Author: Wildbow

Finish Off – 24.10 | Pale

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“Can you expand the table?” Verona asked.

Fairies approached and pulled at the edges of the table to draw it out wider.  Verona emptied her bag carefully onto the surface, then sorted contents, putting papers together and weighing them down with notebooks.

They were in a hut belonging to a larger fairy that wasn’t in, at one of the larger markets Avery was familiar with.  Squat stools and chairs of varying sizes peppered the location.  The table had been so narrow it was almost a bench, but some glamour had helped to extend it.

Lucy was pulling off her coat.  She visibly jumped as Verona slapped a hand down on a notebook.

A little fairy was tugging on a piece of paper, trying to tug it loose.

“Hands off until we deal,” Verona said.

“What’s on the table isn’t for-sure on offer,” Avery said.  “Let us get organized.”

The little fairy, who had gelled her hair into locks and waves that resembled a flower, made a cute little moue.  “Can I have what’s on this piece of paper?”

“No you cannot,” Verona said.

“Let us get organized first,” Avery repeated herself.

“I’ll take what you can give me, from this paper.  My family will give you stuff.  Glamour!” the small fairy proclaimed.  “Ooo, pretty glamour, it’s so useful, you seem like someone that’s good at glamour, ooo, so cool.  Trade!”

“I still regret throwing out some of my old art stuff, I’m not inclined to throw out or sell practice notes and whatever else,” Verona said.

“Jude,” Lucy said, twisting around to look at their escort.  Jude had brought them onto a Path and out here, at their request.  “I don’t suppose you could handle some practice for us?  Just need a reset on some wards I drew.  Especially before we get our usual backup glamours up.  I don’t like being without.”

“I- sure?  I’m not sure I have the Self to power it, though.”

“Hot lead?” Lucy asked Verona.

“Sure.  Didn’t we burn it out?”

“There’s some in there.  Ceiling’s lower, it’s slower to charge, but…”

“Sure.”

“No complaints, Ave?”

Avery turned.  “I never liked using it, I don’t like the feeling of being burned, so no complaints… except maybe Jude doesn’t like being burned?  It’s mild-ish and just a feeling, no actual damage…”

“You’d only have to hold it a second, for the activation,” Lucy said.

“Sure,” Jude said.

Lucy unzipped her sweatshirt, and exposed her shoulders.

“Oh,” Jude said.  He made a faint ‘uh’ sound as Lucy moved the straps out to her arms, to bare the shoulders.  “On you.”

“I mostly need a touch up and a reactivation, since my practice is turned off,” Lucy said.  “Please?”

“Is it a problem?” Avery asked.

“I… she’s-”  He stopped short when Lucy turned to look at him with an arched eyebrow, “-you’re a girl.  I’m touching skin.”

Verona turned, hand on cheek, giving him a look, adding to the pressure and awkwardness a bit, teasing.

Julette, coming up behind Verona, did the same, but with the reversed angle.  Some fairies darted about and tittered.  Verona was pretty sure they didn’t get what was going on, though.  They were like, Peckersnot and Cherrypop tier.  They lived and thought simply, so they took away from the surface level.

“It’s not a problem.  It’s- I missed a step, mentally, once that got thrown in.  Feeling on the spot here, guys.”

Verona broke position and gave him a light shove on the arm.  “I think you’re good.”

Julette reached over to wave off a fairy who might’ve been trying to get a five finger discount on the proffered deal.  That was Verona’s cue to get sorted.  She put stuff out.  There were some odds and ends she’d picked up, some things from the goblin market, a quarter of a beaver skull with a long yellow incisor, a knitted glove, an old fashioned stopwatch, some buttons, a packet of razor blades, bits from a partially looted first aid kit, some change, and a poker chip.  She spaced them out, and put her packet of peddler cards in front of her.

“This rock smells naughty,” a small fairy said, about one of the rocks that Verona had pulled out.  It was glassy and smooth.

“From the Kennet market,” Avery said, diplomatically.

“Goblin,” a larger fairy declared.  “A goblin once owned it.”

Small fairies gasped melodramatically.

“So if you don’t want it…” Avery said, moving to slide the stone back out of reach.

“No!  No!  It’s pretty!” the fairy shouted, fighting to get it back.

Reverse psychology felt mean in this situation.

“Give us glamour and get us set up,” Verona said.  “As payment for the rock.”

“One drop.”

“That won’t get us anywhere near there, we need an amount ranging from a slathering to a sprinkling,” Avery said.

“Smidgen?” the fairy offered.

“We don’t have a lot of time, so if you’re not offering at least a dash…”

“A hint!” the fairy offered.

“That’s less than a drop.  Go away,” Avery said.

“You figured this stuff out, huh?” Verona asked.

“When I was negotiating for your Christmas present.  Slather, sprinkle or drizzle, all those depend on the size of what you want to apply the glamour to, uh, then it’s something like gill, dollop, tad, dash, pinch, smidgen, drop, hint, speck, breathing of.  They like to use obscure and vague terms to try to pull a fast one.”

“That’s great.”

“I don’t think it makes sense to get so caught up on boy-girl stuff and relationships when the stakes are this high,” Lucy was saying.

“Right,” Jude replied.

“I see it in movies a lot.  Not that, always, but other stuff too.  It always bothered me when people would wisecrack in end of the world situations?”

“I was wisecracking,” Verona pointed out.  “Not an end-of-the-world situation, but…”

“I know.  And now that I’m here, seeing a situation like this, high stakes, lives in danger?  I still find it really obnoxious.”

Verona grinned.

“Love you still.”

“Sorry to be obnoxious,” Jude muttered.  “It really was a… social boundary induced brain fart.”

“I like that,” Avery said.  “Good phrasing.”

Verona stuck out a toe, prodding Lucy, eyebrows raised.

Lucy seemed confused for a second, then reframed whatever was going on inside her head, and seemed to realize.  “Sorry, Jude.  I wasn’t harping on it because of you.”

“It’s okay,” Jude said.

“Just stuff on my mind.  Serious stuff.  Sorry if I made it more awkward.”

Jude replied with a murmur, squinting a bit as he looked over the diagram work.  “Trying to distract myself by making sense of the diagram work… very minimal bleeding of the coppery… marker?”

“Marker, yeah,” Lucy said.

“I think I’ve made sense of the diagram,” he said.

“Ask if you need clarification,” Verona said.

“Will do.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said.  “I was just distracted, because my ex boyfriend was wondering about relationship stuff…”

“I saw, I heard.  Yeah.”

Verona prodded Lucy in the leg again.

“You’re cool, Jude.  Owe you one,” Lucy said, as a way of tying things off and stopping herself from going further.  She pressed her lips together.

“Here,” Verona said, to change the subject.  “In the interest of being expedient with time…”

Snowdrop had provided some odds and ends for the table.  Avery had a bit too.  Some Lost coins, some more first aid stuff, some snacks, pressed flowers, and some temporary tattoos.

“Temporary tattoos, small on a human, huge on a fairy, let’s hear the best offer, best offer,” Verona said.  “Speak up, little fairies and fairy-friends in attendance… do I hear one pinch?  One pinch of glamour, any kind, to have a flower and a skull on your body?  You can slap this baby and it won’t break like glamour does, how cool is that?”

Fairies flew around her head, trying to talk over one another.

“I’m seeing one offer for a pinch, how many pinches to a dash, Avery?”

“Two hints to a drop, two drops to a smidgen, two smidgens to a pinch, two pinches to a dash, two dashes to a tad, four tads to a teaspoon, three teaspoons to a tablespoon, gill is a half cup, sprinkle is a light coating, slather is a dripping coating.”

“Got it.”

“I wrote it on my arm to memorize it over a week,” Avery said.  “In class I was writing it in the margins of my notebook.”

“Do I hear one pinch and a smidgen?” Verona asked, trying to pick up the patter that would get the fairies excited.

“And of course Verona’s memorized it already,” Lucy said.

“I cheated in this case, I think the peddler boon to get organized helps with this stuff,” Verona said.  “Two pinches and a smidge, can we get two dashes?  Two dashes, can we get a tad of glamour?”

A group of fairies flew in formation, holding hands, cheering.

“I think that’s a group saying yes.  One tad.  Okay, there’s lots of excitement, one teaspoon?  There.  There’s so much hype.  Do I have an offer for a tablespoon?  Yes, over there, with the glorious hair.  Two tablespoons?  The group again.  Three?  Yes.  Four?  Over there.”

Voices overlapped.

“By taking this tattoo, you commit to a half-gill of glamour to be delivered tout suite.”

Fairies took the tattoo, cheering.  Others protested at the unfairness.

“I’m not here to quibble over small amounts, if you want it, make better offers.  Second tattoo, this one’s got a dolphin and rainbow waves.  Who doesn’t love rainbows?  Half a gill, let’s hear it.”

Fairies fought to be the ones to the front, trying to get Verona’s attention.

“Can we a full gill for the rainbow dolphin tattoo, that won’t break like glamour does?  You can do your hair to match!  Full gill of glamour?  Look at you, you’re a winner.  By taking this you commit to the deal, give me a yes.  Great!  Let’s move on.”

She was dealing with Others that, by and large, had legendarily bad attention spans.  Some fairies would, outside of the Faerie realms, die because they forgot to sleep or eat.  The patter kept them excited.

“Half gill to start for the snake.  Imagine having this running up the side of your body, you can do a wiggle dance and make the snake wiggle!  Half gill, interest for a full gill…?  You’re not loud enough, so let’s stop there.  By taking this, you agree to the deal.  Fantastic.  Give me a tiny high-five.”

The fairy did.

“And show me your best snake wiggle.”

The fairy did.

“What a good snake wiggle, were you destined to win?”

The clamoring voices were giving her a headache.  There hadn’t been quite enough interest in the snake one, and some of the others were more goblin than fairy.  She’d given them the base idea to ride on, and giving them the chance to show off was very appealing to fairies, as Verona saw it.

Avery beckoned the winners over and began helping them to apply the temporary tattoos, wetting a handkerchief with water from her water bottle to help.

“Let’s put the temp tattoos away for now-”

Fairies protested.

“Painted coins.  Useful for dealing with Lost, and if you ever come to Kennet…”

Interest was flagging.  She could read the body language.

“…you can show off the cool paintings on the coins.  How pretty!  What neat colors!”

Fairies chirped and cooed, entirely swept up in things.

“Teaspoon?  Can I hear two teaspoons to win this painted coin?  Sold.  Lucy, handle the register while Jude draws on you.”

“By taking this, you agree to-?”

“Yes,” Verona confirmed.  “And take payment as they go to get it.”

“By taking this you agree to the deal, to be paid before we leave,” Lucy told the first fairy to approach her.  “Go get the payment.  Bring it here.”

“Cool stone, retrieved from goblin hands, one teaspoon.  Give me two?  Multiple parties willing to shell out two.  Three?  Sold,” Verona said, passing it to Lucy.  “Let’s step it up.  Pocketwatch.  A thing for a human pocket, but for a dainty little fairy it’s old fashioned, it’s quaint, it can be the center piece for wherever you have guests when you have them over.”

“Are these items for an awakening ritual?” Avery muttered, picking up the pocket watch, prodding the fragment of beaver skull.

“Just in case.  Offer me a half-gill of glamour for the pocket watch…”

Too much to ask?  But a fairy larger than the tiny ones was interested, craning his head, one eye opening wider, as if to open the aperture enough to get a better look.

“Too rich for your blood, or maybe you all have your eyes on something else.  I’ll cut you a deal, pocket watch for three tablespoons.”

“Sold,” Verona said, sliding it Lucy’s way.  “Pressed flowers.  Wall decorations for a fairy if I ever saw them.  Lasts a long time, gives you a bit of springtime in the middle of winter.  Two teaspoons each, first come first serve…”

Keeping excitement afloat.  Fairies buzzed in, various wing types fluttering and flapping as they navigated around the table.

“A gill is said to be roughly synonymous with a sprinkling over an average full grown man,” Avery said, “assuming you want a full coating.  We’re not full grown, so we can cut back a bit.  But we probably want two gills for a slathering if that’s what we need for Lucy’s fox form.”

“Aces,” Verona said.  “We’re there already, could do a bit more to set up Julette… come on, little fairies.  Wish you guys used currencies, would make this a lot easier.  Stuff over here going for one teaspoon, Julette?”

“On it,” Julette said, taking charge.

“Stuff we’ve got here for a tablespoon…”

Verona used her hands to move stuff into broad, generalized piles.  Everything fairies weren’t showing avid interest in, she began putting away again.  That made fairies feel like the stock was all being put away, which energized them to pay more.

“And we no longer need glamour, we need hands.  Fairies willing to set us up, as instructed.  This is a way to get neat stuff even if you don’t have anything to spare, who wants stuff for a few minutes of labor?  Cool, raise hands.  You, what do you want?  You.  Come on.  You’ve got two hands raised, come on.  You gotta work twice as hard or twice as long, got it?”

Some rocks, some pieces from a fashionista doll wrapped in the fine chain from a necklace, probably done by a goblin who’d been chaining up something it saw as fairy-like, but fairies just liked the doll and glittery chain.  Ironic.  Suturing needles from the jewelry kit, some thread, the wool mitten…

Verona put the rest away.  The amounts they could get for the rest were minimal compared to the effort it took.

“That’s it for this visit.  Get stuff, bring it back,” Verona told the fairies, putting the rest of the odds and ends in her bag.

“After all that effort, it’s still only maybe half of what the three of us would get, back when we were getting glamour from the two Faeries in Kennet,” Lucy observed.

Maybe avoiding names because Maricica was a loaded one and Guilherme had gone to Winter.

“Yep,” Verona replied.  “But that’s the way it goes.”

“It’s neat to know we can do this.  Wish I’d thought to build hype like this when I was shopping for your present.”

“You did other things,” Verona assured Avery.  “Like set up these connections in the first place?”

Avery shrugged.

“But while we’re on the topic of stuff you did and connections you made… you said it was called the Crucible?”

“Yeah.  I have that conversation replaying in my mind,” Avery said.  “There keeps being stuff I wish I’d said, responses I wish I’d given, stuff I wish I’d brought up.”

“Did you achieve what you set out to do, though?” Lucy asked.  “Changing position, Jude, my back’s hurting a bit.”

“Sure,” Jude said, pulling the marker away.  Lucy hunched forward, elbows on knees.

“Did I do what I set out to do?” Avery asked, repeating the question.  “Kind of?  I wish I’d convinced them.”

“Could you have?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know.  Maybe?  I feel like if I’d thrown a few more details out there, I could’ve shocked them out of their current way of thinking.”

“Sometimes it’s less about getting them to turn away from Charles right now, right this second,” Verona pointed out.

“True,” Avery conceded.  “I didn’t feel like these guys were going to change their minds.  Maybe some of the youngest people there who were listening in?  But even then, I- hmmm.  I dunno.  They were such a group, looking to Grey for leadership, I don’t think they’d lose their group to chase down some maybe-alternative later on.”

“Question is… is there a later on?” Lucy asked.  She moved one arm to take the glamour being offered by a returning fairy.  “Because the impression I’m getting, I may be wrong, is they told you because they don’t think you can stop what’s happening.  They implied it’s coming.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“The Crucible,” Verona said.  She watched as fairies filtered back in.  Others hung back, not sure what to do.  They’d offered help.  “You guys?  As soon as we have enough glamour we’ll give you your instructions.”

That… didn’t seem to really achieve any desired effect.  They now knew there was a game plan, but still didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves.

Julette got up, and became a cat, pouncing through the lowest-flying fairies.  It became a playful game, teasing them, drawing them into a game of chase.

The moment they were supplied and set up with glamour, wards reset, and weapons in hand, they’d be on their way.  But they’d needed a second to breathe and think straight, and since they were pulling away and needing to restock, this served.

“I don’t think our approach changes in a big way…” Lucy said.

Verona shook her head.

“…but it makes it more important we get him,” Lucy finished.

“Can it be disrupted?  Poisoned?  So he has to spend the power to undo it, like we kind of wanted the Kims to do with the Titan?” Verona asked.

“The same scenario that ended with us effectively gainsaid?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.”

Lucy sighed.  “Dunno.  Ave?”

“I… the way I interpreted it, going by what Grey said, tone, and as far as it makes sense to me, it’s like, Solomon was this wise person who kind of got to grips with the world of practice and Others in a way that a lot didn’t, saw a need, and actually managed to pull off a big change.”

“And it wasn’t perfect, it got twisted along the way by, like, Musser-type people, Alexander type people, Bristow type people…”

“Us, even, in little ways, maybe,” Verona threw it out there.

Lucy frowned at her.  “Maybe, I guess.  And then here we are.”

“Yeah,” Avery agreed.  “Here we are.  But I guess the big things are, like, you need the wisdom, you need the power, and you need the willingness to bring about a new revolution.  The Ritual Incarnate is meant to do all that, I guess.  Bunch of different things Charles has been doing become different parts of history and the current day, like one big test where maybe it feels like thousands of years pass and you go through the days of primevals and then the days of Titans, the age of gods, the Seal, post-Seal stuff…”

“Probably throw in a bit of learning what it is to be forsworn.  If it’s someone like Charles, backed by his ex-forsworn?” Lucy asked.  “A lifetime of experiencing being forsworn, at least, would be a given, right?”

“Yeah, Avery agreed.  “And I guess that plays into two parts of it.  Getting the wisdom he wants, or having to get the wisdom, to survive that many experiences, across thousands of simulated years, and picking up the motivations to fix what’s broken, along the way.”

“Not sure on motivations.  Wise, yes, but motivations?  A willingness to do good?  Even if Charles twists people’s arms and tweaks the ritual to teach certain lessons…” Lucy murmured.  “Ennngh?”

“I think to them, that’s the same thing, being good and being wise,” Avery said.  “Maybe it is the same thing?  Because I think, like, was Alexander wise?  Did he have wisdom?”

“Nah,” Lucy murmured.

“Was Bristow?” Avery asked, with a half-laugh.

Verona shook her head.

“Musser wasn’t.  But that was them being shortsighted, as I see it.  If you have a full view of the bigger picture and the grit to forge forward… don’t you naturally want to fix that bigger picture?” Avery asked.  “Genuinely asking, I honestly don’t know.”

“You might,” Verona said.  “I think the question becomes, if we get a new Solomon-type, Solomon-tier game changer, someone on top, with the ability and know-how to change things up… someone with power, not just in the raw juice, raw intensity way, does he fix things, or does he wreck things more to secure his spot?”

“Does a multi-billionaire stop wanting money?” Lucy asked.  “Sometimes, in a rare case?  Yes.  But most of the time?”

“Damn it,” Avery muttered.

“So.  Wisdom.  Morality is a toss-up.  Then all the ones who die and fail fuel it,” Verona said.  “Which gives power.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “To set up someone who’s better than Solomon, I think, and it has to be better, because there’s just so much more to the world, so much more to get to grips with, thousands of years later, with Seal stuff and new realms and all that jazz.”

“All that jazz,” Verona echoed Avery.

“Ask my family and they’d say Avery’s a shoo-in,” Jude said, with a half-laugh.

“Still?” Avery asked.

“Ehh.  They’re big fans still, yeah.  I mean, we’re here.  We’re working with you.  We’re working with your family.”

Avery made a sound of protest, half-squeak, half groan, before shifting into a, “Thank you.  Really.  I thought I popped that bubble, though.”

“Gotta do better, my practitioner,” Snowdrop said, throwing herself at Avery’s back, draping over it, arms over either shoulder, cheek against the back of Avery’s head.  “Tell them about your pimple-free butt, and-”

“Snow!”

“And those witty one-liners that give you warm fuzzies to go to sleep to at night.”

“Okay, Snow, need moral support here, tonight, with everything going on.  Not that.  Please.”

“Right, can’t risk popping the coolness bubble like you’d pop a butt pimple.”

“Snow.”

“It’s your fault for taking a goblin-adjacent familiar,” Lucy said.

“She wasn’t as goblin-adjacent when I took her.”

“What does that say about you, that she’s so goblin-adjacent now, eh?” Verona asked.  “Eh?”

“Just don’t pull that embarrassing stuff when people who aren’t best-friend-awakening buddies or super-trusted allies are around, okay?” Avery asked.  She poked Snowdrop in the side of the stomach.

“I understand, I get it.  Refuge in propriety.  Makes sense to my scraggly, scruffy self.”

Avery reached up and back to mess up Snowdrop’s hair, then grabbed the edges of Snow’s hood to pull her face forward until it smushed into Avery’s shoulder.  “Don’t have to understand it.  But line in the sand, I don’t like being embarrassed.  Please and thank you.”

“Mmph.”

“Thank you.”

“Speaking of embarrassing,” Verona said.  “Chuck, the big sloppy dick of a man, and not in a fun way.  We’re going to want to change up roles a bit, going into this next phase.  That determines how we set ourselves up.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Run it by me.”

“You’re fragile.  That glamour may crack and we won’t have easy fixes.  So let’s move you to my role, hanging back, looking for things you can do.”

“Right.”

“I’ll give you some potions, some passive stuff that we’ve had with us and part of our kit for a long time is still running, like how a gainsaid warden or sealer won’t necessarily have all his wards and seals go kablooey and let the big nasty Others they were suppressing run rampant, every time they’re lightly gainsaid.  Your mask should work?”

Lucy reached for her bag and the mask that rested on it.  “Yeah.  Smoke protection and air.”

“Which should work with smoke generating and gas alchemy.  You may be the best-off out of us three, because your implement should secure a bit of loose, generalized practice stuff.  It’s like how Innocents can interact with practice, accidentally, and you’re Innocent with a big extension built onto your Self.”

“Earring kind of works still,” Lucy said, by way of agreement.  “So do some of the fighting lessons.  Not all of them.”

“A better ‘default’ for when gainsaid and an expansion built onto your ‘ceiling’ for some targeted areas is a big benefit of the implement.  Okay.  Cool.”

“Cool,” Lucy said.

“My boons might still be active,” Avery said.  “Turned to some ‘conserve power’ mode, maybe?”

“Sounds like a thing to treat as a bonus if it helps, but not to lean on,” Jude said.  “Don’t go jumping off any rooftops onto hard ground, okay?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“Ave?  Process of elimination, since my role’s taken and you can’t have your old role?  So…”

“I’m Lucy?”

“Up front like Lucy was.  There’s wiggle room in how we do these things.  Like, way I’m figuring it, ‘up front’ means something different with a fight like this.  There’s a wide front, with some running involved.”

Avery nodded.  “I might need to top up my wards, then.”

All of them turned to look at Jude.

“No problem,” he said, playing it cool.  “No pressure, right?  I mean, my family would totally be cool if I did a crap job and their favorite not-a-family-member Path Runner got hurt, right?”

“Whatever you can do,” Avery said, pressing her hands together.

He nodded.  “Your power source might not be enough.  Might mean I’m dragging more on my Self.”

Verona liked seeing guys flustered and flushed, and while Jude wasn’t her type, he was doing his best to handle his shit when faced with the prospect of retouching intricate diagram work on his crush’s neck and shoulders.  It really fed into what she liked seeing in guys in a ‘woo’ way that didn’t turn her crank fully, in this specific situation, but maybe gave her crank a three-quarter-circle turn and reminded her it was there.  Verona smiled at that.

Except that line of thought went cross-wise and bittersweet when it stumbled over Anselm, in her head, and her memories there.  Trying to get him flushed and flustered, almost competing with McCauleigh.

Then the bittersweetness of it sort of transmuted into a yawning feeling of bitterness and melancholy.

“Owe you one, Jude,” Lucy said.

Jude had the hot lead in hand, and was touching it to the diagram work.  It was evocative of Lucy’s earring, copper ink on skin, with that bit of red that matched the dangling part of the earring, as the hot lead glowed like an ember.  He winced faintly.  “A bit, yeah.  But who’s keeping a tally?  Friends helping out friends, helping out the wider region, securing the Garricks a position politically, hopefully.”

“Hope-” Avery started to say.  She paused, then stood so she could pull phone from pocket.  She looked at Jude as she put it to her ear.  “Hopefully.”

“You’re done,” Jude said.  “Maybe Verona should look it over?”

“Yeah.  Thanks,” Lucy said.  “Since Avery’s talking to her family, I’ll call and update my mom first.”

“Sure,” Verona replied.  Then, in response to a glance from Lucy, she dipped her head.  “Right.  Me too.”

The phone rang.

“Midway through one call, and now Florin wants to talk,” Avery said, checking the face of her phone.  “No.  I- I’ll call him after.  I wish you’d looped me in.  I would’ve wanted to be there.  No, it’s… it’s not important, I don’t think.  No, you didn’t do it wrong.  Matthew’s right.  Emergency situation.  If she’s willing… ugh.”

“Hello?”

“Hey,” Verona said, sitting back a bit.  She watched fairies continue to deliver.  “Checking in.  I think this is it.  Final crack at their last line of defense, then final crack at Chuck.”

“Thank you for the update.  I appreciate it.”

“Yep.”

“I’m with Jasmine right now.  Do you- is it a distraction if I share my own end of things?”

“Is it a distracting end of things?”

“That depends on where you’re at and what you need.”

“Just update me,” Verona said, closing her eyes.

“Talked to your dad.”

“Oh,” Verona said, scrunching up her face.  Not that her mom could see.

“Hashing out particulars.  He has a lot on his plate.  So I offered to take you for a while.”

“And?”

“And we don’t need to get into details-”

“Details, please.”

“The messaging was mixed.  That he needs and wants you there but he has a lot on his plate and…”

“And I’m a burden?” Verona asked.  “You’re saying this like you want to shield me from the reality, but that’s just how he is.  Mixed messaging.  I think he wants to be miserable.”

“Well… don’t worry about that for now.  I’ll get set up in Kennet, I’ve got a line on a place, it’s nothing fancy, but it’ll tide us over until we figure out what the future looks like.”

“Big question for us and most people in the region, even if they don’t know it.”

“What else do you need?”

Verona looked up at the ceiling of the hut.  She looked down to wave off a fairy who was nosing into her bag.  “Right now, was checking in to get Lucy off my case.  And because you deserve to know what’s going on.”

“I appreciate it.”

“And… dunno.  Don’t commit to anything apartment-wise this afternoon.  If things go south, you don’t want to be locked into a year-long lease.”

“Okay.  Thank you for that.  Things are hectic in Kennet, with the recent fires, I think there’s some pressure.”

“In a pinch we can stay in Kennet found or Kennet below, I figure,” Verona said.  She felt a pang and thought of Mal as she said, “Kennet below has vacancies.”

“Okay.”

The silence hung.

“You said this afternoon?” her mom asked.

“Yep.  Yeah, no, I figure… this is it.  Final push, final move against his key players.  Final move against him, with any luck.  And either we get to make our way back home, mostly intact, a few new scars and traumas, maybe, and pick up the pieces…”

“Hopefully not too many scars or traumas.”

“…or we lose and a massive selection ritual to empower a god-sorcerer game changer sweeps over the region, exterminating people, Charles wins and maybe takes it out on us, maybe friends die, maybe we die.  Things go to shit.  In which case you, Jasmine, and everyone will want to get clear of the region.”

“I don’t know which part of that you want me to focus on.”

“Good question,” Verona said, sitting back a bit.  She wished the seat had more of a backrest.  Lucy was portioning out glamour, using her debit card.  Her call had been short.

“A part of me always thought that once you found out about the magic, you’d be super into it, trying to explore the nooks and crannies, eager to chase down new threads.”

“Like you?” Lucy asked, half-turning.

“Hmm.  I’m digesting it, still.  Waiting for things to be calmer.  If aliens came to Earth, it would be impossible to study them when in the middle of an invasion, most people you know either in the thick of it or worried to the point of… to an extreme point.”

“Not so impossible.  It’s what I do.  I’m good at it, too.  Creative application of practice in tense situations.  Big f-you magics.  Craft, that’s a big goal of mine, to make it instinctual, to make it art, to make it so there’s a direct line between what I do and how I operate.”

“Your dad was more the creative one.  The costumes he made you for Halloween.  Photography.  The cakes he decorated.  He collected art and carvings.  The meals he made.  The- he made me a multi-layered picnic box, beautifully organized, night of our… one of our dates in the first couple months.  For a late-night picnic under fireworks.  I’ve mentioned that a few times.”

“Huh,” Verona said.  “Past-tense creativity?”

“Maybe.  I don’t know him as he is today.  I only get glimpses and two-minute conversations.  I feel guilty, sometimes.  That I wasn’t… a person who met that and matched it… I don’t know.  That he changed as a result of knowing me.  Away from that.”

“Yeah, I don’t even know,” Verona said.  “Maybe some.  But maybe he’s a person who wants love to be sacrifice, and if you’re not sacrificing so much that it hurts, it’s not love, and maybe as a result it’s a bar you can’t ever meet.  I can’t ever meet.”

“I should ask,” her mom said, and it was a slightly different tone.  “Is this a distraction?  A touchy subject in tense times?”

“It’s okay,” Verona said.  She sighed.  “What are you, then?  If not that?  If not creative and crafty?”

“I’m good at getting to grips with a lot of different things.  Mastering a few.  But it needs to percolate, I have to meet it on my own terms.  Sometimes that means dancing around a topic, poking or prodding, or browsing the occasional article.”

Verona nodded.  Voice soft, she uttered a, “yeah,” for the sake of not having her end of the phone call be silent.

Was it weird, that having a way to organize that into her head, made her feel better than knowing her mom had rented an apartment and had a place for her to stay, to have a tie to the real world?

“I should go.  If I don’t make it back to you, thanks for being reasonably cool, get clear, look after Jasmine, sorry to throw all this at you and die, I guess.”

Verona listened into the silence at the other end.  The creak of furniture shifting.

“Okay.”

There was a lot to be read into that.  A lot of possible interpretations, but it felt like that was just the reality of dealing with her mom.  Verona could be as blunt as anything and then she’d get something back that could have three different implications.  Disappointment, detachment, or maybe it was a desire to not add more to Verona’s plate.  She could see herself in a very similar situation doing something very similar.  So was she supposed to take the best possible interpretation?

“Okay,” Verona said.  “You know, we all wrote letters in case we died?  Part of the reason I went to dad’s house last time around, was to get mine, in case it was left behind.  I guess, with me giving you that short version, that’s kind of me including you this time around?”

Awkward.  Verona rubbed at her palm.

“Glad to be included,” was the response.

Was that a genuine comment, or a recognition that she hadn’t been included before?

Maybe it would always be this way.

Maybe they’d understand each other better, a little down the road, if they lived together for a while.  Maybe they wouldn’t, and Verona would live at the House on Half Street, and she’d at least know she had an adult-supported cover story if a school or something wanted to check in on her.

“Bye,” she said.

“Good luck.”

Verona hung up.  Lucy glanced her way.  Still wearing her earring.

She would’ve heard.

Avery was wrapping up a call with Florin, it looked like, as Jude fixed up her runes, presently drawing on the back of her neck.

“Avery’s family is crazy,” Lucy said.

“Really now?”

“Yeah,” Avery said, her expression and the momentary eye contact with Verona making it feel like a reply to that question. Then she glanced aside, voice changing again, as she replied to Florin.  “Yep, yeah.  Thank you.  Sounds good.”

Avery hung up.

“All good?” Verona asked.

“Some setup.  Yeah.”

“Your family’s crazy?”

“Annoying.  But they’re good.”

“Glamour, weapons, and then we go?” Lucy asked.

Avery nodded.  “Me in Lucy’s normal role.  Lucy in Verona’s, and… you’re me, Ronnie?”

Verona turned, looking over at the door at one side of the hut, which sat ajar, Hollow Yen leaning against the doorframe, leg positioned to keep the door to the Path from closing, so they had their convenient exit.  His arms were folded, his face obscured by mask.

Echoing what Charles did, pulling the various ingredients together.

Verona shot Avery with a finger gun and a click of her tongue.  “In a manner of speaking.”

They exited the Path and entered an ongoing, behind-the-scenes battle.  The Kims were out, but key players were still in the fight.  Right now, right here, at the back lines, where the practitioners they’d brought to Charles’ setup northwest of Toronto were camped out, the White Rot was active.

It bled through wires and spread through walls.  It came out like pus, but had textures like television static.  Faces boiled up and out, stark, fluorescent white, like bubbles ready to pop, but with leering expressions and television static eyes.

Zed had called out three Others who were acting against it.  The Typetap Kitty was out there too, dancing along the broken upper edge of a wall from a damaged cabin.

Lightning crackled and then rumbled where the Titan was active, a little distance away.

“How are we doing?” Avery asked.

“Brought some Innocents out, like you asked.  Some Aware.  We’re ready to bring more out, but the Titan is an issue,” Nicolette reported.

“Are they dealing with it?”

“Trying.  Kims lost their practice same as you-”

“A lot more of them lost it, though, right?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.  So they don’t have that resource to help with the Titan.”

“Meaning they’re busy,” Lucy said.

“Zed,” Avery said.  “Is it a problem if Innocents crash this party?”

Zed turned, and pointed something like a clicker at the wall.  His setup, a laptop with about fifty peripherals plugged into it, or plugged into peripherals that were plugged into it, projected an image onto the wall.

A pixelated game character from like, early arcade machines from forty years ago, was projected onto the wall, red and fang-mouthed.

A crack formed in the wall, and the white rot began to ooze out like pus from a sore.  More cracks spread, wires threading out of and around the cracks, like sutures on a wound.  The rot formed a face.

The arcade machine creature chomped the face.  A two-dimensional image on the wall, it severed things like a guillotine, before fritzing out.

“Shit,” Zed muttered.  “Shit, no… Nico, anyone else with any knowledge of technomancy, watch the walls.”

He began tearing out peripherals, to find one that was starting to spark and smoke.

And ooze pus.

“Yes,” Zed said.

“Yes what?” Lucy asked.

“To Avery’s question.  Yes, innocents.  But knock first.”

“Right,’ Avery said.  “Where-”

“Next building over,” Nicolette beat her to the punch.

Avery nodded, then went, jogging.

She felt heavy.  It wasn’t that she was heavier than normal, but a lot of the side stuff that would let her activate wind shoes or open a door was turned off or muted.

She had the black rope, still.  It was a magic item, and magic items worked when gainsaid.  But it was the sort of thing that played off of so much else that she did.  She couldn’t black rope up to a high place if she wasn’t sure about the falling from high places boon, or do air-rune acrobatics to get where she needed to be to use the rope.

Less like she was tied down, and more like she had magnetic shoes magnetizing her to metal floor, limiting her usual options like jumping and climbing.  Or complicating them.

She checked the coast was clear, then walked up the steps to the cabin next door.  She knocked.

Theodora opened the door and frowned as she saw Avery.

Avery stepped inside, glad to be out of the rain, but she kept her hand on the doorknob, back to the door.

This was the relief group.  A quieter room, lights dimmer.  Deb and Ann were at the back corner, injured, lying on mattresses without cots or beds.  Bea Wint was sitting in a chair by her mom’s mattress, looking miserable.

“Any word on our children?” one of the parents asked.

“You’re Teddy’s parents?”

“Yes.  He sounded upset when he called last.”

“You couldn’t give him the number or-?”

“He wouldn’t listen.”

“He might be one of the last ones to bail.”

“We’re Nectar’s parents.”

“Nectar?” Avery asked.  That fucking name.  “She’s… one of the ones we got out, isn’t she?”

“We stayed because we wanted to advocate for Cameron, when her mom clearly can’t.”

“Right.  Um.  We’re trying, okay, so just bear with us?”  That got a nod, so Avery turned to Theodora.  “Can you let some out?”

“Which?’

“Just… some of my old classmates.  Clem or Vaughn, or… is it easier to grab some?”

“It is.”

“Then, whoever’s easiest, for right now, but I’m thinking we’ll want more.”

Theodora reached into her coat, and she began swinging the horn around.

Fine sand flowed out of the end of the horn, and swirled around them.

Verona had gone into that world.  Time passed differently there.

Now it was George, Jeremy, Caroline, and the guy Vaughn from Sargeant Hall.

It took them nearly a minute to rouse and fully pick themselves up.

Caroline stared down at her hand.

“It’s a bit of a head trip, apparently.  We said we’d pull you out of danger.  That’s where you went,” Avery explained.

“You didn’t say it would be that.  That was a whole universe,” Jeremy said.

“I was a girl,” George said.  “That was an experience.”

“Weird,” Caroline said.

“I wish I thought to do more,” George said.  “Get some… life experience.”

“Gross,” Caroline said.

“You wouldn’t if you were a guy?”

“I’m not even entertaining this particular.”

“Most forget particulars,” Theodora said.  “I wouldn’t concern yourselves.  Let it fade and become a dream.”

“Damn,” George muttered.

“I got lost as a child, fell into a nest of pitspur ameise, and was rescued and raised by hairtooth dustloomers,” Vaughn said, staring off into some distant point.  “Bugs.  Angry bugs in a sandy desert cave for twenty years.  They get fluids with beads of mucus that collect on their face-hairs.  I’d like to let it fade and become a dream.  Soon, please.”

“Look, sorry, Zed was in a pinch.  I think I need just you guys for now.  Come?” Avery urged.  “If you’re okay with that, Vaughn?  You, uh, managing, post-bugchild life?”

“Yep.  Yeah.  I manage.”

“Do me a favor?  Confirm for me, with voices, that you are who you appear to be?”

“George Mason, your old classmate.”

“Jeremy Clifford, ditto.”

“Caroline Gray, ex-classmate.”

“Vaughn Hind.  Chew toy.”

“Literal chew toy or…?” Avery asked, turning around, wary.

Snowdrop leaped from her shoulder and became human, and paced out to the side, so they had Vaughn covered from the side and the front.

No signal.  The communication between her and Snow was muted, so it was purely them going off their usual working relationship.  Which hadn’t been so great when Snowdrop had been talking about butt pimples in front of Jude and fairies, unable to really get Avery’s signals and intentions.  But it worked here, at least.

“No.  Not literally.  Clementine said they had a special label for her.  They even called Figueroa something… karmic filter?  I just sorta threw out what it feels like I am.  Universe’s chew toy.”

“Right.”

“Why did you react that way?” George asked.

“I think because there’s a real chance that someone… magicked up a chew toy?” Jeremy asked, sounding unsure.

“Magicking up a chew toy to look like someone from our group, giving it the same name as them, rigged up as a trap,” Avery said.  “With augurs, they could even match it to Vaughn.”

Vaughn nodded slightly.

“That’s really a thing that could happen?” George asked, sounding incredulous.  “Something people would seriously do?”

“Yeah, yeah it is,” Avery replied, turning to walk backwards while talking.  She tripped a bit, and Snow caught her.  Ugh.  “Come on.  You’re needed.  Just your presence for now.”

“Right,” George asked.

They followed her.  Tripping, no air shoes, limited boons.  She was tied down, in a way, with a lot of her movement limited, she was partially muted, unable to communicate with her scoundrel of an opossum.  She couldn’t call out to Verona and Lucy.

It felt like a pressure coming in on all sides of her.

Avery knocked as she reached the door, uselessly, because she could hear Lucy reporting she was there.

The shift as they entered the space was an interesting one.  The White Rot shrank back as the door opened wide.  Zed had four Others out, at least one other Other was free- the Typetap Kitty.  The moment Caroline, Jeremy, Vaughn, and George came in, the Others took steps, moving to one side, letting the loose crowd of others within be the barrier that blocked them from view – Kierstaads, Knoxes, Mr. Driscoll, Nicolette, Zed, and the other non-combat practitioners.

“That takes getting used to,” Zed said.  “Used to keeping a wider distance.  Thank you, though.  Buys me a chance to regain ground.  Maybe stay away from electronics that aren’t in buildings our friendlies aren’t already in, okay?”

“Okay,” Avery said.

“Okay,” George said, clapping his hands together.  “What are we doing?  What do you need us for?”

“You did it,” Avery said.

“What?”

“Thank you.  Just needed you to show up,” Avery said.

He narrowed his eyes at her, face thrust forward, in a way that made her think it was an inside joke with friends or he was copying a meme.

“Can confirm,” Lucy said.

“Verona,” George said.  “You like explaining the magic stuff, right?  Explain this to me.”

“I’ve actually got stuff to do.”

“All of us do,” Lucy said.  “I feel like we’ve gotta make our move.  Before any Kims recover.  Before they get a full handle on the Titan.”

“On the Titan,” Jeremy said, voice a level lower than the ambient conversation.

“Stay, get sorted, get ready.  I don’t want anyone coming who isn’t enthusiastic and ready,” Avery said.

She waited until she was back outside before she pulled her lacrosse stick off her charm bracelet, shaking it violently to lose the glamour and get it back to full size.  “Snow, can you get the other stuff?”

“What stuff?” Snowdrop asked, grabbing Avery’s wrist, before glancing around and becoming an opossum again.  Her forepaws remained at Avery’s wrist, and she quickly scampered up Avery’s arm.

“Ugly stick, hockey tape, knife.  Knife’s in the umbrella holder toward-”

Snowdrop sneezed.

“Yeah.  You know, I guess.”

She let Snowdrop crawl on her to access her bag and pull the necessary things out.  The ugly stick, hockey tape, a knife.

Snowdrop took the things and started work while Avery stepped back inside.  “Should we say hi, then?”

Thea got to her feet with a grunt.  “If we say hi, Avery Kelly, then we’re skirting the Titan thing.”

“If we are, then so are they.”

There was a sound as something impacted the ground outside.  Avery turned, unsure what she’d do in a serious fight, without the things Snowdrop was holding.

The fear she felt, now, usual tools denied to her, it really dug into her.

She heard goblin sounds, and Snowdrop’s laughter.  The tension left her, but that fear didn’t.

“Okay,” Avery said.

Others were leaving the building next door.  Avery could hear the chatter.

“Goblins are going to have to hide.”

“Yep.”

“If the Titan attacks?”

“Then pull the Innocents back?  If it happens a third time, I think we can argue it counts.  It might even be the best way to mess with it.”

“The Titan?” Theodora asked.

“Titans predated the Seal, right?  It’s… not built to work around it, I don’t think.  Imagine we’re playing a hockey game, and someone comes out onto the ice, and he’s a real beast.  But he doesn’t know the rules.  Can we keep him off the ice by letting him make penalties?  Let him bash his face into the Seal three times?”

“Maybe.  There’s an issue with that.”

“Which is?”

“So soon after putting them into my world, set up as part of my atlas configuration back at my vault, pulling them out again, I’d be weakening my setup and spending unnecessary power to put them back in again.  It establishes a pattern of easy in, easy out, and the spirits want more payment for that, to allow that groove to be dug.”

“Do you have another world?”

“I do.  I have several.  I would send them to those, but they’re dangerous, or deeply unpleasant, or complicated.  I used this one because it’s a happy dream of another life.  As you may know.  I found fingerprints inside.”

“Wasn’t me,” Avery murmured.  She saw Thea’s expression change, then said, “A friend.”

“Mmm.”

“Dangerous or unpleasant is better than dead, right?  Just so long as you can get them out later?”

“As you wish,” Theodora said, with a faint ironic tone.

It was the kind of tone that, if Avery heard it from some person in the hero’s group in a movie, she’d assume it meant a stab in the back or subtler betrayal was imminent.

But that was kind of just Theodora.

Theodora began emptying her realm.

Avery retreated again.

Coordinating.  She found Snowdrop working with goblins to set up the weapon, Liberty standing nearby.  The netting had been cut out and the frame of plastic was a bit of structure to hold the club part in place, with tape going from shaft, up to the plastic, around to the club, and so on.  Plastic had been cut so it now hugged the handle of the gnarly bit of dark wood.  A mixture of hockey tape and some barbed wire locked it down.

Snowdrop pulled a nail out of her pocket, then held it out with a bit of reverence.

Avery took it, lined things up, and then swung the stick and club lightly into the wall, tapping the nail in enough it was stuck.

With a swing, she gave it a serious thwack, and sank the nail in, between handle of club and the topmost part of the stick’s shaft.

“You gotta disrespect our boy,” Snowdrop said, seriously.  “Using the nail, we break a promise.  We acknowledge what happened, and we prepare to give it the appropriate weight, break pattern, and do something ungoblinlike.  Pacifist.”

Avery weighed the nail in her hand, a bit old fashioned, without a proper head.  Almost a wedge.  “Yeah.”

Touching the protruding sharp end against the wood of the cabin exterior, she leaned into it.  “You goblins are going to want to get scarce.”

“Counting on you to stick by me here,” Snowdrop told the goblins.

They fled, some cackling.

“They keep coming from the outside,” Liberty said.  “Random minor Others.  They’re collecting up north, and around the house.”

“Okay.  Good to know,” Avery said.

“I couldn’t tell, I was busy smashing heads and setting things on fire.  Did you leave and come back?”

Avery nodded.  “Getting some things in order, talking strategy and roles, final strike.”

Liberty nodded.  “Am I a part of this strike?”

“Most of us are.”

“Okay.  Cool.  Oh, shit.”

The door opened.  Liberty ran off to the side, to avoid being seen with her flying outfit.

Clementine.  Brayden.  Brayden’s dad.  Mia.

Theodora was talking to some, phone in hand.

People seemed disoriented.

Some firemen called out, asking for people to clear the way, and ran out, jogging.  People seemed bewildered, but it wasn’t a ‘reality is wrong, magic is real’ bewilderment.

Nobody was really talking about their intense dreams.  Or- no, that wasn’t true.  But the fragments that came out were curated.  Managed.  This was the universe going out of its way to nudge people, to ensure that Innocence would be preserved where it existed.  Or half-existed, in some Aware’s cases.

Avery kept the violent end of her stick trailing in snow to avoid letting people see it.  Snowdrop hid, opossum mode, nose peeking over Avery’s shoulder.

Before she could be spotted, Avery turned and went around to the back of the cabin the others were in.  She knocked and opened the door.

“…Kims might have magic items, but they’re not as big a threat.  The first-wave group of Charles’ is an issue because they raided the Blue Heron for choice items, they have power,” Lucy said.

“Power without conscious effort backing it.  It’s like how we had glamour from Guilherme to spare, but it was possible to spend it all.  Somehow.  Mysteriously.”

“Maybe because you’re a glutton for glamour?” Lucy asked.   “You use it like it’s your specialty.”

That prompted a cackle of a laugh.  “Point being, point is, hi Ave.”

“Heya.”

“Point is, they can spend that power, theoretically.  And if they do, that’s it, right?”

“Maybe,” Lucy said.  “Something for the back pocket.  What’s going on, Ave?”

“Our Aware and Innocents are out again.  Theodora can pull them back into another item, but it won’t be nearly as fun or cool,” Avery explained.  “I was talking to Theodora and thinking maybe if the Titan tries and fails three times to hurt Innocents, we can call it out?  It might be too dumb and immature to not to bash its face into that wall.”

“What happens if it bashes its face into Innocents and those people die?” Zed asked.  He was staring at images projected onto the wall.  It looked like he’d completely reconfigured the thirty or so odds and ends that were plugged into available parts of his computer, or plugged into one another, or plugged into one that was plugged into one that was plugged into one.

Many of them had digital readouts or dials that Zed was checking over regularly.

“If it bashes Innocents, that’s a disaster,” Avery said.

“Not great,” Zed said.  “Contingencies?”

“Uh.  Everyone here?”

“My hands are full with the White Rot, so not me.”

“We’ll do what we can.  Come on,” Lucy said. “Thank you, Zed.  One of you, stay behind?  Caroline, maybe?”

“I will,” George said.  “Tech stuff is cool.”

People began to filter outside, getting things together.  People like Sebastian, who couldn’t fight, hung back.

“You and I are in front, Verona’s hanging back, I guess you’re taking the lead here, and I back you?” Lucy asked.

“Best as is possible without practice.  Sucks,” Avery said.

“Yeah.  Don’t love it.”

Avery picked up the pace, to stay near the head of the group.  She kept the club part of her weapon tucked in the crook of her elbow, stick resting against shoulder and sticking up.

Not exactly graceful.

“Nicolette was saying Seth and Cameron are coordinating better.  Two augurs against one.  Nicolette’s good, but Seth grew up with this stuff.  In a duel between augurs, it’s about who looks further, looks clearest, and pulls it together.  We’ve got one of the augurs trying to get things lined up against Nicolette, and one against our whole group.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “Can we bring in other Belangers?  Gillian and Chase?”

“They’re there, staying in touch, but it’s hard when you’re not at the edge of the Storm.  The way these work, it seems like when you’re inside, it’s hard to look out, and when you’re outside, it’s hard to look in.”

“And weird horror senses don’t-?”

There was a dull boom, and the cabins rattled.

The cabin leaned.  Avery was in position, one of the last ones out, to see what was happening near the back.  Pus boiled out of the gap, the shadows of that pus a crackling visual static.

She saw faces, as pus leaked into snow and blurred into it.  Grinning maniacal grins.  Men with beards running from chinline to adam’s apple, nowhere else.  Ones with yellow teeth.  Ones with pus oozing out of swollen eyes.  All with skin the same white as paper, as a toilet.

“It was holding back!” Lucy called out.

The way it was oozing out the back wall meant the Innocents in the middle of the street couldn’t really see.

Lucy ran to the front door, and hauled on it, but it remained locked.  Avery could see pus leaking out of the edges of the door.

The firemen and firetrucks weren’t near, so there weren’t axes to hack a way in.

Avery checked the coast was clear, and, running between two cabins, she leaped up to grab a windowsill.

Snowdrop went low, and gave Avery a boost, to lift herself up.

The White Rot had exploded, and the inside was a mess of broken technology, a shoulder-deep sea of pus and crackling static, and faces the size of beachballs that bobbed in it like apples, moving with ‘hair’ of tattered wires.  Some faces bared teeth, others opened mouths to have gallons of pus pour out.  Some cried it.  Some had it pour out of ears, or ooze out of frayed wire-ends.

Zed was fighting to stay standing.  The others weren’t doing great.

Avery got her forearm braced along the sill, black rope wrapped around her other hand, and went to punch-

And a yelping sound from Snowdrop and a click of the wooden bead bracelet told her the time wasn’t right.

Her forearm slipped, and Avery and Snowdrop fell into a pile at the base of the window.

An Innocent had retreated toward the bang sound and was now here.

They retreated.  “Get clear!  In case the building falls!”

That didn’t seem to Avery like a thing that would happen.

“Are you okay, girl!?” one of the bystanders asked.

Brie joined Avery as they scrambled around toward the back of the building.  There wasn’t much leeway to do much here.  They needed to make a difference before Innocents poked their heads in again, and made it complicated to involve them.

“Ave,” Snowdrop murmured.  “Woods?”

Others in the woods.  They’d pulled back a bit, maybe, to muster numbers and forces for this.

Avery swung her weapon into the door.

The ugly stick was a gift from Toadswallow.  It did a lot of damage that was hard to heal and repair.  With the swing of the lacrosse stick, it was pretty easy to get a lot of momentum, do that bit of extra damage.

Enough to create a gap, as the door caved in partially.

“Eyes closed.”

Avery black roped them inside.

Onto the stairwell leading up to the second floor.  Avery had to steady Brie to stop her from sliding down.  Frothing pus speckled everything.

It was hard to breathe.  There was stink, ozone mingled with the smell of infection.  No air in here.

Which didn’t stop the White Rot from roaring at the intrusion with twenty mouths.

The roaring dissolved into taunting, overlapping voices, insults, bait.

“What have you even done lately?”

“Not S-class, are you, drowning girl?”

“You can’t succeed.”

“They left you and they’ll keep leaving you.”

George was floundering, trying not to drown in digital pus.  Verona’s black mask floated on the surface, above Julette’s reaching hand.  Gaps appeared and popped as oxygen traveled to the surface and created indents instead of bubbles, like they might otherwise.

“Cry more.”

“Bagmilk isn’t even a good band!”

“You’re a disappointment to your mother!”

“Zed!” Avery called out.

“I thought it was too easy!” he shouted, spitting.

“Can you get to Verona?”

“It sucks at you!  I can barely move!”

“Zed,” Avery called down.  “Big red button!?”

Zed had explained it before, how every technomancer tended to have a big red button.  Common magic item, meant to obliterate all technology within a certain radius.  They’d had theirs destroyed last night, by the sword swallowed guy with the magic video game cartridge in his heart.  But if every technomancer had one, then Zed surely would too, right?

“Fuck.  My tech-”

“It’s gone, Zed!” Brie shouted.

He fought to twist around enough to look.  His hand came to rest against a face in the sea of white rot, fingernails digging into forehead and eyeball for traction.  His tech had been absorbed into the White Rot.  Black wires pumped pus into it, and vents oozed it.  “-Yes.  Yes!”

He used that traction on the head and pointed at the far corner of the cabin.  Then he had to pull his hand away, because teeth were popping up all around the head he’d had his hand on.  Another, larger head manifested to bite the smaller head, and nearly take his hand off.

It moved funny as it did it.

Avery got out a down-to-earth ball.

The already damaged door broke in two across the middle, the door handle popping off to land in the soup, the lower half sliding open.  The failure of the door served to stem the tide of the rising pus, because it flowed out through that opening roughly as fast as it was rising elsewhere.  Which still didn’t help Julette.

Others, from the woods, breaking in as a horde.

Not all that far from where Zed had left his stuff in a corner.

Avery climbed over the railing, hanging off the other side.  Twenty feet.  Jumping from near the ceiling, hands and feet behind her, on the railing and outside edge of the stairs, how much ground could she cover?  Maybe half that?  Ten foot leap, land on all fours?

There wasn’t much furniture.  When the Storm had eaten glamour, a lot of the cabins had been rendered empty shells, apparently.  The only things, then, were things that had been brought in to serve as makeshift tables and seats.  One of those tables was a few planks with legs, and was floating on the pus.  If she jumped to that, if it held, it would sink with her weight, she’d have a moment before the muck came in over the top to catch her foot.  Some forward momentum… she could make another leap, ready to toss a Down to Earth softball into the muck to clear a patch, briefly.  A moment to act, find, and use what she needed, before it swamped in around her.

Just like a path.  Just way, way grosser.

“Can you push some opossum resistance to grossness my way?” Avery asked Snowdrop.

Snowdrop opened her mouth wide, making an alarmed sound.

“Not that much, huh?  No dumpster diving ick?”

Brie caught Avery’s wrist with two hands.

“What?” Avery asked.

“You’re not seriously…?” Brie asked.

“If I’m super lucky, I can jump, land there.  Down to Earth ball to clear a patch around the red button, get to it and hit it.  Should clear everything up.”

“And if you’re not super lucky?”

“Then I get gross, and maybe between Snowdrop and I, we can find it blind, in the soup.  If you’re up for it, Snow?  I’d basically dunk you.”

“My followers will never let me rise above the shame,” Snowdrop said.

“Soup,” Brie said.  “Even with the limiters Zed used…”

“Is that anything we can use?”

“Not with that tech being what it is,” Brie answered, pointing at Zed’s setup, which was overtaken by White Rot.

“I don’t suppose you could use your Hungry Choir boon to…”

“Chug an entire cabin full of grossness?” Brie asked.  “Not as fast as it’s coming in.”

The mob at the door were slowly forging their way through, wading through the shallower part.  Goblins, ghouls.  Both seemed to adore the soup, for very different reasons.

A wraith was floating, but it seemed more focused on Zed than on Avery.  Which wasn’t great, but it meant it wasn’t playing interference, at least.

Avery coughed, trying to breathe with the haze of this ick in the room.

Julette was drowning.  George wasn’t doing great.

Heads rose and swelled like bubbles on the surface.

“I can read what’s on your phone, boy.  I can read your search history.  Big tit rub barbecue sauce?”

Voices howled with laughter.

“It was a meme!” George shouted.

“Your memes suck, then!”

“All of this sucks!”

Now or never.

Avery pulled her arm free of Brie’s hand, reasserting her grip, eyeing the way the table floated, bobbed, and shook.

“Learn to code, little man.”

“Fuck you, my coding is great!” Zed shouted.  Teeth sank into his arm, and pulled him sideways.  He didn’t have the traction to keep feet on the floor, at the bottom of that soup.

Avery was about to leap when she saw the table that was her midpoint shifting, sliding to one side.

It was a shift.  The contents of the room rising on one side, dipping on another.  A wave forming.

Avery could hear voices.

The muck slopped against the window.

Avery changed her mind.  She hooked one leg over the railing and slid down to get past Brie, then hucked the ball at the window.

It shattered glass that was clouded with a coating of pus so thick it was like yellow-white paint, shot through with threads of red-to-black blood.

“Help!” Avery called out.

The entire room of the White Rot recoiled, pulling back.  Heads rose up to bite at Zed’s other sleeve and sink into George’s shoulder.  Pulling them back, closer to the stairwell, away from everything.

“Back door is mostly open!” Avery called out.

And with that, the tide of Others began to retreat.  The pus began to leak away.

Avery waited until there was dry ground, leaped, and, landed on floorboards.

White rot oozed up, like it was so close to overflowing out between slats in the floorboards again that her body weight tempted it to ooze up.

But she had a clear path.

“My computer,” Zed said.

“But-”

“And toss me my bag.”

Avery looked at Julette and George, who weren’t great.  George had two bite wounds.

“Now!”

She listened.  She pushed the computer setup toward Zed, and the floor was still gross enough in parts it skidded.  Snowdrop pushed it the rest of the way, as Avery continued to the back corner.

The bag.  The red button was near the top, shielded with a protective cover.

The down-to-earth ball hadn’t created any special effect as it smacked the window.  The red button had the cover… it might not have flipped up, especially if her hands were greasy.

Maybe her plan wouldn’t have been the best.  She would’ve been dunked.  She would’ve had to get inventive, to hit that button.

Zed took the bag, and pulled out a syringe.  Instead of a needle, though, it had a circular mouse port, tinted neon green, at the nozzle.  He plugged it into his computer, which was still bleeding grossness.

People were coming in.  Innocents.

“What happened here?”

“Nothing,” Snowdrop said.

Julette was recovering.  She maybe didn’t need to breathe.  But she looked really unhappy.  Allowed.

George was hurt more, though.

“You okay?” Avery asked.

“I said I wanted to see tech stuff, huh?” he asked.

“Sorry.”

“Get what you ask for.  Ow.”

“We have healing potions,” she said, in a low voice.

“That’s the awesomest thing ever.  Actual healing potions.”

He was so excited about dumb stuff.

The mix of nausea and the memory of the stomach pumping made her stomach cramp a bit.

“They have their ups and downs,” she said.

“It was trying to get inside me.  I felt it.  Static seeping inside.”

“Try to take your mind off it,” she urged him.  Fuck.

From the sounds of it, there was chaos elsewhere.

Augurs.  Seth and Cameron.  The moment a move was being made, they could throw an obstacle their way.

On the other hand, the Innocents coming in were like a battering ram.  With things mixed in, people outside, people inside, the White Rot wasn’t willing to play games.  Maybe if everyone was indoors, it would try to seal the way out and drown them.

But it couldn’t if things were this messy, this scattered.  Not unless it was willing to make the bet it could do what it did, swallow things up, convert them into more white rot that communicated across telephone and cable lines, and clean up the mess entirely.

Zed pulled the syringe out, pulled off the peripheral at the nose, and plugged it into another port.  Brie was by his side, getting first aid kit stuff out of his bag.

“Can you let Zed and Brie handle your first aid?”

“Go beat the bad guys,” George said.  “Before they do that again, please.”

“Zed?” Avery asked, as she caught up to her friend.  People inside the building were milling around, picking up fallen things.  Asking questions.

“It’s been a game of chicken,” he said.  “It was trying to bait me, so it could come to me from a flank while my attention was elsewhere.  I was trying to get it to come to me.  It’s strong, but I have resources.  So I’d put limiters on it.  Make it bite slower, grow slower, have to lag a second before attacking.”

Avery had noticed one small delay.

“Right.  So it has to suffer being locked down or…”

“Yeah.  Or come.  But it wouldn’t come.  I thought it wouldn’t ever.  But it was waiting for a chance like that, where I was more alone.  Taking my computer.”

“Yeah.”

“I was waiting for it to try something and fail.  Because… antivirus…”  He tapped the syringe, holding up the attachment.  He touched the syringe where it was plugged in.  “Becomes a vaccine.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“I guess we’ll see.  Thanks for the help.”

“I didn’t do much.”

He nodded quickly, and gave her shoulder a pat.  She was glad everything had dried off as quickly as it had, after the rot had retreated.

She was meant to be on the front lines, but she was back here, doing her thing.

At least her idea of bringing Innocents in wasn’t a total loss.

A bit of a foil to her side, but to the other side?  When Charles had gone big and blunt?

“Hey.  Managing?” Avery asked Julette.

Julette nodded, coughing, and then made her way forward, putting the black cat mask on.

Avery took Snowdrop’s hand, and ran outside, Julette following.

“Thought the Down-to-Earth ball would’ve counted as a magic item,” Avery said.

“It does,” Snowdrop said.

“I noticed, yeah,” Avery said.  “Fuck.  I guess it relies on me to give the effect.”

The firefighters had no real fires to put out, and were acting as more general rescue and clearance services.  It looked like two were at the building where Ann and Deb were, with Bea.  More were at a house that had collapsed, seemingly checking for any bodies within.

The Titan was back there, a young man lurking so far into the Storm that they had to get close and search for him to see his silhouette.

There were no Kims outside the Kim House, that Avery could see.  No St. Victor’s practitioners.  The house stood, that one room propped up at an improbable position on the third floor, supported by damaged construction beneath.  The Storm and a mess of elementals had really done their damage.

Avery could see connection blocks, left on surfaces.  Some of the simplest.  The same ones she, Verona, and Lucy had learned, day one, and put on their hats, to avoid being noticed as they rode in the bed of a pickup, with Matthew, Edith, and Charles.

Wards against Innocence.

So as the Innocents milled around, and tried to figure out what was going on and how bad the damage was, the area around the damaged Kim manor was clear of everyone except Aware and practitioners.

It wouldn’t be a good idea to damage the wards willy-nilly.

Avery approached the grounds, and as she did, she saw what they’d done.

Practice to distort the building.  Practice that turned it into an Escher painting.  Ruined and burned sections of building, stairwell, rooms, parts that were demolished and parts that were perfectly intact, all forming a catacomb-like arrangement that lined a deep pit.  Everything took on a darker, green-tinted quality as it dipped lower, subdividing and becoming more geometric as one went further down, as if everything was angular stained glass past a point.  Avery could hear it with her skin, a rustling of material on material, like skin attached to skin produced a perceptible, uncomfortable noise where cells met.  But everything was like that.

A dark kaleidoscope.

The closer Avery moved to that simple, fifteen foot tall stairway that led up to the room with the red-tinted exterior, where the meeting was held, the more out of reach it became, dipping into the catacomb.

Teasing.  To get up that stairwell and be ready for Charles, they had to go down?  All the way down?

If she flew somehow, would she get twisted up?  Pulled down?

A disheveled Julette stepped forward, to be by Avery’s side.  She held out the puzzle bracelet from Clementine.

“Would really like that back,” Clementine said.  She was hanging back further than some..

“Hey!” Lucy hollered down.

A haunting, echoing cackle came from below.

“Talk to your augurs!” Lucy shouted.  “Because I think you want to look into this!”

Julette gave the bracelet a waggle.

Silence answered.  But thankfully not any laughter.

Nicolette, arms folded, frowned.  She ran fingernail into groves along the right edge of her glasses until she found a Sight she liked.

“Just like that, huh?” Nicolette asked.  “Holy hell.”

“What?” Clementine asked.  She was with a group of those from Sargent Hall.  No Figueroa or Vaughn, though.

“Imagine turning someone temporarily into taffy, putting them through a trash compactor, then a blender, and then making them live the rest of their life in whatever shape that ends up being,” Lucy said.

“That’s monstrous,” Clementine said, frowning.

“That’s what they tried to do to a group of children.  To hold them hostage.  It’s what they did to Gillian Ross-Belanger, fifteen, and Chase Whitt, seventeen.”

Clementine kept frowning, but she didn’t protest.

Lucy noticed it coming first.  A reaching hand, gloved in black.  She pulled Avery and Snowdrop back and away.

Avery had to do her part, though, and the moment she had stable footing, she used Lucy as an anchor to swing around, swatting.

Smashing a wrist.

The people who’d retreated down into that catacomb of a place were now rising up, coming at weird angles.  Some progressed way faster than it seemed like they should, and with so many people at the south end of the property, a few were able to get up and climb up onto the more northern part of the property before others could circle around to address and stop them.

McCauleigh had come back over from the force that was prodding the edges of the crucible and standing up to the Titan, and she sprinted after one of them.

“I’m tempted,” Julette said, holding the bracelet.

“Don’t,” Avery said, quiet.

“Damn.”

“Trouble,” Nicolette said.

Avery looked.

There were whole types of practice aimed at laying groundwork for really intense practitioner fights.  A necromancer who wanted to send a wave of undead at someone’s house had to first get them across the city, so a practice to call a mist was generally seen as something that fit Law.  Cooperating with the Seal.  It was good karma.

They’d done the connection blocks, as if that was the only thing they were doing to keep Innocents away from all of this.  But that was bait.

Now fog was rolling in, very strategically.

The Titan took that excuse to approach.

“They brought it in line,” Lucy murmured.

“Getting more tempted to use this,” Julette said.

“Might muck you up.”

“I always wanted to be Other, didn’t I?” Julette asked.

“Not like you’d end up, doing this,” Nicolette said.  “Pain every day?”

Julette rubbed at her palm.

“We’re not equipped,” Lucy murmured.

Others were still coming up, unwilling to be in that catacomb in case someone changed their mind about using the puzzle bracelet to further stretch what had already been stretched to a breaking point.

Avery backed off as a black bolt from one of those stupid black branches clipped the edge of the pit.

That chunk of dirt turned fractal as it fell, twisting into itself, going inside-out.  It got worse as it went lower.

“Back up,” Lucy said.  She eyed the approaching Titan.

“I’ll tell you girls this…”

An unfamiliar voice.  Or at least not immediately familiar.

A trick of the mind.  Because Avery expected a voice that near to her, behind her, to be a friend.

Helen Kim stepping out of shadows.

The Kims had been censured by the Judges.  Weakened.  They’d had to set up this, before.

But Helen hadn’t been.  She reached out, black sticks clacking, with multiple hands, to catch at clothes, to grab Avery around the throat and lift feet off ground.  To catch Snowdrop, and grab Avery’s weapon before Avery could swing it to break an arm.

Forking limbs, some braced against ground, others subdividing until she could grab everyone, or just about everyone, in the group that had approached the damaged, catacomb-configuration Kim Manor.

It was a burden, lifting maybe thirty people, even with augmented limbs, and other limbs supporting those limbs.

A bolt of blackness came up, and for Nectar’s dad, he couldn’t back off, and it blasted him in the elbow.

Limb gone.

“Stop!” Lucy shouted.

Nectar’s dad screamed.

“Toss me the puzzle bracelet.”

“Said we’d give it back to Clementine,” Julette said.

A hand pried at Julette’s fist, as she gripped the puzzle bracelet with all her strength.

“Give it… and I’ll only horrify one in five of you,” Helen said, against the continued background noise of screaming.  “Picked at random.  Or don’t, I’ll horrify one in two.  And if you piss me off, if you try something… I’ll throw you in, and you’re all goners.”

“What if we already did something?  Multiple somethings?” Lucy asked.

“Then I should toss you in now.”

“Me first,” was the strangled voice.

The person was Pauline Dishman.  The mom, the one who came from Sargent Hall, who got lost in eerie places.

Pauline smiled sadly.

Then she jerked, pulling back, two hands gripping Helen’s wrist.

Helen was braced against everyone resisting her, pushing when everyone was trying to push back, get closer to secure ground, instead of being pushed out.

Pauline reversed that.  It made them all have to shift footing.  Avery had one foot go backwards and not touch solid ground, sticking out over the edge.

The black shocks of electricity continued to come from below. They had terrible aim, but it meant every second like this was a chance that one of them could get maimed or killed.

Pauline pulled again, trying to go over the edge, smiling more now.

Helen moved, sticks clacking at her side.  She gained more legs.  Then, when she was pulled a bit too far back, she began throwing the people she considered non-threats aside.  Which didn’t include Avery or Lucy or Julette.

“You’re going to get us all tossed off!” Bracken’s dad shouted.

Pauline cackled.  Her smile kept getting wider, the cackle louder.

She wasn’t stopping to breathe.

Helen was retaliating.  She flicked people toward the edge, let go of necks and collars, forced them to be the ones to hold on.  Which they did.  One or two people fell, belly scraping against the dirt ledge at the pit’s edge, and one dropped down to a walkway below, instead of into the yawning, fractal abyss.  She immediately began finding her way back up to the ledge.

The catwalk detonated as a shock of black lighting struck it, and she dropped a ‘floor’ down, tilted, and fell at a right angle, sideways, into the side of the pit.  She screamed, not moving, now.

Something had broken.

Speaking of, though…

Avery’s weapon with the ugly stick as part of it wasn’t in her reach, she had two hands on one arm and another grabbing the other, one at her belt buckle, and one at her neck, but if she lifted a leg…

She could kick it away.

Into the reach of someone with free hands.

Collins’ dad.  Dad of the tattooed guy who’d been taken by the Hungry Choir.  Reagan’s friend.  The guy had been twenty-something scrawny, tattooed.  The dad was more like a biker.

Quiet up to this point, mostly, but in this moment, given a shot?

He broke three arms with one swing.

Pauline laughed louder.

Her mouth opened impossibly wide.  Something peered out from the darkness of her throat, with bug eyes.

Which was a prompt for two more to act.

Teddy’s mom.  Mia.

They’d all volunteered.  Florin had supplied the resources.  His specialty was in dopplegangers, in body snatchers, and, in common parlance, something Matthew had talked about, given his experience as a host, jockeys.  Others that specialized in riding other bodies, who frequently tempted hosts that wanted to hold an Other inside them to host them, then took over wholesale.

Having Innocents, Aware, the augmented Sargent’s Hall Aware, and then practitioners all mixed in together was one thing.

But with voluntary agreements, Florin responding to Avery’s suggestion, they had some traps hidden in the mix.

The biker dude smashed arms like he was cutting his way through a jungle with a machete.  People collapsed, gasping for air.  Helen backed up, pulling herself together.  Broken limbs broken with the ugly stick sometimes took a few halting tries before they reabsorbed into the original arm.

The main armed force of the Kims was coming.  Disarmed in many ways, they had no more practice than Avery, Verona, or Lucy did.

But they had black branches and Joel’s dragonslayer weapons.

Lenard Lily and some bogeymen were with them.

“Bracelet?” Julette asked.

“No,” Avery said.  She drew in a deep breath.  “There are some forces you just don’t want to call on, you know?  Forces so problematic, they change how everyone sees you.”

“Yeah,” Julette replied.  “I hear you.”

“Not talking about the puzzle bracelet.  Something else.  I need a practitioner to call a name,” Avery said, peering over the edge, pulling her head back reflexively as a wand was pointed her way.  “Since I can’t do it myself.”

“What name?” McCauleigh asked.

“Sheridan.”

“They awoke your big sister?” McCauleigh asked.

“Now?” Avery asked, tense.  “Then name Lenard Lily.”

“Sheridan Kelly, Sheridan Kelly-”

Helen reached with a splitting limb for McCauleigh.

The biker dad smashed the reaching arm.  Helen recoiled, pulling the arm back into her, but Pauline and the jockey that was riding Pauline grabbed the broken arm, grinning madly, eyes peering out of the darkness of her throat.

Then, with more strength than Pauline had, it hauled back.

Helen tried to extend limbs, so arms reeled out before she could get pulled, but the biker dad was closing in, and she had to adapt.  She messed up the arrangement of sticks, the arm stopped reeling out, and Pauline pulled with enough force that Helen stumbled forward.

Embracing her, Pauline and the Jockey dove over the edge.

Avery moved to try to see what became of them, but they weren’t falling.

They’d gone on a trip down, but hadn’t ended up down there.

Hopefully that worked out okay.

“Sheridan Kelly, Sheridan Kelly, Sheridan Kelly,” McCauleigh intoned.  “I name and point your attention to Lenard Lily, Bedlamite, Bogeymancer, and gross asshole.”

Nothing happened.

Of course nothing happened.

Lenard Lily seemed to notice his name being called.  He pointed.

The bogeymen with him began ascending the wall.  Sometimes they reached points on the wall where gravity pointed different direction, and scrambled up, building up speed.

The rest of that group moved to one side, to fire up at an angle, driving people back and away, allowing others to ascend and climb out.

So Avery didn’t get the best view.  But she heard a door slam maybe three ‘floor’s down into the pit, and circled around the edge of the pit.

Her mom had called earlier.  Everyone was stressed, Sheridan had heard enough from young Garricks to get a sense of just how serious this was- not helped by the fact their mom had shown Sheridan the picture of the scarred-over bullet wound.

Push come to shove, the Garricks were more than happy to have Sheridan start on her journey, Sheridan badly wanted to help somehow, and their mom and dad were kind of desperate for any edge they could offer too.

In another circumstance, Avery’s mom had said, she might’ve snapped and taken up the role herself.  But Sheridan had studied more.

The first practice one did was pretty defining, apparently.  It was why Lucy and Verona had been discouraged from the Forest Ribbon Trail.

Sheridan did a Loser ritual, helped by a Garrick with the door practice.

Stepping out to catch Lenard off guard.  Throwing out four things that served the same function as an argument in an argumentative practice, the right motifs being brought in and signaled.

For Lenard, bogeyman things gave a pretty good lock.

Sheridan said the words, and it wasn’t enough.

Lenard stumbled, the diagram work appeared and flashed around him.

Then, Avery could see, he smiled.  He looked up at Avery.

He had a black branch.

Avery leaped.

A thirty foot drop.  Past climbing bogeymen.  Multiple practitioners with black branches at the ready.

The falling boon was not at full strength.  But it mitigated things.

The fact Lenard Lily was a soft landing target, Avery’s shin hitting his forehead and knee driving down into his belly, was another mitigating factor.

She landed hard, at a weird angle, one leg feeling the pain.

Lenard, for his part, dropped.

Not out cold.  Not out at all.

“Coup de face, bitch,” Avery gasped.

“It’s supposed to rhyme with ass, you dork,” Sheridan said, standing in the doorway, a Path behind her.

“Fuck off,” Avery said.

“Sure.  I’ll fuck off, and this fuck can get lost, how’s that?”

“Sounds good.”

Lenard started to flip onto his back, so he wasn’t lying on the staff-sized black branch.  Avery put out a leg and arm to stop him from rolling properly.

One of the Kims aimed a black wand at them.  He fired, and the shot did a u-turn to strike him in the shoulder, doing enough damage the arm almost came right off.

“Not with my own shit,” Lenard growled.  “Throw me one!”

They didn’t.

“Across bloodless stone and boneless thorn, twixt unspeaking tree and ribbons unseeing.  Hand in paw, go walk the forest ribbon trail with your head up your ass, Lenard Lily,” Sheridan intoned.  “Framed by deep Abyss snailshell, black wood, sexless Sven doll, and tuft of red pube, get lost.”

Lenard, twisting around, looked up at the black snail shell that was floating above his left shoulder, then the black wood above his right.  There were two more objects Avery couldn’t see with her angle and position.

Then Lenard was gone, replaced by maybe fifty pounds of branches with ribbons tied to them.

“See you when I get around to visiting, I guess,” Sheridan muttered, panting.

Avery looked over, saw the Kims with black branches ready to fire, now that they weren’t killing one of Charles’ main men, and scrambled.  Her leg told her how much it hadn’t liked the earlier fall, like she’d fractured a bone, maybe.  She hoped it was in her head.

One shot made it close.  But before more could come, the bogeymen who’d been climbing up were dropping down, onto those Kims.

Avery moved forward with enough momentum that Sheridan kind of had to hug-catch her.

The Garrick who’d escorted Sheridan -Avery recognized him as Clayton- pulled the door mostly closed.

Avery slumped back against it.

Two of Charles’ players taken out.

And judging by the glow on the other side, the Titan was close.

But that wasn’t Avery’s problem, while her leg hurt.

“That’s the last big practice I do for a bit,” Sheridan said.  “Gotta deal with him later, on my terms.  It’s going to be weird.”

Avery nodded, panting for breath.

“Wild stuff,” Sheridan said.  “Was I badass?”

“Enh.”

“Intense out there,” Sheridan said.  “That your usual?”

“Close to.”

A few seconds passed, Sheridan recovering from the excitement, Avery from a scrap at the edge of a horrorfication pit with bogeymen and worse.

The moment of rest meant Avery was hurting in places she hadn’t realized she’d been hurt.

A thought crossed her mind.

“Tuft of red pubes?”

“That Charles guy, he’s affiliated with him,” Sheridan said.  She shrugged.  “Argumentative signifiers aren’t an exact science, they said.”

Avery nodded, considering for a second.  “Okay.”

Next Chapter