Author: Wildbow

Finish Off – 24.16 | Pale

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“All out?” Avery asked.

“All out,” Verona confirmed, as Lucy gave a singular nod.

“Walk away, and then keep-!” Charles raised his voice.

Avery was already starting into motion.

“-walking!” he roared.  His hands swiped through the air- he’d had them outstretched to either side from a moment earlier, and he raised them, painting vertical streaks.  Dragging fingers down at a diagonal, he drew out a loose outline of a woman.

Overlong arms reached through the gap, near-white, with dark stains at the clawed fingertips.

Avery did a kind of stutter step, starting to move, changing her mind, thinking about feinting- she kicked the bookshelf to push herself the opposite way as both clawed hands reached for her.

It was one of those little things that reminded her Snowdrop wasn’t around- in another situation, Snow would have been there to help maneuver.  Or to make it slightly more complicated, another body to look after.  Better overall.

Charles dotted the air with glowing marks- framing her like the Titan had been framed at first.  Larvae, mirror, thread, moon.  The woman’s face and body remained there in faint glowing lines, as if she was in another reality, only her outline drawn here, but her hands reached through those vertical slices and became fully real.

“Not entirely powerless,” Verona remarked.

“Help, Ronnie!” Lucy barked.  She was already starting forward too, turning her weapon into a whip again.

Avery closed the gap.  I did a shitty job playing at being frontline, but I’m here now, I can try…

She avoided the clawed hands- avoided the elbow that came back her way, not because the woman with the clawed hands was trying to elbow her, but because the large, clawed hands with their long fingers were awkward to maneuver and only dangerous to people she could reach- she had to bring her hands back.

“Oeides: Aerae,” Charles said.  “First thing I ever created myself with summoning practice.  Remade here and now.  Even having given power to the Aurum, this is far and above what I could do then.”

“Don’t care!” Lucy raised her voice.

“I do,” he said.  He was walking backwards.  He gestured, and the portals connected to one another, forming a window for the woman to step through.  She was an exaggerated ghoul or bogeyman of exaggerated proportions, with long fingers tipped with claws that tapered into broken, stained glass tipped with syringe-like needles.  Avery wasn’t sure what to call her, but like, the first place her mind went was ‘heroin ghoul’.

The woman fully materialized and intercepted Avery as Avery ran by, throwing her weight to one side.  Avery was knocked into a window, and glass shattered.  Avery felt the cut at her arm, pain making her arm jump

“A reference I doubt you’ll get… Eidos: A-”

Silence swept through the long hallway.  That’d be Verona.

Charles’ voice was clear in the void of sound.  “-A Scarlet shroud.”

Red, tattered cloth fluttered out and enveloped the Other, transforming her as it blanketed her.  Hair became red, and clothing was enveloped by a billowing tattered cloth, ten or twelve feet long, with something dark beneath.  Spidery limbs dwelt beneath the cloth, suggesting an abdomen that existed only beneath that cloth.  When the cloth flapped downward, it didn’t drape over any bulbous back section, but when it flapped upward, it suggested the back half of an arachnid, six feet long and four feet wide, with some of the legs included, planted onto the ground.

Avery, extricating herself from the window, wasn’t able to move at the speed she would’ve wanted.  A spider leg stabbed forward, hitting the wall beneath the window, blocking Avery at the knees.  She put a hand on the windowsill to vault over, and a hand grabbed the back of her collar.  In the process, those needle fingers raked her cheek, stuttering as they dragged against and tore skin.

The cloth of Avery’s coat unraveled and moved to bind her mouth, encircling the lower half of her head.  More unfurled, leaving her shoulders bare, and she had to raise her hands up to her head to avoid having a blindfold made of her coat forced on her too.

”        !” Avery shouted.

“Oeides,” Charles’ voice cut through the silence.  He slashed open a portal, and grunted in pain as he moved his side.  “Blythe.”

‘Blythe’ was a grungy looking woman, with a cleft lip from a scar, giving her a permanent sneer, the scar extending from lip to left eye.  Her clothes were black and shed black dust, while her hair was white, and shed dandruff, white dust, snow or something.  She put herself between Avery and Charles, drawing a knife.

Avery figured she might be able to move around Blythe, but as she carried on running, casting off the wrapping of rags that was now around head and arms, the spidery Other manipulated the rags, tying Avery’s wrists, with a trailing length of cloth connecting Avery to the syringe hands.

Lucy snapped out the whip past the spidery Other, to catch the trailing cloth and pull it closer.  She switched whip briefly to something bladed, to cut it, freeing Avery.

With cloth now slack, Avery managed to work her hands free.  ‘Blythe’ stepped in, knife swiping through air.

Avery backed away- and more of her coat was unraveled, floating in the air around Avery like she was doing rhythmic gymnastics underwater.  Avery didn’t have many options.  ‘Forward’, toward Charles, meant walking into a knife.  ‘Back’ was into the spidery Other.  Right was bookshelves.  Staying still meant being tied up and stabbed.

She grabbed for the trailing cloth, then hurled herself out the broken window, shifting her grip on the rag she was trying to avoid being tied up by.

There was a Path boon that meant she had a good shot of finding curtains, wires, cords, and other things to grab while falling, for a timely save.  She’d used it to make her entrance against Charles.  This time, she brought her own.  It meant she was skipping part of the boon, but it did help with making sure she didn’t go splat against a hazard or hurt herself on her way through.

She hit a partially open window with two ‘doors’ to it that swung inward, banging one section with enough force it hit the window next to it and both shattered.  She landed awkwardly, bumping into the far wall.  A few people in the hallway startled.

She recognized one of them was one of what the Aurum had described as the Peterborough Ex-Forsworn, which sounded better than the Allaire Ex-Forsworn.  Avery recognized the face from her meeting with that group in the cabin.

“Hey!” the woman shouted.

Avery freed her mouth.  “Are you going to get in my way?”

“Stop.  There’s a lot going on,” the woman said.  She was in her mid-twenties, dressed in nice clothes, mostly white.  The wood around her was changing to a light yellow, framed by dark portions.  Threads of gold traced and decorated the dark wood as the Aurum’s influence spread.  “This entire thing is a process.  You’ve passed two trials, you’re due a third.”

“Yeah, no,” Avery replied.  She ran down the hall, attention split between watching the practitioner and gauging where she wanted to be, made sure vital pockets were empty of necessities, then shucked off her ruined antler-coat… fucking bummer to lose that.  With everything from the shoulders up damaged, she tied the sleeves around her waist, got the ugly stick out, and jammed the ugly stick between hip and coat.

Out the window… a quick climb back up to the floor she’d left…

There were Others and practitioners gathering outside.  It was starting to look like a big event.

This place was still changing.  The stars had turned yellow-gold and were now becoming a perpetual mess of falling stars that crossed paths and traced patterns vaguely suggestive of diagrams.  The moon or sun or whatever it was looked like a massive coin.

She tried to sneak in through a window behind Charles, but he was aware of this place.  Would’ve been better to hurry.

He’d created a glass elemental while she was downstairs.

He glanced at her with a sad, angry look on his face as she climbed through, then disappeared, man turning to silhouette, faintly red.

“Shit!” Lucy swore.

Avery turned her Sight on, tracking connections, while staying wary of the elemental.

Couldn’t really give chase like this, not without abandoning her friends.

“Aurum bailed!” Verona called down the hallway.

“He’s doing stuff outside!” Avery replied.

The glass elemental, which looked halfway between a person and a jungle cat, drawn out in glass -both craggy chunks and broken triangles from flat sheets- prowled toward Avery.

“Ronnie, can you cover me?”

“Toss me some spell cards!” Verona called out.

“Blood, sweat, tears, like the little ritual!” Lucy called out, tossing Verona the spell cards.  “Three of us in sync.  We need to stay on Charles, hard, can’t let him go!”

Lucy moved to the side so Verona could throw some spell cards at the woman with the scar and the spidery Other.  There wasn’t much rhyme or reason to what cards were tossed out, it was just random explosions.

“Shit,” Verona swore.  “Careful!  I don’t think we’re connected to Kennet!”

Meaning we pull on our Selves when we do that stuff.

Avery scrambled out of the way as the glass elemental started toward her, making ear-piercing squeals and scratches as it moved across the tiled floor.  It leaped into the window at the one side of the hallway, and emerged from the glass to Avery’s right.

A swipe of one glass hand sliced past sweatshirt, her dream sweatshirt, and nicked her arm.

“Need more suppression, Ronnie!” Lucy called out.

The spell cards weren’t holding back the spider Other with the heroin needle fingers.  Lucy could fend it off, but then the ‘Blythe’ woman was on top of her.  Lucy stabbed her, the woman didn’t care, and swiped the knife at Lucy’s neck.  Lucy raised her shoulder, and the knife caught the fabric and skin there.

Avery kicked the elemental back into the window, back to the wall, using the bottom of her foot.  The elemental hit the glass, made it ripple and buckle, then rebounded out explosively, with not just the elemental pouncing out, but whole cascades of shattering glass.

Avery managed to throw herself to the side, low enough to the ground the glass was hitting the bookcases, books, and wall above her.  She scrambled to her feet, but tiny pieces of glass embedded in the bottom of her shoe made traction give out, and she nearly fell.  A backhand swing of the Ugly stick shattered the elemental.

It quickly began to reform.

Verona had managed to drive the woman back with what might have been part of a box of salt, which the spider-ghoul Other didn’t like either.  Lucy had managed to shield her face from it, and was currently drawing a spell card, lying on the ground, one of the fat markers they used in hand, her thigh as a writing surface.  She reached for the window, was too far away, Verona grabbed the paper and touched it to glass.

The glass elemental, still only partially reformed, wheeled on them, as if it had sensed the practice.  It screeched, and it was a high screech, residing somewhere past the bounds of human limits, like nails on a chalkboard, but bigger, with clear shrill rage.

The sound warped and was overwhelmed, with a single note in the air, like a finger rubbing the top of a champagne flute, or a tuning fork.

It started to run toward Lucy, and Avery, with only one shoe that was any good for running on the tiled floor, lunged, foot on ground, thrusting herself forward, and swung the Ugly Stick down onto the elemental.

Avery couldn’t see the aftermath.  She landed on her belly on a hard floor covered in shards of broken glass in various shapes and sizes, some as long as her arm, others slivers a half inch long and nearly as thin as a hair.  Her chin stung in two ways, from impact and glass, as it met ground.  Glass from the elemental rained on top of her.  It had been reduced to two long, burly arms, two legs, and a body with a furrow driven down almost to belly button.  It had no head, no place for a heart, no organs, but it carried forward, using the bookcase to its left to walk as it went after Lucy and the spell card.

Avery’s sleeve had gone crimson from elbow to wrist, from the claw swipe.

Lucy’s practice kicked off just as the spidery Other re-engaged with her.  The tone went high and sweet, and all the glass was affected, cracking and breaking in two.  Whatever was holding the elemental together failed.  For a bonus, the spidery Other’s syringe fingers shattered too.  It screamed.

Avery got to her feet, her gloves not one hundred percent enough to protect her hands against the glass on the floor.  Careful with her one foot and the lack of traction, she went to her friends.

Blythe had her back turned, and Avery swung, two handed, to smack her with the ugly stick, driving her into the window, which had basically no glass anymore.

The woman nearly went out the window, but caught the upper edges, feet braced against the bottom, leaving her effectively perched in the window, knife dropped.

“She’s a revenant, I think!” Verona called out.  “Won’t stop!  There might be a token she’s tied to.  Sometimes an animal, sometimes a trinket, or weapon!”

Avery reversed the ugly stick in her hands, and used the tapered handle as a stabbing weapon, striking the Other Charles had called Blythe in the heart before she could extricate herself from the window.

Blythe grabbed for the weapon and Avery’s hands, holding onto those instead, to avoid falling backward out the window.  Avery was pulled forward, used a knee braced against the windowsill to stop herself, then jerked the weapon away, leaving a hole in the heart and the revenant without anything to hold onto.  Blythe fell.

With steady swings, Avery struck at the spider legs that peeked out from beneath the billowing scarlet cape.  The woman turned on her, and Lucy stabbed her from behind, spike going into the base of her skull, out her mouth.

Lucy looked so sad as the Other dropped dead, the cape slowly going still as the life went out of her.

“You okay?” Avery asked.

Lucy reached over, and pulled a piece of glass out of Avery’s chin.  She glanced at Avery’s arm.  “Fuck.”

“I’m more bothered by the needle scratches.  I’ve got first aid.”

“Got healing potion,” Verona said.  “We might need to share.”

“Heal fast, bind wounds, then we chase, we can’t get-”

Lucy interrupted herself by punching Avery, hard.

Avery landed on broken glass.

It maybe hadn’t been meant as a punch.  A shove, too hard and fast to be directed.

Avery, lying on her back on the floor, saw a tangle of clawed arms, limbs from various creatures, snapping teeth, and bones.  It ripped through bookcases, knocked books from shelves- she had to shield her face.  A bookshelf rocked and threatened to fall over on Lucy.

“Ronnie!” Lucy shouted.

As the limbs withdrew, the ones that had done the most damage remained.  Verona had been pierced by a serrated or barbed insect limb, made of blood and ruby tones.  It looked like it had gone straight through her forearm, near the back of the wrist, emerging near the elbow.

Lucy swung for the limb, aiming to sever it, but had to make her weapon back into a marker to avoid hitting Verona as Verona was pulled toward the window.  Lucy caught the back of Verona’s jeans to avoid her being pulled out the window.

Avery got to her feet.  A quick glance over her shoulder suggested they had company.  Two younger members of the Peterborough ex-Forsworn.

She grabbed the bookshelf that was falling, hauling it down as she passed under it.  Black rope out…

She used the falling bookshelf to block the Peterborough ex-forsworn’s view, freeing herself to move straight to Lucy’s side.  “Switch!”

“Ow, ow!” Verona gasped.  “Oh fuck, this is hurting, fuck, don’tletitgetme!”

Avery grabbed Verona around the middle, her entire body helping to brace Verona from the pulling limb.  It gave Lucy the chance to use a weapon to hack at the limb, while still helping to hold onto Verona with one hand.

The limb broke.

Avery could see Charles outside, standing on another wing of the building.  The red of the portals he was painting was stark in the gloom.

They hurried away and ducked down before that second assault tore at the exterior wall of the buildings, pulling away windowsill, supporting infrastructure, and passing through open windows to demolish and tip over bookshelves.

“So,” Avery said.  “Haven’t had much time to figure this out… where’s my trash eater?  Where are our Other friends?”

“Wish I knew,” Lucy said.  “I’m thinking we make that priority number two.”

“Ow, fuck,” Verona grunted.

“Injuries are priority one,” Lucy added.

“Use your healing potion,” Avery told Verona.

“I only have one left, I was going to split it between you two!”  More emotion than usual was in Verona’s voice.

“You need it more,” Avery said.

Verona glanced at Avery’s bleeding arm.

“I have stuff.  Need a second to get my first aid kit out.”

“I don’t think we’re getting time to sit down and stitch our wounds up or anything,” Lucy said.

Lights were coming on outside.  Outstretched wings of the building framed a entrance with a garden, and an amber-and-gold glow was increasingly illuminating that space.

“Do what we can on the move,” Lucy said, eyeing that glow.

“Welcome.”  The Aurum’s voice wasn’t shouted, wasn’t broadcasted, but it was equally audible throughout the premises.

Avery glanced at Lucy.  Her earring gave her some advantage when it came to sound practices.  Probably why she was able to do the glass-shattering tone as fast as she was.

But Lucy wasn’t saying anything.  Avery would have asked if they could locate or do something about that, but the Aurum started talking again.

“Multiple families are coming together in this educational institution.  Bigger than the Blue Heron, it’s a fine facsimile of the same sorts of institution that brought us the Mussers, Alexander Belanger, the Crowes, and the elite of the Hennigars.”

“Ugh,” Lucy grunted.

Avery had her bag off, and as she started digging through it, her arm started to hurt, her hand feeling more tired than it should.  She pulled out the first aid kit.  Lucy was supporting Verona, watching out for trouble, and getting the healing potion from Verona’s bag.

At the same time, they were running.

“A facsimile, yes, for a trial with two judges, but we won’t have lawyers or legal arguments.  I’ve seen how that goes and it doesn’t fit this stage anyway.  No, this is a trial by fire with only metaphorical flames.  Neither we nor our guests want to burn the books.  I extend my welcome to the Peterborough practitioners without practice, the Fae without court, and the contestants who aren’t playing the Carmine Exile’s game.”

Lucy made another disgusted sound.  “Is this who the Aurum gets when he’s fat with power?  Charles turns into a mass murderer on a larger scale-”

“More insufferable,” Verona said.

“-and the Aurum turns into a blowhard?” Lucy finished.

“Always was, I think,” Avery replied.  “But I’m not his biggest fan.”

“Allow me to introduce myself.  My predecessor has done a fine job of stirring up conflict, but my focus is on other things.  Alabasters might periodically find champions, the damsel in white handing a weapon and giving direction to the right people, to do what needs doing.”

“Ow,” Verona muttered.

“Pretty bad,” Lucy noted.

“As Aurum, my role is different.  I handle change, exchange, transformation, and creation.  When a magic item comes naturally into being, as flows mix, I can have a hand in how that works.  The same goes for practitioners, whether it’s a twist in practice, or an outlet for excess power.”

“Here,” Avery said, as Lucy uncorked the healing potion.  She pulled her coat from around her waist, jamming the ugly stick into the top part of her bag, and used the coat with Verona’s arm.  They had to slow down a bit to do it, but they didn’t stop moving either.

“Sometimes the practice falls into someone’s lap, or a twist of energies turns an ordinary shaman into an outlet for a greater spirit.  Sometimes a practitioner’s practice fails them and they become Other, and sometimes they’re pushed to the next level.  A way of discarding excesses and the spare change of the realms exchanging with Earth, by helping someone with unrealized potential realize that potential.”

Avery ended up making a hammock sort of shape, to catch the excess fluid, and wound the sleeves around the bottom and top parts, while Lucy poured.

“And we have so many blank canvases from Peterborough.  Look at that, now.  Eva Nelson’s now a brainstormer, an elementalist practitioner venting out Creation from their unconscious mind.”

“Better?” Lucy asked.  “Look after that arm, Ave.”

“I think it hit bone, might’ve fractured it,” Verona said.  “Better but not great.”

“Sling?” Avery asked.  She ran fingers across her bracelets.  Could she fashion something?”

“Belt, use a belt,” Verona said.

Avery had one on.  She undid it and pulled it free.

“Skye Bartle, the furrows and ruts are already carved.  Natural abomination.  A transformation into something Other lurking just beneath her skin, now.”

Lucy had her own belt off, connecting it to Avery’s, while Avery held Verona’s arm steady.  The smell of healing potion was making her nauseous, mingling with the anxiety in her gut.

Avery saw Charles outside, standing hunched over by a chimney above one wing of the school, looking down.  Lucy would’ve normally caught that, but her attention was on Verona’s injury, and right now, with the token ritual of blood, sweat, and tears, Avery figured she was meant to pick up the slack.  “Excuse me.  Eyes closed, two sec!”

“Ave!?” Lucy asked, but she did close her eyes.

Avery used the black rope and a supporting pillar between the long sections of window.

She appeared behind the chimney, feet meeting sloped roof, grabbed the chimney’s edge to swing herself around, and grabbed the skewer in Charles’ side as she passed him.

“Urghk,” Charles grunted, and the summoning attack he’d been about to do aborted, his expression twisting with pain.

The two of them tumbled down the roof, falling three stories down to the soft dirt of the gardens below.

Charles screamed, and it was this guttural, gross, awful sound, mingling agony with rage.

Avery pulled the skewer sideways, and the scream was strangled with a startled gurgle and choking from Charles.

“James Schrantz,” the Aurum said.  He was close enough for Avery to hear without his voice being broadcast evenly across this place.  “Signet sealer.  Seals carved into stone are an old tradition, I know you spent many years in that basement staring at the cracks in the concrete walls, James, imagining what you’d write, the mark you’d leave behind.”

“Sure,” a guy from the Peterborough group said.

“Give it a try?  The information should flow naturally into your head, then out by instinct.  A basic seal to start.  You can carve something into stone later, for a seal as durable as that stone.”

Avery, surrounded by a crowd that was walking over, had to abandon her grip on Charles.  The moment she let go, he disappeared.

She ran, heading for a hedge-like bush as tall as she was, flowering with gold.

Line of sight broken, black rope-

James over there brought hands together into a circle, and put fingers into the middle to form a shape inside it.  Diagram lines lit up.

The black rope didn’t work.  Avery tried, stumbled, and fell.

One arm still bleeding badly- blood had escaped the part where her sweatshirt pinched in close around her wrist, and painted much of her hand.  On the other arm, the simple seal matching the shape of James’ hands a moment ago was there, hovering over the black rope, some of that glow finding its way into the crevices.

A woman, who Avery was assuming was ‘Eva’, was surrounded by rolling clouds, with lightning jumping from her head to the clouds.  She screamed, and the lightning intensified, making the clouds flash, with flashes increasingly becoming a melody of colors.

A flock of birds flew out of the cloud, and then kept coming- a constant stream of screeching, screaming avians in bright colors.  They hooked talons into fabric, scalp, and skin, and seemed to be trying to lift her by their sheer numbers and supernatural strength.  A beak nipped the back of her neck.

Avery ran, drawing the ugly club and swatting at birds who tried to latch onto her.  She still had glass embedded in the sole of her shoe, and felt it with every footstep.

No black rope, no great maneuvers, no opossum, her friends hurt.

At her lowest point, when everything had gone to shit, when Olivia had left, when her family had ignored her, when she’d been alone at school, she’d had sports.  Even more basic than that, when she’d played the game with Olivia, when her team had been losing, giving up before it even properly started, she’d had speed.  Running, skating.

Lucy hadn’t liked being diminished.  She’d wanted her efforts over these past eight or nine months recognized.  The ‘you’re not real’ thing had hit her hard.

For Avery, she would’ve liked to be recognized for her efforts, sure, but even being recognized for things she’d been privileged to have would’ve been nice.  She’d been so invisible, so disconnected, that even that hadn’t gotten much traction.

She’d wrestled with it for as long as Lucy had been fighting to make an impact.  Connection and disconnection.  It was a big part of being a Paths practitioner.  It was a big part of how, when they’d gone to that primal era, she’d been able to pull back, analyze, and hold on to herself while essentially freefalling through the generations of her tribe.

She pulled away from the main body of birds, feinted- they were dumb animals and swooped that way- and then she veered hard left.  She crashed her way through a door, pushing it open with the force of her running body as much as she was turning the knob to open it, and slammed it behind her.

She held it shut, back to the door, for a second or two, while trying to get priorities straight.  Even then, she stayed moving, scuffing the wood of the door with her foot to try to get some of that glass loose.  She got most of it, but her foot still made a faint ‘tk’ sound as sole met tile.

They were coming.  She wound the black rope at her arm and cinched it with a simple knot.  The rune continued to glow, now over her wrist, like some holographic wristwatch that said ‘no black rope for you’, instead of telling time.

First aid kit, first.  It was awkward to manage, especially while running, and getting access to it meant she needed to use her injured arm, pinning the soft cloth kit between arm and body without spilling it or jostling contents loose.  Bandage.

Kit zipped up and put away.

Where is Snowdrop? Avery wondered.  An extra set of hands to help and eyes to look out for danger would have been great.

She felt the ‘I have a familiar out there’ sensation, but there was no connection going out.  It gave her a bad feeling.

She pushed up her sleeve, and saw the damage- mostly superficial, maybe one nicked muscle, but it was bleeding like three long, clean cuts on her arm were dribbling out steady stream of blood, not like some artery had been nicked.  Any coldness and numbness in her hand would be because blood that would go to it was being put elsewhere, or her body was spending resources on managing the wound, she figured.  She hoped.  She wrapped the ribbon around, pulling it tight, trying not to let it cut off circulation.

One bandage on one forearm, a row of stuff on the other, multiple friendship bracelets, the wooden bead bracelet that reminded her of Mrs. Hardy’s bracelet with buddhist runes, the charm bracelet, mostly spent of charms now, the black rope, the bangle from Sheridan.  And a ribbon.

Avery reached for that sleeve of bracelets, and pulled out the ribbon that was close to her elbow.  It didn’t have a technical purpose- it was purely memento, sometimes used to lash all the bracelets together so they weren’t moving too much.  A reminder of the Forest Ribbon Trail, of the Wolf, of what she was.  But it was also a kind of… a badass thing, maybe.  If the ribbon signified danger on the Paths, wearing it was kind of the Paths practitioner version of wearing a spiked bracelet, maybe?

Either way, it was useful to have the material.

I’ve done this fifty or sixty times, probably, and I bet if I sat down with Verona right now, she’d be faster.

Incoming running footsteps made her stop and pull back into a nook, beside a statue on a pedestal.

They weren’t coming down this hallway.  They reached an intersection and carried off in another direction.

She remained where she was.  It’d be faster to take a minute here and then go than to run the entire way.  Better to go small than big.  She knotted it at the black rope, then did simple loops as she migrated across bracelets.  Over, under, cinch tight, move.

Making a circle.

When she reached the spot where she started, she made a line.  Better to follow the line of her arm, to make it a plus-sign instead of an ‘x’.  The rune for earth.  A seal of a different sort.  The finder’s knot.  The thing she put on her ‘skeptic baseballs’.

She unwound it, and with it, unwound the seal on the black rope.  She saw that holographic wristwatch come to pieces.

She gave it a second to find equilibrium, in case she’d unwound some of the black rope’s innate qualities, checked the coast was clear, then started moving again.

There was a group in the hallway, wearing the uniforms of the ‘school’, here.  Crucible school.  Avery took evasive action.

“Avery!”

Glamour?  Friend?  Avery spun around, stumbled backward, and banged into a bookcase, but she stopped, wary, ready to sprint off again.

It was a boy, red haired, though it was a darker, deeper red than Avery’s family had.

“You guys go ahead.”

The group split off.

“Avery.  The family has expectations,” the boy said.

“Yeah?” Avery asked, panting.

“It’s not just about the grades, passing the tests, meeting all requirements, here.  There are things the family needs you to do here.  Looking after the younger cousins, making sure they-”

“Back all the way off,” Avery told him.  “No.”

“It has to be done.  It’s why you’re here.”

“I got over all that crap back home, part of the reason I left Kennet was it was being put on me.  No.  Don’t tie me down, that’s not who I am.  This is mine, this is something I fought for, something I earned.  I’m freely sharing it to people downstream, to siblings, to parents if they ask, to people I love, to my community.”

“You’ll fail.  And if you fail, if you’re cast out here…”

“I won’t fail in my eyes,” she told him.

“There are eight dominant families here.  Five of them want to wipe us off the map.”

“Faced odds like that before,” Avery said, shrugging one shoulder, resuming movement.  “Sure hope it’s the last time, but if not, I figure I’ll face them again.”

“Then the way you have to look at it, there’s a deadline.”

“Faced those before too,” she said.  “Peace, fake cousin.”

“Peace.  I hope you haven’t doomed us all.”

She shrugged again, walking backwards, then turned and started running.

She knew the general section of the building her friends were in.  She used her Sight to look for connections.

Too much, too jumbled.  The threads of connections went everywhere.

She snatched a book off the shelf.

Regional Others, Bruce Peninsula National Park, II.

Mid-tier spirits, some lesser goblins, echoes… there was a whole hundred pages, it looked like, of brief notes on the weakest spirits.  Two lines for a spirit of bark in the birch tree growing out of fallen oak, with some numbers that might have been coordinates.  The second line mostly referenced other books and texts.  There was an image, vaguely rectangular, with eyes not on the level.

They moved on the pages.  As she flipped back, an echo met Avery’s eyes, and its eyes widened in recognition.

She closed it, putting it aside.

She read over the spines.  Others of Singing Sands Beach.

Realm Abstractions and Calculations, Barney Lake, West.

Innocence Census of Alvar Bay.  Beside it was a thicker volume, Awareness of Animals, Census of Alvar Bay.

Others of Russel Island, South Shore.

She stopped looking, an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach.

She didn’t have a crazy memory like Verona.  She couldn’t collect information and then spit out speeches like Lucy.  But she could get a good feeling for the lay of the playing field, who was where, what was going on.  On a Path, she felt like her instincts were pretty good.  This was deeper and more complex than most Paths.

It made her think of a few things.  Of Hazel in ‘100 Years Lost’, and how she’d said that in her explorations of the Paths, she’d seen the levers and cogs of the universe.  Avery had talked about that a few times with Verona.

It made her think of being in Charles’ nightmare, before the end of Summer.  She’d snuck in, she’d gone digging, and through that she’d found where his cabin was, among a few other details, like the timing of things, and his intent.

Of Alcazars.  Delving into Franky to figure out the goat situation.  Delving into the Carmine Beast.  Zed talking about Alcazars on their first day at the Blue Heron.

Realms, Alcazars, Nightmares, even the real world and universe as a whole, they had to store their information somewhere.  Sometimes it was easy to dig for, like in a forsworn old butthead’s nightmare.  Sometimes it was bigger, harder to get to, warded off.  She hadn’t found Franky’s, but she had a feeling she could have.  It could be an entire Finder organization’s goal for generations to find those levers and cogs for the universe.  Probably was.

This was the peninsula Charles’s side had set up the Crucible, the Kim House, and the mini-settlement on.  Avery recognized some of the names from signs and things in her visit to the town.  This was the Crucible reaching out across the wider region.  Everything that wasn’t being put to use was locked away and codified here.

Bound, locked away, and codified.

Too much information to sort through while being hunted.  They’d been encouraged to connect to the Others as a resource, then had that taken away.  Maybe there was a lesson to be taken from that.  Maybe, Avery thought, Charles had grown or paid attention to certain things when he’d spent time with the Kennet Others, and he wanted to make that unfairness clear to those going through the Crucible.

Even then, even in the best possible way Avery could view things in, Charles had bound Miss in a big, huge ritual that was intended to hang over the area, co-opting spirits and spiritual flows, power and influences.  Miss, who hated being bound.

He’d bound Snowdrop.

He’d bound Avery’s fireflies, even.  What was the point of that?  Even being evil, even if he’d given up the last gasps of decency, who the hell would bind a Lost firefly and put it in a book for however many years, decades, centuries this bullshit went on for?

She was angry, but she kept breath measured, pacing her running.

Finding them would be like finding a needle in a haystack, here.  Her Sight wasn’t connecting to them.  Even when she found them, what was she meant to do?

People were chasing her.

If she had to guess, given this scenario, winning meant working for what was worth salvaging from these books, summoning those bound Others, playing that game.

She removed Sheridan’s copper bangle from her arm.  The cut at her forearm protested as she tried to use any strength or muscle with her hand.

She still had the ribbon.  She pried at the copper until it was a rough circular shape, then wrapped the ribbon around it once, tying it.

Copper to give it the round shape.  She drew up another finder’s knot.  The idea was to ground things, right?  Make them real, give that skeptic-like element that kept practice from working.

She stopped in her tracks as she reached a new hallway.

Too familiar.

This was where they’d fought the three Others.  All repaired, all tidied up, with no sign of body or battle damage.

“Avery Kelly,” a teenager called out, behind her.

She wheeled around.

“Albus Lionheart,” he announced himself, with an air of importance.

“Charles is really a goober, huh?” Avery asked, wary.  “People say I’m bad at naming things.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.  “I challenge you to a duel.”

“Busy,” she said, backing away.

“Keep up that attitude, you’re going to get yourself into trouble.”

She checked over her shoulder, looking down the empty hallway.  As she turned her head, she could see Charles, outside again, watching.

“Duels are a necessary part of the ecosystem here.  Don’t participate, and you might get a knife in the back instead.”

“Yeah?” Avery asked.

She turned on the spot, swiping with the ugly stick.

She hit the window.  The impact from the hit broke the pane, and carried out to crack adjacent ones.  The cracks crawled across wall, floor, ceiling, and air.

Glamour shattered, filling the air with fragments of that broken image that drifted down like falling leaves.  The hallway was in shambles, glass littering the floor, the remains of the elemental and spidery Other lying there.  A lone Faerie stood in the middle of it, the revenant Blythe behind him.

“Thanks for the warning, I guess,” Avery said.

“The Carmine could use a more subtle hand,” the Faerie said.  “Could I have a moment of your time?”

“Fuck right off,” Avery replied.  She had the practitioner and his group on one side, and the Faerie and revenant on the other.  “Both of you.”

“Graceless.”

Avery reached for the floating traces of glamour, catching a handful by swiping the largest pieces.  She moved her hand, shaping it.

“In the midst of my grief, wondering what my sister did and what she was about when we were separate, I’m curious,” the Faerie said.  He waggled his fingers.  Glamour responded.  “Did she fail to educate you about using glamour around Fae on purpose, or did she leave that out to create a crucial gap in your understanding of things?”

Avery wanted to get to the far end of that hallway, but there were too many eyes on her.

The moment her eyes were averted, focus on that distant point, some attention on Charles, the Faerie moved a hand.  Glass shards all across the floor stood on end.  A sea of gleaming points and slivers.

While Avery’s eyes adjusted to that, he swept his arm, as if flourishing for an extravagant bow, but he didn’t bow.

The entire hallway did.  It curved, twisting like a snake, producing a vertigo-like sensation.

With a slight movement of his head, and a flick of his hair, he tried to project something at Avery.  Something like the dream from the wraith with the fragment of Impulse in it.  Attractiveness, coolness, drawing the eye, swaying emotions…

She felt it reaching into her head, heart, and gut, swaying her like the hallway was swaying, finding some alignment there.

“Nope,” Avery said.  Alignment, but no traction.  The emotions weren’t there.  She reached into her pocket for spell cards.

“Your little war destroyed my sister, condemning her to hell,” he said, shifting gears, to something growly, low, dark, and intimidating.

“Blame Charles Abrams,” Avery said.

“No, I’ll blame you.  You could have let me be nice about this, but you turn me down?”

He’s young, like Maricica was, she thought.  She kept a partial eye on Albus, but every time she did, the Faerie was manipulating glamour, moving glass.

The revenant had disappeared, Avery realized.

“But I won’t kill you.  I’ll keep you as long as the Winter Court keeps her.  Now come here.”

The darkness in his voice went all the way next level as he said those last words.  There was a bit of something unhinged in it, which did get to her- reminding her of her time with the Wolf, with Grumble’s worst behavior, with many other unsettling, threatening moments.  With that, he seemed to find that alignment and traction he wanted.

Emotion and altered environment mingled into a swell of vertigo that became reality, her stomach doing flip flops, the entire hallway doing the exact same, gravity moving.

Avery grabbed bookcase, hanging from it to avoid being sent sliding into those glass shards.  She took the paper she’d removed from her stack of spell cards.  One of the Finder practices.  She slapped it against the nearest surface.

She rotated the hallway and its gravity herself, playing her own game, so she crouched on the bookshelf instead of hanging off it.  The Faerie practically had his hands in his pockets as he stepped against one surface and moved to the new ‘floor’.

He stomped lightly, and the glass shards dropped, starting from where he was, coming toward her.  Each shattered explosively, sending out a half dozen to a dozen smaller shards and slivers with enough force they embedded into wood.  None came close to touching the Faerie.

Albus had recovered enough to come after Avery.  He got to his feet, drawing a fencing sword.

She still had some of the glamour.  She started to move her hand, to paint a crude barrier, but found it gummy.  Her hand pulled away with strings of tarry substance between her glove and the black patch.

Hand on the spell card, she rotated the diagram.  It put her into a crouch, ducked low behind the patch of darkness.  Albus fell.  The glass kept on falling, but sideways now.

Didn’t matter.  Another quick adjustment, putting window below her, and she pulled her hand out of the glove, used Albus and his followers falling again and the patch of darkness as her cover, and black roped away.

Through the window, only to find there was more glamour on the far side.  What she’d thought was a clear patch was occupied by summoned Others and Peterborough ex-Forsworn.

Game face, she thought, fixing her deer mask.  Her arrival had been a surprise, which bought her a second or two.  She was on the ice with the puck, on the field with the ball.  She was everyone’s focus.  Different players came at her and there were different things to keep in mind.  Some moved fast, others looked so dangerous she wasn’t sure she’d survive even a glancing hit.

Practitioners were practicing.  James with the seal stuff was carving into the base of a fountain in the center of the garden, his attention on her.  At the top of that fountain, Charles stood, watching her, eyes moving…

Watching Verona and Lucy.  They hadn’t been far from where Avery had been.  Down the hall and up a flight of stairs, about.

There was a gold, bright, glittery, flickering texture to it all.  The lamps, the Others, the people, the practice.  It was like the things being done with practice were shedding more lights.  The Aurum wasn’t even here, content to keep his distance.  After all, why even show his face?  He was a coward.

Round two?  Avery thought.  She wasn’t counting the Finnea trial, when they’d been trying to arrest Maricica.  That wasn’t really a ‘win’ or a ‘lose’.  He’d mostly been acting as a regular judge, just a very capricious, fucky one.

She stopped running and crouched.  Touchdown.

They came from all directions.  Practices were lined up.  Another glowing, hovering seal was being drawn in front of her, larger, and she felt a tug at her heart.  It was tied to her very Self, this time.

Someone aimed a gun at her.  Because of course.  She looked like one of the Peterborough ex-Forsworn, and held a golden gun.

Verona, a hundred feet and two stories up, used a practice, distorting the woman’s aim.  Avery remained where she was.

Her hand, planted on the ground, covered a paper.  A Hazel practice, one of the ones she’d traded for.

After the Aurum had arranged for her to be shot, she’d slipped away to the Paths, faking her own death with Snowdrop energies and glamour to help.

The Path she’d dwelt on was the Crash Course.  Hazel’s practice was undeniably drawn from it.

The fountain erupted, some deep-earth pressure on the internals making it combust, sending fragments of carved stone everywhere, while water sprayed like a fire hose, before something clunked and it abruptly changed direction.  The water problems extended out to pipes beneath the ground, which twisted and pushed up and out of the ground.  Some pressurized water sprayed out inconsistently and in changing directions, in fierce jets that cut through grass and churned up foaming dirt.  People and Others went down.  Bricks from the pathways in the garden were sent flying, and came down in an inconsistent, unpredictable rain.

Avery felt everything go out of her.

The way this practice worked, it invited disaster.  But, like the Crash Course, the only way to be sure she’d avoid any danger would be if she stayed totally still.

She felt like she was going to sway and fall over, which would mean she’d get cut down or bowled over or brained by falling bricks like the rest of them.  The smell of healing potion filled her nostrils and made her feel nauseous, and the only healing potion nearby had to be the traces from when she’d treated Verona.

She fought to hold her focus, eyes wide- even opening her eyes a bit wider let a fleck of something catch bare eye instead of eyelid.

The effect wasn’t as wide as it would normally be, maybe only going twenty or thirty feet out, but there’d been a lot of people.

Charles had stepped down from the fountain, and, limping slightly, hand at his side, paced.

Avery reached into her bag.

One of the things about being a Finder, right from the beginning, shared by Miss, was that she was a bit better at finding lost, capital-‘L’ Lost, and overlooked things.

She had another Gashwad knife, reclaimed after they’d thrown and missed, back in the second era, second trial.

It vibrated in her hand.  It made her wonder…

A lot of metal was vibrating.

Lucy, doing something similar to what she’d done with the glass.

All the metal was singing, now, vibrating like tuning forks.

Verona continued to offer some assistance at range, while Lucy did what she was doing.  Avery marched over to Charles before others could pick themselves up or recover.

“Avery,” he said, staring her down.

His hands moved.  The portals appeared.  Avery reached for the skewer, ready to hit it again to interrupt him.

But the metal of the skewer wasn’t singing.

Avery backed away.

He wasn’t hurt enough, wasn’t whiny enough.  There was a bit too much conviction in his eyes.

He used the portal, drawing out another summoning attack.  Avery got clear of it, but when one limb swiped at her, it passed right through.

“Illusion,” the Aurum said.  “Distinct from glamour.  Some say one can benefit from the other, but a Faerie would disagree.”

“Indeed,” the Fae who had been in the hallway with the glass said.  “Better to invest the effort into being more adroit with glamour.”

He used glamour to make himself a sword, rapier-like, with metal twining around and up its length in a very impractical way.

Pivoting, she threw herself into it.

While within, she could kind of see out, but she was camouflaged from view from the outside.  The wooden bead bracelet went still, and she black roped back to the others.

“Hell,” Lucy muttered.  “That was harrowing, watching.  I’d have come, but-”

“Nah, it’s okay.  I wanted to get in close to hold him down, but there’s layers.”

“I want all of us three holding him down.”

“Need to expand out,” Avery said.  She retrieved the copper bangle with the partially completed knotwork around it, showing them.

“What’s the plan with that?” Verona asked.

“I have an idea.”

“I have an idea what your idea is, I’m worried,” Verona said.  “There’s some influence we don’t want to cancel out.  Let me…”

Verona used the windowsill.  She took Lucy’s hand, moved it over, and used it to hold the card in place while she worked, since her arm was in a sling.

The Others and practitioners were coming for them, fanning out to different entrances, aiming to converge on them.

“They’re using a communication practice.  So if any see us, they all see us.”

Avery nodded.

“You good, you okay?”

“Spent,” Avery replied.  “I was sorta spent before we came in here, but that practice took a lot out of me.”

“Plus blood loss.  Did you get bandaged up?” Lucy asked.

Avery pushed her sleeve up to show Lucy.

“Verona’s arm is better.  So that’s good.”

“I’m missing another appendage,” Avery said, resting her forehead against the window, eyes tracking people’s movements, scanning for trouble.  “A prehensile tail.  Or a head, two arms, and two legs I don’t have or want full control over.”

“It’s weird,” Lucy said.

“It’s the books,” Avery pointed out.  “Everything’s been codified, made a part of this place.  The Crucible expands, it swallows stuff out.  Others are bound and tied into this place and era, and I guess they’re let out to play parts.”

“Fuck,” Verona muttered.  “Julette’s probably out there.”

“Snowdrop, Grandfather, the goblins, my fireflies… and I think the Crucible is expanding while we’re in here.”

“Meaning people on the outside are probably freaking out,” Lucy said.  “So far, it seems like they haven’t snagged any practitioners, or I think this would be playing out differently.”

“Lord of Thunder Bay might’ve evacuated by water.”

“Makes sense.”

Avery finished the knots for the band, as Verona finished the paper.  Avery read it over.

There were some diagrams that were readable with a quick glance, if you knew the language.  Even when obscure symbols popped up, the intention could be guessed, like seeing a word in a sentence.

This one was pretty dense.  Metal, movement- that rune was in a lot of brackets.  Wind, why was there wind?  A curse-mark?

“Charles is looking, so I can’t even ask.  How toothpicky and bubblegummy is this?”

“It isn’t,” Verona said.  “I think it’s pretty good.”

“Should I curve the paper, slide it to the bangle, or…”

“Let it dangle.”

Avery adjusted.  Ribbon, bangle with the Finder’s Knot with the ‘Ground’ or ‘Down to Earth’ rune, and then more ribbon, attached to the paper, which had writing on both sides.

“Gotta find Charles,” Avery said.

“He got a whole lot more cowardly when you popped up beside him and gave that spike a whack,” Lucy said.  “I have one idea.”

“So do I,” Avery said.  “Gashwad.”

“Gashwad,” Lucy said.

“Gashwad,” Verona finished.

It took a second.  Gashwad banged up against the one side of a vent.  He tried to push it away from the wall, but found it too firmly attached.

“Gash, don’t worry about coming through.”

“Gah!”  He bashed the vent.  “I’ll get it, I can get it!”

“Gash, just need you to point the way,” Lucy said.  “Do you know where he is?”

“Graaaah!” he roared, gripping the slats of the vent and shaking his whole body to rattle it.

Lucy used her weapon ring.  She stabbed the grate, and pried it free.

“Got it!” Gashwad exclaimed.  “What you want?  What am I stabbing?”

“The air.  Stab the air, to point the way to Chuck,” Verona told him.

“What makes you think I know?”

“You’ve been keeping pretty good track of us.  You stabbed Chuck lots, you-”

There were footsteps coming around the corner.

“-haven’t finished the job.”

Gashwad hesitated, then stabbed at the air.

“He could teleport,” Avery said.

“Yep,” Verona replied.  “But let’s go anyway.  Trust me?”

Avery trusted her.  She pushed on her friends.  Her forearm complained, throbbing with pain.

They ran down the hallway, away from the incoming footsteps.

“Let’s move this to a conclusion,” the Aurum intoned, voice ringing through the school.

Doors opened all up and down the hallway.  The entire school erupted into activity, with a level of noise and liveliness that made the earlier golden light seem eerie by comparison.

“Night classes?” Verona asked.  The sky was dark outside, lit up by shooting stars and a celestial body like a coin near the horizon.  “Looking more like my type of school.”

“Five factions arrayed against you,” the Aurum said.

He was there.  Not even five good paces away- if Avery could pace.  There were too many people in the school.  Unfriendly ones.  She avoided a body check from one of them as they passed.

“You comprise three.  This, played out, is an eight way game of chess, managing your assets, keeping up with your education, and, at Charles’ request, being the lowest rung on your family’s ladder.”

“Always the underdog, even when he’s one of the four judges of magic in the region?” Lucy asked.

“It’s not a sought-after position for most,” the Aurum said.

Lucy, pushing through the crowd, got a bit too close to him.  The Aurum disappeared.

His voice came from another direction, behind them.  “You yourselves called it a janitorial position.”

“Hey, respect to custodians and janitors,” Verona said.  “Don’t knock it.”

“When this ritual incarnate is in full swing, the eight factions can be composed of multiple practitioners, instead of models as we have them here.  But, for now, I must say you’re not participating-”

“We’re not participants!” Lucy argued back.

“-not protecting or serving your family.  By those rules, resources can be withdrawn.  I’m wondering what a good percentage would be.  Sixteen percent of the items and things of value on you?  One sixth?  With another tax to be paid shortly.”

“What if we are serving our family?” Avery asked.

“Rule of completion!” Lucy cut in.

“That’s a ruling of Law, that a gainsaying or forswearing can’t happen if an individual is interrupted mid-discourse, thus forming a partial and incorrect or oathbreaking fragment.  Not applicable.”

“Discourse can take a lot of forms- it can be done with dance, or participation in a game,” Lucy said.

“Weak argument, not applicable.”

“It’s a partial argument that ties into what we’re doing with the game.  You can’t say we failed without letting us play it out,” Lucy said.

“There’s lots of precedent for that,” Verona said.  “And I think you know it.”

There was no response.

The Aurum had disappeared again, even though none of them had been moving closer to him at this point.

Avery swiped a book from the bookshelf, then tossed it onto the floor, beneath trampling feet.  Maps: realm influences leeching into the region of Singing Sands Beach.

Another book.

“Fuck,” Avery muttered.

“What?” Lucy asked.

She showed Lucy and Verona.

Others of the Toronto Outskirts, West-North-West.

“Almost at Toronto,” Verona muttered.  “I think that’s-”

She grunted, cut off.

A student had jabbed her in the injured arm, still in a sling, in passing.  It looked like Lucy wanted to do something about it, but Verona grabbed her upper arm, keeping her moving forward.

“Rune of Earth,” Avery said.  She drew it out.  “Grounding, used in a celestial diagram, indicates a dampened magic or non-magic section.”

“Do the curlicue type shit,” Verona said.  “Like there is around the-”

Someone went after Verona again, maybe because she looked the least imposing, arm in a sling.  Avery was battered and cut in fifty places from falling on glass, like, five times, bleeding at one arm, but she was closer to the bookshelves, arm grazing shelves, and Lucy was walking just a bit ahead of her, so she was pretty sheltered.

Lucy put herself in the way, exchanged blows, only to get grabbed by the collar and shoved up against the wall.

Avery immediately jumped in, defending her, while Verona kicked at the back of the guy’s leg, near the knee.  It made him lose balance, which let Avery push at him, driving him back.

He grabbed her forearm where it was bloody and bandaged, which hurt, but Lucy was bouncing back, also pushing back.

The hallway traffic had stopped.  Students watched from the sidelines, tense.

It feels like the Blue Heron, before things kicked off.

Lucy pushed the guy aside, and he stumbled, then sullenly walked away, not up for a three-against-one.

“Curlicues, in the corner, like there are around the ‘don’t let runes go off accidentally’ bits they do in magic texts,” Verona said, her voice low.

Her eyes told Avery that Verona was seeing it too.  That their people were on the sidelines.  That they weren’t supporting their people, so their people weren’t supporting them.

“Right,” Avery said.  She did the curlicue, applying the effect to the page that the curls and swoops of the little design were pointing out at.

The intent wasn’t to block the magic in the text from going off, though.  It was to remove the practice worked into the design of the text.

Avery saw the texture of the paper change.  She hadn’t seen it, but the very pulp and the faint inlay of yellowy color across the page had had something to it.  Maybe a sign of the active binding.

“Go, be free,” Avery said.

In the process, she released a spirit.  It might’ve been a spirit of headlights, or of colored light reflecting on opaque glass.

“Go, be free,” Avery said, releasing another.  A spirit of grass growing beneath signs and fenceposts, where it was hard to mow, maybe.  “And- and go back where you need to go, or as close as you can get.  But before you do, if you can speak, if you can do what I’m saying… help a few more Others like this.  Same mark, or same idea, undo the binding, tell them to free other Others.”

The spirit fled.

“Gotta choose the ones who can follow through,” Verona said.

“Talking about it to get my thoughts in order before the next real one,” Avery said.

“Book me,” Verona said.

Avery threw the book her way, then found another one.

Lucy kept her focus out for trouble.

Peterborough ex-Forsworn, again.  Ones the Aurum had gussied up, giving spontaneous practice and practice development to.

Lucy plucked Avery’s deer mask off her shoulder, where it was still looped around the neck, just dangling, off, to avoid sticking out in the crowd.

They were getting closer to the Peterborough ex-Forsworn.

“Here,” Lucy said.  “My eyes to your eyes.  Verona, my eyes to your eyes.  Gate of Horn.”

Avery’s Sight changed, but the effect extended beyond that.  It was written on the masks.

Lucy threw a spell card down.

She staggered immediately after.  Self drained, energy low.  Avery was only barely starting to recover, enough she couldn’t run.

Expending ourselves, being ground down, spending so much on trying to deal with someone who won’t see reason.  And Charles too.

The Aurum was playing this game of eight-way chess, as he’d put it, none of them were moving their pieces with any intent to take control over the board.  They were moving to aim for a checkmate.

Taking too many hits in the meantime.  It was scary.

I haven’t played a lot of chess, but I played the Promenade, Avery thought.

The smoke billowed out.  The gate of horn lent Avery the ability to see through smoke, that had been a part of Lucy’s mask since the night they’d first confronted the Hungry Choir.

Worked with a team.

Avery black-roped Verona across first, trusting Lucy could handle herself.  Then she came back for Lucy, carrying her out before the ex-Forsworn could push past the thickest parts of the crowd.

Verona already had a book out.  One Other was human-ish.  Verona gave it the run-down, asking it to unbind and carry forward.

“Our Carmine Exile likes his rustic cabins, but our school is in need of a retrofit,” the Aurum said.

There were signs of that retrofit already, especially on this end of the school, with its windows facing the torn up garden from the east instead of the south.  Gold piping, boxes, radiators, and other equipment had spread all across this place.  Machines pumped and steamed.

It’s like being on a Path, seeing different versions, Avery thought, getting a book.  She quickly scribbled the effect on the cover, then on the opposite corner on the back cover, so the contents of the book were between them, more or less.

“Do you really think your little rebellion will work?  An entire school of students is invested in having the bound as a resource to draw on.”

“Totally worth,” Lucy said.  She was tearing out pages instead.  Others came free.  The ones who couldn’t were helped by ones who could.  “Free Others from books!  But don’t free those created in the last thirty-six hours!”

Right.  The ones Charles had created.

“Stupidity.”

Charles’ voice.

His practice came at them again.  Avery was glad for the stupid gold piping, because it meant there was some cover to hide behind, that was a bit better than a thin wooden wall or more freaking glass to slice her up and nick her a hundred times.

“He slowed down,” Verona said, after they’d recovered.  When Avery straightened, Charles was gone from that spot.  “Remember that weird glamour?”

“Illusion,” Avery corrected.

“Right, of course.  So why use that when he could use real people, real Others?”

“Charles gave away power.  Doesn’t have a lot to spare,” Lucy said.

“And the Aurum is taking a back seat while focusing on expansion, maybe,” Verona said.  “This starts paying off big if he takes Toronto, right?”

“We took Toronto from him.  Or you did, right?” Lucy asked.

More Others and practitioners were converging on them.  Harder now, because they weren’t in such a thick crowd, to hide from wider attention.

“Hmmm… What if he’s fighting to take it back, or buying it back?  The deal with fancy-talk London was made with the Carmine’s boundaries, right?” Avery asked.

“And consciously or unconsciously conserved power to have more to spend or buy territory with, even if he has lots?” Verona asked.

“Or buy Toronto with.  Weren’t there some key names who bartered for it?  Now they’re not wanting another change of regime?” Lucy asked.

“Your assumption is wrong, I’m not hurting for power,” the Aurum said.  He stood at the entryway to the hall they’d black roped into, behind them as they ran away.  Silent on arrival, with no scuffle, no noise, no alert as he appeared.  “The caution was from the young lady I made into an illusionist, not me.  Sorry to disappoint.  But I am taking Toronto.”

They backed away.  Avery thought back to her hip injury.  The scar that was still there.  It sat heavy in her heart.  She wished she was more okay with it.  Had tried to be, through bravado.

“What a mess,” the Aurum said, looking at the freed Others, who were figuring out how to free more.  “But it’s a mess that will clean itself up.  This place will naturally re-bind them.”

“Then why show up?” Lucy asked him.  “Why say anything?  If it’s pointless, let us waste energy and time doing it.”

The Aurum smiled.

Avery, restless, nervous, paced behind Lucy.  When she was blocked from view, she put herself behind the Aurum.

The swing of the ugly stick was blocked by the centipede’s appearance.  It was as hard as steel, or gold, maybe, Avery didn’t know.  Her strikes battered and dented, but didn’t wound.

It bucked, changing course so a section of its body bumped her, and moved with enough speed it made her spin off, stumbling.

“I don’t like fighting,” the Aurum said.  “You’ve abdicated your responsibilities as members of your individual family lines, now… consequences.”

There were still students coming out, but the mood felt like it shifted, with that last word.

Then the Aurum was gone.

Avery used her Sight, to track connections, and forgot she was plugged into Lucy’s.  She saw the shift in watercolor blurs that spread through members of the crowd.

“They’re dangerous!” Avery said, in sync with Lucy.  “Our people!  They turned on us!”

“Well fuck me,” Verona muttered.

“Come on.”

The Others were freeing Others.  The practitioner establishment had turned on them, but they were in the same building.

“Gashwad,” Avery called out.

“Gashwad,” Verona called out.

Lucy finished with, “Gashwad!”

The goblin made his appearance, amid the flying papers and scattered Others.  Some students were here and there, having noticed the commotion.  Others on the ground picked their way across lawn and garden beds torn up by Avery’s Crash Course practice.

He didn’t need to be asked.  He pointed.

Not far.  There just wasn’t much building left.  The question was, could they get there before the Others got here, forcing them into another brutal scrap?

Avery ran ahead a bit.  Verona was still freeing Others.

Charles was there, reclining awkwardly in a chair he’d bled a lot into.

“Mmm,” he growled.

Before she could do anything, he moved.

“Teleported!” Avery called out.

Except he hadn’t gone far.  With each hallway having windows on one side, he could just teleport out in the direction of the garden and launch an attack, or summon an Other.

He created a swipe, horizontal, like a window standing in mid air, crimson and ruby toned.

A hexagon appeared around it, with circles flaring into existence at each corner.

“Down!” Lucy called out.

Avery ducked down.

The portal Charles had made wasn’t your usual gateway to another realm, bring something through.  It expelled things, firing life out of the portal with bullet-like speeds.

The ‘bullets’ in this case were insects, maggots the size of Kerry with bonus spikes and sacs filled with fluid that looked like they’d burst if so much as breathed on.  A few of them detonated into ten-foot wide blots of fluid that looked like the run-off from canned pasta that had gone mad.

Warrens life.  Often just broadly called parasites, because nearly all of the predators did enough fucked up things when latched onto you that it sorta counted.  Avery could see crawling things inside those blots of fluid.  More parasites.

Avery broke a window with the ugly stick, then vaulted over.  Lucy followed, as did Verona.

The parasites weren’t especially nimble, but a few of them could kinda scrunch up and then spring out for a short lunge.  Two managed to get through the hole in the window.  A third hit the window and exploded into more parasite fluid.

Verona emptied the rest of her box of salt onto the parasites before they could roll over and get legs underneath them.  They weren’t undead, but they didn’t seem to love the salt.

“Is your vendetta that intense?” Charles asked.  “You’ll focus on me, instead of the Aurum?  If you believed in your cause, protecting the wider region, you’d focus on him.  What am I?”

“You’re someone who, when he was Forsworn, managed to fuck up a whole lot of shit,” Lucy told him.  “Now you’re so-called depowered?”

“And being meaner, hitting harder, hesitating less,” Verona noted.

Avery had the copper bangle with the knotwork and paper in her pocket.

“Going to keep making me scramble for it?” he asked.

“Are you going to keep running?” Avery asked.  “Surrender.”

“I won’t, so what now?  Will you break yourselves to pieces on the obstacles the Aurum puts in the way, coming after me again and again?”

“Or maybe we get you,” Verona told him.

Avery felt it, and without saying a word, she conveyed emotions with a singing heart, that Snowdrop was free and out there.

Halfway across the school, running to her.

They’d hit critical mass with the released Others, it seemed like.  Enough were free that they could free more than the students or other powers could suppress.

Avery pulled out the trinket.  Holding the one end, she swung it in a circle.  The paper at the end fluttered.

“Yeah,” he said, his eyes tracking it.  “Then-”

Verona used a practice.  Too specific to be for anything but this- something like ‘go fifteen forward in the direction this paper points, make an earthy, smoky eruption’.

But it was a plume of grit and smoke.  Avery still had Lucy’s mask effect, so she could see through it.

Letting her step through, going to the fountain, behind Charles.

Only a few long strides to get to him.

Except the Revenant was there, waiting.  Blythe.  White-haired, scar on her face.  She came for Avery, knife in hand, forcing a detour, a run in a curve, instead of a straight line.

Then an outright change in plans, when Blythe sped up.  Avery moved back and out of the way.

Metal was singing, again.  Lucy had recycled that practice from earlier.

Charles doubled over in pain.  The singing came from intense vibrations, and the metal of the spike in his side was moving now, shaking.

Avery took the opportunity.  Blythe right behind her, so close on her heels that it felt like if Avery stopped or did one thing that broke her stride at all, she’d have a knife-wielding revenant right on top of her.

He teleported.  Back toward the hallway with the parasites.

Verona turned her focus to the revenant, breaking up the earth beneath her feet.  Another incentive for Avery to run harder, be faster, even after she’d basically been at it from dawn until… across three freaking eras of mankind.

Verona’s support bought Avery a bit of elbow room.

She’d have been willing to take a stab or suffer another slice to tag Charles with the bangle and finder’s knot.

So many had been sent inside, there weren’t many in the garden.  Some Fae, but Avery didn’t feel like they were involved.  She knew that was a dumb instinct to go with, but the entire mood felt like a very real ‘wait and see’ that she’d run into time and time again, visiting the markets.

Lucy shifted her stance, facing Charles head-on, poised, even though she wasn’t close enough to use her weapon.

Avery went off of unspoken agreements.  She didn’t know if Lucy was intentionally evoking some situations, like Avery doing what she did the night of the Hungry Choir, or when they’d been going after Yalda’s ring.  But everything here felt like ‘long pass’.

Avery wound up, then threw, hard.

Lucy threw papers into the air, diagrams lighting up as they kicked into motion.

The bangle was… wasn’t the best long pass.  It arced through the air and looked like it was going to land forty feet short of Charles.

But it got past those papers, and when Lucy threw a piece of glass, the shard went through the center of each diagram in the three papers.

It hit the bangle, and carried it.  Avery could see ‘glass to copper-ribbon’ runework being expelled into the air.

The ‘copper-ribbon’ to… Avery didn’t even know.  Metal, iron maybe.  But with an additional diacritic.

God-metal?

The glass was a dart, augmented to deliver bangle and attached knotwork and paper to the spike of rebar in Charles’ side.

Avery ran harder, not slower, as she saw that point of contact.  The ribbon tangled with

Charles reached for it, to remove it, and the paper fluttered, runework lighting up as the hand got close.

Making the metal twist and bend… partially inside Charles.  Air fluttered, and the hand, now blindly reaching for bangle and paper, missed.  Wind runes kicking off to play keep away.  And when disturbed, the runework also kicked off to play ‘twist and bend without coming dislodged’.

Avery hurdled the window, landing in the hallway, where parasites crawled on a dozen surfaces.  Her friends were a few paces behind, Verona slowed by having to use practice to keep Blythe stumbling.  Snowdrop was there too, and kept to opossum form, moving along the gardens.

But there was no time to waste.  If there was a chance, by some twist of karma, interference by the Aurum, or luck, as Charles managed to grab the bangle and disentangle it, despite it playing keep away- it would put them back at square one.

Not that bindings were that easy to shake.  Usually it wasn’t as simple as untying a ribbon or whatever.  But this wasn’t a time to be anything except totally focused, accounting for as many possible twists or turns as possible.

The runework Verona had done was meant to make it trickier, to make it play keep away, but the main reason she’d wanted to do it in the first place was because it would be terrible if the finder’s knot canceled out or weakened the rebar.  So it had to bypass, attaching its effects to that rebar.

The main one being that the finder’s knot should keep Charles put.  No more teleporting for Charles, until someone removed that thing.

No more running, because he was hurting that badly.

He could fight, but he was using reserves.

She leaped over a parasite, and entered the room.  Charles stood by the blazing fireplace, in a room where the only light was from the window, which was covered in decorative golden lattice that gave the entire room a glittery sheen.

“Come in, and secure the door!” Avery called out.

She hurled the metal spike.

The Gashwad spike.

Charles tried to catch it, but his hand moved past the rebar, and it moved, making him double over.

It caught him where collarbone met neck.

Gashwad’s incoming rage-scream intensified fast.

And the door slammed shut, right in Lucy’s face.

Avery felt the connection to Snowdrop die.

The Aurum, standing behind the door.  The centipede extended out, down the chimney, through fire that heated the gold to a white glow, then around the walls, securing the space.

“Door secured,” the Aurum said.

Avery swallowed.

Gashwad wasn’t coming either.  She couldn’t even hear his voice.  When she looked, the connection was as gone as when she tried to look for Others sealed in books.

Charles sat in the armchair by the fire, groaning as he did.  It seemed to take him twenty seconds to pull himself together.

Avery took in the space.  Twenty seconds was a long time, in a situation like this.

“I could have gainsaid you three on entry,” Charles said.  “I hesitated for two reasons.  One is that the entire point of this series of trials is to engage the practitioner, to hone their powers.  It pollutes this, to punish someone for a lie if they’re participating in something like that.  It pollutes this to use my rule over this place’s Law to bring in outside matters.  Even if you aren’t a contestant.”

“Should I thank you?” Avery asked.

“The other reason is the Faerie you met suggested it.  He said that I could gainsay.  Except, if I did, it would compel you three to stay close together.  You work well together.  But if I leave you to it, by the patterns you follow, you’ll eventually pull far enough ahead.  Then, if the Aurum doesn’t want me dead by your hands…”

“You think so little of me,” the Aurum said.  “Why would I betray you?  What’s in it for me, when I’ve been given everything I hoped for.”

“Always in the back of your mind, isn’t it?” Charles asked.

“Yeah.  I suppose.”

Avery swallowed hard.  It was hard to swallow past the growing lump in her throat.

“You can be separated from the others.  Sure enough, the Faerie who goes by Briserban was right.”

Avery reached for her practice.  Another Crash Course explosion, maybe?  See what rattled free?

“I forswear you, Avery Kelly,” Charles said, voice soft, ragged around the edges with pain.

The lump almost disappeared, overwhelmed and overridden by a sick feeling.

“Oaths were made, that you would look after each other.  That you would protect Verona from her circumstances with her father.  But you were absent at critical junctures.  You abandoned her to those circumstances when you went to Thunder Bay.  Your help was too little, when her Demesne ritual was initially carried out.”

“Seriously?” she asked, whisper-quiet.

“Seriously.”

“Bringing something in from the outside after all?” she asked.

“I’m so fucking tired of you jiggling this metal you’ve thrust into my side.  We have things to do.”

She would’ve spoken, but words failed.

She’d started out alone, rescued by Mrs. Hardy, who could save her and reach out, but couldn’t be there for her.  And now she was here, cut off, alone again.  No Snowdrop.  No Lucy.  No Verona.

“I get a spokesperson, right?”

“No need,” the Aurum replied.  “We can put it to the judges of this area…”

Charles shook his head.

“It complicates things too much.  No advocate.  You’re fit enough to defend yourself.”

“Alabaster?” Avery asked.

“Busy reaching out to those Judges and other powers who control regions you took from me, when you chased me.  Ensuring they put up a fight,” the Aurum said.  “Slowing us down.  But she can’t come in, and she has no say here, not with how the ritual incarnate and the world within it was designed.  Here, the judgeship is Carmine Exile and Aurum Coil.  For a tiebreaker when we make our decision, let’s say it’s the head of the school?”

“Local Lord is conventional,” Charles said.  “There’s a future era with one.  We can pull him in to consider and help mediate dispute.  Not that I see us fighting much.”

“Works.”

“No, that’s- you’re going to cheat?” Avery asked.

“You cheated.  Karma helped you against me.”

“Let’s wrap this up, get to the others,” the Aurum said. “I hope you enjoyed running around and being the little heroine with your friends, Avery.  That should be the last you’ll see of them.”

“What?” Avery asked, even more alarmed now.

“If we let you go, you’d probably leave the region and we’d be risking that you’d get unforsworn,” Charles said.  “Too messy.  But as you’re forsworn, this place and other places won’t work with you or give you your escape.  We’ll keep you here, this place will work to keep you here.  Tucked away, disarmed.”

No Nora?  No family?

“Give it a bit, and you’ll miss promised appointments with Milton Milton of Wonderkand.  He’s tied to bigger powers.  Once you’ve crossed them, even by one or two degrees of separation, there’s no being unforsworn, nobody wants them as enemies.  There’s no way to kill and replace a judge, to rewrite Law in your favor.  Once we’ve gotten to that point, if there’s a place or people you want to go to then, I’ll consider it,” Charles said, groaning as he shifted position.  His eyes remained on the fire.  “Remand you to your parent’s care.”

“The moment the other two separate, I or one of my people can get them too,” the Aurum said.  “Then we split them into separate eras?  Never again to meet?”

“Look me in the eyes, Charles,” Avery said.

He stared into the fire.

“Charles!”

He turned, chair creaking.  He grunted, at the pain, organs skewered, bleeding, but not quite killing him.

He met her eyes, his eyes bloodshot at the edges from… she couldn’t even be sure.  Grief, crying?  From the pain of being skewered with a god-spike?  His irises were red.  His gaze steady.

His voice was a growl, “I told you from the beginning.  Not to awaken.  Not to adopt the practice.  Maybe you did it because I was forsworn.  I imagine you did most of the rest, everything between then and now, because of karma.  I don’t know whether you blame karma, or Fate herself, in her three aspects.  Yourself?”

“You.  I blame you,” Avery said.  “I’m not acknowledging defeat or taking this lying down, either.”

“Good,” he said.  He twisted around with a grunt.  Back to looking at the fire, half an eye on her.  “That’s the ticket.”

“Avery Kelly,” the Aurum said, still standing by the door, blocked by the centipede’s body.  Other coils blocked windows… which had tinted red, suggesting some Law was in place to seal this off.  “You face Forswearance, brought by the Carmine Exile, seconded by the Aurum Coil…”

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