Stolid

current author's notes/schedule -

updates once a day normally nearly every day except for tuesdays and thursdays. i may not be able to provide one full chapter every day on weekdays due to time restraints but i will try my best to do as much as i feel like doing when possible.

PRO☆LOG . Sanctuary
I am stationary.

I am a lot of things, a lot of names, a lot of people, but I take comfort in two things. Constants in every identity, every facet, every reflection of myself. I am a lot of everything but I am stationary. I am grounded. I am my own sanctuary.

The other constant is that, no matter how many times I brush my teeth, my gums are sensitive and will bleed.

Tonight is a special one. The messenger told me I'd received a summons from a person in the Calliope, the largest encampment on the northern front. I'm not certain on whether my current mask would agree, but I'd say the Calliope is flourishing in these times. I think they've got a good chance at winning the war.

The client has requested I stand under the third lantern on the corner of two makeshift trails in a less active section of tents, where I will be received by someone who will take me to them. I spend the next several seconds tossing a pebble into the grass before a fennec in a soldier's uniform sweeps past me, tilting its head to lock eyes with mine for the briefest of moments drawn out long enough to indicate it's the one, and then tipping its head forwards towards a small path between two tents. I've been in the business long enough to know a guide or informant if they shoved me into a lamppost and ran in the opposite direction, but I appreciate the gesture and follow after them.

I realize where this is going because we're headed straight for the Calliope's most important tents. Who was it, I can't help but wonder, who thought I was important enough to summon?

The fennec gestures towards a passage in the back of a tent waving the common Jamaasian flag at its peak and slips inside. I follow quickly afterwards, squinting slightly at the light, though even my mask, my borrowed person, cannot help but widen their watering eyes at who I stand before.

"General Greely." A warbling tone draws up from within me and I bow respectfully. The wolf, clad in the dazzling navy blue and golden of a higher-up's uniform, clinking with the countless medals and chains of a weathered soldier, turns slowly to face me, his amber eye closing as he nods in response. "It is good to see you've accepted my offer, Marten."

By the way, that isn't my name. I thought you ought to know that. "Of course, sir. I'll follow whatever you wish for me to do."

Greely's gaze returns to the map of Jamaa on the table before him, cluttered by models of tiny figures and flags. "As you may know," he begins, heavily, "the phantoms are pushing back."

"Yes, sir."

"They have grown far more intelligent than we originally anticipated and calculated since the last war. However. Recent informants point towards forces influencing their power and capability. There are animals actively supporting the phantoms, backed by magical ability. They are essential to the phantoms' forces: the Specters." Greely moves five crude purple animal figurines to the center of the map. "And, to keep things short and simple, they are hidden within our territory, and our typical forces cannot begin to assess and attack them. We don't know any of their exact locations."

"I see." I nod slowly. I am steady, I am stationary. But this, within, is quite a bit jarring.

Greely mutters something to the dark brown fennec fox standing by him, the one who led me here, and it nods and procures a large pouch with something wrapped around it. Greely pushes it towards me: an overstuffed satchel of coin, and a golden sash with a copper medallion affixed to it, attached to the sash with fine red ribbon.

"You will receive this as upfront payment. Wearing the sash recognizes you as an ambassador to lands outside the main region, and I will be in contact with you through letter to update you on the situation and objective."

"Where am I to go first, general?" I ask as neutrally as I can manage. Truth be told, this is big. Really big. The biggest job I've had in my entire career.

"We have been informed the first Specter is somewhere around Lowertown in the west," Greely replies, leaning forward. "If you accept, you will be transported there tonight."

I eye the bag of coins.

"And what comes after upfront payment?"

"Fame, fortune, respect…"

I cannot help but snort just a bit. I lean forward to meet him, the hood of my cloak falling to my shoulders. "Oh, I accept, general. I just don't think the masses are going to accept a Magicslayer as an acclaimed war hero."

I am stationary.

Steadfast.

I am Stolid.

Yeah, that's me. Stolid.

I . The Road to the First Specter
"Isn't it dangerous to travel by night?"

I'm sitting in a wagon, leaning against the side to steady myself as the wheels turn ceaselessly over the rocky trail into the forest.

"With a wagon bearing the symbols of loyalty to the army, the nation, and the throne, no less." The fennec next to me, driving the clydesdale-pulled wagon (yes, the same fennec who led me here, because he is so tragically the draft-pilot of this wagon) prepares to prattle a thousand complaints about the state of the government. "It's like walking into a den of lions in the dead of night. We're asking for trouble."

"Provided the lions aren't feral, I'd say the worst that could come out of that would be having to deal with a lot of irritated lions," I hum with a yawn.

The fennec scowls rather fiercely at me. "Additionally--"

"He's right, you know," the clydesdale pulling the wagon grunts. "We don't have room in our society for murderous lions no more. No killing of sentient animals. No eating of them neither."

"Oh, feral and civilized!" The fennec pipes up immediately. "Another ever-present moral issue."

"It isn't that hard to think about if you don't think about it." I yawn again. "The animals of the heartstones, most of them anyway, are members of society and mankind. The ones who aren't and haven't been awakened are feral and they go by the primal order of things. Simple as that. No moral or ethical argument there."

"You cougars," the fox snarls, waving one hand's reins in my direction, "are so simple-minded."

"I suppose you're right. You haven't even told me your name, while I'm going to be telling the world. Fame, you know. Fortune. According to General Greely."

He opens his mouth to deliver some witty retort when the clydesdale speaks again.

"It's Papermoon. I'm Kingcall."

Papermoon frowns irritably down at Kingcall.

"Are we using our army names?" There's a particularly loud thump as the wagon runs over a rut in the road and I am jostled to the side. My claws dig into the wooden railing beside me.

"You know, this seat is built so that two people can carry the reins," Papermoon says, his green eyes narrowing as he stares straight ahead. "I'm supposed to have you be in the actual carriage. Not here."

"Well, it's too late. We're in the middle of the woods, which are dangerous to be in at night, as you pointed out. You won't pull over just to cram me in with supplies," I reply evenly, uninterested in the current conversation. He didn't even answer my question.

Papermoon yanks on the reins and holds them to his chest, forcing Kingcall to halt. "Hey, watch it!" Kingcall seethes. His teeth gnash together angrily as he struggles to remain quiet and calm. I'm surprised a scrawny fennec fox can hold down a clydesdale, though I'm sure Kingcall is only humoring him.

"Try me," Papermoon snarls, baring his teeth. I blink once, twice, slowly, rest my head against my paw on the side of the drivers' seat. I don't put up with people like this, but it wouldn't be any good to egg him on now, so I lean back and say nothing.

Kingcall continues down the road. We are silent for a long while.

"I bet Marten isn't even your real name," Papermoon mutters reproachfully sometime later. I can't believe someone's finally cracked my façade. Whatever shall I do.

Despite Papermoon's misgivings about the safety of the woods at night, we come up on Lowertown unscathed. It's early morning, about an hour before dawn, when we pass the weathered sign:

WE WARMLY WELCOME YOU TO 

Lowertown, Foothill Forest.

Populaton: 343.

Proudly home to the northernmost burrowing network in Jamaa for 72 years and counting.

I check my robes for everything. Weapons, vials, tools, all there. Good. I typically don't feel like checking things much, but the general gave me refined "ambassador's robes," specially altered to carry everything I needed. They were nice, fancy, sure, but somehow they didn't carry the same comfort and familiarity as my older worn cloaks. I poke at the golden threaded embroidery along its hem. I suppose the goal of posing as an ambassador is to ease the sense of hostility Lowertownies and like-minded Outer Jamaasians feel against newcomers alongside making sure they know I have more expensive clothes than they do.

I have no idea what I'm up against, but now I'm beginning to formulate a good guess.

II . Lowertown
The road into Lowertown slopes downwards into the valley it resides within, leading to a myriad of small burrows dug into the sides of the small meadow hills. I've never been until now, but I hear Lowertown used to be one of the leading producers in the mining, farming, and jewelry industry, all trades that shaped the explosion of primarily rabbit-populated villages in Foothill Forest and Jamaa nearly a century ago. The phantoms' first serious assault on the land seemed to alter many industries and towns reliant on those industries forever. It looks like a nice town, though. Jewelry and crops are still the odd pair that draw the occasional tourists and merchants to the valley. I guess that's what saved it from becoming a total ghost town.

As we roll down the road past the quaint burrows, I ponder. Perhaps the Specter is a rabbit, too. But why would it be here?

Kingcall halts beside what appears to be an inn. "The scout we got our info from is in there," Papermoon grunts. "They'll recognize you by your clothing, so just sit down at a table or whatever. We're going to be outside town hall."

I leap off of the wagon and approach the building as Kingcall backs up and heads further down the dirt path past me. Similar to the other houses, though quite a bit larger, the earth around its front has been carved away to reveal a stony wall with a rounded wooden door and two windows. The door creaks as I open it and step into a dim room, lit simultaneously by candles, glowing stones, and the strangely bright and narrowed eyes of several rabbits turning towards me.

Ignoring the inquisitive gazes and their sharpening as they note my ambassador's sash, I step through the mixture of glowing, faintly pulsating color and sweep aside my robes to sit at a stool by the bar. The young, dark grey and white rabbit behind the bar turns to fix me with another wide, silent stare.

I yawn. Despite the laws of the land, applying to the central cities and furthest reaches of Jamaa and everything in between on civilization and ferality, I sense an unease from the rabbits, a quivering denoting the presence of a predator (that's "one who ate other animals in the days of old for sustenance, typically animals who in this day and age are just as sentient as everybody else" if you didn't listen to the lesson on retired words in school). "Give me... uh.. whatever," I tell the anxious rabbit, gesturing vaguely with one paw. "My name is Marten Gloomwade and I'm the army's ambassador to the outer lands of Jamaa, you know, I'm sure you already know that. My identity is quite... wide-spread."

The rabbit nods quickly and vigorously. "Of course, sir. Everyone knows. I mean that... respectfully of course," it adds with a squeak, before darting off towards a shelf at the far side of the bar.

My ears instinctively angle towards a thump behind me, followed by the creak of a chair as someone stands to approach me. "Gloomwade," a neutral, feminine voice calls. A skunk with a dull red cloak, which bears the crest of a cartographer on its shoulder, hops up onto the seat next to mine.

She continues before I can speak. "My name is Umberfade. I assume P and K brought you here." Umberfade's head jerks up towards the rabbit, who is fiddling with several bottles at once. "Hops, get me two cups of 'shine."

"Hops" nods quickly and attempts to put the bottles back, nearly dropping several in the process as he reaches for a ceramic jug. Hops. What a stupid name for a rabbit. That's like being a crocodile and naming your child "Teeth," or maybe being my mother and naming me "Has Gums That Bleed Prolifically Upon Rough And Vigorous Physical Contact, No Matter How Many Times Said Repetitive Contact Is Applied To Gums Every Day."

Umberfade suddenly shoots a glare at me and mouths what I'm pretty sure is "it's not a stupid name." I blink in surprise. "Yeah. They're.. yeah." I nod awkwardly. I'm not used to working with the government. I don't know what kind of regulations they have on names and the whereabouts of agents.

The skunk procures a scroll from her cloak and slides it towards me. "There's been strange activity in the tunnels," she mutters, pausing to accept two glasses filled with a dark, unrecognizable liquid from Hops. "No one goes down there much, but several inhabitants have reported a strange energy whilst standing aboveground over the deepest parts of the network. Those spots of energy seem to change location day-to-day. That is a map of the tunnels." Umberfade gestures towards the scroll and takes a heavy swig from the glass. "...it's a special scroll that'll help you find your way, though the further you go down the more crystals there are to guide you. I'd explain it but there's a key in the map and everything you need."

I wonder if this skunk knows what job I'm doing.

"Yes, I know what you're doing." Umberfade narrows her amber eyes at me, her tone harshening pointedly but evening out quickly afterwards to add, "...you're taking care of that energy."

-

Waste as much time as you'd like, at the expense of the army, but you have two days to pinpoint and eradicate that force. Umberfade's words ring in my head as I walk towards Lowertown's somewhat desolate public library that afternoon. It won't take that long, I know. I didn't tell her that, but I figure that she knows, because I thought of it while she was staring at me and practically chugging whatever drink I didn't touch back at the bar. I want to get a better idea of what I'm dealing with, though, so I decide to start by reading a few things at the library.

The library-burrow is similar to the bar, lit by crystals and candles. There's a rabbit at a desk near the front, whom I sweep past towards one of the library's five shelves. ''History. ''

One particularly large tome is a ringed binder of family trees following and cataloging every resident. Stallfur, Oreleap, Pondrush, Digtrot, and Flathorn are the persistent lineages, with brief descriptions of their histories on the side of each family tree. One of them, Digtrot, seems mildly of interest:

''The Digtrot family, known for their contributions to the creation of the tunnels. It is said that the path through the deepest parts of the tunnel system is knowledge passed down through the generations. The late branch of the Digtrot family, descended from Leaper Digtrot and Indigo Digtrot (née Flathorn), are honored and revered for their service to the military during the First War.''

The First War, of course, being the first large scale modern-age conflict with the phantoms, including the catastrophic attacks on Foothill Forest (I paid attention in school... before I dropped out). I remember the uproar about the military being unable to return deceased soldiers' remains to their families for unexplained reasons, a controversy further heightened by their later statement of "...there is nothing to be returned." It brings thoughts of the old rumors in school that, in some circumstances, when you were "killed" by a phantom, you became one.

And that, of course, leads to thoughts of my discoveries last year in another big job that this silly rumor had some merit... but that's a story for another day.

"Excuse me. You've got newspaper archives, right? I'm looking for obituaries," I call to the librarian from my place near the family tree book's wooden, candle-lit pedestal. The rabbit blinks in surprise and then nods, hopping away from the desk and down the hall past the bookshelves.

After leafing through issue after issue of a stack of old copies of The Meadow's Buzz (which sounds more like a gossip magazine than an accurate local newspaper), nothing. I'm looking for a certain Halo Digtrot, the supposed end of Leaper and Indigo Digtrot's branch of the Digtrot family tree. She died during the First War along with her parents and just about everyone else in her close family. I'm just about to assume she went unrecorded when, thank Zios, I glimpse it in a particularly yellowed issue.

''Halo Digtrot was a medical student and artist born and raised in Lowertown. She is honored for her enlistment and service in the army as a doctor. She disappeared during the Siege of Tunneler's Fort and was proclaimed dead by the military on the following day after the attack due to a fatal phantom-delivered electrical shock. A creative and loving soul, Halo was admired around town for her detailed paintings alongside her compassion and drive to help her patients. Halo could not be recovered for a funeral and burial, and her headstone is placed by St. Geo's Church beneath a willow tree in accordance with the church's wishes.''

(...after that, where normally obituaries have the "they are survived by" section, there's nothing. It ends there. Damn.)

Another disappearance of the body, huh? There wasn't any burial mentioned either.

If my hypothesis about the Specters is correct, that they're captured and converted animals and, perhaps, their children...

I thank the librarian and take my leave.

I dislike being in tight spaces, but it can't be helped. To the tunnels I go, scroll in hand.

III . "I am No Claustrophobe; I Simply Hate Dirt" / Puissance's Prelude
So, the tunnels... well, they sure are tunnels. Dark. Dirty. Generally uncomfortable to be in. I enter them in the afternoon armed with everything in my cloak and a nifty sort of green metal staff with a ring attached to the end, where a lit glass lantern is affixed. I borrowed it without permission from outside a burrow on the way to the tunnels even though I can see alright in the dark. I've gone on enough night missions to hone my nightvision, which for most people has been dulled due to lack of use in modern society, but I suppose the lantern is more of a false comfort, because walking around in the open night air is different than clunking about in an abandoned tunnel built for rabbits.

When I open the scroll Umberfade gave me, I'm surprised that it's in fairly pristine condition, something difficult to be found in scrolls now that they're not often produced and most sane people just use books. More notably, the golden-yellow flecks of auxichlydrite sewn into the fiber of the paper, which is used nowadays for decoration by simpletons who don't realize its inherently magical properties, cause the scroll and the outline of the map to glow a soft golden, lighting the tunnel enough for me to see where I'm going without the lantern. I keep it by regardless.

The drawing of the tunnels on the scroll seems to tremble for a moment. As it stills, a small black star appears on one of the outer lines. The map key on the bottom translates. ★ = WIELDER.

Umberfade forgot to tell me exactly, or perhaps she purposefully withheld it, but I expect this map pinpoints and targets sources of living and/or magical energy, and leads the Wielder to the source. A moment later, words in scribbled blue ink appear underneath the map: PROCEED.

One line depicting the network glows a dim orange and pulsates. I grip the lantern-staff and carry on forwards on the route the map orders me to take deeper into the tunnels.

A few minutes later, after I take a left down a tunnel that widens as it slopes downwards, there is a rumbling. The soil around me is stirred and small chunks of earth fall to the ground at my feet from the ceiling and the sides. The tiniest pieces of crystal and metal embedded in the dirt around me, on the walls besides me, above me, beneath me, flicker to life, pulsate faintly with the glow of bright greens, blues, pinks, purples.

It's nearby.

Sure enough, the map drawing shakes again, evens out as a trembling magenta ♦️ appears in the center of the tangled lines. The color of the lines around it indicate, according to the map key, that it is one of the deepest parts of the tunnels. Wonderful. The map's route redirects to take me directly into the center.

As I progress steadily downward, the rumbling occurs more frequently. I pass by abandoned crystal mining sites, some large, brilliant blue gems still exposed in the dirt, glowing brighter and brighter with each discharge of tectonic energy. I wonder, absentmindedly, about those rumors of phantom-animal hybrids or whatever. My classmates called them, aptly, "Phantimals." How profound. The earth quivers violently, this time throwing me to the ground and dumping a pile of soil and crystalline flecks from the ceiling onto my back.

I stumble to my paws, briefly admiring the lantern's flame for struggling and succeeding in staying alight through all this. The map quivers again. I lean against the wall of the tunnel, where it opens into an intersecting path, and reexamine my position. I'm nearly at the center. I step out into the tunnel that leads straight towards my target. Before I can turn towards it and carry on, the map's movement settles. The diamond at the center suddenly disappears. It appears in another tunnel and disappears. It appears in another closer by and disappears. And then the quiet rumbling around me dissipates. My head jerks upward as something appears near the star indicating my location:

♦️

A thunderous rumbling flings me into the dirt once again as a long, bright pink, spear-tipped bolt of magical energy soars down the tunnel over me. The rumbling grows louder still as the bolt disappears into the heart of the tunnels and the ♦️ on the map reappears at the center. Down the passageway, I hear what sounds like a child or adolescent's angered shout, to my faint surprise (dimmed by the electric aftershock of such a potent magical attack-- Zios, I had let my guard down, hadn't I? In the dark, abandoned, scary tunnels no less!... well, I am no claustrophobe. I simply hate dirt).

"Dammit! There's someone here! I missed them! Dammit... I know... I know there's someone there, I felt it."

I glance up at the ceiling. The bolt didn't hit anything. I scramble to my paws and rush down the tunnel to my target, gripping the lantern and map in my paws.

There's a dim pinkish light ahead where the tunnel opens up into what I presume to be a very open room. The tunnel slopes down into the deepest part of the network, and as I get closer I recognize the pinkish light as something like a cluster of crystals, the only thing lighting the room as I leap headfirst into it. I roll up the map scroll and jam it into one of my cloak pockets.

The rumbling tunnels fall silent. Even with the lantern, I can barely see a thing.

There's a faint hum as crystals around me slowly come to life, in a bright glow of blue, green, red, pink, purple, forming a vast circle around the dark room. Above me there's a series of faint, rapid pawsteps, accompanied by what sounds like the jingle of a tiny bell with each step, and I instinctively reach into my cloak and draw my best dagger immediately. Fastest draw in Central Jamaa, they used to tell me in the army, during my failed stint as a soldier. It doesn't take that long for most people to draw a blade when they know what they're doing, but yeah, I can sense the need, reach for it, and draw my dagger from the deepest folds of my cloak in less than a second. Again, though, this cloak is kind of weird to quickly rifle through when I'm so used to my old, humble ones. I probably could've done it faster if I hadn't been digging around in white silk.

The pawsteps come to a halt somewhere above and in front of me. "Hiya, Mr. Ambassador! It's nice of you to come," a high-pitched voice chirps. I hear the bell clink again as the owner of the voice tilts her head to the side. A quick sniff of the room: dirt, overpowering smell of dirt, beyond that, further... dirt, dirt, water, rabbit. Young rabbit. Rabbit, mixed with that, the stench, a wrong sort of stench mixed with rabbit, something that burns my nostrils. Phantom.

"It would be real rude of me not to introduce myself. My name's Peck. Peck Digtrot, but you can call me Peck. I'm an artist! How about you?"

A silence.

"All I know is that you're an ambassador. Don't be so surprised about that! We get around. Ambassador... or... uh, Magic-ck-slaugh... slough...sl...slayerrrr... Magicslayer! Did I get it right?"

I'm surprised. Perhaps the phantoms are getting better at disguising informants. Well, I would expect so, given.. this. More crystals, ones buried in the soil, begin to glow, leading up the wall and pausing at a ledge, outlining the silhouette of a rabbit. Yes, I was right.

"Y'know, none of us have ever seen your face. We didn't prioritize locating you or finding out more about you 'cause you weren't a threat to the fortress or the body." Peck pauses, tilts her head again. "What kind of animal are you, exactly?"

I remain silent, move the lantern's flame away from my face. The crystals seem to shift forwards and lurch towards me. I dig into my cloak again and grip a dark grey, circular object. Let's hope my aim is alright. I haven't needed it much recently. The crystals pause their movement as Peck raises her hands into the air and backs away.

"Sorry... geez... I was just curious. You don't have to be rude... you are being pretty rude, you know that, Magicslayer? I'm just trying to make conversation and you can't even en-tear...no.. turr...ten? Tain? You can't even en-ter-tan, ente-rrr-tayn a poor kid who hasn't spoken to anyone human in soooo long..." Peck clears her throat. "Hey, are we even human? People used to call us animals. Primal. Sah-vage. What is 'human?' Are we animal or 'human,' whatever that is?"

Someone didn't go to school. I bite back additional comment. "You aren't."

"Whaaaat?" Peck's childish tone hardens mid-word. The crystals flare into a blinding light. I squint as golden stone in the walls begins to glow too, lighting the room. It's larger than I anticipated. The crystals sink into the paint-spattered ground, which is surrounded by a blue pool of water. The walls are adorned with more of these splatterings in between countless ledges spiraling upwards. Peck stands in the center. Her fur is several shades of light purple and magenta. The tops of her ears are a much darker shade of pink than the rest of her ears, and they look sewn on. A bell earring hangs from her left ear, and a deep, blackish purple collar is around her neck, a phantom's eye at its center, confirming my suspicions.

Under her short, dark purple hair, one eye is covered by a thick black strip of ribbon. Her other eye is deep purple and oddly cloudy, in a way I've seen before, in older folks and one very unfortunate young... target, one that keeps me up at night, makes me tremble to have to look at something like it again.

...she can't actually see?

''"I'm done talking!" ''Peck yells. "Take THIS!"

Crystals emerge from the ground and rumble through the earth towards me as two pink whips of energy lash out from Peck's body, shaking the tunnels with the force and noise of a thunderclap in my ears as they dislodge a ledge of earth and rock from above me and fling it downwards with the intent to kill.

...a child. I'm fighting a child. Again.

IV . "Showdown!" Puissance ♦️
I dart out of the way of the projectile just as another whip curls around a boulder and lobs that at me too, hitting the wall with a thunderous crack as I dodge it and it splits in two upon impact. Peck leaps off of the ledge she stands on and onto the next one above it. I don't have time to slow down and examine, but the crystals pushing through the dirt to pursue me seem to slow down whenever I halt. They haven't ever attempted to attack me, as far as I'm aware. I quickly discover I can collapse the lantern holder and do so, gripping it in my mouth to free a paw. I'm glad my teeth don't bleed too.

''"You're a cougar, right? Let's see how high you can jump!" ''Peck stops throwing dirt and rocks at me and her two whip-tentacle things withdraw just a little bit. Their tips round themselves and begin to glow white and light pink. As I leap onto the next ledge towards her, the crystals' points jut towards me and the whips release two bolts of sparking, crackling energy. They meet the wall inches away from my feet and explode in a burst of color that sends me rolling backwards and nearly onto the ground thirty feet below.

I jump to my paws, scramble onto the next ledge and the next and the next as Peck sends eight more shots my way, leaping onto the ascending ledges to meet me from the other side of the tall room.

Cougars? Leaping high? That's racist. Well, it's true, but you shouldn't expect that out of every one of us... Why, how, does she know I'm a cougar?

The crystals emerge from the ground around me in a slow spinning motion. I have a moment to glance at them, and note the strange, round sort of bubble encased within each of them floating slowly in my direction whenever I moved. I glance towards Peck, who's paused movement. There are a few crystals around her, too.

I spin around and do another rather tiresome cougar leap onto the final and highest ledge. Peck swings into life, and I sidestep off of the ledge and onto the second room behind me as she fires two more bolts. I grip my dagger and jerk the blade sideways, deflecting the bolts with a twist of the hand. I don't know if you missed it, but my title's "Magicslayer," and my weapons are a mix of magical items that counter and destroy as well as magical-but-not-magical items enchanted to defend against magic. All of my good daggers can deflect a measly old elemental bolt. I guess I should demonstrate more often so that it doesn't seem like I'm pulling a plot point out of nowhere.

"Hey," Peck growls, withdrawing her whips and hopping onto the same room I stand on. "Did I mention that I'm an artist? This room of my burrow is the art gallery. Magic is art too, but I have other ways of killing you before you kill me."

Now that we're on the same level, I have the high ground. I decide to pull out another blade and lunge at her with the daggers and in a flash of shining silver I'm almost upon the beast, the monster, not a child, not a child like that one, a monster...

Suddenly, Peck is holding a paintbrush. She lashes it through the air, sending a splatter of dark violet paint directly across my eyes.

I stagger. I can operate fine without sight, but this isn't normal paint. It can't be. It's cold, too cold, numbing, makes my mind addled. I have a strategy but I'm forgetting it as soon as I think of it... what was that again.. Paint? Paint on my eyes, I have to get it off.

I step backwards and trip on a crystal.

"I've always wanted to see real color," Peck says. I'm pretty sure she's moving away from me, her voice is... somewhere else. "My mom and the phantoms weren't happy when I was born blind. They thought my mom was defective. My mom.. well, you read her obituary, you know her name. Halo. They took her off the battlefield, the phantoms, and they showed her the true path when they put that collar on her. She fell in love with a phantom, I'm not actually sure how, they're kinda gross. I think it was another rabbit that the phantoms stole, but she told me my father was a phantom. They were gonna get rid of me but someone showed me that I could see another way. I figured out how to use Crystal Sight, and see through the foggy lens of the crystals. I can see and attack general shapes that way. But it isn't enough!"

I hear a crackling and a bolt connects with my body, which sends me tumbling towards the ledge I was on just a moment ago. Ow.

"You're a letdown," Peck grumbles in disappointment. "I was expecting more. And it's too bad you won't live to see my art."

Smoke.. Sm.. what was I just thinking about? Right. That. I've been waiting.

I hear the whips charge, preparing to send me off the ledge and onto the ground. I toss the lantern to the ground (yeah, I somehow managed to remember to hold it) and drop one dagger to grab the smoke bomb from my cloak and throw it directly at the crystals around me.

"Hey!" Peck screams. "I can't see! Goddammit!"

I hold my breath, pick up the dagger and stumble to my paws, turning away from the ledge and kicking as many crystals as I can into broken, useless shards before dashing towards Peck's voice. Stumbling pawsteps scramble away from me.

I fumble around for my flask and pour water over my eyes in an attempt to remove the paint. Surprisingly, it fades and almost melts away nearly instantaneously. So that's the secret: Water.

The room before me is a dark gallery, filled with framed paintings of blind swipes and paint splatters. I follow steadily after Peck's steps.

I catch sight of her, stumbling down a hall with noticeably less crystals than before following her. She spins around to face me suddenly, and with a strangled scream sends the whips towards me. They coil around anything they can find as they go: shelves, frames, easels, all flying at me, all easily dodged and sliced through. Peck's form was getting less precise and more desperate, but I didn't say it, didn't think it. It would hurt more.

The gallery led upwards to the surface. If I recalled correctly, according to the map, the northern side of the center which we were going down right now led fairly quickly up into a meadow.

I would have caught up with her by now, but Peck keeps finding things to fling at me, and though they're easy to get through they're still a bother. Finally, though, as Peck manages to break through the surface without ending the barrage of random items, she hops several more steps before tumbling down a meadow hill. I follow after her. She doesn't get up.

''"No!" ''Peck screamed, now throwing pebbles at me as I approached with my daggers. "No! You can't! You won't!"

''A tiny young lynx with cloudy blue eyes. He's crying. "You can't! You can't do this to me!"''

I draw nearer. That phantom collar on her neck... was she normal before it was there?

''"No!" ''Peck sobs. She rips out her bell earring and throws it in my direction. It hits my forehead.

For the second time in my life, I give pause.

"I can't," Peck cries. "I can't stop. I can't make them stop. I want them to let me go." She grips her collar, her pawpads digging into it. It doesn't budge. The protruding phantom's eye wobbles and moves about.

I stand there (on all fours), daggers at my paws. I don't move. I can't.

For the second time in my life, I am paralyzed.

"I can help you," the cougar says, dropping its weapons.

"I can help you," I say. I dropped my weapons long ago. I dropped them as soon as I thought of that other time.

"Please help me," Peck whispers, trembling. Her bell earring fell into one of my pouches.

I extend a paw. Daggers at my paws, crystals, the earring.

Crystals at my paws.

Four whips lash out from the ground, wrap themselves around my neck, lift me up and throw me into the dirt.

"I gotcha gooooood!" Peck screams as she leaps up, four whips at her hands, a laughing scream, hatred in her blank, cloudy violet eye.

My own vision is blank.

My daggers. Goddammit, my daggers-- where?

I am flung into the air again. They're choking me. The whips are choking me and it's because I extended my heart, believed. Well, that's a good lesson on why I don't do that. I guess I needed the reminder.

"You can't hurt me," Peck shouts from the ground below. "Not after I tricked you! I knew it would work when I saw how you looked. You should have seen it! That was hilaaaaaaaaaaarious!"

The whips drop me again. I'm about to hit the ground hard when one grabs me at the last moment.

"...on second thought, maybe the phantoms will want you to join them." The whip smacks me into the ground and coils around my neck again. Peck hops towards me with my daggers and drops them oddly close by.

"OK, I'll just knock him out and contact the fortress and then..." Peck mutters to herself as she stares off into the distance. I decide not to move, since when I struggle and attempt to break the whips and their energy with my bare paws, they only tighten. Peck refocuses on me. I keep my gaze blank and distant, as if I am still startled. As if I haven't been betrayed by people that I've known for more than thirty minutes, as if this is so impactful. Well, I mean.. whatever. Anyway.

"Here's a lesson," Peck tells me with a very irritating grin. "Don't let your guard down. The only reason you lost is because you let your guard down!" The rabbit raises a paw and a glob of dark, almost black purple manifests and shapes into something like Peck's collar. She leans forward. "And now you're going to be.. what was it again... Speak... Spoct-or? No..." She frowns in thought and averts her eyes. "Spect.. spoke... Specter!" Her eye lights up. "Yeah. A Specter, that's what one of yours called it. Well, that's just life, I guess! I don't need crystals to see this, either. And you're too weak to run." The whips uncoil and disappear. I'm... in-de-pe~n-den-t'uh. Dent. Indepen-dent."

"You let your guard down too," I say quietly, gripping an arrow I had recovered from my cloak after she had recalled the whips. Peck freezes in surprise, looks around blindly (ha ha). "Wha-"

My arm lunges upwards, piercing through the eye of the collar.

"UHAAAAAAAAAAHhGghggjhgjhg!" Peck gurgles, stumbling backward. I had pushed the arrow through and past the collar, but only because I hadn't expected it to give way so easily. I stand up as Peck falls to the ground. The collar itself seems to writhe in agony and it coils into itself, one sphere around the arrow's shaft. The tiny sphere runs up the shaft and off of the arrow into the air, where to my surprise droplets of water fall from it and transform into clouds bearing strange images.

Memories.

''"The collar won't help you, but this will," an elderly monkey with a black collar rasps, pushing pieces of crystals into the hands of a young bunny. "Plant these in the ground. When they sprout, you must learn to control them."''

''"Mama!" A purple rabbit shrieks as phantoms drag its mother away. A monkey with a collar grips the rabbit's shoulder with one wrinkled hand, holding it back. "Watch," the monkey orders, dragging the rabbit towards the edge of a pit. "Watch. Now. Summon your crystals or I'll throw you in too."''

''"I don't want to wear that!" A tiny rabbit screams, struggling against the grip of two phantoms as a monkey jerks its head upwards and affixes a black, eyed collar around its neck. "Be quiet. This is the only way you'll be useful."''

"Help me!"

"Mama!"

A rabbit is pushing its mother into a pit of screaming, bloodthirsty beasts.

"You resisted."

"Killing suits me just fine."

"Mama!"

"I don't wanna wear that!"

"No!"

"The body most be fueled!"

"Hey, the Magicslayer's coming your way soon."

"Mama!"

"I gotcha goooooooood!"

"I'll kill whoever the damn body wants me to kill!"

"Never had a dad."

"I'll kill you!"

"What's the woooooooord.... uhhhhh."

"MAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

"UAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--"

I raise the dagger and slam it down into Peck's chest. The other thing, the sphere of phantom ugliness, dissolves.

The last cry was in the present.

''"Why?" ''Peck gurgles. I turn away.

"Why couldn't I amount... to anything..."

In the distance, I can make out Umberfade hurrying over the hills towards me. Probably watched me get beat up. I put my daggers away and head towards her.

"The body.... will prevail."

I can tune out nearly anything but I can't tune out Peck's last breath behind me.

''"Gloomwade!" ''Umberfade calls distantly. She doesn't seem too happy, which I would hope is her version of concern for me. That's nice. I knew she liked me. Time to put away these stupid thoughts before she can read them, though.

What a stupid battle.

..."battle," more like.

V . En Route to Ravine
I'm tired.

I wasn't a little while ago, but my body hurts. The constant up-and-down motion of Kingcall pulling the wagon doesn't help. So now I'm tired, in pain, and nauseous, all while Papermoon is attempting several one-sided debates with me about Jamaasian politics.

Umberfade was more concerned about my wellbeing than I expected when she caught up to me a few hours ago. Then she yelled at me about something. I didn't pay attention. It felt kind of intrusive, her rebuking of every single thing I thought. I can't use self-spawned magic, but I know how to deny it and its effects. It's too bad an immunity to mind-reading is magic in itself, so I'm defenseless. What a bother. Non-consensual telepathy should be illegal.

I stayed in Lowertown for an hour more while Umberfade's agents analyzed some of the things they found in Peck's burrow and handed them off to me when they were done, per Greely's orders. Umberfade didn't seem too happy about that, but it's not like anyone else cares. She was especially vocal about my inability to keep the phantom collar intact, but knowing that it exists is still pretty useful info, I'd say. Fortunately, one of the accompanying mages discovered the second phantom collar that Peck had created in the grass, one that hadn't been destroyed after she died.

"We will study this intensively, and figure out how to counter it, so that you will not fall victim to one," the mage promised.

"Don't worry," I dismissed. "I don't make mistakes so easily."

I sent a letter to Greely that the scouts rushed off to the Calliope, and then I was back in the wagon with Papermoon, who informed me that mages posted near Grand Ravine, north of Coral Canyons, reported strange energies and occurrences believed to be the work of a second specter.

"I think they're after me now. Perhaps they'll move," I had told Papermoon after he gave me this information, in an attempt to cut off another launch into the "corrupt" nature of how the army gathered info. What does he want them to do, make peace with the purely malicious beings we fight?

"Phantoms are stupid," Papermoon retorted. "They're sitting ducks right now... just waiting for you to come and beat them."

Hm. Perhaps that was it. Waiting for me to come to them?

Now the wagon is silent, save for Papermoon's current tangent about "not-mandatory-but-certainly-undeniably-implied-to-be-mandatory-in-order-to-be-accepted-and-respected-by-society" enlistment.

"...although we've never had issues with discrimination in enlistment, in gender and species and whatnot, isn't it a bit odd how much the female population and smaller animals especially are pressured into enlisting as medics or other non-combat roles...? They can apply and be accepted as soldiers without issue, and yet the profiling is there. They're soldiers, but as soldiers they're just not taken as seriously... with males, it's just the opposite, with pressure socially and culturally into being soldiers and nothing more than replaceable, disposable soldiers... oh, and let's not forget the exploitation of natural-born magic users. It's just ludicrous how the government expects they can almost always take magically talented children away from their families at age fourteen without backlash from the public. That's why protective parents lie about their child's magic, and why fearful parents abandon them! And the treatment of orphaned and abandoned magic-users! They're taught that they're special, that they can't die, that they're more important than regular soldiers, and then they die."

Papermoon grows increasingly and alarmingly animated as he goes on. "And then you've got dead children on your hands. And then the ones that live have to live with the memory of seeing their friends, their training classmates, their fellow man dying before their very eyes. Why is it that magic-users' enlistment is mandatory! Why is the enlistment age so much lower for them! Why are they almost always trained insufficiently! Why is that, Gloomwade?!"

"Aren't you, like, twenty? And a magic-user?" I'm examining the bell earring that fell into my pocket for the seventh time.

Papermoon doesn't say anything for a short while, which is like an oasis of relief in an endless desert where the sand grains rant to you about the unfair terms out of some soldiers' control that cause them to be dishonorably discharged.

"Zios. You never went through what I did. I almost forgot," Papermoon grunts.

"I was a soldier."

He blinks slowly in apparent surprise.

"...what is that?"

"A soldier is a person who enlists in the com--"

"No. That." Papermoon is staring at my paw, and after a moment of silence, jabs his finger in the direction of the bell I'm staring at.

"This? Another thing I got. Unless the client specifies, I keep all the magical junk I get from targets for safekeeping and later use. If they do specify, I take it anyway. People can't be trusted."

Kingcall grumbles about something under his breath after Papermoon fails to steer out of the way of a particularly large rock. I am nearly thrown off of the wagon again.

"That has faint magical energy. But it's not a magical item."

"Well, this one just kinda got thrown at me. Literally. Want it?"

"No... I just..." Papermoon pauses and shakes his head. "Never mind. You were a soldier? When did you enlist?"

"Seventeen. I was seventeen." I think about it. What was my story? "Got in trouble. Had to. I was thinking about running away after a while, but they kicked me out because a certain teacher took a liking to some kind of weird ability he saw in me. So I trained under him specifically for a while. Never got the official soldier's mark, though, since I wasn't ever in a battle."

"They didn't give you an army name?" Papermoon blinked. I'm surprised he hasn't gone on an argument with himself about the whole army name practice. I suppose he doesn't mind it because in a lot of places you get to choose it once you serve in a battle, unless you die.

"Nah."

"So it is a fake name." The fennec leans back into his seat in a childish sort of satisfaction. "I knew it because you introduced yourself with your first name. No one does that!"

"I'm an ambassador, so it's different. I have to or else no one will trust me. That's how ambassadorship works!" I toss the bell back into my cloak pocket and flash the trademark wink and smile of the locally-loved politician running for Jamaa Township mayor (this is all of them. All of them, in every single goddamn newspaper photograph. That same smile. They're all blood related, I tell you).

Papermoon scoffs, somewhat playfully. "But you're...

"Anyway, you are a magic-user, aren't you?"

"Coming up on the mountains," Kingcall says. I sigh inwardly. Why did Jamaa have to be so mountainous? I prepare myself for another visit to Rocky Road City, where you get nauseous about five minutes in after the fifteenth rock-on-wheel jostling.

"Yeah. Greely told you, right? I bet you could kill me, Magicslayer." Papermoon yawns nonchalantly.

"Truth be told, there's one type of magic that I can't really figure out how to deny. But I'm sure it'll end up being the one you specialize in, so I won't tell you what it is until you tell me about yours."

"Ugh. Fine. Hey, Kingcall, you first."

The clydesdale snorts. "Me? Don't drag me into this... I'm barely one anyway. I was so useless to the army that I enlisted as a draft instead."

"Come onnnnnnnnn."

Kingcall sighs. "My little... trick... is that I can... call kingfishers. I can draw them to any location. It used to happen subconsciously when I was a foal, but I can do it at will now. It's just a sort of quirk that I got from my grandma, who was some kinda druid. Hence... Kingcall. It's not that interesting or helpful at all. But I've learned to appreciate the beauty of kingfishers... I guess. The only bad thing about it was how disappointed my parents were. They were really hoping for a son with the same power that's been skipping around generations in my family for the longest time."

"Well, I can't defend against that... it's pretty cool, really," I say, meaning it. "I haven't seen a kingfisher in years."

"I'm sure you can deny a little subconscious signal to call upon a harmless bird," Kingcall snorts again. "It's not an attack. I can't sic them on anybody. I'd feel real bad controlling the mind of anything."

"I can't deny raw signals calling upon things, and I can't deny physical magical attacks with my body. I'm not a magic-user, so I can only deny physical attacks and only with magic-denying weapons... haven't we been over this already?"

"Between sections of Papermoon's ongoing ten-part thesis on the fallacy of man? I don't remember. Sorry."

"So you can't deny non-physical attacks and signals!" Papermoon shouts a little too loudly. Kingcall looks as if he's holding back a laugh, to little success.

"Oh, dear. So that's your magic?" I frown in mock concern. "Looks like the Magicslayer is going to be the Magicslayed."

...I forgot that "magicslayed" is a real term that most people take seriously. Well, if they wanted me to avoid making jokes about it, maybe they should've come up with a less stupid name. Thankfully, Papermoon doesn't seem upset about my usage of it, which is an astonishment.

He seems to deflate. "...No... Well, uh, I'll tell you about it later."

"Hey! You said you would! And you should tell me why you chose your name, too!"

"Anyway, before we reach Ravine, I'd like to take a moment to discuss how, despite the progress of humanity, gender roles remain present, even outside of the army and especially prevalent in--"

VI . Grand Ravine / Dry Oasis, Damp Desert
Grand Ravine, if you've never been, is a lot like Coral Canyons, but since it's the northern part of the Canyons it's significantly chillier, and there's a prominent river running through the scarred earth, famous for its white rapids in some parts that have swept away many a foolish tourist (or ones who are just unfortunate, but even so, despite its beauty, I'd be giving this place a wide berth if I had the choice). It's said that the natives of this place carry the blood of both the people of the frigid north and the nomads of the sun-baked south. It's odd to think that both of these places aren't too far from the Ravine.

It's an interesting place, to say the least. It's certainly more vegetated than the Canyons, and it gets less tourist traffic than its lower half, because it's less accessible. That suits me just fine, though. As Kingcall pushes through the last stretch of mountainous terrain and onto the steep, carved slopes emptying into the shrubland far below, I glimpse the peaks of Ravine's mesas silhouetted by the timid colors of the sunrise, a sight all to myself.

The locals, primarily a mix of coyotes and great-horned owls, cherish the sun. They don't worship it, of course-- the dominant religion is another sect of the usual Zios creationism-- but some say that at just the right spot, at the top of the cliffs, in the painted, blurry-eyed smear of color between dawn and sunrise, it's the closest you can get to heaven.

It's not midday yet, and there isn't much of a drop or a rise in temperature as we descend the cliffs, but I quite like the Ravine's milder climate, as opposed to the constant swelter of the daytime Canyons. I began to hear the faintest splashing and crashing of the water below a little while ago. It's a very soothing background noise. My stomach and head are both granted rest, as the ground is fairly smooth. We arrive at the village, Pin, as the sky begins to fade into a rich blue.

Papermoon halts Kingcall beside an old, rustic-looking stable, which looks like a nice inn that I'd be able to enter if I wasn't a cougar. I hear horses have their work cut out for them-- you only need to be strong enough to carry an animal across hilly canyons or meadows, a strength most horses are born with, and you're paid fairly well. The only thing is if you're using a horse for travel you have to pay them. I bet people sure miss back when horses weren't sentient. It was a sad day for everyone when somebody found the heartstone and Ed the war stallion started talking.

"Greely says there's an informant up by the stalls," Papermoon tells me, pointing towards the bustling marketplace some distance away. "We'll be hanging around here. Good luck."

Pin seems like a quiet town from a distance, although you can't hear much from afar over the roaring spray of the ravine river below the cliffs the village lingers on. People say it's one of the oldest standing northeastern settlements in Jamaa. Despite the lack of tourists, the town's population can be found congregating in the marketplace as soon as it opens at dawn. I read all this in an old guidebook once.

I push past a few residents before some begin to notice me and my ambassador's medallion, and most move aside to create a path after a few minutes. I glance over heads in search of any questionable individuals. Nobody yet. It would have been nice if Greely had specified where exactly to look.

"Hey! Traveler." The coarse, fluctuating timbre of an adolescent's voice calls out to me from beneath a stall's woven cloth roof. A young, dark brown coyote in a tattered, dull green vest and straw cuffs sits behind a low stand of various clay vases and bowls. He clears his throat and speaks again.

"I couldn't help but notice you're a newcomer to Pin. As a welcoming gift, please accept this piece of pottery, handmade by myself, free of charge." The coyote carefully selects a small, round vase with a small neck opening at the top, painted with varying, overlapping shades of cerulean and blue-green.

I accept it, and a moment later wonder if it's actually a trap, and curse myself for being so trusting again. "Thank you. Might I ask for your name?"

"Noondance." The coyote smiles again and leans forward slightly, an amulet falling out from his vest as he does so. It's a large, flat, diamond-shaped piece of smoothed-down bone, depicting a crudely carved patterned moth among two boughs of pine needles. Two small pieces of amber are set into the left and right edges of the diamond, containing the beginning and end of the sharply cut words along its border: ''Hopei Blani. ''The coyote dialect version of the army's Trailblazer faction motto. Carve the path, if I recall correctly.

"Thank you... Noondance." I dip my head and start to move away from the stall.

"It's an honor to assist you, Ambassador."

Despite the growing heat of the rising sun, the small vase feels oddly cold in my paws. I peer inside of its hole, and tip it upside down. A scrap of rolled up paper falls out, tied with a coarse, dull green snippet of thread, and after that I hear the faintest tinkling from inside of the vase, as if it is home to a myriad of tiny bells. Before whatever's in it can escape, I tuck the container away in my cloak and break the thread with one claw to read the note it holds.

On the paper is the following hastily scribbled script:

''Enclosd in the vase is what you need to fight the Specter. I have investig ated the thSpecter againts ,.:;;' (IGNORE HTHIS) against order s and he is plant mbased. Enclsd is seeds which are ice seeds which will help you fight him. He is dangeros. I am lucky to be writng ths right now. Currently he is at or aroud the ruins just east of town acros the ravi n. The vase is enchant ed to hold the seeds and you can keep it after wards because as soon as I got the news and got back from spying on the spectr i spent the whole night painting it just for you and I dont want it to Go to waste .''

Sincrer(??? unintelligible scribbling here that I couldn't decipher) sincreerely,

Marigold Noondance

I hear the ranger and trailblazer programs allow some students to graduate sooner if they're particularly skilled. I take it Noondance is one of those, since he's experienced enough to determine what is right against his orders (something admirable), but still quite easily trusting, as he gave me his full army name, something most soldiers don't do in a sort of weird protective tradition unless they really trust the person they're telling their name to.

I slip the piece of paper into my pocket with the vase and grip another tool I haven't used in a while-- a special pair of pliers-- before heading eastward.

After some time, I reach the ravine, where I can glimpse a particularly large patch of greenery surrounding a large set of stony, dilapidated buildings just across the river. I'm pondering how to get across, as there's no functional bridge in sight, when I hear a rapid set of pawsteps behind me. A canid's rhythm. I whip around, dagger in hand, poised to strike at Noondance, who skids to a hasty halt a few feet in front of me.

"What are you doing?"

Noondance frowns. "I wanted to help--"

"No. I can do this myself." I turn to face the ravine again.

"Please! I know what to do here! You can't always rely on yourself, especially in an unfamiliar environment."

"I can. I know what I'm doing. I work by myself."

"You don't understand! I've lived here my whole life, and I've served under the army as a tracker and trailblazer for half that time." Noondance skitters forward.

"You don't understand... you shouldn't be associating with me past passing on the information. Your job is done."

"Wait! Please, I'll tell you anything! I'll tell you... my full army name!"

"You already did that in your note."

"I did?" Noondance tilts his head to the side and narrows his eyes in thought before smacking his face with his paw. "I did! Well, past that. Anything." He pauses. "Oh. I'll tell you this for free. I forgot to say that the Specter there... is trying to spread plants across the Ravine and the Canyons. They aren't any old plants either. They behave on their own.. and fairly aggressively, too."

"A plant-based magic user, utilizing sentient plants..." I mutter to myself. "So just plants? No use of other feral animals, like druids do?"

Noondance shook his head. "Just the plants. They can move on their own to some extent, but I overheard him muttering something about needing more power... more food. There's an old legend that says the most violent of the rapids water in the ravine has two magical properties. If you successfully draw it from its source, the water rewards you, and if you boil it and drink it, it will heal your wounds and give you the strength of the rapids. Since it's been boiled, its violence has been expelled. But if you drink it raw, straight from the raging current, it fills you not only with great strength but with violent wrath."

"So what are you trying to say?"

"I think it's true. It's not entirely possible, given the world we live in. No one's tried to prove or disprove it because it's too dangerous. The Specter isn't a water elemental user, but maybe he's trying to harvest the water to give to his plants, so they'll be stronger and more malicious."

"That all?"

"Yeah. I was going to listen more, but one of his snapping plants looked like it had noticed me, and I got scared and left. But I can help you get across the ravine!"

I sigh. I figure he won't leave me be unless I let him help. "Fine," I reply, begrudgingly, stepping to the side. "How're you gonna do that?"

Noondance confidently steps towards the very edge of the ravine, directly onto a piece of rock that looks like it might crumble upon contact. Surprisingly, it doesn't. Noondance narrows his amber eyes, and after a few seconds, I note that the wavering bit of crumbly rock one of his paws is stepping on seems to move back upwards towards the rest of the cliff, and I watch as the small crack in the earth splitting it off from its source heals into smooth ground so seamlessly that it looks as if it had never eroded at all.

The young coyote shifts slightly. He raises his tail and closes his eyes. There's a quiet rumbling as the rocky ground underneath Noondance's paws slowly begins to grow and move forward through the air. After half a minute, the bridge reaches the other side of the ravine, and the underside grows downwards into a more natural-looking formation to strengthen its structure.

A terraformer. Perhaps that's why he's so fond of pottery-- and seems like a natural at it, too, despite his age.

The expansion ends, and Noondance pauses before opening his eyes and smiling with a content wag of his tail. "There we go! It's more convenient than my other method, and I can destroy it if we need it to be gone afterward." He looks up at me. "Oh, that's not all I can do. I'm not just a terraformer, but that's the branch of earth magic I decided to go into. So I can help in more ways than one, I promise!" When he smiles, his eyes close almost all the way. It's cute, which reminds me that he's just a kid, which in turn reminds me that this is pretty damn dangerous for a kid to get involved in. He doesn't seem afraid, though? I can't tell if that's brave or foolish. Before I can respond, he hops onto the bridge and begins to scamper across in a cheerful, skittering gait.

"Thank you, Noondance," I grunt again as I step onto the "natural" bridge after him.

"Oh! You can call me Marigold," he calls back towards me. "I don't mind. Thank you, Ambassador Gloomwade, for letting me help you!"

"You don't have to call me that."

"Sorry."

We step off the bridge and venture towards the ruins.

"It wasn't as vegetated before the Specter arrived here," Marigold says, hopping up the mossy, cracked stone steps. He seems to subconsciously heal those cracks as he goes along. "You could see the whole thing before. It was a temple back when people used it, where my people prayed and gave offerings to Mira and Zios, as well as our patron of the sunrise, Dai. I think that's why it got abandoned after newcomers began settling the land. Dai isn't a god, he was just a man, but he was very important to our culture, and we remember him as such. But, I guess the foreigners, they didn't like that Mira and Zios had to share a temple with some pagan figure."

The inside of the temple is large and just as mossy as the exterior. On the wall is the symbol of Zios's mask, with a carving of the sunrise behind him and a canine figure depicted facing the sun and the mask.

"If the Specter is not immediately hostile," I mutter to Marigold, "don't return any hostility. But don't let your guard down, either. Do you have a weapon?"

Marigold nods, pointing towards the pack affixed to the climbing rope across his tattered vest. He doesn't seem any more frightened by my warning.

In the center of the room is a statue of Mira. Its head is gone.

Marigold frowns. "That's new. Must be the Specter's work. Maybe I can fix it later."

"Don't worry," a voice calls. My paw darts into my cloak instinctively, but I give pause at the last moment, remembering my own warning to Marigold. Still, I keep my paw near the pocket whose contents I had reached for.

A dark brown, messy-furred koala steps out onto the stone floor from a small entrance in the western wall. He has a belt carrying several suspicious vials and pouches that clink as he steps towards us, and below that a tattered, patched, dark green sort of skirt. He carries three small, spiky brown seeds, one between each of his fingers on his left hand. There's an equally patchy and worn hat on his head with a strange white orb at its tip. His left ear is a lump swathed in a dark cloth. The same fabric Peck had over her right eye.

...and, of course, a phantom collar.

He smiles, not unpleasantly, at Marigold and I. "I wasn't sure whether to prepare for visitors this morning, so it's a bit of a mess in there. Would you two care for a cup of pine needle tea?"

VII . Bird's Nest / Fusillade, First Act
The koala introduces himself as Cosmo, a passionate gardener. The main room is a patched-up section of the temple hosting a hammock, a table and chairs made of mossy wood rooted to the ground (not a pun) by strange plant growth, and several piles of dusty books. In the far corner of the room to the left of some shelves is a hole in the wall leading to another room. It's obscured by a screen of lichen.

Marigold and I sit in two of the chairs. As Cosmo boils some water over an odd, blackish vine of a plant, Marigold shoots me uncertain glances. I'm removing a bottle from my cloak and very quietly unscrewing the lid. ''What do we do? ''Marigold mouths at me. I hiss at him to be quiet and slap his paw when he begins to stand up.

"If you're concerned about the color of some of my plants," Cosmo calls, not looking up from the kettle and the vine entwined around it, "don't be. Many of them aren't ordinary plants. I've begun engineering them to have certain properties you won't find in naturally developed, wild plants with neutral magical structure. You know, all plants can have magical properties drawn from them. Most are neutral and appear as such, but I've been studying which plants have higher levels and imbalances of magic. Interestingly, the pine, cypress, and hemlock trees hold untapped sources of magical energy that are discharged and deposited in large amounts in their needles." Cosmo picks up the kettle and pours it into two cups. He hurries back towards the table.

"They have small differences in properties depending on which tree," Cosmo continues, "but when brewed into a tea, pine needles are said to improve your health. Where I come from, though it isn't as widespread, cypress needle tea unlocks wisdom and intellectual ability, and hemlock needle tea brings you great strength. It's fascinating where nature has deposited and distributed magic in each of her creations, especially when it's in plants, animals and formations the average human considers mundane." He pushes the cups towards us and smiles before pouring the dark amber liquid into a third cup for himself.

"Thank you," Marigold smiles respectfully and lifts the cup to his mouth. He pauses, casts a sideways glance of bewilderment towards me, and downs the entire thing like a total moron as I begin to shake my head to say ''don't drink it yet. ''His face contorts into an expression of pure suffering as his tongue is quite thoroughly scalded. Don't be worried, he deserves it.

"Oh! I forgot to mention, but part of my study of magical deposits in nature is to take those magical qualities and engineer and modify the plants to amplify their properties by tenfold." Cosmo sips his tea. I raise the lid of the bottle of clear, thick fluid in my cloak (I once had to explain that I was carrying a bottle of clear glue to a particularly nosy border guard. This apparently wasn't enough to call off his suspicion so I threw him off the gateway bridge) and dab one claw with the brush concealed at the bottom of it. It's like a bottle of nail polish if you put glue in a bottle of nail polish. That sounds like something Marigold would write.

"The needles I brewed this tea with aren't regular pine needles. The other day I successfully created the first human-enhanced pine sapling, with incredibly potent magic in its needles. I haven't fully tested it yet, but it's supposed to improve and heal any ailments your immune system might have. If it works, it's a pretty big breakthrough!"

"That's very interesting," Marigold says with another smile.

"Yes," I add awkwardly, sticking the tip of my claw in the cup as I raise it. "Cosmo, if you don't mind my asking, why did you choose to conduct your research in Grand Ravine?"

"That's a good question." Cosmo sips his tea again. "Like I said before, many places, not just living things, carry inherently magical energies. I wanted my testing to be conducted on magical but elementally neutral ground. Grand Ravine is perfect for that. It's flat, not too hot, not too cold, and easy to navigate."

"I see." I glance down at my claw. It remains clear. Test result: negative. I guess Cosmo wouldn't poison the same thing he's drinking right now, but better safe than sorry. I figured he'd developed an immunity to a magical toxin and it was even odder that he'd freely give us a supposed healing tea.

"I've always loved plants because they're very versatile. In very hot climates, and even around volcanoes, I've seen a few plants flourishing. Many with elemental magical imbalances, such as an immunity to fire or a resistance to dry, sweltering heat, take on the appearance and location that they do because they've evolved to absorb the elements of their environment. Most people associate nature magic, specifically that branch of plant-based druids and herbalists, as weak, because through their uneducated lens, plants are weak. They can be burned and destroyed, killed by a fierce winter frost, consumed in the sun-barren shadow of their flourishing siblings, eaten away from the inside by bugs and animals. That's not true! Plants have a drive, a ferality. They have the same ferality you and I have deep down. The drive, the primitive rage-fueled need to survive. They can say we've evolved past savagery and we're more advanced than non-sentient creatures. But we all have that disease. Nature is as beautiful as it is savage, but most people see only one side of the coin, the pretty, delicate, harmless flowers and vistas."

Marigold nodded in perfect understanding. "The average person doesn't think about the desperate, scrabbling animal inside, because we don't need to fight for every day of our lives anymore. It's nice, but no one acknowledges our past. They act like we were never crawling over roots and cowering in fear of everything around us."

"You're exactly right." Cosmo had grown agitated as he spoke earlier, but quickly reverted to his calm self. A little bit calmer than what I had seen from him before. Here we go.

"We've forgotten who we are."

I unsheathe my dagger and spin to face Marigold, slicing the root that had wrapped itself around his feet a moment ago. It convulses, twitching, back into the ground, as if in agony. Marigold returns my irritated, disapproving stare with a mixture of surprise and embarrassment. I don't have time to reprimand him for letting his guard down, though, because Cosmo narrows his small amber eyes at me from where he now stands on the table. "Magicslayer...

...you will regret hurting them."

Marigold stumbles off and away from the chair, drawing a short, blunt tomahawk from his pack with a fearful look in his eye. I sigh. This would be surprising and a little scary if I wasn't used to it.

VIII . Pronto! Fusillade ♣️
I never liked plants, or dirt, or rocks. Herbalists always seemed so stuck up and pretentious. Cosmo's the same, humanity this, humanity that. It's a simple matter.

"Door to your left," I hiss at Marigold. "Go." As the coyote makes a dash for the lichen-covered doorway to an unknown room, Cosmo leaps at me, flinging the spiky, brownish-green pods he had been carrying earlier at my face. I roll away from them and swing my dagger towards his face as the pods connect with the ground behind me. I would have hit his eye if the pods didn't explode and fling me off balance with their blast. There's the earsplitting crack of stone and Cosmo flings a nearby pot at my head. "You've ruined my home! You're ruining it! I won't forgive you, or you!" I leap to my paws, but before I can say anything about how he's ruining his own home, Cosmo flings more of the exploding pods at the wall near the door.

As it explodes, creating a new opening, Cosmo shouts, "Rise!"

Marigold runs through the lichen screen, and I curse under my breath and run after him. He skids to a halt a few feet away from a gigantic pit in the center of the room, which appears to be turned into a lab. Plants of many colors and sizes are piled on tables and the stone floor with vials and mildly threatening-looking supplies. The room lacks a roof, and the crumbling pillars surrounding the room reach for the sky above.

And let's not forget the gaping hole in the center, filled with writhing, snarling modifications of chomper plants spilling out of the pit towards us.

"Now would be a good time to use the seeds in that vase-- ah!" Marigold jumps back and away from the head of a plant snapping at his legs. As he slices off its head with one clumsy swing of the axe, Cosmo reappears, screaming something about savagery, and throws more of his pod-bombs at us. I dig the vase out of my cloak and run at the koala.

Before I can do anything, though, the plants in the pit surge forward suddenly to block my path. The vase, cool in my hand, jingles faintly as I halt, stepping backwards to avoid the snarling heads of the flytraps and lolling tongue-like bodies of the sundews.

"I have to hurt them to get to you," I tell Cosmo as I tip the vase's contents into my paw.

"You will not kill them. You'll have to kill me first."

"Okay." I glance down at the cold pile of something in my paw. I didn't pour everything out of the vase, to conserve whatever's in there, but I'm holding about ten of them: small, rounded, eye-shaped, light blue seeds. They look like fragments of frosted glass, and when they clink together they make the sound of bells swaying merrily in a cold winter breeze. I say that because it feels different, sounds different, brings back different memories than the noise of bells or chimes in the summer.

"Mr. Gloomwade!" Marigold's fearful voice crackles from behind me. "Throw them!" I take several steps backwards, glance over my shoulder at Marigold struggling against several strains of the plants. I turn my back on the plants guarding Cosmo and run towards the coyote, flicking one of the seeds at the base of the vine the plants had sprung from.

As the seed hits, a layer of crackling ice runs across its surface. The vines convulse and writhe away from Marigold, and in an attempt to get a better view at the inside of the pit, I leap on top of one withdrawing chomper plant. At the center of the pit, among several thick extensions of pulsating roots sprouting into chompers and sundews, is something like a pitcher plant with a bulbous eye on its "lid." The vines pursuing me catch up, so I throw another ice seed at them too and leap over them and onto the ground.

I run at Cosmo again. The plant behind me shrieks in inhuman, rumbling agony, and sprouts a sharp, writhing tendril that slices off its two damaged appendages before the ice can spread to its core. Cosmo makes a very loud, furious noise, and throws his pods at me at the same time my ice seeds hit the ground near his foot. I pride myself in being faster than a koala and knock the pods out of the air towards the Pitcher-Plant-Amalgamate, but it doesn't go entirely perfectly, as Cosmo dodges the path of the frost on the ground before it can hit him.

"No!" He screams as the pods blow another extension of the plant to bits and it releases an ear-splitting screech. Okay, I'm just a little bit unnerved because hearing a plant scream is really terrifying.

Cosmo dashes towards a table. I'm surprised how quickly a koala can run, but he's near defenseless without that plant protecting him. Marigold suddenly appears next to me. "Marigold, I need you to help me again, so throw the seeds at the tendrils when they come towards me." I push the vase into his paws. There's a frightened look in his eye, but he nods and dashes towards the plant as I draw my dagger again and run at Cosmo, who is fumbling around for something in a glass case of potted plants.

The earth shakes beneath me and a tendril bursts forth to block my path. Marigold, who is slinging ice seeds and tomahawk swings at several tendrils nearby, throws a seed at the vines and I slide under them. As Cosmo grabs a pot filled with a strange, pale green substance and turns in my direction, I slash my dagger across his chest.

He gasps and stumbles backward, clutching the pot to his wound. It wasn't a deep blow, but enough to be fatal if ignored. It would go ignored, alright.

"You..." Cosmo gasps, pointing with one stubby finger. As he falls against the leg of a nearby table, he smiles, moving his trembling finger to point outside of the lab, where the ruins end and crumble away into the mesa. There's a crack in the earth, and from it rises writhing vines and tendrils of hissing plants.

"...I had the Pitcher break through the pit's walls and tunnel underground to the surface earlier. My plan was to attack Pin. And I'm going to do just that, and grow my plants strong enough, with the help of the 'healing water' of the Ravine... once it eats both of you, I'll be strongest out of all of them!"

"No!" Marigold darted towards the exit and the plants outside, much quicker than I had anticipated. "I won't let you! I'll heal the ground and crush them!" A sundew streaks upwards as he leaps away from a tendril, wrapping itself around his body.

"Marigold." I can't stop myself, I make another split-second mistake. The briefest moment I take to glance towards him, the tiniest shift away from Cosmo, is the second he flings his pods upon the ground, blasting me backwards. I barely have time to shield myself from the blast with my cloak, and a pod tears through it, searing the fur underneath with a virulent magical energy. I bite back a hiss of pain as I stumble several feet backwards. It could be worse.

Cosmo drops the pot he's holding, and slowly steps towards me with rapid, shallow breaths. He covers his wound with one arm. "Don't move," he hisses. "Don't move or your friend will die."

My eyes slide towards Marigold. He's dangling above the pitcher plant with a large sundew wrapped around him. He looks like he's still holding the pot of seeds, but isn't really in the position to use it, as his arms are constricted. Oddly, though, he doesn't look too afraid. His eyes are wide as he stares down into the pit, and then they narrow.

Concentrating.

"You!" Cosmo barks, wincing afterwards. I look back at him, still gripping my wounded arm with my dagger-paw. "As I said. If you don't move and allow me to attack Pin with this plant, I will spare you both. If you move, he will die."

"Spare us?"

"I will turn both of you into what I am." The eye on Cosmo's phantom collar spins about.

There's a faint rumbling.

"I would accept," I say, dropping my dagger and drawing my trembling paws back into my cloak. "But earlier you said you would feed both of us to the plant."

Cosmo stares at me for a moment. "What are you playing at? Take your paws out of your cloak! No funny business, or else!"

The rumbling again.

The plant itself makes another noise: a squeal.

Both of us look towards it. Jagged spikes of earth have formed from underneath the Pitcher. They move inward, ignoring the flailing vines desperately attempting to wrap around them. Crushing it.

"You!" Cosmo shrieks again, this time at Marigold. "No! Drop him!... Augh! No! No! The vase, take it from him, the vase--"

As the sundew releases him, Marigold's eyes squeeze shut, and he throws the jar and its contents directly into the Pitcher's mouth.

Ignoring the shrieks of the plant cut short by crackling frost, and churning earth, I turn towards Cosmo. "Hey, so. My paws." I move them out of my cloak and step closer. One is empty. The other clutches a paintbrush, dripping with inky black fluid.

His head jerks towards me, and his eyes widen. "Is that--"

I slash the paintbrush through the air. The ink spatters across his forehead, and Cosmo screams. Damn, I missed.

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the tendrils curling and withdrawing as frost and something like snow consumes them. I don't have time to check on Marigold. I step towards Cosmo, who has fallen to the ground and is rolling towards the pit. I pick up my dagger and dig the blade into his arm. He shrieks again.

"I learned that trick from your friend. She's dead, though. Sorry." I raise my dagger, allowing the koala to stumble to his feet. It doesn't matter.

Cosmo's arm twists behind his head. He yanks the white thing from the tip of his hat and raises it. I pause.

"Don't come any closer," he whispers, choking mid-sentence as he raises the glowing bulb above his head.

"I'll, I'll--"

My dagger tears through the collar and his throat. Cosmo falls to the ground. Oh, dear, my blade acted on its own again. The bulb rolls away from his hand, so I pick it up and put it in my pocket. Marigold stumbles out of the pit and the withering remains of the Pitcher as the collar regurgitates his memories.

''"When is it my turn?" A koala clutching a pot is watching an old monkey.''

''"There's nothing you can do! You're useless without your, uhh, flowers." A rabbit, a broken pot in its paw, scrambles away from a koala, desperately reaching for it.''

"Give it back!"

''"Almost there," a koala mutters, pouring a vial of dark liquid into the soil of a bean plant. ''

"What?"

"I think, that, I've... found it."

"What about the body, Graham?"

"I've found it."

"I don't care... this is important! Look!"

"The exit."

"No! I don't care about the body! I... I don't want to be here!"

"Further. It's further than this. I must push myself further! The roots...!"

"What is this?"

"Don't take another step! Don't! Don't put that thing anywhere near me!"

"I reject it."

"The exit."

"We have forgotten who we are."

"Why?"

"What... is... this...? This bulb..."

"...the exit, I failed, the exit, the egressssssss..."

The collar bubbles and the noises from it gurgle and fade as it disintegrates.

I glance towards Marigold, who has an odd look on his face. "What is it?"

He blinks. "Oh, nothing. Well, I mean. I was thinking, after I had taken the earth out from underneath that plant, why hadn't I done it before? And I'm also sad that my vase is gone. I wanted to give it to you. It was a very nice vase."

"It was."

We stood in silence for a while.

"Oh!" Marigold's eyes light up. "I found something in the pit. The seeds grew frost and snow, and the plant... well, most of it just disintegrated into nothing, but I saw some interesting flowers that had sprouted from the snow. Look."

I peer into the pit, over the decaying remains of tendrils strewn about the lab. At the bottom is a pile of snow, and from it several small, silver flowers have bloomed, swaying in a gentle breeze I didn't realize was there. A few inches from their centers in each flower is a small, softly glowing white orb that moves with its flower.

"Perhaps it's another mutation. Should I fetch the scouts?"

Reflecting, I was going to complain about why I don't work alone, but I realize now that, in fact, Marigold Noondance is quite the helpful change of pace.

IX . Canvas Sky / Ponderings on the Trail
"Papermoon, you never told me your ability or our next destination. I don't forget these things. They're very important."

Papermoon's eyes narrow. He seems unusually rigid.

After the scouts arrived at Grand Ravine, they delivered a letter from General Greely and told me to go on my way as quickly as possible. The letter read:

Gloomwade

''The threat has increased during the past few days. Word has arrived that a Specter is dangerously close to attacking and potentially annihilating the entire area near their location. My mages are attempting to hold them off, but their magic is quite potent. The discovery and assault on the area, if not prevented, will be a serious blow to the army and the nation. Please return to Papermoon and Kingcall and inform them of this news immediately upon receiving this information. Due to the sensitive nature of what I am conveying, specifics on location shall not be provided. Measures have been taken to ensure you and your party's heightened defense while traveling, but please be extra cautious and alert on your path. Upon arrival, you will be met with supplies I believe to be sufficient enough to aid you alongside your current materials. Good luck, and may Zios guide you.''

Regards,

General Greely Lurkshadow

Marigold seemed worried, though he had been barred from reading the letter. After I spoke briefly with a mage, I turned to bid the coyote farewell, only to discover he had vanished. I had no time to search for him, so I left without a proper goodbye. I'm still sore about that. What was important enough to cause him to leave so suddenly? My irritation mostly came from anxiety, though I hate to admit I cared, and asked a scout to look for him and confirm he hadn't been attacked as I left.

I sigh and lean back in my seat. "Fine. I get it's confidential. But how about your ability? I've been checking for hours. There isn't anything following us."

I was almost relieved at the glint of trademark exasperation in his dark green eyes. I wasn't accustomed to Papermoon being so eerily silent and stoic when he should be ranting about feral law and expressing five different emotions at once while being more open with them than I had ever been in my entire life up to this point. I guess it feels like I'm exposing a part of myself when my emotions are visible and so easily read.

"You can't ever be too sure. You aren't even a magic user."

"Aaand you ARE a magic user!" I snap my fingers. "You can detect magic, can't you? Most magic users at least have a dim range and access of that sixth sense. From my experience, the more powerful a magic user's standard abilities are, the more likely they are to hide them. And the more powerful your abilities are, the more heightened your sixth sense is. I'm guessing you're wary of revealing your ability, and thus have something powerful, and thus have a pretty sensitive sense of magic detection! If there's something around, you'd know and would take action by now." There's a warm feeling inside of me, and as soon as I realize there's a smile on my face it reflexively fades.

"Just... a formulaic guess, based off of what I know about you. You're closed off... like me. But in a different way."

Papermoon says nothing.

"...or maybe it's just a regional thing."

He coughs and then pauses, scowling, before coughing again, so loudly and aggressively that it sounds like he's hacking up a hairball the size of a kaiser roll.

Kingcall glances towards him, and then turns his head back towards the trail as Papermoon drops one of the reins and raises one paw, extending a finger.

From the tip of his finger, a smooth, glowing, waving white line slowly snakes into the air. It weaves gracefully forwards past the wagon, and touches a rock. I watch as its surface, upon contact with the line, ribbons into strips of thick red paper with a shining floral pattern. The strips of the rock, still connected to what's underneath, flutter gently in the breeze.

"Illusions," Papermoon muttered. "I can alter the structure of an object so that all who look at it see something other than reality." The red ribbons fade slowly back into grey, rippling gently one last time before stilling. "The rock was always like so. But it briefly changed its surface into something else, an erratic pattern your brain interpreted and hallucinated as a pale patterned red with the consistency of craft paper." Papermoon's white line ability slowly withdraws back into his finger. "I can make them move somewhat to match the falsely interpreted texture or material. I studied the art of origami in school, so I'm most familiar with the patterns and textures that will be interpreted by humans' brains as any sort of paper. I'm working on a few other things, though. So far I can only send this specific sort of signal I've come up with towards one person remotely, but..."

Passing the reins to his other paw, Papermoon reaches into his uniform's pocket, withdrawing a small square piece of thick white paper. In a series of quick, precise movements, he rapidly folds the paper into a shape-- a dove. He flicks the folded dove backwards, directly into the wagon of supplies behind us.

''"Eek--!" ''A startled squeak, hastily cut off by its source.

Marigold.

"You were right. My sixth sense of magic detection is quite sensitive and more powerful than the average magic user. I was told this is because of the vast potential of my primary ability..." Papermoon smiles, wincing as he rubs his ear in apparent discomfort. I've seen some magic users do that before: many, especially younger ones, have a habit of subconsciously touching or holding a part of their head when a magical signal or an attack heavily tied to a magical signal is denied by their opponent. I glance over my shoulder. Marigold's head pops up from a pile of books. "Hi, Mr. Ambassador, and Mr. Papermoon." His sheepish smile quails under my scathing gaze.

"Why are you here?"

"Well, I..." Marigold begins confidently. He trails off immediately and frowns in thought. "I... uh..."

I open my mouth to explain the billion reasons why he should be far, far away from the wagon, but before I can get a word out Papermoon raises a paw.

"Hold on. I only let him stay this far because I know he's a lot more powerful than he lets on.. and more powerful than he probably realizes. You probably noticed, but he denied my paper dove illusion almost immediately after I sent it towards him. It takes a lot of skill to do that so quickly and reflexively, you know? Especially when faced with something you aren't expecting. In his case, the dove appeared as an actual dove flying into the wagon towards him without so much as a hint of a warning."

"Oh." Marigold seems disappointed. "It wasn't a real dove, just another illusion? I was listening in but still kind of worrying I'd disintegrated a real dove. I didn't mean to. It was, uh, what you said, I guess... a reflex, even though I didn't know. I guess my mind just kinda puts up those deny-shields as soon as I'm startled?"

I sigh heavily. This is really beginning to shape up to being one of those books whose protagonist is an adept at something cool without knowing it. Now we just need a teenage romance, and the death of a mentor. Me? Hahaha.

"Alright, but I'm pretty sure the government won't be happy with an unexpected third member of this operation. And I... with this mission, especially..." My eyes lower to the ground, quite shamefully. I don't know how to say it. Over the course of about three days, I've realized how much I've bottled up. There's a whole wine cellar down in my heart and everything in it's aged to perfection. One time I read a story about a psychic magic user who ended up unleashing a ton of his suppressed emotions in the form of extremely powerful, uncontrollable magic. Well, I don't care, because I'm not a magic user and I can't do that! Those bottles are gonna sit and age for all eternity. I wonder if wine ages too much after a while. I wouldn't go drinking something that's been around for four hundred years. Orange juice is better anyway.

Papermoon, miraculously, seems to soften. "...Yeah, yeah. He won't be on the front lines of this thing. But he can still help us. I'll handle the government's qualms."

Well, he isn't so bad after all.

"Hey, Kingcall, how goes it?" Papermoon calls.

"Couple more hours," the clydesdale grunts. "S'rockier than what I remember. Haven't been in a while, but I know the route. I'm tryin' my best. We can drop off some of the wagon garbage if we need to to lighten the load. Some of it I don't really need. Might have to find another route if the Pass is blocked. There was a landslide, wasn't there?"

"Oh!" Marigold's eyes light up. He scrambles over the cargo and weasels his way into the front seat. "If there's rocks, I can move them. I'm a terraformer. The rocks like me. Just say when! My name's Noondance, by the way."

"Noondance?" Kingcall tips his head in acknowledgement. "Good to be working with you... any help'd be appreciated."

"Speaking of names," I coughed, "I have to say that, uh, Marten isn't my real name."

"Ah! I knew it!" Papermoon smirks triumphantly, in that irritatingly smug way of his. "Well, spill it."

I pause. "...Dapple. It's Dapple." Gloomwade is such a dreary last name, but I'll keep it for now, at least until someone else spreads the word that Marten Gloomwade's died in some failed mission. That's when I switch names.

But it wouldn't hurt to tell my companions I'd like a change of pace.

Friends?

X . Nirvana in Turpentine
Some time later, after we carry along the path unhindered with the help of Marigold's stone moving, we halt at a sort of wooden gate in between two sharply carved stone cliffs. The gate appears quite worn and there appears to be nothing beyond it, from where I sit.

Papermoon raises his hand, but before he can do anything, Kingcall clears his throat. "Hold on. I think I can pull it off this time."

"If you insist." Papermoon leans back into his seat. Marigold stares inquisitively at what lays before us, and he startles as Kingcall closes his eyes and several moments later a flitting shape of brilliant blue and orange feathers surges down from the sky. The kingfisher lands on the mossy gate, ruffles its feathers, and squawks out three short, discordant notes.

There is a pause. and then the wood of the gate seems to stir and move. Three carvings of closed eyes form, and the kingfisher takes flight as the carvings move and open and the gate swings forward to reveal a moonlit ruin surrounded by a meadow and scattered pine trees.

"Good job, Kingcall... hey, you two. This is top secret. It's been concealed here by the government for years now," Papermoon mutters to Marigold and I. "It's important that whatever happens here stays here. This is an integral piece of Jamaa that the phantoms cannot find out about. I welcome you to Lunar Meadow, or, Nirvana."

The wagon rumbles through the gate, which swings shut upon our entry, and down a grassy trail that looks like it hasn't been trodden upon in months, into a quiet, open meadow. Further down the path, I can glimpse several decrepit wooden structures that look like soldiers' posts.

"Don't be alarmed. Act normal," Papermoon tells me as we near the posts.

"About what?" I hiss. He doesn't have time to respond, as Kingcall halts and something that looks like a thick, stumpy appendage rises from behind the wall of one of the posts.

A shape draws itself up from the ground with a noise like a grumble. Something inside me leaps about at its appearance, but I remain blank, just as Papermoon asked me to. It looks sort of like a mammal, though not like any I've seen before. It's got a sort of round body, with four short, stubby legs and two rounded ears. Its snout looks like it sort of droops over its mouth.

And, most notably, its body looks as if it's made of patterned, stitched-together scraps of fabric.

"I'm tired," it laments. "Barely got any sleep today. Those stupid phantoms stole that from me, too."

"Wildrose, we have a bit of an urgent situation on our hands," Papermoon begins. Wildrose closes its dark, beady eyes and raises its paw. "Yes, yes. I know, N. First things first." Wildrose raises their paw again for silence as Papermoon draws his lips back into a sudden snarl. "...I know, I know. I can call you whatever I please... I never received word you're hauling prisoners or untrustworthy people. Just the assassin and..." Wildrose paused, their gaze turning to stare at Marigold's uncertain, wavering form beside me. "...Mother of Mira, what is that?"

"Another magic user. They're helping us. It was an unexpected arrival, so I wasn't able to contact you or Sleepwalker." Papermoon settles back into his calm self. "Where is Sleepwalker?"

"Trying to capture that Specter alive," Wildrose replies, still staring at Marigold warily. "You don't need a vision, do you? I doubt the Tree's having much use in this situation."

"We'll see. The Magicslayer here and Noondance'll look for it. If you haven't got anything else to say, we'll be going on now." Kingcall dips his head and begins to pull the wagon forward. As we pass by Wildrose, I glance up at them, yearning for a closer look. I've never seen an animal like this before. Wildrose yawns and flops back down, out of sight, onto the floor of the soldiers' post.

"In case you were wondering," Papermoon mutters as we enter the main circle of scattered huts, "the people of Lunar Meadow are quite similar to what Wildrose looks like, but they aren't really made of that fabric. It's their armor, to protect themselves, and to protect the outside world of what they're made of. Their heartstone hasn't yet stabilized, and all of the ones I've met are magic users and rife with a strange sort of magic. They call themselves tapirs."

"Who's their leader?" Marigold asks, frowning. "Who discovered the heartstone? I thought we found them a long time ago."

"Well, yes, but the only reason it went undiscovered is because, I believe, the leader of them a long time ago didn't want anyone discovering it. This is their homeland. Their leader knew that the phantoms would overtake them, and they couldn't defend-- their magic was not built for killing and fighting-- so they entrusted the Tree and the force it hosts with the heartstone. It slept there, and it must have absorbed the Tree's energy, because when it was awakened, the tapirs had been changed. They were more powerful. It's said they followed the Tree and the force within it... they're both very powerful, and unguarded, just like the tapirs. That's why the government's magically hiding and protecting Nirvana. We really, really don't want it getting into the phantoms' hands.

"... And that's why you need to find and eradicate this Specter as soon as you possibly can."

-

Beneath Nirvana, I learned that night, is a large cavern. From what I gather, that's where "the Tree" is-- the tapir whose hut we entered for information called it the Dream Tree.

"Do you need to visit it?" Cups clink together as the tapir pours another cup of chamomile tea. I grimace. I drank too much, and now I'm getting sleepy.

"I'm not sure if any of us have the time, Ro. We'll need to look for the Specter soon," Papermoon responds, rather distractedly. He seems anxious, and keeps glancing up at the window.

"Sleepwalker's out there," Kingcall grunts.

"They'll need help," Papermoon protests. "All of us need to go."

"Not all. I can go out. Sleepwalker's probably gotten the word and they'll come back in a moment for us."

"Time is of the essence, Kingcall! We don't have time for a vision. This is very, very important. I don't want to.."

"I know." Kingcall's rough voice softens a little. "I know you don't want anything happenin' to Nirvana. But, look, Noondance and I can head out now. We'll search for the Specter, and gather more information, and come back. And during that time you can visit the Tree and see if you can have a vision. The Tree is an important resource, too. If we can't find knowledge, we can get it from..."

Papermoon sighs.

"You're right. I guess," he mutters wearily. "I just don't see that I'm worthy yet--"

"Then Dapple will do it," Kingcall interjects bluntly.

I remain silent. Marigold seemed fine before, but now he looks as if he's getting more and more anxious with every back-and-forth sentence.

"But he's..."

"If you're not worthy, he has to do it. Snap out of it. He'll do it." Kingcall drops his cup back onto the counter, with a firm note of finality. Papermoon sinks back onto the straw mat on the floor, closing his eyes.

The door opens. I tense up, instinctively, but Kingcall doesn't seem worried as he glances towards the tapir that enters. "Sleepwalker. Me 'n.. our new friend here... are coming with you."

"Thank goodness," the tapir sighs. "I've come up on something, but I heard you were here. I need help... uh, just let me feel the warmth in here a minute longer."

I cough quietly.

A vision?

XI . The Soul in the Bark
After Sleepwalker, Marigold, and Kingcall vanish into the night, it begins to rain. There's an uneasy feeling in my gut. Most of me automatically wants me to believe Papermoon is right, which is... maybe a little bit unlike how I am, since I guess it means I care. Although it doesn't matter. I work alone.

Papermoon stays outside by Wildrose, watching the small village, as Ro leads me to a trapdoor in the back of their hut. "Everyone has trapdoors leading to the cavern in their houses, but they're quite difficult to navigate if you're alone and a newcomer, so only we of the Lunar Meadow visit it when we are in dire need of a vision," Ro explains to me as I stumble into the darkness below the door. I can hear a faint running water source, and the walls feel rocky and solid, but I can't see much, and I rely on the hand of the tapir leading me forward.

I feel the ground under my paws soften, though it's still rock. As the path slopes into the main cavern, dimly lit by clouds of small insects like fireflies softly glowing a sea green, Ro snaps their fingers, and the insects' lights flicker and congregate near us with a brighter shine, enough to illuminate a stalagmite-lined path along the underground lake and into the dark.

"Down that way is the Tree. Just follow the 'flies, and you'll see it when you get there," Ro hums. I hesitate, and they push me forwards. "Go on, now. Your companion said it best. Time is of the essence."

I nod begrudgingly and start ahead, blindly, guided rather poorly by the waning light of the bugs trailing my pawsteps. More than once I bump rather painfully into a stalagmite or tread on a particularly sharp rock, which leads me to hop about in pain for a second or two before I hurry onwards. It is quite frustrating, you know, expressing so much. Untangling one emotion from blankness leads to another and another, and before you know it I'll be vulnerable again.

The last time... The last time it'll happen, if it does at all. I won't allow it.

The rocks soften further, until it doesn't hurt much to step on them. I pick up a fragment on my way, and snap it into two between my fingers. Soapstone. Well, I expect it's soapstone, anyway, I can't see proper in this cave. The flies begin to flicker rapidly and circle rapidly through the air in apparent excitement as I near the mouth of a pitch black, narrow cave. I squint, but I can't see anything. Just another cave.

I hate the underground. At least this place doesn't have too much dirt.

As I slip into the cave, I grip the wall with one paw, fearing a drop, but it doesn't come. I step forward cautiously. The flies zip past me and fly far above my head, illuminating snatches of something like wood as they rise and still at a certain spot. I step forward again. Blades of grass sway gently around my paws.

In front of the flies, a sliver of blinding light slices through the dark. I squint as it widens into a round, eye-like shape, which seems to be made of a swirling golden light, thinly contained by a slippery, transparent membrane, like a fire outside of a window, if fire was golden and pleasantly and placidly warm instead of oppressively hot and a crackling orange. A vibrating, humming voice inside my chest stirs at the sight. I never let my guard down, but in the presence of this thing, I want to.

Awaken.

The eye blinks. I'm faintly aware of a sudden thick, lazy cloud, not really wind, passing me by. I resist the temptation to yawn as the huge room slowly flickers and hums into illumination from an unknown source. It's as if someone was slowly turning the dim light in a living room up into brightness, by way of one of those fancy new light switches with the sliding bits, you know, the ones only rich people seem to have. Perhaps you wouldn't know, but I've been in my fair share of mansions, mostly illegally.

I'm in what looks like a meadow, and in the center of it lays a gigantic tree that stretches upwards so far that I can't see the roof of the room through its abundant, bright, jade green leaves. Quite a lot of the roots can be seen aboveground, and I make my way through the tall grass towards one that leads up to a spot right underneath its golden eye. The bark of the tree is a vibrant reddish-brown, and the weathered lines between bark are filled by a mix of neon blue and pink. One might call it an eyesore under normal circumstances, but the brightness of the Dream Tree feels kind of soothing to gaze upon, almost... dreamlike.

The lighter part of the eye in its center turns suddenly but not startlingly towards me as I step onto the large, bridgelike root. I freeze.

''Ah, you... I know you. Your name, written in the bark of your soul. Would you like to hear it, or do you know it already?''

The voice is in my head, entirely, but it is not my own. It is a calm, passive hum of a voice, not human, not... anything, really, it feels like it's not really there.

"I seek a... 'vision,'" I cough awkwardly. "They told me to come to you."

''Of course, of course...but, you did not answer my questions. Though I know the answer is 'no' to both of them. You are... confused, yes?''

"What?"

''I can feel it. My people can, too, from a mile away. You reek of it, tangled bits and ends of yourself. We can see what is underneath, and you, Stolid, are a jumbled mess of an animal... Come closer, Stolid. I wish to speak to you, but I cannot do so well enough, and I cannot provide you your vision, until you approach me.''

"My name," I say, making my way towards the soft of platform at the base of the tree, where all of the roots lead up towards. "You know it?"

''I can sense that is what you'd like to be called. But it is beneath a scribbled cloud of attempts at concealing something. What is that?''

"Do you always... probe everyone who comes here?" I pant as I reach the spot where the wood grooves into a small hollow.

''I must. No god shall speak to their troubled children, so I must do it myself. As I said... my people can see what lies underneath, as we must conceal our own selves in a shell of bark. I was the one who engineered this, after all. Step closer. ''

I move forward, still uncertain, perhaps caught off guard by the volley of questions my mind has suddenly hurled at what I thought I buried. Half dug up, like a corpse's shallow grave in a flood.

"Who are you?"

''Place your paw upon the bark, and close your eyes. I so disdain this form, and if it isn't too much of a bother, I will be able to speak to you more comfortably in the form beneath. Then I may answer your wonderings.''

I waver.

The Dream Tree: the tapirs in Nirvana referred to it as the host of something beneath. A force.

I glance up at the eye in the bark above, and the storm stirring up within my throat and my body quells at the sight. I feel, oddly, at peace.

And I feel so, so tired.

I raise my paw, press it to the smooth surface that accepts it, draws me in. I finally allow my heavy, weary eyelids to droop.

When was the last time I really slept?

When was the last time I really dreamed?

The Dream Tree, and the swirling, inconceivable force within, receives me, as I receive it.

I fall within.

XII . Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Time
There's something swirling around me.

It feels faintly ethereal, blurred, familiar but not familiar, like a dream, one that I won't remember most of when i wake up. The color surrounding me solidifies, in that now it looks like a series of thick, sandy pink brush strokes. Pink, blue, green, a bunch of other colors that I can't really see proper. I'm standing, or floating, one of those two, I think.

From the swirl of color, an eye opens. It's smaller than the one on the tree, more human, and its iris is blue...green... violet? I can't really tell about that either.

"Pardon me," a voice says. It's more there, more "present" than before when it was in my head, and it doesn't echo anymore, but some of it still feels strange to hear like if I thought to myself really hard about it I'd realize something didn't feel real.

"I need to remember. And you might need to remember as well. So... well, you'll know it when you see it."

"What do you mean?"

The eye blinks, refocuses on something above my head.

"Oh, those earrings. Ruby and iron. Your mother gave them to you before you enlisted. Or perhaps before that. But in any case, before."

I feel my paws instinctively rise to touch the two beads clinging to my ears, though they feel detached in a way. The earrings. I'd forgotten, somehow. No... I'd, how, could I have, forgotten?

I hadn't. I'd known. But, miraculously, I'd let even something physical and all the memories attached to it stay buried too.

"You act as if you are aware of everything around you, and yet... you can't see past the bare minimum, and you can't see past your own empty frame. Anyway, that isn't what I wanted to show you."

As I blink, the world melts away.

"Wren, dear, come... come back down from there, it isn't safe."

''A tiny young cougar cub scales a tall pine tree. Below, his weary mother, wrapped in a light blue shawl, watches him.''

'And finally. '''The cub's thoughts, tainted with a lonely sort of bitterness, are as clearly stated as they would be if he had spoken them. "Mother, I am fetching that object from the tree. It looks dangerous. I'm going to protect the Ridgedale family!"''

''The mother steps forward, wobbling with her own weight. Her light violet eyes are clouded with a blank, disconnected grief, dusted with the surface of a deep, depressive pain. "Now, we.. the Ridgedales don't take such risks. We are level-headed... and we... I know you want to protect us, Wren, but you must know when to back down."''

''"This is bravery!" the cub protests, sinking his claws into the bark above and struggling to pull himself forward. "It's what you told me about." He narrows his eyes, the same color, more sharp and determined than his mother's, and raises his paw towards the strange, dark purple box leaning between one of the branches and the trunk a few feet above his position in the air.''

"Wren, please... you're not your--"

''"I know!" the cub yells, grabbing onto the branch. "I'm not my brother! He's DEAD! So stop calling me--" he scrambles onto the thin branch, wobbling as he falls forward towards the box-- "by his name!"''

''As <̵̱̮̩̝̗̠̍ͅU̵͙̭̝̞̟͓̳̽̆̀N̵̗̣͔͚͌́T̸͈̐Ŗ̵̦̀̔͝A̵̗̝͐͐̽N̵͖͇̭͂̈́͆̓͒̕͜͠ͅS̶̰͉͇̲̊̔̒>̴̥̝̭̟̭͌̇͝ makes contact with the box, a dark violet bolt of energy jolts through his body. ''

His mother screams as he plummets.

As I blink again, the world comes back into view.

"What was that for," I grumble, rubbing the side of my head. I don't mean to, but one of my fingers traces the torn, scarred part of my left ear just below one of the earrings.

"That's interesting. You've blocked and so desperately hidden your real name away from yourself that I would have to force through that mental barrier with a shovel if I wanted to reach it."

"I don't understand why this is relevant. I came here for a vision."

"We have time... you know what happened that day, yes?"

"Of course I do. You just showed it to me. After that? No. They said I was out for a week or two."

"That box was a phantom device. The intent of it is to incapacitate the magic users in the area upon detonation, after which they will either be captured or killed. Or both. It varies. But that one was a bit of a dud. It didn't connect with the ground, so nothing was released. You were the first animal who touched it... but... it targets magic-users, and--"

"Okay, I get it." I scowl, still rubbing my ear. "I wasn't aware the phantoms were intelligent enough for organized air strikes. It was at random, or targeted?"

"Your family, Ridgedale, was targeted, yes. Given their long history of generational magic, they assumed that everyone on your property..."

"Way to add insult to injury." I yawn. "If they felt threatened, we couldn't have done anything to them, and if they wanted to convert us, we couldn't have done anything for them either. My father became an alcoholic after the turf war he served in and my mother was a worthless, pathetic mess of a person after my brother died in battle. And me?" I laugh bitterly. "They say my sister was going to be the most powerful of us all, but she died... she... she died too. I don't know why misfortune really had it in for us, but I heard about the so-called curse of my father's father. He only had one son, and that one turned out a mess who married another mess and produced three dead children. A long, long line of mages carrying some of the purest, most powerful magic ever studied, and the only surviving descendant is another mistake of the genes. A mess-up, a 'mistake as useless as he,' as my father called me. Poof. There goes the Ridgedales."

"I hear your mother started calling you and treating you like your older brother, even more so after you fell from the tree and absorbed the latent energy of the box. And you let her?"

"I didn't know what to do," I grunt, narrowing my lavender eyes. My mother's always seemed so weak, so defeated. Before Wren died, she was like that, too, but it felt gentler, somehow consoling, different than the weak, lost, brokenness of her gaze that began when we received that letter.

I saw it first. I read it first, though I wasn't supposed to, knew I would get in trouble. A thin envelope with a black seal and the crest of the military, a brief, folded note inside.

Dear Ridgedale Family, 

''We regret to inform you that Wren Ridgedale has died honorably in battle. He was unable to choose a new name, as he passed away before receiving the opportunity to do so. He has not left anything to the Ridgedale family.''

Unfortunately, we cannot return his body to you.

There is nothing to be returned.

I should have burned that letter.

"..And your sister, Jay?"

"She was powerful. Actually, you got one thing wrong, she... she was the one who got me these earrings. I was thirteen when she got sent to the magical training school."

The eye blinks slowly again. "But, Stolid... There is only one earring that she gave you. The other one is Wren's. Your mother gave you the first one. And you tore out and threw the second one at your father."

I don't say anything.

"You were awfully upset when you couldn't find it again. She made a new one for you. Jay. So that your mother wouldn't be upset with you, in the way that made your heart hurt, that look in her eyes."

"Yes." I clear my throat, and there's a lump forming there. I don't like it much. Before it can say anything else, I growl, irritably, "You never answered me. Who are you?"

The eye moves in a circle through the waves of color and returns to its original place. "I am a spirit. When I had a body, I was appointed the leader of my people, because they looked up to my magic."

"What was your magic, then?"

"I am unsure how to describe that. But, similar to so many unfortunate souls who die so early on in battle, I was a child with very, very potent magical potential."

I blink and scowl incredulously. "You're a child?"

"Yes. I was unsure and afraid when I was appointed leader by my fellow tapirs, because I had no idea how to lead, but I was terrified of failing them. This was in a time where the phantoms had begun to spread across the land for the first time, thousands of years ago. You... I know you so hate your memories I have dug up for you, but your sister and I are quite similar. Not entirely, but I always had the ability to... hm... sense and experience others' emotions, memories, and pain. I could relive these things as if they were my own at will, and I could allow others to revisit their memories and emotions. That was not the extent of my power, but I am still unsure how to describe the rest."

"Fine. What's your name?"

The eye closes.

"I chose it when I became leader. Well, not really chose it. I felt as if it had been given to me by some other force. But that is one piece of information I simply cannot recount. No matter how hard I try to remember it, I cannot. It feels scrubbed from my memory and replaced by the name I have now, similar to your birthname when I pry... except, in your case, if you tried hard enough, you could.."

"I get it. I get it. Message received," I snap sharply. "Just tell me your name, and tell me my vision."

"It is a long story, but when I was still young, I fought in a terrible battle. With the last of my power, I created the Dream Tree, to protect and provide for my people, for we won our war, but I feared they would be weak and lost without my leadership. This tree.. it once bore fruit. But that is besides the point. I slept in this tree for the longest time, so long that my people grew strong with the help of this tree. It hid and protected them from the outside world, so we went near undiscovered. Centuries passed, and long after my people no longer needed me for everyday life, I was rediscovered and awakened by a child, just the same as myself. I felt a resonance within them. They would grow up to be like me. And for years, they visited me every day, for no one else would... and it was my only company. I realized that I could not remember my name, and so I allowed them to name me."

The voice pauses.

"...Rainbow Kitten Surprise. That is my name. I am fairly certain most people would find it humorous. But it is the name my dear friend chose for me, when they were but eight years old, and so I carry it proudly. It is my name. I take comfort in it now, for they are gone. After they entrusted me with the tapir heartstone, I never saw them again. It was a lonely existence. But that, again, is irrelevant. I apologize for my tangents."

"That is a nice name," I say finally.

Rainbow Kitten Surprise's eye seems to contort and lift upwards in a way that would lead me to believe they were smiling, if they had the rest of their face.

"Thank you, Stolid. Now, your vision. Let's get to it. Ah... oh, dear. Yes, soon, right away. That's ...goodness gracious. In a moment."

The eye narrows and looks down. The fur on the back of my neck prickles. "Can you see the future? What's going on?"

"Somewhat. Well, I'll show it to you. I don't want you to panic, but..."

In the blink of the eye, the world vanishes, replaced by a cloudy, blurred vision.

''A village is seen from a distance, in the mountains surrounding it. Shouts and cries of fear and anger can be heard. A burst of golden yellow energy erupts within the center of the village, followed by smaller domes of multicolored power covering the radius of the village. ''

'Closer... I must move closer... there we are. Oh, dear.'

''The village moves closer, and comes into view more clearly. From the pines nearby, several dark purple pipes have sprouted from the ground, and from them emerge dark, sludgelike beings of several shapes and sizes, heading directly for the settlement. In the village, several tapirs are seen surrounding an old, weathered monkey levitating several feet in the air, his crumpled face contorted by hatred as he struggles to hold back their attacks behind a dark yellow barrier, and calls for the phantom forces behind him.''

The picture changes.

Bodies, purple fire, screams and screams again, the tree, the...

I jolt away. Rainbow Kitten Surprise stares at me.

"I--" I stutter. "I have to--"

"I know. You must go now. I am beside myself with the pain and sorrow of being unable to protect my people. But you and your friends must do it for me. I will transport you to the surface immediately."

"Thank you, thank you." I catch my stammerings and hold them down with a cough. My heart feels as if it is beating wildly enough to burst out of my chest. What a... feeling. Yes. It's terrible, but it's there. This frustrates me, but I'm too distracted by the urgency of the situation to berate myself for it.

"It'll be in about fifteen... minutes... Stolid! Wait. Remember this."

"You? Yes, of course I'll remember you. Your people have rediscovered you, too, haven't they?"

"Not just that. Yourself. Remember yourself. The past is not worthless."

"Mine is."

"...it's alright to feel, Stolid."

The next moment I blink, I'm standing in the meadow. The cool night air tosses the edges of my cloak about. I stare down at it disdainfully. I realize that I had been wearing my favorite old cloak in that sort of... "dream" with Rainbow Kitten Surprise. It made me remember how much I dislike this fancy thing.

They knew.

A lump that I can't swallow rises up in my throat as I remember Marigold, Sleepwalker, and Kingcall. I'm not far from the village, but I have to hurry. Clutching the hilts of my daggers, I rush towards Nirvana.

XIII . Idiotic Little Tentacled Spiders / Ameliorate Overture
Phantoms.

It's weird. I haven't seen them in person for a while now. I remember the resurgence had just begun when I enlisted, and the day of the battle was the day I had fled from the army with my mentor. That's weird to think about, too. I never bothered checking, but I wonder if they recorded me as dead in battle, to save energy. If the phantoms had been capturing animals back then, I suppose it would be a waste of time trying to track down everyone. My birthname, squandered. That was the first time I went unrecorded, by a different name.

Damn. I wonder if my mother thinks I'm dead too.

Is she still alive?

No time for that now.

As I reach the village and scurry past the guardposts, Wildrose's head pops up and peers down at me.

"Back already? You got a vision, right?"

"Please, prepare the village," I pant. "The vision... the vision I received-- they're going to attack the village."

Wildrose's sleep-wrinkled eyes widen. "The ph--"

There's the faint clicking and scraping of wood and metal, and the legs of Wildrose's guardpost dismantle themselves and collapse.

The tapir's legs buckle over the nails and wood planks falling from beneath their feet. As I spring forward (not very far, with such little notice), they grind their teeth together fiercely, stifling their own gasp and shutting their eyes tightly. An instant later, there's a brief, blinding flash of pale pink light, and Wildrose disappears, reappearing in the same moment standing on the path a foot away from me.

I skid to a halt, and Wildrose curses. There's a certain, deeper weariness lining their gaunt, dark vision, which is new. "Uuugh, I shouldn't have done that. Stupid. Could've managed just fine if I had just taken it... go, now. Prepare the village. I'll call the defenses. Where're they coming from?"

"Phantoms from the west. And there's a monkey-- look out for that." I nod quickly towards Wildrose and dash off towards the main part of the village.

"The antithesis... the very antithesis..." Wildrose mutters behind me.

As I burst into Ro's house, there's a low humming in the distance by the guardposts. Ro, who looks up with a start from their position by the table, closes their mouth as a peaceful look flickers in their eyes. They look at me calmly. "Phantoms?"

"Yes. The vision is about to come true. Have Marigold, Kingcall, and Sleepwalker returned?"

Ro sighs, pressing a hand fretfully to their chest. "Not yet. Papermoon's on the hill above Nirvana. I believe he'll hear the call and come down in a minute or two. He's adequately equipped."

"Are you?" There's an edge to my voice that I cannot conceal. I have no idea what sort of defenses the tapirs have. On the surface, they both look like dolls and seem just as defenseless as dolls.

Ro smiles shyly. "Don't worry, outsider. We have our ways. Anything else to worry about besides the phantoms? Is the Specter with them?"

"Yes. I think they're a monkey. And I saw Wildrose's guardpost sort of... being taken apart, nails and screws and all. That might be the Specter's ability."

"Thank you." Ro dips her head with a smile. I shuffle anxiously. "Do you have... any young? Your village, does it have vulnerable people?"

"Don't worry," Ro insists, now shuffling and rustling through several garments and tools in a dark closet on one side of the room. "Focus on attack. If you see an opening, search for your friends."

"Okay... thank you. Fine."

As I whirl out of the door, the house across from Ro's collapses in on itself right before my eyes.

A frayed, elderly monkey drags itself from behind the ruin into the center of the circle of huts. Its wild, unkempt, shaggy white hair tucked behind goggles with cracked green lenses is tinted a pale lavender. Despite its age, I note, its eyes have only the slightest fog of dull opacity, and yet it does not seem to take note of my presence as I clamber not too quietly onto the atrophied shingles of Ro's roof to quickly gain a vantage point against it. The phantom collar wrapped around its neck is the same as Peck's and Cosmo's, but more interestingly, the monkey carries a strange sort of toolbelt, with worn, sewn-in pockets overfilling with nuts and bolts and other things I can't identify.

As its oddly calm, wrinkled visage turns slowly about the clearing, I am struck with a sense of familiarity. I've seen this face, distorted, before. Where?

"People of this meadow," the monkey croaks.

That voice.

Right. The memories. Both Peck's and Cosmo's.

"...I, Graham... am liberating you today. You must not be afraid. We know you withhold great power, an--"

"Shut your trap, gramps!"

A quintet of flickering, multicolored lights flash in various spots on the ground around Graham. The cheery fabric of a tapir's armored leg flings itself out from the pale pink starburst of light behind the monkey, and as Wildrose's form rises up from nowhere and body slams the elderly Specter into the earth, the tapir disappears in the blink of an eye, and with every glint of another color comes another tapir clawing, biting, kicking, pummeling in any way possible for an instant, rebounding, appearing again, gone and back so quickly you could, quite literally, blink and miss it.

Graham snarls in pain, or tries to anyway, as the next second Ro knocks the air out of him and dances away from his stubby, flailing fingers in a piercing flash of mellow brown, in the same sort of soft, blurred shade I might have seen during my visitation with Rainbow Kitten Surprise on the inside of the Dream Tree. I can't help but smirk to myself. I guess I underestimated them. I like how these tapirs think.

Gritting his yellowed teeth against the relentless barrage of teleporting tapirs, Graham rolls forward face down on the ground, weakly attempting to clutch his fingers, at least a few probably fractured at this point, into fists. He howls in pain and anger as a tapir kicks his exposed back so hard that from here I can hear a crack that makes even me want to wince.

"I! Graham!" Graham gasps, a weak, flickering dome of golden light pulsing around him as he clenches his fists, which looks pretty painful. "Phantoms!" the monkey cries, as he finally succeeds in getting a pretty faint magical barrier up. This is enough time, though, for Graham to raise his cracked, twisted hand to point at the ruins of the house he collapsed, and with a sweep of his finger, the wooden planks and nails rise and shoot towards the tapirs' rapidly shifting spaces as phantoms, all shapes and sizes, spill into Nirvana.

"Oi! Dapple!" Papermoon shrieks. As I leap off of the roof to meet the forces below, I lower my head and catch an upside-down glimpse of Papermoon dashing down the path to the village, panting heavily with the weight of the armor he had donned earlier and the unwieldly two-handed sword he had unsheathed a moment before. I twist my body back about in a pirouette to land on my feet -- despite the dire circumstances and the literal threat of death five seconds behind me, there's a flash of irritation in Papermoon's panicked green eyes at my unnecessary display. What can I say? I'm just one of those folk who can't hold down their debonair. If I was interested in anyone I'd be married to the first girl I bumped into at a random bar by now.

Not that I go into bars on my own, but clients often make me force my way through the rankness of filthy animals and the stark bitterness of the moonshine's stench that digs up unwilling memories. Thank goodness General Greely has dignity.

"Why'd they issue you a claymore? Take this. Quick. Magic-denying, though I'm sure you don't need it. Gimme." Papermoon flinches as I toss my two daggers at his paws and snatch the decorated army claymore from him. I whirl to face the phantoms but for a moment there's nothing there but the distant screams of the battlefield and the crunching of pine needles beneath the paws of my mentor and I and then, finally, them. Again. Phantoms. Fat ones, smaller ones, skinny ones, ones that act like they hold authority, the usual. No kings, though. Thankfully.

And they aren't phantoms anymore. They're drawings, slabs of smeared purple wood with red painted targets pinned on their heads. Crude child's drawings of idiotic, tentacled little spiders.

What kind of messed up child draws spiders this way?

"Goddamn!" Wildrose shrieks as a wooden plank connects with their body and they're knocked to the ground. Graham growls a primitive, animalistic growl. Holding the dome with one grimy paw, he shoves the other into his pocket, dropping two rusty cogs to the ground.

"Spotbrights!" With the monkey's creaking shriek, the gears shift and rise into the air, and the nails and planks of the houses disassemble themselves and draw towards him. The gears connect themselves to his frail arms, and the wood assimilates into two crude sort of appendages attached to his shoulders screwed together with the old nails. Graham drags himself into the air on these terrible excuses for stilts and growls at our forces.

"L-Lav! Reinforcements! Now!" A tapir blinks back into reality, nods, and disappears in another wink of lavender light. A second later, they reappear, twenty more tapirs in tow.

"Get 'im, boys!"

I sigh.

And so it begins.

Slice, slice, slice, dice... phantom goo is gross.

Where the hell is Marigold?

XIV . Phantoms, At Last! Ameliorate ♠️
The onslaught of phantoms doesn't give me much time to think of anything else. I narrowly avoid blows of purple lightning several times, because I haven't used a two-handed sword in such a long time that it takes a bit to adjust to the added weight. It felt oddly ethereal, though, finally fighting, real fighting, and seeing phantoms again at the same time. The job I had last year involved a few, but never any real surges like this, so even though I was fully expecting it, I can't help but feel somehow detached from reality for a few seconds at a time as my blade tears through a heavy phantom's slimy body (they feel almost like a very thick liquid, but perhaps all boneless bodies are like that), only to be dragged back at the blink of light out of the corner of my eye or the pawsteps of Papermoon behind me.

After several mintues, Wildrose appears beside me.

"You seen that monkey?"

I waver, barely blocking the shockwave of an advancing phantom. The muscles in my paws still spasm briefly, but I maintain my grip. The army claymores just aren't as well-equipped against magic, despite the fact that they rely so heavily on magical forces. I got my two best daggers, surpassing even my mentor's gifts to me in sharpness and denial strength, from a seedy backroads weaponsmith in Appondale and they're far better at fully denying a magical blow. I haven't felt aftershocks after using them to block in eons, even though I had expected them to be ratchet fodder when I first got them. I guess I just got lucky, because I never saw that weaponsmith again and I haven't had any of the same luck with subsequent seedy backroads weaponsmiths in Appondale. Oh well. They seem to be serving Papermoon well, though. The fire in the fennec's eyes looks rejuvenated, and he's advancing through the forces pretty quickly.

"No. Fighting phantoms consumes a lot of your attention. What, you lost him?" I raise my claymore and slash across the phantom's eye, tossing its quickly disintegrating corpse aside.

"Unfortunately. Threw more of our own houses at us and vanished when we looked back. Though--" Wildrose yawns and falls forward, blinking away and rending viciously through a wave of proto-phantoms with violet-stained claws and then appearing beside me again. "--I think if we destroyed where these things are coming from... we could deal with him more easily. These things are just a nuisance. I think the pipes are in the trees over there."

"Couldn't you just warp there?"

Wildrose gives me a withering look. "I haven't slept in the woods there since I was a child. It would wear me out before I could do anything. I'm getting tired already. We need to find a way..." Wildrose yawns again as a nearby tapir slashes through a particularly large heavy phantom in a series of lightning quick flashes of yellow light. The phantom explodes, sending nearby forces tumbling. "...through the crowd, now....now there's an idea. Blasting our way through. Maybe... hm..."

Papermoon hasn't said anything, but he's close enough to overhear. He grunts. "These things... my wrists hurt."

"The sooner we get rid of these things, the sooner we rest our bones. Got any ideas, paperboy?" Wildrose yelps and rolls away from a shockwave that I forgot to catch. "...Zios, I'm tired. We're making short work of them but they just keep coming. To the pipes it is, because I can't strongarm my way through this. That's his goal. To wear us out. Does he have any respect for the weary? Goes against our entire culture. It's depressing."

Papermoon winces, rolling his paw. "Maybe. My paws're full, though. Cover me and I'll try, but I dunno if the shockwaves will deny some or all of it."

"Aren't you supposed to be the war expert?" I grunt as I pull away from my front to stand near Papermoon, who steps backwards in the middle between Wildrose and I and sticks his paw in his pocket.

Withdrawing a piece of paper, Papermoon tosses the daggers into one paw and quickly folds it into a frog. "Give life to this false reality," he mutters, the thin white line snaking out from his finger and circling the frog.

"Phantoms are... quite simple-minded creatures," Papermoon remarks offhandedly. The white line raises the frog into the air, and when he snaps his fingers, it flicks up, high into the air, and lands somewhere off to the side of the crowd, away from both us and the pipes the phantoms came from.

Instantaneously, the phantoms blink slowly and change course, vibrating with rampant electricity as they float and bound and screech in that funny way of theirs towards the origami frog.

Just like that, a path is cleared.

Wildrose pauses their assault on the stray phantoms left over, and stares at Papermoon incredulously. "What did you do?"

Papermoon gives a small smile. "Phantom minds are very primitive and very easy to manipulate, so I sent signals to their 'brains' indicating that there was a large and notable living being nearby that posed a threat. Their shockwaves didn't deny it. I wasn't expecting it to work so well... look, let's go. Quickly now. Before it wears off, and before the pipes replace them."

We dash through the meadow beyond the town towards the pine trees straight ahead. The phantoms haven't begun churning out yet, but I fear something else. A few seconds in I finally give up on the claymore and drop it in the grass. Papermoon might have my best daggers, but I have... well... more.

"You! Simple beings!"

"Don't stop," I hiss through gritted teeth as Graham's voice echoes behind us. There's a quick rush of wind behind me as something like an arrow, crooked and made from cobbled-together bits of rusty metal, whizzes past my ear.

"Come back! You don't think you can outwit me and my Ameliorate, do you? I'm done underestimating you and your kind."

Wildrose, who has brought up the lead, grunts. "Almost ther-- wh--!"

They stumble, twenty feet from the pines, with a gasp. "Wildrose?" I stumble, too. My instincts beg me not to, but Wildrose is slowing. That would be leaving someone behind, if I simply carried on without a care.

I can't do that either, can I?

Graham's mechanical shoulder-arms whir and carry him around us. He halts several feet away. I instinctively reach inside my cloak, but my attention turns back to Wildrose as Papermoon gasps.

The tapir stares down at their legs. Embedded by their neck and other places marking the stitches in the patchwork armor, tiny, interlocking orange and yellow gears connected by stiff, navy, metal lines turn slowly with a soft mechanical whir.

Graham's face contorts from calm disdain to malice. "As you might guess, I'm the phantoms' engineer. I specialize in taking things apart and putting them back together. I design all of their devices, and have for quite some time. I've taken phantoms apart with my ability and refitted them into horrendous beasts, but I've neglected my experiment ideas on animals with Ameliorate. That's because the phantoms haven't given orders to expose my team and I on the outside world, until now... let's see what's beneath that cloth!" His lips draw back into a snarl, revealing chipped, rotting yellow fangs. I've always hated monkey teeth. Terrifying, I tell you. "Ameliorate! Turn this beast into one that serves me!"

The gears clink together. There's a ripping of a seam.

"You snake-hearted son of a--" Papermoon howls, staggering forward. Wildrose's paw darts forward and grabs his leg. They're grinning, a defiant grin, a shadow of melancholy peace passing over their small eyes, replaced quickly by a burning fire.

Within the tear of the fabric, there's a blinding, pale pink light.

"Hey, we wear these things for a reason," Wildrose mutters. Graham stares on, unable to see the light directly. "...you might want to get as far away as you can in the next few seconds. Just know my name's Morphe Wildrose, and I'm still the best at the defenses... urg.. give my things to Ro. 'N Sleepwalker can have my flute. That's all. Run."

"Morph--" Papermoon begins. I grab his shoulder gently. "Thank you, Wildrose," I hiss quickly. "You'll be remembered by them." I back away slowly, a reluctant Papermoon in tow.

"Me? Remembered? Really, Magicslayer... as if."

"I meant by Rainbow Kitten Surprise."

Graham growls. "What are you yammering about? Abandoning your friend, hm? I wonder what that light is. I must study it. Ameliorate!"

Cracks of light appear as gears clink and fall to the ground. Wildrose squints, as if mildly irritated, as we back away. I can barely see their form through the bright glow. The edges of the light pulsate, dying to reach the outside.

The monkey's scowl fades.

"What... is that? Perhaps--!"

"Go on!" Wildrose calls.

"A-Ameliorate! Revert it! Reverse the--"

"Thus always to tyrants!" The tapir, Morphe Wildrose, raises their arm, bidding goodbye with a salute, a grin, and a bang, a flash, a supernova of light.

The sight is robbed from my eyes by its brilliance. I curse myself. I should have turned away, but I couldn't bear it. My eyes feel like they've been stabbed. Like they saw something they couldn't process, and they've clawed themselves out of their sockets.

Graham's shriek is drowned out by nothing, and everything, and the light, if light could talk, the language of warbling light. Papermoon and I are flung backwards several feet, and then the deafening, babbling silence cuts itself off.

I open my aching eyes. In the place Wildrose knelt moments before, there is nothing. Not a singe, indicating some sort of magical flame, any sort of scar in the earth, nothing. There is only the crumpled body of Graham, blasted so far back, given his proximity, that he flew into the first pine tree. I would have thought him dead as I staggered to my feet and stepped towards this murderer, if not for the rise and fall of his pitiful chest a moment later.

An engineer, of all sorts.

The box, then?

A murderer, directly and indirectly, I'm sure.

And I speak for the families of anyone and everyone affected and unaffected when I say I'm going to take the greatest pleasure in breaking his limbs, if Wildrose's true self hasn't shattered them to nothing already.

The box. My mother.

I'd break his legs again.

"Papermoon, look for the pipes."

"L..look? Fine."

Papermoon's footsteps ripple through the grass past me as I reach Graham's body. The monkey's mouth slowly falls open. His eyes are rolled back into his head. I poke his stomach with a stick, and he groans faintly. I could kill him right now, but against my instincts, I want to keep him alive just a moment longer.

He hasn't woken yet, so I stomp the two sputtering mechanical arms on his shoulders to smithereens, examine the cogs briefly, and toss them into the grass. They aren't very interesting. The pouches on his belt, however, seem of interest.

There's a pouch filled with nuts and bolts. They seem awfully ordinary: Shiny. Metal. Nut-and-bolt shaped. There's something in the next pocket, however, that piques my interest. I thought it would be something good -- Graham always looks to be subconsciously moving his paw to guard the side the pocket falls on.

My finger reaches something cold, round in shape, slimy, numbing my fingertips.

As I draw the collapsed phantom collar from its pile of many in the pocket, staring down its bulbous, flickering eye, Graham's arm raises and shoots out to grab mine.

He's fast, but old. Frail. My other paw catches his and bends it backwards. There's a very loud, clean snapping noise, and Graham shrieks in pain.

"What is this?" I show him the small, flat circle of solid goop.

Graham, still wincing, says nothing. I pass the circle into my closest pocket and my paw snaps back every one of the fingers on the hand I caught, and with each crunch it feels like they're someone else's paws. I've broken fingers before, lots, but I guess I'm just in shock at the other aspects of this situation. Graham writhes and sort of gurgles in agony, desperately attempting to yank his wrist away from me.

"Cougars are far stronger than monkeys. Especially old ones. I'll break the fingers on your other paw, and then your arms, if you don't answer me immediately. Your kind's fingers are so long and... breakable. It isn't my fault you haven't broken them already." I frown in thought as I withdraw and reexamine the circle. "You sure seem to have a lot of these. Did you make them?"

"Y-yes," Graham gasps, gritting his teeth. "Th-the phantom collars are my creation. Once activated, they rewire an animal's conscience to serve the phantoms... not just that, but I can modify it however I... uugh.. please. It captures the memories of the wearer and contains them in a way that makes it look like they were 'recorded' by another person when replayed. The foundation of its rewiring... is to manipulate the mind into exploiting these most painful memories, drawing out a modified personality. To test it, I put the very first prototype collar on myself after I presented it t-to the phantoms."

"Have you ever witnessed cases of phantom-converted animals bearing children?"

"Oh, yes, of course--" Graham grimaces. "--one female was pregnant when captured and fitted and gave birth to several... interesting... anomalies."

I'd ask about that later. "Peck's mother. What did you do to her?"

Graham blinks in surprise. "Peck... ahh.. that child. She had so much potential. Yes. For the first time, I observed the effects of the collar wearing off, so the refitted phantoms devoured her. I found out that childbirth while wearing a collar seems to... dilute its effects somewhat. I can't fix them. Once the collar is on... it can't be taken off safely... and why would anyone want to take it off?" He wheezes, apparently... laughing.

"Control. You want control."

"Y...yes? Over the animals of Jamaa..."

"And the phantoms?"

"...the phantoms... the... What about... them?"

"You want control over the phantoms."

Graham stares at me, open-mouthed.

"What?"

"So, your collars. You put one on yourself. Did you rewire your consciousness? Were you doubting the phantoms that captured you? Why did you comply with them?"

"What are you implying?" Graham snarls. "Yes, I modified it so that my consciousness would not be lost to mindless obedience ..."

He pauses. His other arm suddenly lifts upwards, flinging a sharp stone at my face.

I'm not five years old? I can deflect against a piece of earth. I don't see why he's fighting back so much, and not even in an effective way. Dropping the collar, I catch the rock and slash its sharp edge across Graham's face. Scream, pain, shriek, yada yada. "So it's true. Papermoon, what's going on?" I call towards the fennec.

"...Found them. Trying to figure out how to destroy them, though... oh, goddamn."

"What?"

"If you're worrying about the others, I see them. They're coming back."

"Oh, good. Hey, watch out..."

Graham raises his other trembling hand, the eyelid whose eye I slashed quivering in pain, and releases a guttural cry. There's the hum of clanking metal and Papermoon yelps.

"P...phantoms..." Graham croaks. I rip the pouch with the collars off of his belt, shove it into my pocket, and suddenly, surprisingly, my paw darts forward, grips the monkey's arm, snaps it at a horrible angle as my other paw's claws dig into his wrist.

"S-tooooop!" the Specter wails. "Please! I'll do anything!"

I glance towards the patch of woods, where phantom tentacles have begun to emerge from the opening. "Tell me how to destroy the pipes."

"M..magic..." Graham mutters, his eye bulging out of his head. Perhaps the blinding of his other eye was a bit overkill. I stare at the red, slashing mark through his left eye, oozing blood. The more I stare at it the less I feel sorry about it.

"What sort of magic?"

"I will... dismantle it... please... I-I j-just wanted... power," Graham gasps out.

"You won't. You just sic'd phantoms on us." I scowled.

"Please! Please. I will. I will."

"Ambassador! Gloomwade! Dapple!" The lilting, crackling shout of Marigold Noondance's voice over the hillside makes my heart leap with relief. I suppose Papermoon said it already but it's nice to hear it really, truly is happening when you aren't sure about something. So they're safe. Marigold, at least. I jolt again. And the other two?

I drag Graham's somewhat broken body towards the trees and pipes. The gears churning about the pipes cause them to bend and fall apart into several pieces, and there's a distant, inhuman screech as the phantom inside is crushed by the rending of metal.

As Marigold scrambles into view, Kingcall and Sleepwalker follow at an uneven pace. They look exhausted from running, but Marigold is as enthusiastic as ever.

"The other one." I point at the second pipe. "And then destroy the phantoms in the village, if they aren't gone already."

"Yes... yes.."

Kingcall frowns at me as Graham points his hand at the other pipe. "What's goin' on?"

"Beat him. Wildrose is gone but I beat him."

"Gone?" Sleepwalker gasps. "He..where? The armor..?"

Wildrose was male. I guess I could have just asked, but it would have been rude. The tapirs' genders seem traditionally ambiguous.

"Wildrose... kind of... exploded in light? And-- What the hell are you--!"

Before I can stop him, one of the fragments, a sharp, pointed end stabbing the air towards Sleepwalker and Kingcall, flies forward towards the tapir.

"Sleepwalker!" Marigold cries, raising his hand to intercept it, deny it, perhaps, but even his denying isn't quick enough to reach it before Kingcall steps in front of it.

As it pierces the horse's heart, I slam the wildly cackling Graham to the ground.

"Kingcall!" Papermoon screams. There's the screeching, scraping noise of the pipe's remains collapsing and ripping themselves into shreds as Papermoon races past it. I didn't know he could do that.

"One more question." I can feel my teeth grinding together. "Did you make the box, the one that disables all magic users in the area when it detonates?"

"That? Oh, the Magic-slayer. Ye-es, of course! That was a w-wonderful invention. Shame we stopped producing them. And don't think you still have th-the upper haa-aaa-aand, M-magic...slay...er!" The monkey's body convulses as he shrieks with a deranged laughter. Out of the corner of my eye, shards of the pipes point towards me. They tremble in the air, as if Graham's magic is struggling to maintain a grip on this world.

"Magic-slayer. You named it that?"

"Yes, I named it after that long line of warriors, ones such as yourself, who are non-magical but fight mages as expertly as real magic users... a-aa-aah.... That's what this is abo-out!" He grins at me. "Your family must have been targeted by the Magic-slayer! One didn't go off... a powerful family of cougars, spared... are you the empty inkwell of the Ridgedal--"

One. Two. Three. Snap.

I stare at the monkey carcass in my paws. My paws. I stare at my paws. The warmth in my head floods back as I grasp at the moment just before, the tree standing suddenly in front of me. I stare at Graham again. His skull, slammed against the tree with all the force I had three times over, so much that my shoulder hurts. His skull, his head, jerked back with a sickening, satisfying crunch and then nothing. This brings new meaning to "blinded by fury."

Was I angry?

"Nat! Nat!" Papermoon's sobs jerk me back to reality. A fennec fox, shaking the long-gone body of a clydesdale, as a coyote stares on in petrified horror and a tapir bows their head, eyes shut tightly. A stream of crimson fluid pooling from the wound in its chest, a shard of purple machinery pulled desperately, despairingly from the gash in its... Kingcall's chest. Nat Kingcall, not an "it," a clydesdale horse, a man, a soldier, a draft, Papermoon's companion, caller of the kingfisher.

"Please... wake up..."

I blink, glance down at Graham's body. There are no memories played back. His phantom collar has dissolved. Or perhaps I was too busy staring, staring at the jarring, unreal horror, a realization, a paralysis, a wandering thought snailing through my mind that death, that blood, that pain, that grief, is as real as it is tangible.

Who did I steal from this world, in the past? Who cried? Who wept? No one, my thoughts always steeled. No one.

I didn't kill anyone today but a monster. I didn't kill Kingcall, I drop the monkey, stumble forward, my ears fall deaf, my eyes blind to everything else, I killed the man who tried to kill my family, I killed Graham who killed Kingcall, I didn't kill Nat Kingcall, my eyes can't see, my eyes feel like pools and my tongue tastes saltwater for the first time in a long time.

There are no memories, but I didn't need them anyway.

XV . Stand Tall The Four Of Us
"So what happened with the phantoms was..."

"Yeah."

"Well, backup arrived, just in time. Though my people didn't seem to need it. The phantoms were all destroyed. Only a few of the houses toppled, which is a shame, and we lost..." Sleepwalker coughs. "...two. Wildrose and Othello. But we do not need our houses... hey can be rebuilt, and you know, we all sleep outside as a group. The only reason why we did not tonight was because we were wary of an attack. it would have been foolish..." The tapir sighs. "That being said, I believe they're going to be holding vigil for the two lost for the rest of the night, as well as your own, Kingcall."

"What about you?" I pick a needle off of my cloak. "Shouldn't you be there too?"

"I would like to, but General Greely requested through letter that I accompany you, Papermoon, and your new temporary draft. I can feel the Dream Tree... it mourns, it mourns the lost, and it mourns my absence, but things must be done."

"We can wait for you."

"That I cannot allow. You must be on the road immediately."

I groan inwardly. Already? Well, there isn't any room for grieving, or much else at all. I glance over at Marigold and Papermoon, who sit by a mossy stump in the village, and the team of soldiers and mages still analyzing the village and Graham's body. I did tell them how he died, and about the phantom collars which I handed off to another soldier, so I don't know what else they want.

"I think you're right, Magicslayer. He wanted power. Such a crafty, skilled individual would not so blindly and willingly give himself up to the phantoms, most especially given he's the one who created the collars. It seems that it is impossible to preserve them once they are equipped, and the user is killed. It would be quite useful if we were able to capture and study an active phantom collar, and find out how to remove it safely, perhaps?"

 "With all due respect, sir, I doubt it wold be practical to even attempt to control and keep the remaining Specters alive for that long."

"Of course. But if you happen across a controlled animal who does not appear as dangerous, please notify us, and refrain from doing anything more than subduing it. This is an untapped, unknown branch of power."

"Sure. Might I take these ambassador's robes off, now?"

"...General Greely says you may."

I glance down at my cloak, a grey one. Thank goodness I packed an extra. I can admire Greely, but was it necessary for me to wear those robes? Perhaps it was another piece of persuasion.

"The new draft's ready." Sleepwalker glances at the wagon, flanked by a few soldiers. "His name's Ghost. A sabertooth. Be kind to him."

"Ghost? That's his army name?"

"He's like Noondance. Open about his first name, I suppose. I've worked with him before, briefly, I believe. He's nice enough, but a bit slow in intellect. And I'm driving. Papermoon probably needs a bit to recover."

I expect he'll be distant with me, too. My head and my chest hurts thinking about it, for some reason.

The soldiers move away from the wagon, and I glance towards our old one, pushed off to the side. It looks awfully lonely for an inanimate object, but sabertooth tigers are far too large and bulky for smaller wagons to handle. Papermoon is looking towards the wagon too, with a glint in his eyes that is very sad to see from him. I can't describe it exactly, I'm not great with emotions, but if I had a heart and if I could feel it would be breaking right now.

It's okay to feel, Stolid.

"Gloomwade?"

I blink myself back into reality. Sleepwalker is watching me, looking far too concerned about something. "Well, they're ready. Can you... actually, I'll fetch Noondance and Papermoon, so just go to the wagon."

"Sure."

The wagon is quite a bit bigger than what I'm used to. What are all the things in the back, anyway? I glance over my shoulder into the darkness of the cargo, protected by the weirdly rustic roof of the wagon, but before I can draw any conclusions or reevaluate the state of my vision, there's a loud cough.

I turn to look at the sabertooth. His head is tipped upwards and his eyes look nearly rolled back into his head in an effort to look at me, though I can't exactly tell, because he doesn't seem to have pupils, just two large, round, ghostly white dots for eyes in his light grey head. The reins are of a different design, less restraining, and besides the usual loose draft uniform in a pale grey Ghost seems to have a black sort of tasseled blanket on his back.

I stare at him, but he doesn't say a word. "Doesn't it hurt sitting like that for so long?" I ask, finally, watching as Ghost's tongue slowly pokes out of his mouth and lolls to the side like a dog's.

He blinks. I'm relieved. I was beginning to worry there was something wrong with him.

"No," Ghost replies. His voice is... odd, I guess. It's light enough, the voice of a grown sabertooth, with a touch of Balloosh's gravely accent that feels just as odd, like clothes you're expected to grow into but never do.

"Good to know."

"When are we leaving?" Ghost's paws shift from side to side. "Soon?"

"Yes... uh, should I introduce myself? I'm--"

"Marten Gloomwade? I know. I'm Ghost. Ghost Beneather. Oh look, there they are!"

Ghost's head snaps towards Sleepwalker, walking towards the wagon with Papermoon and Marigold in tow. None of them look very happy.

Sleepwalker climbs into the seat besides me, and Papermoon loudly slumps down somewhere in the back after Marigold. "Let's go. On, Ghost," Sleepwalker grunts, picking up the reins.

"Where are we go--" Before I can finish my sentence, Ghost quickly assumes a crouching position and dashes forward. The wagon jostles everyone violently as he bounds down the path and away from Nirvana.

I glance back at the dark village. I've lost track of time-- Sleepwalker informed me a while ago that time in Nirvana was "stunted"-- so I have no idea what time it is, but I'm tired. The sight of Nirvana as I clutch the wooden railing, its magical barriers asunder, the gentle light of their lanterns slowly coming to life as the distant hum of a mourning dirge reaches my ears, is enough to make me remember the others for a moment. Papermoon peers through the gap in the wagon top, his back to me, his body swaying gently in the wind. Ghost's paws barely skim the ground as he bounds further and further through Lunar Meadow, carrying us away who knows where, but it isn't as bumpy as I thought it would be. His tiny ears angle back towards us, and Sleepwalker seems to give pause, too, their eyes lowering to the ground.

It is heard, received, certainly not forgotten, their memory.

Marigold is crying. I can hear him sniffling, restrained, so quietly I know he's desperate to go unheard, but for the first time in a while I'm aware, uncomfortably so, incredibly attuned to not just others' physical presences but their souls. It doesn't take magic to do that.

Just being human.

Perhaps things are alright. Not now, but they will be, anyway. They're strong. I'm strong.

Am I strong without them?

Of course I am. And yet now I can't imagine parting.

XVI . Memoriam
"Wren, come here. I have a gift for you."

''I set down my training knives. My eyes lower to the grass, the bright, cheery, unknowing grass in the backyard. It hurts but not as much now, and I can't decide if it frightens me, that I've stopped fighting in that regard. My knives are on the ground and I'm walking inside towards the doorway and my mother.''

"Yes, Mother?"

''"These are for you." My mother turns her outstretched paw towards me, clutching two small beads of round ruby wrapped in a dark grey metal. "These earrings are passed down from generations of heirs to their fathers. The eldest sons of my bloodline carried and wore these, defending them with the fierceness of a lion and caring for them with the gentleness of a lamb."''

''I remember thinking those were outdated terms. We compare things to plants now for some reason, which is weird and boring. But anyway I remember also this must be why she got my ears pierced last week. It hurt.''

''"Do I wear them now?" I examine the earrings with a frivolous curiosity.''

"Yes. It is tradition to wear them leading up to when you enlist in the army."

''"Okay." I'm taking out the backs of the earrings and pushing one through the hole in my outer ear when''

things change but I don't realize it and

I'm clutching the side of a doorway, watching my mother struggle forward as my father tries to pull her away, tries to snatch the quill pen away from her.

"Stop it. Stop it! He isn't Wren! Write down his real damn name!"

There's a cloudiness in my mother's eyes and a tear slips down her face as she makes another scribbling dot on the paper, the beginning of a W after "Ridgedale," and she gets that far before dragging a line down through the rest of the form because my father shoves her to the ground.

''"Stop it!" I gasp out before I can stop myself. My father, a dark, scribbled blur with narrowed demon's eyes, turns towards me and I can't move.''

"Wren is dead. Your name is--"

''The words melt away into a faint, muted hum, as does my blurred surroundings. There are light hands on my back that rip up strips of fabric and color and stitch them back together as I fall into a meadow. I lay on the ground, staring up at the roughly sketched branches of a tree above me and breathing in the rich petrichor in the damp, dew-laden grass below. A lone, leftover drop hits my cheek.''

''"Steady, Ridgedale," a rigid voice calls. I scowl. ''

"The more you say it, the more I start disliking my family name."

''A dagger falls into the grass at my side. "Then earn your new one," my mentor replies, conversationally. My fingers wrap around the familiar groove of the hilt and I'm up and facing them, a part of me leaping to go, a part of me somehow desperate to see their face again as if I know I won't later. The blur of smudged color and I leap at each other and I close my eyes and open them slowly ''and the memory, the good one, melts away into the back of my mind.

I'm on a wagon. Ghost rumbles along the road at a much slower pace than before, it's a wonder I ever got to sleep at his former speed. I don't remember much other than drifting off, my arm sliding off of the railing. I blink again and yawn. Sleepwalker is watching me, their hand on my shoulder.

"Did... you... did you do that?" I mumble. It was a nice dream towards the end, and I'm rather disappointed that I have to shake it off just like everything else.

"You seemed quite troubled, so I looked in and brought out a memory your mind holds dear." The tapir looks embarrassed. "I apologize. I did not see much, and I did not pry into your personal thoughts. I only felt the edge of a better memory, and your mind is upset enough in these times, so I didn't want you waking up feeling more miserable, so I..."

"The memory of my rechristening," I mutter, yawning again. "Well, it was nice. To remember, to experience some of it again like I hadn't before. I'd... forgotten. It feels like I ignore most of my memories or forget about them. I never have... dreams about such vivid memories."

"It's common to have dreams reliving your memories for a day or two after you visit the Dream Tree. It's similar to our power of altering our own and others' dreams freely... we can sort of tap into memories when someone is asleep."

"Weird. And you can teleport too?"

"Another one of our species' abilities, BLINK!, is being able to teleport instantaneously to any location we have slept in previously," Sleepwalker smiles, a distant sort of smile like they're recalling a particularly good memory. "The longer ago or the less frequently we've slept in a spot, the more of our power it drains, just as instantly. In fact, that's why it's tradition to sleep outside in town. In the case of an ambush or a siege, we will have the upper hand."

"Species specific ability, huh?" Zios, I'm tired. I can't stop yawning mid-sentence. "I hear we also used to have that, but they 'diluted' as we mixed with other species' magical forces."

"Yes, I was also taught that outsider species had shared abilities like ours. But their scope and range became near limitless after ages of learning the trades of everyone else. Some complain and say it led to magicless people, but I find it interesting. Tapirs are born with unique gifts they can hone better than their fellow tapirs, but it's all sleep and dreams." Sleepwalker chuckles. "Not that I mind. It's an interesting medium, and one of the only ones I know. But sometimes I wonder why I decided to name myself the way I did. It's so... uninspired. All of us sleepwalk. It's a species-wide trait. Silly."

"Well, it's nice when you're with other animals who don't think it's like naming yourself 'Assassin of Magic-Attuned People.' Do you know the name of the force in the Dream Tree? They spoke to me."

Sleepwalker frowns. "The spirit in the Dream Tree? They spoke to you directly?"

"Yeah, they did." I scowl down at my claws. They're in dire need of sharpening. "Threw in a valuable life lesson with the vision for free."

"Sleepwalker," Ghost coughs as we come to a crossroads, "Are we going to Sare--"

"That way, Beneather," Sleepwalker interjects sharply, gesturing to the left with mild exasperation.

I look up at the pine trees above. Dawn is breaking. Papermoon pokes his head out from the wagon, looking very tired and very temperamental. I know I should be respectful but it's hard not to laugh at fennecs in a bad mood because of how their big ears flop down in front of their faces when they wake up. "We there yet?" Papermoon grunts. Sleepwalker glances at me. "Not yet. Gloomwade, you probably don't know the route, but you'll know when we arrive. We have to be more cautious about information spreading."

"Sure."

The wagon suddenly jerks to the side, and Papermoon glances back into the wagon. "...Marigold's upset," he tells us. "He's... oh." Papermoon disappears inside the wagon. There's a hushed conversation, and the frantic, hissing whispers of Marigold, and Papermoon's head pops up again, a more concerned expression on his face this time. "Sleepwalker-- Sleepwalker, he says that he can feel a magic user nearby--"

"Ghost! Go!" Sleepwalker barks. The sabertooth lets out a strangled cry as it springs into a sprint, narrowly missing an arrow which whizzes underneath the wagon.

"How many? How many, Papermoon?"

Papermoon glances back, mutters the question, turns to face Sleepwalker. I'm sitting up and running my vision through the trees, shifting my cloak from underneath my feet and bracing my paws on the hilt of the daggers but I can't see much of anything. "One. Just one. He says he's overwhelmed, it's really powerful, that it's hurting him because it's a lot of power, stored up."

"An ambush." Sleepwalker curses. "A Specter. Of course--"

I knock an arrow out of the air with my blade, one that was coming straight for my face. It falls to the floor of the wagon's carriage, quivering.

"Arm and guard yourselves!" Sleepwalker lurches forward, shaking a peculiar short sword from their cloak. "Ghost! Backroad!"

I'm tired. Why must these things happen at such early hours?

Out of the corner of my eye, there's a blur of movement. It pauses for just a moment before darting away, but that moment is enough. It's a panda with a bow and arrow, which doesn't seem all that Specter-like, but that arrow just now was quivering with.. some sort of force. And Marigold's sixth sense is incredibly attuned: this panda, this simple archer, had great power.

Why else would she be alone?

XVII . Ambush?! Peripatetic ♥
"Marigold, do you have armor?" I leap on top of the wagon's roof, which I wasn't sure could support my weight or not before, but it seems fine, just a bit wobbly. I glance around again. Just a moment before, I saw the panda, but now it's nowhere in sight.

"N-no!"

"Stay there. Just a minute."

I have a bow and arrows too. It's small, a hunting bow for travelers, but it does the job. I'm wondering, though, if the arrows I have would even be able to touch the panda. They're tipped with a sort of invisible magical resistance like a pillow that can cut through a magical barrier, but they're probably dulled by age and I don't know my opponent's capabilities.

I draw my bow from my cloak. Despite checking inventory a day before, I nearly forgot I had managed to cram some arrows with foamy orange tips instead of arrowheads into my various cloak spaces and pockets. It's amazing how much you can fit in one specific, heavily modified clothing model. No one ever thought to put a quiver holder in a cloak years ago (probably because they had the sense to worry the arrow shafts might break). This is the dawn of a new age. "Sleepwalker. Is that arrow safe to touch? Is it still moving?"

"Don't know... it's stopped quivering. Ghost, can you cut yourself free of the reins?"

"I can't!" The sabertooth swerves away from a rock on the road. "I'm running! Where do I--"

As a third arrow hits the canvas of the roof with a thunk, I draw, spin around and release the orange arrow in the direction of where the other was sent from.

Nothing connects for a moment, and then there's a cloud of billowing orange and the shape of a panda crossing its arms in an X formation before the cloud is pulled, dwindling rapidly in size, into what quickly reveals itself as a light lilac colored magical shield as the cloud clears, appearing to resemble a closed lotus around the panda.

The cloud disappears, and I can get a very brief closer look, though it's still kind of dark. It's a pale panda with a light green and brown tunic and what appears to be a staff with a glowing purple crystal tied to her back. She clutches her bow in one clenched fist and an arrow in the other, and I expect something like an arrow quiver sits on her belt. She's a lot more... upright than most of the pandas I come across. Her eyes are squeezed firmly shut in the seconds she seems to absorb the cloud, and a flash of jade green and a flicker of movement like a small animal's comes from her sleeve a moment later, but I can't inspect it from this far away, and the panda releases the barrier and dashes quickly into the shadow of the trees.

I leap off the wagon and start after her. Sleepwalker calls after me, but I don't hear them.

They say most animals' senses used to be far more heightened than they are now. My mentor used to train me and throw me in the woods blindfolded to make me rely on my sense of smell and hearing to find a way out. I suppose we could be a lot more technologically advanced if we brought back what we abandoned in our departure from a "primitive" life. Funny.

Fortunately, I am not most animals. I cursed my mentor back then, but now I'm glad for those irritatingly frightening hours in the woods. As I inhale in a few quick breaths of air, it's muddled at first-- pine needles and ferns and all that vegetation layered on top of each other-- but there's the faintest hair of an animal's earthy tone, notes of a medley of sweet-smelling fabric and herbs that fade off as quickly as they come. My head turns in the direction of the scent and a revealing misstep from the shadows, the faintest snap of a twig. My ears swivel.

I've spent my fair share of time stumbling over mossy stumps and brambles lashing dotted lines of cuts across my legs, but it takes a moment or two to get used to it again. I guess I haven't been as active as I have been before this job. Perhaps I need to get my name out more. Well, clearly I have, since Greely knew to contact me.

I step carefully over a fallen branch. A shade falls over my vision, a primitive storm of a feeling in my gut. I step forward again. The scent is clearer now. The panda is fast, but I must stand between her and my companions. Don't want anyone else getting hurt in this mess, do I?

The woods are dark. My eyes dart towards a flicker of white some distance away, ducking behind a tree.

I hunt.

A few moments later, the panda comes back into view, shooting an arrow my way. I'm glad we're in a forest. There's quite a lot of cover. I move behind a tree, and the arrow hits its mossy side with a muted thump.

It doesn't seem she's tried to go back towards the wagon. A double ambush? Interesting. I allow myself to be lured, tracking swiftly over logs and small streams of runoff from the recent rainfall. A few minutes later, the panda steps into a clearing. A pile of cut sticks resembling firewood lays at the center.

I know to be wary, but as she slows her pace and walks towards the wood, pausing a foot or so away, I follow after her, stopping as she halts.

"Magicslayer." A stern voice rings out, reminding me of the time my mother scolded me for getting my clothes muddy, back when my brother was alive.

"That's me."

I tense and grip my bow as the panda whirls around to face me, her dark ponytail lashing her shoulder. She doesn't attack, but stares at me with discolored, faintly violet eyes and an air of mild disapproval.

"Going to introduce yourself?"

"If I told you it was a threat," the panda says suddenly, reaching a paw into her pocket, "would you attack it?"

"Well, reaching into a pocket is suspicious behavior. Especially since I don't know you. So yes, I would be inclined to attack you."

The panda drops something onto the ground. I'm a hair's breadth away from firing when I realize it's a small green gecko. It skitters about in the dirt, its blue eyes flickering to and fro. I've seen them before, and sometimes as pets, owned by rich folk who have other pets and don't struggle with any moral dilemmas.

"That?"

"Would you attack it," the panda repeats, "if I told you it was a threat?"

"I don't consider you a reliable source of information."

"Say yes or no. I need to know what kind of person you are."

"I don't think that's a reliable indicator. Are you a Specter?"

She doesn't answer me. My bow is still half drawn, and I could shoot her from here, but she appears unworried.

The gecko strays away to the left of the panda. It slips over a pebble and eyes me curiously, its tongue flicking out of its mouth briefly.

I full draw and release the arrow. The panda crosses her arms into an X immediately, darting forward to intercept the arrow that went nowhere near the gecko. There's the smallest crunch as she moves and she pauses in frozen shock, lowering her arms. The purple lotus barrier fades.

I step forward again as the panda stares down at the mess of a corpse, which appears almost scorched, beneath her foot. "I wasn't going to hurt it," I tell her. "You gave me the idea of gauging someone's character, which I've done before. So I shot an arrow. But, look, now you've killed it. What a shame."

Something flickers in the panda's lowered eyes. They narrow down into slits, and she slowly removes the arrow from her bow, slipping it back into the quiver and pushing her bow somewhere onto the belt on her back. She lowers her paw, staring down at the ground, her fists clenching and unclenching. Her shoulders tremble and her gaze snaps up towards me, a new, raw, unrestrained anger in her tearstained eyes.

"My name is Liza," the panda growls. "And I will kill you."

She raises her foot, the gecko's sad remains still squished beneath it, and stomps on the dirt.

"Why does everything I nurture die?!"

Liza pulls the staff from her back and, with a screech, points it at me. It glows and discharges a cloud of energy, too quickly for me to avoid. I raise my paws to protect my face and grit my teeth as two narrow bolts the size of arrows rise from the cloud and slice through my paws. The purple cloud that follows sweeps me several feet backwards and into a tree, dissipating shortly afterwards.

"...Everyone says that," I grunt. "'I will kill you, Magicslayer.' But I get to them first. I think it's bad luck."

Liza stares at me, bristling, still pointing the staff in my direction. "The cloud. Its purpose was to blow me away, when you sent that arrow at me?"

"Supposed to disable your magic, but it didn't work, since you..." I blink. An absorption of energy. Well, I haven't seen anything exactly like it before.

"You aren't a magic user?"

"No Magicslayer is... or, well, has been."

My paws hurt, but I've caught my breath. "... do you consider your ability unbeatable?"

Liza narrows her eyes as I rise to my paws. She's still pointing the staff's crystal at me, but it no longer glows. I would assume there's no more power left to throw at me. "No animal I have faced has beaten it."

"Perhaps you've been meeting the wrong animals. Do you consider yourself unbeatable?"

She wavers. Her mouth remains closed.

Daggers drawn, I rush at Liza. She's startled as I approach but in the second that I arrive, her barrier is already up. With each slash across the purple shield, there's a clashing sensation that almost pushes my blade back towards my face, and with each blow the staff's crystal glows. I step backward and continue on until my arms are tired, which takes a lot, and I duck and roll away as, the moment my barrage pauses, Liza releases the barrier and points the staff in my direction. A flurry of purple slashing motions come my way, and though I'm keeping my eye on Liza I manage to dodge away from most of them (a few rip through my cloak and one barely catches my leg, and I curse Zios). The slashes that don't hit me hit the trees. One leans to the side, dangerously close to falling.

I note Liza seems fixed in the one position while she's using the staff. She doesn't deviate from one foot forward, eyes narrowed, arm and staff thrust outward in the direction of the target. When the barrage stops and the crystal's glow fades, Liza's arm lowers slowly, and she takes a few ragged breaths, her eyes on the ground. After a second or two, she takes another breath, closing her eyes, and straightens, back to her normal, always-defensive stance. I saw the last second of this brief period when she had hit my paws.

Well, you know what they say. Everyone has a weakness. Or something. There's probably a more clever saying, but I can't think of one right now.

My arms are tired. I need a distraction. I rise to my paws (they still hurt but I've dealt with worse), and dust off my cloak, but before I can do anything Liza comes at me herself, brandishing the staff with a snarl.

I brace myself, gripping my daggers with aching paws, but Liza's gaze slides to the left and she skids to a halt.

A few feet away sits a piece of brown paper, folded into a rabbit. Liza turns towards it and away from me, stepping forward.

"A feral rabbit," she mutters. "What is something like you doing out here, so close to...?"

Liza pauses. She blinks and looks up towards a flicker of movement in the bushes as a tomahawk flies from the trees and slices into her back in three arcs.

A bloodcurdling scream, almost inhuman, escapes from the panda's mouth as Marigold and Papermoon emerge from opposite sides of the clearing. Marigold stares at Liza, and then down at his paws, as if he regrets throwing his weapon. Liza staggers, unknowingly trampling the paper rabbit, her paw twitching and convulsing as she tries in vain to reach around and remove the axe from the back of her shoulder.

Papermoon turns to look at me. "And so?"

"What?" I cough, and stare down at the circular marks in my paws where the "arrow" energy hit. Damn, that hurts.

"Are you going to attack her?"

I look at Liza, who is still staggering about in pain. "Oh, yeah. If you're going to help me, be careful."

Marigold wavers. His tail is raised as he stares at Liza. "Marigold, what do you want to do?"

The coyote blinks. "U...um... what? I don't know if I'd be much help."

"Well, you just were. Are you able to deny this ability? Well, when she does it again, I mean."

"I don't know. It's powerful. It makes my legs wobbly."

Liza finally grips the handle of the tomahawk, screeching as she rips it from her back and throws it to the ground. "Y-you..." she gasps. "It... isn't ... fair!"

"It absorbs your attacks' energy," I call to Papermoon as he runs forward, raising a shortsword he had replaced his claymore with back at Nirvana. Liza hisses in agony as she crosses her arms, one paw still gripping her staff, and the lotus shield emerges, absorbing Papermoon's two stabs.

Marigold blinks again. He stares, still trembling.

I have an idea, but I don't know if the other two would like it much if I explained. "Marigold," I mutter as Papermoon backs away, "use the earth. Break it open, or something." He nods, eyes wide.

"...Look out, Papermoon!"

The fennec fox snarls as Liza raises her staff and releases the energy, giving Papermoon a nasty slash through his left ear. Fortunately, though, this gives me ample time to charge forward again, and just as I assumed, Liza's "cooldown" takes much shorter the less energy there is absorbed. Before I can attack, she's recovered and the X of her arms blocks my dagger's way.

Though... if Marigold could do his attack, and if we all attacked at once... there would be the matter of dodging, but that's the least of my worries. It probably should be the most of my worries but I haven't time to worry about anything other than succeeding.

"Papermoon, again... Marigold! Now!" I use my daggers and hit the shield and yada yada. The bad thing about doing something over and over is that I run out of descriptors the second time. All you need to know is that Papermoon staggers forward to hit the shield again with me, and I keep at it for as long as I can.

Marigold narrows his eyes and raises a paw. As it slams down, a ripple runs through the earth, and with an earsplitting crack, the ground splits open at his paws. Similar to our time with Cosmo and the Pitcher, the earth begins to jut upwards into spikes that rush towards Liza. Surprisingly, I see her shield flicker as the spikes crash into it.

"It's.... not... fair," Liza growls, her teeth gnashing together. "I'm only one... I'm only one.. I'll use your stupid powers against all of you!"

Papermoon seems to have trouble getting away quick enough with that wound on his arm, so I grab him as I dash away from Liza as quickly as I can and run towards Marigold. With a roar, the panda aims her staff at us and a massive wall of pulsating purple energy shoots from it.

Zios. I should have thought this through. Marigold shrieks and seems to simultaneously use his Terraforming, raising a frantic, crumbling wall of dirt to oppose it, and his denying, as the power sputters and wavers when it slams into me, as I got stupid again and ran for the dirt wall a moment too late. A series of crashes sounds in front of me as two or three trees topple into the woods away from us.

Goddammit, I've broken something. I was just reminded why I don't do reckless things. Knocked to the ground, I wheeze for breath, and my chest stabs with a series of painful, fractured pangs with each attempt. Papermoon seems unharmed as he crawls away from me, clutching his arm. I took most of it.

Marigold stares at us in concern and fear, unsure. I roll onto my side to look at Liza and immediately regret it because now I'm landed right on the ribs that feel like an elephant's crushed them. The panda is knelt on the ground, gasping for breath. She's dropped her staff. I guess Marigold is really who did it, once again. I really ought to properly thank him sometime. I'm sure if he hadn't tried denying the release of energy I would be in a lot more pain right now.

"Hey... uh... urg.. P..Papermoon, I can't fire anything right now. I think we've g..got it in the bag. Oooow, Zios, lord, ooooooooooooouuahnnnngng...Can you shoot the panda. Please." I wheeze again as I pull the bow and an arrow from my cloak and slide it towards Papermoon. "Marigold. Help me get up, please."

Marigold nods quickly and scrambles over to my side. He pushes his head underneath my back and struggles to push me up, which doesn't really do anything except make my ribs hurt again. Curse small, skinny animals.

As Papermoon steps forward cautiously, having drawn the bow, I finally manage to push through my pain (my leg hurts, too) and get up, mostly by myself, though Marigold insists I lean on his for support. I'm afraid he'll get squashed. I draw my dagger and hobble forward. Papermoon releases the arrow, and Liza crumples to the ground as it hits her side. She barely makes a sound.

"Urgg... why does.." Liza mutters. She reaches for her staff, but Marigold hops forward and quickly and fearfully drags it away. "Sorry," he tells her, dipping his head apologetically before skittering off probably to hide in the trees.

"...why does nothing go right? I wanted to be worth something... I wanted to know... what Cosmo's 'egress' was."

She looks up at me and I pause. My eyes lower to her phantom collar. "Cosmo's memories said something about an egress."

"..Yes! Yes!" Liza nods quickly, wincing. "Cosmo... he told me. He said I was the only one who could listen, and not to tell anyone, he was leaving the phantoms. He said Graham had a device that would disable a collar.. and he would steal it and take Peck and I with him and we would run."

"Where would you run?" I lower my dagger and my guard.

"He said... North. To the army, where we could help them be rid of the phantoms... and then we would run as far away as we could. Or was it south? East? West?" A groaning, wheezing, sad sort of chuckle escapes Liza's wounded lungs. "When Peck's mother was fed to those beasts, Cosmo tried to intervene. And that... exposed him. That the phantom collar took too little of his mind, that he was still really Cosmo. And they punished Cosmo, first by making him watch as they forced Peck to push her own mother into the pit. Then... they took him away and the next time I saw him I knew it wasn't going to happen. His eyes... the exit... it was gone. They broke him. And what of Graham? Word has it he died." Liza lets out another ragged laugh.

"He... he wanted to control the phantoms," I tell her. "Yes, I killed him. He tried to kill my family. His mind wasn't lost from his own collar but I'm sure he's the most sadistic out of all of you."

"Ahh, of course he did," Liza mutters ruefully. "And, you know, I knew Cosmo. I was an explorer, and he a young herbalist on the same exploration. I led them, and he was younger, and yet I admired his intelligence and leadership, more than I had... more than I had, because I led them all right into a phantom trap." The panda grimaces in pain.

"Were you with the army?"

"Yes, it was an order from the exploration branch to explore the Outer Lands of the southern jungles. Would have gone perfectly well if someone smarter... had... done it. You know, not all magic users are born with their powers. Have you heard of them? The ones whose powers are born from some inhuman level of stress or some other emotion?"

"A few, yes."

"That was me. The phantoms wanted to use Cosmo, mostly, and they were going to kill me because I fought back, but he convinced them to spare me. And as... some sort of cruel joke, I would suppose, they captured me and later they forced this stupid ability out of me. I was tired of running. I felt worthless and I didn't want to run anymore, I wanted them... the phantoms... to feel the pain I felt. I think that's why my ability is what it is. Peripatetic."

"It's not stupid. Look, I'm half-dead."

Liza laughs again. "I can't use it without thinking of them. The only reason no one found out the collar wasn't sufficient brainwashing was that I stayed quiet, but sometimes I wish they had realized. I wish they had made me into a husk too. It hurts too much to live knowing I'm just a device, and it hurts knowing for longer and longer periods every day I feel like someone else. I don't want them to do that to me, Magicslayer. It's selfish, but I ask you kill me now."

I almost flinch. My head tilts to the side, studying her in feigned caution. She doesn't seem like she's about to reach for anything.

"Liza. There are people who can help you in camp. We can get that collar off of you. And you can help us. That wound isn't fatal."

"I'm sorry. It hurts too much to think anymore. Why would I want to carry on living in some body that doesn't belong to me anymore? I'd rather not think about it, or anything else, for that matter. Kill me. You've done it before, to Peck and Cosmo and Graham. Kill me."

For the first time I feel an open display of guilt. "I'm sorry," my voice stumbles, before I can stop myself.

"Don't be. They aren't really themselves either, are they? They weren't. In a way, you spared them." Liza's head moves back, exposing her neck and the phantom collar beneath. "Please. This is my only wish."

"Liza," I say slowly, "why did you attack me?"

Liza closes her eyes, her head unmoving. "When they sent me I felt trapped in a body that wouldn't listen to me. A body I've had for all my life, going against my own will, taking my consciousness away from me, and as I attacked you I screamed--"

I raise the dagger. Its blade glints in the new sunlight peering between the trees, muted by crimson as it slashes across her throat.

"Thank... you..." The faintest, cracking whisper is heard as Liza falls to the ground. She doesn't make a sound, her body or her voice. And then I realize how tired I am, how much my head, my chest, my bones, my heart, hurts.

I've forgotten about Papermoon but all of a sudden he's there, calling to me, his voice miles away as I collapse.

XVIII . Calliope Reflection
"Ridgedale."

''A young cougar laying in the grass of a meadow glances over at his snow leopard compatriot. "Yes, yes, I'm thinking. About the name. Give me another two minutes."''

"I was wondering if you'd ever thought of the similarities between our family names."

The cougar pauses.

"'Dale' is a common suffix. I thought on it briefly."

"And you know that the Ridgedale and Brightdale families are closely interwoven in their histories?"

''The cougar looks up at him. "Are they?"''

"Brightdale is a line of Magicslayers. I've told you that before. Many generations ago, a cougar in a traditionalist town was sentenced to death under suspicion she was a demon-- they thought that about all magic users. And as she stood on the gallows and the platform beneath her paws fell, my ancestor, Hemlock Brightdale, sprang forth as quick as lightning and slashed the rope binding the noose in two. She fell into the grass beneath and escaped into the night amidst the confusion. It is a story passed down in our generations, and the one accompanying it, stating that the Ridgedale cougar swore she would one day repay him, and when he lay dying after an ambush, she nursed him back to health, gave him her name and her story, and vanished on the wind."

The cougar picks a nearby flower from the grass and examines it absentmindedly.

"Would life be different if I was a magic user?"

"It would. But then I would not have sworn to protect you. It is tradition to pass down the Magicslayer's knowledge to the first son of the Magicslayer. I have no son, and our lineages are ending-- yours of great mages and mine of great Magicslayers. It is fitting our paths come to an end in a reverse."

''A stray breeze blows a leaf towards the snow leopard. He watches it and turns his head to the left. The breeze changes course quite suddenly and the leaf whisks by uninterrupted, higher in the air than it was before.''

"I've thought of a name."

''"What is it?" The snow leopard glances down at the cougar.''

"Stolid."

"--Gloomwade!"

stolidstolidstolidgloomstolidridgestolidgloomwadestolidridgedalestolidgloomdapplemartenstolidmartend--

"Gloomwade!"

I'm faintly aware of a tingling sensation in my chest. My eyelid cracks open, and a warm yellow light floods my senses.

"Ow."

There's a shape, dark grey mostly, to the right of me, and on the other side something sort of bluish. My claws grip white sheets and a mattress as I sit up, wincing as a dull pain throbs in my side.

The lynx beside me seems to wince too. "Stay still! I'm trying to heal you."

A memory thumps into my head. My mother. My head lolls to the other side of the bed to face Papermoon, who's sitting on a stool. "Where am I... again?" A voice fumbles from my throat. It feels like it isn't mine, this hoarse replica, though I know it is.

"The Calliope. Marigold ran off and got Sleepwalker and Ghost while you were talking to that Specter. Ghost carried you back when you collapsed, and here we are now." Papermoon flicks a scrap of white paper off of his arm. "Glassfoot here's healing your wounds still. He did mine already. Feeling better."

"Better... yeah, I guess. It aches. And I had another memory dream, and it got me thinking--" I yawn and hiss sharply through my teeth as Glassfoot the blue lynx presses his paw to my side and a feeling like static shock or the feeling of a limb going numb spreads through my aching ribs. Like when my foot falls asleep in the wagon and it's going dead but at the same time feels like I'm being stabbed.

"Memories, huh? I have a lot of those," Papermoon grunts. He glances at the entrance of the tent, and his dull green eyes glaze over with a distant bitterness.

"Where's Marigold? Interesting you, of all people, are visiting me."

"I'm not really visiting you," Papermoon retorts hotly. "I'm just in the healers' tent because I was injured. And Marigold's outside trying to drink the Calliope tea while we wait. Sleepwalker's discussing something with General Greely, and Ghost's probably... I don't know," he finished, somewhat irritably as he came to Ghost, his eyes narrowing to the ground this time.

I yawn again. The numb feeling isn't so bad, but it makes my side feel uncomfortably hot, for some reason. I consider Papermoon for a moment. "What do you think about Ghost?" I venture, uncertain. I don't like making conversation because I never know what to say.

Papermoon doesn't say anything for a few moments. "...Well, I don't know. I can't really say much about him. Don't know him. He feels almost foreign. I tried holding the reins on our way to the Calliope but I lost my head and I just couldn't, and I had no time to adjust 'cause you were laying there all broken and passed out. So I passed them back to Sleepwalker." He curls his lip. "I'm weak."

"How long were you and Kingcall companions?"

"Since the beginning of my enlistment. I was fourteen, and I was pursuing being a draft worker, though I really cared about studying origami more, working out new folds. When we were paired with drafts-in-training for preparation, Kingcall seemed to care. We spent time at the library in the school sometimes, even though he told me later he couldn't read well. And he was the first one who cared. About my origami. About making new structures, too. I got pushed forward by his interest because he liked it, and I started practicing birds more often, started planning out folds for new birds, 'cause I really struggled with them, and he encouraged me when I complained. He was... you know... closed off about magic, though I was too. Natural, common wariness from most of everyone, that was how things were." Papermoon picks up a mug from the ground by the stool and sips from it. "So I never asked. Once, after working out a method for a long while and finally getting it down, I made a kingfisher. Sheer, freak coincidence that I had chosen that bird specifically. But I'm so glad I did. I gave it to him and he stared at it for a long while, and finally he put it in his pocket and thanked me and left.

"I was afraid I had done something wrong. I couldn't find a window to talk to him, he seemed distant in our training, and I was terrified I had really messed up the only friendship I had. I finally got to ask him, well--" he chuckles, a fond, sad look in his eye. "--I practically begged him to tell me what I had done wrong. And he looked at me and he said nothing, he was the one who had messed up. And then he told me about his power, and how looking at that kingfisher I had made for him made him cry, later, when he was alone, because it hit him. Right there. He said he thought, just like I did, that I was the only one who really cared, even though I didn't know. He had this thing, you know, about never crying in front of people. That then was the only time he cried in front of me, all through our six years of knowing each other. But I knew he never stopped caring."

Papermoon sets the mug down and reaches into his uniform's pocket. "After they brought Kingcall back to Nirvana, they told me they found this. In his front pocket, right next to his heart, where... where he..." He trails off, staring at the crumpled piece of folded, blue and orange paper in his paw. "He never stopped, never stopped caring, he--" The fennec's voice breaks off as his eyes fill with tears of both frustration, perhaps at his own sadness, and mourning. I sit in silence as he tries to stifle his own sobs, failing halfway through, gripping the kingfisher as he covers his face with his paws.

"I, I... I should have... ah.."

"Well, you aren't weak," I state matter-of-factly, ignoring the twisting feeling in my gut. "What kind of person doesn't cry when their best friend dies?"

"I'm sorry," Papermoon whispers. "I rambled. Again."

"Well, everyone does. It's good to get it out. I understand. Completely." This wasn't entirely untrue, though I hadn't rambled to anyone in a good long while. One day those dusty bottles of emotion in my mind's wine cellar are gonna pop off. A twisting feeling again. I rue the day.

"Oh, I think he would want you to know." Papermoon glances down at the origami again, blinking the tears from his eyes. "His name was Gnat Stoneleaf. He was the runt of his family, and Stoneleaf are a family of druids. When he chose his name, he told me it was because of me that he didn't feel entirely useless anymore. He always thought his ability worthless. But it was quite enchanting to witness. He had just begun to hone it to make them into a defensive attack, though he always said he couldn't bear to abuse them for his own benefit..." Papermoon trails off. "I know you know this, but I miss him."

"I do too. I didn't know him well, but I do too."

"...um... and your dream?"

I blink. "Oh, my memory dream. Yes. It was of my choosing of my name. My mentor and I were in a meadow and I had just beaten him and earned it. Speaking of names, I have something I want to tell you."

"Yeah?"

Time to come clean. "I want you, to, uh," I begin, "...call me by the name I chose. Because it isn't Dapple Gloomwade. It's... It's Stolid. Yeah. Just Stolid."

"Stolid?" Papermoon stares at me. "That isn't... you're not... it's Stolid."

I scowl. "What, it's a bad name? I thought real long and hard about it, and--"

Papermoon opens his mouth to speak, then pauses. "...well," he smiles awkwardly, "I just think you aren't all that 'stolid,' Stolid."

"Well," Glassfoot mews softly, his voice almost inaudible, making me jump. "Your ribs have all healed up. Oh! I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

"No.. no, it's alright. Every time you..." My heart thuds. "Every time you speak, you remind me of my mother. She was a healer. Magic-- uh, used magic to heal people. I have a memory... of her healing my arm after I broke it, the same way you did, and it just..." I cough. "...reminds me."

Now that I think about it, that's probably why my family was targeted way back when. A healer and a pureblooded, dangerous fighter could create dangerously high potential levels in their children. This really is a day of confessions, huh? The tent rustles in the wind, and there's the light of the afternoon outside. It feels like time's always going too slowly or to quickly for me to keep up with.

"I hope that's a good thing." Glassfoot has a mixture of warmth and concern in his light blue eyes. "Well, you can stand up now. It might take a minute or two to reorient yourself. Oh, and I was given orders to tell you to go to Greely's tent once you recover. Your cloak is at the door."

As I stumble off the bed and onto the floor with the somewhat useless assistance of Papermoon's tiny form, I ponder what awaits me. Hell, there's always something awaiting me. Can't I catch a break?

Greely's words, from a few days ago (it's only been a few days, but it feels like so much longer).

''There are animals actively supporting the phantoms... the wolf gestures to five crude purple figurines.''

Peck... Cosmo... Graham... Liza... Math. Oh, math. Math, math, ma-- One.

Right. One.

Only one more.

I steady myself.

I am Stolid.

I am stationary.

Am I?

XIX . Orders: To The Grave
"...Stolid."

I had Papermoon run ahead and inform Greely I was going by my real name now. The wolf sits across from me, across the same grand table I sat by three or four days ago. Again, it feels like it's been forever. "General Greely." I dip my head, though this time I spare the act. Glancing down at the table model of Jamaa, I note the purple wooden figurines representing the Specters. One in Foothill Forest, by its meadows, another in Grand Ravine, a third pushed off to the side by the oceans, a fourth near the forest we had been ambushed in, all knocked onto their sides.

A fifth remains, this one, curiously, with a definitive shape, feline. Greely glances down at it and picks it up.

"You've done well so far," he tells me. "Only one Specter, to our knowledge, remains."

"And what are you ding after that, General Greely? Will the phantoms be more vulnerable? Pardon my asking."

"Yes, significantly, but there is also the issue of the remaining, less threatening animals who have been brainwashed by those collars, and whatever the phantoms hold in hiding. You needn't worry about that, though. Your job, currently, is to eliminate the final Specter. Fortunately, I discovered who and where exactly he is a short while ago." Greely raises the figure and plants it down right by where the Calliope rests.

"...That close."

"Yes. I assume the phantoms have plans to attack the Calliope. Fortunately, once again... I know him. Knew him. The Specter."

I study the figure again. It looks like a tiger, its frame carved rather hastily to reveal a shade of wood darker than the rest of it, implying a more recent redefining of its berry-stained features.

"His name was Sir Gilbert. I was friends with him in our early years, and we trained together. We were both promoted to high-ranking officials after our first battle, and he chose his name to follow his family's royal, figurehead titles. We respected each other, though as his magical abilities developed, I began to fear sparring with him. Shortly after that, I didn't hear from him after he went into another battle. And then I found out, later, that he had died." Greely's eyes narrow, though his emotion is indistinct. "But that was years and years ago... those fools surely must have kept him around for that long. I wonder, often, what they do to those captured. if they can revive dead bodies to serve their whims. But... yes. He is quite the powerful magic user."

"Do you know his abilities?"

Greely takes a deep, almost reluctant breath. "Sir Gilbert's ability... is to summon and control spirits. Though I knew him well, I barely know the limits of it, because he worried he wouldn't be able to control his powers, and seldom used them. But he can manipulate them and draw them from the spirit plane. Fittingly... currently, he is at the Soldiers' Rest Graveyard, half a mile from the Calliope. Ghost and your other companions can take you there, if you're ready."

I think about it.

Spirits.

A powerful ability indeed. It's probably going to be scary, but it's not like I can decline. "Of course, General Greely."

Greely seems to relax. "Good. I'm-- well, we're all counting on you. Good luck. I'll send for your party."

XX . Broken Spirit, Summoned Souls / Incarnadine's Harbinger
So I'm in the wagon, trying to brush my teeth, because I've just had a hearty meal and I forgot to do it when I was at camp.

"Really, Stolid, must you?" Papermoon complains. I haven't done much of anything yet, actually, I'm staring down the thing in my hand, the twig of pine with a flat piece of additional wood that is somehow on one side lined with bristles made from what feels like coarse hog hair. I'm not keen on putting hair in my mouth but I'm not keen on fish breath either, so I pour a bit of water from my flask onto its head. There isn't any tooth powder around.

"Must I what?" I turn away and face the road as the horribly rough bristles of the hog's hair stab my gums.

"Do that. Here."

"Dunhaev muchoffa chance vesides now." I hadn't been thinking about food that much over the past few days and I hadn't been thinking about brushing either. I borrowed this toothbrush from an open soldier's tent while we were in camp, but I really need to get a new one. I'm worried the hairs are going to come loose in my mouth. Why is Papermoon talking to me right now? Probably deliberately, because people sound stupid when they're trying to talk over a toothbrush in their mouth.

"It's... well.."

"It doesn't bother me," Marigold says in a small voice. He's been awfully quiet lately. The bristles scrape my gums and I taste that familiar metallic tang. The agony. It never gets less annoying.

"Fine. Fine, then." Papermoon falls silent with an exasperated snort. As I spit the water and the blood out onto the side of the road and clean the toothbrush with more of it, I realize Papermoon's been starting his usual pointless quarrels and then giving them up almost immediately. Maybe this means he likes me now.

"And here we are," Sleepwalker announces. Ghost halts at the top of the hill we're on, overlooking a misty, gloomy-looking field pockmarked with crosses and headstones. Marigold leans forward past my shoulder from behind me with a discontented murmur. "You're going to fight here?"

"I'll be careful around the bouquets."

It feels odd when I step off the wagon and down the hill into the graveyard alone. These past few episodes with the support of my companions have been new experiences to me, and it's not that I don't enjoy their company and their defenses, but that disconcerted feeling I felt when Marigold first followed me to the ruins in Pin is looming up behind me again like some twin, monstrous shadow of something like... fear? Guilt? Frustration?

And to think that out of all of them I've chosen the most powerful of the Specters to face off with alone, to insist the others stay behind. Well, I'll be fine. Yes, they'd be safer up there when I don't know what this Sir Gilbert is capable of. I've dealt with worse.

I say that about a lot of things, don't I? I've always seen something worse. I just can't recall when I've seen it.

I round the corner of a marble mausoleum and enter a row of them, near identical in shape, dotted with withering bunches of wildflowers tied with mouse-bitten twine. While quite a lot of the graves are simply marked by wooden crosses, two pieces of cedar tied together and sharpened to a point, often with a hand-carved mark of initials or a name, the mausoleums appear more richly decorated. At the front of each is a name engraved into the stone in rather official print. The flowers denote that someone's been visiting them, but the bouquets are all dying now. The mausoleums don't seem all that well-kept, either. The iron doors are eaten away by rust and the marble looks as if it's deteriorating right before my eyes.

And despite the quite random orderly row of the tombs, there really is no order here. The crosses and the headstones and the crypts dot the hillsides as far as I can see, laying in disarray half-buried in the ground like forgotten children's toys. I wonder how many graves even have bodies beneath them.

I feel a sense of bewildered melancholy as I step past the mausoleums. Who put them there? Who laid them to rest, even marking those who had disappeared, some probably still kept alive by the phantoms? When was the last time someone had been here?

"GET DOWN!"

A gigantic weight slams into me before I can draw my daggers. We roll over a short slope and narrowly miss a headstone, but I don't think I would care much if we did, even though it might hurt my back a little. I regain my breath and there's claws gripping my shoulders but I dig a dagger from my cloak. The blade connects with dark orange fur and I feel it slip through flesh and blood before I feel cold, hard ground beneath me and a humongous tiger above me.

I feel a sudden pang of guilt, realizing the tiger had told me to "get down." Some threat, perhaps? And I had made a wonderful first impression by slicing through his body as he was pushing me away from something. He doesn't seem to care, or even notice, the gaping, dripping wound in his shoulder, though. His brilliant, scathing green eyes stare into mine, and it takes a moment of hesitation to keep from quailing.

"Soldier!" He barks, tail lashing. "What were you thinking? Could have gotten yourself killed... the phantoms don't forgive our mistakes, so you can't go making them!"

My mind blanks.

"What?"

"You learned this in your training, didn't you? Irrelevant. I have no time to lecture you." Sir Gilbert's head jerks to the side, staring somewhere in the field. "They've driven off the forces, but more are arriving. It is endless. Simply endless. No one, soldier! They wait for no one!" His eyes snap back towards me. The fur on his chin is tied into three messy, unkempt braids tied with reddish bands, but that isn't the thing that catches my attention. When he looked away I abandoned my complaints about the soreness of my shoulders as his paws pressed into them, abandoned putting words together for a moment because that look, that look in his fierce green eyes, lost. A reflection, part of the memory he relived, that prideful anger, that fear, and when he looked away it shattered. Distant. That glint. Too distant. Too much.

And now as he stares down at me, closer than before, I see it closer, the betrayal of his eyes from his stern face, emeralds set with a dazed, almost confused look swimming in his eyes, near-blank, his confusion and his sadness and his vacancy and it's too much and my dagger swings upward, biting into his arm. His claws sheathe, but he does not move. I pull myself away and roll, tripping, stumbling away from him as quickly as I can, but he does not move. I stare at him a good several yards away and finally his head raises to fix me with a blank gaze.

"...They're... taking on... new forms," I hear him mutter.

From the earth, there comes a hum.

in car na di ne

The graveyard, Greely's words. He can control spirits. But of course.

The hum grows louder as noises, ones soft and loud and quiet all at once, ones I can't describe because I've never heard them ever before, begin to almost rise, slowly, from the field of weary souls.

A veteran, trapped in some nightmare of a memory, controlling the souls of those probably trapped here too, buried alive in a sense. What a cruel joke.

Even crueler, somehow, that the only way to make the phantoms stop laughing is to end it.

XXI . Why Me? Incarnadine ★
in car na di ne

"The phantoms..." Sir Gilbert hisses. I ignore him, spinning to face the outlines rising in the air. They're like rough, jagged pencil sketches of a ghostly form, distorted, bearing distinctly defined animal-like features that vary from face to face and body, something that shouldn't be real, should stay on paper. They don't have limbs, just heads, the rest of their bodies sacklike. Their outlines seem distinguished but the more I look the more they look like mere shadows, a trick of the little light filtering in through the heavy fog.

"It's... they're," Sir Gilbert whispers, "they're--"

incar nad ine

The outlines look like they're intensifying. The space inside of them begins to fill with a stark white. Two misshapen circles like eyes are placed rumpled and uneven on their faces, their only facial feature. Strips like cut paper come away from their bodies, appearing to be arms, though the place where their legs should be remains a formless, tapering wisp.

And worst of all is the burning, searing red contrasting so bitterly from their pale, shadeless skin, gushing from their necks, hands, arms, some many places at once, some missing chunks of themselves. There is no depth to their forms, no detail, almost cartoonish, unreal how flat they appear, unreal how dark and thick and fake and awful this blood is.

incarn adine 

A loud humming slowly breaks into an inhuman wail. My fur stands on end and I really can't tell whether it's even a real sound, or something imagined, but the air feels thick with something more than fog. The acrid, sticky scent gluing my tongue to the roof of my mouth, making my throat close over--

"Ridgedale! Don't stop for them!"

''Screams. A grey cougar stumbles after a snow leopard, his blue eyes wide as they dart to and fro, trapped by the bloodshed between phantom and animal. ''

''The snow leopard grips the cougar's shoulder, dragging him forward. "Run, now," he growls, "or you're going to remember more than you want to."''

Another wail, louder, from behind me. I turn around and one of the spirits, behind Sir Gilbert (who seems to be cowering at some unseen force). The soul seems to contort wildly, crumpling into itself and raising again with a ghastly shriek. A line, hastily scribbled onto its feline face, grows wider, opening into a deep, dark sort of mouth, pooling, dripping blood.

i n c a r n a d i n e

"The spirits!" Sir Gilbert howls, clutching his head in his paws, and the spirit with the mouth screams, a scream that makes my skin prickle and my body freeze in place, and dives through the air in a flow of smudged movement, right towards me.

I knock my legs out of stasis just in time to duck away from the thing, which swoops towards the ground and rises back up again behind me. As it passes the blood pouring from its throat and its mouth seems to splash down to the ground, and as it hits the soil a dark splatter erupts, louder and brighter and more defined a bloodstain than bloodstains normally are. It spreads towards my paw, not all that quickly. I back away as more spirits are etched into the air, all staring at me, all dripping from their wounds.

"Sir Gilbert," I call out to the tiger, warily. He doesn't seem to hear me.

INCARINCARNAINAINCARNIADINAIDNAIRANDINDAIRND

The hum of the voices overlaps, screaming over one another as the spirits' outlines tremble and shake.

"Sir Gilbert!"

Sir Gilbert's head jerks upward. He stares in my direction, but his eyes are going through me, empty, staring far beyond. He's gone, of course. I've seen it before.

incarnadine

The spirits suddenly snap back into neutrality. They hover several feet in the air, pit-eyes downcast into crescents, but it still somehow feels like they're staring at me.

"Greely," Sir Gilbert gasps out, sounding more like a frightened cub than a war general.

INCARNADINE

The spirits howl raucously over one another, a deafening cacophany of awful noise pressing against my ears as all of them careen through the air, mouths gaping, claws and talons poised, blood dripping, straight for my sorry soul.

As I duck away from one that swoops particularly near my shoulder, a spirit with a bleeding neck, a stray drop of its blood falls from the wound and splashes onto my head.

It's cold, feels less like liquid and more like fog pouring onto my head and dissipating into nothingness.

And then there's a burning at my throat as I stumble away.

''A burning agony in my lungs and my neck, my head swims, my feet stagger backward, my eyes stare down at the fox and the shaft of the spear it's thrust into my... where? There's a jagged feeling an agony, it's stabbed me, my throat burns, my mouth opens but my voice is gone, I step forward but my sword is slipping from my hand, I'm falling backwards, the agony of the spearhead wrenched from my body as I fall away, my vision dimming, last vision the triumphant gaze of my opponent, last sound the screams of my love behind me scarcely heard over the howls of the battlefield, last feeling the bloodstained earth, frantic arms wrapping around me a moment too late--''

'''Cypress Stonespike. '''

The name runs skittering through my head, gone as quickly as it comes. I've read that name before-- the gravestones, of course, the gravestones. The blood... my throat burns. Sir Gilbert howls again, this time straightening up and roaring, charging forward, a sword in his paws before I can steady myself.

The spirits scream and they dive as Sir Gilbert's sword crunches into the measly dagger I pulled with a very unpleasant grinding noise. He doesn't relent, unseeing eyes raging with emerald fire. His red cape billows in the wind. My arms hurt. I dart to the side to avoid the pushing of his broadsword, which looks as if it was once bejeweled at the hilt but is now made of nothing but corroded gold. He whips around to follow me quicker than I hoped. Blood flies from the open cut on his shoulder, splattering my cloak. I roll to avoid a shrieking spirit and the swing of his blade, throwing my dagger.

It glances his side, tearing through his cape and leaving a shallow cut across his back as he moves forward, not really seeming to notice.

He isn't invincible, though, is he? No one is. Not permanently, even with magic.

I withdraw another weapon, a slightly longer shortsword. Though I prefer my two dual daggers and other weapons like that, since they're so lightweight, I carry something heavier most of the time. Mostly it just weighs me down because I can get by fine with knives and a traveler's bow. The shortsword does alright at physical denial, though.

It's been a while. I take my chances and block a drop of a spirit's blood leaking from a myriad of cuts in its body, its head one of a canine's. The drop sizzles like water on a hot stove when it hits my blade, and as I back away from an advancing Sir Gilbert, the drop falls down the blade and onto my paw, good lord, my stomach--

''I scream in agony as crossbow bolts tear through my body, piercing my fresh, puncturing my organs, ripping the words and the dreams and the wishes from the lungs of a poet with cold, hard, speared metal-- why, why, why did I leave them! Mother! Marie!''

Earhart Flamegaze.

I stumble backward again. The pain in my throat has been subsiding but now it's renewed by the fire dancing beneath my skin like I've been stabbed in nearly everywhere. Once again I'm barely able to block Sir Gilbert's blow, but he's wide open right now, if I can find a way to strike him before he strikes me. Well, lesson learned. My shortsword can't fully deny the blood of a spirit. Is it even really physical? Perhaps that's on a similar line as telepathic magical signals. For all the tragedy in my life I know nothing of spirits.

It's dragging me down.

There's a weight in my chest amidst the pain. It was there when the first spirit bled on me, and now it's heavier than before, pulling me almost to the ground as I block and block and block. Sir Gilbert isn't pushing into my sword anymore, but he's striking repeatedly so quickly and with such force I can scarcely find a good opening. "S-Sir Gilbert!" I shout in his face, attempting to rouse him, somehow, though I'm certain he's gone.

Nothing. He's like a machine and I'm worried my blade can't take much more so I duck away as he's raising his sword, tumbling under the storm of swirling spirits in the air, searching my cloak for something, anything, that might help. I'm surprised some of these vials haven't shattered yet. I keep falling all over the place.

My paws hit the glass surface of a narrow container hot to the touch. Yes, fine, that'll do. I pull out the potion, one that takes effect when you hit it and shatter it against something. Again, I'm surprised I haven't suffered the effects of some of my own weapons, given all my tumbling. Sir Gilbert stomps forward, sword raised. His shoulder wound spurts blood as he walks right through a small dip in the ground. I, too, raise my weapon, and fling it at his paws.

As the container shatters, Sir Gilbert walks right through the burning orange gas that burns his pawpads into nothing. God dammit, he really is unstoppable. Even when he takes damage he keeps going. The smoke dissipates and Sir Gilbert's paw oozes blood from a shard of broken glass that's embedded itself in his skin as he raises his sword again. I really hate fighting this guy, which makes me think of something I heard earlier.

"Greely!" I shout.

The tiger freezes.

"Greely," Sir Gilbert says out loud to himself. The spirits still slightly. A drop of their blood drops down onto my tail, I don't have time for this--

''My last moments are lived in the terror-muted pain of acid eating my body away into nothing. I-- DON'T HAVE TIME.''

Mirre Quiltpelt.

I'm fed up with it. The hot rage burning my lungs, at this, the suffering, at the phantoms, is boiling me alive. Sir Gilbert stares past me, and the spirits still.

"...I miss... Greely? Is he--"

Sir Gilbert cuts himself off with his own scream. I scramble to my paws as his sword slams into mine, the agonized shriek of a madman thrown upon me with every blow. His form is messy now, arcs of steel easily dodged, and I'm able to slash at his chest more than once. The spirits rage around me.

"Why," Sir Gilbert roars, his sword biting near entirely through mine, "Why me? Why did it have to be me?"

With one final scream, my sword is rended in two. My claws unsheathe and they lunge forward, glinting with an awful light, slashing across his exposed neck.

A drop of blood, dissolving.

''I had a family. They are gone, wrenched from my hands. My daughter, oh, my Lea, taken by the phantoms, my love slain, my back splitting open under the force of the phantom device's wheel as I flee after her. Why? Why her? Why me? Why this? My daughter, her child... it hurts. How it hurts. Not anymore, now. I'm falling away. Remember me, Lea. Remember your mother, Peck, name your child for her if you must. Live, escape. The exit.''

Leaper Digtrot III.

Zios, my back. Out of all the deaths...

Sir Gilbert takes a step forward. His paw jerks and crumples from beneath him, and he stares down at his shoulder wound in a sad sort of confusion. I guess they're catching up to him now.

I only now realize he has a phantom collar. I know he was guaranteed to, but it felt like a shock, alongside this general, this veteran who deserved everything that was taken from him, cowering, bloodied, at my feet.

A voice rises up from within me, a fluttering, hopelessly optimistic voice. I crush it like a bug.

I can't save him. Not in the way I'd want, anyway.

How did Liza say it? They're gone already. Death is the surest, most merciful exit.

The spirits still.

It's dead silent as I stare at him. My dagger, the best one, is in my hand, though my arm feels like it's frozen. Sir Gilbert is staring up at me, his fear and his pain sort of melting away in his eyes into an odd curiosity.

I can't save him. I can't help him. My paw clenches so hard around the dagger that it hurts. That is the way of things. My final target is under my feet, unable to defend himself, and so suddenly the weight of everything crushes my aching back. I can't do it.

I can, the usual voice dismisses. I've done it before.

I'm beginning to loathe that voice.

"Lurkshadow," Sir Gilbert tells me, pleasantly. "Greely Lurkshadow. He's always a fair match in a duel. I'm hoping to see him off before we go to war."

My eyes squeeze shut as my paw comes down, that familiar slicing motion, the feeling of flesh and muscle torn through.

I open my eyes.

The spirits are gone.

That was all?

Sir Gilbert's head lolls to the side, the corner of his torn cloak fluttering gently in the somber breeze.

The memories.

Goddammit, Liza and Graham's memories. I never saw them. It feels like it's been a while, but:

''A tiger falls to the ground with a grunt. He laughs uproariously at his opponent, a lanky blue wolf pointing a sword at his nose, who scowls furiously. "What the hell? What is your problem?" he barks.''

''A wolf snarls at a tiger as they exchange blow after blow, dancing about each other in the ring. "You're wide open, Regalthorn," the wolf snaps, "you always are." ''

''A tiger laughs at a wolf, who stamps his foot impatiently. "Lighten up, Lurkshal," the tiger tells him, merrily. "Don't call me that," the wolf snaps, scowling. "War isn't all fun and games, you know."''

"Greely Lurkshal-- Lurkshadow, I mean. Pleasant fellow. Hard to get used to but a real charmer when you get to his heart. He's a real formidable opponent. I'm hoping to see him off after we split parties."

"If I can't call you Lurkshal, have some respect and call me something other than Regalthorn, you sodden grump!"

"Well, I've always felt that way about things like that. I'd like to, if I have to die, die for this cause. Wouldn't you?"

"Just you wait. I'm always right. You'll change that family name to something completely different. Yeah, I can't wait to start a family under 'Regalthorn'... I might stick with my army name for that. I know most people don't."

"What's it like being a wolf?"

"They're looking fierce..."

"The phantoms. Be on your guard."

"I wonder about that a lot. What it's like to be a butterfly, or a gnat, or a star."

"Get down!"

"Yes, a star! Don't laugh at me. You're just a bag of laughs tonight... well, I guess it's payback, eh?"

"Soldier! Look out!"

"And I envy those common songbirds. I wonder what it's like to soar."

"Why this... why me?!"

"The body... the body? No! Get away from me, tyrant!"

"I wonder--"

"The body?!"

"Get down!"

"...A star, there. That one."

"Greely..."

"Why... why...?"

The phantom collar bubbles and fades, just as it always does. My back. Ow. I feel terrible today, for more reasons than one.

There's someone standing on the hill.

I knew it before I saw it, but I whip around and on the hill, the one I came from: a canine shape, standing among the fog, staring with one glinting yellow eye, the distant, faint melody of medals and decorative chains clinking together.

Oddly. Greely is here.

Did he watch me kill his friend?

Well, now it really hurts. Damn.

XXII . Discoveries
Greely stares at me from across the table in the Calliope. It's late afternoon now.

"...I'm sorry, sir. Could you repeat that."

"...Stolid. There is a sixth threat."

"A sixth threat," I repeat. "As in, one that's going to or about to destroy Jamaa." I've abandoned all formal pretenses by now. No one seems to care. I'm not in the mood to check my formalities, either, because Greely has quite literally told me something very, very big.

"Yes," Greely responds, flatly. He seems different from when I last saw him about an hour ago. I'm not sure how exactly, but I can sort of feel it. I edge away from him as he leans forward. He's on edge, I can tell, reasonably. "My scouts detected activity in a certain area, and we discovered a massive Phantom structure that was not visible before. The mages in the area reported splitting headaches, because their minds detected and felt an incredible amount of magic quite suddenly."

"It wasn't there before?"

Greely shakes his head. "It appeared in the last hour." Well, Jamaasian scouts certainly go fast. Maybe they're cheetahs. "They predict it'll move forwards soon. It's at the conjunction between Appondale and Balloosh, and tilted towards Jamaa Township."

"So my killing of the Specters didn't stop them," I say, slowly.

"I'd expect it hindered them. They won't be in your way when you fight the sixth Specter."

I blink slowly. "When I fight the sixth Specter?"

"Yes," Greely says bluntly. "I theorize the Phantoms have one last trick up their sleeve, and it's a sixth Specter they've been hiding away."

"When I fight it."

"Yes, Stolid."

"You told me..."

Greely scowls at me. "This is for the good of your people. Think about it. The world as you know it will be altered dramatically, no matter what you choose. I'd expect you're on our side, aren't you?"

I open my mouth to speak but there's a ball of ice in my throat. He's right. Why did I protest? The good of my people. On my shoulders, of all things. There's a strange glint in his yellow eye, now, one I can't ignore.

"...Of course, General Greely." I dip my head, swallowing hard.

"Thank you." Greely closes his eye, the other one scarred shut as always. Even so it doesn't look like he's really closing either of them.

"Another... nother..." Marigold looks dumbstruck. Ghost looks as if he's about to faint. Sleepwalker, fortunately, carries on flinging several crates from the back of the wagon to lighten our load. Papermoon is nowhere to be seen, but just like Sleepwalker I expect he knows.

"Don't tell anyone about it," I tell him, in an attempt at a firm tone, though some of my words end up shaking a little. I am sanctuary. I am very worried about a lot of things. No one can overhear, since we're situated under a tree a short distance from camp and no one's being particularly loud about anything, but in my brief time of knowing them I know both Marigold and Ghost can shout at the top of their lungs in conversation without a second thought.

"Of course not," Marigold protests quickly, apparently terrified by the fact I'd even consider he might do such a thing. "It's important. I'm just scared."

"I'm scared too," I say through gritted teeth. For some reason I don't want to hold back from saying such things anymore, but it pains me to say them now.

"You'll stop them," Marigold declares, then, in a softer, fear-strained tone still carrying his usual cheeriness, "won't you?"

My teeth hurt. "Of course I will. It'll be no different, you know." I try to smile. "I've beat five Specters and I've beaten more magic-users than I can count. Without even trying," I add, half-lying. I guess it depends whether you take the fairness of the battle into account, among other things.

It's disheartening the more I think of it. What more have I done? After witnessing so much death, souls swept away too soon, I turn around and take it into my own hands, perpetuating some old guild of mercenaries, perverting it with my lack of honor when it came to which jobs I took? I took them all. I didn't care. That's all I am, really. An apathetic soldier of death.

Ghost blinks, staring over my shoulder. "Stolid, there's a lynx coming this way."

I glance behind me to where he's looking. A small blue lynx with cloudy light blue eyes glances around with a frown, taking a few uncertain steps forward. I recognize him as Glassfoot, the healer who mended my ribs. He looks as if he's searching for someone.

He's a short distance away, closer to the Calliope. His steps, though uncertain, continue in our direction. I stride away from the wagon and towards him, feeling a bit lighter now that two of my weapons have been destroyed. As I near, I note the small, wrapped package in Glassfoot's paws. His head turns towards me as I approach.

"Hello," I call out towards him. He seems to jump a little, but quickly smiles, a shy, half-smile. "Hello... Stolid? I wanted to... give this to you.." he mumbles, stepping forward. I stare at his eyes, unfocused. Despite being so near me in the medical tent I somehow never noticed how cloudy they were.

Glassfoot steps forward, wobbling a bit as he holds out the package. I take it from him. "Thank you."

"Um, S..Stolid," Glassfoot near squeaks as I step back, beginning to turn away. "I just wanted to say, that um, well. This sounds weird, probably, but... by any chance, um, did you..."

I'm staring at his eyes again. Cloudy blue. Glassy. Something strikes me quite suddenly.

"I know there are a couple Magicslayers in the world," he stammers, "but there was one I met when I was ten years old, and... were you, ever, um, hired to... kill a young... someone, in a mountain village, but then stopped? And said..."

''A crying, cowering young lynx. "You can't! You can't do this to me!"''

I can help you.

"And you said... you... well, you saved m-- that person?"

I stare at Glassfoot. How old... how long was... how?

"Did you ever go by Quill Ridgewell?"

That name. One of the first, back when I wasn't so hardened.

''A lynx, lying still on the ground, bleeding from an arrow on its back. A cougar stares in a thrumming, heart-pounding, frozen disbelief.''

I can help you.

"...You lived?" I whisper. "You survived that arrow?"

Glassfoot's too-small body shoves into my chest, knocking the package out of my paws. He's gripping my cloak like a child and its blanket, his eyes squeezing shut.

''A lynx hugging a cougar fiercely, sobbing. ''

I wouldn't let them burn the body. I wouldn't. A lynx's body slumping against me, grip falling with its head to the ground, an arrow in its back.

A healer. Of course. Glassfoot is a healer, he can heal himself.

The client, an old, fearful chief in an outdated society. Demanding I purge the child with the gift from this world.

Fresh sobs rack Glassfoot's body. He doesn't slump against me. I can feel his scrabbling, hurting, healing lifeforce, bursting at the seams. Joy. Gratitude. Sorrow.

"Thank you," Glassfoot whispers, hot tears damping the coarse fabric of my cloak, the daggers I contemplated killing him with five years ago.

Those tears, melting away that ball of ice in my throat, my reluctant, stubborn terror of facing that final, make-or-break battle. I would do it. And to think that I ended up saving someone.

I am sanctuary, a faltering voice protests.

What do you do when the sanctuary you've built, so painstakingly, so fearfully, so masterfully, a wall of ice impenetrable by the outside world, impenetrable by my own psyche locked away, is really founded on lies?

What do you do when the last things holding you back from breaking open crumble away right before your eyes, because, as it turns out, they were built not on an insistence of strength but of a fear, broken open now by the strange, fluttering, beating feeling of the love in your thawing heart?

XXIII . Last Supper / Disciples
wipwipipwpipwiwpiwpwipofklfjaksfldjflk