Liveblog of Pact

well if you didnt notice, i obviously did not blog as promised a week ago. 

some stuff is going on and all my classes have research papers to write. all my energy towards reading and writing is going towards that.

“What?  It’s dangerous.”

“It’s about to get more dangerous.  I’m ninety percent sure he just called out to all the other bumps and spooks and ghosts in this forest,” I said.  I watched Evan slip over hedge and fence, struggling a bit, helpless to help.  “No more stealth.”

“Shouldn’t we go the other way?”

“No,” I said.  “Can you tell where he is?”

“He’s hiding.  Far, but not that far.  Watching and listening.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“It’s… easier to tell.  I guess, and I’m right.  I went to sleep this afternoon, too tired to keep moving, too hungry… I woke up feeling… not better, but it’s easier to tell.”

You died, I thought, and just like the monster more sensitive, with connections only to his half-devoured prey, you’ve got less flesh in the way of sensing things.

“Alright.  He’s sorta far, and he’s watching.  Not the worst case scenario,” I said.  “There’re just a few moments.  Let’s see…”

I drew June, and hacked off a few of the biggest clusters of the holly hedge.

“What’s the worst case scenario?” Evan asked.

“Him running.  Getting as far away as he can.”

“That’s not right.”

“Let’s move,” I said.  “We gotta get gone before the little guys close the net.”

“Him running is the best thing,” Evan said.

“Not when you’re hunting him,” I said.  “Come on.”

Ayy, called it.

“What year is it?”  I tried.

“Twenty-thirteen, I think.”

“Twenty-thirteen,” I responded.  “Right.”

Just last fall, then.  No small wonder he was so lucid.  He’d practically died yesterday.

Help was never going to come for him.  There were wards, to keep people out and away from the monster in the woods.  He’d been lured or spooked into entering the area, and there hadn’t been a way out.

Now that he was a ghost, he’d retained all of the prey instincts and tactics and desperation that had kept him going, up until he’d stopped.  Such was the imprint he’d left.

It didn’t explain why he’d been so typical a ghost before, though.  In the tree, by the river, looking through me.

There was more to this particular riddle.

The river has something fucky about it. 

I investigated the fence.  Sure enough, it was plastic.  Faux picket fencing, waist height, churned out by machine, with interlocking panels.

No reason it should stop the monster.

The bush… I had to push off the snow that layered over the top, to get a better view.

Holly.

“Run.”

“Run?”

“Over the fence, over the bush.”

He had to climb over the bush, passed through the snow that layered it, as if it wasn’t there.  Which it wasn’t, for him.

I simply leaped, rolling over the top of the edge, and landed on the other side.

I had to look twice before I saw it, lurking.  I could make out the red eyes, glowing in darkness.  It was breathing hard, from the long run.

I looked down, and the boy was shivering.

Evan spoke, “He wants to eat me.  He won’t let me sleep, growling and sending things.  He won’t let me stop.  Then he grins.  He smiles.  Because I’m not happy and he enjoys it.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “That’s… what he is.”

“It’s never going to end,” Evan said.  “Help’s never going to come.”

“Hey,” I said.  “I-”

The Other lunged.  Evan screamed, backing up, as the goblin-beast ran towards us.

The reaction had to be a replay, the movements were too natural.  The ghost tried to retreat, and he fell instead.  He screamed.

The goblin, the Hyena, Evan’s Wolf, the monster… whatever it was, it stopped short of the hedge.  It paced there, on the other side, looming, looking down on a child who had been reduced to stark terror.

Petty.

Vile.

The hedge served two purposes.  It hid the shotgun, for one thing, which let me pull the trigger, with less than ten feet between me and the monster.

It also meant that when the shotgun did fire, there were shreds of holly mixed in with the shot.

Oh holy shit. Its over, just like that? 

The monster reacted, rearing up, flinching, shaking his head as if to get the offending materials loose.

I could have raised the shotgun, to get a better shot, but I kept it where it was, firing again through the hedge.  Further away, less direct.  But there was the wind rune, and that counted for something.  A little more oomph.

I hope this is enough. Seems chapter is ending soon though... 

He still flinched, reacting.  He growled, breaking the perpetual silence, and backed away to a safer distance.  One open eye glowered at me.  The other squinted. I fumbled with the shotgun until I managed to open it up.  I reached into one pocket for ammo, and reloaded rather clumsily.  I could have managed better, but I wasn’t about to take my eyes off the Other. Evan stepped closer to me.  He’d stood up without traversing the space in between.  Switching too rapidly to another state, another piece of script. Wonder and fear both.  Awe? I imagined it was the same expression he’d had on his face when he’d discovered the water was a boundary the Other couldn’t cross. “Like I said, kiddo, help already came.” The ghost was kind enough that he didn’t disagree.  Script or no. I watched the thing, looking for a response. If it could talk, I imagined it would have just now.  But it didn’t, which posed problems. Everything I’d bound thus far, I’d negotiated with. How the fuck was I about to bind this thing?  It was a big, nasty, cunning animal, beast in every respect that a ‘beast’ was a problem for me, and it wasn’t stupid. Not stupid, but petty.  It was content to taunt. Except it wouldn’t be in a taunting mood, now that I’d shot it. I’d embrace the fact.  It was angry?  I’d have to find a way to use the anger. “Your move, little goblin,” I said.

...Sure, little.

Now start thinking of how to use its large amount of anger. 

He stepped back again, and then he roared.

Howled.  Screeched.  It wasn’t a natural sound.  It was a broken, crackling, painful sound, one that made my skin crawl.

That done, it disappeared, fleeing into the thick of the woods.

A connection, faint.

Through that connection, I saw something else.  Not just a thread or a line between me and the boy, but a bolt of lightning, arcing off.

I focused on other things near me, on trees and stones.

I could tell, now, there was a conflux, a well.  A star at the center of this small world of trees and hills and frozen streams.  Something powerful and scary enough that every other thing in these woods related to it in some fashion.  The monster.

Through the connections that surrounded me, I could see it.

No sooner did I try, than I felt it looking back.  Far away.  Navigating around the stream.

I felt it change course, making its way to me.

Shit. Gotta remember these connections are 2 way. 

Instinct told me to make a break for the stream.  If this was how he functioned,  I could cross each time he came over to my side.

Instincts were not my friend, in this particular circumstance.  He’d called things to that location by knocking the stone over.  They would get in my way.

Besides, I needed to make progress.  Backtracking over and over would be safe, but it wouldn’t get that monster bound and over to Conquest’s custody.

I headed in the direction of the kid ghost.

A kind of conviction settled within me, as pieces clicked into place.  This was how he operated, how he hunted.  The territory was his, almost like a demesne.  All spirits fled from him, because there was no denying what he was and what he did to Others and mortals both.  Thus, the rules of the world were bent.  He made no sound, because there were no spirits to be found.

He littered the area with wounded spirits.  His spirits.  Maybe he held parts of them in his stomach.  Maybe he had a kind of ownership of them because he’d traumatized them.  But he maintained a kind of power over them all the same.

When a connection did form, when something did reach him, he was sensitive to it.  Easy enough to be sensitive, when the only spirits that maintained any connection to him were the ones that had to.

Any maimed ghost I had contact with, in turn, contacted him.

As if the forest was littered with strings and bells.

Too many different types of Other to avoid contact with all of them.

It also meant that interacting with the little boy’s ghost would bring the monster down on my head.

I didn’t have enough chain to make a ring that would encircle him.

Draw a circle in the snow? On the frozen river? Ohhh... cut a hole in the river? Idk how you’d do that though. 

I found the boy in a tree.  He’d made a makeshift treehouse.  Chickenwire stretched across a ‘v’ of branches, forming a hoop overhead, with openings on either end. I could see the fence posts the chickenwire had been taken from. He simply sat there, twenty feet above the ground, arms around his knees. “What’s your name?” I called out. Stupid question, dangerous, given the fact that any connection to him would help the monster find us.  A ghost could only give answers from its particular script. “Evan,” the hooded ghost said. “You’ve stayed alive all this time?” I asked.  I could feel the connection, sense it drawing closer.  ‘Close’ being relative.  The monster had rounded the far end of the stream some time ago, though. Not just the monster.  It was causing noise, and the Others were following in its wake. “It’s been days,” he said, high above me. When he looked at me, eerily enough, he looked at me.  Not through me. “Trying to stay alive long enough for help to come?” I asked.  While I spoke, my eyes roved over the area.  The wire fence was up there.  There wasn’t anything down here.  “Have you eaten?” “I haven’t eaten, I haven’t slept.  I’ve barely drank.” “Yeah,” I said.  “Not sure you want to drink the water from that stream.” “I’m seeing things,” he said, his voice small.  “The wolf was there from the beginning, but there are other things.  There’s a fog.  And the hungrier and tireder I get, the thicker the fog gets.  I see things in the fog.” I touched the chain from around my shoulders, but I had no idea what to do with it.  Couldn’t form a ring big enough… clothesline the thing?  It wouldn’t do anything. The thing was getting closer, and my priorities were changing. “Where do you run, when you need to run from here?”  I asked. I didn’t hear a response, so I looked up.  He’d shrugged.  “If they’re down there, I wait.  But they have to leave.  Or they leave so they can try to trap me.  I go down, and then I go that way.  Climb over the short fence and bushes.  He doesn’t follow that way.” “Can you show me?” I asked. He didn’t climb down.  He disappeared, in something between a flicker and a fade, and he appeared at the bottom of the tree, letting go of a branch and stumbling a bit.  So exhausted he could barely stand.  He took a step and nearly tripped. I reached out to steady him, and my hand passed through him. “I’ll be okay,” he said.  “Have to wait.  Be brave.  Help has to come.” “You’re awfully lucid for a…” I stopped before finishing the sentence. “Are- are you calling me something bad?” I was so caught off guard by the direct response I couldn’t put two and two together at first.  He wasn’t drawing a conclusion.  He was responding to the word ‘lucid’. “Lucid is good.  It means you’re… awake, aware.  You’re making a lot of sense.” “Oh,” he said.

... This is not a regular ghost. I do not know what it is though. 

The thing was getting closer. “Where’s the short fence?” I asked. He didn’t respond, but flickered and traveled a good ten feet away, already walking as he arrived. Still moving a little too slowly.  I wanted to be running. We reached the fence. I’d hoped for metal.  I’d hoped for barbed wire, or more chainlink or chicken wire.  But it was short, plastic, and from the height, apparently meant to keep rabbits or other pests from spilling over to another section of the park.  The cheap look of it was disguised by a hedge.  I couldn’t see with the snow, but my gut told me there had once been a walking path here, when this area of the park was more traveled. All it was now was a stupid, pointless boundary, in the middle of the woodland. “You couldn’t go home, huh?” I asked.  The monster was close, but I couldn’t find him, scanning the trees.  “How’d you get stuck out here?” “I got lost.  My backyard opens out onto the park.  I saw something… someone?  I went to look, and I got turned around.  Scary noises, and growling.  I wanted to leave, but there was always something.  I tried following the paths, but then I’d see the wolf standing there.” “He let you go?” “I… I don’t think so.  This bush is how I escaped the first few times.  I’d follow the hedge, and if I saw or heard him, I’d climb over and hide on the other side.  I- I use the water to hide my scent, washing my boots, like I learned about in school, but yesterday, he was there, and he saw me.  He attacked, and I ran over, and he didn’t follow.  There are two places I can use to escape, like that.” “The stream and the hedge?” I asked. “When I can, I go to the road.  I follow the hedge, and I have to leave it behind to peek.  I look for cars.  Then trouble comes and I have to run harder than I ever run.  There’s nowhere else I can go where I have a place to run to if I need to hide.” “So you wait,” I said.  “Getting hungrier, more tired, thirsty…” “And cold at night.  But I’ll be okay,” he said.  He said it like he was reassuring me.  “I’m tougher than I look.  And smarter.  Did you see my treehouse?” “I saw.”  I kind of want that chickenwire. “I’ll be okay,” he said.  There was more of the ‘ghost’ to his voice, as he said it.  “I just need to wait.  Help will come.” “Hasn’t it come already?” I asked.  “I’m here.” “You’re not really real,” he said.  He started to reach out, then dropped his hand. I looked down, and saw the streaks of glamour, turned into insulation. Mucking with his senses? He was capable of rationalizing, but not entirely capable.  He remained a ghost.

Silent.  I hadn’t heard it approach, hadn’t heard branches break or snow crunch.  Its breathing didn’t make a sound.

It moved forward, cutting off my retreat.  Not that I was particularly capable of runningfrom it. I had the creature to my ten o’clock, the river to my right, and the steep hillside behind me.  Walking forward would mean walking to the same destination it was heading to.  Walking to my left would only require the thing to turn around.

I saw its limbs.  Scrawny fore and hind limbs, narrow enough for me to make out the bones and tendons.  I could see gaps where the flesh sucked in around the ribcage, its dangling, twisted, knotted genitals, and the broken, splintered claws on each foot.

For all that it was gaunt and broken, it was more scary, not less.  Those claws wouldn’t cut me like a scalpel.  They’d tear me like the uneven end of a broken bottle.

This thing was mangy, malnourished, and it was still strong enough to beat me in any contest of strength, no question.

I owed that little boy ghost an apology, for the accusation.  No mistaking what I was looking at.

Tru

Anyway shotgun time? 

“Hello,” I said.  “You’re the thing they call the Hyena, I take it?”

It moved through the trees without a noise.  When it was visible again, I could see its muzzle pulled into a leer, revealing teeth that were every bit as broken and disgusting as the claws.

Hatchet wouldn’t do a thing.  Shotgun… assuming it was vulnerable and not weak to the iron, and the bullets would hurt it as much as they would hurt any other non-Other thing, I couldn’t imagine the shotgun doing anything substantial.    The chain was too fucking short to surround the bastard.

Oh. You’re Fucked! 

Maybe this was a suitable battleground.  But I sure as fuck wasn’t ready to fight the thing.

It stopped pacing forward, now at my twelve o’clock.  Standing by the bank of the frozen stream.  Two red eyes stared at me.

Seeing it more clearly, where I could make out any feature, I could see that it didn’t resemble a hyena.  It didn’t resemble a wolf, either.  Everything fit together wrong.  Proportions were off, if even, muscles overlapped in odd ways.  This was not a creature crafted by years of evolution.  It had been made wrong, more like a humanoid thing that had once walked on two legs and then been twisted and wrenched into a four-legged shape, everything torn apart and rearranged and regrown until it was this.

If anything told me that, it was the expression it wore.

I shook my head a little.

It was a goblin.  A big, bad sort of goblin, twisted into a monstrous shape.  It wanted to tear me apart and then tear my ghost apart.

That was the reality I needed to focus on.

“Do-” I started.

I stopped because he lunged.

Crossing the distance between us.

Stream to my right, steep hill behind me, thick trees to the left.

Wade in the water.

I took the same path the ghost had.  Over the jutting, ice-slick stones.

I’m so sorry for doubting you ghost. 

I got about two steps over before I fell.  Foot slipping, shin slamming into the space between two rocks, chest hitting another rock dead on, knocking half of the of air out of me.  All in all, I came a matter of inches from simply bouncing off the rock and tumbling down the ‘waterfall’.

Rip. Well guys, Pact was a good story, it ended pretty arguably though. 

I heard a crash.  I looked down and to the right, and I could see one of the big boulders from the hilltop tumbling down, tearing out chunks of frozen earth and ice on the way, sending smaller stones skidding out onto the frozen stream’s surface.

When I looked up, the thing was no longer there.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to call it the Hyena anymore.  It felt off-target.  A bad name for what I was dealing with.  But what fit?  The Goblin-beast?  A bit wordy inside my head.

The beast?  That had connotations.

The monster?  That would have to do.

Moving more slowly, more carefully I dug my fingers into the craggier spots on the rock, where the snow didn’t cover it, found my feet and made my way across, slipping twice more, though not so badly.

It was gone.  It hadn’t simply followed and pounced on me.

Why?

The water?

The little boy had apparently found a way to evade the monster he called ‘the wolf’.  Crossing the water.  Not explicitly an anti-goblin measure, but… well, labels were dangerous.

Its Something! Now to examine why and how to use it...

Distant murmurs and shouts suggested I wasn’t alone.  The boy wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but the noise of the falling boulder had attracted attention.

I could make out the shitting ghost, way down the way, staggering in zig-zags, blind and clutching its stomach.  More were visible in the trees.  They walked around trees, but they passed through branches that had been lowered closer to the ground by snow and snowfall.

This was how the goblin functioned.  Take the prey it could, use the remains of its prey when it couldn’t do it itself.

I headed into the trees, and the cries of the ghosts carried sensations.  Illness, an inability to breathe, pains here and there, disorientation, blindness, weakness.  Few lasted for more than a second.

Doubts harried me much as the ghosts did.  The fact that there were ghosts on this side meant the monster could and would travel over this way.  The stream wasn’t a barrier, not completely.  It moved in near-silence, and it could find me.

Hmm. Maybe it is just can cross at certain points.

I was following the boy, after a fashion.  Taking his advice on paths and on that escape route.

Problem was, well, he’d died.

His advice wasn’t perfect, or he’d be alive.

Yeah, i was about to comment on that too :/

I moved the shotgun around my body until I had it in position and ready to fire.  More for the security than out of any belief that it would help.

The murmuring of ghosts fell behind me as I moved on.  I saw an Other to my right, something more wooden than anything, doubled over in pain, but it moved too slowly to pursue me.

Moving was making my injuries from last night felt.  The scrapes and gouges I’d left alone, because I simply didn’t have enough glamour.

There weren’t enough assurances here.  The rules for this goblin were a little different than the usual.  I had to bind it, and I had almost no experience on binding, let alone binding goblins.

The kid had figured something out, or he’d been awfully lucky.  I could use that knowledge or luck.

“Little boy,” I said.

Not even a glimmer.

“Wet boots,” I said.

If there was a connection, I couldn’t make it out.

How to connect to him?

“The little survivor, trying to make it until he can go home,” I murmured.

That is really sad :( 

I circled around them, giving them a wide berth.  They paid me no mind, only sitting there, shuddering, occasionally exclaiming in pain.

Reaching the stream, I saw another ghost by the water’s edge.  The hooded boy.

“Water in my boots,” he said, with that peculiar affect ghosts had.  Maintaining the emotions they had at the moment of death.  “Wet socks.”

I judged his outfit.  The hooded coat wasn’t really meant for the worst of winter.  The boots were closer to rain boots than anything else.  Not the simple rubber sort, a little warmer, but not that warm.  When had he died?

Fall?

“Cold water, huh?” I asked.

He spoke, but it sounded more like he was talking to himself.  “Feet are cold, but I have to keep running.  Have to.  If I keep running and keep hiding someone will come and find me and I can go home.”

That said, he took off.  No snow crunched under his feet.  There was only the sound of wet socks squishing.

I looked back at the family.  Too many ghosts for one area.  How many of these guys had followed the Hyena from its last haunt?

Or did it have a way of engineering these deaths?  Spook a car into going off the road?  Drive a homeless family into the water?

Doing whatever had been done to this boy?

If I’d had any hesitations about setting foot on the ice, that idea was one more reason to stay back.

Taking risks was a bad idea.  If this thing was cunning, it was all too possible that it was capable of something more devious.

I traveled alongside the stream.

Another ghost squatted on the far end of the stream, face impossible to make out, pants down, hands holding nearby branches for balance.  It was shitting an endless stream of liquid shit and blood at the edge of the stream.  Claw marks criss-crossed its back, having gouged flesh, shattering ribs and spine.

Um... nasty. 

They apparently hadn’t been having a good day before the Hyena appeared to savage their ghost.

I could hear the intermittent grunts and groans well after the ghost was out of sight.

“Sorry, ghost,” I murmured.  “If my life wasn’t what it was, and if this wasn’t what it was, I might come back to put you to rest.”

Maybe come back after Hyena? 

Alexis had once given me a hand to help me up from the lowest point in my life.  Or the lowest point before I inherited the house, in any event.  Even if this was a ghost, a psychic echo, I felt like it deserved the same.  I knew it wasn’t real.  It was merely a replay, a bad recording.  There wasn’t anything to it beyond the scenes it lived out in perpetuity.

But I still felt like I should be doing something.

I guess I assumed ghosts had some sort of consciousnesses still... is that not true? 

I started hiking up a steep hillside with large rocks jutting out.

I could imagine the Hyena running up, knocking the rocks from where they sat, crushing me.  Knocking me ten feet to the right, so I hit the ice and broke through to hypothermia-inducing water.  Doing something.  I was vulnerable while climbing.  But I wasn’t about to backtrack.

The savaging at the Hyena’s hands that would inevitably follow, to defile my corpse and ruin me after death…

I picked my course carefully, with attention to where I put my hands and feet, and where everything was.  No icy patches to slip on, no areas where the ground wasn’t really solid.

I was focused enough on the navigation and my thoughts of the shitting ghost that I was caught entirely off guard by what waited at the top of the hill.

The little boy stood there.  His eyes technically on me, but looking through me.  From my angle, I could see his face beneath the hood.

Large eyes, with exaggerated dark circles under them, a thin mouth, hair plastered to his forehead by sweat.  Hands in his pockets.

... what the fuck.

Ummm... no comment. Gotta read more. 

His eyes moved this way, then that.  Searching his surroundings.

“We keep running into each other like this,” I said.  “Is that because you took good paths, or because you want to run into me?”

“The slaves sang songs,” he said.  Voice high.  Prepubescent.

“What?”

“…a secret way to spread the word.”

“That so?” I asked, not really looking for a response.  Riddles.  I climbed to my feet, walking around him.  There weren’t as many spirits over here.  But then again, most of the spirits had come in response to the noise.  I’d chosen the path with the fewest of them, in an indirect way.

Which made sense, sort of.  The stream was blocking ones on the other side from coming over here.  It was only natural there would be less lurking around here.

Was this a good battleground?  If I were to lay a trap…

“Wade in the water,” he said, drawing out the words slightly.

“What’s that?”

“Wade in the water, children,” he said, a lilt to the words.  “Wade in the water.”

Singing?  Halfway between a whisper and a song.

Is this how the Hyena lures people into the water?  This can’t be the Hyena itself in disguise, right? Can’t it? 

“Something, something, trouble the water…” he murmured.

I heard hints of a chorus.  They could have been an echo, but there were different tones, different cadences.  Some were more song, others more whisper.

“Rest assured,” I said, “You’re doing a fantastic job at being creepy.  As ghosts go, you’re first rate.”

He turned his back, then hopped along the biggest rocks that sat at the upper edge of the short, frozen waterfall.

A moment later, I saw him doing it again, the opposite way.

A half-dozen flickering replays all at once.  Back and forth over the river.

While the scenes played out, he appeared again in front of me, still very alert, watching the surroundings.

“Not your average ghost,” I said.

I had a very bad feeling.  A sense of pressure.  Foreboding.

Was this the trick?  The trap that saw me tumbling over the waterfall to become a ghost?

“Are… you the Hyena?” I asked.

“The wolf,” he whispered, in response, eyes wide and staring.

... Oh fuck. Are there two things here? 

Not reassuring.

A moment later, he turned, running.  Scrambling away.

I heard a frightened noise escape his mouth as he scrambled over the rocks, interrupting his whispers to himself.  “Wade in the water.”

I turned to look, and I saw it.

It stood in the thickest patch of trees.  The way it was obscured, I could only make out bits and pieces.  Fur, matted and stained with mud and dark bodily fluids.  It breathed hard enough that I could see its chest expanding with each intake of breath.  Fog appeared with each exhalation, and it took a moment before the fog faded enough to reveal a deep red eye that I could make out through the gloom and intervening branches.

“There isn’t a car here.”

“I… I’m trapped.  My legs are crushed.  Nobody’s coming.”

The mention of his legs made pain emanate outward.  The brute lashed out, but the different sources of noise were confusing it.

“You were in an accident,” I said.  “What are you going to do?”

Move it along.  Push him to follow the script.

“I’m… need to get my phone, call for help.  But it’s not where it’s supposed to be.  Day’s dead.  Oh god.  My arm hurts.  Why?”

I wasn’t sure, but he seemed a fraction fainter than he had.

He was coming to pieces.  Every time he mentioned his legs, he reaffirmed the imprint he’d made in the world.  Every time the arm came up, though, he was running headlong into dissonance, into something that didn’t fit him and his existence.

Question was, would his anger and restlessness drive him to keep pursuing me, despite everything else, or could I get him back on track, using some metaphysical survial mechanism?

“You can’t reach your phone.  What’s the next step?”

“My arm, it hurts.”

Not a bad thing, if he was unraveling.  But it was taking too long, and I only had thirty seconds to a minute at best.

“What’s the next step?” I asked, again.

“Get out, get away, the car might blow up.  Have to get up, get away.”

Cars didn’t really blow up, but that was the narrative.  The image that was Mr. Legs here.

“Then hurry,” I said.

I could see the image distorting, a gap, a flaw.  A scene trying to play out and glitching on some fundamental level.  An interruption in the script.

“Hurry,” I repeated.

Blake needs to hurry too!!!! Can’t believe this is working though. 

My voice echoed through the trees.  The giant punched a tree where the sound had bounced off it.

Not necessarily a good thing.  More were coming.  I might very well have cut off my head to spite my face.  Or whatever the appropriate metaphor was for attempting to solve one problem and creating a bigger one.

If I couldn’t handle two Others, how was I supposed to handle four?  Or ten?

He was replaying the script, stuttering.

“Hurry,” I hissed the word, pushing him to try again.  If he broke down enough, I could slip free.  But I couldn’t jump down to the ground if he was right there, to grab me, or hit me full-on with whatever he was made up of.

He tried again, a little more distinct.  I could hear him now.

“I can do this, I just have to push hard enough, squeeze myself free-” glitch.  “-My arm, it’s not there.”

“Try,” I said.

“Where’s my arm?”

“Try,” I said, once more.

I was nearly out of time.  Others were now drawing closer, getting caught up in one of the same tangles of branches that had slowed me down.  Except they didn’t care about making noise.  Not ghosts.  Men and women in white, features bland and blanched by pain, their clothes stained red around gouges where sharp blades had penetrated the cloth and flesh beneath.  Intelligent enough to be distracted by the sound.  Perhaps intelligent enough to look for me and find me.

The ghost began to struggle, jerky movements, replays of scenes.  This time, however, he simply skipped the scenes where he’d used one arm to help pull himself free.

He screamed, an agonized sound, somehow folded over or partially wrapped aroud something that wasn’t present here, and blood began to pour, flooding the snow around him.  His legs were tearing, his wound where the arm had been torn off joined them in how it bled openly.

I felt the same pain in my own legs.  Each time I’d felt his power, I’d felt like something was being used to pulverize my kneecaps.  Now I got to experience what it was like to try and heave those pulverized limbs free of a vise.

My vision swam.  It was bad enough that I nearly let go of the branch.

I could hear a growling echoing around the area.

The Hyena.

No.

Sorry for big chunk of text, I was just on the edge of my seat.

ANyway, Blake is fucked. 

When I managed to heave in a breath, gasping for air like I was drowning, I heard that same sound echoed.  The noise had been my own, echoed.

I saw the ghost pause for rest, and fragments of bone slid out to protrude once more through the flesh around his knee.  He screamed.

Three or four stab wounds made themselves felt around my own knees.  Illusory, not real, no real harm done, but I still felt it, still screamed, a strangled sound.  I closed my eyes, to shut out everything else, to keep myself from losing my lunch as my vision wavered.

Adrenaline flooded my body.  Again, not real adrenaline.  Only an illusion, the desperate sort of energy one got when they had no other choice but to face terror head-on.

No doubt in my mind: destroying one’s own body in a desperate attempt at freedom and escape was terrifying.

Congrats Blake, by saying that you have ensured that that will happen to you. 

He wrenched himself free, tumbled over some invisible barrier, and collapsed in a heap, radiating agony.

The old spatters of blood from his earlier theatrics faded as the new ones appeared.

He wasn’t moving.  I didn’t, however, trust him to stay still when I hit the ground.  Not with how my own mobility might be suffering.

“You’re free,” I said.  “What now?”

“I’m- I did it,” he said, without rising.  “My… my arm.  I’m supposed to have an arm.  Day!  Day, can you hear me!?”

He was barely there, his voice faint.

“What now?” I asked, again.  “She’s not responding.  She can’t respond.”

My real voice was enough for the pale Others in the woods to turn my way.

I wasn’t exactly sure what they were, but they moved as a flock.  Pale haired, pale skinned, dressed in white, bleeding from their ragged Hyena-inflicted wounds.

I got a bad vibe from them.  Of all the Others here that were in pain, they were in a eerily quiet, bottled-up sort of pain.  They were solemn.  They were different, cold, and I liked them less than I liked anything else I could make out.

Now they were headed my way.

“You’re free of the car, Day isn’t listening.  What do you do?”

I couldn’t keep the desperation out of my voice as I asked that last question.

Maybe the desperation was what he paid attention to.

“Wait by the car.”

“The car isn’t here,” I said.

Just like that, he was gone.

...Wow, you did actually save them. And yourself. Kind of. For now. Also I remembered Blake can’t lie so I double checked and it seems like he didn’t, so good for doing that too. 

I couldn’t say whether it was one more straw, to break the camel’s back and unravel him or if he’d simply gone back to where the accident happened, but he was no longer beneath me.

I dropped from the branch.  Half hopping down, half letting go.

The snow crunched under me, and my ‘wounded’ knees didn’t hold my weight.  I fell, the snow crunching again, beneath my weight.  Both crunches echoed around the space.

The brute and two more ghosts seemed to react to the ghost noises, but the pale ones weren’t so foolish.  They were heading for me, moving with a quiet sort of insistence, heedless of branches in the way, to the point that they got caught, branches scratching their faces and digging into their chests and guts.  But each branch in turn broke, and they were making headway.

The phantom pains in and around my knees faded swiftly, now that ‘Mr. Legs’ was gone.  I found my feet, assessed the general dangers around me, and headed for the nearest gap, the same direction the ghost boy had gone.

The false adrenaline faded, and I made myself slow down, take stock of where I was going, where I was coming from, and what I needed to do.

Branches were broken here or there.  Had I not seen the Others, if I were viewing all of this in blissful ignorance, I might have dismissed it as the casualties of winter.  Ice and snow tearing weaker branches from the trees.

As it was, I was aware that these were more wounds, of a sort.  Something big had come this way, and its mass had knocked healthy branches free, scattering them to either side.  The clearest, most open path available to me was also the path that it traveled.

More things were veering my way as I made my way through the woods.

I shouldn’t have been making that much noise, but…

I was multiplying the amount of noise I did make.

As much as I wanted to keep moving, I made myself stop, and I manually altered the glamour.

Hooray, we are doing this. 

Congratulations, Blake Thorburn.  You’ve successfully reverted two or three million years.  You’re an ape in a tree, hiding from the scary things.

Don’t be too hard on yourself Blake. It is a very scary thing. 

“Day!  It’s your arm that’s supposed to be fucked up!  Day!  You’re the one who died, Day!”

Shut the fuck up.

“God, my legs!”

Again, that wave of pain.  An illusory sort of pain, something that might have knocked me out of the tree if I hadn’t been wrapped around a branch.

The big thing that loomed beneath me, it seemed, wasn’t any more a fan of the ghost than I was.  This wasn’t a bad thing.  Wasn’t a good thing either.  It was just a thing.

Another scary thing! 

It lashed out, striking blindly at the air with thick, heavy arms.  The ghost didn’t have the sense to get out of the way, but the Other didn’t have the ability to hit the ghost.

Nothing accomplished.  Only a brief distraction for the blind Other, a bigger threat beneath me, and a bit more nervousness on my part, when one large clawed fist came a little too close to the tree I was perched on.

It wasn’t calming down, either.  The pain it suffered, the wound, it was driven out of its mind, unable to calm down or relax.

I wasn’t sure how to label the thing.  Yeti?  Troll?  Ogre?  It was big, strong, and somewhere midway between human and animal.  The books had said that the more brutish Others hadn’t survived the years without being enslaved or killed, but it could be argued that this one wasn’t exactly alive.  Or free.

The Hyena was apparently coming my way.  That was, if the ghost wasn’t simply repeating a stock phrase.

“Day!  Oh god, Day!  Oh god!”

The big thing lunged.  Its shoulder brushed against the trunk of the tree, and I swayed briefly.  I heard a faint cracking sound.  Ice breaking, or wood splintering?

“Please, Day, wake up!” the ghost cried out.

Speaking of stock phrases.

Mr. ‘Legs’ here was a car accident victim.  One nearby.  He’d hurt his legs, his girlfriend or wife or sister or something had been in the passenger seat, dying.

Could I reason with him?

Probably not, I decided.

Yeah these things are much more far gone than the dude that Pauz fucked up was. No way to save them. 

Could I do something, given the chance to talk?  Maybe.

But I couldn’t afford to make too much noise and give the ogre-troll thing a chance to home in on me.  I didn’t trust the shotgun to work, and I did believe that a missed or ineffective shot would get me killed.

Besides, I suspected I’d need what I had for the Hyena.

Well, I was camouflaged in glamour.  Whatever that was worth.  It wasn’t helping much against these Others, but it was very possible they were using other senses to track me.

Was that my bias at play?  I was human, so I thought in human terms when camouflaging myself?  My own bias would influence the glamour, in turn…

Alright.  Moving very slowly and very carefully at my position on the branch, I ran my hand along my arms, across my face and over the top of my head, raised one leg to sweep my hand over the glamour I’d painted there…

I could see a brassy highlight here and there, where I’d made contact, deeper shadows.

I had no idea if it would work.

I whistled, a small, tentative sound.

The big thing turned to face me, drawing one hand back.

The whistle echoed, faint sounds a short distance away, bouncing off the trees.

The thing turned, first one way, then the other.

It wouldn’t fool anyone or anything that was thinking straight.  The false sounds were too faint, the sound I made still too distinct.  But this thing wasn’t thinking straight.  It was purely reactive, every action undertaken with blind aggression.

“Tires squealing,” the ghost said, but he didn’t move his mouth.  A thought uttered aloud?

The ghost was still directly beneath me.  He was the real problem.

Damn Blake, you are getting better at this. I am surprised that worked though, honestly. 

More problems, I could tell, were on their way, attracted by the voice and by the violence of the big ogre-giant thing.

They weren’t here yet, though, meaning I had a moment.

Was I supposed to rationalize with this very confused spirit?  Or take a different tack?

No time to waste.

“You killed Day,” I said.

Whispers of my voice echoed through the area.  The brute snorted and grunted, lashing out at air, before stepping a little bit away from me.

“Day!  No!”

“You fucked up,” I said, injecting a note of anger into my voice.  “Day’s dead.”

“Please, Day!  My arm, it’s not supposed to hurt like this!”

“Why are you talking?  Who’s listening besides yourself?  Day is dead.”

I can;t see this tactic working..

The ghost went momentarily quiet.

Which only made it easier to notice that other spirits were drawing nearer, some murmuring.  I could see glimpses of them through the trees.

“My arm, it’s not supposed to hurt like this.  Hurts more than anything else.  It’s your fucking fault, Day!”

More volume meant more attention from the locals.

I needed to think simpler.  I needed to break this pattern, and the way to do that was… what?

Get him back to his usual pattern?

“Your arm isn’t supposed to hurt like this, and you’re not supposed to be here.  Think,” I said.  “Think, where are you supposed to be?”

I shifted the chain’s position at my shoulder.  Coils looped over one shoulder and across the body, held close by my jacket.  It barely made a noise as I adjusted it.

Hatchet at one hip, flare gun at the other, shotgun at my back, strap cross-wise with the chain.  I had a box knife in one pocket, pens and twine in the other.  Nails and other construction stuff in one cargo pocket, a small paint jar with far too little glamour inside in the other.

I was painted in the glamour-ink, but I’d had only so much to spare, not nearly enough for full coverage.  I’d gone for a hodgepodge job on skin and clothing both, instead.  Streaks, that I might match the colors of it to the background.

“I’d drop you further in, but…” the fat man, Teddy, trailed off.  He had an explanation, he just didn’t want to give it.

He was scared.

So was I, frankly.

“Wish me luck,” I said.

“Good luck.”

You should be scared. 

I made my exit.

Ghosts were already emerging from the trees.  Some ethereal, some so real I had to look twice to see where they weren’t quite real.  Feet a little hard to make out, or faces a touch too contorted.  All bore ghastly wounds where the goblin had bitten them.

Some veered my way.  I backed away at the same time the car pulled a ‘u’ turn, and the ghosts chose to follow after the car rather than me.

That wouldn’t remain the case.

I’d inscribed my boots with quieting runes, and the crunching of snow and branches were muted.  More blood spent.  I could have used glamour, but I valued the versatility the small tin offered me over the cost that the blood payment involved.  Being a little bit more me wouldn’t keep me alive in a pinch.  Being able to change my voice or features could.

I hope Blake gets at least a week to recover after tomorrow. 

Overhanging pine branches had caught the snow, meaning it wasn’t so deep that I was sinking in knee-deep, as I’d feared.  With the quiet the runes afforded, I could move reasonably quickly.  Not running, but not walking either.  I had to conserve strength.  This was a hike, a marathon, and chances were good that I’d need to run at some point. A glance behind me indicated that a ghost from that initial pack had followed me.  A man, missing an arm, a mess of gore around his knees, floating as much as he staggered.  He didn’t care too much about the intervening obstacles.  Slow, steady progress. I sped up a fraction. Another being a distance away.  Something bigger and Other.  Huffing, panting in what sounded like quiet agony.  I couldn’t make it out beyond the intervening branches and the shadows that the overhanging needles and snow afforded. It didn’t notice me, and my steady forward progress left it behind soon enough. In a slow moment where I needed to find a way past a fence of crossing branches, the pursuing ghost drew a little closer to me. I could hear him speaking.  “It hurts.  Why does it hurt so much?  The car…” I scanned the area.  I had a choice of either pushing through the branches in front of me or going around.  Pushing through the branches meant noise.  Going around meant looping closer to the pursuing ghost. “I’m… my arm wasn’t crushed.  What happened to my arm, Day?  Day?” I circled around.  Couldn’t waste time debating, or I’d only corner myself. He grew more agitated as the distance between us closed. “Day!  It’s- the car hit your side, Day!  It’s supposed to be your arm!” We were no more than fifteen feet apart.  I rounded the thicket of trees and started to make more distance between us. “Your arm, Day!” With the surge of anger, the irrationality, I could feel the distance between us closing faster.  He was running, or whatever the equivalent was when one floated. I picked up my own pace.  Get far enough away, and he’d calm down.  He was only reacting to proximity. “Your arm, my legs!” His legs.  The idea and the words carried a certain power with them.  Pain. Incapacitation. Someone might as well have hit me across the knees with a baseball bat. I collapsed. “Your arm, my legs!  You don’t get to do this to me, Day!  You never played fair!” Talking more as he drew ever closer. I crawled, fighting past the pain. It’s an illusion.  Pretend. Nice words, but it was hard to convince my body. I hauled myself forward.  My eyes fell on a tree with low branches. I wasn’t silent as I ascended, hauling myself up with arm strength more than my legs.  It didn’t help that the ghost was still screaming. Something reacted to the noise. When I did get high enough to tentatively try using my feet to climb, I found I moved quieter.  Climbing, seizing higher branches, climbing the tree. Cornering myself already. I was scarcely ten feet above the ground as I brought my legs up out of reach. The ghost approached, stopping right beneath me. “Day!  Fuck you, Day!“ The other thing approached.  Big, shadowy, lumbering.  It left a trail of blood in its wake, a wound that never stopped bleeding. Fuck.

Going pretty well, all things considered.  You should not have climbed this tree though.

One great hand settled on the trunk of the tree, not two feet from my foot.

It was blind, face savaged.  Such was the wound.

And it wasn’t moving.  Fuck.

“He knows.  He’s coming.“

A whisper.

I looked, and I saw a ghost perched in the branches.  A little boy with a hooded coat.

No blood, no bleeding.

“Who knows?” I whispered back.

“The wolf-thing.  The worst of them.  He knows.  Run.  Have to run if I’m going to get home.  Keep running, keep hiding, and I’ll be able to go home.”

With that, he leaped down.  Both ghost and lumbering Other turned, but both were too slow.

He disappeared, like the wind.

Little fucker.

I was stuck where I was.

Shotgun pointed.

I dropped both wrapper and coke bottle in the can.

“What do you know about shamanism?” Shotgun asked me.

“I know… maybe three symbols, off the top of my head.  Dealing with the smallest spirits.”

“I’m going to show you two more.  One for quiet, for the chain.”

“Quiet is good,” I said.  “And the other one?”

He showed me the shotgun.  The butt-end of the weapon had a symbol inscribed in the wood, so it sprawled all over the wooden surface, curving around to the other side.  I turned to look, but my view was obscured as he pushed it closer to me.  Against my chest, into my hands.

He didn’t let go of the weapon, though, holding it with one hand.

“I thought you said a weapon was a bad idea,” I said.

“It’s a bad plan.  As contingencies go, it’s something.  Consider it a loaner, not a keeper.  You don’t use this on my family, and you don’t use it in any way that leads our local Lord to think we’re against him.”

I could have argued, pressed for better terms, quibbled over intent to hit his family, to cover for the slim circumstance where I accidentally clipped one.

Not worth it.

“I swear I’ll do my best to get it back to you,” I said.  “I swear I won’t use it in a way that harms your family or informs the Lord where your allegiances lie.”

He nodded, letting go.

I did not expect that at all! Blake you should probably try to get a weapon of your own... dare I say.. an implement at some point. Please. God. 

“That symbol is one for wind.”

“Wind?”

He shrugged.  “Mess with other elemental forces, and you risk disrupting the mechanism.  Weapon is maybe a little lighter, pushes a little harder.”

I nodded.

The other two returned with the chain.  They laid it out on the counter.

Shotgun grabbed the lock, turning it over so the side opposite the dial faced us.

“Your blood will work best,” he said.  He began sketching out the symbol.

My blood.  I was leery, but I had only so much of the glamour to spare after I’d touched up my injuries.

A noisy chain could lead to far more blood being spilled.

I pricked my finger and began drawing out the mark he indicated.

“You gave me your gun,” I said, while carefully copying it.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t suppose you’ll give me your name?”

“Nick,” he told me.

“Thank you, Nick.”

“That thing in the factory fucked us up so bad we can never even fathom what it did to us,” he said, his voice low.  I could see him glancing over at his son, at the other end of the room, as if verifying the guy was out of earshot.  “I think we had actual lives before.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“If you want to stop it?  Or something like it?  I’m not getting in your way.”

“Right on.”

The guy sitting under the window spoke, “It eats away at you.  Wondering what we had, before it was taken away as thoroughly as something can be taken.  We can’t do it again.  Can’t go up against something big and lose.”

“Can’t take the risk,” Shotgun said.

I finished off the sandwich I’d been nibbling on, thinking.  Nobody volunteered anything further.

“You’ll back me against the Lord of Toronto, if there’s a zero-risk way of doing it?” I asked.

“Yes,” Shotgun said.

“Will you take on a small risk, if I offer a book, once in a blue moon?”

“What risk?”

“Not sure yet,” I said.  “Still trying to pull pieces together and form a game plan.”

“Then we’re not sure either,” he replied.

“Fair,” I said.  “Will you hear me out if I want to contact you with a request?”

“Number’s on the phone,” he said.  He gestured, and his son reached over to grab the phone on the counter, turning it my way.

I wrote it down.

“Dealing with that thing is tomorrow, so I should have time to talk to the Astrologer before then,” I said.  “Today, I’ve got to deal with this goblin called the Hyena.”

“We’ve heard of it in passing.”

“Give me a hand in dealing with this thing, any tips, trinkets, knowledge, it means I’m in better shape for dealing with the Lord of Toronto.”

“You’ll need a small army,” Shotgun said.

“I’m going in alone.”

“Then you’re probably going to die.  Too many nasty, angry things in those woods, I’d give you low odds even if the Hyena wasn’t there, if you just had to go in and out, dealing with the flora and fauna in there.”

Blake’s always probably going to die. 

“And the Hyena?” I asked.

“The Hyena caught and mutilated each and every one of them.  Think about that.  Think about how long it’s been around, the number of fights it’s been in.”

“It’s a fighter, then?”

“It’s a goblin, so yeah.”

“Then why name it after a scavenger?”

Shotgun shrugged.  “Wasn’t us that named it.  Might be the association with death and carrion, might be the fact that it’s closer to being a beast than a man.”

“Quadruped, then?” I asked.

“Yep.  Fast, big, strong, and about as mean as you get.”

“Don’t suppose I could borrow one of those weapons you were talking about?”

“If you get into a fight in there, chances are pretty good that whatever you’re fighting is going to make noise.  Noise brings other ones down on your head.  After that, it’s a matter of time before you’re dealing with a crowd.  I don’t imagine there’s any weapon I could give you that would let you do that.  If you were good enough at fighting, I think you’d have a proper weapon already.”

I nodded slowly.  “So fighting isn’t really an option.”

“It’s an option.  It’s just a damn shitty option.”

“Stealth, then,” I said.  “More my style, maybe.”

“You do know that a lot of Others have different senses than we do?” Shotgun’s son said.  “Not just sight and hearing and smell, but other ways of detecting people?”

“I assume so,” I replied.

The son shook his head a little.  “You’re just… what, you’re going to sneak in and do what?”

“Try to bind the Hyena,” I said, “or die in the process.”

“You know what happens when he kills you, right?”

Yeah, stealth and binding it, I guess. Really really wish we had Rose.

“I know,” I said.

“I don’t think your chances would be that much worse going up against the Lord of Toronto on your own,” the son said.

“They’d be a great deal worse,” the fat guy by the window said.  “The Lord is an Incarnation, and the goblin is still a mid-tier goblin.  Mid-tier or not, it’s still a bad idea to go up against the Hyena.”

“Yeah,” Shotgun said.  “I’m thinking the same thing.

I took a deep breath.  “I don’t have a choice.”

“Run.  Whatever the Lord sends after you, I can’t imagine it’ll be as bad,” the son said.

“I’ve got someone who I can’t leave behind,” I said.  “Conquest shackled her, and… yeah.”

“How attached are you to her?” the son asked me.  “Do you love her?”

That was a good question.  Did I love Rose?  Was it borderline narcissism if I did?  Familial love?

No it would not be narcissism. You are very different people. Think of her like a twin somehow lost at birth to the same family... anyways.  He is attached because of promises, at the very least. 

“I don’t have a lot of experience with love,” I said.  “There are people I think I love, who I owe for what they’ve done on my behalf, the support they’ve given me, and maybe she fits in that same category, kind of, but…”

I trailed off.  I couldn’t put words to the thoughts.

“If you have to think about it, maybe it’s best to just walk away,” the son said.

“Can’t,” I said.

“You swore an oath?” Shotgun asked.

It hadn’t even crossed my mind.  But it was an easy answer to give.  “Yeah, well, I made promises to her that I can’t fulfill unless she’s free.”

“Fair.  We all do stupid things from time to time,” Shotgun said.  “What do you need?”

Damn Blake, remember the promises you’ve made.

“Chain,” I said.

“How much chain?”

“How much chain do I want to bring, or how much chain do I need for this situation?” I asked.  “Two different things.”

“There you go again, with your distinctions.”

“I want miles of chain,” I said.  “But I can probably only bring a few loops, before it slows me down too much.”

“Twenty feet?”

“Should work,” I said.

Shotgun glanced at his fat friend by the window.

“We have more than twenty feet there,” the guy said.

“Use the bolt cutters, trim it down to size.  But leave the lock connected to the end.”

“Sure,” the guy said.  He heaved himself out of the chair.  His gait was funny, not quite a limp so much as stumping.

I realized he had only half a foot.

Shotgun looked at his son.  “Go find the bolt cutters and help out.”

His son left.  No injuries there.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You don’t seem like a bad sort, whatever you’re doing with the demons.”

“Like I said, it’s not by choice.  I inherited the title, entirely against my will, and the Lord of Toronto wants to use me for access to my family’s reputation and power.”

“Then, given the chance, you’re not going to touch the things?”

“I can’t promise that,” I said.

“Oh?”

“I read some propaganda, just yesterday.  Justifying what diabolists do.  It wasn’t… completely wrong.”

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

“You have to ask, if the diabolists don’t bind the demons, who will?” I asked.

“The powers that be band together to deal with them.”

“Do they?  Look at what’s happening here.  Three minor threats, too much trouble to deal with.  They get ignored until they can’t be ignored.  Then what happens?  Yeah, maybe the local powers do gather together.  And all of them suffer like your Knights did?  Lots of damage?  Powerful figures brought low or infected with taint?”

“What’s the alternative?”

“I’m not sure it is an alternative, but maybe people like me and my grandmother deal with them.  Shouldering the cost ourselves.  Dealing with the karmic burden, the more abstract costs, too.”

Interesting perspective. I suppose there is some truth in that. However, a better solution would be some group effort that deals with these problems before it gets to this point, rather than a few wild diabolists. 

“So nobody else has to?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I don’t know how much of it was legit or not.  Maybe it means taking on a burden that sinks us, and we inevitably take other people down with us. That it’s too messy for anything else to be possible.”

“If that’s true,” the woman who now sat alone by the window spoke, “Then I worry about us being involved.”

“I wouldn’t blame you.  But I don’t know.  Maybe it’s possible to shoulder the cost and live an otherwise good life that makes up for it, and leave the world better in the end… if our children don’t get greedy and try to use it or take on more debt for short term gains, leaving certain grandchildren with catastrophic amounts of debt.”

“You’re talking about your family, I take it?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Or maybe it’s all just a lie, and there’s no way out from under this.”

“What if that’s true?” Shotgun asked me.  “Maybe we should keep our distance.”

“That seems to be the safe bet everyone else is making,” I told him.  “I wouldn’t blame you much.”

“Much?”

“You’d still be retreating at a time I think the locals really need to be mustering their forces.  Conquest is fucking dangerous.  I’d blame you for ignoring that.”

Shotgun didn’t respond.

Another problem being ignored until it can’t be ignored anymore. I am seeing a pattern here.

I assume we will find out what the big fuck up is specifically? Like what they did. 

And yeah I don’t see them going for it. 

“Then…” I said, reaching for an answer.  “You want less?  Not access to a whole library, but maybe a guarantee of a book once in a blue moon?”

Shotgun looked at the others.  I saw one or two shrugs and some nods.

“You’re speaking closer to our language now,” he said.  “But the risk is still too high.”

“The risk is already high,” I said.

He slowly shook his head.  “We walked into a bad situation once, thinking we had no choice.  It didn’t go well.”

“I was aiming to get around to that topic,” I said.

“Makes for an awful lot of wondering, you know?  Oblivion.  Knowing we maybe had friends or family, people we had as friends, people we loved, and they were devoured.  Eaten so completely that we can’t even remember them.”

I nodded.  I put the coke down on the nearest shelf.  “I’m sorry for your losses, whoever they might have been.”

“Thank you.”

Now I am thinking about TAZ, except here they know that they lost something, and they just can’t remember what it is. 

“If you have any thoughts, or if you can let me know what precautions you used that didn’t work, it would help a great deal,” I said.

“Precautions?  Half the ones we used, it ate.  We can’t remember if we tried something and it didn’t work.  Can’t remember what the others tried doing that didn’t work out.  We tried circles, I know, but maybe it never got far enough to try eating those.”

“What kind of circle?”

“Same type you usually see.  Lines and reinforcing shapes, all of us at the center.”

The same kind that had been used on the Barber.  That had worked, ostensibly, because he was abstract, just like this oblivion demon.

Huh.

That would have been my first guess and one of the few educated guesses I could make, and it was wrong.

How did one ward against a being of nothingness?

A... Barrier of nothing? Lol.

Obviously not that. 

A barrier made of itself so it consumes itself! I say that facetiously. I do not know either, Blake. 

“Anything else?” I asked.

“We went in armed.  We do okay, at trinkets.  Swords, knives, wands.  Whatever the others brought, it didn’t work.  That’s… just about all I can tell you, on the weapon and self-defense front.”

“Better than nothing,” I said.  But not by much.  I didn’t have the resources to research and figure out a good path to take, and the fact that the evidence and memories had been ‘eaten’ meant I couldn’t even work by process of elimination.

“I lie awake thinking about it,” Shotgun’s son said.  “The thing.  The near-miss.”

“We shouldn’t have brought you,” Shotgun said.

“I’d lie awake thinking about it even if you hadn’t.  Who did we lose?  What place did they have in our lives?  Then you think about what happened to Marcie…”

Shotgun glanced at me.  “My son’s ex-girlfriend.”

“She’s still my girlfriend, I think,” the young man said.  “At least, that’s what I think she was.”

“Yeah,” his father said.

“You’re going to have to fill me in,” I said.

“She disappeared,” Shotgun said.  “Few days after that afternoon.  We’ve talked about it, tried to figure it out, actively tried to find her.  But there was nothing.  She wasn’t eaten, or we wouldn’t even know, but…”

“I can’t really remember her face,” the son said.  “Or her last name.”

“I think,” Shotgun said, “The people around her were eaten.  Mother, father, maybe a sibling or two, a friend.  There wasn’t enough connecting her to this world, so she just…”

“Went,” the son said.

“Went away,” the father echoed him.  “To wherever people go when they fall through the cracks in this world.  Makes you wonder.  Were we something different, before?  Did we have more dreams?  More aspirations?  Did we lose important people that were supposed to prop us up, and settle into a different position when we tipped over, without them?”

“As in, maybe you weren’t all a bunch of dabblers working within a small scope, before?” I asked.

“Yeah.  He’s, again, not a big fan of me.”

“Cultist of Dionysus.  Orgies, parties, and a collection of satyrs, nymphs and other beings with a connection to fertility, hedonism or both.”

“Any story there?”

“Lots.  Word is he was trying to make a play, some time back.  Offered favors here and there.  One of the Sisters wanted a baby, he delivered.  Baited the Astrologer into falling in lust with something more spirit than person, and she wasn’t happy when that spell was broken.  Even started collecting more vicious things to keep in reserve, we’ve heard.  Then it all fell apart around the start of the ‘oughts.  He’s mostly flying solo now, a little more inebriated a little more often.  We’ve mostly steered clear.  He and we march to the beats of very different drums, so to speak.”

I wonder what Astrologer was baited into. Curious now.

I do not know what the ‘oughts are. Ugh I feel like it is obvious. But even if I do not know what that means I can assume it was sometime soon after the ‘divorce’. 

I took a swig of coke to clear my throat.  “You dabble, you’re interested, but you don’t want to stick your neck out for anyone to swing the axe at.”

Shotgun nodded.  “Astrologer?  Powerful.  Doing a succession thing.  Every time they get old, they find an apprentice, teach them, and pass on the title and the knowledge.  I never really got what she did.  Future sight, sure.  Connections?  Yeah.  Summoning things from the sky?  Yep.  But never directly, there’s some underlying system of rules and relationships she has to navigate.”

“She’s not a fan of the… guy in charge.”

“Nope.  Her old mentor offered himself up, to be one of those tragic ghosts in the Lord of Toronto’s manor, buying her safety with his afterlife.  She doesn’t pay any tithe, and she mostly has free reign, so long as she attends enough meetings and doesn’t act directly against him.”

Wow... thats a huge sacrifice for him! I assume even after she dies the mentor is condemned... bet there is a good story there. 

“Does that mean she’s not on my side?  I can’t get her to do something?”

“No.  I think she’s eager to stop Conquest, and she’s been looking for a chance for some time.  I’m not sure if she can’t or if there’s a reason she won’t, but it is what it is.”

I nodded.

“Shepherd, not of much use to you.  Guides the dead.  Deals with ghosts, cleaning up the bad and collecting the good.  Tends to stay away, but is on pretty good terms with Conquest when he’s around.”

“That sounds like a problem.”

“It’s the local landscape.  Nothing more.”

“Landscape matters lot when you’re talking battle,” the woman under the window said.  “Terrain?  Strategy?”

“True,” Shotgun said.  “Fine, we can agree it’s a problem.  Who else?”

“Eye of the Storm,” Shotgun’s son said.  “Queen’s Man.”

“Queen’s Man isn’t a concern.  Goes between here and England.  Serving a spirit of Crown and kingdom,” Shotgun says.  “Not here now.”

“Good to know.”

“Eye of the Storm isn’t human.  And it is a servant of our local Lord.  One you’ll need to worry about.  Our Lord needs something done, he asks Fell.  He needs something destroyed, he gives an order to the Eye.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“A fire alarm going off at midnight,” Shotgun said.  “All the exits blocked by flame.”

Cryptic.

“I meant, more, what type of Other is it?”

“Don’t know.  We’re not the people to ask if you want clear answers about that sort of thing.  But mankind and fire have a long working relationship.  A relationship that extends to times when you sacrificed things to gods and spirits.  Most big cities have at least one bad fire in its past, and in cities that do, you can usually find something like the Eye, a memory of that fire and sacrifice.”

“That explanation is a bit too vague for my tastes,” I said.

“What I do know, and I’m welcoming any of the rest of you to jump in and correct me, is it’s a thing that tends to change as humanity does.  We start to use wires and electricity, and the Eye became less fire and more storm, you know?  It’s a living reminder that whatever we were given, whatever we took or learned, energy-wise, there’s still a danger there, if we don’t show proper respect.”

Spooky. 

I don’t even know how you would defend against something like that. Don’t catch the Eye’s attention I suppose. 

“And it serves at the whim of the Lord of Toronto?”

“Arms, legs, torso, head, but nobody’s going to look at it and think it’s human.  Keeps to its own until it’s called.  If you’re going up against the Lord of Toronto, don’t give him a chance to call.”

I nodded, even as I was thinking about how Conquest had brought Rose to his domain.  How could I prevent him from doing the same with this ‘eye’?

“Sounds like I need to get in touch with the Astrologer,” I said.

“Could be.”

“And if I do want help going up against the Lord of Toronto,” I said, speaking very carefully, “Can I offer you anything in exchange for a hand?”

Shotgun exchanged looks with everyone else that was present.  “Probably not.”

“He’s wanting to use my knowledge for something ugly,” I said.  “You kill me now, he’ll be mad enough to do something to you.  Leave me alone, and I might be forced to do what he wants, and that could mean issues for you.”

A very, very small ‘could’, given the deal the Drunk had struck, but still theoretically possible.

“So we have to help you, is that it?” Shotgun asked.

“No,” I said.  “But helping me would do us both a world of good.  I can even sweeten the deal.”

“We don’t set our sights all that high,” he said.

“I’ve got something in the works,” I said.  “Tomorrow night, at midnight, it comes to a head.  You help me, and I’ll give you access to my family’s resources, minus the… troubling books.  The books I don’t particularly want to read.”

“Meaning we wouldn’t be dabblers,” he said.  “We could be…”

“A lot of things,” I said.  “I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t at least one good book on every major subject and discipline.”

“I can see the appeal,” Shotgun said.

“It’s an option,” I said.

“Close enough.”

“And?” I asked.  “You focus in?  You do…”

“We dabble.  All of us dabble.  We’re with the council, because it means we don’t get blindsided if something comes up or changes, easier access if we want to check it’s okay to grab a certain demesne or get a familiar.  Maybe once in a while we can do a favor for a bit of knowledge or a trinket.”

“You’re dabblers,” I said, “As in… you don’t have much firepower?”

He glanced down at his gun.

“Firepower that’s going to matter to someone or something like Conquest?” I clarified.

“Not so much,” Shotgun said.  “Not against someone like… that.”

The way he’d avoided Conquest’s name made me think it was maybe better to not keep saying it.  I could call Fell, just by establishing that connection, and maybe I didn’t want Conquest to know I was talking about him.

Damn it.  I couldn’t help but feel a profound disappointment, with a hint of panic.  I’d found an in, possible help, and they didn’t have any muscle.  I was running out of time, and I didn’t have any meaningful allies.  I was actually losing progress in terms of allies, if I counted losing Rose.

To be fair, not many would have firepower enough to affect Conquest. 

Yet another rule Blake: names have power. 

Also Rose is lost for now but not forever... right? I can’t imagine she is gone for good. I really don’t think she is. It would not make sense narratively or in story. 

“But you have a grudge against the man in charge?” I asked.

“Grudge?” Shotgun asked.  “Not so much.  But, well, he’s… what he is.  Not exactly looking out for anyone’s interests.  Has a way of demanding things and not giving anything back.”

He glanced at his buddies, as if looking for confirmation.  I saw some nods.

Mostly, I just saw glares leveled my way.

Shotgun continued, “Part of why we attend the meetings, from time to time.  Gives us a chance to see how he’s acting, if we need to clear out for a bit, keep our heads down.  Sometimes all it takes is a periodic visit to bow our heads, show proper respect.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Then… I’m guessing you’re not exactly willing to put your lives on the line?  He’s an inconvenience, as you said, not an enemy.”

That got me a slow shake of the head, and a very casual, “You’re pretty much on the mark there.”

I sighed, leaning against the counter.

“Can I offer you anything?” Shotgun asked.  “Very possible we don’t have anything to offer, but I can offer food and water.  Tuna and egg sandwiches aren’t bad, in the fridge over there.  Or candy bars and coke, if you’re wanting a snack.”

“A sandwich would be great,” I said.  “And a coke, sure.”

Thats... oddly nice of them. I’m a bit suspicious. 

The guy sitting by the window got up from the table to walk over to the fridge and grabbed the stuff.

“On the house,” Shotgun said.

“The hospitality is recognized for what it is, thank you.”

He nodded a little, circling around the counter to take a seat by the register.  He glanced up at the television on the wall.  Sports news.

Not many straight answers to be had here, as far as names or capabilities went.  They were small fry.  Dabbling practitioners.

“Is it normal, to be…” I searched for a word.

“Low level?” the kid asked.

“To work within such a small scope,” I said, a little more diplomatically.

“Not sure,” Shotgun said.  “We only have the locals to compare ourselves to.”

“Can you tell me about them?  It might help me figure out where to concentrate my efforts.”

“We’re new, so I don’t know much of the history.  Sisters of the Torch, as I understand it, they were a sorority or club at the University, got their hands on something.  Built themselves up.  Each new year the group would select a few worthy members of their club or whatever to join the core group.  Nine parts secret society to one part practitioner.  They’re more likely to give you a special discount on real estate or help you ask for a favor in local government than do anything fancy, if you get me?”

I nodded.  “Any specialty?”

“Elementals.  Most basic kind of spirits you get, dealing with nature.  Rain, sun, fire, harvest…”

That sounds pretty cool actually. 

“Where do they stand with Conquest?”

“They don’t.  They’re in the council in name only.  They’ve maybe struck a deal with Conquest, because they only send one representative a year with a gift.”

I made mental note of that.

“The Sphinx-”

“I’ve met the Sphinx, the Drunk, and the Astrologer.  And Fell.”

The fact that Meath’s title is “the Drunk” is funny. God Blake you really should find some info about him... not that you’d know to single him out. 

“Ah.  Okay.”

“Sphinx wasn’t a big fan of me,” I admitted.  “Not big on the diabolism thing.”

“To be honest, neither are we,” Shotgun told me.  “But you don’t seem to be an immediateproblem, and we’re not really types to pick fights.”

“Except when it comes to pulling a shotgun on a complete stranger.”

“That’s called being ready when the fight comes to you.  Not knowing anything about you… hearing only casual mention of what a diabolist does?”

“Fair,” I said.  I tore into the sandwich wrapper and took a bite.

“Sphinx is old, and maybe it’s more personal for old things.  Teaches at the University.  Periodically goes for the kids who can’t hack it.  Once every decade or so, maybe.  Failing grades, depression, panic, a downward spiral everyone recognizes, and then their rooms are cleared out one night and they’ve up and disappeared.”

“Didn’t know that last part,” I said.

“She is what she is.  She occasionally takes a student under her not-so-proverbial wing.  We’ve talked it over, and the general consensus is she finds the stragglers and tests them.  Winners get mentored.  Get a natural glow about ’em, you know what I mean?”

“No, not so much.”

“Stuff starts going their way.  Lucky.  The right people start gravitating towards them.  Things falling into place.”

“Good karma,” I said.

“Yeah.  That.  Girls stick around for two or three years and then take their leave, wiser, talented, brimming with confidence.  We’ve seen, what, two?”

“One left a few weeks after we first joined the council,” the woman sitting under the window said.  “Another one wrapped up earlier this year.  Left before Summer.”

“I could do with some of that good karma,” I said.  “But I don’t think even the Sphinx’s ministrations are about to help me with the massive debt my family’s incurred.”

“If she doesn’t like you, I can’t imagine she’s going to change her mind.  Old dogs and new tricks, you know?”

“Suppose so.”

“You’re lucky I’m a level headed guy, Blake.  Able to check myself, question what I’m feeling and why.  But if I had to describe it, I’d say I feel like my wife acts when she has P.M.S., being around you.”

“Lovely,” the woman by the window said, rolling her eyes.  I took it that she wasn’t his wife, from the tone and attitude.  “Does she pull a gun on you?”

“She’d be tempted to pull the trigger,” Shotgun said.

What a lovely, lovely dude I agree.

Fuck him. 

“You’re irritable, twitchy?” I asked.

“A bit.”

“I bound an imp yesterday.  He was making animals and people feel that way.  Act in ways they normally wouldn’t.  Now… well, now he’s not affecting them anymore, though traces linger.”

“You stopped it?”

“For now,” I hedged, “I’m not sure what tomorrow will bring.”

“Ah.  Like I said, I don’t know much about diabolism.”

“I don’t either,” I said.  “I wouldn’t be too surprised if you knew about as much as I did.”

“If you’re binding imps, then you know more than we do.  I’m afraid we’re not sharing names.  Call it paranoia, if you must.”

“I might have to,” I said.

“Can we trust you, Blake?  I think that’s the bigger question right now.”

“I can’t lie,” I said.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I’m going to be blunt and honest here,” I said.  “And I’m going to hope you don’t all fuck me over too badly, as a result.  Conquest is twisting my arm, metaphorically speaking, to get me to clean up some of the local messes, and he’s sent me your way to get some answers on one of those messes.”

They;re not gonna want to help Conquest, but you’re right, you can’t lie.

Blunt honesty hasn’t really helped you thus far, but it hasn’t killed you yet I suppose! 

“We know this, Fell said as much,” Shotgun said.  “Skip ahead to what you said to me outside.”

“Well, that’s only a small part of why I’m here.  I’m thinking you probably don’t have a lot of answers about that demon in the factory.  The real reason I’m here is that I’m looking for some allies.  Because I’m not sure anyone wants Conquest to finish sending me on errands and start using me for something more serious.”

“Demon stuff,” Shotgun said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What if I shot you?” he offered.  “You could stop worrying about being used.  You’d be dead.”

Aw, I was gonna say that.

The most pragmatic thing to do would be to shoot him... except he has a whole ass line of family members to take his place. So it seems to be the most pragmatic thing unless you know the whole story.  This is what has been saving Blake’s ass so far lmao. 

He said it in such a friendly, casual way.  Like he was offering me a ride.

“Conquest wouldn’t be too happy with you.”

“He’s sending you after that demon,” the guy sitting under the window said.  “I don’t think he cares a whole lot about your well being.”

“Point taken,” I said.  “But there’s a difference between me dying because I wasn’t able to hack it, and his subordinates interfering.”

“You’re big on making distinctions, aren’t you?”  Shotgun asked.

“Don’t we have to be?” I asked.

“How’s that?”

“You know… dealing with Others?  Avoiding getting snared in a verbal trap?”

He shrugged.  “Or you can just minimize contact with the things.”

I frowned a bit.  “I’m going to need a few more details on who you guys are.  And names would really help.”

“We’re the Knights,” Shotgun said.  “Can’t call ourselves just ‘knights’, or we’d be treading on toes, so our full title is ‘Knights of the Basement’, kind of an in-joke.”