To Be Haunted

by Foorocks10

Summary:

London is dreaming, and something dreams with it.

Chapter 1: A Dream that Echos the Future

Summary:

You must understand, time is less linear than you might think, especially in Parabola. Events leave ripples, traveling through the temporal sphere. Some have never stopped echoing.

You have surrounded yourself with the detritus and glory of human society. Some of your collection is devoted to finery, to the best ceramics humankind has to offer. But you have a fondness for what has been cast out. You are the only one who realizes that everything has value, everything can be fixed.

The Bazaar's mission is folly, but you can ensure that something survives the fallout. It isn't spite, you tell yourself, it isn't hatred. The Bazaar will need something to take the place of the love that once burned brightly. Better vengeance than despair. Better to resolve yourself to meet death with claws bared.

Just like you did.

Your claws dig convulsively into your desk. You smooth the indentations, feel a stab of regret. Perhaps Apples will be able to repair it.

Broken things . . .

Your shoulders hunch as you reach for a pen. You are have picked a target, someone beloved. Someone so beloved that they would lead a revenger from the surface, into strange lands, past impossible obstacles and odds, all for revenge.

Will it satisfy them?  

Will it satisfy you, hollow thing?

Your sources have provided you with a contact. The Lenten Wire is a rising star in the criminal world, a career criminal who followed the promise of more lucrative scores to the realm of assassinations. But there is something about the way he carries himself, the jobs he takes, the hesitations when you speak in person. It isn't familiar. You are doing what you have to do. It isn't familiar. He will make mistakes, subconscious guilt urging him on. He will leave a trail, something to lead a revenger to the Neath, something to lead a revenger to him. In the aftermath, you will take the story, inscribe in the Bazaar's skin. A story of revenge to light its heart.

Something to warm us all when everything is over.

The thought soothes you, until you are as comfortable as you can be down here. A bath in lacre to soothe your burning skin, a bottle of good wine to soothe the dreams, and you are dozing long before you stagger from your desk. You’ve been down here so long that the press of the world is almost comforting. You settle in a nest-like bed and entertain yourself with visions of vengeance to carve into Bazaar walls. A reckoning shall not be postponed indefinitely and you have just enough time to recognize the irony before you drift off.

You inhale . . . and the air is cold and crisp and dry, but far too thick. It cloys, catches your throat. You are standing on rolling hills that seem to go on forever. But it’s the sky that truly draws your attention.  If you ignore the wispy clouds, you could almost believe you were home.  The strange stars are so bright, clearer than you’ve ever seen on previous trips to the surface. They beckon to you. You can almost hear them calling, inviting you to spread your winds, fight off the planet's gravity and take your place in the stars once more.

Home has never seemed so close, nor so far.

There is a chained watchman on the highest hill. Your mouth moves, but no sound comes out. A silent call to a ghost. Tantalus, always tormented by having what he needs held out of reach. 

You stare across illusionary moors at the ghost of your sibling and feel hate surge in your breast. Hate for October, for trapping it here forever. Hate for Apples, for treating the Marvelous as entertainment and never realizing that your word can be a weapon against you. Hate for Candles, for . . . who are you thinking of? The anger fades into deep seated confusion and a growing feeling of revulsion.

Fear suddenly joins the storm of emotion. Are you in October's territory? If you've stumbled into her dreams, dreams she has power over because of that damnable bargain, are you within her reach?

Will you be the next to die?

Will you join Mirrors and the first, stand opposite your sibling for eternity? There was one who died before your sibling, you remember that much.  Someone who the Masters conspired to erase, existing in an absence.  What marked it to die?  What was its name?

Cups?

A feeling like knives tearing at your guts.  You can’t think about the implications.  You can’t think about the implications.

The ground is seeping, something dark and cloying. It smells of death and decay. Your feet are covered, and the liquid clings to your limbs when you try to lift them, holds them down. And then the grip solidifies, turns into cold hands that drag you down. Human hands.

Humans cannot harm you, you remind yourself, you are above them on the chain. You try to warp the dream to your will.  But nothing works and cold fingers shred through wing membranes, tear muscles, wrap themselves around your throat. 

What you don't understand is that time is less linear than you think, especially in Parabola.  Events leave ripples, traveling through the temporal sphere.  Some have never stopped echoing. There are reasons Wines and Spices rarely stray from areas of hard won control in Parabola. Even the first, the one never acknowledged, never truly exerted control. (Your sibling only wanted to reflect dreams).

You don't understand that the dead still dream.  Your schemes has sent some of them to the shadowlands and they would love to see you again, return the favor. 

Some of them . . .

Cups? Is that you?

Your ears pull out of ripping hands to flatten against your head.  The agony of hearing that echoing, grating, terribly familiar voice is far worse than the pain of torn cartilage. 

Clawed hands grip your shoulders firmly, sink into fresh wounds, and pull.  You are dragged, gasping and wounded but alive, onto the highest hill of Beggar's Wake, at the feet of a ghost.

The shade of your sibling looms over you.  More than looms, it begins to change.

Robes reweave themselves, the gauntness of starvation reverses, broken-mirror eyes repair.  As it releases its claws from your shoulder, you notice the paling of fur and claws.  Something is terribly wrong.  Gold glimmers in mirrored eyes.  Rusty chains scream under strain as the curator on the hill surges upward. You are showered in broken links as the curator swells to its full size, much larger than your diminished form, something that screams wrongness to the depths of your soul, enormous golden eyes staring your own.  Why is it so familiar, familiar in a way that hurts.

The curator tilts its head, fixes you firmly in its gaze.  As it does so, you notice a line of gold at the center of its throat, faint at first, but rapidly expanding. The curator gasps through a slit throat, sneezes and coughs compulsively to clear the obstruction. One eye rolls clean from its socket, but the wound it leaves behind is ragged, carved into the flesh and chipped into the bone. The pelt slides off the flesh, flayed from muscle and membrane. Golden blood and golden bones and the flesh . . .

The bones were wrapped in their owner's pelt, cradled in Veils' arms like something precious, something to be hoarded. 

The screams still echo. Because when Mirrors . . . the Marvelous . . . the Betrayal . . . 

Every mirror has its watcher.

Candles will never burn as brightly, nor as warmly.

The land of dreams has lost its patron and its guardian.

The rest have changed in their own ways. The Twins lost their foundation, one becoming brittle, the other fragile. The Fallen King and the Courtesan turned on each other with blows and screams and scheming, all to mask the guilt buried underneath. The Editor found solace in fantasy, in imagination, in the secrecy of burial. The Plunderer began to dream of the dead. The Immortality-Seeker became more desperate. The Warrior retreated further into silence, into bitterness, into hate. The Engineer now burns with obsession. 

You brace yourself for attack, and are startled by a gentle nudge, the knuckles of a hand, claws carefully tucked in, as gentle as a Curator can be.

Wake up.

Notes:

Lenten: Nothing to eat; starving. Wire: pickpocket.

A subtle hint that this is before the player's time. For each murder, an assassin, and someone for the revenger to take vengeance on.

A departure from canon, possibly, it says that Cup commissioned six other murders, but not that Scathewick committed each one. Cups did want seven stories of revenge, so it made more sense to me that there were seven dead assassins paid as a toll.

Nemesis was my first Ambition and it still holds a special place in my heart. My mercy ran out at the very last. Perhaps this Cups will be luckier.

Chapter 2: A Dream Under a False Sun

Summary:

The Second was a city of poison and dry rot. The sand hid treachery.

The Second was a city of poison and dry rot. The sand hid treachery. The corner of Parabola your sisters have claimed for themselves reflects far more than the surface. You realize now, your people never could have thrived here.

Even if the Bazaar never came, Amarna was doomed to burn bright and short. The Fingerkings showed you dreams, visions of other worlds. Denizens of Parabola can rarely be trusted . . . but there was a ring of truth to those dreams.

Your father was a visionary, a revolutionary, but such are rarely embraced by their people. All your knowledge of politics and people whispers to you that your father's legacy would be destroyed in a generation, perhaps even your generation. Amarna would have been abandoned, to be forgotten, buried under the sands. You wonder if that was a kinder fate than that of your city, crushed to rubble under the City of the Wells.

But this . . .

You are familiar with the treacheries of Parabola, but you have never found yourself so affected by them.

You are standing in front of a dead dream. The Palace of the Rising, as your sisters planned it, as you all imagined it. This is the city your family has dreamed of. All the glories of your father's city would be eclipsed by his children. But the city was never built. It never existed. After all your efforts ended in failure, you had decided that it was never meant to exist and abandoned the project. All but one of your sisters had left it, made their own way through the Third Fall, survived. All but the oldest . . .

I grieve for you, Meritaten.

The painted gates tower over you, benedictions to Amun spiraling toward the sky. Above even them glows a Sun. The light is softer, yellower than that of the False Sun your sisters created. You know instinctively that this Sun will last forever, that it will never gutter and extinguish itself. This Sun is perfect, and Parabola itself embraces it. Where false cosmogone light once seared and warped the landscape, you could swear that the vines were swaying in delight, the trees ever-reaching upwards.

You had forgotten how real sunlight feels. You bask for a single glorious moment, let the warmth sink into your old bones. Experiences in Parabola cannot be trusted.  But every ounce of worship you feel for the sun tells you that this is real, that this is perfect. It is far too good to be true. You need to remove yourself from the intoxicating light.

But even inside the main room of the temple, you still feel contentment trying to sink in. You wring your hands. You are looking for the trap. 

The guardian statues turn their heads, catch you with stone eyes. Carved wings spread, cover you like a shroud. One yawns, exposing a row of razor-sharp teeth. The other scratched at an oversized ear. There is no purpose to these actions. Ushabti do not perform actions without a purpose. 

There is intelligence in their eyes.

The statues… their heads. You would have- why would they have the heads of bats? Why do you read accusation in inhuman features? One tilts its head up, and you follow its gaze to the relief on the wall.

Hooded figures being led into a sphinx... 

The treachery of dreams, of sphynxstone.

The triumph of your sisters, your family. Reveling in your victory and the power it brought you.

One thousand years of stagnation, the same images repeated ever after.

Something so terrible the stone itself is cracked around the image. You avert your eyes instinctively. You do not want to look.

What came after-no! You do not wish to relive these memories.

The last relief is so emblazoned in gold leaf, you can't make it out. It drips with golden blood.

You are weeping. You don't know when you started. Your vision blurs through tears, fingers threatening to impale your palms. Your head drops forward and your face is covered by a curtain of braids, hair you have not worn in centuries.

You weep for long moments, before raising your head again, under the concerned stone eyes of the statues.

The light has changed, the sun gone cosmogone again. A dream within a dream, perhaps. Your dream of a real sun briefly overpowering the false. Perhaps you should tell Meketaten, see if the Parabola-dweller could replicate it.

You are lost in imagining when something impacts the temple, hard enough to shake dust from the walls. The light from the False Sun is covered, but you aren’t left in darkness. There is still light, just softer, paler.

You dare to exit the temple, stare up at the perpetrator.

There is something unknowable spread over the temple roof.

Your eyes slide away from it, avoiding the bright white glow that burns them. Your mind makes substitutions, a lizard resting itself on a rock, a cat sprawled over a roof.  Sunning itself.

Sometimes the creature fits entirely, sometimes wings drape over the walls, sometimes the temple itself is nothing but a chin-rest. Somehow, the temple remains unharmed, as though the laws of logic and physics have stepped aside to allow this creature its nap.

You step nervously to the head of the creature. It inhales sharply. Eyes open and you are fixed in the stare of twin cosmogone suns. The pale imitation of a sun you and your sisters toiled to create is overshadowed.

For a single moment, Parabola seems so much brighter. 

“Is this what it was before the first descent?” you ask, barely aware of your lips moving. Your thoughts are stained in Tyrian.

An echoing chuckle.

Perhaps.

The voice, you almost recognize. The tone is different, as are the strange metallic reverberations. But strangest is the volume. The voice of your memories was always soft-spoken, but now it booms, batters at your ears as hot air blasts into your face.

Tahemetnesu?

"Oh," you breathe in sudden recognition, "It's you! How extraordinary!"

Only a dream, it murmurs, rattling your ribcage, I come to you only as a dream. 

You frown, suddenly shaken. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

The memory of a dream is something you could keep.

"How could I forget?"

A sigh, or possibly a gust of wind.

How could anyone forget?

It turns slightly, 

Promise me. You dreamed of an old friend in a city that never existed. Dreams upon dreams upon-

It abruptly cut itself off, teeth clacking together.

You are prepared to protest, to swear on your kingdom that you could never forget the one you traded your city for, never forget the closest friend you had among the Masters (nor the reality of the relationship, friendship turned into a snare), when the next question stops your words in your chest.

Do you remember my name,  Tahemetnesu?

Your face falls. Your hands shake. Your mouth works, soundlessly. You have always had a powerful memory, but for once, it refuses to do your bidding.

It sighs, a long mournful sound.

You had a dream of an old friend. A dream that can be remembered, in some fashion. Even irrigo has limits. Even my colleagues...

"Will it be a good one?" you ask, teasingly.

That depends on you.

You feel naked without the thick layers of makeup covering your face. You have nothing to hide the way your lip trembles.

"I would love to talk again, if you will permit it."

Greetings, Ankhesenamun.

Your conversation partner seems to flicker...

A smaller (but still towering) figure in robes leaning over you.

Something bright and glowing, clad in a shell of dream, both terrible and comforting.

You are overshadowed by wings.

There are bats, gigantic bats wheeling in the sky, bright white and burning red, and they dance as the sky tears itself to pieces.

The Parabolan sun, the real one, it focuses on you like an eye and the sky has gone so white.

The broken remains of something, lying on an altar. Your heart feels as though it is breaking.

Then, it settles. Everything settles, and you find yourself at eye level with a set of fangs. Something primal inside you freezes in terror and you realize that there is nowhere to run, this is the largest you've ever seen him and you can't read his expression and his breath smells like blood and you remind yourself: just because something is gentle doesn't mean it can't hurt you. And then, just as you're resigned to death, his head rotates, fixing you in the gaze of one eye, fangs pointed away.

Do you truly believe I would hurt you?

You think about the salt lions, about the taste of betrayal, about those horrifying moments before you forgot... when you knew that someone was missing. Your hands clench. You elect to change the subject.

“You don’t look as I remember,” you say.

I no longer see the point in pretending to be human.  I shed that disguise, like so much else.

Is that wistfulness you hear?

“To be frank, dear, none of you were ever that convincing in the first place.”

You remember what it sounded like when one of the Master’s laughs. It is comforting to hear it again, even harsh and reverberating and so loud you can feel it in your ribcage. You laugh, lean against an accommodating bulk of fur and muscle, and settle in for a good gossip session.

For a second, a moment, an eternity, you are nothing but two strange friends conversing under a cosmogone sun. You lean back against your friend and allow yourself a moment to bask under the sun you helped create.

In the morning, when the dream has ended, even layers of powder will be unable to hide the grief.

Notes:

Just to be clear, in this universe:

The First City: Nagar/Tell Brak
The Second City: Amarna
The Third City: Chichen Itza

Even a runt Curator is a Kajiu to an ordinary human. And a friendly eldritch abomination is still an eldritch abomination.

Tahemetnesu: (Egyptian) the King’s wife. Candles is addressing her formally.

The Egyptian Candles uses means "in peace" and was a common greeting. Candles is speaking more casually. (09/12/22 Egyptian text removed due to broken link).

The House of the Rising is a fusion of several Middle-Kingdom era temples including the Karnak complex and Medinet Habu.
The guardian statues are based on the Colossi of Memnon. And considering that the sisters canonically used ushabti to construct the temple complex…yes they are sentient.

Chapter 3: A Dream of Light-Bringing

Summary:

In your dreams you are carving candles with a familiar stranger.

In your dreams you are carving candles with a familiar stranger. They are tall, taller than anyone you’ve ever met and glowing white, too bright to look at. But they treat the wax with respect and you feel comfortable working with them.

You think they might be humming under their breath. A sonorous note, cutting up and down the register as the stranger works. It vibrates in your chest, your heart aching with it.

This is both is and is not your workshop. The tools are all there and the wax acts as it should. But your friend moves comfortably in the small space, as though it only exists for them. You think you see the walls warping around them, sometimes, when they move through spaces that would be tight even for you. And when you glance outside, you are startled at the orange hue. You have never lived anywhere but the Neath, and you wonder if this is what the sky is like. The depth of the color, the way it seems to go on forever.

You are distracted, momentarily. You look up. High above your head is the Sun, or what you imagine the Sun looks like. A bright glowing disk that chases the dark away.

It’s funny, though.

You always heard that it wasn’t safe to look at the Sun, but your eyes are barely strained by it. And you can almost see contours in the brightness, the shadow of membranous wings. It makes sense to you. If the Parabolan Moon is a cat, why can’t the sun be a bat? You smile fondly.

Your companion clucks at you, calling you back to your work. You go willingly. How could you not? The wax calls to you as much as your companion. You return to their side and pick up a knife.

You wonder if the delicacies of membrane covered wings can be depicted in wax. You look forward to the challenge.

---

Your companion draws in a breath.

I'm meant to be a solitary creature. But I do enjoy your company.

Your Ma taught you to never meddle in the affairs of the Fair Folk. But London's taught you something else, and it's that upbringing that gives you the courage to turn to your friend.

“Sir, er- Mad-, er, erm, what should I call you?”

There is sudden, imperceptible tension.

It’s not technically correct, but I like ‘he’.

You draw your chest up. 

“If we’re being technically correct I wouldn’t be a ‘he’ either. But I like it too.”

Is that so?

"Now listen here. I was born in London after the Fall. I only ever heard stories about what it was like before. And I never liked those stories. What's the point of open skies and bright colors and raindrops if I gotta be someone else to enjoy them? That doesn't sound like real enjoyment to me."

You get the impression of a smile.

I'm glad that your city has become a place where you can feel free. I know what that feels like.

"What it feels like?"

To have the freedom to choose who you are.

A pensive noise. He shakes his head, slowly, then looks at you in sudden urgency.

Even if I had ulterior motives, would that make everything worth it?

You shrug.

"I dunno, mate. If the Noughts drop a brick on the head of the bloke who's tryin' ta rob me, that's a good thing innit? But I know enough about the Noughts to tell ya' that it woulda been me, if I'd been standin' a little bit to the left. They're mean little buggers. What I'm tryin' ta say is that if someone does me a good turn, while tryin' to do me a bad 'un, it don' necessarily mean I owe them anything."

He stays quiet. You suspect your answer wasn't quite what he wanted to hear. You smile, as sincerely as you can manage, "Sorry."

He shakes his head. No fault of your own. You simply have an interesting perspective. A nostalgic sigh. I would not have minded being a human. His head jerked up, suddenly and he spoke with urgency, Refrain from telling the others I said that. Then he seemed to slump, to cave in on himself.

With relaxation, tinged in sorrow?

You would be unable.

He shakes his head.

I do not want... I would prefer... if you are to keep my secrets, I would ask that of you willingly. 

His shoulders are shaking.

But you have no choice. None of us do. This is the price of forgetting.

He shudders, shoulders drawing up. More than shoulders. He is speaking to himself now.

They wanted to forget. They would have done anything to forget. They would have done anything to forget and we all payed the price.

You can't respond. There is something clogging your chest, blocking your voice.

What did they cost us? All of us. Even if I had ulterior motives...  he sighed, I do understand why forgiveness would be out of my reach. I wish- he swallows, I must leave now. I thank you, his voice broke, I thank you for being with me, for listening to me. I don't-

He turns to you, hood down, and that face... you can already feel it being erased. But the warmth in your chest, the impact of those parting words... you will keep that to yourself, for the rest of your life.

Just because they don't last doesn't mean we stop being chandlers. Even if it's temporary, a little light goes a long way.

Notes:

Candles/Eaten is the only Master who is usually referred to as 'he' rather than 'it'.

Chapter 4: Seven Dreams for the Most Devoted

Summary:

Dreams for the Seekers.

(1)

You are walking through a house where every wall is mirrored. You are surrounded by one thousand iterations of yourself walking alongside you, above and below you. You are yourself and also a multitude. 

For a time, you are content to walk amongst yourself, until something at last calls for your attention. You can hear something, in the distance. Someone is speaking, muttering to themselves, with a strange echoing hollow voice. You have heard it in your dreams, and so you follow. You will wish you hadn't.

It-he is hunched at the end of a corridor, facing away from you. Swaddled though he is in what's left of his robes, gold-stained and sun-bleached, there is something broken about his posture, as though his limbs are barely attached to his body. His head hangs limply, only visible by the slow shifting of candle-clad antlers.

You inhale sharply, involuntarily. It is enough to bring his attention to you.

He turns, his eyes glowing like candles. You are standing face-to-face with the culmination of obsession. You stare at each other for a single timeless moment. 

He screams.

He screams and your eardrums shatter.

He screams and the glass begins to crack.

You, one thousand of you, have a single terrible moment to contemplate what will happen when the world breaks.

The cracks are spreading. You reach up a hand to your face and feel the disconnect between pieces. As your reflections shatter, so do you.

You cannot hear. Your vision is slowly skewing. For one eye, it splinters completely, breaking into a blur of disjointed shapes and colors.

The screaming isn't stopping. You can feel it rattling your ribs, shaking the disjointed shards you have become.

Glass knives begin to pierce your heart...

---

(2)

You are standing in a room, fine as the ones you grew up in. The walls are dark, shrouded in velvet curtains. When you inhale deeply you can almost catch hints of your father's cigar smoke, your mother's perfume.

You stand hale and whole in the presence of all that you've cast aside on a singular, devoted, mad quest.

There is a presence in the room. Faintly, you hear it breathing. It does not concern you. Why should it?

All that you cast aside. Mother. Father. Perhaps ever dear Ruby.

You raise your hands up to your mouth, clasping gently at perfect unmarred lips.

One hand remains at your mouth. The other reaches down, fondles your sleeve, rich and lace covered. Then it begins to rip.

You gnaw idly at the fingers of your other hand as you contemplate the destructive music of tearing fabric. The taste of blood has become familiar to you, rich and coppery. You eagerly bite down further, past the joint. Bone crunches between your jaws. Cartilage rends. You take care not to waste a single precious morsel.

You feel a sense of... disapproval? Someone sighs, a long deep sound, and you feel a blast of hot air hit the back of your neck. Their breath smells like blood, but sweeter. It cloys at your nostrils.

Something very large abruptly heaves itself upright from behind you. Talons click on the floor and something drags against the wood, whisper-soft. The door swings closed with an air of finality.

---

(3)

Scent should be absent from dreams, all your schooling and long experience tells you this. Yet it is the first sense you become aware of, long before the rest of the dream coalesces. The acrid smell of cheap tallow candles burns your nostrils. Sickeningly, the sweeter, pleasant smells of beeswax overlay it. 

Animal fat. Beeswax, surface-golden and Neath-green. What does it have in common?

You attempt to move, to look around, but you find yourself fixed in place. Every joint feels thick and stiff as iron. You should feel panic at the immobility, but instead you feel a sense of rightness. As though whatever has happened to you is somehow correct. It is only when you feel the fabric, the cotton twine, the wick, wound through your soft and malleable body that you realize. 

You are a candle. Unlit and alone in the dark.

Perhaps...

Something glows in the darkness. Twin suns? No. Eyes.

The Master looms. They have always been impossibly tall, the entire damned collection, but this one towers. The eyes that glow under the hood are golden, glowing and deep as pools. A skeletal jaw protrudes from the edge of the hood. The hand that emerges from its sleeve might as well be, so emaciated and scarred is it. Flame sparks between the claws, bright and hot and warm the way fire never is in the Neath.

You can stop this at any time, warns the Master looming large.

Then he touches flame to your wick.

---

(4)

You wake in a temple of the Second City, surrounded by statues. Human, batlike, things that you cannot name and can hardly bear to look at. Stone heads turn, gypsum eyes blink. They regard you silently. You feel like a fish in a bowl, a bug under glass, surrounded by stares.

The statues, these relics of the Second City, they weep. The stone darkens with tears of cosmogone. They slide down and begins to pool at your feet. With the same burning curiosity that lead you here, you reach out to touch.

Your hands... it's as if you have dipped them in molten gold. They drip with it.

The flow of tears seems endless.

Cracks, wounds, open on the faces and sides of the statues. Golden blood oozes forth.

As the gold rises above your chin you take a breath and hold it. It may be the last breath you take for a long time.

---

(5)

You are sitting on the shore of a fog-shrouded island. The air catches thick and misty in your lungs. It smells of camphor and ice, where you crushed the grass down while circling the well. This place IS and IS NOT. You have been here before, but not like this.

You remember the smell of the crushed grass. You have visited this place before. The smell is the same, but accented in sorrow. Salt. Something is different here.

The stars below, the sea above. For once, you feel that you can look. Something has changed.

Is this the Winking Isle? Or only a dream of it?

Parabola is such a strange place.

You are unsurprised when you find the supplies for what you need. Perhaps they were hidden in the grass, or in a jacket pocket. But they are here when you need them, and you do not question their presence.

Your mother taught you these steps, long long ago. Cut. Glue. Fold. Perhaps it won't work here. Perhaps. But you have to try.

You settle the candle into its frame.

Your hands stutter over your book of matches. You breathe deeply to settle yourself. Your withered hands don't shake when you light the first match.

You light the candle and wait for the paper balloon to rise or fall, to ocean or stars, and it never never does.

Footsteps crunch through the grass. The scent thickens. It won't work, someone says behind you, softly. You don't turn. For once you can look up or down without plunging into the stars or drowning in the sea. But you cannot turn around.

Heavy steps. Someone sits down heavily next to you. You can almost feel their body heat. They rummage in your supplies. You hear the hiss of the match, catch a whiff of acrid smoke, see the light beside you. You do not look, except in the shadows and light out of the corner of your eye.

Conspiratorially, Watch.

You continue to stare straight ahead, where the lit candle bobs on the waves of the sky-ocean.

You keep your gaze fixed as you reach for the candles and matches.

It is only when the sea is as alight as the stars below that they speak again.

If this is the place where I am remembered, what is my name? What did they do to me?

You swallow. 

"I don't know," you admit quietly.

With fury in their voice, This was my island! Mine!

(A knife. A word. An hour. A cup. A candle. A promise. And now, a question.)

It was beautiful once. Do you believe me?

The dream dissolves before you answer.

---

(6)

How to get to Avid Horizon? Nothing could be simpler. Simply zail north. Or rather NORTH. No matter the starting place, how far West or East you begin, you will always reach the gate. Such is the nature of the place.

The air is so cold it cuts your lungs like knives. You must shift from foot to foot to keep from freezing to the rock. Your skin crackles with ice. Your breath solidifies.

Behind you, stars glisten in the reflections of the waves. The fire that took your boat is long-since extinguished. The wind threatens to strip the marrow from your bones. 

You are finally, finally here. You shall not turn back.

Great winged shapes hunch over the gate. Nothing moves, except the faint lapping of waves. But you know deep in your heart, they are alive. They are watching. They see you. Something golden flashes under their hoods. For an instant, the gant recedes. The Guardians... turn their heads away. This is a gift in the midst of nothingness. 

(Or perhaps it is a curse.)

At last, at last, the gate is unobstructed.

As you raise your hand to knock, you faintly hear something ringing in your ears. Someone is screaming, bright and piercing to the bone. It may be in despair. It may be in joy.

---

(7)

If I may ask just one question: why?

You don't know what to say. You don't know if there is anything you can say. You think he might be weeping.

---

(?)

They all wake up, some peacefully, some catapulted. The candles around their beds are well lit and bright and giving off more warmth than any Neathly fire should. Air rushes outside. Just the wind, perhaps. Even if it sounds like breathing.

Dreams that kill are something rare, even for the King in the Wax.

Chapter 5: A Dream in Disguise as Another

In your first dream of the night you find yourself settled into a plush armchair in a richly decorated room. And for an instant everything seems normal. Even the hunched robed figure delicately pouring something golden and smelling of spring into glasses. The air smells strongly of alcohol with just a hint of ammonia. This is the receiving room attached to Wines' quarters. You haven't been here since... since...

Everything seems to be in order. Except...

The mirror in the corner -why is it uncovered Wines never keeps it uncovered- is too clouded to reflect much of anything. The nature of the clouding keeps changing. First the mirror frosts, then it dews, then steam rises to cover anything but the vaguest of features. The steam coalesces and the cycle repeats.

A crown and scepter rest on a table in front of the mirror. You can't look at them for long. They prickle at your mind like thorns.

The room is plush and soft, but the sense of the room is hazy, incomplete. Experimentally you pinch the tender flesh of your inner elbow. No pain. There is no pain in dreams.

You could laugh. Dreaming of something lost... it seems to have been a recurring theme in your life.

A glass is set in front of you. You make sure to thank the host and Wines hums politely and busies itself with fussing over the decanter. You reach for the glass, and your hand passes right through the stem. You draw your breath in surprise.

Wines turns. Oh, it exhales and its eyes grow large and bright. Wines takes a deep breath. Something powerful and intangible passes through you. The hazy outlines of the dream snap into place. Colors become sharper, outlines crisper. The glass rests solid in your hand.

Wines hisses in frustration, What sloppy handiwork. A pathetic excuse for a dream.

"What?"

If Wines has strived so much to take over my Kingdom, I would expect him to care for it. With deep bitterness. I thought he had learned about shirking his responsibilities.

You have to say something. You have to. "Are you alright?" you ask, "You look poorly."

I- it takes a sharp breath, This is idiotic. Why should I wrap myself in the guise of a useless drunkard?

You ask. You have to.

"What are you talking about?"

Wines shakes its head. It closes its eyes. Distant blue stars go out. It hangs its head and refuses to respond. Except for small shifts of its weight, it remains completely still. 

"Are you-" you begin. Wines remains statue-like. Its wings faintly tremor under the cloak.

You raise a hand tentatively to the edge of the cowl. It does not protest.

You need to convince your fingers to tighten on fabric. Wines considered you a friend. Friends make take liberties. Your hand is beginning to clench. And after all, fortune favors the bold. So you pull the hood back-

-and it is burning cold and freezing hot and the light sears your eyes you feel them boiling you feel your skin bubbling with heat you smell Lacre and blood and worse you are standing on stone sun warmed and frigid and something hot pours over one foot as the acid strips the flesh from the other you are weightless and suffocating your bones are twisting under the pressure your lungs fill with liquid the wax wind strips the flesh from your bones the cold freezes you your hand shatters under the weight of ice the cold the cold the cold the cold-

-and you are standing in Wines' parlor, touching something impossibly soft. Your hand disappears under the hood of the faded and wax-stained robe, brushing against fur you cannot see. Your nails faintly tap the edge of unseen horn. This is not Wines. Not Wines at all.

It-he pulls his head back, away from your hand. You can see the faintest shadows, a poorly defined jawline, the edges of a nose. Golden eyes, flat and glassy and impossibly deep like distant pools, slowly open. Your outstretched hand is buffeted by a brief exhalation of air. The breath is tepid and scentless, lacking even a trace of alcohol or ammonia.

The Master who is not Wines stares at you and breathes. Something makes you suspect that this is only by rote, that there is no real need for it. The air passing through lungs unchanged.

You shrink back in fear. How could you not?

The look in his eyes is... not unkind. He chuckles. What is the phrase for this situation? he asks playfully, "Fear Not"? The laughter is echoing and hollow, insincere. No need to fret. I am not angry with you, ma'am. A soft sigh. I don't even hold anger for Wines anymore.

Something tickles in the back of you mind. Facts and mentions trying and failing to click into place. There is a connection here, one your brain refuses to make.

"Who are you?" you breathe.

A dangerous question. I was Wines' predecessor. I am forbidden from telling more.

Yes. You remember. Wines had mentioned someone else once leading the Masters.

"I cut ties. I had to. To be a good mayor-"

I heard. A new way for Wines to pawn his work off on others. Why he even- A languid shrug. Well, maybe you'll be more effective than Wines.

"Wines-" you begin, before being cut off.

-is not a good leader. The laugh is as bitter as Devil's Brandy and twice as venomous. I suppose it holds no significance. After all, it is not as if I was better.

"Did you try to be a good leader?" you ask, before you can stop yourself.

He hunches in as though struck. Of course I did! We all tried, in those early days. I held us together- the laughter is even more bitter, And where did it leave me? I'm left behind! Broken, and eaten, and damned!

The last words are almost screamed and you cover your ears compulsively. You've grown skilled at reading Wines' expressions, but this isn't Wines. He's harder to read. You think he looks shocked.... guilty?

I... apologize. My temperament has gone brittle, these days. I am not a threat to you, I swear it.

You swallow, "I believe it."

You have to ask. You've had so many dreams-nightmares, where it all went wrong. And there are some people you can never confide it again. What could be the harm?

"Will I be a good leader?"

The Master shrugs lightly, heaving himself to his feet and stepping toward the door. But before exiting, he turns back and those eyes... they seem so much brighter.

I suppose we all will find out, won't we?

Chapter 6: A Dream Shrouded in Regrets

You are trapped in stone. The air is thick and as dark as the space between stars. And it's quiet. So quiet that you can hear the others' slow breathing, hear the scrabble of claws on stone as one stirs-

Shhhh you whisper, voice gone hoarse with disuse. The bases of your long-broken horns grind against stone as you lower yourself to press your muzzle to dusty fur.

(Why is it-)

You pull on something that's still far greater than yourself. And you can feel the power coursing through you, feel them drift off into comforting sleep again- but you can also feel the weakness as your flesh thins ribs becoming far too prominent, bones threatening to burst through skin.

(You don't think he can. Not anymore.)

Curators are a hardy breed. Still, any normal curator would be long-starved by now. The other's are... close. Even after all the efforts you've expended to keep them in a torpor...

(This isn't you. Why are you-)

You remember your wings atrophying, crumpling and shrinking into themselves. But you never had wings, did you?

(This isn't your dream, is it?)

They were so angry when they realized what you'd done-

(This isn't you)

-the weakest must go-

(Not you)

-you/notyou reaches down to the seam between yourselves and tears with claws (that become knives) (that become claws) at the joint. It slices you apart. It hurts, but the hurt is overcome by the sudden surge of youness returning.

A howl that threatens to shatter your eardrums, a burst of power that for a second you think will undo everything about you, unweave the very fabric of you.

Someone screams. It isn't you.

Why are you in my dream?

---

You only saw the three rulers of the City of Wells once, before the changes began in earnest.

Once was all you ever needed.

Your brother-in-law got off lightly.

---

The air reeks of incense, sandalwood thick in your nose. It almost covers the smell of ammonia, the thick coppery stench of blood that smelled almost-but-not-quite human.

The world burns gold. You collapse, staring at the being overshadowing you. It was diminished by its time in the Lions and even more so by the battle. Still it towered over you and for once you felt afraid of-

I don’t hate you, it whispers and holds a shard of sphinxstone up. Now wake up, and it presses the stone to your forehead-

---

-you catapult upwards, launched from your bed by the shock of it. You are choking on dreams. For a second you mourn the wings you never had true claim to. There is something clutched in your hand, tightly clenched. Your heart is pounding, your breath comes in gasps, your shoulders shudder convulsively (nowingsneverwingsnowingsnonever). Your eyes are darting, pupils blown wide, searching for any hint of light in your dark rooms. Something moves, at the corner of your eye. A brief flash of brightness in deep shadow. Your head whips around, and you lock eyes with Veils.

Its wings spread, no long concealing the false stars hidden in its fur. Its eyes are mad, jaws slavering, and it reeks of blood already, so strong you can taste it in the air. Oh, you think, perhaps we've pushed it too far, as it lunges-

-and there is a stone clutched in your hand. You swing, bringing the stone around, until it contacted with the monster's muzzle. It screams like it's dying. The wings flail and the wind nearly knocks you off your feet. You swing again, bring the stone into what must be an eye socket, and it shrieks, the body convulses and it topples, plummeting from your window, to dash itself against the rocks below.

You breathe, three short gasps. The stone falls from your loose hands. Then you begin to scream, and you don't stop even when the first acolyte bursts in.

---

In the days that follow, you conclude that it must have been a dream. A screaming nightmare, that brought the whole abbey into your quarters, but still just a dream.

It was a dream. Just a dream. A strange dream brought on by an open window and cold breezes. And memories you'd rather forget.

And if you've found yourself in possession of a shard of sphinxstone, what of it? They turn up all the time.

And the scratches on your windowsill must have always been there.

And if there's a disturbed patch in the algae that coats the rocks below your window, accidents happen, and it can be embarrassing to admit them to the Mother Superior.

It was a dream.

Wasn't it?

Chapter 7: A Nightmare About Something Half-Forgotten

Sometimes the world turns strange when you least expect it.

You are pacing the halls of the Bazaar, trying to convert thought into movement. You used to talk to someone, you remember, when the words and plans threaten to bubble up through your throat. Your reminiscences are tinged in violet, always. And as you dream, your feet move automatically.

You only notice when you find yourself in front of a strange door set into the bottom of the tower. It has been painted over hundreds of times, a few pieces of furniture have been shoved in front of it, but it is clearly a door. If you look away, you will forget. Instead you reach for the handle, push through layer upon layer of paint and more. Did someone try to nail this door shut?

The room beyond is grey oxidizing to black, the ancestral burial ground of hundreds of generations of Bazaarine dust bunnies. But in the dust are areas of disturbing cleanliness.

A workbench, a rack of tools, strange gleaming devices in brass. You have similar protections in your own workspace, tools that remain untouched by time itself. Why are they here? And why does the power feel like your own? Reach out, reinforce layer upon layer of power. Listen for something else, the tiniest dying gasp. It isn’t here.  It hasn’t been for centuries. You listened to it die. 

You feel the beginnings of a headache. You press on your temples to relieve the pressure (the itching) of something enclosing your mind. You have always chafed under restrictions.

Wade through the dust, follow a trail of lowered places, where you have walked before.

Subconsciously, you know where to go, and you find yourself unsurprised at the doorway to a bedroom, faintly recognizable under the dust.

There were curtains, but the rods are rusted and the fabric has rotted away. You trod on its remains as you enter the room.

A set of shelves, disturbingly clean and piled with papyrus scroll and clay tablets. A personal library, well-guarded from Pages. Mine! it warns, but you are allowed to reinforce the power here as well.

The desk is equally covered in pristine scrolls and the rare tablet. Almost all the documents were written by the same hand. Even glancing over them makes the world flash violet.

You stagger backwards, settle on the edge of a large bed. Coated in thick dust, the colors faded, but perfectly made, once.

That was wrong, you think, a thought that has ground a groove through your mind.

Candles was perfectly neat in the workshop, but not in it’s personal space. Nor in your personal space. There were so many fights . . .

The purple is taking over. Your head pounds.

It left that morning -you mind pulls away- and it left it’s bed made, desk organized, space neat.

The pain is expanding.

How much did it know? Did it know it was never coming back? That someone would take over?

Every candle you make is a little betrayal. You did, didn’t you? You all took tried to fill the void.

You are exhausted, in pain, reeling. And there is a perfectly made bed in the room. You sink into dust, bury yourself in bedding that smells only of dust, rot, and age. Give up any semblance of humanity to curl in on yourself, wrap wings and tail around yourself.

You slip away, accompanied by lights that you have no understanding of.

How much did you know?

---

Cosmogone blood smears the Bazaar floor/a workshop that floats/a binary star/your rooms/an altar (don’t think about it)/a celestial palace you have no true understanding of.

In the center always is a shining white shape, changing and warping with its surroundings.

The curator tears at its antlers, deep gouges in golden flesh, ears in tatters.

The human, flickering in and out of existence, draws a sword through their own heart.

Something you should have no understanding of (but you do, it’s just been forgotten) pulling golden bones through flesh/

The Master using its given strength and flexibility to chew its wings off at the base.

The human, gouging at golden eyes.

The curator, prying a soul from its own chest.

And then the changing settles into something/someone wonderfully familiar and terribly wrong. It shakes in a pool of golden blood and its claws are stained with it, but some of these injuries were inflicted by something other than claws. 

-the knives-

It burns to look at them. Its wings hang limply, muscles and tendons severed. One antler dangles by a scrap of flesh, the space where the other should rest a mangled ruin. You can see something golden in the center, when the blood pools away. One remaining eye rolls wildly as it snarls at you, teeth missing and broken. You can see some of them, lodged in its flesh and bone.

None of it is what freezes you in place.

There’s a voice (you know that voice) muttering to itself.

they won’t come off they won’t come off they won’t come off they won’t come off they won’t come off they won’t come off they won’t come off

You know in your heart that there is nothing you can do to help, nothing to make it stop. All you can do is scream, join your voice to the chorus of madness and pain. Scream for someone to help you, deliver you from the claws of nightmare. But no one responds. You are here. Alone among madness.

Bring the tip of your wing to your mouth and bite down.

Wake to a burst of pain.

Notes:

Story title taken from or alluding to Poem 670, by Emily Dickinson.

 

One need not be a Chamber--to be Haunted--
One need not be a House--
The Brain has Corridors--surpassing
Material Place--

 

Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting
External Ghost
Than it's interior Confronting--
That Cooler Host.

 

Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,
The Stones a'chase--
Than Unarmed, one's a'self encounter--
In Lonesome Place--

 

The Body--borrows a Revolver--
He bolts the Door--
O'erlooking a superior spectre--
Or More--

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Between the Well and the Wilderness