DKMortals/SessionThirtySix

[ST] Avir makes his way into the Labyrinth, his breath misting in the air before him. On either side, pyreflame sconces flicker in the white steel walls. The thread spools out behind him. Against the veinous stone floor, it is almost invisible. It looks very small.

[Avir] "Rabbit!" Avir shouts, unwisely. What if the monsters heard him? What if he came? As he walks further and further into the maze without seeing Rabbit, he realized Miruna was right at the pointlessness. Karmic caution seemed a thin reason now.

[ST] The passage does not, fortunately, branch, but it begins to curve, slowly and steadily. The entrance disappears from sight as Avir follows it. His voice echoes strangely down the stone passage; there is no response.

[Avir] Avir hunches his shoulders. He hated dead things.

[Avir] He would go as far as the string lasts, he decides abruptly; it was too likely the passage would warp and change around him otherwise.

[ST] As Avir moves deeper into the Labyrinth, a chill wind blows around his legs. He should be used to it, having feared many a Haslanti winter, but it's somehow colder, much colder, than anything he's experienced before.

[ST] As Avir moves forward, the thread begins to play out. He's got, if anything, a few more yards left. That's when he hears the sound, drifting back to him as if through some strange filter. A muted, distant sobbing, audible over the lower, insidious whispering. Rabbit.

[Avir] "Rabbit!" Avir calls to her. "Rabbit, I'm here, come to me. I'm here to get you out." He goes to the end of the string, but no further, clutching it like a lifeline in his sweaty palm.

[ST] The sobbing continues. The passage has grown darker around Avir now, the sconces placed further and further apart. Ahead, the passage curves again - ahead, a strange, pale blue luminescence shimmers on the stone wall. The thread is very slippery in Avir's palm.

[Avir] He swears to himself, softly and fluently. It was probably a trick. It was undoubtedly a trick.

[Avir] He shrugs off his shirt awkwardly and looks for a loose thread.

[Avir] Holding the string grimly in his mouth- trying not to think of how easily it could be pulled away from him- he unravels a bit of the shirt. It's hard to tie one thread to the other one-handed, and the knot is poor. It's going to break, a little voice whispers inside. You're going to die if you don't turn back now. Perhaps it is the peronelle.

[Avir] Holding onto the shirt he moves gingerly around the corner, letting the thread pull itself from the shirt. He is not quite bare-chested; the demon's eye winks on his shoulder.

[Avir] It moves nervously to a spot about his right nipple, swimming through his skin.

[ST] The peronelle ripples on Avir's skin at the sudden touch of the cold air. Avir makes his way around the corner, and finds the source of the blue luminescence - a sunken pool, glimmering in the center of a circular cavern. Ahead, the path splits into three. A crooked obsidian staircase winds upwards onto a brightly lit path. Next to it, a passage slopes downward - far ahead, Avir can see

[ST] the shimmer of dark, brackish water.

[ST] The last passage is round, not square, and seems to run more or less straight. The rock is slick there, as if it was chewed away

[Avir] Avir felt an instinctive preference for the stairs up. Down was for drowining. And the round passage seemed like to see him eaten. He crouches down and looks for signs of Rabbit's passage.

[ST] Avir finds a few drops of blood on the floor of the Labyrinth, fresh- it smears when he touches it with a finger. Blood's rare enough in the Labyrinth that it can't have been here long.

[ST] The strange thing is, a few drops seem to lead into the downward winding passage, while others lead to the foot of the stairs, and spot the first few steps upwards.

[Avir] Avir pauses and rubs his chin thoughtfully. Was it one passage once? A trick? If it were a trick he would be best off going through the round passage.

[Avir] He wraps his string around his stump and holds the arm tight against himself to keep it in place. He lifts a finger. Just a few specks of blood- but enough. He begins muttering over it, speaking the words of summoning. Come, the essence whispers. Was it malefic essence, here in this dark place? Come Rabbit. Come come come.

[Avir] The blood feels warm and tingly on his finger.

[ST] After a moment, Avir hears a bloodcurdling scream from far ahead. It seems to be coming from the downward sloping passage. It might be Rabbit, though it is too distorted to tell. After a moment, it stops, leaving the soft, muted shufflings and distance whispers of the Labyrinth in its place.

[Avir] "Rabbit..." he whispers aloud. He didn't want to go further. He didn't. It's a trap. He stands and creeps onwards. An effective trap. Fool.

[ST] The thread continues to spool out behind Avir as he descends the middle passage. It's not yet taut, but it hasn't come loose, either - he feels a reassuring resiliency in the string. Stifling darkness rises around him - there's a faint glow from what appears to be lichen on the walls, but it's diminishing as Avir goes lower and lower. Spots of blood are strewn here and there.

[ST] Ahead, Avir dimly sees the shimmering of water. The tunnel terminates in what appears to be a broad, shallow, underground lake. At least... it MIGHT be shallow.

[Avir] He wasn't going swimming in that stuff. Nor woud he take a boat. He looks for Rabbit in a perfunctory way, and upwards for monsters set to ambush him.

[ST] Avir doesn't hear the sound until it's almost on him - a soft, wet slap, repeated over and over. The sound, he realizes, of an oar striking water. A boat the size of a fishing coracle drifts out of the darkness, little more than a black mass in the gloom. A figure, tall and cloaked, stands in the bow. As the boat nears, a lantern hanging from a pole near its stern ignites with green flame.

[Avir] "Did a woman...did a woman named Rabbit come this way?" Avir asks the figure.

[ST] Avir finds himself staring at a boat of bleached white bone, a tall, gaunt, hooded figure. It does not have a face. A pair of shadowy claws grips an oar - as the thing pulls it from the water and gives it a shake, chill drops splash Avir. The oar shudders and reforms into a wickedly curved scythe.

[ST] "She sought passage," the figure says. Its voice is a low, rasping whisper in which Avir can hear a distant shrillness, like the scream of a wounded pig. "Do you?"

[Avir] "Passage where? Why?"

[Avir] A fearful pause. "Passage with what?"

[Avir] (retcon) "How did she pay?"

[ST] "Many questions. One question." The figure extends its free hand in a sweeping gesture. "Pay my toll, and you shall follow her. A memory, I want, mine forever to keep. You will not miss it. It will take you to her."

[Avir] "And will you take me back?"

[ST] "Yes. But not without recompense."

[Avir] "The same price?"

[ST] "Always."

[ST] "Merely think of the memory you wish to offer, and I shall take it."

[Avir] Avir licks his lips. "Very well." The memory comes to him at once, still pain-fresh. He remembered screaming. He remembering screaming and screaming, as the wolf-girl sawed clumsily through his hand. She didn't have the ruthlessness to do it properly, and it was torture, and it was...gone.

[ST] Avir feels a knot rising in his throat, gagging him. No, not a knot, it's twitching, it's moving-

[ST] The ferryman's hand darts forward with practice ease, prying open Avir's mouth and snatching smoothly at the thing that flutters out.

[ST] It's a moth the color of milk, struggling feebly in the thing's grasp. The ferryman nods. "An astute choice. Enter."

[ST] "Watch your step."

[ST] Glowing things wind their way through the water somewhere very, very far below.

[Avir] Avir falls to his knees, staring at his aching stump. He remembered talking to her. You'ren not their kind, he had said. Then after- nothing. The red-jagged edges of the thought are gone. He looks at the ferrymen, licks his lips, and rises to step onto the boat.

[Avir] He still had hold of Creation, he tries to reassure himself. He avoids looking under the ferryman's hood.

[ST] The ferryman lowers his scythe into the water. The boat drifts from away from the shore almost lazily. Outside of the circle of light from the ferryman's lamp is only darkness.

[ST] Luminous things move through the water. Avir can see now that at least some of them are ghosts, clumsily moliated into fish things and many-tentacled squids

[Avir] "Where are we going?"

[ST] "The same place your Rabbit went. I will tell no more. Not without recompense." The figure rows slowly, steadily, as if it could do it until Creation burned itself to a cinder, and long after it had cooled forever.

[ST] "You might find such knowledge useful."

[Avir] "I will choose the memory?"

[ST] "Not this time."

[Avir] Avir stares into the water. What did he have to remember, that mattered so much? He had no loved ones, no children to forget. Every message he had to carry, he had passed on. "Fine," he says harshly.

[ST] The ferryman reaches forward, cupping Avir's hand in a clawed fist, and-

[ST] Avir has a brief vision of a woman he knows well. Morose Carp, with her long brown hair, her glum eyes, her plain face and big frame. He remembers well her searching, penetrating, somehow needy glances, her obedience, her loyalty. And then, in the next minute, she is gone, sliding from the surface of his mind like wet paint.

[ST] The ferryman fishes out another moth, and puts it alongside the first in a huge wire cage in the stern of the boat. Hundreds of others flutter within.

[Avir] He's on his knees again, clutching his throat. He blinks. Looks for gaps in his memory. Nothing- nothing was missing. "What did you take?" He struggles to his feet, rocking the boat slightly. He looks at the cage. One of those was Rabbit's.

[ST] "She has gone to the domain of La-Shi, the hungry spider," the ferryman says, as if Avir did not even ask the question. "La-Shi called her with her music. I knew this, but La-Shi and I have an arrangement. Perhaps you, too, are enthralled already, and simply do not know it."

[ST] "Once one enters La-Shi's realm, one rarely escapes again."

[Avir] But sometimes, they did, Avir notes. It is small comfort. "Have you any advice for escaping her with my comrade? There will be two of us on the way back. Two tolls."

[ST] "I can tell you nothing save this. Go always to the right. Do not look at the lights. And pray to whatever god you might that you are strong enough."

[ST] The skiff fetches up on a sanday beach with a soft crunch. Avir didn't see it coming, and can barely see where it leads, though it seems to wind upwards into a nearby passage.

[ST] The thread, impossibly, is still in Avir's hand. It has stretched far beyond the point of reason.

[Avir] "Thank you." He looks at the thread in his hand. And to whatever power might helping him, that he clutched Creation still. Thank you. "Until later."

[Avir] He steps out onto the beach and trudges along it, looking for Rabbit's footprints.

[ST] "I will wait," the ferryman says, turning away to stare over the dark waters. "But not long."

[Avir] "Then I will hurry." He picks up his pace.

[ST] Avir does find footprints in the sand, which isn't sand at all, but many small, jagged pieces of obsidian. He follows the prints up towards a circular entrance.

[ST] The tunnel beyond is narrow - Avir can fit, but it will be a tight squeeze. The tunnel is very dark - he can see in only a few feet in the wan light from the ferryman's lantern.

[ST] The tunnel rises to an arched peak overhead. The walls are made of a strange, deliberate structure, whorls and ripples of stone like overlapping waves.

[Avir] Avir grits his teeth and shoulder his way inside, stump banging painfully against the tight corridor.

[ST] Avir moves within the tunnel. After a few steps, it's too dark for him to see. His fingers brush the walls on either side, tight, hemming him in. Step after step, he proceeds forward.

[ST] Avir's fingers touch something sticky on either side of the passage - blood. He stops, taking a step back, and something digs into his back. He realizes the nature of it now - the tunnel is constructed so that one can only move forward. He twists his head, and sees an array of stony spikes behind him.

[ST] From somewhere ahead comes the sound of muted sobbing.

[Avir] Avir proceeds grimly onwards. There was a way out; the Ferryman would not pause otherwise. And Rabbit was waiting for him.

[ST] Aver's hands brush opposite sides of the tunnel. The blood continues onward, for feet, then yards, as the sobbing gets louder, and then he bumps into Rabbit in the dark. She's sticky, dripping. When he touches her, she screams, in fear or in pain.

[Avir] "Shh....Rabbit, it's me. It's really me. I'm here to get you out." He speaks softly and squints at her, trying to see if she was wounded.

[ST] It's pitch black, now. Avir can't see her at all, but he can hear from the sound that it's her. She struggles back towards him - something hot and wet splatters across his face. "Avir? Is... is that you?"

[Avir] "It's me. I.... " He reaches out without thinking with his other hand, the one that's not holding the string. He only remembers his injury when he touches her face with the end of the stump. "I came to rescue you." It sounds ridiculous. "We can't go back- only way out is forward."

[ST] "I felt you calling," Rabbit sobs. "I tried to come, I tried... but it hurt... it hurt... The music... can't you hear it?"

[Avir] "No..." he said, horror and guilt tasting like bile in his mouth. She tried to answer his magic through the spikes. "Don't listen to the music. It's a trap. Just- hold my-" stump "-arm. We'll get out of this together."

[Avir] She felt wet. So much blood. Oh gods. He moves his stump down her face to her throat, checking for movement in her throat.

[ST] Avir's stump is quickly covered in blood, but he can feel Rabbit's pulse, frantic and halting. She's still alive, although perhaps not for long.

[ST] She fumbles for him in the dark, her voice for once absent of bravado. He feels a hand tighten around his elbow. "It... it hurts."

[Avir] "It's okay. I'll fix it. Just- try not remember this."

[Avir] He leans forward and kisses her. Her mouth tastes like blood, tantilizingly. The stomach bottle bug shivers as it catches the aroma. Injury! It climbs up Avir's esophagous with delicate legs and crawls out of his mouth and into hers like an enormous spider. Avir's arm is heavy, holding her close as she struggles instinctively when the first probing leg enter her throat.

[Avir] Avir had forgotten how gross the bug felt in his stomach. He feels light without it. "Fix her, for gods' sake," he orders the bug, drawing away.

[ST] "MMMphh!" Rabbit screams into Avir's mouth. The stomach bug scrambles down her throat, swims through her body, hums happily as it begins sealing her wounds. Rabbit moans into Avir's mouth, shuddering against him. She tries to pull away, and the spikes cut into her again. The bug capers, as pleased as it ever is. It needs virtually no command.

[ST] "What is it," Rabbit moans in the dark. "What IS IT?"

[Avir] "Shh..." He strokes her hair. "Does it really matter? It's making you better."

[ST] "I don't want to die here, Avir," Rabbit says softly. "I don't know where we are. I want to go home. I never wanted to go on this Last Rite, it's bullshit, it's... it's..." she trails off into a series of sobs.

[ST] The bug finishes up with a soft, disappointed hum, settling down in Rabbit's stomach.

[Avir] "We'll get home. We'll get home, and we'll drown in booze and whores. Alright?" The worst of her wounds should be gone, he judged. "But the ferryman won't wait long. Lets go." He pushes her gently forward.

[ST] Rabbit stumbles along numbly, and Avir follows in her wake. Ahead, a light begins to grow at the end of the tunnel, red, warm, welcoming. And then, suddenly, the pair step out into a circular chamber, rimmed with a number of glowing red lanterns.

[ST] A pair of tunnels like the one the pair just exited loom ahead on the other side of the chamber. They seem to be identical.

[Avir] Avir pulls Rabbit to the right, and avoids looking at the lights. The ferrymen would want their memories. He didn't trust it, but it was all he had.

[ST] In the red light, Avir can see the extent of Rabbit's injuries. Her armor is shredded to uselessness, and the clothing beneath it is bloodsoaked and tattered. The stomach bug has closed Rabbit's wounds, but a tracery of vicious scarring covers every inch of her exposed flesh. The effect is far more horrific than anything Two-Bits could aspire to.

[Avir] Avir winces away. He hadn't meant it.

[ST] The lights pulse in a welcoming, friendly way. As Avir pulls Rabbit into the tunnel after him, he begins to hear the first strains of distant music, like the piping of a flute.

[ST] Closer, dear. I'm waiting.

[Avir] He struggles not to listen to it, not to hear it. Damn, damn. Was he dazzled as Rabbit? He presses grimly forward. Take the right. Don't look to the light.

[ST] Another chamber, smaller than the first, and another, and another, and another, and each time Avir goes to the right. Rabbit staggers weakly after him - the bug has saved her life, but she has lost a lot of blood. She seems beyond thought right now - perhaps that is for the best.

[Avir] He was moving towards the center, he realized. He must be. Straight into the center of the web.

[Avir] Perhaps the Ferrymen had tricked him. Or perhaps through HER was the only way out.

[ST] Then the tunnel opens up into a sumptuous room. Silken drapes and fine tapestries shroud the rock walls. Pillows cover the floor. The smell of hookah smoke rises into the air, minging with the scent of spices, rot, and blood. It is the center of the web, but it reminds him of nothing so much as Cadda's shoddy, tawdry little wagon.

[ST] La-Shi does not look much like a spider, either, save for her multiple arms. Two hold a flute to a pair of full, lush lips. Another two pluck a harp delicately, and another two run down the surface of her shapely, blue-skinned, and luminous body.

[ST] She rises, leaving the harp behind, continuing to play her flute. Her hair stretches behind her in a great black wave, larger than the rest of her body.

[Avir] Avir turns his head this way and that, looking for another door. He avoids looking at her directly. "Hello, lady."

[ST] "You have come." Her voice caresses Avir's mind. The flute continues to make its faint plea.

[Avir] "Yes. You called us here. Did you not?"

[Avir] His hand clenches convulsively on the thread.

[ST] It trembles, and suddenly tugs back, snapping out of Avir's hand and slithering away into the tunnel behind him.

[ST] La-Shi's hair ripples, moves. A few strands withdraw themselves from a tunnel across the chamber. After a moment, Avir sees that somehow, impossibly, one of them is entwined with the brown thread of Miruna's shirt.

[ST] "Yes." She says. "I smelled you. So warm. So full of life. So unlike the cold things that are usually my prey."

[Avir] "No!" He turns and stares after it, mouth gaping it as all his tenative hope snaps away with it. He looks back at the woman, then flinches away. "You- was it all a trick, then?"

[ST] "There are no tricks with me, sweetling," the ghost purrs. She takes a few steps closer to him, her hair rising behind her back in several columns, the strands twining with each other almost salaciously. "My nature is rather evident, is it not." The music of the flute assails him, battering at his mind.

[Avir] "Yes..." he says faintly.

[ST] Avir's limbs go leaden, numb. He stares deeply into the smooth, black eyes of La-Shi the spider. Her music surrounds him, enters him, takes from him, and it feels splendid.

[Avir] "Oh, that's nice," he breathes as his heart hardens. He stares into her eyes and tries to think of how to use her. Rabbit mewls uselessly behind him.

[ST] Avir can feel something leeching from him, can almost see it on the air, faintly luminous as it surrounds the ghost. She breathes in, face flushing, growing stronger on whatever she's taking from him.

[Avir] He raises his hand to touch her lips as she eats his soul. "Surely...I can be of more use to you...otherwise?" he presses through the pleasure of her feeding.

[ST] "I hardly see how." Behind him, Rabbit is moaning softly. The feeding is having its effect on her, too.

[Avir] "Neither do I," he confesses."DO IT!" he roars at the peronelle skin and it leaps from him like a startled dear, wrapping around the flute, swathing it in gloopy, dripping demonflesh. Avir launches himself forward at the same moment, whipping his spear-haft from his belt to her throat.

[Avir] Avir's skin touches the air for the first time in weeks. It felt good, more real, as he grappled with the ghost and sought to end her. The half-broken spear from Creation burrows deep into her flesh. Avir smiles at her as the spear sinks. "Think you're going to eat ME?"

[ST] La-Shi draws back, screeching, her plasmic flesh dripping as she pulls herself off the spear. Her flute vanishes from her hands as each of them begins to transform into a set of black, drippin talons. With barely a moment's respite, she pounces at Avir, swinging her claws to decapitate him. In her rage, she tears across the room, shredding pillows into clouds of feathers, shearing

[ST] through tapestries.

[Avir] He shrieks as she guts him. The red earring in his ear gleams red. "Kill her! KILL HER!" he shouts to his demons, coughing up blood.

[ST] As Avir falls, his spear goes clattering across the floor. Startled Rabbit feels almost as if she is a spectator watching herself as she reaches down, her hands tightening on its haft. She wasn't brave. She never had been. She wasn't pretty, really. Never had been. She didn't like Avir. Never had. But he had come here for her. He had tried to save her, even if she wasn't brave, even if he

[ST] didn't give a whore's cough for her.

[ST] She was Once Dead; at least she could do the same.

[ST] A brass urn sits near her. She picks it up, whips it at the ghost's head, and follows it in, stabbing furiously.

[ST] The perronelle makes a horrible, trilling screech. Rabbit barely registers that it's there until it springs, battering at La-Shi's face with its pseudopods. Its eyes dart wildly through its liquid form. A half dozen mouths open to scream and curse La-Shi in Old Realm

[ST] La-Shi springs at Rabbit, talons lashing at her furiously. Rabbit retreats, desperately battering away the strikes, and none get through - yet.

[ST] Rabbit plants her heel and pushes back, slamming the butt of the weapon into the ghost's flushed face before driving the point of the spear into her throat.

[ST] La-Shi stumbles back, pressing a luminous hand to the side of her throat. She glares utter hatred at Rabbit, driving back in, battering at her in a sudden burst of force.

[ST] Rabbit staggers back, bleeding anew from her chest and thigh. The ghost is a whirlwind of limbs and talons, battering with almost unstoppable force.

[ST] The peronelle does what it knows best. It bunches itself up suddenly, propelling itself through the air to wrap La-Shi in its grasping tendrils of flesh. One winds around her neck, another aroun each set of arms, another around her legs. The peronelle croons, straightjacketing her, pressing up against her cold, luminous flesh.

[ST] "DIE!" Rabbit screams, thrusting the spear into the center of La-Shi's chest viciously, again and again. Bound up by the clutching peronelle, she has no way to escape. Luminous blood splashes Rabbit's face as the ghost falls, screaming. Mist rises from the ghost's skin, and in the next moment, she is gone, leaving the peronelle writhing obscenely as it grasps at the air. Rabbit lurches away

[ST] from it and vomits on the floor.

[Avir] The peronelle creeps away from the ghost to Avir, sliding back into his skin. He moans as it envelopes him, barely conscious.

[ST] "The fuck?" Rabbit manages, blinking. "Hell is that thing? Wake up, dammit!"

[Avir] "....alive?" Avir sits up, regretting it immediately. The bug squirms cheerfully in his stomach as it works. "I..gods.. Gods. You killed it?"

[Avir] It isn't flattering, how incredulous he sounds.

[ST] "No," Rabbit snaps. "I lost, we're both fucking dead."

[ST] "What in the name of hell is that thing crawling on you?"

[Avir] "It's...fuck. It's a..pet. We have to get out of here. Now." He's able to stand, and the mad surgeon he killed for the bottle bug was the best bargain he ever made.

[Avir] He looks for exits, for the string that lead to Creation, maybe, maybe.

[ST] "A pet, sure."

[ST] There seem to be three tunnels - the one that they entered through, and a pair in the opposite wall.

[Avir] A dozen eyes stares curiously at Rabbit from his stomach. The peronelle is grateful not to hide. "Yes," Avir snaps. He examines the pair on the opposite wall, and with a shrug, he chooses the one on the right. "This way."

[ST] Rabbit uses the spear to brace herself, gazing at the peronelle in revulsion. She coughs, blood dripping down the front of her armor. "Gotta move. Bleeding again."

[ST] She follows Avir once more, through another one of the one-way tunnels. This one seems darker than the others, and longer. Avir begins to hear something crunching underfoot, and a moment later he and Rabbit step onto the obsidian beach again.

[ST] "I thought of leaving," the ferryman says from his position in the stern as the two arrive.

[Avir] "Good thing you didn't." He wonders what he'll lose this time. He switches his gaze to Rabbit. "You know the toll?"

[ST] "Yes," Rabbit says hollowly. She seems... diminished, somehow, from her encounter with the ghost. "On the way here, I gave him a memory. I don't know what it was."

[ST] "The way back is sealed," the ferryman says. "The Labyrinth has shifted. But there may be another way, another place. You have only to pay the toll."

[Avir] "We'll pay it," Avir says grimly.

[ST] "So you shall."

[ST] Avir's memory and Rabbit's soon flutter in the jar with the others. Avir can't remember what it was the ferryman even asked for, but it's long gone now. Rabbit is sobbing steadily at whatever she gave up - she feels the loss, even if she doesn't know it. The skiff glides through dark waters.

[ST] "What do I look like?" Rabbit asks, suddenly and bluntly. "It's bad, isn't it?"

[Avir] "Yes," Avir agrees cooly. "You look worst than Two-Bits. At least HALF of her was passable."

[Avir] There is a bond of loyalty still, but no warmth.

[ST] She cries harder, shoulders hitching. "I knew it. I knew it. You should've just left me to die. I can't-" She buries her face in her hands, shaking pitifully. Even in all her periods of annoyance, Rabbit was never this... emotional.

[Avir] He watches her for a while with a bemused air, thinking idly about choking her until she was silent. He owed her, but she was making enough noise to...roust the dead. "You know Elk. Just put a bag on your head. Call yourself Otter."

[ST] "Shut up," she manages after a moment. "Just shut up, you don't know what you're t-talking about."

[ST] If the ferryman draws any amusement from this exchange, he keeps it to himself. Fat memories slide over each other in the jar.

[Avir] "You've noticed how much time they spend together, don't you?" Avir says. "I'm just telling you in what quarter the wind lies. As a comrade, I would not like to see you shamed." Not if it would reflect on him, anyway.

[ST] Rabbit weeps bitterly, her entire body convulsing with violent, breath-sucking sobs.

[ST] The skiff crunches to a stop once more on another beach, this time of what appears to be knuckle and fingerbones. The ferryman gestures broadly with his scythe. "A staircase leads above. Follow it, and you will return to Creation."

[Avir] "Thank you. Come, Rabbit."

[ST] Rabbit staggers from the boat, blind with tears. A few moments ago, she was felling monsters. Now, she seems done in, broken. She follows Avir up a flight of stone stairs listlessly.

[Avir] He climbs eagerly, glad to be leaving danger. He stops every now and then to wait for Rabbit. "Hurry up," he tells her impatiently after the third time.

[ST] The pair emerge in what looks and smells like a damp cellar. Muted sunlight shines down upon them from a ragged hole in the ceiling. A shattered piece of black stone as large as a man's torso, its surface covered with strange reliefs, lies on its side beneath the hole in a shaft of weak illumination.

[ST] Rabbit wipes at her face, but keeps crying. She can't seem to stop. It makes her eye red and puffy, making her look even worse.

[Avir] It reminded him of his basement, somehow. Secrets. Avir stands on the stone and leaps at the hole.

[Avir] "Help me. I'll pull you up,after."

[ST] Rabbit gives Avir a leg up, glaring resentfully after him the entire time. She sits on the black stone, looking up after him.

[ST] Avir emerges into the light, finding himself in a ruined house. The roof is intact except for a single ragged hole, which has kept most of the snow out, but the front wall of the house has completely collapsed. Through it, he can see a series of slums and, in the distance, the rising form of Citadel Rock. He's in Icehome.

[Avir] "A minute." He searches through the house and finds a woolen cloak, smelling and redolent of mold. He lowers it into hole and pulls her up, te old burn wounds from the Dragonking paining him. He wraps the cloak around himself. "We may have beaten the others here."

[ST] "Icehome? We're in..." After a moment, she starts to cry anew. "They'll see me," she moans. "They'll all SEE me."

[Avir] "Yes," he says shortly, impatient wiht her whining. "You took the wounds honorably. You've nothing to ashamed of. Now come, we must report. Then we will have the leisure to cry all we want."

[Avir] The planned visit to Fetching Peach plays in his mind. Yes. He didn't know why he hadn't decided to see her before.

[ST] -----

[ST] Avir's first thought was to seek Fetching Peach at her home. He found it occupied by a cheery family of Outwallers who had rented it from the winter. The red-cheeked and bountiful family had had no information for him, but the old woman across the way recognized him on his way out, and in a slightly reproving tone, she'd called down to Avir that Fetching Peach had new employment.

[Avir] "Where?" There couldn't be many opportunities for her.

[ST] The answer is not what he expected. A half hour later finds Avir upstairs in the Seven Sighs of the Dragon, Icehome's most expensive brothel. By the time of his arrival, it is evening, and the building's many lanterns are lit. A frantic tone has infiltrated the revelry within tonight, as rumors of war begin to bubble, and some engage in what they fear could be their last bout of drinking,

[ST] gaming, or whoring.

[Avir] Avir slides inside. Fetching Peach had done well for herself. Perhaps the attack had even been a blessing. He catches the arm of a bouncer. "Fetching Peach?"

[ST] The bouncer gruns, looking down at Avir's hand as if he's weighing up whether to kill him on the spot. Then he notices the raven, and points. Avir finds himself in a room lit by wan blue lanterns, the floor covered in thick blue carpets. The revelry here is less, though customers still move freely about to chat up laughing men and women. He spots Fetching Peach at last, sitting on a setee

[ST] and talking animatedly with a woman in a silk blindfold. He'd recognize Peach's eyes - and a lot of the rest of her - anywhere, but a silken veil now covers the lower half of her face.

[Avir] "Peach," Avir says, low and warm. He sits beside her.

[ST] "Avir? AVIR?" She turns in surprise - he can't see her mouth smile, but it crinkles her eyes. She places a slim, worn hand over his own, and draws it back sharply as she encounters his stump. "Oh... oh my. What-" She bites back the question.

[Avir] He grimaces, then passes it off with a laugh. "I caught the wrong end of a sword. I'm glad to see you doing so well."

[ST] "An old friend, I take it?" the woman in the blindfold asks. She is of Realm birth, with short dark hair and a pleasant face. "I'll leave you two to it."

[ST] "Thank you, Lily," Peach says, as the other rises and moves away gracefully.

[ST] "I have been fortunate." Peach turns back to face Avir. "When Madame Pearl's was destroyed, and... everything else happened, I thought I was done for. But I managed to get a job here, and the pay is better than ever. The customers don't smell as bad, either."

[ST] She laughs slightly. "More snobby, of course."

[Avir] "I'm glad for you, Peach, truly." He squeezes her hand with his. He is annoyed, in truth, though he covers it well. This would make it harder.

[Avir] "The Dynast treats you alright?"

[ST] "I am beneath her notice. But she employs me. That is enough. I've found a... unique position here in the Blue Room. There was an opening here, a rare thing. I was fortunate enough to find it."

[Avir] "The Blue Room?" Probably better not to ask, if it put her off-balance. "As long as you're happy."

[ST] She gestures around at their surroundings. "It is where the more... unique of Ralinona's offerings sometimes wind up. Like Lily and myself. And I am... content." Her eyes crinkle again. "What more can someone ask for? Now..." and her voice takes on the purring tone he is so familiar with.

[ST] "Surely you didn't come here just to talk, Avir."

[ST] "You'd have ravished me twice before this conversation was out, if I still worked at Pearl's."

[Avir] He wraps his hand around her head and leans in close. "The surroundings intimidate me," he admits, a laugh in his voice. His breath stirs her veil.

[ST] "Well..." she says. "There's always my room..."

[Avir] "Hmm. I was going to offer to make dinner for you," he confesses, like a boy with a crush. He lifts her veil to give her a quick kiss. "Of course, if you're feeling hospitable.."

[ST] She moves back away from him quickly when he lifts the veil, and he only needs a quick glimpse to see why. Below the line of the veil, the lower half of her face has been horribly and grotesquely burned. She no longer has lips to kiss, and he realizes that the muffled nature of her voice comes from more than the veil. Horribly, in one spot, he can see the whiteness of her exposed jawbone

[ST] showing through.

[Avir] His shock shows on his face before he can muffle it. He had expected her to be burned; he hadn't thought it would be so bad. Then he thinks, this can serve me. "I'm sorry-" he says, and wonder who pursues her now. Carefully, he reaches for her hand.

[ST] Peach squeezes Avir's hand more fiercely than she has need to. He can see pain flit across her face.

[ST] "Done is done," she says softly. "It's not your fault."

[Avir] "I suppose," Avir says, with feigned guilt. "I'm sorry I didn't come to see you earlier."

[Avir] It was no good. She was to distinctive, too noticeable. Others would mark her absence.

[ST] "I'm sure you were busy," she replies, with the light air of someone who is used to hearing such excuses. "If this rumor about a war is true, I'm sure you'll be busier, soon."

[Avir] "Oh, we all will be," he agrees. He picks up on her light air. He couldn't do as he planned, now, but the evening needn't be a total loss. "But I'll always have time for you, Beautiful." He kisses her above the veil, at the corner of her eye.

[ST] "And I you," she says, swatting him as playfully as she used to. "If you have the money." She brushes a lock of hair back out of his forehead to take the sting out of the joke.

[Avir] "Oh, Peach..." he sighs. "You never have pity on a poor soldier."

[ST] "Sure I do, but you're neither."

[Avir] "I give all my pay to widows and orphans." He puts his hand over his heart and flutters his eyelashes absurdly at her.

[ST] "Well, I'm an orphan." She stands, pulling him up after her. "So come show me your charitable side."

[Avir] He grins and follows her into the bedroom.

[Avir] ---

[Avir] He whistles as he walks through the streets, good humor restored by a delightful evening. Peach knew her craft. He'd spent some thought on it, as they lay entangled together, and he'd had another idea. It would be pity to lose Peach, when there was another who might serve, who was no use to him.

[Avir] He fetches him straight from his house. He was a baker, heavy from years of sampling his own wares, face red with alcoholism. When Avir had been young, a beggar, he had sometimes given the boy rolls and cakes, and let him sleep by the fire when the cold outside would have killed him.

[Avir] They had lost touch after Thunder Wisdom had taken him in, but Avir had never forgotten the man's small charities. Now he trundles him along, chiving him this way and that. He stunk of wine. Avir lets loose an explosive breath and a curse as he lets the man drop, sodden with too much ale.

[Avir] He closes the door to his house, locks it, and rolls up the carpet to the trapdoor. The peronelle lays in a little heap by the fire; some aesthetic sensibility had prevented him from taking it with him when he went to find Peach.

[Avir] "I've come to accept your bargain!" he calls down to the thing in the basement. One drunk baker's life was a small thing.

[ST] The peronelle blinks slowly. It lies quiescent as the darkness calls up in Thunder Wisdom's voice.

[ST] "Then bring it, Avir. Bring it."

[Avir] It's painful getting the baker down. Peach hadn't mentioned the burns on his arms and back; too quietly understanding.

[ST] Within the summoning cirle, the demon watches Avir. It is in the form of a woman again, tattoos flickering across its flesh, its eyes watchful. Blood drips from it, striking the floor, steaming.

[ST] "We knew you would return. We knew you would seek our counsel."

[Avir] At last, he has Stolid Hill laid out there in the darkness. Avir fetches the knife. Long, curved. "You were wise," Avir admits. "I don't understand why I hestiated so long before. War is coming. The wolves prove that. Haslanti means more than some man's life." He rubs his cheek with his stump and grins. "If I'd had the benefit of it earlier, perhaps I would have both hands."

[Avir] "Will this man's death buy your soothsaying? He sheltered and fed me when no one else would."

[ST] The demon laughs - it is a sound like knives scraping against each other. "You are receptive this evening. What have you seen, we wonder."

[Avir] Avir smiles harshly. He remembers the ghost taking his heart. "Will it serve?"

[ST] "It will serve," Celebrant of Darkness says. Shadows flicker around it. "Though you value this one less than you might. Perhaps I will temper my wisdom."

[Avir] "Perhaps there will not be another, if I get less than I want," Avir counters. "Perhaps it behooves you to be generous, at this..stage, in our relationship."

[ST] "It learns," Thunder Wisdom says. His tongue emerges from his mouthed, barbed, lashing, over two feet long. "It learns at last. You will not be disappointed."

[Avir] Avir crouches down by Stolid Hill; he already thinks of him as 'the body.' "Does it matter whether he's awake?"

[ST] "Not to us," Celebrant hisses, moving forward eagerly to the rim of the circle. "Nor to him."

[ST] Stolid Hill coughs slightly and begins to stir. He's not fully awake, but he's getting there. He blinks bleary eyes at Avir.

[Avir] Let him sleep then. Avir kills him with the knife in the ritual manner, his ruby earring gleaming in the darkness. He kicks the body to the demon. He is dripping with blood; Avir notices it as an unpleasant wetness.

[Avir] "Sorry," Avir says coldly, and kicks him in the head.

[ST] There is the sound of gnawing, rending, cracking bone, and worst of all, a low, steady slurping. Celebrant of Darkness, a thing of base pleasures in many ways, purrs pleasantly, covered in offal and gore.

[ST] "Yesss..."

[Avir] Avir watches, wide-eyed and eager like a child at Winterfest. How long had he waited for these answers?

[ST] "You wish to save the League." The Celebrant says. "You know that the Bull will come. Before he comes, the others may burn the League for him. Threats on all sides. You wish to prevent this, yes?"

[Avir] "Yes."

[ST] "But you are weak. What mortal can stay the hand of a god?"

[ST] "The League cannot bear such an assault."

[Avir] "A god?"

[ST] "That is what the Anathema are, foolish child. Pieces of divinity itself, as traitorous as they are powerful. The Bull will destroy you, or the Wolf will kill you first. There is only one way a mortal might be strong enough to resist."

[Avir] "How?"

[ST] "Seek the Transcendant Bridge Amulets. An ancient tool, made by the Anathema themselves, part of a bond with demonkind. The cost is dear, but the rewards, immense."

[Avir] "What do they cost? Where are they?"

[Avir] He is torn between eagerness and suspicion.

[ST] "I cannot tell you where they are," Celebrant says. It sounds, for once, apologetic. Treacherous. "Though some must be in the League. They are a relic of the first age. The cost... the cost is everything, and it can only be paid by one desperate enough to do so."

[Avir] "It would free you from your prison, wouldn't it?"

[ST] "No. It would place you within it." the Celebrant smiles. "I will tell you no more."

[ST] It kneels again, licking sloppily at Stolid Hill's blood with the deliberateness of affectation.

[Avir] The conversation was over, clearly. Avir turns slowly. A bridge - between mortals and demonkind? He stops just before reaches the trapdoor and its narrow window of light into the darkness. "Can you give me my hand back?"

[ST] "I cannot. But I could give you something new." The voice sounds sly, eager.

[Avir] "At what price?"

[ST] "Whatever you're willing to pay, of course."

[Avir] Avir nods slowly and makes his way up the rest of the stairs. He would think on it.