awmwrites

Chapter 23: Life After

Astrid and I took a ship back home as quickly as possible. We locked ourselves in our cabin, lest another denizen of the universe or the sea turn their eyes against us. There was a quiet tension between us, as we expected at any moment to be interrupted again, but we tried to comfort each other in the moments between meals, between washing, between sleep. The lightness we had felt the day we left the manor in victory had spoiled. Was the doctor actually dead this time? Had our curse been broken? Were we safe, and, if we were safe now, would we be safe the next day? Could we ever feel safe again, even if, physically, we were no longer in danger.

The captain of the ship invited us to dine with him, but we refused. We just wanted to stay in our cabin, we told him, or rather told his steward to tell him.

“They must have had a terrible fright back there in the new world,” we heard one of the sailors say outside our door one morning. “They haven't left their room since they got here.”

We woke and ate and washed and slept according to the clock, spent days doing nothing but the routine of waking, eating, and bathing, until a steward came and told us that we were in port.

Disembarking the ship, we hired a carriage to take us back to our little house in Aelin's Wall. Being back home, we tried our best to leave what had happened in the new world in the new world. And it worked, for awhile. We were safe here, we told each other. Our little bed, our little house, our bookshelves filled with books for Astrid to read, our little garden for me to tend. I grew vegetables in the garden and baked bread in our oven and we ate simple meals as we tried to shake the corruption of the new world from us. But we still felt it, like sand that snuck its way into our clothes. No matter how often we bathed, or how long, it was still there, always appearing where we didn't want it.

We received a letter from Kaito and Yua. They had returned home, and wanted to let us know that they were safe. The asked about how we were, if anything else had happened in the days since we'd gotten back. They said they had this terrible anxiety, like something was going to happen, but they couldn't tell what they were even afraid of. We wrote back to let them know we were home safe as well, and that we felt it as well. Shortly after, we received a letter from Kenniwak and Youvanna. They were with their tribe, safe. They did not feel safe, though. We sent them a letter similar to the one that we had written for Kaito and Yua.

A month went by, and the moon rose. We watched it expectantly, though both of us were unsure what we were expecting. It rose into the night, and fell into the morning, and then we watched the dawn break.

Our neighbors began to avoid us. We had once laughed at how nosy the old busybodies were, but now we noticed them turning away their eyes, as though they were afraid to look at us directly. One morning I tried to strike up a conversation with one of them as he waited for the postman to come by. He looked at me, looked at the letter in his hand, then said he had to go, quickly disappearing back inside his little house.

I found my leather surcoat, full of holes, stained with blood. I wanted to throw it away, but something inside me couldn't bear to let it go. I hung it up in one of my little corners, thinking that I might one day stitch it up, wash the blood from it. But I never did. It just hung there, reminding me of the manor of Dr. Lyman every time I passed by it.

A few months went by, and the moon rose. We made ourselves coffee and watched it bloom in the sky. We stayed up all night to watch it, focusing on it as though it were a play or a concert. In the morning the moon disappeared, and we went to bed with the dawning sun.

Our sleep schedule began to work that way. We became creatures of the night, sleeping all day, waking with the dusk. We stopped seeing our neighbors altogether, as they slept when we roamed, and they roamed when we slept.

I found Astrid staring at my surcoat one evening. I asked if she was okay, but she just stood there, staring. I gently put my hand down on her arm and she nearly jumped out of her skin. She threw her arms around me and cried, and I let her cry.

The next blood moon rose. We watched it turn red, then watched it go pale. Nothing crawled from the moon, nor did anything call to us. It was as quiet and uneventful as any other night.

We received a letter from Kaito and Yua. The monarchs' armies had finally made their way to east. Kaito had joined a resistance group, and had been training alongside other swordsmen. The younger men were impressed by his speed and the precision of his forms. Yua was helping the resistance as well, but did not want to write it in a letter in case prying eyes might come across it. I knew that she had found a place to be embedded as a spy, just as Astrid once was. So far, they had been successful in holding the monarchs' armies back. Their homeland's many forests and mountains made it easy to outmaneuver warriors that were used to flat-lands and direct confrontations. Their groups were able to spread out into the foliage, and come in to attack weak points, like their curved blades sliding between plate armor.

Soon after, we received a letter from Kenniwak and Youvanna. The monarchs' armies had made an appearance in the new world as well. It seemed that the monarchs intended to spread as far across the world as possible, to claim as much as they could for themselves, to carve the world up until they each had their own sizable piece of it. So far, they had not done anything in the new world other than to establish their presence, but Kenniwak knew that it was only a matter of time. Yarntown was no more. It was now a naval fort called Snowthorn. The manor was long forgotten, as was the doctor, and the curse. All anyone there talked about now was the creep of the monarchs, like the slow crawl of moss across a tree. Kenniwak had been teaching the other members of his tribe how to use a spear and shoot a gun, in case the time came that they needed such knowledge, which they all felt would be soon.

The armies began to appear in our town as well, though we hardly saw them with our new schedule. Only when we needed to visit the shop or the inn did the soldiers' presence bother us. They sometimes looked at me funny, as though there was a glint of recognition in their eyes, but they never stopped nor bothered me.

I woke up one evening to find Astrid standing at the foot of our bed, staring down at me. She didn't move or make a noise, just stood there, staring. I lay there, staring back at her until she finally stirred, turned, and left.

It was one year out since we had last set foot in the manor of Dr. Lyman, one year since the doctor had attempted his ascension using Astrid as bait for me, one year since he had failed. The blood moon rose. The blood moon faded.

We were beginning to think that it was over. With the anniversary come and gone, we thought that there was nothing else for us. So why couldn't we relax? Why did it feel like there was something waiting for us if it was never going to show itself?

Then one day I received a letter. It bore the seal of a farming commune on the other side of the country, one started and run by the O'Doyle family. I recognized it as soon as I saw it. I split the seal with a knife and opened the letter. Though it was written in a language I had never seen before, I found myself able to read it, to translate it in my head. It held only one sentence, a simple one written in a neat script: “Complete the ritual.”

Chapter 22: The Lyman

We said goodbye to Kaito and Yua, promising to write them when we got back to our homelands, promising that if they were ever in our parts of the world, they were welcome to stay with us, promising that we would never forget them. They said that the reverse was true, that if we ever found ourselves in the far east to seek them out, that they considered us bonded across space and time. Friends or accomplices to the end of days.

It felt strange to step outside the manor for the first time in days, to feel the morning air on our faces, the morning wind in our hair. Astrid clung to me as though she had not seen me in years, as though I was the first tree a woman lost at sea had seen in days. The snow crunched under our footsteps as we circled the manor, until we found the carriage tucked into a corner, the horses unhitched and resting in a barn.

“Do you remember how to hitch a horse?” I asked Astrid.

“You never forget,” Astrid said.

We worked together to ready them, until the clasps around their chests were tightened, and the carraige was ready to take us to our destination. I took the seat and Astrid got up beside me.

“You get back there,” I told her. “You'll catch your death in this cold.”

“You'll just have to keep me warm,” she said, cuddling up to me.

We pulled the carriage around to the loop in front of the manor, where Kenniwak and Youvanna waited for us.

“You look like you've driven one of those before,” Youvanna said.

“We have, in another lifetime,” I told her.

“Climb aboard,” Astrid said. “Amelia's a fine driver.”

They loaded the few belongings they had with them into the cabin, loaded themselves inside, and opened the window to talk with us.

“You have to tell us when you drove a carriage,” Kenniwak said.

“When I left the town I was born in and first moved to the city,” I said. “I grew up in a small farming town, but, and this may not surprise you, I was quite restless as a youth.”

I whipped the reins and the horses began to move, taking us down the hill to the gate. In the night, it had been busted inward, metal and wood flowering toward the manor like crooked teeth.

“I did a lot of odd jobs in those days. Learned to sew, learned to clean, learned to drive a carriage. I was a regular Jane of all Trades in those days. I'd never be a seamstress or a cleaning lady or a carriage-woman, but I could do them for some coin.”

The woods looked different in the morning light. There was no longer the feeling of being watched from the trees, no longer the feeling of a spider waiting to drop on us from the trees above.

“I was doing odd jobs for coins and living out of inns for a couple years. And then I met Astrid, and she convinced me that my talents could be put to use with the revolutionaries. And they would offer me a bed in the barracks that I could call my own, and food at the mess that I could eat, and, if we were successful, all of my work would be for a purpose. To drive the monarchs' armies from our lands, to free our people from the monarchy's influence. I would never have an affluent life as a revolutionary, but I would have all of my needs met, and I would have done something worth doing, and I would have Astrid, which was all I really needed.”

She tilted my cheek and kissed my lips.

“What happened with the revolutionaries?” Youvanna asked.

“We failed,” I said. “The monarchs just kept sending troops upon troops from all corners of the land, more than we could fight. They whittled our forces down little by little until we only had enough to hold the capitol city, and then they took the capitol and sentenced us all to death.”

“But you escaped,” Kenniwak said.

“Astrid was working as a servant for the court,” I said. “She stole the prison keys, snuck in one night and opened all the doors. All of us revolutionaries awaiting our death sentences just walked out.”

“Do you still have contact with your old comrades?” Youvanna asked.

“We can get in contact with them if we needed to,” I said. “Not that there's ever a reason to.”

“We send them money and food sometimes,” Astrid said. “When they ask for them. Most of them are too stubborn to ask for them.”

“Too stubborn to ask for food?” Youvanna asked.

“Some of them, yes,” I said.

The sun was almost at its apex when we arrived in Yarntown. The port town had been devastated. A few days before, it was a small but busy town full of people coming and going. Now fewer than a dozen people could be seen out, all of them holding their robes close against the cold of the day.

The inn had several rooms available, and Astrid and I got one, Kenniwak and Youvanna another.

We met in the mess for supper and drinks.

“The inn-owner gave us a horse,” Kenniwak announced.

“For free?” Astrid asked.

“They'll have to put it down otherwise,” Kenniwak said. “Not enough people left in town to tend to it. We can take the horse all the way back south, meet up with our tribe. If it's a good enough place, we can release the horse, let it free. A good deal for all parties involved, not least of all the horse.”

Astrid laughed.

The inn-keeper brought out a cask of ale for us and we drank, letting the liquid warm us against the cold of the night. They set a fire in the fireplace to keep us warm, let us loosen our robes and coats. Time seemed to relax, and we relaxed with it, talking into the night like old friends. When it became late and the fire in the fireplace began to dim, we retired back to our rooms.

Astrid and I made love. I spoiled her, my fingers and mouth drawing the pleasure out of her until she couldn't stand it anymore, and then she returned the favor. We lay together under the sheets, our sweat mixing together as we pressed our bodies against each other.

She fell asleep quickly, the adrenaline of the night before finally wearing off.

I got out of bed and washed off in the sink, wrapped myself in one of the inn's blankets, and sat down in a chair. I stretched out each of my muscles one by one, letting the tightness of the previous few days flow out of me, decompressing the stress and pressure of our adventure.

Through the window, I could see the moon rising into the sky, not full anymore but not diminished in its brilliance. I knew now that it held a terrible secret behind its silver sheen, but knew also that we had escaped from that malevolence, had defeated the ambitions of the doctor. We had killed a demigod, as Kenniwak had said back in the manor. The powers of the universe had turned themselves against us, and we had come away victorious.

Something out the window caught my eye. I stood up and moved to it, looking out at the moon. The moon appeared to be turning red.

“No,” I whispered.

“Human,” a voice said, booming in my mind, rattling around in my brain. It was the same voice I had heard from the void the night before.

Astrid sprang up in bed, shaking.

“No,” she whispered. “Please no.”

Our door burst open as Kenniwak and Youvanna ran inside.

“Amelia?” Kenniwak asked.

“Your time has come,” the voice said. “We have come to collect. The Lyman/lie man/liar/deceiver. You were tasked to return him to us. Where is he?”

“He's dead!” I cried. “We killed him. His body lies in his manor a few hours northeast of here.”

“He is not dead,” the voice said. “The Lyman lives.”

“No,” Kenniwak said. “We killed him.”

“We saw him die,” I said. “I put the final blade into himself.”

“The Lyman is not dead,” the voice said.

The four of us looked at each other.

“We thought he was,” I said.

“If you cannot return the Lyman to us, we will take you instead,” the voice said. “Where is the Lyman?”

“We can take you to him,” I said. “At least, we can take you to where we believe he is.”

“Show us,” the voice said. “Show us where the Lyman is.”

We went out and re-hitched the horses, mounted up. Astrid wanted to come with, but I told her no. Youvanna and she stayed behind at the inn.

Kaito and I rode back up the trail, back toward the manor of Dr. Lyman.

Time seemed frozen in place, everything bathed in a crimson red light, like blood across the countryside. I felt the eyes of the creature from the moon, if they could be called eyes. I felt the pressure it placed upon us, a sword hanging above our heads, waiting to fall at any moment.

The carriage crawled up the hill, inside the busted gate, pulling into the half circle in front of the manor.

“Kaito!” I called. “Yua! Get out of the house!”

They stepped outside, half-greeting us through their waking confusion.

“The doctor's not dead,” Kenniwak said.

“Get out of the manor,” I called again. “Come to the carriage.”

“Where is the Lyman?” the voice from the moon asked.

“He's right there,” I said, pointing at the manor. “Can't you sense him?”

There was silence as energy gathered over our heads, a shimmering in the air like snow falling through darkness.

“Lyman,” the voice from the moon said. “Lie man, liar, deceiver.”

The manor of Dr. Lyman shook, the boards of the house groaning as the manor began to move in a way it should not have, lifting itself from the ground, wrenching itself from its foundation.

“Why can't you all leave well enough alone?!” the voice of the doctor shouted at us, shouted at the moon presence, shouted out of frustration and desperation.

The manor of Dr. Lyman twisted into a massive V, like a moth spreading its wings, lifting upwards toward the sky.

“It doesn't matter now,” he said. “My ascension is irrepressible. You can't stop me.”

The windows on the front of the house became eyes, the doors inside and out becoming mouths. The hallways inside fell out like noodles from a bowl, becoming tensile limbs, pushing the doctor from the ground.

Behind us, something hit the ground. The four of us spun to see the creature from the moon standing behind us, six limbs on the ground, a face like a wicker skeleton, two twisted black eyes staring at us.

“We should move,” I said, whipping the reins.

The horses whinnied, startled, and ran. Kaito and Yua grabbed the sides of the carriage as we were pulled away from what would soon become a battle between two immense creatures, ones that could crush us by accident and not even notice.

The thing from the moon moved like a lizard, jumping and scurrying around the doctor as tentacles that were once hallways fanned out along the ground, swiping downwards at it, trying to crush it. The great arms of the manor swung in large arcs, as the moon creature dodged and wove through his grasp. Every time the manor struck the ground, it felt like an earthquake, a great boom of bass like a great drum.

Their battle lasted for a long time, the entire field bathed in the crimson light of the moon. But the doctor was no match for his hunter.

The thing from the moon skittered up the limbs of the manor, climbed up to the top, lifted its head into the air. Its face split open, and the void contained within pointed downward toward the doctor. Like a snake swallowing a bird that is too large for its body, the thing from the moon drew the great halls of the manor into it, eating or somehow swallowing whatever the doctor had become.

The doctor's form was drawn up into the void, but the doctor still struggled, gripping the ground, thrashing around, trying to buck the creature from it, but it could not. The thing from the moon twisted in the air, straightened itself, and pulled, and the doctor's massive body went limp.

We watched as the creature crawled down to the ground, devouring the manor of Dr. Lyman into the void in its head until the doctor and the manor were no more.

Finally, the thing from the moon turned to us.

“You have done well,” it said. “The Lyman is returned to us. In the future, you may call upon us once.”

It crawled into the air, as though it were hanging from an invisible tree, and skittered up to the blood red moon. Like a fly disappearing into a drop of blood, it popped itself into the ripples of the moon until it was no longer visible. The red of the moon faded, replaced with that gentle silver.

Chapter 21: Confrontation

“Did you see it?” Kaito asked.

“The shimmering in the air?” I asked. “Yeah, I saw it.”

“And you heard the doctor's voice?” Yua asked.

“Heard isn't entirely accurate, but yes, I heard the doctor's voice calling us cowards.”

“So it's happened,” Kenniwak said. “The doctor has completed his ascension.”

“Not necessarily,” Yua said. “He might still be in the process of becoming whatever he's going to become.”

“But it doesn't matter,” I said. “He's invisible. He can hide anywhere in the manor and we won't be able to find him.”

“It looks that way,” Kaito said. “If we can't see him, it will be difficult to find him.”

“So what do we do?” Kenniwak asked.

“We should split up,” Yua said. “You two take one wing of the house, we'll take the other. With any luck one of our groups can find him.”

“What's the plan when we find him?” I asked. “Kill him or try to take him alive.”

“He's already tried to kill us,” Kaito said.

“He's not going to get any weaker,” Yua said.

“Got it,” Kenniwak said.

“Kill him on sight,” I said.

“Are you okay to carry on?” Kenniwak asked me. “You've been using those blood bullets all night. It's got to have taken a lot out of you.”

“It has,” I acknowledged. “But I can still go on.”

“You're sure?” Yua asked. “You're very pale.”

“I'm always pale,” I told her.

“My wife is tactfully trying to say that you don't look well,” Kaito said.

“I understood what she was saying and was ignoring it,” I told him. “Tactfully.”

Everyone stared at me for a moment.

“Amelia knows her limits,” Kenniwak said. “If she says she can keep going, I say we believe her.”

We were about to head back into the house and split up when the doctor's voice rang out in our heads again.

“You don't have to search for me,” he said. “You'll find me in the foyer.”

“Nice of him to let us know that,” Kaito said.

“Saves us the trouble of searching for him,” I said.

“Could be a trap,” Kenniwak said.

“I doubt it,” Yua said. “What forces does he have at his command to use to ambush us?”

“This isn't an ambush situation,” Kaito said. “This is a last stand.”

“Then let's finish this and be done with it,” I said.

The four of us followed the hallway walls back to the foyer.

Upon entering, we were confronted with the doctor's new form and the answer to mystery of what had happened to the marble statue. The doctor was now a cosmic monster, vaguely human in shape and stature, his face a mass of tentacles and feelers, scaled like a reptile, tensile like an octopus, all of it with the unnatural luster of rubber. His eyes were now too bluish purple to be considered natural or earthly, too bright, like stars, a galaxy contained within a marble. Behind his back he had two broken wings, webbed by bones, seemingly incapable of flight, yet also I expected that if he flapped them he would soon be in the air. He did not have hands, but long appendages that seemed to melt from the end of his arms. He towered over us, fifteen feet tall, not as massive as either the marble statue nor the carriage-man, but still intimidating.

“It's good to see you again, doctor,” Yua said.

“You don't have to lie to me,” the doctor said. “I tried to have you killed, and yet you survived.”

“We did,” Kaito said. “Are you disappointed?”

“You may not believe this, but I do quite enjoy a challenge,” he said.

“Is that why you called a challenge for us?” Kenniwak asked.

“If I were to bide my time until my ascension was complete, I could destroy you all with the snap of my fingers,” he said. “The lunaria flooding through your blood streams would rip you apart from the inside. I could destroy you as easily as you may toss a spider into a fireplace. But like this, in my in-between, while my body is still in flux, you still have a chance. A fair fight. The four of you against a demigod.”

“The lunaria flooding through our bloodstreams?” Yua asked.

“You haven't figured it out, yet?” the doctor asked. “You thought that Astrid, Kaito, and Youvanna were the only ones exposed to the lunaria?”

“Why expose all of us?” Kaito asked.

“Because I needed all of your strengths in order to ascend. From Amelia, her will to life and determination to survive. From Astrid, her learned intelligence and her steadfast ability to love. From Kaito, his methodical discipline. From Kenniwak, his reckless guardianship. From Youvanna, her kindness and familial love. And from Yua, her sense of responsibility to justice.”

“You took those from us?” Kenniwak asked.

“I borrowed them temporarily,” the doctor said. “The universe requires an equivalent exchange in order to bestow its gifts upon those that bother to petition for them. I, being only one person, could not offer it all that it requires. I needed to collect what I could from others, so I did. It took years of practice, years of collecting, years of building up my stocks until it was finally ready, until I had only one more blood moon. And the six of you offered yourselves up so readily, your gifts the ones that I needed so badly. It seemed only fair. I perform the blood ministrations, save the three patients from their sickness, and in return, my ascension becomes assured.”

“And then kill us?” I asked.

“I never intended for you to die tonight,” the doctor said. “You were supposed to spend the nights in your rooms, board yourselves in against the servants and the townspeople, and leave in the morning. But you all had to leave your rooms, kill the servants, kill the townspeople, and involve yourselves in the entire matter. That's when I thought to use the carriage-man. He'd always begged me break his curse, and while I couldn't cleanse the corruption or remove the parasites from his body, I could replace his curse with a blessing from the stars.”

“And led to his death,” Kaito said.

“A death at your hands,” the doctor said. “It was a fair fight. You won. My hands are clean. Or at least they have been until now.”

“Did you somehow infect our loved ones with the lunar sickness?” Kenniwak asked.

“Of course,” the doctor said. “I needed all six of you. It was the only way to gather you all here.”

Kaito drew his blade.

“One last question,” I said. “In the phonograph, you said you couldn't understand why we couldn't sense our way around the manor after your death. Did you ever discover the reason.”

“No,” the doctor said. “There are things beyond even my comprehension. My only theory is that because of the excessive exposure to the lunaria, none of you can be considered completely human anymore.”

“So,” Yua said. “You have stolen our talents from us against our wishes, traded them to the universe for your own benefit, put our loved ones at risk in order to manipulate us, had us kill a man who wished us no harm, and have now even taken our humanity from us?”

“That's accurate from your point of view,” the doctor said. “Don't forget about my turning the beasts of this land into men to service my manor, turning the men of Yarntown into beasts in order to keep you locked within these walls, and all of the people who have come through these halls seeking a cure only to be used as a vessel for my rituals.”

“Have you no shame or desire for redemption?” Kenniwak asked.

“Shame of what?” the doctor asked. “Redemption from whom? You think that the concerns of humans or their morality matter to me anymore? Soon, I will be beholden to nothing but the cosmos above, and you will be as ants to me.”

“You shouldn't be so cocky before you've even attained the power you've been seeking,” Kaito said.

“If you'd like to finish this, I suggest we do it now,” the doctor said. “Before you're no longer a match for me.”

“Kenniwak,” Yua said. “Fire.”

Smoke exploded from Kenniwak's twin revolvers, and Yua and Kaito sprang into action, running toward the doctor on either side. The doctor grunted, or made a sound approximating a grunt, as the bullets entered his new body. I drew my pistol in my left hand, and my saber in the right, and fired a shot at the doctor's face, aiming for his eyes as I had done in the observatory. I missed, but I saw a spurt of dark liquid from the doctor's face.

The doctor's hands, if they could be called such, lashed out at Kaito and Yua on either side of him, but they dodged. They appeared to move in sync, dancing around the doctor's attacks as his long limbs beat the floor of the mansion, leaving fractured stone craters where his hits landed.

Kenniwak and I continued to fire at his face, trying to draw his attention as Kaito and Yua swung their blades at his legs and, when the opportunity presented, his arms.

Finding that he could not hit either Kaito or Yua, he turned his attention on Kenniwak and myself, pulling himself across the ground toward us until we were within his reach. His finger appendages folded into cannon balls, and fell on our positions as we dodged outward from him. The air from his attack whipped past us as we fired up into his face.

He lunged forward and tried to cut me off, swinging downward again, but he was telegraphing his attacks so much that it would be impossible for him to hit me. I dodged to the side and drove my saber into his arm, over and over as much as I could, until his twisted unearthly hand fell from it, dark liquid oozing from the wound.

He fell forward and Kenniwak stepped forward, getting two good shots off in the doctor's face at point blank range. Seeing their chance, Kaito and Yua moved to his legs, cutting, slicing, like felling a tree.

There was a roar of pain that shook the house, shook us, rattling through our brains and bones.

The great doctor spread his bony wings and threw them at us like weapons. We dodged, throwing our bodies over and around the attacks, fighting against the wind that he threw at us. With his wings and one remaining handlike appendage, he lashed out like a desperate dying animal. He was no longer the cold calculating doctor, but the cosmic creature that sensed its own mortality closing in.

We could see him growing weaker with the loss of the dark ichor that had replaced its blood, could see his anguish, his agony at his oncoming loss. We kept cutting, kept shooting, kept attacking until he was no longer a threat, until he collapsed to the ground, prone before us.

I stood over him, raised my saber and thrust it into the space between his eyes. My sword slid into that cosmos contained in his cranium. I saw the life go out of him.

There was a solemn silence within the foyer as the world settled, the universe returning to its preestablished routines, the planets turning in time along their paths.

“We just killed a demigod,” Kenniwak said.

“He wasn't a demigod yet,” Kaito said.

“I'll still take it,” Kenniwak said.

“Is it over?” Yua asked. “Is the curse broken?”

Through the high windows of the manor, a quiet beam of light crept up, crawling across the floor at our feet.

“Dawn has broken,” I said. “We survived the night. We can leave. It seems to me the question of the curse is trivial at this point.”

“Maybe you're right,” Yua said.

She sighed deeply.

“It just doesn't feel right. This doesn't feel like the end.”

“It's the end for me and Astrid, at least,” I said. “We're going back to Yarntown. If anyone there still lives, we'll take up room at the inn and leave on the next ship that comes through.”

“Youvanna and I will join you,” Kenniwak said.

Kaito looked to Yua. “I think my wife and I will stay here for a day or two. If any of the cursed ones survived the night, they'll be human now. Could probably use a meal and a bath.”

“The half-beasts should revert completely now that the doctor is dead,” Yua said. “We'll help the animals find their ways out of the manor.”

“Will you be able to make your way back to town safely?” I asked.

“We will,” Kaito said. “This land is strange, but we've traversed stranger.”

Chapter 20: Escalation

Yua and Kaito wrapped my wounds in bandages. Kaito complained that he did not have his satchel, which he said had the finest healing herbs in the world stashed within, and which would have me up and fighting in a matter of moments. Yua rolled her eyes and whispered that his healing herbs were about the same efficacy as a glass of brandy.

Kenniwak and Youvanna helped to prop me up against the wall so that I could see them and converse, draping me in blankets and robes. I was sweating a lot, and tried to push the blankets down, but Youvanna fussed at me.

“Your body is in shock. You need to stay warm or you'll catch a sickness. And with the doctor disposed, there's nobody to perform blood ministrations for you if it turns out you need them.”

Astrid sat down beside me and wrapped her arms around me, holding me so that I would not press the blankets away, but also giving me an excuse to relax against her.

“I read the doctor's journal,” Yua said. “There is quite a lot in there that tracks with what he told us over the past couple of days, but there's quite a bit that diverges as well. And there's a great deal that I don't understand myself.

“The doctor's studies into blood ministration, the lunar sickness, and what he calls in his journal lunaria didn't just entice him out of academic curiosity. In his studies, he found references to a heightened state of being, something called ascension. It promised him everlasting life, cosmic power, knowledge beyond that of even the most learned of scholars, and access to the infinite universe that man can only dream about. It was a lust for power and knowledge that brought the doctor to this place and inspired him to build this manor.

“Being the foremost scholar in the world of blood ministration allowed him access to patients who he could infuse with the lunaria. He never explicitly states what lunaria is, but from what I gather, they're particles from the moon that the doctor learned how to manipulate. He says that he can do it at any time when the moon is visible, but that it's easiest during the lunar eclipse, when the influence of the moon is heightened to a sublime degree.

“Tonight, when he had three patients, each of whom would need an infusion of lunaria, he anticipated would be the final step in his plan for ascension. He writes of his impatience for the ritual to be complete, so that he might fulfill his destiny and take his place amongst the higher beings.”

“So he was killed before he could complete the ritual and achieve his higher form?” I asked.

“Not necessarily,” Yua said. “We've been operating under the assumption that he was murdered. But what if this ritual he was trying to perform caused this?”

“How?” I asked.

“The doctor wanted to change forms, to discard the the trappings of his human flesh. What if he did? What if him, or his consciousness or his soul or whatever you want to call it was concentrated into something else deep down in his stomach. You know how a parasite wasp can lay eggs inside of a creature it's killed?”

“No?” I said.

“So the parasite wasp will kill a scorpion or spider or something else. Then it will lay eggs inside of the body. When the eggs hatch, they burst forth from the corpse. Now imagine something from the otherworld, or from a higher state of being, doing the same thing. Whatever it is places an egg in the doctor's stomach while he is still alive, and he feeds it with lunaria until it is ready to hatch. Then he, through whatever science or magic is available to him, places himself into the egg, and it hatches out of him. That's why these are claw marks. That's why they appear to come from the inside. Nobody killed the doctor because the doctor is not dead.”

“I follow,” I said. “I saw the doctor recently. Through a phonograph. He didn't seem to be in a different form, but he definitely wasn't dead.”

“Maybe since it was through a medium he was able to appear to you in his human form,” Yua said. “I'm not to sure about the logistics of seeing otherworldly beings through phonographs.”

“Where do you think he is, now?” I asked. “The doctor's new form. We've all been through the one wing of the house and we haven't seen him, haven't encountered anything but the half-beasts and the cursed ones. Where would the doctor have gone in his new form.”

“I don't know,” Yua said. “He may have taken up space somewhere that we haven't been to yet, or he may not even be in the manor anymore.”

“Does the journal say anything about why we were chosen?” Kenniwak asked. “We'd speculated before that the doctor gathered us here, a survivor, a curse-breaker, and a guardian, for some purpose.”

“I think it's safe to say that we were chosen,” Yua said. “Or at least, Kaito, Youvanna and Astrid were chosen. In his journal he talks about finding the 'perfect' subjects to complete the ritual. This would have been before Kaito, Youvanna, and Astrid became sick. It's possible that he made them sick in order to lure them here, along with us.”

“If that's true, then we should kill him the next time we see him,” I said.

“I'm inclined to agree,” Kaito said.

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” Youvanna said. “We don't even know if he's still on the manor grounds. He could have slipped out in the chaos. We might never see him again.”

“We also need a plan of action for what to do now,” Kenniwak said. “Do we just sit here all night and leave by dawn's first light, head back to Yarntown and hope we aren't harassed along the way?”

“That seems like a reasonable course of action,” Yua said. “This room seems safe enough, and dawn can't be much further off.”

“Amelia needs to rest,” Astrid said.

“I can still move,” I said. “I can still fight.”

“Can and should are two entirely different things,” Kaito said.

“He's right,” Youvanna said. “As long as we're safe in here, we should stay in here.”

I was in no position to argue, out of commission as I was. Everyone else seemed relieved to not have to fight or argue. Kaito and Yua sat together at one end of the room, Kenniwak and Youvanna at another, Astrid and I cuddled together in the floor along the wall.

“Are you okay, my love?” Astrid asked.

“Yes, love,” I told her. “It doesn't hurt anymore. How are you feeling?”

“I feel as good as ever,” she said. “Better than I did before I got sick, in fact.”

“Probably the lunaria,” I said. “Your body should have integrated them by now.”

“Am I different now?” she asked. “Do I seem different?”

“Other than attacking me, you seem entirely yourself.”

“Attacking you?” she asked. “I don't remember doing that.”

“It wasn't you,” I said. “It was the lunaria.”

“But it was my body, wasn't it?” she asked. “What did I do.”

I reached up and pulled down my collar so that she could see my neck.

“Gods,” she said.

Her fingers touched the bruises on my neck with a mixture of pity and fear.

“How could I have done such a thing?” she asked.

“It wasn't you,” I told her again. “It was the moon particles that the doctor used to cure your sickness.”

She kissed my neck where the bruises had formed.

“I'm so sorry,” she said.

“You've got nothing to be sorry for,” I told her. “There's something I need to tell you, though.”

“What is it, my love?”

“I'm having memories of when I was young, back in the old world. Back before I left. The O'Doyles.”

“What kind of memories?” she asked.

“I think I met the doctor when I was young. I think he came through our town, through my family's farm. I think my family knew him. I think I knew him.”

“How is that possible?” asked. “And how can you just now be remembering that?”

“The music of the phonograph,” I told her. “The one that the doctor spoke with me through. It shook out this memory. And when the parasites entered me, they shook loose another. I think there's something buried in my mind that's important, but it's stuck in there, like a stubborn apple caught in its tree, refusing to fall. I think I need it, need access to it at least, but it's not coming loose, and I'm not sure how to dislodge it.”

“I'm not sure you can,” Astrid said. “Both of the memories you've regained so far were dislodged by things outside yourself, the phonograph and the parasite respectively. Maybe the next memory that gets dislodged will need to be knocked loose by something else.”

“I hope not,” I told her. “I've had enough excitement for one night.”

There was a rumble that shook the house, a rattle in the foundation that made it feel like the whole manor was falling apart. We looked around the room, Kaito and Yua, Youvanna and Kenniwak, all looking to each other.

“That came from downstairs,” Yua said.

“We should investigate,” Kenniwak said.

“I'm coming with,” I said.

“You stay,” Kaito said. “I'll take your place.”

“No,” I said.

Astrid helped me to stand, and I collected my weapons, tucking them back into place, tightening my surcoat.

“The four of us will go,” I said. “Youvanna and Astrid will stay here, where it's safe.”

Kaito looked to Yua, who closed her eyes and nodded at him.

“Very well,” he said.

I was still unsteady on my feat, but was able to keep pace with the others as we made our way back to the staircase, down into the foyer. The marble statue that once adorned the foyer was gone completely, a stone slab foundation barren where it once stood.

“Is that what made the noise?” Kenniwak asked.

“Where did it go?” I asked.

Yua stared at the slab for a long moment.

“I have an idea,” she said. “Though it might not be a particularly safe one.”

“What's your idea?” Kaito asked.

“The observatory,” Yua said. “It'd be the place with the clearest view of the moon. If I were a creature who fed on lunaria, that might be where I would go.”

“That's an idea,” Kaito said.

“Are we going to seek out the doctor in his new form?” I asked. “I thought that we were trying to stay safe now.”

“If that rumbling was any indication, safe may be a comforting illusion,” Kaito said.

“But you're talking about seeking out a possibly dangerous creature before it becomes a threat to us,” Kenniwak said. “Like those townspeople who are cursed now.”

“Those townspeople are cursed because the doctor valued his individual desires over the needs of others,” Yua said. “If he'd given them food when they needed it, they would have never sought out the forest spirit in desperation, would never have been cursed.”

“It's not that I don't agree with you,” Kenniwak said. “But I don't feel right about courting danger when it's not necessary to do so.”

“Should we wait until danger courts us, then?” I asked.

“Yes,” Kenniwak said.

“Let's at least check the observatory,” Kaito said. “With any luck it's empty, but if the doctor, or whatever the doctor has become, is there we may be able to get some answers.”

“You can go back to the doctor's room” Yua said. “Protect Youvanna and Astrid. “

“I'll accompany you, of course,” Kenniwak said. “You never know when you might need a guardian.”

“Then let's make haste,” Yua said.

We entered the hallway we believed led to the observatory, keeping our hands to the left wall as we navigated the once confusing halls. We did not encounter any of the half-beasts, or cursed townspeople.

“Maybe we've cleared them all,” Kenniwak said. “Maybe the danger has passed.”

“I hope so,” Yua said. “But don't let your guard down.”

After walking for a long time, we found our way to the hallway that connected the house to the observatory. The four of us made our way down that hallway to the room where the doctor had performed his operation several hours before.

There, on the altar in the center of the room was a creature about the size and shape of a man, but certainly not one. It had several tentacle like appendages stretching out from its abdomen, and a face like a crab, two lower mandibles that stretched forward like fans, eyes like black coals on long stalks. Its hands were manlike, but distorted, elongated fingers with sharp, curving claws, and legs that drooped from the alter like melting wax.

The creature looked at us weakly.

“I know you,” it gasped. The words were faint, the voice raspy, as though it was stressing its words through water.

“It's us, doctor,” I said. “Do you recognize us?”

“Doctor?” it asked.

“Is this what you are now?” Yua asked. “Is this your ascended form? Is this what you've spent so much time and energy trying to achieve?”

“Ascension?” it asked.

“What did you bring us here for?” Kenniwak asked. “What could we offer you that you needed so badly as to put our loved ones at risk for your own benefit?”

“Risk?” it asked.

“Doctor,” I said. “Will you just repeat our own questions back to us? Will you not give us an answer to anything.”

“I'm not –” it wheezed, exhaling, inhaling. “I'm not the doctor.”

“Then who are you?” I asked.

“I brought you here,” it said slowly. “In my carriage.”

“It's the carriage-man,” Yua said. “What happened to you? What did the doctor do to you?”

“Promised me – if I brought you here – he would make me strong. Break my curse. Grant me – eternal life.”

“Do you want to live like this?” I asked. “We could put you out of your misery.”

Its arm and appendages on the side closest to me flinched, as though trying to push me away.

“Leave me, please,” he said. “Let me drink the moon.”

“Can you two do anything for him?” I asked Yua and Kaito.

“I don't think a curse like this could be broken,” Kaito said.

“I don't think he wants to break this curse,” Yua said.

“What should we do?” Kenniwak asked. “We can't just leave him like this.”

“Please,” the carriage-man said. “Leave me. I don't want – to die.”

“Do we just leave?” Yua asked.

“I think that's all we can do,” Kaito said.

“I don't like this,” I said. “That thing shouldn't exist in this world.”

“Well, it's here,” Kaito said. “Will you kill a helpless creature to sate your own prejudice?”

I trembled at his implications, but held my tongue.

“No,” I said. “I suppose I won't. Let's go.”

We turned away from the creature, and the observatory, and the moon, and went to reenter the manor when a voice boomed from the altar, echoing around our minds like the inhabitants of the otherworld.

“You cowardly fools!”

We turned to look, but couldn't see anything.

“Was that the doctor?” Yua asked.

“It sounded like him,” Kaito said.

There was a shift in the air, a faint outline of something, the suggestion of something moving. I thought I could make out the shape of a knife the background of windows and ice. The creature on the altar screamed out in pain, and its cries were as terrible as its form.

The body of the carriage-man swelled and distended, its tentacles writhing in pain and anger as it grew greater, impossibly large, filling the observatory with a sudden mass far in excess of its original form. Its black eyes found us and it twisted.

“Split up!” I cried, running away from the others as one of those tentacles came down, smashing the ground where I had stood.

Looking back, I saw the others scatter into the benches of the observatory, hiding behind the cover they provided. We dodged and scrambled through the stands as the carriage-man threw his massive limbs at us, seeking safe spots between the attacks. I drew my pistol and saber, firing off shots when I had a second to react, moving when I did not. I heard Kenniwak's twin revolvers firing from the other side of the observatory.

One of the tentacles came down in front of me, and I lifted my sword and thrust into it. As a thick liquid leaked from the room, the creature reeled back, then swiped at me. I ran up the benches and jumped over it, landing back down on my side with a crash, pain flooding through me.

“Amelia!” Yua screamed.

I rolled onto my stomach and pushed myself up.

“Don't worry about me!” I yelled. “Keep fighting.”

Another swipe came, this one higher, and I slid under it.

I saw Yua and Kaito across from me, Yua swiping at the air with her dagger, Kaita swinging his sword in wide defensive arcs. I saw Kenniwak firing, aiming for the weakest points on the creature. I looked up and saw the creature looking down at me, saw it raise its arm and throw it down.

The pain in my side throbbed as I sidestepped the attack and leapt onto the the tentacle, running up it toward the body of what had once been a carriage-man, and was now a monster from out of space and time. I was almost to it when it bucked, tossing me off and to the ground. I fell, and in my fall I aimed at its face, pulling the trigger of my pistol. One of the blood bullets shot out from the strange-wood inside, and pierced the black eye of the creature. It cried out as I hit the ground.

Kenniwak, seeing it in pain ran forward, lifted his revolvers side by side, and pulled the trigger. There was a puff of smoke as the creature's other eye exploded, and another roar from the creature's great lungs.

Without being able to see us, the creature flailed wildly, its attacks landing in random patterns across the observatory benches. I tucked myself into a nook between benches where it could not hit me.

From my hiding space, I saw Yua run forward, under it. She yelled “Hey!”

The creature stopped flailing and swung downward to where Yua was, but she had already rolled out of the way.

It was Kaito's turn, running forward and up the creature's appendages just as I had a moment before. Unlike me, though, he was able to finish his climb to the top, standing atop the creature's body, sword raised in both hands. The curved blade flashed in the moonlight, before turning downward like a scorpion's stinger, piercing the carriage-man's chest.

The immense creature fell to the ground, Kaito along with it. He rolled as he hit the ground, but the creature did not.

Yua approached the creature's head, looking down at the face of what was once the carriage-man, and drove her dagger into its face. With one final spasm and a rattle in its throat, the creature drew its last breath.

Chapter 19: Near Death Experience

We were on our way back to the doctor's room. The hallways disappeared behind us as though they were endless in that direction, but we knew that if we just kept going, we'd reach the foyer, and the doctor's room above it. We entered a room, and it was silent. And then all at once, the buzzing electronic sound filled the room. Six men surrounded us, blocking our path.

Kenniwak and I put Astrid between us, protecting her from two sides, swinging our torches ahead of us. We couldn't form a circle, but we circled Astrid, guarding her from the things as the buzz permeated the room in a terrible fashion. The men circled us, looking for their opening, and we determined not to give them one. The parasites appeared, from arms and chests and necks, dancing in the air as they waited for their chance.

One of them broke, opting to attack first. I swung the torch, the dripping corruption caught flame, and he was burning.

As if that was a signal, the others all moved at once in synchronized attacks, swinging at us, striking at us. We weaved and dodged, batting them away as best we could, dispatching them where we could, defending ourselves where we could.

There was just one left, a desperate little creature, all alone, helpless against me and Kenniwak.

“Never stood a chance,” the cursed townsman said.

He threw back his hands, and parasites erupted from his arms and chest and face, and in the frenzied run of a suicide unit, he threw himself at me. The fire caught, but it could not catch them all fast enough.

I felt a parasite enter my skin on the left side of my abdomen, a searing pain like a heated knife. I felt another in my thigh, and a third in my shoulder. I thought I could feel them inside of me, moving around, swimming through me as though my insides were an ocean.

My memory after that doesn't make sense to me anymore, but then I suppose nothing that night entirely made sense except in the twisted logic of that manor. I know that Kenniwak and Astrid carried me, but in my memory I am falling through a dark sky. I see a black sand beach, and a lighthouse in the distance. The smell of the ocean is thick in my nose, and there is something in the sea, something that has been waiting for me, wanting me, biding its time until it could have me.

There are people standing around on the beach, people I know from a past life, people I knew when I was not who I am. They are wearing masks, but I recognize them as O'Doyles. They know me, and I know them.

A rumbling emanates from the sea, steady and constant like a mill rolled by a river. The people on the beach don't seem to hear it. They hold torches to light the night, and make their way to the edge of the water. They know that there is something out there. They couldn't not know that there is something out there. But that sound, so loud in my ears, so loud in my skull, they take no notice of.

There is a chant, a language that I do not understand. I have heard it before tonight, when the doctor raised his instruments to the blood moon. There are syllables I recognize from when he spoke them, maybe even words that he said to the moon, and now those words live in my mind. I can almost say them, almost sing them, almost chant them along with the other O'Doyles, gathered there on the black sand beach, calling into the sea, waiting for the sea to call back. But the sea is already calling to them, and they can't hear it.

I am holding a ritual knife. Where did I get the knife from? I do not know, nor do I think it matters. I am holding a wooden coin, carved from strange-wood. Where did I get the coin? I do not know, nor do I think it matters. I am wearing a mask, just as the other O'Doyles are. Where did I get the mask? I do not know, nor do I think it matters.

“You must complete the ritual,” somebody says to me. “You must break the curse.”

“I am not the curse-breaker,” I tell them.

“You must complete the ritual,” somebody says to me. “You must protect the people who count on you.”

“I am not the guardian,” I tell them.

“You must complete the ritual,” somebody says to me. “Your life, and the lives of those you love count on it.”

“I am a survivor,” I tell them.

“Make the sacrifice,” somebody tells me. “Complete the ritual.”

The knife comes up, and the knife comes down, and the sacrifice is made. Blood splatters across my face and chest. The others take the knife from me, and they replace it with a vial of blood. The others take the coin from me, and they replace it with a serrated saw cleaver.

“Amelia,” Astrid whispers in my ear.

I scream out in pain as it feels like I am being stabbed in the abdomen.

“I've got it!” Yua says. “Keep her steady!”

“Amelia,” Kenniwak whispers in my ear.

I scream out in pain as it feels like I am being stabbed in the abdomen.

“It's out!” Yua says. “Just one more.”

“Amelia,” one of the O'Doyles says.

It feels as though my heart is being ripped from my chest.

“Complete the ritual,” one of the O'Doyles says.

“It's out,” Yua says. “Now she just has to – you know, live.”

I opened my eyes to find myself on the floor of the doctors room. Up above us, on the roof, there were windows frosted with winter snow, and candles that remained lit despite nobody to tend to them. Around me there were five people, four of whom were strangers to me until just recently. My wife held me to her chest.

“Don't scare me like that,” Astrid said.

“Sorry, love,” I told her.

“Let her rest,” Youvanna said. “She doesn't need your fussing at her.”

“Amelia,” Yua said. “When you feel well enough to move, I have much to discuss with you.”

“Let her rest,” Kenniwak said.

“Thank you, Kenniwak,” Youvanna said.

Kaito put his hand on Yua's shoulder, and she reached up and put her hand on his, squeezing his fingers lovingly.

“I'll be okay soon,” I told them. “Just give me a moment to rest my eyes.”

Chapter 18: Reunited

I heard Kenniwak before I saw him. The echoing roar of his revolvers firing one after the other, followed by the screams of the half-beasts. I navigated around the hallways until I found him and his attackers. He was backing down the hallway, firing perfect shot after perfect shot. There had probably been a dozen attackers at the beginning, but he had whittled their numbers down to only a handful.

“On your left,” I said, taking a space beside him.

My pistol and his revolvers beat staccato drumbeats that echoed down the hallways as the last of the half-beasts fell.

“How many more of these things can there possibly be?” Kenniwak asked.

“I think most of the servants are dead now. Maybe only a few survive. The townspeople are still a threat though.”

“Those things,” he grunted. “One of them almost got me earlier. That centipede thing in their arm shooting toward me like a snake.”

“The doctor said that they're weak to fire,” I told him. “We should probably fashion a torch if we can scrounge up the materials.”

“I can make some,” Kenniwak said. “But you know the doctor is dead.”

“Not quite as dead as we thought,” I said. “I spoke with him only a short time ago. Through a phonograph.”

Kenniwak smiled nervously. “You're sure the pressure of the night isn't getting to you?” he asked.

“It was him,” I said. “I'm certain.”

“Did you ask him who killed him?” he asked.

“He said that we wouldn't understand if he told us.”

“That does sound like the doctor,” Kenniwak said. “Evasive even after death.”

“I found your sister as well,” I told him. “She's with Yua, back in the doctor's room.”

“Good news,” he said. “Any sign of Kaito or Astrid.”

“Kaito was on his way toward Yua and Youvanna last time I saw him. No sign of Astrid yet, but there's only so many places left that she could be. I'll find her soon.”

“I hope that you do,” he said. “Would you like some company on the way?”

“I figured that you'd want to go see your sister,” I said.

“I would but –”

He looked more pensive than I'd seen him since we'd met.

“You're afraid of her not recognizing you again,” I finished.

“Yes,” he said. “How am I going to face her if she doesn't know who I am. We grew up together. She's my sister. She used to be my favorite person in the world. When she looked at me and didn't know who I was and talked to me like a stranger it was... devastating.”

We found a room with materials to use, dressers and tables and chairs for wood, cloth from blankets and pillows and shirts, wrapping them around the wood.

“We need something to use as pitch,” Kenniwak said, pulling cloth into strips.

“We can use the oil from a lamp if we can find one,” I told him.

He picked the unfinished torches up and tucked them under his arm.

“Let's go try to find one,” he said.

I showed him how to navigate the halls, putting his hand to the left wall and following it behind me. It was nice traveling the hallways with a companion again, even if we were lost.

“The doctor said that we should be able to sense our way around the manor now,” I told Kenniwak. “But for some reason we can't, and he doesn't know why.”

“I suppose it's comforting to realize that the doctor doesn't know everything,” Kenniwak said. “Though I think in this case I'd prefer if he did.”

“Nobody knows everything, despite what they want us to think,” I told him.

There was a sound, that electric buzzing, and I reached out and put a hand on Kenniwak to stop him from moving. We stalked the halls until we came upon one of the cursed roaming the halls aimlessly. He had an oil lantern slung over his right shoulder, and he had not seen us yet. I thought it would be easy to sneak up on him.

I made eye contact with Kenniwak and whispered my plan to him. I would sneak up behind him and take the lantern. If he tried to attack me, Kenniwak was to fire his revolvers, buy me space so that we could retreat.

“You're sure about this?” Kenniwak asked. “Doesn't it seem a bit too easy?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Have you seen any of the cursed townspeople by themselves before?” he asked. “Don't they usually move around in groups?”

“They do as far as I've seen,” I said. “You think this one is bait?”

“An ambush is certainly a possibility,” he said.

“So what's the plan?” I asked.

“I don't have one,” he admitted.

“Alright,” I said. “I'm going to try to sneak up on him. If you see an ambush coming, try to warn me or stop it. If he tries to attack me, fire your revolvers, buy me space so that we can retreat.”

“Same plan as before,” he said. “Got it.”

I sheathed my saber and my pistol and tried to quietly cross the space between me and the cursed townsman. He was still looking away from me, even as I approached, slowly getting closer and closer to that lantern Kenniwak and I needed. He turned slightly and I pulled back, but he didn't make any movement toward me or appear to know that I was there, so I started moving again. I reached out my hand to take the lantern, almost touching its iron handle with my fingers.

I heard the firing of a revolver, and felt the splattering of something on the back of my surcoat. I turned to see one of the cursed standing behind me, touching a hole in its chest. The cursed townsman with the lantern turned and looked at me, and I stared back at him for a moment. That parasite that I'd seen in the others burrowed out of the townsman's skin, the head of it pointing at me all teeth and eyes at the tip, dripping corruption from its folds and rings.

I grabbed the iron handle of the lantern and punched the townsman with my left hand, sending him falling back, that parasite screaming an awful sound as it snapped out at me like a snake. Spinning, I kicked away the one that had tried to ambush me. With a path cleared, I ran back to Kenniwak and we absconded down the hall with our prize.

The two cursed men followed us, but we were able to lose them, ducking into a room and letting them pass us by.

“An unstoppable duo,” Kenniwak celebrated.

“We make a good team,” I told him. “And we got what we needed. Let's finish these lanterns and continue on our way.”

We soaked the torch heads in the oil from the lamp. When they were ready, we lit them on the candles that lit the hallways.

“Kind of strange that these candles are still going,” Kenniwak said.

“Not the strangest thing I've seen tonight,” I told him.

“Always astute,” he said.

I stepped back and swung my torch a few times to make sure it wouldn't go out, and was satisfied with its resilience.

“By now the servants' numbers should have dwindled, so the cursed townspeople will be the big threat. Try to keep space from them so those things can't corrupt you as well. Guns to keep the distance, torches if they get close to you.”

“Spoken like a true soldier,” he said. “I've got it. Stealth, guns, torches as a last result.”

“You've got it,” I said.

I was feeling quite confident with our current situation when I saw two figures shuffling at the end of the hall. The two cursed townsmen that had chased us before must have doubled back, and were now moving toward us. Kenniwak was looking down the other side of the hallway, where two other townsmen were now approaching us. We did not have time to return to the room we'd hidden in before, and so had to take a stand against them.

“Time to test what the doctor told you about fire,” Kenniwak said.

“Just watch my back and I'll watch yours,” I said, taking one side of the hallway to defend.

The cursed townsmen drew close to us at a slow pace, stepping steadily closer, closing me and Kenniwak in between them. I backed up until Kenniwak and I were back to back. My pistol blasted two shots, and Kenniwak's revolvers blasted two shots. The cursed ones stumbled, but did not falter, moving ever closer.

When they were within my reach, I thrust forward, swinging my torch in front of me. The two men stepped back, then forward. I swung again, catching the one on the right. He jerked back as the flame caught, but didn't react as if he were especially weak to it.

I was beginning to worry that the doctor had been wrong, or that I had been wrong about the doctor, when the man on the left puffed out his chest, and that parasite within him tore through his chest, staring straight at me, preparing to strike. I aimed at its black corruption and thrust my torch into it, and it screeched in pain. The flames exploded through the man, burning out his chest like a cigarette through a newspaper.

The remaining man thrust his arm forward, the parasite flowing through his arm and shooting out toward me. I spun the torch in my hand and swung it down like an ax through wood. The parasite's squeal was deafening as the flame shot through it.

Behind me, Kenniwak was dispatching the attackers on his side in the same manner, the yellow and red of their demise lighting the hallway brighter than the candles.

“Looks like the doctor was right,” Kenniwak said. “They are weak to fire.”

“We should have no problem getting to Astrid now,” I said. “As long as they don't get the drop on us, they won't be able to stand against us. We might actually be able to survive this, to ride out the night, to make it out of the manor. Everybody lives, everyone makes it home.”

Kenniwak stared at me.

“I like your confidence,” he said. “Just don't let your confidence overwhelm your sense. Overconfidence can cause even the most prepared travelers to fail in their journeys.”

“We have a chance now, Kenniwak,” I told him. “It's not confidence, it's relief. We can do this. We can make it out of here.”

“Oh,” Kenniwak said. “I see. You just realized yourself that there might be a tomorrow.”

I nodded. “I always fight like there is, but, to be honest, I've had my doubts. But it feels like we're making progress. It's not all hopeless.”

“Yua doesn't call you survivor for nothing,” Kenniwak said. “If anyone can make it through this it's you.”

“Us,” I told him. “A survivor, a guardian, a curse-breaker. Who better to survive this night?”

“The right people for the right situation,” Kenniwak said. “Maybe that was the doctor's plan all along.”

“It could be,” I said. “But I still think that there was more to the doctor's plan than we understand right now.”

“That may be,” Kenniwak said. “Let's go find your wife. We'll all go back to the doctor's room and see about weathering the rest of the storm that is tonight.”

There was nothing left to do but to find Astrid, and Kenniwak and I were both determined to do just that. We continued in the same fashion that we had before, taking hallways one by one, dispatching of the servants and cursed townspeople we came across. Hallway after hallway cleared, enemy after enemy dispatched. My pistol, Kenniwak's revolvers, the torches. They began to blur into each other. This single night was dragging on for days, for weeks. Each new skirmish identical to the one before it. There was no way of telling how many rooms and halls we cleared, no way of telling if we were making any progress at all, or somehow repeating the same two rooms over and over.

“Clear,” Kenniwak said.

“Clear,” I called back.

Men exploded into fire as the thing inside them burned. Half-beasts roared as the life was snuffed out of them. Stone and moss hallways became all that we knew, all that we'd ever known.

“Clear,” I called.

“Clear,” Kenniwak responded.

We entered a room where two corpses sat across from each other in chairs. One of them wore a leather surcoat. I could tell that it had once been a woman about my height with sun-bleached red hair, just as mine was. She had a pistol in one hand and a saber in the other. The other corpse had once been a man in a long leather coat, thick hair braided down his back, and a medallion hanging at his neck. He held twin revolvers, just like Kenniwak's.

I turned my head away, and so did Kenniwak.

“Clear,” he said.

“Clear,” I said.

Finally, after what seemed like years of searching, we found her.

We entered the library, and she was there. I should have known. She put down the book she was reading and rushed to me. Our arms crossed each other, held each other. Her lips found mine and mine hers.

“How did you find your way here?” I asked.

“I just wandered until the doorway appeared to me,” she said. “I figured if I stayed here long enough you'd find me eventually.”

“I'm so glad I did,” I told her. “I was so afraid of losing you.”

“You never could,” she said. “You married me. No losing me anymore.”

I kissed her again. “Come on, my love. We've got to go find the others. There's work to be done.”

Chapter 17: A Reprise

It had been quite some time since I'd left Kaito in search of Kenniwak and Astrid, and I was beginning to worry that we might have passed each other somehow, them heading one way, me moving the other, or that the house might somehow be keeping us apart, somehow keeping me on one side and them on the other, when I heard the music again. Somewhere near an old phonograph played music that came through the halls, filling the air around me. I left the path I had been keeping and tried to follow it.

For awhile it seemed to be getting closer. Then, even though I was walking in the same direction, it seemed to be getting farther away.

“Blast,” I muttered, readjusting my trajectory as I tried to triangulate its position.

Though the halls looked linear, the tangled maze of the house made it impossible to keep going in a straight line. I found myself constantly adjusting, attempting to find a path that would lead me closer to the sound. It was on my right, then on my left, then ahead of me, then behind me. If I didn't know about the way these hallways worked, I would think that the phonograph must be moving around me.

The song that it played had a melody of something familiar, but I could not recognize it, and that strange in between familiar and unknown bothered me. So much of this house appeared to be in some kind of flux, from the shifting hallways and superimposed otherworld that it connected to, to the changing of the hallways and the marble statue, that I wished for just a bit of the stable, the unchanging, the constant. My little world at Aelin's Wall, my little house with its garden and Astrid's books. And our neighbors poking in to see how we were eating, and what we were reading, and were we prepared for the changing of the seasons. It felt like decades since I'd last slept in my own little bed with Astrid beside me.

My mind was running through all the things that I was missing, had been missing since I'd boarded the ship that would bring me to Yarntown, my body on autopilot, when I came upon the room with the phonograph in it.

It sat upon a small tray table, a small black cylinder rotating around a wheel, the speaker playing its melody and bass for me. I stood there, listening to it until the cylinder was finished, then watched as it reversed its rotation, playing the same song backward.

The song was endless, eternally repeating itself backward and forward, those haunting notes almost familiar but not quite, calling out through the twisting stone maze that was once a wing of a rich doctor's manor, reaching into the minds of those who might listen as if it had a secret to tell to whoever would care to just listen to it, to hear what it had to say. And what did it remind me of? I could almost reach that memory, could almost remember what that song wanted me to remember, a day a long time ago, holding a torch in one hand while the winds of winter cut through my leather surcoat. How old was I then? It was a funeral, wasn't it? For my parents? No, not for them. An uncle or a cousin perhaps. Way back before I'd left home, way back before I'd been a revolutionary, before Astrid, before everything that made me what I was now. A memory buried in nostalgia for a time before the world was big, when it was still just my family and the farm and the animals we kept, when you had to travel a day away by horse to find a person who wasn't an O'Doyle by blood or marriage. It was a scholar, dressed in the robes of a scholar, the symbol of a snake eating its own tail in the coat pin at his breast, traveling with a stack of books taller than me, a rapier at his waist. There was something that I was supposed to remember, something I was supposed to know, something that the song needed me to know, needed me to realize.

“The world is much bigger than one such as yourself could ever really know,” the scholar said way back then, and he was right about that little girl on that little farm, but not about Amelia O'Doyle, not about the woman who killed a kraken, not about the revolutionary who escaped from a locked room, not from the woman who traversed the sea and faced a monster in the moon to save her wife from a deadly disease. I knew how big the world was, knew how much bigger it was than I could ever see, knew how much I knew I did not know.

I was transposed across time, both the me of the present and the me of the past, the two of us, one of us in two places, two of us in one place, falling through time and space like sliding down a snowbank into a spiral, a spiral that echoed around the center like a cosmic flower that bloomed from the stars.

“It's an impressive invention, isn't it?” Dr. Lyman asked. “I had it commissioned in Villeurves from a musical and mathematical genius.”

“You're dead,” I said. “How are you here?”

“I am dead,” Dr. Lyman said. “I'm also not quite dead yet. I also may never die. With strange aeons, even death may die.”

“I wish for once you'd just answer a question simply and succinctly.”

“Life is neither simple nor succinct, my dear,” he said.

He walked around to the other side of the phonograph and reached down, lifting the needle so that the music stopped.

“I have only a few minutes to spare,” he said. “You had a conversation with something during my operation. What was it and what did it want.”

“How could you possibly know that?” I asked.

“I like to know things,” he said. “It's how I've survived this long.”

“There was something in the moon,” I told him. “It had a head like – Like a rotten chicken egg that's split open, twisted eyes like a ramshead fish. It looked humanoid, but it had these long appendages like the statue in your foyer instead of limbs. And when it spoke it spoke inside my skull, as if I was thinking its thoughts, or it was somehow sharing its thoughts with me.”

The doctor reached up and adjusted his black glasses.

“I know this being,” he said. “What did it want?”

“It wanted you,” I told him. “It wanted the Lyman, the lie man, the liar, the deceiver. Somehow your name was a jumble of all of them.”

“That happens in those realms,” he said. “Concepts overlap until they're all piled onto the same word.”

“It gave me twenty-four hours to hand you over,” I told him.

“Well that's not happening,” he said. “You can tell it that I'm dead. It shouldn't be able to sense me by that point.”

“Can you tell me what's happening? To the manor? To you? To me?”

“You wouldn't understand if I did,” he said.

“At least give me something,” I told him. “Some way of navigating these walls, of fighting these creatures, or shielding myself from whatever entity is after you.”

His mouth pursed.

“You should be able to navigate by now,” he said. “Can you not feel the shifting of the house?”

“No,” I said.

“Now why should that be?” he asked.

He paced around the phonograph a couple times, scratching his chin.

“I'm afraid that I can't,” he said. “When the illusion began to break, you should have been re-acclimated. I can't explain why you wouldn't be.”

“What about these creatures?” I asked. “The cursed townsfolk and the half-beast servants.”

“The servants will revert to their true form soon,” he said. “As for the townspeople, fire should do nicely to clear their corruption.”

“And the entity that hunts you?”

“Just tell it that I no longer live.”

“Alright,” I said.

He nodded assertively. “And how are my patients. Tell me, was the operation successful?”

“There's something wrong with them,” I told him. “Astrid attacked me. Yua said that Kaito is wrong somehow, and Kenniwak said that Youvanna didn't recognize him.”

“Those are all normal side-effects of the moon's influence,” the doctor assured me. “Once the presence is integrated into their blood, they'll be right as rain.”

“My wife attacked me, Doctor,” I said.

“It wasn't your wife,” he said. “It was the lunaria.”

“That doesn't man anything,” I said.

“It should mean a great deal to you,” he said. “I tapped into something unworldly in order to save your wife. It only makes sense that she should experience unworldly impulses, at least for a short time.”

I sighed.

“Well, thank you, Dr. Lyman. I need to go navigate an ever-shifting maze of stone hallways filled with unworldly enemies to find my wife now.”

I turned to leave.

“You could at least try to sound grateful,” he said.

I turned back, and the doctor had disappeared, leaving only the phonograph on the table to remember him by.

Chapter 16: The Thing in the Woods

I found Kaito standing in front of a mirror. I couldn't tell whether it was the same mirror I had found Kenniwak standing in front of, but the effect was very much the same. Catatonic, like a statue made to stare at its own reflection for eternity.

I shook him by his shoulder, called his name in his ear, trying to bring him out of whatever forest he found himself in, but he didn't stir.

“Come back soon, Kaito,” I whispered in his ear. “Yua is waiting for you.”

I was turning to leave when I heard a sound behind me. Assuming that Kaito had emerged from his trance, I turned. I saw a flash of light as Kaito's blade fell toward me, and jumped back. The blade arched downward, missing me, but Kaito was twisting to bring it up again.

My right hand found my saber and drew it, but it would never make it out of its sheath in time to stop Kaito's blade. So I pushed forward, and Kaito caught the guard of the hilt. I spun so that he was pulled forward and I could unleash my own blade to meet his, taking a defensive stance.

Kaito stood, both hands on the hilt of his sword. It was a beautiful blade, gently curved like a road in the woods, shining in what little light still existed in this netherworld we'd found ourselves in.

“Kaito,” I said. “I'm not your enemy.”

“Who's Kaito?” he asked.

He ran at me and our blades met. The sound echoed off the stone around us. His attacks were aggressive, a slash, a slash, a swipe, a thrust, but I was able to read him well enough to deflect them in turn. My saber flashed up and to the right, down and to the left, block to the left, dodge.

I'd expected a fighter like him to become more dangerous the longer that we fought, as his anger overtook him like a fire, but he did not. His movement was the steady movement of years of training. His body knew what to do, and it would carry his attacks through. His sword and his muscles well honed weapons. Though I was tired, my movements matched his in time. Our blades danced through the air, touching when they needed to, passing under and over when they needed to.

“Yua is waiting for you, Kaito,” I told him.

“I don't know who you're talking about,” he said. “I found this body in the woods. It's mine now.”

He tried to surprise me with a quick left feint, but I caught his blade with the tip of mine, tossing it off. With my left hand I brought my pistol up to his head, holding the barrel to his brow.

“Who are you?” I asked. “Who are you really, then?”

“I don't have a proper name,” the thing in Kaito said. “You humans take such pride in your names, but I never saw the point in one.”

He tried to thrust toward me, past the barrel of the gun, but I lifted the butt of my pistol and brought it down into his temple, sending him sprawling backwards, grasping his head in pain.

“Why is everything here so frustratingly difficult?!” I screamed in his face. “Why are all of you so needlessly difficult?!”

He tossed his sword to the ground and shook his head at me. “Listen, human, I don't know what kind of night you had, but you're talking crazy talk right now.”

“The doctor, the servants, the hallways, the things from the woods, the creature in the moon, it's all so damnably irritating!” I shouted at him. “And now you're inhabiting the body of my friend's husband, and you can't even have the common decency to have an earthly name.”

“Look, I'll take a name,” he said. “What's a good name? Tell me and I'll take it.”

“I don't want you to take a name, I want you to return that body to Kaito.”

“Sorry, but no can do. Kaito's wandering the otherwold. Even if I left the body, there's no telling how long he'd be in finding it, or if he'd ever find it. Besides, I like this body. You humans are all kind of fleshy to me, but this one is good flesh. Good solid meat on this one.”

I lifted the revolver again.

“Flee that body or I'll kill it,” I said.

“You wouldn't,” the thing in Kaito said. “Like you said, this body belongs to your friend's husband.”

“And if he's really lost in the woods, as you say, I'm sure she'd rather I kill his body than something else inhabit it.”

“Can you really be so sure of that?” he asked. His lower lips curled up in a goblin-like smirk. “How well do you really know your friend. How well do you really know what she would or wouldn't want.”

“Maybe you're right,” I said. “I'll give you to the count of three. If you're not out of that body on the count of three, then I'll be asking my friend for her forgiveness.”

“Think about this, human,” the thing inside Kaito said. “I won't die, but this meat suit will. The only thing you'll be doing is hurting those close to you.”

“One,” I said.

“Humans who are lost in the woods can't find their way back without a guide,” the thing inside Kaito said. “He'll wander those woods for weeks, months, years. This body will starve without him in it, and he won't have a body to come back to anyway.”

“Two,” I said.

“I'm not giving up this body,” the thing in Kaito said. “This is the most comfortable I've felt in a body in eons, and I'm going to continue to inhabit it until it falls apart.”

“One,” I said.

“Blast you,” the thing in Kaito said, turning back to the mirror.

It walked up to the mirror, raised its arms as though it were taking a bull by the horns, pressed its palms to the glass, and stared into that reflective surface. Only a second or two passed before Kaito's body returned to a state of catatonia, arms falling limply to his side.

I took my place beside Kaito and stared into the mirror myself.

The stone walls and floor slowly faded, as superimposed images of trees grew clearer and clearer until I was in those woods in the otherworld. I knew that it could not be real, that it was only in my head, or perhaps around my spirit somehow. But I also knew that Kaito was here somewhere.

“Kaito!” I called. “Kaito, on me! Yua is waiting for you.

I walked through those woods, dried leaves and snow crunching beneath my feet, the light of the moon cutting through the trees like silver icicles. There appeared to be a path on the ground, but I know not to trust it, instead sticking to open areas and the west side of trees, knowing that I could follow my own path back if and when I found the man I was looking for.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow flash through the trees to the side of me.

“Come back for a second round?” I asked, raising my saber at the ready.

Something gripped me from behind and pushed me forward. I swung my saber back toward whatever had pushed me but it was gone.

“You were all bluster and fury when we were in your world,” that voice said in my head. “But we're on my turf now.”

I saw a shadow fall and felt something against my left shoulder. I slashed, but hit nothing but air.

“I just want Kaito,” I told the voice. “I have no quarrel with you. Once I have the man in tow, we'll leave this place and never return.”

“I don't want you to leave this place,” the voice said.

I saw it at the right time. It was in the trees above me. It dropped on me like a spider. I threw my arm up and swiped, but it was faster. It landed on me, knocking me back as it pinned my arms to the ground. It was a humanoid thing, but its limbs had been stretched out in an unnatural way, twisting in the most awful directions. It was completely bald, and pale as the winter snow. Its eyes and its teeth shone in the reflection of the moon.

“I want to eat your soul.”

I struggled against it, but it had me trapped, debilitated beneath its claws. Only a moment ago I had this creature at my mercy, but it had turned the tables on me, and I felt weak and helpless, scared for my life as it opened its mouth much farther than a mouth like that should open, its teeth drawing closer and closer.

There was a sound like a whistle as a blade fell through the air, and the creature's head was detached from its body. The head fell to the ground beside me, and the body collapsed on top of me.

I saw Kaito place his sword to his sheath, draw it up and slide it in. Then he bent down, hooking his hands under the creature's body and rolling it off of me.

“You must be Amelia,” he said. “You're just as Astrid described.”

“Yua captured your charm as well,” I told him.

He offered me his hand and helped me to my feet.

“I'm glad I found you,” I said. “Yua and Youvana are in the doctor's room, pouring over his journal. I'll take you there, but the halls are dangerous, so we'll have to move slowly and carefully.”

“You're right to business, aren't you,” Kaito said. “What of Astrid and Kenniwak?”

“Missing,” I told him.

“And the doctor?” he asked.

“Dead.”

He looked confused.

“Didn't expect that one,” he said.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“You've met the doctor. You think a man like that would go down easily?”

“Some creature got him, we think. He was eviscerated. Looked like claw marks. And as soon as he was dead, the mansion began to change. The statue in the foyer, the walls and floors, the servants. Yua thinks that we're cursed.”

“I'm inclined to believe my wife,” he said. “Does she know what the source of the curse may be?”

“No,” I told him. “I think that's what she's searching the doctor's journal for.”

“Where is the doctor's body now?” Kaito asked.

“In the doctor's room,” I told him.

“Where Yua and Youvana are,” he said. “I would like to examine the doctor's body, and to reunite with my wife. Do you think that you can get us out of this otherworld and back to the mansion?”

“Right this way,” I told him, heading back the way I'd come.

It always seemed farther coming back than it was going, but eventually the trees faded, and we found ourselves in the room with the mirror again. There was a strange feeling snap as my spirit and body met, like the popping of a joint into place.

Kaito made a noise like his back had cracked.

“What an unusual sensation,” he said.

“Come on, I'll take you to the doctor's room.”

“That won't be necessary,” he said. “I can find my way to the foyer and from there to the doctor's room.”

“There are creatures in the hallway you'll need to look out for,” I said. “The servants became bestial. They look like half-men, half-beasts. The townspeople of Yarntown are also here, and they've become corrupted by their curse. They drip darkness, and these parasites come out of them, swimming through their veins. You can slay the half-beasts, but don't get close to the corrupted. They can pass their curse onto others.”

He nodded.

“You're quite informative,” he said. “Would that I had one of you on every job.”

“Thank you,” I said. “How are you going to get back to the foyer?”

“I have a system,” he said. “I just place my left hand to the wall and follow it until I get back.”

Chapter 15: Curiouser and curiouser

I carefully led Youvana back through the hallways in the same fashion I had advanced, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, the way back was much further than the way there. We followed the same wall, but the passages that we walked through were unfamiliar, the doors all closed, the angles of the shifting corridors ones that I had not seen before.

When we had first arrived at the manor, the hallways appeared to be normal for a house and manor of this size, despite their confounding shifting and moving. The wooden floor was carpeted, the walls all papered over, each corridor lit by candles and lamps. Nothing aside from the impermanence of those halls' location betrayed their unearthliness.

But now, they were changing, almost before our eyes. The sheen of the wooden floors and the plush carpets were now fading, replaced by some kind of stone and moss like that of a cave system. The doors of the rooms still hung from their hinges, but were now warped as the halls around them. The papered walls ran wet with the condensation of underground dew, and where they peeled they betrayed the same stone. Pieces of ceiling had begun to rot and fall, leaving plaster and wood at our feet, and where the holes in the ceiling remained we could see even more of that alien stone.

“What is this?” Youvana asked.

“Yua said something about being able to see things as they really are now that the doctor is dead.”

“The doctor is dead?” Youvana asked.

“Right,” I said. “You didn't know that. We found the doctor dead after your operation. Murdered by some kind of beast.”

“Like the ones that now roam the halls?” Youvana asked.

“I think they arrived after the doctor's demise,” I told her. “But it is possible.”

“If we're seeing things as they really are then that means the house has been like this, even before we got here,” Youvana said. “The doctor talked about clearing the people from the land. I know that there was a tribe who lived in this area once, generations ago. Did they live in these tunnels? Or did the doctor build them somehow?”

“I can't say either way,” I told her. “Right now my concern is reuniting you with your brother and surviving this night. We can worry about the late doctor and his hall of illusions once we make it out of here.”

Youvana grabbed me and put three fingers to her lips. I stopped moving, and heard the buzz up ahead. I placed my pointer finger to my lips and opened a door near us, ushering her inside.

We sat in the room and waited for the buzzing to pass. The room was now an amalgamation of old world furniture and the trimmings of society and the stone cave that was slowly becoming our new reality.

“How does something like this happen?” Youvana asked.

“I've been asking myself that since we first got here,” I confessed. “Everything about this manor and the doctor seemed somehow off. I'd hoped it was simply my imagination, or perhaps paranoia from my journey. Or maybe I just wanted that feeling to be wrong, hoping that once you, Kaito, and Astrid had received your ministrations, we might be able to escape the manor and the doctor and all their strangeness.”

Youvana looked at me for a moment, then looked down. “Kenniwak did the same, didn't he? He had a feeling that something was wrong, but he decided to stay anyway because of me.”

“Not because of you,” I said. “Don't blame yourself because your brother loves you.”

She looked at me. “If it weren't for me, he wouldn't be here. How do I not blame myself for that?”

“Your brother is a guardian,” I said. “If it weren't you, if it were someone else from your tribe, he'd still be here to protect them.”

“That is Kenniwak,” Youvana said. “Always rushing into the most dangerous situations then using his own body as a shield. Like when he drew the great horned serpent to our village, then stayed up the whole night fighting to protect us.”

“Your brother drew the great horned serpent to your village?” I asked. “He made it seem like some boys had angered the serpent while playing a game.”

“He was among those boys,” she said. “It was a rite of initiation into their group or whatever. Steal the jewel from the head of the great horned serpent and bring it back. Not that anyone ever did that successfully. He took on the challenge, but woke the serpent in his attempt and it chased him back home.”

Youvana must have noticed something on my face because she looked concerned and said, “What's wrong? Does that mean anything?”

“I can't rightly say, but I think it might,” I said. “Yua is operating under the assumption that Kenniwak is the guardian, that she is the curse-breaker, and that I am a survivor. But maybe Kenniwak isn't a guardian, maybe he's just brave. And maybe I'm not a survivor, maybe I'm just lucky.”

She looked concerned looked back down at the stone floor.

“I wish I had more to offer you, but I really don't know.”

“You've already done more than enough. Because of you I've got the book and we might be a little bit closer to solving this mystery.”

“What do you mean that you were just lucky?” Youvana asked.

“There's a mystery surrounding Amelia O'Doyle, back in the old country,” I told her. “She was condemned to be killed by the monarchs' armies for the crime of leading a revolutionary struggle against them to free her people from their iron grasp, but on the day she was to be hanged she escaped from a locked room with no windows. How did she do it?”

“How?” Youvana asked.

“Because a woman loved me and opened the door. And then I made her my wife.”

“That's not luck,” Youvana said. “That's love.”

“Maybe a little of both,” I said.

Youvana smiled.

“You'll find Astrid soon,” she said. “She's here in the manor. We have to find her somewhere.”

“If it were any other manor I might take that as a fact,” I said. “But given what I've seen, what I still see all around us – I won't stop until I find her, however long that takes.”

“We won't find her sitting around here,” she said.

She moved to the door and placed her ear against it, listening for the sounds of buzzing or beasts, and, satisfied that we were safe, opened the door. She beckoned to me with her hand, and I joined her.

After a long while of walking, we found the foyer and the marble statue that marked it.

Youvana stared up at the marble statue in horror.

“This...” she muttered in terror. “This isn't... this shouldn't...”

“Amelia!” Yua called, entering the foyer from the hall. “Youvana.”

“Yua,” I said. “I'm so glad you're here.”

She came close and hugged me, wrapping one arm around my back, and I wrapped my arm around hers and hugged her back.

“Kaito pilfered this from the late doctor,” I told her, retrieving the leather book from my pocket. “It looks like a journal.”

“How did it come to you?” she asked.

“Kaito delivered it to Astrid, who gave it to Youvana to hide,” I explained. “Youvana gave it to me.”

“And now you're giving it to me,” Yua said. “What a fortunate string of circumstances. I'll look at it right away.”

The sound of another skirmish came from the hallway behind her and the three of us stepped back from the entrance to the hall.

“I don't think we should stay here, though,” she said. “With those things in the halls it's not safe. Let's head up to the doctor's quarters. We can lock the door and look through this journal.”

“You take Youvana up there,” I told her. “I'll head back to look for Kaito, Kenniwak, and Astrid.”

I looked at Youvana and she was still staring up at the statue. Its enormity and the sensationalism of its transformation had overwhelmed her senses much more than anything else she had seen or heard tonight, and I feared for a moment that she would retreat to a corner and curl herself into a crescent again.

I took her arm and she jumped.

“Youvana,” I said. “This is Yua. Her husband is Kaito. She's going to take you up to the doctor's room and lock the door so that you can look through the journal in safety.”

“What is the significance of our names?” Youvana asked.

I shook my head in confusion.

“Youvana and Yua, Kaito and Kenniwak, Amelia and Astrid,” she said. “We are mirrors of each other and yet we are different than each other as well.”

“It's just a coincidence,” I told her.

“I think we're past the point of believing in coincidences,” she said.

“There may be answers in the doctor's book,” Yua told her. “Come with me. Help me find answers.”

Youvana closed her eyes, then opened them again. “I'll go with you,” she said. “Amelia. Find Astrid.”

“I will,” I said. “Tell Yua what you told me about your brother, about the boys of your tribe.”

“I will,” she said.

“See you soon,” I said to them, heading back to the hall.

“Good luck, survivor!” Yua called after me.

“Good luck, curse-breaker!” I called back.

Chapter 14: First Blood

I remember that I began leading us through the hallways of the manor in the direction that I thought we might find our loved ones. And then I remember that I was alone.

The hallways were very dark now. The candles seemed to be fading, the light of the house dimming, everything heading toward darkness. What's more, the hallways themselves appeared to be tilting, twisting and rolling as though they'd been rocked by an earthquake, though I'd not felt one. I traveled up one hallway, then down another, opening doors along the way to mark my path.

I came to one hallway that twisted before my like a corkscrew. I had stopped and was staring down it, pondering how such a thing might happen, when a figure appeared at the end of the hallway. It appeared to be one of the servants. I called to him, relieved, as I'd assumed they'd all disappeared following the doctor's death and our discovery of the body. But as the man turned toward me, I fell backward onto my heels.

The man was half beast, tufts of hair growing along his face and body in irregular patterns, one eye bulging nearly out of his head. He reared up on two misshapen legs, and raised a saber at me. I held my own saber at the ready in my right hand and watched as he ran at me, his animal legs taking the curving hallway like dunes on a beach. He approached, finally close enough that his sword might do me harm, and I fired the pistol from my hip. The blood bullet entered the man's stomach and he stumbled back a few steps, before coming at me again. He brought his sword up and down, and I brought my sword up to meet his, then down to meet his neck. Blood spurted from him, covering me and the wall behind me as he stumbled backwards. He tried one more time to come at me, letting out an animalistic roar like that of a lion, then leaping at me. As he passed I brought my saber up through his chest. His arms peddled in the air for a moment, as though he did not realize he was dead, the noises in his throat and mouth slowing until they stopped completely. I drew back my saber and he fell to the ground like a sack of bones.

I took a moment to study the body. It did not seem like the same corruption that the ship captain had described to me what felt like years ago, but I wondered if the stories he had heard might not have been distorted through rumors.

I had almost decided that it must have been that, until I looked at the face of the half-beast, and saw that it was one, indeed, one of the servants. Bertram, who we had met on our second day. One of the servants who had not eaten of the forest spirit, and had not been cursed for it.

The thought was moving through my head when I saw a figure appear behind me. It had the shape of a man, but black pustules of corruption had overtaken its form. And from those pustules, curling ribbons of some kind of parasite swam out and back in, and I knew that this was what the captain had described. Those parasites were what had unmade the people they touched, infecting them with the corruption of the cursed. The corruption buzzed in a vaguely electronic way, like a light-bulb humming into glass.

I raised my pistol and fired a blood bullet into the cursed man of Yarntown. It passed through his chest, and he flinched in pain, but he did not stumble or falter as he began to approach me. So I turned up the twisting corridor and ran as fast as I could away from it.

The farther into the manor I ran, the worse the distortion of the halls seemed to get. And there were noises coming from up ahead of me, the bestial sounds of the servants, and there was noise from behind me of the buzzing corruption.

Not knowing what else to do, I opened a door and slipped into one of the empty rooms of the manor.

I sheathed my saber and placed my pistol into my pocket, and covered my mouth with the palm of my hand.

Outside the door I could hear the two forces stop. They had seen each other in the hallway outside. There was a shuffling of feet as both groups got into position. On one side half-beasts, barely capable of thought, armed with rifles and sabers. On the other those cursed with corruption, parasites poking out of their skin and swimming through their veins.

I could feel them preparing their attacks, a tension in the air like the pulling of a string to the point of breaking. And then the string broke, and the two groups threw themselves at the other. The electric buzzing of the corruption struck against the beastly roar of the servants.

The noises that I heard that night are indescribable.

I sat in that darkened room with my hand over my mouth for minutes, listening to the skirmish outside the door. It reminded me of being locked in that cell back in Haethwidge as the monarchs' soldiers burned the bodies of my comrades, and I, stuck there, unable to free myself or help those I'd sworn were my blood siblings.

Only back then, Astrid had come to save me, opening the door of my cell and freeing me. And this time there was nobody coming to save me. I was alone with my pistol and my saber, trapped in this unfamiliar room.

The sounds outside slowly changed in cadence and timbre, as the creatures who were once men killed each other off, and that buzzing of corruption grew like a thronging hive of wasps was building a nest in the wall. The last beast was slain, and the buzzing had reached an unbearable volume. And then the corrupted men moved along, searching for their next victims of the night.

When they had moved on, I opened the door to the room and stepped out into the hallway. The walls were covered with blood, the floor sticky with it.

I swallowed my fear, put my left hand to the wall, and moved on.

It was slow moving, as I took pains to avoid the things in the hallways. The last thing I wanted was a fight I could not win. Still, I pushed myself to cover as much distance as possible in between hiding in a room that I found, always opening doors behind me to mark my path.

I was in the process of climbing a particularly steep corridor when I heard a sound inside one of the doors. I opened the door and let myself fall inside, marveling at how even the floor of the room was as I searched for the source of the noise.

In the corner of the room, curled into a ball, was a young woman in a long deerskin robe. Her hair was braided, much like Astrids, but the long braids hung down nearly to her hips. Her eyes were a deep brown, like chestnuts.

“You're Youvana?” I asked her.

She nodded. “You're human?” she asked.

I nodded back. “I'm a friend of your brother's,” I told her. “My name is Amelia.”

“Have you seen my brother?” Youvana asked. “He was here earlier, but he said that he needed to see the doctor and left. Then those things came by.”

“Which ones did you see?” I asked.

“Which what?” she asked.

“The ones that drip corruption and buzz like light-bulbs, or the ones that grunt and move like beasts.”

Her eyes grew wide.

“The beasts,” she whispered in fear.

“Alright,” I said. “I need a moment to catch my breath, and then we're going to try to make our way back to the foyer. With any luck, Kenniwak will be back there waiting for us, and I can get back to searching for my wife.”

“Is your wife Astrid?” Youvana asked.

“You know her?” I asked.

“She was here when I arrived at the manor,” Youvana said. “I'd never seen anyone with skin as dark as hers. She looked so beautiful in her soft robes. She was very kind to me while we awaited our operations. Always sharing her food and the books that she had brought.”

“Did you know Kaito as well?” I asked.

“Yes,” Youvana said. “Kaito seems a stern man, but is actually very understanding and intelligent. Like a lake that seems shallow, but when you dive into it find it goes down farther than you could have imagined. He was always observing the doctor and the servants and reporting their movements and activities back to us. I guess he thought we might need to know about them in case we were ever in this kind of situation.”

“Kaito and his wife are very astute, and very well prepared,” I told her. “It's no wonder they became hunters of monsters.”

“Are they still here, in the manor?” she asked.

“As far as I know they are.”

“I would very much like to see them,” Youvana said.

“We would both like that,” I told her. “You'll have to follow me back to the foyer in order for that to happen, however.”

She took a deep breath and pulled herself to her feet. She took a few steps toward me, with a look on her face that she was ready to depart, before she stopped in her tracks.

“Wait,” she said. “Astrid gave me something to give to you.”

She went to her bed and crawled under it until only her feet were visible, then crawled back out. In her hand she gripped a leather book. She handed the book to me with the solemnity one reserves for sacred objects.

“Kaito took this from the doctor's room one day. He gave it to Astrid for her to read. The doctor came seeking it from her, so she gave it to me to hide. Being the smallest of us, I was able to hide it under my bed. The doctor could never have found it.”

I opened the book and flipped through it. In certain passages and on certain pages I caught glimpses of interesting information, fragments of the bigger picture that Yua had longed to understand. But I had no time to give it the attention it deserved, to fit the pieces together. So I tucked it into my surcoat.

“Thank you, Youvana,” I said. “I know someone who will find this very interesting once we find her.”