A LAND of MANY a Thesis Submitted to the Kent State University Honors

Home , Abandoned (Lost), Black Chandelier, Eggtown, Follow the Leader (Lost), Good Guy, I Do (Lost)

A LAND OF MANY

A thesis submitted to the Kent State University Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for University Honors

Connor Lillis

May, 2021

Thesis written by

Connor Lillis

Approved by

______, Advisor

______, Chair, Department of English

Accepted by

______, Dean, Honors College

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iv

CHAPTER

I. PROLOGUE: CATH...... 1

II. OFA...... 12

III. ENTOWN...... 53

IV. ONMU...... 123

V. NORA’S BURG...... 174

VI. CLO...... 198

VII. FERVA...... 236

VIII. BHUNIR...... 275

IX. LINBE...... 330

AFTERWORD...... 373

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 377

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Sainato, for all of her tenacity and wit in aiding me

on this journey.

Prologue: Cath

The man walked quietly down a path he did not understand, for the dirt beneath his boots told him that he did not belong. Each leather footstep was carefully muffled against an earth that remained firm against every brushing invitation. The man’s name was Jack and he had everywhere to go and nowhere to stay.

In his thoughts he turned over the quiet passing words of lovers and working people in taverns of a beautiful city named Cath. Like every small town in the green land of Isah, Cath’s image was formed by rumor and strange stories that resembled monastic visions more than lived events. With each tale of ruby-red curtains and rivers seeming like they were filled with coins painted blue came the reminder that the eyes of men were flawed not only in the viewing but in the understanding. Jack doubted that the colors of

Cath were as vibrant as oil paints or the green grass of his home, but he desired to see anyway. A string in his mind tugged at his body with every new story he heard, and so, he arrived at Cath. A wind played at his back, pushing him forward.

The land and the people who had made ashen-gray homes with fine thatched roofs were all recovering from the scorching pain of a summer keenly felt. For once, nobody shivered at the cool breezes, and though Jack was in from the northwest where snow liked to slip into the air at private, innocent times, he liked the mild cold. However, he was far too early in the night to see the wraiths of white frost visit and paint each blade of swaying grass. Though the farms that rolled along the land of Cath were bursting with the

joy of maturity and harvest, like a yearly coming-of-age, everyone was inside their homes enjoying the quiet warmth of a closed house in autumn.

Jack thought on the rumors of colors and knew he had heard correctly. Where were the cobbles like smooth river stones? This road had only packed dirt. He wanted to see the fair maiden or lad whose golden crown bobbed up and down as they did the most marvelous jig at the tavern. These stories could not have been true, for Cath’s shade was deep and both tavern and store appeared deserted. The wanderer, solemn as ever, walked alone between wooden buildings as he noticed something out of place in his image of a town.

Jack had boredom, loneliness, and odd confidence mixing in him like a witch’s brew, and with that he stole a glance into the nearest window. Against the dark, each window was filled with gentle candlelight suited for quiet contemplation. At the first house he thought to knock and ask for lodging. He could offer little but stories and a few rabbits’ furs he had hunted a forest over, but the sight inside the house made him pause and shy away. In the soft smoke of a night worth candlewax, two children were giving their mother a fine white dress. The stitching and seams were awkward and uneven, but the woman beamed as she lauded the two small artists. Jack shivered in the lonely cold.

At the second window he thought to ask for a warm meal, but there was none left for him. Two couples shared a wooden table a comfortable distance away from a roaring fireplace. On the border of summer, none could say the fire was worthwhile or necessary.

Even the most extravagant tavern host would keep his firewood locked up tight for a better day, but these four were thriving. The blaze almost matched the thrill of the

conversation they were having, and the food was steaming and shiny. For a moment, Jack forgot that the bread was devilishly dark and there was hardly any meat to be seen. He craved the company of the table and his stomach grumbled at the sight of their feast. This house he too passed on, for there was no fifth chair and he believed there was no space in their hearts for another.

At the third house, he only desired directions to the nearest tavern so he could rest his weary bones. His body was made heavier by each scene inside the windows, for they glistened not with material wealth but with the tantalizing boons of staying forever inside a town. The last house he peered inside before the guilt tore him away was again impossible to intrude upon. There was an attractive young man dancing. His movements were not a bawdy jig or a courtly waltz with a partner. He stepped and swayed around a small bedroom with an audience of two or three. With another step and a long sway bearing the grace of a crane’s white wing, he took up a candle in his hand and lit two more to make a fine triangle of orange flicker. His soft hair shook and his smile reflected the light so that Jack could be stunned by the man’s beauty. His heart throbbed outside the third house because he wanted tender attention and the private intimacy of a dance behind closed curtains.

As he walked down the path that led outside of the town of Cath, he reflected on how all of these gatherings, these rituals of meals, gift-giving, and quiet, abstract joy happened constantly. He believed that a wanderer could have dinner with good friends by the light of a fire, but the friends or the action would be temporary, and all involved would be left with the same deepening sandpit he felt in his heart at that moment. He

stumbled as the path gave way to rock and root. Jack thought he might cry at the thought of another sad canvas tent in the shade of the forest but he dutifully set one up anyway and wished he would not dream. His body ignored him and he was assaulted with visions of princely young men and food too rich for his poor stomach to handle.

- - -

Jack woke up the next day curled up on his bedroll, so he unwound his lightly aching body and surveyed his campsite. He had made camp so fast that he did not even notice that he was set on the peak of a small, sad hill. The wanderer could not tell the time due to the deep autumnal clouds gathering in the sky, so he sat under the gray on a log that had fallen long before he ever graced the forest. He hoped the sky would open up and reveal his path because he felt lost in his feelings and in the foreign land of Isah. The traveler had been many places after being shunted out of his home, but he had never set foot in that country.

Out before him was a gathering of dark pines that could be called Ofa, but on casual occasion the forest was called nothing at all. Jack could find no paths or trade routes into or out of the thick green, but he did gather in the beauty of each trunk and peak. He sat wide-legged and rested his chin on his palm, thinking and watching for anything that he could turn towards and make his goal. A cool wind grazed against him, a whimsical little strand of what remained of a distant ocean gust, and he stood at the elemental urging. Just as he had resolved to trudge into the forest without a guide, he heard a shuffling sound as if someone or something had fallen many a mile away. He thanked the wind for carrying the sound that he decided to walk swiftly towards.

After packing his bedroll and one-man tent into a sack strapped along his back,

Jack muddied himself stumbling down the small hill and dived into the even darker shade of the forest. The sky was black and roiling with clouds that threatened to storm down onto him, but the karma of what was surely to be a heroic deed stopped them from releasing anger. Jack also entertained the humbler thought that the clouds were cowards today, or that they were too full with love for the summer that would bleed out slowly and fade from this world like a good man on a bad hunt. He fell into the darkness of the forest with the fervor of a child when a merchant or troupe comes to town.

After he had tripped over numerous roots and tangled his soft black hair in three askew branches, he found a clearing where a woman took slow steps of a poorly-learned dance as if she was practicing an art of a foreign country heard of only in passing. Her bare feet crunched and bent pine needles and stray leaves blown in from other corners of the forest. She had long black hair that framed a dark green dress like vines down a trunk.

A few braids in her hair made the comparison all the more apt, as each strand wound down in twisting tangles to her ankles.

However, the forest was not improved by her beauty because she was decimating many pieces of plant matter around her. She was not powerful enough to destroy roots, and she was careful enough with her steps to not destroy half-grown saplings, but her questionable jig made significant imprints on the ground. She left her mark on the world like a tangle of prints from warring stags, and with exactly as much grace. Jack watched quietly, bearing the secondhand embarrassment of art gone sour. Eventually he shivered at a step taken so heinously offbeat and hailed the woman loudly.

“Ho there, lady of the forest. Are you a traveler like me, or do you live here?” He raised his hand in casual greeting, hoping that he did not startle her, but she jumped anyway before smoothing down her rustled hair and raising her own hands in kind.

“Hey wanderer,” she said with her pale hands limp at her sides. She was catching her breath, so there was a pause where neither party dared break the peace of the forest.

“You can make whatever assumptions you want of me. However, it is best to call me a traveler.” She smiled, her teeth shining like platinum in the deep shade of the morning canopy, though her solid grin was more suited to politics than revelry.

“May I ask about your dance, then? Or is that an assumption?” Jack rested his hands on his hips with the ease of a huntsman. He was cool in the shadow but started to worry that his leathers would be uncomfortably warm come full afternoon and he was not far enough in his journey to start with sweat and chafing.

“The dance is not mine. It derives from a local custom, but as a traveler, I’m sure you’re unaware.” She lorded her knowledge over him carelessly. The lady was as utterly devoid of tact as a trout choking on air, though her intonation betrayed good teaching. “I am a fount of knowledge, however. May I inquire as to your destination? I might be able to help with directions or tips in regard to… local color.” She walked closer and made a temple with her hands below her chin.

“Why start business so quickly? We should at least introduce ourselves, hm?”

Jack asked while pointedly ignoring her approach and tempting offer. Wanderers like him are always searching for the next treasure chest of information. They can manifest as chatty errand boys at dusty inns who don’t know rumor from fact or drunk soldiers who’d

rather spend their pay on a whole chicken and tipping the pretty musician than pay to maintain a stable home. To call these drifters manipulative would be like calling a passionate miner an exploitative thief of the earth. They all simply tease out what they need. The meat of the nut is always there: everyone has different methods of getting the stuff out.

Pointlessly, the lady cleared a patch of dirt of leaves and stray green needles. She gathered her dress and kneeled down on the ground with little decorum, and Jack finally moved closer and sat cross-legged across from her, a bit less than a horse-length away.

“There we are,” the woman said playfully. “Are we in a good enough position for business now?” She smiled truly, and the gesture landed somewhere between mocking and flirting. Had she sat any closer to the weary man, he might have thought of her romantically.

“Sure. I am Jack, and my goal in these lands is to find a place to settle down.” He wrestled with the feeling of putting to words an inner feeling, like a friend finally confiding a long-kept secret. The lack of intimacy made him nervous, but her nonchalance helped ease the burden.

Her face perked up like a cat on the hunt. “Oh, your home was not good enough?

Or are you an orphan of some sort? I’m one myself, so I may sympathize,” she said smoothly.

“I had no choice but to leave,” Jack said bluntly. “They cut me out completely, like a puppet with only one string. I’ve carried myself ever since. But that’s a tale for a different time.”

“Yes, we’re all carrying ourselves, I suppose. You’re off to Ofa, then?” Her attention was caught, so she relaxed and sprawled her legs out slightly. The pose combined with her sullied dress made her seem like a farmgirl who hardly understood the cost of fine clothes.

“Ofa? Is that the town in the forest or the forest itself?” Jack offered before remembering himself. “Wait, what is your name?” He sighed at the breaking of a ritual he thought was understood between all people. The thin man briefly thought cultural barriers were at play.

She put a hand up to her mouth and laughed like an uptight robin. “You offered your name so casually I thought I might just let it lie… I suppose the power of names only has any weight amongst faeries, hmm?” She eyed the man nefariously and he noticed her neck and shoulders were grazed with a bronze tan, though her thin frame revealed no time spent working with tools or animals. The lady made the very image of a fae queen who abandoned her duties and leapt into what she thought of as a lesser world.

“Names have other power,” Jack said sternly. He had his hands still on his knees like a master monk or a grumpy old man, sometimes one and the same, “and it would be wise to not ignore them.” He was unhappy with the woman, as much as he liked the gentle mark of the sun along the curve of her neck.

She gave another laugh, this time forced out and sharp like a hiccup. She hesitated and forgot to cover her mouth. “To you, I am the lady of the forest. I take that as my name in our conversations, even if it may not be the name granted to me at birth.” The lady placed a hand on her heart as if making a pledge or prayer, and again Jack could not

determine whether she was teasing or sincere. He nodded anyway and gestured for her to continue.

“Ofa is often the name given to these trees because of the town, which is an hour or so walk east from this clearing. It’s more of a village than anything, and they have some fine culture there.” She smirked as she spoke of culture. “Farther east is Entown, a true cobble-paved place with warmer beds and dirtier alleys. It’s known for the river that heads south to Ferva then the ocean, and an unsavory tale you might’ve heard of a mage of ill repute.” Jack remembered the famous tale and nodded sagely. His thoughts were thrown back to a bonfire where a traveling bard provided the story with strange musical interludes as brief and irritating as a locust or frog. The wanderer was less interested in the story than one of the men listening intently. He wore deep blue robes and cried when the mage in the tale was sentenced to death and drowned in the river before being buried in a giant grave of his own creation.

Jack shivered, though no wind assailed him. He looked away from the lady and waved for her to continue. “South a few days is Nora’s Burg, a scholarly town I’m sure you have heard of directly. There are a few monster settlements as well,” she noted with venomous derision, “but those three I have listed are your best chances for more permanent arrangements.” Jack’s interest was piqued at the offhand comment, and his face twitched up so his nose made a silly diagonal like the branches on trees that reached towards the sky. The lady turned away.

“Tell me of the monster settlements you know of.” The words were forced out of his mouth with a fervor unknown even to the lips that breathed them. The lady’s eyes

widened and she fiddled with one of her braids, pulling the knotted strand over her left shoulder and inspecting it shyly.

“Must you really ask that?” The expression of her face changed completely, as if she put on a festival mask of a courtly lady. The lady’s eyelids were narrow, and she pouted ever so delicately. Jack forgot about her neck and the faint ankle that jutted from her messed-up dress and stared into the light green of her eyes.

“Of course,” he offered. “Monsters make excellent drinking partners. I can see myself living among them.” He maintained a resolute pose, though his back was starting to curve into a more comfortable hunch. He figured the last time he had looked into another’s eyes so long was at least four seasons ago.

“Do as you will,” the lady replied. “Between Ofa and Entown to the south is

Onmu, a rough gathering of tents and brusque, inhuman miners. I am not sure the place even deserves a name, for the accounts say it is hardly one boozy tavern and a stable for sleeping quarters.” She gave up on her braid and crossed her thin arms. She stood as if to end the conversation.

“I’m sorry if I have offended you, lady of the forest. I just do not understand the hatred some people have. They make good beer and fun altogether.” Jack stood as well, though he wanted to stretch and release some ache in his legs. He had crossed them for too long. The lady looked back at Jack with a sadness in her mossy eyes.

“I apologize if I have insulted your special tastes,” she managed with all the dignity of a noblewoman confronted with a lord’s most undignified hobbies. “But know that Onmu has less for you than one night of drink and blurred judgment. For myself, I

am en route to Nora’s Burg, where I might study more exciting local customs and perhaps get a better lay of the land. Should you care to go there, you may meet up with me and we may discuss what our next plans are to be.” She suggested the plan with a conspiratorial smirk, and though Jack hardly bought her kind generosity, he was happy to have a familiar face in a town he did not know.

“Thank you, lady of the forest.” The threadbare wanderer placed a hand on his chest and bowed ever so gently. “I will go to Ofa and try to find whether I can live there or not. If I do, I may never see you again, so farewell.” She gave another uncouth laugh behind one hand before regarding Jack and speaking again.

“I am the image of the quest giver of an epic story, am I not?” She spoke with a true smile, her pink lips thin against the fine white of her teeth. Her eyes brightened, and some rays of sun decided to join the conversation in the clearing. “I am giddy at the thought. Yes,” she started with a much louder, authoritative tone, “go to Ofa, young man!

The hidden village in the forest. Then away to Entown, with rivers and tragedy. Maybe stop at Onmu to slake your thirst, and meet with your fair maidenly guide in the Burg of learning!” She threw a hand to the sky and lifted her chin to join the motion. “Until we meet again, Jack of no home!” She then bowed deeply and walked back into the shade of the forest, leaving Jack confused and warm with stray sunbeams his only companions.

Chapter 1: Ofa

Jack walked out of the small clearing and his steps were muffled inside the vast forest. Though the Lady’s prancing left many maimed leaves behind, Jack crunched on nothing. There was a springy layer of dead pine needles that deadened sound. The distance between each tree was widening, yet Jack took small shuffling steps like a child hiding from his mother.

When he walked for a while amongst the hollow and empty forest, he saw another clearing in front of him and barreled forward. Jack had grown chilly in the shaded woods, so he yearned for the sun. Once he broke free from the canopy, the daylight assaulted his eyes and left him briefly blinded. He regained his bearings and thought he had emerged on the other side of the forest.

There were four blocks of golden crops bursting with life in front of him. They were in squares so meticulously plotted that Jack wondered if men had planted them at all. Jack thought the way the barley, beans, corn, and wheat kept in each open-air box and never dared to lean or grow outside of the parallel lines could only be explained by the most mundane form of witchcraft. After Jack had marveled at the gorgeous, well- irrigated crops and wondered of their origin, he decided to speak with whoever had planted them and thank them for their devotion to the craft.

Jack had grown up with farmers, and he understood the difficulty of the necessary profession. If he had lived amongst such beautiful fields as the ones in Ofa, then he thought he may have become a farmer himself to carry on the art. The traveler even noted

that the canopy was formed in a square to make a personal patch of sunlight for the crops to grow. The sun and the glory of the fields sped Jack up, energized him with life that was missing for many months before he had come to Ofa.

The wanderer walked through the middle path and had corn on his left and beans on his right. Though the warm sun still brought love to the clearing, Jack could tell that they were nearly ready for harvest by scythe and sickle. Yet there were no men nearby, nobody to measure the plants, to determine which could be cut down straightaway and which perhaps needed another few days for careful cultivation. In fact, Jack determined that the fields were completely empty. He reached the middle of the field and crossed over to the patch that had wheat on his left and barley on his right. In his concern, the traveler checked his left and right every few paces because he knew that there must be life here. There was already so much love put into the crops that Jack knew only a tragedy could force them to abandon them so early in the day.

As he neared the end of the wheat and barley stretch of the fields, he heard a sound and rushed over to identify the break in the status quo. A stocky man in a blue collared shirt was hefting a scythe to the best of his ability against a strand of wheat. The wheat was not doing anything to stop the red-faced farmer, but his own body was working against him. He could barely lift the tool above his knee.

Jack noted that he struggled against baldness in addition to his physical weakness, but he felt sympathy for him. In hopes of making a new friend in this strange location,

Jack hailed the man. “Hello. Do you manage the fields, or know who does?” He spoke

quietly to not startle the portly farmer, but the mismatched local dropped his scythe and yelped anyway.

“Oh! Hail, traveler. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you or hear you. Fields are good for sneaking,” he said while rubbing his head where hair might have been. His voice was soft and gentle like the breezes that tickled the wheat every so often. Jack thought the farmer’s words would have been comforting if his tone was lower in pitch.

The traveler smiled at him while waiting on the answer to his question.

“Yes, yes, you wanted the owner of these fields?” He fidgeted with his hands, wringing them out in oddly mesmerizing motions. “Well, they belong to Ofa, that’s for sure, so I guess I’d manage them on a good day… but I’m trying to get the harvest started right now.” His eyes widened, a rabbit-like gesture, and he looked down at the scythe before apologizing again to Jack. “I’m sorry, I can’t talk, I need to start the harvest!” He picked up the tool and dragged the blade through the dirt before attempting to heave the heavy metal again. Jack found the man a bit pitiful.

“Would you like me to help, or fetch someone who can? Surely this work cannot be done by one man,” Jack remarked. The farmer looked back and shook his head.

“There ain’t anyone who can help, sir. If you go to Ofa you’ll see why. It’s a mess, a right mess over there I’ll tell you,” he said while rubbing sweat off his brow.

“Can you take me in? I think you could use a break,” Jack said, knowing the farmer had managed to cut exactly zero stalks of wheat down from the field. He dropped the scythe again and nodded, then gestured for Jack to come closer. He offered a sweaty handshake to the traveler.

The farmer introduced himself, and Jack welcomed the familiar greeting. “I’m

Bin, from Ofa. Though I guess you knew that already…” Bin smiled as Jack matched the handshake and introduced himself as well.

“I’m Jack, not from Ofa. Or Isah at all. Nice to meet you, Bin.” Jack returned the smile and wiped his hand on his cloak after Bin’s clammy hand broke away.

Jack and Bin walked away from the empty field and towards the forest in the opposite direction that Jack arrived in. He realized that had he simply continued to walk forward, he would have found the village of Ofa that Bin hailed from, but he was glad that he had found a guide, incompetent as he seemed. He had expected silence from the farmer, but Bin immediately started speaking, his tone more passionate than before.

“You see, Ofa has a problem, a big problem. Look at me.” He stopped walking to punctuate his command. Jack stared straight into his brown, sad eyes and shivered as he noticed thin hairs sprouting from his upper lip. “Am I a man who should be in charge?”

Bin paused. The silence was heavy and the surrounding trees suffered in muted imprisonment. Sweat dribbled down Bin’s forehead while Jack grumbled and looked every direction he could improvise to not seem rude. After too long, even if that was only a brief moment, Bin started walking again. He looked straight forward towards an ash- gray tree wider than both of the men combined.

“Sorry about that,” he shied away. “My point was that no, I’m not a leader, and I can’t tell if I’m the unlucky one for being stuck with the job or if the five better men and women were so fed up that they decided to go off and get charmed by fairies. I’m sorry, sir, to fill you up with these childish words, but it’s the truth, dang it, and I shouldn’t be

in charge.” He sputtered as Jack followed respectfully behind. He did not want to upset him even further by agreeing strongly with everything he said.

“What exactly happened to the others? Were they actually… you know?” Jack asked, uncertain if the question would upset the well-fed farmer and bring up memories of tragedy. The traveler knew about fairies and their mischievous tricks, but he had never heard of fairy-magic on such a drastic scale.

Bin sighed and slowed down to explain the dilemma to Jack. “You’re wondering about the fairies? I wasn’t bein’ funny, sorry sir if you got the wrong meaning, but I really meant those small wingéd folk who make you do weird things like gather sixty- and-six flowers or eat tree bark. Not that tree bark isn’t good for you, if you’d listen to what my pop always used to say. Heh, he’d probably like this whole mess…” Bin let out the afterthought with an unfitting smile as he put his hand on his chin and stopped walking. Jack almost continued on, as the conversation had lost him, but his curiosity in the farming village convinced him to at least appear invested in what Bin had to say. The traveler stood behind him and waited. He eventually realized that the noises he was hearing were not wind or animal sounds but Bin, struggling to catch his breath.

“That sounds like trouble, alright. And that’s why your farm is in this state?” Jack asked while Bin braced himself on his own knees. The traveler thought Bin was giving a pep talk to his own legs to motivate them to continue walking.

“Yes, yes… I’m actually a cobbler, if you’d believe it. I put my time into shoes and leather and polish if the right merchants come by, so all this outside didn’t suit me at all. I like protecting against the dirt, not sinking my toes into it.” Bin gestured at the

thickening forest around him and Jack stole a look at his shiny, mud-caked shoes. The leather proved his words, and Jack could tell he was a fine craftsman. Each shoe had been polished to perfection, and the make and build was largely expert bar a few flaws.

However, there was an uncomfortable disconnect between the man and his moccasins.

The tops of the shoes were impeccably clean and beautiful, but Jack noticed the bottoms were marred and possibly ruined by grime, leaves, and pine needles.

Once Bin regained the means to go on, he led Jack through the forest road and into another partial clearing, this one not entirely open to the sky above. Instead, the trees that rose up were so tall that even their broad reach could not block out the sun. Light filtered down to them through a patchwork pattern, and Bin stopped and smiled before introducing Jack to his home.

“Well, here we are,” he said while still catching his breath from the walk. Jack looked out into the village of Ofa, where children played with leaf piles and elderly men and women sat and toyed with weaving and knitting projects. He thought for a moment that the humans of Ofa were nomads, and that this was just another camp for them, but the fields invalidated this view, so Jack looked harder for the homes he could not see.

Soon enough, a wooden door opened in the distance and revealed one of the houses and the trick to their survival: camouflage. The front of each small cabin was dark and placed in the deepest areas of inky shade so that they were not immediately obvious to travelers or predators. There were no windows or gray stone flourishes that would have ruined the cover of dark, so the houses were quite drab in Jack’s eyes. However, he admired their creativity in adapting to the forest they called their home.

“How did he find us?” Jack heard an older woman mutter before Bin made a shushing motion and apologized to the traveler. He smiled anyway; this was not the worst welcome he had gotten from any town he had visited outside of Isah.

Bin placed his hands on his hips and surveyed the public area with a proud smirk forming on his face. “We like to think of ourselves as a secret village,” he said out into the empty, leaf-covered clearing. “Safe from everything, uh, except the fairies.”

Jack placed a hand on Bin’s shoulder and found him warm and lightly shivering.

He pulled his hand away, but hovered there as he addressed the cobbler. “Well, thank you for showing me into your town. It’s lovely, and I would like to stay longer and learn about how-” Jack was interrupted by Bin clearing his throat with a phlegmy gurgle.

“Well, I can show you all about that!” He announced with bravado. “We have a great game where we take the biggest dead leaves and trim them down into skinny idols, scarecrows I mean. The kids have fun and the big’uns have time to talk about the harvest and what’s going on in Ofa these days.” He reached down to grab a single brown leaf off of the ground. The span of the leaf was larger than Jack’s outstretched hand. “See, this one would be perfect! Let me show you how…” He took the leaf in his right hand and pulled at the brown matter with his left. As he did, a large crack formed in the center of the leaf and ruined his vision for the scarecrow.

“Maybe when it’s time for the real harvest, it might turn out better,” Jack said while he patted Bin on the back a few times. The cobbler only frowned at the leaf like an omen of doom.

- - -

“Your fields are wonderful, you know,” Jack said point-blank to Bin’s face as they were walking outside of the cobbler’s tiny village.

“W-what do you mean?” Bin said while sweat continued to drip down his face.

Jack offered to lend him a small green cloth he kept on him to wipe his face with, and he did not want the kerchief back under any circumstances.

“Well, it is hardly autumn and yet your crops looked ready to harvest. All at the same time, too,” Jack explained while drawing the shape of the Ofa fields in the air.

“Even the best farms back where I am from did not harvest until the cold settled in.”

The cobbler beamed with pride. “Yes, of course, thank you, we’ve always had the best harvests here.” He wiped his whole face with the kerchief before he licked his lips and continued. “To be quite honest, I’m not sure why we’re so different from every place else, but it might be because of the tree.”

Jack looked around in confusion. “Which tree?” Bin only laughed and pointed ahead of them.

The traveler had been curious when he saw the giant leaf that Bin had pulled from the ground back in the village, and all of his questions were answered. There was a massive tree sprouting from the ground in front of him, and he realized that the entire time they were walking along a snakelike root that was wider than the two men together.

The root formed a natural path for the residents of Ofa, and children had scratched in little indentations every few paces. Some were names in scripts Jack recognized, but others were pictures, little historical art pieces that reminded him of home.

Jack looked up at the tree and opened his mouth wide in amazement. He thought of what godlike nut even bigger than him could have birthed such a towering beast. The brown bark was thick, likely denser than a man is tall, and each branch looked like an entire tree that was felled and attached to the side of the host trunk. Some leaves could have served as a fine hat for Bin or Jack, though the idea made Jack run a hand unconsciously through his thick hair to check for stray leaves, twigs, or bugs.

The cobbler stared at the great tree with a puzzled expression on his face. “Yes, this tree, hmm… It offers a mystery.” He rubbed his fleshy chin like a ship captain who loves his beard.

As Jack saw how the tree parted the canopy and rose into the blue summer sky, he realized something about Ofa and the haven the forest provided for Bin and his people.

“How do you stay hidden with such a great tree nearby?” He asked bluntly.

Bin looked at him, his brown eyes wide with concern. “W-what do you mean!?”

“I mean, your village is hardly hidden with something like this sticking out of the forest,” Jack explained. “Your tree is giant. Huge. A great tree, great meaning big.

Though it’s also quite pretty,” he added.

Bin’s face shone like whatever worry that clouded his mind had gone far, far away. “Ah, I see. You misunderstand, it’s not our tree,” he said confidently. Jack thought for a moment that he was acting like a traveling nobleman who walks around to other cultures and stomps on what they care about.

“But it’s a natural landmark,” Jack continued. “Useful for navigation. If I wasn’t given directions, I might have come here just to see the base of this powerful tree.” He

feared that the tree might be listening in while he wasn’t looking, so he quickly snapped his neck to see that the tree was resting pleasantly in the dirt as always and forever the tree should.

Bin crossed his arms and furrowed what little brow he had left. “Well, you would’ve found the tree and not much else, b-because our village is well hidden enough that you never would’ve found it without me,” the cobbler said.

Jack sighed in the face of Bin’s childish stubbornness and sat down on the giant root, his feet barely scraping the ground. “I understand, Bin. Now can you tell me about the fairies?”

Bin’s body language relaxed from the bold stiffness he displayed before. “Oh, sorry for not explainin’ earlier. The fairies are small people, about yay high,” he leaned over and placed a hand flat against his shin, “but they fly freely even without their butterfly wings. They’ve been around Ofa for forever and they meddle often with the people here, but it’s gotten way worse a couple’a days ago. I wasn’t telling you any tall tale: five of the folks around here who have bigger houses and more years in the village got charmed by fairies. All different charms, and none have worn off since. The farmers can’t harvest and the young’uns who want to take over have no idea how. I’m a cobbler,

I’m no better than a babe.” Bin blubbered on about his shame and failures while Jack listened intently.

The traveler cut him off with a new question. “Bin, do you have any stories about fairies? Anything you have been told to never do, any bad places to go?” He wondered if the people of Ofa had upset the fairies somehow. In all the stories he read and gathered,

he recalled there was always one incident that turned the normally ambivalent fairies against the ignorant townsfolk.

“No, not really,” Bin shook his head, flicking sweat everywhere. That big tree is more important to them than us, and we were thinkin’ of cutting it down to keep them out for good. They’ve always been playing tricks like this, but this time it feels scary, bad, like those stories you hear of the fae up north who, uh… make people dead.” Jack watched him cringe at the idea that the more dangerous fairies were anywhere near his hidden hometown. Jack thought he had to identify a pattern in Bin’s story, and he liked the cobbler better when he was telling his story. The traveler had spent so much time with books, campfire tales, and rumors that he had grown inept at any other means of communicating with others.

Jack caught the meditating cobbler’s attention by placing a firm hand on his shoulder. “So, those five people, what happened to them? What did they do?”

Bin jumped and leapt straight into the description. “Oh, the first was Dena, she had 20 years taken off, poor gal. She’s out playing tag with Yin. Second was Yei, he went out to start the harvest when Dena was lazing around and no one ever found him, except a patch of ground that had no grass anymore. We guessed he got sent somewhere else, though I’m sure he can beat up whatever messes with him, heh.” Bin scratched his head and recalled something Yei had done that proved his strength. He laughed to himself and smiled dreamily.

“Third?” Jack remind him with another pat on the shoulder.

“Oh, sorry, sorry!” For once, Jack thought the cobbler’s apology was honest.

“Third, third was Whena, she hated flowers so the fairies made her gather… uh, sixty- and-five, and then one more for bad measure. She’s at forty, but she keeps on giving up and stomping on them, and that doesn’t work for the fairy magic. Fourth was Yin, my own sister. She’s tough, went out to harvest all by her lonesome, but was forced to play tag for a week. Dena loves the attention,” Bin laughed nervously. “Fifth was the innkeep.

He’s making dishes out of tree bark. No one’s complainin’ about that, it’snot like we had company anyway. The bark makes a good stew.” To Jack’s annoyance, he stopped again to contemplate. Bin gulped on instinct as if imagining the savory taste of tree bark soup.

Jack devoted his energy solely on the fairy mystery. “There has to be a pattern.

Fairies are not crazy, at least from the stories I have heard. Did you cut something down within a couple of days? Burn any trees?” Jack reached for an answer to the conundrum and hoped that his advice led Bin to think of him as a lore master well-versed in monsters and magic.

However, the man simply said “no” and shook his head. “I don’t think we did anything different than any other day. This happens all the time, though sorry ‘cause you didn’t know that. Fairies always messed with us, it’s just that this time it’s worse, way more of us are being messed with, and right at harvest too! You’ve felt the wind same as all of us, we need those crops to survive.” Bin was repeating himself like a cricket in the night with no reply. Jack folded his hands on his lap and tried to place his feet flat on the dirt ground, failing due to the height of the root.

“Hmm… how about the children? Have they gotten up to anything?” Jack truly believed this was his worst suggestion yet. He had already run out of fairy lore.

“Well, you know children! That’s the usual in any village. Sometimes they bring big frogs into the village and let ‘em race around, and they always tease the merchants,”

Bin said before eyeing Jack suspiciously.

“So, were any of them ‘messed with’ by the fairies?” Jack spoke quickly as if he was reaching the climactic conclusion. He decided on the children to evoke sympathy in the cobbler, whom he had deduced was not the cleverest from the great tree debacle.

Bin waved his hands in front of his face and moved closer to Jack. “No, no. None of them go to the farm until after most of the harvest is done. We let them play along once the crops are all on the ground so we can start our little festival right away,” he explained, his voice rising in pitch as he recalled their harvest festival. “You seem interested in our farm! If you solve all this, you’re welcome to stay for the festival. It’s another way to honor the fields,” he finished with a gleam in his eye. The offer was a temptation to Jack, but he disregarded Bin’s words. He reminded himself that Ofa was the first town on his journey for a home. There were plenty more opportunities for revelries with towns that didn’t have fairies magicking away the farmhands.

Jack answered as honestly as he could. “Maybe I will… but hold on. None of the children were messed with because none of them went to the farm?” Jack didn’t like

Bin’s simple wording, but his omissions told Jack everything he needed to know to latch onto a lead.

“That’s right, thanks for listening,” Bin said with a nod. Jack chuckled as he realized the cobbler was too kind for sarcasm. His worry and doubt faded away.

“So everyone who went to the farm at normal harvest time got ‘messed with?’”

Jack spelled his new idea out and thanked Bin in his mind for giving him the tools.

“I’d say so.” Bin continued to nod pointlessly to himself.

“Can we go back to the forest path between the farm and the town? I want to talk to the fairies,” Jack proclaimed boldly, less as a question and more as a call to action.

Bin’s eyes widened. His pupils were balls of twine with dark bags underneath that betrayed a loss of sleep. The cobbler clutched his hand to his chest and sweated furiously.

Jack lamented his earlier judgment and trickery and promised himself he would share a drink with Bin as soon as the fairies were calmed. Bin had reminded him how even the people who never starred in folk stories had great depth to them. The pudgy cobbler had earned Jack’s respect, and for Jack, that warranted at least one beer together on a warm winter’s night.

Jack’s calm moment was interrupted by concerned urging from Bin: “You can’t speak with the fairies. It’s not possible, they just charm you and disappear!” Sweat slid down his cheeks and ran down his neck like twisted rivers of rushing nervousness. An early autumn wind brushed past the two and made the cobbler shiver.

“You’re probably right,” Jack lied. “Can we parley? Negotiate? Maybe make an offering?” The traveler had resolved to think like Bin for the rest of the mystery. Jack thought like a cobbler who believed in the danger of the forest and would never admit that a tree was his landmark.

“I don’t think so, and I don’t want you to try. If anyone needs to go it’s gotta be me. I’m in charge,” Bin said while shaking his head, slipping in some apologies between breaths. Jack slammed his hands against the coarse surface of the root and jumped off from his seat, slamming spectacularly onto a small pile of dead leaves.

“Bin, from all the fairy lore I know, I will tell you that someone needs to confront them and try to make them happy so they stop,” Jack announced. “If that means you, or anyone else in this village, then I am going with them, because I know the most about fairies.” He spoke with loud, feigned confidence. Jack thought that Bin would be receptive to an authoritative voice after having to heft the weight of leadership by himself for a few weeks.

Jack had a creeping suspicion that the people of Ofa were not his folk. He liked

Bin well enough, and the man’s simple dedication to his village was close to the heart of what Jack was looking for in a home. He wanted people around him who would defend him not especially because he was Jack, their friend, but because he was their neighbor regardless of his title or family name. He wanted friends too, but the first manner of business was the community. Bin had the spirit, but Jack thought that the rest of the residents would be nothing but layabouts and braggarts who lorded over the meek Bin and commanded the pure fields. He resolved to fix whatever was plaguing Bin’s people and then move onto Entown, as the lady of the forest had suggested.

Bin’s head fell down and he shut his eyes tight with embarrassment and fear. Jack felt a shocking pang of worry in his heart that told him he was mistaken about the cobbler. Yet, in perfect parallel with the anxiety Jack felt, Bin stood up, slapped his hands

against a tree trunk, and stared Jack straight in the eyes with an asymmetrical smirk like a slug sliding across his face, askew and almost falling off.

“It’s a deal, Jack. I just wanna let you know that I’ll protect this town before anything, and I’ll show you why.” Suddenly his spirit and energy grew beyond what Jack felt, and the traveler was the one who sat down again, almost missing the root completely. Jack put his hand to his forehead and wiped some sweat from his thick hair.

Bin walked away from the traveler and his blue shirt looked midnight black in the shade.

His fists were clenched and another line of sweat was making a tiny trail down his back.

“Come with me,” the cobbler spoke louder than ever before. Jack stood with faith in his heart and gathered himself in order to follow the cobbler.

- - -

Back in Ofa, Bin gave Jack access to the village’s water supply in order to refill his waterskin so they could comfortably approach the aggressive fairies. He surveyed the town again and threw away his early judgments so he could properly assess Ofa and whether he wanted to live there in the future. He had already thought deeply on the people who had left the cobbler in charge, but the location had been on his mind for a while.

The clearing was unique in that the ground was clear from immense trees and even shrubs and other foliage. However, all of the trees around, including the great one to the east, were so large so that their canopy made a natural roof on top of the gathering of cabins and people they called Ofa. There were many dotted holes that allowed sunlight to shoot through like arrows of light, and Jack doubted there would ever be much cover

from rain or snow. Yet the sun ensured that the clearing was not gloomy, and that the children could frolic happily. And frolic they did.

Jack had nearly been tripped by brown-haired kids in rough homespun wool tunics and pants that were surely made out of leftover potato sacks. Some were about as tall as him, and some barely rose up to his knee.

“Are the older kids not fit to harvest?” He asked of Bin, who was standing with him by a storage shed. Though there was sunlight abound, they preferred the shade, as summer’s heat still hung on by a thread.

“Well, uh, they’ve never had to, so we never taught them. Same as m’self, actually,” Bin admitted. Jack watched him wring his hands and felt a burst of frustration.

“Why not? Doesn’t the whole village help with the harvest? I even see some adults around here, are they just like you?” The traveler pointed out a blacksmith whose rhythmic clangs reverberated throughout and seemed to shake the wooden wall of the shed behind them. He then pointed more subtly to an older man who was whittling down a dead branch with a sharp knife.

Bin shook his head. “We all have our jobs, and it j-just so happens that everyone above me had jobs on the farm. We’ve never needed anyone else for that particular job,” the cobbler answered.

Jack stepped out in front of Bin and counted on his left hand, uncurling each finger until he had five outstretched. “This is how many people you need for your harvest, every year?” He glared at the sweating man.

“Y-yes,” Bin muttered. “It’s how it’s always been.”

“Take me to your farm right now,” Jack demanded, and Bin’s eyes grew wide.

“Why? We need to deal with the fairies, that’s way more important than whatever strange thought has crossed your mind—” But Jack was relentless, and walked by himself to the western path he arrived on. Bin followed anxiously, his fine shoes dragging along the roots that dove along the dirt of the clearing.

Jack set his jaw into a grim frown and muttered to himself as he walked quickly through Ofa. “With a farm that big… you would need at least, ten, twelve people. Maybe even more,” he said loud enough so that Bin could hear him. The cobbler couldn’t keep up, his body couldn’t stand up to the rigor that Jack put himself through every day of his travels.

Jack stood silent for a moment and caught his breath. He also hoped that Bin would catch up to him. Despite his boldness in rushing towards the golden lines of crops that would never melt even in the late summer heat, he was scared to face the dangerous fairies alone. So they walked together, their heads lined up evenly and their postures crouched like hunters who needed to find a target before they actually began their wild chase. They only perked up when they noticed the green lights gathering in front of them.

The sun had not yet risen directly above the canopy, so Jack knew the day was not even halfway over, but he thought he saw fireflies in the shade between him and the field.

There were green blinking lights in little bean-sized flashes scattered throughout the air like a child had thrown them and they had stuck there. They were gently hovering and waving with the wind, and the blinks were more like eyelids than fireflies on closer inspection.

Jack approached the light, intrepid, and found the ground slip out from under him.

He was falling, but not downwards as he had expected. He realized that he had never moved; instead, the ground had pulled away from him as if a rug pulled and he remained where he stood. Though as he looked up from the dirt that had left him, he noticed that even the trees were stretching uncomfortably into the horizon, and that the hope and determination in seeing the field again were replaced by a dizzying, horrific headache that reverberated through Jack’s head. He went to hold his head in his hands, cradle himself or pinch his temple to get at least some relief from the agony he felt, but his hands missed and went past to some other plane and he lost consciousness.

- - -

Jack awoke to a gravelly voice rolling over a checkerboard of light and shade.

“- they’re up. Neensha, they’re awake!” The voice said in an inconstant shout.

Jack could feel the air vibrating oddly, like the hum and crackle of a fire shimmered right in front of his face.

Jack thought that magical sleep would be far more comfortable. In truth, his back was sore and needed cracked, and his eyes felt heavier than they had ever been before.

However, he was not about to fall back down into the depths of his mind. He shot up from his resting place, alert and quite confused.

He was resting amongst piles of branches and leaves atop gnarled roots matching the size of the great tree beside Ofa. The traveler stood up and looked back at his bed, and only found an unflattering oval impression in the leaves. Bin was to his left with his eyes

shut tightly. He squirmed as if locked in a terrifying nightmare. But even Jack knew that

Bin would be of no help in the situation they found themselves in.

“Good morning,” said the older man who was speaking earlier. He was a gruff little thing with a coarse but short beard, and he was hovering in front of Jack a few feet above the ground. He was around two feet tall, and Jack raised his forearm to measure.

The fairy was only barely as tall as the section of his arm from his elbow to his hand. He had brown hair like a dying leaf that reminded Jack of youthful days when he would pick up leaves in the autumn and try to separate the fading brown from the thin veins inside.

They always crumbled before he could make any progress, so Jack already felt frustration at the fairy.

“H-hello,” Jack muttered with more dignity than most do when confronted by the fae. The other fairy matched the tales of fairies and forest nymphs that Jack knew from tales. She was thin and had long river-blue hair. The whites of her eyes were stunning and she had them stretched wide in astonishment or fear.

“Hello to you, human,” she bubbled, “and welcome to our fairy kingdom. Marked by the Tree and the workings of Man. I’m sorry for dragging you here so suddenly but it was my turn today and I had some investigation to do.” Her voice resembled the walk downstream when one started out bright-eyed and enthusiastic but ended with the realization that all there would be at the end was more water and one less mystery in the world.

“So, Ofa residents I assume?” She continued, “I apologize again for the foolishness of my brothers and sisters, but Tann and I would like to talk about better

actions to be taken between us. We live so close, but only since the Awakening do we reveal ourselves as we are.” The fairy Jack assumed was Neensha had an excitement in her voice that Jack had only overheard on busy market days when foreign merchants had the gall to push for high prices on goods they thought were rare. She stopped for nothing but air, and sometimes she lacked even that. She was so dramatic and excitable that if

Jack had told her that the only resident of Ofa here was taking a well-needed rest with the roots of a tree as his pillow, then he thought she would have said “who cares? I have you as my audience!”

“Look upon the Tree, young men, and tell me what you can see. I assure you it’s less than I and Tann here—” she was cut off by Tann grabbing her shoulder and whispering her name.

“Neen! Let the second man get up before you lecture them. Better yet, take responsibility and help them up yourself!” Jack realized where the humming he had woken to was coming from. Neensha’s flight was elegant and simple. She remained in the air like dragonflies and hummingbirds do: hovering in place with no obvious movement. Tann was inconsistently fidgeting and darting around in the air. He looked like a tiny priest, but Jack pictured him as a curt carriage driver, whipping the horses with no remorse.

Jack sighed and put his palm to his face as Neensha flew down to Bin’s body and examined him before tugging on an arm uselessly. The traveler walked over to the cobbler, grabbed his face with both hands, and shook him awake with vigor. Jack made a

silent plea that he wouldn’t turn on the fairies and make a bigger fool of himself and his town.

Bin jumped to his feet with startling dexterity. “Huh!? What happened? Jack!” He stretched out and jumped over to Jack, grabbing and shaking his hand with a grin of survival and misplaced excitement. “I thought you were a goner! I thought we both were!

By the forest, it’s great to be alive.” He dusted himself off before turning his head at the sound of Tann clearing his throat impatiently. Neensha rose back up beside him, straightened out her back, and smoothed down her blue hair.

“Anyway, look at the Tree.” She pointed up at a large oak behind her. “It’s what we fairies need to live, or at least it’s a great place for us to live around, because it has immense amounts of earth energy. What that means to you, I don’t know, but to us it’s life itself and—” she was cut off by the glare of the disheveled, balding man beside the traveler. Bin had been gathering his courage since he noticed the fairies and finally stormed up to her. She was so invested in her speech that she jumped three feet into the air when he charged at her.

“You crazy fae folk! You’re ruinin’ our farm and our ‘life itself’ with your wacky magics and annoying spells! We’ve half a minds to cut down that tree and tear out its roots just to get you spritely fellows outta this place and outta our hair.” He was fuming with the rage of a leader, and for a moment Jack thought he was much better than the sixth best option. Jack approached and started to pull him back, though, for what the fairy was saying was far too interesting for him to ignore.

In his hometown, Jack had only remembered the travelers who came equipped with glorious tales of monsters and magic, of a far-off land called Isah with salamanders, dryads, and witches who weave their powers into terrible forms. Before he set off on his own journey, he decided to be guided by gathering stories above all. So he asked the question of himself: what are wanderers without stories? The answer to Jack is “just empty husks.” As much as he appreciated Ofa’s natural harmony, he assumed he had seen all he needed to in the hidden village. He yearned to hear more from Neensha and

Tann without incurring their magical rage, so he had to calm the cobbler who fell up into power. Otherwise, the fairies who tricked and japed in so few tales would never get another entry in the world’s tomes.

“Bin, stop,” Jack said as he pulled the village man back from the fairies by the shoulders and gave him a stern look. “We are interested in talking and working something out.” He smiled and stared straight at Neensha. Her eyebrow twitched as she kept the smile of a powerful woman forced to deal with the unformed thoughts of the lower class.

“Thank you. I know tensions are… high, but I hope we can come to a peaceful resolution. Anyway, look up at the Tree, and tell me what you see,” Neensha urged. Her eyes never rested again on Bin during her speeches and pleas.

Jack stared up at the tree and stroked the tiny stubble on his chin before answering the fairy’s request. “I see a tree. A large one, only special in that its trunk is taller than most others I have seen in my life. Otherwise, not much to talk about.” He explained what he saw without any flourish. He felt no need to describe how the branches leapt

gallantly over the canopy of green or how the column seemed fitting as an entrance into the sky, and that he would not have been surprised if there was a staircase to a god’s realm wrought into the bark, though he knew there wasn’t any such thing.

“That’s the answer I expected! You guys are consistent, that’s for sure.” She jeered and pointed at Jack as if she were teasing a schoolboy. Her smooth face and long, elegant hair were shiny and new, but Jack looked quizzically at the fairy who had begun the conversation diplomatically. He wondered how Bin would take the gesture.

The girl fairy continued her speech: “Fairies have magic unlike any witch you’ve met. We channel the will of the land, the energies of the land you walk on and our trees take root in. Just like any living will, it has emotions and places it likes, and right here by your Ofa seems to be a well-loved spring.” She was moving her hands mysteriously up into the sky as if she was mimicking the trees she seemed to love. Her tone started to shift from high-pitched excitement to dull repetition. Jack thought she may have practiced the spiel too many times.

“A spring of what exactly? Vague magic?” Jack interrupted, which startled

Neensha and rocketed her up into the canopy again. She crossed her arms and continued.

“If you’re looking to name the trees’ power, then give up right now. It’s not that cut-and-dry, the world isn’t set up like that. Ten years ago, when you both were surely babes in your mothers’ arms, did you ever think that there were orcs in your mountains and fairies in the boughs of your forests? Look up, friends, and gaze even more, even deeper.” She threw her pale hands up to the sky and both men looked up with the motion.

Jack felt compelled, as if weights tied to his eyes were pulled upwards towards the

canopy, but not quite. Instead, his sight rested right below the leaves to where the branches were thickest but not blackening his sight.

Jack’s eyes were made to scan like night fires pushed side to side by the wind, and with every sway he saw Bin was mirroring his movements. He had his eyes wide open in horrific shock, but Jack watched with hungry eyes. Amongst the branches and leaves hanging below the polka-dotted light of the sun, Jack found hive-like homes tucked deep into the hollows of the tree. Neensha smiled wide and made Jack shiver as if something had unlocked in his heart when he noticed the houses of fairies at the base of branches like squirrels’ homes or the hidden holes of children too wild for dinner bells.

Much like the allegiances of schoolhouse days, the traveler and the cobbler had joined a club of secret knowledge they never knew about until that moment.

The sun was bearing down on them through the razor-thin lines between the leaves but the homes of fairies were not so inelegant as to need the stroking and overbearing touch of those rays. These strange shapes just big enough for dolls or one man’s leg were lined with fern-green luminescence that faded in and out. They reminded

Jack of the jade fireflies he had seen when he was teleported to the fairies’ home, so he made the logical connection: the fairies owned this slice of forest and also harnessed the power to bring men from place to place with neither carriage nor horse.

Jack felt a headache grip him, and warmth flowed into his mind in unnatural amounts. In each green leaf he saw that graced the fairy tree, he felt the echo of a leaf he had stepped on before. In the patterns on the branches, he recalled a dozen live branches he had snapped in pursuit of firewood or a cure for travel-born boredom. In the brown

roots on the ground, he thought of bruises and aches caused by inconsiderate travelers’ wayward boots, and he nearly wept for their pains. The empathy for nature was overcoming his reason, but a green flash of light from Neensha stopped the flow and left him with only the powerful headache.

Tann spoke and broke the magic silence. “Neensha… I know you’re excited, but never do anything like that again.” Neensha winced and yelped, and another green flash of light shot out from her hands and coated the clearing.

Tann massaged his temple and stared pleadingly between Jack and Bin. “Sorry, humans. The easiest name for that power that springs from the ground is ‘earth energy,’ mark it well. The green you see is earth energy, and anything awe-inspiring we can do is tinged with its hue because it is in our gratitude to the earth that we gain our power. In a sense, our strength is not ours, it is merely borrowed,” he explained on Neensha’s behalf.

Jack rubbed his stinging eyes and saw the dour fairy man crossing his arms, obscuring them in the sleeves of his robes.

“We are too close to our tree for you to look directly towards it, but my friend here,” Tann smacked his partner’s back and pushed her forward, “will help you see what you’ve been blind to.” Neensha cautiously approached us, floating freely, after throwing an irritated glance back at Tann. She tenderly placed her tiny hands on our shoulders and

Bin jumped before letting her touch his shirt.

“Now, gaze back up at our home secured by layers of branches and leaves. I haven’t tried this on-” she was shushed by her older companion before she could finish,

and Jack’s heart thumped faster and louder like he had just remembered he owned a heart and stopped the world to listen. The green flash began again, but foggier and milder than before. He thought the glow would block out his vision, but as Neensha’s light expanded, the forest grew clearer and brighter. Jack could trace the roots in the ground and easily point out which branches were alive and which were ready to be cut. Jack saw the vines amidst the thick canopy and admired each strand’s individual strength. They formed rope bridges he had never noticed before: simple walkways that connected each lime-lined home. The homes themselves were acorn-shaped and well-lit by moss filling indents with wild, artistic patterns. Jack’s eyes were drawn suddenly to a larger hollow more shaped like a bucket than an acorn.

“That’s where we gather for festival and meetings,” Neensha explained in Jack and Bin’s mind. Her voice was a river in a downpour, too full with love for her people and her family. Jack’s sight snapped towards a bean-shaped hollow: the next stop on his eyeball tour.

“Where the babies rest and are fed,” Neensha provided. The rapids of her memory surged on, dragging the humans to a tiny stable built on a wide, thick branch.

“Now you see the tool shed for tree care. We scrape away dead and rotten bark, trim branches that are hurting other lives. Sometimes we scare the birds away so they do not drill deadly holes into each tree’s flesh,” Neensha continued. Her arms fell heavily from the men’s shoulders and the vision faded, but a blissful smile remained on her face and she spoke more to them. “We built the shed onto Elthor’s greatest arm. He asked us

to because he wanted to be helpful. We thank him every day…” Suddenly, her voice faded as her arms fell slack and she began to tumble from the air.

Both Jack and Tann jumped forward to help her. The hirsute fairy was much faster and caught her elegantly. He hoisted her comfortably over his back and flew away, his posture and ease like a father carrying his child to bed. After Jack stood, silent and alone, for a few moments beside Bin, Tann returned alone and sat with the men for a minute more before breaking the glossy film of silence that the forest had imposed on them.

“She loves our forest but she loves humans more than anything,” Tann said grimly, his head facing down. “Sometimes I want to yell at her to choose, but if she asked me why, I couldn’t answer. Too much love is not a valid excuse.” He chuckled to himself for a moment before looking straight at me.

“Now you know the natural land better than any other man alive, so can you forgive us for using the magic of the earth on your people? There is too much in these trees to only use amongst ourselves. We must expend it on something else, something living, so we chose men who looked strong enough to handle whatever might come. If you have a grievance, let us know, and we will surely find a way to change.” He raised his voice so that his earthy tones boomed far beyond the confines of his small body. He sat on the ground and reminded Jack of a statue of painted copper made for an obscure religion. He made the comparison seem more apt by bowing deeply to the humans. Jack held back a laugh and asked him to raise his head, but suddenly, Bin stood up and raised his voice.

“You’ve been targeting the adults because they looked stronger!?” The cobbler paired the unfair words with one finger thrown towards the fairy, mirroring Neensha’s childish jeer. Tann sighed, frowned, and nodded.

The wizened fairy responded: “Remember that the magic is not ours, as much as we may be associated with it. I know Neensha couldn’t tell, but you-” Tann pointed at

Jack, “are not from Ofa or anywhere near here. Tell me what you know about our folk, the whole truth.” He smirked at his last word as he let his challenge seep into Bin and

Jack’s minds. The old fae man had noticed Jack’s earnest interest and caught him in a trap, and Jack thought he may have been too eager to listen to Neensha’s pleas. The Ofa villagers, he assumed, had failed to make any attempt at rational conversation with the fairies so far, so Jack could save them all if he wanted to.

Jack raised his rough hands and spread his fingers apart in pure surrender. He then relayed the tales he had heard: “Fairies meddle with magic far beyond human comprehension.” The traveler began to rattle off stories and rumors as if he was answering to a strict teacher who demanded verbatim memorization. “Fairies dislike humans and use their powers to mess with them and make their lives worse. In very few towns, villagers see fairies as kind but playful. They simply view their magic as something fun to do and do not understand consequences.” Jack tried to mimic a storyteller’s dramatic finish by bowing, but based on the sour expression on Tann’s face, he knew he had missed the mark.

Tann barked: “What else have you heard?”

Jack snapped back: “What do you mean?”

“There should be one word, repeated often enough that it’s a shame Bin never heard it. Ever talk to a monster? You hear what they say about us?” Tann crossed his arms and I liked him less and less.

“Nuisance,” Jack said with a sigh, and he was beginning to think that the phrase was accurate.

“That’s right.” Tann grinned, showing his ugly, twisted teeth that reminded Jack of tree bark. “First off, traveler, we’re no more nuisances than slimes are idiots, and you can tell the next monster you meet that. Give them my name if they don’t believe you.

Second, Bin of Ofa, we help you far more than you know, and maybe more than you deserve.” The fairy’s grumbling voice reminded Jack of a hermit who had lost his voice after years of isolation.

The cobbler sat up again before raising his voice. “I’ve never seen any of ya around until now, how could you have helped us!? You only ruined our incredible harvest and maybe spoiled our winter, ya dingy tree sprites.” Bin was glaring hard at

Tann, a sight that could compete with the proudest snake and make him give up his skin for a pair of leather shoes.

Tann matched the look and flared up tenfold. “Listen here, farmboy with no farm stink on ‘im,” he floated over to Bin and got in his chubby face, “you’d probably brag about your harvest any year. I don’t know about your folks’ crops, and I don’t know how you manage your fields, but I’m sure that the energy of this land makes your crops a damn sight better than any other in the world,” Tann explained with no smile left on his face.

“And you know something good about being a nuisance?” Tann continued. He was playing up his crowd of two with each outburst and twist. Jack wondered if the rugged fairy could singlehandedly convince all of Ofa to ignore the fairies, and the traveler decided for a moment that he could.

“Uhh… what?” Bin managed.

Tann stomped his foot in mid-air. “People stay away. People hate nuisances. I bet you all the leaves in this forest your friend here knows plenty of monsters or has heard scary campfire tales about the more dangerous ones. Demons, vampires, minotaurs… ugh, doppels. Now that every monstrous family is unfolded and bare to the shining new world, they need places to live, and all fairykind has made sure that no one wants to live here.” Tann gestured and reddened with a wild passion devoid of dignity. He lost himself in frustration like his soul was overflowing with anger.

“So when you tell stories about your harvest and your plentiful stores of food and baubles and whatever else humans treasure now that their livelihoods are threatened by strange new beasts, remember the fairies and their reputation. Recall that the forest has given you a gift of life and treasure it.” Tann punctuated his spitting lecture by grabbing the collar of Bin’s shirt and pulling as if he was about to throw a cobbler four times his height over his shoulder.

Jack could trace the red lines of malice that linked the men’s eyes. He was still too distanced from both of their lives to give any proper advice, to stop the fighting between generations and cultures, but he wanted to do something anyway. He wanted to change the outcome, to flip the page himself instead of letting others do the choosing.

Jack went through all the knowledge he had of fairies, and then thought of Ofa and the way they lived. He recalled the beautiful golden fronds that swayed on the border, a nook tucked into the forest just for men to live alone. He looked up at the tree called Elthor, and entire community within the branches of a single glorious pillar. He thought on how they could be reconciled, on how to bring together the ones who were ruled by the status quo, and the chaotic ones who lacked any reason or logical patterns.

With a roaring realization, Jack broke down in laughter. Giggles rippled through him like too many waves on a windy day, and the feuding cobbler and priestlike fairy glared at the traveler with side-turned eyes like farmers at hungover drunks.

“What’re you laughing at?” An upset Bin asked, while Tann just stared on like a stone. Jack continued to laugh, but he tried to fit in words between each wave.

“You are the same,” he ended up saying in as strained of a voice as he could manage. Tann shook his head and gave a smug smirk that sobered Jack.

“You all are the same,” he repeated after a few deep breaths, “because you love this forest. You both never want to leave, so you’re willing to destroy the other to keep the peace.” He jumped onto a large root to his side and placed his hands on his hips, looking down on the pair.

“That’s a lie! I would never—” Bin squeaked, though Jack cut him off before he could make another sound.

“You said to these fairies that you would cut down their tree, and to be curt, it is your tree too. You are also the same because you are childish,” Jack finished with a frown.

Tann jumped in on the offensive. “Childish!? This man lunged at a young fairy woman without any care!” His high temper returned like relighting a blazing campfire after a night of rest.

Jack compensated by raising his voice at the fairy: “Bin saw five of his neighbors disappear or have their brains addled beyond repair. Sometimes being a nuisance goes too far, even if you cannot control what your magic weaves when you knit it,” Jack said and coughed a few times. He sat down on the root after giving so much of himself to protecting the forest. The traveler realized that the job was better suited to those who do not destroy the land just by walking. Humans tend to step on what they cannot see.

Tann’s deep voice returned with a devoted vigor: “What do you propose we do, then, strange traveler? Do you really understand our magic more than we do? Neensha did all she could to make you understand that our place is holy and wholly not ours, and now she rests. Respect her effort and leave this place,” the fairy said before turning around, implying an end to the argument.

Jack continued, attempting to overpower Tann’s finality. “I understand that humans and fairies have not and do not live together, and I will never force this.

However—” he was cut off by an aggrieved Bin.

“Stop it! We can’t live with fairies! Everything will fall apart! Jack, you can’t break everything we’ve worked to make in Ofa,” he blubbered, his face reddening and falling apart like a rotten cherry still hanging. Jack stood up from the root and went over to him while Tann continued to feign disinterest. The traveler placed his hand on Bin’s

shoulder in a gesture of brotherhood, humans among humans, and decided to give him some advice, the very little wisdom Jack had come up with himself.

“Bin of Ofa, you cannot see the world around your village or understand how it has changed. The problem with living under such dense shade is that it blinds you.

Monster folk who we once shunned now make their own towns and trade and stories and music and it is not your place to withhold it from them.” Jack turned to face the sulking fairy. “Tann, can you tell him how many of your fairies have left this forest for other places?” Jack knew he was bluffing, but he relied on one hope: that the fairies of that forest knew enough about other societies to be tempted by books, love, and the soft glow of a tavern in the evening. In truth, he was wishing that some of them were like him.

“Many,” Tann admitted, shuffling away from the humans to study some green moss that ringed a mundane tree trunk. “Even Neensha wants to travel elsewhere to study the world. We don’t get travelers or merchants like you do, but we watch and we learn in our own ways, sometimes through the trees.” His voice was quiet and gentle like a branch finally giving way to the breeze. He placed his hands behind his back and gave in to the reverie of observation.

Bin threw out words carelessly after watching the fairy relent: “That don’t mean we should change our whole way of livin’ just because the world around us is crazy…”

He was gesturing wildly with sweaty hands, but Jack only laughed to himself and turned towards the cobbler.

“Bin, let me show you something.” He turned again to Tann and voiced his question like a mother asking her dirt-covered son what had happened: “Do you want

your village to mix with the humans’, changing everything?” Jack crossed his arms and stared at the fairy with intent, and his patience was rewarded.

Tann replied hesitantly. “No, absolutely not. I would rather move to a different

Tree than destroy everything I’ve worked to build up. The humans cut down trees, they stab the earth and rip it up, they plant life where it was never planned to be. We cannot live in harmony.” The fairy huffed and stole glances towards Jack. He was stretching out his legs in the air, an impatient tic that translated well to the human traveler.

“Bin, do you agree?” Jack asked.

“Well, yes,” rushed out of the cobbler’s mouth uneasily.

“Then you are the same,” Jack stated with a smile and the thought that his work was over. To his disappointment, they were still looking away from each other like scorned schoolboys after a fistfight.

“Where does that place us? What have we accomplished here?” Tann asked warily, and Jack panicked, thinking he had lost the attention of the older fairy.

The traveler sighed deeply, hoping he did not disappoint the acting troupes he bothered as a child. “How do you two feel about change?” He said every word with slow emphasis.

“I don’t want it,” they both said in perfect harmony.

“Do you want to protect your homes and your people?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” they said with so much force that they woke a nearby squirrel.

“Bin, what problem do you need fixed before you can leave the fairies alone?”

Jack inquired. This was the first proper step of his makeshift plan.

“The men and women fit for harvest are useless right now ‘cause the fairies messed with ‘em.” The cobbler rattled the answer off with little energy.

“Okay, and Tann?” Jack kept up a façade of interest and passion.

“We need to use up our earth energy to let the natural flow go through. Also, we can’t have men with axes messing with,” he paused for effect, “our trees. Not our tree and not our trees.” He hissed the s sounds, which made Bin flinch.

Jack raised his hands to stop both of them from bickering further, which made them look up in excitement. “I think I have a solution,” he said, and smiles arrived on both of their faces. “However,” he continued, “Bin will hate it.” The men gestured for

Jack to continue anyway.

“Out with it, Jack!” Bin said while jumping around on the dead leaves.

Jack took a deep breath and spoke his piece quickly: “The fairies will use the energy to mess with Ofa’s children rather than its adults.” Jack anxiously looked between the others. Bin gave a dramatic gasp that brought at least two frowns to the group.

“You can’t… there’s no way… the children!?” Bin exclaimed with his hands limp and useless, his too-smooth face drooping down like a sad old dog. Even Tann was having trouble keeping the stone-cold countenance of a schoolteacher.

“We don’t love humans,” the bearded fairy stubbornly stated, “but I could never forgive harming a child of any shape or culture.” Jack looked to Tann with trust in his moral value of the fairy community above personal desire. Jack knew him to be good from his actions throughout the short hours he had known him, so he ignored the enraged responses and played off of the desires of the two parties.

“Children,” Jack said with a smile sweeter than fruits preserved in the finest honey, “are certainly precious. But they are also frivolous and extremely hardy.” Jack dropped the fake smile. “Bin, you mentioned the children of Ofa who play in the woods.

Have you ever fitted them for their shoes?”

“Uh, yes, I have,” the cobbler stuttered.

“Did you happen to notice anything about those precious gremlins’ feet?” Jack asked, almost spitting out the end. Bin looked disgusted, as if he was remembering far too many antsy boys and girls twitching against his measuring sticks and size molds. Jack understood his reaction, but he had hoped a man who dealt with the things on every given day would be more hardened to such a simple reaction.

“Not really, Jack, I just… they’re tough buggers, that’s for sure. They don’t callus up like the few shoeless hermits we’ve met but they don’t cut or blister like I’d expect them to. I, well, oh no…” Bin covered his head with his hands and shrunk away as he realized Jack’s intention.

“‘Tough buggers,’ eh?” The traveler said with a real grin, his teeth all on display like a wicked wolf on the hunt. Jack had not meant to trick the man, but he understood that where emotions affected Bin, only cold logic would sway Tann.

“Anyway, now that we know that the children of Ofa are strong and perhaps adventurous, what say you Tann? Are you more open to the idea?” Jack gestured and watched as Tann finally turned around and faced the two of them, returning to the triumvirate of fools.

He wrung his hands as he asked this of the chubby villager: “How, exactly, did the earth energy affect your kin?” The fairy’s pointed ears were twitching.

“Well, let me list the ways—” Bin prepared to spring into the spiel he gave Jack earlier, but Jack cut him off as quickly as he could.

“Made younger, then disappeared, then compelled to gather one hundred flowers, then forced to eat tree bark, then… I do not remember the last.” Jack felt his legs weaken as exhaustion overtook him. He had been traveling for an hour or two before he arrived in

Ofa, and even then, he had barely rested once he arrived. He dreaded dragging out the confrontation for much longer and wanted desperately for a drink.

“You forgot one flower, and then my sister Yin, who has ta play tag for a week.

Also, the tree bark ain’t that bad,” Bin corrected with a wagging finger. The old fairy placed a thoughtful hand on his beard and stroked mindlessly.

“Those are all very harmless illusions…” he trailed off without finishing the thought.

“What about age? Can you fix it quickly?” Bin asked of the fairy, now over his anger and onto looking for a solution. Jack smiled to himself, but hid his mouth away with a sly hand.

Tann stopped fidgeting with his beard and answered with a sage voice: “Age is one of the shortest illusions we can manage, and we have almost no control over it. But if the land is choosing such useless spells, then… ah well.” He turned back to the traveler.

“I agree to your proposal, Jack. I think it will help us in more ways than you think.

Fairies like Neensha would love to take care of human children, and even the old fools

like myself need to leave the nest every once in a while.” Tann smiled and reached out his hand for a handshake with Jack. The traveler jumped at how cold and rough the fairy’s palm was, but he knew his skin was no worse than a healthy stream in the shade.

Bin hesitated at first, but he also shook Tann’s hand in the end. Jack slapped his back jovially and gave him some polite reassurance that his people would turn out alright once the fairies’ target has switched over for good.

Jack and Bin said their goodbyes to Tann and wished Neensha well before they walked back through the untouched fairy forest, perhaps the only humans who would ever do so. A weight seemed to disappear from the two of them, and Bin began to smile to himself, blushing red every time he failed to hide his face with his big hands. Jack wondered if he should stay or leave straightaway from the strange little forest of Ofa, full of shy people and rambunctious fairies.

After we took one step into the sun-warmed packed dirt of Ofa, work-worn men and women greeted Bin with smiles after wiping sweat from their brows. He smiled and ran around to tell them the good news in exaggerated and excited tones, and some of the children resting from playtime joined in and began to shout. “Fairy friends, fairy friends!” they chanted, carefree and warm like they noticed a favorite merchant or uncle’s caravan horse trotting near, and Jack started to take his leave, grinning to himself as he felt the sad pangs of separation. He took slow and easy steps towards the east, not wanting to make the parting any more drawn-out, but a soft hand patted his shoulder and turned him around.

“You’re not leaving after not even spendin’ one day in Ofa,” Bin said to the traveler as he dragged Jack to his house. The two broke bread together and opened up an old bottle of wine that Bin pulled out of the dirt behind his house. They went to the tavern and shared a drink with the blacksmith. Before night fell on their town, some children who had strange colored hair and too many fingers from the fairies’ weird spells came around to Bin’s house and asked for stories from the traveler. He told one that he knew of a town that worshipped fairies and gave gifts every year so they would be blessed by their connection to nature. Jack slept on the floor of Bin’s house, and yet, he found himself comfortable rest for the first time since arriving in Isah.

On the next day, Bin offered to inspect Jack’s footwear, and the traveler agreed.

He tended to them and polished the boots for free, and Jack thanked him, though the cobbler dismissed his words with a wave. The two friends sat and talked about useless, trivial things. Jack told Bin about Cath and how beautiful the walls looked, while he nodded and said some of the men in Ofa were from Cath but wanted to live more freely.

The conversation reminded Jack that he had only been in two towns in Isah, and the names that the lady had rattled off rang through his head once again: Entown, Onmu,

Nora’s Burg. And even then, he knew of many villages and cities in Isah that he had wanted to visit before he even knew of monsters or travel, like the great walled capital of

Linbe, far to the east, beyond the great river and the deserts beyond. Jack reminded himself that Ofa was the first of many, and said his goodbyes to Bin, not without sadness in his heart.

The lone traveler slung his pack over his shoulder and made a gallant wave before he walked east, out of the clearing they called Ofa and into the dark forest. He thought of

Bin fondly and remembered his clammy baldness and good friendship for many nights.

The shaded path to Entown was long and dreary under so many unfriendly trees, and Jack felt his loneliness ring through him.

He knew he would not mind visiting Ofa sometime again. On his walk, he entertained the dream of bringing some funny little trinkets for the children and some rare shoes and leather for Bin. Jack would pay the cobbler handsomely to make him some shoes for himself and whoever he would be tangled up with at the time, and the traveler knew they would be the best shoes he would ever own. He promised himself that those fine leather shoes would plant him on the ground and secure him in this world with brotherhood and cheer even in the worst of times.

Chapter 2: Entown

As Jack left the forest and fell into a comfortable rhythm, he smiled at the hills rising gently like soft dough and enjoyed the warmth gathering in the grass. Each humble green peak allowed him to watch the sway of every flower and weed of the rolling valleys and recall fondly the people of Ofa. The first night, a harsh chill entered him when he breathed, and so he made camp back amongst the trees where the wind was not as harsh. With each heavy sway of the branches above him, and the odd sounds of nature behind him, he began to feel the emptiness in a magic circle around him. He had nobody to share his bed with, even in the great expanse of nature that he joined every night of his journeys. He fell asleep listening to the trees, their hushed voices telling him nothing at all.

He awoke in the bright morning and regarded the incline in front of him with a measure of surprise. Back when he walked without a path in front of him, he had seen the mountain as an objective, but the Lady and Bin had set his mind on other directions— notably, east, where Entown laid beside the largest river in Isah, the Great River by most accounts, but Jack had found that the name changed depending on who he asked. Even people he had never asked told him about the rushing rapids of the river and all the trade that was done at great risk to the merchants. Bin was one of these people, and though he had never been to the riverside town before, he had heard dozens of stories, most of which were familiar to Jack.

“Have you ever heard the tale of the man who ruined witchcraft for everyone?”

Bin said excitedly one night, while Jack was lounging at the Ofa tavern. The traveler nodded, but told the cobbler to continue anyway, as the myth was always of special interest to him. Bin went on about a horrible man splitting the town in two and cursing the language forever, as acolytes, mages, and witches were called something else in times long passed. Jack dozed off once he realized that the portly craftsman had no new spin to give on the old story.

There was a witch in the wanderer’s hometown who beguiled tipsy merchants and men with sagging eyelids to come to his tent to hear the selfsame tale. Jack even recalled at a harvest festival that the witch managed to convince a passing scribe from the far west to put down the tale forever in a collection of stories the scribe was penning, but a man visiting from Nora’s Burg made a scene and claimed that the witch’s tale was false in a number of ways. Ever since that incident, Jack had sought out many different interpretations of the Man Who Killed a Word, but he was never satisfied with what he found.

Jack wiped those strange expectations from his mind and pictured Entown as only a fine town with a dock for trading and a rich history. The lord was competent which meant his name was not worth mentioning, and besides, Jack was only concerned with whether there would be wonderfully warm inns. The traveler thought he may be wasting time by thinking of the possibilities. What he believed he needed was a definite future he could stake his claim over, a certainty like a night in a tavern amongst friends or a bed

that he owned. So he stood from his bed and walked towards the east, where one definitive future lie ahead of him in Entown.

The hills he climbed and strained against were between two forests still springing with great green life. To the north was the Ofa Forest, now stored in the traveler’s heart like a squirrel’s acorns in the winter, and to the south was the start of a scrubby and strange smattering of tall, dark trees and bushes that were itching to rip out of the ground and roll across the staggering hills with childish abandon. This was the mountain’s base, for this peak of stone and earth that the fairies surely worshipped was right under the point between Ofa and Entown on the sketched maps he had seen years before. He recalled the symbol they always used to indicate a mountain: two lines together at the top, apart at the bottom: an unfinished triangle that was far too basic to ever represent what was in front of Jack at that moment.

His mind was so overwhelmed and far removed from the magic of the rock that laid in front of him that his mind went to dull and logical affairs like how he would traverse the mountain going forward. The traveler even thought for a moment that a horse would die if pushed onwards on this road, and then he chastised himself as he never enjoyed the company of anything or anyone who smelled worse than him. Jack did, however start drifting north to avoid the uncomfortably steep hills of the mountain’s base.

His path brought him back to the edge of the forest where the fae made their home, and he thought of a child walking a line in cobblestones. He soon found himself walking like a fool, one foot in front of the other, which made him laugh at himself but kept his ankles and his sanity intact under the shadow of a soon-dominating peak.

Jack knew from the tales and his own experience with brushy hills that the hike would not be a hard one. He would simply have to trek down an awkward path of brambles, shrubs, and trees with peeling bark, and hope for some rabbits or plodding streams that could provide him with better meals. For a few days of travel, the mountain loomed like a nosy friend over his shoulder, irritating and dominating in a way that only monuments stronger than oneself can be. Every night when he slept under oaks of iron he faced himself towards those quiet gray hills so that no god-thrown boulders would tumble onto his body and take his soul forever. Other travelers may have called Jack a fool for not taking the high ground and holding onto the advantage, but he believed his own ways were clever and made him incompatible with other travelers.

The second leg on his walk to Entown went much the same: Quiet, without incident, and not full of monsters or creatures. In fact, the dead border between oaks and the mountain climb was utterly devoid of any life besides the occasional fluttering and crunch of leaves to his left where the forests of Ofa remained. The traveler looked over wistfully and his bored mind made him imagine each one was Neensha or Tann. Jack felt the urge to dive into the ferns and dead leaves and make himself known yet again, and he entertained thoughts of dining with them and hearing their fae stories as he did with Bin.

But he knew the time for that had passed, and he had made a final decision. At least, he still believed that his ideas and the conclusions he drew from them were final.

- - -

Jack soon grew tired after a few days of hunger and filling his waterskin at sad little streams tumbling down from the mountain. He pushed himself harder than usual

until the natural border gave way to a man-made path. The traveler had been following the path that Bin set him upon from Ofa, but that was hardly anything than a few wagon- wheel treads that had lost in the mud of the forest. In front of him on the sixth day of travel, however, were gray cobblestones that would have made him skip with joy if his legs were not so tired from overwork. Images of warm hearths and soft beds filled his mind and sped up his pace considerably.

As he joined the path and rejoined the human race, Jack realized that the cobbles were jutting out into the forest in an uncanny position, and many were missing or oddly- shaped. He thought that the small pier made of stone was not planned, but rather a side project designated for excess materials. He barked a coarse laugh at the monument to poor planning, but quietly thanked his luck at having solid footing for the final leg of his journey. His feet fell more comfortably on the hard cobbles than ever before, and after some awkward stretched and enthusiastic hops to get accustomed to the new texture, he walked ahead in the cloudless dawn of a new day.

The path led him towards a wall missing so many bricks that Jack could have walked five paces to the right and simply jumped over. He approached the barrier that had already lost the war before any conflict even started, where he saw two figures.

Guards in leather armor with pikes in their right hands stood erect and alert, or at least that was how they wished to appear. The man on Jack’s right had to raise his back off of the rough pillar behind him to look diligent enough when he saw the exhausted traveler.

The right guard’s armor had a thick gash that split his shoulder pad in twain and he had a clean bandage wrapped around his right eye. The fabric was barely noticeable under the

shade of his brown helmet. The other guard had nothing on his head, so the wind blew about his thick gray tufts of hair and made the rest of his body look like a gargoyle guarding his evil master.

The older guard slammed the handle of his spear on the ground, startling Jack and the poor sentry on the right. The pole wobbled as wood tends to do when met with unnecessary force and the noise could not have roused a squirrel dozing on a leaf. The two had jumped more at the interruption of calm than the guard’s machismo, and after the shock wore off the traveler laughed to himself and the helmed guard blushed red and turned away to scratch his bandage. The proud guard faced Jack, hailed him in a formal greeting, and asked about his business coming to Entown.

“Jack, sir,” he replied. “I am a traveler. If you need my source of income, it is currently hunting, so add huntsman to the list.” The wanderer tried to sound formal, but when the words slipped out they felt like mockery. He considered bowing, but since guards were servants to the ruling lord, there was no social need to do so.

“Good day, Jack,” he said and nodded without moving the rest of his thin body.

“Be on your way,” he barked and returned to his stone-still pose. Jack refused.

“This is the way to Entown, correct?” The traveler asked though he already knew.

He could not confirm any town or river beyond the sad little wall. The stones were about two to three feet depending on where one looked, though the stakes made for disturbing decorations that made the view ever more unclear.

“Ed,” the older guard barked after sniffling and ignoring Jack for a moment. The younger one jumped severely this time, knocking his helmet to the side and showing the

nosy traveler a golden patch of hair. He saluted awkwardly with his left hand before his eye shone open and moved sluggishly to meet mine.

“I’m Ed,” he said with a customary nod, “it’s a pleasure.” Ed fixed his helmet, leaving Jack stuck between a gray-haired grump and a sad cyclops. The one-eyed guard’s hair was soft and fairer than his face, which made Jack think that he may be more trustworthy than his senior. The traveler tried his luck with the younger guard.

“So, this road does lead to Entown then, Ed?” Saying a man’s name to his face for the first time is like making a silent social contract with them, but Jack knew that necessity breeds boldness. At being addressed, Ed looked back at Jack and breathed in carefully before he answered.

“Yes, just keep walking forward,” he said while pulling himself away, as far back as he could, as if he were bracing for an approaching disaster. Jack was still too curious to follow his instructions. The traveler thought to himself: why are these two sad excuses for town guards standing at a gate that could not drive away five children, let alone one band of mercenaries?

“What is this wall, then?” The question slipped out of Jack’s mouth, and though

Ed was staring dead onwards and biting his lip, the golden-haired man still looked at Jack and answered without any theatrics or presumptions. Jack figured that Ed was bored, and secretly desperate to speak with anyone except the dramatic guard that posed next to him all day.

“This is the outskirts, sir,” Ed answered respectfully before slipping into a quicker, more coarse speech. “Or, well, it wasn’t to begin with. This was just the edge of

town back when I was a kid. Now, with the docks and everyone up their own—” a clanking noise from the left interrupted his thought— “… with everyone more interested in the water than the land, no one really gives a care about this place. Me and old Dola,” the other guard grunted, “watch over it. It’s been right dull until, well...” He pointed at the bandage that covered half of his face and ran a hand along the cut in his shoulder pad.

Now that Jack could politely gaze at his armor, the traveler immediately understood that

Ed was not a high-ranking guard and this was not a well-maintained part of the town. The leather was cheap, wrinkled in places, and barely dyed. The cut, whatever the source, might have taken off his arm if the attack had gone an inch deeper.

Ed the guard spoke to Jack again after displaying his shoddy armor: “I’m sure that you’re here for the docks, Jack, so do us tired guards a favor and get a move on.” The blond guard’s face twitched into a strained and fast smile as he spoke. Jack realized that

Ed was honestly shooing him away, which shattered his perception of the man slightly.

Still, Jack rationalized the request: either Dola was about to chew the two lollygagging men out fiercely, or the two leather-clad guards had better things to do than chat endlessly with a stranger who did not understand their situation. Jack hardly understood the company he found himself in, so he doubled down and stood stubbornly still until he could be certain that he reached an understanding.

“Apologies, Ed, but I am not here for the docks. I could look at them, sure, but I wasn’t going to Entown for that purpose.” Jack spoke quietly which hid the conversation away from the stoic gray-haired guard. He had wanted to make the conversation more

casual and to move away from the image of a man accosting a guard like a thief creating a distraction.

Ed rolled his eye before he responded. “Then what are you here for, humble traveler?” He laced the word ‘humble’ with tired sarcasm.

Jack replied enthusiastically: “I would like to learn more about Entown and its people. How things run, and if it’s a nice place to stay. Things a traveler might want to know if he is considering settling down.” No lie was spoken, as the traveler was quite interested in any town bordered on one side by the worst offense to architecture he had ever seen. Jack began to think with a hint of mirth that Ed had somehow injured himself on the low wall.

“Well,” Ed said with a smirk, “as somebody who did settle down here, I have a lot to say about that.” The fair-haired guard kept his smile in the shape of a rebellious crescent: a bold moon for a small man. Jack smiled along with respect for the mask he was putting on, but the traveler had far too much experience with dry senses of humor to handle this like Ed expected him to.

Jack called upon the power of the enemy to sarcasm: honest interest. “Go on, tell me. I am terribly interested, and I have nowhere to be for many hours.” He thought about sitting down on the cobbles to perform the appearance of a whimsical man who does not care for common courtesy but gives all his time to good stories, but instead, Jack only squatted. Ed joined him with a quick glance over at Dola, who had not moved from his position.

He spoke even quieter than before and shielded his mouth so the other guard certainly could not hear him. “I could help you out, but I’m Ed the Guard right now. Meet me at the Witch’s Hut in an hour or so,” Ed said with a sly grin, but he soon realized that he was speaking with a stranger to Entown. “Uh, Witch’s Hut tavern,” he corrected hurriedly. “Tell ‘em you’re waiting on Ed. My name won’t get you one drop of beer, but it’ll stop the questions.” He smiled big, real, and nervous before he stood up and gave a quick bark of “on your way!” before winking at Jack. The traveler nodded, smiled back, and finally gave in to the guards’ demands. He walked on through the threshold of the poor man’s barricade.

As Jack passed through, he noticed a small bird that had landed on one of the stakes. When the creature stopped looking around randomly, Jack noticed the bird’s wings were a shade of blue-gray like water above stone, and the image of a canal ran through his mind. He stopped his pace and took a few careful steps towards the bird before the sun shined on the fragile plumage and revealed splotches of shining green and lapis blue. The canal from before transformed in his mind into a canvas, or the smudge of an artist’s painful mishap. Then, as the bird’s head darted across to the worms that surely inhabited the ground along the stakes, Jack’s eyes were drawn to the thin yellow beak of the creature. He thought to himself with certainty that the bird can pierce the ground, and told himself that surely the thing’s tiny life can be sustained just by worms and bugs underneath. But the feathers are so beautiful, so full of the shine and spark of life. The saddest part about watching the glory of nature is remembering that life hurts other life, intentionally or not.

- - -

Jack was disappointed to find that the wall was a long walk from houses or people, though the cobblestone path appeared finer as the path snaked on. The gray stones were fit into each other perfectly, and Jack no longer needed to avoid stray holes.

After many paces, the traveler found distanced wood houses that lined the road, as if the walls were afraid to approach their fellows. Compared to the hovels in Ofa and the cottages of Cath, the houses on the outskirts of Entown were squat and wooden. They were brown, strong, and big like oaks. Jack saw a few men and women heading down the path in front of him and guessed from their muscles and short sleeves that they were dockworkers or other laborers headed for the heart of the town. They were tall and bearded like mountain-dwellers or forestmen, not like the private artisans of Ofa, but more matching what Jack remembered of the loggers who passed by on the main road of his hometown. The women had less hair but more muscle, and their dark hair was pulled tight into tails or cut short.

Jack noted that there were farmers, most of which remained close to their homes or followed along horses as the beasts dragged carts heaving with plant matter. The big lumberjack-like people joked and slapped each other on their backs, but the farmers were all quiet and smiling softly at each other. The traveler found this strange: winter was approaching and much of their livelihood would be wiped out despite any attempts to do otherwise. Their children, too, were odd in that they were smiling blankly near their parents. Jack was already intrigued by the people of Entown, the strange men and women who smiled at the deadly autumn without moving.

As Jack glanced at everyone’s waking faces, his own dirty visage summoned a few half-smiles and passing waves from the hardy people stomping and laughing along with the thin clouds gathered in the morning sky. A headache that pulsed like the cracks and whims of an open campfire told the traveler that he was in dire need of a warm meal in a warm bed. He admitted to himself that he wanted one of the basic wooden tavern stools that may be uncomfortable to the average city fellow but could be paradise for his rear, which was awfully sore from resting on rocks and shaded cold ground.

Like a candle left lit overnight, his wanderlust was wasted away in those few days’ walk between Ofa and Entown. Any farther and he may have collapsed, fallen victim to whatever beasts made the mountain or the southern forest their home. The exhausted wanderer walked slow along the cobblestone road, and to many he looked like a monk at perfect peace with the universe.

Jack wandered along and rubbed his bleary eyes before he noticed that the wooden buildings were gathering closer together, and soon enough there was a town on the horizon. He began to excitedly check the signs above the buildings for taverns, inns, and places to eat before he found a dingy sign with a large cauldron painted on, bearing the name of The Witch’s Hut in tiny lettering. The tavern was the same size as all of the surrounding buildings. Jack only noticed that he had stepped into the trade district as he stopped and had to move to the side so that others could pass. There were a few cheery faces with smiles below mustaches leading donkeys and plain splotched horses to the docks. All of the buildings were sad for a town this big, though they all had large signs with carved or painted crests hanging above each door that gave vague clues as to what

the building contained. The Witch’s Hut was marked by a symbol of ancient witchcraft, the magic cauldron. Cauldrons were immediately recognizable to Jack, though he knew they were many years outdated. There were witches out there who would be offended beyond belief if they thought their organization was being represented by that sigil.

However, the traveler doubted anyone would out themselves as magic-practitioners by asking them to change.

Jack wasted no time and opened the door loudly. An invisible chime rang out, helping his presence be known to whoever was sweeping the floor or taking inventory that morning. The tavern was spacious and had a small bar, and the traveler walked over to a woman in a tunic who was sitting at a wooden table and seriously cleaning a fine tankard of steel, pewter, or something cheaper. The smooth sides had no engravings, yet

Jack assumed the mug was a beloved heirloom, for she cleaned each side lovingly, like a parent handling their mischievous toddler’s muddy legs. Each swipe of the cloth betrayed confidence and the knowledge that she knew better than the poor silvery thing. Jack found the woman hard to approach with her attire and passionate pastime, but after a moment, she called out to him.

“What’d you want? We’re not really open for a few moments, though if you’re not from around here, I won’t kick you out,” she said without ever looking towards the tired traveler. Her deep voice filled the walls up through the banisters of a wooden staircase and into thin doors that opened into little rooms with soft beds and candles. Jack wondered if he could stay at the Witch’s Hut and find some fortune-telling magic that

would lead him towards the right future, where his new home awaited him somewhere in

Isah.

“Hello, I am Jack, and I am certainly not from around here. I’ve just met Ed and he told me to wait here for him. He was going to show me around, or something,” he announced through the large, empty room to the woman. She turned around the moment that he opened his mouth and stared at him with shining black bangs covering her olive face with fierce black pits in her eyes. Her hair was thick and reached down over her shoulders, and her eyes faded darkly, their color true-black in the gloom of a tavern at sunrise.

“Well,” she started dryly, “it’s a good thing you ran into me and not the owner.

She would’ve thrown you into the street for another hour. I’m Amar, Edson’s wife. Nice to meet you, Jack.” Amar’s voice was low and echoed strongly, reminding Jack of the woods he just emerged from. Her head swiveled back and she resumed her attentive care of the tankard. Jack paused for an awkward moment before he pulled a flimsy wooden chair out from one of the closest tables and gladly rested his weary legs. The room was still cold, empty, and blue, but Jack knew the place would warm up in time.

“He’ll be here in an hour, give or take a few moments,” Amar suddenly said over her shoulder, loudly like her practiced barks from their busiest hours. “He stands guard overnight. I told ‘im to stop taking such crazy shifts, to try for noon ‘til sundown so he can come and drink with me after my work, but no, new guards only get certain hours…”

She gossiped away about her own life without ever turning her head to face Jack. The traveler stretched out like a yawning cat and enjoyed his first real seat in around a week

of travel. He had no desire to disrespect her or Ed the guard, but he had his own needs to fill at the moment. He thought he could have nodded to acknowledge the intimidating tavern worker, but he doubted she would even notice. He could have lied and said he understood, but he knew she would call him out.

Jack smiled instinctively when Amar broke the silence: “Did he tell you what happened two nights ago?” She paused and began to speed up. “I can’t imagine he would,

Ed’s not a talker, not about hisself. Well, a great beast attacked, bigger than an’thing else the man’s seen in his life. Came from the south, and I’d bet it was the monsters who sicced it on us to get us to agree to that trade deal. I say no go, ‘cause Ed nearly died!”

She furiously wiped at the tankard despite a glance revealing that the silver was spotless and charming.

Jack became curious and decided to interrupt her rant. “Ah, what did the beast look like?”

“That’s the worst of it!” She stood up and shouted, causing her chair to fall before she caught one of the back supports with expert reflexes. “The beast was a monster, through and through.” Amar righted the chair and set down the tankard with amazing care and started to gesture shapes and sizes. “It had two heads and tails! One was a feral wolf, the other a fat snake or scaly crawler. They were both the same size, and how Ed tells it, the thing was fast as a huntin’ dog.” She stopped flailing her hands about and panted alone in the empty beerhouse.

Suddenly, a sound of careful creaking and a loud chime dragged their heads towards the door. A man’s voice rang out just as soon as they were watching for who was

about to walk in. “The thing was fast, and strong, but its teeth and claws were rough and broken. Not in good shape, mangy as hell,” Ed said as he revealed himself past the door.

Amar froze and Jack’s eyes widened in surprise, though he made no move to stand up. Ed the guard was wearing nothing on his head and he had arrived far earlier than his shaky promise implied. Golden hair shaved short in the style of mercenary fools and good monks covered his head like a net over a too-big fish.

Amar ran over and embraced him warmly. She ran her hands along his back, catching her fingers on the catches in his second skin of scarred leather armor. The two were the same height, so Jack thought the hug united them better than any other gesture could have. Now that they were reunited, the outsider noticed that both of their eyes were dark-bagged and bloodshot. They were not sleeping well, and how their pupils sunk like snagged fishing boats made Jack certain that those lines were not exhaustion from pleasure. Ed’s night shift explained one pair but hardly the other.

“Hey, Amar,” the beaten-up guard said weakly, “I survived another night.” He gave a shining smile that told Jack there was real concern shared quietly between the two of them like a torch too close to burning out, passed between the weary and about to collapse. They shared their intimate space and Jack knew his place, so he turned away, face flushed and abstractly jealous.

When the traveler turned back, Amar addressed him kinder than before: “Now that you know what this man has been through, you’d know to be safer on your travels.

Even Entown ain’t safe no more, unless you live by the dock.” She spat out the last word without ruining the clean floor of the tavern. She reminded Jack of the joking workers he

watched on the road over, though she had an air about her of size far more than her average height.

“It’s nothing like that,” Ed interjected. “It was a one-time event. No-thing to worry about. You never see mangy dog’n’drake creatures twice in your life, the tales never tell like that.” He was talking fast, maybe a habit from soothing his too-agitated other half. Her speed and his ease melted finely over the small trials of their love.

Amar gripped Ed’s upper arm tightly. “One-time? Sure, you haven’t been beat up by damned beasts two nights in a row, but how about the accident at the shipyard? The strike ‘a lightnin’ from the heavens?” She fumed at her lover with arguments he had surely heard before.

Ed looked away before grabbing her hand and wrenching her from off of his armor. He clasped her hand in his and squeezed tightly. “Yeah, but I’m alive, Amar. We can talk about this later. Let’s get my friend some food before we head into town.”

The trio broke bread and Jack offered to pay many times, but the couple were emboldened by the grime that had accumulated on the traveler’s clothes and refused all payment. For a man guarding against the threat of vicious beasts straight from the worst kinds of folktales, Ed was boisterous but kind in the presence of his wife. She was the one who told the boasts and the braggart’s legends, but the sentry was quick to rebut with jokes and jabs at her flimsy lies meant to make the man appear better than he was. As the men said their goodbyes and Ed rubbed his eyes, a farmer Jack had seen before stormed into the tavern, which jingled the chime violently. The barrel-shaped man ran straight to

Ed. His head was down and he was breathing heavily from exhaustion.

“It’s Dola. He’s been attacked!” Before the farmer could finish, Ed sighed.

- - -

As the group ran back down the path Jack had stumbled upon a mere hour ago, the outsider noticed that Amar was giving her husband meaningful looks as if to pry the skin off of his face and truly reach his mind with whatever she was thinking. Instead of giving those words form, she asked a different question.

“Why were you early, anyway?” Her voice was shaking slightly from the effort of walking fast. Her wardrobe was well-suited to the movement, much better than the dresses Jack expected from a barmaid’s uniform, but she was not exactly fit for the effort.

The traveler’s body had just begun to relax, so he was also not faring well, but Ed was consistent like a cat taking the decisive strike against an intruder.

He replied between breaths: “Dola said I could go early. He does nice things sometimes when people aren’t around.” He could not look his wife in the face, though her eyes were big and inviting, like brown mounds of dirt where a child stores his treasures.

“Ed, we ought to move. Get a job on one ‘a those boats and we’ll be set. Anything but this violent place.” Amar’s smoky voice wavered and thinned as she continued down the familiar path.

“The Witch’s Hut is just a name, and my luck is just a rumor… heh. Even the rumors make me seem unlucky, huh?” Ed rubbed his golden hair down over his forehead and stopped his rhythmical breathing to sigh. Jack pictured him as a great army general who proudly led his squad into an ambush. The crisis could not be his fault, no. The

information was wrong, the superiors were stubborn, and the enemies were too clever, so those under him loved him all the same. At least, that is the way that Amar was looking at him: like a soldier with such dedication in her heart that she would carry his standard through victory or death.

“Jack, I’m a dangerous man to be around,” Ed explained. “Stick around me long enough and your hay will burn on a hot summer day, the boat you threw money at like a bet on your favorite hound would fall over into that big river, and witches will curse your firstborn even if you ain’t married or interested in havin’ kids. You see what I’m gettin’ at?” He smiled at the wanderer with a pale eye with a green ring that morphed into dead- leaf brown. Ed was truly a hero who nobody could remember.

“I am a bit,” Jack spoke between panting breaths, “overwhelmed now. You said,” pause, breath, “a beast attacked you? One?” The doubly-exhausted traveler looked over at Ed, though the guard laughed at his wimpy stride. Jack knew his body was made for the slow and steady pace of a trot, and while he hoped that no canter could conquer him, the sprint from the Hut to the gate took years off of his life. The wanderer only prayed that they were not important ones.

“Sure,” Ed said with a nod. “One witchy creature from the forest in the south.

You came over that way, or from the west, right? Didya see anything like it?” He was asking with no urgency, as if Jack saw a colorful bird on his leisurely walk over to

Entown. Finally, the wood tips of stakes poked out into the sun in front of them. They were almost at Dola’s post.

Jack asked a question knowing their destination was in sight: “Are you sure there was only one beast?” The traveler slowed down considerably, though a slumped-over figure came into view. Ed’s eyes shot open and he sprinted to the elderly guard, leaving the others behind.

Dola was bloody but all anyone wanted from him was for him to stay awake and describe the enemy so sweet justice could be enacted. The incident was still new: nobody had gotten close enough to the man to tend to his wounds until Ed arrived. Jack noticed a shift in the man’s demeanor. He had lost the visage of a kind village man and assumed a powerful stance as a stoic Guard who pushed past the ring of four concerned onlookers to speak softly to the man.

There could be no quiet that morning. All softness, all ease had faded from the man with thin blood that dripped down his arms and onto the ground, still cold from the dark night. “Wizaaard,” the echo of Dola’s voice sounded, and the circle began to back away slowly. “Wizaaaaard,” the sound gained momentum and Jack leaned over to see

Dola shaking on his knees. His voice was hoarse like he had skipped the throes of death to become a living banshee. “A WIZARD,” he shot up and shouted, making everyone jump, “has ruined the peace of the forest. THIS WIZARD needs to be put down.”

The old sentry fell down on his hands and knees and coughed with his throat, making a wet and uncomfortable sound that made a few farm children turn back and walk away, as if their chores were more appealing than the madman who shouted at ghosts.

Ed rubbed the man’s back and crouched down to speak to him again. “Dola, please don’t— Don’t use that word. But I know, I’ll do something about that, Amar and

I—” He was cut off when Dola raised his hand limply. The wrinkly appendage fell just as soon as Ed shut up.

Dola spoke in his skeleton rumble: “Go fetch the guard. The real guard. The Cap at the river. Tell them the sou’western gate’s been attacked, the one they laugh about,” a few rusty coughs stopped him. A woman stepped forward to offer water, which he guzzled with animalistic excitement. “Tell him Old Dola has almost been killed in a vicious attack by WIZARDS. No less, boy. Tae it down if you need to, it’s only my arms that ‘ave been wounded.” Dola’s voice became mumbling sleeptalk then, and if there was any meaning to the words, only Edson knew them. Amar broke through the crowd and whispered gruffly in her husband’s ear. The quiet was out of respect to the injured guard, but Jack could hear ‘inn’ and ‘infirmary,’ which was where they carried Dola to after his bleeding was stopped.

Ed was still assuming the posture and power of a guard, so he had his eyebrows set low and his hair back so his eye could watch over everyone. His white bandages stood out all the more against the red valleys that ran through Dola’s armor and onto his forearms. Ed’s hair shone white with the sun’s stare and he turned towards Jack with military precision. “I’m sorry, Jack,” he said with a stone smile. “It seems disaster strikes me and mine far too often. Forgive Dola, he’s not—”

“Do not apologize,” Jack interrupted. “I want to help you now. I’m involved, after all.” The outsider crossed his arms, ready to argue against any possible objections.

Some green kindness returned to Ed’s eyes as he winked and replied. “You remembered, huh?” Jack looked between the guard and his wife with hope that Ed was

not deluding him. “I left my post ‘cause Dola said it was alright on a day this early and this dull. Don’t blame yourself, traveler. I think of asking the old man to let me go touch noses with Amar every day. I just actually did it this time. No more, no less, you hear?”

The guard bowed his head to Jack like a servant submitting.

The traveler shook his own in response. “I like your honesty, but I still want to help.”

“And I’ll accept all I can get,” Ed said with his hands raised in surrender. “I’m terrified of those beasts if they really took those chunks outta Dola the Guard. Man’s a legend, he’s too old to mess up that bad.” The rookie guard looked down and shaded his eyes with his hands that were getting rougher with each day of hard work.

As Jack watched him closely, he saw pain finally break through the jester’s mask that Ed kept on every day. The guard grimaced and his eyes welled up. He stuttered for a moment when he went to speak again. “W-we have to go into town and tell them what the old man said. Maybe without that, uh, word.” He brought his head back up to match

Jack’s eyes and his gold hair caught the sun and blinded them.

“Let me walk with you, Ed,” Jack said warmly and placed his hand on Ed’s shoulder. The guard was shaking softly in his flimsy guard’s gear, a weak hand-me-down that could never protect the man’s heart from all that had happened.

“Of course,” Ed said while looking right at the traveler. “That’s why I said we and not I. I’ll continue my tour, ruined as it is, and maybe you’ll end up liking this town despite the monster attacks.” His twisted, pointed smile mocked the foolishness of inviting a stranger to fight an invader. The three started walking for the third time down

the path. Jack thought the cobblestones were more beautiful than before, now that he had seen blood spilled on them.

Ed was taking cautious and slow steps, though he was a tall and slender man, the type often inconsiderate of where his steps landed and who he outpaced. His light armor kept Jack from seeing if he was still shaking or not. The guard was like a squirrel too scared to leave whatever hollow he had inhabited after he noticed a wolf run by. He was shaken by the pain and failure of a good man he knew. Jack grew up amongst farmers and tradesmen, and he had never seen mortal injuries like lost limbs or deep cuts that bleed like rivers. However, he understood what even small cuts in very wrong places could do to someone’s career. One tear, rip, or jab in a perfect spot could disassemble one’s life like a puppet’s joint. Dola was not killed, nor was he broken. But just one brush with death could ruin a man forever.

Ed raised his voice suddenly. “D’you want to know the truth about that word?”

His eyes were downcast and his arms hung limp at his sides. Jack asked which word, and the guard only shrugged and kept walking slowly. “You’re a traveler, right? Then I’m sure you’ve heard every word that people use: witch, magic-user, mage, acolyte… Even that one that Dola said.” Jack nodded and stepped closer to the golden guard, hoping to cheer him up by showing interest.

Ed continued. “I’m not too old, but my parents knew the man who started it all.

Y’see, what we call monsters have lived here forever. They’re just as old as us, just as caring, just as full of wanting to live. Really live, you know. Not just walk, but run, and love.” He stopped walking for a moment and looked at Jack earnestly. “Anyway, the

monsters used to live with us, but a few wars later and they just couldn’t anymore. They were chased out of cities and houses and even little comfy holes that we’d probably call torture. It’s sad, but some were killed, some even worse- made examples of to feed the fire, to stoke fear like bellows at a forge.”

The guard drew closer to Jack and spoke more quietly. “But there were a few safe havens for men, women, and otherwise who wanted to live a little louder than your average cave troll. Entown was one, and some say we had sixty witches for a time. They look like any other. No ears, tail, their height’s the same, their hair looks just as pretty.

Sure, they can start torches with just their hands and send messages in a moment from a town over, but the raiders and killers, the ruthless idiots who hunted monsters stopped caring about Entown because we had the dangerous monsters who looked just like us.

Not the big, muscled beasts who could smash buildings, but the bookish, silly people who only failed because they were so dang curious.

“So one man,” Ed took a large breath and began to speak with passion, “a mage a damn sight better than any other in the town, in the world if the tales are true, says he’s gonna make everything right. He’s gonna make it so his mom, his dad, his lover and his brothers could live really free. He wanted to stop the caves, the secrecy, the messages carved in bark that could warn of danger or sympathy, and the blood. It’s all the same color, he said. All red, all hot and full of energy. So he looked deeper than anyone ever had before into magic and power, and some say he ripped apart the air itself, right in the middle of Entown. But the problem?” Jack stared blankly, enraptured.

“He failed. He did nothing but make a great catastrophe appear, and even if it was beautiful— my nanna says she loved it— in the history, he failed. In all the tales, he was just an explosive fool.”

Jack took a moment to understand what he had just heard. He excused the initial excitement at getting a new account of the famous tale and realized that he then understood for the first time how such a man could fall so low and ruin an entire race’s reputation. He decided to raise his voice and join the act of storytelling: “So the word was tainted because of him.” The sentence was a false question that toyed with the idea, as the traveler was uncertain if he had the right to continue the plot.

“Yeah, Jack,” Ed said excitedly, his head bobbing and hands moving while the two walked briskly down the path. They had passed the Witch’s Hut a few minutes earlier. “One man killed a word for everybody, and killed the friendship Entown had with magic-users. But he wasn’t evil.” The guard rubbed his nose with his hand. “He was good. He was right.” Finally, he nodded with conviction, like a child talking about the strength of his father.

Jack and Ed shared a silence like all good listeners do, the men and women who sit by fires and wait for those words to smoothly grace their ears and leave them dreaming at night of the good things, the stories they heard and how they could have done better.

“It’s a good story, Ed. One of the best,” the outsider said.

“What do you know?” Ed said, and Jack was taken aback, forced to stop and look at the blond man walking along a stone path that was growing wider. “About those foul beasts, I mean. You said something before, stressed the only one part of it.”

Jack sighed with relief and kept on walking. “I am no mage, but I have spent enough time around one-night fires and drank with merchants longer than most, so I have heard enough about any kind of monster you could make up, even the fake ones. I have two stories for each. Dragons, toads, brownies, skinwearers, even the yuki-onna. I was scared of many of them as a lad and I would never forget those words as I will not forget the witch you just told me about. Your beast is a chimera, I reckon, and they’re always the same, they say. Always the same.” Jack boasted and went on about the monsters he knew stories of, and they were no lies, but he was stalling. Enough stories stacked on a shelf will knock others off, squeeze them tight so no others can be retrieved. Even a master bookkeeper would have abandoned the traveler then and there, maybe burned his mind down like a forbidden library.

The traveler switched to a different strategy. “Sorry to draw the memory out, but what was the chimera you fought like?” Jack spoke calmly and gestured his hands slowly through the cold wind so that Ed’s attention was solely on him and not the shopkeepers and dock workers he called and waved to.

“Don’t be sorry, Jack,” Ed turned to him and said, “I’d rather forget Dola’s wounds than that beast. The thing jumped me and scratched my eye and shoulder good.

Not ruined, no sir, but enough to sting and burn like bad water. The thing was vicious, fast as a huntin’ dog. Think of a hound, then split its head in two down the front. The

right was a wolf or a mangy mutt, left was a slithery thing. Lizard or the like, not a wyrm.

Thing bounded away after Dola whopped it with his spear, but it jumped on me good.”

Ed was looking away so Jack could only see his covered eye. The guard absent-mindedly slipped his fingers under the covering as if he itched to rip the bandages off with claws of his own.

“There was one? And it jumped on you, scratched you, then ran away when it was hit?” Jack spoke clearly. He hoped to avoid the catastrophic miscommunication he had inadvertently caused in the Ofa forest clearing.

“Yea, that was all. Seemed funny but the blood kept me from laughin’. Got me a few pity drinks at the Hut but that doesn’t make up for the mocking when I bump into tables,” Ed said with a lonesome chuckle.

“Ran away with its tails between its legs,” Jack remarked. “Whimpering a bit?”

The guard nodded. “Okay, I have an idea about these chimeras.”

Ed’s green eye grew wide. “Chimeras? More than one!?” He nearly shouted in the middle of the road. The guard could not believe Jack. There was no doubt in his mind that the chimera that attacked Dola was the same one that jumped on him.

Jack rubbed his chin thoughtfully and spoke carefully. “I remembered what I heard about chimeras. They are fake beasts, made and owned by men, much like a hunting hound.”

Ed’s mouth fell wide open. “So?” He said, incredulous, slow, and upset. His face was growing redder and Jack knew that he would no longer tolerate japes or tricks. Jack thought that the guard was used to making jokes about everything, but his words were

never cruel. Ed’s sarcasm brought the subject to light and made the fear inflated and bearable. In bringing the horror to light, friends could link arms and laugh at themselves and the disgust like a cat turned lame by a barrel of water.

“Sorry, Ed,” Jack began, “please listen, I think this will help you. Men make chimeras, and usually, they make them for a reason. Remember what you were saying?

Monsters want to live, live loud, even if they are hated. Even if everything tells them they are wrong.” Jack spoke quickly and loudly and found that he was amidst a far greater and busier crowd than he had seen in months. Ed’s face had hardened into a powerful grimace and Jack recognized him as Edson the Guard. He was no longer the man in the Witch’s

Hut, and Jack thanked the gods that Ed’s business required reason over emotion. If the blond rascal had been a lumberjack, the traveler’s head might have been split in two.

“So, you think that… that thing has an owner, and that it’s just as alive as the rest of us?” Ed had his palms out and open to the blue high-sun sky as if to ask why. Jack recalled his questions from before: why does everything have to be alive? Why do we have to hurt what we cannot see?

“Wolves and mangy dogs do not let up after one whack to the flank,” Jack explained calmly. “They bite, tear, and latch harder. I do not know what Dola did to the second one, but I guarantee you: it was a different chimera, and those chimeras are most likely pets of someone in the forest they came from. Be it a witch or a fool, I can’t say.

But they are not waging war, and hunting will not solve this problem. Ed, I’m sorry. Not for the chimeras or the injuries, but for this: I can’t let you listen to Dola’s command.”

Jack stopped and placed his hand on Ed’s shoulder again, choosing the pad without the deep gash.

“Why not?” Ed said, playing into Jack’s hands.

“If we use that word and rouse the guards, at least one poor forest-dweller will be killed in the name of justice, and Entown will never accept anything called a monster into their walls ever again.”

The guard stopped completely in his tracks. He fumbled over the words, making strange faces and raising his eyebrows in thoughts as he tried to work out a solution or a middle ground between disobedience and vigilante justice. He spoke after a moment, but only said “I think,” without any other thought. He took his time tasting each sound, as if the chimeras’ assault had twisted his head and left him charmed.

“…you’re right, Jack,” he admitted at a complete standstill in the middle of a busy road. Jack noticed that scents were carrying over from the river: he noticed fish and booze, though the beer smell may have been men going to work with hangovers so nasty they hung on their breath like rot. “I won’t use that word with the Captain. He’s not a man of the ‘Town anyway, he wouldn’t get it. Not like Dola and I do.” Like a heavy clock or the sail of a ship on a slow-winds day, Ed swung his head back and forth with quiet denial. Jack mumbled apologies a few times, and though the words were feather- light they held necessity.

A tall, dour man in black leather armor led a gray horse towards the men and held them in his cherry-pit stare. His mood only improved by half when he recognized Ed and guided the two off of the road with his severe gaze. Jack watched carefully as the

horseman eyed him with a catlike glare, his keen predator’s sight set on the most suspicious nothing. The traveler knew he was an oddity below reproach, but Ed’s quiet pace at his side comforted him. Jack remembered the power of good companionship, and how much stronger he could be in the face of confusion and fear.

The familiarity with which the two addressed each other informed Jack that his words and actions had no sway here. After a few slow carriages pulled by dappled horses with big eyes stopped to stare even more curiously at the men and their grim escort, they were off the road and safely out of the way. Jack watched the residents of Entown and thought that the merchants and townsfolk looked helpless in their cloth tunics, and that the hardy dockworkers looked like giant toddlers without any shirts at all. He felt a strange sense of superiority, as if he were on a podium, a great man advanced above the many for his mission. For once, he had to be within a town’s walls, he was no longer quite an outsider but a messenger with intent and purpose.

While the dark horseman spoke to Ed, Jack observed the town square they had come to. He saw a white marble statue of a youthful man that stretched far above his head. The traveler inspected the podium, but the name was stripped forever from history as if they liked his pretty face but not the record of his life. There were red brick buildings, some speckled with the spray and shimmer of the river. Some were far enough away that the men loading, unloading, and inspecting wagons full of sacks, metal bars, and knights’ tools could still crack jokes about their wives’ and husbands’ fish dinner last night.

The most heartbreaking sight to Jack was the wooden signs above buildings that bore the sigils of beds and drink: true inns with the feather-down temptations Jack craved, and beer so fine that each tankard would have drained his coin purse faster than he could get the golden stuff down.

If the traveler had looked closely at the plan of the town, or stopped dreaming about drowning his loneliness in drink long enough to look behind the back of his perfect inns and taverns, he would have found parts missing. There were holes and cracks in the road that shone with blue light when clouds passed over them, and even further still into the town’s depths would reveal a fissure blocked off by sturdy iron gates. Despite the warnings, every evening children and lovers would gather there and watch the old magical flames as they burned after decades of their birth.

Jack recalled that the flaws in the road showed clearer in the beaten, half-baked road of the southwest. The Witch’s Hut was built along a rough line of unrefined cobbles reserved for the farms and workers who were not of the elite at the dock. Like the cruel irony of a trip into false paradise, the town glowed, sparkled, and shone only after one passed the Hut. The tour Jack had taken down that road did not trace an obvious route from dirt to gold. They still had a road, which marked Ed and Amar’s space as pure copper or iron still outclassed by the fine silver of the dock.

The horseman with silver hair and dark eyes glared at Edson as he desperately explained what happened to Dola like a child who had broken the favorite mug of his stern father. The injured guard’s name was thrown into the air so many times that the word meant nothing to Jack anymore. He began to wander and withdraw into his mind as

boredom took him. He thought of the sound that the name Dola made, and how the two syllables could fit into poetry. If he had his books from his hometown to reference, he would have found dolor, dulcet, and doldrum, all said in reference to Dola. The name was ancient, older than the traveler and the guard whom he met. Dola may have had a history before the children’s rhyme, but enough time had passed that this was all that remained:

Dola dola what’s your name?

Dola dola hide your shame.

Dola dola, night is near.

Dola dola face your fear!

Those may have been the words, or they could have been a broken memory of the odd pages recalled from a book. Either way, to Jack, Dola became a fluttering echo of chatter in the air like a monk’s chant of nonsense sounds. He knew the man was alive, panting and injured in a forgotten inn, while the rich made money on the docks. But Jack thought the second life of Dola, in the throat and a mind of a guard who joked rather than admit that he was being exploited, was even more beautiful.

“So, this monster—” the horseman stopped to correct himself in a strict baritone.

“The beast attacked Dola enough to make him lame, then ran away? No kill, no bites?”

Ed nodded fiercely and spoke the name of the inn where the old spear-toting man could be found. The guard captain continued: “This so-called chimera is a damn sight nicer than my own hounds. Have you a good description? Are there any guards off-duty and sane right now?” Ed took the questions bombarded on him like loosed arrows on the battlefield in stride, in that he began to shrug and mumble defenses of himself. The grim

captain pinched the thin bridge of his nose and dismounted his horse with a stomp. He sighed then issued a severe order to the blond man: “Take some arms and whomever you want into the forest, we have jurisdiction anyway. I’ll speak with the officers about a warning. You’ll get nothing at the least and a search at the most. But in that case, know that you will be the scout.” He leaned and bent his knees to stare directly into Ed’s face.

“If it’s a skeevy witch hiding in those trees like a sick dog, don’t you hesitate in taking them down. And do not dare to think you can bring Amar along. You hear me, rookie?”

The captain pointed in Ed’s face before he led his horse through the street, parting the flow roughly with a fine-gloved hand.

Ed’s calm eyes were spoiled with the shade of worry as Jack and him shared a steely look. The guard ran his soft hands through his golden hair, cleared his throat with a few coughs, and spoke: “Do you need armed? We’re going alone.” He turned around to lead Jack towards the guardhouse and armory. He kept his arms at his side like a soldier who had been chastised for speaking out of order. “Would you believe me if I said this is how it’s always been?” Ed’s voice was still quiet, for his smile and cheer had been lost over the past few hours.

“Would you be offended if I did?” Jack retorted in an attempt to get some laughter out of the guard. Ed looked up at the outsider and rolled his eye so the green and brown made hills just like the plains right outside his home. Jack thought that staring outside the gates of Entown every night and daybreak made his eyes mirrors of natural beauty.

“As a man, I feel like I can’t ask you this,” Ed said after a heavy pause. “But as the newest and saddest guard at the southwest end of Entown… I want your opinion on this whole thing.” Ed turned toward Jack with his gaze lowered as they crossed dark and dry alleyways on a strange shortcut through the quiet part of the city. Narrow and new homes lined every street, though there were no people about except some young folk in pairs.

Jack began: “Well, chimeras are—“ but Ed cut him off with a hand like a blade.

“Your opinion as a person. Not a walking bestiary, for god’s sake, Jack.” His light eyebrow was knitted and tight, and careworn wrinkles made his face appear hardy and old. “Don’t be the loremaster or the librarian right now. Be a barkeep who wants to stop a fight. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who’s gonna get their face smashed in unless you intervene? Don’t overthink.” He stopped and squared his shoulders at Jack as if he wanted to challenge the traveler to a fistfight.

Jack was consumed by indecision, and he understood that the guard wanted him to answer immediately, so he did. “There’s probably a witch out there in the woods and I would like to protect them,” he blurted out. “The captain is untrustworthy but I’m not sure you would listen to me over him, because I’m an outsider.”

Ed sighed with relief. “That’s why we’re going alone,” he replied. The blond guard scratched beneath his bandage and loosened up his stance. “You know, you’re smart, Jack, but not clever. No harm meant.” He scratched his back and started to place his hand on Jack’s shoulder, but he stopped himself and whispered like he was weaving a web of bronze to pull the traveler in to listen to his tale. “I’ve got witch blood in me,

Jack. I want to save that girl out there way more than you could ever know. If I went rogue I might be dead in a week, but Dola, bless the man, gave me a better excuse to go down there.” Ed smiled broadly and Jack was happy to find that he still could.

“I’m now glad that I ignored the rumors and listened to my heart.,” Jack admitted.

He felt relieved as he realized the stress from the busy road and the intimidating captain was seizing his mind and tensing his body. Jack could regard Ed, the injured rookie, as a comrade, a fellow whom he could depend on. The guard was kind to humans and monsters alike, and Jack would have bet that Amar would be the same.

“May I ask, Ed, the general Entown opinion on witches?” Jack spoke with care despite their newfound friendship. Edson was habitually rubbing his golden head as if his scalp still itched from wearing a helmet for hours.

“Well, I don’t know what they would do to her if they captured her,” Ed said, and

Jack grimaced. He suddenly hoped that the heavy shade of the buildings around him would keep his sympathy secret. The guard punched Jack’s arm right below his shoulder and spoke defensively: “Hey, they’re not murderers! I’m a guard too, you know!” Ed had a severe tone of voice, but after he watched Jack’s frown develop into shame and fear, he laughed at his companion and clapped him on the back.

“No, Jack, I know your worry. The men at the dock are mean and harsh. If they see a threat to their families, they try to take it down. A lot of them are in from Ferva, and if you know a thing about that place… they’re a buncha revenge-addicted monster- slayers, that’s for sure.” He said ‘slayer’ with a particular venom: a wet, angry red strain that spread to all of the words around them in a condescending yell. “Maybe if they got

their hands on that witch, they’d be trouble. But the captain’s in from the Burg and he knows Amar. I swear he’s a good guy, he got me this job. He just doesn’t want me to cause trouble so soon after joinin’. As long as no one from around the docks knows about this, we’re fine, you understand?” He said and watched as Jack nodded.

“It’s odd that you’re staying at the Witch’s Hut,” Jack said pointedly.

Ed smiled. “The ol’ shack was my great-gran’s. Her son sold it, thought the name was bad news what with the incident, but the new owners didn’t care. Though it was good for business.” He found a dusty barrel in the alley they were walking through and sat down. He held himself above the wood with both hands. Jack thought for a moment that Ed had a boyish charm to him, like a noble’s son who was not broken in yet by tutors. That showed in his one bright eye while the brown caught the glare of the sun embalmed in midday blue. Jack blushed for a moment as the guard’s eye bloomed in luxurious green.

The traveler recovered and followed-up his question: “Well, was it bad for business? How is it doing now?” Jack leaned against a brick wall and felt the warmth from long-gone morning rays. He would have preferred two drinks at a bar, no longer out of exhaustion or sadness, but more to fit the mood of their conversation. He had found a drinking buddy relationship with a sore lack of drinks.

Ed barked a laugh and answered Jack’s question. “The place did poorly enough that Amar’s papa bought it one night a few years ago, dead drunk. He ended up bringing his whole family there.” The description of Amar’s father brought back nostalgic memories to Jack. Edson continued: “Naw, it’s doing fine. Amar doesn’t own it but she

works there a lot so everyone gets mixed up and says she does. She’s on the track to own it, for sure.” The two shared a smile.

After the sweetness faded, Jack remembered that they could not stay. “Let us go help out someone who needs it,” he asserted. They nodded and walked away from the alley, abandoning the ease and brotherhood of a fine conversation for a clearer motive.

Jack knowingly surrendered time that could have been spent on his journey to chase the mirror of the noonday sun, the core of his ideals and perhaps the path to satisfaction.

- - -

Jack ignored the sharp sword smacking against his back as he ran alongside Ed down through familiar grays, reds, and the awkward faces of idle men and women. There was a pervasive and totally wrong assumption that they were going to avenge Dola, as if they had joined the desire of the town to punish the heinous monsters in a mission of vengeance. Some even cheered Ed on, recognizing him through the cover of his hood.

The two men shared no words, as there was only one road ahead of them.

Jack and Ed paused to rest when they reached the pathetic post that Ed guarded.

The traveler asked his companion if he knew the forest and he shook his head no. The makeshift soldiers stood together for a moment and walked beyond the line of sharpened twigs before they charged into the dark forest. The trees were nothing like the ones tended to by fairies. In fact, this wood was more what Jack expected from fairy- enchanted woods. The canopy was dense and layered so low that the traveler smacked his head on leaves and branches, and the roots were so gnarled that both men tripped and jangled their swords in their scabbards more than one, two, or ten times. The sun was

uninvited completely, though fortunately for them, leaves do not have the authority to block out that lighted king. Jack did not like his chances at finding himself drunk in a tavern before sundown, but the chimera attacks made him think that perhaps the witch was living closer than they thought.

The gloom gathered heavy over Jack and Ed like globs of butter. The only sounds were the pumping of their hearts and the brushing sounds from their stony feet as they trudged through the dark forest. The two gazed at each tree as if the shade between would reveal the mastermind in shadow-weaved robes, and Jack thought up a fantasy of knights meant to save the poor damsel held captive by the heinous chimeras. They kept their heads low and craned their necks like birds, so they looked nearly feral in the dark intrigue of the forest. Any disturbance in the dead leaves on the ground drew their attention, from an errant rabbit that had dragged a fluffy tail, or the hoofprints of a great stag who stopped at trees to scrape and scratch. Those animal signs were too normal to indicate meddlesome witches, at least to Jack, who had some knowledge of tracking from his journeys abroad.

Edson searched for person-prints as well. He had no luck on that front, but the two were too blinded by the thought of justice and safety of their loved ones to consider that they may never find any. Had Jack recalled the monks and writers he had met in his early years, he may have remembered that many hermits are cozy cats in holes who hate being found and expressly despise being ripped out. Instead of stopping to consider the facts, Jack and Ed acted on instinct as they shuffled through dark, rotting leaves and sad bloomless trees with damp filling their noses. A midnight shape raced past their vision,

rushing in and out of the small spouts of sun fast enough that they could not make out any feature.

Neither man moved, but Ed spoke in a low, excited voice like a hunter calling to his hound. “Didya see that?” Jack replied yea so the two only watched and turned their heads slowly. The silence was absolute, like the opposite of a musical performance, an orchestra where nobody would dare make a sound. Without any animal noises, not even crickets and toads, the forest made an endless colosseum for themselves. The men were stuck in the horrid middle of the shade, though the light threatened to break through slowly.

“I think I saw where it went. Follow me,” Ed whispered before he took careful steps with his booted feet. Jack could see over him, and he noticed no difference between the direction the guard took and any other. There was no distinction between left and right in that forest. The traveler followed anyway, unaware and confused. They could not be lost because there was nothing to find and no road to follow. The only light besides the shed tears of the sun were the men’s eyes, which were filled with anxiety. They were also tinged with selfless sadness: the fear of being too late.

Crunches, cracks, and the subtle yelps of two men stumbling over roots echoed through the unwelcoming pillars of wood. Jack walked in file behind Ed and still managed to find new ways to crash his body against whatever organic matter crowded every height. When they spoke, they whispered, not for fear of eavesdroppers but out of respect for the quiet veil of the canopy.

Jack spoke into Ed’s back, hoping that they had not lost their target: “When you mentioned the witch, you called them ‘her.’ Any reason for that?” The traveler spoke with the tiptoe care of a parent checking on their sleeping children.

Ed stopped below a patch of light, so his hair shone gold, dim compared to the midday high. He turned and spoke in a lifeless monotone, staring, cyclops that he was, into Jack’s eyes. “Would you believe me if I said the Witch’s Hut attracts witches?”

The men stopped and waited, decided to think instead of progressing further into the woods. Suddenly, both Jack and Edson brought their hands to their mouths to hold back laughs from breaking out of their wind-chapped lips and into the range of echo- ready trees, but the urge was too powerful. Each belly-wrenching laugh brought another attempt to hold in feelings of mirth and absurdity. In the jaws of the forest they were helpless and small, so perhaps those crazed, animalistic roars were a method of coping.

The noise was enough to scare some poor creature out of hiding, so the men noticed another scurrying sound in the distance and stared like deer towards the sound. The laughter died. Jack slowed his heavy breathing before taking in deep, controlled gulps of forest air. The traveler then noticed that the ground reeked of dead things.

“This may not be a good idea, but we should follow it,” Jack said to Ed after they calmed down, all while their eyes remained on the direction of the last sound. The traveler was hesitant to speak, for he remembered that the well-trained guard was unlikely to show his fear. He hardly let emotions ride across his face besides scowls reserved for annoying and unlucky moments which were too often his bedfellows. Ed placed his hand lightly on Jack’s shoulder and looked up at him.

“Don’t worry. I’m just as scared as you are,” he said. Jack was stunned that the guard had read him so well, and replied so dryly. Ed laughed after seeing his face and followed up with an energetic explanation: “I say that to Amar all the time. She gets so worried that she forgets I try to take care of myself, too. Let’s go.” The guard winked at

Jack and led the way into another shaded forest path, this one having less of the ripped- fabric holes that allowed the fading sunlight to creep through. The trunks of all the trees were dark gray hues of iron, slate, and shale, and if touched they revealed the same hard textures of their stone lookalikes. The bark was rougher than the smooth pillars Jack had seen in the past, but the traveler preferred the variety of the ridges and holes; nooks and crannies for animals to scurry into.

The unnatural dusk of that forest was enough to dishearten the two men, and Jack thought that the dark was magical. He thought of murky spells that weaned their way into a man’s soul and confused him forever. Each step they took deeper into the chimera’s home was enough to unnerve a soldier into a coup, even against their favorite general.

The quiet made each step a careful measurement of the quiet, and every failure resulted in crunches and cracks that were enough to shake the foundation of the forest. The blackened branches of each tree were not controlled like arms on humans, but every gust of cold wind filled them with unnatural life. Every fall or cut on an errant branch was revenge against a split log from Jack’s childhood, and on a thwap to his head he repented each sin. The overwhelmed traveler looked to Ed for guidance, and in the light of the man’s open eye Jack knew that he could carry on. They were united in brotherhood against the darkness. Jack reminded himself that the anxiety that consumed both of them

was not from the mysteries of the feral forest, but the more terrifying truth that the guardsmen of Entown could wreak far more havoc than any lone witch, if wrongdoing was found.

A pit formed in Jack’s stomach like a build-up of noxious gases and he halted in place. He managed to tap Ed on the shoulder as he fell to his knees and groaned. The traveler’s hands squirmed around his belly only to find that the sick twist spread to more than any one oozing sac in his body. His instincts screamed out: not to stop, but to run, to sprint away from the terrifying tear in reality, so far beyond anything good or alive. Jack scraped at the dirt and dead leaves with his dirty fingernails as he held back the urge to vomit, but he was crippled and unable to do anything but whine. He raised his head with a great effort and saw Ed doubled over, trying to force out words.

“This is… just like what happened wi’ the chimera that attacked me,” he said, bearing the aches of a wounded warrior. He was still upright, so Jack cursed and knew that the guard was telling the truth. The outsider had no such preparation or resistance.

He was poisoned by an invisible enemy and cursed with a horrible tearing sensation that told him something was deeply wrong.

Then, in his eyesight blurred from the pain, he noticed a dog appear, or a creature in the shape of a dog. The pain magnified and spread to his head, so Jack understood that this was the cause. The chimera had the clouded black marble eyes of a doe, the fat paws of a bear, and the skinny legs of a mangy wolf or lean dog. Each mismatched segment was a shade of brown, but the different hues together and the matted knots in the fur made for a blend reminiscent of excrement and dirt.

The thing stared at the two men with pupils that reflected nothing, and simply stood and watched them try to squirm away. Jack had never wished for the death of himself or another in his life, but the sheer incontinent malice of that trifold abomination and the pressure of his heart pumping made him feel that something had to die. No peace can be had near a creature like that.

A great snap like the crack of a brittle branch in a storm made Jack’s headache throb, and his heart felt lighter in his chest. His eyes stung with pain and he knew he needed to tear his sight away from the chimera, but then, an odd force hit him like a flick against his forehead and the urge to flee disappeared. The panic was gone, leaving a blank and holy relief, but the mistake remained. Sadness pooled in the chimera’s glass eyes that were made for sunlight and grazing, as if they had died with the leaves on the ground. The life the creature led was not a tragedy, but a perfectly frozen longing. Jack noticed that there was a human hand atop the chimera’s head petting the short deer’s hair.

The fingers had no wrinkles: they were not creased by the rough rivers of time. The newcomer’s hand faintly glimmered white as if the skin was pale enough to light up the darkness of the forest. The chimera closed each eye and sat down before munching harmlessly on a bundle of leaves and returning Ed and Jack to a state closer to consciousness. The guard righted himself quickly and then frowned at their visitor.

A tinny voice like a small shepherd’s bell wobbled into the air from where the shaded hand connected to a body: “Here, boy. Don’t leave me like that. Don’t be like the others.”

The traveler and his blond companion gathered their thoughts and straightened out their wrinkled clothes, dusting off the mud and stains that had marred them when they were made mad with fear. They moved as slow as marionettes with rookie performers until a rustling noise made them jump and stare again into the faux night of the trees’ domain. Yellow light then flashed into the partners’ eyes, which revealed the young woman who inhabited the clearing. She was taller than Ed by a hair and cloaked in a long dress. The fabric was dark but stood out against the intensity of the shadow behind her.

There were dark purple buttons inside the midnight cloth, shy stars that lined the front of the dress. Her face was a full moon, her smile a crooked crescent with soft red cheeks.

Her head was round and coated with curly brown hair that ran along her back and shoulders like a cape.

“Are you deliverymen?” Her voice cut through the graveyard quiet of the forest with ease. “No, I doubt it. Let me check.”

She walked forward, and Jack realized that the shining light that emanated from her left hand was not a reflection off her bone-white skin. There was a tangible, blinding light shooting from her knuckles that only grew stronger as she approached the pair. Ed hid his face in his elbow and Jack shaded his eyes with both hands. Both kept a squinting eye on the woman so they were prepared for any strange movements, but Jack was uncertain as to what he could even do against such a person. The woman spoke a word neither could repeat and the light dimmed, revealing a ring with an amber gemstone that held the light. Now that Jack could see without his hands as protectors, he noted the posh

white collar on her dress. She raised her right hand, palm open in mock surrender, and continued to approach us.

She placed her hand on Ed’s left shoulder, the side that bore the thick gash in his shoulder pad and his lame arm. Her fingers tapped along his leather armor like she was playing a children’s game or keeping the tempo of a song. Ed jumped, then froze in place. After a few stanzas of tapping, the woman closed her eyes tightly as if to mirror the terrified guard. Jack caught her whispering something, but he could not make out any clear syllables.

Then, she shivered, released the guard who sighed in relief, and turned to face the traveler. Jack joined the trees in their still meditation, though he kept his eyes wide open.

He thought he needed to keep a close eye on the woman, and remember her face clearly in case that information may help him in the future, and he was also fond of knowing whom his captor was.

Her cheeks were still flush with blood but her purple eyes were hollow and small.

As she walked over to Jack, he noticed that she was spry and energetic, and her grip was powerful. His close observation was worthwhile, as she hesitated before she reached out to touch him. Jack could have said something to comfort the woman, but when he heard the whine of one of the horrible fusions he clamped his eyes shut. The traveler wanted no more of the beasts as long as he lived, even if he had seen life in one’s eyes for a second.

The woman’s tapdancing fingers ran along Jack’s shoulder and back with a strange rush like little jolts of thunder from the night sky. Each fingertip made him jump, and his muscles ached in pulses along with the remaining headache. Cold loneliness

entered the space between his eyes and his eyelids, and he felt a floating sensation, as if he were moving somewhere else. He felt the wind from another direction and the strange feeling of his hands remembering a motion associated with a word, a language he had never heard before suddenly seemed familiar.

Her hand retreated and the connection disappeared, though some of the cold remained as a kiss of frost inside his head. Jack dared to open his eyes and looked into the clearing. The witch was pouting with her arms crossed a few paces away from the traveler. He stopped holding his breath and walked swiftly over to Ed, who was still frozen in an odd stance. Jack shook the guard’s shoulder and whispered his name. Ed came out of his statue-pose and glared like an eager dog at everything around him before he noticed Jack’s warm hand on his shoulder. The two nodded together and returned their attentions to the witch.

She pointed at Ed with her whole arm like an actor in a troupe made of illiterate peasants and spoke in her loud tingling-bell voice. “You have no magic on you. You’re not a deliveryman,” she explained before pointing at Jack and speaking again. “You have some on you. But it’s of the forest.” She stuck her pink tongue out and pointed the childish gesture at the outsider.

Jack cleared his throat and spoke: “Is that bad?”

“No,” the witch replied, “but it looks like trees vomited on you. Nasty.” She mimed gagging before she aimed her purple eyes between the two men and talked much faster than before: “What’re you here for? You’re bothering my pets.”

A bark from behind her reminded Jack and Edson of the chimeras, so they backed away. They shared a helpless look before the traveler put a hand to Ed’s back and pushed him forward a step. He looked back at Jack with raised eyebrows before speaking.

“Hello, we’re, um, here from the village nearby. Your… pets have been attacking and we wanted to see what could be done about that,” he eked out. Jack had wanted to invoke Edson the Guard and guide the witch to nicer conversation, but Ed had summoned the authority of a soiled doormat.

“I want you to understand…” Jack did not hear the end of her sentence, as a wave of nausea passed through his head and flowed down his throat, and he felt for a moment as if he were swallowing down endless bile. The feeling passed almost immediately, but the stream of sick felt strong and lengthy.

The witch’s voice faded back in: “…my pets need the sunshine and grass just as much as you do. They play and fight as every energetic animal companion does.”

To Jack’s disappointment, the forest-dweller was far more verbose than Ed, the man who had been trained specifically in solving disputes. The witch’s hair created a veil around her face and she supported her elbow with the other hand in an elegant pose of confidence. The rowdy ball of tangled brown fur behind her paced around as if the mutt was about to circle and take a nap in the middle of the forest. Jack also wanted to fall asleep and forget about the day he had, but he carried on as the woman’s voice echoed in what was now the evening air.

She placed her hands on her hips and addressed the two more aggressively than before: “So, what are you doing here, falling about the forest? No one bothers me except

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deliverymen because I don’t need assistants or meddlers in my business. Say what you want, and then get right out.” She flipped her hair and let her bright eyes say the rest.

Ed stood up straighter than before and gestured with his hands. “Oh, are you the witch?” He spoke like a child asking about a naughty word without knowing the implications.

Her nostrils flared and she crossed her arms again. “Hmph. I am a witch. Mallea, if you’ve never heard of me,” she answered before turning around with another huff.

“Let’s at least away to my hut, so I can sit and feed my pets while you think of something worthwhile to say.” The men followed without saying a word.

Ed and Jack shared a silent conversation with winks, hand waves, and mouthed words, all culminating in the epiphanies that they did not understand what danger she could pose, and that hurting her was completely out of the question. She was an alchemist hidden away: a powerful witch who spent her leisure time creating mistakes.

The tar-like shadow that blocked the men’s vision and annoyed them to no end was cleared with little effort by Mallea. She touched her enchanted ring and let the comforting light spread like the open arms of a friend after time spent away. The trees were then visible, and the natural traps they formed with each extended root became easy to avoid. Jack realized that the light made the creeping branches no more friendly in shape, and the same was true of the chimeras. The deer-dog beast that had given the pair the greatest scare followed close to the witch’s side. Her dress ran down below her ankles and each step flicked the hem back and forth. Her confident steps betrayed her nature as a

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child of the forest, and Jack recalled the pace of the lady he had met before he arrived in the village of Ofa.

The gloomy witch named Mallea led Jack and Ed to a cabin crafted out of iron- colored wood that matched the same monotonous hue of the rest of the forest. The walls were giant and stretched above the shortest trees’ canopies. The log roof was not the work of a master carpenter, but the tall structure was sturdy enough for a few generations’ use. The wood was likely taken from the very land the house was built on, so the fading sun kissed the men’s faces. Jack watched Ed smile involuntarily before the rookie guard scratched under his bandages and remembered to grimace. Jack did the same without noticing, because the sight of the cabin was his first comfort in hours. That was a home that Jack could imagine himself living in, even if the gloom of the forest would make any trek into or out of the city miserable for the wanderer.

Mallea barked a word at the chimera and the thing’s bear paws stomped around to the back of the cabin. Jack listened for noises and heard barks, mewls, whistles, and a roar that made him freeze. The traveler regarded Ed with a look he hoped the guard would take as concern, but the gesture fell on a blind eye.

Ed’s brown eye was gazing straight up to the roof of the cabin. “I’ve never seen a witch’s hut proper,” he said, red mouth agape at how the slanted roof dared to claim the sky with a slate peak. “It’s like a mountain.”

“Come on,” Mallea grumbled as she climbed two wooden steps to the front door.

The men’s wonder tested her patience.

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The two men rushed to catch up and forgot their manners, crashing through the large door after her. The inside was typical of any log cabin Jack had found himself in.

The monotone gray seeped further into their minds as each floor, wall, and ceiling was the exact same color. The color was not quite as clear as slate, but reminded Jack of a squirrel or a dirty wolf. This first room, a foyer, was small and had no decorations besides one hard wood table. Jack shook as he peered into the door of the main room, as even though he had come to the forest with peace in his heart, he still feared what experiments Mallea would threaten them with. The traveler was alone in this belief, as Ed had forgotten about Dola in favor of communicating with the witch.

Mallea sat on the only chair in the room and crossed her legs before speaking in a quieter voice than before: “What is it you want? I don’t like merchants or soldiers, though travelers make for good company. You’re not magic, and I don’t want you,” she pointed her wide, hollow eyes at Ed, “to say anything about my precious pets.”

Ed offered to open the conversation: “D’you know anything about Entown?”

The guard was upset at the rude front Mallea was putting on, and thought of her like a child using crude methods to get their way. Jack did not see the witch like that. His fear blinded him and drove out any other impression he could have formed. The witch’s pupils were small when she was calm, but the pits inside the violet rings were the void- black of a dried-up well that grew to the size of a dead night sky when she was upset.

Jack looked away and hoped she would not address him.

“No,” she answered Ed, “I know nothing of any hamlet you hail from and I think

I’m safer here, thank you.” She nodded her head as a lady does when finishing a fine

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speech at a dinner party, not that Jack had ever been graced with the gesture outside of troupe plays. Edson looked down and fidgeted with his hands. He rubbed each finger as if gently combing the light hairs that stuck out from them. In any other setting, Jack would have readily believed that the rookie guard was taking care of his unwrinkled hands and bracing them for the destruction promised by his new job. Instead, Ed just seemed nervous and unsure.

“I’m from Entown, and it was my idea to come here. Entown is…” he stopped and fidgeted even more, rubbing one, two, three fingers until he ran out and he had to cycle to the other. He smoothed the pale lines too many times and Mallea grew upset.

Jack kept his eyes on the guard.

He spoke again, down towards the ground. “Entown is my home. It’s the home of a lotta other things, too. I think- I don’t think I can do it justice. I love it, I can’t help it.”

He turned to Jack and pleaded. “Jack, you’re an outsider, can you take over? Paint a better picture of the place I live?”

Jack took a deep breath and slowly turned towards the witch, who was resting her chin on a fist. Her purple eyes were small and her eyelids were draped over them like blinds only letting in the faintest sliver of dusky light.

Finally, Jack spoke in defense of the town: “Entown is a strange town of halves, where men and women who work together live in houses that may be so different as to be gorgeous and rich, like this cabin, or the most simple of wood and hay strapped together by a few ropes. It is built on a river stronger than anyone working and yet they try to build on it and capture its energy.” Ed nodded with approval, secretly itching for more of

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the outsider’s look into his home. Jack felt the guard’s piercing gaze much more than

Mallea’s lazy glance.

Jack continued: “I met Ed and knew he was a good man, but his goodness has nothing to do with the docks. No, the men at the docks are different. They stay there night and day and don’t have to go back to wood and stone hovels by trees that could crush them in a storm. They hardly know of the great history of the town and the only benefit they gain from banning talk of witches is travelers craving weirdness. Yet, back in the town proper, where there are no boats and fewer flagstones, there is a good tavern called the Witch’s Hut and there are good people.”

Ed stood up from the wall with dazzling light shining from his eyes like the witch’s trinket. Mallea was staring at Jack with her eyelids rising like the gesture of a queen finally engaged in her subjects’ story. “Is Entown worth protecting?” Ed asked, childish and proud, like a soldier repeating a singsong pledge of loyalty.

“Yes,” Jack said immediately, “but in two parts. The town has a past and it has a future. The past is in the witches that lived there and left their legacy. The people carry this on, be it in their nightly drink or the secret telling of great stories. The future lies in the docks, where beauty and great artisans live. While the land is far too split to be my wandering soul’s home, I hope someday to drink and feast with the men of the Witch’s

Hut by the beauty and arrogance of the docks of Entown.”

Jack’s speech ended and a smile enveloped Ed’s whole face. He was in a daze of happiness. The traveler noted that Edson allowed praise to consume him, and Jack thanked him in his mind. The guard’s intense reaction made the outsider’s words feel

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necessary and true. The witch’s face had not changed but her eyes were less like a purple- stoned well of darkness and more like a violet in bloom, soft and open to the outside.

“I…” Mallea hung on the sturdy silence and made the men crane their necks in anticipation. “I see. So this Entown is good and growing in ways that can make it better.”

Ed nodded joyfully and the witch put a hand to her chin. “And the place once housed witches… Well, I urge you to hear us out.” She shook with her long brown hair as she stood and steadied herself on the back of the wooden chair.

“Come with me to see my lovely pets,” she spoke as they walked. The men looked at her, their eyes hazy and unsure as if a rope was tied between the two of them dozens of times until they had no choice but to follow the leader. They were compelled to walk. They had to listen. “You see, witches have specialties. Fields of study that we enjoy and that we can do better than anyone else. Mine is, of course, animal husbandry, and easing suffering creatures into better forms. I love them dearly and I want them to be greater, healthier than they already are,” she finished with a low giggle. Mallea led Jack and Ed towards the back of the wood mansion. They passed by tables bearing alchemical beakers, runes on paper, and even terrifying medical implements stained with blood-like rust. Jack felt the magic in his body, mainly in one aching pulse in his head, as if Mallea had restrained a rumbling earthquake inside a glass bottle.

“You can’t tell, but they are happy,” the witch explained. “They are so happy under my care. If men were to intervene, they would torture and destroy them, tear the parts… apart. Understand.” The word was full of incredible force. Jack’s mind grew confused and he felt his mind wandering out of his body. “Understand that they are

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happier in seclusion. That if they could stay here forever, untouched, they would stay in bliss. No complaints. No messes. And I am doing my work, and living comfortably.

Listen to the souls. All good souls, all right in their places. And I put them there.” A harmony of voices accompanied her plea, and Jack raised his hands to his head. Her smile may have been kind, but the pain and frustration he felt at having his mind invaded made him think that Mallea’s lips twisted her soft cheeks like the vicious bend of a bow.

The overlapping sound of her bell tone voice and hundreds of monstrous echoes made Jack cringe as the sensation reminded his body of what had happened before with the lone chimera: the pain, the twisting, the horrible feeling that something had gone wrong in the world that was to be struck down by any righteous hand. But then, something in Jack’s mind twisted in reverse and went back to where the bend began. The pain in his head faded to sweet, quiet rest. The voices rose in unison once more, and in a breath Jack heard their call.

“We are home,” the chorus sang, and Jack felt that there was no lie. If there was sadness in their ranks, the traveler would have heard discord in the melody. Jack recalled bards who plucked untuned strings on their wooden lyres. After enough missed beats, the crowd or other performers would throw him out as a fraud. So, as Jack followed that logic, these souls of the mixed and changed chimeras were like honest monks gathered to praise the prioress who raised them. Jack was audience to a beautiful song of souls, the privilege granted to him by Mallea’s smile. And finally, he understood.

A glance revealed that Edson understood as well. He held his head in his hands but there was no cringing, no grit teeth or retching like the scene in the forest. He rubbed

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his bandage gently and closed his free eye so that he could think and perhaps regret the misjudgment that led to the first pet’s attack.

Like the end of a church bell’s toll, a quiet shimmer that has gone on so long that the brass’ glorious history has been told in that span of time, the voices settled, and everyone returned to their rightful places and minds. A strong wind dared to mash against the walls of the witch’s cabin, and the two men shivered with bitter tastes in their mouths.

Mallea maintained her open-mouthed smile and found a dog-sized door on the wall Jack had not noticed before. The witch wrapped her pale fingers around a rope handle while she undid a simple latch with her other hand. Rat-like scurrying and scratching noises began from behind the hatch, but the men remained surprisingly calm.

Jack watched Ed as he took his ruddy hands away from his face and opened his one eye. The guard took a deep breath in and let the air out up towards his nose, which raised some of his hay-color hair to the ceiling. The witch let the hatch fall open, Ed smiled, and Jack touched his face to find that he was smiling too.

The chimeras waddled in with none of the urgency expected of creatures twisted by violent magic. The soft pads of cat’s paws and webbed reptile feet Jack hardly recognized tapped along the floor and jumped up onto Mallea to get her attention. She giggled and petted them all wherever she could, mainly on their heads of scale, fur, and strange bare skin. Some tumbled and played with each other, claws retracted, and the big ones mixed with mountain lions and bears led housecat-sized fusions to a large, clean water trough where they drank their fill. A door to the men’s left was bolted with an iron lock. The dark wood of the portal was marred by gray-black bruises and delicate, thin

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carvings that could have been decorative or made by eager claws. The lady in purple stepped in bliss over to that door as they watched, the men’s mouths tugging at the corners into unknowing smiles and their eyes wide at whether or not the witch was wrong or right in her judgment. Mallea turned to Ed and closed her eyes, taking on the image of a caretaker maiden raised ignorant in undeserved shadow.

“Boys,” she began, “would you distract them while I grab d-i-n-n-e-r?” Mallea spelled out the word in whisper, as if the hearing would rile her pets up and ruin the fun.

She opened her shining purple eyes and winked at the guard. Jack relaxed his shoulders and looked down at the animals that had gathered by his feet. Ed kneeled and petted a beast that looked like a dog, but with the smooth skin and warty features of a frog.

“I… smell something strange,” the guard remarked. “It’s like…” His nose twitched and he moved his head around the room. The dog-frog that he was patting mimicked the sniffing. “It’s the herbs from my grandma’s remedies. I know the bitterness. She said it was witchleaf for focus and manderroot for stopping headaches.

They’re boiling in a pot, somewhere nearby. They must be.” He continued smelling the air around so that he forgot the animal and stood like a hunter.

Jack smelled nothing but the forest wind coming through the chimera-hatch and many horrible beastly scents. However, warmth spread out through his stomach and he closed his eyes to find and search for a cause. He tried to picture many things, like poison slipped into him between memories, or the warm embrace of an invisible lover, but he found that he could only picture a stone hearth right in front of him. He moved his hand

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forward, as if the vision was reality, and to his surprise, he could feel the heat growing closer and more comfortable.

“There is not a hearth in here,” the traveler said with confusion. “I understand that. I saw the room. But I feel the sweet autumn fire in this room, and I can almost picture a woman’s smile beside it.” The smile belonged to nobody in particular, but Jack imagined his gentle mother, or his sister tending to the fire while their parents were at the market. He had not thought about those ghosts of his past for a long time.

“The herbs won’t go away. I wish I had some now, but the smell helps,” Ed admitted with a dreamy smile. He had returned to patting his new chimera friend. A few others had gathered around his legs in eager anticipation of attention. One had the black head of a small donkey and the fuzzy backside of a rabbit, and a white cat sported the long, rattling tail of a snake with gray diamonds along the scales. Jack crouched down next to the softened guard and brushed a small dog with goat eyes and long, curly brown hair.

Mallea crossed over from the locked door with three great clay bowls balanced on a wooden tray. Ed and Jack only noticed in their trance because the animals all bolted towards her and sat at a corner of the room between the hatch and the door. They had accidentally given the witch the time to fetch food and return before any of them noticed, as if they fit perfectly into her machinations. Jack felt an odd feeling that he was always meant to help her in her routine that day. He shivered as he thought on how she did this, but then remembered that she had been living alone for many, many years, and likely appreciated their help.

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“Thank you, sirs,” Mallea said gently as she curtsied in an elegant and wrong fashion. “If I could give you titles for your aid, I would.” Her lips curled and widened as she assumed the joke landed and the men were to laugh. Instead, Ed and Jack remained silent and she only stood alone and beamed crookedly.

“So, now that you understand,” she continued with a deep and ominous tone,

“what are you truly here for? Threatening me? Taking my land? Announcing that lumberjacks will be here in a dozen days to cut down my trees and slaughter my pets?”

She looked over at the foyer as if she ached to sit and assume the position only a duchess could hold over two men struggling to appease her. Ed stood at attention, rigorous and straight, and faced the witch.

He spoke in the loudest, most clear voice that Jack had heard from any man.

“Witch Mallea, I am a guard from Entown. I’ve come to warn you that the men of

Entown may attempt to shackle you to stop your practice.” His voice was true and guard- like, both informative and careening close to the edge of demands and cruelty.

Jack followed up in his actions but not his tone. “I’m only a wanderer looking for my home, but I know that sometimes one must interfere to learn the true nature of the place.” The traveler bowed to the witch as he watched her dress sway and her piercing purple eyes. Jack only spoke the truth because he did not understand what Mallea had meant to show them through the visions and senses she must have sent both of them. If

Jack had believed in any of the religions carried to Isah from far-off lands, he would have thought the hearth was an image of a god who was telling him to trust Mallea, for he had never told anybody about the comfort old hearths gave him. However, he had no such

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faith, so he doubted his own body. Mallea was no longer anything resembling a threat, but Edson’s easy submission scared his friend, so he remained strong.

“What’s your goal in coming here, traveler?” Mallea asked while narrowing her eyes. “Stories or glory?” The void in her pupils opened up again, causing Jack to shiver while returning her gaze.

“As I said, I am looking for a place to live. A home,” the traveler reiterated. The darkness of her eyes made Jack fear that she did not trust him. He wrapped an arm around his chest as he suddenly turned cold. The witch’s glare made him cover his face with his other hand. “If you’re searching for outside motives, then know that violence between witches and humans are not part of any of my ideals,” Jack mumbled behind his hand- veil.

Mallea shook her head, making her shiny brown hair sway. “Peacemaker, huh?

That’s about what I expected of you: the weakest part of every play. Did you want some advice before you continue down that path?” Jack looked at Ed, then back at Mallea before nodding. “Go to Onmu. Stay for at least one of their shining nights. It might wipe some of those dark wrinkles off of your face.”

The witch paused and looked back at Ed before she gave a wry smile. She asked him a pointed question: “Should I be concerned about the guards of Entown? Will they cut through my pets like a butcher’s knife through bread?” Jack thought her grin was filled with the immense doubt she had for any mere human and their abilities. Ed frowned and scratched his bandage again.

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The guard, completely broken out of his nostalgic reverie, answered in a low voice: “From what your pets did to Dola, I think you have the upper hand. But I want no violence. If anyone else gets hurt, the guards have failed.” He stared down at the wooden floor of the cabin and clenched his fists like a child.

Mallea’s face turned bone-white and she straightened out her back. She was tall and fierce. “You think I want the lives under my protection to taste tainted human flesh and blood?” Her hair bristled and stuck out like a tangle of dark snakes out for a bite.

A crashing sound at the front of the house interrupted them and made the witch turn, haunches raised, to face the door they had come in through. A familiar man with gray hair and a suit of well-polished black leather armor ducked as he walked into the room before us. His presence was immediately felt in the room and Mallea started to back away towards the hatch that kept the chimeras. The guard captain stood tall above everyone else in the room, and he was panting heavily. Ashen strands of hair dripped sweat down his dirty face, trailing blood from stray cuts. Every patch of exposed peach skin was marred somehow by dirt, leaves, or meager cuts, but the armor seemed pristine as a river in a more pleasant forest.

“I hope no more blood will be spilled,” Entown’s guard said with his voice rolling over them all like gravel. “Nobody would benefit from that. Not even you two rebels,” he growled the end of his sentence like an old dog.

Mallea smugly placed a hand on her hip and drawled her answer like a mother inviting her son’s friend to dinner: “And who is this, who invades a good woman’s home?” Strangely, her hair had settled and color had returned to her cheeks, but her eyes

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were void and devoid of the shine she showed with the animals and Edson. The witch scared Jack far more than the guard captain ever could, as a sword was nothing against magic.

The unsmiling guard brushed branches off his breastplate and answered Mallea’s question, eyes narrowed. “I’m in charge of these two fools and a lot more. Let’s just say that I want you safe too, for different reasons.” He spat on the floor and returned his arms to attention in mock composure. Jack noticed that his eyes were twitching. “You can think of it as charity, but I know strategy. You’re high-value. Good to protect,” he commented. Then the captain reached for a sack at his waist and dug his fingers in. He pulled out a small rectangle of wrinkled paper and some herb Jack did not recognize before he rolled the plant matter into the white paper with rapid precision. Then, the ash- haired man retrieved an item Jack did recognize: a witch’s firestart. The magical artifact was grayer than the captain’s hair and smaller than his finger, but the flame that issued was enough for a few drags on the homemade pipe.

Ed straightened out his plain-leather back and saluted the gaunt man. “Uh,

Captain! How did you find this place?” He looked around at the others in the room before asking another question: “Why are you defending her? I’m not complaining!” He was switching between the serious tone of Edson the Guard and the personable, joking manner of Ed the Man too fast for anyone to keep up. The man’s social masks were confused thoroughly.

The captain nodded and spoke: “Edson, did Amar ever tell you how we met? How

I know her family?” Ed shook his head no. His superior sighed and inhaled again on the

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smoking plant-pipe. Mallea and Jack coughed in unison. “Ask her sometime. It’s not important for now. Listen, kid, this witch’s happiness is key to Entown’s peace and income. Tell me yourself, witch. What would happen if we did anything to you? Take one of your precious bear-cats out?”

Mallea pouted powerfully. The fuzzy chimeras were still thankfully occupied, just out of view at the feeding bowls. “Well,” Mallea said before frowning and rubbing her forehead. “Entown would be destroyed.”

Suddenly, all the men saw a vision in their heads of destruction and terror. A crack larger than two boats across sundered Entown along the main road that Jack had walked that morning. In an instant, a fissure could be created that could kill hundreds.

Mallea moved her hands out to push away the thought, and the image disappeared from their minds. She protested immediately. “Not that I would go that far for one or even two of my pets! But it’s just… they would try.” She held the gentle seams of her dress in her fingers and rocked side to side slowly, the spitting image of a maidenly princess if one ignored her eyes.

The captain paid her no mind and glared at Ed as if the point was cleared and sealed firmly in fact. “I wasn’t going to tell you, because you’re a newbie, but since you’ve lived around here all your life, you oughta know,” the captain continued in his mountain rock voice. Ed backed off, cowering, his serious profile gone completely.

Jack, who had no stake in their conflict, was backed into a corner of the cabin, shaking from the vision the witch had given him. As the images ran through his head of chimeras running wild and jumping over the giant crack, the traveler thought of the rough

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cobblestones that could barely withstand twenty farmers and their horses before cracking.

This witch or her friends could take out such a poor place in mere moments. Jack resolved to never live around Entown. He had grown fond of the rookie guard and his golden hair and he wanted to speak to the void-eyed hermit about her prediction of his journey. However, there was no allure to the riverside city anymore.

Jack had heard of Entown as a fine market town with lively people and a rich history, but he never could have predicted that myth remained, hanging over the town like a giant precipice about to fall down on everything. Jack had no way to predict whether witches would ever be accepted into the town again, and he wanted nothing to do with the crisis that would inevitably occur if they were. His pounding headache informed him that he wanted nothing to do with witches for as long as he lived, unless their specialty was curing maladies or giving pleasant dreams.

As Jack’s thoughts returned to the present, he heard the captain trailing off in a discussion with Edson. He mentioned the name of the local lord as his boots made rough clunks on the wooden floor towards the rookie. The captain’s voice quieted, so the avalanche of his authority smoothened down to a pebble following the direction of a stream. The purple witch pretended that she lost interest rather than acknowledge secrets she could never hear, so she turned to Jack in his corner who wanted to be left alone. She reached out her hand and gave a smile that started full as the moon but twitched to the size of a thin crust of bread. Jack did not react or move.

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She spoke to him in soft, motherly tones as she walked towards him: “Jack, you don’t need to be scared.” Jack refused and pressed himself even tighter into the corner and was thankful when she stopped three steps short of touching him with her hand.

“I know your fear, it’s from living a certain kind of life. A lonely one. I see the same look in my pets’ eyes before I help them understand.” The last word of her sentence made Jack’s ears twitch. He felt a wiggling touch on the inside of his ears like the fairy kiss of a flittering bug. The traveler shut his eyes against the wave of ache he felt coming from her voice but he could not fight the dreams that invaded through his eyelids.

Mallea’s voice echoed loudly in his ears: “Know that I aim to be good and that harmony among us is possible. Maybe even love.” With her last word, images thrust themselves into Jack’s eyes, violently piercing through his mind so that he could not ignore them even though he bit down on his tongue so hard that he bled. He could not hold against the wave for long.

The first image was of a smiling man dancing with a candle. He was no famous performer in a troupe, but rather a friend engaging in some foolery to cheer someone up.

He lit another candlewick with the first flame and gave a bow before the hot white light of the new fire grew, blinded Jack, and moved the dream onwards.

Second was a smirking woman whose face was framed by shiny black hair. She flew into view and was gone just as fast, the dark twisted strands on her head flapping about like birds’ wings. Jack soon realized that she was the Lady of the Forest. The traveler wondered why Mallea would show the strange woman to him, but he realized he thought of her as funny, strange, and novel. He found a longing in his heart to see her

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again and dance with her, but he banished the thought. He had yearned for men and women in that way in his past, but nothing had ever came of it.

Third and finally was a new face with small pink lips that curled upwards in smug amusement. Jack did not recognize them, but immediately he found the figure’s small nose and taut mouth charming. The silhouetted face had piercing blue eyes with faint scars below them. Then, before Jack could commit the person to memory, a flash of white light blinded him before everything went dark and the traveler stopped shaking in fear at what the witch may do to him.

Jack felt warmth all over his body and opened his eyes to notice that the witch’s warm hands were holding his as he sat in the chair from the foyer. If he had stood, he knew he would have collapsed immediately. He was thankful for the cold wood chair that he had fallen into and the support from Mallea. She smiled, and the arc of her lips and the kindness on her face was so bright and real compared to the fuzzy dreams the wanderer thought he was having only a moment ago. Her eyes were not full or empty but whole in harmony, purple and black pitched together in one unifying crucible.

“I don’t think your skill is animal care,” Jack admitted as he fought back sleepy stutters and slurs. He realized that he had just awoken from a fairy-tale rest.

Mallea covered her mouth with the back of her hand and spoke with a giggle: “Oh really?” Her gentle cream skin glowed in the candlelight, and her smile widened as Jack relaxed. “What would people call me, anyway, besides my name?”

“A witch?” I offered.

“No, the broader term. I know you know it.”

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Jack cringed at the chance of her saying ‘understand’ again. He was glad that she did not. The traveler paused before answering, considering that he could be taking a rude misstep onto a rickety bridge. “… a monster?” He almost whispered his answer. The witch’s eyes grew wider and she nodded. She grasped Jack’s hand tighter. He liked the sensation of her soft hand on his.

“You would group me with monsters, a word once reserved for drakes and great sea terrors,” she spoke, matter-of-fact. “But look at me. I’m only a woman.” Mallea let

Jack’s hand return to the stagnant chill of her house as she placed her hands on her hips.

Her dress strained as she stood with the posture of a soldier, her wide shoulders squared and her knees just enough apart. She had a rose blush on her cheeks. Jack knew that the witch could only be described as a beautiful adult woman. She stopped posing and reached a hand out to Jack’s shoulder.

“If I’m a monster, then so is that golden-haired pretty boy over there,” she said with a nod towards Edson. Jack had to admit the guard was easy on the eyes. Compared to the gruff captain, he was a boyish and charming prince. “Do you see my point?” She was intentionally avoiding her word of power at that point.

Jack narrowed his eyes before he replied. “That your specialty is more than you let on, as I guessed?” The traveler pushed her hand off of his shoulder to make distance between them. He immediately felt sorry, and Mallea tried to smile to cheer him up. She only found a frown on his unshaven face.

“Yes, I suppose you could say that,” she explained after a beat. “But I think of myself as the ultimate animal communicator for all animals. Even the ones who look like

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humans.” Her voice slowed as she continued, but a sly grin still tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I will admit that I don’t know my specialty for sure. These things are usually found by the study and examination of a greater witch than I.”

“If you do not know it, then who will?” Jack seriously considered her dilemma.

She was not welcome in Entown and unlikely to find another witch anywhere but a great monster capital that Jack imagined was hidden to humans. Jack did not think that she was human necessarily, but he had heard of other monsters shunning witches for their ability to pass as human.

“I do not wish to step out of my comfortable cabin to see some stuffy witch who spends all her days in a library, nor do I want to have anyone visit me. So here I’ll stay, and I’ll experiment forever,” she said with a hint of sorrowful longing crossing her face.

“But,” she exclaimed as she perked up, “you have a life ahead of you, traveler. I can direct you about, if need be.”

Jack considered her offer and decided to accept. “Where do you think I should go?”

“Oh, to Onmu, of course,” she spoke without hesitation. “It’s a messy pot full of different monsterfolk, but I’m sure that there are some mages hiding out there. If not there then Nora’s Burg, where great scholars regardless of heritage reside.” She had her hand to her chin, thoughtful but still certain and demanding. “But you must go to Onmu.”

Mallea repeated herself casually, like a noblewoman recommending the salmon at a restaurant in the upper circle of Ferva.

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“Why this insistence on Onmu?” Jack had never heard of the place. She covered one eye with a pink-flushed hand and gave a deep laugh like a plotting pickpocket. The traveler was deeply uncomfortable.

Mallea mimicked the voice of a fortune teller, the kind that Jack had heard in many plays performed by many troupes: “I see great things for you there, young one.”

Once the imitation was over, she beckoned for Jack to follow her out of the foyer and into the main room where Ed and the captain remained. The traveler stood slowly using the chair as support and found that his dizzy spell was gone, replaced only with an empty memory of smiles against the white expanse of time.

The two guards were seated at the table eating cooked eggs off of simple wooden plates. Their faces were sober and they were speaking to each other quietly, though Ed beamed when he noticed Jack walking into the room.

“You’re alive!” He exclaimed. “Good for you, Jack.” The blond guard was smiling ear to ear, but he did not stand or stop eating. The wanderer noticed bright morning light coming in through the windows and started to question how long he had been lost in time. Mallea pulled out the two chairs around the table dramatically. Ed patted the seat of one next to him. “Have some eggs before you go, friend,” he urged with absurd cheer.

Jack looked at Mallea and answered her silent questions with one of his own:

“Which way is it to Onmu?” She laughed and shared a look with Ed as if they had a bet that she had just won.

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“Due south from here,” Ed mumbled with a mouth full of eggs. “Southwest, if you leave from Entown.”

Jack remained standing in the threshold between the rooms. He turned his face downwards and crossed his arms without looking at anyone in the room. “I suppose this will be goodbye then,” he declared as he started turning around. He was hungry, but his heart could hardly bear yet another farewell with a good friend. Mallea and the captain were still unknown to him, but the traveler had shared something important with Edson in that dark Entown alley.

Edson, Mallea, and even the captain all protested anyway. To Jack’s frustration,

Mallea giggled and said she “wouldn’t make Jack understand, but he ought to stay.” Jack shivered and decided to indulge them and their curiosities.

Edson told the three of them the sweet story about when Amar and he met, and then reminisced about the mage-blood that ran through him. Mallea gave chilling stories about some of her chimeric pets and mentioned her parents, who were something like nobility in the magic-user community. Jack told them all about Ofa and the fairy meddling the village had endured. The captain was the quietest out of them all, but he told a fantastic tale about thieves and treachery in the desert that Jack could only believe as fiction.

When the morning turned to noon, and the noon-high sun dipped down in the sky, they all decided to part ways with the witch. The captain provided no rousing speech or grim retort, but he did offer Jack advice for travel on the road to Onmu. He was strangely

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knowledgeable on the subject. Edson had nothing to give the traveler but a fond hug and a promise to share his story with Amar.

Yet again, Jack found that parting with new friends was bittersweet, but he did not regret anything except never painting the stark history of Entown into his mind. The traveler never found the setting of his favorite tale: the crevasse that the mage of yore had created with dark magics. Jack also deeply lamented the lack of a soft feather-down bed by the docks where he could hear the river loud enough to sing him to sleep, for he was tired down to his bones.

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Chapter 3: Onmu

There was a fog of misjudgment and apprehension over Jack’s path to Onmu that was marked by the worldly suspicions of a wanderer. He thought long on what others had said to him simply because he had the time and little else to do, though this was after he had hunted and set traps for a few wayward rabbits that seemed to love the vegetation around Mallea’s forest. Even as he set the thin and waxy canvas of his tent as a shelter from the wind, his mind latched onto what he had heard of Onmu.

There was nothing from his hometown or the roads surrounding his childhood and adolescence, and every word spoken to him about Onmu hinted at only one possibility.

Whether the source was the crude black-haired woman stumbling in the woods at least a fortnight before or the witch whose eyes cycled like a basin filled with her emotions,

Jack’s information could hardly lead to the truth. The only definitive answer he came to was that Onmu was not a typical place: a different creation entirely.

Entown had a lengthy history, but the dock or at least the iteration of the port that he saw was new and disconnected from folklore, fissures, and defaced statues of witches.

Even Ofa had some direct connection to the past, something the people could draw on to inform them about the lore of the land and the inhabitants. Jack was hardly a savant in terms of memory. He was good, but not as good as the bards, troubadours, and historians he had met while traveling far and wide. While those greater men could recall more about a town than the immortal stones themselves, Jack could usually pinpoint an exact theme or key phrase associated with each town. Cath had wealth, though this was a

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misunderstanding. Ofa was stuck in a forest and was at least tangentially related to the fae. More often than not, Ofa was a convenient backdrop for fairy-stories. Most men who spoke the name had never seen the lives that weaved amongst greater tree trunks.

Entown, however, was properly famous in Isah history for the tale of the mage who ruined everything.

Onmu had monsters. A decade ago, this would have been the perfect niche for an upstart town, but Bhunir existed and every man and woman heard the whispers that those who founded Bhunir were not displaced or homeless but rather uncomfortable with their hiding holes and roles as normal humans. There was a great reversal, a reveal wherein the neighbors who disappeared and left their farms and livestock untended were tacitly understood to be something other than human. Many even penned short notes instructing friends to take their land or livestock.

Jack remembered a pink-haired gnome he had met on the dirt road west of Isah.

They had gone to a tavern and ordered strange drinks, one brick red and throwing off sparks and the other threatening to overcome the top of the cup with crests like ocean waves or the pulse of a river. They promised each other an exchange of stories before they parted ways in the morning. The gnome had lived in a forest that now sounded oddly like the one Mallea hid inside, but his house was no wood mansion. He made a home inside a tree with a curved bark door. Jack remembered the way his eyes glowed green as he described “the most brilliant of vertical structures, a set of carvings so magnificent one could only be reminded of a turret on one of the castles in Linbe.” The wanderer had

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always pictured the gnome’s house with squirrel-hole windows and a cushion set on the thickest branch for watching the sunrise and breaking your fast.

While the tree hollow house made up the brunt of Jack’s memory, he also recalled that the gnome was the one who told him about the great reveal, for he had monster friends in Entown and Ofa who lived quietly and carefully. Dozens refused to move as the times did, but three times the cowards’ count made their way to Onmu, with the more ambitious steering a course for great Bhunir down the river and to the east.

“The cowards,” the gnome explained, “we didn’t look down upon, you see.” The gnome’s greasy fingers pushed his glasses firmly onto the bridge of his nose. Jack noticed a telltale red indent as if he was being pinched every moment by a tiny metal clamp. “We called them that so the humans who we worked and traded with pictured scared goblin fools and slimes stuck stuttering in hidey-holes and caves. Yes,” he drawled like a scholar or trouper getting to the point of the story. “Cowards sounded better than imposters or human-passing, though we love them all the same. And some of them love humans, mmmhm. That is how these things go.” The gnome’s speech was slurred, but Jack read honesty in his words.

This encounter, far enough away that the gnome’s name was lost and his goal in travelling forgotten, ran through his mind a few times before the cold and dreary night claimed his waking mind. The grass threatened to frost over and wither in the dark and the flowers closed their blooms as Jack shut his eyes to sleep and forget the smiles that fade like the colors of the spring.

- - -

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After gathering the tent and bedroll worn from hundreds of uses, Jack made the astute but untimely observation that he had not gone to a tavern and drank beer in well over two full cycles of the moon. Certainly, he had visited the Witch’s Hut, but Jack believed strongly that locations could change with time and circumstance. Entering a wet house before usual hours was how one received pertinent and useful information with little to no hassle and the necessity of a bribe disguised as a trade. But Jack thought that going to a tavern when the dusty windows are fit to burst from gathered song and light was the proper method of experiencing local color and livelihood. In short, the man was thirsty and by all rights he was going to find a tavern in Onmu even if the act killed him.

After skinning a few stray rabbits caught in crude snares, he had some dark bread to tide him over until he reached the monster town. Though there was no path, or no mundane road that could be seen with human eyes, the trees that reminded him of braying chimeras were thinning and the ground was leveling from lack of roots or droppings.

Once he could taste the kiss of the sun on his messy dark hair, he stopped and planned his route through the fields that opened in front of him. His pack was heavier than before, and though his brown sack was lighter than most wanderers’, he wished to avoid the more strenuous hills and valleys so as to not wound himself or damage the pelts he had just acquired.

A bumpy path rocked him to open fields that housed the place he was looking for.

The monster village of Onmu swathed the hills like a great bandage patching a wound in the earth. Cloud white, clay brown, and blood red cloth formed lazy roofs like hammocks fit for ten loungers. Even the walls formed soft tents with poles of wood and jagged metal

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between them as the most bootleg structure Jack had seen in his life. The hill he stood upon gave him the vantage to see many cloth lids on homes, but as he came closer to the town proper on a road not more than a hiker’s trail, he noticed more of a rainbow’s hues.

Before he made his way into the unprotected haven, the wanderer stole a look behind him at the great lumpy mountain that he had walked three-fourths of a circle around. The spire was a dear friend, and he would miss watching the small beginnings of brooks and rockslides. Perhaps someday the mountain that claimed the horizons of three strange towns would be known as a base for creation, a start to life and death alike. Even mountains are growing things, the unsteady man mused. Even hills have dreams. But his eyes shot back to Onmu and locked on as if he had stumbled upon a faerie grove that would disappear if he gazed too long away and punish him if he spoke a name.

He followed the dirt path through the hills until he noticed that every tent was soaked in the colors he had only seen in the oldest of books and the glory of nature.

Though none were labeled with any sigil or language, and most were small enough to actually be tents despite their atypical square shapes, they each had unique traits that made Jack feel happy to be alive amongst other living things. Unlike the order of the golden fields in Ofa, these tents were red with anger and purple in pride. A dashing tent in the standard triangular style bore streaks of blue that danced along the cloth like river rapids. Jack recognized the color from staring in the rushing turquoise depths of a stream in his childhood. As he watched the sway of the pattern in the chill wind, he knew the gentleness to bear strength like water. He knew that the owner of this tent could wear down people and things in the images he wished because of this immense patience.

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The tents were all temples in their faith to the world around them, and Jack felt inspiration rush through him. What would he color his own tent? For now, the one he owned was rough, uncolored canvas. Not that the fabric bore no color, but the bare white was not his. There was nothing in the tent that could identify him besides the rank scent of a man without a home. He made a note in his mind to think more cautiously about how his possessions could be used to represent him, and to take more care to view other people the same way, for whoever lived in the town of Onmu had proved their emotions through the barest coatings of dye and unrefined paint.

The north end of the village where Jack entered was made of uniform lines of these tents, and while some were slightly larger to accommodate the size of their owners, most were only large enough for one or two men to fit inside, and were customized for familiarity. Jack knew from rumor and intuition that Onmu was no military encampment and that many monsters truly sought to live here. There were only two spaces for their kind, after all, as many towns expressed incredible disgust at the idea of housing monsters who had lived there in disguise before. Some scholars Jack had read months later claimed that the phenomenon was like when new disgusting labels are placed on foodstuff one already loves. The content does not change, and often the level of understanding goes from little to even less, but the judgment and treatment wildly shifts to fit the label. To say that Jack was not judgmental would be a lie, but he was certainly lonely enough to ignore many warnings offered to him by fellow travelers and considerate townsfolk.

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After he appreciated the spectacle of color, the wanderer could only think of his dry throat and the dead weight of rabbit pelts rolled in his sack. As he moved past the silence of the residential area, he discovered the center of Onmu and was promptly shut out and cowed by the world of monsters around him. There were actual wooden buildings around a central square, and many were labeled seventeen times over in various scripts and scribbles. The names may have been witty but at some point, like deep knife- scratches in the bark of a tree, they devolved into the simplest of symbols. One said

“STORE” in the language Jack knew, while another had a crude sigil of a snake dunked face-first into an incontinent foaming tankard. While he was tempted by the sight of drink, he knew that the daytime sun prohibited him from ordering, drinking politely, and enjoying himself all together. Instead, he chose to walk towards the store, though that necessitated moving through a remarkable market crowd.

In keeping with what was surely Onmu tradition, all merchants’ stalls were tents or tent-like and presented with as much flair as cloth can handle before fraying or growing too heavy and tearing under the glorious weight of false gems and gaudy scales.

Jack reprimanded himself for only looking at the base tents and instead turned his gaze to the monsters once in hiding. He stared out of every burning curiosity ranging from the impulse of a scholar to the burning ache of no intimate touch for five years of adult life.

His eyes met with the green, muscled skin of orcs who hefted wheelbarrows filled with stone with ease, and the easy grace of brown-skinned catpeople doing acrobatics or sleight of hand to impress long-eared children. A terribly hairy man in the center of the square had horns Jack was not confident he could wrap one hand around, let alone two,

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for they were thick as a bucket at the base. This man, somehow related to a bull if the coloring could be believed, was offering showmanship of his physical strength. He had dragged a boulder to the center of the square and was boasting loudly that he could break the rock as tall as two men with only his forehead. Jack was suddenly queasy at the thought of bullman blood dripping onto the dirt plaza, so he made his way through the makeshift aisles to the old wood building he could only call the store.

Nobody in the crowded market paid any particular attention to Jack as he walked towards the general store. His skin was a smooth and paler than most despite the tan, and his ears did not stick out from his tangled hair. His hands had five fingers, all of which were accompanied by the gentle curve of noncombatant nails and two joints, for the most part. His teeth, when he smiled or ate, were flat and dull compared to many of the monsters in Onmu, but even that was not enough to identify him as human. He could have hidden nub horns under his hair, and below his sweat-stained clothes could have lain a forest of thick lycanthropic hair if anyone had dared to look. Besides, he could have great magic in the wind of his voice, or artistry so fine he had been branded a witch by his home. Being called a monster makes one a monster regardless of the truth, because pariahs are the same anywhere. And they are welcome in Onmu.

As he made his way to the store, he realized that the doors were shut tight and everything that the familiar front offered to him was bound to be outside in the market.

He lamented the fact that he had to stay in the presence of countless swindlers and mountebanks, and especially that he may see the blood of the strongmen. Jack considered the unfortunate fact he learned once he set out on the road: there is a world of difference

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between a traveling merchant and a town merchant, be they monster or mundane. The store presented stability and expected cheating within reasonable bounds. Temporary tarps and tents promised wild cards and cutthroat deals, sometimes literally. So he set his boots on the dirt and started pacing the aisles, avoiding the center but scouting for the largest awning.

After almost tripping on a browser’s fluffy tail that hung comfortably across the path, Jack spotted a great blue banner that flapped freely like an imitation of the sky and the clouds within. Below the folds was the largest stall he could find, so he approached and tried to look the impassive and sharp customer. There was a minotauress loading a sack of black metal pickaxes, some even larger than her own head which would have towered over anyone there if her muscled brown thighs were not bent and crouched down. This was the only stall with tables, and the proud place was large enough to fit a few browsers at a time, so Jack entered carefully so as to not disturb the rest of the monstrous men and women there.

The goods there were not luxurious or wonderful but rather standard and the most well-stocked of them all were the most typical. Wood bowls, serving utensils, packets of firewood, salt, knives for cooking, knives for arms, and the telling inclusion of countless mining supplies. There were picks, basic gray helmets with no beaver or neck guard, and a few magical lights priced inordinately high. If the minotauress’ haul was not enough for

Jack to determine the export of this town, the contents of the stall were. However, there were still more basic and strange supplies that piqued his interest. A few warm and fluffy coats reminded him of why he was going to market in the first place, so he approached a

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short, black-scaled lizardman who had an apron on and the hands-on-hips posture of a man who owned the place. He raised a dark hand with thin lines running down the whole length and hailed Jack.

“Hey, traveler. You need something?” His voice was as rough as the rocks in the mines Onmu surely hid. The tone was not deep, but certainly earthy, and he rumbled like a pebble down a mountain. His face appeared human enough, ruddy pink forehead and all, but the black scales on his arms and the tapering tail that was curled around his feet betrayed his heritage. Some scales crept up from his neck and covered his cheeks and chin like misplaced warpaint, and Jack thought he would have shone in the sunlight if not for the great cloth ceiling above them. He raised a hand in return and stepped closer into the shade of the stall.

“Greetings. I assume you own this place?” Jack spoke carefully but not quietly.

The marketplace was far too loud for any subtle sounds.

The lizardman nodded. “Yes, I usually run the general store up there,” he gestured to the wood building with a smirk, “but business does better out here, and I get this nice spot. Wind’s great on mild days but a few cloaks sometimes run away.” He laughed and ran a hand through his thinning black hair. “Anyway, are you here to stay in Onmu or are you just passin’ through?” He emphasized the rhyme as if he had practiced those sentences. Jack liked the pleasure he took in such a simple act.

“I think I will stay for at least a night, I am in from Entown,” at that Jack noticed a darkening on the lizardman’s face but he continued anyway, “and I need a good drink.

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Could use the rest for my poor legs, too.” Jack rubbed his thigh with a knowing smile, because he knew weariness is about as universal as the sun rising and setting.

“I hear ya. I got a few waterskins made locally that will do fine for travel, but for staying I don’t have much. Food ain’t my business,” he held his hands out for dramatic effect, as if he wanted absolutely nothing to do with the culinary arts. “But my wife does well over at the Snakehole.” He pointed again at the wood building next to his store. Now that Jack looked more closely at the tavern, he saw a small wooden annex between and behind them that connected the backrooms. The two entrepreneurs were in cahoots. “She serves good beer over there, and if you’ve got the pennies I heard there’s some fine wine in the back. Reserved for our most esteemed customers, of course.” His face turned crooked and as he winked the lid of his eye clamped down sideways and Jack was briefly startled. After the initial shock of the unfamiliar, Jack put on a big smile and remembered to haggle.

“By your recommendation, I will head to the Snakehole as soon as it is polite and order a few beers.” Jack thought the best way to sell roughly-skinned rabbit furs to an experienced shopkeeper would be to flatter him and promise whatever business he could, temporary visitor that he was. “However, I have some furs I wish to unload here, if the going is good?” Jack raised his voice as a question at the end, hoping that the cloaks indicated there was a market. The lizardman raised his hands and smiled wide with all sharp teeth.

“I’ll take ‘em off your hands. Especially if you go to the Snakehole tonight, buy a few, and tell my wife you heard the place was good.” He rubbed his hair again and

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unintentionally showed off a small horn on the right side of his head. “Not lyin’ to her or anything. Just don’t say my name, okay?” Jack nodded and shook his hand. The scales were cold and rough but his voice rang out sweet honey and the silver coins he gave for the furs were warm and seemed to glow in the sunlight once Jack left the stall.

The next question that sparked out in Jack’s mind was how he would spend his time in a ragged town of passionate monsters. He did not often run into scenarios where offloading his small sack of mismatched goods went flawlessly and left him with sunshine to spare. But then, he thought, this cuts to the heart of his journey, his newfound purpose to find a place to live. So he decided he would watch and perhaps speak with some of the folk who lived here in their daily activities. He would not go as far as to visit the mines at the base of the gray peak to the north, but he could at least get the price of wheat, so to speak.

After stepping back from the lizardman’s open-air store, Jack moved away from the central hub of bustle and observed the square and city as a whole. He sat on some long tufts of windswept grass, brown from the scorching summer, and thought about the cloth that made up the quilt named Onmu. The thought that almost everything there was temporary crossed his mind. Nobody ever associated tents with long-term living, and no parents he knew raised their children on open fields in flapping canvas shelters. The monsters seemed to gather in a communal congregation somewhere below a village in permanence, but above that in importance. Jack thought of more stories of witches and mages he knew from flippant troubadours, and he pictured Onmu as one of their rituals.

They were always complicated, time-consuming, and typically involved the senseless

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sacrifice of a few perfectly healthy chickens just for style. But the result was always worth the cost, positive or negative.

Jack considered Onmu as a ritualistic gathering. All of these people being here must mean something eventually if they simply continued to live. Is that how a town is made? Jack wondered. Did they skip the lords’ decrees and border drawing? What about barn-raisings? The birth of a town may be more than a Lord’s official seal creating a new boxy mass on the map. Sometimes, Jack thought, a town may be born out of many people in one area surviving together, never alone.

After pondering the will of settlements and taking a gander at a particularly enriching lesson on flexibility from a snake-haired dancer, Jack moved onwards on the well-stomped dirt road that led deeper into Onmu. As he got farther from the busy square, he noticed that the old wood buildings faded into colorful and sometimes garish cloth meshes which showed a lack of respect for the elements. Whether the houses were from an unrecognizable Onmu before the grand reveal or recently erected out of logs and blankets, they all had a small reminder of who lived there and what species they were.

Jack became surprisingly well-versed in monstrous shorthand on his quiet walk through the residential district. A squiggle close to his human language S was for snake- person, and a stick person oriented next to that S indicated which kind. If the S was above the person, the resident was snake-haired. Jack wondered if the dancer he saw earlier lived in a green-cloth home with a large tarp roof with a point. The front cloth had a slit for a door and a person below an S, with a few rings around for unique flavor. Nobody else had the rings, so he assumed the symbol was an indication of profession. Another

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house, bigger this time, had an S below the stick person’s legs. Jack would have struggled to determine what this meant if not for the owner leaving their plain white cloth home at the same time that he passed by. The wanderer was startled by this, and especially at his now-repeated voyeurism being discovered.

The resident was a burly and intimidating snakewoman with red scales covering her tail and lower body. Jack knew her species as a lamia: a half-woman half-snake monster, though she was the first he had ever met. She had orange hair that was graying with age tucked back behind her head in a tight bun, though the bun was so thick and set to burst that Jack assumed the strands were terribly long, perhaps rarely cut. She was wearing plain brown coverings over her human half, and her wide hips peeked out of the bottom as they turned to shiny, well-kept scales that could impress a stingy dragon. The lamia’s hips swayed as she slithered out of the house carrying a giant wooden tub, but she stopped mid-shake as she noticed the unkempt wanderer outside her home.

“What d’you want?” She snarled out of a snaggletooth mouth at Jack while thinking that some daydrunk fool had harsh words for her or she had somehow insulted him. These things happened in her line of work.

“Oh, nothing, sorry. I will be on my way,” Jack said while blushing wildly. He forced his eyes to the ground and continued to walk away from the comforting square with stores and new friends. The lamia used the opportunity to drop her tub, spring forward, and grab the young man by the shoulder, freezing him in his tracks.

“Oh no, I won’t have that,” she thundered with authority with her forked tongue on full display. She a firm clawed hand digging into his shoulder and she had no intention

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of letting go, unless the man relented. “I’ve never seen you around here or at the

Snakehole. What are you doing here?” Her voice took on a matronly aspect. Jack thought on mothers and cooks as his mind went white from shame and sharp pain. He squirmed for a second before giving and looking the woman in the eye.

“Um… I’m a traveler, and I am thinking about living here more permanently, so I was looking at where people stay.” Jack could not hold her gaze, for the lamia’s pupil stood tall vertically and she had every intention of staring the man down with a marksman’s precision.

“A traveler? I see.” She turned away and gave a haughty chuckle as if she owned the ground he walked on. “I can help you decide if you should stay or go. You’re a human, right?” She had a long nose well-suited for staring down at men too weak to challenge her authority. Jack would have been impressed if he could stop shaking for long enough to consider the woman’s posture and tone of voice. Her mien was improvised but brilliant.

“Y-yes,” Jack stuttered in response. “I was hoping nobody would notice.”

The full-bodied lamia smiled, and Jack felt comforted despite her sharp teeth. He believed that smiles are universal. “Why hide your heritage? None of us do. You’ve been looking at these houses, so I’m sure you see the signs.” She gestured at the cloth barriers around her and started to walk down the lane with Jack slowly following. “We make sure the walls have us on them. It’s not for our neighbors or the post, it’s for… our own kinda happiness, I guess.” She started strong but finished quiet and contemplative. Every time they passed a house, she raised a hand at whatever odd symbol was on the wall. Some

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had the snakelike S branded on them firmly, while others had stranger signs like horsemen drawn with only straight lines and tall women with violent horns stretching out from their heads. Many had cloth of vibrant colors, but the rest were dirty white.

Jack was staring down during their walk, though he glanced up at each of the symbols when the snake woman raised her arm. He studied them, but continued to turn his head downward, contemplative and confused. “May I ask your name?” He said in a gentle tone, looking up at the tall lamia for the first time.

“It’s Leyla,” she answered after stopping for a moment and opening her eyes wide like gates with lonely black towers beyond.

“Leyla, I am Jack. Pleased to meet you.” He bowed truly, though he thought in the middle of bending down that this might be the time when a bow is offensive, but he had no other way of showing his respect. After the gesture, he rubbed his head with one hand and spoke aloud, seemingly to himself. “I thought for a while that living in a town was all about fitting in, or finding a place to stay snugly inside. This is so against that, that I’m just a bit stunned.” The lamia’s smile broadened as she made fists and rested them against her impressive hips.

“Like mixin’ a drink, huh?” The man raised an eyebrow quizzically. “You thought living in a village was like bein’ mixed into a drink. Thrown in and shaken up, made all the same, yeah?” Her speech quickened to resemble a bar patron rather than the proud bar owner.

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“I guess I did,” Jack assented with a shake of his head. Suddenly, Leyla smacked a hand flat on his back and he yelped high and fast. She laughed loud and snorted like a happy hog while the man rubbed the sore spot and turned to confront her.

“Onmu’s like a mixed drink as much as the mountain’s like the ocean! We live loud and crazy, Jack, and most of us know who we are. No, I’d call us a dirty batch of river rocks panned up from the muck.” Leyla spoke proudly and with the authority of a long life. Her age showed in tandem with her passion in the way her eyes flitted around, in the stance she took as she described her community. Jack recovered enough to appreciate her boldness and decided to retort.

“That bad, huh?” He managed, though the lamia whipped right back.

“Some. But many of us glitter if you care enough for us.” She bantered better than

Jack expected. The old snake had a bag full of tricks.

“Ah, tell me how to tell the difference,” Jack offered, though he knew his wit was fading. He had not held a good enough conversation in weeks to prepare him for Leyla.

“You’re funny. Curious too. Check out the bar, the Snakehole tonight. I’m sure you were comin’ anyway, but I bet you’ll meet someone interesting.” The lamia was at her most earnest and dignified with this recommendation. The pair had come with their swaying gait to a dingy brown well with a bucket too sad and small for even a beggar’s gaze. Jack had nothing to do, so he simply stood back and watched as Leyla filled her giant basin steadily.

“Any interesting folk travel here?” She balked at the obvious question.

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“If you find one boring lout in there, let me know. They might not complain when

I tell them to pay the tab,” she said with a thin-lined mouth filled with annoyance. “But we have some good ones. Better than in Bhunir.” Jack’s interest was piqued at that name.

“What have you heard about Bhunir?” He asked too eagerly for anyone subtle to answer. He cursed himself for the tone and reminded himself to be less transparent.

“If the rumors are to be believed, the place’s got scum on every stone in the walls and dried blood between every cobble. Not to mention the coin.” Jack nodded. Blood money always came up in conversation about Bhunir. “But I know a man, a nice orc, who went to Bhun lookin’ for labor that paid more than whatever the hell he was getting’ at the mines, and he sent a letter saying he’s made it down there. Riches, a house, and a girl who keeps his bed warm. Not much to complain about, eh?” Leyla spoke between one- handed hefts of the bucket. She moved with casual grace that told Jack she was much stronger than any human warrior even if they had trained for two score years.

Jack nodded at her description and wondered about something she had said. “So the tales of coin are real? I cannot say I’m not tempted. If I settle down anywhere it should be a place with a noisy marketplace.” He spoke casually, pushing the limits of the conversation with growing boldness. The wanderer started to trust Leyla and he hoped she was coming to trust him as well.

“Never said it was easy coin,” she said with a scowl. “Don’t think of headin’ off to Bhunir just because of one orc’s success, human. In fact, I say you oughta stay here in

Onmu and drink a lot with our folk before you even dream of livin’ in monster towns.”

She stopped filling the giant bucket and lifted it handily onto her head with both arms.

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She maneuvered her shining red tail up to the back of the bucket to catch the odd shake as she started to wiggle back towards the central square. “And I’m not just sayin’ that because I want your coin, Jack. We got bad folk just as much as humans do, except some of ours can break your hand with one shake.”

“That is not encouraging for my journey,” Jack said with a frown, though his words could not express the tired-eyed realization that everything he had set out to do would be harder than he ever assumed. Striking towns from his tacit plan would never help him find a true place to live.

“That’s nothin’, kid. You can do stupid shit here the same as everywhere else.”

Her white and pointy teeth widened in a deadly but childishly charming smile as the momentum of the bucket carried her forward. “Live life. Arm tussle with a minotaur, challenge a dwarf to a drinkin’ match. You could even bed a demon! Man or woman, they’d give you about as much trouble as any one monster down in Bhunir.” She gave a hearty laugh that gave Jack the impression of the open blue sky. Leyla’s words spoke of opportunity and love amidst the impossibilities of daily life. The traveler wanted to thank her for opening his eyes, if only a little, but he knew better and resorted to what he knew best.

“You sure you do not drink from your own supply, miss bartender?” Jack managed the comeback as they reached her house, though they moved past the S- imprinted cloth towards the square and the Snakehole. She laughed again and almost stopped in her tracks, but the basin propelled her onwards.

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“Not this early. And that’s missus Bartender to you, Jack.” She turned to show him her smile as they approached the square where Jack first learned of the bar and

Onmu’s vibrant life. Leyla gave a flippant wave goodbye with her tail before disappearing behind the Snakehole, and Jack hoped to share a drink with her later that day. He thought that making a friend would help him ease into the night life of Onmu, but the bright sun high in the sky told him that he had hours to laze about and be alone before anything true or fun would come to pass.

- - -

Jack and every working man and woman in Onmu met the opening of the

Snakehole with vigor matching the tension of a festival eve. He did not know how they measured time, but his loitering under the setting sun was interrupted by a dozen or so punctual drunks who knew when Leyla opened for business. He followed them in and noted what they looked like. One was made of blueberry-colored slime, viscous but Jack was grateful that they did not leave any of their body on the floor as they walked into the tavern. Another was short, bald, and coated in a thick layer of slate-colored dust, or perhaps their body simply had a hard skin of stone. The third monster that Jack followed behind had hair so long that their silhouette was covered completely. The thick black strands were knotted and unkempt, but not unclean: simply unbrushed. He understood the dilemma. That mass of tangles would have taken an entire day to straighten out, and even then, in sleep they would become chaos again.

The tavern was lit partially by flame, but a magical light bloomed from the ceiling in yellow that rivaled the sun in beauty but not intensity. As Leyla gruffly welcomed the

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regulars in an apron that ran down under the bar, she snapped a finger and the magic light dimmed to create a dusky ambiance. The Snakehole threatened fun at the cost of beauty, which Jack figured was the agreement with beer in the first place. He took a seat at the bar a few stools away from the pale-pated gray man he assumed was a dwarf. Leyla chatted with everyone gathering at the center of the bar while serving frothy beer in tankards with both hands and her tail. Her movements were limber and her balance was excellent, and she even took the time to provide banter and good-natured insults to the rowdy bunch that she made her living from. After most of the dozen monsters had drinks or were being waited on by a bright-eyed girl with droopy rabbit ears, Leyla slithered to the lonely place at the bar where Jack sat calmly.

“You made it, wanderer. Want a drink?” She grinned as her tail whipped an empty tankard from the unseen depths below the bar up between them. The lamia leaned an arm on the counter and towered over the seated man.

“Sure, Leyla. I will have a beer,” he said as he pulled two of the coins he received from the lizardman and placed them on the table. They clinked softly and Leyla snatched them swiftly.

“Good choice.” She dropped the coins into a large pouch stitched on her apron and patted the bulge with post-meal satisfaction. She grabbed the tankard with her right hand and theatrically filled the tarnished gray vessel to overfill with beer before slamming down and presenting the drink to Jack. Leyla relished in the gesture, while Jack only hoped that the rest of her customers weren’t staring. He muttered a thanks and she nodded gratefully.

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“This is the usual crew,” she said quietly as she gestured over to the dwarf and slime. “Many of ‘em actually lived here before the reveal, same as myself. They know me and they always pay ‘cause they got a reliable source of coin. But the ones who come in later…” She shook her head and scowled. Her forked tongue flicked out uncontrollably. “Watch them, maybe talk to them a bit, and then you can decide if you’ll stay. Maybe after you try the beer though, because I brew some damn good stuff.” She patted the bar affectionately, though the force was enough to make the tankard jump and spill foam. She urged Jack to drink by pushing the cup towards him before sliding over to the other side of the bar to address the rabbit girl who looked up at her like she was scared of being scolded.

After an hour spent drinking and savoring the cold bitterness of the beer, Jack was growing tired of watching the strange men and women walk in and order drinks. The wanderer was an odd one out himself, but he was quickly able to identify who had lived in Onmu for most of their life and who had just recently traveled here to jump on the mining opportunity.

They all bore the dust and grime of a hard day’s work, and for their sake, Jack wished for a bathhouse to be built nearby so they could refresh themselves in healthier ways than drowning their guts. Toil in a frontier town is universal. No man escapes dirt and bruises, so they deserve any small happiness they can find. Jack thought of raising his glass in a quiet toast, but figured the gesture would only single him out as even more of a stranger.

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The bar was busy as ever, and the rabbit girl was now behind the counter in an endless cycle of gathering used tankards and filling them to return. The dwarf was likely counting his portions in the dozens, and both bartenders were suffering for his thirst. The human-shaped gathering of slime failed to drink its beer, and now satisfied itself by absorbing the scene from a corner. There were many others, some with the obvious features of monsters, but Jack’s attention had strayed away from the varied lineup of the shaky barstools.

Half an hour had passed when a new trio had walked into the tavern, their appearance causing no surprise or any reaction at all for anyone else in the building. The tallest one- a lanky green-skinned man who had to duck to fit in the threshold- waved briefly at Leyla before leading his companions to a table along the wall near the door.

The green man whom Jack assumed was an orc took a seat, while a grim man with black hair and gray wings stole the place beside the orc with stunning proficiency. He deftly faced in towards the center of the table so that his wings hung over the side of the chair rather than crush them against the back. While he was certainly an expert at managing the feathery growths, Jack assumed he would not last long in the wooden chair. The stool he was on started to wear on his rear, and forcing a wanderer out of a chair after days of travel is a remarkable judgment on the quality of the seating.

The third member was the most intriguing. He sat across from the others and between them, not favoring either side. He sat on the chair cross-legged, and he was small enough that he could fit easily without hanging overmuch. Unlike the grass-green and pale white skin of the others, he had smooth caramel skin that appeared dark and

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intriguing in the dim alehouse. A black tail flicked behind the back of the chair, and pointed ears poked out from the top of his head. He was a catperson bearing the style of the deserts to the northeast, and something about his demeanor called to Jack. He was keeping his distance from the two, yet he chatted amiably between them. Jack was not opposed to eavesdropping, but from the bar he could make out nothing besides smiles and laughter. He had a grin that betrayed sharp, beguiling teeth that shone in what little light was to be found. Even the pale winged man lost his scowl and made jabs at the catperson’s jokes and tales. The orc had abandoned the brisk and serious front he put on when entering and engaged in the drunken revelry encouraged by all taverns.

Jack decided he would be a lone wallflower no longer. He grabbed his tankard by the gray handle and took a seat at a two-person table closer to the door than the bar. He decided to wait for a lull in the conversation and approach the trio under some pretense that allowed him to get closer to the catperson. He considered topics such as the man’s wings or the catperson’s wardrobe, and he even briefly considered the orc’s race in general before deciding that that was too far. While he was mulling over how to approach the unfamiliar territory of monster small talk, he realized that his new position allowed for him to gently eavesdrop on the group’s loud conversation, so he paused all thought and listened carefully to their voices.

“… that’s a wild brag, Amon,” the orc remarked with a deep, friendly laugh. “Are you saying you stole ten every day and the fool never noticed?” He slammed a fist on the table in the anticipation of a defense.

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“The trick is to take from where they would never notice.” The catperson called

Amon continued in a quieter voice than the man, though he had the mannerisms of a good storyteller. He had a well-timed pause before he answered, and the response did not properly strike the truth of the question from the listener. He only hinted at the heart of the matter, so if the listener was following along, they could determine the trick themselves.

“Don’t give me that, you rogue.” A dry and manly voice continued, this time with the monotone lack of enthusiasm Jack recognized from the few traveling monks he had met on his journeys. The winged man was not joining in Amon’s mind games. “He used them every day, so he must have made some kind of inventory. Are you telling me that the man was so ignorant that he did not notice his own stores were draining before he ate?” Jack smiled at this remark. The grim-faced birdman acted proud and above the foolishness of the rogue’s tale, but he was engaged enough to question the truth, so he was strung along all the same.

There was a weighty pause, and Jack realized that the entire tavern was quieting down. The night was still young, so he did not understand why, but the bar’s rowdy noise had drained to half-full rather than the rousing clamor of half an hour before. He did not consider the strangeness any more than welcoming the chance to hear Amon’s smooth voice in more clarity.

“If you have a roll, and you set it away for later, you have a pretty good idea in your head of what it looked like,” Amon said after many moments of careful thought.

The two others nodded. “Let’s say it’s a circle. Just a big round thing that you’re excited

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to eat. If someone went behind your back and cut a slice out, like a pie, you’d know.

You’d get upset, like,” the catperson put his small dark-gloved hands to his rosy cheeks in mock astonishment then made his voice high and irritating, “’Oh no! I’ve been cheated out of part of my roll! But I wanted it aalllll!’” The orc gave a guffaw as the winged man sighed.

“Get on with it, cat,” he crooned like a crow, then the orc wrapped a heavy arm around his friend’s shoulder. He had a wide grin on his face, and he tapped the man to tell him to humor Amon for the time being. He shifted awkwardly in his seat before he crossed his legs and shut his mouth. Amon let the disturbance play out before continuing the yarn.

“Thanks for that. Back to the roll: so, if you’re the thief, taking a slice will get you caught right away. Straight to jail. But there’s another way to run the gig that’ll save your skin and net you a pretty penny. Or lunch, if you’re desperate,” he purred. “Though I know you’re not and never vagabonds forced to pilfer on the road, do you have any guesses?” He braced his hands on the empty spot of chair between his legs and leaned over the table to watch the two closely. The orc retracted his arm and brought a lean green hand to his chin while the winged man aimed his beady eyes at the cat burglar.

The muscled man started rubbing his two white tusks, though they were filed down so finely that they could be mistaken for odd little snaggleteeth that poked out of his bottom lip. He continued with his comforting habit before he raised a finger in epiphany. “I’ve got it!” He said before pointing a green digit at Amon. “You steal something other than the roll, since they are so focused on it.” He smiled and closed his

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eyes in smug satisfaction while Amon shrugged and shook his head, making his dark ears flop slightly.

“Misdirection can work, but that’s best for pickpocketing. Besides, the absence of anything worth stealing will be noticed eventually. Thieves want to be noticed never, ya hear?” The catperson rested an elbow on the table, though he had to lean forward even more to do so. His brown arm was hairless and smooth like a woman’s, and a small black glove covered up to part of his forearm. He had little to mark him as a cat-monster besides his ears and tail. Amon added “Jaz, do you have a guess?” with a sly smirk that told everyone watching that he understood the disdain that the winged man had for him.

Jack found that rebellious part of him endearing, and wanted even more deeply to talk to him to understand his feelings.

“None, Amon,” the bird-man Jaz said, “except that I think this posturing is all misdirection.” This warranted a genuine scowl from the catperson. He shifted and sat normally, careful not to bump his tail or crush it under his small rear. The tension rose higher in the tavern and Jack was heating up, though he swore that nobody else was listening to the trio’s discussion.

“I don’t misdirect. I’m above pickpockets and basic crooks. Besides, I don’t steal anymore, especially not from my friends.” He looked at the orc. “Or friends of friends.”

He sneered at Jaz. Jack thought he saw Amon’s tongue flick out at him in a rude gesture but he could have been mistaken. Jaz tried to sit with better posture and face the supposed ex-thief, but his wings forced him to stand awkwardly leaning over the table. He

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slammed his palms against the table, though the clatter of the wood was nothing against the din of the drunks.

“You said not even an hour ago that you decided against living here in Onmu.

How, then, can we tell that you will not steal from us and run away in the night?” The outrage showed on his face, though there was no ruddy red forming on the pale man’s cheeks. His wings started to flutter and twitch as if they ached to be stretched, but there was no room to do so in the tavern or any civilized building. He was stuck in a hell of no release, and his anger at the cat thief did not help at all.

Amon only faced down at the table and ran a finger along a pattern in the wood.

“I wish I could live here,” he said in a soft and sweet voice Jack had to strain to hear.

“It’s fun, and a bit crazy. There are clever guys like Erik here,” he nodded at the orc, “and suspicious men like you, Jaz. There’s the big bad Snake, and hell, there’s even a ruggedly handsome eavesdropper over at that two-seater hanging on my every word.” Amon flashed a prideful smile at Jack while his face turned a ferocious pink and he looked straight at the bar to feign innocence. Despite the accusation, he continued to listen anyway. “It’s all new and so much more exciting than human towns or even the desert.

But damn,” he sighed and slumped his chin on the table. “I can’t work in a mine. My skin is toooooo perfect!” He yelled with a fake drunken slur thrown on for effect, and his ears twitched up like they were caught in the passion of the moment.

Jaz sat back down and faced towards the bar rather than bear his shame in front of

Amon. Jack could see him more clearly and noted that he was wearing a fine suit in heinous mismatch with everything around him. He even had the accessory reserved for

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only the most pompous of patrons: a glass monocle on his right eye. The white-winged man had a stubborn scowl that twisted his face into guilt and confidence. Jack figured he trusted his suspicions of Amon, but that he could never win against Erik’s trusting nature and the thief’s natural charisma. The orc and the birdman would have to reconcile later, after the catperson had gone and their friendship was no longer in doubt.

After a bold and questionable apology from Jaz, Amon jumped back into the story as if nothing had happened between the last telling and then. “So, what does a thief do to not get noticed but still get his daily bread? Er, daily roll in this case?” He paused theatrically again, not expecting a real response and pointedly avoiding Jaz’s gaze.

“Think of what the owner remembers. A circle, right?” Erik nodded, happy to be back to the simple distraction of a thief’s yarn. “So, keep the roll as a circle. Simple as that.” The orc’s satisfaction was immediately wiped from his face.

“Then, what do you even steal, cat?” His inquiry was as polite as possible, and

Amon relished in the opportunity to explain the trick.

“Steal around. The roll was only an example, see, so that might not be the best for this. I guess you could cut the edges off with a knife, and that would do. But other treasures have other means, like taking the gold pieces in the rusty corner of the chest where no one looks and where some might have slipped out the hinge anyway. That’s another example I… heard, anyway.” The catperson added that last part after Jaz gave him a nasty look. Erik folded his hands on the table and looked on blankly.

“So you stole around the whole time you lived there and you never got noticed?”

He questioned Amon seriously, and his posture made Jack think of a lawman or constable

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interrogating a criminal. Even Jaz was giving the orc an uneasy dark side-eye, as if that was not part of the plan.

“I won’t say it was my only trick,” the cat thief said, “because a burglar with only one trick is going to get caught, and won’t look very cool. But it was my favorite.” He brushed his short hair away from his forehead before gazing at the wooden table as if suddenly noticing an uncomfortable void. “Hey, we don’t have any drinks. Why am I not getting drunk right now at a tavern!?” He leapt up on his boots, sticking his rear out to push the steady chair away from the table. The catperson started to take dancing steps away from the table before adding “you two want some beer,” directed at the remaining pair.

Jaz opened his mouth to talk, but Erik shook his head. “We shouldn’t. I think we oughta be heading out, actually. Nice talkin’ with ya, Amon, cat burglar beyond compare.” He gave a grin that showed his marvelously white teeth and two nubby tusks worn down by tools, not war or diet. The strong but unexpectedly slim orc then helped his winged friend out of his awkward position on the chair with one arm. Amon said a brief goodbye before the two walked out of the tavern and he stepped giddily to the bar without a care in the world.

Once the catperson squeezed his way to the few empty stools and sat lazily upon one, Jack realized that his focus on eavesdropping had caused him to miss the rest of the commotion that had been going on at the Snakehole. He noted that there was a distinct lack of commotion, and that the only sounds he could hear were quiet murmurs and the clanks of dishes and tankards being moved. The wanderer figured that he had missed

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some important cultural ritual and hoped that he had not been disrespectful to any of the old guard of Onmu. He briefly questioned how much time had come to pass during

Amon’s story, but the bar was too full of drunken monsters for the morning to be approaching. They were simply quiet in their nightly reverie, and something about the volume unsettled Jack. He hoped the cat burglar would tell another tale to bolster the spirits of the miners and restore order, because a tavern without noise is like a party without cheer.

There was no laughter at the bar, and Jack even noticed Leyla’s imposing figure glaring at some of the patrons as if urging them to talk to make the atmosphere better.

After Amon was handed a large, full tankard by the perpetually anxious rabbit girl, he drank a little and started to walk along the bar, greeting and engaging in short conversations with practically everyone there. Jack nursed his own drink and watched, jealous and anxious, as the catperson spread a few smiles and made laughter as he went.

While he certainly made them happier, they reverted quickly to the scowls that clouded them minutes before the ex-thief approached them. Jack started to sift through his memory of local rituals, of religions that he heard of that monsters followed, but there was nothing he could cite that would explain the disdainful silence that filtered through the tavern like dusty rays of light.

As soon as Jack realized that nobody was drinking, only pushing their tankards towards the center of the smooth wooden counter, a shadow stepped in front of him and graciously took the remaining chair. “Hey, traveler. Your ears are too big for a town like this. You’ll hear too much and get scared or somethin’.” Amon was sitting across from

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him, and the catperson’s subtle approach was fitting to his former occupation. He twitched his fluffy ears to the side and let a fang slip out from his pink lips in a carnivorous smile. “Anyway, what’d you hear about me?” He had thin cats’ pupils that cut the sea of his blue eyes, and they were glittering at the traveler.

Jack fumbled before finding the means to respond to the well-spoken catperson.

He thought that thieves were supposed to be good at dealings in the shadows, and not so much in the light. “Nothing you do not already know,” he quipped.

Amon laughed, boyish and brash, with a hand on his stomach. “Would it make you feel better if I said I liked hearing about myself from attractive men?” He spoke casually and leaned on the back of the chair. The catperson had a smug, easy smile that

Jack recognized from men who failed to woo serving girls in bigger taverns. He had the forming thought that he was being flirted with, and the man was not complaining.

“Well, your name is Amon.” Jack raised an eyebrow at Amon before the catperson urged for him to continue. “And you were a regular burglar before you came to

Onmu.” The thief had a hand on his chin. He was liking the way the traveler spread out the facts, though he was already intrigued by the eavesdropping in the first place.

“Anything else? Maybe about my grace, charm, or great riches plundered? Or how the great thief Amon stole from everyone without being caught?”

“Something about ‘stealing around,’ though that is all I caught. You did seem fairly charming,” Jack said, and meant the praise. Amon beamed and basked in his words, understanding that the eavesdropping was not insidious. He was likely familiar with the

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curious type that brought humans to monster towns, and he looked human enough to be approachable.

“Good catch. I’ll let you in on a secret: I like describing stealing around with gold in a chest, because that’s what your average man pictures when thinkin’ of thieves. But it’s different from that. I’d like it if you could guess why.” He slouched down in the chair with the smug smile of a lord atop his golden throne, but less prideful and more possessed of the lazy self-assurance that comes with legitimate success. Jack started to heat up as the beer and the desire to impress the cat burglar passed through him, and the still quiet of the bar did not help as his mind started to race.

“Erm, you take what won’t ever be noticed?” The wanderer fumbled with his words as he noticed Amon’s blue eyes looking upwards at him. The thief’s mouth was full of sharp smiles, but his cheeks were rosy and his eyes were sparkling with unbidden curiosity. Jack had forgotten the feeling of being watched closely so a new excitement grew in him that overwhelmed his newfound attraction and fear of being disliked.

“It’s not as simple as that,” the catperson mumbled in temporary disappointment while twisting a strand of his dark hair. “Nothin’ worth stealing is never gonna be noticed. For every careless fool there are ten more who count the coins down to the last blasted one. Guess again.” He leaped out of the frown that seized Jack’s heart into another comfortable smirk. The catperson rested his dark elbow on the table and leaned forwards with his shoulders, which were not covered by his black cloth garments. Jack could not place the fashion, and the pieces were too revealing to be armor, so he guessed they were desert fashion designed to keep cool. Most desert folk wore cloaks and shrouds

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to keep the direct beams of the sun off, though, so he had never determined what was in vogue.

“Well, do you look for the one careless fool then?” Jack offered another shot in the dark, and to his surprise, Amon pondered the answer for a second.

“Hmm… good guess. But there’s a problem.” The cat burglar let his shoulders slump before he laughed, careful not to disturb the stern quiet of the bar. “One careless fool!?” Amon suddenly exclaimed. “When I say ten more who count the coins, I mean ten more careless fools. Just about every man I’ve met has been a careless fool, sometimes even my own pretty self…” The catperson’s blue eyes fell down to the bottom of Jack’s chest and wove their way up to his eyes and messy dark hair. “But you seem alright,” he purred. The wanderer blushed violently and did not allow himself to lock eyes or respond to him. He was now tipsy, and his reservations were being stolen away by the cat’s nimble paws.

“Anyway, you got one thing right.” Amon pivoted the tone and sounded sober as stone. His passion spoke true to his craft, even if he was a pincher. “The people involved matter. If you’re lookin’ to take from a general store owner who loves the people he sells to, you’re gonna have to be perfect, or ready to get the hell out of town the second you do it. He’s gonna care a lot more than, say, a lord who forgets to pay his guards at his riverside villa.” The ex-thief let a fang slip out from his upper lip, forming a devilish spiked smile.

Four monsters entered the tavern, interrupting the two men’s lively conversation for a brief moment. A minotaur couple and their two lanky lizardman friends brought a

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cheer to the place like a candle in a crypt. After the initial struggle to fit in the narrow and unaccommodating doorway, they found the table where Amon had been sitting with Erik and Jaz and took their seat. The rabbit waitress launched into whispering conversation with Leyla, eventually leading to her leaving the bar and approaching the newcomers. A few monsters sitting at the bar glared at them, causing the blue lizardman to tug on the green lizardman’s ratty cloak and whisper in a language filled with S sounds.

Amon tapped the table in front of Jack twice to get his attention. “Now’s a good time. Let me teach you something about thievery.” He was no longer smiling, but a prideful arch of his thin eyebrow informed Jack that he had a wicked plan likely already in motion. The traveler urged the catperson to continue, so he leaned so far over the small two-seater table that Jack felt his hot breath.

“The whole scene is important. In this room, there are score-and-seven people: one owner, one worker, score-and-three patrons, a handsome human and his fluffy-eared friend.” He winked and brushed a hand over one of his ears as if tempting Jack to pet him. “I’ve been in Onmu for half a moon and I’d say I know ten of the people here by name. The tents go farther than you’d think. The four who just walked in,” he pointed subtly to his left to indicate the newcomers, “came to the town after me.”

“Are they here for the mining operation?” Jack offered; his wits gathered despite his descent towards drunkenness.

“Sure, though I wouldn’t call it an operation. Anyway, I’d say a score of the patrons are here for the gold mines too, but they got here real quick after the reveals.

Leyla- you know her?” He looked at Jack with expectant eyes. While the phrasing was

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kind, the traveler suspected that he was still being tested and examined. But he figured that was the price of holding such a charming catperson’s attention for so long.

“The owner, we’ve been introduced.” Jack said, trying to act casual though they had just met that morning.

“The same.” Amon grinned. “They call her the Snake when she gets mean, and man can she get mean on nights like these. Anyway, Leyla said there’s only about ten monsters in Onmu who lived here before all the unveiling, and one of them’s her. So those fools are shunning one of their own, you see?” He gestured with his hand, palm-up, as if his point was truly made. However, Jack had another question.

“I meant to ask you why all’s quiet at the bar. You’re an outsider like me, do you know?” The traveler felt energy return to his body with the sight of Amon’s round face and the intrigue of the evening. He finally finished the deep tankard off and quickly wanted another. He hoped the buzz of one beer could keep him engaged all night.

“There you go, there’s that sight that sets you apart from the fools.” He gave the smile of a sleazy flirter again and Jack’s heart raced for a couple of reasons. “I’ll set the scene for you: frustrated miners with no organization. Tough-as-scales barkeep who’s lived here forever. Outsiders who don’t get it. What’s gonna happen?” He was now leaning so far over the table that he threatened to flop over like a housecat and take the wooden slats down. The fervor of strategy and promise raced through his words and features like a bolt of lightning, and Jack found himself unable to back away.

“I’m… uhhh… not sure.” His mind addled, he wanted to please the catperson but the knowledge escaped him, as if he suddenly forgot how to button his shirt.

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“Bar fight.” Amon said. The two words invoked so much gorgeous imagination in both of the men’s minds. Jack pictured a heroic brawl with overturned kegs and ignored allegiances. He thought of the dwarf swinging a stone fist at the soft catperson’s dark and toothy face, only for Jack to block with his lean, muscled forearm so Amon can escape.

He craved a retreat that could be sung about, where the two leapt away from danger and found sweet haven elsewhere. Nobody would be the wiser if he stole a boozy embrace or kiss from the thief, though he shook the idea away as spawned from the beer.

Amon, however, wanted a grand distraction that fell into place like a key clearing the tumblers of a lock. Grand heists formed in his head one after the other, a few thrown away because they endangered himself or his new attractive friend. He pictured a trophy nicked from the Snake’s storeroom while she was taking out headbutting minotaurs and containing rowdy slimes in kegs. He wanted to hold Jack’s hand while he would lead him down a dark alley, and then present the prize to impress him greatly and earn his affection. The thought of thievery being behind him did not cross his mind once.

“Is it gonna be bad?” Jack said, forgetting his composure but remembering empathy.

“If these were humans, then yeah. But they’re not, so don’t worry.” The blue of

Amon’s eyes vanished as his pupils grew round and shining. He took over the conversation with exceptional vigor, and he started to wiggle anxiously in his seat.

“Maybe there’ll be some busted tables and a broke keg or two, but no hurt people. Hey, want to make a bet?” He hastily added, slinging a thin brown arm over the back of his chair.

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Jack considered the whole scene, imminent brawl and all. His hair was prickling, and watching the antsy catperson made him feel shaky and uncertain. A survival instinct he had trusted a few times before when wolves knew his scent in dark forests spread throughout his body, but the beer dulled the intensity and he suppressed the urge to run.

“I just realized,” Jack said, and Amon’s ears perked up, “I never told you my name.”

The thief sighed but smiled all the same. “You’re free to give it to me. I think I would’ve figured it out soon enough anyway.” He took a glove off and stretched out his hand for a shake, to enter a formal contract. Jack was puzzled, but matched the gesture, happy to find that the cat burglar’s hand was soft and his grip was gentle.

“Jack,” he said as they shook.

“You’re in for it now,” Amon returned. He put his glove back on and carefully surveyed the tavern space around him. The bar had grown deathly quiet and the four newcomers got up to leave. They shooed away the rabbit girl as she slowly approached them. Leyla’s hands were firmly crossed below her scaled chest and her eyes were angry, narrow slits on her face.

“What’s the wager?” Jack asked, grabbing Amon’s full attention again.

“Five gold says I can start the fight myself and make it so violent I can pinch a bottle o’ wine from the back without the Snake ever knowing.” The eager thief pulled five rough coins from an unseen pocket and held them deftly between his fingers. He piled them up on the table, and Jack recognized them as the local currency he received from the lizardman earlier that day.

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“Sounds good to me,” he offered with no resistance. The human placed five of the coins on the table. As they clanked down, he remembered that they would be useless in

Nora’s Burg.

“Great!” Amon said while pumping his fist. He gathered the coins on the table in one pile like a gambler. “That’s how I like my men, eager and naïve!” His exclamation was mumbled in the quiet tavern, so Jack dismissed the implications as a drunken mistake.

“So, when’s the time to pull it off?” Jack asked, fully invested in the catperson’s heist and inconsiderate of the consequences.

“Now,” Amon said while raising a finger to his mouth. He stood up and bent his knees slightly so that he appeared shorter than his usual height. Jack noticed his small frame, and how his tail swayed gracefully without touching any of the wooden chairs and tables as he took careful steps towards the bar.

When Jack had last watched the bar closely, there were holes where stools sat lonely and unused. However, now that the night was deep and any human worker would be deep in the throes of restful sleep for next morning’s efforts, these monsters forgot fatigue and lined the counter like a wall of armed soldiers at the van. Each sat with their backs taut and fine, and even the dwarf made of stone seemed an imposing turret in their barricade.

Like Amon said, the entire scene was important. Jack noticed small holes in their fortifications. Another orc who wasn’t Erik sat far away from his neighbor on the right, whom Jack recognized as the viscous slime he noticed when the tavern opened. Now that

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he was watching closely, more and more of these tiny divisions made themselves clear to the traveler, and a new side to the monsters became clear to him. Two minotaurs sat practically shoulder-to-shoulder, while the dwarf to the right of them was shunned and made as distant as possible, and Amon saw this as an opportunity.

With cunning grace and one anxious heartbeat after another from his patron-in- crime, Amon crept behind the pair of bullmen under the height of the bar counter and used his bony elbow to jab the one on the right. He pulled back as soon as the mute minotaur turned his horned head, and Jack’s heart stopped. Worries ran through his head like what Amon would do if he was caught, if the catperson had a weapon, and whether

Jack could save him. The thief crouched down and started to back away, only to flop over on the ground on his belly and grin at the traveler. Jack almost leapt up and grabbed the foolish cat before he realized that all eyes were on the minotaur’s bloodshot gaze.

The bullman reached his hairy right hand out and seized the tough-skinned dwarf’s tankard by the cup. He slammed the metal against the tavern floor and only glared at his short assailant as the thirtieth refill spilled, staining the floorboards and pooling between them like sticky blood. In a burst of athletic rage, the short mountain man became a blur of gray as he stood on top of his stool and leapt up at the minotaur. He found his footing on each broad shoulder and started to bang on his hairy head and pull on his dusty white horns. The minotaur stood and bellowed an incomprehensible yell as his friend tried to pull the muscled man off of him, to no avail.

Each powder-keg rivalry along the thin line of that bar was sparked in a moment, and Jack realized that Amon was searching for an inlaid monster prejudice to exploit,

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using the whole scene as an excuse to find the smallest tear in an otherwise peaceful life.

The minotaur’s rage spurred an orc to grapple with a slime, and the slime formed into barbaric battle armor with harder spikes than Jack expected from a liquid being. The original conflict that led to unnatural silence was forgotten and the energy of protest was channeled into blows. Even a quiet cyclops Jack had not noticed at the other end of the bar had picked up a chair and was steadying himself to throw the flimsy wood at the minotaur who still had a dwarf perched on his shoulders.

The traveler was still itching to run out the door, but he watched anyway, hoping for a sign of Amon’s return. The catperson had disappeared as soon as the dwarf made his move. Jack sighed to himself and put a hand to his forehead as he lamented his choice in companions. The bet was not any of his worry, as he needed a place to unload the monster-coin, but a sudden valley of sober clarity led him to question his attraction to the thief in the first place. What he felt was sudden, irrational, and unprecedented, and though his heart thumped when he thought of the rogue’s fanged smile, he could not place why.

As he watched the combat devoid of honor develop in front of him, he noticed

Leyla instructing the rabbit girl to take cover under the counter while the lamia tied her long hair into a ponytail. She then casually cracked her knuckles, grabbed the shoulder of the muscular cyclops man, and used him as leverage to leap over the bar and join the fray. Jack fixated on her smile, savage and inconsiderate, but a sweep of the scene informed him that everyone had the same idea: the fight was not an exception, or a rare occurrence, or an unfortunate coincidence. Beating the tar out of each other seemed the

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norm for nightly tavern recreation, causing Jack to question everything he knew about monsters. They were having fun.

However, the fun seemed to stop when the Snake made her appearance. Her thick tail and thick arms made quick work of just about everyone except the bullmen and their new dwarven acquaintance. She wrapped the tip of her scaly appendage around one minotaur’s leg and pushed the advantage in order to throw him backwards to the ground, making a loud crashing noise and cracking a few of the floorboards in. Jack only saw an upturned white horn when Amon suddenly reappeared by his side carrying a wine bottle in each hand.

“I got two!” He exclaimed. He was beaming, his ears were sticking straight up, and his tail was waving faster than a yapping dog’s. He smacked a few tables as he led

Jack out of the building and into the deep night.

The town of Onmu could never have lasted dozens of years, and had the village been tested by the weather, disaster, and combat of a normal human city, every tent and home would have been pummeled into dust in the wind. However, Jack knew that the briefest sparks sometimes shone the brightest.

He had not seen Onmu at dark since he entered the tavern as early as possible, so stepping out into the middle of the town square in the moonlit dark shocked him more than anything he had seen inside.

The penitent quiet preceding the bar brawl seemed even more unnatural as Jack discovered the marketplace was awake, alive, and converted into a glorious display the man could have never seen in a human town. As the wanderer beheld the bright glowing

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paper lanterns and illusionary fountain in the center of the square, his mind could only rationalize the sight through the incomprehensible mastery of mages and the magic- inclined. Each billowing cloth that made Onmu’s communal roof had luminescent thread that captured each ray of moonlight and glowed dimly down onto the unpaved paths.

The patchwork mismatch he had seen before was now bundled into a rainbow quilt that filled the sky and swayed gently in sudden cold wind. He watched fairy greens and berry blues while the fake fountain bubbled in his ears, though a sudden tug low on his shirt forced him out of the aesthetic trance he found himself slipping into.

“Guess you haven’t seen the nightlife, then.” Amon gave the wanderer a sad smile as he walked towards the residential area, quick in his small leather shoes. “I’m sorry, but we’ve gotta get out of here. If I wasn’t a thief I would have shown you around.” He spoke and moved with the energy of a child given free reign of the summertime. He was ecstatic in his victory so the apology rang hollow to Jack.

The traveler smirked back at him. “Guess it is my fault that I decided to listen to a rascal like you.” Amon sighed and scratched behind one of his ears. The thief picked up the pace.

Jack was suddenly grateful for the interruption at the bar, because he felt clear- headed and sober. He wondered if that was because of the excitement of the brawl, the charm of the catperson, or the fact he had only ordered one beer that he nursed and drank slowly over the course of a few hours. The criminal pair did not make their guilt obvious by sprinting out of the town. Rather, by Amon’s lead, Jack took on a happy gamble that

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befit the appearance of two new drunken friends exiting the tavern after rousing conversation.

Amon looked over at Jack and spoke after the human caught up and matched his pace. “If someone sees us, they might think we’re on our way to some one-night fun.

Does that bother you?” He twisted his mouth into a mischievous little smile as his tail waved. The cat burglar eagerly awaited a response, as if he had set a delightful trap for his favorite mouse.

Jack weighed his options carefully before responding. “No, I do not mind. But,” he continued, “I think it makes for a good cover if anyone comes after us.”

Amon snapped his fingers approvingly and pointed at the traveler. “That’s what I meant.” He slumped his shoulders and slowed down slightly. “I did see you blush so I hope you aren’t expecting anything. I want to get out of this town. I think Erik, the orc guy, was starting to get suspicious.” The catperson ran another hand through his hair and looked towards the line of fabric houses to his right. His eyes lingered on the white walls interrupted by faded greens and the occasional home stained with red streams like blood or tears.

After a few minutes of friendly silence, Amon stopped his new friend with a hand and motioned for him to stay quiet as he retreated behind one of the houses and gathered a small sack from a hidden niche. There was a great rock that he had to push to get to his belongings, and he moved the obstacle with ease. Jack was impressed, but he spent the time thinking of what to talk about with him to stay with him longer. He was concerned that this would be the last meeting they ever had, as the life of a wanderer always went.

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He thought back to the obvious, to the core of their meeting and what set them apart from the others in Onmu, and when the cat burglar came back he had stored one bottle in his bag while the other was open in his hand.

“Here, drink some,” he offered to Jack. The wine bottle was heavy but clearly not full, and the traveler was suddenly concerned that Amon had gone behind a house and drank himself silly. The catperson noticed and replied in a disapproving sneer. “I’m not that fun-loving, big guy. The thing was already open. I botched it… or did I?” The question did not want for an answer.

Jack struggled with the two paths before him: should he stay sober so he can appreciate Amon’s company and remember him fully come the morning, or will the drink loosen up his unused tongue and help him make a lasting connection? The cat’s toothy grin answered for him, as he knew he could not disappoint the supposed ex-thief. He angled the bottle up to the moon and choked down a bitter draft, cursing his boldness.

Satisfied with the wanderer’s gulp, the thief continued to walk east down the path of residential housing. The further away from the town they walked, the slower their pace, and the more clustered the colorful tent-like homes became. The free wind that Jack knew from fields and northern riverbanks visited them, giving them both a chill and scattering their hair. Jack pushed his shaggy locks out of his face and Amon smoothed down the short dark hair between his ears that stuck up to the sky.

When the lights of Onmu were well and truly behind them, and all that was between them was the dim white shine provided by the moon, Amon spoke in a low, serious tone not befitting his burgling façade. “Why were you in that town, anyway?” His

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tail drooped, and his steps fit his stature. The fear of being captured had vanished and the absence was filled with a vague loneliness. The party was long behind them.

“I’m looking for somewhere to live,” Jack blurted, egged on by the intermittent swigs of wine he had been taking since Amon handed him the bottle. He handed the glass over to the thief between swallows. “How about you?”

The dark blue sky above them colored his dry laugh. “The same. I don’t think

Onmu’s the place for me, especially not now. I’m just a stray cat, I guess.” He placed his hands on his hips and tried to smile. “I hope I didn’t mess with your journey.” Jack could not think of what to say to that.

They had passed the final house: an ominous black wood cabin that seemed to both of the men to have red flame inside the windows. Beyond that, the human noted a great sloped hill and he suddenly felt dizzy, his step swaying back and forth uncomfortably. “Would you like… to look at the stars with me?” He offered to the thief, knowing he could hardly walk any farther that night.

Amon nodded. They walked towards the hill, draining the bottle together, and when they crested the sea of grass painted blue by the moonlight, Jack retrieved a blanket from his pack and made a place to sit on the dewy ground. The catperson laid on his side like Jack had seen ladies do, and the human made himself comfortable by stretching out his legs and resting his head in his hands. They both stared up at the dots in the sky, only thinking of what was on the ground.

Jack was struck with an intense desire to reach out and touch the cat burglar. He was closer than he had ever been in the tavern, and his vulnerability from admitting he

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was a stray like Jack had moved into his heart and rested there, like a signpost proving that Amon was someone to trust and hold on to. He held himself back, as the wine was making him sweat and he knew his judgment was off. Still, something in him yearned to touch the cat’s hair, thinking of the thin, dark mass as soft and warm to the touch.

“Didya like your time in our monster town?” Amon asked lazily, forgetting the stars.

“It’s the first town I’ve been to that I didn’t feel like leaving a few moments after entering,” Jack said, rushed and awkward. “I wanted to stay.”

“But you didn’t,” Amon finished. “Why’s that?”

“Because I wanted to talk to you. I was curious,” Jack managed with a blush. His lips were looser than they had been in years. He could not recall the last time he had spoken honestly like this.

Amon rolled over and spread out his legs, bracing himself with his hands splayed to his sides. He looked over at Jack with shining, half-shut eyes, and spoke in quiet concentration. “Say, would you like to…” He stopped himself, and looked away towards the rolling slope of the hill that led away to the north, towards the river and the outskirts of Isah. “I should tell you how I ended up here, huh?”

Jack looked over. His smile was wide and nonchalant, as if he never noticed the forsaken offer. “I would like that. Tell me your story.”

“I used to live in an awful town where men made houses out of white brick and worshipped unicorns,” he began. His tone was lethargic, as if that was the lowest point of the story. “But I knew they weren’t honest. They couldn’t even see the unicorns. I think

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there was only one time someone found one, but they ran away.” He continued angrily.

“So I knew I couldn’t stay. I gathered everything I owned and traveled to the northeast, across the Great River and to the deserts that covered everything.”

“Describe them to me,” Jack interjected with a strange look on his face. His eyes were open, and he was staring at the catperson enthusiastically.

“Oh, okay.” Amon answered awkwardly, losing his flow in memory and time.

“They were bigger than the ocean, and yellower than corn. You could walk for days and get nothin’ but burnt paws, but you could sometimes see things in the distance, buildings and lakes and every once in a while you could hope that there was something better.

Everything was better than that desert, you know, so it wasn’t that hard to find a good place.” He explained, struggling to find words to describe his experience.

“Would you ever go back?” Jack inquired. The thief shook his head.

“I stayed for too long, and that’s how I became a thief. Some other beastpeople were struggling in a village so I helped ‘em out and eventually I had followers and friends I couldn’t trust. One burglar is fine, like my own self, but when in the company of thieves…” he trailed off, knowing that Jack would get his meaning.

“You’re good company, though.” Jack said softly. Amon noticed his head nodding every so often, like the lilt of a flower in the wind.

“I know,” he said with a grin. “I’m charming and clever and good with my hands.

I’m looking for something and I’ll find it. It just… gets lonely sometimes.” He curled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his slender arms around them. His downturned head hid wet eyes and words he could not dare to say aloud.

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Jack carefully placed a hand on the catperson’s shoulder to remind him of their newfound bond. “I understand. The road is cruel, especially when you leave places you know.” He patted Amon a few times before withdrawing his arm, not wanting to press his luck or cause a misunderstanding. “I have been out walking for so many seasons that I’ve lost count, but I was not looking for anything the first score. Now that I know that I want to settle down, I think I can manage to find a home.” He gazed up at the moon and thought about the light. The human raised the wine bottle in a pointless toast. “To the both of us, finding a home.” He drank and swallowed, then handed the glass over to the thief. Amon graciously sipped at the pilfered drink, though there was almost nothing left.

“Amon, I don’t want to leave your company.” The man said after a few graceful moments of silence. “If you’re heading the same way as I am, we can travel together. I do not have much to offer, but my companionship should be enough.”

“I’m going to Bhunir,” the catperson said with newfound vigor. “That trashy town of smoke and mirrors seems like the next nicest place I could live in. At least there are other monsters and I can live loudly.”

“Where is it? I could also go.” Jack said, scrambling for some way to stay with him longer. He knew he had planned on meeting with the Lady of the Forest in Nora’s

Burg, but if Bhunir was not far, he could make a detour.

“Far to the southeast, through Ferva or over the river. I’m sorry,” Amon mumbled with his eyes turned to the many stars dotting the sky. “But I can’t go with you, not now.

I need to meet some people and think about… things.” Jack noticed that he seemed so little like the braggart thief he had met at the Snakehole. He seemed soft, and sensitive to

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the great motions of his mind, like a stray sadness would pull him down into depression.

He was far from the human’s grasp now, and he felt helpless to save him.

“Could we promise to meet each other again?” Jack said while stumbling on the start of the sentence. Amon watched him from the side, not wanting to dedicate to the look too early. “I’ve been charmed by you, you know. I need a reason to believe you won’t fly away like a fairy in a dream.” He gave his best smile and the cat smiled back.

“Of course!” The rascal pumped his fist and stood, reaching for his bag. “Here, take this.” He ceremoniously handed the second wine bottle to Jack with both hands.

“Something to remember me by, and a drink to share when we meet again. Because we will meet again.” He placed his hands on his hips and smiled widely, regaining some of the vigor he showed before.

“Thank you, Amon.” Jack said with a sincere and open heart, feeling a rush he had not thought about in years as he looked at the catperson’s fluffy, perked-up ears.

“No problem, Jack.” Amon replied in a tone that promised more good-natured wit than could be used up in one night. “Now, let’s enjoy the sky together, before we leave knowing we have someone who will think about us in our darkest hours.”

Jack thought that what Amon said was beautiful, and he reflected on everything he had found in Onmu. As he reclined under the stars that never seemed brighter, he admired Amon’s energy, bold confidence, and the depth of a man who’s lived a few lifetimes. The rascally rogue was perhaps no older than him, yet there was so much more to learn than the average worker drinking at the bar.

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There was something in that last sentiment shared between them that reminded

Jack of a wise and quiet priest. As he closed his eyes and dozed in the cold bloom of autumn, he wished that in the morning, Amon would still be lying beside him. But he knew somehow that he would be alone again.

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Chapter 4: Nora’s Burg

As the cold breeze woke him with a start, Jack understood that he was well and truly alone. The expensive wine bottle was placed as if in a comfortable nest in the blanket beside him, as if he had slept with glass rather than next to a man he was becoming fond of. Leaving a town behind and heading to the next always used to be exciting for the wanderer, but with each town put behind him he only wanted to hang up his cloak and give up on travel. He was a fisherman without an anchor, drifting in the careless waves of a world that would never tell him exactly what to do. There could only be vague inklings, wisps of wind that would push him north, south, east, or west. Now, the only place to go was Nora’s Burg, where a strange woman awaited him.

He wrapped the bottle in the blanket carefully and stored the new acquisition in his pack. The new weight made his load seem all the heavier, as the blanket normally took up very little space. He walked slowly, not only because of the sack hanging low on his back, but because of the emptiness he felt in his heart at losing a friend to travel. He wondered if anyone else felt that way when he left them behind, be they the gnome he drank with or Ed the guard. Did I fill a hole for someone? Does living permanently mean becoming impossible to replace? He pondered as he started to walk towards the east, no path marking his trail or helping him along the way.

Between brooding thoughts of the thief’s charming tail, Jack thought on Nora’s

Burg and what he knew about the place. He had no intentions of actually remaining there, since there were horrible rumors of scams, gamblers, mountebanks, and usurers, which

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were one and the same in his mind. At many towns, he had to avoid that reputation by seeming as friendly and as willing to spend coins as he could. He had to maintain a polite aloofness, a willingness to engage in some rituals, some closeness, but never enough as to seem anything but altruistic. A long time spent at the Burg without gaining entrance to the halls of the scholar’s tower meant a life of debauchery, and not the exciting kind that

Jack occasionally liked to indulge in, nights that contained only drinking and passion.

He had heard of an extreme division at Nora’s Burg between clever, considerate scholars and the parasites who abused their kindness, but he supposed he had just gambled and drank with a rogue the night before, so he was more inclined to trust the open-handed parasites over the sages with gold chains barring their doors. Jack knew that this separation was much more than the wealth that trickled down the main road of

Entown like a dammed stream, and so he tempered his expectations, hoping to find the

Lady and make a quick exit from the place.

Jack walked for hours and found nothing but dry brown plains with rocks strewn about, rolling nowhere. He hoped to see brown roofs on the horizon with every passing minute, because making camp alone in those fields meant confronting the thoughts that boiled in his mind.

When the sky grew dark and the wanderer tripped on a stone smaller than his shoes were tall, he set up his tent and slept inside. Instead of confronting anything, his night was dark and quiet, only disturbed by the steady, pulsing memory of a soft hand nestled in his own.

- - -

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The traveler was dearly missing the color of Onmu when he crested a hill and the sight of mud-brown buildings rose in the valley in front of him. Nora’s Burg looked like a glossy puddle of post-rain refuse all gathered around wide gray spires. Everything grew out from what Jack knew was Nora’s Library, a great collection of scholars who locked themselves up with books and did research on all the unsettling forces of Isah. At times they debated politics and released strange articles that even reached Jack’s home and told of wars, violence, and the occasional peace. Their most recent communication was about the unveiling that had happened prior to Jack’s journey, and many distant townsfolk were excited to find that the scholars who never lived in ramshackle huts or dripping caves supported those who left them for newly-built houses and brighter futures.

A merchant who hid tufts of fur inside heavy leather gloves and a wide-brimmed hat read the paper to Jack, and that was when he became curious of monsters and monster life. He never knew that there was more than just the odd witch in the woods who stirred green potions that smelled like beer but three times worse. The merchant told a few stories about cat-eared tribes walking the desert in heavy robes and huge women with red and blue skin who wore skirts made of animal skins and tore down trees with their hands… only after Jack bought some wares from him, of course.

Looking at the Burg, Jack understood that he would not be entering the Library or thanking the men inside for opening his eyes to the world. Even if he had the money, reputation, or time to gain access into the locked and heavily guarded gates, he could have never walked through the great mass of hastily-constructed buildings around the gray stone towers without getting robbed or distracted. Even still an hour’s walk away

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from the edge of town he could see hundreds of villagers walking, sprinting, trading, and living in the orange light of the late morning sun.

Jack walked down the hill and found a path he had not noticed before. As he got closer to the edge of town, unguarded except by a low fence broken in areas, he heard barks and shouts from those setting up or visiting the noontime marketplace. He was reminded of an anthill, busy with so many workers. He heard vibrant life in the yells, no matter how mundane their concerns were at the moment. He made up his mind to at least walk the streets of Nora’s Burg once, just to ensure that he was not making a mistake by passing through so quickly.

He made his way into the village surrounding the Library without being noticed or acknowledged. There were no guards, and the fence that rose to his ankle was marked with so many holes that he slipped right through. The streets were dirty and marked with refuse but Jack’s boots found stone and even his worn feet felt some comfort at the familiar sensation. He followed the echoing sounds of merchants calling out their wares.

He caught the sharp syllables of crunchy fruits he liked and cold beer that sang to his memories of Onmu and Entown, as far away as the riverside town was then. However, as he listened carefully he started to notice the predominant products to trade: paper, ink, and quills.

Jack could not possibly imagine who they were selling to, for every scholar at the

Library had locked themselves in so tight that some say a dragon could not free them.

Any relevant goods had to be provided directly through the famous white-armed guards, the Covers. He had his suspicions that those tales were true, as no guards he had met had

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ever been that reliable, but there was no conceivable way that the scholars would leave the Library to buy wares in that scummy marketplace.

His curiosity was piqued by the scenario, and now he needed to know who threw their garbage carelessly into alleys and also wrote with cheap quills on pulpy paper. A spring returned to his step as the shouts became louder, until he finally broke through and found a cross in the road. To both sides was a deep alley shaded by dark cloths hanging between wooden roofs. There were merchants standing behind stalls bursting with food, clothing, and scholarly supplies. The stands were flimsy, but the grime on each splintery wood plank informed Jack that they had been standing in that alley for years.

There were people wandering through the alley and Jack joined them as naturally as possible, not latching onto any particular stand or looking too interested as to avoid the attention of the man behind each one. Had he looked harder at the people in front of him he would have noticed strange ears poking and stretching the top of their hoods and tails whipping from behind baggy pants, but he was only stealing glances at the stands, their inventory, and who was actually buying things. The wanderer had no money left from the bet he made with Amon, and the monster town was so close that he was still comfortable with the amount of supplies he had in his pack.

He followed the merchants’ alley for three more sunny crossroads, keeping a keen eye on each stand all along the way. Once his eagle-eyed trance stopped and he noticed a quiet settle around him, he realized that the alley was gone and in front of him was a giant stone wall with iron spikes piercing the sky above him. While the iron was rough and the stone was discolored and mismatched, the structure was taller than Jack and

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endlessly wide. Even some of the orcs and minotaurs in Onmu would have only been eye-level with the tips of the spikes, and climbing over would have been practically impossible, even for them. The only monster Jack pictured getting through was the amorphous slimes who could just slip through one of the cracks, or climb between the spikes.

The traveler looked to his right and left, finding that the walls twisted around the tall gray towers of the Library in a circle, and so he picked the left path and began to follow. This path was tended wonderfully, and there was no refuse against the wall. To

Jack’s left was the sides of wood buildings close to falling. They were the oldest he had seen, so he guessed the town had formed after and because of the Library, rather than the other way around. He remembered an old mage saying the Library was surrounded by blood-sucking parasites, and he laughed at the thought… though some of the shacks seemed ready to burst like a tick too full of blood.

After two minutes of walking, he found a gate with two guards remarkably unlike what he pictured in his childhood imagination. Instead of great greaves of white metal, they were wearing thick leather gloves with white patches throughout. They looked more moldy than white, as there were still awkward splotches of their original dark brown. All of their armor was like this, and for arms they had short swords hooked to their belts.

They were standing in lazy poses and even in the street in front of them, there was nobody except one dark figure.

The guard closest to Jack was speaking loudly at a woman with long, raven-black hair. The shine of her knee-length braid reminded him greatly of the woman he had met,

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dancing like a fool in the forests near Ofa. She was nodding her head rapidly as the gruff soldier-like guard spoke slowly in her direction. He would not meet her eyes and instead stared straight over her like a man keeping his vigil. Jack thought he could see her squirming in her dark green robe, likely enraged at the rudeness the man was showing her.

For a second, Jack truly thought the woman was just a newcomer vying for entrance into the Library, but he soon understood that she truly was the lady of the forest whom he had promised to meet in Nora’s Burg. He had not thought about her in a fortnight, as everything with the fairies, the witch, and Amon had thrust her out of his thoughts. Perhaps ignorance was bliss, he thought as he looked for an alley to duck behind to avoid whatever strange altercation the lady would start. However, he had drawn close enough to hear what they were saying without catching either party’s attention, so he found a wooden wall to lean against and listened carefully to their conversation.

“So, you don’t let anyone in for anything? You slip things in through supply- holes?” The lady asked, throwing her words out so quickly Jack was surprised that she did not stumble or bite her tongue. He realized she was excited, not insulted, and her movement was scholarly in nature. For the most part, anyway.

“That’s right, miss. The wise men of Nora’s Library only do business with the best and we make sure that’s the case.” The guard’s voice reminded Jack of Dola, though this man was younger and had many more scars. He would not have been surprised if the

Covers were made of mercenaries who had been paid enough to stay in the Burg forever.

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“That’s wonderful. Do you live behind the gates or in the town?” Jack could not see them directly, but he pictured the lady writing down every word the man said with a scribe’s passion. He was surprised that she was asking all of this in broad daylight, at the very gates the man was guarding. He thought of these conversations as best held in bars, sometime after sunset.

The white-armed man scoffed at the question. “We have housing inside the premises. That’s where Nora’s Burg is, after all.” He laced his words with superiority, as if the wooden shacks he stared at all day did not even exist. Jack felt his shoulders rise in tense anger, and he wondered where those emotions had come from. The wanderer suddenly wondered what those men thought of monsters, and how they had taken the missive released many years ago.

“Thank you for the help. Maybe someday they will let me in.” She stated with a sigh, and they both laughed. Jack figured they had different reasons for doing so. The guard told her to be on her way, and she quickly started walking towards her right, making a beeline towards Jack. He straightened out his back with a start and wondered if he should try to evade her, but he could not think of an excuse if he got caught. The wanderer stood there, dirtied by the shack’s wall, as the woman stared at him with her fierce green eyes.

She smiled, twisted and mirthful, before she spoke quietly to the man. “Hello

Jack. Found a home yet, or are you still searching?” The lady was holding her arms under her cloak as if she were cold. Though clouds gathered in the sky, Jack was comfortable as

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he was, cloak still wrapped up in his pack like a blanket, which was how he used the cloth.

“Still looking. I’m not sure I have made any progress at all,” he responded, surprised at how friendly she was acting since they had only met once before.

“You did go to every town I told you to, right?” She smirked. “Or did you have a bad time in Onmu? I told you to stay away, and head straight here…” The dark-haired woman shook her head like a disappointed mother. “At least listen to the ones who give you directions…”

“No, actually.” Jack strongly replied. He felt the need to defend Onmu, to explain the beautiful nighttime and the strange happiness of the bar brawl, but the atmosphere of the Burg in the sun that exposed all the dirt and disorder stopped his words before they came out. “I liked Onmu,” was all he ended up saying then.

“Well, you’re different from me, then. I’m still doing some studying of my own here. I think I will go to the inn and rest for a while, if you’ll join me?” She held out her hand like a countess asking for a dance. Jack disregarded her pale palm and nodded his head.

“I wouldn’t mind sitting and having a drink,” he said. She brought her arm back to her side with a huff and led the way down the alley Jack chose to stand beside. She walked nimbly through the covered backstreets, took quick corners, and found shortcuts that Jack never imagined could lead anywhere. Her braid shook and danced from side to side as she swayed through dusty alleys and past glittering stands with apples and stored

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ink. The lady slowed down to wave at a few shopkeepers who smiled and shouted in greeting, but she was always moving forward towards the inn.

The place she was staying in was quiet and practically empty besides a few curly- haired young women sitting in a corner and writing on thick paper. The common room was exactly what Jack had expected out of every town he had been in before. While he noticed some nails sticking out of the chair he chose to sit on across from the lady, and the planks were thinner than he would have been comfortable with, the place was perfectly acceptable as far as living spaces go.

The lady sat with her legs closed and clasped her hands in her lap. “So, would you like to hear about Nora’s Burg, considering it’s the next stop on your quest for a home?”

She offered, still smiling crudely despite her elegant pose.

“Sure, though I think I’ve already made my decision,” Jack replied. He rested his hands on his knees, wary of the lady and the place around him.

She leaned in, prepared to impart great wisdom. Her eyes seemed to flash as the fire in the hearth reflected in the green. “Everyone here is a scholar.” She paused for dramatic effect. “The buyers, the sellers, even some of the guards. The innkeepers and the bartenders, the merchants, and the beggars. Everyone who lives here is a student, mage, or scholar.” She waited longer, as if expecting a gasp from her captive audience.

“That’s strange, but not the strangest thing that’s happened to me recently.” Jack said. The lady frowned and rested her chin on a raised hand.

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“It’s not strange or interesting to you that all of these people are gathered for one purpose, and one purpose alone? That a land of study is all that matters to them, the only place they want to live?” The lady replied, shocked and enthused.

“They live in a constant hunt for their life’s goal, much like a wanderer, but now that they’ve found their place, they still struggle.” The lady continued, picking up speed as she explained the situation. “The search never ended. They’re still working, and I don’t think they will ever stop.” She rested her chin on her hands and sighed.

“Do you like them?” Jack said, unsure of what to do with the information she was giving. He was not used to information brokers getting distracted by personal emotions.

The lady smiled, dreamy and wide, as she pulled her braid into her hands and started to play with the long, dark strands. “Yes. I think they’re living great lives in their own way. They found a home, did they not?” She narrowed her canopy-colored eyes at the traveler, calling him out as easily as she breathed.

Jack had never felt so far away from other people. Even the rough table between the two of them seemed three days’ walk, and any goal beyond the lady was impossible on foot. He sat slack in his chair, limp like a mannequin without strings to control. “I guess…” Jack mumbled, and the lady was not impressed.

“Do you think you could find a place like this? What kind of home are you looking for, anyway?” Her question was pointed to a vital blind spot in Jack’s philosophy. He had wandered for so long that he hardly understood the concept of settling down anymore.

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“Umm…” The man fumbled with his words as he thought of an answer. The lady patiently watched. “I want to live… where people smile and drink beer together at night.”

He said with finality, hoping to himself that the naïve wish would placate the sharp- tongued lady.

She pursed her lips and stared only at a knot that had formed in her braid. “That’s anywhere, Jack. Be more specific.”

“Well… I want to live in a town where everyone takes care of each other. You know your neighbor’s names, and all that.” He nervously picked dirt from under his fingernails under the table. Jack knew the fidgeting meant he was done for in the face of such a vicious foe.

“Are you religious?” The lady of the forest said.

“Not especially,” Jack responded.

“Then you want to be a farmer,” the lady replied.

“Not my first choice,” Jack retorted.

The black-haired woman sighed with the exasperation of a countess resorting to execution. “How am I meant to guide you if you have no idea where you want to go?”

She said, concerned and confused by the man she once thought to toy with.

Jack sat quietly and considered the situation. He let the silence lay, not because he was sinking into despair or delaying the inevitable failure of his journey, but because of an inner conflict he hardly knew existed. The road had become a home to him, and now he did not know how to replace the pleasures of walking and learning. He would never have admitted this to the lady, and then started to come up with a new direction for the

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conversation to move. “How am I supposed to know what my home will look like? Is it a gut feeling, like falling in love?”

The lady let her hair fall back to her shoulder in exasperation. “This is the last time I help men I hardly know… can you tell me anything about where you would like to live? How about the people you want to live with? Are they scholars, farmers, maybe even…” she paused, almost refusing to spit out the word, “monsters?”

Jack felt warm relief move through him as he settled on the next topic. Neighbors and friends from the past flashed in his mind. He thought of Bin, who was courageous and loyal in the face of mysterious fear. He considered going to taverns with Ed and drinking the night away before being chewed out by his wife. Then he remembered

Amon, the one he had been trying to forget for a day, who rushed into his thoughts like a river in rain.

“Well,” Jack started, “I spent a great evening in Onmu the other day. I met a person there who was kind and a bit of a rogue, and we drank wine together under the stars.” He felt some heat rise to his cheeks as he gave the story. “I guess he was the kind of person I would want to live with. Nice, but never taken advantage of. Strange, but can still appreciate beer and lights at night.” The man rubbed his chin and looked dreamy at the ceiling as he recounted his time with the thief.

The lady’s eyes opened wide and she straightened her back suddenly, rocking her splintery chair and shaking the table an inch off from the resting place. After the shock that Jack never noticed subsided, she hunched down and narrowed her green eyes at the

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man as if suspicious or plotting. “You spent the night with a roguish man, then?” She wrung her hands and smiled, making pink points on each of her pale cheeks.

“Um, yes. I wouldn’t say it that way, but I guess I did. He was nice, he even gave me a bottle of wine for when we meet again…” Jack trailed off as he started to question the lady’s strange change in posture and pose.

“You would like to live with this man, then? If he’s a monster, I’ll excuse him for a moment, since he seems to have a good handle on friendship.” She emphasized friendship as if the concept was a secretive and taboo ritual only a few knew how to exploit. “But did you ask where he was going? What he was doing with his life?” She offered each question like a Lord’s steward catching his master’s blind spots.

“Yes, he was heading to Bhunir. I would like to go there myself, but I promised I would meet you first.” Jack’s answers were lackadaisical. He did not want to think about his separation from Amon. There were still questions he needed to ask the catperson, and revelations he guessed were buried somewhere in their friendship. The embers from when he had laid side by side with the slim man were burning dimly, and if they were put out, the wanderer thought he might truly fall into despair.

“Well, Bhunir is far from here, but I can give you directions, so you must head there now. First, go to Clo and—”

“Wait, why now?” Jack interrupted with lazy indignation. “I thought you might lead me to other interesting towns around here before I would go to Bhunir. It’s so far away, even across the river, and the only decent place to pass is Ferva.” He glared at the confident information broker as if she had turned heel and betrayed his trust.

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“Oh, Jack, you don’t understand.” She said with a smug smile. “Home sometimes isn’t about where you build your house or where you sleep at night. Just like me, you can find a place to live on the road, with good friends you can rely on. I find happiness in learning about every different town I pass through, but you might find your joy with this rogue lad.” She was beaming with knowledge that would remain forbidden to Jack. She relished in the opportunity to hold this over the man’s head, though if he did not come to a reasonable conclusion in the next hour, she was willing to let everything out.

“You say this, but I hardly know him besides his name. He was a thief once and I had a good time with him one evening, how could that be home?” He placed his hands on the table and realized he had begun negotiating. He carefully watched for the enigmatic wanderer woman’s next move.

“Nonsense. One night can be enough to know that you like someone. As for the information, that can be helped. What was his name? Where did he live?” With her glib words, she displayed the cunning and confidence that led to her having so much information on the land of Isah. Jack was suddenly struck with the worry of making an enemy out of the lady, as she might have divined even his hometown and origin.

“H-his name is Amon, and I’m not sure where he lives. I met him in Onmu, but he was an outsider like me. Another person searching for a home.” He replied honestly with the slow understanding that the lady would get all the information she could out of him in whatever method she needed.

“Really? Did he give no indication of where he lives? Is he a nomad like you?”

The lady narrowed her eyes comfortably, and her face assumed an unimpressed frown.

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Her cheeks suddenly appeared wrinkled and worn to Jack, but not as if she was an old woman. To him, the shadows and creases of her visage showed exhaustion deeper than missing sleep every other night. She was overworked, but he made no comment, as even the traveler had greater tact than to insult her directly.

“Well…” he thought through the conversations they had, and between the hazy fogs of drunken memory he realized he had been given a clue by the sly catperson.

“That’s right, he said something about unicorns. Strange, I’ve only ever heard of them in stories. Are there any—”

He was cut off by a fist slamming on the table. “Clo!” The lady shouted, startling one of the curly-haired women in the corner and causing a flurry of curses directed at a splatter of ink.

“Is Clo a town?” Jack said after reeling from the outburst.

“It’s a village in a forest south of here, maybe a bit west.” The lady was speaking with an energy that reminded Jack of musicians playing lutes during particularly rowdy tunes. “They have odd white stone buildings and worship unicorns. It’s the only place I know in Isah that has any myth related to the beasts, but I don’t think they’re real,” she added.

“Then, should I go there?” Jack asked, still ignorant of her intent in guiding him to closed-off Clo.

“Have you ever read a book- no, ignore that. You know some of the romantic plays that troupes perform?” She raised a hand as if to mime a performer’s flourish. “’O, my love! I’ll follow you back to your hometown though you told me to not follow!’

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Things like that?” Jack nodded with a questioning smile at her choice in dialogue. “You could live that out now, you know.”

The wanderer blushed red at the thought, though he had considered the same thing while walking to Nora’s Burg. He thought of catching up to the thief and rubbing his hair in intimate greeting, then sharing another night under the stars with wine and some fresh game in their bellies. He was aching for his return, even though he was so far away now.

The lady was resting her chin on her palm and gained a new pensive expression.

The man rubbed the back of his head and looked away from the table. “That’s too far…” He was embarrassed to think of Amon romantically, and he had no intentions of expressing his interest in such a theatrical manner. He thought to himself that he would be happy with a few hours of conversation over dinner, in a more comfortable environment than a tavern pre-melee.

“You have a great story ahead of you, Jack.” The lady said with a deep and serious tone of voice the traveler had not heard before. “If you won’t live it for yourself, live it for me.” She stared at the man with a dazed expression, as if she had fallen off the trail on the hunt for information into her thoughts and dreams.

“You’re making a bigger deal out of this than—” Jack deflected.

“I’m not, and you know it.” The lady interrupted. “If you like this rogue, chase him. I would have never blamed you if you had gone after him and ignored me completely.” Jack had the suspicion that she was speaking from her heart. She did not have the stone-cold visage of a negotiator at work, nor was she flagrantly enjoying the taunting and teasing of social advantage.

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“But I wouldn’t have known where to go.” Jack admitted, sheepish in the presence of the wilting woman.

“You knew Bhunir, and you said yourself that you know where Bhunir is. I can tell you where Clo is, and you can go there first, but if you ignore the rogue you met in

Onmu I will deeply regret our friendship.” Her green eyes narrowed into harsh slits. She was no longer a negotiator because compromises were no longer an option.

“Why- why do you care so much?” Jack said, unable to resist asking.

She raised her head slightly from the resting position on her hand. Her eyes opened slightly, and she smiled in sad calm. “Can’t you think for a second that I believe in goodwill to others?” She said sarcastically, and the man brightened up at the joke. “I make a living gaining and distributing information. I’m no minstrel or scholar, but I’ve learned much about Isah, more than anyone dreams of knowing. Everyone has a story, and nowadays, they’re far too sad for me to recount.”

“So you want to make a better one to tell?” Jack asked sincerely, curious as to where her explanation was headed.

“I suppose it’s like that,” she continued. “But back in Ferva, they have this wonderful tradition of hero-making.” She gained speed and excitement as she moved topics. “They travel and find problems, and then find the most capable person to solve them. By connecting with the community, with both the bad and the good, they learn and fix in strange new ways.” Suddenly, the woman beamed. “Let’s just say, I had an eye on you for that very reason.” She winked at Jack and he was taken aback.

“You intended for all this?” The traveler replied, shocked.

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“You chose the path yourself. I merely told you where you could go. There was no need for you to visit Entown or Onmu, but you did, and now you have a… shall we say, quest.” She placed sinister importance on the last word, and continued to smile. Jack shivered.

“So you want to make a hero out of me?” Jack asked again, incredulous.

“Well, romance stories are still stories, after all. I do not know if I would call their main characters heroes, but they’re lovely all the same.” She raised her head from the post she made on the table and pushed her braid back behind her. “I’m not just doing it for me. Meet up with me at a tavern sometime after you find your rogue, and tell me what happened. Then you can become one of the stories I tell everyone I come across, and you can brighten people’s days… in whichever way your story goes.” The lady’s grin twisted and she showed her teeth, in fine condition.

Jack sighed and scratched his head. “Some puppet master you are… if you weren’t helping me, I’d call you a proper mountebank.”

“Don’t call me a swindler,” the lady bantered with mock offense. “I haven’t taken anything from you but your time. Any woman could do that.” She giggled, small and strange inside the emptiness of the tavern. “My only cost is that you tell me your story someday.”

Jack nodded. Normally, he would have argued: the road to Bhunir would easily take him weeks, and while the paths around Ferva were carefully maintained by the guards of the city’s lord, he would have much rather found a convenient caravan or stopped in many more towns than the lady’s route allowed for him. The man would have

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never admitted to the anxiety he felt when he thought of passing through the desert east of Ferva, and yet he quietly agreed to the lady’s deal.

The two went out to the countless wall-bound stalls in the alleys of Nora’s Burg and the lady paid for some paper and lead for writing. After a meal in the tavern and some hours besides, the black-braided woman produced a smudged map of Isah centered on Ferva. Paths snaked out from the western side of the riverbed town towards both the

Burg and a forest labeled Clo.

“Where is Clo? That forest looks big,” Jack inquired of the lady.

“It’s in the middle,” she replied. “Don’t tell me you can’t handle some trees.”

“That wasn’t my concern. I can survive, but I don’t know if I can find a strange forest commune,” Jack said, getting upset again at the unreliable broker.

“It’s not a commune. Just go there and see, okay?” The lady said impatiently.

“You’re a traveler, right? So travel and see what you find.”

They shared a drink as soon as the sun dipped below the hills around the Burg and turned the latticed patterns of light and dark into a blanket of inky shade. The pair walked outside in the alleys with warm thoughts in their heads and admired the lanterns that started to fill the roads like permanent fireflies. The lady had her hands clasped behind her back, which to any other man may have seemed coquettish. Jack only thought she was hiding something.

“Can you tell me about your rogue, if it’s not too much to ask?” The green-eyed woman asked. “I want to know what about him moved you so much.”

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“He’s a braggart, shorter than me, yet at night he was softer than a kitten.” Jack explained Amon as a cold wind whistled through the endless alleys of Nora’s Burg. The two travelers were never stopped or questioned by any of the remaining merchants, either because everything in the Burg was closing for the night, or because the pair fit into the drab environment. “He started a bar brawl and stole wine from the back room, yet I found myself wanting to pat his head and tell him he did a good job.” The man waxed wistful as he drank deeper of the thief’s memory.

“Did he seem interested in you?” The lady spoke as her braid swayed with each step. “I love romance, but if this is one-sided I’d rather not give you false hope.” Her tone dropped low as she turned to despair and the worst possible outcome. Jack remembered, despite the pleasantries, that she was still a plotting puppet master.

“He came up to me in the tavern, and when I offered to watch the stars, he joined me right away. He didn’t ask about my life or my name, but he stayed with me as long as he could.” Jack said and rubbed his eternally itchy head. “I’m not sure if that means anything at all. He could have been swindling me all along, but he didn’t steal anything from me.” The lady mumbled something after he spoke. He would have sworn that she said “your heart,” but he left thinking about that for the road to Clo.

As the evening light dimmed and the alleys were lit with strange floating lanterns, a few of which Jack had seen in Onmu, the lady led the two of them back to her inn where they continued to talk in an empty corner. The rest of the common area was full of men and women resting in the warmth and comfort only a home can provide.

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The lady crossed her arms as she reclined in a creaky wooden chair. “I think that’s good enough reason to chase after him, if only to ask if he’s interested. I would have led you to Clo anyway. Did he, perchance, flirt with you at all?” Her lower lip curled up smugly as she focused solely on the ragged traveler. Jack started to blush, and he wished that she could see nothing in the dim light of the inn.

“What d’you mean by flirting? He wasn’t courting me or anything,” Jack feigned some innocence, and he hoped the confidence would dissuade the lady from pressing the matter further. Unfortunately for Jack, she crossed her arms and showed no intention of letting up. The two had stubborn stamina like two stags in mating season, except Jack was all bluff.

“Courting is something else entirely from flirting,” the lady assured the man. “No,

I mean, did he compliment you? Ask you to go on a journey with him? Invite you to his room for something-or-other?” She narrowed her eyes and shook her head as if abandoning her post. “I can’t say I know how men or monsters flirt with each other.

Inelegantly, I suppose.” Her voice suddenly betrayed some hint of class to Jack, like a disgraced noble.

The traveler disregarded her slip and placed a hand on his chin, stroking stubble from a typically shaved beard. “Hm… I think he did flirt with me.” He was looking away from the moss-eyed woman, but her face lit up with excitement.

“How so?” She said, containing the rush she felt at living romance vicariously.

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“Well, he called me handsome a few times, and winked a lot,” Jack admitted without understanding the weight of his words, though the lady noted his face had reddened fiercely, the ruddy skin enhanced by the flickering flames of the hearth.

“That’s promising,” the lady said while encouraging him to continue.

“He told me he was going to Bhunir, and gave me a bottle of wine to share when we meet again. Now, I would call that friendliness, but…” he trailed off as he gazed at the lady’s face. She was struck with emotion, her eyes wide and her mouth open with astonishment. “What?” The man uttered.

“He told you where he was heading, gifted you a bottle of wine, and made a vow to meet again,” she said, her tone high and her pace fast, “under the starry sky.” Jack nodded at every shocked statement. “Jack, you may be a bigger fool than I had ever imagined,” she accused.

“He did call me eager and naïve…” Jack admitted while stuck in reminiscence.

“At least now I know how to treat you.” The lady said in her deepest tone yet.

“What do you mean?” Jack said.

“I’m your quest-giver, correct?” She said with a patronizing lilt.

“S-sure,” Jack hesitantly nodded.

“Next quest: get to Clo and chase that rogue.” She announced.

“But I need to rest after my walk from Onmu—“ Jack complained.

“I’ll buy you a room for the night.” The lady stated and gazed down, her brow furrowing as if she was dealing with scum lower than dirt. “However, you must be gone before I awake in the morning, or I will carry and throw you out of Nora’s Burg myself.”

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Jack sighed, defeated. “Understood.”

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Chapter 5: Clo

Jack wrapped up his meager belongings into the same threadbare sack he had been using for years and walked out of the inn where the lady and he lodged for the night.

His mind wandered to strange places. He had stopped thinking about Amon, since now that meeting with him was his objective, he only had the road ahead of him to worry about. He was pondering the lady and her true intentions.

She was kinder than he originally judged; actually, she had rented a fine room with a double-sized featherdown bed. Jack was shocked that the ratty inn deep in the

Burg even had such lodgings, but perhaps he was wildly wrong about everything he found there. The bed was lovely, his first in weeks, and the lady was well-meaning even in her blunt words. He thought that maybe he could trust her, that he had made a friend beyond their deal. Maybe she would comfort him when this so-called quest failed.

He walked down the alleys of Nora’s Burg, unimpressed by their shabby designs and basic materials. The walls were rotting in places, and some were in ersatz and unthinkable states of toppling. At night, he did not notice any of this, and even in the evening the shade hid most blemishes. He laughed to himself as he thought about paper- thin walls in a village of scholars. Maybe they wrote on them inside their homes, marked up their house with ink and lead when they had nothing left.

After some minutes of walking in the early light of sunrise, Jack found the buildings give way to the hill he had crested when he arrived in the Burg. The houses were like a puddle gathering in a ditch, and now was the time to climb out and head

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southwest for Clo. As he walked up the hill on an unmarked but worn-down path, he felt a rush as if he were in combat with the slope. Each step raised his knee nearly to his chest as he left the valley behind. For the first time in many years, he felt a sense of purpose that allowed him to take bold, confident steps. He reminded himself that this was not a brief, single-minded sense of purpose like reaching the next town so he could rest his legs. No, he had a seed that could blossom into a larger and more beautiful purpose. He dared not think about the word that had been crossing his mind, because to him the phrase was too extreme or did not fit him. Yet, like a dam breaking after defying the elements for far too long, the word escaped: love.

The top of the hill gently sloped towards the southwest, and across the distant plains he could see the dark canopy of a forest. On his journey, he only thought about love. The thought could never be reversed, so single-minded is infatuation. And so Jack daydreamed his way to the forest of Clo, riding the high of fervent adrenaline that precedes the perilous jump.

- - -

Jack had never heard of Clo and had no reason to, as the village’s existence was hardly even known to the men and women who only traveled around Isah. He asked the lady what she knew about the place, and she had little to offer. She asked the curt woman standing at the bar what she had heard from drunk merchants and exhausted scholars, but she denied having ever heard the name. When the pair went on their evening walk, Jack chatted amiably with a layabout apprentice who had bright eyes and a trimmed beard. He only seemed a year or two younger than him.

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Once the wanderer admitted he was curious about Clo, the man sprung into excited conversation about the magic the forest held, and how important unicorns were.

The lady eventually cut the apprentice off when she called him a lazy lout, shirking his work to spread nonsense. She reassured Jack that the forest was safe and remarkably non- magic, yet he doubted that.

When the dark wall of trees loomed before him after a day of travel, he understood that there was no conceivable way that forest was not magic. Each trunk was thick at the bottom and tapered off in a cone to the plate-like canopy. There were no branches jutting out like arms except at the top, where dozens of veiny fingers stuck out and grew waxy leaves to soak up sun. The trees were all strange sizes, and some were only as tall as the man who beheld them. A few even looked comfortable to sit on, but in the face of such a strange marvel Jack could only stare open-mouthed at the sight above.

Cone trunks and senseless heights were mundane compared to the color of the leaves that shadowed the sun from Jack’s sight. They were deep blue, and reminded him of all the rivers and streams he had seen since he left his dull brown home. He had seen blue-gray trees with thousands of spiny needles that stayed on even in the worst of northern winters, and on late nights in dark forests he rubbed waxy blue-green leaves in his hands out of sheer boredom. However, he had never seen plants so blue, so azure they must have been dyed by rain, purified by tears from the sky.

Jack bent down and picked up a fallen leaf. There were not many, so the forest floor remained moist and springy. As he started to pace around the trees and inspect the evidence he acquired, his boots sank into the mud more than he was comfortable with.

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Swamps were too much for him to handle, he thought. There were so many better paths to Ferva and beyond that he would have given up if not for those blue leaves.

The leaf he picked up was blue like the rest, so he ran a finger down the light lines that made up the skeleton. Each diagonal foray into the meat of the leaf formed a round blob that jutted out like a digit on the paw of a beast. They were large, some much bigger than the adult man’s hands, but they were normal in every other respect. The man smelled them, crushed some between his fingers, and vowed to burn them later to check the smoke, but he found nothing of note. The forest was blue, and he would find no answers here: so he dove into the thick of the woods.

- - -

Jack thought that he would have a better time of things if he stumbled blindly into the forest. As his boots sucked down into the mud with horrible sounds like the smacking of a great wolf’s lips, he cursed the lady and her vague instructions, and suddenly wished he had asked more of the merchant’s apprentice. Like: how the path was, if anything was paved, and would he need more proper equipment? Fortunately, his boots held tight to his feet, and he had the strength to pull himself out, so he trudged on.

There were patches where even footholds could be found, so he tested each step carefully, making for a tedious hike. He wondered if, with better preparation, the forest of

Clo would be a delightful sightseeing location, as the trees were beautiful in their own strange way. However, the swampy footing that dragged him in with every careless step forced him to keep his eyes downward so that he never tripped and made a mess of his traveling clothes that were already damp with sweat.

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Nothing made noise in the forest, and even the wind seemed to fail to rustle up any life. The leaves were large but too sturdy to be easily ruffled by air like feathers in a breeze. Jack shivered as a chill surged through his body, seemingly coming from inside rather than out.

As the traveler walked through the muck that now covered his feet and lower legs, he noticed strange white structures in the distance, so he made them his landmark and destination. To his dismay, they were hardly markers of civilization. White stone, grainy to the touch, seemed to jut out of the ground like teeth in the gums of a massive creature.

They were wider than Jack but much shorter, about half the height of an average man. He could sit on them almost comfortably, but his legs were nearly an inch too short to rest his feet on the ground.

Fortunately, the man noticed that there were other boulders, and between them the ground was solid if still springy. As he approached the second one, he appreciated his surroundings far more than before because he did not need to carefully watch his feet so they did not get lost in the mess of black mud. He realized that the conical trees rose from the ground without obvious roots. Either they grew straight down like tubers, or they were mystical horns of plant matter never before identified or understood by scholars. He wondered what the people of Nora’s Burg would have to say about these trees, and as he did, he heard something strange.

A new wind carried the moaning of something Jack thought was a horse. At first, he remembered the gentle moos of cows from farms and pastures in the past, but then, there was no m sound to start off the noise. The sound could not be a cow. The wistful

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cry was low and hidden behind barriers of trees, so Jack knew the creature of origin was lonely. The sound was not made to be heard, only for a sense of self-satisfaction, a selfish and tragic noise that cuts through misery to amplify the feeling.

The wanderer stopped and waited to hear the moan again, so that he could follow and comfort whatever ailed the creature. He doubted the beast was man or monster, as he knew crying and man-made wails, but stranger things had happened, and he was much better at identifying the ills of sentient creatures.

Once he heard the cry, he walked towards his best-guessed origin and found a path away from the trees and the odd stones. The mud was deep and uncomfortable there, but he pressed onward with no stealth or subtlety. The mystery had grabbed him, and even though he was unfamiliar with the territory surrounding him, he knew he must not ignore what was going on. Anticipation gripped him and his heart pumped like a galloping horse inside his chest. The toil and slow slop of trying to walk in that swamp caused the tension to rise as he heard a few more moans he labeled as cries for help. He thought that he might be expecting too much, but he rationalized that away by thinking of what he could do rather than what he could not.

Eventually he spotted something that must have been making the noise, and the anticipation he felt in his chest blossomed into fear that ripped through all other emotions and stunned him completely. Thoughts in his mind twisted like the chimeras’ embrace a month before, and he stopped walking. His boots slid down into the mud only to make an awful squelch and reach the bottom.

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The creature was shaped like a horse, but with his train of thought mangled and his sight blurred by the strangeness, Jack had the sudden observation that the beast was much larger than a horse. He was around seven horse-lengths away from where the thing shambled beside a thick tree trunk, yet he felt as if he were right beside the warm flank.

Something vibrated in front of him like flies swarming, and he tried to take another step forward only to be stopped by the shuddering mist. He put a hand forward to try to dispel the cloud, and a jolt ran through him.

Jack then had a thousand thoughts at once. He thought about life, about the trees and how they had grown for thousands of years. He recalled facts and observations he had never had before, and memories from before he was born. There were squirrels turned blue from eating the leaves, and stags with sturdy antlers that curved upwards like stairs in a turret. He remembered the cool flow of blue water down his throat as he bent down to lap the drink up, but his throat was much too long, and he had the sensation of standing on all fours. The dissonance of memories that were not his shocked him out of the reminisce and brought him back to the present.

When Jack opened his eyes, the creature was no longer there. But in the shambling horse-like thing’s place, there was a thought without words, an image: a happy slice of memory in that forest when the trees bloomed and the grass was green.

Jack sat under the trunk where he saw the creature and reeled from what he saw.

Traces of the memories remained: more feelings and images than actual concrete scenes, as if the fruit of lives had gone and left only a sickly-sweet scent that would be impossible to wash out. The wanderer thought about time, and how short he had to live,

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but eventually settled on the conclusion that this forest truly was beautiful once, and would continue to be as long as these memories remained.

He leapt up and dirt showered the ground as wet clumps fell from his rear. He brushed himself off with a careless hand and decided that he wanted to tell someone about what he saw. The lady and Amon were nearest in his thoughts, and he hoped they were close physically as well. Jack pictured the black-haired woman covering her hand with her mouth as she would laugh at his fantastical encounter.

“Places like that don’t exist,” Jack’s image of the lady said. “But it’s a marvelous story besides.”

He wondered if they stopped existing somewhere along the way, if something was lost. But he forgot about that as he considered telling Amon.

“Of course it was like that back then. I never liked it, though.” His memory of the thief was crossing his arms and sighing, never daring to admit what he enjoyed about his hometown. Jack could be like that, too, if anyone ever traced him to his birthplace.

The man had started pacing the humps and hills around the thick trunks aimlessly, though in his heart he knew he held a story that had to be shared. So instead of making no progress and milling about with the information he had been given, he stomped deeper into the forest.

Jack was covered in mud with splatters like beer spilled on a bar. His trousers, once tucked neatly under his boots, were now tattered in places that seeped grimy ooze down his legs and onto his socks. The seat of his pants was tarnished by black dirt with

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specks that remained stuck to his rear, and the gloves he reserved for labor and rock- climbing turned from brown to black as he navigated through the swampy forest.

He considered glancing at the map that the lady had made him in order to confirm that he was at the right forest, but he knew that would accomplish nothing but ruining the fine paper she had written on. The traveler considered vengeance or demanding an apology from the strangely elegant woman, but these were idle thoughts born from the whims of boredom, and he would have given up his irritation to be free of the muck.

To his delight, Jack spotted more white stones that marked or perhaps caused firmer patches of ground where his boots no longer sank. They were springy, and parts seemed to him like moss on a log that slipped completely from under him as he stepped on them. However, like a knight after a reviving potion in a heroic story, Jack was soaring once he reached more solid ground. His pace quickened, and each step launched him forward, even if that confidence caused him to trip and make a mess of his previously untouched face and hair.

After the excitement wore off, Jack found the most solid ground he could stand on since he had entered the wet and uncomfortable forest. As he tested the limits of the path before him, he discovered what he would call a road. Not an obvious path where merchants led their horses, but a line that was locally understood to be safe and comfortable. Instead of daring to tread in one of the worst marshes Jack had ever seen, he could walk the same trail that men and women of Clo took daily, perhaps. He believed that walking in another’s shoes was an excellent road to understanding.

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The traveler took a few breaks and massaged his aching feet. He had exerted a great amount of effort in traversing the swampy pits, so he was becoming more exhausted than he typically did over a day of travel. These rests were short, though more than once he had to drive himself forward by reminding himself of what the lady had said, and what could await him in the hidden village. He ran a muddy finger over the outline of the expensive wine bottle in his sack, regretting that he had ever let Amon go without more concrete information on him, where he was going, and how they could meet again.

He often lamented mistakes like that, and if he had the courage or self-awareness to ask anyone else if they had the same feelings, they would have sadly nodded. Even the unflappable lady of the forest had missed connections that seized her heart and made her anxious when she rested at night, so perhaps she would have understood Jack the best.

They were both travelers: people who make their homes on the road, who live transient and uncertain lives. If they cannot create boundaries, goals, and attachments, then they will fall to loneliness and chat with their only company, which tends to be their drifting minds… or their horses.

Jack found simple comfort in the consistency of the white stones along the path.

There were no footsteps for him to trace or long meandering lines of wagon wheels, but the stones led him along the best path to keep him out of the muck. He spat a few times into the mud, not necessarily out of spite, but on the off chance that the swamp had ruined some of his clothes or boots. Simple dirt was easy enough to wash out of fabric, but the blue shade that turned the mud black and cold from above reminded the traveler that magic was present.

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He shivered as he recalled the strange creature’s presence, and the memories left in his mind. As he clutched his arms and braced against the nonexistent wind, he passed under a great white archway that may have reached double the man’s height. After he cleared the threshold, he turned around and examined the stone closely. The structure was made of three codependent stones that were taller than the average boulder as if they had been hewed out of the side of a mountain, leaving three deep scores where they were extracted. There was only one of these arches, so he simply admired the stone for a moment and moved on.

Jack was certainly lost in the forest. He understood that he needed to dive deeper into the trees that did not sway and the mud that bubbled ominously, but he would have no luck in leaving and heading towards Ferva. If there was an origin point to the path he was on, he thought the lady would have told him to make his travels easier. The charming catperson had possibly traipsed to Bhunir already, and this journey seemed to Jack to be a strange distraction rather than anything important. He was glad he had found the white stone under the blue canopy, but if he were alone and not backed by one terribly unhelpful patron, he would have ditched Clo many hours ago.

Nevertheless, the path continued on, and he walked with frequent breaks as always. He found a few curious forks in the path, but he knew the wrong directions by which tine had a strange twisting affect in the air. He did want to feel wind on his face again, as the pungent air in Clo was uncomfortably stagnant, but the unique twisting informed him that there was a creature down the road. While he was curious about the

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beast in a foolhardy way, he was tired and wanted drinks and a bed far more than answers to his questions. Mystery and conspiracy vanished in the face of natural exhaustion.

He started to notice more white stone structures along the path as the forest grew thicker and more shaded. Soon enough, the road he was following was completely darkened by the combined efforts of the blue roof and the deep shade of stone towers that rose far above Jack’s head and seemed near to collapsing. None of them arched over the road quite like the structure did before, but many of them made strange and shapes and forms to pique the man’s curiosity. Some even resembled ancient hovels, and he weaved a whimsical tale of early age barbarians living inside huts of blinding white stone.

Without hunting game or cooking fruits over open fires, nobody could have survived, but men’s fantasies tend to surpass the means in which they are given.

After enough of these empty and half-finished structured passed by without note,

Jack thought he saw a man with a shaven head along the road, perhaps five minutes’ walk away. Jack walked towards the strange figure with his hand raised, giving a traveler’s hail to whatever other strange person dared to tread this ugly yet mystical swamp. The bald man waved in return, though he kept his hand closed to his waist in a muted and unexcited fashion, as if he was a monk suppressing all emotion.

“Ho, wanderer. Welcome to Clo,” he greeted Jack in a deep and warm voice, like soup rather than roiling mud. He was wearing thick white robes that resembled the stone along the path, and Jack was loath to realize that his clothes trailed on the ground and gathered a horrible amount of the black muck. “My name is Lowell. Have you come to

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see the unicorns?” He smiled and raised his hands to his sides as if to give Jack a hug, but he only watched before placing them back at his sides.

“I will not say that was my original intention,” Jack replied, not realizing at first that his voice was hoarse from the rough morning, “but if I can, I’d like to see them. My name is Jack, and I am a wanderer.”

The man realized his greeting did not suit Jack, so he placed his hand out for a shake, and the traveler gladly returned the gesture. He seemed used to dealing with visitors, so glib was his tongue and swift his adjustments. “Well, whatever it is you need, we may have it in Clo. We have few beds, but you are free to borrow one, and I could talk your ear off all day about our history.” Lowell crossed his arms not in impatience but in the saintly posture of a monk at rest. Jack relaxed significantly at the thought of Clo being a peaceful town governed by religion and not money, though he had one concern on his mind.

“I’ll take your offer on the bed later, as the journey through the mud was… something.” Jack stopped himself from insulting the black dirt, as he was uncertain of the hamlet’s customs. They could worship the stuff for all he knew. “Do you have a tavern?”

The man whose skin was dark against his robes shook his head and his smile formed into a line. “We do not have any alcohol. We drink the forest’s water with the occasional luxury of milk from merchants who dare to bring their wagons in here.” The monk-like man motioned down the direction Jack was heading with his arms. “Shall we go into the village? We can talk on our way, and then you can rest those legs on the white

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stone we are famous for.” He smirked, erasing the strange hostility that came from the question of ale.

Jack followed, and while he was disappointed in the lack of drink and even more terrified of drinking swamp water, he was pleased to have such a gracious host. Jack was not fond of stoic monks, but Lowell’s mannerisms felt familiar and nostalgic, so the traveler let go of his typical reservations and let the man guide him. As they walked side by side, barely staying within the solid boundaries of the makeshift path, Jack realized the white stone structures that looked like huts were lining the path more frequently than before. In five minutes, the pair had reached the heart of Clo, and rough white houses sprung up from every corner. They were all different shapes and sizes, though they were all blocky and lopsided, as if giants had laid them there and they could not be moved. A few were even hidden behind thick groves of the conical trees, and they all had blue leaves strewn about, some stuck on the roofs. Jack noted two or three that were stained with blue, as if rain had pelted down, pierced the leaves, and bled them onto the white stone.

“How do you like Clo? Your look of wonder makes me think this is your first time here.” Lowell smiled as Jack rushed to retrieve his dropped jaw.

The traveler collected his thoughts and stopped to take another look around. The shady village reminded him of Ofa without the bustle and people. In fact, Clo was a ghost town. There was no hammering at a smithy, and there were no shouts from the marketplace at the town square. Indeed, there was no market at all, only stone houses stuck in the mud like pinecones set upright in endlessly shifting sand. “It’s interesting.”

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“Just interesting?” Lowell replied with a laugh. His voice was deep, and his snickers were short but punched deep. They were louder than anything around and the canopy made the sound echo. “Feel free to be honest. We didn’t come here for the blue of the leaves, you know.” He made every phrase sound like a local idiom, an in-joke for just him and Jack.

“No, I like the leaves. They’re pretty,” Jack honestly admitted. “But why are you here? What’s in this swampy forest that you couldn’t find anywhere else?”

The man with the image of a monk laughed again and let his robes drop to the ground. “I could ask the same of you. You’re covered in mud and about to collapse, and you want to know why we moved here?” He patted his belly amiably, though his frame was skinnier than Jack’s. He was older by perhaps a score of years, even though his pate looked shaved rather than naturally balding. “You remind me of my son,” Lowell said with a warm glint in his eyes.

“You know about the unicorns, yes? Or at least you’ve heard the name,” the man continued when Jack nodded. “Strange beasts nobody can describe. Mystical things that harbor immense secrets and grant wishes.” He waved his robes up and down, making a swooshing noise in the stagnant air before making fists and bringing them to his waist.

“Unicorns are none of these things. But we did all come here for them.” He smiled boldly, as a grand keeper of secrets does when he refuses to give them away.

“So, what are they?” Jack asked, incapable of resisting the temptation.

“They’re an idea. An image.” He answered, much to Jack’s dissatisfaction. “We all heard stories in our taverns, from the Burg to Entown. Hell, some of us are from

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Linbe.” He scratched his head with dirty fingernails. “Travelers like yourself told us about intimate moments with strange creatures in a blue forest and we decided to go there, on a pilgrimage of sorts.” He continued walking forward into the village.

“Do you worship the unicorns now?” Jack asked while catching up.

“No,” Lowell said simply. “We respect them. We love their forest and keep it healthy, but we do not interfere, or give them offerings.” He stopped talking, and Jack used the peace to think, but later wondered if he was watching his step as to not trip and fall into the muck on a particularly thin piece of pathway.

After a few moments of deep silence undisturbed by the whistling of wind, Jack spoke, his speech dotted with cautious pauses. “Have you… have you ever even seen one of these unicorns? Are they rare?”

“Almost all of us have never seen a unicorn,” Lowell replied loudly which startled the traveler and almost drove him backwards into the swamp. As Jack recovered, he noticed a strange stone structure that looked like a giant alehouse made of white brick.

They were heading towards the base slowly. Despite the interesting landmark, the astute

Clo resident kept his pace steady. “My son claims to have seen many, but he has never told us what he saw, and we prefer things that way. The unicorns will remain untouched and happy forever, and we will live here in perfect, ignorant harmony.” He nodded his head to himself as if affirming his own resolve.

A thought suddenly passed through Jack’s mind on a stray puff of wind. “What’s your son’s name?” He cocked his head curiously and waited for Lowell’s answer.

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“He goes by Amon nowadays. I’ve heard he has been a bit of a rascal recently,” the man offered playfully, “but he has seen the unicorns, so I am certain that he will find the right path.” Lowell closed his eyes and smiled, showing his teeth and his true emotions. He returned his attention to Jack after a moment of paternal reverie. “Do you know Amon? Has he perhaps stolen from you?” He raised an eyebrow, possibly in jest.

“Well, yes, I know him,” Jack admitted sheepishly. “He’s the reason for my visit.

We promised we’d meet up again, and… I may have follo—“ Lowell cut him off with a curt chop to the upper arm.

“I do not need to know your relationship,” the monk-like man admitted. “But I hope you are kind to him,” he offered with a smile. “He met with me for a day to talk before withdrawing into the forest. I am sure that he is still there, so I can point you in the right direction. I can’t, however, keep you from falling into the mud.” He finished with a devilish snicker, and Jack blushed with the understanding that the thief may have told

Lowell about their relationship.

“Thank you, Lowell. You’ve been an excellent host. I wish I could give Clo the time it deserves on my journey across Isah, but I don’t want to miss Amon.” Jack got caught up in his gratitude and bowed, only to be raised back up with another fierce hand motion from the older man.

“If you’ll indulge your good friend’s father,” Lowell winked, “at least look at the landmark I am most proud of. The Temple of Clo.” He brought his hand up in a flourish and his flowing long sleeve revealed a giant, wide-framed building of white stone. The walls were not solid and flat but rather filled with natural holes that resembled the porous

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holes of a sponge. The stone stretched so long that the white faded into the misty fog of the forest, and Jack wondered how far the structure went.

“Is this a place of worship?” Jack asked, wondering how much respect he should show to the ancient structure.

“No, we do not worship,” the man reminded him. “But I suggest you meditate for at least a score of moments on Clo, the unicorns, and perhaps even the person you came here to meet up with.” Lowell bowed and left Jack with his thoughts.

The traveler entered the only door-shaped hole on the temple’s walls with the ginger care of a cat on unsteady footing. The floor was also white stone, seemingly flattened as if dozens of men worked together to sand down the natural rock skin. Jack could not tell if the entire floor was smooth and comfortable to walk on because there were plain but enormous rugs over most of the length of the temple.

The long rug meant for tranquil meditation was placed near the holes that made for windows, though no light passed through them at the moment Jack stepped in. The building was just as stagnant as the forest without, and there were no other sage monks calming their minds with their hands resting on their knees. All of Jack’s expectant images of silent monasteries and cloisters were destroyed by the real image of the temple, for the landmark was not a manmade tool for gathering and contemplating. Jack realized that the Temple of Clo was a space for one to grow closer to nature and oneself.

So he decided to go through the motions and kneeled in the center of the temple.

Perhaps a score of men could have fit on the rug, so Jack felt small in the white box that echoed with each breath he took. As he closed his eyes in the darkness of the unlit

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temple, he felt exhaustion throb through his aching bones. He had been walking for much longer than he usually did, so he thought about why he had hurried to Clo in the first place.

I was following the lady’s orders, was the first idea that crossed his mind, but in the void of nothingness he knew he could dig deeper. I was chasing Amon, was another, and closer to the truth.

As he continued to think deeply on his motivation and why he had pushed his body to the extremes of human constitution, a light brushed against his eyes. He opened his eyes to see a small light filtering in through the holes from above as if the gentlest touch from a feather was enough to shift the heavens. As he watched, stunned out of his reverie, the temple blossomed like white orchids. At the height of the sun’s path, the light caught the holes and warmed the man’s face with a rejuvenating comfort he had not felt before.

A thought crossed his mind then, independent of the glory of nature. I am chasing a new life for myself. Perhaps not a more stable life, but a more beautiful one with a man

I like and the potential for great fun. Finally, the sun had illuminated a new path for Jack, one he was comfortable with settling on. He wasted no more time within the Temple of

Clo, largely because he was bursting with energy meant to be spent on chasing life, beauty, and love. A man watched him go, satisfied in his decisions. Somewhere else, part of a beast smiled.

- - -

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Jack made great strides into the forest with his newly-acquired vigor. These steps aligned perfectly with how he imagined a great hero to traverse a forest, so he continued to haphazardly stomp into what he assumed to be the right direction. His boots may have been a certain color, but now they were dark with mud, and his legs were unrecognizable as anything but the thick, slimy appendages of a swampy beast who just finished playing in the mire. The traveler was unconcerned with cleanliness, but he did keep his face clear of grime, for he wanted Amon to recognize him immediately.

After the sun’s zenith was cleared and the forest was left in blue shade, Jack felt a familiar twisting in the back of his mind and a headache consumed him. He stopped his wild march and investigated the land around him, hoping to find the beast again, or some proof of the thing’s existence.

Inexperienced trackers are unlikely to find anything resembling the remnants of beasts that have lived in a forest for many years, especially not a creature who has remained for entire epochs. However, Jack in his incompetence still found rough hoofmarks that dragged and smeared across soft mud. He tested the ground beside and behind them and found that the beast knew exactly which parts of the swampy ground were tough and comfortable to walk on. Grateful for the pathing and hopeful for his chances at finding something, he followed the tracks by walking beside them. While the creature’s gait was less wide than his, and he slipped often on strange patches of wet mud, the tracks made his mad dash through the forest far more efficient. Jack was making progress through the forest of Clo once again.

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As he followed the tracks of what could only be the horse-like beast he found before, he realized that the mental tear remained in the back of his mind. As many waves of strange, many-fronted pain throbbed through his mind, he received flashes of the memories he was shown before. Like before, they were all images of great peaceful moments in the history of the forest. However, the frenetic pace in which they were shown to Jack made him feel hurried and uncomfortable. As the hoofprints continued to smear off-center in the mud, they ferociously sped up towards some inevitable end that

Jack could only comprehend through his headache.

The images of deep blues and dry land where flowers could bloom happily switched suddenly to roiling black mud and the wilting of so much life that was contained here before. Jack’s headache grew and he was forced to slow down so he could manage the pain and not fall over. He held his head with one hand and steadied himself with the other on the trunks around him. As he stopped to catch his breath, he noticed the tracks had closed in on themselves and become a mess of oval indents: the beast was slowing down, and Jack wondered in a moment of clarity if he could find the creature soon. He was not on the hunt, but the urgency that crept into his mind from the rapidly pulsing headaches was enough to force him forward, even in his invisibly injured state.

A weaker man would have run back to the comfort of Lowell’s hospitality, but the traveler had gone so far that he was willing to power through the force that had once showed him delightful memories. Then, only his curiosity spurred him on, for he had no idea what he could do to help or harm or make any difference in that forest.

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A sudden slam from the path in front of him made him freeze and forget the intensity of the pain in his head, though another moment later and he remembered perfectly. He raised his eyes up and saw only dark ears atop a small head before shouting out the name of the thief who had stolen so much of his time, both awake and in his dreams, since they had met a few weeks ago.

“Amon!” Jack raised both of his hands in exaggerated greeting before realizing he was covered in mud and must have looked horrific to the catperson. The burglar’s face went through stages of terror and astonishment before landing on the excitement of finding a prized item at a deal in the depths of a crowded market.

“Jack!? What the hell are you doing here!” The thief’s words were harsh, but his smile stood out against the shade of the forest and betrayed his happiness. He started shifting his weight from left to right like a kitten preparing for a pounce, but he relaxed and rested his back on a nearby trunk. “I told you not to follow me…” He pouted and slid down the tree, sitting down in the thick dirt. Jack walked up to him and sat down beside him.

“I had to follow you, Amon,” he admitted clearly, confident in his resolve. “I’m sorry if you really didn’t want me to, but like you said… it gets lonely sometimes.” He gave his best smile to the catperson, hoping to cheer him up after betraying their small promise. Amon just scratched at one of his ears and looked away.

“It’s not that I don’t like you, Jack, or that I don’t want to travel with you, but I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to think about things.” He blushed as he looked even further away. “You… were one a’those things.” The thief shut his eyes tightly as his

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voice, usually smooth as the rush of a gentle river, wavered against the windless day.

“But I can’t think about you now, Jack. The unicorn is dying.”

“What do you mean?” Jack recoiled, not understanding the weight or even the meaning of what Amon said.

The catperson rubbed his temple and mumbled something to himself about telling the truth before facing Jack head-on with the red eyes of a man who had just been crying.

His voice had leveled, and he appeared to be in control of his emotions. “I grew up here,

Jack. I played in this forest, and I found unicorns. They taught me about life, about nature… they’re everything to me.” As he spoke, his voice cracked and he lost the calm mask he had put on to confront the traveler. “Now there’s only one left, and, and, they’re dying.” The last word sent the small-framed man into a fit of sobs that Jack could have never predicted.

Shame, sorrow, and guilt mixed in Jack’s mind as he watched the thief who was so full of charm and playful love for the world fall into despair and drown in his own tears as his childhood friend passed away. Jack could not understand the relationship between man and unicorn, and he still had the loosest of grasps on what the unicorn even was: if the creature had a physical form, or if the idol of Clo only floated through the forest as a spirit. The thought finally crossed his mind that the horse-like beast was the unicorn, and he finally understood.

With the epiphany that the images shown to him were the sad reminiscence of an immortal being finally crawling to their deathbed, Jack reached an arm over Amon’s thin

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shoulders that shuddered with the weight of loss. The catperson accepted the embrace and rolled into Jack’s arms as he cried, loudly and openly.

As both of the men considered the immense weight of death, and the value of a long life, Amon sobbed and wailed with the stubbornness of a child rejecting the truth in front of him. Jack rubbed the catperson’s back softly with his mud-stained hands before ignoring the taboos of intimacy and moving to Amon’s head. Jack stroked his hair with one hand while he held the thief’s thin waist with the other. Amon accepted everything and hugged the traveler tighter. They held each other under the shade of a blue Clo tree until the little light that filtered through the canopy faded and all they could see was each other’s eyes, glinting in the black of a moonless night.

- - -

After what felt like hours to the two men, Amon retracted his tight hug and tried to rub the tears off both his face and Jack’s cloak. His face was red, puffy, and completely devoid of the boyish confidence that Jack thought he displayed at all times, but the meek smallness that filled that hole was charming in a different way.

Amon’s voice came out weak and small, as if he was only a blade of grass against the great tallness of the forest. “I’m sorry,” he mewled.

“Don’t be,” Jack said, matching the thief’s volume. “Can I do something to help?”

He asked sincerely, still barely whispering as to not startle the man into another bout of crying.

“You helped a lot…” He said plainly. “You’re really warm.” He managed a smile, not toothy or wide but sloped like the crescent moon.

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“Why were you out here in the forest?” Jack said, daring to raise his voice while he hoped the catperson would recover.

“I wanted to see the unicorn again,” Amon said, his high voice growing in confidence. “But I knew in my heart that it was struggling. The tracks helped too.”

“Are you going to try to help?” Jack asked while hoping that he was not overstepping his bounds. The fear of offending someone usually spawned from his desire to please everyone in an unfamiliar town, but at that moment he was completely invested in treating Amon right. The emotional vulnerability the catperson had shown was beautiful in the strength he displayed: Jack had no doubts that Amon loved the unicorns, fully and truly. Instead of finding the tragedy and despair of losing that love, Jack was inspired by the power of his passion.

“Do… do you think I can help?” Amon sniffled.

“Of course you can,” Jack offered with another smile and boldness he pulled like a trick from his bag.

“Unicorns… they aren’t like us, though.” Amon said with a renewed, tactical vigor. His blank tone of voice reminded Jack of Lowell. “They’re like lots of people in one body. They don’t live like us, and they don’t die like us either.”

“Don’t think about what you don’t know,” Jack offered. “Think about the time you spent with them, and how you connected to them. How can you help, the Amon they spoke to?” The traveler wanted to sound authoritative, though he was inwardly embarrassed because he knew nothing of the unicorns.

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To his surprise, the catperson nodded. “Right.” He stumbled over his words again.

“Let’s-let’s get closer.” Amon stood after he rubbed his blue eyes a few more times with the sleeve of his cloak, now stained in mud from hugging the dirty traveler. He offered his caramel hand to Jack and he grabbed hold and held on tightly. They shared a meaningful gaze as they both prepared to head into the depths of the forest, and their eyes locked together like a familiar game. One blue eye winked, and a small laugh bubbled out from the depths of tragedy before being silenced by the task in front of them.

- - -

The two men walked hand-in-hand towards the source of the prints they found in the mud. The unicorn was slowing down so much as to leave sad lines in the dirt like wide wagon wheels that curved around lackadaisically. Amon stumbled more than once and then squeezed Jack’s hand in grateful affection. After they left the shady trunk that watched over their reunion, Amon never once moved his gaze from the road in front of him. He had strengthened his spirit, and Jack resolved to see this quest through with his new partner to the end.

Jack felt himself stumble more than once, and the piercing headache from before had resurfaced with a new intensity. Instead of the familiar twisting he knew from

Mallea’s special breed of magic, he started to feel the assault of at least ten score of arrows on his unprotected mind. The thief held Jack’s rougher hand firmly but the pulsing waves of pain did not seem to affect the cat in the same way, as they always stumbled at different times, seemingly at random. Jack only held his head with his left hand and tried to bear the mental madness that encroached.

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When the headache was at the worst possible zenith, Amon’s ears perked up and he stopped in surprise. Then, Jack saw the shade of a large horse lying beneath a great white tree. The plant was the same as every other member of the forest, but the trunk was bone-white and the leaves that gathered below like shaved hairs were gray and fading away quickly like ashes. They had black stems and veins but Jack dared not touch them, even if they would be invaluable to science or magic in the outside world. This was once a sanctuary, one that both Jack and Amon recognized as the birthplace of this magnificent creature from the memories they shared with the pair.

Amon stopped and let go of his partner’s hand to clumsily reach for something held at his thigh. He pulled a small knife he had clasped there, and then looked at Jack with wet, shining eyes. The thief held up the knife and gestured towards the despondent unicorn. While fighting the throes of the headache that threatened to slam him into unconsciousness, he reached forward and grabbed the hand that held the knife. After a moment of surprise, Amon understood his intent without words: they would end this era together.

They walked forward and the both of them were assaulted by the same force that hurt Jack’s head and invaded his thoughts. Unlike before, this was a physical power that pushed them back like so many hands belonging to dozens of people, though they marched on, their hands tightly clasped around the thief’s knife that could finish the act of mercy.

Jack closed his eyes to listen to the thoughts of the unicorn, and he found so many things that he almost drowned in the memories. This time, they were only chilling words

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and vignettes that made Jack think deeply on life and death. He felt the inner philosophy of a beast, of a creature hellbent on survival and nothing else. For a moment, he thought the unicorn was a ferocious nightmare who would consume him in pursuit of the thing’s own life, but there was still a light within.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the unicorn in front of him. The phantasmal creature was twice the size of any horse Jack had seen in his life, and he knew the beast was once beautiful. Their gray hair was long and shaggy, and the strands were littered with leaves both ashen and blue. Jack closed his eyes again and brushed away the despair to only see the memories of the forest long ago. He understood that this was the afterlife the unicorn envisioned: his perfect home, the place he belonged, and then Jack squeezed

Amon’s hand to show that he was ready to follow through. Perhaps that was not their choice to make, but in that moment the once-immortal creature bowed their head and allowed the men to make mercy real.

- - -

Jack and Amon walked back to the tree of their reunion with their arms supporting each other’s weight as if they had fought a war together and were about to succumb to exhaustion. They did not speak and had dour grimaces on their faces, but both of the mismatched pair were squeezing the other’s body softly with their gloved hands. The gesture was the only caring they could muster after the immense weight of their actions settled on their shoulders.

As Jack trudged backwards through the unicorn’s tracks, he continued to massage his temple as if trying to banish a phantom pain. The echo of everything the mystical

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creature had shown him resounded through his mind and he pondered whether he should tell Amon. The catperson had a deeper connection to the unicorns than anyone else, so his choice was obvious: the question was simply of what time. The walk they were taking was too sacred and filled with grieving to become anything else, and so he followed

Amon’s lead silently while looking around the forest.

With the knowledge the two had obtained, Clo took on a different aspect than before. They could not describe why that was, or how the place had changed. Perhaps they would have used the word “mood,” or “color,” but the truth was that their perspective was the culprit. They knew that an immortal beast like a unicorn could only have been raised in the most gorgeous of environments, so Clo must have been beautiful once, else the unicorn may have wanted to stay alive.

The blue leaves began to remind them of decay, and the smell of the swamp was stronger and ranker than ever before. The bubbles of the murky mud made the catperson jump, though Jack’s arm steadied him and ensured he would not fall into the mire. Even the glory of the horn-like trunks that burst through the ground like spears to pierce the heavens could not convince the two to stay for more than one night.

“Let’s leave in the morning,” Amon said pointedly at Jack as they made camp.

The traveler nodded, and the two huddled together in true silence. The firm ground by the trees was springy and comfortable, but neither of them fell to sleep quickly. They shut their eyes tightly and focused on the warmth of each other’s bodies over anything else.

- - -

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The morning was no brighter and no more stagnant than any daybreak in the dreary swamp of Clo, yet Jack awoke and set to gathering his belongings with a wider smile than he had felt in months, barring the influence of alcohol. As the traveler scraped mud off of bags and boots so the pair could journey again, Amon rubbed the morning out of his eyes and chattered away.

“I know I said we have to go, but I don’t think I was really clear about it,” he said with newfound vigor, in contract with the grieving he showed the night before. “I need to get away from Clo and never come back,” Amon admitted.

“Why’s that?” Jack said while scrubbing a particularly nasty glob of mud off of his gloves, which had originated on his left boot. “Isn’t your family here?”

“Jack, I don’t wanna be mean, but how long has it been since you’ve gone home?” The catperson narrowed his eyes at the whimsical traveler, hoping his accusation hit the mark.

Jack only shrugged and continued to inefficiently clean his gear. “Few years. I wasn’t planning on ever going back.”

“Exactly,” Amon said while lounging nonchalantly in the dirt. “I said goodbye to

Lowell, the unicorn’s gone…” Jack worried for a moment that the thief would break down again, but looked over to find that he was scratching his exposed belly in casual thought. “The swamp’s not fun anymore. It’s just gross, and uncomfortable.”

Jack nodded and started putting his boots and gloves back on for their journey to the outside. “If you’re fine with leaving home, then I agree. The only reason I came here

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was to find you, anyway.” He placed his hands on his hips and looked down at the catperson who examined his face closely before laughing out loud.

“Hahaha, good one, big guy.” He rolled over and stretched out his skinny limbs a few times before stopping on his back. “Wait, you’re being serious?”

“I wasn’t lying when I found you here. I had to follow you. You were stuck in my head.” The traveler scratched behind his ear and looked away while a faint blush gathering on his face.

“Either you’ve seen a few too many of those romantic plays the troupes put on,”

Amon said while pulling himself up off the ground. “Or you really like me.” He stepped close to the human and put a hand on his chest before pulling him into a hug.

“What if it’s both?” Jack asked him in a low voice while returning the gesture.

“Then you’re the same as me,” Amon admitted softly before pulling away from the man’s body and looking him in the eyes. “I like you a lot, Jack. I know I’m a thief, a monster, and a strange bedfellow besides,” he winked his pure blue eyes, “but I want to explore Isah, and I want you by my side.”

“So let’s go,” Jack managed before he blushed hard and could not speak for a moment. Amon let go of the man and snapped his fingers with a grin.

“Yep, sounds good. That’s all I need, but it would be nice if you said you liked me back.” He gave a bark of a laugh before eyeing the traveler’s belongings, which were packed neatly into a sack. “Where were you headed when you decided to come chase me?” His ears twitched as he gave Jack his full attention.

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“Well, my plan was to head through Ferva and onto Bhunir to meet up with you, but I heard something about the unicorns here from a merchant’s apprentice in Nora’s

Burg, so I thought of you and headed here straight away,” Jack admitted while rubbing the back of his head. He had a calm expression on his face, as if all the pain from the unicorn’s influence had faded from his body.

“Yeah, I was headed to Bhunir too. You made me want to go visit my folks and patch things up. Come on, let’s get walking. Burning golden sunlight’s like burning gold, you know?” A coin slipped out of his sleeve and fell into his hand. In a swift motion, he flipped and caught the gold piece.

Jack joined the cat’s joyful march through the mud, though with his belongings he was trailing behind the thief. Amon noticed quickly and slowed down to cling to the traveler’s arm. The two were much steadier while stuck at the hip like that, so they made calm and consistent progress through the swamp.

Jack looked uncomfortable as the thief mischievously nuzzled his upper arm, but he grew used to the warmth after a moment or two. He spoke up against the sloshing of mud at their feet. “So, now that I’ve shared some tales from my travels, do you want to tell me some of yours?”

“Sure, what’d you want to hear?” Amon chattered and picked a leaf out of his hair.

“Tell me about the desert,” Jack answered, “I’ve always wanted to see it.”

“Hey, you asked me that last time we met,” Amon laughed. “But I’ll tell you again if you want. They’re empty, dangerous, and lonely too. The wind whistles much

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louder than it does here, and sometimes it stings like bees or the worst kind of rain.” The catperson stuck his tongue in disgust. “Don’t get me started on sand. Gets in your mouth or your boots. Can’t do anything fun outside.”

“It must look nice though,” Jack suggested.

“If there’s no wind, sure. On calm nights, it’s blue and pretty, though still too cold for a fuzzy monster like me.” He smirked before continuing his story. “I found a town to the distant north of Bhunir, maybe even outside of Isah. I’m not sure if it had a name, but

I plied my thieving trade there. I stole things for people, and for myself too.”

“Well, you made it here okay, so you must’ve been good.” Jack stoked the thief’s ego carelessly, and he puffed out his chest in response.

“I was damn good, Jack. I could steal back that nice bottle of Onmu wine from you and get away before you can even notice. And I’d get you to forgive me for it, too.”

He squeezed Jack’s relatively large arm with his own sly hands. “But I never stole from anyone who couldn’t get the stuff replaced in a fortnight. One time I took from a woman down on her luck and I couldn’t sleep until I gave her something better in return.” The catperson, small at Jack’s side, shook his head and stared at the black grime that roiled up to his ankles.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know thieves like yourself felt guilt.” Jack apologized, and

Amon understood that the sentiment was for his original idea of a thief: selfish and inconsiderate criminals.

“Thanks, big guy. Most people don’t give me a second chance when they find out, some even try to turn me in for having sticky fingers.” He smiled wide and his left hand

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drifted to Jack’s back. The traveler thought he felt the gloved hand wander. “But I know what I’m doing when I call myself a thief.”

“So, those guys in Onmu—” Jack stopped and laughed as Amon tickled his back, growing dangerously close to his rear.

“Yeah, Erik and Jaz. You know, Erik’s a fun guy: town historian of Onmu.”

Amon explained in a serious, matter-of-fact tone.

“The orc was the historian?” The traveler asked, surprised to hear that after all of the tales painted orcs as fools at best, tribe-based sheep at worst.

“Yep. He’s been in Onmu longer than the Snake, and knew more than you, me, and the Snake combined about the place. Great memory, and even better handwriting.”

Amon tapped his head between his fluffy ears with his right hand.

After a moment of quiet in the desolate repetition of the swampy forest, Jack interjected with a suggestion posed as a question. “So, back to the desert town?”

“Right,” Amon answered and disentangled from Jack’s lean yet muscled arm so he could gesture with his hands. “Hear this out: lord suddenly inherits a lot of land from a marriage, including a patch of useless, arid desert that has seemingly no export at all besides maybe some rocks and animal parts.” He had his hands in front of him moving to accentuate his points. The cat burglar was accustomed to explaining plots.

“Then the lord gets lazy? I’ve seen it before,” Jack joined in like a schoolboy.

“Not even just lazy,” Amon exclaimed dramatically. “He doesn’t even post guards.” Jack mouthed an expression of surprise to show his interest. “I wasn’t even sure if anyone knew the town existed. Had enough people living there, but not enough to even

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land on his map. So, you got a few hundred people living off of whatever trade rolled in, selling stuff like strange dyes and good metalwork to get by.” The way his explanation began to roll off of his tongue made Jack think that perhaps he cared more about this desert town than he let on.

“How much trade would a village like that even get?” Jack asked, wondering if there was even anyone to steal from in a place that small and sad.

“That wasn’t the problem,” Amon answered seriously. “Merchants did well there.

See, it was the only place you could get a lot of stuff, and exclusively does incredible with lords and lordlings with too much money on their hands. But think about this: no guards, no guilds, hell: no laws.” The thief’s eyes glowed as he stared expectantly at

Jack. While the traveler thought, they both almost tripped on a root hidden by the mud.

Jack rubbed his chin covered in thick stubble he wanted to shave off at the nearest opportunity. “So, you weren’t the first thief in the town.” He replied after some time of careful consideration. He was not used to that kind of serious conversation, but he wanted to humor his partner’s narrative.

“I was the nicest, that’s for sure. I stole from abandoned estates and merchants who robbed the townsfolk with ridiculous taxes that didn’t exist and prices that would get a tradesman arrested if not beaten in the street in a real city.” The small thief crossed his arms in continued agitation.

“So,” Jack offered with a wry smile, “you were their hero.”

Amon blushed and lashed out instead of accepting the compliment. “No, I was a thief.” He stomped one of his boots before realizing the swamp was not the best place for

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childish gestures of anger. “Jack, you’re silly. There’s no way anyone thought of me as a hero. I stole gold, food, and clothes, and even if I gave some of them out to the town and ruined a few jackass merchants’ days, I still hurt more than I helped.”

Jack sighed and patted the sullen cat burglar on the head before he wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him close. “Don’t act like you aren’t a kind cat who takes care of people from the shadows. You were someone’s hero back then, even if nobody saw you that way.”

Amon harrumphed and sulked but did not take the man’s arm off of him. “I guess you’re right… but if I had stayed there I would’ve become a villain.”

“Why’s that?” Jack asked in sincere confusion.

“The life of a thief can’t last,” he explained sagely, like Lowell. “You can’t just keep on stealing from somewhere and expect the stores to be magically replenished the next day. If you target one merchant they’ll realize they’re at a loss and never come back again, and if you get on the nerves of a nobleman he’ll hire guards and you get your tail skinned.” He shivered for a moment then nuzzled into Jack’s side. “That’s why I’m giving up that life now.”

“Oh, really?” Jack said, hoping to be as clever as his partner who purred into his arm. “And what will you do now? Give back to the world with your adorable face?”

“Of course. My beauty is the greatest gift I can give a man, and I’m starting my rehabilitation with you. You should feel honored,” Amon quipped back seductively with no hesitation before poking Jack with a thin elbow.

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The gesture goaded Jack into replying. “I know I’m dumber than a lord who forgets to station guards in a trading town, but I believe you’ll stay with me even if I have nothing left to be stolen.” He squeezed Amon with his hand and stared dead ahead to hide his smile.

“Oh ho, what confidence!” The catperson responded before hesitating for a moment. “You’re right, though,” he finished in a soft, shy voice before clasping his hand over the one that rested on his shoulder.

They walked in the intimate silence of two partners on a journey to a new tomorrow, even though the gross sloshing of the mud at their ankles interrupted the quiet and made the blooming of their relationship seem silly and commonplace. They shared a laugh when a stray frog jumped in the muck in front of them, splashing their faces with thick black droplets that ruined the moment completely.

Jack kept his arm comfortably wrapped around Amon’s shoulder, and the catperson nestled gratefully in the shroud of his partner. After some time, he spoke without the bravado that marked his every action. He was vulnerable in a different way than he was with the unicorn. This was more the honest removal of a mask than the baring of his soul. “Do you want to talk about how you went through Clo before you met me?” He asked Jack carefully as the sun started to loom through the gaps in the leaves.

“Well, I was a mess.” He chuckled at first. “But I stuck around the trunks of the trees and the big white stones and found my way to the village eventually. I did see the unicorn before—” Amon cut him off before he could continue.

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“You saw them!? What did they tell you?” He asked excitedly, forgetting the decorum of moments earlier.

“They showed me some images of a beautiful forest, probably this one way back in the past. It came with an awful headache though…” He said as he rubbed his head again.

“You need to tell me everything,” Amon replied giddily. “I think I know what you’re talking about, but it’s been so long. I’ve been away from the forest for years, and I want to know what they were thinking about until the end.”

“I don’t mind,” Jack answered.

“And tell me more about your travels while we head to Ferva. I think I see the end of the forest up ahead,” Amon responded as he pulled Jack’s arm to his chest and held on tightly.

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Chapter 6: Ferva

“So, Cath is what gotcha to search for a home?” The sly catperson was speaking to Jack while adjusting his leather travel tunic that looked too large on him, like a hand- me-down from cherished family. The clothes were new and glinted finely in the afternoon sun.

“More or less. It was somehow the most hostile town I had ever been to and the most inspiring. I’d never want to live there, but I like the idea.” Jack replied while gesturing with his hands. The two had grown comfortable together on their way out of

Clo, and now made pleasant conversation about the human wanderer’s travels.

“You know, I’ve actually heard a lot about Cath from other monsters,” Amon replied with a shimmer in his eyes. “You wouldn’t know it, but there are a few who still live there.”

“In truth?” Jack replied, flabbergast. “I can’t believe it. Those places seem too closed-in to accept monsters in their gates.”

Amon clicked his tongue and crossed his arms at the man. “I know you’re a human, but you don’t know much about monsters, huh?”

Jack started in a dejected tone. “I used to collect stories—” but he was cut off.

“No excuses. Monsters can hide better than you think. Scales can go under clothes, and ears can hide under hats.” Amon pulled up a previously unseen hood up to cover his twitchy and excitable black ears. “If someone wanted to, they could live among humans and never be outcast like all the rest.”

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“Well, does that make them human, then?” Jack said in well-meaning curiosity.

“To humans, sure.” Amon explained while taking off the hood so his ears could twitch again. “Other monsters respect them. They never had to live in caves or on top of trees, or be hunted by soldiers and common folk who believe everything they’re told.”

The ex-thief rubbed his arm and gazed at his shoes despondently. “Honestly, I barely knew I was a monster until I left Clo. Sometimes I cried alone because I realized I wasn’t accepted anywhere except there.”

Jack raised a hand to grab the rogue’s shoulder, but his partner dodged and aimed a gleaming smile back at him.

“Now I have you,” Amon boasted, “and that’s home enough for me.” He rubbed his eyes absentmindedly and looked up at his human lover. “Come on, let’s hear more from your time on the road in Isah. I’ve never been to Cath myself but I’ve heard plenty.

What was next?”

“Well,” Jack rubbed his chin. He was passively beaming from the cat burglar’s intimate confession. “Next I… oh, I suppose I met the Lady of the Forest.”

“Who’s she? An old flame?” Amon elbowed the traveler with no hint of jealousy in his voice.

“No, but she’s about as strange as you and me. She’s a woman who knows the lay of the land and its going-ons enough that she trades information for… well, she wanted good stories after I traveled.” Jack fumbled as he realized the Lady may sound fictitious to his partner.

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“Sounds like a swindler. I don’t trust her one bit.” Amon admitted while shaking his head. He pulled out a waterskin and drank with a disinterested scowl, yet he motioned lackadaisically with one hand for Jack to continue.

“She told me about nearby towns, like Ofa and Entown, then wanted to meet again in Nora’s Burg. We met up, and… to tell the truth, she goaded me into finding you after I told her what happened in Onmu.” He sighed and blushed guiltily at the admission.

“I would have never gotten any sleep had I just went to Bhunir and hoped to run into you there. I need to buy her a drink, or something.”

Amon stared: his azure eyes were stretched wide and aimed directly at the man.

“She helped you track me down? You told her everything?” He stopped walking on the slant of a stray hill, and Jack felt his heart seize up.

“Well- I, if it’s not what you… I’m sorry.” The man fumbled with his words like he was dropping marbles and failing to move quickly enough to catch them. He thought for a moment that something had ended or was broken.

Amon noticed Jack start to sweat and shake slightly, so the thief stole one of the traveler’s rough hands and held him with his small, gloveless ones. “No, no, Jack, don’t worry. I wanted to thank her too.” He realized that he had made a mistake with his reaction and chose to pull Jack’s arm closer to his chest. “I really did want you to chase me, and it was stupid of me to not say yes when you asked to travel with me. I wanted to ask, though, did you say she dealt in stories?”

Jack began to calm down as the sweet warmth of his partner’s hand and the kindness of his words flowed into him. “Yes, she just wanted me to tell her everything

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that happened afterwards, especially with you.” He waved his free hand to dispel dangerous assumptions. “I wasn’t going to tell her anything you wouldn’t want me to!”

“Interesting. What did you tell her that she made you chase me?” Amon asked with a grin that betrayed a sharp cat-like fang. Jack was learning that this smile indicated curiosity or trickery, or perhaps both aspects of his lover at the same time.

“Well, I told her that we watched the stars at night outside Onmu, and that I couldn’t stop thinking about you.” Jack rubbed the stubble blossoming into a scratchy beard on his chin. “She turned strange after that, like I had said something brilliant or mysterious. She was excitable yet deathly serious about me going to see you.”

Amon belly-laughed and pulled himself away from Jack’s arm so only their hands remained connected. He laced his fingers into his partner’s and squeezed gently to show his care. “I like this Lady already,” he stated after a moment, to Jack’s bewilderment.

“What’s that about?” He responded in a slow and dazed tone.

“Jack,” Amon said in monotone severity. “Would you say you love me?” He turned to look at the human with his baby-blue eyes that shone like a river on a clear day and angled his head so he appeared like an insistent and genuine suitor asking for Jack’s hand in marriage.

The wanderer rubbed his head and found difficulty in trying to turn away from the piercing, caring gaze of his newfound partner. “Well… I don’t know about love,” he managed after a moment of awkward silence. He continued after mustering his resolve and looking Amon back in his lovely cat-eyes. “But right now, I know I want to spend a

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very long time with you. Maybe my whole life.” Jack said the first three words before he submitted to embarrassment and blushed a deep crimson.

“I’d call that love, Jack.” Amon replied after grinning and flushing a matching hue. “And I love you too,” he admitted with more dignity than the traveler displayed. The rogue stole a tip-toed kiss on Jack’s cheek before returning his grip on the man’s hand and talking in a normal tone. “That was embarrassing to admit, right?”

“Y-yes,” Jack said, still flustered to the point of paralysis. “But it was true.”

“I know, and like I said, I love you too.” Amon said with a straight face as he delighted in the teasing. “My point for doing that, beyond us saying the truth out loud for once, was to show you what you said to that Lady that made her so serious about sending you to me.” The ex-thief pulled on the man’s hand and started to walk up the emerald hill again.

“I didn’t say anything like that, though,” Jack protested as he followed. “I just told her we shared a wonderful evening together and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

“You did it again, Jack.” Amon giggled like a schoolboy. “Every time you say it, you’re making some love story confession like in those peasant troupe comedies. You think you’re saying that you had a good time once with some guy you met in Onmu, but all anyone is hearing is ‘I fell in love after a one-night stand with a dashing rogue.’” He winked slyly at Jack.

“So, she thought I had fallen in love with you at first sight?” Jack asked while he thought, hopefully, that he had figured the situation out.

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“Well, did you?” Amon barked a high-pitched laugh before squeezing the man’s hand and speaking again. “Sorry. Yes, that’s probably about what happened. I’d still like to meet her myself and chat. We’ll probably just share secrets about you.”

Jack ignored the last comment he made and remarked. “I forgot to mention that I promised to meet her in Ferva and share whatever happened, good or bad. I’m happy I can only share good news.” He gave a self-satisfied smile and stared dreamily into the distance while gripping Amon’s hand.

The catperson was less excited. “Wait, were you planning on stopping in Ferva?”

He put special emphasis on stopping, as if the plan was always to go straight through.

“Well, yes. I would still like a place to call my home, even if I know I’ll never be lonely again.” Jack replied in a deadpan manner.

“That’s sweet, but you’re still so innocent to this new world with monsters trying to live out loud,” Amon replied while loosening his grip on his partner’s hand and drooping his dark ears. “I can’t really go into Ferva. The last time I went I ran straight through, with no stopping to talk or drink. They’re not, ah…”

“They’re cruel idiots who can’t stand monsters, huh?” Jack replied with unprecedented clarity.

“That’s about right,” Amon said. “The peasants would be fine with me, probably.

I’m not like a snake-person or minotaur, I can fit in.” He let go of Jack’s hand and placed his on his hips. “But I don’t like that. I want to be welcomed, and living without that is mean t’ the monsters who can’t pass for human.”

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“Well, I’ve never had a partner on my journey,” Jack said while scratching his messy, overgrown hair with his newly-freed hand. “So what do you want to do?”

The small ex-thief looked away and blushed as he kicked a stray rock. “I don’t want to mess up your journey…”

“Nonsense,” Jack said firmly. “If I can’t live with you somewhere, then I won’t even give the place a chance. We’ll go on to Bhunir and take our chances there.” He reached over to pat Amon on the head, and the shy rogue made no effort to dodge.

“You did it again,” Amon spat. “I can’t say no when you’re so bold.”

“Is that a good or bad thing?” Jack said while rubbing the short man’s head.

“I don’t think I’ve felt like this before, so I think it’s good,” the catperson replied while languishing in the attention and nuzzling his head into his partner’s palm. “Mmm… well, here’s a compromise,” Amon concluded with the dignity of a child who was just praised. “Let’s meet this Lady and brag about our love before we get the hell out of there.”

“Did you just purr?” Jack asked incredulously as he started to scratch his lover’s ears.

“Shut up,” Amon said.

- - -

After a few days of travel east towards the Great River, the two men gained a new appreciation for the road they had found on the evening of the second day. While Amon had to put his cloth hood up to hide his pointed ears, the couple could chat with other travelers and merchants as a result. The ex-thief especially shone as they slowed down

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beside caravans carrying great stories of food and other fine goods to be traded in the great human city of Ferva. He befriended a merchant with a pot belly and a mustache like a caterpillar under his nose and shot a few winks at an apprentice following at the back of one of the carriages. Jack was upset at first, but after Amon pointed out a few black scales on the youth’s neck, he understood the gesture of camaraderie.

After buying a few fresh apples from a merchant who had just made a deal with a nearby orchard, the two fell back in step together, alone and comfortable in the quiet space they created over the past few days.

Amon took a loud bite of his apple and grinned at his partner, for a chunk of white, juicy meat had stuck in his sharp canine and made the unkempt wanderer giggle.

The rogue seemed to notice his jangling pack for the first time, and remarked on what was kept in the cloth. “Didya keep the wine bottle I gave you back in Onmu?”

“Why, do you think it’s aged since then?” The traveler quipped back, and did not wait for a response. “Yes, I wanted to drink it when I found it again. Like we promised.”

He held his hand out and made a motion like a handshake. His intent was innocent, but

Amon thought the gesture looked obscene and laughed.

“Yeah, good on you. But you didn’t even try it?” Amon asked earnestly and picked up his pace on the worn dirt road. He started to place his feet in front of each other on the track of a wagon wheel.

“No. It was special to me, and it still is. I was waiting for the right moment.” Jack reached to his back and rubbed the shape of the bottle in his sack. He had grown

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accustomed to the weight and sway of the wine. He wondered if he would lose his balance if the wine was suddenly emptied.

“You know, that’s the last thing I’ll ever steal,” Amon admitted with his head angled down. One of his ears slipped out of his flimsy hood, so Jack raised a hand and pulled the hood down further. “I just decided now,” the ex-thief added.

“You’ve mentioned a couple times that you wanted to quit the thieving life.” Jack said as he stretched his arms and pulled his legs up to give them a seconds’ rest.

“Yeah, I knew back in the desert town that I wanted to quit. It was something I fell into, and I always knew I would move onto better things,” Amon explained while fussing with his hood. “Stuff just… never got any better. I had to keep on stealing one week ‘cause the food ran out, and then the water, then my clothes…” He picked up a rock that stood out against his dark hand and traced the rough edges before chucking his find into a field.

“What’ll you do now?” Jack asked carefully, not wanting to upset the gentle depths of the rogue.

“Don’t you worry, I won’t be depending on you,” Amon said with a laugh that brought his bright smile to Jack’s mind though his expression was hidden under a veil of shadow. “For money, anyway. Everything else is up to you, big guy,” the rogue continued with another bark of a laugh.

“I’ll do my best,” the wanderer said honestly. “But what do you want to do in

Bhunir?”

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Amon wrung his hands awkwardly before answering his partner’s pressing question. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about that town, but… it’s crazy. I saw it while it was still being put together, and people in Onmu were saying it was built in three days by the arachne. It’s the place for monsters to go who have no other place, and soon enough, it’s gonna be the city for everyone to live, ply their trades, and fall in love like we did.” The rogue’s explanation picked up steam as he was reminded of the rumors he heard. “It’s beautiful, and made by and for monsters.” He stopped to look at Jack. “Uh, humans are allowed in too. We don’t hold grudges like that, and I’d probably smuggle you in anyway.”

“What’s the draw to the place? Isn’t it in the middle of the desert?” Jack asked blankly.

“That’s the thing that makes it so special,” Amon answered with fervent hand motions. “The arachne weave buildings and lights like spiders with their webs. It’s a magic town, a capital built on no materials at all that could be dismantled or doubled in size in a night.” Amon beamed, and his hood started to slip off his soft ears. Jack looked around to confirm that nobody was nearby, so he did nothing to stop him. “It’s a wonderful place of lights and parties and… my fellow monsters,” he admitted with a sigh.

“Sounds like the perfect place for us to drink that wine,” Jack stated.

Amon nodded and took Jack’s hand in two of his. “We have to do it.”

“Then straight ahead to Bhunir after we give the Lady our story,” Jack said with the finality of a decision. “No time to waste,” he added.

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“Sounds fine. I want to sow the seeds of our romance. Maybe in ten years we’ll be the stars of those plays,” the cat burglar replied. He adjusted his hood to cover his tall ears and kept the human’s warm hand in his own. They looked out on the path in front of them and let the conversation smolder to nothing, until the peaceful wind blew Jack’s hair around and made Amon giggle.

As the path widened and grew more worn, indicating the path to Ferva, the green hills sloped generously and gave them ample time to discuss what to do in the human town. While Jack jostled a rock out of his boot and laced the thing on the ground, Amon crested a hill and yelped in wonder.

“Come here, big guy! You can see the city!” The excitement in his voice caused

Jack to jump up and fail at tying the thin laces of his shoe. He dragged his foot carefully, not letting the loose garment fall down the grassy slant. As he drew side-by-side with the small monster, he found a sight he would surely not forget for the rest of his days.

The two men could see the great river that split Isah into western and eastern halves, and the rushing water of the many-mile waterway made the perfect centerpiece for the glorious human city of Ferva. Much like the country, Ferva had two sections, and the one Jack could see in the midday sunlight was surrounded by gray stone walls and farms of absurd size. Compared to the secret and joyful fields of Ofa or the jarring inequality of Entown, Ferva was a metropolis, and Jack gasped in wonder much like his partner.

“The walls look even bigger than last time,” Amon noted in a youthful voice as he squatted down and twitched his ears under his hood.

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“Yeah. It’s…” Jack remarked, open-mouthed. “It’s beautiful.” He forgot the sorry state of his footwear and sat down, stretching his long legs over the curve of the hill. His eyes scanned the distant farmlands and found men and women tending the fields like hardy ants. As the road curved through the green fields that skewed towards an autumnal gold, caravans and carriages caught up to the line that led into the well-manned gate.

Jack pictured guards like Edson and the Covers from Nora’s Burg investigating merchants’ stock and taking taxes in larger denominations than Jack had ever had on his person. He thought of conversations about expected wheat harvests, and how the farmers grew unruly as they planned for festivals in a month’s time. For a moment, the wanderer so far from home closed his eyes and thought of the smoky scent that came through his window when the air turned crisp and the wheat had been scythed and heaved into stockpiles for trade and the harsh winter. As the sun retreated behind clouds, Jack pictured the bonfire he saw his mother dancing at once.

The human returned to reality as the bright light of the sun returned and assaulted his thin eyelids. He found the corners of them moist, and he wiped them away with his sleeve before returning to the mundane task of fixing his boot’s laces.

A soft gloved hand patted his shoulder before resting there comfortably and gripping him firmly, anchoring him to reality. “Was it something good?” A boyish voice reached him quietly. Jack looked up slowly to see Amon smiling as carefully as he ever had, without his roguish fang or his lips pursed like a courtesan.

“I think so,” Jack assented after locking eyes with his partner and returning to his boot. “I just remembered something from my home.”

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“So far away and yet you think of home,” the catperson snickered softly. “Do the walls remind you of something?”

Jack shook his head. “Those are the biggest walls I’ve ever seen,” he admitted as he stood up and brushed the dirt off of his rear. “I think it was a feeling, not a place.” The man rubbed his head as he still lingered between past and present. “Does that make sense?”

“Sure, big guy.” Amon spoke while rubbing his partner’s back. “We’ve gone through a lot recently. Got lotsa stuff on our minds.” He grabbed Jack by the elbow boldly and started down the hill, threatening to drag the man down the slope. “But I don’t wanna think about the past, and I think you’d be better off if you saved that for Bhunir.

There, we can sit down, have some beer, and really forget about our regrets,” he finished with a devilish grin.

“Good idea,” Jack replied while keeping a hand on his forehead. “We’ve already slept together… what’s getting dead drunk at midday?” He looked up to the sky and scratched the back of his head in mock exhaustion and resignation, and the ex-thief laughed.

They walked over and down the hill together and continued on past the green fields with cheerful farmers caring for their mature crops. Amon, now hooded and watched carefully by his traveling companion, waved carelessly at every man and woman who hailed them. He shared meaningful glances with Jack, and every sparkle in his eyes told the human that he had made the right decision. He moved on into the city split by a river with excitement he had never felt before.

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- - -

The gate that led into Ferva had an iron portcullis that loomed over the two men like deep black clouds that crept down into valleys and poured rain into unsuspecting houses. Amon openly marveled at the stone walls like a child, while Jack was more suspicious and watched the guards carefully after he greeted them and mentioned the weather as small talk. They accepted no tax and said nothing about Amon, which lightened Jack’s heart ever so slightly.

To his surprise, the wanderer felt something tugging on his long sleeve. A whisper hissed in his ear, not urgent, but cautious: “Hey, we should find this Lady person and then get out of here.” He looked down at his side to see Amon meekly clutching at his arm and eyeing each resident oddly.

“What’s the matter-“ Jack started before he looked out at the road in front of him.

He was stunned— the inside of the city looked nothing like the impressive gray stone walls. Instead of strength and civilization, Ferva only reminded him more of his home.

The road was pure unpaved dirt only managed by the stamped-in footprints of the men and women who wandered the place every day. The walls had faded to wood, mostly rotting brown planks that would snap in half at the slightest pressure.

“I’m sorry,” Jack corrected. “Let’s go in further and see if we can find someplace less…” he fumbled for a word that would not offend the Lady, but Amon jumped in with

“sketchy” and the human nodded subtly.

They walked on, and as they did they felt noise pick up around them, as if something was happened that they were unaware of. Jack felt another tugging at his shirt,

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this time at the back. He could tell from how close the feeling was that Amon was trying to pull his attention to behind them. The man shot a casual glance backwards and could not stop his eyes from locking onto the people behind him.

Men streaked with mud and women with rags for clothes had all gathered behind

Jack and were placing out their hands as if asking for alms from the more fortunate. Jack considered throwing them his empty coin purse, but the way the person in the front of the pack conducted himself stopped him from taking such an insulting action.

An elderly man led the ragtag group of Ferva citizens, and he was not gesturing for coins. He made continual, ritualistic motions, taking his hand from his ear for a moment to point at Jack’s unkempt face. Once Jack took notice of the strange man, the hobbling human started to speak. “Listen… li—sten.” He drew out the word like a ghost wailing for aid.

Jack stopped and decided that the best way to stop this event that beggared belief was to pay heed to the man’s musings. He whispered his intent to Amon, who kept his hood firmly on and took shelter behind his tall partner, not wanting to be directly addressed by anyone in the city but his lover. “What?” The human simply stated, hoping the bold approach that showed his irritation plain as day would help his cause for ignoring whatever the old man had to say.

“Listen…” the bald, hunched-over man said as he cupped a hand around his ear yet again. When he looked up to point at Jack, the fact that he had stopped made the geriatric stop with his eyes wide open. “Oh!” He exclaimed before rubbing his eyes and continuing his spiel. “Yer a traveler, are ye not?” His voice was rough and rustic, and

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though Jack hardly got a good look at any of the man’s features, a life of hard work was betrayed in his eyes and the calluses that covered his hands.

“Yes, what do you want?” Jack managed in his best uptight-merchant impression.

“Our fields…” The old man paused, and Jack began to lose his patience. He thought he heard something from behind him. “..are failing.” When he finished his sentence, the crowd of patchwork followers gasped in astonishment, though Jack was unimpressed. Some of them even fell down onto the dirt, kicking up small clouds of dust and making a few of the older members cough.

“And?” Jack replied brusquely. “I’m a traveler. I don’t live here.”

“THE PROPHECY!” The old man suddenly shouted, making Jack and Amon jump in unison while the rest of the crowd ooh-ed and aah-ed in more pleasant surprise than before. The elderly fellow waited for everyone to calm down before he continued in a milder but still grim and commanding tone. “It says that a traveler from elsewhere, not from our homeland of Ferva, will go on a quest to save us. Since we are so tied to the land, we are also infertile, and cannot do it,” the old man added at the end, seemingly as an afterthought.

Jack remembered something odd that the Lady of the Forest had told him back in

Nora’s Burg. Her culture was tied to something that reminded him of this situation, and something the man had said had jogged his memory. Quietly to himself, he muttered

“questing” and rubbed his chin while he stopped to think.

“You know, I came to Ferva to meet with one of your quest-givers,” he said in a more friendly tone after a moment of consideration. The crowd gave another gasp at the

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shift in fortunes. “Let me meet with her, and then I will tell you whether I’ll go on your quest or not.” The human rested his arms at his sides and attempted to look gallant, and compared to the men wearing threadbare tunics, he may have even seemed heroic in the sunlight.

“Very well. Are you meeting with the Lady of Ferva? She said she came back because she promised someone she would return.” The old man said with a measured precision that betrayed an intellect beyond what Jack had judged him capable of, making him silently apologize in his head for being so rude.

“You know of her? With long dark hair, a nice dress, and no shoes?” The elderly gentleman nodded. “Where can I find her?” Jack excitedly asked.

“She’s staying at the inn down the way here,” he pointed down an alleyway. As he moved his arm, the crowd behind him began to disperse. Jack was glad to see them leave, as he hated having an audience. He was doubly glad to notice that none of them were going down that same alley.

“Thank you, sir,” Jack said and bowed ever so slightly. The bald man shook his head and returned to the wall where he had stood before and began to rub his pale pate with a folded kerchief. Amon returned to Jack’s side and held on even tighter to his arm.

“He seemed nice,” Amon whispered with some difficulty to his partner. Jack shuddered at the thought and the anxiety he had at everything converging at once. He was more used to approaching strange people than being approached by them.

“Can’t say I hate him. He was polite once I li—stened.” Jack echoed the old man’s pronunciation and stuck his tongue out at Amon, making the feline fellow laugh

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and cover his mouth politely. Once the mirth drained from his face and he looked around again at his surroundings, he pursed his lips and squeezed the human’s arm.

“Hey, I’m a bit worried about the fields gettin’ messed up. Bhunir might be made outta magic, but even witches can’t make food appear.” Amon scratched his ears under his hood, adjusting the fabric back after he was satisfied.

As they walked towards and through the alley that the elderly man pointed out,

Jack recalled that he had seen no guards on the central road. He thought that travelers may be scarce due to the cooling weather and the distance between now and any harvest festivals, where wandering revelers may be plenty. But the road had been devoid of anyone but paupers. Jack planted a seed of doubt in his own mind at the strange sight and decided to let the worry fester rather than speak with his already scared partner.

“It’s a problem, but I don’t see what we can do about it,” Jack admitted dryly.

Amon frowned. “Come on, wasn’t your first quest to find and woo me? You’re practically a folk hero already.” Neither of the two laughed, nor did they feel the need to.

Jack could tell from the small catperson’s shaking hands that he hated being walled into a town and a shaded alleyway where there were only two ways out. They shared silence until the strip of road opened up to a much wider passageway which had a collection of awnings in drab and faded colors. The shade from the sad rainbow made them even colder in the approaching autumnal air.

The nearest double door after they escaped the suffocating alley had no right door.

The hole looked as if an unholy force had blasted the wood right off of the hinges, and on closer inspection by the bold Jack, the hinges indeed remained. He pulled at his lover’s

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arm and looked into the hole made by the shattered door to see if the enigmatic woman was there. He ushered for Amon to come closer, and they both peered in.

The black-haired Lady sat in fine leather travel clothes with pants and boots in stark contrast with her previous image. She was at a table with only one chair, one of the legs at a broken angle so the chair tilted awkwardly. The Lady had her chin resting on both of her hands, and to Jack she appeared despondent. He thought sarcastically that she was sad because she was not in the forest anymore, and had simply become another lady.

Amon glanced at her for a moment before looking at Jack and raising an eyebrow in coded question. The wanderer nodded, and in flirtatious boldness, wrapped an arm forcefully around Amon’s shoulder and walked with him into the decrepit place the man had called an inn.

“Hail, lady!” Jack said like a braggart come home from a hunt. “I completed your quest,” he added, intentionally pushing Amon further to the front and causing the ex-thief to blush and attempt to retreat behind his partner’s tall frame.

The lady quietly tucked a strand of free-flowing dark hair behind an ear and looked over at the loud man with an irritated glare on her face, but her eyes widened and her mouth twisted into an impulsive smile when she recognized Jack. “Oh, hello,” she managed in a softer voice than he recalled. “It was so busy in here, I hardly heard you.”

She joked with a plastered-on grin. “And this is your roguish fellow? Have you, erm…”

The lady fumbled, though neither could tell whether she was embarrassed or uncertain.

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“Yes,” Amon answered certainly, having regained his composure from Jack’s offbeat greeting. “I’m Amon. And you’re… the Lady?” He had nothing else to call the woman, as he never asked her name.

“My name is Marla,” she said as she threw her voice into the room and stood up from her broken-down chair, causing dust to rise up from the dirty floor. “I called myself the Lady of the Forest to your friend here, but here they call me Lady Marla. I said I was coming back to meet with you alone, but I had a second reason,” she said before pausing and walking over to face Jack directly. Her hair was no longer contained in a braid, so the man witnessed the full spider-like length of the strands. The darkness flowed behind her like a shadow above the ground, and her pace was elegant and intimidating. She had taken on a new role in Ferva than the man had known before, as if the person known as the Lady was dead and gone, never to be found in the woman in front of them.

Marla’s new presence stunned the two into silence, even though they were so amiable and chatty before. The woman called out to them in a powerful voice without any of the subtlety or humor of her greeting. “You must have heard on the street that our fields have dried up and become impossible to water or till,” she said. Her tone was not conversational. Her stance suggested that her words formed an announcement. “The words are true,” she concluded.

“We did hear,” Jack replied with some hesitation. He barely recognized the lady as Marla, and became quiet as he reconciled his image with the reality she assumed.

She gave a brilliant and controlled smile that showcased her teeth. They were flat, white, and normal: well-kept and effortlessly human. “When one quest ends, another

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begins. Jack, you have found a partner,” she singled out the other human in the room, “so now you can enter a new era of your life, assuming you haven’t already.” The wanderer was caught in a stunned silence.

“W-what do you want?” Amon asked, his tone fluctuating between fear and rash confidence.

“It’s simple,” Marla suggested as she grasped her elbow with her other hand and stroked her chin. “You newcomers must go speak with the spirits of the earth and discover why they are upset. You may not live here, but you can still make a name for yourself by doing a grand service to my city.” After her grandiose announcement, she glanced around the abandoned storefront as if to claim another broken-down chair for her elegant self. Her search turned up nothing, so she continued to narrow her jade-green eyes at the pair like jeweled daggers.

Jack shut his eyes for a moment and opened them to face Marla yet again. He stiffened up and took a step forward towards the woman before speaking. “Why should we do that? We were just passing through.” He nodded to himself and squeezed Amon’s hand. “I only stopped because I promised I’d meet you here and tell you how it went with my rogue. So now you know, and I’ll be on my way.” He turned around with grave, serious intent.

“Wait,” she called out with a deep growling voice, as if the rules of engagement had changed. “You won’t even stop to see what Ferva is like? Will you not cross the river to see how beautiful life can be here, to see why I would fight to protect it?” Her lips

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formed a smile, though her eyes betrayed only desperation. Amon could not tell which of the two gestures made Jack stop and reconsider her offer.

“If I’ve learned anything on this journey, it’s that life doesn’t need to prove itself to be protected,” Jack said with his back still turned. “Let me ask my partner about this,

Marla. We’ll be back to tell you our answer.” He walked away with the catperson in tow.

Once they were out of the dismantled inn and back in the claustrophobic alley that now provided safe cover, Amon drew close to the man and whispered quickly at him.

“You don’t have to leave here in a rush for me. I thought this would be the worst area, but it seems fine so far.” He showed his own anxiety by peeking out of the alley while his hood drooped between his ears.

Jack pulled the retired thief right in front of him in the small alleyway and fixed his hood gently so that no monstrous heritage was unveiled on the potentially dangerous streets. “I love you, Amon. And I don’t want you to feel unsafe.” The lover in question blushed and wiggled his ears unconsciously before the wanderer put a finger to his lips and stopped his intimate reaction. “But… I can’t say I don’t want to help. I really can’t just leave farmers and workers to die.”

Amon sighed and let his shoulders slump down in relaxation. He pulled a hand up to his face, which scared Jack, but he simply rubbed the back of his own neck in resignation at his new lover’s foolishness. “I expected this,” he said, bringing back the other man’s anxiety, “but I don’t hate that you’re like this.” He looked back up at Jack and gave another honest smile that made him want to embrace the cat burglar.

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“Are you okay with this?” Jack asked carefully. “If you don’t like it, we can go, or…”

“Or I can go?” Amon finished. “No. I won’t leave you. Not again.” He grabbed the larger man’s dirty hand and held on tight. “Geez, look at what you’re makin’ me say.

Let’s save these idiots before somethin’ goes wrong and I don’t wanna help them anymore.” The catperson blushed and turned away towards the inn, where Marla was watching deviously from the busted-open double door. Amon pulled his hood lower and hoped the fabric would cover the embarrassment that showed on his face.

“We want to help,” Jack shouted at the lady to give an early answer and interrupt the awkwardness of the meeting.

“Good,” she responded, seemingly to herself, as she ushered them back into the inn. Once they gathered again in a distant triangle, she curtsied and explained the situation to them. “The earth has frozen shut, and is impossible to penetrate. This is only happening in the farms around Ferva. No other place has reported the same issue, so it must be related to the town.”

“Has this ever happened before?” Jack asked.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Marla answered. “Ferva has always had the most incredible fields. So many miles of golden wheat are spread out around the city, irrigated by the natural flow of the Ferva River and by the efforts of our farmers. Oh, what will happen to—” Amon cut off her praise.

“Stop.” He said brusquely before holding out a hand and apologizing. “I’m sorry, just… get to the point. What do we have to do?” He blushed again and turned away

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enough from the woman to hide his face. Jack kept a strong hold on his hand during the conversation.

“Well,” the dark-haired woman said as she gathered her thoughts. “Much has been accomplished in Ferva in years past from traveling heroes going on great quests and appeasing the gods. Not the Great Gods who live above, of course,” she clarified, as if the two men were intimately familiar with her religion. “No, the lesser spirits usually have something to do with this. And they always demand a quest.”

“Like what?” Jack inquired in much the same tone as before.

“Well, something grand, like slaying a drake or a rampaging minotaur.” Amon winced when she mentioned the bull-man race of minotaurs. Jack recalled the bar fight in

Onmu and decided that if the quest was to subdue a minotaur, he would give up and go to

Bhunir. He was no match for those muscles.

“What will that do to save the land!?” Amon burst out, unable to contain his fear and frustration.

“You ought not question my customs,” Marla chastised in return with the countenance of a schoolteacher or a young noblewoman. She was changing her tone and word choice to match her new name, though Jack thought this new self was less pleasant than the last. “Ask anyone here in Ferva, and they will tell you that heroes solve all of our problems. We always live in beautiful peace, and we worship the heroes who keep that peace in place.” She ran her hands through her blackened hair and looked away from the pair as she continued to speak. “I am giving Jack a chance to be the next hero, and he will be rewarded handsomely. No need to deny it because you’re from somewhere else, or

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because you don’t understand.” She bit her lower lip in irritation and Jack found her briefly repulsive.

The wanderer clenched his fist at his right side and clutched his lover’s hand at the other. He thought of many responses to the lady’s rudeness, but the state of the men and women inside the gate stayed his hand. “So, to help Ferva, where should we start?”

He spoke through grit teeth and Amon shuffled closer to his side.

“Go and ask the people outside, and they will give you more details on this quest.

But know that I offered it to you and you have accepted.” She retreated back into the shadow of the unlit inn and spoke as if throwing a useless apple core over her shoulder and onto the ground. “You can be a hero,” she mumbled as she faded into the darkness.

The pair of men shared a glance. Amon was concerned and his eyes were wide and shining with confusion, while Jack had strong resolve that showed on the stiffness of his stance and the strength of his grip on his lover’s hand. With nothing else to say, they walked out of the ruined inn and inwardly questioned whether they truly wanted to be there, to save people who had no interest in their love or safety. Silently, they decided that they would stay and do what they could to help.

- - -

The part of the city that they were in stretched along the coast of the river like a growth against the rushing blue. There were many street urchins and strange dusty fellows like the prophet before who had told them of the crisis, and all of them often gathered behind the pair and spoke of a prophecy, of a hero who had to come save them in their time of need. Jack and Amon ignored them all, sometimes giving alms found on

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the ground by happenstance to the destitute men and women who looked like legitimate paupers rather than the washed-up members of a Fervanite cult.

After they had paced the desolate dirt paths that wound around the western side of the Great River, they decided to move east to get more information on the area and how they could go about rejuvenating the fields. They wandered through claustrophobic alleys and roads in such disarray as to look worse than the alleys.

As they drew closer to the rushing of the wide river, they found a paved road along the water’s edge. The footpath was so close to the riverway that one border of stone was peppered with wet spray, and Amon gathered some on his gloves in order to flick some onto Jack. They shared a laugh before they realized that all they could hear was the swirling and pushing river: there were no chatty couples, no prophets there to explain what path they could take to ensure salvation. The only other sound they could hear was the harsh clang of metal being formed by force, in slow staccato beats out of rhythm with the world around them.

“Let’s go to the smith,” Jack said to his partner who gave him a nod in return.

They tread the path carefully and looked into each building parallel to the river, not finding the smithy until they were quite wet themselves from the white spray.

The blacksmith’s forge was open-air and actively being worked at as the two men cautiously approached. A woman with heavy brown gloves was smacking a metal rod on an anvil with a hammer Amon was not sure he could have lifted if given the chance. She stopped and inspected the metal before stoking the hot forge with bellows that brought an

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acrid smoke smell to the two men’s nostrils. Amon coughed and covered his face before turning back to the river and walking a few steps away.

“Oi,” the woman called out to Jack in a rough, nasally voice, as if the once-high pitch was scratched deep by the iron of her craft. “What’re you here for? Metalwork? Or are you just watchin’?”

“Oh no, miss, I…” Jack trailed off as he thought of what to say to the blacksmith.

She pulled one of her thick, heavy gloves off of her hands and rubbed her cheek idly while giving a few hearty presses on the bellows. “I was given a quest,” He decided to start with.

“Oh,” the woman said before breaking into rumbling laughter and giving up the bellows. She wiped her brow with her dirty glove before rubbing her forehead with her hand to get the smudges right off. “Did you come in from the west?” She asked as she stepped out of the heat of the forge. She was small and stout, though much older than

Jack and Amon. She had arms like the tough branches of trees and dark brown skin.

“Er, yes,” Jack admitted, not knowing what to expect from the powerful woman.

“They told me the ground failed, or something like that.”

“Yeah, they do that,” she replied casually while taking off her other glove and fanning herself with them both. “They want a hero, right?” She said, and Jack nodded right after. She smiled wide and looked up at the tall, disheveled man with warm eyes.

“They always want a hero, you know. Today it’s the land, tomorrow the monsters.” Jack panicked for a moment until he realized that Amon had disappeared behind him. He did not look for the slight catperson, for he thought searching would only raise suspicion. The

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metalworker continued. “The day after, the weather’s too cold, and we should get a hero to warm things up in Ferva. Why, just a month ago, the problem was that the wind was blowin’ too hard, so we got a hero to go calm it down. What’s up with that?” She gave a heartier laugh this time, less clouded by the ash and dust that gathered in her workplace.

“That’s crazy… does anyone here ever go out to play the hero?” Jack asked, hoping his wording would not upset the local woman.

“Oh no, they never would,” she asserted with her arms crossed on top of her soot- stained apron. “Always travelers recruited into their games.” She spat into a bucket right behind her like a sharpshooter. The smith seemed pleased with taking a break from her work, so she stood in quiet there with Jack in the pleasant riverside breeze.

The man’s mind was flooded with thoughts and worries that piled onto the singular anxiety that Amon was gone, but he was able to put his ideas in place long enough to ask the gruff woman a question. “So, they never solve anything themselves?”

He regretted the wording immediately, but the laughter that erupted from the woman’s throat straight away gave him strange hope.

“Yeah, yeah, you got it!” She said while scratching her curly hair where the strands were gathered in a string. “The lazy louts sit around and ask people to solve what they got going on. Can’t do a thing themselves.” As her mirth calmed and she stopped shaking with giggles, she looked up at the man and gave him a knowing wink. Suddenly,

Jack’s hand was grasped by another, a grip he now recognized as his new lover. Amon did not say anything, but Jack knew he was uncomfortable by the way he shook ever so subtly.

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“What could I do to help you all out with the land?” Jack said as his last-ditch effort before making his escape.

“Nothin’.” The woman stated simply and loudly before fixing her glove on one hand and slowly turning to return to her workshop. “My advice is, get your catboy and yourself outta here and forget you ever stopped in Ferva. They’re not worth saving.” She stopped and gave the two a long, knowing look before winking once at the both of them.

She smiled and snapped her fingers, and the firepit in the forge suddenly flared up in ferocious red anger even though nobody had stoked the hot coals with the bellows.

Amon yelped and took a few skipping steps towards the powerful woman.

However, she held a dark hand out blindly and stopped the retired thief in his tracks.

“Call me Iggy,” she said plainly before turning back around and putting on her other glove.

“Are- are you?” The catperson said, more stunned at the sight of the woman than he had been when Marla revealed herself.

“Don’t worry about the people in Ferva,” she said again, directed at nobody in particular. “If they want t’ raise a fuss and get that rowdy dumbass Terry back to the fields so he can make them workable again, let them do it.” Iggy rested an elbow on her anvil where the metal pole she was shaping earlier still laid. Her mouth flattened into a tired line, and her face wrinkled up like a woman with hundreds of years of experience with distasteful things. “Don’t be the one to get them out of their own mistakes. I’ve learned this over the years.” She scrunched up her face as if she smelled something

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horrible and casually continued hammering at the pole that had cooled and hardened since Jack distracted her.

Iggy then made a snapping noise under the anvil, subtly enough that only Amon saw her fingers clash against each other over the heavy glove, but they both noticed the pole flicker red-hot as flame washed over the gray surface. The magical smith gave a smug smile as she held her head down, her eyes only on the metal that she was working and not on the two travelers at all.

Amon excitedly tugged at his love’s arm so they were by the rushing river and stopped only to show his beaming smile at the man.

Amon’s wide and youthful smile was darkened as he watched Jack’s face. The wanderer was sullen, despite the advice from the smith that supported some of the duo’s beliefs and decisions. “Do you still want to help them?” Amon asked in a quiet voice, so soft yet still audible beside the foaming river.

Jack closed his eyes for a moment and massaged his temple with heavy hands. “I think I do,” he grumbled in a more dejected voice than the catperson had heard from the man. “But…” he trailed off as he opened his eyes and gazed at his hooded partner.

“Jack,” the ex-thief urged as he placed a hand on the taller man’s forearm and gripped over his shirt. “That smith’s one of us… one of my people.” He mumbled the last part as if ashamed. “She would never lie to me, and because she probably smells me on you, she wouldn’t lie to you, either.”

The human patted Amon’s wrist slowly as he kept a calm frown on his face. He looked down, and glanced often at the river as if the spray would bring answers to his

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troubled mind. “Passing up people in need… it hurts me, Amon.” He arrived at this answer after minutes of quiet contemplation. “And again, I love you, and I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. But even though Iggy said that someone would sort this out themselves, I can’t help but think that I should be the one to do it. To become the hero they need.” He pulled away from the catperson and clenched his fist, but to his surprise,

Amon lunged forward and grabbed the man at both sides, digging into the light cloth with his sharp nails.

“Don’t fall into that trap,” the short rogue said through grit teeth. His ears were perked straight up, making obvious indentations at the top of the hood. “They’re lying to you. They’re making up prophecies that smell like horse shit to get you to do their dirty work.” The monster’s voice was deeper than Jack could recall hearing, and shame flushed on his face as he realized he had brought his lover to this point.

“Do you really think there’s no truth to it?” Jack answered his partner’s thrust with a pathetic swing filled with the weakness of surrender.

Amon shook his head from left to right slowly and closed his eyes while relaxing his grip on Jack. “It’s a wagon full a’ horse shit, Jack.” He spoke quietly again before his voice grew to a rousing crescendo. “They don’t need a hero. They want a slave they can heap all their worries on, and you were the next fool they liked the look of.” He twisted his tone into a falsetto and began to mock the quest-giving lady like a child. “Marla prob’ly wanted to walk around with you on her arm and tell all her friends, ‘look at

Ferva’s new handsome hero, he’s my lapdog who will do anything I say.’” He gave the

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last sentence the flair of a bawdy comedic trouper playing a prostitute in the street and spat emphatically into the river afterwards.

After a moment, Jack laughed deeply before his face turned stone cold and he stared Amon in his pretty blue eyes. “Are you jealous of my relationship with Marla?” He asked honestly while keeping a straight face. In response, the ex-thief dug his claws even further into Jack’s arm until he heard the fabric tear.

“Shut up,” Amon replied as he let go of his partner and turned to face the river.

The glass windows on the other bank were glinting in the sunlight, so the catperson pulled down his hood to shield his eyes. “You know, Jack…” He spoke so quietly that the human thought he may have been talking to himself, but Jack knew better and drew to

Amon’s side.

He continued in a louder but still private voice. “I never woulda tried to stop you if you were anybody else. If I wasn’t with you, I would’ve just walked a line through the city, gone out the east gates, and never looked back on this idiotic place.” He blindly reached his right hand out towards Jack, hoping to find something to hold onto. “You made me stop, look, and listen to the problems of a town like this, and even now, I think I understand it better enough to care about the people in it.”

“But not enough to save them?” Jack said after accepting the offer of the gloved hand.

“They remind me of the desert villagers,” Amon admitted into the wind that carried spray into his face. “Which means… I know in my heart I should save them. But I can’t bring myself to forget what happened when I stayed too long.”

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“These people are worse, Amon.” Jack said in a dead serious tone. “They would take someone like you and make you do so much good for them that there wouldn’t be enough time in the day to save yourself. Hell, I’m not sure I’d fare any better,” he conceded to his partner with a laugh.

“So you get it now,” Amon said with a squeeze.

“I know that we ought to leave, right now,” Jack replied. He looked towards the magnificent stone bridge that connected both banks of the river and noticed a few people who were milling about in the afternoon sun.

As the notion of playing the hero dissolved from the displaced human’s heart, the threat of danger towards his loved one attacked him like the vicious dive of a falcon. He looked back at Amon and acknowledged that the catperson’s ears were safely tucked into his hood and used the grip on his hand to pull him beside him on the street and lead him towards the bridge. He took on a fast pace, though slowed himself as he realized the speed would seem suspicious.

Amon yelped in surprise and almost shouted a friendly curse at his lover, but shied away once he noticed the people emerging from the inland streets and alleys. The wooden structures to their right seemed to shiver ominously in the riverside wind, and their feet fell into rhythmic step. They pulled away from the rickety awnings and uncertain dirt paths that curved off from the paved road as if every false step could lead to their doom.

The bridge was comforting to the both of them, as there was nobody pacing the gray stones that stretched over the rushing river that could excite them further. Jack

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looked over at Amon’s face and found him grimacing with worry, and the guilt pounded through him again. He resolved to push forward and save the one right in front of him while ignoring the hundreds behind him that he never could.

The wind-touched quiet at the center of the bridge made them both stop and turn to face south, where the Great River that sliced Isah in two made way down the twin sectors of Ferva towards the immense blue gathered in the ocean. Like the roots of a great alien tree, little offshoot streams broke free from the river and planted themselves in the ocean independently. As the paired chills of autumn and fear blew through the two men’s cloaks, they held hands tighter and examined the stones polished by the river.

Amon quietly raised his head to face Jack and he nodded his chin up towards the eastern half of the human-dominated town, where stone buildings with stained glass dwarfed the pathetic huts on the other side of the river. Jack nodded and began to walk in a trance of feigned serenity. He realized that his sudden dash may have scared Amon even further, as if Jack were a spooked horse who gave no indication to his driver what caused the fear.

The painful silence accompanied their determination as they walked across the second half of the bridge. The sun had begun to lower in the sky, so the time they had to leave the city was running out by each moment they spent stationary. As they approached the richer half of Ferva, the two began to hear the murmurs of more than a bubbling brook.

Eastern Ferva sounded more like what Jack and Amon imagined of a nobleman’s party. There were no clamoring yells or plaintive moans from self-proclaimed prophets

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and impoverished men. As the pair crested the last hill of the wide bridge, they beheld the fullest view of Ferva’s inequality that they would ever receive.

The buildings were made of stone and brick, and though none had thought to dye their walls and make them unique, many were shades of red, white, and yellow that made them stand independently of one another. Each building had two stories or more and would have been at home on a luxurious estate with acres of farmland and three score serfs. Only four of the mansions would fit on a road, and the pair could not help but stare up at the glorious heights the vain humans had reached.

The windows that dotted each wall seemed random to Jack, but Amon only admired the colorful beauty of the stained ones. Garish reds, evocative blues, and natural greens made up for the lack of paint on each manor in spades. Even just along the river, the men could point out a dozen scenes set to glass they would have liked to memorize and tell stories of to every displaced traveler they came across. Perhaps they would have not been good stories, not ones with structure or morals to teach, but they would have certainly been beautiful enough to capture the luxurious vanity of the nobles in Ferva.

As Jack and Amon stood with glazed eyes and admired the manors before them, they both jumped with a start as some voices carried over to them from further inland.

The human wanderer, determined again to remove his love from the glittering city of danger, walked forward and made his face hard and cold as if he could not possibly care about what his foolhardy kin had accomplished. Amon lagged behind while still darting his head around to stare at each new wonder of architecture and vainglory he could find.

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The streets on that side of the bridge were immaculately well-kept, and shone as if someone polished the rhinestones between the cobbles. However, they were not unused.

There were still the imprints of dirty wagon wheels and many horses’ hooves, and the murmur grew louder as Jack and Amon walked towards the center of eastern Ferva.

The two tread through the fine stone and watched the extravagant buildings as they passed by. There was nothing else to do but be tourists in a strange land, and the two were content to admire and understand the garish wealth of the nobles in Ferva. They walked hand-in-hand, confusion in confusion, as they wandered down a wide road. Amon tugged at Jack’s larger hand every few houses to study a particular etching in a window, but otherwise, they moved along. Eventually, as Amon burned holes into a rainbow with reds, yellows, and violets along fine lines, they heard a loud sound.

“Did you hear about the way my troupe changed their route?” An accented voice announced to nobody in particular, though Amon managed a subtle glance through the thick glass window that revealed a posh man in an elegant blue suit coat. “They evade

Linbe completely now. They’d rather go through the desert than to that despicable town,” the man continued in a grand fashion.

“Oh, that’s wonderful. I believe my merchants have done the same,” chimed in an older, womanly voice that matched his accent perfectly. Their voices lilted and jumped around in tone like a failed duet, and both shoddy eavesdroppers were off-put by the affectations in their voices. “Why bother with a dead town when you can do business with the capital of Isah?” She added, and Jack imagined a woman with hair like Marla,

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only with ribbons and a white-painted face. There was a storybook back in his hometown that provided an evocative and fitting image of an uptight and insufferable noblewoman.

“Oh, that’s devious. But I didn’t even have to tell my troupe. They simply knew, as I am the patron to only the finest of men,” the man retorted with a huff. “We can do business with Linbe until they fall, as they will surely do soon enough.” He gave a high- pitched laugh like a horse expelling air through a nostril.

“Oh, you foolish lord.” The older woman’s tone of voice switched from that of a kind matron to a strict and scheming taskmaster. “Even if you’re only supporting Linbe to pull back your giving hands in a few phases of the moon, the ones who think Linbe was rotten to begin with will hate you afterwards.” Jack and Amon realized with this that perhaps they were hearing something they should not. In response, the human began to walk away from the window, but Amon pulled back his sleeve and mimed for him to keep quiet.

“What, and spoil my funds for after we lose their business? They’re going into the dumbest war imaginable, what could I possibly hope to gain by helping them lose even harder? If anything, I’d rather them not fight at all. Such brutishness is unbefitting humans like us.” The man rambled, and Jack could only picture a jester in a motley cap.

In fact, the human glared at the rainbow window and could not have imagined where the two would be. The scene he had pictured was too ridiculous to be happening in that beautiful building: a lady and her fool discussing wayward troupers and devious mercantile tactics while the air cooled outside and threatened to kill the joy of the outdoors.

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“You idiot.” The two men could hear a slapping noise. “It’s exactly that we are humans like them that we need to watch out and pull back our coin right now. Th—” The woman cut herself off cleanly as she began a new sentence filled with fiery rage.

“Mistress,” the man began in a weak, submissive voice. “You haven’t told me what this war will be about in the first place. How will it start? Who will Linbe be fighting?”

“You ought not ask questions you’re not prepared to hear the answer to,” the woman replied, having regained the composure of a matriarch.

Jack pulled closer to his partner’s ear and whispered a question. “Is he her lover, chained and forced to obey her commands?”

Amon stifled a laugh and replied with a lighthearted tone. “I think of them as mother and son.”

The two walked forward through the buildings and found them rising above them, some looking so near to castles and keeps that they feared armed guards assaulting them at any moment. But everything remained as quiet and stagnant as life becomes in high places, for the men and women hardly ever explored the ground their manors were founded on. Jack never saw the elegant man that Amon spied through the many-colored window, and so he only pictured these men and women staying far above them, in a heaven of their own making.

“Do you still think you could save these people?” Amon said firmly up into Jack’s ear as they walked and swayed together on the broad stone roads.

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“No,” Jack admitted and squeezed his love’s hand. “I was never wandering through Isah to save anyone. I think I saved some people anyway,” he said before rubbing his nose and looking away in embarrassed heroism. “I just wanted to find someplace to live, and I could never, ever live here. It’s a prison.”

“I’m glad,” Amon said with an angelic smile on his face. He clasped another hand around Jack’s so that he was clutching him tightly. “I can’t stand this place. I’m not scared anymore. I just feel… pity.” The catperson’s ears drooped, dropping his hood down far. “Let’s leave, as soon as we can. No more dallying. Make a clean getaway, eh?”

He let go of his partner’s arm and nudged him with his small elbow.

“This isn’t a robbery,” Jack said with a laugh.

“But I’ve already stolen your heart. You think you can get it back?” Amon replied before speeding up and flashing a toothy grin back at him. Jack shrugged and feigned helplessness before pumping his spindly legs to catch the cat burglar.

- - -

As a tall, thin human with hair sprouting from everywhere on his head and a small monstrous rogue with black hair and brown skin chased each other through the quiet streets, their joyful laughter seemed to be the only loving sound coming from the city of

Ferva. When they left, perhaps Marla, Iggy, the feigned prophet, and the jester in nobleman’s clothes would silently miss the two who could have saved them.

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Chapter 7: Bhunir

As the couple approached the tall stone gates out of Ferva, they only stopped for a brief moment to make rude gestures at the tired guards who stood erect and unblinking on each side. They continued their mad dash out and as their boots landed on soft dirt both human and catperson were assaulted by a telltale gust of ice-cold wind.

“It’ll be warm in Bhunir,” Amon reassured his dark-haired partner between quick, panted breaths.

“The wind,” Jack wheezed, “reminds me of when I set out on this journey.” The man was doubled over, so Amon patted his back in condescending comfort.

“Maybe sit down a spell and tell me about it once ya find whatever wind you can keep in that broad, weak chest of yours,” the catperson joked while squatting on the ground. Jack fell back on his rear and crossed his legs, staring at Amon all the while.

They spent a moment looking at their surroundings. Jack had heard of Ferva and the Great River before, but he never knew a traveler who wandered past the gated city.

The land was vast and flat and terribly uninteresting. The dark earth that now coated the couple’s bottoms faded in the distance into sandy browns that seemed almost yellow against the blue sky.

Amon was staring away from Jack with his crystalline blue eyes narrowed to a point that Jack could not see. He immediately caved to the curiosity that gnawed at his soul and asked what he could be gazing at.

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“I’m lookin’ for Bhunir,” the catperson replied. “It shouldn’t be too far off, but honestly, I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“I understand completely,” Jack said with a nod and a smirk. “I didn’t really know what I was looking for when that breeze caught me outside of Cath.” The man dropped his foolhardy expression and closed his eyes to the desert before him. “But I knew I did not want to be alone for the harvest season.” He clenched his fist and kept his eyes shut tight.

“You’re like a bird, Jack.” Amon said with his gentle voice that rang out like a small silver bell.

Jack opened his eyes and let the catperson’s hand clasp over his own. “What do you mean?” He asked sincerely in a soft tone that came out muffled by the wind and by the distance between the two men.

“You let the wind carry you somewhere new, and now you’re here, in a new tree with no idea where you landed,” Amon spoke carefully and paced out his words, as if they had never been spoken by anyone before this point and he knew he needed them to be perfect. “And only you can decide if you like the place or not. If you like me, and if you like Bhunir, or Ferva, or that Lady, or any other crazy place I’m sure you’ve found on the road.” He squeezed down firmly on the human’s hand with his skinny caramel fingers.

Jack paused and took in a deep breath, then squeezed his chin after giving the dark scruff a deep scratch. He looked again at the monster beside him and smiled sadly.

“I thought after we met up that maybe we could just keep on walking together,” he said

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with dry precision. “But now I think I’ve done you wrong and it hurts to think of ever settling down where I can make new, terrible mistakes.” The gangly man winced and pulled his hand away from Amon’s, covering his face so that nobody could see the tears pooling in his eyes.

“W-what do you mean!?” Amon asked, bewildered.

“In Ferva… I,” was all the man could say before he broke down into tears. His sobs were not the passionate squalls of a storm fueled by regret. Jack’s tears poured down his face in silent intensity, though they dripped from his chin and into his lap so Amon could easily notice.

The ex-thief could not have reacted quicker. He sprung up from his squat and walked over to Jack’s side before stretching his arms around the man’s neck in a lasso- like embrace: spread too thin to be a loving hug. He breathed every calming word and phrase he could think of into Jack’s ear and declared his love so often that even he became embarrassed at how completely honest he was being.

When the human retained his statue-like stoicism, Amon refused to back down and considered his options. The front was too well-defended, and the sides were ineffective. So, the catperson dragged himself to the broad back of his lover and rested his weight on his dirty knees. Amon could hide behind Jack’s wide frame, but that was not the time for hiding. In Ferva, the catperson hid. He knew the town well and understood that perhaps he could have slipped and become the objective of a new quest.

That evil had never been wrought onto monsterkind before, and Amon would never be the one to start a trend.

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Now, the back of the man he fell in love with so quickly was chilly and in desperate need of comforting. Amon thought that this part of Jack was beautiful in a new way: the side that he dared not show anyone else, because the oaf thought turning around on someone was some kind of moral crime. Amon wrapped his arms again around the man, but this time he made a circle around the human’s waist where he could feel the soft give of his belly under his tunic. At first, the loop was loose and insecure, but Amon pulled closer and allowed his cheek to rest against where the man’s back curved into his shoulders.

Jack shook when he felt the catperson’s warm arms wrap around his sensitive center and he straightened out his back by reflex. He pulled his hands away from his face and saw the sunlight gathering on the small, brown hands that formed a link on his chest.

He smiled against his tears when he felt the warm rush of breath behind him and he submitted to the comfort that Amon was offering. He did not turn around or offer his own embrace but he did hold tight onto Amon’s small hands.

“I have to remember,” the man choked out between muted sobs, “that you’re here for me.” He turned his head around to look through the veil of tangles of his own dark hair towards his partner. “Right?” He offered with a cheery inflection.

Amon nuzzled his face into Jack’s shoulder so that his mouth was muffled completely, then he shouted “of course” so the vibrations made direct contact with the man. He wanted the closest possible communication, so that no misunderstandings could occur.

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The salty streams still flowed down Jack’s face, and he let out a few sobs in the new comfort that Amon would stay with him always. But slowly he felt them fade, and though some regret remained, he was glad that he could still learn so much from the simplest of mistakes.

- - -

After the two warmed each other up on the cold, hard ground, Amon wiped at

Jack’s wet face with his long cloak and helped the man get up so they could tackle the world together. Their ascent was slow, but full of smiles, and they were surer of their path than ever before.

“If I should ask,” the catperson started meekly as they walked down the featureless dirt road. “What got you so riled up back in Ferva?” He grabbed Jack’s left arm and clung there comfortably.

Jack sniffled and cleared his throat before speaking. He made an active effort to keep his voice steady and free of emotion, though he found the whole affair embarrassing after he had time to sit, think, and inevitably regret. “I saw the people pacing around the city and realized that I put you in danger,” he admitted with a few cracks in his inflection.

The tall human looked to his right and noticed that the ground sloped slowly down and gave way to the sea a few miles in the distance. “I knew I couldn’t help or save everyone, that’s a fool’s errand.”

“Yeah,” Amon assented with a harsh nod. “That’s obvious. But why’d you get so crazy? Why start movin’ so fast? I thought you wanted to check out the city a little, to see if you’d stay there.” The roguish lad stared daggers into the back of Jack’s head,

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hopelessly wishing that he could look his partner in the eyes, but knowing that he was still recovering from his outburst.

“I’m sorry to say it, and it’ll never happen again, but…” Jack was interrupted by a sharp tug away from his distant vista.

“Get to the point,” Amon yelped excitedly. “I’m not mad at you, just tell me,” he said through grit teeth as Jack finally looked at him directly.

“You sure sound upset,” the human said as he rubbed the back of his head and stared straight forward.

Amon growled in an exaggerated fashion and let his grip on the man’s arm go slack. “I am mad, but not at you, not really,” he admitted in his bell-tone voice. “I can’t get mad at ya anymore, I don’t think. I just don’t understand what really went on back there, in that big, clever head of yours.” Whatever distance they felt between them seemed to melt as the sun drew nearer to the skyline.

Jack scratched at his hair in irritation. “I realized I put the people of Ferva above you for a moment. That’s all.” The human suddenly felt the urge to be alone, to tear himself away from the connection he made, but the taste of iron filled his mouth as he bit his tongue. He would not let himself let go of Amon, even if he destroyed everything else he had created. “I couldn’t forgive myself for it, so I knew I had to do something to make up for it, even if you never noticed. I still don’t think I did enough.”

The catperson absentmindedly rubbed Jack’s elbow and sighed. “I know what you mean. Sometimes nothin’ you’ll do will fill the pit in your heart. I get it, I do.”

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Jack looked at Amon with a pained expression, perhaps hoping for some punishment or confession that could change the dynamic of their relationship forever. He could never understand which he wanted more: redemption by love or pain.

But Amon only grinned stupidly, his fangs hanging out and his upright ears threatening to overthrow the hood that still rested over his head. “So, I’m gonna keep you on the straight-and-narrow the only way I know how.” He nuzzled himself close to Jack’s arm and rubbed his cheek on him. “You owe me big time, big guy. And you’re not getting away from me until it’s fully paid off.”

“What?” Jack exclaimed, completely shaken by the catperson’s announcement.

“I never got caught as a thief, but if the constables did get me, they’d want repayment,” he explained in a dry, declarative tone Jack would have expected from a lawman or a merchant. “We’ve stolen a lot from each other, so you gotta pay me back by being here for me and loving me forever,” he added with a smug grin.

“I’ll do it,” Jack reflected with a stalwart claim. “And I’ll stay with you even after all my debts are paid off.” He stopped and stood up straight like a gentleman so that he towered over the rogue and his dark swirls of hair seemed like a fine hat for such a calm late summer day.

Amon looked up at him, blue eyes ablaze, and let out a chattering little laugh that charmed Jack greatly. “We can get into plenty of debt and trouble in Bhunir, just you wait.” They began walking again while Amon clutched and stroked Jack’s arm possessively.

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As they tread the rough dirt road that led east out of human territory, the solid earth broke up and scattered into grit and gray stone that the pair kicked around and remarked upon. The desert was becoming more like the stories that Jack had heard in his hometown: mere fairy tales at the time, but the sandy blasts he felt faintly approaching from in front of him informed him that the place was real and just as dangerous as many described.

“What are the monsters in Bhunir like?” Jack wondered aloud as he remembered a few merchants who complained about sand in their boots, yet spoke lovingly about the towns within.

“Are you askin’ for a history lesson?” Amon inquired and scowled when he noticed Jack’s immediate frown. “I’ll make it way more interesting than any schoolmarm, ya hear? I know more than you think, about the up- and under-sides of monster towns, you know,” the catperson cheekily added and winked.

“Sure. The only stories I knew about monsters before going to Onmu were all terrifying, anyway. You seem like a much better source,” Jack explained.

“Alright.” Amon nodded and let go of Jack reluctantly, but he needed his arms free to make strange motions and gestures that Jack liked but hardly understood. He began, in a grandiose voice:

“Way back when, well before I was born or Clo even had settlers like my pops, monsters had families and no towns. They lived in caves, trees, mountains, camps, and houses, but never cities, no big gatherins’. If they wanted to meet other people, or fall in love, they organized it through letters or traveled out on their own. Dangerous, but

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usually ended up alright. We’re good at hidin’. Kinda had to be,” Amon remarked with a sad, thin smile.

“When the time came to get out of our stuffy holes and live out loud, the families had to be told one-by-one, usually by messengers’n’such. Some of ‘em organized it themselves, and they typically founded the towns like Bhunir. The demons were a big deal for this, huge influence, and now they’re top dog. See, their ‘family’ was already kinda a town. They had a ruler, a Demon Queen, and they were way good at conning stupid humans. More vicious, too.” Amon made a pouncing motion with his fangs bared.

Jack laughed, and Amon smiled.

“What do demons look like? I’ve never met one, and I don’t think there were any in Onmu,” Jack interrupted.

Amon put his hand on his chin and thought loudly. “Hmmm, I don’t quite know myself. I heard they’re red-skinned and evil, but they also made Bhunir and sent out folks to set up Onmu in the first place. Nobody trusts them over there, but they have damn good fashion sense,” he added nonsensically.

“So, you don’t know anything either,” Jack mocked playfully.

“More than you, ya big oaf,” Amon punctuated with a slap on the human’s lower back. “Anyway, the Demon Queen asked the arachne, another out-there race that I’ve never seen around, and the orcs- you met Erik, right- to build a big town next to some human settlements. The ogre, that’s the leader of the orcs, he agreed, liked the gusto and boldness of the Queen. But he didn’t think it’d be right between the biggest,” Amon

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made a huge circle in the air to accentuate his point, “human towns in Isah. But they did it anyway.”

“Arachne and ogre?” Jack inquired plainly. He was enraptured by the story, and some childish excitement told him that perhaps this was what he set out to find in the first place.

“Arachne are weirdos, and they don’t have a good reputation with other monsters.

I heard lotsa badmouthing over in Onmu, that’s why ya didn’t see any of ‘em around.

More of an orc town,” he explained. “They’re spider-y. Lots of legs, good with weaving.

I think some look more like us, while others have big spider butts,” he made a rude gesture around his own rear, to Jack’s feigned embarrassment, blush and all. “Ogres are nasty, big guys. Not like you,” he added after realizing his poor choice of words.

“What makes an ogre different from an orc?” Jack asked after pouting in jest.

“Not much, really,” the catperson answered. “I don’t think they’re really different in looks or muscle. Same meatheads as all the rest. I asked Erik about ‘em, and he didn’t have much to say. Said there never was an ogre around the mountain. Anyway, they’re real good at heavy lifting and hard work. And brewing.” He thought for a moment, tapping on his cheek while checking to make sure he did not forget anything. “And drinking everything they brew. So, put what I’ve told together and what do you got?”

Amon ended with a school-like question, which made Jack suppress a groan.

“A mess?” He said at first, which prompted a playful smack and scowl from his partner.

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“You’re right, but you’re wrong. You got demons willing to lead, you got arachne and orcs willing to build. And then you add hundreds if not scores of hundreds of lonely, sad monsters looking for a community to live?” Amon gave the question a beat so Jack could process. “It all comes together to make a town of every hellish pleasure you can imagine,” he answered himself with a devilish grin.

Amon let the concluding point of his lesson ring out in the empty desert while

Jack stared on with fish-eyed wonder. The ex-thief had his hands on his hips in a proud stance, and they both continued to walk wordlessly as the sun threatened to fall below the horizon.

“Is Bhunir all fun and games, then?” Jack asked after they passed a stray green cactus, which he studied cautiously.

The lithe catperson shook his head and fumbled with his hood. “Well, with hellish pleasures come hellish pain,” he said too casually. “Every time I found a monster on my journey, I asked ‘em about the big monster town. By my desert town, and to the north a’

Onmu, they all said it was the worst place and that they’d never live there, even if it got them killed.” Amon rubbed the side of his thigh where Jack thought he saw the bulge of a small knife before.

“Well, I can’t imagine you can farm very well out here in the desert,” Jack pointed out, to Amon’s immediate barking laughter.

“That’s fine, we didn’t want to farm anyway,” he said between belly-laughs. “No, they talked about other things, like how a demon had swindled their grandma out of their precious heirloom that warded away vampires, or the classic ‘those brutish orcs stole my

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coin’ argument,” Amon explained with exaggerated caricatures. “I kept tellin’ them, a good trade’s not a good trade if both parties are happy. Orcs are great at finding precious metals and even better at selling them for loads’a coin.” A cheesy grin grew on his face, and Jack suspected that the sly rogue may have worked with an orc merchant before.

Jack grew quiet and stopped his inquiries, though he was still incredibly curious as to what Bhunir would be like, and if he would even be safe. He took a moment on their cheerful walk to think about why anyone would even want to live in a magical city of lawlessness and selfish pleasure-seeking. At least, that was the impression he got from

Amon’s description.

He noted that dunes began to gather around him, slowly but surely, like little rolling hills that dotted the land, waving in no pattern and no uniform size. As his mind wandered to suspicion and confusion, his boot slipped out from under him on a loose patch of sand. He fell forward until a strong force pulled him backwards.

The movement was expert and graceful, but Jack felt no grace in returning upright. He felt his bones rattle and his arm seize up as his partner’s grip tightened.

“Lost in thought?” The catperson joked as he helped Jack regain his proper balance.

“Yeah… sorry,” the human admitted before he cleared his throat and faced Amon properly. “You’re only telling me bad things about Bhunir, so I’m a bit worried.”

Amon brazenly wiped some sand off of his partner’s lower half and adjusted the man’s cloak, which had gotten jostled in the trip. “I can’t tell you it’s all good.

Nowhere’s all good.” He gave a condescending smile and patted Jack on the shoulder.

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“But I know it’ll be beautiful. There’ll be drinks, and fun people to talk to, and, well…” he pouted so Jack would blush furiously, “you’ll always have me, right? And I’m enough.”

Jack scrunched up his face and conceded the point.

- - -

After dozens of tales, dirty jokes, and moments spent languishing in the gaze of a melting orange sunset, the two noticed a dazzling light on the horizon like the first star in the night. The sky around them was still humming with dusky twilight, so the blaze of civilization burned bright.

“There it is!” Amon exclaimed with a joyful leap into the air. He gave Jack a quick embrace and stole a kiss on his cheek with wild abandon.

“Wow, it’s so bright,” Jack said while still not entirely convinced of Amon’s interest in the monster capital. He managed to get caught up in the energy of the moment anyway.

“That’s what I expected,” the rogue claimed. “A gleaming, beautiful fire in the middle of a dry desert. The guiding light for monsters all around.” He nodded to himself with pride.

Jack scratched his scraggly chin, still in need of a good shave. “That’s a nice sentiment. Besides, it’s good for deserts, since there’s no other landmark around. Night is coming on fast.”

Amon ran ahead while he tugged at Jack’s sleeve. “That’s why we gotta go now. I don’t want to miss my first party in Bhunir, especially not with my lover,” he added with

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a wink. Jack shook his head and matched the monster man’s pace. He noted that Amon lowered his hood and wiggled his ears almost as if stretching them out before he needed to use them.

The distance became maddening. They had seen the lights from so far away due to the desolate flatness of the landscape, so they had a goal but no way to tell that they were gaining any distance on the place. They both suspected, but dared not voice out loud, that the place was a hopeless mirage and that they were fooled by everybody who had told them of Bhunir. Complaints piled on, and the two began to walk together, arm- in-arm, as a cold wind blasted through their summertime cloaks and seized their hearts.

Conversation halted, and the last leg of their journey was miserable. Though, they both thought many times throughout the walk that they were glad to have someone warm by their side. Someone they could trust to catch them if they fell, and hold them if they froze. There were no more falls, and if Jack or Amon were poor enough travelers to not have prepared for cold weather, they would have died many changes of the moon ago.

Yet there was always the fear of the frontier in the backs of their minds: that unexpected danger would grab them on their next step, and the only thing holding back that fear like a bulwark against a storm of arrows was their lover at their side.

Sooner than they expected, the couple found a gate looming over them with blue, red, and green paper lanterns hanging above on strings so thin that Jack perceived nothing at all and thought the setup magical. The gate was made of shiny wood, painted red, and stood as the only entrance into great black walls that ran into cylindrical towers.

The towers had no holes that the wanderers could see, nothing for arrows, sieges, or even

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lookouts to use, so they seemed almost comforting, like an egg’s shell around a warm, safe home.

The gate did not have a door. Instead, three pieces of heavy fabric dangled out from the top of the thick red arch and glittered in the multi-colored fae light. Each one was a different color, matching the tripled design of the welcoming lights, and they had patterns stitched or etched upon them, though Jack and Amon were too far away and the sky was too dark to perceive any specific imagery.

Instead of admiring the silk gates, however, the pair greeted the twin guards who stood still as shadows at each leg of the red arch. Each was plainly green-skinned and muscular, though the men noted their unique sense of dress. The orc on the left, who was a foot above Jack and two above Amon, wore a soft blue tunic with white embroidery that barreled down his chest and to his legs like a rippling waterfall. He had thick black pants on and no obvious arms or armor, and his bald head glinted weird colors.

The orc on the ragtag wanderer’s right was about the same height as Jack and seemed younger, less experienced. He had thin brown hair pulled back into a small ponytail and he wore a large black cloak that covered his entire body except his ankles and feet, which were bare and grisly to observe. The two guards, though unarmed, had their meaty arms crossed on their chest. They would have been strange, sculpted statues if the younger orc’s face was not slick with sweat, as if he had been training only a few moments before.

As the guards made no move to welcome or intercept the new arrivals, Jack and

Amon gave each other a helpless look and decided to quietly discuss their next move.

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Amon whispered into Jack’s ear: “I’ll handle this. Who knows what you’d tell

‘em,” he added and stuck his tongue out. Jack mimed a scowl and considered making a familiar rude gesture, but the rogue had already turned away.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said in a feigned suave accent. “May we be allowed entry into Bhunir, monster capital and welcoming home to many?” Jack noticed the ex-thief adjust his weight, almost as if preparing a graceful bow for the two guards.

He sighed and covered his eyes for the inevitable reaction.

A youthful voice called out, and Jack raised his head to watch. “What-what’s your business?” The younger orc said, keeping his arms crossed but walking out from the base of the arch’s appendage.

“We’re a loving couple,” Amon gestured back at Jack with a predatory grin,

“come to spend some coin, have some fun, and perhaps settle down in this wonderful city. You see, we’ve never been before, and we’re deeply curious…” The catperson was chest-height for the both of the guards, yet he paraded around the shade-blue desert and motioned with his hands as if he were on a stage only for the three baffled onlookers.

“Well, you can go right in, then,” the younger guard stammered out, leading to a growl from the other end.

“The fee,” a deep, masculine voice rang out, and everyone diverted their attention to the other guard. He had spoken much louder than anyone else there, and Jack swore he saw the flames within the lanterns flicker and change with the sound.

“Oh, uh, right,” the other guard said and fumbled for something within his enveloping cloak. “The tax for entrance is a gold piece each.” He pulled out a sack

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double the size of his hairy green fist and set the dark bag on the ground with a clang and a thump. He waved his hands out like a child and smiled. “Don’t worry about where the gold’s from. If you’re from a hundred miles away, we’ll still take it!” He reassured the travelers and gestured passionately at the dark splotch on the ground, shaded by his broad shoulders blocking the lantern light.

Amon’s shoulders slumped and his pointed ears fell down flat as he reached into his cloak and pulled out two shining coins of unknown origin. He made a fist, placed the gold pieces on his thumb, and flicked the pair so they rose high into the night sky, caught the burst of light from the paper lanterns, and fell snugly into the orc’s bag. The rogue smiled at the guard, grabbed his lover’s arm, and dragged them both through the heavy cloth and into the city proper.

- - -

The town that seemed little more than a village stuck behind tall walls immediately opened up as they pushed the cloth to the side and entered the threshold. The road before them was plain and completely dwarfed by the two mansions in front of them. The manor on the left was angular in white with brown accents. The walls looked soft, like fabric, yet they were solid and concealed whatever lie within. On top was a great pyramid roof that seemed to have another house on top. There were at least four stories that the men could see from the ground, and each corner of each pyramid had a colorful lantern hanging down and shining into the twilight. The paper light sources were gigantic, and Amon figured they were about half his size. He could practically fit inside one.

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The other house was far more familiar to the two men, as they had seen dozens of the same style in Ferva. Gray stone and four turrets marked a mini-castle, though there was something off about the place that the two immediately noticed. They thought for a moment that there really stood an entire kingdom on that one plot of land, and that they were paying tribute to the owner. The two walked towards the great wooden gate only to realize that the house was merely a two-story stone bunker with no gate, moat, or king to observe. Jack swore and searched his mind for any ache that would have indicated magic, yet he only sensed the sweet smell of druglike smoke.

Amon walked down the road with an open mouth, gazing at all of the tall buildings surrounding him. He felt so small in the center of the road, like a bug about to be squished by giants, yet the feeling gave him comfort. When he was in Ferva, he felt like a courier running through a valley behind enemy lines, with archers poised to shoot him down. Yet here, in Bhunir, he warmed up and smiled dumbly to himself.

The rogue walked back to where Jack was inspecting the gray stone house. The human traced his fingers over some indents in the wall. He hoped to find an arcane symbol that indicated magic or illusion, yet he saw nothing. Amon grabbed his sleeve and shook his head with a suppressed smile, and they walked on their way.

Each manor varied in size, style, and intensity, some even bearing the telltale cloth and symbolism of Onmu. Jack noted to himself that the eight-legged figure painted onto the blue-and-black tent had a wide, one-line grin. One he even recognized as from his hometown, even if that style was brown wood with a thatched roof. Amon ogled a sandy-brown stone hovel and Jack thought he sensed a hint of remorse from the ex-thief.

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The smell that the man had breathed in earlier grew stronger as they walked down the path, and their steps became obscured as the air was fogged up with phantom rivulets of smoke. Some stray strands of the choking mist grasped out of the gathering pool on the road like an arm from the grave, and Jack jumped. Amon chuckled and offered a hand to keep them both comforted. The human, shaken by all the sights so far, accepted.

If the smoke was the first sign that the town was inhabited, then the sound was the second. As they walked down the largest path, they started to hear strange whoops and hollers as well as the pleasant rumble of conversation. Sometimes even great crashes shook the stone they walked on, so the two men rushed forward towards whatever could possibly be in store for them. Jack felt apprehension seize his heart, but he powered through the feeling. He was worried about how he would be greeted, and if he could ever fit into a town of only monsters, but he wanted to be with Amon in every sense of the phrase. The catperson, on the other hand, was brimming with genuine excitement. Onmu had been a taste of something beautiful, but the simple mining town was far too boring for his sensibilities. Bhunir promised far more, and he was starving for the monster parties he had always dreamed of since the unveiling.

When they entered the central square of the monster capital bathed in darkness from the late summer moon, they expected dusky madness and ushers who would lead them into bars that reeked of alcohol and whatever drug they could get their hands on.

Jack could only think of the bar brawl that erupted at the Snakehole, and how he could get pummeled easily even with his love around. He eased his shaking and walked hand-

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in-hand with Amon with feigned heroic confidence, prepared to face the center of monster civilization with a steely gaze.

The square was overwhelming in every sense of the word. Jack shielded his eyes from the color and light while Amon only marveled at the ironic searchlight of the once- hidden world.

Monsters compensated for their dimly-lit huts, rotten tree-trunks, and smoky caves by gathering and putting all the light in the world on display in the center of

Bhunir. Above the square was a magical canopy of lights that glowed in all the colors of the human rainbow, and even some that the pair could not perceive. The lanterns were floating gracefully and spinning like butterflies in the black sky, but there were many more wonders to appreciate. There were black iron lanterns, wooden torches lit ablaze, crystalline chandeliers, and dancing flames which had no dominating masters to tell them to stay in a firepit or on the tip of the torches. These green, blue, and yellow fires sometimes leapt up and down to the square proper to kiss a monster, and every once in a while someone would gesture from the heavens down and a flame would light a candle or cook a slab of meat to perfection. But that was only the view in the sky, the pair of starstruck lovers were grounded and rested their eyes on the square before them, drinking in the sight as if they had been living alone in boredom for dozens of years.

On the black cobblestone ground were dozens of tables gathered around in scattered dusk, each occupied by monsters of every possible variety. Amidst snaking green tentacles, leaking blue slimes, and the bare muscle of orcs and minotaurs, Jack viewed wonders he had never seen before. Creatures that he had only imagined or seen

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drawn in caricature were in front of him, downing tankards of foaming beer in the fairy- light and smiling with jagged teeth.

Stone golems towered over a table to their right, and each one had strange accessories around their head. They were wide, wall-like monsters with shining formations of crystals gathered across their body, but most seemed to wear rugs as chest and waist coverings. The crystals were all different depending on the golem: one black and shining man had white diamond encrusted around his neck, and he stroked them gently when they caught the light above. An igneous golem was dark-red and full of holes, but his emerald teeth glistened when he smiled and gave a raucous laugh when a jape was told at the table.

To the left was a small stage where a large, human-shaped purple slime and a lad with spider legs coming out of his back were doing magic tricks using the slime as a medium. Jack moved over to watch, and Amon followed. The rogue pointed out that the spider man was an arachne, one of the humanoid types that had grown in number and status when Bhunir was formed.

The man had slick and short black hair and eight eyes. The ones Jack was familiar with were in the right place, large and red-pupiled with black sclera, but the others were spread out diagonally up the sides of each eye like dramatic black eyelashes that also had a hint of red in them. He had a smug grin on his face like a mountebank pitching some awful potion, but the magic he was doing was as real as Jack had ever seen.

The arachne’s spider-legs that sprouted out of his back came forward like marionette strings and moved so quickly that none of the audience could identify exactly

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what he had done, but when they stopped, the man had a great golden sword floating in front of him. He laughed magnificently and grabbed the hilt out of the air, and started to swing towards his violet partner. The crowd gasped and Jack stumbled forward to stop him, accidentally stepping on a lizardwoman’s tail. He apologized awkwardly and almost missed the moment when the purple slime’s head detached and jumped up to dodge the swing of the sword.

As the trick was completed, the intensity of the crowd cleared and everyone cheered and clapped while the arachne took a bow with an arm around the slime. The purple mass was reconnecting the head, and while the strange process took place, the amorphous mass took on the shape of a human woman, albeit still neon and slimy. They both walked off the stage and greeted some of the excited members of the audience, leaving Jack to laugh to himself and look around for his lover.

For a moment, Jack was concerned that the catperson had left, but a push on his lower back made him smile and turn around to see a mug of red being shoved up into his face.

“Hey, drink up, big guy,” Amon said with a big smile. He was jovial, caught up in the joy and wild colors of Bhunir’s social center.

“Um, thanks, but what is it?” Jack asked while Amon braced his left hand on his hip, threw his head back, and downed the entire mug, gulping all the way. After he had swallowed all of the wet scarlet, he exhaled deeply and gave his partner a narrow-eyed glance. His sharp canine fangs were hanging out of his lips lazily.

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“Don’t worry about it, Jack. We’ve been walkin’ and working sooooo hard recently,” he said while already slurring some of his words. “It’s just beer. Monster beer, the good stuff. Maybe in a few years we can make some money shippin’ this up to

Onmu,” he burped, “or hell, even Entown.” He laughed to himself.

Jack eyed the thick wooden mug full of red something. He placed a finger in the top and watched a red droplet fall back into the beer. He was satisfied that the drink was not thick or mucous-y as he had expected from foreign bars, but he still hesitated. The notion of tasting a monstrous delicacy gave him some grave anxiety, like when he had only smelled an aged fish dish when he was visiting the stormy north.

To the human’s surprise, Amon cast his cloak onto a nearby chair with a flourish and almost skipped to Jack’s side. When their sides were touching, the rogue slid his hand across Jack’s lower back and held him pleasantly. The catperson only reached his lover’s shoulder, so he lifted himself onto his toes and whispered into Jack’s ear: “Drink up, big guy.”

His breath was warm, wet, and smelled strongly of the alcohol he had just chugged, so Jack felt excited tingles roll through his body and grew terribly hot and bothered. He blushed and eyed the monster beer another time, wondering for a moment what they even grew out in the desert to brew up such a crimson hue. The crowd had dispersed, so the two were alone. Jack felt no undue pressure to drink the beer, and Amon may have just as happily stole the mug from his hand and drank the stuff himself, but he thought for a moment about the town and how he had spent his time up to that point. The curiosity overtook him: why not partake? Why not cut loose and appreciate the popular

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joy, the drunken revelry that seemed to make up the unrelenting throngs of happy monsters?

With a quick and guilty glance at his lover’s thin but tempting lips, Jack pulled the wood rim of the mug to his lips and tested the beer before he gave up the show of modesty and took a giant gulp. The thin red liquid ran down his throat and tasted like juicy, bitter cherries and light smoke from a comfortable campfire. Warmth spread through Jack’s body, too, and he understood why Amon was acting so strange after he gulped down so much. The world around him became slower and his mind felt relaxed. A few of his worries disappeared completely, like how he would be accepted by the monsters around him, and whether Amon would still want to travel with him after they had stayed for a while in what seemed so much like home to the monstrous rogue.

These thoughts disappeared as if the red beer was washing them away. The nasty anxieties that had stalled him before, made him cautious and less open to accepting

Bhunir were killed on the spot, and so his first act after taking two more gulps of the drink was to face his blue-eyed lover, take his soft tan cheek in his hand, and kiss him on the lips. The connection was brief and a little wet, but Jack still closed his eyes and savored the moment with glee rising in his heart.

The catperson tensed his shoulders, and his long black tail stuck out and started waving furiously. Jack thought he heard a pleasurable yelp as his lips came over Amon’s, and the rogue began to purr ferociously. After a blush and a demure look downwards, he faced Jack yet again, his lazy smile widened to a grin. “Was it really that good?”

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“Yeah, it is, and I love you,” Jack said, surprising even himself. He took another awkward drink of the beer and watched as Amon grew more energetic and excited.

“Hey, let’s join the party. Let’s just go around to tables and talk to people and play some games,” the catperson explained rapidly as the light in his eyes grew. “Stick with me and we’ll have the best time of our lives.” He said this as he drew up to Jack’s side yet again and linked his thin arm with the human’s pale one. Jack nodded and finished his beer, not wanting to be out of the fun for even one moment.

- - -

“How did you pull that off!?” A pale man with long, shaggy hair shouted at the table that the drunk duo claimed for themselves. Amon sat on the top of the wooden table, perched like a child kicking his feet at the end of a pier.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” The rogue sneered and laughed before he continued. “I chose a harder path to get in ‘ta the house. What better way t’ pull off such a heist? I went in the chimney,” he concluded with a wink.

“There was a chimney!? In this desert?” A red-skinned orc shouted out from a nearby table as he leaned forward. “I think we’re all hot enough as it is!”

Amon clicked his tongue and waggled his finger. “You don’t get the rich,” he said softer than before. “They’ll build a chimney if they think it’ll make their house look better. They’ll build twelve if that’s the style.” He rubbed his soft chin and closed his eyes for a moment. Jack thought he might have a passionate rant to go on, but perhaps that particular topic was for another time. There were rich monsters in Bhunir, after all.

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“So what’s the chimney like?” The arachne magician from before sat in front of

Amon on a gorgeous golden chair he had made right when the catperson started his story.

The spider-monster glanced over at one of the bars every once in a while to check on a hard-to-miss purple blob, but he was on the edge of his gilded seat, so he still appeared invested.

“Chimneys are tight fits. Not my first choice for in-fil-tration,” he enunciated the word with his whole mouth as if savoring a piece of tough meat, “but it’d do the job that cold, cold night.” Amon paused and took a great sip from a third mug of red beer. He had been going slower at this one because Jack was only on his second.

A red-skinned woman who sat in the middle of the throng of people now had a great empty circle around her. She was wearing a purple dress that appeared to contain the stars in them, and reflected the shining dots as they appeared in the beautiful night sky. The desert was lovely for stargazing, and Jack, at Amon’s side at the table, wished that perhaps they could go off together and lie under the sky. The heat and thrill of the alcohol started to fade, but he still felt giddy and romantic.

The woman faintly rubbed the base of her two finger-length horns and crossed her legs before speaking up during Amon’s dramatic pause. “Well, did you strip down naked, thief? I cannot imagine your clothes would fit in such a narrow space,” she said loudly enough for everyone even in their chatter and laughter.

Amon blushed for a moment as eyes rested on him in a different light. Then, his frame jolted upright and he turned to his right, away from his partner. Suddenly, the crowd grew quiet, and the sly rogue laid down on the table so that his face laid right in

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front of where Jack was seated. He reached a hand up to his love’s cheek and rubbed the ruddy skin before speaking back to the rowdy crowd. “No, I didn’t go nude for that. I’d need a better reason for doing that.” Amon used his position and Jack’s surprise to grab hold on the back of the human’s head, pull him in close and whisper “Isn’t that right, love?” before kissing him hard and fast.

The crowd cheered, and the demon woman laughed while she rested back in her chair. Jack was steaming with embarrassment and confused joy while Amon reveled in the affirmation and the now-positive attention. After the moment had passed and Jack was forgotten in favor of the rousing picaresque tale, the wanderer tapped his spry lover on the shoulder and told him that he would be looking around the square and not to worry. Amon only winked and continued on with the flow of the story, using his small hands to gesture everything greater than himself.

Jack walked around the square, now emptier since many of the revelers had gathered in front of the fun catperson to hear whatever lovely madness he spouted. There were still small gatherings of people, friends sharing warmth as the desert night grew frosty. The human pulled his cloak tight and kept his arms inside while he remembered that he may have to travel in those same chilling conditions. He thought about staying far longer than his preferred week, but the oncoming autumn mixed with the heat from love and lively chatter made him reconsider.

He walked along the black cobblestones quietly. He made a fine shade hunched over in his cloak as he braced against the wind that crept through each of the streets and alleys. For once, he did not feel lonely as he wandered. A placeless emptiness grabbed at

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his heart, yet he sidestepped the feeling by remembering Amon. The chill terror of rejection tried to sting at his plans, but then, he thought, what city that revels like this every night could reject someone as plain and willing to learn as myself? So he wrestled with the madness of living alone for so long, and so he wandered farther down the square, driving himself unconsciously in a swirl towards the center.

When he looked up, Jack was too late to notice that he had ended up beside a great set of stairs that could raise a man above the tall human’s head. The stone that made up the wide, half-circle stairs were blue-black and smooth, marbled like stone he had seen once at a castle to the west and again in Clo. Four of the platforms had men and women standing guard, some red-skinned like the woman who shouted obscene ideas at Amon, others more varied like blues, greens, and purples. Each had the telltale horns of demons.

Some were nubs and others were witches’ fingers as Jack had imagined them: skinny, long, and woefully delicate. He figured these indicated age more than any other status.

He had come from the side, so the guards had not noticed them. He was able to get a long look at all of them, partially out of the paralysis of fear. They had strange garments on. Two of the female demons he noticed had elegant men’s wear. Their black tunics were well-fitted to their bodies and had cauldron-like collars around their neck.

Each pair of pants was similarly shadowy, though they were baggier than the suit’s top.

One even had a tall hat that Jack frankly thought looked ridiculous.

One man, whose skin was a pale violet, had a white fur coat draped around him, though Jack could see the fairy-lights above as they glinted off armor. Another man was wearing boots raised at the heel and had metal rings hanging from his lips. Jack thought

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they were a patchwork crew all together, and wondered as to what they could possibly be guarding. They were all standing at rest. Some were swinging daggers around, and another had a hammer on the step right behind them. Jack craned his neck out of dire curiosity and hoped that he was not breaking some monster taboo.

He recalled what Amon had said back out of Ferva about a Demon Queen who organized the raising of Bhunir. At the time, he had imagined a six-winged monster at least three times his size. Nothing in his head had resembled the demons of reality, because he had never heard a story to solidify the image. There were tales of contracts with demons, and swindling, and murder done in cold black rituals, but nothing of greeting the demons themselves. No tales had ever been told about facing a demon and living to recount what they wore when attending a local party, and none whom Jack had met had even known about a grand ruler, a Demon Queen who led the pack of villainous tricksters.

Yet there she sat before him. At the top of eighteen sets of stairs was a woman in magnificent dark fashion. He was only able to perceive half of her, but he saw black boots with fur trim glittering in the rainbow light above. He noted legs in heavy dark leather crossed over one another in elegant, courtly grace and a luminous robe, unmatched in diaphanous splendor. The robe was thin and cut with patterns of strange symbols that Jack could not place, though he swore he noticed a butterfly amongst them.

The Demon Queen herself had deep purple skin and red eyes that blazed in the night as if the sun was sourced from her ire. Her horns were not nubs or bony fingers, they were antlers, and if Jack had been able to glance for more than a moment he might

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have counted three spiders who made their webbed home in the branches. Alas, the sight was so strange and ghastly to his mundane mind that he fled quickly from the scene and never thought on the hellish stairs again. As he turned and ran, some of the monsters in the square swore they heard a rumbling laughter emerge from their stoic Queen. But all forgot the curious moment when they lost themselves in drink.

- - -

When Jack returned to his lover, the story was over, and Amon had planned the rest of the night for them. When the human asked what he could possibly have planned three beers in, the rogue only handed him a tankard full of red frothy beer and smiled like a fool. Jack accepted hesitantly, and Amon made a toast to new friends, new horizons, and most of all, love.

- - -

They drank. They drank until their minds blurred together and they forgot just exactly who they were.

- - -

“Shall we go to my house?” A distant soft voice inquired, and Jack’s head pounded, though he felt no pain. He had his hand around a soft, comforting waist and he walked forward while someone else agreed to the question blithely. He let himself fade and black out once more.

- - -

Through the blurry view of a monstrous fugue, Jack watched himself being dragged through a house of dramatic dark beauty. There was wooden furniture dripping

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with black shrouds and spiderwebs and blood-red cushions on top. He thought of sitting on one, but he was ushered past into a room with onyx tile. He recalled more drinks being poured, and one being pressed into his hand. This temptation was in a beautiful curved horn but he couldn’t recall what color the liquid was. He pushed through the haze and drank down the gift of revelry.

Jack returned to the furnished room and pain pierced him when he touched one of the crimson cushions. He stumbled to the point of collapse but two strong hands caught his body, hands he recognized as Amon’s. He thanked his lover, but the catperson mumbled an explanation to the others before frowning at Jack. The human wondered if the serious-faced cat had some resistance to monster beer while he dragged him away, hand-in-hand.

“You’re not lookin’ so good,” Amon said, though his voice was waterlogged in

Jack’s stupor. The monster grabbed the horn from the drunk wanderer’s hand and took his own satisfied sip before dumping out the rest somewhere and setting the horn down.

“You better come with me.”

The rogue led Jack down past the black tile room and through skinny hallways with ashen flowers worked into the walls themselves. Every moment Amon was forced to tug at Jack’s hand to urge him forward, because he was distracted by the swirls in the wallpaper. They dove and twisted along the surface like sparks from black hellfire, and

Jack anticipated the pain from magic entering his mundane eyes. The sharp hurt tethered him to the world through the fog of his own creation.

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After an uncomfortable confrontation with the confounding vertical travel contraption known as stairs, Jack noticed that his mind began to clear in slow and important ways. He was not yet proficient at communicating anything beyond mumbles and moans, and his motor skills left much to be desired. He could not have participated in a brawl and had any dignity left by the time the victor was determined, but that was not a certainty on normal terms. However, the stumbling traveler did notice that Amon’s feet were planted firmly on the ground, and that his weight was shifting to and fro with intense frequency.

Jack rummaged through his drawers of memory and recalled that Amon was always a fleet-footed rogue, whether he truly was retired or not. The monster man could never sit still, and he was excellent at walking with grace and finesse, carrying his light weight around like a feather on the wind. But Jack had not regained the function of metaphor yet, so he compared his lover to a cat. At that time, in the strange monster- manor, Amon was walking like an elephant.

As the man’s suspicions rose, so did his awareness. He noticed the second floor of this mansion was styled differently from the first, and the contrast hurt his eyes. Instead of demonic black tile of shining onyx, Jack watched his boots fall on plush white carpets while Amon opened light oak doors. The human wondered further about the owner’s tastes and how this could possibly cater to them. The first floor had been exactly what

Jack had expected from a monster’s home, yet this one reminded him more of a church.

The doors and benches in the wider hallway were all white or beige with golden accents like doorknobs and armrests. Jack could not tell how true to life the gold was, as he had

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never seen the real material, but he knew that there was magic in everything, or else he was having a terribly early hangover.

Amon poked his head through six doors then exclaimed in surprise at the seventh, causing him to throw the oak threshold open and run in before gesturing for Jack to follow. He had taken a seat on one of the benches while his lover chased some esoteric goal and closed his eyes for a while so that he could get a head start on sobriety. He had made significant progress- but he knew he had to chase the rogue.

The master bedroom could have fit three of the house that Jack was born in, and at least ten of his bedroom through adolescence. The motif of white and gold was continued throughout. The bed was furnished with blankets that puffed out in squares like clouds engorged with rain, and the gilded stitching was weaved throughout in diamond patterns. The whole bed was floating on a pale sea of carpet, with the thin veil of the golden canopy floating above like a sail caught with wind.

Jack inspected the plush bed that could fit four of the beds that he was used to in inns across Isah and tested the softness of the blankets. They gave easily to his touch, and the magical shock he had received from the cushions below did not follow, though he winced in anticipation and would have looked the fool to anybody watching. Nobody’s eyes were on Jack, however, because the rogue in the room was busy investigating something entirely different.

Four large latched chests laid along the wall away from the door, and the small catperson was checking every one with methodical and clumsy hands. One was made of unnaturally white wood with a fine golden lock that Amon picked in a minute. The next

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was black and shining like onyx, though Jack inspected the top and found that the material was more like shale or old petrified wood. The third’s surface appeared as stitched-together cloth and not any material that Jack was familiar with, so the pair ignored that chest. The last was red, orange, and yellow, and churning around like boiling water. With a tentative poke, both men discovered that the fourth chest was searing to the touch, and so Amon focused on the others instead.

As the rogue unlocked and opened the chest that fit the room the best, some of

Jack’s reason returned to him and he asked himself what they were doing in that bedroom. He glanced back at the bed and thought about how much he would like to rest his aching head after their night of strange revelry. His weary legs began to give and he stumbled towards the bed before realizing that his lover was doing something remarkably uncouth.

Amon’s eyes sparkled as he handled the treasures in the cold pearl chest. Jack could not see what his greedy hands were mangling and rummaging through, but he felt a sharp pang of pain somewhere apart from his head. His heart or his gut murmured in such a way that reminded him that he owed his love all the protection in the world, and the

Fervan guilt shot through him again with the rush of harsh clarity that returned to his mind.

Amon was stealing from whatever magnanimous host had watched them trip and trudge up their stairs and into their private second floor, and while Jack thought for a moment that a man with this much wealth would never miss the amount of gold pieces that a couple of poor men would treasure, he knew there was a deeper instinct at play

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here than simple travel fare. Jack immediately moved to intercept his love and move him away from the chest.

“Amon, I’m not gonna let you go back to your thievin’ ways,” he managed to blurt out as he approached the small frame of his lover. He thought about physically moving Amon, but he decided against the act, as perhaps the small-framed man would lash out in blind drunken confusion.

“No, Jack,” the furry-eared rogue mumbled. “We can live forever off some of these things. Look at this pocketwatch,” he said while holding up a blue crystalline timepiece to Jack’s face and smiling hugely. “We could sell it and live for yeeeaars.” He dragged on the last syllable before returning the watch to the chest and continuing to rummage. Jack noticed that his effeminate face was covered in streaks of drunken blush, and that Amon was more far-gone than he had thought before.

Jack had lived long enough and drank enough beers to know that his words would only fail him now, or at least, any honest attempt at reasoning with Amon would fail outright or blow up in his face. So, with another glance at the bed that drew his attention far more than any other material possession, he grabbed Amon’s shoulder and tried to pull his cat-eared partner to face him directly.

The monster gave in readily, though his lips were drawn into a thin line that showed disappointment. Before he could chastise Jack for foiling his dastardly plot, the man spoke with firm passion and tried to not mispronounce any pivotal words: “Amon, we’ve come to a beautiful town of exotic magic, great wealth, and people who are fun to talk to.” He swallowed and closed his eyes for a moment to brace against the

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embarrassment of what he was about to say. “But the only treasure I want to hold is you.

The only thing I want to take away from Bhunir is your heart, to have with me always.”

Amon’s mouth hung wide open and his eyes glowed blue like droplets from a clear river. The blush on both of the men’s cheeks grew and flushed their faces deep pink.

Jack held his link with Amon’s eyes the best he could before his partner swallowed dramatically and responded to his confession.

“I-I understand, Jack,” Amon stammered out. “Thank you, and uh, I love you too.

I love you so much. I can’t believe we’re in Bhunir together like this.” He smiled up at

Jack and slammed his weight onto the tall human, wrapping him in a tight hug. He nuzzled his cheeks against his broad chest passionately and purred with wild abandon. “I can’t… even remember what I was doin’. You’re so warm…” He drew even closer to the man and snuggled into his large frame, practically knocking him over.

Jack was a melting pot of conflicted emotions. He was pleased that his gambit had worked out, and extraordinarily happy that Amon returned his feelings equally if not doubly so. But the heat and passion in the room had not gone out, and Amon was now fixated on something else entirely. He was unsure how to handle his excited lover. They had rested side-by-side before, and Jack had found the catperson’s presence and soft sleep sounds endearing and comforting. But they had never entangled themselves with physical love as Amon was threatening to do now.

As Jack’s partner whispered a sultry “come on big guy, let’s get you to bed,” up towards his ear, he was pushed back onto the plush white bed and tackled by the adventurous rogue. Jack wondered if he would regret anything, and decided succinctly

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that he would never regret a night spent in a wondrous magic bed with the one man he loved more than anyone else he had ever known in the world.

The seed of love between the two men had been planted in Onmu, and the plant had sprouted in the forest of Clo. That night, the flower bloomed between them in the cold night of Bhunir.

- - -

Jack awoke in perfect health, which surprised him most of all. The blankets on top of the white bed were scattered much like the cushions which seemed casualties of some great skirmish that had occurred in the intimate hours of the night. Jack laughed low to himself, wondering which side he had been on in the spacious room. His thoughts then turned quickly away from the decorations and settled back onto his lover, like a familiar groove he could rub with his thumb to comfort himself.

The bed was wide enough that the two men could have spread their limbs out without ever touching, and yet Amon was cuddled so close at his side that he could feel his partner’s warm breath on his chest. He was lower down from the headboard than Jack was, so that his face was perfectly aligned with the center of Jack’s chest. A slight soreness in that spot reminded the human of a comfortable weight he felt while he slept.

Jack did not have the gumption to wake the napping cat, and so he carefully inched out of the bed after kissing the soft brown cheek he loved. He had no perception of time in their stolen chamber of love, and so he decided to walk downstairs to apologize to the manor’s master and get some information about the city. Jack was anxious about

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whether he was safe in approaching the monster, but a glance back at Amon before exiting the room gave him all the confidence he needed.

The house was as he remembered, to his surprise. He had been more sober than he thought when he tripped up the stairs of the manor with eccentric theming. He smiled to himself as his bare feet touched angelic soft carpet and he remembered the escapades of the prior night.

The stairs were not much of a challenge to his renewed mind, and so he noticed immediately that he had misjudged the ground floor more than he had ever misjudged monsters in his life. The décor was black and filled with harsh angles and spikes, and when he was hammered he thought of the style as gothic and charming. However, now he could only be stunned into silence. There were black iron sconces on every wall every two paces wrought in the shape of lanterns, and though they were filled with beautiful fairy lights that reminded him of the display the previous night, they were more fitted to a dungeon than a man’s drawing room.

The couches he had inspected before had black spiked gates on the back, and lizard-like spines even jutted out of the armrests. They were impossible to use without impaling one’s arm on them, and Jack poked one when he had the chance. They were sword-sharp and he wagered intentionally so.

“Mornin’, noisy paramour,” a suave voice said at a moderate volume from across the room, and Jack jumped only to look up and find the arachne magician from before.

His four-pair of eyes were all in lazy half-moons, their eyelids covering most of the distracting voids of his sclera. “I didn’t know when I threw such a gallant celebration that

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I’d have two revelers take my bedroom and make it a playpen,” he continued after taking a sip from a white-and-gold teacup he held with one spider appendage while he supported a saucer with another.

“I’m sorry about the-” the spider-lad cut Jack off with one of his grabbers and shushed him while he gestured at the others in the room. Jack had not seen the strange shapes on the couches around him, especially since one was camouflaged perfectly into the cushions and another was literally sinking onto the floor. There was a scaly fellow on the couch nearest Jack, and a purple slime he recognized as the arachne’s assistant.

The arachne patted a patch of slime with care and then stood up, leading the way for him and Jack to leave the manor for a moment. Jack was confused, but he followed, wanting to properly apologize and ask about what had happened the night before. They walked through a garish foyer of black-and-white alternating tiles with a black chandelier before going outside, where gray clouds ate the morning sun and cast gloom upon the world.

Jack started to speak again, but the spider-lad a little under his height stopped him and spoke louder than before. “I wouldn’t be such a magnanimous host if I let you apologize for nothing at all,” he said with a grin. “Now, tell me how you’re enjoying

Bhunir. I don’t know who or what you are, but I know you’re not native.” He led them to a dainty black metal table with two chairs under.

Jack sat down and rubbed his chin, still covered in a jungle of stubble growing into a desperate facsimile of a beard. “Enjoying Bhunir, huh? Well… I feel out of place,” he said to open the conversation.

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“I don’t mean to be rude,” the arachne said with his elbows resting on the table.

“But are you human? Or magic?” He had an inquisitive spark in his eye, though Jack thought him harmless.

“First, we ought to introduce ourselves, hm?” Jack said, put off by the question of his race.

“Ah, yes, I humbly apologize,” the dark-haired monster said. “I’m Kris, the half- arachne. I’m an architect. I helped make Bhunir with funding and planning by the ever- honorable Demon Queen.” He puffed out his chest with pride and smiled with sharp, meat-cutting teeth.

“Pleased to meet’cha, Kris. I’m Jack, a human traveler,” he said plainly in the gray atmosphere of the city. All eight of Kris’ eyes widened and he glared straight at Jack before replying in shock.

“Full human?” He said to a nod from Jack. “Huh, I didn’t know any humans even knew about Bhunir. You’re not…” he hesitated while edging his chair away from the human. “From Linbe, are you?” He eventually finished.

Jack shook his head and combed through his unruly hair with his greasy fingers.

“No, I’m not even from Isah. I’m a traveler, if you need an occupation,” he continued.

“I’m thinking about settling down around here. Maybe in Bhunir, maybe not…” The man drifted off and thought to himself that he still did not have an answer to that question.

Kris smiled and spoke. “After last night, I’m not sure you could settle in Bhunir.”

“What do you mean by that?” Jack said while rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

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The half-arachne crossed his legs and took a sip of his morning drink. “Well, I know you had your fill of fun, but Bhunir is not just drinking, magic, and sleeping in other people’s beds,” he said. “I bet you have not even noticed the guards around.” He gestured around with a broad smile, basking in knowledge forbidden to Jack like a lizard in the sun.

Jack did not realize at first what Kris had meant by his gesture, but he glared around the shining roads and noticed that the few people around were tall, usually green, and had weapons bigger than Jack’s two arms put together. The traveler even noticed a ruddy red orc with a club that even dwarfed him. He had not noticed these monsters before because when he arrived in Bhunir he assumed everybody was a reveler caught up in the regular madness. One orc growled in their direction, and Jack jumped.

In response, Kris waved with one of his black chitinous limbs and shouted out to the monster. “Good morning, Garton. Have you locked up any of my friends yet this fine morning?” The arachne smiled with thin black lips while Garton the orc exhaled like a boar. Kris turned his attention back to Jack before narrowing all eight demonic eyes and continuing his lecture. “See, human? You would have never noticed, had I not pointed this out to you. Everybody in Bhunir is far more aware than you think they are, and when we drink, we like to water our drinks down.”

Jack noticed a slight change in countenance after the orcish guard called out to

Kris. The spider-like man had been so full of himself before, so lilting and noble when speaking about Bhunir and his manor. Jack honestly thought Kris was high-class and full of the hidden venom that the upper crust bears towards those who wrong them. He was

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waiting for the storybook offering of an apple or some tea just so he could call out the poison that had been added in secret, but nothing like that ever came. Instead, the noble front eroded, and Kris seemed to be telling the truth.

The half-arachne placed a human hand on the wire table between them and leaned over, nearly losing his grip on his fine teacup in the process. If he was concerned about the drinkware, the emotion did not show on his face. “If you were to lift up Bhunir like a flat stone in the wood, you would see so many insects, bottom feeders, and diseases that you would be so terrified and you would climb back into your human-shaped hole in

Linbe or Ferva or wherever the hell you came from.” He said the word ‘insects’ with spitting derision. “And I know because I had to climb out from underneath,” he said while returning his back to a natural posture.

Jack was silent while Kris shakily brought his teacup to his lips and sipped. He thought that he must immediately warn Amon, that his picture of a monster utopia was corrupted and dead, and that Bhunir was really not a safe place at all. His thoughts arrived at his lover’s safety with an ironic accuracy, and they rested there, completely missing his own endangerment. Kris rubbed his face with his humanoid hand and looked again at Jack.

“I do not mean to say that you will be treated unfairly in this town, or that misfortune may befall you,” he said quietly. “It’s just that if you had done what you did in any other house last night, I could not guarantee your safety. I, personally, do not care if two men in love share my bed without a care, as I know the heat of revelry,” he smirked. “But at least ask the next time you consider it. An orc may not be so forgiving.”

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Jack nodded politely and thought that Kris had shrunk. He had seemed so large for a moment, and now that passion was gone. Perhaps, Jack considered, the spidery lad enjoyed performing then retreating, like a hermit who goes out for pilgrimage once a year.

The ashen door of the gothic manor opened and both of the men lifted in their seats and watched to see who would be joining them of Kris’ myriad guests. The host was disappointed when the dark-haired catperson appeared in the door frame and shut the door carelessly behind him. Amon beamed and charged towards Jack who stood up to greet him.

Jack peered down into Amon’s cloudless blue eyes and found his dreamy smile to be infectious. The human was grinning like a fool right back at Amon and they shared an embrace in front of the embarrassed arachne.

Amon wrapped his arms up around Jack’s neck and leaned above his shoulders so that he could whisper into his ear. “Good morning, my love,” were the words that made

Jack blush and turn his head away from both of his monstrous audience. With a rub of the traveler’s back and a less-than-subtle lewd squeeze, Amon noted that Jack was tense and shaking with minute fear. Immediately he turned defensively on Kris and spoke in low, guarded tones. “What’re you two talking about so early in the morning?”

Kris fumbled in the moment, but Jack caught his slack while he wrapped an arm comfortably around Amon’s shoulder, bringing him in for a side-hug. “The party, the town, and… the next step of our journey.” Jack spoke more seriously than he had the day before.

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“Well, let me join then. I think I should have a hand in where we’re headin’ next, yeah?” Amon said plainly before looking around the table.

“Of course, Amon,” Jack said. “Our host here, Kris, was just telling me that maybe we should... Reconsider staying in Bhunir.” Kris jumped and placed a hand to his chest as if he had been wronged, but he did not dissent. Amon surveyed the faces on the two men and found them to be grim and serious.

“Jack, I…” Jack only shook his head. Amon faced Kris instead. “Even here you guys think it’s no good?” He asked without clarifying.

Kris continued to sit, putting him below the couple. He took a tiny sip from his cup and frowned. “I cannot say that the demons are evil or the orcs are murderers, as that would be slander,” he sighed, “and mostly untrue. But staying here is dangerous if you are not willing to join the cycle, or submit to it.”

Amon pulled himself carefully away from Jack and crossed his arms while he still faced the small spider-person. “Are you tryin’ to get us out of here ‘cause we slept in your bed?”

“What? No.” Kris replied, his voice faltering. “Jack here just told me he was looking for a place to stay, and after last night, I thought you two were much too soft for

Bhunir…” He set down his teacup on the matching saucer and looked dejected at the table.

“Well, buddy, you were our host, but we’re outside now,” Amon said while withdrawing his left hand into his wrinkled cloak. The other two men could see the indent under the fabric, swimming like a shark to finger a knife-like shape on the outside of his

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thigh, invisible before due to the baggy fit of the cloak. “Jack here’s a sweetheart, but if you think I’m too soft to stay on top in a town like this you’ve got another thing comin’.”

Jack raised a hand and voiced a protest to placate the rogue but his efforts were ignored.

Kris stood up and backed away, his red eyes open wide like little suns. “I don’t…

I don’t want any trouble, ya hear?” His elegant mask crumbled. “I’m just tryin’ ta help out you two decide where t’ live, and I’m jus’ sayin’ that Bhunir ain’t too safe right now.

Humans’ll be alright I guess, but the monster infightin’… it’s too much.”

Amon studied the arachne’s scared face for a moment before withdrawing his hand from his knife and squatting on the ground so his chin rested on the twisted table that reminded him of black tree roots. He looked over at Jack and mouthed the words

“too much” with a raise of his eyebrows. The traveler nodded and pulled his chair over to

Amon so that he could sit more comfortably.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” the catperson said after taking his seat. “I guess I still have some thief in me,” he said with a weak smile aimed at his lover. Kris cautiously returned to his chair, though he scraped the cold metal along the stones and made an awful racket to get himself away from the intimidating couple.

“It’s alright. Where else were ya’ll,” he cleared his throat, seemingly regaining his composure. “Where were you two considering living, besides Bhunir?” He rested his chin on a pillar of a hand. His black chitin arms started fidgeting with blue string, and Jack thought he may have lost his investment in the morning chat.

Jack and Amon shared a meaningless glance and the rogue shrugged. “I thought this was your journey. I’m just followin’ ‘cause I fell in love.”

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The wanderer parried the blow instead of falling to his tease. “You messed up my journey in a beautiful way. I’m not sure what I’m doing anymore, but I guess I could review my options.”

Kris laughed and some of the clouds began to clear in the sky, though all was still dusky and gray. “Perhaps we should start simpler: where have you traveled to in Isah before this? The only towns nearby are Ferva and Linbe, and both are… less then desirable.” He grabbed his teacup again and seemed to be content with the new dynamic.

Amon frowned and leaned against his chair, crossing his legs in the process. “I’d never pick either of ‘em,” he said with finality.

“Why not?” Jack said suddenly. “At least for Linbe,” he clarified. The two eyed him with concern.

“Well,” Kris began, but Amon cut him off. The fluffy-eared man looked up at

Jack and smiled like a mother about to chastise his son for his ignorance.

He said, “Jack, monsters don’t go to Linbe. Remember how I told you about the cowards who’re comfortable hiding in human towns, not really bein’ monsters at all?”

Jack nodded as he explained with care not to offend any party. “Well, no monsters ever go to Linbe. Not even to hide.”

“What about monsters who can pass for human, like yourself?” Jack asked sincerely.

“Nothin’s over there for me,” Amon said. “Back when I left home I was lookin’ for something new, not crazy human violence or religion. Especially after all the stories about that gross old king…”

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“I had no idea,” Jack admitted while he glanced back over at Kris to see his response. To the traveler’s surprise, the arachne had another black iron chair by his side, and his chitinous limbs were rapidly weaving the back. As they made strange intertwined movements that Jack could hardly follow, the blue string he had seen before was molding into sturdy iron strands and being bent like stalks of wheat. The men at the table went silent, as they had never seen such witchcraft before. After a few minutes of waiting, and the sun’s threatening to come out from the clouds, there was a third chair behind Kris.

With a neutral expression on his face, he dragged the wonder of metalwork over to Jack and motioned for him to sit.

In shock, the traveler cautiously poked at the chair’s round back and pulled his hand away at the last moment. Amon stifled a giggle while he tried again, only to find that the newly-crafted chair was warm and quite sturdy. Jack sat gently beside Amon after positioning the seat so. Kris seemed uninterested in discussing the wonder they had on their faces, so he continued the conversation.

“Amon, you have outdated information. Linbe is not so much dangerous anymore as… undesirable,” he said. Jack was briefly surprised that the arachne had used his partner’s name, but he reminded himself that he recalled very little about the previous night.

“Wait a moment, what is this about Linbe being dangerous?” Jack said and stopped the two from continuing. “From all I know, it’s a nice kingdom kept far more in order than the towns led by lords. There are tall gray walls, and fertile farmland, and all

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kinds of money to be made,” he explained earnestly. The traveler had light in his eyes, more than was up in the sky above.

Kris laughed openly, getting a confused stare from Jack and a snake-eyed glare from Amon beside him. “You cannot be serious, Jack,” he said while pointing a finger at the displaced human.

“Don’t make fun of him,” Amon retorted while placing a hand on Jack’s broad shoulder. “He’s full human, Kris. Take him seriously.” Jack felt a smile intrude onto his face as his partner’s kindness flowed through him.

“It’s okay Amon. I’ve had to crush a few childhood dreams over the course of this journey. I guess this might be another,” Jack said with a dejected look. Amon turned to look at him with a wide-open mouth, his fangs on full display.

“Childhood dream!? Why didn’t you tell me?” Amon said while sitting up in his chair.

The small but gallant arachne leaned over the table and tried to include himself in the exchange. “Well, a dream of going to Linbe… well, it’s unheard of in Bhunir,” he said hesitantly, though his words were lost in the distance they had to travel to reach the couple.

“I thought you were heading east too, to Linbe and beyond. I didn’t know when you mentioned Bhunir that it was your destination,” Jack said.

The rogue pulled closer to Jack and gazed into his eyes while he clasped his hands in front of his chest. “If you want to go to Linbe, then we’ll go. I don’t mind at all,” he said with a smile that came across to Jack as patronizing.

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“First, tell me why Linbe is so undesirable.” He copied Kris’ word like he was expelling a bad taste from his mouth. Amon looked to the arachne for support.

“Ah, so, Linbe is historically… exclusive. There were once great walls that kept certain people in and certain people out, and tales were told all around. They even reached the monsters, even little old me in the wet and musky cave.” Kris explained but faltered partway through. Jack was about to ask, but then he noticed a predatory gleam coming from his partner’s azure eyes. Their host continued in a brisk tone: “King Hoj of

Linbe and the Hoj line before him have all been vocally dismissive—”

Amon interrupted him. “Come on, spider-boy. We can’t sit here all day weaving together the details,” he said while he made gestures with his hand meant to mock the fidgeting of the spider’s extra limbs.

Kris sighed and gave up. “If a monster’s found in Linbe, they’re as good as dead.

Better to stay in Bhunir, or really anywhere else, if you wanna stick with people who respect monsters.” This last explanation was enough to make Jack gasp.

“Kris, speech is about havin’ a bit more subtlety than the local peddler shoutin’ his wares.” Amon turned again to face his lover. “I didn’t really want you to hear about it that way, but I do want to know: why Linbe?” He looked away and batted his eyelids demurely. “If it’s too personal, then that’s okay…”

Jack perked up at the gesture. “No no no, Amon, it’s not a secret or anything. It’s just that I was told and read many stories about Linbe, and they sounded lovely.” He smiled at the memory and his partner. “I’ve been away from home for so long that my heart feels heavy in a strange new way,” he said. “When I heard about Linbe and found

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out it was in Isah, I felt like I needed to visit there. Like the kind of pilgrimage a monk makes every so often.”

Amon remembered the sentimental reverie Jack when into when he saw the stone gates of Ferva along the wide river that splits Isah in two. He drummed up his boyish energy, stood up from his chair, and leaned slightly over Jack as he spoke: “Then let’s go cap off our journey by visiting Linbe. After that, let’s drink our wine and figure out where we’re gonna stay.” He braced himself with a hand on the table while Kris gained a new, baffled facial expression.

“I d-don’t recommend that…” He said before trailing off like a fifth wheel on a wagon.

Amon leaned down and wrapped an arm around the conflicted human before they remembered their audience of one and reddened deeply. After a moment, the two were back in their metal chairs pulled close like two perching lovebirds. They had their hands held below the seats of the chairs and thought themselves stealthy.

Kris rubbed his forehead with his human right hand while his chitinous limbs hung limp at his sides. He turned his embarrassed and concerned gaze back to the couple and spoke in his most affectatious voice: “I can’t stop you, but I can offer advice.” Amon began to protest, but a look from Jack stayed his hand. “Amon, you were likely going to cover up your ears with a hood, yes?”

One of the rogue’s fluffy black ears twitched and he nodded, suddenly ashamed.

“Do y’know something better?” He said, posing the question as a challenge.

“Of course,” the arachne grinned.

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- - -

After Kris explained his plan and how much time he had to take, the couple idly walked back to the central square that they had stumbled out of the night before. Jack rubbed his eyes over and over again as the place was completely unrecognizable: the light of the day dispelled the magic over the city and revealed a marvelous marketplace that

Jack could have only imagined in his dreams.

The wooden tables remained, and many monstrous men and women sat at them chatting and eating, but the area around them was transformed. Rows and rows of stalls took up the dark cobblestones with colors beyond compare. Some were solid stone built from magic, and others were in classic Onmu style: ephemeral cloth draped over pillars of wood or some other strange material.

Jack and Amon took their time in looking through the stands, with Amon’s coin buying them baubles and snacks along the way. There were alchemical stands with glass bottles, each one filled with a rainbow of steaming or bubbling liquids that Jack was too scared to get near. Some were small libraries that caught Jack’s attention, though he was woefully disappointed when he did not understand the languages within them. As an added blow, Amon was uninterested in lore of days past. He claimed he preferred oral storytelling and did not understand why Jack was briefly upset at him.

Amon enjoyed perusing the strange food on offer. There seemed to be no distinct culture of meals in Bhunir, as every culinary stand was different. There were salads with leaves that were bigger than the catperson’s head and bread intentionally burnt to the taste of certain customers. The scent of meat drew the rogue to a stall at the end of one of

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the rows, but he only found raw and bloody cuts that were too fresh for his tastes. Amon explained to Jack that he thought beastpeople like him may have eaten raw meat at some point, but when he tried, his noisy stomach ruined every one of his attempts at thievery.

In the end, they bought skewers of cooked blue meat and picked each piece off to feed to one another.

A chill wind reminded them of the oncoming winter, and Amon thought himself lucky for many reasons. They used the rest of his coin – of monster mint, he claimed – to buy some thick travel cloaks and pairs of boots. Jack was quietly overjoyed that Amon placed as much importance as he did on shoes. He believed that people often forget the intimate connection they have with the earth they walk on.

Amon’s cloak was black and matched his ink-colored hair, though the fit was small and likely meant for a large adolescent instead of a small adult. Jack had a ratty gray shawl that was thicker than his summer cloak and large enough to cover most of his body. Amon teased his partner by slipping inside the warm embrace of fabric and clinging to Jack’s arm, hidden inside the gray. Neither would admit to their happiness, but each smile seemed to brighten up the day as the clouds cleared, revealing the strong desert sun. They found themselves walking back to Kris’ manor with the cloaks hanging from their shoulders, the manmade warmth nothing against the guiding light of the sun.

The purple slime answered their knock at the door and let them in with a smile.

Jack found the slime charming. She introduced herself before they left the manor as Jayn, though she was a quiet one. Jayn seemed to prefer a humanoid form, though she sometimes used her lack of definite shape to her advantage. When she guided the couple

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to where Kris sat on the threatening couch, she sat next to him and engulfed his limp chitinous limbs in her slime and began to massage them gently.

While she cared for him, Kris addressed Amon with a grin. “It’s all done. You should have no issues now, in Linbe or anywhere, as long as you put on this cap.” He gestured with his soft human hands at the table in front of him, which was black iron inlaid with crystalline glass. There was a small beige beret lying on top. Jack thought the hat looked saggy and deflated, like a fish that just quit flopping. Amon picked the cap up carefully and squished his fluffy ears down under the fabric. For a moment, his cat ears bulged out uncomfortably under the hat, but after a moment, the lumps appeared to be gone. A sharp-toothed grin slipped onto Amon’s face as he faced Jack and pirouetted, revealing that his tail had disappeared too.

“How d’you like me now? Am I a cute human boy?” He said with a crooning, flirtatious tone. The disguised catperson watched Jack closely for a response. The human only crossed his arms and furrowed his brow, frustrating Amon. Kris turned to Jayn and lost all interest in the couple.

“I don’t know how I feel about it…” Jack said after a moment of consideration.

Amon stamped his feet on the black carpeted floor.

“Why not?” He said with an exaggerated pout.

Jack scratched his chin and looked away to avoid his lover’s gaze. “Well, the ears and tail, they add a certain charm that I, uh…” Jack fumbled and reddened as Amon smiled devilishly, his disappointment converted in an alchemist’s trick to smug plotting.

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“Just say it, Jack. Say you love my cute cat ears and that my tail sways when you hug me,” he said with upturned eyes, his face cherubic in the magic lighting of Kris’ manor. Jack struggled with the challenge of either submitting to his teasing and telling him what he wanted to hear, or staying strong and running the risk of insulting his new appearance.

The wanderer eventually decided on honesty. “How you look doesn’t affect my love for you, but if I had to choose, I would want you to always be your same catperson self,” he said with more confidence than he felt. Amon smiled and kissed Jack on the cheek with more intensity than their public dalliances had ever warranted. This left the human reeling for a while.

Amon turned to face their host, seemingly unphased from the romantic first blood.

“Kris, thanks for having us, and thanks for this neat hat,” he said while patting the sandy beret that fit him snugly. Kris waved him away dismissively, all with a proud grin plastered on his face.

“Do not worry, traveler. I have always wanted to do something like that.” He twitched and smiled at Jayn when she hit a particularly sensitive spot on his shining extra limbs. “You two be safe on your way to Linbe. I wish it were not so, but you ought to wear the hat the whole way there. And perhaps take a detour north to find the main road… the main human road, that is,” he finished grimly.

Amon nodded, fresh-faced, before patting his pants and knapsack to make sure everything he had purchased from the market was still in place. They had fresh rations, the bottle of Onmu wine, fine cloaks that were new to them, and the dream of a foolish

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human named Jack to carry them on their way. The rogue grabbed the stunned Jack’s arm and dragged him out of the place after saying another goodbye to Kris, and so the two left

Bhunir.

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Chapter 8: Linbe

The trek north to the human road was nothing short of a nightmare. According to

Amon, the storms were mild, but Jack could hardly believe him while sand whipped into his eyes and stung him terribly. The daytime sun was warm and forced them out of their winter cloaks, but they were the only protection they had from the loose sand. After dark, the cloaks were desperately needed, and the lovers spent a moonless night together wrapped up in both cloaks. They were warm, and the scene would have been romantic if not for the discomfort: sand in their trousers, scratchy throats with no release, and no way of eating rations without downing a handful of sand in the process. The couple even dared to kiss on the second day, when they thought they had overcome the worst of the journey, only to find that their lips were chapped and sore from the eastern windblasts they endured.

The two were glad to find sound footing on the sandstone brown road, but their pace was a gallop, a mad dash for anything resembling a wall or building. There were no inns in the desert and none dared build anything between Bhunir and Linbe. The clientele would be too mixed and contentious.

Jack thought the end had come when he viewed the shadow of a great wall in the distance. The wall was stunning in scope: seven men could stand on each other’s shoulders and still not quite crest the height. Siege was impossible, or would have been two score years ago. Now, the stone was worn down by sandblasts and disrepair. Jack was disappointed by the decay of each stone, the marks and fallen segments and how the

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wall did not stretch out farther than he could see. The structure was more like a posturing arch, a gateway to nothing but more sand. He patted the inside of the arch before moving along towards Linbe proper.

The storms began to die down after the sandy gate, and the two were thankful, for the landscape around them turned from sandy specks to loose rocks and hard, cracked earth. There were still playful blusters that obscured their vision, but the road ahead was far clearer than in the desert. They took the opportunity to discuss their journey.

Amon began while clinging onto Jack’s arm, as he tended to do when they walked beside each other. “When we’re all done travelin’, would you want to settle down in a human town?” His now-earless head lolled to the side, rubbing into Jack’s shoulder.

“I haven’t really thought about it that much,” he admitted. “Though I guess I should now, since any farther east and we’ll be out of Isah.”

“Yeah. You came here from the west, right? What’s western Isah like? I’ve never been further than Onmu,” Amon said. He walked slowly, forcing Jack to a glacial pace.

To any traveler or guard patrolling the road, the couple appeared casual and romantic, as if this was a happy stroll around the neighborhood.

“There are some interesting towns,” Jack said. He began to count on his fingers while he listed out the towns. “Cath was beautiful but too small. Ofa was tucked away in a fairy forest, and I like that, but they’re a strange bunch. Fun, but meek. They plant some beautiful fields, though.” He lost himself in reminiscence.

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“Huh, I never asked ya’ before, but what did you do for a livin’ back in your hometown?” Amon looked up at Jack and tugged on his arm to drag him out of his reverie. The rogue was a tether to the physical world for a dreamer like him.

Jack grimaced and swallowed before answering. “I kept the books. We had a small librar- well, collection of tomes, and I tried to keep it clean and organized. We had monks and schoolteachers from other towns visit every once in a while, so I hosted them.” The wanderer stopped and waited for Amon’s reaction, expecting a laugh or a jape at his expense. The disguised catperson simply glanced at him side-eyed and asked a question.

“Didya do anything naughty in there? Spend some quiet time with a lad or lass you were sweet on, ‘cause it was always empty?” Amon pulled away from Jack’s arm and stretched out his arms into the air. Jack looked over and saw he had a dirty smile on his face, so he reached out his freed arm and pinched his cheek. Amon yelped and skipped away while Jack laughed.

“No, it wasn’t like that. Maybe if you were there, but, no. It was always empty though.” Amon returned to his side and sighed before pinching the human’s cheek back.

“Well, what’d you do then? ‘Cause that sounds like a boring job. Did they even pay you?” Amon said.

“Of course they did,” Jack replied.

“In what? More musty paper?” Amon guffawed. Jack could see his eyelids closing rapidly and realized that he was trying to twitch the ears that were temporarily

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absent. He found the habit charming, and decided to compliment him the next time he took off his hat.

“Coin’s the same everywhere, you know,” Jack said. “Enough poking and prodding me, what’d you do? Before you were a thief.”

Amon’s jovial, boyish face turned cold in an instant. “Well, plenty of things,” he answered vaguely.

“You don’t need to answer,” Jack backtracked. They were walking even slower, and Amon’s eyes turned to the road they walked on instead of the way in front of them.

“No, it’s fine. Thinking about what I did in Clo actually helped me decide what I want to do when we settle down,” he said.

“You’ve thought ahead that far?” Jack said in an attempt to relieve the tension he created.

“Yeah,” Amon replied with a weak exhale of a laugh. “We didn’t really have jobs back in Clo.” His tone was soft and contemplative. Winds threatened to blow his words out into oblivion, so Jack drew closer to remember every word. “We all tried to help each other. One day I’d be cleaning someone’s house, another I’d be hunting for food. Most of the time I did that the minute I woke up to get it out of the way. I was more interested in the unicorn.”

Jack nodded, listening attentively. A chill came upon Amon and he was suddenly thankful for his lover’s gray cloak that he could wrap himself in. He found himself sharing that cloak with Jack more than he used his own, and they both liked that dynamic.

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“But when I wasn’t looking for or speaking with the unicorn, I tried to listen to everyone in Clo and help them when they needed it.” He shivered and wiped some sand out of his eyes, but Jack perceived the irritant as slow-forming tears and wrapped an arm around the catperson. “Sometimes my dad didn’t have the time to handle the small problems of the entire village, so I filled in the holes.”

“What kinds of things did you help with?” Jack asked carefully.

“The worst was the injuries,” Amon replied and looked up at Jack to see a morbid, sad face. His eyes widened and he corrected his wording. “Oh, no, nothing serious Jack, just sprains and cuts from walking through the forest. We were safe, the forest helped us and we tried to help back.” He fell back into another memory, and Jack thought he was being dragged into the mud, so he tried to rub his shoulder or jostle him while walking to keep him afloat.

“I think,” he started weakly. “I think I want to do that, wherever we end up staying. I want to listen to people who need help and give them that help.” He watched the road ahead of them with flaming blue eyes. “Not like the people in Ferva who don’t know what they need or what they want. Just listenin’ to folks and giving them a hand to continue where they’re goin’.”

Jack thought about patting Amon’s head, but realized the hat would get in the way, so he simply drew the catperson to him and hugged him close. “I know you’re going to say that you’re not, but you really are a hero,” he said. Amon stayed quiet and returned the embrace, though after they released, his face was bright red.

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“Anyway,” he stammered, “what’s your plan? What’re you gonna do once we settle down?” He crossed his arms but stayed right in Jack’s big cloak.

“I thought I could keep stories and write some down. There are so many interesting things that I’ve found on my journey that it’d be a waste if nobody knew about them,” Jack explained.

“Really? Am I good enough for these stories?” Amon said with a confident gleam.

“Of course. And I think they will all be about monsters,” Jack said.

“I bet Bhunir’s dark side has plenty of wild stories we could dig up. Maybe Kris is out there telling naughty tales about us in his bed,” Amon snickered.

“You like stuff like that?” Jack muttered before replying seriously. “No, I was thinking more about Onmu. The Snakehole’s a good place for stories to gather up like scum on a pond.”

Amon eyed him curiously. “Like rust on a blade?”

“Froth on beer.” Jack offered. The catperson nodded, satisfied.

“Onmu is nice. If only I didn’t pilfer their wine,” he moaned without any real guilt.

“Yeah, if only you didn’t slip up that once, you would have lived a perfectly innocent life,” Jack teased. As he finished, he noticed another set of brown walls in front of him, and the two were shocked into silence. The chatty banter that consumed their idle time was gone out of their throats when they found the rounded stone walls that

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surrounded the city of Linbe, the walls that Jack had only heard of in folk tales and dramatic accounts from sleazy bards.

The walls were patterned with diamonds, lopsided squares that dotted the side of the well-weathered bulwark and marked the structure as something more glorious than a simple defense against the elements. Those walls were a statement: a deterrent and an art piece. They showed the might and culture of Linbe in one, and the couple was completely distracted from their conversation.

“Wow. Heard anything about those walls in your stories?” Amon said with a wide-open mouth, though he tried to sound crafty.

Jack nodded slowly as he looked up. These walls were double the height of the archway they had passed before. “The walls of Linbe… called the Shell, or the border of the outer city, by the people who live in there… the first line of defense for King Hoj and his people,” he recited in scholarly monotone.

They both walked closer in awed astonishment. The walls had been blasted for years by wind and storm and were not the clearest image of power. There were chunks of diamond-carved stone that had fallen out onto the hard ground below, and Jack noted that no men stood watch in front of or on top of the walls. He noticed small turrets in increment lengths and wondered what the view was like from up there. The daytime blurred his vision and stopped him from seeing what may have been on top of there, so he could not tell if there were signal flares or hidden lookouts. By the normal signs, however, the outer walls of Linbe were abandoned.

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Even as they approached the great gateway adorned with a portcullis made with tons of heavy metal, they saw no knights in armor or gallant horses with colored livery.

Instead, there were two men with curved swords at their sides and sandy bandanas around their heads. They had thick facial hair that reminded Jack he wanted to shave as soon as he got a break and swaddled cloth layers that were tattered at the edges. The one on the left had a sky-blue scarf while the one on the right kept on grinning to show off a golden front tooth.

“Hey, travelers,” the blue-scarved man shouted at Jack and Amon when they came into range. Amon, still staring up at the wall many times his height, had to be dragged at the elbow towards the grubby guard.

“Have we made it to Linbe?” Jack said, not having to try terribly hard to seem the part of a tired, sand-blasted adventurer. “We came from the nor’western road after getting lost in the desert,” he added quickly.

“Yeah, you’ve got the place,” the man with a golden grin chimed in. “You got the fare to get in?” He had a growling voice that did not match his smile. Jack immediately distrusted him.

Blue Scarf cut in before Jack could reject the man’s claim. “We don’t take a fare here. You can come right on in, travelers. Sit down and refresh yourself in the Shell of

Linbe, before you do whatever you came here to do.” He smiled with his lips alone, revealing a nasty scar along his throat lengthwise. Jack thought that these guards were awfully ill-equipped to be King Hoj’s own soldiers.

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“Thanks. We’ll be on our way then,” Jack replied and pulled Amon into the town.

The catperson waved at the guards and smiled dumbly as he let Jack take him away.

They passed through the wall to find a small-town square with sand blown in that obscured the original color of the cobblestones. There was a slow afternoon market in front of them where many people stood still and milled about stalls filled with hearty root vegetables and some fruits that Jack did not recognize, many of which were tropical or borne from the harsh desolation of the sandy plains. Men and women carted water around in buckets and barrels, some balanced precariously over their heads. Nobody seemed really to care about Jack and Amon, and for once they were comfortable with this strange anonymity.

Past the market was another set of walls, these smaller than the last but none less impressive. They were protected better against the weather that had eroded the Shell walls so they retained their gray stonework and patterning. These curved protectors had dark lattices across that formed small squares along the surface, and there were no towers built into the top. Instead, there were spired turrets inside the walls that peeked out on top like curious birds. Jack did notice torches used for signaling at the tops of these, and all were lit, even in the bright day of the unblocked sun.

Jack pointed up at the steel-gray walls and spoke to Amon quietly as they stood before the market and took in Linbe as a whole. “That’s called the Yolk. It’s where the king lives.”

“Might as well call it Eggtown with how they name everything,” Amon quipped.

“Let’s find a waterin’ hole and crack this thing wide open.” Jack laughed and agreed.

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While they searched the small square for something resembling a tavern, they found an open-air bar that was covered in the front by cloth hanging from an awning. The cloth was striped in thick bunches of red and brown that obscured whoever was behind the counter and the back of the head of someone who was sitting on a small light-brown stool. They were stocky and not too tall, but their clothes were leather dyed a shade of pale green that reminded Jack of fuzzy moss. They took occasional swigs from a wooden cup that made Amon curious, and so he dragged his partner to the bar and took a bold seat between the green figure and Jack.

The man behind the counter had wispy white hair and a fat, wide nose that seemed to cover most of his face. He had a grimace on his face, but he greeted the two when they took their seats. “Welcome to my bar,” he said in a deep, iron-forged voice.

“We just got water and roasted chicken this time a’day. What’ll it be?” Jack ordered two cups of water and an order of chicken for the two of them to share and Amon slipped some gold coins out of his sleeve and handed them to the man. Jack only spotted the glint of the circles that were only slightly bigger than the flat of his thumb, but he knew that they were minted by human hands and had the imprint of a long-dead emperor on them.

He wondered for a moment how Amon came by such currency, but the answer would not have made a difference to him.

After the bar owner gave them a cup each of clear water, he cut up some preserved chicken and began to roast pieces of the lean meat over a fire. He tended to each cut carefully, though Amon watched him and wondered if he was so proficient when there were ten people filling out the seats and ordering whole chickens on a spit. What

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could he get away with, he thought, in the chill of the evening when all the birds flocked to warmth and drink…

While Amon was plotting, Jack stole glances at the strange verdant visitor who sat next to his partner. She wore a full set of green leather armor without anything covering her short-cut brown hair. She had freckles and sunken-in eyes that looked dark in the shade of the thick awning. Jack marked a dark wooden bow strapped to her back with a small quiver of feather-fletched arrows. She stared straight ahead with brown eyes and seemed to not care for the two travelers beside her. Amon made sure to take her out of that ignorant state.

“Hey, we’re from Yestyr up to the northwest. What’s happening in Linbe nowadays?” Amon used a name Jack had never heard before, and something clicked in his mind that made him think of the desert town he had spoken at length about.

“Yestyr, huh?” The hunter had a heavy, smoky voice. She turned her neck like a stone statue to look down at Amon lounging on his stool. “You haven’t heard much from us in a while, eh?” She drank deeply from her cup. The couple followed suit.

Amon braced an arm on the bar and turned to face the hunter, hoping to establish a rapport and learn more about the current, strange state of Linbe. “Not much, not nothin’. You guys so cocky that you dropped your armor, melted it down?” He said, referring to the guards wearing bandanas and cloth at the gate. The green archer raised an eyebrow.

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“It’s safe in Linbe, if that’s what you’re asking. No need to worry about bandits or crooks while our guards are around,” she said with a smile as the cook behind the bar laughed.

“Yeah, it’s safe alright. So take a drink and have no worries, strange travelers,” the cook said as he brought a steaming pile of cut and lightly spiced chicken to Jack and

Amon. He placed the clay platter down and disappeared into another room, uncaring about manners or his patrons. Jack ate with little more than animalistic abandon, while

Amon only nibbled. The hunter watched them with her unique smile, one corner of her thin lips tilted up like a metal fishhook.

She looked into the bar for a moment and spoke out to the travelers, but her body language implied she was talking to herself. “No strange going-ons around here since

Enin came with his guard,” the verdant hunter said and continued to smirk like a man toying with a cat by tugging a string out of the cat’s reach.

“Enin, huh.” Amon said with a sigh, to nobody in particular. The hunter turned to him and blinked slowly.

“My name’s Mitane, by the way. I hunt game for the people of Linbe, so I don’t quite live here myself.” Mitane gave the two an awkward wink and leaned over the bar while resting her elbows on the wood.

Amon rested back in the stool and twitched his eyes in the way that charmed Jack on the road, though didn’t have quite the effect on the green hunter. “Ah, so you’re an outsider too. What’s your take on Linbe right now, nothin’ held back?”

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Mitane knocked back some of her water and stole a piece of chicken from the platter that Jack was feasting upon. She adjusted the strap of her bow that slashed diagonally across her breastplate. “I’d say Linbe’s better now that those big hunks a’armor left the guarding to the common folk.” She picked up a cloth from the table and wiped her mouth. “But if any one of those tin cans asks, you didn’t hear from me. You thinking about going into the Yolk?”

Amon shook his head and noticed that Jack had finished off the plate. He gave the human a smug look that implied future chastisement and teasing before going back to

Mitane. “Nah, I’m here for the Shell. I want nothin’ of that high-class nonsense.”

“Wise little man,” she said in return. “Maybe you’ll fit in here after all. While the guards are wastin’ their time over in that moldy yolk, we can try to relax here.” The hunter stretched out on the stool. Her quiver made a sound like bones rattling together.

“Hey man, you the guardian of this kid?” She directed her question over Amon and towards Jack, who had just joined the conversation. Amon glowered and hoped that Jack would not humor her for a second.

“No,” he said simply. “He’s an adult, and we’re together.” He sighed dramatically and faced into the empty kitchen. “I guess it’s not the season for settling down in Isah, after all…”

Mitane laughed abruptly, the pitch of her voice shifting into a high and contagious wail. She slapped the table before she cut off her mirth and regained her dry expression.

“Please. Linbe’s at its least stable right now. At least wait for the madness to cool down before settling.” The hunter looked down on the pair condescendingly.

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Amon nearly growled once he understood that she was hiding something from them. “Don’t laugh at us. I didn’t hear anythin’ about power changin’ over here. What’s going on, anyway?” He demanded.

Mitane raised an eyebrow. Jack placed a heavy hand on Amon’s shoulder to comfort and stop him from saying anything more. “No, this isn’t about the crown. There would be double the guards if that were the case.” He tried to act aloof and think out loud again. “A marriage, maybe… or a royal funeral. An event where the commoners have no place, a mercenary band in the shell.” Amon rolled his eyes at his love’s fantastical musings and pulled Jack’s hairy hand off of his shoulder so he could hold something in his own.

Mitane eyed a bottle of wine behind the counter and some salted meat hungrily.

She looked down and thumbed a pouch at her side before frowning. “Keep on going,” she said without looking at the two. “This is fun.” Her monotone voice implied anything but.

“A new outfit coordinator for the guards?” Amon suggested.

“A coup, but nobody complained?” Jack mumbled.

“Somebody stole their armor and melted it down for fun?” Amon grasped.

“The king’s gone mad,” Jack threw into the void. Mitane smirked.

“This is how it’s always been, and the stories are wrong,” Amon landed upon.

Mitane burst out in an uncontrollable laugh straight from her belly. She couldn’t resist shedding a gleeful tear at the bold ignorance of the couple who had clearly never been in

Linbe before, let alone the dusty wastes of western Isah. Jack and Amon stared at each

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other and shrugged, incapable of responding or stopping the woman from taking out her frustrations with mirth.

After she calmed down and wiped the wet from her face, she stood up, slapped a silver coin on the table next to her empty cup, and motioned for the couple to follow her.

“Come on, let me take you to see Enin.” Her voice was higher than before, and Amon wondered if the foolish exchange he was now embarrassed about was the key to lowering her defense.

“Why should we trust you?” The disguised monster lad said anyway.

“Best way to learn anything is from the source,” Mitane replied without missing a beat. “Hell, I didn’t believe it until I saw ‘em for myself.” She stuck her hands into slits in her green leather armor and walked away from the bar with a slow, slouching gait. Her gear was heavier than the two could imagine, even with Jack’s tent in his knapsack.

The two followed without complaint, and were relieved to finally have a lead.

Amon was certain that something was seriously off about Linbe- nothing Jack had said about the place matched up to the reality, and yet, nothing the monsters believed seemed accurate either. Regardless, the disguised catperson winked at Jack with confidence he barely felt and kept the human’s hand tight in his own.

Mitane kicked up dust as she led them down the main road heading south from the bar. After they passed a few wood-and-stone buildings that looked more likely cozy shacks than city houses, she stopped in front of a true tavern and let the two men awkwardly halt their pace and gaze at the structure.

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Gray bricks fit together in the wall of the tavern to make sturdy walls that resembled the walls of the Shell and the Yolk. They were made of the same stone and care was put into ensuring each brick was even and in-line with the others. The wooden double doors were wide open in towards the center of the tavern, and the couple smelled heavy smoke coming from inside. Jack stepped back with concern, but Amon waltzed forward to peek inside the doorway and discover what strange manner of man Enin turned out to be.

Enin sat at the front of a long dinner table covered in splinters. The wood was fine, likely made for a mead hall rather than the dingy tavern that was now home. He was a blonde, shaggy-haired man whose face was tanned, but only above his mouth. From his nose down he was pale and exposed, and Jack could see a red bandana around his neck that usually stopped him from swallowing sand while out in the open desert. He was jealous for a moment, as he had nothing to defend himself while he and Amon were walking to Linbe.

Nobody was at the bar, but Enin had gathered eight men and women with matching brown bandanas covering their mouths and noses. There were four on each side of the table. Enin sat in the lord’s spot: he had his elbows resting and his hands clasped like a military negotiator. He looked ominous in the dark firelight of the repurposed tavern, and his eyes were bright and open. They could not even be interrupted by Mitane throwing open the doors and walking right in.

“Berg, you got the western gate covered?” Enin had a raspy voice, but he was startlingly loud. A big man on Enin’s left nodded and gave a muffled grunt. “Good.

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Yeyli, how are the evacuation plans going? Have we gathered enough food?” A black woman with a short mohawk nodded and slapped a scarred hand on some weathered parchment she had placed on the table.

“We tell ‘em that Hoj’s bein’ his own asshole self and thinks there’s a monster attack comin’ from the west, from that snake pit o’er there. If we need cash, we tell ‘em we’re startin’ a relief fund and that they should give us all they got,” Yeyli finished with a braggart’s gleam in her eyes.

Enin suddenly shifted and brought his hand to his forehead, smearing the sweat on his face down towards his neck. “And, uh…” He hesitated. “Xenni… the look-see I told ya to do on monsters’n’such?”

A small woman with thick goggles covering her eyes perked up at the very end of the table. She looked like a monster herself. Her face was impossible to identify as human, with her bug-eyed goggles and covered mouth. Only her nose poked out from between them both, and that too was small and hard to notice. She had a chirping voice that Amon found terribly annoying. “No monsters here, cap’n. I think they’re awl in the west, like Li was talkin’ about.”

Enin breathed a deep sigh of relief and looked up at the table. He smiled and started to pull up the bandana that gathered around his neck like a bloody wound. “Glad to hear it, Xenni. That’s nasty business, it is. I wanna check out the stores we got built up, so I’m gonna head out.” He started to bark out commands like “Li, come with me,” and

“Berg, make sure there’s nobody tryin’ to desert,” and then stood up, marking the end of the meeting.

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Jack and Amon had pulled back to one of the corners farthest from Enin. They were completely silent, and Jack noticed that Mitane had a big smile on her face with her arms crossed firmly under her chest. While the crowd dispersed, only Enin noticed the huntress and approached, Li in tow.

“What the hell do you want, green girl?” Enin said and started to scratch at the back of his neck, moving with the suave confidence of a guerrilla leader. “I already told ya what our deal is. Join in or scram.”

Mitane pointed at Jack and Amon, who were backed into the corner together and awkwardly staring at the men who were leaving. Amon had a strange look on his face, like he could not place what horrible smell was filling his senses. Jack stepped forward and introduced himself. “I’m Jack, a traveler who tries to pick up on everything that’s going on in Isah. You’re Enin, I presume?” He tried to match the man’s presence so that the scruffy man respected him.

“Yeah, that’s me. Mitane over here tell you ‘bout me? Bad form to be shoutin’ these kinds ‘a things around town,” he glared at the ranger. “Anyway, what d’ya want?

I’m busy here.”

Jack smiled an ingratiating smile and closed his eyes briefly as a show of trust. He began to wring his hands in front of him, a habit he picked up from watching merchants haggle as a child. “Well, I have noticed that King Hoj’s guard is nowhere in sight, and that your men have taken their place…”

“What about it?” The sullen man replied.

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“Well,” Jack continued. “I also overheard some things you just said, and I was curious about the monsters you mentioned…” He trailed off meaningfully. The wanderer hoped with all of his heart that he could balance his knowledge against his brash nature.

He realized while Enin was talking that something terrible may be going on, something pivotal to the little worlds he had traveled.

Enin narrowed his eyes down at Mitane and pushed her out of the way so he could see Jack better. He began to corner the human against the wall, and Li’s eyes widened.

The ranger’s smug grin was even wiped from her face as she began to understand what she had wrought.

“A’fore we continue,” he said with grit teeth glinting like knife-points in moonlight, “tell me what kind’a scum you are.” He brought an arm up into a fighting stance and poised himself to throttle Jack. Amon was hidden in the corner, his small frame helping him stay stealthy, but his face was full of dark intent and his hand was hovering over his knife. “Am I gonna have have t’clean you off the walls,” Enin continued, “or can I throw you out with the contents of my chamberpot?”

Jack remained motionless but both Enin and Amon noticed that he was sucking in deep, sharp breaths too often to be calm. The wanderer pulled back from Enin’s prepared hand, muscled and hairy, and flattened himself completely against the tavern wall. For the first time in his inconsistent life, he took a gamble, wagering everything on a man he just met. “I just came in from the monster town to the west. I can tell you what they’re planning to do next if you’ll guarantee my safety.” His words were short, fast, and loud enough that Li and the other grunts who worked for Enin heard him clearly.

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The room went silent and revealed that everyone had been watching Enin and the newcomers with interest, though they had never shown any indication that they cared.

The sandy-haired leader dropped his arm out of the fighting stance and backed off from

Jack slowly. “What do ya mean, ‘you came in from the monster town?’” His voice was slow and cautious. There was a reversal of fortunes: he seemed as unsure of himself as

Jack was a moment before.

“Yes, I braved the desert town of Bhunir to come to Linbe, the great human capital,” Jack lied, and brought himself towards Enin, away from the wall that restrained his movement. He grabbed his cloak at the bottom and whipped the trailing darkness back as if a magical wind just blew through the indoors. “I travel across nations to find monsterkind and study them in their natural habitats. I could tell from walking through

Isah that you are all unfamiliar with monsters, so I overheard you mention an attack and I thought I should educate you.” He was speaking boldly now, bolder than he ever had before, as his mask took form in his racing mind.

Enin frowned and looked behind him at his men, who had gathered in a circle like the scene was juvenile storytime. Li stepped forward, pulled off her bandana, and spoke up in her leader’s stead: “Please tell us, traveling scholar! We were scared when that asshole king decided ta’ abandon the Shell, so we gotta know what’s goin’ on!” Jack looked slowly between her and Enin before the leader nodded and stared up at the wanderer with pleading eyes.

“Of course,” Jack continued with a dramatic, booming voice he thought fit a grand traveling witch rather than a humble scholar, “I will tell you all I know as long as

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you promise to treat it as fact.” He looked out at the makeshift militia and waited for them to nod and plead with him. He was enjoying the theatrics, and he grew even more confident when he noticed Amon had joined him at his side. “In Bhunir, there is a great

Demon Queen who sits atop a crimson throne stained with blood, sweat and tears. She rules over everyone, high in the square so that everybody knows she is on top.

“The Demon Queen worked hard to achieve her monstrous throne, so she throws feverish orgies every night to placate the wild whims of all of her citizens. She has mastery over magical spells and hexes, much like a witch, so she throws fairy-lights out into the sky like lit arrows from a master marksman’s bow. I saw the blue, green, and blood-red shine in the black of night and thought my death was approaching, and the murderous howls and groans struck a second fear into my heart: that I may be kept prisoner and fed upon slowly by the creatures that lived so deep in the arid desert.”

There were gasps and groans from the audience. Amon’s face was lightening up as Jack told his frivolous tale, and his hand was no longer hovering over his deadly knife.

He was grateful in a thousand ways that he had chosen to travel with the man who could diffuse such a situation that could have killed both of them. He had still decided to give the rugged traveler a stern lecture on how much danger they were in afterwards.

“My waterskin was empty and the cold was cutting deep to my bones, so I accepted my fate and drew close to the gates of Bhunir, the colorful hell of monsters due west of Linbe… there were two pig-guards who demanded my money and forced me through the gates, where I found myself on streets of cobbled stone that shone like coal. I slid my tired feet across each stone of death until I made it to the town square, where the

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Demon Queen’s throne rose like the steeple of a heretical church. I saw her sitting on the towering bone-chair with guards surrounding her like flies on meat, and I knew she had seen me, had caught my human soul and threatened to damn me for eternity…”

The men and women in the room were cowering at the tale filled with brimstone and terrifying imagery. Even Enin pulled his strawberry-colored bandana back on to hide his emotions. Mitane retained her composure, but she had gotten jittery and could not sit still. Amon turned around in false fear and covered his mouth to stifle deep laughs and guffaws at the thought of Bhunir being a hellish death-town. He began to wonder just exactly where Jack was taking the story, but he still admired the ex-librarian’s ability to capture the room. His dream of compiling stories of monster folk suddenly drew nearer, and Amon understood why he had wanted to pursue that field rather than anything else.

“You may be thinking, how did Jack, the wandering scholar, survive to tell this tale to you fine protectors of the Shell of Linbe? I am standing here now, having survived my encounter with the dread Demon Queen, so I must have dark magics or some hero’s trinket that saved me from certain death, right? He paused to heighten the tension in the room and get their minds going with wild thoughts that could only be found in folk tales.

“I will have to disappoint you, good people of Linbe. I have no such trinket, and I cannot protect you from a monster onslaught myself.”

Jack was suddenly interrupted by a shout from the crowd. He recognized the man as Berg from before. He was a barrel-like man with a giant sword strapped to his back.

He was one of the few who seemed to be wearing armor, though the set was patchwork

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and inconsistent in material and color. “What happened with the Demon Queen?” He yelled through cupped hands to reach the loremaster.

“Yes, I was about to get to that,” Jack continued, tapping his arm with feigned annoyance. “I learned just a few nights ago that monsters have one small weakness, that you can defend yourselves from mortal danger by utilizing one simple trick… For when the Demon Queen showed me cruelty, I showed her kindness.”

The looks on the men’s flabbergasted faces were priceless to Amon, though concerning in regard to Jack’s plan. He realized that his advice had not had the intended effect, so he continued, losing some of his brash confidence along the way. “The Demon

Queen was a harsh villainess, though she was beautiful and had a dress on like she had pulled stars from the very sky she inhabited. She told her guards to take my weapons, and yet I showed my hands, palms up,” he imitated the motion, “to tell her that I had no such tools. She thought I had come to tear apart her kingdom, but at that time I was too weak and too thirsty to challenge her and her demonic retinue.”

Jack kneeled down on the floor of the tavern, and some of the men backed up, clearing the way for the scene he was setting. “I said to her, ‘I was not going to ruin your peace, monstrous as it may be. I only ask for bread and water, and then I shall return to the realm of humans and never visit again.’” Jack rose, yet he was meeker than before.

He drew his cloak around him once more and seemed to hide in the dark folds. “Her face was a blank slate like a freshly-hewn stone wall. I thought for another moment that she would strike me down now that she knew I was alone, unprepared, and weak, but instead she barked an order at her right-hand guard and sent them away as quickly as possible.

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Then she watched me, her eyes lit by magical flames I could never comprehend, and I bowed my head as we waited in the silence of the night.”

As Jack finished his sentence, the tavern grew deathly quiet as if all of the men and women within were holding their breath and waiting for the fairy lights to spark up and tear the roof from their heads, revealing that this traveler was truly a magical creature from a different plane. They were transfixed on him; on his cloak and every small motion he gave. Even Amon thought for a moment that Jack had a vision in Bhunir, a revelation of how magic moves in Isah and affects the way men view the world, because his speech was real and honest.

Jack broke the silence unceremoniously. “When the guard returned, they had a red tray with ruby inlaid on the borders. Perched on the tray was a black loaf of bread cut into slices and a pitcher with a shining orange cup. The guard set the tray down before me, and I poured the water into the cup before accepting a slice of bread, meaning I was their guest. I tore into the tough bread and expected poison but tasted only the charred fruits of an amateur’s labor. The water was flecked with dust and rocks, and I also thought I may die from drinking deep from that pitcher. But it was cool and comforting, even in the cold of a desert’s night. After I ate and drank my fill, the Demon Queen urged for me to stand and face her again.

“She said: ’traveler, as long as you never wish to bring violence upon the monsters of Bhunir, I will personally offer you my protection. If you desire to return to your people, I will give you directions and you may be on your way. But for this night, and every night you think of us as real and just as deserving of love as your own kin,

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harm will never come to you by a monster’s hand.’ And so she lounged back in her high throne and watched me with her lazy, gorgeous eyes.”

Another interruption came, this time from Mitane, who had remained quiet and unflinching throughout Jack’s tale. Her voice was measured and powerful. “So, did you stay and join in with the revelry and orgies? Or did you leave straightaway?” Jack thought her change in tone was odd, but he accepted the segue into the last leg of the story.

“I could not stay, even though I am a scholar, and I wanted to learn as much as I could about this strange monster town. I knew I needed to inform every human settlement about the way of Bhunir, that they will never harm any of your people if they do not feel threatened by you… and I now know I have come just in time,” Jack finished his tale by moving into the real reason why he told everyone about Bhunir. He knew the monster capital was no secret to the realm of men, but all he had known before was fear and concern for the humans around the desert.

As Jack expected, Enin quickly wiped the wonder off of his face and stretched out to his full height. “We were never gonna attack Bhunir,” he said gruffly. “We’re not dumbasses, kid.”

“And yet, where are King Hoj’s guards? Why did he withdraw them?” Jack drew closer to the wizened militia leader and hoped the intensity from the story carried on into the exchange he must have. “I heard you are preparing evacuation plans. Why? Linbe seems peaceful, if less busy than I expected the ‘human capital of Isah’ to be.” Amon

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groaned quietly and thought, what an odd time for his heroic boldness to rear its ugly head.

Enin scratched his neck and ruffled his hair before responding. “Well, scholar, we don’t know it all, and don’t pretend you do,” he growled. “But we think Hoj’s got something big and bad planned, and we swiped a map from one’a’those shiny guard fellas. We think he’s roundin’ up his troops to head west, to attack that very same monster town you broke bread in.”

Amon froze with the realization of a great fear he had kept locked in his heart.

The vicious murder of monsters had not been done publicly in dozens of years, and no word had ever been spoken about the idea since the great reveal of all monsterkind. Even the rogue, in his sheltered life at the progressive gathering of Clo, understood that King

Hoj was engaging in the greatest of taboos: war for the sake of killing, war on race regardless of consequence. The words of the noble pair from Ferva corroborated Enin’s claim: Hoj was serious.

“What do you plan to do, mercenary leader?” Jack asked with questioning eyes, and some men backed off, fearing the sage judgment he could bring with his superior knowledge.

The bandana-clad man looked sheepishly at his gang and gathered what honesty he could into his answer. “We’re gonna take all the folk outta the Shell and take ‘em further east, maybe find a cave to hole up in by a forest and live for a few months while

Hoj gets slapped around by those monsters.” He pleaded up at Jack. “Unless you have a better idea.”

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Jack shook his head, unnecessarily shaking his cloak with his lowered hands. “I would say to go to Bhunir and prostrate yourself before the monsters so they protect you, but I don’t think you’re prepared for that kind of journey. Besides,” he added, “the world isn’t ready for yours and theirs to mix.”

Enin crossed his arms and bobbed his head up and down repeatedly before signaling to Li to write the wanderer’s words down. “Yeah, yeah, we can’t go west, that’s no good,” he muttered to himself while Li started ferociously taking down notes.

Jack remembered the calm demeanor of the men and women he had met on his travels and channeled them to continue his persona of a witch-like scholar. He had panicked when war was confirmed, when the monsters’ worst nightmare was called out like thunder and made real into a strike of volatile lightning. He had decided then on a simple plan that expanded on what he had done so far in the Linbean’s perception of him.

He only needed to follow through.

“I will offer my help to you, will you accept it,” Jack announced loudly, mirroring the bold start of his falsehoods. Amon tugged at his sleeve repeatedly. “I will go to

Bhunir with my partner and warn them of the looming threat, so that lives can be spared.”

He thumped a fist on his chest to show his valor, and some of the men in the front row cheered for the strange traveler.

Berg pushed his way to the front, and the big warrior’s eyes were shining and wet as he addressed his new hero. “Will you be safe? Do you need a bodyguard?” His voice was low and he appeared to be nominating himself for the job.

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Jack shook his head and stood up tall. “Thank you, but I have the protection of the

Demon Queen to rely on now,” he explained gracefully. “Also,” Jack said while slipping an arm around Amon’s waist and pulling his lover near to his side. “I met with my partner after leaving Bhunir, and together, we can get out of anything alive, if not unscathed.” He shot a smile down towards Amon, and the disguised catperson only blushed and tried to flatten his invisible ears against his head. For once, the braggart was out-bragged.

Mitane stepped up to Jack’s other side and smirked, her green armor shining in the dim firelight at the back of the repurposed tavern. She spoke up, the loudest they had heard her, and her tone was archaic and odd. She fit to Jack’s dramatic style like a camouflaged hunter. “Trust ‘im. He really made the trip to the monster town, and he can go back. I’ll see ‘em on their way and help you round the Shell folk up.” The older ranger looked at Jack and winked slyly. He thought she may have a stake in their success, but he was just glad to have support from a local source.

Li scribbled loudly on her paper before holding a hand up to stop Jack from leaving his position in front of the crowd. She whispered something to Enin and he scratched his chin under his bandana before he spoke up. “How can we thank ya, scholar

Jack?” He said with his hands clasped and squirming, as if he expected the grandest extortion in his time as impromptu leader.

Jack’s face scrunched up in confusion. He had no idea what to tell the man, his façade faded in the conflict between his morals and his expectations of heroes. A grand witch would demand an offering in money, land, or devotion. But the kind of man Jack

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was trying to be would decline all gifts and boons in favor of moral righteousness. He settled on a compromise with himself and the human society he had come to know.

“Give me the tools to reach Bhunir in the next day, and all debts will be cleared.”

- - -

When Mitane offered, Amon insisted on one camel for the two of them, and Jack understood why soon afterwards. The two urged the awkward creature past the cloth- garbed guards and pulled their new bandanas over their faces before the sand blasted their faces and chapped their lips. As soon as they were out of sight of the Shell, Amon leaned forward on the humped animal and clasped his arms around Jack tightly. He fit snugly into the small of the traveler’s back, and they both felt warm and comfortable despite the circumstances around their trek.

“That was bold as hell, Jack, everything you said and did in there,” Amon said with measured tones, but he was shaking so slightly that Jack could barely tell over the steps of the beast they were riding.

“Are you scared?” He asked, but he knew the answer. They continued on in silence, Amon nuzzling his face into Jack’s back to answer the question and stay as calm as he could.

They took the route back to Bhunir as fast as they could urge the animal, and they were confident that the way would only take half a day at most. The camel had lazy, glazed-over eyes and often glanced out, unblinking, at the horizons to the left and the right of them. The sea was far to their left, and the sandy beast of burden seemed to have

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never viewed such an expanse. Jack watched the camel’s eyes flicker and watch the blue while Amon mashed his head against his back.

Whenever a cloud passed over the raging sun above them and they could feel the chill wind of autumn or winter creeping into their skin, Jack turned around half-heartedly and muttered comforting words towards his partner. “We’ll save them,” he said, “we’ll warn them in time.” They were empty but not unfounded, bold but not random. Amon replied by nodding and wiping his face on the cloak. When the sun seemed to roar in the sky, he pulled the dark cloak over his back and made a camel-back tent for himself.

The next time a cloud overtook the sun and threatened to blot out the daytime forever, Jack pulled one of Amon’s tightly clasped hands off of each other and held them in his own. He let go of the reins, allowing the camel to drag them towards Bhunir in the natural shade.

- - -

When the crimson gates of Bhunir appeared in the distance, Amon grew skittish and fumbled on the warm, hairy animal. A muscular orc guard standing aloof at the door seemed confused at the two-man expedition, and her lack of a partner informed Jack that there were hardly any visitors from the east of Bhunir. Amon hopped off the camel and ran, stomping his feet in the sand until he reached the guard. He slipped a gold coin from the deep sleeves of his cloak into the green-skinned woman’s hand, then when Jack dismounted the animal, he handed her the reins aggressively. Jack mouthed an apology as

Amon ran ahead.

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Jack took his time and kept his breathing steady even after his partner ripped the enchanted hat from his head and disappeared out of sight, his ears twitching wildly. Jack knew Amon’s destination, and he thought he knew what would happen once they had unloaded their dark knowledge onto the Demon Queen. He was steeling himself against the inevitable and reminding himself of the loss he could take on this gamble.

He remembered the soft, kind face of Bin in the swaying shadows of the forest, and the way the fairy magic lit him up and made him angry. He thought of the way the old guard Dola slammed his spear against the rough, unfinished path to scare slow travelers like Jack. Sometimes he even wondered about the Lady Marla, even though he had abandoned the soul-satisfaction she could have brought him in favor of endless wild nights spent with monsters.

Jack stopped and smelled the air around Bhunir and thought he could taste

Leyla’s beer from the Snakehole kegs in the back of his throat. He closed his eyes and remembered the first night he spent with Amon, when they were tired and drained of all the tears the swamp could pull out from them, when they had clasped their hands together in half-delirium and knew that something new had been born from the loss of the unicorn.

The memory made Jack smile, though his mind was drawn to the terrible possibility that this might be his last day spent in Isah.

The traveler opened his eyes and walked again down the straight path that led him to the throne of the Demon Queen. He was slouched and stumbling with uncertain steps.

But then he remembered the lizardman merchant who had told him to go to the

Snakehole and compliment his wife’s craft, and he sped up. He thought of Mallea, alone

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with her beasts, dreaming of a witch who could identify her madness, and he began to measure his steps against the cobblestones so that they were even and confident. He thought of Amon’s smile, with his twitching ears and beastly fangs, the way his tail curled around him sometimes when they slept together, and how every time Jack landed himself in trouble, the rogue went to his knife as if he would kill for his love. By then,

Jack was nearly in a sprint, yet he kept his composure. He thought he had fallen into the same persona that gave him the strength to face Enin, but a voice as small and annoying as a sore on his lip told him that he had made that image of himself real. That he could really be that scholar if he kept on walking down and met with Amon to warn the monsters of planned genocide. He could have ignored the voice and left, or slouched and let Amon handle the talking in his impassioned state, but he kept on. Jack stayed on the path.

When Jack heard the stone-cold laughter of a woman with a deep, elegant voice, he knew that Amon had reached the Demon Queen and began his plea. Jack sped up, made his pace into a true sprint before the eighteen stairs of the Queen’s throne came into view. They rose up into the blue sky that made the vision less ominous, and even the demons were far less threatening than they had been when Jack had come across them accidentally in the night.

The bodyguards were all wearing colorful tunics and leathers and they were gathered on the bottom step as if their holiday had been interrupted by something curious.

They looked at Amon like revelers who had just watched an exotic bird plummet from the sky and roost on the stone in front of them. Jack could hear him talking. He was

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excited, and most of what he said was mangled as the words came out. The traveler approached the rogue, his furry ears stretching out and up, before Jack noticed the Demon

Queen on her throne.

Her chair looked different from before. Instead of a king’s throne as imagined in the books Jack used to keep, she was lounging sideways on a purple sofa that matched her fluffy robe in hue. Her dark antlers raised into the sky like fingers frozen in time, wrapped around three times over by spiderwebs that made homes for little followers. She was also watching Amon, but her eyes seemed to roll around Bhunir’s square independent of any activity that was going on. She locked eyes with Jack as he reached his lover for support.

“Linbe… in the east… the humans, they’re—” Amon explained, out of breath from the effort and the sprint. Jack placed a hand on his shoulder and stood next to him.

He thought correctly that the catperson would have been offended if Jack had patronized him and interrupted. After a few more breathless phrases and useless gestures, Amon turned around and pulled Jack forward by his sleeve. The human was stunned, but he had expected that.

“What my partner is trying to say is that there is something dreadful coming from

Linbe, something that—” and he was interrupted by rhythmic clacking coming from above. The rainbow of demons spun their heads around to see their queen descending from above, her horns shaking as she placed one cloven hoof in front of the other down the top five stairs.

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She spoke, and her voice was incredible. Anyone in Bhunir could have heard her booming, echoing voice, and yet Jack thought she was still elegant as she projected. He thought he could hear the energy of the fairy-lights, their depth, weight, and power as she brought her gravel-deep voice to all monsterkind. “Ah, Linbe,” she sighed. “Did you perhaps meet with one of my lovely spies while you were over in that broken town?”

The demon bodyguards all moved to the railings of the stairs, making way for her approach. Despite their gesture, she remained on the thirteenth stair. Jack replied, his voice faltering as a magical headache rapidly approached him. “N-no, unless you sent a huntress in green leather armor.”

The Demon Queen clicked her tongue. “No, she is not one of mine. I never wanted to admit it,” she said with prideful relish, “but the spies I sent to Linbe are dead.

The worst will come to pass.” Amon’s posture changed immediately, and many of the other demons’ eyes widened, revealing that they were not privy to this warning. Other monsters gathered from the square, including Kris and many of the merchants and partygoers Jack and Amon had met before. “I must ask you, lovely travelers, is it war?

Are the humans bringing their stupidity to our land once more?” She languished in her hatred of humanity, and many of the monsters around them snarled and growled in animalistic fury.

Jack felt oddly comfortable in the slowly-gathering mob. He considered growling and yelling out his hatred of King Hoj and the disgusting action he was taking, yet he refrained, and only answered the queen with the dignity she expected. “Yes. King Hoj

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has gathered all of his troops and abandoned his own people in order to attack Bhunir.”

He bowed his head after he spoke his piece.

“Of course,” she announced to the crowd with her magical voice. “We will have to counteract this plot. I dare say I do not need to ask you all, but I will do it for the history books.” She gathered herself, and with a theatric motion brought her hands to her face and threw them out as if attempting to embrace the sky. “Today, I announce the formation of the Army to Protect Bhunir. We will defend our home until our dying breath, we will destroy all who dedicate their lives to destroying us, and spare the ones who were forced into servitude. They may join us on the day of victory, because victory will be ours! We have wrenched independence from the bony hands of men who sought to chain us, so this battle is just the next phase in that eternal battle. It is time, yet again, to fight back against the fools. I will dedicate everything I have to keeping all monsters safe.”

She brought her sharp-nailed hands to her sides and looked down towards Jack and Amon, who were now alone in the center of a rapidly-forming circle. When Jack noticed her eyes pointing down at him, he quickly grabbed Amon’s hand and squeezed him tight. She grinned, and her teeth were white, beautiful, and sharp as knives. She brought her head back up to the crowd and thrust her chest out before she shouted:

“WHO IS WITH ME, PROUD CITIZENS?”

The monstrous mob immediately erupted in shouts, cheers, beer-downing and armor-clanking. Some of the arachne and witches in the crowd even threw their spindly limbs and hands up in the air and cast magic into the sky, which startled Jack and

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worsened his headache. He was still able to observe that the crowd was not violent or aggressive, and there were no outbreaks of in-fighting like at the Snakehole in Onmu. All of them remained calm and passionate, and he noticed the tiny storms in their eyes of pride and hometown devotion and was inspired to join in the gesture. The traveler looked at Amon, who had calmed from his anxiety, and squeezed his hand even tighter before raising his arm into the air with a primal shout of his own.

Amon looked at him with wide-open eyes and thought for a moment before he understood that Jack was throwing his lot in fully with the monsters of Bhunir. In a slick motion, the catperson’s roguish energy returned to him and he slipped in front of Jack, took his other hand in his own, and raised them both as high as he could. After the cheers had subsided, Amon kept his eyes locked firmly on his lover and they let their arms fall down into a warm embrace. Their hold on each other was tight, as if that would be the last hug they could have before the inevitable disruption of everything they had known before.

The Demon Queen hissed orders at her guard as Jack and Amon broke their embrace. The two were in their own world together, and they nodded together with some unseen communication that only a couple can share. The queen of monsters watched them out of the corner of her eye and walked towards them as the crowds dispersed with intense focus on the battle ahead of them.

“I ought to call you two the Heroes of Bhunir,” her voice boomed out into the square. “Now, since you’re not native, what job do you want in the battle against those disgusting humans?” She gave a pointed grin at Jack and flared her nostrils out wildly.

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Jack backed off in fear, and Amon stepped forward protectively. “So, what shall it be?

The front lines, or picking up the bodies?” She snarled the last word out and stretched her grin, wide and shark-like.

Jack thought briefly that there was no animal that demons could be compared to.

Many of the monsters he had found were so deeply related to the natural world in one way or another, so the fact that the queen and her horned guards deviated concerned him.

He pushed the inquisitive part of his mind aside and gave a rapid answer to her question.

“I want to fight,” he said unflinchingly.

“What!?” Amon exclaimed as he bared his teeth, a gesture that was prepared for the antlered regent but ended up directed at his lover. The queen had her mouth open in mind shock, and she placed a clawed hand over her lips in mock astonishment.

“A bold choice,” she said in a lower, growling voice. “Are you sure you want to fight your own kin with ferocious monsters at your side?”

Amon bristled and stomped on the stones like a cat preparing to defend his territory. “Well then I want to—” He was stopped by a subtle hand motion of the queen.

He felt his lips seal and he perceived a wink from the illustrious and powerful woman.

Jack did not notice this and instead nodded at her inquiry. “I’ve only stayed one night in this town, but I want to fight for it.” He hung his head down to the stone and spoke to himself. “I’ve never fought for anything before this…”

“Excellent!” She shouted before gripping Jack’s shoulders with her painted hands.

“Ser Jack, I dub thee!” She said while picking the man up with frightening strength. Jack felt his feet leave the ground and fear gripped him for only a moment before a soothing

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warmth and confidence entered and filled him completely. When she placed Jack back down, she looked over at Amon and similarly raised him. “Ser Amon, if that’s what you wish to be called!”

Once he reached the ground, Amon was prepared to assault the Demon Queen and demand an explanation for immediately sending his love off to war. However, he found that something in him prohibited him from arguing. His lips were no longer sealed, and there were no thoughts in his fuzzy head that logically led to Jack becoming a Bhunir soldier. Instead, he pondered what he should be doing, and he was only interrupted by

Jack himself.

“Will you be a healer, then?” The human asked with sorrowful eyes. Amon clenched his fists and nodded. He took a deep breath and embrace Jack again, this time in a vicelike grip that could never be escaped through physical prowess alone.

“If you die,” he muttered boldly, “I’ll go to the pit of hell of whatever god or devil is real in this world and drag you back here myself, you got that?” Jack, constrained by the catperson’s thin arms and sharp nails digging into his back, nodded and assented the best he could. In a show of quiet affection, Amon headbutted Jack’s chest a few times before they parted ways to make their preparations.

- - -

Jack sighed at the backs of twelve rows of black metal armor glinting in the desert sun. He was wearing a set himself, and he fingered the hilt of a thin blade at his side.

When the monsters armed the traveler, he thought he was preparing for glory and justice against the knights of the despicable King Hoj, but the sight of countless monsters in

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front of him made him think that he may never see battle. Each man and woman was imposing: so big that the human could not have seen the arched gates of Linbe even if he was passing under them. There were elephantine men that served as bulwarks and hundreds of minotaurs that sweated so much that the air was filled with the rank stench of sweat and wet fur. Jack coughed and wiped some salty sweat from his face before the droplets stung his eye.

So he marched on until shouts from ahead rang out and the march turned into a sprint across the unsteady sand. They had not chosen the road that he and Amon had taken a few days before, because the strategy was to surprise and time was of the essence.

Though Jack was not privy to the machinations of the Demon Queen and he never could have discerned her plotting through intuition alone, he knew that there was only one way to stop King Hoj before the massacre began. So he picked up speed with the rest of the army. Not one of his fellows resembled the human in physique, and yet all were identical in spirit. Some began to shout basic war cries that meant nothing but expressing their souls to the world, and Jack joined in. He believed he was fully prepared to fight for the lives of people like Amon.

- - -

“The whole situation is a farce, Amon,” Kris said as he flattened some herbs on a beer-stained table. “Once you understand that, the Demon Queen’s actions are obvious and perfect.” Amon sat small at the table and he was fidgeting his hands on his lap like two wrestling centipedes. His ears were constantly twitching, which made Kris blink and lose his focus.

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“Come on, tell me straight, Kris. Do you think Jack’s gonna be okay?” The rogue asked.

Kris sighed. “Yeah, Jack’s in no danger at all by my reckonin’,” he said with a resigned expression. “Do you want me to teach you or not?” Amon nodded, and Kris began to point at various plant specimens and give names and uses.

- - -

There was no war between the monsters of Bhunir and the humans of Linbe. That was how Jack would tell the tale to anyone who would listen, and as someone unintentionally on the front lines of a grand historical event, most considered his testimony to be accurate.

The Demon Queen’s forces were terrifying out on the sand. Their black armor was flashy and they stomped over the sand dunes that had stopped travelers from traveling freely out of Linbe for decades. Their charge had created such a great indent that the road that was paved there was called The War Path by anyone who remembered the event.

Some of King Hoj’s men did think to stand and fight against the orcs, minotaurs, lamia, and beastpeople who populated the army of monsters, but most had their weapons dismantled in an instant by witches who allied with the side that respected them more.

Some bigoted soldiers saw their armor stolen by speedy rogues in leather who hid behind some of the larger races. Those who surrendered were treated kindly, and while the

Demon Queen had no idea of the mercy Jack taught to Enin’s men before the war, she understood that mercy was the course her army would take.

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When the thirteen ranks of Bhunir soldiers gathered in the center of the Shell,

Jack was taken by the hand and led, terrified, to the vanguard in order to breach into the

Yolk of Linbe. He walked with tiny, offbeat steps and made his way through the gilded arches that marked the prosperous side of the ex-capital. The other monsters watched with bated breath as Jack made his way to the citadel where King Hoj still resided, and there were no guards to block his path. He opened the large oaken double doors and infiltrated the last haven of Lord Hoj, the last of his bloodline, who made himself a king by his own executive order.

On the throne, Jack found a remarkably normal man with sandy blonde hair, freckles, and extravagant jewelry all over his body. Hoj had glinting diamond rings, emerald stud earrings, and a crown with a massive ruby in the center. Jack thought for a moment that the king’s life was stored in the gem like a heart outside his body, because nobody with this man’s record of cruelty could ever hold a beating heart inside his chest.

Jack said nothing to Hoj, and Hoj only whimpered on his white stone throne. Jack stepped onto the platform and grabbed the man’s large hands. He held them up and examined them. They were soft and covered in an untouched jungle of hair. Jack turned the man’s hands in his own like they were objects, but the traveler was only examining the rings. Each had a beautiful gem that Jack eyed greedily. Hoj shivered and swallowed loudly.

Jack let the fallen lord’s hands fall back down to the flat stone armrests of his throne and looked back at the army. They were glowing with sweat and energy, each one beaming with the unrest of joyful rebellion. Jack sought a dwarf and pointed one out in

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the front row, signaling for her to come closer. The woman placed a hand on the greataxe strapped to her back, but Jack shook his head. She shrugged and walked up to the throne.

Jack pulled at Hoj’s hands again and pointed at a matching pair of silver rings with blue gemstones stuck on the top like sapphire pimples. Jack whispered at the dwarf as he held the lord’s hands up, and Hoj closed his eyes and braced for the worst. Fear ran like a jagged thunderbolt through his mind and body. When Jack reached for Hoj’s wrist, the lord flinched and almost fell forward onto the traveler. But Jack only pulled off the two sapphire rings and handed them to the dwarf, who inspected them with a monocle- sized scope and pulled at them with her gloved fingers.

Hoj tried to protest, but Jack shushed him. Some in the army laughed, and some were so bored that they went off to the side and tended to their claws and horns with long files. After a moment and two satisfying pop sounds, the dwarf was beaming. She held up the two sapphires and gave a grin like a half moon.

“Keep ‘em,” Jack said. “I wanted the rings.” His voice came out softer than he expected. His throat was raw from the shouting he did before. The dwarf’s mouth widened into a circle as she gathered the sapphires in one hand, the rings in the other, and tossed them over to Jack before turning away and excitedly inspecting the gems. Jack slipped the two rings into a leather sack hanging on his waist and smiled to himself while he gazed up at the high ceiling of the throne room. Hoj held his hands out in front of him and cried softly while Jack turned around and passed through the army to go back home.

- - -

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A lavish lavender bed swallowed Jack as he held Amon and pulled the blankets closer to stave off the winter cold. Amon could feel his lover’s breath, hot against the top of his head right between his ears. He squirmed to be closer to Jack and squeezed down hard on his hand to get his attention. The rogue’s shiny new silver ring coiled around his finger and dug into Jack’s skin as he gripped him.

“What’s the plan now, big guy?” Amon said dreamily without moving his head from the plush pillow he was resting upon.

Jack pressed his face into the back of Amon’s head and nuzzled him roughly.

“Stay in bed,” he said with his mouth filling up with hair. The catperson pulled his hand away from Jack’s and played with the ring on his finger.

“I mean, yeah, but after that,” he explained.

“Hmmm,” Jack said while getting the hair out of his mouth so he could form a full sentence. “Let’s go to Onmu and gather some stories,” he concluded.

“You really want to go back t’dreary old Onmu?” Amon said with a smirk.

“Yeah,” Jack nodded, brushing his chin against the rogue. “There’s at least one good story already there waiting to be written down.”

Amon perked up. His ears twitched and he tried to untangle himself from Jack so he could face him directly. “Which one?” He asked, still in the process of getting his love’s warm hands off of him. Then his eyes widened, and he stopped halfway through and laid on his back. He groaned audibly and smacked his forehead hard with his free hand.

“Ours,” Jack said with a grin.

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Afterword and Analysis

A Land of Many began its conceptual life as a fleeting idea for a video game where the player takes control of a nameless, blank-slate character and explores a series of towns that each have a “choice.” The idea was centered around the concept of distinct moral dilemmas that the player must make in order to lead their protagonist to the logical conclusion of their journey: an ending. This was for a course where I was required to design a video game from the perspective of writing and early development, and through our readings for the class and my engagement with other students’ work, I found myself enamored with the concept of individual player choice. I made a story where many people could have dozens of different outcomes depending on their opinions and decisions, and the story became quite complex. Quickly, I noticed that the choices piled on and shaped the character in a distinct way that made it so there were so many winding paths that people could go down. Jack, the placeholder name for the protagonist, could be hundreds of different people in one story if he simply made certain decisions. Now, my concept and design for the game and the scope of the class was so narrow that I hardly thought of more than two or three possible outcomes. In fact, I nicknamed them “good, bad, and neutral,” in standard video game ending tradition. Needless to say, the “bad” ending wasn’t necessarily an ending the player would not want. It was simply an ending where Jack is a bad person, morally. Every ending was valid in a different way, and I wanted the player to experience the story exactly as they wanted to, and not how I would.

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However, when exploring this story as a novel, I decided to take a completely different approach. I treated the writing process as if I was playing the game myself. Jack became a mirror of myself just as much as he could have become someone else’s stand-in had the game become a reality. This is not to say that he is a self-insert or that he is me in fictional form. There are parts of me in Jack because I made some of his decisions for him, and there are also parts of me in Amon, the Lady, and all the wonderful inhabitants of Isah whom I spent plenty of time with while writing this novel. Over the year I mainly worked on this novel, I wrote 10-page batches weekly that I feel contributed to the tone of the story. This system reminds me heavily of old fantasy serials and comics, such as what has been published in the Heavy Metal or Metal Hurlant magazines. It adds a distinct feeling of tension and drama, and I found myself unconsciously adding cliffhangers and stopping myself early in order to create a moment that would force someone to turn the page, if there even was another page. This was not something I actively thought about until afterwards, when I read my own finished product.

Much like that, theme is not something I often think about when in the process of writing. Novels typically contain themes that reveal the author’s feelings about philosophy, life, love, and perhaps even politics, but I do not think that this is the most natural of processes all the time. There are many authors who pen their novels with the express intention of exploring a theme, and they do so in ways that impress and amaze. If

Kate Chopin was not writing about her criticisms of her contemporary marriage in The

Awakening, then what was she writing about? If F. Scott Fitzgerald did not have criticisms of those who attach themselves to wealth more than genuine relationships, such

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as Fitzgerald himself, then what does Gatsby stand for? But then I believe some authors do not always think about this while writing, and many themes develop as a matter of course. This can be seen as an accident or the natural engagement that writing forces the writer to have with their world and their mind. When looking back on A Land of Many, I see countless themes, and each chapter has a distinct feeling and message. However, the overarching theme is clear: loneliness is the bane of all lone travelers, and they can conquer it through the strength of well-forged relationships.

Amon did not even exist in the first draft of this story, but he is pivotal to the narrative in numerous ways. He is another lonely man taking up the same social space that Jack is, and he is also looking for a home. Jack and Amon do not necessarily find a home in any of the towns they visit, and yet, Bhunir feels like home at the conclusion of the novel. This is not myself attempting to say that Bhunir, filled with social outcasts who found their own place, is an ideal utopia, and that it is what Jack was looking for all along. No, Bhunir has problems, and the lovers are aware of this. However, they are able to feel at home because of the strong bond they share, not only with each other, but with the community around them. If the two were to visit any other town, or revisit the ones that Jack had seen previously in the novel, then they would be able to make it a home, given enough time and some friends who already live there. I would like to explore this dynamic in short stories or a potential sequel, but perhaps I am jumping the gun with that statement.

A Land of Many is my love letter to fantasy of all kinds. Jack may not take up the same space in canonized fantasy with heroes like Patrick Rothfuss’ Kvothe or Tolkien’s

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Frodo, but his quiet road trip through the fantastic towns of Isah is my attempt to home in on a kind of introspective fantasy that I have not seen often in the genre. This was an experiment that I greatly enjoyed writing, and I hope that the fruits of my labors are accessible and pleasing to everyone who engages with the novel.

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Bibliography

Works Consulted

Brody, Jessica. Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. Ten Speed Press, 2018.

Bryant, Robert D. & Giglio, Keith. Slay the Dragon: Writing Great Video Games.

Michael Wiese Productions, 2015.

Cron, Lisa. Story Genius. Ten Speed Press, 2016.

Field, Syd. Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. Random House, 2005.

Kilian, Crawford. Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. 2nd ed., Self-Counsel Press, 2007.

St. John, Cheryl. Writing with Emotion, Tension, & Conflict. F+W Media, 2013.

Inspirational and/or Similar Works in the Genre

Beagle, Peter S. The Last Unicorn. Penguin, 1968.

Dragon Age: Inquisition. Bioware, 2014.

Hasekura, Isuna. Spice and Wolf. Translated by Paul Starr, vol. 1, Yen Press, 2006.

Miyazaki, Hayao. Howl’s Moving Castle. Studio Ghibli, 2004.

Le Guin, Ursula K. Earthsea: A Wizard of Earthsea. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.

Rothfuss, Patrick. The Name of the Wind. DAW Books, 2007.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Bethesda Game Studios, 2006.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004.

Vaughn, Matthew. Stardust. Paramount Pictures, 2007.

World of Warcraft. Blizzard Entertainment, 2004.