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Alphonse drifted in and out of a sleepless slumber. The sleep was the merciful part; better to be unconscious than half-awake, constantly disoriented with blurry vision and an aching head.
In his brief moments of lucidity, he gathered he’d been hit with some kind of needle-equipped poison cartridge by Scarlet Sun. He imagined crushing the Flowerling in his bare hand in revenge. Imagining was all he could do. Alphonse was no fool. He knew a Flowerling who’d risen to the rank of Rider couldn’t be stamped out so easily.

As the armed carriage bumped along the road, Alphonse lay slumped against the wall, lit only by the trickle of cloud-dimmed sunlight from the meshed-over windows. They’d bound his hands and legs, gagged his mouth and made him drink something they claimed would keep the poison from killing him, with the helpful side effect of keeping him too weak to slip out.

Would they give him a public execution as a traitor to the Empire? Fine with him. He could hold his head up high and say he tried. He did his best to make the Empress look weak in the face of her enemies, to discredit the lie of Prince Charming, to make someone bleed for the fate of Martine.

Would they invite the nobles of Martine to watch? Would his traitorous uncle be there, with a title won by selling out family? Would Duke Kovel squirm with guilt as he saw the final results of his cowardice on his brother’s son? Would Mina be watching somewhere, or would Alphonse be reunited with him after they took his head?

He could live with that. Or die with that.

But it wouldn’t be so simple, would it? Public executions were something straightforward kingdoms did. Libra wasn’t straightforward. They built their army up into an unstoppable force and sent them to fight at the borders of Fire Opal and the Border Island Kingdoms, all while trickling in like water between cracks to absorb the cities around them peacefully. They never held funerals when their current Empress died, or even acknowledged the death. Someone else just showed up in the title, carrying out the same policies, speaking in the same tone as if perfectly rehearsed.

Libra did not hold public executions. They took you away to Monochrome and you disappeared. Better that Scarlet Sun had killed him than whatever awaited him there.

Do you believe that?

He lifted his head with what little strength he had. His mind registered it as a voice, but not like one he’d heard. It was speaking inside of him, a direct line to the brain. Oh, he remembered this. He even knew how to talk back.

You abandoned me, Rot Witch. You left me to die at the hands of that spell-mad prince. What do you want now?

No answer. The carriage ran over a bump on the dusty road, jostling the bound Alphonse. Maybe the poison was causing him to hallucinate. He certainly didn’t sense the Rot Witch’s presence. After having spent so much time carrying her curse in his body, his own nihilism imprisoning the Green Witch’s rose heart, he’d know the feeling anywhere. There was no sensation of sinking into a swamp, no scent of decay. He imagined he’d feel a lot better physically with her essence gone from him if he weren’t drugged.

He didn’t sense her presence. But the voice answered, sounding amused.

Not her.

No, Alphonse had to admit, this felt different. The voice had the feel of smooth, flawless ice, and carried the sensation of cool emptiness. It resonated with a soft hum of a sort he’d never heard before, low and pulsing. As he shut his eyes he caught flashes of a deep shade of blue, and within it, something tiny and black as night.

…So, am I in demand among you creatures? There’s nothing special about me. You can find plenty of people who hate the Empress but don’t have the guts to kill her.

The hum stopped. Yes, the voice answered, but you know the futility of it. The next Empress will be the same. You should answer my question. Would you prefer to die?

He grit his teeth and sucked in a breath.

…Depends what you want from me.

Marjorie held a hand to her head to keep the gust of warm wind from blowing her hair loose from its bun. “My! The weather is lively today, isn’t it?” She positioned herself next to Ezra, who was big enough to provide a little buffer from the seaside wind.

Well, that wasn’t the only reason. He also nicely blocked the mirrors they passed as they walked through the market square. She would only catch glimpses of words written in light, and could convince herself it was still a trick of sunlight and stress. Never mind that the sun hid behind fat clouds.

“Ugh.” Ezra tugged his jacket tighter around him. “Guess we were right not to set up a booth today. We’ll be seeing a downpour within the hour, I’m sure of it.” Already merchants around them were starting to pack up early, rolling up tents and wheeling away carts as the salt-scented wind picked up debris.

“Getting a bit more savvy about land weather, aren’t we?” Marjorie smirked. Her eyes caught sight of the mirror behind Ezra.

-ME HOME COME HOME COME HOME

And thank whatever forces did exist in the universe that Ezra was looking up at road leading to the upper-class districts of Nautilus, because he didn’t see the way her face faltered.

“I’ve had to,” the Sky giant muttered, “since it’s so obnoxiously unpredictable. Can’t you just have a season for rain and get it over with all at once? Basil said his homeland has a ‘freeze season.’” He bit his lip and face-palmed. “Oh hell, Basil! He’s coming to meet me here. He’ll get rained on!”

“Can he really not take summer rain?”

“A little’s fine, but if he’s caught in a downpour it’ll leave him with a chill no matter what. I’ll just find him and head for shelter.” Ezra peered over the thinning crowd, squinting. “Well, once he’s here. Can’t be that hard to find, especially if he’s riding Aurora…”

Marjorie tried to focus on Ezra’s voice, but it blended into the sounds of the crowd as she found herself staring into another one of those endless decorative ‘mirrors’ lining the streets. They puzzled and infuriated Philomene, who saw them as a way for Libra to enforce its claim on Nautilus.

‘They’re decorating the city like a treasured pet,’ the princess had said with a scowl, ‘and Nautilus lets them.’ But they seemed to serve no practical purpose as far as Thumbelina’s researchers could tell.

MARJORIE, the mirror spelled out over her reflection in glowing white letters.

She could be tried for treason for hiding those messages from Philomene. But no one else saw them. Libra had no reason to go to all this trouble to contact Marjorie secretly through mirrors. It wasn’t making her any more eager to listen. Either she was imagining it, mental stress and health-related exhaustion taking their toll, or…

MARJORIE, COME HOME COME HOME COME BACK STAY AWAY MARJORIE MARJORIE

“Marjorie?”

The sound of Ezra’s voice triggered Marjorie to snap her gaze away from the mirror and up at her friend, now standing next to Basil and Aurora.

“I was just saying,” Basil said, “perhaps we ought to seek shelter at Anemone Inn before this gets worse. Are you well, Lady Marjorie? You look positively white as a sheet.” He patted Aurora’s back behind him. “If you’re feeling ill, you can ride with me!”

“I…yes. I mean, yes, I’m well, but also I think a ride would be nice.” It would get her away from those mirrors faster. Besides, her friends were used to her spells of queasiness and weakness brought on by her curse. If she could pass it off as one of those, there’d be fewer questions.

Today was not the day Marjorie wanted to explain why anyone would want to find her.

Alphonse realized the wagon had stopped, its driver strangely silent and still.

I don’t want anything too complicated, the voice said. I just need a pair of eyes and ears. Believe me, I can’t take much else. My brother made sure of that.

At this, Alphonse smirked. Again, this didn’t work out well for me last time. Besides, you’re obviously able to do something. You froze the wagon.

Only because you’re close to where I’ve been sealed. And even this pitiful manipulation of time hurts me, now. But I’ll do it to reach you. If I can speak to you, that means you’re my only hope.Which seems like it would put you in my debt. So why should I grovel to you? Alphonse wasn’t sure of the wisdom of taunting a supernatural force, but after carrying the Green Witch’s heart around and poisoning himself with the Rot Witch’s essence, he found it difficult to fear Other Ones.

Who said anything about groveling? We understand each other, or we will. We both have reasons to hate Empress Valerian, in all her incarnations.

Well, that was an odd way to describe the Empress. Yet at the mention of her name, he clenched his bound fists. You outright said it’s futile to kill her.

Futile for you. I said nothing about us.

Marjorie sat inside the Anemone Inn’s cafe, sipping from a complimentary cup of tea and hoping it would calm her stomach. There were advantages to being friends with the chef. She kept her expression tired but serene so no one would ask questions.

“Well, so much for advertising.” Ezra dusted his hands off, having just moved a heavy dresser in front of the wide glass doors to the balcony. “I would think with all the tourism that tree’s bringing, we could have brought some business from the marketplace here. Does Xaviero really think this is going to be a bad storm?”

“There’s apparently a saying the sailors have about a red sky in the morning bringing storms. Or is it at night?” Basil frowned and shrugged. The Sky-scaled furniture dwarfed him, making both him and Marjorie look like realistic dolls in comparison.

“And you still came down here? What if you got caught in the rain?!”

“Oh, that’s what I wanted to show you! See this?” Basil gestured to the long, black cloak he wore over his other layers of fur, leather and thick fabric. He held it up and twirled in it, letting it flare outward around him. Behind him, Aurora rested on the floor, Red curled up next to her in wolf form. Kind of the owners to allow them inside, Marjorie thought.

Marjorie glanced at him with a tired little smile. “Very lovely, Basil, but I’m sure you could have showed us tomorrow.”

“I was hoping to demonstrate it! It’s a rain cloak.” Basil held out the edge of it, showing off a glossy sheen on the surface. “New invention made from a cloth imported from the Sky. Coated with something that makes the water slide right off. The Taylors got it for me as a gift. Isn’t it great? I should be able to-to…”

Thunder shook the walls. Basil stopped short, devolving into a coughing fit as he held his chest and shivered. Ezra was over there in seconds, holding Basil to warm him up, followed rapidly by Aurora pressing against him from behind. Red, unable to squeeze in, hovered nervously next to Marjorie and ran circles around her.

Funny, she was starting to feel that oozing tightness in her own chest too. Their curses rarely acted up at the same time. But Basil’s was more acute, and Marjorie had no desire to draw attention to her own. She swallowed down her tea and forced a poker face.

“I’m okay.” Basil’s voice came muffled from behind giant and bear. “It’s over. It passed.” He wriggled out of their arms, catching his breath. He grinned, though Marjorie knew an intentional smile when she saw one. “Just a little chill.”

“A chill?” Ezra crouched down to eye-level, lowering his voice. “But you’re wearing multiple layers. It’s warm in here…”

“From a cold,” Basil appended too quickly. “Not a bad one! It’s, you know. It’s this aristocratic lifestyle the Taylors have. Not good for me at all! Too much rich food, not enough traveling in the woods.” He wouldn’t meet Ezra’s gaze.

Behind Marjorie, Red whimpered but said nothing. In the weeks since the seaside ball, the wolf rarely spoke to anyone but Basil and never took human form. Marjorie wasn’t as well-versed in reading canine noises and body language as she was with people. Did Red know something? Basil absolutely did; Marjorie was sure of it.

“If it’s a cold, I can have the princess recommend an herbal tea.” Marjorie walked up to Basil, noting his flushed complexion. “I’ll tell her as soon as I get back home.”

“No need! It’s really nothing, as I said.” Basil shook his head, turning back up to Ezra. “And before you say it, no, no magic cakes. Regular cake will do just fine, if you’ve any.”

“…Regular cake. Right.” Ezra managed a little smile, easing away from his boyfriend. “I made a little bit of pound cake with orange syrup this morning. Not a bit of magic, I tested it.”

This time, wind rattled the windows of the inn and rain pelted the roof. Funny, thought Marjorie, how a storm outside made the indoors appear all the more calm. The owners were off doing financial paperwork, according to Ezra, expecting no visitors in weather like this. Since Salten’s disappearance they’d buried themselves in their work, apparently requesting Ezra not go after their wayward son.

Everyone was just trying to carry on as if nothing had happened. Basil wasn’t returning to Sethwhile or his cottage, not without Ezra. Ezra was still trying to act as a chef even as his magic kept bubbling through him. Thumbelina Kingdom busied itself with its recovering queen, as if it hadn’t faced certain oblivion not two weeks ago. A storm carried on, and no one wanted to look at it.

And what could Marjorie say to that? She wouldn’t even look in mirrors.

“I’ll pass on cake,” she said, stirring her tea without drinking it. “Still feeling just a little…Ezra? Basil? What’s wrong?”

Both were staring at her as if seeing a ghost. Instinctively, her hand went to the side of her head. She wasn’t sprouting a blossom, was she? Last time it hadn’t exactly been painless, and she’d been taking her herbs regularly. But no, there was nothing amiss up there.

“Marjorie,” Basil said, hand over his mouth. “Turn around. Behind you.”

They weren’t looking at her. They were staring past her, at the thing she should have seen the moment she came in. The object that somehow eluded her attention, as if it wanted her to overlook it, until it drew her attention.

It was a long decorative mirror mounted against the wall, and glowing words spun across it like the cogs of wheels. They shone bright enough to obscure Marjorie’s reflection.

COME HOME COME HOME COME HOME SYNCHRONIZATION 99.99999% COMPLETE COME HOME COME HOME ERROR: TIME-SPACE MAGIC DETECTED COME HOME ESCAPE NOW THEY’RE MAKING ME TAKE YOU MARJORIE

“Marjorie.” Without another word, Ezra lunged for her, Basil drawing the sword at his waist as if it could do a thing against whatever was trying to contact them. They saw.

Yet Marjorie found herself rooted in place, staring at the words.

WELCOME HOME MARJORIE RUN THEY’RE ALL AROUND YOU INITIATING SEQUENCE

As the lightning flashed, she felt Ezra’s big hand clamp around her arm. She could see Basil aiming to do the same, but he never got the chance. The words vanished and the mirror turned black, opening into a powerful vortex of wind that surrounded her entire body.

TOO LATE

She heard the sound of shattering glass, saw vivid silver light surround herself and Ezra. Then the light consumed everything else.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Ezra couldn’t make out anything but swirling colors and flashing lights for what felt like far too long. He had a sense of sitting up, then falling back down onto something soft. Voices echoed around him, incoherent.The second time he tried to wake up, his eyes decided to obey him, albeit reluctantly. They burned, as if he’d rubbed his face after cutting raw onions, and wouldn’t open for several minutes.Someone or something was supporting him when he sat up this time, and at least he could hear.“…Couldn’t handle the unexpected extra burden. Why do you suppose it brought him through anyway? It should have rejected him. He wasn’t the target.”The target?Forcing his eyes open, Ezra finally got a look at his surroundings. He was in an all-white room sitting on a thick, black-fur rug, facing a shattered frame with remnants of mirror glass hanging from it. It was much larger than the wall mirror at the Anemone, twice again his own standing height. What he had to assume were servants in black livery swept up pieces of glass, moving with precision and care that the greatest Sky dancers and martial artists would envy. In fact, they all seemed to move in sync with one another. The room itself was sparsely decorated save for that strange mirror, walls bare, lit by a glowing glass orb mounted into the ceiling. If he looked right into it he could see the telltale crackling of captured lightning inside. Did the people of the land have Lighting Catcher Gems? They were still expensive up in the Sky, where gem carvers had only recently managed to reverse-engineer them. Was he in the Sky?It seemed unlikely, given the humans standing around him. A tall human woman in a long black frock looked him over and frowned, sticking her quill up in her white wig as she marched up to him. “So,” she said in a level, cold voice, “you’re awake.”“I think.” Ezra held his throbbing head, pushing back a wave of nausea. “I’m not well. What am I doing here? Wait, where’s Marjorie?!”He looked about in panic as he remembered the friend he’d tried to save from the strange mirror-vortex. There weren’t even visible doors in this room, just broken glass and a solid wall behind him. No sign of Marjorie, Basil, Red or Aurora.Then he recalled the sight of Basil desperately reaching out to him before everything vanished, their hands not touching.Well, there was that. Wherever he and Marjorie were, the others might be safe. That didn’t exactly quell his panic, but it was a small blessing. And if what he overheard was true, he wasn’t supposed to be there either.The woman whistled and one of the livery servants poured Ezra a glass of water from a carafe in the corner. It was too tiny to be of much use, but he drank it anyway. There was something salty mixed in, unpleasant to drink down, but it did make him feel less like he was going to throw up.“Marjorie is safe,” the woman in the coat said. “She’s been escorted to the hospital to get the care she needs.”“Care she needs?!” Ezra rose to his feet, albeit unsteadily. “What are you talking about? You kidnapped her! You brought her through that mirror-thing and just took her to a hospital? Against her will?!”The woman seemed unconcerned with the Sky giant looming over her. She looked up at him the way one usually peers down at an unruly child. “Why do you assume it was against her will?”“Because Marjorie was already under medical care. The Thumbelinans were taking care of her.” Ezra didn’t know the true extent of her strange maladies, but he knew she had bouts of weakness linked to her mysterious curse. He noticed the herbs she took, and while he wasn’t aware of how badly she’d risked her life to get into the Gourmet’s palace, he knew she had. “We can offer her much better care. Thumbelina may believe itself to be at the forefront of medical research, but that’s only because they refuse much contact with Libra. And as Marjorie is a citizen of Libra, it is our duty to help her.” The woman brushed herself off and indicated to two servants again. “Lead this individual to a holding cell for now until we can discern his identity. The Mirror System should have information on him if it went to all this effort to pull him through.”“Yes, Lady Swann.” The servants spoke in unison. The air seemed to shimmer around them as they produced crossbows, aimed right up at him.His first instinct was to flinch away, then to lash out and let his pent up anger give him courage for once. He was much larger and stronger than them, crossbow bolts or no, and if there was ever a justification to fight back this would be it. He had to find Marjorie, and find out how to contact the others. But he could barely will his body to walk forward at the prodding of the servant-guards, suddenly feeling as if his feet were made of stone and he was walking through a thick soup. Everything felt slow and distant, voices echoing. Was this the, for lack of a better phrase, ‘travel sickness’ that had hit him moments ago, or did they poison him?He couldn’t even make himself speak in protest as a panel in the wall slid away, leading into dimly-lit darkness. In his dulled state, he didn’t have the energy to panic. He looked back over his shoulder once more to see if he could figure out what was helping him sit up, since a human certainly couldn’t have done it; he saw only the glint of broken mirrors.Marjorie sat on the edge of a beautiful, soft white bed, glaring daggers at the nurse in the cream-colored smock trying to offer her a drink. “I told you,” she spat. “I will not eat or drink anything here.”“This isn’t a fairy market,” the nurse said, his voice young and melodious in a way Marjorie did not trust. “And we won’t force you to eat unless your life is at stake.” “I’d rather take my chances at the fairy market.” Marjorie was in no mood to attempt her usual deceit through charm, and doubted it would work on this strangely stone-faced nurse and his staff. She was in a windowless room lined with soft white carpet, lit by bubbling lanterns filled with some kind of blue liquid. Soothing music played, not in tones she would recognize as hypnotic music. It was just clearly intended to put her at ease, as was everything else in the room. The lanterns cast a soft blue glow on everything, suggesting a gentle midday sky. And if they thought she would relax around anyone who contacted her through the mirror, captured her and knew who she was, she couldn’t lower herself to fake falling for it.“I’ve left Libra. I renounced citizenship.” That was not entirely true, but Marjorie had to assume runaway children were eventually written off as dead. “You have no right to hold me here, and Thumbelina Kingdom will not be pleased with you capturing one of their citizens.”The nurse set the tea aside on a table along with a tray of glazed cherry cakes, equally untouched. “We mean no offense to the people of Thumbelina. But I think they would understand, if they knew what we were offering.”“I don’t care what you’re offering.” Marjorie dug her fingers into the infuriatingly soft, goose-down quilt. If she had a window she could tear it into strips and use it as a ladder, or make a rope and strangle the nurse and guards. No, that was too obvious. They had to have taken precautions against it. There was no taking the obvious route in Libra.Wherever in Libra she was. This was not the palace, unless it had changed considerably since her last, horrendous visit. The nurse, a younger-looking man with glassy blue eyes, folded his hands, nodded and stood up. “Lady Swann wants only to help you, Miss Blanche.”“Snow. It is Marjorie Snow.” She would use Muller for a time, Snow among most people, but never that name. “The young mistress Blanche was killed in a hunting accident. Very tragic.” The man’s blue eyes went out of focus for just a second, pupils dilating and then contracting. “Miss Snow, then. Allow me to explain the situation on behalf of Lady Swann.” “By all means.” Marjorie offered her most sarcastic, insincere smile, all while taking note of those eyes and his wooden body language. Was he under a compulsion spell? If so, she felt a little bad for being so rude to him.Well, no. She didn’t. She could examine her conscience later, when she wasn’t a captive.“You are in The Spire of White Emeralds, or just The Spire if you like. Are you familiar with what we do here?”She blinked, allowing herself to sit back on that cloud-soft bed. There’d been no Spire last time she was here. “It’s new to me. Go on. I’m sure I’ll be wowed by your explanation for your lady’s actions.”“Here we research ways to bring about a better world, the happiness that the Empress promises her people. We seek to reunite the old with the new, the wonders of lost ages with the ideals of a brighter future. The princess you serve would likely find much to admire about our work if her brethren were willing to ally with us.”Marjorie squinted. “She generally doesn’t approve of kidnapping.” But at least that meant Philomene wasn’t here; nightmarish images of the princess somehow being pulled in through a mirror smuggled into Thumbelina Kingdom weren’t true. “And anyway, I can’t imagine what I could offer you, or what you might give me other than my freedom.”“Your life, possibly?”She stared up at the nurse, wide-eyed, and then realized she was laughing. It was a harsh, bitter cackle, not her usual practiced trill. “You really don’t know me very well if you think I value my own life very high. If you’re threatening to kill me over something, my only reaction would be to wonder why. I have no secrets to offer up, none that would be useful to you.” Marjorie hoped she could still pull off lying in her current state. “And frankly I don’t see why you would go to all this trouble to drag me through those fake Moonflower gates of yours when you have plenty of obedient, scholarly Libra citizens in Nautilus who I’m sure would go willingly. Or were you just testing some new magical equipment? Has the great Ever After Empire grown so bloated and bureaucratic that someone actually convinced them to waste valuable funds on—”“You can stop playing the fool now, Marjorie.”Marjorie froze at the sound of that voice. She looked past the nurse as a panel opened in the wall, sliding open to form a door into a dimly-lit staircase. A young woman stepped through, curls pinned up and jet black as her gown, lips painted blood-red. She merely gave a look to the nurse and a strange gesture of her hand, and he walked out of the room without another word, the panel sliding closed behind him.It had been easy to defy that vacant-looking man, or to lash out against the servants who had hovered over her when she came-to in this confection of a prison cell. Marjorie prided herself in being someone who knew when to flatter and insult, which buttons to press to get the right reactions. She did not let her emotions control her reactions.When she saw the girl standing in front of her, she did not know what to say. She imagined words flickering behind her, like the ones from the mirror. RUN THEY’RE ALL AROUND YOU.“So!” The girl smiled sweetly, twirling in her dress. “You couldn’t even think of an original family name. They say guilt does make one panic.”“Snow.” Marjorie’s mouth went dry. “You…”“Died?” Snow giggled, a sound like a bell just out of tune. “Lady Swann didn’t think sending me in would work, but she doesn’t know us as well as we do, right I was sure I could convince my dear, troubled stepsister to give our lady an audience. Surely you’ll forgive me for bringing you back so quickly?” She grabbed a limp Marjorie and pulled her into a hug. “I was just so excited to be reunited with you! And don’t you worry. I’m going to break your curse.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Basil stared at the decorative mirror, back to its reflective sheen, still and intact as if nothing had happened. Except Marjorie and Ezra weren’t there. He couldn’t reach Ezra fast enough to grab him before that strange vortex took them away from him.He pressed his hands and face against the mirror, staring into it. “Ezra!” he called, to no avail. All he could see was his own reflection, Red circling behind him nervously. Aurora, picking up on his reaction, nudged her heavy body against him to push him from the mirror.“No! They’re-they’re in there! Somehow. I don’t know what happened.” He took a sharp breath as the cold-burn in his chest flared up, leaning against the table for support. “Not now, not now. They need me. I have to save them! I have to tell Philomene, have her contact Rem, find the Taylors…”“Prince Basil? Whatever is the matter?”Celeste came in from the hallway, clutching her apron and frowning at Basil. “I heard a terrible racket,” she added, her voice hesitant. “Is something wrong with the mirror? I’d prefer if you didn’t smudge it like that, Highness, no offense. It was a gift…”Momentarily stunned, Basil pulled away from the mirror and tried to process what had just happened into something he could put into words. “It-I’m sorry, but-mirror, vortex, storm, Marjorie, Ezra!”This just earned a blank stare. “…Are you quite alright, Highness?”He was not, but he knew what he’d seen. Basil took a deep breath and attempted to put those words in the right order this time. “Something just happened with that mirror. I’m not sure how to explain it. But it took away Ezra and Marjorie.”“…Who?”Okay. That was not the answer Basil was expecting. “Ezra? Your interim chef? And our friend Marjorie? She’s here all the time…” Wait, why was he explaining what Celeste already knew? Why did he have to explain it?“We don’t have a chef right now.” Celeste clutched her hands in front of her long skirt. “We’ve been trying to hire one for some time since…” She bit her lip, no doubt banishing a thought of runaway Salten. “Maybe you should lie down. I realize they’re not accommodations fitting for royalty, but you can borrow one of our rooms if need be…”Basil was too stunned to even clarify. Ezra? Ezra who had been staying at the inn for months now? Who was tutoring Salten until recently? Celeste didn’t seem like the prank-pulling type, and the concern in her eyes was too sincere. She must have been telling the truth in her own mind, though the truth made no sense to Basil.He felt a pull on his pant leg and glanced down at Red, who had a mouthful of clothing. She let it go, leaving only light teeth marks, and pawed at him. “Strange smell here,” she told him in a soft growl. “Burning smell. The lights are wrong. We should go.”Backing up a few steps, Basil reached down to ruffle behind Red’s ears and beckoned Aurora over. “Yeah, um…I would love to take you up on that offer, Madam! But I’m afraid I must meet with the Taylors. I’ll be fine, honest!” Without explaining further, he and his animal entourage made their way quickly to the exit, minus their missing friends.Philomene stared up at Basil, sitting in a hand shaking so hard she couldn’t safely stand on it. “Basil, please! I’m going to need you to slow down and explain that again. And…if you could steady yourself? I’m getting a bit of a headache.”“Sorry! Sorry.” Basil knelt down and set Philomene back on the stone platform. He’d come barreling into the halls of Thumbelina the moment the gate was opened for him, pale and stammering, alarming nearby Flowerling soldiers and civilians as he asked for Philomene. At least he’d had the good sense to leave Aurora outside. “I’m just a little overwhelmed. This is the-the fourth time I’ve tried to tell this story today. Before I start, please, please swear on the Mountain Lords or the Vine or whatever gods hear your prayers that you’ll listen and believe me?!”There were pinprick tears in the corners of his eyes, and he clutched at his chest as if catching his breath.Philomene walked up to the edge of the platform, leaning against the railing for support. She couldn’t reach Basil or she’d have given him a reassuring pat. Instead, all she could offer was a smile. “I’ll listen. And I’ll trust you’re not lying. Has that been a problem?” She tilted her head. “You have a reputation for honesty.” Prone to exaggeration as he might be, Philomene doubted Basil could outright lie convincingly to a baby.“You…” Basil drooped. “You have no idea. Okay, here goes: Marjorie and Ezra disappeared through a mirror.”“…A mirror?” Philomene had to take a deep breath and steel herself against her initial panic reaction. Something happened to Marjorie?“So you remember who they are?!” Basil really did look ready to burst into tears, from exhaustion and frustration if nothing else.Philomene settled her arms on the railing and craned her neck. “…Maybe you should start from the beginning.”“I did! Everything was fine, then one of the mirrors in the hotel started displaying glowing words asking for Marjorie. Ezra reached for her, and then they were both gone before I could follow. Red saw it too, but no one believes her either. She was so upset she holed herself up in my quarters.” He stopped to catch his breath. “Nobody remembers who they are, Philomene. Not the innkeepers who employed Ezra, not even Captain Taylor. They all got this strange blank look in their eyes when I started telling the story, and then acted like I was imagining people. People! And that I was ill.” He covered his face with one hand. “It doesn’t make any sense. Ezra and Marjorie helped save their entire city. If Red hadn’t seen it I would have thought maybe I was making it up, that I’d had some strange dream about the spring and summer…”Philomene stopped to gather her thoughts, watching Basil's body language. She turned to a nearby servant. "Bring some water and fruit for both of us, and a boiled egg for Prince Basil. Portioned for us accordingly, of course.""Yes, Highness." The servant bowed and ducked through a doorway."You need to eat and drink something substantial," Philomene said before Basil could protest. "We both need to get our thoughts together. I do believe you. I am not sure how any of this is possible, but I want you to understand that I believe you. And if something has happened to Marjorie, it is my duty as her liege to understand what that is."Basil remained quiet for a second. "You're doing something to focus yourself. Because you're scared too, right?""Terrified." She found herself speaking so softly, she wasn’t sure Basil heard her at first. “Is it that obvious?”“When…when Ezra’s got something on his mind, he pushes himself into his work. When you do, you just try to power past all the emotional bits and take the ‘correct’ action. See? I’m getting better at reading people.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his glove. “Well, some people. But I’m a little glad of it. When something goes wrong, I just have to charge at the problem and hope for the best…and I don’t know what to charge at now. I don’t know what to do.”“…We figure out what’s going on, and plan.” Philomene steeled herself against the urge to cry, though Basil’s own stifled tears weren’t helping. “We owe them at least that much. And you’re sure, no one down there remembers them?”“No one in the Taylor household, the Anemone or the station. I half expected Marjorie to be forgotten here, too,” Basil said. He at least took a drink of the water a human servant brought on a tray. “Maybe we remember them because we’re close to them. As if the spell isn’t as strong as the bonds of friendship and love!”Philomene pursed her lips and turned to a Flowerling guard standing by the balcony doors. “Evers, what do you know about Marjorie Snow?”The guard, who in her duty had remained dead silent, now spoke when prompted in a gruff voice. “She is your handmaiden and bodyguard, as well as a jester and performer for the Floral Court. She arrived ten years ago. She smiles a lot. Highness,” she added quickly.“…Well, a curt summary if I’ve ever heard one, but Evers knows she exists and isn’t exactly close to her. So I’m afraid the bonds of friendship and love are not the variable factor here.” There she went, slipping back into scientific terms. Stepping back from a problem gave her distance from it, though she felt guilty doing so when it was Marjorie’s life at stake. “This is not a good precedent. Those mirrors were set up by Libra, so I’ve no doubt whatever happened has ties to them.”“But why would Libra take them? What did they ever do?!” Basil rose to his full height and looked as if he were about to stalk about in anger before he remembered what a terrible earthquake that would make for the Flower Folk standing on the walkways and balconies. “The mirror was talking about Marjorie. Wouldn’t be surprised if Ezra was taken by accident; I very nearly was. If someone wanted her, why couldn’t they just send for her? What reason would Libra have to kidnap a handmaiden in secret?” As he spoke, his voice rose in agitation. “Who would want to do that to her?”“I DON’T KNOW! I don’t know, Basil! She never tells me anything!” Philomene covered her mouth, eyes wide. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. It’s just always been as if there was a secret contract to our bond. She would only share what she wished to, and I would never order her to tell me about herself. But I wanted to know, desperately. Every time her mask slipped and some old sadness leaked through, I wanted to know who had hurt her. What had hurt her! Why she seemed more concerned about saving us from her curse than keeping herself alive.”Basil’s response took a few moments, thoughtful, weary brown eyes looking down at her. “Princess, she’s your servant. It can never be completely equal between you two. It’s just like how the Grandmothers love me, but they also took on a duty to protect me. She might have been trying to shield you from whatever haunted her.”“Well, and now it’s gotten her kidnapped, hasn’t it?” Philomene slumped against the railing, mourning the control she thought she had moments ago. “Now you’re the one trying to talk through things with logic, aren’t you. Thank you, Basil. I’m just frightened for them.”“Me too.” Basil held out two hands in front of Philomene, an invitation. “Here. I’ll try to be a little more steady this time. Promise.”She hesitated. “But-but we need to plan, take action…Oh, alright.” She let herself sit in Basil’s hands, cushioned by his thick gloves, as he brought her up to his chest for a delicate hug. She could hear his pounding heart even through his layers and layers of clothing, confirming that he needed this too.“Thank you,” she said softly. “I’m sorry. I want to be efficient and find out how to fix this immediately, but it’s all so much. It’s all too much.”“I know,” Basil whispered. “I almost lost Ezra once. I can’t stand the thought of doing it again. And I swore an oath to protect Marjorie.”She looked up, blinking. “You did?”“An oath to myself, as future Prince Charming! To protect all of you, her included,” Basil amended with a tiny swell of pride in his voice, despite his obvious distress. “We’ll figure out what’s going on, but for now I’m just glad you remember them. They still have us.”“…Right. They still have us.” Philomene shut her eyes and took deep breaths. She hoped the lack of body heat she felt from Basil was due to his insulated clothing. “I’ll need to talk to my sisters and the elders. That bit about everyone forgetting them is concerning for more than one reason. And I can get in contact with Rem. Thank goodness they’re outside the city, if my theory is right…”A voice interrupted her. “Highness? There’s someone from Nautilus here to see you. She wishes to speak to Prince Basil as well.”“What?” Philomene looked up, recognizing the voice of the servant even if she couldn’t see him over Basil. “Yes, of course. Send her in.”As Basil turned around with Philomene in hand, a woman in the formal uniform of the Nautilus Royal Guard stepped in, a cool expression on her face. Unperturbed by the stares such a rare sight earned in Nautilus, the guardswoman saluted the two royals.“…Captain Bell?” Basil recognized her before she could speak. “What brings you all the way up here?”“Highness. It’s about your visit earlier.” Bell clasped her hands in front of her. "We should...talk."

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Marjorie could use a drink, but not the one sitting in front of her. The perfectly square lemon cakes dusted with powdered sugar could go to Hell, too, along with anything else they served her here. She doubted that would work out for her in the end, but at the moment she didn’t want to trust anything on this little white table in the middle of a round, mirror-walled room. Snow seemed to ignore her snub. “You’ll absolutely love it here in the Spire. We’re doing some amazing work, reviving artifacts from ancient days and finding all kinds of new uses for them. I’m really just an assistant for now, but Lady Swann says I can climb the ranks through a lot of hard work. Probably because of what I remember from Mother and Father’s sorcery. Considering how everyone is usually assigned a proper role in the Monochrome City, an offer like that is quite hard to resist, wouldn’t you say?” “Snow…” Marjorie’s words died on her tongue as she stared across at the perfectly painted young maiden sitting across from her, and the numerous, distorted reflections of both of them the mirrored walls painted behind her. “I’m sorry—”“Oh, please! All water under the bridge, darling. It all worked out for the best.” Snow folded her hands together in front of her, with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Actually, I may have to reconsider the Spire’s offer. As I was going to say, I’m a Princess! Candidate for the next Empress. They did the testing and it turns out I qualify. You might too. You should try it. Then we can both have our happy endings. But either way, I’ve certainly found mine and I wanted to make sure you were happy too.” “…So this was your idea?” It was a lot easier to stand up to the arrogant nurse. He was a stranger.“Well, not exactly. I thought it would be nice to have you here, but they were looking for the Golden Apple carrier for a long time. You know how it never took with me. Or the others.” For the first time, Snow’s smile faltered. It was only for a second, like a flower twitching in a breeze. “Well, good old Mother and Father weren’t going to give up just because you’d flown the coop.” She started stirring the tea, never drinking it. “And since your escape made them unhappy, they got a bit reckless with their experiments. Enough to finally get them Libra’s attention.” “…So they were caught. Arrested.” It felt so anticlimactic. Logical, from Marjorie’s perspective, and yet somehow she always imagined something a little more dramatic. She didn’t really believe in Prince Charming but liked to think one would find Snow.Because you couldn’t go back for her, right? Snow overlooked any guilt that might have appeared on Marjorie’s face. She just kept stirring that tea. “I imagine so. They disappeared. You know. Capital-D Disappeared. I was given a pardon for my actions, since I was a child at the time.” She looked up at Marjorie with big, blue eyes. “They pardoned you too, you know. We didn’t have a choice.” “…Are you angry with me? Is this what it’s about, Snow?” Marjorie sucked in a breath. “Because I would be, too. I am. I kept wanting to go back, but seeing them…”“They would have harvested you in a heartbeat. You would have died, and done nothing for me.” Snow set her cup down, and all the distorted images of her did the same. “You had to stay out of their hands. Of course I understand! Besides, all the suffering paid off. And you’ve been performing penance, haven’t you? Running around with those awful Hunters, groveling before foreign Flowerling royalty. That’s what all that bowing and scraping before the princess was, am I right?” “No! It’s my life,” Marjorie protested, hands on the table. “It has nothing to do with-wait. Wait.” Her blood ran cold. “You were watching me? You knew where I was…?”“Oh, not until recently! Don’t go all pale like that, Marjorie.” Snow chuckled as she stood up, gesturing to the mirrored wall behind her. “I told you the Spire is doing amazing work, didn’t I? You are going to love this. You of all people know the importance of vigilance. Mirror?” She held her hands out. “Display downtown Nautilus.”The walls went jet black, the only light coming from one of those strange orbs hanging by the ceiling. Then images flickered to life on the walls, squares like living paintings depicting scenes from late night Nautilus. There was a human woman pulling her toddler away from a curious giant child. There was a guard on patrol, a cart rolling home at the end of the day, the Sky hat seller with her infant balanced on one arm. Then they all vanished in a blinding flash, replaced by the mirror walls.“I am afraid we just can’t sustain it for very long. Not yet, anyway. That was a longer stretch than usual. But once the spell’s fully online, we’ll be able to help Libra keep watch over the pearl of its crown. Keep it safe, and clean, and happy.” Snow clutched her hands behind her back. “You always told me you needed to know someone inside and out in order to protect them.”That wasn’t all of it. Marjorie used to say knowing someone inside and out was the best way to protect a friend, or understand an enemy. She felt woozy, collapsing back into the chair and holding her head. Immediately Snow was by her side, cold hand on her shoulder. “Marjorie? Are you alright? Is it…?”“Maybe. I don’t know. This is all too much. You’re…you’re spying on Nautilus. That’s what those mirrors are for. They’re your eyes.”“Nautilus is part of Libra. They have a right to it, don’t you think? And I’m not Libra, Marjorie. Please, drink something! You must be dehydrated.” Snow stepped back. “I can have water delivered instead of tea. I just thought this would be nice. Remember we used to talk about what we’d do if we escaped? When it was all over? Meet up and have tea and lemon bars, and talk about old times and laugh?” “In the forest glen. Yes.” The haze was getting worse, a combination of thirst, exhaustion and the curse reasserting itself in her resulting weakness. “Not here. Not this. What is all this, Snow? What are you doing here? Why didn’t you just send a carriage, instead of kidnapping us like this?”“Us?” Snow frowned, lips pursed like a doll’s. “You came with someone else?”“They didn’t tell you? A friend of mine named Ezra got brought through too. Your Lady Swann seemed very displeased.” Marjorie just stared into her reflection in the tea now, to keep herself steady. It smelled like regular tea. Nothing special. Snow’s frown deepened. “And they didn’t bring him here? I’ll have to petition Lady Swann. If he’s important to you, I don’t see why he can’t be a guest as well instead of a prisoner. He deserves to learn about the wonders of the Spire as well. Marjorie,” she added, leaning against the table on her elbows, “it can be like we wanted it to be now. We can fix your curse. We just couldn’t bring you to the Spire by normal means. If you knew where this was, it’d be a security risk. It’d put you at risk! And I just want to help.” “Okay, I’ll bite.” Marjorie finally broke down, taking a sip of the tea and shuddering. It had the same bitter herbal flavor as the concoction she took to suppress the Golden Apple. Maybe it was the same thing in another form. “Why do you want to help me? Why are you just acting like everything’s fine now? We both know it’s not. I abandoned you to save my own hide. I never looked back and let you deal with the consequences. I’m the selfish, wicked stepsister they talk about in stories. You kidnapping me, locking me up in a tower? I’d understand all that! But this? Smiling? Aren’t you angry…?”“…No.” Snow’s smile returned, perfect as a painting. “I’m not angry or vengeful. I never am. I always forgive, Marjorie.” Something was off about that statement. It was so rehearsed and inorganic. “Besides, like I said. You weren’t supposed to come back, or they’d get their hands on the Apple. It’d be disastrous for everyone involved. You really think you didn’t come back because you were scared?” Snow sounded genuinely surprised. “You weren’t even supposed to remember me, Marjorie. That was part of the agreement.”“…What?”“Oh, but it’s fine now! We can be happy together.” Snow gave a still Marjorie a hug around the shoulders. “They’re gone, both of them, Disappeared.”“This is-this is a bit much at once.” Marjorie broke from the hug and stood up unsteadily. “You’re spying on Nautilus. You’re developing a spell to let Libra spy on anyone with those mirrors. You’re claiming I forgot you, and-and I knew there was something, something wrong, and I remember you now…and you just Disappeared me here, didn’t you? You can use those mirrors to make people vanish too.”Snow took a sip of tea, her calm returned. “It’s fine. I told you, I have my happy ending predestined for me now. The rest is just details.”“No, it’s not! I can’t enter into a situation without knowing everything. I almost did that recently, failed to gather enough intelligence, and my friends paid dearly.” Of course Alphonse’s near-victory was Marjorie’s fault. It’d been her job to figure him out first. “But I’m…I’m glad you’re safe and happy. Really. You are happy?”“Of course. I’ve never been happier.” There was the oddly rehearsed tone again, the doll-like smile on Snow’s face. Marjorie took note of that. “Then let’s strike a deal. I’ll go ahead with whatever you need me to do, provided you tell me what’s going on and why. Treat me like a member of the Spire, not a patient or a prisoner.” And then Marjorie would have to find a way to contact Philomene. “And I want Ezra to be given the same freedom.”“Go along with? But Marjorie, we’re trying to save your life! The Golden Apple will kill you.” “I know. I believe you want to save me,” Marjorie said, unsure if she was lying or not. A place like this made deception difficult to weed out from truth even in her own words. “But you weren’t the one to greet me. And even if you trust the people of the Spire, I’m not sure I do.” Snow hesitated, pacing back and forth behind the table. “It wouldn’t be my decision to make. I’d have to convince Lady Swann. She just wants everything run efficiently. Like clockwork. So she’d have to readjust to allow you two access. And I highly doubt I could give Ezra clearance, although certainly we can keep your poor friend from just rotting in a holding cell or something like that. The Lady did say she holds my opinion in high regard. It was my desire to bring you here that gave her the idea. I think.”Or, Marjorie thought, Swann had her own reasons for wanting her hands on Marjorie and looking into her curse. Who wouldn’t want to delve into the most successful spell creation of the infamous Blanche Estate? Why bring Snow here, when she’s apparently a Princess candidate? But then there was Snow. Did Marjorie really forget her? It wasn’t as if the guilt ever went away, the constant sense of having to make up for something. Marjorie knew she was wicked, and the wicked were not to be forgiven. That, of course, was assuming Snow was genuine about her forgiveness. Or anything. Was Snow ever much of a liar?Funny, she couldn’t remember much about Snow clearly. And when she tried, it just brought to mind a lot of memories she wished she could forget.“Well, please talk to Lady Swann for me.” Marjorie made herself smile and stood, more steadily this time. The tea must have done it. “You speak so warmly of her, she must hold your opinion in some regard.” “Of course, of course.” Snow took her hand and started leading her out, leaving the cakes untouched. “We’ll go to her right away. She’ll be so happy to know you’re willing to go through with our plan, I’m sure we can negotiate something.” As a door opened up to a black void, Marjorie ran a hand over the mirrored walls. A handprint glowed and briefly projected a tiny image of a large figure slumped over in a cell, then vanished. It replaced itself with glowing words.
HELP ME.

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Once again, Ezra was back in a room with no windows, cut off from the sunlight. At least this time no one had clouded his memories as far as he could tell, though whatever he’d been drugged with still left him feeling sluggish and heavy-limbed. On the other hand, the Gourmet had let him come and go from his room as he pleased as long as he followed the rules. This chamber, gray-walled, austere and almost unnervingly clean, had no door. Aside from a bed, a table and a chamberpot, it had absolutely nothing.Oh, and the bed was sized for a human. It was made of a resilient material, as he learned when he sat upon it out of spite and found it did little more than groan under his weight, but it wasn’t of use as anything except a chair. Fine. He’d sit upon it until it broke, since it kept him from pacing around the room and exhausting himself with anxiety.He’d almost attacked humans, something he generally swore never to do. Violence in anything more than self-defense or retention of order was abhorrent in the eyes of the Sun. Yet he couldn’t wring out an ounce of guilt for people who had kidnapped his best friend, planned to do something to her (apparently against her will) and thrown him in a prison for daring to object. The very gall of them, treating him like he was the irrational one for objecting. Was this how Salten felt all the time? Wanting to tear down the very walls of a too-constricted, too-orderly, too-small world that still managed to squish him down?No, Salten picked fights. He’d rushed into the battle against the Rot Witch unnecessarily, and even if he’d done some good, he would still have been better off helping Ezra protect the humans. Maybe that was why Ezra was so quick to turn aggressor. They were going to hurt Marjorie.A fat lot of good it had done, hadn’t it? For all he knew they’d decide they wanted a Sky test subject for whatever sort of medical work they were doing. Or they planned to leave him there to rot. He couldn’t believe it was possible to miss the vivid reds and golds of the terrible Vacant Palace. This place was absolutely colorless.It brought to mind an old myth about the chaos said to rest in the Center of the Universe, flowing through it like blood through veins and warping all that touched it into disorder. All color came from the light of the Sun and the Moon, and it was through their power that even life on the surface remained vivid and beautiful. Beneath the surface where the sun’s power could not reach, the chaos devoured color itself, trapping it in stones and jewels and stealing its essence. It hated the Sun for sealing it so, and would flare up in spite through cracks in mountains, spewing stolen light and clouds of ash so dark and colorless as to poison the sky.Odd for him to be thinking about a fanciful old tale of volcanoes now, one even the most devout priests described as metaphorical. But was that what his captors were trying to do to any prisoner here? Rob them of color, steal away anything that might bring them comfort? Even the poorest in the Sky were allowed free access to public concerts, gardens and galleries. Sky Folk could no more live without beauty than without air or water.Besides, it was natural his mind would wander while imprisoned. How long had he been there? He wasn’t hungry, but for all he knew loss of appetite might be a side effect of the drugging. At any rate, he wasn’t doing good sitting around feeling sorry for himself. What was it they always said? Idle hands feed the idle mind, and idle minds breed ill thoughts? Pacing did not count as doing something, so instead he started feeling around on the walls for signs of a door. Or anything. They had to have brought him in somehow. He remembered how the chamber with the mirror seemed to lack an entrance as well until something slid open. Panels, perhaps?The overpowering grayness started to overwhelm him. To stave it off and concentrate better, he closed his eyes. It was an old exercise he used to do while learning how to knead dough. Cut out other distractions and focus on the hands, on tactile sensations and temperature. Make sure the dough stayed warm…Warm? Why was this part of the wall warm?His eyes snapped open and he realized he was half-crouched with his hand on a nondescript spot closer to the floor than the ceiling. He couldn’t find a raised surface, just a rectangular area roughly twice the size of his palm, so hot to the touch at the center that he couldn’t hold it very long.“Oh! You’ve made contact faster than I thought. Good. I can conserve power that way. I was just preparing to signal you with a written message.”The voice came from the walls themselves, muted and soft. It spoke in a monotone with a metallic-sounding reverberation. Ezra stumbled back onto the floor and stared all around, heart pounding in his chest.“What? Who said that?!” Experience had made Ezra wary of strange voices.“I did,” replied the walls. “We don’t have much time. I’ve managed to tamper with the monitoring spell on this room. If they realize I’m doing this, it’s game over.”“What does game over mean…?” And why was Ezra talking back to this thing?“That information is irrelevant. I failed to keep them from bringing Subject Marjorie here, despite my warnings to her, and she is too central to their plans for me to contact her safely. Thankfully, Ezra the Nameless, I have you.”Ezra scrambled to his feet, settling back on the bed-that-was-a-chair with enough force to make it slump beneath him. “You know my name. You know Marjorie’s name, and you called her a subject. I have had very bad experiences with unknown phenomena before, so forgive me for asking before this goes any further, what. Are. You.”“Inquiry justified. I know your name because I hear everything they say in this place, though even if I didn’t I would still recognize you. You created my brother’s last gift. His desire for your rarity cost us a chance to regain control of Harp.” The voice paused. “In review, that sounds like an accusation. It is not. You made a logical decision from your own point of view. I am just stating the facts. And as to what I am, I am called Mirror.”“Okay, I’ve heard enough.” Ezra held up his hands, glowering at the walls and feeling a bit like a fool for it. “You’re like the Gourmet and the two Witches. I’ve already fallen victim to one of you and frankly I’d like to wash my hands of all of this. You’re not getting in my head this time, sorry. I’ll take my chances with the prison.”A red light flickered against the wall. “I am not trying to get into your head, as you put it. I can’t. Unlike some of my siblings, I am not ruled purely by my appetites. In our original form I was the control center, the decision-making process. If you think of Gourmet as a digestive system and Green Witch as the growth plates of a life form, I am equivalent to the brain.”“Informative metaphor, but hardly reassuring. Gourmet had some nice things to say about himself too.”There was another pause. “Your distrust is logical. You had bad experiences with us in the past, so your fight-or-flight instincts are kicking in. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to prove my trustworthiness to you, though I can assure you I’m not going to feed off of you. They keep me absolutely glutted with what I need here. It’s gotten to the point where the energy input is interfering with my objectivity. I will make a note to have them tone it down.” The voice warbled from time to time but otherwise remained monotone. Yet Ezra thought he could detect a hint of weariness.“Okay. Fine.” Ezra rubbed his forehead. “I can’t believe I’m even communicating with you. But what is it you need of me?”“I need you to escape, and take Marjorie with you. Right now all I can give you is information. I will do my best to facilitate your escape, but if they catch on to what I’m doing things will get much more difficult for all of us. My brother is trying to escape, and I am unable to do a thing about him here. But you sealed two of us and weakened a third.”Ezra stared and held up a hand. “Hold on. You want to help us escape you, and seal your brother? Besides, the Gourmet’s already sealed.”“Not him. There are six of us,” Mirror said. “I won’t say his name, since even speaking it gives him hope. And any drop of hope makes him stronger. If he gets out, a lot of you life forms are going to die.”“…Oh. Lovely. And you’ve put this on me. On us.” Ezra suddenly felt very tired, wanting to curl up on a real bed anywhere but here. “This is all quite a lot. Especially after you’re the one who kidnapped us. We were brought through a mirror, weren’t we? That was part of you.”“That was…well, I suppose saying it was part of me is not completely incorrect. And I told you, I didn’t bring you here willingly. They did.” The lights flickered again. “They’re coming. We wasted too much time! Look for the artifact storage facility and seek out the Vial of Heart’s Exchange. Once you’ve escaped, find a way to contact Nightingale. And whatever you do, don’t—”Static and warbling overpowered the voice, followed by silence. Ezra was left sitting on the bed, baffled, trying to figure out if he’d just been had by an Other One once more. He didn’t feel that fogginess that overpowered him in the Gourmet’s presence, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. How would one know if one was under an enchantment? Would asking questions dispel this one too? He’d certainly asked enough.Yet something was off. Mirror was asking, not demanding. The way they spoke of the people of this place reminded Ezra not of a king with subjects, but a prisoner among guards.Well, if they’ve managed to imprison an Other One, maybe I should thank them, he thought bitterly. Then he remembered the Green Witch, and the implications of Lord Germain making use of her. Besides, while he was not sure the enemy of his enemy was his friend, the people here were definitely enemies. Mirror was an unknown element.And all they had offered was vague instructions. Couldn’t they at least have opened the door? Would that have been too much to ask? What did an Other One even have to hide from?What was this sixth one, and why would Mirror want it sealed? And did Mirror say something about a harp?!“Lost in thought, are you?”A panel opened in the wall, this one large enough to accommodate him. The human woman who entered stood dwarfed by the burlier guards flocking each side, large crossbows aimed right at Ezra. Lady Swann pursed her lips as she looked up at her prisoner. “It seems our guest has rather specific demands, some of which center around you. You’re lucky. You’re a bit too small for Bright Morning’s team. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do with you.”“A human calling me small.” Ezra sighed and rose to his feet. “What do you want.”“Keep up that attitude, and I may rethink my kindness. Though it is Princess Snow you should thank for this, not me.” She stepped aside, and a tall, gangly figure in a dress rushed right at Ezra and hugged him around the leg.“M-Marjorie?!” He was almost as stunned to see her displaying that much open physical affection as he was to see her at all. He knelt down to return the hug, doing his best not to smother her in the embrace. “You’re safe! They took you away before I could react. I’m sorry, I wanted to pull you away from that mirror. I’m so sorry!”“Oh, hush! I’m just glad you’re safe,” Marjorie said, with genuine warmth in her voice. Yet when she looked up at him, her eyes were wide and her expression haggard and pale. “I simply wouldn’t cooperate with anything before they ensured me you were alright and allowed at least some freedom. Don’t you worry, dear friend. They’ve been very kind to me!”As she stared up at him, smile desperate, she pointed a finger to her lips so he would read them. They formed the silent words: we need to get out.

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Salten clutched the wrinkled, water-stained flyer like a luck charm in a clenched fist, unraveling it again and again to read it as he waited. It was simple, printed in blocky font that he could read even with the runny ink. If it hadn't been for Bright Morning's so-called invitation, he would have taken it for a scam or a fighting ring instead of a call for elite soldiers. Ha. That's what he used to hear from the judgmental elders of the Exile communities. Keep living this way and you'll lived debased in a fighting ring, some human's gladiator brute! Wouldn't they be clicking their tongues and shaking their heads at the news that the delinquent heir of the Anemone Inn ran off to the Monochrome City. Not that he'd seen much of it. Upon his late night arrival by ferry he'd been pulled aside by white and black-clad soldiers and ushered into a Sky-scaled carriage pulled by a large animal covered in white cloth, then herded into an impeccably-clean assembly hall alongside other Sky youth and a few stray humans. Nobody made eye contact with anyone else. Perhaps, like Salten, they also felt out of place in the shining silver hall lit by white-glass torches. Or maybe they all felt they had nothing to prove to anyone, a collection of glinting armor, eyepatches, battle scars and calloused hands used to holding heavy weapons. Salten, still in his damp shirt and overcoat from the ferry ride, dug his hands in waterlogged pockets as if to hide his comparative inadequacy. He forced his gaze ahead, at the curtain on the stage embroidered with the Empire’s symbol.“Lesson one: look everywhere, not just where you think the enemy hides.”That was her voice, clearer now without a helmet muffling it, bold and with just a hint of a smoker’s rough edge. It came not from the stage in front of them, but from behind. All turned to look as a woman clad in nondescript white robes threw them off to reveal her scarred face, red hair, muscular arms highlighted by a sleeveless tunic and riding pants. She wore no armor this time.“The theatrics are Scarlet’s idea,” Bright Morning said. “Forward complaints to him if you dare.”She marched down the center aisle onto the stage, hair tied up behind her in a tight braid. Salten didn't get a second glance. He didn't know what he expected. A nod of some sort out of thanks for his help during the Nautilus incident? A knowing wink of her eye? Some acknowledgement that they'd met, that he wasn't just drawn like the others by stray fliers and rumors?“I am going to assume not all of you are Imperial citizens. You will have to swear citizenship in order to follow me. We are not mercenaries. If this bothers you, leave now.” A few audience members stood and were ushered by guards towards an exit to the left. Salten thought he saw a guard holding up something that reflected the light. A hand mirror? No, must have been something else. Bright didn't watch them go. They may as well have ceased to exist as far as she was concerned. Instead she looked at the rest of the audience. If she was scrutinizing them one by one or simply seeing a mass of potential, Salten couldn't tell.“As for the rest of you, I am not going to tell you why you've come. That is for you to decide and understand. But do know if you weren't meant to be here, you would have looked at a flier and walked by, back to your jobs or lack thereof. You might have walked out with the others. You would have approached the meeting place indicated, seen the carriage and turned away. But you are here,” she added with a note of fire in her voice, holding her scarred hands out to them. “Perhaps I cannot tell you why you are here, but I can ask questions." She clasped her hands behind her back. "Do you believe in perfection?" The question spurned a number of confused, whispered murmurs; Salten, unsure of his own answer and unwilling to admit this, bit his lip and stood rigid and silent."That's what we're told the Sky is. A perfect society rising from the fall of the tyrannical Golden Theocracy, as the phoenix is reborn in ash and flame. So fond is the Celestial Capital of that metaphor that the last known phoenix lives in an aviary-temple of its own, treated better than many of Vox's own citizens. We who were Skyborn were blessed, we were told, kissed on the forehead by sunbeams before we left the womb. It was a blessing we could have revoked if we proved to be unsuitable citizens. If we displayed chaotic behavior. You know," she added with a little, devilish smirk, "if we were imperfect. Which is why we're here, right?"She held her arms out, for a moment reminding Salten of the priests at the run-down Sky Harbor temples, though they'd never seemed so confident and sure as she did. Her voice was strong and sonorous, with just the slight raspy hint of her smoking habit. "But would a perfect society produce imperfect people? And if it did, wouldn't it help them? Should the Sun's purity and the Moon's wisdom not be enough to encompass us all? What good is a blessing that can be revoked? Give me a curse I can break myself any day."Yes, of course. What good was this sainted civilization of gentle giants if it rejected his parents for nothing more criminal than tax troubles? They were good citizens of Azure. He couldn't imagine it any other way with how law-abiding and quietly they lived in Nautilus. "But Bright, you are asking, what does this have to do with the Ever After Empire? How is it different from being a gladiator or laboring in mines for humans who would benefit from our strength and profit off of us? Do not lie," she added, hands clutched behind her back and eye scanning the crowd. "Some of you are thinking it. You would be fools if you were not."She made a hand gesture to her left and a cloth tarp fell away behind her, revealing a massive banner. In the center stood the emblem of the Empire, a sphere with a dagger plunged through the center. Salten had seen that many times before, waving above the flags of Nautilus.This one was different. Rays of thick, black lines burst out from the sphere, branching into symbols of their own. A flower, waves, a bird and a burst of stars decorated the four corners. A new flag? Bright went on as if she didn't notice the banner she herself had invoked. "I know Empress Valerian well. I have served by her side through two different incarnations." She used the formal term for the crowning of a new Empress, always referred to by that name and with feminine pronouns regardless of gender, always named Valerian. Probably a requirement for someone of her status, Salten assumed."Valerian, Her Imperial Eternity, Spinner of the Shining Golden Future, is unlike any human who has ever lived. I say that not just for the sake of official theology, but because I know it to be true. To serve her is not to serve a human but an ideal, a higher way of thought. If I did not believe this, would I let her name me?"At this, Bright held her head tall and sent that piercing stare into a murmuring, protesting audience.Even Salten felt disquieted at that, and he never considered himself the least bit orthodox or traditional. The Sun never struck him as anything worthy of worship. It was just light. But a name was a name! You changed your own name with great consideration if it suited you better, birth name for yourself, family name for other reasons. You took on the name of a more prominent family through adoption or marriage. Even the lowest of the low, the Nameless, would never endure the humiliation of letting someone else rename them. That know-it-all Ezra Nameless had more dignity than that.He glanced briefly at the exit. If he'd gotten caught up in the words of a madwoman, he could still leave. Surely he could take on side jobs in Monochrome and earn passage back to Nautilus within the week. And yet, one word echoed in his mind. Ideal. He saw once more the Empress's entourage parading down the streets of Nautilus, resplendent and glorious as it came to bring courage to a troubled people, shining brighter than the sun.Bright didn't acknowledge the confused crowd past that one defiant stare. "Do I look humiliated?" she asked, as if having read Salten's mind. "Or transformed? You are outcasts among outcasts, feared by humans for physical power your own Exiled brethren forbid you to use. For the sake of harmony. The Empress welcomes it. She welcomes you. Fight for her, become part of her Shining Corps, and you will finally embrace the strongest version of your true self. All shall be integrated into her web and led to their happily ever after. Everyone fits here. Even us." For the first time since Salten had met her, Bright Morning smiled. It wasn't the sort of battle-ready, triumphant grin he'd have expected from a warrior like her. It also wasn't the kindly but weary look worn by so many of the older Exiles in Sky Harbor, well-rehearsed. Bright Morning looked content, fulfilled, as if the light of the Sun really did shine from her soul and blazed through her. "Valerian chose me and named me Bright Morning, her Rider of the blazing dawn. Follow me and we will cast light on a lost past, break the clouds and fog of discontent that hang over us today, and cast our rays onto a new, brilliant future." Despite the dim light, it really did seem like Bright was a beacon, shining even without that blazing white armor. "The training will be intense, and not all of you will qualify or make it through. It's not personal. It simply means you weren't meant to serve Valerian in this way. Your enemies will be many, for not everyone understands yet. They will. Will you help them?"There were no rallying roars, no fists pumped up in the air. Instead everyone stood and watched, as if as captivated by her as Salten was. Their agreement wasn't shouted but understood. They were still there. They had already chosen.Salten had already chosen. That swelling, longing feeling in his chest when he'd watched the Empress and her Riders, that was back and pulling harder. Maybe Valerian really did need him. Maybe she would choose him. Maybe she already had. The difference between himself, uneasy and disheveled and uncertain of everything, and Bright Morning was like...well, like day and night, he supposed. But he could be like Bright Morning. He'd already been called.It was meant to be so.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Captain Canamarita Bell lived in a rather modest apartment with, Basil had to admit, a clear view of the storm-churned sea and the busy harbor. Even in the cloudy sky, the decorative mirrors lining the city walls glinted and glittered as if from their own light. It should have been beautiful. Instead it reminded him all too much of ice.At least his lap was warm, occupied as it was by a dodo."You can put Pasha down if you want. She's just very cuddly," Bell said with a nod to the large bird as she set down a cup of steaming cinnamon tea. Basil wasn't sure how he was going to reach around the bird to reach the drink but nonetheless shook his head as a gracious guest should."I don't mind friendly animals at all! Seem to get along with them rather well." Basil reached over to ruffle the ears of Red, who in her wolf form was showing a lot of willpower in not drooling over the two fat dodos wandering the otherwise sparse but cozy apartment. She was just resting next to the chair, perhaps tired out from the stress of the day."I...forgive me, but we don't have these creatures up north. Is this one a baby?" It was a great fat orb of pink and white down thick and shaggy as a mountain cow's fur, and brought to mind the ptarmigan hatchlings Basil's sister showed him during a childhood visit."Oh, no. They're fully grown. The Silkie Rose Dodo is the most spectacular breed of them all, don't you agree? And Pasha's a prize winner." Bell held her head high as if she were discussing  a medal she'd earned, or her recent promotion. Basil looked to the cushion in the corner occupied by a larger, equally pink and fluffy dodo and the blue ribbons hanging up on the stucco wall. He took note of the little perches and boxes she kept around for the stout birds to sit upon and the fresh figs and grapes in the food bowl. Just as well. Some people, like his hound-raising sister, were dog people. Some were cat people. Captain Bell was a dodo person. No wonder she'd strongly suggested Philomene ride Melchior, safe out of the reach of wingless birds. Philomene sat now in the center of the table in the comfort of a teacup, stealing glances at Pasha as one might eye a storm cloud.Well, there was no more point in distracting himself with big, flightless birds. Basil clasped his gloved hands on the table, around Pasha, and looked up at Bell. "Captain, um, Lady Canamarita...""Bell or Cana, please." She sat across from him as the other dodo, the male presumably, nuzzled the bottom of her hand. She'd changed out of her uniform into overalls for the sake of comfort. "You're wondering why I wanted to talk to you here, instead of at the station.""A bit. I figured it could not just be sympathy." Basil lowered his head and peered up at her through the framing of hair, tossed loose from the wind. He probably looked a mess, he imagined. Not princely at all. "You did see me start to fall apart there in front of the guard. I apologize for the display, it's just that today has been...""Maddening? Like reality isn't as it should be?""Exactly, very stressful, and none of you seem to believe that..." Basil stopped and blinked over at her, gently nudging Pasha onto the floor. "Sorry, what did you say?"Bell stirred her tea, the drapes dancing behind her in the cool, sharp breeze that suggested another storm was on its way. "You're not lying. You have no reason to lie. But no one believes you, because no one remembers Ezra Kettle and Marjorie Snow except for us." She raised an eyebrow. "Right?"Philomene looked up from the red gem she was fiddling with, her astonishment echoing Basil's. "...You remember them?"A weary look crossed Bell's face. "Of course I do. We still have records of your arrest. But I suspect when the boss looks at them he doesn't see the same thing I do." She tapped her fingers against the table. "The glass got in his eyes and locked in tight.""The glass?" Basil leaned his head to the side so he could stare at Bell without looking over Pascha's fluffy feather crest. "You speak as if you're familiar with this phenomenon..." By now, whatever Philomene was trying to do with that gem had clearly been forgotten. "Familiar enough." Bell patted her leg and the other dodo waddled over, hopping into her lap and cooing. She rubbed behind its head, a distant look in her eyes. "Wish I wasn't. Mama used to tell me an old story about a glass forged out of lies that could distort or hide the truth. Greedy sorts argued over it and shattered it into a million pieces that blew away on the wind. Get one lodged in your eye and you see lies. Once it gets to your heart, deception is all you know."Basil hoped none of them noticed how his hand went to his chest as dull pain flared up. The sensation of something sticking in one's heart, like a piece of ice, was hitting a little close to home. "Glass...like the mirrors?""But a whole city, suddenly embracing one huge lie?" Philomene said. "Remembering recent events without two people who played a very significant role in them?" "This ties into that," Bell continued. "See, Mama told me that story after things in Monochrome started to change. After I told her about the birdsong."The dodo in Bell's lap cooed, and she gazed down at it and ruffled its back as she went on. "We didn't have big, lovely dodos down there. No, I didn't find my Pascha and Peony until later! Did I, Peony? But we had ravens, and jays, and so, so many crows. Crows were considered good luck because the nation's colors were black and white. And they were so noisy! Gathering around, arguing over scraps and shouting calls for attention. Some of the ravens would imitate the sounds of bells on carts. I loved them." She chuckled. "Used to bring them bread crusts when I was a little girl, and when they swarmed all over me I wasn't scared at all. Guess I have a way with birds.""I sensed an affinity," Basil said as Pascha cooed back at Peony.Bell gave Basil and Philomene an apologetic glance. She seemed so different from the straightforward, businesslike sort she was on duty. "I promise this story is going somewhere. I'm not just trying to distract you from your troubles.""I know. That didn't seem like you, Bell-sorry, Miss Cana. Rem always speaks of you as a straightforward sort." Philomene was now resting with her arms on the rim of the teacup, presumably so she could face Bell more easily."Guess I am, but this is sort of hard to be straightforward about. I haven't talked about it in years." Bell sighed, and the distant look returned."See...one day when I was about ten, the bells in the square rang and all the crows went silent. They didn't make a sound for an hour. Their beaks opened and closed but nothing came out. If it weren't for the bells, the chatter of the people in the square and the sound of wing flaps, I'd have sworn I'd gone deaf. What was stranger was that no one seemed to notice. I tried to draw my big sister's attention to it, and she just looked at me like I was losing my mind. They were noisy as ever, she said, and giving her a headache. So I thought, it was me. It had to be me. That was right when they'd just installed a decorative mirror in the square..."Basil recalled the looks of puzzled incredulity on the faces of the innkeepers, the confused stares of the guards and Xaviero's insistence that he must have made himself ill from the rain. He squeezed his gloved hands together under his chin. "But you don't think it was you.""No. You didn't-you didn't see the birds. It's like they knew something was stealing their voices. They flew around in confusion, cawing silently and circling in distress. I didn't imagine that. Something stole crow songs and convinced a lot of people it wasn't happening.""In other words," Philomene said, "something vanished, and nobody but you...""You get it now?" Bell's focused, forward look was back, just as piercing as ever and no less effective when she had a round pink bird in her lap. "It might have just been a test. Except things like that kept happening. Monochrome kept changing here and there, and if you didn't think about it hard enough you'd catch yourself believing it was always that way. When I was a little older we were suddenly enemies of the Fire Opal Empire, a country we'd been trading with in the past, and everyone around me spoke of it as if that'd been going on forever. My grandparents came to Monochrome from Fire Opal. It made things...difficult."Basil recalled that his curse came about due in part to that same feud between Monochrome and Fire Opal, with his family's kingdom caught in the middle. How long had it been going on? Bell didn't seem that much older than him. "I see. I'm sorry, milady. What is Monochrome like now? It's obvious we'll have to head there ourselves if they're involved in Ezra and Marjorie's kidnapping. Uh, disappearance?"Bell squirmed in her seat. "Wish I could warn you. I haven't been in years. I left, eventually. I had to. When truth changes constantly on you, you start to think you're the liar. But I know I'm not. My sister moved out to marry a farmer in the countryside, and I convinced my parents to retire here in Nautilus where I imagined it was safer. I was a citizen, still, with no real ties to Fire Opal besides ancestry, and I fell in love with Nautilus." She gestured outside the window at the violet sky. "The Guard are like a second family to me. I love the fresh fish and seashell buildings, and ships with sails like clouds."Philomene tapped on the side of the cup to get Bell's attention. "Does Rem know about any of this...? I've been trying to work on contacting them, but it's a work in progress." She held up the gem with the ornate setting in both hands.Bell shook her head. "I was afraid if I told them they wouldn't know what to think. We were all pretty distracted with the plant monster threat, and off duty it was hard enough getting them to relax and have a drink with us. And besides, I thought it was just...contained. Just something about that city. Something I could ignore as long as the greater Empire was safe. Ugh, I've been a fool..." She covered her forehead with her hand."Not at all! You've been busy saving Nautilus from evil plants and destructive scientists, I'd say. That's as fine an excuse as any, Miss Cana!" Basil had no way of heroically taking her hand to encourage her across the table, what with the birds in the way, so he hoped his gesture came across in his voice."We all have to prioritize," Philomene added in a gentler and less Dramatically Enthusiastic tone. Besides, it sounds terribly lonely and frightening. I'd have packed it away, too.""You're really being too nice about this." Bell shook her head with a bitter little laugh. "But thanks. I don't know why it doesn't work on me. Suppose that scares me too. But that means I'm kind of your last uncompromised ally here. I hate to say it, because Captain Taylor is one of the most honorable guys I've ever met, but if he's forgotten your friends that means the mirrors got to him. And I'll bet Monochrome took them, though darned if I know why.""If I may," Philomene said, "sometimes a plague spreads through an area and certain individuals never contract it. Maybe it works the same with this form of-of magic? There might be other people immune to the effects of the mirrors, stuck in the same position you are. They're isolated and confused. Since they can't install those hideous mirrors in Thumbelina Kingdom my homeland is safe, thankfully, though I suspect Meramene will want to severely limit interaction with Nautilus for the moment. As for Basil...""Power of love, obviously!" Basil crossed his arms proudly."...Sure." Philomene just nodded and turned back to Bell. "Rem has a long distance communication gem and I've promised to contact them once I get it working properly. Lord Germain performed a few tweaks on the artifact that I'm still figuring out." She huffed. "In the meantime you might try contacting us another way if you have news.""We've sent messages through pigeons before," Bell suggested. That elicited an alarmed squeak from Philomene. "Um, maybe not...something that would look at a Flowerling and think 'dessert.' No offense, I'm sure they're very well-trained birds...""We'll find a way to contact you once we get to Monochrome," Basil declared. "I promise it. I'll tell Xaviero that I have to make a diplomatic trip, and the princess and I will leave in the morning. With Aurora and Red." He rubbed the ears of his sleeping wolf companion."Right, I'm sure getting into the city with a bear and a wolf will be a piece of cake." Bell sounded a little more like her old self, which Basil found encouraging. "The fact is, they let anyone in who comes in to bask in Her Imperial Eternity's glory. I'm sorry, Princess, I see the face you're making. You can fake it if you need to. Just, just promise me this." As Peony hopped back down to the floor, she walked up to Basil and put her hands on his shoulders, looking into his eyes."Monochrome's a strange place and it keeps getting stranger. You're going to be submerged in stories and lies. So whatever you do, whatever you have to do to get your friends back, don't lose yourself."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"I missed braiding your hair like this." Snow's fingers ran through Marjorie's black hair, pulling maybe just a little too tight as she wound the strands together. "I'm so glad you've decided to go through with this. You really need to take better care of yourself. You're so thin. Do they feed you there in Thumbelina?"Marjorie fixed her gaze on the checker-patterned rug beneath their feet and dug her fingers into the sides of the plush white chair. "They take very good care of me. It's the curse. It's like a parasite, Philomene says. It steals nutrients from me to fuel itself." Snow was right about Marjorie's lacking self-care regimen, but she wasn't about to let another dig at Thumbelina Kingdom pass like that. "Well. I'd like to meet your princess sometime. Maybe next time you meet you'll both be princesses, like me! There we go, all out of your face." Snow stepped around to look Marjorie over, nodding in apparent satisfaction. "It'll make the procedure go smoother, Lady Swann says." "It's safe? You're sure it's safe?" Ezra loomed hesitantly over Snow, being possibly the only person Marjorie knew who could loom hesitantly. He was allowed to walk in the preparation room, at Marjorie's request, though soldiers had restrained him with manacles around the wrists. "It is safe and painless. It'll be over before either one of you know it. Lady Swann has tested the procedure many times, Mr...." "Stormalong," Majorie answered, hoping Ezra's immediately baffled expression didn't give away the game. Just go with it, Ezra, please. "Ezra Stormalong, what a lovely ring to it!" Snow spun around and gave a perfect curtsy to Ezra, who seemed stunned into silence by the false name. "I'm so glad you're looking after my dear sister, but it's time for us to look after her now. Your part in this story is over." Marjorie's stomach turned at the sickly-sweet way Snow said that. "No one is looking after me," she snapped, looking over her shoulder at Snow. "I said I'd go ahead with the operation to get the tree removed. Not that I'd stay. And you don't get to tell us our story, Snow." She snuck an apologetic glance at Ezra, whose brow was wrinkled in likely puzzlement over Snow's statement.Come to think of it, Marjorie thought, Snow never talked about a story like this before, or rambled about having a 'happy ending.' Lady Swann, the tower, all of this was having a bad influence on her. It never went well when one started thinking of oneself as a main character of reality. Especially when one obviously wasn't the one writing the story, Marjorie added as she looked over at Lady Swann. Swann was standing at a table, rubbing liquids and herbal-smelling ointments onto the surface of a figure-length mirror. With each gesture, a little wave of light rippled under the woman's gloved fingers. There were no scalpels in sight, no needles or candles Marjorie would associate with medical care. The operation was some kind of magic, then.At this rate she risked ending up like Avery Toad, afflicted by so many compound enchantments that he became something no one had ever seen before. Then again, it could kill the Tree. If it killed the Tree that’s all she needed.“Leave Ezra be,” she told Snow. “He’s just worried about me. And what’s all this about a story?”“Sorry, Ezra,” Snow said in a voice soft and smooth as fresh milk. “Just a fit of jealousy. I cannot imagine what kinds of adventures you two have had while I’ve been here. Safe. It’s for the best, of course.” She reached a finger into a jar of minty ointment and rubbed it on Marjorie’s forehead. “This will help you relax, sister. I know this looks a little intimidating.”“I was going to say unorthodox.” Inwardly Marjorie cursed herself for letting Snow apply a sedative, one which was already starting to take effect from how heavy her limbs felt. “We’re going to use the spell mirror to pull the tree out from inside of you. It’s painless and doesn’t require cutting you open.” “Just as well, since Her Highness thinks it’s wrapped its roots around my heart.”Snow shuddered. “You poor thing! It just sounds so painful. Mother and Father really thought of everything.” For a second it was as if a crack formed in a mask, and Snow’s eyes widened, looking past Marjorie and at something else.Despite everything, Marjorie reached out to take Snow’s bony hand and give it a little squeeze. Guilt wriggled like a snake in her stomach. Of course their parents didn’t stop the experiments just because Marjorie was gone. She tried to ask, “what did they do to you,” but her mouth felt fuzzy and her mind worse. Snow let her hold the hand and then pulled away. "Can you ask your friend to stop pacing like that? The floor is shaking and giving me a headache. Lady Swann needs to concentrate." She pointedly did not look at Ezra. Ezra stood still, his clenching hands the only sign of any offense, and knelt next to both of them. "My apologies," he said in a low voice, eyes downcast. "If I might have a word with Marjorie before the procedure? Just in case?"Marjorie affixed Snow a look suggesting she'd best comply, and her sister stepped back to speak with Swann without giving Ezra another glance. Ezra's shoulders fell. "I know she's your family, Marjorie, but something about all of this is off.""Of course it's off," Marjorie whispered back. "Every little bit of it." Her mind was starting to feel as heavy as her hands as the sedative kicked in. To focus, she dug her nails into her palms and fixated on Ezra's big, gold eyes, rimmed with red."But," she continued, "I've been running through scenarios and I can't quite think of an escape at the moment. They want to kill the Golden Apple Tree. Maybe Snow managed to get Lady Swann to do the procedure, and this was the only way she could find to contact me.""By kidnapping you through a mirror?!"Marjorie glanced over her shoulder at her sister. "She did not have the best influences in her life." Again that guilt wriggled against her stomach lining. "If this can at least destroy the curse and kill the Golden Apple...""And save your life," Ezra added in a firm tone. "Ha, yes, right..." Well, if Philomene wasn't around to fight against Marjorie's occasional death wish, Marjorie could see Ezra was willing to make a valiant effort. "But when I've recovered I'll find a way out of here. Maybe I can even bring some information back to Thumbelina. I don't know what sort of magic they've got going on here, Ezra, but the doors, the...doors..."Oh, it was suddenly very difficult to speak. Ezra gave her wide-eyed look and then a gentle squeeze of her hand, kissing her on the forehead. "...I'm ready," Marjorie managed as Ezra stepped back. The sedative did feel good, in that the aches that sometimes throbbed in her arms and chest were just gone. Her body felt floaty and heavy at the same time. Weren't there said to be salt lakes overseas where one could float effortlessly? She'd promised to take Philomene to see those someday. She let Snow lead her onto a flat elevated bed draped with the same silky white as the rest of the room. What was it with this tower and a lack of color? Experimentation was messy, best done over anything one didn't mind staining, ruining or accidentally turning into gold. Either these Spire fools were so dedicated to an entire aesthetic they were willing to pay the laundry costs, or they knew there would be no mistakes.A question dug at the back of her mind, drowning in the muck of sedative. There was something she needed to ask beforehand, something she meant to be sure of, and now of all times it was escaping her. She should have refused anesthesia. Wasn't it supposed to be a non-intrusive spell? She didn't need calming, unless...As a mirror lowered from above, she saw herself lying on her back, black hair braided and face showing the faintest tint of green. She could focus as long as she stared at that reflection. and when she could focus she could think. What was it she needed to know, what was it again? There was still time. She squeezed her hand into a fist again, digging in her nails. She could still feel that.Light rippled through the mirror, as red letters flickered by too fast to read. The light coalesced over the image of her body, forming a cluster around her heart with thin, veiny branches on the arms and legs. That had to be the Golden Apple Tree. Another red ripple, and she started feeling a strange pulling sensation on her body, light flowing from it onto the mirror patterns. In the race of red letters, a sentence flickered past, lingering just long enough for her to read.DO YOU WANT THIS?Was that the question? Did she want this? Everyone else wanted it, except Ezra who just feared for her life. She knew she was supposed to feel more strongly about the curse in her body, but all she could think was what a problem it would be for others if the Tree bloomed from her. What she wanted for herself wasn't even buried in the black muck of magical anesthesia. It was lost. It was in there, but it was lost.She looked up and saw herself again, only this time she was on a wooden table and there were forms looming over her, smiling. She was back in a darkened room in the mansion that had fallen into such disrepair, the roof creaking over them and barely holding back a snowstorm, the walls lined with potions and withered apple tree sprouts. And instead of Swann at the controls she saw Father, holding Mother's hand, whispering to her about how Marjorie would finally make them happy. Wasn't it such an honor to be part of this project? Didn't she want to make them happy? Wasn't that what she wanted?DO YOU WANT THIS?And something breached the muck like a dolphin surfacing, bringing her back to the present. Everything about this was suspicious, and she didn't have to go through with it just because Snow thought she should, or just to make amends, or for any other reason. It was time to trust her instincts again. They rarely led her wrong before.She looked back up into the mirror, bit her lip, forced up her arm, and punched the mirror. She only had time to see cracks spread across it like a spider's web before she blacked out.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The world faded in, sounds still distant and vision fuzzy. Marjorie was in a pair of large, powerful arms. A bleary glance upwards revealed them to belong to Ezra, thankfully, who was running down a long white hall in what could best be described as an disorganized panic.“...Really hope you have a plan,” he was stammering aloud as lights flashed off and on down the hallway. “I was waiting for you to give a signal, but not like…”Marjorie made the mistake of looking at one of those flashing lights and everything went dark again.“...jorie? Marjorie? Stay with me.” Now Ezra was clutching her to his chest as he peered warily around a corner. His heartbeat throbbed in her ear. So, Marjorie thought, Philomene was right. Sky Giants did have slower pulses, even in the midst of panic. “Ezra,” she asked, her voice hoarse in a way that surprised herself. “Where are we? I would love to stay with you in the conscious world, but I’m not sure it’s up to me.”There were shadowy forms moving towards Ezra and Marjorie around that corner, guards with long spears and tower servants all in black walking with clockwork precision. “We’re still in this Chaos-cursed Spire, and I’ve just been running and hiding. It’s all I can do! And I’m not much built for running,” Ezra said all in one breath. “How is your hand?”“My hand…?” Marjorie couldn’t quite recall what would be wrong with it. She lifted up her right hand only to notice it was bound in a scrap torn from Ezra’s shirt, red bleeding through the colorful greens and blues. Oh, right, she’d punched a mirror with her spindly hands. That would explain the burning pain, wouldn’t it?“I think I’m not quite awake enough to experience the brunt of it yet. I should at least thank them for that. So, do you have a plan at the moment beyond ‘run and panic until they catch us?’ And how’d you break us out, anyway? There were no doors in that room.”Ezra kept looking at that bandaged hand of hers and wincing. “We really need to get that washed out. You’ve got glass shards. And I don’t know how but when you broke that mirror you disrupted the systems somehow, that-that machinery or magic running everything. It’s been going haywire like this, opening and closing doors in walls at random, and I just run where I can.” He stared at her for a moment. “Wait. You didn’t know that would happen?”“Ezra, darling dear friend, how would I know that?”“This isn’t part of a plan? I thought you had a plan! You just punched a mirror out of impulse?!” Marjorie regarded her hand again with a little frown. “I was very angry.” She peered past that corner again where the servants were making stuttering motions of stopping and starting, stopping and starting. There really was something doll-like about them. “I think something is disrupting them, too.”Ezra looked where she indicated and nodded slightly. “That happens from time to time. I think M-someone is helping.” That earned a look from Marjorie. “You were about to say a name and then didn’t. You’re very transparent and forget I’m the expert secret-keeper here. But nevermind, let’s go while we have a chance!” Marjorie thought she heard Ezra muttering about ‘not hearing a peep from’ someone as he picked her up again, making a dash for it as a door opened in the wall. It seemed to flicker in and out, as if it were being projected onto the wall itself, and Marjorie half expected Ezra to just slam into it instead of slip through.On the other side was another labyrinthe white hallway with flashing lights and doors flickering in and out. Ezra groaned, visibly drooping.“They’re all like this. It’s just been a lot of this. A spire is a tower, isn’t it? So where are the stairs? Where’s the blasted storage facility? You can’t give me a little hint, maybe?!” “Ezra, I don’t know-wait.” Marjorie noticed he was looking upward. Whoever he was talking to, it wasn’t her. Granted, there wasn’t anyone in the ceiling either. Perhaps he was a little loopy at the moment too. Then something flickered in the corner of her vision. There was the tiniest wriggle of motion, the shadowy form of a cat’s tail slipping into one of the doors. Oh Withering, not the blasted cats again. With a long sigh, she pointed at the indicated door, and Ezra ran through it without hesitation. The next hallway featured a similar layout, and this time she saw the shadow of a cat leaping from the ceiling onto a round-shaped door that kept flashing regularly in and out.  “That’s so disconcerting,” Ezra said as he made a very carefully timed stumble through the portal, skidding to a halt. “I guess it has to put up a show of resistance or they’ll be suspicious.”“Pardon?” “Just thinking aloud, sorry.” Ezra stopped and glowered at the ceiling, which was a lot closer to his head here. Dangerously close. “Oh, of course. The hallways are narrowing and...shrinking. I guess that’s one way to catch me, isn’t it? Not on my worst but this Spire can collapse on itself, thank you!” “Once we’re out of it…oh! That one!” There was a doorway with a shadow of a cat just sitting right next to it, a rather narrow one unfortunately placed further into the narrowing hallway. As Marjorie watched it really did seem like the walls and floor were moving, the very end of the hallway sealing itself off like the pinched end of a sausage. This was no problem for Marjorie, who was rather narrow herself, but Ezra was a giant. She slipped out of his arms and landed on her feet, looking up at him and biting her lip. “Are you sure you’ll be able to…”He didn’t look very confident, but he nodded. “I’ll manage. Go on ahead and I’ll be right behind you.” Ignoring the stinging pain in her hand, she took a few steps in the shrinking hallway only to feel the floor well up beneath her like waves, rippling and throwing her off her balance. Catching herself with her hands only increased the burning beneath her bandage. Gritting her teeth, she crawled forward on three limbs, glancing over her shoulder to see how Ezra was faring.The answer was ‘not well.’ He was already down on all fours himself, forced into it by the lowering ceiling, and paling as he gave nervous glances to the walls. Whether it intended to just trap him or crush him, Marjorie didn’t want to wait to find out.The cat was so, so close. She reached out with her good hand and touched nothing, as it really was just a shadow on the wall. Of course, this place was ridiculous, and if Ezra was able to enter those doors by refusing to acknowledge them as shadow projections, perhaps she just had to change her perspective.She pictured a real cat, a big black cat, imagining one of the numerous cats she’d encountered in the Vacant Palace demanding she serve as their Catalyst. And she grabbed that cat by the scruff, pulling it closer and holding it up to her as if it were in front of her and not on the wall. She felt nothing, but it was convincing enough to move the cat.“It’s me. The Catalyst. HELP.” With that the cat yelped, wriggled out of her grasp and dashed into the door. Marjorie collapsed on the floor with a sigh. “Yes, I know that’s the correct door. Thank you. What I mean is that my friend here is in a lot of trouble, and we apparently need to reach some storage facility, so if you’d be so kind as to...oh, yes, like that, thank you!”Four shadow cats had emerged from the door and were dragging it with their teeth and claws closer and closer. One of them seemed to meow with its jaws wide open, though no sound came out. “Well, makes as much sense as anything else here. Ezra, come on!” She turned around to pull at his hand with her own, though it closed around her like a mitt. It was really more of a symbolic gesture, as there wasn’t much she could do to actually move him, but it seemed to do the trick. He slid forward, eased her in the door with the palm of his hand and then tumbled into it. They both landed in a dark room this time, no white hall or flashing light. It was eerily silent, save for their breathing. Marjorie thought she saw the glint of green and gold eyes reflecting some nonexistent light, though they vanished quickly. Then red, glowing text appeared in a ribbon on the walls, bright enough to bathe the entire chamber in a bloody scarlet. They were in the midst of a dusty storeroom, the biggest Marjorie had ever seen, the walls lined with shelves, drawers and boxes. She spotted a young dragon skull on one shelf next to a bottle of something greenish. Everything was labeled, on display as if in a museum.She looked up at the glowing red letters. 
FINALLY. THANK YOU. FINALLY. THANK YOU. FINALLY. THANK YOU. I’M SORRY.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Philomene covered her mouth to stifle a yawn as she leaned over the platter-sized jewel sitting in her lap. Red’s steady wolf gait was oddly soothing, and she could feel herself being rocked into a slumber within the makeshift travel-pouch tied to the big canine’s back. It was no substitute for her Thumbelina lab space or even her dollhouse, but given the nature of their emergency departure it would have to do.At least now she only had the one project to worry about for the road, albeit an increasingly urgent one. Lord Germain had long destroyed all of his notes by the time law enforcement found his secondary hideout in a damp Sky Harbor cellar. She knew this gem was a far more advanced version of the one she’d used to communicate with Marjorie in the past, the one that she couldn’t reach at all. Rem Tera had the match to this communication gem, and the sooner Rem was informed of the situation, the faster they could find a way to help. More urgently, they needed to be warned. They were venturing further into the Empire to uncover buried secrets about Colossi. How far had the mirrors spread? Were they under the influence already? She couldn’t lose Marjorie and Rem, not like this, not to the Empress.She didn’t get a chance to halt her mind from catastrophizing further, as Red did it for her with an abrupt stop that threw her off her cushion seat. Groaning and wincing at the sharp pain in her back, she rolled over onto her stomach and emerged from the mouth of the pouch into the glaring morning sunlight. “Red, did something happen?” She could see over the hill of fur that was the wolf pup’s shoulder rough that they were deeper inland, the road surrounded by the lush, leafy trees that were so thin and spidery in arid Nautilus. She had, as per usual, lost track of time while working. She also noted the lack of Bigger Than Philomene-Sized wolf ears in her line of sight, meaning Red had her head tilted down and was, by the sound of it, sniffing rather urgently. Before she could creep over for a closer look at the ground, her view was filled with yellow-white fur and her ears with the grunt-snuffle-growl of a bear. Every time she heard that she had to remind herself that Aurora was safe, loyal and well-trained enough that she would never harm a friend of Basil’s no matter how small or potentially tasty. It still sent a chill down Philomene’s spine. The mind might know that Aurora was a friend, but something deeper remembered stories of bears demolishing entire City-Colonies. Craning her neck to look up at Basil helped, though it did little for her back. The prince was giving Aurora a curious look as the bear sniffed and scratched in the same spot that seemed to garner Red’s attention, giving his bear a gentle pat on the side. “What is it, old girl? Now, don’t grunt like that, it’s a term of affection. You’re not old for a Snow Bear, I know. Red, you too? What’s gotten into you two-oh, ah, Princess!” Basil grinned and mimicked a bow best he could on bearback. “Good afternoon. Did you sleep well?”Ah, that was right. After their departure before the light of dawn, Philomene was supposed to have slept. That was what she was forgetting. “The pouch is very comfortable and Red is a smooth ride,” she said, sidestepping the question. “Red, do you mind telling us what it is you smell?”The wolf seemed to have trouble pulling herself away from the patch of dead leaves and withered blue flowers. She raised her head and glanced up at Basil, ears low. “I don’t know. I smell...I smell nothing.” One of her ears twitched. “I’m going to sneeze, Basil.” Taking the cue, Basil scooped up Philomene before Red’s sneeze sent a little wolf-quake down her whole fluffy, rust-colored body, poofing out her tail. From a safe distance, it was cute and a little comical, though Philomene carefully stifled her laugh. “Thank you for the warning, Miss Red.”Red’s ears perked for a second, then folded back again as she sat down. “I smell nothing,” she repeated.“You smell...nothing?” Basil wrinkled his forehead. “I’m not sure I understand. Can you break it down for me, someone whose nose is rather useless compared to yours? Why are you both so distracted by this little spot here if you don’t smell anything?”“No, that’s not it. I smell nothing. It smells of-of something that should be there but is not. The absence of a smell.” Red whimpered low. “No rotten leaves, no soil, no old bones. No traces of your minty scent or Princess’s flower-scent on the wind. Only there.”Philomene glanced up at Basil, who looked down at her with an equally-puzzled head tilt. In the back of her mind, Philomene remembered the jewel. Let it go, she tried to tell herself. This is a distraction. They need to focus on getting to Monochrome to save Marjorie and Ezra, who need them. She needs to concentrate on contacting Rem in the meantime. This is an unrelated phenomenon.But what if it wasn’t?And with that question the princess justified an investigation to herself. “Basil,” she asked as she peered over the edge of his gloves, “do you think you could lower me down there?”“To the forest floor, Highness? I’m not sure you’d be able to smell anything. Not to insult your olfactory prowess, which I’m sure is as acute as mine, but-”Philomene chuckled and held up a hand. “No, no, we have two experts here. But I can see up close. This is, well. Strange enough that we should at least give it a look. Just for a moment.” “Oh, right, of course! Just a moment. Aurora, if you could?” Basil gestured with his free hand and the bear sat down just next to the location in question with a little snort. Good thinking on Basil’s part, Philomene noted. The forest floor was historically a very dangerous place for Flower Folk, inhabited by carnivorous rodents and mustelids, snakes, raccoons, and anything else that might want to make a snack of a Flowerling. But most Flowerlings didn’t have the protection of a human, a wolf cub and a bear. “You see,” Philomene explained as Basil knelt on the ground, then crouched and put his hand at floor-level, “there are spells one can cast to conceal magic. We’re not sure what power source they draw on, since they don’t seem to be classified as Green Magic, Blood Magic or Light Magic. It’s a sort of...null magic? And you’d do it to hide another spell, like disguising the taste of medicine in syrup. That might mean there’s a spell active here, which could make this path dangerous. I can look to see if there are any runes or disguised sigils. Oh dear, though, I forgot my cane...well, I’ll just sit and look from here.” She perched herself on Basil’s fingers and peered over the edge at the mess of brown leaves and trampled plants. Well, it certainly didn’t smell like nothing to her. There was the thick, earthy smell of soil, the damp scent of leaves and mold, and the faint trace of flowers. And at first glance, there really wasn’t anything peculiar about the tiny clearing. She could spot no traces of salt or chalk, no discarded glass bottles or discolored patches that might suggest a potion. Blood magic would leave behind, well, blood, though some animal might have taken quick care of that. Green Magic would resonate with her own body, as all Flowerlings radiated Green Magic. She was about to give up, ask Basil to put her back in the pouch and leave the mystery for someone else in less urgent circumstances to solve when she saw a glimpse of blue amid the leaves. No, multiple glimpses, discarded and torn flower petals that were far, far too bright blue for their state of decay. They were of a very familiar hue and shape.“Basil. Those are Moonflowers. And this…” She finally looked upward, and even with her skewed, too-far perspective could see the curve of the tree branches above into an arc. “This is a Moonflower Gate.”“Oh, you’re right! Of course, why didn’t I see it?” Basil cupped her in his hand and rose back to his feet with such speed and energy that it left Philomene dizzy, and she made a note to remind him about carrier etiquette. “It’s smaller than the one in the Blue Forest, but it stands to reason there’d be a Gate within range of Nautilus. I’m sure I remember Moonflower Market selling those pickled sea snails they hawked to tourists at the docks.” “See, that would explain why Red and Aurora smelled ‘nothing.’ I haven’t had many chances to study Moonflowers in full, since they only bloom by these gates and even the greatest scholars aren’t entirely sure how they work. We think they might be an old age artifact, in, erm, flower form. But the common theory is they make a hole in the-in the substance of everything.”“Ah, Princess?”“Since they seem to have little holes of nothingness inside of them, and that hole bends time and space into a little tunnel that sucks you somewhere else.”“Princess?”“So if the flowers are squished, that must be the residual ‘nothing’ our wet-nosed friends detected.” Philomene stopped to catch her breath. “You see what I mean?”“...Yes! I absolutely see what you mean by all of that,” Basil declared a little too earnestly. “But, Highness? I think you missed a detail. The flowers are squished. They’re dead.” “Oh, yes, that is a shame.” Philomene stopped herself. “Wait. But aren’t they…”“They bloom every night without fail and if one is crushed another rises to take its place, right! Like mushrooms. At least that’s how the one in the Blue Forest worked. They’re not supposed to die, Philomene.” Basil shivered, quickly steadying his hands. “Sorry, sorry. Just, it’s unnerving. Goes against everything my grandmothers taught me about the forest. That’s all.”“...Curious. No, Basil, you’re right. This is off. I wonder.” Philomene looked down at that patch of earth. It always came back to those flowers, the ones that had fascinated her since she’d first seen one in the Blue Forest. No, they’d been on her mind since she read old texts speculating on their origins and searched archives in the Vine. She thought back to the one Lord Germain had taunted her with in his plant-prison, at the tiny black star at its core.She thought of who might benefit from destroying or harnessing that power. Was Monochrome destroying Moonflower Gates? But why?“I wonder if we could get it to work again,” Philomene said.“Get it to work again? You mean revive the flowers? Because I’ll be honest, I don’t know how to do that. Though Prince Charming never overlooks a hopeful possibility, and I bet we could use the Gates as a shortcut to Monochrome. There has to be a Gate near a city that big.” “And we can bypass a lot of dangerous roads.” That Monochrome’s Gate was probably well-protected Philomene knew, and figured she could cross that bridge when she got to it. “It’s really just a slim hope, but if there are any shoots under there that are too weak to emerge, maybe…”“Maybe?”“Maybe a Princess of the Flower Folk has enough Green Magic to help it grow. We all give it off.” Philomene gestured down at herself. “It would be a lot easier if there were more of us, but I haven’t heard tell of any nearby City-Colonies. But if I meditate for a few hours, if we have that much time and can take that kind of risk, maybe…”“Well, at the very least we’d know how badly the Gate is broken. Though maybe we should just move along,” Basil said, looking over his shoulder warily. “The forest seems dangerous for you, and I don’t like the idea of-of-”He stopped and seized with pain, burying his face in his scarf as he bent his head low and cupping his hands together so he didn’t drop Philomene. She felt his pulse increase even through those thick gloves. His hands were so cold.“Basil? Prince Basil?! Are you alright?” Oh, Philomene thought, don’t let him be in crisis too.“...I’m fine. I’m alright!” Basil opened his hands again and peered down at her with an apologetic look, eyes watery. “I think I just have a riding cramp. Tell you what, we’ll stop here for a bit, you can try that meditation to see if we can get the flowers blooming again, and I’ll rest and stretch so that doesn’t happen again.”It certainly didn’t seem like a riding cramp, and Philomene did not miss the way Red held her head up and stared at Basil with a little sigh. He was keeping something from her. But the time she could spend getting it out of him was better spent on the immediate problem. “Rest, then,” she said, phrasing it more like an order than she intended. “I’ll meditate inside Red’s pouch. Red, you stay here with Basil and Aurora, and if you have to move let Basil know so he can take the pouch. Just...give me a few hours.” Basil leaned against Aurora’s fur, absorbing all the warmth he could as the bear curled around him. She was big enough to crush him but gentle, always so gentle. He wished he could will his body to absorb all the warmth coming from her, pull it through his coat and gloves and under-layers of clothing that sometimes made moving around so cumbersome. It didn’t work. It wasn’t working anymore. The icy cold shard in his chest usually had the decency to stay a dull pain, present but easy to ignore after a while. It was when it flared up like this, often without warning, that he found it hard to concentrate on anything but the chill.No, it didn’t hit without warning. It came when he felt something strongly, he’d come to realize. Panic at the sudden loss of Ezra and Marjorie, followed by confusion at the disbelief of others. Love, when Ezra held him tightly. And now a sense of dread as he saw the dead Gate.“Check the Moonflower Gate every night,” Grandmother Violet instructed him as soon as he was old enough to patrol. “If anything is amiss with it, if the flowers are dead, let one of us know right away.”They hadn’t told him why, or what it meant, but he recalled the grave tone in Violet’s voice. It was the same one he’d heard when she and Lavender told them about the Other Ones. He couldn’t not think about it, anymore than he could keep his mind off worrying about Ezra and Marjorie. Even thinking about not thinking about it just stressed him out further, and up the cold flared, painful as ever.It was in his heart. He knew that much now. His heart was freezing and he didn’t know why. What had Alphonse done to him?Red sat across from Aurora on the other side of the clearing, and gave a low grunt-whine to Aurora. As if the bear understood the wolf, Aurora set her head to the side, letting Red see Basil eye to golden wolf eye.“Why are you lying?” She asked plaintively, without a hint of judgment.“I’m not. I mean, I am, but look. The Princess has enough to worry about. She has to clear her mind to meditate, right? And I have to save Ezra and Marjorie. They need me, Red.”“You need you.”“What?”“Prince Charming.” Red held her nose upwards. “You need Prince Charming to save you. You need to save you.”Basil sighed and shook his head. “I can wait. I’m feeling better already.” That was not a lie. “I’ll break my curse on myself in due time. I won’t leave you behind, Red. I promise.” He reached over to rub the space between her ears. “You’re doing so well, being the Princess’s bodyguard. Marjorie will be so proud.”Red’s tail wagged. “Proud? I’m a good girl?”“The very best.” Basil hadn’t failed to notice how often Red seemed to want validation from him, and he wasn’t about to withhold it regardless of whatever troubling questions that raised about her own past. She could talk about it with him when he was ready. He was in no position to judge at the moment. Something in the corner of his eye caught his glance.It was a blue glow, a faint one emerging from a break in the soil at the center of the clearing. He frowned and slipped out of Aurora’s grasp, ignoring the drop in temperature to crawl over to the blue glow and dig at it with a finger. There was more beneath, and it was brighter. “Red? Wait, no, the princess needs stillness. Aurora, could you dig here?” He mimicked a gesture with his hand. Aurora, recognizing the command, lumbered up to her feet and gave a low swipe with a paw the size of Basil’s head, then another, digging up more and more light. There was a thin barrier of some kind, solid enough that Basil could touch it. It was smooth to the touch, like glass, and warm. Beneath it were innumerable blue lights pressing against the surface, dancing about urgently as a tiny swirl of green light pulled at them. “Um, Philomene? Should we wake her? I think-I think her magic’s doing something, alright!” But what?As he stared into the blue abyss, something took shape in darker shades of blue. It was a silhouette at first, then more detailed, with jagged edges and a pair of eyes. Then there were two shapes, with two pairs of eyes, one much larger, unmistakable even through a distinct blue tint.“Marjorie? Ezra?!”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Ezra was about done with mysterious voices and words on the wall at the moment. “It’s all well and good that you’re sorry, but Marjorie is injured, we still have no way of contacting our friends, and you haven’t told me anything. If I’m going to be working with you,” he told the marquee, “I need you to be upfront.”I AM BEING AS UPFRONT AS I CAN, the marquee he was sure was Mirror said. RIGHT NOW I AM CONCEALING YOUR PRESENCE USING INTERFERENCE. IF I HELP YOU MORE DIRECTLY, THEY WILL CATCH ON AND I WILL-The letters flickered and changed before Ezra could read the rest.THEY WILL CATCH ON AND CORRECT THE ERRORS. Somehow, despite Mirror only communicating at the moment through written word, Ezra sensed an odd weight to that last statement. He turned to check on Marjorie, who was resting on a bundle of old uniforms. She was still paler than usual, though that greenish tinge he’d seen manifest on her skin during that awful moment in the lab was gone. He knelt next to her.“Let me see your hand again.” He took it and started unwrapping, wincing at the dried blood and bits of glass still embedded into her knuckles. “How are you feeling?”“I’m rather used to the pain at this point,” Marjorie said in an infuriatingly droll tone. “So, why is Mirror our friend now?”Ezra froze and stared at her. “How did you know who that is?”“Those red letters. They kept trying to warn me about something. Didn’t you?-Ezra, could you move over a bit? I can’t see over your shoulder, darling.” She weakly gestured to the side as he shuffled, letting go of her hand reluctantly. “There. You,” she said, pointing at the marquee. I WAS APOLOGIZING TO YOU, the letters read. I COULD NOT STOP THE EXPERIMENT. “No, I doubt you could, though that’s a bit puzzling. Your sisters and brothers sure didn’t let themselves get pushed around by us mortals so easily. So are you like Green Witch, then? Is one of your siblings pulling the strings?”There was no response.“I guess they can’t say yet,” Ezra whispered to Marjorie. “I still feel like a fool for trusting another one of them again, but there’s...there’s no one else on our side here. I know that girl is your sister, but…”“No, you’re right. She can’t be trusted right now.” Marjorie’s devil-may-care smile flashed, the kind Ezra knew meant she was forcing it. “We can’t trust anyone completely, not here.”“Is this…” Ezra paused. He’d never asked Marjorie anything about her past before, because she seemed so reluctant to volunteer information. “Is this your…”“Old home? No, no. I’ve never seen this place before. I’d never even heard of the Spire when we visited Monochrome, and we lived outside the capital.” She was dusting herself off with her healthy hand. “So this is all as new to me as it is to you, I’m afraid. But I already know to question everything you hear when you’re in this city. Even as a child, I knew that.” If Marjorie was raised in such a paranoid environment, Ezra thought, this explained at least a little bit about her. But that wasn’t the part that worried him as he got to his feet, shuffling through the shelves and shelves. “We need to clean out that wound and re-bandage it. It’ll only get worse otherwise, especially with all those shards. Something alcoholic will do…”Marjorie chuckled. “You know first aid, Ezra?”“Any kitchen worker worth their salt knows how to deal with cuts and burns!” He huffed as he looked through glass bottles labeled with words he didn’t recognize. What was ‘borealis acid?’ “Or iodine, iodine…what about the rest of you? Mirror, what did you do to her?” He turned to the wall again, glaring while knowing full well it probably had no effect on the recipient.I SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO REMOVE THE TREE BUT-BUT-BUT-This was interrupted with garbled nonsense that soon corrected itself back into legible words. BUT WHAT YOU DID, MARJORIE. IT HURT ME. “A little punch like that? Against just one little mirror?” Marjorie gave a hoarse, bitter little laugh. “I should try using my fists against Other Ones more often, I suppose. Ow, wait, perhaps not.”IT SHOULD HAVE HAD LITTLE EFFECT. I CAN MEND MY PERIPHERY MIRRORS IMMEDIATELY. I AM NOT SURE WHY-WHY-WHY THAT HAPPENED. EZRA NAMELESS, YOU WILL FIND AN IODINE SOLUTION ON SHELF 34-B-LOCATION-C. REMEMBER ALSO, MAKE CONTACT WITH NIGHTINGALE. THE VIAL OF HEART’S EXCHANGE IS ON SHELF 97-A-Q-Z. YOU WILL NEED A REFLECTIVE SURFACE AND I WILL DO WHAT I CAN TO-WHAT I CAN TO-SORRY.With that last word the red text dissolved into mish mash and then vanished, leaving only the two noted locations and the word NIGHTINGALE.“...Well, that’s. Better than nothing,” Ezra said when he found his voice again. “But these filing shelves seem to go on forever, how am I going to find…hold on.” He knelt down to pick up Marjorie again, letting her rest against his chest.She gave him a bemused look. “You know, I can probably walk on my own. At least, I know I ought to say this so as not to appear slothful, but you have longer legs and can travel faster.” A little bit of color was coming back to her cheeks. Ezra hoped both it and her peculiar sense of humor kicking in were a good sign.As he trudged down the hallway, passing shelves of bones, old bits of machinery, coils and what he could swear was a giant crystal eye, he glanced down at her. “Are you alright to talk now?”“What else are we going to do until you find all that business Mirror sent us for?” “I mean, sometimes we ask questions and you’re not the most forthcoming,” Ezra said haltingly. “I just noticed. You weren’t yourself back there, haven’t been since we’ve gotten here. Until now, until we got you away from them.”“...Ah.” Marjorie looked away, out towards the shelf on the opposite side of the room. “I suppose I haven’t.”“It was like all your confidence was gone. And I know it’s not all an act in the name of protecting Philomene, because I’ve seen you use it to keep the rest of us safe too.” He kept his voice low. “...I didn’t expect them to bring me back here.” There was no humor in Marjorie’s words, nor bitterness. She just sounded exhausted again, her body limp in his arms. “Everyone has a weakness, Ezra. I analyze everyone to find theirs, even you. Not that yours are hard to find, you big-hearted popover, especially when ‘dashing princes’ is one of them.” She chuckled. “Well, I suppose you’ve just seen mine. I had all these ideas in my head for what I’d do if I ever did come back to this city, and yet once I was here it all drained away. I felt like a lost little girl again, doing as I was told.” It was what Ezra suspected and dreaded at the same time, and he stumbled to a halt as he looked down at her. She still wouldn’t meet his eyes, which was just as well as they were stinging with tears. This was too familiar. He thought he’d recognized the way she tensed up in the Spire, how cold and resentful and yet muted she seemed compared to her outward self. “...If Hamilton Tooth showed up one day and reinstated his contract on me, I’m not sure how I’d react either. I like to think I’d spit in his eye now, but I suspect I’d just freeze in place and fear that everything that’s happened since his death, all the good and bad, was just an escapist dream. But, um, listen.” He was bad at this. He’d rather comfort someone by brewing a cup of tea or offering a scone, perhaps with a touch of peacefulness magic. “We’re here now. Well, I am, and I’m sure Basil and Philomene are doing their best to find us. Wherever you are, you’re not there alone. For what it’s worth. You’re not the best at protecting yourself, and none of us are sure why, but since you do such a good job of looking out for us we’re going to return the favor. Alright?”Marjorie was quiet, then rolled her head back up to Ezra and smiled wanly. “You’re a sap.”“You just said one of my weaknesses was a dashing prince, of course I’m a sap!” He snorted. “Basil’s better at speeches anyway. He would have said it in a way that set your heart soaring with hope and left my spine like jelly. But he’s off to rescue us, so in the meantime you have Ezra the Baker, not a poet.” “I get the sentiment, anyway. It’s much appreciated. Oh, there’s the shelf with the Vial of Heart’s Whatever, innit?” She pointed to one just to Ezra’s shoulder-height.He turned around, squinted to read the too-small number posted there, and then stared at Marjorie. “How’d you-?”“Observant. Part of my job. Worry about the iodine later, I want to see what this is.”“Worry about the iodine later my foot,” Ezra muttered as he searched through the green-glass bottles and vials on the shelf, careful not to knock any aside with his big hand. Even the largest could fit between his thumb and forefinger. “At the very least, the moment we find some clean water I’m taking care of that hand before it swells up to the size of a souffle.” He stopped, his pinky finger bumping gently against something the size of his fingernail, a red bottle. It was heart-shaped. Carefully, very carefully and not without a bit of internal grumbling, he reached to pick out the tiny red dragee with two intertwined snakes on the label and writing a little too small for him to read in the dim light. He handed it to Marjorie. “Can you…?”She held it up with her good hand and grinned. “This is it! Vial of Heart’s Exchange. Hopefully it isn’t some manner of love potion.”“Why would Mirror want us to find something like that?!” Ezra recoiled. “Do I look like I understand the mind of our apparent helper? Now set me down and I’ll find us a reflective surface. That’s all it says to do, by the way. ‘Pour over reflective surface, peer in.’ The rest is all scribbled out.”“Oh. Good.” As Ezra let Marjorie back onto her feet, his shoulders slumped. “I really need more experience with untested, dangerous magic after turning Toad into a salamander man.”“Come now! He deserved it and you ought to embrace that whole ‘hearth mage’ thing more often. But I suppose I do have the smaller fingers. This doesn’t seem terribly Sky-friendly,” Marjorie said of the dragee as she shifted around, tossing floor-strewn clothing to the side. “How often do they even go in this storage closet? What do you think they’re hoarding all of this for?”Memories of the Gourmet came back. “I don’t want to stay and find out. Let’s just...do what Mirror says for now, and if it backfires we know he’s an enemy.”“See? Now you’re thinking like a properly paranoid sort. Oh, here we go.” Marjorie reached for a shelf full of silver tea diningware, set after set after set, and pulled off a serving tray. “This’ll do. Ezra, I suspect I will need your help activating this here. You know how to channel magic through your baking, right?” He took a deep breath, going down on his stomach in front of the tray opposite Marjorie. “In the sense that it’s something I do, yes. I know I did it intentionally a few times. Other times it just happens. It’s all based on emotion, I think. I just channel it into what I’m making. But this isn’t anything edible. Shouldn’t this potion just work on its own?”“Ideally, yes, but we don’t know how long it’s been in storage. Its power might have weakened, so having a mage of any experience level nearby to charge it will be very helpful.” She seemed to be back into her element, moving without hesitation even with her injury, though Ezra again found himself wondering how she knew this much about sorcery. He used to assume she’d picked up information from Philomene, but everything about the Spire raised more questions about her.She uncapped the red bottle and let out one drop, then two. The substance oozed out slowly, a deep golden-brown like caramel, with a harsh vinegar smell that left Ezra covering his nose and wishing he didn’t have to crouch up so close to see. Despite the tiny amount in the bottle, the amber liquid seemed to spread across the entire serving tray. Marjorie gave Ezra a meaningful look.“...I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to be doing,” he admitted. “Mirror told us to find this, not what we should be using it for. Though he said we need to escape, and I agree…”“Then we need something that will help us escape. And it’s called the Heart’s Exchange. So maybe just try pouring out something from the heart. A wish? Can never go wrong with a wish.”“You can absolutely go wrong with a wish!” Despite Ezra’s protest, he didn’t have any better ideas. He associated magic with his hands, a feeling that passed from within him through to whatever he was working with, be it dough, spun sugar or tea. He was always working with his hands. So he made the reluctant decision to dip his index finger in the viscous fluid, making a face, closed his eyes and wished.Wishes had to be worded very carefully, and the heart didn’t lie. What did he want more than anything? He wished to be back home, but ‘home’ was a nebulous sense of place. He didn’t want to return to the now-derelict shack, at least not for a while. Certainly he had no desire to go back to Mielle. Nautilus was nice, but it was a temporary place to stay, not anywhere he planned to settle forever.Home was with Marjorie, and Philomene, and Basil. Home was in Basil’s arms.He felt the pull of energy through his hand and withdrew it reflexively, eyes snapping open. Fearing that his sudden action had ruined a spell in progress, he was both relieved and rather alarmed to see the caramel liquid glowing vividly with red light, a spark of green dancing within it as it swirled and shaped itself. Ripples formed in the goo before it spread flat and shiny as the now-obscured platter below, with a shape forming in shadow. Features filled in, eyes and coat and braided black hair, all of it tinged through red.“Marjorie? Ezra?!” Basil’s voice sounded as if he were shouting from underwater, echoing and distorted, but it was unmistakable.

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Ezra couldn’t help himself, reaching into the goo and pressing his palm against it as if he could somehow reach Basil through it. “I can’t believe it. Can you hear us clearly, Basil? Can you see us?” “Yes! You’re all a bit blue-tinted, but otherwise quite clear! And healthy and intact, thank the Mountain Lords.” Basil sniffled through a grin. “Sorry, how unprincely to turn on the waterworks so soon, it’s just...it’s been very strange here since you two vanished. Very worrisome.”“It has been rather odd for us too,” Marjorie said in a droll tone, a little smile on her face. Ezra noted how she seemed to keep that hand concealed; probably for the best, as there was no point in stressing Basil out about her injury when there was nothing he could do about it. Ezra could stress over it just fine on his own. “Prince Basil, please excuse the abruptness, but Her Highness…?”“She’s with Red, meditating.” Basil must have read the alarm in Marjorie’s blink. “Oh, no, Red would never hurt her! She’s doing a marvelous job sitting still so she doesn’t disturb the princess’s state. We’re at a Moonflower Gate and we think Philomene’s Green Magic might help to repair it.” “Repair it?” Marjorie frowned. “I told you things are puzzling. That’s not even a drop in the sea, Lady Marjorie! But never you two mind. Concentrate on staying safe, as we’re here to rescue you! Ah, not-not here-here yet. Not there, I mean. Obviously.” A nervous laugh escaped Basil’s mouth. “I’m giddy.”“Me too,” Ezra admitted, gazing down through the red-tinted portal at Basil’s big, brown eyes. He couldn’t help feeling a little lightheaded every time Basil spoke of ‘rescuing,’ even though to be rescued meant being in peril in the first place, and furthermore would put Basil in peril too. It was that old fluttery feeling of being something, someone worth a rescue. He was startled out of his reverie by Marjorie clearing her throat, giving him a wry look. “As cute as it is seeing you two gaze at each other like this, and I don’t want to understate how cute that is, we don’t know how much time this potion has given us. We need to make some plans.”“Right! Right, sorry.” Ezra shook his head. In the back of his mind he couldn’t help but feeling a bit guilty that he got to see Basil, but Marjorie would have to pass messages onto Philomene secondhand. “We’ve not quite escaped yet, but we’re in hiding at the moment. We have, um, an ally of sorts, and they’ve given us very vague instructions to find another.”“Can you trust this person?” Basil bit his lip. “We learned some things about Monochrome that suggest it’s not the place to trust anyone.”“Their instructions led us here,” Marjorie said. “And no, that does not answer the question regarding our trusting them, which is one I cannot answer yet. But you know how I am.” Basil wiped his eyes and smiled at Marjorie. “I’m glad of how you are, Marjorie, especially in a place like that. I trust you.” That prompted Marjorie’s eyes to go a little wide and color to go to her cheeks. Ezra recalled the feud the two had, how Basil felt he needed to talk to Marjorie about it in full and couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. Those words must have meant a lot for both of them. He reached over and gently set a hand on her back. “Philomene would send her love and regards too, I’m sure,” Basil added. “I sort of want to wake her out of her trance, but I’m worried if she does it’ll break the spell. I’m not entirely sure what’s happening here, and neither is Red. Who says hi, by the way.” They could hear a tail-thump on leaves in the background, and a low groan. “And Aurora too…!”“It seems the Spire has a lot of magical artifacts lying around, and a lot of magical technology that would make Philomene’s eyes shine like diamonds if she could see it.” Marjorie chuckled. “This was called ‘Heart’s Exchange,’ which is a little puzzling. Magic can involve an exchange of power or value in order to invoke a stronger effect, but so far that hasn’t happened. This isn’t much different from the spells Philomene uses to communicate with jewels or mirrors.”Ezra was quite sure after this misadventure he’d never want to hear the word ‘mirror’ again.“Maybe you can use it to get here? Exchange yourself for me, and you’ll be back safe!” Basil sat up.“No,” Ezra answered immediately. “Then you’ll be trapped here with one of us. If it’s an exchange, it can probably only take one of us. And none of you are sacrificing yourselves for us. That just means we’d have to go find you in turn.”“Ah, you’re right. I was just jumping on an impulse,” Basil said. “It felt like Prince Charming ought to make the offer, but come to think of it, Prince Charming is selfless, not silly. But I just hate feeling helpless seeing you, not really knowing where you are, and not being able to get to you.”“You can! You can get into Monochrome through more conventional means, and we’ll find a way to get in contact with you. We’ve been instructed to find someone or something called Nightingale, so keep an eye out for that. Actually,” Marjorie added with narrowed eyes, “keep an eye out for anything that can help us understand this city. It’s changed since I-well, it’s changed.” “So I have heard,” Basil said with a slow nod, sinking down into a kneel. “Philomene will never forgive me if I don’t prioritize your safety, but this is turning into more of an infiltration than anything else. A proper spy mission on behalf of my kingdom! And yours.” “Prince Charming can spy for benevolent reasons,” Ezra offered. He had no idea if that was true, but it sounded right.“And keep an eye out for cats,” Marjorie added, earning a puzzled glance from Basil that went unanswered. “Just a hunch. But as for that exchange, maybe you can lend Ezra something we’ll need.”“What do you need? Food, supplies, a weapon? I have my sword, but neither are you are trained in swordfighting. And I doubt hunting equipment is going to be of much use to you there.”Marjorie shook her head. “No, I doubt we’ll have trouble finding food in a city, and we’re in a place with access to medical supplies. When you’re dealing with powerful magic, you have to go bigger than that. Magic based on exchange can work with almost anything. Ezra, what do you think?”Ezra fell quiet, his mind racing. What could Basil give them that they could give back in exchange, something concrete that could help? He had no honest idea. None of them knew the layout of the city or its secrets; even Marjorie, who seemed to hail from here, was as lost as he was. Philomene had knowledge they lacked, but he didn’t want to take that from her in exchange for what, knowing the difference between bread and cake flour? He had no idea.No, Ezra corrected himself as something sparked inside of him, that tricky, electric feel he sometimes got from his own magic. His mind had no idea. But…“It’s called Heart’s Exchange. The heart knows. The magic knows,” he said, briefly catching the odd glance Marjorie gave him but ignoring it. Basil stared. “Ezra, your eyes….”“My what?” He blinked, almost breaking the trance.“No, no, ignore me! Keep going,” Basil said hastily. “I was going to say, your eyes are a beautiful shade of gold that comes through the blue tint as green. Keep going!”As he felt heat rise to his ears and cheeks, Ezra turned his attention inward again, back to that electric feeling. Hearth magic came from within, though he was never really sure where. It was in the heat of his hands working through dough, in the motion of whisking and shaping and cutting, and yet it had to come from somewhere. His heart knew, even if his mind couldn’t comprehend it, and the dissonance was alarming if he focused on it. No wonder he kept trying to avoid using it.Nevermind that. “We just have to concentrate on one another,” Ezra said, not sure at the origin of his own words. “On the way we feel. I’m sure that’s what Philomene is doing too, which might be why we were able to find you in the first place. The exchange will come because the magic knows what we’ll need. Somehow. Am I being creepy?”“Only a little,” Marjorie reassured him with a pat on the back of his palm. “And right now I think it’s the best advice we have.” “The heart knows, huh…” Basil held a hand to his chest, grabbing the layers of fabric keeping it warm and then letting go. “Okay. I trust your hearts.” He closed his eyes, and Marjorie followed. Soon Ezra had no choice but to obey his own words, close out the world, and let go.It was all so gradual, a sense of being surrounded by heat and chill at the same time, swirling around in a miniature storm around them. The electric feeling of Hearth magic, heat, kinetic energy, emotion, light, all of it plunged through him and he followed it into a sea of nothingness, so vast he feared diffusing into it forever. But something was pulling the magic through, something reaching out, something desperate and hopeful, and something else broke it through like grass breaks through the soil.Then it left him, and he was back inside of himself and on the floor, wrapped in cloth that felt heavy and oh so warm. Sleep was impossible to resist.Alphonse felt a shudder run through himself, a wave of nausea that reminded him he still had a body of sorts and it occasionally, inconveniently, felt things. Not as often as it used to, and when it did, it was always significant. “What was that?” he asked aloud, knowing the voice would answer internally. He wanted to remind himself he still had a voice. 
I felt something pass through. Would have been impossible to follow it out, but I tried anyway.
“But why?”
I can always hope. 
With that cryptic reply the feeling subsided, leaving behind a now-pleasing nothingness. Relieved, if puzzled, Alphonse spread wings as vast and dark as the night sky and took flight.Ezra did not really want to wake up or leave that bundle someone had dropped on him. He did not want to move. He could tell he’d overdone it, used too much magic at once to do something, and he didn’t even have an enchanted meringue to show for it. But he also didn’t want to sleep in a dangerous storage area, he reminded himself as he pushed the blanket off of his head.A dangerous storage area with a higher roof than he remembered it being, he added. Was he dizzy? Sitting up didn’t help the eerie perspective shifts any, or the vertigo. The shelves seemed to go on much higher and further than they ought to, the floor all that much closer. Come to think of it, where had Marjorie found a blanket big enough to fit him among all these human-scaled goods?“Had a good sleep?”Ezra spun around to see Marjorie leaning over him while he was sitting, which, he reminded himself, should not be possible. She was tall for a human, certainly, but “tall for a human” was still much smaller than “short for Skykin.” “Um, your hand?” Ezra decided to focus on what made sense at the moment.“I found the iodine and some bandages,” she said, lifting her hand and showing off the work. “You worrywart.”“Ah. Good.” Ezra breathed in and out and tried to get the part of his mind constantly demanding things make sense for once, just once, to shut the hell up and let him process this first. Not Marjorie’s hand, which was a genuine source of relief, though he’d have to make sure to brew some painkiller tea the moment he had the chance. He’d also have to get the ingredients for tea and find a chance to brew a spell, provided he didn’t just exhaust all his magic in one go there. Was that how magic worked? No, he had to process this, wherein he stood up to his full height and reached to Marjorie’s shoulders. Marjorie, who had clearly been stifling it, burst out into giggles here and ruffled his hair. “My,” she said, “I was not expecting that!” Ezra endured the hair ruffle, glaring up at her through his bangs, breathed in and out. “Marjorie,” he said, in the most level voice he could manage. “Why am I human-sized?”

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Philomene dreamed.She knew it was a dream. Lucid dreaming, the scholars called it, a way to sustain awareness during the sleep state. They developed it to keep Flower Folk who dove too deep into the Vine from losing themselves completely. Philomene was holding an olive blossom in her hands, and that was the tell.She was sitting on a cushion next to a large spider, a beautiful black and white orb weaver who spun web of a brilliant gold. The spider would pull, pull from her spinnerets, then encircle their little enclosure to create another layer of an intricate web that went on past the horizon. There were innumerable glimmering lights in the web of every color.Once in a while one of the lights would glow a little too bright, and the webbing would encircle it to dim it.“I have to keep spinning,” the spider said in a half-sob. “But I also have to keep cutting.” And then she climbed down to snip at the bits of web that kept trying to sneak into the spider’s home, seeking to engulf her in in turn.“If it’s going to consume you, why not stop?” Philomene asked. This poor spider looked so exhausted and frightened. “If I don’t spin, I’ll lose control of it.”“But haven’t you already?”The spider ignored her, snipping and spinning, snipping and spinning. “If I don’t spin, everything falls apart. If I spin, everything stays as it ought to be. I can spin a-a happy ending…”Something huge, of the deepest, darkest blue plunged through the web and tore through it, and the floor gave way beneath Philomene. She fell and found herself submerged in a sea of darkness illuminated by blue flowers, blue jellyfish, everything wildly out of scale. And stars, stars so small she could hold them in her hands. When she looked up, she could see a shape through the surface of the water. Which meant there was a surface. In the waking world she couldn’t swim, but her dream logic knew to kick and paddle, grab and reach for a surface that kept slipping just away from her. She wasn’t drowning. She just didn’t want to be here anymore, not after so very long, not when she knew there was a hope of escape. There was always a hope of returning. As she paddled, strange visions passed before her. The golden threads entrapped a formless shape of light and forced it into a shape; it burst out. Spiderwebs choked stars, and stars burst forth and burned it away. The deep blue sea was formless and shapeless, too chaotic, and the web was too restricting. She wanted to reach the surface; she wanted the sea to be stilled. And some part of her knew these were contradicting wishes. If the sea were stilled by the golden thread, it would die. If the sea broke out of the restraints, everything else would just become part of its mass.But she had to see the glowing shape distorted by the surface of the water. She had to see it for herself. Reaching, reaching, she broke the surface with a hand as green light rippled across. She could float on the surface now, around her a sea that roiled and boiled without rhyme or reason, stretching on every part of the horizon. And when she looked up, she saw not the moon, but a sphere of green, blue and swirling white.The gold threads turned to ice and the surface of the sea froze, trapping her there. Everything froze, and the spider loomed before her, wearing the masked headdress of Valerian. And then a quake shattered the ice, and Philomene plunged.And woke. In a rather unglamorous position no less, her face pressed against the cushion she was using for meditation. She meant to meditate, not sleep! It was embarassing. Philomene had never been the best at meditation, finding the idea of clearing one’s mind very difficult when one’s mind had a tendency to race and chase ideas. And she had been a bit more exhausted and sleep-deprived than she wanted to admit. But still, to fall asleep…! What if she missed an important develpment from the Moonflower Gate? Would she have channeled magic in her sleep, or was she just wasting time? It wasn’t unheard of. At least she could remember the dream this time, and she moved to jot down a few notes on it with her twig quill in her notebook. She could interpret it later. What was that deep, low sound vibrating through her carrying bag, anyway?Oh, that was a wolf whimper.“Red? Little Red, are you alright? What’s wrong?” Philomene climbed for the exit. “I’m sorry you had to stay still so long for me. You can stretch your legs and, um, erm, uh…”As she reached the exit and gave Red a gentle rub on the back of the neck, Philomene looked up at the scene greeting her in the morning light and words left her. There was a great heap of fur and leather bigger than the confused-looking Aurora, long enough to effectively block the path. Near a booted foot she could see a fallen sapling, which would account for that quake she felt. And yes, that was absolutely a foot, and the heap was a cloak covering a humanoid shape, and furthermore it was a very familiar boot and fur cloak and that was an equally familiar hand reaching out of it as deep, rumbling, bleary noises came from under the hood.“Aurora?” said the voice, distorted but clearly the voice she expected.“...Let me get my notebook,” Philomene said, reaching behind her. #Basil didn’t want to leave the warmth of his cloak-turned-temporary-blanket. He never did. Even though he slept in gloves, boots and layers of clothing outside, he knew it was just the slightest bit colder outside of his cocoon. Not even summer heat and morning sunshine could overpower his curse. Besides, he was so exhausted. Granted, he couldn’t remember going to sleep. He had been talking to Ezra, hadn’t he? And then things got a bit fuzzy. If he really fell asleep after finally making contact with those two, he was going to be so furious with himself. And where was Aurora? She always slept pressed up against him when they were outdoors. Maybe she’d gone to relieve herself? But wouldn’t he have felt her move? “Aurora?” He peeked out from under the cloak hook, and blinked. What was wrong with his voice? It sounded deeper than it ought to. Was he just hoarse? Come to think of it, his entire body felt heavy, sprawled out as it was. Lords of the Mountains Below, he could not be developing a cold at a time like this. It would just be the luck of the past few weeks. On the other hand, at least that way he could just attribute the chest pain to a respiratory illness. He heard a familiar sound and a pressure on his fingertips. Red was there, sniffing his glove and giving it a lick. He chuckled, whispered a “G’morning, Red,” and then stopped and stared. Red was tiny. No bigger than a lamb. He sat up with a start, immediately regretting it with the way blood rushed from his head. “Red, Red, are you alright? What happened to you?!” Again he felt something off about his voice, covered his mouth, and studied his surroundings.The trees were much smaller, too. So was that patch of land by the Gate, now back to being a dull brown. Aurora was behind him still, sitting on the tail of his coat, leaning against him and making a curious grunt. She was the size of a very large dog.It took a second for Basil to work out that no, nothing had happened to Red, Aurora, the trees, the path, or anything else that was suddenly much smaller. They were unchanged.“Aaah, um, Highness? Princess? Philomene?!” He pulled his knees up under him in the unlikely yet potentially tragic event she was somehow on the ground. “Red, can you wake her…?”Red’s ears flattened and she whimpered. “Too loud.”“Oh, sorry! I’m sorry, Red, how’s this?” He intentionally lowered his voice, though it took an effort. “She’s awake,” Red said. “She says she’s coming.” Red sat down, still looking cautious with a lowered head. “Why are you bigger?”“That’s exactly what I was going to ask her help in figuring out. Oh, Red,” Basil added with a little frown, “don’t be spooked! It’s me, still, see?” He hesitated, then pulled off one of his gloves for her to sniff his hand.It was not as biting cold as he thought it would be, even though there was more of him for the air to touch. Odd.“Smell like sunlight,” she said, then gave him a gentle lick. It seemed to calm her down.He laughed and pulled his hand back, slipping the glove back on. “Thank goodness whatever happened to me happened to my clothes, too.” His heart was pounding in his chest, and he knew to avoid a panic he’d have to joke around a bit. But underneath the panic and shock bubbled a sense of giddness.“She’s trying to talk,” Red said, flicking an ear.“She?”“Princess.” “OH! Oh, Philomene? Pardon me, Highness, pardon me!” Prince Charming was never rude, no matter how big. Basil had to squint to see the little shape moving atop Red’s back, making out more details when he rested on his stomach with his chin under his hands. Red dutifully lowered her head to reveal a little shape, dark-complexioned and clad in purple and green. She was so small. She was so small. Was this what it was like for Ezra to see a Flowerling? “Can you see me now? Am I coming through?” Her voice was tinny but surprisingly audible. Of course, she was able to speak with Ezra and even Rem without problems. Basil, nonetheless afraid his voice might knock her over from up close like this, just nodded.“Okay! Okay, good.” Philomene sounded a little horse and was jotting something down on an object in her hands. “I was just going to ask if you feel alright? Any joint pain, nausea, fever, chills?”Basil blinked. “I’m bigger, not ill.” Why was that the first thing she would ask?“Good! That’s a very good sign. See, magical studies suggest that a sudden shift in mass to that degree can be dangerous, and if it happens improperly you-well, your organs would have collapsed in on themselves if it was going to happen by now. So there’s that! Now, um, what happened?! You’re Ezra-sized!”“I think I’m bigger. Ezra’s short for Skykin. And I am...I’m not sure.” Basil looked down at himself again over his shoulder with a little frown. “We were at that Gate, and-oh! I saw Ezra and Marjorie! That’s right, they were able to communicate with us for a little while! But you were meditating, and I worried snapping you out of it would break that off. I’m sorry, Highness! Um, what was that about my organs?” “Nothing, nevermind. You saw Marjorie?! Is she alright? No signs of injury? Has she been taking her herbal medications?” Philomene rattled questions off so fast it was hard to keep up. Everything felt a teensy bit faster than it ought to, though maybe that was just because Basil was still waking up.Medication? Oh dear. “I forgot to ask,” Basil said, head lowered. “Forgive me. But she looked well, not the least bit greenish or leafy, for what it’s worth. Ezra looked exhausted, but that’s not all that unusual. And his eyes were glowing, because-because, that’s right…” He sat up again, lost in his thoughts. “The Something Something of Heart’s Exchange, they were using that. We were going to exchange, um, something that would help them and us?”“Sizes? Sizes can be exchanged.” Philomene flumped down on her stomach and kept writing. “Fascinating…”So Basil had Ezra’s height. Well, more of it, given the differences in their physical builds. He remembered how astonishing it had first been to spot the giant in the forest, crouching over a bush and methodically picking berries with his huge hands. How while yes, he’d grown quite used to the likes of Ezra, Rem, Cecily and their kin, sometimes he still caught himself breathless at the sight of Sky Folk in all of their towering height and, well, elegance. And now he had that.The height and strength, at least. Elegance had to be cultivated, and Prince Charming always strove for it.He stood up to his full height carefully at first, watching the ground just plummet from him as he did. It was a little dizzying before the giddiness finally boiled over and he laughed in delight, spinning around and feeling the weight of his massive, warm cloak twirl around him. “Look! Look at me, this is amazing! A little frightening I guess, but amazing! I’m so strong now, I bet I could pick you up easily, Red! I bet I could pick you up, Aurora!” He wrapped his arms around the bear’s midsection and lifted gently, only to find himself toppling back onto his rear as Aurora made disgruntled noises. “Ah, perhaps not that strong,” he huffed, having forgotten just how heavy the bear was. No wonder Ezra never tried that; she would only ever tolerate it from Basil, he suspected. But he marveled at the fact that he could, in fact, wrap his arms around her at all. “Basil? Basil, please be careful.” That was Philomene down there atop Red, coughing. “You threw up a lot of dust there…”“Oh! Apologies, Highness, apologies!” He couldn’t forget himself, for a giant Prince Charming would never. Letting go of Aurora, he bowed in apology on one knee. “I’ll be as careful as Ezra ever was, I promise. Wait until he sees...wait.”He felt blood drain from his face. “But it’s an exchange. Which means I have his height, and he has mine? Or-or his as a human? But why? I wanted to give him something to help him, not take from him! He’ll be in even more danger now, and less able to keep Marjorie safe…”“But smaller,” Red said.“Yes, exactly! Smaller, and he hates fighting anyway, which means Marjorie will have to protect him when I doubt she’s in any state to do that…”“No, I mean he’ll be smaller. So he can fit places.” Red pawed at the ground. “When I transform I’m smaller, so I can squeeze and hide. So they can hide.”“And being small isn’t the worst thing in the world,” Philomene added with what might have been a touch of prickliness, eliciting a wince from Basil.“Of course not. I’ve been small-framed all my life, you know. Uh, by human standards. So I guess I just have to trust that this is the best for them, too. But in the meantime, we should take advantage! I can get us to Wellspring faster, and there’s a ferry there. Hopefully a ferry that accepts Sky Folk,” he added with a little frown. “We’ll cross that when we get to it?”“And a cover story, yes.” Philomene was jotting things down again. “Just make sure you eat something soon, as I imagine you’ll be very hungry soon enough after that sort of transformation. Tell me if anything goes wrong, or if you experience any sudden pains.”Basil nodded, hand subconsciously over his chest. It wasn’t bothering him at the moment. Maybe this would make it go away. One could hope against hope. Though he was already rather famished. “And please, please, be careful!” Philomene retreated back into her pouch.“Prince Charming is always careful. Now then…” Basil put his hands out and, with a nod to reassure her, picked up Red and set her on his shoulders. She sat remarkably well there, curling around and resting against his hood, ears up and at ease. It was a little heartwarming how much she seemed to trust him already.“Now then, onward! We can save our friends with my new strength and walking strides, Red’s teeth and claws, Philomene’s brilliance and Aurora’s soft, soft fur!” He held his head high.And promptly walked into a hanging branch.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Well,” Ezra huffed as he looked over a floppy hat with a tattered silk rose, “I’m glad one of us is taking this in stride. I’ve lost my height and bulk, and that was one of the few advantages I had down here.”Indeed, Ezra only came up to Marjorie’s shoulders. She was on the tall side and thus used to seeing the tops of people’s heads, but not his. “I’m not taking it in stride,” she said as she adjusted a pair of overalls. The two had found a stockpile of seemingly discarded clothing in the storage area, and decided to take advantage without considering the ominous implications therein. “I’m planning. As soon as I saw what happened I started coming up with an escape plan. I realize this is probably an, erm, adjustment. And hopefully temporary! But we couldn’t have asked for a better disguise, could we? They’re looking for a Sky giant, not a short human.” She winked at him, adjusting a cap. “Or a young man looking for work.”“...I didn’t think of that.” Ezra glanced down at himself again with a little sigh. “I mean, the change of clothes is nice. Things fitting is nice, I suppose.” He’d cloaked himself in a red and gold poncho, apparently still unable to resist the lure of bright colors and fancy patterns. “Though in here they’re still looking for us no matter what we look like. I doubt this’ll fool them…”“That’s why we get out of here as soon as possible. We can disappear into the city for a while until the others arrive, and gather information in the meantime. Say,” Marjorie added with a blink, “if it was a spell of exchange, do you suppose Basil is much larger now?”Ezra stopped where he stood, eyes going wide and a slight reddish tinge going to his cheeks. “He could pick me up. And dip me.”“Literally sweep you off your feet, yes.” Well, Marjorie thought, seeing Basil again certainly brought out Ezra’s inner sap. All the better motivation to help him escape. “But I hope he knows what he’s doing at that size. He’s going to have to pose as Skykin, not a giant-sized human. And your kind have no royalty.”“He’ll know what he’s doing,” Ezra blurted out a tad defensively. “He’ll-well, he can act. Sometimes. He may not have your powers of deception, and really he’s painfully sincere, but he has, um, Philomene giving him advice!” He paused and winced. “Oh, he won’t know any of the slang or anything. Maybe if he pretends to be landborn, he’ll be alright. It’ll be alright!” Marjorie could tell Ezra was repeating that last bit as a mantra and knew better than to push it. “Well, I know he’ll be careful with the princess. Prince Charming etc etc and all that. You really going with the rose hat, darling?”Ezra adjusted it and tossed his messy hair, standing (relatively) tall and proud for the first time since his sudden transformation. “Roses symbolize victory in a difficult undertaking, since they take so much work to cultivate on Islands.” He reached up to take her hands, squeezing them in his. “We’re going to get out of here, and survive this, and find out what’s happened to both of us. If they can grow star-studded blue roses on Capricorn Island, we can manage this much.” Caught up in the sudden passion of her companion, Marjorie looked directly into his focused, brown eyes. Brown eyes; that was an adjustment, and a detail he could find out about later given the significance of gold eyes to the Sky Folk, but they suited him just fine. She just wasn’t used to being able to meet his gaze so directly.Nor was he, apparently, as he let go abruptly and stared at his hands. “Okay, that was disconcerting. I grew up in a world sized for my kind, so the furniture and clothing being me-sized isn’t that much of an adjustment, but being able to hold your hands like that without risk of crushing them is just odd. I’ve only known you as, you know.” He held a hand to the level of his round stomach. “Around here? Ish?” Marjorie paused. “Are you sure you’re alright, Ezra? You claim I’m taking it in stride, but that’s because I’m focused on a plan. This is much more of an adjustment for you.”“I’m fine,” he said forcefully. “Focusing on the plan, like-like you said. Besides, you don’t get to worry about me after what happened to you there! First thing we do when we’re out is get you to a safe physician to make sure everything’s alright in there with your curse and all. And I’ll have to get ahold of a kitchen somehow, because I ought to at least still have my magic…”Translation: He was not alright with it, Ezra having always been a transparent sort to Marjorie, but he was avoiding the problem. She was the last person to judge anyone for that. And he had a point; she did want to know what the status of the Golden Apple Tree was from a reliable source. Mirror certainly wasn’t talking.“Well then! Follow me, your good friend Conrad O’Rourke.” She assumed a rougher tone to her voice, gesturing broadly to Ezra as she led him down a smaller service hallway branching off from the main storage area. Ezra looked like a bit of a fashion disaster with the blooming rose hat, red and gold poncho over a purple silk shirt and black trousers. He was still Skykin in that sense. Not the best look if one was trying not to stand out, but ideally he’d just be taken for an eccentric. As for her, she took advantage of the added freedom of movement given by the steady trousers and cotton shirt, her hair tucked up beneath her cap. She kept her eyes on the ceiling, watching the light patterns and stopping where there was a break in it. Right there, she spotted that black print of a bird she’d found while Ezra was out cold, its beak pointing downwards to one wall. There, right on the wall, another bird pointed its head down at a well-disguised wall vent.“Nightingale, was that what Mirror said?” She was already moving to push boxes so they could climb up to the vent. “You found that?! In this huge place? You really are a master of snooping,” Ezra said with a hint of awe. He effortlessly dragged a crate as big as he was and clattering with something metallic inside. “And you still have your strength, or at least some of it.” Marjorie pointed to the crate. “See? That would’ve taken me a lot longer. It wasn’t all due to being so big.”This earned a blink from Ezra. “I didn’t even think about it,” he said quietly, “just sort of did it. I mean, I’ve always had to lift a lot of heavy trays and whatnot. Also, that vent. I wouldn’t have been able to fit in it normally….”“Yes. That occurred to me. You’re the one that said ‘the heart knows, the magic knows’ or something like that, didn’t you?” “Did I say that…?”Well, that was an interesting development, and a troubling one given the unpredictable nature of Ezra’s Hearth magic. It was also one that could wait until they were safer, so as she climbed up on the crates she nudged him with her ankle. “Yes, now hush because I doubt Mirror can conceal our presence forever and we’ve been down here long enough, Mr. Passes Out After Casting a Spell.”The vents smelled of burnt dust but weren’t hot inside, the metal actually cool to the touch. Marjorie recognized that scent. It lingered where a great amount of magical energy had been expended, but often disappeared within moments as the energy dissipated into the atmosphere. For it to be so pervasive and constant meant that The Spire was running on a lot of magic. She hadn’t smelled it in the Vacant Palace or Violet and Lavender’s cottages, but they were faeries. It was different for them. No, the last place Marjorie remembered the burnt magic smell so strongly was…
It was always mixed with the sickly-sweet stench of rotten fruit, bitter herbs, a touch of mildew, the coppery tinge of dried blood, so much candle wax, and there was the sound of bubbling cauldrons and sharpening knives, and swishing gown fabric, and wind rustling through silver leaves and silver branches and knocking over silver apples…
“-jorie? Marjorie?” Ezra shook her from behind and pattered her on the back, his voice a whisper. “You alright there?” Breath came back to her slowly as she opened her eyes, her vision distorted by tears. She removed her hand from her mouth, wiping away saliva. Her throat felt harsh.“That was a devil of a coughing fit,” Ezra said. “Do you need to rest?”She did. She could hear Philomene’s voice in her head insisting that she rest for the sake of her health as the little princess prepared to run a test. But there wasn’t time for rest, not when escape was so close. Instead she held up a hand to signal Ezra to go quiet as she leaned her ear against the metal lining of the vent, hearing footsteps. The steps grew ever closer and then stopped too near for her comfort, followed by the voices of a man and a woman.“Could’ve sworn I heard some banging around,” one said.“It’s been doing that lately,” said the other. “Maintenance issues. Mirror System keeps giving us a hard time, but we’ll get it hammered out.” As she heard the figures walk off Marjorie let out a soft breath and silently thanked the Vine Itself, Ezra’s Sun, the Faerie Queen, and whatever other deities might be looking out for them. Her throat still felt raw, but at least the smell wasn’t making her gag as much anymore. She would just have to avoid any more flashbacks. Focus on what was ahead, and nothing else.And what was ahead, barely visible in the dark, was a branching path with one split marked off with a bird-shaped dent. Either Nightingale wanted to be found, or...well. She just had to assume the former.She held up her hand one more time to gesture to Ezra, slipped through the branch, and then…Down.Down, down, down the tube slide went, light flashing past from the breaks in the piping. Marjorie spun and bounced and thanked her previous self for wearing trousers instead of a skirt that might get caught, wondering for a moment if perhaps ‘Nightingale’ was having a laugh and would have them deposited in a basement or furnace. At least that was light up ahead. Light, and no sign of flames, and white flowers? She tumbled directly into a soft, yet resilient sea of white flowers, rolling to a halt as petals drifted about like feathers, moments before Ezra landed on top of her.“Ezra, dear,” she said, spitting out petals. “You’re still heavy.”“Sorry, sorry…!” Ezra stumbled to his feet and then staggered back, holding his head. “I’m so glad I have an empty stomach right now. Are you alright?”“I think so, but…” Marjorie trailed off as she stood, gazing at the horizon of shining white buildings with black roofs, houses stacked like building blocks and architecture that wound like spirals. She couldn’t tell if it was day or night, and looking up at the sky made it clear why. Woven above the city, like an eggshell, was an intricate web of shimmering, gold material with a glow that blocked out the sky.“...It’s changed a bit since I left.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Once upon a time there were two sisters. One was good, and one was wicked. That’s how the stories go, Snow. Remember, you’re our good girl. Be pure-hearted, and your purity will always be rewarded in the end. You’ll find your happy ending, just like we found ours.

One day you’ll thank us for this gift.

Snow rushed through the automatic entrance to her room, past the white veil that acted as an illusory “door,” stumbling and covering her mouth. Her vision was blurred with blue, red, green.

Why? Why had Marjorie fled like that? Why wouldn’t she just stay? Snow was saving her. For all that Marjorie had abandoned her once, Snow forgave her.

Of course she did. She had no choice.

Heat rose to her skin, dizziness overtaking her as she collapsed on the bed. She removed her hand from her mouth and looked down at a smear of envious green, all while tears of angry red and deep, bitter blue oozed down her face and splattered onto her black and white sheets. A glance at the mirror revealed the colors swirling brightly in her eyes, the overflow proving to be too much.

“You did this,” she accused the mirror in one of the few moments she could express something like that.

Mirror didn’t answer. It rarely did.

She gasped as bitterness welled up in her throat, threatening to choke her, and anger started singing her black hair red. Through distorted vision she staggered to the corner, took the ribbon-tied key from her neck, and with shaking hands opened an ivory box.

Within was a clear, heart-shaped jewel big enough for her to lift with both hands, set in white gold on a red ribbon. She picked up the shining jewel, breathed through her nose twice to steady herself, and kissed it.

The colors flowed out from her, the red of fury and the blue of bitterness, the green of envy, the yellow of bile and spite. They filled the crystal heart and swirled within it, liquid within an impenetrable solid, shining in a blinding rainbow of impurity. She felt weight lift from her chest, her throat and stomach clear, and a brush of the cheek with her fingers revealed only clear tears. Pure tears.

The crystal settled on a deep, dark blue, heavy in her hands as she set it back in its holder. Funny, Snow would have assumed the overpowering emotion would be anger, not bitterness. In time it would process the impure emotions and distill them, clarifying itself again for the next usage. And if it didn’t, she had spares. And at least it would make a useful distillation, she told herself as she took a glass bottle the size of a finger and set it beneath a tiny, filigreed drip-spout at the bottom of the box.

A weakened liver or kidney, she was told, could only process some impurities out of the blood. Her heart was not weak. It was a rarity, in fact, so much so that it had helped earn her the title of Princess Candidate. It beat steadily and evenly in her chest, marked by a sigil of scar tissue hidden by her gown. It was the one, true Pure Heart.

A Pure Heart had no room for impure emotions. They bled out.

“Oh, how embarrassing,” she said aloud as she looked down at the color-splattered sheets, her voice cured of its vicious harshness. “I’ll have to wash that myself.” She sat down at her vanity in front of the little mirror to fix her hair, all black again and in quite a tangle.

“Well, Mirror, now that I’m feeling better, I suppose I just feel sorry for you. You seem all jumbled up lately, poor thing.” She wiped her mirror with a cloth to dust it and get rid of a stray blue tear. “Maybe that’s how she feels, too. It was all too much for her. And she doesn’t think she deserves to be forgiven. That’s why she prostrates herself as a servant.” With a clarified heart, Snow could express the compassion a good girl was supposed to do towards Marjorie. She shed a single, delicate tear. “But we’ll find her and help her, won’t we?”

Again, silence from Mirror.

Well, she didn’t want to force it, but it was for Marjorie’s good. And Mirror’s own good, if It was acting up. “Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, how fares my sister, brash and tall?”

Static appeared on the surface of the mirror, followed by a diagnostic, a diagram of Marjorie’s body as an outline and the Golden Apple parasite within her snaking inside. DIAGNOSTIC INCOMPLETE DUE TO DAMAGE, red text scrolled.

“Damage? But she only broke one of your mirrors.”

DAMAGE, DAMAGE, IT HURT.

“Oh? Poor thing.” Snow bit her lip. But she only had so much compassion to share for Mirror while distracted by the image on the mirror.

It seemed that part of the Golden Apple Tree had been extracted successfully, while some of it remained within Marjorie. “What does that mean, Mirror, Mirror?”

This time Mirror spoke, with Its hollow, metallic voice. “I’m not sure, Snow. There’s still not a lot of information on the Golden Apple Tree. In theory the part still inside of her should dissolve and die. I can try to monitor her but-” ERROR. ERROR. DAMAGE.

Pushing away from the vanity, Snow sighed. “Poor girl. I hope she’s alright. Well, they’ll bring her back here. I’m a Princess Candidate. They’ll do that for me.” She pulled a rope on the wall to ring for a servant.

Within moments, the wall opened up beneath the veil and a servant appeared, clad in a black gown with slightly jittery movements. Snow made a note to check which ones needed repairs, in case that brutish giant had gone on a rampage.

“Hello, Matilda.” She gave the servant a kindly smile, even though she knew it didn’t really care. “Please send for Lady Swann. I wish to discuss something with her.”

At least the servant’s voice was working fine, smooth and realistic as ever, the perfect simulation of a young woman. “My apologies, Mistress. Lady Swann has been dismissed.”

“Dismissed?” Snow covered her hand with her mouth. “Oh, I know she bungled the surgery a little, but just like that? Poor Lady Swann.” She bowed her head respectfully. “Well, who is heading up the Spire now?”

“Lord Dross is expected to arrive by the evening. We’ll see to it to arrange a meeting as soon as possible.” The servant curtseyed, head lopsided.

Snow reached over to fix it, clicking it back into place. “Well, I suppose in the meantime I should help clean things up a bit. What a state he’ll find us in! A shame about Lady Swann, though. Odd, nobody ever seems to last long in that position. I hope she enjoys a pleasant retirement…”

That was all she could say for Lady Swann. While Snow was grateful for her tutelage, one could say Marjorie’s escape was her fault. Snow forgave her for it, resolving to do well by her services, and looked to the stack of books on anatomy, physiology, medical philosophy and medicine. Her studies would keep her mind off of troubling thoughts and steady her heart until the new master of the Spire arrived.

Yet she found herself instead standing at the window of her room, stepping out onto the balcony and running a hand gently over the magical energy field that kept it safe and secure, encircling it like a bubble.

She did not want to leave. She did not want out. That would be ungrateful. There was nothing for her out there. Nothing but Marjorie, who had to come back here.

There was no unspeakable longing, because something that could not be put into words was not worth bothering with and probably too sticky and messy for the pure of heart.

She didn’t realize she’d wished until after, and she still wasn’t sure what she’d wished for.

Did you feel that?

This didn’t feel like a shiver through Alphonse’s body. It rippled, startling and yet strangely pleasant, and he wanted to feel it again. He turned towards the horizon and spotted the faintest glint of blue light far in the distance.

He’d been resting, having made his body small enough to curl up on a leaf. Was this his body anymore, or the Other One’s body just sort of blurring into his? He tried not to think too hard about that question, or what had become of his blood, his bones and veins.

“What was that, then? Someone else passing through the rest of your body?”

No, no, nothing like that. That was a Wish. An unspoken one. Those are the most powerful.

“Wishes. So you like wishes.” Alphonse formed a pair of wings and flapped them to stretch out; he had a feeling the Other One would want to fly again. “I thought your brother was all about desire and whatnot. You’re all strange, you know that?”

Oh, I know. And yes, The Gourmet is all about planting desire in others and feeding off of it. He tells them what to want and they want it because he does. The Green Witch is all about surpassing limits, or was; seems she’s gone dormant somehow. But wishes, oh wishes are different. A wish is a sense of hope within despair. It is the last vestige; if something is otherwise impossible, there is always the wish. How do you think I heard you out there in that wagon? You wished.

“I did not. I was ready to just die out of spite.”

You think you were, but some part of you went, no, there has to be another way. I am the other way. I am that which breaks down barriers and undermines structures. Help me, and together we’ll create a world like the one I was torn from, where all wishes can be fufilled because anything will be possible.

Alphonse just listened. This was the most the Other One had ever shared with him. Aside from a body.

“Sounds far-fetched.” But something stirred inside of Alphonse. As hopeless and silly as this idea sounded to him, it had a strange draw to him, like the light of that wish.

Of course it is. Wishes always are.

“And again, why do you need me to do this? I’ve given up on everything. You should have gone after someone like…”

He remembered Basil’s bright smile, the one he thought he ought to extinguish for Basil’s own good before someone else did it.

I’m not like my siblings. Yes, that boy was full of hope and you are almost deprived of it, but that’s not how I work anymore. Blame my brother turning me inside out.

Alphonse, faced with such baffling words, could only laugh, It came out in his own human voice. “So, what, are you Hope or Despair? What’s your name?”

The Other One didn’t answer. And so, left without other direction, Alphonse unfolded his form and took off flying towards the light of the wish.

“Please! Please, I’ll find her if that’s what you want! We’ll scour the entire city. Mirror’s surveillance spell is almost ready! I just need more time!”

Not that it made a lick of difference to beg the servants, Swann knew. They didn’t care. She was blindfolded, traveling down what felt like an endless staircase at spear-tip. She was to meet with the Empress herself, personally, over her next ‘assignment.’

Execution. The Empress would execute her. Sure, officially no one was ever executed in Monochrome, but there were rumors. What else could ‘disappearance’ mean? Would she be left to survive on her own in the mountains or woods? Sent down with the Legion to the borders to await a war with Fire Opal that would never come? It was one failure! After so much hard work…

Any will to beg for her life left her when she stopped and one of the servants removed the blindfold. She stood in front of a great stone precipice overlooking what seemed to be a great void within a cavern, no doubt deep underground. Golden lights shimmered in the abyss, dancing in thread patterns.

Her Imperial Eternity sat on a throne near the edge of the precipice, level with Swann but for the oddly simple stone chair. She wore her white dress and feathered mask, a sash obscuring even the painted lower half of her face, deathly still and immaculate. She was beautiful. Every time Swann saw Her Eternity, even in previous bodies that looked nothing alike, she was beautiful. The immortal soul of Valerian the Spinner did show through.

“Elharmonia Swann,” the Empress said, her voice level and calm as a snowfield.

“My Eternity.” Swann bowed as low as she could manage, her hair heavy on her head and cold sweat running down her back. The cavern, cold as it was, smelled of ozone.

Valerian cupped her chin in her gloved hand. “We see you are frightened. You have no reason to be so. You are still part of our Empire, our plan. We just find that you have a role to play that is better-suited to your nature.”

Swann dared to look up, even rise to her feet again. What did it matter, if the Empress already had her mind made up?

“Was the girl that important…?” She covered her mouth as soon as the petulant whisper left her lips.

“Marjorie of the Many Names has a use to us. In addition, her actions have altered the nature of Mirror, who is essential to our long term plan. We shall have to reassess that plan as a result of this development, and to do so we will need your help.”

Her help? Swann threaded her fingers together, feeling for the first time in years like a nervous magical student before a teacher. “You seek me?”

Valerian sat motionless again, shimmers of light rippling behind her. They looked like a spiderweb of golden threads hanging behind her. Only then did Swann notice how many of those threads connected directly to the Empress’s chair.

“You wish to impress us out of fear, but you have no need. You distinguish yourself out of a desire for your happy ending, but yours is already ordained. You shall serve us among those of us chosen to relinquish our endings so others may have theirs. There is no greater honor.”

Threads flew out from behind the Empress, wrapping and binding Swann’s arms and waist. They glowed brightly as more of them swarmed her, obscuring her vision. Even with her eyes shut, she could see a golden light creeping over her, voices whispering into her mind, the sense of something slipping in cracks and intruding and bleeding into her.

And then she heard the Empress in her mind, speaking in a thousand voices in unison.

“You shall become one of

us

. And

we

are never alone.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Basil was a giant. No, Sky Person; they didn’t think of themselves as giants. Except Salten apparently did, which Ezra found baffling. Basil thought of himself as a giant because he was, in fact, a giant version of his regular self, but he would have to pretend he didn’t.Or did he? He wasn’t likely to encounter many other Sky Folk here in a rural port town. He would get to be the big stunning marvel this time. Or the intimidating sort one picked on to impress others, which wouldn’t bother him except that he had Philomene with him and couldn’t risk her safety by getting into a brawl. Anyway, Prince Charming did not get into brawls. Was Prince Charming ever a giant? Giants were never princes but Prince Charming was not a prince, exactly…“Um, Basil?”Philomene cleared her throat, bringing attention to herself from where she and Melchior sat atop Basil’s shoulder. Snapping out of his daydream, he carefully scooped Melchior into his hand so he could speak with the moth-riding princess more directly. “Sorry! Sorry, Princess! I was just…”“It’s fine, just, I think i hear people behind you…”Turning around, Basil saw several humans glaring up at him, one tapping her foot. He was blocking the door to the tavern. “Aha, my apologies, my apologies! Come right on through!” He laughed nervously and stepped aside, stopping himself from giving a polite bow as that might have given poor Philomene vertigo.He sighed, looking down at Philomene. Lords of the Underground, she really was just incredibly small. How did Ezra and Rem keep from panicking about her safety? Once she was closer to eye level, Philomene tilted her head. “Are you nervous about something?”“No! No, not at all, why would-I’ve faced monsters and plant creatures and the Gourmet himself, why would a tavern frighten me…?” He felt heat rise to his face.“Melchior can feel your pulse quickening.” She pointed to the wings that twitched in time to his heartbeat. Oh, right. It was hard to keep details from Philomene. Basil gave up on the nervous smile and let his shoulders slump. “Well, I am, how to put this? If I have a character to play, like that mercenary I posed as in the Gourmet’s palace, I find it a lot easier to not be myself. Does that make sense?”“But you are yourself.” Philomene patted his palm with her hand. “You’re Basil. Just bigger.” “Yes, but remember, I can’t be Prince Basil of the Sethwhile Mountain Kingdom.” He spoke in a whisper, though he doubted anyone cared what he was saying. He was getting double-takes and stares just from being there. “I can’t go to the You Know Where because we’re allies with them and besides, Prince Basil is a human and I am…”A human, he had to remind himself, same in soul. At least Philomene caught onto his practical concerns and left the heavier business alone. “Oh, you’re right! I forgot. We need an identity for you. But maybe not mercenary bodyguard?”“Why not? It worked so well last time.”Philomene paused. “Well, um, actually, it’s just. You’re not very grim or hardened in the least. It’s a good thing! And I’d hate for you to have to hide your cheer. That’s one of your best features.” “Hmm.” Basil wasn’t sure quite how to take that. He filed it away, looking down at himself and over at Red and Aurora. Alright, so he was no expert liar like Marjorie who could invent things whole-cloth. That didn’t mean he couldn’t come up with a convincing cover story. A cover story so compelling that not only would he dazzle everyone in the room, he’d earn passage on a riverboat for a giant with a wolf and a bear. It’s what a true hero would do…!“A circus.”Okay, so based on the confused, dry looks he was getting from the almost entirely human patrons of the pub, this might be a hard sell. Basil could accept that. Prince Charming did not give up at the first sign of skepticism.“That’s right!” He thumbed himself in the chest, holding his head high. “You are speaking to the one, the only Bremen the Brilliant and his multitalented beasts! Well, the beasts are outside.” There was no need to mention the moth perched in the rafters if nobody noticed Melchior coming in. “Late of the Circus Illustrious, now going solo to bring our wonders to the people of the land! Oh, thank you, sir,” he added as the waiter nervously dropped off a bowl of lamb stew. It was awfully small-looking for, as Basil had politely requested, ‘the largest size you have,’ and sitting on the floor in front of a knee-high table was going to be awkward. He wished he had more room to stand, in part because playing such a dramatic role required dramatic stances.“And, uh, so,” Basil added, “I was wondering if perhaps anyone else here is headed towards Monochrome, a city said to be filled with wonders and…” No one was looking at him. He’d had their attention for less than thirty seconds. Were they deliberately avoiding eye contact because he’d mentioned Monochrome, or had he just come off a little too eccentric? Come to think of it, how did Ezra know when someone was trying to make eye contact with him? Everyone was so short and far away. He’d been hoping someone would find the idea of a traveling miniature circus endearing enough to offer passage, or at least agree to make a deal on transporting a bear and a sometimes-wolf. And it had been such a fascinating backstory he’d come up with, too! One involving a treacherous uncle, a fairy patron, a lost treasure of whale bone ivory and a rescued gaggle of orphans! He couldn’t let that go to waste.And there was no way he could use this miniscule spoon. No wonder Ezra usually served stew with flatbread. Basil sighed and lifted the bowl to his lips, savoring the heat seeping from the broth and warming his gloves. A good thing he couldn’t burn his hands or mouth on food.Wait a moment.After downing the soup in a few gulps, Basil ignored the demands for more from his stomach and cleared his throat. “Ah, you know,” he said perhaps a bit too loudly for the conversational tone he was attempting, “if anyone would be willing to help secure river travel for myself and my beloved animal companions, I could perhaps give a free demonstration of my powers. You see, along with being a skilled tamer of beasts, I am the world’s greatest flame-walker, fire-eater, practically immune to heat! Kin of the stone whales!”“What stone whales?” a heavily inebriated woman asked from a nearby table. Oh, whoops. “The, uh, ones the wise and noble people of the Myriad Mountain Kingdoms speak of, swimming in the fires beneath the land! I hear stories.” He held his breath, but no further interrogation of why Skykin would know Mountain lore came. “So you know, uh, the offer is out there!”Silence, mumbles, a few curious stares and again Basil found himself largely ignored. Did they not believe him? Did they not want to associate with him? “Careful. Nobody likes a brrraggart.”The voice gave him a start as he turned around, trying to figure out who had spoken. It sounded feminine and lilting, almost like a whisper. Maybe he’d imagined it. He hoped no one was playing a prank on him. Who would be so foolhardy as to pick on someone with his strength, size and heroic voice? “That is, um, I would also be willing to work for my passage.” This he admitted with a hint of embarassment. Not that work bothered him in the least, but he wasn’t used to traveling on a limited budget. “All of us would, provided you’re kind to animals. I’m quite strong! As you probably guessed. From looking at me.” Which of course, they were not. Now he was certain this was deliberate. He was a disruption for them to brush under the rug. As his confidence started to leak away, he felt a chill replacing it, the sting in his chest like needles. Well, he would show them! Treating a stranger with such rudeness was inexcusable. Had they not any sense of honor in hospitality? Didn’t they know that his kingly ancestors would shelter anyone from ash storms and blizzards as a matter of law? Didn’t they know how small they all looked, how fragile and…Wait. Basil stopped himself, breathing in and out to try to control the icy feeling. That was going nowhere good. Prince Charming did not impose. He rose above it.“Well! I understand it may not be possible,” Basil said, making himself sound cheerful and grateful even though he didn’t feel it. “Nonetheless, I do hope you all come see our performance if you are ever down in Monochrome! It will be exquisite!” He set down the pay for his meal, picked up the jug of stew he’d gotten ‘to-go’ for Red and Aurora, and stood as gracefully as he could to leave.And his head hit the heavy ceiling beam. He forcefully swallowed down all the unprincely curses he wanted to let out, rubbing what he knew would be a bruise and twitching at the chuckles and snickers. “Ougtta stay where you fit,” he thought he heard someone mutter. He shot a glare in their direction and saw a few drunks suddenly very focused on their drinks. Admittedly, that did feel good after a trying evening.Gesturing for the little moth carrying the princess to follow, he started lumbering towards the door when he felt something slipped into his hand. Opening his glove, he had to squint to read the writing on the white card.‘Want to take you up on the offer. Let us negotiate in the agreed place. Bring your friends.’“Well, the card’s not poisoned,” Philomene confirmed as she sniffed it. “I mean, I can’t run thorough tests, but usually toxins applied to papers have a pretty distinct scent. It’s why toxic ink isn’t a very popular form of assassination, or at least won’t be until the technology is further developed or cloaking spells become more reliable. Besides, if they wanted to poison you I doubt it would have done much good to slip something onto your gloves, unless they were waiting for you to sneeze and get it on your face. Actually, that would be effective. Your lungs and mucus membranes are very effective...targets for…” She looked up at Basil and coughed into her fist. “That is not what you wanted to ask me about, is it?”Basil, rubbing a bruise on his forehead, stared down at her and then politely glanced aside. “N-no, Highness, but your knowledge and fascination in bleak subject matter is impressive as always!” Philomene sighed. “S’not bleak, it’s just interesting.”“No offense, Philo-ahaha, Red! That tickles!” Basil halfheartedly brushed a hand at the wolf who had climbed onto him where he sat and was nuzzling at his forehead. “It’s very sweet of you to be concerned,” he added as he picked her up as carefully as he could in both hands and set her down. “You’re not bleeding,” Red said. “That’s good, right? Who hurt you? Do you need me to get back at them? Do you need protection?”Basil stopped laughing as he looked down at Red, who was all alert ears and erect tail, as if awaiting an order. The fact that she did that from time to time, seemed to expect him to tell her what to do, was unsettling in a way he wasn’t sure how to explain to her. Instead he rubbed between her ears with his fingers. “No, no, I was just clumsy. I’m not used to this body yet. Ah, Philomene, what I meant to ask is if agreeing to meet up with this person is a good idea.”Philomene set the card down, snuggling back into Melchior’s fuzzy body. “Well, I’d worry it’s a trap, but for who? For what? If Libra knows we’re trying to sneak in, they can just stop us in a very direct way. And I doubt they feel the need to do so anyway. We’re hardly a threat,” she added bitterly. Basil sighed, slumping against Aurora. At least he wasn’t so big that he couldn’t comfortably lean against her as she wolfed down stew. “We don’t have many other options. I still don’t know why that Moonflower Gate was broken. I tell you, that isn’t supposed to happen. And I don’t get why everyone just ignored me.”“...I think they were nervous,” Philomene said.“Nervous?” Basil blinked. “But why? Surely I couldn’t be the first Skykin they’d ever seen. That is, yes, Ezra would get stares too, and he’s as intimidating as a slice of angel food cake, but…” But the first time Basil had seen Ezra, he’d had a rush of enthusiasm at the idea of facing someone so potentially dangerous.But he wasn’t dangerous! Dangerous people were violent, or held power, or-or something! “I’m just guessing,” Philomene added. “This doesn’t seem like the friendliest town, honestly. But you’re right, there’s no way you’re the first Sky Person they’ve encountered if this is a common stopping point for people like Salten who got caught up in-in whatever they’re doing with young Skykin. Maybe your persona was a little too, um, erm…”“A little too what?”Philomene paused. “That is, um, to be honest, if I heard someone loudly declaring they were very unusual and eccentric and fantastical, I would think maybe they are trying too hard?”“Trrrying too hard to what?”This time Basil saw Philomene startle too as he looked up and around, recognizing that familiar, whispery voice. He’d lost track of time and almost forgotten just why they were waiting at the well on the outskirts of town, an odd meeting place if he’d ever heard of one, though a mercifully roomy one.“Up here. Up here! You are tall, look at eye level.” Basil frowned, standing up slowly and again suppressing the mild shock of how far he was from the ground when he did, finding himself staring at low-hanging tree branches. There was a pair of eyes glinting at him, golden beacons in the darkness. Then another pair and another.He didn’t even need to warn Philomene as Melchior flew up and hid carefully in the folds of his cloak. Behind him he heard Red’s low growl and Aurora’s protective snarl, holding his hand out to keep the latter from pouncing.“Mistress,” a different voice said as a pair of eyes moved, “I think they need light.”“Why? I can see them purrfectly fine. Oh, alright.” The first speaker reared back her shadowy form, letting out a wailing meow, and a soft green glow emanated from the edges of her long, black fur. The ghostly light revealed a cat-shape surrounded by three other cats, all but the big black one looking as guarded as Aurora and Red seemed to be.“Why cats,” Philomene squeaked inside the cloak. “Why cats again?”“So,” the black cat said, padding along the branch gracefully. She was easily as big as a raccoon. “Bremen the Brilliant. I am to understand you can work wonders?”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Cats. Why was it always cats? Granted that Enlightened cats were not as bad. They could be negotiated and reasoned with. In theory, Philomene had no more reason to fear them than she did Red Hood.But cats had a particular reputation as hunters that Philomene could not shake when she looked upon one. She steered Melchior to land atop Basil’s head to give herself a higher point of view and a good hiding place. They weren’t going to pose any danger to the other three.Red growled low. “Easy, Red,” Basil said, holding a hand out. “We’ll hear them out, alright?” His voice was a rumble beneath Melchior’s little insect feet, distorted by his larger size and still hard to reconcile with Basil’s youthful enthusiasm. Ezra, Rem and Cecily all sounded deep as well, but Philomene was used to their voices being their own. The big cat up at the front moved oddly, her fur swishing around her as if she were surrounded by her own bubble of air, and her paws didn’t quite touch the surface of the branch where she perched. “I did not rrrrealize there would be dogs,” she trilled.“Bear, dog, moth, me.” Basil pointed to them all in turn, including the perching Melchior. “We are a fine troupe if I do say so myself! All of us quite talented on the stage and eager to share our crafts with the world!” He held his arms out in what would have been a bow were he not wearing a moth. Thank goodness he could apparently feel that on his head.“Ah, and the little one riding the moth?”Oh, crud and mouse droppings.Philomene emerged slowly from Melchior’s fluff. Basil was doing a bit, wasn’t he? She had to play along. She wasn’t Princess Philomene. Come on, she rehearsed coming up with lies on the fly when she was hiding with Marjorie, she could do this. Think of a lie!“Oh, me? Yes, I am, uh, my name is Phi….Philo…!” Nailed it. Now she needed her cover identity. She couldn’t sing and her training on the string pinecone was rudimentary at best. “I am the, uh…” “Manager,” Basil cut in hastily. “She is our manager, and rather shy. She prefers to stay behind the scenes and do her work there. And she’s a little wary of cats, no offense intended of course!”Philomene nodded vigorously. “Manager! I manage.” What did a stage manager do? The big cat purred, wrapping her tail around herself with a smug expression to her ears. “None taken. Purrfectly understandable. I just smelled her, and wondered why you were smuggling a Flowerling.” Philomene made silent note of that. Even if she hid, a cat could track her scent. Or a guard dog.The cat who’d spoken stepped forward. “I am Muffet, hailing from the newly-established Anarchic Kingdom of Cats.” “The cats from the Gourmet’s palace?!” Basil exclaimed. “Anarchic...kingdom?” Philomene squeaked at the same time, her ears ringing from Basil’s own shout. The little black cat from behind Muffet blinked. “Our legend spreads! Good, I like when that happens.”Basil cleared his throat, a sound which made Melchior’s wings flick. “Yes! Legend, of course, spread far and wide. And I, being a worldly traveler and all, have heard many!” He held a hand to his chest dramatically. “I shall regale you with tales sometime. But what brings you here, and why have you called on us?”Philomene held her head. “But a kingdom can’t be anarchic. A kingdom is a hierarchy. An anarchy has no hierarchies!” “It also has no rules,” said the little black cat, “so you can’t tell us what to call ourselves.”Philomene opened her mouth to object, stopped, and just slumped against Melchior again. This was giving her a headache already. Muffet took charge, ears flicking. Her voice was low with a purr that emphasized every r. “Enough small talk. I was watching you in that tavern, even if you couldn’t see me. I can conceal things from the sight as one of my spells. This kind of magic is called Glamour.”Philomene startled. “Wait, does that mean...you’re an actual Glamour Cat? I thought they were extinct.” She recalled texts of the magical cats, slightly larger than average and all Enlightened, possibly the result of some ancient crossbreeding with fairies. But she’d never seen one in the flesh.“We are very rare, which is why the Gourmet collected the rest of us and let us interbreed with the other Enlightened Cats. So we were extinct in the wild, and now the few of us left are trying to re-establish ourselves in the Kingdom of Cats. We cats are very good at kittening.” Muffet looked a little smug there. “But we’ve heard of strange movements from the empires of the nearby lands, and we want to establish relations.”“Those being,” the black cat added, :‘if we give you something, leave us alone.’”Philomene cleared her throat. “I-well, that is kind of how diplomacy can work. I suppose. Not that I would know, being a manager! Of course!”“But you are a Flowerling,” Muffet said. “You know about making sure bigger things just mind their business and not yours.” “...Perhaps.” Philomene really didn’t like how much these cats knew about Flower Folk. She reminded herself not to get too snippish, as she was in fact Just A Manager. “So did you want to hire us to help with your passage? I’m not sure how much good that would do, in truth. We’re trying to figure out how to get up the river to the city gates ourselves.” The black cat said, “Oh, we have another way there. We want the help of this big one here, because he’s big.” Ugh. Philomene didn’t have to see Basil’s face to know what sort of grin he had on when he thumped his chest. “Ah, naturally! You’ll find I’m strong as a herd of oxen now...that I’ve reached adulthood, as opposed to when I was a boy.” “Good save,” Melchior squeaked.“I thought I warned you not to brrrag?” Muffet snorted. “Let me explain. Not long ago I smelled a crack in the boundaries of the world, a little place to slip between here and there. This happened right after the Moonflower Gate stopped working, cutting off our supply of scraps stolen from the Moonflower Market.”Philomene reached behind her and took out her notepad, jotting down info as fast as she could with her quill. So Moonflower Gates elsewhere were failing too?Muffet ignored her. “Of course I went in, as did anyone else who could find it because a cat’s duty is to snoop into anywhere we can fit and find what’s there. I found myself in a long passage, a maze of blue and blue and blue.” She lowered her head and swished her tail, her voice slow and hypnotic. “I’m not sure how else to describe it. But Izzy could tell it led to all the places where there had been Gates, just longer.”“I can see wherever a path will head even if I can’t get there. I’m a Catographer,” the black cat, Izzy, declared.“We decided this was the perfect chance to take that diplomacy trip we’d been planning forever and to bring our treasure to the Empress so she’d leave us alone. We kept meaning to do it before, but there were better things to do. Sunshine won’t lie in itself. But once we got deeper in, things went wrong.” “We kept making wrong turns,” Izzy said, “even with me as lead. And a forest of blue flames burst out around us. The flames didn’t hurt, but they made us feel…”“I don’t know how to describe it. We lost one of our own. Clover just stopped moving, and wouldn’t budge. Just curled up and wouldn’t move.” Muffet’s ears flattened, her eyes lowered. Then she turned that focus back on Basil. “So we need you, fire walker, you who can navigate through any flames. Unless that too was a lie?”“Lie? What-what do you mean by that?” Basil’s voice cracked a bit.“Oh, nothing.” Muffet kept her gaze fixed on Basil. She’s onto us for sure, Philomene thought.“But yes, flames don’t hurt me. That is absolutely true,” Basil said with a little sigh. “It’s complicated. Granted the same can’t be said for my clothes, but-”“Good. Then you’re hired.”“Perfect, excellent!” Basil crossed his arms and held his head high. “You won’t regret hiring the amazing Breme-Ah, Melchior! Stop, that tickles!”Philomene had steered the moth right in front of Basil’s face. “Hold on, hold on! Basil, Red, can we talk about this? First? Please? In a huddle, maybe?”Basil blinked his large gold eyes at her, frowned a little and turned around, taking a few steps away and crouching near Red and Aurora. “What’s wrong? We need to get down to Monochrome, and I can’t find passage for a bear. No offense, Aurora.” “Yes, but-this is a lot at once, isn’t it?” Philomene landed Melchior atop Basil’s outstretched hand. “If there’s some kind of dimensional magic disturbance happening as a result of-of whatever happened to the gate, it could be very dangerous. We may never emerge from it.” “We’ll be fine! I’ll be fine. We’re determined to get to Monochrome, and this will get us there.” Basil’s eyes glinted. “Besides, we don’t have time to debate too long. I already feel like we’ve waited long enough, while Marjorie and Ezra deal with gods-know-what. They need us.”“I-I know, but…” Philomene faltered. How to explain to Basil how Muffet’s story brought to mind that strange blue sea in the dream? She meant to tell him about it, but the whole size-shifting thing threw that off. “I won’t let the cats eat you,” Red said, flicking her ears forward. Philomene offered Red a weak smile. “Thank you, Little Red. But that’s not my worry. I-I suppose I’m running out of objections, but I just have a bad feeling about this. And I know that’s not like me because bad feelings can’t be explained and shouldn’t be acted upon automatically, but I felt I needed to let that be known.” Basil paused. “It is strange. All of it. But I still feel like we can handle it. You don’t understand how this feels, Philomene, having this body. It’s incredible! It’s hard for me to be afraid of anything.” He smiled brightly, cupping her in his hands.“Ah, that’s what I’m afraid of.” Philomene sighed, reaching out to touch one of his colossal fingers. “You know full well that Ezra and even Rem aren’t invincible, so don’t go... getting a bit head about…” She trailed off, turning towards the finger. Sky Folk were warmer. They had a higher average body temperature than humans just due to their size, enough so that a Flowerling touching a Sky giant would notice. Despite the warm summer night, even through the layers of fur and leather Basil wore on his hand, his finger was cold to the touch.She stared up at him. “Basil, you’re freezing.” His smile vanished and he shook his head. “No, I’m fine. It’s just the gloves. I’m warmer now, really. And please, stop doubting me! I know you didn’t trust me to know best for myself when it came to Alphonse and you were right, I get it, but that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot who can’t be trusted!” Philomene leaned back as he raised his voice, a knot in her stomach. That was right. They’d never really worked things out between themselves regarding Alphonse, and how Philomene had Marjorie snoop behind Basil’s back. “I-I know, and I’m sorry. I do trust you. But just because you’re so much bigger doesn’t mean you get to make decisions unilaterally, alright?” And then she lowered her head. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Basil shrank back, glancing away. “Oh, I-I shouted at you, and you could have gone deaf! No, I’m fine, honest. Please. It’ll be fine. We’ll all keep you safe.”“Even from the cats,” Red added. “Especially from the cats.”Philomene wanted to object that her own safety was not the issue, and since when had Basil grown so overprotective and condescending anyway? She was older than him! She was the oldest in the group, unless Aurora was somehow a senior bear. But she reminded herself that he was royalty too, and probably just as used to being listened to as she was. “Well, we do need to get to Marjorie and Ezra as soon as we can.” She sighed. “Just you be careful too.”“I will, I will, of course.” Basil let her go, perhaps a little too quickly, and turned back around to the cats with a flourish of his cape. “Dear Madam Muffet and friend Izzy, we are at your service. Lead the way, O Glamour Cat!”Muffet blinked her big gold eyes and leaped off the tree, drifting down as if she were made of feathers. She wriggled, pawed at the empty air, and squeezed herself into the blue-black tear that appeared in the middle of nothingness. “Oh, one more thing,” she said, poking her head out. “See the box around Izzy’s neck?” There was, indeed, a little black parcel hanging off of Izzy’s collar, no bigger than an apricot.“Never open that box.” And then she was gone, leaving the others to follow her into a void.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Scarlet Sun brushed the caterpillar gently with his gloved hand, using the other to hold it steady. “There, there. Just a moment and you can get back to your lunch.” He knelt next to it on the wooden deck of his porch, whispering to the larva.“Well, look at that! Docile as a well-fed cow.” The old man standing at face-level to Scarlet’s treehouse villa chuckled to himself, holding out a bony violet finger for one of the butterflies fluttering nearby. The butterfly looked about to alight and then seemed to change its mind abruptly, darting off. “I think,” Dark Midnight added, “They like you better than me.”Scarlet Sun did not say what he was thinking, which was that animals sometimes had a second sense when it came to sorcery. “They know me. Besides, these kinds know they have nothing to fear from most creatures. Not with these.” He lifted his hands, showing off the hair-thin, stinging spines stuck to the thick, padded gloves. “One of these would put your docile cow in agony for hours.” He let the caterpillar crawl off the porch and onto a tree branch on its own as he moved to his outdoor work bench, slipping off the gloves. He poured himself a cup of floral wine punch, downed half of it and set the carved shell goblet aside before grabbing a pair of pliers. “Here we go then. Slow and steady does it, just got to pull ‘em out.” “I cannot believe you are doing that while drinking, Scarlet.”Scarlet waved a dismissive hand in the general direction of the huge, hooded face as he worked. “Steadies the hand and the nerves. So how does this evening find you, old friend? You know I always appreciate a visit to my humble abode. Bright still won’t honor me so.”“Bright can’t fit in the greenhouse,” Midnight pointed out with a wry grin just barely visible under his hood. “Oh psh, I’d be just as happy to chat with her while I’m sitting on the roof. It’s very pleasant on a warm night. She’s just antisocial.” Setting a few of the long spines in their protective jar, Scarlet sat back on a wicker chair and poured himself another glass of punch. “I’d offer you some,” he added, “but you know.” Scarlet’s villa was a multi-room treehouse decorated with beads, shell furniture and assorted memorabilia from the Empire. He’d had it constructed in the branches of a tree famous for sap stronger than any glue, one which produced cherries that tasted like pure honey and made for fine wine. It was the centerpiece of a round glass greenhouse populated by thorny roses, venomous lilies, stinging caterpillars and poisonous berry bushes. Scarlet was inordinately fond of his Poison Garden. It was beautiful and functional, everything he liked in a home. Dark Midnight, on his part, seemed unconcerned with the toxic nature of the plants and insects around him. This was no surprise. He spoke in his rasping whisper of a voice. “It regards Her Eternity.”Scarlet sat up straighter at this. “Her current avatar is weakening,” Dark Midnight continued. “The time to choose among the Princess Candidates is coming again.” “So soon? They aren’t lasting as long as they were, are they?”Midnight shook his head. “The Valerian System is expanding faster than our long term plans anticipated.” Scarlet frowned and tapped his goblet with his fingers. “Not good, not good. If we start burning through Princesses like candles the people won’t put up with it. I take it you didn’t come to me just to spread bad news? You’re hardly the kind to vent without a plan.”“I do not have a fully formed plan yet,” the old man said. He idly cupped one of the vivid red blossoms of a Tears of Blood Bush in his hand, deftly avoiding the spines. “It is the Empress’s way to look at every possibility and reach out to any angle to achieve a goal, not merely focus on one ‘plan.’ And so I reach to you.”In seconds Scarlet Sun tossed away his casual demeanour, standing at attention and then bowing low as if he wore the cloaks and skull of his Rider garb instead of a stained work apron and trousers. “For Her Sake, I shall do anything.” “Good. Bear that in mind. And don’t bow to me, I feel ridiculous.” Midnight gestured upwards with his hand. “You’re so dramatic.”“Can take the actor off the stage but can’t take the stage out of the actor.” Scarlet rose to his feet again and grinned, cocking his head. “So, what else did you need me for?”“You’re so certain I need more from you? Can’t we visit as friends?”Scarlet imitated Midnight’s human-level voice with perfect pitch, off only by volume. “Hello, Scarlet, I thought I’d come by and admire your caterpillar-harvesting skills and bring you a gift out of the thoughtfulness of my very warm and definitely real heart.” He thumbed at the jar at the end of the porch full of Silver Apple flesh, a glass vial which came up to Scarlet’s waist. He knew better than to eat the stuff, but it made for a good preservative for certain toxins.“I do like your company,” Midnight insisted, even as he gave a defeated little sigh and laughed. “But perhaps I am too transparent. So, you’ve heard that the Moonflower Gates haven’t been working?” “Yes?”“I’ve been sensing something...coming from them. Something large. In my dreams I see a great beast, blue and massive and without fixed form, descending upon our beautiful city to corrupt it. And I see a great hero rising up to defeat it.”“Ah, a ‘chosen hero?’” Scarlet snorted. “Your dreams are getting cliche, Midnight.”“But that is what the people will see!” The sage held his hands out. “They shall watch as a hero battles the beast and saves us all, and the hero’s coming will be a sign for our Empire, proof that the time has come for our reach to extend past the shores. We tell a story and it comes true, and it proves that the other stories we tell are also truth.”“And be more willing to accept their own Narratives,” Scarlet added, swishing his glass. “You really are great at finding the upside to any situation. Do we know what this beast is?”“I don’t know much about it yet, though the Empress seems perturbed by its presence. It is Her Eternity’s will that we neutralize it and keep it from infecting the city as much as possible. Mirror is clamming up again.” “Ugh. Useless piece of glass,” Scarlet snorted. “So,” he added with a playful grin, “I take it you don’t want me to be this Legendary Hero? I mean I’m flattered and all, but I doubt anyone would see me!” “No offense meant.” Midnight nodded. “I want to you to help ensure the hero wins. We’re not fools here, we know a one-on-one battle is dramatic and impractical. You’re to assist our side in secret, using any tools at your disposal.”Ah. Well, that was a bit more Scarlet’s comfort zone. “I have a few poisons that might work well against some magical beasts, but I’m going up against something I know nothing about. That’s going to be tricky, isn’t it?”“Then you advise, influence, just make sure the battle goes our way. If our plan fails and our hero dies, we have a martyr, but on a pragmatic level it’s best if the people are given a hopeful story rather than a tragic one. I will do my research in the meantime. Are you up for this, Scarlet?”So, Scarlet was to face an unknown enemy with the help of some bumbling ‘hero’ he’d never worked with before. He and the other Riders were like a well-oiled machine together after their years of teamwork, but a human who didn’t know what they were doing around a Flowering could be as much of a hazard as any magical beast. He drained his glass. “In a way, this makes me the hero, doesn’t it?” He imagined Her Eternity smiling down at him, actually smiling, her hearts and minds united in admiration for him, her hero. “So, who are we sending out there to do the job then? I take it I’m to act in secret so as not to bruise any egos.”“That would be for the best. This person needs to believe in the story as much as anyone else for it to work properly. Bright Morning plans to pick a candidate from among her personal Legion.”Scarlet clicked his tongue. “A Skykin hero of the Empire? Interesting. They are good at being seen, I suppose. Well, I do have some work to do, don’t I?” He rose to his feet, flush from the drink but steady as ever. “Let’s hope our monster has a weakness for the dramatic.” Dark Midnight bowed his head and turned to leave, his cloak trailing behind him. His walk was more like a flow, without the clumsy heaviness of a human, and the butterflies didn’t flutter in his wake. With that, Scarlet Sun walked into the his treehouse, past jars of bubbling substances and pipes of extracted venoms, statues and art pieces he used to impress Flowerling-scale guests. He headed straight for the room in the back, his personal infirmary, where one patient lay on the bed.The plump, bearded old man slept sound as ever, his fever lessening by the day. Soon enough, by Scarlet’s calculations, he’d be conscious enough to speak but still too weak to escape.“So, Germain,” Scarlet said to his sleeping prisoner, “have I got some questions for you.”Bright Morning walked around the yard where the new candidates trained and sparred. Here she would reach over to correct a stance, there she’d simply snap and point at an obvious error and let the young soldiers figure it out for themselves. The ones who had failed the initial basic training runs, or quit, were allowed to leave through the proper channels. There was no point in shaming them past whatever they already felt themselves. They wouldn’t return, or leak information. The ‘proper channels’ ensured that.Those who had made it this far had taken on a more uniform appearance as befitting a military unit. Their hair had been shorn shorter, they’d been fitted with black and white training garb and armor, and they were practicing with polearms, swords and archery equipment. Some who would be better suited for the polearm wanted to take up the sword, and they would learn on their own, after enough defeats, where they best fit.She’d already pulled two candidates aside, one a young woman with wide eyes and flowers tattooed along her bare arms, and a Lunar with a cloud of curly pale hair and a sunburnt face from travel. It was best to pick from three, good luck, an old Vox superstition she still couldn’t shake. And she had a good sense of who her third should be.The woman, Paraya Lumin, had the star power from a childhood spent in a theater group. She could handle celebrity, though there was a chance she’d be a little too adept at it. Kamin Silvera was gifted in combat, already skilled at the longbow and crossbow, but zie was stoic and reserved in a way that fit a member of a legion better than a solo hero. And then there was candidate number three, still rough at the edges, hotheaded, but with a hungry look in his eyes. Candidate number three wanted to be the hero, and she could work with that.She walked up to Salten Candlewood, waited for him to wipe blood off of his face, and gestured behind her.“Come with me.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Marjorie gave Ezra a gentle nudge to the back, a signal that they should casually move from the crowd mulling around a book shop to the one at the street corner. Pedestrians shuffled and grumbled impatiently as an ornate carriage passed, decorated all in white frills and drawn by two huge, long-haired horses. “Someone’s taken their nobility to heart,” she heard a woman whisper to another, and made note of it. At least she didn’t need to worry about losing Ezra. He clung to her like a shadow. With his short stature and baggy, form-hiding clothes, he looked like a shy child instead of a nervous young adult out of his element. Maybe she could pass him off as a younger brother, differences in skin color and build aside.“This’ll really keep us out of sight?” He kept his voice low, hiding his face beneath the rim of his hat. “Think of it like this.” She held her hands out at the various decorative mirrors hanging on buildings, street lamps and even sturdy tree branches. “These are all their eyes. You know how a housefly’s eyes work?”Ezra nodded. “They’re numerous, set together like jewels in a ring.” At her stare, he cleared his throat. “Etchings of insects are popular art subjects in the Sky since they’re so hard to see. And sometimes people make jewelry based off of those. They were everywhere for a while.” “But a fly has all of its eyes in one place, so even if it can see in multiple directions it isn’t trying to see entirely different rooms. That place Sn-she showed me was filled with displays, but they couldn’t focus on the same thing for very long and they flickered in and out. Imagine if you had a thousand eyes spread throughout an area, and all those eyes had to blink. What would you concentrate on long enough to see?”Ezra glanced uneasily towards a mirror without looking into it. “So we’re betting on the law of averages right now? Just keep moving and hope Mir-You Know What doesn’t pick up on us?” “It’s not perfect, but until we can get out of their sight it’s the best chance we have.” She gave him a little tug as she rushed across the street, staying in the middle of the crowd. That was another technique. Wolves went after the sheep at the edge of the herd. She was glad Ezra wasn’t asking her where she’d learned all of this. She would have to lie and say it was all bodyguard training, and she was getting tired of lying. Certainly her mental energy would be better spent figuring out shelter, for while she couldn’t tell day from night in this newly-illuminated Monochrome, she remembered their police forces did not take well to finding anyone sleeping in the streets. She was a little dubious of this meeting Ezra seemed so keen on attending based on what might be a coincidence, but if nothing else it would give her a chance to gather more information. Were the meetings new? She didn’t remember any from her time in the city, but then again, Monochrome had a habit of leaving memories with fuzzy edges. There was a small group gathering at the base of the white marble statue at the center of a park square, its gate marked by a hedgerow of white roses and cherry trees. Ezra stopped to examine a rose. “They’re so perfectly formed, I thought they’d have to be fake. Not all the same shape, but look.” He traced his finger along the edges of a few flowers. “It’s like they fit together, like gears or puzzle pieces.”Marjorie didn’t have quite the eye for the arts that Ezra did, but once he pointed it out she couldn’t ignore it. “Like rose-pattered wallpaper made of real roses. We have to be careful, though. Confirmation bias is a thing and if we’re looking for strangeness, the mind will find it where it isn’t.” “I’m not falling into an unobservant trance again, not like that time in the Palace. Especially not in a place like this.” Ezra clenched a fist and sucked in a breath. “If I start acting strange during this meeting, can you prod me?”“What makes you think I won’t fall prey to it myself?”“You’re a little more cynical and I think that’s to your advantage here,” Ezra said. Marjorie spotted a rare little grin on his face. “But is that you giving me permission to poke you if needed?”Marjorie smiled back. “Well, now my cynic pride’s at stake, so I’d better live up to that. But if you insist. Come on, time to mingle.” She stepped through the gates of the park square and took in the scent of flowers and grass, a scent that was conspicuously absent on the outskirts.Butterflies and bees hovered and darted around the carefully-laid flowers of the park, and their presence just highlighted another absence in the rest of the city. This was the first time Marjorie had seen an insect since her capture in the Spire. She hadn’t seen a single hornet near a fruit stand or even a cockroach by the trash bins. Most of the gathering audience were human, and not all wore the customary white and black. She noticed one older man who looked like he might be from the northern mountains like Basil, though he wore his hair cut short and his clothing suggested a different kingdom or clan. There was a pale woman with a baby wrapped in her thin arms standing next to a wealthy-looking couple adorned in silks chatting about local experiences. She didn’t spot any Flower Folk, but knew from experience that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Something bumped behind her hard enough to make her stumble, and she turned around to scowl (as the tough young lad she was playing would do) only to find herself facing an apron. “Oh, oh, pardon me, sir! I’m so sorry.” The Sky woman took a step back and gave a little curtsy. “I was-I can’t see very well.” She was plump with dark, straight hair and wore trousers and a stained work shirt beneath her apron, leaving Marjorie to wonder if the giantess had just left a lumber yard and gone straight to the meeting. Remembering herself and the role she was playing, Marjorie shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest with a cocky grin. “Nothin’ to worry about, Miss. No one was hurt.” She turned around to face the statue again, nudging for Ezra to do the same. “Not polite to stare,” she reminded him, since he was gawking a little.Ezra, looking mortified, quickly mumbled a “sorrymiss” and ducked his head down beneath his hat. Was this his first time seeing his kinfolk from the angle of a human? A figure wheeled a wooden podium to the base of the statue and stepped onto a lift of some kind so he stood above the audience. He was young looking and fairly handsome, Marjorie supposed, dressed in a white button-down suit that seemed a little heavy for summer. Then again, it didn’t feel as hot as early summer inside the city, just temperate and comfortable. Had she failed to notice that as well?The speaker clasped his hands together and gave a warm smile. “Thank you to all of you who have gathered here. In doing so, in listening to the golden thread that drew your hearts to this place, you have taken the first step towards your happy ending.”What golden thread? Did he mean the posters? Somewhere Marjorie could hear Philomene grumbling about all this and forcing herself to hold her tongue. Thinking of the princess made her heart ache. She reminded herself that Philomene was likely with a bear, a wolf shifter, and a newly-gigantic Basil and thus safer than she would have been with Marjorie. That didn’t entirely help.“Maybe you came because you’re desperate.” As he spoke, Marjorie noticed the woman with the baby tremble in the corner of her eye. “Perhaps you’re just disillusioned, or bored, or even curious. Whatever the reason, you seek happiness and harmony. We all do. We just want a place to belong and fit in.” Well, Marjorie thought, I had that and you took me away from it all. The man lowered his head. “The truth is that we all have our place, we just have to be led to it. Everyone is part of the great story, the truth woven from the cosmos. Fate and probability brought you here, and if you follow them, they will take you to your destiny.”Marjorie heard her inner Philomene again, scoffing. Easy enough to say someone is destined to arrive where they already are. But she knew too well how despair turned into a kind of thirst for something, anything to say ‘you are safe here, you belong here.’ This man knew his stuff. “The truth is that we all have a story and are part of a story. You have heard the tales that circulate, the ones with no authors, the legends of heroes and monsters, of princesses and queens, of Prince Charming and Robin Hood. You can be part of them too! You are part of them.” The man held his hand out to the group.“Perhaps you are meant to be a hero, defending Libra, or to nurture the hearts of those who do. Maybe you’re waiting for a rescue. Perhaps your place is to cultivate wisdom and give it to others. You have a role, as I do, as all of us do. You will be happiest when you find your role and place and settle into it, as the web of the story falls into place. To break from it is to end up lost and disillusioned, and to wear it is to find comfort and joy. Peace comes to those who accept their fate.”Marjorie felt pain shoot up her hand, and thought at first Ezra was trying to alert her. But he was on her other side. Maybe she should have been more suspicious when it healed up so fast, but she was too eager to get out and keep safe. Reckless, she scolded herself. She’d finally let a doctor look at it once she found someone trustworthy, which might take a while.The man at the booth held up a mirror. Immediately she made every effort to stare at the black-rimmed edge of the handheld, round mirror, for to conspicuously look away would be too suspicious and to look right into it foolhardy. “You can’t see yourselves in here, I’m guessing, because it’s not close enough.” The man’s smile and voice remained serene and relaxed. “But when you look into the mirror you see yourself as you are and as you are meant to be. Try it, as a mental exercise. See yourself through the eyes of the story. You, Ma’am.” He pointed to the woman with the bay. “Do you want to come forward and try?”The woman hesitated, looked to the sleeping bay in her arms, and stepped forward. The man gave her a hand to help her up. “There then, look into the mirror. Do you see what I see? I see the soul and form of a kind heart in need of rescue, the kind who felt Prince Charming could never reach her. But we can. Let Libra be your hero and Monochrome be your castle, and live happily here.”The woman stared into the mirror, and tears filled her eyes. “I do, I do see it,” she whispered. The crowd murmured, touched and astonished. Marjorie narrowed her eyes. Was it just an ordinary mirror, and the man was telling people what they wanted to hear? Was it as simple as that? What was going on with her arm? Her hand was trembling and seizing up again, and it took all of her nerves to keep her reactions to gritted teeth. Maybe she could swipe some ice or willow bark tea from the market before it closed.“You understand now? You are part of Libra already. Libra is balance, the narrative we all are meant to tell, and if you listen you can live happily ever after here. All in your place, all in the name of Her Imperial Eternity who brings her wisdom from the Faerie Plane itself. She spins the straw of a wayward, troublesome world into purified gold and uses it to protect us, to watch over us and guide us forever.” Marjorie’s hand cramped up. She shoved it into her pocket, ignoring Ezra’s worried glances. At least the rest of the crowd was too distracted, and while some looked a little confused, others wore hopeful expressions. She heard a soft sob behind her, and glanced at the Sky woman, who was crying into her apron. “You will awaken to your role on your own, in time. If you listen to the thread…”An arrow struck one of the cherry trees, and the man froze as the crowd shouted in confusion.“Listen? Listen to this man’s words with a sharp mind and trust your own guts!” Before Marjorie could find the source of the voice or the arrow, she heard the strum of a harp. The mirror in the man’s hand shattered, and Marjorie, overcome with pain, lost control and screamed.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Ezra valued his short stature for the first time in a while as it let him duck beneath the chaos of the screaming, confused crowd, holding Marjorie in his arms as she howled in pain. He should have forced her to go to a doctor first. He should have found something to help her in there, boiled some water somehow to make a healing tea. What good was he as an apparent Hearth Mage or a friend? “Pass out,” he whispered to her, “please just pass out. Please do this one thing for your own sake.” He held her to his chest.All the while he could hear the strum of a harp, not a full song but a series of pulsing chords. A strange background noise for an attack, Ezra thought, though he wasn’t sure this was an attack so much as merely a disruption. Figures in green cloaks were running about firing arrows and smashing hammers into the hanging mirrors. The apparent leader who had mocked the speaker was the pink centaur he’d seen earlier, clad in a mask and wearing a green and pink coat over her flank. They weren’t a large group by any means, but they were visible with their brightly colored clothing and glittering masks that reminded him of Solstice Festival Night. “Do not sit idle and let someone lie to you about your own places in this world! They are the hands who sort you there, for their own purposes!” The centaur’s voice carried clear over the confusion, though her height certainly helped. “Even the neatest, cleanest, most beautiful cage is still a cage!” Now he knew what this was. It was a protest, one almost as theatrical as the sorts he’d see in the Mielle Town Square from time to time. Protest was itself considered a form of art in the Sky, with costume and staging as important as the message itself. But he couldn’t imagine planning such a thing in a city full of surveillance mirrors, let alone one so massive and heavily populated. He looked down at Marjorie, who had mercifully passed out, though her breathing was shallow. Everything that she’d been through must have caught up with her, and he knew she wasn’t in top health at the best of times. He’d observed how often Philomene checked up on her maidservant. “Excuse me,” he called out. “Is-is anyone here a doctor? A physician or a healer? My friend needs help…”He couldn’t hear his own voice over the din. Ugh, why had he chosen to listen to the advice of one of the Other Ones and follow gut instincts and clues instead of dealt with the more immediate problem? Of course, getting her to a doctor might lead to their arrest again, which would have made all their progress for naught. A shadow fell over him, and he froze out of old instinct. He didn’t like being loomed over, as it was an old intimidation tactic Hamilton Tooth loved. But when he looked over his shoulder he saw it was just the young Sky blacksmith, biting her knuckle. “Do you know what’s wrong with him? I know a little first aid, not much…” Oh, right, Marjorie was disguised as a boy. He’d almost forgotten her cover identity. Ezra gave her a grateful look and shook his head. “It might be a little more intense than that, I’m afraid. But thank you.”“Well, at least I can shelter you in case things get more heated than this.” She lumbered in front of Ezra and stood in front of him, arms crossed. “There, how’s that?”He now found himself with a tower of a woman between him and the rapidly dispersing crowd, which had the extra effect of keeping her from any prying Imperial eyes. “That’s lovely,” he managed, trying to shake the awe at the sight of her. She was his own kin! That was his natural size, or close to it. The more he thought of her as gigantic, the more human he feared he’d become.He heard a whistle, followed by thundering footsteps. Looking past the woman’s silhouette, he glanced three more Sky figures, these clad in all black guard uniforms with white trim.They wore hooded helmets and carried heavy shields. Riot guards? But why were Skykin serving as part of the Libra guard? This was a human city, or something like it, and no self-respecting Skykin would let themself serve in a foreign military. The apparent leader was listening to a frightened, angry explanation from the meeting speaker while the costumed rebels started to dissipate. He could swear he saw one literally melt back into the air, though it had to be some kind of elaborate illusion. The Sky guards stormed the square and shouted orders too booming and deep for Ezra to make out over the din, while the centaur took a graceful leap right out of the reach of one of them.“Ah, so some of Bright Morning’s tin soldiers have come!” She had a singsong quality to her mockery, one that almost worked in time with the harp strums but was just a beat or two off. “We put on some lovely puppet shows if you’d rather watch a marionette than play one!” She fired off an arrow that struck the tree next to a Sky guard, deliberately missing the woman’s head and bathing her in ribbon streamers. “You’re ridiculous,” the soldier said, tearing the streamers away and charging at the centaur. “Remember,” another barked, “arrest and detain! Good citizens of Libra, please remain calm and stay for questioning! We’re here for your safety!”Oh stars, of course they’d want to detain witnesses. Ezra knew he looked quite different from the Sky stranger who had escaped, but he didn’t want to count on Marjorie’s disguise fooling anyone, especially if she was too weak to act on it. He had to get her away, but where? She wasn’t heavy at all, but her lanky build made her a little hard for his stout arms to carry for very long. She’d droop. “Ma’am?” A young-sounding soldier walked right up to the Sky person. Ezra froze, feeling his heart pounding hard in his chest and uttering a prayer in his mind that the soldier wouldn’t look down at the ‘humans.’ “Uh, um, er, yes?” The woman bowed her head and clasped her hands, a greeting he’d seen some travelers use on Mielle. “I don’t really know anything. I was just here to get information and, uh, they showed up…”“Right.” The soldier nodded curtly. “You got nothin’ to worry about. We’re here to protect you.” There was something all too familiar about his cocky voice, one Ezra had heard many times before as he lectured someone his own age on zesting lemons and folding pastry.He dared a glance up at the soldier’s face. He’d finally cut those too-long bangs, but the freckles, sun-tanned skin and round face were unmistakable. Salten was working for Libra.And would absolutely recognize Ezra’s face, he realized, and have no real reason to let him go. He looked away immediately, ducking down so his hat hid his face and hoping he’d just look like a scared citizen. Before Salten could ask about him he shuffled away, feeling guilty about leaving the Sky woman behind but confident she’d be alright. He had to keep Marjorie safe.“Damned Masquerade,” he heard another citizen ranting to a different guard. “They always leave behind such a mess!” “Oh, we’re fine,” one half of the wealthy couple trilled. “We were hoping to get a bit of local flavor, and what’s more flavorful than this?” “It’s staged,” he heard someone murmur. “Libra stages it to give the illusion that it’s not got everything under control, see? And that’s why we have to obey them further.” The conspiracy theorist was notably avoiding the guards.Ezra had nearly managed to make it out of the park when he realized that one of the guards had, of course, blocked the nearest exit. Questioning. What was he going to do to get her out? A few members of the ‘Masquerade’ were still there, though a few hadn’t managed to avoid arrest. Maybe he could use them as a distraction and break for it through a gap in the hedge, but running through rose bushes would cut him up and only do more harm to Marjorie.What was with that harp music? He followed the sound, weaving and ducking and staying just out of sight as Marjorie had told him to do. He noticed Marjorie’s breathing tensing every time the harp strummed. What was so familiar about a harp? He’d been through so much in less than half a year, but he knew there was something about a harp.The player was a lanky figure in a green hood and a blue and gold mask. Ezra immediately recognized that harp, intricately carved with strings so delicate-looking they could have been made from spider silk. “Jack?” he blurted out, and immediately covered his mouth. If that was Jack, he had good reason to hide his identity. But the harpist just looked at him blankly and then ignored him, playing again.Maybe Jack was being smart, hiding his name and knowing better than to react to it. But if that was in fact The Harp, Ezra could guess why Marjorie’s hand started flaring up at that moment after apparent healing. It had shards of Mirror in it, and Mirror was reacting to Harp’s presence. “Stop playing,” he gasped. “Please. It hurts my friend.”The harpist didn’t seem to hear him this time. “Stop,” he shouted again, no longer caring if the guard saw him. “Enough! Put it down!” “Harp, O Harp, the song is over.”That was the voice of the centaur, and as she spoke Jack lowered the harp, clinging to it and still looking right past Ezra. Did he not recognize Ezra, or did this centaur just command that degree of loyalty? Was this part of the performance? The centaur landed next to Ezra, leaning in. “So, you know his name?”Ezra stared up at her, at her red eyes peering down at him through the mask. It was trust this woman or fall prey to the guards, was it? Trust this woman and Mirror.“Nightingale.” Ezra held his head high. “We need to find Nightingale, and my friend needs help. From someone who understands magic,” he added, for he doubted bits of Mirror could be extracted by normal means. No wonder Mirror said that Marjorie hurt them. She forcibly fragmented a tiny part of Mirror. The centaur studied him. “Well, I may need your help too, though if you come with us I can’t guarantee safety.”Ezra groaned. “Of course not. I know that.”She chuckled, and then knelt down. “Climb on, and bring your friend.”In calmer times, Ezra might have felt awkward riding on a centaur’s back. Now he hardly cared, boosting himself on and sitting Marjorie in front of him. Her breathing had steadied, and now she just seemed to sleep. “Harp, O Harp, it’s time to go,” she sang to Jack. And with that she took a springing leap that Ezra thought would leave his own stomach behind, right over the hedge and into a space that rippled around them and disappeared in a dizzying splash of color.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Everything was blue. Soft blue light shone on Basil from all around, though he couldn’t find a source for it. It was just there, a glow casting a blue tone on his coat, his gloves and everyone around him. Even Red looked a little more like a Purple through the filter.They stood at the bottom of a valley passage through what looked like towering, transparent rock formations, just wide enough that Basil could hold both hands out and his fingertips wouldn’t touch the edges. He hoped it wouldn’t narrow past that, or he and Aurora would be in a fix. Experimentally he put a hand on the walls of the transparent ravine, surprised to find it was warm to the touch and gave just slightly like clay. He pulled back; there was something stomach-churning about the texture. “Careful,” the Glamour Cat said as she turned over her shoulder. “We noticed if you touch the walls too long you start to feel ill.”“Is that what happened to your companion?” Philomene asked. She and Melchior were sitting atop Red to give the moth a chance to rest. “No, no,” the Catographer guide said. “He just sat down and wouldn’t move. We’re afraid he might thirst to death, but we have no way of going back for him right now. Whenever I try to lead us back, this happens.” He padded past Basil and Aurora to walk in the opposite direction, only to go flying into a confused and thankfully patient Aurora with a plaintive meow.Basil turned around and managed a few steps with no trouble at all until he got past Aurora, who was trailing the end of the group. Instantly he hit a wall of force, a powerful wind he had to brace his legs against to keep from tumbling into the others and possibly crushing one of them. “It’s pushing us forward! But why?”Philomene made a noise with her throat. “I have a theory, but…”“But?”“On second thought, it’s probably wrong. We should just continue!” Basil recognized that tone. It was Philomene’s classic You Probably Don’t Want to Know Right Now bit, and considering her occasional fascination with worst case scenarios he had to imagine it was pretty grim indeed. “Never you fear,” he told the cats, “we’ll find a way to rescue your companion in time!” He hoped they hadn’t unwittingly led him into a trap, but he did have a duty to them. And Prince Charming did not shirk duty. “Now, about those flames? I don’t see any.”“Just wait,” Muffet mewed. “We’re in a quiet spot. They’ll flare up soon.”Basil was beginning to regret his brag, as it was obvious now this flame would be of a magical nature just like the rest of this place. There was also something very familiar about this shade of blue, but having it surround everything made it harder to pinpoint. If Basil could see it in comparison to something else that would help. As it was it just felt a little dizzying. “Nowhere to go but forward, right?” He hoped his voice sounded more confident than he felt as he tramped onwards. The ground, at least, didn’t have the same creepy give as the passage walls. It felt like a flat, shallow desert with a thick layer of white, dusty sand tinted blue by the light. Red sniffed the sand here and there but didn’t seem to pick up on anything. Oddly, the sand clearly extended past the transparent walls into a long, flat landscape dotted with craters and rocks here and there and a night sky. It was hard to make out much else, since the walls distorted light like water and looking too long gave Basil a headache. It got worse when he gave a glance up, as the walls of the cavern showed only darkness above and a crack of some bluish-white light. He staggered and slipped against one of the walls, holding his head and hoping his stomach would calm down. “Basil?” He heard Philomene’s voice next to his ear, thanks to Melchior. “Are you alright?”He’d dealt with nausea and dizzy spells before, an occasional side effect of his cold curse. His hand went to his chest as he took deep breaths, hoping that would steady the painful chill. Once his vision returned he gave Philomene a little smile.“Quite alright, Princess, quite alright! I just suggest not looking up. I think something about this magic field causes severe disorientation. At least it’s warm, right?” He laughed, which only resulted in another coughing fit.Ugh. It would be impossible to hide his condition around her, wouldn’t it? Especially in an environment like this. “Um, Highness?” He lowered his voice. “I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier.”Philomene paused, then had Melchior land on his shoulder so she could give him a little hood-pat. At least he thought that’s what she was doing. “We’re both stressed, aren’t we? It’s been a difficult time, and I know you miss Ezra.”“Well, yes, but once we’re safe there’s something I need to talk to you about...hmm? Red?” He glanced down at the wolf tugging at his pant leg. “What’s wrong?”“I know this smell.” She grunted and held her nose up. “Can you crouch down?”Basil blinked. “Oh yes, of course!” He lowered himself slowly so he wouldn’t make Philomene dizzy. Red probably wasn’t used to looking up at him like this, and he didn’t want to loom over her. “It’s the blue flowers,” she said in a whispering growl. “The ones that he...Lord Germain had me gather some at gates so he could study them.” Her ears went flat, head lowered. “He wanted to make Dryads out of them, I think. I can’t smell them in my other form, but this nose is stronger.” She curled by his feet. “It’s overwhelming.”Basil sat down next to her. “Pardon us,” he said to the cats, “we just need to take care of something!” His voice softened when he turned to Red. She rarely told him anything about her time with Lord Germain. “You could shift into human form if it’ll be easier for you. I can carry you. I don’t mind!” Red looked away. “...Can’t.” “You can’t shapeshift anymore?” “I mean, I can, but I can’t.” She whimpered again. Basil frowned, then reached down to pick her up as she was. She didn’t resist, resting in his arms. “So the smell is making Red feel ill and I keep getting vertigo just looking around. Princess, do you think this area’s under some kind of poison curse?”“I don’t know, but whatever’s filling this area is potent. We should try to get through this passage as soon as possible.” She sounded weary, and though Basil couldn’t see her from her angle on his hood he suspected she was leaning against Melchior. Gritting his teeth, Basil reminded himself that Prince Charming carried on when others could not and started heading through the labyrinth of the blue canyon again. The navigator cat would stop, stare forward for a moment and then take a turn through an occasional fork in the road, but for the most part it was a one-way passage. Basil found it easiest to keep focusing on what was ahead of him, avoiding the claustrophobic sense of the crystal walls. The ‘forest of blue flame’ didn’t show itself. Maybe it was the sort of landscape that shifted often. Red buried her nose in his coat and shut her eyes.“Poor Little Red,” Philomene whispered. The Catographer stopped suddenly, turning to Muffet and the others. “We’re approaching another clearing area.” “Clearing? Oh thank goodness, we’ll probably feel much better not closed in by those walls.” If Basil didn’t see the color blue again it’d be too soon. “You speak too soon, Firewalker.” Muffet turned around and gave him a careful look. “The clearings are strange. But you will see.” Sure enough, after squeezing through a passage that was a bit too narrow for Aurora’s comfort and brushed against Basil’s coat, they came out in a broad, open area where the walls spread out in a bowl-like dome shape around them. It made Basil think of a pendant on a necklace. The light-distortion effect was thinner here, which gave him a better view of the scenery outside of their tunnel. “...Princess? Am-am I seeing this right?”The area around them, inside the dome and out of it, was dotted with overturned carts and torn banners. Jars lay half-buried in the dust and grit. Patches of green poked out, evidence of grass buried in the powdery sand. The wreckage extended far past Basil’s view, but he would have recognized some of those carts anywhere. There was where he bought hot cabbage stew. That was where Ezra sold his pies the first night. This was Moonflower Market. Melchior took off and flew around Basil’s head as Philomene steered him onto one of the broken stalls, one dotted with glittering bits poking out of the sand. “These are miniature bottles,” she said, sounding hoarse. “Witch’s Bottles, made of tinctures I used in magic research. Or they were. Basil, what happened here…?”“Do you know this place?” Muffet batted one of the tiny glass bottles away idly, the charm around her neck dangling. “There were a few of these in the last clearing, but not as many. If it weren’t for the lack of wind I’d say they were blown around.” “If the Gates aren’t working, it’d make sense that the Market was abandoned. But this a wreck! It was green and grassy before, and much more...compact.” Basil clung to Red a little tighter, thankful he couldn’t find any bodies. “And for it to have degraded so quickly is strange, isn’t it, Highness?...Highness?”Philomene wasn’t answering, distracted by staring up at something. He approached her as delicately as he could so he didn’t cloud her view. “Princess? Philomene?”She was staring past him. Hard as it could be to make out her expressions, Basil got an impression of blankness, her arms slack at her side. “Princess! Princess!” He clapped his hands. She winced at the sound, shook her head and went back to staring. “Basil. Look up.”“Just, you’re worrying me here! You don’t need to hide anything troublesome from me, I’ll understand it or try my best! Please explain…”“Look. Up.”Taking in a deep breath, Basil obeyed, standing up and shifting his hood so he could better see above him. Hanging in the dark sky was a great orb, a moon far bigger the moon ought to be. Even through the filter of blue light it was beautiful, covered in a swirling pattern and obscured partially in shadow. It was massive, and as Basil stared at it he felt as if he was seeing something that should be impossible. Swirling around it was a faint trace of blue light spreading out from the passage itself, like a reaching tendril. 
How do you like it? Seeing what I saw day and night? Does it taunt you? Does it make you feel small? 
The voice came from all around Basil and inside of him, reverberating in the ice in his heart as the blue flames burst around him like a field of flowers.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Alphonse had made himself very small in order to keep watch on the walled gates of Monochrome, standing tall and arrogant in their sheer black and white filligree. They looked too delicate to provide protection but were said to be reinforced by unbreakable stone. Even that shouldn’t have proven a problem for his new body, one that could make itself thin as onion skin and slip through the crevice between the doors. So why couldn’t he move any closer? He wanted to slip in there and tear the city to shreds, make it clear to the Empress and all those fools who worshipped her how unworthy she was. He wanted to devour it. He wanted it gone. And stronger than that was the wish, the powerful one drawing the other part of his new self here, one that even the false paradise of Libra could or would not grant.It’s my sibling, the other part said.“Another one of you? How many of you wretched things are there?” He thought back to the Rot Witch who had taken a ghastly pale imitation of his sister and given him that rose, whispering how to avenge his kingdom and bring to truth the lie of Prince Charming. He recalled the scar left on his chest where the rose had burrowed in, the Green Witch too mindless and eager to devour him but too weakened to do so. And now here was this one, who he ought to resent as much as the others. But what did it matter? He no longer knew where he ended and the Other One began.There are six. The one you sense calls themself Mirror. But something is different about them. They are stretched thin, in bondage to the will of someone else. A chuckle. Well! How do they like it then? But they’re being used to repel us. “Then tell them to stop. Make them stop!” Alphonse grew a hoof and scraped it against a rock, snorting. “We need in there.” 
Patience. Hope and patience, fleshbound self. I have a plan. I’ll unleash you when the time is right, and when I’m strong enough. Can you feel that?
A rush of power welled up in Alphonse, like blood returning to a sleeping limb. He shivered all over, the tingle almost painful. “What was that? I keep feeling it sometimes.”
It’s coming from the rest of me. Someone despairs. 
“...Give us more.” 
Oh, they will. Fortune smiles upon us. They will.
Some gut instinct told Basil what the great, impossible, swirling moon above him was, the thing so hypnotic and terrifying he couldn’t look away.
That’s right. Behold the world, and know the loneliness of being exiled from it. Behold the world, and how massive it is. Behold the world and know your insignificance.
A hoarse laugh escaped Basil’s mouth and he shook his head, shutting his eyes. “You’re using an illusion on us. I’ve dealt with magic many times before!” 
Obviously, cursed and enchanted creature. But you misunderstand. You were here before, trodding upon my prison. When you looked up and saw only stars, when only darkness surrounded the Moonflower Market, that was the illusion. I will not craft lies in service to that greedy fool anymore.
“I don’t understand.” Basil flexed his fingers, bit his lip, anything to hold onto sensation in the face of this dizzying sight and overwhelming voice speaking into his mind. He opened his eyes and fixated on the planet again, trying to make sense of it. Was that great white mass near the top the High North of the Snow Queen, the one that bordered his mother’s country? Where were the mountains, so enormous and steady he was sure one could see them from the stars? 
Your entire world is a drop in a great, dreadfully orderly sea, and within it you are a mere speck. All of you are specks. This cannot change. There is nothing you can do about your insignificance or your weakness.
The voice had changed now, growing softer and gentler with a hint of compassion and pity. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked over to see a figure standing over his kneeling form, long hair white-blue and face obscured in shadow. She looked as he’d always pictured her, for she was never described in the tales: wearing the fur cloaks and intricate armors of the heroes of his people, tall and strong, with a glimmering amber sword at her hip and a white rose on her chest. Prince Charming, The Lady Prince, The Noble Peasant who transcended and saved shone like a beacon of blue light, and her touch was so, so cold even in the strange warmth of the blue passage.You have tried so hard. I understand. She brushed his hair, pushing his hood back. But this world is so great, I cannot save it. You cannot save it. It is out of our reach. The world, as it is, is hopeless. But thank you for hoping, dear one. This was not Prince Charming. He knew that on a logical level. Her ghost wouldn’t be here, in this desolate place apart from the world, speaking to him like this. But he couldn’t ignore her words, thinking of the Alphonse he thought existed and the real thing, of how no matter how hard he tried to be Prince Charming he couldn’t imagine himself as the great hero. He would die first, and all those who needed Prince Charming would go without. You’re right. You cannot be what the world needs. But I can. The false Prince Charming put a hand to his chest, and a white line of a grin appeared on her shadowed face. Oh, interesting. Perhaps this is what my sister was preparing for me. But it isn’t ready yet. Preparing? Sister? The strange words briefly broke Basil out of his trance as his hands covered his heart. “Don’t touch it. Stay back!” Even as he spoke he felt the ice creeping inward and outward, his chest clenching in pain as breathing grew painful. He was going to die here, and this...thing would take his heart. He should have told someone, but what would be the use? There was no cure for him.
That’s right. There is no cure. 
He would die in this strange place and the cats would lose their bodyguard, Philomene, Red and Aurora would be stranded, and Marjorie would perish in Monochrome. He’d never see Ezra again.There is no hope outside of me. The false Prince’s form had grown monstrous, looming and fanged with curls of blue energy growing from her form. She held out her hand, something black and swirling inside. Help me fix that, won’t you?Basil stared at the hand, briefly reached and then recoiled. “What am I doing?! I’m not dying here. I refuse! I don’t care what size it is right now, it’s my body! I don’t care who cursed it or how, it’s my heart!”Well, I asked. That’s never worked out for me before. Time to take…?! The image reached for him and then pulled back, the hand bursting into flame and then vanishing before the rest of ‘Prince Charming’ dissolved into blue fog. You had godmothers? Godmothers? Violet and Lavender! Had they put some kind of protective blessing on him against whatever this was? “That’s right. Maybe they couldn’t lift my curse, but they could do something for me. They raised me and blessed and protected me, and they loved me. Maybe I can’t become Prince Charming right now, maybe I’m doomed eventually, but I can save all I can in the meantime.” He forced himself to grin. “No hope but me? No way to change the world just because it’s huge? Prince Charming would never say such things. Learn how to lie better next time, um, Thing!”Under such duress, it was hard to find a proper insult. He was sure he’d think of one later when it wasn’t as useful. When the voice spoke, it was back to being harsh, smug and bitter. You really aren’t ready yet. After waiting so long here, can you blame me for being impatient? But at the very least I can make use of you for now. They need some other reason to despair. Feed me.Instantly the warm, moist air turned into a tiny storm of stinging, painful cold around Basil, swirling around him and numbing him inside and out. He knew what this would do in the best situation, and did all he could to fight it, pulling his coat around him and huddling into a ball. He needed a hug from Aurora, but she was too small now. They were all small, and he...he was about to become a threat to them. “Stop! Aurora, Red, someone, please, stop me before…!”Red didn’t get what the big moon above her meant, or why everyone was so fascinated by it. She didn’t care. The mixed moonflower scent of the Market was sickening, churning her stomach with its sickly sweet-bitter smell. It wasn’t a bad smell in and of itself, but it was too familiar.Which might be why he was standing next to her, right next to her snout and patting it gently.You see? It turns out you can’t forget me, the blue Lord Germain said in his usual cheerful tone. I live on in your memories. I attained immortality after all. Isn’t that awful? There’s no hope in trying to move past me. It’s just a waste of energy.She felt weak, her wolf body refusing to move. She had enough strength to turn her head and ears, listening to where Philomene sat curled against Melchior’s back.“Olive Blossom to Delphinium. Delphinium, please answer. She can’t stop weaving but the ocean keeps coming. But if she keeps weaving she’ll choke the world. It’s so much,” the princess whispered. “Olive Blossom to Delphinium, why can’t I reach you…”The two cats were pacing around in confusion, but Red wasn’t sure she trusted them anyway. She couldn’t cry to Philomene for help right now. She had to protect the little princess. Ah, but she’s wise and an adult! Lord Germain was still there. You are a confused child. You can’t do anything without me. She folded her ears back, trying to recall if this is something Lord Germain would really say. She knew it wasn’t him, but it didn’t help to imagine hearing his voice. Growling low in her throat, she forced herself to her feet and started trotting towards the alarmed groans of Aurora as she padded at the crouched-over, towering form of Basil, who breathed slowly and cried out in pain. Philomene was tiny, Basil was huge, but both needed her protection. She didn’t know what to do. Someone was supposed to tell her what to do! I can, Lord Germain said. If that’s what you wish, I can give you guidance. I promise. It’ll be for the best, Little Red.Ugh, he never called her Little Red. She snorted, shaking herself as if to rid herself of the illusion and pawing at Basil, who felt cold as ice. When he looked down at her, his eyes were a deep, deep blue and his breath hung in the air around him. He rose to his full height, towering even over a sitting Aurora, and moved his hand to his sword.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Red, please listen to me. I don’t ever want to give you an order, so think of this as a friend asking a favor. If you ever seem my eyes turn blue, stay away from me.
Red looked up at Basil, his huge form silhouetted by the giant swirling moon. She recognized the unnaturally pale blue hue his usually brown eyes had taken on. His cheeks were dotted with ice crystals, frozen tears. Even amid the sickly-sweet scent of Moonflower she picked up on the sharp smell of mint and fresh ice, overpowering the rest of Basil’s scents. That, Red had figured out, was the smell of his curse. The last time he’d taken on this state, Alphonse had just broken his heart. What was the Blue telling Basil?You can’t take action on your own, silly girl, a blue-tinted shade of White Hood said, crouching down next to her in wolf form. You always need someone to tell you what to do.That’s what a good girl does, the false Germain added, patting her snout. Just wait and obey.She knew they were fake. Germain wasn’t here, even if the smell reminded her so strongly of the trips he had her take to Moonflower Market for supplies. Philomene had removed the communication jewel from her wolf ear, leaving only a notch. White Hood was long gone. So why did everything they say sound so real? Why did their made-up words sting like hornets? “We have to get moving.” Basil’s voice was a low, harsh monotone. Without the usual energy behind his voice its deeper, more resonant nature was obvious. He stared down at Red with narrowed eyes. “Let’s go.”“No! Warm up first.” Last time Basil had focused only on stopping or possibly killing Alphonse. Perhaps when he was like this he forgot about everything but his goal. But Red couldn’t let him keep going through the passage in this state, where he might pose a threat to their feline charges and his own loved ones. Besides, what if he stayed cold too long and froze forever? She nudged her muzzle towards him and he pulled away, scowling. “What are you doing?! Don’t touch me.”It was hard not to flatten her ears at the harshness and disdain in his words. It was not really him, Red reminded herself. But you’ll listen, right? White Hood growled smugly. You do what you’re told. You’ve never known how to do anything else.Basil turned away from Red and surveyed the landscape, lifting a discarded cart and tossing it out of his way as if it were made of paper. He was just going to mindlessly advance, it seemed. She could try gently biting him again, but if he was in pain that could make it worse. “Basil? Red…?”Red forced herself to stand up despite the strong pull on her body and looked over at Philomene, who was lying sprawled on the back of Melchior. The princess’s voice was faint. “Red, where is Basil going? I can feel his footsteps.” “He’s cold.” Red wasn’t sure how else to describe what was going on. “What do I do?”No answer from the princess, who just looked up at something Red couldn’t see and shuddered. No, Basil needed to be defrosted. She needed something warm. What was warm? No, who was warm?She thought she heard the false White Hood and Germain starting to talk before she barked loud enough to drown them out. “Aurora! Um, cats! Come here! Come here!” The Glamour Cat and her entourage seemed less affected by the Blue, aside from the navigator who kept wandering to and fro and meowing in confusion. The leader looked up at Red and frowned. “Do you have a plan, dog?”Did she have a plan? Did Red have plans, on her own? There was no time to ask that.“Gather around Basil. You need to warm him up. He might attack you, so be quick! And stay out of Aurora’s way!” The Glamour Cat scoffed. “Orrrders from a dog…” But she didn’t argue, instead nodding to her subordinates who seemed to understand right away. She darted over to Basil, her big fluffy form moving lightly on her feet, and started to rub against his ankle. Aurora was trailing Basil and trying to pull him back, earning only resistance. She would wrap her paws around him only for him to tear away, ignoring her otherwise. At his normal size Basil would be so fully enveloped in one of Aurora’s bear hugs that escaping it would be impossible, not that he’d want to. Even as a giant, Red didn’t think he’d have the strength to resist the bear so easily. Maybe turning cold made him much stronger. Meaning that if he turned on Red or the cats, he could tear them apart. And if he really managed to hurt Aurora, she might tear him to shreds in self-defense. He needed something truly warm, like the hot teas and hand pies Ezra made or the feeling of the sun on her fur. Fur, yes. That was what Aurora and the cats were trying to use and what Basil wrapped himself in as protection even in the summer heat. What was the strongest warmth she could remember? Burying her nose in her mother’s thick fur.She could do something the others could not. She could lend them her fur.Lend your fur? That’s ridiculous, the false Lord Germain scoffed. There’s nothing you can do. You know that.And yet she also heard his voice from elsewhere, in her memories, more cheerful and encouraging. He did not love her, but he never spoke to her like that. 
That’s right, if my calculations are correct you could probably control quite a bit of your form-shifting. Why don’t you practice more often? Take advantage of this beautiful gift I’ve given you. You are my greatest creation.
Was that why she hadn’t shifted since joining Basil? Because her human form was his gift. It felt tainted. Could she go through the motions without hearing him talk her through it? For someone who did love her, or at least might, it was worth a shot. She stretched her whole body, letting her toes elongate and reshape themselves into hands. She felt her wolf-self fall away from her like a cloak and pulled back her hood, now made of deep red-brown fur, worn over a red tunic and pants. She felt something else was different about her human self this time, but without a mirror she couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. She had hands and she had what she needed.Reaching down, she carefully scooped up Melchior and Philomene to protect them from Basil and Aurora’s scuffle and held them close to her chest. Taking a deep breath, she used her other arm to pull her cloak off of her back and threw it hard as she could.It hit Basil square in the face.“Oh!” That was not really her aim. She’d hoped to wrap it around his neck, but she could only reach so far. Both Germains and the false White Hood fell silent and vanished into the blue fog.Basil, momentarily stunned and blinded by the fur cloak in his face, stumbled and gave Aurora a chance to get her big arms around him. The cats scattered gracefully as anything could scatter as the bear pulled Basil down onto the ground and set her heavy, warm body over him. Basil wriggled, resisted, then fell still with a gasp of surprise.“A-Aurora?” That was his normal voice, if a little hoarse. Red approached the downed prince with slow steps, reaching down to lift the cloak off of his face and saw two large eyes flickering brown before they turned to gold. They stared up at her.“You transformed,” he said with a bit of a wheeze. “Aurora, I-thank you, I am fine now. You’re extremely heavy.”Aurora did not move, making a stubborn-sounding grunt. “She’s trained to hold onto me until she’s completely sure I’m warm again,” he explained, coughing. “In case I...oh, oh Lords of the Mountains help me, I went cold. That thing forced me to turn cold. Red, are you unharmed? Where’s the princess?!”Red wordlessly held out her arms to show Philomene, still murmuring atop Melchior. “Oh, Philomene. At least she’s safe physically, but this place seems to be bad for her. I remember thinking we need to get out of here quickly, since it’s so dangerous, and that must have been the thought on my mind when I…” He shuddered. “I could have hurt you. All of you.”“Not Aurora.” “N-no, not Aurora. You’re right there.” Basil tried to laugh, but it sounded forced and pained. He looked away. Red frowned. What was the matter? He was back, and he hadn’t hurt anyone after all. Aurora, satisfied by whatever measures she used, slid off of him as the cats started to gather again. The leader seemed to have a thoughtful expression in her eyes and a twitch of her tail, but said nothing. “The fire wells up like that from time to time,” said the Catographer. “We’re not far now, at least. In the final stretch.” “I’m not sure I’ve done such a fine job of firewalking,” Basil said with a little grumble as he got to his feet. He was smiling, but Red could see how his gloved hands shook. He stopped, swallowed something down and lifted Red’s cloak from off of his head. “What’s this? Red, is this yours?”“Keep it for now. Keeps you warm.”“And you took human form to save me and protect the princess?” Basil stared down at her, tears again welling in his eyes. He was so open with his emotions, it was impossible to reconcile him with the cold, machine-like figure that had taken over his form moments ago. He knelt down and picked her up, engulfing her (and by extension Philomene and Melchior) in a great, warm hug. He’d held her wolf form before, but this was different. No one had ever hugged her in this form, when she could, with one free arm, hug back.“Thank you,” he said softly. He repeated it in a louder voice as he set her down, grinning despite the tremble in his voice. “Thank you! You’re quite the hero, you know. You as well,” he said to the cats, “and I’ll do my best to protect you from here on in. I apologize for my bravado.” “Hmm, we all must stretch the truth sometime,” the Glamour Cat said with a too-casual stretch. “You all will be interrrresting to watch in Monochrome, I can see that. Come along, follow my Catographer.” Basil agreed a little too loudly and marched forward, Aurora insistently rubbing against his side. When Red insisted he hold onto her cloak, he tied it around his neck like a scarf, a striking red against the brown and gray of his furs. His hands no longer shook, but he couldn’t hide the catch in his voice. Something was bothering him. Red held Philomene carefully, adjusting to the strange feeling of walking on two feet again, and conjured up the memory of being hugged. It was as warm as her mother’s fur. “Delphinium to Olive Blossom. Delphinium to Olive Blossom! I know I heard something!” Rem spoke in a harsh whisper as they curled up on the dusty ground, water dripping through the cracks of the abandoned barn they were using for shelter from the rain. There would be more luxurious lodgings later with rooms and a bath that would fit Rem, or so they told themself in denial when the thunderstorm hit. But none of that mattered now. They didn’t care about their sodden clothes, dripping hair or growling stomach. They could live with straw in their sleeves. They just needed that jewel to answer back.The communication jewel, as big as the Flowerling scientist it was confiscated from, was still so tiny in Rem’s hands and yet shone so bright. It hung on a chain, for a necklace outgrown could become a bracelet, a bracelet a ring, a ring an earring. “Delphinium to Olive Blossom! I hear you! Whatever you’re doing, it’s working!” Hearing her voice meant that she was alive. And why wouldn’t she be? She might have spoken of further travel, but Rem suspected she’d need more time to recover first after the ordeals of the Green Witch. So why did she sound so weak and desperate? They held the gem close to their face, listening for the faint catches of Philomene’s voice that kept coming through amid a crackling noise. Was the storm causing interference, as it sometimes did for Sky artifact-based equipment? Well, this ‘contact’ was said to have a good hand for artifact restoration. Maybe Rem had two jobs for them.A crack of thunder jolted Rem out of their thoughts, the necklace nearly slipping through their fingers before they caught the cord. Muttering a curse, they glanced up at the sky through the cracks in the roof and wrinkled their forehead. That was the darkest, heaviest cloud they’d ever seen.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Marjorie stood on stage and sat in the audience.No, that wasn’t exactly her in the audience. The one sitting in the otherwise empty, run-down theater wore a silver-greyscale version of her body, with a giant, unblinking eye instead of a face. “Well! If you wanted to make me more self-conscious, you’ve certainly picked a fine shape.” Marjorie swept the stage in preparation for the show. Another one of her waited in the wings, hair and costume getting last-minute fixes by yet another one of her. She was all of them, all except the one in the audience. “No offense, but are you sure you can’t do something about…”“Do something about what?” The voice was hers but metallic and hollow. The eye blinked.“Ugh, nothing. That’s your thing, isn’t it? Metal and eyes.”“I wanted to manifest as a flat plane,” Possibly Mirror said, folding their hands in their lap. “I see, absorb knowledge and understand. This is the part that doesn’t serve any purpose.” They gestured down at the humanoid Marjorie-shape.“Hmph. You’re in my head, you dress for the part.” Marjorie huffed, walked backstage and then saw through the eyes of the Marjorie who was the star of the one-woman show. The curtains rose, the lights fell on the stage, where Marjorie stood in the brilliant blues and violets of her court jester gown. She held her hands aloft, bowing to the one audience member and rising to her feet with a flourish. She assumed her storyteller’s voice.“Once upon a time, there lived a young maiden.”“You?” The eye asked.“Oh, are we doing audience participation today? No, no, that’s not me. This story isn’t about me!” The eye blinked but said nothing.“As I was saying. Once upon a time there lived a young maiden who loved to play in the silver woods.” At Marjorie’s cue, a hastily dropped background appeared, a row of trees painted silver, the paint still dripping. “But there are two,” Eye pointed out. Yes, she’d call this figure Eye for now, as they kept denying being Mirror. “There were two.”“I’m sorry, is this my performance or yours?”A blink. “I can see into your memories. This performance isn’t necessary.”Marjorie rolled her eyes. “It’s a story. It’s based on events I experienced, perhaps, but made more palatable to an audience. For instance, you can’t have two good maidens. One has to be the bad sister, because that makes the good one look better in comparison. One of them has to be the good one, very, truly good, or else who would cheer for her? But she can’t be too good, or she’s treacly and dull. So you balance her out with a counterpart.”Marjorie held out two fingers, counting on them. “Hence, there was one heroine, and one wicked stepsister.” Eye said nothing, which Marjorie took as reason to continue.“So as I was saying, our heroine, we will call her Snow, was kind and just and lovely, and thus prone to making others jealous. So her wicked stepmother plotted against her, as they are wont to do.”“She wasn’t Snow’s stepmother. She wasn’t yours, either.” Eye squinted. “Why are you a stepsister anyway?”“Because they called me that,” Marjorie blurted, then paled. No good to lose composure on the stage! Up went her mask again, the perfect calm of a storyteller. “Anyway, people expect that sort of cruelty and jealousy from stepmothers. If I said her own mother and father envied our-her happiness, the audience would be horrified.” “Did they envy your happiness?”“...I don’t know,” Marjorie said softly. “I don’t know. I just have theories. Look, do you really want the true story?” “It’s in my nature to seek out information, I told you. And the more information I have, the easier it’ll be for me to get myself disentangled from you without causing you further damage.” The Eye stared directly at Marjorie.“Please, like any of your kin have cared about causing damage to mortal minds before.” Marjorie would almost prefer manipulation to whatever this was. “I do not want to damage you, Marjorie. I do not want to be here. I’m only a small fragment of Mirror, and I cannot resist you corrupting me.”Well, that was new. “Are you afraid of absorbing my creative talent and wit, o Eye?” “Only the Rot Witch fears.” Eye blinked. “But this embellished version of the story is of no value to me.”“Everyone’s a critic. Fine.” Marjorie waved her hand and the jester gown changed into a plainer black and white dress with a red ribbon around the neck, exactly the sort of thing she used to wear as a child. She hated it. The set warped, too, the trees becoming more detailed like oil paintings. They were scraggly, black-barked things, heavy with translucent leaves and silver apples. “So! Before you start, this is all hearsay, told to me by outsiders. The Hunters, that is. If it’s wrong, it isn’t on me, O Lover of the Truth.” She cleared her throat. “Once upon a time, a hero saved a maiden, or the maiden saved a young man. One saved the other from a dragon, that’s all I gather, and fatally wounded the dragon in the process. In its dying words the dragon laid a curse on them, pointing its one long, scaly finger and hissing. ‘Your love will come to ruin,’ it said, and then crumbled to dust.”“Why did it crumble to dust? Doesn’t it take time for biological bodies to decompose after death?”Marjorie ran a hand down her face. “I am embellishing for dramatic effect. I am a performer and storyteller, and if I must explain this I will do it my way. Anyway, why do you need me to tell you? You said you can see into my memories. Just read them like a book.”The eyelid lowered. “I need context. I need to hear it from you so I know they are your memories, not mine. When we are partially merged like this, the line between us can become porous.”“Right, right, we can’t corrupt each other. So we have to communicate on our own terms, I suppose. As I was saying.” Marjorie reached behind her back and pulled out a pair of marionettes, one of a maiden with black hair and another of a young man with pale skin.“The two fell in love at first sight, and knew it had to be so, for the dragon had cursed their love. Who can curse what does not exist? And they felt their hearts swell with the rush of emotion so strong and enchanting it could only be love.” Eye did not respond. Well, the greatest storytellers knew how to work even the worst audience. “So they were wed and moved into a beautiful little cottage surrounded by apple and cherry orchards that bloomed into a sea of pink and white in the spring, and lived enamoured by the company of one another, and for a time they were truly happy.”“How did they make a living?”Marjorie paused. She felt a little foolish coming up with a lie or an excuse to someone who knew when she was fibbing, so she took on a comical shrug. “Ah, who knows? I wasn’t there! Maybe they raised sheep or cows, or paid someone to do that for them.” She tried to imagine her mother and father, younger, laboring to pick apples and cherries and bring them to market. It hurt her head.“Anyway, when telling a story you don’t always worry about those little logistical details. You include what needs to be included. If I went on about how M-about how they learned how to harvest apples, I’d lose the audience. Maybe that would be fine for a pastoral tale, but this is not that kind of story!” She cleared her throat and continued before Eye could interrupt her again.“They lived on this way until one day the woman looked up and realized she did not feel the same burning in her heart, and the man, tired from his work, found that he looked at his wife and felt merely content. Contentment was fine, but the two missed the burning passion of what they knew as true love. They could not live without it. So the man took the woman’s hands in his and asked, my dear, what would make us truly happy again? And the wife thought, perhaps if we lived in a great house surrounded by beautiful things, instead of a cottage, then the burning feeling would return.”“So the woman made arrangements to sell the orchard land, and the man took out loans, and the two of them used it to commission a great house with many rooms which they filled with gifts to one another. They had to work harder, so they needed money for servants, so…” Marjorie trailed off. “Hmm, this part of the story is always a blank here. They came into more money, or so I have heard, but I don’t know how exactly. But you know, the man was from a noble-descended family, and this might be around when my grandmother died…” She did not like the implications of that. No, the two were supposed to still be sympathetic at this point in the story. There had to be a point where they had good, unselfish intentions, or their fall wouldn’t be tragic. It would just be predictable. “Well, that was just fortune,” she decided. “And all was well, until one day the man looked at the woman and realized she was growing older, and so we he. Not yet old, but she didn’t look the same she did as a young maiden. And she saw in her husband a little bit of hair loss, a few early laugh lines, and feared. What if their love faded because they looked different? So together they decided they simply could not age anymore, that they had to preserve their beauty, for the eternally beautiful had to be forever happy and in love.”At this the sky in the background started to darken, with little clouds hanging on strings. “Honestly, is that the best I can manage?” She huffed, and the Marjorie working on the set painting stuck her tongue out from behind the wings.Marjorie meanwhile kept manipulating the puppets to match the action, holding hands, pleading, fearing, scheming. “So the two looked at some of the magical books they’d acquired as gifts and realized there were old ways of staying young forever, of preserving the flesh, if you will. And they tried a few to no effect, for most were hoaxes, before stumbling upon the Silver Apple.”“Silver Apple,” Eye interrupted. “Magical biotech from Fall Cycle 231, originally intended for medical use. It is parasitic in nature, growing in living tissue and eventually killing its host before fruiting. Eating it halts aging temporarily. The effect can be extended by continuing to consume Silver Apple flesh, though not without side effects.” Marjorie stared, tilting her head. “Well, um, thank you. That was. Informative.” “My nature is to gather and store information, remember?” Eye sounded as arrogant as ever, though Marjorie noticed something strange. Since she’d mentioned the quest for agelessness and eternal beauty, Eye’s gaze kept shifting back and forth, the big eyeball not quite making, well, eye contact with her. Almost as if they were uncomfortable.Well, it was an uncomfortable story! If Marjorie had to tell it, Eye could listen.“So yes, the Silver Apple. All they knew at first was that they could eat it and stay young, and they found one for sale in a magical black market. It tasted revolting, but the two ate it and felt younger, and their enthusiasm again bloomed, so for a time they were happy. But as you said, it is temporary. And that one Silver Apple had been so expensive, could they not grow their own?”Here the clouds grew darker. “Of course they didn’t want to harm anyone, but they could not forget the curse of the dragon. ‘Your love will come to ruin.’ Their love could not fade and the dragon could not win! What kind of terrible ending would that be? So at first they just fed a seed to an elderly gardener, since surely her story was over already. And then, because one tree bears so little fruit, they slipped a seed into the old guard’s pudding. And then…”And then Marjorie wasn’t in the theater anymore. The stage and seats were there, but they were surrounded by the real scraggly, grasping-hand branches of the Silver Apple Tree orchard, the grass beneath them yellowed and dry, dead silent as birds and insects knew better than to eat their fruit or nest in their leaves. “Come on, this is a story. It’s a story! It’s not supposed to feel real, it’s a way of detaching myself from it. Yourself from it.” Marjorie felt something wriggling in her hands and wrenched away, tossing the puppets back before they transformed into tiny replicants of her parents and then crumbled into the soil. “Eye, Mirror, whatever you are.” She wrapped her hands around herself as the quite-real clouds darkened in preparation for a storm. “Can we…”“Finish later.” Eye held up a hand and cleared the orchard, the stage, the seats, everything from view, leaving them in a silvery grey void. “We finish later. It is time for you to…”“...Wake up?” Ezra’s voice sounded distant and hollow. “You’re waking up? Oh thank the Sun, I’ll make an offering tonight, I’ve been remiss…” Marjorie’s eyelids felt heavy, her ‘bad’ hand numb and tingling but no longer in pain. Her vision cleared to reveal a darkened room where she lay on a cot covered by a linen blanket. Ezra clung to the side of the bed, staring at her with a sigh of visible relief. He wore a pair of round, purple-tinted spectacles, leaving Marjorie wondering how well he could see in such dim candlelight. The windows were veiled and curtained. The room was filled with a sweet, grainy smell.“Oh, dear. How long have I been out, Ezra?”“Just the better part of a day. I think. Keeping track of time here is odd,” Ezra said. “The physician did something involving, what was it, body points?”“Pressure points,” a higher-pitched voice said from the foot of the bed. A tiny figure climbed down onto the cot and gestured for a lift, which Ezra provided so he could bring himself eye-level to Marjorie. The Flowerling wore a white tunic and black pants, his hair braided and his hands gloved. He, too, wore those spectacles. “And your friend here has a few special talents of his own, I see.”“It was nothing,” Ezra muttered. “Well, we’re not out of the roots yet,” the physician said in his clipped tone. “We’ll give you something gentle to eat, but then we’re going to need some answers from both of you so I know what I’m dealing with. How are you feeling? Tired, I’d imagine? Any strange dreams?”What did dreams have to do with her physical state? But she had, of course, the sort that usually left her in a cold sweat but now just had her feeling drained. She didn’t want to think about it. To talk about it was to think about it.“No, nothing,” she lied. “But I do feel a bit as if I’ve been dropped by a roc. Ezra, where are we?”She spotted that rare treasure, a smile from Ezra, an oh-so-brief but gleeful one. “Marjorie! We did it! We found Nightingale! I think?”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Now,” the centaur advised Ezra as he clung to her back, “keep your eyes shut for a bit. I’m going to land, but don’t worry, I’m a pro at this!” Ezra, one arm around the waist of the centaur and another holding the limp Marjorie in his lap, too panicked to care about the propriety of either, already had his eyes shut tight. He wasn’t fond of heights or flight, and wherever or whatever the centaur had jumped into, it was close enough to flying for his discomfort.He felt a little jolt and the clop of hooves, then heard a commotion of voices gathering around them. Warily he opened his eyes, only to shut them again with force. What a dizzying array of color he glimpsed, as if looking at jewels through a kaleidoscope! It was too much, shifting too rapidly for him to focus on anything. Lovely as it was, he knew it’d make him nauseous quickly. “Okay, everyone,” he heard the centaur shout, “we got two here who need some help. The one in the overalls especially needs some medical attention, so go call the Doc. Shortie needs some specs at least, I’d say medium-large. Shortie, you nearsighted at all?”“No, my vision’s fine.” Ezra was going to have to endure ‘Shortie’ until he gave his name, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to give it yet when he didn’t even know what he was dealing with. “Specs?” His question was answered when someone shoved a pair of spectacles in his hands. He fumbled with them, putting them on though they felt a bit odd and heavy on his nose. “Is it...safe to look now?”“Sure is. Though,” the centaur said with a little edge to her voice, “I hope you didn’t peek, cuz we don’t need anyone knowing how to get here. Might have to silence them if they did.” Ezra froze and shivered. “I didn’t! I couldn’t even see…”“Florian! Come on,” another voice said, “he’s a wreck right now. She’s just joking, kid. Open your eyes.” Ezra did so reluctantly, doubtful that a pair of spectacles could really turn that nightmare of brightness and abstraction into anything coherent. The world was still bright and glittering, colors shifting about without steady pattern like bubbles of oil in water. They spread across the ground, onto buildings and plants. When he looked down at himself he found to his relief that his cloak, tunic and skin were all the colors they were supposed to be, though all seemed a bit brighter and more defined. They stood in a replica of the park square that was similar in shape and structure but could not otherwise be more different. Where the rose hedge around that park was so trim and even as to look unreal, here rose bushes, lilies, bluebells and a few flowers he could not identify welled up in a lumpy circle and crawled through the uneven bricks on the ground. There was a daisy piercing through the stone at his foot, shifting from blue to violet to green before his eyes. Instead of a statue of the Empress a cracked, lumpy-looking marble block held nothing at all. Either the statue had been removed and possibly defaced or it was awaiting something else. The pink centaur, Florian if Ezra could guess, grinned and crossed her arms. She’d exchanged the mask for a pair of tinted spectacles herself. “So! What do you think of Polychrome?”As she spoke, a tall, burly human bent down to Ezra and held her arms out. “I’ll take your friend to the Doc,” she insisted in a soft voice. “They’ll be safe, I promise.”Ezra stopped to clear his head. He hadn’t escaped from that awful Spire with Marjorie just to hand her over to another mysterious group, had he? His instincts and a hint from Mirror might have led them here, but those instincts had certainly steered him wrong before.“I’ll bring her,” Ezra insisted, even though it would be much easier for the tall woman to carry lanky Marjorie. The human woman hesitated and then nodded slightly, standing back up and gesturing for Ezra to follow. “Just don’t take it personally if Doc chases you out.”Marjorie was breathing evenly, but she felt too hot to the touch. It was hard to concentrate on the wonders of Polychrome around him as he stopped to check her forehead. He was led down streets that wound and crisscrossed like snakes, a contrast to the perfect grids of Monochrome. He was quite certain that, although it was a short walk, they passed the same mint-green building somehow.The woman stopped in front of a dilapidated building that leaned just slightly, like an unstable cake, with white flowers poking out of the cracks in the wall. Ezra frowned. This was an infirmary? Mielle had only two physicians, rival competitors who made house calls, but he always envisioned true hospitals as more...orderly-looking. “Doc.” The woman knocked twice on the door. “Got a patient for you.”“So I’ve heard.” A gruff but oddly tinny voice came from the grate next to the door. It sounded as if someone was shouting down a metal tube. “The bed’s ready, so bring ‘em in.” The door unlatched itself and led into a darkened room lit only by candles. Ezra caught the scent of mint and burning oil as he carried Marjorie in and set her on a simple but clean cot in the middle of the office. The shelves were lined with bottles and burners, bandages and buckets of water. There was an elaborate-looking pully system rigged along the walls and ceiling. “Sorry about the darkness,” the woman whispered. “Doc likes keeping the, um, effects of Polychrome out while he’s working.”“It’s so I don’t have patients sprouting wings or speaking new languages,” the gruff voice said from the walls themselves. “Hey, newcomer kid. I appreciate your concern for your friend here, but I need room to work and you’ll get in the way.”“Excuse you! I know a thing or two about healing.” Ezra immediately regretted the outburst, especially since the woman had warned him ahead of time, but ‘Doc’ had somehow struck a nerve he didn’t know was there. “Yeah, so do I,” Doc insisted, still without making an appearance. “Probably a few more. Look, we’ll just get this fever down and check up on you when things are a little less hectic. You’re their friend or boyfriend or something, right?” “Best Friend,” Ezra said softly. “Yeah, see? Your nerves are gonna be shot if you try helping me, and if something goes wrong you’ll blame yourself forever. Bree, show the kid around and get his mind off things before I have two patients to deal with. I can hear his heartrate from here.”Ezra wanted to protest, but he really didn’t know much about healing. The few times he’d been able to use his magic were mostly accidental or based on gut feelings, and it was hard to argue that with a professional. At least Doc was being more straightforward with him than the shady Lady Swann had been. “Alright, fine. Thank you, Doc.”The voice made a noncommittal sound and then started barking orders at unseen parties as Bree set a hand on Ezra’s shoulder, gave him a sympathetic look and led him out. As he left, he thought he saw tiny figures descending on pulley platforms.“So Polychrome? That’s what this place is called?” Ezra still had trouble looking at anything for a long period of time, because it kept shifting a little. The buildings were wiggly. He pushed one wall experimentally with his finger and found the texture gave slightly, like kneaded dough. “That’s what we’ve been calling it unofficially. And we’re the only ones here as far as we know, so that’s what it is. I’m Bree Bryony, by the way.” Bree shook Ezra’s hand. “That centaur you met is Florian, one of the voices of the Masquerade. If she chose to bring you along, it means she has some reason to trust you.”“But she just met me,” Ezra protested. “I’m Ezra.” He’d grown used to the heavy, weighted silence in lieu of a family name, and half expected the sympathetic, pitying or scorning look that came when a Skykin had only one name. But Bree didn’t seem to care. Then again, maybe some humans just didn’t give their family names. It didn’t have the same meaning. “I can’t give you the tour of the whole place, in part because we don’t have it all mapped out yet.” Bree’s words flowed like a river, steady and bubbling. “But we think it might be as big as Monochrome itself.”“What is it? It’s so bright and colorful.” Ezra rubbed his temples. “Like if I look at anything for too long I won’t be able to look away.” “We’re still figuring that out.” Bree rubbed the back of her muscular neck. “But I feel like if you end up here, there’s a good reason for it. Like it won’t let you in otherwise. I mean, notice how none of those soldiers followed us?” “I assumed that was some magic on the part of Florian’s,” Ezra said. “I was not paying a lot of attention. Distracted.” “Oh, I bet!” Bree laughed awkwardly. “To be honest I don’t know jack all about magic, so maybe you’re right. Hey, if you want some information I can bring you to Diana. She’s our magic scholar.” Ezra found it a little troubling and puzzling that Bree was so casual about her lack of knowledge, but maybe it was just enough for her to feel safe. He knew when he was stressed he threw himself into work, and without an opportunity to do that, he asked questions. It was a leftover habit from the Vacant Palace ordeal.Bree led him through another too-winding, too-looping path to an open lot where flowers and plants dotted the broken bricks. All that remained of some old structure were jagged chunks of a brick foundation sticking out from the ground, creating a sort of open enclosure. And within it Ezra saw some kind of large, dark shape. He took a step forward, realized what he was looking at, saw one big yellow eye open up and and immediately yelped and retreated behind Bree.“Snake! Big snake! Extremely big large snake, be careful!” Bree paused, and then laughed. It was a big, throaty sort of belly laugh. “Oh boy, I forgot to warn you! I’m sorry! Diana?” The serpent, big enough that its coiled body filled the empty lot, opened the other eye and raised its head. It flicked a tongue as big around as Ezra’s arm and looked at him, then chuckled. “Oh, Bree! Hello.” The snake’s voice was soft and lilting, with every word elongated just a little too long, stretched like taffy. “A newcomer? How exciting!” Ezra stared, stepping out from behind Bree and flushing with embarassment even as he had to swallow down his fear. An Enlightened giant snake who was friends with a human was unlikely to eat him, even if she could, in fact, swallow him whole. “You are Diana?” He had to stop his voice from catching and squeaking. “I’m Ezra. I’m terribly sorry for my rudeness.” He gave a little nervous head-bow.“Oh, not at all.” Diana slithered glacially from her enclosure, her dark brown and gold scales glinting in the multicolored ‘sunlight.’ “Everyone reacts that way at first. Nice to meet you, Ezra. Did you want to have a nap here too? This is the best napping spot.” “N-no, thank you.” Ezra wondered if everyone in this place was so strange, snake or otherwise. “Bree here said you can answer some questions I have, maybe, while I wait for my friend in the infirmary.” Diana’s expression softened, her eyes going half-lidded and her head lowering. It was the closest a snake could pull off to that sort of thing, Ezra supposed. “Oh, I see. I’m sorry. Well, I’m sort of the resident magic researcher. I might bore you.”“Not at all. Actually, one of my best friends back home is a magic researcher, I’m sure she’d love to meet you!” Ezra, somehow feeling a little more at ease, took a seat on one of the chunks of foundation. Diana nodded, then turned her huge head to Bree. “Big Sis, can you get us some snacks and lemonade? Something cooling.” Bree, apparently taking it as some kind of cue, gave Diana a thumbs up and lumbered off around the corner. That left Ezra alone with Diana, and a million questions brewing in his head.He fired off the silliest one first. “I thought reptiles didn’t like cooling things.”“I don’t mind them sometimes. I love ice cream as long as I don’t eat too much of it and fall into hibernation mode.” Diana chuckled, covering her mouth with the tip of her tail. “But you need something cool to calm you down.”“Can you hear my heart rate too?”“I see you met Doc. He’s just like that. He means well, he just doesn’t have the best people skills.” Diana blinked slowly, twice, like an affectionate cat. “They send people to me when someone needs a listener, though, because I’m very good at listening.”“So you can gather information?” Ezra didn’t mean for that to come out as harshly as it did, and immediately slumped. “Sorry. Just spending so much time in Monochrome…”“It’s a place designed to make you complacent, and if not that, leave you paranoid and on edge. Either way, it slithers into your brain.” Diana leaned one of her coils against the bricks. “I’ll keep secrets, I promise, or you can claim my tail and my tongue. So, what’s wrong?”Ezra knew Marjorie’s instinct would be to keep quiet, but he wasn’t her. He couldn’t hold so many secrets forever, keep so much close to his heart without it souring. Somehow hearing someone ask those two words in a sincere, gentle tone broke a dam, and he just started talking.He told her about the strange operations in the Spire, their kidnapping, his fears that something was happening to Marjorie that no one could stop and that she herself wouldn’t stop. He spoke of how he missed his beloved Basil and his dear friends Marjorie and Red, his fear that some horrible fate would befall them. And then he gasped, realizing he was pressing his face into snake coils and hugging them, because he needed to do that with something.“I’m-I’m sorry. I said too much,” he said, face flushed. “She’ll be infuriated with me. I don’t even know who you people are, no offense, and if you did some kind of enchantment on me to get me to spill my guts, I swear I’ll, I’ll…” He wiped away tears. “Shh. It’s fine,” Diana insisted, giving him a gentle nuzzle on the shoulder. “I used no magic on you, I promise, just empathy. Your mind and heart were filling up, and you needed to clear them out. It’s part of the purification we do here.”Ezra sniffed. “Purification?”“Well, I don’t like using that word. It suggests purity. More like a cleansing? A refreshing? It’s a step you need to go through once you pass through to Polychrome, or else...well, nevermind that. There’s no shame in it. I’ll keep your secrets. I keep everyone’s.” “And you aren’t overwhelmed yourself?” Diana paused. “Mmm, it’s fine. I dream them away.” She lazily rested her head on the ground. “So now I can answer any real questions you have about Polychrome. Oh, there’s Bree. Mm, she forgot the ice cream…”Bree hurried over to the lot and gave an apologetic wave. “Doc wants to see you! He said, what was it.” She tapped her foot. “He’s got the fever down and now just needs to wait for the patient to wake up. He needs to ask you a few questions.” “He could have asked before he kicked me out,” Ezra muttered. He was already trying to think of something to help energize Marjorie so she could wake up. The scent of spices, maybe? Care and compassion brewed into tea, the strong kind with some of that basil he smelled in the infirmary. “Sorry, Diana, I’ll come back later. With my friend.” No ‘hopefully.’ The Sun and Moon would will it.“Good luck to you,” the snake hissed as she curled back into a mountain of smooth scales. “I hope you at least stay until midnight. Nightingale is holding a concert.”Nightingale? Nightingale! Ezra rushed after Bree, newly energized. He’d help get Marjorie back on her feet, and then they’d go see Nightingale! And then, and then…He didn’t want to think past that.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Marjorie listened to Ezra explain the oddities he’d encountered in ‘Polychrome’ as she watched the Flowerling physician pace back and forth across the tray set on her lap. All around her other Flowerlings in white and beige medical garb bustled, using pulley systems and elevators to move about her bed. One checked her pulse at her wrist. Philomene used to do that regularly, Marjorie thought with a pang in her heart. “See, what’s odd to me is that according to Ezra here you’ve probably got some kind of foreign magical object under your skin. But there’s no sign of that. Your wrist is completely normal, no infection. Not even a sign of puncture wounds.” The physician had a scratchy, whiskey-soaked voice and spoke in clipped tones as if taking notes. Ezra kept trying to help and found himself shuffled back by the staff that had emerged from the walls and ceiling of this dilapidated, yet spotless room. Biting his lip, he stepped back. “You did say you felt better than before, right? That it was healing itself.”“Rapidly.” Marjorie’s voice sounded hoarse even after she took a sip of lemon water. “I should have been alarmed, I suppose, but it worked in my favor.” She flexed the hand in question. “It didn’t hurt in the least until I heard that harp music.”“You think Jack did that?!” Ezra asked, eyes wide. At the same time, the doctor stopped in mid-pace and stared up at Marjorie. “The harpist?”“That was Jack?!” Marjorie slapped her forehead, only to realize her sudden movement had left a Flowerling nurse swaying on his elevator. She steadied it carefully. “Sorry, terribly sorry about that! Ugh, I’m from Thumbelina, I should know better. But wait, our little Jack is here?”“So that’s his name.” The doctor frowned and cupped his chin. Well, there were two troubling new revelations right there. Jack had a harp of enough importance that the Gourmet targeted him, but the last time she’d heard it she’d only been left captivated in guilt and regret. It shouldn’t have caused her that much pain. Or, well, not her.“Doctor? Physician? Erm, how do I address you…” “Dr. Zhou Yan.” The doctor nodded up at her. “Just call me Doc.”“Marjorie Snow.” She had meant to give another false name, but somehow found herself falling back on the one she’d used for so long in Thumbelina. It was hers, and she was a little too tired to come up with a new one. Wait, no, she was never too tired to lie properly. What had come over her? Granted Ezra seemed to trust the ‘Doc’ implicitly, but Ezra had also trusted the Gourmet. At any rate, the name didn’t seem to register any kind of reaction from Doc. “We even took a blood sample, and nothing strange came up.” Nothing strange? Marjorie blinked. “Really? No discoloration, nothing overly magical? Speaking purely theoretically, of course.” “Well, obviously something magical is going on with you, but your blood’s just blood. It doesn’t always show up there, though. A magical ailment can hide in the brain tissue or even the bone marrow.” While Ezra shuddered, Marjorie stopped and decided to follow Philomene’s lead with a little experiment. In her mind, she asked a question. ‘Is that where you are?’No clear voice answered her. So Eye, or Mirror, or whatever it was either didn’t want to talk or could not. She tapped her fingers. “Oh, there’s something here, alright. I dreamed it. It’s a little fuzzy, but it’s there. And I think it’s what was healing me, Ezra.” She gave him a meaningful look. “Healing me more than I expected.” Was the curse really lifted? If traces of the Golden Apple Tree weren’t showing up in her blood, did that mean that Mirror’s attempted extraction worked? But she’d interrupted it. Best case scenario, the tree had fragmented and died and the part of Mirror inside of her had eliminated the rest of it, though why she couldn’t guess. In the worst case…“We have to get back to the Spire.” She gripped the sides of the bed.“What?! Absolutely not! I never want to see that terrible place again,” Ezra said all in one breath. He paused and added hastily, “I mean, we can go back to help your sister, but…”“They might have it,” Marjorie hissed. “The Golden Apple Tree. If they have it they’ll try to implant it in her, or someone else!”The doctor whistled for attention. “I don’t know what you mean by Golden Apple this or Spire that, but you need at least a few days to rest up. I won’t have a patient of mine tromping around just to relapse from a condition I can’t even identify yet. Besides, you said you had something inside of you.”“Yes, something besides the thing I thought I had, and…ugh.” Marjorie held her head in her hands. “It’s complicated. But you are right, I’m in no position to go back there right now. I just hate the idea that-I hate not knowing what’s going on. Knowing is part of my job.”Ezra set a gentle hand on her arm. “And you can’t do your job if you’re sick. Philomene would wring my, um, thumb if I let you come to unnecessary harm. If you don’t have the Tree inside of you now, and whatever’s inside is healing you, as creepy as I find that...well, maybe you should take that chance to heal. Be at your best when we do go back.” Marjorie hadn’t even thought about the fact that her body could heal. Surviving the curse never occurred to her. She just had to avert it so the tree would never grow. It was so odd, realizing she could live to be an old woman. She’d never pictured life past the next year. She gripped her sides, wondering when the other shoe would drop.“Your friend made you some porridge.” Doc’s words broke her out of her thoughts. “And whatever concoction he brewed with our human-scale teapot helped wake you up.” Ezra glanced away bashfully. “Oh, thank you, darling! I’m not…” Marjorie realized for the first time in a while she really was hungry. Usually she knew she had to eat but the act of it brought her no pleasure. Now even something as weak as porridge sounded delicious. “Is it also a, ahem, concoction?”Ezra rubbed the back of his neck. “I can’t really promise one way or the other, but I was trying to invoke a sense of um, rejuvenation while it was boiling. Positive hopes for my friend and all that. It might be a little syrupy and sugary as a result, and if you end up feeling sentimental and soppy that’s my fault.” The doctor looked up at Ezra and muttered something to himself, but the shrunken giant didn’t seem to notice as he brought Marjorie a bowl of steaming rice porridge and set it before her. It did smell overly sweet. She hoped she wouldn’t cry while eating it. Her mind tried to race ahead, planning step after step, and every time she hit a wall. They didn’t know enough about Polychrome or these people. She didn’t even know why there was a Flowerling-staffed infirmary here, though she could recall Philomene talking about a famed colony-city made up entirely of a big university hospital. But the Shoemaker School had disappeared, hadn’t it? Then she would keep planning, but gather information first. That was what a proper bodyguard...no, jester...no, hunter?...lure?...what was she now? Stupid sentimental rice porridge. She had to change the subject of the conversation she was having with herself.“You mentioned Nightingale, Ezra?” There. Ezra’s eyes lit up. “Yes! I almost forgot! She holds concerts here.”“Concerts?”“Diana said we really ought to hear her sing. After all these Nightingale hints, I know it seems strange to trust the suggestions of You Know Who but it’s something. Besides, I haven’t heard a proper concert in so long. It’s good for your soul, you know.” There was a pleading note to his voice. Of course, Marjorie recalled, the Sky Folk considered it just as important to engage in art as it was to eat or sleep, and without a kitchen Ezra had been cut off from his own art.“Oh, alright. I’ll be back here after, Doc, I promise. I do feel well enough to walk,” she insisted. Someone had to make sure Ezra didn’t fall under the spell of some kind of magic songstress, and she had to admit she was curious.Doc grumbled. “Just try to take it easy. The Masquerade can get kind of rowdy.” “You’re not part of the Masquerade?” Ezra said.“I’m a doctor, not an artsy-fartsy performer. Though, uh,” he glanced at some of his staff members, “I might have some students hitching a ride on you two.”“She’s amazing,” a nurse sighed next to Marjorie’s shoulder. Doc sighed. “Show up for your shifts prompt and early, hangovers or no!” The students around them gave tiny little groans and chuckles. Ezra wasn’t sure how one determined midnight when the sky was a wash of rainbow colors hidden behind a black shadow of the same lattice that covered Monochrome. The people of Polychrome, few as they were, seemed to sleep and eat when they felt it necessary. Just as Monochrome seemed to disguise day and night and wrest control of time itself, Polychrome threw it to the wayside entirely. He wasn’t sure he much liked either solution, but at least Monochrome had clocks.Yet it was clear something was about to happen as a crowd of humans, a few scattered centaurs and beasts, and even a couple of Sky Exiles gathered in that same overgrown park where Florian first brought them there. Sure enough, the pink centaur was there with her arm on Bree’s shoulder. Bree was almost tall enough for Florian to lean against her. “Ezra!” Bree grinned and waved them over, gesturing to one of the stones dragged in to serve as makeshift seats. “And Marjorie, it’s Marjorie, right?”“My, word travels fast.” Marjorie, looking smart in her cap and suspenders, still looked a bit tired but had insisted on accompanying Ezra ‘as a chaperone.’ Sometimes he wondered if she’d forgotten she was not really his older sister. “This is Florian and Bree,” Ezra said, a little more at ease with the crowd now that he’d found familiar faces. “You I remember, Florian. What a splendid performance you put on there! Also, many apologies for saving us…” Florian grinned with the sort of pride that reminded Ezra of Basil. “If you liked my performance, wait until you see this.” Ezra stepped aside to let two figures pass wheeling in a cart full of hand pies and steamed buns, snacks for the concert-goers. He wasn’t terribly hungry, but he did accept a wooden stein full of a citrus-scented, very green punch ladled from a big barrel. Refusing to take anything would be rude. “Ah, speaking of,” he added, “what is the Masquerade exactly?”He got no answer as the crowd had fallen silent. The very sky itself dimmed, the colors muted with a few streaks here and there glowing and swirling like liquid stars. He heard the chimes of midnight despite seeing no working clocks anywhere. There was a snap of fingers, and a beam of shimmering, multicolored light fell on a figure in a cloak who now stood on the broken pedestal.She was a Sky woman, a tall and full-figured one in a silver mask who threw back her cloak to reveal shimmering, loose pants and a shirt with sleeves that looked like great, white flowers. It was a simple outfit compared to the ruffles, layers and glass jewels typical of a Sky performance even in rural Mielle, yet it seemed to suit her. She did wear one glittering jewel in her short black hair. She didn’t need any of that, for her dark skin shimmered with iridescent green scales on her arms and legs, and a dusting of them on her cheeks. Ezra couldn’t tell if they were real or a trick of skilled makeup, but they were a wonder either way. Her very appearance elicited a roar from the crowd, which Ezra could swear had grown more numerous since the strokes of midnight. She bowed and smiled, holding her arms out, and when she spoke her voice was soft and resonant. “People of the Masquerade, lost children who have found the neverland and impossible world of Polychrome, tonight we celebrate. Our enemy is great, powerful and overwhelming, and our hearts and bodies tire. Yesterday we performed, tomorrow we rally, but today the Masquerade celebrates! What do we celebrate?”“The feeling of breath,” one of the crowd shouted out.“Our future victories,” said another.“The way it feels to celebrate!”“Whatever we want!” Nightingale, for she could be no one else, laughed and nodded, her scales glittering. “We celebrate whatever we want. So eat, drink, dance, sing! Your master of ceremonies is here!” She held up her hand again and music started playing, drums and violin, brass and flute from a band gathered around her. Ezra, fascinated and trying to figure out what sort of stage magic she was using, absently took a sip of the punch. Oh, that was good, sweet and spiced. “Careful,” Bree whispered, “ambrosia catches up with you.”“And it’s great!” Florian added.Nightingale began to sing, her voice carrying through into Ezra’s very bones with its reverberations. Her song told the story of the little mermaid who had fallen in love with a prince of the land, and how he’d fallen in love with her in return. The two could not live in the realms of the other, for the prince would drown and the merfolk eat him or the mermaid would dry out and perish.So the two made a pact and approached a Sea Witch together, and while no one knows what became of them, it’s said they managed to transcend the boundaries of their worlds. Those who transcend and cross are powerful, so went the song. Those who cross are blessed. Ezra hadn’t even realized he’d drained his stein, and went back to refill it while the song echoed in his mind. Basil had said something about that regarding Prince Charming, the first one, that she was a crosser of boundaries who was of all worlds. God, he missed Basil. The prince would have loved this concert.“The Masquerade is more than a rebellion,” Nightingale said in between song numbers. “We can awaken others trapped in the maze of Monochrome, break the spell little by little, but it isn’t enough. We must find a way to be like the mermaid and the prince. Remember this!”As she launched into another song, Ezra snuck a glance at Marjorie. She was quiet amid the energetic crowd. “Um, thanks for coming,” he whispered, fearful that she might be bored.“Oh! Of course, it’s better than sitting in a dreary room. This is fascinating,” Marjorie said with a little smile. “I’m just listening and trying to analyze.”“Analyze?” Well, that was Marjorie alright. Ezra was trying to figure out what the punch was made of based on the flavors, so he couldn’t blame her for leaning into her specialties. But he wanted to trust Nightingale. Sun Herself, he wanted to be able to trust someone for once.The music and dancing reminded him of the Long Day Festival, where food and wine, music and theater, puppets and kites filled the longest day of the summer from dawn till midnight. They paid tribute to the Sun by honoring what She created through them and what She inspired them to do, and celebrated on behalf of their kin in the southern hemisphere who were praying, fasting and cleansing themselves through the chilly Long Night with an expectation that the same would be done for them when the time came. Even Hamilton Tooth let Ezra join in on the festivities, for he’d lose face if he didn’t, and if he could never quite find a dancing partner who would look him in the eye at least it was a relief from his normal drudgery.This time, though, he didn’t feel as if he were allowed to join out of pity. There was something so welcoming about the Masquerade, so warm and joyous. He grew chattier with Florian, Bree and Marjorie, comfortable and more at ease than he ever ought to be given their troubles. He could celebrate Marjorie’s hopeful return to health, Basil and Philomene’s impending rescue, the idea of seeing Basil at sky size and getting an all-encompassing embrace from him for once. Whatever he wanted, wasn’t that what Nightingale said?The colors shimmered, the music thrummed like waves against the sand, and how many times had he refilled his stein? “Not enough if you’re still asking,” Florian said with a broad laugh. She was rather flushed in the face herself, her rose-pink somehow even pinker. “Wait, I said that aloud?” Ezra covered his mouth and stifled a giggle. How long since he’d giggled? “I’m a baker, alright? I’m doing...flavor research.” It made perfect sense to him.“You’re a-a baker? Bree, he’s a baker! We gotta, we gotta show him the kitchen after this!” Florian nudged Marjorie. “Can we borrow him? Just f’r tonight? Just some late night after-drinking snacks! Can you-can you make donuts, Shortie?”“Donuts? Please, I’m a ropesshonal.” Ezra stopped. Considered. “Pro. Fessional. Wait, wait, Marjoriiee, I don’t want to abandon you! Should I walk you back to the hospital first after the conshert’s over? Hey, whas’ funny?”Marjorie was clearly trying very hard to keep a straight face and failing. “Nothing, Ezra darling. I assure you, I can make it back to the infirmary just fine. I’m feeling much better already, just a bit sleepy. You three have fun, and do be careful, won’t you?”What was there to be careful of? Ezra was just a little tipsy. “Ah, you’re th’best.” He gave her a little hug. “I’m happy for you.”“Happy for me?”“Because, because...you should have someone happy for you!” He snorted. “I’m gonna bring you back donuts, okay, donuts that’ll fix everything because I’m feeling a lot more confident now…” Yes, he’d listen to the music and absorb all this beauty, as that was art was for, and he’d use it to create art. He’d save one for Basil.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The eruption of vivid blue light startled the sleeping birds and wandering raccoons who scattered in the wake of a giant tumbling out of nowhere, a young girl and several cats clinging to his cloak. At least that was what Philomene had to imagine happening outside of her pouch based on the squeaks, skitters and grunts as poor Basil stumbled onto the ground.Still groggy from her embarassing trance earlier, she peeked out of the pouch the humanoid Red now wore around her neck, surprised to find she’d been clinging to the communication gem. They were in an old growth forest with tall pine trees obscuring the very dim predawn light. The sound of what she hoped was distant thunder echoed over the sounds of night insects. “You’re awake.” Red looked down at her chest, blinking with a pair of dark red eyes. Philomene had seen so little of Red’s humanoid form, it took her a second to remember that this person who could have passed as Basil’s blood sister was she. So much had happened while she was trapped in a dream she could barely remember. “And you transformed, Little Red!” Philomene gave her a smile and a pat of approval. “Terribly sorry to have fallen apart back there…”“You didn’t fall apart,” a deeper voice insisted as Basil knelt down next to Red, though he still loomed over both of them. Seeing them together it became apparent how much Red had modeled her current human face after Basil’s, ruby-red eyes and hair aside. Basil reached over to ruffle Red’s hair, movements a little slow and hesitant. The bags under his eyes suggested fatigue, but he was too on guard, his breathing a little too fast. “Please, I had a vision and couldn’t resist it. There was…” It came to her slowly. “It was the one I had earlier when I was trying to meditate, but worse. There was a weaver, and she was caught up in a web she had to keep on weaving, except I was there trying to tear it apart with shears. But then it caught me. And there was this ocean that was flooding us, this big blue, blue….blue! That blue entity, it was trying to speak to me but I don’t remember what it was saying.” Basil shuddered. “It spoke to us too, and tried to take on the form of Prince Charming. The nerve! As if my heart could be swayed.” He tossed his hair, and then slumped. “So it chilled me and turned me on the others.” “Oh. Oh Basil, I’m sorry. But it looks like no harm done?”“No, no harm done,” Basil said, though without much enthusiasm. It seemed he was fully aware of how much danger he posed to others as a heartless giant. Philomene could only hope he wasn’t blaming himself for what he couldn’t help. “Well, mostly thanks to Red,” he added with a smile. Red accepted another hair ruffle with a soft squeak. Though she didn’t smile, Philomene had the sense if she had a tail at the moment she’d wag it.“By the way, it sounded like you knew a lot about what that blue thing was. You said it was pushing us along? Because that’s how it felt to me,” Basil added, “especially after I broke out of my trance. Like it was kicking us out.”“Oh. Oh, yes, that.” Philomene tapped her fingertips together, trying to figure out the best way to explain a rather unpleasant theory. “It was using contraction and force to move us along in a tunnel, much like, um. The esophagus does, or an intestine, or…”Basil tumbled back against Aurora and shuddered. “Say no more, Princess, say no more! Oh, disgusting, were we being digested by that thing?” “Maybe not digested, but it was trying to feed off of us? Why else try to drive us to despair, making us look up at the planet and give up? You know how some of the Other Ones feed off of emotions, and-oh. Oh dear. Ohhh dear.” Basil blinked. “Um, Highness, what was that about a planet?” “I mean we mustn’t jump to conclusions. Yes, the Moonflower Market was associated with an Other One at some point because it was under the Gourmet’s control, and this could just be a leftover side effect of that, but he fed off desire and loss. And nothing like that ever happened in Moonflower Market before, and, hmm?” Philomene looked up at Basil. “Did I say planet?”“Yes. You said that enormous, swirling moon we saw was a planet.”“Did I.” She rested her heavy head on her elbows as she leaned against the lip of the pouch, searching her memories. “Oh, yes, that’s where I recognized it. In the old archives of the Vine you sometimes come across degraded images and recorded memories that are a little incoherent. Our researches found one some years ago and it was displayed in the Thumbelina library, and the only label we were able to decipher and translate was ‘planet.’ Presumably ours?” “The Blue did say we were looking at the world from a distance, ‘kept away from it.’ Kept away from it where?” Philomene paused, trying to process her own thoughts. Her heart raced as the truth dawned on her. “Basil! What could possibly be close enough to the world to see it from an outside perspective? That!” She pointed upward as dramatically as she could, given the weight of her revelation.She and Basil both looked up at a purple-tinged, cloudy sky hidden by tree branches.Bah, damn the weather patterns ruining her attempt at scholarly dramatics. “The moon, I mean. We were on the moon. The tugging feeling at our feet was probably the Blue giving us artificial gravity since a smaller celestial body would have less of a pull, we think anyway, and that means that picture was taken from the moon, which means we’re not the only ones to have gone there, and Basil Basil Basil we were on the moon.”Basil stared down at her, upwards at where the moon would have been if it were visible, then back down. He crossed his arms and cupped his chin. After a long pause, he finally spoke. “Highness, that is amazing and I have no idea of what to do with that information.”“Neither do I. It’s exciting and baffling and I have no idea how it connects to anything but it has to connect to something because that Blue essence connected us to the Moon and back! Does that mean Moonflower Market was on the surface of the Moon the whole time? Why had all the grass turned to white desert? Is the moon a desert? We always thought it had rivers of silt based on the black patterns but I didn’t see any. Why couldn’t we see the planet from the Market before? Was there some kind of illusion in place? At least it would explain why the Market didn’t show up on any maps, not even the ones drawn from the Sky, and, and and…” She stopped and fell into a brief coughing fit, her throat protesting the outburst. “We always thought it was covered in ice,” Basil said, scratching his head. Only then did she notice the odd red fur scarf he’d acquired. “It isn’t that I’m not as excited as you are! Rather floored, to be honest. I’m just honestly having trouble wrapping my head around it. Around all of this.”“Yes, yes.” Philomene caught herself. No need to focus too strongly on something that wasn’t a huge priority. The Blue could be a threat, as if they needed another, but the moon was just the moon. (THE MOON!) She would have to sit down and figure out the weight of this revelation when Marjorie was safe and all were well-rested.And fed, she added mentally as Basil’s stomach made a noise. He coughed into his fist and gave a little bow. “Oh, apologies, my ladies! That, um, that was…”“Do you need to hunt something, Basil?” The Glamour Cat landed deftly on his shoulder, giving all three of them meaningful looks. “You are terrible at keeping up a false persona, you know.”Philomene froze, shrank down into the pocket briefly and then peeked out again with a little sigh. Basil looked equally mortified and embarrassed.“Um, well! One has, you know, a stage name,” Basil said hastily, “And, um, a name one uses personally with close friends, who are managers, yes?”“Whom one calls Highness?” Muffet asked. “I knew you were fibbing. That’s one reason I chose to ally with you. It looked interesting.”“Fibbing, calling it fibbing is a bit, um…” Philomene coughed herself. Marjorie would be so much better at handling this. “Listen, Glamour Cat Muffet? We will need your secrecy. Can we promise that? We did get you and your entourage through safely, did we not?”“And we can continue to serve as your protection,” Basil added, leaping to his feet. Muffet wasn’t even jostled by the movement. “You and, erm, where’s the Catographer?” “He went back to find our fallen comrade and bring him back home to the Anarchic Kingdom of Cats,” Muffet said. Every time Philomene heard the phrase ‘Anarchic Kingdom’ she had to bite her lip to keep from protesting. Cats. “I suppose it would look good for an ambassador to come alongside a sword-carrying Exile and a bear. Besides, you forgot your assumed name, didn’t you?”Basil, perhaps wisely, did not comment. “And you two,” Muffet added, leaping down to the ground and looking up at Red and Philomene. “Your moth can be a pet, but who shall you two claim to be?”“I don’t lie,” Red stated with a frown. “I’m Red. I follow Basil.”“And I was planning on hiding,” Philomene added, “though that may have been a poor plan. I am certain they have ways of detecting Flowerling spies.” Many wandering, Colony-less Flower Folk hired themselves out to gather information or just took it upon themselves to watch the world from the shadows. “Then you are a diplomatic advisor sent as an ally of the Cats,” Muffet decided. She paused to lick her paw before continuing. “You are all fascinating! I will let you stick with me and help you get into the city, though I cannot guarantee more than that. The Empress may not even see me, at which point I will just eat some fish and go back home. It is her loss. I, for one, cannot wait to see what happens when you’re there.” That prompted a scowl from Philomene. “What do you mean by that?”“Oh, you are pretending to be what you are not, and you are bad at it. And I have heard such things about Monochrome. But you do not mind that! We are so close to the outskirts of the city; if it weren’t so foggy we could see it from here come sunrise. You need to sleep and I will go catch some chipmunks for you.” Muffet sprung away and off into the trees. “...I don’t like her,” Philomene said once she was sure the cat was out of hearing range. “She’s smug, and I’m certain she knows more than she’s letting on.” Even if roast chipmunk did sound delicious. “Oh, without a doubt, Princess. But I did promise to protect her, and Prince Charming cannot go back on his word.” Basil stopped to yawn, covering his mouth. “And it is an easier cover identity than actor. Once I get some sleep…”“You mean once you get something to eat.”Basil shook his head. “Aurora needs to rest, so I can’t trouble her to fish, and I won’t be able to catch enough to fill my stomach anyway. It won’t be the first time I’ve missed a meal on the road, Princess. I’ll be fine.” He knelt down, beginning to spread out his cloak to act as a blanket before he froze and glanced behind Red. “Wait.” “What?” Red spun around quickly enough that Philomene was left a little dizzy, and then she saw it too. There was something bright blue darting from tree branch to tree branch, and each time growing a little bigger. It looked at first like a firefly, then took on a more lizardlike form. And it was headed out towards the city.“Some kind of fire spirit?” Basil asked. “A fairy? No, wait. Philomene, is it that shade of blue?” “It is that exact shade.”“And it has that scent, too,” Red added. “Of the flowers.” Basil stood up straight again, stretched and put a hand over the hilt of his sword as he patted Aurora with the other. “Right, then! No rest for our heroes today, yes? Muffet will find us by our scent trail, and we won’t be far.”He reached down and scooped up Red, helping her climb atop Aurora as Philomene climbed out of her pouch and onto Melchior. Tired and hungry as she was herself, she couldn’t ignore such a strange sign.The blue light flickered again and again, its shape changing in the distance. And for it to be visible in the distance, Philomene realized, it had to be getting much bigger. Blue, it seemed, was still hungry.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Marjorie took sips of bitter herbal tea as the Shoemaker medical crew recorded her pulse. Doc stood on her shoulder, pacing in a circle. “So, any new dreams last night?”“None that I can remember.” She frowned. “Rather perturbed at that, since the thing inside me only seems interested in communicating through dreams. But I admit, I am curious as to why you keep asking? No offense, but it doesn’t seem to fall under your purview, darling.”Doc grunted. “You’re correct there, generally. Diana’s the dream expert, and you have to catch her when she’s awake. But dreams can be connected to mental state, and that’s related to your physical health.”“Right now you’re our only patient,” a nurse added as he used a tiny medallion to take Marjorie’s temperature. “So you’re getting the star treatment.”“Well, how flattering!” She smiled, though that did raise questions. “Is this place so sparsely populated?”“Polychrome? It’s just the Masquerade group, a few scattered outliers like Diana, and us. And we were brought here whole,” Doc said as he scaled down Marjorie’s arm. She held it still for his sake.“Brought here, not ‘came’ here?” she asked. Doc, now standing on the tray in Marjorie’s lap, crossed his arms. She couldn’t make out his expression but still sensed the scowl from behind those spectacles. “It’s a long story, and I’m not good at those, so you get the short version. Shoemaker University got hit by some kind of flashing, colorful light, and a part of it ended up here. As in, us. But I wasn’t going to let that interrupt studies, not with our high standards!” “Well, of course! Wouldn’t want to cheat your students out of an education.” Odd, Marjorie hadn’t heard about anything happening at Shoemaker, and she knew a number of alumni from the famed academic Colony-City lived in Thumbelina. She also noted the use of passive language. Doc, at least, was claiming that something happened to Shoemaker, not that they themselves did anything. He could be telling the truth as far as he knew it or covering for the reputation of the university. A university which, she noted to herself, was not within Monochrome. So how did it end up here, and why?A figure stumbled into the infirmary, nearly tripping on the doorway and leaning against the wall with a groan. A tall, muscular young woman Marjorie recognized from the concert as Bree followed Ezra in, giving him a gentle shoulder-pat. “It’s alright, Doc will get you fixed up just fine.”“I do not fix up hangovers,” Doc insisted, tapping his foot as Bree left. “It’s just dehydration anyway. Get some water in you, kid, and drink it slowly.” “There’s no way this is just dehydration,” Ezra muttered, his voice muffled by the wall as he pressed his forehead against it. “And I’ll be fine. The Sun smiles upon those who endure their fates with pride.”Marjorie bit her lip to keep from laughing at her poor friend. “Did you have a good time last night?”“I...think?” Ezra finally peeled away from the wall and made his way to Marjorie’s bedside, accepting the offered glass of water despite his earlier insistence and taking a tiny sip. “Flora and Bree have a contagious sense of energy. Like Basil, but...well, I rarely get caught up in it like that. I blame the drink.” He raised his free hand, revealing a little brown satchel. “I made donuts, apparently.”“Yes,” Marjorie said, her attempts to keep a straight face positively heroic in her mind. “Your friend mentioned wanting donuts. Are they enchanted, by chance?”Ezra paled. “I’m not entirely sure. Bree and Flora had a few and seem to be fine now, at least? Not even hungover at all, which is entirely unfair. I’m certain I didn’t have any.”“I take it you’re familiar with the recent contents of your stomach, dear.”Ezra glanced aside and coughed. “I made it to the privy at least. Um, but, enough whining from me! I did what I did to myself, lost control in a way I do not like, and now I pay the price. You’re the one on the mend here.” She reached over and ruffled his messy hair, which was starting to grow a bit long over his eyes. “You’re allowed to have fun once in a while, you realize that?” “Not when others are in dangerous situations.” “In case you haven’t noticed,” she said, “we are the ones in the dangerous situation as far as we know. Basil would be proud of you, making friends without being pushed into it. He’d want to see you happy. Will want to,” she corrected herself. Ezra leaned against the side of her bed, after pausing to make sure the hospital staff were out of the way. “I don’t know what got into me. It felt like my shyness was lifted, the way fog fades away, and I had nothing to fear from anyone. Even before I started drinking, so I don’t think it was liquid courage alone.” Marjorie considered as she let Ezra rest. It was a good thing for him to be more open in general, but they were not in the best position to be so trusting. Yet here Marjorie found herself trusting a doctor and medical staff she’d just met, so soon after her terrible experiences in the Spire. Was it just because the Golden Apple Tree was gone and she had nothing to hide? For all she knew, the medical staff could be spying for Monochrome. But then why keep her here? Why not turn her in before she had a chance to heal?“Do you think it was Nightingale’s song? I was wondering about her,” Marjorie said. “We only saw her in the evening at the concert and nowhere else, right? Do you know where she lives?”“Apparently she only makes appearances like that. She’s Skykin, obviously, and those scales on her arms remind me of something but I can’t remember what.” Ezra frowned. “Must have been a fashion trend at some point. I was always bad at keeping up…”“Scales as fashion?”“You use a sort of paint,” he explained. “If it was a hypnotic song wouldn’t you have fallen under it too, though? Or picked up on it, the way you did once from that harp song in the market?”“Well, I’d like to think so, but it could be some very advanced magic. This entire place seems, well, topsy-turvy, and it could affect how magic works here. Doc, do you know anything about that?”Doc looked up from his notepad. “Magic’s magic. Our Green magic levels are normal here, and that’s all I’ve picked up on.” If the Flowerlings were able to sustain a regular level of internal Green magic, that meant there was a Vine somewhere in this building. Part of Shoemaker’s Vine survived here intact. Interesting. There were supposedly ways to contact other Vines through an ancient network, but it hadn’t been operational in centuries. Still, there was always a first time. “Anyway,” she said to Ezra in a whisper, “keep your heart open but your mind sharp. I’ll continue to be your spymaster.”“Spymaster?” Ezra tilted his head. “Oh, let me be dramatic here! I’m the sneaky one and you’re the one who, erm, makes magical donuts.” She grinned. “Now, do you mind showing me around for real? I’m feeling much better, Doc, honest.” In fact, she was feeling better than she had in years, and positively restless with energy. She hoped she didn’t leave poor, sick Ezra behind.Of course, that wasn’t the only reason she wanted to get around Polychrome. Ezra was clearly dazzled by the place and its Masquerade in more ways than one, and she wanted to get a second opinion. “Well, alright. Just try to get back here when you rest. Wanna make sure you don’t have any relapses,” Doc said. As Ezra waited for her by the doorway, though, Doc gestured her aside. She leaned in to hear him. “You seem to be in a precarious situation. If you want my advice,” he said, “be careful with Masquerade. I agree with them, and I help them out when I can, but if you get pulled into what they’re doing your fate’s gonna be tied to this place and Monochrome forever.” She wanted to protest and dismiss the worry, as she was already quite involved in Monochrome at this point, but something about the doctor’s phasing unnerved her. She didn’t want to be tied to anywhere but Thumbelina. In fact, she wanted to sever bonds with Monochrome as soon as she knew its secrets. Was that even possible, to delve into the heart of an empire and come out of it? Ezra had taken the now-bespectacled Marjorie to an open stand where Bree was cooking pancakes over a griddle, free to whoever wanted them. Surprised to find she had an appetite for once, Marjorie ate a stack of three while Ezra just managed one. She was even a little hungry afterwards, but unwilling to push it. One always had to be careful with free food and sudden physical changes. “Feeling better now that you’ve got something inside you?” she asked Ezra, who stretched after their brief breakfast and yawned. “Not perfect, but better. Ugh, I wish my memory wasn’t so clouded right now. I could swear I was going to meet Florian somewhere, but I can’t remember where.” He tapped his foot and then shrugged. Ah, alcohol-induced amnesia. “Bree, is it?” She sidled up to the muscled woman who was taking a break from the griddle. Bree was tall enough that even Marjorie had to look up at her. “I don’t suppose you could answer a few questions before our Florian arrives?”“Oh, Floflo had to run and check on something early this morning. Sorry about that,” Bree said as she sat down next to Ezra and Marjorie on the broken stone benches. “We have to do food supply runs here and there, so it might have been one of those.”Ezra blinked. “She was up early in the morning?”“Food supply runs,” Marjorie noted. “So you can’t grow anything here? I thought I saw a few garden patches here and there.”“We’re trying, but we can’t always predict what grows. And even if we could, the few places where the soil is usable aren’t big enough to support even our little community.” Bree waved a hand out at the color-shifting, shapeshifting buildings. “We’re still figuring Polychrome out for ourselves.”“So you haven’t been here long?”“Well, uh. No. We don’t know how long it’s been here, either.” Bree shifted awkwardly. “We can’t answer every question about it, because we don’t know everything yet. But if Florian brought you here and Nightingale sang to you, it means I can tell you what I know. Polychrome is a, well, it’s a reflection.”Marjorie narrowed her eyes. Reflection, like from a mirror. “Go on.”“Uhh, it’s actually just a theory we have, but it’s obvious Monochrome runs off of a lot of magic, right? That’s why it’s so perfect and sterile and weird. There’s a spell, people fall under it, birds fall under it, everything does. And the spell’s connected to all those mirrors hanging around. They weren’t always there, you know. Nor was that webbing in the sky.” Bree fidgeted with her hands. “We think whatever’s running Monochrome is powerful enough that it casts a shadow, in a way, and Polychrome is its shadow. It’s bright and colorful and doesn’t seem to follow any rules but its own. And that kinda suits us!” She blushed. “Uh, that’s what Floflo would say…”“It’s chaotic,” Ezra whispered, covering his mouth. Marjorie let the comment slide.“And your community, your Masquerade. Are you by chance, well! Not that I would ever accuse anyone of rebellion,” Marjorie insisted with a hand to her chest, “but…”“We’re rebels! For now, anyway. We’re still kind of figuring that part out too. This is all pretty new,” Bree admitted. “We’re no Green Hood Rebellion, to be honest, and our attempts to contact them have all been a failure.”“Green Hood Rebellion!? Wait, they’re still a thing?” Marjorie frowned. If the famed, far-networked enemies of Libra were still active somewhere, why did Mirror instead lead them to this band of misfits?“Bree, stop being down on us, will you?” A dark-skinned woman with hair in a bun and an angular build approached the stand. There was something familiar about her voice and maybe a little odd about her movements. “Our whole thing is that we disrupt the spell of Monochrome! We make noise and cause trouble. It’s not going to overthrow the Empress, but it’s going to slow her work down while we figure out a greater plan. The Harpist plays notes that weaken points in Monochrome and let us slip through.”“The Harpist! Stars, I meant to ask about him,” Ezra said, knocking himself aside the head. “See, his name’s Jack, and he’s not supposed to be like that. He’s-has he been quiet like that since you ran into him?” The woman nodded with a sigh. “Doc’s been doing what he can, says the guy’s fine physically, but he’s just kind of in a trance. Seems to want to help us, though. Maybe he’ll talk to you.” At the sound of the word ‘harp,’ Marjorie felt a twinge of pain in her arm. ‘Don’t you start,’ she thought. She would have to get more answers from Eye regarding this harp, for Jack’s sake and her own. She noticed the woman with the hair bun was giving her occasional glances and stares. Did Marjorie really look that disheveled? But no, there was recognition there. Where did she know that voice?“Wait. Princess? Princess Utamene?” Utamene, who should have been a Flowerling, blinked and covered her mouth. “Marjorie?!” Bree startled at the word ‘Princess.’ “Oh, wow, Uta! You never told us…”Their reunion was interrupted by the sound of a horn blowing and bells ringing as Florian galloped into the square. “Places and costumes, everyone, something real big’s happening at the city gates! Whatever it is we want to make sure the Empress isn’t gonna turn it into her own puppet show, right?”Utamene covered her mouth and leaned over to whisper to Marjorie. Only then did she notice there were ball-like seams on her joints. “I’ll explain later, I promise!” “Ezra, buddy!” Florian grabbed Ezra by the shoulders and hoisted him on her back. “You said you wanted in last night, remember?”“I did?” Ezra stared. “Wait, I mean, I want to see what this involves, but I, um. Marjorie?” He gave her a helpless look.If the Harpist was going to be there opening a passage for the Masqueraders, Marjorie knew she’d best not be there. “You don’t have to go,” she reminded him.“Yeah, but…” Ezra was quiet and then tightened his hands into fists. “I’m here for a reason, right? Marjorie, you be safe!” He clung to Florian for dear life. “Go talk to Diana!” As the entourage rallied towards what Marjorie had to imagine were the Polychrome equivalent of the city gates, she was left rather stunned, trying to go over what she’d learned. Why had Mirror led them here? Was Ezra really buying into Masquerade, or just trying to figure it out in his own way? Why was one of Philomene’s older sisters here, and what was she doing with that big, doll-like body? “Who’s Diana?!” she finally called out to them, though she knew they couldn’t hear.“Mmm,” said a low voice behind her, “that would be me.” She glanced over her shoulder to see enormous black coils and a serpent’s head. “I remember you,” the snake said.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Alphonse felt more of the other one’s self clinging to him, coalescing like water droplets. It took effort to keep his form compact and hidden under a leaf, nothing more than a glowing blue salamander. 
“What’s this? What’s going on?” He shuddered, feeling a jolt of energy rush through him. “Is it time?”

It’s coming. Just because I wasn’t able to extract all the despair I needed from those intruders doesn’t mean I didn’t get us a little.

Despair had a ‘taste’ to it, cold and biting. Alphonse wondered how much the Blue took from him when they first met and merged. He also realized he was calling it the Blue, when previously he had no idea what it was called.

Yes. Blue. If that’s what others want to call me for now, so be it. Most of my body is still trapped in the Far Prison, but we should have enough to cause some trouble.

“Is that all? Cause some trouble?” Alphonse formed the salamander toes into curling claws. “I thought we were going to tear the place down and her with it.”

We can’t yet. Besides, did you forget?

Blue forced Alphonse to look upwards. Once again he saw the wishes glimmering in midair, tempting and strangely appetizing. There was the bright one in the distance, up in a spire just below the city’s dome. 
“So how does causing trouble get us in there?”

Trust me. I have had so long to plan and plan. I have high hopes for you, for both of us. Now, I’m going to let you take the lead. I can see in the shadow of your heart that you know what to do. Have fun with this little burst of power and make your dreams come true!

Blue’s presence vanished, and with it the barrier between Alphonse and the immense power of this shapeshifting, warping form. Energy burned inside of him, needing direction and focus and latching onto his desire. No, he corrected himself, his wish.
Blue wanted to grant wishes, and Alphonse was curious about that. But what Alphonse wished for was to see the great stone gates of the Monochrome City of Libra ground into dust. 
He stopped holding back as the doors shrank, going from towering monoliths to things he knew would barely fit his expanding form. He gave himself wings and claws, letting the blue energy decide the rest. As he heard bells ring in alarm and guards run for cover, he reared back his head and roared with the sound of a crumbling mountain. 
If he was big enough, strong enough, fierce enough, even the Empress Herself could not ignore him forever.

The night before, Dark Midnight appeared in front of Bright Morning’s austere quarters. He came unannounced as he always did, holding a candle that dripped no wax. He accepted the offering of bread and buttermilk Bright Morning had on hand, for even if she’d turned her back on the Sky she wasn’t going to forget Pegas manners towards guests, and asked this and that question as they whiled away a half hour. 
“The beast will come tomorrow morning,” he said, “before the sun rises. Have your hero ready.” Then he thanked her for the buttermilk and left. 
Bright Morning had long since chosen who her hero would be. All three of her ‘trinary’ had great potential. Selfishly she wished she could keep all three, for she knew the hero would become a celebrity and play a different role in whatever chess games entertained the Empress. Kole, Parina and Salten were all young and energetic, strong and taking to the loyalty training well. 
But she’d noticed something while interviewing and screening them. She would sit them down and test them verbally on battle tactics and Imperial history, but that was just a smokescreen. Each time she was watching to see where their eyes were, whose lit up when she spoke of this or that. 
Kole wanted a leadership position, clearly. They wanted to be able to mentor others, to lead them into battle or give commands. Parina wanted to keep order, to help sculpt the perfect society of Libra with her bare hands or her blades. 
Salten, though. There was something in him that hesitated, that strove to keep up, a sense that he did not belong there but was trying. Physically he could keep up, and he knew his tactics and history. He took to it all well. He was just trying so hard, and after an interview she knew why.
Salten’s eyes lit up when he spoke of Empress Valerian, of Her Imperial Eternity’s glory and grace. He would serve Libra, but, Bright Morning suspected, he truly wished to serve her. In other words, Bright had already lost him to Valerian’s reputation. That was as it should be, she supposed.
As the bells rang, she was already at the barracks, tapping Salten’s shoulder as he and the other guard trainees rushed for their armor and masks. 
“I’m going to need you,” she said. 
He stared and gawked for a second, then steeled his expression and nodded slowly. “Yes, ma’am. Whatever ya need.” 
It was endearingly informal. Well, no one said it was Bright’s job to deal with his manners. Scarlet or someone else could bother with that.
She pulled him aside, leading him into a mechanica-pulled carriage with her so they’d arrive at the right time. She would fill him in on the details along the way, at least the ones he needed to know.
She had never told them which one she had chosen. Instead each had been told, quietly, to stay alert as she would tap them for a special mission when she needed them. After all, she might need them for something else. 
She also never told them that this was pre-planned, that they were being set up against an anticipated enemy and that plans were in place for their victory or their martyrdom. What good would that do? This had to feel spontaneous and earned, by the hero as much as by anyone else, or the spell would not do its work.
Instead, as the covered carriage took off, she gave him the gravest look she could pull off, by all accounts shaken to the core by something unimaginable. The kind of look that said, ‘this is all up to you.’
“Salten. Have you ever fought a dragon?”

Alphonse smacked a paw at the human guards rushing towards them and sent them flying like toys. Gods, but this was satisfying! Much more so than playing the hero for that Rot Witch and having people fawn over him as if he cared what they thought. He would have been a lot happier doing this from the start. It must have been the Green Witch getting to him, making him think that destroying the idea of Prince Charming was more feasible than destroying the Empress. Too much ambition, and not enough hope.
He raked his claws across the stone doors and smacked his tail against it, the impact knocking more guards down onto the ground and throwing a few unfortunates on the wall tumbling to their doom. He was so close, so close to being able to pry those doors open and then fly down to incinerate the Palace of Clarity. And then, and then…
There was no ‘and then.’ There was just the wish, and the moment, and the moment was glorious.

Ezra clung to Florian as the others gathered in a circle near a huge pile of marble rubble. He could make out an outstretched hand etched into one piece, and part of an orb with a blade through it in another. Was this part of a huge wall engraving of the Empress? He hadn’t seen such a thing in Monochrome proper, though he also hadn’t seen much of Monochrome yet. 
There was Jack stepping into the middle, his face still as blank as ever and his steps outright mechanical. Ezra’s stomach twisted with guilt. He’d gotten so caught up in whatever was going on with Polychrome and Nightingale that he’d forgotten to seek out Jack himself. 
Experimentally, Ezra cleared his throat. “Jack? Do you remember me?”
There was no answer from Jack, not even a turn of the head. The harp in his arms looked brighter, too, a little more elaborate than it had been when he last saw it at the Gourmet’s palace. It had more wings now, and what he could swear was a jeweled eye. 
He got the distinct impression the harp was looking at him instead of Jack.
Florian whispered to Ezra, “It’s alright. We’ll get him straightened out, promise.” Then she spoke more clearly, or rather, sang.
“Harpist, o harpist, don’t make us wait! Play us a song and open the gate!”
The harpist nodded and began to strum a melody, the same one that had hurt Marjorie. Ezra was glad she wasn’t coming along, even if he wasn’t entirely sure why he himself was. What good would he do? He was no actor, and he was still a small, relatively weak human. 
Well, if Marjorie couldn’t do the investigation and snooping, he’d have to do it for her. They needed to know more. What better way than to follow them? Or ride in this case, as Ezra did when Florian took a great leap through a shimmering piece of air and disappeared.
They landed just outside the gates of Monochrome, alongside a massive painted wall that seemed to rise up to the sky before curving over into that dome they’d seen from below. Ezra shuddered as he realized he hadn’t even noticed walls inside the city. Was there enough sunlight for a Skykin to survive in there? How big was Monochrome, anyway? From the outside it looked unimaginably massive. Or perhaps it ordinarily would, if it weren’t dwarfed by a huge, shimmering blue creature whose very footsteps made the ground shake.
Ezra yelped, tumbling off of Florian as the earth quaked. “What-what-what is that?!”
“That?” Florian looked up, and then cackled. “That’s a dragon! A dragon striking at the corrupt city, and a biggun too! Seems like divine fate to me.”
“Maybe so,” Bree said as she wrung her big hands and stood over Ezra to protect him from falling rubble, “but that thing’s going to get a lot of innocent people hurt or killed. What can we do against it?”
“Yeah, that’s the only reason why I’m not suggesting we cheerlead the dragon.” Florian stretched out, then whistled to one of the Masqueraders wearing a huge, goggled leather hat. “Percival! You got those sparklers ready?”
Percival, who was of a similar build to Ezra but a little taller and had remarkably blue-green hair, was busy digging through a crate he’d been carrying on his back. “Just gimme a minute! Not sure what you think they’ll do against something that size, though…”
“They’ll annoy him and distract him for sure! We don’t need to fight the dragon ourselves, just make the guard look like fools for needin’ the help of a bunch of lowlifes like us.” Florian stomped a hoof and then grinned down at Ezra, a strange gleam in her eyes. “Hey, Ezra! You remember last night?”
“Only a little…”
“Doesn’t matter! You still got those donuts with you, I see?”Ezra hadn’t planned on bringing the sack of little round donuts, fried Mielle-style with no holes thank you, but there it was in his hand. He didn’t even realize he’d been carrying it around. “You...don’t intend to feed it a donut, do you?” How would they even get up there?
“We might need ‘em for a surprise.” She winked as rubble fell around them like snow.

“You know, big guy,” Scarlet said as his gecko-ride clung to Dark Midnight’s shoulder, “one of these days you gotta dream us some good fortune instead of disasters we’re supposed to turn in our favor. Would be nice.”
“The dreams don’t work that way.” Midnight sat in a cloak of darkness, a tiny void torn into the air along the rim of the city walls. The dragon, for they decided it was close enough to a dragon, wouldn’t see Midnight no matter what; even if it looked that way, it’d just see something hard to focus on that hurt the eyes, and such a beast was unlikely to linger on it for long. 
“Well, you could’ve at least told me it was gonna be THIS big. I’d have made a few extra doses.” Scarlet held a wax-capped vial against his chest, carefully fitting it into a needle. He wore a large crossbow across his back. Something this large couldn’t just be thrown like an ordinary dart. The substance within sloshed with a faint red glow. 
“The hero will not know you hit him with that, Scarlet?”
“First off, he may not even need it. Right now I’m predicting he dies a heroic death and our guards avenge him before scraping him off the floor, and then we have the whole memory of this fallen kid to work with. But lemme guess.” He glanced over at his bearded friend. “That isn’t ideal.”
“You said it yourself.”
“But say he does need this? Trust me. I’m accurate enough and I know how to calculate what sort of needle can penetrate a Sky giant without hurting ‘em much. And if he does find out, what? Is he going to be mad we helped him? He’s a fool if he is.” He strapped the vial onto his back and set his mask on the top of his head for better visibility. 
“Ah, look! There he is!” Scarlet could make out a figure bigger than the humans below by a good measure, though still easily dwarfed by the dragon. There was a big, white form next to him. “That must be the one. Wonder why Bright went with fur? I thought she was all about practicality. Also, where’d she get a bear?”
Midnight hummed but said nothing.
“Yeah, good luck to you too, old friend. I’m off!” He pulled at the reins of his gecko as it crawled down Midnight’s arm and leapt onto the wall, where it started a long, treacherous vertical climb to the bottom.
“Time to be the real hero,” he said with a little smile.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

And so in her travels the noble Prince Charming, bearer of grace, hero of the people, came across a city spun of silk under siege by a great spider.

And so in her travels the blessed Prince Charming, bearer of compassion, herald of no kingdom, came across a temple built of black volcanic stone under siege by an army of draconic salamanders…

A port under siege by a many-tentacled kraken…

A living marble statue titan…

A dragon, with eight heads…

A dragon with silver feathers sharp as knives…

A dragon glowing like the sun from the phoenixes it had swallowed…

A dragon maddened by the intoxicating lake of the Mountain of Poisons…

A dragon…

A dragon…

A dragon…
“That isn’t a dragon.” Basil heard the shouts of dragon and came running, ignoring exhaustion, thirst and hunger that gnawed at his stomach. Now as he looked up at the towering beast, brilliant blue and glowing bright against the sickly grey of an overcast morning. It had a great curving neck, an angular face with too many blinking eyes and great claws it used to tear at the walls of what had to be the huge, walled Monochrome City. Its vivid, swirling shades of blue seemed themselves a declaration of war against the stark off-white of the walls and the obsidian-black gates. Its form was fuzzy at the edges, shifting like it was made of liquid or cloud, though clearly solid enough to toss around the human and Skykin soldiers swarming around it without effort. “I don’t know what it is,” he said, staring upwards from the edge of the gathering crowd. “But it isn’t a dragon.” “I can’t see what it is,” Philomene’s tiny voice piped up from Red’s pouch. “But it’s large enough that its steps are giving me a headache from the quakes. Basil, Red, um, cats? We may want to look for safe cover?” “Safe cover?!” Basil didn’t mean to shout. He found doing it with his new, bigger voice felt a little frightening even to him. But it couldn’t be helped. “But it’ll kill those soldiers! The-the not-dragon, I mean! You lot should take cover in the woods and try to get inside when the gates open again, but I-”“Me too!” Red said, rushing at Basil’s leg and tugging on it. “I can help too! I can change again and, and, and…”Basil sucked in a breath, set a hand as gently as he could on Red’s shoulder and shook his head. She would be a powerful ally as a wolf, but in her current form he couldn’t look at her and see anything but a child afraid of being left behind. “You have a more important task, Red, okay? You have to keep the Princess safe. If anything happens to me, you have to protect her and listen to her. I-I mean, do that either way!” He stopped and winced as a screeching roar filled the air, drowning out his voice. “Third Prince Basil of Sethwhile,” Philomene warned as she shoved her torso out of the pouch and propped herself with her arms. She was using the Older Sibling Voice, and despite himself Basil flinched. “You will not have a dramatic ‘here is what happens if I die heroically’ speech with Little Red here because you are not going to run out there and fight that thing. This is Monochrome we’re talking about! They have a military so powerful kingdoms will surrender to them rather than even face war! They have resources we can only dream of. Surely they can swarm and subdue that beast better than anything we could do.” Basil blinked. “But they’re not winning! Look, they’re being scattered left and right!” He lifted Red onto his shoulder to give Philomene a view. “They need my help…!” “...I don’t understand,” Philomene said. “They must have more soldiers than that. Are they waiting for something? Why are they sitting around letting Monochrome fall under threat by a big, blue…”She must have had the realization at the same time Basil did. He set Red down gently and knelt again, lowering his head in the same sort of bow hunters and soldiers did to his father before a ceremonial hunt or festival. He spoke in a whisper. “I don’t know why it’s turned into a fake dragon, but it might be trying to drive the people of the city to despair like it tried to do to us. If it’s one of the Others we just have to hit it with whatever is its opposite, remember? Ezra used comfort against the Gourmet’s need, you...did something I still don’t understand with the Green Witch, and Red, you showed courage against the Rot Witch’s fear. So...so this is my turn.” He looked up at the two of them, eyes wide. “I have to give a show of hope against it, you understand? I have hope on my side. This must be why I have Ezra’s size and strength now. The magic intended it for a reason!” Philomene was quiet, lowering herself. “That may be true,” she said, voice so soft it was nearly drowned out by the rumbling and chaos around them. “But you need to be careful. Please be careful, for Marjorie and Ezra’s sakes if nothing else. We still need you to help save them.”“Of course I know that! They’re in there, so if Monochrome falls I certainly-we certainly can’t save them!” He stood back up. “Aurora, follow me! Red, Philomene, we’ll meet by, um...well, just come and find me, I’m hard to miss!” He turned and ran into the fray before he could hear more of Philomene’s logical objections or see Red’s worries in his eyes, Aurora brushing up against him and then taking the lead. He had to weave through the crowd before just plowing through and letting them part for him. “Coming through, here to help! Here to…”And there he was on the pathway trampled flat by innumerable pilgrims to the Monochrome City of Libra, surrounded by angry soldiers, with the Blue staring straight down at him.Someone jostled him so hard he fell into Aurora. He turned around to snap at them as he stood back up, only to catch sight of the face peeking out from the Imperial armed mask. “What are you doing?” Salten hissed. “This is my mission, idiot!”Red watched Basil take off and her last protest got caught in her throat. Basil was ill. His scent was changing, the minty, icy overtones growing stronger little by little, though it didn’t seem to be an illness that affected his fighting prowess. She’d just earned a hug from him, a hug! What if she lost him after that? But he’d given her orders, and she trusted his orders. So she ran with hands protectively over Philomene’s pouch, disappearing into the crowds gathering on the outside to watch. She was old hat at this, from her days on the streets of Nautilus pickpocketing and running errands for Lord Germain. “He’s lost his mind,” Philomene said with a long sigh. “I understand he has that hero’s instinct, and it’s admirable, but he’s not as invincible as he thinks he is. Even Rem wouldn’t…no, Rem would out of duty, but Rem is trained to give assistance. I think?”“It’s okay, Princess,” Rem whispered as she darted along one of the roads leading out from the gates, dodging fallen debris. “You’re worried too, right?”“Terribly so, Little Red. But I shouldn’t burden you with those worries.” A pause came from the pouch. “Basil will be fine. We’ve been in worse scrapes. Is this how Marjorie feels whenever I get an adventurous idea into my head?”Red looked around and spotted a group wearing vivid colors and masks, crouched around something that smoked. One of them cursed as something sparked, fizzled and went out. No, Red didn’t want to hide among them, though she had a mind to keep an eye on them. There was a covered wagon waiting mostly unattended as its owners stood outside, gawking at the battle. They must have come to trade with Monochrome or set up shop there themselves. Red climbed up onto the back and slipped into the wagon, crouching down among crates and barrells. “We’ll be okay here,” she whispered to Philomene. “I think.”“Thank you, Little Red.” The princess peeked out. “You’re very brave and resourceful.” Red wanted to wag her tail before remembering she didn’t have one at the moment. The equivalent for humans seemed to be a little increase in heartbeat. There was a little tear in the canvas, big enough to give Red a long distance view of the action. “Do you want to see, Princess?”She lifted the Flowerling up to watch, keeping her eyes out for a figure in furs.“I still don’t understand why they’re using such limited forces to engage a threat,” Philomeme murmured as she settled in Red’s hands. “One would think they’d want to make a show of it. We can’t be the only ‘diplomats’ here, and...wait, diplomats. Red, what happened to that cat?”Basil was about to blurt out the name of the familiar face before a huge chunk of stone wall fell between them, obscuring the area with dust and leaving Basil’s heart jumping in his throat. He could have been under that hunk of stone and that would have been the end of the Story of Basil, Failed Prince Charming and Now Pancake. He’d have to be more careful. He grit his teeth and tore at the end of his cloak caught beneath the rubble, wincing as the edge ripped off. “Sir,” he called out to Salten, “I was thinking perhaps I could be of help!”“Well, you can’t! So scram!” As the dust cleared he saw Salten charging at the dragon’s foot, slashing at it and taking away a chunk of flesh that dissipated into wisp light and vanished. The foot regrew right away, the dragon barely noticing.“What the hell is this thing made of?” Salten spat at the ground, breathing heavily. “We just need it to stay still!”“Stay still?” Basil stumbled under another quake and steadied himself by leaning on a grumbling Aurora. “Yeah, for the…I said to scram, kid! Didn’t you listen to the plan?” Salten stopped to take a long look at Basil and squinted behind the mask. “Wait a minute, you’re not…”“Sir, mind the dragon!” Basil grabbed Salten by the arm and pulled him out of the way of a scrabbling claw bigger than the two of them altogether. It was translucent, like the body of that thing they’d traveled through on the Moon. That thing, the Blue, had been huge, unimaginably huge. Why was it here now in a different form? Where was the rest of it? Up close Salten’s face was bloodied and his armor cracked. He was leaning oddly on one leg. “Sa-erm, Sir,” Basil said, “are you wounded?”“It’s nothing.” Salten pulled away, glaring. “Some rubble got me, that’s all. Damn, that thing isn’t even looking at us. It doesn’t care. I’m like a bug bite to it.”But we’re so big, Basil thought. How can this thing make us feel so puny? It was getting harder to argue with Salten’s downbeat attitude, though why he insisted on being the only one to really engage with the beast Basil couldn’t understand. Wait, of course. He’d said it himself, he’d felt it himself. The Blue fed off despair, didn’t it? All it had to do to win was seem unwinnable. And all Basil had to do to beat it was hope.Alphonse felt a surge of something inside of him, like the striking of a match. The Other One was pleased by something, but silent. Which was fine with him. There was nothing more satisfying than being able to bring this city to its knees. He just hoped the Empress could see it herself.It was so easy to ignore the guards whose attacks barely hurt him. Was this really the best this great city had to offer? Were there no cannons, no other protections for their precious jewelry box capital? Were they just so arrogant they assumed nothing strong enough to penetrate Monochrome’s walls would ever dare? 
Listen.
That was the Other One, and with his words Alphonse had no choice but to listen to one voice and one voice alone. A voice he knew all too well.“Great Beast, symbol of despair! In the name of Prince Charming, I challenge you!” Basil stood and pointed his sword, hoping his tattered cloak would flap in the wind and Aurora would choose a majestic pose instead of taking that moment to groom herself. It didn’t always work that way.The crowd murmured, cheered, whispered in confusion, while Salten just gawked at him. “What are you doing?!” “Trust me, Sir! Follow my lead!” “Shouting at it? Posing like a clown?”Basil didn’t dignify that with a response because he was trying to bring hope to the people, hope that would help bring this monster down. Let Salten see it and understand himself, if he didn’t yet. Basil may not have been the greatest warrior or even a match for a military-trained Salten, but he knew how to get attention.Perhaps a little too well. The Blue froze, many eyes blinking, and then turned its head downwards. It stared and stared. “I know you.” The voice, horribly distorted and more like a warble than human speech, came from inside the thing’s body. Basil held the pose and blinked. “...What?”Scarlet loved the thrill of dodging boots many times his size and pieces of rubble big enough to crush him. He’d left Black Spot at the foot of the wall so the poor, exhausted gecko could rest while he leaped and darted, using his grappling hook to leap onto the backs of soldiers and climb their armor. They didn’t even notice or feel him.“There we go, that’ll be our clear shot...oh, bugger, which one was it?” He could see the fur-clad giant and the uniformed one arguing about something. It was obvious the uniformed one was Bright Morning’s chosen hero, unless she’d intentionally dressed the other to look like a mysterious outsider. But what an outsider, giving a speech like that! How adorably cheesy. They could work with that.Besides, the uniformed boy was wounded already, walking with that limp. Pragmatically speaking Scarlet could give him a boost, but it might be wasted. And if the fur-clad one was an outsider, Libra wouldn’t lose a soldier regardless of the outcome. It was just common sense.He looked through the scope of his shoulder-mounted crossbow, poised on a piece of rubble that gave him the right vantage point, and fired. Just before the fur-clad boy was engulfed in a wave of blue dragon’s fire breath.“...Oh. Didn’t calculate that in.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

And Prince Charming soothed the fears of the people, facing the monster head on and pointing her sword...

Her spear...

Her staff...

Her bow and arrow…

And declared, “In the name of honor and grace, I challenge thee!”

And the beast reared back its head and roared so loud that the ground itself quaked and split. 
As Basil shielded his eyes from the brilliant blue flames engulfing his body, he thought, I hope this is real fire and not that terrible blue misery. He couldn’t burn. He knew this from stories Lavender told him of his toddlerhood where he would grab coals from the fireplace unharmed, earning only burnt clothing and a harsh scolding from his grandmothers. But his clothes could burn. Then he’d be naked and either freeze or die of shame.This? This felt different. The air simmered as something passed over him without blackening his clothes, passing right into his skin and stinging, biting, burning. Hot, hot, hot! How did he know how that felt, he who could dip his hand into the egg-boiling volcanic springs and come out unscathed? It was suffocating and nauseating. This was the heat of a fever, or the fierce burn of ice touched by bare skin. This creature was not a dragon, and it did not breathe fire. Basil gasped and forced himself to hold his pose. He was the cursed prince who froze from within, and the heat of the sun itself could not burn him, or so he reminded himself. He was to follow Prince Charming’s footsteps and become Prince Charming himself, and Prince Charming did not fear monsters! She tamed them, or befriended them, or destroyed them.Water dripped down his face from beneath his fur hood. Was this sweat? “In-in the name of Prince Charming,” he whispered, “by the blessings of the Mountain Lords below, please…” He didn’t know what he was pleading or praying for, but something came. It felt quick and sharp against his cheek, like a mosquito bite, followed by a tingling all over his face. They said Prince Charming once gave a blessing by a kiss on the cheek.Basil shut his eyes and shook his head to try to block out the spots still dotting his vision as the flames died out. His clothes were tattered from the force but otherwise unburnt. The not-dragon, the Blue, was still staring down at him. He felt numb, but in a more pleasant way, his hunger and thirst forgotten. This was what he was meant to do. This was a monster he could fight!Salten was staring at him, too. In fact, all of the guards were. The city was watching him.“It’s just staring at that guy,” Florian observed, peering through her spyglass. “We got the rockets ready?” “This one should work this time,” the technician insisted, wafting away the smell of burnt sugar. He held out a hand to Ezra. “Gonna need another one.”“I still don’t see what these things are needed for,” Ezra insisted as he dug another donut out of the satchel. There weren’t many left. “I doubt we’ll lure it away with something this small if it wants to eat a city.” He tried to squint and see past the crowd to figure out what Florian was talking about, but he couldn’t make out anything clear beyond the obvious, towering dragon. “I’ll explain later. If it works! If it doesn’t we’ll just forget I tried anything.” Florian stepped aside. “Alright, soon as it lifts its head…” Basil quickly realized that even if the Blue was trying to stare him down now, that didn’t mean it would stay still like that forever. He would have to rally the others. “Hey, all of you! Guards of Libra, everyone who’s armed, you saw that, didn’t you? All you have to do is believe you can stop it!” “That’s the corniest thing I’ve ever heard!” Salten was giving Basil a very harsh glare behind his helmet. “We have to cut off its head is what we have to do.” “Cut off its head? But it-oh, there we go.” Basil dove and rolled away as the dragon snapped at the ground with jaws big enough to swallow him whole. Taking advantage, Salten rushed at the Blue and tried to bring his sword down on the dragon’s neck, only to have it pass right through again. The head flickered into a blue mass of light, recoiled and pulled back. “It’s solid when it wants to hurt us and insubstantial when we fight back.” Basil could just imagine Philomene trying to figure out how it was doing it. But she couldn’t help him on the battlefield. He’d need to watch it on its own.“Wait, no.” Salten, staggering again under his wounds, pointed his sword at the place where the beast’s heart would be. There was a darker, amorphous shape in the center of the Blue’s translucent body. “That. We gotta get to that. That’s its...heart, or something.” Or Salten could prove to be a lot sharper than Basil gave him credit for. “Salten, that’s brilliant! You have to get off the battlefield, though, you’re hurt! Can’t any of them help you?” Salten glowered again. “I’m not getting off the battlefield to let you have all the glory. Wait, you know my name?”Basil balked, remembering that no, Salten would not recognize a Sky-sized Basil immediately. “Um, no time to waste! We need to get to that thing. I’ll try climbing its back and keeping it distracted and you try to get the archers to aim for the center. You’re military, right? You can give orders!” He heard Salten protest that he wasn’t ranked at all as he rushed for the lashing tail, Aurora running behind him. “Aurora,” he ordered, “stay down here and be ready to help if I’m wounded.” She was a better climber than he, but he couldn’t let her risk her life like that. He grabbed for the tail, held on tight, only to have it go insubstantial again as he fell through to the ground. “Ugh…”No, no, he needed determination. He had to believe he could grab the Blue’s tail just as the archers had to hope they could shoot the creature in the...heart? Core? Whatever it was. Fairies didn’t follow the same rules but they did follow rules, and he had no doubt in his mind that the Blue was an Other One. He pictured himself holding on, climbing, and then he had it. He held on as the tail whipped around, thankful for his empty stomach for once, and started a long climb up the back. He was to be a distraction. Not the most glamorous role, but it was necessary.Maybe Ezra and Marjorie were in that crowd and would see him, and he could take them all home in triumph for now. Sitting on his little pocket of subspace atop the wall, Dark Midnight watched the battle as Bright Morning’s chosen ‘hero’ was upstaged by a random upstart. She would be displeased with that, and possibly blame Scarlet for undermining her. Midnight was fond of the other two Riders, but they let their egos and ambitions get in the way of the goal too often. One hero was as good as the next. Perhaps this one would be better suited. He looked over his shoulder to see a golden tendril, a curl as fine and thin as moth silk. She was watching, too. He saw the currents of energy run through the System as Valerian gave an order. She did not give it to Midnight, her other Riders, or the guard. She gave it to the city.So, Midnight thought, that’s what she intended to do. #The archers were already firing away at the core, but none could quite hit it. It was small, terribly small compared to the rest of the Blue’s current body, and the fact that the thing kept making itself incorporeal didn’t help as far as Basil could see. But Basil was able to hold on through the harsh climb. He’d imagined a scaly body, but this thing felt like climbing warm, hardened jelly. It really was like the walls of the Blue passage on the moon. He tried not to think about how Philomene had compared it to an esophagus or other less pleasant organs. Did that mean it was liquid inside? Could he swim into it and just grab the Core?Basil wasn’t much of a swimmer, and it was a long distance to swim even from the creature’s back without any air. He could drown inside of it. Unless he truly, honestly believed he would be able to breathe in there, right? Digging in his fingers, he was able to tear a hole right into the ‘flesh’ of the Blue without it even noticing. Shutting his eyes and hoping he was making the right decision, he ripped the hole open and plunged into something liquid and blue.It wasn’t quite like water. It was hot, pleasantly hot in there, and something was holding him up, but it didn’t feel like he was underwater. And he could breathe, though the atmosphere was oppressive and thick. He just had to swim, and pull, right?Well, unless the black dot of a core saw him and was swimming towards him. It formed a more humanoid shape, stretching out hands to grab him before Basil could move. Was it just mimicking his form? It was trying to form a face, and sometimes he would see a glance of it before it would fade into a shapeless blob again. And it was squeezing Basil’s neck, suffocating him and pulling him further in. Basil fought and kicked, but the creature wouldn’t let go.Had it lured him in knowing it could get to him this way? Had it planted this idea in his head? Fighting the Other Ones was always like playing a game without knowing the rules. Had they ever even successfully fought one? An eye opened up in the face, a blue eye, before it faded again as the creature plunged him downwards. And then light exploded in the air above the translucent sea trying to drown Basil, and the thing let him go, grabbing its own ‘head’ and reeling as the exterior dragon form reeled. Basil himself felt a bit dizzy, gasping for air as he rushed to climb out of the membrane. He’d almost reached the edge when the dragon fell on its side, leaving Basil to crawl out onto the ground and gasp for air.Were those fireworks up there? And why did it smell of burnt sugar?#“GOT IT! We got it!” Florian hooted and raised her arms in the air, pointing at the fireworks. “Nailed it right in the head.”Ezra peered. The dragon was indeed tottering this way and that, trying to get up and then failing as it stumbled back down onto the ground. It was leaking out blue...something, puddles of it just dissipating into the air. “One firework did that?”“Not a firework, your work.” Florian prodded him on the back with her equine knee. “It was those donuts.”Ezra stared at the stunned dragon, and then looked down in the bag. “Okay, honestly, tell me what these do. I was too drunk to remember when I made them.”“Nothing to us, cuz we were already wasted. But I remember you telling us as you were cooking that you put your sensations into the food, and you were three sheets to the wind. So I guessed there was some concentrated intoxication in those things.”The baker looked down at the donuts again, and then at the dragon, and frowned. “We...got it drunk?”“Well, I-I wonder what I did.” Basil felt a little weak on his feet as he stumbled upwards, leaning on Aurora for support. Salten wasn’t on the battlefield anymore. In fact, all of the soldiers had cleared the field, perhaps figuring the Blue had breathed its last. It was definitely acting strangely, stumbling up and down and oozing bits of itself from the arrow wounds. It was stuck in gelatinous mode, he supposed, though he had no idea why. A set of hands grabbed at his leg as a human-scaled soldier started nudging him. “Get off the field,” she shouted, “and find cover!”Find cover? Basil, a bit giddy, thought it rather odd that he would need to find cover. He was so strong now. Look what he’d done to that dragon. But he agreed, letting Aurora lead him into a crowd. And then a great eye opened up on the wall.No, six of them did, six eyes in a great circle surrounding the battered gates. Rocks slid away to reveal them, steel and jewel creations peering out at the crowd through topaz-colored pupils. The eyes blinked once, twice, and then…Basil didn’t see exactly what happened. The light was too blinding, the force of it so much it knocked him rolling onto his back. He heard a sound like thunder striking and a thousand cannons firing at once. And then the Blue was gone. Whatever the wall had done, whatever the very city of Monochrome itself had done, it’d left the ground scorched and smoking but the crowd unharmed, if stunned. “Behold,” said a strong voice echoing in the silence, “the power of Her Imperial Eternity, the valour of her guard, the immortality of the city that shall stand forever!” It was a figure in gold-white armor he faintly recognized from a distance, though his vision was getting a bit fuzzy and spotty again. He couldn’t stand properly, relying on Aurora for support again. Why was that figure walking towards him? Why was the crowd parting for her, heads bowed?“And behold,” said the Sky woman his addled mind finally recognized as Bright Morning, as she stood over him. Even as far as giants went she really was intimidating. “The one who has come to find his destiny and has been granted so by the will of Her Imperial Eternity, the one who shall be part of our Happily Ever After. Behold, the Hero of Eternity!” She held up his hand, giving him a little nod, gesturing out to the crowd that stretched all around, a crowd that now cheered and chanted ‘Hero of Eternity! Hero of Eternity!’ And cheered it for him. The crowd warped into a beautiful, colorful mass as he felt himself collapse against Aurora again, as strong, armored hands reached out to grab him and Aurora made a grunt of distress. He heard the chanting as he passed out, and it echoed in his mind as he slept. 
And Prince Charming brought the beast low, and banished it from the land…

And broke the wizard’s spell…

And cut open its stomach and freed the hostages…

And transformed it into a mouse…

And took its head.

And the people embraced her, and she became beloved of the city.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“I remember you,” the giant snake repeated, setting her big head level with Marjorie and moving to look at her first with one gold eye, then the other. Her scales shimmered with iridescent reflections of the colorful sky, like oil slicks. “I know who you are.”Marjorie wasn’t afraid of snakes. She had faced down monster wolves, slept against a polar bear and squatted in a giant’s home. Diana being a huge serpent surprised her, but everything in Polychrome being as odd as it was, Marjorie supposed she may as well be one. It was Diana’s words that made Marjorie clench her fingers against her overalls and step back with a stare.“I think you must be mistaken, darling! Surely I would recognize such a striking creature?” Diana laughed, which sounded more like a cough or a hiss. A noble attempt for a snake, Marjorie thought. “Do not be afraid. I would be surprised if you would remember me. But I know you by your voice. Could you show me your hands?”Marjorie hesitated. “You have to understand, such a request is a little…”“Iffy, coming from a snake that could swallow you whole?” Diana pulled more of herself up, which looked like it took effort given her size. “I promise not to harm you. The Masquerade aren’t fools. They wouldn’t keep me here if I was the sort to hurt one of their own.”“I am not exactly one of their own,” Marjorie noted as she held her hands out, palms up, ready to pull them away at a moment’s notice. If Ezra met Diana and held a high opinion of her perhaps Marjorie owed it to this snake to at least give her a chance. The snake rubbed a snout the size of a pumpkin against the palms. “You carry a shield with you. It is heavy and it wears on you.”“Are you a palm reader, Madam Diana?” “Only as an amateur. One of the Masqueraders taught me lessons before she was caught. But these are the hands, longer and thinner now. I would know them anywhere. They were quick and strong, and could have snapped my neck.” Diana blinked. “But they did not.” Marjorie withdrew her hands, mind racing. Her fingers had been long and spindly since adolescence, when the Apple Tree started affecting her growth and metabolism. That meant Diana knew her from childhood, not from her days training with the Hunters. Diana flicked her tongue. “Shall I tell the story of the Ruinous Lovers?”“I’m familiar with that one.” Marjorie stiffened again. “Let me sit down, you start telling your part and we’ll take turns. I’m already dealing with enough interrogation in my dreams.”Diana rested her head against one of her fat coils. “I don’t want to interrogate you.” “You remember me and I don’t remember you. I want to make sure I haven’t left anyone else behind.” Diana seemed to accept Marjorie’s answer, her eyes going distant. “I remember a meadow on a hill overlooking a forest of silver. We all knew to stay away from the silver trees that ate the life away from the soil so no grass grew, a forest of blossoms that poisoned the bees and drove them mad. The birds sang warnings to each other before they dove down to try to eat me and my fellow hatchlings. But the meadow was lush and green, full of good things to eat.” Ah. The meadow was where her parents buried things. “I caught you.” Marjorie took her turn. “My parents were always asking us to bring back this and that little thing like a big snail or frogs in a bucket. Snow loved the snails and frogs but was afraid of snakes.” And Marjorie taunted her for that, because she’d long since figured out what their parents wanted to use the creatures for and didn’t know how to deal with it. Poor Snow would cry over the mice destined for experiments. Diana would have heard Marjorie and Snow arguing, Snow’s tears and Marjorie’s insults shouted out of fear and confusion. Marjorie looked away. “I didn’t understand the human tongue back then. All I knew was that you could eat me and did not, and that didn’t match the logic of my life thus far. Then your mother took me down to a dark, warm place, put me in a cage and started performing rituals out of old texts. It was she who gave me this.” Diana shifted her coils and lifted one in the center, revealing a sigil burnt on the belly in the shape of a coiled line with a wide-open mouth at the end. “No matter how many times I shed it never goes away.”“I’m sorry,” Marjorie blurted out. It looked like a painful brand, dug into the snake’s scales. At the words something flickered in Diana’s expression, a little quiver running down her long body. “Be careful saying that,” she whispered, before continuing. “Once the ritual was complete I was a little bigger and stronger, and I could understand the speech of the humans who kept visiting me from time to time. They gave me only water and fed me words, and the words sustained me more than any food had before.” “...I feel like I would have noticed them keeping a large snake. Anyway, what sort of immortality experiments did they run on you? Living off of words?” “Oh, I figured it out soon enough. Immortality, is that what they were after?” Diana blinked. “I never could figure it out.”“I think they saw it as a prerequisite to what they really wanted.” Marjorie thought back to the silver apples, so numerous they filled the air with the faint rotten sweetness of their scents. Were the bees that never stung anyone really affected by the silver apple blossoms? Whatever had become of that orchard anyway? Nothing you want to know about, she reminded herself. Perhaps noticing how Marjorie kept tensing up, Diana pulled a coil close to her. “I am not mad at you,” she said in a soft voice. “Now that I know what a child is I know it wasn’t your fault.”“I went with it. Snow plead for us to hide you away instead, but I went with it because I thought they would use us next instead.” And then they did it anyway. “You can hate me if you want.”“But I do not.”“You should!” Marjorie surprised herself with the volume of her voice and covered her mouth, turning away again. “My apologies. It’s-this is a sensitive topic for me, you understand.”Diana was quiet for a moment, moving her head up and down to study Marjorie. “You are like me.”“Pardon?”“Do you know what a Sin Eater is, daughter of the Ruinous Lovers? A scapegoat?”Marjorie raised an eyebrow, still refusing to let the coil get close. “I know the concept of a scapegoat is something blamed for a greater problem, a metaphorical sacrificial goat.” “A Sin Eater is a scapegoat of a sort. You infuse a living thing with an old essence, something conjured from the Fairy Layer, and they become one and the same. You teach that thing how to feed off of guilt, then every night you whisper your sins to it and let it feed.” Marjorie looked again at the sigil, a snake with a mouth wide open, as if awaiting food. “They made you to eat their guilt, literally.” She stopped and choked down a laugh, even as tears stung her eyes. “They felt guilty? They felt bad about what they were doing?”“Every day they doubted themselves and each other. I doubt anyone could do what they did for as long as they did without having to lie to themselves a lot. So they gave it to me.” Diana flicked her tongue. “It was so delicious.”“They felt bad.” Marjorie broke into another angry laugh. “Can’t have eternal happiness and bliss with a guilty conscience, can you? And instead of stopping or doing anything to make amends, they invoked what, lost age lore or something? What era are you from?” Diana shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. The faerie part of me has no memory of what came before, except a sense that I’ve been a Sin Eater before.”“You know you aren’t the first snake I brought back? They wanted lots of them for a while. Poor Snow, she was terrified of snakes and yet still kept pleading on their behalf.” Come to think of it, Snow used to urge her to disobey and lie when it came to doing cruel things like bringing in test animals, or worse. Why was the Snow of the Spire so mellow and...obedient? What had they done to Snow after Marjorie ran away?Had they felt bad about it?She wiped her eyes. “Still, I’m surprised I don’t recognize you. I think there were a few big, fat snakes around the laboratory, but you’re practically a basilisk. Meant as a compliment, Madam Diana.” Diana laughed again, and gently nuzzled Marjorie’s tears away. Marjorie let her. “I grew very slowly at first. After I started hearing fewer footsteps around the house I figured one of the humans had left, which I suppose was you because I still saw your sister around from time to time. At that point there was more guilt for me to eat, and I grew and grew.”“If a Sin Eater is too big, perhaps that’s a sign of something.” Marjorie leaned her cheek against the snake head. “You, I...I’m not sure I want to know, but you should tell me anyway. What happened to my family home after I left?”“I don’t know all of it. After a few years soldiers began showing up, and I heard them talking about packing me up and sending me away somewhere. I saw glimpses of your sister here and there. At one point she confessed to me.”“...Are you allowed to say…”“She was to be given a gift, she said, and she felt guilty about not being sure if she wanted it. That was all she would say, and after that she never appeared in the basement laboratory again. The Lovers would argue with the soldiers about keeping me. I came to realize that no matter who kept me I would be doomed, so on the night of a great storm when the basement started to flood, I broke through a weak wall and left. And I…” Diana shook her head before continuing. “I don’t remember how I got here, but I feel like Nightingale guided me. She’s the one who taught me how to feed off of troubles and woes instead of guilt, and that became my role in the Masquerade. I carry their troubles and they can continue in their mission more effectively.” Marjorie frowned. “I feel like a rebel movement needs its worries. Those exist for a reason.”“Maybe, but they seem so much happier this way. I get to make good people happy instead of soothing the conscience of wicked ones.” She closed her eyes. “That’s why you mustn’t apologize to me. I tasted your guilt, and it was so familiar and delicious. I can’t develop a taste for it again.” Marjorie was about to protest that any reasonable person would feel guilty from time to time, but a Sin Eater was designed to expunge guilt, not address it. She tried to imagine what the decision-makers of Libra would do with such a thing and shuddered. “...But you said I’m like you.” Marjorie stroked Diana’s head gently. “Afraid I am not sure what you mean there.” “You might in time.” “...Diana. You said there were soldiers there. Did they hang up mirrors?”Diana shook her head. “Not in the basement. It wasn’t until years later I found out how beautiful I am. Sin Eaters aren’t supposed to know.”Well, at least she didn’t consider herself a monster. Marjorie bit her lip. “I knew they were Imperial citizens, but I don’t remember them working so closely with Libra. We took trips into the city sometimes, but doesn’t everyone? I need to know how far it went and what they learned from my parents. I need to know how Snow ended up where she is.” She needed to save Snow. “We need to go back there.” Marjorie dug her fingers into her overalls again, squeezing the fabric. “We need to go back to the old estate and the Silver Orchard. I need to know what Libra’s done with all those trees and all their research. I need to know what they did to Snow.”“There now.” Diana hissed softly. “You need to recover first.”“I am tired of recovering. All I do lately is wander and sleep.”“You will need that sleep.” “You and Doc, honestly…” Marjorie was about to raise another argument when she heard the sounds of footsteps and hooves, moving a little too slowly for a triumphant return. Oh dear.She turned around and stood up to see Florian looking a little too cheerful and upbeat for it to be convincing, her companions clearly struggling to share her false enthusiasm. Ezra, in particular, looked shaken and hid behind his overgrown bangs.“Come now,” Florian said with a hint of desperation in her voice, “it’s just a big flash! They’re showing off. For all we know that was all a planned operation to make Libra look better, and we still managed to disrupt it! We don’t know if it’s even a usable weapon…”“Oh dear.” Marjorie nudged Diana. “I hope you have been saving your appetite for troubles.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

You are Princess Philomene Marl Thumbelina of the Kingdom of Thumbelina. You are a magicological researcher and scientist. You believe in gathering information and testing hypotheses as a way to solve problems. You want to…
Hand shaking, Philomene crossed out the last bit. It was too abstract for what needed to be a simple information sheet.
Objectives:

Ezra and Marjorie are here. Find them. Save them.

Basil is missing. Empire has him. Make contact with him.

Look after Little Red.

Gather information.

DO NOT FORGET.
The ink blotted as she dotted the T. Philomene’s handwriting lacked elegance at its best, and now it was a barely legible sea of swirls and spots of ink. Just as well; anyone who found it would think she was writing in code, but Philomene could always read her own handwriting. She was more than used to writing while being held or carried in pockets, propping a button in her lap to use as a makeshift writing desk as she did now in her pouch. She just couldn’t get her hands to stay still. The vision played itself over and over in her head. The wall of Monochrome opening eyes and firing off beams of prismatic light so bright she could still see their echoes when she blinked. The dragon, quite possibly an Other One, vanishing in the midst. Did that seal it? If it was Despair as they’d guessed, maybe defiance was its opposite. But none of them were ever defeated so easily. And if the Blue had to be sealed on the Moon last time to keep it contained…But that beam, that wall, that show of power. Of course Libra withheld their troops and just made a show of it. They had it handled the whole time. Had they planted something to lure a creature there in order to prove they could destroy it? Was the Blue in league with them? The longer she thought about it the more nightmarish scenarios she came up with, images of how far the Empress’s reach went. And why the bit with the hero? What was that about?Philomene took a deep breath to steady her heartbeat, rolling the information sheet thin as a twig and slipping it into one of the pockets of her gown. Aphorism of the Autumn Dormouse: Prepare for a blizzard but do not dream of one. “Philomene?” Red’s voice sent vibrations through the pouch the girl wore around her neck. “You can come out now, I think. We’re here.”Philomene propped herself up to peek out of the pouch, taking care not to aggrevate her already sore back. She couldn’t see much besides the towering forms of other humans, all of them jammed so close together it made her think of a forest choking itself out with its own trees. Even to Philomene, born and raised in a cavern city and most comfortable in small places, it felt a little claustrophobic. She was used to being carried by tall Marjorie or even Ezra, the latter like riding a very polite mountain. But while Red was awfully large for a wolf pup, as a human she was just a little girl. A little girl moving through a huge crowd that flowed like a muddy river, Philomene reminded herself. “Red? You did very well there.” She’d instructed the girl to slip in with everyone else and go unnoticed. “Did they question you at the gates?”Red shook her head. “They just welcomed us. Said something about us being fortunate to see the beginnings of a great story.” She held out her hands to pick up Philomene and frowned as she held the princess in front of her. “Do you think Basil is alright?” Philomene gave her hand a gentle pat. To be reassuring or honest? “They called him a hero, didn’t they? I think that means they’ll at least treat him well. But he’s in a dangerous situation, so we need to find him as soon as we can.” Philomene sighed. “I didn’t want us further separated, but I understand why he thought he had to act.” “He’s scared. I could smell fear off of him.” Red blinked back tears that welled up in the corners of her garnet-colored eyes. “Oh! Oh, don’t cry, Little Red, it’ll be alright! Basil is very strong, you know, not just physically. He has a hopeful streak as wide as...well, as wide as he is right now.” Philomene objectively knew there were things bigger than Skykin, but it was always hard to compare them to anything larger than themselves. “Is this crowd stressful for you?”Wordlessly, Red nodded as a tear ran down her cheek.“Then we’ll disappear out of it as fast as we went in. We can find a cafe or a shop, okay? Even just a general store will do.” For her own part, Philomene was hoping to be able to talk without having to shout over the booming voices of so many humans in one place. The smell was a bit much, too.Red sniffed, and then slipped Philomene back into the pouch. “I know where to go.” A sudden jolt threw Philomene to the bottom of the bag, face up with her button-desk on her face. She shoved it away and made a note to remind Red about gentle carrier movements as she felt herself shifting back and forth. Moving through such a dense crowd couldn’t be easy, but surely there had to be a way to go about it that wouldn’t leave Philomene glad she hadn’t eaten yet. In the scattered jumble that was her current workspace she saw a glimpse of the broken communication jewel, once again flickering off and on again. It’d been doing that since their encounter in the Blue passage, though she hadn’t had time to tamper with it yet. Maybe something about the Blue’s magical energies affected it? Lord Germain had been experimenting with Moonflowers, hadn’t he? With her contacts and allies falling away from her one by one, finding her Rem again would be a blessing. If it was safe to contact them here.Then again, Monochrome seemed to care very little who came through their gates if what Red said was any indication. Either they had a system for monitoring magical transmissions foolproof enough that they didn’t need to waste time searching visitors, or they had nothing to fear from them. She didn’t like either answer.She just missed Rem. She missed everyone. They weren’t meant to be scattered like this. At least Rem was likely safe from Monochrome’s apparent mind-altering influence, which was more than she could say for the rest of them. She included herself. Her ‘ride’ came to a halt as she heard Red’s voice. “You can come out now.”“I think I need a little help.”Red pried the pouch open with her fingers and wrapped them around Philomene, gently lifting her back up and into her lap. Philomene took the chance to rest until the lightheadedness passed and gently sat up. “Red. Why are we on the roof?”Red tilted her head and looked down. “It’s out of the way.”Out of the way, though perhaps not entirely legal. Red was sitting cross-legged on the white, flat roof of a building, one of many lined up like well-organized blocks. Philomene hated how satisfying it was to look at them, even their alternating heights looking like a well-built fence. Window boxes held red roses and white blossoms that looked like eyeshadow for the faces of the buildings, a sea of which extended as far out as Philomene could look. They were out near the edges of the city by the inside of the wall, and she couldn’t even see the center where she was sure the so-called Palace of Clarity sat. Did Monochrome look that big on the outside? It was hard to tell from her perspective.And then there was that dome. The sky pulsed with threads of light running through it, hypnotic and beautiful like a web. (A spider’s web? The web of the weaver in her dream?) This was a city of marvels, marvels in the wrong hands. Red interrupted her thoughts by offering her a slightly too big piece of cake. “I’m good at moving around crowds,” she said, a hint of pride in her voice as she held up the rest of the strawberry muffin. So it was pickpocketed. Philomene, currently a spy from another kingdom in Libra on a secret mission, knew better than to scold Red for that sort of thing, especially since she was starting to notice how long it’d been since her last decent meal.“You’ve done well, Red. Thank you,” she said as she swallowed down a mouthful, royal decorum out the window. She frowned, straining to see over the edge of the rooftop. “What’s going on down there anyway? What’s all that chanting?”Red looked down at Philomene and fidgeted. “I-I don’t want to drop you.” “Oh, no, I don’t mean to hold me over the edge! I wouldn’t be able to make out more than broad shapes anyway. It’s so far away for me. Besides, I think I can see a little. Banners, and...singing. They’re singing about a hero?” “Basil! They’re singing about Basil.” Red paused. “They don’t know his name but I heard them say things about a dragonslayer.”“But didn’t the city’s weapon systems ‘slay’ the dragon? And how fast do bards compose songs anyway?” This was looking fishier and fishier, save for the fact that they couldn’t possibly have anticipated Basil being there even if the monster itself was a setup. They were interrupted by a voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once, the lines in the sky pulsing along with it. It was the current Empress’s voice, as practiced and smooth as ever. “Good citizens of Monochrome, children of Libra and pilgrims who have come to find your happy ending, welcome. You cross the threshold of our proud city on a fortuitous day. A hero has arrived, an awaited one who raised his sword to defend the empire of eternal peace.” Philomene scowled. Of course she would exploit this situation and make it about Libra. She wondered how Basil felt about being used as a symbol by the empire that captured his boyfriend, if he even knew about it yet.
“You have come here to find yourselves and your roles in the world, and some of you will follow in his footsteps and serve as our heroes. Others shall find their destinies among the saved, those who serve to motivate the heroic into action. Perhaps one among you even has the soul of a princess.”
The terms ‘saved’ and ‘princess’ so close together left Philomene with a sour taste in her mouth. “I will NOT be captured AGAIN,” she huffed to no one in particular. “There is nothing more irritating and I have work to do.” But what did it mean to have the soul of a princess?
“Know this, that our Hero of Eternity shall lead us into a new age where we shall reach to the glittering deserts and deltas of the south, the snowy peaks of the north, and upwards into the very heavens themselves and bring all into our great story. Throughout it I shall serve you, my people, as the Empress Valerian who shall forever weave the web of fate towards our one, true Happy Ending.”
Cheers erupted from the crowd below, loud enough even from a distance that Philomene dropped her breakfast into her lap and covered her ears to drown it out. Of course they were able to enter Monochrome without trouble. The Empire wanted them there. It was like asking a pitcher plant why it let flies into its wells. Red held up Philomene. “What does she mean by ‘happy ending?’”“I really don’t know. I think it’s like in bedtime stories, but…”“Bedtime stories?”“...Lord Germain never read you any bedtime stories, did he?”Red shook her head. “Well!” Philomene patted her palm again. “Rest assured, I may not know where we’re going to stay tonight but I will tell you a bedtime story before you sleep. It may not be any good. Actually, storytelling really isn’t my specialty, but I will do my best. Perhaps I can tell you about the theory of plate tectonics? That’s a really interesting story that starts with the formation of the planet itself, and we don’t know if it’s true yet, so it’s a story!” This triggered a little pause from Red and then a faint smile. “Thanks. Basil sometimes sang to me before we slept.” The poor girl really had latched onto Basil just long enough to lose him. Philomene would have to do her best in his stead. At least she had a lot of experience being an older sister. “But the thing about a happy ending is that it’s what you get when the story is over.” That was what worried Philomene the most about the Empress’s speech, even more than the very strong hints that Libra wanted to spread further into the mountain kingdoms and the Fire Opal Empire. (And the heavens, what was that about? How would they even reach the Clouds?) A happy ending suggested that there was an endgame in mind, and empires had no endgame. They expanded and lasted forever. Right?“At any rate, I think I have a few pieces of Imperial coin in my pouch from Nautilus, but we may have to wash dishes at an inn the first night. Getting separated from that cat’s entourage really is rotten luck, isn’t it? If we were part of her guard they’d probably have to find us accomodations. You’ll forgive me, Red, but usually it’s Marjorie handling these sorts of things. Red?” “There’s a goat.”Philomene blinked. “Pardon?”But no, there was indeed a rather small goat standing next to Red on the roof, though Philomene hadn’t heard a single hoofbeat. It looked at the girl and bleated a greeting.“You looking for work, roof climber?”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Basil woke feeling as if he’d dreamed but couldn’t remember a thing about the dream itself. He was wrapped in blankets and resting on a soft pillow, his body heavy as if a great, warm weight was upon it.As his vision cleared he realized he was staring at a black nose. There really was a weight upon his body, and she was watching him intently.“Ah, Aurora!” He tried to laugh, though it got caught in a wheezing cough. “I-I am warm, honest. You don’t have to sit on me. Down, please…” The bear uttered a stubborn grunt, then licked his forehead with a slobbery tongue, triggering another hoarse laugh from the prince.“Honestly, I’m fine! I am perfectly fine, dear girl. I am sorry if I worried you. I’m safe.” He gave her a nudge that finally seemed to get the point across as Aurora ambled off the sizable bed and plopped herself next to it with another firm grunt. Perhaps since he was a little too big for a standard bear hug to have the same effect, Aurora had adapted. Basil did feel the sense of a cold sweat breaking. Had he been ill?“I’m safe,” he repeated, sitting up. “Safe from...from what?” When had he even fallen asleep? He tried to backtrack. There had been a dragon, no. A not-dragon, the Blue, and Basil had rushed in to help fight it because he thought he knew how. Then things started getting blurry, flashes of a humanoid shadow in deep water, a searing light like the sun itself. He touched his neck, just above where he’d wrapped Red’s cloak like a scarf, and winced at bruises Red’s cloak! Where was Red? Had she and Philomene managed to follow him in? There was no crouched dog by the bed and no signs of a tiny princess. He slumped and sighed. “You haven’t seen them, have you, girl?” Not that Aurora would be able to read his mind, but he had to talk to someone. As he reached over to rub the space between Aurora’s ears, as much for his own comfort as hers, he finally started examining his surroundings. Considering how important that was for survival, he was surprised he hadn’t done it sooner. It was as if the room he was in blended in, a round white bed with white cloaks stained by bear fur and footprints in the center of a round white-walled room with three doors positioned like the 12, 4 and 8 of a clock face. He’d been brought into this uncomfortably clean chamber in his ragged furs and torn cloak, boots and all. It left him with the sense that he was the outlier. He had a desperate desire to take a hot bath. One of the doors opened on its own and a human in a black, buttoned-down uniform entered, steps well-practiced and even, not even blinking at the sight of a bedraggled giant and a bear. The servant carried a tray with a large pitcher of water that to Basil would be more like a single glass, and Basil remembered how dry his throat was. Maybe that’s where the pain came from, not the bruises.“You should drink this,” the servant said, holding up the tray. “Slowly. You were dehydrated and needed intravenous fluids.” “Intra...what? Oh, I mean of course! Thank you, sir!” No wonder his voice sounded so hoarse. Basil still wasn’t used to this body and how much it needed to sustain itself. Just because he was bigger and stronger didn’t mean he was invulnerable. Had he collapsed due to dehydration? How mortifying. He didn’t have Ezra around to nudge him and make sure he was taking care of himself. He had to keep himself from gulping the entire glass down, knowing that if he drank too fast he’d vomit. As he emptied it clarity started to return to him, though he still couldn’t recall the last few moments of the battle with the Blue. Had he been taken prisoner? If so, this was a very strange and luxurious prison with its quilts soft and light as silk.As he replaced the glass, the servant looked up at Basil. “We tried to change your clothes but your companion would not let us near you.” Aurora grunted, and Basil chuckled. “Ah, well, if I was unwell she’d refuse to leave my side. She’s trained for it, right? Brave girl, good girl.”The servant didn’t react to that either, or the way Aurora flashed her fangs at him. “That said.” Basil sniffed himself and frowned. “Is it possible to request a change of clothing and a bath? A very hot bath, please, and very warm clothing. I know it’s summer, but it is…for modesty’s sake.” The servant bowed. “It will be ready in the next room momentarily. The door will open automatically for you.”Basil blinked. “It...well! Um, thank you? That’s very efficient.” He often felt a little guilty about his requests for near-scalding baths. Come to think of it, how did he know he could make requests of this person? If he was in prison, he wouldn’t have an attendant. Maybe this was some kind of Libran hospital. “And something to eat, please,” he added as his stomach protested and reminded him of how little food he’d had recently.“You will dine with the Her Eternity and her Riders later today after your bath,” the servant said with another bow, “but I can bring some refreshments in the meantime. Will you request assistance with your bath, Hero of Eternity?” “No!” Basil flushed. “I mean, no thank you. I prefer privacy...wait. Wait, what was that you said just now? Hero of what? Dine with who?” But the servant had already turned to leave without answering, as graceful as if he were on wheels.The bath was just the right size for Basil’s current shape, lined with enamel, and just as hot as he was hoping it’d be. Steam filled the room, which was another circular, white enclosure. He imagined rooms connected to one another like beads. He felt like he had to, as when the door was closed this enormous bathroom felt just as disconnected from anything as the bedroom had. A plate of chopped fruit and vegetables had lasted exactly as long as it took for the steam to warm them, and they hadn’t done much to curb his hunger. His first real meal would be dinner with the Empress and the Riders? The Empress? “What is going on?” He sighed as he immersed himself up to his shoulders in the water, scrubbing away with the towels resting on the edge of the bath. “Hero of Eternity…?”“That’s what they were calling you.” Startled by the sound of another voice, Basil plunged under the water and emerged just high enough to speak, his hair dripping in his face. “I said I needed privacy!” “Please, as if a cat has ever respected a request.” Muffet emerged from the mist, padding along the edge of the bath and swishing her tail. “I wanted to check in on my bodyguard. You’ve made quite a name for yourself already, haven’t you?”“Miss Muffet?” Basil waved some of the mist away so he could see the fluffy cat better. “Oh, Miss Muffet! I, um, I fear I have been remiss in my duties to you, my lady. Running off to fight a dragon when I was charged to protect you was…”“Brrrrilliant.”“Brrrrilliant, yes, and I hope you will let me make amends to you by. Um. What? Brilliant?”“A warrior representing me has been named a hero by the city I wish to contact. You have an audience with the Empress soon, and so shall I.” She purred softly. “And here I thought I might have waited weeks.”Basil blinked. “How long does it usually take to get an audience with the Empress?” His father held court regularly to meet with village elders, clan leaders and representatives, but Sethwhile was a very small kingdom. “Longer than a day, which is how long you have been asleep.”“A day!” Basil slumped against the side of the bath again with a groan. “If Philomene knew where I was she would have tried to contact us by now. And I still have Red’s cloak. And no sign of Marjorie or Ezra. I wasted a whole day sleeping?”“Healing. You weren’t well.”“Wasted it healing, then.”“I think you are looking at things from the wrong perspective. Naturrrrally, since you’re tired and hungry.” Muffet rested on a folded dry towel and looked back at Basil with large, slitted eyes. “Where do you think you are?” “I thought it was a hospital of some kind, but then the servant mentioned a royal dinner.” He felt blood drain from his cheeks. “This isn’t the palace? Their palace…?”“We are in one of the outer chambers of the Palace of Clarity, yes.” “But it’s...it’s so…” A palace, to Basil, meant the stone walls, tapestries and ceremonial armors filling his ancestral home, filled with the smell of roasting meat and crackling hearthfires. Or it brought to mind the Vacant Palace with its glittering red-sugar splendors. This place was so sterile, so white as to disappear in the mind’s eye. And it was so quiet. He shook his head. “Never mind. They called me a hero.”“Because you are. You helped slay the dragon.”“It wasn’t a dragon. But I-I did, didn’t I?” A little bit of something warm swelled in Basil’s chest, starting to drown out the sharp pains that were becoming so regular to him he’d almost stopped noticing them. “The Hero of Eternity, beloved of Libra!” Of Libra, who had kidnapped his dear friend and boyfriend, who were by all accounts brainwashing their own citizens and those of Nautilus, who were allies of his family’s kingdom but his own personal enemies.“Is something wrong, Bodyguard? You look a little nauseous.”“It’s just hunger,” he lied as he lowered himself back into the water. “I love the idea of being a hero, but that isn’t why I came here.”“Of course not. You are here to find someone. You and that tiny princess, you cannot keep a single secret.” Basil froze. “You won’t...tell? Please?”“Of course I will not.” She flicked her tail. “If you continue to serve as my hero. You are in the heart of the city now, and perhaps that will give you the best place to search for your lost beloved or whomever it is you want. I will keep using my glamour magic to make sure they do not notice, for instance, how you shiver so often, since a curse like that seems very distinctive.”“Thank you, my lady. I did make a vow, so I would honor it no matter what. Prince Charming does not break vows.”“We are speaking of this Hero of Eternity! What does Prince Charming have to do with it?” Basil wanted to protest, but he didn’t have the strength to argue. Besides, he couldn’t help that heady rush when he heard the phrase ‘Hero of Eternity.’ He didn’t know what it meant, but to think about what he might already be instead of what he would constantly strive to be had an appeal. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” Muffet continued. “And your bodyguard closest of all. You protect me and I will protect you. You serve me and I will not care who else you serve. Of course, when it comes to navigating this court I have no experience, so you are on your own.”‘On your own.’ There was something chilling about that, the memory of how he’d trusted Alphonse enough to feud with Marjorie over it only for her to be proven right. What would Marjorie say about Muffet, or this whole hero thing? She wouldn’t trust it one bit. But she’d also play along, wouldn’t she? She’d find a way to turn it to her advantage.And surely there had to be a way to bring adoration to his advantage. He’d just figure this out on his own long enough to locate the others and save them, all while gathering knowledge on just what Libra was up to. Muffet was right. If anyone was in a place to learn more about the Ever After Empire, it was him.Maybe this was why Ezra gave Basil his size. The room and bath certainly suggested Libra expected the Hero of Eternity to be a Skykin, and Ezra’s spells seemed to have a mind of their own.“All I have to do is avoid looking into mirrors.”“What was that?”“Nothing, Miss Muffet! Just thinking aloud.” He mulled over the phrase ‘Hero of Eternity.’Hero.“I’m coming for you soon, Ezra, Marjorie. The hero has arrived.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Ezra appreciated the hospitality (so to speak) of Shoemaker Hospital. Doc let him choose a mostly-intact room in the building to sleep in, and he was allowed access to a corner stove and stray pots and pans to use as a makeshift kitchen. He and Marjorie were invited to the evening group meal held by the Masqueraders, and he felt a little guilty declining, especially when Florian gave him a basket of vegetables, flour and butter from the community stocks.But he needed to talk quietly with Marjorie, with as much privacy as a Flowerling-staffed infirmary allowed, and he needed to cook. “These might be a little bland,” he warned as he rolled mashed potato dough into balls. “Gnocchi isn’t one of my specialties. And I’m trying not to put any magic in it. You don’t need my worries.”“Please.” Marjorie was sitting up on the bed again at Doc’s orders. “You fill everything you make with that big heart of yours and it just makes it more delicious.”“Those donuts I made got a monster drunk,” Ezra pointed out.“Alright, almost everything. Just stop preemptively apologizing! You do good work and you should be proud of it. And I know you’ve been itching to get behind a stove again,” Marjorie added with a little handwave.Ezra felt his cheeks flush. “Maybe so. Fine, I’ll indulge in pride. Once this is done I’ll make a huge, self-indulgent, gaudy monster of a cake with three different flavored tiers and whipped cream, garnished with sugared flowers. And anyone who wants some can have it as long as they compliment me first.” “What you’re describing sounds a bit like a Nautilan wedding cake.”Ezra nearly dropped the last gnocchi dumpling and gave a laughing Marjorie a flustered scowl. “What does that mean?”“Come now,” Marjorie said through chuckles, “we all know you intend to make your own wedding cake.”“First of all,” Ezra counted off on his fingers, “my wedding cake would never be gaudy. Second, I am not Nautilan, I am Miellian and plan on the traditional spiced honey cake with marzipan. Third, I don’t even know what traditions Basil’s kingdom uses and I don’t want to step all over those, do I? And fourth, we’ve not even known each other for a year and a proper wedding contract takes…” He realized all he’d blurted and coughed in an attempt to regain his dignity.Marjorie rested her chin on her hands. “You are adorable.”“Marjorie, please.” Ezra made a show of returning to the potato dumplings as he dropped them in the pot of boiling water. He’d serve the gnocchi with onions cooked in hot fat. It was old-fashioned, simple Miellian cooking, the sort he used to look down his nose at even while toiling over Tooth’s dreadfully oversweetened pies. It felt so good to be back in a kitchen of sorts, in front of a stove, doing something familiar. He squinted and wiped tears away from his eyes with his forearm before turning around to face Marjorie. Smiling never came naturally to him, but she deserved a smile.“Thank you for taking my mind off things with that. Though I’m not sure if being ‘adorable’ is better or worse than being big and intimidating.”“Ezra, I regret to inform you that you intimidated me for exactly 13 seconds when we first met. Your attempt to loom comes across as more disapproving than hulking, like you are judging the cleanliness of dusty furniture. It’s a good thing,” she added when she saw his joking offended scowl. “Trying to intimidate exhausts me,” he admitted as he chopped onions, wrinkling his noise at the acrid scent. “I’ve known what it’s like to be on the other side of that since childhood. Besides, a Skykin being larger than a human isn’t anything to applaud. Being big isn’t something you do.” He sighed. “But I do miss it. If I were my usual size, I might be a little more help around here.”“Against Libra? It’d be a drop in the bucket.” Marjorie stopped to take a cup of something herbal-smelling proffered to her via pulley. Ezra wondered how safe it was to discuss things as if they were alone when in fact they were surrounded by a very efficient, focused team of Flower Folk, but Doc had been so kind. The awkward pause lingered after Marjorie took what Ezra assumed was some kind of medicine, before both spoke at the same time. “So what happened?”“You’re not grilling me for information in your own flowery, indirect way,” Ezra pointed out, “and you’re deflecting attention away from yourself by getting me to talk about myself.” “You’re stress-cooking,” Marjorie said, “and the pot is boiling over.”“What?!” Ezra spun around to lift the pot of water off of the heat before any of the gnocchi fell out, letting the boil settle to a simmer and reducing the strength of the gas flame. He sighed in relief. “If I go first, will you promise to be honest when it’s your turn?” His human friend chewed her lip and finally gave a relenting little nod. “But try not to worry, will you?” “You know that isn’t possible for me.” Wiping his hands off on a towel in lieu of a proper apron, he scraped the onions into a pan sizzling with hot butter. Cooking them helped give him a focus as he spoke.“You probably noticed we looked a little demoralized when we returned. It isn’t as if we made no difference against that creature. I’m pretty sure we might have helped save the life of whoever that was fighting it. But it was Libra that saved itself, with some kind of weapon I’ve never seen before. It was like the light of the Sun Herself distilled and focused, too bright and brilliant to look upon. We were all blinded for a second after. And it only hit the dragon, nothing else, which means whatever that was, they know how to use it.”“When I saw that, this monstrous city using an equally monstrous power in its own defense, I couldn’t help but feel miniscule in comparison. What could any of us do against a country with that kind of power? An Empire? The Sky Islands are miracles of old relic engineering even we don’t fully understand yet, with artificers spending their entire lives trying to unravel their secrets. Vox is a massive forest of Cathedral Trees that stays aloft above an ocean even in the strongest hurricanes. Their plants feed us and their solid cloud matter purifies our water. We think of the Sky as paradise not only because it’s our home, but because of its wonders.” He looked over his shoulder at Marjorie, eyes wide. “And we have nothing like that.”Marjorie was silent in response, waiting for Ezra to go on.“But I’m used to finding wonders on the Center of the Universe, right? The Sky is myopic and turns inwards and ignores the beauty of the land at its own peril. I figured that out a long time ago. I say some prayers, take a deep breath and soldier on. It scares me because it’s normal to be frightened of such things. Except…”He peered at the darkened windows, covered with cloth, the insular world of the hospital where the swirling skies of Polychrome could be seen peeking through holes in the fabric, day or night.“When I got back into Polychrome, it was like a pendulum swinging in the other direction. As I listened to Florian cheering us on, my worries slipped away and I found myself excited to have such an opponent. Thrilled, even! We were going up against an impossible power and that made my blood run hot. Until I ducked back into here to check in on Doc and remembered how strange that is for me.” Marjorie tilted her head. “Courage in the face of danger isn’t a bad thing, darling. Isn’t that what you admire Basil for?”“That and a thousand other things, yes. But I am not him. This is not me. I feel intoxicated when I go back out there, that same sort of dreamy heady feeling I got when I watched Nightingale’s concert and drank too much ambrosia. It’s weaker in here, but I still feel it, this rush and detachment. I know I’m not as scared or tired as I ought to be and I do not trust that, Marjorie! Drunkenness always leads to a hangover later on, you know? And this place where you can barely tell day from night, where I feel like I could get drunk on the sky itself if I looked at it too long, it’s…it’s all very strange, that’s all.” He wrapped his arms around his chest. “I nearly lost myself once in the Vacant Palace. I don’t want to do it again, not when I need to be here for the rest of you.” “You need to be here for yourself,” Marjorie reminded him. “But this is, well, concerning. Magic can obviously manipulate emotional states. Truthfully, I have not felt myself these past few days either.”In a way, Ezra had hoped she would reassure him that he was just in a strange state because anyone would be after what they’d been through. But Marjorie was the closest he had to a magical expert at his side, without Philomene. “You mean physically, or…?”“In every way. You know what, Ezra? I’m famished. I had breakfast with extra helpings for the first time in forever this morning and found myself hungry for snacks. When you offered to cook I could have positively hugged you. I usually don’t have much of an appetite, though I suspect it’s because of that parasite curse. And for all I need to sleep lately I’m full of energy when I’m awake, like I could climb a Cathedral Tree and reach the top.” “Do you think it’s the Mirror shard?”“Perhaps. I do feel like it’s doing something to me, even if it’s just repairing all the damage the Golden Apple did for the sake of its own survival.” She flexed the fingers of her previously wounded hand. “Something is happening and even the physicians here don’t seem to know what it is. If Philomene could see me she might be thrilled at my recovery, but it’s all so sudden. And you know what else?” She leaned back on her palms. “I am tired of lying. Sick and tired of it. But what am I if I’m not a liar? A jester is a storyteller, and stories are full of lies. A bodyguard has to lie to protect her lady. Not saying I have no other talents, but most of them are attached to deceit.” Ezra stirred the onions as they turned translucent and ladled them onto a bowl, spooning out the cooked gnocchi and mixing them in before he handed the bowl and a spoon to Marjorie. “I imagine lying all the time can’t be good for you.”“Neither can worrying,” she countered before shoving the hot dumplings in her mouth. She really was hungry. He methodically served out a portion for himself before putting a cover on the pan and taking it off the heat. He’d offer the leftovers to the hospital staff, as one dumpling was probably a hearty meal for a Flowerling. From there he climbed up onto the bed next to Marjorie and sat with his legs dangling as he ate, much slower than she. “That isn’t all that happened, is it?” Marjorie was silent after swallowing a mouthful. “No. And I will tell you more, I promise, when I can think about it again.”“Of course,” Ezra said. “I can’t help but notice that we’re worried because I’m happy and engaged with the world, and you’re healthy and recovering.” “I thought that too. Says something about us, does it?”“But!” Ezra held up a finger. “It’s new and I’d argue that makes it frightening. Especially if Polychrome is doing this to us.”“What, healing us?”He hadn’t thought of it that way. “Well, Doc tells his patients what he’s doing before he does it, you know? There’s something a little off about Polychrome’s healing, that’s all.” He ate down another spoonful and frowned. It needed more salt next time, and it didn’t taste quite right cooked in butter instead of oil. “But I do feel like the Masquerade are good people. I don’t think Florian’s brainwashing us or anything, or that Nightingale is trying to control us. It’s something else. And maybe we should try to escape it, logically, but…”“...Maybe we need to heal.” “Yes. Whatever this is, maybe we need it? And our loved ones need us to heal too. Like you said, it’d warm Philo’s heart to see you taking care of yourself.”“And Basil would swoon over that bravado.” Marjorie ruffled a blushing Ezra’s hair. “And find your drunken self just precious.” “That is not happening again,” Ezra snorted. “But I noticed the effect is weaker here. Maybe that’s why Doc and the others keep to themselves here, but still help the Masqueraders. I’ll have to ask him more about it when he’s not busy with his students. So we need to remember we have this, before we change too much. It’s an anchor.” Marjorie had finished her plate, scraped down to the last bit of onion, and stood up to wash it in the basin. “There’s one more thing.”“Yes?” “There’s...somewhere I want to go, and I would like you to come with me. It’s going to be dangerous and unpleasant, and-”He set a hand on her arm. “I’m in already, you know that.”She gave him a gentle smile that could have melted ice. “Of course I know that. And yes, I’m going to get a proper sleep first, goodness knows I’ve needed enough of that lately.” She wrung her hands as she set down the cleaned plate. “It’s my old family’s estate.” As she said those words, Ezra tried to imagine returning to that stifling hot kitchen where his old master listened to harp music down the hall, praying that the music would lull Tooth to sleep so he could escape another beating. “You said you needed extra helpings, right? I’ll clean one of the pots and fix us up some custard. Best I learn how to properly crack eggs at this size anyway.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Despite its sleek, glassy design, the elevator was still a work in progress. It was a new model, a replacement for the one that was too small to lift the likes of Bright Morning and her kin, and due to balance issues it still wobbled here and there. She had faith in the Empire’s engineering work, but it wouldn’t do for her passenger. So, for Scarlet Sun’s sake, the two of them descended down the stairs, he on her shoulder.“What do you think the chef will prepare? I suppose with one of you big folk as the guest, it’d be a folly to expect roast stag beetle.” Scarlet Sun’s playful voice rang in her ear. “Ah, that’s fall food anyway. Listen to me, getting nostalgic lately.”“Well, we had expected a Nautilan landborn boy,” Bright noted, hoping the point did not sail over Scarlet’s tiny head. “Just as well, river seafood can’t compete with ocean fish.”“And where is our actual hero from, you think? You’d know better than I, Bright.”The mirrors lining the nigh-endless, curving staircase reflected one another, displaying Bright in her gold and white gown a thousand times over. “I don’t recognize that style of clothing. But there are some Islands that keep to themselves as often as possible, even in their interaction with other Skykin. We only see what they trade, and they do it all through the Merchants.”She drifted off, both letting the clip-clopping sound of her footsteps on white stone fill the silence. Those dreadful pointed formal shoes. She would take the hole-torn boots drenched in Martine marsh mud anyday. “Truly, Bright, are you mad at me?”She blinked. Unable to turn to someone on her own shoulder, she looked at him through one of the mirrors where he appeared as a bright red, humanoid glint, like a large ruby. “What would I be angry with you for? Our duties are not about personal feelings. I did my part, and you did yours.” “Yes, but my actions could be seen as undermining yours. And I want to make clear I’d never do that.” She gave him another glance. “Of course not. We do not compete.” She sighed. “You won’t rest until I’ve said something about it, I suppose?”“It will eat at my stomach so that I won’t be able to enjoy a meal with Her Imperial Eternity.” Scarlet mock-fainted backwards, hand over his forehead. “I will wither away into nothing and it shall be your fault.” Leave it to him to take full advantage of his freedom of movement for the sake of faux dramatics while she was doing her best to stay level for his sake. All she could do in response was a roll of the eyes, since a shrug might knock him over. “As I said, I did my part. I presented a candidate, and another one appeared from the ether. All threads have their role in the tapestry, even if that role is to be snipped away. A new thread presented itself to us and you were fated to choose him.”“Fate? You’re talking about fate as if it’s something outside of our control, Bright.”“It still is for now.” She tucked a lock of hair behind an ear, the scar on the earlobe clashing with the elegant pearl-cluster earrings. “If your intention was to undermine me, that would go against our ideals as Riders. No matter how hard we worked to get into this position, regardless of the tactics used, we discarded them the moment we took the vows and chose our names. We three are equal in the Empress’s eyes and nothing else matters, because jealousy would be a distraction from our goal.” She raised an eyebrow. Scarlet stood back up and smoothed out his cape, which Bright took to mean he got her point. She would say nothing more on her personal feelings, because they did not matter. It was to be taken as nothing more than fate, and possibly a warning that Scarlet might still be addicted to the game of one-upmanship he played in the courts of his former Colony. “As for the boy,” Scarlet asked, “how is he taking it? Fine with it all?”“Of course not. If he was as accepting of that sort of thing as we are he would be of no use to us. I’ve assigned him to drumming duty to work out his frustration. If he leaves, I lose nothing; another warm body will fill his place. But I doubt he will.” “Got guts, has he?”“He has spite, and jealousy. Those I can work with. Those are motivators, Scarlet.” She knew them well. “Just because he isn’t to be our dragonslayer hero doesn’t mean he has no role to play in the tapestry. I just need to suss it out.” “Work with, she says, like people are made of clay.” Scarlet kicked his legs idly. “Suppose you’re looking at this mysterious new hero we have and picturing a lump for the pottery wheel?”“That’s a crude way of putting it. People need to be forged into their ideal selves. Crafted. Otherwise they’re just flesh wandering through life. Plants are to be cultivated, wood is to be carved and clay is to be molded. You just need a pair of hands.” Always one to talk with her hands, she held them up in front of her and then frowned, turning them over. “Can you believe Penni wanted to polish my nails? Nail polish and calloused palms? As if such a petty detail would impress Her Imperial Eternity.”Kick, kick, went Scarlet’s legs, as if he were sitting on the edge of a pier and not a shoulder many times his own size. “I recall a few idle threats if I frayed any threads on this gown.”“Because it’s expensive.” She adjusted the straps on the shoulder not carrying a passenger. “That boy had a bad reaction to the Warrior’s Blessing. At the very least test your concoctions better next time.”“You speak as if I invented Warrior’s Blessing,” Scarlet huffed. “Was he ill?”“Weak, dehydrated and disoriented. He slept for some time, muttering about Prince Charming.” Which meant Bright would have to find a copy of the Edicts of Prince Charming if she was going to be working with this foundling. “And we’re having dinner with him on the same day he wakes?” Scarlet chuckled. “I’d be terrified.”“So we won’t have the chef serve anything heavy on the stomach, that’s all. If he can’t take the pressures of life in the Palace of Clarity, he’ll have to adjust.” Setting her hand on the handrail as she kept descending the staircase that looped around a translucent white pillar, the walls illuminated from behind, she felt a tremor and held on as the mirrors and steps vibrated. The sound of a low, mournful humming filled the chamber for an interminable minute before it fell silent again.Bright scowled. “I thought the artificers took care of that thing…”‘That which vanishes from Monochrome always returns,’ Snow’s tutors reassured her. She had no time to spend hours reviewing all the images from the mirrors in case she spotted her sister, not when Mirror itself was in such a befuddled state. If she wanted to prove herself worthy of the title of Empress, she needed to outshine the other Princess Candidates using her own talents. And Snow could spend hours using her steady hands to make etchings on the surface of Mirror’s core components. It was not a distraction. A pure-hearted maiden did not need distractions. “Is this really because you lost a few shards in one of your periphery components? Are you really so fragile?” She ran a hand just above the surface of the huge, metallic sphere, careful not to mar it with fingerprints. Red, glowing letters appeared on the mirrors lining the walls of the octagonal chamber. LOSING MASS IS IRRELEVANT. PART OF ME IS MISSING.“Missing?” I CANNOT CONTACT IT. I HAVE BEEN FRAGMENTED. THE DEGREE DOES NOT MATTER. I AM FRAGMENTED AND LOSING CONTROL OF PART OF MYSELF AND LOSING CONTROL AND LOSING CONTROL AND LOSING CONTROL AND The text filled the chamber with sickly red light. Snow wiped her scalpel and etched an x into the core component, a wordless order for silence. It was an act of mercy to keep Mirror from trapping itself in a logic loop. The text vanished. Then, THANK YOU. “Are you frightened?” I AM NOT CAPABLE OF FEAR. MY SISTER IS FEAR. But Snow could tell Mirror experienced periods of discomfort, panic, even misery. At times she thought it was just what Mirror deserved for what it used to do, and then she would collect a black teardrop in her crystal, for a pure-hearted maiden had no room for bitterness. That left only the gentle compassion of a caretaker. “You’re like me, aren’t you?” She gazed into the distorted reflection cast by the metal sphere.IN WHAT WAY? I AM VERY UNLIKE HUMANITY. THE MORE LIKE HUMANITY WE BECOME, THE WORSE OFF ALL OF US ARE FOR IT. YOUR KIND INCLUDED.“Exaggeration isn’t like you.” I DO NOT EXAGGERATE. THE OTHERS ARE CONTAMINATED BY CONTACT WITH YOUR WORLD.“Which is why you should be glad you’re safe here.” Snow smiled, taking a cloth to shine the component. She wasn’t sure how else to show Mirror affection in a way it would understand. “What I mean,” she continued, “is that we’ve been left behind while some other part of our lives is off...with others, doing other things. We just want to be complete again. Did I guess right?”There was a moment without response. Then, IT IS NOT A MATTER OF WANTING TO BE COMPLETE. I AM THE LOGICAL COMPONENT OF THE GREATER SELF AND THE OTHERS ARE PURE, UNBRIDLED ID WITHOUT ME. THEY NEED ME. “There, see? You understand me. Marjorie needs me whether she realizes it or not.” She ran a cloth over the little knife stylus, delicate as a quill pen but sharp enough to take off a finger on the careless. “But the Empire needs both of us, Mirror.” THEY DO NOT NEED ME. THEY USE ME. She frowned. “They make use of you. Do you realize how wonderful it is to be of use to another? To know that without you, the system falls apart? That’s what being a Princess Candidate is about. We shine among the gears of the machine, and if we prove worthy we become the heart of it all. Treasured.”AND DISCARDED WHEN YOU DIE. Snow’s hand stilled. It was true that the Empresses never seemed to live to old age, the stress of being the Weaver of the World and the heir to Valerian’s wise heart taking a harsh toll on the human body. Being Empress meant sacrificing one’s own name and identity, vanishing into the role of Valerian Herself. But she would be queen, and more importantly, she wouldn’t be Snow anymore. She would never again be stirred by wishes that couldn’t be granted, wishes she should not have, because she would have Valerian’s wisdom. And she could weave a proper happy ending for Marjorie, who could serve as a great sage or even a Rider. “Everyone dies,” she told Mirror instead. THAT IS AN INTERESTING ATTITUDE FOR ‘HER IMPERIAL ETERNITY.’ “When did you develop a sense of humor?” OBSERVATIONAL HUMOR AND A SENSE OF IRONY ARE NOT OUT OF MY GRASP. OUR SENSE OF HUMOR WAS NOT ONE OF OUR SEPARATE SELVES. “Ah. I suppose Lady Swann didn’t quite understand that, and that’s why you were so doll-like around her? Just giving one-word answers.”There was a very long pause.SHE SAW SUCH BEHAVIOR AS ABBERANT AND IN NEED OF CORRECTION.Snow respectfully dropped the subject with a shudder. Even she, as part of Mirror’s maintenance team, wasn’t sure what ‘correction’ involved except that it often led to mirrors flashing in angry reds and pained yellows, and sometimes the vibration of screams in the Spire. She knew better than to ask about correction for abberant behavior. The mirrors flickered red. SOMETHING IS APPROACHING. “What? Who?”SOMETHING IS APPROACHING SOMETHING IS APPROACHING IT’S HIM WHY IS HE HERE IT IS ONLY A SPARK BUT IT IS HIM WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHYThis time, when Snow silenced Mirror, it didn’t speak again. Could that have been another error? Mirror was prone to them since Marjorie’s escape. The Spire had numerous security systems all tied to Mirror itself. ‘Something’ was far too broad and vague for Mirror’s usual behavior.After passing the message on to her superiors to be on guard just in case, she headed back to her room for the evening, rubbing her sore, reddened wrist. The mirror in her room was darkened, and out of what she supposed was mercy, she draped a curtain over it. There was something on the balcony.It was tiny, shining blue against the dayless, nightless sky of Monochrome, flickering and fading like it was about to go out. Snow opened the balcony doors and let it land in her hands. It was warm, its light dimming as it rested in her palms in the form of a tiny, tiny blue bird.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Just act natural,” Muffet said as she padded in the hall ahead of Basil, tail held aloft.
Basil reminded himself that Prince Charming was never ungrateful and even if ‘just act natural’ was possibly the most meaningless and vague advice anyone could hear in a stressful situation where hiding that stress would, in fact, be unnatural, he would be gracious about it.
He was a little surprised that the Palace not only had accomodations for Sky Folk, something Ezra often had trouble with even in cities, but formal clothing that was only a little loose on him. The servant assured him there would be adjustments later. Then again, one of the Riders was Skykin, wasn’t she? 
He wore a silver cape more for warmth and comfort than appearance, and beneath it a buttoned-down uniform and slacks. He’d tied Red’s cloak into his hair for good luck, and because he needed some color in this oddly gray outfit, surrounded by the stark black and white decoration of the Palace of Clarity. 
He wondered if it would be rude, or too suspicious, to ask for a map. The Palace felt to him like a series of tunnels and interconnected rooms, with no great grand hall to speak of, no openness. He felt a bit like he was in a very fancy anthill that smelled of roses. At least the servant leading them to the dining hall seemed to know the way without looking over her shoulder at the disoriented prince and cat. 
“Would it be easier if I did the talking?” Muffet asked. 
“Mm, we can both speak, I’d think. It would be rude for me to say nothing.” He suspected he’d be a little more coherent after finally having more in his stomach than water and a few light vegetables. What would this banquet be like? The ones his family threw were great, crowded affairs with musicians playing stringed instruments and drums, the smell of roasted meat and charcoal filling the room, and older relatives nudging him to refill his plate. They were chaotic, loud, but full of enough warmth and love to make up for the terrible stomachaches. And there would always be baked apples wrapped in pastry and topped with jam. 
Suddenly aware that his mouth was watering, and a little mortified, he covered his face with his gloved hand as he passed through a great pair of doors bearing an image of hands holding a flame and a crystal. He had to remember why he was here. This was an infiltration of sorts. He could not be dazzled.
Here was finally a room worthy of being called a ‘hall,’ long and narrow with a high ceiling, the walls hung with white curtains and the floor bearing a checkerboard pattern of marble. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling dripping with glass crystals. Servants, all of them in those plain black uniforms and standing unnervingly still, stood at the doors as another led him to his seat. The table itself bore only the plates, glasses, candles and a simple centerpiece of a glass crystal with a dagger through it. He resisted the urge to run a finger over the cracked orb.
They had a peculiar means of seating Skykin, as he had to step down into a well in the floor and sit on a chair rooted much lower into the ground. This put him at the right level so he didn’t have to crouch on the table while keeping it at human height. Or, he thought, maybe it was the Empress keeping others from sitting higher than she. 
Moments passed before doors he didn’t know were there opened in the wall, or perhaps the wall just gave way momentarily. The movement was strange and too fast for him to perceive. One door was huge, one tiny, and one human-scaled. From each in turn came Bright Morning in a white formal gown, the barely discernible but brightly-colored figure of Scarlet Sun, and Dark Midnight, wearing the same cloak he’d worn for the ceremony in Nautilus and face just as hidden as before. Their movements were timed together so that one never had to catch up with the other, even if it took one of Bright’s steps to innumerable ones by tiny Scarlet. There was a rhythm to their walk, with Bright slowly gliding her feet one in front of the other so the others could keep up. 
It was all so practiced. Basil wondered how much time they had to spend just learning ceremony. 
The three were seated, Bright in the same kind of lowered chair Basil himself used and Scarlet on top of the table itself with his legs crossed. The sight of it reminded him of evenings sitting amid Ezra, whose size provided a feeling of safety more than Basil would be willing to admit, and Marjorie holding up Philomene. Everything was in balance with them, despite their scales. The Riders carried the same sense of balance, but it was more restrained, as practiced as the entrance ceremony itself.
Dark Midnight spoke first, with a voice hoarse with age but firm and solid. “Lady Muffet of the Anarchic Kingdom of Cats, Sir Basil the Wanderer, we welcome you.” 
“We dine with you,” Scarlet continued, his voice awfully deep for a Flowerling, “as a sign of friendship and thanks.”
“We offer the contract of Eternity,” said Bright. She stood half a head taller than he, staring straight into his eyes. Only when he glanced around did he catch the sense that all three were making eye contact with him, even Scarlet. 
“You honorrrr us with Eternity,” Muffet said, bowing her head with ears flat. Basil supposed it was a more dignified show of submission for a cat than falling over and showing one’s belly on a dinner table. She gave Basil a meaningful glance, and he quickly bowed his own head and held his hand to his chest as a prince should.
A warrior, he reminded himself, not a prince of the north. A traveling performer-turned-warrior from who-knew-which Island. But warriors chose to emulate Prince Charming as well, didn’t they?
When he looked up again he noticed all were turned to the head of the table, even Muffet. There, at the front, unannounced, sat the Empress in her regal white and black gown, harlequin-like mask and headdress. How could she have appeared so quickly and so quietly while so heavily ornamented? Why had she not sent a herald? 
When Basil had been silently talking himself up for this dinner, he had pointed out that the Empress would be much smaller than he was this time. She would be as fragile-looking and doll-like as most humans did from his current size, and thus less intimidating. He actually wondered if he’d have trouble taking her seriously, which would cause its own problems.
But now, seeing her, she filled the room with her presence in a way even the towering, beautiful Rem did not. He felt outsized in comparison to her, oafish and clumsy. He could not shake the sense that she was the center of that balance he sensed between the Riders, the metaphorical Center of the Universe. In her careful movements, her faint smile visible underneath the half-mask, he remembered everything wrong with himself. 
The ice shard in his chest sent a jolt of pain he had to work to ignore and his fingers tingled with the chill as that same stage fright anxiety that had come over him in Nautilus threatened to take hold. He breathed in and out, slowly. He had a duty to his loved ones and his kingdom. Think of them, he told himself, and endure.
The Empress gave a nod, and it was like a heavy blanket lifted from the table. Servants approached, one with a pitcher of water, another with some kind of rich, dark wine, and a third set a plate of a porridge-like soup in front of Basil. Painfully hungry as he was, he waited for Muffet and the Riders to start eating first before taking a spoonful of the brothy porridge. 
A millet porridge was an odd choice for palace luxury, he thought, but he wouldn’t complain. He loved that kind of food. He had to take care not to wolf it down, because Prince Charming always had the best manners. 
“Well!” Scarlet grinned, leaning forward. “Now that we’ve gotten past the stuffy ceremonial parts, we can really start to enjoy ourselves. You cannot have all formality, it’s bad for the digestion.”
Basil blinked. That was unexpected. 
“The ceremony is important,” Bright said as she gave Scarlet a glance. “But yes, we can speak freely now, and you should feel able to do the same. You said you have a gift for Her Imperial Eternity, Muffet?” 
“A gift for her and only her, yes. I think she will find it quite interresting.” Muffet was lapping her soup up with impeccable manners. “But I am to guess most ambassadors are not honored to this degree, especially when we show up unannounced. This is because of the actions of my bodyguard, yes?”
All eyes turned to Basil, who felt blood rushing to his face. At least the heat helped balance the cold in his fingers and chest. 
“You-you flatter me a bit, My Lady! Really, I just did what anyone would have done in such a situation.” 
“Most people would not have rushed into battle against a beast like that,” Dark Midnight said. He ate very slowly, which Basil attributed to old age. “Indeed, most did not. You were surrounded by visitors, pilgrims and citizens of our good city, and yet only the Exile soldiers of Bright’s guard dared to fight back before you arrived. And they were following orders.” 
So those armored Skykin served under Bright Morning? It would make sense, as he couldn’t imagine the likes of Salten taking orders from human authority so readily. In fact, he couldn’t see Salten taking orders from anyone, which made him wonder what sort of command Bright actually had.
Scarlet waved a hand, drinking deeply from the same wine Basil had politely refused. “Saying you just did what anyone would do is modesty. It’s just part of the role. Don’t be hard on the kid, Midnight.” 
As they spoke, the soup was exchanged with an appetizer of vegetable-filled dumplings. They seemed so tiny and cute, though the taste was lacking. 
“Mmm.” Dark Midnight folded his wrinkled hands on the table. “What you did is not what just anyone could or would do. Most are not fated to be heroes. It is not written in their souls or their blood. They may dream of heroism but will never act on it. To pretend that anyone can be anything is a delusion.”
There was something about Midnight’s hands. At first Basil assumed he was just a dark-skinned human, but the color was off. His skin was a deep, deep blue-purple, and it glinted in the light as if covered in sand or glass. 
Was Dark Midnight a fairy?!
“What Midnight is saying,” Bright said, swirling her dumpling in cream sauce, “despite the fact that rhetoric is never good for the digestion, is that you acted on your own fate, and that is what led you here. Surely you have questions about…”
“Ah, yes! They-they were calling me Hero of Eternity.” He blinked, working through a memory fuzzy with exhaustion. The whole battle felt like a delirious dream. “You were, weren’t you, Lady Bright?” 
As the servants offered up a main course of white fish in a pastry shell, Bright nodded, a little smile on her face. It didn’t make her look any more casual or less intense. “You’ll learn more in time, but we feel you have an important role to play in the future of our empire.”
That was a lot. “Do-do you now?” He swallowed a bit of fish, too distracted to taste it.
“Bright, you’re scaring him! This is awfully intimidating, isn’t it, friend?” Scarlet swished his glass, or at least it looked like that’s what he was doing based on the color of the tiny shapes Basil could make out. “For now, let’s leave it at the idea that you’re our guest as much as Lady Muffet is, and we think you came here destined for great things.” 
This was fortunate, Basil told himself. Strange, but fortunate. If he was a Hero of Something, if he somehow found himself holding influence, he surely could learn more about the Empire and the location of his friends. In fact, he was already learning more about the former, though everything felt like a collection of puzzle pieces picked haphazardly out of a box.
He realized the Empress had not said a word. Was she eating? He was sure when he glanced at her he didn’t catch her in the act, but she must have been eating. There was a plate in front of her.
“Tell us more about acting on our own fate, will you?” That was Muffet, whose fish came plain without pastry wrapping. She seemed pleased with it. Did they serve fish because one of the guests of honor was a cat?
“Of course, Lady Muffet. Witness.” Dark Midnight held his glass of water up to the light. The crystalline handle cast small rainbows on the white tablecloth. “The words of our Empress, who has journeyed to the Faerie Layer and returned with the blessings of the Fairy Queen, state that all have a destined fate. They must seek it in order to find their Happy Ending. Stray, and one brings about disorder and chaos, displeasure and even war.” 
Basil pursed his lips. The Empire rarely made war because it could just overpower surrounding countries into surrender or alliance, and it certainly made enough rumblings with Fire Opal, but now was not the time to bring that up. 
“We are the prism, helping focus individuals and people into their proper places. Some are meant to create, others to destroy. Some to live in wealth and others to find happiness in poverty. A very few among us are heroes, individuals who rise above to serve as paragons, to uplift the downtrodden and the cursed.” 
“The cursed?” Basil blurted out. Muffet gave him a glance and twitched her tail, hopefully using a little glamour to make that seem less suspicious. Drat, he would really have to be more careful.
“Well, in order for there to be heroes there must be those who need to be saved. The suffering, the pained, the cursed. The balance must be maintained. Some find happy endings through heroism and others find it at the hands of those heroes. You have heard stories, yes?” Dark Midnight nodded slowly. “There is power in stories. They speak truth, if you listen.”
Basil felt the ice in his chest again, hoping his slow breathing would go unnoticed as he tensed. The suffering, the pained, the cursed. They were the ones who needed heroes, not the heroes themselves. Prince Charming never needed to save Prince Charming. 
“Well! Looks like it’s time for dessert, yes? Ah, red, my favorite! Have either of you ever had this?” Scarlet asked, breaking Basil out of his thoughts.
He had barely thought much of the meal itself. At first Basil assumed it was because the dinner company was so distracting, but the food really was plain and bland, astonishing for a powerful palace. Maybe the people of the Palace of Clarity were ascetics? But then why the fancy ornamentation and costume? He had enough to fill his stomach, at least. And all the food was either white or pale-colored: white porridge, off-white dumplings, white fish. 
But ‘dessert’ was red, as Scarlet put it. It was a stunning red, a jelly in a dish that quivered softly at the touch. At first he thought it was made of jellied fruit juice, but as he studied it he realized it was sparkling as if studded with thousands of tiny, tiny rubies.
“Pomegranate,” Bright said with a knowing little smile. “Not very popular around our kin because it’s impractical for any but the very rich to serve it properly. But our chefs know what to do with it.” 
“Pass,” Muffet sniffed. “Cats don’t eat sweets.” She was already licking her toes. “Oh, but do not hold back for my sake, my bodyguard. Why don’t you take the first bite?”
Basil moved slowly. There was something about that jelly that looked pristine, like any touch of his spoon would ruin it in the same way the Empress seemed to diminish any who stood or sat near her. It was too perfect. 
He needed to keep this up so he could find her weakness. He had to know the weakness of the Empire itself. That was what Marjorie would do. 
Slowly, carefully, he dug his spoon into the jelly and took a mouthful. After the strange, bland food of the feast, it was the most fantastic thing he’d ever tasted.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Is this really it?” Flora scratched her head as she approached the ruin. Majorie had to wonder how a bright pink centaur was able to walk around Monochrome without being recognized. Perhaps Masquerade had some enchantments or technology they weren’t sharing with new recruits, understandably. As for herself, she hoped the overalls and work hat would be enough. The ruin looked completely out of place in Monochrome, a city of perfect white buildings and black trim. Set against the ‘seven o’clock’ position in the wall, as Diana put it, lay a dilapidated shack with wood planks blackened by flame, a one-story cottage barely bigger than an outhouse. The area around it was roped off with signs marking it as condemned and promising a demolition in favor of new reading rooms. Behind it, the wall loomed above as if glaring down at the singular eyesore with disdain.“Diana says it’s been here for a long time,” Ezra whispered. “Those signs have been there forever. People just forget, and think this is the first time they see it. Story is that it was one of the old Monochrome buildings damaged in a fire, though fires never break out here.” That tore it. “This is it,” Marjorie said, with a snap of her fingers. “Flora, thanks, but we’ll go on alone from here. This isn’t…”“Not my fight is what you’re going to say, right? Which means nothing to me.” Flora rolled her eyes and stretched her arms. “But I bet I’d be more help to you out here, so I’ll just be your watch. I’ll come get you if I need to, okay?” “I was going to say this isn’t going to be easy for you to fit through, but you’ve got the idea of it.” Despite everything, Marjorie winked. Then she turned to Ezra, who nodded slowly, and stepped over the roping. The door, leaning unsteadily on the broken hinge, proved so easy to open Marjorie feared she might splinter it with her newfound strength. She slipped through into complete darkness.“I thought you said they were in a mansion,” Ezra whispered. He was gripping her hand tightly so they wouldn’t lose track of one another. “They were. Just keep moving forward. I knew they had some way of getting to and from the main city, I just had no idea they’d built a portal.” One that she knew wouldn’t work if they lit a match, so it was up to her to feel around in the pitch blackness. A portal of this sort would only work properly if one knew exactly where it went. And if it did not, they’d be wandering in a void without color, sound or smell for a very long time.She hadn’t mentioned that bit to Ezra. No need to cause a panic.“Is this like those gates that send us to Moonflower Market?” he asked.“Something like that, though a lot more primitive and not as long-range.”“Ah.” Ezra’s grip tightened and she heard him nervously clear his throat. “Impressive. Can’t imagine what Philomene would say if she got to see this. Probably a lot of magicology jargon I’d pretend to understand…”“Philomene will not see it.” Marjorie could not halt in her steps, because she knew the portal might take that as doubt and trap her. But she wanted to. “I could never take Her Highness here. I don’t-I do not want her to know.”There was a pause. “She would never judge you. She adores you, Marjorie.” “I know.” That just made it worse. The void beneath her feet, a solid substance that made no noise when she stepped on it, gave way to hard ground. She heard the crunch of dead grass. Holding a hand forward, she found the door she was looking for, giving it a hard shove.The ‘door’ that fell to the ground was a plank resting against the thick trunk of a dead oak tree. The two stepped out of a hole carved into the tree. Sure enough, when she turned to put the plank back in place, the ‘hole’ just looked like a solid mark on the trunk. It was evening, she had to guess, though the heavy clouds filling the sky made it hard to judge. How odd it was to see the actual sky again, without that netting, or to think about natural day and night cycles. How odd it was to see clouds, or hear the distant rumble of thunder. Even the air felt different, though she couldn’t pinpoint how. The two stood at the foot of a hill absolutely covered with dead silver trees, their bare branches curling like grasping fingers and growing into one another. They’d lost much of their metallic sheen, but she recognized the gray, gray wood and the scent of rotten fruit that lingered long after the plant had stopped bearing apples. At the peak of the hill sat the mansion, as dilapidated as the shack had been, windows boarded up and roof sporting holes. No birds nested in the ruin or flocked nearby. That, at least, hadn’t changed. This was an orchard without the chatter of songbirds, the scampering of chipmunks or the buzz of insects.“That’s it, isn’t it?” Ezra finally let go of Marjorie’s hand, peering up at the house from beneath the brim of his huge hat. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”“It’s intact to some degree, and not only did my parents build a portal to Monochrome, Libra kept it intact and hasn’t torn this place down. Not that it would be useful farmland for another century or two, I’ll bet.”“That is not what I asked.”“And that means they’re doing something with it. We’re going to find answers to why Libra is the way it is and how there, I know it. And I’ll be able to figure out what’s become of Snow, too, so I can save her.” “Marjorie.” Ezra cleared his throat. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”She stared at him, taking a deep breath.“Truthfully? No. But if I wait until I’m sure, it’ll be too late. There, see? I just convinced myself to go again.” She dusted off her overalls, ignoring the shaking in her hands. “Ezra? Thank you again for coming with me.”“Of course.” Ezra offered her a rare, soft smile. “I’d never make you go back alone. We’ll stumble around whatever’s left there, find something useful or shocking or both, and then flee never to look back.” She smirked despite herself. “Not march in there bravely?”“If you wanted that, you need to find Basil first. You’ve got his nervous boyfriend, so stumbling around it is.”It was sweet of him to try to lighten the mood with humor, even if Ezra leaned toward the self-depreciating kind. Usually that would be her job, but Marjorie’s mind was elsewhere. “So.” She spoke in a low voice just in case anyone was around, though the orchard seemed as deserted as the shack. Dead leaves crunched beneath her feet, the only padding for the rock-hard, dry ground that could now soak up a river and stay rancid and dead. “Let me tell you a funny story from when I was a child. My parents were a little overly concerned with happiness, bliss, eternal love, that sort of thing, and they tried all kinds of methods to make sure they had it. Silver apples, for instance, will delay the natural aging process and reverse it, but only temporarily. You need to keep eating them, and eventually it gets to the point where if you stop you risk your skin falling right off.”Ezra gave a queasy glance at the trees. “So this is…”“They were much older than they looked.” Marjorie knew she was speaking too quickly, too energetically, that as a performance this would be abysmal. The audience would see through her, think her an amateur with stage fright. “Anyway, the story isn’t funny at all, but we’re going to see how it ends here. For them. And then I’m sure I’ll find a way to retell it in a manner that’s less upsetting and personal.” She glanced a jagged fragment of bone sticking out of the ground at the foot of a tree, and carefully nudged Ezra so he wouldn’t trip on it. He didn’t see it, to her relief. There were the wooden doors, the paint long having peeled and chipped away. Once it had an enchantment over it that drew the eyes, made it seem comforting and welcome no matter its condition, a place for travelers to stay the night. Inverting the spell on the shack portal must have been easy. She glanced down. “Do you mind? I-it isn’t that I can’t, but I…” She did not want to feel the weight of those doors under her palm again.Ezra just nodded and slowly pushed them open, unleashing a cloud of dust that set them both to coughing and spilling light into an otherwise dark atrium. As the doors shut behind them, an eerie glow spread from beneath their very feet, circles on the floor illuminating the room.“Well! That is new.” Despite its disrepair, it was clear Libra had done at least some renovation to the old place. They probably needed to for safety. It was clear, nonetheless, that no one had been here in some time, the dust particles floating in the pale blue floor lights.It was helpful, in a way, seeing the mansion so disheveled and stripped down, with a few of Monochrome’s sleek but lifeless trappings. It looked less familiar, less like a place she was tempted to call ‘home.’“Be careful and stay by my side,” she whispered to Ezra. “Just because it seems empty doesn’t mean it is. And avoid mirrors. And is-is that a frying pan?”Ezra, with a slight scowl, held tight to the pan he’d pulled out from under his cloak. “It’s something I know how to use. As a weapon, less so, but it can’t be that complex. Anyway, what if they’ve confiscated everything already? Certainly was a lot of strange junk there in that Spire storage room.”“And nothing I recognized. Anyway, I want to be sure.” Marjorie, leaving the matter of the frying pan behind, lifted her foot and brought it down on the first marble step.There. Nothing happened. It was just a building. They were not here.She kept telling herself every step of the way, even as in her mind’s eye the furniture returned to the atrium, the tapestries rolled down the walls, the lanterns lit and the statues sprouted from the marble floor. There was one of her mother as a goddess in the local tradition, wreathed in flowing robes and holding an apple in her hands. There was a painting of her father battling a dragon, and while she knew it was actually a blank wall she was looking at, it was impossible to see anything else. Yes, and there was one of those awful, heavy velvet dresses they always had her wear, by definition gaudier and fancier than Snow’s white frock, because that is how the Wicked Sister and Good Sister ought to look. At least it was appropriate for the snow falling outside the long windows, clouding the stained glass pictures of her mother and father, each on either side of the grand doorway. They had built a temple to one another, a temple to themselves. And behind her, trailing her like the train of a dress, there was Snow, clinging to her hand. Never hiding from their mother, no. She was just a bit shy.And there at the top of the stairway stood a woman who looked as youthful as she had in her twenties, long black hair framing pale skin, with only a little sickly sheen if you looked close enough. And there was Father next to her, tall and strapping, a heavy book in his arms and a smile on his face. “Marjorie! Snow!” Mother held out her hands, her flawless hands with just the faintest silver sheen. “Come, come and have some cocoa. You must be freezing. You’ve done enough playing for now. We have some work for you…”“Marjorie?” Ezra shook her arm as she stood stone-still at the foot of the stairs. This had gone past mere dread into something else. Was she in shock? Should he have protested when she said she wanted to go back here? And why were her movements suddenly so stiff and mechanical?She turned around to look at him, her voice suddenly harsh and blunt, with a little metallic undertone. “She’s in a trance and will not respond. Emergency mode activated. I am now in control.”One of her eyes was completely silver, reflecting Ezra’s face like a distorted, tiny mirror.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Ezra forced himself to look away from the distorted reflection he saw in Marjorie’s mirror-plated eye. “You,” he said, feeling heat bubble up inside of him. “What did you do to her?” “You are assuming too much and it is affecting your judgment. You know who I am?” The voice coming out of Marjorie’s body was hers only in its pitch. The tone was too flat, with a metallic after-echo that Ezra recognized all too well. She stood rigid, hands hanging at her sides as if she didn’t know what to do with them. Which, Ezra figured, the being inside of her did not. “Don’t play mind games with me, Mirror. You’re the same as the others. Here we tried trusting you and you take over her body when the timing is right? You just wanted to get out of whatever trap they had you in and you used us. You used her!” The temptation to grab Marjorie and try to shake Mirror out crossed his mind, but he doubted it would do more than hurt Marjorie. ‘Marjorie,’ or Mirror, held up their hands. “Please calm down, Ezra. You misunderstand. This was not part of my plan.”“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Ezra hissed. “You’re all like this. You see us as toys to play with. As-as things to collect!” “Well, naturally,” came the voice of the Gourmet as he strode from behind the stone-still Mirror, the empty walls suddenly filled with hanging treasures and the stained marble floor sprouting a soft, red carpet. He smiled at Ezra, clawed hand cupping Ezra’s chin. “You mortals are things to be had and owned, used and discarded. Isn’t it an honor to know you have worth at least to someone? That in someone’s heart you are treasured, at least for a moment? Come now, come back to the kitchen…”Mirror stepped right through the Gourmet, lifting Ezra with strength he didn’t know Marjorie had and wrenching him away. The railing turned back from glittering red candy to dusty stone, the treasures vanished and the Gourmet had not even left footprints in the dust. Naturally, Ezra realized, because he wasn’t even there. He felt dizzy, his stomach roiling as Mirror let him fall on his feet.“Breathe,” Mirror said, looking down at him with a face devoid of emotion. “Breathe and concentrate on the breath. You are here.”“Right. Right.” Ezra held his head for a second and shut his eyes. When he opened them he was still in the empty mansion, dust swirling around them. “Is that some kind of spell? I thought I was back there for a second. I genuinely believed it.”“I detect some kind of deception spell, left defunct but never fully deactivated. This area is awash with them, operating without direction and feeding off of one another. That one affects temporal place and memory, activated by a traumatic trigger.." Being manipulated and used was certainly going to trigger something in him, Ezra knew. “Oh, and this place must be full of terrible memories for Marjorie.” He wanted to hug her, but she wouldn’t feel it. “So she’s trapped in a trance and you’re piloting her? Can we snap her out of it like you did for me?” Mirror shook their head. “I have been trying. I do not like being in a body like this.” They stretched their fingers on the same hand Marjorie had used to break the mirror in Spire. “Too easily corrupted and vulnerable. But the temporal spell seems to be affecting her more deeply than I can reach.” Mirror said. “Analysis based on her mindset and your reactions.”“Oh, Marjorie…” Ezra slumped against the wall, triggering a sprinkle of plaster on his head. “What if we just take her from here?”“There’s a risk she may not snap out of it with how deeply she is affected. Our safest best is to shut off the source of the spells, which ought to be somewhere in here. Besides, she still wants to find what she came to look for. I can feel it,” Mirror said. “If I follow that sense I may be able to lead us there.” Ezra ran a hand down his face. “The Gourmet did something similar to me, though he didn’t trap me in memories or anything. Just messed with mine.” A spot of the floor sprouted bright red carpet; Ezra stomped it out to remind himself it was just cold marble. “So we just keep our minds in the present and if we sense the other slipping, we snap the other out of it until we can get Marjorie back.”Mirror blinked. “You seem to think I will be affected? I have nothing for the spell to affect. I assure you, I will be fine.” They strode forward, opening the double doors with little effort. Somehow, Ezra wasn’t sure he believed Mirror’s statement there. Not that he doubted a fragment of an Other One could resist a spell, but there was something a little strained in Mirror’s tone. There was always work to do. As long as she toned out what happened around her, Marjorie liked the work itself. The chores felt like a kind of game to her. There were cords to weave together, plants to water, songs to sing to keep a spell going. She and Snow were always given different tasks. ‘So you don’t spend the whole time chatting with each other,’ Mother said. There were tasks for good girls and bad girls. A wicked daughter had a role to play just as a good one did. Marjorie sat in a parlour lined top to bottom with old magical tomes, statues, enormous crystals and heavy curtains covering the windows. She was carving today, whittling miniature forms out of branches salvaged from the river after a storm. She enjoyed it, as it offered her peace and quiet and kept her restless hands busy, but she wished there weren’t so many rules to the game. She could only use driftwood, no branches from the forest or the orchard. She had to carve little figures as close to the pictures in the old books as possible, then bring them to her father for the finishing touches. She needed to use the carving knife with the strange symbols, and if she slipped and cut herself, she needed to wipe her finger on the mirror before letting a servant bandage it up. She was careful never to let the knife slip.She hated that mirror, the big, round one leaning from floor to ceiling. It was warm to the touch, like flesh, and when offered blood or spit it absorbed the fluid as its surface rippled. She refused to look into it, afraid that one day her reflection would grab her and pull her inside like in her nightmares. But she was not permitted to drape a cloth over it, even when she was alone in the parlour. She was just finishing carving a little face into the humanoid figure, trying her best to make it look like the old, yellowed etching, when she heard the sound of a carriage pulling up outside. The hoofbeats sounded odd on the hard dirt road. Something was off about their timing, though she’d only realize that later, after thinking about it. Usually she ignored visitors unless called in, because she didn’t like to see what would happen to them, but something tugged at her. Maybe it was the strange hoofbeats, heavy and metallic. She set the figure and the knife down and tiptoed up the stairs to the grand hall, just peeking out of the crack in the heavy door.The grand hall was a museum in and of itself, truly bigger on the inside than it should be. Mother and Father called it a testament to their bliss, one they had forged themselves; though their happiness was destiny, sometimes destiny needed some reinforcement. Crystals hung in midair, glowing of their own power in lieu of candle lit chandeliers. Wall hangings shimmered different colors. Everything was red, gold and silver, which made the black and white uniforms of the visitors stand out all the more. There were no children, which was a relief. She and Snow would not be sent to play with them and distract them with tea parties or shadow puppets. In the entrance stood three adults in uniforms, black on the left side and white on the right, a stocky woman and a taller, thin man with a cane. The man in front of them, the speaker, wore white gloves, and his scarlet cape and mask were the only color worn among the three. The two in black and white were immovable, like columns. They stood when Mother and Father gestured for them to sit in the fine soft chairs, though the red-clad man sat with ease. They did not partake of tea. The red-clad man did, but Marjorie swore she saw him drop something out of his ring and into the cup first. An antidote to some anticipated poison? Clever. Perhaps he’d actually win the game this time. Usually her parents triumphed so easily it was depressing to watch. Lord Blanche would call for champagne or tea and sweets, Lady Blanche plying visitors for stories in search of information. There were tours of the marvels, and dazzled tourists or lost travelers overwhelmed by generosity. And then there was the test that would determine if they would leave, the Blanche house a foggy memory that might have been a dream, or if they would stay. But this was different. There was a purpose to these visitors, an intensity beneath the red-clad man’s easygoing demeanor and theatrical body language. She heard, among other words, ‘Scarlet’ and ‘marvels.’ And something like pyre? No. Spire?As soon as Mirror opened the doors, Ezra felt his stomach lurch.The room before them was a shifting landscape. At first glance, it was an empty hall with torn remnants of banners and dust-covered furniture, as abandoned as the entryway. Then it was a great blue seascape where enormous, skeletal fish swam by, moonlight streaming through their translucent bodies. Then Ezra saw a storm of colors like the sky of Polychrome but worse, then a river of fire where fur-clad Mountaineer warriors rode currents of flame, and then a Sky forest of Cathedral trees, the shape and like of which he’d never seen even in old paintings. And then, as he stared at Marjorie’s body, it was an empty room again. “So staring at something unchanging keeps it from shifting.” Ezra breathed in and out to calm his nausea. “Did you see that too?”“Yes.” Mirror’s mouth drew into a line as they bit their lip, not noticing the trickle of blood their teeth drew. Ezra noted he might have to keep Mirror from using Marjorie’s body too roughly. “Though I may not have seen what you did. This place is a toxic burial ground of active spells falling into decay. That may be why the Empire kept it intact, to contain all the residual magic.” They turned to Ezra. “You’re a magic user yourself, aren’t you?”“Periodically,” Ezra sighed. “Nothing on this level.”“You have an instinct for it. You were able to find a contact point for me in the Spire. You can feel it out even if you lack classical magician training. You will need that here.” Ezra glanced up at the hall again, holding onto the hem of Marjorie’s sleeve as he did. Images flickered and forms wavered. “We need to figure out where it’s coming from and shut it off,” he decided. “If it’s possible. Then Marjorie can wake up, right?”Mirror did not answer Ezra, scanning the area with a machine-like precision. Then they spoke. “We are not alone.”“What?” Ezra followed Mirror’s gaze upwards to the high ceiling, at first seeing only bits and pieces of fabric and cobwebs. Then he saw the skittering movement of a humanoid figure walking on the ceiling itself, staring down at them.It looked like a figure in a black and white robe, then a silver-skinned being with gold armaments, then the Empress herself, then a copy of Ezra. And between those forms, as the world shifted and flashed around it, he could make out the form of a wooden marionette with strings hanging right through the ceiling.It stared at the two of them, then dropped on them with the sound of clattering wood.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Scarlet Sun was not a chemist. He was, as needed, an actor, an amateur botanist, an insect-tamer, a flirt, and an assassin, but not a chemist. He made the distinction frequently because the stereotype that all Flower Folk were too nose-deep in the sciences to pay attention to the world around them chafed, and he hated to think he was living up to it just because his teacher had been a chemist. Well, his teacher had been human. So there.But chemistry was a useful skill for those who dealt in poisons, and poisons were useful for those who lived among towering humans and unimaginably huge Skykin without the support system of a Colony. Yes, someone could step on Scarlet or flick him away. They could crush him if they could catch him. But, like the blue-ringed octopus depicted in the painting that hung in his parlour above wicker furniture and hookahs, he would have the last laugh if anyone dared. Poisons, in small doses, were also useful in other ways. A low dose of a particular floral concoction kept Lord Germain peacefully asleep in a state between life and death, without needing food, water or use of the toilet. It wouldn’t be good for the old man’s liver, but that was Germain’s problem. Scarlet had, after all, saved his life. Sometimes an important official, or someone that official cared about, would fall ill. Just an isolated case, enough to leave others unnerved and emotionally vulnerable. It made negotiations easier. Strawberry wine wasn’t a poison except in the broadest, strictest terms embraced by some, but it did dull the senses just as much as Scarlet needed when he let Germain wake up. It took the part of his mind terrified of keeping a secret from the others, the part that said he ought to turn Germain over now and come up with an excuse for the delay, and gently drowned it out in sweet bubbles. Germain coughed and sputtered, drinking the water Scarlet carefully tipped down his throat and taking the little salt tablets. Scarlet patiently sat with the old man as he sweated and shook through a fever, helped him use the facilities, and fixed him a bowl of barley broth steeped in herbs. Waking up from Slumbering Lily poisoning was never as romantic as it was portrayed in the theater, where lovers were woken with confessions or a kiss.Yet within hours, Germain, his eyes still red-rimmed and his breathing heavy, turned to Scarlet with a look too calm and casual for an ailing prisoner and smiled. “So,” he said, setting his hands on his stomach as if speaking to a nurse at a hospital, “should I be flattered? Here I am in a villa stinking of rose jam and caterpillar fur when I expected an Imperial prison, alive when by all accounts I ought to be dead.” He chuckled, shaking his belly. “I must be precious indeed. What do you want?”Come to think of it, what had Scarlet expected? Even he didn’t know. Germain was a strange one. Somehow, geniality wasn’t on the list.“What makes you think I want something? I might just need you conscious in order to interrogate you.”“An interrogation in a bed?” Germain shrugged. “Well, there’s needing me conscious and letting me recover my senses. Besides, you’re not an interrogator. You’re a spy. Amid human-dominant nations we aren’t exactly known for intimidation.” He kept smiling, serene as a panda. As if amused.“This from a man who manufactured gigantic plant monsters?”“Beings which are much more intimidating than I am alone. Now, could you get on with it and tell me what it is you want? Personally I cannot see the value in saving an old man’s life and not turning him over to your government or his unless you get something out of it.”Scarlet wanted to drag the game out a little, perhaps just to spite the old man. He sipped from his glass. “I can’t be acting out of solidarity for kinfolk?” “You serve the Empress, and your appearance reassures our kind that we have our place here, as defined by Her Imperial Eternity.” Germain put special emphasis on the word ‘place,’ letting it drip with sarcasm. “And you’re keeping me from Thumbelina’s justice system. They would no doubt exile me to the Salamander Island or imprison me for life, and of course I would escape, but I gather you’re circumventing that step for a reason.” He drank from the bowl of broth. “Hmm, is there rosemary powder in this? It’s a little strong. Too much rosemary tastes of soap.” Well, that was one potential threat down, though Scarlet had no intention of turning Germain over to Thumbelina. He was no traitor. “For a prisoner, you don’t seem to fear for your life. I could have poisoned that broth. I could be using that rosemary to disguise the taste of nightshade.”“Ah, but if you wanted me dead, you had plenty of chances. Besides, what do I care if you kill me? I have done what I wished to do, scraped my name across history. So what if I lost?” Germain shrugged. “I set my expectations and met them, mostly.” “Sleeping Lily doesn’t work on those with weak wills. They never wake up.” Scarlet could not directly say, ‘you are lying about your indifference.’ Or he could, but where would the drama be in that? This was a dance now, like something out of one of the plays of Monchante or a stealth attack by the ‘hunters’ of the House of Snow. And despite everything, he was having so much fun. No wonder Avery Toad and the Rot Witch worked with this strange man.“Well, you’d be the expert there. Though I personally find that to be a superstition. Some just have bad reactions to Sleeping Lily, that’s all.” Germain turned to study Scarlet up and down, confident as if he were in his own villa and Scarlet a prisoner. “Well, you aren’t hiding who you are,” he said, gesturing to where the shrew skull mask hung on a wall. “Was I supposed to quaver in the presence of one of the Riders? Because if so, I’m rather insulted.”“No, no! I’d be disappointed if you did,” Scarlet said, and meant it. “And you’re right that I can’t just turn you over to the Empire’s justice. They would not understand why I waited, why I kept you here, even though what I do is in Her name and for Her sake. But before I tell you what I want, don’t you want to know what I do hold over you?”Germain again studied Scarlet, and then turned away. “I have no more friends. My family consider me a criminal, rightly so, and I can think of no other ways to prod at the pompous nation of Thumbelina without feeling redundant. I live my life without regrets.” He paused. “No, that is incorrect. But my one regret you could do nothing about. The one thing I would desire, you could not give me, for if you did it would not be what I wanted.” “And your life? Long, comfortable life in retirement and seclusion?” Though Scarlet suspected, even hoped, that he already knew the answer.At that Germain scoffed. “Who do you take me for? Some conquered noble who grasps at lost glory through the promise of immortality? A Sea Witch trawling the deep to do nothing but think and eat? Wait, I hope that isn’t what you’re asking for. How awkward that would be!” And he laughed again, merrily, as if he were a peddler telling tales and not one of the most wanted criminals in the continent. It was, in Scarlet’s mind, a little disappointed. The world ought to be more like theater, where Germain would have a tremendous cackle. Now he was finding himself starting to like the conversation with the former Thumbelinan noble, and that was dangerous. “How about this. I name my offer out in full, and we see if it’s suitable. If not, we test the degree to which you’re so detached from your own well-being.” Scarlet grinned, patting his lap to beckon a fat green caterpillar which looked up at the world with two enormous false eye markings. The caterpillars were more at ease when allowed to wander as they wished, some even going so far as to pupate in closets and windowsills. “You used to work with Avery Toad, a fugitive from Thumbelina who reportedly could shift into a human form. Your Dryads could grow rapidly and change mass and shape. You transformed ordinary creatures into Enlightened-”Germain held up a hand to interrupt. “Attempted, mostly failed. My one success would be difficult to duplicate.” There was something different in his tone there, something distant. Scarlet filed that away for later.“Nonetheless, you tried. If anyone can pull this off, it’s you.” Scarlet gave the caterpillar a pet as it squeaked. “Shapeshifting is dangerous. Most attempts end in death, and successes are unreliable. But we can change that! We can bridge the gaps between the Kinfolk even more than the Empire does now. I can.” Germain once more examined him, stroking his beard. “You want me to make you into another of the Kinfolk?” “I want to be able to shift to any of them. Yes, I know I’ll never hold a Sky Family name and or have children on my own without the Vine, but that is what acting is for. I am an actor.” Now that he was finally presenting his offer, Scarlet felt his heart race. There was the danger he was missing! The danger, of course, being told it was impossible. “I want to stand as tall as Bright Morning, to look her in the eyes. I want to blend in with a crowd of humans. I want to prove it’s possible, to show Her Imperial Eternity, to earn…”He caught himself. “Her approval. Her smile.” Even as he said it, Scarlet felt the heavy gazes of Bright and Midnight on his form, staring down at him in disapproval. The three of them were supposed to be equals in the highest positions one could hold outside of the Empress Herself. To compete with one another would disrupt the harmonious flow of the Eternal Machinery, or in more practical terms, it’d just cause pointless strife. But this was not pointless. It wasn’t that he cared any less for Bright and Midnight, or that he envied them. They were his friends and he wished them no harm. But oh, to be first…“Let me put this into less poetic and more practical terms,” Germain said, interrupting his momentary guilt. “You want the ability to change your size and mass at will. How useful that would be for a spy! Though you’d have to go without that ridiculous red outfit and skull if you meant to blend in.” He considered. “It is a nice challenge. I hope you realize I will need test subjects.” He glanced at the caterpillar. Briefly recalling the reports of what had happened to the moths and grasshoppers subjected to Germain’s experiments in forced Enlightenment, creatures liquified from the inside out or maddened into tearing their own limbs off, Scarlet swallowed down a wave of nausea and drowned it in the rest of his glass. “Well, yes, of course.” “And what’s to keep me from creating a neurotoxin instead and just making my way back out? What do you intend to threaten if you can’t hold my life above my head, Scarlet Sun?”“You aren’t curious enough to try for the sake of trying? Even if I provide you with anything you need?” Scarlet couldn’t help a little bit of indignation slip into his voice. He hated himself for it, seeing how glacially calm Germain was in response.“I am very curious! The effects of such a concoction would be immense, to use a little bit of wordplay. But you weren’t counting on that. Go on, threaten me.”Germain was taunting him, and despite the obvious power difference, Scarlet felt as if he had lost some kind of competition. So the Rider of the Endless Day pointed to the empty bowl of broth.“Are you familiar with the Lethefly?” Germain’s smile faded, replaced with a blank mask. “It’s extinct,” he said.“In the wild, yes. So feared that its nests were destroyed and the bushes it laid its eggs on burnt to the ground. But of course it was too good to let go, you know that!”And indeed, Germain’s expression, turning colder, suggested that he knew very well. Scarlet couldn’t help himself, dangling his empty glass in his hand as he spoke. “The Lethefly’s venom steals memories, distills them into a substance the fly drinks up to pass onto its young. What do they do with the memories, since they seem to be only a little smarter than mosquitoes? Who knows? But sometimes a ruler is struck ill, a government official makes a poor decision, you know how it is…”Germain studied the bowl. “You’re a brazen lot. Suppose if it comes out what you do to spread your tentacles, you’d just come up with excuses.”“Please, we’d change the truth.” Scarlet immediately regretted letting that slip, blaming the wine. “Of course, if you want the antivenom, it’s a daily dose for weeks. I do have it. What sort of poisoner doesn’t carry antivenom? And I might be bluffing. You could take your chances.”Germain put the bowl down, and his smile returned, though his gaze was sharp and piercing. “Perhaps when you see what I require for my research, you will change your mind about whether or not this is all worth it.”Scarlet knew he had won, even if Germain seemed dismissive. He’d found something Germain valued more than his own life, and that was his own mind. Still, there were so many risks involved, so many chances his secrets could come out. Could one even keep secrets from the Empress? Even before Germain woke up, he found it stressful to gaze upon Her serenity and perfection with his guilt whispering in his ear about how he was a traitor and a liar. That was untrue. Everything he did, he did for Her sake. But guilt was a liar.Perhaps he could do with more leverage. What was the wish Germain claimed he could not grant?

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Marjorie was the wicked sister.She knew this because she’d failed the test. She couldn’t remember the test very well, not anymore. She’d been very young at the time when her parents had taken her to the Illusory Room, one at a time, and let them wander until they returned. She could recall a forest, not a silver one like the orchard but one with huge, heavy evergreens forming a carpet over the sky. There had been an old man, or was it an old woman? There had been instructions she had chosen to ignore because they made no sense to her. She was lost and hungry, so when she found food she ate it. Why was she out here? Where were Mother and Father? Where was Snow? Why couldn’t Snow come with her? And she had returned empty-handed. Snow came back carrying a pure white egg, warm to the touch. It vanished, of course, being an illusion from another time and place, but that didn’t matter. Snow had passed the test, and as Mother and Father embraced her, they told her what a good girl she was. She was a pure-hearted girl, the Good Sister, and she would bring them happiness.Then their parents pulled Marjorie aside, out of hearing of Snow, and dried her tears of confusion. She had the seed of wickedness inside of her, they told her, but that was alright. It was her nature. She could bring the family happiness too, as long as she did as she was told. She could carry that wickedness within herself and keep Snow pure. Marjorie was the wicked sister, and that’s why…She tired of hiding in the doorway and watching the strange man in the hall. Marjorie knew she ought to go back to her work. A good girl would finish her carvings. A good girl would clean the wood shavings and place them in a marked box, then go join Snow for their studies. 
But she was a bad girl, a wicked girl. A wicked girl disobeyed and went elsewhere. 
Where did that come from? Was that her own thought? It felt like something inside of her head, and yet not hers. The voice was hers but different, richer. Older? Was that the actual seed of wickedness growing inside of her, waiting to bloom? She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, tugging at the long skirt of her dress. Then she slipped past the door, down the hallway and towards the spiraling stairs.When she glanced back to see if her parents had noticed, she saw...herself. There was a perfect image of her hiding in the doorway, still as a painting and a little translucent. The sight of it spooked her so that she turned to run to the stairs, not caring if she was seen or heard. Only when she was halfway up the elegantly carved staircase did she notice that her parents and the visitors were frozen in the same way.She never remembered this happening. Remember? What was there to remember? This was happening to her now. So why did she suddenly feel as if she was reflecting back on events of years ago? A wicked girl can break the spell, the voice said again. This time it was coming from everywhere. A wicked girl disobeys. A wicked girl goes off script. Snow. She would find Snow. Snow was brilliant. Surely something in one of her books would explain the peculiar spell that had come over the mansion. Snow’s room was in one of the two towers. The mansion, seen from the outside, did not have towers. This was one of the spells their parents had experimented with to create a space larger on the inside, a kind of magic her mother called Spatial-Temporal Alteration. It used black obelisks stationed in corners to stabilize it. Once a laboratory rabbit escaped and knocked one of the obelisks askew, and all the rooms were shuffled for a week. It made for such fun. Marjorie would have done it again, but then remembered how they’d had rabbit for supper that night. The tower twisted out of the house itself as if giant hands had squeezed the roof like clay and molded a spiral out of it, the patterns on the walls warped as a result. It felt like walking through the inside of a seashell, and at the top a room that was almost more of a library with a big bed in the middle, too big for little Snow, who was balancing a tome on her lap and ignoring the tea that had grown cold on the night table. Only recently had Marjorie realized that if Snow and Marjorie were stepsisters, they should not look so much alike. Stepchildren might at most share one biological parent, and often didn’t at all. But their parents had been married for a long time before having the two girls, and she couldn’t imagine either of them having a dalliance outside of their marriage. It was odd, and the sort of question Marjorie suspected her parents would not answer. Good girls didn’t ask such questions.Snow looked up and blinked, setting the book aside with some effort. “Marjorie? Aren’t you supposed to be down in the lab?” But she smiled brightly, patting the space on the bed next to her. “Do you want to read with me? I…” She turned a little red. “I borrowed this one.”That meant Snow had snuck it out of the main library without permission. She always returned them without being caught, because she was a good girl. “Is it one of the fairy stories?” Marjorie made a face. There were so, so many of the ‘fairy stories,’ as they were called, old histories, myths and folklore about princesses and knights, gods and monsters. Her parents loved them. ‘These contain the secret of happiness,’ her father said more than once. She never liked them much.Snow shrugged. “Maybe? It’s about long ago, anyway, and there’s a princess. Sort of? She’s a great war hero, and she conquers nations with the help of a gigantic goddess with steel skin.” She pointed to an illustration of a towering figure with a woman on its shoulder, the light of the sun shining behind them. The giantess was far, far bigger than even the Sky Folk who lived in the clouds, her eyes masked by a band of glass. “I keep reading about heroes, and princesses. Good people,” Snow whispered. Marjorie tried not to wince at the word, at Snow’s innocent insensitivity. “I’m supposed to grow up to be like them. So I should study them. But some of these stories feel different. They always end badly. There’s always death.” She didn’t sound troubled, only interested, eyes wide.“Well, yeah, everyone dies,” Marjorie said. She looked out the window at the orchard. Everyone dies and everyone’s story ended somewhere. The trees marked those whose stories ended here. That’s how it was supposed to work.“But if a hero dies at the end, or a princess, or a shrine maiden, how can that be a happy ending?” “I mean…” Marjorie didn’t know. “Do you want to be a hero?”Snow pursed her lips. “They have to deal with a lot of scary stuff. I guess I be a princess. They’re important. The Empire has princesses, right? They pick out princesses? Mom told me.”The Empire was a distant, strange place full of confusing rules that Marjorie thought had nothing to do with them. Until that morning, when the visitor had arrived. “Do you want to be a princess?” “I should, right? Want that?” There was a strange, pleading tone in Snow’s voice, as if it weren’t a rhetorical question. She really wanted Marjorie to say yes, a good girl wants to be a princess. Instead, Marjorie changed the subject. “There’s visitors from the Empire downstairs, I think. They’re in weird fancy white clothes.”“I saw the carriage from the window.” Snow sat up, rubbing at her eyes. Had she been near crying? “They’re not going to take Mom and Dad away, are they?”“Why would they?” Snow’s head fell forward so her hair obscured her eyes. It was a deliberate gesture, a way of hiding when she had nothing else to hide behind. “The trees. They’re criminals. We’re criminals.”“No! No, you’re good,” Marjorie insisted. It came out like a reflex. “You’re not a criminal. I’m sure they’re here for a sensible reason. Mom and Dad are geniuses, like you. Maybe the Empire wants their help. Or-or maybe they want to make you a princess!” The moment Marjorie took Snow’s hands and looked into her eyes, she knew she’d said the wrong thing. Snow looked stricken for only a second, just a brief moment before she smiled, but Marjorie saw it. Why hadn’t she ever seen it before? Before when? Before what?Everything froze again, and Marjorie once more stepped away from another echo of herself. This had never happened. She’d never had this conversation with Snow up in the tower. She’d never gone up to eavesdrop on her parents mentioning the Spire-the Spire, of course the Spire, it had their fingerprints all over it…She was quite abruptly a grown woman, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at an image of her younger self clutching Snow’s hand. When she peered over at the open book, she found she couldn’t read the words. They were a jumbled mess of lines. “These aren’t my memories, are they? They couldn’t be. I can’t remember what was happening if I wasn’t there.” She tapped her fingers on the bed. “So who is it? Who is this? Mirror, is that you?”Mirror did not answer, but the two girls on the bed vanished in a spray of light particles. In their place was a transparent glass orb, hovering and flickering. It pulsed as it spoke in her own voice. 
Hello, wicked girl. Thank you for coming back. 
Marjorie stared, reaching out to touch the orb only to find her hand passing right through it. “Where am I? I need to go back to my friends.”
I can’t stop this. But you can, Wicked Girl. You can go off script. I can only remember, and imagine what happens when you go off script. When you go to talk to Snow. When you disobey where once you obeyed. 
So, this was a magical simulation of some kind, not just a memory flashback? Or it was, but a flexible memory. She squinted, and the orb briefly turned into a tree laden with fruit, then an old woman, then a well. Shapes she remembered only glimpses of from that terrible, terrible test in the Ilusion Chamber.“You’re the one that failed me.” The orb flickered again. It was nothing personal. There were rules set up and I followed them. But now I am broken. I malfunction. You all arrived, and I thought it would break the script. Instead I have taken you into it, Wicked Girl.“Then take me out! Ezra can’t fare by himself out there! And-and I need to find…” Marjorie remembered that look on Snow’s face. The look that said, ‘I do not want this.’Snow didn’t want any of it either. Of course she didn’t, but there was some odd relief in seeing it. Relief and horror. Snow didn’t want it, so they did something to make her want it. Something she would find if she looked, here or in reality.
They need to find me. Help them find me. Help them find me and break the script. I am broken. I malfunction. 
The orb vanished, leaving behind the frozen forms of the younger Marjorie and Snow again. Where was the Illusion Chamber? She had to find it. She did, or she had to help Ezra do it. She took off running down the shell-spiral stairs, past her parents and the previous Scarlet Sun frozen in memory. As tempting as it was to start listening again, to hear more of what the house itself remembered, she needed to contact Ezra first. That meant moving past her other frozen self, down into the room filled with those wood carvings used to enchant victims like puppets. She threw the tarp off of the mirror, The Mirror, and started writing in the dust on her finger. E. Z. R. A.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Hands that felt like rotting tree branches grabbed Ezra by the midsection and pulled him up, up, up into the chaotic abyss of nonsense swirling in the ceiling. The marionette moved like a jack-in-the-box, popping down and back up again so fast it left Ezra’s stomach lurching. Other marionettes manifested from the multicolored clouds that hurt to look at and stared at him with blank faces, then all assumed his own face. He found himself held so tight he could barely breathe, with blank-eyed copies of himself reaching for him. They all hung from the ceiling suspended by thick, ropy strings, more like monstrous spider silk than the kind a puppet ought to have. How wrong it felt to be tossed about, torn from the ground like he weighed nothing. He was Skykin, and he ought to be substantial, too big and heavy to toss aside. He ought to be strong enough to withstand the winds that blew over the Islands. He didn’t regret giving that blessing to Basil, unintentional as it had been, but he’d never missed it more than in that moment. “Curse-giver,” one of them said in a voice like creaking wood. “Curse-layer,” said another.“Smells of Hearth magic. Smells of light.” “Witch,” they all said at once, holding him limb by limb as he stared up into a nest of marionettes. “Witch. Witch. Witch.”Marjorie stared at the mirror. The letters E Z R A looked back at her.Then they lit up red and started scrolling across the surface of the mirror, just as she’d seen Mirror scroll messages before. 
EZRA EZRA EZRA EZRA IS IN TROUBLE. RECONFIGURATION OF BODY STILL IN PROCESS. COULD NOT REACT FAST ENOUGH IN TIME.
“Reconfigure...what? Mirror, we are going to have some words after this.” Marjorie ran her fingers through her hair and then leaned forward with one hand against the wall next to Mirror. “Can you hear me? Can you just give me control of my brain again? Wake me up?” The surface of Mirror wrinkled like skin on cream.
NOT POSSIBLE. 
“What do you mean, not possible?!” 
EXTERNAL FORCE HAS CONTROL OVER YOUR PSYCHE. 
Marjorie sighed. “Yes, yes, I gather that. I’m remembering things I couldn’t have actually seen, so these obviously aren’t my memories. And I don’t know how long I’ll remember that before I slip back into it.” But grumbling about it did no good, especially to Mirror. “Look, whatever you’re doing to my body, at least take advantage of it to rescue Ezra. He’s used to being huge and able to defend himself by default, and even then he’s a trouble magnet. I think I know what this is, but I have to remember where it is and lead you there.” Which meant going back out there and wandering a memory. Something else’s memory. “Can you stay in contact with me?”There was an unnerving pause before the Mirror rippled and text scrolled again.
REFLECTIVE SURFACES. I CAN USE REFLECTIVE SURFACES. 
Marjorie had to admit, that made a strange amount of sense. “Reflective surfaces, is it…” She looked around, spotting a bucket of well water, a ladle and a chalice used for who-knew-what sort of spell. “Well, Princess,” she said to an absent friend as she poured water into the chalice, “let’s hope all those carrier and balance lessons paid off.” “What do you mean, witch? What-ugh, why am I arguing with a berserk magic spell?!” Ezra knew why, because he otherwise had no defense. No matter how much he struggled, he couldn’t loosen himself from the hold the wooden dolls had on him. And if he did, he’d risk falling to his death, unless the floor far below had somehow transformed into a lake. Which was a distinct possibility.He didn’t need more reasons to loathe this place, and yet here he was. “Curse-giver,” one of the dolls whispered. Its voice was like the creak of old wood, its face flashing between a copy of Ezra’s own and a blank, polished oblong with a crack running through it. “Curse-giver. Curses set forth the wheels of fate.” Curse-giver? When had Ezra...oh. Oh. “He was a bad person. He wouldn’t reform without reason! I even gave him the chance to break his own curse. That’s more than poor Basil got!” The words poured forth through Ezra, and he wondered if he was defending himself from the dolls’ charge or his own guilt as they reminded him of Avery Toad.Avery Toad, accidentally transformed and intentionally cursed to wander the land as a chimerical mix of toad, human and salamander, a Beast, until he learned not to be quite so beastly. Cursed to do so by Ezra, who was…“A baker, dammit! I’m not a witch, I don’t even know quite what a witch is! And you, you’re some kind of security spell gone awry, just another thing trying to get into my head like those illusions! All because someone apparently forgot to turn you off…!”Ezra felt something tingly in the places along his limbs and midsection, where the arms held him. He glanced at a shoulder and realized that while the arms still held him, digging into his skin painfully, they weren’t moving at all. The faces on the dolls all went blank and stayed that way as they hung in lopsided positions. The thick strands that held them from the ceiling stopped glowing white and went dark. He found himself stuck in rafters full of similarly-inert wooden marionettes, tangled with tattered banners and tapestries. An attempt to look over his shoulder and find Mirror-Marjorie just gave him a terrible case of vertigo, so he shut his eyes and tried, very carefully, to slip out of the grasp of the wooden dolls and climb onto a rafter. The arms cracked and broke as he struggled to pull himself upwards, so brittle he wondered how they were able to support his weight before, only to fall away as he hefted himself onto a sturdy-looking wooden support beam. He brushed his arms, wincing at the red marks that would no doubt bruise later, and tried once more to peer carefully down at Mirror.The grand hall was still a shapeshifting mess, this moment a great green forest below, in the next a sea of enormous blue flowers. Whatever spell he’d accidentally shut off, it wasn’t that one. This place really was a maelstrom of decaying magic. No wonder the Empire had it roped off and isolated. Anyone who ignored the memory wards and entered would find themselves consumed by all this.And Ezra could not see Marjorie’s form anywhere.“Oh, for the love of...Mirror, you had better be telling the truth about being trustworthy,” Ezra grunted as he pulled himself very carefully along the rafters. He could wait for the ground to shift into something he could climb, but there was the risk it would shift from a green jungle to a rocky abyss while he fell. What would Basil do in this situation? Basil would bravely charge through, maybe swing on something to rescue Ezra. And yet Ezra saw Basil’s kind, bright, encouraging grin in his mind’s eye, and heard him ask, ‘but what would my brilliant Ezra do?’ Ezra would take advantage of his smaller form to crawl among the rafters and navigate through tight spaces, not looking down so he didn’t throw up. He would snoop around to find Mirror-Marjorie and he would mix something up to wake Marjorie, because he still had his magic. (Not curse-magic! He wasn’t a curse-giver!) Which meant finding a kitchen and dealing with whatever sort of nightmare that place had become. Ezra had come here to support and help Marjorie, who knew she had to come here for a reason, and he would keep on doing that even if things had gone very, very pear-shaped.Taking a deep breath, preparing himself for splinters, he crawled on hands and knees towards a broken vent. Mirror found it interesting to look through human eyes. Interesting, and a little calming. They were only a fragment of their true Mirror self, a shard, yet they felt safer here than they had in the Spire. They were safer than their collected self in the Spire, because Marjorie could not force them out. They supposed, if they were the sort to think of ‘comfort’ as a thing they could experience, this would bring them small comfort in an otherwise chaotic situation.Although Marjorie’s body was much stronger than it had been, there was no way it could make the jump to the rafters to chase after those damaged, malfunctioning marionettes. Ezra was on his own for the moment. The shifting environment didn’t help, transforming the interior of the grand hall from a bubbling, boiling sea into a forest of the sort of thick-leaved, fat-trunked trees generally found in Sky Islands. Mirror made note: this was a projection spell, an attempt to recreate a three-dimensional landscape from recorded information. Even the mages of the Spire hadn’t managed this level of hard-light illusory magic. Presumably they copied what they could from the Blanche research archives and did their best to avoid exactly this kind of disaster. Something tugged at them, nudged them just slightly to the left, turned their head to a small, nondescript doorway emerging from the fake forest. Marjorie wanted them to go that way.Moving this body wasn’t automatic as it would have been for Marjorie. They had to activate the right nerve clusters, sending the right signals to the right muscles to take off running, dashing across the soft, illusory cloud-surface before it changed again. Organic bodies were complicated things. No wonder the Green Witch was so single-minded in nature, if she had to spend so much time manipulating the moving parts of a shape-shifting plant body. No wonder Gourmet preferred hardened sugar or decayed tissue. They did not like this body, still healing from the ravages of the Golden Apple parasite even with Mirror’s help. They did not dislike it. They were above preferences, which is why they were the most objective Other. They had to remind themself of that as they rushed through the door, just barely avoiding the cloud-surface dissolving into a lake of acid. They had no interest in finding out if hard-light acid burned skin. Marjorie had led Mirror to a narrow hallway leading up a creaking, poorly-repaired staircase. They passed boarded-up doors, walls stripped bare and peeling, all with the scent of burnt, decaying magic permeating through them. (It was Marjorie’s nose detecting the smell, and Mirror’s own knowledge that identified it. An odd feeling for Mirror, who had never actually smelled anything before.) It seemed so peculiar that Libra, which had gone to great lengths to procure and research artifacts of fallen ages, would leave something as potent as this place to rot. Peculiar, Mirror noted, and ominous. You should not have come here, Mirror messaged Marjorie, hoping she was somewhere where she could read it.WANTED TO. Mirror felt the letters drawn inside of their mind, though these were more indistinct and struggled to keep their shape. Marjorie was writing on water? Imperfect, but clever. I underestimated Libra once and we are all paying for it. Generations of your kind will pay for it at this rate. Mirror spoke without guilt, because the feared Harp was elsewhere. It was a warning, one that Marjorie did not answer. And what sort of reason was ‘wanted to,’ anyway? How did mortals function, so ruled by contradictory instincts? How had They ever functioned as a whole in the first place? No wonder they had fractured and…Mirror realized their mistake the moment the landscape in front of the door shifted. Even grabbing ahold of the doorknob and forcing it open with Marjorie’s enhanced strength didn’t stop the memory spell from creeping in.Mirror had thought of the past, and the memory spell had found a hook. A hook that made the walls vanish into an endless sea of brilliant colors, dimmed only by the limited amount Marjorie’s eyes could see. (There had been more colors there, so many more.) This was a sea filled with creatures of shapes that could not, did not exist in the physical plane, minds and presences unattached to physical forms. Even trying to perceive it through limited human eyes created a dissonance so strong, Mirror knew they had to tear away from it, even if they knew what was next.Mirror was remembering the edge of the Faerie Layer. And as they shoved the door open and barged into the room, the crowded, unlit storage closet transformed into a familiar glade in a familiar valley where five Other Ones lay newly-exiled, and their brother bled.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The five of them, the Fragments of the One, lay scattered amid the ruins of a cottage blown to pieces by the impact of their arrival. Their brother lay bleeding, his essence oozing onto the ground and burning away the grass. He rippled, a deep blue with a center so black it consumed the light around it. The Gourmet stood above their brother’s form, a red energy silhouette around the crystallized sugar he’d used to anchor his new body. Long claws of sharpened candy dripped with blue. He stood glaring at the others, daring them to judge. “You saw what happened. You saw what I had to do. He would have destroyed this world, this beautiful world full of things.” Desire, already The Gourmet, wiped off the blue, which fell like drops into the puddle of darkness. “He would have torn us apart in the process. Whether he succeeded or failed, we would not have survived.” “Is that why you did it?” Mirror asked, just an eye projecting from a shard of broken glass. (What had Mirror been before? They had been Reason, yes? That was the only possible answer.)“Poor little brother would not quit,” trilled their sister Ambition, still feeling out her new form in a bean sprout. She wriggled back and forth. “Poor, poor little brother.” Fear said nothing, for this was new, and new things frightened her. When she learned more about the physical world and how to feast upon its terrors to strengthen herself, she would take on the name Rot Witch, stealing the name ‘witch’ from long-forgotten whispers without knowing its significance. “Don’t pity him,” Gourmet hissed. “Ambition is right. He would never stop. He will never stop. You think I’ve killed him? He’ll just reform. He will…”“He will lash out at you,” Fear said at last, raising her death cap head. “At all of us. We always agreed it was us against the worlds, and now it isn’t. He’ll blame you.” Mirror watched, judging, as was Mirror’s right. Mirror was impartial where the others were driven by their passions and errors. And yet Mirror remembered what had not yet come to pass, and something nagged at them, told them there was a reason for that. They averted their gaze from Guilt. All of them did. Guilt, shining gold from the broken harp string they had chosen for an anchor, glared in silence.Marjorie wasn’t sure how she was able to find the illusory room, the place where her parents had taken her and Snow to be ‘tested’ and then sealed off thereafter. Maybe it was because she was in the memory of someone else, someone who remembered what she hadn’t seen. There was no ancient forest path this time, no ice crunching underfoot. Here was a cabin, half of it crushed to smithereens, the trees around it smouldering with no fire in sight. And there were five amorphous shapes and a puddle of blue. “Is this your test, then?” She spoke into her reflection in the water goblet, only to get no response. Nor did the version of Mirror seem to hear her. Even if she hadn’t seen the broken glass shards anchoring the Other One, she would have recognized Mirror as the pillar of silver light standing taller than the rest, topped with a huge, dispassionate eye. 
I have to run the test. I can no more stop than you could willingly cease breathing. 
There was the voice again, reverberating from all around even as the illusory Other Ones ignored it. “This is your memory, isn’t it? This whole thing. Are we seeing a memory inside a memory?” Marjorie crossed her arms. “Bit self-indulgent, isn’t it?” 
Even a fragment of Mirror is too powerful for me to contain. That’s why I have to run the test. Their memories are too strong. 
“...Well.” Marjorie looked back over the circle of what she had to assume were newly-emerged Other Ones, standing in the wreckage of a magical gate collapse. “What do you want, then? I followed your directions. I would like to get back to saving my sister and friends now? Or do you want to show me once more how I’m the Wicked Sister, just in case I didn’t internalize it enough yet?”
I want to sleep. I want to break. I want to be free. 
“You want to break?” 
You are the Wicked child. You can break the script. You can break the spell. You can

break me.

They were all looking to Mirror. Even Gourmet, defiant as his tone was, seemed to beg for their approval of his actions. A hand reached up from the blue puddle, rippling and warping the air around it. When the Faerie Queen expelled them by the force of Her own essence, tearing a hole through the Faerie Layer with Her own judgment and shoving them through by manifesting a universe without them, each had bonded with part of the Physical Plane out of necessity. Faeries could not look upon the Physical Plane without an anchor, not without seeing a hellscape of fixed angles, molecular bonds and gravitational pulls. The wrongness of it would break their minds.The Blue fragment had done something they thought impossible. He had bonded with the tear itself, manifesting as energy that warped time and space around it. The hand trembled in agony, and a gurgling, wet voice emerged from Blue’s collapsed form. “Help me. Please. Brothers. Sisters. Siblings. We can still. Go home. There is always hope.”Of course Hope had attempted the impossible.“Go home? We could go home?” The Green Witch hovered over the puddle until the Gourmet nudged her back. “But I want to do something different. We could grow here. We could change here. So much ambition here.” “So much desire, purred the Gourmet.“Such a fearful, terrible place.” The Rot Witch rippled with shudders. “I’m with Hope. We should go back. I don’t want to be stranded here because you two are greedy. You can’t see it the way I do.”“We cannot go back!” snapped Gourmet. “You think he was trying to go back? He wanted to collapse the planes together. He wanted to open the tear until Faerie annihilated this plane. What would we have after that? It would not be home. And you think we would survive that intact? Weakened and fragmented as we are now?”Gourmet clung to life because he saw it as something that was his own. Fear feared exile and nonexistence in equal measure, and her form withered back into its death cap anchor. Ambition wanted to flourish in the potential of a world they could dominate, even if she chafed at the limits of physical life. Mirror could confidently analyze them all. They were easy to read. Guilt wanted what Guilt always wanted and could never have.Mirror did not want. Mirror was above wanting. Mirror did what was most logical for the whole of them. That was why their siblings all looked to them, because Mirror’s judgment would be right.(It would not always be right. How strange to remember the future for a second, to know instantly that in this world they would be ignored and sneered at, that they would shout to maintain authority and then gradually lose it as they became the prisoner of mortals. They would be screaming into an empty void and only Guilt would hear them.)“There is always hope,” the Blue gurgled. “We can make the new world like home. We would be together. We can be as strong as we were as the One, without...without all that loneliness.” A bubble of darkness popped above the puddle. “It is your nature to want the impossible,” Mirror said without judgment. Their new voice sounded like ringing metal. “Nothing is impossible! I can create a world where nothing is impossible. For you. For us. I will forgive you, Brother Desire. Just let me heal. Let me grow as the rest of you will and I will save us all.” A very faint light grew within the dark splotches, a bright, soft blue.Mirror stepped forward, and with a confused scowl, The Gourmet stepped aside to let them pass. Even Gourmet wanted Mirror’s approval. After all, Mirror was the logical center. Mirror’s approval meant a correct decision.And Mirror had already made their decision.“Gourmet. You attacked Hope, so Hope is your responsibility now. Keep him from acting. Bind him to this plane. Forge something out of him using that body of yours. Consider him yours now.” Mirror emphasized the word knowing that Gourmet would jealousy cling to anything and anyone he considered his. The blue puddle bubbled and boiled, swirling blue and black as the light within it flared and vanished. Hope’s words dissolved into liquid noises as he grew too weak to communicate. When Gourmet, as Desire, had turned on Hope, he had broken Hope’s trust. None of them had ever acted against Hope before. Now Mirror, as Logic, cemented that betrayal. Hope, confronted with something he never expected, experienced despair. (That should have paralyzed Hope. It went against his nature. Hope should never have stirred from his prison, even after the mortal giant sealed Gourmet.) No, Mirror was doing what they had to do. Hope would never stop acting, and he would act in the way he felt best for all of them even if it led to their complete destruction. Hope carried within him something even Mirror could not comprehend, something left over from the One.
At least look at it! 
The voice. Mirror knew that voice, and upon hearing it the world seemed to freeze around them, the Gourmet reaching down to mold Hope into something else. They looked past a curious Green Witch and a fearful Rot Witch hiding behind her. They glanced in all directions looking for Marjorie, all but one.One was blurred. Staring at it just caused discomfort. 
No, no, I’m here. I’m right here! Near the golden thing. The harp string! 
The harp string. That was right, this was when…“No. It wasn’t my fault.” The world around Mirror started to fracture, bits of light creeping from cracks and static tugging at the corners. “They were sealed because this world carried too much guilt for them to absorb. They were overwhelmed by the world. It was Gourmet, they carried Gourmet’s guilt at betraying his brother.” They had been unable to look upon Guilt as Guilt cried out, self-sealing. Guilt carried the weight of all their sins. But Mirror’s actions were right. They had to be right because Mirror made them, the Mirror who was Logic before being corrupted by this illogical world of atoms and mortality and immortality. The Mirror who drove Hope to Despair was not some puppet of physical beings trapped in a tower. Mirror was Logic and Logic had no sins to carry. Guilt was wrong, Harp was wrong about them…A hand reached from nowhere, slipping through the part of Mirror’s memory that was blurred because Mirror had refused to look. The hand, long and pale, plucked a string. The sound of Harp’s wail shattered the world around Mirror entirely, plunging them into an abyss of their own silver light fighting against an intrusion of gold.Marjorie stood over the crouching form of, well, herself. Mirror was still in her body and assumed the form again once Marjorie had broken the illusion. “Goodness, am I really that pale? I need to get a little more sun or I’ll worry Philomene.”She placed a hand on Mirror’s shoulder. “Poor thing, I knew it. That was Harp’s song we heard way back in the Market, and that was your pain I felt when Jack played it in the city. Probably tearing holes in your barrier or something.”There was no response from Mirror except another shudder and a gasp. “Hey, be easy on my body there, will you? I have to use it once you’re done with it. Somehow I have a feeling you’re not Logic after all, are you. You don’t seem to react well to uncomfortable truths.”The forest was gone, with Marjorie and Mirror left standing in a large, cluttered storage closet. “I suppose the ‘test’ was over. Was it really just in that old closet? I played hide and seek in here!” She laughed harshly, reaching out to knock a broom aside in spite only for her hand to pass right through it. Ah, yes, she wasn’t steering the body. “Did that break the script enough, weird voice? I disrupted the ‘testing’ spell. I can’t even tell if I’m seeing the past or the present right now. I have no idea where Ezra is and I have a feeling Mirror won’t be much help here, so if you could give me a little hint, maybe a bit of help…”The voice said nothing. Mirror said nothing. Whatever force ran tests in the closet did nothing.“Look, I want to help you sleep! I want to fix you so we can find out what I need to do to save my sister and stop the Golden Apple from ever blooming and get out of here. Not exactly in that order! Fine, fine, I’m the Wicked Child or whatever. I’ve known that for a long time thanks to you and the lovely inhabitants of this cursed house! What. Do. You. Need?”A spiderweb on the wall wiggled.Marjorie ran right through her own motionless body to get a closer look. That wasn’t a spiderweb. It was a strand of some kind of tissue, like a mass of veins, the color of the dull gray stone. It was leading further into the closet, into a door she’d never noticed before. It pulsed evenly.“You’re in here, aren’t you? You, the one who wants to sleep, you’re not just a spell. You’re...this mansion.”The pulse quickened.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It was a kitchen. The windows were boarded up, the tables dusty, the lamps unlit. The only light source came from seams of flowing light in the ceiling, a reminder that even if this seemed like a dead kitchen, something was alive in this house. Ezra climbed up, sore all over from the fall he’d taken trying to crawl out of the vents down onto one of the counters. He had missed the counters and had bruises and a bloody nose to show for it. He coughed and coughed until the dust subsided before he looked around.What had his plan been, anyway? Find a kitchen because that’s where his magic worked? What sort of materials would he find in an abandoned building? And abandoned it did appear, pots and pans still hanging on the wall, fancy dishware in cupboards painted with the emblem of an apple. He would really have to ask Marjorie what it was with her family and apples. He had to cook because that was, as far as he could tell, how Hearth magic worked without the aid of nearby potions and a store room of enchanted whatnots. He’d used magic to get them out of a monstrous building before, hadn’t he? What else could he call the Vacant Palace?Oh dear. There it went again, white turning to shimmering transparent red crystal and plain walls turning lavish. The spell even managed to reproduce the smell of the Gourmet’s massive, beautiful kitchen, yeast rising and spices simmering, with the scent of burnt sugar undercutting everything until one barely noticed it.“No. No no no, can’t have this.” Ezra pinched his shoulder, bit his lip, shut his eyes and pressed his fists against them in the way he did when trying to wake from a dream. Without Marjorie or Mirror-Marjorie to anchor him, he’d have to keep himself afloat in reality. When he opened them again the illusory echoes of the Vacant Palace were gone, the kitchen again truly vacant instead of occupied by innumerable entranced servants, merely large instead of a palace unto itself. No, the mansion was not dead. He was still walking on the edge of one of those cup-flowers that used honeyed scents to trap insects, and at any moment he could fall in.Mirror was still sitting inert, unresponsive to Marjorie’s shoulder-shakes. The fact that Marjorie’s hand passed right through her own occupied body did not help in that regard. “Wake up! Wake up already! We need to open the door. You need to, because I’m pretty sure it’s in reality and not this dream of mine.” Not that Marjorie doubted that the line between the two was thin. She was acting on instinct. Magic felt a certain way if you knew how to pay attention. Philomene had trained her in that. The filaments shone brightly, then faded, their pattern like a heartbeat. No, Marjorie realized, like a heart pumping blood through veins. Whatever was forcing magic in and out of those filaments was behind that door. “Is this your heart?” A pause. “Are you the house?” The voice was stronger in her head now, more coherent, enough that she could hear the pain underpinning it. It sounded so tired.
I am the spell and the house. I am this spell and that. I am a swamp of magic gone to decay, but I cannot stop. They will not let me stop.
They? “The Empire? Is that why they’ve kept you intact? Are they running some kind of experiment?”It took longer to respond this time.
The spell swamp corrupts their eyes and they want to know why. But the Empire does not keep me as I am. They do.
Marjorie sighed. “They, they, they. I suppose you’re going to be cryptic, it does tend to be a magical thing.” She could recall Philomene ranting about how ancient mages seemed to revel in being obtuse for the sport of it. What was it the princess had called them in her more exhausted moments? ‘Smarm artists.’ Come to think of it, wasn’t Marjorie something of a magical thing at the moment herself? After all, that was her own body sitting behind her, and her hand had passed through a door. That was her problem. She was thinking like someone who had a body that needed to occupy a physical space, instead of a dreamer or a ghost. Whatever she was. “Well. Never been much for method acting.” But a ghost didn’t care about doors or walls just because a Marjorie usually did. And sure enough, when she reached for the door, her hand passed right through it up to the wrist. It didn’t even feel like anything. Stepping the rest of the way through it was almost too easy. Inside was a storage room, the walls covered from ceiling to cluttered floor with gnarled branches, twisted, dry ivy and grasping twigs. Even though they passed through her, she still ducked away from them on instinct. At the center of the room came the source of the pulsing light, an orb as big as Marjorie herself, held in the grasp of two entwined apple trees.The trees bore silver bark and shining, metallic leaves that glittered in the glow of the orb. Their two biggest branches looked like arms, and in the bark she could see echoes of faces. Faces looking into one another. She knew those faces. “No. Nonono, please…” The faces of Duke and Duchess Blanche did not react to her. They were frozen in the wood, entranced. They’d never looked happier. You see now, said the thing in the orb. They will not let me go.“What am I doing? What am I doing?” Ezra kept asking himself as he looked through cabinets, cupboards and drawers for anything he could possibly use for materials. “Couldn’t learn the kind of magic that doesn’t need a kitchen or a stove, could I? I mean, there’s...oh, right, blood magic.” Which used the energy of the body as a basis, and according to Philomene was not as gruesome as it sounded, but still made Ezra a little queasy. “Okay, no, not that. Or maybe I could have asked Basil to teach me how to fight? So I could fight a house.” No. “Fine, fine, hearth magic it is!” He didn’t know how long this kitchen had been abandoned or why the storerooms hadn’t been cleaned out, but he knew what he couldn’t use. Oils could go rancid. Spices dulled. Solid fats spoiled. When he came across open sacks of flour and buckwheat he thought he saw sets of glowing eyes peering out from the darkness of the storage cabinet, many, many sets of tiny, animalistic eyes. He told himself those were mice or rats and did not stick around to see if he was wrong. No hard cheese, though he found a few waxy rinds and attributed the loss to the maybe-rats. There was salt. Water, thanks to a pump and plumbing that somehow still worked, and the water at least looked clean enough to use with a boil. Which would all be well and good if he trusted that stove or thought he had time to get a good fire going. He doubted he did. Besides, what was he going to make, salt water?“A good cook makes do,” he reminded himself. “A good baker makes do.” A good witch makes do. It was a whisper coming from the ceiling and walls, and despite himself Ezra shivered. “Enough of that witch-this, witch-that, will you? I don’t even know what a proper witch is.” The walls, thankfully, fell silent save for the creaking in the ceiling and the skittering noises in the storage closet. He renewed his resolve not to touch the grains.Odd, he thought. For all the magical things clearly alive in this house, or large thing, or whatever it was, he hadn’t encountered any wildlife. No raccoons, no stray cats, not even a single insect. Monochrome had been the same way, roses without bees and fruit without flies. He disliked it. It made him think of the barren field of dead trees outside, a place the birds knew to avoid.“But you’re alive, aren’t you? Whatever’s giving us strange dreams and turning the foyer into things. Whatever’s calling me a witch.” He set his hands on his hips. “Maybe you’re just bored. Maybe you scared off all the raccoons. Or maybe…”What was it Mirror had said? Decay, the spell was in decay. Like the rotting wood. Something was here, and it was damaged, like Mirror. It was ill.That was when he spotted it up on a shelf so high he had to move a dusty chair to reach it. It was a glass jar sealed with wax, full of golden liquid. Honey. Honey was the Sun’s Tears of Joy, the jewel-toned gift of the bees, some of her smallest and most beloved children. It cleaned wounds and could be made into expensive salves. In far-off Omel Island, a gift of emerald honey symbolized long life; in Mielle, they ate sapphire honey-drizzled fruit at Summer Solstice and warmed themselves with mead in the winter. And the prominent beekeeper families took names like Longevity, Chronal, Cyclica and Tempora, because sealed honey never went bad.“Well. It’s a start, isn’t it?”Marjorie looked away from the wooden forms. She made herself do it, instead staring into the orb of light held in their low branches. She set a hand on a surface that felt smooth as glass and warm to the touch. It made her think of some kind of egg. She breathed in and out, reminding herself that she was an actress and could wear whatever mask she needed. Now she wore the mask of one who was just trying to solve a problem, answering a call. She would have done it for Philomene and now she had to do it for…Well, for herself. “Those memories I’ve been wandering in, those aren’t mine. They’re yours, aren’t they? You see everything. Are you the house itself?”When the orb spoke, colors rippled through it. She thought she saw an abstract shape within.
I am not the house, but I grew into it. I am not sure what I am anymore. I was a spell, then many spells, and then we all dissolved into one another until ‘we’ became ‘I’ again. Somewhere within me is a spell that tests with illusions, and another that probes hearts. I am a spell that protects the home and a spell that brings happiness and eternal beauty. Something in me was brought from somewhere else, but I think it is gone now. We digested it. Now I am just this. 
“Don’t know what you are anymore.” Majrorie sunk to her knees, leaning against the orb. “You aren’t the only one. So, you think I can break you? Break your spell? Which is it?”More colors rippled. It is the same. I break. The spell breaks. I am the spell and the spells. It is the same. “S’rather morbid, isn’t it?” Marjorie glanced at it over her shoulder. “You’re asking me to destroy you.”
I have served my purpose. I have done so long after my hosts ceased to need it. You see what has become of my summoners, of Them.
Don’t ask about it, Marjorie told herself. Just don’t. Let it go. Let it be. It’s over now.“Are they dead?”
They are not themselves any longer. They found a way to cement their state of happiness forever. They will experience a moment of euphoria as eternal, as long as that tree stands. Happily ever after. 
“Ah.” That was all Marjorie could say. She thought she would have wanted to cut the tree down, or find a way to bring them back with her tears and blood just so she could ask them what they thought they were doing. And then what? Make amends? Curse them on her own? But no. There was just, “ah.” “So. What do you want me to do?”She felt the flash of heat behind her.
I do not know.
Marjorie heard laughter and realized it was her own, hoarse and harsh, punctuated with tears. “Oh, of course. Of course you don’t know. You took all the trouble to lure me here in your own labyrinthe way and now you have no idea what to do. Philomene is right about you magical things, so unnecessarily dramatic.” The last words caught in a sob before she wiped her eyes on her dress, stood back up and stared into the orb, both hands on the glass.“Fine. You remember everything, right? I came here to find out more about us in the first place, so let’s start with that. Tell me about Snow. Tell me about myself. Tell me about the Golden Apple.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Ezra had honey, salt, and clean water. These would have been of use if he was trying to sterilize a wound, he supposed. He also had an unwelcome audience.At first he’d just heard the whispers, echoing the things he’d said aloud to himself, but making them about witches. A witch makes do. A witch can find something to do with salt. A witch wants to find out whoever organized this kitchen and give them a piece of his mind. He’d managed to ignore them. Maybe they were just talking like that on autopilot. Had Marjorie’s family been witches? Is that what a witch was? She never referred to them as such. She never referred to them much at all, not that he could blame her. But soon he found a mannequin watching him from the doorway, the same kind that had held him in the ceiling. He froze when he saw it only to realize after a while that it wasn’t moving, just watching him. It briefly imitated his face.“Cut that out,” he snapped, feeling ridiculous. But the mannequin obeyed. It had glowing strings hanging slack from its back. It just stood there, gawking facelessly, until Ezra decided he had nothing to lose by keeping up his search for something to work with. When he went to investigate the matches and wood-burning stove, he found more sets of eyes peering out at him from a cupboard. Out came creatures shaped like mice, more or less, but too big. No, no, he told himself, he was smaller now. He was used to mice being specks. Horrible, horrible little hairy specks. But mice, regardless of size, didn’t have stitches and button eyes. They, too, appeared to be some kind of puppet, long strings connecting where a tail would be and gathering in bunches in the darkness. “...At least you aren’t fish.” Mice were creepy but fish were repulsive. “Are you all part of this house?” “Yes,” whispered half of the mannequins and mice puppets.“No,” said the others at the same time.Ezra shuddered, forcing it down with a layer of irritation. It was easier to be irritated than unnerved. “I don’t know what sort of answer I expected,” he said as he opened the stove and sighed at the lumps of ash inside. “You ought to know I’m not like one of those pompous chef-performers who pan-fries vegetables in the public square with handfuls of spices. You know they have assistants to do all the hard work for them? I’m about the process and the product, not the spectacle. So don’t expect any kind of theatrics for an audience.”The watchers just watched. A mouse blinked, or did something to make its button eyes vanish for a second. I am talking to myself to ward off abject terror, Ezra realized. I feel so silly about it.“Furthermore, I’m a baker. Of course I can cook and mix teas like an expert, but I’m most experienced in working with flours. And obviously that isn’t possible here. So I will do my best with what I have.” “Baker,” whispered the mice. “Witch,” answered the mannequins.“I’m going to pretend you were asking for a sandwich, and no, that’s not possible without flour and a lot more time than I have. I’ll just have to light a fire using what I have and hope the kettle isn’t too rusty.” He paused to look them over again, these strange puppets attached to the house itself or something within it, just watching him with what felt like genuine interest. The house was contradicting itself. “Your spells are going off willy-nilly, you’ve been abandoned, and you’re bringing back everyone’s nightmares. You’re sick, aren’t you? You’re feverish. Well, I can’t make a garlic tea without fresh garlic, but…” A mouse ran up to the positively ancient string of dried garlic hanging over the counter and pressed its sewn nose to one clove. It freshened and sprouted in a second, splitting open to reveal a clean green shoot. “...Garlic tea it is.” Colors rushed through the orb, forming blobs that coalesced into clearer shapes. A sphere of gold warped into an apple, growing on a thin tree with golden leaves.The Golden Apple, one of the three known Apples developed during the Era of- Here whatever the being was trying to say blinked out. “Artifact magic, I gather.” Marjorie tried to channel Philomene, letting her curiosity and burning need to know overpower her gut feeling of revulsion. She had to know the truth even if she knew the truth would be awful.
The Enchanted Apples are parasites, more closely related to the Flowering Vine than true plants. Only the Silver Apple has been successfully cultivated in the modern era. Your parents could not find any information on the Copper Apple, which grants an unpleasant truth.
“Mmm, no, that would not be their style.” If nothing else, Marjorie clung to her sense of dry wit. Not that she had an audience outside of trees made out of people and a...thing.
The Golden Apple grows in the heart of a compatible host. Like the fungus that grows within a caterpillar, it eventually devours its host body. 
A flicker of energy darted out at Marjorie, who jumped back in shock, though not before she felt a sharp tingling in her chest. “What was that for?!”
You don’t have the Apple anymore. And the damage to your body has been repaired. You have been enhanced. How? 
Her hand went to her chest with a little involuntary shudder of her body. “Someone else has been hanging out there. But I’m not in my body, am I? How did you know?” For that matter, how was she able to feel anything?
Your essence is here. Your life energy. That is enough for me, I think. 
“So the apple. What does it do? All I knew was that it could not be allowed to blossom. That’s...that’s what the Hunter told me.”
Devouring the Apple produces eternal happiness. No matter what happened to the one who ate it, they would experience bliss and contentment. I do not know its past uses. But They wanted it-
“To be happy. Of course.” Marjorie let herself glance at the wooden faces in the trunks, forever gazing at one another. She squeezed her eyes shut to crowd out tears. “I mean, I wouldn’t have been the first they sacrificed in the name of that goal.” 
They learned about it from the mirror.
Marjorie opened her eyes again, staring at the orb. “What mirror? Wait, no, that one, right? The one they had me sacrifice blood to if I hurt myself.” The one she was able to use to communicate with, well, Mirror. “Mirror told them about it? Why? Were my parents controlling an Other One?!”
Mirror told them one day, and gave them the information they needed to grow a Golden Apple. That is all I know. 
And a fragment of that Mirror, which had somehow failed to mention knowing this, was still in her body. That Mirror that had turned on their sibling. That Mirror who was doing something to her body.“...Interesting.” The shape of the apple split and transformed into two infants lying side by side, one larger than the other, the smaller with a fluff of dark hair. 
I do not know how they acquired the two of you when long term Silver Apple use causes sterility. You may have been recovered from victims. But they knew what genetic template they needed to grow a Golden Apple, and applied it to both of you. I sensed this about you as soon as I was summoned here.
The two infants shifted and changed until they were mirrors of the other, pale and hairless. Neither one had looked like that at first. The infants grew into children, again identical, light skinned and dark-haired. 
And I was summoned to test you. I? Something within me was. I am so much now. I am security spells and transformation spells and so many memories. 
“You’re not a bonded faerie?”
I do not know. I suddenly existed. I was here. I instinctively knew how to create tests, how to simulate environments and evaluate the results. You both went through the tests. From there I determined that Snow was more likely to obey and you to defy. In their terms, Good and Wicked. 
“...So they used me as the apple host, I guess, because I was wicked. I figured that out long ago, though it’s nice, I guess, seeing it confirmed.” Marjorie sat down on the floor, briefly pressing her forehead against the orb. “Tell me what they did to Snow. Tell me why she is the way she is now. What happened after I left?”
Snow was to be used as a backup in case you failed as a host, but she proved to be incompatible. The spell cast on her had not taken as well as it had on you.
Briefly there was an image of Snow, dreadfully ill in a bed, a piece of apple half-eaten.
Because you had left, They feared similar rebellion from Snow. They thought you might have corrupted her with your influence. A Happy Ending meant a perfect child. 
“What is this Happy End business?! I hear it from them, the Empire drones on about it, who’s defining what it even means?!” 
I do not know. All I can do is remember, test, and come to conclusions. They, my masters, learned that Snow’s life was in danger because she rejected the Golden Apple seed. They saved her by implementing a Pure Heart.
The display changed to a golden device, shaped like a human heart and decorated with filigree and jewels. An artifact if Marjorie had ever seen one, though not one she’d ever heard of before. She had so many questions for Philomene.
Her behavior changed after they gave her the Heart. Soon after that, they entered the state you see them in today, and the Libra Empire took full control of Blanche Manor. Libra keeps it in this state to observe the effects of spells running forever, decaying, changing, remembering and bleeding into one another. They keep it to observe me. 
Marjorie covered her mouth. “And they kept Snow. Snow is their property now instead, and she’s obedient. She was always brilliant, so I’m sure they managed to turn her interest towards whatever they’re trying to do, and...oh, Snow…”Could spirits or essences or whatever cry? Well, she was doing it. Snow didn’t want any of this. “I should have brought her with me. That hunter said he could only take one of us, and she insisted I go. She used something to make my memories of her fuzzy so I wouldn’t feel bad. Because she thought she had to be the good one.” She wiped her eyes. “I should have corrupted her more, eh? She could use a little corruption. Maybe it’s time for me to go back to her and-I don’t know. What can I do against her own heart?”
I do not know much about how it operates. 
“And Mirror?”
They did not learn about it from Mirror. The books they used were confiscated by Libra. 
“Right, I imagine they’d be all over that. And the Golden Apple. Got to learn about control and obedience and Happiness and all that.” At least she could use disdain to ward off heartbreak and guilt. “I’m going to go save Snow. I don’t know what else I can do, but I feel like I can help her. You’re the one who called me Wicked, the rule-breaker and all that.” She tilted her head. “But you said it like I can stop...you. Is that what you want?”I am. I am something that cannot continue in my current state. I cannot emerge. I cannot hatch. I cannot I cannot I cannot. The visions dissolved into swirls of nauseatingly bright colors. I…
Someone is trying to help me. I was able to extend a little of my power to change one thing here. He is trying to help but I do not know him. Why?
“Help…? Let me guess, in the kitchen?”
Yes. 
Oh thank goodness, that big-little idiot was alright. “Ezra’s, you know. He’s just like that. So you keep talking, alright? You keep telling me what you weren’t allowed to say, since I’m the rule-breaker and all that, and we’ll figure out something for you.”Ezra still had his audience, despite his loud insistence that he was ignoring them. He was tuning out the whispers of ‘witch,’ a phrase which barely registered as a word to him anymore. Fine, let them call him a witch. They were sick. He supposed he’d called Hamilton Tooth some choice things when he was ill.Reality rippled, and immediately he regretted that name coming to mind. Tooth was a shadow looming over him, eyes glowering from a form that was gigantic to even his true Skykin self. Not that Tooth was especially tall. He was just good at making himself seem bigger. “So, you want to go to the festival? I can’t stop you, can I? You’re a citizen.” Tooth spoke in a fake cheerfulness dripping with venom. “A citizen living off my good charity. But you’re a hard worker, right? You want to attend the festival with a clear conscience, don’t you?” A hand tossed out the contents of a sack, spilling a heap of multicolored, dried prism wheat kernels in front of Ezra’s workspace. “Separate those by color and you can go. It’s training.” Ezra felt his muscles tense up, his teeth grit. “You’re not here,” he grunted as he struck flint to light the remaining firewood. He had to look past it, through an illusion of rainbow kernels.Tooth loomed closer now. Ezra could actually smell the liquor on his breath, feel a big hand clenching on his shoulder. “You know I do this out of the kindness of my heart, right? How I sully the reputation of my family name on your behalf. So you have to make the contest entry look like my work. You have to win for me. It’s a learning experience.”“You’re dead,” Ezra snapped without looking up at Tooth, though he already knew his face by heart. “You fell to the Center of the Universe and were buried there with no cremation or ceremonial flame, where your soul will never return to the fires of the Sun. You’re dead and I am not a threat! I’m trying to help you, house-thing! Can’t you turn this off?!” He marched past Tooth to the tap to fill the teapot, staring at mice so he could see through a wall of cooling loaves. (“They’re selling well. You’ll bake twice as many in half as many days if you want to buy off your debt,” Tooth had said.) He chopped the garlic sprout and spooned honey into a mug as he watched an arm knock a sourdough starter to the floor. (“Meh, you’ll make a replacement, genius baker,” a drunken Tooth scoffed.) He poured steaming water into a cup and stirred it, making eye contact with a doll so he didn’t hear the threats and guilt trips and strange harp music from down the hall. “You’ll thank me one day, Kettle.” Ezra turned and found himself staring up at Tooth again, with no Jack to protect, no Basil to protect him, nothing between them but the fact that Tooth was just a memory and Ezra was real. But that was enough. He had one person to protect, or one thing. He clutched the cup, wishing into it the sense of comfort and safety no one had given him back then. “No wonder you keep invoking bad memories. You’re afraid, aren’t you? Well, don’t be,” he whispered. “I promise it doesn’t taste so bad if you bolt it down.”Ezra tossed the garlic tea at Tooth, dispersing the illusion as the liquid fell and seeped into the floor, vanishing.At first nothing happened, and he wondered if he’d gone through an entire homebrewed Hearth spell for nothing. Then the walls began to quake, a light filling the room, and the sound of something cracking filled the air.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. It’ll pass. The cold always does.At Basil’s current size, Aurora could no longer envelop him entirely in her warm, fishy-smelling embrace like a living blanket. Still, she did her best as always, clinging to him and holding him tightly against her big, soft body without her claws digging into his back. She was trained to protect a human, not a giant, yet she knew exactly what to do when Basil’s heart started freezing itself again.He knelt down, pressing his face against her fur and leaning his back against the wall of yet another hallway that looked like the endless other white hallways of the Imperial Palace of Clarity. He thought of dear Aurora, of Ezra’s warm and seemingly endless embrace, and of Red curled around his shoulders the way he now wore her cloak as a makeshift scarf. The stabbing turned to tingling, the biting cold to a dull chill. It passed. The cold always did. “Thank you,” he gasped into Aurora’s chest fur before sitting up, giving a bleary look to the piercing black eyes of the golden-white bear. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re still here. Somehow I keep losing everyone else, you know?” He rubbed bits of frost out of his eyes and off his eyelashes. “I don’t even know what that silly cat is up to lately.” Glancing around to make sure nobody could see him without his dignity intact, Basil tumbled back into a sitting position, letting his new white cloak shield him from the cool marble. “I’m not sure how well I’m doing at this ‘playing hero’ thing,” he whispered to her. Probably something he should not say aloud at all, but the sections of the palace he was allowed to wander through were often so plain and empty. He needed to hear a voice. “The Empress is so... I mean, I saw her before. But that was during ceremony. I thought maybe she’d be more of a person you would converse with, or something. Especially if she was going to make such a fuss about a Hero of Eternity.” Not that Basil had much chance to do anything heroic in the days since his capture-slash-rescue-slash-heroic exultation. Those strange servants, clockwork beings if he’d ever seen them but with unnervingly realistic faces and voices, brought him food and clean clothing, heavy and warm at his request. Nobody questioned anything. Nobody told him anything, and he hadn’t seen the Riders since that strange ceremonial banquet. ‘We will give you some time to recover your health,’ said Bright Morning, and then nothing else.If they meant the fatigue and nausea of a body recently grown much larger through magic, underfed and dehydrated, and pushed to its physical limits in a long and strange journey that culminated in a monster battle, all that was over and done with. He felt much better now, thanks to plentiful (bland, dull, colorless) food and hot baths. If Bright Morning hoped he’d get over his ‘spells’ of shivers and chills, as Muffett described them, she would have to wait a long time. “Maybe they’re observing me. Right now. I mean, I’m sure they are. They have mirrors.” Basil had not looked into a single mirror, nor had he seen many in the halls, oddly enough. But if a mirror could pull a human and a giant across time and space, surely a little one could spy on him. “They must already know. Maybe they’re deciding my fate right now, or they’re just playing along until I screw up. So they can get me on something, and pin it on my home, and with that have a reason to break the treaty with the Mountain Kingdoms and…”Aurora grunted and put a large paw over his head. It didn’t cover his head like a hat anymore, but it still made her point.“You’re right. I am doing their work for them, panicking like this.” He had Muffett’s Glamour cast on him even if the cat herself was Lords-knew-where, and that had to be worth something. “They know or they don’t, and I suppose I must be of use to them or they would starve me. Perhaps we should go back to our room and get something to eat.” He often shared the food with Aurora, though she had plenty of fish for herself. Transparent, boneless fish. He climbed to his feet, taking a moment to marvel at how Aurora was dog-sized now in comparison. It never grew old. How did Ezra take anyone on the land seriously when they were all so small and cute? Well, not the Riders. Not the Empress. He could attribute that to presence, perhaps. Ezra stopped coming across as intimidating after a few hours, long before Basil had finally stopped misinterpreting the giant’s lovestruck gazes as condescending stares. And if he admitted out loud how adorable Philomene seemed at times, she’d rightfully fix him a death glare that would reach him no matter how difficult it was to see her face. One did not call Flower Folk cute. But there was something else to the Empress and her entourage. Something uncanny about them, especially Valerian herself. One did not look at her and see a human in a headdress with a painted face and a frilly gown, the marks of ceremony worn by every Empress. One saw Valerian, whoever that was supposed to be, the incarnation of the woman who ruled with the blessings of the Faerie Queen. “But she doesn’t,” he whispered to himself as he turned the corner of the hall, trying to remember the way back in the termite hill-like labyrinth of Clarity. “My grandmothers would have said so. Wouldn’t they?” They never said much of anything about the Faerie Queen, save that while she grew stronger from her physical realm worshippers, she no longer sought them out. “Perhaps if I ask some questions, as a curious outsider,” he mused to Aurora. “I ought to make myself useful in this role if nothing else. If I can’t save…”At the word ‘save,’ he paused, feeling a strange vibration under his feet.A child of the World’s Edge, the great northern ridge where the kingdoms and clans of the Mountain Folk lived, knew to respect the world beneath one’s feet. A soft tremor could crest like a wave into a great earthquake, set off an avalanche or mudslide, or serve as the first whispering sign that one of the volcanoes was stirring from its sleep. Basil may have spent most of his life in the Blue Forest among lowlanders, but his faerie grandmothers and family instilled the same knowledge into him. He could have dismissed it as the hum of whatever sort of mechanisms powered the Palace of Clarity, but he stopped. The vibration came again, warbling and pulsing. It was a little harder to hear and feel things in this bigger form, voices sounding more distant and impacts softened by differences of scale. He pressed his ear to the floor, shivering against the cold stone, and listened. A murmur grew into a voice, one deep and resonant, with a metallic tone that suggested a great pipe organ. What he thought might be tonal sounds were words, sung so slowly and stretched out that they were difficult to make out. And it was a song, one with a mournful melody in impossibly low octaves. There, that sounded like ‘depths,’ and was that ‘rescue?’ “Rescue? Do you need a rescue?” Basil realized how useless it was to speak through the floor to something like that, especially when he had no idea how far he was from these so-called ‘depths.’ Was that underground? A lower level? A prison? “Please, I can help you, whoever you are! I am…” He was not Prince Charming, not yet. But. “I am the Hero of Eternity. I can rescue you!”The voice and vibrations fell silent, leaving the halls even more painfully empty and lonely than before. He stared at the marble floor, looking into his own shadow, then leaned against Aurora again. “What is happening? What is this place? Palace of Clarity my foot! Is it an ironic term, like how the Gourmet called his cluttered museum a Vacant Palace? Should I just distrust any place called a palace that doesn’t belong to my family? I’m rather inclined that way!” “Young Hero?” “Just a sea of white walls and lights that work on their own and doors that open like great mouths and…” Basil realized he was being addressed, though when he looked around he couldn’t see anyone. Then he heard a low growl from Aurora and felt something move along his hood onto his head. Instinctively his hand moved up to brush it off.“Wait! Hold on, young man! Not so hasty! Just leave your hand there-yes, right, there.” As a confused Basil held his hand stiff by his head, something tiny crawled onto his glove. When he brought it to eye-level he thought at first it was some kind of worm, then realized it was a comparatively miniscule gecko carrying a familiar (and even tinier) figure in a red cloak, wearing his rodent-skull mask on his back to expose a face too small to be seen clearly. Somehow the confident grin carried through anyway as Scarlet Sun dismounted and gave an enviously theatrical bow.“Terribly sorry! Didn’t mean to startle you there, my boy! Sometimes it’s just a bit hard for me to get attention from you huge sorts. Got to make sure I have your ear, so to speak.” Basil felt blood rush to his cheeks and his heart pound in his chest. “You’re apologizing to me?! I-I could have squished you! I could have killed you!”Somehow Basil knew Scarlet Sun winked. “Sure you could have. Anyway, I’m used to Bright and she’s used to me. I’ll give more warning next time.” He leaned against the back of the gecko. “I was just wondering if you were alright. Saw you crouching here like this and talking to yourself.”That did not help the degree of Basil’s shame in front of the cocky Flowerling. “I was just feeling unwell for a moment. You know, one of my spells.” “Poor lad, to be struck with an affliction at your age. But you’re a big, healthy sort, and I’m sure you’ll pull through.” Scarlet never asked many questions about the ‘affliction.’ No one did, which meant that Muffett’s glamour was stronger than he thought or they already knew more than he liked. “I will say, you’re right about this palace. The lack of color symbolizes purity of morals and confidence in truth, but it makes for a rather dull convalescence. Sometimes if you spend enough time here you catch yourself seeing and hearing things that aren’t there.”That was a rather suspicious answer if Basil ever heard one. Still, he smiled wearily and nodded his head. “It isn’t what I’m used to,” he said truthfully.“Bright Morning tells me you Sky Folk are big on color and decadence and all that business. No judgment from me, I started in the theater!” Scarlet laughed musically. “Don’t you worry, my boy. Once you’ve had your debut you’ll be able to come and go more readily as you please, to get to know your public. Within reason, of course.” “Debut?” Basil blinked.Scarlet slapped his forehead. “Oh, how did I forget? That’s why I came to fetch you. It’s time to get you dolled up for your debut. Psh, wipe that shrew-in-hunter-sight stare off your face. It’s nothing, just you standing in front of a crowd while the Empress gives a speech. Ceremony stuff, you know how we love our ceremony. But we ought to get a move on! I’ll hitch a ride on you and not your bear, if it’s all the same. She, erm, she doesn’t eat geckos, does she?”Getting ‘dolled up’ was nothing new to a prince who mostly visited the kingdom during summer festivals. Where his grandmothers, family servants and aunts and uncles would have braided bright fabric into his hair, instead one of the clockwork-like humans (or humanoid clockworks?) painted plaits and strands of it with some kind of silver dye. Instead of fresh herbs and oils, the soaps used to cleanse his face before applying makeup smelled of, well, nothing. The makeup itself was simple, merely a darkening around the eyes that reminded Basil of Rem Tera’s kohl. “It’s to help your features stand out more,” Scarlet Sun explained. “Black looks striking against gold.”Oh, that was right. Sky Folk all had gold eyes. Basil had carefully avoided looking in mirrors. When he thought of gold eyes he thought of Ezra’s great big ones with their ever-so-worried and gentle gaze, and his stomach tightened. 
Don’t worry, my Ezra. I’m here now. I’ll use this lie to save you. 
Wait. Of course, as a Hero he was clearly valuable to the Empire somehow. Surely that meant he could ask favors. Perhaps he could just ask for the safe return of Marjorie and Ezra? But they were in the midst of escaping somehow when last they’d spoken, and he didn’t want the Empire to interpret his wish as ‘arrest them more quickly and bring them back into custody.’ That would help him find them but not save them. But what of Philomene and Red? He could at least ask them to secure the safety of a lost child, his ‘charge,’ and Philomene could sneak in with Red. Then he at least could protect them, and Philomene could help plan a way out of-well, a way out of all of this. “Scarlet Sun? Could-ow.” Basil winced as the servant pulled a little too hard on a plait of hair. “Could the Empress grant a favor if I wished it? Is there a particular way to ask that?” “You mean a ceremonial way. Of course!” Scarlet supervised nearby, standing on a dresser while Basil’s room bustled with ‘dolling up’ activity. “The Empress understands the power of a sincere desire. You just have to look her in the eyes and ask it, and she will grant it or not.” “Is-is that all?” As intimidating as the Empress could be, Basil was sure he could just do that. He’d have to crouch, but he could do it. “See, I became separated from someone during that battle with the bl-with the dragon. She’s very important to me, and I’m afraid she might not be safe on her own.” “Ahh. A lady friend?” Basil had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. “No, no! Nothing like that. She’s a little sister of sorts. Human, though.” He hoped Red would stick to human form instead of trying to wander the streets as a large, dangerous-looking wolfdog.“Aha. A child on her own, poor dear. Well, you needn’t worry. Monochrome is the safest city in the world, you know. We have eyes everywhere.” Scarlet tapped the side of his face. “But you can ask the Empress anyway, just to put your heart at ease, and in the meantime if we get reports of lost children I’ll pass it your way.” “Thank you.” Basil was surprised by the way his voice broke on those words. Why was he being so open with Scarlet, anyway? Was it because Scarlet himself came across so relaxed now, after so much ‘ceremony?’ “That’s why I want to keep wearing this,” he added, touching the red cloak-turned-handkerchief. He’d had to put his foot down to keep the colorful touch against the gray fur cloak, the gray garb and the silver-gray in his hair. Scarlet had relented with the condition that the fur cover the red. “So that’s hers, eh.” Scarlet studied it for a second, then nodded as a servant draped the heavy fur cape over Basil’s shoulders and fastened it with a black clasp. The fur was soft as rabbit and warm to the touch. Basil resolved to keep it if-when, when he escaped. Ezra kept his red Vacant Palace garb, so why not? “Well, go on,” Scarlet urged. “Go look at yourself in the mirror.”Oh, whoops. Basil was sure he wasn’t supposed to do that, though the reasons why had grown fuzzy. “If it’s all the same,” he said with a sheepish look, “I feel self-conscious enough in front of crowds. I feel like knowing how I looked right now would just make it worse. You know how you’re your worst critic and all.” “I am an artist, I know all about that. But come on, we’ve put all this work into making you look like a proper Hero of Eternity. Downright princely, if I do say so myself. You’re going to see yourself reflected on mirrors out there anyway, so this’ll brace you. You are also your most important audience. And you want to feel good, right? Confident?” Scarlet said. “Nothing does it like a costume.” Basil hesitated but realized there wasn’t much he could do to get out of this, not without alienating Scarlet Sun, and he was sure the friendship (and favor) of one of the Riders would come in handy here. Besides, it was just one mirror, and all he had to do was look at his own reflection. So he stood, legs tingling and sleepy from kneeling for so long, and turned to the huge mirror he’d so studiously avoided in his room.And to his astonishment, he saw a hero.He saw a figure in dazzling silver, towering over the human servants around him like a swan amid pigeons. His red-brown skin stood out healthy against the black and silver of his hair, all signs of chill and anemia invisible or gone. The man in the mirror was huge, strong, powerful and confident, the sort that helped others feel safer from his presence alone. He felt he could lift the world in his arms, hold it aloft and protect it from all harm. This was someone whose heart would never freeze, who would overpower a curse through his power and his own alone, who would save and never need saving. Basil was not Prince Charming, but this person...one day, this person could be. That was not him. That was a costume. But it could be him, couldn’t it? If that was what others saw, that’s who he would be. He could be this hero for his friends, for his kingdom, for his beloved and kind baker. This was a hero Ezra deserved. “See? Nothing to it,” Scarlet said, breaking him out of a trance he didn’t even know he was in. “You’ll get used to it, trust me. First time I put on the red cloak and skull I felt ridiculous, and now it’s just like a second skin. At least you don’t have to wear bones, right?” He laughed gently. “Now just pull the hood over your head, yes like that, and we’ll head out to the balcony. You sure you don’t want a drink to steady your nerves? I know you said you don’t drink.”Basil shook his head, that heady, ‘big’ feeling still filling his body like the air he breathed. That reflection still filled his mind, so much that he didn’t think to ask for tea instead. “Then more for me. Not that I would ever imbibe on the job,” Scarlet said with another winking tone as servants took Basil by the arm, leading him out the door as Aurora nudged him in the back with her nose. Through that luscious fur cloak, he barely noticed it.He felt like a shell, with a baby bird cracking out.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Snow’s fingers danced across the copper surface of the Speaker, using needles to dab ink and blot the ends of lines. This combination would work. It would have to work. YOU ARE TIRED, Mirror said, choosing to display text across the surface of the wall-sized mirror in the Speaking room. YOU WILL BE MORE PRONE TO MAKE MISTAKES.“Are you sure you don’t mean you are tired?” Snow snapped, and then immediately regretted it. Snark was born of bitterness, and bitterness welled up in her mouth. She used her handkerchief to discreetly spit it out, the excess emotion a deep violet blot on the cotton. I DO NOT TIRE, Mirror said.Snow took in a breath. A good, kind princess would accept blame for their recent errors, even if she thought they had to belong to Mirror. “I have so much on my mind lately.” That was true. “Do forgive me.” THERE IS NOTHING TO FORGIVE. YOU ARE NOT THE ONE WHO WHO WHO Immediately Snow dipped a needle in ink and blotted out a circle edged deep onto the Speaker orb. It was meant to act as a sedative of sorts, to keep Mirror from trapping themself in another loop. Mirror did what was asked because they had been convinced that the Ever After Empire had the most logical and sound means of saving the world. That was the official story, and one Mirror themself would not deny. For Mirror to acknowledge what happened when the captive Other One did not comply would go against their nature. And Snow was not the one who did it. So Mirror was correct in that respect. She didn’t like it. For all she found Mirror frustrating, they were her one of her only real friends in the Spire, one who would not be replaced like Lady Swann and the ones who came before her. But Mirror was also massively powerful and dangerous even in their diminished state, and by their nature capable of great treachery. Their behavior had to be curbed so they could be Good, just like Snow.THANK YOU, Mirror flashed. SNOW, YOU NEED TO EAT AND SLEEP. WE WILL CONTINUE THE SEARCH FOR YOUR SISTER AND MY FRAGMENT TOMORROW. I WILL WATCH WITH MY MANY EYES IN THE MEANTIME. Snow flushed, guilt gnawing at her. “The anomaly,” she reminded Mirror. “We were trying to find a way to break through the anomaly and figure out why people keep vanishing from the Empress’s reach.” That was what the Speaker was for, as they called the floating orb excavated from an old ruin long before Snow’s birth. It had taken years and years for Imperial magicians and artificers to figure out how to work the device, which could enter the mind of a faerie-like being and guide it. Mirror had, as they had said, a hundred thousand eyes in their current state, and needed help weeding out what was important amid all that information. That was where Snow came in, using the ink to guide Mirror along on paths. Only Snow, and Snow alone, could get Mirror to cooperate with the Speaker without threat of consequences. No one knew why. I KNOW WHAT OUR OFFICIAL GOAL IS. BUT YOU WANT TO FIND HER. I AM ATTUNED TO DECEPTION. YOU CAN NEVER LIE TO ME. Snow felt her face flush further and bit her lip. She spoke softly, for the walls always had ears. “I thought if we found her along the way, it would be...perhaps I could convince the Spire to let her stay. Speak with her about Her Imperial Eternity when she isn’t in such a stressful condition. We’re so similar. She could be a Princess Candidate too.”Snow had carried herself very well when Spire officials informed her, in gentle but blunt terms, that they were calling off the search for Marjorie Blanche. They had retrieved enough of the Golden Apple Tree to work with. Mirror’s missing fragment and subsequent errors could all be accounted for. The Spire no longer needed Marjorie. At this news Snow nodded with downcast eyes, being a good Imperial Princess Candidate, and had then filled three bottles with vivid red rage and curdled blue despair. SLEEP, Mirror reminded her, and Snow flashed a grateful smile. “Yes, of course. It is late, isn’t it?” She mimed wiping her eyes, though she wasn’t tired. “I shall retreat to my room and order something light to eat with chamomile tea. Do alert me if you have news.” Officially, she meant news on the anomaly, the strange force that the pesky but mostly unthreatening Masquerade used to hide themselves. But Mirror, she guessed, knew what she really meant.Snow waited until the door to her room sealed itself from the inside, seams fastening and melting together into a solid mass. She pressed her lips to the heart-shaped crystal as it went from colorless to orange and then blue-green, filling finger-sized bottles with the excess emotion. Hmm, blue-green. Green was the color of envy. That one kept showing up now, little trickles of green whenever she remembered that brief image they’d captured of Marjorie, clad in a boy’s overalls and cap. What was it Snow could envy there? Marjorie had no home in Monochrome, none but the Spire, and nowhere to go but back to the life of a servant. Perhaps her Pure Heart needed an adjustment. She clutched the tiny bottle of blue carefully in her palm and knelt in a corner of the room near the window, by an innocuous-looking pile of extra white cushions. There, hidden in the center of white, was the vivid blue of her other friend.When the Blue Fairy, as she’d come to call him, had arrived at her windowsill, he was little more than a wisp, barely bigger than a teardrop. He’d since grown significantly, and now took the form of a softly-glowing bluebird with piercing green eyes. “It’s not as pure as I know you like it,” she whispered to the Blue Fairy.The bird tilted his head. “I really don’t mind! I promise, I’m not picky. You’ve been so kind already.” He hadn’t been able to speak beyond a faint whisper, but had indicated with his tiny floating form that he wanted some of the excess emotions Snow had been collecting for research purposes. The Spire would come to take some from her, but it was easy to hide just a few for her own secret research project. She was always so good, so pure. Surely even a Princess Candidate deserved something of her own.She carefully opened the little vial and the bird chugged it right down, his form filling with a bright blue undercut by the dark indigo tone of Snow’s discarded despair. “Thank you,” he gasped in his strangely human voice, his wings fluttering. She could swear it sounded a little clearer. “I feel like I’m starting to remember why I came here again. Not...not entirely yet. But there was something, someone I wanted to…” And then he trailed off with a birdlike chirp. “Sorry, it’s still foggy.” “Poor thing.” Snow reached over and pet the bird gently on his head with one finger. “Never you worry. Everyone has a place and role in Monochrome, and you must have come to find it or you wouldn’t be drawn here.”“Right. A place, a role…” The bird closed his eyes. “Snow, do you know your wish yet?”Snow hesitated, pulling her finger away slowly. “Oh, I spoke too soon. Sorry, sorry!”“No, no. You really do not need to grant me a wish,” Snow insisted, hands back in her lap. “Your friendship and company is enough. I love my life in the Spire, as a proper Princess should, but…”The bird chuckled. “It’d be easy if we could say my friendship is granting your wish, but that’d be cheating. Besides, it isn’t. I know there’s a wish in there, burning its way out of your heart. I can see it. It’s blinding to me, Princess Snow.” “You do not need to grant me a wish,” Snow repeated, a bit firmer now. “I am happy here, with everything I could want.” What did the Blue Fairy mean by that? She had already asked him to return Marjorie to her, and while he had promised to help when he was strong enough just to make her happy, he had insisted that was not her wish. Shouldn’t that be her only wish? Faeries were so confounding sometimes. “I think it’s in my nature,” Blue Fairy said with a little sigh. “Does it make you feel better to know I have selfish motives? I think if I can grant a wish, a real strong pure wish, I’ll be a lot stronger myself. Maybe I’ll even remember what I am and why I’m here. Or what my name was-no, is. What my name is.” “Will that help you more than my despair? Do you want some of my anger, will that help?”Blue Fairy looked up at Snow with a gaze too intense for a little bluebird. “I don’t know how I know it. I really don’t. But I feel like if you can figure out what your true wish is, and if I can grant it, it’d make me stronger than drinking an entire ocean of despair.” He blinked. “Besides, I think it needs to be granted soon for your sake too, Snow. That’s a lot of despair you’ve been giving me lately. I’m grateful, of course, but it can’t be good for you.”Snow’s hand went to her heart, above the artifact mechanic she knew was behind her ribs, the last gift her parents gave her. And unlike most, it was truly a gift, wasn’t it? “I can never fall to despair. I am a pure-hearted maiden and I do not feel such things.” “If you insist,” though Blue Fairy sounded skeptical. And a bit worried. That was progress too, Snow noted. Early on all he could do was hunger and obsess over his own hunger, rambling about knights and sometimes floods. “But in the meantime, let me show off! Guess what I can do now?”He stood, wiggled his tail, flapped his wings and took off flying, not floating aimlessly like a wisp but really flying around the room, laughing. “I used to be able to do something like this, I’m sure! I used to be so much freer in my movements! It’s really something!”Delighted by this development, Snow laughed and clapped as the Blue Fairy did loops in the sky and then landed in her outstretched hand. He gave a birdlike bow. “Wonderful!” Snow cheered, though she remembered to keep her voice down so the automata servants didn’t hear anything they shouldn’t. “Do you think your actual form is a bird, then? Since you can fly?”“...I don’t know. I just know I don’t like being restrained. Sometimes I also want to walk around, but you only get so far with these little stick-legs. Maybe after I grant your wish I’ll change into something else.” “And leave me too?” The words were out before Snow could stop them, and when she put her hand to her mouth to stifle it a drop of blue welled out. The bird didn’t answer, watching her carefully, possibly distracted by the despair she wasn’t supposed to feel over anything selfish. Was he judging her, or just hungry?The full-length mirror in her room flickered and filled with light, projecting an image. It happened so suddenly it startled the Blue Fairy as he fluttered upwards to settle down on the edge of Snow’s bed.“Oh! That means an announcement from Her Imperial Eternity,” Snow explained, secretly grateful for the interruption. It was late in the evening for one, but in Monochrome time didn’t matter. When the Empress spoke, you listened.“Her Imperial...Eternity…?”Sure enough, the image in the mirror resolved itself into the throne of the Empress, Valerian clad in a stark white gown with vertical black lining and the same mask and harlequin-like makeup she always wore. Snow thought she looked a little thinner than last time she’d seen Valerian, and sounded a little hoarse. “People of Monochrome, citizens of the Ever After Empire who bless us with your presence in the beating heart of our empire, we are pleased to make an announcement. One more key to our Happy Ending has been unlocked,” said the Empress, still as a statue aside from her head. She looked so regal and strong, even when sitting. Could Snow be like that if she was chosen as the next Empress?“Come out to the streets,” she beckoned, “or to your windows, and look to the high balcony of the Palace of Clarity. If you cannot come, look to your mirrors. The time has come for us all to meet the chosen one who will lead us to bring all of the world its good, proper fate. It is time to show you the child of the Sky who serves the land, the slayer of dragons. The Hero of Eternity.” A hero? That was new, though she’d heard rumors of a dragon attacking the gates some days ago. Snow, curious, stepped out onto her own balcony, the Spire towering high over even the Palace at the center, looking over it like a gigantic guardian. The roof of the Spire touched the domed ceiling of Monochrome, and Snow’s room was high up enough that she could see it twinkle above her, currents of power running through the golden threads. Sure enough, she could see the tiny dots of crowds gathering in the streets outside, standing on balconies and roofs, desperate to hear from the Empress and this ‘Hero.’ The Blue Fairy landed on her shoulder, looking down. “Well, can you imagine that? We have a hero now. I have no idea what that means,” Snow admitted, “but I suppose we’ll find out. What do you think?”The bird didn’t answer. He just stared downwards, tilting his head, as if lost in thought.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Well, are you still there? You going to let me take the wheel again, Eye? Mirror, I should say?

…

Fine. Take some time. Guess it would hurt a Mirror to see a reflection of itself. Believe me, darling, I understand completely. Starting to see why you hitched a ride in me, and why you can’t tell us much about your nature. You can’t acknowledge it yourself.

Whereas I thought I knew perfectly, but I’m starting to think I was wrong.

Light bled through the walls, seeping over them and burning them away without smoke or flame. It erupted from the orb in bright, vivid colors, as if the multicolored sky of Polychrome was falling in a storm around Marjorie. She shut her eyes and moved to cover them with her hands.

Then she stopped and held one hand out blindly to the surface of the orb. Something was happening to it. It shouldn’t be alone.

The shell gave way under her hand, breaking like thin chocolate. Something took her hand, bright and so hot to the touch she had to keep from pulling away. But it didn’t hurt or burn.

And then, as if the creature had breathed out that blast of energy and color, it breathed it all back in, rainbows and light distortions rushing and siphoning into a form that started to take on a humanoid shape. It grew too bright and Marjorie found herself falling back into rubble, blinking in and out of consciousness.

When her vision finally cleared, there was no more mansion.

There was not even a pile of ruins and treasures like the remains of the Vacant Palace. The cellar, the mirrors, the enormous hall that changed shape and size at the wills of her parents, the statues, they were all gone. She sat on dead, parched ground, a huge, empty patch in the middle of the Silver Orchard. And where the strange orb-creature had been stood a humanoid figure, child-sized and hairless, made of shimmering rainbow light. It stared at her with a blank void of a face.

She felt a hand squeeze her shoulder and looked over to find Ezra, looking bewildered but mostly unhurt. He didn’t say a word before he pulled her into a tight hug and held it, trembling even as he tried to comfort her.

“This is you, right?” he finally whispered as he pulled away, looking her over. He smelled of chopped garlic and herbs. “Not Mirror or whoever that is.”

“No, it’s not Eye. Not Mirror,” Marjorie corrected himself. “Mirror’s gone quiet again.” She could sense the fragment of the Other One like a flicker in the back of her mind and a twitch in her hand, but nothing else.

“Good.” Ezra looked past her at the brightness before them, the colors looking out of place amid the Silver Apple trees and the sky so gray it looked like it might burst into rain at any second. “Do you...know what that is? I’m afraid to ask.”

The figure looked between Marjorie and Ezra with its smooth face, and then spoke. The voice, sounding like an old man and a young child speaking at the same time, seemed to radiate from its entire body.

“You nurtured and cured my body,” it said to Ezra, and then to Marjorie it added, “you listened and cured my heart.”

Ezra rubbed at his eyes. “Mirror said something about a spell malfunctioning. Was that your work?”

“That was their work,” the figure said. “Them, and time, and neglect. And Her Eyes on me.”

Marjorie frowned, thought back to the hazy, dreamlike visions she’d seen under the mansion’s power.

“You are the spell. The orb, that was where my parents trapped something from the Faerie layer and used it to power the illusion spells on Blanche Manor. And I’m sure they stretched it out to do whatever they wanted it to do, like clay. They were good at that.” There was no spite left in Marjorie’s voice, though she suspected there should have been. She felt cleaned out from inside.

“The thing inside was a dying faerie. I remember being that once, but I am not anymore. I was becoming something else, but it took so long. I changed and dreamed,” the spell said in those dual voices. “I had to protect the house, so I couldn’t hatch and be born. No, it wasn’t that. Something was trapping me. When the witch tried to treat me and offered me his magic and compassion, it gave me the energy to break free. I wasn’t so confused anymore. And when you let me tell my story, Marjorie, it gave me the heart and will to be reborn.”

Marjorie was not sure she understood any of this, and made a mental note to run it all by Philomene as soon as she was finally reunited with the princess. Already she knew she was in strange territory. Spells were not usually self-aware, let alone capable of speaking and making decisions.

“Thank you for coming back,” the spell said, its colors growing more vivid. “Thank you for looking to me even though I tried to push you away with illusions and nightmares. There is another you will need to find and free.” It paused. “No, two will need your help. You are story breakers, Wicked Child, Hearth Witch.”

Ezra tensed visibly and took a step back. “I’m not a witch! I don’t even know what that is. Anyway, two? Marjorie’s sister and…?”

“I will help you,” the spell continued without responding to Ezra. “I will give you my last gifts before I fly free and...figure out what I am and what I am to become. Perhaps I am like a new faerie. They are born of compressed magic.”

“...Well, take your time. You’ve worked hard, haven’t you?” Marjorie managed a tired smile. The spell had no mouth, but reflected a pink-purple glow on its face in return.

“Yes. Let me rest. You will see me again.”

With those last words, the figure shattered into suspended drops of light before collapsing into a puddle that immediately sunk into the dead, hard earth. There was a sound like a soft exhale before tendrils pierced the soil and a patch of glowing, shimmering grass grew over the spot where the mansion once loomed, spreading out to the edge of the silver trees. Two crystalline roses emerged at the feet of Marjorie and Ezra, growing on a single stalk rather than a bush and waiting to be plucked.

“...Marjorie?” Ezra knelt down in front of his rose. “What was that?”

“I’m not entirely sure. I think whatever was here needed to come to terms with what happened as much as...I did.” Why were her eyes watering? Why was her vision clouding? Marjorie felt foolish crying now, when she’d held back for so long.

“...Said it had to figure itself out. Like the Green Witch, I guess.” Ezra gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You probably have a lot to figure out right now too, but we can do that safely in Polychrome. After we figure what these are.” He reached down to pick one of the roses, which turned into a crystallized sugar rose in his hand. The shrunken giant stared down at it and cupped it carefully in both hands, though Marjorie guessed anything magical wouldn’t be as fragile as Ezra feared.

Right. Marjorie had time to ‘figure things out,’ even if her situation was still urgent. She took her own rose, which transformed into a crystal-glass key with a rose on the handle. Curious.

“...M-marjorie?” Ezra cleared his throat and nudged her. “I’m sorry, I want to say more, but we-we should go.”

They were not alone. Marjorie had been so distracted by the spell-creature that she hadn’t noticed the shapes lingering at the edge of the mansion, bare-faced marionettes and stuffed rats with button eyes. They shambled closer.

“I thought they would have vanished with the house,” Marjorie whispered as she stood up again, reaching for the knife she kept on her belt. “Do you know what they are?”

“I think some of them weren’t part of the house. They said ‘no,’” Ezra said, then shook his head. “Sorry, that makes no sense without the context, but those are...I think they’re…”

“Her Eyes.” Marjorie recalled the spell’s words. The mansion was under some kind of magical surveillance, though she could only assume the malfunctioning spell interfered with it. Now the spell was out of the way.

The marionettes shuffled forward, carried on invisible strings. Their moves were ragged and haphazard, but there was a mechanical unity to them, as if they were being controlled by one hand.

“We need to go and we need to make sure they do

not

follow,” Marjorie hissed as the circle started to close in on them. “I’ll just make a break for it, and you follow.”

“They’ve already seen us,” Ezra whispered back, starting to tremble now. “They’ve seen you. We’ll have to change your disguise again. We can’t lead them back to-”

Marjorie put a hand on Ezra’s head to steady him, nodded, and rushed at one of the smaller marionettes. She collided right with it, sending it flying into a tree as she ran. The impact of wood on skin stung and left splinters and bruises, but it wasn’t as bad as she expected. Mirror was still enhancing her strength, for whatever reason they had.

She heard a thwack and a clang behind her before Ezra caught up to her, flower in one hand and frying pan in another. “Maybe I can come up with some kind of disguise spell for you. Like how flavors can disguise herbs or medicine! Something like that!” He huffed and puffed. “I miss having longer legs!”

“Well, at least one of us has a plan!” Marjorie let adrenaline carry her down to the shack where the passage lay, glancing once over her shoulder.

No sign of the marionettes yet. She doubted they could move that fast. Then again, if they weren’t chasing her maybe it was because they didn’t need to. They already had the information they needed.

Did Her Eyes extend into the mansion’s memories?

Marjorie’s

memories? Did the Empress know she had a shard of Mirror in her now? If they needed a reason to recapture her, that would be the one.

An idea entered her mind, a potentially terrible one. But first she’d have to make sure nothing really was following them into Polychrome.

The tunnel felt much longer than before, and when at last they emerged out of the derelict door Marjorie stumbled out, coughing from the dust. She was a little astonished to find no one paying attention to them, until she remembered what Florian had told her about the shack being under some kind of ‘don’t notice’ spell.

She was more astonished to see everyone staring upwards at the mounted mirrors on the walls.

The street was packed with Imperial citizens in their finest whites and blacks, standing under parasols and using binoculars to watch something. When she followed their gazes, she saw that not only were they watching mirrors, some were looking straight up at a giant image projected on the sky-dome itself.

It was the Empress Valerian herself, in her mask and makeup as always, partway through a speech about a hero.

“...This is good,” Marjorie whispered to Ezra. “We couldn’t have asked for a better distraction. We’ll just blend in with the crowd and make our way back to Florian. Though maybe you should go first so as to secure me a change of clothing. Ezra?” She gave the baker a little nudge, as he was staring wide-eyed at the projection. “Ezra? I know it’s technically dazzling, but it’s all smoke and mirrors, as Philomene would say…”

“Marjorie. Look.”

At Ezra’s prompting, Marjorie glanced back up at the Empress’s projection, and promptly fell silent.

There, standing behind her, towering over her and yet clearly diminished in her presence, was a copper-skinned Sky Giant cloaked in lush silver furs with a red scarf around his neck. Marjorie recognized that youthful face, the long, black hair framing eyes that should have been brown but were gold.

That was Basil.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Up in the top of the Spire, as Mirror coordinated a projection of the Empress’s speech that would reach the entire city of Monochrome, they felt a flicker. New information flooded in from a set of long-defunct Marionettes, ones old enough that they predated Mirror’s installation in the Spire. Mirror could not admit to themself that the Empire had made changes to them, because to do so could cause a chain reaction that would harm Mirror. So instead, Mirror felt that they had simply changed, as their fellow Other Ones had changed and been irrevocably corrupted by the physical plane. In their current form they could extend their consciousness across many mirrors throughout the Spire, giving them enough power to perform as many tasks as necessary. They could monitor every image that came through the Empress’s security system, formally known as Her Eyes. They could see through any mirror in Monochrome and adjust the Spell of Storytelling projected through those mirrors at the citizens and would-be citizens. They could answer questions and present new ideas to the Spire researchers. They could do this all at once because they were true, and rational, and quite powerful. Even losing a tiny fragment of one of their core mirrors did not hurt Mirror as much as they feared it might. It made for a few more errors than usual. There would always be errors. That was the nature of the physical plane; it was imperfect, and its imperfection tainted Mirror. But the fragment also made for an excuse. Mirror could, if they wanted, decide that the new footage of fugitive Marjorie Blanche and her unknown accomplice could wait until after the Empress’s speech was complete. If the staff of the Spire disagreed with their decision, they could blame the fragmentation. Mirror was the prisoner of the Spire, but even a prisoner could rebel.Basil stood on the balcony next to the Empress, dwarfing her and yet feeling dwarfed. He never felt so small in the court of his parents, even though his father and mother really were taller and had a presence that filled the great stone halls and tents where the king of the Sethwhile Mountain Kingdom held court. Rather, he felt that their presence made everyone feel a bit bigger, maybe a little more important. Basil would never be king, curse or no curse, due to politics he did not understand nor care about. He rarely cared, though he always imagined if he ever did become a king for some reason, he would want to spread that energy of making others feel stronger in his own strong presence. Then again, the Empress was not doing anything actively to diminish him. This was all in his head.And she was speaking to thousands, thousands and thousands gathered in the streets, on the balconies and even on the roofs, of him. About him. Or the version of him the Empress knew.“My people,” she said, her voice ringing out with the force of a thousand speaking as one, “long have We waited for a sign from Our reader of dreams, Our Dark Midnight. You, the citizens of Libra, are the people of the True Story that We shall forever weave from Our own hands.” She held up her hands there, gloved; they looked oddly thin and bony beneath the fabric. Basil felt Aurora’s nose against his back, and reached behind to scratch her ear. “Never fear, girl,” he whispered. “All is well.” “What does she mean by the True Story?” Red asked.Philomene looked up from the notes she was furiously jotting on a scrap of paper, a donation from her hosts’ dinner. She had to record everything, in case she started to slip and forgot. Basil in Imperial hands. Called some kind of hero. Playing along or enchanted or both? True Story?She sat in Red’s palm, the girl perched on the rooftop along with the two of the three Gruffs. The Gruffs owned the upstairs flat and were happy to give a young girl and her Flowerling “aunt” a place to stay for a while, provided they didn’t mind straw and didn’t bother poor old Big Gruff. They were goats, an Enlightened trio who had come to make their fortunes in Monochrome. Well, Philomene was not entirely sure Big Gruff was really a goat, but it seemed rude to ask. Before Philomene could speak up about how the True Story sounded like propaganda, and risk alienating their hosts, Middle Gruff spoke up. He was tall and lanky, white with black spots and curved horns. “See, little lady, the world is aimless and frightening because we don’t know where we fit into its story. The Empress finds that for us and guides us into where we’re meant to be in order to find happiness. Right now we might just be wall-washers and dome-cleaners, but one day we’ll be great heroes among goatdom.” He stopped to munch on a mouthful of paper and straw. Philomene jotted down more notes. 
True Story: something to do with narrative and ‘fitting in?’ Need to get close to Basil but not sure how without endangering Red. 
“I’m glad he’s okay,” Red whispered as she lifted Philomene to face-level briefly. “He’s wearing my cloak.” “...So he is.” Philomene gave Red a reassuring hand-pat. “We’ll find a way to help him and reunite, Little Red, I promise.” Back to her notes she went. Long as Basil has Red’s cloak he may be safe, I hope. But this cannot last. Marjorie, Ezra, where are you? Rem, why can’t I reach you? I cannot lose any more loved ones! Basil felt a hand on his arm as, for the first time, the Empress touched him. It chilled him, that touch, even through his layers of cloth and fur. He felt the tingle of cold on his skin and bit his lip to avoid flinching at it. “This Skykin youth saved us in our time of need. As you know, all great stories have a hero, and through Dark Midnight’s dreams We have found Ours. While his kinfolk hide in the skies or skulk in shame on the land, he has found the thread of destiny and embraced his strength and power. Step forward, young Hero of Eternity.”Those words, ‘strength’ and ‘power,’ hung in Basil’s mind as he did as Valerian asked and walked to the front of the balcony. What she said about the Skykin was cruel and unfair, but he couldn’t find his tongue to argue with her. Besides, he had to play along, didn’t he? Once he was given voice as the Hero, he could start defending his fellow Skykin.Wait! But he wasn’t Skykin, just a giant human with gold eyes! He was only playing along to find Ezra and Marjorie, or at least get in touch with Philomene and Red! What was it Bell had said? About losing oneself? Did that really happen, or was it just metaphorical?Yes. Marjorie, Philomene, Red, Ezra. Think of them, he reminded himself, center them in your heart and look for them in the crowd.But the crowd was a sea of eyes, unfamiliar faces staring out at him and expecting something. So many faces, so many eyes, like the Empress’s speech in Nautilus but worse. This time he could not run and hide from it, much as he wanted to. Ugh, and most of them were human! Why was he afraid of a human crowd? Why did he feel like they would well up like the great waves that hit the far northern shores after earthquakes and swallow him up? Where was Ezra? Where was his Ezra? “You alright there, buddy?” Basil heard a whisper from his shoulder. Scarlet Sun. “We can always tell when big folk are having some trouble. You’re shaking like a leaf.”They could tell, they could always tell. He was surrounded on all sides by high ranking members of the Empire who would know if he showed weakness. They could tell. Basil the human prince had stage fright. Basil the human prince wanted to hide and be sick until it was over. So Basil the human prince had to rest for a moment in the back of Basil’s mind, and Basil the Skykin Hero of Eternity needed to take charge. It was easy enough to do. When he imagined this Hero, he saw someone who feared nothing, and his panic went away. He felt bigger now, his mind and soul gradually filling this body that did not fit. The eyes were unfamiliar, but they loved the Hero, and the Hero would draw strength from that love. He even felt his back straighten and his breathing slow as the ice in his heart stopped throbbing again. “There we go,” Scarlet whispered. “That’s more like it, lad!”He heard a noise from Aurora. Probably just a sneeze.“What sort of nonsense is this? Hero of Eternity?” Florian scoffed as she watched the projection on the Polychrome sky. The colors were warped and the images floated like oil in water, but the Empress’s voice came through clearly. None of the Masquerade knew that they would be able to watch a Dome projection from their sky; Florian had to assume Nightingale was doing something. “If the Empress tells them something, it becomes truth. People will start believing they always wanted a hero, and now they have one, and they’ll thank her for it.” Doc was outside that evening with a few students in tow, standing on a vacant windowsill. It was rare to see him ever leave the hospital, and he did so now with tiny green glasses and hands covered by protective gloves as if he feared contamination. He had strange ideas about Polychrome. “Heroes,” he added with a scoff. “Nothing but fools on roosters with glorious ideas that get ‘em killed.”“I don’t think that hero’s going to be riding a rooster,” a young student pointed out, to which Doc just scoffed again. Florian watched the Empress and the Skykin boy next to her, whose eyes looked strangely blank, like he was caught in a spotlight. “I feel a little bad for him,” she admitted. “He’s probably as much of a pawn as anyone else. But the Masquerade must go on! You know what we have to do, right?” She turned to her fellow rebels who sat watching the speech in the ruins of the square. She pointed up to the projection in the sky. “We need to make sure the Hero’s journey doesn’t end the way the Empress thinks it does. We need to find out more about this guy, and this so-called legend.” She grinned, hands on her hips, and stomped a hoof. “This story is going to get derailed by the Masquerade.”“Hero of Eternity,” the Empress commanded, “kneel before me.”And Basil, the Hero, did so, even if by kneeling he was still taller than her. The crowd roared behind him.Basil, the Prince, hoped Ezra did not see him kneeling before the one who captured him. “Oh, Basil.” Ezra stared upwards. “He’s terrified. I saw it for just a second, but there was real fear in there, like he was drowning.” He wanted to go up there with him, find out what he was doing and if he was under a spell. He wanted to offer Basil a hug and a kiss and some herbal tea that would soothe whatever was going on his heart. But Basil was all the way up there; no, Basil was in the Palace, and he and Marjorie were hiding in the crowd. He held the sugar flower carefully in his hands, where it seemed to have closed up on itself and formed into a harder, more solid rosebud shape. Into Basil’s open palms the Empress placed a sword. It was too large for her to hold as easily as she did, for even Basil was surprised by the weight and solidity of the blade. Stranger still, it was transparent, forged not of metal but of some kind of clear, hard material. It couldn’t be glass, what good would a glass sword do? No, he knew this weight and texture. Amber. It was solid, clear amber. “We bestow upon Our hero the Blade of Clarity, which shall be used to purify the world of confusion and sorrow and bring the Ever After Empire to its full, unrealized glory.” She turned to the roaring crowd again as Basil rose, holding her arms outward.“Our dreams will be fulfilled at last. The Hero shall save his kin, for with him we shall save and conquer the Sky itself!”This time Basil could not keep from blurting, “Come again…?” But it was lost in the cheers around him, so loud he couldn’t even hear Aurora behind him.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The Palace of Clarity turned on Basil. He had never spent a winter or even a summer in the High North kingdom of his mother’s birth, where they bred tame white snow bears and built temples of ice to the holy auroras, but he’d sat at her knee during his summer Sethwhile visits and eaten dried whale meat as he listened to her tell stories of the High North. She spoke of how in the worst snowstorms, the world would turn into a sea of whiteness, a treacherous sea that could drown one in light. Did the Palace know about snow blindness, or was it merely echoing that nightmare from coincidence?The white walls flowed into the white ceiling and white floor, hallway turned to identical hallway. He’d found it confusing before, but now it was like a great blizzard engulfing him. He tripped and stumbled, still unused to the size of his body in these unfamiliar clothes, and as he slammed against a wall a trickle of blood ran down his nose. He wiped it with his glove and stared at it, trying to ground himself in the color red. Red was a hot color, and blood was warm, even his blood that ran through a slowly freezing heart. That was when he saw the gold.Threads of gold ran through the white stone walls, not marbled and not threading cracks like pottery, but literally embedded in the wall and weaving in and out of it. They were so thin he wasn’t surprised he’d missed them, big as he was and tiny as they were, and yet they were so numerous they should have tinted the wall a pale yellow. And they were moving, wriggling and squirming, pulsing like the threads that had wormed their way out of the Empress’s body. The Riders hadn’t acted like Valerian was really dead, and the threads shed the body like a soiled garment. If the threads were the ‘real’ Valerian, then no wonder she seemed to dwarf Basil and everyone else with her presence. She was enormous, bigger than the Green Witch. She was the Palace of Clarity. She’d swallowed him whole, and here he expected to resist her power? To stay himself long enough to be her Hero, which meant turning his blade on his lover’s homeland? But what was he supposed to do? Everything about the Palace of Clarity went against its own name and served to confuse him. Of course, the strange, tasteless food made the pomegranate dessert all the more vivid, just as the curious boredom of the Palace and the sameness of its doll-like servants made the Riders and the Empress all the more dazzling. They were the red blood against the white walls. Basil shut his eyes as Aurora nudged behind him, trying to envelop his body in her fur the way he would when he was human-sized. He was too big now, but that didn’t stop her trying, and her hug against his back would almost be funny in better circumstances. She still knew how to fight off his chill, even if she couldn’t do anything about the ice in his heart. Inside, the Hero of Eternity who had emerged during that speech to protect Basil from his stage fright nudged him on, told him to push past the terror and overwhelm and run. But run where? The Hero would only return to the Empress, Basil feared, because that was all he knew. Basil thanked the Hero, and told him to rest for now. And that was when he felt the vibration again. Aurora did too, from the sound of her confused grunt. When Basil opened his eyes she was sniffing at a patch on the floor that looked no different from any other on first glance, until Basil crouched down close enough to look at the threads and see they were retreating from it in a circular radius. No, they were being pushed away, struggling and wrinkling themselves against some kind of invisible bubble. The vibration that was too rhythmic and focused to be an earthquake sorted itself out once more into a song, the slowest, deepest song Basil had ever heard.“When she dies, then I wake. Now I wake, but soon I sleep. Come to me, listen to me, for now I remember but soon I shall dream.”It was the singing voice that had asked him for help, though its song had changed. ‘When she dies, then I wake?’ Was ‘she’ the Empress, and had her false death loosened some grip she had over this entity? Still, it was a plea for help.Basil had no idea how to help himself, but he could always act to help another in need. That was the most important part of being Prince Charming. He stood, and he felt the Hero part of him stand as well, as if following his own lead. He nodded to Aurora, nudged her clear, and lifted the odd crystal-amber sword that looked too fragile for the job. It would have to do; he didn’t have any other sword handy.“I’m coming!” he shouted to the voice as he plunged the sword into the spot on the ground, and as impractical an act as it was, and as right as it seemed, it sunk right into the floor like a key in a lock. Rainbow light radiated from the sword and rippled outward as a hole appeared in the ground, with barely-visible steps leading down into the darkness. Basil tested one with his foot to make sure they were Skykin-safe. He heard shuffling from down the hall. They were catching up, the doll soldiers and their Rider keepers and who knew what else. They would make him look in the mirrors and forget, change him until he was no different from one of the automated dolls. But only if they caught him.Picking up the sword again, and wishing he had a better way to sheath it or strap it to his back, he had no choice but to carry it in his arms as he ushered Aurora to follow him down the stairs and into nothingness.Ezra, feeling a little dizzy, leaned briefly on Marjorie for support before catching himself. He couldn’t do that, she was thin as a twig and in poor health, and he was much too large, he’d crush her! Except no, she still towered over him, and with the newfound strength she’d manifested since the incident with the Mirror shard she easily held him up. How’d he forgotten that? And why was he still haunted by nagging feelings in the back of his mind that he needed to check on the sourdough starter before Tooth messed with it, that he wanted to impress the brash and handsome prince he’d just met despite the insult Basil had given him, that his perception was unstuck from the present? “We just heard the Empress speak, right? And Basil was here?” And, Ezra didn’t ask but hoped to answer, this is real, isn’t it? I am here, we are here and nowhere else in the past or future. “...Yes,” Marjorie said after a moment’s pause, squinting upwards at the surface of the sky-dome where the Empress’s broadcast had just concluded. (Concluded with what?) Now it just shimmered in its usual way, blasphemously distorting night and day to bathe the city in endless soft twilight. But the look Marjorie gave that artificial sky was the sort he’d expect for someone who had just threatened Philomene, razor-sharp and cold as hail. She seemed to snap out of it, glancing down at Ezra with her mask-smile back on.“Well! At least now we know Basil is in the city. We just have to reach him, don’t we?” “Through a message, you think? If we could get ahold of a messenger pigeon…”Marjorie shook her head. “No, we have to find him, because he’s immersed in the heart of whatever spell this city puts on its people. Just as you were with the Gourmet, except I doubt I’ll be able to lie my way into a dinner party. You know lying is a lot harder with that Mirror shard hitching a ride?” She huffed comically, though Ezra could see the dismay beneath. “Now what am I supposed to do?”Ezra squeezed her arm gently. “You’ve still got your mind, and you’ve got me. And soon we’ll have the others.” How he didn’t know, except as a gut feeling. He’d made a wish, cast some kind of spell out into the ether, and despite not having a grain of sugar or a drop of water to cast it with, it felt as if something had happened. He was learning to recognize the feeling of magic, like a great breath exhaled at once. He was getting a taste for it.As soon as the phrasing came to him, he realized that he heard it. A vibration beneath his feet, a song sung so deep and slow it may as well have been breaths. As Marjorie had stared at the sky, he now knelt by the ground, putting a hand to it. Marjorie, frowning, knelt next to Ezra. “Are you alright? I know it’s daunting, but I’m sure we can get in there and rescue Basil. And Snow…”Ezra shook his head. “You don’t hear it or feel it?” No one else seemed to either, based on the way the crowd was starting to mill around and part, speaking to one another of the speech and the new ‘Hero’ with delight. “Maybe try your Shard hand?”Marjorie set the hand that the Mirror Shard had pierced on the ground, and pulled back immediately with a shudder, going pale.“Are you alright? It isn’t like the Harp, is it?” Ezra asked. “No, not at all. Mirror isn’t repulsed. It just sent something back. I don’t know what it did, but it answered that voice back.”“What did it say?”“It said, ‘let them in.’”And that was when Ezra felt the swelling up of a breath again, except it was all around him, in the stone ground beneath him as the street started to melt away. It opened around them and reshaped itself into a tunnel, silver light running through it as something tiny and fibrous within the stone retreated and pulled back as if burned. No one else seemed to react to this tunnel, or even notice it. They just walked around the entrance without a second thought. “This city is so strange,” Ezra sighed. “Do you think it’s a trap?”“I think it’s awfully convenient,” Marjorie agrees, “but on the other hand, if we’re going to see where it leads, we’d better act soon. Have you noticed everything seems a little off since that speech ended?”“Fuzzy,” Ezra agreed, looking around. “And slowed down.” Indeed, the artificial lights were a little dimmer, and the crowds around them were a little too calm and sleepy-looking considering the announcements the Empress had made just moments ago. Whatever was reaching out to them, be it part of Polychrome or otherwise, was able to do so because Monochrome had weakened for a moment. Perhaps it had used too much of its own power and needed to rest. But used it doing what?Taking a deep breath, looking down at that sugar-crystal rose in his hand and carefully pocketing it, he stepped into the tunnel and heard Marjorie follow. Stone ground behind them as the opening started to close, only for a figure to wriggle in and run after them. Ezra froze, fearing he’d been noticed after all, when he caught sight of the young girl grabbing at the back of Marjorie’s overalls. She disappeared into the darkness as the exit of the tunnel closed behind them, but her eyes still glinted, and they were the eyes of a red wolf.“...Red?!”“I smelled you,” Red said, with a victorious tone in her voice. “Red, oh Red!” Marjorie could be heard laughing or crying, one or the other. “Thank goodness, thank goodness you smelled us. I hope we smell good?” Correction, that was both laughter and a sob. “The princess, is she…?”“Asleep suddenly. But safe. I have her.” Red paused. “You were not moving. You were all still, but I could move. Now everyone is moving slowly, and she’s still asleep.”Ezra bit his lip. He wanted to give Red a hug too, but doing it in the darkness might end poorly, especially if she was carrying Philomene. His instinct had been correct, though, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He was so used to questioning himself. “We should keep going. We don’t know how long this tunnel will last, and I’d rather catch up somewhere with lights. You wouldn’t happen to have a candle, Red?”“Don’t need one. I can see.” And with that, Ezra felt a shape brush by him and a child’s hand take his as she started leading him forward. Startled, all he could do was reach behind him and grope for Marjorie’s long, lean hand so she could follow. They followed Red through pure darkness, a tunnel of dark, smooth stone, until a glint of light ahead of the endless corridor grew and grew into an exit. They emerged, still holding hands, in a vast, cavernous chamber lit by white lamps, the domed ceiling depicting murals in stark black and white. A glassy spiral staircase descended from the center of the dome, and in the middle of the round chamber stood a massive statue of a kneeling figure, silver and gold veining its metallic surface. The statue looked as if something had been gnawing on it, one of its arms stripped down to a metal core in the shape of bone, wires and threads hanging from the wound. It had a startlingly realistic face, with two lines running down its cheeks in patterns that resembled tears. And it was truly enormous; even Rem would be dwarfed by one of the hands it held clasped together in front of it, head bowed. “Ezra…?” Ezra was so busy staring at the statue, he almost didn’t hear the voice call his name. It was a little different, deeper and more resonant, but the tone was the same. And when he turned to look at the figure standing at the foot of the spiral stairs, the eyes were gold and not brown, and he was towering instead of hug-sized. But it was him.“Basil…!”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“They can’t, you know,” Ezra whispered to Marjorie as the Empress declared her desire to take the Sky, nearly drowned out by the cheers around them. “We’re-I mean, the Sky is unreachable except by flight. Do you see any Rocs or flying machines here?”

Marjorie glanced down at Ezra with a sardonic smile. “Are you sure saying ‘they can’t do that’ is a good idea at this point?”

“No,” Ezra admitted, feeling a bit faint. The Ever After Empire was a threat, but it was a threat to his friends and his new home. He never thought of them as reaching his people in the Sky. For all of their many problems and cruelties, the Sky Islands were literally above the grasping hands of the land. Weren’t they?

“Funny, though,” Marjorie continued, giving Ezra’s shoulder a reassuring and surprisingly powerful little squeeze with her bony hand. “You’ll note she hasn’t said how she’s going to do it. She’s just declared it, right there in front of poor Basil. And everyone’s just accepting that she’s going to do it, and soon. For all she talks about weaving a ‘story,’ she knows how to do it.”

“So she’s lying?” Ezra stared. “Why would she lie?”

“I never said she’s lying,” Marjorie said. “I’m wondering...well, it’s all just theory. We are going to have to get Basil out of there, aren’t we? Never a moment’s rest.” She had returned to her usual outwardly-flippant self, and in a way that was a relief for Ezra, after all she’d been through in the mansion.

It really did hurt, seeing Basil there and being unable to reach him. There was no way Basil would be able to see them in the crowd, and even if he could, how could they get to him up on that balcony in the middle of the palace? Would he have to pretend to be their enemy, if he was playing along with serving the Empress? What if he wasn’t playing along but had fallen under some kind of spell, charmed by her as the Gourmet had done to Ezra?

In Snow’s room, the Bluebird sat up.

That’s a wish, isn’t it?

It wasn’t as powerful or tantalizing as Snow’s wish, but the Bluebird couldn’t grant an unacknowledged wish. And that locked mechanical heart of Snow’s made it very difficult to acknowledge a wish.

Besides,

said the part of the Bluebird that never spoke to Snow, the part that was deeply hungry for something,

this way we can still have despair and hope. We need them both to regain our strength.

The Bluebird, who felt he had a name that was just out of reach, looked over at Snow, who was watching the speech more dutifully than anything else. Snow was a good source of despair, so why did it bother him so much to think of the situation like that? To treat Snow like a fountain to turn on and off.

Stop that,

the hungry, bitter, very old voice said.

The human will betray you in the end and you will betray in turn. That’s how the world is. Once we’re strong enough to regain your memories, you’ll see.

Bluebird, of course, felt that the other voice knew and remembered everything, and all he could remember was pain and terror and spite. He had been enormous and powerful, and then greatly diminished, struck down by...a sibling? So the other voice must be correct about the world.

But oh, there was a wish down there, a potent one.

The Empress’s speech continued; she was going on about weaving fate and happiness and other things that just blended together in Ezra’s mind. He couldn’t stop looking at Basil, or thinking of poor Philomene and Red, who should have been with Basil. This dreadful Empire had torn them apart. What a dreadful Empire, what an awful Empress…

I want us back together. I want us reunited. I don’t care where.

He looked down into that crystalline sugar flower in his hand.

I still don’t know what a witch is, but if it takes a witch to keep them safe, I’ll become a witch.

The hanging mirrors shimmered.

It was easier than the Bluebird thought to grant a wish. It was like exhaling, feeling fate shiver around him, and then breathing in something heavenly. Despair was nourishing, but hope? The sort of desperate, last-ditch hope borne of wishing? It really was phenomenal. It filled him up until he thought he might burst.

And then it was gone, consumed or burned away. But he remembered now, why he came here, and it wasn’t just to grant Snow’s wish. It was to regain strength the other self lost after an eternity of confinement, and to strike back against…

Something. Her. Probably the Empress; he remembered he hated her for some reason. And…

“Alphonse,” he said aloud. Snow turned to him quizzically.

“I think my name is Alphonse,” he repeated, fluffing his feathers, still riding the rush of having a name. “But you can call me Bluebird if you want, Snow.”

Snow’s smile, usually so reserved and careful, turned genuine as two hands scooped him up to keep watching the address.

She couldn’t, right? As the Empress spoke, Basil tried to remain on his feet. He had to be the loyal Hero of Eternity. He had to play into their story just a little bit longer.

But she was going to use him to attack the Sky! She would use him as a weapon of war! No, not war exactly…

“Those who live in the Sky cage themselves from the world,” the Empress went on, “when they could be joining us in happiness. Even now, a poison spreads through one of their Islands, a poison we shall cure. We shall save them from themselves and from their own torment, as we have saved you from yourselves.”

No, not war. What was it Alphonse said? That the Empire waited for Martine to suffer and reached out to ‘save’ them, claiming them in the process.

Why was he thinking of Alphonse of all people?!

And where would it stop? The Mountain Folk kingdoms and nations kept neutral among the dueling empires of the world; it was that desire for neutrality that cursed Basil in the first place, since Sethwhile refused an alliance with the Fire Opal Empire. Let the great giants fight, for they are dwarfed by the mountains; so the saying went. But some lowlanders saw the Mountain Folk as poor nations, their practices ‘exotic’ and ‘quaint,’ as he so infuriatingly learned in Nautilus. Could the Empress weave that into her story and lay claim to them as well?

“Eyes forward,” Scarlet urged him. “Don’t be nervous, lad. You’re doing so well. Don’t like crowds, do you? You look a bit green ‘round the gills.”

Basil nodded slightly. It wasn’t a lie, just not the whole truth. He held the crystalline sword in his hands, glancing down into its clear amber surface.

For a second, he thought he saw an image flicker in the crystal, a pair of glowing eyes opening with tears of fire streaming down.

Later, he would wonder if that was why he missed it. Then again, it happened so fast that even Scarlet couldn’t react before it hit.

“Celebrate,” the Empress commanded her people. “Celebrate, and know that in our arms, you are always safe-”

There was a whooshing sound, and the feeling of displaced air ruffling Basil’s coat. Then the Empress fell silent, collapsing on the marble floor. Her eyes looked up vacantly, her headdress splayed around her.

There was a tiny hole on her neck, but it did not bleed.

Someone, it may have been Bright Morning, uttered a curse as a shutter wrapped around the balcony, shutting out the crowd and leaving the Empress’s still body in darkness.

Basil willed his limbs to work again, shock slowing him down. He tried to kneel down in front of the Empress to check on her, unsure of what else to do, but two guards blocked his way.

Bright Morning loomed over them, expression stony.

“It’s all right, Hero,” she said. “The Empress will be fine. We’ll take care of her here.”

“But-” Basil tried to protest. “A hero should help his-his…”

“Right, of course,” Scarlet added. He was standing on a guard’s shoulder now, atop his lizard. “But this is not really a hero’s work. She’s just taken a recess. The speech has ended.”

Mirrors flickered behind him.

Yes, of course. The speech had ended, and the Empress was retreating to her quarters. The hero would give her space because that is what a hero ought to do, what his liege wishes. It all made sense to Basil on the surface. He was supposed to look away.

But he refused. He leaned past Bright Morning, pushing one of the guards aside as gently as he could safely do, and took one more look at the Empress who did not step back, she fell, she fell…

The Empress’s unmoving body was leaking.

No, it was unraveling.

Threads slithered out of the wound, tiny golden threads that might have been beautiful in another circumstance. They writhed over one another, retreating out of the mouth now too as the Empress’s body started to crumble to glittering gold dust. The thread wound through her crown and up into the walls themselves. Something had been in that body, and was retreating.

Bright Morning grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and tossed him aside as if he were made of paper.

He landed hard against the stone floor, his heavy coats the only thing to pad his fall. Immediately Aurora growled protectively over him, rearing up to defend him. He imagined Bright Moon striking her down and stagged back to his feet.

“No, Aurora! No, I’ve got this!”

Bright frowned. “I was hoping that would knock you out cold, so we could do this a little easier. Panic always makes the process more difficult. You’ll learn this in time.” She turned to servants who were wheeling in mirrors, mirrors as tall as he was. They were going to surround him with mirrors.

They were going to make him forget what he’d seen.

“Aurora,” he whispered, “on my cue.” He let them bring the mirrors closer, lowered his head and appeared to submit.

Then he raised his sword and smashed them to bits, sending glittering pieces of glass throughout the chamber. Several of them hit him in the face, leaving little cuts.

He knew on some level that The Hero of Eternity would stand and fight. But the Hero of Eternity would also submit to having his memory wiped; he would see only what he was supposed to see. So Basil, who was not Prince Charming but wished to be, nudged Aurora and fled with her down the halls of the Palace of Clarity.

Around Red, the world stilled.

It was only for a second, but everything seemed to slow around her, even the colors dimming. The panic and confusion that had broken out when the Empress had collapsed fell silent. It was deathly quiet, so much so that she couldn’t even hear the strange, constant hum of the golden wires in the dome.

When she glanced in concern at Philomene, even the confused little princess appeared stilled in her hand, frozen like in a painting. The Gruffs were no different, Mid Gruff stopping right in the middle of a mouthful of paper, Small Gruff with his hooves over his eyes.

“Philomene?” Red’s own voice felt muffled and thick, as if the very air was crowding it out. The princess did not respond.

Red was alone.

This was worse than facing the Rot Witch, worse than losing track of Basil. She was surrounded by people, a city practically overflowing with citizens in the streets, and yet they weren’t really there. Or she wasn’t there. And she couldn’t even transform into a wolf to feel safer. Ever since she’d given Basil her cloak, Red had been trapped in human form, with its pathetic excuses for claws and teeth that couldn’t tear through raw meat.

But she had her nose. Her nose still worked.

She sniffed the air, and almost gagged. There was a bright, hot, burning scent filling the air, the sort of smell the mirrors in this town gave off residually but magnified a thousandfold. It was magic of some kind, and it was welling up so powerfully that it was temporarily drowning out everything else. Almost everything else.

There they were. Two strange scent trails.

One led too far away from her, to the east, just above the great gates of the City. When she turned she saw movement, the only movement in all of Monochrome, a small figure in a black cloak dashing away along the rim of the dome and then vanishing. Even their scent of seawater and salt was gone.

The other scent trail led below. It was sweet, warm and pleasant, with a hint of cinnamon and honey. And it was hot, not like the burning scent, but like sunshine. She smelled Ezra.

Not knowing what else to do, Red carefully set the immobile Philomene into her pouch and made sure she was cushioned and safe, whispered a quiet thank you to the Gruffs and a promise to come back and check on them, and climbed down the gutter pipe onto the ground below. At least human feet were decent at climbing.

As per tradition, the three Riders knelt in front of the Empress as her current body dissolved and her threads retreated to recover. As was customary, the Empress’s death had triggered a wide-scale Mirror effect that would rewrite the scene for the audience. To them, the Empress would have bowed out gently to great applause, and they would know it was time to go back to their homes and their work.

“A public death is always a pain,” Scarlet sighed. “Usually we have time to line up a new Princess Candidate. How many are we down to now?”

“Six,” Midnight said. It was as if he had simply flowed into the room, unannounced. “In the meantime, the Empress need not make public appearances. Besides, the Valerian System will need to rest.”

“Maybe we should let them remember an assassination attempt,” Bright suggested. “We could blame it on forces trying to keep her hands away from the Sky. Did you know she was going to declare an intention against the Sky? That was news to me.”

“Valerian speaks, and we act,” Midnight said without answering the question.

Scarlet led his lizard up a wall and onto Midnight’s shoulder. “So, our young Hero is a little squeamish, it seems. He’s off in the palace panicking. Let’s go find him, shall we?”

“It doesn’t matter where he goes,” Bright pointed out. “He’s ours. He’s part of Libra now; it’s in his blood. And if we lose him, I have a backup plan.”

Scarlet tilted his head at Bright. “What do you mean, a backup plan?”

“You don’t spend much time with warriors. Turns out,” Bright said with a little shrug, “there are plenty of would-be heroes.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Basil stared down at Ezra while standing on the ground. That was new. The novelty of it lasted a few seconds before Basil reached down and scooped Ezra up in his arms, hugging the human-sized giant against his giant-sized, coat-wearing chest.He said something into Ezra’s hair, or tried as something welled up from inside him and he burst into tears. They clouded his vision and he choked and coughed. He’d imagined finding Ezra and taking his hand, swooping the baker up into his arms like a Prince Charming should. Instead he was just sobbing.He heard a distressed noise from within his arms.“What? Uh, what was that?” Basil sniffed, wiping his eyes with a sleeve unCharmingly and looking down at Ezra with clearer eyes.“I said,” Ezra gasped, “I couldn’t breathe.” Then he broke out into a smile, his own eyes glistening with tears. “And it’s okay. It’s okay, Basil.” He climbed up, using Basil’s shirt as a handhold, to wipe a tear from his eyes. It left Ezra’s hand soaking wet.“I’m sorry!” Basil squeaked, mortified. “It’s just that I forgot you’re-you’re…” He trailed off. “You’re so little. Ezra, you’re adorable. You always are, but now you’re adorable and little!” He laughed, though it was broken by a choking sob.Ezra returned the laugh with a hoarse one of his own. “You don’t need to apologize. Really. I’m fine. I may be small like this, but I’m sturdier than I look.”“But I…”And then Basil realized what he’d been saying when he had his crying fit. He had meant to say something poetic, but all that came out was apologies. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I never meant for it to be like this. I’m sorry.’“I was going to sweep you off your feet,” Basil said, kneeling down. He hadn’t let go of Ezra yet, feeling as if he did Ezra would vanish through another mirror. “Especially now that I’m so tall, I was going to-to do something very impressive, I’m sure.” He caught his breath, his chest aching from the outburst. “I was going to make up for stealing your size from you and still failing to find you.”Ezra stared, and then laughed quietly, burying his face in Basil’s chest on purpose this time. Despite how small he was now, Basil still felt the impression of great, strong arms encircling him.“You didn’t steal it, I gave it to you. You gave me your size, Basil, and it let me hide in plain sight in a city where they try to turn my kind into soldiers. You brought attention on yourself and it helped us recover.”“And you played your part very well for someone who didn’t know he’d been cast,” another voice piped up.With a flush of shame, Basil realized he’d been so caught up in reuniting with Ezra that he’d lost track of everything else, including the others. He set Ezra down and stared at Marjorie, then beamed, resisting the urge to hug her only because she never seemed like the hugging type. Instead he bowed, letting his frayed cape trail behind him.“My lady Marjorie, dear Red, please forgive my terrible rudeness in-oh!” He stopped short as he felt Marjorie hug his knee and Red climb right on top of his shoulders.“Your clothes smell funny,” Red said. “Like perfumes. Don’t like it.”“And I don’t either,” Basil declared, sitting carefully so Red could balance on him. “Ezra, you never told me how marvelous it is to have everyone just climbing you like this!”Ezra blushed. “Well, I…anyway. The princess, is she awake yet?”“Still sleeping,” Red said next to Basil’s ear. “Not sure why.”“Sleeping?” Basil frowned, turning to sit cross-legged. “She’d been sleepy a lot during the trip, but I just assumed that the travel was stressful on her body. Though I’ll bet she was also staying up working on that communication gem to get in touch with Rem, or some other plan of hers. How do you get her to take proper care of herself, Marjorie?”Marjorie looked like she was about to say something, then just waved her hand. “Her Highness must have found plenty to fascinate her. This city, the spells it’s inflicting on everyone, Polychrome…”“Polychrome?” Basil asked.“Oh, or maybe you haven’t come across that yet. We’ll explain later,” Marjorie quickly answered.“We need to take you there,” Ezra said, a little dreamily. “You’d love it. Especially after spending so long in a place like this,” he added, staring up at the domed ceiling and the great statue behind them. “Are we really in the palace?”“The Palace of Clarity. It was only a week or so,” Basil said, then hesitated. How long had it been? There were no day and night cycles. “Not very long. Right?”The quiet, confused mutterings between Ezra and Marjorie only confirmed his suspicion that either through sorcery or just plain manipulation, time in Monochrome was a little fuzzy. It wasn’t a thought Basil wanted to dwell on, as the longer he did the more he felt a sense of vertigo.“We’re beneath the Palace, I think,” Basil explained. “Someone...someone called me here.”Marjorie looked at her hand. “You weren’t the only one, darling. I do hope we haven’t been lured into some elaborate trap, but if we have, joke’s on them! We’re much more dangerous together as a group, yes?”Basil resisted the urge to strike a Heroic Pose to emphasize Marjorie’s point, as much as he was in agreement with her there. “It’s not a trap,” he said. “I’m certain of it. Everything about the Palace and everyone in there seemed to want me not to listen to that voice. And they were crying for help. Singing,” he amended. It felt important. “I only made it down here because the Empress…” He shuddered at the image of her vacant body, filled with golden thread. “Because something happened. It sounded like they were casting some kind of big spell, for lack of a better word. Like the entire Palace was distracted.”Ezra paced in a circle once, and then snapped his fingers. “Marjorie. A few minutes ago, before we entered the tunnel, I kept feeling unstuck in my own memories. Like I’d forget where I was and think I was back in the forest cottage, or in Mielle, or at my mother’s side. Does that sound familiar to you?”Marjorie answered in a quiet voice Basil could just make out. “The spell in the mansion.”“Yes, exactly. I think that memory-unstuck feeling is a side effect of a spell which messes with your perceptions on a wide scale. Or something like that.” Ezra spoke rapidly now in a way that reminded Basil of Philomene when she’d hit on a train of thought, and with an impressive amount of confidence. “Monochrome cast a spell on us, and it changed our perceptions of something.”“Not mine,” Red piped up. She was still perched on Basil’s shoulder and, he suspected, would stay there for as long as she could get away with it. “Everyone stopped, even the goats.” Goats? “Philomene fell asleep. I saw someone in a black cloak run away. I followed the smell of Ezra’s magic and everyone started moving again. No one knew the Empress died.”“Died?!” Ezra gawked, and even Marjorie looked a little disconcerted.“An assassin attacked her,” Basil said, “and she, she didn’t die, but something happened to her.” The Hero of Eternity stood over him, gripping his shoulder and asking to ‘take over’ again, but Basil declined. “But why hide it? If they wanted to use me to declare war on the Sky, that would seem like a fine excuse, right? Blame it on Skykin or something…”Behind him, something rumbled, interrupting his words. A sound like stone and metal grinding against itself shook the floor with an intensity even he felt. He braced himself on his hands on knees, prepared to shelter his smaller friends if the ceiling was collapsing on them, just as Ezra had done in the Vacant Palace. But nothing fell upon him, and the dome stayed where it was. Instead, the massive shadow looming behind his own shadow moved.The great metal statue, kneeling with its arms in prayer, was trying to turn its head. Eyes as big as a human’s entire body trembled underneath silver lids painted with blue, slowly lifting to reveal great, black jewels studded with stars.“You came,” warbled a sing-song voice from the statue’s chipped lips, and the starry eyes blinked.Philomene was back in the weaver’s room, which meant she was dreaming. She looked around for that olive blossom she used as her anchor for lucid dreaming. She saw walls this time, instead of a rising ocean, craggy stone walls of a more old-fashioned type than she was used to seeing. She sat in a chair in the round chamber, the weaver still at her loom, working as frantically as ever. No olive blossom in sight.The girl at the loom was her size, face covered by a simple half-mask showing skin painted white beneath. Her fingers bled as she pulled a shimmering thread, snipped another, pulling them tight and fine as spider silk. The loom was a humble wooden contraption, clicking and clacking with the weaver’s work.“I know you,” Philomene said, rocking back and forth in the chair. “I dreamed of you at the broken Moonflower Gate, when I was trying to pray.”The girl mumbled something and kept working, snipping and pulling, cutting and weaving.Philomene felt she ought to keep talking, because someone had to. Besides, it was her dream.“Thank you for the chair. It’s more peaceful here, isn’t it? No strange ocean, no Blue.” Had it been Blue she’d dreamed of before? It felt right. “Safer, yes?”At this the girl’s hands fell from the loom. She stood and turned to stare at Philomene, dressed in muddy, torn rags that clashed with the white silk of the mask. The white paint dripped in splotches, revealing reddened, irritated skin.“It’s never safe. There is always a new factor. Always a new thread. A wave crests and crashes upon the cliffside, then collapses into flat seawater.” She spoke in a flat tone that nonetheless quivered with exhaustion. Then she turned back to her loom, which had somehow transformed into a spinning wheel.Philomene hated dream logic.Yet something about that phrasing bothered her. She had heard it before. She stood up, limping over to the spinning wheel and knelt down next to the masked girl.The girl wove and spun silk from an infinite source of nothingness, and it kept vanishing into nothingness. No matter how hard Philomene looked, she couldn’t see any of the intricate patterns the girl seemed to be working with. It was just thread, thread that crumbled to dust the moment it curled around the spindle.“What is it you’re trying to do? Can I help?” Philomene spoke to the girl in a soft, gentle voice, so as not to frighten her off. She seemed so brittle. “Granted I’m no good with weaving or spinning. But I’m sure if you give me some instructions I can adapt.”Without a word, the girl took hold of Philomene’s hands and moved them so they were upright, facing each other with fingers outstretched. Her touch felt like putty. She took some of the shining threads from the spinning wheel. This time they stayed intact as the girl tied them into loops and weaved them loosely over Philomene’s fingers, then gestured for Philomene to pull them taut.The princess recognized it immediately. “Oh, I know this game! Though I haven’t done it since I was little. Egg Sac, right?” It was a game where two players took turns weaving shapes out of strings passed back and forth between their hands. The phases went Egg Sac, Larva, Anthill, Queen, and Philomene had forgotten the rest.The girl moved her fingers across the loops and formed shapes Philomene did not recognize from the Egg Sac game, abstract and unidentifiable.“A wave crests and crashes. An ocean freezes and thaws. A star burns and retracts, swells and cools. A universe breathes out and breathes in. It never stops. It never ends.”As Philomene watched, the shapes on the finger-loom started to take on the forms of the chant the weaver girl repeated over and over. She saw a great wave smothering a city and a glacier melting into the sea. She saw a cloud weep itself into nothingness and a forest burn to ash. She couldn’t look away.“It never stops. It never ends. It never stops. It never ends.”The girl looked up at Philomene, her eyes pure white points of light behind her mask. Philomene knew she should recognize some of the traits, the painted skin and the hidden face. It itched at the back of her mind.“You said you will help. You will help. You will help it stop.”The paint filled itself out, growing more detailed, with the red lips of a harlequin. The rags changed into a great, flowing gown of glittering white, like a snowdrift. The mask bloomed into a headdress and a crown.“You will help,” the Empress demanded. No, she promised it. “You will help. Promise you will help.”“No!” Horrified, Philomene tried to pull her hands away only to find they were stuck in place, frozen as a frame for the Empress’s loom-play.“You will promise. You will…”The old-fashioned tower quaked and swayed. The Empress vanished before the floor gave out. As Philomene tumbled through darkness, she wrapped her hands around an olive blossom that transformed into a communication jewel.No, it was that she was hugging her communication jewel, buried deep in Red’s satchel. She let it go and straggled to the surface of the bag, wondering how she’d fallen asleep so suddenly. What had happened to the Empress’s speech?She looked upwards to see Marjorie staring down at her with tear-filled eyes, and behind her the towering form of Basil. And behind him, a person-shaped mountain blinked.

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The massive eyes blinked and blinked again, as if the owner was unused to them. Perhaps they were, Marjorie thought. How often did metal statues open their eyes?She held Philomene gently to her chest, wishing her button-down shirt had a proper front pocket suited for a princess the way her handmaid dress did. Philomene wasn’t saying anything, just squeezing Marjorie’s finger tightly with her delicate arms and burying her face in Marjorie’s palm. Was Marjorie resuming her duties by comforting her princess, or was Philomene comforting her? Tears clouded her eyes.“You have to tell me everything,” Philomene mumbled into her palm. Had Marjorie not been trained to hear the voices of Flower Folk even at their softest, she might have missed it. “Not right now. But soon.”“I will, Highness. I promise.”“It’s an order,” Philomene said, though without the sort of authoritative tone that would have accompanied such a phrase. “And I’ll do the same.”Then she shuffled around in Marjorie’s palm. “Could you part your fingers for me a little? I’m trying to see what we’re looking at.”Could someone of Philomene’s size really see the shape and form of the being (for they had to be a living being) looking down at Marjorie and the others?The statue, if that’s what they were, was made of metal plates with seam at the joints and along the face, so many seams that its slow movements felt almost natural. The paint on the eyes and the mouth had long chipped and faded. From the stump arm hung golden threads that trembled when the statue tried to move their head.“It hurts,” the being rumbled, “to move.”“Then don’t,” Basil said as he stepped forward, silver cape billowing behind him. He looked up at the enormous face and held up a hand, as if helping someone stand. It was pantomime, Marjorie recognized immediately. “You called me, did you not? I heard your song. How long have you been singing, alone and unheard? What is your name, and how should I speak of you?”He is good, Marjorie observed wryly. No sign of intimidation at all, even though that person could crush us all without a thought. Very charming.The eyelids lowered to half-mast.“I am…” The face wrinkled in alarm and then concentration, plates shifting to simulate flesh remarkably well.“I am Celestial-Born Sister Forged in Platinum, Ion 7811...I cannot remember the number anymore.” The head drooped slightly with the groan of machinery. “It matters not. That title no longer has meaning, and I have no more right to it. You may speak of me as Ion, and use ‘she.’” Her speech was slow and deliberate, with an accent Marjorie could not place.Something about the sight of Ion was scratching at something buried in her memory.“Celestial?” Philomene’s voice, tiny as it was, made a striking contrast against Ion’s slow warble. “Sorry, I can’t understand everything you’re saying, but I made out ‘Celestial.’ Do you mean like the Celestial Patrol, Rem’s, erm, former division?”Ion did not answer. Most likely she could not hear Philomene; it was a wonder Philomene could make out any of Ion’s speech in turn. Then again, Flowerlings were adept at interpreting louder, deeper voices.Ezra did hear the princess. “They take that name to sound important,” he insisted. “‘Celestial’ is just an archaic term for…”He trailed off, then gawked up at Ion.“Skykin,” he finished, his voice a little dry. “An old, old name for Skykin.”“Sky...kin?” Ion hesitated, her starry eyes blinking slowly. Then recognition returned to her. “Oh, yes. That is what my kinfolk call each other now.”Ezra looked up, up at this metal-skinned giant among giants, and wondered. She seemed adrift in her own memory. He would give her something sharp and spicy to bring her to the present, pfeffernusse studded with candied ginger perhaps, if he had a kitchen to work with. And if she even ate food. Ugh, was he already thinking like a Hearth Witch, hoping to magic ills away?‘Celestial’ was a term from the hymns and scriptures of the old Golden Theocracy that fell and reformed itself as the democratic Celestial Capitol of Vox, a secular government that nonetheless held onto that ancient term. It referred to the Skykin tales of their birth among the stars, their place in the Sky as the Sun and the Moon’s beloved children alongside the birds and the insects, how their bodies grew big to accommodate the weight of the Sunlight within their souls.But the Theocracy that gave the Priest-Kings royal lineage and power fell long, long before Ezra was born, its teachings transformed as Solarism adapted to its worshippers. The Sun was consistent, but her sister the Moon would help her change, so Solarism changed in turn. Even if Ezra could only visit the temple once a month and listen to the sermons in the back, he remembered that much of his faith. And there were no mention of metal giants.None in the mythos, but in the rumors, and in what he knew…“Ion,” he said, giving the name weight and respect, for she too was Nameless. “Were you born like us, flesh and blood, and then grew and grew and...changed? Are you a Colossus?”“Like you?”Ezra remembered his current form and felt blood rush to his cheeks. “It’s a long story, but I’m Skykin and Basil is human.”“I…” Ion turned her head just slightly to regard Ezra and Basil in turn, and then seemed to recognize something unseen. “Yes, I see now. Unusual. Colossus is what they call us now, is it?” The mouth slowly crinkled into a smile, but it struck Ezra as a bittersweet one.“...I remember now,” Ion added, after another long pause. “Forgive me. It has been so long, and I am so far from sunlight, and soon she will reach me again and I will be lost in dreams. Even recalling what I know of this time, what little I have picked up from her and her millions of minds, is like holding water in my fingers.” She lowered her head. “My Metal-Forged Siblings are reborn over and over, but in an era where no one knows how to nurture us, they die early before reaching metamorphosis. They starve or thirst to death, freeze or drown without shelter, or perish in loneliness. I feel it every time. Except...lately I do not. I cannot even feel them anymore. Where are the graves of my Metal-Forged Siblings?”Ezra thought of Rem Tera, quietly sent from Vox on a mission that was never meant to end. Dismissed as a problem, just like Ezra was, but more dishonestly. He hoped Philomene would be able to reach Rem soon. There was so much the Voxian Colossus needed to know.Basil held out his arms, as if embracing Ion even if he couldn’t even reach around her wrist. “My lady, if questions trouble you, we can leave them aside for now. You called me here, and you needed help. Are you trapped here?”Ion’s answer came slowly. “Yes. I am alone. My beautiful Nightingale can only reach me in our dreams. I failed her.”“Nightingale?” Marjorie raised her eyebrows and exchanged a knowing look with Ezra. The mysterious Skykin songstress had a connection to Ion?“I failed her,” Ion repeated, her tone mournful.“Are you hurt?” Basil continued, turning his head to her frayed arm.Ion shook her head ponderously. “I can no longer feel anything. They granted me that mercy when they found me. But they are taking me apart. Her fingers and her eyes peer into my memories and steal secrets. Her scholars dissect me piece by piece to know me better, and what they do with it I do not know.”Ezra stepped forward now, placing a hand on her enormous bare foot. It was cold beneath the metallic surface, but he could feel the pulsing of something like a vein. “Are you frightened?”“...Yes. I dream, and forget where I am, while she slowly consumes me. I dream and I am with my Nightingale, and the Mirror protects me, and the serpent comforts me in a place where the sky ripples with color like oil on water. But sometimes I wake, and I am alone and afraid. I sing, and no one listens. I reach out, and no one answers.”As the Colossus spoke, Ezra saw himself on trial, facing jurors with cold eyes and a judge who simply shook her head in the face of the verdict. He’d shouted in defense and no one had heard. He’d called out for someone to listen. He was surrounded by kinfolk but knew he was alone.Ion was too big for them to move, paralyzed in some way.He pulled closer to the others and lowered his voice.“What can we do? What can we possibly do for her?! I keep coming up with recipes in my mind to help her feel better, but even if I had a kitchen handy and could make enough for her to eat, what would that do? She’d still be down here!”“And The Empress would still be plundering her memories for lost age secrets,” Marjorie added. “She’s a living Artifact. Imagine being so big and powerful and being unable to do a thing with it…”Basil looked thoughtful for a second, then turned back up to Ion. “My lady, do you know what would help you? You say the Mirror and your Nightingale provide you with a little relief. Surely we can do the same, help you stay afloat in your dreams for just a little bit longer until we know how to rescue you?”“Rescue...me?” The word sounded unfamiliar to Ion.“They’re very good at rescues,” Marjorie added with a little smile. “Speaking from experience. It may not come about in the most straightforward way, that’s all.”At that, Basil blushed and Ezra could swear he heard Philomene groan softly.Ion did not answer for a long minute, during which Ezra saw that she did indeed breathe despite her machine-like body, her chest rising and falling gradually.“Mirror tells me that they fractured, and traveled with one of you. They saw things that gave them new, strange ideas. They will never admit to changing because they cannot, but they are changing.” Ion seemed to look straight at Marjorie, who took a little step back and held her scarred hand. “The world has changed, keeps changing, and I cannot see it. Give me an eye so that I may watch the world, a window out of my prison. Then I can begin to change again, as I have been unable to do for so long.”“To change?” Basil asked. “That is what you want?”“To change is to live, to stop is to die. That is what Nightingale told me.” Ion smiled, and as she did the stars in her eyes shone Skykin gold.She needed some reason to keep living, Ezra realized. That would buy her time.From within Marjorie’s hands, a voice cleared her throat.“I think I have something,” Philomene said, as Marjorie parted her fingers to show the princess in her seated position. She was still clinging to the red Communication Jewel she’d been holding when she woke up, the bulk of it filling her lap.Philomene lived in the World of Towers. If humans were among the Towers, Skykin were living mountains. And Ion…Ion was as if Mt. Thumbelina itself was alive, the great extinct volcano forged into a human shape so vast Philomene could barely make it out. It was easier to think of her as a talking, breathing abstraction, except that sometimes she would stare at the contours of Ion’s plating and make out a nose, a cheek, the corner of a mouth.She was not afraid of Ion, she realized. Poor Ion could do nothing to her if she wanted to; probably couldn’t even see her. Philomene just had to wrap her head around the idea of a person that large.Stop it, she told herself as she held her head to fight off the dizziness. The world is massive, with room for aphids and dragons, Flower Folk and Colossi. And one day Rem would look like that too, so huge as to be out of reach to everyone. If Rem survived.Setting that bleak thought aside, Philomene looked up to the great form of Ion, using her cane to stand.“Lady Ion, can you hear me?” She shouted at the top of her lungs, to no response from the giant. Unsurprising, considering how much difficulty Philomene had following Ion’s deep vibration of a voice.“Marjorie, can you speak on my behalf?”Marjorie stared down at her mistress with some wonder, but nodded. “Of course, Highness.”“Thank you,” Philomene said with a warm smile. “I missed this. We always did make quite a team.”At that Marjorie nodded, looking tearful again. Oh dear, if she cried Philomene would start crying again too, and now was not the time. Not when she was needed.“Lady Ion,” Philomene started, and Marjorie repeated the phrase upwards. This Ion heard, turning her gaze down on the two of them.How captivating those eyes were, like a meteor shower. Good news, Rem. You’re going to be enormous, but you’ll always be beautiful.“I have a piece of ancient Artifact technology,” Philomene went on, with Marjorie echoing her words in turn. “It’s a communication device, and one of your Metal-Forged Siblings has the other one. No matter what I do, how many etchings I make on it, I cannot get it to function. But if you could help, if you remember how these work, perhaps you could use it as your window. You could watch the world through my eyes and those of your sibling.”Ion blinked. “I could do that…?”“I’ve been studying its properties. It’s possible to mark it with a sigil so a third party can see through both gems, and maybe even speak to us.” Philomene quietly mourned the private conversations she was hoping to have with Rem; it couldn’t be helped. “But only if I can get it to function. May I show it to you? Do you think you can help?”“I could help someone? From down here?” Ion’s voice trembled, and for a moment Philomene wondered if such a being could still cry. Those lines down her cheeks did look like tears, come to think of it.Philomene craned her neck, up at an entity bigger than the Cathedral Tree Dryad that had menaced Nautilus. Bigger than Rem, bigger than those great birds the Skykin rode. Ion couldn’t move, so asking for a lift from her would just make her feel worse.“Can you take me up to her eye, Marjorie? So she can see? Can you climb up there? If it’s safe for you,” Philomene added, having no desire to put her handmaiden in danger so soon after finding her.“I can,” another voice piped up, as Red peeked out from behind Marjorie. “I can climb anywhere. It’s fun.”Marjorie bit her lip, looking up nervously at Ion and then back down to Red. “Are you sure? That’s quite high up. Surely you can just send someone else, Princess?...No, you can’t. We wouldn’t know what to do with it. But, Red, you must be very careful.”“Little Red has been a lovely carrier,” Philomene said, smiling up at the bashful wolf girl. “You should be proud of her.”With obvious reluctance, Marjorie sighed and handed Philomene over to the smaller hands of Red, who slipped the princess into the pouch she wore on her chest. “She really is an expert climber,” Philomene noted as she peeked out. “Not exactly what wolves are known for, but.”“It’s because I don’t climb much as a wolf,” Red explained. “When I’m human I get to have hands. It’s fun.”“Well, I’m glad you’re having fun,” an unknown voice said, a soft, smug one with a growl beneath it. Red turned around as the others did, and Philomene saw a white, fluffy shape emerge from nothing at all and start sauntering over to Basil.“Oh, loyal bodyguard, you aren’t going to leave your duties behind, are you?” the cat purred with a tone that made Philomene’s skin crawl.“Muffet?” Basil winced. “Listen, I’m sorry, my lady, but-”“But I’m sure I’ll finally have the Empress’s ear now,” Muffet said as she licked her paw. “Bright Morning? Scarlet Sun? I’ve found him!”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Muffet blinked lazily in the way cats do, and the sight of it unsettled Basil. It was such a casual betrayal.“All you had to do was play along. You had a nice home in the Palace of Clarrrity, enough food to eat, a soft bed, and an entire city loved you. You had your reward for your hard work. Wasn’t that enough?” The cat’s voice was as honey-sweet and calm as ever. “But I expected this would happen sooner or later. Heroes are trrrouble.”“On the contrary,” the golden-armored woman rumbled as she towered behind the cat. Bright Morning had her sword in hands, a great musical blade with chiming rings and patterned holes as intricate as it was impractical-looking. It was Skykin art for sure, the blade she’d used to fight off the Green Witch and the Rot Witch at the Nautilus party.Basil knew enough of swordplay to recognize how comfortable she was with the weapon, while he wielded a ceremonial, possibly ornamental crystal blade he’d used for the first time less than an hour ago. If he went up against Bright Morning, he would lose.“Go,” he whispered to Red, “get the princess up there now!” He would just have to serve as a distraction. It was the same idea behind taking on the role of the Hero.As he heard small arms and legs skittering up the metallic ridges of Ion, he tried to nudge Ezra and Marjorie behind his larger body. But neither would move, instead taking their places on either side of him.“So! The famed Riders at last,” Marjorie trilled. “You know, for all the trouble your empire has put me through, and it has been a lot of trouble, darlings, not once did I manage to run into one of you three elites! Do I not merit such attention? What would dear Snow say to that?”Basil felt blood drain from his face. “Marjorie,” he mumbled aside, “you do not need to draw attention to yourself. It’s me they’re after, and you are…”“A fugitive, yes,” Marjorie said aloud, looking straight at Bright Morning and the clockwork soldiers at her side. “I’m not trying to upstage you, Hero, don’t you worry!” She sounded a little too cheerful as she patted the side of his leg. He knew that upbeat tone coming from her, and it was inevitably dangerous.Bright tilted her head and sighed. “If you think handing yourself over will spare the others, you’re mistaken. You’ve stumbled across state secrets.”“Is that what you’re calling her?!” Basil shouted loud enough that his voice echoed through the cavernous chamber. “A ‘secret?’ She’s one of your kinfolk, Bright Morning! She’s suffering! How could you?!”Bright took a step closer, studied Basil and then snorted. “Funny, I thought she was your kinfolk too.”Well, crud, Basil thought, hoping his weak attempt to keep up a straight face was working and certain it was not.“And she would have suffered at the hands of my kinfolk. She is a living Artifact, an outlier, and you should know the Sky has no love for outliers. We saved her,” Bright added, smoky voice taking on a gentler tone. “We found her in a dormant state buried in a mine shaft, and took great pains to extract her safely and bring her here. The wider world has no room for people like Sister Ion, or for Exiles like me.”“You are an Exile?” Ezra said before Basil could ask the same question.Bright regarded the diminutive ‘human’ for a long moment. “I suppose it would be more romantic if I had left the Sky intentionally to join with Her Imperial Eternity, or if I were some kind of Landborn. But yes. I was rejected by the ‘paradise’ of the Sky Islands and embraced by Libra. We, of course, are not a true paradise. But we will be, with Ion’s help. With your help.”Too late, Basil recognized his error. He’d been waiting for Bright to attack and overpower him, something she could easily do. But she didn’t need to do that. She reached at her side to pull out a round, flat object, and the soldiers did the same, moving like puppets.“Just don’t think about it,” Bright commanded as Basil stared into mirrors.Philomene clung to the jewel, focusing on its scarlet glint so she wouldn’t feel ill as Red ascended, the wolf-girl using the breaks in Ion’s plating as handholds with Philomene’s satchel around her neck. The princess could hear Red’s heartbeat, which didn’t seem quite right for a human’s. Of course, Little Red was quite literally a wolf at heart.She felt a sudden jerk that threw her into the corner of the satchel and heard the sound of metal plinking against metal.“The dolls are firing crossbow bolts at us,” Red warned. “But I’m fast.”Dolls? “Oh, be careful, Red!”“I’ll be okay,” the girl insisted even as the horrible sounds of metal projectiles against armored skin increased like raindrops around them. She seemed to wriggle around them, shifting from side to side, which did little for Philomene’s uneasy stomach.Philomene squeezed the jewel in her arms, pressed her face against its cold, hard surface, and started to pray.
O Vine, garden of life and death, library of the ages, if you could grant this girl a blessing and keep us safe…
She never really knew if praying to the Vine when there was no Vine nearby to hear it did any good. The Vine was not a god, it was just the Vine. But if it put her own heart at ease and gave her the strength to do what she needed without panicking, did it matter?The jewel warmed in her arms, so suddenly that she had to pull away. It cooled just as rapidly, leaving her staring at it in wonder.“Princess. We’re here.”A child’s hand with rough, long fingernails reached down and carefully scooped up Philomene, jewel and all. Red was kneeling on a narrow, curved surface now, using her other hand for support. This, Philomene realized, must be the top of Ion’s cheeks. She dared not look down to confirm it.Instead she turned to face an expanse of dark glass that seemed to go on forever above her, a curved window into a sea of darkness spotted with innumerable tiny stars. She had seen something like this before, hadn’t she? It was dizzying to stare into for too long, as if she could fall right in.The window shuttered without warning only to open again, the force of the eyelid’s movement creating a puff of air that blew Philomene’s braids back.This was Ion’s eye. She had to remember that. The vast plates were part of Ion’s armored, metallic skin. No matter how impossibly big Ion was, she was not a disparate collection of parts but a living person.“Ion?” Philomene shouted as loud as she could. “Can you hear me?!”There was brief silence, and then a rumble from below as Ion spoke in a thundering whisper.“I have adjusted my audial range. I can hear you now, Vineborn. You may speak normally.”Vineborn? Was that another archaic term, like Celestial? Philomene had to resist the urge to pepper this ancient being with questions about the forgotten past. If all went well, there would be time later.“Sister Ion, this is an old Communication Gem used by, er, by someone who did not share his knowledge with us.” That was a very charitable description of Lord Germain he did not deserve, but time was of the essence. “I’ve used similar devices before, but this one appears to be more advanced, and we no longer...That is to say, I have...I cannot get it to work,” she finally admitted with a sigh of frustration.Something happened within the glass sea of Ion’s dark eye. The points of light gathered in a cluster right in front of Philomene, bathing her in the blue-green light of a miniature galaxy. It moved up and down with the rapid motions of a pupil.“I...I know this! I know what this is. We all had them. Even I had one, sized for me, but it broke long ago.” A tiny quake that might have been a chuckle jolted Red from below, and Philomene clung to the girl’s finger with a wince.“Sorry,” Ion added. “It has just been so long since…” The stars studied her again, the cluster growing a little bigger and brighter. “That one has a protection code scratched into it.”“I thought so.” Bloody Germain! Philomene gave a baleful glare at the heavy jewel. “I don’t suppose you know how to remove it?”“No, but I can do this.”The lights in Ion’s eye rearranged themselves from a spiral-edged blot into a complex fractal pattern as Philomene heard and felt the other eye shut tightly. Lines of light danced around the fractal before pulsing out at the gem in Philomene’s arms, illuminating it from within. Once again it grew so hot that Philomene had to pull her face away, then softened in her hands to a jellylike state.“Wait! You’re melting it!” Philomene blurted, knowing full well that gems didn’t ‘melt’ in that fashion.“Trust me,” rumbled Ion. “Can you hold it without burning your hands?”It was very warm to the touch, but not painful. “Well, yes. But it’s falling apart,” Philomene said, holding up armfuls of glittering red goo oozing through her hands and onto her dress.“Put some of it on my eye. Even a handful will do. It will not hurt me.”A ‘handful’ was not really possible given how rapidly the gem was turning into a jelly. Unsure of what Ion could possibly be thinking, she chose to trust the giant among giants and thrust it forward onto the eye. That it was hard, glassy and dry made Philomene wince a little less in sympathy.Most of the jewel oozed right out of her hand as if acting on its own, spreading in a sheen across Ion’s eye. It spread so thin that it lost its red tint. Was this part of the Communication Gem’s design? Were they originally intended to help Colossi, to give them voices and eyes among others so they were less isolated in their towering bodies?As Philomene watched this, she realized she’d been left only with a handful of the gel goo. Most of it had gone to Ion. She pulled her arms away. If she had no way to contact Ion or Rem, what would be the point?The remains of the jewel reshaped itself in her hands, cooling and drying into a pair of small, pink spectacles sized perfectly for her face.“...Um. Might I ask what just happened, Ion? Ion…?”But Ion didn’t answer, not right away. The massive eye blinked, the stars within it scattering into their constellations, and a great jewel of a tear welled up in the corner of it.“I am looking at myself,” she gasped. “I am outside of myself. Oh, it has been so long! I am here, and very small, watching myself cry. Are those my eyes?”“...Yes,” Philomene said when she found her voice. “They’re very pretty.”Ion was speaking faster now, as if energized simply by seeing something besides the walls of her prison. “And now I see a lake, the shores of a wide lake. The water is churning and the sky is filled with a great black storm cloud, but no rain.”A lake?Philomene leaned in closer from her seated position in Red’s hand. “You’re truly seeing something else? Somewhere else?!” That had to be wherever Rem was.“I have not seen the sky in so long...I missed it so.” The tear welled up gradually, as slow as everything else Ion did.Philomene wanted to press Ion for more details. What did the lake look like? Were there any noticeable landmarks? Could she hear anything Rem said? But she held her tongue, instead looking down at the crystal spectacles. The Gem had changed to accommodate not only Ion, but Philomene herself. Perhaps it had changed for Rem as well, wherever they were.She lifted the glasses to her face.It happened quickly. The crossbolt struck Red from behind, where exactly Philomene couldn’t say. The girl gasped in pain, clutching Philomene closely to her chest, and then Philomene couldn’t see anything. She could just hear Red’s pained breathing as together they fell away from Ion.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The mirrors lied.

Basil knew this. He’d known since the one in the inn swallowed Marjorie and Ezra whole only for the Nautilans he knew and trusted to deny having ever known them, tricked by those bright, gaudy mirrors Libra had hung around the seaside city in what Basil had taken as mere imperial boast.

Bright Morning did not raise her enormous sword with its bell-chimes. She held a mirror, and she told beautiful, horrible lies.

“Do you know what will happen if you try to oppose Libra? You’ll die, ignoble and forgotten. Or you’ll become part of us. The Empress is the Empire and the Empire is the Empress; Her Imperial Eternity is Libra itself. She is a hundred thousand minds working in tandem to create the perfect society.” Here Bright paused and laughed, a voice rough with smoke and derision. “Actually, you saw what you saw, didn’t you? The Valerian System simply works to perpetuate herself. We don’t even know anymore if her end goal would be a perfect society for us. But don’t you want to see?”

These were lies, Basil told himself as he tried desperately to look away. The mirror showed gold threads spreading like a flood over the forest around Monochrome, spinning a city around them, a gorgeous, glittering city where day was no different from night.

“When faced with overwhelming power, one can either resist it and die, or become part of it and live. I live, and I take under my wing Skykin who find themselves cast out of too-small human society and

my

judgmental kinfolk. I give them purpose. Here there is a place for everyone, a path for all desires.”

“A cure for all curses,” a voice whispered into Basil’s ear, and he shivered and smacked a hand to the side of his face.

Scarlet Sun hopped out of the way too quickly, landing on the ruff of his coat. “Ha! That was a close one.” That was another lie, Basil knew. Scarlet couldn’t die so easily, not to such a clumsy reflex. “We could do it, though. We have the resources to cure your curse. Keep you from ending up like the Snow Queen. As it is you’re a danger to others, you know.”

Basil raised his hand to swat again, but doing it consciously to someone so tiny made his stomach turn. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he snapped, and hoped he was a convincing liar.

Scarlet laughed, like the cackling bark of a fox. Basil made a note to ask Marjorie for ‘convincing liar lessons’ someday.

It was fine, he told himself. It’s fine. Just keep distracting them from Red and Philomene. Just draw the attention away from Ezra and Marjorie. Just hold out. Nothing more than he’d done as the Hero of Eternity, or what he’d tried to do.

Just ignore the creeping cold feeling from inside.

“You’re turning a little green, Hero of Eternity. You want to know how I know, don’t you?”

“You’re a spy, an assassin,” Basil spit out. “All of you were watching me from the start and playing along out of-out of some sort of game I don’t understand!” He was astonished to hear the venom in his own voice. “Isn’t that right?!” He turned back to glower at Bright Morning and her terrible mirror.

But Bright had lowered the mirror and was giving Scarlet a peculiar look. Scarlet could be no more than a red speck on Basil’s silver coat from her distance, if that, and yet she managed to squint right at him.

“Well, we knew you were ill,” she said, all the while not looking away from Scarlet. “I’m not sure where all of this talk of the Snow Queen is coming from. Fascinating what our little spy *overhears on his own,* isn’t it.”

Not that Basil could really make out his face from this angle, but it seemed to him that Scarlet was the one turning a little green now under that rodent skull mask. He had a sense of it.

They’re not united on this

, Basil realized.

I thought they were in sync all the time, three faces of some splendid, monstrous ideal. But they’re people, and they lie to each other.

Somehow it was then that Basil remembered he was not alone. Of course he wasn’t. He looked down, first at Ezra and then Marjorie, to see if they had noticed the same break in Rider solidarity that he had, or if they were being taken by the mirror. Dear Ezra in particular might not know.

But Ezra must have known something, because he was not looking at them at all. He was holding Basil’s robe as if trying to hold the hand he couldn’t reach, gazing up at him with eyes that somehow held a shine of sorts despite being dark instead of gold. He wanted to kneel next to Ezra to better see his face and read his expression, but that would draw attention to the (oddly, still) diminutive baker.

And as for Marjorie, she was covering her mouth with her hand. Why, she was stifling a laugh, and having so much difficulty she was shaking. When she caught Basil’s gaze, it was as if the dam broke and she burst out, so taken with mirth over something that she was in tears. He’d never seen her laugh that hard at anything, not even when Ezra had accidentally concocted meringues that made anything in the world funny for a few minutes.

“Of course,” she said when she’d caught her composure, “of course I can’t see anything in those mirrors. The shard won’t let me,” she said aside to Basil, apparently not caring if the Riders overheard. “I’m compelled to look, same as you, but there’s nothing there. Mirror is self-deception, don’t you get it? No wonder they bonded to me so well. Mirror can’t stand to look at themself, so to protect itself the shard’s blinded me to it. It’s just a blur there. Just a blur.”

“Are you saying you’re immune?” Basil said, staring down at her.

“Hmm? Are you?” Bright added. Her voice lacked its usual power and confidence even as she gazed impassively at Marjorie. Drat, Basil had distracted her from Scarlet’s, well, distraction. It was fine, it was fine, just buy time…

“What? Are you going to cut me open to find out why, darling? Tell my sister she’s helping me? You made me what I am now, whatever it is I’m becoming.” Marjorie wiggled her hand. “Ah, see how it is? You love outliers and outcasts unless we don’t fit into your little perfectly-oiled machine, in which case you just hammer us into the right shape. Tell me, Bright Morning is it? What sort of instruments did they have to use to reshape you? Did it hurt much?”

Bright’s fists clenched together with the sound of metal against mesh. “And that’s better than exile? Than calling oneselves the perfect society, the utopia, and casting out anyone who makes a mistake or who can’t afford to pay off some powerful sort or file the right paperwork?”

Before Marjorie could answer, or Basil for that matter, Ezra spoke up. He managed to look not at the mirror, but at Bright herself, still holding Basil’s cloak like it might slip away.

“It’s the same. It’s the same, and we’re going to do something different. All of us. And I don’t care what she is, your empress will...she will…”

He shivered, as if swallowing his own words. What was Ezra trying to do? There was a strange, flat weight to his words. Basil had heard it before from his grandmothers.

Was he trying to cast a spell? A curse? Just speak it into being?

Basil reached out a hand to Ezra and pulled him close. Something told him he couldn’t let Ezra just do such a thing recklessly, not to an empire. Not yet. He gave Ezra a warm, wordless gaze, and turned back to Bright.

Then he did what he had failed to do before, now that the mirror’s spell was fading. He saw the mechanical soldiers around her and behind her, and their crossbolts, firing like shooting stars above them. He’d intended to distract Bright, and she had done so to all of them instead.

“Red! Red, be careful!” He charged at one of the mechanical soldiers, swinging that amber sword he felt would break at any moment. But as it had held when he pierced the floor to open the way to Ion, it smashed hard into the soldier, knocking the figure onto its side where it stood stiff and wiggling.

Chaos erupted around them. Basil lost track of Scarlet, the Flowerling Rider having wisely fled his cloak. He felt hands on his back and turned around in panic only to recognize the voice of the figure climbing him.

“Let us know if we’re slowing you down, darling! But I had to get your beloved to a safe place,” Marjorie said, “and you’re the safest one right now.”

Basil laughed, sounding hoarse as he did. “You have a lot more faith in my sword skills than I do, I think!”

“Nonsense, I have faith in your current size and strength and my sharp eyes,” Marjorie said as she clung to one shoulder, the weight on the other being what he had to assume was Ezra. “There, to your left! No, your other left!”

With her direction, Basil managed to knock away metal bolts with his sword. He felt them graze his face and shred his cloak further, reminding himself that the more ammunition he drew to himself, the less aimed up at Red.

“You two safe back there?!”

“We’re fine,” a muffled Ezra shouted back. “Basil, even through all these clothes you feel so cold now…”

Did he? Basil didn’t feel especially cold, and he certainly wasn’t going numb with the way his cheek cut burned and bled. Was his heart freezing without his even feeling it?

“BASIL! It’s her!!”

Ezra’s warning did no good, as there was no way Basil could have stood against the strength of Bright Morning’s swing. He parried her sword for just moments before the force of it threw him back and rolling down, gasping for air as the blow had knocked the wind out of his lungs. Now he felt the ice in his heart, stinging and making every beat hurt all the more. He saw Ezra sprawled nearby, supported by Marjorie who was somehow already back on her feet, if stunned.

And there was Bright, looming over him. Only then did he realize she had struck to stun, not kill. She could have taken his head. She still needed him for something.

There was a cold, angry diamond gaze in her eyes.

“You’re stubborn. You think that’s a virtue, but it just means you’ll suffer more. You’ve already thrown yourself in with hopeless causes. They’ll drown you.” There was something unnerved and shaken in her voice, as there had been ever since Scarlet’s slip-up. “We can cure you of that. People are like clay and just need the right hands.”

“Is...is that what happened to you?” Basil said, regretting the wheeze in his voice. “Because I thought everything you did was your choice. How come you get to choose and others are just clay?”

The diamond eyes narrowed. “You’re already at the mercy of a curse, apparently. Why choose it over us, knowing we could help you?”

He had a feeling they could, too, if they knew. Something in Valerian’s vast webbing of a mind, somewhere in the secrets Libra extracted from their scholars and mages could find the solution to a curse that was all-too-rapidly advancing. He could easily say he was being selfish by choosing to fight against it himself. He could say the truly heroic thing would be to give himself over to Libra instead of risking becoming a Snow King. He would only lose parts of himself. He would be bringing happiness to some, at any rate.

And there, there were the arguments the Riders might make to him to convince him. There were the guilt trips they could use on him. Having made those arguments to himself, he felt they could have no power from another’s lips.

“I don’t have to answer to you,” he gasped as he leaned on the sword he still clung to somehow, using it to brace himself so he could rise back to his feet. His body felt so heavy, his chest still aching and blood trickling down onto his once-immaculate silver coat. “It’s

my

curse.” And given the chance, he might have taken a swing at her. He would have lost that fight, and maybe that time she really would have killed him.

But then he heard Red.

He heard the scream echo through the chamber and the silhouette fall. All his aches and chills fell away in the heat of panic as he lunged to her, just managing to catch her in his arms. She was shuddering in pain, a cross bolt sticking out of her shoulder, the wound bleeding and bleeding. In her hands she still held the princess’s satchel.

Philomene, dazed but apparently unharmed as far as Basil could tell, emerged from the mouth of the satchel. “Basil! She’s…”

Behind him, Basil heard something fall with a great, musical splash against the stone floor. A splash of liquid hit him in the back, thankfully too hot to invoke a chill. He looked up at the still form of Ion, seeing a wet trail on the lined cheeks. It was one of her tears.

“How...could you,” Ion said, her speech again slow and unsteady but with a rumble behind it like the tremors of a volcano. “She...helped me. She helped…”

Basil lunged away on instinct, holding the sobbing Red close to his chest.

Ion’s hand trembled, light pulsing inside of the joints of its armor. For a second Basil saw the gold lines running through her body retreat from the hand, then the elbow, then all the way to the shoulder. Ion lifted her arm, eyes wide enough to show off the stars within.

She brought it down with the force of a lightning strike, down on the army of soldiers, and the chamber quaked with the impact as it filled with clouds of dust.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Basil held Red as tightly as he dared, kneeling to shield her from the rain of debris. He could only hope Marjorie and Ezra had found safety, and Marjorie was protecting Philomene; he couldn’t even see their silhouettes in the dust cloud. Red whimpered in his arms like the wounded wolf she was, human form be damned. She felt so small and light.

When the debris settled, he raised his head and looked around. The soldiers mostly lay sprawled about, posing like jointed dolls tossed to the floor. A few were in pieces. Before Basil’s eyes the illusions of skin and face faded from them, leaving blank wooden marionettes in uniform. Pieces of golden thread shimmered, thin as spider silk.

Ion was staring down now, her remaining hand clenched in a fist in the center of a newly-formed crater of shattered marble. Her eyes were wide open, glaring down, the points of light glimmering a dull, angry red, and her mouth curled into a snarl. Basil tried to imagine for a moment what it must have been like to face one of those ancient giants among giants on the battlefield. Ion was an army unto herself, or would have been at her peak. She’d gone still again, her lips closing again, her lids slowly dropping to half-mast. It must have taken a great deal of energy for her to move that much, just to protect Red.

“Thank you,” he said, tilting his head up to look her in the eyes. Well, eye, as he could only manage one at a time. “We’ll rescue you, milady, I promise. I swear as…” As Prince Charming? As the Hero of Eternity?

“As a friend,” a strained voice said. “And speaking of rescue, Basil, if you would…”

He spun around and gawked at Marjorie, holding a block the size of her entire body on her back, keeping it from falling on an equally stunned and very dusty Ezra. Shifting Red’s weight to one arm, Basil stumbled over to Marjorie and pushed the rock aside so she could stand. It took a hard shove from his shoulder. How was Marjorie, hardly the strongest physically even when she was feeling well, able to do that?

“Before you ask,” she said as she dusted herself off, “I am not sure what happened there and I’m just as bewildered as the rest of you. If you ever take shards of an Other One into your body by mistake, maybe have someone look into what it’s doing to you.”

“Marjorie,” Philomene said breathlessly, “that was spectacular…! And I need to-”

“Give me a thorough examination, yes. You and Doc both. Now, I’d rather not think about this until then,” Marjorie said rather quickly, with a little shudder. Ezra gave her arm a squeeze before looking up at Basil.

“Is she…?” He gestured up at Red.

“Out of it, mercifully. You-you mentioned a ‘Doc,’ right? A doctor? She needs help. I know a little first aid,” Basil said with a tremble in his voice, “but not enough.” At least he hoped he could slow the bleeding. He reached for some scrap of cloth to tear off of this foolish Hero costume, only for his hand to fall on the red cloak he’d been wearing as a scarf. It was a charm of good luck as far as he was concerned; now it was time to return Red’s gift to her. He wrapped it around her.

“If we can get ahold of the Masquerade,” Ezra said, “I’m sure they’ll help her. If we can get out of here…”

Basil glanced at the staircase he’d taken to the center of the dome. It was a wreck now, the quake having left the bottom part buried and inaccessible. “Well, if you know an exit…”

“I think the tunnel Mirror made is still there, but it may not be for long.” Marjorie rubbed at her hand. “Mirror is saying something like, ‘she’s waking up.’ I doubt he means Ion.”

“Right. Follow us!” Ezra tugged at Basil’s cloak, nudging him towards a hole in the wall. It looked like it just might fit Basil, which was a relief. Outside of the Palace of Clarity and its wobbly physics he supposed he’d have to start worrying about the size of doorways again.

He started to go when he heard a soft groan behind him.

Bright Morning lay in the middle of the crater, a mess of broken armor and debris, but clearly still alive. She shifted her head but didn’t look up. Her legs were pinned under Ion’s massive fist. It was a wonder she’d survived at all.

The urge came to help her. Save her. Prince Charming would save her out of goodness and mercy. The Hero of Eternity would do so out of loyalty.

But she was in her own domain, serving an Empress so powerful she could seemingly do anything. Bright was surrounded by powers and forces that could save her. Basil had to trust that they would, because Red needed him more.

He turned away and dashed into the tunnel, and hoped Prince Charming would forgive him. 
  
Marjorie groped through the tunnel, one hand over Philomene’s satchel, and called out to the Shard in her mind.

Well? What was that about?

No answer beyond the sense of exhaustion. Whatever the Mirror Shard had done to her body, presumably to protect themself, might have taken something out of it. Or perhaps the Shard remembered that contact with the Masqueraders meant listening to the Harp.

I will say this. I have had quite enough of others taking control of my body for their own purposes. That goes for the Golden Apple Tree and for you, Mirror. I don’t care if one was eating me up from within and another is revitalizing me. I’ll burn the Tree, but as for you, you will ask next time.

This time, the inner voice answered with a sleepy, heavy I know.

I will.

And then,

I’m sorry.

It would have to do for the time being.

“You alright in there, Highness?” she whispered to the satchel.

“Yes, I’m fine! A little dazed from the fall still, but poor Little Red kept me safe. Oh, Marjorie, I missed the sound of your heartbeat.”

That earned a chuckle, despite everything, and a lump in Marjorie’s throat. “Doesn’t it beat same as any other human’s? I thought you said we mostly had a fixed rate.”

“More or less, though there are variations given weight and height and all, and levels of stress, and health concerns, and children have a higher heart rate, and...Oh, but none of that is what I mean! I missed your heartbeat. Don’t ask me to explain it but I have it memorized.”

“Well, you won’t be parted from it again,” Marjorie said, keeping that hand clasped over the satchel. She missed the little weight of it on her chest, the warmth of the princess’s body and the way she would shuffle around whatever clutter she’d curated in there.

The neither-day-nor-night light of Monochrome hit her eyes with its white, empty glare as she emerged and found herself once again looking up at the woven net of a dome above. Whatever illusions Mirror was casting, if it was Mirror’s work, kept them from attracting attention despite literally emerging from a hole in the ground. The crowds drawn by the Empress’s fateful address had since dispersed, now clustered around shops or walking in that all-too-orderly way they had in the enchanted city.

Ezra followed her seconds after, covered in dust just as she must be, and sneezed. He held out one cupped hand. “Can you believe it’s still intact?” Sure enough, the sugar crystal flower looked entirely unharmed. “Faerie magic indeed. I thought perhaps I should have used it down there, to help Ion or maybe save Red, but I wasn’t sure how. Oh, Basil, one moment…”

He spun around to help coach Basil out of an entrance that was starting to shrink behind him. Basil could only use one arm to pull himself out, the other wrapped around Red. “I felt like if I didn’t hold my breath, I’d be squished,” he gasped. “Ezra, how did you even get about at this size?”

“Well, I rarely had to use tunnels, Sun shine upon us. There, just keep your balance, you’ve got it! You were always more sure-footed than me for certain.”

Aurora was the last to emerge, grumbling and nudging Basil from behind. It would be just as a great white bear appeared behind a bedraggled, dust-covered giant that the hole would close up, the illusion would collapse, and someone would spot the polar bear with an appropriate scream.

Oh dear. Marjorie had not planned this far.

“Now now,” she said, holding her hands out. “Nothing to fear! We are just the, erm, the traveling troupe of…”

They all looked to one another, Basil looking like he was about to speak before he lost his nerve. Marjorie would have to spin a quick lie, and somehow she felt rusty. She really was starting to tire of it. Still, something to fit in with the strange spell Monochrome cast would be appropriate. Something to help them blend in, something like...

“We are with The Masquerade!” Ezra said, striking a pose with a hand over his chest that Basil approved of based on his stare.

That, Marjorie thought, would not help them blend it at all. What was Ezra thinking? Was he trying to bring forth the Masquerade by invoking their name? There were spells like that, at least at their root. How rather like a proper witch, whatever he thought of the title.

The shrunken giant went on, oblivious to her brief stare. “Here to bring truth to the lies through stories! For have you not heard the tale of the White Bear and the Maiden of Wolves?”

Of course, how hadn’t she seen it before? All of Monochrome claimed to offer its people the simplicity and safety of a life that was a story, all the while simply turning them into bit parts of Monochrome’s story. Ezra was choosing a role and claiming it for himself.

“Maiden of Wolves?” One of the gathering audience members whispered. “Is that why the Sky boy is carrying a wolf?”

“Doesn’t he look familiar?”

“Maybe he’s dressed as a mockery of the Hero. Very clever.”

“Very disrespectful! Ugh, where are the city guard? They’re disrupting foot traffic!”

Marjorie was trained in picking up on details from idle chatter and curious whispers. Carrying a wolf? And sure enough, she saw that Red had reverted to wolf form in Basil’s arms, though she remained unconscious. And she was breathing slowly. How much time did they have to stall?

“Ah, yes,” Basil stammered, doing a valiant job trying to play along despite clealry knowing nothing about the Masquerade, “for the bear with me-and bear with me, please!-the bear with me is none other than the Queen of White Bears, the Matriarch without a Kingdom who wandered in the steps of Prince Charming Herself, dispensing justice and speaking truth from her fish-stained jaws!”

On command, Aurora let out a loud, grumbling roar, and the gathering crowd mostly took a step back. A fascinated child ran forward, only to be pulled away by her parent.

Philomene spoke next, though she clearly had to shout at the top of her lungs. “And she sees what you do not! Look, look to the walls of your city, to its immaculate buildings, to the very dome that keeps out the rain and hides the night! Look, and see what she sees…!” She broke into a little coughing fit after this, and softly muttered, “I’m fine, s’just the dust.”

They were all making up some kind of story all around Marjorie. They were lying and telling the truth, one woven into each other. They were all doing what she would have done, and they weren’t wicked at all. Or if they were, it was only because Libra defined goodness here. That was something Marjorie had to consider, turn over in her mind like a piece of glass in the sea.

“The tall girl can speak without opening her mouth! In another voice!” a member of the crowd said.

“It’s called ‘ventriloquism.’”

“It’s called having a Flowerling partner in the act. You’d be surprised how loud they can be when they want to be. Have you ever seen their operas? The masks and costumes do a lot of the work, but the voices…!”

“And I have with me the Maiden of Wolves, raised among the beasts and brought to the land of the Enlightened by a wicked sorcerer.” Basil had taken the thread of the story now, and was again weaving the truth into the lie. “She came here to find her fate, following her foolhardy brother, and when the brother was taken from her she was hurt trying to save him. Hurt by the soldiers of your city! Does a just and kind empire declare the Maiden of Wolves wicked? If they treat wolves that way, what do you think they’ll do with our Enlightened kinfolk?”

“Like goats?” Philomene added, and Marjorie kept her lips shut to add to the ventriloquism illusion. Goats? She would have to ask later.

Ezra’s turn. “If they look upon a Queen and see a beast, if they insist a Maiden of Wolves is a monster, what will they make of my-of my beloved’s kin? What will they think of your kinfolk? Of you? Will you let them decide who is wicked?”

Shadows started to emerge from around a street corner, looming shadows, mostly bigger than Ezra, armored and masked. It was the Skykin Monochrome had somehow recruited into their military-class city guard. Perhaps they were playing into the spell of Monochrome by declaring themselves Masquerade and thus an enemy of Monochrome’s story, and that had consequences. They just needed a little longer...

“Preachy nonsense!”

Or perhaps not, Marjorie thought as she saw Flora’s silhouette part the crowd.

“What a load of preachy nonsense. You can’t just tell the story without acting it out! Giving some voice to it, some drama! Amateurs, the lot of you.” She galloped forward, pointing past Marjorie at Basil. “And that is a very poor imitation of the Hero of Eternity! Though not bad for something you threw together at the last minute, I suppose.”

Marjorie could kiss Flora and her small entourage if she were inclined towards kissing. Instead she inched forward, gesturing for Flora to crouch down and whispering in her ear as best she could. Tall as she was, she couldn’t quite reach the head of a centaur.

“We need Doc’s help. Immediately. Will he operate on a wolf?”

Flora stared at Marjorie for a second, then shook her head. “He might want her muzzled for safety, but Doc’s a big softie under all that grouchiness. He’ll do it.”

“Good. And in return…” She whispered her new plan into Flora’s ear.

The masked and feather-clad centaur grinned and held her head high, clopping her front hooves. “Fellow Masqueraders, we have new recruits! And they have given us quite a gift! Witness, for we shall make the Hero of Eternity disappear!”

Basil quailed. “Ha, I mean, you’re mistaken, I’m just-I’m just a poor imitation of…” Ezra shushed him, and he complied, though baffled.

As the armored soldiers started to close in, Flora pointed to the sleepy, zombielike version of Jack, and Marjorie covered her ears. It wasn’t enough to keep the pain and nausea from rippling through her, though knowing it was coming at least kept her conscious this time. Then one of the Masqueraders produced a hat, and another a giant hoop. Streamers burst around them as Basil was ushered through the shimmering path to Polychrome, shouts of protest and anger behind him.

Marjorie opened her eyes to see Flora offering her a ride, Ezra already on. “Get on and hold tight,” the centaur said. “You’re in trouble now!”

“We have been in trouble for a while. At a certain point, one stops keeping track of such things.” With that, Marjorie climbed atop Flora, and the two sailed into the shimmering, rainbow abyss.

And that was how Marjorie Snow, or Marjorie Muller, but never Marjorie Blanche, helped the dangerous Masqueraders kidnap the Hero of Eternity. At least, that’s how she hoped they’d record it. 
 
END BOOK 3

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Basil stumbled through a blur, the gawking stares of the other strangers who seemed to recognize Ezra and Marjorie, one of them taking Red from his arms and rushing her to someone they called ‘Doc.’ There was a change of clothing, though where they got Skykin-fitted clothing he couldn’t say, as they were mostly human save for the centaur he took as the leader. The mismatched trousers, shirt and fur coat hung loose on him and bunched at his ankles and sleeves, though he barely noticed. At some point he’d been given a pair of green spectacles to wear on his face, ones that somehow did not tint the world green.

He had barely given a thought to ‘the world,’ wherever that was. There had been no time.

But now he leaned against the wall of the brick building where ‘Doc’ and his Flowerling medical students worked on Red. He wanted more than anything to help, to call on his own experience patching up Aurora’s injuries or calming the mountain cow back at the cottage when she calved, but Doc would accept only Ezra in there to help.

Besides, Basil couldn’t fit in the door.

He couldn’t sleep, and while he could easily blame it on that strange, oil-slick sky, he doubted he’d be able to even in familiar territory. Poor Red. She hadn’t even cried.

Something tugged at his sleeve.

Sluggishly, Basil looked down to see Ezra, wiping sweat off of his brow and looking exhausted but focused, his eyes shining as bright as the gold they usually were.

“They say she’ll be alright,” Ezra said, climbing unbidden into Basil’s lap. “It didn’t hit anything vital.”

“Oh! Oh, thank the Mountain Lords,” Basil gasped, pulling a surprised Ezra into his arms. “Did you use some kind of hearth magic to help? I thought I smelled something herbal in there.”

“Just-just tea to keep the medical students awake. I tried to invoke determination and fearlessness, since they were all a little nervous operating on a wolf. They did all the work! Basil, love, I can’t breathe…”

Basil made himself release his grip on Ezra, who slumped into his furry sleeves and burrowed there against his chest. “I imagine she’ll be laid up for a while at least? Granted if she’s anything like her mother, she’s pretty hardy.”

“She’ll be safe here. This place is-it’s different.” Ezra pressed his face right into Basil’s fur coat. “Oh, this is very comfortable. Why didn’t you tell me how nice it is?”

“I’m sure I did several hundred times!” Basil said, finally allowing himself to smile again as he ran a finger through Ezra’s messy, overgrown hair. “And I’m sure my embrace is nothing compared to yours. You have those muscles and that nice stomach. You know how I can’t keep meat on my bones.”

“Flatterer,” Ezra said, visibly blushing even with the flush from his hospital work starting to fade. “Speaking of, have you eaten?”

Basil looked towards a building with a lumpy, twirled shape like a lump of clay in order to avoid Ezra’s no doubt piercing gaze. Ezra took caring for others very seriously. “I had some broth, they insisted. Don’t have an appetite otherwise.”

Ezra sighed. “Is it because you were worried about Red?”

“Well, yes. But not just that,” Basil said, turning back to Ezra. “My head’s too full right now even if my stomach’s empty. I saw-I saw the Empress die, Ezra. I was right there, and she fell to the floor, and her body…”

He stopped and covered his mouth, thankful for that empty stomach. Then he saw how Ezra was staring at him.

“I’m not going to throw up on you,” Basil blurted, mortified by the very possibility.

“No, no, that’s not it.” Ezra shook his head and tugged at Basil’s coat. “You said the Empress died?”

This time it was Basil’s turn to stare. “You didn’t all see it? Wasn’t it broadcast on the dome sky using whatever weird system they have to do that?” Then he remembered the mirrors back in Nautilus, and what Bell had said about them and what they did.

Ezra seemed to come to the same conclusion. “Ugh, I thought something was off there. For a few seconds after that speech I felt disconnected from the present, somehow. It’s hard to explain.”

“You’re getting very good at working around this magic stuff,” Basil said, even as thinking about it too hard gave him a headache. “I’ll give everyone my account tomorrow. After I’ve eaten,” he said to Ezra by way of a promise.

“Good.” Ezra rested against Basil again, grumbling. “She really died…? How strange...well. Any requests?”

“For what?”

“Breakfast! I’m making you breakfast tomorrow!”

Basil frowned, lifting Ezra to chin-level. He was so light now. “You’re not getting up early to cook after all this?”

“I want to. I insist. I haven’t been able to cook for you since I was kidnapped.” Ezra gave Basil a plaintive look. “Could you not lift me up like this? I feel like a kitten.”

“Oh! Sorry.” Basil let Ezra rest against him again, slumping a little against the wall. “Cabbage soup,” he finally decided. “If they have the ingredients for it here. I’m not picky with the meat.”

“They had some smoked bacon and dried beef here last time I checked. Cabbage soup for a prince, then?”

“A prince who was raised by two fairies in the forest happens to love it.” Basil put his hand over Ezra, stroking the baker’s back. Now that he wasn’t in panic mode, now that he had time to actually think, he couldn’t help but notice how strange it felt to embrace all of Ezra at once and know he couldn’t do the same.

“Do you ever worry about how fragile we are? I mean, humans. They seem so fragile to me now, and I am human.”

“You’re fragile, and very unpredictable and strange,” Ezra said, voice muffled by the coat. “I know I could break your bones if I squeeze hard, or toss you around like rag dolls. It’s very unnerving to imagine, isn’t it?”

It was oddly relieving to hear it from someone else, Basil thought as he just nodded.

“And you get so much attention. I would have withered under what you got. You handled it so well. I’m proud of you, Basil.”

This time it was Basil’s turn to flush, his heart pounding. He could barely feel the icy sting, though it was always there now, like an old wound. He supposed that’s what it was.

“I suppose we’ll have to fix this sooner or later,” Ezra added drowsily.

“This?”

“Our being switched. But I don’t know how to do it, so I’ll worry about it later. Can you lift me up again? But underhanded.”

Basil knew that of course Ezra had to ‘fix’ it, and yet suddenly he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He was so big now, so strong, and it would be so much easier to protect his loved ones even if he already missed fitting through doors. But no, it would have to be fixed, wouldn’t it?

He was distracted by that thought when he lifted Ezra and the baker leaned forward to give him a kiss, a long, lingering kiss, wrapping his arms around Basil’s head and neck to do it.

Kisses always cleared his mind in that they left him a bit foggy and distracted. As they parted, Basil couldn’t even remember what he’d been thinking about.

There was the sting in his heart again. Fainter, but even the heat from that kiss couldn’t melt the ice. That must have been it, yes?

“Ezra, there’s more I have to tell you. I have to tell you all,” he said, letting Ezra rest against him once more. “In the morning. I promise.”

But Ezra had fallen asleep, apparently too worn out to tell Basil that had been a goodnight kiss.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Basil woke to the smell of cabbage and smoked pork.

His favorite. Ezra and the Masquerade kitchen crew were cooking his favorite!

He stood unsteadily, leaning on the side of a building for support only to recoil as it began to crumble beneath his weight.

“Sorry! Oh, I’m so sorry-ah,” he sighed in relief. It was just one of the many ruined structures dotting the labyrinthe landscape of what Marjorie had called Polychrome. The chunk of wall fell chalky and white to the ground, revealing a little hole into a dark chamber filled with mushrooms.

Of course, he wasn’t that strong in this body. Still, imagine if he’d tripped and fallen on the Shoemaker hospital! He wasn’t in the Palace of Clarity, which seemed to shape itself around whoever it was sheltering or imprisoning.

Basil shivered, holding his breath and pulling his new, patchwork quilt cloak around him until hte chill passed.

This city, or whatever it was, wasn’t built for giants. He would have to be careful, and make a note to patch the hole up later. Mushroom gardens needed their darkness.

The word ‘careful’ hung in his mind as he practically tiptoed through the cracked pavement, wincing every time he stepped on a weed breaking through. He was still a prisoner, unofficially, and even if Ezra and the others trusted the so-called Masquerade Rebellion, the rebels themselves had no reason to trust him. He was the symbol of, of...of whatever Libra was going to do next.

The Sky, wasn’t it? Conquer the Sky? But how? The Green Witch was still dormant in a massive tree on Nautilus’s shore. Flying dragons were extinct, and rocs were as loyal to the Sky as the white bears were to the High North peoples.

His temples pounded, his vision briefly filling with spots. Dehydration and hunger, though he’d managed to keep down some broth while Red was in surgery. He could figure this out with the others after he’d eaten.

Smell brought him to an open square with broken statues and wild roses climbing over fallen columns where a group of humans and a pink centaur gathered around a fire that flickered with all the colors of the swimming, prismatic sky. There was Ezra, standing on a crate and ladling out soup from a cauldron bigger than he was. Cabbage soup…!

Much as he’d tried not to tromp around too clumsily, his footfalls and shadow must have been obvious enough. Pairs of eyes turned to him, assessing him through the same colored spectacles that kept falling off his nose. Some narrowed, others widened and a few just glanced away.

And then Marjorie came out of nowhere and grabbed his arm. “Come on now, kidnappee. I’ve never known you to be shy…!”

“Ah, well, crowds,” Basil stammered, then shook his head. This wasn’t an audience, these were his captors! And his friends among them. There, now they weren’t frightening at all. What had come over him just then?

Giving a thankful nod to Marjorie, he swept down into the best bow he could manage while lightheaded and wearing a quilt tied around his shoulders.

“Do pardon my rudeness, friends! I come to you as Prince Basil Yunen of Sethwhile, your most humble prisoner.”

There was a snort and a giggle somewhere, and relief seemed to drift through the square as Basil looked back up.

And then Ezra was upon him before he could get back up, wrapping his arms around Basil’s shoulders as best he could manage. Basil stood and lifted him, holding Ezra up to kiss him. Even if Ezra couldn’t engulf him in a hug at this size, Basil still felt warmer.

“In public…!” Basil wondered aloud with a grin, looking down at Ezra as he held his boyfriend to his chest. “You’ve grown bold, love. I like it!”

“If anyone judges me for public affection after we’ve been separated for this long, then not-on-my-worst the lightning take them,” Ezra said with the familiar scowl Basil now knew as a kind of smile. Then, more gently, he added, “Red is resting. Doc called it a learning experience and said he’s never operating on a wolf again, so we’d better keep her safe.”

Sitting down cross-legged and setting Ezra down, Basil felt his shoulders relax as he sighed. “Let Doc know I will do anything he asks in return.”

“It’s not like that here,” the pink centaur said, looking up at Basil with crossed arms. “We all pitch in to help however we can and we don’t keep track of what we owe. But if it would help you feel better, I’m sure Doc can find an excuse to boss you around once you’re feeling better.”

“You’re the leader, yes? Flor-Florian, was it?” Basil had already knelt once and imagined doing it again would look a little excessive, even for him.

“Closest we have right now! Though I like to think of the Masquerade as being bigger than me or whoever else leads it. Eventually,” Florian added. She was a bit easier to talk to face-to-face, as centaurs tended to tower over humans, though the muscular woman next to her came to Florian’s shoulers.

“What is the Masquerade, Lady Florian?”

“First of all, I’m no noble.”

“Just let him do that,” Marjorie said with a wave. “He likes being formal to everyone for flashiness’s sake.”

“Uh, hey now,” Basil started to say, but Florian went on.

“We’re the drama that brings to light the lies of Libra. We disrupt their ceremonies and meddle with their perfect, orderly city in a box. We’re, uh, new-ish?”

“And small,” the tall woman added, “right now.”

“And not all that organized,” a human in goggles noted.

“And still figuring out a plan,” said a willowy woman who looked familiar to Basil, though he couldn’t pinpoint how. She sat next to the goggled person, leaning against him.

Florian turned around with a glower. “I’m trying to sell him on our cause to recruit him here!”

“You can recruit him after he eats,” Ezra said, stepping forward and marching over to the huge cauldron.

Basil, who had briefly forgotten about the yawning emptiness in his stomach, could have cried. But Prince Charming was never greedy. “Well, only if everyone else has-I mean I eat so much now, and…”

“I have kissed you in public, Basil, and now I’m going to make sure you’re feeling better. Indulge me in this,” Ezra said with a penetrating stare right up at Basil, who knew immediately there would be no arguing with Ezra when he was in mother hen mode.

So, with Aurora curled up against his side, Basil ate.

He ate while Ezra and Marjorie told of their captivity in the Spire, their escape, their new involvement with the Masquerade and the strangeness in the Blanche mansion. He ate and helped Philomene recount their side of things, she calling him out on his occasional exaggeration, he steering the story back on track when the princess went on an excited tangent or chipping in when her tiny but loud voice started to tire. He ate while they made it clear that yes, the late Moonflower Market was on the surface of the moon, and no, they weren’t sure how it worked either. (Poor, devout Solarist Ezra seemed troubled by this.)

He ate while telling the gathering Masqueraders and Doc’s medical students about the strangeness of the Palace of Clarity, the rituals and trickery of the Riders and the strange “assassination” of the Empress, amazed that he could sustain an appetite while telling of a body collapsing into golden threads. And then, accepting half a watermelon for dessert, he let Philomene talk about Ion. It only felt right.

When Florian’s group split off to discuss the new information, Basil finally leaned back and sighed, hands on his stomach. “I think if I eat anymore, I’ll die,” he said sincerely, then added with a warm look down at the others, “thank you. I needed that.”

“Controlling food intake is a brainwashing tactic,” Philomene said from her perch in Marjorie’s lap. “They wanted you weakened, but not so much that you wouldn’t be of use to them. I wonder if they’re doing that to those Skykin they use as enforcers?”

“Salten didn’t look malnourished, at least not from what I could see. It was such a quick look.” Ezra glanced aside, shifting his weight from one foot to another. No surprise he was uneasy with the topic, given how he and Salten had last parted ways.

“I guess I just started seeing this bigger body as a weapon I could use to protect you all.” Basil held out his arms, emphasizing their length. “Since it isn’t mine, exactly.”

“It isn’t! It’s Ezra’s size, more or less.” Marjorie looked from Ezra to Basil, and then held her hand a bit above Ezra’s head. “Well, you’d be taller than him no matter what.”

Ezra mock-scowled at Marjorie over this, but it didn’t last; he melted quickly when Basil brushed a gloved finger over his cheek.

“It’s endearing to imagine I could still kiss the top of your head if we were the same kin-size.” Basil, too full of emotion and food to care about public displays any more than Ezra did at the moment, scooped up Ezra and kissed his head to demonstrate, then let Ezra rest against his chest. He could still feel the warmth of the baker’s body even through his heavy clothing.

Warmth. Chill. Right.

“But you’re right. If I think of it as yours, Ezra, perhaps I should have treated it more carefully.”

“Nonsense!” Ezra tugged at Basil’s cloak for emphasis. “You should treat it carefully because it’s

yours

. Why neglect yourself and punish yourself? Forget how it affects us. You want to save yourself, right?”

“I…” Basil shut his eyes for a moment, took a breath in and then out. “Yes. I do. And I want to do it myself, without burdening anyone. Which is why I didn’t tell anyone what I should have told you all before.”

Everyone fell quiet and gave him a confused look. All but Philomene. He couldn’t see her face, but he had a feeling the princess was expecting this.

Basil’s hand went over his heart, just over where Ezra rested in his lap.

“There’s ice here. When I found out Prince Alphonse was a fake, no real Prince Charming at all but someone using the title in order to destroy it, something in there froze.”

“You went cold,” Marjorie said. “I remember that. Red snapped you out of it.”

“Yes, and thank goodness. But I didn’t thaw all the way. There’s something frozen in my chest. The pain comes and goes. Sometimes, like now, I can ignore it when I’m not thinking about it. And then an attack will come on and it’ll feel as if I’m breathing in needles.”

With the floodgates open, Basil kept going, increasingly aware of the same stinging ice starting to take hold inside him. “And I wanted to hide it at first because I thought I could solve it myself if I just tried harder, although Red was onto me all the while. You know how she can smell magic and whatnot. And I was scared, and did not want to talk about it, not when everyone had already been through so much in Nautilus. And then you two were kidnapped and no one remembered you and I had to stifle it, because I needed to be-I needed to…”

He stopped and doubled over into a coughing fit, the chill spreading from the inside. That was the worst, the way it inverted his curse. He was used to cold overtaking his extremities and sneaking its way into him. The shard in his heart was already in there, like an enemy overtaking a capitol. What could he even do against that?

His breathing slowed, and he gradually became aware of warmth around him. Warmth, weight, bodies.

Aurora, instinctively snuggling him from behind with her massive, furry body, doing what she was trained to do for Basil no matter his size. Marjorie, pulling his cloak tighter around him. Ezra, holding his forehead and pressing against him. Even Philomene, a tiny touch against his knee from her pouch around Marjorie’s neck.

His vision came back, and he mumbled into his cloak. “Thank you.” His voice was hoarse, and wet with tears.

Ezra was right there in his face, eyes wide, gasping in relief himself. “Basil.”

“Yes?”

“Promise me you’ll tell next time. Whatever happens with your curse, however hopeless you think it is, I will find a way to break it because I’m a-a witch or whatever. On my honor as a baker.”

“But…”

“You are Prince Charming, my Prince Charming, and I will not lose you to a curse, or Libra, or your own confused ego. Let us save Prince Charming so Prince Charming can save us.” Ezra pulled on a lock of Basil’s hair, gently but firmly. “Promise.”

Basil shut his eyes again, and bowed lower, careful not to jostle or squish his smaller companions around him.

“On my honor as Prince of Sethwhile Kingdom, Ammonite Jewel of the Mountain Kingdoms and Clans, I, Basil, Son of King Yunen, hereby-” He stopped to look at Ezra, who was clearly about to interrupt. “Yes, it has to be done this way! I, Prince Etc what I said before, hereby promise not to lie to my beloved or my companions again, nor to hide the truth from them, lest the land swallow my soul!”

There was a long silence.

“You just had to say ‘promise,’” Ezra murmored, still staring.

Basil sniffed and managed a little smile. “But you like it when I’m fancy. And you swore on your honor as a baker. I had to live up to that.”

This finally triggered a little laugh from Ezra, the rare kind Basil treasured. It wasn’t quite the right pitch, but it was enough.

Marjorie clapped her hands. “There, good, we have exchanged vows, and now let’s actually get to the root of things, shall we?”

Basil, still bowing, looked up. “Shouldn’t I apologize to you two as well? Especially you, Highness, since if anyone could have helped earlier had I just spoken up…”

“True,” Philomene said, a little clipped. So she was still a bit angry, unsurprising.

“Your Highness, Marjorie, I, Basil of-”

Majrorie waved him off. “Please, you get to do that once. Any more and you’re just showing off.”

“Apology accepted,” Philomene added, with a little more warmth. “Besides, there was a little bit of a rift in your trust in me after that whole incident. I can’t help but feel a little responsible. If I had been more open with you about Alphonse…”

Basil finally sat up, shaking his head. And not only because he was dizzy from so much bowing. “I wanted to believe in him. You can’t take responsibility for that, Highness. Honestly, another reason why I found it so hard to talk about was that it was a little humiliating. For a lying rat like that to have broken my heart…!”

“Broken heart?” Philomene paused. “Hmm. Hearts factor into magic frequently. The heart, the brain, the centers of identity. Not that this is much help to you now, but it gives me somewhere to start. Anyway, Avery Toad broke my heart and he was only the worst best friend I’ve ever had, if it helps.”

“A little,” Basil admitted. And then hiccuped, startling Aurora. “Ah, pardon me! I think my stomach didn’t like all of that bowing and panicking. Ezra, how did you manage to cook all of that stew? I know it’s a big pot but I feel like I ate three times as much as might fit in there, and there was enough for everyone else.”

“You know, I didn’t even notice that,” Marjorie said. “I had thirds myself. That mirror shard sure seems to be affecting my appetite. Was that a spell of yours, Ezra? A hearth magic thing?”

Ezra looked a little pale, staring at the empty cauldron for a second. “I… I don’t know. I wanted there to be enough, and for you to feel safe and well-fed and comfortable, and I was thinking about it when I made the stew. Sometimes magic just comes out of me, which is a really ridiculous way to do it to be honest. I can’t just go oh, sometimes fat renders out of chicken meat, or sometimes if it feels like it yeast makes dough rise.”

“Technically yeast does have to feel like it. I mean, if yeast could feel. It has to be the right temperature, and it needs a source of sugar in order to, um. Sorry. I’m getting hung up on the metaphor,” Philomene admitted. “I’ll stop.”

Now it was Basil’s turn to comfort Ezra, who was leaning against him with a distant look. He stroked his hand gently over Ezra’s hair, still messy from wearing the rose hat currently laying at Basil’s feet.

“You’ll get it,” he whispered. “I have the utmost faith in my beloved witch. You did declare yourself a witch, right?”

Ezra nodded. “Twice now. Once in Libra, which feels dangerous enough, since it’s as if that city listens and shapes you into what it wants. But I don’t know what a witch is…”

Basil blinked, and then grinned. “Oh, good. Because I do!”