Daggeuro and Baron Dimanche left the humans in the room, heading out into the hallways to explore the castle. The voodoo spirit waited until they were well away from the Gryffindor dorms to say anything. "Dis is madness," he snarled. "We were six when we came here, and are now four. How many more of us will die searching for your King?"
"Ether Plane needs King Ovin," Daggeuro retorted hotly, putting space between himself and Dimanche. "More, if we succeed here, we may be able to kill Quoth and end his terror. You may not be dealing with him now, but how long do you think he'll wait before assailing Spirit Plane?"
"De Loa are more den a match for him."
"Are you so certain? By the gods, Baron, he overthrew the Dragon God and King Ovin both! Your gods are not strong enough to repel him!" Dimanche scoffed.
"We have no trust in us, so he could not trick us like he did dragon and faeriekind," the voodoo spirit countered. Daggeuro slid in front of Dimanche, staring him down seriously.
"Baron, he was able to block out your magic entirely for one of these little tests of his," said the kennin warrior gravely. "Do you doubt he could swat aside the Loa without a thought?" Dimanche paled a little, shook his head.
"I get it, I know. I'm just, distressed, is all. I hate thinking dat some outsider, some demon, could do to my world what he's done to yours. De very notion is terrifying." He shrugged himself off and walked around Daggeuro, soon side-by-side with him once again. As they opened a heavy wooden door upon a darkened stairwell, he said, "I believe de answer lies in Byron."
"I suspect as much too," said Daggeuro. "His power of manifestation is akin to Quoth's, though many leagues removed in scope. Grab that torch." Dimanche grabbed a guttering torch from its bracket upon the stairwell wall, and together they descended to the next floor, stepping out into a black stone hallway. The heavy scent of dust and bizarre chemicals hung in the air, more potent when the kennin opened the door to some kind of alchemical laboratory. A blackboard at the front of the room had a single word writ upon it, 'Potions'.
"Ahh, now dis is my kind of room," said Dimanche happily. He handed the torch to Daggeuro and moved to one of the tables, sliding open drawers and pulling out books and equipment. "I'll be here or back in dat dorm room, my friend, if you want to go exploring some more."
"I'll be back to check on you in a bit," Daggeuro said, leaving the classroom, allowing the door to hang open. He headed back up the stairwell, putting the torch back in its bracket along the way. As he roamed the corridor, poking his head into rooms as he came across them, he allowed his thoughts to become free flowing, like the vapors of fog on a day of light rainfall.
He suspected that they were close to King Ovin now, though how or why he couldn't say. Instinct told him the tiny monarch could be gained soon, and intuition told him that Byron was, somehow, the key to achieving their aims. He dared not press him too hard about it right now, though. Kathy was taking the loss of Senta hard, though he suspected she was also mourning Vernon. There hadn't been time really to let the death of the cyclops blacksmith settle into their minds before. Now there was time, and the ability that allowed her to make such fast friends now cut the other way to wound her psyche.
Byron was likewise in a fragile state of mind. He may not have lost friends, but he was once more prisoner to the creature that had tormented him years before, Awakening his powers. Too much pressure, and his mind, already fractured, might break entirely.
Daggeuro hated balancing acts, but he had to play one now, it seemed.
When Kathy finally sat up, she allowed Byron to rub her shoulders and hug her from behind, taking comfort in his presence. She didn't know what she would do if anyone else perished. She realized that her grief had been mostly for Vernon, but seeing how horribly the gotrin assassin died had made his demise almost as gut-wrenching. Nobody should have to go like that, she'd thought.
She sat on the edge of the bed, running her fingers down the post at the foot end. She loved the Potter books and films, her favorite fiction indulgence of all. She should have felt transported with joy to be in Hogwarts. Instead, she felt worn out and despondent, wondering if they would ever win free of the Hell that was Quoth's pocket realm.
Byron clambered off of the bed and walked over to a closet in one wall, rolling the doors open and rooting around for a card. He manifested a small flashlight and began poking around, rummaging through what Kathy saw were student robes and cloaks. He pulled a squat box out, which Kathy recognized as a Quidditch gear kit, then returned to the closet.
"Kathy?" She sat up straighter, leaned forward a little. "Um, you should take a look at this." Kathy hopped down off of the bed and squeezed into the closet with Byron, looking curiously at what Byron had uncovered and shone his light upon. It was a marvelously detailed dollhouse, crafted from real wood. Byron handed her the flashlight and lurched forward, grabbing the dollhouse by its sides and lifting it up.
He grunted as he carried it backwards into the center of the room. He set it down gently, and under the light of the room's overhead candles, they peered down at it in wonder. "Is this," Kathy asked quietly, but Byron was already shaking his head.
"No, Quoth couldn't make something so delicate with his power, not on purpose." He knelt down, probing with his fingers for the latch that would allow them to open it. "This is something else at work."
"Very deus ex machina," Kathy quipped. Byron looked up with a wry grin at her. "What?"
"Let's just remember this is real, Kathy. Our lives aren't some book for people's entertainment."
*ahem*
Byron found the latch and lifted it, pulling the dollhouse open, split down the middle from roof to floor. He and Kathy stared in awe at the miniature furnishings within, a perfectly represented modern home in doll size. An envelope sat on the floor of the first level living room, which Kathy took out and opened, withdrawing an index card from within.
It read: 'Journeyman, if you should find this dollhouse first, good. Take from the refrigerator the silver key you'll need to get into my safehouse, then close it up and leave it alone. If, however, you should come upon it first, Lady Potts, look under the covers in the master bedroom for what you need, and do as I informed The Journeyman. -The Forger'
She flipped the card over, a chill running through her. Who was The Forger, and what did he know of Kathy? For that matter, who was The Journeyman? She handed Byron the index card, and as he scanned it, she reached into the model master bedroom and pulled the cloth doll blanket off the bed. What she discovered there was a small key painted red. She held it up, turning it this way and that.
"Where did you get that," Byron asked suddenly, shuffling away from her, face pale, eyes wide.
"It was what The Forger left for us," Kathy said. "Byron, what's wrong?"
"I've seen that key before," Byron rasped. "I left it behind when I escaped Quoth's dungeons. That was the key to my cell!" Byron wheeled about and ran from the room, and Kathy almost followed right after. However, she closed and latched the dollhouse first, setting it back in the closet as instructed.
Then she was off, chasing after her love.
Daggeuro heard the footsteps clomping along, turning around with an eyebrow arched as Byron came running down the hall, panic-stricken. Normally the kennin might have let things play out as they would, but the group needed to stick together. He threw one thickly muscled arm out as Byron closed, clotheslining the human roughly to the floor with a thud and "Hooomph!"
"Byron," Kathy was calling, now visible far back up the corridor, closing on them. Byron's eyes were glazed for a moment as Daggeuro reached down a hand to him, finally clearing as he took it. Daggeuro hauled the human up, and Kathy took him by one hand as she halted beside him, panting.
"Don't do that," she snapped at him. Byron hung his head for a moment.
"Sorry. I just, started remembering being in that cell again, the escape, all of it." He threw up his hands. "It's just Quoth trying to throw us off."
"But Quoth didn't leave us this key," she said, patting the pouch on her belt where she'd put the red key. "The Forger did, whoever that is."
"What are you two blathering about," Daggeuro asked. Between the two of them, the Awakened humans told Daggeuro about the dollhouse and the note, Byron handing him the index card when they were done. Daggeuro read it, flipped it over, handed it back to Byron. "Neither of these names is known to me. Did you put the dollhouse back?"
"I did," said Kathy. "You should see it, Dag. It's beautiful."
"Take me to it," said the kennin warrior. The trio began heading back for the dormitory, passing by the stairwell leading down to the Potions classroom. "The Baron is down there, in case either of you needs him."
"Snape's classroom," Kathy asked.
"I'm not sure who that is. The blackboard says 'Potions'."
"Yeah, that's his room," said Kathy with a grin. When they got back into the room, Byron manifested another flashlight and handed it to her. She swept into the closet, but when she shone it on the place where the dollhouse had been, she discovered it absent. "It's gone," she said quietly. "How is that possible?"
"If this place teaches us anything, it's that all things are possible," Daggeuro replied. "Whoever this Forger is, it seems apparent that he, like Quoth, is from some other world. How he knows us is not our concern. That he seems to want to help us is something we should take as a good thing." He shrugged off his enchanted bag and tapped the buckle, reaching inside to procure some of the canned food he was carrying, along with four bowls and sets of flatware. "I'm going to fetch the Baron. We need to eat and rest."
"Resting might be hard," Byron commented. "I'm still feeling wound up from everything."
"You can't forego taking ease," said Daggeuro, setting the cans and bowls on a rounded table next to the closet. "If you become too exhausted to function, it could get you killed or make you strange." Byron raised one eyebrow. "Stranger," Daggeuro ammended. He departed to fetch Dimanche, leaving Byron and Kathy once more to their quiet.
For a change, neither of them said anything, merely sitting at the table and holding hands quietly until the kennin and voodoo spirit returned.
Several hours later, Kathy stood outside of Hagrid's cottage, bow in hand. She had seen no other signs of life, and the queer fellin fellow had assured them this was a safe place, but she didn't trust his analysis. Salag Trum had been Quoth's prisoner for decades, and the odds of his having retained his sanity over that span were slim.
That thought led, unfortunately, to another, related thought- what if the same had happened to King Ovin? The fairy monarch had seemed perfectly sane in her visions, but that didn't mean he was so. Even the most deranged person could experience periods of lucidity, and in those moments call out for help.
"No, not him," she said to herself aloud. "This place couldn't break him." She had to wonder, though. Kathy walked up to the large door of the Hogwarts Gamekeeper's home, easing the door open and staring inside from the doorway. The interior of the house was completely barren. There was no furniture of any sort, no fixtures, just an empty round chamber to go with the perfectly reproduced exterior.
As she turned away and headed back toward the castle, she realized how fitting it was. After all, most folks who were forced to come through this place would likely not even know what Hogwarts was. Exploring the castle would consume them entirely.
Kathy was almost back to the castle when she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. Drawing out an arrow from her quiver, she took aim as she turned, seeing a curious thing. Twenty or so yards away burned a small fire, and before it sat a giant mushroom with arms and legs, its brightly colored orange cap bobbing up and down as it reached a stick into the flames. She put the arrow back, and despite her promise to herself to not do anything dangerous, she approached the mushroom man.
When she was across the fire from it, its cap rose, revealing a pair of thin, slitted black eyes. "Hello," it said, its voice sounding like something echoing off of the walls of a long metal tube. She saw no mouth, no means of communication, and took half a step back. The mushroom put up one bulging, four-fingered hand to stay here. "Please, be not afraid. I will not harm you."
"Uh, okay," Kathy said, shaking her head, pinching the bridge of her nose with her right hand. "Um, what are you? And what are you doing here?"
"You may call me Todd," said the mushroom, pulling its stick from the fire, a burning marshmallow on its end. It held the treat up toward the ridges on the underside of its cap, which then flapped, air rushing out to extinguish the flame. It then pushed the food up into the ridges, and brought the stick back out, sans marshmallow. "As for what I'm doing here, I am merely passing through."
"Okay," said Kathy patiently, "maybe you can answer me this. How did you get here?"
"I walked," said Todd the Talking Mushroom plainly, as if this should be obvious. "How about you? How did you get here?"
"I got sucked through a doorway by white light and magic," she replied.
"I see. What is your name?"
"Kathy," she replied, sitting across the fire from Todd. "Kathy Potts."
"And what are you doing here, Kathy Potts?" She could now see a small burlap sack beside the mushroom, previously concealed from her angle of approach. He reached inside, where she could see was kept a bag of marshmallows, a compass, and what she believed looked like a book.
"My friends and I are trapped here," she said. "We're caught in a pocket realm designed by a creature named Quoth. If you're here, that means you're probably trapped too."
"I don't get trapped," said Todd matter-of-factly. "None from the magical land of Zam-za-Bam can be trapped." Kathy's eyes snapped up, boring into the mushrom at that.
"From where?"
"Zam-za-Bam," said Todd. Kathy began to get to her feet as the cap of the mushroom-man began changing colors rapidly, first fading to green, then yellow, purple, blue, and onward, the hues beginning to whorl and swirl together. She could suddenly smell a stench of sour milk and fish coming from the creature. "It's a wonderful, magical realm, ruled by a well-meaning lunatic. Our national anthem is the Hampster Dance. Would mackerel taste good if you cut it with the shell of a dung beetle?"
Kathy began backing away as the mushroom started melting, the fire blown out by an unseen wind, the kindling vanished as if never there. "This isn't happening," she rasped, turning to run back into the castle. When she was almost to the door she had left out of, she looked over her shoulder, yelped as she saw the mushroom standing three feet away, a blue frog held in one hand, its body gutted and dripping.
"You're right, it isn't," said Todd. She blinked, and he was gone. Kathy's heart raced as she sprinted along inside, leaving a blue frog on the stoop, wondering how its insides got on its outsides.
Byron luxuriated in the open air washroom, lounging in the broad communal tub with a wash cloth folded over his forehead and eyes. The water was warm and cloudy with the soap mixture he'd located in the closet, which smelled of blueberries. He was laying peacefully when he heard the washroom door bang open, followed by the heavy footfalls of boots. He snapped his head up, spotted Kathy, and relaxed.
"Hey, hon," he said as she knelt down by his head. She looked harried, flustered. "Babe? What's wrong?"
"What's that thing you called yourself a few times, when you've been on the edge of a breakdown," she snapped, hand on her knee, knuckles white as she gripped herself. "King or Lord or something?"
"Oh, that," said Byron with a chuckle. "The Emperor of Zam-za-Bam! Why?" Kathy stood up, pacing back and forth, hands on the sides of her head. "Kathy, what's wrong?"
"Byron," she said, coming to a stop. "Have you ever had a hallucination involving a talking mushroom," she asked. Byron shook his head.
"No, can't say as I ever did. But I did see one once, in Quoth's compound," he said. "Roderick tried to chase it down, but it got away from him. No idea what it's about, why it was there." Byron cocked his head to one side. "Did you see one?"
"Outside, on my way back from Hagrid's place. Which is empty, by the way. I don't mean 'he's not there' empty, I mean the cottage is a prop, hollow inside."
"Window dressing," Byron said. "Makes sense. If people wake up here inside he castle, they aren't likely going to know their way around already." He stood up and climbed out of the bath, wrapping a towel around his waist and fetching a second to dry his hair and face. "Nobody's expected to go digging around too much."
"I suppose you're right," Kathy said with a shrug. She sauntered over to his piled clothes and gear, handing him his garments one at a time so he could get dressed. "Still, it's unsettling."
"What is?"
"The fact that there are things going on here just out of our reach, our purview. I feel like something important is right there, just beyond our grasp. How do I put it?" She planted her hands on her hips, looked down contemplatively.
"It's like our story is just one part of a much bigger one," Byron said softly, putting his hands on her shoulders. She met his eyes, saw the madness just under the surface, but mixed with it was something even more fundamentally disturbing- undeniable certainty that he was right. "We're still in the background, but sometime in the coming years, we'll be in the foreground, and it will be terrifying."
"Hey," she said sternly, cupping his chin, wiping away tears that ran silently down his face. "Take it easy, honey. Whatever that is that you're talking about, it's down the road, okay? Let's focus on getting King Ovin and getting out of here." He nodded, and let her guide him, hand in hand, back to the dorm for some relaxation.
Gods knew they both needed it.