Kathy found her world fading from pure white into a fuzzy surrounding, which sharpened over the course of a minute into a clear perception of her environment. She was standing beside Byron in the center of a humid earthen chamber, columns of stone standing from ceiling to floor all around the cavernous room. The rock floor was uneven, rough underfoot, and smelled of old fires long since snuffed out.
A mummified corpse in rusted plate armor lay slumped against the nearest one, Daggeuro crouched down beside it, pawing through a mouldering rucksack. Kathy looked around and asked, "Where's the Baron?" The kennin warrior paused, then hung and shook his head. Kathy's mouth went dry.
"Impossible," Byron rasped. "He's one of the Loa, he's a god!"
"Even gods can be killed," Daggeuro replied gently, standing up. He held Serpantus in his left hand, which he extended to Byron. "Here. Better than your katana, same style. Mind the enchantments." Byron didn't move for a moment, and when he did take the blade, he secured it to his belt and sat down heavily on the roughened stone floor.
"This is just wrong," he whispered, eyes unfocused. Kathy and Daggeuro each took a seat on either side of him, the kennin keeping his senses tuned for signs of oncoming danger. Kathy knew the look in Byron's eyes, and knew as well that his medication didn't always prevent episodes like the one he was about to have. His mind had just been through too much stress, and killing a man who essentially looked like himself was likely one push too many. He began rocking slowly back and forth, muttering, "This is wrong. This is wrong."
She put her hand on his back and rubbed softly, determined to see him through this hopefully momentary fugue.
Rasmus sprinted through the house, pounding on his parents' bedroom door, cold sweat slick upon his brow. Selena pulled the door open with eyes blurry with sleep, her stump not connected to any of her artificial arms yet. "Ras? What is it, honey, what's wrong?"
"Something is coming," Rasmus said, hands massaging his temples. "Several somethings, and they are very, very angry, mother. They are enraged." Selena sensed the gravity of the matter from her son's demeanor, and quickly nodded.
"Fetch your brother and sister, and get armed," she said sharply. "Bring them to the front door, eight minutes." Rasmus said nothing, just hurried away, still rubbing one temple, using his other hand to wipe blood away from his nostril. When Selena got down to the front door, her children were all lined up, armored and with weapons ready. "Rasmus, where will they come? Down the lift?"
"No, from Spirit Plane," he said. "They will appear in North Park." Selena guided her children through the cty, and ou in the streets, she could feel the immese magical pressure building ahead of them. Other citizens of the Faded Army, she saw, were also reacting to the tidal pulse of power thrumming from North Park.
When they arrived on the grassy field of the park, she spotted the rest of the High Command arranged in a semicircle. They were standing before a short cone of wavering purple energy, Spirit magic, which gave off a low hum. Three distinct shapes were forming in the cone, two tall and broad, one short and bent and rail thin. When the cone of light faded, three figures stood before them all. One of the tall ones, a thickly muscled man who looked a lot like Baron Dimanche, stepped forth, a short staff with a lizard skull atop it in hand. His face was painted in a white candy skull, but his arms and chest, both bare, were as black as night.
This man raised his staff and shook it, rattling something inside the skull. "Behold! I am Baron Samedi! Wit' me are Papa Legba," he said, at which the other man, dressed more formally with full sleeves and shirt, slightly older-looking but very similar to him, nodded. "And Mama Lo, of course," he said, his voice less querulous and more reverant for the elderly woman. She was dressed in a funereal black dress with a wide-brimmed black hat, her thin veil unable to conceal the wrinkled, wizened face that scowled wickedly out from underneath at the assembled faerie around. Her long hair was iron gray and wispy, ethereal. Samedi continued. "We, are de Loa, voodoo gods from Spirit Plane. Anodder of our numbah came here to lend aid, Baron Dimanche, my broddah."
There were some mutterings at this, and Selena quietly guided herself and her children closer through the crowd. The elven woman could see a single tear trailing down Samedi's wide cheek.
"We, we felt his death a few hours ago," said Samedi, and he seemed to shrink somehow, becoming less potent, less there. Mama Lo put one gnarled hand up on his arm for support. "We have come in search of answers, if any can be given." Selena stepped forth then, her children right behind her.
"They can," she proclaimed.
He was back in the testing chamber, waiting for the stranger named Roderick to jump into the water after him. The stranger couldn't swim very well to begin with; this he'd learned from casual observation. Weighed down by his great coat and boots, his gear, the man would barely be able to move once he was in the water.
Byron watched as those cowboy boots broke the water's surface, and immediately he launched himself upward. The stranger was still sinking when Byron cleared the surface and tumbled out, dismissing the pool. It snapped shut, the floor once more a normal floor, a crack in the stone spraying a gout of the stranger named Roderick's blood all over. Byron cocked one eyebrow, shook his head.
"No, that's not how it happened," he said aloud, and the entire scene began rewinding until he was climbing out of the pool again. He rolled aside, got up to a crouch, and dismissed the pool. It snapped shut, spitting the stranger out, soaked and unconscious. Byron bolted over to the pale, scruffy-faced stranger and snatched the key ring off of his belt loop. The captive human then ran from the training chamber out into the hallway, rifling through the keys until he found one that hummed with power in his hand.
Holding this key aloft, Byron ran through the twisting halls and corridors of the compound, seeking the door he needed. Shortly, his vision darkened, and soon he was back in the training chamber with Roderick, having just taken the key ring.
"I'm forgetting something," he said to himself. He looked toward the chamber doorway, flinched as a blue penguin wearing a monocle on a chain, a red scarf around its neck and a fez on its head waddled into the room, holding a smouldering pipe in one flipper. A rich, full-bodied scent of pinch tobacco filled the chamber as it approached the human.
"Bonjour, monsieur," said the little penguin, its French accent thick. "Ca-va?"
"Uh, je ne sais pas," Byron replied. "Aussi, je parle l'englais, mon petite amie. Mon francais, c'est mal."
"Not so bad that you can't understand me, at least," the penguin replied. "It has been a long time, monsieur. Judging from your reaction, you don't remember me. That's fine. You don't have to remember me, Byron, but you must remember something far more important."
"But what," Byron pleaded, kneeling down so he was on eye-level with the blue penguin. "What do I have to remember?"
"I don't know. I'm not you, monsieur. But I offer you this- I have paused everything on this floor of the compound. Have a look around. It might come back to you." Byron realized he was in his own head, but only vaguely so. Trusting the penguin instinctively, he crept out into the hallway, and began exploring the floor.
The stranger named Jago sipped his tea, reading a magazine until he heard something sliding across the pulpit floor above in the darkness. He heard Quoth say quietly, "Something is wrong." A moment later, the raven-thing banished the darkness above and called out, "Jago! To me!" The stranger tossed his magazine and cup aside, hurrying up the steps to the long, flat pulpit stage on top, where Quoth stood in his striped suit, his throne of bones and flesh melting into the floor. His eyes swirled as he faced the stranger. "Jago, something unpredictable is happening, something I didn't foresee. Tell me, are some of the dragons still defecting?"
"Every day, my lordship," the flame-eyed stranger confirmed.
"The Faded Army isn't marching, is it?"
"No, lordship, they still take small forts and lairs, nothing more."
"Still, I felt it. Something monstrous, something as strong as that six-headed dragon deity has entered this realm." Quoth was smiling now, hopping from one foot to the other, shaking his hands excitedly. "Something unexpected! Hooray, hooray, kaloo kalay!" He danced a quick jig, six Celtic dancers in kilts appearing beside him to join in loudly before turning into clouds of plaid smoke. Quoth pulled an oscillating fan from thin air and flipped it on, blowing the smoke away. He leaned on the fan and grinned at Jago. "And things have taken an unexpected turn inside the box, too."
"Sire?"
"I think our good friend Byron is about to stumble upon a loophole. What precisely, I don't know, but it should prove entertaining. Jago?"
"Yes, lordship."
"You will return through the Tear now," said Quoth, flapping a feathered hand at him dismissively. "I'm going to enjoy the conclusion to this game alone. I'll be paying you double."
"Sir, you don't pay me anything."
"Exactly. Now get out." The stranger named Jago left him then, passing out of our tale for good. Quoth conjured the throne again, and sat down, raising a large screen television before himself with a cluck of his tongue. On screen, he watched as Byron rocked back and forth on a cavern floor, muttering to himself. "What's going on in that head of yours, hmm?"
Kathy used a combination of her earthen magic and Awakened power to form several humanoid figures from the walls of the cavernous chamber and set them to guard the three entrances. She and Daggeuro pulled cans of Chef Boyardi from his bag and cooked Beefaroni over a small fire several yards from Byron. Kathy explained that usually, when the other human's episodes carried on a while, she simply had to be patient, wait for him to come out of it on his own.
"I've tried rousing him out of it before," she said, stirring the small camp pot's contents slowly. "Never works. What's worse, I have no clue what's going on in his mind."
"Everyone needs a little space of their own," Daggeuro said. "I understand that it's troubling, but you can't know everything he thinks. It wouldn't be right."
"How do you figure," Kathy asked. She was intrigued, because all times before, the kennin warrior seemed like a tried-and-true authoritarian. She would have thought him supportive of the idea of finding out everything she could about Byron's mental trappings.
"Allow me to put it this way," Daggeuro said. "You love him, right?" She nodded. "Now, would you want him to know what you're thinking all the time?" Kathy grinned, shook her head. "Why not?"
"Because sometimes I think things that would probably piss him off," she replied.
"Do you think him immune to that himself? Consider too something you once told Selena and I about your home," Daggeuro said, rubbing his fork clean on a rag before shoving it back inside his bag. "About your furnishings."
"Um, I'm drawing a blank here," she said.
"When Byron moved in with you, he had no furnishings of his own. In the home he lives in with you, everything belongs to you originally. He has little or nothing of his own, so the space doesn't feel like his. So, the only space that he can wholly claim as his own is his mind."
Kathy was quiet for a minute, looking over at Byron as his rocking slowed. "How do you know that," she asked.
"Because I went through much the same thing when I moved in with Selena. For the first five years, nothing in the house carried a hint of my own choice or possession, except for my clothes and gear. But then the kitchen table broke, and she let me select a new one. Over time, I became accustomed to thinking of her furnishings as 'ours' instead of 'hers', but it isn't an easy thing for men to do. Women are just better at acclimating that way."
Kathy chuckled. "Man, what would it have been like if I'd moved into his place?"
"A nightmare for you, I imagine," Daggeuro said bluntly. "If he didn't bring furniture when he moved into your apartment, it's likely because what he had was either improvised or of low quality. I don't like to make sweeping generalizations, but most single men will try to make do with the minimum of upkeep and expense." He pointed over at Byron and asked, "Is that normal?"
Kathy turned herself around and watched as Byron slowly slumped over onto his side, body limp. She sighed. "It is. Usually it means he'll be waking up out of it in the next ten to twenty minutes."
"Let's hope that's so," Daggeuro said, casting about again. "I sense we're going to have company soon." He drew out Boon and Bane, walking over with Kathy to stand guard over Byron. Kathy hoped he was going through his usual motions as she grabbed her bow and an arrow.
Byron stalked along the corridors, keeping from making contact with the various specters that stood frozen in time throughout the many chambers on his floor of the compound. These were not the monsters of Ether, though several shared similarities; no, these beasts all shared the same mindless bloodlust of their handlers, the wraiths and strangers who served the Master.
Fearful that contact would snap them back into action, he kept his distance from them where he could. Many of the doors required a key to open them, which he did several times before his own natural curiosity got the better of him. He counted the keys on the ring, including the red one that hummed, then walked the floor counting doors.
"One extra key," he said to himself, once again in the test chamber with the penguin. "There's one extra key here. Why?"
"Retrace your steps," said the penguin. "Think of the hallways you ran down when making your escape in the first place." Byron tried to think back, but found that when he tried to envision it, it slipped away from him. To try and jog his memory, he ran from the room, fleeing as he had once before, when this escape had been real.
Somehow, he wound up back in the training chamber. He snarled, cursing under his breath. "Something is out of place," he groused, pacing back and forth furiously. "Something's missing, but I don't know what!"
He stopped suddenly, looking at the little ash pile by the stranger named Roderick. Byron walked over and searched the otherworldly man once again, coming up with the deck of blank cards and a pen from Roderick's trench coat. He stood up slowly, his mind reeling.
"That's right," he muttered to himself. "I had already counted the doors, tried the key on all of them. And," he said, blinking and finding himself now standing in a dead end hallway on the compound floor . "I thought, 'I'll just make one'." Byron wrote 'Escape Door' on a card, tossed it at the wall, and grasped the handle on the multicolored door which appeared. Of course, it was locked. He slid the red key in, turned it-
And woke up laughing, lying between Kathy and Daggeuro.
It took several minutes for Byron to calm down, during which Kathy and Daggeuro helped her stone golems defend against strange, red-skinned goblins which wielded crudely made weapons and hissed like animals. When he stopped laughing he joined them, wielding Serpantus with the same proficiency as he had his katana. It was a good blade, balanced and lightweight, and sharp enough to cut clean through bone.
When the goblins began tapering off and running away back into their underground tunnels, Kathy wheeled and embraced Byron tightly. "You had me so worried," she said, holding him at arms' length. "Are you all right?"
"Better than all right," he said with a broad smile. "We're going to King Ovin, now." He sheathed Serpantus and drew out a blank index card and pen. He held the writing implement aloft a moment, looking at it reverently. "It really is mightier, isn't it," he muttered. Quickly he scrawled several words on it, then held out his hand to Kathy. "Got that red key?"
She fished it out of its pouch, and Byron tossed his card against a cavern wall. There, it flashed brilliant white, manifesting into a stark crimson door. Kathy cocked her head to one side, sensing the portal's magical energy. "Byron? What did you write?" He walked toward the door, slid the key into a hole on the knob, and turned it with a 'click'. He looked over his shoulder at her and Daggeuro, hauling the door open.
Revealed on the other side was another cavern chamber, in which stood a giant, six-headed dragon, and a diminutive speck of light glowing on the floor nearby. Byron said, "I wrote, 'Door to King Ovin'."