Over the entire ndscape now was a bnket of snow ten feet thick. And winter, it seemed, was not done showing its full might, as it was still snowing. Clustered around a fire that burned without need for fuel and was blue instead of orange, Denholm warmed his hands and stared at the goddess where she sat across the fire from him. Thanks to her, they had their own little oasis where the snow could not fall. Though around them, they were surrounded by sheer walls of white. At the moment, she looked like a mostly normal human woman, ageless in appearance and dressed in a dark green tunic with a dress underneath of the same color. Her skin was the only tell of something more, faintly illuminated by an internal glow.

  She hummed a rhythm. Not quite as predictable as a song, but not random in rhythm either. The blue fme danced in tune with the rising and falling of the notes and flickered whenever she psed in her singing.

  “Are you going to keep to ‘saving’ me?”

  “If you want to die, you can die. I just want to talk to you first.” Her humming did not stop as she spoke; rather the words overid it.

  “Why?”

  “Like I said, company is rare. I want to hear what has brought you to this, especially being one so young. I am curious.”

  Denholm considered that. At least, if she was true to her word, going along with her wishes would eventually result in his freedom. “Fine,” Denholm agreed. “But you already know most of it. I wanted to become someone people–” Abruptly, Denholm stopped himself, biting down on the lie before he could finish it. He had no reason not to tell the truth, he supposed. “I wanted to be someone Silvi could be proud of. I didn’t want to be a failure anymore.” Denholm met her eyes. The ck of emotion in them made it easier to share, honestly. “I failed. In every part of it, I failed. I…” He bit down on his tongue until he felt warm blood in his mouth. “I was tricked. But I still killed her.”

  “As in the heart, there will be sorrow, in the winter, so there will be snow.”

  Denholm struggled to keep his eyelids from twitching. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “No. But it is supposed to make you understand better.” With a flourish of her hand, suddenly the blue fme was gone. Frigid air washed over him, followed by the heavy snowfkes. In seconds, Denholm was shivering.

  She continued on, completely unperturbed by the cold. “Without knowing sorrow, you will never know what joy was worth. Without cold, you would never know the comfort of warmth.”

  Denholm was beginning to shake uncontrolbly. It was impossibly cold, like nothing he had ever known. In the Gde, there was only a day or perhaps two of snow in a year, and it was usually gone by the sunshine of noon, and the worst of the cold required at most one extra yer. This cold was… different. It was violent in a way that he could not describe. Everything became brittle in the face of it. The skin on his face and hands, even the hair on his head. He wanted nothing more than to be rid of it, but when he opened his mouth to beg her to make it stop, even the words themselves froze in his throat. He was forced to close his eyes, for he could feel they were going to freeze over before long as well. He curled in tight to himself, pressing his face into his knees for the meager warmth it provided. The cold consumed him, making him forget even where he was or what he had been doing. Snow was beginning to pile onto him thick enough that he could notice the weight. There was only cold, now, and the only thought in his mind was an urge to preserve what little warmth he had left.

  Until, just as quickly as it had been let in, the cold vanished.

  He opened his eyes, and through the steam rising from his body, he could see a dull blue glow in front of him. Eventually, when the snow was done burning off of him, he saw the fme again clearly, and her. And her. He had forgotten she was even there, forgotten everything in the face of that… that violent, consuming cold.

  “Cold, out here, is more than temperature,” she said. “Everything is. The essence of things takes root beyond the physical. Concepts themselves manifest in a way that drives the nd into chaos and the minds of anyone walking upon it insane. It’s a miracle you have survived this long, alone in the Outside. From another perspective, it might be apt to say that some of you has perished already.”

  Denholm looked down at his body, still quivering, and found she was right. He was gaunt, a totem made from bones and flesh, not a person. The only thing that had allowed him to push forward as long as he had was Silvi. “Is that what you call this pce? Everyone in the Gde called everything outside the Gde the Darkwood.”

  “I’m sure there are many names for it.”

  Denholm nodded weakly. For a while, he was content to just soak in the warmth. “I suppose I didn’t ask yet. What is your name?” It surprised even him that he was the one to restart the conversation.

  “My name is Echo.” The name itself, aptly, echoed.

  “Echo,” Denholm repeated. “Before I tell you the rest of my story, can I ask you some questions first?”

  “I think you will find I am in less of a hurry than you are. Ask what you please.”

  Denholm almost chuckled. Almost. “Right. There must be no shortage of time when you are an immortal god. You said it had been a long time since you met anyone out here. Do you get lonely?”

  “Maybe not in the way you do. But yes, in a manner of speaking.”

  “What about the other gods out here?”

  “Most are very single-minded. Or insane. Either is bad company.”

  “Oh.” Denholm stayed quiet for a while after that, collecting his thoughts. After all, she did say she wasn’t in any hurry. “About gods. I still don’t want your power. I won’t use the key, but can I ask what that would look like?”

  “A god's power is based on a single concept. I have chosen to be Echo, and so I can turn the echoes of things that happened once into things happening now, in the present. If you used the key, you would be able to do the same.”

  “So that huge toad? The catfish?”

  “Creatures that really existed at some point in the past in the exact pces I summoned their echoes back into reality. Maybe they were just passing through then, or maybe they once id cim to those pces as their domain.”

  Denholm’s hackles stood on end despite himself. “How long ago were those monsters really there?”

  “I couldn’t say for certain. In the Outside, distance, time, the essence of everything, it is all more pliable. Out here, steadfast ws of nature become leaves carried on the winds of something deeper, something that cannot be named or defined. The toad could have been there yesterday from his own perspective, but from ours, years, even decades. Or the reverse. But with my ability to see the echoes of the past in the present, I can bring those past events into reality. That is how gods have power here. There is a symbiotic retionship between our power being here and the instability that has created in the ndscape.”

  Denholm couldn’t help but wonder in what other ways that manifested. She said some gods were insane or single-minded, though that part made sense now. If you had to tie your entire identity to one concept, it would probably be maddening. Thinking back on it, Denholm had been doing just that for these past few weeks, and it most certainly had been driving him mad. “Are all gods like that?” Denholm asked.

  “Yes, to varying degrees. Our essence is of divinity, which once allowed us to influence anything, but we were forced to fall to this world and imprisoned in the Outside by powerful mages of your kind. To stay sane in a pce that no longer had any constants, we had to anchor ourselves to concepts. It may sound silly, but it also might surprise you how nonsensical the Outside can be at times. Having no anchor when all is chaos around you is maddening. Many of the gods who didn’t anchor themselves to something became deluded and violent. Unable to die, their illness of mind festers beyond what you can possibly imagine.”

  “You mean there are mad gods just roaming around out here?”

  Echo paused for a long moment. “Yes.”

  Denholm had heard as much in the stories told by the old masters in the Gde, but it was a whole other feeling to hear it spoken by a god themselves.

  “So this fire, is it real then? Or just an echo of a fire?” Denholm asked.

  “In every way meaningful to you. It’s warm, and it would burn you if you put your hand too close. But yes, it is an echo. At some point in the past, a group of adventurers sat around it and warmed themselves just as we are. I can sense their presence just as I was able to sense this fire.”

  Denholm blinked. “Can I see them? Can you summon their echoes too? I haven’t seen people in a long time. I’d like to see some.”

  The blue fire flickered and then dimmed. Four figures shimmered into existence. There were three men and one woman, all sat crosslegged close around the fire. They were translucent, almost ghostly, and cking any range of color besides the same washed-out green that Echo’s skin was made from. None of them made any move to acknowledge either Denholm or Echo.

  “They can’t see you,” Echo said, picking up on his obvious curiosity.

  “Why not?”

  “They’re not beings with free will. Just echoes. Acting out the same actions as when they were really here.”

  “Oh,” Denholm said, disappointed. Still, it was the closest thing to human interaction he had. He studied the four of them. One of the three men was much older than the other two, signified by his wrinkled face and balding head. He wore a tattered cloak that had visible holes in it. The two younger men wore yered robes that came to a point at the shoulders, exagerating the v shape in their frame. One of them had a sheathed sword at his hip.

  Denholm almost had to shake himself to make sure he was seeing the woman clearly. She wore a dress, though it seemed to be made of a thicker material than Echo’s and was segmented below the waist. She also wore pants under it, and the whole getup seemed simir in styling to the two younger men. But none of those things caught his attention the most. Her hair was long, reaching all the way to the hip, but with bangs cut ft that covered her whole forehead.

  Just like Silvi used to.

  The woman stirred, her eyes flicking from the fire to something else. For a moment, he swore she was staring at him. Then, her echo, along with the others, dissipated into shimmering mist. Only the fire was left. It brightened noticeably as soon as the adventurers’ echoes disappeared.

  Denholm shook his head, returning his gaze to Echo. “If those adventurers had a fire here, they probably cooked something. Could you conjure the echo of that? My story is pretty long, and I’m so hungry I can hardly remember the details right now.”

  She smiled slightly, though there was a hint of sadness to it. “My power is more limited than you might expect. I could try, but as soon as I stopped focusing on it, the food would disappear right out of your gut.”

  Denholm frowned deeply. He was still pretty sure he wanted to die, but he would rather spend the time until that happened with a belly full of something warm.

  “Hold on,” she said. “Maybe I can do something.” She held her arm out to the side, palm facing the snow wall, fingers dancing like they were pying an invisible instrument. “Ah,” she said, and moments ter, a glowing and partially transparent boar burst through the vertical wall of snow and into their little clearing. It snuffled around, nose to the ground. Eventually, it decided on a spot, oinked gleefully a few times, and began to dig. About a foot into the ground, it found what it was looking for. The pig pulled out a lump of something made from the same echo magic as itself and began to chew on it. It let loose one more satisfied noise before dissipating into mist. The only thing that was left behind was the hole itself. The dirt it dug up was real, not an echo.

  “Stick your hand into the bottom there,” she said. “You may find what you’re looking for.”

  Denholm frowned at her but did as he was told. Amidst the coarse soil, he found a more solid mass. When he pulled it out, it looked nothing more than a hunk of dirt, though it was lighter than dirt and more solid. “What is this?” he asked.

  “Food,” she responded simply.

  “Did you make the pig do that, or is that just an echo of something that happened?”

  “An echo, of course.”

  Denholm shook his head. “But then how can the food still be there if the pig already ate it? I saw him crunch it all up.” Though he supposed what he had actually seen the pig pull out of the ground did have the same transparent glow as the pig itself, and what he had in his hands now was very much real, not an echo.

  “Like I said, time is a strange thing out here. Maybe, from our perspective, we were actually here before the pig. Maybe long enough after that the forage it ate had time to regrow anew.”

  “But you can’t tell which?”

  “I am an Echo, not a timekeeper.”

  “They seem the same to me,” Deholm admitted.

  “Yes, they might.”

  Denholm sat back down by the fire, staring at the ball of… whatever it was he was holding. It was hard not to grimace at the thought of eating such a grubby-looking thing.

  Her ever-present humming became lower and more somber as if in response to his reaction. “It’s not hand made stew, but it is food,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “Truffle.” She summoned an echo of a pot filled with water in front of him. Well, perhaps it would look more appetizing when cooked.

  “Did this belong to one of the adventurers around this fire?” Denholm asked, looking down at the pot.

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “Use the water inside to wash off the truffle.”

  “What about using the water to cook it?” Denholm asked.

  “Truffles are best eaten raw, though usually as a garnish rather than a meal in and of themselves. In this case, I think you will have to be a little less picky. We could search for more food, but it would take time and energy. I mean no offense, but you look inches away from death, even if it was not for your own efforts to make it come sooner. So eat.”

  She had a fair point. As he went about cleaning it, he found it more than a little strange to be sloshing his hands through water that wasn’t real and glowed faintly. Not to mention being able to see through the bottom of the pot to the ground below it, but he did as he was told all the same.

  After it was cleaned, it did look somewhat more appetizing. Only somewhat. The surface appeared cracked, and the truffle itself was distinctly lumpy now that it was not covered in dirt. He turned it over in his hands. Was he just supposed to bite into it like an apple? It felt quite a bit more solid than an apple but much lighter as well.

  A moment ter, a small knife fizzled into being beside the pot, another transparent echo of one of the adventurer’s belongings. Denholm grabbed it by the stubby handle and waved it in front of the blue firelight, curious about how realistic the copy really was. As an experiment, he held the tip of the bde inside the blue fme for a while and then tried touching it ever so gently and briefly to his skin. “Ow!” he excimed, finding the heat just as real as the fire.

  He sort of expected as much, but he had still been interested to know if two echoes interacted realistically. That urge satisfied, he sighed and began pairing off small chunks of the truffle onto the lid of the pot he turned upside down as a makeshift pte. The goddess stayed silent and impassive all the while. He appreciated her willingness to help as much as her ck of urgency to get something in return from him. He had a feeling telling his whole story would take a toll on him, especially when he was forced to relive the worst parts. Even the graces she had shown him thus far were not worth that pain, but even still, Denholm found part of him wanting to tell it just so he wasn’t the only one who knew the whole story. All those people back in the Gde would have long since found and buried Silvi, but none of them knew what really happened. Even the Trickster only knew what happened after he met Denholm. There were years worth of formative events before that, leading up to him taking that final leap that caused her death.

  After he had a small pile of neatly cut chunks, he pced the makeshift pte on his p. Before he began eating, he realized he should offer some to her. He didn’t know if gods ate, after all. “Do you… eat?” Not the most subtle way of asking, but he supposed this was not a time for that.

  “No,” she said. “I find the process interesting, though. Go on, eat.”

  Denholm raised an eyebrow but nodded regardless and went on eating himself. He could have sworn he hardly blinked, and it was all gone. He found himself sucking on each of his fingers, eager to get what meager crumbs might be stuck to them. After there was truly not a scrap left, Denholm looked up at her.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I think I’m ready to tell you my story now.”

  She smiled ever so slightly. “Please, spare no details.”

  Denholm did just that, including every nitty-gritty detail he could remember. His whole story. All of the neglect the craftsmen in the Gde had shown him when he proved to be too distractible to focus on any given task for longer than a few minutes. All of his failures.

  The story of the night he left and the events that followed in those next several hours were the hardest to get through, of course, but oddly relieving as well. After expining it all, he was surprised he could honestly say he felt lighter than before. Even the weeks spent starving and sleepless, desperately searching for a god out here seemed a distant memory after they were spoken out loud. All of it was like he was telling a story about someone else, not something he really lived through. Finally, and with a note that he swore carried a hum under it just like her own words did, he reached the end of it. “And that’s when I met you,” Denholm said, then exhaled a long breath that made the tips of the blue fme dance wildly.

  “A story worth telling indeed,” she said. She hadn’t interrupted him once in all his expnations, only watching him with a bnk expression occasionally broken up by the slightest of smiles during parts where Denholm had told of his hopes and dreams for what his explorations into the Darkwood might bring.

  Denholm shrugged. “I guess so.”

  Her tunic started to ripple, simir to the st time when she had been thinking deeply about something, though it was less unnerving now that she appeared overall more human. “It sounds to me like what kept you alive so long in the madness of the Outside was exactly the same as what keeps me alive.”

  “That’s not true,” Denholm said. “I can’t just anchor myself to a concept.”

  “No, you aren’t doing that anymore, but you were. Silvi was your anchor, your purpose.” She smiled, seeming quite pleased with that.

  “Sure,” Denholm admitted. “She was the only thing that made me keep going, putting one foot ahead of the other.” He curled in tighter to himself, watching the fmes.

  There was another long pause before the goddess spoke again. “And nothing can bring that purpose back to you, but what about others?”

  “There are no others,” Denholm whispered.

  “What about your dream of reuniting the oases?”

  “It’s not worth anything without her there to see me do it. Besides, it’s impossible anyway.”

  “Gods falling from their perch in the heavens was supposed to be impossible. So was the segregation of humans into oases. Things can change.”

  Denholm shook his head. “Sure. Maybe some day someone will do it.”

  “Why not you?”

  “Because I failed!” Denholm shed out. “Because all I can ever do is fail! Because I’m too stupid to do anything good! I… I used to think I knew something no one else did. It was always the opposite. They all knew better. Silvi knew better. I can’t believe I thought I was smart… I can’t believe I let my stupidity get her killed. I just… can’t… believe… How could I be that stupid?” Denholm curled up again, pressing his face into his knees.

  “What about a new quest then?”

  Denholm shook his head, still curled up as he was.

  “You still wish to fulfil your dream of uniting the oasis; I could hear it in your voice. That much is certain, even if the driving factor behind your motivation is now gone. But loneliness does not st forever. There are other humans surviving out here. I have met some of them. Perhaps you could find others who you might find a bond with, maybe even a strong enough bond to motivate you to pursue your dream again. You never know, other humans trapped out here like you might be more likely to share that dream than you imagine.”

  “Even if I wanted to do that, it feels impossible. Once I left my oasis, I couldn’t find my way back even though I knew I was going the right way. I could only cross back over once the Trickster was with me.”

  “As far as I know, once you leave an oasis, you can never return to another one. It is the same reason why gods are relegated to the Outside. Only Tricksters can traverse the gap, and even then, only under special circumstances. But what excitement would there be in a quest that had an obvious and easy to achieve ending?”

  Denholm finally found the strength to lift his head and look at her. “Why do you care? Why try to convince me to keep chasing my stupid dream?”

  She smiled, a hint of a wry curl to the corner of her lip. “That is an answer I can easily give, and a purely selfish one. I find you curious.”

  “Even if I wanted to, I can’t do it on my own. I was hardly surviving out here. If I tried, I would just fail again. As soon as you leave, I’ll just continue to wither away until I die like I was before.”

  “Who said I was pnning on leaving you?”

  Denholm blinked at her.

  “What would be the point in indulging my curiosity now if I wasn’t going to see this story through to the end? When you were younger, did you ever tell your mother to stop telling a story right before the best part began?”

  Denholm, despite himself, could not help but feel a spark of hope ignite in his gut. A small one. But a spark nonetheless.