Into the fog. Ike extended his aether as he walked, searching ahead of him to sense what came next, but all he could sense was the steady gray energy of the fog. The fog itself was imbued with… not mana, not aether, not lunam either, but some other form of magical energy. Something that twisted at the edges of Ike’s senses, almost comprehensible, but not quite. It was as if the fog itself was a form of magic, some kind of high-density mana that took physical form all around them. Ike tried absorbing some, experimentally. By the same mark by which he could absorb lunam or mana, by holding it in his core until it returned to its base form of aether, he could absorb it, but he couldn’t directly use its power any more than he could directly use lunam.

  Then again, I guess that’s fine. He knew lunam turned one’s eyes inverse colors, and had other side effects, besides. Maybe this form of mana turned people into stone beings. He highly doubted it, since those things had had physical properties totally unlike human beings, while those who absorbed aether just had funny-colored eyes, but the stone beings were stone all the way through. Not dolls or puppets, not ex-humans with human physical structures like muscles and bones that had calcified into quartz, but stone. Solid, uninterrupted stone.

  Still, they were completely surrounded by dense mana of an unusual type. Ike breathed in as much as he could, replenishing his core. With nothing to look at, he contemplated his future as he walked. Two other lives inside him, lives that were his and yet not his. Not lives he’d forgotten, or previously lived; but pieces that had been carved out of whatever the essential core it was that made him, him.

  No, to put it correctly, whatever that essential core was, he didn’t have it. It wasn’t him. He was just another piece carved from that core. An inconsequential, tiny, incomplete shard of a larger core. Some piece so small that Brightbriar hadn’t even bothered to keep track of it, that he had sown into some woman like tossing a seed into a barren field and hoping that it might grow. Now that the seed had grown into a hardy weed, Brightbriar was interested to see where it would go, but he wasn’t excited about it. He didn’t even keep it close, like he had his daughter, Rosamund, nor watch over it, like he had with the King and Prince. In fact… he sent his consciousness into his core, measuring the weight of the two of them. They were worn down by time and effort, but at one time, they had been larger pieces than him. They were smaller than him now, weaker than his… soul, or whatever he had that made him, him, but by the same measure that he could sense his core, and theirs, he could sense that they had been much larger than him, before the ages had decayed them. Whatever core they had all been shorn from, the King and Prince could more claim to be that core than he could.

  Ike laughed to himself. But I’m the one that’s alive now, aren’t I? And maybe that was it. He wasn’t a complete enough person to be bothered by things like moral quandaries and difficult decisions. Wisp was a savage because she wasn’t human; Ike was a savage because he was a piece of a human.

  Well, that’s a bit reductive of myself. He was a complete person. He couldn’t really blame his savagery on anything but his own lazy heart and disinterest in interpersonal affairs. If he had been a shard at one point, it had been long, long ago. When he’d been born—and he had been born, he was sure of it—whatever shard he’d been had been filled in.

  He reached out to the King and the Prince, questioning if they’d been born. The King scoffed. What a question to ask. Yet, he was sure he’d had a flesh body. The Prince, too, responded likewise. He had been human, before he’d died and been turned to a puppet. Whatever Brightbriar’s methods were, he had ways of securing flesh bodies for his children.

  But not Rosamund, Ike pointed out.

  No. Perhaps whatever core was running out of energy; perhaps Brightbriar was simply trying a new method. There was no knowing. But the one thing the three of them knew for sure, was that they’d all been raised uniquely.

  The Prince, raised preciously.

  The King, given resources and adversity.

  Rosamund, held close as his jewel of a daughter, spoiled and shielded from the world.

  Ike, abandoned.

  It was as though he were searching for something. The perfect child, perhaps? If that was the case, then what qualified perfection? The Prince, certainly, had some flaws, and had died due to them. Ike could understand that. Rosamund was a brat. But what about the King? He’d built up a country that flourished, even after Brightbriar besieged it, ruined the King’s headquarters, and tried to burn it down. Was that not ‘perfection?’

  You forget. I was a disobedient child who went my own way. I was not perfect, not even close. To Brightbriar, the Prince grows closer to perfection, the King grumbled.

  But I died, so I cannot be perfect. Perhaps… what he craves, is someone he can hold close and treasure for his whole life?

  Wisp’s comments on puppet fucking and Rosamund came to the top of Ike’s mind again, and he shuddered.

  True, but we aren’t truly his children, the Prince put forth.

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  The King scoffed. I’d rather die than have any form of me anywhere near that man’s filthy dick.

  Ike had to agree with the King. Plus, if Brightbriar’s goal was romance, why raise them all as his children? Easier to raise them as family friends, or children he had to guard over, rather than declare them as his blood. Sure, it was still icky, but less so in society’s eyes. No, he probably wasn’t trying to create the perfect match through this weird childrearing obsession. What, then, was he after? A perfect child. But why? Why did he need a perfect child?

  Someone to succeed him? Take up his puppety mantle and become the next puppet master? But he’d been at this for centuries. There was no urgency to finding his successor, if this was truly such a search. Sure, maybe he was just trying to get ahead of the curve, and Ike could respect that, but what a hell of a curve to get ahead of.

  He never taught me his puppet arts.

  Nor I.

  Ike frowned. He hadn’t been either, but given that he was tossed into the wilds, that was something he was willing to overlook; besides, he was young, so who knew if Brightbriar planned to apprentice him later. But if he’d never tried to apprentice any of his children, then it couldn’t be that.

  So it wasn’t succession. It wasn’t romance, either, or at least, so all three of them stringently hoped. Ike thought for a moment, then frowned. Thinking about it, we’re all pieces of someone, right? We can all agree to that.

  The King and the Prince assented.

  Then… could it be that he’s trying to recreate someone who passed away long, long ago? Someone who we are not… but who we once were?

  It was something worth obsessing over. Someone lost, who was infinitely precious to Brightbriar. A close friend, a lover; given Rosamund, their original gender was in flux, so Ike was willing to admit it. The specific details of their relationship, and the labels they applied to it at the time, weren’t important. What was, was how precious that original person must have been to Brightbriar, to spawn this kind of obsession.

  But if that’s the case, why not do the obvious? If he has their soul, or whatever, put that in a body, the King postulated haughtily, bringing the argument to its obvious end.

  What if they were so precious to him that he couldn’t bear to take that risk? Ike asked.

  That would be foolish… the Prince trailed off.

  More foolish than trying to rear the perfect child, year after year, century after century? Brightbriar was caught in some kind of obsessive loop, that much was obvious to all of them. His thinking wasn’t—no, couldn’t be—logical. To spend centuries in an obsessive state, trying over and over to attempt one task, only to end up failing over and over again—at least in his eyes, Ike amended, as the King declared with great emphasis that he was no failure—his mental state after so many failures, after so long locked in obsession, couldn’t be good. If he’d had a goal that he could achieve at one point, he’d doubtless washed that away in his sea of obsession by now.

  How do you mean?

  Brightbriar chased perfection. Perfectly bringing back whoever he lost. This was Ike’s postulation, his hypothesis. At first, perhaps, that goal had been achievable. He’d known that person, and he’d known what he wanted to see. But through all the years, his vision of that person had blurred. He’d lost sight of his goal. And not only that, but in every failure, he saw the glimmer of some facet of that person. The glimmer, of accomplishing his goal perfectly. He didn’t just want to bring back some version of them, he wanted to bring them back. The first few times, he was probably fine with getting close, but he didn’t have the skill to get close. But every time he saw that glimmer, that one perfect facet of the person he chased, mixed in with all the ‘incorrectness,’ it taunted him. It was possible to bring them perfectly back, that glimmer said. He simply needed to try again. And again. And again. If the child he created was 90% that person, maybe that might have been acceptable at first; but by the tenth time he wiped the game board clean and started again, 90% wouldn’t suffice. It had to be that person, or else it was no good.

  The King and the Prince were silent. Flashes of their memories appeared in Ike’s mind, flickering by. Moments where Brightbriar suddenly smiled or showed them favor, without explanations. Moments where his face suddenly turned stormy, lacking the same. How close were they? How much of that person had glimmered through their selves?

  Whoever they were, they were kind of a douchebag, Ike thought, eyeing the four versions he knew from a distant lens. Himself, a rabid savage. The King, all pompous and overbearing. The Prince, a childish lout. And Rosamund, a brat.

  Though… he had to admit, they also shared good qualities. The Prince’s streak of nobility. The King’s deep care for his underlings, and his responsibility toward his people. Ike’s own deep bonds with those that society overlooked, his loyalty toward Wisp, Mag, and Shawn. And Rosamund… He thought for a while, then shrugged. He supposed she had loyalty toward her father, however misplaced it was.

  Faith in others, the Prince pointed out gently. It was a positive quality, even if Ike, raised as he was, didn’t have much, and didn’t see it as such.

  Hmm. Maybe he was a shard of a person. He couldn’t even understand what it was that Rosamund had that was a positive quality.

  The Prince laughed. No… it’s merely the way you were raised. Even if they were all identical, the way they were raised meant each one of them had wildly different perspectives on the world. It was a simple fact. The same person, raised under different circumstances, would become different in adulthood.

  And perhaps that was exactly why Brightbriar could not succeed. Perhaps that was why he was locked in this loop, trying over and over again to recreate the conditions of his friend’s childhood, while knowing nothing about the exact details, so that he could meet his friend yet again, even if they were a different person.

  You failed to count the Prince’s gentle nature, and my absolute nobility and grandeur, as positive qualities as well, the King butted in.

  Ike wasn’t too sure about that second one, but the King did have a point. They had plenty of positive traits between them. Who knew which ones it was that Brightbriar craved? Who knew if savage Ike or demure Rosamund more represented the child he sought?

  He breathed out, half-laughing. Well, fuck him. I don’t care what he’s after, or who he wants to meet. Fuck that puppet-fucker, and if I see him again, I’m gonna sock his teeth in.

  Well said, the King said, exuding the aura of applause.

  The Prince laughed. Perhaps that’s the attitude we need, in the end, to break him free of this obsession.

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