Chapter 5

  The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.

  - Richard Bach, Illusions: the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

  Eric and Heidi scrambled to their feet in response to the sudden light and noise from overhead. They gazed up into the invisible clouds of night, ready for storm worms. Kate looked up as well, though she only hugged tighter against Elizabeth.

  Only Elizabeth did not turn her gaze to the heavens. Her eyes were fixed on the white hexagon which had fallen from the storm. It lay by the fire, six glowing symbols in the flickering light. Elizabeth thought she knew whose hexagon this must be. But why was it here? She reached out and picked it up. It was cool and damp, exactly like hers in every way, except that the paintbrush symbol decorated the back. It was Jimothy’s.

  Elizabeth wanted to be alone. She didn’t want anyone to see her cry, even if they were her best friends in all the world. She didn’t know what to do. Without Jimothy…

  Kate trembled against Elizabeth under the blanket; she had no compunctions about crying in front of her friends. Eric looked angry; he glared at the storm. A damp wind tugged his tarpaulin cape; red headphones around his neck glinted in the firelight. He probably wanted something threatening to drop down just to take his mind off the loss. And Heidi…normally Elizabeth found Heidi’s expression difficult to read, but now she was evidently miserable. Her armored fists shook at her sides, and wetness shone on her cheeks, and a dark serpentine form coiled in agitation at her feet.

  The light returned; it flashed around the four of them, a sea of radiance. The others panicked; Eric shouted something. Elizabeth did not move. She could not bring herself to care about this light, whatever it may be. She shut her eyes against the brilliance and clutched Jimothy’s medallion in her hands. The light danced on the other side of her eyelids, making vague red shapes, yet it remained silent. Or almost silent. Something whispered there, some sound, like a distant echo. But Eric and Kate began arguing about something, and Elizabeth could not hear.

  “Quiet!” she shouted at them. They stopped. Elizabeth’s phone vibrated, but she ignored it. She listened. The sound within the light was like a voice, buzzy and distorted, a distant quavering drone imitating speech. And what was it saying? Eyes?

  The light faded to a flickering glow, a dim haze around them.

  “G-guys,” Kate whispered.

  “What?” said Eric.

  “That’s w-what it’s s-saying! ‘Guys!’”

  “Why would it be saying ‘guys?’ And speak up so Heidi can hear you; she’s deaf now.”

  “I’m fine,” said Heidi. But just a minute ago she had been surreptitiously snapping her fingers close to her ears. And she was not fine. She sniffed and turned away from them.

  The strange sound came again, stronger, more pronounced, more like speech. “...zabeth...”

  “D-did you hear that?!” Kate whispered.

  Elizabeth stood. The strange light drew itself together a dozen paces away down the incline. A vague, hazy nebula shot through with lines of color illuminated the green hillside, casting stark shadows. It moved, it spun in a silent maelstrom, and it was nearly too bright to look at directly. A brief sprinkle of rain shone like a shower of sparks as it fell around them.

  Elizabeth faced the light, a cold knot of dread forming in the pit of her stomach. What could this be? An emissary of the Bright World? Some new manifestation of the ‘gods?’ Elizabeth glanced back at the others, all of them right behind her. None of them had any ideas, she could tell from their bewildered and frightened expressions. Callie brushed up against Elizabeth’s leg as she turned back to the light.

  It collapsed in upon itself as though giant invisible hands were squeezing it down to a smaller size. It flickered and moved, and the strange buzzing drone of a voice came again. “...orry...azel...I’m...”

  Frisby chirped in wild excitement and flapped past Elizabeth toward the light, performing a barrel roll on the way and nearly plummeting down to the grass. Navi was only a moment behind; she flitted in Frisby’s wake, and Callie bounded after them down the wet slope. Frisby and Navi flew in circuits around the light, while Callie sat composedly in front of it, swishing her furry tail back and forth.

  Heidi spoke, from behind, uncertain: “Is that...?”

  The light condensed again like an exploding star in reverse. It became a raging ball the size of a person. Part of its mass flared upward, a blinding pseudopod extending to the skies. There, framed by the darkness of the storm, words appeared, written in trembling brilliance: ITS ME. Then, although by then it was hardly necessary, the words faded and were replaced by: JIMOTHY.

  Callie confirmed that it was true. She and the other angels had recognized Hazel, who was also somewhere in that light.

  Kate scrambled down the slope toward the light; Eric and Heidi and Elizabeth followed slowly after. “Is it really him?” asked Heidi. Her voice shook. “What if it’s a trick? It looks like something the Dark Ruler could do.”

  “There’s no heartbeat,” Eric added, but then he trotted down and slid on the grass until he stopped beside Kate in front of the light.

  The light quivered as though being contained under great pressure. A column of brilliance erupted up into the dark sky where it lanced the stormclouds and vanished. A featureless human shape remained behind, still terribly bright, but the radiance gradually dimmed to a dull green until they could all see its featureless face.

  The noise returned. It began as a chaotic clash of sound, loud enough to startle them and make Heidi summon her shining golden gravity spheres in apprehension. The sound softened, collapsed together, and spoke words. “I’m okay. I guess.” It didn’t sound anything like Jimothy’s voice. It barely sounded like a voice at all.

  “Jim?” said Eric. “What happened?”

  “Y-yeah!” Kate added. “W-w-where are you?”

  The green mannequin-like figure stood stiffly, unmoving. It answered, “I’m...here, I think? I don’t know. I don’t remember. I’m...confused.” The voice became more like a voice as it spoke. Elizabeth thought she could discern the effort being made to smooth it out, the pattern of someone rapidly getting used to something new and unfamiliar.

  Elizabeth could not bring herself to speak. A strange mixture of elation and bitterness and anger churned within her. Rain began to fall. It pattered on Eric’s tattered laserproof tarpaulin cape as he stood there being impassive and cool, being a solid rock for Jimothy. The rain tapped on Kate’s painted lab coat as she bounced in excitement, and it disguised the tears that she was undoubtedly crying as she visibly debated the feasibility of hugging Jimothy’s green form. Heidi looked up into the rain and closed her eyes as though in relief, and she smiled a little at the dark skies, though whether her smile was for Jimothy’s return or for feeling rain again, Elizabeth did not know. Elizabeth summoned her bright yellow umbrella and popped it open above her. She offered to share it with Heidi beside her, but Heidi had turned away, and her armored shoulders shook with silent sobs. Elizabeth left her and stepped toward Jimothy.

  “Jimothy,” she said, “what do you remember?”

  The figure’s green head turned stiffly to one side as though it were a puppet or a doll being crudely manipulated. “I remember...Mike...” He said something more, but the voice distorted beyond comprehension. His dim green form fuzzed apart into an ambient haze that shivered with rippling bands of light.

  Elizabeth might have tried to hug him, to comfort him, if there had been anything to hug. But he was...not really there? Or had he changed, somehow transmuted into a being made of light? Was that possible? She looked down at his medallion in her hand. It must have been what happened on Hyperion. He wouldn’t remember that; he’d been asleep. But who would know? The Lockbreaker. Fiora.

  Elizabeth checked her phone while Jimothy’s light reformed itself. She had received a message from Fiora.

  FI: his book has begun writing again!

  FI: look! it is him! it is!

  Elizabeth silenced her phone and put it away. A faint fizzling pop announced that Isaac was again among them. He arrived with a flash of deep purple light, the kind that is curiously difficult to see on neon signs at night. He stood to their right and watched them through that eerie mirrored helmet. Jimothy’s green light slid around in slick reflections on its curved surface.

  “ARKO says there’s a weird power spike here,” he said. He looked to the left, then to the right. “So...is something happening? Guys?”

  Jimothy had reformed into his green mannequin while Isaac spoke, but Isaac appeared not to notice. He took a hesitant step forward and almost tripped on a rock in the grass in front of him. “Uh...guys? You there? Charlie...” His angel was not present, but he didn’t seem aware of it.

  “Isaac, you fuckin’ blind?” said Eric. “Look.” He gestured at Jimothy. “Take your damn helmet off.”

  Isaac didn’t respond.

  “M-maybe he can’t,” suggested Kate. “M-maybe it’s b-broke, and that’s why he c-can’t see.”

  Isaac pointed a finger at Kate. “That’s it. My helmet’s broke. So what’s the power spike?”

  Elizabeth slowly shook her head at his obvious lie. She thought: please don’t go crazy, Isaac. Please.

  “I’m here, Isaac!” said Jimothy. “I’m...okay.”

  Isaac flinched at the sudden sound of Jimothy’s voice. “Jim? It’s you?”

  The green image spread stiff arms. “I guess,” it said.

  “Nice,” said Isaac. “I knew it. Nobody’s actually dead unless their light goes out. So you’re all good?”

  “Well,” said Jimothy, “I’m made of light now, or something.” His voice became clearer by the sentence, but it still wasn’t Jimothy’s voice. The green image raised its hands before its face as though to look at them. “It took me a long time to figure that out, and then to collect myself together, and then to try to talk. Um. I can see all around me, everywhere, but...I can’t feel anything. I can’t smell. I can’t breathe, or move. And I feel weird. When I think, it’s like someone else is thinking. Like it’s just words. I...I don’t like it.” He paused, then said, “But I guess I shouldn’t complain. I’m not dead. I guess it worked. So, thanks, Fiora, if you’re listening. And I’m happy to see you all.”

  “W-we-we’re happy to see you t-too, Jim!” said Kate.

  “Yeah, welcome back,” said Eric with a smile.

  Elizabeth glanced back at Heidi, who had composed herself somewhat. Heidi now looked worried, her bushy eyebrows furrowed in concern. Elizabeth felt the same way, though she hated to admit it. Jimothy being alive was a great thing, an amazing thing. Isaac had been right after all. But something about all this worried her. Maybe it was just pity for Jimothy. He must be hurting so much more than he could express at the moment. He had watched his brother die.

  She stepped forward and held out Jimothy’s medallion. “I believe this is yours,” she said.

  “I want you to keep it,” he said. “It’s hard for me to hold on to it, since it’s a real thing. Not made of light like me.”

  Elizabeth accepted this and slid Jimothy’s medallion into a pocket.

  “So Jim,” said Eric, “best I can tell, it’s pretty much your birthday. From our temporal perspective or whatever. Remember what you wanted?”

  “Yeah,” said Jimothy, “For all of us to be...oh!” His voice distorted with static.

  “Y-you g-got your w-wi-w-wish! W-we should celebrate! Are y-you okay, B-b-brother?” Kate directed this last question at Isaac, who had removed one of his gloves and was holding his pale, long-fingered hand in front of him, palm up against the rain. The faceless black visor seemed to peer intently down at the hand.

  It took Isaac a moment to realize he was being addressed. The helmet looked up at them. “Oh, yeah. Doin’ fine, Sister Kaitlyn! It’s just, the rain, I can see it. I mean, I can read it. Uh, never mind! In other news, you’re about to ask us all to play music together, right?”

  Kate flung her arms out in excitement. “Can we!?” She spun around to look at the rest of them. Eric and Heidi had both moved in close to inspect Jimothy’s green form, which glowed faintly in the night. Heidi shifted uncomfortably at Kate’s suggestion.

  “What, now?” said Eric. He reached out and rapped his knuckles on Jimothy’s shoulder. “Might not be the best time. You in there, Jim?”

  “I guess,” said Jimothy. “I can’t feel that, but I can see and hear you, so I think I’m here.”

  “I believe,” said Elizabeth, “that we should postpone the performance. For now. However...” They all watched her expectantly, except Isaac, who was looking straight up into the sky, still with his hand out to catch the rain. It occurred to her that they would almost certainly do whatever she said next, unless it was something outrageous. Had Rasmus been right? Was she the leader? Elizabeth didn’t think she wanted that. In any case, the decision here belonged to Jimothy. “Jimothy,” she said, “we could celebrate your birthday if you feel up for it. What do you think?”

  Jimothy, for the first time ever, could not be read. He stood there, an impassive green mannequin, for a long minute, silent in the rain. With a suddenness that startled Heidi, he spoke: “Yeah. I think...it’s good for us to be together. I don’t want...” His voice fuzzed apart into distorted electrical tones. Elizabeth thought she knew the rest: I don’t want to be alone right now.

  “Where?” said Isaac. “Here?”

  “Someplace with food,” Eric suggested.

  “We could go to the flagship,” Isaac suggested. “It’s the ADS Elucidation now, I think. You can meet the Admirals.”

  “Or Kotho,” said Elizabeth. A cold town, but the welcome would be very warm.

  “The Theian village isn’t far from here,” said Kate. “Or we could use my palace!”

  “The Citadel?” said Heidi, who might not have felt comfortable inviting Jimothy to her moon.

  They decided on the Theian town because it was close by and a storm was beginning to pick up. When Heidi made this observation about the storm, Jimothy offered to pick them all up and take them there quickly. Kate accepted this in a heartbeat, and so they found themselves held aloft in clouds of colored light and whisked away through the dark at dizzying speed. They landed in the midst of the geodesic Theian enclosures less than half a minute later, where Polyom soon arrived to greet them and lead them into a vast, warm, dimly lit dome. Kate began to lecture Jimothy on acceleration and g-forces so that in the future he wouldn’t accidentally send someone into unconsciousness or worse by taking them for a ride. Isaac made a lame pun even though no one was nearby listening to him, and Eric and Heidi were good-naturedly punching each other. Everything was back to normal, it seemed.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Elizabeth was not fooled.

  The Theians did not mind getting up in the middle of the night to prepare a celebration. As Eric observed, the moths were always ready to party. (He also observed that their parties never included meat.) A Theian combo struck up some rhythmic music minutes after their arrival, and soon a variety of colorful figures cast enormous winged shadows on the dome overhead as they flitted about. The Theians did not quite understand about birthdays, but they did their best to congratulate Jimothy on his achievement. Fifteen years, very impressive. Elizabeth waited patiently; she had questions for Jimothy, many questions, but she desired some privacy to ask them.

  She found Isaac instead, still in full suit and helmet, looking down at the display of food tastefully arranged on woven mats on the grassy floor. “Hungry?” she said.

  He turned his head, and she couldn’t shake the impression that the mirrored black visor was some eerie alien eye gazing at her. “Yes,” he said, and even his voice sounded strange coming through the helmet.

  “Isaac, take that thing off.”

  “Um...” He stalled, trying to find an acceptable excuse to refuse.

  “You’re not fooling anyone. What happened? Is it something with your face?” Elizabeth remembered Kate’s embarrassment about the scar on her face. Isaac didn’t seem the type to care about that, but…

  Isaac paused, then said, “Shut up, ARKO.”

  Something occurred to Elizabeth, an idea inspired by something odd in the way he’d peered down at the food, had looked at his hand in the rain, had failed to notice Jimothy or his absent angel.

  Elizabeth waved her hand in front of Isaac’s visor. Isaac spoke again without reacting. “Like, I’m not trying to trick you or anything, this isn’t a joke with the helmet, and I guess maybe I should just tell you, ‘cause you’re right, something happened, but...”

  Slowly and silently, Elizabeth stepped around Isaac while he continued to ramble. She stopped behind him, but he kept speaking to the air in front of him.

  “...so it’s probably a good idea,” he concluded, still facing away from her. “What do you mean, she’s behind me? Like metaphorically? ‘Cause I know that, ARKO. It’s—”

  “You’re blind,” she said.

  Isaac didn’t move, didn’t turn around. “Well, I guess I should’ve known better than to try to get that past you.”

  “Why would you want to ‘get it past me,’ Isaac? What happened?” She tried to keep her voice even, but could not prevent distress from creeping in and raising the pitch.

  “Well, I guess it’s, like, embarrassing...”

  “Isaac!” She took his hand to lead him somewhere more private, paused to grab several of the purple Theian fruits she liked and stuff them into a sack she materialized from mist, and then dragged him to the nearest wall where a cluster of tall leafy ferns gave them some privacy. Several curious Theians approached, but Elizabeth waved them away. “Here.” She put one of the fruits on his hands. “You can eat the rind. Now, what happened?”

  Isaac shrugged, uncomfortable. “I guess...I asked Anzu to show me someone who needed help, so he showed me this girl, and I couldn’t find out who she was, so I went to the Bright World, just to check it out, you know, but then at the Bright World it seemed like a good idea to make a wish and find out how to get in touch with her, and it turned out that the price was my eyes…so…”

  Elizabeth processed this for a moment. He did it for a girl? Isaac? Elizabeth heard Eric’s voice in the back of her head: ‘You traded your eyes for a chick’s phone number? Bro...’

  “Let me see,” she said. Isaac didn’t argue. His helmet came off easily. His face was pale and pimply, and he needed a shower judging by his hair, and if Elizabeth felt like being mean, she might have wondered how his ears managed to fit inside the helmet. No wonder he likes to wear it. The insult came to her unbidden, in a flash of irritation, and she was ashamed of it.

  His eyes were closed, but he opened them while she watched. “Glass,” he said, answering her question before she asked it. “They’re turned to glass. It doesn’t hurt.”

  “Well...” She didn’t know what to say. What were you thinking? You’ve been warned about the Bright World! Was it worth it?

  “...did you find her?” she finished.

  Isaac smiled. “She won’t tell me where she is yet, but we’ve been talking. She, uh, she’s in pretty bad shape. She needs help.”

  And he had traded his eyes for a chance to help her. It was absurd and infuriating, but Elizabeth had to smile. Her friends were all idiots. “Got some Jimothy on you,” she said.

  Isaac laughed and put his helmet back on.

  “If you ever need help, Isaac...”

  “Yeah, I know. ARKO’s been helping me out a lot, but, yeah. Thanks. Same to you. ARKO’s resources are at your disposable with whatever you’re planning.”

  ‘At your disposable.’ That doesn’t even make sense, Isaac. It’s not even a joke. Elizabeth almost asked him about ‘reading the rain,’ what he meant by that, but instead she turned and said, “I’m telling the others. About your eyes.”

  Isaac gave an unenthusiastic grunt. He knew as well as Elizabeth what Eric would have to say.

  Elizabeth set out to find Jimothy. On the way, she saw Eric and Kate surrounded by a crowd of Theians. They were doing something that had the moth-and-butterfly audience leaping about in laughter. Elizabeth stopped to watch. Even though she couldn’t see what her friends were doing through the onlookers, she heard Kate’s mad-scientist cackle rise above the din, and Elizabeth felt the peculiar nearly imperceptible tug on the rhythm of her heartbeat that meant Eric was playing with the flow of time.

  Those two had been spending a lot of time together lately. Which was fine. Eric and Kate were excellent together. Elizabeth had already hashed all of that out with Callie during one long tea-ridden introspective night in her greenhouse.

  Heidi appeared at her side, and they together watched the raucous cluster of Theians. “What’s wrong with him?” said Heidi. She spoke a little too loudly. “Isaac.”

  “He’s blind,” said Elizabeth, speaking loudly in return. “And you’re half-deaf. Do you want to talk about it?”

  Heidi shook her head slowly. “After,” she said. Then she added, “It was the sound of my life being saved that deafened me.”

  Elizabeth knew that Heidi wasn’t really the hugging type, and a hug may have been awkward anyway since Heidi barely came up to Elizabeth’s chest, but she raised a hand and put it on Heidi’s shoulder. Heidi tensed up for a moment before accepting the touch.

  “I…” Heidi stopped, took a deep breath, continued. “I was really scared.”

  “About your hearing?”

  “About Jimothy. I thought…you know. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “I know.” Elizabeth was touched; she hadn’t known Heidi was so close to Jimothy. “I was scared too.” Heidi nodded. “Have you eaten?” Elizabeth asked.

  “A little,” she replied. Then, with another visible mustering of courage, she said, “Do you mind if I ask…what happened with Abraham? On the other side.”

  Elizabeth did mind a little; she hated remembering her sister weeping over Michael’s body. And Jimothy…But she said, “What do you mean?”

  “I heard that Dwayne finally defeated him. Or…something?”

  Elizabeth had an answer for Heidi’s confusion only because she’d been puzzling over it herself. “You know about the mist over there? You can imagine things into it, and they become real for a little while.” Heidi nodded. Elizabeth continued. “I think that Dayne Hartman imagined God. By singing.”

  “God?” Heidi’s thick eyebrows scrunched together in consternation.

  “God the way that Dwayne Hartman imagines him, I suppose. And Black couldn’t compete with that, so he just vanished. That was the last we saw of him.”

  “Huh.” Heidi turned her attention back to the laughing crowd of Theians. “He’s also scared of butterflies. But he won’t say why. I think he’s a little embarrassed about it.”

  Elizabeth looked hard at Heidi for a moment, trying by sheer force of willpower to peer into her brain and see what she was really feeling. She knew Heidi had been spending time with the Abraham Black that existed in this world, and she also knew that it wasn’t the same as the one that had murdered Jimothy, Isaac, Michael, Amelia. But…how different could he really be?

  “What do you think about that?” Heidi asked.

  “About what?”

  “Them.” Heidi inclined her head toward Eric and Kate.

  “Is that any of our business?”

  Heidi shrugged. She had a faraway look in her eyes. “It might be,” she said. “I met the Dark Ruler. I think we need to be together—really together—to beat him. And that’s what we’re trying to do, right?”

  Elizabeth remembered. “Actually, I meant to talk to you about that. We need a plan. We need to end this story before anything worse happens.”

  “It’s getting worse right now,” said Heidi, her voice grim. “I just received intel on the Dark World. Come to Orpheus, we’ll make a plan.”

  “Can we make a door as well? You and I.”

  Heidi seemed to deflate. She turned slightly away from Elizabeth. “I don’t know how,” she said.

  “We can find out together. Even if you can’t play music, there must be a way.”

  Heidi only nodded. A shadow crawled from under a bush nearby. It slithered toward Heidi and rose up to her height, which was half its serpentine length. And Elizabeth might have been wrong in her assessment concerning Heidi and hugs, because Heidi embraced her reptilian angel with obvious affection. Elizabeth felt its eyeless gaze watching her over Heidi’s shoulder. In the odd way of angelic communication, Elizabeth sensed Bahamut’s appreciation for Elizabeth’s offer to Heidi, to make a door.

  “How are the words?” Heidi asked when she released Bahamut. The angel seemed to collapse into a pool of glossy blackness in the grass at Heidi’s feet.

  “I can ignore them.” They never stopped burning on her stomach and calf, but the pain was minimal thanks to Fiora.

  “I think the Dark Ruler wrote that,” said Heidi. “That’s what he does. He writes things. He turns words into weapons and monsters.”

  Elizabeth filed this away. She thought: sounds like we’ll need Isaac for that one, blindness or no. Then she thought: oh my god—Milton. Isaac Milton. No, probably just a coincidence. Calm down, Elizabeth.

  “Seen Jimothy?” she asked Heidi.

  Heidi had not seen him. Elizabeth wandered the dome and found that nobody had seen Jimothy since they first arrived. Even Kate and Eric, when she asked, said they thought he’d been with her and Isaac.

  Mormo found her just as worry began to gnaw at her. The moth leader, whose vibrant patterns of rich emerald against deep brown never failed to captivate Elizabeth, had a message from ‘the Child of Lights.’ It was simply this: that he was happy to see them and thanked them for the party, but that he had to go think about some things.

  “But w-w-where’d he g-go?” asked Kate.

  “Back to his moon, maybe?” said Eric.

  “How?” said Heidi. “His lighthouse is wrecked.”

  “I think he’ll be okay,” said Isaac. When asked why he thought this, he replied, “Well, he’s like made of light now, right? And also, remember how I said ARKO picked up an energy spike, and that’s why I came back? Well, it was...like, a pretty huge spike. Like, ARKO thought his sensors were broken or something.”

  Elizabeth messaged the daimon later, as she prepared to sleep in a bed provided by the Theians. She chose Zayana.

  ZA: Why me, Elizabeth Eddison?

  EE: I trust exactly three of you. And of those three, I trust the intelligence of only one.

  ZA: I assume the other two are Rasmus and Fiora?

  EE: Yes.

  ZA: Don’t be so quick to judge.

  ZA: Fiora’s intelligence is invariably overruled by her compassion, but it is not insignificant.

  ZA: Rasmus is na?ve in the ways of cunning and deceit; of schemes and machinations he is ignorant. Yet he has a god’s wisdom.

  ZA: His counsel may not be clever, but it is good.

  EE: Such counsel as ‘DISREGARD LOGIC’ and ‘NEGLECT THE OBVIOUS LIMITATIONS OF REALITY’?

  ZA: Ha.

  ZA: Well.

  ZA: Maybe not that advice.

  ZA: That might be something only he can do.

  EE: Can he really?

  ZA: Yes. Anything that can conceivably be accomplished by physical force, he is potentially able to do.

  ZA: He is more keenly aware than any how little such a power matters.

  ZA: Fiora told me your friend has returned.

  EE: Yes, though I have yet to understand how.

  ZA: Fiora hardly understands either. He has become one with all the light in his lighthouse, and all the light which Leocanto brought along.

  EE: So the Lockbreaker might know more.

  ZA: Possibly.

  EE: While I intend to get to the bottom of that, the more pressing issue is our victory in the Narrative.

  ZA: That is wise. Do not delay too long.

  EE: I want to meet with you. In the Museum.

  ZA: Understood. You should be able to message me while you are here.

  ZA: Perhaps I will bring Rasmus. He is eager to meet you.

  EE: That sounds interesting. I was wondering, how big is he? You daimon sometimes speak of him as though he is a giant.

  ZA: Hmm.

  ZA: Most of us are about the same size as you humans, but Rasmus...

  ZA: Imagine a very large bear.

  ZA: Or, say, perhaps a dozen Elizabeth Eddisons put together.

  EE: Haha

  EE: Okay.