(Sixthday of the Fourth week of Azonro, 670 A.C)

  It took a while to reach the base of the mountains where the medium’s home supposedly was. The magic district had been about a third of the total distance the city expanded west, so it took the better part of the day for Kletz and Wanily to reach the large house with a green roof and red door. The sun was just beginning to dip below the horizon when they finally stopped in front of what was hopefully the right place, and, more than that, Kletz hoped that some answers and maybe even some relief waited beyond the threshold.

  Wanily eyed him, still apparently sour from their last conversation outside Minerva’s shop. Still, her tone was amicable enough when she said, “Do you want to do the honors?”

  Kletz scanned what he could see of the house. The window curtains were drawn shut against the world, and no light peeked through the cracks between them to indicate someone was awake inside. Even though it was barely evening, maybe this medium was asleep?

  They really should have asked Minerva what his name was, but that was a moot point now.

  Kletz shook his head. “Go ahead.” He didn’t want to face the medium’s ire if they were disturbing him--Kletz was likely to spit vitriol right back and that would get them nowhere.

  Wanily shrugged and approached the door. She didn’t hesitate to bang on the wooden surface exactly four times before stepping back and waiting. Kletz slipped to stand just behind her, and as always, his ghosts followed to stand right behind him. At least they were mostly quiet at the moment, only one of them audibly crying.

  They waited for several more moments, but when there was nothing--no sound of movement, no voice telling them to go away, no sign of life at all--Wanily knocked again. When no one came to answer the door still, Wanily cupped her hands around her mouth and called, “Hello? We’re looking for a medium! Is one home?”

  Nothing. Wanily glanced back at Kletz who was already debating the merits of picking the lock and entering or climbing up to a window and slipping inside. Wanily turned back to the door before he could decide, raised her hand to hit it again, but at just that moment, the door swung open.

  The man that answered the door was older, small and spindly, with dark skin and eyes and shockingly white hair. His gaze flitted from Wanily to Kletz and then to the space slightly over Kletz’s shoulder. To someone unaware, it might have looked like he was examining the surroundings. To Kletz, he knew the man was looking right at his ghosts.

  It had to be true then. This man was a medium and for some unknown reason, he was seeing ghosts all the time. Or, Kletz hoped, he was simply choosing to see the ghosts right now and would be able to tell Kletz how to turn off his own power.

  “What--” The man’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. When he began to speak again, his voice was scratchy, like it had been a while since he last spoke. “What do you need a medium for?”

  Wanily grinned. She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder toward Kletz. “My friend Kletz here is a medium, too,” she said. “But he can’t seem to turn his power off. Have you--?”

  The medium suddenly lunged forward, and Kletz had a knife out and poised to throw right at his eye before he realized he wasn’t attacking them--the medium had simply gripped Wanily by the arms, eyes wide and brow furrowed. “It’s happening to him, too?” he asked, sounding as crazy and desperate as Kletz did. “I’m not the only one?” He drew back suddenly, his gaze flitting about. “Inside, please, quickly.”

  Kletz slowly put his knife away as the medium shuffled backward into the house and held the door open for Wanily and Kletz to step inside. There were more ghosts in the house, it seemed, as four more people with colorful hair stared at them as they entered. Wanily, however, gave no comment on them or seemed aware of them at all, so they had to be ghosts.

  The home itself was cozy enough, if the general state of disarray could be ignored. Plates of half-eaten food sat on half the available surfaces in the room, and the rest were covered with papers. Some of them were blank, others had tight writing scrawled across their faces, but from their distance, Kletz couldn’t make out what any of it said.

  The medium went to the nearest window, just a short distance from the front door, and pulled the curtain back a fraction to peek outside. Apparently satisfied with whatever he saw, he turned back to the two of them and began to wring his hands.

  “I wrote to Hansen weeks ago,” the medium said. Kletz carefully did not flinch. “The only other medium I know of in the country. I only got a letter back yesterday saying that he’d been murdered in his own home. They’re still not sure who did it. But I couldn’t confirm if it was happening to anyone else or I had lost control of my power or even if I was simply going mad.” He gave a short, mirthless laugh before his eyes suddenly widened. He lurched forward again, gripping Wanily by the shoulder. She looked alarmed but didn’t brush him off, so maybe she was just concerned. “You are real, right? Right?”

  He shook her, and Wanily finally brushed his hand away a bit brusquely--which was less than the medium deserved, Kletz thought. “I’m real,” she assured him. “We both are.”

  The medium turned his wild gaze onto Kletz and licked his lips. “You--” he cut himself off and made a vague gesture. “How many people are in this room? Other than the three of us.”

  “Four,” Kletz said, not even bothering to turn and count again. “And there are three more outside that followed me here.”

  The medium’s eyes shone and his shoulders slumped a little. “So you can see them,” he muttered, probably more to himself than Kletz or Wanily. “That’s--well, it’s not good for you, but it’s good for me, I suppose.” He laughed again, more than a little crazed, before he glared at Kletz. “Why do you seem so much more put-together than me?”

  The answer to that was probably that death had followed Kletz basically his whole life, so being haunted by ghosts was hardly anything to drive him as crazy as them. It still bothered him--how could it not?--but while he was jumpy and sorely sleep-deprived, he wasn’t losing his mind. Unlike the man in front of him.

  Kletz very much doubted he should say any of that though and merely drawled, “I ignore them.”

  The medium ran a hand through his short, white hair. “How? How can you just--just ignore all the screaming and crying and--” he cut himself off again and took a deep breath. He made a cutting motion with his hand, slicing it through the air. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is finding a way to stop it.”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” Kletz replied. “First, though, what’s your name?”

  “Oh,” the medium said, blinking. “Right. Breeg. That’s my name. And you two are?”

  “Kletz.”

  “And Wanily,” she chirped, waving a hand.

  Breeg eyed her. “You’re not a medium?”

  “Nope,” she said. “Just someone who wanted to meet a medium and get to the bottom of what was happening.”

  Breeg grunted. “You’re a mage,” he said warily, like that had any bearing on anything.

  Wanily straightened. “That’s right.”

  “Do you use new magic? Oh, what am I saying, of course you do,” Breeg muttered the last part seemingly to himself, but it was still loud enough for Kletz to hear it.

  “I don’t, actually,” Wanily said slowly. “Why does that matter though?”

  Breeg’s gaze snapped to her. “Those trapped in Gehenna can sometimes see and interact with enchanted items,” he said. “It can make the enchantments freak out, but obviously anything the ghosts can see or touch will draw their attention. There’s nothing else in Gehenna for them. They’re drawn to them.” Wanily opened her mouth, but Breeg continued, “Do you know any soul magic?”

  That made Wanily look like she’d bitten a lemon. “I don’t,” she said. “Never got around to having someone teach it to me.”

  Breeg deflated a little. “I went to the nearest church when all this started happening,” he said, making a large but aimless gesture, like he was trying to encapsulate everything. “The priest there examined my soul, and something about the way my specialty presented was warped.”

  “Warped how?” Kletz asked.

  Breeg shrugged. “He didn’t say. It just seemed like something was wrong, and neither of us had any idea what. The priest said he’d do some digging, but I haven’t heard back from him, and it’s been nearly a month now.”

  Wanily frowned. “Did you... go back to the church to ask him about it?”

  “And leave my house?” Breeg demanded. “There are ghosts following me everywhere and someone killed a medium just two weeks ago and you want me to go traipsing around town without a care in the world?”

  “I didn’t say all that,” Wanily said. She crossed her arms. “I’m just asking if you’ve done anything to figure out what’s happening. We started looking for a medium the moment Kletz realized he wasn’t going mad, hoping that you would have some insight into this whole thing.”

  “Well I don’t,” Breeg hissed. “I’m going mad, as mad as the dead that follow me, and I don’t know what to do about it. There is something wrong, but I don’t know what, and how can I possibly begin to figure it out with all the--the screaming and sobbing and staring? You,” Breeg spat, pointing a finger at Wanily, “have no idea what it is like.”

  “I do,” Kletz said softly. He eyed Wanily, wondering how much good she was actually doing. He supposed she’d at least gotten them into Breeg’s house. Kletz could try to take it from here. “Do you know why someone would think the world would end with a medium?”

  Breeg narrowed his eyes. “What?”

  “The...” Kletz trailed off, trying to remember what his last client had said to him. “The world ends with a medium meeting the reaper. That’s what someone said to me.”

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  “The reaper? Bryo the reaper?” Breeg asked dubiously. “I didn’t think mediums could even see him. Though, maybe it makes sense as he is also a creature bound to Gehenna, but I’ve never seen him, so--”

  “Slow down a little,” Kletz said, sharing a glance with Wanily who gave a tiny shrug. “Who is this reaper?”

  “Bryo the reaper is the being that rules over Gehenna,” Breeg said, frowning. “Or, well, I guess the old gods rule over Gehenna, and Bryo merely reinforces their will. The old gods were beings of rules and order--from what little survived the Cataclysm about Bryo, it’s said that he explains the punishment that is being sent to Gehenna and all it entails.”

  “How do you know all this? I’ve never heard of Bryo before,” Wanily asked, more than a little cautious after Breeg’s outburst at her.

  “I attended the College of Lo Lenney once upon a time,” he said, finally cracking a small smile. “Those were simpler times. I learned what I know about the reaper there.”

  Wanily eyes practically sparkled with excitement, enough that Kletz knew this conversation was about to get very off topic. “You went to the college? Do you know how old you have to be to attend?”

  “You have to be eighteen to attend. You’ll need a letter of recommendation to get in though,” Breeg said. He waved a hand. “That’s not the point. Why would someone think the world ends with a medium meeting the reaper?”

  “No idea, but she seemed very adamant about it,” Kletz drawled.

  Breeg grunted. “Well, where is she? One of you could just ask her.”

  “Dead, unfortunately,” Kletz replied. “Didn’t like the fact I was a medium when she was convinced one would end the world.”

  Breeg took a step back. “You killed her?”

  “He defended himself,” Wanily insisted.

  Breeg made a choked noise. “I see,” he said, gaze flitting between the two of them.

  “You know,” Wanily said slowly when it became clear Breeg wasn’t going to continue, “that lady might have been an oracle.”

  “What’s an oracle?” Kletz asked, frowning, though Breeg perked up slightly. He must know what she was talking about.

  “An oracle is another type of specialty mage,” Wanily explained. “There’s oracles and seers, both of which can see the future, but in different ways. Seers see the future of specific people, but oracles see a vague vision of a future event. From what I’ve heard anyway,” Wanily said, shrugging.

  “No, no, you’re right,” Breeg said, casting his eyes to the side as he thought for a moment. “If this woman was an oracle, and if she saw some terrible vision of the future that involved a medium, it wouldn’t be clear to her exactly what was happening. But she might have gleaned enough to know that the world ends, and that a medium and the reaper are involved.”

  “That’s all just conjecture though,” Kletz pointed out. “We have no way to confirm any of that.”

  “True,” Wanily said. “But it makes some sense, right?”

  “If that’s the case,” Breeg said softly, “then there is something brewing on the horizon. Something that convinced an oracle that the end is nigh.”

  Kletz wasn’t one to shift uncomfortably, but Wanily did. They all fell silent, but Kletz couldn’t begin to guess what the other two were thinking. All he knew was that he didn’t care about the rest of the world--he just wanted to know what was going on with him.

  “We need to figure out what’s happening,” Kletz said, breaking the silence. “We need to contact more mediums, find out if they’re experiencing the same thing, and try to figure out what’s causing it.” Hopefully, if they could determine the cause, they could find a solution.

  “We?” Breeg said, blinking owlishly at Kletz.

  Kletz nodded. “I could use help in getting to the bottom of this.” He smirked. “Unless you’d rather stay cooped up in here, losing your mind.”

  “No!” Breeg shook his hands empathetically before bringing them back together to wring them. “It will do me some good to... be around someone that understands. Someone that can face these things with more, hm, grace than me.”

  Kletz nodded and turned to Wanily. “What about you?”

  She grimaced. “I don’t think I can stay for very long,” she admitted. “I’m trying to learn magic, and now I know I can join the college in a couple years...” she trailed off with a helpless kind of shrug. “But I can stick around for maybe a week or two, at least, and try to help where I can.”

  Breeg narrowed his eyes at Wanily. “You’re trying to get into the college? The College of Lo Lenney?”

  She nodded, smiling. “I think it would be the best way for me to learn magic. I mean, the only other places I know that practice old magic are Fris,” she all but spat the word, “which I don’t plan on ever going back to, and Kra’xen, which is very far, very cold, and very much in the middle of a war. So going to Tiranda seems like the better option to learn old magic.”

  Breeg laced his fingers together and looked Wanily up and down with a critical eye once more. “Magic is not for the faint of heart,” he said. “Why do you want to master it?”

  Wanily’s smile grew into a grin. “I want to become the Archmage,” she said, “so that I can help a lot of people with my magic. That’s why I came with Kletz--I wanted to help him with his magical woes. And even if his problem hadn’t been magical, I would have tried to help him with my magic anyway.”

  “Noble,” Breeg said. He stared at the ground for a moment before nodding. “I’ll write you a letter of recommendation,” he said.

  Wanily gasped. “Really?”

  Breeg pursed his lips. “On one condition.”

  “What is it?” Wanily asked, her enthusiasm curling more toward suspicion.

  “If we don’t find out what’s going on before you leave,” he said, “and if we’re still having the problem by the time you graduate, you’ll help us figure it out once you become the Archmage.”

  Wanily beamed at him. “I can do that. I promise.”

  Breeg twitched out a smile in return. “Good. You already have silver hair, so you shouldn’t have any problem with the entrance exams. All you need is someone to vogue for you.”

  He shuffled past them toward one of the blank pieces of paper scattered around the place and grabbed a nearby pen to write with. He scribbled furiously on the paper in more of that cramped handwriting of his before carefully folding the letter and handing it to Wanily. Wanily took it like it was made of cracked glass, eyes shining like she had been given the most valuable thing in the whole world. And, for someone who wanted nothing more than to learn magic, maybe she had been.

  “The entrance exams are always the first day of Azonra,” Breeg told her. “You’ll have to be there at least a day or two before them to give them the letter of recommendation so they can get you processed.”

  Wanily vigorously nodded. “I’ll be there,” she said. “And I won’t forget my promise. If we can’t figure this all out soon, I’ll figure it out when I become the Archmage. Just... hang in there until then, okay?” she said gently.

  Breeg ducked his head. “I’ll try.” He turned back to Kletz, who was begrudgingly happy for Wanily. He didn’t care for magic--other than the occasional helpful potion, it had always made things more complicated for him than not--but it was clearly very important to Wanily. And Kletz might not agree with her on most things in life, but he could still be glad she was getting what she wanted.

  She was a good person, Kletz could admit. She deserved good things, even if people like her hardly ever got off that easy.

  “I know of a couple other mediums across the strait,” Breeg said. “I’m sure there are others on this continent, too, but with the war going on, I’ve kept my contacts mostly to Oavale. We should start by trying to get in contact with them.”

  “Is that what all this is?” Kletz asked, gesturing to the room with all its many scattered papers.

  “Ah, no,” Breeg said. “Don’t--Don’t worry about all this. I’ll just, uh--” he cut himself off, hurrying to start picking up the papers. He did nothing about the half-finished plates of food everywhere, which Kletz found a little disgusting but did not comment on. “I’ll think of something to write to the ones I know,” Breeg said once he had all the papers and was trying to arrange them into a neat stack in his hands. “Can you try to find where more mediums live on this continent?”

  Kletz grimaced. He wasn’t sure how he could go about that, but maybe there would be more well-traveled apothecaries back in the magic district that could help him. With night rapidly approaching, though, he doubted any of them would still be open by the time he managed to trek all the way back there.

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll go to the magic district and ask around.”

  “Is there a library in town?” Wanily asked. “I can go there and try to read up on anything that could be causing this.”

  Breeg nodded. “There’s multiple libraries around the city that you could go to. But it is getting late--it would be best to wait until tomorrow for all this.” He turned toward the stairs in the back of the room, motioning for Kletz and Wanily to follow. “I’ve got a guest room upstairs that you can sleep in. I... imagine you might be here for a while, huh?”

  “At least until tomorrow,” Wanily answered, sounding far too chipper. Like they would be able to figure out anything in a measly twenty-four hours, Kletz thought.

  They did not, in fact, find out anything substantial in the ensuing twenty-four hours. Or the next day, or the day after that. Kletz asked around town as much as he could for the locations of other mediums, and he managed to get a couple more addresses of a medium in Telldor to the south and another in Iten to the north. Breeg wrote to them and the other mediums he knew asking about their own powers and whether or not they could control them anymore. It would be at least a few days before they received a response, and that was if the figonas Breeg paid to send the letters more quickly actually got to their locations without any delays.

  Wanily spent the days holed up in one of the libraries, poring over books on specialty mages. Each day, however, she would come back with little to show for it other than weak theories about what could be happening to their souls that caused them to become warped.

  One was that prolonged exposure to crystals, an intensely concentrated source of magic, was causing the innate power of the souls to become corrupted. Breeg--correctly--pointed out that if crystals really were doing that, all specialty mages and even regular people would probably be experiencing negative side effects. Kletz wasn’t sure why Wanily had something against crystals but though she seemed adamant about the theory, Breeg dismissed it.

  Her only other theory was that using new magic was degrading their souls. It happened to regular people, too, and was a phenomenon most readily seen in priests and priestesses of Amera that frequently used powerful new magic spells. Kletz, however, didn’t know the first thing about magic and his soul was still warped, so that theory was thrown out, too.

  After three weeks, they were no closer to solving the mystery than when they began. They received a letter from one of the other mediums during the end of the second week, but while the medium confirmed she was experiencing the same problem, she didn’t have any clue as to what was the cause. She did, however, agree to keep in touch with them in case she figured anything out.

  They went to the church Breeg had visited before they arrived, too, but the priest that saw him had no answers for them either. He suggested, none too kindly, that maybe the gods were simply punishing them for some reason. Kletz couldn’t imagine the gods cared enough to punish them for anything, and when the priest couldn’t even give them an example of something they could have done to earn such a curse, Kletz dismissed the idea. Breeg rolled his eyes when Wanily dubiously mentioned it to him, and that was about all the consideration they gave to that theory.

  Eventually, a month passed, and Wanily finally said her farewells to the two of them. Winter was just around the corner the morning that Wanily packed her bag and set back out into the world.

  Before she left, though, she gave first Breeg and then Kletz a hug. “I won’t forget my promise,” she said earnestly, looking between the two of them. “I’ll even look into it while I’m in college if I can. Just... don’t let it get to you guys too badly, alright?”

  Breeg smiled and Kletz nodded, and just like that, Wanily turned and marched down the street. Kletz had no idea if he’d ever see or hear from her again, but then, she was a good person. Much better than Kletz himself, surely. He didn’t think she would readily turn her back on the promise she’d made.

  Breeg sighed when she turned down a street, disappearing from view. “I guess we should get back to work, hm?” he asked, and Kletz nodded. They went back into Breeg’s house, and Kletz idly wondered how long he would spend with the man trying to get to the bottom of this. It didn’t matter, he ultimately decided. As long as Breeg was ready to have him, Kletz would stay and try to figure out the source of their problem.

  And after that? Kletz wasn’t sure. But he’d always lived his life on the edge of a blade. He couldn’t imagine that would change anytime soon.