While Isse and Siidi, Issidi for a short while, dined on fine meats that tasted like nothing they’d ever eaten in this life or the previous one – courtesy of the appropriate application of spices by masterful [Chefs] – and listened to this small group of friends as they chattered among themselves about their day and its happenings, trying to make her feel at home and welcome, waiting for her to join the conversation and tell them about herself, in other places of the world different people enjoyed more or less complex meals.

  The closest group to our ragtag gang of broken mirrors was a quartet having a jolly good time in a tavern not a kilometer away from our arachne.

  Moon and Shriya, together with the naga Murgia and his lover, the [Sky Captain] Furioso, sat at a worn but lovingly kept table in the ‘Miner’s Retreat’. The owner of the place, Alan Gris, had, once upon a time, before joining Ravenspoken and his people, worked as a [Miner] on Eva, part of a crew owned by a company which name was better left unremembered.

  He and a few of his friends had left the day this strange man, accompanied by, of all things, a goblin, had passed by the mines, telling a story of a people who’d travelled to this world using the roots of some strange, ancient, tree. He’d told them he had come looking for people willing to help him achieve something insane, maybe even slightly impossible: create a new city. They’d accepted, on the one condition that they’d never have to work in a mine for the rest of their lives.

  And so here they were. Alan had become the owner of this relatively fine establishment, one of his friends working as the [Cook] while another worked the counter and made drinks. The others had chosen the most disparate jobs: one had become a [Baker], another had chosen to undergo hellish training under Tiana, now working on the walls – “As far away as possible from the ground”, he liked to say – and so on and so forth.

  They were happy.

  Just like the quartet currently chatting at the table.

  “I’ll be honest, with treatment like this the crew could very well choose to burn our flag,” said Murgia as he took a sip from his mug of beer, his serpentine tongue first flitting out to give it a taste and, finding it good, he started chugging.

  “I’d like to say this is insubordination, but he’s not lying,” agreed the captain as he cut through a nearly blue rare steak.

  His lover looked at his choice of dish with a raised eyebrow – much the same way Moon and Shriya both were in truth – that spoke volumes of his approval for the choice of food.

  “What is it with you jungleborn and a good, saucy, rare steak? Every single time I buy one you always act as if I’m the dumbest man alive, Murgia, but I thought that was only a you thing. Now I’m feeling judged even by your friends.”

  The naga chuckled at that, shaking his head slightly: “It’s just… a habit, shall we say.”

  “More like a way to stay alive,” disagreed Moon vehemently, “Rare meat in the jungles is just a surefire way of getting some bad parasites that will turn you into their personal broodmother.”

  Furioso had been bringing a forkful of delightfully juicy meat to his mouth but, upon hearing those words, he stopped, mouth half open, a little drop of fat slowly travelling the whole length of the piece of meat he’d cut off and dropping to his plate soundlessly.

  He very slowly put down his bite, crossing his hands in front of himself, staring Moon deep into her eyes: “I’m not hungry anymore.”

  Friya quirked an eyebrow, then grabbed the plate and started eating with gusto, to the captain’s absolute astonishment. Three bites in she looked up at him and spoke through a mouthful of food: “What? She said it was a bad idea in the jungles. We’re on another continent. And you weren’t hungry anymore.”

  And at that the other two broke down laughing, the tip of Murgia’s tail tapping rhythmically against the wood as he did, causing a drink on a nearby table to spill. The customer, who’d just watched ten coppers worth of beer fall on the table, fortunately away from his food, gave an irate look at the group of jungleborn – and an extra – and decided that he didn’t fancy fighting ten meters of packed muscle, a [Mage] of some kind, a woman whose smile reminded him too much of [General] Tiana and a grizzled [Captain] over some beer.

  After they’d all calmed down – and Moon offered to pay for their neighbor’s spilled drink – and ordered some extra food, their conversation turned more serious.

  “How’s it going, Murgia? Really going, not the propaganda,” asked Moon, unusually serious.

  “Last time I was in Alanna the situation was… tense, to say the least, and that was years ago,” she added.

  The naga sighed, looking to his lover, his eyes asking a question whose answer was a slow nod.

  “The situation isn’t… great. We haven’t been back to base for a few months now but voices from the clouds say that the College got a delivery.”

  He gave them a meaningful look, his tone turning dark upon that last word.

  “Wait, really?” Shriya’s eyes had become as big as saucers as, in her excitement, she had risen from her seat.

  Furioso nodded: “The Brothers Two came and plowed through everything the city threw at them. Apparently even managed to destroy part of the inner walls. Then they just… disappeared.”

  “What do you mean disappeared? Did they teleport somewhere?” asked Moon, whose curiosity had been picked.

  “If it was just them, then sure. But no, even their carriage disappeared. Who in their right mind teleports an entire carriage?”

  “Someone who cares?” tried the [Engineer].

  The naga shrugged: “Maybe you’re right, maybe you aren’t. Point is, they delivered something and then they weren’t there anymore, and ever since then the College’s been in an uproar. The Grandmaster has called in every man and woman that wasn’t already in the city. I think something big is brewing, and you know just as well as me that that doesn’t bode well.”

  Both Shriya and Moon sighed, hitting their foreheads on the table at the same time, before the latter said: “Let’s just hope they don’t attempt another crusade on the jungles.”

  The birdkin [Shaman] shook her head: “No way they’ll do that again, not after how… welcoming the mountaineers were the last time.”

  At this point Furioso piped up for the first time in a while, his tone gruff and thoughtful: “Ain’t no need for permission from them mountain folk if you can just fly over them. And winter’s about to end in not two weeks' time, so they’ll be able to sail in armies without repercussions.”

  “I hate how right you are,” agreed Murgia with a sigh of his own.

  “Well, nothing we can do about that now,” said Moon, rising back up and raising her tankard of beer, “We’re down here in Irevia, after all. Say I, let’s toast instead: to a more peaceful future and less interesting times. To a world without the churches trying to capture me wherever I go.”

  The naga laughed uproariously at that, raising his own tankard and practically crashing it against hers.

  As for the captain and Shriya, they looked at each other with resigned expressions, the weight of their patience enough to sink a ship.

  When the duo calmed down, sitting back in their places, Shriya asked what was probably the most pertinent question: “What will you two and your crew do now?”

  Furioso shrugged: “I have no idea, truth be told. We could very well go back to Alanna and report your last known location. It’d probably net us some good money too.”

  That gained him a glare from his naga boyfriend, one he attempted to ignore.

  “Of course we’d have to act as if you’d damaged the airship just to make it more believable. And we’d have to get the crew to agree with the plan in the first place. Most of them are loyal to the alannian cause.”

  If possible Murgia’s glare had only intensified, upgrading from simple ‘disapproval’ to ‘I can sear the flesh off your bones if I choose to’.

  “But that’s inconvenient, am I right?” asked Moon with a little self-satisfied smile.

  “A hassle is what it would be. I’d give myself two hours back in Alanna before someone came to get me and put a rope around my neck.”

  “So, what are you gonna do?” asked Shriya.

  “Act like I’ve just brokered us a deal for our lives. We’ll give up, say, half our cargo, and say that was the price to leave with our lives. Then we’ll go back to Alanna and act as if you’re some kind of merciful angel out of Larnos. How’s that sound?”

  Murgia’s glare had softened slightly, but it was still clear that he didn’t like the idea.

  “Hmpf, I mean, can’t say I dislike the plan,” started the [Engineer], “especially since I’m getting something out of it. Making ends meet ain’t easy as a private flier. But… I don’t know, it doesn’t sound good enough to me.”

  The captain raised an eyebrow: “What, you want the entire cargo?”

  She shook her head dismissively, her hair rustling slightly with the force of the motion: “No, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just… you said it yourself, Alanna’s got its panties in a twist. They’re gonna be thrice as suspicious about anything and everything. I fear they’ll start looking into things here, and you know as well as me that when they start doing that they find things… even when there aren’t.”

  “So, what you’re saying is… we’re fucked whatever we do,” said the captain. Considering how grim the subject was he didn’t sound too worried, probably the effect of years working on a boat with a giant, fragile, balloon, in a sky where a bird that could spontaneously catch on fire was the least of your worries.

  “Pretty much.”

  Furioso looked pensive for a while, staring into his beer as if the golden, frothing, liquid contained the answers to all of his problems – and it did, although the answer wasn’t satisfying enough – before a sigh left his lips: “The options are reduced to us somehow capturing the two of you and bringing you to Alanna, or becoming a pirate. The problem with the former is that I couldn’t live with myself and Murgia here would hate me –”

  “And a good chunk of the jungles too,” added the naga.

  “ – and a good chunk of the jungles, yes. The problem with the latter is that I’d have to… get rid of the loyalists, in a permanent manner, and I’m not fond of the idea of straight up murdering half my crew. So, suggestions?”

  Moon and Shriya looked at each other, the [Engineer]’s face lighting up after a moment: “Hey, do we still have some of those parasitic brain worms?”

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  The [Druid] shook her head: “We lost the box somewhere in Rodar.”

  The naga’s eyes widened: “You lost a box of those little fucking monsters somewhere on Rodar of all places?!”

  “Hey, it’s not our fault!” tried to defend Shriya, “It’s that place’s misfortune!”

  “What city were you in when that happened? What city is about to be fucking wiped out of the maps?”

  “Erm… I’m not sure…?”

  The naga put his face in his hands and sighed, a resigned look crossing over his face: “Well, whatever, not my problem! We’re just not going to take a job on that continent. Not like we ever have.”

  Silence fell on the quartet as they all tried to come up with a plan.

  Not long after their food arrived and they began eating again, munching silently on various cuts of meat with fresh or seared vegetables to the side, which the jungleborn enjoyed immensely more than the meat. Getting good vegetables to grow in the jungles was hard between how difficult it was to keep any plot of land free of the cover of the canopies – which were also required to keep the flying predators out of sight – and the many animals who enjoyed eating them.

  When they finished the [Captain] sighed: “Why was I ever born with a conscience? And why is killing always the easiest choice?”

  Murgia smiled sadly at him: “So that you could meet me and fall in love with me.”

  “Murgia, for all that I love you back, sentimentality won’t help us right now.”

  And then Moon spoke: “You could run away with us.”

  The table fell silent again, the two men turning to look at her with raised eyebrows that shouted ‘Go on’.

  “The ‘Amissa’ is big. Sure, technically speaking a single person could make her run without a problem, but she was made to house a lot more people than just me and Shriya. If you don’t mind working with me, you could join us. I mean, we’re already wanted by the silvers, what’s an extra reason?”

  Furioso sat there, staring at her as if she’d sprouted a second head – which, thank you very much, she had not. She’d taken her potions against that particular parasite – trying to understand if she was being serious or if this was some kind of elaborate joke. Murgia, by his side, was slowly starting to smile as he realized that no, this was not a joke.

  “Who’s going to be the captain of the ship in that case?” asked the naga.

  “Still me, thank you. And Shriya’s going to be the First Officer. You can be… I don’t know, the Pilot and the Cook?”

  “Fuck off!” both men shouted.

  Then they started animatedly discussing the details.

  A young teen and a positively ancient elf (by non-elven standards, that is) sat at a small table in a well lit room, a dwarven [Secretary] taking a nap on her favorite armchair nearby.

  The young teen hadn’t always been, well, a young teen, which isn’t a strange sentence all things considered. No, what was really strange was the fact that, until not even a month ago, she had been a child of six, nearly seven, years old. Now though? Any observer would’ve given a look at her tall, lean, slightly muscular, figure and given her twelve, maybe less, years of age.

  Her name was Ama, and she was an [Assassin] in training under the woman by her side, the Guildmistress of the Assassin’s Guild, an elven woman simply known as ‘The Gardener’.

  Not much could be said about this mysterious figure whose past was shrouded in lies and false leads, but one thing was certain: she really leaned into that title. Her assassins were her gardeners, the world around her, her beloved, endless, garden. Her and her people’s job was to make sure the verdant field filled with flowers and bushes and trees could thrive, which required them to… trim a few plants here and there.

  Currently they were eating a salad with fresh vegetables from the woman’s actual garden. Some of these were mildly poisonous, but that didn’t worry any of them: the girl needed to train her body and develop a resistance to most poisons, while the elf had become immune to most poisons known to humanity well before she’d gotten the Skill for it.

  Crunching was the only sound in the room for a while, sometimes interrupted by the dwarf’s gentle snoring. Gorizia wasn’t one for sleeping: she could stay awake for days on end if she wanted to, like she had right now.

  An entire week: that’s how long she hadn’t closed her eyes. Between helping her friend, the Gardener, lead the organization while also supporting the girl she was training the dwarf had run herself ragged.

  “How do you feel, Ama?” asked the Gardener in her mellow, soft, voice.

  Ama had learned to distinguish the elf’s different voices: there was the ‘work voice’, mildly boisterous and just a step below loud; then there was the ‘serious voice’, more calm, low, capable of turning dangerously sharp at a moment’s notice, but also capable of being calming and reassuring.

  Finally, there was the ‘private voice’, the one she used only in those moments where it was only the three of them. It was just as calm and soft as the ‘serious’ one but, at the same time, lacking its hidden sharpness. It was also much sweeter, like honey trickling down from an overstuffed beehive, the queen inside asleep and surrounded by her workers and guards, cuddling together for warmth.

  “I… don’t know,” she answered.

  She’d learned long ago that the Gardener was very good at distinguishing truths from lies, even without the use of Spells and Skills – the woman was a firm believer of mastering everything. To her Skills were a crutch and one should learn to do the same thing a Skill allowed… without actually using it. It was a strange philosophy, one that was followed by most elves, one that didn’t apply to the short lived races as well since they couldn’t live for literal millennia.

  It was, apparently, an idea they’d developed back when slavery was still a practice accepted worldwide and [Slavers] had found a way to create chains capable of locking a person’s Skill.

  Anyways.

  “You… don’t know. Hmmm, mind telling me more?”

  Ama put down her fork, savoring the foxglove’s aftertaste for a few moments, before answering: “I… I’m… ah, fuck it. I can’t stop thinking about that night, alright? I can hear mama’s screams in my nightmares, and… and – I feel alone. My devil, I… I miss her.”

  Ah, separation anxiety, thought the Gardener. She could tell that the nightmares weren’t truly affecting the girl, not as much as they had when they’d started. To her the memory of that day was distant now, as if years had passed since that fateful night. It was one of the advantages granted by her Skill, although it had meant that for the first month the nightmares had been even worse than they normally would’ve been. Those first few days had been a constant battle against the Blood attempting to seep into her mind, one that had been won only thanks to Gorizia’s gentle care and strange techniques.

  Still, in the last week they’d done something that was arguably as traumatizing to Ama as losing her family had been: they’d separated her from her devilish companion.

  The Gardener had found the instructions for this specific rite in the book the girl had brought with herself. The book her father had used to tell her strange stories from the past, tales of a violinist and a writer, tales of two Wishers. The book which, she’d found out, had pages she couldn’t read.

  The book which, on its first page, had a single sentence that she’d never thought she’d hear or read again:

  ‘You know what to do, old pal. How does your garden grow?’

  She shook her head: no time for remembrance, not now.

  The book, in one of the few pages she could read – the others were just filled with gibberish – had described a simple rite – by elven standards, that is – that would temporarily break the connection between Ama and her devil, allowing her to go back to Airm and become more powerful. It was, apparently, a tradition in their family, and Ama had told her that her parents had done the ritual three times as far as she could remember.

  She hadn’t been ready for the sensation of something missing that came with severing the thread that bound her to her devil.

  And that had lead to them now.

  Without her devil to support her, Ama’s nightmares had come back with a vengeance, fueled by the fear that she wouldn’t be able to come back, that something would go wrong and that she’d be… alone. Oh, sure, she had her brothers still, but it wasn’t the same! They were merely blood of her blood, her devil was a fragment of her very soul.

  “Would you like me to spend the night with you, Ama?” asked the Gardener, putting down her fork and placing her head on top of her hands, looking her in the eyes.

  The teen, who, like most teens, fancied herself to already be a grown woman, looked down at her plate, mulling over the idea. A part of her, that prideful side that all young adults held so close, wanted to deny her request, to march on through this situation, to let this challenge forge her into something better, greater.

  But then there was also the child, still alive, still seeking comfort.

  A child who told the adult that they had a lifetime ahead of them to forge themselves into greatness.

  An argument, which won.

  “Please,” she said.

  The Gardener smiled softly, nodding: “Sure. I do hope you like long stories: we elves don’t tell short ones.”

  A giggle escaped the girl’s lips, then she smiled up at the ancient assassin, a thankful smile that was worth more than a hundred words, and went back to her salad.

  And my parents said I’d be an awful mother, thought the Gardener, remembering her family bitterly. But that had been a long time ago now. So very long.

  His name was… actually, it doesn’t matter.

  He wasn’t going to stay alive long enough for that to matter.

  He ran through the twisting corridors of his home, of what he thought was his home, was supposed to.

  But it wasn’t. Not anymore. It was theirs.

  The things made of shadows. They had started hounding him a few days ago, appearing in the corner of his eye, staring at him whenever he went to sleep, and then slowly doing more: moving things around the house, snuffing out lights wherever he walked through, leaving sharp things where he spent most of the time.

  And now? Now they’d touched him.

  They’d started talking in gentle whispers, but there were many, so so many, and they spoke all at the same time, their voices uniting into a crescendo that had nothing gentle to it. He didn’t know what they were saying, they were talking in a language that didn’t sound like anything from any of the continents, even though nobody could’ve really told with how their voices were whispers shouting all together.

  He tripped, because of course he had to, he was tripping so much on loose floorboards, that had never been loose to begin with or on carpets that had been bunched up in just the right way.

  Then he saw it: salvation! The door to his bedroom, left ajar, light coming through it. He had tried everything else: from opening the doors to escape his home to breaking a window to going as far as trying to climb up the chimney in the kitchen. Nothing had worked. There was no way out.

  He scrambled for the door to his room, opening it and slamming it shut behind him, feeling for all the world like one of the characters from the stories he’d read years ago. At the time he’d thought them idiots. Now? Now he understood them completely.

  He took a deep breath, trying to center himself.

  And then the light that had illuminated his bedroom was snuffed out.

  A figure stood in front of the window. Imposing. Tall. Wide. With white circles in place of the eyes. And wearing a hat.

  Then a second figure stepped to the side, one he hadn’t noticed with how dark it was, managing to blend in with the much bigger figure behind it.

  This one… it was a child’s form. He was certain it could’ve reached no higher than his waist. It also lacked the white circles like all the other shadowy beings that had hunted him down.

  It giggled, and there was something so very feminine and childlike about the sound.

  “Thank you for the meal,” she said.

  Then the hulking form of the hatted man shot forward, faster than he could blink. A big, cold, hand reached for his neck, closing around it with the strength of a raging [Barbarian]. The being turned around, dragging him along like a sack of potatoes, moving for the bed.

  He tried to scream, naturally, of course he did, and he was pretty sure that the hatted man had lightened his grip just for that purpose alone.

  They reached the bed.

  The man began disappearing in the darkness underneath, as if he was stepping down some stairs.

  The noble feared what would greet him in that darkness.

  Luckily, he needn’t worry about that.

  Because he wasn’t made of shadows, nor was he one of the [Shadowers]. He couldn’t enter that realm. Instead, his body smashed into the floor.

  That was where his luck ended – not that there had ever been some to begin with. Why? Because the Hat Man’s grip – how did he know that that was its name? – didn’t lighten. He kept dragging him down, even though he couldn’t move downwards.

  That didn’t stop the shadow.

  It kept pulling, and pulling, and pulling.

  And then:

  SNAP!

  Of course the sound of his breaking neck wasn’t so loud. It was only loud for the nobleman, before his eyes went blank and he died.

  They found his body the next morning, his face frozen in a rictus of horror.

  He was the fifteenth victim of the last two weeks.