Very few people of the Imperium owned a villa like Aelia and her family. Most inhabited apartment buildings, with each apartment housing an entire family in one big room, which they split amongst themselves as they pleased with movable dividers. It wasn’t bad living. The people of the Imperium didn’t spend much time at home, anyway; being indoors wasn’t all that appealing, hence our outdoor markets. All it really was, was a place to sleep at night and somewhere to store your personal effects.

     The entire building I was lead to had been evacuated, all of its doors barricaded by men in blue crests and cloaks. The city guardsman waved me inside and directed me to the second floor. Standing down the far hall, a circle of guards were shouting at one another, as if it would help the situation in some way. Just beyond them, a second group of blue crests stood watch over a blocked wooden door. Despite their closer proximity to the real danger, they seemed to be handling the situation with quite a bit more calm. That was probably the reason they were the ones closest to the door to begin with.

     Bracing for the intrusion, I reopened my consciousness, my awareness, to my demon blood. The incomprehensible voices rushed in again. It blurred into a buzz, making the inside of my head a wasp’s nest.

     I skipped any sort of cordial introduction. “Where is Seruwen?”

     The guard swiveled their heads in my direction. Only one of them spoke up. “What took you? We hoped you’d get here sooner.”

     I didn’t have the time for conversation. Again I demanded, “Where is Seruwen?”

     “She’s inside,” he motioned, “but you can’t go in there like that. Where’re your weapons, man? Did you come to a hunt half-dressed? Where’s your master?”

     He went on like that, but I didn’t have the time to listen. I bent down, slid a leg of my trousers up my calf, and pulled a short knife from my boot. The guard was right, I was half-dressed. Thanks to Aelia’s request for discretion, we had set out for the day with none of our usual hunting kit.

     It didn’t matter too much, though. A crossbow would do little against a grimling swarm. A sword would have been nice, but that may not have helped much either. The knife would work just fine. I wasn’t planning on actually fighting anything if I didn’t have to – blood magic would be my tool of choice.

     Drawing my breath in slowly, I focused on the beat of my heart; the ebb and flow of the blood within my veins. Their hearts began to beat in time with my own. I opened my senses wider, until the thrum of the grimlings’ minds touched mine.

     There were far more of them than there were of me, but I had power on my side.

     I threw the door open and entered a nightmare. Hairy creatures no taller than the length of my hand skittered across every possible surface of the room. Their long, taloned arms clawed deep into the walls and ceiling. Their crippled and wounded lay in mounds, oozing black ichor, but their kin paid it no mind. They scaled right over each other, digging their claws into their fellows’ flesh just as quickly as the plaster of the walls, all of them in a mad rush to reach Seruwen.

     Seruwen, a huntsman’s hatchet in one hand and a bladed spear in the other, flowed in a warrior’s dance in the very center of the room. Though the grimlings swarmed, she kept them all at spears’ length in a ring around her despite the fatigue obvious in her limbs. Any that attempted a wild leap at the huntress were cleaved out of the air by that axe. All of her steps, all of her maneuvers, they were all pivoting around one point: the man who lay limp and unmoving at her feet.

     Raising my free hand before me, palm out, I focused again on my link to the demon horde. They would overwhelm me if I was stupid and distracted, but there in that room, aware and prepared, the roles were exchanged. Within me, I drew on all of the strength and knowledge I’d gained over a century of combating the abyss, and my heart burned like fire in my chest.

     I cried out and, all at once, released the gathered strength. It washed through the room, crashing through the grimling swarm with physical, concussive strength. As their senses burst, as their minds shut down with the raw dominance I held over them, they were all thrown across the room and left convulsing. Stars twinkled in my eyes from the exertion, but I didn’t pay it any mind. That sort of magic was never my strong suit, that was always Tullius’ half of the job. My reservoir of power was relatively shallow compared to his. I only needed to buy myself enough time to set up my ritual, though. I was sure I could at least manage that.

     “Did they wound you?” My words rang as demands, not just questions. “Are you bleeding?”

     She may not have been minari, but Seruwen had taken part in more hunts in her lifetime than I had in mine. She understood the situation well, she knew every spare second mattered, and so she wasted no words in her reply. A simple “No.” came from her mouth.

     “Is he the channeler?”

     “Yes.”

     “Is he still channeling?”

     “No.”

     I strode deeper into the room, small demon bones snapping and popping underfoot. It wasn’t really an apartment anymore. The false walls that once made the place into a home had been reduced to nothing but splinters and blood-stained paper. “Take him and go, Seruwen. Quickly.”

     “Where is Tullius?”

     “He isn’t here.” Then I added, “And he isn’t coming.”

     Shockingly, she didn’t try to discourage me at all. Seruwen knew the minari and the rules we abide by; but she also knew when something simply needed to be done. Casting her spear aside, she knelt beside the unconscious man. He was much larger than her, but the sinewy muscles she possessed allowed her to scoop him off of the ground as if he were just a child. She heaved him over her shoulder and, with long and powerful strides, she carried him past me and out the door.

     The exchange between Seruwen and I hadn’t even lasted a full minute but even so, the swarm had begun stirring again. What I’d given them was about the same as a hard blow to the head. They would be on their feet again in no time at all — though they might be dizzy awhile longer. The way my own head swam made it quite clear that I wouldn’t be able to put them down like that again.

     I dropped to my knees. Tightening the grip on my boot knife, I began carving a rune into the ground, the first of five needed for the ritual purge. The first was simple: a broken circle, underlined twice. Kon.

     A grimling beside me stirred, rising to its spindly limbs. I rose and crushed its skull under my heel.

     I moved deeper into the apartment, knelt, and carved the second rune. A straight line bisected by two half circles, their ends pointing west. Dhe.

     As I worked, they began to awaken, each mind alighting within my consciousness like candle flames.

     One candle.

     Then two.

     Then ten, twenty, one hundred of them coming to consciousness faster and faster and there would be no slowing it. I had only finished two runes. Terror rose in my chest – I didn’t give myself enough time. Why did I decide to go it alone? Why did I send Seruwen out? I didn’t even have a proper weapon. What was I thinking?

     I hurried off to carve the next rune, the third point of the star, but fell short. A set of claws hooked into the leather of my trousers. Then another set, and another after that. The grimlings swirled around my ankles and one by one they latched on, scaling my legs just as they had the walls before. I kicked my legs out, desperately trying to throw them, but it accomplished nothing. More of them latched on, clawing over their kin to reach me. They screamed at me, shrill and maddening, and I heard them just as well in my mind as I did in my ears.

     I didn’t waste any energy trying to fight them off with my knife, it wouldn’t have accomplished anything. There were too many of them to just slash away at the swarm, and I didn’t have a goddess at my back like Seruwen did. Instead, I drew my strength again, chest burning, and unleashed another concussive burst. Though pain pierced my skull like a dagger and I felt my heart lose a beat, the blast worked. Not as well as my first had a minute earlier, as it didn’t render the entire room unconscious, but those at my legs fell away in a stupor.

     I forged on, treading right atop the fallen, snapping and popping bones beneath my feet. I dropped and carved the third rune in the bloody floorboards, a shape like a drawn bow, a gentle slope on one side and an angled line on the other. Xus.

     Demons washed over my stooped form, leaping onto my back. Red hot pain lanced through my shoulder, followed by a wet warmth. I reached back with my free hand, grabbed one of the bastards by its head, and tore it off of me. I leapt up in a rush and whipped myself about, tossing off whichever of the grimlings hadn’t sunk its claws into me yet. Any thoughts I had of having help from Tullius or Seruwen, of having a weapon more useful than a boot knife, all left my mind. Those thoughts were replaced with a much simpler one: why couldn’t it have been a colder day? I would have had a cloak, then.

     My second blast didn’t put enough of them down. The remaining demons just washed over their fallen to get to me. Claws hooked into my trousers again. The leather protected me well, but the sheer number of them hanging off of me, off of each other, slowed me. The wracking pains in my back slowed me more. Still, I pressed forward to carve my fourth rune, laying my weight against theirs.

     I was screaming. It took me awhile to realize it, but I was.

     I gathered power in my chest, and unleashed it a third time. My heart stopped. My legs fell out below me. My vision blurred red and my eyes felt like they were about to burst inside of my skull. Then my heart started again and I crawled forward, shaking the stunned demons off and out of my back. Laying in the greasy pools of blood, I carved my fourth rune: a teardrop with an elongated stem. Aan.

     Whether it was due to exertion or simple mindlessness I don’t know, but I took that very moment to look at that particular rune. Tullius had always described it as a tear drop, and I suppose it had that look to it. A wide, rounded bottom. A sharp point at the top. But the point continued in a line upwards a ways, and I realized that it looked an awful lot like a noose.

     Grimlings flowed over me like water, sharp claws and powerful teeth clamping down wherever they could manage. My arms. My neck. My trousers kept my legs safe. That was why we minari wore them, you see. When we’re being eaten alive, when completely pathetic and utterly useless demon vermin somehow manage to kill us because we entirely overestimated our own competence, our legs will be perfectly safe and they’ll need to eat out our eyes and tongues first.

     Everything went black.

     The moon hung heavy in the sky when I awoke. I could see it above as I lay on my back, through the gaps in the forest canopy. I tasted wood and steel on my tongue. I looked down from the sky, and my master withdrew the handle of his boot knife from my mouth.

     No, not my master. Not Tullius. Not his boot knife, but hers. A woman, the very image of warmth and gentleness, knelt beside me. Golden hair framing her soft face, she smiled down at me, lines of worry creasing the corners of her eyes. “Calm, Varin. You’re alright.”

     ”Am I dead?”

     ”You’re dying.” She sat beside me and pulled my head into her lap. She was warm. Soft. I’m not sure the feeling of being safe can ever be properly put to words, but it was how I felt with her. Safe. I was dying, but it didn’t bother me as much as it should have. If I died with her there, I would be alright. I closed my eyes. She touched my face lovingly. I couldn’t see the smile that touched her lips, but I could hear it in her words. “I’ve never seen you in that much trouble before. You get very silly when you’re in trouble.”

     I laughed. The laugh was sincere, though there wasn’t much spirit in it. “Seruwen thinks I’m silly all of the time.”

     She took my hand in one of hers. She laughed, too, but I could hear the uncertainty in it. “Seruwen isn’t wrong.”

     ”I still don’t know your name.”

     The smile left her voice. “I know. I’m sorry.”

     ”Why are you sorry? You came for me anyway. Just like you said you would.”

     “No, Varin.” She leaned forward and kissed me softly on the forehead. “I can’t help you this time. This wasn’t supposed to happen to you. I’m sorry.”

     “It’s not your fault.” I opened my eyes again, so I could see the woman with no name one more time before death took me. “Thank you for being here. With me. I’ve wanted to see you again. For a long time.”

     “I know.” She smiled again, but there was only sadness in it. “We were supposed to have more time together. You don’t know me, Varin, but I know you. And I love you. Very much.”

     She was right, I didn’t know her. I didn’t know her at all. But I knew I loved her, too. I loved her from the very first moment I saw her, so many years before. “I love you, too. I wish I knew your name, so I could say that, too. I love you, whatever your name is.”

     She said nothing for awhile, and I wondered if that was how it would end. The two of us, together in silence until life left me. But then she spoke again, sounding distant and afraid. “You don’t have to die today, Varin. I can’t save you, but you can still save yourself.”

     “How?” I asked. “I don’t want to die. I want to be with you.”

     She laid a soft hand on my cheek and turned my head toward the woods. Eyes that once sat in my head watched me from within the skull of a dead hound, bound in chains.

     My mouth went dry. “My awakening?”

     “Yes.” She held me. “The blood still holds power. You can drink again, Varin. It will save you.”

     “Will that work? Taking the blood again?”

     Slowly, carefully, I was eased into a sitting position. She embraced me from behind, propping me up so I could better see the hound. Laying her head on my shoulder, she spoke. “The blood will grow stronger within you. It will bring you closer to falling. You may not live as long as your master, but you will survive this hunt and many hunts to come. We will have time to be together, Varin.”

     The choice wasn’t difficult. Shortening my life was a better option than letting it end then and there. I didn’t want to die. If taking the blood again gave me just one more day, I still would have done it. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

     The embrace ended. The woman rose and then helped me to my feet. She was shorter than I was, and when she pressed her lips to mine in a soft kiss, she had to stand on the tips of her toes to do it. “You’re going to wake up now. If you’re going to do it, do it quickly.”

     ”When will I see you again?”

     Her smile at that moment was absolutely radiant, but she said nothing.

     And then I woke up.

     I was screaming again, and judging by how raw my throat felt, I had been for a very long time. Maybe ever since that second rune. I couldn’t be sure, buried beneath skittering claws as I was, paralyzed by the irregular beat of my heart and the pain wracking my body. I pressed my face to the floor, inhaling the cloying, sickly sweetness of the greasy black blood pooling around me. I was suddenly aware of every dark drop that Seruwen spilled before my arrival.

     I choked down my pain and forced my limbs to move again. Both of my hands were empty, which meant I’d lost my knife at some point. Finishing that fifth rune would be hard without it. First, though, was the matter of the blood. I could have just lapped it up off of the floor, but I was better than that. I was dying, sure, but I still had my dignity to worry about. I had to get up. I had to move. If I could just get my hands on one of them, I could get at the blood. I lost my knife, but I still had my teeth. I was sure my teeth could get through grimling hide. I could just tear one open, and…

     “Varin, get up! Get up, get up, get up!” Screaming. A woman’s screaming, right beside me. Seruwen? No, not Seruwen. Seruwen didn’t scream. Never. But then who? “I finished the runes, but I can’t do the magic. Wake up!”

     Aeliana.

     She came in after me and was shaking me awake, despite the swarm. I opened my eyes and could see her, wrapped in a guardsman’s cloak, frantically slashing at the demons on my back with a knife. My knife.

     Stupid, reckless, absolutely wonderful girl.

     I pressed my palm to the floor. The runes were complete. That was all I needed. A small pulse of strength, the absolute dregs of what I had remaining, washed out of my body and through the slick, black blood coating every surface of the room. Through the blood, power touched each of the five runes. They sprang to life. I didn’t need to fuel them any more from that point. Rather, they began to fuel me.

     The blood that had been spilled in that room peeled away from the floor, from the walls, from the corpses and the wounded. It gathered in the air as a black-red haze. Then, still suspended in the air, it coalesced into solid glass-like shards. The shards began to spin the air. Slowly at first, but they picked up speed quickly. In seconds, it became a cyclone, with Aeliana and I within its eye. The grimlings were torn from my back by sudden, violent winds. They were pulled into the cyclone and shredded in the air. Every last one of them died in a spray of gore.

     It wasn’t pretty, but if there’s a better way to kill a grimling swarm, I’ve never heard of it.

    Returning my eyes to the road ahead, I greeted her with some ambivalence. “Hello.”

    ”I believe,” she said, keeping pace and not looking at me at all, “that my mother asked that you stay in the guest room.”

    She spoke in an aloof, nearly toneless manner, but the end of each word rolled in the back of her throat in a curiously appealing way.

    Undeterred, my walk continued. “Not in quite those words, no. She did not.”

    ”Hm,” was all she said.

    Glancing at her from the furthest corner of my eye, I asked, “Is that a problem?”

    ”Will you be coming back?”

    ”Yes, eventually.”

    ”Does another hunt call you away?”

    ”No. I’m working on yours.” I drew the words out in patient explanation. “We need bait for the fairy.”

    ”Ah.” She made the entire affair sound boring. She added, “I’d like to go with you.”

    ”I don’t know why you would.”

    ”You’re minari.” She shrugged. Her clothing, an airy wrap of green silk, left one slender shoulder bare. “I’m interested in what you do. I can’t imagine where you would even go to find bait for a fairy.”

    ”It’s simple, actually.” I waved my hand in a dismissive gesture. “Any place you can buy cakes or sweetbreads. Candied fruits work, too. Sweets. Tasty things.”

    ”Really? Any old baker?”

    ”Sure.”

    ”Why didn’t you just ask our cookstaff?”

    That was a good question. I didn’t actually think to ask at all. Most in Neva Cora didn’t have the luxury of having a kitchen in their home, but of course a place like Aelia’s villa would. The smart thing to do right at the moment would have been to thank her for reminding me, turn around, set the cooks to work, and retire to the guest room for more wine.

    Pride, as it often does, demanded otherwise. So I lied.

    ”It’s best to involve the house and family as little as possible,” came my explanation. I kept as straight a face as I could manage. “It’s safer that way. You don’t want to give the fairy any material item it can link to a specific person. If she knows one of your servants made the bait that caught her, she might know his name or his face. The demon’s sisters can use that to cause more trouble.”

    ”Really?” She turned her disappointed look on me fully. Something about the lines of her face told me she always looked that way. “That wasn’t in the books.”

    “Very little ends up in books,” was my false explanation. “Minari don’t like sharing secrets.”

    “You just did.”

    “Well, yes.”

    “Why?”

    “Because I don’t see ink or paper in your hands.”

    “Yes, but –”

    I interrupted her, redirecting the conversation. “You’re the one that guessed your mother had a demon problem to begin with, aren’t you? The one that told her about the pollen?”

    The two of us turned off of the road leading into Aelia’s villa and started down the wide, white brick road leading into the city. All trade from the Imperium’s colonies and territories arrived in Neva Cora from the west. All trade goods from human territories being shipping into the Imperium arrived from the east. Humans only produced simple goods like tubers and grains, so there wasn’t much money to be made there. Aelia’s villa, as well as those of her competitors, all fell along the main road into the city from the west.

    The land was mostly flat on that end of the city. In all directions, between the distant villas, was vibrant green grass below a bright blue sky dotted with clouds like wisps of cotton.

    The girl hadn’t answered my question. I cast a questioning gaze on her, waiting. It provided a good, though brief, opportunity to get a better look at her. I took her in quickly. Hair as black as crow’s feathers fell in untamed waves just past her shoulders. If it were not for the length of her ears, it certainly would have obscured much of her face. The angle of her emerald green eyes, the bones of her cheeks, the slope of her nose, and the way she pressed her lips together all appeared sharp and severe. Something about her suggested that on another day, in another light, she could be a dangerous creature, capable of a terrible fury.

    At that moment in particular, however, she was just very pretty — in an almost unearthly sort of way.

    A bothered sigh escaped her lips and her frown deepened. “I made that easy enough to guess, I suppose.”

    My frown matched hers. Did she not want me to know? Was she trying to hide how much she knew from me? She wasn’t doing a very good job of it, if that’s what she wanted. I decided it would be best not to press that topic just then, and pushed another instead. “Maybe if you had introduced yourself before asking for lessons in demon hunting…”

    “Aeliana,” she supplied, terse.

    Aeliana, First of Aelia. Her father probably would have saved his name for the son that never came, so Aeliana was likely the oldest of her sisters. And assuming her mother did not remarry one day, that made Aeliana heir to her father’s house. The house which bore a name I still didn’t know. So I asked.

    “Aeliana of house..?”

    “Corus,” she said. “Corus Aeliana.”

    Corus, founder of Cora. As old and as large as Neva Cora is, you can’t just assume everyone has the blood of the founders in them. I certainly don’t.

    I began to introduce myself in turn, but Aeliana cut back into the conversation before I could.

    “And you are Calidus Varin.” She said it as a simple, known fact.

    My mouth quirked back up into a grin. “I have a reputation, then?”

    Aeliana coughed a short laugh. “No, not really. Minari Tullius, I know of him. He has a reputation. You, his apprentice? No, not at all. I was in the courtyard earlier so I heard your name when you were talking to my mother. You were too busy falling for her to notice me, I’m sure.”

    “I didn’t fall for your mother,” I drawled.

    “I’m sure,” she drawled back. Despite her constant frown, she sounded amused. Her voice lowered an octave. Word for word, she mocked me. “Then I will simply need to be satisfied with feasting on your beauty, madam.”

    I couldn’t help but laugh at her imitation of me. “It’s just flattery, Aeliana. I was being a good guest.”

    “You were being manipulative,” she corrected. “You wanted to bed her.”

    “Manipulative, yes.” I agreed. “To that end, not at all.”

    “To what end, then?”

    “Information. Details.” I explained as we walked together. “Everyone hides details about these things. Nobody wants to implicate themselves in the summoning of demons. Maybe she would tell me things she held back at first.”

    “But she didn’t take to it,” Aeliana pointed out. “Not at all. She probably thought less of you afterwards. How does that help you?”

    I stopped walking. Aeliana took a few more steps before stopping as well. She turned back, eyes twisted in confusion.

    “You know,” my voice became suddenly serious. I met the young woman’s eyes and she met mine. She knit her brow in fascination. My demons’ eyes had her attention. With as much sincerity as I could muster, I told her, “you’re very beautiful, Aeliana.”

    Aeliana could manage nothing but a blink of her eyes for a moment or two, then her entire face twisted at the absurdity of it. She turned away from me and began walking to market again. “Don’t do that.”

    “Do what?” Feigned innocence flooded into my words. I hurried to catch up with her. “I didn’t lie.”

    Her reaction was exactly what I had hoped it would be.

    “I don’t want to discuss that anymore. Don’t make this uncomfortable.”

    As much as I appreciated Aeliana’s company, I couldn’t give her the answers she wanted. I couldn’t tell her that my flattery worked just fine, that it began the moment Tullius and I stepped into their villa, or that I distracted her mother pretty damn well. I took Aelia’s attention away from Tullius and gave the old man time to explore the villa without oversight or supervision. My parting words, the words Aeliana mocked me for, were not the beginning of the dance. They were the end.

    If Aeliana believed my flattery failed, that my manipulation achieved nothing at all, I’d let her go on believing it.

    Despite the mild anger apparent in the set of her shoulders, Aeliana slowed a step or two so we could walk side by side again. She asked nothing else of me. Not immediately, anyway. We spoke further, but all of it was minor and entirely inconsequential; small talk.

    We arrived in the market about a half of an hour’s walk later. The market nearest Aelia’s villa was only one of many in the city and far from the largest, but you’d never know that by looking at it — it still held countless merchants and vendors hawking anything and everything, and crowds of people standing by to lap it all up. Booth, stalls and carts lined both sides of the road. Amateur artisans tossed woven blankets and sheets of burlap right down on the white brick to lay out their wares. Every single man and woman on the street, standing shoulder to shoulder, bartered back and forth with their own goods and products nearly as often as with coins.

    Some cities in the Imperium adopted the eastern style of markets, containing it all within large general stores and indoor market strips, but not Neva Cora. Neva Cora remained firmly within the Imperial methods, keeping all business outdoors, right where it belongs.

    Though the market was far too populated for Aeliana and I to continue walking side by side, we never lost sight of each other upon parting. She was not disturbed by the crowd at all, and despite the tumult, never allowed herself to be shoved aside. She didn’t fight back, either — she had no reason. She slipped through the crowds like a fish through water, flowing from one place to the next. Every bit of free space, she found it and made it her own, receiving countless warm greetings from every direction.

    She knew the market and the market knew her.

    In sharp contrast, I did not need to find gaps in the crowd. It parted for me. It’s probable that none of them were consciously aware of doing it, but they did. They would feel a faint glimmer of fear at the back of their mind and, it would tell them that they should stand just a step or two further away from that man with the strange eyes walking down the center of the market.

    Mortals have a basic, natural instinct to avoid demonkind. It’s an unconscious reaction on the same level as knowing uncontrolled fire is unlikely to contribute to your continued existence. If a mortal colludes with a demon, it’s because they believe they can control it, such as a person using a cookfire to heat a meal. When the fire spreads, when the demons walk free, mortals turn and they run or they die.

    Because I lay somewhere in between demonkind and humanity, nobody would run screaming from me, but they all knew that I was something wrong, something that could burn them.

    It had its advantages.

    “Aeliana!” I called over the bartering din, pointing to a corner stall. “There.”

    She nodded her head in understanding, not bothering to shout a response over the noise of the gathered, and continued her dance through the crowd while I walked my more direct path.

    A gaggle of children crowded the stall, boys and girls alike. An older man stood within, visible only from the waist up, exchanging their bits of struck brass for small tarts and peanut taffy. One of the children, a little boy, tore his attention away from his new sweets long enough to take notice of me. His brow arched. His jaw dropped. He grabbed one of the other boys by the arm and spun him around.

    “Look,” he said in awe. “A demon.”

    All of the children turned around. They all went similarly wide-eyed, caught somewhere between terror and wonder. Silence washed over every last one of them. The candymaker stared as well, though not so kindly as the young ones.

    Tarts, cakes, cookies, all of that sort of thing sat on plates and pan, displayed on every flat surface of the stall. Strings of crystalline rock candies hung from above like rime-covered vines on a winter morning.

    “I’m looking for something sweet.” I asked him in as pleasant a voice as I could manage.

    The shopkeep watched me warily. “You’re in the right place for that..”

    I pursed my lips together. “Pastries do well, those take time to eat. They’ll last awhile.”

    “Just about everything I have goes down in a bite. If you’re looking for a meal, that’s further up the road.”

    “Well, it isn’t for me,” I explained. “It’s for someone with a much smaller mouth.”

    He didn’t say anything.

    Aeliana stepped up beside me. She apologized to the man, “I’m sorry, he’s being stubborn. It’s for a fairy.”

    The children all lit up with glee. The man shook his head. “I won’t help with that.”

    It was my turn to explain. “No, we’re doing nothing wrong. It’s a hunt. Minari business. I’m going to kill it.”

    The children all cried out in horror, like I’d kicked a chicken.

    I produced a silver piece from a pouch at my belt. I held it up so everyone, children and shopkeep alike, could see it. “I want two of the tarts, those red ones there, and two of the little taffies. Let the young ones here spend the rest of it on whatever they’d like. Is that agreeable?”

    The children swiveled their heads toward the old man so quickly I thought they might all break their necks. A silver can buy a lot of candy.

    He muttered his acquiescence. “Yeah, alright.”

    We made our exchange without further confrontation. The shopkeep wrapped our little candies and tarts in paper, then packed it all together in a bundle of white cloth. After a number of thank-yous from my mouth and a significantly higher number of apologies from Aeliana’s own, we left the giddy children and the startled old man to their business.

    We left the stall and headed further into the city, simply to get out of the man’s way. Aeliana caught on to my ability to part the crowds and walked behind me rather than apart from me, taking advantage of the path left in my wake.

    She shouted from behind me. Despite it, I still had a difficult time hearing her. The market had grown increasingly loud as we walked through it. I had to turn back and ask her to repeat herself a few times, but I finally made sense of the words. “Do all merchants react so poorly to you?”

    “Not all of them. Closer to the forum, they know me and they don’t mind. This far out, I’m a stranger.” My hand flapped a dismissal. “It doesn’t bother me.”

    Aeliana shouted some sort of response, but the details of her words were drowned out by the noise of the marketplace.

    “It’s too loud, I can’t hear a damn thing,” I called back. Aeliana’s face contorted, confused. I motioned onward. “We’ll find somewhere to talk.”

    She took hold of my hand in both of hers and pulled me back. It was my turn to be confused.

    “What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

    She leaned up toward me and spoke in my ear. “I think someone is calling your name.”

    I scanned the crowd. The multitude of voices buzzed in my mind. I saw no one I recognized at all. I looked back to her, but didn’t bother trying to speak over all of the noise. I knit my eyebrow in confusion, hoping that would get my message across.

    She enunciated her response very slowly. I could not hear one bit of it, but I did manage to read the words on her lips.

    It’s not that loud.

    It terrified me. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to focus on the noise, the thousands upon thousands of senseless voices echoing in my head. It’s not that loud. I tried to block out what I didn’t want to hear, to slam windows shut and muffle out everything that wasn’t truly there, but it wasn’t helping. It was too loud. There were too many. All of my senses began to blur. I was being pushed this way, pulled that way, and I could do nothing about it but stumble as my mind lost its ability to coordinate my own motions.

    Aeliana took me by the hand and tried leading me away. I let her. She pulled me along, out of the tumult of the crowded street and into an adjacent alleyway. She lowered me to the ground, put her mouth right beside my ear, and she shouted. “What’s wrong? Can I help?”

    I waved her off. I lowered my head, eyes closed, and clamped the heels of my palms of my ears, pressing down until my head ached. It helped, a little. It muffled the voices from the market and all things earthly — the pounding of feet, the blowing wind, the singing birds and chittering insects. I focused again, concentrating on the voices that remained — hundreds of them, screaming in a nonsense, incoherent mess. No intelligence, only madness.

    One by one, I shut them out. Individually, none of them held any substantial power. Alone, none of them posed any true threat, but as numerous as they were and as close as they must have been, they simply overwhelmed me. Not realizing it sooner was an absolutely stupid mistake. I felt the volume rising in my head and simply dismissed it as part of the background. I shouldn’t have needed Aeliana’s warning at all.

    Opening my eyes and lifting my head again, I took my hands away from my ears. The din of the market was still loud, but tolerably so.

    Aeliana knelt across from me, but the two of us weren’t alone anymore. One of the city guard stood there as well, blue jay crest high upon his head. He asked, “You alright, boy? Seruwen sent me for you. There’s a problem. Gremlins.”

    “Grimlings,” I corrected, rising unsteadily to my feet. “They’re called grimlings. Tullius isn’t with me, we’ll need to go get him.”

    The guard shook his head. “No, we go now. She contained the problem for now, but she’s been at it too long already.”

    Hunting without Tullius was completely and entirely forbidden. Minari do not hunt alone. Hunting alone is stupid and dangerous.Two or more, that’s the rule. There is no breaking it. There is no bending it. But the guardsman wasn’t wrong. Wherever the grimlings were, there were a lot of them. I felt that quite well. If Seruwen was fighting the damned things, spending another hour going back and forth for Tullius could kill her. If the grimlings got to Seruwen, they would get loose. If that happened, it could take months to track down every last one and wipe them out, assuming they didn’t just breed faster than we caught them.

    “Damn it,” I spat, passing the cute little satchel of sweets to Aeliana. Somehow, I managed to hang onto it through everything. “Alright. Take me to Seruwen.”

     We entered through the atrium, past its shallow indoor pool. A few young men and women relaxed in its waters, nude. The lighting was low and intimate, only what filtered in from the courtyard. None present made any flirtations or advances toward the others. They were all content to enjoy the waters together.

     Once we moved onward from the enclosed atrium and into the villa halls, everything was bathed in bright sunlight again. Wide halls and high, arched windows and doorways saw to that. The summer breeze flowed almost as well indoors as it had outdoors. Though it felt nice then, I suspected it would be miserable in winter. Brilliantly colored murals covered the walls here and there, depicting Indora and Truscus. They were a strange pair, the goddess of the hunt and the merchant god didn’t have much in common. Indora was dear to me, I wore her charm on a thick chain around my neck, but I had no idea why a merchant house would set her right alongside Truscus. Maybe the ancestors of Aelia’s family had a boar problem once.

     Crutio led me up a flight of wide stairs to the third floor, the top floor, and showed me into one bedroom of many. I entered, thanking the man. The room looked pleasant. A plush bed, a few comfortable chairs, some low tables for eating or reading or writing. The back wall was completely open, leading out onto a balcony. Again, a wonderful thing to have in summer, but it likely meant this room would never be used in winter.

     ”We’ll be back with your fellow,” Crutio informed me. “Enjoy yourself. A serving man will be along with drinks for you. If you need anything for your hunt tonight, he’ll be able to help you with that.”

     Tullius had a rule against sending anyone but ourselves to gather hunting supplies if we could help it, but it wasn’t worth explaining to the guard.

     ”Right,” I agreed. “Thank you.”

     He and his man turned to leave, but Crutio hesitated and turned back. “And if there’s going to be trouble, send word to me first, would you? I know how you minari are. If you’re going to go around calling demons for advice, give me some warning, man. I’ll trust you to do your job so long as you trust me to do mine. Understand?”

     ”I don’t think we’ll need to anything like that for a fairy. But yes, I’ll warn you. No surprises.”

     Crutio offered me a firm nod and then was gone.

     I carried one of the chairs out onto the balcony, preparing for a long wait before either Tullius or more of Aelia’s people arrived. The balcony looked out over a copse of pear trees. The end of summer was nearing, which meant the fruits would be ready for harvest soon. Even if you didn’t know that sort of thing already, you’d be able to tell just by looking down at those trees, so heavy did the pears hang. I dusted the chair clean with a hand as it seemed that it hadn’t been used in some time, but a clap came at the door before I could sit.

     ”It’s your house,” I called from one end of the room to the other, “come in as you’d like.”

     Tullius would have walked right in, so it could only possibly have been one of Aelia’s people, I figured. And it was. A serving man entered the room. A huma, tanned and tall and hulking, with muscles that bulged as only a human’s do, always looking as if they threatened to leap free of their skin. He had a genial smile that looked out of place on a face so broad and dark. His hair, the color of wet earth, carried the lightest dusting of salt at his temples. He wore a length of green silk around his waist and nothing else, leaving his hardened chest bare.

     A human slave. You don’t see many of those anymore.

     The man set a jug of wine and a pair of cups out on the table. He had the size of a man but moved like an elf, making very little noise as he worked. He looked to me, sheepish. “An elf in trousers, a man after my own heart.”

     ”How in the world did you end up a slave?” I asked, genuinely befuddled. There may have been more bite to my words than I intended. “We’re not supposed to take your kind as slaves anymore. We haven’t for centuries.”

     He laughed. I always thought Tullius had a deep voice, but he sounded like a field mouse compared to this man’s rumbling bellows. “Not taken, lord minari. Given! I volunteered, if you can believe it. Sure, there’s no glory in being a slave, but I’d rather live in the Imperium than die in Khalino.”

     ”Are you a criminal of some sort?” I asked, enthralled by the man. Humans rarely find their way to Neva Cora. Almost never as slaves; absolutely never as willing slaves.

     ”No, I didn’t break any laws. At least I don’t think I did. The worst Aelia’s girls do to me is put me in a skirt and pinch my arse. The best my king would do to me is stick a rusty sword in my hand and tell me to die for god. Given the options, I’ll take pretty elf girls.” Bradley’s conviction wavered all of a sudden and he shifted his stance from one foot to the other, decidedly uncomfortable. He scrunched his broad face and then spoke hurriedly. “I shouldn’t be talking so much, I have more work to do. I’m sorry, I get very excited around men with enough sense to put a pair of pants on. A bit of home, you understand.”

     ”You seem to be a good man,” I told him, hoping to provide some sort of consolation. “If you’d like, I’ll put in a good word for you. If Aelia makes you a free man, you can wear all the pants the world has to offer.”

     ”Oh, don’t bother yourself with that.” He shrugged broad shoulders. “Just like you said, you’re not supposed to take my kind slaves anymore. I could put on a pair of trousers and walk home tomorrow if I wanted, nobody could tell me to do otherwise. Besides, the skirt’s not all bad. The girls seem to like it.”

     ”What’s your name?” I asked.

     ”My birth name? Or my elf name?”

     ”Whatever you’d like me to call you.”

     ”My name is Bradley.”

     ”A pleasure meeting you, Bradley.” I nodded him off. “If you get the chance, stop in again. We can talk more.”

     ”Aye,” he said simply. “Enjoy your wine.”

      Bradley left and I took his parting words to heart. I took up the jug of wine and filled a cup. My heart soared when the wine poured a beautiful golden-green rather than the expected red. Few things in the world are better than a crisp white on a summer day.

     I departed for the balcony, taking care not to slosh my drink onto Aelia’s decor. I sat in my chair, brought the cup to my face, and inhaled. The wine smelled wonderful. Sweet citrus and apricot, with notes of licorice and spice. Reclining in my seat, I closed my eyes and drank, finding peace in the breeze.

     I’m not sure how long I sat there, rising only to refill my cup, but it was longer than I ever thought it would be. Long enough that, when I heard the door open, I rose from my chair and rushed back indoors like a hound greeting its master. Tullius entered, but Crutio and his man hung back at the door. Everyone wore angry, twisted looks on their faces, like they had all just drank curdled milk.

     “Did I miss something fun?” I asked, beaming like the sun. I didn’t feel quite so cheerful, but someone had to balance their scowls. “Did you find the fairy?”

     Tullius pulled the door closed behind him, slamming it in Crutio’s face, shutting the man out of my question. Tully always knew how to win the hearts of our hosts.

     “Fairies,” Tullius grumbled, emphasizing the plural. He sat in the second chair, his mood unaffected by the beauty of our spacious room. “At least two.”

     “Two?” I asked. “How do you know? What did you find?”

     He peered across the room at me. I couldn’t read his face well. Anger? Confusion? Maybe even disappointment.

     “You hear it.” Tullius stated it as a fact. “It’s echoing in my head clear as a bell. You must hear it.”

     I fell silent. I listened. What Tullius said was true, the minari do hear things that others can’t hear, we see things that others can’t see. Demons hide behind a veil that cannot be parted by beings of the mortal world. The minari are the only exception. The blood of demons runs in our veins, their blood mingled with our own in a rite as old as the world itself.

     I did hear singing. No — not singing. Humming. Delicate and feminine voices humming a wordless song as innocent and as fleeting as a dewdrop. If I hadn’t been told to listen for it, I never would have heard it. When the wind blew too hard out on the balcony, it was impossible to hear it at all.

     Tullius repeated himself. “You hear it.”

     “I hear it,” I agreed. I didn’t bother to refute his earlier claims of its clarity. “That complicates matter. Of course, there being only two of them, that means we’re not dealing with a queen.”

     “We would have known right away if we were dealing with a queen,” Tullius grumped. The man didn’t know the meaning of silver lining. He took up the wine jug, sniffed at its rim, then set it back down in disgust. “Didn’t they leave us any water?”

     “Just the wine. It’s good wine, though. You could try it, at least.”

     He didn’t seem happy about it, but he filled a cup. “More than one changes things. I hope you didn’t send the man to market already.”

     “No. Sundown is a long ways off.” I rolled my shoulders in a shrug. “We have time to get our own things.”

     It was a loose rule of ours. If we had the time to gather our own reagents, then we would do it ourselves. You can’t be sure things are being done right unless you do it on your own. Personally, I think the whole concept forces more busywork onto our shoulders than is strictly necessary, but Tullius has driven it deep enough into my mind that I can’t see myself doing things any differently.

     “I don’t think we need to do it at all,” the old man explained. “Bold, the way those girls are belting out that song. We can lure them out easily enough just by joining in. Even easier if we can get Aelia and her girls to help.”

     I took a slow breath. Reluctantly, I disagreed with him. “I don’t think that will work.”

     Fairies aren’t dark creatures. Not really. They enjoy all of the things that we enjoy. Food, drink, song, dance, and everything else capable of bringing a smile to someone’s face. The problem with fairies is that they take all of those wonderful things and push them to the point of being harmful and they are incapable of understanding a good thing can be wrong. When fairy magic causes someone to dance themself to death, they sincerely believe they’ve brought joy to that person’s life. The fairies ruining Aelia’s honey probably don’t understand that they’re the ones ruining it. All that they know is that it tastes really good for awhile and they should enjoy it for as long as it lasts.

     Tullius’s idea is one that has worked for us before. If a fairy is singing loud enough to be noticed, then it wants to be noticed. If others join the song, it’s a cause for celebration. The fairy will show itself and then we catch it and kill it.

     The problem is the fairies weren’t singing nearly as loudly as he thought they were. I can hear fairies pretty well when they intend for someone to hear them. This time, though, I couldn’t hear them much at all. If a fairy wants to be heard, even full mortals can hear them. These fairies did not want to be heard. They were hiding. Joining their song wouldn’t lure them out. It would frighten them, drive them into hiding. Our job would become much harder.

     He asked, “Why won’t it work?”

     I hoped he wouldn’t ask me that, but I really should have known better. Tully doesn’t pass up an opportunity to display his belligerence.

     I decided to be blunt. “Because they’re not as loud as you think. We should use bait.”

     “What do you mean they’re not as loud as I think?” Tullius demanded. He leaned forward in his seat. “You’re a child yet. Just because you can’t…”

     I interrupted. “I’m young, sure. But you’re getting old.”

     “What does that have to do with this?” Tullius spat the words, as if he expected them to hit me like physical blows.

     “I mean,” I kept my voice even, “that we both offer valuable perspectives. If you hadn’t heard them, we wouldn’t know we were dealing with more than one. But if I had a hard time hearing them, it means they don’t want to be heard. Joining their song might frighten them. Let’s try a safer method.”

     I could see the conflict rising in Tullius’s eyes and the lines of his face. He wanted to argue the point, his pride was on the line, but another part of him knew I wasn’t wrong. His jaw worked while he contemplated his argument, ready to shout me down as soon as he thought of one. I pushed my advantage rather than allow that.

     “Sundown isn’t for an eternity yet, we have plenty of time to get to the market and back. We could go out right now, put a few coins down on some sweets, and set it for bait tonight. If Aelia doesn’t have any honey left, the fairies will be looking for something else to eat. It will be the easiest hunt we’ve had in years and we won’t need to involve Aelia’s family at all.” I drove that last point hard. “It’s always safer to avoid involving the family, you know that.”

     “Fine.” Tullius drained the last of his wine and then waved his cup at me in dismissal. “You go see to that.”

     “You’re not going with me?”

     “No.” Tullius refilled his cup. “You clearly have this hunt well in hand.”

     “Are you actually angry with me?” I quirked my brow up. Then I grinned at him. “It’s because I called you old, isn’t it.”

     “You’re wasting daylight, boy.”

     He left it at that. So did I.

      “You’re sure this is the place?”

      An affirming noise rolled from the back of my partner’s throat..

      “You’re becoming quite the orator in your old age, Tullius.” I drawled.

      He grunted again.

      When a courier delivered an overfilled sack of struck silver and a gilded letter requesting haste and discretion to the temple, I thought we would be working for a politician. Maybe even a consul. I didn’t expect a merchant. It made sense, though; a merchant would have that sort of money to throw around. They also wouldn’t want potential customers to know their might be a demon lurking around their goods, either.

      We stood together in a villa courtyard. It was open to the sky but enclosed on all four sides. A wide open archway leading out to the roads stood as the only direct path to the courtyard, you would need to take a circuitous route through the villa proper from any other entrance. The villa was large, but not unreasonably so. Pretty, with sweeping arches and smoothly hewn pillars. Each pillar had been painted in grand, colorful detail. The paint seemed recent, it hadn’t even begun to fade yet.

      As lovely as it was, you couldn’t mistake the fact that it had been built for its function over its form. Wide doors and spacious halls provided plenty of clearance for the countless carts of goods going back and forth. The floors lacked the intricate engravings you might see in a politician’s villa. In fact, the courtyard itself was nothing but hard-packed earth. That constant foot traffic and flow of goods would be hell on proper flooring.

      Leave it to a politician to install a floor not meant to be walked on.

      Any sort of vegetation or greenery would be out of the question in that courtyard, too. The deep grooves worn into the earth by wagon wheels displayed that quite clearly. Packing new dirt, or laying planks if you really had to, would be a lot cheaper than laying entirely new flooring every other season. Spreading grass seed would be a completely futile gesture.

      There had to be nearly a hundred elves there, men and women both. Most of them had the look of slaves about them, but slaves that were well cared for. Clothed in proper workman’s cloth. Well-nourished and strong. The slaves saw to the loading and unloading of goods while freemen in loose, lighter clothing acted as overseers and directed the flow of traffic. Clay jars and vases were stacked everywhere imaginable, though the fine amphora was contained in just one small part of the courtyard. Wine, I guessed. A pair of guards in the house colors of dark green and deep violet stood watch over those.

      A woman in clean green silks hurried past us. Not at a run, but the brisk walk of someone not looking to waste their time. I thought to let her go, she seemed busy enough already, but Tullius thought otherwise.

      “Excuse me,” he called to her. He made it sound like a demand and not the polite request his words suggested. “Where is the man of the house?”

      She stopped suddenly and turned on her heel to face him. She carried herself well and had that matronly sort of allure. Her beauty would have been sharp and striking in her youth, but it had filled in and softened her edges over the years, added a curve to her hip and a swell to her breast. She had eyes as green as the length of silk wrapped around her body and her hair was as red as an apple in autumn. The angry burns on her nose and cheeks were the only thing detracting from her beauty. They didn’t seem to belong on a face like hers. She had delicate skin, unaccustomed and unsuited to long hours in the sun.

      “I am the head of the house,” she answered, words rushed. She looked to Tullius, then me, then back to Tullius. “You are the minari?”

      “Yes,” Tullius answered tersely, “but you are not the head of the house.”

      Her eyes narrowed and her entire face twisted into a frown. “I’m inclined to disagree.”

      “I know the man of the house,” Tullis pressed. “His seal was on the letter.”

      “You must not have known him very well.” The woman’s eyes looked like they could bore a hole straight through his head. Her words were short and clipped. “I am his wife. He died three years ago. He left me with more than my share of daughters, but didn’t have the decency to leave me any sons to take the house before he passed.”

      I cut in. “It doesn’t seem like he’s the only one at fault there.”

      “Of course he is.” She dismissed the thought. “I have nothing to do with it. I get stuck carrying them for two years, but he puts them there. I have daughters coming out of my ears, but no sons. If a woman is going to run the house, it might as well be me. Are you here to help me or aren’t you? I’ve already paid you, so I certainly hope you are.”

      “How many daughters do you have, exactly?” I asked. I know I’m not supposed to tease the clients, but Tullius isn’t supposed to call them liars after they’ve paid us in advance, either.

      “What does it matter?” She asked in return. “What business is it of yours?”

      “I’m just curious.” Then I assured her, “We are here to help. I promise.”

      “Eight. Is your curiosity sated?”

      Tullius cut back in, “I’m going to look around the property.”

      “But I haven’t even told you the problem yet,” she protested. The burns on her cheeks made her look furious. “You can’t just wander off! And you’ll frighten everyone.”

      She was right about that, Tullius could be frightening. He’d never looked handsome for as long as I’d known him and old age didn’t help at all. Deep, darks crags of wrinkles lined his face. No matter how often he took a blade to his whiskers, coarse salt and pepper remained to make him look even darker still. He’d lost most of one long ear a few decades back and left an uneven, unattractive stump on the right side of his head. His wolf eyes didn’t help matters.

      Neither did the fact that we wore trousers. Only barbarians wear trousers, we’ve been told. We disagree. The minari have learned the hard way that demons rather enjoy tearing a man’s legs out from under him. We’ll take every protection we can find, thank you. I quite like my hamstrings right where they are.

      Wearing as much brown and black as we did in a society that prided itself on its use of bright colors didn’t help our case, either. I don’t know why we did that. It seemed right. Maybe demons have poor eyesight at night.

      They don’t.

      Tullius did not listen to her protests and disappeared into the rush of the courtyard. The woman tensed, ready to rush off after him. I spoke quickly to discourage that and redirect her attention back to me. “He’s been doing this for a long time, madam. Sometimes it’s best to just let him work. Why don’t you tell me what’s been happening? Why do you think a demon is targeting your house?”

      The woman’s body made a strange pulling motion, as if half of her wanted to keep chasing after Tullius and the other half wanted to stay and speak with me. The half that wanted to speak won over. Apparently she decided that, between the two of us, I seemed the more reasonable. She asked, “Can you tell me your name first?”

      “Of course,” I said. I had teased the poor woman enough, so I did my best to sound as polite and as gracious as possible. “My name is Calidus Varin. I don’t mind if you just call me Varin. And your name?”

      “Aelia.” She only gave me her given name. Either she didn’t want to give me her house name, or she assumed I had it from the seal on her letter. Unfortunately, Tullius never let me look at that. Aelia would have to do. She motioned me onward. “Come along, I’ll show you the problem.”

      I walked a step behind her and to her left, as was proper with a person of her station. If I walked beside her, I’d be declaring myself her equal in her house. If I walked to her right, I’d be claiming to be a member of her house. I was neither of those things. Walking behind her made conversation difficult, so neither of us spoke. That didn’t bother me at all. It gave me more time to observe her and her people.

      She walked with a gentle grace. Aelia was probably very thin in her youth. If she dressed then as she did now, draped in one long, flowing length of green silk, her steps would have been as close to imperceptible as you can get. I could almost see it in my mind, Aelia thin and supple, floating across the floor with hair like fire flowing in her wake. Now, though, she had too much hip to keep a sway out of her step. Not a bad thing, of course. Well, maybe she would think so. I can’t speak for her. Not the sort of thing you’d ask a person about, either.

      I caught a few looks from her people, slaves and freemen alike. Not as many as I expected, though. Tullius wasn’t unique in his ability to inspire terror. Minari always inspired either gawking awe or nervous glances, no matter how charming and handsome they may be. I’d grown to expect them. Few people had their eyes on me, though. If the men looked away from their work at all, it was to cast their eyes on Aelia, not me. Not looks of need or desire. Respect. Adoration. Even from the slaves. For one reason or another, they all seemed to love her quite dearly.

      Likely it meant she had done an admirable job of taking her husband’s house. She kept her people fed and clothed. Judging by how active the courtyard appeared, business seemed to be going well. Most merchant houses would simply collapse if their man died without a properly trained heir to their empire. Aelia’s house hadn’t done that. It had not collapsed. In fact, it seemed to be doing quite well for itself. Either she’d gotten help, or she was very shrewd. Based on the respect her people seemed to have for her, shrewd seemed the more likely.

      “Here,” she said. She had taken me to the guarded amphora in the far corner. They were stacked high, their thin, curved bodies shaped to be slotted one within the other in staggered layers. They were all piled high enough that a rolling ladder sat nearby to reach the top layer. “Crutio, would you get one of those down for me?”

      One of the guards, Crutio, bowed his head. “Yes, of course.”

      He was an older man, clean-shaven with grey hair. Grey, but not thinning, and not the wispy white of true old age. Past his prime, perhaps, but still capable. Still formidable.

      Crutio rolled the ladder into place and ascended its steps with ease. He had strong legs. It was hard to miss them. He wore the same sort of clothing your standard house guard would. A skirt of layered leather. A formed tunic that left his arms bare. Hardened leather sandals that extended up his shins and calves. If he were marching out to battle he’d have a long armored cloak to accompany it all, but he had no need for it in the sun on a hot summer day.

      Crutio lifted one of the amphora out of the tall stack, muscles straining with the weight of the thing, and brought it down to ground level.

      “Wine?” I asked.

      “Honey.” Aelia answered. “Taste it.”

      Crutio gripped the top of a cork as large as my fist and twisted it free, working the thing back and forth out of the vessel’s mouth. He leaned the amphora toward me, just enough so I could see the honey within without the contents spilling out.

      I eyed the honey, suspicious. I looked back to Aelia. “I mean no offense, but if you think your honey has been demon-touched, I don’t really want it in my mouth.”

      “It’s no problem at all,” Crutio chimed in. He stuck a finger into the pot, scooped a dollop of honey onto his finger, and stuck it right in his mouth. The finger still came away sticky. “The demon ain’t there. It’s just not right, that’s all.”

      “That makes me feel much better,” I grumbled. Still, I supposed if he did it, it couldn’t hurt me any. The man hadn’t fallen over in convulsions as someone exposed to the corruption normally would. And even if he did, I had protections against it. So I jabbed my finger in the honey, brought a dollop to my mouth, and rolled it around my tongue.

      I gagged, throat convulsing. The muscles of my stomach clenched. I spit the honey to the ground with a hacking cough, face twisted in disgust.

      “Come now,” she said gently, like a mother to an infant. “It wasn’t that bad. Crutio, would you bring our guest some water?”

      Crutio set the amphora upright and rushed off to find the water. He said something to me, but I didn’t hear it. I was too busy barking, “That was horrible! It’s spoiled!”

      “No,” Aelia said gravely. Unsettlingly so. “Honey doesn’t spoil.”

      I wiped my mouth with my arm, standing upright again. “Then what’s wrong with it?”

      “It’s fermenting.” She explained it in a very calm, even tone. “My house is the sole distributor of Virencine honey in Neva Cora. The honey arrives just as it has for thousands of years. Sweet, golden, and beautiful. But before we can distribute it to our vendors, it’s gone sour and working itself into a froth.”

      “Alright,” I said. “So it’s fermenting. Start a winery, then.”

      “It’s not the right fermentation process for making wine,” she explained, hands folded at her middle. “Honey doesn’t have the proper yeast for that naturally, you need to introduce… no, it doesn’t matter. That’s not the problem. I don’t want it fermenting to begin with. My vendors want Virencine honey. I’m acquiring it, I have it, but I can’t use it. That’s a problem. I’m losing money.”

      Crutio returned with a shallow bowl of water. I took it happily, tipped the bowl back and rinsed my mouth. Calmed my nerves. Cleared my head.

      I started the conversation anew, refreshed.

      “Okay. You know your goods. You say the honey arrives in good condition, and then it goes bad on your property?”

      “Yes. I know it happens here, because it travels a long way to get here. If it was bad honey, the fermentation would have already started in transit and would be sour by the time it arrives.”

      “Okay. I don’t know much about honey, so you’ll need to explain. What causes honey to ferment? Why do you think you need minari?”

      “Too much time in open air can cause it. Introducing too much water to the honey can cause it. Introducing the wrong sorts of pollen to the batch or even to the bees who made it can sour honey.” She shrugged her shoulders. “All of those take time, maybe weeks or months. It couldn’t happen overnight.”

      “Okay,” I responded. She hadn’t given me anything to respond to yet, but sometimes people need that prompt onward. I didn’t know if Aelia was the sort, but I provided it anyway.

      “My daughter,” she explained, “is a very well-read girl. According to her, fairies love honey, but fairy pollen sours honey in a particularly virulent way. One fairy could ruin an entire season’s worth of honey if you let one loose is in an apiary.”

      “You think there’s a fairy getting into your honey?”

      “It is the only rational explanation I’ve heard so far.”

      I looked to Crutio, “Didn’t you tell me a demon hadn’t gotten into that honey before I stuck it in my mouth?”

      “No, sir.” He answered earnestly. “I said the demon wasn’t in there now, didn’t say it wasn’t in there before.”

      “How very clever of you,” I droned.

      It made sense, I supposed. As much sense as anything to do with demons. Stoppered pottery wouldn’t keep a fairy away from something it wants. Fairy dust, or fairy pollen, had a list of effects unimaginably long. Minari scholars have spent entire lifetimes documenting what happens when you combine the pollen of a fairy with other substances. Apothecaries of questionable morals loved the stuff. The little blighters rarely caused anything good. I didn’t actually know how honey reacted to fairy dust, but Aelia’s theory seemed like a strong possibility.

      “Alright, you probably have a fairy, then.” I agreed with her, though I didn’t actually know for certain. “The problem with fairies is they’re hard to find during the day and even harder to catch. They’re unusual demons, they fit very well into the natural world. They’re like flowers, brighter and stronger during the day. We would have to lure it out, catch it, and kill it when the sun’s down. We can do it tonight.”

      Aelia sighed a raw sound. Needing to wait until sundown must have been just one more frustration atop a pile of them for her, stacked one inside the other like those amphorae. She looked to me. “If you have no other engagements waiting for you, that means I’m obliged to offer you a sitting room and a meal until then. You’ll eat well, but I hope you’ll understand that this villa’s feasting days are behind it.”

      “Hard times?” I asked, despite knowing that couldn’t be the case. Soured honey aside, I saw nothing to suggest hard times at all. I don’t know why I asked the question. It seemed like the thing to do. The most senseless questions are often the ones that spur conversation onward.

      “No.” She said it calmly and clearly. She had every right to be offended by the question, but she didn’t seem to be. Or if I had offended her, she masked it well. “I just don’t see the sense in it. We’re all reasonable people. We can all eat reasonably.”

      I put winning smile on my face and bowed graciously before the woman. “Then I will simply need to be satisfied with feasting on your beauty, madam.”

      She looked upon me with pity. “That is the worst attempt at flattery I’ve heard in a very long time, Varin. Crutio, take your man there and show the minari to our guest room. And find the other one, I don’t want him wandering like that.”

      I heard its voice, screaming in my head.

      I AM HUNGRY, MORTAL THING. I WILL TEAR THE FLESH FROM YOUR BONES. I WILL FEAST ON YOUR MEAT. I WILL BATHE IN YOUR RED, RED BLOOD. COME CLOSER. I CAN SMELL YOU.

      COME CLOSER.

      COME CLOSER.

      The hound lived, no matter how much I wished otherwise. The row of spines along its back twitched with fury, each of them oozing venom. Taut muscles writhed beneath coarsely furred skin. Wound wire held its maw shut. Heavy iron chains bound its legs. It couldn’t rise. It couldn’t hurt me anymore. I still feared it with all of my heart.

      I SMELL IT. I WANT IT. UNBIND ME.

      COME CLOSER.

      My master stood behind me. I could not look at him as he spoke, too terrified of the demon to look away from it. His voice rolled like thunder. “This is your last chance, Varin. I won’t give you another.”

      I tried to answer or even offer a nod of my head. I couldn’t do either. My words were caught in my throat. The muscles in my neck were too tense. I wanted to reach for the knife on my belt, to do what I needed to do, but I couldn’t. My fingers trembled and I could not stop them.

      FREE ME. GIVE ME WHAT IS MINE.

      My master moved beside me and stooped next to my ear. I knew he spoke softly, but his words were as clear as if he were shouting. “Do it, Varin, or I will abandon you here and now. Do it and you will have the power to live, to save, to protect. If you do not, you will be a gutter rat again, no better than you ever were. Do it.”

      I gripped the handle of my knife.

      My master rose again. He commanded me, “Do it!”

      I inched toward the hound. Its writhing grew more furious, its spines undulating in a nightmarish rhythm.

      I WANT YOUR BLOOD. YOUR BLOOD IS MINE.

      “No,” I breathed. “Yours is mine.”

      The hound thrashed, but not long. I drew my knife and slit its narrow throat in one quick, brutal motion. Black arterial blood poured forth. It tried to howl through the bindings, but it could not. Its howling breaths just boiled out of the fresh wound.

      “Good.” My master approved. “Now finish it.”

      I wiped the blood from my knife in the hound’s matted coat and replaced it upon my belt. The beast’s movements were slowing. I cupped my hands beneath its gaping throat, letting its black blood pool in my hands.

      MY BROTHERS WILL COME FOR YOU, MORTAL THING. YOU WILL DIE. YOU WILL BE MEAT FOR THE UNENDING FEAST. THEY WANT YOUR EYES, PITIFUL ELF.

      YOUR EYES ARE OURS.

      I brought my hands to my lips. The blood smelled rancid. My limbs began trembling again.

      “Don’t think about it,” my master barked. “Just do it. Now.”

      I squeezed my eyes shut. I took a deep, calming breath. I drank.

      YOU ARE… you are…

      The hound’s voice faded. Thousands took its place. The wordless, mindless screams of the damned. Pain and anger and sorrow and hunger and everything base and wrong. I could not speak. I could not think. Every thought I formed in my mind was washed down the river of voices.

      MINE. One screamed. Then another echoed it. And then another. HE IS MINE.

      BLOOD FOR BLOOD. MINE BY RIGHT.

      One gibbering voice screamed above the others. FEAST. FEAST ON THE FLESH. SNAP THE BONES AND DRINK THE MARROW. BATHE IN BLOOD.

      Then that voice was drowned by the screaming masses again. It was a physical weight on my body, clawing at my skin and pulling me under. The voices wrapped themselves around my limbs and throat. They dragged me down with rough, vicious brutality.

      Help me, I tried to scream to my master. Help me! The words didn’t come. They echoed in my mind, joined the din, and washed downriver like every other thought.

      Then I felt a pair of small, soft hands on one of mine. A woman whispered in my ear, sweet and kind. “You aren’t lost yet, but you will be if you aren’t careful. Don’t think about them. Hold onto me.”

      As warm and as delicate as her fingers felt on mine, she began lifting me away from the pull of the damned and out of their reach. The clawed limbs at my throat fell away, but they held fast around my waist and legs.

      “Hold onto me,” she repeated. “I can help you, but not if you give yourself to them.”

      I clasped my other hand over hers, and we were one. She lifted me from the current. The voices left me. The woman released my hands and took me in her arms. I fell against her. I wept, sobbing the words, “I thought I was going to die. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

      She laid her head against mine as I buried my face in her shoulder. She stroked my hair and whispered, “It is not over yet. Your master has inflicted a terrible pain upon you. I have to leave you now, but when the pain becomes too much for you to bear, I will come for you again.”

      “No,” I gasped, my words rolling out as my body was wracked with sobs. I begged, small and pitiful. “Stay with me. Please. I need you. They’ll kill me. Please.”

      She took my face in her hands and tilted my head up to look at her. Long, golden hair like rays of sunlight framed a slender face with bright blue eyes. I met her warm gaze and could not look away. I could see all the stars of the night sky in the blacks of her eyes. Love, the purest love I’d ever felt in my life, welled in my heart. She must have been a goddess. No one else could have been as wonderful as the woman that held me then.

      “You are very strong, Varin.” The most wondrous smile I’d ever seen appeared, full of genuine pride and joy. “You will not need me again for a very long time. But when the time comes that you do, just call my name. I will be there.”

      She began to fade, floating away like motes of dust on the wind. I threw myself against her and held her tight. It did no good. She fell away from my arms and was gone.

      “I don’t know your name,” I sobbed. “How do I call you? I don’t know your name!”

      Her voice rang in my mind. You will when it’s time. Be strong, Varin. You will change, now.

      And then I heard the hound again. Not as a voice, but as a memory.

      YOUR EYES ARE OURS.

      Pain. Pain wracked my body. My head felt like someone had worked a wedge into my skull. It hammered through bone, inch by agonizing inch. My entire body tensed and I fell to the ground, arms and legs curling beneath me as if the stiffness of death had taken hold. My eyes burned with fire and they throbbed within their sockets, threatening to burst with every beat of my heart.

      The physical pain tore me out of the depths of my mind long enough to think of looking to my master for help. I opened my eyes to seek him out.

      I saw nothing. Empty, gray darkness. I felt thick moisture rolling down my cheeks. The wind blew. I felt raw pain inside of the sockets where my eyes should have been.

      I screamed my throat hoarse and collapsed to the earth again, my limbs refusing to obey my demands to claw at my face and check for my eyes. I could feel nothing but pain and raw, uncontrollable terror. My body convulsed. My gut heaved, and I emptied it into the dirt beneath me.

      Then the pain stopped. My screams stopped. Everything stopped. Blackness, body and mind.

      Gone.

      The moon still hung heavy in the sky when I awoke. I could see it above. The demon hadn’t taken my eyes. It hadn’t blinded me. I blinked a few times, just to be sure.

      I tasted wood and steel on my tongue. I looked down from the sky, and my master withdrew the handle of his boot knife from my mouth. My face twisted, confused.

      “You had a seizure,” he explained. He slid the knife away and spoke as if nothing unusual at all had happened. “You just woke from it. You weren’t out long.”

      “I couldn’t see.” I laughed. The delirious sort of laugh, where your mind isn’t sure what else to do. “The hound told me it would take my eyes. I thought it did.”

      My master made a motion with his head. I followed his gaze. It led me to the hound.

      Its eyes were gone. Mine sat in their place.

      My master looked between me and the hound. His voice filled with a calming patience, but it only worked so well. His words were always hard and coarse no matter how hard he tried otherwise. Even when he tried to be kind, barely restrained raged boiled somewhere behind his words. He said to me, “Don’t be surprised. You’ve seen my eyes. How did you think I got them?”

      I tore my gaze from the hound, from my eyes in its head, and looked to my master. He had the amber eyes of a beast, too, wolfish and piercing. The realization did make me feel foolish. Every time I looked at him, and every time he looked at me, I should have seen the change that would come. I still felt like I’d been misled, like he could have told me what to expect.

     “You didn’t tell me what would happen. Why didn’t you warn me?”

      Even as we conversed, my master was a man at work. He took a leather pouch from his belt. He loosened the strings that held it closed and stepped to stand over the dead demon. He turned the pouch over. A thick cloud of silver dust cascaded forth from its mouth. The powder drifted down to the demon, unaffected by the night wind, and spread across its corpse in an unnatural uniformity, clinging to its furred flesh without a single mote falling astray to the earth below.

     My master continued on, his tone even and measured. “It is an unexplainable experience. There are no words to describe becoming, in an instant, aware of every demon that lives and them becoming aware of you in turn. It isn’t a thing meant for mortals and so our minds make of it what it will. Sometimes it is beautiful. Sometimes it is terrible. Sometimes it is both. Nothing I could say about it would prepare you for what you would experience. Nothing I could say could do the awakening justice.”

     “It felt like I was drowning,” I explained. Every muscle in my body trembled as I said it. A creeping fear in the back of my head made me wonder if speaking it aloud would invoke the dream again, but the river of souls didn’t return. “Will they come again?”

     “Mine felt like an open grave, welcoming me into the earth’s embrace. Terrifying, yes, but not unpleasant. My master explained his to me as an encroaching avalanche, a slow but inevitable death. His was, perhaps, the most accurate.”

     He tethered the empty pouch to his belt. He dipped his fingers into a pocket. He withdrew a gray-black stone and a small loop of dull steel. He struck them together in a sharp, backhand motion of his fist. A spray of sparks lit up the night and rained down onto the hound.

     The silvered dust leaped to life, igniting in a slow, rolling fire. Though it burned white hot, bright enough to sear my new vision if I looked directly at it, tongues of flame did not lash and leap at the air like a campfire would. The steady fire burned the demon away, layer by layer, inch by inch, eroding it like sugar in water. The powder burned bright, but it did not burn away. It clung to charred flesh, even as it all fell to ash.

     My master watched the pyre. He spoke over the crackles and pops of flame. “When the blood was fresh, you heard them more loudly than you ever will again. But the blood is a part of you now. The demons are your kin. You hear them right now, but as irrelevant murmurings in the back of your mind, no more meaningful than a cricket’s chittering. As you grow older, the blood will grow stronger. They will grow louder.”

     The burning corpse looked more beautiful than it had any right, white purity smothering black corruption. Slowly, one inch at a time, I rose to my feet. I felt weak and unsteady, but laying in the dirt a few short feet from where I’d emptied my gut didn’t hold much appeal.

     He continued. “One day the demon’s blood in your veins will grow too strong. The cries of the abyss will grow too loud. Whoever you name your apprentice in the coming years will kill you before you fall, before you condemn your soul to them. As you will one day do for me.”

      I suddenly wished I hadn’t bothered to stand. I knew how the demon hunters worked. I knew apprentices killed their masters. It was mercy, not murder, just one more protection against a lurking darkness. I knew that. The slaying was a tradition as old as the awakening. I knew it and accepted it long before I drank the blood, but hearing my master explain it again just then, so soon after my initiation, unsettled me more than it ever had before.

      “Master,” I started to protest. The older man cut me off.

      “You are minari now, Varin.” He turned away from the corpse, now burnt to mere cinders. With nothing left to cling to, the powder tumbled to the earth, ceased its burning, and lost its silver sheen, its power waning. Inert and boring and entirely absent of magic, nothing more than the dust that gathered on an untended mantle. My master placed his hand on my shoulder and gripped it. “We are blood kin now. Brothers. Equals. I’m not your master anymore. You call me by name. To you, I am Tullius.”

      “Tullius.” I said the name out loud, testing how it felt upon my tongue. It felt wrong, like waking one morning and deciding to call your mother and father by their true names. You didn’t do it. It wasn’t right. Regardless of my feelings on the matter, it was unlikely that my master would allow me to do any different. So I said the name again. “Alright. Tullius.”

      “Let’s go.” He spoke the words as an order. He didn’t want me to address him as master anymore, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t my superior. He still expected me to obey him regardless of name or title. He walked away and motioned for me to follow. “The guard will be waiting.”

      We left what little remained of the smoldering demon behind and made our way out of the forest. Tullius tried to maintain a quick pace, but it turned into an erratic stop-and-go each time he realized I could not keep up, feeling as I did. I struggled to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I managed it, even across the moist, uneven earth beneath me, but it took more effort than I ever imagined walking would require.

      The new sights in my eyes didn’t help matters, either. Everything looked the same as it always had, but I seemed to notice more of it. Every flitting nightfly stood out against the darkness. I saw the moon glinting in the eyes of owls overhead. The night didn’t obscure my sight nearly as much as it had earlier that same night.

      Even the stars, as I glimpsed them through the gaps in the forest canopy, were brighter and more alive than I’d ever known them. I had lived under the same stretch of sky my entire life, and I had seen the same constellations and heavenly formations over and over again. Never as I saw them now. They were no longer pretty decorations hanging overhead. The stars radiated strength and heat. The fires of creation and destruction boiled over one another within them, spinning with unimaginable power, primal and unstoppable. The sky itself seemed closer to me, as if just barely out of arm’s reach. My heart screamed for me to try and touch them. To reach out, take the stars in hand, and wield the power of creation to my own ends.

      “Keep up.” Tullius growled the words. They shattered my fixation. The intended effect, I was sure.

      Before too much longer, the forest parted. We stepped out onto a thin strip of springy green grass bordering a road paved with white bricks. The city guard stood there in force. A row of men, crossbows cocked and raised, knelt in the road before us. A second row of men stood behind them, torches held high in one hand and long, hooked spears held in the other.

      “Peace.” Tullius raised his arms, holding his hands aloft to display them as empty. Even to the city guard, he spoke in a commanding tone, as if it was their duty to obey him. I didn’t think he knew how to speak any other way. “Lower your weapons.”

      The guards shifted, uncertain, but they did not do as he commanded.

     They wore the armor typical of any city guard. Sandals protected their feet, attached to plates of hardened leather that extended up their shins and calves. A skirt of leather scales and gray-blue chain protected their thighs. A similarly crafted cuirass guarded their chests and bellies but left their arms bare to the open air. A length of blue silk pooled around their neck and shoulders and cascaded down their backs, blowing in the night wind. Each of them wore a blue metal helm, complete with nose and earguards that framed their faces, that swooped up and away in the back like a jaybird’s crest.

     It wasn’t armor fit for a battlefield, but Neva Cora hadn’t been one for thousands of years.

      Tullius shouted again. Louder. Harder. “The demon is dead. We are well. Lower your weapons.”

      “You heard the man.” The guard captain shouted from the center of the crowd. The only way you could tell the difference between him and his men was the larger crest upon his helm. In my exhaustion, I wondered if the crest ever gave him a sore neck. He stepped out of the guard formation. “Weapons down! Don’t stick each other in the legs this time, ‘ey? Fine job as usual, minari. We heard the boy screaming and thought the worst.”

      “He awakened,” Tullius explained. It was a poor explanation. I didn’t know what the awakening was before I went through it. Someone outside the minari certainly wouldn’t know.

      The guard looked down at me, puzzled. Then he looked to Tullius. “He’s got the eyes now. Lots of blood ‘round there. He became a man or whatever it is your sort do?”

      “Something like that.” My master nodded his head. He redirected conversation quickly, perhaps hoping to avoid further elaboration. He motioned the guard captain toward the woods. Tullius spoke with words both quick and clear. “The demon is dead, but the place of death needs to be purified. Set a watch of three men over the ashes. Choose the guards by drawing sticks or rolling stones, as we always do. Then, at sunrise, a priestess of Indora and a priest of Barthan need to clean and consecrate the earth. Exactly like that. Very specific. Do you understand?”

      The guard shook his head. “Last time it was the other way ‘round. A priest of Indora and a priestess of Barthan.”

      “That was last time. This is this time.” Tullius punctuated the point with a down-pointed finger. “A priestess of Indora. A priest of Barthan. If you get it wrong, the corruption will seep into the ground. That demon’s death will open a gate for its brothers to come and go as they please. If that happens, you’ll need more than a minari or two to take care of that problem. Do you understand?”

      “Right, yes.” The captain nodded his head. “Three men, chosen by a game of chance. At dawn, a priestess of Indora and priest of Barthan. I understand.”

      “Good.” Tullius inclined his head. “Good hunting.”

      “Aye, good hunting.” Then the captain added, “Make sure that boy gets cleaned up. Looks like death.”

      My master grunted his acquiescence and we were off, stepping past the guards with their freshly-stowed weapons. Into the streets of Neva Cora.

      My awakening aside, our hunt that night hadn’t been anything special. It had been entirely mundane, in fact. We didn’t trek deep into any dark, mysterious forest. The hound was not all that powerful or terrifying as far as demons go. Except for the pyre, we hadn’t used any sort of magic at all. We bound it with perfectly normal, unenchanted wire and chain that we bought at market for a few brass coins just before sunset. You can’t do that sort of thing with the truly dangerous demons.

      The demon’s territory had not been large. It hadn’t been running loose in a true forest, working chaos across the countryside. Rather, it had been running loose in the wooded park in the Imperial city of Neva Cora. The Imperium knew the value of grass and trees and flowers and every other beautiful thing the Mother blessed us with, unlike our neighbors to the east. While they pushed everything green and natural as far from their cities as possible, we preserved at least a little of it.

      At night with the moon and the stars above, the city slept, still and silent. Tullius and I walked in near perfect darkness, only the shifting torchlight of the guard patrols kept the night at bay. When the sun rose, however, the city would spur to life. The forum, the true beating heart of the city, especially so. That’s where we were headed.

      The forum served as host to all manner of communal activities: trade, games, politics, worship, festivals, and whatever other thing brought people together on any given day. It was not far from the park at all, and my trembling legs thanked the gods for that. Every step I took felt like the last I could ever take, but I managed to keep putting one foot on front of the other, somehow continuing to draw from a reservoir of energy that had long gone dry. Though the walk felt longer than reality and I was sure, absolutely sure, that I would not make it, we came upon the forum without any trouble at all.

     We passed the temple of the merchant god Truscus, a stout and square building of white marble inlaid with gold and silver filigree all across its length like creeping vines, a simple form in elegant clothing. Vendor stalls had been built right into the walls, carved of hewn stone rather than the lumber-and-nails stalls in the streets. In true mercantile fashion, the city tradesmen bought, sold and traded the rights to the temple stalls each season.

     We passed the temple of Khalin, god of war, laying in. Not true ruins, but ruins crafted by hand, evoking a conqueror’s strength, with shattered weapons carved of stone worked into a false, ordered chaos. Old warriors often left weapons and armor as offerings for their patron there, but the guard always removed them before nightfall.

     We passed the temple of the twin gods of Sun and Moon, a grand dais with no roof above it, surrounded by a set of fourteen grand pillars set in a ring. Dials and charts were worked into its surface in such grand detail that a man could go mad trying to decipher them without guidance.

     Then we came to the temple of Indora, goddess of the hunt. We ascended the steps to its arched entryway, the entire structure styled as a summer hunting lodge, longer than it was wide and open on all sides to the night air, its roof held aloft by thick pillars. Offerings to She of the Hunt lay heaped upon the altar within: buckskins, boar’s teeth, the antlers of stags, bear paws, the scales of great lizards, and every other imaginable trophy a huntsman might consider precious.

     A set of stairs leading underground lay at the back of the temple. I wanted nothing more than to go down below and collapse in my waiting bed, to flush the exhaustion from my mind and body. It would need to wait at least a few moments longer. An attendant of Indora rose from her vigil near the altar to greet us.

     “Varin!” She exclaimed with a wild smile, baring teeth. “The goddess told me tonight would be the night. I would hug you, but I think I’d rather wait until you’ve had a bath.”

     She was Seruwen, Indora’s chosen of Neva Cora, a fierce woman even by the standards of the minari. She wore one long, unending length of white silk embroidered with styled green leaves, wrapped around her body from just above her breasts to just below her thighs. A length of ivy tied the cloth in place across her bust. A tail of excess fabric was meant to trail behind her and lay against the backs of her legs, but she always tucked it out of the way. Upon one arm she wore a leather falconry glove. More a sleeve than a glove, really. It covered the full length of her arm, wrapping up and over her shoulder. She was all sinuous muscle beneath a dark complexion, tanned from countless hours in the sun. She did not have the eyes of the minari and the blood of demons did not flow in her veins, but that did not stop her from joining the black hunt from time to time.

     “Yes,” I agreed. I wasn’t sure why I agreed or what I agreed with in the first place. I was too tired to make much sense of what she’d said. It seemed like the right thing to say.

     Seruwen threw her head back in a rich laugh. Tullius made a mildly amused sound from the back of his throat.

     “Come, Varin.” He said. “Wash so you can rest.”

     Seruwen stepped aside and allowed us to pass. We went below the temple. I washed. I slept. If I dreamt, I do not remember it. When the sun rose, so did I.

     Tullius and I broke fast together, sitting on a bench outside Indora’s temple. My master looked to me and said, “We have a hunt today.”

     We spent nearly a century that way. Waking, hunting, sleeping, and then repeating the process. The life of a minari. A life of service to the mortal realm.

     After that, things became more complex.

I lived with my family a couple years longer. My grandmother passed away shortly after I left Wisconsin the first time and my grandfather was diagnosed with colon cancer shortly after. He’d had cancer of some other variety before that and pulled through it. He’d had a stroke and recovered some years before that, too. He’d been through a lot, but it was clear the cancer was going to get him this time around, so my parents moved in with him to take care of him until he passed away. I moved into the basement of my grandparents’ house in the meantime. The basement was nice. It was furnished and carpeted. I had a refrigerator and a stove. It made a good apartment. I paid a little rent. It was comforting and I could separate myself from the depressing goings-on upstairs when I was down there.

I had a job. I worked. I lived. I never thought about what my life was or where it was going. I did a good thing for myself, moving out to Minnesota, but I was terrified of just repeating that forever. Go out into the world, realize I’m not ready, end up crawling back home with my tail between my legs. I didn’t want to do that again, so I didn’t do anything particularly noteworthy. I worked fourty, fifty hour weeks. I came home and played video games or watched television.

Then, shortly after I turned 21, my grandfather passed away. We had to sell his home, because we couldn’t afford to buy it ourselves. My parents ended up finding an apartment for themselves and my little sister, but it became clear that there wasn’t room for me. They didn’t intend for things to play out that way, it was just what life dealt them and I hadn’t exactly put much effort into ensuring a place for myself anywhere at all. I probably could have afforded a small apartment for myself at the time, but I’d never actually rented a place on my own before, so I didn’t even know where to begin. I just resigned myself to having nowhere to go.

A pair of good friends of mine offered me their couch temporarily. In Michigan. I took them up on it. I loaded all of my belongings into one big box. One overnight Greyhound later, I was sleeping on their couch. I treated my time in Michigan more like a vacation than I should have. I did have some freelance writing that came with me from Wisconsin that brought in a little money, but I never treated my time there as seriously as I should have. I used my time there as an opportunity to just stop and think about what I was doing for once. I’m not sure if my friends realize how important my time there was to me. When I ended up leaving, I felt terrible — they’d offered me hospitality so I could get on my feet again. To them, it probably looked like I’d just abused their kindness for a few months and then ran back to the same silly situation they’d dragged me out of to begin with.

When I decided to depart Michigan for Wisconsin again, I loaded all of my things right back into that cardboard box. My friend, bless her heart, helped me carry that horrifically heavy thing down the street, onto a city bus, down another block, then into the Greyhound/Amtrak station. Do note that this box had my PC tower, monitor, and peripherals in it in addition to all of my clothes. It was not light.

She sat with me in the station. I had every intention of traveling via Greyhound. I’d been taking Greyhound for years at that point, commuting between Wisconsin and Minnesota. Greyhound was how I’d gotten to Michigan, so naturally I’d take the same method back. Except I didn’t. On a whim, I walked up to the Amtrak counter and bought a train ticket instead. I’d never taken a train.

“Why are you taking the train?” She asked, thinking me insane. “Adventure,” I replied, confirming my insanity.

So I got on the train. The train had far more stops than a bus did, which was surprising to me. You’d think it would be the other way around, but I guess not. The day was mind-numbingly boring, I didn’t have an iPhone or laptop  and I didn’t even have the foresight to buy a book for the trip. It’s all a hazy blur until my train reached Chicago. Union Station. I didn’t realize trains back to Milwaukee had to stop at Union Station. Greyhound didn’t. I had never been through Union Station and the entire experience was perfectly terrifying. It was massive and confusing and nobody seemed to understand the words out of my mouth when I asked, “Where do I find the connecting train to Milwaukee?”

Eventually, I found my terminal. Desperately pleading with bystanders for help amounted to nothing, but I figured out where to go once I finally bothered to look up from the ground and use my eyes. I wasn’t lost. I wouldn’t be stranded in downtown Chicago. I wouldn’t need to call my parents and beg them to drive south an hour to find me. I hadn’t made a terrible mistake. I just needed to stop expecting someone to rescue me. If I was old enough to end up in Union Station of my own accord, I was old enough to find my train.

I did find my terminal. I sat down in a very uncomfortable chair and set my box of things down beside me. My fingers had gone raw and started to peel from carrying the shockingly sturdy cardboard all over Union Station, but I was on my way home, so I didn’t care about that anymore.

My terminal had a little play area in it for children. Just the basics. A bright yellow slide no taller than the chair I sat in. A plastic tree house without the tree. That sort of thing. There were a few kids in there. It was late and there are better ways to travel between Chicago and Milwaukee so the terminal wasn’t the most populated places ever, but it wasn’t abandoned, either. There were kids there and they were playing and doing whatever it is kids that age do. There was one little girl that wouldn’t join in with the rest of them, though. She just sat beside her mom and watched them. No smiles. No laughter.

She was very young, seven or eight years old at the most, but probably younger. She hopped off of her seat and walked across the terminal. I don’t know why she chose me out of everyone there, I don’t make a habit of drawing attention to myself. She produced a deck of cards and held it out to me. “Go fish?” She asked. The words didn’t come easily to her, but she asked them anyway. Her mother watched me very nervously from across the terminal. I was a very large man who probably looked terribly agitated after running around the entirety of Union Station. I’m sure if your daughter with Downs Syndrome ran off to invite a scary looking man to a game of cards, you would be nervous, too.

I’d like to say I had a very kind, intelligent response to the girl’s invitation, but I made some sort of vague eh? sound instead. Her mother was not reassured. The girl asked, as politely as she could manage, “Want to play Go Fish, please?”

There were only ten or fifteen minutes left until my train home would be boarding, but I couldn’t turn her away. So I got out of my chair, turned it into a makeshift table, and we sat on either side of it playing Go Fish. She cheated a little bit. I let her. “Do you have any twos?” “No.” “I meant fours.” “Oh, sure, I have a four. Here you go.”

My boarding call rang out over the Union Station speakers before we could finish our game. I broke her the news as softly as I could, but there is no good way to tell a little girl that it’s time for you to leave when she wishes otherwise. She didn’t fully understand what I meant when I told her I had to leave. The game wasn’t over, how could I stop playing? I couldn’t just stand up and abandon her, though. “My train is here. I need to go home now. Why don’t we clean up these cards?” I explained again. She asked, “Do you have an eight?”

I am not a crying man, but I came close just then. She was sweet and wonderful and just wanted to play. How could I ruin that? Was there a way I could make this girl understand through my words? Probably not, I decided. She would do what she wanted to do and that wasn’t her fault at all. She simply didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand. Games can’t end before they’re over. So I stopped trying to explain to her. “We need to clean up now,” I told her. “You won.”

I laid my cards down. So did she. Then, with very careful, deliberate motions, she started picking up her cards one by one and putting them into her pile. Her cards were  very important to her. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t need to know. I helped her clean up our game, placing each card in her pile very carefully, knowing very well that my train could be pulling away without me at any moment. Clearly this girl and her mother weren’t taking the same train I was, because her mother didn’t seem to be in any particular rush. I could have asked her mom for help, but I didn’t. I helped the girl put away her cards, said goodbye, and walked her to her mother.

I didn’t miss my train, but I came close. I think that even if I had missed my train, I wouldn’t have been upset. I wouldn’t have missed it because I was lost and alone in Chicago. I would have missed it because I made the choice to do so. That makes all the difference in the world.

I ended up back in Milwaukee, yes, but I didn’t do it crawling with my tail between my legs — I did it with my fingers torn and bleeding from that damn box. I found a job again. I kept up with my freelance work, which transformed into an actual career. I have an apartment. My life is mine and while I appreciate having friends and family, I no longer expect them to rescue me all the time — and I don’t need the rescuing anymore.

I don’t entirely understand the significance of that game of Go Fish, but I think about it a lot. That game of Go Fish is the moment when I stopped thinking of myself as a child. It’s when I realized I needed to make choices. Things wouldn’t simply fall in my lap. Life doesn’t live itself. All of the things I’ve done to improve my life in the last few years, I link them back to that game of Go Fish.

Why? Who knows. Maybe there’s some metaphor hidden away in that game that I haven’t found yet, but it’s more likely it was just a moment of simple peace after a very long stretch of depression and uncertainty. The calm makes fonder memories than the storm.

One such recurring element is an idol or statuette. Ever since I was a kid, maybe 11 or 12, I would occassionally (once or twice a year) have an otherwise completely mundane dream interrupted. Someone, not always me, would notice a small statue reminiscent of a man built out of a substance I can only describe as greasy charcoal. It’s a dark, beckoning thing, and it would inevitably be broken. Smashed, thrown, dropped, whatever — it would end up broken by someone, usually intentionally. After it breaks, the statue would shatter into small cubes made of the same substance, floating in the air in ring formation. Touching either the statue or cubes would leave dark, black stains on your skin. Avoiding contact with these cubes, for some reason, was usually a matter of extreme importance. It would drive us into a panic at times. I remember one night, in this dream, I grabbed my sister away from these stones, looked her in the eyes and said very clearly, “Don’t touch them. Don’t ever touch them.”

Afterwards, my perception of human faces in my dreams ceases to function properly. Nobody looks like they should. Faces lose features, gain new ones, or completely lose all human proportions. I don’t mean that people become animals, I mean someone’s face pinches in half. I mean their forehead juts out a foot from their face. I mean their teeth become spikes of bone that pierce through their skulls.

I imagine this whole thing is my mind attempting to process what amounts to garbage data in the part of my brain that comprehends human faces and expression, so I attach no significant weight to it at all, but it does interest me. The mind creates all sorts of strange symbols to process loose thoughts and data while you dream, but these long-term, recurring symbols are so much more fascinating to me. What does the charcoal man signify to my unconscious mind? Is it a warning, that I am about to be subjected to something the conscious mind hates? Or is it completely meaningless? It’s certainly no omen or sign from beyond, I know that much.

It is true though that there are few things the human mind hates more than distorted human faces. It isn’t anger, it isn’t fear, it’s a base biological reaction to a thing that should not be. These faces constructed of garbage data or misfiring nerves, the mind knows they shouldn’t exist. It knows that a real human being should not have gaping holes where their eyes belong. It knows where your nose should and should not be. When things arent right, the mind rejects it. Somehow, for some reason, I’m given warning when it’s about to happen in the form of a greasy statuette of coal.

Even more fascinating to me is that these dreams have become progressively more lucid. Like I said, I put no effort into remembering, documenting, or controlling my dreams at all. But when I see the charcoal man, something changes. I can look away. I can stop myself (but not others) from breaking it. These dreams didn’t used to be that way, but my ability to manipulate them has grown with each time Ive seen that statue. Again, I see no deeper meaning in this, it’s just a game the mind plays.

I don’t consider this a nightmare. I don’t fear it, it doesn’t prevent me from sleeping, it offers no ill effects. It just sticks with me the same way it stains the skin.

Codex Alera

In my last “whatcha readin’?” post, I mentioned that I was just starting in on Codex Alera, Jim Butcher’s more traditional fantasy series. I mentioned that it didn’t grab me, and that continued to be true. I didn’t actually finish the first book. In fact, it contributed to me falling off the reading wagon — it had so little grip on me that I spent less and less time reading, until I didn’t want to pick up my Kindle at all. Maybe the series gets better after Furies of Calderon, but if I can’t get past the first book in the series, it’s very hard to find out if I’ll enjoy the rest. Maybe I’ll read a summary of #1 on a wiki and try out #2 one day, but that’s so far on the backburner that that day may never come.

A Song of Ice and Fire

I went into this series knowing I was in for disaster. One of my dark secrets is that I don’t really like Lord of the Rings. I like it in theory and I enjoy the base story and I appreciate it for what it is, but I don’t like to read things where I have to chew through every thick page to get to the next one. I want to be urged onwards constantly, and these massive fantasy tomes do not necessarily do that — that’s not their goal. They create something much larger, much more expansive. Still, I enjoyed watching Game of Thrones so I thought I would start in on Game of Thrones the novel. I read part of it, and I will continue to read it, but it isn’t something I’m going to be able to read cover-to-cover without any pauses. I read a good chunk of it and I’m taking a break by going back to an old friend.

The Tawny Man Trilogy

Robin Hobb’s The Farseer Trilogy was on my list last time — it was a trilogy that, despite its slow beginnings, I really came to enjoy, full of characters I really loved. After being in a reading slump for a few months, going back to that world was exactly what I needed. The first book in the trilogy, Fool’s Errand, picks up 15 years after Assassin’s Apprentice. Fool’s Errand is what I have in progress right now, and right within the first few pages it immerses you in the Six Duchies again. It’s like a homecoming. It feels good.

What next?

After I’ve wrapped up the Tawny Man Trilogy, I’ll go back and read a little more Game of Thrones. Ghost Story, the latest Dresden Files novel, releases on July 26th — top of my list, for sure. After those, who knows? We’ll see what time brings.

I think it also might be fun to provide a little information on my mindset when I was writing a particular piece. Maybe useful to all of you, definitely useful to me — I can look back down the road and see where I was coming from. So here is that for this part!

Forethoughts

This excerpt comes immediately after what I posted here previously. What I posted before is what I now consider the prologue. Originally the story kicked off right from there and we saw a child’s journey away from home to find her place amongst strangers in a place she’s never seen before, a place so massively different from her home that she needs to relearn how to live, essentially. Ultimately I ended up not being happy with that. That’s not the sort of person I am, writer or reader. One of my criticisms of The Farseer Trilogy was that the first half of the first book was completely dedicated to setting up the world Fitz lives in, and that wasn’t terribly exciting. Informative, yes. Exciting, no. I realized that I was repeating exactly what I didn’t like about those massive fantasy tomes: too much exposition for too long.

I scrapped all of that, kept the initial scene as a prologue, and restarted the story with the child already a young adult, living in this new world and accustomed to its ways. Essentially: she’s the same brave little girl, but she’s grown up, been through boot, and been exposed to What Lurks Below(tm).

Enjoy!

***

“You’re bleeding.”

“Oh, really?” Tylien, the elf I shared my apartment with, asked dimly. He had just climbed in the window and sat on a wooden crate in the corner. “I hadn’t noticed the blood leaking into my eyes while I walked clear across town with the gaping head wound.”

I replied with a grunt and dug into my crate on the opposite corner. You could hardly call our apartment such — in exchange for a little coin each week, an old widow let us stay in her spare, second floor bedroom. She didn’t want us walking through her home, of course, so she had nailed the door shut. Our sole entrance and exit was the second story window. Inconvenient, that.

It was a dark, damp little place with a low ceiling and creaky floorboards, but it was cheap and it was ours. There was only enough room for our beds, a chest each for our clothing, and a few small crates to hold our other belongings. Decent enough for sleeping in, but not a place for leisure. Certainly not where you’d host friends, either — and we never did. That was our rule. We never talked about this place. We never talked about where we lived at all.

While Tylien’s crate was a glorified stool that held nothing of worth, mine contained rows of rolled bandages and little brown pots: herbs, salves, and poultices. They were amateur, but they got the job done. The Academy didn’t leave much time for practicing these things over the years, but being forced out of the barracks drove me back to considering  to self-sufficiency. That was the whole point of being forced out of the barracks before ascension. The threat of living in a gutter is an effective motivator.

I took a few items from the crate and crouched near Tylien. He had removed his tunic and the cord holding back his long dark hair, so it could flow freely. He tilted his head back for me. This had become routine for us; he would come home beaten, and I would tend to it. We were both in training to be Champions and spent a lot of time together, even when we weren’t home. More people than I’d care to admit assume we’re lovers. It isn’t true. To be honest, he disgusted me, physically. He was decent enough company, but I’ve never managed to grasp the attraction to elves most of humanity seems to have. The angles of his face were all wrong, his limbs were too gangly, and the tilt of his eyes was unsettling. Beyond that, he wasn’t a bad person.He was strong. A warrior. He was kind, usually. All very admirable traits. I’m sure an elf would find him perfectly handsome. To me, though, he was another creature entirely. I couldn’t be attracted to him any more than I could be attracted to a bird or a fish.

I twisted the lid off of a jar of water and washed the blood from his face, rinsing the wound clean. We didn’t have a basin up here, so I just let it all spill to the floorboards. I set the jar aside, lifted the lid off of one of my little pots, and scooped some of the moist paste out with my fingers.

“You’re already squirming.” I scowled down at Tylien, just barely above eye level with him. He was tall. I was not. Even when he was sitting it was hard to call it looking down at him. “Stop that.”

“Do you have any idea how much it hurts when you use that?”

I pressed the poultice into the long cut — it ran straight along his eyebrow, which explained all of the blood. Forehead wounds bleed more than they have any right to. “It can’t be any worse than being beaten.”

“Yes,” Tylien said through clenched teeth, “it can.”

“If you would stop taking beatings, we wouldn’t have to do this anymore.”

I wiped the poultice remnants off of my fingers and onto a bandage, which I wrapped around Tylien’s head. He shrugged his shoulders and stood up, pushing past me. The two of us worked odd jobs for money now that we needed to learn how to live outside the barracks — you can’t take on an apprenticeship in a real trade, because that will never come to pass. You’ll be a Champion. That is your profession. There is no becoming a smith or an alchemist or a cobbler. So you make whatever income you can, where ever you can. You would be surprised how much you can make just by doing what nobody else wants to do. A housewife will give you a bit for sweeping up bedstraw for her so she doesn’t need to do it. Her husband will get angry with her for throwing good coin away on petty errances, but ask him about it later and he’ll give you a silver so he doesn’t need to lay the fresh straw himself.

Tylien did work as a translator. If an elf doesn’t live in the city, it’s unlikely that they know how to speak our tongue. They don’t teach it behind the Everwood. Any elves that come to the city for business or politics will need a translator — Tylien’s name is at the top of a short list of competent ones. In the minds of the elven nobles, however, he’s also a cultural traitor. He left his people’s ways behind for ours. Elven traditionalists will work with him, but they don’t like it. He gets beaten for it, and he just accepts it. He’s an idiot.

He rose from his crate and knelt down by the chest at the foot of his bed. “If the difference between being beaten and not being beaten is a sovereign or a silver, I’ll take the sovereign.”

That much was true, as the traditionalists tended to be among the nobility — those who held the vast majority of the wealth among elves. They’ve long forgotten the actual worth of a sovereign. Beg long enough and they’ll give you a sovereign just to make you go away.

I leaned beside the window. “Did you stop at the market at least?”

“What? No.” He pulled a clean shirt on over his head. “I didn’t think to stop at the King’s Market and pay for a meal while I bled out.”

“Damn it all,” I cursed. “It was your turn. What are we supposed to eat?”

He shrugged at me.

I shook my head, turned, and swung out the open window, climbing a rickety wooden ladder to the street below.

***

Afterthoughts

This situation is a bit absurd by design. After the heavy prologue, I wanted something less serious as an introduction to these characters. Their living situation is still a little dark, but it’s the sort of dark that, after having been through it, you look back on it years later and you can’t help but see how ridiculous it was and laugh about it. “Yes, that was awful, but I got through it.”

Some criticism I’ve received about this so far from my editor is that the world seems “dry.” My first thought was to say, “but you’ve barely seen the world yet. How can it seem dry?” Maybe that’s the problem, though. I haven’t shown anything particularly notable about the world yet, because I deemed it unnecessary — but I have shown things that aren’t that impressive. Maybe I shouldn’t show anything, until I’m ready to show the good stuff. It’s something I intend to keep in mind for future edits.

As usual, I would appreciate any feedback you all have to offer.

I picked up a Kindle quite awhile ago and I realized I’ve never really mentioned what I’ve been reading on it. Considering this blog exists, it seems like something I should do, no? I’m not going to review any of these titles, just yap about them very briefly.

The Dresden Files

I eased myself back into hobby reading by picking up a fun, simple series — Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files. It’s a series about a private investigator. Also, he’s a wizard. Wikipedia’s synopsis:

The Dresden Files is a series of fantasy/mystery novels written by Jim Butcher. He provides a first person narrative of each story from the point of view of the main character, private investigator and wizard Harry Dresden, as he recounts investigations into supernatural disturbances in modern-day Chicago. Butcher’s original proposed title for the first novel was “Semiautomagic”, which sums up the series’ balance of fantasy and hard-boiled detective fiction.

The series is an easy read and absolutely a cheesy romp — there’s plenty of gratuitous violence and sexual tension with a ludicrously powerful main character, but I’m cool with it. It’s fun and forgetting how to appreciate simple fun is one of the worst things you can do to yourself.

The Farseer Trilogy

Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy is a great fantasy series that starts off very slowly. It’s a rich setting and the trilogy as a whole was made better by it, but the first half of the first novel is all scene-setting. You’re given the background of the kingdom involved and are given an overview of the main character’s growing years, from being a small bastard child left in the care of his father’s right hand man, up to him being a teenage apprentice to the royal assassin. I have rather severe untreated ADD. My attention span and ability to focus is complete shit and it’s something I struggle with quite a bit. Muscling through the first half of the first novel was hard. Not only is my attention span shit, but there was also nothing reaching out and grabbing me and forcing me to focus — if books had a voice, the first half of Assassin’s Apprentice would have sounded entirely monotone to me. It gets better.

Once the series got going, there was no stopping the events in motion. I loved the series — and I hated the main character. You want to cheer for him, but he’s constantly fucking everything up for himself and everybody he comes in contact with. You hate him, but you still want him to win. It was an interesting feeling.

The Tawny Man Trilogy is a followup to The Farseer Trilogy, taking place fifteen(ish) years later. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my list.

Codex Alera

After wrapping up the most recent addition to The Dresden Files, I was curious how Jim Butcher handled a pure fantasy setting.  Codex Alera is his attempt at that — I’m currently reading the first novel in the series, Furies of Calderon. It’s … okay. It is far too early to say whether I like it or not, but it hasn’t grabbed me. It’s simply not interesting. I’m going to give Butcher the benefit of the doubt though, because I do love Dresden and early Dresden wasn’t the greatest material, either. Based purely on faith to the author, I’ll probably give it until book two to grab my attention.

Have any of you read this series? Does it get better?

What next?

After Codex Alera, I’ll either move onto The Tawny Man Trilogy or go back to the Vlad Taltos series. A good friend of mine recommended them to me a few years back and I very much enjoyed them, but for some reason I stopped reading right in the middle of Dzur and never picked the series up again. Considering the recent release of Tiassa, it seems like a good time to get back into them. Though I hear that reading Phoenix Guards before Tiassa is highly recommended — I haven’t touched those yet either. So perhaps Dzur, Jhegaala, Iorich, Phoenix Guards, then Tiassa? We’ll see.