story

They say that the starved wretches in the wintry South know the meaning of Hunger. They do, but only in part. To find the true comprehension of the fullness of Hunger, one must look to obscure places—to the darkened isles of Miulu, and to their god, the Archon Mephi tel-Sharvara.

He is crazed with Hunger. He can barely move, speak, or think, such is the strain of suppressing his hunger. Of course, he breaks. He must be slaked. With human souls, he must be slaked.

‘I volunteer,’ many raise themselves bravely. They don’t understand what they’re offering. They see only the benefits of Sharvara’s magic: which enriches the soil for crops, staves the cold of the endless night, and supplies the storehouses full of good products. They see the wealth of the country, its very freedom from soul rot, and the liberty of the people to dictate their own rule. They think it's only fair to give recompense.

And they see the promises: of power, of prestige, of royalty, of a word that is respected like law. They are privileged to become sane witches, the jewels of Miulu’s crown.

In exchange, in his stomach, their death will be Hunger.

They don’t understand what they’re offering.

It is the Shevra Baht who might understand, the priestly attendants to Sharvara’s hunger. It is they who feed him. It is they who drag these witches down into the dungeons. And it is they to whom Swift Kappel was born: one more servant, of many.

There is boldness and respect in sacrificing oneself for this nation. They witches are honoured, they are adored. But when the ultimate ruling comes, and the reality of damnation hits, that resolve fades quickly. They will fight, they will run, they will beg, they despair.

It is just one duty of the Shevra Baht to usher the doomed to their fate smoothly, and clean.

Swift's parents birthed him with no pretensions. They did not love each other. They had no feelings for each other. They had united solely to produce a new member of the Shevra Baht, and raised him like an apprentice, not a son. Check your posture. Do not laugh. Practice your bow. What is the appropriate greeting to the newly dead? To the old dead? What are the tenets of the Order? Recite them. Such was the way of this family, going back generations upon generations for centuries.

He was not allowed friends outside the Order. Emotions and attachments directed anywhere but towards duty were dangerous. This job permitted no independence or mercy. "How restrictive!" you may think. And you'd be right. It was.

But Swift could do little about it. These systems were all he knew, this home was all he had. Defectors soon went to Mephi. Quickly he adopted the obedience, the seriousness, the coldness, and the formality characteristic of the Shevra Baht. Quickly, his childish inquisitiveness and wonder for life was snuffed.

This was his life. He did not want for much. What he did was important, respectable. His loyalty was to the Order, to his comrades and family in the Order. One day, come adulthood, he would continue the chain.

That was his life.

One of his earliest memories was meeting Catherine.

He was six or seven. She was a few years younger. She was weird.

He didn't entirely understand the circumstances, but, she wasn't allowed to be around normal people. The dead had adopted her and were raising her at one of their shrines. Normal people weren't allowed to be there, either, and apparently she needed a human friend, and Swift was the only one in the Order close to her age. He didn't get it, but he needed to do it, and when he needed to do something he did it. So he committed himself as best he could.

She didn't seem to appreciate his ethic. She would just laugh and be silly and say he was weird and run off when they weren't meant to and get them in so much trouble and once she even pulled someone's tail. They didn't get caught, much, thankfully, but now he understood why this was work. What a terror.

Despite himself, he came to enjoy it. Through his lessons he'd think about her, wonder if she'd behave and play the games they were supposed to play or just throw the cards in his face and run into the woods laughing again. And of course he'd have to collect them but she would save one and hide it in a tree somewhere. And so he would have to find it while making sure she hadn't snuck off again. Horrible.

But, and let none ever know an esteemed servant of the Order dared to think such a thing, it was. Fun.

It was fun. Catherine was fun.

A terrifying thought. What if someone knew? What if someone someday saw into his head and just knew, and decided he was no good in the Order, and they expelled him, and he got eaten? But for his worries, no punishment came. No one said anything. Things were just normal. He attended his lessons as normal, saw to his duties as normal. Visited Catherine as normal. So it went.

For Catherine's part, when she wasn't with him, she'd either be with the dead or with the witches. Hers was an odd family, but he hardly had room to criticize. Months passed, years passed.

Then one day, out of nowhere, she announced: she wanted to be a witch.

A witch of the Masked Coven. Those who would sacrifice their souls to Mephi. The demographic the Order served, like pampered hens, until it came time to wrangle them into the dungeons.

Swift naturally advised her against it. She would die. It would be awful.

Yeah, she said, not quite appreciating his seriousness. But she was bored. She was lonely. She'd seen everything there was to see of this dumb forest. And it annoyed her there was a whole civilization of people out there she just "wasn't" "allowed" to cavort with. But she could do it if she was a witch. Nobody said no to witches.

So his company wasn't enough? He wondered, more hurt than he'd like to admit. But he kept silent. Because no. He wasn't enough. And he wasn't supposed to be so invested anyway.

Her request was approved. She soon became a witch.

So she moved away. Swift was still an apprentice, not yet prepared to interact with the witches. Someday, yes, in the future, but strictly forbidden for now. He didn't resent the process. But.

Bizarre how just like that, so easily, his only friend could disappear from his life like nothing.

A decade passed. He was a devoted student of the Order.

It wasn't that he'd forgotten about Catherine. But still, it wasn't until he noticed her offhand, during the course of his everyday duties, that he realised he'd at some point ascended to a rank high enough to associate with her.

She'd changed. Her name was Trivia now. And he wasn't sure whether to ascribe her new listlessness, detachment, and indeed melancholy to her new identity, or to the fact she'd grown up.

And grown beautiful, damn her. These hormonal years were said to be the worst in any acolyte's life. For extremely good reason, Swift was discovering, as he stared down at his soiled palm. This was weakness. A pleasurable – weakness.

The urge to reconnect – as if their friendship had ever been anything but an obligation, to ensure the resident feral girl had some age-appropriate socialization – burned at the back of his brain constantly. How had she been? What had she gotten up to? While the rest of him, the sensible and disciplined rest of him, pressed down with a mantra: THAT IS A TERRIBLE IDEA. THAT IS A TERRIBLE IDEA. SHE'S NOT YOUR BUSINESS. THAT IS A TERRIBLE IDEA.

He vacillated, agonized. In the end, she chose.

"Hello. Are you new here?" she asked.

She didn't even remember him.

"My name is Trivia Venn. We haven't spoken, so..."

She didn't remember.

Which made things simpler, but...

Protocol. Forget everything. Follow protocol.

Swift bowed his head. It's my honour, mistress. I am privileged that you might use me.

"Oh? Then yes, maybe you can help me," she began. "I've a rendezvous with a man, tonight..."

What

"...But I have been waiting ever so long, I fear perhaps he has died. Would you ease my heart, and fetch him for me?"

With all respect, 'a man' is a rather vague description.

"Oh yes, yes. Well, if I were to describe him..."

Yes?

"He was a horrible man. He would not even hold me."

Well.

It would take quite a daring soul to attempt that.

"When I was hanging from a cliff, he stomped on all my fingers."

How well you recovered.

"Only my fingers, I am afraid. My spine is still broken in six places."

A blackguard indeed. This is to whom you are bound? How might you stand it?

"Ah, I might not!"

Truly unfortunate. Well, it happens I've also a rendezvous tonight, with a woman.

"She's a slight luckier than me."

She's here. You are ridiculous, Catherine.

Then she snorted, and she laughed at him.

Over the past decade, she had more than sufficiently explored the "civilization" her younger self had, for the span of about a week, lusted for. She'd had to make her own fun since then. And she hadn't always done a great job of it.

Otherwise put, she was bored. Miulu was only so big, there were only so many people, novelties only lasted so long. If anything her most persistent hobby was to pester Sharvara. Because she could. Of all things.

Hardly worth the tradeoff of eternal damnation. And though she never outright called the whole thing a mistake – Swift couldn't imagine how it wasn't.

But look at him, caring. She'd gotten into her own damn mess. He had his place, his purpose. And her lack of these things had been her downfall – indeed, just another case of insufficient guidance that had let her wander stupidly into her doom. So there was a truth and a lesson here. Impulsivity was a weakness. Discipline was strength. Once again he should be grateful for his birth into the Shevra Baht.

Should be, should be, should be. Still.

What to call this feeling. Disappointment? That she had degenerated something so dismal. Wayward and so morose. Almost as if some promise had been broken – though he knew that a ridiculous thought.

And still, still, still. Even as an echo of herself, she only had to say something foolish, or smile her sly little grin, or let the moonlight fall on her silhouette, and as if commanded, he would smile back, joke back, desire ways to be with her more. That was all it took for his every guard, his every principle, for every touchstone of who Swift Kappel – devotee of the Order, servant of the Archon, he whose heart beat only for duty – was, to melt to nothing.

It was unnatural. Rather, it was too natural.

He couldn't keep seeing her.

He couldn't get away from her.

Apparently his torment entertained her. She would appear exactly whenever he didn't want to see her, always with some asinine task she could very well do herself. Of course she was entitled to use him however she wanted. But when her wishes were always, could you fetch me that apple? Oh, no, I meant that other one, or, oops I dropped my bracelet again, could you pick it up for me?, he could only imagine she was targeting him on purpose.

Then she'd smile, and joke, and the moon would trace her curves. As if she hadn't an idea in the world what she was doing. But when he told her this couldn't continue, that they were not friends or children, that she was master and he servant, she just tilted her head in confusion. Then told him to come look at some frogs she found.

Incorrigible.

He requested he be moved to a post far from her residence on the Night Isle. At least now she couldn't innocently wander in on his business.

She of course showed up two days later and got right back to pestering him. He snapped. If she was so tired of everything here that she had to keep harrying him, why didn't she just leave!? He was mortified even as the words left his tongue. She wasn't.

Just in that same listless way, she said that was a very horrible thing to say, and she had nowhere particularly to go to, and everyone she cared about was here. Though veiled in her usual roundabout phrasing, subtext was quite clear to him.

She was scared of being alone.

And curse her.

Curse her, curse her, curse her. Word of Swift's insubordination reached the Order before day's end. Curse her, curse her, curse her. Raised his voice to a witch. Impermissible to pass without punishment. Curse her, curse her, curse her. With each stroke of the cane, again that thought echoed. Curse her. And curse him.

Through some grapevine or another, she heard about the beating. Her absence, when he recovered enough to return to work, should have been a relief. He'd as much asked for it. Naturally, because heaven help it if anything worked out for once, it was not.

She was isolating herself, is what it meant. At the very least, from him. When she had seemed to favour... or perhaps, enjoy his company.

And, well. You know.

Well.

No. He didn't really know.

But it was apparently very painful for her. When he'd been the one to mess up. Punishing herself for his failure. How was he meant to interpret that?

Not his problem. Not his problem not his problem not his problem not his problem not his problem not his problem not his problem not his problem not his problem not his problem not his problem not his problem not his problem not his problem not his problem not his problem

Was she at least seeing someone?

He woke up, and wondered, Was she alone?

As day passed, he wondered, Was she alone?

He lay in bed, always wondering, Was she alone?

And at some point he had to wonder – was he alone?

He had peers – comrades in the Order – though he'd confess he did not regard them much. Rather his simultaneous respect and apathy towards them was a point of pride. So many brothers and sisters who loved him and not one he particularly cared for. Oh Swift Kappel, so dutiful. Swift Kappel, so devoted. True to his forefathers, an unassuming paragon of the Shevra Baht.

That he of all people had slipped up made waves. It's never the ones you expect, someone murmured. Fellows in the Order soon invited him for drinks, curious to know what on earth had happened.

I am going mad, he confessed after more than a few cups. Incessantly, my thoughts are harangued by that woman.

Their reaction was not so exceptional. This was a common problem, they assured him, with an easy solution. They advised he visit the red light district and spend some money on a professional.

It was something of an open secret that the Order frequented these institutions. Swift never thought much of the practice. Even as he found himself partaking in it, he still didn't.

Don't misunderstand, the girl was skilled and beautiful. But if only her breasts were a little larger, hips a little plumper, hair a little shorter, and she had those endearing freckles. Overall, he left with the impression that Catherine's skin, cursed as it was, was most likely softer.

When his fellows returned and asked if it had helped, he smiled and assured them it had. They clapped his back, and nodded, and the less disciplined among them laughed as they began regaling their own escapades with lust and hookers. Somehow, it was in the middle of all this camaraderie, that Swift, for the first time he could remember, truly felt alone.

He was afflicted with something – severe. Something a quick lay couldn't solve, beyond what any of his peers seemed to have experienced. If he tried to explain it – though frankly he hardly grasped the situation himself – he doubted they would understand. Moreover he had to marvel that they, so emotive and loud and at times disobedient, had not fallen victim, but him. It really wasn't ever the ones you expected.

But, proudly, he was still Swift Kappel.

He met with the Master of the Order in private, determined to solve the conundrum.

I am in love with a witch, he confessed. Even now I worry for her well-being.

The further Swift exposited, the more haggard the Master looked. He explained he had no cure for feelings, and in fact none existed. The best they could do was try to keep them separate, stay mindful of the issue, and keep up the regiment of visits to the brothel. From there it would be on Swift not to let these emotions of his further influence his behaviour.

There was no mention of expelling him. Naturally. His childhood conception of the Order had been somewhat over-dramatic.

But it left him with no solutions or progress. Only the reassurance that nobody could do anything for him. So he was left again to ruminate: How is she doing? What's she been up to? Is she okay? How much am I to her? What does she think of me?

Ad infinitum.

Months passed. The girl he usually visited abruptly disappeared. She'd retired from the business to become a cook, or something else of that nature. While it was of course a paid service, and an incredibly replaceable relationship, Swift couldn't help but be stunned that her absence, for no good reason, made him furious.

The urge stabbed at him to hunt her down and – he wasn't sure what, exactly. Snap at her. Slap her. Explain to her that she was his prescribed treatment, and regardless of her efficacy, that taking her had reassured him of his efforts against Catherine. He was Shevra Baht. She was duty-bound to stay. Something to that effect. He knew it was lunacy.

Again his peers noticed. Again they took him drinking. This time they diagnosed him with the fatal condition of 'needing to lighten up'. So they took him to a play.

Something of a novelty, an acting troupe from the Kingdoms of Asphodel was passing through the country on an ambitious international tour. Not that Swift was one for novelties. But seeing everyone else's enthusiasm, he couldn't quite say no. Quietly he suspected they enjoyed having an excuse to make a party of the occasion. Well. If nothing else, they were fun to watch.

His peers, that was. Not the play. The play was awful.

Truly, awful. Several people left before the halfway point, others persisted for the sake of politeness. Swift felt a handful of his party, even, restraining themselves from mocking it as it proceeded. Being noted representatives of the country, such an outburst would be intolerable. But, lord.

The jovial atmosphere of the group had turned cold, and formal, and awkward, and even sad by the end. Some apologized to Swift afterward. Others tried to recoup their losses on humour by privately mocking it now that they were free to. It was truly, an awful play.

The problem wasn't the story itself, or the acting, or presentation or anything like that. As far as Swift could judge, they were all passably good. The problem was the language.

Outside of their home country, they had opted to perform in the lingue franca of Kierparle. Unfortunately, while they could manage good diction, their word choice was incomprehensible. Actresses wept for the ‘relish of their zests,’ not speaking of lemon confectioneries, but the ‘loves of their lives’. And that was only one sentence. To understand the whole required a Kierparle-Kierparle translator.

Fortunately, Swift Kappel was a translator, and of more than Kierpale. He acquired the script in its original Asphodelean, rewrote it to Kierparle over three whirlwind nights, and more impressively, bestowed it to the troupe without it seeming a snub. Floored by superiority of Swift’s translation, and comforted by that night’s performance when the audience actually cheered, the troupe adopted his version forever. Their ‘thank you’ to him was tickets.

Two tickets. To their next play.

Quite perfectly the number for himself and for Catherine. Tickets crumpled in his fist, Swift seethed at the universe’s connivingness.

The simple existence of the tickets anywhere near his person weighed incredibly ominously. Somewhere in the night sky, a saccharine matchmaker was ferociously giggling as he purled a red string onto his needle. One skilful yank, and she would come: Catherine. With a characteristically uncharacteristic interest in something so inanely unusual, like Asphodelean theatre.

He would not, of course, invite Catherine to anything. She may be moping, lonely and miserable, (and oh! The pang of his heart!), but the thought of himself slobbering to lighten her mood at least disgusted him enough to assure that he would not do it.

But unless he could dust his hands and say, “What a shame. I’ve no excuse to treat you to anything,” he would surely find himself seated beside her, pretending he was watching the stage.

The tickets to his heart—whoever held these, held his future. He wished he could snort at his own sudden corniness.

Snap the thread, Swift Kappel, and fight back at fate! Go ahead and dump those tickets!

But he could not find the ingratitude to scrunch them up and throw them away. So some cheekier, looser apprentice—that was the mark he must pawn them off to, and may whatever bacchic consequences of owning this fanciful curse, land on their head.

Else he would have given them to someone outside the Shevra Baht, but he knew nobody outside the Shevra Baht. He hardly even knew those inside the Shevra Baht. That was the order’s professionalism.

Surely, though, this youth—“All the way in Asphodel? I can’t take a vacation.”

I know this one is free—“An interesting change of pace. Very gracious. I can’t speak Asphodelean. You know that, Swift, what are you up to?”

Then the customs stewards, who dealt with tourists—“S-Swift Kappel! Oh! You mean, for training in more casual Asphodelean vernacular, with practical application? And with your instruction, too? That’s an incredible privilege... but... why both of us? Who’ll fill our roles? D-did the Master really clear this?”

His hasty retreat followed that.

He swirled through alien streets full of people, eyes hazing at the ever-dawn sky. There were still the civilians, untrammelled by the Order—

“Shevra Baht! Come, come in, welcome, yes, we bow to you to our bellies. How may we serve, the one who serves the Odious, who further serves us our meals? Ah, no? No, you bring us a gift? Ah, tickets to Asphodel? For a play? For me and my wife? Ah, but it’s this sort of story? Ah, no... no, with bloodshed and ghouls... my knees will rattle out of their joints, far too scary...”

Indeed.

It irked Swift that such a trifling work, to discard some paper scraps, was proving so inordinately hard. Where were those undisciplined acolytes who gasped awe at his name, Swift Kappel? Why did the drunkards and boisterous clowns suddenly feel more responsible than him? For not one stranger blared as a saviour, reliable with an extended hand, when he truly needed it, to reprieve him of these cursed tickets.

The timekeepers clattered the bells and snuffed out the streetlights. Swift knelt at the dinner table of his family home, and after grace to Sharvara, split his chopsticks.

“Father, Mother. Might you care for a visit to Asphodel? I was given these tickets as a reward.”

They stared like wordless stone titans. His younger sister let the silence saturate until he was soaked, as was soothing, in the family’s typical reprimand.

“Just rip them up,” she said primly, then disappeared behind her upturned rice bowl.

She surely would. The girl knew nothing of art.

Swift proceeded his dinner with the impassive precision of a machine. I partake fuel for my fallible body. Satisfied, his parents’ heavy gazes shifted to his sister, with sweat beading on her neck, for the chunks of rice she plucked that were a little too large, swoops of the chopsticks that were a little too eager. Swift estimated—knew—that her mouthfuls overstayed on her tongue for 0.6 seconds. She yet, and always had struggled, to suppress the pleasure of food.

Their parents finished and vacated the room with the implicit command she extend her meal. Lessons in their household were usually taught through inference and observation, which at least cultivated considerable skill in inference and observation.

Swift laid his chopsticks across the rim of his emptied bowl. He raised noiselessly from his heels, as though his feet had not gone numb.

His sister’s round eyes peeked up at him with just a crease of distress, and more than some admiration.

He told her, simply: “Improve.”

Sitting on his bed, then laying with distasteful casualness, Swift stared up at the tickets.

He pressed them to his forehead.

All this ridiculous running around. Was there any wrinkle in his life’s tapestry that could not be ironed flat by the Master of the Order? The ability to forfeit such issues to higher authority was the privilege of a slave like him. The image of what he was crafted to be, too, was already perfect.

He pinched the corners of the tickets. One sharp tug, and they’d tear apart.

Instead his thumb traced over their faces as if over a butterfly’s wings. His sharp gaze softened, and his mouth slackened into a strangely delicate frown.

It wasn’t devastating like Catherine. But he did quite like poetry. Passion was how he finished that script in three nights. Hobbies menaced the Order, but were far from taboo. They were an indulgence, like alcohol, to be partaken lightly, frequently, and without aspiration of making it all that one did.

He would have refused any partaking of this mild interest had its kindling not been an accident. Hours of study, thousands of texts, hundreds of translations he penned into tenfolds of languages, over only a handful of years. Still not a prodigy. The yearning to become one was ultimately why the Master cancelled Swift’s prospects as a liaison, translator, border guard, or ambassador. After all that.

And yet the satisfaction of scribing a well-formed turn of phrase...

Some flicker in his heart could have been a poet.

If he ran to the tower, indeed, the Master would solve this. He’d lock the tickets in a box in his office, kept with the finality of a casket’s interment. Certainly a solution. Not one that felt like ‘help’.

He knew he had been avoiding it.

Swift retrieved a small, ornamental porcelain chest from his room’s tasteful lineup of old gifts and trinkets. Squinting, he inspected the tickets again. If he could convince the Master to truly use these to go on a linguistic field study with the younger acolytes...

Hope was a strange thing.

With a sharp ‘click’, he sealed the tickets inside the porcelain chest: enshrined, and not entombed.

Days, and then weeks passed.

Insulated by the pleasant dream of tutoring his juniors in Asphodel, Swift was hesitating to kill his temptations: those tickets. ‘This study trip is how I reject Catherine without losing my soul,’ he boasted inside his own head. Fantasies of the adventure whorled and whorled and whorled like stirred honey, a solution so sweetly, engrossingly tantalising.

Yet upon his return—the visions clicked off—and there before his eyes was Catherine still existing. From what devious angle would the next arrow hail, of the menacing cupid, that he must frantically bat away like a flying bug?

He hadn’t even secured the trip. If the dream was so captivating and powerful that he could only imagine the Master permitting, ‘yes’, why was there such an itch of procrastination? Every day he didn’t disarm these tickets was another day Catherine might appear, and like an eagle, swoop him away.

Anxiety rose.

Seated upon his bed, as seemed oddly ritual, Swift again opened his porcelain box. Inside were the tickets.

His face wilted into a weak, resigned frown.

Even if the Master refused his scheme, the pain and weeping he’d doubtless endure for the eradication of his heart as a prospective poet or translator, was still magnitudes less destructive to who ‘Swift Kappel’ was than any risky bonfire that involved Catherine.

(For the Master quite knew Swift’s proclivities, and it was a principle that personal ambitions be quashed.)

(Sharvara must be fed.)

Dim light seeped through the paper-screen windows in the silence.

He placed the lid upon the box with a light ‘click’.

With the smoothness of a waterfall, he arose. With the majesty of a cliff, his face steadied. With the solidity of stone, his heart cooled. He shifted the box from his hands to his pocket, nodded to himself, and, braced for a vicious rejection, left to seek the Master’s tower.

And should he never see these tickets again, he could call that the end of this caper, and say plainly that he had grown up.

It was upon the pathway to the Master’s tower that everything so nondescriptly collapsed.

He was serenely trotting through the field, then like thunder before lightning: boom. Catherine.

She bowled in like a hurricane, and plummeted to Swift like a brick. Her clothes were wet with sweat and dirt, and her mask hung slightly askew.

Swift’s spine straightened and his tongue pasted to the roof of his mouth. (Pro-to-col).

She panted, out of breath, speaking in quick confession, “I’ve just seen quite a production—,”

His neck-hairs prickled: danger.

“And it’s quite enlivened me with a love for the theatre—,”

A scream was swelling in his mind, bloated behind his grit fangs.

“What would you wish of your servant, Mistress Trivia.”

“—it’s become a burning desire of mine to see a stage production before I should die.”

“Shall you die?”

“I surely shall,” she said.

“Mistress Trivia, it is also my job, to process feasts for Sharvara.”

She shivered and exhaled a nervy breath. “Are you doing that now?”

“I believed so.”

“Ah, then, if you’re not quite occupied...”

“Indeed. What was your wish? For a chaperone?”

“Ah, I wish for a friend, to take me on a date.”

Catherine!! Swift bit his tongue and squeezed his eyes shut. “Those you’ll not find in the Shevra Baht. Might I beg for your clemency—I was to report to the Master of the Tower.”

“I think I shall report too,” she said, coiling into step beside him. “I’ve sudden thoughts to give of this priesthood’s customer service.”

Though likely a joke, Swift’s heart sizzled with terror as they departed for the Tower. Speaking professionally, his attempt to ditch her had indeed been unprofessional, and merited reprimand. Even if somebody died, even if Sharvara went mad—a witch’s will should rule all. But he did not know how to receive Trivia even a little without being hooked by her playful mystique, or goading her on.

And moreover... his eye trailed down her form (smoothly tracing the hills of a valley).

Curse this flame, ‘curiosity’! She was so haggard and bedraggled in filth, but his guts shouldn’t be melting with concern, to touch her: Catherine, what happened? ...That sent you running to me, but what happened?

He wrenched his gaze to the horizon, to the Tower, and screaming in his thoughts he begged: Help me!

Swift’s internal distress was astonishingly unapparent as the pair calmly rose up the stairs to the top of the tower. He knocked to enter the Master’s office.

Inside was an austere room, made of cold stone bricks that sucked up the starlight. On the ebony shelves behind the Master’s desk were silver compasses, golden clocks, jewelled astrolabes. The masterpiece was the Master himself. Enigmatically bright and yet grim as the shadows, his congeniality was somehow always more terrifying than his parents’ obvious harshness.

His gaze landed on the pair, ‘ah’, then on Swift with comforting authority.

“Master,” Swift bowed. “Lady Trivia has come seeking an escort to bring her to a play...” he hesitated to continue the joke, then resigned, professionally, “...and to complain of our customer service.”

“What’s the trouble, our Lady?” he nodded sharply to Trivia.

“I feel quite crestfallen and not much like nobility. This fellow offered me no perfume, gold, laurels, or apricots, though I thought my desires quite plain on my face.”

“All such delights may be surely provided to you through the Order,” Swift said. “Yet I’ve a contention with a word you used: date. For love I shan’t give, least not through an order.”

Catherine’s eyes twinkled so brightly it shone beyond her mask. While Swift basked, the Master seized.

“Ahoh! Well! A date. A date! Swift Kappel, you’ll quite date the Lady. If she asks, you’ll even kiss her.”

The Master’s smile widened. An incredible, bitterly paralysing pressure fell upon Trivia. Everyone in the room quite knew of her curse. It was a dangerous thing to allude to. Why, though, was he targeting her?

Swift held his tongue.

“Love’s not so unreasonable a demand. We are property,” he continued. “I would even pare my heart out of my chest and present it to you right now, Lady Trivia. ...In fact, there’s many in the Order who would follow you so, gladly and zealously. Your choice truly is Swift Kappel?”

The pressure sank on her like filthy water. Weakly, without confidence, she squeaked, “...I think I should choose him to the end of my life.”

Just her usual strange choice of phrasing. The Master’s brows popped up with a nod.

“Alright. Then, Lady Trivia, this matter of a play—?”

“—He’s also quite funny. Even if I could have your heart, I don’t find you quite funny at all.”

“Would you like me to be very funny?” he said seamlessly, settling into his chair.

“...I am piqued,” she admitted.

Swift could not tell whether he ought be whipped or celebrated—for the fire of rage that abruptly blazed up in him against the Master, or for his utter perfection in concealing it.

“Are you much the actor?” Trivia continued.

“I am always, utterly genuine,” the Master fanned out his hand.

“—That will not do. I was indeed seeking a play, and there’s little play to speak of without acting.”

“Hm—like the tongue of a jackal,” he leaned forward onto his desk. “Were you contemplating a specific theatre, or would you like us to arrange something for you?”

“Forgive my incursion, but it is these, Master.” Swift stepped forward and presented the box. The Master’s eye slid like a knife onto Trivia—and seeing her relaxed, he settled himself.

He inspected the tickets. “In Asphodel!”

“Ah, yes...” Swift glanced guiltily aside.

“I’m afraid I’ve grown woefully tired of the domestic theatre,” Catherine explained. “For our endemic drama is truly quite droll. I seek a place where the stage might be fresh.”

“Exotic indeed. Kingdoms, war, and knights. Bloodcurdling stuff,” he muttered, scrawling notes in his logbook. “In two months’ time, Larkeshire, Asphodel.”

“Ah, and since we are eloping, I would quite like also to see the world’s sights. I have heard there are seven. I shall live in miserable dissatisfaction until my heart has seen each, for I have heard they are so wonderful, the dead turn fitfully in regret to have missed them.”

Catherine!! Swift wanted to yowl. Though unlearned in geography, those sights were transcontinental. This ‘trip’ had just swelled into years of a ‘journey’: what other conditions would she drop on him?

“And I should like to leave before noon tomorrow,” she finished. Once all was said and the Master acknowledged her will, for the will of a Witch was absolute, she departed from the room as whimsically as she had arrived.

The Master stared after the door. His jocularity vanished immediately.

“We’re sending observers,” he said.

“Y-yes sir.” Heat rushed to Swift’s cheeks. “I—apologize, and beg you forgive my weakness. I should not have let this,” he accepted the box with the tickets, “munition gestate.”

“Just don’t aid her if Sharvara calls it. If it’s the most you can do, simply stand back and do nothing. You’ll get out,” he advised, pointing at Swift. “Although...”

“Master, I must ask. She seemed very distressed when she came upon me today. Did Sharvara call her?”

“No. Today, it was someone else. It’s odd timing.” His chair creaked as he leaned back. “There must have been some affair; I’m sure it’ll reach me before midnight. I’ve not seen an attempt at oathbreaking so blatant.” His gaze lowered to his logbook. “Quite a precipice, Lady Trivia tiptoes upon, and with impressive finesse. I’d look a fool voicing concerns of this to Sharvara; he’d rather, even, eat me.”

Better he does, flashed through Swift’s mind. His hands and teeth grit in distress.

“She is quite like that,” he boasted instead. Said in plainer words, maddening.

“I’m finding. Well, in my own way, I’m familiar with Lady Trivia, too.” He smoothed his hand over his notepad and tapped it once, punctually. “Now you, best go pack up quickly. We won’t be seeing you back for two months, quite likely longer. Bring shades and sun protection, also. It will take your body several days to adjust to the light outside the isles.”

“For the Lady, as well?”

“She’s one-half Asphodelean, and has a mask. Prudence never hurt us, however.”

Swift nodded, bowed, and gasped a breath to voice a formal gratitude for his dismissal.

“One last thing, Swift Kappel,” the Master interrupted, tilting his head. “If, or when, her call comes, it is enough for you to do nothing. However—if you cannot steady your mind, to be ready to be the one who kills her, with your own hand... you may be in danger, of being unable to just stand aside. Rehearse it in your thoughts. And be careful.”

His gaze upon Swift was oddly knowing.

In the silence and the dark, as if sucked into the Master’s level gaze, the heat and the light within Swift’s ribcage drained away.

Unsure if he himself meant it, but aware the Master was right, Swift nodded, soberly.

Swift returned to his quarters. As he packed for his sudden adventure, the rationality that presided around the Master pulsed more and more into panic.

Catherine was in incredible danger. She had been, of course, her whole life—and Swift had certainly considered that she could randomly die, all the time. But to actively be in the Master’s crosshairs... the chains of the dungeon were clanging. She could be locked in them very soon.

Yes, it was her own fault, yet...

Just one little infraction, one deviation from schedule, one critical word even from Swift himself—with the Master’s advice, deemed as an Oathbreaker, she’d ricochet to the top of Sharvara’s call list.

She better be serious about this fanciful trip of hers! He better get stuck in the seats of a stage play beside her, tormented by the glow of her body heat... and the waft of her scent, and her dainty hands upon her lap, so close he could sneak a touch...

No, no, no! Swift gnarled his fingers through his hair. And given the condition of her skin, that last image was particularly deadly!

And this nonsense about killing her—it wasn’t nonsense, his brain immediately flipped. But when he tried imagining his crossbow pointed at her... he’d rather the bolt reverse and shoot through his own neck. So he could never say an eloquent word again! But let him gurgle as she swooped to cradle him, that he might snuggle her breasts, even if he turned into a bat...

He shoved papers, ointments, booklets into his satchel. His sister idly passed him his hairbrush.

If things went well, he’d be for stuck years with Catherine. Stuck for years, with Catherine! Already warm bubbles rose in his chest. They’d be marching through the world’s most scenic environments—fields of heather, grand sloping cliffs... no! Her caprice, or strategy, was dastardly. He could not even tell whether she was running from her obligations, or truly taking a vacation. How could he possibility defeat this?

That he might have to kill her was not nonsense.

It was not nonsense. But...

Swift’s sister stared at him from the bed like a dead owl.

“My coat,” he requested.

She folded and passed it. Then stared.

“Your company, dear sister,” he stuffed the coat into his pack, “is not much consolation.”

“You’re not acting much like yourself,” she said.

Yet she had decided, as whimsically as Catherine, to become a voyeur to his grief in this moment. “I have said that I’m in love. A dismal condition.”

Her stony face did not even flinch.

There was reassurance, in that. There was familiarity, in that. Her outer blankness mirrored perfectly the wastes in her ribcage, with a starkness that conceded nothing.

He smiled.

“You may be a proper young woman, when I see you next.”

Only the most minute twitch of her eyes. Impeccable. And yet a smidge of her soul slipped from behind the facade: Don’t be silly.

“I am quite serious.”

“You’re speaking to ghosts, brother.”

Though his smile tempered on his face, in his heart he grinned further. Catherine’s company would be a constant seance with the spectre called ‘subtext’.

Forte of his family, another language of which he weaved fluently.

Foolish Swift Kappel, putting his heart in a box, an object made to be opened! But Catherine would not poach him yet. Let his soul become illegible, hidden behind a screen, and a gulf of mistranslation perplex her, until his dry and spartan dialect rendered her simply too bored.

Then let his own diction deceive himself, to say that he truly felt nothing but ice.

And let him achieve it by the virtue on which he most prided himself: discipline, keen as quicksilver.

Sleep came, midnight passed. He and Catherine met for their departure an hour before the waking-lamps were lit.

His discipline impressively held, that day. He did not rise to a single joke, nor follow any one of her enticing, silly provocations.

“Ought we not stop at Atabazas?” he asked. For the Atabazas Glaciers were one of the world’s seven Wonders, and the only one native to their homeland of Miulu. Situated a short hop away on the Twilight Isle, whenever an aurora struck, the glaciers would reflect rainbows of light through each other dazzlingly. To stand amid them was to stand inside an impressionist painting.

Folklore said that any promise made amid these auroras would certainly come true. More than simply tourists, they attracted romantics, merchants, warriors, and mystics from all over the earth.

“I think I shall keep them to the return trip,” she replied.

And he nodded, and the matter dropped perfectly from his mind.

They crossed the border and customs. They hired their coaches, found rest-stops and inns.

Already the novelty tugged with excitements and suggestions of ‘pleasures’; a world full of things more than just ‘work’, seemingly even more upon Swift than on the sombre, gloomy Catherine. Because it was him, and not her, inquisitive and whimsical her, who marvelled quietly at something as simple as the rustic, foreign architecture of the inn where they lodged, or the padded earth of the town’s streets.

Or the tweed of the blankets, and the cotton of the pillows. A whole universe of peoples, societies, and cultures existed with characters and circumstances so disparate from Miulu’s.

Of course, Swift would boast that his home was his home. But the revelation that a certain compound unique to one area dyed the earth red there, and the characteristics of a local plant fostered a particular sheen in the papers made from it in another, and that the lacemakers learned their particular patterning technique from guild artisans three hundred years ago, that it represented this or that, or commemorated this or that, or was practical for this or that, or was exquisite for this or that, truly blew his mind with the thought that the world was indeed very large; that history was very close, its phonemes very diverse, and that hearts throbbed in each stitch of linen.

Sunlight and morning blazed over Swift for the first time in his life. The day cast everything with a strange sort of warmth and revelation.

The tropes and symbols and myths he had scribed from hundreds of inkstained epics were living reality. The components were there. He was one; a Shevra Baht cultist! The droll imperceptible ticks of everyday living were the raw mineral, and refined poetry the faceted jewel.

What a breathtaking thing was the world.

So he meditated while rubbing the strangely foreign high-ply sheets of his strangely foreign elevated bed in the strangely foreign oak-log inn (with glass windows), completely unable to do his homework of imagining himself killing Catherine. The whole prospect of bothering had already dissipated.

Not that it seemed he needed to try. Though not against the world, his discipline did hold against her. Of her own accord, she spoke less and less, looked downwards more and more. Some gloom of depression had mired her.

With the same perceptiveness by which he saw tiny variations in wood, dirt, and stone, he caught every one of her sighs and her silences. She was already flagging? What masterful work.

So heartless, Swift Kappel.

Soon it came to Swift Kappel a resentment for the Shevra Baht.

It snuck up on him, as much as did his his growing appreciation of beauty. Though far from a painterly captor of art, anyone would concede majesty in the sights they now traversed: cliffs, canyons, beaches, meadows, truly beautiful things, often with beautiful spirits nearby. Locals, eager to share their lore, or adventurous booky tourists, like them.

And these were not even a tenth of the seven wonders, purportedly! What stories were writ about those?

Miulu had its own sights, but certainly nothing Swift was permitted to bask in. The tales behind the sights were also all dismal. ‘That is where Sharvara saved us, so we feed him and have a festival.’ ‘That is where Sharvara saved us again, so we feed him and have a festival.’ ‘That is because Sharvara gave us the gift to avoid the soul’s death.’ ‘That is because The First Apostate quartered the world and left us as runoff; technically, this nation ought be uninhabited—ah, but then came Sharvara.’

Tales of Sharvara returned to his diet, and his diet returned to the steely ministrations of the Shevra Baht. Their dungeons were the floor of the country. Their chains strangled more than just witches. The very prospect of ‘going home’ soaked Swift's intestines with bile.

Amid cliff-sides and forests, orchards and rivers, under sunset's dye, Swift’s focus slid away from sceneries of world’s awesome majesty to settle instead on the silhouette inside them, of Catherine.

Every speck of grandeur felt more and more a simple backdrop in which to envelop her.

And she was discordant; she was morose, amid vivid flowers, a cowled widow in black. The icy casing around his heart started to drip. With her head bowed low before peach-coloured clouds, he knew she was feeling regret.

She spread her hands to a horizon of tulips, waving in the breeze.

“And yet I will rot in a beast’s stomach,” she said.

“Indeed,” Swift coolly grinned.

She bit her tongue and looked away from him.

What pained him most was that she did have a joke, but refrained to speak it.

It did simplify everything for her to so regard him as Shevra Baht. She had become terse and wary of him, although he had not invested great effort for her to be so. Avoiding her playful enticements was easy when she was simply too mournful to offer them. If taking Swift had been pre-planned, and not just the instinctual impulse that Swift now suspected it was, she was not using it to much advantage.

But through the seams of his fraying screen of professionalism, he could not quite push it out of his mind, that he would like to hear every one of her asinine jokes. There was a strange intelligence in them, and whenever she spoke them, she glowed.

Whenever they did return home, the greatest solace would be her, flowing again in top form. Though he would not be allowed to think in that manner.

Yet, the vast brightness of this daylit world, until she too shone with light, surely offered her far more material.

By the end of the first month, Swift’s frigid heart was melting. Frosty waters sluiced down and chunks of ice crumbled in his hands. It had grown aggravating. Catherine’s depression—it had grown aggravating.

What is bothering you? Or, does this sight not interest you? Or, are you not enjoying this journey? Or, are we going to quit before seeing even one wonder? — none were the right question to ask, and none blazed like the fire in his heart. The fire in his heart rather wanted to slap her.

I’ll not be her jester, but she is quite more than this, he decided. He coolly began to inspect her from over the rim of his closed fan, waiting to sight a glimmer of her soul, judicious.

“Are you staring at me?” she asked, sitting meditatively in a motel bedroom.

“You are just very beautiful,” he answered.

She crinkled her nose like a fly had perched on it.

“It’s only truth.”

Set upon her lap, she thumbed her death mask. “Tomorrow,” she said, “I think we shall go west.”

“If you wish. That is away from Larkeshire,” he seated himself on the opposite bed, maps rehearsed in his mind. “And the next settlement is far. We may miss the performance.”

She flopped backwards onto her bed, with arms folded upon her forehead. “If we miss it, so then we have.”

“The observers will expect you to have pursued the concert.”

“Is it quite damnable of me to change my mind?”

“You best plan an explanation.” He laughed lightly to himself. “Insofar as you would plan anything. Deviating your own rules will undo you. So easily you’d give up, Catherine?”

She eyed him dirtily askance, as though unsure to his motives. Clamped shut inside her mouth, another jest wilted and died.

Through the pain of an ice pick into his chest, Swift smiled and fanned himself leisurely. “You’re very unpleasant when sullen. I would not like to share that journey either.”

Her brow crinkled. “Well, I would still like it.” She turned over. “And I would like to be a jackal. They do not worry of things.”

“Alas, my lady.”

“Perhaps if I were quite stupid, I could wander where I wished and nobody would mind.”

“The woe of celebrity.”

“But sadly I am tremendously stupid. I’ve accepted power from the hand of a Devil, and surveillance from his gnashing goon.”

“Were the wisdom of children much to envy, the world ought flip upside-down.”

“Most swear to him when they’re wrinkled and wise,” she smiled grimly. “In a race to the finish, have I outpaced at a sprint?”

“Indeed. If you stop running.”

She hugged her pillow, not seeming to hear him. “They say the eyes of a Witch are blightful; but his are truly the worst. I have seen into the Hunger of Hell itself. Even a glimpse, before we signed our contracts, would starve our nation to death.” She inched her head up. “Have you ever been close to him, Swift Kappel?”

Swift snapped his fan shut. “His affairs are far above me, Lady Trivia.” Then rolled his neck. “I hear you were irreverently soppy towards our dreadful Master.”

“It scares me.”

“Rationally.”

“And I’ve no consolation beside me, in this horrible man.”

He grinned. “Is it not a compliment to your sense? Should you wish for irrational words, you’ve plenty to provide for yourself.”

She squinted over her shoulder at him, unable to pinpoint from his careless tone how offended she ought to get.

“It is truly horrible, Catherine.”

She slumped a surrender upon the sheets. The next day, they departed that place and went not west, but east towards their original destination of Larkeshire.

“I changed my mind,” she said, standing beneath the signpost at the crossroads. “Planning even one mite destroys me.”

By the time they reached the performance at Larkeshire, Swift’s discipline had dissolved completely. Every day and every thought was a heart’s pang of wishing she would just smile.

The Shevra Baht? Those dead-faced machines? What were they? Beside the splendour of a field of tulips, of a sunset, of the violet curtains raising, of every tiny twitch and smile and word so particular to these foreign people, that spoke clear as the thrum of a heartbeat: I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive. What were the Shevra Baht?

Not something Swift could comfortably endorse anymore, or call a desirable thing.

Still being himself, he did not hoot but only grinned as the curtain closed and the audience applauded, with a sly eye to Catherine. Who was hugging herself and staring at the ground. Her departure from the theatre was wordless, and her silence in the motel that night was equally numb.

The observers would follow them soon, and would want their report.

They remained several days at Larkeshire to receive the observers. Who arrived like a small flock of crows, out in the town square, conspicuously black in their cloaks: two Shevra Baht and a Masked Witch.

They herded Swift and Trivia to a small lakeside garden like sheep. Though there was a bench, nobody sat.

In the silence usually reserved for small chatter, boats drifted along on the lake. The Witch took in the novel sight of seacraft with a grinning, hefty breath. She was well-known: Anberlyn of Dragons, a somewhat maniacal philanthropist with powerful magic that well countered Trivia’s. Hence, more than the sightseeing, the reason she became an observer.

A witch’s motives were always opaque, and Anberlyn was not known for cruelty. But cynicism, or realism, whispered to Swift that hers were unpleasant.

It was the Shevra Baht who spoke first. “Lady Trivia, how is your day?”

“Quite miserable. Tourism is an arduous work when moving only in circles.”

Swift held his closed fan to his lip.

Anberlyn tossed her head. “Hah! Trivia, darling, ever our twister of riddles.”

“I have made it a resolution, yes,” Trivia explained, cycling her finger over her palm, “that in this town, I shall move only in circles.”

“However shall you get anywhere like that!” squawked Anberlyn.

“Very circuitously,” Swift supplied easily.

Trivia paused for a strange second.

The other Shevra Baht continued, “and did you quite like the play?”

“Oh, yes, I enjoyed it tremendously,” she said. “It was so vivid and colourful, I am perhaps sated more by it than by all the flowers to pluck in the world.”

“Your joy is full? Will you return home, then?” the Shevra Baht asked, lightly confused.

“Ah, no,” Trivia started.

“There are yet several more landmarks that the Lady thinks may fill her heart over to bursting,” Swift interjected.

Behind her mask, he could feel Trivia crinkling her nose. “—Yes, and I wonder if that might not be a wonderful way to die, by so much joy that my heart pops.”

The observers fell into quiet bemusement. Trivia, herself too taken off-guard, steadied herself quickly with a nod of the head.

“—I fear I shall not be satisfied until then, and that any other means of death would simply add to my distress.”

“So morose!” chirped Anberlyn. “Dear Trivia, you’ll be in constant distress if you’re thinking of death all the time.”

“I quite love him, sadly.”

“Who do you mean? Death? Our Dark Lord?” Anberlyn’s shoulders scrunched with her whole, masked face. “I hear that equation with umbrage! Lord Sharvara’s not quite a walking volcano.”

“Indeed, he is worse, and more noxious.”

An odious sort, Swift refrained from quipping. With his closed fan to his lips, he watched the grave Shevra Baht. The turn in the conversation, and Anberlyn’s receptiveness to Trivia’s meandering speech, had derailed their sobriety from seeming topical.

“Hmp!” Anberlyn tutted. “Trivia, darling, I would love to talk, and I’m glad to have joined you for this little rendezvous, but there is a spot of business we need to uphold.” She looked to the elder of the Shevra Baht. “Well, what do you make of this? Talking so ill of the Master.”

“I judge that she’s fine, Mistress Anber,” the elder said. His gaze levelled on Swift. “I have concerns about this one.”

“He’s done little but talk,” Trivia moaned, stretching herself upon the lake’s railing.

“And yet I sense he has overstepped, somewhere.”

“Upon a fox’s tail, or over a crumbling cobblestone?” Trivia wondered. “There’s many vague somewheres to which he could misplace himself. I fear he might have to stay put at this lakeside forever.”

“Lady Trivia, I speak not vaguely, but in matters of protocol,” the elder warned.

“Ah, what matters, when who shall I have to join me in my journey of ecstatic grief? The loneliness would surely swallow me whole, and consume all sparks of joy before they could kill me.”

“You truly are grim,” commented Anberlyn. “On such a fine day, too.”

“If you wish to have Swift Kappel...” the elder started.

“Indeed. I truly do,” Trivia said. “It’s a conversation I have spoken before, but I quite like to walk in these circles about him.”

“And I haven’t a clue what it means!” Anberlyn chirped, then leaned in. “But it sounds so profound.”

“Very well. As you will,” the elder grunted, then switched. “Swift Kappel.”

“Master,” Swift attended flawlessly.

The elder looked at him warily, then shook his head. From his satchel he withdrew a small, onyx box—a soulcatcher vessel, one of the fifty-three mystic tools of the Shevra Baht. The soulcatcher would capture the soul of any dead witch and bind it to the box, in a comatose state, as a deceptively advanced familiar. This binding would slow the process of soul rot until the witch’s soul could be delivered to Sharvara, for his consumption.

It was a wicked tool, as were most Shevra Baht tools. In his trip to Larkeshire, Swift had been equipped with three of them: a tracker, a magic dampener, and a toxin to render Trivia comatose should she abruptly rebel and flee the observers. For utility, defence, and disabling.

“You’re certain that you’re able to use this,” the elder said. “Yes, Brother Kappel?”

“It is gift of which I’m unworthy, to be entrusted an artefact of such prestige,” Swift knelt to receive the box as though placing a ring upon a maiden’s finger. “The master’s trust is priceless.”

“But you can use it, correct?”

“Correct,” he stood. “Very much so.”

One of the many technicalities of speech he had abused in his life, masking the whole truth with a partial. Could he? Yes. Would he?

Ideally, no.

“It is another grim shadow over my life, to witness these men plot my death here before me,” Trivia said, “although I cannot much blame them, since I have already been doing so before them myself.”

“Your sacrifice is a noble thing, Mistress Trivia,” the younger Shevra Baht said, very earnestly, and with full admiration.

“I am glad that I get to travel,” she said.

“The first straight word I’ve heard from your mouth!” Anberlyn harped.

Swift pocketed the box with a grin to Trivia. She, again, looked away with chagrined disgust.

Utility, defence, disabling—now, killing. Should she deviate from the professed itinerary of ‘tour the world’s wonders,’ he better fix her right. Not that there was a designated route to this journey, nor could one be strictly imposed if the Mistress’ intention was to wander to and fro at her leisure. But if a seditious word about hiding spilled from her mouth, or damage came to Swift or his tracker: it was her soul, on Sharvara’s shelf, in a box, in a month.

“We ought depart,” Swift suggested.

“Ought we?” Trivia moaned. “Perhaps I am glad for the company.”

“Truly, darling Trivia, our party is best soon heading off as well. Not that I don’t find the catch-up quite ravishing! Once you’re home you’ll have so many stories, the whole town will gather to hear them.”

“And I would be the star of the play,” she wondered aloud.

“If you think you could act! We’ll be the little galaxies, orbiting you,” Anberlyn chuckled, then eyed the Shevra Baht. “Though, if you wish to spend a day out with us, I don’t think these boys could say no.”

“Whatever is your will,” the elder Shevra baht affirmed. “Although, with all respect, I would like to know, for our records, your next destination. I could never presume which of the seven wonders has first captured your tenebrous fancy.”

“It’d be an honour to be so used,” the younger chirped quickly.

“Shush,” the elder said.

“I think I shall wander to a wonder as blown by the wind. I could not tell you which one is next, or where. The order has no particular requirements, except that I do mean to visit. Today I am moving in circles, perhaps tomorrow, I shall be out of this place and fancy a diamond, or a square.”

A matter of degrees, Swift’s brain sketched for later. There was a joke about compass points lurking somewhere in there.

“Understood,” the elder said such plain dejection that Swift thought it, though not unprofessional, very unsightly. “Then, that being all of our business, if you would like us for entertainment...”

Trivia declined, “I think I will find my own games.”

The observers departed, then so did Swift and Trivia. While the Shevra Baht returned home, the couple engaged in the more ambitious adventure, to anywhere except home.

She was strategic. To garner trust in the first years, she struck off two of Seven Wonders quite quickly. But after that...

Indeed, after that...

Weeks, and then months, and then years, meandered labyrinthine into decades. The third Wonder was checked off in Year 22. Seeing true joy seep from Trivia, Sharvara was being lenient.

The only frustration Swift had about it all was that she didn’t see how genuinely cherished she was.

It was somewhere in Year 2 that Swift Kappel admitted to himself that he adored Trivia Venn. Oh, he knew intellectually. His body reacted to her perfectly, incessantly, obviously. But it was when the wistful yearning steeped through him for a life of more of her, of her personality, of her wit, of her self, of her smiles, that he conceded Trivia Venn’s wellbeing was the purpose of his own life.

So he committed. Anything to ease her, he gave. Anything to build her, he said. Anything to sacrifice, he sacrificed. His only line was suicide, as that robbed her of a guide and a friend. Otherwise it was anything. Anything. Heavy loads, stupid jokes, deep conversations, bad meals. Devotedly, everything.

She didn’t get it.

She didn’t trust it.

Yet my only spark of company: the Shevra Baht’s mirror of an old friend, hunting for my soul, she misjudged.

So he made her trust.

He proved himself in Year 16. It was the year he threw off all restraint. He became very obnoxious. ‘I do love you.’ ‘You are darling.’ ‘Now, but if I were to choose a nickname for you, it would be mon cherie.’ She at least kept her vomit inside her mouth well enough that she didn’t dismiss him completely.

He’s just kidding, she reasoned. This is a fresh tack of foolishness to entertain me.

But he was not kidding.

That was the funniest part of it. Swift Kappel was heaving bags, seriously, dispensing wisdom, seriously, disarming hazards, seriously, and leaking sugar, seriously. It could be a game.

But he was not kidding.

And Trivia Venn’s eyes snapped open on that day, when he shattered the soulcatcher over his knee, yanked her hood over her face, and planted a kiss deep in the crook of her neck. Her heart thrummed with terror. Did he touch her? But: Oh.

He isn’t kidding.

He isn’t kidding. He isn’t kidding. He isn’t kidding. HE ISN’T KIDDING.

HE COULD HAVE DIED.

HE ISN’T KIDDING.

He withdrew and what she saw was Swift Kappel, whole, human, and grinning.

She touched her own neck, and shaken, what she said was, “You monster.”

So Swift Kappel was serious. He actually had disavowed the Shevra Baht, would support her against them, and loved her.

What a terrible thing to see love as a weapon, and a devoted friend as a warrior. How much worse to destroy that friend, and drag them like an anchor to the grave.

That was how Trivia saw it. To love her lead to only one destination, the one to which she herself was inexorably bound: death. Down every corridor she saw, being joined to her led only to death, death, and death.

Year 17, 18, 19 were the years of shaking and reckoning. The years of tension and earthquakes. Trivia Venn would not allow Swift Kappel’s traitorous heart to love her to death.

So she hexed him.

She was a witch herself, after all. A spot of malevolence in her heart was obligatory.

His body began responding to others they met. That pretty woman at the tavern, that compassionate farmer’s daughter, the elegant actress: each their own throb in his chest and rush of endorphins. Yet for the lust imposed on him, he never flirted a word. Instead he laughed over the attention from Trivia, and chose her, again.

So many tedious chores. So many awkward silences. So many journeys into the most boring lands ever. But with her there, they always were fun. His inspirational juices flowed.

He just never left.

In Year 22, they stood at the cascades of a rainforest waterfall that tumbled into the mist. Beholding the majesty of the sight, Trivia sighed, looked down, and glumly conceded:

“I think you are winning.”

Trivia gave up on hexing Swift soon after that, and reasoned that it came down to her. If Swift wouldn’t leave of his own accord, if he couldn’t be pressured away, it was on her to order, as the Masked Witch she was to the Shevra Baht he was: ‘leave’.

“I’d quite die equally if you consigned me to that. You may, of course, slot this defective cog back into the machine; but one or the other will break—and what am I but one small defector?”

Why did it feel like he knew so much more about her, than she knew about herself?

“For I have watched you so obsessively that my mouth may serve as a mirror. I will tell you all your flaws and your beauties if you merely ask.”

And if she didn’t, quite often.

What is the ugliest thing about me, then?

“That you are attached so to death.”

Somehow...

Somehow, she was beginning to agree with that.

Trivia Venn looked up into a bath of light. Here in a glade in an oasis in the North, the amber sun shone oddly temperate and comfortably mild in a sky of cerulean blue. Like a hen nestled upon her eggs, the warm air nursed orchards of olives, apricots, and figs.

Something opened in her heart that found the sight unpretentiously beautiful. No cynical counterpoint: ah, it is so lovely, but I’ll surely die—instead, it is so lovely, and I wish it were mine.

Was the unsightly corruption inside her soul a metastasised cancer, or only an infected stain?

Trivia closed her eyes. These were dangerous questions.

She had to choose between Swift and Sharvara. Sharvara, her old lover, (but maybe, not her first), in whose death and in whose gloom she’d been cradled and crying for years.

Or daring, silly, serious, devoted Swift Kappel, who was promising—dreams. But if it was between his dreams and Sharvara’s nightmare...

She shook her head. She still couldn’t decide.

She needed a pure Shevra Baht. One of those shallow puppets who’d celebrate to shove her into Sharvara’s maw. Someone who could validate the morose tint to all she saw in life, and remind her constantly of nighttime, dungeons, and graveyards. A boring Shevra Baht.

Who could suck her down and make her boring and uglier too.

But woe to her, she always was the coward.

To dismiss Swift Kappel? She shivered and trembled stock-still.

She never could cross the line of possibly losing a friend.

And so she became his.

Time worked its horrible magic. Months eroded the walls of her heart like a river smoothing a stone. Year 25: Perhaps Swift was right. Year 26: I do want to live. Year 27, a year of admission: if I ever could have children, I would like them to be his.

He was weaving fables and she was dreaming pipe-dreams. With the terrible hex on her skin, one brush of intimacy—much less a hug, or a kiss—could turn him into a puddle of ash. Her body was fallow ground for children. Even allowing for some scientific miracle, her accursed hex would transform any child she bore, too.

She wept the more that she thought of it. She poured out wailing screams. Year 32, the year Trivia Venn realised that she wanted motherhood.

And Swift Kappel was saying bold things.

“I assure you it will happen. Your own, from your own body.”

“Are you speaking with the mouth of a God, like an Easterner, now, Swift Kappel?”

“Like an Easterner indeed,” he bowed. “I will bring my tongue to the West and the North, and around all corners if that should clean up your body.”

“That’s quite disgusting.”

“I hear no objection.”

“I do object; a God who would run his tongue over me is one among my greatest fears.”

“Merely one, now, is he?”

“I am quite scared of falling, beasts, violent monsters, the ocean, dark tunnels, suffocation, and house fires.”

“You are very brave to journey even out of your bed.”

“There are horrific things hiding there, too. But lately my mind has been stuck in my bed. I have even begun to imagine...”

She trailed off.

“Yes?” Swift prompted. “You’re now trialling creativity, Mistress?”

“Not that,” she laughed, and, smiling softly, thumbed her mask on her lap. “...That you may not be joking about this, as well.”

Grinning, she put the mask on and playfully mimed claws: rawr!

Swift chuckled perfunctorily in the back of his throat. She would see that he was quite serious, and that this was more than a game. For, if loving Trivia Venn meant reaching for the impossible, its fulfilment was truly assured. Anything love demanded, was possible.

For if love could melt the Shevra Baht he had been, he knew that precept was true.

So Swift believed and would keep on believing. When the burden weighed heavier, he just believed stronger.

Year 43. Trivia Venn broke down with refreshed dread. After accepting and dreaming for years that she might have a normal, happy life, the reality clawed through her thoughts that she was regardless bound to Sharvara.

Even if they spent all their lives in hiding, even if they removed the hex, even if they indulged in a storybook idyll for years and years as her magic extended their lifespans... it would all be wiped out by Sharvara.

He’d find her. Then he would eat her. He wouldn’t forgive her. He was too much a stickler for laws.

What she saw, 43 years ago, was a vision of his heart, which was Hell. Eye contact with Sharvara, that day, led her to peer into his soul; and feel the thousands of spirits trapped inside him that he had consumed. They were stuck in utter terror, boiling in molten tar in a realm of absolute black, while a massive lupine beast rampaged and tore them apart eternally. They were all in pain, burning, scared, violated, starving with maddening hunger. There was no peace or satisfaction. Whoever they were in life, all they did now, for eternity, was scream.

Trivia had recognized some of them and had known them in life to be happy people. They were not happy now, nor would they ever be again. She doubted they could even conceive ‘happiness’.

And that would be her, also. That doom was what she sold herself to when she agreed to witchhood, at age seven.

Maybe if she lived a joyful life with Swift, she, in that darkness, could stare up at the memory of her own life as if gazing up at a beautiful star, and call the sight ‘satisfaction’.

She was not a noble enough person to truly do that.

She was a coward. Her focus would be battered towards the horror and torture around her and upon her, like everyone else. She wouldn’t forget him. But she would hate her existence.

Not a glimmer of humour in sight, Swift’s mouth flattened. “We shall fix this.”

“So are the words I did hope to hear,” Trivia said. “But however could this pact be...” ...annulled, or broken, she splayed her hands to indicate herself, struggling to find the best words.

Swift paused with his fan to his lip. “You understand Lord Sharvara better than I. But here is what I posit. The promise that binds you to him is the promise of witchery; that is what binds you, in this transaction.”

“It is,” she nodded. “Power, status, and liberty, by witchhood; those were the presented benefits.”

“I reason, then, if you were not a witch, he would have no claim to take you.”

“And no motive,” she added quickly. “His palate only desires witches and sinners. I would suddenly become quite distasteful.” She frowned slightly.

“This is the theory. I find it robust. Truly there’s hope, Lady Trivia.”

“It would ease my heart immensely, if the status of ‘sinner’ could be as transparent to me as the status of ‘witch’.”

“Leave it aside, Catherine. Should he bring you before him, first before his stockpile of obvious sacrifices, I would fight him on every technicality. I’m not ignorant of the law, myself.”

“Be quite gentle with him,” she urged, then sighed.

“Regardless, Catherine...” then he broke into a tickled smile.

“What’s so funny?” she smiled back, and laughed.

“...you took quite the premise, with merely a shrew’s squeak of resistance.”

“That I could stop being a witch?” She asked. It was like saying ‘stop being human’; not completely impossible. “I see no life in fretting about it.”

Swift beamed a grin and fisted his fan to his hip:

“Truly, you’ve begun to believe me.”

Their journey continued. Tension like a gasp held for several years—44, 45, 46—with an air of panic from Swift. With their goals set: that were, free Trivia from her pact by abolishing her witchhood, and remove the hex upon her so they could romance properly, (the precedences of which shifted by the week), he wanted them achieved immediately.

The very solidity of their desires made their possible destruction feel more tangible. But in reality, nothing had changed to increase or decrease Sharvara’s likelihood of randomly summoning Trivia.

For it all, Trivia contentedly proceeded at a laid-back pace.

“I know him. He won’t interfere; he’s waiting for the Seventh Wonder.”

As if to prove it, she shortly routed their course in Year 47 to the Fourth Wonder.

The word back from Sharvara was total:

‘Glad you’re having fun.’

So they proceeded, and Swift slowly relaxed. He too eventually caught on to the lackadaisical nature of their journey, with Trivia terming her slowness ‘making the best of witchery while she still had it.’ It was a very optimistic, and hopeful view.

And it spoke greatly of her character. It may have been euphemism for, ‘I’m unsure how to yet achieve my goals’, but it also was honest. She wanted to bring good while she still could effectively.

For Trivia’s magic was powerful. Especially as a doctor. She could cure otherwise incurable diseases, mend dementias, end cancers. Between all the travelling, if not for her wit, then for her powers, she had become famous.

Even kings sought her out—even the divine kings of the West, blessed Asphodel.

And even suspicious tribespeople saw her worth—even those so-called shamanistic gods of the East, world-bending Palidans.

Every corner of the world knew her, sometimes unfavourably, but mostly not. ‘The good witch from Miull and her rude, pale servant.’

Well, Trivia certainly was a good witch, though Swift would take issue with ‘rude’. He had become a slight braggadocios, speaking to these foreigners with a laconic tongue. But it was only to cloak the real audaciousness of Trivia, whose quiet brand of daring often went completely unnoticed beside him.

With every subtle little joke, she shone, and Swift’s heart just thrummed even brighter. He loved who he had become by her contact; himself, in greater total. Dimensions once impoverished of ‘artfulness’ and ‘bravery’ and ‘jocularity’ harmonized beautifully with his established ‘dutifulness’, ‘decorum’, ‘discipline’ into a brilliant mosaic.

What he once called 'the tapestry of his life'—his identity—revealed itself as barely a patch. There was so much more to life and so much more to him. Indulging it, and discovering it, and discovering her, was rapture.

They solved political disputes, economic troubles, family woes, countless illnesses. They remembered capers and peoples for decades, as Swift logged their adventures in poems. Small towns fading from relevance were immortalized in his pen. Had the Shevra Baht known, he would've been quartered. There was even a time when he would've quartered himself.

Instead, he had grown up. When you had very little to start with, love nourished real maturity.

And for it all, they’d managed to dodge arriving anywhere with a fanfare. That was Trivia’s skill.

But surely with all that adoration, someone significant must owe them a favour. Year 64: Wonder Five went by. Year 71: Wonder Six. Once you became, as they had, responsible for the birth of more than one god, ‘curing witchhood’ ought to be child’s play.

And indeed it was.

In the right place, in Year 80, the right person appeared.

Her name was Nashira Rakel.

Whispers about her wove to their ears around the end of Year 78. She was a powerful shaman from Palida, of the tribe Valleys-Through-The-Mists. Fortunately, Swift and Trivia had met that tribe some decades before, and helped them solve a complex marital dispute. Palidans remembered favours and slights for generations, and access to a tribal shaman from the Valleys was one they hadn’t cashed in yet.

The first thing they did was confirm that Nashira really existed.

The second was confirm was that her specialities were truly her specialities.

The rumour: Nashira Rakel hated witches. She was cursed to hate witches. From age 11, she’d been the victim of a flawed invocation that blended her soul with that of the Archon Sharvara. She fortunately escaped only with blunted emotions and an intense hatred for witches, otherwise remaining herself.

She channelled that hatred into her shamanistic practice: she hated all things witchcraft. Nobody burned with the passion to cure a hex like her, and nobody else had the coal smouldering in their fire to truly try curing witchood. She was already studying the idea and mostly lacked a test subject. It might be novel research, but she had a good list of credentials.

The dim stars of Miulu spangled the sky over their heads.

Prisms of light, like through a faceted gem, speared the world with rainbows. Auroras snaked lazily with oranges, pinks, and emerald, such that every colour soaked the couple, the ice, and the night sky. The Atabazas Glaciers were beautiful. They still could not rival Her.

Swift knelt on one knee to Trivia. Whether the legend of this place was true or not, the oath he spoke would never be broken:

Will you marry me?, he said.

And Trivia, in the brightness, she smiled.

The proposal had been somewhat pre-planned. Once Trivia decided to formally end their adventure, by checking off the Seventh Wonder in Atabazas, the script for what Swift ought to do wrote itself.

Year 80. The start of their life together. The end of their journey. More than a decade for each Wonder, but it was formally done. The Shevra Baht would want them to properly report home at the Dusk Isle.

They didn’t.

Instead they diverted for Palida as promptly as they had arrived. After a spell of confusion, the Shevra Baht at last blew the whistle. Oathbreakers! Defectors! Trivia’s name rocketed to the top of Sharvara’s dinner list, and observers hastened to catch them as would hunters chase after their prey.

Good luck, you furious brigands, for you’ve made wily, quick jackals your game.

Greeted warmly by Valleys-Through-The-Mists, the pair journeyed into the mountains and entered the grass hut of Rakel. She was clearly a strange woman: with pink hair, yellow eyes, and no clothes except undergarments and a lab coat. Yet for her eccentricity, she was also very skilled and intelligent.

Lackadaisical herself, but seeing the pair’s urgency, she diagnosed Trivia quickly. Indeed she did have solutions – albeit, experimental ones. Two very rare reagents—Asphodel Blood and a mystical herb called Lifeweed—could theoretically end Trivia’s witchhood. Theoretically.

Now, she had Lifeweed in her stores, but to acquire Asphodel Blood... she’d see them again in fifty years, after they’d amassed Western accolades, gentryhood, knighthood, land...

“Then I am fifty years early, though the West would not call me a Dame.”

Trivia revealed the vial of Blood they had acquired years prior.

What.

Rakel was floored.

A slow grin crept over her face.

“Alright—alright. We can begin this posthaste. Would you be especially willing to owe me a favour for my Lifeweed? Or rather...”

Seek it yourself, with hunters on their tails?

It wasn’t a clear-cut decision. “I couldn’t owe you a favour, but I could become your friend,” Trivia settled on.

“I quite like that,” said Rakel. “The support of a wise friend is worth many favours. And yet, for the abundance I gain, I’m not cheating you. Now! Here’s what I’ll need you to do...”

Rakel demanded that the pair focus first on Trivia’s hex. To cure it, she would need material from the witch that had hexed her—fortunately, that witch still existed, and dwelt even in Palida. Sealed underground in the shadows of a drowned city, it would still be quite an excursion to reach the creature and retrieve the reagent. That it was so close shouldn’t be seen as convenient.

Meanwhile, Swift could concentrate on establishing a hiding place in the mountains. They wouldn’t need it long, but Rakel required some time to complete the treatments, and any second standing still was a second the hunters gained ground.

So each departed: Trivia to the dark watery underground, and Swift up higher in the mountains.

Trivia’s task was arduous. Swift’s was far more simple. Still, it had its own difficulties.

The most arduous thing for Swift was his awareness that the Shevra Baht coordinating this chase was his sister. She had overtaken charge of their case long ago, certain that Swift would openly defect, and determined to erase the shame not just from the family, but from the priesthood and the nation in total. She was, of many things, a real Shevra Baht.

So he could figure what she would overlook. Which was to say, very little. She was a ruthlessly thorough person, driven by insecurity that Swift himself may have engendered. She would turn over every stone to find them, and then blast a hole in the mountainside.

It was time for tricks.

Or perhaps ‘sorcery’ was the fairer word, to infuse the practice with well-deserved mystique. Summing together all the information he’d gained in his travels, and all his poetic eloquence, he orated an invocation to hide a particular cave from notice. Energy spiralled like spilled ink around the cave’s mouth. Rakel’s servant stood wide-eyed and floored. From the tongue of a novice, a true invocation. It worked. His job was done.

Trivia’s was not going swimmingly. Swift deduced so from the slow hours: second upon second as the sun slanted down, and orange eventide swallowed the day. Footsteps scuffled across the rocks as the pursuing Shevra Baht arrived and surveyed the mountains. They ran right past Swift’s hovel, but were setting up sentinels all around the area, and at Rakel’s hut.

Swift’s innards twisted.

To post guards up here meant they knew about Trivia’s quest. She was too late. On her return, they would catch her.

Unless—unless...

He would quite like to prove himself with some great act of daring, but wisdom demanded restraint. Instead of leap out and distract the hunters, or perform more sorcery as Rakel’s servant insisted, he quickly penned a note and promised Rakel’s servant lessons on diction.

The servant raced down the mountainside to Rakel.

Swift was left to fester in dread, thumbing stones, and readying his crossbow.

Thunk. Shhlt.

A man squawked in shock as his own clothes yanked him backwards. A light scuffle, an impact of a fist to his chest, and by the time he recovered from wheezing, his wrists and ankles were bound tight with a cord.

Swift stripped the hunter of his tools and left to find the next mark. There on the next curve of mountain—a sentinel, alone. With his crossbow out, Swift steadied his aim.

Thunk. Shhlt.

Another surprised squeak, witless by the abrupt attack. Swift sprinted to disable the man, tie the cords, his heart nonetheless aching with the knowledge this resistance would not be enough.

He could disable every Shevra Baht left on the mountains, but if they caught Trivia at Rakel’s hut, it was for naught. She had to see the threat early and slip away. With the Shevra Baht only placed singly up here, the main party likely was at Rakel’s.

Hence he had sent Rakel’s servant with a message to warn Trivia, and direct her up to the cave. But Rakel herself was a wildcard. Whether she’d help them or their pursuers was completely unreadable.

Thunk. Shhlt.

Another Shevra Baht down. With four disabled, in a hunting party like this, what remained should be four more hunters and the party leader—his sister. Swift took aim at his next mark.

Thunk—

—Pain, seared across his raised elbow. Shhlt. In his panic, his shot went wide. A vicious cut bled crimson across his arm, and there lodged in the stone behind him was a crossbow bolt. Following its direction, Swift looked down and saw the impassive face of his sister below, staring back.

With her own crossbow pointed at him, intended not just to disable or wound. Swift immediately pulled back to dodge the shot that would have sunk into his chest.

His erstwhile sister, ever the brute.

Frenzied movement blitzed down below, and Swift too was energized by the furore. His sister was no doubt coming to pursue him, and in his hunt he’d drawn himself far from his hiding spot, instead towards Rakel’s hut. He could simply run, but he could also do better.

He retreated as much as he could to the pathways above Rakel’s hut. His sister arrived, with crossbow drawn, and he raised his hands. Blood showered from his cut.

“A shame,” said his sister. “If you abandon your weapons and come with us quietly, the Master will settle this issue with five flagellations.”

Her crossbow’s bolt gleamed.

“I’m aware, dear sister,” he bowed his head in practised theatrics. “Through my head, for many days, I have had thoughts of nothing but the punishments awaiting my failure.”

“You failed decades ago. ...You won’t be permitted back into the Order.”

“I had—ah, no presentiment of ever again joining.”

“You’re bleeding,” she said, and levelled her crossbow. “Choose quickly.”

“My sister, I’ll tell you truly.” His head woozed dizzy. “Should I surrender to you, or should I collapse here on this spot, I’d rather spend my last minutes standing stock-still to buy more time for my sweetie.”

She squinted with the slightest hesitation—but her fiery temper prevailed. Aim secure, she pulled the trigger.

Thunk—Shhlt—and a great rumbling peal, as a wall of rock arose between Swift and his sister, blocking the crossbow’s shot. Swift’s sister’s eyes widened slightly. Below, furious, was Rakel.

Easterners despised violent bloodshed, and death itself as the worst of defilements. For an upstart Miull to come to her mountain and dare attempt murder solidified Rakel’s stance on the conflict, threat of the Archon Sharvara or not.

A token of cultural knowledge that his sister would overlook, too aware of death’s light consequences for children of Miulu. She blubbered to explain, but:

“Go to the cave!” Rakel called. “She’s come and gone; I’ve sent her there. As for the rest of these rabble-rousers, they’re mine.”

Heart leaping, Swift took her instructions. There couldn’t be that many hunters left. With Rakel’s backing, they truly might escape this conundrum—assuming he didn’t bleed out first.

Secure himself, then Trivia. The order of priorities pained his heart.

Braced against the mountainside, he tied a tourniquet of clothing scraps secure on his arm. And he ran, as fast as he could without losing his footing on the mountain path’s perilous edges.

The cave came into view.

Hope flared. He glanced in as he passed; Trivia wasn’t inside, and noise and shouting was coming from further ahead. A bad omen twinged in his gut—Trivia’s voice! He sprinted, unceasing—

Just in time to catch her wrist as she, sprinting herself, and pursued viciously by Shevra Baht, tripped and hurtled off the side of the mountain.

He cartographed her face in his memory as though clicking a camera shutter, every second.

Time seemed to slow down, and he appreciated the effect.

First: her surprise. And then her grieved offence, an expression teeming with the sentiment: you dummy, why?

His grip and his footing were firm as he grinned. He could pull her up, but already he understood that expression.

The wrappings she wore on her forearms, to cover her cursed skin, were shredded. Her encounter with the witch had been violent, and she hadn’t the time to replace them. In gripping her wrist so firmly, he was, for the first time in his life, and for the third time in Trivia’s, directly touching her skin.

The locus of her hex, which hadn’t been cured yet.

Strength drained out of Swift’s fingers suddenly as tears welled in her eyes. Her weight became heavy—and in scrambling to climb up, she yanked him down. With his focus fully on Trivia’s beautiful, angry, mournful face all thought cleared from Swift’s mind except the delight and the knowledge that finally, finally, this was the moment.

With the pair plummeting down through open air, Swift leaned in and kissed her.

She sobbed a miserable laugh of disbelief, and—like a lightning strike, a red flash, and queerly—

The wrappings she wore on her forearms, to cover her cursed skin, were shredded. Strength drained out of Swift’s fingers suddenly. All thought cleared from Swift’s mind except for the delight and the knowledge that finally, finally, this was the moment. Plummeting down through open air, Swift leaned in and kissed her.

And queerly—

The wrappings she wore on her forearms, to cover her cursed skin, were shredded. Strength drained out of Swift’s fingers suddenly. All thought cleared from Swift’s mind except for the delight and the knowledge that finally, finally, this was the moment. Plummeting down through open air, Swift leaned in and kissed her.

And queerly—

The wrappings she wore on her forearms—

The actions he took over that span of two minutes have looped for 500 years.

Swift himself is not conscious of it, being locked into the same thoughts and same emotions, separated like a slice out of time, repeated indefinitely.

A miracle happened that day on that cliff: the Demiurge himself, incensed at the miserable fate of Trivia Venn, appeared to that same girl in the moment of her fall. To others, he would offer Godhood. To her, He offered nothing but a word of commiseration, and acknowledged that her soul already belonged to another.

To Mephi tel-Sharvara, one of His little acquaintances. Mephi would collect her dead spirit from the rocks below, take it to his lair, and consume her. The ending would be what it, straightforwardly, was always prefigured to be; and what Trivia had always been fleeing.

If not for Trivia’s twist.

She distracted herself and even the Demiurge by her extreme grief towards Swift, such that not even she herself could predict her next move. Puppeteered by wild impulse, she reached out to the Demiurge’s heart, and squeezed it in a fist as tight as a vice. A songbird would’ve been crushed in that hold.

The Demiurge squawked. Power spiked from him, and Trivia’s veins sparked alive. Her name signed itself on the contract sealed within God’s heart—as his very seed flowed into her. She indeed became a god, the same as Sharvara, and more than that, the mother of God—but that is another tale.

Rather, her godhood as the Lady of Ghosts drew the spirit of Swift Kappel into the twilight realm—where he has been looping that fall, and that kiss, for 500 years. Ruined by the hex, his body did transform into a small bird, that splattered on the rocks, but it’s no concern for his soul.

A shrine has been built. Rakel’s ghost holds vigil. The completed cures for witchhood and hexing dutifully await their recipient.

Swift is, as ever, present so reliably. And queerly— And queerly— And queerly—

And ever so queerly, he’s begun travelling again: this time, at the side of a feisty young pilgrim.