Twelve months.

A time that, when arranged as diabolic digits,

represents what they were: always beside me;

and now that I’ve become nothing,

what they are: out of reach.

Darrell Drake’s

THE FLAMEFORGED SAGA

WHERE MADNESS ROOSTS

WITHIN RUIN

EVERAUTUMN

EVERAUTUMN

Copyright © 2012 Darrell Drake

All rights reserved worldwide.

ISBN: 978-0-9917247-3-4

Cover by Ruyi Yuen

http://www.ruyiyuen.artworkfolio.com

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information

storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where

permitted by law.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

http://www.darrelldrake.net

Thanks to . . .

Almi and Merill. It is because of your stubborn refusal to remain secondary

characters that this book exists at all. Bask in the attention: you deserve it. I

only hope something somewhere in these pages will do you justice.

My poppet of a wife, Pina. She’s positively wonderful—and brazenly so! Look

at her show off. She has and continues to support me with a foolhardy

devotion unknown to most creatures.

Hali Mason and Michael Paizen, whose keen eyes were indispensable in

locating and squashing errors and typos, those fell critters.

Ruyi Yuen for the swoon-worthy cover. I would hire her full-time if I could.

C H A P T E R O N E

Happenstance, Happenstance

“A cotton beard!” exclaimed the elf through a rising giggle. An exotic

seesaw, she tottered with her belly over the vessel’s bulwark to swipe at a

diaphanous cloud cleft by its bow. To the inquisitive girl’s dismay, the fluffy

vapor evaded capture; it passed heedlessly through her fingertips, and she

frowned her disappointment. “Oh.”

“Oh,” murmured her sister, the weight that balanced the dangling girl on

the stable side of oblivion. The pair had moored themselves to the airborne

ship by employing the same coordination used when one would assist the

other with equally amusing if quite less pernicious hand-walking: Almi’s olive

ankles secured under arm by Merill.

Approaching from the fo’c’sle, Virgil nearly grinned. He stamped the urge;

it would only encourage them. “Songbirds,” he called, using the recently

adopted title for the way they would chirrup and lark alongside the dawn

passerine. “You are persistent, but your mock surprise isn’t fooling anyone. As

I’ve explained thrice over, I cannot make it cotton.”

“Then—”

“Or edible.” He reached to shift the fulcrum and retrieve Almi before

pausing at the girl’s chryselephantine calf. Golden-brown flesh was betrayed

by the pureness beneath: a latticed ivory of fresh self-inflicted scars. It would

be many years before his healers could right the skin. With his resources

spread thin, he’d have to wait until kingship returned to marshal a substantive

effort. The thought dampened his rebuke to a hardly stern, “Careful.” With a

gentle push he brought the fishing elf’s feet deckward and shook his head. It

wasn’t a gesture of disapproval or impatience; instead, he was merely

intrigued.

“Why do you continue with this?” he probed. “Attention?”

The foundlings snapped to the military equivalent of his question,

imitating a royal guard greeting their sire. “Attention!” shouted Almi.

Spurred by a nudge from her sister, Merill followed with less volume and

confidence. “Most cottonest king of . . .” She paused to struggle with the still-

foreign lexicon. “Of whitest cotton fluff!”

“I cannot.”

Gazing wistfully over the starboard side, Almi heaved a sigh. “We know

our Virgil can. He stirs cottony clouds at home.”

“We watch,” added Merill. “We see him stir.” For punctuation, she followed

the full stop with the motion of swirling a cauldron. “Stir us?” she asked,

leaning forward and straightening her arms at her side.

“Stir for us,” Virgil corrected, though he found himself wondering whether

the lewd misstep was intentional. Her deepened dimples invited him to

inquire, for they were the cherries crowning a very well-prepared dessert.

One whose peculiarly provocative way of stretching and reaching he’d found

himself noticing with greater regularity and intensity of late, and they’d long

expressed their love for the man.

A tug on his trappings called his attention. “Our Virgil will stir us?” Almi

pressed, emphasizing with fire the incorrectness of his correction.

The sorcerer executed a mental double-take at the waif’s sultry insistence.

No, he thought, this isn’t quite right. He was struck ill in spite of the agreeably

suggestive coiling his complaisant wards had resorted to. Their shapely

figures pressed to his while they pleaded for his stirring. Merill, usually

dominated by her less traumatized sibling, had overtaken Almi with her

crowing. “Stir us!”

For a moment, Virgil was suspended in that hazy nomadic residence

where one acknowledges the scene before them as fantasy, a chimerical side-

road where nightmares overturn memory. Only the dreamer cannot

comprehend the significance and returns to the role of oblivious master-slave.

In that instant of peripheral clarity, the man figured it strange he had

succumbed. Dreams were the effect of memory interacting with the Fabric,

and that was something he displayed remarkable control over. Then the

thought dispersed.

“Dears,” he began, “you needn’t—no. You really don’t want—” Virgil

clasped Almi’s pawing hand and caught her smoldering stare. “You’re

beautiful girls. Oh, I’ve noticed often. But I will not abuse your sickness. I need

to know what’s gotten into you.” Something about that stare was uncanny and

alien; their movements flickered as the four flames set upon him.

Merill hung her chin over his shoulder and set forth a sibilant purr, “Stirrr.”

Almi’s words danced on her lips, but were mere tongue taps drowned out by

the sizzle and hiss of liquid blaze spreading roots across her flesh. Even within

the tranquilizing grip of dreams, Virgil knew this was not as it should be.

“No more games. What is going on?” His voice was calm, his inflection

controlled. Yet the weaver was fraught with worry. “Tell me,” he demanded as

he snatched Almi by the shoulders and shook her. She simpered

mischievously. “Tell me!” Virgil produced again, shaking her more vigorously

as his composure wilted.

“We—are—wai—ting—for—our—Vir—gil.” The staccato ascended his

earlobe and reminded the man that the two wonderful, if haunted, creatures

were very dead; that he’d promised to come for them as he had the elven

queen of yore. Almi retreated after her ghastly reminder, and so too did the

unsettling dream.

Unfortunately for Virgil, he was rushed out of oneiric clutches into an

insane reality. Descarta was astride his torso. She had his wrists pinned above

his head with otherworldly force, and she shook violently under the onslaught

of tears.

“It burns,” she cried. “Please.” Her voice was coarse and struggled; she had

been agonizing long enough to wear her throat raw. Elissa hovered bedside,

no less disturbing. His daughter held a blade aloft, its identity confirmed as

Descarta’s when the gem-studded hilt gathered and threw some distant

illumination. Virgil thought perhaps it was the moon granting its light to the

waves, which in turn transferred it to the instrument through a hull window.

He contemplated this for the moment of stillness that followed, content to

wrestle with the source. Then, realizing her sire was very cognizant, the scowl

dashed from Elissa’s features as quickly as she dashed out the room, leaving

only a frightened yelp in her wake.

The immediate danger conquered—as far as Virgil could tell—he turned

his attention to his convulsing beau. “Blossom,” he said, the placating tone he

sought trembling on his lips and emerging as something scarcely settling. “Are

you hurt?”

Descarta emitted a whine, and whatever dominated her loosed its grip. A

shiver later and she collapsed atop him. Relief washed over her in a wave of

fresh ocean air, as if the breeze itself had been waiting for the opportunity to

glide in and do her the favor. Given her propensity for the element, it very well

could have been.

“Des?” he called to her, but she was unmoving, unwilling to believe so

readily that she was freed. Cautiously, she appraised herself, the prickle of

frost that touched her skin in the warm summer night as the remnants of

some infernal elsewhere left her body. Far as the girl could reckon she was

unharmed, mental stress notwithstanding. With certainty, she knew sleep

would prove to be an evasive catch in the days to come.

Virgil rose enough to gingerly examine her. Descarta could feel his careful

pet as it found first her chin, then cheek, then auburn lovelocks, and she

whimpered at the magical heat of his fingertips. The weaveress heard his

disappointed sigh and shared its melancholy. The touch should have been

rejuvenating, exciting, reassuring: never fear-inspiring. Desperately, she

wanted to open her eyes and escape the nightmare, but she was a slave to

apprehension; what she had experienced was no mere nightmare.

Again, he called to her. “Des, say something. I need you to say something.”

His voice was taut and struggled for stability.

She was so afraid of opening her eyes to that searing hell. So afraid of

returning.

Virgil sat in a bog of confusion. She didn’t seem to be physically harmed or

feverish. Her flesh welcomed him with that impossibly cozy threshold

between the cool, smooth surface of polished serpentine and the soft greeting

of a velutinous petal. The vivid dream, Elissa, her: he was having great trouble

untangling the mess. And where was Hafstagg during all this? Virgil forced

himself to focus on the immediate problem. The girl in his arms looked weak,

so he pulled the eiderdown to her chin. Pointless, he knew; the weaver had to

do something in his helplessness. He didn’t dare enter the Fabric to inspect

her there and invite vulnerability. Not when everything remained to be

explained.

As it grew, his turmoil reached their bond, and Descarta knew the man

cradling her was hers. “I’m here,” she said. Her words were unsure, because

seconds ago she hadn’t been there. She had to forcibly instruct herself to ease

her lids open and, to her relief, only Virgil’s concerned countenance welcomed

the girl. “Virgil,” she breathed, squeezing herself snug to the sorcerer. “The

boiling was too much.”

She seemed hale, if a bit shaken. So Virgil surmised she hadn’t suffered any

injuries. “What boiling?” Virgil inquired. “What has gotten into Elissa?”

“Elissa?” The weaveress shook her head. “Nothing as far as I’m aware.”

“She was above me with your sabre in hand, poised to strike. You saw her.

And you were, what was that just now?” asked Virgil.

“Where is she?” Descarta dodged the question. She’d seen nothing, of

course; her mind was elsewhere at the time. And she did not wish to return,

even in recollection. He had promised the elves’ influence would not grow, but

tonight made it clear they were more tenacious than he anticipated—or some

rule had changed. The place they’d taken her when commandeering her body

was an arid landscape, sweltering and spotted with broiling pools of reddish

liquid. Not lava, perhaps water tinted by some caustic mineral. But the worst

part, the inescapable part, was the air: so hot that inhaling set her lungs

aflame and made her capillaries scream. Descarta was clueless as to how she

survived the ordeal without injury; there was no doubt in her mind about the

place being real. She entertained the idea that perhaps Almi and Merill were

protecting her while they wrested control, and did not see it fit to thank the

pair.

“She dashed off quite upset. I don’t think she expected me to be awake

when, well, we’ll find out what she was up to.” It occurred to Virgil that this

could also be an elaborate dream. The entire situation was nothing like the

serenity he’d fallen asleep to. It also occurred to him that the prudent course

would be to treat the scenario as real whether it was or not. Better he take the

fantastical seriously than gamble ruining reality. “First,” he insisted, “I’ll need

you to answer me. What happened to you?”

“I haven’t a clue,” she replied honestly.

“Des, please. You know you can trust me.”

The girl was pensive. Of course she could trust him. His love was manifest

in multiple sacrifices. Still, for his sake she couldn’t tell him everything, but she

had to provide some patchwork explanation. He wouldn’t budge when her

well-being was concerned. And there was the issue of Elissa. Something was

amiss. “I was transported somewhere, Virgil. I was alone.” Her throat ached

like she’d swallowed glass, but she went on. “There was fire all around. It

burned to breathe; it burned all over. Oh, it burned so dreadfully.” Descarta did

not need to fabricate the agony of her visit.

Virgil frowned. He had trudged through something peculiarly similar

before his near-death in the Saradin dungeon. “Take your dress off.”

Descarta regarded him quizzically. “I don’t think now is the best time,” she

whispered. “And I feel unwell after—” She stopped as he pulled the eiderdown

away and helped her to stand. “What are you doing?” the diminutive girl

asked. “Virgil!” she objected in a hoarse cry as he swept her frock over her

head with a flourish of viridian samite. She didn’t bother to cover her willowy

chassis; he was intimate enough with the image.

“Stand still, blossom.”

She nodded and cast away from his gaze, blushing. This was an odd time

to go about such things, but she would not deny him his desire. Descarta stood

in place, a porcelain statue while he moved behind her, hands finding her hips.

He sighed against her lower back and she shivered her response.

“Damn,” muttered Virgil.

“Damn?”

“This isn’t right.”

“W-What?” stuttered Descarta.

With equal ease, Virgil helped her back into the frock while the

woebegone girl did her best to avoid his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she offered. “I’m

afraid.” The weaver before her was quiet, ruminating and melancholy. He

scratched the piceous mess atop his head. Silently, Descarta succumbed to

habit as well, fumbling with the volute lace of her pinafore.

Virgil sucked in a slow, deep breath and released it the same. “It is gone.

The wound is gone. Just two days ago you cut yourself exercising with Elissa.”

The synapses had finished their job, so they relinquished control to

compassion. Repentant, he cursed himself and hugged the girl with vigor.

“Forgive me, Des. You’re resplendent.” Virgil applied a gossamer kiss to her

temple, and put space between them so he could stroke her neck and

command the shimmer of her amber stare. “Resplendent, yes?”

Descarta nodded.

“You were right; it isn’t the best time. But I cannot turn away such an

appetizing girl.” Virgil grinned. “Her mews are so awfully arousing.”

“Virgil,” she turned appreciative little arrowheads into her cheeks,

conscious of the way he could make her smile even when terror lingered.

Descarta recognized it in him, too. Behind the grin he wore for her and in the

tumult of his stare. “I misunderstood you; that’s all. What is the significance?”

She intended to say more, yet her throat wouldn’t allow it. And she figured he

could gather what she meant well enough.

“I’ve been there,” Virgil replied as he exited the chambers, Descarta in tow.

“Where?”

“The land of fire you described. When we were rescuing my—” Virgil

choked on the names of his wards. All he had left were memories, and those

precious rubies were now tainted, too. It wasn’t that he couldn’t summon the

names. He was frightened by the consequence of acknowledging the poisoned

syllables as something forever lost. He’d promised the chipper pair

resurrection. He would give his utmost to fulfill that promise. Descarta

instinctively grasped his palm and squeezed. She said nothing. She didn’t need

to: her touch inspired confidence.

“Elissa!” Virgil called. “Hafstagg!” No answer, so he went on while warily

descending the steps to her quarters. “When my flank was destroyed at

Saradin, I treaded the muck of some lava swamp between this world and

wherever that is. I was subsequently healed, and so were you.”

Descarta’s words came as a hack and rasp. She swallowed them with a

wince.

“Heal your throat, dear,” urged Virgil, but she refused. The sorceress

wanted to be sure no one was in dire need of her weaving before addressing a

bothersome but less than vital wound. “Very well,” he sighed, auguring the

cause without much trouble. She cared deeply for everyone aboard the vessel.

The master weaver would have happily summoned his meager healing

capacity in her stead, only it was lost to him. Since the incident that nearly

killed them all, his access to everything but the element of fire had been either

suppressed or lost. The passes to conjure anything else had been wiped from

his knowledge, leaving only the one strengthened affinity.

A quick search of the quarters and storage rooms was fruitless, so the pair

left belowdecks. Above, the moon glowed a vibrant vanilla, suspiciously large

among its celestial brothers and sisters. The unnaturally placid sea didn’t

slosh or complain against the hull in its usual manner. Beyond the aft railing,

Descarta noticed a blotch of starless ink that interrupted the otherwise

perfect horizon.

“Land,” Virgil acknowledged as he followed her outstretched finger.

“Elissa,” he called just before spotting the lass near to the fore mast. “Elissa.”

The girl was quaking, sabre clasped in similarly unsteady hands before

her. “I’m sorry!” she screamed. It was the first time Virgil or Descarta had ever

heard the milquetoast raise her voice, and it was startling. “I’m sorry! I’m

sorry, Virgil! I’m sorry, Des!” She shook her head vehemently. Virgil took a step

forward and she stopped him with a defiant cry. “No!”

It was Descarta who caught the hulking shadow some mid-way between

them. The body lay motionless behind a crate. “Hafstagg,” gasped the

weaveress.

Elissa started at the mention and backed away, closer to the bow. “No, no,

no, no, no!”

“This must be another dream,” Virgil sighed. If Descarta had the voice to

argue, she couldn’t have conjured a solid counter. “Elissa—”

“I’m so sorry!” she interrupted.

“Elissa—”

“I’m so sorry!”

Virgil let loose a steadying suspiration. Descarta nudged him and nodded

to the supine figure, brow furrowed anxiously. “I know,” he whispered. While

he scarcely cared for the boorish man, she did, and he had learned to

begrudgingly respect that. He separated himself from Descarta and began a

careful walk forward.

“No!” shouted Elissa. He continued heedlessly through several more

shouts until he was within blade’s reach. His daughter trembled but showed

no signs of relenting.

“Come, dear. I’ll forgive whatever you’ve done,” Virgil said while wearing as

benign an expression as the situation allowed. “Just relax and drop the sword.”

Elissa looked from him to the exquisite hilt and back. Her volume softened

and returned to its shy native pitch. “I-I cannot.”

“Why?”

The girl turned her crimson stare to contemplate the timber at her feet.

Virgil seized the opportunity to shuffle in beyond the sabre’s effective range

and take the girl to the deck. Elissa only resisted when the sorcerer pried each

finger from the sabre, and even then only by clenching her fists as hard as she

could. When he finally succeeded in disarming the blade, he tossed it aside.

The dull thud and bumpy roll was signal enough for Descarta to hurry to

Hafstagg. He lay clutching a nasty wound along his unarmored side. He wasn’t

yet mortally wounded, but that could change with enough blood loss. The

poppet pursed her lips and was grateful she’d foregone needless healing. After

gingerly removing the upper half of the large man’s arming doublet, Descarta

invoked a glove of watery weave and began her effort to staunch the flow.

Elissa was quiet, dejected, and refused to look at the man holding her. His

efforts to comfort her failed miserably, so instead he simply sat quietly beside

the girl. Virgil didn’t want to restrain her, but he also could not let her free

given the incriminating evidence just a dozen footfalls away. He watched her

closely, and the moon’s margaritaceous shine in her incarnadine eyes

reminded him keenly of her mother’s radiant rubies moments before they

were drained of life. Virgil found the distant sorrow there disgusting. Eyes as

hers should never be blemished so.

A grunt issued from below Descarta, and the hope that washed over Elissa

was lucid in the way her posture transformed from sagging to tense. She

hugged her knees and leaned forward, eager to hear another sign of restored

vigor.

“Easy,” Descarta hoarsely instructed when the hulking warrior recovered

consciousness. “Just rest. I’m not finished here.”

He began to object, but even a slight tilt of his head brought on vertigo and

another groan. “Elissa did this,” he warned. “I’m not knowin’ what caused it,

but she’s off kilter. I thought she was foolin’ when she slashed at me.”

“We’re aware,” responded Descarta, shuffling on her knees to tend the

back of his skull. “She’s been calmed.” The prone man grunted again as she

tapped at the hard lump on the back of his head.

“Why did you do it?” Virgil asked his once-again-reticent daughter.

Elissa drew a breath, and if she had planned on responding it was

interrupted when the boat pitched under the force of a sudden blow. She

yelped, Virgil cursed, Descarta cried out and Hafstagg complained. When the

violent rocking subsided, a leviathan towered over the four recovering sailors.

Serrated spines dominated the portion of the creature that breached the

water. It was truly behemoth: half as wide as the ship and many times the

length. The latter was initially an assumption, but it was a brief assumption.

The beast wasted no time in throwing itself across the deck and diving,

tearing the long course of its scaly, pike-laden hide across until, with a fierce

swipe, its spire of a tail sailed just over a tumbling Descarta to splinter the fore

mast.

Virgil could have sworn; he could have raged; he could have thrown in the

towel; he could have smartly voiced the absurdity of this carnival of events his

mind had clearly—clearly!—concocted under a deathly high fever. The

scenario justified all those things. But he was growing weary of this theatre-

prison. He stretched a hand to help Elissa to her feet and the biting pain that

stretched from shoulder to fingertips when she took his hand assured him

that yes, his arm had been fractured when he was thrown to the deck. Of

course it was. What would an incredulous series of events be without fighting

a leviathan while crippled? Surely, the ship would burst next. “Des,” he called

while Elissa helped herself up.

“Here,” Descarta answered from her side of the wake, which split the

upper deck in twain. Hafstagg was beside her, unhappy but no more harmed,

struggling to stand with her help. “What sort of monster was that?”

“I don’t know, blossom. But we must defend ourselves. Can you manage?”

Virgil looked to Elissa and appraised her. He could boast of her expertise in

many arenas; combat did not find its way onto that list. “Hide somewhere

sturdy.”

She nodded and headed back toward the bow. He really had no idea where

she would find somewhere sturdy. That had become peripheral. Virgil

clenched his teeth and performed a quick arcane pass that materialized a

flaming harpoon in his working hand. This beast was likely ancient, powerful

and wanted very much to stain the sea with their blood. Virgil shared the

traits and sentiment. Descarta and Elissa had been such doting, affectionate

caretakers during the labors of his recovery. The pair made certain he was

always comfortable, always healthy, despite his many objections. He loved

them all the more for it, but it made him feel weakened. It was his turn to care

for them in his own way.

The leviathan emerged well out of reach in a giant leap that sent its

snarling beaklike maw into a low-loping cloud. For seconds, it seemed to fly,

and the awaiting cohorts could only gawk at their disgustingly bad luck. Then

it plummeted to the sea, producing a great swell. “It’s trying to send us off

balance before a direct blow!” Descarta painfully issued. “Grab something and

be ready!” She wrapped both arms around a bulwark balustrade and prepared

for the wave. When it hit, it was hardly damaging. But the gushing blue-green

water was sucked into the split deck and took hold like an anchor, quickly

shifting the boat in the opposite direction. Descarta found her balustrade

quite resilient. Only she was underwater, surrounded by debris falling from

the canting ship. When the water lost its grip and the deck returned to an

angry sometimes-horizontal, she was up. The sea behemoth was nearly upon

them then, but it halted to bellow at the fiery harpoon that’d lanced its

forehead. After a two count, the magical weapon exploded in a great, ferocious

inferno that engulfed a large part of the creature’s upper body.

Overkill was better than another blow from the beast, so Descarta began

her own offensive. The creature was obviously endemic to water, and she

doubted even a tornado would deal any consequential damage. So the

weaveress instead summoned a gust of lassoing wind to heft the cleft fore

mast. It was heavy, and she began to question whether she’d picked too large

an object; a fierce gale answered her call to assuage the problem. Descarta

used the conscripted winds to hover the timber-spear high above the deck.

They whirled with the power of a twister around the mast until it burst forth,

much like a ballista releasing its load, to disappear into the waning inferno.

The subsequent roar and spasm indicated a hit, and she doubted anything

could live through the assault she and Virgil had mounted.

Elissa clutched the lifebuoy. She was instructed to find something sturdy,

but what was sturdy when that monster had nearly decimated the ship by

wriggling on it? This wasn’t at all what she wanted when she agreed to join

the crew. The half-elf had hoped to have her aloof father notice her, and if

things went as he intended, Merill, too. Instead that man, that insidious man,

had perhaps sundered any chance for her to be close to her father.

She knew his name: Giacomo. He’d introduced himself as “an old friend of

Virgil’s”. Well, it seemed to her that old friends did not wield daughter against

father like he did. At the time, all she heard was the vile voice of Giacomo; all

she saw was what Virgil had never done for her. The man in her dreams had

corrupted her so easily.

“Steady! It’s coming again!” warned Virgil.

Elissa saw her death in its foaming maw. The leviathan was repulsive

when she first saw it. Repulsive had transformed to gruesome. Scales bubbled

in the inferno’s aftermath; the glowing harpoon still injected firestuff into the

beast’s punctured eye; a great shaft of timber was wedged deep into its

colossal skull. And yet it raced toward her. She saw the rancor in its gaze and

knew it wanted to kill them. Not for food or sport or whatever its initial reason

for attacking had been. The creature simply wanted the four who would dare

to maim it dead.

Another flame-harpoon impaled the same compound eye. Another

explosion. Elissa knew it wouldn’t be enough. Even if the barreling beast died

there, its corpse would obliterate the ship. She looked at her lifebuoy; it was a

gourd colored like confectionery.

Then the impact came. There were brief shouts all around. Curses, most of

them. Elissa just clenched the safety device tighter and closed her eyes. She

could feel the wind racing through her hair as she soared free of the surely

obliterated boat, the splash of warm tropical water, and then nothing.

C H A P T E R TWO

Scatter Me Not

Virgil came to with a startle. The last thing he remembered was

hurling harpoon after harpoon at the leviathan as fast as he could

materialize the weapons. Everything thereafter was a chaotic blur of

scale and water. And Descarta: the frantic thrashing that was his futile

attempt at grabbing for her. “Des!” he screamed in the grim desperation

that still wrenched his heart. He called for her again and again, crawling

about the beach he’d awoken on and shaking his head in disbelief. First

the twins, now her. Hopelessness came in a deluge, and he lowered

himself to the sand.

The weaver sensed movement behind him. He didn’t care; let the

native animal have a filling meal tonight. “F-Father,” came the more

matured yet still very Merillian tone that belonged to Elissa. “I’ve made

us a meal.” Her words were very nonchalant, like it was simply another

night on the vessel searching for the island he’d stumbled upon those

many centuries ago.

Virgil listlessly rolled over to look at her. It wasn’t too bright out—

early morning—but there was plenty sunlight to see the woman’s

crestfallen stare. She was deliberating her bare feet, a habit Descarta had

worked to gradually break her of over the past year spent searching.

Once again, she was afraid to look at him, and it didn’t take clairvoyance

to extract the reason. Virgil expelled a defeated sigh and gathered himself

enough to sit up. He wanted very much to wallow in misery, but he was

charged with protecting Elissa, too. His fractured arm was blazing,

probably more from the crawling than the initial injury.

“Can you stand?” Elissa asked.

“Yes, dear,” he replied. “But would you give me a hand?” She nodded

and bent to encircle his hale arm and help him to his feet. A campfire

burned in the distance, and the shore was littered with detritus. “How

long have I been out?”

The half-elf shook her head. “I can’t say. I floated to shore last night,

and you were here.” She hadn’t once released the lifebuoy. Elissa omitted

the details of the night: how she wept when she found him washed

ashore not far from where the buoy deposited her, how she snuggled up

to him to share warmth and comfort herself. He smelled of petrichor.

At the campfire, she watched her feet. They were sandy—she’d hung

their shoes to dry. Elissa nibbled at the crab meat she’d prepared. She

wasn’t very hungry after the incident, but she knew she needed to eat.

She thought of the man across from her. He ate silently, surely glum. Virgil

hadn’t opened up to her in their time sailing together, but he’d called her

pet names on those rare occasions when he and Descarta weren’t

slouched over maps and navigational tools. It was leagues better than

being ignored, even if he spent most of his time with his “blossom”.

They’d endured much together, so Elissa felt no ill will toward the girl. In

fact, she too was very worried.

“D-Des will survive,” she sputtered spontaneously. Was he looking at

her? A quick shift of her eyes told her that, yes, those glacial eyes were

watching. “She’s strong. And you’re alive, so that means she yet lives,

right?”

Virgil nodded. She was right; given their mutual existence, they could

only draw breath together. Why he had assumed Descarta, who’d

survived far greater dangers and exhibited a magnificent command over

water, would die was beyond him. Mayhap he knew it was better to

expect the worst. To be always prepared for the misery that clung to life.

Existence was no more than scattered dandelions to wish upon, lies

whose dust grants a flicker of false hope in those times when misery

gives you something to strive for so that it might strike again. “You’re

convenient to have around when stranded,” he finally managed.

“Merill taught me some things,” Elissa explained while poking the fire.

The weaver averted his gaze to the sand where her footsteps

remained. Almi and Merill were mesmerized by the beach, as they were

with all things in nature. They would have had no problem prospering

here. He missed their many traipses; he should have appreciated them

more.

Elissa cursed herself for mentioning her mother. Virgil still frequently

visited that oft-denied illusion wherein he would pet and converse with

the dead elf and her sister. Descarta told her he’d suffered a similar

dementia only a couple years prior. At first, Descarta would confront him,

but it only angered the man who ardently denied the encounters. So it

became understood that everyone should just leave it be and concentrate

on healing his more tangible wounds. “I think—”

“Why have you stopped looking at me?” Virgil cut in. Elissa glanced

upward but found her stare drawn elsewhere, to the foliage behind him.

“Why?” he pressed.

“Last night,” she meekly explained. Or at least what was the last night

to them. The woman would have liked to say more, but as many times in

the past, she couldn’t give a voice to her thoughts.

Virgil let a sigh free. He had a feeling it was going to take some time to

work through the events of the night before. “There’s no point in

dwelling.” It was his way of expressing forgiveness without prying.

Elissa smiled slightly. While they never talked much, it had become

easier for her. When they first departed, she could hardly form whole

sentences. “I think,” she began again with renewed confidence, “the twins

sometimes requested me specifically to accompany them when

exploring.”

She never blamed her mother for her negligence; it was clear to

everyone at the ramparts that the elves weren’t fully there. On one such

expedition, Elissa once found the nerve to ask where her mother came

from, what she did before Virgil took her in. Almi and Merill, who had

been plucking flowers to braid into a garland, froze at the question. It

might have been over a decade past, but she’d never forget the terrible

look Merill gave her. Almi eventually responded slowly and deliberately

with, “We love our Virgil.” Elissa still did not know what to make of those

dejected stares or that carefully delivered reply.

“I’m sorry,” Virgil said after a moment of silence for the beloved

sisters. “They gave their best. They always gave their best.”

Elissa tilted her head in agreement. Merill hardly treated her much

like a daughter, but she was always pleasant. When they went out, which

was only about once monthly, the elf was so enthusiastic and so

knowledgeable about the forests wherein they adventured. The sisters

were at home among the fauna and flora, and everything from a buzzing

bee to a daffodil enthralled them. She admired their vim.

“Y-You . . . you were good to them. F-For them,” Elissa said with some

trouble. He answered with a smile. It was warming, appreciative, and so

very unlike the Virgil she had once watched from afar.

The breakfast conversation gave the sun time to crest well above the

horizon. “We should make use of the light,” Virgil said while rising from

the sand and patting his robe down. He checked their boots: still damp.

“It’s better if I don’t leave you alone.”

Elissa stood to follow before recalling the small bit of gathering she

managed in the early light before his screams drew her from the fringe of

the jungle. “Oh, I should make a sling for your arm.” With his consent, she

used a pair of large, flat leaves and vines to devise the sling. It wasn’t

perfect, but it did the job.

“You’re a resourceful girl,” complimented Virgil. “Now let’s see what

this island has to offer.”

The half-elf followed him into the dense foliage. She hadn’t dared to

venture far earlier in the day; trepidation over the possible inhabitants

had conquered her then. Now she wasn’t alone, and with the memories

of Almi and Merill fresh in her mind, the trek through exotic brush

harkened to those merry days of peregrination. The twins hadn’t

instructed her on this sort of biome as they had never visited. If they had,

she was sure the pair would’ve imparted their special titles for the

numerous and varied life. Names like purple slink-alongs, fuzzy stinkers,

briarfeet and bitterpots. Sure, they didn’t follow conventional scientific

classification in most cases—something Elissa discovered after adopting

botany and zoology as her only real hobbies—but the twins were well-

versed in the creatures they marveled at daily.

“Elissa,” Virgil called from ahead. A few fan-leafed plants blocked him

from her view, so she shoved through them to find him standing before

the only easily recognizable tree. “Those are coconuts, right?” he asked

while pointing to three round-shelled fruit attached to a slender tree,

naked except for a crown of leaves.

She nodded briskly, certain of her capacity to spot the particular

arboreal member. “A palm tree.”

“Can you climb it?”

Elissa shrugged and approached the trunk. She would try; she hadn’t

done this since her early teenage years. Climbing was a simple concept:

lift with feet, brace with thighs, push with legs, pull with arms to the

desired height. The endeavor itself proved to be much more challenging.

She fell twice just trying to begin. The second time, Virgil stepped

forward, squashing a croft of sea-foam green mushrooms underfoot to

help her up with his one good arm. When she attempted a third time, his

hand pressed firmly on her upper back to support the incipient hops up

the tree. And when she finally made it beyond his reach, Elissa felt

comfort in knowing he was below her, watching. She gleaned a great deal

of gratification from being needed when he was concerned.

Two coconuts dropped beside Virgil. Each went about its death

throes with a slight bounce and languorous crawl then fell still. The

weaver would have refused them their theatrical floundering, but some

peripheral movement caught his attention. He waved a half-hearted

goodbye to the palm before wandering off in pursuit of the honeyed

giggle thrown from just beyond sight. That pleasant purl continued to

ring periodically from just beyond reach. But it slaked the heretofore

drowning anguish packed within; Virgil could not resist.

The disembodied call eventually led him to a clearing where it died

instantly. The far side of the glade was strewn with vine-laden ruins.

Most protrusive was a strangely familiar statue hewn from polished

stone in the reddest of hues. The sunlight that forged on in shafts through

the dense jungle canopy incited a shimmering much like scintillating fire

just beneath the surface.

“We found the tippest top,” issued a subdued voice from just behind

the sorcerer.

“The toppernmost tip!” exclaimed another sprightly pitch. Both were

cosseting in the way their singsong slant arrived like the diaphanous

lullaby of a young mother’s bedside hum.

“My songbirds,” Virgil acknowledged light-heartedly as he turned to

greet them. “You are clever indeed to have bested me.”

Merill and Almi beamed at his praise and expressed their elation

further in a hopping pirouette. “Winners! To the victor!”

“Now what was the prize?” Virgil teased as he reached for a

concealed pocket beneath the half-cape fore of his cranberry-red

weaver’s robe. “I seem to have forgotten.”

The energetic pair tip-toed close to the tantalizing treat he had

promised, advancing like bantam burglars with sindoor eyes trained on

the golden-brown loot they knew to be just beyond the final safeguard.

Virgil shook a finger at the pair, and their favorably upturned noses

twitched dissent. “We won the fabled sweets,” pouted Almi.

“A safari for sweets,” arrived Merill’s supplemental pout in swift

succession. “The grandest of sugar.”

“Virgil?” interjected a fourth voice tonally positioned somewhere

between the trio. She scratched absently at a swollen little blemish on the

butternut skin of her forearm—a mosquito’s last meal. Cradled between

her arms were four coconuts. “Who were you talking to?” Elissa had an

idea.

“No one. It’s just the two of us,” Virgil noted with creased brow. He

cast about to gain his bearings. While the clearing wasn’t foreign to him,

he certainly did not know how he had ended up there. His last

recollection was peering up at Elissa anxiously while she labored to

knock the coconuts free. He lightened her load by half and gave her

lustrous curtains a laudatory pat. “Well done, dear.”

The half-elf responded with a small self-conscious smile.

“Now,” said the weaver, “we seem to have been stranded on the very

isle we sought. Behold, the tippest top of Cartesium, greatest empire ever

to fall.” Virgil paused and considered his words. “Tippest top?”

Elissa parted her lips to reply, thought better of it, parted again then

thought better of it once more and let the question fall unanswered.

“I admit it might not strike you as grand, but the metropolis is vast,”

Virgil assured her while he approached the coruscating statue. It

depicted a flaming phoenix in the everlasting circle of death and

resurrection. An elaborately embossed yet very succinct “From Fire” was

set beneath the bird in the civilization’s forgotten language. Every

character of the lexicon was runic: representing just how thoroughly

weaving had pervaded the defunct nation. While he had never cared to

research the downfall, Virgil would not have been surprised if it were of

arcane origin.

To the half-elf, the well-preserved effigy was unsettling. The ruins

were just that: ruins; yet among the dilapidated remains this piece was

untouched by time. When Virgil assured her it was safe to touch, she

offered him a brisk shake of her head and shied away. Elissa couldn’t

resolve the unease brought to the surface by the flamelike shimmer

incited all about the phoenix.

Virgil deliberated his missing blossom—her enduring laugh, the

alluring cataract of chestnut gathered about her nape—and could not

idle, the impotent sorcerer. He was a maestro of magic, and if there

existed a way for him to find Descarta, it would surely rest in the bastion

of arcane triumph deep below. Virgil didn’t bother with a call to reason;

his spoiled heart would surrender no ground in this saudade tangle.

Almi, Merill and perhaps Descarta relied on the subterranean excursion.

“Listen,” the weaver began in a distant, calculated tone, “you must

return to camp and remain as a lookout. If you find Des, take her here.”

He indicated the stone to their left. “Use a stone to scrawl a message for

her. Tell her where you are and that fire is the key to this entrance.” It

looked to Virgil as if Elissa would object, but her features softened and

she gave an affirmative bob.

Without another word, Virgil touched the statue and filled his breath

with the damp, salty scent of the open world. A rivulet of snaking flame

eased from his ring finger to the shimmering phoenix. Two heartbeats

later he vanished.

Elissa nibbled her lip and twiddled her fingers, crocheting a fine net

of apprehension between her and mutiny. This would mark the maiden

voyage of a girl bloomed under the pretense that Virgil’s word was

immutable, final. And it would be the first time she disobeyed him as a

daughter; Elissa never could grasp the hidebound urge of young girls to

defy their parents simply for the sake of it.

She followed his instructions insofar as leaving a message for

Descarta and Hafstagg at the camp and ruins. Then she stood once again

before the statue that had whisked Virgil away just moments prior,

kindling in hand. Elissa engaged in combat with her timid, introverted

disposition, the controlling part of her that refused to be conquered.

She’d come to terms with her inability to ever vanquish the beast, but she

could subjugate it for a time.

The city could be dangerous. He could fall into a trap with no way to

get out. A mammophant could corner him. A survivor could serve him

one final meal on a palatial balcony overlooking the spectacle city. Virgil

would think himself doomed until she swung in from above to cut the

evildoer down. This was all implausible and no good to her cause; she

had not swayed the beast an inch.

Then she remembered the rare smile he gave her on the beach.

Passing, yes, but that transient flash was a connection. She depended on

it. Before an inner argument could arise, she thrust the glowing end of

the firewood forward, splashing embers about the sculpture with a

blunted sizzle.

Elissa stood spellbound as the world around her was stripped away

like parchment in wilting retreat from flame. When the peeling ceased,

she was no less taken by awe. Virgil had used the adjectives vast and

grand to describe to her the once-thriving kingdom. The scope was far

more impressive, and Elissa understood that she would have gaped after

even the most flattering, grandiloquent description.

Beneath a pearlescent dome streaked by alternating hues of rich

color, more than a mere metropolis waited; she was in a land apart.

Elissa had appeared between four volute pillars on a soaring tower that,

as far as she could tell, was the tallest structure there; she could bounce a

pebble off the milky dome. From her vantage, she could see every

horizon made jagged where a sea of spiny spikes stabbed skyward. Each

was larger than Galvant’s Bulwark, which she recalled visiting only once

as a young girl. At the time, she was flabbergasted by the enormity of the

thing; no longer. Upon closer inspection, the spikes were revealed to be

spires, fashioned from an opaque substance identical to the autumn-fire

phoenix above and fitted with windows, balconies and throughways.

Cautiously, she began down the stairwell leading into the mass of

cuddling sea urchins. By managing a careful peek over the stairs, the

descent afforded her the view below. The half-elf couldn’t make out any

ground or floor, only a haze where distance overtook vision. She couldn’t

combat the possibility that there could be no bottom at all to this

otherworldly elsewhere. “You aren’t here for gawking,” Elissa quietly

reminded herself.

She pressed onward, downward, and the spines eventually became

more a forest of the redwoods indigenous to southwest Elusia as they

closed around her. When she spotted Virgil tinkering with a nearby globe

apparatus, she halted abruptly. His cranberry trappings were less

imposing than the customary talon-inspired design of the despot he

formerly was. The half-cape robe was simple yet regal, trimmed in a hue

somewhere between wheat and sunshine; it occurred to her that the

colors were likely tribute to those lost souls he sought with such

determination.

“So you came,” Virgil said evenly.

Elissa wasn’t sure what to make of the inflectionless statement, so she

travailed in silence a dozen steps behind the weaver. When he faced her,

she expected a scolding, or worse.

“Did you leave the message as I instructed?”

A sharp nod sent stray strands over the pointed ears peeking out. “I-I

didn’t douse the campfire. In case a ship comes by.”

Virgil let free a dry chuckle. “I guess it cannot be helped. Come then.

Take a look.” He spread an arm to the side and produced a disarming

smile. Virgil wasn’t upset at her. If he were to be incensed and aggrieved,

it would be at the fact that he was here at all. That she was here at all. He

should have finally claimed serenity with his precious twins and

homunculus. Elissa should have her mundane life, free from any true

burden. As he considered that circumstance, the weaver conceded that

he was thankful for another chance to be a father to Elissa, who seemed

more than willing to give him one.

As she drew near, he wrapped an arm around her back and pulled her

to stand before the globe. The half-elf spared a worried glance at the

sorcerer. He was acting uncharacteristically friendly given her digressive

course. Shouldn’t heave the bellows, she reasoned. Besides, she was

genuinely intrigued by the contraption and just a bit excited by

adventuring with Virgil.

“What is it?” Elissa asked while eyeing the rings of polished bronze.

Together they formed a sphere with many notches and unreadable titles;

as constituents, they symbolized colossal conveyances.

“A very special tool,” Virgil explained, pleased by her curiosity. “In an

emergency, one with the proper magical acumen and authority could

activate this to navigate an entire kingdom in seconds. Pick a site and it

comes to you.” He ran tired fingers over the inscriptions, some of which

were mere blemishes. It was one of those polished away areas, erased

from the history of an already esoteric civilization, that would bring forth

their journey’s destination.

This time Elissa did reach forward to feel the worked metal. She tried

to avoid looking directly at the runic reliefs, as they emanated a feeling of

queasiness beyond anything she expected normal text could inspire. “Are

we going, uh, bringing somewhere here?”

“We would be, but I’m at an impasse.”

Elissa inched closer and forced herself to examine the repulsive

script. It was nauseating, as if some hidden meaning was coming forth

and her brain did not want to comprehend it. “Why?”

Virgil directed her eyes to two points in particular amid a cluster.

“Here, and here,” he pointed. “One is our goal.”

To Elissa, they were just small imperfections with no label. And she

could no more tell the significance of one over the other than the elegies

left by raindrops when they splashed outside her window. She expelled

her discontent in a low sigh. Some daughter she had become, tutored by

the best and yet positively useless in situations of true import.

“It is a quandary,” admitted Virgil. “My memory is fuzzy with regard

to which, but the lair we seek waits at one of these coordinates. Of that I

am certain.”

The admission made Elissa feel less impotent, though she scarcely

could have narrowed the thousand potential destinations or deduced the

mechanism’s purpose.

“Would you like to choose?” Virgil gently offered.

“H-How?”

The weaver shrugged.

It was clear in her puzzled expression that Elissa didn’t understand.

“Are we turning back?” she asked in disappointment.

“Listen, songling, not every step in an expedition is empirically

decided. Sometimes your course is drawn only by caprice. Because

without that, life would be uneventful; without that, I wouldn’t be

returning to this forsaken place in search of another blighted spell. I

wouldn’t care to bring back your wonderful mother or her sister, because

I would not have chosen, on a whim, to follow a seedy fellow into a dark

alley.”

His edged point did not miss Elissa. Neither did the energy of his

brightened cerulean glower, aimed well beyond her. “Somewhere down

here we’ll find what we need. I’m sure of it,” she said with atypical

confidence.

“You’re outspoken today,” Virgil noted.

“I—” Elissa sought her toes. She was being silly, trying to act more like

Descarta: the person she wanted to be but never could. Virgil sighed. The

half-elf was warmed by the reassuring squeeze he gave her.

“Your choice,” he said with finality as he nudged her a bit closer to the

pedestal.

“Caprice,” she murmured. With a hop of her inherited crimson tunic,

she shot a finger to the squash-shaped smear. “Here.”

“How did you choose?” Virgil asked.

Elissa allowed herself a slight dimple-hugged grin. “I didn’t; my finger

did.”

The sorcerer nodded. “Well done. Now, let’s hope you didn’t kill us

both.” With those cryptic words he motioned for her to back away before

raising his hand above her whimsy-place. The squash lit up and the

bronze rings began to whirl with naught an antiquated creak.

Virgil heard her incredulous gasp as the world began to shift all

around them. Only their miniscule platform remained stationary. Above,

and somehow below, the soaring spines were partitioned into discs that

followed the globe’s example. Quickly, the towers became a bloody blur

while Cartesium spun to reorient itself at Virgil’s behest.

Tunic and robe whipping around them, the pair could only wait and

watch as the rings eased to a stop one by one. Until the scenery, while

structurally similar, was repositioned with a heads-or-tails chance of

being their destination.

“Let us see where you’ve brought to us,” Virgil said somberly. He

started via the channel toward the summoned spire and stopped before

its massive carmine doors. Not even Hafstagg with his superhuman

strength could pry the heavy portal apart. This was the throne of

weavers, and the world-movers who once worked here yielded only to

the puissance of magic.

Still, Virgil could not simply waltz in and claim the spoils of a

devastated civilization. As one would expect, there were traps aplenty,

caustic constructions meant to repel prying or looting enemies. Giacomo

had many in his time—perhaps more than any resident of this quiet

place—so Virgil suspected a plethora of arcane rebuttals to his order for

the doors to part.

“Come close,” he bade Elissa. “This could be dangerous.” The weaver

expected any distance in this realm insufficient to evade whatever

contingencies the past owner had placed. He had once read of sentient

traps, nearly as intelligent as the weaver who planted them. If she stood

any chance, it was where he could invoke an aegis versus any would-be

onslaught.

When she was at his side, Virgil gave her shoulder a supportive pat. It

was firm, tense, as if she was aware of the uncertainty he had over

breaching the imposing entrance. Virgil manifested a semi-transparent

bubble of wispy cinders that bobbed upon a slight zephyr. Their leisurely

rise and fall set the flitting flamelings on a circling path that encompassed

the pair. If Virgil hadn’t lost his ability to marshal earth, he would have

instead fused the elements to make a crystalline shield that could

withstand greater force. The thaumaturgic feat was beyond him, though

the loss had given him charge of a blazing counterpart. What worried

Virgil was that his tests of the shield had been versus principally trivial

attacks.

He cast askance at Elissa, whose sanguine stare judged the door in

advance for what it might spew at her. She was as ready as he was not.

Virgil placed his hand on the portal, bridging the personal connection

that would, barring painful outbursts, extend his will. The very polished,

very red door was warm, and that should have alerted Virgil to the

danger. Instead, he was distracted by the pair of equally red orbs

watching him from behind.

“Elissa, is someone with you?” he asked.

“N-No,” she tersely replied after throwing a frightened glance over

her shoulder. The question was terribly unsettling, so she did her best to

avoid searching too thoroughly. Deadly or not, she did not want to

contend with a demon or phantasm or whatever horrid lurker called this

dead place home.

Virgil turned to investigate as well, palm still resting on the blood-

warm surface; he wasn’t fond of disembodied eyes. “That’s odd,” he

muttered when he once again studied the blank slate.

It wasn’t until his mental command to activate the door that he

recognized his blunder. The eyes were more than a trick of the mind; they

were a deterrence devised to prevent the brain from picking out that

telling radiation.

On this one rare occasion, fortune found the heart to favor the weaver

and his daughter. When the portal parted and the trap burst forth, it was

a blaze that escaped. A mighty, terrible blaze, but a blaze. And Virgil

managed blazes quite well.

It was impossible to simply quell such a roaring inferno. So Virgil first

activated his shield, and the cinders exploded outward with enough force

to redirect the fiery flow. They acted as tiny anchors within the spewing

flame, depositing the weaver’s influence there so that he might slowly

convince the bright orange tempest to join him. The element was nearly

as tenacious as wind in its refusal to be enslaved, but Virgil had grown

quite intimate with its particular tugs and rejoinders. He would weave

and it would resist, try to trick or mislead him with a delayed reaction or

feinting turn to steer last second in another direction. Eventually, and not

without first shedding a few beads of sweat, Virgil convinced the angry

fire to simmer and dissipate. If Giacomo—the sorcerer whose records

were stricken from all but the most peripheral accounts—conjured this

trap, his artifice with fire was not to be questioned.

“That sure was a heated encounter,” Elissa meekly said, her voice

falling off the “er” into a string of self-indulgent giggles.

Virgil regarded her, absolutely thunderstruck. As far as he was

concerned, the woman beside him was exhibiting early symptoms of

dementia.

“A torch, a torch, my kingdom for a torch!” she soon followed,

jubilantly citing some well-known play she’d read three summers prior.

The equestrian words were, to her, hilariously replaced.

The sorcerer ran his fingers through his glossy black mane.

Committing her to a sanitarium might make him a wealth of a hypocrite,

but he was beginning to worry. At the very least, she seemed truly

brightened; there was no contesting the worth of that truth. As he

watched her doubled over, wholly taken by her abysmal jokes, it was

impossible to not see Merill there.

When Elissa finally noticed she was the only one in a fit of snickers,

she swiftly gathered herself straight—as straight as the bumbling half-elf

could manage when laughter prodded defiantly at her belly. She

pointedly did not look at Virgil.

He, on the other hand, was scrutinizing her. “What was that?”

Elissa’s ears twitched under the spell of another withheld giggle. “N-

Nothing,” she managed to squeeze out. “Spontaneous.”

Virgil wondered whether she’d regularly composed these jokes in her

head and only just decided to share her humorously rotten yield. Maybe

it was a hobby for the woman.

“Inside then,” Virgil declared.

At first glance, the entry room was completely empty. A step forward

and a second glance afforded the peculiar mural that protruded from the

far wall and changed according to perspective.

“Is this a puzzle?” Elissa inquired, shifting from left to right to find

both sides made no sense. “Art?”

“Could be both, dear. It seems the trick would be to look from the

proper angle.” If it were a puzzle, Virgil did not remember it at all. But he

conceded centuries had come and gone with many memories in tow.

Elissa inched her way along an imaginary grid, stopping to adjust a

series of angles every few inches like a half-elf sextant. Virgil was doing

his best to stay out of her way while examining the shapes up close.

There were no buttons, latches or otherwise hidden objects he could find,

so he stepped back and allowed her a free view of the entangled curves

and corners.

“No luck?” Virgil dismally asked as she finished her rounds.

Elissa shrugged.

“I really don’t think blasting our way past is feasible or safe,” Virgil

considered. “Yet anything we seek will most likely be up top, beyond this

room.”

An idea brought its light to Elissa’s expression. “Should we look from

above?” she asked, unintentionally posing the question to herself and

hardly audible in order to avoid sounding like a dunce.

“That’s a great suggestion,” Virgil said approvingly. “But how do you

plan to do that?” The ceiling was high and even, and neither had the pads

of a gecko.

“Um, well . . .” Elissa scanned the room, empty as before, and her

attention eventually came to rest on Virgil. “You could, you could lift me,”

she proposed.

After a moment of hesitation, the weaver shook his head and started

toward his daughter. “No, that will not do. You must lift me.”

“W-What?” Elissa stuttered. She took a step backward as he neared

her. The prospect of lifting him was absurd: he was taller and heavier

than she! Before she could protest, Virgil spun her about, sunk low and

hefted her on his shoulders.

With arms fiercely wrapping her father’s face, Elissa was frozen. Her

feet called for solid ground. “This is ridiculous,” she muttered. How she

must have looked, a grown woman sitting atop his shoulders.

“This is ridiculous,” Virgil agreed. “But it was your idea.” In that brief

respite of silly proximity, he didn’t anguish over the reality of his dead

songbirds, or of Descarta, whose soothing presence he could not feel

through their mutual connection. It’d become a pleasant white noise that

accompanied everything. There, he was momentarily secluded with his

wrongly neglected daughter atop his shoulders.

“You’re light,” he said. She was, and the knees he grasped to balance

the feathery load were smooth. Virgil could almost picture her as a child,

a miniature Elissa, smiling merrily from the perch. That had never

happened.

“Half of me is elf,” Elissa responded, apparently confident it explained

her lightness. Everything thus far had been an awkward, alien discourse,

but it was settling in a way. “I see something,” she said. “Could you move

to the right?”

Virgil did as she instructed. “Here?”

The deceptively disparate shapes were coming together. “Farther,”

she said.

Virgil shuffled another three steps. “Here?”

Elissa squinted from her crow’s nest. So close. “Left, only a half-step.”

Again, Virgil the shipping crane moved; this time only marginally.

“Oh,” muttered the half-elf from her vantage. “What does that mean?”

She drew a single dimple in concentration and studied the image. It

depicted a humanoid figure with a star in the middle of its head.

“Well?” asked Virgil.

“I see a star-headed person.”

“A star-headed person?” The sorcerer pictured a human with a star

on its neck.

“In the middle of the head, there’s a star,” Elissa clarified.

Virgil deliberated the clue. It could have been something about the

brain, or the varied symbolisms owed to a star. In the time of Cartesium,

stars could have been attributed to pride or poverty or any equally

plosive trait; he’d not once come across them in his studies. The one

constant with stars was that they were astronomical bodies, used to

represent the heavens or in navigation.

It only took a moment of searching the otherwise featureless room

before Virgil managed to solve the puzzle. And it would have been

impossible had he closed the portal after entering. The shadow cast from

the angled spires outside intersected with Elissa’s head on the floor in the

shape of a star about two footfalls left of the mural. The puzzle was

cleverly designed, requiring the opened door and either a very tall

individual or a coordinated couple.

“There,” the weaver said, pointing the solution to Elissa.

She was equally impressed, and after being lowered from her perch,

examined the floor where her shadow had been. “There’s a tiny hole

here.” It was well-camouflaged, and the half-elf doubted she would have

caught it even if she were searching the room for such an infinitesimal

inconsistency.

Virgil peered from above her at the hole, only placed because she was

marking it with her fingertip. “I don’t suppose you have something we

can prod it with?”

“Nothing so thin,” Elissa replied.

The weaver knelt beside her and wove a gossamer thread of flame

that snaked down his worn digits and into the floor. Seconds of tinkering

by means of his extended will eventually resulted in a mechanical click.

The catalyzed whirring of machinery sounded from just beyond the

stone. Large parts of the room were heaved out of place and folded away

to be stowed in the floor and walls.

Elissa watched in bewilderment as what one would expect to be a

multi-level tower opened to a one-room affair with hanging balconies,

dozens of chandeliers and space enough to swallow the ramparts where

she had served most her years. And it was furnished more opulently than

even her sire’s personal quarters: an ivory organ with pipes spanning the

spire’s circumference, full scale chess set, still functioning baths

emanating steam and decorative treasures abound. She supposed a fair-

sized village could comfortably call this single living area home.

Virgil had already begun rummaging through musings, mumbling to

himself while tossing aside unrelated articles in his search for the

unnamed desideratum. There was some alternative method to bring the

twins back; of that he was certain. But everything he touched was

inconsequential, and often nothing more than a payment receipt or

missive.

“Is there anything I can do?” Elissa offered timidly from across the

washed stone writing desk Virgil worked over.

Virgil expelled his frustration. He was well aware of the immensity of

the task when setting upon it, but he also expected help. Descarta, the

genius that she was, already had a firm grip on the ancient script under

his lessons. Elissa, who was intelligent in her own way, didn’t possess the

penchant for weaving necessary to unravel the arcane markings. It was a

matter of eking out the meaning rather than simply reading.

“Just search,” he said more caustically than intended. “Carefully,” he

softly added.

Hours passed with Virgil searching errant heaps of books, wardrobes

and crumpled alchemic notes; the mess of research was very much like

the aftermath of his own subterranean laboratory.

“This is pointless,” Virgil said. “Anything of consequence is going to be

concealed.” Only then did he notice that Elissa had left his line of sight.

For a time he would glance up to be certain she hadn’t stumbled into

something noxious. Then tunnel vision began to set in. “Elissa,” he called.

Her absence was disquieting.

The half-elf, who had given the sorcerer a respectfully wide breadth,

was fiddling with the knob of a faucet now gushing water. “O-One

moment,” she answered while struggling to stymie the cataract. She’d

nearly toppled over the tub’s cusp when she finally managed to open the

belligerent valve, and it was just as obstinate in its refusal to close.

“Elissa?” Virgil beckoned, nearing the sound of running water.

“Here,” came the woman’s mild chord. After some rigorous twisting,

she was able to stop the torrent and avert an overflow.

When the sorcerer found her standing with fumbling fingers before a

nearly full clawfoot tub, he offered a raised eyebrow. “You’re going to

bathe; here?”

“No,” Elissa said. She’d ceased her fumbling to rap at the tub’s edge. “I

was tinkering,” she explained.

“So you weren’t searching.” Virgil sighed and cupped his hands for a

drink. He was parched, and odds were the water was magically purified.

He wasn’t fond of the unnaturally over-cleansed taste, but staying

hydrated was not only important but helped one think clearly.

“N-No, I was only, I was . . .” Her scrambling ceased, and Elissa chose

to occupy her guilt by having a drink herself. The tips of her dampened

locks tapped as timidly as the girl they belonged to at the pool’s

shimmering surface. And when she rose, the ends of her inky quills wove

a slight goodbye to the fleeing droplets. It was common to see her thus:

evasive, noncommittal and unconfident—yet shining.

“You were doing your utmost,” the weaver said. “And you thought

some water would do us both some good.”

Elissa bobbed her head. “I found some potions, but they seemed

toxic.”

“It’s good you avoided them. Most potions are toxic in some way. You

could quaff the wrong brew and turn to stone.”

“I wouldn’t like that,” Elissa said as she seated herself in a rather

ordinary chair among the embellished de cor. The instant her bottom

touched iron she was fettered in place by unseen chains. The half-elf

fought her restraints to no avail; she may have avoided being turned to

stone, but petrification still set in. All she could do was show Virgil her

torment through a scarlet stare glistening with the fear that swiftly

welled there.

The sorcerer placed her uncanny stillness and the saturnine plea

almost immediately. He reached to extract her from the seat’s thrall and

parted his lips. Before he could utter her name, she was swept up in a

great gust. Then the grandiose chamber came to life with all the ferocity

and clamor of a storm.

“Elissa!” growled Virgil, more a curse at his luck than an issuance of

anger. Her only response was the silent yet salient scream her gaze

projected.

It then occurred to the weaver that the room wasn’t overly furnished

out of extravagance. The decorative elements belonged to a slumbering

beast, which she had inadvertently awoken by triggering what must have

been the heart: both a source of fuel and trap. At once, dozens of the

room’s inanimate inhabitants were animated. Coins, books, pottery, two

canopy beds and manifold other items converged on the woebegone

woman to form a mass of wind-hewn golem: a scatternaught. The

constructs of gale were given the title for the scattering their pieces

would do upon defeat.

Virgil set his jaw. He had to dispatch the amalgamation or it would kill

him then rampage until its half-elf power cell was exhausted. Worse, he

had to cripple the thing; he couldn’t risk harming the lass hidden behind

the crooked armoire constituting a third of its chest.

With the scattered carapace assembled, the spire’s innards were far

more accommodating to someone fleeing a shambling construct. And

Virgil took to flight immediately; he wanted nothing to do with the

masonry huddling in its asymmetrically huge right fist.

A thought threw a jagged shaft of fire-lightning at the lumbering left

leg, scarcely damaging the giant but setting its knee momentarily awry.

Since the year-gone incident—for his carnage at the demise of Almi and

Merill was verily a conscious feast and by no means an accident—

weaving had changed. The Fabric, the place that governed their reality,

no longer answered his arcane call. Spells felt different, visceral, plucked

from within instead of without. And it was that innate control that

allowed Virgil to toss spell after fiery spell at the construct with precision.

The scatternaught did not appreciate being kited, and with a great

heave of stormy lungs sent its breath forth with the force of a twister.

Virgil, who only recognized the beast from books and wouldn’t have had

the expertise to conjure one, was utterly unprepared for the beast’s

riposte.

He was thrown into a tumble by the indomitable breath weapon,

crashing through a stack of books, which might as well have been bricks

to him then, and into one of the heated baths. It was shallow enough to

stand in, but thinking came before standing. His pounding skull was fresh

out of thinking. Fortunately for Virgil, his hellish affinity tapped into

subliminal thought and brought a prehensile tail into being. The water

hissed and complained as the magmatic limb flung him through a wall of

steam and caught its load beyond the stampeding scatternaught.

The jolt was enough for Virgil to deny the ache and regain a sense of

self. It did not quiet the din of mighty footfalls. Then the debris-fiend was

on the man, and he was forced to resort to rolling to escape the medley of

stomps. Sorcerers did not favor the roll; Virgil shared the sentiment. With

the aid of his prehensile appendage, he dodged stomp after stomp. But

the weaver would soon tire while the elemental would only cease when

Elissa was depleted.

Virgil considered the grave situation. Without distractive cannon

fodder such as Hafstagg he could not mount a distanced assault: the

scatternaught would surely employ another twister. Close proximity

placed him in contest with the gargantuan beast and all the potential

crushing thereafter. He truly did not enjoy these one-sided situations

wherein he was forced to abandon the more powerful spells of his

repertoire in order to avoid harming another. Yet he would not so much

as singe those dew-laden tips he’d just witnessed.

With a growl, more austere than feral, the weaver adopted the role of

battlemage. It was not unfamiliar to him; it was just inferior, a personal

limiter. A pair of infernal blades answered his mental call. The two

lengths of roaring whiteness moved almost of their own accord, set into a

feverish dance by his deep-seated hatred of the automaton. Its existence

threatened Elissa, the daughter that was finally warming up to him.

His countenance flashed anger as Virgil shuffled under a monstrous

blow from the scatternaught’s mace of a right arm. Hungry blades bit

twice into the stonework there and snapped ravenously at the cauldron-

calf as he shuffled past. The forged iron gave way like parchment beneath

his weaverially augmented attack.

This drew a backhanded sweep of that giant club-like fist. To his

credit, Virgil ignored the greed of a follow-up to shuffle judiciously

forward and under, utilizing the magmatic claw-tail to hasten his course

and evade while remaining in melee range. The movement afforded two

deep incisions on the construct’s knees, and the ghoulish cry that

followed confirmed the potency of his mandibular strike. When the

weaver passed fully between the legs, he about-faced to launch a

renewed assault, only to face the less massive but still quite dangerous

left fist soaring in a nasty hook.

He raised his arms in a hilariously futile shield; the command also

marshaled his tail up and out, whose palm fared far better than his

human arms in thwarting the pulverizing punch. During the subsequent

battle instant of magma consuming scatternaught, it dawned on Virgil

that the extra appendage was his best weapon and only defense. It ate

through the thing—wind and sundries both—with the acrid stench of

ozone.

The prehensile claw could but blunt the golem’s full force, so the blow

still sent him tumbling as before. It was a good thing, for a kick came in

just after the bubbling fist. Twice saved from being pulverized, Virgil

came out of the roll and immediately back at the fiend. He had his

strategy; it was time to do some dismantling.

When the mace arm greeted him with a vertical strike, he evaded by

side-stepping to the right. The shockwave sent his knees into a wobble,

but the sorcerer hadn’t planned on running by. His roiling claw seized the

scatternaught by the braid of organ pipe that made its elbow and swung

under and over to alight on the goliath’s back. Virgil tore at the monster,

white-hot talons clawing to a count of four at broad detritus-armored

shoulders. Meanwhile, his incendiary claw smothered the head, a half-

cocked grand piano that chimed with the discordant complaint of a mad

pianist.

Before Virgil could dislodge the centerpiece, he was forced to vault

away; the construct had the wherewithal to topple backwards in an

attempt at splattering the pesky sorcerer. That or it’d grown tired of the

declining exchange. Whichever the cause, Virgil was quick to mount its

chest. He shred and smashed, weapons infused with all the fury of a

master weaver. The scatternaught would be disassembled shortly. It was

broken, punctured, leaking wind in fleeing gusts and Elissa waited just

beyond the armoire that refused to be pried from the torso.

Then, while he was so rapt by the nearness of victory, masonry-made

digits closed around him. Multiple ribs snapped with a pop that sent

them through his lungs and chest as lancing daggers. The construct was

failing, but it retained enough energy to clumsily slam Virgil into the floor.

When it lifted him again to appraise his state, the weaver was bridging

into darkness.

Cracked skull, limbs splintered, jaw crushed, he only had the one

bloodied eye through which to see his murderer, his daughter. Her

precious soul was too drained to be afraid. She regarded her father with

the sleepy sorrow of a woman who knew what was coming next. Who

knew she was powerless to save him. And she was.

C H A P T E R T H R E E

Birds in Autumn

The receding wave frothed playfully about her toes, pulling sand into the

space between. Elissa absently watched the fleece-lined retreat and wriggled

her butternut digits; the sandy deposit between each toe felt toothsome along

her skin.

She figured it would have been a delightful place under less disastrous

circumstances. They were effectively stranded on an uncharted island.

Assuming island terrors someone somewhere must have authored to scare

children or protect treasure weren’t a legitimate concern, it could turn out to

be a paradise. She hadn’t ventured far enough into the dense foliage to tell, but

the size of the shore indicated an ample sized formation with room enough for

a bounty of resources.

No one on the wrecked vessel had planned on returning to the Elusian

port: they were pariahs. So they could make a home anywhere suitable. Virgil

would be rife with unrest, and so too would Descarta. The fallen sovereign had

made a promise that she championed with a resolve of her own. Surely, the

weaveress would succumb to reason if the path ahead grew too bleak or

dangerous. Hafstagg followed Descarta.

Elissa was somewhere between, nestled into a lonely crevasse. She joined

because she was asked, because her father was involved. And she thought it

might be a lovely trip despite the inherent danger clearly expressed by

Descarta. Not because anyone on the ship had befriended her. That was no

different than her situation at the time: the quiet, dutiful servant distanced

from everyone around her. But she thought maybe her father would either

choose to or be forced to acknowledge her existence.

Hitherto, the journey had placed her somewhere in the vicinity of

ranklesome aide. Until recently, she had nurtured Virgil’s health while

Descarta slept. Most of that time was spent as a bedside phantom while he

rested or occupied himself with aged grimoires and stained sheepskin.

After his recovery she was left to her own devices. Outside of cooking

meals, the half-elf often languished in solitude. He would never call out to her

as a daughter.

“Elissa,” called a drowsy voice.

The addressed woman frowned. The ocean had burrowed into her mind.

“Elissa, no!” came a second call, a shout saturated with fear.

Startled out of her daze, she rushed to the side of the waking man. A

modest wall of shattered hull that had washed ashore from the wreckage was

slanted overhead to protect against the sun’s blazing zenith.

“Stay calm,” she urged. “I’m here.” She allowed her dimples a cheekward

turn at his call. It had been for her.

Virgil groaned against the throbbing in his broken arm and aching skull.

Each heartbeat sounded there, reminding him he was alive. Alive—and so was

she! The sorcerer shot up, snarling against his body’s objection to wrap Elissa

in a single-armed embrace. “You’re alive,” he said.

“I-I’m alive,” she confirmed in her staple stutter. It was calm, matter-of-

fact, a statement to hide the restlessness within. He was hugging her.

“What happened?” he asked.

Having realized her hands were occupied with nervous scrambling, the

half-elf pried them free and returned the hug. The one appendage

encompassed her mid-back with an unrelenting firmness that showed Virgil

was afraid she’d float away if he wasn’t anchored to her; she appreciated the

stubborn grip.

“You began hallucinating and ran off when I was gathering coconuts,”

Elissa explained. “I found you unconscious by a red sculpture. There were

some strange mushrooms nearby, and I found residue on your foot.” The

words were brought forth in a fast-moving stream of nervousness.

Virgil nodded while absorbing the information: the news that she hadn’t

been deprived of her future by a parading junk golem. To say he was relieved

would be a cloudy observation. The man was elated to find her breathing, but

if the encounter had been fanciful, he’d still lost a part of her. He thought

they’d grown closer during the exploration. She set free her awkward jokes,

and they worked together to solve a millennia-old puzzle. All of it was blown

away in a blink of the eyes. So it was with a wistful sort of relief that he

squeezed her for the first time.

“It’s been two days,” Elissa said.

“Two days,” Virgil acknowledged while pulling away and deciding it’d be

better to not speak of their fantastical leap into the heart of a lost civilization,

all in his hallucinating mind. “I see you managed on your own.”

“Not quite alone.”

Virgil drew creases across his brow.

“Des and Hafstagg found us yesterday,” Elissa explained.

The weaver afforded Elissa a breath to say more, but the half-elf only

looked away as she did when the fatigue of conversation set in. Virgil was

conquered again by the relief of knowing someone near to him had, for the

moment, evaded harm.

A storied yearning draped its memories over his heart. He wished for

Descarta’s pale porcelain thigh, bared and lazing upon his waist, the smooth

curve of her bottom, the downy repose of her side and back, and the basin

where her chiffon curtains went about their winding bosk. It was not a lustful

yearning, though it could swiftly become one. It was a yearning for that to-

and-fro’ course his fingertips would lovingly indulge in as they wound from

hair to knee and back again, sometimes drawing a shiver from his sleeping

poppet.

“Where are they?” Virgil asked.

Elissa gave a slight shake of her head. “They said they’d be back before

sundown. That they were searching for supplies.”

“I see.” Virgil looked around him and saw a variety of items integral to

survival had already been gathered. But that wasn’t why they were here, not

to simply survive. “You mentioned a red sculpture.”

“Yes.” Elissa etched an approximate shape into the sand. “Like this,” she

said. “I didn’t inspect it.”

That was the sculpture from his dreams, and also his past. This was the

island they sought from the outset of their maritime votive. Somehow a sliver

of luck had found its way into the overall catastrophe. “We’ll visit in the morn

then.”

Elissa was distracting herself with doodling jellyfish in the sand. She

bumbled into a common problem of hers: navigating the byzantine nature of

conversation. The half-elf answered questions well enough, but going about

undirected dialogue was trouble. Virgil hadn’t made it easier in the way he

greeted her with such unprecedented vigor. It must have been a terrible

nightmare.

“Say,” Virgil began while returning to his respite, “Do you like jokes?”

“Jokes?” mumbled Elissa.

The sorcerer stared at the damaged roof of his half-shelter. Investigating

hallucinations was a fool’s task. But he had little else to occupy him, and he

wanted desperately to salvage something of her chimerical self. “Jokes, dear.

Witty wordplay and jester’s work.”

“I haven’t heard many,” she said, still digging trenches in the sand around

her feet, which she’d tucked close.

Virgil sighed and supposed it couldn’t hurt to reproduce one of her stale

works. “Well, let’s say you and I just felled a beast, a colossal being of pure

flame.”

“Okay.”

“And afterward you cleverly quip, ‘That sure was a heated encounter.’” At

first, the sea’s perpetual noise was the only response. Then a snicker, then a

giggle, then the half-elf was rolling about her bloom of sandy jellyfish in a fit of

merry laughter.

Virgil hadn’t expected his experiment to yield any real result; the joke was

beyond stale, beyond abysmal. Yet his daughter was grinning wildly and

clutching her tummy, delighted enough to drop her guard. He smiled, too;

evidently he had learned something of her over the year at sea.

When her laughter subsided to a sparse shake, Elissa pushed herself to

her knees and, having finally grasped what she’d done, flushed a vibrant rose.

She tried to part her lips, to throw his attention elsewhere, but all that escaped

was a chuckle. It must have been anxiously waiting for the chance to leap forth

and join its brethren. The half-elf decided against a second attempt and

instead occupied her embarrassment with brushing the sand from her dirtied

crimson tunic.

Her tension was palpable. Virgil assumed she wasn’t accustomed to

breaking out into giggles in front of more than a very select few—a group he

did not belong to. So he did what he could to disperse and ignore what

happened, even if it pleased him. Plus, he was starving. “Does there happen to

be any food?” he asked. “The crabs you prepared were delicious.”

Elissa nodded, still too shaken to do much else.

“Good. I’ll help myself then.” When he stood, the headache intensified and

vertigo set in.

That drew Elissa from her internal fumbling. “No, rest!” she exclaimed,

bolting up to steady him. “Rest,” she repeated.

“I’ll be fine. Just give me some support,” said Virgil. The vertigo was fading,

and the headache wasn’t debilitating; he could still indulge himself in her care.

And he justified that it was better than leaving the taciturn woman

unattended. That’s right: he was doing the aiding there.

Elissa escorted her father to a meal of tropical fish and coconuts, which

against her advice, he insisted upon eating while walking the shore. So she

followed him a few steps behind and observed the ocean once again exhibit its

fleecy playfulness around her toes.

“This is scrumptious,” Virgil said before taking another bite of his

skewered meal. “You’re a great cook.”

“T-Thanks,” the half-elf meekly replied.

There was a long window of silence while one ate and the other counted

footsteps. Occasionally Virgil would stop to examine a shell or debris, mumble

something to himself and they would start again. After what Elissa knew to be

two-hundred and thirty-seven footsteps, Virgil once again prodded the

woman.

“What have you been occupying yourself with?” he asked.

“M-Mostly this,” came her reply. “Taking care of you and cooking, too. Des

and Hafstagg gave me tasks.”

“I see,” said Virgil. “And mostly this?” He stopped to gaze at the ocean.

Elissa watched as the breeze set errant strands of inky hair to dancing

about his profile. He looked very weary, but leagues beyond those years

following Descarta’s first appearance. “The sensation is new to me,” she

explained. “It . . . does something strange to my feet.”

“The tickling creamy parts, the feet-thieving burrowers and the sand

nibbling your toes,” Virgil quoted.

“A-All those things,” Elissa said after mulling over the odd description.

The weaver noted each event in turn as they came upon him. His wards

had a unique way of giving words to things, but that didn’t make their phrases

any less fitting. He found the troika of sensations in order as the foam left, the

tug arrived and the grit accumulated. “That was Almi and Merill’s explanation

when I asked why they were so fascinated by the shoreline. It was their first

visit to the beach and they hardly swam or waded at all.”

“Oh,” said Elissa. “That sounds very much like them.”

“They are peculiar.”

Elissa identified the present tense employed in his speech with a

sympathetic pang. Virgil would not let them go. He was probably revisiting the

archives of that referenced day right then. “They are,” she somberly concurred.

The mawkish conversation trailed off and once again silence reigned.

Beaches had a way of impairing chaos, of opening even the darkest vaults with

a sort of serenity. And so the two abandoned their foolhardy attempts at

bridging a distance too long ignored for the day. Perhaps they’d try again the

next day; for the moment, each was content in their slow pace.

When they returned, the sun was shining less brilliantly, obscured by a

puffy passerby on its easterly path.

“There you are,” lilted a familiar timbre as Descarta hurried over. “Where

have you been?”

Virgil smiled at the buoyancy of her syllables. Their weightless resonance

was flowery. “My blossom,” he quietly greeted as she trotted forward to

embrace him. Her sweet berryflower aroma welcomed him in turn as he

pressed his face against her head. The fire-scarred, too lonely fingertips of his

right hand affectionately traced the smooth dorsal just above her lace-

trimmed pinafore.

To the love-struck pair, words weren’t the only form of communication.

When Virgil saved her life, he’d done so by fusing the very umbilical that

anchors souls to the corporeal world. True, they had never formally been

married, once-king and his never-queen, but the rite he performed joined him

and Descarta as a single entity—greater than any legal or religious ceremony.

Rightfully reviled sorcerer and his pure weaveress were joined dualities.

Eventually they would return to quiescence together; for one could not exist

alone. That was the nature of their arcane binding and the burden each

carried. And due to this confluence, they shared emotions with minimal effort.

Descarta basked in the coddling metronome that played about her back, a

herald to his projected joy at having her once again where she belonged. He

kissed her hair with the hungry avarice of a starved urchin.

“I’ve missed this,” he said against her scalp. The feeling of waning

weariness that washed over Descarta confirmed his declaration and mirrored

hers.

It might have only been a few days, but to her it might as well have been

decades. During her slow drift to shore, Descarta wasn’t afforded the mercy of

oblivious darkness. She witnessed the vessel sink, and watched from afar as

the leviathan chased it into the wine-dark sea. When the tip of its barbed tail

disappeared below, she sucked in each breath as though it would be her last.

Many such breaths passed to that anxious intermission, and she was

ultimately left with only the certainty that, somewhere, her Virgil was

breathing, too.

The weaveress expressed this to him in her own emotional discourse: a

rapping at their shared ribbon that emanated a progressively brighter tale.

First her dolorous drift from the wreckage owned by the miserable

comprehension that she might never see him again, followed by elation at

discovering the weaver quite well given the circumstances, and finally the top

of the hill where she now sunbathed in his returned warmth. Virgil retracted

the leathery, glancing caress of his scarred fingers and put enough space

between them to glimpse the starburst of bronze and amber staring back.

“And yet you shine,” he said with a hint of awe. Virgil did not exaggerate.

Descarta wore the trappings of a girl who had endured a meeting with

calamity. She was an utter mess. Yet within the ragged frock, dirtied skin and

storm of tangles falling from her crown, she was dazzling. “Dazzling,” he said,

giving life to his observation.

Descarta’s grin told him she appreciated his compliment, even if it made

her uncomfortable around Elissa. “Feel better?” she asked while walking him

the rest of the way to the camp. Hafstagg had fallen asleep, a state first

signaled by the boisterous snore that permeated the vicinity.

“There’s the incessant throbbing, but I suppose that’s only natural.”

Elissa began extracting and sorting the supplies Hafstagg tossed to the

earth before entering his bearish hibernation. She arranged the assortment

around an oversized leaf that contained water Descarta had conjured for

drinking.

“I did what I could to tend your arm, but my weave sputtered out almost

instantly. I think I can right your fractures in the morn,” Descarta explained.

“Can you manage?”

Virgil gave his sling a pat. “It’s nothing. I’ve endured worse.” A small wave

of his marred hand illustrated the latter point. He knelt beside Elissa and took

a swill of water; it was dutifully refreshing. “So, how did you survive?”

“I floated to shore and Hafstagg found me soon after.” Descarta pointed to

the spiraled, yellowish horn by the sleeping warrior’s side. “He finished what

we started.” Virgil followed her finger to the trophy, now serving as a

replacement war hammer. The weaver gave a shake of his head. Leave it to the

ogre of a man to rip out a legendary monster’s horn and swing it like a club.

“Des,” Virgil started while easing himself under his shelter, “I have a

suspicion.” She sat in seiza so that he could rest his head on her lap, pinafore

spread around her as a viridian hellebore. He accepted the repose and

reached up to give her knee an appreciative stroke.

“Suspicion?” she asked after a prolonged pause. He’d closed his eyes, and

when her inquiry came, they opened again with a plain, lusterless cerulean.

The worried lines in his face had deepened, and the centuries he’d seen were

armed to darken those oppressive contours. “What’s troubling you?”

“We may have blundered into Cartesium.”

Descarta threw him an expression that painted her befuddlement well.

“Fortune favors us then,” she said with a slightly upward inflection, enough to

place the response somewhere between question and declaration.

“Perhaps,” Virgil tersely stated. He left the word hanging ambiguously in

the air. The weaver did not fear what he’d find there. More than the terror his

hallucinatory incursion incited, he was afraid of what he might not find. After

all, the entire expedition was founded on the conjecture that there was some

way to revive his twins, and that it lay within the fallen weavers’ bastion of

Cartesium. The only promise was that which he had made to Almi and

Merill—one the man intended to keep. He prayed he would be afforded the

knowledge to make real his pact and finally do them right.

“We’ll see for ourselves tomorrow,” he said before fatigue won and sleep

took him.

It wasn’t long before the moon heedlessly shoved the grumbling sun out of

the sky and, according to an insidious sect of ne’er-do-wells that happened to

originate in Elusia, blessed the folk below with a goddess’ glowing grin. She

protected them during the vulnerable twilight hours when mortality

demanded they pull the covers to their chins. That was, of course, made as

much of fancy as most other faith-driven institutions. Naive Elissa believed,

and she returned the grin.

“We need to talk,” Descarta said with a firm, solemn tone she rarely used

with Virgil.

Elissa heard the man’s assent in the form of a sigh and did her best to feign

a deep sleep as the couple passed. When she decided they were far enough

away, the half-elf craned her head to peer at Hafstagg. His snoring was still as

arrhythmic as ever; his silver-bearded chin hung open. She imagined he was

dreaming of a Pyrrhic victory over roasted pigs and the impending porky

counter-assault.

A brief span of surreptitious tip-toeing through the gloomy cover of

jungle-cast shadows reintroduced her to that firm issuance.

“You know I care,” arrived Descarta’s whisper from just within the brush

not a flufftail’s hop away. Elissa sucked in a small gasp and dove to the ground.

Hush followed, and the half-elf thought her rapidly drumming heart would

betray her.

“I’ll never forget,” Virgil promised. “This is another matter.”

They hadn’t heard her. Elissa’s heart slowed its furious pumping. She told

herself eavesdropping was wrong, and she found the jagged shadows cast

over her body unsettling, as if a creature of darkness were primed to sweep

her into its jaws. But something ominous instructed her to stay there, face in

sand, and listen.

“She nearly killed Hafstagg,” Descarta reasoned. “He called her a

nightshade.”

“I would take her word over his,” said Virgil.

“And what has she said?”

Elissa couldn’t tell if Virgil sighed or if a breeze scurried through the

nearby brush. “I haven’t asked,” he answered.

“Why?”

Around came another tired outbreath, this time clearly from the sorcerer.

“What will confronting the girl accomplish? It’d push her further from me.

She’s already closed herself off to the world, and no thanks to me I might add.

She’s taken care of me after the wreck. That speaks vivid enough, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe so,” Descarta said as her resolve deflated. “I’m only worried—for

both of you. The mind can be volatile. You know this more than anyone here.”

She wouldn’t watch Elissa suffer the same dementia he did. After Descarta

abandoned him to that forsaken underground laboratory, his sanity shattered.

She and his elven twins had scarcely pieced him back together when the

misery of losing the pair sent him once again into the abyss. Descarta

questioned whether he would emerge victorious if forced into a third bout

due to Elissa. The weaveress wished that emotionless prudence of his would

resurface and see logic.

“I’ll have a talk with her,” Virgil settled. “Would that please you?”

“It would,” Descarta said. “And thank you, my love.” She drew closer to kiss

her gratitude.

“Let’s be back then,” he breathed against the moist pulp of her rosy bottom

lip. It quivered in response. Virgil supplemented his subtle assault by drawing

his touch casually across her lower back as he turned the girl toward camp; he

knew the spot stirred her.

She shuddered against him and pressed her dainty chassis backward.

“You’re teasing me,” Descarta pouted.

“Never,” Virgil lied. “Now go on and I’ll be right behind you. I just need to

relieve myself.”

With a whimper and another unsuccessful pout, Descarta was on her way.

Elissa held her breath and remained frozen as the girl’s foot fell just in

front of her and passed by.

“How long have you been there?” Virgil whispered, squatting before the

prone half-elf.

She was caught like the snake she was, and petrified as though he’d

already chopped free her head, for there was no way out of this one. He’d

surely exile her into the wilds after a thorough reproaching.

“Go on,” Virgil bade her. “Take the jungle back to bed before she returns. I’ll

distract her.” With that he tugged the woman up and hurried her into cover.

Once Elissa was out of sight he called to Descarta. “I’m not finished with you,

my blossom!”

He had primed his queen for a quick turnaround; a stratagem that worked

both to free the delinquent half-elf and liberate his libido. Virgil had yet to

ravish her on a beach, so he thought to seize the night and witness the

wonders moonlight would do to her sand-speckled skin.

Elissa had to concentrate to tame the muscles in her legs. They wanted to

bolt away and hide where she wouldn’t face the sunrise. She felt embarrassed,

guilty and ashamed for betraying his trust. And he went so far as to deceive

the sweet girl who trotted anxiously back without noticing the crimson stare

just beyond the tenebrous tree line.

Virgil awoke the following morning to a stabbing flare in his injured arm.

He would have cursed himself for his overexertion the night before, but the

wanton revelry was well worth it. The weaver turned his head to see Descarta

snoozing peacefully by his side, lips just parted in her reverie. Stray lovelocks

twitched ever-so-slightly about her face on the tropical breeze.

Such a sight was commonplace for the man, almost diurnal; yet every

occasion to observe her thusly engendered greater passion for his blossom.

And he treated each as a rarity, a juncture of time and alignment of celestial

bodies never to be glimpsed again. He passed his fingers under a lovelock,

those dangling clusters of silken chestnut, as he did so often for no more

reason than because they were there, to settle it behind her ear. Virgil

packaged the portrait and stored it away among hundreds of its kin.

He decided to let the homunculus, his beautiful creation, sleep while he

addressed her concern. But when he scanned the camp, Elissa’s bed of leaves

was empty. A pang of distress washed over him. What if the conversation had

driven her away?

“Finally rising?” Hafstagg asked from the campfire where he was winding

straps of his arming doublet around the trophy horn to add a grip. “Late night,

was it?” He flashed a knowing smile at the sorcerer.

Virgil smirked in return. The warrior had grown more tolerable, amicable

even, after their time at sea. It almost seemed as though he supported the

venture, and the way Hafstagg treated him as a comrade was nothing like the

outright disapproval during their earlier disputes. Virgil supposed it did not

matter; he was a valuable asset, a friend to Descarta and the shift in attitude

was welcome. “Late indeed, friend,” he said casually, cautious not to betray his

worry. “Where is my daughter?”

Hafstagg pointed a grubby index down the beach where a tiny silhouette

sat. “Went to gather mollusks.”

Virgil waved his thanks and started toward her. He didn’t know what or

how much to say, whether to coddle or condemn her. To him this was the

hinterland of conversation, a place where he did not belong and had never

visited as a long-negligent father.

When he reached the half-elf, she was toying with a shell, rolling it

between her fingers. “I haven’t seen any mollusks,” he said.

“Oh.”

Virgil took a meditative moment to inhale and exhale. Perhaps he should

have had Descarta tend to his throbbing limb before tackling this problem. For

a time, he allowed the conceivable approaches a skirmish, but none would

capitulate. His only reference points were Almi and Merill who were hardly

applicable here. All he knew was to tread carefully. “What has you so glum,

Elissa?”

“Nothing,” she somberly muttered.

“Dear,” Virgil said as he eased down beside her, “you’re upset.”

Elissa’s digits ceased their scrambling and the shell tumbled to the sand.

Keenly, she wanted to share how isolated she felt, how the three who’d hardly

acknowledged her were now so intent on fashioning her a monster. She never

could speak her innermost thoughts, and that wasn’t about to change.

Virgil interpreted the painful hush as a sign he was correct. She was upset

and too timid or uncomfortable for articulation. “I won’t presume to lecture

you as a father would. I’m no father. But I’ve been around for some time. If the

years have taught me one thing it’s that those who care are always scarce.

Those who genuinely care: not the acquaintances, false friends or those with

similar aspirations. The few who seek your company, the souls who would

plainly step off the world for you. Once you resolve to ignore them, only regret

will follow.”

Elissa gave an acceptant nod. The advice was not only judicious, but born

of his single most lucid lamentation: the departed sisters whose specters he

would often address. Given what she’d witnessed, the half-elf found the

candor of his counsel undeniable. Still, she remained silent.

The weaver gave her raven crown a pat. “No one here blames you for

anything. We only want to see you smile.”

Elissa cast askance at the man in a small jerk that afforded little more than

a blur of his features. The skittish motion was enough to discern he was facing

the sea, not her. It comforted the woman. She did not want to be judged.

“A smile, a smile, my kingdom for a smile,” Virgil insouciantly half-quoted.

As before, the joke was gnarly; as before, he was thankful they were alone.

The half-elf’s half-quote shattered her morose palisade with a hefty risible

injection. Somehow he’d found her weakness, and Elissa admitted he

exploited it well. The surgical silly-strike forced a sugary chortle free, one

cleansed of the tumult within.

“Y-You’re good at that,” she said with a self-conscious smile.

Virgil rewarded her with another crown-bound tap. “And you’re not quite

normal,” he said as he stood and offered her a hand. “I’m fine with that. We all

are.”

After a moment of silent deliberation, Elissa accepted his leathery grasp

and they returned to camp where Descarta and Hafstagg each greeted her

with gentle expressions. “M-Morn,” she stammered.

“I was expectin’ a heap o’ them mollusks,” Hafstagg said, noting her empty

arms.

“We ate them ourselves,” Virgil said. He then gave the half-elf’s sweaty

palm a squeeze. “Why don’t you help prepare some breakfast while Descarta

tends to me?”

Elissa mumbled her assent, but she didn’t mind. On the contrary, she

found gratification in cooking. As much as they set her tummy aflutter, she

secretly sought the compliments a good meal granted.

“Sorry, darling,” Descarta preemptively apologized as she began to untie

the impromptu sling. After many grimaces, she managed to gradually

straighten his elbow. The bones were splintered at multiple points: enough

that she was amazed not a one punctured the skin. With hardly a thought, she

wove her command over water and Aether, the essence of all natural things,

into his arm. The extent of his injury made the task arduous, gathering

fragments of bone back where they belonged, sealing the marrow then

suturing the resultant wound. Altogether it took long enough for breakfast to

get cold. She ended the healing by stroking his arm. “There, how’s that?”

“Stiff,” Virgil said after giving the appendage a few calculating flexes. “But

much improved. Your command of weaving continues to impress me,

blossom.”

Descarta flushed rouge at his approval and the subsequent kiss he gave

her forehead. “I’m already yours. I wonder what you plan to do with all this

flattery.”

“Gorge you like the glutton you are,” the sorcerer replied. “Then gorge on

the succulent harvest myself.”

“I don’t—oh.” Descarta’s cheeks flooded a deeper red.

“Yes, yes,” Hafstagg interrupted. “I’m thinkin’ our hearin’ is mighty keen to

what you two can’t keep in your chambers.” The warrior flashed a wide grin to

Elissa, who shrunk away from the exchange. “Don’t think the lass cares for an

exhibitionist father.”

Virgil waved away the complaint. “You are both adults.”

“Can’t keep the frenzied churning private, eh?”

“Enough joking around,” the weaver sighed. He doubted Descarta could

get any more embarrassed, face shoved as it was into his robe and nearly the

same hue. “We’re setting out to see if we can locate Cartesium after eating.”

A meal of seaweed-wrapped crab later and the four companions were off

in search of the legendary city. The expedition was short, for it brought them

to the phoenix sculpture from his mushroom trip. “This must be the entrance,”

he surmised. “And I believe I have the key already.”

“W-Weaving?” Elissa asked.

“Exactly,” Virgil said with an approving pitch. “This is the fabled city of

weavers after all.” He omitted the part where he had hallucinated all of this

once already, only with a smaller incursion party. Still, he cast a doubtful

glance at Elissa. What if the entire illusory ordeal was a portent?

“Is something wrong?” Descarta inquired. She could sense the unrest

issued by their bond.

“No,” he assured her. “Everything is fine. Now everyone gather close.” The

four huddled together and with a flume of flame Virgil transported them to

the subterranean metropolis.

Structurally, the scenery was identical to the imaginary visit; that conjured

place had pulled its scenery from the memories of his discovery some four

centuries earlier. Something cataclysmic had befallen the once-wondrous city

in the span since.

“Place has seen better days,” Hafstagg commented.

“What happened?” Descarta asked.

The many monolithic spires were all crumbling, only held together in

pieces by some eldritch manner of weaving. Some had toppled and others

seem to have simply vanished. Much like the spotted pearlescent dome above,

the path before them was pockmarked with holes leading into the nether

below.

Virgil shook his head. He was as speechless as they were; there was no

explanation forthcoming. “When I first stumbled upon this place, it was intact.

Deserted but intact.” The sorcerer turned a slow circle to absorb the

mutilation. “Whatever did this did so between then and now.” The spiny

crimson sea urchin looked dead, and he feared the mechanisms that moved its

elaborate system of rings had been crippled in the process.

“Even in death Cartesium is more impressive than our grandest creations,”

Descarta gawked while the four marched toward the control dais.

Virgil scrutinized the bronze globe doubtfully; it looked frangible, like

choosing the incorrect location would dismantle its rings. “Elissa,” he said.

“Help me, will you?”

The half-elf nervously stepped forward.

“Pick a coordinate,” he instructed while directing her to two in particular.

“Here or here?”

“What’re you doin’?” Hafstagg questioned. “A game of chance? In this

place?”

“Quiet,” Virgil snapped. “Everything from this point forward is chance.”

Elissa eyed the cross- and squash-shaped smears. Something told her

they’d been expunged for a good reason, and that they were tempting death

by merely standing there. Nervous digits clenched and unclenched at her

sides.

“Why are they polished away?” Descarta inquired for the reticent half-elf.

“They’re dangerous and were meant to be forgotten.” A gentle brush along

her elbow urged his daughter to choose. “Don’t be afraid,” he said to her. “This

is where I uncovered the secrets of Giacomo.”

“Giacomo,” whispered Elissa. The name given by the disembodied voice

that bade her disoriented and conflicted on their last night at sea. She

shivered. “It’s him.”

“Him?” the sorcerer asked.

Elissa swallowed her words. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be forthright.

She’d decided to tell Virgil the truth of that wretched night. But whenever she

tried, spider webs clogged her esophagus and disabled her vocal cords. “H-

Here,” she said while timidly tapping the squash-shaped smear.

Virgil beheld her slender finger, bowed at the bottom knuckle, with an

oppressive dread. A dilemma unfolded before him, one that asked whether he

should view the choice objectively or employ the presage of his ethereal visit

wherein the gourd-coordinate devoured them both. If it were possible to

attribute polished bronze with maleficence, he would have verily heaped it

upon the globe.

There was no apodictic destination; each buffed-out inscription held the

potential for mischance. So it was only natural he consider the one clue,

however contestable it was. If possible, they would avoid the smudge under

her fingertip. “Do you know what it’s like to weave?” he asked his daughter as

he placed his hand over her own.

She gave a quick side-to-side shake of her pointed ears.

“Would you like to?”

Whenever he or Descarta manipulated the weave, Elissa longed to possess

such remarkable control over her surroundings. Sometimes she would

summon herself a secret, day-dreamed reality where nations depended on

her arcane might. The flame-touched phalanges cradling her hand tempered

the glory, though; their scarred ridges warned her of the danger even the most

esteemed weavers faced. Still, she assured herself a sample couldn’t hurt.

A sharp, sure affirmation sent a wave through her curtains and a twitch to

her ears.

Virgil subtly shifted her pointer finger a few coordinates northeast as he

drew her near. “It will be painless. I promise,” he said. The idea was simple: to

use her as a magically-conductive bridge, and all living things were magically

conductive.

“Goodness, Virgil. Please be careful,” Descarta warned from behind.

“Should I be a buffer?”

“It’ll be fine, blossom. I’m quite able to control it now.”

Descarta could have retorted that he was still quite out of control when his

mental faculties were concerned, but such a fulmination was neither meant

for her tongue nor beneficial to the health of either.

Hafstagg, however, wasn’t so emotionally venal when Virgil was

concerned. He didn’t hate the sorcerer; in fact, he had learned to envy a part of

the man: a poisoned persona who could switch so readily between merciless

and positively passionate. But Hafstagg sometimes had to step forward when

Descarta let her adoration of the sometimes-sane sorcerer cloud the judgment

he knew simmered just beneath her roiling love.

“Maybe she’s just wantin’ to participate,” he suggested. “You know the lass

wants a part in everything you do.”

Virgil cast doubtfully at the warrior then the homunculus. He suspected

there was more to it than the need for attention. Thanks to his tutelage and

her unnatural affinity, Descarta was more familiar with weaving than the

highest ranking sorcerers of Elusia’s court. But perhaps she simply wanted to

take part; perhaps he’d been neglecting her in his worry over Elissa. “Would

you like to join?”

A demure grin pulled her ruddy lips wide. “Very truly,” Descarta lilted. She

did want to protect the half-elf, but she also patently enjoyed sharing even the

common things with her weaver. The girl moved opposite Elissa and leaned

into Virgil’s sanguine robe, which smelled pleasantly of ozone. He clasped her

side and she allowed him into her, entwining his arcane will with her thread.

When their combined weave first came upon Elissa it was like a cresting

wave of fire and frost; there was no telling where one ended and the other

began. The traditionally dissident elements complimented one another as a

hearth in winter’s hold. Then the frost slowly surrendered and left her with a

blanket of tiny ebullient cinders covering her everything. The feeling was

somewhere between the touch of sunshine and the taste of cinnamon. Her

first time was magical, as it very well should have been.

The weave flowed through her and activated the globe apparatus. Its rings

emitted a high-pitched screech as metal ground on metal, and the spine-city of

Cartesium groaned accordingly. Stillness followed, pervaded by the

continuous complaint of many mechanisms fighting age and dilapidation to

do their part. Virgil sighed and Elissa gasped as the cinders he sent through

her were amplified tenfold. Still nothing. The power grew again but was

abruptly quelled by an overwhelming chill.

“Virgil,” Descarta said as she gently pulled his palm from over Elissa’s

fingers. “I think she’s had enough.”

The weaver gazed at his displaced grip miserably. He was being checked,

watched over like a wild animal or rudderless inept. Is that how she viewed

him now, his treasured blossom for which he held the highest regard? She

only wanted to participate to stem any miscast magic or prevent him from

harming the half-elf; she no longer trusted him to his craft.

Wistfully he waved both girls away. “I’ll do this alone,” he said.

His melancholy came to her without the need for speech, and she knew

the cause. Descarta opened her mouth to speak, but an upraised palm halted

her guilt-ridden response.

“Alone,” Virgil insisted in a timbre caught between disappointment,

dejection and indignation.

Descarta respectfully backed away and motioned for the half-elf to do the

same.

Elissa instead nudged herself close enough for a whisper. “It was amazing,”

she said. “T-Thank you, father.”

He gave her an empty smile, the artificial draw you give a friend when

you’re sorry for not actually smiling. “Off with you, dear,” he lightly spoke.

Watching the encounter was lacerating for Descarta; it should have been a

victory for him as a father, and she had ruined it. The downcast girl worked

remorse into the ink-black filigree winding her frock, index and thumb

fumbling with the fabric. In her eagerness to protect him and his interests she

forgot Virgil was a person with well-deserved pride, not the milksop she’d

taken to treating him as. Descarta bunched her frock and resolved to show the

man she still trusted and admired him. Because she did, and fervently.

Virgil stared at the sphere, the disfigured fingers that palmed it, and he

frowned at what they represented: a weathered, weary man who had fought

life and lost. With a sigh, he once again activated the globe. This time a surge

of weave poured from him and into the apparatus, overcoming the machine’s

atrophy and setting the spires into a blur of reconfiguration.

Only they never stopped. Virgil knew something was amiss when the

sphere began to siphon his weave without consent and refused to release him.

The spines accelerated faster and faster, shedding friable chunks or entire

sections that were devoured by the grinding giant.

“Get out of here!” he bellowed over the roaring engine. “It’s trapped!”

All three cohorts took a step back, but not one ran.

“Go! I cannot—” his order was truncated by a pair of severed monoliths

that collided just overhead. The rubble spread in a spray of angry stone. He

threw his stiff arm skyward in a defensive effort, but the trap demanded every

drop of his pool.

A windy blast threw a mammoth segment sideways to crumble against the

wall of whirring death. Descarta appeared beside him and grabbed his wrist.

“Forgive me,” she said. “I’ll never desert you.” She discovered immediately the

globe would not relent; his leathery grip refused to budge.

He hardly acknowledged her, and certainly did not comprehend her

apology. The weaver was dazed, enervated by the vampiric contraption so that

he only peripherally sensed danger at all. His outstretched hand hung above

him in some statuesque pose of a revered sorcerer ready to rend the heavens.

The din of crying stone and dismantling machinery ceased at once.

Cartesium’s death knell might have persisted elsewhere on the sorcerer’s

stolen energy, continuing until naught a spire stood. But not here.

Surrendered were the sounds of catastrophic failure to the homely pop and

snap of a low-burning fireplace.

“Where are we?” Descarta asked. She peered quizzically at blades of

candlelight flickering as grass. Harmlessly they peeked from beneath her

boots, even making way for an orange-blue tulip. Brushfires peppered the

parched stretch between her and a copse of equally uncanny trees whose

leaves were endlessly autumn.

Elissa gawked at a majestic phoenix listing lazily on an updraft of super-

heated air from one of the many volcanic vents scattered throughout the area.

The elemental avian soared high above with a glimmering tail of many shifting

colors.

Virgil peered beyond to a glade where the scorched earth gave way often

to bubbling lava complete with cattails and lily pads. He even spotted a frog, as

biologically suited to this alien place as he expected every other creature to be.

They had all been here at some point. Virgil when his flank was cleft wide

in the Saradin dungeons, Descarta when the twins anchored within

overwhelmed her, and Elissa when the voice magnified her deep-seated

emotions. And none of them knew where here was.

Equally flummoxed, Hafstagg was naturally the first to pose an

intellectually trenchant appraisal of the situation. “Guess the fire doesn’t

burn.”

“No,” agreed Virgil.

“Ain’t that fire’s thing?” Hafstagg quipped. “Useless otherwise.”

“That isn’t quite correct,” Virgil riposted while gathering his bearings and

subsequently admonishing himself for thinking there were bearings to be had

in such a place. “Descarta was created chiefly from flame; I favor the element if

you haven’t noticed.”

The named girl knelt and tapped curiously at a flower, which shed its

emberlike pollen with each touch. “This is the place from the night our ship

sunk.”

“I s-saw it, too,” Elissa stuttered.

“But this isn’t the same,” Descarta said with a shake of her mahogany

canopy. “The place I visited was cruel with heat; my flesh boiled.”

Elissa nodded her accord. She too had experienced something torturous.

“Ah,” issued a man that they’d either overlooked or who had only just

appeared before them. “Finally you’ve arrived. Time capers so quickly when

tinkering and so sluggishly when waiting.”

“Stay where you are,” Virgil warned, stretching a protective arm in front of

Elissa.

“Oh, no locomotion here, weaver. Bartering, perhaps. Certainly bartering.”

The figure looked human enough, though a bit ragged. He wore an

asymmetrical mantle with a high collar that ringed one side and reeked of

chintz.

Virgil’s scowl showed how little he trusted the man—if it was a man—and

dubiousness was evident in his tone. Still, he might glean some answers from

this man: principally where they were. “Then barter.”

The mystery man clucked. “Gracious, Virgil. The lava ravens have better

manners. Right, you haven’t a clue what lava ravens are. Let’s just say yes, they

are born from lava, and yes, they would greet their mentors.” He fidgeted with

the orange-brown sleeve of his robe. “If they had mentors.”

“I have no mentor.” Virgil festered. Whatever this creature was, it called

him by name and made his blood boil with its rambling. “Who are you?” he

demanded.

“Foolish! Maybe indirectly, but you studied under the great Giacomo. Ah, I

remember when you first blundered into my hometown and I thought—”

Virgil gestured to the man who called himself Giacomo and pointedly

grabbed Descarta’s gaze. “This poor fool has no faculties,” he stated. “Now you

have a point of comparison.”

“That is rude,” complained Giacomo in mock-injury. “Besides, I have your

rantipoles, those wandering elves who call for you tirelessly.”

“You have my what?” Virgil asked venomously, taking a step forward. “My

what?”

Giacomo produced a cackling, dry chuckle. “Oh, those creatures will be the

gallows to you . . . scythe to you . . . fall to you . . . blast it. Forgive me; your

tongue has an odd structure. So many needless phrases and pointers and

magniloquent stand-ins.”

Virgil took another menacing step forward. “You mentioned my elves.”

“You don’t fear Giacomo? Oh, but you should,” the man cautioned in a

harsh octave. “Besides, I don’t have them insofar as a malevolent captor would

have them. I have them insofar as I’ve been a very diligent secure-from-afar

manner of guardian: keeping commodities safe for bartering. This realm—

Everautumn—is very dangerous you know.”

“Where are they and what do you plan to exchange them for?”

“Around. I suppose you could fetch the twittering things yourself.”

Giacomo tapped a finger against his chin. “Though I suppose you could also

find a caterpillar in a haystack.”

Virgil sighed and dug troubled trenches through his hair.

“I want your daughter,” Giacomo added, not quite unaware of the man’s

growing aggravation.

“No.”

“Oh, but her for your precious smatchets. The deal of deals among us fur-

traders. I require her exceptional features.”

“Features?” Descarta asked.

Giacomo approved of her question because he approved of anything that

bade him to rodomontade. “I cannot blame you for missing her eccentricity;

you haven’t the ear for it. Only a true Cartesian scholar is trained to listen for

irregularities in umbilical undulations. Oh, she is very rare, this one. In

creating you, Descarta, your sorcerer deserves some applause. He finished one

of my side-projects. To be fair, I had tossed it aside out of disinterest and not

incapacity to follow through. But as the progenitor to this fine specimen,” the

bombastic man waved to Elissa with a flourish, “he has accomplished a great

deal. Magnificent loins and just the right frequency. You see, dear girl, Elissa is

what I like to call an anti-conduit. She inhibits the flow of the weave, verily an

anti-weaver!”

Given the extradimensional jump, Virgil hadn’t given the frantic moments

prior much thought. When he opened the crumpled memory, what he found

was enlightening. It was why the magical trap only sprung after Elissa was

removed as resistance. Under the newfound knowledge, he doubted she

would have been harmed at all had he unleashed a true thaumaturgic torrent

through her. Still, he would not simply submit to this imposed trade. If what

the snobbish man claimed was true and they were here, he would find them.

“I decline,” he said with finality.

With shaky footsteps, Elissa had begun to gradually remove herself from

the group. She was horrified by the entire transaction, which is what it had

become to her. When chanced with the opportunity to relieve himself of

unwanted baggage in exchange for the very goal of his expedition, surely Virgil

would surrender her. He only parlayed to erect an illusion of care.

But it was more than that which fueled her step-by-step divagation, the

wedge she drove with a misery-forged mallet. In their oneiric meeting,

Giacomo had illuminated the core of her uneasiness around others, the

memories tucked deep within a childhood declined. Virgil would pass her by

without a word, without an outwardly sympathetic—or even virulent—

glance. It was as if, to him, she did not exist; she was a mere gaffe to be cast

aside and forgotten. Elissa wanted to be acknowledged, but more than that,

she wanted to be worthy of acknowledgement. Giacomo promised as much

four nights ago.

“What are you doing?” Virgil asked as he noticed her slow escape. She

covered the distance between him and Giacomo with a frightened hop and

speedily shuffled to hide behind him.

“S-Sorry,” she barely managed through quivering lips.

“That’s a good girl,” Giacomo said to Elissa before addressing Virgil. “My

proposal was generous, yes, and I will still uphold my part. I do apologize for

the fiasco on your vessel. It required planar weaving—always arduous—and

her inner turmoil was stronger than I expected. I assure you I only meant to

tip the scale by invoking her denied feelings.”

Giacomo snatched Elissa’s wrist, which drew a snarled white-hot firebolt

from Virgil. The spell dissipated harmlessly as a flume of orange sparks before

it hit the target. Undeterred, he pulled hands crooked like claws behind him

and caught the very breath of flame in their hooked digits. He would not let

her walk away; he would not leave her disappointed in him; he would not

relent. “You’ll not have her!” Virgil roared defiantly.

He raked his arms forward with all the fury of fire trailing his claws in an

unraveling spool of blue and orange. The streaking talons met in an inferno-

brewing thunderclap that called to the realm and summoned a splash of

firestuff. Virgil caught the viscous cloud with an overhead sweep and heaved it

forward as a conductor articulating sforzando. The firestuff coalesced into a

beastly vortex that avoided Elissa and seized her captor.

Another incensed sweep and Virgil stomped forward, stirring a blaze.

Torrid wisps hissed from beneath his ground-shaking footfalls. His

movements were rigid, angular, driven by malice, and the element he

commanded reflected such in a wreath of agitation. The weaver drove a fist

forward in step with his boot, hurling his hatred of so many things with a

powerful punch that set forth a spout of super-heated loathing. Three times

he stamped onward in succession and three times the molten spew answered

his call.

Descarta and Hafstagg saw the flare as a signal to attack, so they did. The

sorceress gave the weave an experimental pluck; wind answered, though

hardly pleased, and water’s reply was almost imperceptible. Wind it was, then.

She passed bare porcelain arms before her twice and took a grand jeté en

avant to land squatting at Virgil’s side. Descarta entangled her dainty digits

with a subjugated gust then scooped it skyward, spun a pirouette, and wove it

into Virgil’s next two burning beats.

Hafstagg dashed forward with a speed and agility his size would never

have betrayed. He flanked the gale-kissed inferno and flexed massive muscle-

straps to raise his gargantuan trophy as a club to splatter skull and brain.

Gripped by fear twofold, Elissa did all her quavering chassis would allow:

she ducked head and hugged her knees. She did not like the idea of

incineration. The sniveling half-elf abhorred the smell of charred flesh

introduced to her by Virgil’s maniacal tirade when her mother died. She did

not want someone to abhor her putrid death-scent. More than that, she was

conflicted over her father’s display. Elissa would never have expected such a

genuine resistance. Almi and Merill were categorically superior in every way,

so why did he fight for her?

“Impressive,” Giacomo casually and smugly declared from within the

mounting igneous convergence. “But surely you know I’d have multifarious

wards prepared before engaging in electrified conversation.”

A magmatic war hammer materialized for each of the companions and

thumped each chest with enough force to deposit all three in the flickering

grass. The blaze exhausted its fuel, the lava sloughed fretfully away and the

gusts fled as waterfowl from the hunt. Giacomo did not emerge unharmed;

half his attire was reduced to cinders and the flesh beneath shown a bright

red.

The man shrugged as though it did not matter. “This is the domain of

flame, a place that nurtures us both, my pupil. Go forth and discover its rules

on your own. Well, best of luck.” The reviled weaver made a quick arcane

gesture and he and Elissa disappeared. Only a handful of moth-like embers

fluttered and died in their wake.

The three remaining companions lay speechless, each dissecting the

encounter and each reaching the same grave conclusion: Elissa willfully

sacrificed herself.

“Right-o!” rang the unpleasant voice of Giacomo from nowhere in

particular. “Forgot my end of the bargain. Silly me. One pair of hobgoblins on

the way.”

Then the fluttering embers returned and deposited a pair of napping elves

just beyond the bottom of Virgil’s plumage. Half of the man toiled over Elissa,

his so often downcast daughter; half could hardly contain the sudden rush of

elation.

Carefully, so not to shatter the fragile, unbelievable fantasy placed before

him, he sat up and stroked the sandy chin-length crest of the nearest elf. They

were truly there: the touchable, tangible, lovable peris he’d lost some twelve

months prior. How he yearned to watch them rollick once more, to listen as

they lilted the loveliest of phrases and be utterly mesmerized as when they

sought to manipulate him with those sugary sindoor stares.

Almi grunted under his caress, and she and her sister blinked drowsily at

the man hovering above. They looked worn, cheeks dirtied and tunics stained,

but their eyes were lustrous as ever.

“Our Virgil?” Almi asked in disbelief.

Virgil answered with a grin, true and untrammeled.

“Our Virgil!” both sisters jubilantly exclaimed. Their sonorous pitch had

taken on a slight but unmistakable sibilance. The sisters scrambled up and

onto the sorcerer, undamming a torrent of affection.

In the past Virgil might have objected, reproached them for acting so

rambunctiously. Now he welcomed their impassioned kisses and hugs. He

followed their salvo with a gentle sortie, one that saw him cosset their cheeks

in turn. Only then, in that delirious proximity, did he notice the gossamer

slivers of vermilion that shone through their skin. Virgil deduced the cause

easily enough: they’d been conscripted as he had by this infernal realm. When

he initially reanimated the twins as marionettes, it was by his newfound

power as a being of fire.

It mattered not; he adored the bantam elves for their many imperfections.

And the wandering forefinger that gingerly traced the glowing veins hoped to

ease any insecurity each harbored over their new image.

“He came for us,” Merill mewed while blissfully curled around the touch.

“Our Virgil did,” Almi agreed with a honeyed hum.

Merill, always the meek one, could not contain her glee. She fashioned the

most beaming grin ever worn by a non-bioluminescent creature, the most

shimmering rubies. “Our Virgil is marvy magpies!” she declared as both

sisters threw themselves into his cranberry mantle.

“We waited because our Virgil said he would make us his number one

elves,” Almi sputtered, muffled within his half-cloak. “We never doubted.”

“Never,” insisted Merill, whose bravado had deflated. She rubbed her face

against the fabric and inhaled a heady breath of his after-the-rain scent.

Virgil gave them each a squeeze and sat up once more, this time with an

arm hooked around each. “You’re as ravishing as ever,” he said.

“Ravish us then?” Almi asked. “A special howdy-hi.”

Merill bobbed her wheat-colored locks enthusiastically. “Howdy-hi.”

The weaver sighed and stroked their flanks. “I missed you terribly, my

songbirds. I never believed I would prevail, that I would have forever failed

you.”

“Silly Virgil,” the contented twins said in unison.

Merill caught him with her sanguine gaze—happy as red could be. “We

want our Virgil to see us grateful. We are so very grateful, so very.” She paused

momentarily to gather the courage lent by her twin. “Our Virgil’s songbirds

will twip for him every day and every night.”

“Twip, twip,” Almi said.

Her twin gave an emphatic nod. “Twip, twip,” she chirped. “We love our

Virgil. He brings cider to our bellies and sunshine to our faces and many

moths to our chests.”

Virgil pressed his lips to her forehead and gave her waist a pat. “I’m glad to

see you’re as vibrant as ever.”

The abnormally outspoken elf nodded and finally shied away.

“Spry Merill is spry,” explained Almi.

“And your Virgil is spry, too,” admitted the sorcerer. How he had longed for

their singsong speech. “Come, now. We should find a way out of this place.”

Descarta, who had been watching from afar, finally thought it suitable to

return to his side. The reunion was well-deserved, and she hoped her dear

broken Virgil would be repaired by their return. “What’ll we do about Elissa?”

she inquired.

Hafstagg had taken the worst of the magical hammer-bludgeoning and

was still recovering. “Who knows where that bastard’s done disappeared to.

I’m thinkin’ we can’t leave the lass behind, though.”

“Elissa?” Almi asked. “We know Elissa.”

“We know her,” Merill agreed. “I made her with Virgil.”

“That is correct,” the sorcerer said. He was always uncomfortable when

discussing the girl with Merill. At times the elf would detail the nature walks

shared with her daughter. Even the weeds were described with a flourish,

indicating just how satisfied Merill, and Almi by extension, was with the half-

elf progeny. They were perceptive enough to know what a daughter was, just

not what to do with one. He had once found Merill doting over Elissa by

sneaking a Brioche de Rois into her servant’s quarters. Almi and Merill might

not have been cognizant of the significance, but they both were fond of the

woman in their own mercurial maybe today, maybe not tomorrow way of

being fond of someone who wasn’t Virgil.

“We made her,” Merill said again, apparently proud of herself. “So we

instructed about the birds and the bees.”

“In forests,” Almi explained with a sage nod. “Twipping and buzzing.”

Descarta shook her head with a smile. Earlier in their time together, she

might have sighed or chastised the pair. Instead, she appreciated their

renewed vim. “We owe her this, Virgil. The very reason she left is because she

was abandoned.”

“I’m aware,” Virgil said. He was the one responsible for her fumbling

disposition, low self-worth and her choice to freely leave them. “But this

place—Everautumn as he called it—is foreign, and Giacomo made fools of us.”

“We know the nookly crannies!” Almi shouted.

“Many for hiding little elves,” explained Merill.

Virgil put his feet beneath him and only then did he realize how fatigued

he’d become. Merill bunched his dark red robe between willowy arms and

added her adventitious aid by hugging and lifting to her toes.

“Up, up, up!” Almi chirruped, mirroring her sister’s exaggerated

movements.

Each sun-touched crown was rewarded a pet. “Thank you, my sylvan

stanchions.”

“Woodsy girls,” murmured Merill.

Descarta gave each a playful prod. “I guess you didn’t miss me.”

“You guess,” Almi said.

“She has guessed,” Merill concurred.