HFTH - Episode 192 - Lies

Content warnings for this episode include: Abuse, Ableism, Animal cruelty or animal death (Shank as usual), Violence, Gore (hand injury), Kidnapping and abduction, Death + Injury, Blood, Centipede Bite, Transphobia, Homophobia, Gun Mention, Strangulation/suffocation, Static (including sfx), Emotional Manipulation, Drowning, Bugs, Body horror, Religious Violence

Intro - Double-Edged Sword

You understand that the truth is a complicated thing. It is a virtue but it can also be a vice. It can lead to damnation or salvation equally swiftly. And it must be administered carefully on the path to enlightening the sinful masses of the world.

If you had simply walked into the streets of Scout City and proclaimed your message, you would have been booed in the street for raising your voice against their immorality and blindness, for letting wolves dance with the sheep. But through all this artifice—the blood, the messages, the signs written on high, you have shown them truth in a way they might understand, might come to believe they found within themselves. A truth they feel but are reluctant to accept, would be afraid to embrace at the risk of being shamed by their equally doubtful friends. Finally, they can be afraid of the monster, afraid of the sin, and be justified in their fear. What is wrong in Scout City is now visible on the surface, in every street, in every home. No one can deny that inviting monsters to stay, building a society that embraces sin, has put the entire city in jeopardy. As it all comes burning to an end in the light of truth, you sit in your mask on the steps of a chapel, feeling the spirit move within your chest, staring up at the mural doors which whisper Hello from the Hallowoods.

Theme.

Right now, I sit on the roof of a small cabin. It once belonged to a family who, having come far from home, built it as shelter only a few minutes from the outmost edge of the streets of the Stumps neighborhood that surrounds the great tree of Scout City. It was deemed structurally unsafe in 2062 following barkbeetle damage, and the occupants have moved to a more central neighborhood, and it now stands to crumble slowly from bark back into soil. Visible from here on either side are groundskeepers, preparing to tackle their greatest groundskeeping this year. Although the cabin appears to be abandoned, inside are a large man with the head of a pig, and a woman keeping a loaded crossbow pointed at the door. The theme of tonight’s episode is lies.

Story 1 - The Nerve

Russell sat in a black cape of drifting rags; it had the look of black leaves from a distance. The shroud was usually used to get close to things that liked to trample other animals, like Griffocaughs, and he supposed this was not so different.

The night was almost gone; the distant sun had begun to turn the sky a glowing red, although the plumes of black smoke rising from the southern neighborhood of the Stumps gave it a hazy film. He looked over to the cabin; he hoped all their effort would pay off. He had not seen motion from Shank or Shelby inside in a while. He could also not see Riot from where he sat, but she was similarly perched on the opposite side, protecting the flank. It was important that each of them only be a shout away from the other.

It would be ironic, he thought, if the Quartet did not come after Shank after all—but the Quartet did have it out for Shank and Shelby, and they had made the trail as obvious as they could. Shank’s boots left craters rather than footprints in the dusty soil of the Stumps’ outer trails.

Russell caught a glimpse, a glint of light—and for a moment he swore he might have seen four masks, four black robes, distant through the twisted trees, silhouetted by the red glow of the atmosphere. But when he looked again it was just the trees, gnarled shapes casting long shadows. He held his breath, and watched, waited, listened.

And then there was a sudden cry, a rush and snap as the trap that he had set went off, and he slid out of his cape down the tree, and went dashing quickly through the underbrush, shovel in hand and his belt loaded with tools. He moved a little more heavily than usual in his dog-catcher’s jacket and gloves; what could hold up to the teeth of one of Big Mikey’s festerhounds could surely hold up to a light bout of stabbing.

He could see a person then, swinging with their head four feet off the ground, dangling by their ankle, lashed to a thin young tree he’d been able to bend and hook in place.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” called Russell, tightening his grip on his shovel as he crept into view, making sure there were no others in the trees that he could see. “As a Scout City Groundskeeper, you have been marked as a threat to the city. You will wait peacefully until we can…”

He looked up, squinting at the person furiously dangling.

“Johannah?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“What the hell, Russell?” said Johannah, spinning and reaching for her ankle. She was wearing her usual camo top and baggy pants, and gave up struggling to scowl at him upside down. “Hunting is off limits, you say that all the time. Yet here you are.”

“I wasn’t… listen, you should not be here,” he said, although he did not approach, and held his shovel closer. “What are you doing out here?”

“The pig’s tracks lead this way,” she said, crossing her arms. “That’s who you set these for, right? Did he get away from you earlier? Let me guess, you’re trying to let him free into the forest like a bird with a broken wing. I can’t believe you. The way you lied to my face. Aren’t you supposed to be protecting this city?”

“I don’t expect you to understand what groundskeepers do,” Russell sighed, and looked up to the sound of a branch cracking somewhere nearby; a second person stepped into view from behind the dark pine trunks.

“Step away from my sister!” said Jedediah Wicker, climbing a bank of soil and root, face stained with dirt and soot. There were other sounds in the forest now, cracking and scraping echoing out; he could only see a glimpse of the cabin from here. He pivoted to face Jed as the Wicker boy grew closer. There was a hunting knife in Jed’s hand.

“Both of you, listen,” said Russell. “Go home. This is all going to be over after tonight.”

“Over?” said Jed. “It ain’t nearly begun. You’ll have a lot of explaining to do. Our family wants the pig dead for killing our brother. But burning half of Scout City… well. They can have what’s left of him.”

“Let me down,” Johannah said, and Russell looked up to her, unsure, but Jed shot him an urgent glare. He sighed, and went for the wire, and clipped it with his shovel, sending her falling a few feet into the tangle of the underbrush. She rolled to her feet, and came to stand eye to eye with him, Jed approaching to stand behind her.

“Maybe you’re the one who should go home,” she said, studying him. “Maybe you’re the one who’s out of your league. It was nice, your griffocaugh story. How many times in your job have you really killed a wild animal? Do you even have the nerve to do it?”

“I find it, when I need it,” Russell said, gritting his teeth. He didn’t back down from her, but he could see Jed glancing over to the cabin.

“Come on,” said Jed, nodding to the cabin. “He’s not who we’re here for.”

“Right,” said Johannah, backing away from Russell and heading toward the cabin. Russell began moving to try and stop her, but Jed stepped into his path, and nodded up to the disabled wire.

“It’s shoddy work,” he said. “Russell, the pig dies tonight. You can be here or not. It’s gonna happen. But if Jacob sees you trying to help him, he will kill you too.”

“Thanks for the warning,” said Russell. “I’ll give you one too. I know you and I aren’t close, but please listen. Shank isn’t the only killer out tonight. The Quartet are here. They’ll kill anyone who stands in their way.”

Jed looked him and up and down, and smirked.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said, and turned from Russell, following after Johannah into the trees, heavy bag at his side. “There is no Quartet. Don’t you read the papers?”

Russell frowned, but then there was a sound of a heavy thump, a muffled cry. He began to run then, passing the Wickers as he dashed back for the cabin. He arrived just in time to see a red flash of blood splatter across the inside of the cabin’s side window, and to hear the screaming begin.

Interlude 1 - The Coda

The Coda was an initiative that grew out of the Scoutpost Therapy Circle, where in the wake of Solomon Reed’s tenure as the Instrumentalist those who had survived direct encounters or lost loved ones to the Instrumentalist wished to embrace each other, provide resources for the affected and ensure that the scale and scope of his violence was never again enacted in the Scoutpost. They analyzed over long nights spent processing trauma through logic what might drive a man to kill and use the corpses of his victims as raw materials; what it meant for a man to have power over one’s soul and to have experienced the existence of ghosts, dissected in long study series the muttered ramblings he, like a white-haired prophet, had shouted in the night as a deadly orchestra resounded through the woods. Each tale of his violent acts was a solemn reminder of the power that a single man with one hand in heaven and one on Earth could hold. After all, those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it—but those who do not forget must choose what kind of example history will be to them.

We go now to one tired of history.

Story 2 - Broken Keys

Shelby watched the shadows move on the other side of the filthy glass pane of the window. The slope of the outline in the red light told her they were wearing a hood, and she almost fired through the door—she expected her crossbow bolt might well be able to puncture through the flimsy timbers—but she was only going to get one shot with it before it came down to closer quarters, so she waited on her chair with her hand on the trigger.

The door swung open silently, and standing in black robes, black leather boots and gloves, and a mask of polished wooden fragments, was the Fiddle-masked member of the Quartet.

“Hello,” said Shelby, not rising from her chair. “Take a step further and you die.”

“Shelby Allen,” said Fiddle. “You should have stayed in the box.”

“Not in my nature,” she growled, and then twisted to look down the second hallway to her right, and fired her crossbow. The bolt whistled through the darkness, and buried itself in the shoulder of the second member of the Quartet, one wearing a drumskin mask with a blackened hole over one eye, who had been busy silently climbing in through a back window. Drum screamed and fell hard into the hall, which only crushed the crossbow bolt sideways in his wound. By the time she looked back, Fiddle had begun running from the front door down the hall towards her. She did not rise from her chair yet, or even flinch as his boots slammed across the flimsy wooden boards of the front hallway.

And then a massive white-gloved hand shot up from the basement, splintering the fragile planks to seize Fiddle’s ankle, and Shank yanked Fiddle straight through the floor into the basement, flexing and shattering wooden planks and no doubt several of Fiddle’s bones along the way. One down, she thought, but she had thought Heather was the Drum, so the arrival of a new one was a not entirely unexpected wrench in her equation. As the sound of a desperate fight echoed in the basement beneath her, she stood from her chair, and kicked it over as she flicked on the lever that activated her arm-bound electric bonesaw. She went striding across the back hall to where the new Drum was pulling himself across the ground, clasping a hand to his wounded shoulder, grunting. She could barely hear anything over the electric shriek of her saw, ready for any sudden attack. She stood above the Drum, and reached a hand down to him. The pale white face of the drumskin mask turned up to her, and for a moment she thought she might have recognized the glimmer of an eye that lurked behind the hole in its material. Drum reached his hand up to hers, and she gripped it tightly.

And then her grip shifted to wrap around his wrist, and she brought her saw down into his hand, blazing through the stringy cartilage between his ring and middle fingers until both halves of his hand spasmed limply. Blood shot in long arcs across her, across the hallway and the windows, across the drumskin mask, and she stopped being able to hear anything at all; it was a ferocious static of the electric saw and his screaming and the blood pumping in her ears all at once, a moody thrum, a battle song.

“Almost even,” she said, and reached for his mask, and attempted to wrench it from his face, but it was tightly secured. She brought her saw towards the support straps that trailed from its sides back into the recesses of his blood-soaked hood, but he swung out, and caught her ankle with a practiced technique, yanked his leg to pull her off her balance. In trying to avoid falling on her running saw, she turned it toward the floor. Which was a mistake; it plunged through the boards and jammed immediately, and as she hit the floorboards hard and rolled, which bent the saw’s blade at a sharp angle and made it useless. She cursed, and began trying to undo the straps that bound it to her arm, as she was now fastened to the ground by it. Immediately Drum was on top of her, one hand useless, the other had a black knife raised. He must have said something; waited for a response from her. Her heartbeat was all that she heard; she brought her elbow up not into the drumskin, but into the metal edge of the drum mask, jammed it back against his jaw and throat suddenly. He responded almost immediately by punching her with his remaining hand, although it seemed to come with yet more pain from his impaled shoulder. It was still strong enough to send her world spinning, flickering white for a moment. She spat blood, and hoped no teeth, and took her cleaver, brought it into the side of her saw, cracking the fabric straps and her arm snapped free of it. She rolled away just in time to avoid a boot slamming down onto her arm; she rolled to her feet. Drum was bleeding out, deep red pools rushing down his robes and across the floor from where she had ruined his hand. He was on his feet, but unsteady, could not move without pain.

Shelby backed away from him down the hall, and called down the basement stairs.

“Shank? You get your kill down there?”

A black boot shuffled into view at the foot of the basement stairs—and then a face. The smooth wooden plates of the fiddle mask, dirtied and cracked, but intact. Leering up at her. She turned back to look at Drum, and found him face to face with her, mask blood-spattered and burned, and then the fabric of the drum burst as something punched outward from within—she caught a glimpse of mandibles, claspers, long wriggling orange legs. A large centipede. It caught her cheek in a split second, and she felt a sharp sting as it bit through her flesh, and then it was her turn to be unsteady on her feet; her head pounded hard, and a burning sensation erupted immediately in her face, rushing through her veins with a nearly paralyzing whirlwind of pain. The centipede retracted into its hole within the drumskin mask, and she could not move her mouth or jaw to say anything, but she wondered why Cole was here; whether he was in disguise, whether she had made a terrible mistake, or whether he was really wearing the mask and trying to kill her as much as Fiddle was. It did not take her long to arrive at a conclusion as Fiddle came to stand beside him, and as her vision grew blurry and she felt like all of her organs might set ablaze, Fiddle dodged a swing of her cleaver and then shoved her hard. She spilled down the basement stairs like a river, head tumbling beneath feet as she rolled, and came to crash in a torrent on the packed earth.

“Shank?” she managed to say; it escaped her as a breath, although she could not inhale again as her lungs were on fire. Her fragmented vision travelled up to Shank, who looked as though he was sitting back against the basement wall, but implanted in his unmoving forehead was a thick square nail, black iron and twisted, with a bead of black blood dripping out from it down his head and snout. It was the last thing she saw before her eyes swelled closed, before she swam in darkness and agony.

Marketing - Everything

Lady Ethel Mallory

The key when you are in marketing is not to lie, but to glorify the truth. The heights are not just good, they’re wonderful. Exhilarating, refreshing, rejuvenating, innovative, bright, youthful, energetic, dynamic. The lows are moving, powerful, illuminating, hopeful. When something is to be feared, it is a subversive menace, surprisingly deadly and underestimated by all your peers. When something is to be loved, it is intimate, beautiful, rich, decadent, luxurious, essential. I am everything. All of it. I am the bane of the corporate suit. The antichrist of corporate America. I’m back to inherit my empire, and I’ll do it in furs. There’s a sun rising on this country after a decade and a half of darkness. You can keep a Lady down, but you can’t keep America.

Story 2, Continued - Broken Keys

There is a little more darkness yet.

We return now to Shelby Allen.

When a little consciousness returned to her, she was laying on her side, looking up the basement stairs, where she saw several faces—Russell, and two of the Wickers.

“They’re still here,” she tried to say, but what came out was a swollen groan.

“The pig,” the Wicker boy was saying. Jedediah?

“What the hell happened?” said Johannah, and she had her pistol in her hand immediately. “Nobody move!”

Neither Shelby or Shank were moving.

“I’m going down,” said Russell, and he stepped down the basement stairs, with Jedediah following closely behind him.

“Careful,” she tried to say, but it again came out as nothing intelligible. Her vision spasmed with green and black pressure behind her eyes. Whatever Cole’s tongue-centipede had stuck her with was potent, and her next words were also lost. “It’s Cole. Cole’s in the Quartet.”

“You okay? What’s wrong?” Russell said, kneeling over her. He inspected the piercing wound on her cheek, which must have swollen up horribly.

“I’ll live,” mouthed Shelby. She looked up to see Jedediah’s hunting knife was held dangerously close to Shank’s unseeing black eye-holes, and Russell followed her gaze up to the Wicker boy, and held up a hand.

“Hey now,” said Russell. “Stay back. He’s dangerous. Whatever they did to him might not slow him down for long.”

“Maybe it’s me,” said Jedediah, and he poked the end of Shank’s snout with the knife. “Maybe I’m the one who cuts his head off. Brings it home to everyone. Not Jacob. Me.”

“Jed, if he wakes up he will crush your head in one hand. Please step back,” Russell said. “Help me get Shelby up the stairs. I’m not sure what’s wrong… she’s covered in blood…”

“Actually, that’s not in the script,” Johannah said, and Shelby looked up to see her sitting at the top of the stairs, gun trained in Shelby’s direction. Behind her stood two tall shadows, a mask made of fiddle and one fashioned after a drum. Cole’s hand was wrapped in straps stolen from her saw, no doubt to quell the bleeding until it could be looked at, although she doubted that Mrs. McGowan would be interested in patching him up as soon as his secret was out in the open.

Shelby yelped, motioning toward the stairs with a hand she could barely feel, and Russell and Jed alike looked up in confusion.

“Johannah?” said Jedediah. “Who are those people?”

“Friends,” said Johannah. “Don’t worry, big brother. You don’t have to protect me anymore. I look out for myself just fine.”

“Johannah, put down the gun,” Russell said slowly, and he gulped as he looked up to the other members of the Quartet behind her. “It doesn’t have to go down this way…”

“Oh?” said Johannah, and the pistol flipped to face Russell instead; and there was a bright flash of light, a bang that rang in Shelby’s ears, and Russell fell backwards beside her, clutching his arm with a muffled scream. Johannah kept talking. “It was your job to kill this pig bastard as soon as he stepped foot within ten miles of Scout City. But you’re too chicken. Josh was family, and you don’t give a shit about him or anyone else except for your stockholm syndrome pig pet.”

“Monster loving freaks like you are a plague on this city,” said Fiddle, crouching at the top of the stairs. “The Groundskeepers are especially guilty of spreading propaganda among these upstanding survivors. You spit in the face of everyone this animal has ever hurt.”

Shelby spit out blood, unrelated to groundskeeping. Russell writhed on the ground, trying to apply pressure to the wound, hissing at the pain of it. Johannah had only grazed him, Shelby expected, and the Wickers were good shots. Jedediah Wicker turned his attention to Shank.

“I don’t care about Groundskeepers, I don’t care about detectives. I want to kill him now,” said Jedediah, staring down the pig. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“It’s not you, Jed,” said Johannah, tilting her head. He looked back to her sharply.

“What do you mean?” he said. “He’s right here.”

“The Wickers can’t be the ones to finish him off,” said Fiddle. “They’re not Scout City’s children. The Coda will be here any minute. They’ll find him. Find his accomplice, Shelby. Find the Groundskeeper who helped the pig escape the deputies tonight. And who knows what they’ll do. Maybe they’ll tear you up and line the streets with you. Maybe they’ll burn you all together. We’ve been preparing them for this. It’s the beginning of Scout City’s rebirth. An initiation.”

“Jo?” said Jed, looking up to her. She nodded wearily.

“I know people in the Coda,” Russell grunted. “We’re friends. They wouldn’t do any of those things.”

“You think you know a friend,” Drum spat from behind his mask. “Until they try to kill you.”

“The best kind,” said Johannah. She accepted a bundle from Fiddle; a black robe that shrouded her baggy pants and black boots, and a mask of splintered white and black fragments of piano keys. “Go home, Jed. We’ve won.”

Jedediah looked around the basement a last time, and his eyes briefly met Shelby’s, and she narrowed them in as much as she had any control over her nerves.

“Jedediah,” said Russell, but the Wicker boy went walking up the stairs, and the three members of the Quartet parted to let him pass out of Shelby’s sight.

And then it was the six of them—her, unable to move her legs or arms or mouth, and Russell bleeding beside her, and Shank with the nail through his forehead, while Drum and Fiddle and Piano stared down from above.

“There is one exception,” said Fiddle, and looked to Drum. Piano’s mask tilted happily.

“What,” Cole grunted. Shelby decided she would have shredded his other hand, too, if she’d gotten the chance.

“Shelby Allen has already failed her test,” said Fiddle. “She’s chosen death. So take your knife and slit her throat.”

“Like hell you will,” said Russell, pulling himself over the ground to rest between Shelby and the stairs.

“Oooooohhh,” said Piano, and looked up to Drum. “Think you can do it? You’re no chicken, are you?”

“No,” said Drum, and Shelby did notice the knife in his hand then, an obsidian crescent. “No, I’m not. But…”

The one reflection of an eye she could see through the hole in the drumskin watched her; his ruined hand was tucked close to his chest, and the black tip of the bolt still buried in his shoulder.

“Let the Coda handle her,” he said. “Like you said, it’ll be better that way. There’s something else. Someone else. I just remembered.”

“What are you talking about?” said Fiddle.

“While I was unconscious earlier tonight, I think Danielle O’Hara was snooping in my head,” said Cole. “I think she’s on to us. She lives in the Upper Trunk. If we’re going to stay secret that’s a loose end that needs to be tied up tonight.”

“You didn’t say anything sooner?” said Fiddle, and looked down the stairs to Shelby, who tried to sit up and could not quite manage it without sinking back down in a hazy green exhaustion. There was light that she could see, flickering shadows, torches bearing a yellow glow, shining down through the hole in the basement ceiling.

“You try remembering a dream,” said Cole, glancing down to Shelby.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook,” said Piano, pushing Cole’s shoulder as she stood. “You’ll carve her up nice and slow. She won’t even be able to run.”

Drum was gone, and then Fiddle and Piano, and the cellar door swung shut; there was a heavy thud as something was propped against it. Shelby’s world swam again, and she sank onto her back, looking up through the hole in the boards ten feet up, and the brighter blaze of fire, the shout of voices. The twisted black nail in Shank’s skull, glinting in the red light.

“Don’t worry,” whimpered Russell. She could only catch a little of him in her view, pulling himself up to sit beside her. “It will be okay. The Coda are good people. They’re our people.”

Our people, Shelby thought, and closed her eyes, and venom coursed in her like wildfire, electrifying her veins, her heart. There’s nothing left of this city but animals, and fear, and a fire we can’t put out. She thought of better days, of Clementine, sitting at her desk, writing in the afternoon light in their detective office in the Stumps, but that invariably brought her to remember Riot, and that gave her one last flash of fear before she swam in darkness again: what have they done to Riot?

Interlude 2 - It is the End

The dawn has come, and it is the color of a blood-red sky. The air over Scout City is a black haze, and it looks from the underbrush like the end of days. It looks from above like a very large tree, surrounded by rings of concentric neighborhoods, stretching off into the rising grasp of the forest, with embers crawling ever outward across the buildings, and great plumes of smoke rising. It looks, from your atmosphere, like a mote of light in a vast black sea of trees. Your world with its black oceans, its white curling clouds, the blue disc of your atmosphere. It orbits a young sun, weary beyond its years, and although your age is almost over, it is still a young planet. Some worlds do not even have life by now. Most do not. You were here too early, and will be gone too soon, to really enjoy any cosmic neighbors.

So when they tell you it is the end, that this is where it stops, that the fire and darkness and grief grow too heavy for anyone to carry or move on through, it is not the whole truth. Endings and beginnings come all at once, replacing each other. As long as Froglinkind survives through this dry season and the shrinking of their lakes and riverbeds, I expect life will carry on just fine on Earth. It is not the end. It just might be the end for you.

We go now to one who is twice familiar with endings.

Story 3 - Into Revelation

Riot waited patiently, or as patiently as she could. One of her feet insisted on a bouncing rhythm. She waited behind her tree, within sight of the cabin. She and Russell had figured that probably some of the Quartet would go around the side when they came, and they each had taken their own approach to trapping the surrounding woods. All there was to do now was wait.

And sure enough, the footsteps, nearly silent, came creeping.

You are a groundskeeper, she thought. And that means… you keep the ground. No, you keep what’s on the ground. No, you protect people. And you try to make life in this forest as fair as it can be for the people and forest both. She picked up her shovel, and its weight felt familiar. The serial killers had rather exhausted their share of fairness.

She waited until she could spot a black-robed figure, creeping through the underbrush forty feet distant. And then she stepped out into view, shovel in hand.

“Hey stranger,” she called. “It’s a little early for Halloween costumes.”

It was a properly scary mask the stranger wore, with sections of brass and saxophone keys jumbled together, a melted handprint embedded in each side. The Brass took another step towards her.

“You’re not getting your hands on the pig guy tonight. Sorry,” Riot said, backing away a few steps. Closer, closer.

“I’m not here for him,” said Brass, stepping closer still. “You’ve had an impressive career, Riot Maidstone. Care to explain your fourteen year absence?”

“Yeah, I was busy finding myself,” said Riot, and grinned as Brass finally stepped into the danger zone. “And my current job as groundskeeper means kicking your ass.”

She yanked a thin wire tucked behind her tree, and a canister left to sit in the Groundskeeping office cooler for far too long burst twenty feet above the stranger, and a flume of condensed Griffocaugh urine exploded in a hazy cloud. Immediately, Brass was suffocating, and she went running further into the woods, drawing him off from the cabin. He went dashing after her, clawing at his mask, and in his haste tripped face first into the thick wet bed of black mud she’d cultivated beyond the first embankment. His mask slapped satisfyingly into the muck, and did what she’d hoped; filled its eyes and airholes. She ducked behind a tree to hide. The mask came off as he rose up again, and she could see his face—eyes inflamed and red, a strong jaw with stubble, grim glowering brows. She didn’t recognize him. He went running in her direction again, slogging through the rest of the mire, clumps of earth falling from his boots and cape.

“Where’d you go? Our game is just getting started,” he said, choking on his words, as he pivoted around, looking for her in the trees. She could see a long knife sheathed at his belt, loops of cable. She waited until he had wandered close enough, then flung a glass vial full of ink through to the other row of trees. Brass turned around to watch it shatter against a trunk, and in that moment she leapt from her spot and swung a shovel into the back of his head.

He cried out, stumbled forward a few steps as he spun around, and she swung the shovel again, this time for the side of his face. It opened up a red gash across the side of his cheek, and he fell backwards, still choking on the Griffocaugh spray he’d been doused in. He unfastened a coil of wire from his belt as she stepped closer, and rolled to his feet.

“Quite the trickster,” he said, glaring.

“Not everyone appreciates my genius,” said Riot. “Good luck getting that off of you.”

She swung out with the shovel again, and he twisted his hands, let the shovel catch on the wire between his hands, and then wrapped the wire around the head of it and yanked. She came forward with it, refusing to let go of the shovel, and his knee went hard into her solar plexus. Her hands spasmed at that, and the shovel flipped free; one of his boots went crushing down onto hers, and then she was shoulder-checked by a grown man twice her size. She stumbled back only to realize that the wire was around her neck now, and she tried to dig her fingers under it as it whipped tight. Suddenly she was in a web of wire; the loop around her neck yanked around a nearby branch, a second loop twisting around her boot and she nearly hung herself, only caught her balance at the last second. Then the wire tightened, and she saw red.

“This is our city,” she grunted.

“Not anymore,” he whispered, and she pivoted around from where she was half suspended by the wire around her neck in time to see the handle of the shovel flash out for her forehead, and she really did see nothing then.

Life came to her in gasps.

Watching the red sky roll past, along with the treetops.

The wire around her neck, around her shoulders, her back getting scraped raw by the forest floor as she was dragged.

Crossing through great wooden doors as the morning light found her; it was already suffocatingly warm, and she could only taste the sweet rust of her own blood, hot and sticky and dried on her face. Looking up at an arched stone ceiling, with what seemed like a set of doors high up in the wall, carved with wooden apostles.

“She’s here,” said the Brass. “All in one piece. Like you asked.”

“Blessed be,” someone said quietly, and she was able to lift her head to see that she was in a church, an old chapel. At the end of the row of pews, bathed in a beam of sunlight, there was someone with a mask of metal sunflowers, laying on the steps of the dais before the altar. And from the center of the person’s chest, a third arm protruded, an arm of skeletal silver bones, reaching for the sun. “Thou hast brought the instrument of our revelation.”

Outro - Lies

Lies. I would like to tell you, dreamer, that things will get better. That things will always get better. But the truth is, I do not know. I can predict. I can guess. I can hope. But I do not see threads leading into the future as Skryekeskrye does. I can not pretend to guarantee the shape of what is come. All I know is this: either things will get better, and we will have been right every time we said it. Or things will get worse. But even, I think, if we go headlong into disaster, and there is no salvation, is it not better to go fighting for a bright future you believe can be earned, than with no fight at all? Perhaps it is even that the belief that things will get better, they must, that makes it so. Fighting for a future we can not yet see, refusing to let the dark devour it quietly.

Until things get better, I am your loyal host Nikignik, waiting deceptively for your return to the Hallowoods.

The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'Nice to Meetcha' and is available on the Hello From The Hallowoods Patreon. Consider joining for access to all the show's bonus stories, behind-the-scenes and more! Until next time, dreamer, we are out of applications for guard that only tells lies. We are full of applications for guard that only tells the truth. We remind our applicants that even guard who only tells the truth is employed to mislead visitors in the labyrinth dungeon, and so in a way both guards get to tell lies.