HFTH - Episode 194 - Replacements

Content warnings for this episode include: Racism, Racist Violence, Dragging Death, Implied Homophobic Lynching, Abuse, Ableism, Animal death (fish, spiders, implied), Violence, Kidnapping and abduction, Death + Injury, Blood, Homophobia, Spiders, Strangulation/suffocation, Static (including sfx), Emotional Manipulation, Drowning, Bugs, Body horror, Consumption of Inedible Materials (Black rains, Gorham gang members), Religious Violence, Intended Child Sacrifice

Intro - Same Ship

At one time, you were whole. Or perhaps, it is not that you were ever complete, but that you were first, original. All the pieces of you were there as they were first conceived when your voyage began. But then, in stormy weather, you began to lose small pieces of yourself—a grudge, a belief, a finger, a bone. You were quick to replace them as you noticed they were missing. The spaces of you have rarely stayed empty for long. But as you have sailed ever onward, you have lost more and more—mentors and loved ones, girlfriends and partners, battles and wars. Your body, your sister, your soul. And yet you have always replaced what is lost, and by this you continue to sail over the destroying waters. There is, you have come to realize, no original piece of you that remains. Why then, you wonder, do you continue to sail, if the journey was originally taken on by no part of you?

Because it does not change what is right, you have decided. Because the new ship likes to fight the storm as much as the old one did. Because there is still an ocean to cross, and blood in the water, and people worth sailing for on some distant shore, and written across your sides is Hello from the Hallowoods.

Theme.

Right now, I sit on top of a moving automobile, as all the seats are occupied. The world that flies past it on all sides is dry; it has been a parched summer, and Iowa has suffered for it, and I am transported back to a different time in my life. The automobile is a stranger here, but only as much as I am. The fields are overgrown with a wild and untended strain of wheat that grows as tall as trees, everywhere except the dusty grey line of the road ahead. The theme of tonight’s episode is replacements.

Story 1 - It Comes Back

“You know what I appreciate about you, Mr. King?” said the crackling voice that came from the supercharged convertible’s dashboard. It was the first time Ray had spoken in two hours; otherwise they had been listening to garbled and ever-shifting radio signals—the count had been promoted to the passenger seat while the hooded and spectacled outlaw named Moth snored quietly across the back row. The driver side sat empty, but the wheel twisted of its own accord. It did not need to twist very much to adjust for the endlessly flat and straight road through the golden plains ahead of them. The wild wheat had grown tall before it starved, betting on rain to arrive and losing it all on the gamble.

“What?” said the Count, squinting at the light.

“You’re not a talker,” said Ray. “Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy all kinds—yappers, passenger seat DJ’s, the ‘oh look at that’ window watcher. But the rarest kind of guest is the one who has things to say and doesn’t feel the need to.”

“What makes you think I have anything to say?” said the Count. He had been in a down mood for the last day; he had spent a lot of energy, and eaten nothing, and the silver he had accidentally ingested was still there, sluggish in his blood, fogging up his mind. He could see almost nothing of his future, and yet chasing him was the rarely-seen monster of his past.

“You do this thing where you click your lips when you’ve composed a thought,” Ray observed. “And you do that once every three or four minutes.”

The Count had never noticed this about himself, and did it again while composing a rude response, and then decided against speaking it. Instead, he sighed.

“I am not used to being easily read,” he said.

“I gather these last few days have presented you with all sorts of things you’re not used to,” said Ray. “Like talking automobiles. And consequences.”

The Count leaned against the window, and his eyes caught the passenger mirror, but his reflection was nowhere at all.

And all of a sudden he was somewhere he had been before; had scarcely remembered, had tried hard to forget. He scrubbed hard at his face in the basin, and then raised his head to look in the mirror again. He was invisible in the mirror, and nothing would scrub it away. He could see the empty neck of his shirt collar, but the man that wore it was gone.

He sank to his knees, hands on the counter. He could still see himself, knuckles split, dirt under his nails. And then it was all pouring through his head like a river; the darkness of the night and the angry torches sparking, the white men on black horses hacking his lines loose, scattering his herd, the screams of Mack being dragged behind Marty Gorham’s horse, and he had never heard Mack scream except in ecstasy and once when he’d accidentally put a nail through the soft bit of flesh between his forefinger and thumb, and the wound had healed up in time but the purple mark on the back of his hand was always there after, and he’d kept pressure off his left hand a little more after that—but the hands on the basin were his and not Mack’s, and it was his hands that had let everything slip away, and it was all screaming out of his grip, a rope rushing loose through the grassland, getting away from him like a stampede.

“You did it again,” said Ray, and the Count was a time and a world away, and suddenly he was choking, and he thumped his hand on the side of the car door.

“Pull over,” he said, and Ray was talking as he coasted to a stop, popped the passenger door, and the Count fell out of the vehicle, and crawled, on his hands, off the asphalt to take fistfuls of the dry soil of the midwest, and wept against the earth, an overwhelming, choking, thought-killing sorrow.

Mack was dead and gone, and the herd was gone, and they should never have come here, should have known they had crossed too far into territory where two black cowpokes would be hunted like the war had never happened. He should have known it was coming; should have seen it in the horizon, but he’d been blind and they had both paid a terrible price for it.

There was also no way of knowing which of the Gorham gang the blood on his hands, the blood that stained his lips, ran down his chin and neck and shirt, belonged to. He had flown through them like a knife thrown in the night, tearing flesh with his own teeth, ripping apart skin with his bare hands, snapping and shattering their bones, drinking deeply of their putrid blood, as if it would make up for the two miles of road watered by the blood of Mack.

The Count sucked in air at last, and realized that Moth was outside, kneeling beside him in the shade, in the bright dirt of a sunny day in Iowa. Moth’s hand was on his back, seemingly unfazed by the long black wings that jutted from his waist, which were bent all wrong. He withdrew them quickly. He was drained of crimson tears, and as he sat up, wiped at his face; blood and dirt streaked the back of his hand, which did not have a puncture wound between forefinger and thumb—that was Mack’s; he had only known it like his own.

“You alright there?” said Moth.

“That bastard,” said the Count, quietly. “I’ve remembered.”

“Remembered?” ventured Moth.

“What he whispered to me,” said the Count, on his knees, and closed his eyes. “The Humble Boot. The goddamned Humble Boot. He said something, when we dueled, and it’s ruined me.”

“I see,” said Moth, brows furrowed. Moth raised a corner of Moth’s black cloak to wipe gently at his face, and he did not stop moth. “What did he say?”

“Lewis,” he said. “He said ‘Lewis’. Which is my name. I’d quite forgotten.”

They were quiet for a long moment, and he squinted at the glaring bright sky; it hurt to look at. Moth said nothing, but took off Moth’s round red spectacles, and silently offered them to the Count, to Lewis.

Lewis took them, giving Moth a skeptical look; it was a curious gift, but Moth seemed neither happy nor sad. He slid on the red glasses; the daylight was easier on his eye, and he appreciated the veil, the pretense of separation between his soul and the world. But unlike the polarized gleam of a motorcycle visor, the red ones were clear enough for the world to see him.

No longer shielding his eyes, he looked up to the object casting the shade they had stopped in, and realized it was a billboard by the roadside. Unlike the field and the road, the billboard was fresh, and its colors shone brightly as the screen buzzed boldly against the sunshine. It depicted a woman in a red business suit, a black kerchief around her neck, red heart-shaped sunglasses, but a face with wiser wrinkles around her pursed red lips. A bob of blond hair fell from beneath her velvet hat, and she wore a pin of the American flag on her lapel, and the text beside her said in bold letters: Lady Ethel Mallory for Queen of America.

Interlude 1 - Uburk-Zurrop Tourism

Scout City is not the only city that has persisted in the Hallowoods. The froglin village of Uburk-Zurrop has blossomed under the guidance of froglin queen Maligra II, and in addition to their primary exports of clay and fish, its citizens have developed a reputation as explorers, wayfinders and drivers. The song of froglinkind has a calming effect on other blackwater-affected wildlife, enabling them to guide powerful and otherwise unwieldy steeds such as springbough griffocaughs or bristly brackenpigs for use in transportation where humans cannot. Froglin carriages can be precarious, but nevertheless promise travel to destinations like Webequie First Nation, the ghost city of Toronto, or even as distant as Liberty City.

If you have the chance to visit the thriving riverside city of Uburk-Zurrop, please come with an open mind, prepared to experience the unique and evolving froglin culture at its most authentic. You may find the doors and ceilings shorter than you would like; they were not built for you. The buildings are primarily made from mud, and stairs are rarely found where most of the populace can manage a twenty-foot standing jump. Insects play a large role in Uburk-Zurrop’s cuisine—especially just after Spider Day.

Please do not confuse Uburk-Zurrop with the northern froglin village of Lolg-Umurg, which is home to the Temple of Lolgmololg. You can denote the worshippers of Lolgmololg by the black mud which they use to stain their faces, and the more green eyes than frogs would usually have, and in places they do not belong. Lolmololg’s attempts to sculpt life are clumsy by comparison to a true artist, and her approach is much to see what sticks.

We go now to one who is planning an empire.

Story 2 - Other Candidates

Lady Ethel Mallory stretched her eight massive legs across the hangar bay of Box Pleiades. No one could see her in this bloated hideousness, of course, as she had relegated the box’s few and tiring non-dream workers to the lower levels; although she in a strange way found herself impressive. Four hands, eight eyes, a thick exoskeleton. Years of drinking blackwater, concentrated as thick as she could get it, had done unspeakable things to her. She felt as though perhaps her massive grey body, bristling with hair and the stony texture of her bone-skin, was a cocoon, and curled somewhere inside her massive ribcage that round young child with dimples and pimples was waiting, shyly smiling, as if she had never learned all the brutal lessons of her childhood.

She had become horrific, and yet, it was the most invincible she had ever felt, outside of the first time she had worn heels in public. She was fairly sure she was bulletproof, could take a Botco drone taser without flinching, and possibly could even withstand a Dreaming Box defense laser for a few seconds before the heat would begin to cook her. It was a busy day in the office for the future Queen of America and C.E.O of the Botulus Corporation, and she could see, from the dozens of screens she had assembled on the second-story catwalk over the hangar, her empire beginning to bloom.

The catwalk doors from the hangar office complex slid open, and Rupert strode out at a brisk pace. He was a product of the blackwater too; his belly and chest bloated up beneath his tuxedo to cradle his head and obliterate all thought of a neck. A blackened tumor of a man, and beady all-black eyes winked from his wrinkled and ruined face.

“Box Auriga is ready for their deployment tonight,” he said, coming to a stop, tailcoats almost trailing behind him, white-gloved hands folded. “Botco has still not managed to evict us from the Prime Dream or their operating systems. Your benefactor was most courteous regarding the backdoors.”

“Good,” Lady Ethel purred. “It’s Box Auriga tonight, and then… tomorrow Box Anguilla, Box Noctua after that?”

“Quite so,” said Rupert. “And at this rate, one Dreaming Box a night, we will have closed in on his territory in California within approximately a year and a half. A frighteningly quick timeframe. There are of course outstanding issues with scaling up our barely-incorporated supply line overhaul.”

“I’m aware,” said Lady Ethel. “I’m going to have to reach out to the oil baron about developing new routes, but I’m feeling rather spent…”

“It is already done, my lady. We have a meeting via drone camera scheduled for tomorrow after brunch,” said Rupert.

“Where have you been all my life,” she said.

“Waiting patiently for your return, my lady,” said Rupert, nodding. “I am not the only one in this company who has remained loyal to your memory. When you departed, you took the very class of the Botulus Corporation. What dreary humdrudgery the past decade has been.”

“A year and a half,” said Lady Ethel, sighing dismally, which nearly swept Rupert off the catwalk, quite by accident. “For some reason I was envisioning a swifter sort of vengeance.”

“Well, it is not a quick thing to adapt every Dreaming Box to a new operating system, and then develop programs to keep them supplied, provide maintenance, restorations. The work shall benefit the company for decades to come. And besides, you shall have additionally much to focus on in your bid for Queen of America.”

“Yes,” she mused. “Have any other competitors shown their faces yet?”

“A few,” Rupert said, stepping over to the rightmost of her screens and applying a few commands to the keyboard beneath it. “I’ve taken the liberty of assembling a dossier. Luckily, with the Count seemingly having vanished, and the Humble Boot being sent into exile across the Atlantic, there are no candidates who have yet gained as much political power as you have. The first…”

“One moment, Rupert, it’s time for my three-o-clock call to Box Atlas,” she said, and searched in the digital overlay of her glasses’ screen until she selected Oswald’s offices in Box Atlas from her list of dreamcasting destinations.

“Quite right, ma’am,” said Rupert.

Marketing - Pink and Gold

Lady Ethel Mallory

Oswalllddddd.

Guess which one I’m taking tonight? You have no idea. That should terrify you. One by one, your empire is slipping from your bony hands and you have no ability to stop me. You have no forces you can militarize to send to Box Pleiades. Your drones are broken-down, undermaintenanced. And you just can’t seem to get your claws into me where the Prime Dream is concerned. I’m sure you could, if you really tried, but the paper-passing, bland dreaming minds of your engineers cannot fathom their tools being used against them. Why aren’t you trying? Why aren’t you fighting back?

Don’t you love this company anymore? Don’t you want to be the big boss? Have you really gotten so sick and tired that you’re going to let me pull it from your loose hands? I’m disappointed.

But it doesn’t matter. Whether you say anything or not, I’m going to own this place. And I’m going to take all those nice photos of our noble founder down from the walls, paint over all that black and white formal technology company minimalism. I’m going to be a queen. We’re going pink and gold.

Anyway, Rupert-

Story 2, Continued - Other Candidates

“-Rupert, you were saying?” said Lady Ethel, cutting the array short. Dreaming signals could be rather hit-or-miss, intercepted by the wrong audience or lost in translation, so consistency was important if you really had something to say. Rupert had been waiting patiently beside his screen, and finally toggled it with the return of her attention. A poster of a woman with rolled-up sleeves and a striped vest. Her forearms had the muscular distinction of someone who works with their hands, and her dark skin and eyes and tied-back hair were contrasted by the orange block font of her poster which read ‘Dinah Dealey for King of America’.

“Apparently we picked up most of her Las Vegas resistance group near the end of your tenure,” said Rupert. “Which included some particularly damaging Stonemaid activists like the Scarberries. Dinah has based her campaign on sorting out food logistics for her constituents in Las Vegas as a former chef and caterer.”

“They’re in a desert, Rupert. Destroy one greenhouse and they’ll be begging at my feet to apologize for running for King. Next.”

“I should note, we may wish to consider running for King of America,” said Rupert. “From a marketing perspective it’s more consistent.”

“I refuse to masculinize myself even for the sake of marketing,” said Lady Ethel. “They’ll have a Queen and they’ll like it. I said next.”

The next slide featured a wide face, a putrescent nose, eyebrows like jagged mountains, mounted over a regal frilled collar.

“Otis Moloch,” said Rupert. “You recognize him, of course.”

“The oil baron,” said Ethel, crossing her small hands together. “That’s unfortunate. I need him working for me.”

“I am sure he can be made to see that as you are already running, it may be more profitable to combine efforts and operate as one cabinet,” said Rupert.

“I’ll discuss it with him tomorrow,” said Lady Ethel, and sighed. “Next.”

“The last contender for now, but the most severe threat, I think,” said Rupert, and clicked the keyboard again.

“Good god,” said Lady Ethel. “What is that hideous thing?”

“Her name is Mandy Monroe,” Rupert said, and lingered on the first photo—a woman wearing shorts to reveal two elephantine legs covered in tiny, toothy grinning mouths—before flashing on the next. Mandy in this picture was younger, eyes bloodshot, staring up from a Dreaming Pod’s characteristic silver casket, with her legs in a similar state, ridden with teeth.

“I think I remember Mandy,” said Ethel, leaning in.

“She was one of the Box Aries subjects that were awakened during… the Box Aries debacle,” said Rupert. “Their water had been contaminated, and unbeknownst to box supervisors, the occupants more or less stewed in their dreaming pods, blackwater injected directly into their bodies year after year. During an outage, Mandy awoke to discover this, and became a prominent advocate for Botulus Corporation reform. Although Box Aries was kept quarantined from the Prime Dream to avoid them spreading this information, in time the Stonemaid Amendment enabled them to depart Prime Dream service.”

Lady Ethel grimaced. She’d seen the picture before; it was the day she’d learned that the outage she had caused—a small gambit to set the Stonemaids up as a threat and retain the relevance of her job position—had in fact let thousands of happy dreaming family members realize that their bodies were festering while they dreamt, and they could not be returned to the Prime Dream to share that choice information to others lest the entire Prime Dream come undone. An entire Dreaming Box, wasted, taken off the grid.

“What’s she campaigning on for King of America?” said Lady Ethel.

“Her legs,” said Rupert, flap of eyebrow raised, blistering mouth flapping. “Which have developed seventy-two toothy lesions. She is an advocate for blackwater awareness, and the idea that these mutations are part and parcel for the age. Nothing to be afraid of. Blackwater-affected people are, as you know, a vast demographic, perhaps larger than we will ever precisely be able to calculate.”

“Well she’s not the only one,” said Lady Ethel. “I mean, look at me.”

“I must remind you, ‘you’ are not the ‘you’ the public knows,” said Rupert, and waved a hand at another screen, where her Prime Dream avatar—blond and perfectly human—looked serious at the screen. “We could alter your advertising strategy if that is what you…”

“No, it’s alright,” Lady Ethel said, raising a small hand quickly, although a big hand went with it, which was almost as large as Rupert and made him flinch. “I’ll stay how I am. It’s not about demographics anyway, it’s not a vote. It’s a challenge.”

“In the short term, to become Queen, yes,” said Rupert. “To stay Queen, you will have to rule, through might or right. Appeasing the general audience will be crucial for a sustained reign.”

“Rupert?” she said, eyes alighting on a small screen to the top-left; it was one that had held a black box within a grey box for as long as it had been online, and a thin grey line. But now it was filled with a red spiral of light. Rupert fell silent as he noticed it too.

Box Atlas was responding with a dream signal of their own. She had been taunting him for weeks without so much as a flicker of a response. Immediately Rupert’s presentation was done, and she activated her glasses, and listened.

“Hello?” she said. “Oswald? Are you there?”

Only silence met her on the other side; a dull, almost noiseless tone. The sound of a room.

“What?” she said. “Nothing to say? Not even a welcome home?”

“…”

“Rupert, is the interpretation working correctly?” she said, half-rousing.

“It all appears to be in order,” said Rupert.

And yet, there was only silence to be heard.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll get the chance to talk in person soon.”

And then she closed the connection, and watched the screen. A few moments later, the silence too went dead on the signal screen for Box Atlas.

“Rupert, I’m changing our timeline,” she said.

“Ma’am,” he said.

“That slob can’t be bothered to say a word to me?” she said. “It’s been a decade and a half, Rupert. Since he threw me out. Since he ruined my life and ran this company into the ground. And he’s still too good to talk to me.”

“I worry about any changes to our long-term strategy without proper…” Rupert began, but she was alive then, massive legs moving, rising in the hangar.

“Get me a carrier,” she said. “We take California next.”

Interlude 2 - Eyes and Ears

My talk with Skrykeskrye has not exactly filled me with encouragement, dreamer. I have been brought to the council to be Syrensyr’s eyes. But he had eyes before, in her. And certainly could in Noptilnopt, if Who Walks Unseen was willing. I have no doubt that Noptilnopt could, if he wanted, stalk unseen in many places and listen in on important conversations. Perhaps he already does. So why does Syrensyr need eyes? Why me? Why now? Is it that the threats outside have grown more significant somehow? Certainly, this Urnundurn business threatens us all, but anyone can see it if they can look far enough. Unless something has changed within the Council, and I am stepping into shoes I do not yet see.

We go now to one who is familiar with stepping into shoes.

Story 3 - Third Time's the Charm

Riot’s head was hot and heavy and fuzzy and her vision spun a little, which was good and bad. It was good in that it indicated she was alive, really alive, and not some sort of undead person who didn’t need blood or an unwhacked head to function. The bad was that right now, clarity was what she needed, clarity and strength, and after her fight she was short on both.

A sharp loop of cable had been wrapped around her wrists and forearms, which had bit several bloody lines into her skin, although it was not as thin as the razor wire the Quartet had used in some of their killings. She was able to roll, at least, so that she lay on her side on the floor of the small stone chapel, looking down a few rows of pews to the black altar, the massive shape of the pipe organ, the figure that sat on the stone steps.

“If there’s five of you you’re really going to have to get a new name,” she said, and promptly received another boot to the head from Brass, which did not help her dizziness situation.

“Quiet,” he said. He had put the mask back on, but it was still thick with mud caked in its brass knobs, and he reeked of the powerful musk of a griffocaugh, which was somewhat akin to being choked with a bushel of rancid hay. “Show some respect.”

The Fifth String wore a mask of metal sunflowers made from cut-up trumpet heads, and had, bizarrely, a third arm protruding from the robes in the center of her chest, made of skeletal silver bones. It was not doing anything except for slowly stretching its fingers in the air while the Fifth String grunted, which Riot found deeply uncomfortable.

“Holy fuck,” said Riot. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Only that I was insufficient,” said the Fifth String, from the steps. The mask must have been heavy; she seemed barely able to lift her head to look at Riot. “He knows you are here. Bring her closer.”

The arm withdrew, rather suddenly, into her robes, until only a few silver fingers peeked from a fold in the fabric. There was that wrenching sensation as Brass took the wire she was tangled in and dragged her across the chapel floor to practically throw her at the feet of the Fifth String.

“Some place you’ve got,” said Riot, glancing around. “Let me guess, great acoustics?”

The Fifth String sat up, slowly, to inspect her.

“You died,” she said.

Riot blinked at that, and shrugged, winced as she did—something was deeply torn up in her shoulder. And her body had been brand new, too. Well, recycled, anyway.

“Yeah, it was nice,” she said. “Saw some old friends, talked about jellyfish. Now I’m here, and I’ve got a job to do.”

“Are you Riot Maidstone or Clementine?” said the Fifth String. “Clementine would have delighted to make it here, to the end of her case.”

“Half of each, really,” said Riot. “Consider me half delighted.”

There was a kick from Brass again, but she twisted to avoid it, and the Fifth String raised a non-creepy hand in warning. Brass took a step or two back. She felt inspected, somehow, like a bug on a white wall.

“How?” said the Fifth String, leering down. “How was this done? You are a salvation.”

“Dead girls never tell,” said Riot, squinting.

“You will,” said the Fifth String, lying back on the dais. “We attempted something similar; to cheat death.”

She reached up with pale, thin fingers, to pull away the robes at her midsection. Brass averted his eyes, but Riot stared; in the center of the woman’s bare, wrinkled chest, there was a glowing wound. Tattooed symbols surrounded its perimeter, stretched up out of sight to her neck and shoulders. And protruding from the wound were four silver skeletal fingers, tapping slowly.

“I’m so confused right now,” Riot whispered.

“The Church of the Hallowed Name has long sought to restore our founder,” said the woman with the silver claw rooting around where her ribcage should have been. “To this end, we once imbued a child name Laurence Abbot with the memory of our founder. It should have worked; our founder’s soul was written upon his skin and set to burst free, in time, from its cocoon. But the transformation never came, and Laurence circumvented his fate—the memory of Tiberius Laevinus, Hand of Eternity, the True Apostle, was sealed away in a painting in Downing Hill.”

“And then I’m guessing you did something dumb,” grunted Riot.

“Our attempt to recreate the binding, the resurrection, was… not completely successful,” said the Fifth String. “But you… you are perfect. Alive. Full of soul. Tell us how you were made, and we can make you and your mother queens of the new age of our city.”

A cold shot ran through Riot. “You leave Valerie out of this.”

“Oh, she’s been in it from the start,” hissed Brass. “She’s allowed this evil in our city to fester. Never brave enough to stand up and put an end to it, even though her own friends’ ripped up corpses are walking around in the street. Shameful.”

“You need her,” said Riot, twisting to catch a glimpse of him. “She’s the mayor. If she dies the city falls apart. That’s not what you want.”

“No, it isn’t,” whispered the Fifth String, soothingly in a way that Riot found quite the opposite. “We’d like to leave her alive. We’d like to give her a place in what is to come. But if you don’t cooperate…”

At this, the Fifth String shrieked, and blood spat across her robes and down the steps of the altar, dusted Riot’s face. And the woman twitched and writhed as the silver hand pried, and a second set of fingers, human, wrenched the other side of the glowing wound, and both hands seemed to peel apart the hole in the center of her until it was wide enough for a single eye, grey as glass, to peer out—the gaunt and wrinkled face of a man, glaring out from inside the wound of her chest. The Fifth String seemed to breathe in deep gasps, which again Riot hated, while the man came to stare eye to eye with Riot through the hole in the Fifth String, impossibly fully formed within her.

“If you do not cooperate, and in doing so buy repentance for your wretched family, then we shall end your bloodline, mother and daughter alike,” said Tiberius Laevinus. “And who shall reign in the wake of your debauchery shall be a holy ruler, and a true servant of eternity.”

Outro - Replacements

Replacements. I know, dreamer, that as soon as my voice ends, your nightmares will move, into perhaps more pleasant dreams, or darker depths. Would you prefer them? Do you regret yet that I chose you, have whispered into your mind night after night with each sleep so far? Do you wish it were someone else?

I cannot speak for what you think of me, but I do know that I am glad it has found you. I speak in dream this way across the universe, and yet for each dreamer I cannot speak to your mind without knowing it, cannot pronounce without hearing in turn a touch of your own mind. A fear, a wish, a memory of the sun. And from what I know of you, dreamer, I do not wish it had found different ears. I think it will matter, one day, that it was you. I am sorry, but it will.

Until you forget me for good, I am your loyal host Nikignik, waiting identically for your return to the Hallowoods.

The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'The Field' 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, dreamers, please make sure to put a mark upon your arm in permanent marker that only your friends know, and then show it to them discreetly. It will help them tell you apart from your doppelganger. Or, if you are the doppelganger, from the real you.