HFTH - Episode 201 - Weapons

Content warnings for this episode include: Animal death (fish), Violence, Death + Injury, Blood, Static (including sfx), Emotional Manipulation, Body horror, Electrocution, Religious Violence

Intro - Another Nightmare

Darker than your dreams, and farther north than you remember, there is a forest where life and death meet. It is a forest you know well, dreamer. How many times now have your dreams been plagued by my voice, and black pines that have grown as tall as the night sky, of burning emerald stars? We surround you, he and I, for I swallow your dreams and his blood stains the world you wake to. He is the change, dreamer, and I am its voice, and there is no denying now that your world is deep in the throes of a new age. And yet, the age never changes without a fight. I am the whisper of its coming. I am Watching In All Shadow. I am One Hundred Eyes in the Dark. I am your loyal host, Nikignik, Eye of Syrensyr, beginning one more nightmare with Hello From the Hallowoods.

Theme.

Right now, I hang from the ceiling of a small wooden house in the Stumps neighborhood of Scout City, watching a curious grey cat and a woman who thinks she owns it. This is not where I should be—I should be investigating the dissenters of Syrensyr and reporting their vile acts of betrayal to his office. But I am, like the woman, distracted by a blade. The theme of tonight’s episode is Weapons.

Story 1 - What Cuts Comes Back

The cleaver always came back to Shelby Allen. She contemplated that as she turned it this way and that in her new hand, using the edge of its blade to catch a little of the morning light. How was it that after she had lost almost everything else, she still had this? This fat wedge of metal and stained wooden handle, almost black from blood, had butchered her parents. No doubt there was some part of Shank in it, who had used it to do that. And no doubt there was some part of her in it too, because after he gave it to her that day, she’d used it ever since to solve her problems.

Yes sirree, she had lost a hell of a lot since then. Her parents, her job at the meat shop, her reputation. She had lost her hand. She had lost Clementine, her one tether to any kind of normal life. And she had lost the battle with the Quartet to avenge her, because they were still alive and Clementine wasn’t.

At this point, all that she had left was her brother Mulder, who had been badly burned fighting the fires that had almost torched Scout City, and the fluffy grey tabby that was chasing her knife’s reflected spot of sunlight around the floor on the far end of her living room. Well, those, and the new hand, but that wasn’t really hers. More like a rental. The hand grasped the cleaver in five delicate black tendrils, each almost translucent in the light and bristling with minute hairs. Milo had said something about what vine he’d cultivated to produce it—she’d joked that it could be called the Devil’s Hand, but he was planning for something more friendly like a Graspentwine.

Close neighbor of the Rosenbrace, yes, but whereas a Rosenbrace could only support what was already there, the Devil’s… the Graspentwine had to take minute impulses and interpret them into the movements of a whole hand, each twitch of a finger and twiddle of a thumb read from the destroyed nerves of her jagged stump of a wrist. Its roots grew into her skin, which she’d wrapped in dark cloth. Felt stupid having a plant for a hand, and yet, she didn’t have a whole lot of great alternatives. Her electric saw had been bent up in the fight with the Quartet. Besides, from the way things were shaping up, they’d have bigger weapons on their side than a little bonesaw.

“Shelby,” the call came from upstairs. She frowned, and set the cleaver down on the table, much to the disappointment of Cat, who looked up in dismay from the other side of the room as the game of ‘chase the light’ ended. She trudged up the stairs and down the hall to Mulder’s office, and pressed open the door. She stood in the entrance.

Mulder’s office was uncharacteristically messy—but being bed-bound for two weeks would do that. His bed was in the middle of the room, back half elevated so that he could sit. His broken leg was wrapped in a cast, and much of his body and face were wrapped in bandages. The maps of Scout City by district that blanketed the walls of the room had been accented with new marks—boundaries of red X’s where four districts of the Stumps had been burned to ember and ash .

“Drop something?” Shelby said.

“Heh,” he said, and a single dark eye in a triangle of pink skin looked down at her. It still was filled with his dry, mathematized humor.

“No. Just, take decent notes at Mr. Menken’s speech, alright? I don’t want you coming back with ‘he talked some. Plant stuff. Long speech’ written on the back of a receipt. Not all of us can make it there today, you know.”

“You want a bottle of whiskey along with the novel you’re asking for?” Shelby said. Mulder almost laughed, but it was cut short by a wince as he moved.

“No,” he coughed. “Actually, on second thought, bring whiskey, forget the speech.”

Shelby smiled a little. “Can do.”

“Any idea what he’s talking about?” Mulder said, looking down.

“He’s been very secretive about it,” Shelby said, leaning in the doorway. “Last time Milo addressed the whole city, it was to announce the Rosenbrace. Maybe he’s finally ready to go public with this thing.”

Shelby raised her Graspentwine, and then her brows furrowed. It was holding the cleaver; she was sure she’d left it downstairs. The fingers twisted around the handle like ivy around a lamppost—she hadn’t quite gotten the hang of making them act like fingers instead of what they were.

“How is it feeling?” said Mulder, studying her. “Still having problems at night?”

“Not anymore,” Shelby said, although that was untrue. “And you’ll find out soon enough. The second your leg isn’t ready to snap at a moment’s notice you can bet Milo will have a Rosenbrace on you.”

“Oh spare me,” Mulder sighed, and looked up to the maps on the walls. “With the amount of work I have to do, the only walking I’ll need to do is from the desk to the pot and back. Do you know how much new city there is to plan?”

“You’ll work it out,” Shelby said, and turned. “I’ll take notes in longhand.”

Mulder’s thanks were ignored as she found her way downstairs, and looked around. Cat was gone—it came and went as it pleased, although how it got outside and back, she was never sure. She pulled on her long coat and slid the cleaver into its leather sheath on her belt. She thought for a moment about taking the crossbow that sat up next to the umbrella stand by the door—the one Bern had given her.

No, she thought, as she stepped out of the door into a windy day in the Stumps and a bright sky. I won’t need the crossbow until tonight, when we go to the Old Chapel and turn the Quartet and their twisted leader Indrid into dead meat. The cleaver hung heavy on her hip as she walked. Like Shank, it was always hungry for a little more blood. Like her, it knew how to be patient.

Interlude 1 - Alternative Truths

Scout City is a regional jurisdiction governed by an elected mayor that exists over sixty miles from the nearest concentrated human settlement at Webequie First Nation. It spans over three miles, including the furthest reaches of the Stumps neighborhoods that surround the gigantic central city, which is built into a tree of a new species that has been tentatively classified by the city’s leading botanotechnologist as Phenomenonous Duckworthius. In this sense, Scout City is recently affected by a large wildfire which consumed a large portion of the city’s Stumps neighborhoods before it was eventually extinguished by a sudden rain, and the city is facing a housing and economic crisis for hundreds. Storms like these, however, it has weathered before. Because Scout City is its people, in a different definition, and those people have only lasted so long because of their ability to hold fast to each other, to protect their community, to care for each other in a crisis.

But the wildfire is not the only harm that has been done to Scout City’s people. The people have watched their community members murdered one by one, just as they were in the days of Solomon Reed. Some have heard that the Instrumentalist killings must be stopped at any cost, even if it means more killing. Some have heard that the Quartet were responsible for the killings. Some have heard that there was never a Quartet, and only Shank and Shelby Allen were responsible. Some have heard that there is a conspiracy that Valerie Maidstone will do anything to cover up. Some have heard that the Quartet are saviors because they will rid Scout City of the monsters that are ruining it with their presence and influence.

All of Scout City, however, has heard a message in their dreams that says Ben Alder, Cole Kane, Johannah Wicker, Indrid Buckley, and one unidentified member are the names of the Quartet. For some, even the means of the delivery of this message—speaking directly into one’s dreams—is cause for only more suspicion. If the truth is a weapon, its edges have been dulled by a hundred confusions, and the city balances truth and lies on a blunted edge, and wavers as it decides who it must strike.

We go now to a monster.

Story 2 - Scars and Lots of them

Riot was a girl with scars. That was what she told herself lately, to try and get by. And really everything was a scar. The white hat she wore, with its Walter Pensive’s Groundskeeping logo, was a scar whose hurt had gone but left her changed. The yellow jacket she wore, with its thread-ripped imprints where Scoutpost Badges had once been, had belonged to Clementine, and that part of her was a much more recent scar, and much deeper. Her mom, up on stage in a high-backed wooden wheelchair, was a scar—her love had outlived two daughters already and was barely healed enough to scab.

The shovel she carried was a scar. It was her duty, her purpose, and it hung always on a strap over one shoulder as her sword might have once in a past life.

So, it seemed, was every single person that surrounded her in the crowd as they stood in the burnt soil of the Stumps. Diggory Graves, a head taller than her and wearing a black jacket embroidered with red thread, was made of all her mom’s dead friends and also the old lady who had doomed them and also the heart that Riot had died trying to destroy. Danielle O’Hara, with the thorns of her Rosenbrace poking through her tights, stood close by Diggory. It was brave of her to be out in public; her dream-wide messages to Scout City had drawn their fair share of criticism, and somehow the threat of violence from nowhere felt close at all times.

Percy she was sure was here, even if she could not see him immediately. The friend who had spent the past fourteen years living his best life in Toronto instead of telling her mom and her clone twin that she was dead. His poltergeist partner Ratty was probably also here. They were rarely far apart. She did not see the ghosts well at the best of times, and Percy had been particularly quiet since he burned vast amounts of his fire fighting the Quartet.

Olivier Song, standing not too far from her, with dark hair and coveralls and not currently making any thunderstorms, was a wound that had recently come open. She remembered a night, sitting in the rain. A kiss. Being electrocuted, a lot. Complicated feelings. About as far away on the other side, arriving just barely in time, was Shelby Allen, who was also a bundle of memories buried deep in her flesh—long nights curled up together in front of a fireplace in their office, a shoulder she could cry against, a warm soup. And somewhere in the crowd, just behind and to the left of her, was Clara Martin, who was her first love. But Clara was a thousand years old on the inside, and although Riot felt like that too a lot of the time, she had also been born yesterday.

Arnold Eggers was off in the crowd, in his groundskeeper whites, and beside him Russell McGowan, whose arm was still in a sling. Russell was a child in some of Riot’s memories, but in the present she relied on him heavily to keep the swiftly growing ranks of the groundskeepers in line. Harrow, an old friend of Arnold’s but a new recruit, was clad in the same uniform.

Friday Rescher, a woman clad all in black, was Olivier’s oldest friend, older than her. Her red-haired twin Penny, wearing all white, she was afraid to talk to too much for fear of resurrecting all the wrong memories—her mentions of growing up as a science experiment, as a creature in a containment cell, brought out bits of Clementine that had given her nightmares for most of the week.

The blood-red automobile improbably parked in the crowd, with the black-cloaked rider Moth sitting on the hood, she remembered as old friends from a summer long gone, when everything had been just about as life-threatening but a lot more simple. She missed those days deeply, although she had never known them. The man they had travelled in with, Lewis, was likely lurking around somewhere. She was aware that he was the Count, who had made her a very unpleasant dinner of horned rabbit once long ago and talked of prophecies, but in the present he was busy dodging anyone who became too suspicious that he looked a lot like the former King of America.

Vincent, who had stabbed out her eye on one violent night while under the possession of a wicked spore, and Raj Greenstreet, who eluded all of her attempts to get an accurate summary of his life story.

Ignatius, the new sheriff of Scout City, who shot her a dirty look as he usually did. “You should have stayed dead,” he’d told her once. Oswin Scance, the only remaining deputy from the original crew that Clementine had failed to become a part of, was unreadable in their beekeeper’s hood.

She even saw two or three of the Mendies, hanging close to the old city matriarchs Violet and Bern, who were near the stage itself. She did not see any of the Wickers, but that was hardly a surprise.

God, she thought. The hell I have gone through with so many of these people. No need to think about it. No need to think about it at all. You’re just a girl with scars… oh right. There were literal scars, across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks, where she’d been sewn up with two souls and a whole lot of anti-rot runes on the inside of her skin. She was alive now, breathing, not dead, not rotting. Warm to the touch.

Just a living girl with scars and a job to do.

“Citizens of Scout City,” began Valerie Maidstone, speaking into the Echtothorn; the plant’s sensitive drum caught and amplified her voice through a dozen flowers whose elaborate structures projected her voice over the crowd of hundreds gathered in the wasted remains of Clover Street. Her mother looked older somehow—not just by being bound to the wheelchair, but in the eyes, the cheeks, the way her mouth never ventured into a smile anymore. “Thank you for gathering today. I have asked you together to hear what I believe are important scientific findings from Milo Menken, Scout City’s leading biologist. Milo?”

From Riot’s view, she could barely see Milo until he approached the podium where the Echtothorn had been set up. But then he lifted a little, and Riot was reminded that what held him aloft at all times was the Venus, a gigantic living plant whose five-foot pink blooms clung to the back of the stage like the scenic backdrop of a play.

“Hello everyone,” said Milo, looking around a bit nervously. His glasses were thick, and his thinning brown hair swept back. His thumbs were hooked in the pockets of his corduroy pants. “To be honest with you, I’ve been trying this speech a dozen different ways in the mirror. Practicing to myself, trying to choose words. I’ve run it by Valerie more than once, and every time she’s asked me to put the point of it into simpler language, so I’m going to try and forgo my usual academic explanation and try to say this as straightforwardly, as candidly as I can.”

He cleared his throat. The crowd was uneasy, and Riot was too. It didn’t seem like the kind of announcement that would precede a new plant-based microwave or whatever Milo’s latest project was. And if it had to do with the forest, then it was treacherous territory. Walt had built a legacy of working with the woods, protecting it, finding a way to live in harmony with the dangerous trees and massive wildlife, and she had carried that legacy on. But Walt had died, and so had she, and in their wake a different sentiment had grown in the city.

“When the stumps burned, we thought it would take months for plant life to grow again,” Milo said. “But look around you. There are already flowers and ivies creeping up around these ruins. These trees that surround us were not as round as a house twenty years ago, but they have grown centuries’ worth in two decades. The Froglin species that we encountered in roughly their bronze age are dealing with the rise of feudalism.”

Valerie began to move towards Milo on the stage, but Milo held up a hand.

“What I am saying,” he said. “Is that the world around us is, in so many ways, evolving at an unprecedented pace. Its growth is impossible, and it’s happening month over month instead of ten million year increments. An unknown intelligence guides its shape. We have watched transformations in our bodies, in our environment, in this very city, that defy rational explanation but are, scientifically, on a cellular level, on an observable level, true. All of which is to say…”

Here he paused, and there was a look between him and Valerie. The huge pink blooms of the Venus undulated slowly in and out, revealing a hint of the many spiral teeth that lurked within.

“By every calculation, every mathematical model that I have run, every pattern and measurement of growth and transformation,” Milo said, looking out to the hundreds assembled. “Our species is faced with imminent extinction. In fifty years or less, there will be no more recognizable human beings in this city, or maybe in this world.”

Marketing - The Show Begins

Lady Ethel Mallory

Hello, happy dreaming family across America! The fight of a lifetime is happening soon, and you’ll have a front row seat! The battle for next Queen of America will be televised by the Botulus Corporation directly to your dreams! Some of my competitors believe that using the platform of dream-based advertising offers me an unfair political advantage.

To which I say, do you really want a Queen of America who would whine about something like that, instead of making it happen for herself? The technology is proprietary, Mad Mandy, but you could invent your own. Use that wicked intelligence you promise will lead our nation to a new era of success. I’ve taken a dreamcast apart and put it back together piece by piece. I spent ten years developing better systems for our dreaming population, which included my opponent Mandy Monroe, once.

Even as thousands upon thousands of loyal and happy Botulus Corporation customers sleep happily in their Dreaming Boxes, thousands of America’s brave free populace are already dreaming of supporting my reign as queen. Make no mistake, though, we no longer live in any kind of organized democracy, so the battle for Queendom is a battle to the death. For the battlefield, I have chosen my home town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Otis Moloch, Dinah Dealey, Mandy Monroe… I’ll see you there. And for you, my lovely audience? It will be a show you don’t want to miss…

Story 2, Continued - Scars and Lots of Them

I for one cannot wait for this event, Lady Ethel. I cannot wait to see you lose at your own game. Again. We return now to Riot Maidstone.

The crowd was in uproar, and Milo’s wavering voice only provoked a louder wave of questions each time he answered one.

Riot was on her knees, in the burnt earth of the Stumps, the ashes of her last defeat. Tears came choking out of her, but she did not know why—she was not sad about Milo’s words, or happy, or any emotion at all except maybe confused. Maybe the confusion was why the tears came. Confusion from part of her who had died trying to stop the Heart from poisoning the world. And confusion from the part of her that had stayed home. A part of her that had loved Walt said that it probably wasn’t as bad as all that, heck, who knew if she qualified as a recognizably human anyways and what did it matter. A part of her that had loved Buck Silver said she was going to have to ask more questions to get to a rational conclusion, and to never leap to an extreme. But those parts had only tears to offer her as she wept, and the world outside was too overwhelming a sight and sound to comprehend.

Fifty years.

She’d be alive by then, probably, if she didn’t do anything stupid tonight.

She’d be alive to see the end.

Everything she’d ever fought for—her community, her home, her world, gone.

And then from the tears, anger. What the hell did some plant-sniffing Canadian know? Maybe it would be fine. Maybe they would find a way to stop it, whatever it was.

“Riot?” a voice said, cutting through the haze, and she found a hand on her shoulder. Shelby was there beside her, and a part of her wanted to be closer. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Riot said, pulling herself to her feet. She rubbed her nose with her sleeve. “I’m good.”

“What’s going to happen to the humans that are left?” a reporter from the Scout City Almanac called.

“It is likely that they will either become so affected by the mutagens in their environment or face such severe genetic alterations from birth that they will belong in a different scientific categorization than Homo Sapiens,” Milo said.

“What kinda classification do you put me in, doc?” called Sheriff Ignatius; Riot could tell because he’d taken to wearing one of Virgil’s white cowboy hats.

“I would have to study you further to make a judgement on that,” said Milo, hiding behind the Echtothorn a little. “Next question?”

Diggory Graves she saw coming in the crowd; the revenant towered head and shoulders over most of Scout City’s populace. They came up beside Riot in the surging crowd, a lone pale eye fixed on her, and they knelt a bit to lean close to her ear.

“This must be incorrect,” said Diggory. “The heart is destroyed. I believed this would be the end of it. That we had if nothing else gained time. This is no time at all. I must go and speak with the Crown of Decay.”

“Who?” Riot said. “Diggory, you can’t leave. We’re marching on the chapel tonight.”

“I will only be a few hours,” Diggory said.

Someone had come to stand beside them; Clara, who wore a hood of purple. Her hair was in thin braids which cascaded around her face, and always at her side now there was a curved golden sword with a glaring carnelian in the pommel.

“I’m going with Diggory,” Clara said. “I’ll make sure we’re back on time.”

“You also can’t leave,” Riot said. “You’re the brains of this operation. Also what is the Crown of Decay?”

“A harbinger,” said Diggory. “Of this world’s end.”

“A great big pit in the ground full of a mushroom from space,” Clara said. “I’ve read about it.”

“Can’t the mushroom wait until tomorrow?” Riot said, looking to them both. And then, she realized, Percy and Ratty also, shimmering in the air as they hovered above her.

“I require answers,” Diggory said, coming low enough to look her squarely in the eye. They pressed their hand to their chest, bladelike black fingertips traveling beneath their jacket to squeeze at their heart. “And I will get them from perhaps the only being that can answer them. Do not think that our mission of vengeance is not also important to me. I shall return in time to fight.”

Riot sighed, and rubbed at the bridge of her nose.

“Okay,” she said. “Just be quick, if you can.”

“Fast as the wind,” Clara said, and immediately there was a broomstick in her hand, which was carved to resemble birds in flight. “Diggory, hang on. Percy, Ratty, try to keep up.”

And then they were off into the air. Riot wondered if Percy had said something to her; she had trouble seeing him at the best of times, and had seen even less of him lately. Not like Diggory or Clara—their eyes were touched by a different vision. She turned around to find two women standing immediately beside her, and she jumped.

“Jesus,” Riot said. “Stop doing that.”

“Sorry,” said Friday, frowning slightly as she looked Riot up and down. The woman was dressed in all black, and wore a wide-brimmed hat with a veil as if for a funeral.

“I’m so sorry we scared you. We can be very quiet without thinking about it,” said Penny, beside her, who wore a white sun dress with excessive ruffles and bows. Her red hair was decorated with small bones, as were Friday’s braids. A raven that sometimes talked sat on Friday’s shoulder, eying Riot scrupulously. Behind the twins was Olivier, whose presence filled her chest with static. Olivier’s eyes were dark, and like her hair, held some slight trace of the violent blue that had once lived there. Patches in the shape of clouds adorned her blue gardener’s overalls.

“Hey Riot,” Olivier said, with half a smile and half a wave.

“Hey,” she said, looking at the ground. It was weird; in the memories she had, Olivier was only a little older than her. But a decade and a half later, Olivier and her friends like Friday were in their thirties, and Riot had been left refrigerated at nineteen.

“We’re leaving too,” said Friday.

“Not for very long, probably,” said Penny.

“We’re not sure how long,” added Friday.

“We’ll be back by sunset,” nodded Olivier, looking to the other two, and then back to Riot. “Or at least I will. I won’t pretend that I can wrangle Friday… that’s never gone well.”

There was a look between Olivier and Friday that likely communicated some hijinx in their school years at Downing Hill Public Library that Riot was unaware of, and suppressed smiles. Before Riot could ask where they were going, Friday continued.

“The speech,” Friday said. She had a certain catlike way of studying Riot that Riot did not like. “Out there in the forest is a group of rogue witches called the Blackwood Coven. They’re… family, to us. It’s time we checked in.”

“About the… well, the end, specifically,” said Penny.

“These witches have a Grandmother Briar who echoed a lot of this end-of-the-world sentiment. We want to see what else she knows about it.”

“And I just want to see what witches look like that weren’t raised at Downing Hill,” added Olivier, nodding enthusiastically. “I’m so interested to hear what they do when it comes to strengthening their covenants. Or if they even do? I’ve had to learn so much on my own in the past decade, I just… yeah. I think it would be neat. Friday’s been talking about it.”

“Cool,” Riot said, sticking her hands in the pockets of her ripped yellow jacket. “Yeah. Uh, sure. Just don’t be back too late for serial killer fight night, alright?”

“Hey,” Olivier said, and stepped closer to her. She looked up to her face for an instant, that grin grown toothy and free, and then she looked down to the ground. But Olivier put a hand on her shoulder, and she flinched, and so did Shelby a few paces behind her. She looked up to Olivier again.

“Serial killer fight night two,” said Olivier. “We did this with the Instrumentalist once before, remember? We can do this one more time. And there’s so many of us on your side this time. We’ve got this.”

“Be safe,” Riot said, looking up, and hugged Olivier, and she was enveloped tightly for a long moment before Olivier let go and looked to the twins. “Alright, let’s get a move on.”

“Before we do, this is for you,” Friday said, and produced from the lumpy black bag she carried over her shoulder a blade. It was a long silver sword; its hilt was styled after a sun, with a face and radiant spines of light peeling from its circle. The handle was wrapped in black leather. Friday proffered it to her casually. Riot blinked.

“It’s a present,” Friday said.

“Why are you giving me a present?” said Riot.

“I thought you might need it,” Friday sighed. “And Olivier said you liked these.”

“I. Uh. Thanks,” Riot said, taking it into her hands. The weight of it was a relief, in a way, sharp and comforting and dangerous.

“Hope you like it,” said Olivier, as they began to move past her. She turned to show the sword to Shelby, and found Shelby walking away from her through the crowd.

“Wait, Shelby!”

Shelby turned back to look at her evenly, and she hurried through the assembly to catch up with her again.

“I got a sword,” she said, waving it a little.

“Very nice,” said Shelby. Riot’s brows furrowed.

“Where are you off to?”

“There’s one thing we haven’t been able to crack yet,” Shelby said. “The identity of Fiddle. The one who kidnapped me, put me in a box with my hand in a trap. We know all of the others. But I’m going to see if I can work it out today. If I don’t, it might bite us in the ass tonight.”

“Here’s to no ass-biting,” said Riot. “You going alone?”

“No,” Shelby said, and then turned, satisfied that their talk was complete, and kept walking through the crowd, toward where the gleaming red automobile was parked.

Riot quietly whispered her a goodbye, and looked back to the stage. Milo was still busy taking questions from the crowd, and with each answer their concerns deepened. Fuck, Milo, what are you doing, she thought. The relationships between the monsters and the people who think they aren’t monsters are already so strained in this city. This could make it a hundred times worse. And her mother was up there, watching it happen. Did either of them grasp exactly what their words would mean to this crowd, at this time?

She held the sword, feeling the leather handle in her hands, and she looked down, tested her grip. It felt so much like her old one, except that had been less fancy and ornate, a simple tool. But annoyingly, she now had a shovel too. What was she supposed to do? Abandon one? Carry both?

She sighed, and darted through the crowd to try and catch up with Russell and Arnold and Harrow. She was going to have to rally the groundskeepers for tonight—and she wondered what new scars the night was going to bring.

Interlude 2 - A Puddle of Light

The smallest unit that you have been able to observe is neutron; a part of an atom. And atoms are formed by those parts, and the parts of cells by atoms, and cells from the parts of cells. And cells, given the smallest ember of the fire of life, burn brightly together to make structures. A fleck of bone. A drop of blood. A square centimeter of skin. The string of color in an iris. These parts form your body. And you are one of a family, which form communities, which form governments, which control regions, which blanket the continents of your earth.

You are one of several million remaining humans in your world. Your world brims with more life at a given moment than is possible to count, although a sum total of its fire of souls could fuel Syrensyr’s industry for twelve auditing cycles if the planet was not actively quarantined against such harvest. Nine of your planets orbit a star, and there are 400 billion similar stars in your galaxy. There are 2 trillion galaxies, each with as many stars, in your universe.

Can you imagine it, dreamer? The pool of infinite light in which you dwell? Imagine it now, but smaller. A little puddle of light. Four hundred billion times two trillion stars, in a single pinhead of light, surrounded by an ocean of utter darkness. That mote of light grows smaller, smaller, until it is so small in the vast great dark that you cannot even see it. That dark’s name is Urnundurn. He is the only Indescribable that dwells there, outside the border, and he is all that lies outside the light.

He surely does think, and plan with intention, for he sends materials from that void into our universe—silver which is poisonous to Life Indescribable and all that is born of it, and the stone of the void which is capable of stealing our power and siphoning our life away. He is endless. He is the absence of all that is. He is the Black Eternity.

And as he grows larger, and presses in on each corner of our universe, all I can think of is what will transpire during this intermission in the meeting of the Council of Heavens, and how infinite life in this universe, just like yourselves, dangles in this endless shadow on the thread of our choices.

We go now to one who loves the dark.

Story 3 - Together In Eternity

The apostle Tiberius Laevinus sat beneath the blood-red sky of the Compact, on a stone fountain long run dry. Doors and high grey walls stretched off in each direction, presenting different angles to further examine the labyrinth from. It truly was the work of the devil, this place, and he had been most cautious in his journeys through it so as to avoid its perils and trickeries. He was not alone; it was finally the time to enter together. Beside him on the fountain sat his most devoted disciple—poor, poor Indrid. She looked far better in here than she did in the world outside—pale and pallid, dark circles under her eyes, damp hair that hung around her wet-looking eyes. But at least here, in this devil’s dream, she was not dying. Or perhaps she was, but in a different fashion.

“I hate to be here,” she said, and looked to Tiberius urgently. “Am I still promised my eternity if my soul perishes in this awful place?”

“Your salvation is not only guaranteed, my child, through your sacrifice,” Tiberius said, taking her small bony hand in his, and kissing it. “But greater is your reward for it.”

Stupid little lamb. No, of course you will not be slaughtered. You shall grow fat and happy in the fields where your mother has gone to wait for you.

She held onto his hand for a moment, inspecting the silver bones that made up his wrist, his palm, his long fingertips.

“Did this gift hurt?” she said, brows furrowed. “When our lord bestowed it upon you?”

“In a manner,” Tiberius said, a little surprised. He had only been asked that particular question once, by a porcelain girl in a sunflower field. He flexed the fingers in Indrid’s hand, allowing her to see how they moved. “It was not a pain of the flesh, but pain of the mind. For the first time, when he touched me, I understood my place. My insignificance. His vastness. The iniquity of my own self-importance, the meaninglessness of all my philosophy. His ultimate love and enduring compassion in offering me a way to join him in eternity. Offering us.”

Indrid nodded, and closed his silver hand in both of hers.

“I hope that one day, I see, and understand,” she smiled. “Perhaps, in eternity, we will reminisce about this together and laugh.”

“Yes,” said Tiberius, and stood, offering his hand. “Perhaps we will.”

He did not have the heart to tell her that there would be no laughter in eternity; the unity with their lord was not so worldly as to exist in the same mode. Indrid’s philosophy had always been poor when it came to leaving behind the world. She talked often of seeing her son again. The very notion.

He led her onward through a high stone arch, into what seemed to be an identical empty courtyard. Except that this one was not quite empty; in the fountain, there was a fantastic fish, of no like that Tiberius had ever seen in his earthly walk.

“Welcome back,” said the fish, a lazy yellow eye peeking up over the edge of the fountain, small twisted teeth grinning. “Couldn’t crack it, could you? Come to me for help?”

“Forgive me, my dear, I neglected this errand,” Tiberius said, and left Indrid standing for a moment, as he walked towards the fountain.

“Fishbone is happy to help,” said the demon. “Awful lonely, I am. Keep me company. Carry me with you and I’ll lead you to the center, shall I?”

Tiberius came to stand over the fountain’s edge, looking down at the wretched creature.

“Do you feel no shame for your condition?” said Tiberius. It was a genuine question.

“Shameless, me,” said Fishbone, blushing. “Positively the worst. I’ve been told at times that I’m a bad friend; yes, I admit it. But I think I can still help you.”

“I think not, ill creature. You are made of the devil’s own intent. There is no good in you. There is only one thing that you may do to help me now.”

“Oh?” Fishbone said, blinking. “What might that be?”

“In the name of the Darkness, in the name of Urnundurn, in the name of the Black Eternity, I cast thee out, demon,” Tiberius said, and stooped, seizing the head of the fish with his hand of silver bone. “Let this place be purged of your presence. May your vileness no longer stain this universe. Return to the ash from whence you came.”

“Not very nice! Not nice at all! I have friends! Friends who’ll care about this!” Fishbone screamed, as Tiberius held it.

“No, you don’t,” Tiberius said. Tiberius cared not for it. Rotten little mockery of life. As his skeletal fingers dug into its eyes, its gills, waves of shadow poured from his silver bones in pulses like his own heartbeat, and turned the demon to ash. First its fins and tails, and then its scales, flickering off and out, until great piles of its form had been carried away in intangible winds, leaving behind only a brightly burning candleflame dancing in his palm.

Indrid gave a small clap. “Well done, Tiberius. Well vanquished.”

“We cannot allow evil to exist, wherever we find it, Indrid,” Tiberius said, and clenched the flame in his hand until it was imbibed, and lowered it. He looked back to her, and smiled. “It is humble work, but it is the work we are called to do. Come.”

He returned to her, and took her by the hand, and led her for many weeks through the elaborate descending stairs, the bridges over deep chasms where any wrong step might cause a collapse, the winding passages full of trapdoors and boiling water and jutting metal spikes. They were pitfalls in the barest sense; challenging for neophytes, but for the mind that was prepared to counter the devil’s lies with truth, transparent barbs easily predicted and overcome. They walked gracefully, hand in hand, on their last pilgrimage, until finally they arrived at the center of the Compact; the room with a dozen doorways and steps leading down to a great stone altar lit by a burning red light.

“Father, I am afraid,” Indrid whispered, and turned to him. “What if I have not made my spirit ready for eternity? What if I am disgraced? What if I am chaff in the grain?”

He held her tightly, an arm around her.

“Oh, Indrid,” he said. “You who doubt even now of your own limitless devotion. Your faith will be an example to the others that shall inspire them as we herald the age of eternity, and beckon him to take all of the world into his fold.”

She smiled at this.

“And I shall see my son again,” she said. “At last I’ll see Al.”

“Yes,” Tiberius said, and smiled. “I am sure he waits for you even now.”

Indrid’s eyes lit at that, and she beckoned Tiberius down to the stone pedestal where the altar was suspended over gleaming water, and laid down upon the stone table.

There was beside the table a short scythe, as one might use for cutting wheat. And he held it in his hand of silver, coming to stand beside her head. She closed her eyes.

“I shall see you soon, father,” she whispered.

“Rest now, my child,” he said. He was half tempted to reveal to her that she was living in sin and ignorance even now; that she clung to what was worldly, that to seek what had been given to the Black Eternity in sacrifice was blasphemy. But he needed her—yes, he needed this most wretched of women—in order to herald the coming kingdom. And in that sense, she served eternity in the only useful manner remaining to her.

No blood came when he severed her throat; instead, he woke up.

His vision was seared by morning light, and it took a long few moments for his eyes to begin to adjust. He raised a hand in front of his eyes; blurrily, he could see that the silver bones of his right hand remained. He looked up to find that he was lying on the stony steps of the Old Chapel, in front of the organ, with a battered old book beneath his hand. Down by his feet, Indrid lay crumpled—her body twisted, face masked by metal sunflowers. There was a bloody hole in the center of her chest that seeped into her clothes. He found that two figures were seated on the pews just beyond, watching—one wearing a mask of broken piano keys, and the other in a mask of brass, scarred with a molten handprint.

“Good morning,” said Tiberius, looking to both of them, and he sat up, and breathed his first real breath in two thousand years. “Could I request a cup of water? We have much work to do.”

Outro - Weapons

Weapons. Many things can be weapons, dreamers, that are not obvious. A word can be a weapon, wielded for or against the user, for its meaning can cut differently from one hand to another. Love can be a weapon, when it is used as a consequence, a prize, an ultimatum, when it becomes anything other than a gift. A child can be a weapon, when they live through great harm and swear to bring justice, vengeance. Friendship can be a weapon, when protecting your friend means the death of another. Good can be a weapon, and evil also, for in the name of good great harm can be done without guilt, and that which is evil can be destroyed without consequence. Dreams are my favorite weapon of all, dreamer, and as long as you sleep, I am your loyal host Nikigik, pressing a blade into your palm, and waiting violently for your return to the Hallowoods.

The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'The Armory' 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, don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. Stay home from the gun fight. At home, no one can bring guns to your knife fights.