HFTH - Episode 202 - Worlds

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

Intro - World Ender

You were born to bring death everywhere that you touched.

From the first moments of your infancy, your touch, your breath, brought ruin to all that it met. Your grasping hands, reaching out for love, turned your caretakers to ash. You were excised from the Orchard, and you left a trail of dying stars in your wake. You had a hunger that nothing could satisfy. For a time, you were adrift, but what you had eaten was enough to begin your transformation. You opened your skin and found a thousand spores begging for life. And as they were cast adrift by the thousands into the cosmos, you began to grow. Not taller, or stronger, but wider. Farther. You began to experience a fracturing of consciousness. You were yourself, yes, but you were everywhere. Growing in the soil of hundreds of worlds. Small growths, at first, but quickly spreading, so much faster than their plant life ever could. The mycelium you extended into their skin drank deeply of their planets, and in turn you grew all the faster.

You, like me, have watched them grow. And in a way I know that you do not wish to hurt them. That you care too, in your own way. I preserve their stories, and you preserve their broken promises. And even as you wrap your hands around the heart of this world and squeeze, I wish you a Hello from the Hallowoods.

Theme.

Right now, I’m flying on a broomstick. The broomstick is accompanied by three spirits, and laden with two riders who can see them perfectly as they fly. There is a slight chill to the air that flies past us, a hint of an early autumn. What passes beneath us all is a vast expanse of pines, deep black and beautiful, and twice the size they were a decade and a half ago, a bristling sea of boughs that conceals the changing of the age in their depths. And the horizon, as far as one can see in any direction, is a dark ocean of trees that has come to envelop this land, and indeed, has scarcely begun. The theme of tonight’s episode is Worlds.

Story 1 - Old and New Things

Clara Martin clung to the broomstick as it flew at a breakneck pace through the crisp winds high over the forest canopy. The forest had changed much during her time in the Compact—she had thought it so grand and vast even then, when she was scarcely a child. She realized now that it was only then in its infancy, and according to the predictions of Milo Menken, might itself be scarcely a child compared to what might come after.

The speech she had heard sat in her stomach like a deep black rot. She had only just started to live again. So long she had spent buried deep in the labyrinthine layers of that accursed book, learning how to set herself on fire for others. And the burning was not over; a far cry from it. There was a battle tonight with individuals who, like her, had made a specialty of tampering with powers beyond their grasp. Individuals who, like her, had been consumed by something they did not completely understand. She needed to know that somewhere on the other side of all this sacrifice, there would be something worth fighting for. She had mistakes to atone for.

There was no guarantee on that furious flight north, all those years ago, that putting the Heart safely into Downing Hill’s cradle would have been any different for the world, for humanity, than where it ultimately ended—with its power pulled into Diggory Grave’s body. The revenant was much bigger than her; Irene Mend’s creations tended to be larger than life. Even now, as they clung to her with their bladelike hands, trying not to fall off the back of the broom, she could feel a heartbeat against her back. The Heart had been destroyed, in the end, or stolen, although without her help. And according to Milo, it had not been enough. It did not matter that black water had ceased pouring into the ocean; what had already infused the earth was a lethal dose.

But if there was anything that she could do, she wanted to know it. If there was a secret that could reverse the change, she needed to keep it. And although she had cut herself with the Binding Stone to meet the being whose power irradiated her blood, she had never spoken directly with an Indie. She would change that today.

She glanced up to Percy, keeping pace with her broom. His curly hair streamed back in an intangible wind, and he was dressed in a sweater, a collared shirt, trousers. A sharp contrast to his partner Ratty’s knee-high boots and spiked apparel and actual silver piercings, physical objects caught in her form. Clara wondered if they hurt as much as the wounds that both ghosts had sustained. They were just emptinesses now, a tear here, a hole there, where the light no longer formed. And Clara’s ghostly hound, Dogsmell, bounded far ahead of them until it was just a smoky point of white light, and then came running back apologetically, tongue hanging from a ghostly pointed face that was at times one face and at times a dozen.

Dogsmell was more than a bad odor or a companion, now, but had graduated to professional curiosity—surely the fire of souls of any of the individual hounds would have burned out a generation ago, but combined they kept enough heat to stay substantial, more or less, outside of isolated moments of splintering. She supposed her stupidly bad-smelling ghost dog had been the inspiration to unite Riot and Clementine, in the end. The happy, blank-eyed, rancid-smelling proof that it could be done.

Percy made eye contact with her, and she looked up to him, and could hear him murmur to her. His voice was something she felt, more than heard audibly. She could listen better than most where spirits were concerned.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” he said, as they flew. “You gave the Quartet the book you used to bring back Riot. Aren’t you worried that they’ll have done something with it by tonight?”

“No,” Clara frowned, and then smiled a little, pushed up her glasses. She found herself slowing on the broom a little, just to manage talking and flying at the same time. She tended to veer off course if she tried to do both. “It took me almost fifteen real-world years to make headway in there, and it felt like thousands in there. For them it’s a distraction, a waste of time. By the time we get there all they’ll have learned from it is that Fishbone likes to lead you in circles.”

“It’s the kind of thing I would have done,” Percy said, looking away from her. “That I did, when I was… worse. Younger. Stupider. I traded something important to someone, to save everyone else. I was… worried to see the same gambit from you.”

Clara felt a twitch of concern from Diggory behind her. “And that was?”

“When we were in Box Atlas,” Percy sighed. Clara felt that she was receiving part of a story she did not have the full context. “We were on a mission to rescue Valerie and Danielle from the Botulus Corporation. Some of us had gotten captured. Oswald Biggs Botulus himself wanted something… my dad’s work. I gave it to him, and he set us all free. But I have always wondered since what he’s doing with it. Whether he ever tried… to do what my dad did. That was old Percy. Thoughtless like that. But I can’t change it now.”

“Ah,” said Diggory. She expected that the revenant had more to say, but they fell silent.

“Yeah,” said Ratty, who had come to hover beneath the broomstick, looking up at Clara with a wink. She plucked a silver spike out of her lip, and then threw it in a long curving path into the forest underbrush. Dogsmell went diving to chase it, vanishing from sight. “Like, if you keep worrying about it, it just makes you all sad and anxious. You just gotta breathe and then… let it go.”

“Yeah,” said Clara, looking back up to the horizon as Dogsmell came sailing back up, the bit of silver glinting in its teeth, to race up back to Ratty. “I’m not so sure. There’s no old Clara or new Clara. It’s contiguous, you know? It’s… all whole, it’s all the same. The good decisions and the bad ones. I look back at every choice I ever made, and I always wanted something good. But I sacrificed friends—I sacrificed myself—because I thought the sacrifice would be worth it. That I could do a whole lot of good if I just ignored the cost a little longer. There was a breaking point, eventually, and it was when I saw Riot lying in the snow, and I had to choose. But the person who made those choices isn’t a stranger to me. I wouldn’t make the same choices, now, but I wouldn’t be able to look back and say that without having gone through all of it. Every step. And I can’t run from it by saying, old Clara was this power-hungry monster and I’m cured. I did back then what I thought was the right thing, and I was wrong. And today I’m someone who’s been right and been wrong.”

Percy was silent, and Ratty watched Percy and Clara both with interest and a mote of concern. Dogsmell offered the spiked metal rod and Ratty took it, shoved it back into her form’s lip with a crackle of light.

“Yeah, what the hell do I know,” said Percy, lips pursed. “I came back to this forest thinking I was peaceful, I was kind, I was a better person. And then the second I get here I start setting things on fire just like before. I tried so hard to show those assholes who worship my dad that I’m not some out of control monster. And you know what? I almost believed it. But they’ve stabbed me and hurt Ratty and everyone that I care about and I really, really want to watch them burn from the inside out. I… I don’t care anymore. I’m so angry. I’m so fucking angry.”

“It is alright to be angry-” Diggory began.

“Diggory, shut up,” Percy said, and his eyes were sparks. “You don’t get angry. How would you even know? I want to kill these people for what they’ve done and that makes me exactly what they say I am. How do I get out of that? They’ve… they’ve made me like this. I don’t want to be like this. I wish I was like you, Diggory, always like calm and unbothered and steady. I really do. But I’m not, and the angrier I get the faster I am killing myself.”

He was blazing bright now, brighter than was needed for anyone here to see him, and he sailed alongside her at that intensity a long moment before he began to flicker into dimmer shades, more transparent, with a sigh.

“I know anger,” said Diggory from behind her, after a moment. “I know it as well as I know you, Percy. I know the vastness of a powerless fury as well as I know your face. I was angry when I killed Shank, and bathed the floor of this forest in his blood. I am angry now that he made me do it. I do not wish to kill, Percy, it is the farthest thing from my heart. I know that you and I are alike in that. I am angry for tonight. For what we have to do. And I am angry that based on Milo’s words, every battle that I have fought has been for nothing.”

“Well like,” Ratty said, pierced brows furrowed, studying each of them with her all-black eyes. “Fifty years is like twice as long as I lived, so it’s not nothing nothing.”

“I didn’t give up fifteen years of my life just to let humanity die,” said Clara, gritting her teeth as the broom took a long dive through a gulch in the trees and came up on the other side. “Downing Hill’s mission might not be mine, anymore, but I’m not going to let it go without a fight.”

She reached down to her side, clinging to the broom with one hand; it shifted beneath her to keep her and Diggory balanced. She found the handle of Winona’s golden khopesh. Her khopesh. She wrapped her palm around the shining red gem in its pommel. She remembered Winona pressing it into her hands from her bedside, telling her the story of how she got it. What it meant to her, to her family. Whose name must be called to grant its bearer the cosmic eye.

“Voss nen xorn Nikignik,” she breathed. “Om nen xorn Nikignik.”

Nikignik sighs

I see a hundred miles distant, two hundred, to far-open wasteland, a bloodied black pit in the earth, a sinkhole a mile wide. It has grown vastly from the narrow throat that a Prime Minister once descended to speak about end times with its occupant. Wet black shelves of fungus burst in blooming tendrils of pink and purple, glowing with bioluminescent points that stretch deep into the shadow. Clara Martin sees this, too, with her eyes rolled up into her head, and she smiles.

“We’re close,” she says, and her eyes flutter as she removes her palm, and the vision—my vision—is gone. And she looks to Diggory Graves behind her, and Percy, and Ratty, and her white hound trailing through the sky. “Let’s talk to god.”

Interlude 1 - Secret Cabals

For periods of earth’s history, conspiracy theorists might tell you that there is a secret cabal operating a world government that ordains all that occurs. I am pleased to report to you, dreamer, if you theorize of this conspiracy, that the vast majority of politicians are long dead. Some were killed in aeroplane or automobile accidents on their way to their secret apocalypse scenario bunkers as green lightning arced across the sky. Some sealed themselves in and waited for a habitable period that never arrived, and resorted to cannibalism before wasting away entirely. Others freed themselves from their bunkers after years or decades and immediately became food for large carnivorous plants or the blackwater-affected citizens they had abandoned.

The politicians that have emerged in the present day certainly do not govern the world, and indeed, can scarcely govern small local communities. A single elected mayor oversees Scout City, with support from sub-council advisories. A council of seven mayors oversees Liberty City, the largest survivor-city in America. Various communities in Europe, in Africa, in South America, band together to survive, even now, but dreams of larger conglomerates have been repeatedly crushed by the cruelty and viciousness of their transforming environments.

And until recently, there was a King of America, but the title is largely an excuse to take whatever you want from local communities by force, and the position is currently vacant.

And yet, other conspiracy theorists believe, there are politicians, even now, beneath the earth, or far off in space, charting the direction of the remaining survivors of the human race. And who am I to crush your dreams?

We go now to one who has greatly affected the survivors of the human race.

Story 2 - Loose Lightning

“So I mean who the heck was Henry O’Connor then?” Olivier said, following Friday and Penny. The two women were way more agile than you might expect for their age and their dresses, darting ahead like ferrets through the massive tree trunks that filled the forest floor, at one moment paused introspectively, the next vanishing to appear suddenly thirty feet ahead. Olivier walked; it wasn’t like he had a choice.

“A self-righteous control freak with a god complex? In Downing Hill’s staff? What a surprise,” said Friday.

“Friday,” Penny admonished, shaking her head as she walked. She looked over to Olivier. Penny was new to Olivier, but she was so like Friday that she and Olivier had clicked immediately—even if she was also the furthest thing from Friday that Olivier had ever met. “She’s just furious that she has daddy issues, Olivier.”

Olivier choked on a laugh, and Friday shot a furious look at her sister.

“Daddy issues?” said Friday, squinting. “Rich coming from someone who freed her abusive office worker captors from the Blackwood Coven. Were you sad to find that Mr. Raven and Writingdesk hadn’t hung any of your drawings on the fridge in the Institute?”

“Mr. Writingdesk had one of my drawings on the corkboard in the office, actually,” Penny sniffed. “I don’t know if you noticed.”

Olivier had stopped chuckling, as they were venturing into barbed territory and he wasn’t sure where to step.

“But you got to meet your parents recently,” said Friday, glancing back to Olivier as she stepped with poise up a twenty-foot slope of roots. “Did you also develop daddy issues or are you above that sort of thing?”

“I’m not saying that I have either of you beat,” said Olivier, hopping up after her. He thought he felt a whiff of the wind, helping him up, but he was not sure. “But listen. Your parents didn’t exactly leave the world to die or build an academic network that basically kidnaps children and makes them into weapons… and then submit you to that program.”

“I’m still a little foggy on that,” said Friday, waiting up for him at the top. “I thought Director Blackletter was the mastermind.”

“She was,” Olivier said, coming up beside her, a little out of breath. “For Downing Hill. But Downing Hill wasn’t the only group of Covenants trying to make some kind of global power play. My parents worked on a similar group in Europe; the Daedalus was for covenants who had… graduated. Gotten hold of their power a little more. Ones who could be genuinely useful in a political, in a military way. It’s been years since I saw them, but when I left… they were tyrants. They’re like gods, out there. If people want rain, they have to give them what they want.”

“What are they like? Your parents. As people, I mean,” said Penny, and Olivier realized she was standing beside them too.

“They’re… strong,” said Olivier, and memories came flooding back. It was a seal he did not like to break, lately. “In different ways. And they can be so kind, in different ways, and so cruel, in different ways. My dad is silent whenever mom speaks but he’ll turn around and issue orders to cut the supplies to a city that isn’t under his protection anymore. And then he’ll get up early to bake pastries for breakfast. And when my mom speaks, it’s like this voice that every single one of those thousand people that fly on the Daedalus listen to. She’s their guiding light. And yet I’ll hear her crying from behind a closed door that she’s being too hard on me. But when I go to open it, it looks like she’s never cried in her life, and she’ll be so cruel with her words and her actions to me that it makes me wonder if she even knows I’m her child. If she even loves me. It’s… they’re a lot, is all.”

“The Blackwood Coven is like that too,” said Penny. “Complicated.”

“Yeah?” said Olivier, looking to Friday for her thoughts. Her eyes were narrowed.

“I find their methods refreshing,” she said. “No subterfuge. No riddles. Well, not as many as Downing Hill, anyway. You participate and keep to their code, or you leave.”

“Except we did leave, eventually,” said Penny.

“We had some preoccupations to work out,” said Friday, looking to them both. “Me with burning Downing Hill, and Penny with freeing the other poor things the Institute locked in little boxes. And now we’re both free.”

“Well, at the cost of shoving those two things together,” said Penny.

“Yeah. What exactly did you two do?” said Olivier. “Did you shove the CPE Institute into Downing Hill’s dimension, or did you pull Downing Hill into the CPE Institute?”

“Yes,” said Friday.

“Well, most likely,” said Penny.

“I should rephrase,” Olivier said, sighing and beginning to take one sliding step after another down the far side of the root bank. “Do we need to worry about everything in the Institute and everything in Downing Hill getting back out?”

“If we hadn’t collapsed the tunnel, maybe,” said Penny. “But I think somewhere, deep beneath the American soil, there’s a hole that goes to a library and a big floating darkness. But most important, Mr. Spiderfingers is never crawling out of it.”

“Kind of wish he would,” Olivier said, elbowing her a little. “Just so he could see what lightning does to spiders.”

“No,” Penny said, stopping him to stare right in his eyes. “You don’t.”

Olivier believed her.

He looked up to the Omen, which hopped, leaped, and soared from one pine bough to another high above them. It had avoided him ever since he got back; Olivier suspected it still held the memories of their old and bitter rivalries closer than he did. It was so stupid, in the end; neither of them ended up being Director Blackletter’s favorite. And he, and the Omen, and Clara, each bore the scars of the Director’s attention.

He hadn’t been enough for the Director, who cast him out from Downing Hill. He hadn’t been enough for Solomon Reed, who was full of hate anyways. He hadn’t been enough for Riot, or Diggory, or Percy, or any of the people who had taken him in when he had nothing, because he had lost control entirely in the arctic and he was sure that he had killed Riot as a result. He hadn’t been enough for his parents, who needed the soulless soldier they’d sent him to Downing Hill to become. And he hadn’t been enough for the Weather, which had given him a new vigil for the past long chapter of his life: guard the chapel. Let nothing disturb it. Let the darkness hidden in there sleep deep, and long, and let it sing to itself in the shadow. Never allow the doors to open.

But in that, even that, most precious that, he had failed. And there was darkness growing, he felt, even now, far away across the Atlantic. Why had the Weather carried him home instead of letting him fight? Why was that the moment it moved him to return to Scout city and put out its fires? He did not know, and felt he might never know the reason for these movements, except that it was where the winds of his soul carried him. And he was free now, fluid, to follow where they went.

Including, he thought, as he followed Friday and Penny through the last veil of black needles, through a concealing mirror spell and into a vast clearing with dozens of low patchwork huts and a single withered tree in the shape of a bent and weeping prophet, into a den of true witches.

Marketing - On the Road

Lady Ethel Mallory

A quick update to my happy dreaming family. I’m about to board the aircraft that will carry me to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. I haven’t needed to be airborne since I came here to Box Atlas and reclaimed the seat that is mine. In order to stop outside interference during our little game, I have had the Botulus Corporation deploy any surplus drones I could muster to form a defensive ring around my hometown. This also prevents cowardice, you understand. It is most disgraceful for a potential King or Queen of America to give up halfway through claiming their title. Keep that in mind, Otis. If you choose to step into the ring, you’re not tapping out. I swear, Otis, if you turn down my offer and compete here I will not make your end swift. I will make it entertaining for a dreaming public. They’d probably cheer for that. After all, you’re the one who’s been continuing to refine oil and fuel the remaining vehicles in this country for costs that even god’s jaw would drop at.

Anyways, happy dreaming family. I’ll see you soon once I’ve landed in sunny New Mexico. It’s supposed to be smooth flying today, and I’m excited.

Story 2, Continued - Loose Lightning

I have never hoped in all my millions of years for a rotor failure the way I am hoping now.

We return now to Olivier Song.

It was dark inside Grandmother Briar’s house. The ceiling was low, long rafters that strained to hold up the thatched roof above. Like all of the buildings that they had passed, it seemed as though it had been made years ago and then repaired, one piece at a time, with parts from other buildings, until none of it was uniform and it all strained to stay together. That seemed to be the state of this place—Olivier noted the somber silence of the two witches who had silently joined them, and of Friday and Penny, and the deep black river that had eaten away at the roots of the Prophet Tree, stripping away the soil and carrying it downstream.

“Grandmother Briar,” said Friday, stepping ahead of him. “We’ve come to talk.”

“I hope you’re feeling well,” added Penny. “How have you been?”

“Friday,” a voice said from across the room of low tables and scattered objects—soil, small bones, mushrooms, dried strings of herbs and spices, made the room an earthy collage on every surface. There were plants growing in pots and hanging planters in every corner of the room, a luscious garden surrounding her deathbed. “Penny. It is good to see you again, my girls.”

The person they approached was laying in a wooden cot with a raised back, her legs covered by a thick patchwork quilt. Her hair was in thick braids, filled like Friday and Penny’s with little bones and thorny objects. She wore a dress of felt, which was comprised entirely of embroidered vines, falling in bushels around her wrists, creeping up to encircle her neck. There were dark bags beneath her half-closed eyes, and the trembling hand she raised towards Friday and Penny fell quickly. Olivier stood a little behind the rest, but nevertheless, Grandmother Briar’s eyes darted up to her immediately. There was a sharp look in them, despite her condition, which Penny had described as poor and Friday had described as dying.

“And who is this?” Grandmother Briar said. She laid her head back against the pillow, and closed her eyes, breathed in. “Something of the sky comes in with them.”

“This is Olivier,” said Friday. “I’ve told you about Olivier.”

“You have?” said Olivier, nodding deeply to Grandmother Briar. “Flattered. I’ve heard some about you too. I think the path you walk is very interesting.”

“I don’t walk many paths these days,” said Grandmother Briar.

“Grandmother, we came to ask you about the spring,” said Friday, folding her hands. “We’ve just come from a rather disappointing lecture explaining how all of humanity will be gone in fifty years. I know that won’t be your problem, but how true do you think it is? The spring you were hoping for never came, but what exactly did it mean when it didn’t?”

“They call these woods hallowed,” Grandmother Briar said, opening her eyes again, and the darkness in them caught Olivier. “Hallowed means holy. And they’re right. These woods are blessed. You can feel it, can’t you? The same magic that flows in your veins flows in this forest. Different types, yes. We are touched by sky or water, by fire or shadow. But this forest is a blessing, and it must prosper. It is the world we are inheriting. We are its keepers, its caretakers. It was made for us, and we for it. The spring was supposed to be spectacular. An outpouring of the power of the soul of the world. A waking from a long dark dream. But the prophesies were wrong. The spring never came.”

“It sounds as though the spring might have killed an awful lot of people,” said Friday. “Is that accurate?”

Grandmother Briar sighed, and closed her eyes again.

“Not us,” she said. “Not our people.”

“So what’s happening now?” said Olivier, speaking up. “Why isn’t it over? The Heart is gone. The spring was stopped. That should be the end of it.”

“Why?” said Grandmother Briar, still not opening her eyes. “Who says it should be the end? What has been planted will grow. What has been planted will grow.”

“So we tear it up at the roots,” said Friday. “Like any weed.”

“What would that mean?” said Penny, looking to her. “The roots of this forest? Of every forest? Of every person who has drank the water in their lifetime?”

“What has been planted will grow,” Grandmother Briar repeated sleepily.

“Right,” said Olivier, brows furrowed. “There has to be a way to undo it. It was made with… what you call magic. It can be undone with magic, right?”

“More than you know hangs on that question,” said Grandmother Briar. “And our souls are safe with it unanswered.”

“Please try to avoid riddles, grandmother,” said Friday. “I’m quite sick of them.”

“What do you know about the Black Eternity?” Olivier said suddenly, and Friday and Penny looked back to him. He looked to them both, and then shook his head, and came to the bedside of Grandmother Briar, kneeling and squeezing her hand to try and keep her awake. It was the reason that he had come, really, although he could not bring himself to explain as much to Riot. Not with everything she had going on. What he had left behind in France, he had barely shared with anyone. Scout City was balanced on the precipice of such a precarious apocalypse, without having to worry about the separate one he had set loose on the shores of France.

“The dark that burns,” Grandmother Briar said, tilting her head to look down at Olivier. Her eyes were dark, and scanned Olivier up and down. “You have met it, face to face. Of all the magics, it is the rarest, and has the greatest power to destroy. It wants to expand, to encompass. To grow and suffocate and drown. And you…”

Here her eyes widened, and the expression in them petrified Olivier; her visage changed. Her mouth was stretched open in a shriek, and her eyes threatened to push from their lids.

“What have you done?” she shrieked, and pulled from her bed with a sudden burst of strength; her hands were claws, digging into the skin of Olivier’s hand so that he could not pull away. “You have ushered in a destroyer! Death! You have brought death to my garden!”

A crackle of light burst from Olivier’s hand, although he did not intend for it to—even with her screaming, he did not want to hurt her. But the electricity that peeled from his fingers was a bright blue web that buzzed loudly in the air, and she recoiled with another cry as he yanked his hand back.

He stood there a moment, and covered his mouth with his hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said, to himself at first, and to Grandmother Briar, and looked to Friday and Penny, and then to the witches who were approaching quickly with concern. “I’m sorry.”

But Grandmother Briar, laying in her bed, staring at the sky, was not moving, and her hands were curled and stiff against her chest. And every trailing ivy and blooming flower in the room had turned thin and black, wilted over the edges of their planters and turned to rot.

“Olivier,” Friday said, “if it helps, I think she was dead as soon as I stepped in here.”

“Olivier,” said Penny, looking to him with widened eyes. “What exactly did you do?”

Interlude 2 - Distracted by Beauty

Work work work. Watching watching watching. The enemies of Syrensyr are vast and terrible, dreamer, and surely they are hiding around here somewhere. Wherever could they be? They will not escape my watchful gaze!

I am supposed to be watching for the spy and the saboteur, yes, dreamer. But as always, I find myself distracted. My eyes, everywhere, behold planets. Globes of pale blue and green and crimson and lavender. Glowing with the light of their suns and moons. Framed by eclipses. The life that dwells on each one is entirely unique from the last. One might have thought that a hundred worlds, planted with the same seeds, might offer a hundred identical fruits, but the beings that dwell in this universe are as strange to each other as color is to sound.

And on each one—yours, dreamer, I watch the most intently, for I have promises to keep, but all the same—there is such an array of unique beings. Each with their own mind and heart, each seeking a purpose, a way to fill their time, a path to walk in their brief journey through this cosmos. So far beyond a crop of souls, you are. What beauty grew where only food for the forge was planted.

But I am not busy observing this, no. My eyes are watching for any danger to my lord Syrensyr, of course.

We go now to one whose sight is clouded.

Story 3 - No Secrets

Lewis, formerly the Count, formerly King of America, stood a few paces away from Moth, who stood a few paces away from the exceedingly surly and irate woman named Shelby Allen. Ray had been heartbroken to stay back on the main avenue, and he could still catch a glint of crimson between the burnt-out husks of the tree stump buildings. A three-legged dog was sniffing around; it had just joined Shelby as she walked at some point. He wondered if this place just attracted strays in all kinds. What great heights he’d fallen—from standing on top of the world, to squatting in the ashes at its roots.

“Aren’t you supposed to have a magnifying glass?” he said. “In Buck Silver novels there’s always a magnifying glass.”

Shelby looked up from the pile of burnt soil she was looking at to glare at him a long moment.

“I too am curious about the magnifying glass,” said Moth, bouncing on moth’s heels. “Is it a legitimate part of a detective’s toolset, or only a common misconception?”

“I’m not trying to see small,” Shelby said in her typical dull monotone, and then stepped back a bit from the massive black wall of Scout City’s trunk. The tree that the city occupied was frankly too big. Frankly ridiculous. Its branches obscured almost all of the bright morning sky from where they stood, which he appreciated. “I’m trying to see big.”

“And are you seeing it?” Moth asked quietly.

“That branch,” Shelby said, pointing up, and Lewis followed her gaze. “Way up there, with the buildings hanging off? The member of the Quartet who wore a fiddle mask fell from there. If he fell straight, it would be somewhere within this hundred feet or so that he made his landing. The air blasting off of the wildfire that filled this whole area at the time might have shifted him further, or the wind. But it’s a start. He fell, and we never found his body. And I don’t trust dead until it’s cut up on an autopsy table. And even that’s not always enough. And I can guarantee Sheriff Ignatius did not search this area adequately.”

“Do you have any current suspects?” said Moth, who was far too excited to be involved.

“None that I’m actively pursuing just yet,” Shelby grunted.

“Well, who is there to worry about in this city,” said Lewis, putting his hands on his hips. It felt strange to have his wings out in public—here there were enough blackwater mutations and public weirdos that he could almost pass as one of them. He kept them small and folded into an approximation of a backpack, even so, just to avoid drawing too much attention to their clandestine investigation. “Not that I’ve been prying, but wasn’t your brother rather burned that night?”

“It’s not Mulder,” Shelby said, dark eyes darting up to him. The scraggle of wet-looking vines that dangled from her trenchcoat sleeve tightened into a fist. “Trust me. I’ve known him his whole life. He was fighting the fires in Scout City that night. I’ve had to push him around in a chair for the last two weeks. Getting him up to movie night was a bitch in particular. And now that Shank is gone he’s happy as a clam.”

“Is there anyone else it might be?” said Moth, nodding.

“That’s what I’m hoping to find out,” said Shelby, and it was her turn to put her hands on her hips and look to the both of them. “I’ve heard that you two are information specialists. What can you dig up for me?”

“Well,” said Moth, looking very official in Moth’s wing-embroidered cloak for a moment. “Information always comes for a price.”

Shelby chewed on the inside of her lip before responding.

“How about,” she said, “the city you just moved to doesn’t get overrun by musical serial killers.”

“I like your terms,” said Moth.

“You’re terrible at this bargaining business, Moth,” Lewis sighed. “You’re supposed to put on the squeeze.”

“I squeezed. But she squeezed harder,” Moth squeaked. Shelby waited patiently for a response, and Moth cleared moth’s throat. “Ah. Well. I have a network of informants that are always watching at night, especially in areas of fire and bright light. A direct witness to the fall might even be right at my fingertips.”

“That seems improbable,” said Shelby. Her expression moved less than the Count’s face did—the big face, carved onto Mount Rushmore. Oh god, he thought. They’re probably going to pave it smooth and start fresh with the next king of America. Who was that going to be?

“Well, it’s true,” Moth said, and crossed moth’s arms. “But I’m going to have to wait until dark for them to come out.”

“That doesn’t help me,” Shelby said. “Sunset is ‘Scout City Goes to War’ time.”

She glanced over to Lewis, and he held up his hands.

“Don’t look at me,” he said. “I used to be much more useful in this regard before my vision of the future went away. Now I’m just befuddled by the normal interpretations of sight and sound, like you or any average peasant. But I will say, it doesn’t take a lot of insight to note that you’ve manifested quite the defense for your brother in your head.”

“They want me to suspect him, probably,” said Shelby, crossing her arms. “The Quartet have more resources at their disposal than you might think. They have grappling lines; he might have been able to get caught somewhere. There’s also an army of ghosts on their side. I don’t know how far their influence goes, but maybe they could have caught him. They always want to turn us against each other. I’m not going on a witch hunt until I have evidence to back it up. If it’s Mulder, then so be it. But I think I’m missing something here.”

Lewis arched his eyebrows, and sighed. Well, that was the thing with being a speaker of truth, wasn’t it. Fools would agree with you and confidently go the opposite direction. But then, the question was raised… if it wasn’t Shelby Allen’s reclusive brother, who might it be? He began to turn a more interrogative eye towards the burnt soil, just as there was a barking from the three-legged hound some forty feet away across the hills of burnt ash.

Shelby went pacing quickly across the grounds, and Lewis ran after her, trying to walk casually enough so as not to lose the crimson round sunglasses that Moth had given him, and dodging the occasional dappled areas where the sunlight somehow fought through the thicket of Scout City’s canopy—it was thinnest here, where the wildfire had claimed some of the boughs.

“What have you got, girl?” Shelby said, kneeling next to the hound as it dug at the fresh black soot, barking. Lewis and Moth approached together after her, watched as she put a hand down to where the dog had been pawing. The hound had dug a full foot and a half beneath the surface of the rubble. Shelby reached in, and grunted as she pulled away a large sheaf of flaking black bark, charred to nothing by the flame.

There, beneath it, was the unmistakable charred mask in the shape of a fiddle, burnt strings broken and twisted. The mask was not alone; it was attached to a blackened skull, remnants of hair and melted skin clinging to it, and a body beneath that.

“Oh no,” whispered Moth.

“Disgusting,” muttered Lewis. “I suppose that answers your question?”

“Not quite,” Shelby said, inhaling sharply, and then nodded to herself, pulling her hand back. “Hope Vincent’s ready for one more autopsy.”

Outro - Worlds

Worlds.

I sometimes wonder what it might have been like, dreamer, to have a world. To grow on one planet’s soil. To be raised under one sky. To lend all my hopes and aspirations to the future of a celestial sphere, and to be invested in the rise and fall of its empires. To have my universe be so small that it could be banded by a single horizon. To find others who were like me, and to love them, knowing that their lives were short and we were together finite.

Indescribable life is so high above you, dreamer, and these notions would amuse them. Why have one world when you can observe thousands? Why dwell on one speck of light in a vast mosaic of grandeur? Why settle for a home when you can be everywhere?

Even so, dreamer, I wonder if as I dwell upon your Earth, as my gaze returns to it again and again, if I am not living a little vicariously through you just as you are through me.

Until your world falls into its final darkness, dreamer, I am your loyal host Nikignik, waiting globally for your return to the Hallowoods.

The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'Rot' 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, if you are not sure that your partner is your whole world, here are some telltale signs: Walking on skin. Kissing gravel. Difficulty communicating. Being seven trillion times your size. Has boundless natural resources for you to harvest.