Valiant: The Covenant Chronicles

[Covenant #32: The Hounds of Winter]

Log Date: [date/timestampcorrupted]

Data Sources: Jayta Jaskolka

Event Log: Jayta Jaskolka

The Old City

Day 71

I travel now on the back of a giant wolf that is my lover.

After being transported to the desert by the Watcher, we continued our long journey, and quickly found it harder than it was when we were traversing the plains and forests. The sand underfoot was far different from solid ground — every step required twice as much effort as walking over dirt, asphalt, or packed earth. A little bit of the force that you put into every step disappeared, the sand shifting and sinking beneath your shoes ever so slightly, sapping your forward movement. It was like walking on pillows — pleasant at first, and less impactful on the feet, but slowly growing strenuous as you kept trudging forward.

Combined with the cold wind over the dunes, it wasn’t long before I fell ill on the second or third day. I wasn’t aware I could get sick in the afterlife, but apparently you can — Raikaron said that while there were no illnesses in the Old City, the living that visited the Old City still carried microorganisms on their person, and within the hammerspaces that we had brought with us. If sufficiently stressed, tired, or injured, the living could still get sick, and that is exactly what happened to me.

Initially, I shouldered through it, but it soon became clear that I was not going to get better right away. I collapsed on the day after I started feeling unwell, apparently from fatigue and dehydration; when I woke up, I was in the tesseract, with Raikaron preparing warm soup and a simple bread. We would not continue traveling until I was well enough to do so, he said, so I was to take it easy and rest. I knew better than to argue, so I accepted the food he prepared for me, and after eating, curled back up and tried to go to back to sleep.

I only started to recover after the better part of a week; and much of that time was spent tossing and turning, or being tired and fatigued, and reading the book on the Old City that Mek had given me. I’d expected that we’d travel during that time — I figured Raikaron would leave me in the tesseract, recovering in his pocket while he traipsed his tireless self through the desert — but he didn’t do that. When I asked him why, he said that it was because I was his passport, and he did not want to get caught without me in the Old City. I had a right to be here as an Aurescuran soul, but he was a creature of the Dreaming, and a demon Lord of Sjelefengsel — he did not belong here, and other residents of the Old City would know it and sense it. It was not much of an issue with the Old Ones — he felt he could deal with them — but with the other members of the Order, such as the Faceless Ones or the Watchers, he did not want to take his chances. I hadn’t been aware of it, but my presence alone afforded him a modicum of protection from the higher powers within the Old City.

So while I recovered, he worked. He would spend time on one of the other sides of the tesseract, the one that contained much of his lab and workshop equipment, working together pieces of something that looked like leather. When I asked what he was working on, he explained that it was a saddle. The desert terrain was not conducive to bipedal perambulation, and it was clear that we were making less progress than we had been when traveling over solid ground. His solution to this was to shapeshift — a quadruped animal of the giant variety would be able to make better progress over the sands, and because I needed to be with him while he was out and about in the Old City, he was fashioning a covered saddle that I could ride in as he trekked through the desert.

I asked him why he hadn’t thought of this before, back at the start of our journey, and he’d answered that it hadn’t been a problem back then — solutions that could improve a variety of things usually only arose when there was a pressing problem to be solved. Plus, there would be drawbacks — he would not be able to verbally speak as a giant wolf, and increased size would make it easier for Old Ones to spot us. The packs of smaller Old Ones did not concern him; he was confident that he would be able to easily handle them as a giant wolf. But there were other Old Ones, bigger Old Ones, that would present more of a challenge if they decided to pick a fight with him.

So the days passed by, with Raikaron steadily binding, stitching, and shaping the covered saddle that he would wear as a wolf, while I slowly got better. Since he technically didn’t need to sleep, he worked on it straight through the times I was sleeping; often I would leave the room to find him in the same spot he’d been in when I left to go to sleep. He would pause only to help me with meals and check on me now and again to make sure my recovery was still progressing, and the saddle itself was finished before I had fully recovered.

But I was well enough at that point to travel, so after taking a rest, we finally left the tesseract, Raikaron shifting into the form of a russet wolf that stood about seven feet tall at the shoulder. After getting the saddle onto him and securing it, I climbed on, retreated into the covered portion, and pulled the flap across, zipping it up to block out the wind and sand.

And with that, we set out across the desert once more, continuing our long journey to the Ocean of Souls.

Event Log: Jayta Jaskolka

The Old City

Day 78

It is all too easy to lose track of time.

Even with the shifts that Raikaron sets for us, the days blur together with nothing to tell them apart. There are no weeks, no days, no hours, no sun and no moon. There is only the endless grey twilight above everything, always, forever, and constant. There is no rhythm of work to which we set ourselves; no weekends when we can be at rest. It is only the same alternating pattern, over and over again, in twelve-hour increments: rest, then travel. Rest, then travel. Rest, then travel.

And so I’ve stopped keeping track of the days, or at least what I was measuring as days: a single cycle of rest and travel. It all becomes the same after a while; just another rotation in an endless circle. Raikaron is always able to tell me how long it’s been because of his pocketwatch; I think it’s the only thing that’s keeping our journey from dissolving into a timeless blur that has no beginning and no end. Yet even so, the numbers threaten to lose all meaning; saying that we’ve been here for seventy-eight days doesn’t prompt anything in me. Not dread, or elation, or wonder — it’s just another number. Seventy-eight days. And tomorrow will be seventy-nine, and the day after will be eighty, each of them as dull and grey as the seventy-eight that came before.

Raikaron has tried to alleviate it — he knows the dangers of this kind of monotony. In the tesseract, the lights have been set to slowly dim, mimicking the fade of evening into night. We cannot have stars and a night sky, obviously, but during the dark hours, little pinpoints of light will kindle to life in the tesseract, sprinkled across its open spaces as if you were walking among the cosmos itself. It has helped — the rest shift feels different, like I’ve been transported away from the grey twilight of the Old City, and instead, I’m lost among the stars in a different realm altogether. The darkness, pinpricked with grains of light, is comforting; it feels cosmic and vast, reminding me of the grandeur of the mortal plane, an infinite ocean of darkness that contains stars without number.

Somehow, I feel more at home here, in the artificial cosmos of the tesseract, than I ever have when I’m in the Old City.

Event Log: Jayta Jaskolka

The Old City

Day 85

We saw a train today as we were leaving the desert and passing into the hilly hinterlands.

It was the first time that I’d see something like that in the Old City. We’d seen tracks, and highways, and that sort of thing, but until now, we’d never seen any vehicles in motion. The vehicles scattered in the cities and towns were always parked and inert, and Raikaron had assured me that their batteries were dead and their fuel tanks were empty — they were little more than relics of the era they came from. If they had been operable, there would’ve been no reason for us not to use them to speed our journey.

So that had given me the impression there was no mechanized transportation in the Old City, and that all travel had to be done on foot. And I had believed that up until we came up over a hill that looked over a dale with a railroad running through it, and on that railroad was a train, steadily puffing along through the hills.

My first instinct had been to scramble forward, pointing it out with excitement and calling Raikaron’s name to get his attention. He saw it, of course, but couldn’t reply, since he was still a giant wolf; still, his reaction said enough. His head turned towards it, watching it for a brief spell, before he resumed his steady plodding along the path we were taking to the mountains. It was clear that he did not intend to pursue the train, or head for the tracks on which it ran.

I had questions, but they had to wait until we stopped for our rest shift, and Raikaron turned back into his usual self. I held them for as long as I could, but they eventually spilled out as we were preparing dinner.

“So, that train…” I say as I halve a set of mushrooms with a paring knife.

“Ah yes, the train.” he says from where he’s filling a pot with water. “I suppose you’re going to ask why we didn’t try to get on the train, or follow the tracks around the mountains.”

“Well yes, but also — I thought you said that the vehicles here were dead and couldn’t be used for transport.” I say, rolling one of the plump, firm little mushrooms between my fingers. “Is that only true for the personal vehicles? All the cars and trucks and vans we see in the towns and the cities?”

“It is true for all forms of transportation.” he says, lifting the pot out of the sink and setting it on the stove, turning on the burner. “Visit the airport in a city, and the planes will be idled and inert; visit the docks at a port, and the same will be true of the boats anchored there. But there are exceptions, and that train is one of them. That train, and other variations of it across the Old City, offers expedited travel to Aurescuran souls that are willing to pay with the good credit they may have accrued during a virtuous life.”

“Good credit?” I ask, halving more mushrooms.

“Good credit. Karma. Benevolence. Goodwill.” he says, covering the lid of the pot while pulling out a pan and setting it on the second burner. “There are many words for it across the afterlives, but it is the measure of the value of one’s good actions during a mortal life, after one has accounted for how much would be cancelled out by the bad actions. Depending on the type of afterlife you’re in, that good value can be exchanged for certain things — and in the Old City, it is how you pay the train conductors. The amount you pay them determines how long they let you travel on the train, which allows a soul to bypass many of the hardships of trudging through the Old City.”

My chopping slows as I work that through my mind. “So living a good life earns you goodwill, and that goodwill can be used to pay for a faster trip to the Ocean of Souls?”

“Faster, and safer.” he says, opening a cabinet and pulling down a container full of barrel noodles. “The Old Ones do not trouble the trains; they know that they are off-limits. The conductors themselves are Old Ones that were exceedingly loyal to the Witchling, and proved their worth; as a reward, she gave them power, and changed their form, that they might more resemble mortal Aurescurans. They operate the trains, and guard them from attack and sabotage; it is unwise to trifle with them, or the locomotives they command.”

“Would we be able to use the trains if we wanted to?” I ask, starting to peel the outer layer from an onion so I can cut it up.

“Perhaps. I do not know for sure; I don’t think the conductors care whether you’re living or dead, so long as you pay for passage.” he says, dumping the noodles into the pot of water. “But you and I are demons, and demons are not exactly known for being stocked with good karma, given our line of work. Even if the conductors were willing to take us on as passengers, I don’t believe we would have much to pay with, and our trip would probably be a very short one as a result.”

“Yeah, true.” I concede as I work on chopping the onion as fast as I can, so I can get it into the bowl before the smell starts making my eyes water. “Are there any other ways that we could make the trip go faster?”

“I have given it thought ever since fashioning the saddle, but there are none that I’m aware of. Even traveling as a giant wolf feels like we are pushing our luck a bit.” he says, taking a bowl of precut chicken pieces and sliding them onto the pan. “Heavens and hells are generally not fond of people trying to find ways to circumvent the customary experience within an afterlife. There are obvious reasons for this, as far as the hells are concerned; the entire point of the experience is punishment and atonement, and if people can circumvent that, what’s the point of hell?”

“I suppose that makes sense, but…” I say, quickly scraping the chopped onions off the cutting board and into the bowl with the mushroom halves. “We’re just visitors to the Old City, not residents, right? We shouldn’t be held to the same standard as the people that are supposed to be here.”

“Who says we aren’t supposed to be here?” he asks. “Perhaps we are supposed to be here; perhaps we are supposed to endure this trek, a partial penance for some of the things we’ve done. For me, punishment for breaking one of the laws of the Witchling; for you, partial atonement for the murder you committed.” He takes a moment to stir the noodles before going on. “I would not be so quick to say that we are not supposed to be here. If the Witchling wanted us to deliver her lost memory back to her throne expediently, she would’ve provided a way for us to do so. That she did not provide us with such an avenue indicates to me that she meant for us to take this path, to suffer somewhat for the things we have done, before allowing us to complete our task.”

I feel a little uncomfortable at that; unsettled at the thought that this journey was not incidental, and perhaps meant to punish us for the sins of our past. “Can she do that, though? The Witchling, that is. Punish souls that don’t belong to her?” I ask, passing him the bowl of onions and mushrooms as the chicken starts to sizzle in the pan. “I’m an Aurescuran, so it makes sense that she could punish me, but you come from the Dreaming, right?”

“The Witchling has never been one to believe that the standard rules apply to her.” Raikaron says, taking the bowl and emptying it into the pan. “Among hypernaturals, she operates as a law unto herself, dispensing punishment as she sees fit, to who she sees fit, regardless of whether they are under her jurisdiction or not. And for the most part, other hypernaturals allow her to do so, because she is powerful, but also because the castigation is almost always justified, if not always proportionate. The fact that I am a child of the Dreaming does not protect me from her; but beyond that, we are in the Old City, and that is the Witchling’s domain. When you are in the domain of another deity, you are subject to their laws and their judgement. You are a guest in their house, and if you do not behave accordingly, you very quickly find out what the consequences are.”

I don’t have much to say to that; it makes sense, even if I don’t like the implications. Taking the cutting board and the paring knife, I go over to the sink so I can start washing both of them. It’s as I’m scrubbing them down that I’m able to find the words for what I feel.

“I suppose I just don’t like the idea that there’s these higher powers that take it upon themselves to judge the rest of us. Us mortals.” I say quietly, as if worried the Witchling would hear me. “What gives them the right, you know? Most of them don’t even seem involved in our lives, but they still judge us when we die. Unless they were involved in our lives somehow, I don’t feel like they have a right to judge us for those lives.”

“Perhaps nothing gives them the right.” he says, taking a moment to lift the lid on the pot and stir the noodles again as it gets closer to boiling. “But someone must judge. Otherwise we must accept a universe without order, without fairness, without equity. For the universe is, in its natural state, without order, fairness, or equity. As much as we might wish otherwise, there is no natural law which punishes evil, cruelty, or malice. We create systems to hold people accountable — what mortals know as the heavens and hells. We maintain those systems because balancing the scales of right and wrong requires a deliberate act — it is not something that happens on its own. The higher powers judge because mortal souls cry out for a universe which makes sense, a universe which is fair — and immortals cannot find it in their hearts to deny that yearning.”

I set the cutting board and the knife on the drying rack off to the side of the sink, turning around and leaning back against the counter. “Do you say that because you’re one of the immortals doing the judging? And who judges the judges?”

That appears to give him pause, and he doesn’t answer right away. “The judges are judged by those above them, and at the highest levels, the judges hold each other accountable… mostly. There is some evidence of favoritism in the courts of the cosmos, as much as I hate to admit it. The plight of your people during the years of the Cycle is a testament to that.”

“What do you mean by that?” I ask, my brow furrowing.

“Your goddess, Aurescura, was never punished for what she did to her creations.” Raikaron says as he shuffles around the chicken and mushrooms in the pan to make sure they’re cooking evenly. “She sealed your world, and hid it away in the void between galaxies. And there your people would’ve eventually been exterminated, their souls trapped by the seal and unable to escape to an afterlife where they could tell their story. All evidence of the crime lost to the infinite darkness between stars.”

“But the Cycle was eventually broken. We escaped.” I point out.

“Not through their own genius.” Raikaron says, moving to pull milk from the fridge and uncap it as he pulls out the measuring cups. “Aurescura thought that she hid her crime, but the Dreaming saw. The Dreaming knew. The Dreaming judged. And one among the Dreaming took pity on your people — my ancestor, Solebarr Syntaritov. He came unto them, time and again, to offer them an escape from the torment that Aurescura had condemned her creations to. But they would not take it, for it would require leaving their world, the only home they had ever known. Only at the end, when they were unable to seal the Beast and renew the Cycle, teetering on the edge of their final destruction, did Maugrimm accept Solebarr’s offer. Only then was the Cycle broken; only then were your people freed; only then did Maugrimm become the Witchling, and the evidence of Aurescura’s cruelty laid bare for all the gods to see.”

Turning down the heat on the pan’s burner, he goes on. “But did they punish? No. They condemned, and they disapproved, and they distanced themselves from her, but Aurescura, known also as Kaleidoscope, one of the first Primordials, was never punished according to the laws of the Gathering. Not the way that they punished others, like the Inkling, or Eraser. The hypocrisy was rank; the Dreaming was wroth, and the Gathering lost favor that day in the eyes of the Dreaming. And the Dreaming no more answered the call of the Gathering, until the advent of the Serenity War, some thirteen thousand years ago.”

There is something solemn and grave to Raikaron’s voice, as if he was recounting a shameful and sorrowful chapter in history — only made all the more jarring by the fact that he’s measuring out milk and pouring it into the pan as he does so. “So you’re telling me that my people only broke free of the Cycle because of your ancestor?” I ask.

“My ancestor provided the means to break the seal. Your people, through Maugrimm, provided the strength to make it happen.” Raikaron says as he finishes measuring out the milk, and hands it back to me to return to the fridge. “I tell you all this by way of admitting that the judgements of higher powers are not always perfect, and the plight of your people is proof of that. But I will still stand by the belief that someone must judge, and to have judgement, even if it is imperfect at times, is better than yielding to chaos, and accepting a lack of justice at all.”

“But Aurescura was never punished for what she did to my people?” I ask, putting away the milk in the fridge. I find it galling to know that our creator got away with trying to destroy our people, and essentially paid no price for it.

“Not in a way that matters measurably. But that does not mean there were not consequences.” Raikaron says, stirring some cheese, powder, and seasoning into the pan and then covering it to let it simmer. “The frustration of justice has its effects. The indignity and the righteous fury of your people is embodied in the Witchling, and her existence is also a manifestation of the Gathering’s shame. It is why she has such power against the gods of the Gathering; it is why she does as she likes, and goes where she will, even unto confronting deities in the heart of their own domains uninvited. She is a reminder of a failure of their morality — the consequence of their hypocrisy.”

I’m quiet at that, letting it all soak in while Raikaron goes to wash the measuring cups in the sink. After a little bit, I sigh, sweeping my bangs from my eyes. “Why can’t things be simple?”

He looks over his shoulder. “Is it too much for you to think about?”

“It’s just a lot to absorb.” I say, leaning back against the counter. “And a lot of it is… big. On a scale that’s just hard to grasp. Gods that have one name here but go by another name there, and things that happened tens of thousands of years ago, and different groups — Dreaming, Gathering, Witchling — it’s just all so big, and beyond me sometimes.”

“That is true. I cannot disagree.” he says, placing the measuring cups on the drying rack, and toweling his hands off. “The universe is a big place. As individuals, we are small — grains of sand in an ocean of stars. It can be easy to feel dwarfed by it all, to wonder if you actions really matter against the backdrop of everything that’s come before, and the scale of everything that currently is. But it’s okay to be small. There is still meaning in little things such as us.”

He turns to me, his arms open to offer a hug. And I just can’t pass it up; I step into his embrace and wrap my arms around him, resting my head against his collarbone. “But you’re not small. You’re a demon Lord; you’re a big deal.” I mumble as I hug him.

“I am just one person in a long chain of hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of individuals that have held the title of the Lord of Regret.” he says, one hand tracing in circles over my back. “And there will be many that come after me that hold the same title. I am but a passing moment, as most of us are — here for but a few seconds on the cosmic clock, and then gone, to make room for others. It is not a bad thing. We simply do what we can with the time that we have, and remember that the point of existence is existence itself — to experience things, and to be part of the grand story of this universe.”

He finishes by planting a kiss on my head, and I can’t help but smile at that. “Thanks. It does feel a little better, looking at it that way.”

“Excellent. Now, speaking of experience, why don’t you set the table so we can experience this dinner? I think the barrel noodles are getting to the point where I can start draining them, and then after that we just need to wait for the sauce to thicken a bit…”

Event Log: Jayta Jaskolka

The Old City

Day 91

We are in the mountains now.

After making our way through the hills, we followed the trails up into the mountains, which are quilted with snow. It is cold up among the peaks and ridges, on account of the altitude; I am not sure how the snow got up here, since I haven’t seen any weather since we arrived in the Old City, and snow is precipitation — it must fall from clouds. Raikaron said there are some places in the Old City that have weather, like the Ocean of Souls, and that these mountains might also be one of those places.

The cold is bitter and sharp; even when keeping the covered saddle closed, it seeps in and chills me something terrible. After that first day in the mountains, I made a habit of bringing blankets with me from the tesseract and stuffing them into the covered saddle, creating a nest of sorts that I could burrow into, surrounding myself with layers and layers of insulation. It works, mostly; the cold still seeps in here and there, but the blankets keep the worst of it at bay.

At any rate, I don’t have it nearly as bad as Raikaron, because he’s the one that’s actually doing all of the traveling. Even as a giant wolf with a thick pelt of fur, the cold among the peaks is sharp and bitter, and his paws are always wet from trudging through the snow. At the end of the day, when he morphs back into his human self, his hands and feet are ice cold and numb — he has to wait for them to warm up before he can start using them properly again. Yet he never complains, and I have taken the lead of making dinner at the end of the day, so he doesn’t have to worry about fumbling about the kitchen while waiting for feeling to return to his hands.

I’d assumed that we’d be alone in the mountains, even more than we were on the plains or in the forests, but today proves me incorrect. Several hours into our travel shift, I feel us come to a halt; curled up in my nest of blankets, I don’t think much of it. Raikaron has a penchant for stopping to examine difficult terrain as he plots out the best way to navigate it; he’s done it several times as we travel through the peaks. But this time it takes longer; at first a minute, then two minutes, then four minutes, and I start to wonder what’s happening. So I work my way out of my nest, zipping open the cover to the saddle’s entrance.

The cold greets me like a harsh slap, and my eyes need a moment to adjust to the pearlescence of the snowcapped peaks. Raikaron’s russet pelt stands out among the white landscape and the grey sky, and I fix on that until my eyes adjust — and our surroundings come into focus.

Lingering in the snow around us, and up on the ridge on either side of the gully we’re in, are what look like white sheets rippling in the wind. Or rather, white sheets wrapped around creatures; the wind presses the sheets against the creatures beneath them, creating a blank, featureless contour that’s nonetheless recognizable by its profile alone: a pack of wolves, all shrouded in white sheets that completely hide their bodies from view. As far as I can tell, they surround us on both sides, and block the gully ahead of us.

“Raikaron?” I murmur carefully. “What are these things?”

They are Old Ones. I wince as I sense Raikaron’s voice in my head, speaking across the contract that binds us together. I don’t like it when he speaks into my head like this, and he knows I don’t like it, so he doesn’t do it unless a situation demands it. Whatever is happening, we must be in some sort of immediate danger. They are the Hounds of Winter, ghosts of the mountain. Old terrors from the myths of your people. They lure travelers away from the path by taking the shape of familiar things, and then when the traveler is lost, they descend upon them and consume them. They are then able to take the form of the things they have consumed, so that when others come looking for the missing travelers, the Hounds can lure the rescuers away by pretending to be the missing travelers.

My fingers curl around the edge of the blanket I have wrapped around myself. “Are they hunting us?”

Yes.

I take a deep breath, looking around. There’s something unnerving about it all; the silky white sheets, rippling around the profiles of things that are imitating the shapes of wolves; the absolute silence coming from them. If I didn’t know what was going on, I’d have said it was an absolutely gorgeous scene, good for an artistic holoshoot — there was something about these sheet-wreathed wolven outlines that reminded me of stone-carved statues of veiled people, the way the cloth flowed and contoured around their outlines.

“You are bigger than them.” I point out quietly. “You would wipe the floor with them in a fight, right?”

I believe I could inflict considerable casualties on them, yes. But they know that and will not attack me outright. They are hunting, and hunting large creatures requires that you harry them, you wear them down, and then you strike when they are weak. They will nip and bite every time I let down my guard. If we try to set up the tesseract and so we can retreat into it and rest, they will attack. And by forcing us to travel without rest, they hope to wear me down until I am too exhausted to fight them off.

“So what do we do?” I ask, keeping my voice low.

We need to find a place with a narrow entrance or a bottleneck. Something that can be defended or barricaded, where they can only attack from one direction. That will allow us to hold them off long enough to get into the tesseract, where I can consult my library and concoct a way to keep them away from us while we travel through the mountains. Out here, where we are exposed on all sides, they will attack us the second I try to demorph and pull out the tesseract.

I look around again, taking in the desolate white peaks and ridges all around us. “I’m not seeing a lot of options for us in that regard.”

Yes, that is what I am trying to figure out. I have seen almost no signs of civilization up here, so buildings are not an option. If we could find a cave, that would be ideal. In this geography, a ravine or a crevasse is more likely, but those are often dangerous. The fall could kill us if we misjudge how deep it is, and getting back out again is a challenge all unto itself.

“Yeah.” I say softly, trying to gaze beyond the sheet-wreathed Hounds. “Might be our only choice, though. Do you think you could find one?”

I think I can, but it will take us off the beaten path. Finding our way back may be difficult, but I do not think we have a viable alternative at this—

His train of thought abruptly cuts off and is replaced by low growling as one of the Hounds tries to move forward. I can feel Raikaron’s snarl vibrating up from his chest and through the saddle; it sounds like the distant rumble of thunder from a looming storm. The Hound that had tried to step forward pauses; the wind seems to shift and start blowing the other direction, and for a moment, the sheets swirl formlessly. When the wind stiffens in a particular direction again, the way the sheet plasters around the foremost Hound instead resembles the profile of a woman, instead of a four-legged beast.

“Raikaron…” I murmur, feeling thoroughly unnerved as it lifts a sheet-wrapped arm towards us.

We need to move. The longer we remain here, the bolder they will grow. His low growling continues even as his words feed into my mind. You will need to ride in the saddle proper; they will attack it and try to rip the assembly off my back if there is no one to keep them off it. Get into the saddle and get situated; keep your plasma shotgun at hand. It is well suited for situations like this.

I quickly untangle myself from the blanket I had wrapped around me, and start zipping up the winter jacket I’ve been wearing since we crossed into the mountains. Pulling myself out of the covered portion, I bring my legs around to hook into the stirrups on the actual saddle itself, which sits in front of the covered portion. Once my boots are seated, I yank my shotgun charm off my bracelet, seating it in my arms as it expands to full size. As an afterthought, I reach behind myself, zipping the covered portion of the saddle closed.

“I’m set now.” I say, pumping the shotgun a couple times to make sure it’s charged.

His ears flick at that, and he starts to move forward, plowing through snow that would be up to my knees if I was standing in it. Along the sides of the gully, the Hounds watch as we move forwards; the ones in front of us don’t give way until Raikaron gets close enough to start snapping his jaws at them. They begin to scatter and part to the sides at that, though one of them tries to dart forward towards Raikaron’s foreleg; his response is instant. I have to cling to the saddlehorn as he lunges down, his teeth snapping shut around the billowing sheet with a horrid crunching, then whipping his head to the side and throwing the Hound across the gully to slam into the ice-faced ridge lining one of its sides.

The rest of the Hounds truly scatter away after that, giving us wide berth as he continues plodding through the snow. I keep my finger lingering on my shotgun’s trigger guard as we go; on the sides of the gully, the Hounds have turned, and are starting to move along, keeping pace with us. The cold is already starting to bite at my ears and face; reaching up, I pull my hood over my head, tightening the strings so that the gusts of wind up here don’t tug it off.

And we travel in this manner for hours, trudging through the snow and the high ridges of the mountain. The Hounds continue to follow, trailing us at every step, regardless of where we go or how far we travel; they typically move parallel to us on either side when they are able, and there are always a few of them behind us. Sometimes, one or two of them will go up ahead; it wasn’t until after the first couple of attacks that I realized they were scouting ahead, checking the terrain ahead to see if there would be good places to attack us.

Those attacks, when they happened, always failed, and were always quick — bursts of aggression that came out of nowhere, a mad scramble to suddenly swarm Raikaron and try to bring him down. Raikaron was quick to start biting and throwing whatever Hounds he could get his jaws around; and I always had plenty of targets to choose from. Too many targets, as it turned out; while I got shots off and rarely missed, the problem was that there were just too many Hounds to shoot them all as fast as I needed to. Some always got through Raikaron’s jaws and my plasma bursts, and would claw at whatever part of Raikaron they would able to reach. Those were the only times I ever saw what was beneath the billowing sheets — brief glimpses of long, grey, sinewy arms, ending in obscenely long claws.

We always left a scattered field of broken bodies covered in billowing sheets behind us during those encounters, but it did nothing to improve Raikaron’s outlook. He explained to me, after one of the attacks, that the Old Ones were similar to the damned in Sjelefengsel — you could kill them, but they would come back. Where it took demons about a week to reconstitute in the sulphur fields of Sjelefengesel, the Old Ones — or at the least the Hounds — seemed to recover in an hour or two, no matter how thoroughly we had brutalized them on the prior encounter. Usually there were a few survivors after every encounter, and they would follow us at a distance — but their numbers would always grow, slowly swelling back to the size of the pack that we had originally encountered.

We travel like this for hours, and it is, in a word, miserable. Until now, I had rarely had to endure the cold of the high mountains, spending most of my travel time nestled within the covered portion of the saddle, burrowed into blankets like I was hibernating. Now I was experiencing what it was like for Raikaron, spending hours trudging through the bitter cold and wind, feeling the chill seep through my clothes and bite at my extremities until they turned numb. It takes me no more than a few hours to realize I am not cut out for roughing it in this kind of environment, even when I’m merely riding when Raikaron is doing most of the work as the steed. And the attacks by the Hounds…

They are wearing us down, bit by bit.

It takes me a while, but I start to realize that Raikaron is not invulnerable, and the repeated attacks are having an effect on him. The injuries he’s received have started to accumulate, and after one of the attacks, I notice he has developed a limp. His pace has slowed as well; where before his movements were steady and effortless as he plowed through the snow, they are now labored and fatigued. And I am not the only one that has noticed it; the Hounds, which before kept their distance by about thirty or forty feet, have now closed to about fifteen. Their pack travels more tightly around us, and sometimes tries to direct our path by moving in one direction — though Raikaron will snap at them if they get too near, and they quickly course-correct to avoid running afoul of his jaws.

Knowing where this is going if we don’t find shelter soon, I sink a hand into Raikaron’s fur, speaking to him while keeping an eye on the Hounds. “Are you okay? Is there anything I can do?”

It’s a moment before Raikaron responds across our link, and when he does, his reply feels mentally sluggish and belabored — which I find alarming, given Raikaron’s usual mental acuity. There is a sickness in their claws, a poison. You must not let them strike you — a few doses would incapacitate lesser creatures with ease.

My breath hitches in my chest at that. I knew he’d been struggling, but I didn’t know he’d been shouldering his way through while poisoned. Though I wouldn’t normally consider it, I decide to make use of the contract that binds us together, projecting my thoughts across that common link, concerned that I might be giving away his weaknesses to the Hounds if I speak aloud. Though they take the shape of wolves and other four-legged creatures, I’ve seen they are capable of taking the shape of people — and if they’re intelligent enough to do that, I’m pretty sure they’re likely intelligent enough to overhear and understand speech. Rai, are you okay? Will you be able to keep going?

My strength is fading. His response is blunt and unvarnished, lacking any of the usual eloquence, and his thoughts feel tired and ragged. I will not be able to continue this for much longer. I have sensed no crevasses or caves, and the poison is clouding my senses and reducing their range. Without a narrow place to retreat into, we will be too exposed to deploy the tesseract and get into it.

I return my hand to my shotgun at that, looking around at the Hounds traveling apace with us. What do we do?

I have an idea, but it is dangerous and risky and will take us off our path. It will involve flying, and you will need to use your demon manifest. We will lose time by straying from our path, but at the moment survival is more important.

“Okay.” I respond aloud without thinking about it, then remember I want to keep our communication private, and I project my thoughts towards him once more. What is the idea? Share it with me.

Rather than words, Raikaron’s reply flows to me in a series of unsteady images, taking me through the steps of his proposed course of action. It is precisely as dangerous and risky as he stated it would be, although he has couched it in similarities to the time we escaped from Kolob’s angels. I cannot help but tighten my hands around my shotgun when I realize how difficult it will be, but even I understand that the situation we are in demands it — if another solution does not present itself soon, the one that Raikaron has proposed will be our best and closest chance of escaping the Hounds.

Alright. If that’s what we have to do, then let’s do it. I reply through our link. Just let me know when. I’ll be ready to act when you are.

His response to that is without words, a vague sense of confirmation — it seems to be the most he can muster while his mind is clouded with poison and pain. I can almost feel him fading every time he sends over a thought, sense the waning of his strength as he struggles to keep pushing forwards. If the poisoned claws of the Hounds would bring down a normal person within a few strikes, then Raikaron is bearing up the weight of many times that dosage, with how often we’ve weathered the pack’s attacks.

Yet he plows onwards, trudging through the unforgiving snow of the peaks, with the Hounds following his every step. By gradual degrees, he strays to the left over the next hour, eschewing the path along the peaks in favor of the one along the ridge, which boasts a sharp dropoff into a pine valley with a partially-frozen river through it. The change does not escape the notice of the Hounds, who follow with greater alertness, trailing more closely on all sides. Before they would do so typically as a prelude to an attack, but here it seems to be precautionary, as if they wanted to be ready to react if Raikaron attempted anything.

But their precautions cannot prevent the wild gambit we’re about to undertake.

He pulls the trigger as we’re crossing near a part of the ridge that comes dangerously close to the path we’re traveling; the closeness of the ledge forces the Hounds on our left side to fall back and fall behind us, and the rock face on the right side forces the same with the Hounds on our right. Over our link, Raikaron tells me to be ready, but outwardly does not slow his pace or change direction, and I try my best to do the same, only reaching down to grip the saddlehorn. In the next few seconds, Raikaron pivots with an alacrity that is surprising for a creature of his size, and launches himself off the ledge, out into the frigid air and the open fall off the ridge’s side.

The moment he does so, I’m tapping into my primal fear and anger at the Hounds, letting it rip through me and transform me into my demon manifest. At the same time, Raikaron begins shrinking, morphing back into his usual self. Letting go of my shotgun, I keep my wings folded close to my back, wresting my legs free of the saddle’s stirrups, then kick it away. By now Raikaron’s shrunk small enough to slip through the harness loops, and I dive down, catching him and wrapping my arms around his chest. After that, I open my wings, wincing at how much the high-altitude chill bites at the leather-soft skin.

They will be coming; they can fly. Even now, Raikaron’s thoughts feel ragged as they push into my mind. As I settle into a turbulent glide, buffeted by the mountainous winds, I look over my shoulder to see the Hounds are milling at the ridge’s edge, as if trying to decide if or how they should follow. The wind shifts, and the rippling sheet on one of them begins to contour around its body in the shape of a large condor or eagle. As it launches off the ledge, the sheets of the other Hounds catch the new breeze, starting to bend and plaster around their bodies in the shapes of other large birds. Dive. We must get down to the trees.

I do exactly that, folding my wings in and angling downwards. This time, I have the benefit of experience, and I don’t need Raikaron’s guidance as I begin a series of dives, broken by short stretches of gliding to slow down to manageable speeds. It’s still a little rocky — I haven’t flown at this altitude since the escape from Kolob’s angels — but I feel like I’m making good progress compared to my last outing.

But my good progress is not enough.

Raikaron’s warning makes that clear; it is without words, but he shunts a series of images into my mind, impressions of the Hounds growing nearer. How he can see them, I’m not sure; perhaps he’s merely sensing them behind us. But they are getting closer, and closer, staying on our tail, diving when I do, but doing so faster and more efficiently. In my defense, they don’t have a passenger like I do; it’s hard to fly when I’m holding on to Raikaron, who’s very close to being dead weight in my arms. Still, it’s very apparent that we are not going to reach the pine forest before the Hounds catch up to us, and when that becomes clear, he communicates another exhortation to me.

To roll over, and fold my wings in so that I am falling with my back to the ground.

At another time, I would’ve questioned it; in a different situation, I certainly would’ve. But in this situation, I have no doubts, no hesitation — I know instinctively that what Raikaron’s asking me to do is critical to our survival. So I do exactly what he’s asked, pulling a wing in so I can flip over, then folding in the other wing once my back is towards the ground. I can see the Hounds spread out behind us, a flock of white, bird-shaped sheets fluttering against the endless grey sky.

Raikaron lifts a hand, stretching it out towards them, and I see his mouth move. He speaks something, but I don’t know what it is — the words are so soft and terrible and that they turn my ears numb, and make everything sound muffled and distant. For an instant, all the world is rendered in negative color, a jarring disjunction — and then it is back to normal again, and fading wisps of white smoke where the Hounds once were.

I’m shocked and in awe, but I’m not given time to linger on it. Raikaron’s voice is pushing back into my head again, reminding me to flip around and continue flying, but it’s gone from ragged to fuzzy and faint, as if he was fading from consciousness. I unfurl a wing so I can twist in the air, and find that we’ve fallen quite a distance in the time we were flipped over; the trees are coming up fast, and I open my wings to brake as quickly as I can. I angle for where the trees are more sparse and where it’ll be easier to land, but we still come hot, with frigid, pine-needled boughs clipping my wings as I tumble into the ground, plowing into the drifts of snow. Having Raikaron in front of me helps absorb some of the impact, but he’s the last person I want to be taking the brunt of that right now.

The powdered snow is wickedly cold as I let go of Raikaron, struggling to get upright. He’s doing the same, his breathing heavy and labored; his sleeves and pants are stained with blood, proving that the injuries he sustained in his wolf form have carried over to his regular form. As I’m finding my feet, he does the same, taking a couple shaky steps before completely collapsing int the snow.

“Raikaron!” I stagger forward to kneel by him, turning him over on his side; his eyes are half-lidded, and vacant and empty, and then closing. He’s still breathing, but it seems like the strain and the poison is finally too much for him. I try to shake him awake, but he doesn’t rouse. At a loss for what to do, I stare at him until motion above catches my attention, and I look up.

There against the grey sky, is a white sheet in the shape of a condor, gliding over the pines.

My heart sinks, and I glance at the pines around us, and then grab Raikaron and drag him back under the cover of the nearest tree. Raikaron may have destroyed most of the Hounds, but there were stragglers. There were always stragglers in the pack that had been hunting us, and they would continue searching for us, looking to finish the job that the other Hounds had started. With Raikaron in the condition he’s in, I’m not sure I could fight them off if there were more than a few of them.

Pulling us under the snowladen boughs of the pine tree I picked, I unzip Raikaron’s coat, and start rummaging through his inner pockets. I can’t use the tesseract — it doesn’t answer to me, and I can’t get it to unfold to its full size the way Raikaron can. Instead, I dig around in his pockets until I find my hammerspace case, which expands back to full size once I find it and pull it out of his pocket. Popping the latches on it, I set it against the base of the pine and open the lid, greeted by a stale rush of warm air, and the citrine lights of the stairway and hall immediately within it. Biting my lip, I look at Raikaron, then pull him over and start to push him into the narrow stairwell as gently, quickly, and quietly as I can. The whole time I’m on edge, jumping at every noise I hear, or think I hear, in the woods around us. Worried that the straggling Hounds will find us while I’m shoving Raikaron into the case, and kill us before I’m able to get both of us in it.

Once Raikaron is inside and pushed down the stairs, I climb in after him, reluctantly using my feet to push him further down the stairwell so I can ease myself in. Once I’ve gotten inside, I reach up and grab the handle on the interior of the lid, pulling it down until the latches click back into place. Taking the handle with both hands, I rotate it — and all along the interior rim of the lids, metal bolts cycle into place, locking the lid so that the case cannot be opened from the inside. That particular feature was a recent modification by Raikaron — he’d built in a mechanism that allowed you to open or lock the hammerspace case from the inside, to prevent meddling or intrusion by outside forces. At the time I thought it was just his favoritism at play again; now, I didn’t care what motivated it, so long as it keeps us safe in our current situation.

With the lid secured, I ease myself down the narrow stairwell, carefully maneuvering around Raikaron until I can get past him, get my arms around him, and drag him the rest of the way down the stairs. Once he’s off the stairs, it’s a straight shot down the beige hallway to the elevator, which I try to open and close as quietly as possible, even though there’s no way the Hounds would be able to hear it through the locked lid. When we finally arrive to the room below, I drag him out of the elevator, and over to the ramp that spirals around the ovoid room from the wraparound balcony.

Upon reaching the main floor, I pull him over to one of the rooms beneath the balcony, sliding back the panel that partitions it from the main floor. Within is a small bedroom, and I drag him over to the bed within, pulling the covers back and lifting him onto it. And once he’s there, I just stare at him for a long minute, feeling numb as the buzz of adrenaline starts to level off, waiting for him to wake up, to move, to tell me what to do next.

Because I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know how to handle this situation. I’m not totally helpless; I can figure things out, but I need someone to point me in the right direction first. And a situation like this — I’ve never been in a situation like this before. I don’t know what to do. Where to start. Raikaron’s always been that person for me; the one that knows everything, can do anything. He always knows what to do next.

I don’t know what to do next.

I can feel the uncertainty and fear ballooning in my chest, and it’s overwhelming and makes it hard to breathe. It’s too much, and I crouch down, resting my arms on my knees as I let my mouth hang open and heave deep breaths, trying to get the anxiety and the fear under control. I don’t want to cry, but I can’t hold it in, and I just let it out; all the stress and discomfort of the last several hours. The fear of being hunted, the worry for Raikaron’s well-being. I let it all out in great, gasping sobs, wishing that we had never come here to the Old City, to suffer through the grey horrors of my people’s purgatory.

I cry myself out over the course of several minutes, my sobbing eventually slowing down and coming back under control. Once I’ve run out my tears, I sit there for a few minutes more, wiping my eyes and nose. With that explosion of pity and sorrow out of the way, there’s nothing left for me to do but pick myself back up and make the most of my situation. Sitting here and crying won’t achieve anything, and we haven’t come this far, and made the sacrifices we’ve made, just to stall out here.

So I pick myself back up, and head back out into the main room, so I can start digging through what’s left of the stuff that Trinity helped me clean out of the hammerspace case. Once I find a first aid kit, or some bandages or rags, I’ll start cleaning his wounds. And after that, I’ll start a fire in the fireplace to keep us warm, and then after that I’ll check our food reserves and get something to eat, and then I’ll get some rest, because I’ll be shambles without it.

And I don’t know what comes after that, but it’s enough of a start for me.

Event Log: Jayta Jaskolka

The Old City

Day 95

I’ve lost track of time.

Without Raikaron to tell me how many days have passed, I can’t tell what time it is or how long it’s been. My hammerspace case doesn’t have the lights set to a day/night cycle like the tesseract does, and there’s no point in checking outside of the case, since the Old City is in eternal twilight. I was able to find Raikaron’s pocketwatch and tried to check it, but after the popping the lid, I knew I wouldn’t be able to read it. It doesn’t keep time in a way that I can read; the markings on the face aren’t something I recognize, the dials and gears don’t appear to be of mortal make or design, and the six hands of the watch move in contradictory directions, leaving me wondering what I’m looking at.

I have been staying busy, though. After I first settled in and got some rest, I woke up find that Raikaron was still unconscious, and I couldn’t rouse him. So checked the hasty dressings I’d done for his wounds, and took some time to more thoroughly clean the gashes he received from the Hounds. From what I can tell, they’re healing at a decent pace, but the poison is still in his system; little white veins wander away from the gashes, and I don’t know how to diagnose them. But if there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that the poison is the problem, not his wounds — a collection of minor lacerations wouldn’t bring down something as big as Raikaron’s wolf form. Poison and sickness, on the other hand, could do to large creatures what physical damage could not.

I’ve stripped him of his bloodied clothes, but I wasn’t going to wrestle him into the change of clothes I’d packed in the wardrobe for us. Instead, I’ve layered him beneath blankets to keep him warm, relying on the collection of old, musty quilts squirreled away in one of the storage rooms beneath the wraparound balcony. The room seems to be cold by default, I think because of the cold seeping in from outside the hammerspace case — back when I first received it, this hadn’t been a problem. It’d always been stale and lukewarm back when I was cleaning it out with Trinity’s help, and even felt a bit too warm while I was moving piles of junk to be thrown out. But now, if I stay still for too long, the cold starts seeping in, leaving me shivering.

So I’ve made a habit of keeping a fire going in the hearth. I’d stocked the firewood rack a week or two after I got the case from Mek, and after my venture in splitting logs earlier this year, it had only taken me a couple days to get enough to fill the rack. It had been easy to get a fire going; a lot of my chainlinks are heat-related, and I could use any combination of them to ignite the wood. I didn’t even need to use the poker to shift the logs or embers around, because of my heat tolerance chainlink — I could just reach in and move them around however I wanted to move them around.

But even though it might not seem like it in the moment, wood burns rather quickly, and keeping a fire going around the clock isn’t as easy as it sounds. I quickly switched to only burning a single log at a time, rather than multiple, and that single log usually slow-burned on a bed of embers left over from past logs. The reduced heat output meant that it only really felt warm around the hearth itself, and the temperature quickly dropped off the further you were from the fire. But it was better than nothing, and I didn’t want to burn through my supply of firewood before Raikaron woke up. And by all accounts, he has not woken up yet.

That’s not to say he’s comatose — he’s not. As far as I can tell, he’s sleeping, but it’s a strange sleep, one I can’t wake him up from, no matter how hard I shake him or hit him — and I have tried. It is almost like there is something holding him under; he twitches in his sleep like he wants to wake up, but there is something blocking him from doing so. I think he dreams as well, though the dreams don’t seem pleasant; on more than one occasion I’ve caught him hyperventilating, his breathing fast and shallow, like an animal being hunted, or someone having a panic attack. Sometimes it’ll go on like that for minutes before cresting and gradually coming back down to normal breathing patterns, but it’s still unsettling when it happens. I want to help him, but I can’t, or I don’t know how — all I can do is sit beside him and hold his hand until it passes. I don’t imagine it helps all that much, but it does seem to calm him down a little quicker.

And between those times when I’m not sitting beside his bed, or tending the fire, or nibbling at our meager supplies, or sleeping… I am not entirely sure what to do with myself. I want to help him, but I don’t know how, and I don’t have access to anything that could point me in the right direction. Without access to the tesseract, I cannot reference any of Raikaron’s books, or access his lab — I have only what’s here in my hammerspace case. I’ve gone through the closets and storage rooms, looking for anything that might be of use, but all I’ve turned up so far are two basic, halfway-depleted first aid kits, which I’ve been using to dress his wounds and change them every so often.

I only hope that whatever happens, he wakes up soon — because I don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t.

Event Log: Jayta Jaskolka

The Old City

Day 98

I think it’s been a week, but I’m not sure.

Not much has changed. Raikaron’s wounds have continued healing, but he remains in a fitful sleep, and nothing I do can rouse him. From what I can tell, food enough for two people to eat for one week was stored here in my hammerspace case, and soon I’ll have eaten through half of it. While that’s a concern, my more immediate worry is the stock of firewood, which I think may run out before the food does. If it does, the hammerspace case will become much colder than it currently is.

So I’ve been letting the fire burn out before I rest, and slipping into bed to sleep next to Raikaron and conserve heat that way. With the two of us sharing warmth beneath the covers, it easily keeps the cold away, though Raikaron’s restless slumber often wakes me up when I’m trying to rest. He sometimes murmurs things in a language I don’t recognize, an ancient tongue that seems like it might’ve been his birth language. I only wish I knew what he was saying, if it would help me find a way to wake him up.

And now I am sitting in front of the fireplace again, wrapped in one of the spare blankets and watching flames flicker across the single log on the bed of embers, waiting for it to burn down and out again. It’s as I’m staring into that dull red glow, morose and despondent, that I hear the sound of something wrapped in fabric being dragged across the floor. I don’t react to it right away, thinking I imagined it, but then I hear it again, and I realize it’s not coming from side of the main room where Raikaron’s resting.

Something else is in here.

I immediately twist to my feet, my manacles and chainlinks flaring to life as I wheel around to glare across the main room. Something startles in the dark near the wall to the right, and I see the tapetum flash of twin eyes in the dark, staring back at me. It takes me a moment to realize that it’s a cat, hunched like it’s ready to bolt — and I recognize the collar and the color of the pelt, which has it nearly blending in with the deep shadows sin the room.

“Cinder? How did— I thought you were in the tesseract!” I exhale, all the tension dropping out of me as I slump a little in relief. “How did you get in here? And what in the world are you dragging around…”

I head over to her, my manacles and chainlinks fizzling out as she drops what looks like a satchel that she had been dragging across the floor. Crouching down, I pick up the satchel and hook a hand under her in one go, carrying both of them back over to the hearth, where it’s warmer. Setting Cinder down on blanket I’d had wrapped around me, I pull the neck of the satchel open, and see why it’s so heavy — there’s a bottle inside.

“What’s this?” I murmur, pulling both of them out. The bottle has no label, and only a paper ribbon tied around its neck, on which the word Dreamshare has been written. On the envelope, my name has been written in the elegant cursive of Danya’s hand. Untucking the flap that keeps it closed, I pull out the folded letter within, also written in Danya’s flowing script, and start reading through it from the top.

Jayta,

Within this satchel you will find a bottle of Dreamshare, one of the Dreaming draughts brewed by our Lord. Trinity snuck into his personal reserves yesterday and brought it to me, insisting that you would need it, but refused to explain further and said only that I should write a letter telling you what it does, then leave both the letter and the draught in a satchel near our Lord’s desk in the study. Though such cryptic commands vex me to no end, I trust that it is for yours or for Lord Syntaritov’s benefit.

Dreamshare is thankfully a very easy draught to explain, and the name does most of the heavy lifting here. As you may have deduced, it allows you to share dreams with someone else that partakes of the draught with you. How long the dream is shared is dependent on how much of the draught is consumed by all of the involved parties. A sip each will get you a short stint in a shared dream; a full glass before bed will have you in each other’s heads all night. Normally I would have expected our Lord to explain this to you, but if Trinity is telling me to write you an explanation, I presume this means he is not present, or will be otherwise indisposed, when this letter reaches you.

Whatever you may be needing this draught for, I will caution you to employ it with care. Dreams can be dangerous, whether they are yours or another’s, and you should not tread them lightly.

Regards,

-Danya

I read through the letter once, then skim over it a second time, before setting it down and picking up the bottle. So this was one of Raikaron’s draughts; the glass is dark green, and it’s hard to tell what color the liquid is within. With the situation we’re in, it could only be meant for one thing; Trinity clearly intended for me to drink it and get into Raikaron’s dreams, and hopefully I’d find a way to rouse him from his poisoned slumber by doing so. Looking up and at the bedroom where Raikaron’s been resting, I let out a bracing exhale, then stand and head over to the kitchen.

Grabbing a glass from the cupboard and a cork remover from the drawer, I walk back over to the bedroom beneath the balcony, and sit on the edge of the bed. Cinder remains by the hearth, curled up near the fire while I twist the corkscrew into the bottle, and work it loose with some effort. Once it pops out, I pour some of the draught into the cup; the liquid that comes out is a deep, clear sapphire blue, rich and dusky by the faint light of the fire. I don’t pour too much, realizing that it’s going to be tough to get Raikaron to swallow more than a few sips when he’s asleep. Stuffing the cork halfway back into the neck of the bottle, I set it down, then pivot on the bed to take Raikaron’s chin and pull his mouth open slightly.

“You might not like this.” I murmur as I lean over him, carefully tilting the glass towards his lips. “I haven’t tried it, so I don’t know what it tastes like. But Trinity had Danya put it where Cinder could bring it to us, so they must’ve meant for us to use it.”

With that, I carefully ease a couple of sips into his mouth, taking it nice and slow. He doesn’t protest or cough it up, and I can see his throat move, so it seems to me like he’s swallowed it. Once I’m sure he’s not choking on it, I sit up and drink the other couple sips left in the glass, finding there’s a slight sweetness that makes it easy to go down, and a mellow warmth soon after that easily lends itself to drowsiness. Setting the glass on the floor beside the bed, I pull back the covers and settle in beside him, pulling them back over us as I rest my head against his shoulder, and my arm across his chest.

Then I close my eyes, clear my mind, and let the mellow warmth of the draught guide me to sleep.

A dream about the Dreaming… yes, how poetic that is.

Though it is not quite about the Dreaming, is it. Or rather, it is a about a part of the Dreaming we do not speak of often. The dark mirror; the black ocean; the raven sky; the part of the Dreaming which houses the deepest darkness of mortal minds. The primal depravities which never truly leave us, but lurk, unspoken and wanting, beneath the civilities of society.

The Haunting.

It takes many forms, it does, as all parts of the Dreaming do — shaped as they are by the minds that at once create and visit it. This patch of the Haunting, however, lies far from the swirling lights of the rest of the Dreaming, deprived of its vibrant hues and its vivant mindscapes. Here, upon the black sand beneath a starless sky, there is only emptiness for as far as the mind and the eye can see. This is the Desert of Despair, a lightless, lonely place, created by every Waking mind mired in the depths of depression, or a loss of hope.

It is through this lightless plane that one of the many children of Syntaritov trudges, his feet sinking into the black sand with every step. He is not a prisoner of this place, as many others are, but rather a visitor — to come, complete an errand, and depart again with expediency. He has no intention of lingering here, and has been warned of the dangers of doing so. The Desert of Despair claims those who spend too long upon its ebon dunes, and this Syntaritov has commitments in the Waking to honor, as the glass sphere beneath his arm attests.

But the Desert is not without a mind of its own. It is not a passive presence, and those who transverse its lightless depths may find themselves subjected to its call, or to the cries of those trapped within it. This son of Syntaritov is no exception to this, finding himself arrested in his tracks by the call of a familiar voice; and he turns aside to see a woman that was once a girl he knew. Mired in the black sand, like so many other souls that have found themselves trapped here.

“Raikaron.” It is but his name, but a single word, yet the tone in which it is delivered tells an entire story. It speaks recognition, even after all these centuries; it tells a mutual history, a shared origin; and it is a question, and a plea, all in one.

At first there is no response. One wonders if the word, and all that the tone conveyed in it, were false. But his brows draw together, and a ghost of pain flickers across his face, making it clear that he does in fact recognize her, and all the suffering she inflicted upon him.

And after a moment, he turns, and begins to march on once more.

“Raikaron, please.” Two words, this time, telling a sequel to the first story. A plea, a callback to that shared history, a request for mercy, an admittance of weakness, a begging for salvation, all delivered in something that verged on a barely-controlled sob. “Please.”

It brings him to a halt. After a moment, he turns and treads back towards her, until he stands before her, and yet just out of reach, gazing down upon her.

“I gave my all.” A moment of silence, to let that sink in. “I poured out my soul for all of you until there was nothing left, and I broke.” Another moment of silence, to feel the weight of those words. “And you repaid that with abandoning me.”

The shame. It is unbearable, for she cannot meet his eyes; she squeezes hers shut, and looks down, twists her head to the side, as if she was squirming beneath its burning weight. “We had to take care of ourselves.” she says, and yet she cannot bring herself to look at him as she is saying it. “We had to do what was right for us.”

“At my expense.” Three words, damning in their simplicity.

“We didn’t mean to hurt you.” Words spoken in desperation.

Met with silence.

“We didn’t want to hurt you.” An amendment, spoken in wretchedness.

Answered again with silence.

“I’m sorry.” She wipes at the tears gathering in her eyes, but still cannot bring herself to lift her head and meet his gaze, knowing what she did to him. All she can offer is what she said earlier, but it is weak and hollow, and lacks the force of conviction, because she knows it justifies nothing. “We had to do what was right for us.”

“I know.” The words, delivered gently, are finally enough for her to raise her head, but though there is pity and pain in those bright green eyes, there is no mercy there. “And now I must do the same.”

In that moment, hope is extinguished, and it goes out like a blown candle, leaving only darkness behind. The desperation that had been propping her up now collapses into despair as she hangs her head, and her shoulders slump, and begin to shake with the beginnings of silent sobs. She does not protest his words, for there is nothing to protest. This is the consequence of choices made long ago; a bed that was made in the distant past, and has been waiting for centuries for her to lie in it. This fate, though it was sealed by him, was of her own design.

He watches only for a moment as her regret finally sets in, then turns from her and begins marching across the black sand once more. And though he has made his choice, it does not mean he enjoys it, or revels in it. Though the sounds of her soft sobs slowly fade with the distance, they haunt his every step, for she is not the only one that feels regret for how this came to pass. And he finds himself wishing, with every step, that he had chosen differently — yet he cannot bring himself to turn back, and recant his decision. The choice is made; the die is cast — and now they both must live with the consequences.

It is only when he sees someone in his way that he stops. There, in the unmarked path, is a small blonde, who has seen and witnessed all. Yet she is not a part of the memory; no, she is instead part of the future that is, and her gaze is upon the woman that he has abandoned, before her grey eyes turn to him. In that moment, he expects judgement; he anticipates condemnation.

But none is forthcoming. Instead, she lifts a hand out to him. Offering, beckoning, welcoming — an invitation to take it, and return to the future that this memory created.

“Come back, my Lord. You have slept in your past long enough.”

I come awake slowly.

It is the sort of waking that you don’t want to do, the warm waking where you know that outside the bed there is cold, while under the covers there is safety and comfort. But I cannot keep myself asleep any longer, and there is something pushing at the back of my mind, telling me that I need to be awake. So I open my eyes.

Raikaron.

He’s turned his head towards me, and though his eyes are barely open, they are open, and that is what matters. His breathing is slow and weak, and he’s paler than normal, but that’s okay — because he’s finally awake again.

“Rai.” I murmur, my hand moving up to graze his cheek.

He stares for a moment, and then—

“Jay.”

And after hearing that, I know everything’s going to be alright.

Event Log: Jayta Jaskolka

The Old City

Day 103

He recovers slowly.

The poison has left him weak, and for the first couple of days, he could not move without assistance. About three days in, he was able to get up on his own, though his movements were slow and ginger. I helped him get to the bathroom, so he could shower and get into the change of clothes that were waiting for him.

He has slept over the last few days, of course, but not the deep, unbreakable sleep from before. He has been able to wake up on his own, and during the times he is awake and cognizant, I have brought him up to speed on everything that’s happened since we’ve sequestered ourselves in my hammerspace case. He has mostly listened, and doesn’t speak much, as if he was still working through the haze of sleeping for so long.

During the times he was awake and lucid, he took the time to explain to me the poison that was on the claws of the Hounds. Though it had a deleterious effect on the body, the primary impact was on the mind, in that it seemed to collapse the barrier between the past and the present. Memories would feel like they were taking place then and there, possibly manifesting as hallucinations to those affected. The Hounds, using their ability to shift their shape and form, could then appear as the outlines of sympathetic figures within these hallucinations. Being as he was a creature of the Dreaming himself, who fed upon emotions and memories, the poison was not particularly effective on him; it was why the dosage required to bring him down was so high.

Something else we also ended up talking about was the satchel from Danya, and Cinder. I was still at a loss for how she’d managed to escape the tesseract, get back to the House of Regret, then find a way back to my hammerspace case; Raikaron, though, did not seem all that surprised. Cats, he explained, were unique creatures within the universe, and many of them had a penchant for finding their way into places and dimensions that would not be considered remotely close to each other. Insofar as he had been able to observe, they generally seemed to have free run of the cosmos and all the planes contained within it, and roamed where they wanted, largely unhindered by obstacles such as distance or borders.

Outside of that, there was not much talking done on his part, I think because he was too tired to talk. He did tell me that his first priority was getting better, so we could get back on our way, and he would focus on that. I was all too eager to help him with that, happily preparing the meals we had in storage while he carefully worked around his wounds, using his abilities as a Dreaming creature to slowly heal the physical damage to his body. Very often, he ended up dozing off where he sat on the couch, or leaning against me. His strength was coming back, but for the present it was limited, and when he had exhausted the energy he had, he’d typically doze off on the spot.

And in the times when there was nothing to do, I’d often find him sitting on the couch, staring into the fire with a certain distance in his eyes. That is what he is doing tonight, and I can tell he is lost in his memories, haunted by some distant echo of his past. So once I finish washing the dishes, I come over to sit beside him, taking his hand as an invitation for him to talk to me, and tell me what is consuming him.

He doesn’t say anything right away, though he does turn his head to me. His lips press together for a moment, and he looks back to the fire, starting into its endless, hypnotic dance. We just watch the embers flicker and the logs burn for a little bit, until he starts speaking.

“I still remember that moment.” he says softly. “Those sounds. Specifically the sounds. I didn’t look back at her as I walked away, but I remember her heartbroken sobbing.”

It takes me a moment before it clicks, and I remember the memory that we had shared within his dreams. The journey into the Desert of Despair, and abandoning someone there that had once abandoned him.

“I could tell she rued what she and the others had done; I could sense her pain, her shame… her regret.” His words are quiet and solemn, with all the mournful weight of a confession. “I could’ve turned around. I wanted to turn around. But I also wanted her to suffer the way she had made me suffer. I wanted her to feel the pain of abandonment. Of isolation. Of loneliness. I wanted her to understand what she did to me.” He pauses there, and I don’t know what to say to any of this, which is just as well, because he continues after a moment. “She needed to know how it felt. Because if she did not understand, she would do it again. To me, maybe, or maybe to others.”

Another pause, and in that pause, I give his hand a squeeze to let him know I am listening.

“So I left her there.” He lowers his head, as if he was not just admitting it to me, but admitting it to himself as well, and coming to terms with what he did.

And still, I say nothing, because I can tell he needs to get this off his chest.

“I eventually decided to return, years later, when I could find it in myself to forgive. But not everyone has the strength, the force of will to bear up underneath the weight of their sins, their shame, their sorrow.” he says, studying his free hand. “When I came back, she was gone. She had faded away, collapsed underneath the weight of her grief and isolation, as creatures of the Dreaming do when their sorrows exceed their strength or ability to carry them. It took me too long to find it in myself to forgive, and when I did, there was no one left to forgive.”

There’s an incomprehensible weight in those words. A burden of guilt, of sorrow, and yes, regret. I can see in his face that he knows he was within his rights to do what he did, and that in the grand scheme of things, he knew it was the right thing to do — but that didn’t mean that it felt good, or that it was easy. What he did was many things, but it was not either of those things.

“I chose the path of justice, but I could have chosen the path of mercy.” he goes on softly, letting his hand drop as he looks back to the quiet crackle of the fire. “Had I done so, the story could’ve been different. I might’ve become a different person. I might’ve been the one that saved another from the depths of their despair, and gave them a second chance.” Here, he pauses again, as if he was looking back on all of this in retrospect. “Instead, I became the Lord of Regret.”

It’s a damning sentence, as if he was reading out his own fall from grace. A side of Raikaron I’ve never seen before; vulnerable, mourning over his past, and admitting his failures of character. The person beside me is not a demon Lord, but someone that had arrived to this position with just as much regret as everyone else that would come under his command. A flawed person, laying bare one of the missed chances that made him who he is today.

And in this moment, I love him more than I have up until this point, because I feel like I’m really seeing who he is, and know him better than I’ve ever known him up to this point. I feel like I’m seeing who he might be, if he wasn’t a demon Lord.

“Raikaron.” I say, finally speaking now. He turns his head towards me, though he doesn’t quite look at me. “You know… you became that person anyway. The one who gives people second chances. You always have been that person.” I rub my thumb over his, looking down at our joined hands as I go on. “Even when people hurt you, even when they’re disloyal or betray you, like I did with the miracle heist. You showed me mercy; you gave me a second chance. You have always been the person that wants to forgive and show mercy, and the only reason you don’t is because you know there are some things that can’t be forgiven so easily; some things that need to be punished, so a lesson is learned, and the person doesn’t cause that harm again.” I look up at him at this point. “That’s not a mistake — that’s the way that things need to be in order for the universe to be fair.”

He takes that in with measured silence, replying after some time to absorb it. “Yes. I suppose so. And in the end, it is the past, which no one can rewrite, not even gods.” Inhaling a deep breath, he looks to the fire. “We must live with the foundation we have laid, the story we have written. Make the most out of the choices we have made, even if we regret them.”

I nod wordlessly to that. I know it all too well, with the choices that have led me here. I could not change what I’d done — only do my best to make the most of it.

“I also need to thank you.” he adds before the silence can stretch too long. “You have taken care of me these last many days, when I am the one that is supposed to be taking care of you. I apologize for putting you in that position.”

“No need to apologize. You’re the one that’s been soldiering through the freezing temperatures while I was riding in the saddle, wrapped up in blankets.” I say, letting go of his hand so I can brush some of the scarlet hair back behind his ear. “You’re the one that’s been putting in the hard work, so let me have this. Let me take care of you.”

He turns his head more fully towards me now. “I’m not used to… other people taking care of me. It’s… nice.”

“I know.” I say, pulling him into my embrace and holding him close by the light of the fireplace. “And it’s what you’ve been doing for me since we’ve been together. So let me return the favor.”

Event Log: Jayta Jaskolka

The Old City

Day 107

We are preparing now to leave the hammerspace case.

Raikaron’s improvement over the last few days has been considerable, and he no longer needs my assistance for most things. Once he was well enough to do so, he brought out his tesseract and opened it up so we could step into it. He’d had some concerns about doing so — after all, the tesseract was a hammerspace, but so was the case we were in, and he had never tried to open a hammerspace within a hammerspace before — but there didn’t seem to be an issue with it when we tried it, so we took that to mean that there was no inherent issue in putting one hammerspace inside another hammerspace.

Once we got back into the tesseract, Raikaron wasted no time in scouring his library, pulling down book after book and skimming through them. After our harrowing encounter with the Hounds, he was determined not to let us fall into that kind of situation again, and spent the next days researching various spells, enchantments, and wards that could keep away creatures of that particular supernatural persuasion. He eventually settled on a proximity ward that would set any supernatural creature on fire if it came to close to us; while there were concerns about accidentally setting friendlies on fire, he reasoned that we would only have to use it for as long as it took us to leave the territory of the Hounds. Once we were clear of the mountains, we could go back to traveling discreetly, with less aggressive countermeasures.

After finalizing the ward, and ensuring that he would be able to cast it quickly, we both geared up in another set of winter clothes, preparing to return to the brutal cold of the mountains. We left the tesseract, Raikaron collapsing it and tucking it back in his pocket as usual, then left headed back up the elevator to the upper floor of my hammerspace case. Standing in the hallway at the foot of the stairs, we made our final preparations, tucking scarves and gloves to seal them against the chill. “You said we’ll be coming out underneath a pine tree?” he asks me, making sure his glasses are clean.

I nod. “Right at the base. I tried to tuck it as far back as I could under the branches to hide it from the Hounds.”

“Understandable.” he says, moving up the stairs. “If you could cover me while I’m casting the ward, I’d appreciate that.”

“Of course.” I say, yanking the shotgun charm off my bracelet and letting it grow to full size in my hands. “Ready when you are.”

He takes the handle on the interior of the lid, and twists it until the lock latches click out of position, then cautiously pushes the lid up. Rather than the biting chill we were expecting, the lid instead opens to clear, open sky, and tall grass devoid of any snow. Raikaron moves up a couple steps, looking out and around. “You said you left the case beneath a pine tree in the mountains, right?”

“I did, yeah.” I say, shuffling up behind him and peering out across what looks like endless, windy plains with endless, rippling waves of grass. “I have no idea where we are, or how we…”

At this point I trail off, because Raikaron has climbed out of the case and I have followed him, and as we both step out, we can see that behind the case is the towering, monolithic grey shroud of a Watcher. A single gaunt arm holds one of the long, thin metal staves that the Watchers always seem have with them, though this one only has a quarter of a circle at its top. The blustery wind of the plains sets the Watcher’s shroud rippling, though it never rises or gives any indication of what the body beneath looks like. The slow orbit of stone faces does not seem to be shifted in any way by the fitful gusts, their impassive visages slowly rotating around the spot where the head should otherwise be.

“I presume that you were the one which removed the case from the mountains and brought it here to the plains.” Raikaron says, his tone carrying a level of clear deference. “We express our gratitude in the deepest manner. Is there anything that should be required of us in turn?”

The Watcher’s only answer is to lift its other arm, the shroud of its cloak drawing up with it, as it points a single grey, knobby finger over our heads. We both turn to gaze in that direction, and see that in the distance, there is the faint gleam of something which might be an ocean. After a moment to process that, we turn back to the Watcher — only to find there is nothing there but the hammerspace case, its lid still open.

“I suppose that answers that.” Raikaron says softly stepping over case and peeling off the outer shell of the winter jacket that he’d put on, dropping it on the stairs in the case. “I will certainly not complain. This removes a great burden from our shoulders.”

“That’s twice now we’ve encountered them.” I say likewise pulling off my outer layer and bundling it into my hammerspace case. “Do you think…?”

“There is no guessing the mind of the Witchling and her Watchers.” Raikaron says, bending down to close the hammerspace case and pick it up, tucking it into his jacket as it shrinks to fit into one of his pockets. “Perhaps they wish to speed us on our way; perhaps they want to ensure that we are not sidetracked in our task. Perhaps their actions have another purpose altogether. Personally, I find it best not to think too hard about the intentions of beings we cannot hope to understand — I will simply accept the convenience for what it is, and make the most of the aid we have been given.”

I sigh as I turn back to look towards where we’d seen the distant gleam of water. “It’s a long way.”

“It is.” he agrees, holding a hand out to me. “But you are not walking it alone.”

I take his hand, smiling a little. “No.” I say as we start walking through the tall grass and rolling plains. “I suppose I’m not.”