I stood there, semi-nude, and eye red from tears, and asked, “How?”

  How does one start their execution? Does it involve kneeling—I didn’t much want to kneel, the carpet would’ve been uncomfortable…at least let me die without first suffering rug burn—or does it begin with reading off to me every wrong I’d committed that led me to this point? Nemesis, as the one officiating my send-off from reality, gestured at the chair in front of her—it was the one I’d fallen into when I first arrived.

  “I’m going to die sitting?” I asked.

  “Nah,” Nemesis said, “unless you want to, but I’d prefer you don’t. Getting gore stuck in the upholstery is the worst—you never find out you missed a spot until it stinks.”

  I shrugged, walked around to take my seat, and found a plate of three tacos—asada—waiting for me; already dressed with a drizzle of salsa roja with a lime on the side. Looking up, I saw that Nemesis had already returned to eating, and from the way rendered fat dripped from her fingers I decided to simply enjoy the meal, digging in myself. Tortillas tore perfectly, spilling onto my tongue exquisite charred meat, cut along the grain for easy bites, and dripping in their own fat—rivers of condensed flavor. It wasn’t Conceptual fare, but it was made with a Master’s touch, and when I chewed, spreading salsa around my mouth, the acid cut through the fat before it ever became too heavy for my palate whilst the heat spread unevenly across my tongue like a dandelion’s seeds; the uneven coating a beauty all its own. The tacos were gone before I’d remembered to even squeeze the lime, and provide one final transformation.

  “Why feed me?” I asked. “I’d think the last thing you want is someone’s body churning up food before death.”

  Nemesis took my plate, stacked it atop hers, and set it to the side—they were the kind of plates a vendor trusted you to bring back cleaned. She leaned into the couch’s back. Thinking she was contemplating something deep, I leaned forward, she grunted, I leaned farther forward…and catching me by surprise she burped into my face. It shocked me back into my own seat, as I plugged my nose, a futile gesture considering the scent—beef, acid, and the copper scents of blood—had already infiltrated my body.

  “Seriously, I get I’m executing you,” Nemesis said, “but Nadia, try to appreciate the moment. You had a good final meal that encapsulated all of life.”

  “Which you decided to bookend by belching,” I stated, my eye narrowing.

  She laughed, a loud bark of a thing. “Them’s the breaks, but consider it early payback for getting your future corpse-stink in my office.”

  I rolled my eye. “Nemesis, I probably don’t deserve it, but can you actually be honest with me?” I asked. “I made a really hard choice banking on the fact that maybe I’d get some answers here.”

  “Oh, I can smell that you did. I’m guessing Miss Redacted hit her gnostic boundary, huh?” Nemesis asked, and, clearing her throat to assume a professorial tone, explained after I looked like I’d never heard the term before—which I hadn’t, “The gnostic boundary can be understood as the back-edge to every gnosis shard a summoner acquires as they ascend the Chain. While said gnosis can be empowering, it is also inherently constraining, necessitating the forward-thinking summoner consider how their own power might one day harm them.”

  “That’s the same voice Amber would use,” I said, recognizing the tone and cadence before actually processing the answer.

  “Not surprised, we all copy Eeny—she’s the only real researcher among us,” Nemesis said. “Anyways, all you gotta know is for every one of your understandings—the gnosis shard—it becomes a noose eventually. You can’t break it, so you live around it…until you can’t.”

  She gestured at me as she finished explaining—I was the one who pushed Amber to her boundary. The recognition of her helplessness should’ve made it easier to crack the door to my forgiveness in terms of her lack of answers; allow myself to just trust that she wasn’t lying to me or being intentionally withholding, that it was something beyond her control, beyond sense. Yet, if the roles she took—far as I barely understood them—let her masquerade as Baron then why not find a role that let her tell me the truth? I took the lime, bit into it like it was her throat, and fixed my mind on the fruit’s sour juices as they wiped all remnants of flavor from my mouth.

  “All I wanted were answers,” I said, face scrunched from sour mood and fruit.

  “Apparently,” Nemesis said. “You turned down the easiest escape the New World ever saw.”

  “Was that a bad idea?”

  “Alls below, I don’t fucking know,” Nemesis said. “Getting executed sucks—doesn’t get my blood boiling the way I want—but running off with Miss Redacted, eh. She couldn’t give a straight answer before we found out we liked girls, and she sure as shit couldn’t now.”

  “Meaning?” I asked.

  “Whatever you take from it,” she said. “I tried running away with her once…didn’t work out, and now, eh, I doubt I’d even get the option. Especially with her ducking me all the time despite leaving her scent across the city.”

  Nemesis hopped off the couch, and meandered toward a liquor cabinet, withdrawing two glasses and a tall cylindrical bottle of tequila. Hands full, she tapped the cabinet closed with her head before returning to the couch where she placed a smooth glass in front of me. Then placed an ornate glass in front of herself that was beautiful, and all too recognizable.

  “Is that Venetian glass?” I asked.

  Nemesis smirked, “Yeah, it’s even from Venice before—”

  “It got destroyed,” I whispered. “Amber had one just like it. She said her siblings had the others in the set. Why do you have one?”

  Nemesis glanced from the glass to me, groaned, and poured a double of tequila into her glass and mine. Slammed the bottle on the coffee table, meeting my eye with her own as the biting rumble of a chainsaw filled the room—she was growling. Instinctively, I tried to stand…

  “Sit,” she stated, flexing her spirit in a manner that exerted enough pressure to slam me back into my chair, pinning me. “This is all happening out of order, normally I like to give you guys a good meal, chat about how your choices led you to this place—”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Most executioners can’t handle the mental burden of seeing the condemned as a person,” Nemesis said. “Violence being my nature…I lack that problem. So, I can treat the condemned humanely, feeding them one last meal, listening as they tell me whatever they want to tell me, and then I give them their dream death.”

  “That’s why you fed me,” I said, earning a nod of agreement. “Since you said, ‘normally,’ what’s going to be different about my execution?”

  “Not much, except I think I will be giving you some of those answers you want,” she said, folding her spirit back inside of herself, “and I’ll be asking some questions of my own. We go until we’re both sated—you, knowing everything I can tell you so you die with no regrets, and me, knowing exactly how much shit I have to beat out of Miss Redacted’s fucking body.”

  Stunned, I asked, “Who goes first?”

  “Me,” she declared, “since I fed you and gave you my good tequila. Why’ve you been trying to kill me?”

  “Simple,” I said, sipping the tequila first and enjoying the life-assuring burn as it tumbled down my throat, “I was led to believe you killed my parents.”

  “Hmm,” she hummed, “I can understand that. You wouldn’t be the first to try killing me for that—it’s how I get most of the secretaries—but I take it you don’t think I did it, now do you?”

  My mouth twitched, caught between a scowl and a smile, scorn and bemusement rippling across my face, clouds of mood. I shrugged, drinking more, letting the burn build inside in the hope that it could surmount everything else mixing in me. Nemesis waited, patiently, and when my glass was empty she even refilled it.

  “No, not think,” I said. “I know you didn’t do it. Only found out, ironically, when you went to go fight Marduk—your mask was wrong. Different from the five.”

  “Alls below, who’re your parents?” Nemesis asked, giggling while she sipped her drink. “Most of us Black Wombs would kill each other on sight before we’d work together, let alone five of us.”

  I swirled the tequila in my glass, appreciating the micro-tornado of liquor that formed, violently rotating with nowhere to go, nothing to destroy or consume. When I placed the glass on the coffee table, it dissipated from the shock, becoming nothing but bubbles.

  “City Killer and the Sovereign of Upheaval,” I said.

  Nemesis coughed, liquor spilling out the sides of her mouth. “Fuck!” she screamed, rearing back her arm to hurl the glass at the wall, stopping just before release as the awareness of what would shatter returned to her.

  Sighing, she drained the glass before setting it back down.

  “Didn’t realize their death would make you that upset,” I said, briefly sympathetic to the shock I saw on her face.

  “Of course it would,” Nemesis whined, “those assholes knew how much I wanted to fight City Killer! I’d been saving that fight for when I got bored of being a Duke and was ready to graduate to Sovereign. It was my dream to be the one to kill him.”

  My jaw dropped, and with it my sympathy and no small amount of guilt waterfalled out of me.

  “You’re mad because you didn’t get to kill my dad?” I asked, earning a pitiful nod from Nemesis. “What the fuck did my parents do to you guys to deserve that?”

  Nemesis’s brow furrowed, “Hmm, not surprised Miss Redacted didn’t tell you, but it’s pretty simple. Your parents killed us—well, thought they’d killed us, and alls below they were pretty thorough. Killed all ten Black Wombs, myself included, and destroyed the Cradle, though I blame Waycarver for that one—fucker just had to cheat on the warlord queen of the Moon.”

  “Oh,” I said, as this one answer shoved other clues and half-truths into place, “so that means you’re all hybridae?”

  “Yeah,” Nemesis said. “I’m the Black Womb of War, Marduk’s the Black Womb of Seas, and Miss Redacted—your Amber—the Black Womb of Caverns. One of us per principle.”

  My eye flit across the shape of her words; ten principles meant ten people I’d have to search through, technically eight since I knew Marduk was one and Nemesis wasn’t, but that still was a lot of people with motive; Amber had motive. The burn in my gut sputtered as the realization fell, a sobering rain onto my inner fire. So I drank more, trying to preserve the liquid equilibrium of tequila to tears so I didn’t fall apart—I’d wanted answers.

  “What did you guys do?” I asked, thinking that there had to be some reasonable explanation.

  Nemesis refilled her glass, and sighed nostalgically, “What didn’t we do? The Changeover was a period of no rules, infinite possibility, and—”

  “You had so much ‘fun’ that you became the Ten Cruelties,” I said.

  “We became the ‘Ten Cruelties,’” Nemesis said. “Might’ve been forgotten if Waycarver didn’t write his stupid book, Folktales and Fairymyths—didn’t even get my name right, what’s up with that? Anyways, calling us that was just people being jealous because we rarely lost.”

  “There were ten of you,” I said.

  “Not all at once,” Nemesis argued. “Though, despite being called ‘The Ten Cruelties’ like we were the final boss of some video game, it wasn’t why your dad killed us. If I was generous, I’d blame the Godtenders more than him—he was only their sword.”

  Is it weird that I smiled at that? Is it less weird if I say it was only on the inside? It’s just the strangest thing to hear something that should be kind of sad, and have it turn out to bring you closer to someone. Especially when that someone wasn’t around to make the connection himself, but it was made and it made sense; the daughter of a sword would be a knife.

  “Did they go after you for being hybridae?” I asked, a minor paroxysm striking my drinking hand.

  “Worse, it was that rule of theirs, ‘No Carrying the Thread.’ We—all of us Black Wombs—were in violation just by breathing,” Nemesis said, her voice growing quiet. “The consequence of who made us, raised us, and not a single Godtender asked us how we felt about all of that. They just swung the sword and slew us all. Made a holiday out of it.”

  “The Declaration of Thunder festival,” I gasped.

  “Mhmm. The fireworks you all do,” Nemesis said, “is even about mimicking the way our home—the Cradle—blew up as it re-entered the atmosphere.”

  She raised the bottle—empty—and set it aside, and let herself slip sideways to lay across the couch. I offered her the rest of my tequila—I’d stopped drinking as she spoke—but she turned it down, so I pushed my cup to the side as well.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. “That’s pretty unfair.”

  Nemesis deflected my apology. “Eh, nothing to say sorry about. It was the best fight I ever had, Nadia, your dad was a genius on the battlefield, with spells and a sword; crazy bastard dueled me on a chunk of debris as it burnt up in the air. I—I have nothing against him, but I guess I wouldn’t…”

  “War’s your nature,” I said, to which Nemesis winked.

  Her smile fizzled, as she rolled onto her other side—back to me, and groaned. “Nadia, what did Miss Redacted say about me?”

  I bit my lip, air slipping out in a sharp wheeze. “I don’t think you—”

  “You asked your question,” she said, “and this is mine. Just tell me, I can take it.”

  “Okay, um, she said you were her first love. That you were capable of subtlety, and she was furious and hurt that—as she put it—you employed subtlety to take advantage of that love, cursing her and her siblings. Made them—”

  “Alls fucking below!” Nemesis screamed, rolling over. “She’s still on that?”

  I held up my hands, defensively, “I mean, yeah.”

  “Let me set the record straight,” Nemesis stated, pounding her fist against the coffee table, “what I did was a prank. Everyone kept mocking and judging me for not being able to hold back, which isn’t my fault. I was born to War, and the program directors made me bond when I was twelve!”

  “Twelve?” I gasped. “That’d fuck up anyone.”

  “Thank you,” she said, clapping her hands. “So, I tampered with the masks Miss Redacted had made for us. Next time they all wore theirs, they got a taste of what it was like to be me, and lo’ and behold, it wasn’t long before every problem was a tree and they only had chainsaws for hands. Not like the curse even makes you do anything. Only gives you a pleasure incentive, a fact none of them ever want to own up to being unable to resist; easier to blame Little Nemmy!”

  “It’s not as if she’s free of sin,” Nemesis snapped, continuing her tirade. “I don’t hold it against her that she steals from all of us all of the time! Took my fucking railgun—I ripped that thing off the back of a mech with my bare hands—and she never asks to borrow it. Bubo even texted me earlier this week. Said that her plague-sword went missing and I’d bet good tokens Miss Redacted stole it.”

  Her outbursts spent, Nemesis flopped onto her back and tapped the coffee table before pointing at my glass, I want that now. I slid it over, watching her down it like water. While I did my best to not let it slip that I’d tossed Prick of Plague into the ocean.

  “You can keep going,” she said, deflated.

  “Not much else to add,” I said, “though Amber did say that out of everyone who wanted to kill you, there’d be a small number in this world that’d want it more than her.”

  I doubt I’d ever be able to predict Nemesis; the news of how Amber presented her and the curse wounded her, but the idea that Amber wanted to kill her more than almost anyone in this world, made her smile. She was sincerely touched by the statement—even covered her face, squealing and kicking her legs in the air in excitement.

  “She better do it,” Nemesis muttered. “Barely anyone else could in this world. Anyways, you have any more questions for me?”

  If I did, my mind went blank, I’d gotten so comfortable that I forgot she was going to kill me. She sat up, and I scrambled to come up with any other thoughts, any other questions, anything that could let me live a little bit longer. Nemesis stood up, twisting at the waist—she was stretching before executing me.

  “Can you tell me who did it?” I asked. “I know Marduk was one, but there were four more. A mask with ram horns, one bursting with color, a plain one with a long veil beneath it, and one with mushrooms bursting from its eyes.”

  “Hmm, not the team I would’ve expected,” she said, “but that does explain some of the visits I got a few months ago.”

  “So you know?” I asked.

  She smiled, “I do, but while they suck…they’re my siblings. It’d be fucked up to betray them.”

  “That…makes sense,” I said, stunned and somewhat unsurprised that that question would remain unanswered for me.

  “Thanks for being understanding,” she said and walked around the coffee table. “Now, stand up, let’s push your hair out of the way.”

  She slipped loose curls behind my ears. Guided my shoulders down so I’d be relaxed. Walked me to the cleared floor space in her office, and pulled a card out of her pocket for me to take. I turned it over and saw that it was a Lodgemember card.

  “How’d I…I don’t…why?” I asked, figuring it was a good enough question to stall.

  “Because you passed the exam,” Nemesis said. “You actually swung your way to the #1 slot after orchestrating this entire mess—really, I haven’t had this good a time since Redacted kicked off the destruction of Tokyo.”

  “I’m getting executed for causing this mess,” I said.

  “Mhmm,” Nemesis hummed. “Doesn’t mean you aren’t deserving of #1, Nadia. See, the entire Lodge is a honeypot for summoners of incredible skill, drive, and very low moral compunction. Most folks who fail out of the exam do so because they either lacked skill, drive, or had too many morals to make them be something worth worrying about. Of course, there are the rare few that slip by, like uh, that Knitcroft girl—horrible fit.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “So the rankings are…how dangerous we are?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Nemesis said, “and how close to the execution threshold you are. I end up killing almost every first place examinee—outside of the years where there’s no one really that bad. That top rank requires someone to be almost as bad as…”

  “One of the Ten Cruelties?” I offered.

  Nemesis grinned, “Mhmm, and I couldn’t have done a better job myself. Now, you have a way you want to die?”

  I looked up from the card, past Nemesis’s shoulder, and saw one of my Barons leaning against the open window behind Nemesis’s desk. It wasn’t Isolating, Unmaking, or Questing which meant…Living, Revelation Living. She looked like me, but with her hair cut low on the sides—it showed off my sharp-angled ears—and unlike all the others she didn’t speak, in fact, she was faded, the world visible through her body. It was distracting, and I almost missed the hand motion she made, two fingers snipping vertically, bisection; a brutal image, but the sight of her, Living, infused hope into my limbs that there was a way out—through the window maybe, a vertical slash was easy to dodge if you knew it was coming. I returned my attention to Nemesis.

  “Can you bisect me?” I asked, only then noticing I’d briefly fallen into a Godtime—and Living was gone.

  Nemesis cocked her head, “Eh, sure, kind of messy but if it’d put you to ease. Just, stand still so you’re nice and even.”

  She raised her arm, conjuring from her field-spell an axe of crystallized Bloodlust. Moved her arm back and forth, lining up the cut, and I watched her breathing, timed it so I’d know when to move. Though Nemesis, in her inadvertent kindness, made it easier.

  “See you around, Nadia,” and swung.

  I leaped right.

  Duke’s, as I’d already known, were fast. Their bodies moved according to something quicker than synaptic responses. It was a hopeless measure of mine, dodging, and though I’d ruined Nemesis’s hopes of a perfect symmetrical cut…I was still cut.

  Down my left ruined eye. Severing the left-lobe of my brain. My right eye went dark—brains are kind of shitty that way, left controls right and right controls left, makes no sense.

  Sense…it spilled out behind me as a pressurized blood wave ripped through me, flying off in the splatter. I hoped it was a big splatter, the kind that took a massive cleaning crew and lots of time.

  Time…was a thing that I suppose didn’t matter anymore. My dad had been around for a long time, but he’d died. I was around for a pretty short time, and I was dying. No idea how long Amber, Marduk, Nemesis, the other Black Wombs were around for…hopefully they’d die someday…well, maybe not Amber…if she didn’t kill my dad.

  Dad…left his mark on this world, but he never told me about it. He never told me a lot of things, and I wished I didn’t have to hear it from books and killers. Though, perhaps, he’d left me what mattered to him, demonstrated the marks I was meant to learn from, loving and not killing…yet who can say that one doesn’t beget the other…that they aren’t sisters.

  Sisters…are interesting. Melissa grew up in the shadow of hers. Amber hated and dated hers—though they don’t look blood-related, Nemesis has a face. I…never got to know mine…from my memory, it seemed like we were friends once…my sister-self and I. We never had a chance though, children of City Killer, loved by a Black Womb, a hybridae walking the Canonical Path…we were torn so many ways, by so many fates. Unable—I was unable—to relinquish what ripped us in two. What…

  …gave me the last bits of the name that spoke to us, defined us, and Sphinx had made so clear if I’d looked more deeply. More broadly. As my life leaked onto the floor, carpet teasing two halves of a body that had fallen in separate places, I knew my spirit still connected both—the base for two trunks, the screw that bound separate knives to create scissors—and I opened my eyes. Spoke with two halves of the same spiritual mouth, as I strummed the whole of me.

  Singing my name, DIVISION.

  * * *

  Amber looked up from the sand wet with her tears, and spun around in confusion—my heart had stopped, my spirit was…singing? When it happened, she had no answers for what it meant and so turned to prayer for the temple that enabled her rebirth. While Nahey tittered, joyous that the story wasn’t done.

  * * *

  Melissa’s head was resting in Ina’s lap, the summoner of Suppression playing with her hair and trying to distract her from my death. Though she couldn’t see Melissa’s face…the growing disgust at Ina’s touch, not for anything the small woman had done, but because she happened upon the same lock of hair I’d play with so reflexively. When it happened, she’d looked to the window as the light bleached out the colors of Ina’s hotel room. While Ina, proving how much she cared, tried to curl her tiny self over Melissa to act as cover—I guess she wasn’t that bad.

  * * *

  The Angler Knight stood against the side of a building in complete defiance of gravity. Below were Lodgemembers that’d come to hunt him down, and interrogate his master who sat sleeping within himself. It would be a four-on-one fight, at an even link, and though he was the Everlasting Night, a part of him did consider what it would mean if he lost. When it happened, and the Lodgemembers—reliant on vision meant for photoreception—were blinded, he smiled as he fell upon them, gleeful that he’d not have to answer that question.

  * * *

  Tsumugi, leaning against a wall as she called a superior, was frustrated. The battle she’d barely survived may have been a clue, but there’d been nothing definitive. An apocalypse was more than a brawl between a Marquis and a Duke, right? So, when it happened, her jaw fell in awe of the vision granted to her and the city. While Swordbearer, already facing the direction of ascension, dropped to her knees and bowed.

  * * *

  #2 and #3 were finishing up paperwork, I’d made a big mess with my plot, even though it’d failed. Though what slowed the two of them was what I’d said, a name, #2’s name—they weren’t supposed to know it, they still lived. It wasn’t like #3 judged them though, but they didn’t know how to reassure #2; it’d been #1 who kept the three of them together for so long, and neither wanted to take their place. However, when it happened they rushed to each other, stated in the rapidity of psychic communication everything they should’ve said, and then smiled as their hearts were light. Of course, they didn’t die as a carmine blur moved them and every secretary in headquarters down to the beach.

  * * *

  Nemesis smiled when it happened, this was something new and very interesting, but her Bloodlust told her that touching it would be death, so Nemesis became a blur, rescuing every secretary in the building. Then she went back for every Lodgemember with a threat rating below five-stars and weren’t fast enough to get out on their own. Then once more, for all the civilians whose link was too low to even process what was happening. When that was done, they’d invoked The Infinite Slaughterhouse—not that it was good for defense, but it was better than nothing—and bellowed in pain as their aspect was tested by the potency of my ascension.

  * * *

  Across the city people saw their shadows undergo Division, slipping away from them in the wind. Lodgemembers collapsed as the radiant light of Division fell upon them, splitting Nemesis’s curse from their spirit. Children who stared in awe didn’t notice as Division split their eyes, granting eternal sorcerous sight into worlds Real and Conceptual. While those caught in the throes of death, left behind by Nemesis in her evacuation or safely kept but still reachable by Division’s light, felt a burning line stretch above them that asked the question: Will you be or not be. Those who chose the former, felt Division’s line swipe in one direction removing all wounds, and those who chose the latter witnessed that line move in the opposite, hastening wounds to completion bereft of the attendant pain as they underwent life’s cessation.

  * * *

  I was dead, yet I lived. I was mortal, yet I was eternal. My corpse was consumed in the fires of Revelation as votive, yet my spirit towered over the city; a four-pointed star whose top half was the azure of the sea and whose bottom was the gold of brilliant heaven, radiating the misty light of a far horizon—nature’s Division. From my dual position, though largely my spiritual one, I witnessed ten thousand stories—most not notable to me, for my sight was broad and my care minimal, a division between capability and intentionality—and I felt the clouds, the atmosphere burst around me as I, the blazing star, grew vertically, becoming a sword much like her father had used to strike down the Old, the cesarean needed for the birth of the New.

  As those present looked upon my magnificence, they spoke first of Dreams, ideas of what I might be or herald—fitting for my circlet was hammered in possibility. Though amidst those dreams were worries of War, conflicts thought dead, changes they’d never conceive—appropriate for the bloody gems of delineation, of which conflict was but one avenue, provided great beauty. This composed my crown, and though it was brief I felt its touch on my brow. Though brief, I opened an eye, seeing from both heaven and earth, what perhaps I could be. Unveiled by the mask of clouds and causality—mortal screens that neither I, nor all of Brightgate, need concern.

  * * *

  The Blazing Line Between Is and Not. She Who Makes Two of One. Sleeping Yet Awake.

  * * *

  In the sky was a fetal form. A sleeping woman. Beautifully dreaming. Eyes weeping blood. Tail slashing fitfully, the violence that precedes creation. In her grasp is the world that could be, which she holds covetously until it is time. And—most don’t stare too long, quick to avoid Underside exposure despite this not being the Underside—those that look away, but don’t look down, witness the procession of the dead spiraling into the clouds, mirrored by their living counterparts who dance in the streets at death having been denied. This should be comforting—most cry because it is not. It is New, but they are New, and now they ask if they are Old. Now they ask if they will die, slain by a divine sword, and so they pray to their tenders, alerting them en masse of what has come to pass.

  And lo’, while gods make little concern of mortal motions, their tenders make many plans.

  * * *

  All of this happened in moments. In the eternities between one second and two. When it’d passed, as did I, my brief glimpse of transcendent being was revoked, leaving me a tumbling spirit in the rush of the many dead. They fell over me, liquifying into a current, melding with other branches, pressing down on me until I felt consciousness drift away—could the dead die again?

  I didn’t get my answer. A hand, flat and wide as a ship’s deck, scooped me from the flow and deposited me on a shore of rocks. Stumbling to my feet, I opened my eye to discover I was naked, though my skin had washed away to reveal my spiritual musculature, and despite how familiar I was with it I couldn’t help but slide my hands over my body again and again—

  “You need a room?” an old woman asked.

  Looking up, I saw the woman who’d shared with me a bag of donuts, whose face I couldn’t place, and who currently wore wading pants. She sported a grin, laughing internally at her joke.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “I think it’d be a shame to keep all this to myself.”

  She snorted, “Glad you still have that quick wit of yours. The River of the Recent Dead has a way to strip that from a person if they aren’t careful.”

  I glanced behind me—a river stretching wide as the ocean, its other bank unseen, surged through the air in one coruscating sheet. The light, coming from somewhere unknowable, played upon the shifting compositions of every spirit’s musculature. I wanted to know how it worked, where the river would go, what existed on the other side…

  “Really kid,” she groaned, before wrapping a hand around my eyes and hauling me up the shore and into the tall grass where she dropped me. “Don’t you know the first thing about Underside exposure safety?”

  Blinking, I said, “Didn’t know I was in the Underside.”

  “Where else would you be?” she asked.

  “Dead?” I offered.

  She rolled her eyes, “Don’t you read the gospels?”

  “Don’t you remember I’d never been in a palace before we met?”

  “Touche,” she said, tilting her head. “Get up, I’ll explain.”

  Finding my feet, for the second time, I hurried after her—for a fellow dead person she was really fast—and kept my eyes blinking to avoid staring at the marvels around me…

  She said, “So, if you studied any liturgy, you’d know that part of dying involves your spirit being unable to remain in Realspace.”

  The upside down stygian city that replaced the sky—blink.

  “Now, plenty of people are curious about this,” she said, “but I posit it’s largely because your spirit isn’t really Real. It’s Conceptual. And the body…”

  Phantom birds that sang languages long dead yet never lived in human history—blink.

  “...makes it so that it’s safe from the degradations of Realspace,” she stated. “Now, what this means is that your spirit has to go somewhere and—”

  The pod of whales who swam the waters of death between the fields I was traipsing through and the city above…

  “Are those whales?” I asked. “Like, normal whales?”

  The old woman paused, looked up, then to me, “Yeah. They cut through here all the time.”

  “Whales can do magic?” I asked.

  “Kid, the amount of things and ways to do magic would leave us in this field for way too much time, and you have a train to catch.”

  “What do you mean a train?” I called after her.

  We crossed fields of flowers, where the specters of children spun about and chased each other. Passed through an orchard of extinct fruits, some who lived on in ones I’d recognized, and others that had no counterpart. Eventually, we’d arrived near a set of tracks, where the woman made a sharp left and led me to a train stop with a bench that she dropped down onto, huffing softly, the only sign that she’d suffered any exertion; while I panted and felt my legs give out.

  “Where was I,” she said, not really asking, “oh yeah, so yadda yadda your spirit can’t exist in the Real yadda yadda it has to go somewhere yadda yadda River of Recently Dead. There we are, so the river carries all the recently dead—like you—down here to the deepest part of the Ghostlands.”

  “Wait,” I said, concern rising, “the deepest part should kill me, right?”

  She shrugged, “Eh, you’re already dead, wouldn’t make sense. Though if you were alive, that’d be another story.”

  “What about curses, they should be terrifying down here,” I said.

  “They were when I first took over,” she said, “but I prune them pretty regularly. Have to keep things tidy for those not ready to sail the river past Afterlife’s Gate.”

  I stared up at her face, still unable to really place it, “What do you mean ‘took over’? Marguerite Ghost-Sheperd’s the Godtender of Ghosts…”

  At the sight of my dawning realization, Marguerite raised double ‘peace signs’ as Dad called them. Finding energy I thought I’d lost, I bolted—the Tenken-bumon were hunting hybridae for the Godtenders, so as a hybridae I decided to make myself scarce, or at least I tried. As I ran, I glanced backward to find I’d made a good distance, but when I looked away I discovered that I’d only run toward the train stop.

  Before I could try running again, she yelled, “I’m not going to kill you.”

  “Really?” I asked, skeptical. “You’re one of the—”

  “Godtenders, yes, I know,” she said, “and you’re a hybridae. We should be mortal enemies, muahahaha, but I don’t give a shit. I have my opinion on you guys, and you have your opinion on us Godtenders. However, unlike the others, I don’t think you’re that bad—as a people. Though you really fucked up with that plot of yours. Even after I warned you not to.”

  “You didn’t warn me,” I argued.

  She scoffed, “I left a note in the donut bag. It said, ‘Don’t do it.’ Very simple.”

  I scrunched my face in disbelief; the entire reality-bending power of a Sovereign was in her hands, and in the possibility of a scheme I hadn’t even dreamed of implementing yet, opted to leave a note. A note, at the bottom of a bag. My frustration with godtenders and their ineffable nonsense, surged.

  “Why only one?” I asked. “At least have a back-up note!”

  “The back-up note should’ve been common fucking sense and decency,” she snapped. “Now sit down, I hate looking up at people. Hurts my neck.”

  I settled back onto the bench. Allowed the quiet wail that served as a rustling breeze in the Ghostlands to wind through the air and the silence. While I turned over great questions in my mind, letting them bubble up and die, and emerge changed, trying to find the best way to ask—

  “Yes, I knew your dad,” Marguerite said. “Yes, he helped us end the Changeover. No, I didn’t and still don’t agree that killing the Black Womb kids was a good idea.”

  “You can read minds?” I asked.

  “Go the fuck to a palace, like once,” she said. “The Court of Ghosts doesn’t only cover the dead, Nadia, it also spans the intangible leave-behinds of thoughts, actions, and those who’ve moved us. When you keep killing and reviving so many variations of the same question, derived from the same previous bits of information, it makes a shit ton of Ghost thoughts—those I can read. Alls below, it’s like he didn’t teach you anything.”

  “Oh,” I said, and tried to defend my dad, “well, I guess Dad didn’t think it was that important since it’d mean I was dead. He didn’t tell me a lot of things, okay, but he taught me some good stuff; Temple and shrine architecture, how to get a good spin on a ball after kicking it, helped me develop a palate for tea and coffee.”

  “Yeah,” Marguerite said, “your dad lived a pretty peaceful life up to the end there. Fuck, I miss his coffee, did he still make it with the—”

  “Hot sand,” I said, “yeah, until the very end. He’d bother traveling merchants all the time to find anyone producing Conceptual sand, just for coffee.”

  Marguerite crossed her legs, rested her elbow on her knee, chin on her fist. She stared into the mid-distance of thought and memory, considering something. Only to flick her eyes in my direction, smirking as she said, “It’s never ‘just coffee.’ Depending on context, it’s an amazing rush, a rich flavor, pour in some milk and it’s decadent. Full of life.”

  “Why not buy some?” I asked. “Not like you’d be hurting for tokens.”

  She chuckled, darkly. “A Sovereign’s a limited thing, kid. Very limited.”

  “Gnostic boundary stuff?”

  “Oh, I wish it was only that,” she said.

  “No it’s—” and before I could deny it, point out that there was nothing in either unending direction, there was suddenly a train. When the doors parted, I was graced by the sight of Every Train and It’s Rails, half-way smiling as she acknowledged me. Then, acknowledging Marguerite, she tipped her head in a shallow bow.

  “Tender,” she said.

  “Sovereign,” Marguerite replied, then turned to me. “Well, this is my favor to your dad, fulfilled. Be good, enjoy the trip—wherever you’re going—and please, sincerely, don’t cause anymore mass death events. It’s way too much work.”

  I nodded, “Sure, um, but I brought everyone back, well, Amber did.”

  “Oh, I know,” Marguerite said, “but that just makes different work. Like meetings with the Nine about tracking down a rogue godtender we’ve yet to interview, and most of us tried to conveniently ignore—which we no longer can do.”

  “Don’t hurt her,” I snapped.

  Marguerite leaned back, eyes wide in shock.

  “Sorry,” I said, realizing I was yelling at a godtender who wasn’t madly in love with me. “Please, don’t hurt her.”

  “That’s for her and the others to decide,” Marguerite snorted. “Now, get. I won’t have you causing the citizenry to lose access to their main way to come back to life because you delayed the big lady.”

  That raised even more questions, but Marguerite shoved me through the doors into Every Train’s locomotive body. I leaned out the door, not trying to stall for time—I could feel the train stirring, a beast stretching its muscles before racing off—and asked.

  “Why don’t you look like the art in your palace?”

  Fwoom. The train took off, the landscape melting like it was painted onto the surface of a pool that someone decided to stir up, but somehow Marguerite’s answer found me, a cognitive specter at the back of my skull: Gnostic boundary stuff. Found this one when I saw how many spirits were haunting you. It’s the face of what the first person you killed would’ve looked like if she hadn’t died. Neat huh?

  As the Ghostlands receded, swirling like water down a drain, Marguerite was beyond any response I could give though none congealed, the rumble of the train and my heart preventing peaceful cohesion of thought. I did my best to put her words from my mind, choosing instead to join Every Train at the chairs in what served as her lobby. She held her chin between her two middle fingers, while she chewed on the interior of her cheek in concern, but did her best to hide it once I sat opposite of her.

  “It’s been awhile since last you rode me,” she said, “and I can tell you’ve changed. Quite a bit in a week’s time.”

  While Marguerite’s words implied something darkly cosmic, it was Every Train’s that hit the hardest—a mundane statement driven into the core of myself. Only a week had passed, maybe a bit longer, and I had changed. She’d stated this fact without judgment, but I could easily provide enough for the both of us. I curled up in the chair and tried to smile only for tears to roll down my cheeks. The sight perturbed Every Train; she looked everywhere but me, and quite frazzled at that, unable to determine what course of action would calm me.

  “It’s fine,” I said, trying to pacify her. “I’m fine.”

  She exhaled, “Thank you, I…worried. You’re a complicated thing, royalty and not, and you placed the edge of the covenant against my throat, just then.”

  “How?” I asked, eager to escape from self-reflection.

  “‘A train must be accommodating and comfortable,’” she answered. “Such is one of many terms in my covenant, and it is decidedly true that you carry discomfort like a shroud.”

  “Sorry I’m a poor rider,” I said.

  She shook her head, “No such thing as a poor rider lest they fail to observe my rules or insist on stretching my covenant.”

  I nodded, looked around at how unchanged Every Train’s interior was, and settled back on her.

  “I thought your covenant was in Realspace,” I said. “What are you doing in the Underside?”

  “A common conclusion,” she said, “but an inaccurate one. I am every train, not only Real trains. The lines that pass through the Underside, ascend from Earth to your Moon, and currently see us hurtling beyond Causality’s Rim…all are me, and in that truth distinctions like incarnation, Real versus Unreal, they’re meaningless.”

  That term, Causality’s Rim, struck my heart, emitted a clear tone that I realized was the sigh of my own voice, the weight of my worries melting away. I’d never heard of the place, but something in me had…maybe that eternal thing that I was and was not, recognized it. The clink of a mug against the table between us returned me from inner considerations—Every Train had placed hot chocolate in front of me, and nursed her own.

  “What’s Causality’s Rim?” I asked.

  Every Train sipped, lowered the mug to reveal a foamy mustache. “It’s something of a fence, I suppose, for this playpen mortals refer to as reality. It separates them from where we live, the motherland of All That Is.”

  Sipping my hot chocolate, it tasted like a blend of Dad’s and the kind Melissa’s mom made, I inquired, “And why am I going there?”

  “Royalty, no matter how distant a branch or far from their throne, should make the trek at least once, I would say,” Every Train answered. “However, in this matter, you’re going there because someone asked me to ferry you.”

  “Who?”

  Every Train lowered her mug. “I hesitate to say, it might make you uncomfortable to know.”

  “I’m more uncomfortable not knowing,” I stated. “I’m a big girl, I can handle it.”

  “Hmm,” she hummed, “from my position, both in measurement and chronology, you are quite small. However, I must also be accommodating, and defer to your judgment. The favor was from your mother, specifically for when you suffer your first death.”

  The mug tumbled from my hand. “Mom asked you to do this?”

  Every Train, looking down at the shattered mug on the ground, answered, “Yes. She wanted me to bring you to her post-haste, to share words with you, schedules permitting—which they do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must find a broom.”

  She lifted herself from her chair, and sank into the floor that was herself, seeking out a broom—though at the time I didn’t consider that she could easily absorb the shards in the same manner she’d absorbed herself. She’d given me my privacy to process the fact that…I was going to visit Mom; talk with Mom.

  Colors of Winter, just concluded clocking in at 21k words. Between that and the first interlude, Schemes of Autumn, you'll get to see what's going on with in Brightgate, finally meet this mysterious 'Eeny,' and get a glimpse of just how much new things went down post-Nadia's divine ascension.

  The Blazing Line Between Is and Not. She Who Makes Two of One. Sleeping Yet Awake."