Greetings And Goodbyes 22-08 (Heretical Edge 2)

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Of course, the rest of my going away party with all my friends ran long into the night. I was glad I had that ability to go so long without rest, because I was sure going to need it by the time all this was over. At this rate, I was going to end up needing a break before I ever actually left to meet Ehn in the first place. Especially when you added in the emotional cost of leaving all these people behind for who knew how long. Yes, I would still be in contact and keep track of what was going on, at least as much as possible. But that wouldn’t be the same as being here myself. For all intents and purposes, I was leaving them to handle all that stuff without me. It made me feel weird inside.

Either way, I didn’t have a choice. Not a real one, anyway. I might feel anxious right now because I was leaving the people I cared about for a while. But it would be a hell of a lot worse if I didn’t do this and it turned out I really could have helped stop the Fomorians if I hadn’t been so selfish. 

The day after that big party, where I had spent hours long into the night talking to what seemed to be everyone I had ever even slightly interacted with, was my last day here. This was the day I had to spend with my family. My dad, my mom, sort-of stepdad or whatever Deveron was, my grandparents, big sister, little sister, big brother, and my niece. 

I had thought that we would spend a lot of time talking about everything that still needed to be done, or about what I was going to do while I was gone. But we didn’t. Not that much anyway. Actually, most of the day was spent taking a hike through Yellowstone Park down on Earth. We didn’t talk about anything that important or world changing. We just hiked through the beautiful scenery and talked about stuff we liked to watch, listen to, anything like that. Somehow, we had agreed on an unspoken rule not to discuss anything important. Even Wyatt went with it, and simply regaled us with a story about the time he had tracked a pack of violent werecreatures through a forest fairly similar to this one. 

Needless to say, he wasn’t the only one with an impressive tale. Koren, Tabbris, and I were treated to hours-worth of amazing stories, even from my grandparents, who talked both about things they had seen while out in Seosten space, and stuff they have been through in their supposedly completely ordinary (but not at all boring) lives. 

Eventually, we stopped by a lake and fished. Yes, we actually fished the old-fashioned way. It was just the right level of boring, allowing us to sit there and focus mostly on more stories. Popser brought out a grill at one point and we had dinner using the very fish we had caught.

Yeah, it was pretty great, especially since it actually allowed me to stop thinking about all that important stuff and just enjoy the time I had with my family. There would be time to dwell on everything else later. 

After hours of playing around the lake, fishing, eating, and just talking, the sun was starting to set. I stood at the edge of the water, skipping rocks with Koren now that we were done with the fishing part and wouldn’t scare anything away. The two of us were talking, not about Heretic stuff, but about our lives before all this started. She told me about being the spoiled but somewhat neglected child of a big shot lawyer (Abigail still felt bad about how far she had allowed that to go while she had been busy with her job), and I talked about being a kid and teenager back in Wyoming. Not that my life before all this had been anything ordinary, considering how often I managed to find trouble. But it had been pretty mundane by the standards I was using now. 

Either way, we chatted about that stuff, teasing one another about the whole aunt and niece thing. In the background, the adults were talking, while Tabbris went swimming in the lake itself and kept diving down to look at the fish there. I had even let my sharks out through the portal connection I had with them, so they could stretch their fins in this new water. Obviously, they were still protected from that whole salt versus fresh water problem thanks to Wyatt. They could swim in any of it.

Climbing on Princess Cuddles’ back, Tabbris called out to tell us she had found a really pretty Arctic Grayling (some sort of fish she had shown me a picture of earlier) down there. Smiling at that, I waved to my sister and spoke quietly to the girl next to me. “Keep an eye on her, okay? She said something about going with me, but I talked her out of trying. It’s better for her to stay here with her mom most of the time and just stay in contact through our connection.”

“Better for both of you,” Koren noted. “It’s the best way for you to know what’s going on here, and for everyone here to know you’re okay.” She sighed and looked at me. “You have to be okay. Whatever happens out there, whatever this guy wants you to get into, take care of yourself. Don’t let him control you too much.”

Despite the doubt and uncertainty I felt about the whole situation, I offered her a faint smile. “When have you ever known me to let anyone control everything I did and who I am, no matter how powerful they are? This guy might be strong, but I’m still me. And I’ll still be me when I get back.”

We embraced like that, before I saw my grandparents beckoning me over to the tall rocks they were standing by. So, I excused myself and walked back that way. 

“Do you think you guys can stick around and not get taken on any more wild outer space adventures while I’m gone?” I managed to ask without allowing my voice to crack too much.

Grandpartie stooped to pick me all the way off the ground, crushing me against his chest in an embrace that made me let out an embarrassing squawk sound. “Sounds like you’re the one disappearing on a space adventure, kid.” He reminded me of that while continuing to hold me tightly. “So you just make sure you find your way back here before you miss all the fun, you got it? If this situation with the Seosten comes to a head and you’re still off gallivanting around with your new dragon tutor, I don’t think we’ll ever let you live it down.” His words were teasing, but also tinted with emotion. It was obvious that he didn’t want me to go. But he, like everyone else, knew it was for the best.

After I promised to be back, even if I had to tell Ehn to give me a sabbatical, he let me down and gave Grandmaria a chance for a hug. The two of them set me down there by the rock and talked about their wedding day, which had apparently been a bit of an adventure in and of itself when their first choice of venue had been rained out. Then their priest had been arrested for some sort of money laundering or something. They still weren’t completely certain about the details, but it sure sounded exciting. Especially when the priest had stripped naked (yeah, he turned out to be incredibly drunk) when the cops showed up and went streaking through the assortment of shocked guests and police.

It stayed exciting as a story rather than tragic because they had still managed to get married in the end. And they had enjoyed their actual ceremony, crazy as it was, perhaps more than they would have enjoyed the normal, planned one.

It was a story I’d heard little bits of previously, but this was the first time I’ve gotten the whole thing from start to finish. They had previously said I wasn’t old enough to get into it, considering the whole drunk, naked priest thing. But now, apparently I finally was. 

Honestly, I was pretty sure they could’ve told me the story before and the whole me not being old enough thing was just an excuse so they have a good story to tell at my own wedding if I had one, or something else big and important. Maybe my high school graduation. 

Whatever it was, they had clearly decided that this moment was a good one to get the whole thing out. And boy was it a good one to listen to. From Grandmaria imitating the way all the little old ladies had screamed when the priest stripped himself and went running through the crowd, to Popser mimicking the priest himself flailing the whole way through and drunkenly screaming about the cost of reshingling the church roof or something, it sounded like a really wild time. I was just sorry it happened long before the advent of cell phone video.

I also took the time to tell them a few stories of my own, from my old Bystander life. Just like before, these weren’t Heretic stories. They were just my own stuff from my time in Wyoming. It was the sort of things I would’ve been nervous to tell them before, stuff I might’ve thought would get me in trouble. Or at least make them tell my dad so he could put a stop to it. My habit of finding trouble hadn’t completely come out of nowhere once I got to Crossroads. That had simply magnified the sort of threats I was capable of finding. Thankfully, my ability to deal with those threats had been magnified a fair bit as well.

And speaking of people whose ability had been magnified, they both showed me how much they had improved with the powers they had inherited. Which, considering how strong those powers were, meant my grandparents were going to be two of the strongest members of the rebellion before too much longer. I was very okay with that. They were the sort of people who deserved that. And given the level of trouble my family tended to attract, they are going to need it. 

After leaving the two of them for now, I went over to talk with Deveron, Wyatt, and Abigail. My half-siblings and my step-father. That really was the best term for it, I supposed. Step didn’t really define it properly since he had been married to Mom before my own father was. And technically, I supposed, they were still married. They were still together just like Mom was with Dad. It was the same way I was with Avalon and Shiori. Terms be damned, I was just glad they had worked it out.

The three of them were about a hundred yards away from the lake and rest of the area where the others were. It was only once I got closer that I realized they were practicing with some sort of booby trap landmine spell. Apparently Wyatt and Abigail had both come up with it together and were showing it to Deveron. He gave a couple tips based on his own experience, but for the most part, it was their own thing. Which they also showed to me as soon as I approached. 

“Okay,” I started once they had explained once, “let me get this straight. If any person steps within the barrier of this spell, it makes a face outline of what they look like in a sand pile that’s sitting somewhere else, like the security room. From that point on until the spell is canceled, everything that person says is also said by the sand facsimile so you know what they’re talking about. What if more than one person goes through it?” 

Wyatt was positively bouncing with glee. “We thought of that! Of course we did. Show her, show her!” He waved both hands toward his sister and father. 

Abigail and Deveron looked at each other before shrugging as they moved to step one at a time through the spell area. First, Abigail’s face appeared in the sand at full size. A second later, a much smaller addition of Deveron’s face appeared below that, just barely large enough to make out a couple minor details, like the picture in picture setting on a television. As I watched, Wyatt touched the smaller bit with two fingers and the facsimiles switched places so Abigail was the small one and Deveron was the big one. Apparently you could set the spell so that it would stick with one until you touched it like that, or make it automatically switch back-and-forth based on who was talking. 

They were still working on perfecting it, so I sat there with them for a bit and worked on it as well. But mostly, I listened as the three of them talked about their own old lives. Deveron gave a few stories about the old rebellion and also about being a student at Crossroads. Wyatt got into a bit of his own life growing up, which mostly just made my heart ache about how rough he’d had it for so long. There was a reason he had grown up to be so paranoid. But he was getting better. We were all getting better. And, of course, Abigail told stories about being a lawyer, and about being in law school. Which, if I understood things right, involved a lot of heavy drinking. From the stories she told, I was starting to think my half-sister could drink Ruthers under the table. Which would’ve been one hell of a way to settle this war. Actually, come to think of it– nah, he totally wouldn’t go for that. 

Abigail, of course, made me promise repeatedly to keep them updated about what was going on and to be certain I could say no if Ehn tried to get me to do anything I didn’t want to do. She was very emphatic about that, as were the other two. I reassured them as much as I could under the circumstances, but mostly kept the conversation as casual as possible. I didn’t want to spend this time fretting about what was going to happen in the future. I just wanted to talk about the past, or about nothing in particular. I wanted to enjoy this time with the various pieces of my family, since I had no idea how long it would be before I saw them again.

With that in mind, I finally made my way to my parents. Mom and Dad were standing together under a tree near the lake, talking about one of the first dates they had ever gone on together. I started to leave them alone, but they insisted I join them. So I found myself standing between the two of them, leaning against my father with both of their arms around me as they talked about those first times spent seeing one another, long before they had ever known anything about this stuff. In those days, my dad had regaled my enraptured mother with stories about being in Los Angeles and all the trouble he’d gotten up to there. Which they both laughed about now. But still, it just made me feel even closer to my father. Like me, he had found plenty of danger and excitement on his own long before the whole Heretic situation was an open part of his life. 

For the next little while, as the sun finished setting and the moon rose, I simply stayed there with my parents. Tabbris joined us after a while, clearly nervous about interrupting, but it was my mother who insisted she come over and sit. 

So, she did. And then the four of us talked even longer before eventually getting up and moving back over to where everyone else had already gathered and started a fire. We sat in a circle around it, watching the flames and talking about everything and about nothing. We told stories that alternated between frightening and funny, or even both at the same time. There were jokes, boasts, teasing, and more. I had no idea how long we stayed there like that, though to be honest, it could have been decades. Decades of some of the best moments I remembered having any time recently. I was there with my family. Even better, Avalon and Shiori joined us eventually. As did Asenath. Senny, the first Alter friend I’d made, the source of the best decision in my life and the sister of one of my girlfriends. She absolutely belonged here too. 

Yeah, I could definitely get used to this. Unfortunately, it couldn’t last forever, no matter how much we might’ve wanted it to. No matter how much I wanted it too. Eventually, it was clear that it was the end of that day. Which meant I needed to try to sleep a little bit before Sun showed up and wanted to get this show on the road. 

So, we doused the fire, cleaned up, and made a portal back to the station. I was going to sleep in my own bed rather than at my family’s apartment. There’d been a lot of talk back-and-forth about that, and I’d promised to come to the apartment with Sun once he showed up so I could give a last minute goodbye. Right now, however, I needed to sleep in my own bed one more time. 

Once on the station, before I could head off that way, my mother pulled me into a tight embrace. It wouldn’t be the last one we shared before I left, but I still felt myself clinging tightly to her. “I’m scared,” I whispered once we were completely alone and the others had moved down the hall. “I don’t know what’s going to happen while I’m gone.” 

Mom held me, brushing my hair back while meeting my gaze. “It’s okay to be scared, my Felicity. We just don’t let it control us. And you have never allowed your fear to rule you. Whatever happens, no matter where you go or what that man involves you in, know that I am your mother. And I will always be there when you need me. Even if it is only in spirit, through the lessons I know you’ve learned.” 

“Thanks, Mom,” I murmured, feeling a shiver run through me. “Something tells me I’m gonna need every last one of those lessons. But hey, at least I won’t be completely alone.

“After all, Persephone’s coming along, and how much trouble could I possibly get in with her beside me?” 

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Interlude 20B – Avalon And Aylen Meet A Witch (Heretical Edge 2)

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Flick was off-planet. Not that that meant all that much as a statement by itself, to be fair. The entire Fusion school lived off-planet if one wanted to get technical. After all, the sun was quite a bit distant from the Earth. Ninety two million miles, basically. You could fit over eleven thousand Earths between the actual planet and the sun itself. But more specifically, Flick was completely out of the solar system. She, and those who had accompanied her, had gone off to visit Fossor’s home planet in order to find the missing vampire Rasputin, as well as give the ghosts she had collected an opportunity to be released there if they wanted to. And, of course, to talk to Fossor’s former slaves about what had happened to the dead piece of shit. 

Avalon would have gone with her, in a heartbeat. But there were things to do here on the planet. They had a lead about how to find and free Gaia, and she wasn’t going to let that slip through her fingers. As much as she wanted to be with Felicity when she visited Fossor’s homeworld, she couldn’t miss the chance to save Gaia. Not after everything the woman had already done for her. Hard as it was, she had stayed behind, trusting Shiori to help keep Flick out of too much trouble. 

Not all of it, by any means. She was completely confident that something would go wrong. There would be a lot of danger, fighting, and terror. The question wasn’t whether that stuff would happen, only whether Flick and the others would come back from it. And Avalon trusted that they would. Especially with both Shiori and Mrs. Chambers there. Not to mention Persephone, who may have abandoned her plans to make the girl her wife or whatever, but still obviously cared about what happened to her. They would help keep Flick safe, and she would do the same for them. 

For now, Avalon focused on pushing those thoughts, and worries, out of her mind. She couldn’t affect any of it, so she was just going to have to wait and see what happened. After all, she had her own thing to focus on, with tracking down this lead. Wyatt had been the one who managed to dig it up. It, in this case, was an old Crossroads Heretic who had apparently grown disgusted with the entire civil war and walked away from it. From what Wyatt had put together, this guy wasn’t interested in joining the Rebellion, but he wouldn’t help the Loyalists either. He chose to become independent. Beyond that, while he wouldn’t help the rebels and refused to actively assist in saving Alters, he did at least commit to his neutrality by only hunting down the ones he was reasonably confident were actually attacking people. According to Wyatt, the guy actually did some investigation work to determine for himself that the Alters were guilty of hurting and killing people before he hunted them down. 

In Avalon’s book, that actually put him on the Rebellion’s side, regardless of his claims of neutrality. When one side said ‘kill all of them’ and the other side said ‘only kill the bad ones,’ and your way of being neutral was to only kill the bad ones… yeah. But she wasn’t going to argue with that. If the guy wanted to say he was neutral just because he wasn’t actively participating in the Rebellion itself, then… fine, whatever. 

The point was, he had also apparently been one of the Heretics involved in setting up the system for keeping Gaia prisoner. Wyatt thought they might be able to convince him to give them some real information about that, information they could use to find and free her. Unfortunately, that was time-sensitive given the guy was moving around a lot. He did everything he could to remain completely out of sight. So if they didn’t take advantage of knowing where he was going to be for the next couple days, they’d lose him. And who knew how long it would take to find the guy again? Especially if Crossroads decided to go after him themselves. 

All of which was why Avalon was here, in the main library of Iowa State University. She was on the third floor, just beside several sets of individual study rooms starting to her right. To her left was the men’s restroom, with various plush cushioned seats and tables ahead of her where an assortment of students were busy studying and writing. Various shelves of books lay beyond them, with more students browsing through. One, a small teenage black girl, who looked like she was barely old enough to even be in college, was chewing on a pencil while flipping through a very large book of maps set up on a table at the end of one of the rows of shelves. A short distance away, a man in his twenties, wearing a rainbow colored beanie, was perusing a book about the history of war in Africa. And so it went throughout the room with more random students. Some looked bored, others frantic and terrified. 

Either way, they were all busy and none paid Avalon more than a passing glance, if that much. 

Well, one guy had done more than give her a glance, but he was going to be icing his wrist for awhile, and wouldn’t be a problem anymore. Not before they had a chance to finish what they were doing and get out of here, anyway. 

‘They’ consisted of Avalon and her other girlfriend, Aylen. And wow. Just the thought of having one person she trusted enough to call her girlfriend would have been unthinkable only a little over a year earlier. To have two girls, two she cared about as much as she cared about Felicity and Aylen, and to have them return that affection… it felt impossible, as though her luck and life couldn’t possibly be that good. 

That, in truth, was why Avalon was so terrified of what was going on with Gaia. It felt like the world would find a way to make her pay for being happy with Felicity and Aylen by taking her adoptive mother away. Which… yes, that was ridiculous. If someone else had voiced that worry, Avalon would have told them they were being absurd. 

Unfortunately, sometimes it was easier to give advice than to take it. It didn’t matter how much the girl told herself she was being an idiot about it, her feelings remained what they were. Stupid feelings. 

“Valley,” Aylen spoke quietly from her spot beside the other girl. Her attention was on a blond, thoroughly average-looking guy who appeared to be in his early twenties. The man had just stood up from a table, tucking his laptop under his arm while putting a pencil behind his ear. He walked away from where he had been sitting, before the pencil fell to the floor beside another table where a dark-haired black man with a neatly-trimmed beard was studiously writing in a notebook. The second man, who appeared to be either an old student or a young professor, barely glanced up as the blond stooped to grab the fallen pencil and walked onward. 

That was the signal. The blond man was Wyatt in disguise, using magic to both stop anyone from recognizing him and to block Alters from identifying him as a Heretic. Avalon and Aylen were using the same spells. They both still retained the same basic appearance, but just enough was altered to make them not immediately recognizable. 

Wyatt dropping the pencil next to the other man had been the signal that he was the person they were looking for. The missing, ‘neutral’ Heretic, James Northern, was indeed a black man, though he looked quite a bit different in the pictures Avalon had seen. He was normally visibly older, for one, looking more like a man in his fifties than one in his twenties. They had known he would be using a disguise, just like they were. Which should have made it all but impossible to find the guy, but Wyatt had his ways. And if he said this was the person they were looking for, it had to be right. 

Taking a breath as she told herself not to rush no matter how badly she wanted to, Avalon began moving that way. There had been some idea of coming with more than just the three of them for this, and especially to approach him with more than just herself and Aylen. But in the end, it had felt safer to avoid making James feel threatened by only coming to him with the two of them, while Wyatt stayed as backup in case they had to escape for whatever reason. That was also why they were approaching him in this public space, where he wouldn’t have to worry about a bunch of other Heretics starting a fight with him. That was the idea, anyway. It was all about keeping him calm. They’d see how well it went. 

The man in question glanced up as the two girls approached. Without saying a word, Avalon tugged the chair across from him out and sat down. Aylen did the same beside her, both of them keeping their hands in plain sight. There was always the chance that he might use magic or a power to simply vanish in front of them, but they were hoping against hope that he would at least wait long enough to hear them out. Especially if he didn’t know who they were immedi–

“You’re late,” James noted in a calm voice. “She said you’d probably be here sometime this morning. It’s already afternoon.” 

Blinking twice while resisting the urge to glance in Wyatt’s direction, Avalon carefully replied, “I don’t think we’re who you–” 

“You’re Sinclaire’s adopted daughter, right? Avalon, formerly Hannah.” James noted before glancing toward Aylen. “And given you’re Native American, I’d say you’re her girlfriend. Not the Chambers girl, she’s probably not the type to racially appropriate like that, even for a disguise, unless she had to. Especially not in this case. So, Ms. Tamaya, I presume?” 

Exchanging a glance with the other girl, Avalon sat back in her seat to look at the man intently. “You knew we were coming, then. But who told you that?” Her eyes were scanning the area around them, watching for any trap. Not that she expected anything to have gotten past Wyatt. And the fact that he wasn’t bailing them out immediately meant there wasn’t an apparent threat. Not yet, anyway. 

“Not Crossroads,” James calmly informed her. “You’re safe here. She doesn’t want to hurt you or anything. She just wants to talk, and she wanted to do it privately. So she asked me to stay put and let you come to me.” 

“Whoever this is, we still have to ask you something, Mr. Northern,” Aylen pointed out. 

The man shook his head. “I can’t help you get the old headmistress out of prison. They would have changed everything after I left.” Before they could protest, he continued. “Whatever info I gave you would be outdated and useless at best, and would lead you into a trap at worst. But you won’t leave here empty-handed. I said I couldn’t help you. But she can.” 

Yes, this entire thing had been a longshot, of course. but it had been something. And now Avalon was reeling a bit from being told, in rapid succession, that the man couldn’t help but that someone else here could. Her eyes scanned the room once more before flatly asking, “She who? Someone asked you to sit around and wait for us to approach, and you did? I thought you didn’t want anything to do with Loyalist Heretics or Rebels.” 

“I don’t, for the most part,” he confirmed. “There’s more important things to do than fight each other. But she’s neither of those things anyway. You’ll see for yourselves, if you go into that study room over there, second on the right. Go in there and she’ll meet you. And yes, I’m aware of how much that sounds like a trap. But you have my word, for whatever that may be worth, that it is not. If you want to save the woman who adopted you, that’s how you do it. Go in that room and have a little discussion.”

Avalon was silent for a moment, running through all that in her mind. She knew that others would have screamed at her for even entertaining the idea. But they were here already, and James had obviously known they were coming. He knew who they were, yet had sat and waited for them to approach. Either this really was some sort of trap, or he was telling the truth about this mysterious woman wanting to talk to them about saving Gaia. 

She couldn’t risk walking away from something like that. So, giving a very short nod to him, Avalon stood. “Thank you.” 

“Thank me by focusing more on saving people than fighting a war against the Loyalists,” he replied simply, turning his attention back to the book he had been looking at. 

There was a lot Avalon wanted to say to that. Instead, she glanced toward the study room in question. She and Aylen exchanged looks, before starting to head that way together. Wyatt would have heard that whole conversation, but he hadn’t moved from the table he’d taken up residence at. He wasn’t doing anything to stop them from going into that room. Either he knew it was pointless to try to prevent Avalon from doing everything she could to get the answer they needed, or he too knew this was still their best, and possibly only, chance. Or, most likely, both. 

Whatever the reasoning, the man stayed where he was, though Avalon knew he wasn’t nearly as involved with his book as he appeared to be. He would be keeping track of everything that happened in this place, and where everyone was. Even more so now than before. 

Trusting the man to let them know if anything was wrong, the two girls walked to the study room. It appeared to be empty, but before going in, Avalon carefully plucked a coin from her pocket and activated the spell on it. It would glow bright red if there were any transport spells inside the room that would have sent them somewhere else once they passed through. Yet when she surreptitiously tossed it through the doorway, it stayed dark. No transport magic then. 

With one more glance at one another, the girls stepped through into the room. Nothing happened. They looked around the small space a bit, then moved to sit down at the table. There was nothing to do now but wait, and hope this wasn’t a complete waste of time. Or worse. 

They weren’t waiting very long before the door opened, and another person stepped in. It was the young black girl Avalon had noticed looking through maps earlier. She stood barely over five feet, a diminutive figure with long, intricate braids, each of which was dyed a different color of the rainbow. She wore glasses along with an open flannel shirt over a gray tee, and jean shorts. Without saying anything, she closed the door behind her, before moving to sit at the table across from them. Only once she was seated and had adjusted herself, with both arms crossed on the table in front of her, did she look directly at the other two and finally speak. “So, the way I hear it, y’all wanna get Gaia Sinclaire out of the slammer. And the sooner the better, yeah?” 

“Yes,” Avalon confirmed. “But before we say anything else, who are you?” 

Her question was met with a smile that showed the stranger’s perfect white teeth. “Who am I? Oh, you could call me a witch. Most do. Some for good reasons, some for bad.”

She seemed to consider something for a moment before making a decisive clicking sound with her tongue. “Usually I like to play coy with this, but that’s probably a waste of our time right now. There’s already a lot for us to talk about, and I don’t exactly have unlimited time. Pressing concerns elsewhere, you know.” She paused then before audibly chuckling. “Isn’t that weird? It doesn’t matter how old you are, there never seems to be enough time to do everything you want and need to. You’d think once you live as long as I have, you’d run out of stuff to keep you busy.” 

Her expression sobered almost immediately then, eyes seeming to stare right through Avalon as she pointedly added, “I’ve gone by more names than there are students in this school. I could list them for you, but we’d be here for way too long. And at some point that sort of thing just turns into bragging. Only a few of them are actually known these days anyway. Isis, and yes I am pretty pissed off about that name getting ruined, Werethekau, Freja, but most just call me–” 

“The Wandering Woman,” Aylen managed, sitting up a bit straighter. “Wait, how do we know you’re–” 

“Telling the truth?” the woman finished for her. From within her open flannel shirt, she produced a rotted apple core, the skeleton of some sort of rodent, and a silver-bladed knife. Without wasting a moment, she dropped the first two on the table, then calmly and without any expression whatsoever, drove the blade of the knife through three of the fingers on her right hand, slicing them clean off. 

Avalon and Aylen, rather understandably, jolted a little bit at that. Though before they could say anything, the woman waved her uninjured hand at the damaged one. In the blink of an eye, her fingers were reattached, and there was no visible blood left on the table. Another gesture made the rotted, mostly-eaten apple quickly reform itself into its perfectly pristine, crispy-looking self, as though it was fresh off the tree. And, with barely a look that way, the woman turned the rat skeleton into a live, squeaking creature that was sniffing the apple with interest. 

While the two Heretics were still reacting, both felt themselves shrink in their seats. No, they weren’t just shrinking. They were getting younger. The two quickly exchanged half-panicked looks, only to find themselves staring at twelve-year-old versions of one another. They were sitting there, practically drowning in their too-large clothes. A noise of confusion and shock escaped both girls.  

“I am who I say I am,” the woman informed them, before tucking both rat and apple away. With another wave of her hand, she returned the girls to their proper ages, this time in the blink of an eye rather than the slower effect she’d used when deaging them. “And if you want to save Gaia Sinclaire, I can help you do that.” 

“Why?” Avalon asked, once she’d found her voice. “Everyone says you don’t get involved in this sort of thing.” 

“I don’t let others drag me into their problems,” came the short reply. “There’s a difference. I choose when to involve myself and with what. There’s a lot going on that you don’t know about. I have to pick and choose just how involved to get. There’s only one of me, after all, and a lot to do. Remember what I said about not having enough time?” 

“What–” Aylen started before taking a second to find the right words. “What do we call you? And uhh, do you want me to leave you guys alone?” 

“I’ve been using Sawyer recently,” the woman replied easily. “That should do. But no, you should stay. After all, this involves you too. And that thing you’re supposed to do that you’ve been wondering about.” 

“You know about–” Aylen caught herself. “Of course you know about that. Wait, does that mean you know more about it? Do you know how I’m supposed to do it? Do you know what–” 

Sawyer held a hand up to stop her. “I know more than I can tell you now, I’ll say that much. But I can tell you more than you already know.” She smiled faintly. “Listen, sometimes it’s fun to be creepy and mysterious, but it also takes a lot of time, and it can be annoying as fuck. I mean, from the other side of it too. So let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?” She pointed toward Avalon. “You want to save Gaia Sinclaire. If you wanna do that, you need some of her blood. Or blood from someone related to her.” 

“But Gaia’s only son died ages ago,” Avalon pointed out. “The Seosten used his body and… and that’s it. We can’t find him. She doesn’t have any other descendants.” 

“You’re right,” Sawyer confirmed. “You can’t find what you need that way. But she had a half-brother. Okay, she had two half-brothers. One of them is the one you’re trying to bring back.” Her eyes glanced toward Aylen, then back again. “But the other, Chadwick, lived a completely normal life. Well, as normal as one could live after your entire family disappeared or were killed by a dragon and you were sent off to a new family. Chadwick lived and died, and his descendants continue on to this day. Some even became Natural Heretics, though the Seosten never allowed any to go near Crossroads or Eden’s Garden. That would’ve been too dangerous, if one of them had turned out to be the Merlin Key.” 

“You’re saying we need to find one of Chadwick’s descendants and use their blood to locate Gaia,” Avalon put in. “But the hardliners would’ve blocked her from that sort of magic. They aren’t stupid.”

“Well, not in that sort of way, no,” Sawyer agreed while taking her glasses off. She held them by one side and tapped the other against her hand. “But what I’m about to tell you ain’t the sort of magic you can just block like that.”

Before saying anything else, she dropped the glasses and reached into her pocket to take out a package of Starburst candies. “God, I love these things.” Tapping it against the table, she pried an orange one out, unwrapped it, and popped the thing in her mouth. Then she offered the package to them. “Go ahead.” 

While Avalon and Aylen hesitantly each took one of the candies, the woman continued. “I tell ya, people talk about the good old days, but speaking as someone who’s been around for all the days, they’re full of shit. Rose-colored glasses and all that. Ironically, that’s one of the reasons the old days were shit. No easy way to get glasses. Now, where was I?” 

“Blood from Chadwick’s descendant for some special spell,” Aylen informed her. 

Pointing that way, Sawyer nodded. “Right, yeah, that. If you wanna save Gaia, you need three things. The first is the blood of Chadwick’s descendant. The second is the blood of two of her heirs.” 

“You heard me say that Gaia doesn’t have any natural children, right?” Avalon pointed out. 

With a slight smirk, Sawyer replied, “I said heirs, not children. You count as one of those heirs. Virginia Dare counts as the other. She sees both of you as her kids. Well, she sees a lot as her kids in one way or another, but you two more than others.” She set the glasses down before continuing. “So that’s easy. And third, you need the blood of a Reaper.” Before Aylen could say anything, she continued. “That is, the blood of a full Reaper, not a half-one.” 

Avalon opened and shut her mouth before shaking her head. “Oh, right, so all we have to do is find a full Reaper and ask if we can pretty please borrow some of his blood.” 

“Her blood,” came the correction. “Because your friends Guinevere and Michael the Seosten already went and found one willing to help. Her name’s Jones. It’s a long story, and probably one she should tell you herself. Point is, they found her to help bring Arthur back, but she can help you with this too. You get the blood from those four people. The Reaper, the descendant, yourself, and Virginia Dare, then follow these directions.” A sealed envelope seemed to appear from nowhere in her hand, which she slid across the table. “It’ll tell you exactly where Gaia Sinclaire is, no matter how much they try to block it. And it’s an ongoing spell, so you’ll find her again even if they move her.” 

While Avalon slowly took the envelope, Aylen asked, “Seriously, why are you doing all this? Why are you helping this much?” 

“Let’s just say there’s some big trouble coming,” Sawyer replied. “And if this planet is gonna get through it, which I’d kinda like it to do since I happen to live here, we’ll need Arthur back on his feet.” 

“Wait, Arthur?” Avalon blinked. “What does Arthur have to do with Gaia? I mean,” she amended, “I know she’s his sister and all that, but how does saving Gaia help bring him back?” 

Unwrapping and eating another Starburst, Sawyer remained silent, watching them until she had swallowed it. “Simple, she’s the only chance you’ve got of getting anywhere near the Reaper that’s locked up inside that lighthouse.” 

“My grandfather?” Aylen blurted. “What–wait, huh?” 

“Your Reaper grandfather, as opposed to the Fomorian one, yeah,” the woman confirmed. “He was there the day Arthur met the dragon. If you wanna bring Arthur back, you need what’s locked up inside his copy of the Reaper archives. He’ll know more once you talk to him. Plus some other stuff, but Guinevere’s got most of that covered. What you really need are in those archives. And the only way to get them is with that Reaper’s help. Which you can only get to with Gaia’s help.” She smiled a bit, looking back and forth between the two girls. “See how convenient it is that you two came together?” A pause followed before she laughed. “Hah, and that works both ways. You came here together, and you came together as a couple. Now seriously, your babysitter’s getting nervous out there. I haven’t exactly been letting him hear what we’re talking about, cuz I despise eavesdroppers. You better head back out there before he decides to do something drastic.”

“Wait,” Avalon quickly put in. “Ruthers thought they might be able to convince you to take Felicity’s necromancy away. Was… was he right about that?” 

Sawyer’s head shook. “Oh, I don’t think I’ll be taking anything away from that girl,” she murmured. “She’ll need everything she can get soon enough. Especially when he decides he’s ready to train her. Which should be any time now.” 

Avalon was nodding slowly, before blinking at that last part. “He? Wait, when who decides to–” But even as she began to ask that, her eyes focused on the spot where Sawyer had been sitting. 

There was no sign of her. She had disappeared in the span of a blink, leaving no sign she had ever even been there. 

No sign, that was, aside from two wrapped Starburst candies, one for each of the girls. 

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Growth 18-05 (Heretical Edge 2)

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Dinner that evening was really something, to say the least. We didn’t eat out in the main cafeteria, figuring this was something we would want to keep a little more private. It would’ve been pretty hard to focus on things with a couple hundred pairs of eyes from everyone else in the room constantly staring our way if we had eaten in public with someone like Jegudiel. He was the sort of guy who tended to attract attention even without the whole archangel thing. With that added in? Forget it, we never would’ve had any privacy at all. And having all those people watching our every move would have made the whole situation even more uncomfortable.  

In the end, it was still a fairly large group of us at the dinner, all lined up along either side of a long table that had been set up in the Moon’s apartment. Along one side of the table was my dad, both of my grandparents, Wyatt, Abigail, Koren, and me. Along the other side were Haiden and Sariel, Vanessa and Tristan, Jehoel, Spark, Puriel, and Tabbris. Jegudiel was at the end, with Tabbris next to him to his right (her mother on her other side) while I was next to him on the other side, across from my little sister. 

The entire table was laden with dozens of heavy platters of food. Seeing all of it, Jegudiel  clapped his hands together once very loudly, the sound echoing through the room. “Now this is a meal!” he boomed, a broad smile spreading across his face. “You make sure to eat as much as you can, little teuslin,” he teased with a look at Tabbris. “We’ve got to make sure you grow up nice and big so you can squish the heads of your enemies like geppins.” 

Blanching a little bit, the girl squirmed in her seat. “I’m not really sure I’m gonna be up to, um, you know, squishing.” 

“Oh don’t you worry,” Jegudiel informed her, “I used to be a pint-sized little thing like you too. Believe it or not, I was even smaller when I was your age. And even if you eat all you can and still turn out to be a tiny one, it doesn’t really matter. You’re big where it counts.” He offered the girl a wink as she stared at him. “Hell, from what I’ve heard, you being kind of small right now is the only thing that’s keeping you from taking on the entire Fomorian Empire by yourself!” His words right then were accompanied by a hearty laugh. 

Smiling a little despite myself, I watched the girl’s reaction while speaking up. “She’s impressive, that’s for sure. I’d be pretty dead, or worse, right now if it wasn’t for her.” 

Grandmaria took a sip of her water before speaking. “And we’re all certainly glad that didn’t happen.” She smiled my way while adding, “Plus, I can’t say I object to having another grandchild to spoil. Not to mention how much Arthur appreciates being able to buy more of those little video games and pretend they’re actually for one of them.” 

Popser made a huffing sound deep in his throat. “You know I can’t just hand those over without making sure they’re appropriate. Besides, when they put them in the system, what if they have questions about how it all works? I need to have a thorough understanding of all that.” 

From where he was sitting next to his own father, Dad leaned over and whispered something in his ear. Popser listened, then gave a short nod before adding, “And working with them gives me a chance to practice with these technology power whoozits.” 

For a moment, it looked like Jegudiel was going to say something about that, his expression curious. But Haiden spoke up first. “I’ve got a question of my own for you, big guy.” His gaze was focused down the table to the archangel. “How do you think the people on the front line of that war would feel about the idea of working with humans instead of using us as flesh-and-bone mecha to pilot around? You know, letting us have a say in what happens. Is it like people around here talking about asking their trucks for permission to drive them?” 

Obviously, he wasn’t the only one wondering that, but I was still surprised that anyone had asked so directly during the very first meal with this guy. And judging by a few of the looks he was getting from some of the others, they might’ve thought that he had gone too far. 

Jegudiel, however, observed him curiously before giving a short chuckle. “I wouldn’t have expected any other question from the one they called the Bane. You did an awful lot of damage while you were out there, you know.” He actually sounded admiring in that moment rather than reprimanding. “Kept a lot of them on their toes, so they didn’t get soft back away from the front lines.” Pausing briefly to consider, he amended, “Well, not as soft, anyway. You did some fine work. A lot of bad work too, but considering the situation… ehh, can’t say as I blame you too much. 

“Anyway, as for what you were asking about, I don’t really know, to be honest. I don’t use a host unless it’s for some quick tactical advantage, making them think I’m not there or something like that. And in those cases, it doesn’t tend to last very long. If there’s some big discussion going on about that, I haven’t heard it.” He shrugged. “But then, I’m usually too busy kicking Fomorian teeth down their throats and then ripping their spleens out to get the teeth back to actually listen to stuff like that. Tell you what, I’ll have one of my people who’s actually more into that subtle talking stercus ask around to see what the general feeling is. That good enough?” 

Haiden seemed to think about that briefly before nodding. I had the feeling he was surprised to get an actual thought-out response, let alone an offer like that. “Yeah, I’d say that’s good enough.” Another pause came before he added, “Thanks.” 

From there, Wyatt asked something about a bit of Seosten magical security he had been working on taking apart, looking for advice from Jegudiel. The thing was, I happened to know for a fact that he had already long-since solved the problem he was asking about. Clearly, this was a test of some sort. He wanted to know if the man would send him down the wrong path. Whether he did or not, I wasn’t sure. Because even with the advanced lessons I had been getting, I absolutely could not follow Jegudiel’s response. And Wyatt’s next words sounded even more like total gibberish. From the way Sariel reacted, I could tell they weren’t actually just fucking with us and were actually saying real things. But damned if I could follow any of it. 

Still, at the very least, I was able to sit back in my seat and watch them go through this whole impossible-to-understand discussion. Then I looked back and forth along the table, seeing everyone watching as well. My grandparents, my dad, the Moons, we were all sitting here with Tabbris’s archangel father while he and Wyatt discussed security spells. This was all so surreal. Even in a world that had already been so impossible, a world where I had once foolishly thought I was completely beyond being surprised, this was… something. 

Sometimes, I had to take a metaphorical step back and really look at what my life had become over the past year and a half. Honestly, I had no idea how I had gotten here. 

And I certainly had no idea where I would be once another year and a half had passed. 

******

I may not have known where I would be in eighteen months, but the next morning I was attending Xenozoology class, where we learned about Alter animals. Lillian wasn’t there to help teach this time, of course. She was still with Mom in Peru, working on taking care of that whole situation. But we did have Scratch, the short guy from Eden’s Garden who I had met at the beginning of the year working with these animals. 

Obviously, he didn’t look any different now. The man still had the same long, dark gray hair tied into that same ponytail, and that crescent moon-shaped scar still marked his very tan face from just under his right eye down to his cheek. Even after all of this time, I still had no idea what had caused his scar. Nor did I know any other name he went by besides Scratch. But then, from what Miranda and Seller had said, no one else seemed to know any other name either. He simply was, and apparently always had been, Scratch. 

At the moment, the man in question was standing next to a cage that has been covered with a tarp. He was watching me and the rest of the class, his gaze making it clear that he was considering just how to start this lesson. Or possibly wondering if we were ready to hear it. Finally, he exhaled, the sound of his soft sigh stopping the whispering that was going on. Not that there had been a lot of it, but still. Everything went completely silent at the mere prospect that he was about to say something. 

“No yelling,” the man started flatly, in the same simple, soft voice I had come to expect from him. He wasn’t the type to raise his voice or act outwardly excited. He always carried himself calmly. Which was probably why he was so good with the animals. Or maybe the fact that he spent so much time with animals was why he talked like that. I wasn’t sure which came first in that particular egg and chicken situation. “No raising your voices or blurting things out if you’re not called on. I don’t want any of you scaring the poor guy, or making him think he’s in trouble. When you want to say something, raise your hand until I say your name. When I do, you talk in a normal, quiet, civilized tone. Does everyone understand?” 

He waited until we had agreed before putting his hand on the tarp. Once more, he looked over at us, his eyes inquisitive. “How many of you can tell me what this is?” With that, the man pulled the tarp away from the cage, not so much ripping it off as giving a simple gradual tug so it came up smoothly and steadily. Probably to avoid startling the creature inside. 

And what a creature it was. Now that we had a chance to look at it, I could see what looked like an ordinary wolf at very first glance. Except it was bigger in the shoulders and had paws that were more like a bear, with long claws. Which I was given a decent view of as the thing reared up on its hind legs once the tarp came off. It didn’t just briefly rear up either, it stood and stayed that way, its wolf-like head snapping first one way, then another as it took all of us in. The thing pressed its paws against the glass of the cage, deadly claws extending. Yet I didn’t get the impression that it was trying to break out, or even threaten us. It seemed more like it was showing the claws to let us know that it wasn’t helpless, and that if we tried to hurt it, there would be a fight. 

So it was a wolf with bear paws that could stand on its hind legs, but that wasn’t the only thing different about this thing. It wasn’t simply a bear-wolf hybrid. That much became clear as the large bat-like wings unfurled from its back and spread out. Probably to make itself look even bigger, to ward off any potential threats. The thing was spreading those bat-wings out from one end of the cage to the other, its eyes looking over every one of us in rapid succession to assess if we were going to try to attack. 

“No sudden movements,” Scratch reminded us in his soft tone, drawing the creature’s attention briefly before it went back to looking at the rest of us. “Don’t startle him. Just let him take it all in. He’s usually in a bigger enclosure, so he might be a little grumpy right now. But he’ll be okay. Especially once we get him some food. He’s been doing presentations with me for awhile now. Like I said, how many of you can tell me what he is?” 

Vanessa wasn’t in this class, or I was certain that her hand would have rocketed straight into the air. Instead, it was Jason Furuya, the Natural Prevenkuat Heretic, who raised his hand. The Asian guy, who had a scar of his own over his cheek (though not as pronounced as Scratch’s, waited until the teacher said his name before speaking. “He’s a Kludde, right?” It sounded sort of like ‘could’ but with the added L sound right after the kuh sound. Kludde. Like if you mixed up could and cloud and tried to say them both at the same time, or something. 

Scratch smiled faintly, giving a short nod. “That’s right, top marks, Furuya. What else can you tell me about the Kludde?” 

“Uh.” Jason hesitated. “They originated–I mean, here on Earth that is– around the Netherlands and Belgium, right? People thought they were werewolves at first. Uh, werewolves with wings, I guess.” 

“Werewolves with wings, or even the Christian devil,” Scratch confirmed. For a moment, he looked a little amused. Probably because he was thinking about the fact that even his own moniker used to be a nickname for the same devil. Old Scratch, that was. Or maybe he was thinking about the fact that we literally had Lucifer himself, now Apollo, living with us. Either way, he took a moment to smile about something before continuing. “People thought a lot of things about them, some true, some not. Who knows why they’re called Kludde?” 

Even as he asked that, the creature opened its mouth and gave a sharp barking sound. Which sounded an awful lot like its actual name. It barked again, and it sounded even more like it was saying ‘kludde.’ 

“Now that’s just cheating,” Scratch informed the creature with a sidelong look. “You’re not supposed to give them the answers, Montgomery.” 

Rebecca started to say something, a noise escaping her before she caught herself and raised her hand. When the man said her name, she asked, “Montgomery? His name is really Montgomery?” 

“That’s right,” Scratch replied with a simple nod. “Montgomery here is the nicest of his pack. There’s also Edna, Waylon, Ned, Maude, Luann and Seymour. Maybe once you all have a little more experience, I’ll let you see the rest of them. But for now, let’s stick with Montgomery. Who knows something else about the Kludde? Anything at all, I’m sure you’ve heard of them now and then.”

One of the other students, a tiny pixie with long green hair and polka dot clothes, flew up and down in the air to attract attention with her arm raised. Seeing that, Scratch pointed. “Jeckselprea?” 

“Just Jeck is fine, sir!” the pixie chirped. She sounded like Namythiet, and I found myself briefly wondering how the other pixie was doing. “And is it true that if you kill one of them, seven more appear?” 

Scratch shook his head. “No, that was either people getting them mixed up with Jekerns, or just seeing babies crawling out from under the mother’s body and thinking they magically spawned.” He paused before muttering, “People can be really stupid sometimes.” He shook that off before focusing. “If you kill a Kludde, you just end up with a dead Kludde.” 

“Are they shapeshifters?” Koren asked once she was called on. “I think I remember something about how they can change into a lot of different animals.” 

“That they can do,” Scratch confirmed. “Kludde are very powerful animal shapeshifters, almost as good as Pooka. Even stronger, in some cases. They can become plants too. Makes it a little complicated to keep track of them when they keep turning into trees and bushes in their enclosure.” He added that bit with a small smile, clearly amused by a memory of just such a situation. “Some say they can become human, but it’s rare. And even when they do, they don’t talk. They might mimic things they’ve seen humans do, just to try to blend in. Or hunt.” He added that bit with a small smirk. “Anyone else? They’re shapeshifters, they can fly with those wings even in this form, and they do not spawn seven babies when they die.” 

Ruckus, the guy who looked like an assortment of slinkies, raised one of his metal coils until Scratch acknowledged him. “They’rereallyfastright? Imeanlike… theycangetfrom… oneendofthisroom… totheother… sofastit’s… likethey’reteleporting.” 

Oh yeah, Ruckus talked like December. Except somehow, he seemed to get words out even faster. Thankfully, someone seemed to have had the same talk with him about slowing down slightly so he put some intentional pauses in his sentences. Not exactly between every word, but enough that it wasn’t completely impossible to follow what he was saying. Just difficult sometimes. It made me wonder if all of his people were like that, or if that was just a Ruckus thing. 

Scratch nodded. “Yeah, they’re pretty quick, whatever shape they’re in. I’ve clocked Montgomery here doing two hundred and ten miles per hour in a sprint. Not quite blinding speed, but you try telling a Bystander in the seventeen hundreds that what he called ‘incalculable’ speed is actually slower than the airplanes they’ll use in a couple hundred years.” He chuckled softly before sobering. “So yes, they’re very quick, even faster when they fly, and they can shapeshift. All of that makes them pretty dangerous when they want to be. Which brings me to the next question, who can tell me what they like to eat?” 

No one had any answer at first, until Shiloh raised her hand and hesitantly offered, “Um, liars?” She sounded uncertain, like she thought she might just be repeating a silly rumor. 

Scratch, however, beamed a bit. “Yes, actually. That’s pretty much right, believe it or not. The Kludde have the ability to sense when someone is lying. Not just a little white lie, but the malicious kind. They can tell when someone is keeping deep, dark secrets. Evil secrets. And the worse those secrets are, the more… evil the person is hiding inside, the tastier they are to the Kludde.” He paused then, clearly letting that sink in before dryly adding, “As you might expect, a lot of the people in positions of authority and power didn’t really like having them around. So, even before the whole… Bystander Effect came to full power, they started spreading rumors about the Kludde eating babies, literally being Satan or just a demon in general, spawning from the cremated bodies of dead witches, that sort of thing. Anything to stop people from paying attention to what–or rather who the Kludde were actually trying to eat. And, as a side note, that’s also where we get the concept of hellhounds. Well, that and the whole Cerberus thing, of course.” He gave me a brief look before continuing. “They went all-in on making these guys look as evil as possible, just so they’d be hunted to extinction. And they nearly succeeded. Montgomery and his pack are one of only a few left here on Earth. Well, somewhat close to Earth, anyway.”  

Offering us all a slight smile, the man continued. “I’m going to let my buddy here come out of the cage in a minute. Everyone just stay calm and steady. Spread out so there’s several feet between each of you. I’ll lead him to one person at a time. Let him sniff you and then put his head down. When he does that, you can touch him. Just scratch behind his ears or under his chin. And if any of you aren’t comfortable with doing that, go ahead and take a few steps back that way. No one’s going to give you a hard time. 

“And if they do, let me know. I have plenty of other fun things that could eat them.” 

******

So, I made it through the rest of that class, as well as the next couple. Eventually, I was on my way to lunch, wondering if I would see Tabbris there or if she was still busy with Jegudiel. On the way, however, I was interrupted by the sound of someone calling my name. Turning, I saw Miranda sprinting down the hall. She came to a sliding stop, blurting, “We gotta go down to the Eden’s Garden rebels, down by the ocean, the hotel, down there. We gotta check it out.” 

“What?” I blinked a few times, head shaking. “What’s going on? Is something wrong?” 

“Wrong?” she echoed, grinning. “No, nothing’s wrong. It’s right. Dakota, she did it. She finally got them working.” 

“Dakota–the vines?” I realized belatedly. “She managed to make the vines grow?” 

Miranda’s head was bobbing rapidly. “Not just grow, she managed to get a few of them to bloom. New apples. She made the vines give off new apples. 

“We can make new Heretics!”  

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By Blood 17-01 (Heretical Edge 2)

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Christmas morning was, to say the least, a bit of a blur. It seemed weird to immediately think of it in the sense of a montage, and yet that was what it felt like even while it was happening. I had my grandparents back, and that was a whole thing. I spent hours just sitting on the couch with my parents in their apartment on the station, listening to Grandmaria and Grandpartie tell stories about what they had been through since they were transported to the Seosten homeworld. My grandfather, of course, compared everything to various adventures in Star Trek. That was a whole thing, especially since my father’s favorite captain was Picard and Popser’s was Sisko. My grandmother and mom, meanwhile, liked Kirk the best. All of which begat an entire conversation about various episodes and what-if situations. And apparently whenever Uncle Al showed up (he was giving our immediate family time to reunite), he would have his own very strong opinions to share. 

Personally, I didn’t really pay that much attention to that entire franchise, but it was still nice to just sit there and listen to them go back and forth about it. Though, to be fair, given the people involved I would have quite willingly listened to them go on about nearly anything. All that mattered was the fact that they were here now. They were all here, together on Christmas morning after we had been separated for so long. Hell, even the fact that it was Christmas was basically immaterial when you got right down to it. My grandparents had arrived. It could’ve been Arbor Day, and it would still be one of the most amazing and wonderful times of my life.

There was also the fact that through that, I found out that my grandmother had become a Puriel-Heretic. Seriously, she was bonded to him and it had stuck. She actually had his power, even if she was only a tiny fraction as powerful with it as he was at the moment. But she was learning. Baby steps, just like the way I was with my incredibly powerful Necromancy. Except even more, because it was goddamn Puriel. 

Which, of course, fled to a sudden moment of fear about what would have happened if the Whispers had decided to go after her instead. Whether their lack of attempt had more to do with not knowing about that, or her not being powerful enough for their purposes yet, I was just glad they had mostly left her alone. 

And she wasn’t the only potentially-absurdly powerful grandparent I had, either. Well, she already wasn’t because of Dare, but still. She wasn’t the only potentially-absurdly powerful paternal grandparent I had. Grandpartie had been bonded to the same sort of thing Gaia and Seller had been bonded to. He had picked up the technology control powers, like the former headmistress. Because of course he had. This was my grandfather we were talking about. He loved new technology. Given the chance to mentally control it? I was willing to bet that he had quite literally jumped at the chance. Possibly to the point of banging his head on the ceiling.

So, both of my paternal grandparents were bonded to incredibly powerful beings, and had their own absurd gifts that they were slowly learning how to harness. Which was… yeah, that was a thing. 

Not only did we sit there listening to Grandmaria and Popser tell their stories, but we also got to tell them our own. Well, mostly me. I ended up talking a lot that morning, from quite early, essentially re-telling the whole story about what had happened since I took the bus that morning a year and half earlier. A year and a half. God, it felt like so much longer. Most of a lifetime, actually. When I tried to think about what life was like before that day, through the first full sixteen years of my life, I almost couldn’t picture it. The whole thing basically felt like a story I had read somewhere, rather than what amounted to almost ninety percent of my life. 

In any case, telling the story (or many stories) about what I had been through up to this point eventually led to my grandmother insisting we make cookies and take them with us when we visited the others. She felt distraught that she hadn’t had time on Earth to actually buy presents, and assured us all that they would be doing that eventually. No amount of protests that it wasn’t necessary would dissuade her. She was going to get presents for everyone, no question about it. We would just have some sort of late/extra Christmas when the time came. 

That, of course, added to the ‘montage’ feel. I helped her bake cookies, while also taking the time to help my parents put the finishing touches on the gifts we were taking over to the others. Which was supposed to have been done the night before, but we’d been a bit occupied. 

We weren’t too far through that before Tabbris arrived. She had been spending time with her other family, and popped up to meet our grandparents for the first time in an actual peaceful, quiet situation. Or at least, that was the idea. Except as soon as she arrived and saw them in the kitchen, Tabbris immediately hid behind me with her hands on my shirt. She was clinging to me while peeking out that way, making a very uncertain noise in the back of her throat. Apparently it was one thing to meet them in the heat of the moment back on the ship with everything that had been going on, and quite another to do so right now on Christmas morning with no other distractions or anything. 

Brushing her apron off, Grandmaria took one look our way and seemed to understand. She immediately reached out, plucking one of the just-finished cookies from the tray. Her voice was chipper as she took a couple steps our way. “Now, if there’s one thing I know about my Flick, it’s that she loves my coconut chocolate chip cookies. She doesn’t share them with anyone she doesn’t really care about. She especially wouldn’t break one in half except for the most special sort of person.” 

Having said that, she extended a hand with the warm, delicious, oh-so-incredible cookie in her palm, offering it to me. In the background, I saw Popser and Dad having a quiet conversation in a corner of the kitchen while occasionally glancing our way, and Mom was pretending to be busy with the mixing bowl, all of them giving us time to get through this.

Taking the cookie, I went down to one knee and looked toward Tabbris. My hands smoothly broke the treat in half before I spoke quietly. “She’s right, you know. I don’t share my grandmother’s special coconut chocolate chip cookies with just anyone. They have to be my top most favorite people in the world. And splitting just one?” I gave a low whistle before raising my half of the cookie to take a bite. Immediately, my eyes rolled back a bit as I gave a murmur of appreciation. Then I lifted the second half and offered it to the other girl while continuing softly. “That sort of thing is only for someone I love very much.” 

There was a brief pause before Tabbris, face pink, slowly took the offered cookie half and bit into it. Immediately, she visibly shivered and gave a very quick nod. Her voice was a whisper. “I wouldn’t wanna share a whole cookie either.” Having said that, she quickly shoved the rest of the cookie in her mouth and murmured appreciatively. Then her eyes blinked open once more to focus on our grandmother, offering a tentative smile. “Um, hi… hi.”

Gesturing back and forth, I introduced them officially. “Tabbris, this is our grandmother. Grandmaria, this is Tabbris, my sister.” 

“Why, hello, Tabbris.” Grandmaria stepped over closer. She didn’t go down to one knee the way I had, instead reaching out to take the girl’s raised hand as she started to wave. “Do you know what my very favorite sorts of heroes are?” 

“Um, no?” Tabbris offered a bit uncertainly while letting the older woman take her hand (her other one was busy checking for any crumbs from that cookie). 

With a kind, gentle smile, our grandmother explained, “I have three favorites. My first favorite heroes are the very sneaky ones who do all this work to help people without getting a lot of credit for it. My second favorite are the people who help my friends and family. And my third favorite are my own family themselves. So, you know, by all that, I would say that you might just be my very most top favorite person right now. I’m not sure yet though, we need one more test, just to check.”

Eyes darting briefly to me, still kneeling beside her, and then back again, Tabbris hesitantly echoed, “One more test?”  

Still giving the same tender, welcoming and yet somehow conspiratorial smile that I recognized from so many years past, Grandmaria gently replied, “Well, yes, before I decide if someone fits the family member sort of favorite person, I have to see how good they are at hugs.” 

A giggle escaped the girl beside me, before she managed to retort with a somewhat-straight face, “I dunno, that puts a lot of pressure on a first hug.” 

With a laugh at that, our grandmother tugged her over by the hand and the two embraced. It was somewhat tentative at first on Tabbris’s part, as she was obviously still a bit nervous about the whole thing. But that quickly vanished as she felt just how intently Grandmaria was hugging her, and she ended up latching on just as tightly. 

Watching that while smiling, I straightened and glanced to my parents. They were both watching as well, and Dad gave me a thumbs up. Then he leaned over to whisper something to his own father before both of them chuckled softly. 

By the time Tabbris and Grandmaria separated, Popser was right there. He reached down, taking the little girl by both hands and squeezing them. On a ‘one, two, three, hup,’ he hoisted her off the floor and into his arms for a tight hug of his own. 

It didn’t end there either. They both passed Tabbris back and forth for several more hugs before being satisfied for the moment. Then we got back to talking while finishing the last batch of cookies as I (with help from Tabbris, Dad, and Mom) finished getting them caught up on what they had missed. Or at least as much as we could think of right then. I was sure there would be a lot more specific details we have to get into later. But they had at least the broad strokes. And it also gave me a chance to let Tabbris know about just what our grandparents had been bonded to, so I could see if the look on her face was as great as the one on mine had probably been. So, of course, she had to hear all about that. And they both had to demonstrate, which was fun. Especially when Popser got Tabbris to ‘pull his finger’ and turned every television, radio, light, etcetera in the apartment on, including setting off a couple alarm clocks. And yes, that made Tabbris fall over giggling.   

Eventually, the cookies were ready and we packed them up along with all the presents, before heading out to go see Abigail, Koren, and Wyatt. They were waiting for us in Abigail’s apartment, and we all exchanged more hugs and greetings. Grandmaria and Grandpartie were both immediately taken with all three of the others, and stories were soon flying back and forth. Wyatt wasn’t exactly shy (awkward sure, but not shy), yet even he seemed to take to our grandparents incredibly quickly. Before long, he and Popser were sitting at a corner of the room, going over some sort of security device designs that Wyatt had scrawled on the back of a napkin. They sounded like little kids conspiring to build a tree house or something. It was pretty great, even if I was a bit nervous about what they would end up with. 

Koren, standing beside me as we watched everyone interacting and laughing like that, leaned over to whisper, “Did you ever think we’d be standing here like this back at school last year?” 

The thought made me snort at first, before shaking my head. A lump had formed in my throat. Looking at everyone, I stopped to think about how lucky I was in that moment. Sure, plenty of bad stuff had happened. And plenty of other bad stuff would happen in the future. But right then, I was celebrating Christmas with my father, mother, Grandmaria, Grandpartie, Koren, Wyatt, Abigail, and Tabbris. They all knew the truth, they were all on the same page, and we were together. What would the me from the year before even do if I had told her this was what the next Christmas would be like? I honestly had absolutely no idea. 

Of course, that led to the question of what next Christmas would be like, but I wasn’t going to focus on that right now. This was a day that I wanted to savor every last minute of. 

Finally, I found my voice. “Nope. I think I can safely say that I never expected to be in a situation like this.” Then I glanced toward the other girl and added, “Especially not when we first met.” 

Koren, in turn, snorted while giving a vigorous nod. “Especially not when we met.” After a brief grimace, she offered a small shrug. “I guess that just goes to show how much things can change, huh?” She glanced over toward Wyatt before adding, “Really, really change.” 

“Here,” I raised my hand with a treat in it. “Try one of Grandmaria’s cookies. Believe me, you wanna talk about change you’ll look back on? 

“After this, everything in your life will be ‘before cookie’ and ‘after cookie.’”

*******

So, that was how Christmas went. Well, that was how Christmas with the family went. We exchanged presents and all that. Uncle Al did eventually show up, which started a whole other round of stories, especially when who he really was got pointed out. And yes, they all made me change into my werelion form to pose with him. It wasn’t exactly the same as a real Nemean Lion (I was entirely too tiny), but the others got a kick out of it anyway. 

All in all, it was fun. And I also spent time with others, besides family. It was an entire day of that stuff. Not to mention the fact that everyone else was still deep in partying mode after that whole protection spell thing. Which they had gotten Puriel and everyone else linked into, so hopefully they would be safe from Whisper counterattacks. And beyond that, they were apparently working on security updates on the station to keep them out or monitor for them. I’d tried to get more information, but Abigail basically gave me a hard stare and told me to enjoy Christmas. I sort of heard an unspoken ‘or else’ behind her words, so I left it alone for the moment. Abigail could be pretty scary in her own right when she wanted to be. 

Late that night, after almost everyone else had already gone to bed, I was sitting in the park part of our housing area, watching a few people on the forcefield elevators as they came down. I had both of the rings that I had inherited from that Seosten ghost hovering close to the ground in front of me, as Jaq and Gus played by hopping back and forth through them from both sides so they could be faster or slower. They were clearly amusing themselves quite a bit, and I couldn’t help but smile every time I glanced that way. 

“Well, it’s nice to see they’re having fun.” Asenath, seated beside me, noted. “Who gave them the Christmas hats?” 

Yeah, both cyberform mice were wearing little red Santa hats that had been attached to their equally-little heads. There were even tiny bells on the end that jingled softly whenever they did their hops back and forth. 

“Shiori,” I informed the other girl, as a fond smile found its way to my face at the thought. “I told them they didn’t have to wear the hats past the party, but you should have seen the look they gave me. I’m starting to think I’m going to have to get that girl to make a whole bunch of little hats for them to wear. Otherwise I’ll never get those ones off them.” 

With a very low chuckle, Senny took a small piece of metal about the size of the top of a soda can from her pocket and tossed it down for the pair to immediately start munching on from either side. “Well, I can’t exactly blame them. They are very stylish.” 

“That’s for sure,” I agreed, before looking toward her. “It must be weird for you. I mean, you grew up before the whole Santa myth was even–” 

“Myth?” She glanced to me and raised an eyebrow. “After all this time, you really find the story of Santa completely impossible to believe?” 

Her words made me squint at the girl. “You are not about to tell me that Santa Claus is real. I’m sorry, but if you say those words, I’m just going to get up and walk away.” 

She, in turn, gave a low laugh. “Okay, the answer is no, he’s not real. And yet he is. Sort of.” To my confused look, Senny waved a hand. “It’s the elves that are real. Or rather, the LVS.” When I didn’t get it, she spelled it out. “The L-V-S.” 

From there, she told me the story about the tiny creatures who had arrived on Earth with no memory of their past, and their only clues being a badly damaged ship with the letters L V S visible. Letters the collective amnesiac creatures had taken as their name. LVS or ‘elves.’ Apparently they had been helped a lot by the actual Saint Nicholas way back in the days that he had actually lived. Once he died, they spread his legend and basically helped create and push the whole Santa Claus thing. And they tried to give gifts as much as they could. Clearly, they couldn’t do the whole world or anything like that, but they did do what was possible. And any parents that happened to see brand new gifts under the tree with no explanation, well, that was covered by the Bystander Effect. If they even got that far. According to Asenath, a lot of people just assumed either the other parent or some relative left the gift. They ignored it. 

Hearing all that kind of made me want to meet these LVS, but apparently they were pretty notoriously secretive. Asenath herself had only met them one time, a few decades back. Still, I’d met enough important people in the past year and a half that I wasn’t going to rule out the possibility. 

Before I could say anything else about that, the phone in my pocket buzzed. I plucked it out and took a look before blinking. “Uh, maybe it’s a good thing you’re here,” I murmured. “It’s Jack Childs.” The Eden’s Garden Victor was calling me, and I could only think of one reason for that. 

“Hello?” I answered, hitting the speaker button. “It’s Flick, and Asenath is here too.” 

“Ah, good to hear,” came the response. “Heard a lot about you, Asenath. Good things, for the most part. And plenty of bad from the right sort of people.” 

“I do enjoy hearing that the right people have bad things to say about me,” Senny noted. 

We both heard the man chuckle. “Ain’t that the truth. Anyway, a happy Christmas to you both. But I think you know why I’m calling.” 

“You have a lead on Kyril Shamon’s secret prison,” I immediately replied. “I mean, where he might be keeping… Tiras.” As I said that, my eyes darted toward Asenath. She had gone a bit still, staring intently down at the phone. 

There was a very brief pause (which seemed to be a lot longer than it actually was) before Childs confirmed. “That’s right, we’ve got a lead on it. But even better, we have a lead on a transport that’s taking place. If you can take a group, subtly intercept that transport, and show up there, you’ll be able to get your entire group inside before they know anything’s wrong and when it all goes down, Shamon will think the Rebellion simply chased it down that way.” 

“So whatever resources you used to find out where it is won’t be burned,” I murmured thoughtfully. A part of me wanted to note that they also wouldn’t have to get their hands dirty, but I knew better than that. This was about more than Senny’s dad. As important as he was to her, and to Shiori and me by extension, there was a whole war for the world and beyond to deal with. The rebel Victors couldn’t blow every resource they had to help save one guy. Or even a full prison camp. 

“Yes,” came the response. “The transport isn’t for a couple weeks, but if you’re interested, you should start putting together a group to deal with it. Be ready to get into the camp, find the prisoners, and get out before Shamon finds out and sends reinforcements.” 

“Oh, we’re definitely interested,” I replied, smiling dangerously toward Senny. 

“Just give us the details. We’ll take care of the rest.” 

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Reception 13-01 (Heretical Edge 2)

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

A/N – The non-canon chapters for this story and for Summus Proelium were posted over the weekend. You can find the SP chapter here and the HE chapter here

“You remember when we were little kids back in school?” Miranda’s voice oh-so-innocently asked as the girl herself sat beside me at a table. I was pretty sure she was smiling, but couldn’t tell for sure, considering my head was down against said-table. “And we all used to make jokes and–uh, well fantasies for some of them about which of us would get married first?” Yeah, she was definitely smiling. Or smirking. “I seriously never thought you’d be the one to take that pot. Congratulations, I’m pretty sure there’s like twelve bucks in change, a handful of hair scrunchies, two stuffed animals, three tubes of the good chapstick out of the Laramie Falls Junior High vending machine, and that sweet Lego watch waiting for you back home.” 

Raising my head from the table, catching a glimpse of Koren, Sands, and Sarah sitting on the other side collectively snickering in the process, I turned toward Miranda next to me and squinted at the innocently-smiling girl. “You think this whole thing is just super funny, huh?” 

Randi, of course, gave a quick nod, even adding a thumbs up. “It’s fucking hilarious, dude. Come on, this immortal Revenant girl comes out of nowhere and says she’s your wife because you killed her husband and inherited his Necromancy power, which is the real thing she made her wedding vows to? Exactly how many people would something like that happen to? This has ‘Flick’s Life’ written all over it. And for once, it’s not something horrific or sad. Yeah, it’s funny.” 

“She’s got a point, Flick,” Sands put in while reaching across the table to gently poke my shoulder. “Seriously, how often does something insane happen to you that’s just… weird and kind of hilarious instead of terrible and violent? I mean, yeah the way she showed up was violent, but she saved us from that Nuckelavee! That’s gotta put her in the positive column, right?”

“Yeah, that’s definitely positive,” I confirmed. “She showed up and took out the monster, fantastic. She says she’s friendly, double-fantastic. She also says she has no interest in getting revenge for the whole killing her husband thing, which is just extra bonus fantastic levels. But…” 

As I trailed off, Miranda asked, “Are you afraid she’s just playing the long game and is more into the whole revenge thing than she’s letting on? You know, stab when no one’s looking?” 

Koren spoke up. “From what Mercury and Sariel said, that doesn’t really sound much like her either. It kinda sounded like what you see is what you get with that chick. She’s really straightforward. If she was pissed at you, she’d say so. Which uhh, kinda goes with what we saw, you know? She doesn’t really seem like the tricks and subterfuge type.” 

My head started to shake, then I hesitated before continuing to shake it. “No–I mean, yeah, you’re right. From what those two said, that didn’t really sound like her MO. Besides, they’re checking all that.” Turning my head slightly, I looked away from the table on the playground next to the motel where we were sitting, gazing off to the main building itself. In one of those rooms was where the Seosten, along with several others (including my mother), were having a long, magically assisted chat with this Persephone chick. They’d insisted on doing a full rundown without me present, just to make sure everything really was on the up-and-up with her. 

Behind me as I was looking toward the building, Sarah spoke quietly. “Avalon and Shiori.” 

Turning back and settling once more, I nodded. “Yeah, them. I’m not sure how they’ll react or how she’ll react to them. I mean, she says she doesn’t mean me any harm and that she’s in love with the power I have and loyal to it and all. But does that extend to being nice to the girls I love? Or anyone else I care about? I just–how much is she actually going to listen to me or care about what I care about? What if she decides only she gets me and turns violent against them?” 

The other four exchanged looks for a moment before Koren spoke again. “Uncle Wyatt’s in there, and Grandma. If she’s a danger to anyone here, they’ll sniff it out. And uhh, I’m just gonna guess she won’t really mind, Flick. Seriously, I’m gonna be super-surprised if she’s the strict monogamous sort. I mean, she’s definitely not the ‘til death do we part’ sort.” 

Snorting despite myself while the others outright snickered, I waved that off. “Right, yeah, okay. Point. And yeah, they’ll probably find anything wrong in that whole interrogation thing. I just… this whole thing is weird. Better weird than usual, but still weird.” My foot was tapping nervously against the floor. “She’s… she made an oath or a vow or whatever to Manakel’s power, and now it’s my power so she thinks it extends to me. It’s like inheriting an old grandfather clock in a will, and then finding out some other person has an arranged marriage with that clock, so now you’re married.” 

With a cough, Miranda offered, “Can I give you a little advice, old best friend? Maybe don’t tell the immortal Revenant chick the comparison about her being married to a clock.” 

Blanching a little, I shook my head. “Yeah, yeah. I didn’t mean it as an insult or anything. I mean, she seems fine. She saved us, she was friendly, I just–I’m worried about where this is going. Everything Sariel and Mercury said makes her out to be super-loyal to Manakel. Or, you know, to his power. Which I guess maybe translates into being loyal to me, or something? But she also seems, I dunno, unpredictable? I guess I’m just afraid that this ‘not a problem’ is going to turn into ‘very big problem’ as soon as she finds out I’m already romantically involved. Yeah, you’re right about the whole multiple loves thing being pretty accepted and all, I just… I’m really confused. And maybe just a little pessimistic that this totally random thing won’t find some way to turn out to be terrifying after all. Especially if I stop worrying about it.”

Miranda put her hand on my back, squeezing it. “Don’t worry, we get it. Everyone here knows why you might be… uhh, pretty hesitant to believe this isn’t some huge problem, believe me.”  

Sands nodded. “Yeah, totally. But I’m pretty sure this is more like Tristan showing up out of nowhere while you were on that jungle hike with Deveron, Wyatt, and Koren, you know?” 

“And hey,” Koren quickly put in, “He fell out of the sky too, remember? So it’s totally like that.” 

A very slight smirk found its way to my face as I looked around at all four of them. “You guys are pretty good at the whole encouragement thing. Thanks, I–I guess I really needed that.” Letting out a breath then, I straightened and gave a firm nod. “Kay, I’ll try to believe that this whole thing isn’t about to blow up in all of our faces, but I reserve the right to scream I told you so if it does.” 

“Thankfully,” Miranda pointed out, “I’m pretty sure if it does turn into a problem, we’ll all be too busy to listen.” Coughing, she added a flat, “Anyway, are you sure you’re not just hoping it turns into a problem so you don’t have to tell Avalon and Shiori that you’re freaking married?” 

Face flushing deeply, I gave a quick shake of my head while the others snickered. “Oh come on, I am not married. If anything, my Necromancy power’s married. Hell, only half of that’s married, just the part I got from Manakel. Half of one power I have is married. So like, that barely even counts as anything, right?” Saying that, I found myself looking around at a group of pretty dubious-looking friends, before muttering under my breath, “Well, it makes sense to me.” 

“That’s good!” Koren teased, “get your excuses and explanations ready before Avalon finds out.” 

That prompted another round of snickers while I extended my leg to kick her under the table, my face still pink. “Yeah yeah, laugh it up. Believe me, someday you’re gonna be in a situation like this, and I will totally take advantage.” Without missing a beat, I added over my shoulder toward the person my item-sense power had just detected, “And you’re not allowed to protect her from my eventual cunning revenge, Wyatt.”  

Stepping closer, my (much) older brother sniffed while stopping at the end of the table. “You’re very capable,” he informed me primly, “but you can’t stop me from protecting my family.” 

Squinting that way, I pointed out, “I’m your family too, you know. You could’ve been here protecting me from all this awful teasing and mockery.” 

There was a very brief pause as the gangly-looking man seemed unsure of how to respond to that. It was a little awkward, as if he knew he wanted to say something teasing back, but wasn’t quite to the point of knowing exactly how to do so. Wyatt had gotten a lot better over the past year with all this family and friend interaction, but there were still times he just lost it a bit. 

However, that only lasted for those momentary seconds before Koren whispered something into her hand, then made a flicking motion toward Wyatt. I heard nothing, but the way the man reacted made it clear that she had somehow… thrown the whisper to him? New power, obviously. 

Sure enough, Wyatt gave a very short nod toward Koren before focusing on me once more. His voice was calm as he spoke the retort she’d given him. “Tough diddies.” 

“That’s not wh–oh never mind,” Koren waved it off before asking, “So how’s it looking over there? Is she a secret murder-assassin just waiting to jump Flick?”

“Or,” Sands put in, “is she just waiting to jump Flick.” That made her and Miranda snicker. 

Sarah, kindly stepping on her sister’s foot, pointedly spoke up. “They mean, is she safe?” 

It took a moment for Wyatt to answer, while he collected his thoughts. Finally, the man confirmed, “She didn’t trip any guilt spells, or make any of the threat-indicators light up, and the danger-gel I made her hold stayed completely calm. Everyone checked her and she…” The next words looked like it took a lot for him to say. “She appears to be on the up-and-up.” Looking straight to me, he added, “Our mother is making her take a binding oath spell to do no intentional harm, nor intentionally allow harm, to you or anyone you care about. It’s being prepared right now by Mom, Sariel, Mercury, and two of the Victors on our side.”  

Raising an eyebrow, I asked, “You’re not there helping?” 

Wyatt, in turn, folded his arms, looking a little annoyed at himself. “I… might have gone a little overboard with the truth and danger sensing spells. They didn’t want to wait for me to recover. They said they have enough power to make them binding as it is.” 

Right, that made sense. He’d used so much magic making sure this woman wasn’t a threat, that he didn’t have enough left at the moment to contribute to the oath-making spell. Was it weird that I found that a little adorable despite everything? My brother really cared about what happened to me. 

As I was thinking about that, Wyatt continued. “They need you to come talk to her. The oath magic works better if you’re there for it.” His tone turned serious as he reached out to touch my arm. “But if she makes any funny moves or makes you feel uncomfortable, you say the word and she’ll be buried under so many trap spells it’ll take her a month to dig her way out.” 

“Good to know,” I replied easily while pushing myself up. Thanking the others and promising to let them know what happened, I headed off with Wyatt toward the motel building. On the way, I glanced over to him and asked, “So, what do you think of this woman? I mean, I know she’s really intense and all. And potentially dangerous, obviously. But what do you really think?”  

Wyatt didn’t answer at first. He was quiet, clearly considering the question. Which did a lot to show how much he had really changed over the past year. Before, he would have ranted on for an hour about how she was obviously plotting to kill all of us, and probably wear our skins or something. But now, while he was still suspicious, he was a lot more reasonable about it. He thought things through more and was much more in control of himself. Finally, as we were about halfway to the building, he answered. “You’re right, she could be dangerous. She’s very strong and hard to stop.” His long, beak-like nose had scrunched up a bit. “But I’ve learned two things about you this year. Okay, more than two. But two specific ones now. The first is that you’re really good at making enemies. Really horrible, strong, vicious enemies I can’t always be there to help with. Even with magic. They find a way to get past it if they have to.”

My mouth opened to say something, but he waved me off and continued. “The other important thing I’ve learned is that you’re also really good at making friends. So, my instinct is to say this girl is dangerous and just get rid of her. That’s what my brain wants to do. It’s what my heart wants to do. Just throw her out and be done with it. But we wouldn’t be done with it. Either she’d be angry and turn into a threat herself, or she just wouldn’t be here to help you with a different threat. She–she’s strong, capable, terrifying. And I’d rather you make her into a real friend, than me make her into an enemy. Even if she scares me. I… I trust you to handle it.” 

We had stopped outside the motel room by that point to finish all that. I didn’t speak at first, just looking at my awkward, wonderful, gangly, incredible brother. Then I stepped over and put both arms around him to hug tightly. “You’re pretty cool, you know that?” My voice was quiet, yet still audibly choked up. “I’m lucky to have someone like you.” 

Despite all the progress he had made, Wyatt was still reflexively stiff when I hugged him. But, after a brief moment, I felt his arms move down to return the embrace. His voice was a bit thick as well. “Be careful, okay? Not–not just because she’s dangerous. But because… because I think she’s fragile too. Not– she’s different. You could really hurt her if you wanted to.” 

That… yeah, that wasn’t at all what I’d expected him to say. Still, I nodded while releasing the man and stepping back. “Trust me, I’ll keep it in mind. The last thing I want to do is traumatize the millennia-old ghost-creature possessing an immortal dead body. Yeah, immortal dead. I said it.” 

With that promise, I turned to the motel, took in a breath before letting it out, and moved to knock on the door. Before my knuckles could actually make contact, however, it opened seemingly of its own volition, with nobody nearby. So, I shrugged before stepping in. The door closed behind me, leaving Wyatt to head back to the others. 

The motel room had had all the furniture taken out of it. The floor, walls, and ceiling were covered in various magic runes that were all centered around a single figure who stood in the middle. Persephone, of course. She stood there calmly, wearing only a sleeveless version of the Seosten bodysuit, arms extended out to either side with more spell-runes drawn along them. 

Meanwhile, Mom, Sariel, and Mercury were on one side of the room, with the two Victors opposite them. They were Jack Childs, the old cowboy from Fate’s Shepherds, and Fu Hao, the Asian woman who looked very young except for her ancient-looking eyes that had clearly seen an incredible number of years. She was one of the leaders of the Vigilant Sons. Seller and Avalon’s tribe, whom I might have had a pretty big problem with given how they had treated Valley. But apparently Fu Hao had already apologized and openly admitted fault for that. Which, given how old and powerful these people were, the fact that any of them were willing to admit when they were wrong meant a lot. I still wasn’t happy with what happened, except that if they hadn’t kicked Avalon out, I wouldn’t have met her the way I did, and–god, that same thing kept coming up, didn’t it? Bad things led to good things. It was all so complicated. 

Eyes lighting up when I entered the room, Persephone called out without moving, “Hello, beloved! Did you eat something yet? Was it good? I’ve heard very nice things about something called pizza on this planet. I’m very interested in trying it once we’re finished with all this.” She spoke so casually, as if she was just waiting for something like… toast to pop up rather than being put under an intense set of spells meant to ensure she wouldn’t kill any of us. 

Before I could say anything, Mom spoke up. “Felicity, come right up in front of her. It’s okay. Put your hands on her shoulders and we’ll finish the spell. Persephone, you know how it works.” 

The white-haired woman remained completely motionless, even as she cheerfully confirmed, “Don’t move an inch or the spell gets messed up! You got it, no moving. I am a tree. Except I smell better.” Her eyes found mine as she amended, “Not that trees smell bad, but you should sniff me, Honeycakes.” After a brief pause, she noted, “I smell like honeycake.” 

Moving that way, I hesitated uncertainly before putting both hands on the woman’s shoulders. She was taller than me by a couple inches, but shorter than Avalon. Speaking… completely academically, she was also incredibly beautiful. Like any Seosten, really. She had that totally snow-white hair and tanned skin, with a slim figure that– yeah. And yes, she absolutely smelled like vanilla cake and honey. It made me blush a little. Especially when she smiled brightly at me, clearly knowing exactly how I was reacting to all that. Oh boy, because this whole thing hadn’t already been awkward enough.  

So, for the next few minutes, I stood there basically face to face with this woman who kept calling herself my wife. Which would’ve been so much easier to deal with if she wasn’t so attractive. And cool. Seriously, she flew down out of the sky and completely exploded a Nuckelavee to introduce herself. It was–no, Flick. Knock it off. Firmly telling myself to push those thoughts aside, I focused on just looking at Persephone. 

Okay, scratch that. I focused on closing my eyes and pretending I was somewhere else. Somewhere with cake and honey. 

Damn it. 

I knew why the spell was taking awhile. Even with two strong Seosten, my mother, and a couple Victors, a Revenant was incredibly hard to target with magic that would actually stick. And one like this, who had found a body as powerful and long-lasting as Persephone had, took even more effort and time. Oh, sure, they could’ve hit her with a teleportation spell or something quite easily, shifted her somewhere else. But for an ongoing effect like this, one that would give even her enough trouble if she started to turn against us, it took a lot. According to Sariel, when they were back on the Olympus, only two people had been able to tell Persephone what to do. The first was Manakel, with the very same Necromancy power that attracted her to him in the first place. And the other was Puriel, who was basically a god when it came to magic. 

But in this case, we had enough power to put the spell on her. Plus, she was willingly cooperating, which helped. She could probably break the spell, but doing so would alert basically everyone Mom was including in the spell, so Persephone going bad would result in a whole bunch of people jumping in, while the Revenant herself was buried under a heap of targeted trap spells. They wouldn’t stop her forever, but they would, with any luck, slow her down. It was the best we could do. Between that and my own ability to sort-of control or at least push her with my Necromancy (I wasn’t as good with it as Manakel had been, so I couldn’t just order her around), this whole thing was as safe as we could make it.   

Finally, with a rush of power that even I felt closing in all around us to culminate in a burst that made my ears pop, it was done. Mom stepped over, putting her hand on my arm to tug me back. “There,” she said quietly, her eyes on Persephone. “You say you want to spend time with my daughter. You can do that, but… when she tells you to back off, do it. Sariel has an extra room you can use. You live with her, not with Felicity. You give her space when she needs it.” 

“Of course, Mother!” the woman cheerfully replied, “we wouldn’t want to rush things.” 

Oh boy. Yeah, Mom had her own reaction to that. But before she could get too into it, I quickly turned to the two Victors, who were starting to leave. “Uhh, um, excuse me?” 

Fu Hao and Childs exchanged brief looks before turning to me, the Asian woman curiously asking, “May we help you with something else?” 

Pushing aside the thought that it was really weird to ask them for anything else after they’d already done this much, I nodded. “Yeah, I uhh, I sure hope so. 

“Let’s just say I have a friend who really needs some help when it comes to one of your old colleagues.”

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Long Awaited 12-06 (Heretical Edge 2)

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I didn’t need much sleep, obviously. But I did stay in bed with my girls for as long as possible. I just laid there and enjoyed being with them while not having anything super-immediate and right in my face that had to be taken care of. Sure, there were things to do, but they could either wait on their own, or we had no choice but to wait because we had no way of affecting the situation yet. Whichever, the point was, I had no flashing life-or-death emergencies at the moment. 

Eventually, of course, I did need to get up and move around. I extricated myself from the bed and slipped downstairs, heading outside to practice with my staff in the backyard. I was mostly just running through some training drills, moving almost entirely on autopilot. It helped me clear my head a bit, even with the audience I attracted as Raphael, Eiji’s rhino cyberform in the backyard next door, moseyed over to the chain link fence and watched me curiously. Of course, I sent Jaq and Gus over there to keep him company, which led to both of the mice perching on each of the rhino’s horns so that all three could watch as I did my thing. I had the feeling that If any of the three that had the ability and materials to write, they would have held up number cards like a scoring table. Actually, come to think of it, that would be a pretty good skill to teach them. Could they learn to write? Because that would be a good way of passing information or relaying an emergency when we didn’t have any other way of–later. I’d think about it later. 

Another thing I had to think about for later was replacing the wristband that had previously allowed me to teleport myself to where my mice were or vice versa. It had been destroyed at Fossor’s, and now that I was back, I really needed a new one. 

When I was done staff-training, I took a jog around the neighborhood. Between my enhanced speed, strength, and stamina, taking a little jog wasn’t exactly going to do a lot for me. Or anything at all, really. But it passed the time and I enjoyed it. Plus, it was a way of re-acclimating myself to the neighborhood, considering how long it had been since I’d actually lived here. God, it felt like I’d been gone for a year, not just a couple months. One of which I’d literally skipped over. I didn’t even know what day it was. Seriously, Petan and his people had made such a big deal about getting me back to the right day, but it had all been in relation to when Fossor’s spell was cast, and was more of a… conceptual date for me. I had the vague idea that it was late November, but God only knew exactly which day. Was it close to Thanksgiving? Had we already passed it? Actually, yeah we had. Fossor made us have that… feast. But I still wasn’t sure what day it actually was. Did it really matter? Probably not, but I was curious. Honestly, I wanted to know when the first real holiday would be where Mom would actually be with us. Mom here with us and safe, Dad safe, my paternal grandparents… not exactly here, but on their way. Hell, maybe they’d make it before Christmas. Wouldn’t getting them back here be a great way to celebrate everything? 

Yeah, okay, my whole family situation was still complicated. Especially when you added in Dare and that whole… yeah. But still, I wasn’t going to let that get me down. This was basically the best condition my family had been in in years. My mother was here, and whatever happened next, she would be with us. Fossor hadn’t won. He’d lost. He was dead. I could let myself be happy about that, damn it. The universe wasn’t going to implode just because I let myself be a little optimistic about things. Not cocky or dismissive, just… optimistic. That was safe, right? 

Eventually, I worked my way back to the house, where I went inside and met up with Rebecca, Miranda, Doug, and Jason, who were all in the kitchen making breakfast together. When I came in, they had a whole thing about welcoming me home and all. It was pretty cute, especially when Jason held up a banner he’d made with those very words across it, which looked so hastily-done I was pretty sure he’d scribbled it out when he saw me coming back from jogging (which, given his ability to multitask, he’d probably done while preparing the food). I didn’t care. I exchanged embraces with everyone, thanking them. Most of them I’d already reunited with back at the Atherby camp before, or on the literal battlefield where Fossor had died. But I still hugged them all as if I hadn’t seen them in years. It was really good to be home, in more than one way. 

Pretty soon, they all went back to getting breakfast ready. I did my best to help, which mostly meant doing exactly what I was told and staying away from the stove just in case. It seemed to work, because nothing blew up and the pancakes, eggs, and sausage all managed to survive without being burnt to a crisp. Which was good, because Tabbris, Avalon, Columbus, Shiori, and Triss had joined us by that point, so there were a lot of hungry stomachs.

Shiori let Choo out of his ball (it wasn’t like he was cramped in there or anything, given the size of the pocket dimension within) in the backyard. The poor guy had exhausted himself during the fight back on the Meregan world and had slept through basically the entire flight home and all that. I couldn’t blame him either. That had been a huge, nasty fight, and the big guy really came through. As far as I was concerned, he’d earned all the naps and extra food he wanted. 

Shiori, of course, had no intention of giving him sausage. Yeah, it wasn’t exactly cannibalism given he wasn’t really a normal pig and all that. But, as she put it, it was close enough to be uncomfortable. Still, he got his share of pancakes and eggs, and he really seemed to enjoy them. We could hear the Jekern happily going at it in the big feeding bowl on the back porch. 

“Should we be saving some of this for Kersel?” I spoke up while everything was being passed around. The wooden Relekun guy was the only member of our house who wasn’t down here, and I kind of felt bad. I didn’t know him very well, or really at all. But still, he was part of the house, even if he did tend to keep to himself. 

“He’s kind of a vegetarian,” Jason informed me with a glance toward the others. “He’s got his own stuff in the fridge. Just make sure you don’t eat or drink anything with his name on it.  Seriously, he gets really particular about that.” The boy said that while scratching the back of his neck in a way that made it clear he’d been on the wrong side of that ‘particularness.’ 

Rebecca spoke up then. “He’s just kind of… shy. Okay, not shy. He doesn’t like to be around people very much. It’s not just Heretics either. Err, Boschers. It’s not just Boschers like us. He doesn’t like crowds or loud noises or having to talk to people in general. He just… keeps to himself. He doesn’t even say much in class.” 

Briefly, I wondered if that had anything to do with an experience the Relekun boy had had, or if it was just the way he was without any tragic backstory. Either way, pushing on that front was probably overstepping to the point of rudeness. He deserved some privacy. So, I focused on the people who were here. And on eating a little bit of breakfast. Emphasis on little bit, considering I still had to eat something with Mom and Dad. No way was I going to miss out on that, no matter how good this breakfast was. 

“Actually, hey, is it a school day?” I suddenly found myself blurting. “I don’t even know what the date is. Or anything.”

That made everyone exchange glances before Avalon answered, “It’s Tuesday, November 27th. They cancelled classes for a few days to let everyone celebrate Fossor dying.” 

“Oh,” I murmured. Yeah, of course that was a big deal for everyone else too. He’d sort of terrorized and murdered a hell of a lot more people than just my family. 

Tabbris, who had been running around the backyard with Choo after scarfing down about half a plate of food (she was holding out for family breakfast too), came trotting back in, out of breath and moved to take several gulps from her own glass of juice. Watching that, I chuckled softly. “Okay, well, thanks for the welcome breakfast, guys. And the banner.” I gestured to where Jason had hung the sad, but cute little thing across the wall with tape. “This is all awesome. And hopefully, this time I’ll stick around long enough to–” 

“Chambers,” Avalon spoke warningly, her gaze intent on me. “Do I need to get a spray bottle and start squirting you and hissing every time you try to tempt fate?” 

Coughing, I shook my head. “No, ma’am.” With that, I pushed myself up and exchanged a kiss with both her and Shiori. Promising to come find each of them later (And, in the latter’s case, that I would talk to Asenath about whatever her thing was), I said goodbye to the others and headed out with Tabbris to go upstairs. The two of us made our way through the maze of corridors to find the right door. Mostly thanks to my Seosten little sister and her perfect memory, of course. 

The door unlocked for us automatically, and we stepped inside just in time to hear laughing and the sound of pots and pans clanging in the kitchen. Exchanging brief glances, we moved that way, finding Mom and Dad working around the stove, chatting with each other. Mostly Mom was teasing him about never learning how to make real food, while he insisted there was some kind of magic anti-cooking curse specifically targeting him, which had clearly passed down to me. 

They were both just… laughing and talking and teasing each other. For a moment, Tabbris and I stood there, taking that in. She reached out to take my hand, squeezing it while giving me a quick, happy look. It was a look that I returned. 

Mom knew we were there, of course. Eventually, she waved us in and set us to different chores for getting this breakfast ready. Omelettes. She was making omelettes. Tabbris and I jumped to follow instructions, and soon the four of us were joined by Deveron, Abigail, Wyatt, and Koren. Then the kitchen was really busy. Not to mention loud. Everyone was talking back and forth, food was sizzling, we were all joking, teasing… laughing… being a family. We were being a family. It was… wow. 

Wyatt even let Corporal Kickwhiskers wander around on the floor, where he, Jaq, and Gus chased each other back and forth through the living room. Of course, Wyatt said it was good training for the little cat’s hunting instincts and ability to quickly assess and adjust to potential danger. I wasn’t sure what kind of training ‘lots of scritches from everyone in the room’ was, but Kickwhiskers definitely got that too. We ate, we talked, we laughed, it was all great. Just… really great. And nothing interrupted. There were no explosions, no sudden emergencies or problems. We got through that entire full breakfast together, and another hour or so afterward of just talking. Deveron told a story about Mom as a student when she was organizing some kind of protest about the way Ruthers was running this one training tournament, and how the old Crossroads Headmaster had practically ripped his hair out because of all the shit she had been piling onto him from getting the other students involved in that whole thing. It sounded pretty great, and I could see just how much they loved each other in the way he and Mom exchanged glances. It was the same sort of look I’d also been seeing between her and Dad. It was–yeah. That was definitely complicated. I was glad that my own joint relationships were more… had started at the same time, basically. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be involved with Avalon for literally decades, then lose and eventually completely forget her for decades, get involved with Shiori, then get my memories of Avalon back. It was all… yeah, complicated. But they seemed to be working their way through it, even if it was clearly going to take time to really figure it out. 

Seeing Mom with Abigail, Wyatt, and Koren was kind of amazing too. For awhile, I just sat back and watched the four of them interact. Koren actually seemed to be the most comfortable, even repeatedly calling her ‘Grandma’ in what I was pretty sure was meant to be a teasing way. But Mom seemed to like it. She chuckled, pulled Koren over to sit on her lap, and started teasing her right back, about what kind of student she was, what kind of boys she might like and if there was anyone special, just general stuff like that. Which made Koren bring up that Wyatt had a thing for Croc over at Eden’s Garden, leading to a whole bunch of chattering back and forth. Wyatt himself seemed kind of overwhelmed and a little reflexively defensive, but he settled down easily enough. Especially when Mom went on to talk about memories she had of Croc, something Wyatt was pretty interested in. I had no idea how that whole thing was going, but apparently he had spent some more time with the guy. Which was great. I really, really wanted good things for Wyatt. After the kind of life he’d had to lead to all his issues, he deserved as many of those as possible. Thankfully, this moment right here counted. For both of us, actually. 

Come to think of it, we all deserved this and more. Tabbris had spent years basically alone. No, worse, she was around Dad and me but had to hide from us. Deveron had lost his wife and children for almost a century. Wyatt had been raised by horrible people who gave him all sorts of legitimate paranoia issues. Dad himself lost his wife for years, thinking she had intentionally abandoned him and his daughter, me. Koren had spent years with the spectre of the Hiding Man looming over her, and the trauma of all that in her memories while no one else in her family remembered anything. 

Out of all of us, Abigail had apparently had the most normal life up until she was traumatically brought into this by that same Fomorian monster. But even she’d been taken away from her real mother, father, and twin brother, and had to grow up in a different place, with different people. I hoped she had a happy childhood and all, but either way, she was still kidnapped from her family. She still lost time, moments, memories that she should have had. Even if it did lead to her having Koren, whom she clearly wouldn’t give up for anything. Hell, that was like the fact that Mom losing everything in Heretic society had led to her having me. It was… complicated. Even Abigail finally being brought into things had come with the cost of losing her husband. And Koren losing her father. He was a man I never knew anything about, and the Fomorian piece of shit had just murdered him to take his place for fun.

So yeah, we all deserved to have as many of these moments, these breakfasts, these mornings, these days as possible. We deserved to have years and years of them all in a row, without interruption. We’d never get that, of course. Hell, lots of stuff was already lining up to call for our attention within the next few months, let alone years. So, I would just enjoy these moments when they came. I would gorge myself on the enjoyment of just being with my family. 

Eventually, Mom asked if I wanted to go for a walk with her. And, judging from the way she was looking at me, I was pretty sure there was something important she wanted to talk about in the process. Of course, I wasn’t going to object to spending more time with her, so we excused ourselves, heading out with just the two of us. 

Whatever Mom wanted to talk about, she didn’t immediately get into it. So, I just showed her around the station for a while, mostly focusing on the school and adult student living areas, considering those were really the only places that I knew. There were a lot of people who wanted to see Mom and ask her questions. That part was unsurprising, but there were others who wanted to talk to me. Yeah, apparently the fact that I had been the one to finally get the killing blow on Fossor had been spreading around, and people wanted to talk about how that felt, or just shake my hand. It was awkward, especially when a couple people asked if I’d really picked up his necromancy and wanted to know if I’d show it to them. 

Thankfully, Mom helped extricate me from the most awkward situations without hurting anyone’s feelings or being rude. She was smooth and very charismatic with them. Better than I ever could have been, that was for sure. If I’d ever had any question as to how she could have been the one to lead that first rebellion, which I really didn’t, I wouldn’t have after this. 

In any case, we talked to people, we wandered around, and I showed her the house I was now living in, along with the others in the neighborhood. I was going to ask if she wanted to go inside and see the others, but Mom suggested we walked to the park so she could talk, and show me something. What she wanted to show me, I had no idea. But it was clearly something important.

Whatever it was would take me a few more minutes to find out, apparently, because when we got to the park, a voice called out my name. It was Asenath, approaching along with Twister. Both of them were focused on me being there, but stopped short when my mother turned that way. 

“Asenath,” Mom immediately greeted, “and Twister. You’re still going by Twister, right? I’d hate to think you went and changed nicknames when you forgot about me.” 

“Forgot you came up with it,” the Pooka girl cheerfully answered, “but I definitely didn’t forget the name. It’s a hell of a lot better than Esevene, that’s for sure.” That said, she made a fist and bumped it against Mom’s. “Still looking good, Jossy.” 

“I’d say the same to you,” my mother replied, “but you’re a bit shorter than I remember you being. Gotta watch out for the people you piss off.”

“Right back atcha, babe,” Twister retorted. 

With that, Asenath coughed and reached out to take Mom’s hand, squeezing it firmly before speaking up. “It is great to see you around again, Joselyn. And to remember who you are.”   

“I enjoy all of that too,” Mom confirmed with a soft smile, pulling Asenath into an embrace. “And I’m glad to hear that you helped my daughter here more than once.” 

Glancing my way, Asenath gave a short nod. “Yeah, well, I sort of tripped over her when I was trying to help the mother of a dead girl get some justice. I–” 

Mom interrupted. “That’s what I wanted to talk to Felicity about, actually. It’s good you’re here.” She glanced toward Twister before adding, “good all of you are here.” She hesitated then, taking a breath before letting it out. “As… you all know, my son… my youngest son, Ammon, was… killed.” Her voice was quiet, and she spoke up quickly when the three of us looked at each other. “Fossor destroyed him long before he… long before he was finally killed. And by that point, the death was more of a mercy. Not only for him, but for everyone else he would have hurt and killed because of what Fossor turned him into.” Even as she said the words, Mom’s voice cracked. I knew it was hurting her to say all this, hurting her to even think that one of her children dying was a good thing. 

She kept going before any of us could find the right words to say anything. “But, you should also all know that he used his power on a man named Scott, and made him kill himself. Scott, he’s a–” 

“A Pooka,” I suddenly put in, a mixture of dread and confusion suddenly rising up in me as I glanced toward Twister. “Wait, Mom. Wait. Are you saying… are you telling us that–” 

Mom, instead of answering, took a phone from her pocket. “I asked a friend to go over and record this for me yesterday before we went on the ship. Watch.” Her voice was quiet as she held the phone up, playing a video on it. 

Twister, Asenath, and I exchanged pretty loaded glances once more before focusing on the screen. There, we saw a house. It was a pretty simple, suburban place. My fists were tight as I waited to see my Pooka-resurrected half-brother show up. How could this be happening? Would he be evil again? He had to be, right? They got all their memories back eventually, so everything that he’d been, everything that he was and what he’d done, it would all–

The front door of the house opened, and a girl emerged. She looked to be about eleven years old or so, with dark hair and a quick smile as she shouted over her shoulder that she was going to someone named Carly’s house. Whoever was taking the video must’ve been invisible or something, because the girl didn’t even look at them despite jogging down the sidewalk right in front of the camera. Watching her, I felt a sense of familiarity somehow. It was like I knew the girl from somewhere. Seriously, I knew her. It was right there on the tip of my tongue.

When she got right up close, her face framed in the video, Asenath suddenly snapped her hand out with vampire speed, pausing it. She was even more pale than usual. “That’s… that’s… how? I know that face. She’s younger now, but I know her. It’s the girl from the gas station. The girl Ammon murdered. Joselyn, how the fuck is Denise Cartland alive? And why is she a kid?” 

“Simple,” came Mom’s quiet response. 

“I used my son’s Pooka respawn power to bring her back, instead of him.” 

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Triumph 10-07 (Heretical Edge 2)

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“So,” my dad faux-casually began, “exactly how long would you say you made it without getting yourself involved in another life and death struggle after Fossor died? An hour? Maybe less?” 

It was a short time after the meeting with Jophiel and Sachael. We’d left them behind with the agreement to meet the next evening, after everyone had plenty of rest. Jophiel didn’t like letting Elisabet wait that long, of course. But we had all exhausted ourselves way too much. Even if we weren’t planning on any actual Fomorian fighting (or at least as little as possible) by just jumping in, grabbing those two, and getting out again, going in this shape was a bad idea. Because whatever our intentions, we could get into another brawl. And against Fomorian-created creatures, a brawl could turn into total fucking suicide if we went in there tired. 

We had to rest for the night. Honestly, we should have rested for a week, or even a month. But there was no way in seventy-four hells that Jophiel would wait that long. We were lucky she was even waiting this much. I wasn’t sure how I would’ve felt or acted in her situation if it was either of my girls. Or Tabbris. Or–yeah. I knew just how desperate she was right now. 

In any case, we made it back and I went to where my family was to explain what was going on. Guilty as I felt for bringing the mood down right then, they all needed to know the situation. 

Cringing a little at Dad’s words, I offered a weak, “Is it better or worse if the answer is somewhere in the negative numbers, since I agreed to this rescue mission before I ever came back to the present in the first place? The only reason I was able to come back here, the only reason I wasn’t Fossor’s prisoner in the future, is because of Elisabet and Dexamene. Without them, I wouldn’t have made it back here to stop Fossor, period. I can’t abandon them now. No matter how much I just want to… enjoy this.” With those words, I cast a guilty look toward my mother. God, how I wished I didn’t have to deal with this now. My mother was back. After all these years, after all that trauma, she was here. She was here! She was right in front of me. 

But happy as I was to have her here, it would be nothing if I ignored Dexamene and Elisabet. They deserved to be here too. They certainly didn’t deserve to end up either killed or captured by the Fomorians, with the former being the absolute best-case scenario as far as that went. 

It was Deveron who spoke first. “She’s right. We can’t just abandon them. Not after what they did.” He was looking to Mom as he said it, and I realized he was simply saying what she would have. “We all know what the Fomorians are like. Not all of us firsthand, and none of us have faced a full invasion like the one that Gaia and Jos’s parents ended. But… but we all know.” 

“Yes,” Mom agreed. She hesitated, looking over the large front room of the cabin we were in. Deveron stood by the fireplace, with Koren sitting in front of it, perched on the fancy-looking stonework. A bit to the side was a long table, where Abigail and Wyatt sat. Dad was standing by the same table. Lillian (my mother considered her family), who had come while I was away, was standing next to him. And Mom was in the middle of the room, closer to where Tabbris and I were. She had come over to greet me when we came in, then stepped back after that quick yet tight embrace to let me get that whole story out. 

Now, she asked, “You said something about a… ship to get there.” 

With a quick nod, I explained about the prototype Seosten ship, and how they’d been working on getting it to make those instant jumps again. “They think it can probably do a jump there and back. We just have to be careful. You know, come in away from the Meregan world, fly down to get those two, then fly away and jump out when it’s safe.” 

Wyatt immediately piped up, “What if they’re dead already? The Committee woman and the Nereid. What if they’re dead and the Fomorians are waiting for someone to rescue them because they’ve already loaded up the bodies with booby traps, with biological weapons. Then you show up, think they’re alive, bring them back here, and unleash a plague.” 

“Well,” I pointed out with a shrug, “I’m pretty sure I can tell if they’re dead. I mean…” Trailing off, I felt a sharp queasiness form in my stomach at even bringing it up. “I have his power. Not his skill or anything, but between him and Manakel, I think I can tell when someone’s dead. And even if they pull some artificial life biomancer thing, I’ll make sure it’s really them.”

“We’ll make sure,” Mom amended. “There are ways.” 

“Damn right, there’s ways,” Lillian put in, stepping over to stand closer to my mother. “No one’s bringing those two anywhere sensitive until everyone’s one hundred percent sure they’re safe.” 

Wyatt, in a flat voice, retorted, “No one is ever one hundred percent safe. Eighty-seven percent is the absolute highest ‘safe’ level I’ve ever given anyone.”

“You mean besides yourself,” I pointed out. 

Koren, however, piped up with, “No, he’s eighty-five. And that’s a recent upgrade.” 

“I could have been compromised as a child,” Wyatt promptly agreed, giving a slight nod and one of his lopsided, goofy smiles toward the girl who had practically become his protege over the past year. “I can’t account for my whereabouts or memories of the first few years of my life. For all I know, I’m a shapeshifter who took over the real Wyatt as a child and had my memory wiped with implanted triggers. Stranger things have happened.” 

“I really wish I could argue with that last point,” I muttered while shaking my head. “Anyway, um, yeah, they’re working on prepping the ship. Should be ready tomorrow evening. Hopefully.” 

“You’ll need a group to go with, in case things turn sideways,” Lillian noted quietly. “People strong enough to deal with Fomorian threats long enough to get the hell out of there.” 

I nodded. “Like I said, Sachael’s going. Between him, Jophiel, Sariel, and Athena, we have four Olympians. And Haiden’s coming with, he’s pretty strong too. Tristan won’t let anyone go without him, not when it comes to Dexamene. And Vanessa won’t let the rest of her family go without her. Plus, I’m pretty sure Larissa won’t let Haiden and Sariel go potentially face Fomorians without coming along. Not after what… what happened back on that boat.”

With a sigh, Abigail spoke up. “I don’t suppose pointing out that none of you children should be going anywhere after what you’ve been through would do any good. You just… you just fought that monster. You don’t need to be rushing into this nightmare. I’ve… seen and… felt what those Fomorians do, what they’re capable of. Even if you don’t get into a fight, just–just seeing those things…” 

“None of us are children,” I pointed out as gently as I could. Technically, Tabbris was. But even then, she’d always been more than that. She’d never had a normal childhood and never would. The point stood. “We’re young, yeah. But so is Dexamene. And neither she or Elisabet deserve to be caught by those monsters. They helped me. They saved me. Dex put herself in that situation specifically to save me, to save everyone here. If I wasn’t willing to put myself in danger to get her out of it, what kind of person would I be?” 

Both Abigail and my dad looked like they wanted to argue with that. But they couldn’t. Mom, however, stepped over and pulled me to her in a tight embrace. “That’s my girl.” 

“You’re going too, aren’t you?” That was Deveron, watching her knowingly. “Five minutes out from being Fossor’s prisoner for a decade, and you’re about to throw yourself into a rescue mission against the Fomorians.” 

“Of course she is,” Dad agreed, folding his arms as he stared at both of us. “If Felicity’s going, Joselyn is. Even if she wasn’t,” he amended immediately, realizing that my going or not wasn’t the only deciding factor. It was just who his wife was. 

“Would either of you have married me if I was someone who could walk away from this?” Mom pointed out, still holding me to her as she squinted pointedly back and forth between them. 

Dad and Deveron both glanced to one another, and I saw a moment of what seemed to be silent conversation before each flushed and turned away. Dad cleared his throat, looking at my mother. “I know this goes without saying, but be careful, Jos. Please. We just got you back. Both of you. I couldn’t–” His voice choked itself off briefly before he gave a sharp shake of his head. “Be careful.” He sounded strained, like it was all he could do not to start shouting about us going into danger yet again, so soon. Honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed him if he did start yelling. I kind of wanted to yell at myself. But I also meant what I’d said. I couldn’t live with myself if I abandoned Elisabet and Dexamene to the Fomorians after everything they’d done to help me. Hell, I couldn’t have lived with myself for abandoning basically anyone to the Fomorians. 

“We don’t need to worry about it right now,” I pointed out after forcing those thoughts down. “We’ve gotta wait until tomorrow night for the rescue mission anyway. Nothing else we can do about it until then. So how about we just enjoy tonight and deal with all that later?” I felt shitty about interrupting Mom’s (and mine, I supposed) welcome home party with all that. But they’d wanted to know where I went and what was so important. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should’ve kept quiet about it until the next day.

Either way, everyone got back to the actual celebrating part pretty easily. Deveron started to say something apparently embarrassing about Mom from when they were in school, before she shut him down with a hard kick, hissing something at him about their kids being present. Then Lillian whispered something in her ear that I didn’t catch, but it made Mom turn red. 

Abigail had stood up by that point, clearing her throat, “Ah, girls, why don’t we go check out the rest of the party for a little while? At least some of us should make appearances before the crowd starts wondering if you all got kidnapped again.” She started ushering Koren, Tabbris, and me toward the door with an added, “Come on, Wyatt.” 

“Yes, I’ll ahh, help you with the crowd.” That was Lillian, who patted my dad on the shoulder before moving to join us. 

I knew what they were doing, what the whole deal with getting the rest of us out of the room to leave Mom there with Deveron and my dad was about. They deserved some time alone to figure out their whole thing. Especially after so many years and horrible things. But equally, I reeeeally didn’t want to think about any of that. 

So, after giving Mom and Dad both a quick, lingering embrace and promising I wouldn’t get kidnapped for at least a few minutes (hardy har har), I headed out with the others, to join the much louder area outside, where everyone was still partying like it was New Years or something. From the look and sound of things, they really didn’t need any us to be present right now. They were well and truly off to a rousing celebration completely on their own. One which, I was pretty sure, wouldn’t be ending any time within the next several hours. Or possibly days, for some of them. 

Which was good, because the moment we stepped outside, Shiori and Avalon were right there. I ended up being pulled out of the way with a few quick words about how they’d bring me back. Then we were off to another part of the camp, as I managed a weak, “You know, I just promised my parents I wouldn’t get kidnapped again like, fifteen seconds ago. And yet, here we are.”

“Guess we’ll just have to make breaking your word worth it, won’t we?” That was Valley, who immediately suited action to word by giving me a firm push up against the back wall of the cabin the two of them had dragged me to. 

Then, for a good long while, I forgot all about what was going on with my parents, and about the party itself. And to be honest? Yeah, it was totally worth it. 

******

“Mom?” Hours later, the two of us were standing hip-deep in the lake. I had just finished introducing her to my sharks, and apologized to them for being away for so long. I’d already thanked Tabbris, as well as Shiori and Avalon, for making sure they had enough fish to eat, and for playing with them. 

“Yes, Lissy?” Mom was brushing Quint, one of the Mako sharks. She’d been marveling a bit at how my power had actually made it possible to touch their skin like that without cutting up your hand. Well, cutting up a normal person’s hand anyway. I was pretty sure she was too tough for that to begin with. 

“I was asking Namythiet about that Wandering Woman Ruthers was talking about, and she said that she’s like… one of the first Heretics? Do you know anything about her? The way he was talking, it sounds like you do.” 

For a moment, my mother didn’t answer. She reached out to brush the snout of Brody, the other Mako shark, who had clearly been jealous of his brother. Finally, after a few seconds of silence, she replied, “Yes, I know a bit about her. We’ve had an encounter or two.” 

“Why does Ruthers think I should visit her?” I hesitantly asked, too curious to avoid the question now. 

Mom’s gaze rose to me. “Because he thinks you should give up Fossor’s necromancy.” 

The answer made me blink. “Wha–give it up? Is that even possible?” 

Again, Mom was quiet for a long few seconds before she spoke. “The Wandering Woman, Werethekau, the Witch of Endor, Isis, Freyja, any name you want to give her, she is one of the most powerful beings I’ve ever heard of, let alone encountered. She was bonded to a Primal.” 

“That’s what Namythiet said,” I hesitantly put in. “She said they were the beings who um, who made the weapons King Oberon uses up in Canada, the ones who lived here before the first humans, back around the time of the dinosaurs.” 

With a little nod, Mom explained, “Werethekau was a primitive human, one of the first from the time of stone tools, who found one of the last living Primals. One of the first of one species to find one of the last of another. No one knows what happened, but she was bonded. And in that bonding, she gained the strongest gift anyone has ever seen. The ability to undo.” 

Her words made me blink. “The ability to undo?” 

Mom’s gaze was intense. “Anything or anyone Werethekau focuses on, she can rewind the results of specific events. If you break a stick, she can unbreak it. Shatter a window, she can unshatter it. Stab a man in the heart, she can heal the injury as if it never happened. Cut every limb off, sever the head, burn the body, bury the ashes in seven different continents, she can think about that person and erase it. She can bring him back from all of that. 

“But it goes further than that. She can erase skills by rewinding the fact that you learned them. Blow up a building and she can rewind that, restore the entire place and everyone in it. And–” 

“And she can take away powers by erasing the fact that you got them,” I finished in a breath, staring open-mouthed at her. “How–how is she not ruling the entire universe right now?” 

Mom shrugged. “She has no desire to. That and I’m sure there’s limits to what she can do, but as far as most people are concerned, that might as well be chipmunks guessing about the limits of human beings. No one knows what she wants, honestly. She’s mysterious. You can find her if you know how–correction, you can try to find her if you know how, and if she feels like it, she might respond. Or she might not. You might wait a day for her, or a year, or longer. She goes and does as she pleases. She, ahh, wanders. She has existed since the time of primitive man, simply rewinding any effects of age.” 

“She’s the one who taught people here on Earth how to block time-stop spells, she–” Coughing, I realized, “It’s time-magic. Erasing injuries, restoring people from death, fixing broken things, even removing people’s powers and skills, it’s all about manipulating time. I mean, sort of. Manipulating the effects through time?” Squinting, I shook my head. “I’m not–never mind, I’m gonna go cross-eyed if I try to figure out how that actually works. But this–you’re right, Ruthers wants me to get rid of Fossor’s Necromancy. He wants me to ask this Wandering Woman to use her power to take it away. But that won’t bring Fossor back?” 

“It will not erase the fact that you killed him,” Mom quietly assured me, “only the fact that you inherited his power.” 

Staring at her, I muttered, “He wants it gone. Ruthers doesn’t want anyone to have Fossor’s necromancy. I mean, he doesn’t want the power to even exist.” 

With a sigh, Mom replied, “As long as he’s lived, he’s never understood that it’s the actions, not the powers, that make someone good or evil.” Then she looked over her shoulder at me. “But, in his own way, he is trying to help you. He thinks–never mind what he thinks. What do you want to do about it?” 

I noticed that she was being careful not to express her own opinion on the subject. She wanted it to be my decision rather than a choice I made just because of how she might feel. 

Thankfully, it wasn’t a hard decision to make. With barely a pause, I shook my head. “I’m keeping the power. Yeah, it makes me feel… gross to have something of Fossor’s. Especially necromancy. But it could also help. It’s like you said, the power isn’t evil. Not even a power like that. I can use it to do good things. Like the way I’m helping some of those ghosts get closure before they move on.” Biting my lip, I hesitantly added, “And, if there’s other evil necromancers out there, it feels like… it’s a good idea to have this power. Not just have it, use it. Exercise it.”

With a smile, Mom stepped over through the water and put both hands on my shoulders. “Have I told you how proud I am of you, Felicity?” Her voice was soft, the slightest hint of tears in her eyes as she stared at me. “You are my girl. I missed you so much.”

The words took me by surprise, a thick lump forming in my throat that made it impossible to respond. I tried, but nothing came. Nothing save for a small, almost animalistic sound before I quickly stepped forward, putting my arms around my mother to cling onto her tightly. There was so much I wanted to say right then, but I couldn’t. I had nothing. Just that simple hug. 

Mom returned it, seeming to understand that I couldn’t speak. For a minute, the two of us simply stood there, embracing as we stood hip-deep in the water. I could feel the eyes of my sharks on us, watching silently and with more understanding than any normal shark. I still wasn’t sure exactly how intelligent they were, but it was clearly pretty high, as far as animals went.

Eventually, we made our way back up onto the shore, each of us producing a field-engraver and using a spell that dried us off immediately. On the way, I looked over and saw Haiden and Sariel having some kind of intense conversation with Vanessa, Tristan, and some other girl I didn’t recognize. She was incredibly thin, almost sickly-looking, with very pale skin and dark hair. 

“Friend of yours?” Mom asked, looking the way I had glanced. Even as she said it, I saw her eyes narrow very slightly. Not at the pale girl, but at Sariel. At the same time, the blonde woman herself turned her gaze to look our way. Their gazes locked, and even though neither of them moved or said anything, there was something there. The two were exchanging some kind of communication that I was pretty sure wasn’t all one hundred percent friendly. It wasn’t actively hostile or anything, but still. Mom obviously wasn’t Sariel’s biggest fan in the world. 

Yeah, I had no idea what was going on over there with that new girl. But I was pretty sure that leading my mother away from the situation was the best thing, so I took her hand and started to head in the opposite direction. Whatever the deal was with the girl Tristan and Vanessa had brought to their parents, they could handle it. 

After all, I still had a rescue mission to a planet infested with Fomorian monsters to deal with.

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Triumph 10-04 (Heretical Edge 2)

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We didn’t go straight to the camp or star-station, of course. Even though we were on a truce with the loyalists, there was no sense in taking unnecessary risks. They knew where that quarry was, and there was nothing stopping them from deciding to quickly go back and check the portal signatures to see where we went. None of us trusted that they wouldn’t go that far. Even if Ruthers himself didn’t (which I wasn’t sure about), some of the other Committee members would almost certainly do it themselves or sign off on it. Like Litonya, the second she found out. 

So, we made multiple quick jumps instead. About seven or eight in total, just to be safe. We’d come out of a portal, check to make sure everything was clear, then jump again. And we weren’t all together either. There were over a dozen groups jumping to different places, just to confuse any attempted pursuers even more. After everything that had just happened, the last thing any of us wanted (or needed) was to have to fight a bunch of overzealous loyalist Heretics. I was with my team, Shiori, my family, and Mom’s team. None of us really said anything, too focused on making certain we made it somewhere safe without more problems. 

Yeah, I was pretty sure everyone else was just as tense as I was, half-expecting something horrible to pop up just because things were going entirely too well. Every time we came through a portal (created by Roger and Seamus Dornan in our case), I had my guard up. I wasn’t going to be able to relax or believe any of this was really how it would end until we were somewhere safe. Even then, it would probably take awhile for me to actually accept it wasn’t a dream. 

Finally, the last jump carried us to right on the edge of the Atherby camp, on a bare hill overlooking the cabins and lake below. I could see other groups popping up around us, everyone shaking off the disorientation and kind of sagging with some level of relief when they saw where they were, and realized that the rapid series of jumps was over. We had made it. 

Still, no one moved much or said anything. We were all quietly looking around and waiting, still at least a little bit tense. That was, until Gabriel Prosser arrived with the last batch. The hill was crowded by that point, people spread out all the way down basically into the camp itself. Everyone turned when the man himself appeared, looking to him expectantly. Even the people from Wonderland were waiting silently to see what he said. I was pretty sure they, like me, were ready for him to declare that we had been followed and were about to be attacked. 

Yeah, sue me, I was having a hard time believing that this whole thing was going to end this well. And judging from the looks of the people around me, I was nowhere near the only one.

Prosser, on the other hand, didn’t say anything at first. Instead, he looked over to my mother. The two of them locked eyes for a few seconds, seeming to communicate silently. Then Prosser gave a short nod before turning back to everyone else. He raised his voice to be heard by everyone. “We’re good!  No one followed us and our trail is clear. It’s safe.” 

That was the trigger, apparently. The tension immediately vanished from everyone around me the moment he said it was safe. No, it didn’t just vanish. It morphed into utter jubilation. Everyone up to that point had been fairly quiet and subdued. They were all keeping themselves under control while there was still danger of being attacked again. But the second they got the official all-clear from Prosser, loud cheering suddenly erupted. People were jumping up and down, hugging each other, even shouting in each other’s faces about what had just happened. There were tears of joy and relief with the realization that this whole thing was real, that the dark, evil cloud known as Fossor, hung over everything and everyone for so long was finally gone. He was dead. He was officially and completely dead. More than dead. He was disintegrated, his essence completely erased. There would be no coming back for him, no last-minute tricks. He was gone. And from the sound of the cheers and wild celebration that had broken out around me, I wasn’t anywhere near the only one euphoric about that. 

Well I was still reeling from the sudden outburst, Sands and Sarah were there. They made it to me first, both launching themselves to grab me in a tight hug together, nearly knocking me down. There were a lot of words flying at me, mostly from Sands but some from Sarah too. Mostly about how glad they were that I was safe, that I’d made it home, and about how amazing it was that Fossor was actually dead. There were tears too. The twins hugged me tightly, and I hugged them right back. 

Others were right after them. The rest of my team, my girls, Koren, everyone took a turn to grab on. It was almost like we hadn’t already had a quick reunion back in the quarry. But that was the whole problem, I quickly realized. It had been a quick reunion while still on potentially dangerous ground. Now that we were home–or at least somewhere completely safe, the reunion was happening all over again. Actually, I had a feeling it would happen a few more times before everyone was satisfied. Not that I was complaining at all. In fact, I was pretty ready to have nothing but this for the foreseeable future. 

Except I couldn’t. Even as I was exchanging an embrace with an exhausted-looking Roxa, the realization came. I had to talk to Tristan and Jophiel. I had to tell them what was going on. 

Roxa, for her part, raised an eyebrow after stepping back. “You okay? You should be happy-face right now, but you’re worried-face. And tired-face, but that’s more understandable. You’re not thinking of running out to find another super-Necromancer to pick a blood feud with already, are you?” Pausing, she added, “I’m kidding. But really not. Please don’t do that for at least a month.” 

“More like a year.” That was my dad, putting both hands on my shoulders from behind. He was grinning, pulling me back against him tightly in a reverse embrace. “You hear me? No Necromancer supervillains to go hunt down for a year. We’ve had more than enough.” 

Oh God, how I just wanted to forget everything, melt into my dad’s arms, see my mom, and let everything wash away. I wanted to party. Everyone around me was still in that zone. They’d produced music somewhere down in the camp, and people were heading that way. They were having an actual party, a real celebration. I could see Mom, still with Wyatt and Abigail, and surrounded by a veritable horde of people wanted to talk to her. Everyone who had known her before was getting close, apologizing for not saving her, or just congratulating her on being free again, on being herself again. Mom looked overwhelmed, but was dealing with it, talking to everyone at once. It clearly helped that her eldest children were there, and that she could see me. 

Still, she’d been a prisoner for a long time. It was obviously going to take awhile before Mom truly relaxed. I was having a hard enough time, and I’d only been held by Fossor for a tiny fraction of how long Mom had been trapped. And he had… he had done worse to her. A lot worse. 

But she was dealing with it. I almost felt like speaking up, asking people to back up. Yet, seeing her like that, I was pretty sure this was actually good. She had been alone, save for Fossor, ghosts, and vile people she had to fight and kill, through basically all that time. As I watched for those brief seconds, I could see that she was tired and still reeling. But happy. She was happy, being right here with everyone. She could see Dad and me. She had Deveron right there, along with Abigail and Wyatt. Her best friend, Lillian, was there along with the rest of their team. 

Yes, it was a lot. But it was a lot of good. Mom needed it. She was happy. Maybe in a few minutes we could ask everyone to back off for a little while and give her some air. But for the moment, I was pretty sure this was doing more good than harm. 

“She’s pretty amazing, isn’t she?” Dad murmured in a voice filled with awe and reverence while his hands squeezed my shoulders. He knew where I was looking. Probably because he couldn’t take his eyes off her either. He was giving her time to be with the others for the moment, though I was pretty sure it was all he could do not to march over there, pick Mom up, and carry her somewhere quiet where they could talk about everything. 

“Super-amazing,” I agreed before tilting my head to look up at him. “You’re allowed to call dibs and go somewhere with her, you know.” 

Dad gave me a small smile. “Soon enough. These people have been waiting to see your mom back again even longer than we have. And believe me, I know just what it’s like to miss her.” His voice caught a little. I could tell that, despite his words, it was taking everything he had to wait here. 

Prosser had clearly noticed too. The man moved up beside us, hand finding its way to Dad’s shoulder. “You’re a fine man, Lincoln. A brave and very understanding one too.” Turning his head a bit, he cleared his throat. “Now put that aside for the moment. Let’s go rescue your family and get you some privacy. I’ll handle everyone else. The celebration can go on without her. You all deserve time alone.”

Time alone. Time with just my family. My reunited family, with my mother safe and sound. God, did I have any idea what that was going to be like? The thought made me happier than I could even process. But it also made me strangely nervous. I was afraid of what that was going to be like. Was that weird? Was it strange that I felt confused and worried by the prospect of actually winning this whole thing and getting my mother back safe and sound? As happy as I was, I couldn’t shake the tiny knot in my stomach. It kept telling me that something was going to go wrong. I tried to shove it aside, and was successful for the most part. But no matter what I did, I always heard that dark, worried whisper coming from that little knot in my stomach. I had a feeling it was going to take a long time for it to fully go away. 

Or maybe I was just permanently paranoid. Maybe Wyatt was rubbing off on me. I’d ask him how he dealt with it. Though I was pretty sure that would end with him teaching me a bunch of new alarm spells. 

It took some doing, but Prosser eventually managed to separate my family from the rest of the celebration. Everyone was making their way down to where food and drinks had been laid out, and where the music was loudest. There was dancing, cheering, laughing, and a lot more going on. This was a party that was going to last long into the night. 

Eventually, after Mom promised to separate and go spend some time with Lillian and the rest of her old team (the Dornans and Tribald), our family was by the cabin. Prosser gestured to the door, remarking that he’d make sure no one bothered us. 

“Go.” With that word, I nodded to my mother and the others. My hand caught my dad’s, squeezing firmly. “Go ahead without me. I’ll be right there, I promise. I just have to talk to someone first. It’s–” There was a lump in my throat that I had to swallow down. “It’s important.” That felt like an understatement, so I added, “Life and death.” 

Dad and the others looked uncertain, but Mom met my gaze before nodding. She smiled, reaching out to take my father’s hand. “Come. We have a lot to talk about.” 

So, my parents, Deveron, Abigail, Wyatt, and Koren went into the cabin together. That was good. I’d already had time to reunite with my mother. Even if it was under pretty terrible circumstances, I’d still had weeks with her. Weeks of sleeping in the same bed, of sharing quiet secrets, of just being with her. The others deserved to have time with her too, time where she could focus on them. And she deserved to have that focus. She’d been separated from one husband for ten years, and from her other husband and two eldest children for a lot longer than that. Several decades she had spent imprisoned by Ruthers and his people, then a couple more decades either mind-wiped or imprisoned by Fossor. 

They deserved time. I would join them, after I took care of this part. But for the moment, letting Mom and the others have their own reunion felt like the right thing to do. 

Feeling a presence next to me, I glanced over to see Tabbris there, staring up. Her eyes were a bit watery, voice a quiet whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. We’re supposed to be partners and I… I wasn’t… I couldn’t…” 

My head shook quickly, and I quickly wrapped both arms around her, hugging the girl tight up against me. “Stop that. Stop it right now. If you weren’t where you were, we wouldn’t have been able to kill Kwur. And if you were with me, Fossor would’ve had a way to drive you out. Then he might’ve–” My voice caught, and I hugged her even tighter. “We’re fine, Tabs. You, me, we’re both fine. We’re all fine. And he’s dead.” Saying it outloud like that made a shudder run through me. I had to say it again. “He’s dead, he’s gone. He’ll never bother anyone again.” 

We stood there, embracing like that in silence for a minute. Well, not really silence. Even though we weren’t talking, there was a lot of cheering, music, jubilant screaming, and more from nearby. Looking up finally, I saw people dancing, running around with colorful torches, some flying through the air. 

Colorful torches… fire… light… wait. 

“Hey,” I finally blurted, my gaze snapping back to the girl. “What about those wings? Where the hell did those come from? Is that–I mean are they… umm…”

Tabbris giggled, but also looked a bit nervous. Squirming on her feet, she stared up at me with those big, innocent eyes and hesitantly explained, “They’re… my… biological father. He’s one of the Dyeusai–err, that’s the archangels. Jegudiel. Michael checked, he used a spell to see the signature and said my father is Jegudiel.” 

She told me a bit more then, about how this Jegudiel guy apparently made the most sense as someone who would have given genetic samples to Kushiel for her experiments because he wanted to build some kind of legacy, that he had been disappointed when it seemed as though the archangels (or Dyeusai) couldn’t pass on their energy wings to any children. 

“So, if–when he finds out that you did get the wings…” I murmured under my breath, trailing off as the thought made me grimace.

“I’m not going anywhere with him!” Tabbris declared firmly. “I have a dad. I have a great dad, a real dad.” 

Hugging her tightly to me, I nodded. “You do. You always do, Tabs. Don’t worry, we’re not going to let anyone take you away. I promise.” Inside, I was reeling. Tabbris was the daughter of one of the archangels. I’d known that, of course. I’d known that from the moment she first used them. But hearing it outloud, having confirmation, made my knees weak. Tabbris being the daughter of an Olympian and a Dyeusai. No wonder she was so amazing. And was it bad that I wanted to cling to hope that her bio-dad would be reasonable about the whole thing? Tabbris should get to know him if it was possible that he could be nice. 

“Are you okay, Flick?” the girl asked tentatively, staring at me with that worried expression, like she was afraid I would treat her differently. 

“I’m fine,” I insisted, hugging her tighter. “Whatever happens, you’re my sister. That doesn’t change just because we know who your biological father is. I love you.” 

“I love you, Flick.” Her quiet voice murmured the words as she clung to me. 

We stayed like that for another minute, before I reluctantly released her for the moment. “Okay,” I started, “let’s–” 

And that was when a loud squeal made my gaze snap to one side, just in time to spot Namythiet fly straight up to me. She zoomed in, doing wild circles and loops around my head as she babbled on and on about how great it was to see me, how worried she’d been, how many nasties she’d stabbed and killed, how much fun she was having with everyone at Wonderland, what it was like being the new Tiebreaker’s apprentice, the places they’d gone, and so on. It all came out in a quick jumble, and she was doing those loops around my head the whole time. Luckily, I had practice deciphering that kind of talk, and finally managed to lift my cupped hands to give the girl a place to land. “Hey there,” I greeted affectionately once she came down, standing on my palms. “Good to see you too, Namythiet. Glad we had you on our side back there.” I was serious too, given what she was capable of with that Cataclysm of hers. The little thing had a lot of power behind it.

And speaking of having a lot of power, I hesitated before asking, “Hey, I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of that ‘Wandering Woman’ that Ruthers wanted me to visit?” 

Hearing that, Namythiet flew off my palms and moved so she was half-hiding behind Tabbris’ head. Her voice was quieter. “Um, I don’t know very much, but from what I’ve heard, she’s a really powerful witch. Like, one of the first witches. One of the first Heretics.” 

I blinked at that. “One of the first Boschers?” 

Her head shook quickly. “Natural. One of the first Natural Heretics.” 

For a moment, I stared. “One of the first… Natural Heretics. One of the first humans on the planet to bond with something is still alive?” 

The pixie sort-of squirmed in the air. “Uh huh. I mean, there were others before her, but she’s the oldest, the one who stuck around the longest. They say umm… they say she’s not bonded to anything that exists anymore, that she was bonded to one of the Primals.” Quickly, she added, “One of the beings who created the weapons the King of Canada uses. They were beings that lived here back during the time of the dinosaurs all the way up to primitive humans.”

Briefly, I wondered if Aylen’s Grandfather would know this Wandering Woman. He had to, right? Shaking that off, I asked, “So if she’s bonded to some mythical being that helped build the superweapons that Oberon uses, she’s gotta be pretty strong.” 

Namythiet, in turn, stared at me. “You know how people use spells to counter those time-stop powers so they don’t get frozen?” When I hesitantly nodded, she continued. “Almost everyone here on Earth who uses those learned them either from the Wandering Woman or from someone else who learned from her. Or–you know, down through the line. They originated from her.” 

I whistled low. “That’s… pretty impressive. I guess it makes sense if she’s been around for so long. They call her the Wandering Woman because she–uhh, wanders a lot, I guess? Does she have a real name?” 

“They called her the Witch of Endor,” Namythiet piped up helpfully. “Oh, and Werethekau, they called her Werethekau too, when she was in Egypt. And Isis too. She had both names. Sort of interchangeable.” 

That made me do a double-take. “Wait, this Wandering Woman is the Witch of Endor from the bible and she’s Isis? As in the goddess Isis?” 

Shrugging at me, the pixie pointed out, “A few different goddesses. She was Freyja for the Norse too.” 

Yeah, that wasn’t helping my confusion and awe. “Isis, Freyja, Witch of Endor, why the hell does Ruthers want me to talk to her? Is she part of Crossroads?” 

Namythiet’s head shook firmly before she moved back to land in my hands again. “Nuh uh, she never joined up with them. She does what she wants, goes where she wants. Sorry, that’s umm, basically all I know.”

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “Thanks a lot. I’ll try to find out more from someone else, see if we can figure out what Ruthers thinks she can do for me.” 

Setting the pixie on one shoulder then, I started to walk while talking some more to her. Not about where I had been. I didn’t want to think about that, let alone talk. Instead, I asked about her new mentor, only to stumble as she cheerfully started talking about Jeanne d’Arc. Joan of Arc was her mentor. And was also someone who was quite close to the Seosten Michael, apparently. 

“Wow,” I started, before suddenly spotting one of the people I’d been looking for. Tristan was with Vanessa, Sarah, and a couple others, intently watching some kind of show that a few other pixies were putting on. 

Seeing the boy, I was reminded of what I had to tell him about his friend. My hand moved to gently pat the pixie on my shoulder as I swallowed back the nervousness and fear about what could be happening on the Meregan world. No way would I be able to keep Tristan calm if I didn’t start that way. 

“Okay,” I murmured, taking a breath before walking toward the group. “At least I’m starting with the easy one.” 

Because I had the feeling that however Tristan reacted to the news, Jophiel’s reaction was going to be a lot more complicated. 

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Triumph 10-03 (Heretical Edge 2)

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It had been on the cusp of night throughout the battle with Fossor, the quarry itself filled with shadows that had grown longer and blacker with each passing minute. Now, as we emerged through the opening in the forcefield, darkness had fully settled around the place. But the quarry itself was filled with enough lights from various bits of magic and powers that it might as well have been the middle of the day. But beyond the quarry, things were pitch-black.

There were also a lot more people here than had been present for the battle. I saw groups from Wonderland, more Fusion school people, and other rebel-aligned groups gathered up on one side. Meanwhile, Ruthers and those few other Committee people had been joined by a small army of Crossroads and Eden’s Garden loyalists. Everyone had formed up onto either side to stare one another down, with hushed, yet clearly heated discussions between groups.

That heated discussion, however, stopped instantly the moment my mother and I emerged with the others. As soon as we came into view, every bit of conversation stopped short, as their eyes turned to us. I felt the weight of hundreds of people staring at us. Some, on the side of the rebellion, were focused on my mother with expressions of joy and welcome, amazement at her presence and her survival. I saw a few raise their hands to their mouths in shock, tears visible.

That was when it really struck me. This wasn’t just about people who believed what my mother said. It wasn’t just about following her words because she was powerful and cunning, or because she happened to be the one in charge. This was beyond anything like that. They didn’t simply believe in her cause. They loved her. They loved my mother more than I could ever have truly understood before that moment. And seeing her right there after all the time that had passed (now that their memories were back) was akin to seeing their savior rise from the ashes. Their true leader, their champion, the one who had brought the original rebellion together, had come back. 

Meanwhile, the reaction from the loyalist side was far more mixed than the one from the rebellion. Looking that way, I saw some who looked sad. Whether because they hoped Mom had died, or were lamenting the side she had chosen, I wasn’t sure. There was also plenty of hatred, outright disgust, and other strong, nasty looks. But still others looked confused or uncertain. It seemed like they didn’t know exactly how to feel right then. 

That mixture of uncertainty, regret, hatred, and just… sadness made me hesitate, staring that way while the others all formed up behind us. I couldn’t actually feel other people’s emotions, of course. This was all just taken from reading the expressions on their faces. But I had a pretty strong impression that if I could feel what they felt, the sheer force of it would’ve knocked me down. These people, all of them on both sides, had very strong emotions about my mother. 

Mom had stopped when I did, her hand moving to touch my arm. Wyatt and Abigail were on her other side (the right), while Koren moved up with me on the left. When I felt Mom’s touch, I swallowed the thick lump in my throat before nodding with a whispered, “I’m okay.” 

Movement from the loyalists side was met with a rush of motion from the rebels. Ruthers had taken a step our way, only to be met by a dozen figures on our side who moved to intercept and block him. Which had made more people from the loyalists jolt as though to jump in. 

“Stop.” That was Mom, her voice loud and clear. The single word made not only all the people on our side freeze, but also caused those loyalists to stumble a bit. Aside from Ruthers, of course. He just kept walking, albeit gradually, clearly in no rush. The rebels who had moved to stop him parted at a nod from my mother, leaving an opening for the man to walk through. 

He didn’t come right up to us, stopping a good twenty feet away. Not that that sort of distance actually meant anything when it came down to it. If he wanted a fight, he would have a fight. 

Oh boy. If tensions throughout the quarry had been high before, they were damn near stratospheric right now. The people on Ruthers’ side were clearly only waiting for a single word from him before they would jump into battle. And those on our side, though tired from the fight with Fossor, were just as willing to throw down the instant anyone made a move. The slightest wrong word here could result in a catastrophic battle so soon after we had beaten the monster.

No one said anything at first. No one moved once Ruthers had stopped. All eyes from both sides were on him, waiting to see what he did, what he would say. Whatever happened, whatever came next, everyone was ready. 

“I’m sorry,” Ruthers said. 

Okay. So I was wrong. We weren’t ready for whatever would come. Because I was pretty sure I was far from the only person who was floored and reeling from those two words. There was a collective gasp throughout both sides. It was clear that no one saw anything like that coming. 

But if he noticed the reaction, Ruthers gave no indication of it. He focused solely on my mother, still speaking in a flat, gruff voice. “Not for fighting you. Not for stopping you. Not for trying to make sure you never poisoned any more of our people with your rhetoric and naive thoughts. I will never stop working to make certain you are put away where you can’t destroy our world, where you can’t doom humanity. I won’t stop fighting you until you’re no longer a threat, Joselyn.” There was anger, brittle rage and hate that had built up over the past century. 

“But,” he continued, just as I started to think this might go sideways after all. “I took it too far. I let…” He paused, trailing off with a shake of his head before pushing on. “I involved your family. I involved children. Your children.” With that, his gaze flicked toward Abigail and Wyatt briefly, before returning to our mother. “I lost it. I lost… I was no better than the things that want to destroy this world. For that, for them, I am sincerely sorry. It was wrong. It was evil. And I will never allow anything like that to happen again. You have my word. Whatever comes next, however this goes, I will not allow things to go that far.” He was speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear, on both sides. A glance past him showed that the loyalists were whispering amongst themselves, clearly confused as to exactly what he was talking about. 

Mom, who had been silent through all of that, finally spoke up. Her own voice was as brittle as his, making it clear that the hatred he felt for her went both ways. “Do you think that’s enough?”

There was a brief pause before Ruthers shook his head. “Probably not. But we all have darkness in our pasts, things we wish we didn’t have to do. Or things we should have chosen not to. You and I, we are alike at least in that.” He took a breath, letting it out. Somehow, the tension in the air grew even thicker. It felt like it was hard to breathe through the certainty that any second, violence would start and blood would fly. 

Ruthers, however, kept talking through it, even as people on both sides shifted dangerously. “You are wrong, Joselyn. You have always been wrong. The creatures you court, the ones you believe to be your allies and friends, they will betray you. They cannot be trusted. And the moment you accomplish their tasks for them, they will prove that. The people you love will be killed. Your family will be torn apart. You would sell this world out to those creatures, allow them to destroy humanity because you refuse to see the truth.” 

“I see plenty of truth,” Mom informed him in a flat voice. “Between you and Litonya, I think it’s been pretty well proven that it doesn’t take horns, a tail, green skin, or anything like that to make a monster. It just takes someone willing to do monstrous things.” 

Ruthers, for his part, dropped his gaze to the ground briefly, then raised it to stare at her. “Stop this now, Joselyn. Tell your people to stand down and for things to go back to the way they were before your daughter restored their memories. We have a chance, right now, to stop this war. I’ll let you come back. We will let you come back. Not just you. Your family, everyone. Things can go back to the way they were supposed to be, before any of this happened. We can end this civil war, we can all go back to fighting the monsters we’re supposed to be fighting.” 

Mom, for a moment, just stared at him. When she spoke, her voice was almost awed. “If you believe I would do that, you’ve truly never understood anything about me. And if you believe I could do that, that my words would mean anything to all these people if I betrayed them and everything I’ve ever stood for, then you’ve never understood them either.” 

There was a moment of silence before Ruthers exhaled. “You’re going to go back to pushing this open warfare, aren’t you, Joselyn? Look at what was accomplished today. Fossor is dead. His body has been taken apart and disintegrated, just to be certain of that. He’s dead and gone. We have a chance for peace now, a chance to make things better and avoid all the bloodshed and suffering that you know is coming. We have a chance to avoid all of that and for all of our people to stand united against the threats we both know are out there.” 

“Are you blind, or just an idiot?” Those words came not from Mom, but from Abigail. She had suddenly spoken up, drawing everyone’s eyes and more than a few gasps. When Ruthers’ gaze settled on her, she continued. “Yeah, hi. It’s me, the grown-up version of the toddler whose head you held a metaphorical gun to. Or maybe it was a real gun, I don’t know how literal you make your threats against children. The point is, look around you. The people who fought that Necromancer, the ones who helped kill him? They weren’t all humans.” 

Ruthers was silent, and I had the feeling he was taking a moment to tell himself not to start another war right here. His hand moved before a small flask magically appeared, which he took a sip from before making it disappear again. Only then did the man seem to trust himself to speak. “I’ve never said that Strangers are incapable of working alongside humans for limited times and toward goals that help them. Only that they will always eventually fall back to their baser natures or their own self-interests and hungers. Fossor made many enemies. The fact that these creatures wanted him dead and saw this opportunity as the best way to make it happen does not change anything about what they are and what they will always be.” 

“Fossor is dead, Ruthers.” That was Mom again. Her voice shook a bit. “You said it yourself, he’s gone. You’re right, this is a chance. It’s a chance for us to let all of that go. The rage you’ve felt, the hatred you’ve put on everyone who isn’t human since the moment that one man betrayed your trust? Let it go. These people, all these people, they don’t have to be your enemies. We can all be united against the actual threats in this world, human or Alter. We can avoid this entire war. You can help turn the tide and shift the Committee and Crossroads itself to being the force for rightness and good that it should be. He’s dead. He’s gone. Let it go and move on, Gabriel. Please.”

Ruthers said nothing to that at first. Instead, his gaze turned toward me, eyes narrowing. “You,” he said flatly, managing to keep any sort of judgment he had about me out of his voice, “you killed the Necromancer. Your second Necromancer kill, if I’m not mistaken.” 

“Um.” I swallowed, offering him a small shrug. “I’d say it was more of a giant team effort. But if you mean I was the one who took the last hit, yeah. I did. It was right there. Believe me, I know you or my mom had a better claim to–” 

“I don’t care about that,” the man informed me sharply. “But he is dead. You felt the… he didn’t fake his death somehow, didn’t switch with something else. Our people said the body was his, but you…” 

Realizing what he was asking, I quickly shook my head. “Err, no, he didn’t fake it. Trust me, that–he’s dead. One hundred percent dead.” 

“You’ve felt his power then,” Ruthers pressed. “You’ve felt an increase in your own strength, your own… necromancy.” He said the word with obvious disgust, making it clear what his own feelings on that particular style of magic were. “You have his gift.” It was perfectly apparent in his voice that he didn’t exactly see it as an actual gift. 

“I–” My mouth opened, then shut. Was this a trap of some kind? Was he trying to establish a reason to want to come after me for having Fossor’s power? Was–fuck it. I gave a short nod. “I’ve felt it, yeah. It’s easier to–yeah, I’ve had an upgrade. I mean, it’s nowhere near the sort of things he could do. I mean–” 

“Fossor wasn’t capable of the things Fossor did when he first started out,” Ruthers informed me simply. “But he got there. And you–” 

“Are different,” Mom snapped shortly. “I’ve told you what we can do here, Gabriel. If you–” 

It was his turn to interrupt, cutting my mother off with a short, “We’ll leave.” There was a renewed firmness to his voice. “This is a day for celebration and relief. Fossor is dead. I was… wrong, about you working with him.” That last sentence came with a slight hesitation, but he did at least meet my mother’s gaze through it. “But this–this I am not wrong about. The creatures you call your allies will turn on you, when it is in their best interest to do so. I only pray that it will be when they sense weakness because the humans on your side are about to be beaten, and not when you have fulfilled your purpose by killing enough of ours.”

Mom’s voice was sad. “These people helped kill Fossor, the abomination you’ve rightfully raged against for all this time, the one who began your obsession. And it’s still not enough. You still can’t let go of your blind hatred enough to see the truth.” 

“I see perfectly clearly,” the man insisted, starting to turn away from us. “I see that you will drag our people into a war because you are incapable of letting go of foolish naivety that you should have grown out of by now. But for now… for now we’ll leave, as I said.” He paused briefly before speaking again with dark bitterness. “Your obsession with allowing humans to kill humans for the benefit of monsters can wait.” 

“My mother!” Beside me, Avalon suddenly called out. I felt her hand grab my arm, gripping tightly as she demanded, “Where is she?” 

Glancing back toward us at those words, Ruthers hesitated before answering quietly. “Gaia is safe. She won’t be harmed. I promise you, whatever happens, she will not be used as a pawn or hostage. She is a prisoner and she will stay that way.” 

From the way Avalon’s grip on my arm tightened, I had the feeling there was a lot more she wanted to say to that. But she kept quiet, aside from a very quiet snarl under her breath. 

Ruthers obviously heard that, but made no comment. Instead, he looked at me. “For your sake and for those you claim to care about, you should go see the Wandering Woman.” His gaze moved to Mom’s before adding, “You know it’s for the best.” 

Before I could ask who that was, the man snapped his fingers. A portal appeared nearby. With varying degrees of reluctance, the Crossroads loyalists began to move through it, some making comments about how this wasn’t over. One of the last of which was Liam Mason. He stood by the portal, staring over to where Larissa, Sands, and Sarah were. All three were watching him. There were obvious emotions there, but the girls held firm. For a moment, it looked like Liam might say something. His face was twisted, mouth opening as though to call out. But, in the end, he just sighed visibly and shook his head before turning to step through the portal. I caught the barest glimpse of his face in the process, once he had turned away from his family. It was torn by grief, tears in his eyes as he forced himself to step through that portal. I had the feeling there was more to that whole interaction I hadn’t seen. 

In any case, they left. Ruthers, Calafia, and Teach were last, the three standing together to give one last look our way before stepping through. 

They were gone. Which left the rest of us standing here, alone in the quarry. For a few seconds, no one said anything. Then I heard Prosser speak up loudly, his voice filling the whole area. “I’d say it’s past time we all got out of this place. Preferably before our friends who just left decide to change their minds about saving our fight for another day.” 

Everyone started to disperse, and I looked to my parents. Both parents. Both of my parents. My mom was there. Right there. After all this time, not only the past ten years, but all the time since the moment her twins were taken, she was finally back where she belonged. She was back with her friends, her teammates, her people. She stood with both of her husbands, her three living children, and her granddaughter. Her family. 

 “What–” My throat caught as I saw them together after all this time. “What now?” 

“Now, like Gabriel said, we get out of here,” Mom informed me with a small, yet stunning smile.

“And we move on.” 

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Triumph 10-02 (Heretical Edge 2)

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Please note, the non-canon chapters were published over the weekend! You can find the Heretical Edge chapter here and the Summus Proelium chapter here

Koren reached me first, and the two of us embraced tightly before she leaned back to shake her head at me. “Can you go a week or so without some big apocalyptic kidnapping or whatever, please? I don’t think me or my mom can take another one for awhile. It’s a bit much.” 

Snorting at her words despite myself, I felt the giddy rush sweep its way back through me. It was an almost physical sensation. I was so relieved, so shocked, by everything that had happened that just kept repeatedly hitting me. I was alive. My mother was alive. And free. 

And Fossor was dead. He was dead. He was really, truly, forever dead. He was fucking gone. Everything he’d done, all the atrocities he’d committed, not only to my family but to so many countless others, and he was actually totally and completely dead. He was worm food. Except even worms didn’t deserve that. He was nothing. He was manure to be tossed into the cow–

Tabbris squeezed my hand, and I blinked, seeing Koren staring at me, mouth open to ask if I was okay. Quickly, I spoke up, using my face-shifting power to ensure I didn’t blush. “I’ll do the best I can, believe me. But hey, at least one major reason for those kidnappings is gone.” 

“Damn right, he is.” That was Deveron, who took his turn to embrace me as soon as Koren let go. And he did more than hug, literally lifting me off the ground to hold tight. It felt like he might never let go again. “Kid,” the man informed me with a voice that was full of relief and awe, “you are definitely your mom’s daughter. Including the scaring the living hell out of everyone who cares about you part.” 

Flushing a little, I returned the hug before shaking my head. “I didn’t–it wasn’t my fault. I mean–” Hesitating, I finally settled on just raising my foot to kick him in the leg while still being held off the ground. “Next time, maybe you should get kidnapped by the evil megalomaniac.”

“He most certainly should not,” Mom put in, stepping up beside us. As Deveron put me down, her right hand found my cheek, while her left squeezed his arm. Her eyes were on me. “My girl.” The words came in a shaky, fragile voice, one that made it clear just how terrified she really was that all of this would turn out to be a dream, or a trick, and that she would wake up once more in Fossor’s clutches. It made me wonder how many times she’d had dreams like that through the years, dreams of being freed, of killing him, of being back safe and sound with her family.

But this wasn’t a dream. This was real. Absolutely real. To prove that, I reached up and pinched her shoulder. It didn’t hurt her, of course. Given how tough she was, I was pretty sure she barely felt it. Still, Mom knew what I was doing. A beautiful, amazing smile broke across her face, and she took her turn to embrace me once more. Her grip was even tighter than Deveron’s, her voice a whisper in my ear that cracked from emotion. “I love you, Felicity.” 

God, it was too much. My body shook, a shudder running through me. Not of disgust or fear, but of… of happiness? Relief? Emotions I couldn’t actually understand or quantify in that moment. My eyes closed tightly as I hugged my mother, losing myself for a brief time. “Mom,” I managed with some effort, “I love you. Mommy. Mom. I love you. It’s okay. We’re here. We made it.” 

We released each other then, Mom turning to Deveron as he pulled her into his arms once more for what was clearly the latest of several moments they’d had since Fossor’s death. 

For a second, I just stared. My mother and Deveron, finally together. Seeing them like that, seeing them embrace and… and kiss, made me… happy? Yes. Yes, it did. My mother loved Deveron. And she also loved my dad. Just like I loved Shiori and Avalon. She didn’t love one more than the other. She loved them both. 

And really, all I wanted, all I desperately hoped for, was that Mom would be happy. After everything she’d been through for the past decad–no, century. After everything she’d repeatedly sacrificed to help and protect those she cared about, she deserved to be happy, damn it.

By that point, Wyatt had found his way to me and I was yanked closer, his gangly yet strong arms holding me tight as he babbled apologies for not being able to find and save me sooner. 

“Stop it, you did everything,” I insisted. “Fossor would’ve escaped without you. He’s dead because of you.” Even as I said it, a protesting yowl made me release Wyatt, looking down to see Corporal Kickwhiskers poking his little gray head (he was a British Shorthair) out of his owner’s jacket pocket, annoyed that I had yet to pay any attention to him. So, with a smile, I took the gray cat into my arms and gently scratched behind his ears. 

“He’s dead because of all of you.” That was Abigail, slowly stepping closer. Her head was shaking in disbelief. “It’s really–you really…” Swallowing, she stared at me in stunned silence for a few long seconds before managing a quiet, “You are an amazing young woman, little sister. And you’re going to drive everyone who cares about you into an early grave.”

Snuggling Kickwhiskers briefly, I handed him over to Wyatt before moving to embrace Abigail, careful not to hug her as tightly as the others given she was much more fragile without the kind of powers that others had (though she did at least have some). My head shook at her words, as I retorted, “Tell all the bad guys to leave me alone–wait, you’re a lawyer, can you draw up a restraining order that says they have to stay several continents away from me at all times? That’d be super-useful.” 

Snorting clearly despite herself, Abigail returned the hug as tightly as she could. “I’ll see what I can do,” she murmured before adding in a more serious tone. “I’m so glad you’re alive, so glad you’re safe. You–” Swallowing hard, she leaned back to stare at me. “You’re incredibly brave.” 

“Believe me, I was terrified the whole time,” I assured her with a shudder. “I was so afraid I wouldn’t make it back t-to this, to any of you. I was…” 

In mid-sentence, I trailed off as Abigail nodded past me. Turning that way, I saw him. My dad. He had just come through the opening in the forcefield that Prosser was maintaining. Our eyes locked, and then… then something happened. I didn’t know what, because I moved too quickly to register it. The next thing I knew for sure, I was there. I was hugging my father, tears streaming down my face, blinding me as I clung tightly to the man. I was babbling something incoherent. There was something about missing him, about loving him, saying Dad a lot, things like that. But it was all jumbled together and impossible to decipher. I was just babbling as I clung to him, my tears straining his shirt while I pressed my face to his chest and sobbed. 

Maybe it should have been embarrassing to lose it like that. I didn’t care. I didn’t give a shit what it looked like. My dad. This was my dad, after I had just spent so much time in the clutches of– that. A shudder ran through me, but it vanished immediately as soon as my father felt it and hugged me tighter against him. He was saying my name, lifting me fully off the ground. I could feel his tears too, both of us completely losing it for the next few moments as we held each other. My dad. My father was here, right here. After the past months, after all the time I’d spent away from him, he was right here. 

One thing, one thought, was all it took to finally make me draw back a bit. My eyes widened with realization, as I gasped softly. 

I wasn’t the one who had been torn away from him the most. I’d been missing for months. That was a drop in the bucket compared to–

“Lincoln.” That single word came from my mother. She stood a bit away from the others, having approached a few steps. Deveron, a bit behind her, watched with a small smile that told me he knew just what the two of them were going through just then. Probably about the same thing he and my mother had gone through a few minutes earlier. 

My father, meanwhile, straightened with a gasp of his own. Setting me down, he stood at his full height, staring over at my mother. For a few long, silent seconds, no one spoke. No one moved. My dad simply swallowed, his breath clearly catching several times as he tried to speak. In the end, all he could manage was a weak, barely audible, “Joss…” 

Slowly, Mom took one step, then another. Her own voice quietly murmured my father’s name. Her face twisted up a little, emotions clearly ripping through her as she crossed the last few feet between them. As soon as she was close enough, her hand rose to tentatively touch his chest as though she was afraid he would vanish the moment she did. “Linc. My chainman.” 

I saw the way my father shuddered, the way his eyes flickered. He swayed a bit on his feet, like the slightest breeze could have pushed him over. His shaking hand rose, finding its way toward the side of my mother’s face. But he hesitated just a little before making contact. Hesitated, that was, until Mom’s other hand, the one not on his chest, rose to touch his wrist. Her fingers slid gently down his arm, then back up again. Locking eyes with him, she guided his hand down to her own face. Once it was there, cupping her cheek, they each made a sound. It was part relief, part joy, part something I couldn’t even begin to understand at that point. And it was love. It was absolute, definitive, unbreakable love. 

“Joselyn,” Dad murmured. That time, when he said her name, was different from any other time I remembered hearing it. For years before Crossroads, my father’s voice had been filled with pain, with anguish and loss when he said my mother’s name. For months after he was brought in on the truth, he’d spoken her name with fear of what had been done to her, and whether we would ever free her. 

Now, the fear was gone. The anguish was gone. The loss was gone. All of that had been vanquished. In their place was joy. An unspeakable, indescribable joy. He spoke her name, and I heard the love in his voice. I felt the love in it. 

They embraced. Mom’s arms went around Dad’s, and they were locked into one another. Then they kissed. They kissed and I–I turned away. Yeah. It felt wrong to spy on them like that. Especially when it was clear neither of them remembered (or cared) that anyone else was around. They’d been cut off, torn away from each other, for the past decade. They deserved to have a moment, just as Mom and Deveron had deserved their moment. 

Okay, they deserved a hell of a lot more than a moment. But still. The least I could do was not stand there and gawk while they were involved with one another. Besides, we had time. Fossor was dead. He was dead and gone and he wouldn’t fuck with our lives anymore. Ever. 

There were still problems. Still a lot of things we had to deal with. But right now, at this moment, I didn’t care. My mother was safe. I was safe. Fossor was dead. Fuck everything else that might want to rear its ugly head. All of it could wait its goddamn turn. Patiently and quietly, if it knew what was good for it.

Yeah, it was possible I was a little bit giddy after everything. But who wouldn’t be? 

That whole giddiness thing got even stronger a moment later, as Tabbris murmured my name. Looking up, I saw that she was looking toward the entrance once more, where two figures stood. Avalon and Shiori. They were there, looking uncertain as to whether they should interrupt or not. Seeing them, I felt a lump in my throat. Yes, I’d seen them earlier, during the fight. And that had been joyful enough on its own. But this was different. Now there were no other world-ending distractions, no terror that they would die any moment. 

They were there. My girls were safe, sound, and right there. 

And a second later, I was there too. I lunged that way, using my boost to get there faster. My arms caught hold of both of them at once, as I hauled them close. Not that they were complaining, exactly. All three of us simply clung to one another tightly, unable to speak. All I wanted just then was to touch them, hold them, smell them, be there with them. 

Okay, I wanted more than that. I wanted a hell of a lot more. But right then, being with them was enough. Knowing they were safe, being safe with them. Knowing my mother and father were right nearby, having their own reunion. Knowing Fossor was dead and would never bother us again. I was pretty sure I had never been happier in my life than I was in that moment. Which seemed fair enough, considering how not happy I’d been for so long throughout the past weeks while I was imprisoned by Fossor. 

“Flick, Flick,” Shiori managed while Avalon was still just clutching at the back of my head. “You made it. You really made it. You–you’re–” Her voice choked off then, tears streaming silently. 

“I made it.” Putting one hand up against Avalon’s face, I leaned to kiss Shiori. It was urgent, hungry, a desperate need that was barely sated by the kiss, which itself was strong enough to make my knees weak. 

Then I was kissing Avalon. Both. I loved them both, and I felt absolutely no confusion or uncertainty about that. Maybe others would have been put off, but this was our business. Our relationship. I was with Avalon and I was with Shiori. They weren’t with each other, though they were friends. 

It worked for us, and that was the only thing that mattered. 

For the next few minutes, the three of us stayed right there. Shiori and Avalon both had a lot to say. And none of us wanted to let go. They asked about how I was, about what had happened in the future (they were avoiding the subject of what had happened at Fossor’s), likely to avoid ruining the mood. 

So, I told them. Well, the Cliffs Notes version anyway. There was a lot to get into, but I just gave them the short explanation, before my eyes widened. “Jophiel,” I blurted. “I have to find Jophiel. She wasn’t– I mean I didn’t see her with–” 

“We haven’t seen her,” Shiori informed me quietly. “But I’m sure someone around here can find her. Why–” 

“Elisabet, Elisabet’s on the Meregan world, with–” Cutting myself off, I shook my head. “I have to find Tristan too. His… his friend. It’s a long story. His friend is with Elisabet on the Meregan world too, and they’re both in really bad danger.” Swallowing hard, I focused on them both, staring into their quizzical gazes. “Fomorian danger,” I managed flatly, making it clear just why this was so important that I would bring it up now of all times. “The Fomorians took over the Meregan world, and now Elisabet and Dexamene are there, and I promised I’d bring help as soon as possible.” 

Yeah, so much for things waiting. But to be completely honest with myself, if I just let it go, if I waited just to selfishly have my own reunions and then later found out that Elisabet and Dexamene had been taken by the Fomorians during that time, there was no way I would be able to live with myself. 

“If we go outside this forcefield,” Avalon quietly informed me, “we’ll have to deal with Ruthers and the others before anything else happens.” 

“We don’t think they’ll push for a fight right now,” Shiori hurriedly put in. “But they’re kind of insistent that they see and say something before anyone leaves. It’s… tense, but not as bad as it could be.” 

Avalon gave a slight nod. “I think Ruthers is still happy about Fossor dying, so he’s willing to let more go without pushing too hard. But I don’t think that mood will hold forever.”

“Then we should go and talk to him.” That was my mother, there with my father and Deveron, with Abigail and Wyatt on the other side, close enough for Mom to touch. Her voice was… tired, but happy. 

“Seeing you like this is going to piss him off again,” Deveron noted pointedly. “He saw Fossor as the bigger threat, so he played nice for that long. But now that that threat is dead, he might just decide today’s a good chance for a two-for-one.” 

“If he makes a move, we’ll deal with it,” Mom replied quietly before shaking her head. “But I don’t think he will. Not right now. Ruthers is an asshole, but he has his own… sort of code.” She exchanged a glance with me, our eyes locking. I’d told her what I’d learned about Litonya wanting to assassinate Wyatt and Abigail as babies, and how Ruthers had abducted them to save them from that. It didn’t exactly make him a hero in her eyes. She still hated him, considering he could have given the children back after that instead of using them to force her surrender. 

He was still a piece of shit who held toddlers hostage. But… yeah. 

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Deveron asked her, my father echoing the sentiment. 

Mom, in turn, offered a shrug. “I don’t know. But I don’t want to stay in this forcefield forever. We need to go out there. I need to see him face-to-face. 

“So, let’s do this.” 

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