The horizon was still dark when Seele wandered into the tree-line outside Thorinn. Moonlight still soaked the canopy, still slunk down through the leaves in silvery beams that she always avoided walking through on superstition. You didn’t step on cracks, you didn’t walk under ladders, and in Pariah, you didn’t break moonbeams.
These woods were familiar to her. Thorinn was her patronland after all, and she had done her fair share of foraging for apothecarial reagents out here. With how often she forwent treasure and praise, what meager money she did make came from the minor alms she provided to wayfarers and denizens. But she had not come here to make salves and tinctures—though she would, later. She had come here because she could not sleep—
would not sleep. She had come here because it had been a long time, and she was not sure when she would come again.
And also, because she was still filthy.
Eventually the trees broke around a small clearing, within which was settled an old, familiar pond. Many a time she’d plundered its murky depths for the potent weeds and strange tubers that grew from the floor, but not tonight—or was it today? Tomorrow? Regardless,
now, its waters were flat and still and black as onyx. Moonlight filled the clearing, but as it spread nacreous across the surface, try as it might it could not sink even an inch lower. Standing before it felt much like standing before a void.
Seele kneeled at its bank and shucked the complicated heap of fabrics that was her robe for the simple sleeveless shirt and shorts beneath. Graves—she suspected—had taken nearly all of Enos’s blood in their fight against the demon, and it seemed that the rest was now stuck to her. It was caked beneath her nails, drying in the crook of her collarbone, and it stained the gauzy cloth wrapping her arms and shins.
As she washed, the surface seemed to resist her touch, as if it were too heavy to be bothered. The ripples she left were smoothed almost as soon as she looked away, and she could not tell if it was some bewitchment of the water, or if time had simply begun to slip from her again. In the quiet and dark, she often felt like the molasses at the very bottom of a bottle. Such a small amount, so slow to move. Better to just toss it out and buy another.
The sight of herself in the black-liquid mirror was always a small shock. Pariah had done little to change her physically; her skin was a bit less pallid, her hair was a bit more fantastical, but she was no taller or thinner or bigger than she was in the world outside. Despite this, the longer she looked, the less she recognized the face she saw. Her reflection became an uncanny stranger. She began to feel again, as she had in the dungeon staring down into the chasm, that strange and yet familiar sense of vertigo.
She looked down at her hands and arms, where the gauzy bindings of her witch’s outfit were water-loosed and unwinding. Something settled in her mind, something calm and accepting, yet when she took hold of the cloth her fingers trembled for a moment, before she found the resolve to undo them. She turned her eyes up to the void above her.
She
breathed.
Sink.Her fingers traced both scars as though an honest touch might rend them open again. The one on the left wrist was smaller and shallow and would have been the easier to look at, and Doctor Hall said that one day, with enough time and decent care, it might eventually fade altogether. The one on the right would not fade. The skin there was a ruinous valley. She could recall little from the time it happened, only the distant sound of alarms, the cold, and the promise of a dreamless dark. Then she’d dreamed anyway.
Sink.It had not been a conscious decision to bring these with her into Pariah, but it had been a conscious decision to keep them. Some chains didn’t break. Weren’t meant to.
“
Sink.”
Ghostly breath prickled the hair on the back of her neck. Missy whirled around and saw nothing but shadows and moonbeams. She stared.
“Mi…ssy…”She turned back to the pond, and again she saw nothing. But on the other side of the water, enshrouded by the darkness of the trees, there was a small, nearly-imperceptible smudge. For a moment she held out hope that it was merely a monster stalking easy prey, but that moment was fleeting. There was nothing on the other side of the pond, there never was. She had misheard. It was her heart beating in her ears.
“…I can…hear…”“No,” she muttered. Her chest grew tight. A faint, mechanical hum filled her ears. She felt the sudden urge to flee.
“That’s not fair…”Missy rose from the bank and gathered up her robe. By the time she’d put it back on, the distant smudge was gone, the buzzing had ceased. But she was no longer alone.
A silhouette stood at the center of the pond. It was tall, its limbs gangly. Its feet did not disturb the abyssal water’s surface. The thing held no reflection, no shadow, the moonlight did not touch it. It was featureless, yet Missy could feel eyes upon her. She stood still as stone and stared back.
“
You made a promise,” it said in a voice that was at once entirely familiar, and yet utterly foreign.
Missy frowned, whispered:
“I know,” and then left the pond behind.
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