Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Desert mornings are quiet. At this hour everything is cast in a soft rolling blue, the sands rise and ripple in the wind like ocean waves. The darker shadows of night receding to the blue hour of morning. The sun teeters on the edge of rising, though it hesitates more each day in setting, as the summer days grow longer.

Frigid night giving way to scorching day ad infinitum.

But now is the in between time of transition. Interim.

The blue hour before dawn.

Oscar sits at the edge of the city, atop a pinnacle in the old stone wall. Looking out at the desert, beyond the sprawl of tents and makeshift shelters of the refugee camp outside the city walls. Pressing in on all sides, Shade surrounded.

Cast in blue, Oscar mourns sleep. Being awake at this hour carries a kind of nostalgia that tastes like dirt.

Sleeplessness is the least of his worries though, a derision that would draw an outcry from his closest friends.

You could be wrong, Oscars says without speaking aloud. Directed at the niche in his mind, compartment of his soul, where Oz resides.

Though the delineation between where Oscar stops, and Oz begins in that space has long since blurred. Like fences in a cleared field built in centuries past, breached and overgrown by the forest and shifted by the imperceptible, titanic movement of earth underfoot. The outline still discernible but the membrane permeable.

Oz stirs slowly at the prodding, not yet lucid. They don’t always wake up together now.

Half-awake, he responds, About?

Everything, Oscar’s says in deliberate provocation.

An effort to rouse the other, but his tone relays humor as much as the background-radiation fuzz of their shared mind relays worry.

It’s there always now, the dread.

Oz has been slipping lately, long stretches of time where it feels as if Oscar is the only voice in his head. That when Oscar does hear it, the recurring realization that Oz’s voice is becoming indistinguishable from Oscar’s own internal voice steals his breath and makes everything brighter-louder-harsher, and overwhelming.

Oscar brings his right knee up and rests his chin upon it. Folds his arms around his leg and holds himself. Shuts his eyes to the wind and just feels it.

He tries to breathe around this thing in their chest of undoing-assimilation-synthesis-becoming.

The curse itself like the far-off toll of a bell. It’s call distant but growing louder with each pace they take in lockstep. Always walking towards their inevitable doom no matter what direction they choose. Sands through the drain of the hourglass, cacophonous in their rain.

The noose around their neck tightening further still.

Unmade, and made unknown.

The terrible, slow, overflowing fear as Oscar recognizes he can’t remember what of himself that’s changed because of Oz. He can guess—driving himself mad—but can’t pinpoint with certainty. There is no one around him now, who would know the difference of him-before-Oz and him-after-Oz. What pieces of himself he can claim and what’s been grafted on. Inherited by shared mind, spirit, history, and sense memory.

They are both losing pieces of themselves. Gaining traits and peculiarities that the other brought to the merge. Oscar’s life coloring Oz, and Oz’s coloring Oscar.

If Oscar were to be overwritten in an instant, that would be simpler then. Not any less horrific and its own kind of death. But there would be final rest, at least, in erasure. Oscar feels Oz recoil, though still disoriented. Oscar’s shoulders tense.

The truth is they’re both dying.

But neither will die a true death.

And when they’re both gone something new will take their place, risen from the collision of their souls. Born in the aftermath of that impact. Left to deal with the fallout of Oz’s choices, Oscar’s choices, and the bleed between. An amalgamation, haunted by too many ghosts.

It is the multipart tragedy of their curse. They will be the walking dead.

Oz is resigned and Oscar vacillates between terror and acceptance.

Oz seems to stretch out like a cat, trying to shake off curse-slumber, but still groggy; and giving the impression of a sixteen-year-old teenager woken too early, he says, That’s a lot to be wrong about.

Oscar breathes slowly for them both and takes the plunge.

Everything we’ve done, our past lives, we’re working from a few base assumptions that might be wrong.

Which are? Oz responds after doing the mental equivalent of walking in an agitated circle.

Salem and the god of light.

Oscar conjures memories of Ozma’s first-hand experiences and revelations from Jinn’s vision. They remember the world before and its obliteration. They remember the Brothers Grimm and their divestment. They remember Salem, they remember the god of light’s mandate.

Oscar creates a roadmap from these memories, a spider web of strings connecting points. I think we’ve got it twisted.

Oscar, I don’t think we should go down this line of thinking again—

Has Salem ever said what she actually wants? Oscar interrupts. Are you certain she wants to die?

A pause, pregnant, but brief at the speed of thought.

I think she’s tired…I think she wants to rest. And she sees only one way to get there.

But how can you be sure? Oscar pushes.

Oz is silent again for a beat. Then another. They feel out of sync, discordant in the weave of the bond between them. Tangled and uncomfortable, in just the same way Oscar woke from sleep today. Suddenly, like falling.

The sun begins to rise above the shadow of the mountains. Daybreaks on an off-key note.

I think you know by now how famously bad of a judge of character I am. Oz says finally, fatalistic and self-hating to the point of nausea.

Oscar stops, and tries to recenter, saying, She may think the same of us as we do of her. But, honestly, with more reason to believe we will summon the brothers and kill the world.

A jittering anxiety that Oscar was astutely suppressing bubbles over from Oz. An anxiety that surfaces every time their minds turn to this inflection point. Rebellion. Oscar has suspicions on the true source of this fear—that it is not truly coming from Oz but the curse’s influence on him—the snare around their neck—tightening, tightening, tightening, choking—but regardless its justification stems from piety. Faith in doctrine handed down from the word of god.

Prepare for the day of judgement.

That can’t be our final goal. After everything, that can’t be what we cling to.

Oscar knows the words come from himself but feels Oz lock into place along his spine and round the curve of his skull. A frisson of vibration in harmony, his words have an echo.

Affirmation without direct dissent, however feeble, even in the privacy of their own mind. A loophole then for the old, tired, terrified man.

He’s trying. At least he’s trying. Oscar breathes steadily, slowly. To soothe them both.

Oz starts to drift away, his presence never wavering but his awareness fading. Oscar sighs, thunks his forehead against his knee and then unwinds from the knots they’ve been tying themself in.

Oscar stands and unfolds his wings, steps off the wall and swoops gracefully over the tent city outside Shade’s walls. Residents uplift their voices in greeting to him from below and he answers each and every one in kind. Drawing strength from so simple a candlelight in the storm like, “Good morning!”

He does a full sweep of the encampments from above, circling the city and all its people. Back on patrol.

Back to work.

In the endless expanse of the abyss between star nurseries and hurtling celestial bodies, a behemoth stirs from the darkness.

Glittering gold, a titanic wyrm spirals in rings through the black between stars. Its attention caught by something inscrutable.

Dwarfing neutron stars, and bloated with power, the wyrm twists its head in the nowhere-space bereft of up and down and glowers—eyes blazing solar flares, shedding streams of gold—into the far-forever distance.

It tosses its regal, antlered head. Enraged.

Its mane billowing and hide shimmering, dripping liquid light.

Petulant, it bares its teeth.

A cry from its maw splits the equilibrium of the nearest galaxies, disrupting the careful balance of their dance. Each dancer spinning out, some colliding, with a calamitous crash of chaos.

A shattering.

Such arrogance…

Evernight is still as the grave. Its high halls lit only by moonlight.

Evernight is a monument, only a handful of the wretched of this world have laid eyes upon it in all of remembered history; let alone traveled the lands of the Dark continent. As to what it memorializes only two—three now, three—people in the whole world have seen it and understood.

It’s not meant as glory, it’s entirely a pragmatic reminder. And a grim one at that, intended for an audience of one: Its architect alone.

She stands in an empty atrium. Before ceiling-scrapping windows that overlook the diminishing pools of black below, enshrouding jagged broken-tooth cliff edges, and the slope of the red valley beyond.

The purple night above is eternal, the stars a shimmering field through the clouds.

The stars have changed so much. Salem has watched some fade entirely from these skies. Their deaths finally reaching her here.

The only sound is the seer, chittering and clicking musically behind her. The report was detailed but thin on substance or sustenance.

Conditions on both fronts have failed to improve. The stalemate promises no end in sight, but there is a crack in the wall, she just has to find it—

A hum emanates from the seer, distinct from the Grimm’s chirping, interrupting her mid-thought.

Salem closes her eyes and regroups, then returns her gaze to the figure projected in the seer’s orbuculum. Her lieutenant had asked her for orders, and she had been silent long enough for a nudge to be necessary. Ridiculous.

“For now, refocus our forces on Shade. We’ll need the secret keeper to uncover the Beacon relic and to reach him we must breach the walls of Shade.”

A form like a leopard emerges from the pools of black, clawing its way to the surface. It shakes off the ichor with a full-body shiver. On four legs it lopes away, two-tailed and tusked.

“Target the sword as they expect and use the chaos to extract the boy. If we can apply enough pressure to force their hand, to open the vault and use the sword, all the better. We’ll meet little resistance at Beacon and their last stand in the desert will be wasted once we have the Beacon relic.”

A rumbling hum of assent in reply comes from the seer’s projection.

Gradually, there is a subtle shift of pressure in the air. Salem turns back to the window and trains her eyes downward once more. A ripple cascades through the remaining pools of black. What seems like bubbles boiling to the surface becomes fingertips. Fingerprints. Scratching, scraping, and clawing.

Screaming without voices. Without mouths.

Skeletal hands in the hundred-thousands press their palms against the surface of the pools of black, pushing at the membrane till it bulges. Then snaps back.

The surfaces rippling, then stilling once more. Reflecting the fractured moon in pieces.

The legion long contained, the last trapdoor.

Salem waves away the seer and it departs the atrium, passing an overturned, broken throne on its way to the door.

Salem looks up once more out of her tower’s windows. The atrium’s expansive space closing in on her.

Evernight’s residents are as quiet as the stars, those many ghosts haunting the sky.

Though they may be riotous and howling at the end, no one would know. A soundless void is no place for grieving. Their voices unheard here and their meaning as clear as if the stars too were laid to rest underground.

Chapter Text

“Could I do that?”

Oscar, who had been in the process of roughly pulling his hair back into a short ponytail, pauses, and glances sideways at Jaune from where he’s materialized in the hanger bay.

Oscar blinks at Jaune owlishly, uncomprehending, until Jaune indicates his hair with an illustrative hand motion.

“Oh, uh,” Oscar says distractedly, “I’m just putting my hair up, nothing fancy.”

“Yeah. Looking very rolled out of bed,” Jaune says in that very gently teasing tone he’s been using more. Each time tentative, like he’s still finding his feet after all this time, and braced for reproach. “If that’s what you’re going for.”

Ruby, seated at an armament table behind them, fastidiously putting Crescent Rose back together after disassembling her weapon to clean it—damn sand—snorts loudly.

Oz hums in agreement.

Oscar drops his hair, puts his hands on his hips, and turns around to give Ruby a look. She grins lopsided at him from behind her goggles and he can’t even feign annoyance.

He sighs, affecting a put-upon demeanor, “Ok—fine.” He can hear the half-laugh in his own voice, “But do you even have a—”

Jaune proffers a pocket comb like an offering and Oscar is immediately overwhelmed by fondness. Oscar pulls out one of the empty stools from under the table with his foot and sits down next to Ruby.

As he takes his seat, Oscar carefully folds his wings closed, nice and neat.

Jaune, practically glowing with joy, stands behind Oscar and begins to comb out Oscar’s unruly mane. Taking extra care detangling snarls and knots. Hard to keep one’s hair tidy when flying.

This isn’t the first time Jaune has tended to Oscar’s hair. A lot has changed since his and Ruby’s return to Remnant. This among many things, big and small. Oscar had long since let his hair grow out, and an odd ritual has emerged between him and Jaune. Jaune’s need to caretake and Oscar’s inclination to reintegrate Jaune into his life, finding many strange and comforting manifestations.

Today, Jaune isn’t particularly ambitious, parting sections of Oscar’s hair at the sides of his head in three sections each to braid. Carefully twinging the braids and then joining them at the back of his head. Jaune leaves the rest of Oscar’s hair down and loose.

Oscar hasn’t found the antidote yet to Jaune’s deeper displacement and disassociation—gods Oscar doesn’t even know how to help himself in that arena—but Oscar can be kind. He can be patient and accept Jaune’s outstretched hand when it’s offered.

Jaune ties off the joined braids and says, pleased, “There.”

Oscar runs his fingers along the weave of the braids, marvels at the neatness and glances at his reflection in the hull of a nearby gunship. Oscar then runs his fingers through his own fringe and allows himself to marvel further. The half-up, half-down hairstyle is simple and understated, but quite striking. Especially, the wild tussle of hair at the back flaring from where the braids are joined and tied off.

Oscar quite likes it, and Oz glows warmly at the care shown to them by their friend.

Oscar smiles up at Jaune. “Thank you, Jaune. That’s actually much better.”

“No problem!” Jaune’s reply is a little loud with obvious pride, but genuine, “Anytime.”

Oscar turns to Ruby, rests an elbow on the table and leans his cheek into his palm, “Better?”

Ruby looks up at him as she slots the chassis of the sniper rifle back into the main body of the scythe—the weapon emanates a resounding clean and clear click of metal on metal—When Ruby’s eyes fall on him her back goes ramrod straight and she freezes. Her eyes suddenly frantic. She looks back down at her weapon immediately, folds Crescent Rose into its standby form, and hums a monosyllabic affirmation.

Her reaction is imperceptible to any onlookers but a blaring alarm to Oscar. He sits up, his wings tensed, feathers slimmed to his back, “Ruby—”

“Alright! Who’s ready for another supply run!”

Oscar jumps in his seat. Yang’s voice interrupts him before he can settle a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. She’s rising from her seat and turning to smile at her sister before Oscar can make enough sense of her reaction to chart a way forward.

“Woo, let’s give it up for 293,” Nora says beside Yang, clapping glibly.

“And counting!” Ruby says, bright and sunny. In the exact way he’s learned to recognize as her slotting on a mask.

Oscar stands and chances a glance at Jaune to gauge if he caught any of that. Jaune’s eyes are elsewhere, waving at Neptune and Sage as they pass by.

Did—Did I imagine that?

No, I saw it too, Oz responds with a mental frown.

Oscar tries to keep their dual frowns from marking their face and greets their teammates as they all trickle in.

Ren, Blake, and Weiss come bearing dust cartridges and ammo for their weapons. Dust rationing is at an all-time high, so none of them are able to restock completely, but every little bit counts.

They’ve had to learn how to make a little go a lot further and make high stakes risk-reward decisions while out in the field.

Not like that’s anything new.

“This why it took you guys so long?” Ruby asks as she refills her gun belt, hip-bumping Weiss as she slots dust cartridges into Myrtenaster’s barrel.

“We’re early!” Weiss half-shouts, half-hisses, exasperated, “Debrief doesn’t even start until quarter of. You’re early-early!”

“We’re running late to being early,” Blake says.

“So, we’re right on time,” Ren chirps sagely, following Jaune and Yang as they start to head toward the hanger’s bay doors. The delivery of Ren’s words pulls a surprised giggle from Jaune.

Weiss throws up her hands, miming like she can’t decide on which morning person to strangle first as she follows behind.

Ruby snickers, and then glances left meeting Oscar’s eye. She looks away again quickly, and worry prickles at him as he bats away inconvenient feelings of self-consciousness.

Ruby seems to steel herself, moving over to him and pulling her goggles up to rest on her forehead at her hairline.

When she doesn’t immediately say anything, Oscar flails, and tries to joke, but his words come out in almost a whisper, “If it’s that bad I can take it out.”

He doesn’t know what’s wrong. He doesn’t know the right way to ask her when they’re not alone.

“No!” She says quickly, “No. Nothing to do with you,” she waves her hands in front of her, placating, “Or your hair.”

He tilts his head, entreating.

“Just…” she sighs, bone-deep tired, “It’s stupid. It doesn’t even make sense but…”

She runs a hand over her face and looks off into the near distance, “Just saw a ghost for a second there…”

The grief in her voice moves him. Oscar reaches for Ruby’s hand at her side and gives it a squeeze.

Oh, says Oz, foreboding.

When Oz, unhelpfully, does not explain, Oscar doesn’t press him or Ruby.

Ruby squeezes his hand back reassuringly and he pulls her gently toward their team. She allows Oscar to set the pace, and he intentionally hangs back a bit from the group.

Ruby squeezes his hand once more then drops it.

“You get enough sleep last night?” Ruby asks, breaking the easy silence.

Oscar sighs, and answers honestly, “No.”

Ruby frowns, sympathetic, “Me either. Nightmares?”

Oz squirms, Oscar powers through, “I don’t remember really but I’d guess nightmare adjacent. Woke up, couldn’t go back to sleep. You?”

“In and out,” she says, stretching out her wrists and then shoulders, “Not my worst night but,” she shrugs, “Not my best either.”

Oscar shakes out his wings with a yawn, hums knowingly, also sympathetic, and nods as he reaches into his waist side-pack for his stash of dried mango and hands her a strip. Ruby lights up at the outstretched gift and snatches it with gratitude.

Oscar chews on his slice of fruit as he opens his scroll to review the mission details again. He fires off quick messages to his team for things to be on the lookout for, their team assignments and the division of labor. As Oscar is getting their replies (he receives an endearing number of emojis from Ren), he catches Ruby looking at him again in his periphery and swallows the last of the mango.

When Oscar turns his head to make eye contact, she doesn’t pull away this time.

“Still seeing ghosts?” Oscar asks gently.

“No,” she says, looking him in the eye and smiling for real this time, “Just you.”

He smiles back and they bump shoulders in easy camaraderie as the massive metal gates of the bay doors decouple and grind open. Their group walks out onto the airstrip toward their waiting pilot and airship.

The heat of the desert sun is like a force of gravity, pressing down on Oscar as he walks into the light. The weight of that heat like something tangible on his skin.

It’s starts as a dismissible moment of uncomfortable tightness around his heart and skull. Then, a lurch of what could be misconstrued as the beginnings of one of their “episodes” flares. Oscar’s wings tense at his back, feathers standing on end.

Oscar reaches for Oz in a panic and finds his other half reaching for him in return. This dissonance is not internal. Wordless confusion passes between them, when suddenly the totality of fear slams into them all at once, as a shrieking roar splits their mind. A sound only they can hear. Spotlight of the panopticon, an awareness comes to them both of a presence great and terrible searching for him.

THERE YOU ARE.

Oscar freezes midstride, he stops abruptly at the back of the pack, and chokes on air. He feels a fishhook pierce his very soul and the line go taut.

Ruby whips around immediately, and Ren, just as fast, calls with alarm, “Oscar?”

Everyone turns back at the call of his name.

In the instant Ruby’s eyes meet Oscar’s, he reaches an arm out to her, his fingers outstretched, like she could catch him; and a blinding portal of gold erupts open behind him.

Ozma screams.

Like a tear in the fabric of reality, a burned hole punched through the weave, the portal roars like an inferno. Heat scorching his back; harsher than the desert sun.

—And it is a portal.

Unmistakable, that feeling like he’s standing over a gap, his back to a cliff edge, that same feeling before crossing the threshold into that long ago central location. The bridges of light—

Grasping gold hands in the dozens and white-hot, molten, metal chains usher forth from the tear in a deluge. In the very next instant seizing Oscar from behind. The touch so cold it burns. Fingers grasping his neck, his arms, his legs, his wings. The chains wrap around Oscar’s body, pinning his wings to his back, and ensnare him.

A hand clamps down over Oscar’s mouth from behind, smothering his scream.

Oscar is ripped backwards painfully with the momentum of a whip towards the portal’s gaping maw. His vision entirely dominated by his friends, his family, leaping toward him desperately. Their faces shocked and terrified. Their screams ringing in his ears.

Blake and Ren have already flung the cables of their weapons out toward him. Jaune’s knees are bent like he means to leap after Oscar. Yang already hurtling half in the air. Nora brandishing her weapon with a roar. A glyph begins to form under Weiss. Oscar witnesses the shroud of petal burst begin to eclipse Ruby’s form as she dives for him.

Too slow.

Ruby does not reach Oscar before he is pulled through the molten-gold tear, and it slams shut behind him with a quaking of the earth. Ruby closes her arms around nothing and lands with her arms empty. She looks back at her friends, her arms still up, and she hears a far off, shrieking howl.

Chapter Text

Blinded, Oscar is pulled violently through a cold inferno. A roar like a furnace shrieking in his ears. This is not like the white spaces of the in-between limbo of half-life they go to when he dies. Waylaid from the afterlife.

Oscar bites down on the hand that covers his mouth, teeth sinking into abductor muscle between forefinger and thumb. The offending hand does not react like it has sophisticated stimulus like pain. Something so simple and transcendental as pain.

Oscar thrashes wildly, If we could just get a hand free—Reach our cane-!

As he fights the chains and formless hands binding him, another tear opens before him. A point of black darkness in the sightless, all-encompassing, frenzied light. He goes screaming past it, eyes watering. The force dragging him along lurches and whips around, giving him whiplash as he’s pulled in a new direction. Toward the dark tear.

The chains loosen infinitesimally, and Oscar writhes and contorts his body painfully—Wild animals caught in a snare will break their own bones, file down their teeth, snap their own spines, in their desperation to escape—He manages to get a wing free and wrench the hand from around his throat off before he is thrown through the tear’s threshold. The hands holding him evaporate instantly when he crosses the bridge between spaces. The temperature difference hits him immediately as he comes into contact with solid ground. By instinct and pure muscle memory, Oscar is able to roll out of his hard descent and not crack open his skull or break any bones.

He hears laughter, sick and satisfied, behind him. The quality of sound eerie, as if from underwater.

His hands find his weapon at last.

Oscar lashes out behind him at the portal and the presence beyond. His swing sweeps through its remnants and the portal disperses. Gold recedes from darkness like a gossamer veil shred and dissolved into water.

Disorientation as the better part of fear, his heart in his throat as he becomes aware—not of the pale rock antechamber and its walls of intricately carved maddening patterns surrounding him—but of red eyes in the dark.

Her form backlit for a single heartbeat in the moment their eyes meet by that same gold light—Her eyes catching the gold light that shines from the receding portal in front of him—before the light goes out in an instant.

Only the red remaining.

His cane missed her by inches.

At the recognition, they are overcome by terror, so sharp it cuts and eviscerates them.

They feint back and brandish their weapon. Oz sketches out a dozen plans of attack, while Oscar looks for exits. The room they’re in is cavernous, the ceiling hundreds of feet up. There is a way sloping down to the left. And another way sloping up to the right.

Salem sways out of a low crouch as her leg reconstitutes—She was injured?—and stands to her full height to look down at him. Her face is full of fury.

All at once that totality slams into Oscar and Oz again, shattering their thoughts. That awful shrieking roar rending their mind. It takes all of Oscar’s strength to remain upright at the onslaught.

Salem reacts in time with them, every inch of her tensing as Oscar does. Hysterical confusion from Oz, Is this not her doing?!—

Words and meaning crash into them, with the weight of an ocean, their will buckling as the cacophonous cry becomes words they are given no choice but to grasp.

KILL HIM. | KILL HER.

KILL YOUR ADVERSARY. | KILL YOUR ADVERSARY.

KILL THE LIAR. | KILL THE BUTCHER.

KILL YOUR ADVERSARY. | KILL YOUR ADVERSARY.

The commands, a sea wall crashing, slam into them. Oscar hears what the voice says to Salem simultaneously. Understands it all at once. The voice unmistakable | unknowable at once.

Oscar feels pressure all around him, pressing in like the constriction of a snake around his body. Suffocating them. Now fishhooks pierce him anew—his limbs, wrists, hands, feet, throat, the crown of his head, the pit of his gut—and he lurches forward. His weapon held tight and pointed at the enemy.

Salem is—

Salem is frozen.

But he can see her shaking. He has never seen her so angry in all his life.

Oscar can see the points of tension where fishhooks must be pulling at her too. Pushing her toward him. But she is resisting. Salem remains rooted to the spot, the image of fury. She doesn’t budge an inch, her hands at her sides in fists.

Oscar reels back in a stuttered movement—his wings unfurl, beat erratically, desperately—and pain erupts all over his body. A strangled whimper slips past his lips.

Glowing red in the dark, Salem’s eyes bore into him.

Oscar grits his teeth and pulls back with all his might. A ragged yell is pulled from him as he manages to retreat from Salem the distance that had been closed. The pressure increases in intensity, and he fears being crushed to death by this unseen force.

The fishhooks tug once more, worse than ever before. Their very being threatening to break beneath the weight of this totality.

“No!” Oscar screams. He sheaths the Long Memory and holds it to his chest. “No!”

A controlled exhalation exudes from Salem, loud in Oscar’s ringing ears. Every move deliberate, she takes one careful step back and away from him.

Something shifts inside them—Ozma sobs—and a shudder reverberates through the lines of tension holding them. The agony draws on, scraping against the foundations of Oscar’s sanity. Oscar pulls back further, manages to take another stuttered, halted two-step, half-step back.

Salem does the same. Her face set in grim determination.

The pull slackens. Incrementally the pressure lessens, until it recedes entirely.

Oscar wobbles immediately once there isn’t a force to fight against, and barely manages to catch himself with his cane. He sways, breathing hard, his vision darkening around the edges, but maintains eye contact with Salem.

We’re okay. We’re okay. Oz repeats, his very being blurring.

Salem is looking at them. He has her attention.

Oscar raises a placating hand up to Salem, he tries to find firmer footing to address her, but before he can speak a much more familiar stab of pain lances through him.

What had been the beginnings of her name cuts off in Oscar’s throat with a hiss and a yell of pain. Oscars eyes flash as the curse sinks its claws into them, seeing its opportunity to strike in a moment of unparalleled weakness. Forcing Oscar and Oz inextricably together.

Oscar! Oz screams, his familiar voice distorting to a dozen different voices. Their fear all the same.

“No,” Oscar cries, and staggers, “Not now.” He drops to the ground clutching his chest and head. His heartbeat pounding in his ears, deafening him.

No no no no we have to run! Fly! Fly! We have to go! She’s right there, she’s-!

His vision swims, Salem before him growing blurry, the chamber losing its hard edges. Her red eyes pinpoints as everything blurs together. Light crowds his vision in spots, growing, and overtaking his sight with light.

The hundred slings and arrows of flashes overwhelms their senses completely and they lose track of the here-and-now, of place-and-body.

Oscar and Oz are lost to the cascade.

A thunderclap, a field wet with rain.

“—what they could never be—“

Wriggling little toes in sand and surf, ocean sounds.

A shipwreck.

“For a hearty pumpkin stew, we’ll need one generous Casper or Cinderella—or several Kabocha—look for soft spots and uniform color. Oh yes, and one with its stem intact!—Why that one’s perfect-!”

Pages turning. Turning, turning, turning. Eyes burning.

Smell of smoke and—

—Crawl of fire through the forest. A blaze. Smoke seen rising in the distance.

“You promised me. You promised!”

“—That Liar!”

“Please try to eat something, just a little, for me?”

A kitchen table—

Flashing red of alarms—

Blare of sirens—

Arrows sticking out of his chest, shoulders, and back—blood pooling—boiling—Still he stands on two feet. Beast—

“Sétanta!”

A quiet space in the mountains, a grove overgrown with soft mosses, Baba tending the mountain shrine. The babbling of the brook.

“—And we’re coming to you live from the launch site—

SCREAMS IN THE DARK

—and we have liftoff, people! Amity is in the skies—!”

Running across the plateau—legs pumping, heart pounding, blood rushing in his ears—to the cliffs edge, gnashing teeth of the hunters close behind. One desperate leap into the sky—clear open sky—

Falling—

Falling-!

“The single quality that is common across every living creature on this planet is—“

There, in the darkness…

What Are You?

A handhold in the maelstrom surfaces and Oscar-Ozma latch on. Gasping for breath and nearly dragged back under, they claw their way together out of the sea of memories back into their body.

Oscar wakes with a shudder, his fingers ache where they are clenched in his hair. He’s on his side on the cold ground. The red dirt marked where he has clawed at the ground on one side and flapped his wings in convulsions on the other. His fingers brush the braids at the side of his head, still intact but loosened and frayed in the throes of fighting the merge. Oscar sobs and curls up into a tight ball.

Then abruptly remembers he had company and freezes, holding his breath.

How much time has passed? Impossible to tell.

Slowly, he lifts his head and looks.

Salem stands exactly where Oscar had left her when he and Oz had gone under. Her hands are loose and open at her sides, but she wears the most peculiar look on her face. Surprised and displeased are too simple to really get at the look she’s giving him. Oz, jittery and still pulling himself back together, gets stuck on her expression and can’t look away.

She is staring at them.

Oscar stares right back.

They say nothing to each other. Oscar shakes and Salem is frozen like a statue.

This goes on for a very, very long time.

“What was that?” She asks eventually, strangled.

Her words break the silence, snapping Oscar back into himself where he’d started to drift, and he flinches.

With a gasp, his whole body one ache, Oscar crawls further away from her to the wall. He gets ahold of the carved reliefs of the wall and shakily pulls himself to his feet.

“Happens when,” Oscar says hoarsely, taking deep breaths huddled against the wall, “We fight the merge.”

“What?” Salem says, severe.

Oscar peaks at her, still trembling in aftershocks of pain, “Whatever that was,” he weakly waves a hand up at the ceiling, he doesn’t know why, “Triggered it. Close enough to a memory to…”

Oscar trails off as Salem goes through multiple extreme and escalating expressions and lands again on what he guesses are the estranged cousins of perplexed and deeply unhappy. He’s surprised by her expressiveness and thrown by it. Though Salem was plenty expressive the last time they were face to face, but only in violent outbursts. Her affect for the majority of that experience was largely subdued.

The absurdity hits him—What is he thinking? Why is he talking, why is he explaining? He feels a little hysterical.

Did she even mean the merge attack or…Or before that?

Huddled behind Oscar’s eyes, mentally covering his mouth with his hands like he’s holding his breath to dampen sound, Oz projects cornered animal ready to bolt and lash out in equal measure.

Oz has no gentle reassurance that they will be OK this time.

“We—” Oscar’s voice breaks and he swallows thickly, urgency pushes desperation into his voice, “We don’t have to fight. Please we don’t—”

“I’m not going to kill you, fool,” Salem interrupts him with a feral snarl, then sneers sharply, “He wants me to kill you. So, I refuse. I will not play the part in his designs as he demands. Never again.”

Rebellion.

We finally had freedom—

Oscar squeezes his eyes shut and bites down on his lip, hard, until he tastes blood. The pain wrenches Oz back from the ocean cliff-edge of their mind. Shame and grief are a vortex always threatening to drown Oz. Right now, they cannot fall into the sea again. Oscar forces his eyes open again and focuses on Salems face. She’s giving him that peculiar look again. Pensive.

“Then you felt it too,” Oscar trudges on, pushing off from the wall slowly and leaning heavily on his cane. “That—Those—That awful weight. The strings? Like hooks in—in your flesh.”

“Yes,” she seethes.

“Who spoke to us?” Oscar asks, reaching for the thread. The question intended not just for Salem, but his own strange passenger too, Who pulled the strings?

Ozma folds in on himself.

Oscar despairs.

Salem narrows her eyes and tilts her head distinctly, “Ah, it’s still you, boy.”

Oscar stills and blinks.

“Oscar,” Oscar says flat and holding his ground. A strange sensation of relief briefly surfaces that he has no time to look at too closely.

“Right,” Salem says, her tone veering wildly from curt to sickly sweet, “Oscar Pine.”

He can’t help it when his eyebrows raise incredulously and his features grimace. Oscar distinctly dislikes the sound of his full name in that quality of her voice. Like-minded souls indeed…Oscar and Oz squash the building anxiety at the remembered tone of voice—the hurt—the open wound—never healed—and it’s accompanied memory of violence, and focus on the present moment.

As terrible of a moment as it currently is.

Deal with it later. Survive now, deal with it later.

A common refrain in this head of theirs.

“Well, Oscar, can you explain to me what has brought us here, together, now?”

“I don’t know,” Oscar starts, quieter than he meant. He steels himself and says firmer, louder, “I didn’t do this.”

A beat.

And Salem does not immediately object or fly off the handle at him. Her critical eyes sweep over him, pausing at his shoulders where his wings are tensed and half-unfolded—they always give him away—until her gaze rests on his face once more.

Expression placid, Salem then says, “Hm.” And nothing more.

They say nothing to each other for a breath.

“If you were behind this, would you tell me?” Oscar asks then, ready for the bear trap, lion’s jaws, to slam shut on him, “Honestly.”

Salem glowers at him then, he doesn’t flinch, but simply says, “This was not my doing.”

She doesn’t raise her voice and she doesn’t advance upon him.

Oz isn’t sure he believes her, but Oscar knows he saw true resistance from Salem to the command to murder him just a moment ago. So, for their survival, he’ll work from an assumption that’s she’s telling the truth. Can they give her the benefit of the doubt?

So, we’re just…talking now…?

So far so good, right?

…

Let me keep talking to her, we’ll figure this out.

Oscar takes the lead.

“What happened to you?” Oscar asks, and then volunteers like a shaking olive branch, “I was grabbed from behind by,” his voice stutters as he tries to remain calm, “By hands and chains and pulled through a portal. Right in front of my…” their faces flash in his mind, “My friends. And then spat out here.”

“Wherever here is…” Oscar waves his hands around at their surroundings.

The atmosphere of this strange, deathly quiet place is starting to get to him. Their voices have a far-off echo that speaks to its possible daunting expanse.

Salem seizes upon something and her eyes light up, brighter and dangerous, “Chains you say?”

“Yeah…?”

“What were they made of?” She asks, then qualifies, “Do you estimate?”

“Looked like, well.” Oscar stumbles over himself, “They looked hot. But they were freezing. I think—I think the chains were molten gold.”

Salem’s gaze slides off him and into the middle distance, then she looks off into the dark. He follows her gaze for a split second before turning back to her. Salem curls her right pointer finger at her chin, her brows creased in thought, “Yes,” she’s says, “Molten gold...”

“What happened to you?” Oscar reiterates.

Salem narrows her eyes once more, and actually grimaces, before she says, “A hooked spear of gold pierced me here,” she points to her abdomen, just below the flayed wings of her ribs. “From the front. A tear was ripped into the world where the spear came through. The spear was attached to a long chain and once it found its mark, the fisherman reeled the line back in.”

Oscar takes that imagery in, “No hands?”

“No,” she encircles her left wrist with her right hand, rubbing circles with her thumb over where her pulse would be, “Though there were many more instruments of capture than the hooked spear. Knives, hooks, hammers, stakes, barbs, anchors…”

Salem looks at him meaningfully, her voice taking on an oddly distant tone, “And chains.”

Oscar’s mouth is dry and the harrowing past few minutes of his life (could be hours, no way of telling how long he was under) are really putting this conversation into perspective. Gods, he is so tired. Oscar hasn’t completely ruled out that this isn’t a stress dream or that he’s finally cracked and lost touch with reality; but this might as well happen.

“So, we can agree that we were both brought here against our will,” He says, tentative.

Salem sniffs derisively but does not comment.

“Do you know where we are?” He ventures instead. Oz has been sifting through a millennia of memories in the background and coming up empty for time and place.

Salem looks down her nose at him, but then she grimaces again and admits, to his surprise, “No.”

“Okay…Okay,” Oscar says intelligently, “So, then we look for a way out. And we don’t kill each other in the meantime.”

Salem nods once, but she looks like she’s bitten into something bitter.

“Okay,” Oscar says again, still feeling a little crazy, Oz a tight ball of baffled terror at the base of Oscar’s skull.

Taking a deep breath, Oscar resolves to do something very stupid and a little brave. He steps forward, walks within Salem’s reach, and holds out his hand.

Salem looks at his proffered hand and her expression goes blank. She stares at his extended hand for a long enough pause for his resolve to waver. He struggles to keep the tremble of his whole body in check, his feathers shivering, and wings primed for flight.

Abruptly, Salem takes one singular step forward, careful, and grasps Oscar’s hand in a sure grip. Salem shakes his hand once then drops it, as if he burned her, and takes a step back. Salem clasps her hands in front of her, incongruously polite, and goes very still.

Oscar, still holding his hand out in the air, blinks, and, excruciatingly slow, eventually lowers and retracts his hand. Oscar blinks rapidly at Salem. Oz is speechless.

Given that Oscar’s worst-case scenario was Salem literally biting his head off, Oscar thinks that went pretty well.

“Okay,” Oscar’s beginning to feel like a broken record on this, “So, up or down?”

Chapter Text

With the immediate threat of death at Salem’s hands postponed for the time being, Oscar and Oz try to pull themselves back together and think clearly. Assess their options and come up with a plan. On their left the chamber drops down, and on their right the chamber rises. In both directions, there appears to be buried sections of stairs. Surfacing from under the red dirt.

Both passageways spill darkness.

There are no light sources.

Oscar is thankful he can see well enough in the dark to make out their surroundings. Though he doesn’t know about Salem. In answer to his unasked question, Salem ignites a blue fire in the palm of her hand. Oscar squints his eyes, throws up a hand to block the light and blinks blearily, eyes adjusting to the bright light from pitch dark. He swears under his breath forgetting himself for a moment, Oscar’s head is aching from a merge induced migraine.

Oscar rubs at his eye, grumbling, and finds the intensity of light immediately lessens.

Once the pain of the headache subsides marginally, he peeks his eyes open to glance at Salem, and finds her watching him. Her expression subdued but her gaze keen.

So, she can’t see in the dark.

Why do we not already know that?

“Let’s have a look around,” Oscar starts, weary.

Oscar moves to step toward the stairs leading down, when his hackles raise suddenly, the second his back is to Salem. The hairs on the back of his neck and the feathers at his nape standing on end. Split second reflex has him whipping around and dashing back from Salem’s outstretched hand at his turned back.

DON’T take your eyes off her! Oz hisses.

Oscar crouches into a fighting stance, his hand already reaching for the Long Memory. Oz primed like the fight-or-flight instinct behind his clenched teeth, ready to react, ready to attack and defend—

Salem blinks slowly and shifts her hand—still hanging in the air where she had grabbed for him—and points, “There’s something on your back.”

Oscar splutters at her, “Don’t just–!” They process what she just said, “What?”

“It’s gold,” Salem sneers, pointing more emphatically but importantly not getting closer to them.

They stare at her, then Oscar twists his body in a way most other humans cannot. Keeping his head facing her, while twisting his torso around so he can look at both Salem and his back. Salem does not react to this contortion.

Nestled between his feathers, right up against the line of his spine between his shoulders, is the glittering, gold shell of a beetle. Once its presence is known to them, once they are both aware of the awful thing, Oscar can feel its alien adherence to his flesh and bones.

Oscar almost screams.

Parasite! Syphon! Leech!

His wings unfurl—can’t fly away from a lesion on your skin—He wheels around, pawing desperately at the metal insect but he can’t reach it.

“Stand still, fool boy, I’ll rip it out.”

Oscar whips around to face Salem as she purposefully steps toward him this time. He scrambles back from her, alighting half-a-foot up, disturbing the stagnant air, before dropping back down, “Wait! Turn around.”

Salem stills dangerously.

It’s Oscar’s turn now to point emphatically at Salem.

The blue fire she conjures floats up and away from her palm, detaching into globular motes of blue light. The lights scatter above their heads like glowflies.

Salem achieves the same contortionist maneuver Oscar did, though the bones, ligaments, and muscles of her neck make an awful sound when she twists around backwards.

And there, burrowed into the skin of Salem’s back in the same place, is a twin gold beetle. It’s polished antennae buzzing as if transmitting a signal.

“What the fuck,” Oscar says with feeling.

Salem’s face gradually contorts with rage. Her arms twist around backwards—Rakshasi—and she grasps the gold beetle fused to her spine. Purple electricity sparks from her fingertips as Salem blasts the metallic insect with one of her most lethally destructive spells. The beetle’s shell remains unblemished after multiple assaults with concentrated powers that could have leveled a hemisphere of Remnant.

Salem snarls and digs her fingers into her own skin, sinking deeper and deeper. Her face communicates singular focus unbothered by pain.

Oscar steps back and claps a hand over his own mouth to muffle his distress.

Oscar watches as Salem sinks her fingers into her flesh, digging deeper and deeper still, until she gets both her hands around the column of her spine. She carefully carves out the infected area, veins of gold spidering out from under the scarab’s shell woven into black ichor-soaked muscle tissue.

With one violent movement, Salem wrenches her spine from her body, sections of her ribs ripped away in the mighty rending. He can see now, horror of horrors, where the scarab’s spindly legs pierce her very spinal cord. Salem throws her bones away, the scarab attached to her spine wheeling through the air and clattering hollowly to the ground. Salem then collapses, falling in a heap on the floor, like a puppet with its strings cut.

Can’t stand up straight without a spine, Oz supplies morbidly, the rest of them in shock.

Oscar stares at where Salem’s spine landed, ichor is starting to pool around the severed bones and hunks of gore. The beetle gleams in the dark, seeming to emit its own low ambient light. The sick sounds of Salem regrowing her fucking spine and knitting her flesh and skin back together nearly untenable. Oscar clenches his hands at the tops of his shoulders, and fists his feathers painfully. The space between his shoulders burning. Prickling.

On the ground, Salem twists her arms back the right way round and stands back up smoothly. Her movements are too quick, fluid, and Oscar jumps when she’s says, “Come here, child.”

Oscar cowers away from her, “Wait.”

“You’re wasting time.”

“I’m not going to survive having my spine ripped out!” Oscar shouts.

What else can be done?! There has to be something—Think!

For the very first time, Salem raises her voice, “Do you want to live forever as a puppet or die free?”

Oscar-Ozma locks eyes with her. Something that has been brewing inside of them all their lives expands. A powerful feeling without name takes root. An idea, the most dangerous thing, stoked by hope.

Indomitable.

“No,” Oscar says, “I will live free!”

He gathers himself and takes the plunge.

Form, matter, substance, tether.

First, he takes the form of a wolf. Then fur recedes to the feathers of a mollymawk. Then midair salmon scales landing on the hooves of a red elk—The beetle holding gamely on through each shift—Then on his belly as a snake then jumping into the air again, a hare–antlered–jacklope.

Form taken water, then fire, then lightning, then mist. A cloud of moths erupts into scores of tiny fluttering wings. The transition between water vapor and moths wings imperceptible.

Then water once more, like rain into the dirt.

A soft green sprout emerges from the red dirt. In seconds it grows to a full-sized, mature fruit tree. The beetle embedded in the tree’s sturdy trunk. Flowers bloom on its branches. Petals fall and fruits swell. A single pomegranate drops from the tree’s bountiful boughs.

The pomegranate hits the floor and bounces, once, twice. And then rolls to a stop. It lies there still.

Moments pass…

Then, the pomegranate splits open and fireflies spill from its trove. Glittering phosphorescent green in the dark. The fireflies rush up into the air like a wave then rain back down, flying low to the ground.

Hundreds of twinkling lights ringing like bells.

The cloud of their lights fluctuating, until they begin to shape the silhouette of a humanoid form in their murmuration. Wings outstretched.

Ten fingers. Two eyes. One mouth. Head, shoulders, knees and toes. Knees and toes.

Two wings.

Oscar takes form gradually, then all at once.

Oscar gasps for breath like he almost suffocated and collapses on his hands and knees in the dirt. Sobbing for breath, everything tilts dangerously to the left before the world rights itself once more. Oscar shakes out his head, as if to clear water from his ears, and checks himself over for all the essentials.

The freckles on his arms are glowing faintly.

Staring at his left arm, watching the glow slowly fade, Oscar reaches a hand up and winds his fist painfully in the feathers at the nape of his neck. Grounding himself.

He turns to the tree and beholds the gold beetle wedged in the bark of the tree trunk.

Oh, my gods it worked.

I can’t believe that worked.

Still breathing hard with effort, Oscar slumps back from kneeling to seated on the ground. His wings sagging in relief at his back.

Salem makes a small noise, and Oscar only picks up on it because all his senses are currently turned up to eleven. He startles and then slowly peeks at her. Salem isn’t looking at him, she’s looking at the tree. Vibrant and green. There in her eyes is a spark of…wonder? No, it couldn’t possibly—What else could that be? What does she feel?

If anything at all.

Oscar mentally shoves Oz and Oz pushes right back; though less forcefully.

At some point, Salem had called back her conjured blue fire into the palm of her hand. There it burns above her clasped hands in front of her heart, disembodied lantern for its keeper. The eerie blue light casts stark shadows on her face. Salem approaches the tree Oscar left behind and circles it slowly, her pace and silent candor predatory. Carefully observant and keen.

Once she completes her circuit of the tree she approaches him, her critical eye roving over his form. He watches her right back but makes no move to rise. Oscar clasps the back of his neck with his right hand and leans his left elbow on the top of his knee, tries to bear her scrutiny without agitation. He focuses instead on catching his breath.

Without preamble, Salem gives the meager flame in her palm some more juice, and it grows, blossoms and brightens. She holds the flame aloft above him and her gaze sharpens further. Oscar glances down at himself again. His freckles are still glowing a little. That’ll probably go away eventually—Right?

“Does—” Oscar swallows thickly, his voice rough with disuse as if he hasn’t spoken in an age, “Did I get the—my—face right?”

As he says this, he looks back up at her. Salem’s eyes are practically glittering, What the hell?

In response, she nods. Her face is impassive.

“Hmmm,” Salem then says, musically, the corners of her lips twitching, “Clever and full of tricks, are we little one?”

The phrasing hits him as peculiar. And yet, familiar. Frustratingly so. Something nagging at the back of his mind pulled to the forefront by those words in that order, but he can’t place it.

Oscar sighs, fatigued, “There’s always another way.”

That wasn’t what he thought he was going to say, but once the words are out of his mouth, that’s that. Oscar braces himself once more, but Salem just hums thoughtfully. Her left hand, the hand not currently holding the light source, twitches. Before Salem moves, Oscar gets his feet under himself and stands up from the ground.

Oscar dusts himself off with little fuss and shakes out his wings. He’s absentmindedly counting his flight feathers for the right number of primaries and secondaries—reasonably worried about his remiges having reconstituted himself from pomegranate seeds and lightning bugs—when a rippling chill runs through him. At this sensation, Oscar snaps his head up at the tree—chrysalis shed—his twin in matter and form—voyager—and gasps.

The leaves, that were just a moment ago vivacious and bright green, are rapidly yellowing. In mere moments curling up, turning brittle brown, and falling from the tree’s branches in scores. The fruits rot in an instant and fall to the ground with a sickening wet splatter that roils Oscar’s stomach. The branches of the tree droop and groan, an unnatural, ominous creak of wood moaning from the trunk as it slumps.

Oscar’s tree is withering before his eyes.

At the base of the trunk, the golden scarab bores deeper into the wood. Thick veins of gold burrow and spread from the beetle, a thrumming pulse through those veins, like a mouth dragging at a straw.

On the ground some ways away, the beetle anchored to Salem’s discarded spine has weaved itself the same network. Though it’s more difficult to discern, seeped in the ichor of Grimm essence.

Oscar feels sick looking between these two horrors. He feels cold.

Salem steps forward, blue-white flame coalescing between her fingers, a dwarf star. She raises her palm toward the severed spine and golden beetle resting in a black puddle of ichor, intent on destroying both.

Without thinking it through, Oscar lunges and grabs her wrist, “Stop!”

Salem goes right for his throat this time. Her immovable fingers locking around the vulnerable corridor of his neck. Oscar claps his other hand around the wrist of the hand choking him and, at the same time, tightens his grasp on the wrist of the hand gathering destructive power.

“You couldn’t break it before,” Oscar chokes. Salem isn’t applying much pressure to his windpipe, so he can still talk at least, but that could change rapidly so he needs to talk fast, “What do you think happens if we destroy what those things have latched onto?”

Salem scowls at him wordlessly. Her hand around his throat makes Oscar want to bite her, but he resists the impulse by the skin of his teeth.

Jarringly calm, Salem says, “You do not sense the threat these parasites pose if left unchecked?”

“You didn’t sense the immediate release of a hold on you when you ripped the bug out?” Oscar parries.

She says nothing and does not let him go.

He does not let go of her either.

“There meant for us Salem,” Oscar growls, surprising Oz, “They’re supposed to do that,” he lets go of her wrist holding the blazing star and points emphatically at his dying tree, “To us.”

Her expression does something strange he can’t parse.

She stares into the middle distance between them, then says, “Clearly,” and dismisses the destruction spell with a flick of her wrist and releases her hold on him. “But what more can we do about it?” Salem snipes.

Oscar rubs at his neck and allows himself to glare at her, “Call it a hunch—I don’t think brute force is the answer.”

Salem “Tsk’s,” her annoyance clear in the set of her shoulders, but her tone drips sarcasm when she rejoins, “Containment, then? By proxy. Because that has always worked so well in the past.”

Oz bristles.

“Is it proxy when it’s our own godsdamn flesh?”

Salem stills at that—And so does Oz in Oscar’s head.

Oscar is still connected, in some transcendental way, to the tree before him. As it is bled dry of its lifeblood, he can feel it dying, like a part of himself he just met. Oscar knows the same is true for Salem and her split bones. Normally, a piece of her severed from the greater whole dissolves or disappears as the lost piece reforms. Not so here. Does it frighten her like it frightens Oscar?

We. Our. Us.

What are we doing?

“What we’ve accomplished may be enough to keep those wretched things from crawling under our skin again, but it is not a guarantee,” Salem says after a long beat of silence, “You are comfortable with the risk?”

“No,” Oscar says, “But my gut’s telling me it’s a risk I have to take to get home.”

A beat, “What’s your gut telling you?” Oscar asks.

Salem’s expression turns incredulous and then evens out to bored once again, “That we’ve wasted enough time on this. Come, let us move on.”

She turns and begins to walk toward the stairs leading down. Oscar follows but keeps his eyes on the two scarabs. His gaze lingers on his wilting tree and Oscar finds himself heartbroken.

The grief oddly directionless and half-formed.

It was a part of you…

Don’t forget the rest.

Oscar joins Salem where she’s come to a stop at the top of the buried stairs, she clasps her hands in front of her neatly. Blue lights dance around her again, illuminating the way down.

Oscar peers down into the dark, the light does not reach far, and even with Oscar’s heightened senses, the dark below seems bottomless.

There is something there, in the dark.

Though the dark itself may have nothing to do with it, and it is the down that matters more. Gravity itself.

Yes—There is a pull. Something down there in the dark is pulling them towards it. A buried well of gravity. It is not like the tearing pull of the hooks and strings and chains and hands—No—This is different entirely.

Whatever this is, it is not alive in a way that they know how to be.

But it is power.

Warmth…

Oscar and Salem look down into the dark in abject, tense silence for entirely too long.

“I don’t think down is out,” Oscar says, feeling itchy and jumpy, still looking down into the pit.

“And why is that?” Salem drawls, seemingly wearied.

“Just,” Oscar says, “A feeling.”

Salem “Hm’s,” and glares down into the dark with him. After a moment’s tension, she says, “I think your instincts are correct.”

“We go up.” Salem says with finality.

Salem and Oscar both give the weeping tree & severed spine a wide birth as they pass. The pale rock corridor is wide enough to accommodate a fifteen-foot pole distance between Oscar and Salem and their discarded vestiges. The gold scarabs do not leap at them like ticks from tall grasses thankfully and the pair reach the bottom of the stairs without incident.

Here they begin their ascent.

Chapter Text

“This place is old,” Salem starts, her head on a swivel, agitated, “Too old,” she’s actually glaring at the walls now, like they’ve insulted her, “Impossibly old.”

It’s been some time now, spent in absolute silence as they climbed the seemingly endless slope up—32 minutes, 10 seconds­—Oz supplies. Pentameter ticking like a clock, counting down. Always counting down—The stairs are overly large, and Oscar has a measure of difficulty climbing them. Who were these built for, giants?

The carvings in the walls cast strange reliefs and shadows in the blue light Salem conjures. Everything looks…wet, but it’s all bone-dry. There’s a sheen of polish to the stone that refracts and scatters the light. Looking at the patterns too long hurts Oscar’s eyes and head, the migraine still throbbing like spikes of ice drilled into his skull. In spite of this, Oscar keeps a steady trudging pace upward, and ignores his mounting exhaustion.

Before them, the cavern opens up, the off-white sculpted walls breaking away from the floor and vast caverns opening up on either side of the stairs. The stairs are still caked in ruddy dirt but not as buried as the trek to this point. The walls are now beyond their reach and the ceiling is far enough above them that Oscar cannot see it in the dark.

The space is also open enough to stretch out his wings. He knows Salem can fly too; he glances at her sideways.

“What makes you say that?” Oscar asks into the gloomy quiet.

Salem grumbles and the blue fire crackles.

Oscar honestly doesn’t know what to make of her grumbling. It seems so strange a thing for her to do and so benign too. He waits. But she says nothing more, and they continue up the stair.

Such artistry…Oz says, a few paces later, oddly enchanted, What craftsmen could have made such a seamless rock tapestry? The pattern never breaks…

Oz don’t look at it too hard, Oscar warns when Oz’s attention draws Oscar’s gaze back to the walls.

Oz hums like an engine. Seemingly in acknowledgment, but then Oscar’s eyes begin to wander again, and Oscar has to deliberately shut his eyes.

Oz.

Right, sorry, it’s just—

Oscar sighs aloud. Salem raises an eyebrow at him subtly.

It’s just that there are no depictions of figures. People, animals, plants, creatures of any kind. There’s no form. Or forms. Just—

Fractals. Oscar says, keeping his eyes trained on the steps in front of him.

Yes.

Like Oz says, so far there have been no depictions of living things in the walls. So, there are no carvings of eyes that they can see, but Oscar still feels like he’s being watched. Or that the walls will start to talk any moment now.

She’s right though, Oz says, This place seems too old to make sense.

The words come out strained, Oz is barely keeping it together in prolonged exposure to Salem’s presence; he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe Oz is just looking for a distraction.

Oscar looks up at the expanse above him and stretches out his wings with intent.

“Let’s fly,” he says to Salem. He doesn’t wait for her response before leaping into the air. It feels good to pump his wings again and lift off the ground. Though there is definitely something off with the air here.

He feels…lighter.

Is he worried about Salem striking him as soon as he shows her his back again? Maybe. They’re a paranoid guy, that’s inescapable at this point. But really, if she was going to squash him like a bug, she should just get it over with already.

And if not, he needs to test the waters to see where they land. See how far he can push this.

Oscar hears a whirlwind kick up behind him and glances back to see Salem levitate herself with a conjured cyclone. After a moment of mid-air maneuvering, Salem positions herself to glide just below him. The updraft she creates carries him with ease and the ascent from there is almost effortless.

They follow the path of the stairs through the cavernous expanse, it winds in a gradual serpentine that is more obvious with their higher vantage point and speed. In a quarter of the time they spent climbing, they reach the top of the stairs.

Salem lands on the top stair and Oscar alights beside her, landing in a crouch. An enclosed corridor yawns its entrance before them, its edifice cut directly into the rock where the stairs end. Salem stares down the dark passage before turning back to survey the way they came, then she twists her head to look into the small hallway again. Mots of blue light dance around her and float down the corridor revealing the continuation of the walls’ intricate designs. The pattern folding over and over in on itself in the smaller space. The passageway appears perfectly square with equal dimensions on all four faces. Salem’s lights drift past this brief threshold into another vast open chamber.

Beyond, a truly massive, polished, pearlescent bridge with opulent sconces—Perhaps braziers?—rests lightless and dark. What appears to be a heavy, gray fog obscures the extent of the bridge and the likely vacuous cavern.

Oscar tries to look for a glimpse of the sky through a pocket of fog, but he finds no respite or reassurance. Only ephemeral mists.

Oscar takes all this in and wonders with increasing worry why all of his instincts are telling him there is danger here. It has nothing to do with what’s behind them, or the bridge beyond. But this 20-foot cube incised from the rock atop the stair. Oscar doesn’t know why but…the threshold before him feels like a wound. Cauterized.

“Quite crowded through there,” Salem says to the air.

“Mhm.” Oscar responds. Monosyllabic answers are permitted in these circumstances. They’ve established that.

Neither of them takes a step forward, both still resting on the top stair. Her hesitance sets him and Oz more on edge than anything else.

They pause.

Until Salem abruptly walks forward and through to the other side. Her gate changes subtly though, Oz hyperaware and poised to catch any faltering. He notices a rigidness to her walk that illustrates oppositional force. Pressure perhaps?—Passing through this threshold is not nothing for her, though he saw no physical harm wrought upon her. No spears extrude from the walls. No tongues of fire jet from hidden spouts or poisoned needles shoot from loaded caches due to the triggering of some trap.

Though there is not an obvious, tangible trap here does not mean there isn’t one at all.

Oscar exhales sharply, gathers his recovered aura defensively, tries to follow Salem’s exact path, and immediately finds it impossible to do so.

On the other side of the bottle neck Salem gives him a bored look, “What are you waiting for boy?”

Oscar’s brow creases with effort. He tries to force himself forward and finds himself still immobile.

“I can’t.”

“Do you want me to leave you here?” She asks sharply.

Oscar ignores her barb and shifts back on the top step. Ok, so, he’s not paralyzed then. He can move backwards easily enough, he can move to the sides, but as soon as he tries to move forward, everything just stops. It’s not like a force field or illusionary wall. It’s something else. A mental block. Oscar walks down three steps then tries to run at the threshold, but his body catches itself before he can breach the space of the corridor. Oscar wobbles on the top stair before he regains his balance.

“What are you doing?” Salem says a hint of bafflement bleeding into her bored tone.

“I’m trying to pass through but,” Oscar says frustrated, waving his hands in front of him from the second stair, “There’s something here stopping me.”

She looks at him skeptically, “Are you sure you would rather not be alone?”

Oscar bristles.

I am never alone.

“If you don’t want to be left behind then,” the tenor of Salem’s voice begins even and reasonable but then becomes gratingly paternal as she says, “You need only ask for help.”

“I know what you’re doing,” He warns, not feeling half as confident as he imagines he sounds.

At that, Salem smiles smugly in a manner that reminds him disconcertingly of the signs of Ruby slipping on a mask. The bravado. Ruby getting under the skin of an opponent to trick them to step right where she wants them. Knowing people, how they work, and what to say to them at the right moment. For ill or care. Call it trickery, Oscar has come to admire Ruby’s cunning.

Oscar packs up this mirror to his dear friend and buries it deep in his mind, and labels it ‘To be unpacked later if still alive’.

“If you want something from me, then why don’t you come back over here and take it?” Oscar says.

Salem's expression pinches then smooths out, “I want nothing from you, fool boy.” And with that, Salem turns her back on him and begins to walk away.

“Rot here in the dark until you’re someone worth having a conversation with,” she says over her shoulder, like a hot, burning metal stake to Oscar’s core.

Oz glares at Salem’s back with such a force of fury, Oscar wonders if they’ll spontaneously manifest lasers from their eyeballs to vaporize her.

Would you cool it? Oscar says to Oz where the other is all coiled up and furious.

She’s trying to hurt you! Oz yells. And being so rude about it!

And it hurt. Oscar admits in their bullet time, I’m not going to pretend it didn’t, but she’s trying to hurt me because she wants to get something out of us.

One big frown, Oz folds his little mental arms, and nods his little projected head, Yes, I know, just like when she had us in the whale.

Right, and she just revealed that she might not be able to pass through this stupid box again like she did before. Oscar rolls his shoulders, and considers further, Or, at least it wouldn’t be as easy as it appeared the first time.

Oz hums, and Oscar feels the sense memory of his head against a bus window as it trundles down the street. The vibrations through his skull.

No, no it was a train…A disembodied thought.

They watch Salem’s dark form disappear rapidly into the strange mists.

Oscar continues, And she implied that she wants to talk to you.

Unfortunate.

Oscar laughs in the privacy of their mind. Yeah, tall order.

They watch the swirling of the mists for a moment, until Oz broaches, …Maybe a spell?

Oscar doesn’t react to that externally, except for the tightening of his hands into fists. His face remains blank, but they don’t exactly have a mirror for it to even matter that Oscar is keeping his poker face. Oz is in his head; he knows how strong of a reaction Oscar is actually having to that suggestion.

No magic. We’ve used way too much already. Oscar tries to communicate this calmly and mostly succeeds. Mostly.

Right. Right, sorry. Oz reassures hastily.

Oscar sighs, crouches down and looks around the square passageway again. Then says to Oz, Ok, hold on, just let me try something…

In their head, Oz clearly sees the arc of Oscar’s idea, and does the brainwave equivalent of putting his head in his hands. Synapses firing in a muffled scream of frustration.

This too, might as well happen.

Oscar rises from his crouch with a grin and jogs down a few stairs, on the downward tilt he unfolds his wings and leaps. He lifts up into the air again with a swoop of his wings, kicking up dirt and dust as he leaves the ground. As he gains altitude, Oscar tests the strange lightness of this place and its subtly weaker gravity. Oscar experiments, he weaves through the air in tight circles, expanding the arcs of his flight path in increments. Oscar feels out the difference and quickly gets a grasp on how this may affect aerial maneuvers like dives.

If the obstacle here relies on some kind of mental block that prevents Oscar from moving forward by immobilizing him. Then the way through must take Oscar’s own free willed movement out of the equation.

All he has to do is fall.

A successful dive still requires your wings be tucked at the right angle, Oz interjects, frazzled. And for your limbs and torso to maintain their positions. With critical minute adjustments.

It won’t be graceful, yeah, but the box’s weird mind field will lock me in place, and we’ll be carried through by the momentum. Oscar counters.

And then we’ll get a face full of rock. Oz commiserates, Goodbye adult teeth we hardly knew ye.

Shut up, I’m not 10 years old.

Our last adult teeth didn’t come in until age 13, we’ve had them for 2 years.

3 years! I’m 16.

In response, Oz wobbles over-dramatically, Don’t even have your wisdom teeth yet. Oz shakes his head like it’s a damn shame Oscar hasn’t had that milestone experience yet. Oscar knows that Oz is just trying to lighten the mood again in his own funny way.

As they talked, Oscar was positioning himself midair at the right distance and angle to build up the momentum in the dive he needs to pass through the threshold, while also not being fatal. A difficult happy medium to hit in this case.

This will be so dumb if it kills me, Oscar says biting his lip as he bops midair, adjusting.

Concentrate on forming a protective aura on the areas of likely impact on your body. That will avert the most disabling damage, Oz says, more serious now.

“Right,” Oscar says, “Let’s do this.”

Dives feature prominently in Oscar’s aerial combat. Most often, his dives end in surprise attack impacts on his grounded opponents from above. He uses his aura to reinforce his abdomen, legs, and feet the moment before impact, often creating a crater in his wake. It’s one sure way to shatter most people’s aura or splatter Grimm under his boots.

Dives in which Oscar has to arc back up from the lowest point of the dive, and not balk, put much more strain on his wings. Especially when the aim is to snatch someone from the ground and carry them with him upward.

This is one such case where the aim is not to impact…Too much.

Lift and thrust. Oscar creates lift and thrust by flapping his wings and stays aloft by the upward force produced from the flow of air over his wings. The air over his wings travels faster than the air underneath, thus creating a pressure difference. Precious energy will be lost in the drag of this dive.

He can’t think about that now.

Oscar swoops up and then dives down.

His arms are outstretched in front of him, palms flat facing down and arms held together. Legs straight and back curved. The gouged threshold screams toward him, and as he passes through—momentum carrying him as it should—Oscar locks up and his mind blanks.

He is senses without thought. Everything recedes from him and there is only numbness.

Oscar crashes.

There is no thinking to be done, no pain to be felt, no need for pulmonary tissue to expand and contract. No reason for veins to pump or eyes to see.

Except for fingertips, finger tips grasping past the threshold and through to the other side.

Here, there is feeling. Here, there is life.

While the rest of the body stills, the fingers dig into the dirt and claw. The essence of the soul pools into the fingers, like blood to a bruise, green-amber light over the knuckles’ skin. The soul, indomitable, extends from its vessels shape. Sharpens and strengthens, into claws to find purchase in the stone under the loose dirt. The stone underneath cracks as it is pierced by talons.

Inch by brutal inch, knuckle by bent knuckle, the soul pulls the dying body forward. A clawed hand scours the ground and is pulled through the gate, out of the underworld, then the wrists, and then arms. The head scraps the ground at it is dragged through, blankness remains upon the body’s face even as it’s pulled through to the other side. The body does not breath, its heart does not beat, until its chest escapes the gate. Only then does the body pull in desperate, sucking breathes; as feeling begins to return, tears spill from unblinking eyes. As he pulls his waist past the threshold, his mind slowly returns to him. His senses have meaning.

There is blood in his mouth. His nose, chin, chest, and collarbone hurt. His fingers burn.

He hurts…He’s alive.

Alive!

On his belly, Oscar crawls out of gate, dragging his wings and legs through to the other side. His knees and hips regain feeling and add their effort to the crawl, wretchedly clawing at the ground for purchase. Oscar gets a foothold, wriggles his toes in his boot, and drags himself the last excruciating inch over the finish line.

In the moment Oscar slumps, having escaped the gates into the underworld, the god-curse strikes. Helpless, Oscar seizes—Ozma ripples like a still surface of water disturbed—dissipates—dissolves—less than human–quintessentially inhuman—MORE—as they are pulled under.

“What kind of a monster are you?”

Lightning strikes the tallest pinnacle of an evergreen, energy arcs through the body of the tree in a flash. In seconds, the wood is engulfed by flames.

Desert rain.

The sea in a storm cut through by a lighthouse and its beacon.

“—send out a Hunter! What else are they good for?!—”

An empty grave.

A gray landscape. Ash and smoke drift after the forest fire. On the ground, redwood cones blackened by fire unfurl like flowering blooms, seeds burst forth from the clutch of their protective carrier slowly; to root, sprout, and rebirth the forest anew.

“Continue the weave Scheherazade, for the night is long, the story unfinished, and you must live.”

“I’ve come for you, my love—

A SHATTERING

I AM INEVITABLE

THERE IS NO ESCAPE

—through a window in the dark.”

The high halls of an opulent white marble and gold chapel, there are candles burning on the alter. Dripping red wax.

“Crescent moon! My beloved! My poor Ket! Torn in twain. Split! Please. Please do not ask this of me. Do not ask me to let you go.”

The ancient moon. Full, shining and unbroken.

White knuckled grip on the railing of a ship as the eye of the kraken breaches the surface. A tidal wave washes over the deck of the ship and sweeps a few poor fellows overboard. The massive yellow-red eye of the kraken rolls in its socket, it watches—

Humid heat of the jungle, swatting fruitlessly at a cloud of insects.

Slow, noisy rotation of a box fan. Grass mats laid out on the floor. Doors opened to feel the—

Feel of the wind through sweat-damp hair.

The back of a hand brushed against his forehead to take his temperature.

“You forget yourself.”

Water spots and mold spreading on ceiling tiles.

Drape of the gauzy baldachin. The sound of nighttime insects.

A creaky old voice signing a lullaby.

“Well, you don’t know me, but I know you.”

Light through the curtains.

Dark brown eyes that turn red-tea-warm in the sunlight.

“Don’t look at the sun you little idiot. You’ll go blind, and then what will I do with you?”

Hands covering his eyes, it does nothing to stop him from hearing the horrible sound of sinew and muscle tearing to gristle.

“May the Light protect us. May the Dark spare us.”

A flare is struck and tossed down a dark cavern’s throat, ten-thousand red gleaming eyes catch the light; writhing bodies blanketing the walls, illuminated in their grotesque multitudes in instants of the flare’s free fall. Before the flare’s light vanishes to the depths below.

“—bumps and bruises—”

A pair of leather gloves.

“—nothing hurt worse than—”

A distorted reflection in rippling, murky water.

“My head! My head! It’s rotting, I’m sure of it—it’ll rot right off my neck! And then what’ll I do?!”

A coin drops into a cup.

Oscar-Ozma falls back into themself from a great and terrible height. The hard-stop is beyond jarring. To them, the impact carries the force of an earthquake. Or a meteor making landfall.

Oscar gasps and sucks in breath like he’s coming up for air from watery depths. He snaps back into his body abruptly as the onslaught lifts. Oz jitters, scattered among Oscar’s being, and pinging off his atoms. Oscar can feel pieces of Oz lodged in his straining joints, shaking muscles and buried deep in his aching marrow. Like shrapnel. Like atomic scattering.

Killing me—You’re killing me—Silence the thought.

Oscar scrambles up to his knees and skitters onto the bridge before he fully comes back to himself. He stops abruptly and groggily looks around. Oscar doesn’t recognize his surroundings—Where am I?—His strength leaves him all at once and Oscar lays himself face down in the dirt.

Oscar is confused, he can’t get his thoughts in order, it’s like he’s half asleep.

Oz is quicker on the uptake.

Easy, Oz says, and Oscar jumps like he’s managed to forget his bound companion was there.

Nothing’s broken, thankfully, but we’ve got some scrapes and bruises. Blunt force trauma, Oz continues. Our nose is bleeding.

As Oz talks, Oscar is on autopilot, already directing what’s left of his aura to his face, palms, shoulders, and chest which bore the brunt of the impact.

Still prone on the ground, Oscar gets one arm up and then the other, and leans heavily on his elbows. The hanging, heavy mists blanket the bridge, and Oscar cannot see further than 20 paces ahead. Sound seems dampened as well, strangely enough. There is no hint of footsteps ahead of him.

Oscar feels fuzzy.

Oz shifts, and Oscar can feel him once more around the curve of his skull and length of his spine. Then, like he’s settled his hands over Oscar’s shoulders to draw his attention and ground him, Oz asks, What’s your name?

“Oscar Pine.” Comes the immediate response.

Oscar is relieved.

Good. How old are you? Oz continues.  

“Sixteen. I’m sixteen.” Oscar says as he heaves himself up from lying face down and sits with his back to the railing of the bridge. His wings flutter absentmindedly as he shifts.

Correct. What’s your favorite color?

Oscar sighs, covering the left side of his face with his left hand and closing one eye. Lifting the other hand, Oscar calls forth his aura to extend from his fingertips once more as claws. Oscar gazes down at the soul woven claws with one eye open and flexes his fingers, “Red.”

His aura wanes and Oscar drops his hand, closing his eyes with another sigh.

Oz, as the stillness of mind, asks, What?

Oscar’s eyes fly open, “Wait. It’s orange. Orange is…” Oscar hesitates and searches himself like he’s looking for a gaping wound he’s somehow missed; or the glittering gold shell of a bloodsucker. Finding nothing, and feeling deeply unsettled, he says, “I don’t know why I said that.”

Oz hums high-pitched with worry and flutters around Oscar like an extremely localized wind that only Oscar can feel, checking him over.

“Is,” Oscar begins aloud and then huffs, brushes his hair out of his eyes and asks more discreetly, Is your favorite color suddenly red?

It is not.

Oscar knows this.

Huh. Oscar covers his mouth with his torn up, bloody palm, What does this mean?

I’m not sure, Oz replies honestly. I’m getting a weird feeling, but it doesn’t feel like the god-curse. It feels…

New? And strange? Oscar says. It’s not a presence so much as an ambience.

Yes…Does it—Or did it—Feel…warm to you? Oz asks, clearly uncomfortable.

Yeah, Oscar replies, Like the thing below…

Hmmm, Oz hums again wary and distinctly unhappy, It may have influenced you. We may have been made vulnerable in more than one way crossing that threshold. Not good. We need to keep our eye on this.

“Right,” Oscar wobbles to his feet. Leaning heavily on the railing of the bridge. Thankfully, his aura has begun to recover a bit.

“And this?” Oscar waggles his fingers at thin air where a conversation partner would be.

You’re evolving. Oz says definitively. I don’t think these things are connected and it’s not something to be afraid of. This level of aura mastery is either found through years of study and training, or through pure instinct and moments of epiphany. Most often it’s a combination of these factors.

So, we got lucky, Oscar says, trying not to relive the past few ordeals. But he’s stuck on the idea of being trapped in that doorway for a moment longer, immobile, helpless and empty. What dies first? His heart deprived of blood, or his brain deprived of oxygen?

No, Oz says, his no-nonsense tone making a sudden appearance, I’d say you persevered by your own tenacity and resourcefulness. What you did was remarkable and not some fluke. You saved us, Oscar. Again.

Oscar’s vision clouds as his eyes water. He shuts his eyes tightly to hold the tide in.

I’m proud of you, Oz continues, Scared for you too! But the emotion I’m choosing to focus on right now is pride in you.

A bittersweet smile pulls at Oscar’s lips as he huffs a weak laugh, “Thanks, Oz.”

Oscar recenters and shakes himself out of it. To Oz, in their sanctuary of the mind, he says, I need you to keep an eye on me and be on the lookout for any other…weirdness.

Of course, Oz says. Same goes for me.

Oscar nods, “I say we keep getting as far away as possible from whatever it is at the bottom of this place. Agreed? Agreed.”

Just then, the stone braziers all erupt to life with blazing red fire. Oscar jumps a foot in the air with a startled flap of this wings, lands, and staggers back from the edge.

Oscar looks down the deck of the bridge, the roaring braziers like signal fires through the thick fog; blurry, but persistent, nonetheless. With the rows of braziers illuminated, Oscar can see a rock ceiling peeking through gaps in the fog above—We are not outside then—and the dotted line the bridge traces through the fog. There’s a slight upward angle to the lights that indicates a curve to the bridge. The outline of the bridge stretches far into the distance and the thick mists obscures the red glowing furnaces past a certain point.

The fog around Oscar feels heavy, and it pulls at him hauntingly. With heavy fingers.

Oscar wipes blood from his mouth with the back of his right hand. Why does this place have to be so spooky?

Oscar inhales a fortifying breath, exhales, and begins to walk. The bridge is massive, four lanes of traffic could easily fit on its expansive deck. The red furnace fires burn on either side of him. The crackle of energy, fuel and fire, is the only sound. But it sounds…off. Not like the popping of coals. More like, hushed murmurs and mad chattering. If he focuses on it, gods, it’s more like teeth grinding. That awful, high-pitched tenor of intolerable sound that grates at your senses and nerves. Oscar’s sharp hearing also doesn’t help.

Oz starts humming a familiar tune that distracts from the grating rattle of the furnaces.

Oscar begins to hum along.

Oscar reaches the top of the slight slope of the bridge. If this is a halfway point, and there’s no guarantee that’s right, then the bridge is at least a mile in length, probably more. From here, Oscar looks out on the great divide the bridge reaches over. The fog is thinner here, especially in the air above. There’s a slight curve to the cavern. Like the curvature of the horizon on Remnant but viewed at the micro-scale; and with a parallel perspective to the curve rather than perpendicular, as one would have standing on the face of the planet.

It might be a ring, Oz posits. One huge ring.

Continuing the humming tune, Oscar nods and replies, And what would that make what’s behind us? A tower?

Before Oz can respond with further hypothesizing, Oscar catches a distinct sound just ahead of him; and a distinct stomach-twisting smell. Another five steps and the mists recede to reveal Salem standing before one of the braziers sprouting from the bridge’s guardrails. Her hand plunged into the furnace coals and engulfed in red flames. The pop-sizzle sound of fat boiling and the smell of burning flesh were what reached Oscar a second before his sight caught up.

Oscar intakes a sharp breath involuntarily.

Salem seems to stir. Like she’s waking up from a dream and tilts her head only slightly in his direction. She doesn’t raise her eyes to him. Salem pulls her hand out of the fire and flexes her fingers, burned down to the bones. The black ichor of Grimm essence begins to flow over her bare, blackened bones once removed from the fire.

“That melody,” Salem says, still looking down at her hand as the muscle tissue and skin knits together and reforms. “I’ve never heard it before.”

Oscar watches her warily, he asks, “Did you light the fires?”

Salem’s head doesn’t move but her eyes flick to him, then back to the red fire. She hums and closes her hand into a loose fist and holds it up, level with her chest. In a wistful cadence, she says, “Found a way through then, little bird?”

Oscar grimaces, hate that, he states, “Don’t call me that.”

Salem blinks and turns her head to him, she “Hm’s”, Salem unclenches her fist and drops it to her side. Then Salem says, under her breath, “Troublesome.”

Clearer, but in a wearied tone, Salem says, “The mechanism of these forged constructs is faulty. Time ravages all the best laid plans. But I’m sure you’re both familiar with the decay of overly complicated machines; and their self-important forge masters.”

Oscar rolls his eyes. He looks at her hands, her right hand has fully reformed now, and he looks at the dark veins visible through her thin, pale skin.

Salem smiles at him, assumptive, “You’re bleeding, little bird.”

“Oz says fuck you, that’s stone masonry not forge works,” Oscar sucks the blood from his gums and spits it over the edge of the bridge.

Again, under her breath, though still loud enough to hear, Salem mutters, “You and your pointless obsession with antiquities.”

“And what are you an auteur of, huh?” Oscar cajoles in a parody of Oz.

Salem does not respond to that and continues to look miserably bored.

Oscar wipes the blood from under his nose and sniffs, “He thinks you’re right though; this place is so old that it’s impossible.”

That gets a reaction. Salem snaps her glare onto Oscar and sneers down her nose at him.

“So, you are content to be a mouthpiece for that man. And why can’t Ozma tell me that himself, hmm?” Salem says with obvious repulsion. She folds her hands neatly at her back and walks to the side, forcing Oscar to shift his footing to keep facing her, “Does he feel apart from it all hiding behind you, boy?”

Oscar gives her a deadpan look, “He’d say it to your face himself if he could. But he can’t anymore, so you’ll just have to settle for me.”

Salem cocks her head at a severe angle, her teeth gleam, “Can’t? Not won’t? Are you absolutely sure he hasn’t made you his patsy?”

“Can’t.” Oscar says firmly and feels Oz fill in the cracks of his sureness. Affirmation and support of the promise they made, this one they will keep until one of them or both are dead. “We don’t switch anymore.”

Salem inclines her head curiously, she then hunches her shoulders, lowering her face to be level with his, and begins to stalk toward him. Tilting her head in the other direction as she advances—Like a bird of prey—Salem drops her hands to her sides from where she had linked them behind her back. Salem’s movements call back to how she approached Oscar while he hung from the Hound’s clamped jaws by the scruff of his neck. In that dark, musky room that smelled like cave water and old, rotting flesh. When he pretended to be Ozma and Salem caught him in the lie.

Here and now, Salem’s fingers twitch at her sides as she comes just within reach of him.

“Do not,” Oscar lets fury enter his voice, though his words remain even and low. “Touch me.”

At his words, Salem slows to a stop. The curiosity on Salem’s face does not shift to something dark or violent. She merely regards him with her keen red on black eyes.

While Salem considers this, Oscar does not retreat from her and maintains eye contact. He doesn’t reach for his weapon. Oscar’s feathers are smoothed to his back and his wings are calmly folded.

Oscar thinks of Ironwood and a cliff, useless words; and of falling from a great and terrible height.

Oz coils along Oscar’s spine protectively. Waiting.

Show me. Show me who you are.

He doesn’t feel brave in that moment, just tired.

Salem nods, and steps back, then she says plainly, “As you say. I can afford you this one line not to be crossed, can’t I?”

There’s no cutting knife in her choice of words or wildly veering tone of voice in the delivery of her remark. In actuality, Salem sounds tired, too. Oscar has been trying to shift his own tolerable level of permanent unhappiness ever since he and Oz started talking again. It’s been a trial from within and without, but he did not expect this accommodation at all. It could still be a trick, but to be taken seriously, or even humored, and for a boundary to be respected at all is…promising.

Oscar feels like being brutally honest, “Let’s be clear, you don’t need to get your hands on me to kill me either. If I’m in your way, I’d rather you just explode me with your mind.”

“True,” she says, a subdued surprise in her voice and on her face. Possibly, she may be amused at his phrasing as well. Hard to tell. Does she like jokes?

Don’t answer that.

“Of course, if your aim is to hurt me then, well,” Oscar throws up his hands in an exaggerated shrug, “Though, you of all people should know that torture doesn’t actually work.”

Salem looks at him then, baldly puzzled, “You are different.” She folds one hand under her chin and rests her elbow in the palm of the other hand, asks, “How are you different?”

Oscar returns her curiosity by raising an eyebrow. He shrugs again, more genuinely this time, with his shoulders and wings. “Dunno. But maybe we can have a better working relationship, this time.”

Salem blinks at Oscar for a while. Salem tilts her head back the other direction and Oscar mimics her. At this, Salem clicks her tongue, and says, “We shall see, won’t we?” Salem turns and moves to press on.

Oscar follows.

Chapter Text

Wow, a spiral staircase, will wonders never cease? Oz hums sarcastically.

Like all the structures here, the spiral is carved right out of the rock, with the ceiling above as the next spiraling flight of stairs. Unfortunately, the ceiling is too low for Salem and Oscar to comfortably fly through. The width of the staircase has also been gradually narrowing as they climb.

All things considered, this is the shortest section of stairs they’ve had to climb yet. And in short order they climb to the top; without the passageway ever becoming narrow enough that he and Salem are within swiping distance of each other. Thank the gods.

Oscar and Salem reach a low and vast antechamber that spreads out in four directions, in the shape of a square. The room is illuminated by grim red light, and it reminds Oscar of emergency lights.

They exit the spiral staircase at the center of bottom square floor and the space expands dauntingly all around them. There are brief sets of stairs circling the center, with long stretches of even, flat ground; rippling out like right-angle waves carved into the rock. Perhaps places for people, or things, to sit and watch. Watch what? There are streamlined channels of the overly large stairways at the midpoints of the square room, like a cross, leading to the lowest floor Salem and Oscar stand on. It feels like an arena, or a chapel.

It feels like the bottom of the drain.

Bracketing the cross of stairway channels are lines of red fire, burning from presumably unseen reservoirs of hot coals and oil.

The folding pattern is there, on the ceiling, above them, and on the four far walls.

The ceiling drops down in accordance with the floor, similarly, segmented with straight angles. As the floor descends, so does the ceiling. Like a big bowl.

A massive open doorway makes itself apparent on what Oscar deems the north wall. There are no other avenues of egress, it is the only obvious way forward. At least the path forward remains simple.

Oscar looks at more stairs and sighs deeply, “I need to take a break,” Oscar says. And with that, he sits down. Salem does not protest or move to leave him behind, in fact, she waits.

Interesting.

Back leaning against the lowest set of rock “stadium bleachers” below the door of the north wall, Oscar scoops a handful of salted nuts and candied banana chips into his mouth, crunching loudly while the gears turn in their head. The scale of this place is mind-boggling, though there are clear walkways with intentional design, everything appears to have been crafted for giants. Oscar regards the carved alabaster walls, Oz is correct, this place is full of intricately detailed art. But no figures, creatures, or people are depicted. No language either, that Oscar or Oz can discern.

Just shapes in twisting patterns.

Folding halls.

Oscar peers at the floors, a ruddy red, and drags his eye up the pale walls. Near the floor the red seeps up, staining the white walls. The stains marking the walls drawing the path of the flow of liquid, but every surface is bone dry. Is it possible there’s a water source that partially floods these chambers? What would dye it red? Iron deposits?

With a keen eye, Oscar traces the folding patterns of the wall adjacent him again, shoving another handful of nuts and fruit into his mouth, and pointedly ignoring the two elders giving him the side-eye for his noisy eating.

While also ignoring the persistent, dull stab of chronic migraine at his temples. Oscar rubs at his eyes wearily.

There’s something there in the patterns, something there that’s the same—or parallel—in each room they’ve entered. A through-line, if he could just trace it, grasp it, then—Well, he doesn’t know what then exactly, but it would be something. It might point to where on Remnant they are.

Oz tenses and Oscar mentally pauses, What?

She keeps sneaking glances at us, Oz whispers. For some odd reason.

Oscar frowns, and keeps his eyes trained where he was looking, but takes Salem in through his peripheral vision. She hasn’t moved from her position at the bottom of the stairs beside him. Her shoulders are square, and her expression is neutral. Salem’s hands are clasped in front of her, poised and patient. Her chin is titled slightly up, gazing up the stairs they still must climb; the passage ahead with ceilings still too low for them to fly comfortably through.

Up and out seems unending.

And there-! It’s only for a split second, and Oscar only catches it because of Oz’s hyper-focus, but Salem glances at him out of the corner of her eye, then quickly returns her gaze to the upper tunnel entrance.

Huh.

She wants something, Oz says, grinding his teeth and pulling at his hair and tying himself in knots—

Ok, Oscar says, mentally clapping his hands to stop that spiral, What do we think she wants?

Oz laughs hysterically for a millisecond before clamping himself shut.

Oz shrugs their real-outside shoulders by mistake and shrinks further into himself.

Oz has been even more on edge since the conversation on the bridge. Oscar takes a deep breath and mentally shakes Oz, gently, in the way one would to wordlessly tell a friend to get ahold of themself. In the same moment, Oscar wraps himself comfortingly around Oz. The tension in Oz eases ever so slightly and their shoulders drop. When had they raised them around their ears?—Oh, it doesn’t matter.

Outside of themselves, Oscar reaches into his bag for another handful of food. Maybe she’s hungry? Oscar says.

Oscar’s intentions are immediately apparent to Oz who quakes, winds right back up again, and stammers, Wait. Wait!

We need to find a way to bridge the gap and work with her or we’re going to die here, Oscar starts to explain calmly, becoming less so as Oz flails.

By some miraculous boondoggle of the curse, Oz manages to effectively elbow Oscar in the nose as Oz whales for the reverse button.

Don’t draw her near us! Don’t draw her close!

Instead of holding the food out to her as he had intended, Oscar jolts from Oz’s rearing, and tosses the food in an underhanded throw at Salem. The nuts and banana chips pelt her arm—one particular banana chip manages a spectacular arc terminating in its impact with her jaw—and then clatter to the ground loudly in the vacuous, empty chamber.

Oscar glances down at his hand with betrayal.

Very slowly, Salem turns her head toward them and then twists her whole body to face them fully. Internally, Oz quails and Oscar runs in circles like a chicken with its head cut off.

Externally, Oscar says, blank, “Are you hungry?”

Salem looks down at the dried fruit and nuts scattered on the ground, then back at him. She raises her eyebrows indicatively. To his own credit, the color doesn’t drain from Oscar’s face, nor does he flush in mortification.

“How much food do you have?” Salem asks instead.

Oscar blinks, “Days’ worth ration. Maybe a little more if I stretch it out.”

“Do you have water?”

He pats the water skin slung around his waist, “Yes.”

Oscar reaches to unhook his water skin from his waist, fully intending this time to offer it like a completely sane person—who is not jockeying for control of his motor functions—but then Salem makes a sour face and turns back to the stairs.

Salem says, “Keep your food and water, boy. Hunger and thirst do not pain me.”

Oscar means to ask if she’s sure, but Oz shakes him, harried, and Oscar relents.

Oscar lifts the water skin to his lips and drinks deeply. Conserving water at this stage is just going to make him dehydrated, which will make him slow, which will just make him dead.

“Alright then,” Oscar says as he stands and stretches out his arms and wings. Most of his injuries from the crash have healed, but what he really needs is a warm meal and a good night’s sleep. Not going to be getting either of those anytime soon.

Oscar tilts his head toward the tunnel above them, “Onwards?”

Wordlessly, Salem folds her hands in front of her and glides forward. As she ascends the first step, her cloak flows over the ground where the discarded dried nuts and fruit are scattered in the dirt. In the wake of her black cloak, the food disappears.

Oscar forces himself to not stare and not react, but a trepidatious giddiness begins to bubble in him. He’ll draw hope from any spring he can find right now.

Instead, he hops up the troll-sized stairs with the aid of his wings. With a buoyant bounce to his movements, Oscar directs internally, The air here is so strange.

Hm. Perhaps we are in close proximity to gravity dust deposits? Oz posits, his gaze still on Salem in their shared periphery.

Playfully bobbing up and down as he climbs, Oscar says, Anything like Lake Matsu’s floating islands are hell to navigate midair. All those sporadic changes in gravitational pull. This feels a lot more stable.

I agree. Perhaps it’s one massive, uniformly dense vein? Undiscovered underground.

Salem is slightly ahead of them, her regal gate unimpeded by the awkwardness of the height and width of the stairs. The adornments in her hair make the softest windchime like noises when she moves. It is the only sound, besides the near silent flap of Oscar’s wings and their footsteps.

Maybe…Oscar trails off, his thoughts drifting elsewhere. His mind caught briefly by the abstracts of his life, and Oz’s past lives, that the curse has pulled forth recently. The visions are always vivid and painfully disorienting, but it feels like there’s something different about these latest merge attacks. Something…meaningful. Dare he venture, intent.

Oz, do you think…do you think this place is affecting the merge? Oscar asks with dread.

Possibly, Oz replies like he’s biting his lip. This place is affecting you; we know that from what you said and felt on the bridge, but we can’t be certain yet it’s influencing the curse.

Oscar bites his lip. That’s two episodes now within a few hours. This is…That’s too soon, right?

Oz nods his head emphatically in the privacy of their shared mind-space; and thankfully, Oscar has enough self-awareness in the moment to not replicate the gesture externally.

Is the merge accelerating? Oscar asks more directly.

I honestly don’t know, Oz says. We just need to get out of here. And escape capture once the exit is within sight.

You really think she’ll try something once we’re out of here? Oscar keeps their eyes set firmly ahead and does not side-eye Salem.

Oh, I am absolutely certain, Oz says clutching himself tightly, while feeling like acid in the back of Oscar’s throat. A roiling wave a nausea strikes, and Oscar has to steady himself by his hands on the edge of the next stair. She’s not going to just let us slip through her fingers again.

Right, says Oscar, his eyes watering from the rapid flash vertigo, We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

They press on, to the top of the stairs, again. By the time they enter the next tunnel Oscar has managed to settle his stomach.

Corridors open up on either side of the tunnel, though there isn’t the same uniformity as the previous room. These smaller corridors appear to be randomly interspersed, dotted along the walls to each side at varying heights and widths. A fair number are perforated high above the floor’s edge. Even though the openings are rectangular, the clumped scattering of the tunnels on the walls to either side of Oscar looks concerningly similar to insect burrows.

Oscar keeps his head on a swivel with his ears primed. He looks down every burrowed passage for signs of movement in the dark.

Down each corridor, the pattern follows them on the walls. It twists and turns and folds and spirals off into the dark. Oscar tries not to look for too long. Lest they get pulled in.

The dull red light from the dungeon stadium behind them fades quickly. In the brief moment of oncoming darkness, the freckles on Oscar’s arms glow ambiently. He scratches at them absentmindedly. New light, a familiar eerie blue, floats past Oscar and further down the perforated tunnel. Oscar glances to the side for a brief moment, to take in the globules of blue fire arising from Salems palm. Looking forward, Oscar watches as the little blue lights dance in slow, circling trajectories. Strangely imitating life-like movements.

Like a lure, Oz asserts.

Not a bad idea.

At least they may have some warning if there are any large creatures calling these subterranean tunnels home.

The acoustics of this particular junction are difficult to parse. Each footstep echoes down the nearest passageway, bouncing that noise down that tunnel’s extent. While the main, larger tunnel they are traversing echoes their footsteps as well. It’s giving Oscar a sense of the network of these tunnels, but it’s also a hell of a lot of sensory inputs.

It’s distracting. Distracting is what it is.

I can’t make sense of this place, Oz muses, What could have dug these tunnels? Why? They appear random, or imitate natural formations, but they’re not! That damn pattern is meticulously carved into each one…

Speaking of distracting…

Oh, you’re just as curious as I am, Oz says haughtily, and mentally puts his hands on his hips.

To himself, Oscar smiles and rolls his eyes.

Oz puffs up like an ornery, old bird and Hmphs. It’s all in jest.

Up ahead, Oscar suddenly spots a problem.

“Uh,” Oscar utters out loud by mistake, “Well, that’s not good.”

Oscar realizes that what he’s seeing is probably still out of Salem’s visual range. If she does need light to see after all. Oscar clears his throat and points ahead of them, “The main passageway is blocked.”

Salem squints her eyes looking down the tunnel, and her lights adjust their movement and speed in time with a flick of her wrist. Darting quickly to the end of the cave hall, the passive blue lights become a frenzied cloud of stinging insects. At once, Salem’s lights illuminate the problem.

It appears there has been a cave-in. A massive boulder and scattered rubble block their path.

“Y’know, with how old you both think this place is, I’m surprised we didn’t encounter something like this sooner,” Oscar says as he kicks a white, red-veined pebble. It bounces off the huge rock in their way and back at him. The pebble rolls to a stop by his left foot.

Salem looks placid as she approaches the collapsed tunnel. She lays her left hand on the face of the boulder and cocks her head. Oscar watches her neutrally.

Salem pulls her hand back, curls her fingers, and knocks on the rock. With the force to crack a human skull open.

One solid, strong, “Knock”. Her strike shakes loose some settled dust in a cloud from the rubble and Oscar tenses in preparation to jump back from more falling rocks.

The sound resonates through the boulder, the piled rubble, and the cave walls. Through the soundscape the vibrations create, Oscar is almost able to understand the extent of the cave-in.

Salem turns her head and looks back at him. Oscar blinks at her.

“Well?” Salem asks, clearly impatient.

“…Well, what?” Oscar tries to temper his tone evenly. It’s so hard to remain calm when she addresses them directly like this. Especially because neither of them can figure out what she’s thinking moment to moment.

“Do you need me to hit it again or do you have the full picture?”

Oscar stares at her. He blinks. Once, twice. Oscar shakes his head to bat away Oz like a particularly anxious, buzzing bee at his ear. Oscar walks right up to the boulder and puts his ear against it.

Oscar says, “Again.”

Salem raises her fist again and knocks twice against the boulder, hard.

Oscar squeezes one eye shut and focuses on the reverberations as pale dust blankets him. He follows the echoes into the next pocket of open air, just past this juncture. He listens until the sound peters out. Oscar pulls back his head, and with both palms flat against the face of the boulder, he looks upward at the direction the collapse fell.

“I think it’s just this section of the tunnel,” Oscar says, and turns to Salem, “The tunnel should be mostly intact on the other side of this rock.”

Salem hums, and Oscar is starting to get a sense for the lexicon of humming she emits. The distinct meaning and the difference of sound like inflections. It’s uncomfortably similar to Oz’s idiosyncrasies. Which by association are starting to infect Oscar’s own speech patterns. Ugh, don’t think about that. Focus!

“Push the rock out of the way,” Salem says, illustrating her point by holding her palm up flat and pushing her arm out from her chest, “Or burrow through the rock?” She pulls her hand back and then punches her fist forward deftly.

She’s asking him? Why would she bother?

Oscar thinks, he drops his hands and steps back. He mimes the gesture she did before, punching his fist forward, and Oscar replies, “Through.”

Oscar picks up a sharp rock from the ground and quickly etches a large ‘X’ onto the face of the boulder. By his best estimation, they should focus their efforts drilling through the rock right on that ‘X’.

Now the question is how, exactly?

Salem nods once, sharply, at his assessment. She glances for a brief moment at the small of Oscar’s back, where the Long Memory is hooked into its holster. He pauses. Then Salem makes a shooing motion at him with one hand and as she simultaneously collects the fluttering blue lights into the palm of her other hand. Oscar takes a generous step back as a sound like a massive generator powering on begins to ramp up from Salem’s coalescing power.

The blue motes of power swarm around her, feeding back into her hand and compressing once more into a singularity. A blazing dwarf star held in the palm of her hand. The spectrum of light shifts from blue to technicolor.

There is a moment of perfect stillness before the power erupts, magnifies, and issues forth in one sustained stream from the core of magic Salem conjures. The rock superheats in seconds and the drilling magic carves through the boulder in minutes. Salem must be able to tell when the beam of magic breaks through to the other side because she cuts off the stream abruptly by smothering the core with a clenched fist. After, trails of purple-gray vapor drift upwards through the gaps between her fingers.

A perfectly circular, molten and glowing tunnel is now carved into the massive boulder.

Oscar waits, his head cocked and ears prepared to catch any seismic shifting in the cave-in, adjacent walls, floor, and ceiling above; but the boulder doesn’t buckle and break after Salem drilled through it. No further collapses occur from Salem’s onslaught either.

From his side, blue globules enter Oscar’s field of vision and float around him once more, dividing and splitting off into smaller and smaller blue lights. Salem sends her lights ahead and illuminates the intact section of the tunnel beyond the cave-in.

Everything looks stable, just like Oscar thought it would, Phew.

Oscar steps forward and puts his hands on his hips. He eyes the glowing walls of the crawl space. He might be able to fortify an aura barrier strong enough to resist most of the burns but not all.

His feathers might catch on fire.

Oscars eyes light up and Oz goes, Oh dear gods, please no.

In for a penny, in for a pound!

Oscar turns to Salem, and says, “Hey, you’re pretty strong right?”

Salem raises one sharp eyebrow at him.

“Do you think you could throw me through there with enough force to carry me to the other side?”

Salem stares at him. She says nothing but Oz reads, “Come again?” plainly in her facial expression.

“I can’t build up enough speed on my own here and I can’t exactly crawl through that,” Oscar says. As he turns to face Salem, with one hand still on his hip, Oscar points with his thumb backward at the drilled tunnel glowing with heat. “Unless we want to sit here and wait for it to cool down.”

Salem’s right eye twitches and Oscar immediately regrets it.

Pushing too, far too fast, he fears, but then Salem sighs and gives him a subdued, baffled look. Oscar tries not to laugh nervously, backpedaling ready on his tongue, but then Oscar smells ozone.

The now recognizable precursor to force and gravity magic.

Salem twists her wrist and flicks two fingers up. At once, Oscar becomes weightless. Salem turns to the tunnel she dug and aims. Oscar barely has half a second to prepare himself before he’s being rocketed at the opening. He tucks his wings in tight and he dives through. A rush of scalding heat passes over his body. With his aura acting as a barrier between him and the searing heat, Oscar comes out the other end intact and unburned.

He pivots midair, with the aid of his wings, and rapidly decelerates. From there he goes into a roll meeting the ground and pops right back up again. Exhilarating!

Oscar can’t help it, when he spins around to look back at Salem, he’s smiling.

Salem is standing there in a ring of fluttering blue lights. The tunnel she carved with her magic like a circular picture frame, framing her against the darkness. Eerie and stark. And moreover, she’s giving him a look. It’s the same look she gave him at the start of all this, just after the first merge attack, though it’s softer at the edges now.

But Oscar doesn’t know what it means.

Salem moves to climb into the drilled tunnel, Oscar watches her brace herself and then, without more than a grimace she climbs through. Oscar gets to smell burning flesh and hair again, his stomach twists.

Salem doesn’t react to the physical trauma of burning alive, but it must hurt.

They remember her screams as Hazel restrained Salem and set them both alight.

His smile falls away.

Salem's hair is lightly smoking as she leaps out of the hole. Salem reaches up with two fingers and extinguishes a few lit errant strands like candle wicks when she catches Oscar staring at the hair turned match sticks.

Salem says nothing to Oscar as he flounders for words and passes him by.

Stop trying to engage with her! Oz hisses with his hackles up.

No. Oscar says and stomps off after Salem.

Hallways cross in winding paths and their footsteps echo into the emptiness. Oscar tracks their progress from minutes to hours of the silent treatment from Oz.

The grand and worryingly perforated tunnel they’ve been following ends in a collapsed veranda that opens up on the edge of dark, winter-bear, bleached forest. The trees are massive, and twist in winding, willowy spirals up. But none of them touch in their barren boughs or along their gargantuan trunks.

There are lights above them, twinkling stars, but they do not match any star map Oscar or Oz have ever seen.

Instinctively, Oscar does not recognize what gapes its mouth open-wide above them as the open sky. With a swoop of his wings, Oscar flaps up onto a broken, white stone column and looks up into this false sky.

Salem’s little blue motes rise around him as he peers upward with intensity.

“That doesn’t look right,” Oscar says, his voice comes out vehement and annoyed. It surprises him.

“What do you see?” Salem asks.

Oscar glances down at her, then back up at the false sky, then back down at her, agitated. How can she not see it? When he looks back at her, Salem has cocked her head to the side and her features have shifted to openly inquisitive.

That’s a trap.

Oscar huffs and searches for words to explain, and when he can’t, he hisses at himself, frustrated, “We’re not outside. That is not the sky. A sky, whatever—It’s wrong—It feels wrong.”

“Hm,” Is her curt response. Salem’s gaze lingers on him and then drifts upward more intently.

Without warning, Salem rockets upward with a whirlwind. She almost disappears into the murky dark above, but by the grace of his owl-like sight Oscar can track her. Blue motes of light scatter in a halo around her as she lifts off. Some of her lights remain in a gentle swarm around him where he is perched on the broken pillar.

With her blue lights following her in a shimmering, spiraling cloak, Oscar can just barely distinguish her from the scattering of the other pale-grey lights above; dull false stars.

Minutes tick by, he’s measuring the distance by time with the speed he approximates Salem was moving. Oz surfaces as the calculation goes up and up, meticulous record of time as distance calling his twin soul fourth. Oz feels thin, however, like he’s only half there. Running on autopilot.

We could go. Right now, we could just go.

Oscar stares unblinking up at the false starry night, he tells Oz, And go where?

Anywhere. Away.

Oscar shakes his head with annoyance, and narrows his eyes at nothing, What good would that do? We’re not out of this yet.

There is a brief flash from above. No calamitous domino effect or falling sky occurs after.

Oz doesn’t respond and recedes like the tides. Slow and ebbing. But it also feels like Oz turns away from Oscar.

A strange sense of melancholy blankets Oscar. Here, alone at the edge of that pale, barren forest, under a false night sky, Oscar feels a formless loneliness take root.

It pangs like hunger.

It’s so familiar.

Oscar hates it.

Gradually, Salem comes back into view. Oscar does not deny the relief he feels when he registers her face racing back toward the ground through the dark of the false night. As she nears Oscar at his perch, Salem twists midcourse to point her feet at the ground and slows to a midair halt in front of him.

Without preamble, Salem holds out her hand, palm up.

A stone, emanating an soft gray glow, rests in her palm. Oscar blinks at Salem owlishly, then reaches out and takes the stone from Salem. He turns it over and over in his hands.

“There’s a ceiling,” Salem says, floating around to Oscar’s side as she folds her hands neatly behind her and tilts her head to gesture upward, “Some of the rock up there is luminescent. No sky. We are still underground.”

Oscar closes his fist around the glowing rock and holds it close to his chest. He leans on his other hand and peers, now, into the dead forest.

The silence that way is deafening. The stillness too complete.

What happens when we disturb it?

Oscar really doesn’t want to go into that haunted wood.

“How could you tell?” Salem asks, her tone oddly indulgent.

Oscar glances at her, incredulous, and he can’t help but frown as he responds, “The depth. It didn’t have the depth the open sky has. Even when it’s in a storm or clouded by fog.”

He’s had some time to think about this now. Put it into words, measly as they are. Oscar glares up at the deception.

“Ah,” Salem says, she too looks up again, “I see what you mean now.”

Oscar pockets the gray stone, he rubs at his eyes and smooths his hands down his face. He rises from his crouch, leaps off the stone column and glides forward gently until his feet reach the ground at the petrified forest’s tree-line.

“Into the woods?” Oscar asks Salem with low-energy facetiousness. He finds her right behind him when he turns around and Oscar startles, badly.

“Quite,” Salem says with a prim grin.

Oscar openly rolls his eyes at Salem as she passes him and enters the dead wood first.

The best way to move through this winter-barren, frostless, dead forest is on silent, night-scented wings.

Flitting between gargantuan boles, and the trees’ varying willowy spirals and wide waves is easy as reading the wind. Except, of course, that there is no wind in this dead place.

Oscar jumps between landing branches and zips through the gaps in the canopy tangles. On the forest floor below, Salem sails over the gnarled knots of roots without obstacle.

Oscar suspects she’s levitating.

“Oh, but surely it was you behind every shadow and misfortune?” Oscar layers the sarcasm on thick. He is, maybe not so subtly, trying to play the same trick on Salem that she attempted when he was her prisoner in the bowels of the colossal dogfish.

Oz is playing the bad guy. He’s not bitter. He’s not.

“Despite what Ozma’s paranoia tells him,” Salem says evenly, “I did not pry into all his lives. Frankly, I failed to notice the majority of them.”

Oscar leans out on the branch he balances on to look down at Salem as she picks her way carefully through the bleached undergrowth.

Oscar doesn’t bother to hide the dark humor in his voice when he says, “I figured as much. Especially when it clicked that my lifetime is the first time you two have spoken. Directly, that is, since his second life. Only a few hundred-thousand years of radio silence, give or take. What harm could that do?”

Salem exhales sharply from her nostrils. It’s not not a laugh.

He alights onto another branch ahead, vaults over a tangle of tree limbs, and weaves through the petrified and crumbling canopy with ease on his barn owl wings.

Below, Salem is keeping pace with him, uncannily gliding through the lifeless forest like a ghost.

She fits right in.

Oscar catches Salem openly tracking his movements as he flies through the forest canopy above. As he weaves between two tree trunks, Oscar makes eye contact with Salem fleetingly, before dropping down to settle on one of the lower awning branches. Oscar cocks his head curiously at Salem, and pauses, hoping she’ll take the obvious cue and just say what she means already. He can feel her building up to something and the anticipation is giving Oz ulcers.

So, it’s giving Oscar ulcers too. Ew.

Salem hums, brief but harmonious, then says, “This is the first time I’ve known him to reincarnate into the body of a Faunus.”

Oh, that. Oscar rocks his weight back and forth on his heels.

“It’s just as you say,” Oscar hums back, rolling his shoulders and stretching out his wings with a feigned yawn, “I am the first. The only Faunus host Oz has ever had.”

Salem’s face does something funny. The corners of her mouth twitch and her eyes practically glitter. Her expression, however, is severe and blank. It looks painful.

For a moment, Salem appears to be taken aback. She seems to take the measure of Oscar again and size him up for the second time.

Oscar eyes her right back with a raised eyebrow, he is trying for patient but regardless is unnerved.

“Truly,” Salem says, the taut line of her mouth twisting into a crooked smile—Real—and her eyes lighting up, “You are the first? How could he have let such a thing happen?”

He who?

You who?

Salem huffs a bitter laugh that sounds entirely too sinister in the abject silence of this abyssal wood.

Oscar presses his lips together in a thin line and worriedly glances around. He’s lost the thread to steer this conversation for the moment. Salem is difficult to talk to for a number of reasons, but her wildly oscillating tone of voice and seemingly obtuse conversational left turns make every conversation excruciatingly tedious. Like pulling teeth. When talking, Salem walks around, and, occasionally, right up to what she means to say, but doesn’t put it in plain terms.

Maybe that’s why all the members of Salem’s inner circle have such conflicting ideas about what her endgame goal is?

Is it fair to point to the same reason for us not knowing?

On the forest floor, Salem glides away, continuing the pace forward. The persistent cloud of blue lights around her flutters amongst the trees with slow, uncanny movements. Now the shifting of her conjured lights harkens to old myths of ghostflame and cautionary tales of will-o’-the-wisp.

With a haunted look, Oscar glides after Salem, and keeps pace with her from above.

The terrain of the forest rises and falls with low hills and shallow valleys. At the crest of a particular hill, Oscar spots the edges of jagged cave walls and the ragged cut of a cavern opening at his 2 o’clock. He estimates no more than a half mile away from their current position.

Oscar heaves a relieved sigh, “Ok, so we’re not stuck in the unending ghost forest dimension.”

“So, we’re not.” Salem enunciates each syllable with precision, suddenly right beside him on the next branch.

Oscar shrieks and lifts off, and away from Salem. He slips into a gap between branches, drops a few dozen feet down—the white bodies of the petrified trees screaming past him as he briefly plummets—and then soars upward with the unfurling of his wings. Oscar catches himself with a few choice curses.

Flapping his wings to hover in the air, Oscar clutches at his heart, and yells at Salem, “Don’t do that!”

Salem looks at him nonplussed.

Oscar lands on a branch just above the one Salem is currently standing on and tries to bring his heart rate down. Echoing in the back of his head is stifled chuckling.

Oscar flushes and balls up his fists, his feathers puff out, and he hisses, “Don’t laugh you jackass!”

Salem blinks at him like a frog.

“Not you!” Oscar throws out his hands in a propitiatory gesture at Salem. Salem frowns at him, gods. Oscar groans and throws up both his hands. “Agh! Both of you, enough!”

A beat. Both Ancients are quiet for just a beat.

“I did not mean to startle you,” Salem says, her voice devoid of emotion or mockery. Her delivery stilted.

Oz puzzles over this.

“Just,” Oscar holds up one finger, “One moment. Give me just one moment.”

Oscar pulls in a deep breath into his lungs–his lungs are larger than most humanoids–he holds it for count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Exhales, count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. He repeats this practice twice more before blowing out a raspberry. Tired, Oscar looks away from Salem back to the next way out. Oscar finds himself oddly relieved that the jagged cavern opening did not vanish when he took his eyes off of it.

The air shifts.

“I have questions for you, boy,” Salem says out of nowhere. “And you will give me the truth this time.”

Oscar braces himself and turns his head toward Salem to give her his full attention. From his vantage point, crouched on the branch above her, they are nearly at eye level.

“Ask,” Oscar says simply, as Oz waits behind bated breath. A pained weight wedged in between Oscar’s breastbone and lung.

“When we first arrived here, something happened to you that you described as a consequence from fighting what you referred to as the merge. But, are you not fighting Ozma himself?” Salem asks like she’s cutting into flesh with a scalpel when she speaks. Meticulous and exact.

Oscar stills, his vision blurs as his eyes go distant, then as he refocuses on Salem, he says, “No, I have fought Oz before, but not in this case. When we fight the curse, Oz and I fight together now.”

Salem’s eyes upon him are illuminated with that brighter, starker red that he has seen flare in her eyes numerous times before.

Wild clarity and sharpness.

“You call it a curse. Does Ozma share that sentiment?” Salem’s tone of voice jumps from even to disgusted by sentence.

“Yes.” Oscar responds plainly, eyeing her reaction. When Salem’s expression scrunches up subtly, he continues, “He’s trapped just like us. He cannot rest.”

“Ozma is not returning by choice?” She asks, her voice suddenly dangerous. Salem has read something into him.

“No, he did not choose this. Or wait—Well,” Oscar grimaces and Oz cringes like a sick stomach, pain and anxiety, “Oz did choose to come back the first time, when the god of light gave Ozma his ultimatum, but coming back after that? Definitely not, no. And the way the curse works it’s,” Oscar trips over his own words when volcanic, black smoke starts to rise from Salem, he finishes speaking abruptly, “—Punishing.”

“Tell me the terms of this curse,” Salem says with an ominous echo to her voice. “Right. Now.”

Alarm bells of danger ring in Oscar’s head from his own instincts, and Oz banging pots and pans.

Oscar’s feathers stand on end, and it takes every bit of nerve in him not to fly away from Salem. Oscar tightly grips the pale bark of the petrified branch he bows on, and he is unaware that soul woven claws have extended from his fingertips to pierce and dig into the branch.

Oscar swallows and starts, “Ozma was condemned to reincarnate until his task is complete. An impossible task. The curse won’t let him die. It forces him to come back and unmakes him into someone else; while it kills the person he’s paired with. It’s a kind of death for him too. Each time.” They breathe in a steadying breath to keep them both calm.

It doesn’t really work, but they forge on, Oscar says, “The meat grinder of the merge made it very difficult to question the ultimatum Ozma was given by the one that cursed him. The implications of its true demand…”

Time to be brave, time to tell the truth.

In twined voices, Oscar-Ozma continues, “When we die, we are thrown into a white, screaming void.”

Salem’s eyes narrow at the changing resonance of Oscar’s voice, but she does not interrupt them.

They continue, “It hurts to be there like it hurts to be living, dying, and dead all at once. The curse chooses a new host, and we are shunted into them. We don’t know how it chooses exactly, just that the time in between is agony. And the time living under the curse is torture.”

Salem’s face twists—They’ve said too much—The petrified tree branch under her feet cracks in a radius around her and shatters with an eruption of petrified pulp. It falls to pieces, crashing to the ground loudly, disastrous in the abyssal quiet of this inert forest.

Black smoke smears the air along the crown of Salem’s head, her arms and shoulders. Salem’s hands curl into claws at her sides, and fury twists her features violently.

Suddenly, Oscar feels the full force of her frightful presence.

His instincts scream at him, Fly! Fly! Oscar jumps back and flaps further up into the canopy. He skitters back on a new branch and half-hides behind the trunk of a neighboring tree. Oscar watches anxiously as thicker, darker, black smoke billows out of Salem’s form. When she broke the branch she was standing on, she didn’t fall with it. Salem remains in the air, and floats there like an angry wraith.

“So, you speak the truth, boy.” Salem says, spitting out the words. Her voice strangled, Salem hisses, “All these years, all these years, and finally I know why you keep coming back.”

Ozma shrivels up like a riverbed exposed to the sunlight.

“You didn’t know?” Oscar asks, trepidatiously leaning his head out from behind the tree trunk.

Salem raises her face to look up at him very slowly, like the resounding toll of a bell getting closer, she says, “You know I didn’t know.”

Salem holds Oscar’s gaze for a long time. He sees so much raw emotion in those startling moments. Once again, Ozma within him cannot look away, even as that gaze pierces him and shreds him to ribbons.

Oscar does not enjoy being the go-between for these two.

Salem looks away first, and as her gaze lowers to the ground, she begins to drift slowly downward. Until she reaches the ground with a soft hush of her robes fanning out around her. The smoke billowing from her dissipates in time, like a doused inferno.

Smoke without a fire.

Oscar gives her, and Oz, a few moments.

Oz is giving thousand-yard-stare in multitudes and Oscar is loath to poke him with a 50-foot pole.

Oscar grimaces internally. Maybe he does externally too.

Below them, Salem stands there, motionless, at the foot of a petrified tree and simmers. She hangs her head and stares at the ground. Oscar can’t see her face, only the sagging of her shoulders and hunch of her back. Her hands go limp at her sides.

After a time, Oscar quietly descends the barren canopy and alights onto the lowest branch that he estimates can take his weight.

From above, Oscar calls down to Salem, “Are you okay?”

Salem snaps her gaze up to him in an instant. Her eyes are shinning and wide, her face strained, and expression cracked right down the middle. Rage does not approach what Oscar sees on Salem’s face.

Neither does grief.

Oscar’s wings unfold and he flinches back. He forces himself to stay and hastens to add, with one hand out placating, “Sorry, stupid question.”

Salem covers her face with one hand and wordlessly waves him away with the other.

She’s out of words, let’s go ahead. Whisper the voices of the many lamented dead.

Oscar hesitates.

“Ok, I’m…” Oscar curls his right hand at his heart and sighs. He clears his throat and calls down softly to Salem, “I’ll go a bit ahead and wait for you. When you’re ready we can…talk? Or not talk.” He adds when her brows furrow in annoyance, “And then we’ll keep going.”

He beats his wings, jumps, and lands on another branch. Oscar stops, hesitates again, squeezes his eyes shut and commits. Oscar calls back again over his shoulder at Salem, “Don’t get stuck! And don’t take too long, like—Days—I’ll probably die of dehydration by then.”

Salem makes a guttural hiss of warning and Oscar takes that as his cue and flies away.

Chapter Text

The Long Memory is posted up at the entrance to the cave. From the globe of its handle, a warm amber light glows. It is a beacon in the dark at the edge of an abyssal wood.

At the mouth of the cave, Oscar paces.

We’re playing a dangerous game, Oz says.

“Who’s playing?” Oscar responds, terse.

Oz would rub at his—their—temples if he could but is denied the self-soothing ritual.

Instead, Oz sinks like a dead weight into Oscar’s feet and makes every step heavier. Like the contrarian he is, Oz endeavors to be a stick in the mud on this particular matter. When he has been overwhelmingly supportive of all Oscar’s harebrained rehabilitation missions in the past.

Oscar has a pretty stellar track record on these matters, too.

This is different. Of course, this is different.

Did you think we would get to the end of this without needing to talk to her? Reckon with her? Oscar asks of himself and his second self.

Oscar, this is Salem. Not one of your wayward orphans, Oz says, and there it is, lurking in the background—a shadow cast over his every word—the grief Oz won’t admit to. You can’t change her mind. Not about this. Not about us.

Not about me, Ozma doesn’t say, but Oscar knows it, all the same.

Oscar clicks his tongue in annoyance. He briefly entertains pulling Ozma’s scar tissue to the forefront to interrogate it, but no. No, there is no good reason to wound his strange passenger so viciously.

We have to try, Oscar says instead, dead horse. What else are we good for?

He grimaces, he didn’t mean for that second thought to fully form.

Oscar turns his head toward the treeline for the hundredth time. How much longer do they wait?

It’s so cold here.

Oscar wrings out his hands and does the same approximate nervous motion with his wings. He pivots and turns, clockwise, walks the width of the yawning cave opening, pivots, turns, and walks back. Repeat.

Repeat.

Would you sit down, please? Oz pleads like a thinning line, straining to snap, but still holding on.

Oscar paces. They stare down at the trek he’s paved in the ground as Oscar retraces it again and again. Ozma doesn’t pace, this is an Oscar thing.

Small reminders.

Trying to drive off the cold, Oscar crosses his arms and cups his chin in one hand. His fingers are cold where he’s curled them around his chin. He thinks—

Of the press of cold glass against his cheek, the touch of tundra winter bleeding through the window to steal his warmth. Windows span from the lip of the floor up to wide arches, accented by polished, filigreed metal.

The sky kingdom sprawls below, but Oscar is looking up.

The domed glass ceiling of the ostentatious observatory gives them the perfect view.

The northern lights, magic by any other name, are rippling and cascading above them. Green, green, green, ever green. Polar sky, and frigid night.

The coldness of true night that only belongs to winter.

His wings shiver.

In a far-off corner of the sky, the fractured moon is a crescent, cut by the planet’s shadow, and shrouded by the aurora borealis.

The moon is wearing a veil, he thinks. It’s hiding its true face too.

Sitting beside him on the ground, curling a long, red lock of hair round and around her finger, Penny Polendina says, “Sometimes, I think it’s harder to be a person than to be your purpose.”

Her eyes are searching—green, green, green—when she looks at him. She almost makes him cry—

Oscar shakes his head violently to chase away the memory and Oscar jerks as he comes to a halt. Focus, focus. He tells himself.

In the middle of the circuit he’s worn into the dirt, beside the Long Memory’s post, Oscar hugs himself against the chill and sits down.

He does feel a little like he’s going to start crying.

The god-curse has funny effects on the vividness of memory.

The pull of the past.

He hardly knew her and still—Still. Oscar wishes he’d known Penny better. Wishes he’d had the chance to.

Ruby loved Penny so much, how could he not?

Stop. Don’t think about this right now, just stop. Oscar tells himself. Fights with himself, Don’t think about Ruby. Don’t go down that rabbit hole.

Oz is quiet.

“Gods’ waters, what am I doing?” Oscar whispers as he clasps the sides of his head with his hands and sets his forehead on his knees. Oscar then wraps his arms around his head and buries his face there. His wings wrap around him in kind, a desperate attempt to keep some of his own warmth when not moving.

It’s not difficult for Oscar to doubt himself when a whole, entire other self, within his own self, doubts him already.

(That makes sense, he promises, to them at least.)

In the recesses of his mind, Oz begins to drift away again, and Oscar is filled with numbing dread at the threat of isolation. It’s a dissociative kind of anxiety, being left here to wait—Alone—in this awful, desolate place. But then, Oz suddenly and forcefully yanks himself back to the forefront. It’s so jarring it sends a shock through Oscar’s system and he involuntarily jumps. His feathers puffing up so he’s a feather ball of amber-oak and cream on the floor.

“Oz?” Oscar asks the empty air.

“I’m sorry,” Oz says, off-balance enough to speak aloud by mistake. Oz reels and chastises himself silently.

I’m sorry, he says again. I’m not being helpful here, when you need me most to be. I’m letting my fear control me, and in allowing it to, I’m failing you. I’m sorry…I’ll…I’ll do better.

Oscar re-folds his wings over his seated form like a quilt—checkered and neatly stitched, his aunt’s careful craftsmanship—soft, soft, love-worn where he rubs the quilt between freckled forefinger and thumb—and his feathers settle down as Oz apologizes.

“You’re scared,” Oscar acknowledges, and Oz swallows thickly around the frog in his throat, “I’m scared too.”

Oz hums his assent and curls up at the back of Oscar’s neck comfortingly. With the sensation of weight and touch the barn cat had when it made Oscar its perch. It was a tabby, mottled and flecked like Oscar’s own barn owl wings.

It’s a phantom touch, drawn from memory and synthesized, Oscar knows this; but Oscar also wants nothing more than to lay his hand gently over Oz’s little head for shared comfort in kind.

Instead, Oscar settles his chin back down on the tops of his knees again.

We have to be in this together, Oscar pours all his hope and trust into the plea. I need you to have my back on this. Fill in the gaps I lack. I can barely keep moving forward when you cast dread and doubt over every move we make.

One autumn, when Oscar was much younger, he caught a terrible flu. He’d been laid up in bed for days. It had been absolutely miserable and made worse by the haze of fever. Oscar hated that part the most, not necessarily the pain, but the disorientation.

The lost time.

On the second night, Oscar woke to that same old barn cat curled up on his chest, purring like a gas motor. Every night, it would return to its post atop the center of Oscar’s little, fluttering, wheezing chest and kick up a roar of purring. It was like a handhold in a maelstrom for Oscar, when, to his child mind, it had felt like he’d never be well again.

Such a comfort from something beyond words.

He learned later from a book that it’s hypothesized that cats don’t just purr as a sign of contentment. But, possibly, to promote healing as well.

Oz is palliatively trying to have the same affect now.

Yes, Oz says with powerful feeling. Remorse and reciprocity, Yes, OK. Together. Forward. I’m with you, I swear it.

“Good,” Oscar says on an exhale. This is our chance, can’t you see? This is our chance.

Ozma wobbles on that but does not flinch or flee. We have to try. You’re right. Oz still trembles where he cannot hide from Oscar anymore.

Though Oz would surely prefer to still appear unflappable, Oscar prefers them both uncloaked. Honest and raw, rather than shrouded in their shared mind-space; bridge of the convergence between melding souls. The open-stitch-wound. The crucible.

It always felt like a strain when they tried to keep things from one another. Oscar has given up on privacy.

“Good,” Oscar says again. Then he asks Oz, “How much longer do you think she’ll be?”

Because they haven’t yet gotten to the desperate point that would require Oscar to entertain the thought that Salem is not coming at all; not in his lifetime.

Oz considers—clock tick-ticking its precise count down—and then, surprisingly, says, Not much longer.

Oscar quirks his eyebrows skeptically with a dawning, lopsided smile on his face, but doesn’t question Oz’s sudden and uncharacteristic optimism.

They wait.

At some point, Oscar’s eyes fall closed.

Forced into a holding pattern, they can feel all Oscar’s stubborn aches and pains, as well as his mounting exhaustion.

Before they can consider the treachery of sleep, however, Oscar sees light from behind his eyelids. Oscar cracks an eye open to glimpse blue will-o’-the-wisps swarming among the bone white, petrified trees. The procession is making its way toward him. The softest chiming of bells reaches his ears, and he realizes that the fluttering lights are also making sound—Just like the myth.

Oscar-Ozma sits up and stares, absolutely floored by this choice of manifestation.

Oscar can hear her approach—Salem is also deliberately making noise. She might as well be stomping on the roots of the forest floor with how much noise she’s making. Instead of creeping up on them from the bottomless darkness of the forest, Salem re-enters their view wreathed in a cloud of bouncing, blue lights and looking, of all things, grumpy.

It would be hysterical, if Oscar wasn’t overwhelmingly relieved to see her return.

Odd thing, that.

Let’s not make it a habit.

Salem looks completely unsurprised to find him waiting here for her—She shouldn’t be surprised, Oscar said he would wait, for crying out loud—but she doesn’t look happy about it.

She looks…How do they put this…Uncomfortable? Restless? Queasy?

Oscar rises slowly to his feet and clasps his hands at his chest, tentatively hopeful, he starts, “Hello again.”

Salem face goes searingly blank and Oscar’s stomach drops. Oscar’s shoulders and wings rise slowly around his ears as some of Salem’s frightful, apocalyptic presence bleeds through her calm veneer.

Oz drafts a dozen ways to broach a conversation he explicitly does not want to have, like a frantic speech writer, and pushes the best rhetoric behind Oscar’s eyes.

Thrown off, Oscar twitches involuntarily, and then blinks rapidly like he has dust in his eyes.

Oscar picks what he thinks is the best path forward, “Are we talking now?” He tries for accommodating and winds up somewhere between jittery and empathetic.

Good enough?

That’s what you always sound like.

Salem closes her eyes and takes in a drawn out, deep breath. Then she exhales a weary sigh and looks at Oscar once more. Oscar cocks his head slightly to the side and tries to make his body language and expression as open as possible.

At the same time, he and Oz are batting back intrusive thoughts like flies with a swatter. They rise to the surface—flashes—memories of his time in the marrow-rotten dungeons of the whale, like flotsam from the wreck of trauma—Her face—Her face—white, red, black—Rushing toward him in the perilous moment before he calls forth the atomic-kinetic power secreted away in the core of the Long Memory—One of many sharp, buoyant thoughts caught by the churning oceans his mind; the high skies and bottomless depths of the Sea of Voices.

His mind did not always take this shape. Not before Oz spoke to him that fateful early morning rise.

Add it to the tally of Oscar-before-Oz and Oscar-after-Oz.

Oscar tries to keep this inner turmoil from showing on his face, but given Salem’s frozen stance and stony expression, he is probably mostly failing at that.

Oscar begins to sweat, What do they do? How do they talk to her?

What does she want?—

“No talking,” Salem says suddenly, like the words are dragged out of her painfully. She yanks her gaze from Oscar to the Long Memory and they both go statue-still.

Salem stares as the light burning from the weapon’s pommel for a long, and agonizing moment. And while Oscar makes a point to not defensively reach for his weapon, his muscles still tense in preparation for violence.

In a flash, there and gone, Salem’s features turn bitter and mournful.

The emotion departs as quickly as it was revealed, leaving Oscar and Oz to question if they had seen it at all.

Salem approaches him then, each step stilted—Haggard—like she’s walking on knives. Like Salem has been walking for thousands of miles to reach this point. As she comes to stand level with him at the mouth of the cave, Salem folds her arms tightly around herself.

The Long Memory stands between them.

Oscar holds very still. This is the closest they’ve been to one another since she went for his throat.

Stood beside Oscar, without turning to face him, Salem says, “No more talking. Have mercy on me and I will return the courtesy.”

A plea for silence need not have such stipulations.

Oscar nods readily and tries to meaningfully catch Salem’s eye when she glances at him from the side, but then Salem sneers at him meanly.

Oscar’s multi-step plan grinds to a halt in his head and his thoughts fizzle out like static.

Salem looks away.

She moves like a ghost past the lips of the cave entrance wreathed in a procession of tiny blue lights. Her conjured lights are cheerily ringing like silver bells as they swirl around Oscar to follow Salem’s stomping march. The hunch of her shoulders and clench of her fists is illuminated by blue.

The scene before him is so dissonant, Oscar feels himself slip into dissociation for a few labored breathes, before Oz jars him back to reality with a mental shake.

Oscar stands there, in a cloud of blue lights that rush past him flowing along an unseen current, and somehow, he feels more lost than before.

On autopilot, he reaches for the hilt of the Long Memory and dislodges the weapon from the ground. With expert sleight of hand that has become second nature, Oscar presses and clicks the handle in a successive pattern that smothers the amber light from the Long Memory’s cradle.

Not quite feeling his feet carrying him forward, Oscar sheaths the Long Memory and clips it into his holster at the small of his back.

Salem is moving away from them very quickly.

Oscar stumbles to hurry after Salem but keeps his distance when she snaps her head around at him as he knocks loose a few pebbles from the uneven cave floor.

The look she gives him is a haunted one. But once more, it’s like a flash. There and gone, like she can’t bear to look at them.

Oscar makes himself small and quiet, and he gives Salem a wide berth.

He feels the tension in himself as he traces the hunched line of Salem’s shoulders.

Oscar remembers—

The hunch of her shoulders...

“I’m sorry for my part in it.” He says.  

Ruby stalls out, her features crease and her brow furrows. He watches Ruby find her footing again, and then, offering him plausible deniability, she asks, “What are you talking about?” A half-hearted laugh. “You didn’t—You helped—”

“But I was part of it.” Oscar restates, he can’t let this go again. She needs to hear it. “I put you on a pedestal too, Ruby. I’m not going to make excuses for myself or rewrite our history. You deserve an apology; you deserve to hear it! I wasn’t—”

Here, Oscar chokes on it a little.

She’s looking at him now with wide, startled eyes. Like she’s five seconds from leaping out the window to escape this conversation and simultaneously pinned to the spot.

Flight. Freeze.

Fire and Darkness, he’s supposed to be helping.

He’s supposed to be better at this.

Oscar masters himself as best he can, and though he cannot keep the emotion out of his voice, he forges on, “I wasn’t the friend you needed, really. Back then. But I want to be, now.”

Ruby blinks at him rapidly, her hands move erratically, torn between motions to comfort him and wave this all away.

Ruby aborts, splits the difference, and covers the back of her head with one hand, rubbing anxiously through the hair at her nape, while the other hand is held out to Oscar. She closes the outstretched hand into a loose fist and shakes it to punctuate her words, “That’s not—” A sharp breath, “That’s not fair.”

“Ruby,” Oscar rallies to say what he means to, but Ruby interrupts him.

“That’s not fair.” She says again, dropping her hands to her sides, and then Ruby throws her arms up in protest. Animated and agitated on his behalf, “You were a good friend, you are a great friend!”

“But I could’ve been better!” Oscar shouts when he doesn’t mean to. Quieting himself, Oscar whispers, “I should’ve been better to you.”

Oz sinks like the pit in his stomach.

Ruby’s face hardens, and, gods, they are not getting anywhere, he’s doing this wrong.

Oscar waves his hands between them to dissipate the tension, “No, wait, listen. I’m sorry. I just mean that—That I want to be a better friend to you. I want—” Oscar exhales a calming breath and lays his palms gently on the tops of Ruby’s balled-fists, “I want to know you better. Really.”

At first, Ruby’s face goes disastrously blank, and then her expression cracks right open. Her mouth wobbles open, and she says—

Oscar stumbles on an unseen crack in the rock floor, trips and flops down face first into the dirt.

For a moment, Oscar lies there as pieces of that conversation play on repeat in his brain. Self-loathing and insecurity needle at him, he’s supposed to be the one that’s good at talking. Emotionally intelligent or whatever. He’s supposed to be the one that solves problems with words and not violence. But all the instances where that has blown up in his face—when it hasn’t worked—including how things are unfolding now, pulls him down and keeps him there; lying in the dirt.

Oz tugs worriedly at Oscar, his presence concentrated in the space between Oscar’s wings on his back. What are you doing? Get up.

Maybe Oscar does want to wallow, a bit. He does actually get why it’s so hard for Ozma to not wallow every waking moment.

The only thing that rouses him is the sudden and abrupt stop of the second set of footsteps.

With profound frustration, Oscar pulls himself to his feet, dusts himself off, and keeps walking.

Ahead of him, stationary, Salem never looks back. But as soon as the sound of Oscar’s renewed march reaches her, Salem moves on as well.

Chapter Text

Oscar doesn’t like being underground. He also doesn’t particularly enjoy being cooped up indoors for too long. He goes a little stir-crazy—or “owl-eyed” as Blake puts it—after being confined for more than a few hours.

He needs to see the sky.

He needs it.

It’s not something he can explain with words, it’s just something he feels down to the incessant vibrations of his atoms. By the rightness of the rush of blood in his veins and sprawl of his feathers.

A fundamental need imbued into his gray matter, connective tissue, instincts, and sense memory.

This is why he was so affronted by that fake sky above the dead forest.

With the true sky before him, Oscar can find those pockets of peace in the wind.

When deprived of the open sky for too long, Oscar experiences a mounting sense of dread and restlessness. Like the sound of nails scrapped on a chalkboard to the ears or the sensation of pins and needles in a limb that’s fallen asleep and gone stiff.

But bodily all encompassing.

Inescapable.

It’s ignorable to a point, but it gets worse the longer it goes on without relief. Until it becomes intolerable.

Then Oscar gets…Weird.

This whole ordeal has been a true stress test of the very foundations of Oscar’s sanity and the setting itself really is the cherry on top.

Straw that breaks the camel’s back.

A while ago, what feels like a lifetime now, his team was drafted by the Atlas military to investigate an abandoned SDC mine out in the Solitas tundra. Oscar was exempt from the mission for a myriad of reasons. Initially, a number of his friends had objected—“We need to stick together,” Yang had said squaring her shoulders—but Oscar had told them emphatically that he was fine with staying behind in this case.

He had been glad of the excuse not to join—an SDC mine—the SDC mine—nightmares made manifest—Did Blake know?—and Oscar hadn’t rankled under the derision of his vulnerability from the man who made the call at the time…Much.

If Oscar’s team had needed him then, if his friends had needed him, nothing would have been able to keep him from being at their sides.

But they didn’t need him then.

And Oscar was spared the inevitable suffering of an underground maze and an exhumed mass grave.

Do they need him now?

How would he know?

Oscar feels itchy all over. How long has it been? How long have we been wandering around aimlessly in the dark?—Tick-tick-tick-tock—The walls around Oscar are pressing in and he may now be hanging by the last threads of his composure.

Take deep breaths, Oz tries to soothe him, but Oscar can’t do that. They need to stay quiet.

They can’t make a sound.

Because there’s a very old and very tired woman ahead of them who is more ancient than humanity itself. And she asked Oscar for silence.

Threatened more like, Oz says.

Oscar doesn’t react to that.

She was harsh with you, Oz goes on to say, I think we can expect that unfair treatment to continue as long as you are associated with me. But that doesn’t mean your initial plan needs to be thrown out with the bath water.

Oscar almost laughs out loud at the work “associated” is doing in that sentence, but he manages to tamper down his reaction to only a twitch at the corners of his mouth and a wrinkle of his nose.

The suppression is not a good feeling.

Don’t get discouraged, Oz continues, his hope wobbly and contingent upon Oscar’s own resolve—Oscar knows, he knows. How frail a broken heart truly is. How expectant of further wounds and disappointment it becomes—

Oz finishes, We’ve only just begun.

Oscar nods once, resolute but weary.

The growing itch under Oscar’s skin makes Oz’s reassurances sound far away. Muffled.

The cave tunnel they’ve been following winds in slow meandering turns. There have been a few dead ends and twists that loop back around to a previous section they’ve already traversed. Salem has taken to marking the walls to track their navigation and notate infuriating loops. But the simple strategy of “keep going up” hasn’t failed them yet, and they are still seemingly making progress in increasing their elevation.

Presuming that up is still out, of course.

Up is always out, a tiny voice whispers.

Oz looks around at the endless, becalmed sea of their mind. Did you hear that? He asks.

Hear what?

Oz frowns deeply.

Oscar is too distracted concentrating on stopping himself from clawing out of his own skin to pay Oz’s chronic paranoia any mind.

Salem has remained resolutely silent and taken the lead since they left the pale forest. She takes great pains to stay ahead of Oscar and adjusts her pace to maintain that distance. Oscar has actually tested it, he’s had the time to, but that is the line up to which he is willing to poke the Ursa.

Salem won’t let him walk beside her.

She recalled her tittering, bouncing blue lights just a moment ago, rather spontaneously.

Oscar presumes she holds one condensed flame in the palm of her hand to light her way through the caverns. As all Oscar can see of the light source is the stark white-blue outline it casts of Salem’s silhouette.

Behind him, at the edges of his night-vision periphery, the darkness swells.

It’s not necessarily the dark that bothers Oscar. The dark has never been something for him to fear. It’s how the darkness distorts the space and makes the cave seem both bigger and smaller than it actually is.

At once, Oscar feels claustrophobic and lost in an endless expanse.

It’s a tricky line to walk without losing his mind. There’s a scream building in the back of Oscar’s throat that he refuses to let out.

The pattern is following them.

Even here, in this natural-esque cave, the pattern burrows alongside them. Marking the walls, ceilings, and floors of the shifting caverns they explore. Oscar hadn’t seen the pattern in the forest. But maybe if he had gone with Salem up to the false-sky ceiling above he would have found the maddening pattern there. With whorls in the dark spaces between the lying stars.

Maybe the pattern was covered by tree roots?

Maybe the pattern was inside the trees themselves, wrought upon tree rings, and maybe he’s looking in the wrong places on an erroneous assumption of simplicity.

Maybe Oscar’s about to crack—Oz pulls back a bit, in an effort to help relieve some of the building pressure.

It helps a little.

The tension in their shoulders does not ease one iota, however. His wings are folded too tight.

Oscar’s thoughts turn back to the false sky above the dead forest. He wants to ask Salem about it, but he won’t.

Not yet at least.

So, instead he’ll ask Oz a different question.

Are we being punished?

Oz, watching Salem from behind Oscar’s eyes, blurs like a signal being lost and then retunes to focus. Slowly, like he’s waking up from a dream, Oz says, Maybe. Probably.

For what purpose? Oscar asks with growing intensity, And by whom?

Ozma goes blank, a wall slams down between them—fall of the broad blade to cut the king’s neck—and for the first time in months Oscar is shut out of Oz’s true thoughts. A year ago, it would have only stung, but a severance like this now, when they are so melded-melding-melting-together, it’s an amputation.

Oscar gasps and seizes violently.

Without hyperbole, Oscar feels he’s been gutted in one swift strike and his innards are spilling out and onto the cave floor.

Or like his throat has been slit.

Absurdly, Oscar’s hands fly to clutch at his neck. There’s a burning ring of sensation there, just under his bandages, as if a blade really did separate his head from his shoulders in that instant.

As if, even headless, he can still feel the cut.

Oscar collapses in on himself, he is unable to catch himself as he falls and hits the ground hard.

As quickly as the walls were raised, Ozma tears them down in an instant and floods Oscar with regret, guilt, and shame. A blinding deluge without focus or center.

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—

A tiny sound of agony slips past Oscar’s lips without his permission. His thoughts are flayed, his mind—as the bridge between soul and body—stutters and jolts. In trying to shunt Oscar out, Oz might as well have jammed a live wire directly into the wrinkled meat of Oscar’s brain.

His blood is on fire.

The anger at this betrayal will come later.

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to—that was a mistake—I shouldn’t have done that—I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry—

Salem is standing over him.

Oscar has his forehead pressed into the dirt with his hands clutching around his throat. He squeezes his eyes shut tight then forces them open and blinks rapidly as spots appear in his vision.

The telltale signs of another oncoming migraine.

He feels more than sees Salem stoop down over him. The shadow of her presence falls over their fetal form with its own imperceptible weight.

Salem doesn’t say a word, but they can feel her waiting.

Watching.

In bursts, Oscar flits his gaze past the disheveled fringe of his hair to look up into Salem’s grim face. In her features he only sees storm clouds. His stomach drops, and that scream in the back of his throat shivers, it comes out as a ragged cough as they strangle it.

“So—S-Sorry,” Oscar chokes out, he drags their eyes away from her. “Sorry—sorry—” Oscar grits his teeth and clamps his jaw shut before anything else can escape.

Oscar’s head aches with a vengeance.

Suddenly, instinct ripples through him. An animal cry to freeze, and Oscar does.

Sometimes, he can feel it when someone is about to touch him. As if Oscar’s sense of touch does not end at the clear boundaries of his skin but extends beyond in a hazy cloak around him.

At times, it feels prescient in a pall of instinct.

Salem’s hand is extended and held in the air above Oscar’s head, mere inches from resting her fingers in his hair.

He knows this like Oscar knows the shape of his own wings in the dark.

Oscar doesn’t look up, but he’s already given it away that he knows.

Anticipates…

He cannot hide that he is fearful and filled with dread.

There is a palpable moment’s hesitation.

Caught, Salem retracts her hand and balls it into a fist. She presses her knuckles into the dirt and grit and meets Oscar’s eyes unflinchingly when he finally shifts to look up at her.

“What ails you?” Salem asks, startlingly intense.

Oscar’s left eye twitches as he and Oz flash through a quick roulette of—Are we still playing the quiet game?—Does responding mean we break a rule and she hurts us?—I hate secret rules—I’m sorry—What the fuck what the fuck—and what comes out of them is a meek: “Huh?”

Salem gives him a blank look. Several agonizing seconds pass between them.

Then Salem slaps on a bored expression and tone, she says, “Is this the curse? The merge you spoke of.”

Oscar closes his eyes as he wobbles up onto his knees and wipes off the dirt on his face and in his hair as best he can. Acerbic, Oscar half-whispers, “No, not exactly. Oz did something stupid.”

I’m sorry, Oz says again on the verge of shattering anew.

Oscar almost snarls something he can’t take back, but he squashes the thought brutally before it can breathe or make a noise. It must show up on his face though because the corners of Salem’s mouth twitch almost into a betraying smile. Almost.

“Can you stand?” She asks, feigning disinterest.

Oscar could mistake himself for a bloody, open wound right now. When has that ever given him an out?

“Yes,” He says, unsteady, and still half-whispering for some reason.

“Then get up,” Salem says, as she swiftly rises and turns her back on him. “I’ll not wait for a broken leg or a shattered mind.”

And she doesn’t, forging on ahead while Oscar struggles to get his feet under them.

Curiously, jingling, blue-bell lights spill from Salem’s retreating form and light the way of the path she travels—Breadcrumb trail—The light these motes give off is softer, more ambient, and easier on Oscar’s eyes. Even the sounds the lights make are easy to follow with Oscar’s eyes closed.

Oscar-Ozma tries not to read too much into it and fails miserably.

Oscar, Oz starts. Making himself translucent as the membrane between them. Please let me explain—

That fucking hurt, Oz.

I know…I felt it.

Why would you–? Ah, there’s Oscar’s anger.

I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.

Oscar shakes his head and then regrets it immediately as his head pounds. Oscar leans on the wall and relies on his hearing for navigating a formless void.

We can’t be making these kinds of mistakes at this stage. Your words! Not mine. Oscar says with some bitterness he himself was not wholly aware of.

I know. I know. Oz says penitent. I will—

Oz in Oscar’s head stutters and fractures abruptly—A record skipping its track and white noise playing instead—And then Oscar’s strange passenger refocuses.

As if Oz is built of ocular lenses and mirrors in an orrery meant to magnify the centerpiece of light, Oz focalizes with a blinding clarity that sends an uncomfortable shiver up Oscar’s spine and wings.

Oscar winces, he closed his eyes for a reason, but the light that hounds now him is behind his eyes.

I will answer your questions. Oz says with finality. He continues with some diffidence, But we may need to talk in circles around it. To be safe.

Oscar balls his hands up into fists and shakes them in front of him in a silent outburst of frustration. Air whistles from between his clenched teeth as Oscar sucks in a harsh breath to tamp down on the squawking growl bubbling in his chest.

Then Oscar unfolds his clenched fists to mime strangling some invisible clown with his bare hands.

I. Am. Listening. Oscar says to Oz.

Oz tightens, pulling uncomfortably at the seams of their conjoined jagged edges, before he musters the courage to continue.

Oscar waits with waning patience.

One can know a thing, Oz starts.

But not think it, Oscar finishes. Oz has spent many laborious hours teaching Oscar this practice after their reconciliation in Atlas.

Do you remember the story I told you of The Golden Bough and The King of the Forest? Oz asks, unreasonably nervous.

The one about the murderous deer king? That’s one of your lost fables, Oscar says, From the world before.

Yes, yes it was seen as blasphemous back then. You’re the only one I’ve ever shared it with.

Oscar blinks. Scatterings of blue lights and dark spots hover before his eyes and these visual disturbances are haloed by a golden glow that crowds out the darkness at the edges of his vision.

You shared that story after Ruby told me what really happened in the Ever After. Oscar says.

Hmm, a grim day that was, Oz says, Why did she keep that tale from the others do you think?

Oscar suddenly feels very small.

Before Oscar can plumb the depths of his grief for what Ruby went through—why she told him the whole awful entirety of the truth—

“I close my eyes and you’re bleeding out at my feet—”

Oz continues on, hastily, The whims of a storyteller can be so fickle!

Would you get to the point already. Oscar deadpans on cue. Its undercut somewhat when he nearly trips.

Oscar can feel Ozma holding on by the tips of his fingers. They’re both at the edge, Oscar can feel it.

The razors edge between them and the Sea.

The Golden Bough and The King of the Forest, Oz hurries on, like he’s putting on a show at gun point. What do you remember of it?

Oscar purses his lips. He searches his memories to paraphrase what he remembers of the tale.

After a moment’s recollection, Oscar says, The king of the forest was a great and terrible stag. In the stag’s antlers grew a beautiful golden bough. The king of the forest ruthlessly guarded his treasure and territory, and he would attack anyone and anything he saw as a threat.

And with the golden bough atop his head, he saw himself as justified. Ordained. And with the golden bough atop his head, he saw jealous threats from every direction. From every shadow. Oz seamlessly continues.

Oscar swallows thickly, he says, Those who the king of the forest impaled on his antlers did not die true deaths. Their wounds would not heal, and their bodies could not rest. They died in soul alone. The golden bough wove a curse of undeath upon the stag’s victims.

Oz continues, trancelike, A hunter and their wolfhound came to the forest of the King. To hunt and slay him. To steal his golden bough.

The King of the Forest slew them instead and left the hunter and the wolf-hound empty and undying.

Lost in the King’s forest, forevermore.

A merchant and their mare lost their way in the forest of the King. On their way to market to trade but surely these opportunists had a scheme. To trade away his golden bough.

The King of the Forest skewered the merchant and their mare in one brutal stab and left them empty and undying.

Lost in the King’s forest, forevermore.

A homeless vagabond foraged for food in the underbrush of the forest of the King. A wild red squirrel searched the same ground. They migrated closer and closer to each other, surely to conspire against him. To trick him out of his golden bough.

The King cut down both the wayward vagrant and the red squirrel in a brutal frenzy and left them empty and undying.

Lost in the King’s forest, forevermore.

Oscar waits for Oz to finish the tale but feels a tumultuous expectation from his companion instead.

Oscar flicks his eyes up from where their gaze had been trained on the ground.

Salem is still ahead of Oscar, but her pace has slowed considerably. The gap between them has widened but he hasn’t lost sight of her yet.

Biting his lip, Oscar lays out the conclusion as best he can, The king found a rock face on a mountain in his lonely forest. Perfectly polished and mirror-like. In the moonlight mirror, the stag saw his reflection.

The stag was fearful of the hate he saw in the other elk’s eyes.

The stag couldn’t cope with the idea that he wasn’t unique.

He charged his reflection and the mirror in the side of the mountain shattered upon the touch of the golden bough. And the king of the forest fell into the underworld. Oscar finishes.

There’s a ringing in Oscar’s ears. It is so quiet in their mind as to be deafening.

To know a thing, but not think it.

No one need teach a tree how to stand tall or a butterfly how to crawl out of its cocoon.

How does a snake know that its bite carries venom when it opens its maw to strike?

Hollow boned and born knowing how to fly. Ready for free-fall.

Talons to pierce a scaly hide.

This is the territory of the innate. It is something Oscar knows well. To know something, in your bones, doesn’t require conscious thought.

Oscar shakes out his wings and follows the winding cave around a steep turn.

With Salem’s wisps flitting about, Oscar notices a receding gradient of red as the incline of the cavern steepens. Around him as he walks up and up, the stone becomes pure, powdery, pale white. There are no veins of red here.

The angle of the cavern rapidly increases to a right angle, and abruptly the tunnel leads directly up.

Silent, Salem glides upwards, a dark phantom wreathed in soft blue lights.

At the bottom of the chute, Oscar opens his wings and flaps assurgent to follow. If he’s not careful, the tips of his wings just barely graze the walls of the cave.

In no time at all, they exit the winding cave tunnel and enter a grand hall. Massive white stone columns stretch from the polished floor to the far ceiling. The shafts of the columns are meticulously fluted, but the capital and base of each column is wrapped in the maddening pattern.

No two columns are alike in that regard.

Their exit seems to have formed alongside the collapse of two nearby pillars. The mouth of the cave appears to have swallowed up the base of both fallen pillars, though Oscar saw no evidence of the crumbled architecture below.

The columns lay like fallen trees across the grand hall. One column dislodged entirely and the other missing its head. That column’s capital is still affixed to the ceiling above. A very ornate stalactite.

Oscar swoops down and settles on a section of crumbled drum from the trunk of one of the fallen pillars. He kicks up a cloud of dust with the beat of his wings as he lands and sneezes. The reflexive sternutation echoes absurdly in the daunting space. Oscar wrinkles his nose.

Perching in a crouch, and waving away the dust with one hand, Oscar swivels his head around to take in the new space.

Everything is white with a faint shimmer over every surface. Bare, silvery, and pale.

It reminds Oscar oddly of the linoleum and fluorescent lights in hospitals.

Above him, Salem sends out her lights in all directions. Illuminating the furthest reaches of this gargantuan hall with a flood of wisps. Their movements enchantingly similar to jellyfish pulled along by an ocean tide. When the wisps hit the walls, they soundlessly crash and reverberate in a wave of tiny lights. The wisps congregate around the pillars in ripples.

It’s quite mesmerizing.

One end of the hall has collapsed in a tremendous cave-in.

The other end of the hall ends in a massive hatch door.

Decagonal and easily 40-feet in diameter, the door—because it must be a door—dwarfs Oscar and Salem.

Its structure is alien and strange. There are layered panels that radiate from the ten sides of the hatch towards its center. The panels fold neatly over each other not unlike the closed bud of a flower. The hatch borders the pattern on all sides, but the panels of the door are polished bald. Without blemish and without the twisting, folding pattern on its face.

On either side of the forty-foot hatch hangs two massive rings.

Oscar estimates these rings must be ten or fifteen feet in diameter, positioned twenty feet off the ground, and embedded in the wall.

The rings are made of the same material as the rest of the hall, polished off-white stone, but the bottom-center of the ring’s hoops are stained a faint pinkish red.

Oscar has to admit he doesn’t have a lot of direct evidence that points to what he’s looking at being a door, but it’s eerily similar in design to the vault doors under the schools.

Oscar hated going to Atlas’s vault.

Snatches of conversation gnaw at him as finds himself once again buried and entrapped with an impossible door shut tight in front of him. Oscar tries to ignore it, but the memory plays out behind his eyes anyway. He remembers asking—

“Why do you keep bringing me down here?”

James had just stood there for a moment. Stock-still. His expression pensive and caught out.

Then he’d let out a long, world-weary sigh and his shoulders had sagged. James then covered his face with his left hand, ashamed.

Coming out hushed, in the tone of someone who knows better but intends to bleed it dry anyway, James had said, “If you’ve got a signal flare you use it. One of these times…he has to see it and wake up.”

And Oscar had thought, in a dark moment, about how James Ironwood would trade in Oscar Pine for another gambled chance at his Oz without hesitation.

Oscar had thought about it again when General Ironwood had shot him off Atlas and into the pit.

That had been the point, really.

An exchange.

Oscar Pine wouldn’t do, let’s take another roll of the dice for someone else.

Being dragged down to the seat of the vault door—knowing full well the true intentions of the invitation meant an awaited exchange of Oscar for Oz each time—and being unable to say—“No.”—had been its own kind of torment.

The growing number of people who looked into Oscar’s eyes searching for someone else killed him.

Oz simmers with barely contained rage at the reemergence of these particular memories, but he keeps a lid on it.

How are you holding up? Oz asks.

I’m ready to be out of here and deal with the next problem instead, Oscar sighs as he lifts off the collapsed pillar and glides onto the white stone floor.

Heedless, Oscar heads for the door. To Oz, Oscar says, I’ve got a feeling that this is it.

Salem lands ahead of him and walks primly toward the forty-foot hatch as well. Her robes drag behind her in a train. Salem leaves a trail in the thick dust coating the floor.

Oscar walks in her shadow.

Until she stops, a few feet from the vault door and shifts to the side. Oscar peeks around her left side to find Salem gazing up at the door with a critical eye. Her eyes flit back and forth between the closed petals of the hatch and the twin rings bracketing the door.

Salem glances at Oscar for half a second—blink and you’ll miss it—and then she lifts her right hand and knocks on the door.

Oscar blinks and cocks his head to the side, puzzled by what he hears.

Salem looks at Oscar expectantly.

Oscar opens his mouth to speak and then closes it with a click of teeth. He presses his lips into a thin line and puts his hands on his hips to give Salem a look.

Salem frowns at him and arches her eyebrow, unimpressed. She lifts her fist once more, not turning away from him, and knocks again. Harder this time.

Knock, knock.

With his hands still on his hips, Oscar furrows his brows. He walks past Salem to the far left of the closed hatch, his ear to the door as he goes. Oscar then turns and walks back to the center where Salem waits. He motions with a cycling sweep of his hand for Salem to knock on the door once again, and after a sharp exhale from her nostrils, she does.

Knock, knock.

Oscar carefully walks to the far right and then back to the center; same as he did before for the other side of the hatch.

Oscar is confounded.

This mechanism is wondrously complex, and its scale of size is almost impossible. There are so many possible moving parts hidden in the wall.

Oscar can’t make sense of the tangle.

Oscar opens his wings and flaps up to the center of the door where the petal plates converge. He finds purchase in the slits between the plates, sinks soul woven talons into the gap, and signals for Salem to knock again. Oscar strains to listen.

Knock, knock.

He can’t hear past the titanic door.

Oscar spends a few more minutes flitting about the face of the vault door following the reverb of noise with a few more successive knocks.

Befuddled, Oscar lands back down on the ground and winces at Salem’s intense look of ennui.

Oscar shakes his head at Salem, and she sighs.

Salem turns away from him and faces the door. She runs her fingers along the edges of the plates in repetitive, searching motions. Dust falls away as Salem scratches at the flush edge between two overlapping panels.

An echoing whine resounds from the hatch door as Salem gets a handhold and pulls. The plates creak ominously under the strain of Salem’s applied strength, but the door doesn’t budge.

Oscars eyes light up, Salem’s efforts to pull the door apart and open by brute force reveal a connection in the door’s mechanism. The groaning sound emanates from the wall behind the two rings.

Oscar lifts up into the air once more, a cloud of dust pluming in a radius around him as he takes off.

He flies over to the ring on the right side of the vault door and lands on the ornate facade the ring pull is mounted to in the wall. Oscar presses his ear to the mount and hears the mechanism straining just beneath his feet.

Wait is this an escutcheon? Oz says with barely contained excitement.

Nerd.

Oscar trills down at Salem to get her attention and she goes very still, very quickly.

She whips her head up and looks at him with an expression approaching surprise. Maybe even startled? Oz fucking giggles at this in the back of his head and Oscar has to fight the mirth from showing up on their face.

Oscar hops off the edge of the mounted sheath of the ring pull, twists midair, and grabs the massive ring with two hands as he falls.

The ring gives immediately at Oscar’s applied weight and momentum and clicks out of its socket. Oscar draws it down as he swings from the ring’s hoop. The gargantuan hatch door makes a sound like a misfire and doesn’t budge. The ring pull recoils to its resting position and clicks back into place with Oscar swinging from its band.

As the ring recoils by it chain, Oscar looks up at the mechanism and notices finer details on the ring itself. Smudged into the red stains on the ring’s hoop are strange whorls Oscar twigs as curiously familiar.

Oscar lets go of the ring and hovers backward.

He turns his gaze meaningfully down toward Salem and points emphatically at the other ring. She’s already kicking up a cyclone heading for the left ring before they can make eye contact.

One handed, Salem pulls the left ring down and Oscar dives hastily to activate the right ring. They are woefully out of sync and the hatch remains stubbornly closed.

Oscar trills at Salem again, this time more insistent.

Salem looks at him and then nods slowly, exaggerating her gestures. She seems bemused. Faintly.

Oscar wordlessly huffs at her.

This time they approach the rings in sync. Salem pushes the left ring down as if she’s merely leaning on a desk with one hand and Oscar bobs with his wings beating to get the right ring to go down.

A thunderous click resounds from the vault door, followed by harsh hissing as the air seal is broken and the pressure releases from the door.

With a calamitous grinding, the hatch door begins to unfurl and open.

Oscar swings off the absurd door handle and lands with a spin on the ground in front of the door.

Salem joins him on the ground, though she lands a distance away and walks over to him. He’s secretly grateful, not having dust tossed in his eyes is a small mercy. As she sidles up to Oscar at the foot of the vault door, Salem folds her hands in front of her and clasps them at the wrist neatly.

As the fitted plates pull back and fold away in a spiral—receding into notches in the larger mechanism—Oscar thinks they look more like teeth than petals now.

A throat full of teeth.

There are many layers of teeth between them and egress.

Oscar grimaces and then steels himself.

“When we’re out of here,” Oscar says, flicking his eyes to Salem, “We should talk.”

Salem tilts her head, captious, and glances at him. She then hums, noncommittal, and frowns again. Her eyes narrow fractionally when she makes eye contact with Oscar.

Oz warns, Ready yourself.

Oscar turns his body to face Salem and leads with that genuine kernel of hope. His expression earnest and open.

Ruby’s voice in his ears, “The tree told me how terrible a thing it is to have a broken heart. And that, for the cat at least, there was no one who could help them. They were…Alone. It shouldn’t be that way for anyone.”

“Please.” Oscar says.

The rattling of the giant vault door almost drowns out his words, but he knows Salem heard him by the ever so slight widening of her eyes.

Salem lifts her chin, and then lowers it, considering.

Oscar doesn’t expect her to believe his sincerity the first time. He just needs Salem to think about it.

Marginally, Salem’s shoulders relax by a hair. She opens her mouth to speak but then her features go grave, and Salem darts her gaze back to the door. Her gaze becomes intense.

Oscar’s instincts sting a millisecond later and his feathers stand on end.

In the next breath, a quake rattles forth from the hatch door as the final seal begins to unfurl. The tremor rushes from the door through the ground under their feet and the ceiling above their heads.

Oscar and Salem stagger to keep their footing.

Salem’s wisps are tossed about the room and extinguished in clusters.

Pieces of the ceiling come loose and crash down around them as the titanic shaking continues. Oscar leaps out of the way of a falling piece of debris—The frenzied dodging is accompanied by a psychic scream from Oz.

Oz reacts much the same to Oscar getting a cold.

A crack forms—jagged and alive—in the floor. It races past Salem and Oscar and carves itself between them.

Beneath their feet the ground buckles and heaves.

There is a scream in the room that only sundered earth and shifting, grounding tectonic plates can make. The sound of movement on a different timescale, brought down to their level.

Oscar feels something break. Not in his body, but in the fabric of time and space.

A powerful seal shatters.

The quakes weaken as the last furled plates of the hatch door slide open. Light streams in from outside and Oscar shields his eyes.

A stillness reigns then. Complete and exacting.

Oscar lifts his hand, squints, and looks outside. A barren, silvery white valley meets their sight. Shimmering in the sunlight like a fresh, pristine blanket of snow. Oddly gray in hue and pockmarked in places by craters.

The sky above expands. Pure, black and endless night.

True night.

And hanging there in the dark, above the sterling valley, is a little blue dot.

The southern hemisphere of the planet is partially obscured in shadow, but Oscar can trace the coastline of Anima with his eye easily.

From where he stands on the shattered moon.

Chapter Text

The blue marble is effulgent in the abyssal dark. Brilliant and distant, the last and only sanctuary.

Home. Seen from a satellite view.

He can’t look away. He can’t close his eyes.

The silence rings in Oscar’s ears. So total and complete is the quiet that falls over them, that Oscar thinks, for a moment, surely the world has stopped. Surely, he must be dead—Finally, stone cold dead. Like the rock of his tomb. Lunar mausoleum—All the simple, abundant brutality his body has weathered, and this is what gets him—An impossible thing.

Oscar’s chest rabbits back and forth, his breath shaking in and out of him. Blood rushes to his ears. Despair-panic floods his system.

The stars blur.

His hands come up, flinching, his motions caught between covering his mouth or his ears; or his eyes. Instead, his hands hang before his face, detached from him, as streams of light filter through the gaps of his fingers.

When the door opens—howling, teeth bared—does all the air go out of the room?

No.

They’re not suffocating—Air hunger—Tachypnoea, cyanosis, miosis, hypercapnia, tachycardia, adrenaline, cerebral hypoxia, convulsions, progressive bradypnoea, total loss of consciousness, cardiac arrest, cessation of breath, and then death—None of that.

But how can they be breathing. What are they breathing? Oscar continues to take in shuddering breaths as his mind refuses to accept what his eyes see plainly.

The air is cold. It stings as it enters his lungs.

The temperature dropped dramatically when the vault door yawned open wide to reveal the surface of the moon.

If Oscar were to weep, would the tears freeze upon his cheeks? Would they float away like snow? If that is already happening, Oscar can’t feel it. He feels detached from his body. The bell tone ringing in his head grows in volume and solidifies as Ozma made manifest as tinnitus.

Tinnire…

And Oscar realizes that it’s a scream he’s hearing.

“Stop,” Oscar says, dissociative. “Stop screaming.”

The ringing scream hiccups. Oscar’s ears pop like they would from a change in altitude.

Ozma becomes static then visual distortion. The arcing charge between neurons and synapses. Low-grade background radiation. Pins-and-needless. Diffused light. The incomprehensible, cacophonous murmurs of a crowd of voices played back in memory.

The sound of the Sea.

Oscar’s stomach drops and in a disconnected panic he reaches for Oz to give him form, but not sense.

In the moment Oscar wraps his arms around the other—jagged, sharp edges cradled and crushed between fingers—“Don’t pick up broken glass with your bare hands!” — Ozma becomes a mirror.

How can this be, says the Sea of Voices with Oscar’s face. How can this be? It bends and tears the mind.

Are we dreaming?

Did we die?

In the throes of madness—precipice of the merge—Oscar brings his wrist to his mouth and bites down. Hard. Hard enough to draw blood and taste it. The pain and self-violence are a bucket of ice water doused over their shared head and it jolts them back into their body.

Oscar lifts his wrist away from his teeth, shaking—feeling rabid—he says to Oz, Get it together or I’ll eat you alive.

Ozma does the sensible thing and laughs.

This all happens within seconds of the door opening.

Oscar staggers forward.

There’s a shimmer in the air spanning the gaping maw of the final threshold to the surface of the moon. Like an oil slick. Or a soap bubble. It’s faint and miasmic, but tangible.

A barrier.

Oscar finds himself walking up to the membrane and reaching one hand out; open palm, fingers splayed. In his mind’s eye—Oz, frantic, feverish with imaginings, pulls the fright and awe to the forefront—Oscar imagines the bubble pops upon his touch, and Oscar and Salem are sucked out into space.

Oscar’s features crease as he wills away Ozma’s ecstatic catastrophizing and tries, tries, tries to focus on the substance of the here and now.

It will not pop.

How can you know? How can you know–? Chattering teeth.

The barrier under his palm is like water. A ripple goes out from his touch in gentle, iridescent waves. Oscar feels some resistance as he presses gently against the membrane of the seal. Oscar pushes just a little harder—A little further. His instincts blare a half heartbeat before the palm of his right hand is seared with a hiss as it breaches a hair to the other side of the barrier.

“AHK!” Oscar shouts and wrenches his hand back. His hand comes away burned and smoking. The pads of his palm and fingerprints are bloody and bubbling through the glove. The skin seared away.

That wakes them up.

Oscar clutches his right wrist with his other hand and briefly trembles with agony, his wings shivering. Feathers standing on end. He looks at the barrier with one eye squeezed shut against the blistering pain. As he hunches over his maimed limb, Oscar instinctually pools his reserve of aura into his right hand and chokes out staggered breaths. He’s still bleeding from the half-moon bite marks on his wrist.

Salem steps up beside him, silent and supernaturally fleet. Oscar’s eyes go wide, unseeing, he somehow managed to almost forget Salem was there.

She doesn’t give Oscar time to react.

Salem places one hand delicately on Oscar’s shoulder and then bodily throws him back from the barrier’s threshold.

Oscar goes flying backward in a wildly flung arc—He is hysterically indignant at this. In quick succession, Oscar unfolds his wings to catch himself, somersaults midair, and then tucks his wings closed to his back to drop out of his momentum. He rolls to a stop landing in a crouch on the ground. All while cradling his burned hand to his chest.

“Enough of this,” Salem hisses, her eyes bright upon him as she looks at Oscar over her shoulder. Bathed in moonlight.

“Salem!” They shout. Oscar’s voice reverberates with an overlayed echo and fierce golden light shines in a halo at the edges of his vision.

Turning her back on Oscar, Salem steps through the barrier onto the face of the moon.

Her obliteration is instantaneous.

Its starts with her skin and hair, and then her body is destroyed layer by layer. Down to her bones. Salem’s body breaks in seconds and she topples into a pile of annihilated, ichor-tainted flesh splattered on the silvery sand.

Oscar scrambles back to the edge of the barrier and goes down on his hands and knees. His eyes jump frantically over the shuddering, black, lumpy puddle that used to be Salem. A single red-black eye regrows at the center of this mass and looks at him. It rolls in the viscera to turn its gaze upon the blue marble. Then the eyeball pops like a tiny water balloon.

From this writhing mound an arm reforms and reaches out, clawing forward into the dirt.

Salem starts to inch away.

Frantic, Oscar and Oz go into overdrive trying to think of a way out. An idea strikes Oscar, like lightning. They seize upon it.

Form, matter, substance, tether, and—Energy.

Oscar sucks in a deep breath and fortifies himself.

Oz buzzes at the root of Oscar’s spine as they reach out to the barrier once more with their uninjured hand. Oscar hesitates. He swallows, thickly, and closes his eyes. As he loathes to do each time, Oscar reaches into the well of power within them.

He transforms just his hand into pure energy. Green lightning.

Oscar does the same motion he did the first time. Only now, when Oscar’s lightning limb crests the event horizon there is no pain. With mounting anticipation, Oscar pushes his hand past the membrane and out into the open air. His form remains stable and intact.

This could work…

Oscar’s blood feels electric.

The Sea starts to sing. A chanting choir.

Oscar–!

Oscar rips his hand back through the membrane and reverts it to flesh and bone. Steam rises from his knuckles. Oscar folds himself in half, curls his chest to his knees, and cradles his hands to his heart.

He hastily seals the spigot to Ozma’s magic reservoir closed. Oz locks it shut.

The curse rumbles. Like thunder, a coming storm in their mind.

Oscar-Ozma thinks of the wind. Wind over the ocean to blow away the storm clouds.

Flux and flow.

Rising and falling.

In a slow roll, the Sea quiets and the pressure lifts.

…Oscar?

Oscar breathes hard, sweat dripping from his temple, and rises out of his huddle. To Oz he shivers, That was too close.

Yes. Oz’s voice sounds strange. Weak. The old man continues, But we may have a way back home now. We can’t maintain that form under our own power for long. We just need— Oz struggles. Something. We need…

A power source. Oscar grabs the Long Memory and looks at its pommel.

No, not that, Oz says. There’s not nearly enough energy left to make the trip.

Does it have a storage limit? Oscar asks.

Oz resonates.

Oscar-Ozma’s mind jumps. Their thoughts leap, meld, and synthesize too quickly for sequential conversation. The terrible idea isn’t just brilliant, mad, and untested; it’s the kind there’s no coming back from if they’re wrong.

But it could work.

Oscar turns his head back and looks down into the dark of the hole they climbed out of. He can still feel the telltale pull of that ominous well of gravity.

Oscar considers.

He shifts and looks to the side at Salem’s sundered form. Despite the perpetual writhing, clawing, scrapping, and squirming—She hasn’t managed much distance.

When Oscar finds the words, they’re desperate.

“Come back!” Oscar cries at Salem’s immortal corpse. “I have an idea, come back!”

But she cannot hear him.

Sound does not travel past the barrier and voices die in the empty air of the shattered moon.

Enough time has passed for the shadow of the moon and its flotsam to pass over a quarter of the planet’s face.

Seated crossed legged on the ground, with his elbows leaned against the crux of his folded knees, and his steepled fingers covering his mouth, is Oscar.

Oscar sits and watches as Salem drags her perpetually obliterated, razed, liquifying body past the barrier of the labyrinth’s doorway across the surface of the moon.

Oscar sits and he waits.

So far, Salem has managed to traverse a measly 20 centimeters forward. Granted, it is very difficult to make any progress when your extremities do not remain intact to grab, and push, and pull, and move, for more than a handful of seconds.

Oscar watches the finger bones of Salem’s left hand reconstitute long enough to dig her fingers into the surface of the moon before the barely-there connective tissues in her left wrist and arm vaporize and melt once more. The simple machine of bone-muscle fulcrum, lever, and effort as hand-connected-to-wrist-connected-to-elbow-connected-to-shoulder snaps at the key joints and muscles.

The staggered thrashing of Salem’s movement kicks up a cloud of silvery dust around her. Without wind or atmosphere, the moon dust floats around her melting body, like a plume of smoke. Or underwater detritus disturbed on the sea floor.

It shimmers faintly—That’s not right. If the moon is devoid of an atmosphere the particles of moon dust should not move in this way…

Salem’s skull is caved in.

With her head turned to the side, Oscar can see the back of her eye socket and trace the threads of nerves that connect the eye to her nervous system. Salem scrapes her brain matter along the ground as she is reduced to a misshapen pile of ichor, gore, and viscera again. To grow back what was destroyed, only for it to be vaporized and liquified again.

And again.

And again.

And—

It is absolutely horrific to watch, and Oscar has had a front-row seat for long enough.

Please stop.

On autopilot—Once Oscar had concluded that either Salem could not hear his pleas or was ignoring him—Oscar cleaned and dressed his wounded right hand and wrist. He had wrapped the bandages methodically, as he always does, and packed his ruined glove away.

Now, Oscar rests his chin upon the fresh gauze wrapped over his right hand and stares at the horrors with vacant eyes.

Please…

Gradually, Salem goes still. Her body continues to reconstruct itself, but that’s not something she has control over. Salem herself stops making intentional movements forward and instead just lies there.

Oscar raises one eyebrow. Oz raises their hackles.

Moments pass and Salem remains still. Dying and resurrecting into goo. Oscar carefully considers, then sits up out of his haunted hunch and lays one hand into the pale, silvery dirt of the moon. He pushes maker-magic into the dirt, while keeping his eyes trained on Salem’s mutilated form. A verdant, glittering, green and blue flowering vine bursts from the ground and whips out of the labyrinth’s entrance to encircle Salem’s middle and hurl her back inside the barrier.

The vine sears and bubbles as it passes the barrier and is exposed to the air beyond. It makes a sound like an egg drooped into boiling oil, sizzling and crackling.

But this extension of himself holds its integrity for the duration of its designated task.

On the upswing, the lower half of Salem’s body detaches from her torso and she lands in two pieces a few feet to the side and behind Oscar; where he sits at the very edge of the barrier.

For a pregnant moment, Salem just lies there, in melting pieces, inert.

Then, inevitably, she stirs.

Salem’s form begins to rapidly reform once pulled back from the blistering, brutal space beyond the barrier. Her disconnected lower half starts to disintegrate, drifting away aimlessly as ash into nothing. Salem convulses violently. Fire and Darkness, how much it must hurt to reconstitute from such bodily obliteration. Salem makes a wild and loud sound of agony once her lungs and vocal cords are back in order, but the lack of mouth and jaw makes the sound all the more grotesque and discordant.

It shakes Oz and Oscar both.

Oscar has had time to comb through and unknot the rats-nest-thorn-bramble-tangle of his and Oz’s thoughts. They’ve come to an accord.

Oscar shifts around to face Salem properly. He re-crisscrosses his legs calmly and waits.

The moment Salem has eyes again she turns them on Oscar with a stony glare. She raises herself out of her corpse-like slump by the jointed curve of her actively reconstituting spine. Her movements staccato, she jerks upright. Salem’s head snaps in Oscar’s direction, mostly bald bone and wriggling tissues.

“Are you done?” Oscar asks, at the very end of his rope.

Salem glowers at him as her jaw reforms and she snaps it back into place with a hand still missing its ring finger and pinky.

“Because, again, I’m going to die of dehydration before you make it 10 feet out that door,” Oscar says pointing at the hatch.

He’s ready to take some major risks, now that he knows the stakes of the situation, he finds himself in. Maybe that’s arrogant, or naïve. Oscar doesn’t know the exact stakes, but he’s certainly got a better idea now.

And what a picture it paints.

The ante has been upped drastically. And they must reckon with that and adjust accordingly.

“Now, I know my death means little to nothing to you,” Oscar says, holding his hands up in mock détente. “And you certainly could spend the next half century slithering across that moon field. Maybe you find a way to get airborne. Maybe. But I think,” and here Oscar leans forward and tilts his head at Salem indicatively. He says, “Time isn’t on your side here.”

Salem pops her left shoulder back into its socket and continues to scowl at him. Oscar can see her blood boiling where her veins are exposed and still under repair. Like burst pipes.

Her hair, as it sprouts and erupts from her scalp in a flowing downpour, has come undone from its complicated, bizarre styling.

Amongst the long white tresses of Salem’s hair Oscar glimpses skittering legs and black insectoid bodies. Ichor inked centipedes and spiders shift and scuttle in between the locks of Salem’s hair—A veritable hive of Grimm creepy-crawlies exposed; many chitinous bodies writhing like you would find under a moss covered stone or honeycombed, decaying fallen tree—Before the horde hides from the light behind the curtain of her hair.

Oscar suppresses a scream that jumps up his throat and rattles behind his teeth.

At least there’s no gold beetle in sight.

Instead of screeching like a banshee seen the specter of death, Oscar presses his lips into a thin line, and argues, “You can’t wait that long. Neither can I.”

Salem coughs wetly, spits black phlegm from her throat—not in Oscar’s direction—and wipes her mouth with the back of her left hand. Her voice like gravel, Salem asks, “What’s your bargain, boy.”

Straight to the point, good.

“I propose a real partnership.” Oscar says, clasping his hands together and then immediately regretting the gesture at the sting of his still healing injuries. “Not just a truce, but collaboration.”

Salem blinks at him slowly. She does not trust this, or him—Them, clearly.

Fair enough. Wilting leaves.

“We have a better chance of escaping this absurd deathtrap together,” Oscar inches closer to Salem, careful of his right hand as he moves. Nearing the harridan only so they’re not half-shouting at each other 10 feet apart. “I don’t like our odds if we go at it alone.”

Salem sneers as she adjusts her position on the ground. She brings one knee up and slings an elbow around to rest loose and languid on her bent knee. While stretching out her other leg, Salem leans in and sighs harshly. Unconvinced.

Her robes are in tatters. She’s not wearing shoes.

“All I see in front of me is a little boy terrified of his own inevitable death,” Salem says derisive and cold. She sweeps the line of her gaze over Oscar perfunctorily. Salem then graciously inclines her head toward him in whiplash inducing congeniality. “Whose fear is entirely valid, truly…But whose struggle is futile. A poor host whose merit as an equal in partnership I find entirely…lacking.”

Oscar has his cheek pillowed in the palm of his uninjured hand. Head tilted to the side as he listens, and elbow on crossed knee. With all the visceral spite he can summon, Oscar levels an acetic, unimpressed look at Salem.

With a hiss-sigh, Oscar rejoins, “Your sympathy for Ozma’s “hosts” is genuine,” Oscar puts scare-quotes and a grimace around the word ‘host’.

Host as to parasitism. Not holiness.

By the light in Salem’s eyes, Oscar knows she catches his unspoken distinction.

Oz wriggles between the wrinkles of Oscar’s brain.

“You saw us as his victims, yes? But your sympathies only extend to a point. That is, as far as your capacity to care about other people.” Oscar gestures at Salem one-handed, evaluative, “A limitation we do not all suffer, but a metered threshold which is not entirely your fault—No. You were molded into this shape forcefully and your compassion whittled down by hundreds of millions of years of isolation and alienation.”

Salem’s expression goes severe. Oscar nonchalantly bites his nails.

Blow for blow.

Salem’s eyes narrow and widen by increments. A vein in her neck jumps. Oscar feels like he’s sitting across from the oldest apex predator in all of bloody creation. And it’s deciding whether he’s food for play, thorn in its paw, or something else entirely.

Mutualism. No competition.

That’s what he’s angling for anyways.

Oscar is skating by on adrenaline, ill-advised boldness, and numbing terror. This conversation is a series of hurdles that Oscar has to surmount. Each threshold a life-or-death test of wit and—stupid—stubborn, persistence.

At least Oscar was born with wings to fly the mountain’s peak.

“Perhaps you are less afraid of death than I thought,” Salem says, a base growl in the back of her throat. Half of her face is cast in stark shadow and her teeth gleam where they catch the moonlight.

“There are worse things,” Oscar says, his heart open wide through the windows of his eyes. “You, of all people, should know that.”

This seems to give Salem pause.

“I’m saying I sympathize,” Oscar says with gravity. He feels the need to make it clear, “With you.”

Salem exhales sharply from her nostrils, dragon’s breath. Like it’s a bad joke.

She does not otherwise respond.

Oscar prods further, he impassions, “Everything has been engineered to stop us from connecting. This is our chance! We have to start somewhere…”

Take the first step…

Oscar waits.

The silence drones on, the cold creeps in, and Oscar loses his patience.

“So, what? We’re going to keep falling for this trap. Over and over again, we’re just going to keep making the same mistakes?” Oscar finds himself snarling.

He’s talking to both Ancients.

And they are both listening. He’s part of this now.

Oscar throws down the gauntlet, asks, “Are you not ready to try something new?”

Ozma shines inside of him. A bead of hope, a candle flame protected and feed. A burgeoning hearth fire.

Salem tilts her head at Oscar, predatory in the same way a heron is to a frog in the muck. She says, “That is exactly what I’ve been doing.”

Oscar smiles, sharp. “So then, what’s holding you back now?”

Salem’s eyes go to slits upon Oscar, and Oz flinches. Ozma makes a sound like a tornado siren heard from miles and miles away. Maybe somewhere on the desolate face of the moon it’s calling to them. Eerie and howling.

Oscar’s head hurts. He ignores it.

Salem’s silence drags on.

“Hmm?” Oscar hums, too bold for taunting. Oscar tilts his head too, himself bird of prey, “What’s another leap of faith?”

Again, Salem does not immediately respond. She just…watches them. But this particular choice of words seems to unsettle her.

And then Salem surprises Oscar and Oz both by putting her head in her hands. Salem intakes a sharp, deep breath and then drags her hands down her face. She clasps her hands in front of her, like a prayer, and looks at Oscar.

“You are confounding,” Salem says, using her clasped hands to gesture at him pointedly.

Thrown off, Oscar says, “I’m not trying to be?” And there’s a nervous laugh in his voice. How did that get there? Oscar laughs sometimes when he’s uncomfortable. It’s a reflex, and an unfortunate one at that.

“Pine, if this is a trick, so help me. I will make you regret ever having been born,” Salem says, less fire-and-brimstone and more wits-end. She snarls at him, “I will hold you in the same contempt as him.”

“You really think I would try lie to you?” Oscar asks, incredulous. Heedless of the consequences for his bluntness in favor of maintaining honesty. “After seeing how you react?”

Salem’s brows crease and wrinkle. Her eyes go stark.

“I’m not trying to trick you. And you know I’m not. You can tell when people are lying.” Oscar goes on to say with some intensity, “I’ve got the scars to prove it.”

Take the pedal off the gas a little. Oz warily advises. It’s his first real input to this conversation.

Instead, Oscar sends Salem a nasty look with bared teeth, “I’m not planning to make that mistake again.”

Salem regards Oscar, thoughtful, and the harsh red glow in her eyes abates and dulls. Salem shifts her position again, she folds her legs neatly under herself and sits up straight. Salem sweeps her hair out of her face and then folds her hands in her lap.

She asks, reluctantly cordial, “Where do you see us going from here?”

Oscar blows out a banked breath and promptly roots around in his side-satchel for his stash of candied mango. Once he finds it, he looks back up at Salem feeling wild-eyed and feral with hope.

“This time,” Oscar says squaring his shoulders and looking Salem dead on, “This time we are really going to work together, and not just wait for the other shoe to drop. Deal?”

Once again, Oscar holds out his hand to Salem, but this time he proffers an offering. Oscar presents an olive branch in the form of his favorite sweet, a dried strip of mango.

Salem looks at the fruit like he’s made an obscene gesture at her.

“You have your little tests, right?” Oscar arches an eyebrow and waggles the slice of sun-warm fruit at her. “Well, I have mine too, but it’s not going to be a trap I set for you.”

This wipes Salem’s expression clean, and she looks, with growing bewilderment, between Oscar’s face and his outstretched hand.

“How can you be real?” She whispers, her voice barely behind it. So quiet, that if Oscar’s hearing weren’t so sharp, it would just be nonsense murmuring to anyone else’s ears.

How can you be real?

Oscar tries not to be too unnerved by the echo.

Tentatively, Salem reaches out. She tries her absolute damndest not to touch him as she extracts the strip of dried mango from his grasp. Oscar pulls out another slice from his pouch and bites into the candied fruit heartily.

Salem regards him pensively and then stares at the piece of fruit in her hand.

Oscar continues to munch on his fruit idly. Oz is on the very edge of his seat.

With something akin to trepidation and acquiescence, Salem takes a bite.

Victory! Oscar can’t help it. He smiles as he chews.

Salem distinctly does not look at him.

Oz is half expecting her to spit it out but Salem takes bite after bite. In her face, he can see it, the peace offering is what he hoped it would be–a balm.

Everything Eats.

Oscar blinks. They lose their train of thought.

Salem and Oscar finish eating in relatively peaceful silence. Once done, Oscar puts his hands on his folded knees and says, “I have an idea.”

Salem nods. I’m listening, she doesn’t say, but he reads in her expression all the same.

“First, some information sharing,” Oscar provisions, “What was it like on the other side of the barrier? Did you learn anything?”

Salem considers this at length, he waits as she gathers her words. After a glance out of the hatch to the moonlight field, Salem says, “There is a powerful orison blanketing the entirety of the moon’s surface. It cannot be lifted.”

“Was there anything out there?” Oscar asks.

Salem flicks her gaze to meet Oscar’s, “No, it’s a wasteland.” She continues, grave, “Given our method of delivery to this place, I find it unlikely that we’re alone. But we are more likely to find company below than on the surface.”

That wasn’t what Oscar meant by his question and he has to clarify, “Wait, do you think there’s something living here?”

“No, this place is dead.” Salem replies, matter of fact. “We’re not meant to be here. Nothing is.”

Oscar rubs at his temples, “Please, speak plainly,” He begs.

Salem blinks. Once.

“I strongly suspect this was not our abductor’s intended final destination for you and I. Something intercepted us. Whether that something is alive or not…Hmm,” Salem says after an overly long pause. “We were never meant to come here.”

Oscar turns this piece of information over in his mind and bites his lip.

“That might be to our advantage, right? His–!” Oz glitches and chokes. Oscar’s voice breaks on the word. Strangled, he continues, “Their. Influence. On us, it’s-it’s dampened by this place. Somehow.”

Salem is watching him with keen eyes again.

Oscar wets his dry, cracked lips, “Right?” He asks.

Salem nods, chary but precise. “Your idea,” she says, “You will share it now.”

Oscar nods too and draws himself up out of the hunch he’d fallen into.

Sitting up straight, Oscar starts, “Now, this is just a theory, but I think I can get us both out of here with this,” Oscar unhooks the Long Memory from its sheath and holds it out for Salem’s inspection. “But I don’t have the juice we need to get us across the gap.”

Salem lilts her head to the side, curious, “What is the method?”

“A lightning cloak,” Oscar says, feeling less confident as Salem’s expression darkens and Oz jitters under Oscar’s skin.

“That kind of magic would burn up the caster,” Salem says with a scoff. “You would not survive. And if I were to cast it instead, you would still perish. As soon as my body crumpled, the spell would destabilize, and my passenger would vaporize.”

“Because you cast through your hands and not a focus,” Oscar rejoins.

Salem’s nostrils flare and her lip starts to curl; This is an old argument.

“It could work,” Oscar endeavors, “If, the caster instead draws upon a large enough reservoir of power, separate from their own body; And channels the spell through a conductor and stabilizer as a focus.”

Salem tilts her head further at a severe angle, it looks painful.

“For that to work, the reservoir would have to be contained within the conductor and stabilizer at once,” Oscar continues, to tie off his argument he spins the Long Memory in hand. Oscar points the clockwork hilt of the Long Memory at Salem, “We have the tool we need right here.”

Salem glares daggers at him, “I’m not getting in that thing, Pine.”

Oscar’s painstakingly streamlined mental bullet points of persuasive arguments and evidence screech to a halt and scatter. “What!?”

Oz gets buried under the cerebral rubble, like a toppled bookshelf, and calls from under the wreckage, Backtrack! Quickly!

Oscar fumbles the Long Memory and barely manages to catch the weapon before it clatters to the ground—Seared hand stinging where it grasps the handle. Oscar holds the sheathed hilt of the Long Memory to the center of his chest and looks at Salem aghast, he cries, “No!”

Searingly skeptical, Salem asks, “What’s the alternative?”

“The—The thing!” Oscar says eloquently. Oz help me I’ve misplaced all my words—He flounders, still vehement, “The thing in the pit! The thing pulling at us. Pulling us down.”

“Explain,” Salem says, terse.

“I think it could serve as a power source.” Oscar illustrates, with animated hand motions, “There’s evidence to suggest that the thing is the source of the—What did you call it?—Orison. And the pattern.”

Salem’s shoulders relax infinitesimally, Oscar wouldn’t have caught it if he didn’t have Oz in his head sharing his sense of sight. Salem hums a thoughtful “Hmmm.”

“If we tinker with the mechanism of the Long Memory we can alter it to hold that energy and fuel the lightning cloak,” Oscar continues. “We just have to reach it.”

Salem curls a crooked finger at her chin, her expression perfectly placid, “You want to go back down.”

It’s rhetorical, but Oscar responds, “Yes,” anyways.

“Hmmmmmm,” Salem hums again, drawn out. With a slanted smile she says, “This idea might have wings.”

Ha.

Oscar deadpans at her.

“There’s something else to consider,” Salem says, needling but voluntary, “With your…plan.”

Oscar shifts his weight and listens.

“What we may seek at the bottom of this place, likely located at the core, has a strange gravity to it…” Salem says then trails off.

Oscar nods, and when Salem doesn’t continue, he offers, “Yes, I’ve felt it. As I’ve said.”

Momentarily distracted, Salem turns her head ever so slightly to the side. Alert, her ear directed at the door, the lunar wasteland, and their planet far beyond. Salem’s pupils contract and dilate in rapid succession and her lips curl with abrupt viciousness.

Oscar whips his head toward Remnant as his heart jumps up his throat. He’s half expecting to see the tectonic plates of the planet erupting with seismic-volcanic fire; like the cracks in an eggshell before the yolk escapes.

The blue planet remains whole and floats on undisturbed by planetary calamity.

Oscar looks between Salem and home with an inkling of dread. “What?” He asks.

At the sound of his voice, Salem’s features even out with a tranquility akin to the vacuum of space.

Salem turns back to Oscar and crenellates like nothing happened, “I suspect, should you be successful in capturing whatever power source is there, it will have an immediate and catastrophic impact on the moon’s locked debris field.”

Oscar works his jaw, spluttering silently, indecisive on whether he should call her on it or not. He closes his mouth and hums with assent instead.

“Most of the detritus will stabilize either in orbit around the moon itself or Remnant,” Oscar says.

Salem is looking into the middle distance between them. Somewhere around his collarbone.

Oscar forges on, he says, “Though it is also probable that a number of asteroids will fall to Remnant instead.” He exhales a long breath, “I think…I might have an idea on how to eliminate that uncertainty and the risk of collateral damage…It just depends on how workable the power source is when we find it.”

Salem arches a withering eyebrow at him and cryptically responds, “Many moons.”

Happy hunting!

Oscar blinks like he’s been beamed between the eyes. Parts of Oz had retreated so far within the reassess of their mind for the majority of this conversation that his sudden outburst is as startling as it is nonsensical. To their combined humiliation, Oscar flushes involuntarily with Oz’s infectious embarrassment.

Oscar rubs at his eyes and then massages his temples. Hopefully, Salem’s words mean she gets it, and hopefully, she also didn’t see the car crash that just happened behind his eyes.

Oscar says tiredly, “Yeah.”

Salem narrows her eyes at them.

“What assurances do I have from the two of you that Ozma will not sabotage this effort?” Salem asks, bitterly cold.

“Oz can’t interfere insofar as he can’t take control if that’s what you mean,” Oscar says feeling a chill.

“His promises mean very little to me, Pine.”

Oscar searches himself for the reasons to believe in this.

“He’s fighting,” Oscar replies, “In a way he hasn’t tried before. And—and it’s changed things. Oz says I’ve lasted longer against the merge than any other paired soul. Tell me, is that a lie?”

Salem’s eyes are suddenly aflame with crimson light, “How is this time different?”

Oz surges inside him. A wellspring. An outpouring.

It’s you, Ozma says like a song, It’s you. You’re the reason I can fight at all. It’s you, Oscar.

At the melody, tears threaten to rise to the surface—so sudden and overwhelming Oscar’s entire fortified front nearly collapses—and Oscar has to fight the tears down.

Salem is giving him that singularly peculiar look again. In what Oscar can only interpret as a moment of grace, Salem calms.

She doesn’t prompt Oscar further, just waits.

Oscar swallows thickly, and when he finds his voice it’s stronger than he expects, “He says it’s because of me.”

Salem nods, oddly, like she knew that already and was confirming a long-held suspicion. She looks away from Oscar for a moment. Then draws her gaze back to his face slowly.

Salem stands up in one fluid motion. When she stands, her hair is long enough to reach past her hips. Her bare feet peak past the frayed skirt of her robes. She looks two-parts feral, three-parts undying, witch-queen.

Oscar unfolds himself and rises to his feet too.

A moment of something passes between them, but Oscar can’t read it. Oz is feeling a powerful emotion he wants to keep to himself, but the curse doesn’t give him the dignity of privacy. Oscar is about to clear his throat and suggest they start heading back down—his body already turned toward the hole in the ground—when Salem speaks again, abruptly.

“And what of your scars?” Salem asks. “What will they mean for our partnership?”

Oscar’s mind blanks. He did not expect her to ever address this matter directly.

When we were tortured, he took it—

“I don’t expect your apology. And I don’t need your apology because I won’t forgive you for what you did to me,” Oscar says with blinding clarity, his head turned to the side to face Salem and his wings idle. “Just like you won’t forgive me for being made.”

Oscar watches Salem go very still. He thinks she stops breathing.

Ozma freezes over cold inside of him.

“Not fair, is it?” Oscar says subduedly blithe but no less bitter.

When no word comes from either Ancient, Oscar gets his feet under him and walks away.

“C’mon,” Oscar says, heading to the pit. “No time to waste.”

Chapter Text

Oscar rubs incessantly at his eyes, puffy and bloodshot from physical exhaustion and restlessness. They’re back in the bone orchard—forest of the dead—and having some difficulty locating the passageway down.

The space seems to have shifted and grown since they last passed through the dead, pale wood; not too long ago. The expanse above and extent of the forest imperceptibly bigger. Moreover, the pale dead trees in their countless numbers appear to have also moved. It’s the only explanation for the change in terrain. The freshly upturned ruddy dirt around their roots marking a route carved by bred-in-the-bone giants. An impossibility Oscar’s tired mind can’t contend with at the moment.

Can’t be driven mad by impossible things if you’re too tired to care.

Impossible things can still kill you if you’re too tired to care.

There is a wild and jagged crack in the glittering ceiling above their heads. Like a singularity torn through the false starlit sky. A fissure. The open wound glows and sheds shimmering, luminescent dust down upon the alabaster wood. Oscar has the odd sense that it’s the same crack that tore between him and Salem when the vault door opened.

Oscar tears his eyes away from the deep cut.

It’s been more or less half a day since Oscar was snatched up and spat out of that portal, arriving here in the secret, subterranean catacombs under the surface of the shattered moon. The image of the desolate, silver-white moon valley and his home planet hanging above him in the dark abyss of space burns behind Oscar’s eyes.

It hits him again. Oscar is on the moon. The Moon. The gods be damned moon in the sky.

Gods, he’s so tired.

Oz is near catatonic.

Oscar runs his hands down his face with a drawn-out sigh as Salem etches another marker into the trunk of pale, petrified tree. This specimen indistinguishable from the menagerie of bone-colored twisting flora-forms.

Salem sends him a cursory glance over her shoulder.

Unwittingly, Oscar sags and his wings droop as he passes Salem. He leans on the Long Memory and the trunk of one of the massive pale trees as he navigates the gnarled roots. Oscar unsheathed the Long Memory to use as a walking stick when they came upon the knotted mess the bone orchard had become. Oscar wishes they could circumvent the whole awful tangle. There have been several tight squeezes they’ve had to wriggle through, and if his luck is anything to go by, there will be more.

The now dense canopy above crowds out the open space below the wounded false sky. The gaps between branches too small to fit through but pocketed enough to let the meager light in.

The dead trees moved. They moved. And now they are too close to each other for Oscar to fly through the forest as he did before.

Not that it matters. He’s too tired to fly.

So, Salem and Oscar walk.

They crest a shallow hill and look around once more for their bearings. The canopy is choked with gnarled, petrified knots of branches.

Far ahead of them is a steeper hill where the crowded crush of the forest thins somewhat. Surely from there they will be able to see the opening in the rock that will lead them down. The pull of the power source they’re both following is too weak to guide them on the correct path right now.

Getting to the top of the hill takes what little wind he had left out of Oscar’s sails.

Oscar hangs gangly off a low branch one handed and peers blearily off into the distance. Moments bleed by as he sweeps the terrain with his gaze; half-unseeing, half-asleep. His eyes skip over it the first time, and Oscar has to recenter himself back to alertness. When Oscar refocuses, he spots it once more. There, in the far distance is the gaping maw of the passageway down. It’s jagged doorway unmistakable.

“There,” Oscar points, his voice barely behind the words. More sigh than speech.

Salem, “Hmph’s.”

Oscar drops his arm. His limbs feel heavy.

He looks back up at the awful, false night above them as he says, “We’re going to have to avoid that tangle in a quarter of a mile and go round. If we follow that bright cluster of stone stars—see the three that make a triangle—we should be able to find it…” Oscar peters out when he turns back to Salem.

Salem has a sour look on her face, Oscar feels himself go cross-eyed trying to parse her expression.

Eventually, he gives up and thunks his head against the tree he’s leaning on, and asks, “What?”

“How long have we been here?” Salem replies after a moment of glaring at him.

Is she glaring? Maybe she’s just staring. Intensely. Oscar would call that a glare, probably, but he’s also not in the most charitable mood.

“Ten hours, I’d say,” Oscar stifles a yawn, “Not sure though.”

Oz blessedly does not pipe up with the count down to the millisecond.

Salem’s frown deepens, almost…offended? Oscar doesn’t know.

“Daytime in Vacuo has long since passed then,” Salem says, terminally cryptic. What’s she getting at?

“Mhm,” Oscar hums, blinking his eyes blearily, trying to keep them open, “Guess we both missed meeting with our insidious councils, huh? What ever will they do without us?”

Oz radiates quiet distress and chagrin at Oscar’s loose tongue, but talking helps keep him awake. No bracing thrill like poking the bear while prodding for information.

When Salem does not offer a direction to guide the conversation, Oscar continues, heedless, “I shudder to think of what your apprentice will do in your absence. Without you to temper her worst impulses,” Oscar puts on an eloquent affect to satirize, but the delivery is somewhat hampered by the fact he’s smushing his cheek into petrified tree bark; and sounds every bit the sleep deprived teenager he is.

“I could say the same of your ferocious smaller soul,” Salem says with venom, then jeering, “And her merry band.”

Oscar rolls his forehead to brace against the tree and shuts his eyes. Oscar is worried about his friends—his family. About what they’d do to get him back.

He cynically hopes for inaction, and it hurts to wish they’d do nothing, but the alternatives risk doom for all—Just for his sake. Oz shudders, and Oscar pulls his wings in and rests his hand over his heart.

The life of one person weighed against the rest of the world.

It cannot be. It cannot be, not again. The story untold—

Salem interrupts their train of thought with: “It will do us little good to ponder these things, your allies will do as they will, but I trust mine to do what is necessary. Can you say the same?”

Salem is prodding at him just like Oscar is poking her. Ill-advised, to be sure. Though they’ve both hit their marks it seems. Oscar leans back from the tree to look Salem in the eye.

“If you’re asking if I trust my friends, if I trust that they will not fail, then you already know the answer,” Oscar says, passing his hand through his hair as he pushes off from the tree. Oscar levels a tired look at Salem, and continues, in amnesty, “Look, I’m sorry I brought it up. But if you aim to ask another question entirely, you should just ask it instead.”

Salem exhales sharply from her nose but does not immediately reply. She brushes past him again and Oscar follows behind, bleary-eyed.

They walk on for some time, until Salem spontaneously pivots, and says, “When I found Hazel, he fought me for days. His strength waned hour by hour until he collapsed before me. He fought to stay conscious then too, but one cannot fight their own body and win.”

At that, Oscar’s thoughts feel like noisy static. Why is Salem bringing up Hazel?

A man Oscar effectively killed, who is no longer among Salem’s lieutenants, as far as Oscar knows.

What a left turn, Oscar tries to make sense of this by retracing the steps of their conversation. Oz shakes loose some of the cobwebs in his mind to decipher her meaning.

We should sleep, Oz says suddenly.

Oscar blinks and shifts his gaze up and to the right; as is his habit when Oz speaks to him like he’s over Oscar’s shoulder.

Instead, he catches Salem’s eye and the odd fervor in her gaze strikes him as something approximating concern.

Suddenly it clicks.

“Gods, the both of you,” Oscar mutters to himself under his breath. Salem glances at him sharply. Louder, to Salem, as well as Oz, Oscar states, “Fine, you confounding Ancients. I’ll rest as soon as we get out of this stupid, shifting bone orchard and into that corridor.”

Oscar points at Salem, “And as long as we’re stating the obvious,” he says that part like it’s a punchline, and Salem sniffs derisively. Oscar continues, “You won’t be able to use my cane if you steal it. You know that, right?”

Salem honest to Darkness rolls her eyes at Oscar. Oscar almost snickers at that, and, shit, he’s losing it. He’s convinced, he needs sleep.

“Why do you call it a bone orchard?” Salem asks as they’re nearing the tree line.

Oscar blinks blearily as he hauls himself up and over a gnarled knot of roots. His boots hit the ground below with a puff of red dust, and he responds, monosyllabic, “Hm?”

Oscar wearily turns his gaze up to Salem as he dusts himself off.

Salem glides like a shadowy apparition, perfectly perpendicular to the forest floor through a sideways gap in the low canopy trunks and branches. It’s a scene straight out of one of those old horror movies Em likes so much. Uncanny.

Salem’s black robes billow about her form as if caught by tempestuous winds.

But there is no wind here with the buried.

Oscar hates the stillness. Hates hates hates it—

“A moment ago,” Salem says as she rights herself midair, like a compass needle finding true north. “You called this desolate forest a ‘bone orchard’.” She does scare-quotes and everything, maybe she’s mimicking him. “That’s quite a specific, evocative phrase. So, I was wondering, why?”

Oscar frowns at her and then looks away into the near distance. His brows draw together in thought.

Why did you say that? Oz asks.

“I…” Oscar searches himself. Red Red Red. He says, “I don’t know?”

Salem floats down to the forest floor to stand beside Oscar, almost phantasmic in his peripheral vision. She seems positively unsatisfied with that answer and quirks an articulate eyebrow down at him as she shifts to stand in front of him.

Oscar gesticulates at the pale forest around them, “It’s dead. And the trees look like bones! Very…Very knobbly bones—I don’t know. What do you want from me?”

“I’m not sure,” Salem says, and Oscar’s eyes widen fractionally. Salem finishes, “Yet.”

Oscar rustles his feathers at her, “Well I know what I want.”

Salem gets a fae look in her eye and walks past him. Oscar huffs at her.

As Salem passes Oscar by, she says, “That’s not a conversation we can have yet.”

Oscar blows out a frustrated breath and ducks under a thick, curling tree limb that Salem floats over.

The raveled thicket of the petrified forest loosens its grip on Salem and Oscar, and the two cross beyond its tree-line back into the ruined courtyard. Oscar passes a hand over the broken white stone column he’d perched on not too long ago. He rests his head and shoulder against the pillar but briefly, and then continues on toward the tunnel that will lead them further below.

Down. Down. Deep down, underground.

Oz spreads out across Oscar’s shoulders with shrouded weight and warmth. Like a blanket, soft and worn. Oscar’s wings sag.

Oscar, you need rest. Oz says.

“Yeah, yeah,” Oscar waves him off, “I know. I know.”

Salem clicks her tongue.

Without ceremony, Oscar finds a spot just inside the tunnel and curls up. Folding his wings over his body and covering his head. They listen intently to Salem’s movements as she takes a seat across from them against the opposite wall.

I’ll stand guard, Oz states, platinum and bronze. Plumule and spun yarn, Sleep.

Oscar hums in assent.

Caught by a whim, Oscar peaks through their wings at Salem and says, “Goodnight.”

Of all things, this seems to rattle her. Salem utters unintelligible speech for a half-second before she replies, in a hush, “Sleep, damn you.”

Inhibitions lost by exhaustion, Oscar trills softly at Salem once more. The sound close to a tittering laugh. He curls up, closes his eyes, and begins to drift off. Anxiety prickles at Oscar, but with a split consciousness like Ozma’s, it’s like Oscar has eyes in the back of his head. Or his eyes stay open when he sleeps? Whatever. They should be fine.

Hopefully.

In his slow free-fall into unconsciousness, Oscar thinks he hears humming—A familiar tune—but then darkness takes him; and the melody slips through his fingers.

A meadow quieted with snow. Shivering cold.

The roar of a mob echoing on city streets.

“Bring me his head!”

Cold pavement.

The night sky, endless, forever. Fathoms deep to fall into.

“—really wish one of us could fly-!”

A butterfly—orange and black—

Gunfire.

“C’mon bluebird. Your secret is safe with me—”

A knife plunges into his gut—

A hammer cracks his skull—

A ricochet of bullets finds their home in him—

Teeth tear out his throat—

Flames engulf him—

Crushed under rubble—

The voice of his mother, the Mountain, a warm rumble, “Be gentle, Sunflower. It’s a delicate thing, if you squeeze too hard, you’ll break it’s—”

A fish—silver, gray scales—slips through his fingers and slaps him in the face with its wet tail on the way down.

“Do you really think he was the first?”

He steps into the painting to escape.

“Koshchei…That crooked bastard!”

A titan. The heart of a monstrous blizzard.

Four children come to his door. They snuck in, four little ones desperate to escape the biting cold. Four children invade his home and interrupt his isolation. Four children build a fire in his long-abandoned hearth. With the legs of his coffee table. Four daughters—

A campfire, voices uplifted in song.

“They will come back—Come back again, as long as the red earth rolls—”

A sword standing tall, it pierces a jagged, rocky ocean cliff. Resounding, the loud crash of waves and surf. Flash of lightning—the blade reflects all power—Roll of thunder. An infinite, dark sea. A perpetual storm.

“I just want to be free. Please, leave me be. Oh gods, don’t take me.”

Encircling, awful coils of the twisted Bøjg.

People surround him. The faceless crowd.

Fairgrounds. Carnival lights and laughter.

“Sterling, come back! Sterling, please! Do not turn away from me!”

Echo of footsteps in empty halls.

“Tippetarius! You slacker! Where are you hiding?! You good for nothing, wretched, little, imp!”

YOU’RE GOING TO DIE HERE LITTLE LAMB

FOREVERMORE

A sundering sound, as the glacier’s wall cracks. An avalanche—

So loud—

The Sky Is Falling Down!

Instruments held up before playing—an old concert hall—the precise moment before the music begins.

“Listen to me-!”

“So small, this new host of yours.”

Tea poured over rice.

“Wake up. Wake up. You’ve slept long enough, wake up.”

Turmeric, salt, chili, and ghee.

“I could not wish for any other friend, in the all world, but you.”

“—Your kind could never understand-!”

“The gods had made a mistake—Something new had come to Remnant—”

A tower, crumbling down.

“He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think he would squander souls?”

Red! Red! Red! Red! Red!

Pull a board up from the deck of a ship. Replace it. Pull up another. Replace it. Take down the mast. Replace it. Untether the sail. Replace it. Tear out the ship’s still beating heart.

Replace it.

“What is lost?”

“—All that remains—”

“Mercy, mercy. This is all I have ever known—Mercy, please-!”

A directionless, disembodied, ragged scream of agony.

“What lived and died between us—Haunts me still.”

“This ends when I grant them my forgiveness. Not the other way around.”

Darkness…and then dawn. Then sunset once more.

“This night will be bad. And tomorrow…Beyond imagining.”

Hands in the dirt, the smell of soil—

Smell of rain—

Iron—

Blood.

BLOOD

Oscar wakes abruptly. Violently. The smell of blood follows him.

There’s blood on his fingers. There’s blood in his eyes. He can’t move. His mind is too slow, his thoughts disjointed and sluggish.

Oscar doesn’t understand immediately. Like something’s been jammed into the cycling machinery of his mind, causing the gears to grind painfully. Unable to turn together as they must for him to form coherent thoughts.

He can’t move because…He’s being restrained.

Someone is holding him down, their arms around him, pinning his arms and legs. In an instant, their hold is gone, and Oscar is left untethered on the ground.

He’s disoriented, he doesn’t know where he is, but he knows he’s Oscar…He’s Oscar.

Where’s Oz?

Oscar?

Oscar doesn’t try to get up. He just lies on the floor in a sprawl trying to put the pieces of himself back together. His forehead itches. He reaches up to scratch at the incessant itch, febrile, but a hand clamps down on his fingers. Oscar blinks and cranes his neck to see Salem crouched over him.

“Stop that,” she says, flat.

His vision wavers on her. Oscar can’t seem to bring her into focus.

“Where’s—” Oscar cuts himself off as he coughs brokenly, unexpectedly. His throat is shredded like he’s been screaming.

Can you hear me?

Salem is still holding onto his fingers. His fingers…He has blood on his fingers. Under his nails. He saw that earlier, but he didn’t understand it.

Are we safe?

Are we sound?

Oscar has hurt himself.

His sight clears and sharpens on Salem’s face. Her eyes are wide and that blankness she falls back on is particularly strained in this moment.

She’s still holding his hand.

Why, why, why. Tears well up in his eyes, unbidden, and Oscar chokes on his own distress.

Salem drops his fingers, and Oscar clutches them to his chest. His chest burns painfully, and the star-burst scar aches. He curls into a tight ball and sobs in painful gasps.

Salem moves to withdraw, and Oscar snaps out a hand to sightlessly seize a corner of her robes. His grasp weak and trembling.

Salem stills, considers, and then shifts. She crosses her legs and folds her hands in her lap. She sits beside him, mercifully not facing him directly. Not touching him, but she stays close. Oscar holds onto the scrap of fabric like a lifeline.

A merge attack in his sleep. That hasn’t happened before, even in their nightmares.

Though their nightmares feature similar vignettes, their shared dreams have not yet been true offensive attacks of the curse. Is this latest horror a normal byproduct of the curse? A natural progression of extant rot?

No, no, no, none of this has precedent, Ozma has never fought the curse in this way before.

Oscar searches for Oz with increasing distress, stumbling around in the dark of his own head. On the outside, he can’t stop crying or get his breathing under control.

“Steady yourself, Pine,” Salem says over his strangled sobs.

Oscar tries. He really does, tries to breathe in count, 1, 2, 3, 4.

Hold. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Exhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Repeat.

Tries to employ all the shared muscle memory and discipline of a millennia old warrior to reestablish control and calm. But he can’t. He can’t. Where’s Oz? Why can’t Oscar hear his voice? He’s here, Oscar can always feel him, but Oscar can’t reach him. Can’t find him in the warped mess of their shared soul. Oz can’t bear being alone, Oscar has to reach him!

I’m not Oz, not yet. Not yet please—Please-!

“Steady,” Salem says firmer, her hands are laid on top of her knees. Her back is straight.

“I—I can’t—I can’t—” Oscar hates the sound of his own pitiful voice, broken by heaving breaths and sobs, “Can’t find him.”

Salem’s features crease, still looking ahead, she gives him a moment and when he’s incapable of saying more, she calmly asks, “You’ve misplaced Ozma?”

“Here, but lost—” Ragged gasps wrack his small frame and Oscar hates his weakness and his smallness—The worst person imaginable to be this weak in front of—He feels every bit the child he truly is. He forces the words out painfully, “Oz is—here—” Oscar chokes again, and strangles another sob, “But, he’s lost—”

Salem hums soothingly, and it’s almost comforting. If she was anyone else, it would be entirely.

“Picture a forest,” Salem begins. “Picture a forest path, a dirt path cutting through the grasses of the underbrush. This forest path is a well-worn road through these woods, it’s seen a lot of foot traffic. Follow the path.”

Oscar sniffs wetly and tries to focus on her words. His breathing still stutters in hiccuping, wheezing gasps.

“Along this path is a stream. Clear, clean water. Listen to it, can you hear it flow? Follow the path and the stream, and soon you will come to a meadow. Wildflowers are blooming.”

This is the most she’s ever spoken aloud to Oscar at once.

Salem continues, “At the center of this meadow is a cottage. It’s painted aquamarine, yellow, and white. The roof is thatched. The cottage has a waterwheel built into its side that the humble river turns. There’s a small stained-glass window above the front door. It’s a simple design. The front door is cherrywood. The doorknob is stamped bronze.”

Oscar can see it in his mind’s eye, clear as day.

“Go to the door and knock,” Salem says, her voice resolute but almost a whisper.

The inside of the cottage is silent. There might be no one home, but Oscar knocks at the door anyway.

Oscar finds himself oddly terrified.

A voice calls from inside, but he can’t make out what they say. They sound like they’re shouting from the bottom of a well. Less “Come in, make yourself at home”, and more, “Help!” Oscar throws open the door and all at once Ozma resurfaces.

Oscar! Ozma is in tears.

Relief washes over him and Oscar cries harder, “I’m here—I’m here! I’ve got you.” Oscar hugs himself tightly.

Oz returns the embrace, all desperation and anguish, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. You couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t hear you. I was stuck. I got lost; I don’t know how. I didn’t mean to leave, I swear. I didn’t mean to leave you alone.

“Found him?” Salem asks, Oscar doesn’t have the wherewithal in that moment to pick up on how tense Salem is when she says that.

“Yes,” Oscar whisper-sobs, folding his wings over himself to self-soothe the terror-grief-agony-panic away.

I’m here.

I’m here.

With a whimper, Oscar curls into an air-tight ball on the ground. He refolds his wings over his head and body and shakes away the panic.

Once Oz has settled back into his well-worn niche, Oscar begins to concentrate his aura on his head wounds. Oz flares reflexively at the realization that Oscar is hurt, his hackles raising. But Oscar pushes the replay of the past few minutes into Oz, before Oz can spit fire at Salem. And in revisiting the memory with Oz, Oscar gains some clarity of the sequence of events.

Specifically, the moment he began to claw at his own head—and chest—in the throes of cursed nightmares.

Fire and Darkness, how did Oscar miss the red rivets he dug into his sternum through his shirt? Right above the star-burst scar. His skin feels pulled taut and stretched tight over his body. Every muscle and joint straining as he curls tighter and tighter to make himself smaller and smaller. Oscar begins to unravel again.

Oz uncoils from a pit in Oscar’s stomach.

Comfort is required. Grounding is needed.

Oz sounds like Yang when he hushes Oscar soothingly. Once again, Ozma settles over Oscar like a soft blanket, with gentle warmth and quiet care. Oscar’s breathing finally begins to even out.

Oscar apportions his aura to the injuries over his body accordingly. When he’s stopped the bleeding and closed the cuts, Oscar shifts his folded wings down slightly to peek over his feathers at Salem and finds her staring at him.

The look on her face—It floors them.

Salem abruptly looks away, caught, and stares forward with her back rigidly straight once more. Oscar realizes in that moment that he’s still clutching at the scrap of her robes. He lets go slowly and carefully.

Still feeling unmoored, Oscar sniffles noisily and says, with a watery voice, “Thank you.”

Salem jolts like he’s plunged a knife into her abdomen with those words. Her eyes widen and her features go blank. Salem opens her mouth to respond but no words come out. Just a strangled exhale of breath. She looks at him for a fraction of a second and then away again, immediately.

She stares at the wall wearing a half-blank, half-apocalyptic look.

Salem stands suddenly, rising from seated crossed legs in one fluid motion, turns and swiftly strides away from him. At a supernaturally brisk pace, she speed-walks back the way they came until she reaches the entrance to the dead forest and immediately turns right. They lose sight of her and stare at the empty space she leaves behind.

Oscar’s eyes go owl-wide in the dark and he lurches out of his tangle on the floor.

Did she just—Oscar’s mind races, his feathers standing on end—Leave us?

Uh oh. Oz replies.

I messed that up didn’t I-? Miserable, Oscar begins to shrink then startles, and puffs out, at the sudden loud and unmistakable crash of stone and rock being sundered.

An echoing scream of anguish then resounds. And absolute silence follows.

An attack?! We should-! Oscar scrambles to a sitting position.

No, no attack, Oz cuts Oscar off, which is now uncharacteristic of him. We need to stay here.

“Buh—” Oscar slumps to his elbows. He didn’t mean to make a sound. He continues mentally, But—

Please trust me. We need to wait.

…Ok. Oscar says still holding on tightly to Oz. And not feeling 100% himself. In the “full command of his faculties sense”, not actually in the “actively dissolving into the drift between their combining souls” sense.

(This time.)

When she actually gets upset, Ozma says into the silence, Or angry. She’s always tended to…go away. To have an emotion in private.

Oh, Oscar says, a kite with his strings cut.

Oscar’s wings slump to either side of him. The moment drags on and the far-off dread creeps in with its steady pace, hunting. Haunting.

Why…How did it turn out like this? Oscar says, aimless.

Oscar wants to go home.

How did we get here?

Something swells within them. Oscar digs one hand into the dirt and the other clutches at his pants-leg.

They take a deep breath in.

Then out.

Well…

What to say?

Let me tell you a story…

Oscar turns his head to listen.

I was born dying, Ozma begins, unfolding like a picture book with secret folded paper pop-out slides, inserts, and panels. Animated and colorful.

In the world before Remnant, magic lived in all people. A great power hewn from a shard of the soul of Darkness, given to humanity as a gift with terrible possibility.

But for some, the power they contained within themselves was too great. And it ate them, from the inside out.

We called it the Howling.

If you were born Howling, your time in that world was uncertain. It was a sickness without cure or balm. Your magic would hollow you out from where it lived inside of you, killing you at any time. Most did not live long enough to reach adulthood.

I was born Howling.

My family, before I fled them, treated me like I was made of glass, and that each new day would be the fateful day I shattered.

They were afraid to love me. My parents did not give me a name.

To them, I was a wretched, ill-fated thing; better off dead now, then left to struggle here a short while and die an inescapable, painful death.

My parents spoke once of putting me out of my misery behind a closed door.

I fled their home that night.

It had never been my home. Not really. I had always been a passing visitor to them.

From then on, I lived my life wild and reckless. Though the Howling spelled my doom, it also meant my magic was potent. I could be useful. I ventured forth and spent my time in service to those left unprotected. The wretched, the wounded, and the forgotten. I would go where no other dared tread. I held out my hand to the misbegotten. Even when they slapped my hand away or shrunk back from me.

I understood their mistrust.

I was not afraid of dying, and in fact, I was looking for my death at any other hand than the Howling that stalked my every breath.

Each year that passed, with me still breathing, was a stolen century from the Howling.

I was a wanderer. I never put down roots. I listened to the call of the wind and followed it. Every place I blew through bringing new experiences, new faces and voices. I wanted to see it all, as much as I could.

As much as I was allowed.

Each year, the Howling became heavier and my spirit lighter, my grasp on life weakening by increments. Pain filling in the pathways my magic marked on my mind, body, and soul.

I became known in the lands I traveled. The people sang my chosen name and called for me in times of need. Those who wielded wealth and power with cruelty feared my name.

I was wild and clever; and I knew how to spin a tale when it counted.

By the time I was fifteen, I had toppled lich kings and slayed ancient leviathans.

I would go to such lengths to save those in need. I would die first before I left anyone behind.

And still I lived.

In every town I aided they would beg me to stay.

“Why don’t you stick around? We could use someone like you.”

“You’ve made a difference. You’re more than welcome to stay.”

“This could be your home too, y’know.”

The fear I felt each time someone reached for me…I could not stay. I could not let them in.

I could not let them love me.

The agony of my pitiful existence. The cruel irony. I had so much love in my heart, but I did not allow myself to give it in any other way than the unexpected goodness of a stranger.

It was never enough. I was always overflowing.

Those friends I made on my journey imploring me to rest. To slow down. Take a moment, breathe.

But I felt I was always running out of time. I was so hungry for life, and I knew my clock was ticking.

Hmm. Sands through the hourglass…

I had no companions. I took no one with me and I stayed for no one.

No one could know that I was one with the Howling. In certain regions, those born Howling were culled. We were seen as an aberration. A blemish. The sickness a condemnation from the brother Light for gluttony of his Dark brother’s gift.

Even in my homeland, where babes were not silenced for Howling, popular belief still held that anyone born Howling was a waste of a good life.

So, I could never let anyone close enough to know me and figure it out. They would never look at me the same after. I couldn’t bear that.

I was so desolately alone.

And then I met Her.

It was instant. From the first moment we spoke, the connection was synchronic. I’d always had an odd and dark sense of humor, and she matched it immediately. Others saw me as wild and strange, often off-putting behind the valor, but she was strange just like me. Over-eager, sharp, charming and genuine.

Fighting beside her to escape was seamless. Without us working in tandem, we would have perished.

I saw her through to the fields of fallen warriors her father had slaughtered. She looked all around at the rusted weapons left behind and then back at me. When she asked for safe passage to the nearest village, I agreed all too quickly to guide her down the trodden roads, out of the old kingdom.

As we traveled, she told me much about herself.

Too much at first, too quickly, it seemed, and embarrassment flooded her abruptly at oversharing.

She went quiet.

I moved swiftly to assuage her fears, filling in the gaps with stories of my own. She lit up, and conversation flowed between us; talking to her was the easiest thing in the world.

I soaked up every drop of her that she was willing to share. I didn’t allow myself to stall, though I wished so desperately for the road to be longer.

Just a little bit longer in her presence, just a moment more.

I had never known anyone like her before.

From how she spoke, I was sure she’d be off and running as soon as we reached the village. Hungry for life and freedom as she was, just like me.

But when I went to leave, she followed me.

At first, I tried to dissuade her gently.

I reminded her of her own goals and aspirations, to find freedom for herself.

When she did not easily let me go, like everyone before her had, I got desperate. I got scared. I couldn’t let her tie herself to me when I couldn’t even promise her tomorrow.

But I found I couldn’t flee from her like I had everyone else before her.

I realized I needed Her to leave. I needed her to be the one to walk away.

So, I told her what I was and waited for the moment she gave up on me. Waited for her eyes to dull upon me and for her to turn away.

She did not.

She stayed. She was not afraid.

I couldn’t fathom it.

The one time I let myself love someone…She changed everything for me.

Recollecting upon our first meeting, I had once pondered, how we were brought together completely by chance. What luck then. What luck, that I was alive at the same time as her.

Later, I thought, perhaps the fates drew us together.

But, no. No. She had always written her own fate.

Do you know what’s funny? She was the devout one.

When my days darkened, and I became bedridden, she believed the gods would spare me. They would heal me.

In my first life I was apocryphal. My worship of the Brothers Grimm was a practice built on fear. Salem, on the other hand, knew true devotion in her faith.

She had me believing in the end.

When I was reborn into this world I felt my magic change. And wretched thing that I am, I thought—Hah! I thought the god of light had finally forgiven me for being born.

But no, the Howling did not snap its teeth at me, but at my twin souls. My unwilling vessels. The Howling ate them and not me.

I am the curse, it’s me.

It took me too long to figure that out, but once I did, I tried to make it stop.

…

…The maidens…

I thought—stupid—I thought severing my magic from my own god-sick soul would save the innocent souls I was paired with from corruption.

And I hoped it would destroy me.

But nothing turned out as I had hoped. I only bought you a little more time.

You can hear it now…The Howling at the door. Can’t you?

“Yes…” Oscar says aloud. A shuddering breath, “But there is still time.”

A sob from Ozma, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but you know that. I just—I wish things were different.

I wish someone could save you from this. Free you.

I wish that I could take it all back—I wish-!

…

I hurt her. In—In a way—

Here, Ozma heaves a terrible, billowing breath, and Oscar gives him that precious air.

I hurt her in a way that cannot be healed. I can never take it back.

In his mind’s eye, Oscar sees shattered stained glass, toys buried under rubble and crumbled towers.

A still pool of clear water.

A still pool of midnight black.

Moonfall.

The horizon’s edge.

Falling forever with no hope of hitting the ground.

The grief still feels like fear, says Ozma.

And then speaks no more.

Oscar lets the silence ring and breathes carefully through the quiet. In the holes of their heart, in the privacy of the attic space of the brain, the liminal bridge of the soul, Oscar asks, Do you want to tell her you’re sorry?

Oscar already knows the answer.

Tears well up in Oscar’s eyes again, this time not his own, but he sheds them for Ozma all the same.

Chapter Text

The quality of light is hazy and thin. Bleak gray and spotted through the barren boughs of the petrified forest. The passage way’s crooked threshold cuts the light and carves a shadow into its path.

Oscar sits at the edge of the light cast into the tunnel. He sits in darkness. All is quiet, save for his hushed breathing.

He is waiting.

Ethereal prismatic dust falls from the crack in the false sky—glittering, luminous, and technicolor. Soundless crystalline snow. Oscar watches it fall hugging his knees to his chest.

Dissonance in mind and body, Oscar perfunctorily wipes away the incessant tears that slip from the corners of his eyes, with some repetition.

Ozma is inconsolable.

He ripped open the oldest wounds he guarded inside of himself and seems to have broken something quite fundamental in the process.

And he did this voluntarily.

All Oscar can do is hold him through it.

With some difficulty, Oscar has been trying to strike the right balance between acknowledgment and confidentiality regarding Oz’s weeping; because Oz, ever the multilayered pile of contradictions, is at once desperate for Oscar’s comfort and mortified-tormented-ulcerated at being laid bare.

Seen.

Yet, Oz needs to be seen in this moment, to be held, but only with such great care.

Oscar just doesn’t know if he’s the right person to do it.

The well of grief is bottomless.

Oscar endeavors to try anyway.

With fortifying breaths, Oscar undertakes a self-soothing ritual for both of them, and tries to approximate his morning routine. He begins by straightening out his hair from the disheveled mess it’s become.

Oscar is oddly attached to the half-down half-up braided hairstyle Jaune gave him before this whole ordeal started; so, he takes great pains to maintain it. Oscar rakes out the snarls with his fingers in the portions of his hair that are down and loose. Then carefully smooths and tightens the braids at the sides of his head, tracing their trail to the back of his skull where the two braids are joined and tied off in a flair. Oscar runs his hands through his fringe and sighs.

Through this, Oscar must intermittently wipe away new tears.

Next, Oscar sets about eating breakfast and cataloging his rations. Breakfast amounts to one of his two protein bars, a handful of trail mix, and a few generous sips of water.

With a quick assessment, Oscar hazards he has on his person at least three or four more “meals”. But calling the portions he’s mapping out in his head “meals” is really stretching the meaning of the word. If Oscar is regimented in his watering, then they’ll have a few days’ worth of water before dehydration becomes a risk.

Hunger will strike first.

Through this, Oscar must continue to intermittently wipe away new tears.

Though the deluge has certainly begun to let up.

As Oscar is packing everything back up, Oz surfaces from the downpour with a shaky, ‘M not helping with the dehydration concerns am I?

“Mmmm,” Oscar hums aloud, with easy levity. Oscar sniffles too, on the exhale, and wipes at his right eye as it wells up unbidden by his own emotions. Mentally, he says to Ozma, I wouldn’t worry about that.

Ozma sighs in a gust. Explosive and full of fatigue. For the hundredth time, ‘M sorry…

I know. Oscar assures him. Are you ready?

Oz immediately wants to hide away, but Oscar feels Oz reigns himself in.

Oz tries to steel himself—force himself forward—at this, Oscar begins to frown—but instead Ozma tells Oscar the truth: Oz pleads, Just…Just give me a few more minutes, please.

Oscar nods and hugs himself again, Alright.

A beat.

Oz asks, How are you feeling?

Oscar is loathed to turn the eye inward upon himself, but he doesn’t want to make a hypocrite out of himself either.

Oscar replies, I’ve definitely been better. But I’m holding on. I don’t feel rested, but we did get some sleep, at least. Before…Well, you know.

Oz grimaces. We fought that one hard.

Had to.

No other way around it.

Only through.

They elapse into silence.

We should, Oz says like pulling teeth, Talk. About that.

Oscar’s breath hitches and he brushes the back of his wrist under his eyes to wipe away the tears that spill over.

Oscar could almost laugh, Where do we start?

Ozma smiles, brittle and rueful. Oz summons the sensation of a weight resting on Oscar’s shoulder and against his side. Without thinking, Oscar shifts his wings as if to accommodate someone leaning on him. But really, there’s no one there.

Ozma is resting his head on Oscar’s shoulder, and he’s not. If Oscar closes his eyes, he can more than pretend.

A phantom comfort is still comfort.

By my shoulder protect thee—

Oscar opens his eyes, and he is alone. He stares out at the ghostly woods. A shimmering shine is beginning to blanket the bone forest as the falling luminescent dust accumulates. It’s a surreal sight.

It was really scary, Oscar says, still feeling too small for what he carries. When I came out of it—bleeding—and you were…Gone.

I was scared too, Oz admits. His thoughts are stuttered and overlayed in the next breath. A jumble of leftover panic and grief, he says, I thought—That somehow—Maybe—We had—You—Had died.

Oscar-Ozma shutters, I thought I lost you.

They hug their knees close to their chest and weep softly—in relief—because that didn’t happen. And they are still alive.

Still themselves.

The two of them.

The Sea simmers under their feet but does not begin to churn, the final flood still blessedly far off. The tidal wave that will drown them always cresting the horizon of their mind.

Oscar lifts his face from being buried in his knees and opens his eyes again, blinking back tears to no avail. He uses the heels of his hands to wipe away their tears and then settles his chin on top of his knees with a weary huff.

Oz says, I…Then stops.

Oscar feels the halted apology change course in Oz.

Instead Ozma says, watery, Thank you…For listening. To my story…I needed that.

Needed to pour it out to someone? Oscar asks with a gentle, understanding smile.

Yes, I—I needed to say it and hear myself say it. Oz says, But I wish it hadn’t affected you so…You hate crying. It’s exhausting and they’re not even your tears.

No, no. I think I needed this too. Oscar admits with a watery laugh. I’ve wanted to start crying since we got here.

A beat.

You make light of it. Ozma says, somehow in Oscar’s defense.

We need a good cry! Oscar says, indeed trying to wave the tension away, Old man, I’m not upset with you. I’m glad you trust me with how you really feel.

A clench in the tear in their heart. Along the seam that stitches them together. A reverberation without an echo.

Oscar blinks. And then regroups.

He has the notion of cementing this excruciating moment of vulnerability as a positive experience for Oz, but Oz is on a completely different track. Zeroing in on a snag Oscar wanted to skip over.

No, listen. It must be said, Oz lays it out plain. To carry one’s own grief and regrets is something even the strongest of warriors buckle and break under. To carry another’s? Without any boundary between their mind-memory-emotions and your own? That you should have to carry my burdens, without having chosen to do so yourself. It is a terrible thing.

Oscar goes quiet. He swallows around the lump in his throat. His knee jerk response is to disagree and placate, but that’s survival. This is living. Or…Trying to. Oscar should know better by now than to smother himself just so someone else won’t feel uncomfortable.

To know someone in this way, Ozma goes on to say. It should be something you choose. Not something that’s forced upon you.

Oscar is about to protest when it clicks that they’re both talking about two separate events (closely linked, but separate).

They’re talking past each other. Oscar means the history Ozma shared with him about the Howling. Ozma means the merge attack that preceded that tale. Ozma means the curse itself.

Because of course he doesn’t see a distinction between the malignancy and his own self.

Gods’ waters—Ozma did say as much himself, didn’t he?

The point that Oscar must make Ozma see is that he cherishes what Ozma chooses to share. And Oscar does not blame him for what the curse dredges up…Anymore…

What if I choose it now? Oscar asks, with the same feeling that comes before his wings fill with wind. What if I do want to know you?

Oscar sits up straight out of the hunch he’d fallen into, What if I want to help you carry your burdens as friends do?

In lieu of Ozma’s answer, big, fat, tears erupt from Oscar’s almost dry eyes and spill down his cheeks. Ozma’s tears, no doubt. Oscar doesn’t wipe them away this time and just lets the tears fall in their rain.

How can you possibly—? Ozma weeps. Because Ozma knows Oscar’s heart and knows he speaks true. I’ve done you no good, why would you want to be my friend?

You must be really lost if you think I need a reason, Oscar says and wraps himself around Ozma and shelters the other under his wings.

I do have reasons, Oscar clarifies. Opening his heart to Oz with trembling trust of his own. Oz sobs an awed gasp. Oscar says, But I don’t need them.

I don’t deserve you. Ozma says. Then, suddenly fierce and loyal, But I will try so hard to be worthy of your friendship. I—I will be!

A warmth, all their own, grows in strength—It is not like fire. It is something else entirely.

I want to help you carry your burdens too, Oz says quickly, but earnestly. Oscar, we didn’t choose each other, but I am with you.

I will always be with you.

Oscar stands.

Forward? Together?

Yes.

Oscar nods at nothing and nobody, and steps into the light. Inevitably, their thoughts are drawn back to Salem.

She helped us, Oscar says. He reaches the lip of the tunnel and clasps his hands over his heart, She helped you. Implicitly.

Ozma shakes, at his very foundations, but does not rise to recrimination. Or denial.

What would you have me do? Ozma asks, haplessly helpless in tone.

Oscar tries to temper his response, though his immediate gut reaction is to throw up his hands, flabbergasted.

Instead, Oscar calmly explains, It’s not about what I want. It’s about what you want.

Ozma suddenly won’t look at him. Oscar knows what Ozma wants but also knows the fool man won’t say it directly. Oscar doesn’t push him.

Yet.

Oscar peers out of the cave at the ruin of a veranda looking for said harridan. Salem is nowhere in sight but there is a very obvious trail of carnage to follow.

Please wrap your mouth and nose with a cloth before you step out under that dustfall. Oz says in a numb tone of voice.

“Hmm yeah,” Oscar wrinkles his nose as he gives a cursory glance to the dustfall—an aberration of snowfall. Wouldn’t want to breathe that stuff in—Nope.

Oscar ties a cloth bandanna tightly around the lower half of his face and fishes around in his side satchel for his goggles. The lenses are scuffed and tinted orange. They make the already alien environment look even more bizarre.

At this point, the practice is standard-fare to him, after living through so many desert storms. Though only so much can be done to protect against the wind blasting him with sand and particulate matter from every direction. Getting the sand out from between his feathers in the aftermath of a dust storm—once he’s had the great misfortune to get caught in one—is a hell of its own.

Oscar hopes the dead air here will ensure that particular discomfort does not happen with the shimmering glow-dust.

Once covered, Oscar hugs the wall and follows Salem’s bread crumb trail of uprooted petrified trees and sundered white stone.

Where the trees have been pulled up by their roots the ground is ruddy red like open wounds. The smell of iron stings Oscar’s nostrils as he passes one such deep red gouge in the ground, and he has to stop and calm himself down from a near lightning-flash panic attack.

—quieted with snow. Shivering cold—

Oscar has to get himself back under control before they continue. He steadies his breathing as best he can and presses on.

Oscar follows Salems’s footprints in the snow—No—Dust. Oscar clenches and unclenches his hands at his sides as he walks.

Oz is steady reassurance in the absence of certainty.

He is trying so hard.

They are so scared.

Oscar and Ozma find Salem in a clearing she’s made in the forest, sitting on a knobby stump. There’s a radius of destruction that expands outward with her at the epicenter. She’s in the process of pulling jagged shards of petrified bark out of her arm when their eyes land on her.

Glittering glow dust rests in her hair and on the tops of her shoulders. And it clouds ethereally in the air around her as it’s disturbed by Salem’s jerking movements at their arrival. Her head snapping up as Oscar steps on an unseen twig, the CRUNCH announcing his presence.

Oscar finds himself staring at an arm-sized spike of bone-wood protruding from Salem’s abdomen.

When Oscar tears his eyes away to look up, Salem’s face is impassive.

She unceremoniously grasps the stake in her gut and rips it out—Oscar flinches. Salem tosses the black stained stick away and it hollowly clatters against upturned stone and petrified root.

The wound in her stomach seals in seconds but—Gods. Oscar feels sick at the sight.

Salem is staring at them.

For some reason (Oz), Oscar can’t make himself step toward her. So, Oscar raises his voice, so it’ll carry to Salem and calls, “I’m sorry.”

Ozma sinks like a heavy heart.

Salem jerks her head away. Something deep and embroiled marring her face. She visibly calms herself, exhaling a long, low breath and relaxing her shoulders. It almost looks like she’s meditating, perched up on that stump.

Once composed, Salem rises and approaches them slowly. She sheds a mist of shimmering dust behind her as she walks.

Salem walks right up to Oscar with her hands at her sides.

Her voice is rough when she speaks, in a way Oscar has never heard it before—Salem howls on her knees as the moonfall hails—and Salem says, “What are you sorry for?”

She’s genuinely asking.

“For upsetting you,” Oscar replies.

Salem scoffs but it seems to be reflexive, her face becomes vacant, and she slowly falls out of her incredulity. Salem looks at the ground.

Oscar opens his mouth to say something more—what he would say—should say—he doesn’t know—But Oscar can’t find his voice.

Salem shakes her head and walks past him, “Come,” She says.

Oscar turns and follows Salem back to the tunnel entrance at her pace.

Once out of the dustfall, Salem shakes out the technicolor detritus like some kind of wild, furred animal. In a surreal moment, Oscar finds it endearing—Ozma makes a choked sound. Trying to be calm, Oscar shakes out his own hair and wings. Once the dust has settled onto the ground, Oscar pulls off his goggles and pulls his bandanna down to rest around his neck.

Salem makes an unhappy noise and Oscar turns to her, wide-eyed surprised.

“Why were you crying?” Salem asks, numbly distraught, with what must be broken glass between her teeth and down her throat.

He blinks.

“Oh,” Oscar says, and rubs self-consciously at his still puffy eyes. “It wasn’t me.”

Salem looks at them. An expression of dismay dawning on her face.

Oz feels peeled. He wants to—crawl under a rock and die—Wretched and contemptible. A barely formed thought at the edges of their shared consciousness trembles awake—Don’t let her see me—A bug turned onto its backside; desperate, pitiful wriggling and flailing—The frightful mortification of your soft underbelly bared.

Oscar feels nauseous.

To Oz he says, as gently as he can manage, I know you’re going through a lot right now, but if you make me throw up our breakfast this will be even harder.

Sorry, Oz says, voice tiny and small.

It’s okay, Oscar tries, holding Ozma protectively in the bastion of his ribcage, We’re gonna be okay.

Salem swallows with an audible click in her throat, it’s impossibly loud in the desolate space. The sound pulls Oscar back to the surface. Salem looks like she doesn’t want to ask—She looks like the only thing in the world she wants is to know—Why? Why do you weep?—Salem opens her mouth, lips moving, but no words come out. She tries again, sounding out the words silently, jaw working.

Then, stilted, she asks, “Have you eaten?”

Oscar blinks at Salem a few times.

He says, “Yes,” softly, as his stomach churns.

Salem nods once, twice, like she’s convincing herself of something and then she brings her hands together, interlaces her fingers and then refolds them—Fidgeting, she’s fidgeting. Salem swivels on the balls of her feet to face the downward slope of the tunnel.

Salem inclines her head toward Oscar, and ventures, “Then, we press on…?”

There’s an odd accommodation in her voice. Not uncertainty, exactly, but she doesn’t sound sure of something. And for the time being, she’s chosen to leave it alone, whatever it is.

Oscar bites down on his lip, scrunches up his nose, and gradually closes his hands into tight fists. His nails press harsh half-moons into his palms. Skies save him—Oscar offers, bracing himself, “If you and Oz need to talk—“

“No.” Comes Salem’s immediate reply with an upheld hand to wave him off.

In the same instant, rushes Ozma’s fervent, DON’T.

Oscar winces.

“I prefer…” Salem begins and then seems to have second thoughts. She pauses. Looking ahead into the dark tunnel once more, with a stare that shutters between searingly blank and flitting marvel.

Salem says, eventually, “Speaking with. You…Pine.”

“…Oh,” Oscar says amazed. “Okay.”

Salem squints one eye at him. As if she expects Oscar to bite her or bolt.

At a complete loss, Oscar says, “Right—Okay.”

He nods at Salem dumbfounded and clamps down on his own tears threatening to overflow—Keep it together—Oscar manages, “Got it. Let’s go.”

And they don’t discuss it further.

Oscar doesn’t realize they’re traversing pitch-black darkness until Oz points it out.

Oscar swivels his head around backward to Salem and notes she’s moving a bit slowly. It is very dark, but she hasn’t conjured new firelights to guide her. It doesn’t initially seem like she’s having too much trouble navigating but her slowness may be the only sign of difficulty.

Maybe she can see in the dark? Then what was all that light juggling for?

Or is she being stubborn? That’s silly.

Salem is rapidly approaching him, on a direct collision course in the dark—So, maybe she can’t see him—and Oscar is about to voice his position in warning; when Salem steps around him without issue.

Oscar closes his mouth with a click of his teeth.

When Oscar remains stationary, Salem pauses and turns around to face him. Dryly she says, “Are you waiting for an invitation?”

Oscar tilts his head, maybe they’ll get a straight answer.

“You haven’t conjured your lights yet.” Oscar asks, “How did you know where I was in the dark?”

Salem gives him a look. A truly magnificent grimace that shifts every muscle in her face. It’s visceral.

And undeniably hilarious.

“Are you unaware of your own bioluminescence?” Salem asks like she’d rather not.

“What?” Oscar replies, grave. The smile that had been about to crest his face evaporates.

Oz sits up in a rush with an air of bedraggled alertness, as if he’s almost fallen out of his chair. Oz echoes, louder, What?

Salem’s frown deepens, “You are glowing. Quite brightly.”

In a flurry of panic, Oscar looks down at his legs, and then at his hands; gloved and bandaged. He sees nothing. He looks back up at Salem faintly annoyed, because this is a bad joke he does not appreciate.

Ill at ease, Salem clarifies, “Freckles.” She points her finger in a circling motion at her own cheeks, “Spots.”

Oscar claps his hands to the sides of his face oddly mortified and remembers his method of escape from the scarab’s clutches. He shucks off his vest and shirt and unceremoniously drops his clothing into the dirt. Oscar shifts and contorts his body to get a real, good, look at himself and finds—As if there was any chance Salem would lie to him—every freckle on his body glowing ambiently.

Phosphorescent green.

His warm brown skin is now an uncharted, starry sky.

Oscar wraps his arms across his chest and his hands around his bare biceps. He splutters, “This—This was supposed to go away.”

Salem sighs and stoops to pick up Oscar’s discarded shirt and vest. Dusting off his clothes with a pragmatic air. She steps closer to Oscar gingerly, and as she holds the articles of clothing out to him, Salem says, unsentimental, “It looks permanent to me.”

It was likely the prevalence and strength of Salem’s lights—and his own willful ignorance—that stopped Oscar from noticing this—his own “bioluminescence”, fucking hell—sooner.

Oscar doesn’t reach for his clothes but stares up into Salem’s face, and asks, “Have I looked like this the whole time?”

“Since you shapeshifted, yes.”

Oscar looks away. He covers his mouth with one hand and tries not to slip into another panic attack.

Or trip over the edge into the Sea…It calls to him. In wafting waves that break against his mind like ocean surf to a rocky, crumbling shore; cyclical erosion.

He’s shaking.

It always has to be one more thing—Why is he even freaking out about this? There are so many more pressing dangers to worry about. What is wrong with him—Oscar’s thoughts dissolve into incoherent, agitated, tangling static.

His head hurts.

Oscar? Oz prods gently. Meager reassurance, It doesn’t look bad, per se—What—What do you need? How can I help?

Salem’s expression is giving more away than he wants to see.

Oscar covers his face with his hands, presses his face into the closest wall, and screams.

It’s muffled.

But raucous all the same.

The tail end of the scream sounds like a sob.

Neither Salem nor Oz comment on this but he can feel them both hovering. At least neither of them try to talk to Oscar immediately. So, Oscar isn’t forced to form the higher thought required for coherent speech.

Oscar is sure that a number of his well-meaning crew back on Remnant would consider the amount of time Oscar spends with his face to the wall in irate, abject silence to be concerning. Salem and Oz don’t bat an eye. Well, metaphorically of course. Oz tries to not blink Oscar’s eyes these days. The idle movements and processes of the body are murky territory for them though.

Sometimes Ozma breathes for Oscar without meaning to. But only when Oscar forgets to breathe.

Oscar slips his hands from his face to press the flats of his palms to the cold stone wall. He inhales one sobering breath and gusts out a loud exhale, pushing off the wall with his hands. Oscar’s bandaged right-hand stings from the agitation of applied pressure—This particular wound is taking a while to heal for how superficial it seems.

Extended before him, Oscar’s bare arms are clustered with twinkling lights—Make your peace with this Pine. It is what you are now, Oscar tells himself.

Oscar is still trying to crush, smother, and pack away what must be a disproportionate emotional reaction to something quite silly, when he turns around and finds Salem standing exactly where he left her when he turned away. With one arm up, still holding out his discarded vest and shirt.

She’s looking at him with atrophied sympathy.

It hurts to look at, a little.

It looks like it hurts a little for her to show the thing on her face.

Is she prying herself open for us to see?

…

Oscar swallows his crisis like a cough and reaches out for Salem’s outstretched bundle. As he grasps his clothes, Salem looks at the center of his chest and then away—Her eyes flitting so quickly between points Oscar almost misses it.

Almost.

Salem retracts her arm robotically and keeps her gaze averted toward the downward slope of the tunnel while Oscar hastily pulls his shirt back on and re-fastens his threadbare vest. Now, that’s a thousand-yard stare—She’s hunched in on herself a little, and to Oscar’s eye, it makes Salem look older than her ageless face falsifies. Haggish with the tattered state of her robes and long, loose, frazzled hair.

The skittering of shiny, black, insect legs between the strands of her hair only adds to the effect.

Despite himself, Oscar steps up to Salem’s side and trills at her softly.

Salem flicks her eye to him. She says nothing.

Wordlessly, Salem invites Oscar to continue their steady pace down with a jerking gesture and he nods, not making a fuss at her sudden mutism. They retrace their steps and find few things exactly as they left them.

The perforated tunnels shifted their hive like burrows, as if sections of the wall were dislodged and then slotted into different places, jigsaw puzzle pieces to their new niche.

When they reach the bottom of the drain hippodrome, there is a red liquid seeping from the walls. Oscar can’t look at it for long, the way the red liquid drips between the cracks of the pattern gives him awful vertigo.

Besides the troughs of red fire in the amphitheater-coliseum, Oscar notes that Salem neglects throughout their journey to conjure any firelight when they plunge back into darkness.

As they descend the spiral staircase, Oscar asks, abashed, “Are you following me through the dark?”

“You know where you’re going.” Salem says, simply. Very matter-of-fact.

Her words ring in his ears. This amazes him and he doesn’t know why. Wait—This amazes Oz, not Oscar. Ozma is the one having a very strong reaction and Oscar is feeling the emotional bleed between them.

Oz promises he is not going to start crying again.

Oscar sighs helplessly.

Their footsteps echo in the desolate halls of the underground.

There is something Oscar wants to say, to both Ozma and Salem—Or, something he wants to ask?—But his own thoughts are impenetrable in their cacophony.

Just as he is beginning to pull something legible from the messy tangle of his thoughts and feelings, an anomaly distracts Oscar.

Up ahead and down below, Oscar hears an unmistakable, wet, pitter-patter which should be plainly impossible this deep underground. When they return to the massive bridge that was once shrouded in mists, they find the pearlescent bridge soaked through by rainfall.

Red rain.

Underground.

On the Moon.

The way this impossible phenomenon plays on his senses is…maddening. To his eyes, the red rain is a deep, dark, red wine in color. It moves strangely, seemingly more viscous than pure water. Oddly squirming into excited rivulets as puddles congeal and overflow past the edge of the bridge railings—Like it’s alive. The smell is pungently metallic, coppery-iron and salt. Somehow, Oscar tastes it in his mouth.

It incites him. To what end, Oscar does not know.

The fires in their braziers burn on, lighting the span of the bridge. Unbothered by the rainfall.

The air is dank and humid.

Half-awake, Oscar goes to outstretch a hand and catch a few raindrops in his upturned palm—Through Me, The Flood—Before he can extend his bandaged hand, however, Salem shoots out her right arm in warning. Barring Oscar from reaching out.

Startled by this, Oscar retracts his hand immediately and holds it to his chest; clutching fist closed. He snaps his eyes up to meet Salem’s grim expression.

Her eyes are bright.

Oscar searches her face, already shying away from the ardent splash of the rain at Salem’s wordless warning. Salem shakes her head fervently, in a manner of concern that has Oz dizzy, stupefied, and lurching to the left.

Salem keeps her right arm out, forbidding Oscar from approaching the deluge, and raises her left arm above her head. In a swirling motion, Salem twists her upheld hand—palm up-palm down—at the axis of her wrist and steps out into the rain.

Fleeting images of Salem’s obliteration upon stepping out onto the surface of the Moon flash behind Oscar’s eyes—Oz still shaky from bearing witness to the ordeal. Though the man’s loathed to admit as much.

But no harm comes to her.

The rain does not touch her, it is thwarted in its flow around some unseen barrier Salem conjures. In what Oscar estimates to be a six-foot radius around Salem, the red rain is diverted. Even the water pooling on the deck of the bridge is pushed back, clearing the only dry spot upon which for her to stand.

Salem motions for Oscar to join her.

Oscar gives Salem a significant look—This matters—This is important—Here is my belly—Here is the knife—Here is my ready wing—Tuck yourself under—Safe and tight—and then steps under her unseen umbrella.

He notes her controlled ease—The effort she’s putting in to appear nonthreatening.

Oz puts his fist in his mouth and does not comment. He feels like indigestion in Oscar’s half-starving stomach.

He feels like whatever comes after hunger.

Oscar pokes his soul-bound twin, Stop being ridiculous.

High-pitched, nearly at a frequency only dogs could hear, Oz responds, This is fine. I’m fine with this. We’re doing great.

Oscar smiles, strained but bemused, and he looks directly up at the fall of the red downpour over Salem’s invisible rainshade.

Aloud, Oscar says, “Do you have a theory about what this place is yet?” He adds, turning his head to Salem as they walk in tandem, “That you’d like to share, that is?”

Salem glances at Oscar and she frowns. Not displeased by his asking, necessarily, but by the subject matter itself, it seems.

With the distinct air of dulled odium, Salem responds, “None that I’d like to share.” After a moment she adds, “For now.”

“Hmm,” Oscar hums, easy candor and acquiescence. He’s still blown away they’re talking at all, and Salem hasn’t yet ripped his throat out with her bare hands or vaporized him—Maybe that’s Oz talking. Dead horse—Dead horse—Oscar coaxes, “Would you like to hear my theory?”

Oscar folds his hands behind his back and leans forward at the waist boyishly when he asks this. His wings expand and flutter in minute adjustments to keep his balance. Salem, her hands clasped neatly in front of her and her gate regal and refined, hums at this. She inclines her head toward Oscar—she’s doubtless humoring him—and Oscar takes it as his sign to go ahead.

The rainfall all around them—despite its unnerving nature—is a pleasant white noise.

“At the risk of being completely wrong and sounding like a fool,” Oscar endeavors, bringing up his hands to gesture expansively at the space around them. “I think we may find ourselves in an awful temple the gods built and abandoned when they left Remnant.”

“Awful?” Salem asks, a half-smile twitching at the corners of her mouth.

“I hate this place,” Oscar responds candidly.

Ozma laughs at this. Dismayed and uninhibited.

Salem exhales from her nostrils in a clearly amused burst.

Was that a laugh?

Does that count?

Dare they hope?

Salem raises one hand, unfurling her fingers to also gesture at the inconceivable place they find themselves in. She says, “Abandoned? Yes. But the sequence of events might be more…” Salem pauses, as if she’s chewing on the word, “Incongruous. Then you’re supposing.”

“Elaborate,” Oscar wheedles.

What they’d give to know what she’s thinking.

Salem gives Oscar a discerning look and it miraculously does not frighten him. She looks away from him with a dismissive sniff.

Oscar relents without objection and looks forward into the ominous deluge lit by haunting, undying firelight. Carmine and empyreal.

Inexorable, he looks back at Salem.

This is the closest they’ve walked together, and Oscar tries to unobtrusively watch Salem from the corners of his eyes as they cross the bridge. His gaze lingers on the branching, blackened veins that twist on her skin like lightning strike scars—

Oscar holds Nora’s quaking hand and despairs. At the loud, grinding, grit of her teeth, prick of tears budding in her eyes, and agonized hiss of her breath, he breaks.

Oscar starts, desperate, “Oz knows a spell for this—The pain—I can—“

“No.” Nora says. By Thunder.

She looks at him. By her gaze, peeling back every layer of him, each layer that is-was-will be-will never be-lay dying inside of him. Both-One or the Other-Neither. Oscar and Oz and Ozma and the many faceless, lamented dead that squirm and writhe in between the sutured cracks of his grafted soul.

She sees him—he knows this—the full awful totality of what he becomes. Of what unmakes him.

Oscar goes quiet and still.

“I can endure any pain,” Nora says fierce and wild-eyed. “None of it is worth the price of you.”

She grabs his shirt and pulls Oscar closer. With a ragged strain in her voice, Nora nearly shouts through gritted teeth, “Do you hear me? Not a single minute of the time you have left. Nothing will ever be worth that trade.”

Oscar doesn’t know what his face is doing in that moment but all the reflective surfaces in the room—upon which his visage is captured—crack.

Ren flinches. He hides it well.

Oscar keeps his eyes on Nora.

Small and raw, Oscar says, “Okay.”

Nora slings her shaking arm around Oscar’s shoulders. Tears in her eyes, she asks, “Just let me lean on you for a little while. That’s enough. More than enough.”

Oscar hugs Nora tightly, his voice wrecked with emotion, again, “Okay.”

And he folds one of his wings around her hunched frame. Oscar says, broken open, “Thank you.”

Oscar looks away from Salem and out over the edge of the bridge.

The red rain falls in an endless downpour.

The white deck of the bridge is awash in red. The fires’ reflections glitter on the surface of rain puddles as Oscar and Salem cruise past in their protective bubble.

They’re so high up right now it shouldn’t be a problem, but if they have to reach the bottom of this place—to find what they seek—should they be worrying about a flood?

Oz makes an unhappy noise not dissimilar to the one Salem made hours ago.

Oscar regrets the comparison as soon as the thought forms, but Oz doesn’t have any stronger reaction to it than disgruntled acknowledgment.

As they near the other side of the divide, Oscar and Oz halt their brainstorming on how best to ask Salem to carry them through the gate to the underworld—Given the affect the gateway had on them last time—But that negotiation might not be necessary. For they see a jagged crack has fractured through the gate to the other side. Rupturing the floor, ceiling, and walls of the cubic gate in branching fissures.

Breaking the pattern—Reopening The Wound. And lifting the field that rendered them lifeless and mindless when they last entered its domain and fell under its influence.

Crashed into more like.

Hush.

By his own reliable instincts, Oscar senses that the danger that had once been here, no longer holds the space.

Oscar has no hard evidence to suggest this, but he is unreasonably, vehemently certain that this is the same crack that carved itself between him and Salem when the vault door to the surface of the moon opened.

And the seal shattered.

Tense, he steps up to the threshold of the gate and tentatively raises his left hand. Then—overanxious, as if he’s plunging his hand into a box full of scorpions and not empty, open air—Oscar flinchingly waves his hand through the gate’s threshold.

Success!

“Huh,” Oscar says, and blinks. Dropping his hand to his side.

Either boldly or stupidly, Oscar steps past the doorway into the gate. To his great relief, Oscar does not go numb and senseless. Though, even with the gate’s overpowering pressure excised, it still feels beyond awful to pass through the space. So, Oscar hurries hastily to the other side.

Futilely, Oscar tries not to let his eyes linger on the messy, splotched trail of dried blood on the floor that tracks his desperate crawl to escape the gates paralyzing-crushing-killing influence.

The deep gashes at the edge of the gate where Oscar sank claws into the stone floor.

He reaches the top step of the stairs on the other side and feels a weight lift from his heart, lungs, shoulders, and brain.

Crushing gravity escaped once more.

Oscar flutters his wings.

He turns around, “Are you coming?” Oscar says to Salem with his hands on his hips.

Wings unfurled and primed for flight.

Salem is standing in the center of the geometrically perfect square gate. She is looking at the ground where a smear of Oscar’s dried blood gathered into the divots of the pattern on the floor.

She looks up at him after a long drawn-out moment and her expression is perfectly placid. Salem steps primly out of the gate and into the underworld, to stand beside Oscar at the top of the stair. Without preamble she lifts up into the air wreathed in a cyclone and swoops to follow the stairs down.

Oscar grins to himself, dashes down three steps, and then leaps up into the air. His wings beat to gain some altitude and then level out into a descending glide.

Ahead of him, aglitter, blue wisps spill from Salem’s fingertips and flutter around her to illuminate the daunting expanse of the cavern as it opens up around them. The far, pale rock walls overlaid with the maddening pattern.

Now, we’re following her through the dark.

When did we become so sentimental?

Have we not always been this way?

…Ah, you might be right.

It feels good to fly, it alleviates some of the scratchy-itchy, tight, tension roiling under their skin. But Oscar knows it is only a brief respite.

“We’re getting close to where we left the parasites,” Oscar calls to Salem as he swoops down on his wings, “By now, the awful things might’ve eaten through what we left behind. We’ll need to watch out for them.”

Salem nods her acknowledgment.

With practiced aerial dexterity, Salem shifts her midair position to fly below him without disturbing Oscar’s own flight path. She looks up at him from below, her face cast in stark, shifting shadows from her fluttering lights flying in a murmuration.

She surprises them when she says, unprompted, “I did not say it in so many words before, but,” She glides effortlessly through the air, her face upturned toward Oscar. “Your solution to that predicament was…Inspired. I did not know that Ozma still had enough magic left to accomplish a feat like that.”

She’s fishing.

Fire and Darkness—What for?

Salem looks away. They’re nearing the bottom of the long, winding stairs.

After a moment of air whistling through Oscar’s ears, Salem adds, “You hesitate to wield his magic. Why?”

Oscar doesn’t answer immediately, instead choosing to bank and fold his wings to prepare for landing. He lands in a deft crouch. The soft impact of his boots to the ruddy red earth kicks up a coughing cloud of muck, which Oscar then clears with a flap of his wings.

Salem lands just behind him, slow and deliberate. Without disturbing a single speck of dust.

It’s unnerving, the stillness of the air around her.

Oscar can see on her face that she’s waiting for his response and will venture no further until she has an answer.

Oscar sighs softly.

“It comes with a cost,” Oscar says, fussing with the feathers at the nape of his neck.

Salem’s expression does something complicated he fails to follow. Her gaze goes sharp and bright upon him. Oscar tries not to be intimidated by it.

“Using Ozma’s magic…Accelerates the merge,” Oscar looks away from Salem’s hard expression and down at the palms of his hands. “Every time we use that power; I can feel it…Wearing—Washing me away. Bit by eroded bit. Less of me left after, each time.”

“It changes me—Changes us.” Oscar looks back up at Salem, and curls his hands closed, to hold them clasped to his chest. Salem says nothing—In fact, she does not react at all—and Oscar looks at the ground.

They worry, not for the first time, that he’s given someone too vulnerable a look into them.

“Hmm,” Salem vocalizes, very softly. After a moment’s deliberation, Salem asks, “It eats at you. Would you see yourself rid of this power, then?”

Oscar blinks at her, but before he can attempt to navigate that minefield, Salem adds, “It is a shame, you seem born for shapeshifting. I have never seen another so seamless in the change.”

Oscar quirks his mouth and looks away but lets his twofold musing and longing show on his face.

“To tell you the truth,” Oscar says, letting his hands drop, “If changing shape was something I could do under my own power—Without consequence. I would do it all the time.”

Oscar chances a glance at Salem, and she smiles at him. As if this piece of information genuinely pleases her.

Oz tries not to stare.

Oscar tilts his head at her subtly, he asks, “Is that strange?”

“No, not at all.” Is what Salem arrives at after some inscrutable internal computation.

Her next words come out stilted but clearly deliberate, “I understand it. It is the preoccupation of all living things to want to have control of our fates.”

The quote comes out of her confusingly sententious. They can see on her face that she had not meant it that way.

Entirely, Oscar thinks.

Oscar makes it clear in his body language and expression that he caught her meaning. He asks, “You’re familiar with that parable about the god of animals?”

Salem laughs, “Familiar is a word.” Her laugh is more like a snarl.

She walks past Oscar, heading back to the low chamber that saw their arrival. Salem has her lights up. Doubtless, to catch sight of the approach of any gleaming gold bugs.

Oscar moves to walk beside her. He’s about to ask Salem a question when he feels a sudden chill from the fuzzy aperture of his mind within which Oz’s consciousness resides.

Mentally, Oscar turns to Oz. Under his scrutiny, Oz balks.

I didn’t realize it at first, Oz says, soft and muted. It’s clearly something he’s afraid to voice, Until I saw us for the first time in a mirror…

Oscar is immediately perplexed; he waits for Oz to continue and for a moment it seems like he may not.

But then, unmistakably terrified, Oz finally whispers, What you are.

Suddenly, a fight-flight-freeze fear response rockets through Oscar. His shoulders and wings tense, half-unfolded. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck stands on end. But there is no threat to them that Oscar can detect. It is directionless fright.

Haltingly, Oscar asks, What—What do you mean?

What am I?

There is abyssal quiet, and then—

Ozma sings, You’re impossible. So, we’re impossible. We should not be able to be the way we are.

And yet.

Here we are. All the same.

“Be on your guard.” Salem says as she approaches the doorway into the chamber where they left the scarabs fused to their discarded vestiges.

Oscar jumps out of his skin at the sound of Salem’s voice.

Salem takes notice and stops. Her face is inscrutable when she looks down at Oscar, but Salem raises her eyebrows in a clear question.

Oscar releases a shaky breath and nods at her.

Salem gives him a sternly assessing look and then silently sends her lights into the next room with one hand upheld.

Poised for fight or flight, Oscar and Salem enter that long ago lightless, decrepit hall.

The start of this nightmare.

They do not find the golden scarabs embedded in bone and bark. No severed vertebrae. No wilting tree. Rather, they find a smeared trail of black ichor and an empty hole where Oscar’s tree once drooped. From the uprooted hole in the ground, marks a frenzied trail of movement into the dirt. Scarping and crawling in the same direction the ichor trail slithered.

Trailing down—Deeper—Into the dark.

Chapter Text

Oscar has always felt small.

He is in fact—and always has been—small. Really, if he was much bigger than he is now, flying would become very difficult. So, it is to his evolutionary benefit that his body takes the shape—and size—that it does. That there are limits to his extent, is perfectly ordinary.

But there’s a difference between being small. And feeling small.

And Oscar has always felt his smallness. Acutely.

Lost in the high hall ruins of the moon’s hidden depths is some sick joke to Oscar—punchline upon maddening punchline. Every built structure here is set to the scale of beings three or four times larger than the average humanoid denizen of Remnant. And by those averages, Oscar is an outlier runt.

The moon’s spiraling edifices are eerily similar to an environment ripped straight from his worst nightmares. Where everything is comically too big—“The little people lived in the walls of the old barn”, She said with a mischievous glint in her eye, and he shifted closer. Listening to the story with rapt attention—but the terror never reckons with the absurdity of the situation.

You can’t always know you’re dreaming when it’s happening. Oscar—and Ozma, of course—often find themself at the mercy of their imaginings—He can’t turn the doorknob—he can’t lift the book that drops—he can’t get out—his voice from his little lungs is too small and soft for anyone to hear him cry for help.

Dream-logic, nonsense, fear like that. The existential helplessness of a nightmare overshadows all good sense. And that senseless terror gives nightmares their fleeting, gripping realness.

If this was all a twisted nightmare, Oscar thinks he would’ve woken up by now—Someone would have woken him up by now.

He hopes.

Salem is all tension and coiled anticipation beside him. She’s moving like a stalking predator, as they wander further and further into the deep dark. Oscar finds he needs to periodically remind himself and Oz that Salem is not hunting them—at the moment. Her primed strike is intended for the things Oscar and Salem are tracking.

The gilded parasites.

Those damnable things have a head start, if they are indeed seeking the same thing as Oscar and Salem. Which, by Oscar’s luck, is a sure bet.

There are two distinct sets of tracks to follow: First, the serpentine, black muck stains, and second, the punctured, skittering gashes.

The slithering ichor trail never wavers or meanders from its route. The scuttling gashes disappear after a time but pop up in scattered blips beside the other wriggling tracks. The two things appear to be keeping pace with each other and there are no signs of conflict between them. Tracking the second entity’s movements leads Oscar to believe that it is either climbing the walls and leaving no trace; or becoming airborne for brief intervals.

Oscar worries the blunt edge of his teeth into his dry, cracked lips until he tastes blood.

Steep stairs become the gradual incline of a ramp. Salem and Oscar pass underneath a wide archway that serves as a crisscross bridge over their empty highway. The hanging teeth girders of the bridge above them are scrimshawed with the fractal pattern. Red drips from the pointed edges—like gored stalactites—gnashing teeth—to splatter on Salem’s invisible umbrella.

The fucked up moon labyrinth accommodates high-volume traffic…

The architectural mysteries persist, hooray!

Tunnels, bridges, and roads converge on the grand highway Salem and Oscar traverse. To Oscar’s mind, the path they walk appears to be the main river of travel, fed by its tributaries. All paths converging on this trajectory.

Gently sloping down.

The channel of the tunnel widens, and the ceilings become vaulted and arched. Thick veins of red split the rock and tiny crimson streams trickle down the far facades. The jutting, bone-white rock, and suffused red haze of the walls, floor, and ceiling, reminds Oscar of the back of a throat. Or the column of a spine and its vaulting ribs.

Disconcertingly so, Says Oz.

It’s worse now. Oscar worries, there’s a rumbling under his feet. It echoes the growling of his stomach. That feeling. The deeper we go, the hungrier it gets.

Don’t focus on it. Remember your training, and center yourself.

Oscar feels annoyance prickling at him—That wasn’t what he wanted-needed from Oz—but he pushes it down.

Oz still catches the fleeting twinge and stalls out for a beat.

Oscar feels an immediate apology without words from Oz and Oscar accepts it wordlessly in kind.

You should eat something, Oz says, trying a new track, It might take the edge off.

Oscar’s brows crease but he nods, It has been a long time since we last ate.

Lunch?

Sure.

Oscar turns to Salem and opens his mouth to say they need a moment to rest but instantly shuts his mouth with a click of his teeth.

Salem is staring daggers at them.

By sheer willpower, they do not flinch away from her.

Oscar and Oz scramble for all of four and a half seconds—Oh gods—What do we do?—What did we do wrong?—When did she change her mind?—before Salem’s expression crashes out in the next heartbeat and she goes blank.

Train wreck on her face, Salem scrunches up her features into something approximating a smile; but in reality, it is much closer to a pinched sneer.

“Your stomach has been growling for a while now and I find it quite bothersome. Eat something, Pine.” Salem says. Salem’s voice is commandingly harsh, in the same way Oscar had heard Salem speak to her underlings; in the bowels of the undead whale-colossus.

In that same insufferably, patronizing tone, she adds, “I’d not have you weakened for what’s ahead by foolhardy hubris.”

Oscar’s ears ring, and instead of all the diplomatic things he could say, what comes out is facetious, “Yeah, I was just about to say it’s been gnawing at me, and I need a moment to rest and eat a pitiful lunch.”

Oscar nonchalantly snaps his fingers with his right hand and pistols a finger gun at Salem, “Thanks for looking out.”

He says it like Yang would.

So, really, he says it like Ruby.

Ozma groans internally like a dying whale; Oz clearly wants the ground to swallow them up for that display.

But something clicked in Oscar’s brain just now and he understands he cannot—absolutely cannot—let Salem set this tone between them. The tension between them will become that much more dangerous if he lets this happen. He needs to put up a fight and challenge the dynamic she’s trying to assert, or they are doomed.

When her eye twitches at his response, Oscar gives Salem a look that any authoritarian would call disrespectful to their authority.

And if he’s trembling a little, that’s probably just fatigue and low blood sugar.

Salem’s teeth peek past her lip, but briefly, as her sneer morphs into the beginnings of a full-blown snarl—cliff edge—cliff edge—But then Salem seems to catch herself with a jolt and pulls the breaks. Abruptly, with a rueful manner, Salem covers her face with one hand and wipes away her expression with a weary sigh.

She looks away from him.

With one hand still covering the lower half of her face Salem leans back on the balls of her feet and sets her other hand to her waist. She inhales one long breath and forcibly relaxes her shoulders on the exhale.

Oscar fixes her with a dubious look and Salem catches the full brunt of his squinted eyes, dual creased-upturned brows, and unhappy frown when she turns her gaze back on Oscar’s face.

She frowns right back at him, and says, sharp, “You don’t need my permission.”

“No,” Oscar agrees. “But I need your cooperation.”

Salem’s eyes narrow. But the harshness in her face eases in increments and when Oscar turns—with his head swiveling around backward to maintain eye contact—she follows him without a word to a dry alcove to sit and eat.

Though, Oscar sits and eats. Salem does not.

Salem posts up in Oscar’s blind spot and keeps a hawkish watch over their surroundings.

When Oscar is packing his rations back up, Salem says, loud and icily unhappy, “You are running low on food.” Fact.

With her arms folded across her chest, she adds, “How much water do you have left?”

Oscar holds up his water skin and sloshes it, “Half-full.”

Half-empty.

Hush.

“Hmm,” Salem responds with a grimace, and Oscar chooses to take solace in her lukewarm displeasure at his imminent and agonizing death by dehydration and, slash, or starvation. She says, “Then we must hope that we are more than halfway there.”

As they descend to greater depths, the rumbling Oscar felt before, grows in strength. Salem hasn’t remarked upon it yet, but they’ve been sharing significant glances every time a tremor is strong enough for them to both halt and widen their stances to keep their balance.

They reach the main thoroughfare’s terminus at the rising arches of a mountainous, ornate, double-doored gate.

The gate before them is easily the same size or bigger than the titanic, surface vault door Oscar and Salem opened above.

That gate, spotless and opaline.

Here, the spiraling pattern is gouged into the rails, mullions, and panels of the gate’s two faces.

This door, when they reach it, is already cracked open. Just wide enough for six feet of space to separate one door from the other.

The culprits of its cleaving are clear. Frenzied scratches and black, goopy stains mar the door by its opening.

Salem and Oscar share another significant look and cautiously approach the gap.

Now slightly ajar, the regal gate reveals concealed teeth that would interlock with its twin when the gate is closed. Stepping through its threshold is like passing between the lips of a sideways mouth—lying on its side, its jaws hanging open in death—glassy eyed and still—Oscar pinches himself in the arm and the disjointed memories flow past him and back into the Sea.

A cacophony of sound thunders below. Oscar can feel it through the soles of his feet.

The roof of the tunnel slants off as they step into open air and out onto a wide concourse. Oscar’s breath stutters in his lungs as a shocking sight unfolds itself before them.

A city.

A sprawling, undulating city stretches out in all directions to the extents of Oscar’s field of vision. Multilayered buildings, towers, roads, and squares. High spires and deep gutters. Tracks and rails thread through the metropolitan sprawl, with trolleys and gondolas making their loops. Large platforms rise and fall on gargantuan, ticking gears like the most formidable ferris-wheels in existence. The architecture is all built in a grim chimera of gothic, classical, and art nouveau styles.

All woven from pale, lunar rock.

Alien in both the metaphorical, and quite literal, sense.

Sections of the city itself decouple and shift. Rising and falling, clicking into place with another section of the city before separating and cycling to the side and back around.

The city literally unfolds in front of them. The grinding, mechanical movement of its city-block, tectonic plates shifting in a wave. Ripples, receding out then in.

A chattering clamor of metropolitan movement.

Alive.

The city looks awfully alive.

And calling this realm of wen a “city” is minimizing its impossible expanse. This is a whole layer underneath the surface of the moon. Multiple kingdoms of Remnant could be stacked on top of each other here; with room to spare.

This is an entire civilization.

And there is no one here. The absence is startling.

The city bustles in perpetual movement but no one climbs its steps or rides its lifts. There is no one seated on a roof, or hanging out of a balcony below, to look up at Oscar and see him.

An entire civilization, expunged. And sealed away.

And over all of it, a red rain now falls.

Oscar looks up. Between the raindrops, he catches scatterings of pale, gray light high above.

Not stars, he knows.

Oscar looks back down at the city; true horror creeps in and freezes his blood in his veins.

—You do not understand. There is…No one left.

Oscar covers his mouth with a trembling hand, his voice shakes, “This is—”

Oh gods, Ozma says. Fear and grief and dread; the Sea sobs in its many ghastly voices. They’ve done this before.

This planet was a beautiful experiment…

Salem turns her head deliberately toward Oscar and looks down at them. He matches her gaze and finds behind her eyes a terrible certainty, and a furious fire.

Slow, she turns away from him and looks back out and over the drenched, shifting city and says, “This…This came before us.”

“How can you know?” Oscar-Ozma pleads, their voice a rasped whisper.

“It is old,” Salem says, simply. “Far older than I am.”

They watch the stone city skitter under their gaze for a few heartbeats before Oscar asks, directionless, fathomless, “Are there—More? Dead worlds. Buried under Remnant and the world that came before? Your world, Ozma’s world…How many desecrated graves are we walking on?”

Salem stares pointedly at a spot at the center of the city’s shifting mass, and then she looks back at Oscar. A crooked, sharp smile breaks out across her face like the cut of a knife.

Oscar bites his tongue.

Salem grins wider, as one would set their canines into something soft to tear it open, and hums, “Finally, someone else is asking the right questions.”

Oscar takes a step toward her, something brimming in his heart and mind—Oz a flurry of possibilities—Terrible, terrible possibilities.

Salem takes a step toward the city.

“We must hurry,” She says. They both wordlessly note that the rain has washed away the black ichor trail. “Our quarry will be near impossible to track in this place. There is no time left to waste.”

“Then lead the way,” Oscar says.

Oscar follows Salem, under the ward of her rain-shade, into the streets of the city.

Oscar is surprised how imperceptible the tremors of the city are when standing on the face of one of its rotating plates. Though it is a bit like walking the deck of a seafaring ship.

His ears still hurt from the perpetual grinding.

The second inscrutable detail Oscar notes—striding from a bird’s eye view of the city to the microcosm of a silvery street-corner—is the nature of the pattern.

The pattern can be found whittled over the facades of basilicas and passenger terminals. Decked across cobblestone streets and causeways. Climbing high halls and steepled pinnacles. But halted—for the first time Oscar and Oz have seen in this place—in its preeminence over all things.

The pattern has edges. It’s unfinished.

The spread and cover of the pattern is more patchwork here, but, so far, no piece of the city is free of the pattern’s presence. The pattern was prominent and complete at the gates, but scatters when they enter the city proper.

Seeing the fringes of the pattern for the first time is illuminating. The rough edges give the impression that the pattern is creeping forward—Encroaching—Spreading—The pattern proliferates itself—Once it’s infected part of the city—Surging through the city’s streets, the pattern looks like the spread of a physical contagion, an earthy rash. It behaves like the propagation of mold or the encroaching swirl of frost on a windowpane.

But carved through stone; A corruption of the rock and the moon itself.

Not Corruption. Sterilization.

Then again, their frantic observations could just be a trick of the eye.

If the pattern is actively growing, then it’s likely on a timescale Oscar simply can’t perceive.

The third detail is how stupidly massive everything is—I’m toy-sized. Oscar thinks bleakly.

Oscar and Salem skid down a steep set of ivory stairs adjacent to what Oscar surmises to be the city’s mainline tram rails. Oblong streetcars race down the line at regular intervals, splashing eager red waves from deep red puddles over Oscar and Salem.

If not for Salem’s protective barrier, they’d be drenched three times over.

Oscar has always loved the particular quality of sound a vehicle’s wheels make on a rainy road.

Another trolley trundles past them and Oscar watches the spray of the rain puddles absently. He marvels absurdly at the efficiency of the city’s public transportation infrastructure.

Hard to judge efficiency accurately without any passengers.

…

Here and there, are cracks in the city’s infrastructure. Parts of the city are crumbling—The unknowable ages take their toll—But some of the damage, Oscar observes, is fresher. Oscar links this new devastation—to an old world—to the shattering quake that shook the whole moon when the door to the surface opened.

The cracks reach all the way down here too.

Or are they looking at this from the wrong perspective?

The section of the city Salem and Oscar are traversing begins to decouple and lift away from the adjacent borough.

We must know what is powering the city’s movement. Is it even a question?

And we must know what will happen if we manage to steal that core of power.

The city will stop. It will go to sleep. What right do we have?—Grave-robbery.

…

Maybe…Maybe rest is needed. Maybe rest is wanted.

What right do we have to make that choice for them—The dead have no one to speak for them.

Salem gallops down the steps three at a time. Oscar untucks his wings to glide in shorts bursts beside Salem to reach the bottom at her pace. They hop onto the next terrestrial plate of the city just before it slides away, out of reach.

Salem’s urgency spurs them on, and they duck hastily under what appears to be a district welcome arch; the pattern overlays the arch’s face and it’s impossible to know what was once written there.

Around them, a sprawling neighborhood block unfolds. Dwellings are stacked on top of each other like gothic jigsaw pieces. Oscar can only draw the conclusion that these are—were—residential buildings.

Ghastly dread and grief-stricken melancholy pervade every corner of the city.

“Do you think—“ Oscar’s breath stutters in his lungs as they pass under a small bridge that connects two apartments at the third floor. His voice becomes a whisper, filled with that same dread, “Do you think. If we went inside one of these homes—We’d find bodies?”

The rain thunders on derelict roofs and deserted streets.

Salem says nothing. She doesn’t make a sound.

Oscar already knows: Nothing remains.

That would be too kind.

He hunches a little deeper.

There is no sign of their quarry.

They move on.

A city square.

A fountain at its center, collecting the rain unsuccessfully with its broken pool—An overflowing tide past the breach.

A statue stands tall from the fount, hewn of the same white rock as all the other surviving structures in this place.

Headless, the statue stands with its arms spread out wide. Its arms are feathered wings. Each fibrous feather is rendered delicately in stone, dripping red from the rain.

The winged statue’s figure is vaguely feminine, but the sculptor clearly chose to lean into androgyny in its depiction.

Oscar stares and feels a shiver creeping up his spine. It frissons at the back of his skull uncomfortably. There’s a strange chill in the air, windless, like the ghost of momentum and energy. Only an absence remains.

The absence itself is a presence.

Oscar drifts away from Salem toward the winged statue. Before he can wander outside her rainshroud, Salem hisses at him—clipped but clear in meaning. Oscar startles, stops, and turns owl-wide eyes on her. Salem didn’t scruff him by the nape of his neck, but he can tell it was a near thing; by the tension in her squared shoulders and crooked fingers.

Oscar looks back at the winged statue—the first depiction of form they’ve encountered, free of the pattern’s influence—Did the pattern eat the other statues?—and then he points a worried glance at Salem.

Salem’s face is inscrutable, she takes a long look at the statue and then pointedly glances at Oscar’s back, where his own tawny-brown wings are tensed and tightly folded.

For a beat, Salem meets Oscar’s eyes—Red Red Red. In the next beat, she looks away.

Salem turns to continue on, showing her back to the plaza and its winged nucleus. To stay under her invisible umbrella, Oscar must follow. He spares one last glance at the outstretched, stone wings, and then hurries to stride beside Salem.

Salem glances down at Oscar briefly as he comes up beside her.

Without a word passing between them, they carry on.

The closer Oscar and Salem come to the center of the city’s writhing mass, the more piecemeal and scarce the pattern becomes. Until they reach sections of the city entirely unblemished by the pattern’s shroud—Like the fountain.

It is an abrupt and startling transition from fractals to clear iconography. And at least one of the pattern’s true functions becomes immediately apparent: Erasure.

Oscar and Oz stare agape at the surviving imagery they encounter.

Carved in intricate detail into the friezes of the inner-sanctum halls appears to be a cycle of evolution, with seemingly no end.

Bodies twist and morph by triptych into new shapes and forms. Growing horns and tails. Scales and wings. Sprouting many eyes. Many mouths. Changing shape, growing in size. No two three-part-transformations are the same. Each new form, the bodies depicted in stone take, bounds with vibrant, lively movement into its next phase.

For Oscar, the high hall’s friezes recall the many werefolk and shapeshifter tales Oscar grew up with; but this is a leap further.

Mutation as revelation. Source for reverence and belief.

And though there does seem to be a demarcation of three revolutions, there is an unbroken through-line of evolution in all the friezes Oscar sees. From one to the next, like dance partners in an unending procession.

Are these depictions of the peoples of this world?

Or their heretical gods? Spirits?

For all those depicted, it doesn’t seem like there is any going back from the change that twists their bodies. Only further metamorphosis, the next branching path.

Though the branch winds away in a new direction—the whole of the tree, the origin—remains. Growth. Always—

Memory exists not only in the mind but the body—the very marrow of bone—patchwork history recorded and kept in DNA—Blood-!

Their head throbs with a sudden zap of agony. Sharp and piercing—Full of teeth full of teeth full of teeth—

Stop! Oscar-Ozma suddenly jolts, overwhelmed, and raises their hands to hold themself. They’re digging their nails into the meat of their arms too harshly. They draw—blood.

Stop, Oscar says, and shakily unclenches his hands from his biceps to clutch and massage his temples instead, Slow down.

He knows it’s not fair, Oscar’s own mind races too. But it’s easier to find a handhold by reaching for Oz, rather than try to quiet the maelstrom of his own mind.

He’ll never find purchase there. Oz is much more responsive and reasonable.

Salem makes a curious sound, and Oscar drops his hands from the sides of his head. Sheepish, they turn to the side to face her, but Salem is not looking at them. She’s looking all around, her head craning to see everything.

Salem looks—be still their anxious beating heart—excited. Positively ecstatic.

With a bounce in her step, Salem glides past intersecting hallways and out into an open-air galleria.

It’s “open air” because the ceiling has caved in.

The centerpiece of this once bustling gathering place is a tiled and carved white rock mural.

The mural is massive. It spans from waterlogged floor to crumbling ceiling. And though some of its finer details are muddied by weathering, and the pattern’s encroaching overlay on its left side, its larger meaning remains legible.

A gallery of larger beasts and creatures mid-metamorphosis crowds the bottom of the mural. Celebration is clear in their wild and fervent gesticulations. What seems to be another unbroken string of mutation rings the border of the mural. Much like the similar carvings of the friezes.

The three most prominent icons in the mural are depicted at the center, their black shadowed bodies swirling into one another like a whirlpool. Two dragon-headed figures stand facing each other, one ram-horned and the other elk-antlered. Their bodies are indistinct silhouettes whittled into the stone and their depiction only gives the vaguest suggestion of humanoid limbs and features.

Their dragon heads are the only clear details about these two figures—Ozma ices over with fear.

Between the dragon-headed figures’ outstretched hands, floats an oblong orb; wreathed in a halo of wings and emblazoned with a spiral.

There’s a crack in the egg-like shape. The jagged crack looks fresh, and likely not part of the artists’ original intentions.

Ozma is speechless and petrified.

Oscar is beleaguered by theories.

The pattern looks like a glitch on this tapestry. Dead pixels—splash of bleach on colored fabrics—black ink censoring lines of text—The Library burns—

“This isn’t even a church,” Salem says, delighted and, at the same time, dissonantly scornful. “We must find a place of worship to compare.”

Oscar jolts at the sound of her voice and then gathers himself as quickly as he can.

“I’m not convinced my moon temple theory is wrong,” Oscar says, trying for levity and falling somewhere between apprehension and intrigue. “It could all be a “church”. Your word.”

Salem’s eyes flick to Oscar and she seems to give this idea some considerable thought.

“Point.” Salem says like a puncture wound. She’s smiling again.

Oscar tries to smile back at her, but he can feel it forms a little too incredulous on his face. At least it’s genuine and not painfully forced.

He steps closer to the mural and nods his head in the direction of the round shape at the perfect center of the expansive artwork; embraced and environed by wings.

Oscar puts his voice behind his fervent curiosity, “What do you make of this?”

Salem hums, steps up beside him, and reaches out a long-nailed hand to brush away moon dust detritus from the face of the mural. She plants her palm over the edges of the spiral engraving; the barest edges she can reach.

“It seems fairly obvious to me…” Salem drawls. She lifts her hand from the wall of the mural and turns a furtive, almost co-conspiratorial glance in Oscar’s direction. Like the two of them are sharing an inside-joke.

Salem folds her hands behind her back and gravitates toward the left side of the mural and inspects the creeping pattern. Oscar watches her for a moment, then redirects his gaze to the center spiral—A notion forms in his mind but it’s too nebulous to articulate in its infancy.

Oscar takes a few generous steps back, to get a better view of the big picture, and rests his hands on his hips.

Salem hums inquisitively as she scratches at the frayed edges of the pattern with a blackened fingernail.

She’s distracted, and so is Oscar. It’s only by the briefest windows, but—as Salem meanders away and Oscar takes another step back—The invisible field of Salem’s conjured barrier passes over Oscar’s face and shoulders at the curve of its vertex. Exposing Oscar to the open air and allowing a single drop of rain to plunk down onto the top of his head.

I Am In The Thew And Sinew.

Oscar full-body flinches and he claps his hands over his ears as they ring with spontaneous deafness; in the wake of a soundless, psychic scream.

He watches Salem jerk around and call his name—her mouth drawing the shape of “Pine?”—but he can’t hear her. He hears only deafening silence.

It hurts.

The warmth—An uncomfortable, painful flash of heat through his body. Like the rapid onset of a fever. His heart hammers in his chest—The pull. Gravity, all encompassing—The pull of that buried well of gravity becomes impossible to ignore. It nearly brings him to his knees by the enormity of its weight—

Dawn-Son, Hear Me!

Suddenly, Salem overshadows him and he feels the shelter of her barrier separate him from the balmy air and drumming rain. But the force of gravity upon him does not abate. There is no relief—You can’t un-ring a bell.

A seed is planted—

An infection spreads—

Chain-branching chemical reactions result in devastation—

A tree grows around the steel bars of a rusted gate—

In the womb, another body takes form in primordial waters and changes shape.

“You can’t—You can’t un-ring a bell. ”

The Sea speaks in nearly one voice: A bell! A bell! Do you hear it ringing! Siren song warning—For whom? For whom does it toll? Surely, not for thee!

Many voices rise from the Sea, chanting in dissonant tones, but something else simmers under the surface.

A choir, the fates, singing: Foul worm! Howling beast! Gutless runaway! Fallen champion—Your duty is not done and you will never know rest. You will never know peace—

Our fate cannot be taken from us—

When the World Ender comes—

Something else—stronger than the Sea of Voices trapped in Oscar-Ozma’s grafted soul—rumbles in the deep.

Louder than words could ever be.

The impetus of hunger itself.

Hear Me.

An ink blot of black on white hovers before their eyes. Two pinpoints of red glow betwixt black veins. The twin red lights blink.

Oscar blinks.

Salem’s face is in front of them. She must have stooped down to Oscar’s level at some point, though he can’t determine when that happened. Her features come into focus slowly and then solidify. She says something but Oscar doesn’t catch it; his ears are still ringing with supernaturally inflicted tinnitus.

He can’t read her lips. His gaze unfocuses again.

Salem hovers her hands over Oscar’s shoulders, and in an unbalanced moment of weakness, they wonder if a grounding touch would help them.

Oscar tenses further and Salem pulls her hands back.

Staccato, Oscar’s head snaps to the side as he catches sight of stuttering, organic movement at odds with their surroundings, past Salem’s right shoulder. A horror runs at them from a shadowed alleyway. It’s loping, two-legged, gallop giving its break-neck approach away. But the only parts of its body that Oscar can see clearly are its pale, white, cloudy eyes and its skinned, veiny, skeletal face.

Just its awful, sunken eyes and flayed face, hurtling at them through the dark red rain.

Salem whips around, following the line of Oscar’s gaze, inhumanly fast. She puts herself between the rapidly approaching threat and Oscar. A crackling ball of technicolor energy sparks to life in her right palm and Salem throws her left arm out in a defensive stance.

Oscar doesn’t hear the aerial approach of the other horror until it’s already swooped down and caught him in its claws.

In the space between heartbeats, Oscar locks eyes with Salem as she looks back over her shoulder at him. In the split-second Oscar is snatched up, the grotesque skeletal creature is mid-lunge from the alleyway; its six dripping arms spread out, reaching for Salem.

Oscar blinks and Salem fires off a shot at his abductor—She misses.

Too fast—Oscar hurtles upward with enough force to give him whiplash, in the clutches of something terrible and unknown. Oscar is ripped bodily out of Salem’s sanctuary barrier and thrust headlong into the storm with a choked off scream.

He is immediately battered with a barrage tenfold the potency of that single drop of rain.

Through Me You Go Into A City Of Weeping; Through Me You Go Into Eternal Pain; Through Me You Go Amongst The Lost People.

The rain is hot. It burns.

Each raindrop hits Oscar like a rubber bullet as he is rocketed through the torrential downpour, sightless.

It burns as it washes over him.

It burns as it invades his mind. Bridge between body and soul—

Overwhelming is an inaccurate descriptor for the experience. It is sanity destroying.

Oscar goes senseless—without a handhold or a waypoint—and if not for what the flying aberration does next; Oscar knows he might have been lost forever. Right then and there.

Brutal pain explodes across Oscar’s face and the upper half of his body as his abductors slams him into roof tiles. The thing drags him across the tiling as it flies, like it means to make a smear out of him. It has its long claws clamped around Oscar’s midsection, effectively pinning both his arms and wings.

Oscar unconsciously activated his protective aura the moment he spotted the flayed face barreling at him and Salem from the alley.

So, even though his brain has broken, his aura is still up when the rain pelts him.

And when he gets a face full of city roof.

The mounting surge of his own essence to his skin does not magically grant Oscar back his sense. But it does invigorate something else core to his being—Will.

Ferocious, fierce will.

He becomes only his will to survive.

They reach a gap between buildings—open air—and Oscar bucks, drives his elbow into a soft spot between two joints and gets his hand around the hilt of his weapon. Oscar deftly clicks the handle of the Long Memory, and it extends with a Clack and a POP. The sudden protraction of the Long Memory half dislodges Oscar from his abductor’s grip. He uses the moment of surprise to lash out a harsh blow and it connects with another fleshy, vulnerable joint; breaking the hold on one of his arms.

His attacker doesn’t make a sound.

Oscar pendulums through the air upside down as the flying aberration fumbles for purchase and grabs at his legs. Oscar unfolds his wings and flaps against gravity and the direction the monstrosity pulls him.

The change in position allows Oscar to get a good look at his assailant and Oscar hates what he sees.

A misshapen wooden face with five, scattered, burl-drilled eyes. Each eye emanates a sickly, yellow glow. It has no mouth on its face. A bushel of wilting, yellowed leaves sprout from the back of its head, like a mane, behind the wooden mask of its face. The balding tree branches that spring from its head look like antlers that don’t match.

It has three arms. Two arms, though crooked, are positioned at the approximate, anatomically correct locations for a humanoid; but a third, shorter arm sticks out asymmetrically of the right side of its gut. Five legs extend at random points from the midsection of its oddly insectoid, thorax-shaped posterior. Each limb ends in a cluster of branches, closer to tarsal claws than the fingers of a hand.

Its skin—or perhaps more accurately, its shell—is tree bark. Whorled by grotesque, pulsing veins.

And nestled like a tumor, metastasizing out of the monstrous dryad’s breast, is the golden beetle. Humming with light.

Of all things, Oscar feels rage.

Oscar tumbles with the monstrosity through the air. He manages to wrench another hand free and land a two-handed strike with his weapon on the broadside of its face. The thing wheels Oscar around through the air by its hold on his ankles.

Abruptly, it lets go of Oscar at the height of his momentum.

Oscar’s back connects with a frail, but solid surface, and he crashes through the rose window of a white rock cathedral. Pain explodes across his back, wings, and shoulders as the glass shatters.

Oscar careens over the altar.

Muscle memory and pure instinct turn his wild, spinning, crash into a midair flip, and then a deft, four-point-landing. He splashes through the nave of the cathedral, sliding on all fours through the red flood waters to slow his momentum. His fingers and the toes of his boots digging into the submerged, tiled floor, and the flood flowing between his ankles and the gaps of his fingers.

The gargoyle poppyheads that ornament the end of each aisle go screaming past him. Each empty seat in the splash zone of his wake gets drenched.

Oscar screeches to a halt at the other end of the cathedral and staggers up onto two feet. He grips the Long Memory in two hands and takes a defensive, martial stance. His right palm throbs and festers as his grip tightens. A snarl contorts his features, he can feel the vicious facial expression pull at the skin of his face.

The roof of the cathedral is only partially collapsed, but the cathedral floor is still flooded. Oscar stands ankle deep in red rainwater.

He’s soaked through to the bone.

Petrichor fills his lungs.

His mind shivers.

Above him, the monstrous dryad lands in the opening of the broken rose window. When it lands, it stops beating its wings. Its wings—half invisible blur before due to its midflight, hyper-speed beat—are distinctly dragonfly shaped.

There’s a sudden flash of distant, cold light.

The light silhouettes the walking, puppeteered, corpse of Oscar’s tree from behind. The monster’s stained-glass, wing vein ultrastructure refracts that flash of light back down onto Oscar—In place of the desecrated rose window.

The light burns technicolor.

In the sporadic, disjointed, exaggerated movements of a marionette, the dryad scuttles from the window and dives down to land with a clatter on the altar. It spears the rock under its flank with its many tree branch legs. It hunches and sways as it rises out of its crouch. Its arms limp at its sides.

Oscar readies himself for violence.

There are no other thoughts in his head. Only readied action—His ears pop.

He blinks.

The noises the mutated dryad is making pierce the thunder of the rain. It whimpers. It sobs—Without a mouth, it wails behind that wooden mask. Guttural in its throat. Choked, grievous, and resentful.

Pitiful.

The dryad’s malformed, wooden-mask face jitters and pivots on the axis of its neck. It locks its five eyes in Oscar’s direction, with its neck parallel to the ground and perpendicular to the trunk of its torso.

Its eyes roll in their sockets, and the horrible thing full body vibrates. Oscar clenches his teeth as the dryad’s smothered, whimpering cries become howling sobs.

Thorns erupt across the dryad’s wooden skin, and it hunches in on itself again in the wake of the change. It rises and lolls its head to the other side, twitches, and then dives—murderous—across the span of the cathedral’s nave for Oscar.

Oscar is ready for it.

At just the right time, he stabs the end of the Long Memory into the cathedral floor in front of the dryad as it closes the distance. Extending the pole of the cane, Oscar leaps and vaults over the diving dryad. Oscar spins midair and gets two brutal hits in; both aimed at the delicate looking structures of the dryad’s wings.

It doesn’t even flinch.

The dryad whips around fast—almost too fast for Oscar to react—and a spray of projectile thorns issue forth from its pustule ridden skin.

In a flurry of movement, Oscar successfully parries a number of these darts, but not all of them. He can feel where the needles have punctured him in his right hand and foot. A few thorns bramble his wings, but blessedly not the muscles or bones.

No, the thorns are just stuck in his feathers, dangerously close to his right wing’s manus and follicles.

Whimpering like a newborn babe, the dryad leaps onto the descending column of one of the vaulting arcades, scuttles around its drum, and then lunges for Oscar again. This time, expelling thorny darts from its back in the same moment it dives.

Oscar dives under it in turn and manages a burst of quick attacks on its belly.

Nothing. Nary a sign of bludgeoning. This thing’s bark hide might be too thick for him to do any real damage on his own.

Not without knowing a weak spot.

The dryad bawls in hysterics and lashes out with its two mantis-like, blade arms. Oscar feints to the left and the monstrosity cleaves through a stone column instead of Oscar’s neck.

Quick as a whip, it wheels around to slash out at him again, and this time it’s too close for Oscar to escape its reach.

It scythes through his guard counter and slices his left cheek open.

Close combat with this thing is going to get him killed.

Oscar ducks under its next blow and lands a savage strike to the underside of its chin that snaps its head around backward. In the moment the dryad manually wrenches its head back the right way round, Oscar lodges a boot into the crux between the lower half of its body and torso. He climbs the wretched centaur-dryad like a tree, then kicks off its shoulders to leap into the air.

He catches a few stray thorns for his troubles.

Oscar soars up into the red gale with the dryad buzzing hot on his heels.

The rain assails his face and the blood pouring from the cut on his cheek boils on contact. The meat of his face feels raw. His skin stings. The rain soaks his feathers and makes it all the more difficult to fly. His heart beats a rapid, terrified pace in his chest.

He feels so alive.

By the strength and dexterity of his wings, Oscar flies between the cycling, grinding, crushing structures of the city without fatal impact. He cuts between revolving spires and dives under bridges and rattling rails. Over flooding canals and spillways.

But he’s only a hair faster than the dragonfly dryad; the demon always nipping at his heels.

Far in the distance, there’s another flash of technicolor light, and this time, the light show is accompanied by a bellowing roar.

Salem.

A rock, titan, observational wheel rises from the cityscape to Oscar’s port side. As the giant gears cycle, the gaps between gears open and close at a regular, calculable interval.

There’s precious little time between when the gap opens and then shuts.

The physical space of the gap itself is small.

If this doesn’t kill the dryad—if this doesn’t kill us—it will at least put some distance between Oscar and the puppet.

Oscar veers off sharply, banking to the left. The dryad lashes out at Oscar’s boots as he turns and Oscar performs a messy aileron roll to evade the attack. He builds up speed, knowing that if his timing is off, that’s it—that’s curtains—bring the next one in—But he’s not going to get his timing wrong.

Tick-ticking like a clock, Ozma in his hindbrain. Counting, always counting down.

They race toward the oscillating gears, pick a gap between stone cogs, and set their course.

The gap closes.

They scream toward a closed door. Objectively, a brick wall. A shut window—Oscar used to have nonsensical nightmares of flying face first into glass windowpanes. If Oscar was going to balk, this would be the moment. The terror is there. It is omnipresent.

Oscar begins to fold his wings in. Every movement feels like slow motion.

The gap opens.

Oscar tucks his wings in tight and flattens his arms to his sides. For two ticks of a clock, Oscar becomes a midair bullet.

The gap closes.

No sooner than his boots leave the threshold of the guillotine gap.

Free and clear to the other side, Oscar hurtles through the air, chancing the barest glance backward to make sure his trap worked—and sees a stick-bug limb crunched in the gap.

His teeth peek out past his lips as he grins.

Satisfied, Oscar swoops upward, climbing elevation to soar above the skyline of the buried and drowned city. He sets his heading as the direction that last flash of light came from, and gets one hand around the hilt of his weapon again.

Oscar makes the mistake of looking down when he registers an anomaly with the terrain that races by below him.

This part of the city does not move.

A red lake. A ring of altars, circling its shore. And at its center, a hole. Perfectly circular. A well. A pit of darkness.

The red lake flows over the edges of the pit and cascades. The gentlest falls.

In a reverberating pulse, three roughly triangular panels emerge and cut through the red flow of the falls. The smooth rounded edges of the three petals interlock and the gap closes. The pit shutters.

The way is shut.

The water level of the red lake rises. A thumping pulse reverberates out.

So similar in construction to the vault door to the surface of the moon—The three petals turn and retract, and the pit opens once more. Once the way opens again, the falls rush back down, into the unknowable abyss below.

All Oscar can think is: Heart-valve.

Aortic—Pulmonary—Rhythmic—

The valve shuts once more.

Oscar passes right over the red lake and the pit, before he can think to be afraid of it.

The heart-valve opens, just as Oscar overshadows it, and his stomach drops.

I Have Waited Long Enough.

When Oscar thrashes himself out of another bout of madness, he’s lost altitude, but he didn’t literally nosedive into the pit of hell.

He doesn’t let himself wonder. He’s got no spare room for it.

No time to dwell on it.

Oscar pushes off the slanted roof of a ziggurat to keep from colliding with it, and redoubles his efforts to reach Salem.

As he wobbles back up into the air, he catches sight of the dryad rocketing toward him. Its right arm—the thorny, tree bark skin peeled off—underneath oozing, yellow, mycelial flesh—looks stunted and fetal. The vernal limb must be growing back after it was chopped off.

“Fucking hell,” Ozma says.

Oscar bites his tongue and tastes blood.

He’s overly aware of every inch of his body, from the strain of his wide open eyes to the outstretched tips of his wings.

His right hand is numb with pain.

Oscar banks sharply around the bell loft of an ornate clock tower and spots Salem interlocked in fierce combat with another abomination.

A ghoul, made of ivory bones and dark ichor. The oddities of its anatomy match the dryad’s, though it is much more human in form. It has six arms and two long legs. When it stands upright, on just its two feet, the ghoul is no taller than Salem.

Its face is just as grotesque as the first time Oscar saw it.

But the most novel part of its anatomy is its tail. Sprouting from the ghoul’s posterior is an elongated, segmented, many-legged, centipede tail. It repeatedly balances on its long, prehensile tail to loom over Salem. The ghoul also appears to rely heavily on its skittering tail to outmaneuver Salem.

When not performing its balancing act, it tends to crawl on its belly.

One could mistake the ghoul for a new species of Grimm. If not for its awful, milky-white, human eyes. And the things it says.

“BUTCHER WANTS A FRIEND.” The ghoul bellows, the tone of voice and volume of a hundred brutal fathers. “POOR LONELY THING. WANT TO BELONG, BUTCHER?”

There’s something strange about the ichor that makes up the jabbering ghoul’s body. It’s semi-transparent, as if the Grimm essence has been diluted by another substance.

Oscar registers that Salem is kneeling on the ground—Her legs are in the process of reforming—Just below the knees. Salem lifts one arm and fires off a quick barrage of magical volts. The blasts of magic bounce off the ichor surface of the ghoul’s skin, leaving ripples in the viscous surface; but no lasting damage.

Immune to magic.

With one hand, Salem grabs a chunk of debris from a nearby collapsed building and lobs it at the ghoul. As the boulder hurtles through the air, Salem blasts it. It explodes and rains stone bullets down on the ghoul. The chattering ghoul is fast and manages to partially scuttle out of the radius of Salem’s attack. But it still takes a shot gun blast of rubble to the shoulder. Oscar can see, from this height, the moment a rock the size of a coin punches through the ghoul’s left scapula.

But not invincible.

The ghoul lunges for Salem as the bones of her legs reconstitute; but before muscle and skin can be properly woven into place. The two lock hands and the ground buckles under Salem feet at the force of the ghoul’s pounce.

One of her ankles snap.

“CAN’T SAVE ANYONE. CAN’T HOLD ONTO ANYONE.” The ghoul howls, getting right in Salem’s face. “YOU DO AS A BUTHER DOES. AS A BUTCHER MUST. BLEED THAT LITTLE ONE DRY TOO.”

A ghastly smile splits the ghoul’s flayed face, and it digs its thirty fingers into Salem’s hands and forearms. Thin, sinewy, yellow strands wiggle and squirm free from between the knuckle joints of the ghoul’s hands and burrow into the flesh of Salem’s arms.

Salem jerks and tries to summon a spell strike—aimed at herself—just above the elbows—but the ghoul thrashes Salem around like a rag doll. And her severing blow doesn’t land.

The yellow threads creep up Salem’s arm, wriggling under her skin and then erupting back out once tangled and infested inside her flesh.

Oscar can hear the buzz of the dryad’s wings closing in behind him.

Time for a few more tricks.

Oscar tucks in his wings and dives for Salem.

As he picks up speed, Oscar inputs a careful sequence of command clicks by squeezing the gear shift handle at the Long Memory’s hilt. Cogwheels and gears turning, the weapon begins to vibrate and hum in Oscar’s grasp. The lever handle affixed to the Long Memory’s cross guard extends outward like a fin. The rondure pommel of the Long Memory glows nova green. Oscar spins the grip and pole of the Long Memory in his hands, to set his wide, two-handed hold on the extended pole of his weapon, rather than the hilt.

Just as Salem—still interlocked with the ghoul—comes within striking distance, a green plasma blade catalyzes from the core of the Long Memory. Alacritous—exacting—Oscar scythes the laser through Salem’s flesh. And with uncanny precision, he severs Salem’s arms just below the humeral head of the shoulder joint. Saving flesh unspoiled by worming infestation.

The energetic blade exists in a flash, only for the moment of the strike. There and gone; a lightning strike.

Oscar sweeps Salem up in the revolution of his gale and spins her around. With Salem now facing the dryad, Oscar plants his boots on her back and aims himself at the ghoul.

Oscar pushes off, and shouts, “Switch!”

He flies at the ghoul as it rears back.

Heat explodes behind him and Oscar is immediately hit with the wafting smell of smoke and burning flesh.

Burnt sugary sap.

“BABY BIRD!” The awful thing in front of him shouts with glee.

Oscar has to be fast—quicker and cleverer than he’s ever been before—He has to be fast enough for the ghoul to not even get a chance to learn how to fight him.

He has time for one, decisive blow.

He looks for the taunt thread of an opening.

With a wheezing, wet, rattling bark of laughter the ghoul raises up its centipede tail, whips the appendage over its head, and slams the hard chiton shell down directly in front of its face. Directly in Oscar’s hurtling flight path.

At the last moment, Oscar lets the pressure push of the centipede tail’s descending blow carry him out of the way and dodges nimbly to the side.

CLICK-CLICK-TICK, goes the lever of the Long Memory in Oscar’s hand.

Oscar lashes out with a brutal strike, hitting the ghoul upside the head—much the same as he had the dryad in the cathedral. The ghoul cracks its neck back, and its lidless, bulbous eyes fix him with a gaze of unfiltered hate.

“EAT YOU UP!” The ghoul bellows, pulls its tail back, and throws out its six arms wide—snare-grapple.

The line pulls taunt—No room for error—

Bullet time. The ghoul’s six arms begin to close around him.

I fear the snare—The cage—The butcher’s block—The hunter’s teeth—

Oscar plunges the Long Memory hilt first into the gut of the hateful ghoul, just as the globe at the weapon’s pommel unfurls—lotus petals—and detonates.

Criticality.

Green lightning.

Waves of gold.

The roar of the explosion, at first, sounds like it’s underwater—At a distance, not two feet from his face.

Then the ghoul explodes into globular pieces, and splatters violently out and away from Oscar in a 180-degree radius.

In a split second—between when the initial blast wave obliterates the ghoul’s internals and vaporizes its bones—Oscar catches a glimpse of a golden beetle; securely wrapped around a few stray vertebrae.

That remnant of the ghoul rockets away into the city, and disappears into the red deluge.

Oscar lands, his feet skidding on wet stone, and stumbles to his knees. He staggers up onto all fours and twists around as he hears a stone pillar collapse behind him.

He catches only a glimpse of the charred upper body of the dryad diving into the rapids of a red river as Salem rips the thing in half with her bare hands.

Salem lunges to dive after the dryad and Oscar jolts.

“Salem!” He calls.

She whips around.

One of the mutated dryad’s twiggy tarsal claws is impaled in her left eye socket.

The dryad escapes.

Salem stares. She yanks the branch out of her skull as she prowls toward Oscar.

He sees something in her face that frightens and vexes them.

“Child—“ Salem says.

“I found the way down. Follow me.” He says, his voice hoarse, and doesn’t wait.

Oscar unfolds and spreads his wings to their full extent and sails up into the air once again.

Fear grips him—Hurry—Hurry—His heart pounds.

It’s a relatively short flight back to the red lake and the heart-valve well, but the mad urgency that’s captured his heart pushes him to extreme speeds.

He doesn’t land, so much as he hits the ground running. Oscar touches down on the rock carved shore of the red lake and watches—transfixed and terrified—as the heart-valve opens and drinks the volume of the lake. Then it closes once more.

He makes no note of the streams that feed into the perfectly circular lake.

Oscar hears Salem land behind him and then a hurried stride.

Oscar steps up to the lip of the water’s edge. The water level looks to be no more than a foot deep. Maybe less.

His mind is eerily quiet.

“Wait.” Salem says and seizes his shoulder from behind.

Oscar dislodges her hold with ferocity, spins around to face Salem and flits away from her; toward the heart valve falls.

He lands in the red lake with a crimson splash.

The red rainwater tugs at his ankles as it goes flowing past him, ebbing and tumbling down the heart-valve falls at his back.

Salem’s face is carved of ice. Her out-held hand—the one she reached for Oscar with—drops to her side limply. There is such cold fury held in every line of tension in her body.

And—Mercy—Under the rage is shame. Oscar feels sick.

Oscar doesn’t want to be collateral.

The ghoul’s verbal abuses knock around in their mind and crash-obliterate any other reasonable thought they may have.

There are very few rational thoughts top-of-mind right now.

A whisper, “Let’s just go,” and Oscar turns his back on Salem.

After a moment’s hesitation, Oscar hears Salem solemnly step into the pool of red.

Suddenly, a fear-inspiring flash of yellow emanates from behind him—Counterfeit. Oscar sees his split-second shadow on the surface of the red pool. After the flash, Oscar’s eyes hurt, and an after-image burns in his sight line. As if he looked directly at the sun.

Salem howls in agony.

Alarmed, Oscar spins around and sees the aftermath of the attack. The dryad is cupping Salem’s face in its hands—its forehead pressed tenderly to hers—and Salem’s eyes are melting out of her skull.

A pale, yellow light takes up residence in her hollow eye sockets instead.

Salem roars and thrashes off the dichotomized dryad. Blind but forever lethal, she strikes the dryad’s neck, and its head goes sailing off in the opposite direction of its ribcage.

Salem scratches at her empty eyes—unable to dislodge the offending, lurid light—and starts cursing.

Oscar staggers toward her but gets no further than two steps.

Gentle receding current turns riptide—dragging at his legs—and a spontaneous wave crashes over Oscar. Knocking him off his feet. The water level rises above his shoulders and drags him toward the open, gaping, heart-valve maw at the center of the shallow lake.

Oscar fights the sophont tide. Wings thrashing, arms paddling, and mouth gasping.

Salem staggers toward the sounds of Oscar’s struggle. One hand covering her eyes as black ichor bleeds down her cheeks.

Sickly, yellow light streams between the gaps of her fingers.

A red waterspout issues forth from the center of the heart-valve falls. It ripples and twists in the air with strange animus—Leviathan tendril. The fluid mass of red whips out and envelops Oscar.

Submerging him in the red tears of the moon.

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers.

Oscar is swept away into the spontaneous whirlpool and down the throat of the heart-valve falls.

Twisting in the dark chaos, the strong current rips the Long Memory from his grasp.

The heart-valve closes and Oscar falls, alone, sightless, into drowning depths.

Welcome Home.

Chapter Text

I. Months Ago

The sun was setting.

Oscar was sitting on top of the filing cabinets that were pushed up against the wall under the windows. Obscured by his silhouette, the unseen sun sunk low on the horizon. The warm light of sunset haloed him and glinted off the golden flecks in his feathers. Where the light hit his dark hair, it turned auburn-red and hazy gold. Dying daylight set his freckled, brown skin aglow.

Attentively listening, Oscar had his legs crossed one over the other, his right elbow bent, supported by his thigh, and his chin resting on his right palm. His left arm was slung across his lap. Oscar’s fingers were curled and pressed to his sealed lips.

Nora was speaking, she was unsure but passionate. Blake interjected when Nora stalled out. Yang and Emerald bickered affably.

Background noise.

Oscar’s wings shifted, absentmindedly. Tawny brown, ephemeral amber-ochre, and speckled cream.

Ruby had her back to the larger group as she faced the frenzied chalkboard. It was a veritable tapestry of everything they knew about each faction that currently made up the Coalition. Their leaders, key players, issues, and demands. There was almost a dozen different handwritings scrawled on the board.

Ruby and her friends had commandeered one of Shade’s auditorium classrooms as a kind of war room. They were strategizing on the best way to unify the disparate factions and present their proposal to the newly formed Coalition Council.

They were still short on the votes they needed.

This kind of political maneuvering made Ruby’s calluses itch for gunmetal and velocity.

Ruby had her back to the group and was facing the chalkboard, but her head was turned to the side. Her gaze elsewhere. She hadn’t been reviewing their gathered intel for some time now.

Instead, she was watching Oscar.

Taking in every detail—posture, mannerisms, the cadence of his voice, the fall of shadows across the planes of his face, the glimmer of light in his eyes—all his own—with studious, near obsessive intensity.

If Oscar sensed he was being watched so acutely, he hadn’t let on, yet.

Ruby didn’t fully realize she was doing it until she got caught staring.

In a lull in the conversation, sudden as a rush, Oscar flicked his eyes to Ruby and met her gaze.

Caught, Ruby looked away immediately, back to the board, unseeing; and then looked back to Oscar a half-second later. Oscar had held Ruby’s gaze and a slow, small smile slanted across his face, half hidden behind his curled fingers.

It was an Oscar smile. A real Oscar smile.

Ruby sent him a smile of her own, with maybe too much naked tenderness for the crowded moment. But in that brief instant, no one else existed except for the two of them.

Everything softened, everything quieted.

Like all the weight lifted, for one relieved sigh of a moment, when she looked into those ringed, hazel-green eyes.

In the background, Nora continued talking to the group at large.

Ruby would have felt bad about completely checking out of the conversation, but her friends had truly, truly, been talking in circles for hours.

She was tired.

Ruby knew they were all tired. Oscar hid it best.

It’s not fair.

Oscar’s sharp eyes were drawn away from Ruby toward the active, ongoing discussion happening right behind her. Ruby tuned back into the conversation, pulled along by Oscar’s own shifting focus.

“We need their support,” Nora said. “We can’t just say, ‘This is what we’re doing. Fall in line. Get over it.’ The refugees and Vacuans have to agree to it. They have to have a say in what happens to them.”

“We literally can’t make everyone happy,” Emerald replied, slouched low in her seat with her neck tilted back on the headrest of her auditorium chair. Emerald had thrown her hands up, frustration a puff of air from her lungs, “Some of the things these different groups want are in direct opposition to each other!”

Nora made a distinctly characteristic, unhappy Nora-Noise, but Blake jumped in diplomatically before Nora could get going.

“We need concessions.” Blake agreed, “The Faunus refugees from Mantle have been largely accepted by the Vacuan Faunus community. The human refugees from Mantle have also pretty seamlessly been incorporated into that group. They’ll vote in a block. The problem is the upper class Atlas refugees and the industry holdouts—What they want is the problem.”

There was a chorus of assent to Blake’s statement.

A trite, “Duh.” from Emerald.

A waspish, “Greedy bastards,” from Yang.

Vigorous head nodding came from both Ren and Weiss.

Ruby shifted her weight on the balls of her feet, and then she turned her body to the side—facing the windows. But she didn’t turn to fully face the circle of her friends.

Ruby shared a significant look with Oscar. He took her meaning—and shared her concern with an affirmative glance—but his expression was unusually inscrutable to her.

Worry prickled at Ruby. She crossed her arms over her chest.

Blake continued, “The old dynamic between Faunus and humans is reasserting itself here, too. And made all the worse by rampant, nationalist xenophobia spread by the Crown.”

“Emerald’s right,” Blake lifted a hand to gesture at Emerald, who lolled her head to the side to look at Blake, not unkindly. Blake said, “We’re going to have to make some people unhappy and we should think hard about where we make concessions and where we hold the line.”

“The communities are too different.” Jaune said, grim, his chin balanced on the pommel of his new sword. His hands clasped at its two-handed, great sword hilt. “But the math doesn’t square, we still need all their votes.”

“Humans don’t trust Faunus. Faunus don’t trust humans.” Weiss sighed, with a deep sadness and barely concealed guilt. “Only one of those groups has a good reason to not trust the other.”

These two responses, while well-meaning, irked Ruby—because they’re missing the point.

Oscar hummed and drew the collective gaze of the group to him.

“A distinction without a difference,” Oscar said with a hand wave, and an involuntary flutter of his wings. He was talking fast, but didn’t miss a beat, “What’s important here, is bridging the gap—But, as Blake says, not ceding the ground under our feet at the same time. A number of the Atlasian demands are fueled by bald ignorance and that’s where we should focus our negotiations.”

“Our predicament—The threat we face—is equalizing.” As always, Oscar was unpretentious and straightforward, but very shrewd. Oscar gestured animatedly, he said, “It forces us to stand shoulder to shoulder or die. We need to use that. There is more about us that is the same then—“

“A distinction without a difference?” Blake interrupted, belatedly. Her ears tweaked in bewilderment. “What do you mean, ‘A distinction without a difference’?”

The unspoken, dangerously polite, ‘I must have misheard you,’ was clear in her voice.

Oscar blinked, wide-eyed and owlish. His hands froze where he held them up to gesture at the chalk board. He blinked again and dropped his hands.

With a far away look, his gaze suddenly directed down at the ground, Oscar had said, “Ignore me, I’m not being helpful.”

Blake turned in her seat to face Oscar then. An intensity grew in her face, as Blake seized upon a detail Ruby had not cottoned onto yet.

Ruby took a step toward Oscar, reassurance ready—ready to put herself between him and the group—worried of another dog-pile—some misplaced, protective feeling bubbling to the surface—but Yang beat her to it.

“Wait, no.” Yang said, placating arm held out toward Oscar. “What does that mean? What do you mean?”

Oscar grimaced and ran a haggard hand down his face, chagrined. His whole body sagged with some grievous exhaustion. When Oscar next opened his eyes, there was a faint yellow-gold glow emanating from behind his pupils.

It was soft, but unmistakable.

Suddenly, Ruby was wide awake and alert. A cold feeling entered her body. Her calluses itched, but there was nothing to fight, except inevitability.

With a harsh sigh, Oscar sat up straight, and looked them all in the eye.

Oscar then said, in a chilling, echoing voice, “You have forgotten that which you used to know well as the People of Remnant. That truth which you discover and discard in seasons. The knowledge slips through your fingers like water as the generations pass. Things that shouldn’t be forgotten are eroded and lost. The known truth isn’t passed on to the younger generations, and the knowing leaves you…Sometimes, willfully.”

Everyone was looking at Oscar with alarm by that point.

“Know what?” Ruby asked carefully, anguish buried deep at the look of him. The sound of an Other twinning his voice. She pushed, “What don’t we know now?”

Oscar looked at her. It was not just Oscar looking at her.

Ruby clamped down on the betraying riot of ugly emotions inside of her and kept her demeanor cool and calm.

“Humans. Faunus. One and the same,” the internal light dimmed, and Oscar lifted his shoulders and wings at once when he shrugged. A wry grin broke out across his face. He continued, and the light brightened, “One species. We all came from the same place—A distinction without a difference.”

Ruby blinked.

“That—“ Jaune objected and then cut himself off. After a pregnant pause, he redoubled, “That can’t be true. If it were—We would know that…Wouldn’t we?”

Ruby skirted her gaze around the faces of the room. Most incredulous but some were thoughtfully pondering.

“But we are distinct,” Emerald debated, one manicured, sharp eyebrow raised. “Pretty obviously.”

“And where do you draw the line at Faunus traits versus “human” traits?” Oscar asked. Teacher voice, which was distinct from Professor voice. “From the outside, two people with amber eyes appear to be indistinct, but one of these people can see much better than the other. You could say, one of them has eagle eyes. But the rest of them is exactly the same—I’m telling you, factually—physically—there is no substantial difference underneath.”

“People get built different, sure, does this difference equate a species gap? What makes red eyes or green hair reasonable human traits but scales or fangs inhuman? Someone’s on the hairier side, are they human hairy or Faunus hairy? What decides?” Oscar searched their faces, “It’s arbitrary. And cultural. That’s my point.”

“But…” Weiss fidgeted in her seat looking askance, “Two humans can’t have a Faunus child.”

“Can’t they?” Oscar swiveled and tilted his head in Weiss’ direction, bird-of-prey mannerism—The light eerie in his eyes. It was still mostly Oscar talking. “How common of a stigmatizing myth is the adulterous Faunus? How many different folktales hinge upon an unfaithful human bride and a monstrous child born out of wedlock?”

Everyone went still and quiet.

Then, Yang’s voice, a light-bulb, “The Minotaur.”

Jaune added, intrigued, “The Beast of Gévaudan.”

Blake nodded, an epiphany in her eyes, “The Lindworm Prince.”

“And many more!” Oscar singsonged, oddly cheerful.

“But even then,” Weiss unfolded, and refolded her crossed arms, “If people were having Faunus babies now, wouldn’t we know?”

“It’s exceedingly rare,” Oscar admitted, “We speculate less than 1% of the population is born with Faunus traits that have two parents without Faunus traits. That is fewer people than all the redheads in the world.”

Here, Oscar turned to Nora with a gregarious, conspiratorial look. Nora smirked at him, she didn’t seem to have a problem accepting this revelation into her worldview at all.

We speculate, Ruby thought.

Oscar turned back to Weiss, he said, “But that has more to do with long held cultural stigma around Faunus and Human unions impacting the gene pool. Today’s cultural norm is to assume infidelity when a child is born with Faunus traits to two parents without Faunus traits.”

Behind him, the desert grew dark. Oscar swept his eyes over the group again, “And how common is that?”

This little factoid hit the group in waves.

“There is a distinction,” Oscar corrected, after they all resettled. “But it’s a cultural—and structural—one.”

Everyone took this in different strides. Blake seemed to be the one most shaken by this information.

Ruby thought about Jinn’s vision and the Faunus in cages.

She thought about how there allegedly used to be more Faunus than humans, way back when.

Ruby could put two and two together.

Supremacy must maintain itself through violence.

Yang reached for Blake’s hand and gently held it. Then, when their eyes had met, Yang wordlessly coaxed Blake out of the beginnings of an existential spiral—The look they shared was too vulnerable, it deserved privacy, Ruby had to look away.

The envy she felt at their freeness was stupid.

And—of course—she looked away, right into Oscar’s eyes.

He must have seen right through her.

Oscar held Ruby’s gaze and hummed again. That time, more musically. After a moment, he cast his gaze back to the group at large.

“Humanity as it exists now is very different from Ozma and Salem’s time.” Oscar then went on to say, with some measure of lighthearted humor, “I mean—pink hair and pink eyes, rather outlandish compared to the ancient humans.”

Oscar glanced at Ren, a humorous glint in his eye—An inside joke?—And Ren lilted his eyebrows at Oscar with the softest of Philia smiles.

Oscar continued, “Let alone our other distinctive features.”

Here, Oscar had nonchalantly shook out his wings. He said, “We are wonderfully odd this go around.”

“I’m actually curious now,” Nora said, “Surely people back then had pink hair at least, right?”

Oscar smiled at her, “Unfortunately, no. Most people had black or brown hair. A few people—like Salem—had blonde hair. Others —though fewer—did have red hair, but the hues were more limited than what’s possible today. Only the elderly had white hair, mostly—It came with age.”

Emerald snorted in Weiss’ direction and Weiss threw an empty water bottle at her. Emerald caught it and slung the bottle back at Weiss immediately. Weiss snatched the water bottle on the return and set it down on the desk pointedly; face pink.

“Then, what about blue eyes?” Nora asked, and pointed at her own blue sky eyes. Paying no mind to shenanigans.

“Yes, in fact,” Oscar said—and Ruby puzzled at the arbitrariness of it all. “The first humanity had brown, blue, gray, and green eyes. Brown was most common, green and gray were rare—But nothing more than that.”

Ruby recollected Jinn’s vision again and every lost soul shown from the world that came before.

She’d burned them all into her memory that day.

“How strange,” Ruby said. She raised a keen eyebrow at Oscar, and had tried to make her voice sound curious and light as air. “Gray you say?”

“Not silver,” Oscar carefully distinguished. He said it like an apology, but he also smiled at her so, so, softly.

Ruby pursed her lips, but pursued that line of thought no further. She had to look away from Oscar, or she was going to trip and fall—And in front of everyone else too. Gods, spare her the mortification.

Spare her the reality of the situation.

“If…” said Blake.

They all stopped and gave her their full attention. But Blake trailed off. Her voice losing it’s strength and her face full of shadow.

Yang squeezed Blake’s hand, achingly tender and reassuring. Blake closed her eyes and fortified herself with Yang’s support.

“If we didn’t have animal traits to carve out as an Other,” Blake had said, “We’d just find some other trait to classify and discriminate against.”

Ruby knew it was true.

Oscar nodded, measured. He looked so tired in that moment.

The glow faded from behind his eyes, until he blinked, and it was gone.

Ruby was happy to see it go.

As the night crept in and the darkness drew darker outside, Oscar’s reflection in the windowpanes behind him became stark and sharp. That light, which Ruby attributed to the curse and not to Oz, reasserted itself.

But not in Oscar’s own face.

Oscar’s reflection stopped following his idle movements. The back of his head, in the reflection, looked somewhere else—Straight on. Slow, mechanical, and spine-chilling, Oscar’s reflection turned its head around backward—independent of Oscar, who was still facing forward, his head turned down—and looked right at Ruby.

Her stomach dropped.

Its eyes, alight—awful yellow and phantom white—pierced her as true as any knife.

Ruby stopped breathing and smothered her fear reflexively. As if she were facing down a Grimm, a kind of monster that could be comforting in its known quantity and familiarity.

That was not what this thing was.

Oscar’s reflection looked at her with haunted certainty, a subtle sheen of turquoise shimmered over its visage. Wide eyed and severe. The kind of intense expression that preceded a howling scream of madness. In the reflection, Oscar’s features remained rigidly, inhumanly still, but the scream was there in its gaze.

Ruby could hear it in her head.

The Howling.

The glass of the windowpane made an infinitesimal creaking sound and then shattered—A spontaneous spiderweb of cracks issuing forth from the two pupil pinpoints of Oscar’s reflection.

Just before his reflection shattered, Oscar had flinched.

In the moment the glass splintered—A hundred twisted, shrieking faces in the fractured shards.

In the split second fissured aftermath, Oscar leapt like prey from the top of the filling cabinet across the room. Without thinking, her body already moving, Ruby extended Crescent Rose to its full extent and put herself between Oscar and the windows. Oscar, who also may not have been thinking and had just moved on instinct—a flash of his wings as he bolted—dove for Ruby.

So, as Crescent Rose unfurled in Ruby’s grasp, Oscar slotted near perfectly into her guard.

The moment Crescent Rose was bared and ready, Ruby already knew it was pointless. Ruby was trying to guard Oscar against something he carried with him—Inside. Not another gun in a trembling hand.

Predictably, however, everyone else reacted like those were bullet impacts in the window. They all hit the deck.

No one else had seen, only Ruby.

Oscar leaned into her space as the room became a loud flurry of movement and Ruby—though she knew it was needlessly overbearing—backed herself and Oscar up, out of view from the windows.

Irrationally, she didn’t want his reflection looking at him.

Jaune and Ren ducked and rushed to Oscar. Jaune called out, “He’s okay!” Once they’d checked Oscar over and found no gunshot wounds.

Ruby noted that Oscar made no effort to correct anyone’s assumptions or assuage their fears. In fact, Oscar had gone mute, and actually tried to hide behind Ruby. Ruby wondered for a staggered moment if even he had missed it, but one look into Oscar’s eyes—as Jaune turned away to shout something at Yang and Nora—Oscar’s nose was bleeding—told her everything.

He knew.

He was himself right now, and he knew.

Frightfully, they both understood.

Nora, Yang, and Blake hurtled out of the room to investigate the shooter that didn’t exist.

Jaune and Weiss took up defensive positions around them. Their weapons drawn.

Ren, conspicuously, did not. He crouched low near Oscar and failed to get Oscar to meet his ambulatory eye.

Emerald walked right up to the window and glared at the rippled fractures in the glass and then out into the night.

As Ren persisted in searching Oscar’s face, Oscar leaned more heavily on Ruby to hide.

Oscar pressed his forehead against her shoulder and grabbed a fistful of her red cloak. He was trembling. Ruby felt nonsensical overprotectiveness seize her good sense and she shot Ren a firm, but perhaps too searing, ceasefire look.

Ren actually flinched at the force of her glare and put up a bewildered, placating hand. He looked deliberately away from her and Oscar, and rocked back on his crouched heels. Ren’s expression was plainly concerned but directed elsewhere.

Once Ren’s scrutiny was diverted, Oscar softened his grip slightly, but he didn’t let go.

And he was still shaking.

The others were going to catch on that something was really wrong soon. They’d think, This wasn’t like him—Only in the case of what the others thought had happened. And not given what had actually happened—The curse and its sharp teeth. The wounds of the soul that didn’t bleed—That no one could see. The essence of his being—Chewed up and spat out.

They would think, that this wasn’t the first time an attempt had been made on Oscar’s life. And they’d worry.

Last time, Oscar caught his attempted murderer himself.

When everyone calmed down enough to think clearly, they were all going to realize, That’s not bulletproof glass.

Ruby wanted to say something—but Oscar was giving her every signal in their shared, secret lexicon that he could not bear talking about it in front of the others.

So, Ruby kept up her protective guard around him. Even though she knew it could only make him feel safe.

And wished for a miracle, to keep him safe.

Ruby waved goodbye with as bright a smile as she could muster to the clamoring crowd. She turned a corner at normal-person walking speed and—when no one had eyes on her anymore—made her scattered escape via the external outlets of the academy’s air ducts. Ruby turned into a roaming cloud of rose petals and slipped right through the vent teeth.

She’d reinforced quite the odd habit of traveling via HVAC systems when cloaked in petal burst. It was almost the only method of travel that kept her from getting stopped 4-5 times everyday on the way from Point A to Point B, anywhere; let alone on academy grounds. Though she was most familiar with Shades’ network of winding air ducts, Ruby often didn’t think twice about dematerializing herself into the local AC network for a quick getaway or shortcut. She did try to stay out of private residences out of an ingrained sense of polite courtesy.

Right now, Ruby’s social battery was drained and she needed some alone time.

There was no where she needed to be for another hour and a half. So, instead of heading back to the barracks or the training grounds, Ruby headed to the storerooms. Where she could find a dark alcove between shelves, and maybe turn her brain off and play Brawler’s Concrete on her scroll for a little while.

The storerooms were their own maze but were occupied by other people with far less frequency. Supplies were running low, after all.

No point in checking empty shelves.

Ruby swirled out of an air vent in the northern most corridor of Shade’s depleted repository and rematerialized crouched low to the ground between two dusty shelves. One of which proudly displayed a lone box of toiletries.

She quieted her breathing and strained to hear a shuffle of boots or idle chatter down any of the storeroom’s straight, boxy hallways.

Ruby heard nothing except the creaks of the old building.

Tangibly relived, Ruby sighed, and headed toward her favorite hiding space near the root vegetables. On the way there, Ruby would have to pass the repository’s office—where all the records of supplies, donations, and scheduled distributions were kept. It was unlikely to be occupied but she would still be careful to check anyway.

A few paces from the office the hair on Ruby’s arms and at the back of her neck stood on end. There was an almost imperceptible pressure in the air. She slowed to a cautious stop for a single beat, just as she was passing the closed door.

It wasn’t odd that the storeroom office door was closed. It was odd that the door was locked.

Neon green and burning yellow light flashed from the gap at the bottom lip of the door.

Ruby rushed to press her ear to the door and heard a strangled, young voice cry out in muffled agony from within the confines of the office.

Ruby’s heart leapt up her throat and she pulled violently at the handle of the locked office door. She pounded and shoved at the door fruitlessly—throwing her full weight against it—until Ruby overcame her panic induced idiocy and flew under the gap between the door and the floor as scattered rose petals.

In a blast of rose scented wind, Ruby emerged into the dark office and took in every detail as she would a battlefield. There were signs of a struggle. A broken chair thrown against the wall. One of the desks was overturned, and papers were flung in every direction—There was a weak, shivering wind in the room that did not come from Ruby. A burgeoning mini cyclone that dragged its weak, willowy grasp through her hair and tugged at her clothes.

And on the floor, curled up in a tiny ball on his side—like he was nursing a wound—was Oscar.

Ruby didn’t think, she just moved. Crescent Rose unfurled and snapped into being in her hand as Ruby flew across the room and landed, standing defensively, bodily over Oscar’s fallen, vulnerable form.

The Long Memory was embedded by its stave in the wall as if Oscar had thrown it like a javelin.

Her mind racing, Ruby looked for the threat that had laid him out. Eyes jumping between points of movement in the room. On red alert, Ruby was ready to tear apart the first thing that jumped out at them from the shadows.

There was nothing.

Every computer screen in the room was cracked and dark.

On the ground, Oscar shuddered and sobbed. Oscar clutched at his face, the blunt edges of his fingernails dug angry, red half-moons into the skin of his forehead, as green and gold light streamed in flashes between the gaps of his fingers.

Ruby’s stomach dropped to somewhere likely hundreds of feet underground.

“No-!” Ruby gasped, dropping Crescent Rose in a clatter as she went to the ground and reached for Oscar with trembling hands. Ruby grabbed onto his shoulder and arm. “No, no! Not now!”

“Oscar!” Ruby called as she shook him.

Oscar didn’t react to her presence at all. His feathers were standing on end in clear distress. He jolted and one wing was flung out in a jerk. Ruby narrowly dodged and ducked low, closer to Oscar’s head.

He started murmuring in a whispered, feverish pitch—the words too fast and wetly broken for Ruby to understand.

Ruby wasn’t even sure Oscar was speaking in a language she knew.

Ruby pried Oscar’s hands away from his face just as he started to break the skin. A sudden, involuntary sob pulled from her throat as Oscar whimpered.

Once his eyes were unveiled, green light lit up the room. A sporadic wash of yellow intruded in violent blazes.

Oscar’s eyes—green nova—burned their purblind gaze into her. There were no pupils or irises, just warring light.

Suns crammed into his skull.

Oscar gasped and reared as yellow light washed over green. Oscar jerked again and nearly hit his head against the leg of a table. Ruby grappled with his wrists and waist to keep him from hurting himself. Green overtook yellow once more and Oscar thrashed harder in Ruby’s hold.

“O welche Lust, in freier Luft. Den Atem leicht zu heben! Nur hier, nur hier ist Leben!Der Kerker eine Gruft.” Oscar rasped.

Ruby didn’t understand.

Louder, almost begging, he croaked, “Wir wollen mit Vertrauen. Auf Gottes Hilfe bauen! Die Hoffnung flüstert sanft mir zu: Wir werden frei, wir finden Ruh.”

They struggled on the ground. With great difficulty, Ruby maneuvered Oscar into her arms, settled his back against her front, and thumped her own back against the wall. She grappled her hands around his wrists and barred her arms across his chest. Oscar kicked out with his legs and Ruby had to restrain him by his thighs.

Oscar stank of ozone.

His eyes flashed green. He gasped like a man drowning on thin air.

Oscar chanted, through clenched teeth, “¡Pienso en tu mirá, tu mirá, clavá, es una bala en el pecho!”

The light in his eyes flashed yellow and Oscar strangled the scream in his own throat.

Aura glimmered over his skin.

Is this it? Is he going to die in my arms? Right now? Ruby had thought, almost dissociatively, but it was too raw to push down.

Hot, painful tears began to well up in her eyes, and without her permission, pour down her cheeks. Ruby held Oscar tight in her arms and pressed her right cheek against his feverish left cheek. She didn’t really care when he knocked their skulls together as he struggled against her hold. Or when she got a face full of feathers when he beat his wings in his thrashing.

She just tried to hold on.

After an indeterminate amount of time, the light in his eyes burst a vibrant, verdant green.

Oscar let out the same kind of noise that would’ve accompanied a decisive blow in a fight. His back arched and he strained against her hold in one final jolt before he collapsed against her and went limp. The light in his eyes petered out until it vanished entirely, dimming last from his pupils before going dark. His eyes fell shut.

Oscar was breathing hard, his back sticky with sweat. Ruby loosened her hold around him, but only so she could readjust to a more comfortable position for them both. Oscar slumped against her like his strings had been cut, his head cradled in the crook of her neck.

Ruby waited. She slide the circle of her hands from Oscar’s wrists to cover the backs of his hands and threaded her fingers through his. She couldn’t wipe at her eyes.

Oscar’s eyes fluttered and he whimpered in pain. Ruby tried not to breathe too loudly—as if that would help—but regardless of what she wanted, Ruby was on the edge of sobbing.

When she spoke, Ruby could hardly bear the raw sound of her own voice, “Oscar?”

Oscar blinked his bleary eyes open and tears slipped down his cheeks from the corners of his eyes. Agonizingly slow, he turned his glassy eyes in Ruby’s direction and looked at her. Oscar didn’t seem entirely lucid, but Ruby almost cried out at the immediate recognition she saw in his face.

Instead Ruby gasped and called his name again, “Oscar.”

Oscar looked at her with a lost expression.

“Ruby?” Oscar croaked, his own voice weak and raw.

Elated joy frissioned through her whole body and Ruby buckled under the relief. She gasped wetly. It was Oscar. Here he was, in her arms, still alive!

Oscar squeezed his eyes shut hard and a few sobbing breaths escaped as he shuddered with an aftershock of pain. More tears dripped from his eyes and Ruby gathered him up desperately in her arms.

“I’ve got you,” She said, trying to pull him closer, impossibly. She started unconsciously rocking them back and forth, “You’re okay…You’re okay…I’ve got you.”

Oscar turned his face into her neck and his breath hitched. Oscar’s eyelashes fluttered against her neck as he caught his breath.

Eventually, he pushed—oh so gently—at her arms still restraining him. Ruby immediately released him from her crushing hold and resituated their positions.

Ruby didn’t let go of him, she wasn’t capable of that right now, but she slide out from behind him and settled them into less dire positions. Oscar leaned his side against her as Ruby knelt beside him. Ruby laid one arm across his back and coaxed his head to rest in the crook of her neck once more. With her other hand, Ruby grasped Oscar’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

Oscar sighed with bone deep fatigue and sank into Ruby’s embrace.

Something bloomed anew in her chest and Ruby couldn’t hide from it.

She wanted very badly to kiss Oscar’s forehead, where all those little cuts were etched into his skin. They were already healing, with small glimmers of aura.

Instead, Ruby started running her fingers through his hair. As a midway point between keeping her feet firmly on solid ground (denial) and leaping off the edge of a cliff (insanity). Ruby even let herself have a little excuse by convincing herself it was to tidy his hair and brush it out of his eyes.

Helpful. She was being helpful.

“You’re safe,” Ruby said, tucking a curly lock of brown hair behind his ear. “I’ve got you.”

Oscar watched her as he caught his breath. A kind of trepidatious wonder overshadowed a deep anxiety in his eyes.

Eventually, she had to ask: “Are you hurt? What was that?”

Oscar let out a long exhale and then inhaled a fortifying breath. He nodded weakly, “‘M okay.”

Ruby watched Oscar visibly pick up the pieces.

“Oz and I…We’ve been fighting the merge,” Oscar said, exhausted. It took clear effort to put the sentences together. The next part came out of him watery and unhappy, “You—I don’t know what it looks from the outside…But you must’ve seen the attack...”

“Attack,” Ruby repeated, feeling cold.

“Merge attack,” Oscar confirmed.

“When—“ Ruby unconsciously held Oscar tighter. “How often are you under attack?”

Oscar closed his eyes and thought, he said, “Hm. This would be, the third time this week. It used to only happen a few times a month but…happens more often now.”

Ruby stared at him, and Oscar must have felt the pressure of her gaze because he grimaced and sheepishly peaked one eye open at her.

“Have you been dealing with this alone?” Ruby asked. An edge to her voice she would’ve dulled if she could.

“It’s fine—“ Oscar began but Ruby immediately cut him off with a cry.

“Oscar!” She objected. “Your team doesn’t know?”

“No,” Oscar said, disconcertingly cold in his defensiveness. “And they don’t need to. It’d just be another distraction.”

Ruby froze and locked down her facial expression to keep her true reaction to those words in check. By Oscar’s own trembling expression she could see she failed at that.

“Don’t talk like that,” Ruby said. “Don’t talk like that, not about this. They need to know—They’d want to know! Maybe Jaune could even help, like he helped Penny with the virus.”

Oscar winced at her, for reasons other than physical pain, and weakly shook his head, “You know that was a temporary fix—“

“It bough her time,” Ruby said—scar tissue—barely healed—off tempo beat of a broken heart—and had to shut her mouth when her voice cracked at the tail end of time.

Oscar’s eyes widened and he squeezed her hand tightly. Ruby shook her head wordlessly at him as she squeezed his hand back.

“You have to tell them, shit—You’re shaking, you need a medic or—We need help. I’m calling them right now,” Ruby said and let go of Oscar’s hand to reach for her scroll.

“No, please!” Oscar grabbed her wrist, sudden desperation in every line of tension in his body. “Please, you can’t tell them.”

“Oscar—“ Ruby started.

“Please! It’s bad enough that you know now—“ And Oscar cut himself off with a click of his teeth as his mouth slammed shut and his jaw locked.

Ruby starred at him.

“I didn’t—I,” Oscar stuttered. His voice strained around messy emotions, and new tears welled up in his eyes, “I didn’t want anyone to know. But I especially didn’t want you to know.”

“Why?” Ruby asked. Simply devastated and at a loss.

“Because now you’ll never rely on me again,” Oscar sobbed in a hushed, anguished whisper. He looked away from her, and through his teeth said, “I wanted…I want to be the person you lean on.”

That struck at the heart of her—Direct hit.

Ruby set aside any betrayed feelings that surfaced—pulverized them into dust—and crushed Oscar against her. He squeaked in surprise and her heart clenched in ardent fondness. Ruby rested her chin atop his head and dredged up that fierce feeling she still couldn’t bear to name.

Ruby said, “Well, you’re wrong. You’re just wrong. I do rely on you and I’m not going to stop because of—of this—this terrible, terrible thing that’s happening to you.”

Ruby pulled back so she could look Oscar in the eye—so he could know she meant it, unflinchingly—and said, “I already knew the curse was killing you, this just makes it more real.”

Oscar’s breath hitched painfully and he blinked tears out of his eyes. His mouth opened, and she waited, but no words came out. Ruby let the silence stretch on but Oscar could say nothing.

“It scares me,” Ruby admitted because she couldn’t lie to him. Not about this. She continued, “But it doesn’t change how I feel. Or what I’m going to do.”

Oscar searched her face, a dawning awe in his own expression.

Oscar swallowed thickly and asked, “You’re not…Gonna start treating me like I’m made of glass?”

Ruby blinked, there was something else underneath those words but she couldn’t pin it down. She tried for a reassuring smile, “No, of course not.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Oscar relaxed against her immediately and said, “Ok…I believe you.”

II. Weeks Ago

“Proof!” Ruby slapped her right hand on the wall projection of the archived wartime newspaper article and practically shouted, “Real proof! The portal does exist and it’s in Vacuo! But it moves.”

Oscar blinked at her a few times, uncomprehending. His poker face was impeccable, but his wings had twitched reflexively when she slapped the projector wall, feathers ruffled and standing on end.

She’d startled him.

She hated doing that.

Ruby scrambled to gesture at the old newspaper juxtaposed with the pre-war mining expedition records and the scans of first edition print of The Girl Who Fell Through The World, she said, “This is the portal that brought Alyx and Louis to the Ever After. This is the answer! We just have to find it.”

Oscar looked between Ruby and her gathered research, with sharp eyes and amenable curiosity, but obvious confusion.

Ruby realized she had jumped the gun, and hadn’t actually explained anything, when he asked, “The answer to what?”

Ruby almost tripped over herself.

“Ah—Uh,” She spluttered but then reoriented—Start from the beginning—She then said, excited and desperate, far too much of both to hide either, “The merge—Ozma’s curse.”

Oscar’s eyes widened—But not in relief, or elation, or eagerness, or all the other bright emotions she had been brimming with when she’d grabbed his wrist a moment ago and told him she’d made a game changing discovery.

No, instead Oscar looked at her with sad reluctance.

“I just have to find the portal to the Ever After and bring you to the Tree.” Ruby said, undeterred. She closed the distance between them, offering this plan like an oath of fealty, she said, “Or—Or, we get the staff of creation back and make our own portal. Either way! The Blacksmith will take one look at you both and—“

“Ruby…” Oscar said solemnly, and cut her off. His voice weighed down by that ancient grief that was growing in him, more terrible each day.

There were times—with terrifying, increasing, frequency—when a strangeness overtook him. Moments Ruby couldn’t be sure anyone else had discerned, when he was not Oscar, and not Oz or Ozma, but something else entirely.

Something new.

But not him.

Ruby was afraid of mourning too soon.

She was afraid of loosing Oscar the moment her back was turned.

In a random, impossible to predict instant, she would turn back around to find someone else standing there.

Looking out at her from behind Oscar’s eyes.

“I know we still need to find the damn thing,” Ruby admitted hurriedly, covering up how sick she was with the time left passing by, “But it’s not impossible! Especially, if we all start working on this.”

“You can’t—We can’t make everyone drop everything and look for this teleporting unicorn,” Oscar started, with little humor and more resignation.

“And why the hell not?” Ruby challenged, suddenly feeling like a fight.

Oscar opened his mouth, some doubtless witty rejoinder ready, but Ruby watched him lose all steam. His shoulders sagged instead. Oscar covered his face with his hands and gave a great, big, weary sigh.

Ruby felt lost. Doesn’t he know?

She said to him, “We’d do anything for you.”

He flinched and sucked in a sharp breath. Oscar was scared of that.

Ruby clamped her mouth shut.

Instead, with more feckless hesitance than she liked, Ruby reached out a gentle hand and placed it lightly on his shoulder. Unobtrusively enough, so he could dislodge her touch if he wanted to.

He didn’t.

Oscar peeked at her through the gaps of his fingers and let his hands fall from his face. In reciprocal care, Oscar placed one hand over hers. She leaned into his space, only slightly—Greedy, greedy.

Oscar looked at the arrayed research materials around them.

“You’ve been working on this for a long time, haven’t you?” Oscar asked.

Ruby nodded, she bite her lip, “Only about a month of research. Records were hard to find.”

She paused, and then admitted, “Ren gave me your notes. Y’know, from when you were looking for what happened to us? Those notes were my starting point.”

Oscar’s eyes had grown glassy and he looked away from her face. He curled his fingers around her hand and pulled it from his shoulder. He then cradled her right hand in both his hands and stared at them folded one over the other.

“I didn’t know you were thinking about all this,” He said.

Ridiculous and demoralizing.

Ruby placed her left hand on top of his folded hands. She confessed, “I’m always thinking about this.”

Her words hit him like a jagged knife to the gut. Oscar hunched a little bit over their linked hands. He sniffed wetly. He smoothed his thumbs over her knuckles, and Ruby felt like he was flaying her alive—For what she felt, his fingers should’ve been under her ribs—Between her lungs—Wrapped around her still beating heart.

He looked back up with his Bad News Face looking particularly strained.

“Do you—“ Oscar said haltingly, “Do you remember how the Cat couldn’t get through the portal? Into the Tree—To Remnant.”

Dread scythed through her, “Yeah…” Ruby replied, softening the volume of her words to match Oscar’s trepidatious whisper.

“Oz and I have been thinking about this too…” Oscar had acknowledged, meeting her eyes then, a quiver in his voice, “After what you told us about your own experience in the Tree, we thought the same thing that you did, but—“

Oscar cut himself off abruptly, and shut his eyes tight. The pause dragged on as Oscar struggled to find his composure. Suddenly, Oscar let go of her hands. He made the tiniest sound of agony and clutched at his heart. Ruby staggered toward him with her arms out—to hold him—but Oscar shook his head and half stepped away from her—Ruby’s heart clenched painfully. Bereaved, Oscar wrapped his arms around himself, with his head tilted to the side like someone was talking to him from over his shoulder.

His breath shuddered out of him, and Ruby realized with another painful jolt that Oscar was on the verge of tears.

Oscar said, grief stricken, “It won’t work. We think that Ozma might be like the Cat. Cut off from the Tree…A kind of—Severing—Being an integral clause of the curse.”

After a moment of that hanging in the jarring silence between them, Ruby had stuttered. Half-words, like feeble bargaining, jumped from her throat. She waved her hands assiduously into the chasm that had opened between them. As if she could disperse the heavy atmosphere like noxious smoke and ash.

Eventually, Ruby had landed on, “We—We still—We have to try. Oscar, it’s still worth it to try. Please—”

She grabbed his arms, and pulled him to her. “Please let me try.”

Her eyes hurt.

Let me save you. Please, I have to save you!

This time, when he broke, he let her hold him.

And Ruby let herself be held in return.

Later that same week, he’d said something terrible—Something hideously awful about himself and his disposability.

And he’d done worse than that, Oscar compared himself to Oz in a negative light.

“I get it wrong. I always get it wrong—You’d all be better off with someone else behind the wheel—Better off without me,” His demeanor was numb—bleary-eyed—but the venom he bore for himself was devastatingly acrid.

Destroying and corrosive.

“‘M not—Not good enough. Can’t be—” a harsh breath, “Can’t be what everyone needs me to be.”

Ruby had registered the words like a slap to the face. And a bucket of ice water over her head. She impulsively grabbed Oscar by the shoulders and shook him.

Why can’t he see it? Back then, he startled badly at her touch and went stiff.

“You are enough! More than enough. You are better than him! You always have been!” Ruby didn’t mean to raise her voice, that was just how the words clawed their way out of her.

It was a mistake.

Oscar’s apathetic facade shattered. His aching heart cracked open right in front of her and all the ugly, compound terror-doubt-resentment-grief spilled out onto his face.

“What if I don’t know who I am without him anymore?!” Oscar shouted in her face, anguished. So devastatingly unsure.

Silence followed. Ruby couldn’t find her words. She felt Oscar’s desperation in her strangled lungs, dry mouth, and in the ache behind her eyes. Every muscle in her body tensed—her heart raced—her fingers itched for Crescent Rose—but there’s Nothing. To. Fight.

Just the boy in front of her that she must save.

—When she closed her eyes, she saw him bleeding out at her feet—Empty eyes—Empty—

That haunted house memory was etched into the back of Ruby’s eyelids. Just the same as Penny’s lingering voice still echoed in her ears.

Wrecked with despair, Oscar sank in Ruby’s hold. Quieter, almost pleading, he asked, “What if I’ve lost track?”

She’d had that nightmare again last night—This time, a starburst crack fissured across his chest and light poured out of him.

This time, he died in her arms and metastasized into glittering dust. He slipped through her fingers and scattered in the embrace of the winds across the ocean.

There was nothing left of him for her to keep.

The moon had then fallen from the sky into the sea.

She’d woken up before the tidal wave reached her.

“What if all the parts you—You…Guys like about me—are from him?” Oscar had then asked, voice a terrified, aggrieved whisper—Rock bottom given voice and Ruby broke.

“I know you,” Ruby dared. “I know you, Oscar.”

He looked up at her. Trembling with counterbalanced doubt and hope. Was she cruel enough to give him the latter?

She watched Oscar blink away tears and Ruby had to clear thick emotion from her throat before she could speak again.

“Hey—Hey, have I ever gotten it wrong? Telling the two of you apart,” Ruby asked, trying so hard to be a pillar. Strong enough to weather any storm—But Oscar just wanted her to be real. He’d told her as much, many times, but she was still figuring out how to split the difference.

“No…” His voice wobbled. Wiping the back of a wrist under his teary eyes, Oscar added, “Sometimes you know better than I do.”

Ruby let an anxious gust of breath escape her and said, “Right—So, you can trust me when I say, I would know you anywhere.”

Oscar’s downy soft bangs brushed her forehead and she leaned the hair’s inch closer to press their foreheads together.

“And if—“ Ruby said, brave enough to bare her own uncertainty, foolish enough to try, “If you change—“

Oscar’s eyes flashed to hers. A sharpness there that could cut them both.

Ruby squeezed his arms, and promised, “If you change, but I still recognize you—You, Oscar. I’ll get to know you again.”

At this point, it was impossible for Oscar to escape unscathed. The merge was changing him—irrevocably, this was true—but eventually it would kill him. She had to stop it before the point of no return.

—Half a year ago, he’d told her, in a maudlin moment: “The Sea is memory, yes, but that’s also an oversimplification. It’s literally made up of Ozma’s past lives—Their very souls, melted down and bound to him. When the merge completes this cycle I will become one of its Voices. And Ozma will be unmade again. I’ll be—Lost. A kind of undeath. There will be…Parts of him that are really me, part of the larger whole, but I’m just a drop in the Sea—I can’t drown out the cacophony. In an instant…I’ll be overcome.”—

She couldn’t let that happen. But time was slipping through their fingers.

Ruby was terrified she’d be too late.

III. Days Ago

Ruby remembered she had found him, later, in the barracks bathroom arguing with his reflection. These bathrooms were utilitarian and economical, and made efficient use of the space. With washbasins set into parallel walls. The mirrors that hung above each sink faced their twin across the room and created a crude infinity mirror effect.

She had caught the tail end of the one sided dialogue.

In an annoyed, vehement, snappish tone of voice she rarely heard from him, Oscar had said, “Just because you’re in my head doesn’t mean you know better than me how I feel!”

Ruby was on red alert until she saw the reflection’s eyes. Green-on-green. She softened her grip.

Oscar’s reflection had thrown its hands up in the air animatedly, and then mimed like it wanted to shake Oscar by the lapels of his vest.

Oscar, outside the mirror, had done no such thing. Only put his hands on his hips and huffed.

Oscar’s reflection then said something—its mouth moving—but no sound came out. Ruby carefully watched the shape of the words as they drew across the reflection’s exasperated face. There was an eerie, deep green miasma haloing Oscar’s infinitely repeating reflection. But this green haze was the only thing off about it.

Besides everything else about this.

Ruby believed the reflection said, “You’re supposed to learn from my mistakes, not repeat them!“ Or something to that effect.

“It’s not the same!” Oscar almost shouted and then stuck his finger into his reflection’s face. Pressing his right pointer finger’s fingerprint into the glass—his reflection had wrinkled its nose at this—Oscar said, “Stop projecting, it’s annoying!”

In the mirror, the reflection gave Oscar a taste of his own devastating eye roll—its wings parroting the motion of lifting its shoulders as it crossed its arms. It muttered something Ruby couldn’t parse and looked away—in Ruby’s general direction—as Oscar started to squawk and splutter indignantly at whatever his reflection had said.

When it caught sight of her standing in the entrance its eyes widened impossibly. First mutely nonplussed and then mischievously delighted.

Oscar’s reflection—Oz, clearly—mouthed, with a big, wide grin, “Well, here she is now!”

Oscar startled badly—his feathers and hair puffed up comically—and he wheeled around to face her.

Color flooded Oscar’s cheeks and the tips of his ears flushed prettily. His eyes were as wide and round as two dinner plates. It was like she heard a fuse break in his skull. She could smell the metaphorical smoke pouring out of his ears from here.

He said, unblinking, “Ruby.”

She liked it when he blushed. It looked so lovely on his warm brown skin.

Ruby mentally snatched those traitorous thoughts from thin air and strangled them in her metaphorical bare hands.

Ruby still couldn’t help but smile at Oscar. “Oscar,” she greeted him in kind.

“Ruby! Hi, Ruby,” Oscar stammered—his brain coming back online in fits—and fruitlessly tried to cover up his reflection with his wings. He fumbled, his hands clutched to the edge of the sink, voice raising a strangled octave higher, “Hey—Hi! Ruby!”

In the mirror, Oz poked his head past the reach of Oscar’s sprawled wings—peaking his chin over Oscar’s left shoulder—and waved at Ruby.

Ruby smirked at Oz and waved back.

She brought her gaze back to Oscar’s face and gave him a gently amused and inquiring look. With an ever so slightly teasing tone, Ruby said, “Sorry to interrupt.”

Oscar grimaced, slumped, and let his wings fall and fold loosely. With a lingering glance in her direction, his reflection turned around and started following Oscar’s lead again.

Oscar’s reflection was no longer worn by Oz, castoff, like a coat he’d hung up on a rack.

With an embarrassed groan, leaning heavily against the sink, Oscar asked, “How much—Ugh—How much of that did you see?”

She thought, How much did she see. Not how much did she hear.

“Just the end,” Ruby answered. “Are you two…” She searched for the right words that wouldn’t result in him slotting on a polite mask, “Getting on each other’s nerves?”

Oscar clapped one hand to his forehead and said, “Gods’ waters—Yes.”

His archaic curses were always amusing—Ruby knew that Oscar used them because it both amused and annoyed Oz. It was the fact that Oz found it funny that annoyed him.

Oscar only knew these relic phrases because of Oz.

Oscar lulled his head in Ruby’s direction and gave her a weary, but playful, smile. He muttered with comedic emphasis, “He’s driving me crazy.”

“What about this time?” Ruby asked, feigning innocence, and Oscar winced immediately.

“It’s—“ Oscar balked and covered his mouth with one nervous hand.

Oscar glanced back at Ruby with a bare and vulnerable look, humor suddenly gone. He curled his other hand over his heart—a self-soothing motion Ruby recognized easily—and took a breath. The tips of Oscar’s ears pinked again and Ruby realized, too late, that she would not be able to handle it with grace if he chose this moment to take a leap.

She’d ruin it. She’d ruin everything.

Lucky for both their battered hearts, Oscar hesitated.

Ruby forced a light-hearted giggle and told him, “You don’t have to tell me. We’ve got more pressing matters.”

Oscar pulled his hand away from his face and sobered immediately.

She could see in his face that Oscar didn’t buy her laugh for what it was selling, and had heard the undercurrent of apprehension she was trying to hide; despite her best efforts.

Before he could even open his mouth Ruby gave him the marching orders.

“Dinner’s ready,” She told him.

Oscar blinked at her. She saw the moment he deliberately let it go and decided—as Ruby had—not to press the issue.

Were they both cowards or were they both being practical?

Instead, he pulled out his scroll and checked the time. He looked at the screen plainly perplexed.

“Oh,” He said, and pushed off the sink. “Time got away from us. I didn’t realize it was that late.”

“Me either, really,” Ruby said. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was until Ren told me to go find you for dinner.”

“Thanks.” Oscar nodded, affable and genuine, “I could eat.”

Ruby motioned to the door, “Then let’s eat! C’mon.”

“What if we’re wrong?” Oscar had asked, late one night, uncharacteristically nervous in her presence. His hands balled into fists at his sides.

He clarified, “About Salem,” and Ruby immediately understood his hesitation.

Before Ruby could dredge up a reply that wasn’t dissonant static, Oscar winced, clenched his teeth, and squeezed one eye shut with a twitch.

“Inside voice, please,” Oscar whispered under his breath at Oz. Who Ruby could only imagine was objecting strongly and loudly to this hypothetical.

“No yelling. We agreed, no yelling,” Ruby chastised Oz. She then asked, after a pause, “Is he still talking?”

—“We don’t switch anymore.” Oscar had told her weeks ago. And Ruby had half a mind to jump Oz if he ever broke that promise. “The next time we switch will be the last time.”—

“Not anymore,” Oscar massaged the heel of his palm into his ear. “But he is not happy with me.”

Oscar’s eye twitched again and Ruby sighed.

“Oh, would you have preferred I said you were “pouting”?” Oscar asked out loud, terse. He grit his teeth, and gestured pointedly, “I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to Ruby.”

“Alright—Both of you, enough.” Ruby said and held her hands out placatingly to Oz and Oscar.

Oscar gave her a look and put his hands on his hips.

Ruby took a deep breath, she said, “Oscar, Salem is a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in barbed wire and teeth. I don’t think anyone can confidently say they understand her—Don’t get wrapped up in the mind games—Nothing she says can be trusted.”

“It’s not,” Oscar gestured at Ruby with both hands—Oscar always talked with his hands. After a moment of internal argument, Oscar said, “It’s not her words that bother me. It’s what she does. What she’s done.”

“Salem has said and done many terrible things,” Ruby agreed, placing one hand on her hip.

“No, I mean the things she’s done that don’t match what she’s said—Or, more like,” Oscar hedged, “The things she’s done that don’t match the show she’s putting on.”

“What?” Ruby asked, plainly.

“There’s this,” Oscar said, stepping closer to Ruby, “Difference. Like—Ontologically. Between certain things I’ve seen her say and do myself—Including Jinn’s vision—And certain things I’ve seen her say and do in here.” He tapped a finger to his temple. “In Ozma’s memories.”

Ruby folded her arms and tilted her head, “She changed.”

Oscar nodded, “Oh, most definitely. But especially given what Jinn showed us, I really don’t think things are as simple as Salem being pure evil. It seems…Too theatrical to me.”

Ruby chewed on that for a second before she shook her head and told him, “You’re too kind. She tortured you and you’re telling me she may not be that bad?”

“No! She’s choosing to be cruel on purpose and that’s deplorable. I’m not saying she’s secretly a good person. I want us to talk about why it’s a forgone conclusion that we have to fight her to end this.” Oscar had thrown his arms out wide, and his wings unfolded with the gesture.

We don’t have to kill you to stop you—

“And why Salem is the fight we’re striving for and not—“ Here Oscar’s voice cut off like a valve being shut. A door being closed. A candle blown out. Oscar cleared his throat and hissed, quiet but forceful, “Ozma, godsdamn you, let me say it.”

Ruby worriedly watched Oscar visibly struggle to speak. She could hear the creak of his clenching jaw. It reminded her of a vivid train wreck. Cold metal in her hands. Snowfall. Still air.

He held up one finger in a clear One Moment Please gesture and promptly turned his back on Ruby. Ruby refolded her arms over her chest as Oscar proceeded to have a fervent, mad argument with Oz. Completely silent but with many strangling gesticulations.

In an animated moment, Oscar threw up his hands and spun around to face her. His eyes were almost feverish with frustration. Oscar held up his hands on either side of of his face and stuck out his fingers—As if to illustrate horns, or even antlers, he did not have.

“Yellow jerk and purple jerk,” Oscar said disconcertingly vehement.

It was almost funny.

Ruby covered her mouth with a fist and nodded emphatically. She tried not to laugh, just as she tried not to blanche. Oscar dropped his hands to his side and hunched like a gargoyle.

“Don’t blaspheme me, I’ll blaspheme you,” Oscar said under his breath at the immortal parasite lashed to his soul.

Ruby peeled back the layers of Oscar’s supposition as she watched Oscar get into another argument with Oz behind his eyes. She interrupted them as they appeared to reach a fever pitch she couldn’t hear.

“Where’s this all coming from?” Ruby asked.

Oscar blinked. His gaze refocused on her face.

“Just—“ Oscar exhaled sharply. “A feeling.”

The wind picked up suddenly and streamed through their hair. Oscar’s wings shifted at his back. Oscar breathed in and added, “A strong feeling.”

Ruby took a breath too, “Okay. I—Hah.” Ruby shifted her weight on the balls of her feet. She rubbed tiredly at her own forehead, “I need time to think about this, Oscar. I’m just not sure…I need time to think.”

“Of course,” Oscar nodded. Standing up straight once more.

She walked away from him and spent the rest of the night staring at a wall. White noise screamed in her ears.

She did not sleep.

IV. Yesterday

Free fall.

Sun glare.

Metal in her hands.

Her own instrument of pure velocity striking its lethal cord. Perfect, effective, and brutal.

As she hit terminal velocity, Ruby pulled the trigger and the gun blast torque of Crescent Rose sent her spinning through the air. Like a saw blade freed from its arbor. Ruby the center of gravity upon which the axis turned.

The cycling blur of weapon and wielder bisected the erratic, swooping body of a gargantuan, vampire bat Grimm. Ruby fell through the cloud of flaking ash its dying body wafted into the air. With one last, tremendous flap of its leathery wings, the monster disappeared into nothing.

Ruby wheeled out of her whirlwind spin, set her steel soled boots into the crook of Crescent Rose’s blade and halted her momentum. As if buoyant, Ruby bounced mid-air as she fired off a few rounds from her rifle’s barrel.

She’d fallen below the cloud cover. Below, on the ground, she heard screams in a cacophony.

Another rabid Diaemus hurtled itself at her. Careening through the balmy air on its leathery, patchwork white-and-black wings. As it drew closer, she could see madness in its eyes. Diaemus Grimm only come out at night but here they were in broad daylight.

Just as the leaf-nose dove at her, with a snap of its needle-toothed jaws, Ruby twisted her body midair with the assistance of Crescent Rose’s heft. Ruby slung the crooked blade of the scythe around the jugular of the flying Grimm, planted her boots on its hairy back, and caught a ride. The vampire bat Grimm shrieked in maddened fury but nonetheless careened downward under her blade’s insistent rein and bridle.

She’d thinned the numbers up here enough, she was starting to see a shift. They needed more help on the ground. Ruby had spent long enough in the clouds.

It’s not as fun when silent wings aren’t watching her free falling back, anyway.

Her stomach dropped.

She’d never been afraid of falling before.

“I’m sorry,” Ruby started.

“Ruby,” That was Blake—Bless her. “You don’t have to—“

Ruby interrupted, “No, let me say this.”

Please, Ruby thought. She said, “I need to say this out loud. Or I’m going to lose my mind.”

Her teammates went quiet. Some things go without saying—Forgiveness is given not earned—but the things left unsaid tend to fester. Ruby knew this from experience, a lesson learned the hard way.

Had she yet earned the right to be selfish?

“I’m sorry for what I said to you in the Ever After. I’m sorry I wasn’t happy for you when I should’ve been. Both of you. You deserved better.” Ruby took a harsh breath, “It’s just—You got your happy ending and what did I get?”

A laugh meant as bitter came out frantic instead.

Repeating patterns.

Ruby’s voice dropped an octave, “Wasn’t there again when she needed me. Wasn’t there again when she died. And now I’m right by his side, but he’s dying right in front of me, and I’m—Useless.”

Ruby covered her face with both hands and took a shuddering, strangled breath. The kind that would’ve been a sob if she’d let it escape into the open air.

“What if he’s already dead?” Ruby gasped, eyes wide and bright with staggered, stumbling anguish. “And I’m just—We’re just—Chasing his ghost…”

Yang and Blake put firm hands on her shoulders, and then pulled Ruby into an embrace. Weiss completed the circuit by wrapping her arms around Yang and Blake’s shoulders. They pulled her in and squeezed her tight.

It wasn’t the first time Ruby was held together by sheer force.

Ruby cut off the head of the shrieking Diaemus just as the ground screamed toward her. She wrapped herself in Petal Burst and materialized on a nearby clerestory roof.

An old, horned, desert behemoth Grimm collided with a residential building two blocks down from Ruby’s current position; just as her feet hit solid ground. Ruby felt the tremors of the huge Grimm’s rabid thrashing through the soles of her shoes. The hulking beast didn’t seem to even notice the group of people that ran screaming from its path of destruction.

There was no rhyme or reason to the attacks. The Grimm had been driven mad. They were just as likely to crack their skulls open on red brick walls, as they were to maim and kill. Both people and themselves.

This is a distraction. It must be.

The sun burned off the wispy remains of the morning’s cloud cover and beat down the pressure of its searing heat on all of them. Ruby hefted up Crescent Rose, readying herself to leap off the edge of this building and back into the fray. But, before she could put strength behind her poised lunge, the air became terrifyingly still.

A pressure mounted and Ruby’s ears rang suddenly; painfully.

From all corners of Remnant, every creature of Grimm that squirms—and crawls, and creeps, and slithers, and swims, and flies, and flutters, and scrabbles by four limbs with its belly on the ground, or upright on two feet—froze.

And lifted its head up to the sky and howled. A calamity of pure sound.

Ruby looked up. Above, flying Grimm dropped from the sky like stones.

The sky turned red, and the moon swelled.

The eclipse began.

V. Now

Everyone is having nightmares. No one is able to rest their eyes for more than a few weary moments before terrors manifest in their minds. Very few people are able to put into words what they see in their dreams. Most decide to go without sleep.

It doesn’t really matter to Ruby. She wouldn’t be sleeping anyway.

Ruby can’t stop thinking about it. Her waking nightmare. The scene plays on repeat behind her eyes, even when her eyes are open. It’s there in her mind, coloring every thought, the moment of Oscar’s broad daylight kidnapping.

The cruel hand covering his mouth, and the burning chains glinting in the sunlight as they wrap around his body. Vaporous steam poured from the portal, and off the skin of the errant hands and trapping chains. As if some chemical reaction occurred when these unearthly things were exposed to the air.

The shudder in the fabric of reality, at unknowable power reaching out and enacting its will.

The fear in his eyes.

The molten gold portal snatching Oscar up and snapping closed. Disappearing into thin air.

The cold spot the portal left behind. A wrongness under the hot summer sun.

After that, there were a few precious hold-your-breath hours, where Ruby and her team scrambled to find the thinnest lead to follow. A sign. To find their missing friend. To find a shred of proof that Oscar still drew breath. To know if he even resides on the same plane of existence. To find a method of rescue once he was located—Step 2 could only come after Step 1’s success.

And then the apocalypse started.

The crust of the planet cracks open, deep fissures branch across the continents and carve through the ocean floor. The seas churn as the ground quakes and crumbles.

From the cracks in Remnant pour horrors.

Horrors, which were once hidden and buried under the planet’s skin, now erupt in a volcanic deluge. Tidal volumes of black ichor swell up from the fissures like the welling of blood to a fresh wound.

Grimm essence.

The rivers of Grimm weren’t just an aberration of Salem’s invasions.

But what animates the ichor now is what horrifies.

Ruby hasn’t recognized any of the wailing faces in the waves of writhing, clamoring black muck yet. But it has to be only a matter of time.

—“Still seeing ghosts?” He’d asked. His gentle smile softened his boyish features, and earnestness made him look serene. He smiled at her like that a lot.—

There’s a moment, when one of the echoing shrieks amongst the countless cacophony, catches her ear and twists her insides with uncertain familiarity. The gasping shriek morphs into a bloodcurdling scream and Ruby struggles to parse it from the loud, chaotic clamor of horrific violence. If Ruby had her wits about her, she wouldn’t try to focus on it—identify the voice by owner with feverish desperation—Penny?—Pyrrha?—Oscar—but terrified dread has a hold of her. She loses track of that one voice and fights herself to abandon the pointless search—Don’t have the luxury of despair, Rose.

The glare of white light she commands is the only thing that keeps the black flood at bay.

Her light has increased its potency tenfold. And it hurts so much as she channels that power through her body and out into the wild world. Ruby doesn’t know why the light is magnified, but it might be killing her every time she reaches for it now; just a little bit.

Shaving down her lifespan, minute by minute.

Ruby doesn’t care.

Maybe she will later.

But tomorrow might not even come.

Sudden as a heart attack, a titanic tremor ricochets between the tectonic plates of the planet. Cities, occupied and abandoned, crumble. Spontaneous canyons deepen, the oceans surge into new routes carved into coastlines, and volcanoes erupt.

The terrain of Remnant shifts and changes under their feet in an instant.

Ruby hears a new sound, maybe a sound only she can hear. A sound in her mind and not moving through the air.

A howling roar.

Into her mind’s eye flashes a vision of a future-bright beast, with ringed eyes.

It’s source from above.

Possessed by foresight, Ruby looks up at the moon and watches it shudder. There is a blurring mirage around the circumference of the moon—Like heat waves rippling off the hood of a desert vehicle left baking under the summer sun. A deep, bassy reverberation vibrates through the air and echoes in waves across Remnant.

The moon field starts to destabilize. It heralds moonfall.

No one and nothing, save the Grimm, can survive the repeat of this calamity.

The moon turns red with the sky.

It’s over. Give up the struggle. It’s done.

Under the moon’s shadow, Ruby goes to her knees and howls.

Chapter Text

I should’ve been born a sea bird.

No. Better to be a fish.

The hysterical, nonsensical thoughts of a mind dying of air hunger in an underwater torrent.

Drowning. The worst nightmare for a sky-hearted animal. Oscar-Ozma is intimately familiar with how it feels to die by drowning. It is high on their list of least favorite ways to die. In their experience, it is one of the most painful and terrifying ways to be violently lost to the screaming, white void of the In-Between.

Hold your breath. Burn up air. Burn inside.

Gasp. Suck down water directly into your lungs.

Burn inside. Seize. Gulp down more water at the immutable reflex of your soft body.

Fill your lungs with water. Drown.

Let the darkness take you.

It’s all inevitability—Truth of lost breath—Not a thing to be fought, but to succumb to.

Or escape.

Oscar-Ozma tumbles in carmine darkness without harbor or lighthouse. The waters’ grasp over their skin—drag into their clothes—through the strands of their hair—between the gaps in their feathers—wash over their open, unblinking eyes—is a sensate phantasmagoria. Their body does not collide violently with any solid matter, though they would welcome it as an alternative; not even, necessarily, an out.

The current tosses them around in its rushing grasp, and they could no more track their own path through the twisting dark then they could speak human words right now.

A wild turn whips them around at speed. Their surging momentum slings them around to the edge of the curve and Oscar-Ozma’s head bursts above the red rapids. They suck in a wretched gasp of sobbing, choking breath and thrash to stay above the water’s surface.

Oscar-Ozma struggles to orient themself, they can’t find up or down. They appear to be tumbling down a waterfall but the tether of gravity the surging stream of water has on their body doesn’t make sense for free fall.

They go under again. Panic a constant friend.

Oscar-Ozma swallows water as they’re hurled about, like a rag doll between the teeth of a wild hound—Frothing mouth.

They surface once more with desperate, coughing cries.

Soon they will run out of strength.

It is only a matter of time.

Faint light bursts in shutters from the opposite direction the river is carrying them. Points of light, which appear and disappear, like winking stars.

Many heart-valve falls—There is a pulsing beat all around us.

As above, so below.

In chaotic flashes as their head bobs above and below the water, Oscar-Ozma glimpses an impossible landscape of massive, flowing rivers of red, suspended, swirling in the air all around them. Some gargantuan rivers appearing to be over 50,000 m3/s or even 100,000 m3/s in volume. Interlocking and coursing together with smaller, floating tributaries—Pulsing veins. In pockets between the rivers, float islands of moon rock.

It’s In The Blood.

Far below, is a churning sea of red.

The Bones Of The World Remember.

Titanic columns of lunar rock extend from the ceiling down, anchoring to the ocean floor below. These colossal cave stalagnates tower hundreds of miles long and dozens of miles thick. The gravity defying red rivers swirl around the columns like twisting vines flowing free in the wind.

A sepulchral forest for giants.

It’s a good thing Oscar-Ozma has already lost their mind. The impossibilities of this biome can’t break a brain that’s already come apart at the seams. But there is something else—Something that was not there before. There is an otherworldly presence in their grafted mind. Pervading their body. Sunk into their soul.

A stain.

They panic like an animal and try to get away. As if it’s something in the physical environment—oil spill—leeching toxin—forest fire—Flood—that they can escape, but the stain has already seeped inside of them.

They take it with them.

Their heart thunders in their chest.

Further down the rapids, a floating chunk of pale, lunar rock floats between the swelling tributaries of the red rivers. The waters brush the barest edge of the flying island’s shores. Oscar-Ozma angels their desperate flailing and thrashing in the direction of the floating island. It races toward them as they’re carried along by the fierce, fast current. The rocky lip of the tiny island comes within reach and Oscar-Ozma claws at the slippery rocks with desperate, wild abandon. Emerald-amber glow claws extend from Oscar-Ozma’s finger tips and catch on cracks in the craggy edge. With hysterical strength, Oscar-Ozma gouges their claws knuckle-deep into the rock to create their own hand holds. Weighed down by the water, but fueled by the frenzied will to live, they pull themself from the grasp of the river onto the jagged cliff of the angular, floating island.

Coughing up red and sobbing breaths, they scramble up the rocks as sharp shale cuts into their palms and knees.

When they reach a reasonably flat surface, Oscar-Ozma rolls onto their back and heaves gasping breaths into the misting air. Their chest rises and falls with the rapid pace of their labored breathing. They place an open-palm hand over their thudding, snared-rabbit heart, and clench the fabric of their clothes in a white-knuckled grip.

Their own heartbeat pulses loud and warm in their ears with a rush of blood.

Like a boat tethered to a mooring, the floating island they lay upon drifts along the midair current. Bobbing back and forth, as if rocked by waves.

For Oscar-Ozma, calm does not come.

Allostatic load crests the mountain’s peak.

The toll’s come due.

A spray of red surf splashes over their supine form and Oscar-Ozma flinches back as the water pelts their body anew. Though they are soaked through to their bones; their head is on fire. A fire that cannot be doused, only fed—feed it—feed it—feed it—Aguey, they roll over onto their stomach, then up onto hands and knees to crawl on their belly across the weathered face of their tiny island. They peak cautious-flinchingly over the edge of its shore at the impossible scenery around them.

They look down, once more, into the depths of the wine dark sea.

Light scatters below, gone unnoticed before in their frenzy. Swarms of light specks fly over the dark waters in clustered, loose groups. Like glimmering schools of fish. It is impossible to tell what the lights really are from this far away. Oddly, the quality of light puts Oscar-Ozma in the mind of tapetum lucidum flash; a menagerie of eyes glancing toward them in the dark.

The lights are countless in their number. Billions upon billions.

Oscar-Ozma lift their face up from the ocean and gaze out at the standing pillars. They scuttle up the right edge of the floating island to get a better view past the torrent of the branching rivers arrayed around them like a festering net.

One of the mountainous stalagnates stands out with anomalous straight lines and right angles. The other gargantuan sinter columns have the rough, alluvial, silt-accumulated exteriors of natural cave formations. This column was carved. But not by the pattern.

A tower.

A Tower.

Eyes raking over the chiseled column, Oscar-Ozma snaps their head to the side when they see movement on the pillar—Skittering insects. From so far away they’re mostly indistinct specks, but Oscar-Ozma swears they see people. Or things very close to the shape of people. These vaguely humanoid shapes walk upright on the vertical surface of the pillar, as if, like the rivers, the anchoring pull of gravity is sourced at the pillar’s center. The figures sprint across the long, faceted faces of the titan-bone pillar and disappear into an octagonal hole in its facade.

Another doorway.

An entrance.

Oscar-Ozma feels a kind of manic starvation for the rescue and company of other people.

Maybe someone else would be able to help put them back together; right, this time.

Maybe they’re just going to get hurt again.

From above, from where Oscar-Ozma fell, there is a sound like the tectonic lurch and fracture of a glacier. An ear-splitting roars thunders in the next second—Her roar—Her battle cry—Suddenly, Oscar-Ozma is back in the flayed belly of the grim dreadnaught. Hearing her cry of rage as sure as the final trumpets sound. The roar blasts through the buried air like a shockwave, as pieces of the ceiling begin to fall into the torrential chaos of the gravity-defying river system.

Renewed terror sparks across the synapses of their fried brain. Misfires and burnt receptors jolt the signals into painful, muddied, mental mayhem. In a recursion from body to brain; to mind, to soul, to the abyss waiting inside them to swallow them whole.

Urgency spurs them onto spontaneous action without thought.

Oscar shakes out his wings and wrings water from his dripping feathers as best he can—A passing moment of singularity gained through the sensory. The lucidity recedes, gone as quickly as a blink. Forgotten already—On all fours, they climb to edge of the rocking island’s cliff. They open their wings to their fullest extent—feathers shift like outstretched, fanning fingers against the backdrop of wild, red rapids—and dive into the open air.

Gone will be, any hint of you or of me.

Gone, gone, gone. Gone, we’ll be—

Gravity is strange in this place. Each floating body of liquid or solid matter has its own pull. The strength of which is determined by the volume and density of said river, column, island, or floating debris as flotsam comets. The orbits of these entombed comets seem as chaotic as swarming insects, but in truth, are part of a larger equilibrium. Oscar-Ozma isn’t at the right scale to understand it.

The sporadic, inconsistent draw of gravity makes for spasmodic flight. Oscar-Ozma dance-jerks through the air like a rabid bat. Possessed and seemingly crackbrained. Dodging hurtling comets and wandering red-water rapids with too many close calls.

Worse than flying through any storm he’s known.

The swell of the red ocean below has, by far, the strongest pull. So, it is awarded the honorific of below. It is the grounding gravity of the frothing sea below that allows for any approximation of directional flight. Otherwise, Oscar-Ozma would have been immediately tossed about, ripped to shreds, and drowned a dozen times over by the flying, riparian blender.

Oscar-Ozma flutters ungracefully around a jagged, roughly diamond-shaped, moon rock island, arrested betwixt two voluminous tributaries. The Tower reveals itself through the throng of rivers, asteroid-fields and rainfall, as a monument would: Tall and immotile in the shape of long memory.

Their wings are heavy.

With great difficulty, Oscar-Ozma struggles through the torrent, and aims for the same opening in the Tower they saw those strange silhouettes enter through. It’s difficult to gauge their speed when so much of motion here is start-and-stop and pull-push from every which way. The transition from lateral flight to nosedive is terrifyingly abrupt as they enter the Tower’s field of gravity. Oscar-Ozma flails in the air and throws out their wings wide to create drag, twists, and swoops narrowly passed the glancing face of the Tower. They slow their momentum enough so when they impact with the Tower it doesn’t kill them, but it hurts—It’s a crash—They crash. They tumble and roll with the impact to lessen the damage of the fall, and slump to a stop some dozens of feet from their intended landing zone. For an exhausted moment, they lie there, buffeted by the spray of red.

Get up.

Get up.

Oscar-Ozma gets their elbows underneath them and heaves their body up. They stagger back onto their feet and stumble toward the Tower’s threshold. When they reach it, they find something closer to the darkness of a well—A porthole—A scuttle.

When they climb in, they are expecting to fall into that darkness, but instead gravity shifts again. Oscar-Ozma face-plants onto one of the eight sides of the Tower’s entrance as up and down reassert themselves to new alignments. This is a hallway, with walls, a ceiling and a floor. Ahead of them, darkness. Darkness so thick even their nighttime eyes can’t pierce it. They stand up again, and once steadied by the wall, they enter the Tower’s threshold proper.

Pandemonium Welcomes You.

They duck past the entrance and step into the foyer of that godsforsaken house perched on the misty Haven cliffs.

They stop abruptly.

Everything lurches to the right.

Vertigo veils over them. They stumble and trip through a doorway. Palms thrown out, reflexive in the fall, plunge into wet mud. They’re now in an open field, the earth soft and the grasses dappled with glimmering dew from a recent rainstorm. The prairie grasses stretch out in all directions to the horizon-line and beyond. Tumultuous clouds brew above their head—The sky is turning green—The wind picks up and electrifies their heartbeat.

They jump to their feet, and their boots slip in the mud. They turn around to run—sprint—gallop away—and dash through a rusted, squealing metal gate into a frozen wasteland. Their feet skid to a stop on black ice.

Crusted in frost, an old well stands before them; squat and homely.

They take three, halting, careful steps backward and freeze when their back hits a wall. They wheel around and find a glass window, looking out over a long dead kingdom. They find themself shaking in a ruin. The window before them is the only thing left standing.

The sun is setting.

Sunspots burn into their periphery as they stare.

“The people built a city underground. They meant to build a future, but instead they built a tomb.” Obleck’s voice, behind him and to the left.

Oscar-Ozma turns around, delirious, and finds no one there.

“What’s the dumbest way you’ve died?”

“Choked on a tooth.”

Voices bounce off the marble walls and high, arched ceilings of a temple. Oscar-Ozma finds themself standing in front of a white marble and polished gold altar. Red wax candles drip entrails onto the altar stone. Candlelights flicker with the drag of a draft.

“Do you ever…Get lost inside yourself?”

“…Frequently.”

Another wave of vertigo has their center of gravity wobbling dangerously and they grab at the altar’s edge with clammy hands to steady themself.

Oscar-Ozma doesn’t recognize their own hands.

“None of that matters anymore,” Salem says, delivering judgement the same way she breathes.

They tremble at the sound of her voice and rear around in flinching terror and stuttered guilt-hope.

“—I don’t always want to be Ruby Rose.”

They blink.

They’re standing in the cycling, ticking clockwork heart of Beacon tower. The pinnacle. The white flag and distress signal.

If they do not stand absolutely still, the grinding gears of the tower’s clock will crush them between its interlocking teeth.

“—Even if the gods don’t return to judge us for our deeds, we should act each day as though they are arriving tomorrow. In the end, we will be the arbiters of our fates…”

One of his feathers snag between two tiny brass cogs.

With a pinched shout they’re wrenched backwards. They cartwheel into rubble and land on top of a pile of stone and steel. They recognize the subterranean chamber instantly. The ruin of Beacon’s vault, the stage of a past life’s final curtain call. Pebbles skip and plunk down the pile of rubble they sit atop as they shift, shaking, to their hands and knees. Beneath them, their own bones. Behind them, the soul-grafting-machine coffins. A single black arrow is still lodged in the glass lid of one of the sarcophagi.

Do I stay in the cage because it might protect me? Or because I don’t know how to live outside the cage anymore?

Those that would hurt you—Hurt us—Are the ones who hold the key to the cage. It was always a trapdoor.

Brazen with madness, Oscar-Ozma bolts upright from atop the rubble tomb and vaults down the precarious hill. They teeter and narrowly avoid breaking both ankles. And their neck. Chunks of the piecemeal hill dislodge as they slid wildly down its acclivitous swell—Have you forgotten we have wings!?—They slam into the half collapsed steel doors, the impact jarring their skull, and unfazed, begin to pry the metal apart with their bare hands. The metal whines and squeaks and groans as they wrench it violently apart.

“—This was not an accident. This is what happens when you hand over your trust—your safety, your children—To men who claim to be our guardians. But are, in reality, nothing more than men.”

With the desperation of a trapped animal, they squeeze themself through the gap they’re able to tear in the metal doors. They wriggle out the other side and fall flat on their face on hard wood floors. Again, they somersault out of a flopped heap on the ground to see a farmhouse kitchen table and a faded, threadbare herringbone rug. The old, weathered, wooden table is arranged with three place settings. All too familiar gingham cloth table mats and mismatched clay and glass cups. There’s a chipped, porcelain vase, filled with sunflowers, and placed at the center of the table. Oscar thinks he hears his Aunt humming in the other room.

A fresh, stronger wave of vertigo takes them back down to the ground. Their feet fall out from under them. Oscar-Ozma staggers forward and grasps the edge of the table. They knock over one of the chairs grabbing for its armrest. The room spins.

What is this?

Where am I?!

What is this!?

A memory erupts to the surface of their dissolving mind—It’s his—Only his—It’s Mine—The water is up to his knees—

“Maybe, if I could leave the Rose part behind, it wouldn’t all be so heavy…I don’t know.” He remembers her saying it with so much open shame, grief, and guilt. She had also hesitated before sharing this vulnerability. It was a scar, and something she was still scared to give voice to.

He’d let it go unchallenged or scrutinized. Accepted it for what it was.

“Y’know. It’s funny,” Oscar also remembers replying, some time later. With a weary laugh and dread a far-off cry thudding in his head, “I chose this name.”

Names are funny, he thought.

She doesn’t startle, per se; but she does take him in for a long moment. Ruby’s face is carefully neutral but her eyes—sterling shine—are anxious and mournful.

“Why?” Ruby asks.

Why?

Why, indeed.

Oscar looks away from Ruby’s precipitous eyes—he’s never been afraid of heights before—and off into the distance. He folds his hands in his lap, one over the other. Then unfolds them and looks at his palms.

He tells her the truth, but the truth is also not something that can always be singular or pinned down, “It felt right.”

The wind tangles in his hair and bleeds through his feathers.

Trepidatious, like she’s scared of his answer but needs to know, Ruby asks, “Does it still feel right?”

Oscar-Ozma clutches at their head. Memories shutter behind their eyes.

“—I hate thinking that we were destined for this— ”

They’re going to leave their body. The Sea of Voices is going to take them, unmake them, and change them again.

“—were your parents?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know,” Oscar says. He shrugs, “I never met them.”

Ruby halts, freezes mid-stride and blinks wide-eyed at him. She stumbles.

“You—“ Startled grief in her voice. She cuts herself off—Ruby must see something in him that blares the alarm—Please Don’t Make Me Talk About That—and scrambles verbally, “Well then, your Aunt must know. She’s—“

“Ah,” It’s Oscar’s turn to cut her off, he grimaces. He flaps his hand in the air between them, “I’m not actually—familial-ly—related to my Aunt. That’s just what I call her.”

He scratches the fingers of one hand at the fine hairs at the back of his neck nervously, and motions with the other hand. He offers, “I, uh, wandered onto her property one day and she just let me stay.”

Ruby stares at him, he can see the gears turning behind her eyes. He doesn’t like how this two-fold annoys and frightens him.

Like he’s been found out. Like he’s done something wrong.

Why does he feel the need to explain himself?

“She needed the extra pair of hands,” Oscar keeps it all from showing up on his face, and shrugs, painfully nonchalant. He says, “Worked out for both of us.”

I Wish I Could Fly Too.

“I made you a promise, and I am going to keep it. We will find a way to break your curse—I just need you to keep up your end of the bargain—Fight until the end—You promised me, you wouldn’t give—”

A sob. Coming from whom, they don’t know.

“—I want to do everything I can to help, with whatever time I have left—”

Further pain enters their body as they hit the hard, cold floor without bracing. They still feel like they’re falling—a slow drop takes them. They’ll never wake up from this oncoming nightmare.

I stand on the surface of the Sea now, but I will fall in eventually. I will drown—I am drowning. I’m drowning. It’s happening now—I’m dying—

His return is inevitable. Our doom is assured. I am just a man.

Everything stops.

Oscar’s mind snags on that last wayward thought amongst the maelstrom—knocked loose from its hiding spot—hidden in plain sight—and Oscar’s mind dislodges from its simultaneous overlap with Ozma’s. Oscar careens back into his body on all fours beside the mimic of his Aunt’s kitchen table. The roar of rushing water echoes from all around him. Their facsimile surroundings start to literally melt. Whatever spell has broken, dispels the illusion of their surroundings too. They must still be somewhere in the waterlogged Tower.

A weighty caesura staggers.

“Ozma?” Oscar’s voice from his own throat is shredded and weak. It hurts to speak and Oscar coughs raggedly around the syllables of Ozma’s name.

No no no no—

“Was that you Ozma?”

Don’t look—Don’t look—

A clench in their heart along the seam that stitches them together. A taut tension. It has always felt like a strain when they’ve tried to keep things from one another.

A strain.

Their compound heart breaks in four directions.

“You…” At first, his voice dies.

A stutter, “Ozpin was going to—You were…”

Then, Oscar sucks in a thunderstorm gust of a breath and forces himself to speak.

“How did you manage to hide this from me?” Oscar asks, the tenor of his voice belying the powerful emotions he feels, under the scratch of a sobbing cough. His emotions build, like rising dawn. Like the sky turning green before a cyclone touches down. The tumult brewing inside Oscar buffets the walls of Ozma’s carefully built hideaway.

The crooked troll hiding under the bridge between their souls, revealed. Ozma hid this, and Oscar would only have uncovered the lie at the exact, precipitous moment before the merge completed—Upon his death. Just as it almost had completed, seconds ago. They needed to be that close to assimilation for Oscar to have a hope to see through the lie.

The rage Oscar feels…There are no words.

Ozma flinches.

“So, when I am gone,” Oscar continues, a great and terrible feeling overshadowing every good thing they’ve shared up to this point. He storms on, “When I am well and truly gone, you would use my husk to bring about the very thing I fought to prevent?”

The next sentence comes out as a rasping whisper, “Are you really just waiting for me to be gone?”

I would mourn you more than—Oz starts but Oscar doesn’t let him finish.

“After, everything—You’re still obedient to a god that hates you? Hates us all?” Oscar demands.

Oz clamps his mental mouth shut like the click of teeth. Lips sewn tight and jaws wired shut. He does not speak.

“You’ve surrendered to the inevitable, is that it? Is that—really—it? All of this was just—just-! Everything we shared, everything between us, between you and our friends—Our family!—It was all just you going through the motions?”

Ozma is apocalyptically silent.

“You found a way to lie to me again. We live inside of each other, and still, you cannot be honest,” Oscar balls his hands into fists and presses them into the ground to stop himself from tearing at his own skin as both their impulses long to. His fingernails cut into the meat of his palms anyway, “Do you think so little of me? Was anything real?”

Oscar’s heart bleeds. Why pretend? Why waste time fighting the merge with me? Why did you not just—Kill me with your own hands?

The silence drags on, awful and painful. The quiet itself is full of teeth.

“You lied…Again,” Oscar sucks in a sobbing breath. His soul now constituted of cold lightning and atmospheric, pressurized, condensed fury. Oscar calls to the pit in his stomach, Oz made manifest in physical sensation, “Tell me why.”

Ozma does not answer, but Oscar can feel the coward trying to make himself smaller and smaller, with the hope of crushing himself into non-existence.

“Godsdamn you, answer me!”

Ozma tries to flee then, to lock himself away deep within the depths of their subconscious; as he once did before.

Oscar does not let him run away.

Oscar wraps the threads of his soul, that still belong to him alone, around Ozma to stop his escape—Snare-grapple. But in their shared mindscape, it plays out much more like Oscar bodily tackles Oz from behind and wraps his arms around Oz in a headlock as Oz claws to get away.

You can’t run from me! You can’t run away from yourself!

Oz fights frenzied and desperate. Ozma does not speak in words, but Oscar can feel Oz’s conjured terror at the spotlight of the panopticon upon them.

Face me! Oscar shouts, a bellow that echoes tremors into the fault lines of their combining souls and shakes lose all their grief and guilt, Tell me why!

In waves of pure, unfiltered fear, Ozma communicates his surety of the presence of an all-seeing voyeur through painful zaps of a millennia’s worth of paranoid sense memory.

Oscar does not care anymore.

All of the strength Ozma has directed at fighting the merge in the past he turns on Oscar. It is a horrible, calamitous thing. Within their mind. Within their soul. Within their body—Shared. Shared. Shared—Like turning the blade of your own trusty sword upon yourself. They tear chunks out of each other. A merge attack threatens them at the edges of their control, but Oscar’s fury is incandescent. In that exact moment, his rage is more powerful than any cliff-edge racing towards them, inside their mind. Proof, at last, of his own sovereignty.

No matter how hard Ozma thrashes, Oscar does not let go.

Oscar pins Ozma to the board. With no space for the other to wriggle out.

“Answer me!” Oscar demands, like the falling of the sky upon their head. His voice like thunder and eyes streaming lightning.

The lightning an afterimage of wept tears.

Ozma, Oscar’s reflection, hardened to diamond in defense, has also made himself brittle enough to crack right open. He screams, ragged and wild. One loud outpouring of trapped, negative energy, and then all the fight goes out of Ozma at once. He goes slack and trembles in Oscar’s hold.

Cracks spiderweb across his form, bleeding liquid gold—Kintsugi of the soul. The scars of Ozma’s curse made real and visible to the naked eye.

I… Ozma’s voice is weak and feeble. I don’t—I don’t—

Inside Ozma, a breach splinters up the downstream slopping face of a dam. The fortification weakens with a rumbling, echoing groan through their mind; across the divide between.

Ozma shouts, I don’t know what else to do! And his voice breaks halfway through.

Oscar looks into his own broken face when he looks at Ozma—It frightens him—And so Oscar let’s go of Ozma’s wrists. Ozma immediately covers his face with his freed hands, and through sobs, Oz repeats, I don’t know what else to do!

He’ll kill us all, Oz whisper-screams, in abject terror, He’ll kill us all. There is no appeasing Him, we will never be good enough; and we will never be clean and pure in His eyes. Salem isn’t the inevitable end, it’s Him.

There is no stopping it. I can’t stop it.

She’ll fight him, just as she has before, she’ll rebel and she’s right to, but she’ll lose again, too! And Remnant will pay the price. Everyone—Everyone, Oz unravels further, becoming fractals of himself. A hundred weeping faces.

Now that he’s started, he can’t stop. Words rush out of Oz, All the people of the world. Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone—Erased! And I am to deliver this unto the world. The god of light will not brook disobedience on my part to play. He has given me no other choice.

Madness inflames within them like an infection. Like rot. The untold millennia living these impossible demands and contradictions.

I’d rather die. Ozma admits. I want to die.

It hurts to hear. Oscar knew, but it hurts all the same. The cyclical nature of grief comes in waves, and though changed by time and distance, it always comes back to you.

Always hungry again.

I want to die and there’s only one way I can rest but I can’t—Another tremor reverberates through them, a cracking, sundering sound—like the breaking of concrete foundations, wood beams and steel skeletons—I can’t bear it. Not the cost. I want to die but I—I—I have to—

“You have to live,” Oscar says, solid and resolute. “We have to live.”

I’m so tired, Oscar. I’m so tired. I don’t want to be here anymore; I don’t want to be me.

Oscar holds Ozma so tightly, with enough strength to either crush them both or hold them together—Or reforge them as something new.

Ozma continues, in an anguished outpouring of words, like the coming flood, You’ll be the first to die, Oscar. How am I supposed to go on without you? This is the first time I’ve felt hope since Jinn told me the truth millennia ago, and it’s because of you.

A deep-sea quake births a tidal wave within their grafted, twin-souls.

I should be the one that dies and you the one that survives. You’d know what to do. And you’d have the strength to do it. Oz whispers, I’d rather be you.

The Sea rises, singing one sustained, cacophonous note in a chorused answer to Ozma’s self-obliterating admission.

The curse was so close—so close—to fulfilling its function, not a moment ago. It means now, to do as it was designed to, and swallow them whole. The Sea of Voices reaches the vertical pitch peak, and its harmony is loud enough to burst their eardrums and drive all who hear it to complete and utter insanity.

Oscar punches the nearest red-veined, alabaster wall with an aura imbued fist. A ripple of green-amber surges up his extended arm and flows over their whole body. The rock fractures in a radius out from his clenched fist. The strike is a clash of cymbals and drums, and the many voices of the choir go abruptly silent.

Oscar breathes hard through his teeth.

“I’m no better,” Oscar says, the sound of his own voice in his ears is alien and strange; loud and harsh, “If you were gone, I’d still make mistakes! I’ve killed,” his voice sharpens, haunted, “and brought ruin. I’m no better! I can’t make it all go away. I don’t always know what to do, you can’t put that on me! I’ve failed before and I will again. But that—“

Here, Oscar must suck in an awful, sobbing breath or suffocate.

Strangled, he continues, “But that…That doesn’t matter, because I can’t do this alone. I need you with me. How many times do I have to say it before you hear me, and believe me? Listen—Please listen, we both have reasons to keep living!”

Ozma tries, halfheartedly, to turn away from him then, so Oscar holds him tighter still. He pleads, “Look at me, stay with me! Please listen, Ozma. Please!”

Oscar casts about for the right thing to say. He searches himself for what he means to say.

Stay True To Yourself.

What is his truth?

Oscar softens his hold on Ozma, away from painful, toward tender, but Oscar still holds Ozma fiercely close. He tries to be grounding and not just another cage to hold Ozma.

Oz is still covering his face.

“I want to grow up. I want to fall in love. I want to see Menagerie. But, I’m afraid,” Oscar says, and pours fierce hope and sharp love into the bond between him and Ozma. “And that’s okay! You want to say you’re sorry. You want to reconcile with her, but you’re scared! And that’s okay, too.”

“We’re scared,” Oscar heaves, the shape of his mind taking the shape of his body, locked around Ozma’s chest like arms. Oscar’s chin resting on Ozma’s shoulder and still holding the other tight. Oz is slumped into him like a dead weight, “We’re scared, but we still try. And that’s what matters. It—It matters to me!”

“You were trying so hard, trying new things too, I could feel it! I was so grateful we were fighting together, as one. Please don’t give up, Ozma. Not yet—Please don’t give up on me…”

Ozma whimpers like a wounded animal. He reaches up and covers Oscar’s folded arms with one of his trembling hands as they rest over his shattered, stained-glass heart. Hands that look just like Oscar’s, but fractured and sundered, light pouring through the cracks.

“Tell me what you want,” Oscar pleads. His head resting against Ozma’s neck, “What do you want to do?”

I can’t…I don’t—Oz begins again, his voice barely there, a ghost of himself, What I want…I—

An upwelling of powerful emotions rises in Ozma. Things he has not let himself feel the true measure of, because to lift the numbness would mean no turning back.

It would mean discarding the lie that Ozma makes himself believe. The lie required to stay the course. Ozma pulls his hand away from his face, he says, I want—

A sharp inhale.

“I want to see you grow old! I want you to be safe and happy,” Ozma cries aloud, and the tide crashes. Ozma begins to sob, “I—I want that for myself, too!”

A dam breaks within them and the flood rushes through their joined souls.

“I want to make amends—With Her!”

They are swept up by the flood; from within and without. Crying on the inside and out.

In the physical, material world, they hold themself with two shaking arms clutched around their biceps. Their head hung, shoulders shaking, and big fat tears dripping down their nose to splash onto the stained, red floor.

In the liminal space, inside their shared mind, they are a clutching, four-armed-four-legged, weeping mess.

It starts to rain. Only on them. Clean, clear water, to wash the blood stain away. Unburdened by the blinding shine of light or the murk of darkness.

Clear-eyed, Oscar says, “I think we can change her mind, and I think it’s already started.”

Ozma replies, no mask, no smoke, no mirrors, “I would give anything for you to be right.”