Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

DESCENDING SHINDAEREY

As he did the first time he was forced into a different state of being, he screamed, slumped over, and couldn't figure out how to move.

Billie Lurk -- now effectively his mother, for all that it mattered -- hauled him bodily from the Hold, carrying him over her shoulder when his legs threatened to tremble and deposit him in a shaking heap on the floor. Living pained him: the sudden roar of blood returning to bled-out veins was agonising, and the harsh flinging of his soul back to his body was terrible, to put it lightly.

He had managed to give one last monologue -- or rather, the last one while still being known as the Outsider -- to Billie when the functions of his body were still weak enough to ignore; it had surprised him when he found that he still remembered how to breathe, or that he even had to. When Billie used her Knife to tear a hole through the collapsed remains of the Ritual Hold, he had nearly fainted, and becoming reacquainted with regular, unchanging gravity was one of the least pleasant sensations he thought he'd ever had to feel.

Getting him through it was the fact of his name. He knew what his Mark was, of course; his name was hardly uncommon, and he had watched hundreds named the same write and speak it for years before some unfortunate drought killed them all. The only thing that had stopped him from calling it his own was some Void magic or other -- and he found that he still hardly understood it, despite having spent so much time at its source.

Regardless, now his name was lost to time, and only those who seek to destroy him recognise it. To have it back felt unbelievably good.

He smiled weakly. The feeling was raw.

"Hey," Billie said, soft yet awkward. She tossed him down gently on a slab of stone, next to where Malchiodi's body stood encased in voidrite. "Have anything you need to do before leaving?"

The Outsider opened his mouth, then frowned. His tongue didn't automatically take the shapes of Gristolian when he went to speak, and instead gave him a heavy accent in a language he had almost forgotten.

"No," he said carefully, feeling the sound. "I don't think so."

The image of Daud leaning to whisper into his ear was imprinted on his mind's eye. He mused on how muscle memory seemed to transcend eras.

Billie hesitated.

"You don't sound sure. I-- right. First thing's first, I guess: what's your name?"

He shook his head. She sighed.

"Fine, right. What do you want to be called, then?"

"Anything is fine," he sighed, then rubbed his hands over his face. He nearly recoiled at the feeling of skin rubbing against skin: he wasn't used to feeling so... encased.

Billie frowned, her skin folding around the Eye embedded in her skull. "Fine with me." She fidgeted for a moment.

He raised a brow, overwhelmed with the feeling that he could. "What?"

"You could call yourself the Insider," she blurted, then covered her mouth with her shard arm. The black rock rattled along with her shoulders.

He scowled. "That isn't nearly as funny as you think it is."

"No, but it absolutely is," she said, her grin beaming out between her stone fingers. "That can work, right?"

"No," he insisted, against Billie's laughter. Rage suddenly flared inside him.

She held her hands up placatingly. "That's just how I joke, kid; I know that face. You're going to have to learn to not take it personally."

He opened his mouth to respond, before his face dropped. "Did you just call me kid?"

Billie set a displacement marker a few metres behind herself. The Outsider's scowl deepened.

Billie's expression turned contemplative. "You can see the markers?"

"I've always been a wolfhound for magic," he sniffed. Something in his body felt wrong, but he didn't pay it much mind; he hardly remembered how it was like for it to be all right. "More pressingly: are you plotting an escape route from me?"

Billie shifted, then sighed. "Look. If I'm being honest, I have no idea how to treat you: a child is insulting, and a god is inaccurate. My brain isn't seeing you as an adult -- especially with those hands you haven't grown into yet, Void. They're still the size of your head. So, I'm lost, and I don't have the faintest clue what will happen if I get you mad. Give me some pointers?"

The Outsider blinked. It hadn't occurred to him that he needed to be... forthcoming. Talking was one thing, but telling others how he felt -- well; that was a different beast entirely.

"I..." he began, then realised he had no idea how to continue. Thankfully, the woman saw his lost expression.

"How are you feeling?" she prompted.

He frowned; he felt like he'd have wrinkles before the day was over with. "Alive."

Billie tipped her head like a curious bird. The gesture was oddly playful on her battle-worn body. "In a good way?"

The Outsider fought his way through another breath before replying: "I don't know."

His tone was lost, and she clearly understood that; she removed the marker and sat down beside him. She folded her living hand on the knee closest to him.

"I don't know what kind of advice I can give a four-thousand year old ex-god," she began, a rueful smile twisting her angled face, "but something that nobody tells you plainly is that living is hard. You stop to think about it for a moment, and you realise just how fragile you are -- the heart in your chest could stop at any moment, you have to remember to breathe, and sleeping can be hard to come by even though it's exactly what you need. The stuff up here," she tapped her temple, "is worse. Time insists on happening to you, and your attempts at living outside of it -- alcohol, drugs, whatever else you find -- only makes it harder to deal with. What you've got to do is breathe, find something mindless to do, and think.

"I know that's... well; you haven't had much else to do other than think for the past however many years, right? But it's important to check in with yourself, to make sure you're all on the same page."

"I don't want to," the Outsider replied, something petulant and desperate in his monotonous voice.

"You must," Billie said simply. "Otherwise, you're just going to drag yourself through each day with no end in sight. You've got to sort everything out inside before you can start enjoying the outside."

Musing on her words, the Outsider attempted to lean back on his arms, but his elbows gave way immediately under the pressure. He groaned when his head connected with the rock.

"Careful," Billie admonished, startled into a strangled half-laugh. "I just got you out of there; no need to send yourself back."

The Outsider came down with sickness almost immediately after leaving the Void.

Between the sneezing, coughing, tearing up, swollen eyes, and fevers, it seemed like he had nearly every symptom imaginable. When Billie had overcome her fears of touching the lanky, skinny man (which took under ten minutes; the pull to take care of someone who couldn't take care of themselves was too strong), she found that his forehead roared with heat in comparison to the cold clamminess of his back.

In all honesty, the temptation to take out a (green!) eye for her troubles was tempting, but ultimately overruled -- she'd spent too much time and effort on getting him out of the Void alive only for him to lose some pieces. While she didn't think that she'd forgive him for the manhandling incident, revenge certainly didn't seem all that important.

She wondered who she'd picked that up from.

"Kid," she called uncomfortably, crouching down beside him where he'd sat down and refused to move. He sneezed five times in quick succession before he could answer.

"I am not--" here, he sniffed, "--a kid," he spat, but the effect was entirely diminished by how he roughly pulled his hand over his eyes and forehead, like a child desperately seeking comfort. Something in Billie's heart twinged when she realised that his fingertips were blue.

"You're sick like one," she said for the sake of argument, grabbing his free hand with her inorganic one. She turned it over, examining the twisted-gold rings against the sickly periwinkle his skin had turned. "This is not normal."

When the Outsider next devolved into a sneezing fit, it was necessary for him to be wiped up. Billie awkwardly held out a cloth to him -- the one she typically used to clean her sword, but it had been spotless for a long time now -- but, once she realised he couldn't see it through the tears freely flowing from his puffy eyes, she leaned in to mop him up herself.

He flinched -- hard -- at the first contact, but quickly relaxed. He even pressed into her hand, no doubt mindlessly chasing the coolness of her skin.

He really is just a kid.

"Do you know what's wrong with you?" she asked, swiping his short fringe away from his forehead to feel the fire burn. It was only getting worse.

He shook his head, which rubbed it into her palm; he let out a groan that resembled the pathetic mewling of a kitten. Billie thought that was oddly accurate: he had been prickly and standoffish, but just by sticking around, Billie has earned some measure of trust.

Wasn't that strange to think about.

"I know a doctor," she began tentatively, watching for signs of his lucidity. He opened his eyes -- green eyes -- to watch her talk. "She owes me. I could take you there."

"With what boat? You burned the Wale," he commented airily, and Billie only just restrained herself from snapping at him as she remembered why she was in this mess to begin with. She grit her teeth.

"I still have the skiff," she said dismissively.

She took another breath to speak, but was interrupted by a small, quiet, "I forgot about that."

The Outsider's (green... she couldn't stop thinking about that) eyes were squinted, watery, and utterly haunted. Despite it all, Billie smiled.

"Get used to it," she said, not unkindly. "You've only got limited space up there, now. No Void hivemind, or whatever it was that you had."

"Constant vision," he corrected. "Seeing everything. Forever."

"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that, because I really don't feel like unpacking your shit for you," she sighed, sitting back again. She patiently waited out another sneezing fit -- this time punctuated by a wet, rough cough that sounded rotten straight through to its core.

"We get to Doctor Alexandria Hypatia. Then what?" he asked, because of course he knew.

"Then we see what she can do for you," she shrugged.

"What if she doesn't accept us?" he asked.

"Then we find someone else; that won't happen."

"You don't know that," he scowled. "What happens if there's nothing to be done for me?"

"Then there's nothing to be done for you. You've survived worse."

"What if--"

"I don't know, Outsider," Billie sighed. "You saw everything, right? Get used to seeing only what you know, and only knowing what you find out. It's what the rest of us do."

The Outsider sat preternaturally still, but the imposing effect was ruined by the novelty of his eyes, blinking owlishly. They were so... green.

"Did you know you have green eyes?" Billie asked. His expression loosened infinitesimally.

After a long pause, he replied with a short, certain, "No."

They sat in silence for a while; the rustling of high, shimmering branches filled the air, with the chirping birds sat on them singing into the great, blue sky. The Ocean's crashing against the beaches echoed up the mountainside, and the heat of the day made the distant white-painted slums ripple in patterns. People milled like ants in the cobbled streets between each small, narrow house and its smaller, narrower neighbour.

The Outsider's pale skin seemed to glow in the shadow of the tree they were resting under, but colour seemed to return to him with every passing moment. The dappled light made him look frighteningly ordinary.

He sneezed again. Billie sighed.

"Getting better?" she asked cautiously, studying his face. It went through a range of emotions before deciding again on a frown.

"No," he said, and proved himself right by choking on the word and coughing hard enough to make Billie seriously check for if he was bringing up blood.

"Can you knock me out?" he sniffled, eyes now completely clouded with mucus and tears.

"What?" she replied, surprised. "What for?"

"I hate this," he said, but his tone was everywhere: the child that he was before tried to speak plaintively, but the ex-god that he was now spoke with levity and aloofness.

Billie sympathised. "I would if I had any of my old sleep darts; I've only got my hands. Electrical bursts tend to make people soil themselves before going unconscious -- and, somehow, I don't think you'd like that."

"Choke me, then," he said, shifting to turn away from her.

"It hurts," she said, raising an eyebrow. "I'll be cutting off the blood's flow to your brain; you'll feel worse when--"

"Just do it," he hissed, nose bunched in a snarl. Her black-shard arm rattled and rearranged in response.

Somewhat spooked, she leant forward to comply, wrapping her arm around his neck. He felt damnably human beneath her fingers.

"You're s--?"

"Billie Lurk."

"Fine! Fine; whatever you want. Don't blame me when you wake up covered in bruises."

She snaked her arm around the join of his jaw, his aorta throbbing under her forearm when she pressed down. After a few more seconds of halting the blood, he fell limp.

I could keep going. Finish the job. Do what the old man wanted, after all.

She released her arm.

The hike down Shindaerey was slow-going, and ultimately tiring. Despite spending half the time as a half-awake lump slung over Billie's shoulder ('Void, kid, how are you so heavy? You look like some twigs wrapped up in leather!' 'Keep calling me kid, Billie Lurk. See what happens.' 'I'd be more threatened if you could actually stand,'), the Outsider still managed to be exhausted, and the sneezing, coughing and fevers only grew in intensity the longer they went on. Eventually, Billie declared that his landlegs have successfully developed, and refused to carry him any longer while he was conscious.

He was struck by the thought that she was being friendly, and that was the only reason why she dared to tease so much to begin with. He was used to being treated many ways -- with resignation, with awe, with lust, with wonder -- but being treated as a new recruit to Billie's ever-expanding found family was bizarre.

He sniffed after another sneeze. He had wanted family, but he truly hadn't expected to get it.

After a while, he reached out to grab Billie's bicep. She flinched, but quickly recovered to look at him with a critical eye.

"Hm?" she asked.

"My stomach hurts," he said irritably. She chewed on her cheek.

"I don't know what I'm meant to do about that, kid," she said, and completely ignored his reflexive scowl at the nickname. "Pop a squat in the trees if you need to, but I'm not helping you with anything."

"I wasn't asking for help," he replied, barely restraining himself from being more hostile than necessary. "I want to know why."

She shrugged. "Are you hungry?"

He blinked. "I forgot about that."

"Mm. There we go," she sighed, and pulled him over to a fallen log, half-rotten with pungent mushrooms. "Have some food, then. You remember how to eat?"

He froze. Carefully, he nodded.

Billie studied him as she sat down, watching as his chest rose and fell quickly. "You alright?"

Somehow, he remembered to swallow and breathe before responding. "Every time a meal is taken, the one who eats believes that he'll live to see another day," he said, something in him twisting his wariness into flowery phrases. He couldn't remember when he'd picked up that habit.

She scowled. "No need to go cryptic on me, kid."

"I'm not," he growled, gritting his teeth. She tilted her head.

"Tell me what you mean," she suggested, in the tone of a command. "In plain-speak." He swallowed again, shifting on his feet.

"They fed me and my friends," he started, his newly-rediscovered accent pulling out the 'i' and 'e' into distinct sounds. "None of us ended up leaving the mountain."

A ray of sunlight shone into his watery eyes, causing him to squint with a hiss. He looked up at the tree that stood over him to see that the wind had blasted its branches into a tight curve.

"They didn't mention your friends in their notes," Billie said carefully. The 'they' in question was undebatable.

"They wouldn't have," he replied. He marvelled at the glimpses of cerulean sky he could spot through the heavy canopy.

"Why did you... go with them?" she asked, but the Outsider's capacity for invasive questions was quickly running out.

"That's enough," he snapped, and turned sharply on his heel. He was impressed by the fact he managed to without falling to the floor.

He moved to the nearest tree, then rested his head against its trunk.

"You need to eat," Billie said mildly, rummaging around in her pack. The friendly tone to her voice had nearly disappeared. "It's a long way down, still. We can barely even see Cyria."

"I know," he sighed. "The thought doesn't make it any easier."

Something in Billie's face softened. "Yea, well. We've all got to do things we're scared of, eventually. Might as well start your streak now."

Despite it all, a grimace-that-was-nearly-a-smile creased the Outsider's face. "You took the same tone with Rinaldo, when he first joined the Whalers."

She froze, halfway through pulling her food pack from her bag. "Yea, I did."

He walked back over to her (carefully, this time, as his muscles were still becoming accustomed to pumping blood and burning oxygen, and asking them to do too much in one go was an invitation to go crashing to the ground) to hold out his hand. She deposited the small sack in his palm -- before quickly taking it back when his hand dipped under the weight.

"It weighs less than a kilo," she commented, expression quizzical. He sighed.

"Try again," he commanded, and this time, he remembered that the Void wouldn't help him hold it up. The weight insisted on being felt by his skin. He scowled after he sneezed again.

"Offended you?" she teased, although her tone still hadn't returned back to the lightness it had before. He wondered if it ever would, and cursed how he couldn't just look and check.

"I can't say I'm fond of how I have to hold it," he commented, studying the packet. "Objects in the Void tend to be incorporeal."

Something flickered over Billie's face, and he knew exactly why.

"How did you--" she began, but was interrupted:

"The Dead God exists simultaneously in the Void and in the real world. Pulling your spirit into one of the destabilisations caused by Delilah Copperspoon's return to the world was trivial, and it qualified as a region where I can appear. I was able to touch Emily Kaldwin in the same way."

He folded his hands in front of him, stretching his spine. He winced when it cracked. "I have power over the Dead God, in a manner of speaking. I can force it to bond with a living host in the same way that I can whale ink."

Billie frowned. "Whales don't have ink."

"This one does," he countered, pointing at himself. Her frown deepened.

"You're not a whale," she said plainly. He gave her a wicked smile.

"Keep believing that, Billie Lurk," he said, and unwrapped the oilskin while she scoffed.

The cloth fell apart to reveal dark bread, blood sausage, and a tin of Tyvian whale meat. He immediately tossed the can back at her.

She caught it with a laugh. "You keep getting cheekier. Have you always been like this?"

"I'm becoming delirious," he said confidently. "This fever is ravaging me."

He seized the sausage with his fist, not trusting his finger and thumb to remember how to pick it up otherwise. Closing his eyes, he leaned forward to take a bite.

"...Alright?" Billie said, after the Outsider had spent over a minute chewing. He nodded.

After another moment, he remembered that he had to swallow. It went down lumpily.

"Disgusting," he said cheerily. Billie fought off another laugh.

By the time they reached Cyria Gardens, the Outsider was taken by another severe wave of illness. He'd begged Billie to knock him out again, and so he was currently hefted over her shoulder.

The boy was heavy.

She only regretted that he wasn't awake to see civilisation up close for the first time in thousands of years. She considered waking him up, but she didn't want to think about the snot freely running down the back of her jacket for longer than she needed to; he'd resisted when she suggested wrapping a cloth around his head, and she was utterly unwilling to force an ex-god to do anything he didn't want to. She hadn't asked if he'd retained any magic yet, and she wasn't eager to find out by being on its bad end.

She earned a few strange looks from civilians as she walked through the wealthy district, and stranger ones still from the oddly scarce Grand Guard patrols. She kept her black-shard arm free and ready, but nobody attempted to intercept her, bizarrely.

Eventually, she reached a checkpoint of two guards at the carriage station, but she decided to push her luck and go through the main entrance regardless. Finally, one of them stopped her.

"Please halt," said the young man, eyes flicking nervously between her face and her cargo. "You are Billie Lurk?"

She blinked. "Yes."

"I thought so. Forgive me for saying, but you're very recognisable," he said, and produced a letter from his pocket. "Your royal pardon."

"What?" she asked, startled, glaring at the envelope as if it had slighted her. "How did she know I'd be here?"

"At least one guard at every major checkpoint in Karnaca has a copy," the man supplied helpfully, still holding out the letter. "Please, take it."

Still wary, she extended her inorganic hand to collect it. When nobody turned the corner with guns blazing, she unfolded it with her teeth and fingers.

It read:

7th Day, Month of Rain, 1852

ROYAL PARDON

This letter is to inform BILLIE LURK, CAPTAIN OF THE DREADFUL WALE, that SHE is now a free person in the eyes of the Crown and Law. The following charge(s) is/are hereby dropped against HER, effective immediately in all provinces of the Empire of the Isles:

(Here, the letter became handwritten, and Billie would recognise Emily's courtly cursive anywhere:)

All.

(And it turned back to the impersonal print of the typewriter:)

This document cannot be revoked. An identical copy will be filed in the Royal Archives, Turthe District, Driscol to confirm its legitimacy. Any complaints or rebuttals of this pardon may be addressed to the HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY, EMILY LELA DREXEL KALDWIN I.

Signature of the pardoner:

(And here, the looping curves of Emily's formal writing were present again, set next to a similar hand with fewer flourishes:)

Emily Kaldwin

Corvo Attano

She nearly let her surprise show at the second name on the list, but managed to keep it together in front of the guard.

"This is real?" she asked, tone wry. The guard straightened his spine.

"Indeed, I believe so," he nodded. "Unless the Duke is pulling a fast one on all of us. Somehow, I doubt that."

"Yea, I do too," she said, mostly to herself. She tucked it into her inside jacket pocket.

"I also have another, which is to be addressed to you also," he said after a beat, digging out a second letter identical to hers.

The name printed across the front was 'DAUD'.

Billie's mouth twisted in a sad smile. She slipped it into her pocket. "He's dead now, that choffer. Void rest his soul."

"My condolences," he replied unemotionally. "In which case, that's all your royal correspondence. Have a safe journey."

She looked up at him, and watched as he resolutely ignored the body slung over her shoulder. She smiled.

"Thanks," she said, meaning it.

The Outsider woke blearily, coughing up another chunk of phlegm as his consciousness returned to him. He groaned.

"Good afternoon," Billie's voice said, amused. He opened his eyes to study her.

"This is miserable," he said, at which she laughed. He scowled.

"Stop with that face," she said, still trying to control her chuckling. "You look just like Daud, Void."

The lines in his face furrowed further. "I do not."

"You haven't even looked in a mirror yet," she pointed out, face split in a rare grin. "No, you definitely do -- but when he was younger. He didn't scowl much before he died, thankfully."

The lightness of her voice was strained, but she still seemed happy. The Outsider thought about that.

"Why are we shaking?" he asked, then raised his eyes to study the sky through the glass ceiling.

"We're in a carriage," she replied. "Do us a favour and don't look outside; some people get sick when they see the world moving around them. You haven't vomited yet, and I'd like to keep it that way."

"You and me both," he grumbled, then slumped down in his seat. His head throbbed.

He frowned. "How often do people have to drink?"

"Frequently," she said, already pulling out her water-bladder from her satchel, "and more when they're ill. Slipped my mind, sorry -- here." She pressed the leather into his loosely cusped hands.

He gripped it from both sides with his fists. The bladder bulged in the middle at the pressure.

"Careful with that," she said amusedly, watching him twist off the cap with his teeth and drink.

At the first wave of cool liquid passing down his throat, his headache subsided. He continued to empty the pouch entirely, and put it down feeling all the better for it.

"Good?" she asked. He nodded and made a noise in the positive.

"Not as bad as eating?" she pressed, curious. He nodded again, then sighed.

"How close are we?" he asked, and was startled to realise that he was about to reply in his first language. Already, his accent was becoming stronger -- he wasn't sure what would happen if he tried to speak in the Void's tongue, and he found that he didn't exactly want to find out.

"Only a few more minutes," she said. "Maybe twenty. You've waited longer."

"I'm well aware," he replied, then forcefully stopped his brow from creasing again. "I was just curious."

They fell into silence, the only sound being the rattling of the rails beneath them. The carriage was comfortable, covered in red velvets and leathers, and seemed to hold the Outsider when he leaned back into it. One thing he liked about living, he decided, was a comfortable chair.

"Do you feel the heat?" Billie asked, arms crossed. "You're white as bone; I tried to keep you out of the sun, but you don't seem to be bothered by the temperature."

He thought on that. "Everything is unpleasant, currently. I'm not entirely sure which sensation is the heat."

Billie smiled. The Outsider coughed and sneezed in quick succession, then shivered.

"Nearly there," she said, pitching her voice to soothe. He wasn't sure whether to be amused or irritated.

"You said," he responded wryly, letting his eyes fall closed again. He heard her huff.

There was silence again for a beat.

"You're from Serkonos?" Billie asked, unprompted.

"Yes," he answered.

"Which area?"

"It doesn't exist anymore."

"Well, obviously -- I mean, where did it used to be?"

He thought for a moment. "Karnaca, and the sea. The exact place has been lost to the Ocean a long time ago."

"Interesting," she said. "How are you so pale, then?"

He grit his teeth. "Five years before I was sacrificed, a mountain that was revered throughout Pandyssia erupted. The magnitude of the explosion was so immense that it swallowed several civilisations, and sent endless clouds of ash into the sky."

Billie paused. "That can happen?"

"Obviously; it did," he said, amused. "Light was scarce. Make your own conclusions."

"And it lasted the entire five years?" she asked, curious despite herself.

He nodded. "It only lifted entirely after I was killed."

"Can that still happen?"

"Underwater, most times. It's rarer on land."

"But not to the same scale?"

"Of course not," he said, baring his teeth in an awful smile. "Otherwise, you would've heard about it."

He didn't have to look at her to see her shrug.

"I am not a hound to be commanded to sit and stay," the Outsider growled, boyish face twisted into a snarl.

"No, you're not," Billie sighed, watching a small crowd of miners leave Addermire's left entrance, "but I trust that you won't kill yourself in the five minutes it'll take to talk to Hypatia."

"Doctor Alexandria Hypatia," he said. She fixed him with a quizzical expression. "That's her name." He shrugged.

"Yes," she replied, trying her best to sound more confident than she felt. "You stay here, and, I don't know, watch the sea or something. Don't try to swim, try not to talk to people; you know it."

He nodded. "Go talk to Doctor Alexandria Hypatia."

"Alright," she said, turning to trot towards the building.

"Meagan," Alexandria greeted happily, watching as Billie opened the door to her office. "Here for a chat, or are you saving the world again?"

"Both," she said, a smile finding a place on her face. "I'm here to cash in that favour, too."

"Of course," the doctor replied, standing up to tidy away her papers. Billie was pleased to see that her office was neater than how Emily had described it; that anti-serum must've really set things to rights in her head. The ex-assassin was happy for her.

"So," Hypatia began after she had slotted the last set of confidential files in its correct place. "What can I help you with?"

Billie sighed. Where could she even start?

"I found a kid," she started, trying not to laugh at the image of the Outsider's scowl when she'd first called him that, "who doesn't have anyone alive to take care of him. He's in a bad way: I took him from where he was being kept captive, and he immediately started sneezing, coughing, having fevers -- all of it. It gets better and worse in turns, but I honestly don't want to leave it to chance to see if he survives; his fingertips were turning blue a little while ago."

Hypatia nodded solemnly, mulling something over. Her expression was sincere on her long face. "Where did you find him?"

"Shindaerey," Billie informed her, to Hypatia's distinct surprise. "He was being kept by a bunch of cultists. I guess the mountain's just where they thought was best to set up shop."

"Not near Stilton's mineshafts, I assume?" she asked, sharp eyes creasing into her frown. "That's bizarre; I thought all of the mountain was heavily trafficked."

Billie shrugged. "The quarry they took over's not on any maps. I only found out about it through a silvergraph that was going to be destroyed."

Hypatia huffed a little laugh, then leaned back in her chair. "You get up to such strange adventures, Meagan. Or, Billie?"

She nodded hesitantly. Another laugh sounded from the doctor.

Then, Hypatia looked up to properly study the woman, and promptly did a double-take.

"Is it just me, or..." She trailed off, gesturing to her own arm and eye. Billie barked a short laugh.

"Oh, yea; this is new," she said, raising her right arm so that it caught the sun shining through the narrow windows of the office. It was clearly unnatural, and sucked in the light reflected from the auburn woods and warm, pale walls. "Black magic business. Don't worry about it too much," she added hastily, trying to keep a smile from her face.

She didn't succeed. It looked slightly manic.

Hypatia stood and crossed the ground between them in long, confident strides -- and Void, wasn't that good to see after her wobbling and ambling off the dock and onto the Wale -- and placed her hands on either side of Billie's gaunt face. Her palms were cool and dry.

She thumbed Billie's right undereye. "That looks... peculiar. Inorganic."

Billie grunted her assent. It took everything in her to not press into her hands, which were nothing but clinical in how they held her; it had been years since she'd felt a gentle touch.

After a second, Hypatia's arms dropped down to her sides, her olive overalls rustling with the movement. "Is the boy outside?"

She blinked. "Yep. Hopefully he didn't get into any mischief; goodness knows he isn't used to being around people."

Hypatia huffed a laugh.

When they wandered outside to fetch him, they found a small group of miners gathered around a dark lump on the floor. Upon closer inspection, the lump was the curled-up body of the Outsider, still donned in his funeral attire.

"Kid?" Billie called urgently, gently brushing past some of the burlier miners, who stepped aside for her easily. "You alright?"

One of the men was crouched beside him, gently rubbing his chest while his head lay cushioned in the man's lap. The Outsider sneezed and coughed almost constantly, and the pauses were filled with loud wheezing.

"He yours?" the man asked, studying her with a steely gaze. "He hasn't been good. Threw up that--" here, he pointed to a dark patch of red-stained stone outside of their gathering, "-- a minute or so ago. Best get him out of the wind."

"You did the right thing," Hypatia said firmly, standing beside him. "Thank you. Can you help us carry him inside?"

The miner nodded with a sharp "Aye," and together with one of his friends, lifted the boy's body up by his legs and chest. A shiver rattled through the ex-god.

"To the ground floor," she said. To Billie, she commented, "Now that the Grand Guard's finally moved out, I have enough room for patients again. It took ages to steam out the wolfhound smell, though."

Billie gave a weak laugh at that -- admittedly, her thoughts were preoccupied. She didn't exactly feel obligation towards the boy, but seeing him diminished and suffering on the floor reminded her of a lot of things that she'd rather forget.

"What's your name, dear? I didn't catch it before," asked Hypatia's gentle timbre after the Outsider had been fully awake for more than a few moments. The medicines she had him hooked up to (of which Billie had first flinched at, seeing the mechanism's resemblance to the Eyeless' transfusion machines) had halted the sneezing for now, and a small dose of caffeine administered directly to the vein let him stay entirely lucid for a short assessment.

"Attan," he responded without skipping a beat.

Billie reigned in the urge to raise a critical eyebrow, but she did glance at him out of the corner of her eye. He was too busy sneezing to realise.

"Attan," Hypatia echoed, noting it in her book in her neat cursive.

Daud had once told her to be wary of people who wrote neatly: it often meant that they were rich enough for their handwriting to matter, and if their writing mattered, they had social networks who would notice them being missing -- and, it was generally a good idea to not trust them. Just a trend he'd picked up on over the years, he'd said. She wondered if there was more to it -- but, she could hardly ask him now.

Regardless, she was sure that Hypatia was someone who could be trusted -- an outlier to the rule, she supposed.

"And what's been bothering you?" she said once she was finished, waiting patiently for the Outsider to be finished with his coughing before she spoke. When he could finally take in enough air, he wheezed:

"Respiratory illness. Meagan said that my forehead burns, while my back is cold. There's itching on my chest. I haven't been able to see clearly for three days now."

Billie blinked at the effortless use of the alias. Looking over at the group conversing just outside of the door, she appreciated the thought; even if she had been legally pardoned, it may still be best to err on the side of caution.

Hypatia nodded solemnly. "How old are you?"

"Fifteen," the Outsider said. Cold terror washed over Billie before she could pack it away.

Fifteen?

The doctor frowned, then leaned back in the chair positioned by his bedside, where he perched like a carrion bird. Blazing sunlight illuminated the ends of her hair and the edges of her face through the hall behind her.

"Do you want Meagan to be here for your examination?" she asked, which made the Outsider slide his gaze over to where Billie hovered by the door. She shrugged.

Your call.

"I don't mind," he said, and reached up with the hand not connected with off-white tubes to pull down the blanket covering him.

Billie's first thought was that he was startlingly thin -- too thin to be caused purely by his slight appetitive over the last week.

No; his frame was built from constant, repeated starvation.

Her second thought was that he looked like he had been painted: bands of brown coloured him from a spot on his left hip to his shoulders, looping over them like a child's drawing of the sun's rays. They were dark, but naturally so, and weren't wholly unusual against the paleness of his skin.

On the topic of illness, on his chest was a patch of redness, with two or three spots raised like jagged mountains.

Hypatia hummed before speaking. "As I said before, it looks like you have multiple ailments at once," she said, and reached out with gloved hands to palpitate the region under his ribcage on both sides. Billie saw a ghost of a wince die on his face. "I've given you some general medicines for now, as your immune system may need help to fight all of them off at once. If you get any worse, I'll specialise your doses."

The Outsider already looked worse; while Billie had managed to return colour to his fingers (and he'd outright refused to let her look at his toes), he was still being wracked by full-body shivers every few minutes, and the volume of water he was losing surely wasn't healthy.

"You have pneumonia, undoubtedly," she said, lifting a hand to count it on a raised finger, "that developed from a common cold. An infection, of some kind -- possibly from that wound on your throat that you keep trying to hide," she paused, with two of her fingers lifted in the air. If his face wasn't already red with fever, Billie was sure that he would've blushed, and he tipped his head downwards. "Chickenpox -- which you are rather late for, if I'm being honest. Potentially, there could be something else hiding itself between the symptoms of the others, but we'll just have to investigate and monitor you for that."

"Chickenpox?" Billie blurted. She looked at the Outsider. "You haven't had chickenpox before?"

He fought his way through another round of sneezes before responding: "If you knew how I grew up, you wouldn't be surprised." Billie frowned.

"Ready to rest?" Hypatia asked expectantly. The other two nodded.

Hypatia found her perched on a bench in the empty solarium, smoking a pipe. She looked off into the ink-stained sky and bottomless blue waters through the grimy glass, lost in her own thoughts.

Still, she greeted the doctor when she sat down beside her. "Hi, Hypatia."

"Please," she replied cordially, "call me Alex."

Billie smiled around the tip of her pipe. "Alright, Alex."

Then, she sighed. "Do you know that feeling, where you have no idea what to do, when before you were certain you'd know exactly what you'd do if you ever found yourself in that situation?"

The doctor paused thoughtfully. "Like when you go to the shops with enough coin for the peaches you want to make tarts with later, but when you get there, you see some apricots and wonder which one's more worth it?"

Billie barked a laugh. "Basically, yes. And your dad said that he wanted the peaches too, but you know in your heart that he'd actually prefer the apricots."

"Hmm," Alex said lightly, scraping the dirt from under her nails with a blunt scalpel that she produced from... somewhere. "I think I know the feeling."

She bumped into Billie's right shoulder playfully. Billie gave another chuckle.

"I'm glad," she said earnestly and quietly, looking out into the distance again. "You know -- I'm conflicted. I don't think I've ever been this conflicted, and that's saying something."

Alex looked her over patiently. "Want to talk about it?"

"Didn't take you for a psychologist," Billie chuckled, but appreciated the offer. "I don't know; most parts of the story aren't mine to tell."

"There's more to that boy than either of you are letting on, isn't there?" she asked, studying her with a piercing eye.

"Nothing gets past you, does it," the ex-assassin sighed. "Yes, there definitely is -- but, again, it's not my place to say."

"Talk about like it happened to someone else. Plausible deniability," she suggested, and so Billie did just that.

"Alright. Well, uh -- once upon a time," here, Alex chuckled, "there was an old codger, who was the only father a ship captain knew. When she found him again after over a decade, he asked her to help him kill god."

Alex's eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hair.

"It turned out that he had it all planned out -- but, because he was so old, all he did was sit around in an armchair all day and cough his lungs out." She teared up a little, but pressed on. "So, he sent her to find the location of an ancient artefact, which she ended up stealing from a bank."

"Billie," Alex admonished.

"The artefact was a knife," Billie pressed. "The knife that was used to create the god. So, it could also be used to unmake him."

They sat in silence for a bit, with the distant cawing of seagulls and rumbling of the waves below ferrying their thoughts.

"That sounds like a lot to handle," Alex said soothingly, setting a hand on Billie's shoulder. "Don't tell me the ending; I'll figure it out. What has you so torn up, though?"

Billie pressed into her slightly, setting her pipe down on the iron bench. "I don't know if I did the right thing."

"Whatever it is that you did, it was the right choice," Alex assured her, her hand sliding around her shoulder to rub her back. "I don't doubt it."

Billie shot her a grateful smile, before turning back to the view with a sigh.

"I want to leave," she said, speaking like every word was difficult. "But I don't want to leave him alone."

"He won't be alone," Alex said. "I'm hardly going to kick him onto the streets. These last few weeks sound like they've been hard on you; if you need to leave, I wouldn't hold it against you."

"He might," she replied half-heartedly. Alex shook her head fervently.

"I'll make him understand," she said, somehow managing to sound earnest, even with her voice dragged down with tiredness. "He seems like a bright young man. He'll grow into something to be proud of yet."

"Yea," said Billie. She blinked furiously.

SHORE LEAVE AT ADDERMIRE INSTITUTE

Waking up again was a sensation that the Outsider couldn't label. The darkness behind his eyelids was absolute in the dimmed room he was set in, and frankly, he couldn't believe that he was seeing nothing. Now that his head wasn't quite protesting his every moment of being alive, he could fully appreciate the changes:

It was possible to not look at anything.

There was only one timeline that he existed in. There were no other Billies or Dauds to catch up with.

He was physical. His soul was carried by a body, and that body breathed, sweated, and did what bodies do.

But still, he didn't feel fear, and the lack of it was conspicuous among the roiling landscape of his mind.

He sighed, then shifted, and immediately regretted the movement as it made the linen around him rub against his oversensitive skin. Healing, it seemed, was disgusting and messy, but also meant that he felt more alive than ever.

That was bizarre to think about; he never thought he'd be able to recover from the holes stabbed through his neck. The stitches the Doctor had put there ('It's already half-healed, but it's a miracle that you hadn't torn it open again with how much you say Billie was shaking you around,') were slippery under his finger when he went to brush it.

He opened his eyes on an empty, dark room: Doctor Alexandria Hypatia had been kind enough to provide him with a smaller individual room for his comfort, and while the windowless box was stifling, he appreciated how still and silent it was.

Four-thousand years was not a short time to spend living -- existing -- in a certain way. He wasn't sure that he could ever get used to doing it the right way again.

What he was sure were years after he'd woken up, a confident hand rapped on his door. The indignant, seething rage that belied his every moment reared its head again, as now he was powerless, and anyone in the world could be behind that door, but he could not look ahead and see. He couldn't figure out whether he resented the removal of his powers or not.

Realising that his visitor was expecting a response, he said: "Come in."

Doctor Alexandria Hypatia, daughter of a common man who sold his house to pay for his only joy's education, stepped through the door, which swung smoothly on its well-oiled hinges to admit her and a dose of light. His eyes squinted automatically.

"Good morning, Attan," she said kindly, voice soft like the dimness of the room. "How are you feeling?"

Under the doctor's care, the respiratory symptoms had faded, but the march of chickenpox had just begun. Rosettes of bulbous acne decorated his body like sequins on a dancer; Hypatia had commended his ability to refrain from scratching at them. He didn't bother to tell her that his body had long forgotten its instinctual reaction to itchiness.

He blinked at her; her head was tilted to one side, in a way that he remembered Billie doing. They had both learned the gesture from their fathers.

"I'm alright," he said, and found that his speech was becoming nearly unrecognisable as Gristolian; he placed emphasis on the vowels in strange places, and the harsh noises were all pronounced individually.

"Are you sure?" she said softly, pushing the door so that only a sliver of light could shine through. His eyes opened again fully.

She sighed and came closer before she could respond, then placed a hand on his forehead. He barely kept himself from flinching.

"Your fevers are gone," she frowned, and sat down on the chair beside his bed. "Wait -- I'm sorry: do you not understand Gristolian very well? You have an accent, of course, but you replied just fine when you first came in."

Signs of impatience rose on her face before quickly being plastered over with an understanding expression.

He replied: "I do understand it. I'm familiar with the modern letters, and all of their predecessors, as well as the multitude of languages it was born from."

Hypatia's face lifted in polite surprise. "My apologies. I didn't mean to undermine you."

He felt strangely touched. Hypatia was always an interesting person; despite his contempt for Delilah, he found that he was interested to see how the serum she tampered with would affect the kind doctor. In fact, that was one of the many events that made him resent the witch more: the world is always short on kind people, and the fact that she actively sought to corrupt one of the most pure irritated him endlessly.

"Are you -- sorry; are you aware that you're pausing a lot?" the doctor asked kindly, laying her interlaced hands on top of her crossed knees. "Every time before you reply, you leave a minute or two. Spontaneous brain damage..?" she said, quieter, and her brow bunched in a frown.

With a small wave of shock, he realised that he hadn't noticed -- at all. And now, as he listened to the world passing around him -- yes, it was quick in comparison to himself, and the seconds trickled through his mind like water through loose fingers.

It was five minutes before he replied: "I didn't realise."

Hypatia gave him a slightly strained smile. "No, I didn't think you did. Don't worry about it; we'll get through it together."

The Outsider barely withheld the urge to give a mocking scoff. Instead, he responded mildly a few minutes later (although for him, it was only a second):

"I'm sure."

BEFORE 03 -- an extract from a story by an unknown author

After the impossible fullness he had felt after the feast was concluded, the boy must have fallen asleep, as he woke with a jerk and a gasp.  

Then, he frowned; upon testing his limbs, he found all of them were tied firmly to the chair he had sat in. His friends, he realised as he studied each of their slack faces from his point at the head of the table, were all still asleep.  

"Hello?" the boy called, turning to realise that his enigmatic hosts were no longer present. The room was black and cavernous without them; the scar in the ceiling from where thin, ashy sunlight flickered through earlier was now dark and grey. "Is anyone there?"  

Four sets of hasty footsteps rang out from a hallway, which must have been hidden behind him. Soon enough, four cloaked persons surrounded him, carefully keeping each other in such a position that the boy would not have to move his head to take in all of them at once.  

"Your gift is nearly ready," one said, his voice trembling nearly as much as his body. "But first, we must take care of your friends. They will never feel fear, hunger or loneliness ever again."  

Those words were repeated from when the boy had first met the hooded enclave, he realised.  

He felt as if he should be fearing what they intended to do next, but he found that his brain was numb; his thoughts were slow, and fear was suddenly foreign to him.  

"What are you going to do?" he asked, voice suddenly lax and unemotional. He couldn't remember what had just passed through his mind. He deemed it unimportant.  

"We will ensure that they will never feel fear, hunger or loneliness ever again," said a different person, but in much the same intonation as the last.  

The boy tried to raise his hand to push back a lock of hair from where it had fallen into his eye, but was quickly reminded of the ropes that tied him.  

"Why am I bound?" he asked. Suddenly, it was an effort to keep his eyes open. Sleep attempted to push them back closed.  

"Just to make sure," another one of the figures said fervently, voice strained by a ragged throat. "No harm will come to you."  

The sudden shuffling of several sets of footsteps caused the boy to snap back to alertness. He scanned the room to see many hundreds more people gathered than he thought possible, all clothed in the dim purple rags of their collective. More than ten carried knives.  

There were eight of his friends sat at the table.  

"No," the boy said, face, heart and soul dropping simultaneously. "No! No, you can't!"  

"We promised you, my child," the final one of the figures from the original group said, and he immediately recognised her voice as the one who found them in their rotted shelter. "They will never feel hunger, fear or loneliness ever again."  

The scream that ripped from the boy's throat was barely human; he fought against his bindings, trying desperately to break them. As he struggled, the ropes only tightened, and he quickly wore through the skin on his wrists.  

He shouted the names of his friends, but they stayed still and unresponsive, as if they had become statues during the time he had slept for. The face of the one he was closest to faced away from him. The smallest one looked like a large pebble deposited into a chair decorated in finery.  

"Please," he gasped, finding himself blinking through tears. The figures stepped forward as one. "No, please -- let us go!"  

"We are," said the woman simply. A cold, white hand crept out from underneath her rags.  

The nails were bitten and curled, curved in the manner of an igris-hawk. They were tinged black at the cuticle, and the webs of veins beneath the wet skin were blue.  

When she swept the clawed appendage through the air, the armed ones advanced.  

The boy, suddenly caught up to by exhaustion, could do nothing more than watch in dismay, with even his struggling ceased by the sudden fatigue sweeping over his muscles. The cloaked ones seized each of his friends by the chin, with hands so pale that they shone in the dim light, and pulled their heads backward to expose the sensitive, life-giving parts of their necks.  

One by one, the black blades they carried found their paths through the throbbing pulses hidden by his friends' skin. Blood flowed in thick rivers down their new clothes, their content expressions undisturbed by the life draining from them.  

The boy could do nothing more than watch.

Hypatia found him sleeping on the janitor's bed after Hamilton came to her with a sheepish expression and confusion written across his face.

"I don't know how he got in," he had shrugged, watching her pack away the last of her more volatile substances. "I also don't know why he's even there to begin with. Dunn'he have a bed for himself?"

"Yes, he does," she found herself replying, smiling at the man. Once she had locked away her myriad solutions, she turned to him and gestured to lead the way.

Now at his room, Hypatia found the boy curled up like a feral cat, arms tight around his knees, and his head hidden between his elbows. He was still topless, and the striking birthmarks across his torso stood out like ebony against the janitor's clean white sheets.

"I needed to talk to him anyway," she sighed, nodding politely when Hamilton showed himself out. His bulky body was graceful on the stairs.

"Attan?" she called gently, testing to see if he was awake. When one green eye peeked over his bicep to shoot her an aggrieved stare, she huffed a short laugh.

She sat down beside him, keeping a hand on the duvet between them to steady herself. "Why are you in the janitor's room?"

As was becoming customary with him, he paused for a few minutes before replying confidently: "I was exploring."

Somehow, the peculiar accent he had arrived with had only gotten stronger, and despite having treated patients from all the provinces of the Empire, she had never heard a dialect that could fit around his tongue. It rolled his words and dragged the vowels out longer -- although, she wasn't entirely sure if that wasn't because of the brain damage he appeared to be facing.

"These are private rooms," she explained patiently, because patience was never something she was running out of, as opposed to time and resources. "Mister Hamilton sleeps here."

"I know," he said, after only half a minute. "I was exploring," he said again.

Hypatia felt her face begin to frown. "But, surely you know that you shouldn't sleep in other people's beds?"

Then, entirely unexpectedly, he hissed: "I am perfectly aware."

He then sat up fluidly, his previous ungainliness forgotten by his limbs. He rubbed his hands over his face, pushed his short fringe away from his forehead so that the hairs stood on-end like the crest of a wave, and let out a sigh that sounded exhausted beyond his years.

"Doctor Alexandria Hypatia," Attan began, the venom gone from his tone, "Meagan Foster suggested that I should sit and think whenever the things I'm facing become too overwhelming. Similar principles have been echoed throughout time: the Ancient Incolae guided their children to cliffsides to scream their worries to the wind; some natives of Pandyssia believe that confiding their secrets to a beloved pet would improve both of their health; and even today, the modern scientific breakthroughs in the Academy of Natural Philosophy focus on the mind being interwoven with the body, and that compartmentalising thoughts and experiences are crucial to living a healthy life."

Hypatia blinked. While his accent was unfamiliar and heavy, the leisurely pace at which he spoke allowed her plenty of time to decipher his meaning.

She found that she was utterly dumbfounded by her patient, and under- and overestimated him by turns.

"I came here to think," he said, and waved his hand -- the one with the connections to her new machine still attached in the wrist, and she was very glad that he appeared to have detached the tubes correctly -- loosely to gesture to the room. Dim, blue light shone through the narrow window. "I've always preferred heights."

His tone was raised like he wasn't finished, but his face fell as he turned silent. A crease formed on his forehead.

Tentatively, she pressed a hand to his back; the skin was still clammy with sweat, but was warm and healthy. Despite expecting the dark skin to have a different texture, his back was smooth all across, interrupted only by the final bumps and scars of healing chickenpox.

"That sounds difficult," she said sincerely, rubbing between his shoulder-blades soothingly. "And you don't have to go through it alone."

Attan's face folded into a mean smile for a second, before flattening out again. "I have been through it alone for the better part of..."

And here, he trailed off, and appeared to think something over. Privately, Hypatia was relieved that the speed of his responses seemed to be consistently increasing.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked politely, continuing to rub over his back as she did.

He paused, but only to consider. "Potentially."

"Talk about it like it happened to someone else," she said, finding herself repeating her advice. It was good advice. "Plausible deniability."

The boy laughed coldly, and she tried to ignore the feeling that she should be scared. "I always do."

Then, he sighed again, and leaned forward on his elbows, balancing the points on his spread knees. A quiet wind rustled through the room, from where the stars were visible in the sky beyond the window.

When it became obvious that he wasn't going to say anything ten minutes later, Hypatia decided that her secret was worth sharing with him, if only to earn his trust. Somehow, she doubted that the kid would tell anyone else.

"I..." She paused to choose her next words carefully. "I know that you're not all that you seem; Meagan has always kept company with people who have innumerable layers to themselves. She made friends with the literal Empress, for Void's sake -- she's a magnet for unusual personalities and curious stories. Do you want to know what mine was?"

"You were the Crown Killer," said Attan, voice curling mildly.

A bolt of fear shot through her, before she forcefully mellowed it.

"See what I mean?" she smiled weakly, leaning forwards to study the side of his face. The angles were still sharp and unfriendly, but his skin was looking healthier every day that passed. "Layers. You're no ordinary person to have known that -- Void, even I didn't before Emily came and rescued me."

She didn't know what to think, but didn't let the panic overcome her.

Deciding to go back to safer topics, she took a deep breath before confiding:

"I've been conducting some experiments, and I've found some... peculiar, let's say, things about your biology."

When he turned his head towards her, she continued, "Firstly -- you haven't been in contact with disease for countless years. That's also why you were so vulnerable; I won't pretend to know what you've been through, but disease evolved without you. The common colds that you encountered before aren't the same as how they are now, so your body doesn't know how to handle them anymore. When Meagan... rescued you, she shocked your body with so many illnesses that it didn't know where to begin; that's why you were so sick. That's also why I keep insisting that we leave island nations alone," she chuckled mirthlessly. "There's a few uncontacted islands off the coast of Bastillian, did you know? Their only wish is to be left alone to conduct their traditions in peace, but some, ah -- explorers insist on trying to go there every few years. They trade diseases, and our lot often come back dead. I hope the Islanders survive."

Attan looked at her fully, the pale green of his eyes shimmering in the low light. His pupils were constricted, even in the darkness, which left them as dots framed by rings of yellow and emerald. It hardly looked natural.

She smiled sadly. "Lucia doesn't agree with me -- Lucia Pastor, that is. She thinks that the world being more interconnected -- what was the word she used? Globalisation? -- is a good thing, but I think that people should have the ability to choose how they want to live. You can't escape taxes, did you know? Regardless of where you go or what you do, if the royal collectors can travel to you, they'll tax you."

"It's always been that way," replied the boy, his voice calm and monotone. Something distressed hid in the way his skin wrinkled around his nose and mouth. "Civilisations rise and fall on the backs of the exploited. Disease, slavery, government -- all the rich man's friend."

She nodded.

Isn't he fifteen?

"I've got to say," she said, amusement colouring her voice. "I've never met someone so young with such a level of education. Where did you learn?"

"In the Void," he shrugged, and she studied the way his skin rolled over his skinny shoulders.

Suddenly, and with a cold wave of understanding, she was entirely aware of who she was talking to. She swallowed.

Billie wasn't joking. Void; I wish she was joking.

"Who are you, really?" she asked lightly, and watched as his eyes darted around the room before settling on the outdoors.

"You know the answer to that," he said amusedly. He scratched at the patchy stubble coming in on his jaw. "I'm still deciding if I should tell anyone, leave them to form their own conclusions, or if I should vanish into the shadows. Somehow, I don't think I'll be satisfied if I took that last route."

Her throat was feeling increasingly dry. Then, she asked the question that her hindbrain was begging for her to ask: "How?"

He arched a brow at her -- and now that her perception of him was changing, she found that she was shocked at how bushy they were. Black, thick, and nothing like the faint hairs that she pencilled over every morning.

"Didn't Billie Lurk tell you?" he asked, and despite being a frail, skinny teenager sat in a ratty bed that was yellowed in the centre and didn't belong to him, he managed to make her scared. Never in her life was she devout, but she was still finding herself reciting what little she could remember of the Strictures in her mind.

Do those even work?

"Don't stress," he admonished, concern tickling at his facial muscles and tone. Despite herself, she followed his instruction. "Admittedly, I'm unfamiliar with speaking to people in a way that doesn't deify myself or scare others -- it's not my intention now." Here, he spread his hands, and continued: "I'm human again. I'm still learning what that means."

"You're not how I expected the Outsider to be like," she blurted, and realised that there was now a solid metre's worth of distance between them. She wasn't sure who pulled back. "I thought -- well. Inhuman. Something to be scared of."

"Evidently, I still am something to be scared of," he sighed, and buried his face in his hands.

Hypatia startled. "You can read minds?"

A single eye filled with mirth peered at her through his long fingers. "You were trembling, Alexandria Hypatia."

"Ah," she said succinctly. Then, she shifted uncomfortably, and sighed.

"I'm going to pretend that this part of the conversation didn't happen," she informed him, and conducted a short breathing exercise before she continued to speak a minute later.

"Frankly, I don't know if I believe you, but even now, my mind isn't quite completely settled. Debating whether or not I'm treating a god will put me under pressure that I, quite plainly, could live without."

"Ex-god," he corrected lightly, twirling his fingers around each other in rippling patterns. Something about his expression told her that he was pressing on purpose.
"Ex-god," she echoed, then stood up swiftly.

"Billie -- Meagan -- called in a favour; she asked me to look after you until you're capable of looking after yourself. I also volunteered to be someone you can go to if your life gets rough -- like family, if you will. You can stay at Addermire for however long you'd like, and I'm to give you audience with the Duke if you would like to contact Emily or Corvo for whatever reason. She also told me to mail one of her friends if anyone with whalebone on their belts and tattoos on their chests try to ask after you. Does that all make sense?"

With an elegant tip of his head, he agreed.

"Good," she said, then promptly walked off to sit down somewhere dark and quiet for a few hours.

"He's still there, doctor... Didn'he listen when you told him to move?"

"...Shoot -- I don't think I actually told him to?" Here, a sigh. "I'm sorry, Joe; you're on your own. I need a break from him."

Here, a chuckle. "Don't hear you saying that about people much. He get on your nerves?"

"Somehow."

The next time the Outsider had reason to talk with Hypatia again (she'd conspicuously sent her colleagues in her stead for his last few check-ups, but they undoubtedly both knew why she was avoiding him), it was midnight, and she'd discovered him in her own bed. He woke with a long, low groan, covering his eyes; he was roused by an impatient hand shaking him by his flank. He shot a scowl at its owner.

Standing over him with a concerned expression on her face was Hypatia. She frowned, the crevices dark in the night.

"Is there any reason why you're here," she asked, tone flat. She was exhausted.

"I was exploring," he said, and a lazy smile crawled across his face. He'd been told, sometimes in not-so-polite terms, that his grins were wicked, even when he genuinely meant them.

"So I see," Hypatia replied. "May I have my bed back?"

"Emily Kaldwin went through your apartment once, when you were deposed in Luca Abele's care," he said loftily, stretching his arms and legs far above and below him. He could barely unfold his knees before he was cased in by the walls. "Despite having earnt your living situation a hundred times over, you insist on staying with your patients on difficult nights."

"Yes," she agreed, and he was immediately made curious by the irritation flickering in her eyes.

"Listen," she said, interrupting his train of thought, "I'm sure you know why I've been avoiding you: you're obviously intelligent, and you're so many times older than me that I don't even want to think about it. Please, do us both a favour, and get out of my room before I do something rash."

When he only looked at her unblinkingly, she heaved a frustrated sigh and pressed her hands over her face. "I'm too tired for this."

"Sleep with me," he suggested, and she immediately levelled a venomous at him.

"What," she spat. He raised his hands placatingly.

"I'm not propositioning you, Alexandria Hypatia," he said, allowing his mirth to show on his face. The fire in her eyes blazed higher in response. "I meant it literally."

"With all due respect," she began, tongue loose with exhaustion and anger, "you reek of sweat, you have a complicated age, and I have no desire to share my bed with anything that isn't my duvet. Get out."

He sat up fluidly, hanging his head between his shoulders like a Pandyssian hyena, somewhat cowed. He readjusted his hospital-issue clothes before brushing past the doctor. He was barely taller than her.

"Outsider," she called just before he left. He paused at the end of his stride. "I don't know what you were like in the Void, but I need you to understand that other humans have ambitions, wants and desires too. You can't play with us like -- like toys, or like ants in a terrarium. I understand that you're still... learning to be human again, but you need to make more of an effort. I can't be your test subject for learning how to interact with people. Like everyone else, I get tired, have a fuse, and can be forced to act violently. Please sort yourself out."

He mused on that. Admittedly, she had made a very good guess at how he was interpreting her -- but, it wasn't quite right.

All throughout his life, he'd been taught that the people who looked after him would harm him. His father beat him, so he left to the streets; the middle-aged scholar he'd taken residence with had tried to molest him; and the last kind woman he'd thought he could trust had raised him like a cattle for slaughter.

He was wondering if that lesson was still true. Testing the Doctor was a way for him to, however subconsciously, find out if he still had to be wary.

"We'll see," he said lightly, then continued down the corridor. He heard the rustling of linens being replaced.

She found him standing near the carriage station, hands lifted and head tilted down. His chest fluttered with quick breaths.

She hesitated before calling: "Attan?"

He didn't respond. She was still wary of him -- and she tried to not think about why she was wary -- but she was, first and foremost, a doctor. Even if she specialised in communicable disease, she knew enough of psychology to identify the beginning of a panic attack when she saw one.

She drew closer -- close enough to see the starved planes of his face, and the dehydrated colour of his lips. She said again, firmly: "Attan."

"That's not my name," he said faintly, but didn't otherwise move.

"You gave it to me, so I'll use it," she responded, and came to a halt directly in front of him. "What's wrong?"

"I've got the taste of the Void in my mouth," he said desperately. She'd never heard him so... distressed.

"Open," she said, then reached to tap his chin. He obeyed.

There was blood pooled around his gums. It had stained his crooked teeth pink.

The culprit was his tongue; there was a small crescent-shaped mark in its tip.

"You bit your tongue," Hypatia said, confused. "What tastes like the Void?"

"Blood tastes of the Void?" he asked himself. Then, something solved itself in his expression; he lowered his arms, raised his head, and looked at a spot far in the distance. "Oh."

She tilted her head in question.

"Nevermind," he said. "I've answered my own question."

Despite herself, she'd found that the irritating, little (although quickly becoming taller) man was growing on her. His intelligence -- if she ignored where he'd learned it, at least -- was pleasant, even if the way he kept prodding at sore subjects wasn't.

However, he'd shown himself to be human. There was a cavity in the back of his mouth (which she'd forgotten to tell him about, she realised), his face was asymmetrical, and the way he responded to trauma (which again, she was not thinking about) all denoted him as being a boy. A simple, annoying boy, who'd grow into an intelligent man.

She decided to forgive the last incident. He reminded her of her own brother, in a way, if he'd survived.

He went to the solarium to think, sometimes, late at night. He mused on plenty of things -- ancient history, language, interesting people, his life before everything -- but didn't really know what he was meant to earn from the exercise. Billie's advice was precious, however, so he took it very seriously.

First, he thought about timelines. His stint in the Void gave him a very specific sight that he likened to a Tyvian miniature-tree artist's craft; the timelines branched off into many millions of possibilities, and billions more from those. The branches that withheld were allowed to grow on, while the others were clipped neatly and kept from expanding. At the end, there was a long, winding tree which he could move across at his leisure, with only the steady barrage of clipped branches showing him where time had caught up to.

Watching the final possibilities be clipped away as Billie advanced towards the Ritual Hold was... an indescribable feeling. Where he had once seen time in plural, there was quickly only becoming one possible way forward, with every future that he could move to being forcefully closed off in a steady, inescapable flow. That was the only reason why he wasn't currently suffering more mental stress, he thought; he had practice looking at time as only linear before he was reborn.

He wondered what had become of the Ritual Hold, now that the spell that held it together was broken. He hoped the whales had made it out safely.

Additionally, he wondered what had happened to the other versions of himself. The Ritual Hold was the only constant between all the differentiated timelines, and his dead body made it there in all the possible universes, whether by the Void's interference or by man's. The moment that the impossible place ripped itself into being, the timelines where he wasn't killed were destabilised. He had called the resulting phenomena Void rifts. He wondered if that would happen again, and was somewhat irritated about how he couldn't just look and check.

Secondly, he thought about Billie Lurk herself. A formidable woman, now equipped with a weapon made by a civilisation that came long before them both, and who was joined with a dead titan, now fossilised. She, Emily and Stilton were the only ones who remembered, to some extent, the other timeline that Delilah had managed to splice into this one, causing his tree of timelines to warp and bend at a link in its trunk.

The witch had the rare privilege of being someone that he truly loathed.

"Attan?" called Hypatia's voice. He turned to see her hovering by the wrought-iron entrance, the night drenching her in dark blue. Her eyes were bright and caught the light kindly.

He gestured for her to join her. She sat down next to him a moment later.

"Thinking about things?" she asked. She still sounded tired. He wondered if she had slept since their last conversation, which was... years ago? Or days?

He nodded lightly, eyes fixed on the murky horizon. "Many centuries ago, there was a different civilisation on this island. Building upon it was forbidden, as it was considered a holy site; during the summer solstice, the arch of stone that once lay here contained the sun perfectly at dusk. When the Addermire Solarium was first proposed, the grand rock arch was taken down for use in building. There are no people or records that recall that arch, nor the tradition of gathering around it to celebrate the new year."

"You remember," she said, pulling out a pair of scissors from her pocket. She started trimming her nails. "Maybe you could write it down. I know an author's group in Karnaca; I could give you their address, if you'd like."

He tilted his head in thought. "That's not a bad idea."

A short chuff of a laugh sounded from the doctor.

"When did Billie leave?" he asked, apropos of nothing. Hypatia stilled.

"The day after she dropped you off," she said carefully.

"How long ago was that?"

"It's the Eleventh of Wind," she said in a helpful tone. It cleared up nothing.

"When was I brought in?" he asked, frowning.

"The Fourth."

"Oh," he said simply. "I'd hoped to be able to thank her before she left."

The clicking of nails being clipped filled the air. "She didn't come to see you?"

"No," he said. "I expected her to leave, but I didn't think it would be so soon."

"A week is a long time for that woman," Hypatia laughed gently, putting her scissors away. "She gets antsy after a single day of inaction."

"It was worse when she was younger," he said wryly, remembering her restless days of waiting for another contract after Jessamine, and becoming frustrated when Daud picked up none. "Now, she's positively patient."

"I'm not going to get used to you talking like you're her dad," she sighed. Then, she frowned. "Did you remember to eat today?"

"Oh," he said happily. "No, I didn't."

He didn't have to look at the woman to see her rolling her eyes. They'd found that the moment he was removed from the liquid-machine, eating and drinking independently never occurred to him. After their brief falling-out, she had dropped in on him frequently to press water and bread into his hands, because Void knew he wouldn't fetch them for himself.

"Thankfully, I prepared for this," she grumbled, producing a soft-furred peach from her pocket. He reached for it with hands whose proportions barely matched the rest of him.

When he started crunching on the fruit (sweet, he thought, if he remembered which sensation was sweetness correctly), she pulled out another item from her overalls. He looked on with interest.

Opening her hand, she revealed a gold-trimmed, black-and-white pocketwatch with an array of buttons on the side that he could only guess at the meanings behind. He itched to find them out.

"I treated a visiting noble today," she said calmly, turning the watch so that the jet-black intricacies of its face shone in the low light, "and he slipped this in my pocket when I wasn't paying attention. When I confronted him, he said that I worked too hard and needed a portable alarm to remind myself of when to sleep. When he insisted I keep it, I thought that you might find better use for it than I."

With that, she dropped it into his lap. "I have no clue how it works, but it's meant to be able to remember up to five recurring alarms at one time. I assume that's what the buttons are for, but I didn't check; mechanics have always been beyond me. Kirin tried to teach me once, but..."

She trailed off, squinting into the distance. "Was that me, or..."

"It was Grim Alex," the Outsider replied, marvelling at the machine. It was palm-sized, and perfectly round with the exception of a small loop at the top for a chain. "Thank you, Alexandria Hypatia. I appreciate it."

He surprised himself by meaning it.

TO THE MAINLAND

A week later, the Outsider found himself in the bright sun of the Karnacan dockyards, walking between sweat-ripe workers and worse-smelling hanging fish. He was ecstatic, practically waltzing down the winding roads, feeling the heat beat down on his skin and and stick the linen shirt he'd borrowed from Hypatia to his skin. The breeze was gentle on his face, which was already peeling on his prominent cheekbones from where burnt himself yesterday.

Eventually, his pocketwatch gave a neat chime from his trousers. He pulled it out to find that the second button was depressed -- the one he'd allocated to his water alarms. He sighed.

He made his way over to a small alcove where a gaggle of kids were playing some unnecessarily complicated game with marbles they'd probably pilfered from their parents. One was screaming at another when he approached.

They quieted when they noticed him lurking like a spectre.

"Can we 'shelp you, sir?" a girl asked, face partially covered by her filthy brimmed cap. "We 'sdon't have no coin or food, but we 'scan tell you where to find some if you're not some noble."

"He looks like a noble," a smaller boy whispered, face long and pale in the shadows. "We 'sbest get outta here."

The Outsider raised his hands. "I'm not a noble. I was just wondering where the nearest fountain is? You can even have this," here, he pulled a five-coin piece from his pocket, "if you lead me there."

The group of five stared at him unblinkingly. Finally, one of the older boys exclaimed, "Well, what's we waiting for?" He promptly stood and grabbed the Outsider's wrist, which he barely stopped himself from flinching at.

"There's one that people don't piss on a little ways from here," he said conversationally. The Outsider looked down on the crown of his black hair in amusement. "We can take you there instead if you've have more coin."

The Outsider nearly smiled. Thankfully, he'd come prepared. "The five is upfront. The rest is afterwards."

"The rest?" the girl from before squeaked. "We'sll be rich! Kamila, Rodrigo, come, come," she exclaimed, hauling the corresponding kids up by their ratty collars. "Are you staying, Rico?"

The Outsider realised that the smallest boy didn't get up immediately because he couldn't -- when before he'd assumed his legs were crossed, he now realised that the kid's trousers lay limp and empty.

"Yea," he sighed. "Don't be too long. Don't want the Howlers to come get me now, do yous?"

"We 'scan carry you," the girl suggested, but the boy -- Rico -- only laughed.

"That went awfully last time," he said, then wiped his nose with his sleeve. "Don't hold up the rich boy. Go, go." He shooed them with his hands.

"I could carry you," the Outsider startled himself by saying. The others, from where they stood more than two feet shorter than him, stared.

Rico looked at him critically. "Has'ta be with your arms. Piggy-backs don't work."

The Outsider replied by passing the five to the older boy, then crouching and holding out his hands. Rico shuffled towards him on his fists, hooked them around his neck with a surprisingly hard grip, and barely shifted when the ex-god lifted him. He tucked his small head into the curve of the Outsider's neck, making him shiver when the boy's short hair tickled the twin scars on his throat, freshly stitched and healed at Hypatia's hand.

"Ready?" he asked the other four, the motions of carrying a smaller body flooding back into his mind: a four-thousand year old memory rediscovered. They nodded.

They began their journey through the white-paved roads, the street kids surrounding him like an oddly undergrown posse. They sniped at each other regularly, and often with such crude comments that it made the Outsider wonder where they'd learnt half the words.

"Do you have family?" he asked them without a target, halfway through their journey. They unanimously shook their heads.

"We 'sall from the same apartments," said the tallest girl, who the Outsider had learned was called Lourdes. "There was a flat fulls of old people on the ground floor. Ones of them died, and the rest couldn't take care of themselves no more without him, so they didn't think to get rids of the body. We 'swere all out playing one day, and we 'scame back to all the adults down with bloodfly fever. Was awful," she said fervently, and the rest agreed with low voices.

"How long ago was that?" the Outsider said, with impolite curiosity.

"Monfs," said Kamila. "Monf of Earf, last year."

"Th," said the boy sat cradled in the Outsider's arms, dragging the sound out into a long hiss against his neck. "Kammy, you've gots to start saying your th 's properly. Nobody's going to takes you seriously if you try to barter when you're asking for 'twelf loafes of fresh earfy bread!'"

The Outsider glanced over at Kamila, only to see her beaming with a smile that was missing all four of her front teeth. He felt oddly charmed.

"We's nearly there, sir," said the quieter kid, Rodrigo. "There's meant to be some occult stuffs happening around, so be careful."

The tallest boy, who looked similar enough to Rodrigo to be related, tagged on: "Last week, we's came across a wolfhound being fed some stuff that looked... special," he said, grimacing.

"Sure smelled special," said Lourdes. "I'm pretty sure it was boy juice."

There was nothing the Outsider wanted less at that moment than to ask what 'boy juice' meant.

"How do you know what that looks like?" asked Rico indignantly, before quickly being cut off by a small chorus of: "We're here!"

"There 'syou go, sir," Lourdes said, bowing primly. "Cans we have that coin now?"

"Of course," he replied, moving over to a bench to put Rico down. The boy parted from him reluctantly, but still smiled.

The Outsider emptied the small pouch he'd carried around his waist (not behind him -- he'd seen too many pickpockets thieve unattended pouches, the Empress and her Protector included) into his palm, counted out twenty coin, and poured the coins of five and ten into Rodrigo's cupped hands.

Their eyes collectively widened. "Thanks you, sir!"

"You can have another two if you can tell me where Orozia Way is," he said, lifting another coin in the air. They squabbled over who would get to reply first.

"S'next to a huge row of quarantined buildings," said the tallest boy, whose name had eluded the Outsider throughout the conversation. "Remember that huge signpost at that crossroads in the way we came? You's looking for Irimesa Precinct; if you can't read it, it's the arrow with the big mountain on it. You'll come across the bloodfly'd buildings a few minutes down that way. You turn right there, and you're facing Orozia. Noplace else to accidentally wander down, either."

"It's in a nice place; we 'scouldn't take you there even if you wanted," Lourdes sighed. "The Guard tried to stab us last time we 'swent exploring."

The Outsider grimaced. "Thank you for the help."

"Anytime, rich sir! We're staying at the building yous found us at," said Rico, dropping from the bench onto the floor. The bandages he had wrapped around his knuckles turned beige with dry dust. "Yous need any more guiding, we can do it. Probably nicer and cheaper than the other people you'll find, too."

"I don't doubt it," the Outsider said, with a wry twist to his mouth. "I'll be seeing you."

"Bye-bye," they chorused, then retraced their journey, quickly disappearing around a bend in the road.

The Outsider laughed quietly to himself. Then, he turned to face the fountain; it was lavishly decorated, with black iron details framing the spout in spirals and whorls. He remembered the architect who designed it. It was once a focal point in the community across a range of forgotten years.

He leaned forward, cupped one hand, then reached with the other to activate the button by the spigot's side. The water was pleasantly cool on his skin.

He drank. It was nice.

Later that day, he found himself staring up at the authors' house Hypatia had referred him to. It towered over most other buildings on Orozia, with popcorned white walls that easily matched the height of the umberwood tree it was built next to. The deep-purple wood was the same colour as the window frames, of which it had countless; it looked like a many-eyed creature lurking behind cover.

Across the double-doored entrance was a sign that said 'ESCRITA DE DONINHA' in big, black letters, obviously painted with care and attention paid. He tilted his head with curiosity; he couldn't remember it being founded.

He had lingered too long, however, as a squat old woman hurried out of the doors towards him a moment later. She had a stern expression, halfway to a snarl.

"Move along," she said, brandishing a straw broom like a weapon. "We've got a visitor recommended from Doctor Hypatia herself! We can't have you scaring him off when he comes."

"I am he," the Outsider said with amusement, lifting the note the doctor had given him. "Unless you're waiting for a different visitor, of course."

"Come again?" she said, squinting. "Speak slower. Can't understand you for the life of me."

He barely stopped himself from scowling. "I am the visitor she recommended," he said slowly, purposely enunciating each syllable so that his accent wouldn't confuse her. "Do you want the letter she wrote?"

She frowned, studying him with a critical expression that clearly said that she didn't believe him.

"Don't try to mess me 'round, boy," she said, stalking closer to snatch the letter from his outstretched hand. She ripped open the envelope, and nearly tore the note in half trying to take it out.

Finally, she held it open in her hands and squinted for a few moments, before she seized the horned glasses hanging from the neck of her dress and placed them onto her face.

She read the note through once, twice, three times, then turned her gaze towards where the Outsider stood. Somehow, her eyes narrowed further.

"Hmm," she grunted. "Alright, then. Follow me."

With that, she stuffed the letter in her pocket and marched back inside, flinging the doors open with a swirl of dust. The Outsider felt charmed.

Daphne Norton, the Outsider remembered, led him through the winding corridors of the building, randomly opening doors and shouting into them as she went. Behind each were rows of desks littered with typewriters, books, and pens, with magnetic boards fitted with obscure illustrations lining the walls of each room. The people there were mainly young and lithe, wearing loose fashions similar to the Outsider's own flowy white blouse.

Speaking of the blouse: Hypatia had warned him that it was considered to be a feminine article of clothing. He wore it anyway because he thought that he may actually die prematurely if he wore anything tighter or heavier in the immense heat of the Karnacan 'autumn'; how Emily had managed to fight, stalk and survive in her heavy Empress' coat was beyond him.

Finally, on a floor near the top of the building, Daphne halted in the hallway. For the first time since they'd started, she knocked on the wooden door politely before pushing it open.

"Marvin?" she called, voice scraggy with age. "I've got the one from Hypatia. Pull up a chair for him."

Inside the burgundy-walled room was a circle of people, all lounging in mismatched armchairs and chaise lounges. The majority of women were in pantsuits and semi-formal wear, with one or two in summery yellow dresses and other attire, while the men seemed to have unanimously agreed on wearing conservatively-cut suits in dull colours. The Outsider barely stopped himself from grinning wickedly at the inquisitive looks thrown at him; the impulse was new, but he was glad his humour was returning to him.

"Ah," said a clearly Gristol-born man, hair mousy and skin burnt -- Marvin. "Welcome. Forgive me; the good doctor didn't give us a name. You are?"

"Ben," he said simply, then grimaced internally. It was a boring, common name -- but then again, so was his actual one; he supposed it fit.

"Suits you," said a calm woman, wrapped in bright cloths stained in patterns typical of Pandyssian fashion. He recognised her as Yetse Doruga -- and winced at the information his mind tried to feed him about her life lived under his eyes.

In fact, looking around, all of the people were rich in history that his brain had decided important enough to carry over from the Void. His ears filled with empty noise as he tried to block out the tide of information threatening to breach over the carefully-built, centuries-old defences that towered in his mind.

He was talented at making it seem like nothing was wrong to his peers; that was something else he'd retained from his life before his death. When he opened his eyes again, the attention had shifted back to Marvin, with nobody giving him any concerned glances. Barely a second had passed.

"Come sit here, Ben," Marvin suggested, tapping the arm of the cushioned chair by his side. Heads followed him when he crossed the room to reach the violet, well-loved seat. He sat gracefully, pulling one leg up over the other's knee. Then, as he was comfortable doing, he waited and he watched.

"So. Welcome, everybody." Here, when he paused, his greeting was echoed back to him. "Today, we'll only be introducing ourselves -- but first, let me introduce the House properly.

"This authoring house is fifty years old, now -- undoubtedly, you've seen some works published by us. I'm not sure how much you've all been told already, so I'll say: we write and publish in-house, with the only compunction being that a percentage of the coin made with each book goes to us in exchange for our help with marketing, printing -- etcetera. In all, it's a mutually beneficial relationship.

"We currently have six open spaces for the Community. There are thirty of you. We have to decide which to choose from you somehow -- so, there'll be some tests and assignments to help us choose. You'll be compensated for your time if you don't end up joining us, as much as I'd like to admit you all."

Then, he coughed, and leaned forward to balance his torso on his elbows. "I'd like to go around the circle, to begin with. We can start getting friendly a little later. I'll go first: I'm Marvin Gallahan, thirty-eight, from a little town near Dunwall. I have a pet cat called Marie, and I love her to pieces. I've been part of this authors' house for ten years, now."

He gestured to the Outsider to continue, who was startled with the fact he could actually speak and participate -- still, the novelty hadn't worn off, and he wasn't sure if it ever would.

He effortlessly appropriated the life of a man he'd watched amble around the mountains years ago. "I'm Ben. I'm fifteen years of age, and I'm from a village on Shindaerey, where my parents farmed sheep before they died of bloodfly fever --" One of the younger men's mouth opened while a grave expression haunted his face, so he quickly said, "-- no, please, it was a long time ago; I don't need condolences. I've been bothering Doctor Alexandria Hypatia for a while, so she's told me in no uncertain terms that I should come here to get out of her hair. I don't like to eat meat." He'd discovered that fact after the long trek down the mountain, forcing himself through bites of blood sausage and whale meat. If Billie had noticed his discomfort, she'd said nothing.

He looked pointedly at the man beside him, who started talking with ease. He found that he envied that gentle confidence.

It felt bizarre to be among people again, with their breaths disturbing the currents of the air and the warmth from their bodies contributing to that of the sun that filtered in through the single-pane windows. In the Void, his view of this situation would've been almost completely one-dimensional -- a wooden room, on the fifth floor of a building he would look back in time to see the origin of, filled with people and stories that he could correlate by watching their younger selves roam the older timelines of this world. In fact, this situation would've been deemed boring by him: something that had taken place millions of times before, with billions more iterations waiting in the future.

He hadn't expected that being a part of it would be so... fascinating. That being a regular, normal human once more would be filled with more promise in his future than he'd ever seen before.

When the circle came back to him, Marvin said: "Great, that should be all. Short session today, but we're getting ready for a mass publishing, so it's all the time we have for now. Ben; stay behind for a moment, please?"

He stayed while the others filed out around him. He looked into the man's greased face; the sun-filter he used was thick and white on the bridge of his nose. "You're the youngest here?"

He fought desperately to keep his inappropriate smirk at bay. "Yes."

He tipped his head and considered him with one brown eye. "Hmm. How much have you written before?"

The Outsider raised a brow. "In terms of stories..?"

"Yes," he confirmed.

"Nothing physical," he said delicately. "My stories are mainly in my mind, but I can write them easily. I have a good handle on both punctuation and spelling, if that's what you're trying to ask."

"It was," he said bluntly, then eased his critical expression. "You'll prove yourself, just like everyone else. I don't doubt that. Even if I did, the Doctor helped me recover from a growth on my knee a year ago, and I'll give anyone she refers to me a fair chance." He handed the ex-god a slip of paper. "Write a short blurb about yourself on here. She asked me to check if you could actually use a pen."

Despite himself, the Outsider snorted, then complied.

While the railcar rattled, the Outsider realised that he was faced with a choice:

To hold onto who -- or, rather, what he once was, or to move past it. To disregard, as much as he could, the most painful period of his life in favour of moving forward, as a regular man with regular aspirations and regular means of achieving them.

He found that the thought filled him with more excitement than he thought possible. He'd never wanted what was forced upon him -- the sheer notion of being able to start anew like it had never happened was tantalising beyond belief.

He looked out the window at the rapidly-moving buildings and roads.

Simultaneously, he knew that it wouldn't be that easy; he'd watched too many millions of people attempt to move past their childhoods to delude himself into thinking it would somehow be easier for him -- but he counted himself lucky that, despite how eternally long his imprisonment in the hole in the world was, his ability to truly comprehend that time was quickly disappearing. Instead of the four-thousand and sixty-eight years spent there, his mind was likening the memory to when his father started relying more on rotgut than his brain.

Unpleasant, but something that was behind him, and only happened once. Something that he'd escaped from, and had the ability to move forward from.

He contemplated that as his metal chariot continued to rocket through the city.

"Attan," Hypatia greeted, looking at him kindly. He climbed out of the railcar, misplacing his feet only once. It was a new record, she thought.

"Doctor Alexandria Hypatia," he said, giving her an awful smile. It twisted his lips into a wicked-looking smirk, and his eyes were far too constricted to make him look relaxed, but she knew it was genuine nonetheless. Despite the odd condition, his eyesight didn't seem to be impaired, so she wasn't worried.

"Had fun?" she asked politely, watching as he pulled his clothes away from his skin with a grimace. He nodded.

Then, he marched forward and placed something into her hands. It was a note, sealed with red wax.

"Read it," he urged, jerking his head towards the letter. She broke it open with a scalpel produced from her pocket.

It read (in jagged lines, curly flicks and unnecessary flourishes):

My name is (and here, a symbol that she couldn't even guess at how to pronounce). I was born on the Darkest Day, four-thousand and eighty-three years ago. On the Twenty-eighth of Rain, I was rescued by Billie Lurk from the Void.

She looked up at him. He was practically bouncing on his feet.

"What's this?" she asked, quirking a brow.

"I remembered how to write, and I managed the Gristolian alphabet," he said proudly, settling into a wide-legged stance. "Also, that's my name."

"I know; it says," she said, amused. "Did they like you?"

"Alexandria Hypatia," he said, tone exasperated, "I remembered how to write! Isn't that interesting science? Muscle memory transcending centuries?"

She considered. Yes, it was, but at the same time, she had no idea how much of that was influenced by the Void.

"I see your point," she conceded. He nodded wisely.

"Yes, they did... like me," he replied, considering her past question. "It took everything inside me to not snap at people calling me a child."

"But you are," said the doctor, at which the Outsider snarled like a cat. She laughed. "In their eyes, at least," she corrected, teasing.

"They also didn't let me have their wine," he frowned, following Hypatia where she was walking back towards the towering grey walls of the Institute. "It was insulting."

"I can imagine," Hypatia said.

She paused in front of a group of people hovering in the lobby. "Are you waiting for someone?"

"She's being released now," said one of them. The doctor nodded and moved on.

"Was it strong wine?" she asked the Outsider. They started taking the stairs, dodging others coming down.

"No," he grumbled, scowling. "I distinctly remember the year it was brewed in -- the vintner wanted to ferment a wine with as little alcohol as possible as a gift to a woman he was trying to court. She loved it so much that she insisted that he recreate the recipe to sell."

He either didn't notice or ignored the odd look cast at him by an elderly resident they passed by.

"You didn't tell them that, did you?" Hypatia asked, worried. He barked a startling, short laugh.

"I'm not stupid, Alexandria Hypatia."

There was still something odd and strained between them, but both were willing to look past it in favour of having someone to talk to.

When they reached her office, she sunk down in her leather chair with a sigh. The sun shone bright beams of light through her windows, illuminating every mote of dust flying in the air. When the Outsider turned to face her, his skin practically glowed.

"You're so white," she laughed, which made him scowl.

"I used to be darker," he admitted, rubbing one hand up his opposite arm. The fine black hairs there were coming in more thickly with every passing day, but his stubble stayed as it was: barely visible, at best. Then, he shook his head. "Tell me about your plan."

"Alright," she conceded, then pulled out a small folder of papers from her umberwood desk's drawer -- but as she did, a short chime sounded from the Outsider's pocket.
"What do you need?" she asked, watching as he pulled out the watch and examined its buttons.

"Food," he said. "Ah. That would be why my stomach aches."

She tossed a green Morley apple at him; he bit into it gratefully. Both of them had vegetation-based diets, it seemed, and it was easy to find out what he liked from the assortment of vegetarian meals made by the kitchens. He was extremely partial to fruit and kale.

She spread out her sheaf of papers, correcting each one's position until no edges touched or overlapped; his face, captured in shades of grey, looked out from some of the documents. She opened her hands.

"You start at the authors' house," she said. "Through them, you secure a placement at the Academy. Voila."

"That is a very bare plan," he replied.

She shrugged. "It'll work. Unless you're not planning on being accepted?"
"No, I definitely am," he grinned, "but one must always have more than one idea on how to move forward."

She echoed his smile. "Give it ten years. I bet you can become head of the Academy before you reach thirty."