A candle in the night.

[Cinnabar]

Night time. It's quiet outside the shuttered window, quiet and cold. In the dim candlelight of his sparsely-furnished chamber the silver-haired young man sits on the floor in shirtsleeves and bare feet, back against the wall. His sword-belt is hung over the back of the simple chair that serves him as a nightstand and clothes horse; his boots kicked off and tucked beneath the bed; his coat hooked onto the peg behind the door.

It's been a week or more since he began his apprenticeship. A week of early mornings, simple food, strenuous exercise and rigorous training. Strength, endurance, footwork, reflexes. For now, though, his time is his own.

In what has become something of a nightly ritual he reaches beneath his bed, retrieving a small casket to rest it in his lap. Maybe a foot across, half that in depth and height, bound skilfully in gleaming brass; stylised forms of legendary beasts elegantly carved into the light-coloured wood. He runs slender hands over the finely-wrought surface, fingers spreading to touch certain details. Here and here and here, he presses firmly upon the wood, and there is the faintest of clicks from the cunning mechanism within the box.

He lifts the lid carefully, grey eyes once more regarding its contents. The velvet pouches do not interest him overmuch; he knows their contents, and though they are certainly useful, they provide no answers. Instead he lifts out a small, stout book, bound in embossed leather, decorated with intertwined forms similar in style to those decorating the casket. A journal, perhaps. Opening the front cover, fingertips brushing across smooth, expensive paper, he re-reads the inscription on the first page. Black ink in a firm, confident script, all elegant loops and tails and copperplate flourishes.


Warm salutations!

Your name is Cinnabar Calomel. You are from Clearwater, a small village in the mountains of northern Derry.

You have no knowledge of your past. That is as it should be. Do not let it trouble you. For now, look to where you are going rather than where you have been!

You have no knowledge of who you are. That is for you to discover. Act as your heart advises and you will not go far wrong!

You are here to learn. Asking questions is a good way to find answers.

All will become clear in time!

Your friend,

And then a series of angular strokes - runes? - that he assumes form some kind of signature or name-mark. It brings to mind a half-remembered string of syllables, though he would be hard-pressed to utter them aloud with any certainty.

He reads the passage again, and one more time, brow furrowing as if to glean more information from the cursive letters through sheer force of concentration. Eventually, though, he sighs, shakes his head, and rummages in the bottom of the casket. A bottle of rich black ink and a writing pen are retrieved, and he closes the casket's lid to rest the book upon it.

The ink bottle is unstoppered and set on the floor at his side, the pen-nib fixed into place. Turning forward a past a number of pages filled with neat black script, he dips his pen and scratches a swift horizontal line beneath the last sentence written.

A moment's pause to collect his thoughts, and pen is set to paper beneath that line to inscribe the day's date.

The candle burns down while he writes on, the smooth paper marked with black ink in a firm, confident copperplate.

[Cinnabar]

He stands in a pool of pale light, a cold floor beneath his bare feet. It smells of damp stone, and his breathing echoes back at him from walls invisible in the shadows, the air thin in his lungs, breath fogging before his face.

Looking up, a gibbous moon shines through pillars of warped glass at the end of a steeply-slanted passageway. No. No, not glass, he realises. Ice. A waterfall, frozen.

A new scent to the air, crisp like a clear morning. Something moves in the darkness behind him, scraping against the rocks of the cavern floor.

Grey eyes snap open, and Cinnabar wakes in the darkness. It takes a moment to get his bearings, remember where he is. Myrkentown. The house behind the smithy on the town's outskirts. West wing. The sparsely-furnished room that forms his home at present. Yes.

He lies and listens for a time; the stillness from outside tells him that dawn is hours away yet. No birdsong, no street sounds, no creaking of wood and leather as the smithy's bellows are pumped to heat the furnace for the day. He lies in the dark for a time, trying to hold onto the dream that even now seems to evaporate from his memory, but eventually curses quietly and throws back his blanket to get up.

He pulls on breeches and a shirt, and pads out into the dark hallway. Other people might have lit a lamp to find their way, but the dim starlight seeping between the shutters serving as more than adequate to his needs. Darkness poses little obstacle to him. Along the corridor onto the main landing, down the impressive staircase - keep to the sides to avoid the boards creaking underfoot - and he pushes open the door to the main hall.

It was once a fairly grand dining hall, no doubt well-appointed with all sorts of lavish furnishings to impress dinner-guests and important visitors. Now under new ownership, it has been stripped and refitted. Where once hung opulent tapestries now stand practice dummies; where once lay luxurious carpets now lie bare flagstones marked with footwork placements in chalk and paint; where once rested magnificent wine cabinets now stand racks of training weapons.

Cinnabar moves unhesitatingly towards the far end of the room, flagstones cold beneath his bare feet (ice and moonlight and damp stone) to retrieve sulphur-matches from the shelf there. Striking a sputtering yellow flame, he lights a single candle near one of the practice dummies. He can see the wooden man-shapes well enough in the gloom, but the candle is required to properly make out the painted target roundels at the throat, chest, armpit and abdomen.

A few warm-up exercises first. Stretches, squats, reaches, the movement enough to ward the hall's chill from his limbs. Then he takes up a training blade - thin and flexible wood, weighted and fitted to a rapier's hilt - and stands before the dummy. He grins and raises the blade briefly in salute, then drops into guard stance, carefully checking his posture and the placement of his feet.

He eyes the dummy for a time, then nods. The chest first. Advance (stay on-balance - move your centre at the same time as your feet); lunge (straighten your arm first, to put the weight of your body behind it; aim through the target, to give him six inches of steel to think about). The tip hits an inch or three off-target (close, but not close enough), the training blade's supple wood flexing with the strike. Drop back in preparation for the other man's counter-attack, staying on-balance still. Return to guard stance. And repeat.

He runs through the exercise in batches of ten lunges. The first batch scores a pitiful three strikes on-target, five strikes almost on-target (not good enough), and a couple of miserable misses. This improves to six hits, then eight. Only when he can get three batches in a row of at least nine hits does he move on to the next target point. Chest to stomach to throat to armpit. Repeat until three sets of nine or more. Then a new pattern of footwork. Repeat again from the top.

The candle burns down while the hall echoes to the scuffing of bare feet on flagstones, and the clack of wood against wood.

[[Deost]]

He would be impressed by his apprentice's knack for over achievement. For his knack of pushing forwards. For his resolve in continuing training even when he should be resting. But a restless mind oft makes a restless body. Deo understood this too well.

Indeed the home had been refitted to his tastes. Outfitted for teaching, for training. Though it seemed so large compared to only a few things scattered about.

There are a pair of cobalt blue eyes watching his apprentice from a dark vantage point of the door that led to the kitchens. The cooks hadn't roused yet and it seems only the master of the manor and his ward were the ones awake.

Some things weighed on his mind and often walking about unseen and unnoticed by the staff made him more appreciative.


"Your improvement is quite impressive. But do not let that go to your head. Now try it with a sideways motion. When you can strike going forwards the majority of the time, to all of the time, try it while stepping sideways. You will lose a slight amount of power. Only if you do not twist wrist and ankle at the same time." He offers explination to his apprentice.


Barefeet like his apprentice but clothed in dull grays from head to toe. Tunic and pants alike and the odd cobalt metal wrapped about forearms. His hair was in dissarray. One thin braid of held by hematite and iron encircled and interwtined at cheek.

[Cinnabar]

Maybe he had been aware of his teacher's presence; maybe not. Either way he doesn't startle or jump at the voice from the doorway. He finishes his lunge, returns to guard, then straightens, training blade raised again to salute the dummy before he turns to face Deost.

The young man listens intently to the new instructions, then nods with a grin, glancing down but briefly to note the starting position of the relevant footwork markers. He turns away, offers another salute to his worthy foe (which appears to have recently had a fierce scowl chalked onto its wooden face) and he drops into guard stance once more, bare feet treading lightly where indicated by painted flagstones.

He is quick, it's true, both in movements and in studies. The first attempts are slow, measured, focussing on getting the motions just right. Stance, foot placement, balance. Adjusting each when corrected, frowning slightly in a mix of concentration and irritation when he misses some nuance of posture or gesture. This takes time. With dozens of iterations, though, as the moves become familiar they also become faster, more fluid. Muscles remember how they must flex, joints how they must bend to place the sword tip there when commanded, and not an inch to either side.

He is quick when required, a shifting of feet preceding a sudden burst of movement like a viper's strike; the training sword flashes out to its target and back to the guard position almost faster than the eye can follow. The lateral attacks are not yet on a par with the forward lunges, maybe three or four in ten hitting their target dead-on, though the remainder are close enough that most of the shortfall can be made up with practice.

Silent all the while, save for the scuffing of his feet on the flagstones, and the hollow impact of his training sword on the dummy's wooden torso. He knows concentration when required; he knows dedication and perseverance. Though he has already been training for several hours and his shirt is damp with the sweat of exertion his attention remains unwavering, his movements firm and precise. It is a game, and he grins to himself when he hits the target, frowns when he misses, but he plays to win.

This is how he studies and improves, by hammering at his exercises hour after hour, executing the forms and movements over and over again. Relentless, patient and implacable. If you're not going to work to get it right, what's the point in doing it at all?

[Cinnabar]

It has been a long day. An unsettled day also, which started poorly and did little to improve. Now at its end, he finds it difficult to put it behind him as he knows he should.

In his room, the still darkness of night deep and thick outside his window, Cinnabar the apprentice sits quietly in the light of a single candle. Once more his journal rests open in his lap, quill grasped between slender fingers, inkwell close at hand. But he does not write. Tonight he finds it near impossible to compose himself, to put his thoughts in order such that they might be committed to the page.

He had taken the child's body* to the barracks to make the death known, and had spent some while giving an account of what little he knew to various Janeiro guardsmen. His name, his trade, his place of residence, where the body had been found, what he had been doing on the streets at that time in the morning, whether he had seen anyone else in the area, and so on and so forth. He answered as best he was able, and as patiently as he was able given the bitter anger that still seethed in his heart.

Perhaps it was the resigned acceptance with which the girl's body had been acknowledged and received; the impression that this matter was unfortunate, but nothing particularly remarkable. Perhaps it was the weary shrug that had been the answer when he asked if this sort of thing happened often. Perhaps it was all of these things which added to his sense of outrage at his discovery, the sense of wrongness that such a thing could be permitted.

Eventually the guards seemed satisfied that he didn't need to be arrested right away and he was released. He had returned to the house to begin the day's exercises much later than usual. He practised as much to clear his mind as anything, to regain some semblance of balance.

Forms, footwork, lunges, parries. Muscles and sinews going through motions which have become almost reflexive. He strove for the focus that would allow mind and body to move as one, in which Will becomes Action without need for Thought. Beneath all this, however, the anger still burned; hammered down, concentrated, forged into something harder than steel and keener than glass. If his concentration lapsed even slightly it found its outlet in the swift thrusts and lunges of his practice foil against the target dummy.

When the third wooden blade had snapped the apprentice decided to call an end to training for the day, setting the splintered practice swords aside to repair later. Instead he had returned to town, spending the afternoon loitering and observing. Listening to rumours, to nervous tales told on street corners, to foreboding words muttered in smoky taverns. It seemed that the disappearance of a child was but one of many things which the people of Myrken Town worried about, and was not even very high on the list.

This realisation had done little to improve his mood.

So he had returned to the house once more, replacing the splintered blades of the training swords with new ones before retiring to his room. And there he had remained, and there he sat now, staring irritably at a blank page. Angry. Angry that such a thing could happen. That it could be allowed to happen. That it could be accepted so easily by the guardsmen, by the townsfolk, by everyone, it seemed, except him. It is not right.

But then, perhaps that is how things are done here. He has heard mutterings of Myrken Wood being a dark place, even cursed, since he has been here. He has previously seen some evidence that it was strange (hah, and what did he have to compare it to, he with no history or memory older than the first page of this book?). Strange, yes, and perhaps confusing. And though he had listened to the tales, and the hints, and the allusions to the darkness that haunts the land, he has not really been touched by it. Had not, that is, until this morning. And he is forced to admit that it has left him unsettled, upset, his balance knocked off-centre. Not frightened. Not worried. Angry.

With a muttered curse he snaps closed the journal, returning the book and the quill and the ink to their casket, shoving the carved box back under the bedframe. Though fully expecting to lie awake brooding on the day's events and realisations he readies himself for bed, burrowing beneath the blankets before reaching to pinch out the candle's flame between forefinger and thumb.

In spite of his expectations he soon falls asleep. He dreams of moonlight through a frozen waterfall, and of stone-scented darkness.

[Cinnabar]

He lies curled on his side upon a stone floor, rough and damp and chill against his skin, against his face, beneath one outstretched hand. The scent of it fills his nostrils, somehow comforting; there is a cold light upon his eyelids which he knows to be that of a gibbous moon shining through pillars of ice; the occasional drip of moisture from deeper into the cave, a mournful sighing of wind across the cave-mouth between those frozen bars grown familiar through this dream. How many times has he come here in his sleep? Dozens? Hundreds? And always the same sights, sounds, scents.

But these thoughts and stimuli trickling into his dreaming senses do little to distract from a more intrusive presence, the alien pressure of the Janeiro arrowhead lodged in his back, grating between two ribs and prematurely arresting each breath with a spike of white pain. For a time he just lies still, focussing on breathing, on taking shallow enough breaths that he might forestall the jolt that stiffens his limbs and brings cold sweat to his skin.

Even despite this altered situation, the dream plays out as it always does: minutes of silence, save the quiet movements of air and moisture. And then the scent like a clear spring dawn, and that sound of something scraping upon the rock of the cave floor behind him, moving around in the shadows that even his eyes cannot penetrate.

This time, though, he doesn't try to look round, he doesn't try to catch a glimpse of whatever it is that treads in the darkness at his back. Let it come, with its slow, deep breaths; with its sussuration of movement like soft leather rustling against itself; with its approach that crunches grit and dust beneath each step, accompanied by a scraping like blades on stone. He is too tired, too pained and weary and sick with betrayal to look round, to care. He breaths fitfully, shallow gasps for air like a beached fish.

He feels it draw near, nearer than it ever has. The displacement of air as it stands over him, breath hot and damp upon the chilled and sweat-beaded skin of his back, stinging the wound in his back where the arrow still nestles into his flesh and bone. And at last it speaks, and its voice is deep and rich and musical like a great bell struck softly, a thrumming undertone to its words felt as a rumbling in the bones like the lowest notes of a mighty church organ.

"You're doing well. Don't give up."

He daren't breathe for a time, eyes squeezed shut, hands clenching to white-knuckled fists until his joins creak. Finally, a barely-audible whisper: "What are you?"

He senses tolerant indulgence from the thing that stands unseen at his back, perhaps a slight snort of amusement that purls across his skin.

"Your friend." A pause, then: "You're going now. Maybe another time."

"What?" Confusion, bewilderment.

"You'll wake up in a moment. Try not to hurt anyone."

"What do you mean?"

"They're about to take the arrow out. It'll hurt."

Then the voice, the cave, and his back dissolve into searing whiteness that denies him sleep, breath and thought all at once.

--*--

Hours later, in the nighttime darkness of the Rememdium, Cinnabar Calomel lies curled on his side upon clean white sheets. Bandages swathe his ribs to hold a wad of gauze to the wound in his back; further bandages wrap about his hands, where his clenched fists had carved crescent-shaped cuts into his palms.

It is still here, quiet save for the gentle sleep noises of the other patients; the occasional groan, or muffled grumbling, or soft snoring. The silver-haired young man stares unseeing at the nightlight that burns at his bedside. His angular features fixed into a mask of resolve, of unyielding determination, and the flickering yellow flame glitters and reflects in eyes like polished silver mirrors.

[Kylerryth]

The following morning, there was a knock at the door to Cinnabar Calomel's room at the Rememdium.

"Ser Calomel?" inquired the woman who entered -- not to verify his identity, no, but his state of awareness. "A letter arrived in the night, but we did not wish to wake you."

The aforementioned letter was in her hands; she crossed the room to place it on the small table next to the High Constable's bed, then bade him farewell before taking her leave.

Perhaps, Cinnabar, you would recognize the seal on the letter: that of House Aldred, imprinted on dark red wax.

[indent]To Cinnabar Calomel, High Constable, the Myrkentown Constabulary:

Salve, High Constable Calomel. Good health and fortune to you.

I will be brief, because this is not the only letter I have sent today and will not be the last.

I am not unaware of the events that transpired yesterday, nor the result of those events. For instance: through my sources I have already learned of the deaths of some of the men of my household, so you need not worry about that detail.

In fact, High Constable, this letter is actually an invitation to dinner at my Estate.

Please take your time in replying. There is nothing urgent about the matter I wish to discuss; and as I have heard it, you sustained a grievous wound during the battle before Mr. Helstone's office. Allow yourself to recover fully, then decide.

Cura ut valeas, High Constable.

Sincerely,
Aston Jylan Aldred
Lord of Aldred
Councilor of Defence and Civil Security[/indent]

[Cinnabar]

A day or so later, a reply is dispatched to Lord Aldred's estate. Plain paper, sealed with a thumbprint in common candlewax; it seems he does not currently have access to the materials with which to properly compose such a letter, which is probably not surprising. No matter.

To Lord Aston Jylan Aldred, Councilor of Defence and Civil Security

Lord Aldred

First, my most heartfelt regrets for the loss of your men; I should be grateful if my most sincere condolences might be conveyed to their loved ones. They died upholding their duty to the last, and serve as an example to us all. They and the other men of Aldred who have served in the Constabulary are a credit to your household, and Myrkentown remains indebted to you for their vigilance and dedication.

Secondly, my thanks for your letter and kind invitation. I would be honoured to accept, and shall advise you as soon as I am permitted to leave the Rememdium in order that a mutually convenient date might be set.

Sincerely

Cinnabar Calomel
High Constable, Myrkentown Constabulary

[Cinnabar]

Bruised and battered he limped his way here to the Rememdium after the worm-thing's attack and eventual defeat. Caked in dust and muck and slime, he was received with mingling pity and disgust by the hospice staff, and tended to as best they could.

Torn and filthy clothes were cut and peeled away, skin and hair cleaned as vigorously as his injuries would allow in an attempt to scrub away the creature's stink that still clings to him. His skin grows blotched and mottled with spreading bruises, the livid line of a cut or the raw patch of a graze adding some variety. By the time he has been cleaned enough for the healers to begin their work in earnest his eyes have puffed to bloodshot slits amid features so swollen as to render him unrecognisable.

It is some hours and a strong dose of willowbark tea before he manages to sink into an exhausted slumber.

--

The cave again, cold rock and quiet darkness. By now it's almost comforting in its familiarity, for all that he cannot recall ever being here while awake - if this place even really exists outside these dreams. Rough stone floor under his feet; cool, moist air on his skin, soothing the cuts and grazes which sting him even now; the scent of damp stone permeating his nostrils through the stench of worm-thing that lingers still upon him.

It takes some moments before he realises that he only recognises this dream-place from its scents and textures, the faint sound of dripping water and the crunch of grit and dust as he scuffs his feet over the stone floor. He cannot see the pool of silver light he knows that he stands in; he cannot see the crystal pillars of ice that bar the mouth of this cave; he cannot see the gibbous moon hanging in the night sky beyond.

He cannot see at all.

Stark panic clutches at him, sheening his skin with perspiration and filling his ears with the sound of his own frantic breathing; he stretches his hands out to grope around him, seeking a wall, a rock, anything solid to anchor him down lest he tumble forever into this endless blackness. He experiences heart-stopping moment as he shuffles forward and finds nothing but chill air beneath his foot, barely managing to recover his balance and stumble back from the edge; it could be a drop of mere inches, or of countless fathoms - he cannot tell, and the uncertainty of it is terrifying.

He has never known true dark, true loss of sight - even in an absence of light that has most people tripping or stumbling or feeling their way along the walls, he has been able to see his way. Only here in this dream-cave has he ever known the shadows to defy his eyes, to stubbornly hide their contents from his sight. Even then he had the circle of light at his feet, the illumination of the moon above, but now even that is gone.

Something moves in the darkness off to one side; a crunch of something heavy scraping against stone, steady breaths deep and soft like the breeze through distant trees. Cinnabar turns, willing his shallow breaths to cease, his heart to still in his chest lest whatever lurks in the blackness hear him, and come for him. Neither breath nor heartbeat obey his will, however, and he is left helpless, sightless, not daring to move his feet lest the ground betray him and let him topple into some bottomless abyss. He flails an arm off to one side, but recoils in startlement and pain as his bruised risk strikes against something, some object that was not there before.

It is long moments before he dares reach out again, tentative fingertips seeking this thing he struck, curiosity gradually overwhelming fear; blind groping eventually grants success, and he finds his palm resting against something... something smooth, uyielding, perhaps the thickness of a man's leg; warm like polished wood and yet more so; nearer to blood-heat, such that he can feel its radiated warmth from an inch or so away. In one direction it tapers to a point, while the other end widens and merges into some larger object, some stone or boulder perhaps; this texture is subtly different - smoother still, almost like glass or burnished silver though with shallow ripples or imperfections in its surface. Not as warm as the other part, though still well above the temperature of the cave.

Reaching lower, his hands encounter a confusing arrangement of supple fabric and thin rods of some kind; no, not fabric, more like soft leather, stretched over struts like the spokes of a parasol or the ribs of a fan. As he explores further the whole affair flicks and twitches and rustles, and for a split-second there is the sensation of movement like muscles beneath the leathery surface. No, not leather - skin.

Alive. It's alive.

The realisation has him stumbling back even as the thign starts moving again after the stillness in which he explored some part of it with his touch. For a brief instant the image of the worm-things crosses his mind, similarly huge and daunting as this unknown creature is, but the thought is discarded quickly - they were creatures of slime and chitin, quite different from this... whatever it is. The creature is moving again, breathing again, and then at last speaking in its great voice, like music and high winds and distant thunder.

"Be unafraid."

Another might speak such words to comfort, to reassure, but this voice speaks it as a command - not harshly or unkindly but certainly in a way that compels obedience. And curiously enough, Cinnabar finds himself obeying. As if a tide of reassurance flows through him: as his heart slows its frantic thundering; his breath becomes deeper, steadier; his panic fades into a weary calm. Thought comes more readily now, no longer drowned in the urge to lash out wildly or to flee headlong. He knows this voice, knows this looming presence, and so does not fear it.

"I can't see." A simple complaint, as if grumbling about poor weather or watered ale. It's an annoyance, but doesn't seem to have the overwhelming horror it did mere moments ago.

"That's because you're a mess. Touch your face." The young man complies, and winces as fingertips encounter puffy and bruised flesh, eyes swollen shut by his injuries. "You see? Of course you don't, you look like a week-dead corpse. Here, hold still."

He senses the thing looming nearer, some movement of air currents and a glow of warmth near his face. Then here is a snort of breath - hot, moist carnivore stink - and a sudden stinging heat as something rough and damp scrubs over his face and eyes, first one side then the other. He flails to push it away, briefly touching upon daggerlike teeth the length of his hand before the presence withdraws, and the stinging of his skin fades to an angry glow.

"Who are you?" He turns his head this way and that, willing his bruised eyes to open, to let him see.

That prompts a rumble of amusement, felt in the bones and chest. "We've already met, haven't we? Under similar circumstances, in fact - that nonsense with the arrow." Padded footfalls, a rustling and scraping as the creature slowly prowls in a circle around him, and he tries to turn to follow its movements. It seems to sense how its evasiveness frustrates him, however, as it then speaks an answer for him.

"Syerebreyakh." Sibilant whisper of a word, syllables that a human throat can only approximate. But the young man knows it for a name, knows it to be the label this creature uses for itself and nothing else. It has the weight of self attached to it, of identity.

--

He rises to consciousness with the word still in his ears, mumbling it through split and bruised lips; he lies in a bed at the Rememdium, the pale pre-dawn light filtering through the window's shutters. The light. Uncertain fingers rise to touch his face, and cautious exploration confirms it: the swelling, the puffiness of damaged flesh has subsided. Not completely, not by a long shot - his skin is still tender, still raw in places where it scraped against the ground - but enough that he can open his eyes, that he can see.

The knowledge brings a sigh of deep relief, and he sinks back into restful, dreamless sleep.

[Cinnabar]

For Cinnabar Calomel - Apprentice, High Constable, Governor - things have been... busy. Incredibly busy. An endless flow of events to tend to, to read reports on, to make judgements on, to approve or disapprove, to examine and weigh and balance and scrutinise and decide. A constant stream of visitors during the day, and then paperwork to be dealt with when there aren't any visitors.

He's taken breaks, visits to the Dagger and other places simply to clear his head, distract himself with something different for an hour or two, but otherwise it's been a case of cementing his position, making sure this coup of ink and parchment and wax and signatures holds. And then there's the business of tending to that which has been neglected for so long, matters delayed because they needed a Governor's signature, not merely that of some scribe or functionary or bureaucrat. Matters that require decisions.

He's not slept in days.

By rights he should be practically dead on his feet, a useless, shambling thing. And yet... he isn't. It's almost become a challenge, an experiment to see how long he might remain like this, how long he can go before he can go no further. When he thinks on it then yes, the idea of lying down and resting is pleasant enough; the thought of closing his eyes and drifting into that nocturnal quiet does have its appeal. But it's not got any real sense of urgency to it, of need. Hunger and thirst still make their demands and cannot be ignored, but sleep? It's a want. Not a need. It's an interesting thing, to him, curious, but not frightening.

Tonight, though, he gauges that he has time. He has accomplished enough that he need not fear the morning's tide of paperwork; things are stable enough that he can begin to delegate some things to trusted subordinates; a new routine is forming, and people are adopting it, settling into it, getting used to it. This is good.

So tonight, for the first time since the Ashfiend assaulted his farm, he stops. He returns to his spartan room at Esreaux, the better to attend to training in the morning without wasting time walking to and fro from town to farm and back again. It's familiar. It's home, of a sort. Home for now. So he undresses for bed, performs his ablutions, settles in between the sheets and pinches out the candle on the nightstand beside his bed. And he sleeps.

--*--

As before: a cavern; chill stone rough beneath his feet; night air cool against his skin; silvery light from the cavemouth above illuminating the ground he stands on, while leaving the rest in darkness that even his eyes cannot penetrate.

It feels more real now than it ever has, more solid and tangible and there: the sound of grit against stone as he shifts his weight, the soft echoes of his own breathing; the smell of damp rock and some sort of plantlife - moss, perhaps; the healing scar from the Ashfiend's blade that itches at his ribs; the way every pore and hair and crease in the skin of his hand is clear and crisp to see in perfect detail. He pinches the inside of his elbow, and it hurts as it should. A particularly deep sleep; a particularly real dream.

But it's always the same dream, with the same elements. Including one in particular.

"Syerebreyakh."

He whispers it, a soft exhalation of breath moulded between teeth and tongue and lips and throat into a name. The sound of it echoes from the cavern's unseen walls, rebounds and grows into a hiss, layer upon layer of name overlaid upon itself until it is a smooth and seamless rushing sound like wind in the trees.

From within this there comes some other sound that grows more apparent as the echoes die slowly away; a different sort of hissing, a scraping of thick skin on rock; a rustling of soft leather; a padding and clicking of claw-tipped feet, like a dog on flagstones, only larger, greater. A change in the currents of the air as something massive draws near, a sound of breathing as deep and steady as the roar of the sea, and beneath that one can almost discern a slow, regular pulse as blood is pushed through vessels the thickness of a man's wrist.

"You've not come here for a while." A sonorous voice, almost felt more in the bones than heard in the ears, yet somehow musical; less speech than song, some vast and soaring harmony of which only tiny snatches are revealed when this great creature speaks. The smaller creature, who calls himself a man who calls himself Cinnabar Calomel, cannot help but smile at the sound of it, at the majesty of it.

"I've been busy." He can place the creature with which he shares this cavern by sound, he realises; over there, in the shadows beyond the silver light, from whence comes that rustle of skin, that breathing, that heartbeat. But he cannot see the thing, save perhaps a very few glints, pallid highlights that show as specks in the darkness; he sees the creature Syerebreyakh as a faint but vast constellation, something he must turn his head to take in even at this distance of a half-dozen yards.

"Very busy. But very successful, with it. You surprise me, and that pleases." An air of satisfaction about the voice, as if it might think itself responsible for Calomel's success. But also a layer of congratulation, of pride in the man's actions that fills him with a giddy euphoria, a gladness for this praise such that it's all he can do to keep from hugging himself in delight. Almost enough to distract him from the question that has been gnawing at him of late, yet which he has not found opportunity to ask. So he composes himself, breathes deeply and steadily, and stares expectantly into the glittering darkness.

"I must know something." Phrasing it almost as a demand, even to this creature whose voice and unseen presence alone invoke something like awe. It takes no small amount of resolve. And yet for all the impudence of such, there is only a sense of indulgence from the darkness, of patient tolerance.

"I was wondering when you'd ask." He knows already, Calomel cannot help but think; he knows my question already, and yet waits for me to speak it, and he feels very slightly peeved by this, by this small arrogance. Very well, then.

"Who are you?" Words spoken firmly to the darkness, with determination bordering on fierceness. It ill prepares him for the rolling chuckle that is offered in reply; rich and deep like summer thunder, it should annoy him and yet there is such a sense of benevolence to it, almost paternal, that he cannot summon the indignation that he suspects he should feel.

"I am not you. And you are not me. Indeed, you are everything that is not me, which is perhaps why there is so little of you. Or was." A thoughtful pause. "You have grown, you know, even in so short a time. It has been fascinating to watch." Contemplative, musing over something. Calomel knows frustration, then, his question deflected, batted aside by riddles and cryptic utterances. But still his vexation is muffled by this soothing praise, this warming sense of somehow having pleased the creature, of making it proud. The silence stretches out, until Syerebreyakh speaks again.

"Keep growing. You're doing well. Maybe we'll talk again soon, Cinnabar Calomel." Warmth and benevolence suffuses him, and the cavern fades.

--*--

It is morning; light is bleeding through his thin curtains, and he is amid rumpled blankets in his bed at Esreaux. He has slept, and feels refreshed and ready to face the day; to face the world, in fact.

He will wash, he will dress, and he will act as his heart advises. He finds himself humming as he sets about his day; a fragment or echo of some vast and soaring harmony.

He's doing well.

[Cinnabar]

The meeting between Vraal and Ashfiend looms, a night and a day away. There have been three weeks to come up with a plan, and yet it's taken until the very last moment, the day before the meeting to come up with something which might actually work. A risky plan. A dangerous plan, and one which might end in tragedy as readily as success. But given their lack of alternatives, a plan that they will have to see through. But first, certain measures must be taken. Let me sleep on it, Calomel had said to Glenn Burnie as they desperately racked their brains for ideas, as clues and hints and pieces began to drop into place. Let me sleep on it, and we'll see how things are in the morning.

So in his small room at Esreaux, Cinnabar Calomel readies for bed; after a time, he sleeps.

--*--

Always the same thing. Always the same place. Chill air, damp stone, pale moonlight forming a pool in the darkness. Quiet, save for the soughing of distant wind outside the cavern, and Cinnabar's own shallow breaths. He's nervous, he realises, palms clammy and heartbeat quickened. Anticipatory, anxious, uncertain. He swallows, mouth dry, then takes in a breath to speak. To whisper.

"Syerebreyakh."

The name echoes faintly from the stones, but fades, diminishes to nothing. Silence, for a time. Then, in the far depths of the unseen cavern there is a stirring, movement, a soft breeze that pulls briefly into the depths then pushes away again; almost a yawn. The young man clenches his hands into fists to still their trembling, and waits as that distant shifting grows nearer, resolves itself from a host of dry echoes to something more distinct; claws on stone, soft but solid footfalls, a rustling like supple leather. Finally he can distinguish the creature's breathing, deep and slow like ocean breakers, and beneath it the pulse of a mighty heart. So they wait, the two of them, dream-man and dream-monster, surely little more than yards apart. Finally, that voice.

"You want something from me." A statement, not a question. Cinnabar flinches briefly, and nods. The unseen creature seems to consider this for a moment before speaking again. "Ask." Not impatience in his tone, nor even the fond indulgence that he's sensed before; this time it's curiosity, purest intrigue.

"A boon, if I may. A favour. I need you to keep something for me. From me." A gamble, this, the man uncertain as to whether it might even be possible. He hesitates for a span of heartbeats, and realises that he's staring at the stone floor before his feet. It takes an effort of will to look up, to gaze into the darkness speckled with tiny motes, pale slivers of moonlight reflecting from this creature's hide. There, that closer collection of glints, those two larger that flick to and fro; that is his face.

"Speak it."

The man takes breath, a slow and steadying inhalation as if to draw in resolve from the atmosphere around him. He sets his features into a mask of determination, straightens his spine and firms his gaze.

"My anger." Some abrupt shifting of those glittering points of light, as if they recoiled in startlement. Silence, and a sense of surprise, of shock. "For a time, I mean. Not forever."

"Are you certain?" The creature's voice is subdued, almost wary, a note of warning as if entreating the young man to reconsider. To hear such concern sparks a warmth in his heart that he could be so cared for; a warmth which he suppresses fiercely, brutally refusing to allow it to undermine his resolve.

"Yes. Can it be done?"

"Are you certain you want such a thing? To give up a part of yourself, even for only a time? It is no trivial matter." No small amount of confusion, of worry in the creature's voice, and that is more unsettling than anything Cinnabar has yet experienced.

"Yes."

Silence.

"So be it."

Stillness. The splinters of light that mark the creature's presence fade, slowly, dimming into the darkness, and Calomel stands alone. Waiting. He is opening his mouth to speak when it happens, a small, brilliant flame of anger igniting in his chest, just beneath his breastbone that has him clenching his fists tight, brow lowering into a scowl, lips drawing back from his teeth in a snarl; a strange sensation, to feel this emotion without a cause for it, without a target for his ire --

-- a black-armoured figure wreathed in deathly chill looms in the ruddy light of a smithy's forge; a slighter figure clad in liquid iron is knocked back towards the coals --

-- muscles knot beneath his skin as the attack is relived, fury at being so assaulted, frustration at his task being interrupted, foiled, outrage as this figure endeavours to see his friend burn alive --

-- Foggy Bottom burns, smoke mingling with flame-lit mist, and distraught figures stagger through the murk, screaming, sobbing, wracked with the nightmares of three thousand years --

-- outrage, shock and horror mingle at what has been wrought here, a whole town sent mad and turned upon one another, lives destroyed or forever tainted by horrific memories; not only the false ones placed in their minds though sorcery, but those of their own - of what they have done to themselves, to their neighbours, to their kin; outrage, thirst for vengeance, for the chance to repay this atrocity upon the creature that spawned it --

-- screams of fear, horror, revelry turned to panic in mere moments; simple cottages burn in the night, and limned by their fires stalks that armoured figure again, the ground streaked with hoarfrost at his approach; meeting corrupted steel with burning timber, striving desperately to see the fiend ended, beaten, driven away lest more innocents perish; burned and ravaged bodies, the marks of blade and fire upon them, the grief of a husband made a widower, a father robbed of his son, a woman robbed of her sister, bereavement and anguish and bitter tears of suffering --

-- his anger is a molten lump that seethes and writhes beneath his breast, a blazing core of wrath that has him longing for something within reach deserving of it, that he might smash and tear and rend --

Abruptly Calomel finds himself on his knees, the fire in his breast pulsing with fierce vitality, drawing his anger, his fury, his wrath and rage into itself and forcing itself upwards through his chest; it consumes him, it tightens his muscles until joints crack and pop, it fills him and chokes him and clouds his eyes with its intensity.

Then he is coughing and retching, wracking heaves that bring up something black and clotted from deep inside, heavy like tar as it pools on the stones before him; drawn out from lungs and stomach and heart, pouring from his mouth, his nose, running in thick tears from his eyes; bitter, more bitter than anything he has ever known.

It goes on for some unspeakable while, ages and instants at the same time and as it is purged from him there is a feeling of... absence. Void. Something gone, something missing so profoundly that he cannot even remember what it was like. Eventually it is done and over with, and he hacks and spits and coughs, before slowly, bonelessly slumping onto his side. Breathing. Staring.

In the darkness, a soft breeze that might be a sigh.

--*--

He wakes slowly to the pain of muscles cramped and protesting, and it requires some deliberate effort to will them to relax, to loosen. He spends a while staring at the ceiling as he cautiously probes this gap, strange and uncanny like the socket of a missing tooth, only instead of an unfamiliar space in his mouth it is... deeper than that. More pervasive, more subtle, and yet at the same time gaping like the vast pit at Golben, shocking in its magnitude.

After a time, he rises, and dresses for the day. There are still things to do. Further steps to be taken before this plan is complete.

[Cinnabar]

A bed in the Rememdium. Starched sheets, clean linens, warm blankets, quiet save for the healers moving to and fro. Calomel rests.

--*--

The cave, as always. Cool, stone-scent, mountain air. He stands in the pool of light, turning slowly to face the darkness that surrounds him. Bandages swathe his chest, stitched wounds aching dully with each breath despite the medicinal teas and infusions of the Rememdium's healers. And he waits. Patient, uncertain. Finally, as he takes a breath to speak, to utter a name, something stirs in the shadows. Again that change to the cave, as if something vast enough to disrupt air currents, to distort the chamber's echoes draws nearer with the clack and scratch of claws against stone, the soft ocean rush of deep and steady breathing. It stops, as has become customary, at the edge of the shadows, just beyond the boundary between dark and light, and waits for a time.

"You have an... interesting way of doing things." Not quite approval in the creature's voice, some resistance to actually praising the young man. "It might even work. We shall see." Faint points of light in the shadows, glittering highlights.

"I have hope that it will." He nods firmly, summoning up what confidence he can find. It needs to work. There aren't many other options.

"We shall see." The creature repeats, before shifting slightly, as if settling with a gritting of thick hide against the cavern's rock floor. "You want it back, now?" That prompts a blink from the young man, a moment's catching-up before he offers a slight nod.

"Please." A rueful grin to go with that word, thanks and some sort of contrition combined.

"At your feet."

Calomel lowers his eyes, confused, until his gaze falls upon a goblet of dark metal, silver coated with a layer of tarnish perhaps; more of a chalice than anything, finely-wrought and adorned with stylised depictions of mythical beasts, sinuous coils interwoven across base and stem and cup. Inside, some thick and glittering liquid. He stoops carefully, taking up the vessel in both hands, peering into its depths. Its contents are black and viscous and unsettlingly warm; an acrid scent rises from its surface, and it glistens like thick tar.

"Drink." The word is something of a command and something of an entreaty, as one might press upon a feverish child to drink a nourishing broth, or accept a spoonful of restorative medicine. So instructed, Calomel nods, and raises the cup to his lips. A moment to brace himself, time spent at the Rememdium lesson enough that it is better to take such things as swiftly as possible, and he tilts the dark cup and takes a deep mouthful of the vile brew.

As it touches his tongue there is a movement from the liquid itself, almost lunging into his mouth, forcing itself down his throat, crawling across his face to squirm clotted tendrils up his nose, into his eyes. As he chokes and makes to cast the chalice aside, its surface shifts beneath his touch, the coiled and serpentine creatures writhing and uncoiling to sink tiny, jagged teeth of blackened silver into his palms and wrists; they burrow into flesh and dive into veins such that the skin of his hands and forearms dances and seethes with furious movement. A ghastly epiphany as he realises that the drink and the cup that holds it are the same thing, the chalice not a vessel but a form assumed by that tarry mass, and his palms are drawn to his face as this black and amorphous horror pours itself into him, into his hands and mouth, pulling the two together.

At first there is shock, panic, incomprehending terror; but as the blackness burrows deeper fear is replaced by anger, fury, a blinding rage that has him choking down the stuff so that he might draw breath, might take in air purely to shout this all-consuming wrath into the cave's chill night. It is a fire beneath his skin, in muscle and sinew and bone and nerve and blood, a searing heat that radiates from him in waves. The thick rage-stuff stretches and parts as he strikes his fists against the stone floor, teeth drawn back in a feral snarl, eyes wide and glittering silver streaked with oily black.

He does not know how long he rages and rants in words that scrape his throat, how long he vents his wrath against uncaring stone; there comes a time, however, when it is done, when it is over, and he finds himself crouched and panting, glaring at the bloody marks of his fists upon the floor. He looks to his hand, flexing his fingers and staring even as the splits on his knuckles clot, scab, heal within a space of heartbeats. Across the back of his hand, along his forearm, chevron-stripes texture his skin as if some other, thicker hide presses from beneath; a moment later they, too, fade, and his hand relaxes from its clenched fist. Finally he looks up, staring into the darkness, and takes a slow, cautious breath.

He feels... more whole, more complete. As if a furnace that had been extinguished now blazes again within him. Ah. Yes. A glance down, placing a palm to his bandaged chest. Those stitched and aching wounds. Tch. He frowns, and reaches for the fire that suffuses him, drawing it down to those hurts, those insults, concentrating it, focussing it. Damaged flesh is reminded of what it should be, what form it should take, and fibres of muscle and skin reach out for one another, and begin to weave together once more. Not a full healing, but... a good start. Nerves still thrumming with the new-returned heat, the young man stands, and his features split in an unsteady grin as he looks up again.

"I had forgotten."

A movement from the creature, a shifting in that constellation of tiny glints. A nod.

"Now you remember." A greater motion from the thing as it rises, stretches, turns away to head back for the deeper cavern. Begrudging amusement in its tone, a wash of benevolent feeling from the shadows.

"Keep surprising me. It's interesting. And don't give up."

--*--

Morning. The Governor's eyes flick open, only to be confronted with that irritating discoloured patch of paint once more, and there's a small jolt of delight as he recognises that he is irrtated by it, rather than simply discomforted. Ah. The Rememdium. Dull cloud-filtered light from outside, rumpled sheets tangled about his legs, cooling sweat chilling his skin. It takes him a moment to properly realise he's awake, but he sits up quickly when he does. A hand moves to his chest, the wads of gauze beneath his bandages, and then there's a broad grin.

More alive. More whole.

With that thought, he calls a nurse, and asks if he might be brought a hearty breakfast. But for the love of all that's holy, no more beef broth. Please.

[Cinnabar]

The dream begins as it always does, as it has for as long as Cinnabar can remember: chill mountain air and the smell of damp stone; a pool of moonlight ringed by shadows, the small sounds of his breath and the shifting of his feet echoing from the cavern's walls; the sense of a presence behind him, veiled by the darkness. There's a comforting sense of familiarity to it, and it's been a long while since he's felt anything resembling fear, trepidation. It's a [i]safe place, standing here in the middle of that pool of pale silver light.[/i]

--*--

Except it isn't him standing there, bathed in moonlight; a dizzying shift in perspective at this realisation, a change in viewpoint. What were shadowed cavern walls become a wall of dark trees; what was a pool of moonlight on a stone floor becomes a snow-covered clearing.

What he sees switches from one to the other, and yet there is an unnerving sense that somehow, it is both. The air is chill, fat white flakes drifting down from a clear night sky; and yet instead of forest scents, the tang of pine resin and the rich earthy scent of leaf litter, there is only the scent of cold stone. Sometimes it sounds like the creak of fresh-fallen snow beneath his boot, at other times it's the crunch of grit on rough stone. Through it all, though, there's a presence at his back; something large, something powerful, something watchful. This knowledge brings a small smile to his lips, draws away some of the uncertainty that troubles him.

He steps carefully to circle the clearing, staying within arm's reach of the treeline, eyes narrowing as he regards that solitary figure on the low rise. A young man - barely more than a boy, in fact, maybe fifteen, sixteen summers - narrow shoulders, light hair, dressed in warm, homespun clothes, wrapped in furs, sturdy boots and a thick woollen cloak. Calomel's seen similar worn by those displaced from Derry by the Thessilane invasion. Mountain garb. Some stirring from that presence at his back, a voice quiet but deep, like distant thunder.

"Go on."

Stone and snow crunch with each step as Cinnabar makes his way from the treeline, crossing the clearing towards the figure. The boy. Who glances round at the man's approach, squints curiously for a moment, then offers a broad grin, hand raised in greeting.

"Ha! It is you! You've changed, you wily sod. Taller. Older. Still, the hair's a giveaway. Always is." His tone is familiar, friendly, jocular, a broad Derry accent with it. "Nice coat. Doin' well for yourself, eh?"

"I... you know me?" An obvious question with an obvious enough answer, given the lad's demeanour.

"Know you? 'Course I bloody know you." A narrowing of green eyes, then, a speculative glance before the boy's grin becomes less sure of itself. "Y'don't know me though, do you?"

"I'm afraid not. You're from Derry? I... don't remember much about Derry." A wry grin, self-conscious as he huddles into his coat. "Anything."

"No? Not even your old pal Kenan? Ah. Well, that's a shame. Not you an' me goin' up Trevanson Pass?" He seems disappointed at Cinnabar's blank look. "Nor fishin' on the Crugmere? Or even explorin' the old silver mines above Erdowr?" Some quiet desperation as he mentions these places, these activities, as if searching for anything that the man might remember. "D'you even know who you are?"

"I do." This much, at least, he knows. "Cinnabar Calomel. From Clearwater." There's a frown of vague annoyance as the boy seems to find this deeply entertaining.

"Oh, very fancy. Yeah, an' I'm the Duke o' Derry." He shakes his head in amusement. "You've really got no clue? You're Mergher. That's you." An easy grin, though it fades as the lad glances past Cinnabar's shoulder, squinting into the treeline. Whatever it was he saw, though, apparently it's gone; he shrugs, looking back to Cinnabar again, regretful, almost pitying. "You don't remember a thing. Not even Tecca?" A name. Someone close to the lad, from the note of sadness that comes into his voice. Someone close to Cinnabar, apparently.

"Sorry... no. No, I don't remember." Desperately racking his mind, trying to summon up anything associated with that name. With this strange, friendly boy.

"Ah, well. My sister, that was Tecca. She died, though. Caught a fever just before Midwinter, from bein' out in the snow. Moonin' over you, I reckon, waitin' for you to come an' swoop her off her feet. She was sweet for you, y'know. You an' your laugh an' your clever words." A difficult smile, sad and pained, and the boy glances away, blinking. "You wouldn't know, though. You, up on your mountain. I tried to come tell you, when she was gone. Thought you ought to know. And if you'd not come down yourself, I'd go up to you. Stupid bloody idea." Anger, now, anger and bitterness as he looks back to Calomel. "Like you'd care. Like it'd matter to you what happened to some daft girl who thought the world of you. You who don't even remember her. Bloody pointless thing to die for. Both of us."

A blink at that from Cinnabar, a step back. "...both?"

"Aye, both. There I was, trudgin' up a bloody great mountain lookin' for your cave or den or whatever you call it, an' the worst storm for years comes howlin' up the valley. Froze to death, didn't get found until the thaw." Resentment gives way to defeat, a helpless shrug from the boy, a sullen glare as he looks away to the treeline. "Still don't remember?" A sidelong glance, and then the boy's lifting a hand towards Cinnabar's face.

"Here. Try th-"

--*--

Blankness. Void.

--*--

A cavern of rough, cold stone and chill mountain air. Moonlight filters down through pillars of ice that block the cave's mouth, and all outside of that patch of silver light is darkness. Cinnabar stands alone once more, breath clouding in front of his face.

Behind him, something large, powerful, watchful; it shifts with a scrape of claws upon stone, breathing deep and slow in the quiet of the cave, and he turns to face it, eyes picking out those tiny points of reflected light that mark the creature's presence.

"You stopped him." A question. A statement, just shy of an accusation.

A rumbling sigh from the darkness; the glints of light shift and move as the creature turns away, and heavy footfalls move off into the cave's depths. Its voice rumbles from the cavern walls as it departs, deep and resonant, as if thunder learned to speak, and its speech was a song.

"The past holds no answers worth knowing. Look to where you are going rather than where you have been." Old advice, advice he has learned by heart from the words inscribed upon his journal's first page. "Do not let what was cast a shadow over what can be."

--*--

These words echo in Cinnabar's thoughts as he awakes in the grey half-light of dawn, together with a vague sense of disquiet. Uncertainty.

Doubt.

[Cinnabar]

"-ake up."

His voice echoes from unseen stone walls, his breath fogs lightly in the chill air; no longer the foetid stench of vile effluvia, no longer warmed by a landscape that shifts and pulses and lives. No longer surrounded by friends and foes and acquaintances, instead standing in the dark of a mountain cavern, moonlight pooling at his feet. Alone.

"Ah. I see." There's something of relief in his tone as he turns slowly to survey the space, grey eyes lingering on familiar details; pillars of ice across the cave mouth, a gibbous moon hanging in the sky beyond. Thin air, crisp and blessedly clean, such that he finds himself taking deep breaths of it, snorting and coughing to clear the memory of that cancerous dreamscape from his nostrils and throat. A touch to his throat, and the discovery of nothing but smooth skin between his collarbones has him grinning despite - no, because of the horrors so recently witnessed. So recently escaped.

A shifting from deeper within the cave, a scraping of claws on stone, grit crunching beneath that deceptively soft tread. Faint glints from the highlights of the creature's form, as if limned in silver dust; the cavern's echoes shift and alter as it approaches, filling the space around it with the leathery shifting of its hide, the steady ebb and flow of air-currents with each massive breath, the barely-perceptible beat of that great heart.

"I owe you thanks." Polite, despite that grin; a courteous bow offered, for all that he still wears nothing more than filth-smeared cotton trousers.

"You do." Accepting, rather than demanding. The creature settles at the edge of the shadows, reclining catlike upon flank and elbows, thick skin scraping upon the stone floor. Waiting, perhaps?

Ah, yes. Waiting. "My thanks and gratitude for your aid, and your advice." Quite formal, quite courtly, quite proper. And from a huff that Calomel takes to be some mix of acceptance and amusement, quite appropriate.

"It was an interesting thing to watch - an interesting test, on the part of its creator. You did well, considering." The glow of benevolent approval that radiates from the shadows has the young man grinning wider, and bowing his head in acknowledgement of the compliment. "Waking up... won't be enjoyable. Not at first. But you've matters to attend to, so it's necessary."

"Matters..? Ah, yes. The others. Certainly so." His fellow dreamers. Those within reach, at least - those he could find. No way of knowing what transpired after his... after Aeryn died. That thought has him frowning somewhat, firmed resolve, and he nods a moment later. "Now?"

"Yes, now." The creature moves to stand, stretching for a moment before moving to return to the deeper shadows "Wake up, then do your best." Amusement in its tone, there, as the cavern fades around him.

--*--

In the next instant, he wakes up screaming.

[Cinnabar]

The space between the tavern floor and the Rememdium is a dream in scraps and fragments, fading in and out of perception, drifting between jumbled awareness and black oblivion. A bleak wasteland of time filled with throbbing pain and bitter weariness; limbs weighted with cold lead, numbed and distant; hushed and anxious voices that smear into gibberish in his ears. Easier to turn away from these glimpses of bloody-handed surgeons, wads of gauze that arrive white and depart a deep crimson. Easier to withdraw. Easier to let go.

A candle that gutters and fades.

--*--

Even here in this place of stone-scent and pale moonlight there is no respite. Cold throbbing in his bones, an ache in his side where the Ashfiend's blade bit deep, too deep, pain pulsing with every weakening heartbeat. Even this place is no refuge, no safe haven, no place where he might find rest and soothing balm for his hurts.

Easier to let go.

The cavern too grows distant, fading even as the Rememdium's whitewashed ceiling and echoing floors faded, sinking into muffled blackness, soft and reassuring; a blanket that enfolds him and shields him from all hardship, all pain. Somewhere he is aware of urgent voices, an abstract impression of blows to his breast, of air forced into reluctant lungs, but this too is a distant thing, irrelevant, easily ignored, to be smothered by that blackness.

No, not blackness. Radiance, warmth, suffusing light that invites and comforts, a reward for surrender.

Easier by far.

Something else presses upon what perceptions remain, some distant cacophony and movement that grows louder, fiercer, more furious; roaring as of storm-force gales or the boom of the ocean, an all-devouring inferno or a mountain avalanche. A voice like thunder that has learned to sing, raised now to howl and bellow in rage and denial and bitter, bitter disappointment while claws score sparking furrows in cavern stone, lashing out in frustration and dismay. Words amid the tumult, or the sense of words at least; fury given rough shape and battered against his mind, a last desperate attempt upon his unravelling thoughts, drawing his attention with the force of a physical blow.

"Surrender? How dare you? HOW DARE YOU?" Drop a man in a river of rushing snowmelt and it might be a similar thing, a cold and overwhelming violence that robs the mind of thought just as it robs the limbs of feeling, leaving one helpless in the midst of the fury; a jolt blots out all else. Not cold, this, but fire, a blazing wrath that blows through him as if he were made of fog, trying to sweep him away from that comforting warmth, that gentle light that offers him peace eternal.

A stranger sensation, then, as of burrowing or frenzied scrabbling, and he is assailed by visions, by memory; faces, places, voices, scents and sounds and sensations that flicker and sleet through his perceptions, a jumble of things seen and heard and experienced. The sound of hammer on heated iron and the bellows' breathing, from spare days spent learning forgework; the scent and taste of fine apple brandy, sweet and smoky; fencing practise with the mapmaker Glenn Burnie, patterns of feint, parry, lunge, riposte; idle afternoons at the farm with the Kaczmarek children, foolish antics that have them all laughing until giddy and breathless; quiet hearthside conversations with the swordswoman Ariane Emory, curious and thoughtful, struggling against barriers of both language and understanding; the glow of late-afternoon sunlight against his office wall, warm and satisfying as he sets the last of the day's paperwork aside and closes the lid of his inkwell; the scent of sweet jasmine and fragrant herbs, sipping hot tea and grinning at Cambree across a tearoom table, green eyes shining as she smiles, colour rising to her cheeks at some compliment.

A pang at this last, a sharp, high note of loss against the roar, and whatever scours through his memories swiftly siezes upon this, the remembrances changing to follow this thread of longing, presenting a rush of emotions, sensations, visions and impressions, everything about her that can be unearthed from his mind. The sound of her voice, laughing, whispering, murmuring, speaking his name in affection, inquiry, amusement, passion; the warmth of her skin, the shy brush of her hand against his own, the heat of her flesh; the smell of her hair, infused with the fragrances of the tea she works with, and the warmer scent of her skin beneath; her face as she laughs in delight, or sets her lips in determination, or relaxes in sleep, or smiles absently when she doesn't realise he's watching; emotions, the sense of comfort she brings by being nearby, desire as she meets his gaze with a playful smile, dizzying exhileration as they kiss for the first time, fierce devotion as he listens to her steady breathing in the deep of night.

Cambree. He promised.

All of these things pile atop one another, a cascade of sensations and the feelings they provoke, and the blanket of warm surrender seems not so much comforting as stifling, cloying; he finds himself struggling faintly, flailing, striving to shrug off this smothering nothingness as a sleeper kicks free of tangling sheets. The roaring changes, shifts, no longer fury but encouragement, approval, exhorting him to keep trying, keep fighting, keep going. He rises as a man surfacing from icy depths, not even sure which way is truly up, but struggling all the same.

When he breathes again, it is with the taste of cold mountain air in his lungs, the scent of chill stone in his nostrils, the grit of rock beneath his back; a looming presence shares the space with him, deep breaths and a steady heartbeat that his own strives to match. The relief that fills him is palpable, and not entirely his own; clawed feet pad in a circle around him, crunching on fresh gravel and splinters of stone, thick hide shifting and rustling like leather, and beneath it all a rumbling purr of gladness. He hurts again, he aches and suffers, but the flame that had almost vanished within him blazes once more, small and weak but stubbornly bright.

"Good." The benevolence, the affection that accompanies that one word betrays the deceptive warmth of surrender for what it was, a sham, a pale mockery of comfort that tried to tempt him into oblivion. Movement still hurts, breathing is still an effort, but he offers a faint smile in response. He hears, he understands, and he lives. Time passes, and the creature's pacing slows, until it comes to rest upon the stone floor, sprawling like a great cat. A thoughtful silence for a while longer, as Cinnabar lies still, breathing, feeling.

"You are bonded to her. I'd not expected this, but it's a good thing. A fortunate thing." Approval, pleasant surprise. Curiosity and intrigue. "You intend to have young with her?" Blunt. The young man can't help but laugh faintly at that question, despite pain at the movement.

"I'd like to. We'd like to. If it's possible."

"I'm surprised you've not yet made any. Considering." Amusement, particularly as the young man coughs and shifts, a faint warmth brought to pale features. "Ha, you learn coyness from them. A silly conceit."

"It's difficult for her. She... she cannot do so easily. She needs help."

"And your efforts to do so have been most diligent. Commendable." Dry observation, but unmistakeably teasing humour beneath, relief perhaps making the creature particularly playful. "Also energe-"

"No!" Silly conceit or not, he can't face that kind of commentary. Not now, anyway. "I mean, not like that. She needs a boon. A blessing. From, from a god, or her ancestors, or powers, or spirits." Hesitant, as it raises the question of what manner of thing the creature is. Hopeful, though, the request implicit in his tone.

"Or me." A more wry amusement there, but indulgent, tolerant. Cinnabar can only nod, swallowing to moisten a throat suddenly dry. A long silence, as the creature mulls over this matter, the cavern silent but for vast breaths and the tiny shifting of the thing's form.

"Yes." A different relief fills the young man's heart, entirely his own, and his teeth show in a grin. "The more you have to live for, the more fiercely you will live. That is your part in this. No more giving up."

"Yes." Wholehearted agreement, there, nodding weakly. "Thank you."

"It is good. Now, rest. Regain your strength." An order, a command with which Cinnabar is only too happy to comply. Yes. The creature shifts and moves against the stone floor, rising to pad back into the cavern's depths.

"Don't fail me. Or her."

--*--

Cinnabar Calomel sleeps between linen sheets, swathed in bandages and gauze. His skin is pallid, cool to the touch, too much blood lost upon the tavern floor, but his wounds have been staunched, cleaned and stitched and bandaged. Grievously unwell, a wound at first feared mortal, yet his heart still beats, weak but steady, and his chest lifts and falls with slow, shallow breaths.

A candle burns by his bedside, pale light defying the surrounding darkness.