After the nerve-wracking conversation with Solsnam, Vance returned to the small stone chair and sat with a dignity uncharacteristic of any prisoner. He said nothing, because he was done defending himself, and he only watched as Solsnam picked up his disfigured notebook and left the bedroom. Eleanor also left, seemingly in a hurry to catch up with the solar elf and tell him something. And only Himilco Magus stayed behind. The elephant-mage was supposed to join the deliberations that would lead to the final ruling, but he lingered next to the square window and seemed to be looking up at the dusky sky.

“You fought an uphill battle,” he said. “Everyone, including me, thought that you killed her. My, it never crossed my mind that you could be innocent. But you forced us to ask questions, and you eroded the evidence little by little until it all collapsed. And now we have to figure out what to do.”

“I couldn’t just let you convict me,” Vance said.

“I know,” Himilco smiled. “And you made me realize that I had let my fears control me. Believe it or not, I was once like Eleanor. I didn’t just give empty speeches about companionship. My first instinct was to trust other Turncoats. But … the longer you stay in Middlerift, the more it changes you, and the more you sense the tentacles of Decay creeping toward you. Forgive me … for trying to kill you. I know apologies mean very little when it comes to matters of life and death, but you do understand what this apology means, don’t you?”

“You will vote innocent,” Vance said.

The elephant-mage smiled.

“And Eleanor? And Solsnam?”

“I don’t know about them, but I will let them know my opinion.”

“Thank you.”

Himilco moved away from the window and headed toward the room’s door. He almost walked out, but then he suddenly stopped. “My, my, I almost forgot.” He turned around and approached Vance. He stood four steps away—perhaps as a teleporter, he was used to maintaining this minimum distance—and he said, with less emotion and more gravity, “I didn’t stay behind to praise your defense or inform you about my vote. There is something else that we need to discuss. Even if we arrest Hollie, even if she confesses to the murder, another mystery remains unsolved.”

“Another mystery?” Vance felt tense.

“Yes,” Himilco said. “Why did your Blood Pilgrimage end in Rust Lake?”

“Ah, that,” Vance chuckled, with a bit of relief.

“Do you remember having a terrible dream right after the Honeydew Flies beheaded you? A horrible nightmare? A vision that seems to distort the present and the past and the future?”

“I don’t remember anything like that,” Vance said.

“Well, you must’ve had this terrible nightmare, even if you don’t remember it now. It’s called the Pilgrim’s Dream. No one knows for sure what happens to the dreamer while they dream, but our best theory suggests that the Honeydew Flies take you on a journey throughout Middlerift.”

“Throughout all of Middlerift?”

“Yes. They visit the scattered havens in a certain order and deposit some of your blood at each place they visit—hence the name, the Blood Pilgrimage.”

“I see.”

“Rust Lake is one of these havens,” Himilco continued, “but it’s a stop in the middle of the journey. It’s not the final destination. So why did the Honeydew Flies drop your body there? This is a question that needs to be asked, even if we don’t have any answers at present.”

“It’s another riddle,” Vance said, after a pensive pause. “Do you think there’s some kind of connection between the pilgrimage and Shannon’s death?”

“I can’t tell for sure,” Himilco said. “Honeydew Flies are peaceful creatures. They have no reason to murder Shannon … But I still think there might be a connection … a superficial one, at the very least.”

“Is it just your intuition?”

“No. You told me you had a nightmare when you slept with Shannon … a tormented vision that sent you into her memories. At first, I thought you were making things up to try to justify the Redspine High, but now I interpret this nightmare as a clear sign. It’s a sign of the Honeydew Flies.”

“So … You think I saw Shannon’s memories because there was a fly in the bedroom,” Vance said, pausing to absorb this bizarre idea. “This doesn’t make any sense. Why would a fly follow me around?”

“I don’t know,” Himilco said.

“Did this ever happen to someone else before?”

“No … But Azara the Cursed-Knight made claims long ago.”

Azara the Cursed-Knight? “Shannon … Shannon sent me his robes.”

“They’re not technically his robes,” Himilco said. “But he did design the enchantment that makes them unique. Azara was a madman. He thought that the Honeydew Flies were trying to kill him, so he designed an enchantment to break through their disguises. The flies can turn invisible and quiet their drone, but with the enchantment, you end up seeing them and hearing them.”

“And Shannon bought this item?”

“Yes, you see, the enchantment has a useful by-product. It increases Mana regeneration and lowers the cost of Geo-manipulation. So it was natural for Shannon to have the robes in combination with her Tectonic Medallion. But it is still a strange coincidence, isn’t it? For her to send them to you. Were they really a dying message? Or is there more behind them?”

“Maybe I should put them on and see what happens. I might be able to tell if there are any Honeydew Flies following me.”

“Well, perhaps you should. But you will have to wait until you get back your golden key from Solsnam. That’s the only way to open the Imp’s Storehouse and retrieve the robes.”

“Right …”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Himilco smiled. “As I said, Azara was a madman, and the robes were never proven to work. Even if you wear them, you might never see any flies. For now, you have much more important things to worry about … the final ruling, to say the least. So keep the things I told you in an unused corner of your mind, and leave them there in case you need them. The flies aren’t hostile to Turncoats or Headbound, but you never know. Middlerift is full of surprises, and it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

The Blood Pilgrimage and the Honeydew Flies. Vance committed Himilco’s words to memory. Azara the Cursed-Knight and his robes.

“Good luck, Vance,” Himilco purred, as he walked out of the room. “I hope the final ruling will be in your favor.”

***

After Himilco Magus left the room, the Dullahan guards, who were waiting respectfully near the door, entered the deserted crime scene. A few of these guards picked up Shannon’s body, placed it in a coffin, and carried it away for burial; while the rest took positions around the bedroom. They were supposed to watch Vance until the final ruling was issued, and Vance relaxed in his seat and hoped for the best. I did everything I could. He looked down at his rusty shackles, which he still couldn’t get used to. I believed in my innocence until the last second and fought my hardest to decide my own fate.

Time passed slowly, and its unheard ticks changed the Dullahan guards who watched over the main suspect. At first, it seemed that these changes were random, but then Vance noticed that they only occurred at the top of the hour. He was witnessing one aspect of the system that the Dullahans employed to balance personal goals with public interests—the One-hour Rule, as some Headbound dubbed it. Five times this rule was applied; then Vance detected new and strange movements in the room. A lone Dullahan entered when it was not yet the end of the previous one-hour shift.

What’s going on? Vance looked at this new arrival in surprise. She was one of the lizasaurians—a race of reptilian humanoids who lived in bleak swamps and whom humans feared enough to include in many cautionary tales. Her skin was greener than that of goblins, and her long tail ended in colorful scales—yellow, red, pink, and blue. In addition to the heavy armor that most Dullahans wore, she had a peculiar staff that didn’t match the description of any weapon Vance knew about. It started thin at the ground but gained girth with height, and at its top rested a stone reptilian head—eternally screaming and weeping without the faintest sound.

The appearance of this staff filled Vance with worry. He shifted in his seat and looked at the other guards for any clues about what would happen. Neither hints nor answers quenched his thirst, however, and before he knew it, the staff-equipped lizasaurian was right in front of him.

“You!” She pointed her staff at the guard standing left of Vance. “You saw me walking in! Why is he still in shackles?”

“My apologies, Lady Sizensya!”

“Don’t waste my time with your nonsense! Just do your job!”

“It won’t take a second!”

The guard took out his keys and removed Vance’s shackles and chains. Am I finally free? Vance moved his hands apart, as if he no longer believed they could become unjoined. Before he felt too comfortable with his restored freedom, however, he noticed that Sizensya had potion patches in her hand. No … I’m not free. She’s got more Prisoner’s Potion with her.

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“Frog’s patience! You took your sweet time, didn’t you?” Sizensya said, to the flustered guard. “Administer these patches. Come on, hop, hop!”

The overwhelmed guard took the Prisoner’s Potion patches and started to stick them to Vance’s arm. His hands turned clammy as he worked, and he struggled with the many wrinkles that formed on the patches; but he managed to complete the task. As the patches dissolved away, their contents absorbed, he turned Vance’s arm toward Sizensya as if to ask for her approval.

“Good, good,” Sizensya said. “It took you a whole minute, and I’m honestly impressed someone could waste so much of my time. Now, take your friends and leave. And give the shackles and keys back to Eleanor.”

The guards hurried out the room, almost scrambling or scampering like tiny animals, and Vance was suddenly left all alone with the lizasaurian. He had so many questions to ask, but he was afraid that the answers would crush him. And so he stayed silent—silence kept him calm; silence guarded his dignity.

“I heard several rumors about you.” Sizensya grabbed his collar and pulled him closer to her. “Some say you drugged a girl. Some say you killed her.” She walked in a circle around him, examining him as if he were a mannequin on display. “Some call you a psychopath. Some call you a Necronette.” She put her forefinger on his chest after she had completed a full circle. “But to me, you are just another tadpole in the mud. I control the stream, and you swim—you struggle—wherever I lead you.”

Sizensya waved her staff, and it discharged several green globules, which rose toward the ceiling at first but then curved toward Vance like magical projectiles. Before he could do anything, these globules coated his entire body in a semi-liquid layer that resembled swampy water. Even his Flame of Revival wasn’t spared. It burned under the viscous cover as if from inside a cage. No system message came. No notification explained what was happening. And then his body started to move on its own. He fell to his knees and put his hands on the ground as if he were submitting to the lizasaurian.

“This is what happens when a guilty Headbound refuses to hand over his flame,” Sizensya said. “We leave it untouched and take away everything else.”

Guilty? Vance was shocked by the word. “I can’t be guilty! This is a mistake! Eleanor and Himilco voted innocent!”

“Who cares about votes?” Sizensya laughed.

“What?”

“Solsnam has a special punishment in store for you.”

“I proved my innocence!”

“And that’s irrelevant, honey. You challenged Solsnam, and you need to learn a lesson. You need to learn your place in this world.”

She waved her staff again, but this time, it didn’t discharge the globules. Instead, the coating that covered Vance’s body began to shine, and he stood up from the ground. He started to walk against his will. Every single step he tried to resist, but the outcome was always the same. I can’t do anything. My body won’t listen to me. The loss of control made him panic internally, and Sizensya’s arrogant laughter made things even worse. He found himself heading toward the same square window from which he had escaped before.

“I heard you love jumping around,” Sizensya laughed. “Doors are overrated, aren’t they? Terribly overrated.”

Vance found himself standing precariously on the window sill. He looked down and imagined the bone-crushing impact with the ground. If he landed flame-first, he would break his ribs at the very least; while if he landed upright, without the intermediary step on the protruding clay ledge, he would most probably break his legs. Both outcomes were horrible, but he still found his body moving forward and out of the window. He was set into a frightening free fall, a down without an up, and the few seconds that passed as the ground drew closer—the fleeting moments of the blood-curdling descent—were made worse by all the imaginings of the pain to follow.

Before Vance hit the ground, however, a long tongue stretched toward him from the direction of the House’s facade. This tongue coiled around his thin waist and tightened like a Ring of Magus. Then it pulled him out of the alley and into the dirt road. He continued to fly and to turn around as he flew. A terrible nausea attacked him, but he didn’t give in to it or to the persistent desire to close his Mental Eye. During one of the torturous revolutions, he saw the open mouth of a gigantic frog. Then there was darkness and saliva.

***

The world jumped and bounced, turned and swiveled, shook and shivered. The cold saliva surged and ebbed. The froggy tongue tightened and relaxed. At one moment, it seemed as though Vance would be swallowed into the stomach; at another, it seemed as though he would remain inside the oral prison and that the digestion would take place here, slowly and painfully, over days and nights. But it was not long until the light of the outside world returned. The beams of dusk that penetrated the darkness of the Middleriftian sky—the faint signs of a dying sun—returned, and they revealed with their sudden reappearance that Vance had left Argilstead.

The giant frog wasn’t a predator but a means of transporting convicts. When it spat Vance out, there was a vast swamp around him, and he found himself sinking into a muddy bog—into soft land that had the same characteristics as quicksand. Lady Sizensya and the giant frog were standing on solid ground, and they watched him as he struggled. He tried to move his arms and legs; he craned his neck to prevent his Flame of Revival from sinking; he reached for anything to hold on to—twigs, logs, rocks, stones, stalks. The more effort he put into saving himself, however, the deeper he sank.

“Don’t even try,” Sizensya said.

Vance ignored her, and by stretching his arm to the limit, he was able to place a few fingers on solid ground.

“It seems you’re hard of hearing.” Sizensya waved her staff. “But I guess this is how low life acts.” The green globules emerged and coated Vance again. “You only listen to the crack of a whip or the snap of a spell.” She waved her staff for a second time and destroyed his efforts. “This transition from bold defiance to wretched helplessness, how I love it!” She laughed arrogantly and walked away, the giant frog hopping behind her.

Unable to struggle anymore, Vance continued to sink until his entire body disappeared into the boggy ground. Only his Flame of Revival remained on the surface, and it burned as if it were a fiery plant with roots hidden in the earth. Having become stuck, having accepted the bog as his inescapable prison, he turned his attention to his new surroundings with less panic. He wanted to understand what it meant to be trapped in this place, but there was no definite answer. There was no graveyard; there were no execution devices; there was only a bleak, alienating landscape.

As he scanned the swamp from left to right, panning his Mental Eye over everything in sight, he noticed trees that resembled mangroves, which grew out of the soft earth like thousand-legged beasts and displayed brown pedate leaves. Among these trees, there was a large hut, and in front of this hut, there was an oversized black cauldron. Hundreds of frogs of various sizes jumped around, and even more were visible in the distance. These frogs were unlike any monsters he had seen in the human world. Their eyes had a blue-silver glow, and their backs had small holes from which tentacles extended like stamens.

“Welcome to Sizensya’s Hut, brother,” a voice suddenly said. “Is it your first time here? Oh, what am I saying? Of course, it is.”

Vance turned his Mental Eye toward the voice and saw another flame that was stuck in the ground. It seemed that Sizensya had collected more than one prisoner on that day.

“What’s this place?” Vance said.

“This is where the Argil-dogs send you when they really hate your guts,” the prisoner said. “Hehehehehehe … Boy, do they hate me. Enough to drag me here twice. But I’ll escape … Hehehehehe … I’ll escape again, and they will never find out where I went. I will hide inside their hearts and stomachs. Carve them up from inside.”

Vance didn’t say anything.

“Speak, brother,” the prisoner said. “Speak, or time won’t pass. What’s your name? What do you do for a living?”

“Vance—”

“They call me Hector-skelter,” the prisoner interrupted. “A pretty neat play on words, ain’t it? I’ve been terrorizing West Cloverfield for 15 years. Forced the townspeople to hide every day at sunset … Hehehehehe … No one could stand against me. Even the town guards. Turned them into my underlings. Butchered anyone who opposed me. Wrung their necks. Electrocuted them to death. They say electro-magic is the easiest way to go. I made it the hardest. Hehehehehe.”

“How did you end up here?” Vance asked.

“Those Argil-dogs tricked me,” Hector said. “They confused me with their stupid rules. What’s wrong with killing a few weak Turncoats? What’s the difference between them and Amirani’s humans? I didn’t even attack them in the clay village, but those Argil-dogs still came chasing after me.”

“How many did you kill?”

“Twelve … Hehehehe … Twelve corpses. Four every day.”

“That many?”

“Yeah … Hehehe.”

“You killed them for no reason?”

“We kill humans all the time, brother. How is this any different?”

“It’s … It’s different. You get nothing from these killings.”

“Hehehe … The pot calling the kettle black. We’re in the same bog, brother!”

Vance couldn’t find the right words to respond, and he didn’t even have the time to think of an appropriate answer. While Hector-skelter laughed in partial madness, Lady Sizensya walked out of her wooden hut. She seemed to be heading toward her two prisoners, and Vance couldn’t help but feel afraid of her approach. Is she going to execute us now? He tried to see if she had any new weapons on her, but there was only the peculiar staff. Perhaps this staff was all that she needed.

“Why is she coming back?” Vance said.

“Lizzy-sizzy? She seasoned the meat, and now she wants to cook it.”

“Cook it?”

“She’s gonna turn you into potions and ingredients, brother. Then she’ll sell you back to the Argil-dogs. Hehehehehe. I’d be really scared if I were you.”

“He’s not the only one who should be scared, Hector.” Sizensya stopped in front of the bog, with her giant frog close behind her. Then she kicked mud on Hector’s flame. “It’s about time for this wicked flame to die out.”

“Hehehehe … That tickled.”

“I’ll make it tickle even more,” Sizensya said.

Following a command from its mistress, the giant frog put out its tongue and scooped Hector out of the mud. Then it turned around and headed toward the oversized black cauldron. It was on its way to deliver the rogue Headbound to the boiling maw of death, but halfway toward its goal, it was suddenly forced to stop. A strong electric shock traveled through its amphibian body. Its tongue relaxed, and it dropped Hector on the ground.

“Bye bye, Lizzy-sizzy!” Hector shouted, breaking into a fast run and leaving behind him five Elekiminions—manifestations of electro-magic that he had summoned long before his arrest and that had been hiding in the earth.

“Do you really think I would fall for the same trick twice?” Sizensya said, with a tone of infuriation. “You’re mine, Hector, and you will be cooked!”

Sizensya waved her staff, and the globules chased after Hector. Meanwhile, her frogs engaged with his Elekiminions. It was a scene of utter chaos and confusion, but Vance couldn’t use this chance to escape: he was still stuck in the mud, and he still couldn’t move his body. He watched helplessly as electrocuted frogs dropped and as defeated Elekiminions exploded with after-bolts. Then there came the decisive moment of the fight: the green globules caught up with Hector before he could escape the range of the staff.

“Foolish Electromancer!” Sizensya said. “This is the end!”

The last Elekiminion exploded, and Hector’s body started to move against his will. He turned around and walked all the distance that he had run. Then he climbed three wooden steps and jumped into Sizensya’s cauldron, without any signs of resistance or hesitation, like a meek automaton surrendering to the will of its creator. He didn’t even have a chance to say any last words; he didn’t even have a chance to express fear or rage or to beg for his life. And his previous confidence now seemed to have been the defective product of madness.

“Right where you belong!” Sizensya fumed. “Now the Headbound will finally have a use for you!” She walked to the cauldron and started to stir its contents. A few minutes passed before she used a strange utensil—very much similar to an insect-net—to scoop up Hector’s boiled skin, which had come off the body. This skin she cut into strips and placed aside to be put in jars. Then she used another strange utensil to pick the bones from the broth. These bones she crushed into sediment and threw into a barrel. Finally, she searched for the human meat, took it out in red chunks, and placed it in salt-filled containers.

When she was done, she turned toward Vance.