We landed in the Oldtown street, Tanra in the lead, me and Em slightly behind. The cobbled road was wide enough for four wagons abreast, and the gardens in front of each house were small, incredibly colourful. Night had fallen, but the lights were on in the windows, and I caught several people gawping at us as we settled down to earth. Perhaps word had already gotten around.

I knocked on Keyla’s door again, and within ten seconds about forty people were on their doorsteps, many just staring at us, some cheering and punching the air. As much as I didn’t feel that we deserved this level of fanatical response, it made me grin, feel like myself again.

“Feychilde!” screamed a fat little seven- or eight-year-old on the other side of the road.

I made an ‘F’ with my index and middle fingers, held them up for him in salute and he just screamed louder: “Mum! Dad! Did you see that! Did you see it!”

“Liberator!” at least five people were calling, along with incredulous shouts of, “How did you do it?” (and one confused chap muttering to his neighbour, “What did he do, again?”).

All of our names were being mentioned. “Killstop – she’s the one that saved that baby!” “Who in the Twelve Hells designed that robe?” “Wow – look at Stormsword!” “Hey Stormsword, you can storm my sword anytime…”

I met Em’s eyes through the slits in her mask. I could see that she’d heard the drunken guy’s lewd comments from the level stare, the slight twist of a devious smirk at the corners of her mouth.

“This will just take a minute,” I said to her as Keyla swung open the door. “Don’t do anything… dangerous.”

“Oh, I think we’ll be fine, Feychilde,” Killstop said in an amused tone.

Shuddering, I stepped inside the hallway.

I didn’t even close the door behind me, or accept any of the various, many-faceted refreshments offered. (Was it an offer, if it sounded like a threat? The phrase “You will take a biscuit” had never sounded so terrifying, especially when, after I politely refused, she followed it up in a level, unheeding voice with “A biscuit with icing”.) All in all it couldn’t have taken me thirty seconds to get the necklace on the old woman, get my shield taken down, and ensure she understood she couldn’t afford to lose or even take off the amulet (at least not until Dreamlaughter was caught).

Yet in that brief interval, things had clearly escalated. When I returned to the doorstep, Em was floating in the middle of the street, a solid thirty feet up, with an incredibly green-looking drunk dangling by his ankle in the air in front of her, emitting the occasional shriek. She wasn’t taking much care with him – his pants-legs had fallen down to the knees, his long, greasy hair was hanging straight down, and he was pivoting from the single foot as he helplessly swung his arms.

The crowd were still cheering and laughing. She hadn’t managed to turn it into a horror-show by disintegrating him yet, at least.

“You’ve got icing on your chin,” Killstop pointed out.

I cursed and pawed at myself.

“Nope, missed it.” Within a split second she was there in front of me, spit-wet thumb raised, sliming up my jaw. “Come here.”

“Sweet Nentheleme, gerroff me!” I barked.

Killstop laughed, backing away as she stuck her thumb beneath her mask again, then twisted to look around me, behind me. “Hey, these are nice – can I get a biscuit? I know I wasn’t here when the darkmage was after you, but I totally helped make that thing Feychilde just gave you – well, I was totally there when he made it – I answered the door…”

As the arch-diviner wandered into the house with an incredibly pleased-looking Keyla leading the way, Em hailed me.

“Feychilde! I’m sorry, but I’m leaving you for this fine figure of a man –“

“P-put m-me d-down!”

“When it is a choice between the Liberator of Zadhal and the… the…”

Em looked down at a teenage girl about our age standing in the crowd, casting her a ‘help me out here’ gesture; the girl grinned and cried: “The Liberator of Drop!”

(The cry very quickly got repeated across the younger members of the audience, going through several versions before seeming to settle on “The Droperator of Droptown!”)

“Pleeeease, I won’t say any-anything, I prom-”

Em shook him up and down in the air violently and he stopped talking very suddenly. My hand shook spasmodically as if in response, and for a moment it almost felt like the skin on my palm was coarse, papery.

“But you said you had a weapon hot for me, did you not?” Em pouted, then bit her lip. “Don’t you want to fly with me?”

She doubled their elevation as swiftly as I could draw a breath, which was taken as a fine piece of uproarious humour by our observers; once Em took pity on her heckler and lowered him to the cobbles, quivering like a newborn calf, he darted into his house and slammed the door.

“Justice well served!” cried one of the heckler’s neighbours, an old, robed man.

“Hail Stormsword, Liberator of Ekenrock Road!” someone else cried.

Killstop emerged, hands filled with stacks of biscuits coated in coloured glazes. At the exact same time, I coughed, suddenly choking on something small and chewy that appeared in the back of my throat.

Too late. Swallowed.

Did I just swallow a fly?

I deliberately, and pointlessly, coughed into my hand.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“I don’t know…” Zel murmured.“Wait… that was weird…”

I shook my head. This was all just too good. It couldn’t stop.

“Bring out your wine-glasses and mugs, folks – I think this requires a toast!”

Nighteye had been missing for days. Five minutes wouldn’t hurt, and I had a tasty bit of fly to wash down.

After Flood Boy had filled their vessels to the brims and I’d reassured everyone as to both the wine’s wholesomeness and its veracity, the faun tottered towards me, little hooves clattering on the stones, and cast me a strange, almost wistful look.

“I like you, Feychilde,” he said.

I gulped my drink, lowered the borrowed cup. (The owner of said cup was lingering nearby, watching me – out of reverence, or fear for the safety of a beloved bit of crockery, I was unsure.) “You say that like there’s a ‘but’ coming up.”

“Why would there be a butt coming up?” he asked sharply, casting about as if suddenly reappraising the situation.

“Erm…” I gathered that there was some confusion. “It’s an idiom. I mean, you said it as though you were about to say, ‘I like you, Feychilde, buuuuut…’ You know?”

“I – a ‘but’ – no, ha-ha… It’s just – well… You know how to summon a faun. This…” he gestured with his chalice with tears in his eyes, “this, to me, is a little bit of otherworld on earth, if you follow me, lad. Where’d you find these people?”

I grinned, patted him on the shoulder with my biscuit-less hand. “I think you’re drunk.”

He lowered his head, teetered on his narrow hooves.

“Aye, lad.”

I sent him back to Etherium, an uneasy feeling in my stomach.

“Twelve Hells, Kas, is there anything you’re ever not feeling queasy about?” Zel snorted.

Hey, Miss I-Don’t-Want-To-Talk-To-You-Around-Arch-Diviners…

I looked over at Killstop, shoving a biscuit into Em’s half-protesting, half-laughing mouth, while the uneasiness continued to grow. It wasn’t the way Em was keeping the wine in her cup, even at the unnatural angles she tipped it while recoiling from the arch-diviner. It was something else, something ephemeral, forever changing before I could grasp the nature of it…

“Sooooo anyway,” Zel continued, “speaking of feeling queasy – that fly you swallowed? Not a fly. Something a diviner did.”

A diviner? A diviner made me swallow a fly?

“Not – a – fly! And before you ask, I don’t know who – I’m checking for illusions right now – the thing could be demonic, or –“

I get it Zel.

Forever changing before I could grasp the nature of it… like a dream…

I produced a meagre illusion on my outstretched palm, an oversized flagon of ale overflowing with snowy foam. Those nearest me stared in wonder, and I ignored their cries.

I went with my gut.

Yeah, illusion; that feels right. Find the way through her seals or whatever you call it, Zel.

“Give me time.”

Terror slowly, coldly building inside me, I shook away the illusory flagon, pressed the unfinished cup of wine into its surprised owner’s hand and half-raced, half-flew to Killstop’s side.

“Killstop, can you slow us?” I asked her quietly. “Someone’s messing with us.”

The very same moment, just a few feet away, Em started spluttering.

“Swallow something?” I asked her.

She nodded, staring at me, and I saw the real mask appear over the lower features – the mask of professionalism, the same face she’d worn on the night of our very first meeting. It was scary how quickly she came to attention, realising something was really wrong without having an onboard observer to confirm things.

“Zel’s checking for illusions.” I tapped the side of my head on the outside chance Killstop’s power hadn’t quite caught up to informing her of my occupant. “We may need to drink our healing elixirs, Storm, if we start to feel unwell. They got me first – keep an eye on me, and if I need mine, drink yours.”

It was annoying – I’d only replaced it this morning.

“You think Dreamlaughter is back?” Killstop asked, sounding worried, glancing around at the people, the houses.

“Maybe, but there’s a diviner putting things in our mouths. Could it be… you know… him?”

She cocked her head at me, shrugged. “Him… he could do… anything?” She said it like it was a question.

“Have you swallowed anything unusual?” Em asked her.

She didn’t reply. I looked at my girlfriend.

“They aren’t getting to her mouth, not through the mask. Even if it’s him. She’s way too fast for that.”

“Hm,” Em demurred. “Perhaps you are right…”

I did my best to grin at her, the way she was tacitly leaving the other option open like that. Did my best to keep my spirits up.

It was difficult, not knowing if someone had made us swallow something disgusting – something lethal…

Anything, Zel? I asked internally.

“Feychilde!”

What the hells, Zel? Why do you sound like Spirit?

Then when I heard Killstop’s voice, I realised; it really was Spiritwhisper, linking us up.

And I realised in the same instant that the Killstop standing in front of me wasn’t really her.

“Damn it, Feychilde, Stormsword, can’t you disbelieve it yet? She sent most of them off to drown in the Whiteflood six minutes ago. It’s proving difficult to stop them jumping in and administer antidotes to the poisons you both ate in the biscuits and find an enchanter to link us so I can dropping-well tell you all this without her stealing the feel of the gods-damned piece of paper out of your hand and –“

I stared into the mask of the arch-diviner standing in front of me.

“Dream.”

Em instantly took flight, calling on her lightning at the same time as she spread a tornado through the surroundings, surely searching for anyone moving conspicuously.

“I’ve almost got it…” Zel said. “Damn it, damn it, damn it! She’s good, really good!”

If Graima had done something like this to us, back under the Green Tower, we might never have been able to escape.

Fake Killstop didn’t need to remove the fake mask – she could’ve just changed – but for the sake of theatricality Dreamlaughter did it anyway. The Tanra before me lifted her face-covering and she was the maniac again: short of stature, silver-robed, the giant grin masking the lower face…

Standing well within my shields.

Another illusion.

“Oh, sweetie, you came back for more,” she tittered. “Well, you’ve got it all figured out – why don’t you go save ‘em? While you’re there, I’ll start cooking up a fresh batch of bickies, and cook up some more, ya know – ideas.” She tapped her temple knowingly.

I looked up at Em, and Dreamlaughter used the momentary lapse of concentration to put a dagger in my chest.

I barely felt it, being part-wraith, but the continued lack of pain depended on my willingness to actively disbelieve what I could see, what my flesh was doing its best to respond to – so I sneered in her face, and cackled at her enthusiastically.

“Nyahaha! Come on, Storm – she’s right!” I cried, leaping into the air, deliberately dragging the dagger through my torso as I did so.

“Got it!” Zel crowed, and my left eye filled with brown-violet colour. There were only three of the residents of the street still hanging around, and they were stumbling, dazed, beneath the illusions that hid their true actions and expressions.

I could speed through the houses down the nearest streets, enwraithed, to see if I could find her – her seals could change before our next encounter, if I understood Zel right –

“Yep,” she supplied.

But she could be in a loft, or hidden in a box, and my illusion-breaking sight wouldn’t let me just see her outright – or if she was just sat there eating dinner, how would I know it was her? ‘Her’, even…

And lives were on the line, in the here-and-now.

“We’re on the way!” I called over the link, increasing my speed to match my competition.

We sped towards the river, and I instructed Em where to place her walls of wind and stone – I had Flood Boy place barriers of wine in certain locations, funnelling the stragglers into the arch-wizard’s net – but all the while I could hear the laughter carried on the air Em brought to bear, drowning out the excited yelps of the sleep-runners and only increasing in volume and maniacal intent as we flew farther from its source: Dream’s shrill, taunting titter, seeming to echo from every surface we passed.

Two points to you – but this isn’t over, I promised her silently, leaving the witch behind as we went to work.