There was no tension in the air. No feeling of bloodlust. No sense of death. A pure absence of aura as Miserable Henry led Trinch, Oriz, Princh, and Crik through the distillery. Nobody let slip an inch of Willpower, nobody let their Dexterity play with things as they passed. There was no sign of Insight scanning. No trace of Might. Even Vitality, the purest expression of life, was gone.

They walked like ghosts, and Zoe trailed behind, filled with a sense of impending doom. She did her best to keep her Skein under control, but every step felt as though she were going to burst open.

Why was this charade even going on? She knew Miserable Henry knew they were imposters, but he said nothing. The ruse was done before it began, but nobody addressed this.. Did the others truly believe they were getting away with this? She felt sick to her stomach. At any second the entire plan would collapse.

Miserable Henry pointed out various new components of the still and mumbled self-deprecating jokes as they approached the still’s main pot.

“Couldn’t run this place without the help of such fine employees as yourselves. I wouldn’t even have a reason to live!” he sobbed out a light laugh as bloody tears dripped from his chin. “Might as well jump out a window if I have to run this place on my own. No, nobody is as important to me as people like you.”

They reached the main pot. A large spherical chamber of dimpled brass that could house an elephant. Sticky green mash spattered the stone block floor. The mess gave Zoe a shudder. The grains looked like pellets of spinach. They smelled like sour cherries and allspice. Nothing like the nectar that dripped into the tents. What exactly had Zoe drunk?

At first, she thought it was alcohol, and though there had been subtle drunkenness in the tent, all such feelings had passed. Now she floated like a balloon behind her body.

Knowing that at any second, Miserable Henry would turn around and snip that tether and send her floating away into the abyss. Cold sweat pooled in the grey boots of her suit.

She couldn’t figure out why this kept going. Was this some sick joke between him and Trinch? Some kind of game?

Miserable Henry turned around and faced her. His bloodshot eyes bored into hers, even through the opaque grey mask. She barely suppressed a scream. He stepped close to her. His silver robe flowed down from his shoulders and he extended a voluminous sleeve. A pale, slender figure pointed at Zoe.

That finger contained judgment. The end of worlds. A groaning pressure squeezed her bones, but this was no aura. It was her own pure fear leaking from her pores. She closed her eyes and waited for death.

“You,” he said. “Open the chute and drain the pot.”

Zoe dared to open her eyes. Maybe they had convinced him otherwise? Tears dripped down his face as he watched her, and she hurried to obey. He pointed at various wheels, at levers, and she hurried to obey. Nobody else moved to help her. Nobody said a word.

Only the ungainly squelching of the strange grey material as she hurried back and forth across the damp floor. At last, the pipe beside her glowed with heat as the hot mash poured down through a grate in the floor. It seemed like florid vomit as it vanished into the depths below.

Zoe watched it vanish with a strange sympathy. How many times now had she fallen through the void to some strange destination? A sudden smile tugged her lips. She was about to do it all again.

Steam billowed from the open still door. Miserable Henry beckoned with a small sad smile.

“Please, after you.”

Oriz led, stiff-backed, and Trinch followed.

The green-haired behemoth climbed up into the doorway. It was barely large enough to accommodate him. The grey suit stretched and strained to cover his muscular body. He stopped halfway in and ripped off his helmet.

“I can’t take this anymore!”

Miserable Henry’s hand flew to his mouth.

“Oh my word, Trinch?” he chuckled. “I had no idea!”

Trinch glanced at Oriz.

“Carry on the plan.”

“Plan?” Miserable Henry tittered. “You mean you’re up to no good?”

Trinch snarled.

“Die!”

Zoe squeezed her eyes shut as aura exploded. Metal shrieked. The shockwave knocked her to her back. The ceiling burst open. Dust blew about. Chunks of masonry fell around her. She finished closing her eyes.

Oriz hauled Zoe to her feet.

“Come on!”

Zoe stumbled on her feet. Bruises bloomed across every inch of her body. She felt blood leaking from her ears. Her eyes. Tasted it in the back of her throat. It had happened so fast. Her ears rang. Her bones ached with a dozen micro-fractures. She almost collapsed just from the effort of standing.

She looked about. Miserable Henry and Trinch were gone.

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So was the ceiling.

And most of the still.

The colossal brass contraption lay wrecked. Torn in places as though it were taffy. New fires sprung up in all the colors of the rainbow. People screamed in the distance, but the sound was muted.

She heard again the drummer’s insistent beat.

Death hung close.

Not even the bright blue beam survived the clash between Trinch and Miserable Henry. Some parts of the still throbbed garish blue, but without the brilliant beam, the tavern seemed drab and unreal.

Zoe looked at her fingers.

Was any of this real? She could be asleep right now, on the flight across the Pacific, preparing to confront Ben in Australia…

Oriz grabbed her and tossed her into the pot. Princh caught her and shoved her into the center. The world spun around Zoe. She fell to her knees and puked, barely remembering to pull her hood from her face in time.

The still’s heat assaulted her. She felt her skin cooking. Choked out a scream, and forced the hood back on.

“Hurry up!” Princh pointed at an open trapdoor in the center of the pot. It looked like a drain of sorts, but a ladder hugged the wall. Crik had already clambered halfway down. Princh pushed Zoe, and she caught the rungs in time.

The smell of the ocean filled her nostrils as they healed enough to smell.

Blue light scattered throughout the shaft. Zoe squinted against the glare as she climbed down with the others. The beacon glowed in the cracks of the stones. Cast the shadows as things of ice.

The suit did nothing against the light.

It passed through Zoe’s skin and into her blood. Skipped her pulse. Moved her veins. Sent bubbles of iridescence through her arteries. She choked down her fear and descended.

The ladder was long, and her fingers wanted to let go, but she would keep going.

###

Joel’s bloated body floated at the top of the lakes blood tainted water. Above his blank eyes shone a bright blue sky. Inside his stomach, things stirred.

He was dead, and he knew it, but the knowledge brought no comfort.

Why did he know this at all?

His flesh moved. His limbs swam, a casual breaststroke as his swollen belly hung in the water. Skin twitching as the things inside him seethed.

They were almost ready.

If he could, he would dig at the flesh of his belly with his fingers. Rip open his guts and let the foul creatures out so that he could strangle each one. But he controlled nothing. Whatever foul liquid Cassy — no, the thing that was Cassy — pumped down his throat had taken his flesh from him. Turned him into an agent of whatever destructive, alien force now possessed Cassy.

Cassy’s body.

She was just as dead as him. Doomed by an unlucky strike. Unable to incorporate an element. Unable to engage with the new reality forced upon them.

She could have chosen an element on the plane, but he insisted she wait. Everything had been so strange. It had been so unreal. Anything could have happened if she chose an element. If she incorporated essence into her body. He couldn’t have known what it really meant. The others were crazy for performing such an action when they had no information. Reckless fools. It was their fault. Not his.

How could he have known she would have survived if she had essence inside her?

He couldn’t have. It couldn’t be his fault. It wasn’t his fault.

But she was still dead…

His body swam between the spired rooftops of submerged houses. A mirrored yacht cut through the water and steered around him. Just as the marching dead under the bloody water ignored him. What greater sign that evil possessed him than to see the forces of the dungeon treat him as one of their own?

He would have sighed if he controlled his mouth. Instead, only a feeling of puppet-like horror as his body climbed through an open window and into the attic of a house. An inch of water connected the floor. Whatever the original occupants stored in here — books, furniture, food, whatever — was long rotted. A trapdoor led from the attic down into the house. The hinges were rusted apart. The door long rotten and gone.

Through the square in the hole, a dark house lived underwater.

The sight made Joel shudder, if he could have shuddered, as it was his body crawled into the corner and gripped the walls. His fingers dug into the soft wood. Fingernails split and splinters pierced his tender flesh.

The pain entered his mind, but he couldn’t flinch, or even react. He tried to scream, but his flesh only smiled.

Why did he wander into that graveyard? Why did he look for Cassy? He knew nothing good would happen…

He went looking for love, and death found him.

The trapdoor bubbled, and Cassy’s body emerged.

###

The thing that was Cassy smiled with too many teeth at the thing that was Joel. His flesh twitched, and he smiled toothlessly at her. Such love, their bodies still reeked of the pheromones.

“Such a pleasant feeling,” she hissed. “This human love. Such a pretty smile my… boyfriend… has. I could climb inside and live there.”

She delighted at the way Cassy thrashed inside her brain. Pain, fear, shame, invasion. Delightful. The thing that was Cassy crawled over to the thing that was Joel and peered into his eyes. Through the peephole of a pupil, she spied Joel’s original mind squirming in its prison of flesh. Delightful.

Yet its pain was so minor. Splinters. Humiliation. Possession. So minor.

They would fix that.

Cassy and Joel would suffer such agonies when they emerged from the dungeon. This flesh would enter battle, and all that entailed.

Because, soon, soon, their children would be born, and their brood required feeding.

The thing that was Cassy couldn’t wait to leave, but first, she needed the humans…

Needed them to succeed, or needed them to die.

Their petty fate meant nothing, just as the thoughts of a key mean nothing to the holder. She knew all this with the deep knowledge of her origin. The black, grasping ichor smeared between dimensions. She felt the connection, deep in her guts, a fleshy tube that led from her naval to the edge of reality and beyond.

Soon, the humans would die, and the dungeon gate would reset, and she could exit. Cassy’s brain held images of a world of people. So many vessels, and how many must have felt fear when the system arrived?

So many who said no, and now waited for her. She needed the reunion. Craved it with every fiber of the body she wore.

She would start with the town that Cassy saw from the plane. The one aflame in the middle of the sky. In the memories of Cassy’s brain, a golden barrier surrounded the town. This safe zone kept it free of monsters. Kept it free of people — the true people — like the thing that was Cassy and the thing that was Joel.

But she knew — with the deep knowledge of what she was — the safe zone would fall. The divide between civilization and the wild would fall, and she would step across that threshold with her brood in tow.

Mother and children, together they would feed.