Dew glistened on the grass in the clearing as the sun crested the tree strewn horizon. Jack sat on the log, sipping coffee from a metallic cup. A lockbridge stood nearby as Mioko plopped onto the opposite end of the log.

“You’ll probably have to go get him,” she said.

“Yeah,” Jack replied, nodding. “Something tells me he won’t be in a good mood.” He poured the rest of his coffee into the fire, then pushed dirt into what remained of the embers. “I’ll go get him.”

“Jack. About last night.”

Jack shook his head. “I’m still going to Jormungrund.”

“Yeah, just promise not to do anything foolish? Like, don’t go looking for trouble with Hnoss. I know how you are.”

“Then why would you ask for a promise you know I won’t keep? What are you asking for exactly? My lie or for my betrayal of who I am?”

Mioko shook her head and looked away. “Just go get Wolf so we can get going.”

Jack translocked and found Wolf sunbathing on a nearby hilltop.

Wolf raised his head when Jack emerged, then stood when Jack approached the hill.

“We’ll be leaving soon, Wolf,” Jack said. “Mioko’s going to turn us loose anywhere we want.”

“She’s cutting you loose too, huh?”

Jack shrugged. “Well, we’re done. We did what we set out to do. All that was left was bringing you up to speed.”

“So that’s it then?”

“Yeah, she’ll put us out in her home world. And she doesn’t plan to go back after that…so you won’t have to worry about y’all crossing paths.”

“That’s nice. But she doesn’t seem very sorry for what she’s put me through. What reason do I have for jumping through any more of her hoops?”

“None. But go through a last one and you’re rid of her for good.”

Wolf shook his head. “I’ll go, but I need to make a stop first. Near the Grandma’s cabin. I need to get my things before anything else.”

Jack thumbed back towards the lockspace. “You’ll have to take that up with her.”

Wolf nodded and trotted down the hill, where they both ousted to find Mioko standing with a duffel over each shoulder.

“We good?” she asked.

“Wolf’s got a request.”

“Yeah,” Wolf continued. “First, you gotta take me back to the cabin so I—”

“Whoa, whoa, just stop,” Mioko said, dropping the bags. “Requests aren’t something I typically do, and I damn sure don’t do demands.”

Wolf’s ears fell flat. “But you abducted me. How can you expect me to just go along with whatever—”

“Yeah, no. I’m not asking. I’m letting you pick a place after we get my obelisk. You can come with us or you can hang out here until we get back. This isn’t a tour. When I take you to the cabin, you make your own way from there.”

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Wolf’s eyes narrowed. “Why does it even matter? It’s not like you have to do anything more than open one more of your magic doors. You keep saying jump while expecting everyone to just ask how high.”

Mioko shrugged. “Jump or don’t. But as you saw last night, if I want you gone, I don’t need to discuss it with your first. This conversation is a courtesy, which is the hard way. I’d much prefer switching back to the easier one.”

Wolf looked to Jack, who shrugged and shook his head.

Jack moved to grab a duffel as Mioko hooked one over her shoulder. “Is this other the ammo?” he asked as he took the strap.

Mioko nodded. “Yeah.” She turned but stopped when Jack’s hand rested on her arm.

“Everything alright?”

She didn’t look back but nodded. “Yeah, I just…I don’t like goodbyes.”

Jack looked back to Wolf, who lowered to his haunches, staring dumbfounded after Mioko. “Come on, Wolf. We’re almost done.” Then, he jumped back as Mioko’s duffel fell beside his foot. He looked to see her sprint through a new lockbridge.

Jack followed, finding the sky a hazy gray with air that smelled of smoke. Forms lay crumpled in a nearby ditch, but his attention shifted back over to Mioko who fell to her knees in the grass. His mind was pulled back to the time he found her prostrated over Hansel and Gretel’s headless bodies.

A charred foundation with a scorched frame nestled to the right of a gravel driveway. To the opposite was another ruin, though a stone chimney stood mostly intact.

Jack approached and looked over Mioko’s shoulder as she mourned the loss of a yard ornament. It was black iron, a shaft bent over into the ground where a design was crumpled and folded over itself. A single ‘W’ was isolated to one side, attached to a partially raised rod.

Mioko’s hands moved around it as if she were molding wet clay spinning on a pottery wheel, yet she was touching nothing. It was broken, and she seemed to struggle with what to do about it.

Jack knelt next to her. “There’s nothing you can do, Mioko. It’s broken.”

Mioko turned back to him, her eyes full of hope, tears running freely. She nodded, vigorously, hoarse as she responded. “Yeah, it’s just broken. Not ruined. Broken doesn’t mean ruined. It can be fixed. I can fix it. You’ll see, Jack. I can—I can.”

Jack pulled her away from the broken weathervane, but she resisted. She broke down and cried into his shoulder as he looked around. This was a farm—once upon a time. He turned back and saw fields across the road, beyond which was the a colored forest. He knew those woods. They weren’t his, but still, he knew them.

“Where are we, Mioko?”

“It’s my home,” she sobbed, without looking up.

Wolf walked over and sat beside them, looking around at the burned buildings. He glanced at the top of Mioko’s buried head, then away, his eyes narrowing on the orange and red forest across the road. “That forest,” he said. “It’s the same, isn’t it?”

Jack nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

Mioko noticed Wolf and pushed herself away from Jack, turning away from them both.

“How close are we to the cabin?” Jack asked. “The grandmother one, I mean.”

Mioko shrugged. “A mile or two. Straight line. I don’t really know. But it’s on the outskirts of Haeliheim…my hometown.” She raised her palm and gestured towards the two scorched foundations ahead of her. “This place is outside of town too. Just a different direction.”

The three looked west as they heard a series of gunshots.

“And those other times we came over to Jormungrund?”

Mioko shrugged. “I don’t know. Around. Why?”

“There are headless zombies in the ditch near the road.”

“Good,” she said, nodding. “Then they won’t be a problem.”

“You think this is where she was keeping them?”

Mioko stood and wiped her nose with her wrapped knuckles. She looked around briefly, then shook her head. “No. There’s no way she could accommodate the numbers we’ve seen. Even with some kind of control over them, she’d need to keep them confined. Some sort of enclosure at the very least.”

“Then why are there dead zombies in the ditch?”

Mioko’s expression sobered, blinking as she looked towards the road. “They must have wandered. Then someone killed them.”

“I don’t know what freshly-dead zombies smell like,” Wolf said. “But those don’t smell like what showed up at your gran…at the cabin. Those things smelled like old dirt. These are different. They smell…sticky.”

Mioko studied Wolf, blinking. “Is she getting more elsewhere?” she mumbled.

“They could have been turned,” Jack said as more gunshots rang out. He pointed their direction. “What’s that way?”

Mioko stood and looked towards the horizon. “That’s Haeliheim.”

“Do people do a lot of shooting over there?”

“This smoke in the air,” Wolf said. “It didn’t come from the buildings here. The wind’s blowing it from your Haeliheim place. But smoke isn’t the only smell on the air.”