“Well then, enough lounging around. Let’s get you up and working outside, shall we?”

Merry’s request was straightforward enough: learn what was in the surrounding area with Alicia as the guide. By now, Cyg guessed the witch was shoving the basics onto her apprentice instead of teaching it herself, which was, if he was being honest, not something he’d prefer. It wasn’t anything personal—it’s just that they didn’t mesh well.

As he followed the elf into the woods, he was thankful he finally got to stretch his legs. Any activity to serve as distraction or entertainment was appreciated, or so he thought at first. The trees here were tall but sparse enough to let plenty of sunlight through, which allowed for relatively easy plant identification. Easy, and incredibly boring to Cyg.

Crouching down, Alicia pointed to a white-yellow flower and explained, “Watch out for this one. You’d need to eat a lot of it to kill you, but it’ll still make you terribly sick. They’re called sleepy meadows, which is kind of funny given you can’t find it in meadows anymore. Apparently, a species of—”

“Wait,” Cyg interrupted, “They look identical to the other plants you just showed me.”

“No no, look!” she said, uprooting one of them. Between her fingers, she rubbed the leaves. “They feel rougher, and the roots at the end are more bulbous!”

“How the...” The thief ran a hand through his hair. “I’m supposed to remember how the damned leaves feel?! What, am I meant to start rubbing them until I get the hang of it?”

Alicia blinked. “That would work, yes.”

“Okay, forget it.” He shook his head with a sigh, deciding to drop the subject altogether. “By the way, I saw what you did back then, on the day I arrived. You very expertly guided the conversation.”

Hearing that, Alicia’s eyes narrowed. “What about it?”

“How did you know I had an Aspect?”

“It was a guess.” She stood and continued walking. “Oh here, look! It’s the non-poisoning, definitely-not-sleepy-mea...” She trailed off when she saw the complete disinterest on Cyg’s face. “I’ve seen people like you before, alright?”

The thief hummed. “People like me?”

“Ugh, that’s not...” Alicia began and stopped. “Just drop this line of questioning.”

Try as Cyg might, he could not hide his widening grin. “Come on, you’re going silent now? I bet you’ve got some interesting stories.”

“You heard what I said, and I won’t repeat myself,” Alicia shot back, “And you should be remembering what I’m teaching you because this was what we were stuffing you full of a week ago.”

And with that, his grin was gone. “Fine. Couldn’t you have numbed the pain with your healing magic anyway?”

“It’s not that simple. It’s just another earth Aspect anyway, only I’m manipulating your flesh and blood,” she replied, “Which by the way is a stupidly complicated task. Do you know how many bones are in your body and their exact shapes? And where each muscle and tendon is supposed to go? Anyway, the only possible pain relief from that would be fixing the source of the symptom.”

“Huh.” Cyg let that sink in for a bit while Alicia continued with the lecture. He paid a little more attention but was ultimately distracted by the elf herself. Soon, he interrupted yet again. “Wait, do you have one or two Aspects?”

“Two, the earth thing is just a dumb classification. Because our ancestors couldn’t wrap their heads around something existing without being forced into categories.” The explanation given to all children curious about magic was more or less the same—imagine a tiny person inside of an earth-sized balloon poking outward, trying to reach the Outer Sea. They would never actually touch it, no, but the depth and width of their reach are control and breadth of ability respectively. “And yes, it is perfectly fine to be your age and only have a single Aspect.”

“W-Wait, I didn’t say anything!” Cyg stammered, “And how would you know how old I am?”

“I could tell,” she replied, “...And I could tell.”

He crossed his arms and turned his head, trying to act casual. “Yeah, well, how old are you?” He failed.

“Older than you.”

Scoffing, Cyg replied, “If you don’t give me a number, I’ll start calling you granny.”

Alicia sent a death glare his way. “I’ll kill you and then I’ll feed you to Merry’s familiar.”

“That doesn’t sound like you’re denying it,” pointed out Cyg. Alicia sighed and opened her mouth to answer, stopping with a concerned look instead. “Hey, hey! Don’t think about lying because the number ended up being bigger than you remembered.”

“Hush, it’s not that,” she replied, “It’s just harder to keep track of than I thought.”

“Hm? Don’t you guys have a calendar? Or notice the changing of the seasons?”

“No, that’s not it, just forget what I said. Add two or three to your age and we’ll leave it at that.”

Cyg hummed. “Very circuitous.”

“Very big word for someone who looked like they walked out of a garbage pile. You should change already with the set Merry left in your closet.”

He looked down at what he was wearing. “Oh yeah. Er, I’ll do that tonight,” he replied, sheepishly rubbing his neck. “Anyway, sorry for cutting in for the umpteenth time. Really needed to get that out of my system.”

Sighing yet again, Alicia went back to the task at hand.

* * *

The day after, Cyg was anticipating another round of outside learning but was only met with pouring rain. He even bothered to change out of his old rags, now wearing an oversized black shirt with one side stuffed into long brown breeches that fit far better.

Forced to pass the time in the study, he rubbed the bridge of his nose with an index finger and thumb. Merry was in the living area, concocting some kind of stew in the fireplace with a medium-sized cauldron. Cyg didn’t know that cauldrons came in such sizes as he believed it was a given that witches used impractically big ones, and in no way could this one be described as such. While deeply concerned over the existence of those fabled witches, he peered out and watched her cook.

Alicia, her spirits at long last shattered, told him, “For heaven’s sake, if you’re so interested why don’t you go over there already?”

“Huh? No, she told me to do this.”

“But you’re not doing this,” she replied, “Go over there and frame it as help so she can’t send you back.”

And then Merry shouted, “I can hear the both of you. Don’t bother.”

* * *

The rain relented the day after, and Cyg opened the front door to the sight of a massive, squat beast with black scales, the mere sight sending him recoiling backwards onto his behind.

“What the fuck?!” he exclaimed.

Merry walked up to him and looked outside. “Oh, it’s Bassy.”

Dumbfounded, Cyg stared at her, and then back at the creature. On four legs, the thing was easily Cyg’s height and then some, and he’d imagine it would be almost triple if it stood on its hind legs. In place of eyes, it had stalks or tentacles that formed a crown at the top of its head, the colors bleeding from black to pink. He’d imagine its massive jaw and sharp teeth could shatter every bone in his body effortlessly.

With Merry’s prior words, he was also able to piece it all together. “Bassy... Basilisk...?! That’s your familiar?”

“Hmm... I don’t know if I’m good at it enough for Bassy to be called a true familiar, but yes, we can go with that. Why don’t you say hi to her?”

Cyg looked at the massive beast, whose crown wriggled to give a greeting first. He gave it a meek wave back, saying, “Hello.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t see her on Monday. I mean, she was lazing around right behind the house.”

He paled and turned to Alicia, who returned his silent inquisitive stare with a straightforward answer: “I thought you’d take it better if you didn’t meet her so early.”

Which was met with: “She’s silent enough that I didn’t even know she was there!? How!?”

Meanwhile, Merry had walked up to the thing. “Now, what is it that you’ve been up to?” she asked, and Bassy turned, dragged something on the ground, and dropped it right on the doorstep—a mangled corpse of some small, blue, translucent animal. “My, is that a faerie? You’re finding all sorts of rare things lately, aren’t you? Aw, who’s a good girl?” Merry said, scratching the underside of the beast's chin, and Bassy wagged its fat lizard-like tail with giant thumps against the ground.

Seeing this, Cyg said to Alicia. “You should’ve introduced me two days ago. This was way too sudden.”

“Noted.”

So Alicia said, but she also informed him there were no more giant carnivores left to meet.

Regardless, Cyg began to get into the groove of things, rotating between learning the local wildlife and basic runecrafting. On the day following Bassy’s introduction, Alicia was prompted to make a treat for Bassy, leaving Merry to show him how the lanterns fully worked. The problem was, Cyg no longer cared. It wasn’t hard to figure out by himself, even if he physically couldn’t make one from scratch. He knew all the pieces now and all their basic functions, but when he asked to be taught other things, Merry refused.

It wasn’t until Friday that he began to piece together why.

On that afternoon, one of the city guards came stumbling into the house. Merry knew immediately when he entered her domain, and much like when Cyg arrived, she waited right outside for her new guest. The injury was immediately clear: his left arm was a twisted statue of wood, stone, and leaves in the shape of an appendage, the affliction spreading onto his chest. It was the work of a glimmer snake, and despite their rarity, they’re one of the many, many reasons why one should think twice before going into the wilderness.

The guard explained, “I... I went to the local apothecary but he couldn’t do anything. He told me to come here, so I did.” Attacked during a patrol, he explained.

Merry mumbled, “You should’ve come sooner. By now the toxin’s already spread throughout your body and your mana’s running rampant, but I’ll see what I can do. Alicia?” The witch called for her apprentice, who helped the guard onto a chair.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Cyg, now restless, asked, “Is there anything I can do, anything I can help with?”

“No, you need to leave this to us. Better to go outside and play with Bassy or something.”

“Err...” Taken aback, Cyg still felt the need to try again. “Can I at least watch?”

“He’s in critical condition. You can’t be around to distract Alicia or me,” she explained, moving to the study to search the shelves.

It then clicked inside his mind and he silently nodded, taking his leave. It could all be summed as a matter of trust, and the witch had little of it for Cyg. He wandered out, his head in his thoughts as he stood in front of Griff’s impromptu grave a short distance away. What made Merry change her mind? Did he do something? Was it something he could fix? He had already indirectly asked Alicia before, and all he got in response was to wait. Wait for what? His long-gone friend gave him no answers, of course.

The mystery gnawed at his mind day and night. Cyg had relinquished his bed in favor of a chair in the living area, and through a window he could see Bassy curling up outside. When daylight broke, Merry informed Cyg the guard failed to make it to morning. He was barely fazed, given the grim prognosis beforehand. Besides, that was one of the baron’s men, another one of the bastards who enjoyed the swine’s accommodations their whole career.

As for his lessons, it was certain Alicia was aware of his dissatisfactions, but she acted no different, teaching him the same basic nonsense as she’s done for the past week or so. Fear and paranoia began to seep into him. Something was wrong, deeply wrong, but he struggled to understand why it was happening. He’d seen it throughout his entire life: the patterns, the faces they made, the roundabout answers—they were plotting against him in some way. His instincts were always faster than his ability to put the danger into words. Still, he knew better than to do anything stupid until he had solid proof.

Then, as if fate itself had decided to provide him with that opportunity, Merry made an announcement the day after.

“I’m going to town to get some rare materials to handle the faerie with. Do your best to not burn the house down, won't you?”

The thief forced out a chuckle and said goodbye, watching her don a strange wide-brimmed hat. It had strings holding up marbles that fluttered in the wind, seemingly serving little use other than to distract the wearer. But knowing better, he didn’t inquire, instead watching the witch as she flew into the air and then shot off into the distance.

When she had disappeared behind the treetops, he spun around to see Alicia staring at him, his heart filled with sudden, inexplicable panic. “...What?”

“Nothing,” she replied, retreating into the study.

Cyg, entering his room, sat down at the desk and twirled around the puzzle box, absent-mindedly mashing buttons on one of the sides. This one was a classic, where pressing down one button caused all adjacent ones to switch positions. It was an easy solve, but he had other concerns. Rather, he stared at the wall where he believed a door should've been built, a quick path to the front entrance strangely missing. He then got up, opened the door to the living area, and stepped out, measuring the distance with his eye. And like that, his instincts crystallized.

He went back to the guest room, placed his back against a wall, then walked forward in strides of equal distance—and it took him five paces to reach the other side. Then in the living area he repeated this, reaching the hallway after eight or so. To finish it off, he went back to the stairs leading up, finding that his memory held true: the width of the stairs was only a pace and half. The wooden walls had no reason to be this thick, meaning there was *something* in the space between these stairs and the guest room.

The glaring question was whether or not he should investigate, as it was obviously suicidal to snake around an immortal. Not to mention his actions killed Griff, and to die would be to waste his friend’s efforts in saving him. The right answer would be to stop here and listen to Alicia’s advice, and yet part of him managed to twist it so the opposite became entirely rational. Cyg suspected he was already marked for death, and if knowing what the witch was up to would give him the slightest advantage, why should he not take it? Putting his hopes on that belief, he went right upstairs, finding that Merry’s room was on the side he was looking for and that it was unsurprisingly locked.

He went back down, thinking about sneakily searching the study for something to help him pick it.

“You shouldn’t go up there,” Alicia told him as he went down the last step. She hadn’t so much as looked away from her work.

“What are you even up to?” Cyg asked.

“Making ink,” she answered, “Almost done, actually.”

“...Well I was just curious, since I’ve never really been on the second floor and all. I won’t touch anything.”

“Don’t forget you’re in Merry’s domain. In her house, no less. She’ll know, and there’ll be no turning back.”

Trying to control his pounding heart, Cyg gripped the wooden handrail. “No turning back from what?”

“We all know you can’t un-know something,” she explained, taking a key out of her pocket. She dangled it from a finger, waiting for Cyg to take it.

He asked, “You’re just going to give it to me...?”

“You happened to see me have it and you stole it when I wasn’t looking, got it?”

Cyg exhaled hard. “Got it.”

He took it and went straight to the door, unlocking it to enter an unremarkable room. There was a tidy bed, a filled bookshelf with some of its contents scattered across the desk and floor, and a few knickknacks decorating a cabinet top. A single small portrait of an unrecognizable woman hung on a wall, but he could scarcely pay attention to it, for directly adjacent was another door.

This one wasn’t locked, and it led to a narrow set of stairs which was doubly as steep as the one outside. He went down them carefully so as to not stumble and fall, then entering what appeared to be the basement. Shelves and cabinets full of vials and concoctions and all sorts of ingredients and mixtures line the walls. Most importantly, in the corner there was an unconscious man tied to a bed.

Cyg recognized him as the guard, his arm that was once ruined by a glimmer snake bite now a clean stub. His fingertips and toes had all gone black, and the slight scent of rot permeating the room was being covered up by a potpourri on a nearby nightstand. He was changed into a sleeveless top and shorts, showing off the black-red boils that covered his body. It took Cyg a second to identify it as none other than the famed plague of old, the one that died out ages ago and had no reason to exist now. The conclusion drawn was obvious: Merry cured the man and then decided to infect him with something equally horrific.

He knew he had to run. He learned this for nothing, Cyg realized. How could this have been advantageous in any way? His curiosity was satisfied at the cost of his life. He bolted out of the basement, out of Merry’s room, and out of the house without a farewell from Alicia. Cyg scanned the outside to find the basilisk nowhere in sight.

Then, he ran, sprinting over roots, vines, and small rocks as he went north. Merry would be coming from the south and this would give him more time, he reasoned, but he very quickly lost track of his orientation for the sun was directly above. If it was any other time of the year, the sun would be south enough that it would never be ambiguous, and it as if right now the stars aligned to screw him over. He kept pace until he was out of breath, then leaning against a tree and almost collapsing.

At that moment, Cyg finally noticed something was following him this entire time, a sound other than his own footsteps and the rustling of trees in the wind. There, in the distance, he spotted a shifting blur of black, somehow gracefully weaving between trees. As soon as he saw the basilisk, its stalks wriggled knowing it was detected, and losing all pretense, it truly began to close in.

The earth shuddered as it leapt and bounded across the forest floor. Cyg tried to change directions, but before he could even put the idea into action, the beast already altered its angle to where he intended to go. He was done, and he knew it. How can someone outrun a monster that can read minds?

His foot suddenly caught on a jagged bit of rock and he fell longer than expected, for he had tripped past an overhang. It was a storey and half drop, Cyg saw, and he shifted his body to not land on his head—and with a sickening crunch he smashed onto hard stone, the few dead leaves below doing nothing to soften the blow. The basilisk landed a few paces past him, spinning around with its tail wagging.

“Get... get away from me!” Cyg turned and kicked his feet to inch toward the cave behind him. It was a shallow thing that led nowhere, he could tell, but he had nowhere else to go. The basilisk immediately descended upon him, snatching him into the air by his lower half. He screamed out as it shook him, and after two swings, its jaw and teeth fully split Cyg into two. He fell onto the ground again, this time too exhausted to fight back at all. When he looked down, he expected a pool of blood, but there was nothing there. Its venom had instantly coagulated all of it, and a sickening numbness started spreading up his body.

Suddenly, he heard Merry’s voice. “Oh no, Bassy! You shouldn’t have done that.” The witch softly landed next to Cyg, the dangling marbles on her hat clicking against one another as she moved. She reached down and touched his mangled torso, the poison vanishing, but stopped before actually closing the wound. “Hmm. No, that’s a shame, I can’t remake half a body. Sorry Cyg, I wanted to keep you a little while longer, but you ruined it.”

Fighting back unconsciousness, Cyg spat out a single word, “Why?”

“Why, you say...” she mumbled, placing a hand on her chin, “Did you not come into my forest asking for my help?”

“What does that have to do with anything...?”

“What would’ve happened if you didn’t come to me?” Merry asked, “You would be dead. If I didn’t exist, you wouldn’t have survived, right? No one else to turn to, no one else to ask for help. The moment you breathed that poison in, your life was forfeit. I even gave you a very fair deal, despite all that: a year as an apprentice, then freedom! That would’ve been preferable for the both of us, really.”

Right there and then, Cyg saw Alicia walk into view, and he realized the elf had lied. Merry wasn’t waiting for him to get better. No, what had happened was that Merry judged Cyg’s character wrong at the start and then corrected herself. Alicia could stomach whatever Merry was doing, but Cyg couldn’t.

“To... to give people the fucking plague...?!”

“No, to cure it.”

“It’s... It’s gone! It’s not coming back!” It spread quickly and died out after wiping out half the continent, like fire running out of fuel.

“You don’t know that. History tends to repeat itself, even if not exactly identical in nature. True, a studious mage can cure it by themselves, but what good is a single person or even a dozen? The real value is a cure anyone can find and use, so that such a tragedy can never happen again. Now, I ask, how does a single walking corpse measure in comparison?”

Cyg had come to a single conclusion: talking to Merry was pointless. She’s gone mad as immortals do, and the passage of time had worn her down until a single human life no longer held any sanctity. Merry was clutching the past as if it was all she had.

He stayed silent, resigning himself to his fate. There was one thing she was right about, and it was that his death was long overdue.

And Merry, figuring that he was done, turned around and waved at the basilisk. “Better finish what you started, Bassy.” It took a step closer, but it stopped when Alicia walked in front.

She asked Merry, “Can you leave him to me?”

The witch looked thoughtfully to the side, seemingly rolling the idea around in her head, but she didn’t sit on it for too long. “Fine, but make sure to clean up. I don’t want anyone finding him and making a fuss.” With a hand, Merry motioned Bassy away.

Alicia watched them leave, and after a minute, she knelt down to him.

Cyg scoffed. “What... what is it now?”

From her apron, Alicia pulled out a small glass bottle of ink slushing around along with a worn piece of paper filled with scribbles. She told him, “Quiet down and stay still if you want to live.”

He scowled in return. “...Don’t joke with me.”

“You need to listen carefully,” she began, “I’m going to inscribe a sigil onto you. If I mess this up, we’re both dead.” That was enough to still his tongue. She rolled up his sleeve to his shoulder and opened the bottle, and after a strained wave of her hand, the ink flowed out and toward him. “Here’s a short version of the story: there’s a spell circle underneath the basement of Merry’s house. It’s an absurd masterwork, and I know little of how it functions other than that I can choose who it targets and some kind of duration. Naturally, I set it to as long as possible, since the damned thing sends souls back in time.”

Cyg gritted his teeth as the ink dug into his flesh and swirled around. He almost wanted to complain about how outlandish this all was, but he no longer had the energy for it. Whatever happens will happen.

Alicia continued, “Unfortunately, it can’t go back farther than when you first entered it. I mean, it might, but there’s a kill switch somewhere that stops that very case because it starts to drain all the mana out. Right now it’s set to a month, but for you, it’s cut short to a week.” A bead of sweat ran down her forehead as she wove the ink in and out, getting annoyed when it refused to sink into the tiny precise shapes she wanted. “I don’t know what the mana source was, but when I first finished it, it started off full. Now, it’s almost empty, and I can’t even put the both of us in without it running dry immediately. So here we are, my stupid, hair-brained self betting it all on you. I want out of this place, and you do too, right?”

A sizeable puddle of red had already formed where he was bisected. He could feel himself going any moment now, but he croaked, “Wait... why me?”

“Who else, the guard? He doesn’t even have a single Aspect. Plus, we’re in the middle of nowhere,” she replied, then meeting his eyes. “I need someone who can do what I can’t, to go at this at another angle.”

Darkness crept into his vision. “Yeah... not the guard...” he mumbled, “I’m relieved...”

“About what?” Alicia asked, shifting the last bit of ink. She sat down on the ground, wiping the sweat off her face and throwing the rest of the contents on the floor.

“I could trust you after all.”

She snorted, and he was gone.

There was recognizable nothingness, a strange moment of consciousness that should not have existed. He should be gone and purely incapable of thinking, but none of it was true. Instead, he was ripped away from reality and plunged wholly into a great swirling abyss, a place that crushed his very being the longer he lingered. A thousand knives stabbed at him and a thousand hands tugged at him, all trying to morph him into pure chaos. Then, as suddenly as he arrived here, he was pushed back through a gap in the world, one different than before.

— ! —

“Well...”

Cyg jerked awake in the bed of the guest room, turning his head to find an elf rolling up his sleeve and checking the teardrops circling a nigh unreadable set of runes on his left shoulder.

Six darkened drops from a circle of thirty, she counted. “It looks like I went and did it.”

When he felt for his legs and found they were there as they should be, he sighed in relief. He stared at her in awe of the miracle, only to see that behind Alicia’s tired, focused eyes was nothing but anxious fear.

After all, he was in and she was out.