"Stories are boring. I am ready to kill you." Hatharia chuckled while sharpening a knife made of bone.

"There is one more story I have to tell you." I looked at Cory and he tilted his head.

"No more, not tonight." Said the closest thing to a leader that the Fen and the Fell had.

"This one concerns that last stone, the one you need." I tried to smile. I was in a lot of pain from the torture. Smiling hurt.

She turned and even from that distance from across the room she could reach me with those impossibly long arms. She backhanded me and my front teeth split each other and I bit a large piece off of the side of my tongue. My head was stuck sideways for a moment, the muscles too torn to operate. With effort I dropped my chin and my head just hung there, blood and bone falling from my mouth.

"My Lord, are you alive? I cannot tell for sure." Cory asked me.

"Ug." I gurgled.

"I can hit you much harder. I restrain my fury so that I don't splatter your guts across that wall." Hatharia growled with menace.

"Thou art a nightmare beyond the reason of Dawn." I made myself speak with effort. I chose to address her in my own words, as each took great effort and pain to utter.

"Very true. I am that old and terrible." She laughed and withdrew her other arm from the killing strike she was gesturing to me. Her laughter continued and she set down the knife and went to have a drink. This she imbibed as sips, at first, then more heavily. Finally she went and laid upon the bed of corpses she ravaged the lesser of her species upon. She was the mother of their kind, of this I had no doubt.

Her snores suprised me as rather soothing. I wondered how long her nap would last. Cory came to peck at my binding. He told me:

"This is made of a leather. It is braided from the hide of both the Fen and the Fell and also of Man."

"Be glad she has nothing for a crow." I whispered with barely audible words of our hybrid language.

"I am glad. Did you see what she did to that male of the Fen and the Fell?" Cory asked me.

I said nothing to what I had not opened my eyes to. The sounds were awful enough. The stench was by far the worst of it, however.

After awhile my crow had freed me from my bonds. It was of no triumph, however. The monstrous creature had mangled my legs beyond use. If I tried to crawl upon the dried gashes she had carved into my chest: they would leave a trail of blood. I wouldn't get far with only seven fingers left between my two hands anyway. It was of no use. I just fell over and laid upon the floor of the cave.

The sound was enough to awaken Hatharia. She pulled herself onto her stubby, trunk legs with her insanely long arms and looked at me with her huge monster eyes. She spoke then, in a much different mood:

"Tell me the last story."

I couldn't really speak very well and I could remember the story even less. I just laid there breathing and trying to remember what had happened.

"My Lord is dying. When he is dead, his secret will die with him. I could tell you what he would, if you can understand me." Cory spoke in perfect English for the monster. She shrugged and waited. "Perhaps he was going to tell you all about stealing from your people and that he threw the stone away."

"The Alltheim is with the cats. What is this you meant to tell me? You think that this last story is of value to me. You think it will save your life?" She spoke to me and my crow in a somewhat confused grammar. Her accent obscured her speech as she slurred it all together. It took me a moment to think on what she must have just said. My delay brought no consequence. She was patiently waiting.

I clicked once that I meant yes. Cory translated: "My Lord has said 'yes'."

"Does your crow know this story?" She wondered. Cory shook his head.

She showed her teeth in a strange expression and then plucked a white liquid in a clear jar from a shelf. She fitted it with a rubber nipple that she used on bottles for her offspring. Then she lifted me up, cradling me, and fed me some of the stuff. It burned in my throat and tingled violently so that it was an unbearable sensation, not unlike pain. "Drink it. You will be restored enough soon."

I gagged and coughed and she took away the rest of it. She reshelved it and then flicked my broken teeth from my mouth. Her finger tasted foul as she reached into my mouth and felt around. My ruined tongue had stopped bleeding and had started to heal closed. My other wounds also began to heal closed. I had stopped bleeding entirely. After about an hour I was able to sit up, my body aching and the damage to my legs causing me the pain of a never healing wound.

"Now you are well enough to tell a story. Perhaps you remember it now?" She grinned toothily. I had no doubt she would bite my head off as soon as I was done talking. It was of no matter, I couldn't even recall how it started. I only knew how it had ended. She had come and taken me into a closet. Somehow she had reached out of the darkness and dragged me in. Cory had come with me, somehow.

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"It was after I came home. My face was a mess from clawing at myself. I had torn out some of my hair. Isidore and Dr. Leidenfrost had waited up for me as I walked across town. They were upset to see me so damaged."

"And?" She asked.

"I went on one last mission for the cats before you came to me."

"I saw you come home. After your mission." She offered. "You looked tired. Ahhh, you went into the bathroom. You put something in the top of the toilet, dropped it in the reservoir. It must be a gemstone you took for the cats. You failed your mission."

"No. The cats said they would come and get the necklace when they could. They said only to hide it in my home." I corrected her. Hatharia frowned.

"This wasn't much of a story. Where did you go to steal that last gemstone? Did you travel through time or enter the dreams of the great sleeper?" Hatharia complained. "What is its significance? How shall I know to whom it is connected? Obviously the cats are collecting all of these different treasures. You are just their thief." Hatharia smiled as she would whenever she was about to begin torturing me again.

"I want to live. I will teach you how to trade the last stone for the Alltheim. I want you to let me live, as a bargain. Are you fair enough to make a trade with me? Do you really take my handling of your sacred ornament so personally, or can we have our own agreement?" I asked her.

"You call upon my venerable reputation as a means to save your own life. I would rather just torture you and make you talk. However, I have already healed you and I am not really interested in more of the same torture. You have no more parts to ruin. I think you look splendid as you are."

"Not too splendid though, right?" Cory asked.

"No, I am already brewing a little Fen and Fell in my womb. Nothing looks too splendid." Hatharia really had mellowed out since I had met her. Things not looking too splendid to her was a good thing for me and my crow.

"Then this is it: I went to a museum and broke in. With the alarms going I rushed to a display case and smashed it. From there I took the necklace and ran away with it. I hid it in a trash can and laid down upon a bench and pulled cardboard over myself to keep warm. When the police searched the area they found me and searched me and let me go. They were even kind enough to leave me at that park bench without telling me to move on for loitering homelessly."

"So you stole an ordinary Earthly treasure?" Hatharia seemed agitated, confused even.

"That is the truth. It is all I can tell you."

"You are lying." Hatharia decided. "It does not matter. I am going to go to your home, kill all of your women and take the treasure."

"One of them is pregnant. The other is nursing." Cory told her. It seemed a strange thing to say in response to a threat of a home invasion. However, Hatharia began lactating at Cory's words. She muttered something softly and then said:

"I will go when they are all asleep and steal from you." She decided. She went to her crystal embedded in the wall of the cave and stared into it. Hatharia's eyes narrowed as she focused on the distant proceedings of my home. When she was satisfied they were all sound asleep, she opened a door of wood, in a frame of a strange shimmering metal. She stepped into the darkness of Dr. Leidenfrost's apartment beyond.

Moments later she returned with the necklace from the museum. I watched as the shadowy claw of a cat reached from the shadows, looming over her. I cringed as she was smashed into a broken heap by one terrible blow. The cat meowed darkly and its orange eyes shone from the closet and blinked at me. Then it was gone.

"Can we go home now?" Cory asked me.

"It would appear so." I crawled along the cave floor with effort until we reached the closet. Inside I found a dead policeman she had murdered. I had not known a policeman was staying in the living room at Dr. Leidenfrost's apartment. I realized he was surely a friend of Dr. Leidenfrost's and a pained feeling of horror, for her sake, grew in me as I lay there staring.

I started to cough and Dr. Leidenfrost turned on the light and found me with my clothes torn and bloody and my body covered in sores and bruises and closed wounds. My legs were both broken in more than one place and Hatharia had cut off three fingers total from my two hands. She braced herself, I had not seen her strength before. It was a newfound strength. She knew she would find her friend dead, most likely. She guessed as much and only looked at him briefly. She didn't scream, instead she forced herself to slide to the ground with her back to the wall, her fists shaking. She looked back at me and focused on me.

"Are we in danger?" Dr. Leidenfrost collected herself and asked me. I shook my head and pointed at the closet door. She went through and saw the cave. When she came back she shut the door and then opened it back upon her closet.

"That thing is dead." Dr. Leidenfrost acknowledged. "I am taking you to the hospital. Isidore can't see you like this. She couldn't take it."

"What about your friend?" I asked.

"I will have to call the police and say the intruder came back and killed Thomas and left you here. I had to take you to the hospital." Dr. Leidenfrost decided. She dragged me to her car and laid me in the backseat. Cory stayed behind, preferring his dogbowl and the rest of his family to waiting outside the hospital. Dr. Leidenfrost went back inside and put a sheet over the dead policeman. Not long after she came outside the police had arrived.

"I called Threnody and she and Josh are coming to get Isidore and the baby."

"I am just gonna sleep on the way there." I told her. "I haven't had any sleep this whole time and I am going to pass out. I am so weak right now."

"You seem well enough, stay with me champ, okay?" Dr. Leidenfrost looked very concerned and terrified. She was showing me, though, her stronger side. The last time she had dealt with a horrible situation she had broken down. This time she had kept herself together perfectly well, in my eyes.

I tried to stay alert but drifted into unconsciousness. I awoke in the hospital and soon after I was awake, I was visited by Dr. Leidenfrost. I smiled weakly for her.

"I thought I had lost you. I was so scared. Then you were back, Lord, except everything is wrong now." Dr. Leidenfrost told me of her experience. "Or right, just to have you back."

"I am sorry about Thomas." I apologized for the death of her friend.

"Me too." She said strangely. "Officer Kiter was a good man."

"Mr. Briar?" My doctor came in while Dr. Leidenfrost was there. He wanted to discuss my injuries and the casts on my legs. Somehow Dr. Leidenfrost had gotten me onto her insurance overnight. I had no idea how. I was going to stay in the hospital for about a week, my doctor decided.

"I am going to spend a lot of time here with you." Dr. Leidenfrost promised. "I can read you what I am writing, Princess of the Underworld."

I smiled for her as best I could and ended up wincing. "Thank you, I'd like that."