…..:::::|. Fifty-Foot-O-Rope Inn .|:::::…..

Halycind awoke roughly.

There was a heavy sound on her mind. It was his voice. Still in her head, commanding the distances between them. Commanding that in the long absence to come, she would mind her attentions, weigh her observations well, and judge everything slowly.

Nothing in the lingering weight of his words made any sense to her. Only a throbbing pounding of something powerful having left its mark.

She uncurled herself from her position in the floor of the room in the Inn and an uncomfortable shiver struck her. She glimpsed the sigil burning more of its way into her hand; it was the throbbing.

She shook it, wildly, in attempts to free herself of his Power then collapsed again into tearless sobs.

On the floor beside her lay open the rosetone music box her sweet feather had gifted her, still playing its tune. A tune she now suddenly realized had been filling that mysterious place where she just lay with her mistake. How could he have known such deep secrets of her? No one else knew she was the daughter of an Immortal.

She looked around her as her hand quieted its thump. Both her platefuls had been eaten and she did indeed feel sated. Had he fed her? Cared for her hunger? Had he lay her here? To rest? What was he, that he cared for her and frightened her both so intensely?

She bent back down to let true tears go. She was unsure how she'd even gotten to this day. How she’d so lost control over her own life. How she'd muddled up so badly the chance to be with a good man who had good intent, one she’d loved so dearly. How she was honestly developing something akin to familiarity with this Shadow.

She hated everything about herself. Everything.

She had no power anymore nothing was within her grasp. She was lying naked in the floor. Her marked hand covered her mouth.

She wanted to cry for him, Siin. But he would surely hate her. He'd hate her for lying to him. He’d hate her for making such poor choices. He’d hate her for being weak. She wanted to scream anything but nothing would come out.

Halycind grabbed at her clothes and removed herself from this room quickly.

...

It took her far too long to descend the wooden staircases into the main dining hall, but she could hear their familiar voices off in an area to the side.

“I don't get it, we've been making seizures left and right.” Siin was staring blankly and picking at a still full plate of food while Kodlaa sat sober beside him. She hadn't taken one sip of the ale foaming its last bubbles in its stein.

The two hunter moons, Anteqwar and Qilla, hung bold and bright during their married Solstice in the night sky as Kodlaa slid a look to the window. The Solstice Crowds were still so jubilant and loud and celebratory with their carousing in the streets. Even moreso now that a mancer had been caught and captured by Agents in their midst. She could hear them, chanting their monikers; Paragons, Princes, Actus Agentem. Everything she didn't want to hear at the moment. They were just far too loud.

And their formers had never actually made mention they’d even been accepted as Agents.

“In the Ladi they said we'd get our ‘Venge quarry. Then, no, not there. We'll start it in Cloudsfall, oh wait no, did we say Cloudsfall? What we meant was Havvenchael...Oh, wait no not Havvenchael either?” Siin was rambling.

Halycind walked in to that private room where still sat her friends and about six or so Grui routinely moved from her passing as she joined them.

"Geez, you look like siidal." Kodlaa wobbled a look up to her. Halycind’s hair was every where and her clothes hung ugly on her frame.

"I am siidal." She couldn't even look at Siin.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"No. No, I didn't it mean like that...oh, me head. The heart-pump's in me head."

Halycind's hearing keened her in on distinctive bootfall nearing the room.

“And now they've got to trod off to someplace I've never even heard of.” Siin groaned again. “Cevion aut Pika. Where even in all of Dureyr that? I thought I knew where all the Speculah Holds were. And there's no telling how long they'll be there so we'll never be rid of these wolaenki.”

"You all will. I definitely won't." Halycind mourned.

The other two caught a shudder as she seemed tortuously solemn.

Before anyone could clarify anyone else's mood, an entirely different sort of conversation entered.

“...What? With the WarQueen?” Ruu finished as he, Percival and Veygornne entered from bidding their profferers farewell.

“She asked for it, baba.” Percival attested. "And how could I not? It was the solstice...like today."

“Hexandrea is an Isam woman...they always ask for it.” A jovial Veygornne smiled with his lovely locks ruefully bound up in a messy bun near the top of his head. “Dunno, why you let that one go.”

"Her sister had a problem with tricksters."

“Oh, Thisbe’s stern. I can see why, now.”

Siin cocked an eyebrow to Percival astounded at catching yet another whiff of one of his past romantic conquests. Percival waved his hands upward as if to pass off the blame from himself.

They were very loud entering, what with the rustling and turning of the chairs to face the three.

Ruu shoved his hand out in beckon of the candle. “Gimmie the baby wand.”

Kodlaa pulled from her tunic the long slender muted blue candle set in a peculiar array of gears and metal and handed it to him with out looking at him. “Your little Agency meeting is about that thing, iddin't it?”

“Here, put these on.” Percival handed the lot stone rings with runes on them set inside a curious loop of shining black metal.

“Wait, what?” Their chase-numbed brains ne'er comprehended what they were being given, even as they shoved them onto their left wrists.

“You're going with us.” Percival imparted with a sure-looking nod.

“Do what?” Siin uttered. He had made to leap up from the seat with full excitement chewing the rest of his mouthful, when he was suddenly stricken with an odd wave of light-headedness.

Halycind suddenly clutched the back of her chair she straddled, what with it doing an immediate about turn with out her having touched the floor.

“Wait, uh. What's the...uh, buzzing?” Kodlaa said shaking her head and nearly falling from her floating seat. She stared at her formers. Ruu was becoming two Ruues and Percival was melting like her daggers once had. She shook her head once more and the room straightened itself out. “It's like...bees flying 'round in me head.”

Percival shined a debonair grin as he plucked one of the troll gallstones hanging in the air. They all reacted to the punch as if they’d been struck across the skull. “That would be the Gross Roaming User Interface.”

“Wha-a-Who's face is gross?” Kodlaa attempted as her head rocked with a loud buzz.

Percival and the other two men rose and gestured a jovial sign to the lot while leaving. “Sweet dreams.”

The three all tried to follow him up the staircase but its width and depth kept changing. Siin kept muttering something about Rubien’s Walls and Percival chuckled at his associations.

"Nonono, you explain what gross has been roamin, Percival!" Kodlaa said far too loudly as she was certain she could no longer hear herself.

“The interface.” Percival informed disappearing into his room as he pointed to the wolaenki to go straight to theirs. Kodlaa stumbled and mumbled hard curses as she did so and they could have sworn she’d fallen over in there. Sudden snoring immediately followed the loud thud even as Veygornne and Ruu entered their rooms a floor above them.

"My head hurts.” Halycind tried to moan still forcing her feet to make the last two steps without falling over.

Siin’s heart was thumping far too languidly for him to not feel its weight inside his chest every time it pumped. Something was very wrong.

She watched him take a very slow breath, much like the way he’d done in the forest when he first saw the dead girl. He took one more tried step holding the railing with a death’s grip. Then drew in a slow breath as if he were sucking in the hallway, just as a burst of thought hit him.

"I remember kissing you." He said with some exhaling fright.

"You had forgotten?" She burst to question, trying to capture his far-off gaze. "I-I thought you were upse--"

"When did I do that?" He asked, his eyes listlessly roaming the last step as if the wood grain would give him answers.

"The pantry.” She whispered concern to tears welling in his eyes. “Why don't you remember?" She was near to tears herself.

"I don't know." He tried to breath, again, normally as he slid a pair of near-angry bedroom eyes toward Halycind's confused expression in this hallway. "I don't want to not know."

Siin Ynggrloch slammed an angry kiss to her lips on the sill of an open room, then rolled that kiss inside, against a wall, and shut the door.