The conversation between the two Indians seated around the blank-screened television screeched to a halt when the Primoi noticed Waia trudging towards them from across the room.

Waia vaulted over the back of one of the couches and took a seat next to an Indian, plastic cup in one hand. She took a slow sip of whatever was in the cup and slung one arm over the back of the couch. “You know, I’ve seen quite a few instances of what that ‘alcohol’ stuff does to humans. Gotta say, I’m jealous.”

The Indian to her right hunched his shoulders and tried to look away. “Greek or Aztec?” He squinted and glanced at her eyes. “Or… Human?”

“Hawaiian. Visiting.” A grin forced itself out of Waia. “Oh, man, you guys have no idea what’s going on around these parts, huh? Yeah, I’ve got this whole thing between me and the Aztecs. Of course, we’re actually a little shaky, because a certain group of people can’t get their priorities in check.”

The Indian next to Waia looked pleadingly at his relative before looking back at Waia. “That’s… nice. I didn’t know–”

“Frankly,” continued Waia, “it’s a miracle that a bunch of losers like you guys survived this far past the end of the world. Like, you know what’s been coming out of the woodwork every twenty minutes ever since Deus decided he couldn’t be bothered with us? In February, I had to literally go to hell in order to stop the legions of the afterlife from conquering the earth. And I’m supposed to be one of the lucky ones! How have you gotten this far? That’s the real enigma here.”

“Actually,” said the Indian opposite Waia, “they just got me to do everything for them.”

Waia grimaced. “That right? And who are you supposed to be, then?”

The Indian winked. When his eye opened again, it had changed from yellow to dark green. “We’ve met.”

The eyes of the Indian next to Waia went wide. “No. No, y–you can’t be here, we left you at home! How did you get here?! Where’s the real Veshpur?”

Rachna shrugged and grinned. “I have my ways, just like always. And French Mustard is soaking in his guilt twenty-two point nine three metres north-northwest from here.”

The Indian sighed with relief when he saw the Primus that Rachna had been impersonating standing casually by the band. He looked contritely at Waia. “We’re so sorry, he’s not supposed to be here. He’s normall–”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s just Rachna, we’ve met.” After a moment of quiet, Waia blinked in surprise. “…I know your name. How do I know your name?”

Rachna’s face lit up and he shifted into a blue-eyed replica of Waia. “They’d do that? For me?” He wiped a tear from his eye. “You really don’t need to do that, b–but I appreciate gestures like that, I really do.”

Waia winced at the sound of her own voice coming from someone sitting across from her. She nudged the Indian next to her. “Who’s he talking to?”

The Indian shrugged dejectedly. “He does this a lot. Talking to people who aren’t there. More so than usual for the past few years.”

“Pfft. ‘Aren’t here’.” Rachna grew two tiny arms out of his neck and made airquotes with them before promptly retracting them. “Not present, sure, but you folks need to learn to cut the odd stay-at-home ventriloquist a bit of slack. The quietest voices hear the most. Time draws to a close for the coward’s legion, and the final crossroads must be…” He took a deep breath and shut his eyes. “We’re in… Mexico?” He opened his eyes and looked at the Indian across from him expectantly.

The Indian shielded his eyes. “Just… Can you at least talk about things that we understand? Use names that we know about, at the bare minimum.”

“Oh, sure, just know everything that you know about, like it’s that easy.” Rachna snorted and waved off the other Indian. “Names, words, they’re all made up already. I can barely look at a ‘stranger’ without hemorrhaging, and you expect me to keep track of what everyone around me knows everyone by? I’m just one man!”

“Okay, that’s…” The Indian stood up and grabbed Rachna by the arm. “We’re bringing you to Kuravaan, and you’re going home and staying there while we wrap up business here, got it?”

“Nah.” Rachna melted into a puddle of tar, slid across the floor and reformed next to Waia, sitting in the exact same spot and position that the other Indian had been. His features morphed into a replica of the other Indian. “Why would I spend my six hundred and ninety-seven thousandth, nine hundred and ninety-second day in that hole on today of all days? I’d be missing the graveyard inauguration!”

He tapped Waia on the shoulder. “Sorry about the whole Cassandra thing, by the way. Warnings would be way easier to dispense if I had a frame of reference for the concept of ‘common knowledge’.

“It’s cool,” said Waia, taking a sip of her drink. “I’ve put up with a lot of worse people than you, actually. I move in some weird circles.” She extended a fist, which Rachna met with his own.

Rachna turned back to the other Indian, grinning smugly. “See? It is, in fact, possible to be nice to me.”

“You won’t get away with this,” muttered the Indian, before storming off.

Rachna smirked at his departing relative. “A shame, isn’t it? I can see enough of the past and present that the future is a foregone conclusion, but I still can’t manage to feel comfortable with my lot in life. Well, if there’s one thing that our mutual friend can tell us, it’s that serenity doesn’t come cheap.”

Waia shrugged and stared at her drink for a moment. “You say you aren’t good with using the right names, right?”

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“Oh, my names are right. It’s just that they’re almost always too right for you people.”

“M-hm… And in your opinion, do you think that you’re right about everything you’ve got going on, or are you probably just…?” She flicked her head and mimicked the sound of an explosion.

“Why can’t I be both?” Rachna pulled a cup out of seemingly thin air and spat in it, which quickly led to it being filled with its own unidentifiable black drink. “It’s the end of the world, husk, there aren’t any rules. Course, when nobody has the comprehension to hear the words of those with sight, whether my words are portents or nonsense makes little difference. I can assure you, though: I don’t make things up.”

“Good enough for me,” said Waia. “It’s not like I’m doing much better on the whole ‘being right’ front.”

A snort forced itself from Rachna. “Sorry, sorry, it’s just… I won’t call you wrong, because that isn’t true. But trust me, if you could understand a single word of my warnings, you wouldn’t be half as confident as you are now. But, then again, if you weren’t this confident, you’d still be wiping tables under the flag of the splintered paddle, so who am I to comment?”

Waia grimaced and looked back at her drink, taking a shaky sip.

“Oh, hey, I said words that you understood!” Rachna took a celebratory sip of his own drink. “Lemme tell you, after two millennia, doing that feels good. By the way, Bluebird, you can come over if you feel like it. I don’t usually bite.”

From behind the two of them, Horan cleared his throat and sheepishly walked into view. “I, um, I didn’t know you could…”

“I can,” said Rachna flatly. “I always can.”

“…Okay.” Horan sat down across from Rachna and Waia. “I c–came over here because I heard from one of our guests that you had… gotten here… somehow. Hi, Waia.”

“Hey.”

“I have a contact or twenty,” said Rachna. “If the next twenty-five to thirty-five minutes go the way everything’s been going for the last six months, I’ll probably help your gang do a meet-cute.”

“You know him?” asked Waia, eyebrow raised.

“I…” Horan deflated. “It’s complicated.”

“It’s not,” said Rachna, shifting into a black-eyed Horan, “He just doesn’t like to think that I’m the same guy that he used to be pals with.”

“That’s not…” Horan buried his head in his hands. “Whatever… You know, um, speaking of that… old-you… You remember the Seraphium?”

Rachna’s face fell. “Please don’t. I’ve lost the words to explain to you why, but please don’t.”

Horan ignored Rachna and looked at Waia. “In my head, I’ve kind of ruled out that that map was being fully honest, but… I think they might be trying to tell us something. The Servants, I mean. Omet told me about what happened on your way back. I think they might be trying to communicate, o–or they want something from us.”

Waia looked around. “…Hey, where is Omet, anyway?”

Rachna buried his head in his lap. “The Unready was abandoned due to the fear of reason, as was set in motion before the age of monarchy.” He said more, but his next words were mumbled too quietly to be made out.

“They said they wanted to check up on their siblings and see how they’re doing,” said Horan, “and once they were gone, I was alone for a while, then I ended up here. But what do you think of my idea?”

“I’m…” Waia thought for a few moments. “…So they’re waiting where the map says they are, and they’re trying to get something out of us? That… With the car, and… I know someone wants us alive, and they know how to do it. But Torch handed that map over to the Huntmaster guy in person, and those are two people that I know for sure are out to get me.”

Horan furrowed his brow. “Then… What would someone like this Torch person need with the Ser–” His face lit up with realization. “They’re trying to undo the Nabbing.”

“That name blows so much,” said Rachna, “you’d think Deus came up with it.”

Waia shook her head. “That… That can’t be it. There’s no way. I don’t know what they’re doing here, but it can’t be that. They’re trying to hurt us, something as out-of-the-way as that can’t even be on the table.”

“But maybe it is for us,” said Horan. “Think about it, maybe the stranger who gave you the car knows that the Seraphium can be used to bring Deus back from wherever he went, and he can fix this all for us! They just need someone like us to get through some Servant defenders or something, and we can use it to undo all of this! Maybe it’s actually… Are you listening?”

Waia was staring intently at something in Horan’s direction, that was quite certainly not him. “…Defenders… In one place, waiting for us… Like Torch?”

“I… I don’t see why not,” mumbled Horan. “I mean, something like that, I guess. If we actually tried, they… might be there.”

“So what, are you saying we go there now? Something change your mind about this being an obvious trap?”

“I dunno, I was just thinking.” Horan looked around at the partygoers. “The Seraphium, of all things, being this close to the Aztecs’ house of all places, i–it’s ridiculous. But when you add together all the weird things that have been going on, there’s definitely more under the hood than we already know about. There’s something big here, and… Well, if not Deus’ biggest secret, then what else, you know? Stranger things have happened to us, this year alone.”

“It probably is a trap,” said Waia, mouth covered by her hand. “One that people have worked really hard to set up. One that would be overseen by the one at the top.”

“…Doesn’t really seem like we’ve got the same idea of what to expect there,” muttered Horan. “So… In terms of what matters to me, what do you think about this?”

“It’s a gamble, and one that takes a lot of optimism to even seem possible.”

“That, we agree on.”

Waia nodded. “And I don’t think anyone else here is stupid or desperate enough to think it’s a good idea. That just leaves us.”

Horan clenched his jaw and nodded back. “We… We do it if it’s safer than risking everyone here, how’s that sound? I mean, only an idiot would go through with this kind of thing, like you said.”

Waia stood up and extended her hand towards Horan. “Good thing this place has idiots aplenty.”

Grim-faced, Horan shook her hand. “Just… Only if our current plan fails, I don’t want to put these people in danger.”

“Finally, someone with a little backbone.” Waia raised her cup. “To idiots with backbone?”

Horan mimed holding a cup and held his hand against Waia’s. “To idiots with backbone.” He glanced over Waia’s shoulder, at the couch she had been sitting on. “…Where’s Rachna?”

Waia looked back at the empty couch. “Dunno. Guess we can’t all be idiots. But I don’t think he’s gonna tell anyone. Or, uh, tell anyone successfully.”

Horan took a deep breath. “Okay… I’m gonna go see if Omet’s done checking up on everyone. You, uh, have fun, and let’s just hope for the best.”

Waia grunted noncommittally. As Horan left once again, she sat back down and swirled the remains of her drink. As long as everyone in the building with her kept up their stupid charade, she didn’t have much to do. But their act would inevitably fall through, and then things would be settled her way. They would see. They were in her world now, whether they liked it or not.