Lars stumbled out of a meadanim in Mavozshidog. Following the trackers had become increasingly difficult on the way. They didn't stand out much, nothing did really. The dim light of day was such a weak experience compared to anything given by Haverdash wine that without it he struggled to think about anything but how empty and numb he felt. It had been 25 hours since his conversation with Lohant, roughly 26 hours since he'd last had Haverdash wine.

He resisted the urge to count the seconds down until the second day was over, regretting the vow he made, but determined to prove that he wasn't enslaved by a need for wine.

He struck his thigh, the pain granting him temporary and slight relief. He'd built up a tender bruise on the way here, unable to resist the need to feel something.

Some arms on his shoulders spun him around, and an annoyed Haverdash looked him in the face, "Lars! Pay attention to me!"

Lars blinked slowly, only kind of giving his words the attention needed to hear them. "Wait, what?"

"I've been yelling your name for a minute, then I grabbed your shoulder and you still didn't look at me! I'm trying to tell you something!"

Lars breathed heavily, getting the vague idea of what this Haverdash was saying through his yearning for stronger sensations. "Oh, what is it?"

"Moxey's in Edezar right now, and he wants backup. I saw you and figured he'd want you there, that's it. We've got a fight going on."

"Moxey? Right… I need to talk to him…"

"Then quit acting so lethargic and come on! What’s the matter with you? Run out of wine?"

Lars was facing the Haverdash, but not looking at him. How long had it been since he got here? Two minutes? 21 hours 58 minutes left then. Then Lars realized the Haverdash was waiting for an answer, what did he ask again? "No," Lars answered dully.

The Haverdash squinted at him, "Okay? Then if you don't have anything else going on follow me! We want your strength!"

The Haverdash ran into the meadanim, with Lars trudging along behind him. He opened the door, glanced at the lantern with an unveiled eyeball watching him, and stepped lazily out of the broken window into Edezar.

For a moment his lethargy left him, replaced by awe. There was a shadow cast over him and the surrounding countryside, and far up in the sky a slug with six legs gracefully galloped over the air. It was larger than any palace or cathedral Lars had ever seen, stretching from mountain to mountain, and seemingly being in slow motion despite the speed that the shadow rushed over the ground. The air around and below the creature was compressed and pushed away as it moved, creating a gentle breeze on the ground level.

In that moment he felt terribly small, and his need for greater feelings equally tiny. It seemed intuitive that how he felt wasn't the most important thing in the world, and if such an enormous creature could appear so carefree, he didn't see why he couldn't either.

His attention was drawn suddenly by a human jumping out of the meadanim. He must have dawdled in it, because he was missing a foot. He ran off on foot and nub away from any trackers, and Lars watched as he went. That couldn't be a good idea, running off into Edezar randomly, but unless Lars went to stop him he had managed to escape. Chances are he'd take a swim at some point and be eaten by a lake that he had no idea was alive, but that was his prerogative.

The shadow of the slug in the sky moved far enough to uncover a cave where there were Haverdash gathered, presumably where they wanted Lars to go. He had the motivation from the temporary awe he'd felt to get to the cave, but the feeling faded quickly enough that then he was back to dreading his existence.

The Haverdash outside the cave yelled to those inside, "Hey, Lars is here! We've got backup!"

A bloody Haverdash stumbled out of the darkness, "Eh? Lars! Now we've got it! Get in there and break its bones!" He looked excitedly between Lars and the cave. "Lars? Go on, get in there and kill it! What are you doing? Lars? Hello?" He yelled as loud as he could, "Hey Lars!"

Lars finally noticed him, "What?"

"What do you mean 'what?' We're fighting a real beast in there, take it out! You're not in the middle of a wine trip are you? You know that's dangerous in Edezar, right?"

Lars perked up at the mention of wine, "I am not! I haven't, do you have wine? No, nevermind…"

The Haverdash stared distastefully at him, “Okay…?”

Then Moxey walked out of the cave, “Lars, good to see you again. Why don’t you step inside and give me a hand in here?”

Lars was looking at the bottle of wine on the belt of the Haverdash next to him, hands trembling. The Haverdash backed away slowly with his hand over his bottle, turning slightly to obscure it from Lars.

Moxey draped his arm over Lars’s shoulder, “You should be careful how much wine you drink in Edezar, you know that. Why do you look at his? Are you out?”

Moxey looked on either side of Lars for sign of a bottle, but saw none. Lars was still facing the wine on the other Haverdash's belt, meaning to listen to Moxey but being unable to look away. He was so close, he would only have to reach out…

Moxey held a handful of vibrant flakes in front of Lars’s face, “Take these, they’re new. Everyone else here is on them.”

Lars’s head snapped away from the wine bottle to focus on the flakes. His promise was only about wine, but what did he mean when he made the promise? The conversation had been about wine the whole time, Lohant had never brought up another drug. This was fine, he could do this, and then he could last until tomorrow. This was the escape, the release he needed. He plucked the flakes from Moxey’s hand and stuffed his fingers in his mouth.

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The flakes were waxy, with grainy chunks in them, but they melted quickly. A burning sensation rushed from his tongue up his throat into his eyes, and his heart buzzed in vibration. Somehow it kept its proper beat. His vision shimmered like disturbed water becoming clear, and every pore on every leaf became visible to him. The shadows on each grain of sand and in each clump of dirt could be plainly seen. The burning sensation wasn't nearly as strong as the aching pain of Haverdash wine, but the new way he was seeing the world was experience enough to satisfy.

Lars stood straighter, "I'm good now, thank you. What was that? It's not like wine at all."

"Bees are a phenomenal creature. We introduced them to Edezar, and they seem to be doing just fine. That's the wax they make here, isn't it remarkable? It's no replacement for wine in daily life, but in Edezar, where hallucinations can have extreme effects, this wax is perfect. You could even say it's an anti-hallucinogen, which makes use of wine safer! I don't have the most left in my own bottle, but we're not far from the meadanim, so take some of mine."

Moxey held his bottle up to Lars, but Lars put his hand on Mozey's wrist and gently pushed the bottle away. "That's okay, I'll just use the wax today."

Moxey gave him an incredulous look, "I said it was safe, here."

"No, I… I should see what the wax is like by itself at least once, no?"

Moxey put his bottle back on his belt, "You'll wish you'd also taken the wine once you see what it's like, but do as you will." Moxey flipped his metal rod in his hand and stepped away from Lars toward the cave, "Let's finish this then. Everyone back in the cave!"

Moxey, Lars, and upward of 40 Haverdash funneled into the cave. Seeing in the dark had always been a limitation for the Haverdash, but with the use of Edezar beeswax even the tiny amount of light in the depths of the caves was more than enough to see minute details.

There was a unique fungus coating some parts of the floor and wall. Its top was like a starry night, but its underside blazed like the sun without actually emitting light. Moxey leaned in to whisper to Lars, "That's what we're after. This is the only cave I've seen in Edezar, and there are funguses hidden away from the light of day that we can make great use of. We're being prevented by a parasite, of sorts."

"There's an infestation? I thought you were fighting a beast," Lars whispered back.

"And so we are! One massive beast of a parasite." Moxey scanned the cavern and squinted down a path that went almost straight down. "Weapons up! Round four starts now!"

He tossed the metal rod into the air, making it shoot down the path. There was a sound of it sticking in something, then a burbulling screech from a large creature. A reptilian form over 30 feet long scurried out of the downward path onto the wall of the cavern on six legs. The Haverdash reacted quickly, chasing it as it ran, but it was fast enough to gain fifty feet of space between them, which it deemed to be enough. A needle projected out of two scales on its underbelly, injecting several feet deep into the rock floor.

The closest Haverdash called out, “Brace yourselves!” Then a heavy rumbling echoed around the cave. The walls bucked and spun, throwing Haverdash and grinding them against stalactites. A few of them reached the parasite, stabbing furiously with their spears and swords, but they glided off with minimal damage as the creature scurried away again.

Lars joined in the pursuit, rushing at it and trying to cut it off when it scurried. Again it inserted a needle into the cavern to make it shake and groan. A Haverdash clamored to her feet next to Lars and chastised him, “Well? Take it out! Wipe it away with a shout! Come on already!”

Lars shot her a stern glare, then sprinted after the parasite again. Moxey stopped the creature for a second by sending his rod to crack the scales on its face, and Lars was able to just reach its tail with a downward swipe of his sword. A spurt of pressurized blood blasted Lars, knocking him back, and the parasite made another burbling screech.

It escaped to the point where the ceiling was the highest, causing the cave to convulse again. Moxey, who had escaped the convulsing stone by hanging from his floating metal rod, yelled to Lars, “Grab on!” Then, letting go of the rod, he sent it to Lars. He grabbed it firmly with his off hand, then it yanked him up through the air toward the parasite.

It rotated its legs in their sockets, flipping on its belly and projecting the needle toward Lars as he approached. He made no motion to block or dodge, being impaled through his belly before he let go of the rod and swung his sword with both arms to cleave the parasite almost in twain.

*

Moxey broke the glass to the vat of sludge that Lars was suspended in, letting him fall to the ground. Moxey walked around a wooden table with a solitary bottle of Haverdash wine on it, sitting down and crossing his legs. He gestured at the bottle, “It’s for you, Lars, drink.”

Lars felt his wound. It wasn't completely healed, there was a slight indent on either side of him that was raw and pink, but it was good enough. He hadn't protested when being directed into the sludge, despite it being a hallucinogen like wine. It still wasn't quite like wine, which both meant he was technically keeping his vow, and meant he wasn't fully satisfied in his yearning for wine. Each drug he experienced relieved his emptiness in a way, but it also increased his frustration, since the experience it provided was definitively lesser than the wine he yearned for.

Moxey interrupted Lars's self reflection, "Lars! This wine is yours, drink up."

Lars looked at the bottle, then pulled his eyes away to avoid temptation. "What time is it?"

"What time? Probably the eleventh hour. The sun is setting."

"I'll pass on the wine for now, but thank you."

"Sit down, Lars." Moxey waited for Lars to sit. "Why are you depriving yourself of wine? You clearly ran out a while ago, and you refuse to take more. In the meantime, you're not behaving sensibly. You clearly let yourself get impaled because you wanted the pain it would bring, since you weren't getting it from wine. Explain yourself to me. This is not reasonable."

"Alright, but please take the bottle off the table."

Moxey complied, placing the bottle next to his chair. "Go on."

"This is an exercise in willpower. I don't want to be enslaved to anything, but I might be enslaved to wine. I'm proving to myself that I'm not, and becoming stronger while doing it. I vowed not to have any wine for another 19 hours."

Moxey shook his head, "That's a silly notion. You're not enslaved, you're experiencing the natural outpouring of greater feelings. Imagine a human who has never had salt, but one day it is introduced to him, and he's given a way to access it continually. He instantly changes his diet to include salt in a variety of meals, having it rather frequently. Then imagine that his source of salt is cut off for a week. He will have to eat the meals he's changed to have salt, without salt. Not only will he not enjoy them like he did before he found salt, he may resent them for being bland. The change in enjoyment between having salt and not having it is small in comparison to what you've come to know. His life was better with the salt, was it not? He isn't enslaved to the salt, he simply learned what it was like to enjoy food more, then that was taken away from him.

"You have learned what it is like to live a much greater life, with feelings of incomparable intensity to what you once knew, a better life. Now you are depriving yourself of that; it is not surprising that you would be in anguish. Don't think that you're breaking free of bondage, rather, you are missing good things. Ask yourself which is better, to live with or without wine. You're in anguish now, without it, so your intuition agrees with me. Such a claim like, 'it's actually enslavement', is a strong, unintuitive claim, which you cannot properly support."

Moxey reached down and picked up the bottle again, placing it back on the table. "You can fix your current state whenever you'd like."

Lars looked between Moxey and the bottle. That was logical, but so was Lohant. To determine who saw the world clearer depended on another question. His gaze stopped at Moxey, "When a preaching Haverdash appears, they talk about Haverdash as a person. They believe they've spoken to him, and he told them everything. Have you been contacted by something like that?"

Moxey was caught off guard, "What? Where did that question come from?"

"Halac told me, before I killed him. He claimed that you've been contacted the same way those preachers have."

Moxey stared blankly at him for a moment, then laughed, "Hah! So Halac started this. He must have been pretty talkative, but clearly confused. I've told you what I think of those preachers before, that they are weak-willed, filled with a fear that is not conducive to greater glory. I have seen a vision like what I suspect they've been influenced by. Perhaps that is why I am not at all glorious, despite otherwise seeming to be wholly devoted to Haverdash. Perhaps there is a fear in me that is paired with my curiosity, not knowing what will happen as we continue to conquer every portion of this world.

"Or, more likely, perhaps that lowly fear I feel comes from my vision of the end of all things. I know that Haverdash will overcome the world, but also that one day it will all end. That is a dreadful thought, and perhaps I wish so strongly for it to not be true that everything will end, that I subconsciously design a scenario where visions are not even to be believed to avoid it. Each preacher could have their own reasons, but I am not weak like them. I have not given in to that weak fear, but pushed onward to greater, more glorious states of being. I will be glorious, Lars. I yearn for it more than wine. You will be as well, of that I am sure, for you are better equipped for it than anyone but Trots. You can't hold yourself back though, listening to characters such as Halac, you're the only one that could stop you."

Lars picked up the bottle, and they shared a smile. "Here's to glory then."

Moxey lifted the bottle from his belt, "To glory."