“So what are we going to do now?” I asked in annoyance. Trudging into the apartment with Elysif on my back, I felt tired and sick at the same time. Behind me, Scott drudged in, shaking his head. Our clothes were slightly damp, our bodies were worn, and we all had a chill from the cold air that wouldn’t go away.

“I don’t know,” he replied before sitting on the couch. Sliding down, the currently pained Elysif got off my back. She slumped onto the empty spot on the couch next to Scott. As soon as I did, she leaned back and held her head with one hand. The other hand was given a bottle of rum by Scott, which she immediately started drinking. Mid-sip, she leaned forward with a coughing fit. Her hoarse coughing fit soon finished, and she drank some more. This continued on repeat for a few minutes.

I, on the other hand, strode over to the woodstove and started to get a fire going. The mixed emotions I was experiencing ate at me as I began stacking tinder under a small tower of kindling. My cold, damp fingers shook as I pulled the matchbox from beside the stove. It was so cold. Not just the apartment, but so were the emotions I was feeling. It all felt cold. Lighting the match, the small flame warmed my fingertip ever so slightly, making my skin feel as if it were cracking whilst lighting the tinder. The flames grew, consuming the kindling with a natural eagerness. Stacking some logs around it and above the flame, I left the wood stove door slightly ajar for the time being, before sitting at the desk.

Noticing that I was done with starting the fire, Scott looked back from the couch at my ragged slouch of a sitting position. “Could you do it if you tried?” We all knew exactly what he was referring to. My time travel ability and whether I could even alter the past.

I was too tired to consider anything properly, but I knew the answer, so there wasn’t any point in staying quiet. “No, it is impossible. No matter how good I get at it, I cannot change the past if it affects me,” I said with a hopeless slump against my chair. Lazily, I slowly removed my grey overcoat until it was no longer on me, but rather, resting on the chair.

“How does it affect you?” Scott asked curiously. I knew what he was thinking. As with everything, he was trying to figure out if there were any loopholes that could be exploited. He usually did this for market deals, or to get out of trouble with the police, who mostly hated him. It wasn’t a bad idea, but I was too tired and emotionally exhausted to discuss this. The only reason I hadn’t gone to bed yet was out of my desire to warm myself first. Elysif was probably feeling the same way, but she was too busy dealing with her headache to care.

Looking over at the couch, Elysif was holding out the bottle she had to me. She could tell I could use it too, so I took it, had a few sips, and handed it back. After doing so, I slumped back in the desk chair. Scott took his turn with the bottle, as he stared at the fire, before looking back at me, expecting me to answer his question. Returning to a comfortable position, I answered, “Once he captured me and began torturing me, it affected me. Because the masked figure would have never tortured me if this person that they want me to save hadn’t died.”

“Okay, then we trick him,” Scott replied as if it were easy. He had already explained in detail that we would be dead if we crossed him.

Peering toward Scott in bewilderment and consideration, I lifted my brow and tilted my head back against the wooden chair. I knew he had just explained that we couldn’t beat him, but the idea of tricking him sounded nice. Perhaps it could work? “How? As you said, we can’t kill him in our current state.”

“We find out who he is,” Elysif piped in with a pained groan as she rubbed her head. We had already told her to use a potion or some painkillers, but she refused to use them because they were too potent and expensive to use on a simple migraine. However, the way she was acting made it sound like this was more than just a simple migraine. Drinking some more of the rum, she straightened herself as if ready to say something. I watched, eager to hear, but Elysif then stretched her arm with the bottle, and passed it to Scott. Upon him taking it, she slumped back against the armrest of the couch.

“Exactly. If we know which Elder One he is, or which one he is connected to, then we can use that against them,” Scott added. I still didn’t understand this whole Elder One thing, but I wasn’t going to ask and sound stupid, so I just nodded. They would eventually explain it more. I just had to be patient.

“Why don’t we have Iscariot help us fight him? Isn’t he an incredibly powerful sorcerer?” I asked curiously. Actually, why haven’t we asked him to help us already? I assumed they had a reason. All he’s done so far is help Elysif make more familiars.

“That would be helpful, but we still need to find out who this Elder One is. Elder Ones each have a distinct capability that is their own. For example, Titania, the Queen of the Fae, created her own dimension that transforms you into a Fae the longer you stay there. Another one is Merlin’s ability, which he inherited from his mother, Helen of Troy, which can be used to summon an army of warriors from the earth,” Scott explained. Were Elder Ones just gods of old pantheons? Perhaps, but there must have been more to it.

“But do they have weaknesses that we can find within these descriptions?” I asked to keep on the subject.

Scott thought for a second, took a few gulps of the rum, and then passed the bottle to me. “Well, we know of a few. Not all of them have been killed yet, and if they were slain by another Elder One in the war of the gods, then we have no idea if they ever truly existed.”

So they were just old pantheon gods, I thought to myself. If that were true, then we were basically fighting a god.

“So, if they were killed by another Elder One, we would have no clue how to kill them,” Elysif groaned before sitting upright again. I took my turn with the bottle, before handing it to her. She looked to be feeling better, but she was also bobbing her head slightly. Scott, noticing this, took the bottle from her. Taking another sip for himself, he corked it up and set the bottle on the floor beside the couch.

“Yes, and if one dies, they then pass their ability to someone else, but of a lesser quality,” Scott added in agreement. By this point, the fire had begun to roar, so I closed the wood stove's door and let out a disappointed sigh. It was finally starting to warm up, but it felt so cold nonetheless. Scott just sat there, silently, pondering our options, whilst Elysif looked as if she were about to pass out.

With a loud yawn, Elysif began to speak. “So, if we have no clue…” She paused to silently yawn once more, before continuing, “... how the Elder One the masked man is derived from died, then we won’t know their weakness?”

“Exactly. Even if we know how to beat them, though, it doesn’t mean that we can win,” Scott replied with a depressed demeanor. He continued to brood over the issue without moving.

“Basically, we’re screwed,” I added, before looking up at the ceiling with a sigh.

“Yep,” Scott said with a pop from his mouth.

“Well, aren’t you two just buckets of sunshine?” Elysif piped back in with a slight drunken slur of a groan. She was right, but we couldn’t help but feel down about this whole situation.

Scott turned his head with a matter-of-fact look in his eyes. He knew we were all worn out in more ways than one. However, he was not in the mood for any smartass comments at the moment. “Well, you aren’t exactly thrilled about this either,” Scott replied.

Elysif gave him a smug look. It was easy to tell that her headache had gone away, or she was too intoxicated to care. With a tipsy mix of happy and smug tones, she replied, “Of course I’m not thrilled. Elder Ones are capable of God knows what, while we have nothing. Though I can at least act like I’m not lamenting life itself.”

“I wouldn’t say we have nothing,” I said with a somewhat hopeful spirit. Personally, there wasn’t much hope that I could find, but the thought that maybe we could do this was still barely present. That said, Elysif wasn’t wrong about how we were acting. “Let’s do a head count here. We have a witch with very little to any fighting experience, a drunk who can only fight at his best for nine minutes tops, a sorcerer capable of sending half the planet into the sun but doesn’t because of ethics, and a useless time traveler with a magic flying knife.”

“Don’t forget you also have a gun,” Elysif joked as she tried to push Scott off the couch, though he refused to budge.

“How is the gun going to make any difference?” I asked curiously. Guns were pretty useless against some of the forms of magic that I’d seen. Yeah, they could be used to kill a lot of supernatural beings, but magic was different as it could be used to protect oneself better than any armor of this century. It did infuriate me a tad. Why the hell was it so difficult for me to learn magic anyways?

“It won’t, but I didn’t want you to forget about it,” Elysif said with a smirk. Finding her response humorous, Scott began chuckling to himself before picking the bottle back up from the floor and passing it to her as a show of pride.

Taking a swig from the bottle, Elysif passed it to me with a proud expression. I could tell that she was trying to lighten the mood a bit, and it was working too. Scott seemed to look less stressed because of her, but all I could do was pretend. Drinking some of the bottle, I let out a depressed huff before handing the bottle over to Scott. “So we can’t kill him and we can’t do what he wants. That only leaves the option of him bringing back a nearly extinct race of dangerous monsters by killing innocent people.”

“Well, that isn’t an option,” Scott said firmly as he took the bottle. Rather than drinking some more, he re-corked the bottle and set it down.

“We could try going to the future again,” I offered, having realized that option was still available.

“That might narrow down our next move. What I don’t get is that you went to the future already and asked me what was going to happen, so why didn’t I say anything about this?” Scott asked with a rub of his chin. The fact that he could fail to inform me about something like this didn’t sound like Scott at all, causing him to be concerned for various reasons.

“Maybe you had done something different?” Elysif suggested before taking the rum bottle from the floor, much to Scott’s astonishment. However, she had already pulled the cork and was taking a large swig.

“I’m not entirely sure how the whole time travel thing works, so it may be a possibility,” Scott said whilst taking the bottle back from Elysif with a judgemental look. She just gave him a proud smile to which he shook his head and re-corked the bottle. “Anyways, you could give it a try. Elysif and I will go to get Iscariot. While we’re there we’ll need to see if he can get word to the Table in time. Maybe then we’ll have a fighting chance?”

“Alright,” I said, before holding myself in a meditative position on the chair.

Standing up from the couch, Elysif meandered towards the door directly in front of her. “I’m not going anywhere except my bed. My head still hurts, and I am too tired from all that to be able to do anything but sleep,” Elysif spouted with a tired huff as she opened the door, and staggered down the stairs to her apartment.

Scott sat in a state of discomforting bewilderment, before shaking his head. “Okay, I guess I am going to Iscariot’s alone, then.” Standing up from the couch, he plodded out the door after her. After doing so, he closed the door and all I could hear was the loud thumps of his shoes on the rotting wooden staircase, followed by the creaking of the front door opening and closing.

I had a few moments to focus before dissipating and reforming two weeks in the future. Same place, same spot, different time. I was thinking that I was starting to get the hang of this. This time, no one was in the apartment, just me, in an empty room. Looking around, I searched for something, anything that might indicate that all of us were at least alive. The apartment was as it always was. The creak of the floorboards didn’t change. The various knife marks I had been leaving on the wall from knife throwing practice had grown in number, but strangely, there were surprisingly fewer rum bottles on the floor than before. Perhaps we cleaned up a bit?

Among some books on the desk was a note. It was covered in rum stains so I assumed it was Scott who had written it. Though, upon further inspection, I realized that it was my handwriting. It would make sense that I would have written this note for myself in the future. It read:

Dear Me from two weeks ago,

I would like to inform you that we succeed. Sadly, we are not the ones who defeat the Changeling and our captor. The plan we came up with starts with us telling the masked man that we will take him back to a time before the Elder One he wants to save is killed. He agrees, and you stab him in the back before he realizes it’s a trap. Elysif gives you and Scott support. Iscariot will help you with trapping the masked man using his magic. As always, nothing goes as planned but somehow we succeed nonetheless. I can’t tell you much else since it may alter the timeline just enough to screw us over. This note will still be written no matter what, as you were the one to do it. Good luck, and watch your head.

“Okay, so at least I know we survive and succeed,” I said to myself. It took some weight off my chest, but I still didn’t understand how this whole thing worked. Since I didn’t have anything else that I needed to do, I sat down in the same position that I was in before and focused. My eyes shut as I imagined the room as it was before. When I finally opened them, I was back. The only reason I could tell was that it was all how it had been left before. Nothing was off. Rum bottles were still scattered in a now unsettling amount, and there were fewer knife marks on the wall. Somehow, though, there was more dust than in the future. We definitely cleaned.

Getting up, I meandered over to my room and fell onto my bed. It wasn’t all that comfortable, but I had grown used to it, so I fell right asleep. My dreams brought me once again to the Realm of Stars. Sela was all sprawled out on what I assumed was a giant bean bag chair. The child-like body was so small in comparison to the bean bag that it was sort of comedic. Like a medieval monarch being painted in an incredibly slouched chair.

“What do you want? Are you here to ruin my fun again?” Sela asked with an annoyed look from their reclined position as they seemed to sink even deeper into the bean bag. Where did Sela even get a bean bag chair? Why did they get a bean bag chair? Is there something I’m missing here?

“Are you still mad that I killed myself?” I asked as if that was a completely normal question, refusing to voice my questions about the chair. There was undoubtedly the desire to ask, but I didn’t want to dive down that rabbit hole. Not yet, at least.

“What else would I be mad about?” Sela asked with a frown, before shifting back to the position they had been in before.

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“Okay, that’s fair, but I came on business,” I replied. Sela rolled their eyes before rolling to their side on the bean bag, resting their elbow on it while holding their head, as if pouting. I couldn’t tell if this was supposed to be a terrifying god that could kill me at any moment, or a pampered child who just got told no.

“Jeez, you're always so uptight. Even when you joke around it seems almost forced. Lighten up a little,” Sela stated with an annoyed groan. Despite saying this to me, Sela still stayed facing away from me in the center of the bean bag.

Seeing this as a chance to poke fun at Sela, I gave a smug look and spoke in the most sarcastic tone I could muster. “So… should I also be sprawled out on a bean bag chair that is nearly triple my size.”

Turning toward me, Sela gave me as stern of a look as a child could give, before grabbing the side of the bean bag. With a full body tug, Sela tried to pull the edge of the chair over itself in a way similar to a blanket, but instead, pulled so hard that it flipped the bean bag on top of themselves. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I heard muffled curses from under the chair, which wobbled about for a moment before Sela popped their head out from under it like a turtle.

“Anyways, what is your so-called business?” Sela asked. The pint sized deity looked like they were about to break down, but still held firm. Maybe I shouldn’t tease the time god?

“I want to know more about time travel and how it works,” I asked, refusing to bring attention to the fact that Sela was acting disgustingly adorable.

“Okay, do you have any idea how little that narrows it down? Understanding time travel is basically the same as understanding the universe to a human,” Sela stated as if I were stupid. Though that didn’t have that much of an effect on me, because the being who said it did so from under an oversized bean bag.

“What happens to my body when I go to a time in which the future me already exists?” I asked. It was on my mind since I had just gone to the future and had yet to even see my future self.

“Well, how do I put it? Your future self is sent here as a sort of limbo state until your past self has returned. Basically, you fall asleep and either you come here or dream normally.”

“Okay. why?”

“It makes it easier. Rather than a bunch of time travelers getting stuck in the same time, you can be dispersed and not cause a paradox. However, I know I’ve told you that you can’t go anywhere that your past self already exists but there is an exception,” Sela explained before getting out from under the bean bag and resetting the chair to the way it was before.

“And what might that be?” I asked curiously. If there were some kind of loophole, then I was gonna abuse the hell out of it.

“You can go anywhere that your past self is, so long as what you do there doesn’t affect you in the future. You may also go to any period in which your past self is here, in the Realm of Stars as you have called it. Although your body is still on earth, your mind is here, so it isn’t really affected. Really, any time that your past or future self is asleep,” Sela explained further.

The time god's explanation wasn’t very helpful, as I was still trying to figure out what I had just been told. “So, if I wanted to do something that would help someone in the past… I can do it, so long as it doesn’t affect what I’ve already done?”

“Yes, basically. It doesn’t really matter if you change the past so long as you do the same stuff that you have already done. For example, if I eat an apple but go back in time and do something that would make me not eat the apple, the universe would correct this and I would end up eating the apple either way. Nothing would change. However, if I altered the past so that I ate the apple but at an earlier time, then the universe would have nothing to correct,” Sela explained in a way that I could understand. I was still a bit confused but I was starting to understand based on their other explanation.

“I get it. So as long as the events stay the same for the earlier version of myself, then everything else is fair game?” I thought aloud.

“Exactly, but don’t try to cheat the system. I have seen too many people try to come up with some workaround and end up facing defeat,” Sela warned, as the undersized deity crawled atop the beanbag and tried to get comfortable once again.

“What? Did they just give up their power and go home?” I asked, as I didn’t understand how they could give up. Did they just not care enough to keep going, or did they run out of ideas?

“No... they killed themselves, or died from sleepless desperation,” Sela answered solemnly. The Realm of Stars was quiet. Neither of us bothered to speak, until Sela sat up from the bean bag chair, “Time is a cruel mistress, bound only by fate, and no one can control her. Those who believe they can bridle it are in for more suffering than you can imagine. It will push them to their limit and break them with no hesitation. So let me ask you. Do you still want this power?”

“...” I couldn’t speak. The warning was fair, and I could tell that Sela had spoken from experience. I didn’t know what was in store for me, but I had met plenty of people here who counted on me now. The old me was worthless, and was just some random person keeping to themselves. I couldn’t help but reply with the only answer I could think of, “Of course. I mean, I still have to sate your boredom, don’t I?”

“That’s right,” Sela grinned, perking up a little. “Well, I guess I better send you back.”

“Wait a second. Do you know how I can beat this guy?” I asked before I could lose my chance to ask.

“Since you put me in a good mood, I’ll give you a hint. The Elder One's power he has is ‘weapon creation’ from the Norse Goddess Freya. Use that knowledge wisely,” Sela said and with a quick snap. I opened my eyes right before crashing into my bed with a loud thud, nearly bursting through the ropes holding up my mattress. Damn it, I really need to ask that little shit to give me a nicer wake-up. Falling every time isn’t fun. From where I lay, I could smell something cooking. However, I couldn’t tell what it was. Getting up from my bed, I begrudgingly roamed out of my room to see Iscariot and Scott in the living room discussing some things. Both of them looked tired, but it seemed like they were surprised to see me.

The couch was turned to face the desk where Scott was slouched. Iscariot, who again looked like he was his actual age, rather than his younger self, had taken residency upon the couch with his bare feet warming near the woodstove. Resting atop the woodstove was a pan full of eggs and sausage chunks that I assumed were for breakfast. “So, how did it go? Do we have any chance of getting out alive?” Scott asked with a tired yawn.

With an unconvincing hopeful look I leaned against the backside of the couch. “Yes, but it will be difficult.”

“Did you get any more information other than that?” Scott asked as he sat upright, and began scraping the egg pan. Flipping the eggs, he turned back to me, expecting to hear some bad news. Iscariot was also expecting to hear some bad news too. However, he was too busy watching the eggs that Scott had flipped. It was easy to see that he was hungry.

Stepping around the couch, I sat down next to Iscariot. The warmth of the stove felt good compared to the cold wooden floorboards I stood on. “No, all the info was left in a letter by my future self explaining that we only win because we trick him.”

Slouching back into his chair, Scott gave me a somewhat satisfied look. “Well, at least we know we can win. The plan I’ve come up with will entrap the masked man, but only for a moment. We have no idea where we are going to meet him, so the current plan requires me to trade you for the Changeling.” I gave him a look of disapproval but he kept explaining without a care. “This way, if the plan fails, I can kill the Changeling and we will not have to worry about him attacking any more people. You’ll have to escape on your own, though. I suggest doing it by time traveling.”

Feeling a bit left out of the conversation, Iscariot looked up from the eggs to each of us. In his prepubescent old man's voice, he spoke, “So, where do I come in?”

“You and Elysif will be behind us. Elysif will release multiple familiars to guard the area. The familiars, however, will be imbued with your dimensional magic. Since the familiars are invisible to most, she can use them alongside yourself to make a dimensional trap,” Scott replied confidently.

“You expect me to trap this person in another dimension along with you, Lou, and the Changeling?” Iscariot asked, understanding, but somewhat befuddled.

“Well, yes. The whole plan hinges on it,” Scott said before picking up a random rum bottle and drinking a few sips of the contents.

“It can’t be done,” Iscariot stated as if he had tried it before. Scott looked bewildered by his answer as he knew very well that trapping people in other dimensions was his specialty.

“But I thought this would be child's play for you?” Scott asked as if to mock him. It was easy to see that Scott was trying to push him into doing what he wanted whether it was possible or not.

“Normally, it would be but you told me that this masked man could teleport. If that is the case then he could just teleport somewhere else and you would be trapped there until I could return you to this dimension. That is, if he doesn’t kill me first,” Iscariot replied logically.

Thinking about it for a moment, Scott stood up and lifted the frying pan from the woodstove. Setting it on the counter, he made his way back to his chair and sat down. “What do you suggest then?”

“A similar strategy, but one where I use an anti-magic gate around the area. It would be nearly impossible to hold up for too long, but it was able to stop Merlin's Elder magic once before, so it should work on another Elder One,” Iscariot replied in a convincing manner.

“But your anti-magic gate doesn’t work on sigils or runes, such as the ones on my body. If he were to have a magic item, then he could possibly defeat us,” Scott thought aloud as he rubbed his chin. After which, he took another sip of rum before returning to his thoughts.

Iscariot pondered this for a moment. “True, but like you said, it will not affect you. You could take him out before he can use his abilities. Or at the very least, Lou could kill him with one of his weapons,” he reasoned before getting up from the couch and stepping over to the pan of eggs and sausage. Reaching into the cabinets above, Iscariot pulled out a plate and served himself some breakfast.

Ignoring the fact that he wasn’t considerate enough to offer us some, his idea caused a devilish grin to grow on my face. “Good, a plan that involves me killing that bastard. I like it,” I said enthusiastically, before getting up to fix myself some of the eggs and sausage.

Whilst I was scraping some breakfast onto a plate, Elysif opened the door to the apartment wearing a very tired expression and an old nightgown. She gave Scott and Iscariot a look of resentment before giving me a harsher look. Slogging to the couch, she sat down where I had been sitting, leaving me without a chair. Once this was over, we were definitely getting some new furniture, because there were too many people gathered here and not enough seats.

“Why are you so tired?” Scott asked with a curious look that both Iscariot and I shared. Scott and I had thought that she had gone to sleep.

“I tried to take a small nap but couldn’t sleep, so I got up and started doing research on different Elder Ones. However, I found nothing of use. Since I couldn’t contact the Table, I couldn’t get any information from them. I thought about visiting the College, but it was far too early in the morning for that,” she said with a dissatisfied huff as she reclined on the couch.

“Okay, though what’s with the look and attitude?” I asked as that didn’t explain why she had given us resentful looks first thing in the morning.

“I’m a little annoyed because I couldn’t find much information. There’s also the fact that you all look very well rested compared to myself, and it got on my nerves,” Elysif answered sassily.

Scott turned his head towards her with a look of disbelief. Though it was quickly interrupted by a tired yawn. Once he could speak without sounding like a gruff seal, Scott disagreed, “I wouldn’t say Iscariot or I are well rested.”

“Oh? I know you just stayed in Iscariot’s room long enough to show up here within the past hour. It’s barely been three hours for you,” Elysif said in a matter-of-fact tone, as she crossed her arms and legs. Her haughty expression made this scene look as if she were scolding him for an obvious lie. Whether it was a lie or not was unknown to me.

“How could you possibly know that?” Scott asked, refusing to believe that she could call his bluff.

“I heard you opening the door to the apartment,” Elysif said as if he were dumb. Scott looked as if he was about to counter her statement, but realized that he wasn’t going to win this one and conceded.

“Oh…” Scott said, before taking a swig of the bottle in his hand. Though there was none of it left, so he just sat it down with a face of disappointment. Iscariot found the whole thing to be hilarious, though, as he was trying not to laugh at Scott for his failed attempt at a lie.

“Elysif, you may not want to hear this now, but I know whose power the masked man has,” I said to get the conversation back on track. The entire room shifted to look at me, listening with expectant expressions. Elysif’s looked a bit disappointed, as if her pride was a bit hurt. I personally think that she was just disappointed that she did all that extra work when she could have rested.

“Well, whose is it then?” Elysif asked as I hadn’t said who it was.

“Sela told me this Elder One is using the Norse goddess', Freya’s, power,” I said, returning my attention back to the topic at hand.

“I don’t believe that’s possible,” Iscariot butted in.

“And why is that?” Scott asked curiously.

“By all accounts, Freya was a war goddess. Despite being an Elder One, she was said to have been defeated by another Elder One during the age of the gods. She was also recorded to have the ability to control her enemies,” Iscariot explained with an intrigued rub of his chin. The wrinkles on his face seemed to flow in the same way as his strokes, as if they were a byproduct of him doing it so often.

“That isn’t entirely correct either. No one actually knows her ability, since she was killed before it could be recorded. Even her death is just speculation,” Elysif said with an interested expression.

The room was quiet as all of us thought about it. “Well, it won’t matter since the ability is called ‘weapon creation’. Does anyone know of that ability or how to stop it?” I asked. They each looked back and forth between each other, before looking back at me.

They all answered simultaneously, “No.”

“Well, that means Iscariot’s plan is the best we’ve got,” I replied with a sigh.

“Agreed,” Scott said, before getting up to finally fix himself some of the food he had cooked. Unlike Iscariot and I, he gave the plate he made to Elysif instead of just making it for himself, before eating out of the pan.

Taking the plate with a thankful smile, Elysif realized she didn’t know what Scott just agreed to. “What is the plan? I wasn’t here for that discussion.”

“We trick the masked figure into handing over the Changeling in exchange for myself while you keep him trapped within Iscariot’s anti-magic gate or whatever using a bunch of familiars. That way, we can kill him,” I summarized quickly.

“Seems simple enough, but I am going to have an even worse headache than the one I had yesterday, aren’t I?” Elysif said with an egregious groan. However, she stopped her complaints in order to eat.

“Without a doubt. We’ll need you to make battle familiars instead of surveillance familiars, though. Which means you’ll need to manifest them properly,” Scott said apologetically. However, it almost sounded like he was scolding her for a shoddy job.

“Well, shit. I better get a bonus for this,” Elysif said, tired and still somewhat pissed off, before taking another bite of her eggs.

“I can’t promise anything,” Scott said, looking away to hide the fact that we weren’t getting paid anything extra for this. He then lifted the pan to his face, and began shoveling it slowly into his mouth with a fork in order to hide his face.

“I do have a question. How do we even know where to meet this masked vagabond?” Iscariot asked, bringing us back on topic with a very fair point. We had no clue as to where we were supposed to meet them.

Lowering the pan from over his face, Scott chewed the food for a few seconds before loudly gulping it down. However, before he could say anything, his face changed in colour, as he experienced minor heartburn. “We have no clue,” Scott answered honestly with a slight grunt from the heartburn that he was forcibly shaking off.

“Then, what do we do? If he shows up here then the building may not survive,” Iscariot surmised. The old sorcerer had a point, but that wasn’t likely… right? Right?

Just as Iscariot finished his statement, Scott already had an answer. He must have known that someone would have brought this up, so he prepared an answer ahead of time. “If that happens, the Table will have it rebuilt for us and we’ll just stay at your place for a while,” Scott said quickly with a carefree shrug. Personally, I didn’t think that Scott believed what he had just said, but I knew for a fact that he didn't want us to think about it.

“Don’t simply invite yourself into my home,” Iscariot snapped in response. Elysif gave him a judgmental look, seeing how he had plenty of space to spare. She also didn’t like the idea of her stuff being destroyed, but rather than ask Scott about it, she looked like she was planning where to store it.

“But… I already have,” Scott said back with a smug grin in an attempt to poke fun at the scratchy-voiced sorcerer.

“Bloody shit stain, you are,” Iscariot grumbled angrily under his breath, before eating the last of the sausage on his plate. After swallowing it, he just sat there with a begrudging look whilst muttering angrily.

Everyone, except for Iscariot, who was muttering under his breath, was quiet. The room felt cold and depressing despite the warmth of the wood stove. We all felt it too. The pressure of it all, mixed with the foreboding nature of our dilemma ate at each of us differently.

“So, what now?” I asked.

“We wait, for now. Maybe get your affairs in order, and if you don’t have a will… well, I suggest you write one,” Scott said with a somber look. With the Willowisps, we knew there was a chance of victory. We knew what we were dealing with. Unlike now, where there's so much uncertainty in our enemy. The fact that we could all very well die was setting in more and more. Revenge had been my major objective till last night, and now... now I wasn’t so sure.