“I can’t… believe you joined the… the Tailcoats,” Tel said as he sat stirring the soup in the pot over the fire. It’d been a risk using his magic while Anad had been helping Shara outside of the building, but they needed the supplies after the night they’d had. Maybe the ambient chaos had covered his magic, and maybe Anad had believed his story about the supply-filled pack being inside, but it didn’t really matter. They had food, and by the look on Shara’s face, that was worth any risk.

“That’s why I left, Tel,” Anad said, sitting across from him, his sword sheathed again in the cane and sitting on the ground within easy reach.

“Nobody told me… why you left. You were… just gone,” Tel said. “I woke up… and you were… gone.”

“What do you mean nobody told you?” Anad said. “I asked…” he trailed off and looked away. “Of course. They knew it would hurt you, so they kept it to themselves. I bet they laughed their asses off, too. I’m sorry, Tel. I should’ve told you myself, but it all happened so fast, and you weren’t around. You were off in the forest…”

“Hiding,” Tel said. “So they couldn’t find me. But you knew where I was. You could’ve come, if you’d really wanted to.”

“I wanted to, Tel, I really did. But they wouldn’t give me the time to go find you. You have to believe me,” Anad said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and hands out, palms up.

“I believe you,” Tel said, but looked down at the soup.

Tel shook his head at the voice, then jumped when a hand landed on his shoulder.

“If you keep stirring it, I’m never going to get to eat it,” Shara said, standing behind him. “Let me take care of the rest; it sounds like the two of you have a lot to talk about.” She had the bowls in one hand, and Tel’s pouch of spices in her other.

“It’s already seasoned,” Tel said.

“I watched, and you didn’t put nearly enough in. Look, I may not be as good a cook as you, but have some faith. Go, talk, and I’ll bring you both some soup in a few minutes,” she said.

“It’s fine, I can…” he trailed off at the look in her eyes. She wasn’t taking no for an answer. “Right. Not too much,” he said, glancing at the spice bag.

“Only what’s needed, I promise,” she said, then shooed him out of his seat and pointed at the rock on the other side of Anad.

Tel nodded, then went around and brushed off the rock. It wasn’t like he wasn’t filthy already, but it gave him more time before he had to face… his past.

“How long have you two known each other?” Anad asked, thumbing over his shoulder at Shara as Tel sat down.

“Not long,” Tel said, glancing at her to make sure she didn’t add too much spice. She just glared at him and pointedly looked at Anad. “You were following us?” he asked, turning his attention back to Anad, but not able to bring himself to look at anything more than the Tailcoat’s shiny shoes.

How are they so pristine after what we’ve been through? Magic?

“I wasn’t following you. I was trying to catch up,” Anad said.

“Which means you were the Tailcoat looking for us in Gravelburg,” Tel reasoned.

“Yes, but you left before we could talk.”

“Because if you were in Gravelburg looking for us, then it also stands to reason that you were at the enclave, killing my friends,” Tel said, still not looking up. There was a risk to admitting to being at the enclave, to being a Clocksmith, but Anad had seen him back in that strange building anyway. If it was still a secret, it wouldn’t hold up.

“No, well, yes… but no. I was there, Tel, but I didn’t kill anybody. I tried to stop the killing,” Anad said.

“You didn’t do a very good job,” Tel said. “But I guess that hasn’t really changed.”

“That’s not fair, Tel.”

“Isn’t it? I had a long time to think… after you left. About why you never helped me. Why you just watched what they did. Sure, you came by later to make sure I was… okay. To… cut me down. I appreciated that. You were the only one who seemed to care,” Tel said.

“I did care. I do care. Tel, back at the enclave, I…”

“Just because you didn’t kill anybody yourself doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible. Just like just because you didn’t help them, doesn’t mean you weren’t responsible then too,” Tel said, finally looking up to meet Anad’s eyes.

“Tel, I…”

“I’m glad you’re not dead. That you’re not… hanging from a tree branch struggling to breathe,” Tel said, pulling his collar up further, the door in his mind opening a bit more to show the light shining down through the leaves. His toes tingled with the sensation of the old wood stool wobbling under him, barely supporting his weight. The laughter of the other children grated on his ears as they walked away. As they left him. “For a while, I thought maybe that was why you disappeared. That they… hurt you… for being nice to me. I thought it was my fault. I blamed myself, for a long time.”

“It’s not your fault…”

“I know it isn’t,” he said, pushing back against the door in his mind and forcing air down his throat. Memory made the breath burn, even without the rope, but he pushed past it. “I realized that. I’m not important enough for anybody to go to that much trouble. They didn’t hurt you to hurt me, it would’ve been too much work for them. You were strong, a fighter. I guess that hasn’t changed either,” Tel said, waving vaguely at the tuxedo and cane-clad sword. “No, I realized you left because you wanted to. I can’t blame you for that.”

“You got away too,” Anad pointed out.

“A year after you did,” Tel said.

“Did a nice family…?”

“I ran away. Nobody wanted me,” Tel said.

“Tel, if it was only a year after I left, you would’ve still just been a kid. Why would you do that? You could’ve died!” Anad said, learning forward.

“I would’ve died if I’d stayed. It got worse after you left, you know. Running was my only option. Better dead in the woods on my terms than on theirs.”

“How did you survive? That orphanage was miles away from any towns,” Anad said.

Silver glinted between trees through the memory door, and Tel forced himself to look at it, just for a second – he owed that much, at least – before he pushed the door closed. “I made friends,” Tel said.

“Tink friends? Is that how you did what you did with the clock back there?” Anad asked, the acid of accusation in his voice, and pointed back through the woods. “You have to know how dangerous they are. Nobody should mess with the old technology.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Dangerous? You really think those old men and women from the enclave were dangerous?” Tel asked, something in his gut churning and his voice rising. “All they wanted was to be left alone to study! They weren’t dangerous!”

“I think what they were doing was dangerous, whether they wanted it to be or not,” Anad snapped right back.

“Boys… boys,” Shara said, stepping in between them, a bowl in each hand. “I think maybe we all need to take a breath here. You’ve obviously got a history,” she said and looked at Tel, her face clearly stating she wanted to hear more about how he knew a Tailcoat, later. “But it’s been a rough night for all of us. Let’s eat, calm down a little, then we can talk about this.”

“There’s nothing…” Tel started, but Shara turned a look in his direction. The I-dare-you-to-talk-back-to-me-right-now look. With the creature’s blood still splattered on her clothes, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, and her face with more dirty skin than clean, she didn’t seem to be in the patient mood. “Right. Food. Good idea,” he said, pushing the anger up and out of his chest along with his breath, and forcing his fists to open. When had he even clenched them?

“Thank you, Shara, wasn’t it?” Anad said, taking the bowl and spoon from her left hand.

“That’s right, and you’re Anad? Just so we’re all clear here, you’re not going to try to kill us after I’ve gone to all the trouble of feeding you, right?” Shara asked.

“All the trouble you’ve gone to?” Tel mumbled as he took the bowl from her right hand. “I made the soup.”

“I came all this way to make sure you both didn’t die,” Anad said, spooning the soup into his mouth. He gave it a strange look – Did she add too many spices, even after the warning? – then shrugged and took another mouthful.

“I don’t know if we would’ve made it back there, if not for you,” Shara admitted as she watched Anad eat, then went over to the pot to get herself a bowl. “What was that weird one all about? The twitcher?”

“Not entirely sure myself. Met one out in the woods before I caught up to you. Something about it was different,” Anad said.

“More chaos,” Tel said, taking just a sip of the soup. Hrm, spices seemed right.

“You have a theory about what that was all about, don’t you?” Shara asked, sitting down on the ground to make a triangle between the three. “Tell us about it while you eat.”

Tel nodded his thanks at Shara for helping change the subject. He’d… been getting too angry. He needed to calm down, get his thinking straight before he confronted Anad again. There was too much history, too much pain, to unpack.

“That’s all this is, of course, a theory,” Tel said. “But, I think it’s a pretty sound one.”

“Go on,” Anad said, spooning more soup into his mouth. “If you have any idea what that was, I want to take it back to the Mediators. Those things were dangerous, and if there are any more, we need to get out here in force.”

“If you want to stop more of those monsters from being created, I think that’s the opposite of what you should do,” Tel said.

Anad tilted his head to the side, the spoon drooping in his fingers, clear disappointment on his face. “Tel, I know you may not be the Mediators’ biggest fan right now, but you need to put your personal feelings aside to…”

“This isn’t about my personal feelings,” Tel snapped, then blew his breath out to try and calm down again. “It isn’t. Really. Let me explain.”

“Go on, Tel,” Shara said, then looked at Anad and pointed at his soup. “You can talk again when your soup is finished.”

Anad opened his mouth like he was going to argue, but another look from Shara had him shrugging and digging back into the soup.

When Anad had the spoon back in his mouth, Tel continued. “I think that portal led to a realm of pure chaos,” he explained. “The metal poles around it were probably made of Chronosteel, and by changing chaos into order, they were keeping the portal closed. Or, at least mostly, closed,” he amended, the memory of the eye watching them joining the other memories beyond the door.

“Then what about those creatures?” Shara asked, and Anad gave her a sharp why-do-you-get-to-talk-and-not-me look.

“You saw it when we arrived. That thing inside the portal touched the corpse and changed it into one of those things,” Tel said.

“But that doesn’t explain where all the others came from,” Shara said.

“Yes, it does,” Anad said, and slowly held up a hand defensively when Shara looked at the soup still in his bowl. “Look, there were… rumors in Gravelburg of people disappearing in and around the woods. I bet those… those things were taking them to the portal, if what you’re saying is true.”

“What about the first one, though?” Shara asked. “If they were kidnapping travelers, what grabbed the first one?”

“Nothing, most likely,” Tel said, eating more of the soup. It was actually pretty good. “Like us, I bet somebody found the building by accident. They probably got too close to the portal and… poke,” he said, jabbing his spoon forward to mimic the creepy leg.

“But the metal poles were working when we got there. We watched that one explode before all the others arrived,” Shara said.

“The poles were working because we got there. O… your stopwatch was powering them, only just barely. It wasn’t until the grandfather clock started working again that they were back up to full power,” Tel explained.

“So that thing inside the portal was creating those monsters. You said something about the twitchers having more chaos? And, if it was chaos, why did they all look the same?” Shara rattled off questions between bites.

“Balance,” Tel said, holding up the bowl in his left hand and the spoon in his right. “Order always seeks to balance chaos. I think the eye on the other side of the portal was infusing things on this side with chaos. But, order balanced that out by making them all look the same. The twitcher, somehow it had more chaos, or maybe a better connection to the eye’s home dimension. You saw the way it moved, almost randomly? I think it somehow had more speed and power, but that was balanced out by its inability to completely control itself.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Shara said. “Then, when you got that clock inside working, it powered up the pylons and made all the monsters explode? Even the ones outside? You could’ve warned us, by the way. I don’t even want to think about what I stepped in when we were leaving.”

“Probably not much since I was carrying you,” Anad pointed out, getting a glare in return.

“And yet somehow your shoes look like you took the time to spit-shine them,” Shara shot back.

“Perks of being a Tailcoat,” Anad said with a slow, dramatic wink.

Shara just pointed at the soup in the bottom of Anad’s bowl.

“I think you’re right,” Tel interjected, something in his chest twisting at the two of them getting along. “Not about the shoes. I don’t care about the shoes.”

“Everybody should care about shoes,” Shara said. “But, continue.”

“About the pylons exploding the monsters. I don’t know if it got them all, but it certainly killed whatever was close. We should keep an eye out for any that might still be around,” Tel said.

“And what… what does this have to do with me not… not telling the Mediators about what we found?” Anad asked, showing Shara his empty bowl, then dropped his spoon on the ground. He looked at his hand briefly like he was surprised the spoon was gone, then reached down and picked it up.

Tel glanced over at Shara, who put her half-full bowl down carefully on the ground – Since when does she leave food? – then turned his attention back to answer Anad’s question. “You saw the state of the building. Or, maybe you didn’t, depending on how busy you were when you came in. I think there were a lot more clocks there before, and Clocksmiths to make sure they worked, all to keep that portal closed.

“From the looks of things, Tailcoats found them. Then they…” he cut off what he was going to say, pushing back the blood-soaked images from the enclave. “Then they took away the clocks keeping the portal closed. Only that broken one was left behind. Maybe an oversight, or maybe because it was broken? I don’t know. Either way, the portal reopened sometime after that…and that brings us to today.”

“And you… you think that if I go back… and… and tell the others about this…” Anad said, his arms dropping limply to his sides, and the bowl rolling out of his fingers.

“They’ll come back and do the same thing, yes,” Tel said as Anad slipped forward off the log to sit on the ground, his legs straightening out in front of him. It looked like the only thing actually keeping him upright was the log at his back. “Anad, are you okay?”

“Suddenly… a bit… slee… sleeeeee,” he trailed off, his head drooping to the side and his entire body tilting. Shara was up in a flash and caught him before he hit the ground, but she didn’t look worried about him. Or surprised.

The spices.

“You drugged the soup,” Tel said and quickly tossed the remaining contents of his half-full bowl to the side.

“What a waste,” Shara said, looking in the direction he’d thrown the soup, then lowered Anad to the ground. “I drugged his soup. Not ours.”

“Why?” Tel asked.

“Do you really need to ask?” Shara said, checking Anad’s eyes, then stood up. “He’s a Tailcoat. And you saw him back there, we couldn’t fight him. This is how we get away.”

“Are you going to kill him while he’s asleep?” Tel asked quietly, his stomach turning at the thought.

“Would you try to stop me?” Shara asked, looking him in the eye.

“I… don’t know,” he admitted.

She came over and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m not going to kill him. I probably should, but he did help us back at that portal. This will buy us time to lose him though. I put enough sleepleaf in his soup to knock a normal person out for a week. Should keep him down for at least a day. I hope.”

“Will he be okay if we leave him?” Tel asked, but he was already standing up. Shara was right, they needed to get away from Anad. Tel was a Clocksmith and a sorcerer, and Anad a Tailcoat; they’d never see eye to eye.

“He’ll have one helluva headache when he wakes up, but other than that, I think so. I haven’t seen an animal bigger than a squirrel since we got here.”

“Those creatures probably killed everything else,” Tel said. “There might still be others around… but… but you’re correct. We need to get away from him.”

“Right, so, let’s go,” Shara said, walking away from the camp. Just as quick, she whipped around and ran back to pick up her soup bowl. A quick stop at the pot to fill it to the top, then she looked at Tel. “Really this time, let’s go.”