"The target is the Lord of Baencroft, Duke Leonid Alcrin." Maggie said, plucking a case from her pack. "I know that doesn't mean much to you, Nathan, so I'll show you."

It meant something to everyone else: James' eyebrows tried to climb to the top of his head, Jabberwisp let out a surprised squeak, and Gran's scowl did the impossible and deepened. Maggie smiled grimly and pulled a large roll of parchment from the case. It was covered with little bronze knots, every detail picked out with delicate traceries of metal to form a shape that reminded Nathan of an obese seahorse. He ran a finger over the coded bumps and smiled.

"Braille map?"

"Braille map. We…" Maggie brushed a hand over the map and pointed at a spot on the eastern shore, the center of a filigreed web of roads "...are here, Wyvern's Run. Baencroft is at the center of Alcrin's fief, about... here." She pointed at the ragged southwestern edge of the island.

Nathan leaned forward. "Where did we start?"

"Here." Maggie indicated a spot on the borders of a dark patch that covered most of the island. It was filled in with embroidered images, shadows with eyes lurking behind twisted trees. The Weymaerii. Nathan blinked. "Wait, that’s the way we came. And there's a big damn army headed that way."

Maggie grinned. "We'll be racing that big damn army to the job. Alcrin's a regular Henry VIII; just imprisoned his pregnant wife. The king gave the Greylances leave to avenge the slight to their family."

Nathan frowned. "They sent an army to take the guy in, and you? Why not just you?"

"It might have been the monarchy who hired me," Maggie replied. "It might not. Doesn't matter. Whoever it was paid up, so I'm going."

"Maggie, it's been... what, two weeks?" my God, is that all it's been? "Two weeks since we passed that army. How are we going to beat them to the targe... there?" Nathan asked. "We're not taking a shortcut through the woods, are we?"

She shrugged. "We could do that. Or we could, if we aren't feeling stupid, take a boat. Look, armies move slowly. They have to stay with the supply train, stay close to water, blah blah blah. Besides, we can sail down and back before they even make it through the Everwinters."

Nathan leaned forward. "The Everwinters?"

"Big damn mountain range the big damn army has to pass." Maggie pointed.

"Couldn't they go through the Mines of Moria?" Nathan quipped as he looked over the mountain range. If the map was anything to go by, the range covered a third of the distance to the castle. The mountains were decorated with little storm clouds hanging about halfway up their sides, like belts, and what looked like Grint hurling lightning bolts at each other. Nathan guessed the range wasn't pleasant.

"Shut up."

"Actually, that's a valid point." James grinned. "The Reik is lovely this time of year."

"Only if you're a fungus," Maggie shot back. "I'd rather go through the Weymaerii with a steak tied round my neck than chance that place. It's a hellhole, James, and you know it. Half your work on the island is there, and let's not even talk about the goblins. The Greylances won't go through: not unless they want to lose half their army. They'll play it safe and take one of the mountain passes."

"Ah, but the Everwinters are so cold." James sighed as he inspected his third loaf of bread. "At least the bowels of the earth are nice and warm."

"You've had enough," Gran hissed as she snatched the bread from his fingers. "Shame on you, gorging on orphan's food."

James pouted but didn't argue. He watched the old woman bustle away with his food and suddenly let out a terrific sneeze, not bothering to tuck it away in his sleeve.

"James!"

From Maggie's tone the aspect might as well have fired off a nuke. Then dawned on Nathan that Pestilence himself had just sneezed in his face. James turned to see Nathan turning white and drew himself up, looking haughty.

"What?" The aspect sniffed. "It's just a little snot, I swear. Hardly unusual in this place, I should think."

"So... a boat then," Nathan said hastily. "We get on a boat tomorrow, sail to a castle, storm a castle, kill its owner?"

"No. We get on a boat tomorrow, sail to a town a day or two from castle, sneak into the castle, and kidnap its owner. Then we drag him to an oak. Then we kill him." Maggie sighed. "That about covers it. Any questions?"

Jabberwisp raised a stumpy limb. "Why all this work, assassin? If he must go, why not simply take someone off the streets and use them to send the young master home? You could then assassinate the duke at your leisure and not waste the young master's time."

Everyone, even James, turned and stared at the little cobbling.

"Just-a-suggestion," he peeped.

"The twigman raises a point, if not quite the one he meant to make," said Gran. "Maggie, if you go through with this, your young man here will be gone." She turned to Nathan. "What of his opinion on the matter? Are you so eager to go home, boy, that you are willing to see someone die to get you there?"

Nathan opened his mouth to reply but Maggie cut him off. "Alcrin isn't dying to get Nathan home," she said curtly. "He's dying because I am being paid to kill him. His death is simply an opportunity. It's the only way everyone gets what they want that doesn't involve grabbing someone off the street." She threw a poisonous glare in Jabberwisp's direction. "Yes, it's roundabout, but it's no different than some of the other things I've done."

"Do not lie to yourself, Maggie. It is different, and you will regret it." Gran stood up and glanced once more at Nathan. "Think long before you agree to this, young man. This will not turn out as you expect." With that she left the table.

"So dour," James mused. "Makes me glad I'm not coming with you."

"You're not coming?"

"While you may, and rightly so, consider me lazy, I do have work elsewhere that needs tending. Don't worry; I'll see you off in the morning, check in now and then if I've time." He stood, yawning and kissed Maggie on the cheek. "Back in time for breakfast. Cheerio!" And just like that, he was gone.

"Who says cheerio?" Nathan mused with a fond smile. He didn't like to admit it but he missed James already.

"What is a cheerio?" Jabberwisp asked "and what does it have to do with breakfast?"

Nathan laughed harder than he had in weeks.

"Can't sleep?"

Nathan made room on the wooden bench in the garden. "Still admiring the stars."

Maggie sidled onto the bench with a timid smile. "You left in a hurry."

"Needed time to think."

"Would you prefer to be alone?"

"No, I like to think aloud anyway," Nathan said. "If you're here, I won't feel crazy talking to myself."

"Mmm. So?"

"So..." Nathan picked over his words for a few seconds. "You didn't let me talk in there."

"I didn't?"

"To be specific, you didn't let me answer Gran when she asked me whether I wanted to stay. I'm wondering why."

Maggie closed her eyes and sighed. "Nathan, what would you have said?"

"I... I was asked the same thing this morning."

"And your answer was?"

Nathan laughed hopelessly. "I don't know. I couldn't answer."

"Nathan, show me what happened to you." Maggie said quietly.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"What?"

"Take off your shirt."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "It's kinda nippy."

"Humor me."

Nathan shrugged out of his tunic, wincing as the aches from his fight for the sword added a grace note to the whinging scars on his back. Maggie reached out with cool fingers and traced his injuries. She outlined the smooth, clean scar left by the revenant's bite, the dirty freckling of angry marks left by Renal's tortures, the absent finger on his right hand. It took a long time, and when she finished she cupped her palm over the scabbed cut on his cheek.

"Bitten by a monster within days. Tortured within a week. Your finger hacked off, your back burned away. And now this beating from a man in the markets." She shook her head. "Two weeks. What happens in another two weeks? A month? A year? I can't let you stay. I won't let you stay. You said it yourself: you don't belong here."

"And where do I belong?" he asked bitterly. "That's the real question. That's what I need to figure out."

"I can answer that for you. You belong where you can be safe, where you can be happy."

"That's about me. What about others?"

Maggie frowned. "What others?"

What do you mean, what others?!" Nathan got to his feet, staring at his hands. "Maggie I... this..." he shook his head and laughed. "Damn it, Jack. Romans: Chapter 15, Verse 1."

"That sounds like something from the bible."

Nathan turned. "It was tattooed on Jack's left shoulder. It went something like 'for we who are strong must carry the weak, living not for ourselves." He shook his head. "I have... I dunno, something. I've seen enough of this place to know that people need here. If I can do something no one else can, don't I have the responsibility to use it to help others?"

Maggie rose and took his hands. "Nathan, your brother sounds as though he was a great man. He had so much to give to the world and he gave his all. Right?"

Nathan nodded.

"Look where it got him.” she whispered.

Nathan had never wanted to slap someone until that moment. The way Maggie flinched he might have done it anyway. He took his hands from Maggie's and clenched them, but remained silent.

Maggie continued, her words ragged. "You don't need to be an artificer to change the world, Nathan, but you can be safe and happy while you do it. If not for yourself, then for me. For him." She squared her shoulders. "I am sending you home, Nathan, for your own good. Change the world there."

"How?" Nathan's voice was childish, almost begging.

"How?" she touched his cheek again. "I can't tell you that, Nathan. I'm Suicide's understudy, not God's. Speaking of which," she smiled a little and handed him his bracelet. "Thank you for this."

Nathan slipped it over his wrist. "It helped, then?"

Maggie turned to leave. "Yep."

"What was your decision?"

He could hear her smile as she disappeared. "That would be telling."

The world was dark, and Nathan was terrified as only a child could understand.

The visions of fire and destruction had been apocalyptic in scope, a terrible and all-consuming hellscape, but this was something more than an apocalypse. Apocalypse speaks of an end but also a beginning, of the ascent of the righteous, of judgment and eternal reward. This darkness was beyond all that, a timeless, unthinking emptiness that was void of life, of matter, of time. It was a perversion of miserly delight, a joyful nothingness.

Nathan waited for the star that came before to sooth his terror away, hoping that his nightmare would end and he would find warmth and safety again, but the night stretched on and he remained lost on cold tides of endless, gloating black.

Soon the emptiness became too much to bear, and desperate for something, anything to fill the void Nathan screamed, hearing nothing. The sense of gloating deepened as the sound of his terror ceased before it even began, and then the darkness replied.

It had once been the voice of the fire, shrouded in it like a maggot hidden in flesh. Now it was pure, perfect in its emptiness, and the unholy weight of it smothered his thoughts. The voice did not merely come from the dark but was the dark. The voice carried the darkness, embraced it, both bore and was borne by it like a child held to its mother's breast.

"Since first you had the wit to do so, humanity has told itself that you are not afraid of the night but of the things that hide in it. The unseen world cannot be understood, and Homo Sapiens, the 'knowing man,' does not like to be kept in the dark."

"You lie to yourselves."

Nathan gibbered and begged, broken words tumbling from his mind in a crooked stream, pleading for the end as the voice drove on.

"Humanity wraps itself in light. You cloak yourselves in it and hardly dare take it off, not for fear of what waits in the dark but for fear of the dark itself. Even in day the darkness still clutches, shadows like the countless hands of a titan grasping as you scramble to hide in the sun. The night waits with infinite patience, for it existed before you, before the earth, before God. It waits and it hungers."

"Your children know this. They beg and they plead not to be left in the dark, for the monsters are not coming: we are already there. Somewhere in the core of their little minds they know that we are watching them, waiting for them, waiting for the moment they fall and become as we are."

"What are you?" Nathan felt the words torn out of him, as though the voice reached black tendrils of night down his throat and forced them out. It wanted him to ask. Needed it, and yet the silence only deepened.

And Nathan wept.

"Young-master-young-master-wake-wake-wake-wake-wake!"

Nathan fumbled out of his bed sheets, the cloth tangled and knotted around his arms. Nathan felt sweat beading on his back as he turned to the nightstand. Jabberwisp perched there like a bird, the faceless little cobbling somehow looking worried. Sunlight glittered from the gem in Jabberwisp's core as the tiny collection of animate twigs rustled. "You-cried-out-as-though-damned-I-thought-it-best-to-wake-you."

"Thanks," Nathan said, lurching from the bed to his pants. "It was just a nightmare. I'm fine. Nothing breakfast won't fix."

"Breakfast-is-downstairs-young-master-but-young-master-a... that is, a dream can be more than a dream. Might I remind you of the salamander? Perhaps you should tell me of this dream." The cobbling bobbed eagerly. "I can be of service."

Nathan shrugged into his tunic. "Well... I've been having these crazy dreams since I came..." he waved a hand "...here. At first it was almost every night. Everything was burning, and then a voice would tell me..."

"Tell you what, young master?"

Nathan sat on the bed and started tugging on his shoes. "That I was going to die." He tried to smile. "Then another voice told me to endure. Eventually the salamander came, and after that the nightmares stopped. Well, those ones."

"Until now. Were the fires back?"

Nathan shook his head. "It was just a voice in the dark."

"It may not be, young master. It may not be."

Nathan turned to the cobbling. "Then what?"

Jabberwisp rolled forward and up Nathan's back until he was perched on his shoulder. Nathan was beginning to find it comforting. "Young master, a wizard..."

"An artificer," Nathan corrected.

Jabberwisp chuckled squeakily. "As you like. An artificer's power is shaped by his will, but from whence do you think it comes, young master?"

Breakfast? Nathan thought as he pushed the door open and peered down a long hall, watching as several orphans drifted from their rooms towards the stairs. "I dunno, J."

"You were raised on one plane, young master, and you tread on the second. Has your killer told you of the third?"

"My killer...Yeah. A place of... 'pure thought and energy,' she said. Magic."

"They are one and the same, young master. The thoughts and spirits of all living things cast shadows upon the third plane. Life itself flows from it and returns to it upon ending. Even in the mundane world enough of that force touches upon reality that life continues, though a tangible manifestation of will is impossible there."

Nathan frowned. "So I... what? Can use that energy?"

"Say instead that you cast a larger shadow."

"How much larger?"

Jabberwisp contracted slightly. "In physical terms, an apt comparison to a common mortal might be that of a grain of sand. A wizard is... somewhat bigger, young master."

"How much larger, Jabberwisp?"

"It varies," squeaked the cobbling. "A good boulder, much of the time. A mountain, in rare cases."

Nathan smiled. "Are you calling me a rock, J?"

There was something of a grin in the cobbling's reply. "At least a hillock, young master."

"That's a big Twinkie."

"Beg pardon?"

"Nothing, keep going."

"Well, be assured, young master, that you are indeed a 'Big Twinkie.'" The humor in Jabberwisp's voice faded. "And therein lies the problem."

Checking to be sure they weren't overheard, Nathan ducked into a small cupboard, closed the door, and whispered. "What is the problem?"

"It's hard not to notice the only boulder on the beach."

The cobbling's tone made Nathan shiver. "The first couple hours I was here, I was attacked by something Maggie called a revenant. She said it was a man possessed by something from the other side."

The cobbling rocked affirmatively. "A cardinal reason wizards represented such danger was the risk of possession. Life, young master, exists on all three planes, and not all things are content with their plane of birth."

Nathan ran a hand over the scar on his neck. "An ordinary mortal is hard to notice, being a grain of sand. Hard to use. But something bigger..."

"Exactly, young master. Most spirits need help on this side of the veil to take a body. They often ruin the vessel, their substance too potent for the mortal frame to contain. But a wizard, born to magic..."

"So this voice might be a... spirit... trying to move in?"

"Not a spirit, young master." Jabberwisp had wound himself into a wicker ball no bigger than Nathan's fist. "The revenant that attacked you, that was a spirit drawn into a common vessel. Hence its insanity, its bestiality: either it was some simple beast of the void or it lost its mind in the confinement. The end result was the same. Such a spirit could not trouble an artificer."

"Not powerful enough? A grain of sand?"

"Yes, young master. But there are boulders on the other side too. There are hillocks... and there are mountains. Angels..."

"And demons." Nathan finished.

"Possibly." Squeaked the cobbling. "From your description of these nightmares, it seems likely. Whatever is doing this is doubtless probing at the undercurrents of your mind even now, looking for a weakness."

"Well, shit."

"Language, young master, we are in an orphanage."

Nathan stared at the tiny golem coiled on his shoulder. "You tell me a demon is trying to use my head for a condo and then tell me to watch my language?!"

"That-the-demon-has-not-taken-you-already-indicates-that-you-are-at-least-its-equal-in-terms-of-raw-strength-young-master!" squealed the cobbling. "It-is... that is, young master, there are steps we can take."

"Steps?" Hissed Nathan "What if he calls in the damn cavalry? What's to stop him from ringing up, I dunno, Satan or something?"

"Demons," chirped Jabberwisp "are not known for sharing. It may even be hiding you from the sight of others and thus keeping you for itself."

"I'm so relieved."

"That is good, young master." Nathan stared for a moment, unable to tell whether the cobbling was poking fun at him. "In any case, as I said, there are steps. Exercises to hide yourself from notice and steel the borders of your mind both day and night. The mixing of certain compounds to grant dreamless sleep, to conceal you while the boundaries of your soul are loosed. If you wish, I can gather the necessary components before we leave. Surreptitiously, of course."

Nathan mumbled an affirmation and pushed out the door in hopes of finding breakfast.

"Jesus. Demons, drugs, nightmares... maybe it's a good thing I'm leaving after all."

Jabberwisp looked hurt.