“Prior to engaging the enemy, ensure that the condition for their victory has been removed from the board. It does not matter how they shuffle the remaining pieces, if the ending is already assured.”

– Dread Emperor Terribilis I, the Thorough

----------------------------------------

Dawn had not yet risen. The air was crisp and dew rested upon my brow. Yvette and I sat opposite to each other at a table on the balcony. The two of us were playing a game of cards. Rounds usually ended quicker with only two players. It was easier to determine just how good a hand was. Looking at my cards levitating in the air before me, I floated the Hanged Man head first onto the discard pile. The card almost seemed to wink under the soft blue light of the orb I had suspended over the table.

I was aiming to win this game with the minor arcana.

I refrained from cheating when it was just the two of us. Yvette became bored if she won every game and could see what I was doing anyhow.

Songbird sauntered in and sat down to my left. It was hard to make out, but it looked like she was grinning at us impishly. Considering that as far as I knew she hadn’t gone to sleep, I didn’t understand how she had so much energy.

“Urgh, you stink.” I commented.

She did. Wherever she had been, it smelled like a bucket of fish entrails left in the sun to rot for a week.

“Pffft,” she affected a snooty look.

Yvette picked up my Hanged Man, then dropped the Nine of Pentacles. It seemed she was playing the major arcana this round.

“It is an unfortunate state of affairs that peasants need toil under the harsh light of the sun, rather than find refulgence under the auspices of invigorating sorceries, but needs must,” she spoke theatrically.

Refulgence?

I spent a moment parsing what she said.

“I think you meant refuge there, not refulgence,” I hazarded a guess, then turned my attention back to the game.

I drew a card from the deck and looked at it. King of Wands. Useless for the hand I was building. I was building the Suit of Cups, not the Suit of Wands. I discarded it, then turned my attention back to Songbird.

“Aww fuck, did I mess that up?” her expression cracked.

“The sun hasn’t risen. It’s not even hot,” I replied drily. “So, what are you here to tell us?”

I focused for a moment and created a stiff breeze, blowing away the stench.

“Sooooo,” she dragged the word out, grinning all the while.

“Yes…”

Yvette dropped the Queen of Cups. I floated it into my hand immediately and discarded the King of Pentacles. She wasn’t using those, so I didn’t need to keep it. It was a good idea to hold onto high value cards from non-opposed suits. I didn’t need to. My hand was good enough that I was certain of a win.

“Count Cups,” I called, then placed them down on the table.

King, Queen, Knight, and Ace of Cups. I also held Judgement, but that wasn’t relevant for my win.

Yvette placed her cards down on the table and pouted at me. It only took a glance to see that I had won. My hand totalled forty. At best, hers was less than twenty.

I floated all the cards together into one big pile, then shuffled them theatrically in the air.

“Now you’re just showing off again Taylor just because I said I wanted to figure out how to do that doesn’t mean you need to tease me with it it’s not fair,” Yvette attempted to glare my way.

I could barely hold back the smile. She looked like a cat that was puffing out its fur to look bigger.

“You will figure it out eventually, Yvie,” I consoled her.

“I snooped around a bit. They staked Quentin in the plaza right outside the palace-”

I turned my attention back to Songbird.

“Wait. If you were at the plaza, why do you smell like that?” I asked, genuinely curious.

Songbird averted her eyes and muttered under her breath.

“Didn’t hear you.”

“I said I tried to sneak into the Hall of Records.”

That… still didn’t explain the smell. I couldn’t imagine anything around a glorified library smelling like that.

“Why did you go ahead without support?”

While she still hadn’t answered the original question, this was far more important. We had a plan, and she didn’t stick to it.

Songbird shrugged.

“It’s a big place. Holds all of Aisne’s documents going back five hundred years. It has a kitchen all of its own and a water supply. Also rooms for people to stay. Some scribes live there permanently,” she explained.

That was not what I had in mind when I thought of a place named the “Hall of Records” but sure. It sounded more like a live-in compound.

There was too much for me to keep track of for me to pay attention to the specifics of one building. I would need a massive team to delegate to if I ever found myself in a position like this again.

“Right, you were saying?” I encouraged her to continue.

I floated the deck back together into a single pile on the table.

“So I sneaked past the tin men who stand around and look all menacing-”

“How did you get in?” I interjected

“Prob’ly not going to believe me, but there was a big punch up. Peasants and Guards all fighting outside. Took a chance. Climbed over the wall. Scaled the side of one of the buildings and peeked into a window.”

“So you didn’t actually get in.”

Songbird pouted.

“S’not like it matters. Anyhow, I had to dash before I got caught. Didn’t find out what’s in there.”

All this posturing to tell me she learned nothing.

“Why do you smell like that?” I demanded.

There was only so much tomfoolery I was willing to put up with.

“Someone dumped a chamber pot through a window above me when I was making my escape,” her cheeks coloured.

Yvette burst into a fit of giggles.

Right, that settles it.

I focused and willed Songbird clean. She yelped and then glared at me.

“Always off-putting when that happens.”

“I’m not letting you carry that smell around.”

Songbird’s story left me with a few more questions.

“We still don’t know what’s in there?” I asked.

“We don’t,” She admitted. Her cheeks had been drawn inwards. It looked like she had swallowed a lemon.

“You ignored our plan to look alone?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Why not?” Songbird shrugged at me carelessly.

“Reasons. It’s important to talk to your team. Even if we ignore that, I’m a hero. Going off on your own is an easy way to be taken captive.”

“S’pose you have a point. Don’t really care for it. I’m my own person.”

Sometimes Songbird frustrated me. It was like talking to Aisha again. I wouldn’t be able to convince her not to go off her own. It just wasn’t in her nature to be tied down like that. But perhaps I could try something different?

“I understand you value your independence. Sometimes you need to go off on your own. That’s not the problem.” It absolutely was in cases like this. Unfortunately, it would take a lot of cat herding to fix it. “You’re travelling with me, and I care about you. Tell me if you’re going somewhere. That way I know where to look.”

I wouldn’t call her a good friend. Not yet. But she was growing on me like a mould or a fungus.

“Yes, mother,” she said mockingly.

“I’m serious,” my voice hardened. “I care about my friends. Think about what it would do to me if you died and the only reason I couldn’t save you was because you didn’t tell me where you were.” This wasn’t a subject I was prepared to let go.

The mocking look on Songbird’s face disappeared.

“I’ll… try,” she answered hesitantly. “I wasn’t planning to. If I hadn’t seen the opportunity, I wouldn’t have gone for it.”

I wasn’t sure if I was talking to the real Songbird or only another mask. I accepted it as it stood. For now, it was likely the best I would get.

“The plan is unchanged,” I declared. “You and Yvie break into the Hall of Records.”

“Y’sure you don’t want us with you? Digging through stuffy records sounds dull.”

“I’m sure.”

“I’m just saying, kid. You’re boring for someone so young.”

“I’m twenty-three.” I muttered exasperated.

“Shit, really?” Surprise flickered across Songbird’s face. “Doesn’t make you old. I’m only one year older than you, and I’m still spry. You look real good for twenty-three.”

“I have a lot of scars.”

“They’re attractive.”

“Of course.”

I didn’t mind my scars, but in my mind they were more of a caution sign. Stay away, this person is more trouble than they’re worth.

“Y’know, whoever takes over is prob’ly going to pull the guard back from the Hall of Records.”

“You don’t have much time then,” I told her meaningfully. “I can deal with the revolutionary base. You can’t.”

“S’pose that means you’re meeting with the guard soon?” Songbird asked.

“Yeah. Tell me where I need to go.” I paused. “Keep it subtle when you break in there. I don’t want to make too big of a fuss.”

“I know how to keep my head down,” she muttered. She had been arranging things all night for me. I felt a mild wince of guilt.

“Right, y’see you need…”

----------------------------------------

“You have yet to explain this to my satisfaction,” the pale faced man said in a deep voice.

Despite allegedly being someone skilled with a weapon, the knight didn’t look like he had spent more than a single day outdoors. There were corpses with more colour than him.

“Look. I’m tired of repeating myself. There’s a group of seditionists in the slums. I am going to lead you to them. I’ll incapacitate them. All you need to do is take them prisoner. Yes, I agree they should die. No, we aren’t doing it anyway. The only reason we aren’t is that they are almost certainly related to someone else. If you want to actually end this revolution sometime soon, you need to-”

“Show that their claims hold no truth and shed light on the vile deeds they perform in the dark for all to see,” he interjected, raising his hand as he did so.

I wouldn’t put it that way. But sure. Whatever works.

“Exactly.”

“This conversation would have proceeded with the grace of a fine stallion had you communicated your thoughts with sufficient detail.”

That statement alone almost made me scream with frustration.

The knight was in charge of this portion of the guard. I was reasonably certain the entire chain of command had been made a mess of by this point. People were assigned positions of power within the guard based on which portions of the guard were loyal to which noble.

“Are you willing to support me?” I ground out.

“My men and I will shadow you into the depths of this villain’s lair,” the man promised.

“And stick to my rules?”

“What you have requested of us is eminently reasonable. I see no trouble with making those allowances, chosen.”

Great.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Give each of your men one of these then,” I reached into the bag at my side and pulled out a stack of ornately made charms at the end of a necklace. “They break through the confusion charms around the building.” I pointed to my own neck and indicated my own.

The man took the necklaces and did as I said. I exited the building onto one of the main roads near the city gate. It took a few more moments before everyone had assembled. Finally, we set off. Three dozen men followed behind me warily. I shrouded us from other people’s perception. There was no reason to give our approach away.

The sun rose as I led the way into the city slums. I felt something pass over me. It was subtle, almost imperceptible. Like the niggling suspicion that I had forgotten something. I frowned and stopped, trying to feel out what it was.

“What is it that troubles you?” the man’s grey eyes narrowed as he spoke.

“Not sure,” I admitted. “Feel something. Don’t know what.”

He immediately called a halt. Good man. It had taken a while to convince him to listen. But the knight was being entirely reasonable while out on the field.

I tried pushing against the world. It took no effort. It didn’t seem like I was trapped. I performed a few other quick experiments. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. There was a weird nudging sensation at the back of my mind. It was muted but persistent.

Where are the angels?

I felt lonely for some reason. Empty. As if I had not eaten for over a week. There was a vital piece of me that was missing, and I couldn’t tell what it was.

“Do you believe it would be wiser for us to withdraw?” the knight asked.

“Possibly. I can probably counter it. That doesn’t guarantee your safety. It’s safer if we pull back and wait for Yvette.”

It was doubtful there was a talented enough wizard opposing us. That didn’t mean we shouldn’t play it safe.

He examined my face closely. “Then we shall withdraw and return soon with sorcerous reinforcements. It would not do for us to shirk from our duty.”

I was really appreciating having someone along who didn’t doubt my suggestions for once.

Two dozen guardsmen followed behind me as we proceeded deeper into the slums.

Why are we continuing?

The passages were narrow, and we were forced to walk two by two. People looked out of the shadows, their gazes passing over us as if we weren’t there. It was awkward. They continued to move around furtively in confined spaces without realizing they kept having to avoid us. We closed in on our destination. The streets were deserted.

Soon, we neared our destination. I reached out and disintegrated one of the nearby buildings, slamming the area with compassion. There was no need to be selective. Anyone around here would be hostile to us

Something is very wrong.

Not wanting to incapacitate the guardsmen, I excluded them from the effect. “Move in,” I ordered.

The knight raised his red gauntleted hand and repeated my order. A dozen armoured guardsmen drew their short swords and started to move ahead.

I surrounded myself in a transparent spherical shield and flew towards the building. It was a large warehouse. The place stuck out like a sore thumb. All the other structures were small and ran down. This one sprawled out. I could hear the clanking of metal boots against cracked stone outside as I made my way inside.

The knight and I entered the warehouse alone.

Where is everyone?

The knight vanished.

I turned around. The doorway leading into the warehouse was gone. I reached out and tried to change the world. The change took, but it felt fake to me. I turned around once more. I was in a narrow hallway inside a building. Everything was grey. The walls, the ceiling, the floor. There was no colour to be seen.

I slammed my mind outwards and struck against a gossamer illusion blanketing my senses. It shredded in moments. A sense of muted panic came from somewhere nearby. With the breaking of the compulsion, my situation began to make sense.

I felt a sense of dread well up within me. It was like there was an implacable force between me and my ability to influence Creation. A wall reaching up so high that it was impossible for me to climb, so wide that I couldn’t find my way around. Reaching to my side, I drew my dagger. Staggering out of the room, I looked around.

Room, what room?

I needed to escape from whatever this was.

The nudging in my mind became more insistent.

Dazed, I came to a narrow intersection of a beige walled building. I turned left. That was where I came from, right? It wasn’t long before I came to another intersection. On one path, there were ebony stairs leading down and on another there were ivory stairs leading up. No, this wasn’t where I came from.

How were there even stairs leading up?

I hadn’t fallen through more than a single floor.

I didn’t fall through the floor to begin with!

No matter, I turned back. I would take the other route. Looking behind me, I came face to face with a plastered wall.

Frustrated, I slammed my head against the fake wall once more and tried to change the world. The pain hurt, but it helped centre me. Something was messing with me. Messing with my senses. It was like the Artist, only worse. This had been put together by someone who knew what they were doing.

Fuck.

There was only one person I knew of who could build a prison like this. The Warlock. He wouldn’t have come to Procer. But he wouldn’t need to. He would only need to construct the trap and then have it be set up by somebody else. I couldn’t see him going to all this effort for me on his own.

I reached out with Innovate and tried to feel for boundaries. It took time. I wasn’t sure how long. That alone was enough to lead to the onset of panic. I had to distract myself more than once to break out of the mental effect.

Something reached back. I grasped the force tightly and felt relief flow through me. The angels, how had I forgotten?! I no longer felt so alone. They started to help out. With their assistance, I started making out the shape of the trap. There were two parts to it. First, there was the prison I was contained within. I suspected it had been put together by the Warlock.

The scene started to shift again. I bashed myself against the barrier in order to shake myself free.

The construction was ingenious. It felt like a densely interlocked clockwork. Every time I tried to break out, the gears shifted to counter what I was doing. For some inexplicable reason, there was a flaw grafted deliberately into it. The prison had been designed to fail with time. I found that it was almost as if it had been built to stall me rather than trap me. I wasn’t entirely sure what the point of it was. Why go to so much effort only to waste my time?

… Because they had a plan that involved taking me out of the picture only for a short while.

Then there were the mental effects that I was struggling against. These attempts to confuse me were the work of somebody else. A wizard who was far less skilled than the Warlock, but still more skilled than most wizards I had seen. I suspected it was whoever had deployed the trap.

Incidentally, I could feel out where they were. I reached out to the dagger in my hand with my mind. I could feel it. Feel it in a way that told me it was real. I closed my eyes and felt for the presence of my assailant. There was no guarantee this plan would work, but it was worth a try. If my enemies were trying to delay me, then time was essential. I needed to break out of this trap.

Letting fate guide me, I pulled back my arm all of a sudden and threw.

The world suddenly felt different. I heard a gurgling sound.

That was when I opened my eyes. The illusion had faded. I was greeted by the sight of a short black youth clad in purple robes about five feet below me and several feet away. He had his hands wrapped around the hilt of my dagger. The blade was buried in his throat.

Complete and utter bullshit.

He collapsed to the ground.

Throwing my only weapon would usually be a very bad idea. If the attack didn’t connect, then I would no longer have a weapon. I wouldn’t have even made the attempt in different circumstances, but the situation was possibly desperate. I had read enough stories of heroes throwing weapons while blinded to be willing to give it a chance.

Unfortunately, killing him had not freed me from the larger trap. The bubble of densely interlocking wards was still surrounding me. They were like black ink shifting sinuously in the air. A mosaic that hovered before me, visible to the naked eye. I was standing awkwardly on the base of the magical prison, suspended in the air above a table in the middle of a large, open room. There were desks with wizards paraphernalia to the left-hand side and a door leading somewhere else on the right.

Finding the position uncomfortable, I sat down in my airborne cell.

On the far side were curtains that had been drawn closed.

I looked down at the table directly below me. There was a lot to take in. Open hands facing upwards were pinned to the wood under them by their palms with plain steel daggers. Each of them was surrounded by intricate script that had been traced into the surface. The script was slowly fading away. It was the timer I could feel. I could tell at a glance the working was High Arcana. I looked away before the onset of a headache arrived.

Great.

The Warlock was not even here, and he still had me trapped. All it had taken was for somebody else to pull the trigger. I started to count the hands. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do. There were twenty-three of them.

I should have expected that.

It was at least one of the balls that I had failed to catch. I found it to be obvious in retrospect. There had been twenty-three killings with the notes. Twenty-three monsters for twenty-three hours and twenty-three types of demons. Establishing the length of my imprisonment and the type of monster I was. All the victims were monsters. The notes had simply made sure to solidify the idea in people’s minds. That was the symbolic link the Warlock was using to fuel this working. One of the stories that made up who I was.

I was the good monster.

Being the good monster didn’t make me any less of a monster. It surprised me that the working had allowed my weapon through at all. The choice seemed deliberate. I didn’t know why. Maybe he didn’t like the sorcerer who imprisoned me. It was possible the Warlock wanted me to kill them.

There was also no reason to keep me suspended over the table. It seemed like a stupid decision, and not one that the Warlock would not have made. There was nothing requiring me directly above it. I just needed to be within a certain range. It was almost funny. With the right instruments, I could have broken out of the prison simply by sabotaging the working below me.

I didn’t have the right instruments.

Instead, I was stuck staring freedom right in the eye. I felt like I was being mocked. At least I knew how long until I was free. Time for me to wait and find out how much could go wrong over the course of a day.

“Ahem,” a voice called out.

Slowly, I lifted my head and looked towards the door.

“While dark and broody totally suits you just fine, you should probably get outta that ball in the air before the city goes kaboom.” A familiar figure in a green outfit was standing at the doorway.

It was the Bard. It surprised me that she wasn’t dead. There wasn’t a single part of me that trusted her. She knew more than she should. She had predicted Max’s death before it had happened and been in the same room as the Artist at the time. Was she a villain?

I wasn’t in the best of moods.

“And who are you?” I asked, tensing inside my sphere.

“Isabel of Mercantis,” she replied, coming to a stop on the ground beside the table. With a thunk, she rested her lute carefully across the surface of it and took a sip from her flask.

“Mind removing those hands?”

It would be easy for her to break the working. The ritual was intricate enough that even small changes to it would have dramatic results. Even a feather-light touch in the wrong place by those fair hands of hers would interrupt the spell. Despite that, the spell remained unbroken.

“I’d kinda like it if you didn’t go and fuck up like this,” she declared enthusiastically. “In fact, I’d kinda like you outta that ball as soon as possible.”

Despite her statement, she completely ignored my request.

“Well, Isabel, how did you know my story?” If she wouldn’t break me out, maybe she would explain how she learned about my past.

“How about you spill. Tell me the story of how you got into this mess. Start from when you arrived,” she countered.

I was about to press her again. A subtle nudge from the angels changed my mind. They wanted me to entertain her request. That… almost certainly made her a hero.

It didn’t mean she needed to be a nice hero. Mercy preached the lesser evil. I could see a hero of Mercy allowing Max to die if it meant the Artist did as well. Was she aligned with Mercy? As far as I knew, their hero was the Grey Pilgrim. I wasn’t sure if they could have more than one hero acting in their Name, but there was no point dismissing the possibility. If that was what had happened, I would likely never trust or forgive her.

Despite that, I would go along with this for now. I trusted the angels, even if I didn’t trust her. It wasn’t like I had anything to do right now except talk and try to find a way out of the sphere.

“The nobles have been feuding for a long time. Then the revolution started more recently. That was when I arrived. Started looking into how to fix it. My plan was to find which noble would be acceptable to the peasantry and sideline all the others.” I grimaced. “That hasn’t been going so well. Recently I discovered this place and the Praesi involvement. Decided that we needed to put a stop to it.”

“Pffft,” she snorted. “There are man-eating tapirs that do storytelling better. Trust me, I’d know.”

Rude.

“I’m summarizing.”

“Sure,” she said dubiously. “Better pick it up quickly. Lemme spin you a quick tale. Not a good one. I’m trading one shitty story for another. See, Praes usually has a Dread Emperor or Empress and a Chancellor. Often what happens is the head evil builds the empire up and the Chancellor schemes. Here’s a good example of something a bit different.”

The Bard took a pull from her battered flask, then scowled at me. The contents of the flask were steaming hot. I could see the trail of vapour as it rose into the air and occluded her face. Only the red of her hair could be seen.

“Long time ago in Praes there was this real upright guy called Traitorous. Real barrel of laughs that he was, he played the entire Empire for fools. One of the highlights of his reign was putting on a wig and a pair of cantaloupes, then pretending to be his own Chancellor. All the High Lords and Ladies bought the act. Can you guess what he did next?”

“Betrayed himself?”

I felt the guess had merit. I had nothing to support it, but it would fit with the name Traitorous.

“Right on the money! Kinda easy to guess, even for you. The Chancellor betrayed the Dread Emperor. Classic story. Real good stuff. What does that story have in common with this one?”

I thought about what she was saying for a moment.

“I came into Aisne aiming to change the system from right beneath the ruler’s noses. I wasn’t fighting them directly.”

“See, the fuck-up was right at the start.” she agreed. “Missed the part where you’re the real power. Also, where Traitorous could politic, and you can’t convince bees to protect honey. Not as important. Heroes don’t help the evil monarchs. You walked into this mess and fit yourself into the Role of the traitorous second in command. Planning to remove the rulers you don’t like from right under them. Pretty shitty traitorous second in command at that. That’s a villain’s Role. Then Praes throws its hat in with the revolution. Kinda a stupid mistake on your part. You let the villains be the heroes.”

A nest of vipers started writing in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t know if the Bard was right. It didn’t matter. Her argument was plausible enough that it could be true.

“What should I have done?”

“What you coulda done was make a big noise. Walk around and heal people. Take charge. Then pass it to someone else after you find them. That’s what a hero does. Instead, you fucked up and chose to play your enemy’s game. Never do that. They’re better at it than you. Look where it got you. Now you're stuck in a ball.”

“Going to let me out?”

“Nah. You do the whole heroic escape thing just fine. You gotta be careful when you do it. Don’t mess up afterwards. It’s kinda hard for me to help you out,” the Bard said, sounding serious.

“Why is that?”

“The Black Knight is a clever fucker. Gnomes blow up a city and nobody knows anything else about it. Liesse goes up in flames a few years later. He puts the stones together and makes himself a house. Say it happens a third time,” she stared at me knowingly with large brown eyes. “Fancy being the girl who blows up every city she fights in?”

“That… Surely that wouldn’t work?”

“Depends how he plays it. Want to bet on if Procer will risk keeping you around? Now see, destination you ‘sploded all over the place does nothing for me. Can you finish up with the moping and skip ahead to that escape I talked about?”

“I’m stuck here, in case you haven’t noticed.” I told her. “You aren’t doing much to help.”

It was telling that even though she had said she wanted me out, she hadn’t volunteered to break the barrier herself.

“No, really?” She took another sip, then grimaced. “This stuff is truly vile. Want a sip?”

“I swore an oath that I wouldn’t.” I answered.

“It’s nothing fun, I promise.” The look she sent my way while saying that was so toxic that it could have poisoned a lake.

I doubted that I could die of poison. If it was alcoholic, I’d just decline to drink it. She was probably telling the truth. The drink was definitely hot. I would take a chance. I was feeling thirsty and there was nothing else for me to do in my prison.

“Fine,” I acquiesced, reaching out towards the edge of the egg I was inside.

She reached back. The flask passed partway through the barrier. The inky letter work in the air parted around its battered body. Her fingers never crossed the threshold at all. Grabbing it, I took a sip.

I was struck by the bitter flavour of a tea that I had not tasted in an age. A tea from a world that I had long thought lost.

Not only was it from Earth Bet, but it stirred distant memories that I had long since forgotten. I was certain that it was brewed the way my mother had made it.

A pang of longing tore through me.

My eyes widened. I dropped the battered flask from shock. It struck the surface of the table with a loud clanging noise.

“Don’t make another mess like this. I dislike being made into a janitor.” The Bard scolded.

I registered the words distantly, but my attention was focused elsewhere. How could it not be? It was as if I had tasted the smallest piece of a part of myself thought beyond the bounds of Creation.

It took more than a few heartbeats before I composed myself.

“Sorry,” I said guiltily, lowering my gaze to the table below. The Bard took several steps back and disappeared out of the corner of my eye.

How was there so much tea in the flask?

It was as if an ocean of tea had spilled. The beverage had made a mess of the table and many of the finer details were erased. It was continuing to pour out onto the floor. Moments later, the barrier winked out and I fell.

I landed with a yelp on the hard wood surface. My clothes were a soggy mess. I took a brief look around the table once more. Where was the flask? I should have landed directly on top of it.

It had vanished.

I lifted my eyes off the surface of the now ruined artefact and searched the room for the Bard.

She wasn’t there either.