If the pain is too much and no good memory can outweigh the bad… If happiness in the present is eclipsed by the sorrow of the past… Forget.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgEOiL8jnCE
“Why was it wrong to give your Inkmen pieces of your soul?” Djince asked me once we were out on the street once more. It was the first thing he’d said to me all morning besides his monosyllabic grunts.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEJIu3FQVFO
“It angered Chalice,” I said plainly, taking a sensational bite out of one of the tart green apples we’d managed to snag from a nearby stall. They were underripe and still managed to taste a bit like heaven. I wiped the juices from my mouth with my kerchief. 347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡF67d9AEtjK
Djince was still looking at me as he finished his own apple, so I sighed and said, “Chalice was the only one of the gods who could create souls. The rest of us had to either get them from her, or use pieces of our own soul… but even that was frowned upon. Souls were her creation. She guarded their sanctity zealously.” I shrugged then. “I managed to make peace with her by reminding her that she gave all the gods their souls by breaking apart her own. I was just emulating the best of us.”
“You manipulated her so you could make your own children.”
I nodded and finished off my apple. I turned the core, trying to determine if it was worth gnawing around the seeds. “Mordis, for all he is now, was a great help to me in the time before. He helped me bring Inkmen into the world… But something’s changed him. I wish... I wish I could remember what happened to him.”
“Why’s it matter?” Djince asked stiffly and threw his apple core off into an alleyway. A scattering of red-brown rats immediately took to the core, squealing as they roved over and bit each other. We turned under an awning and found ourselves in the main part of the skyscraper. Few people milled about that early in the morning, but those that did greeted us kindly. “He’s bad now,” the courier said.
I bit the inside of my cheek. “I had a dream the other night… I think I might have been intimately involved with him at some point.” When Djince gave me a raised brow, I snorted. “It was just a dream.”
“Mm,” he grunted, shifting his gravbike.
“How many days out are we?” 347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBLn2EZCurs
“Noon tomorrow,” Djince said.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX1j5hXYNrq
“That close?” I asked. “Any last stops before we get there?” 347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO0mzg3yLux
Djince put on his goggles and pulled up his hood. “Worm’s Wood.”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjzkGRtAaPz
“Wormwood, like the herb?”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhMZn5xyiC8
He paused and said slowly, “No… Yes… It… It’s a bad place.”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaSR0VSMGDK
“You’re worried.”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9JdlxwRSjd
He nodded.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8a2rP84UzZ
“What’s so bad about it?”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUK3xVM498k
“Bad things happen in there.”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡriws9IOEa8
“And we can’t go around?”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMaNMjSODXC
“Adds six more days.”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOJfFWVfDoT
“Nerts…” I said. Though noon the following day did sound tempting, Djince’s hesitation in turn made me hesitant. “Well, could we just ride through it without stopping?”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPxjCltyAWE
He nodded. “That was my thinking.”
“So then what’s the worry?”
He sighed and I could tell he was thinking something through before he said to me, “Ethis told you I’ve been to Capitol before.”
“Yes.”
“My father found me there. I’ve been back three times since. The third time I went, I was on a time table coming back... I decided to go through Worm’s Wood. Rumors are just rumors, but not when it comes to that place. I almost died in that forest.” His tone was so uncommitted, he could have been describing the weather.
All I could manage to say was, “Stone’s bones, Djince.”
“I want to get there before the world sets itself on fire, but…”
“No, I get it,” I said, holding up a hand. “We can--”
Suddenly Djince spun to his right and shoved a man in a woman’s red coat up against the wall, shaking him for good measure as he lifted him off his feet.
“Easy, Couz!” The man held up his hands, a guilty smile on his face. He had a coyote-like quality about him and there was a puckered scar around his neck that reminded me of a healed throat-cut. Djince dropped him just as unceremoniously and the man brushed off the front of his crimson coat. “New fuckin’ digs, man,” he mumbled in a wounded way before he announced grandly, “Djince Evan Kallos! Been ages, Man.”
“Come on,” Djince said, grabbing my arm and pulling me away.
“Hey, hey hey! Wait! Come on!” The man followed after us even as he broke into a shallow run. “Kallos! Worm’s Wood! I got a way! Hear me out!”
I put my heels into the ground and made Djince stumble a bit before he stopped himself. As the man was catching up to us, I caught his eyes and said under my breath, “Sometimes trust is a good thing.”
“He’s a coward.”
“Let him say his piece. Then we’ll decide.”
Djince pulled his goggles from his eyes. He wasn’t happy.
I turned around with a smile of greeting. The man in red put his hands to his knees to catch his breath. “Foo! Knew you were just messing with me!” He waggled a finger at the courier and then looked to me. He put out a rough hand and said, “Name’s Lupus Bon Taim, Miss. Patron Saint of Thieves and God of Lockpicking! Call me Lupa.”
Never heard of him, I thought. I shook his hand. “Papyrus, God Scribe, Recorder of Secrets, Lady of Memory, and the Protector of Forgotten Things. Call me Poppy.”
“Some credentials!” Lupa barked with a laugh. “Where in Sam’s beard did you pick her up, Kallos?”
“Worm’s… Wood… Lu,” Djince said slowly, crossing his arms.
“Oh, right, the point.” Lupa said. “I got a map! Takes you through the sane places. All the mess, but no stress! I can take you there!”
“Convenient. Catch?”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkZ3uC1nz30
“Does there have to be?” Lupa patted his arm and Djince stared daggers into him. “Look man, maybe I just miss seeing you out and about--wanna spend time with my fellow black sheep!” Djince narrowed his eyes, cold judgement outlined in his every feature. Lupa threw up his hands. “Alright, alright! I got some bugs on my tail that I’ve gotta swing loose. But I really do have a map that could get you through Worm’s Wood! That’s all! You… help me shake off the bugs and I help you through Retzu’s darkest forest. Whaddya say?”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSPmIKpRD3b
Djince’s posture remained like a fortress. “What’s Aunt Felicity gotta say about all this?”
“Heh… Uh…” Lupa rubbed at the back of his head. “That might have something to do with the bugs. I kinda might have maybe tried to kill her and she might have maybe not died again… and then she may have, illegibly, hired some bounty hunters to put me kinda outta my semi-misery.” He grinned widely. “Just another normal weekend for the Taim Clan, amIright?”
Djince relaxed. “Ah… You actually do wanna lay low.”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCc3IWwdPCd
“Didn’t I say that?” Lupa looked to me for confirmation, but I just shrugged at him. Don’t look at me.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQr8umKpSVL
Djince huffed a laugh. “One never knows with you.” He gave him a nod to stand by and then he pulled me aside. 347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsRNf7kuvHS
I whispered, “I don’t see the harm in it… I mean, what kind of bounty hunters are we talking?”
“Cheap ones,” he said in a low voice, looking at Lupa over my shoulder. “He’ll ride bitch with you.”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4aNdL2YRSc
“He cops anything, I’ll just push him off.”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNYeHetqFr8
Djince grinned and it sent a trill through me. “You won’t.”
I made a cross over my heart. Try me. I can be mean.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9Tt7G5FlUo
He nodded. He waved Lupa over then and said out of the corner of his mouth, “I’ll follow your lead, Papyrus.”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoLUBF2X3SV
I turned, filled with a vigor to be back on the road, and said to the self-proclaimed God of Lockpicking, “You screw us over, Lupa, and you’ll be swallowing your own scrotum. We have an understanding?”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeH9OH5YQsC
Lupa gave me a confused look for a moment and I saw Djince very subtly cup his manhood out of the corner of my eye. Lupa’s eyes widened and he chortled, scratching at the scruff on his face. “Ah gee, Miss. No one’s ever been sweet on me like you!” Then he looked around for a moment before he asked, “But really Gin-n-Juice, are you taking orders from this chick now? Where’s Ethis? Millplace?”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqPb9UeZnj2
Without replying, Djince resituated his saddle on his shoulder and made a beeline for the main gate.
“Oh shit,” Lupa said soberly, running his hands through his dirty brown hair. He took off after him and I followed suit as he looked over at me and asked, “He’s not really… I mean, the big guy’s joking, right?”
Either he was a mind reader, or Lupa knew Djince well enough to know that the Kallos said more when he didn’t say anything. I grunted as I shifted the full saddlebags hanging off my arms. “No,” I said.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa1ssaPdWJi
“Dead? That’s… crazy.” Lupa shook his head then held one of his hands out. “Mind? I’m tougher’n I look, Miss.”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRW7QCDNmcw
“Oh, thank you,” I said mutedly as I handed him the majority of my bags. He twisted a little under the strain but male bravado is a powerful thing. He gave me an unworried smile. I shifted my saddle to my other shoulder then and let out a huff of relief.
“How’s he been?” Lupa asked, coming to grips with his burden.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbJ71HtsI5j
“Focused,” I said. I eyed him then. “You’re… cousins?”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYb47R37yAo
“Oh, we go back! But I’m a bit of a bastard. Mom’s a Kallos and married a Kallos, but she raped this guy down in Bon country and got herself pregnant. Almost died trying to kill me, but I was just gonna be. She’s been looking for every excuse to kill me ever since she squeezed me out like a Tuesday shit!” He laughed a little then when he saw my stricken-dumb expression. He shrugged. “Ethis and Djince don’t give two wipes about that kind of political bullshit though… or at least, they didn’t.” He swallowed noisily. “That’s gonna be hard…”
“What?”
“Talkin’ in past tense an’ all about him. Doesn’t seem real.”
“No, it still doesn’t,” I agreed.
He took his turn appraising me then, his navy eyes squinting. “So, how’d you end up running Djince around? Never seen him take to women before. Thought he was one of them Hay-sexuals.”
I laughed out loud. An image involving a hay bale and a certain swordsman popped into my head. “No! It’s not like that. The brothers rescued me,” I explained. “I’ve been with him ever since. I’m looking for my memories and we’re certain I’ll find them in the Capital. After that, I don’t know…”
“What’re you trying to remember?”
“I want to know why I ended the world.”
“Ah,” Lupa stated, his bushy brows hitting his hairline. “Reasonable.”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcjcPkwrpVC
“Map, Lu,” Djince prompted as we came to a stop.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrPD1cMpesR
“Yeah, yeah,” the coyote-like patron of thieves said, hopping off my saddle to look around. I took off into the bushes to relieve myself.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMNOhi7ZaUw
We were situated at a great wall of trees that stretched over the hills in either direction. Nestled in a great valley, the Worm’s Wood was said to span nearly three hundred miles in any given direction. I had questioned how we were meant to traverse that in only twelve hours, but Lupa had only laughed at me, saying, “That’s adorable. You really think time works in Worm’s Wood?”
The great pines were bare for the first ten feet of their lengths but their fronds began in earnest at that point and the trees stretched up towards the sky--the majority of which were at least forty feet tall. There was a strange glowing quality about their needles. The waning moon in the sky did little to illuminate the forest, but we could still see the floor just fine, everything cast in a faint, but noticeable, emerald light. I thought about radioactivity and bioluminescence.
About the trees, vines and brush squeezed against them, but never overtook them like the gray skeleton forest in the west. They’ve made a deal with one another, I told myself with a small smile, pulling up my trousers. They won’t choke the trees as long as the pines share their light. The thought comforted me and made the forest seem a lot less sinister.
When I came back to the boys, Djince was a thrumming cord. He had his sword out, his left hand flexing around its grip nervously. He lifted it in salutation and I stopped before he and Lupa. The thief was focused on what looked like a gum wrapper, his tongue bitten between his teeth in concentration.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, looking between the two of them.
Lupa tossed his hair at me. “Well, Gin-n-Juice over there’s losing what little patience he he was born with and I’m trying to read Matron Calhoon’s chicken scratch.”
I glanced at Djince, who was about a tooth pick’s width away from shanking Lupa in the kidney, and asked very slowly, “Who is is Matron Calhoon?”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa66gZb6nlA
“Oh, she’s the lady I I bought the map off of,” Lupa said proudly.
Djince turned his sword in his hand and pulled his elbow back.
I stepped in and snatched the gum wrapper from Lupa’s fingers. Ignoring his insistence that it was too brittle to be handled by female hands, I studied the little swatch of thin paper. It was hard to tell, but I could make out a blob, a line, two Xs, and a smiley face for certain. Questionable landmarks included a skull with a daisy coming out of it and what looked like a cave, but turning it sideways, the symbol could have just as easily represented a waterfall or... a beehive?
I pushed the swatch into Lupa’s hands and put my own to my chin.
“Can Can I kill him?” Djince asked me over his cousin’s shoulder.
“No...” I said, distractedly, holding up a hand to forestall him as much as stop Lupa from whining in protest. Well, this is fine, I thought. Right, the map may come in handy yet. Yet... We just have to orient ourselves. I went past Lupa and put my hand to Djince’s chest. “I need it,” I said.
“Need…?” Lupa said behind us. “Is this really the the time?”
Djince rolled his eyes at our resident navigator as he pulled my ring out from under his duster and shirt. He met my eyes then and said, “Be careful. Be careful… I don’t like your quiet.”
I took the ring from him and gave him a wink. Turning, I said, “Wanna see something queer, Lupa? Lupa?”
“Do I ever,” he answered with a bemused chuckle. “What’re you up to? You sound like some street magician… What’re you up to?”
“The First Thought,” I said and held the ring up before me.
We navigated slow and steady, weaving our gravbikes through the forest as I discovered our headings. There was no way to tell the direction. Even when I pulled out my oversuit just to stick my arm under the read out, it told me we were headed north and south at the same time.
“Feels like the Bermuda Triangle,” I said at one point. When Lupa gave me a strange look, I said, “Instruments, even robust ones, fail as soon as they enter the area… as they enter the area. I don’t know about any place in the world where you could lose time or distance. Not… mortal mortal places anyway.”
Lupa, looking over my shoulder at the world shining at us through my ring asked, “You mean godly places? Godly places?”
I smirked. “As a God of Lockpicking, you should know all about holy places, shouldn’t you?” I heard Djince stifle a snort from behind us. Then I said, “Yes. Yes. Holy sanctuaries… This feels like one.”
We heard a cry in the distance and Lupa tensed against me.
“W-What was--?” he began.
It came again, but this time we could hear words in a strangled voice. It sounded like a woman in pain. “Help! Please… Please! Someone!” We heard crashing through the underbrush. “Please, gods… He’s hurt!” She sounded familiar. “He’s hurt!”
Djince’s gravbike bumped into ours, jarring us. “Ignore it,” he said.
Lupa began, “But she’s--”
“Not there. Not there,” the courier said. His eyes glowed as green as the surrounding trees. “Nothing is real. Don’t stop. Keep moving.”
“Djince…” I began uncertainty. “What is going on?”
He shook his head and let out a breath. “This... is a bad idea.”
We kept moving and we tried not to stop.
I heard a voice like rustling leaves calling through the wood. “Ghost,” it called me. “Where are you going?”
“Ghost?” Lupa asked me. “Ghost?”
I shook my head. “This forest knows me too well. I I don’t like that.”
“Like it’s it’s stalking us,” Lupa said.
“Get your ass off that bike right now and finish your fucking dinner you little piece of shit!” the forest said in a woman’s irritated voice. “Piece of shit!”
Lupa laughed out loud. “Oh please! Oh please!” he shouted into the trees, “Everyone in Lolome could hear my mother chastise me--that’s no secret, ya godsdamned spook-factory! Spook-factory!”
A male voice answered with, “But do they know about me?”
Lupa went quiet then, which was quite the mean thing. He buried his head into my back and I could feel him shaking against me.
My ring before me said through me, “This is it, Lady.”
“What? What?” I demanded.
“There aren’t any memories here. Ciau.”
“What did you say say?” Lupa asked me in a slow voice.
I shook my ring as the image within it went dark. Oh. Oh dear. I slowed down so that Djince could level with me and I said, “My ring… No one remembers this place. It… It is holy ground. No human has ever been here, alive or dead, because it doesn’t exist.”
“So is it just me, or are his his peepers shining?” Lupa asked.
“It’s not not just you,” I said. “I noticed it earlier. They do that that--Djince, we need to find the god of this place. If we can convince convince him to--”
“Like, even out of even out of the Worm’s Wood?”
“Well, not as brightly, but yes. Yes. Now, would--”
“What are you you two talking about? About?” Djince demanded.
“Your eyes are are glowing,” I said dismissively. “Your eyes are glowing. Your eyes are--That’s not what’s import--”
The ground dropped away and Lupa shouted something in shock. I heard myself yelling wordlessly too. My hands came away from the gravbike as we fell, the saddle being pulled faster than we could fall and, as the blue holograms disappeared, we were pitched into absolute darkness. I felt a brief euphoria as weightlessness took over me. There was a roaring in my ears like my head was exploding, and then the ground came up to meet me in a quiet sort of finality.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpehzqUtBgw
“Where are you going?” Mordis asked. “You know you cannot go anywhere without me. We are bound, you and I. Without the other, we are both nothing. This is why I love you… You know whose trap you’ve sprung. He and I were born on the same day. Come now…”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8HYt9t4p4X
I took a shallow breath in and it felt like I was swallowing daggers.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVPX6e9O1dM
I could see a shape in the darkness… something darker. It whipped and waxed and roiled, its substance curling over and around itself like an onyx flame. A hand came out of the smoke, reaching out for me. 347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBuAyFVgVnA
“Get up, Papyrus. Memories cannot die.”347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrAaneuM5jn
I couldn’t move. Everything was broken and I was scared.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5JVdnKEmVL
A toothy white smile built like two rows of tombstones appeared out of the inky nothing. “Maybe you need some motivation.” Several black hands stretched out of the dark then, pulling at my limbs, stretching me and pulling me and squeezing me into some shape. If I had had anything left of my mouth, I could have screamed.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgZeE4exChr
