The path was clear. Its bulging lines dissolved at the edges as she studied them.
“The longer you’re here, the more the Fade learns you,” Mouse warned.
Their path dipped into a circular clearing, lined by a series of fire pits. Behind their smoke, a wall of twisting, barnicled bulk, plated in some calcified dream-matter, horn-shapes jutting upward in clusters. A stage that had grown its own fortress.
“This is where the test will take place,” Mouse declared. “The creature could be anywhere. But it manifests there.”
“Why isn’t it here yet?”
“It prefers to be wanted,” Mouse said. “Even a little.”
Lyrium veins ran through the ring. They cut through the muddy Fade with clarity, humming with a beauty unlike its note in the waking world. It held a certain structural integrity reflected from somewhere outside the dream. She felt drawn to it.
“That might be a problem.”
“If it were already here,” Mouse said lightly, “you would have failed.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Emma lied.
They passed the arena. Another emerging wisp shocked her before she was able to drain it. The horny structures gave way to stubby organic accumulations, the same dark color of her own hair. The most dead part of her not-a-real-body blurred into them.
The ground pitched up and they climbed. The yellow lattice wall fell away and revealed it.
She’d seen it before, any time she managed to sleep. But she never felt prepared for the way it made the rest of the fade look provisional. It stood where the center should be, in a place that had no edges.
And there also stood a spirit, gleaming, unmistakably bright. Surrounded by fire pits, standing before a flaming anvil. This workstation was adjacent to its own smaller stage. But this one was a pedestal in open air, or what passed for such in the dense humidity of the Fade. It overlooked the Black City itself.
The spirit appeared the shape of templar armor: plate, surcoat, glowing in silhouette. Emma shielded her eyes. It hurt to look at. It was not a templar.
Its resemblance to the templar’s suit unsettled her, but taking it in, she felt guarded, but not afraid. If this was the spirit she was meant to fight, it wanted to talk first.
“Another spirit–” Mouse began. He was not afraid, either. The glowing suit turned to her. It spoke over little Mouse.
“Another mortal thrown into the flames and left to burn.” It shook its head, a glowing image of a steel helm. “Better you were pitted against each other to prove your mettle, skill against skill, than sent unarmed against a demon.”
“I had no choice,” said Emma.
“Indeed, the choice, and the fault, lies with the mages who sent you here,” he boomed. His voice was stronger than any templar she knew.
“What kind of spirit are you?” she said.
“Valor.” He said it the way people say their name. “A warrior spirit. I hone my weapons in search of the perfect expression of combat.”
He turned, not away from her, but to the rack of weapons behind his flaming anvil, and lifted a blade from it — one of the glowing ones — and examined its edge with the focused disinterest of someone checking their work.
“You are not the first. Nor the last, I suspect. That you remain means you have not yet defeated your hunter. I wish you a glorious battle to come.”
Emma looked at the weapons, an array of blades, but for a staff near the end. It was dark, gnarled wood. Only the junction between shaft and ferrule was unclear, as if it wasn’t sure where it ended. But the grain looked natural. Her eyes kept returning to it, rethinking the shape. Like trying to recognize something by its shadow.
“What is done here, with you — I know little of your mortal ways. But I know that a demon has been called and told that a meal awaits.” He put his blade back. “Whatever their reasoning: the demon cannot leave until one of you is dead. That is the condition that was made.”
“Yes,” Emma said.
She reflected on all the years she’d been warned against bargaining with spirits. By people who built a cage, rang a bell, and locked her in with a demon.
“Did you create these weapons?”
“They are brought into being by my will. I understand that in your world, mages are the only ones who can will things into being. Those mortals who cannot must lead such hollow, empty lives.”
“We all do.” She had read often of spirits envying mortality. It seemed so misplaced.
“Would these work against the demon?” she asked.
“Without question. These blades are not steel. The staff is not wood. Each weapon is a singular need for battle, made specific by my will. Do you truly desire one of my weapons?”
“What’s the condition?” she said.
“I will give one to you, if you agree to a duel. Valor tests mettle as mettle should be tested.”
She looked at him. The armor. The complete stillness. The forge that burned with serious fire.
“It seems,” she said, “that you would simply prefer to kill me yourself.”
“How dare you. I am no demon. I do not prey on helpless mortals. I am a being of honor.”
“Then prove it,” she said. “Help me fight the demon.”
He evaluated her: not someone who lunged for the first offer. Someone who chose argument over acquisition. She waited. She was good at that.
“You are insolent,” he said finally, and she could hear the concession moving underneath it. “But your will is unquestionably strong.”
He turned back to the rack. His hand moved to the dark staff. He lifted it and held it out.
“Go,” Valor said. “Prove your worth as you must.” A beat, and then, almost quiet: “I am confident you will succeed.”
The forge burned behind her.
She did not look back.
Their path ended on what appeared to be an enormous napping bear. It was plated in dangerous spikes, twisting fangs, and crusted blood.
It sniffed the air. Emma knew running would be the wrong move.
“So,” the demon said sleepily. “The mortal being hunted.” Its attention moved to Mouse with a quality of assessment that was almost, but not quite, appetite. “And the small one. Is he a snack?”
“We should go,” Mouse said, from somewhere adjacent to her left heel. “He’s not going to help. I don’t like this. We should—”
“No matter.” Sloth inhaled and exhaled judgment. “The demon will get you eventually. Perhaps there will even be scraps.” It said this in the same tone one might describe weather.
“What kind of spirit are you?” she said.
“It’s a demon,” Mouse stage-whispered. “Possibly more powerful than the one hunting you.”
“Begone,” Sloth said, without particular heat. Surely you have better things to do than bother me, mortal. I tire of you already.”
“I need help defeating a demon,” she said.
Sloth looked at the staff, which had no definitive opinion about where its wood ended and its metal began.
“You have,” it said, “a very nice staff. Why would you need me? Go. Use your weapon. Be valorous.”
Sloth existed the way a mood exists in a room, resident, accumulated over time, appearing only when attended to.
Then: “He looks powerful.” Mouse’s voice had shifted into something she hadn’t heard from him before, tentative in a new direction. “It might be possible that he could. Teach you. To be like him.”
Sloth’s attention descended on Mouse with the slow inevitability of a tide.
“Like me,” it said. Not a question. Tasting the idea for entertainment value, finding it marginally sufficient. “Teach the mortal to take this form.” It paused. “Most mortals are too attached to their forms. They find this distressing.” Another pause, and then the gaze shifted, and something in the quality of Sloth’s attention changed, sharpened, which was not a word she’d expected to apply to anything about this entity.
“You, however. The small one. You let go of the human form years ago.”
“I don’t think I’d make a very good bear,” he said finally. “How would I hide?”
“You could help me fight the demon,” she said.
“It’s true,” Sloth said, in the manner of someone conceding a point in an argument they’ve already decided not to engage with. “I am quite powerful in this form. When I wish to be.”
“I—Welcome the opportunity. If it is my choice. The mages in the tower are quick to volunteer others, as you well know. But I’ll try to be a bear. If you’ll teach me.”
“That’s nice,” Sloth said. “Away with you,” Sloth added, as clarification.
Mouse exhaled something that was shaped like a sigh but functioned as defeat. “I told you he wasn’t going to help.”
“Mouse wants to learn,” she said. “Teach him.”
“You wish to learn my form,” it said to Mouse, slowly. “Then I have a challenge for your friend.” The mass of it oriented, incrementally, toward Emma. “Answer three riddles correctly, and I will teach him. Fail, and I devour you both.” A pause. “The decision is yours.”
“Riddles,” she said. Making another bargain, each nastier than the last.
“Indeed. Amusement is difficult to come by.” Something in the voice that was almost — not quite — contentment. “I shall take it in the place of a meal, if I can.”
“I am not sure,” Mouse said quietly, “that I want to provide him with either.”
The riddles came one at a time:
Seas without water. Coasts without sand. Towns without people, mountains without land. A map, no drama.
Rarely touched, often held, if you have wit, you’ll use me well. She said, “a tongue,” and watched the demon’s expression of reluctant satisfaction.
“Yes, your witty tongue. Fair enough. One more try, shall we?”
Often spins a tale, never charges a fee, amuses for an entire eve, leaves no memory. She said, “a dream” and Sloth was quiet for a moment.
“Hmph– You are correct. Rather apropos here in the Fade, no?”
The riddles were simple. It felt odd he asked for so little. She wondered if she made a mistake. Her exchange with Valor was more legible.
“An amusing distraction. As promised, I shall teach him my form.”
Sloth delivered instruction in the tone of something reading from a text, a set of principles about the relationship between will and form, about the permeability of the self when the self stops insisting on its own edges. She listened. She was good at that.
Mouse listened too. Very still. Very small.
And then, slowly, he changed. A process of a consciousness revising its most fundamental document, the form it had held forever, or close enough that the distinction had stopped mattering. Mouse became less mouse-shaped.
What arrived instead was not graceful. It had to negotiate with gravity for the first time. She watched him arrive at bearness the way a thought arrives at language: approximate, slightly wrong, recognizable.
“Like this?” he said, in a voice that had not previously been capable of the frequencies it was now using. “Am I a bear? It feels so—” A pause that seemed to be taking inventory. “Heavy.”
“Hmm,” Sloth said. “Close enough.”
It was already returning to whatever it had been doing before they arrived, settling back into the deep comfort of its own inertia.
“Go, then,” it said. “Defeat your demon. Or whatever you intend. I grow weary of your mortal prattling.”
She looked at Mouse, who had never been a mouse, but was now a bear. Aproximately.
She picked up the staff. Her palms felt the solid junction between wood and metal.
Why would the Circle set her up to make these bargains?
Perhaps the demon hunting her would come out, now.