Infernal Investigations

Running was the smart move. I could hear the other three doors opening behind me, and redoubled my pace. Hooves hit stone, nearly skidding as I rushed through the open gate, hurrying to the southern house.

The sound of paws hitting stone and grass behind me, the snarl followed by a hot breath I could feel on my back. I'd left the door open when I left the southern house, a small mercy.

I ran inside, grabbing the door behind me, slamming it shut just before the first of them collided with it.

It stopped right in front, snarling. Taller than my head, the wolf opened its mouth, fangs like daggers dripping saliva as stared at me through the patterns of wood making up the upper half of the door.

I backed up, looking around for a knife as it stood just a few inches outside my door. It was an old wolf, patches of fur missing, a mutilated ear. The eyes, though, I knew those eyes. I'd drunk tea across from them only a few days ago. Disturbingly unfitting in a wolf's face, Uncle Liu's eyes stared into my own.

Two more oversized wolves padded up, similar, same disturbingly human eyes. One of them was much older than the other two, feeble and weak, or as much as a six-foot wolf could be. It was entirely possible those eyes weren't Aunt Diwei's or Grandfather's, especially since I hadn't seen the latter in so many years.

Of course, it was also possible that I was secretly related to the Queen. I knew better.

I waited, breath bated, holding for the moment they burst through the walls and tore me to shreds. It's not like I could do anything to stop them, and already I was prepared to wake back up in my room. However, seconds ticked by, and they refused to try and break inside. I cocked my head to the side, hands still cupped around the butterfly.

"While I appreciate the restraint," I said to them. "I would think tearing me limb from limb would be more in your instincts than patiently waiting outside?"

Not a response from any of them. Despite being in the land of fey spirits, apparently, these animals did not talk.

The butterfly moved around inside my hands, and I cautiously went to the table, letting it down on the surface. It lay there, weakly stirring. Right, wounded and likely jostled around by my evasion of these three creatures. Hungry and tired as well.

I searched the cupboards, finding water, a shallow bowl, and a small packet of sugar. Ah, I could still remember the argument when Mother had first bought the packaged sugar. That at least had been an affectionate one between her and her siblings.

I went back to the table, doing my best to ignore the growling and snarling outside the walls. The butterfly still lay where I put it, weakly fluttering. Hrrm. I gingerly moved it on top of a cloth napkin, making a small mound before putting the bowl beside it.

I…why was I going to all this effort for a not-real insect? Especially while three oversized wolves were outside. Admittedly, three very passive giant wolf representations of my estranged family. Honestly, not trying to kill me might make this version of Aunt Diwei more restrained than the actual one.

I sighed. Well, I'd already bothered to drag it all out. Might as well put it to some use.

"You are a lot of trouble," I told the small insect. "Although I suppose it's more accurate to say I am a lot of trouble?"

More weak fluttering from the little insect. More snarls from outside, as one of the three paced about, growling lowly while the other two stood ready outside the door. Ready for me to leave, to bite and claw the moment they could.

I put the bowl nearby, poured the water, and then sprinkled some sugar in. I considered helping the butterfly to the drink, then considered my hands. The claw-like nails I'd had earlier had shrunk? Or perhaps retracted, to a more manageable length than when I'd speared a giant centipede with them. Still, I left it alone for now. Too much chance I would rip it to shreds.

I went back to the front door, my tail giving a jaunty wave, fins unfurling. That helped drive some of the warm, rather nauseous air from the wolves' breathing back at them. It stank of rotting flesh and death.

"So," I said, looking between the three animals, two of whom were lying down, the last one pacing back and forth. "What do I do about you three? I don't suppose asking politely to leave would do the trick?"

Skin pulled back from teeth on one of them, looking like a sadistic grin as it exposed yellowing fangs.

"Well, it was worth a shot," I said. "You can understand me, then? To a degree?"

One of them snorted, in a way far too close to the dismissiveness of my aunt.

"I shall take that as a yes, in which case-"

I darted away before finishing my sentence, not really planning on running out of the other door to the house yet, just wanting to gauge the timing.

The roof shook, and I cursed. One of them was cutting across the building entirely.

I ran to the other door, hand on the handle, only to see the wide-open yellow eye of one of the giant wolves outside. Mouth dry, I let go of the handle as it growled, pressing its snout against the openings. A snarled exhalation sent my fins fluttering as hot air pushed against me.

"Fine," I said. "Another way out then."

To the floorboards now, only too aware of the wolves watching me, yellow eyes affixed. I moved slowly, ready to bolt the moment it sounded like they were breaking inside the house. One floorboard, two, three. I stopped for a second, looking at the butterfly as it lay against the table. Still alive. Not going for the sugar water, probably because of its injuries. If I could find us a way out, that wouldn't matter much, although with three gone what lay beneath wasn't very comforting.

Two more floorboards to confirm it. Beneath the floorboards was solid stone, and there was no way inside the entire house to dig through it. I snorted. Should I have expected some easy way to solve…whatever this was?

Was this even something that could be solved? What would tunneling do but be an escape that brought no relief in the end? Just a forestalling of the inevitable, until I met them next, and the chase would resume in spirit if not in actuality.

I snorted, then a gentle laugh was coaxed out of my chest. Oh. This was fitting.

"Is this some gentle suggestion I should what, go outside and let the wolves devour me?" I asked the open air. "Or better yet, get on my knees and prostrate myself, to beg forgiveness from them?"

No answers, although the butterfly's agitation had lessened. It was drying out some, although it still looked feeble, and peering closer, its body was splitting along one end. Holding together. Just barely.

"Am I to take you outside? I asked. "To beg my uncle once again to find a healer for the poor butterfly, injured in the rain? What a sight that would be, a massive feral wolf and a fish-devil walking the streets, begging priests to help heal a poor injured butterfly."

It took a step and then collapsed, wings fluttering. Despite knowing it wasn't real, I winced.

"My apologies. It's not fair to make sport just because of what this is," I said, looking around.

Unfortunately, this wasn't my workshop, otherwise, we could try a healing solution. Very slow-acting, but on something like a butterfly, a greater effect. Assuming it didn't overdose. Instead, my eyes happened upon the needle and thread my mother had used fixing up clothing for the family.

This shouldn't be working, as I somehow got the needle and its gossamer thread to go in just right, beginning to stitch the insect together without destroying it. Fey magic. Or this being inside my head. Why did I need to question it this much?

"I suppose this is a message of sorts," I said as I finished it, beginning to tie while the butterfly remained carefully still. "Not that I can puzzle it out. Not needing Uncle Liu this time. Although, since he's a wolf, that again would have been quite difficult."

With it carefully perched on my finger, I lowered it to the edge of the bowl where it began lapping up the sugar water, fluttering its wings.

"Be careful," I warned it. "I'm hardly a skilled seamstress. Don't test that stitch too hard."

It lifted off, flying through the air before landing on my shoulder. I raised an eyebrow, which is when reality decided to make itself known.

The walls shook, a wolf howling as they pressed in, wood creaking. Whatever grace period I'd been granted was coming to an end.

One of them leapt onto the roof, and this time boards did splinter.

"So," I said to the butterfly, backing wearily towards my old room. "I don't suppose since I fixed you up you can help me out by forming into a sword or something similar?"

The butterfly flew up off my shoulder and rammed into my eye.

"Ow," I muttered as it flew back into the air, rubbing the slightly irritated eyeball. "I suppose that's on me for thinking violence would be the way out of this. There's no escape, and there's no fighting, and I really doubt talking is going to work!"

A snarling wolf's head tore through the ceiling, claws cutting through the ceiling.

"Forgiveness isn't the right thing," I muttered. "I don't desire it for them, nor do I think they will ever grant it to me. What are you?"

One of the walls groaned, the wolf pressing further in. The butterfly's fluttering grew more impassioned, but I kept my breathing slow. Don't panic. Don't become unsettled.

"Their hatred of me?" I muttered. "I'm alone in here, so their perceived hatred? What, am I to hug you while saying that it was my fault for not trying to rejoin you? To endure you?"

One of the wolves snarled, head forcing its way in. It did not look like it wanted a hug. Uncle Liu's eyes stared into my own over a maw of daggers.

Blind. The fey had said outright said it to my face at multiple points in our talks.

"You are the first knife," I told the trio of wolves. "The first one and the one that stabbed the deepest. You dealt a wound to a little girl, and she never recovered from it. And I've run from that knife ever since, always afraid of getting stabbed again."

The Uncle Liu- wolf snarled, sticking its head inside, and I wrapped my tail around its jaws, forcing them closed as my arms wrenched its neck. It jerked to the side, and I yelled as the side of my head scraped along the inside of the wall. I kept my grip, getting a fragile control over the creature. The other two continued to force their way inside, but I didn't let that stop me.

"I can't blame you for the others," I admitted. "Bad choices in who to trust caused those. But the mark you left is that I run, and I don't stop running from it. I spent how many years avoiding you all?"

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The second one, Aunt Diwei, by the eyes, landed in the middle, smashing the table and other furniture, on her back for just a second before getting to her paws, while Grandfather's wolf continued battering down the other door.

"Circumstance forced that change," I said, keeping a tight grip on Uncle Liu while Aunt Diwei stalked closer. "Forced me to deal with you again. One of you again. I still avoid the rest of you like the plague, and the last, I force myself to be polite with, because I want things from you. But I never wanted that, and I still do my best to avoid dealing with any of you. And none of you deserves my respect or my company, but I'm not going to run from you either."

The Uncle Liu wolf was..shrinking, head growing smaller, and the rest of it following suit, and Aunt Diwei's wolf snarled, not charging directly at me.

"It's where it all comes from, isn't it?" I said. "I didn't..resolve this. Instead just keeping myself way from anything involving you, even fully confronting you over what you did, because as long as you never knew who I was, I couldn't get stabbed again. But I can't let that keep me away forever, even if we end up enemies. That's what needs to change. When I'm free of this. No more running. No more trying to hide to avoid knives. When I'm out of this, I'm getting what I want…"

I hesitated, my mind touching on part of the reason I really didn't want to pursue this any further, and I gritted my teeth.

"And no matter what it is and if it unsettles me, I'll hear what you have to say on why I was banished. What my mother did to earn it for me and her."

Uncle Liu by now was the size of a normal wolf, and whimpered as my wrapped-up tail practically swallowed his head. I released it, and the wolf quickly backed away.

Snarling, the Uncle Liu-wolf backed off as I finally let go, padding off towards the main courtyard. Flanked by the other two, it disappeared as the rain finished falling. The sky remained overcast, but not as dark as it was when heralding a storm.

The butterfly flew off my shoulder, heading towards the courtyard at a leisurely pace, and I quickly followed.

"A different framing on what I was going to do anyway," I mused to it. "Something I was going to do already, just with a different mindset going in. Does it really make that much of a difference?"

The butterfly just continued flapping about, and I sighed. "If you aren't some spirit guide from either my subconscious or Tagashin, I shall feel very foolish."

Back into the courtyard now, the gingko still towering over all, with no signs of the wolves. But something new. Set among the Gingko tree roots, carved out of the ground, the tunnel again sloped gently downward. I came closer, and immediately had to try not to retch.

The stench of death and decay came from that tunnel, an overwhelming stench that made my nostrils burn.

"I should have guessed that would be next," I muttered. "You should stay here. What's down there isn't something you'll enjoy."

The butterfly steadfastly refused to leave my shoulder, and in turn, I didn't have the heart in me to brush it off.

"Fine," I told it. "Let us see if things can go differently this time."

***

I exited a tomb into the middle of the graveyard once again. I paused, eyeing the stairs I'd descended, which were from a tomb where the only way was from underneath the ground.

"Oh, you're back," Golvar's rotting corpse said. At some point, it had reattached the fallen-off pieces to itself. Skin was still missing, of course, but now all the limbs were on, and most of his face.

"Indeed, I am," I said calmly, closing the tomb door behind me. It would probably vanish anyway.

"And you brought a butterfly, how nice. Is that supposed to brighten up my day Harrow? First, you let me die up above, then you bother me multiple times and bring me some overly colorful insect to make up for it?"

"You got yourself killed," I reminded the corpse. "Then, when it got you in trouble, you tried to drag me in, and I was nice enough to help you. I could have cut your throat. Should have, some would argue, but I healed you and helped you, and yes you died. But was it me who picked that life for you to live Golvar?"

"And somehow you've become even worse," he commented. "Oh hail the mighty Malvia Harrow, stuck up little shite because she got raised by a decent family instead of having to scramble from birth on the streets of the Quarter. You want to say you're better than me, Malvia?"

"I am," I said, staring him in the eyes. "Perhaps my brother is right. Perhaps the part of me that is you is right. That I am uncaring, that I am murderous, that I have perhaps a few people I wouldn't cross that line for, and no others. But even the,n Golvar?"

The corpse grinned, probably anticipating where I was going.

"I am better than you," I told Golvar, staring the rotting corpse right in the eye. "Whatever else I might be, I never took the sadistic joy you did in hurting others. As caustic as I might be, I never reached the depths of your sheer hatred for anyone you disapproved of. I didn't decide to ram people's horns point-first into their eyes because they accepted health from a non-Infernal, never mind the fucked up things you did to people trying to help."

"Is that what this is about?" The corpse asked. "You sleepily eye-fucked some fucking elf that worships Lareran, and now you're pissed I made you slice open and burn a bunch of her subordinates."

"His, unless they've changed, Golvar," I said, eyeing the corpse uncomfortably. Only emulating the views this piece of shite had when alive, but it was still my subconscious driving this. "At the same time, I suppose I am worse. I didn't act on what I knew. Ran instead of facing what had happened. Even if it was a grave, I dug it as much as you dug your own. I like to think it balances somewhere better than you, but in the end, maybe we are just the same."

The corpse stared at me, eyes blank and uncomprehending.

"What kind of fucking bullshit centrist take is that, Harrow?"

I sighed. "The one you are getting, Golvar, because I have people more deserving of answers than you up ahead."

"Seriously? The ones who fucking killed you last time get more pleasentry than one of your trainers? Harrow, you stuck-up little shite, answer me!"

I ignored him, walking along the gravel pathway. Already, some of the shambling corpses from before were in sight. This time ones I could easily recognize were in the lead. Pieter. Lady Karsin. An assortment of faces only recognizable from recency, the mercenaries who chopped off my tail, the Pure Bloods slain during the issue with the shapeshifters, the Infernals conscripted for their false Black Flame attack.

"Come on Malvia, there's still time to run," Golvar said. "Look, fence right behind the tomb, I bet you what's left of my pancreas you can't use it to avoid this lot before they lay a finger on you!"

I was pretty sure Golvar had no idea what a pancreas was. Also…maybe but repeating old methods wasn't going to help me here. Tagashin had landed me in a place where I had to do something besides run or fight.

Annoyingly, I had to admit I'd been doing far too much of those two.

"What would you want?" I asked the increasing horde. "For me to say I should have died instead of each of you?"

More figures had crawled out of graves, pulling themselves together and joining the core group. Less familiar faces. Some of them tugged on my memories. Watch Officers from the Flame day. Others on the streets when sometimes had survival been decided by a brick and a shard of glass. Infernals from the ballroom party.

"Some of you, that's not deserved," I muttered. "Some of you deser- no, saying you deserved to die is too far, but you made your choices and suffered the consequences of them."

"You know, you really are a charmer, Harrow," Golvar said from behind me. "Oh, I want to apologize for killing all of you, except not because I think you led yourself to the end of my revolver."

"Be quiet," I told him. "I'm not bantering."

"Oh, come on, Harrow! Exercise that razor wit a little! It's almost as lethal as everything else you use!"

I ignored the corpse, even as the others began to grow in front of me.

"What are you all?" I muttered. "This is my head. I really doubt fey spirits came into play the people I've killed. Not that all of you are even that."

Lady Karsin had a prominent spot on the right, rotted and half-melted. Half a foot of entrails poked out of a massive cut across her gut. Lazy effort on my mind's part, not bothering to actually fill in with a shapechanger's biology, and for including her to begin with. I hadn't killed her. Just…arranged for her death to happen.

Not that there was much difference, I thought as she stared passionlessly at me. Her son had a good reason for wanting me dead from his point of view.

What did they want from me? A lot of them had been self-defense, others not so much. The ones in the Flame, mostly, when I'd hide inside a mask. Was that it?

"I put on a mask of not regretting it because I thought it would make me weak," I said hesitantly, looking over the host of assembled dead. "A breaking point where I thought if I carried all of it forward with me, I'd crack and break. Some of you were easier than others, I can't deny that. Some of you I didn't know at all."

Most of them. They started forward, and my hesitation only grew. Something about this was off. Unlike the realization with the Xangs, I wasn't sure what was supposed to go on. Just admitting I should feel sorry about all of this? That shouldn't be hard, but at the same time, it felt impossible, especially because I was realizing that no, for many of the people here, it had been self-defense. Kill or be killed. Would leaving them crippled in my wake make any difference?

Some, some were accidents, mistakes, panic, or done on behalf of my brother before I realized him a traitor or liar. But the most recent set, in most cases…I breathed out.

"I don't regret most of your deaths," I said bluntly, and Golvar laughed.

"Oh, brilliant apology," he chortled.

"Unless you want to claim to speak for everyone here, be quiet," I told Golvar, then turned my attention back to the horde. They at least had come to a stop.

"I don't," I said, starting over again, and Golvar remained quiet for now. "And whether that's from too long embracing a mask where I don't care, or simply because many of you swung first, I don't know. But I chose to stop caring at some point, to shove it deep inside, and letting it out is still something I can't just do. And I can't keep doing that because all I'll do is drown in death and violence if I keep going. But I don't know how to stop it. Thinking of ways besides that. I can try to be better and-"

My voice halted a bit.

"I can admit that I do regret it," I said. "I tell myself I don't prefer violence, but end up turning to it, reveling in it? Maybe I don't seek it out but I have asked people to dance on top of literal corpses, haven't I? It's not just enough to push for ways besides teeth in the throat, I should actively push to try other methods. And if I have to turn to it in the end? Then fine, but I should try to be something besides an avatar of diabolism and ruin."

I met Pieter's eyes, choosing to focus on him instead of the others.

"When you rushed me, I acted on instinct," I said. "My instinct was to bite your throat out, Pieter, and if that isn't a sign that there's something I need to change, I don't know what is. I'm sorry Pieter. I'll try. That's all I can promise."

I closed my eyes, breathing in. If that wasn't enough, I wouldn't panic. If I needed to dig deeper into the graveyard I'd built in my soul, so be it, but I wouldn't do it with fear.

A second passed. Then five, then ten, then I opened my eyes and the assorted dead had vanished. Almost all of them, as Golvar's corpse grunted behind me. What I'd said, what I'd promised, it had been enough.

I breathed out. I…it was a problem. Was it the pressure making it worse, or had it always just lurked underneath, waiting to come out? I didn't know, but I'd find out and deal with it. And hope my promise to myself holds. Not all deaths were unearned, but neither had any of them robbed me of my choice to kill. I should hold onto that much, and try to be different.

Well, I didn't know if that would satisfy Her Majesty's Courts, but it was enough for my own mind.

"Well," Golvar said. "Do I get my apology now?"

"No," I told Golvar venomously, picking up something from the ground. "You're getting something else entirely."

The corpse didn't even try to dodge the brick as it smashed into his face. Flesh tore, ripped off the bones as the skull fell off, landing on the ground.

It sprang into action, charging me. I grabbed it, trying to throw him to the ground, but he got a leg behind mine and I took a tumble instead. The rotting corpse threw itself on top of me as my hoof lashed out. A leg tore out, rotting flesh and decaying bone giving up the ghost, but what did it care?

"So," the zombie told me as his hands tightened around my neck. "Everyone else, including the fucking Watch, gets an apology for your shit? But I get a brick to the face for having put up with you for so many years?"

"You didn't put up with me," I snapped, rasping as I kicked the corpse off me. "You and your friends dragged me along into a dozen different things, and I'm damned for going along with them. But you're the one who helped us down there, Golvar."

The corpse cackled, flesh shedding as it got back up. "We're already damned, Malvia. You, me, everyone in the quarter. Why fight it when you end up either there or at the bottom of that damn cathedral, screaming inside a silver spike?"

"Because it shouldn't be an excuse," I shot back, then batted him aside with my tail.

Yellowed teeth bit into fins, but I ignored the pain, slamming him into a gravestone.

"I curse myself for being a fool back then, letting honeyed words from one man, the fact he accepted me as family, blind me to what we were doing," I said as I kneed Golvar's skull against the tombstone, neck cracking as the back of it rammed into solid stone. "

I grabbed an arm as it grasped for me, put a hood against his chest, and pulled. It tore, and I tossed it off into the distance. Best not to have it scrambling back too soon.

"I wondered when you died, why I was crying, why I felt so strange," I snarled as my tail sent the corpse sprawling to the grave. "It's because I felt relief that you were dead."

The butterfly settled on my shoulder as I tore the other arm off, tossing it far into the distance. Golvar tried to say something, but my hood went where his throat was, snapping through his spine.

"I'll apologize for not exposing Versalicci for the traitor he was," I told the now severed skull. "I will not apologize for being happy you're dead, you malicious thug."

The skull twitched, its shattered jaw trying to move. It failed to make a noise before my hoof ground it into dust.

I breathed out as Golvar's corpse came to a halt, beginning to come undone, flecks of bone and dead flesh floating off its swiftly decaying form. Something inside me was about to come undone when something stepped on a stone behind me.

I whirled around, only to find Pieter's corpse standing behind me, keeping a good distance between us.

"Oh," I said, the shock fading and replaced by confusion. I thought he had gone away with all the others, gone since my mind no longer needed them. "Can I…help you?"

Pieter tilted his head to the side, question unsaid, but I understood. Which itself was the answer to the question.

"I know you aren't him," I said morosely. "None of you are. This is all just in my head. Like most people, I'm not going to hear answers to my apologies. I can live with that. Forgiving myself, though…it's a step."

The corpse shuddered, nodding, parts of it going limp as the strings holding the puppet up collapsed.

"See you down in Hell," I told him morosely as the graveyard dissolved.