Wander West, in Shadow

A blast of frigid air.

A long, keening howl, echoing off unseen walls, a roar of hundred, thousands of voices, from a great distance; almost animalistic, full of rage, confusion, pain.

A tearing sound; the world flickered as Martimeos passed through ther door. He stumbled forth as everything around him disappeared; for a moment, falling forward through nothing but empty darkness, and for a moment, just a moment, he knew with cettainty that something in all that black was watching him-

He blinked, and all at once he crashed into the ground, catching himself with his hands, up to his elbows in blindingly white snow. He remained there, for a moment, drawing a shaky breath.

He heard the crash of the others landing in the snow about him. "Black hells," Kells muttered, from somewhere to his left, "That was unpleasant."

And then he heard Aela gasp. "Ancestors preserve us. Ancestors preserve an' save us."

He raised his head to see what it was that she exclaimed about, and his breath froze in his throat.

However they had arrived here, there was no sign of it; no door lay behind them. A black sun hung in a slate-grey sky. Only it did not remain still; it wobbled and shook, like a leaf in the wind. There was no color to the world at all. And stretching out before him, for as far as the eye could see, was slaughter. A great snowy field littered with countless bodies, like a painting done in black ink. The aftermath of some incomprehensible battle; he saw knights in gleaming silver lying mangled beside their blood-stained, snow-white geldings - knights of the White Queen, still bearing her standard in their death-locked hands, a flag bearing a single white rose. Crosscraw, too, in their furs and hides, bloody, runied faces hidden beneath long beards. And soldiers of the Durnholde Concord, farmfolk and their sons in patchwork armor, bearing the flags of a dozen towns; a standard of a sun over rising grain, a flag bearing a willow tree, and the flag of the Concord itself, bearing a black key. A bitter, stinging wind blew across the wretched dead, coating them with frost.

"Burn and boil me," Kells swore, as Martimeos struggled to his feet, looking out across the grisly carnage, before spitting on the ground in disgust. In this coloroless world, the solider looked even more grim than usual; half of his harshly-angled face concealed in crisp black shadow. "I do not know what I expected to see here. But it certainly wasn't...what is this?"

Only the low moan of the wind blowing across the corpses answered him, at first.

And then Torc whispered, "Ah ken what et es."

The Crosscraw man was wide-eyed, pale as a sheet, as he stepped forth. He shook as he took in the carnage that stretched out before him, transfixed, as if he stared at a ghost. "Aye," he mumured. "Aye, Ah ken et. Th' battle of Durnholde Fields. Et can be nawt else. Nae other battle had so many flags en et, nor caused this much death. Ah..." He shook his head and closed his eyes, unwilling to look at it any longer. "'Twere th' blackest battle o' th' war," he muttered, "Fer both sides."

"Then why is it here....?" Elyse replied with a whisper. She had her black hat pulled down, the brim covering her face, but as she looked up at him, Martimeos noticed that her eyes were still the same dark blue, the only thing that retained color in the Land of Dim. "Why would the remains of an old battle be what we saw on this side of the door?"

"The Dolmecs did say that the Land of Dim was half-dream," Martimeos said quietly, tugging his black-furred cloak around his shoulders and whispering to it with the Art to warm it. At least, he thought, that still worked here. "Perhaps.....perhaps this is what Hadley dreams of. Some memory of the Queen's War."

"Et figgers," Torc snarled, spitting on the ground, "That yer bloody Hadley would hae such dreams of violence."

A hot wave of white rage flared up in Martim's mind. He whirled on his feet, jabbing his finger at the Crosscraw man. "You," he growled, "Will keep his name off your filthy tongue. Or have you forgotten your place, here? Shall I have you leashed once more? Or shall I run you through?"

But Torc, it seemed, had a rage of his own. "An' why," he snapped back at Martim, "Should Ah do tha'? Aye, Ah'm damned, but yer friend - and yer brother, fer helpin' him - they've more blood on their hands than Ah do." He snorted, and spun around, gesturing as best as he could with his one stump of an arm bound to his side. "Look at this. Look at et. What es he, that makes his home en such a place? An ocean's worth o' blood he hae spilt, oh Aye. Ah've nae doubt Ah'll be seein' yer Hadley en th' hells. Ef ye do indeed intend tae kill him."

Martim's hand shook as he grasped the hilt of his sword, his teeth ground together as a fury that almost made him sick overwhelmed him as Torc stared defiantly back at him. The fact that the man's suspicions were correct only made his rage worse. It was only Elyse's voice in his ear that stopped him from running the man through. "Grizel sent him for a reason," the witch murmured to him. "Remember, wizard." And she was right. But perhaps that reason would not require a tongue in his head.

But Aela had no such constraint. She stomped towards Torc, hide boots crunching in the snow, wound her arm back, and slapped him across the face so hard that his head rocked backward. "How dare ye," she hissed at him, as he spat blood and glanced up at her, "How dare ye speak such about mah friends. How dare one such as ye question th' honor o' those who hae saved me." Martimeos felt a twinge of guilt that he quickly buried.

"Aela," Torc breathed raggedly, his eyes darting between her and Martim, "Lissen. Ah ken ye like 'em, but use yer head, girl. Think. Th' wizard's brother an' friend - they're th' ones who hae bin killin' us. Th' Queensman there-" He nodded to Kells -"Hae nae been honest wit' ye about who he es. An Ah can smell black lies on th' witch. Ye cannae trust these lowlanders. Ah beg ye. Ah only care tae see ye safe. Yer still mah sister-"

He stopped, the breath driven out of him, as Aela furiously punched him in the stomach, and then shoved him tae the ground. "Ye ent nae kin o' mine!" she spat at him, though her voice cracked as she did so. "Nae any longer! Dinnae speak tae me as ef ye are familiar! What d'ye mean tae do, spoutin' yer filth naow? When we are so close tae our goal? Ah - ah..." Hands trembling, she reached into her hides and drew out her stone dagger. "Ah'll kill ye mahself," she whispered, a mad glint in her eye and the wind whipping her long, wild hair, "Ef ye mean tae sabotage or betray us."

"Enough," Kells snapped, the command in his voice causing all the others to jump. He looked to Martim, who seemed barely kept in check by Elyse, and to Aela, who seemed halfway to convincing herself to stab Torc. "No one is killing him at this moment." He marched through the snow, and roughly hauled the Crosscraw man to his feet, and bought his face very, very close to Torc's, his eyes and tone as hard and cold as ice. "Your words may prick and prod at your sister and the wizard," he said, "But they mean very little to me. I do not know what you are up to, but listen well. I think that what you want is to see your sister safe. If you wish to live to see that, from this moment on, you will not open your mouth except to offer useful information. Not even idle conversation. Or else, I will be the one to kill you. I will not need to convince myself to do it, and I will not do it in a fit of anger. I will cave in your skull and think nothing of it. The blood of your death will not be on your sister's hands, or the wizard's. It will be on mine, and I don't care. Look into my eyes if you doubt me."

Torc stared back at him for a long moment, and the fire in the man slowly turned to ash. He swallowed, and nodded meekly.

Kells set the Crosscraw roughly on his feet, and patted the mace by his side. "Remember," he intoned, nodding toward Aela, "Obey me, and you'll see her safe. Step out of line even an inch, and I will take it all away, and damn Grizel and the consequences." He glanced towards the Crosscraw woman, who still held the dagger in her hands, looking uncertainly at her brother. "Stow your weapon," he snapped. "This place is mad enough without us killing him the moment we set foot into it."

Aela looked as if she might protest for a moment; at being given such a stern command if nothing else, but she seemed relieved as she nodded and placed the stone dagger back within her hides. "Dinnae hesitate tae discipline him on mah account," she said, crossing her arms and looking away from her brother. "Ah dinnae know him."

"I won't," Kells replied simply. He sighed, dusting off his leather gloves, as he took in the field of dead that lay before them. "Well," he said, "Leave it to daemons to think leaving us in such a place is useful. Assuming any of what they told us was the truth and this isn't an elaborate way of killing us, where do we go from here?"

"They would not kill us if they thought they'd get Dolmec iron out of the bargain," Martimeos replied. He was staring out over the windswept remains of the battlefield, running a hand through his shaggy hair. "And...I...I think I know where to go."

"What? How? Do you recognize this place?" Elyse asked, peering up at him.

"No." Martim shook his head, puzzled himself. "I - I cannot explain it. But it as if my feet know the path. It feels..." He paused, then said in a small voice, "Feels like the way home."

Kells and Elyse gave each other troubled glances, and Aela seemed puzzled and confused. Torc, admonished and wary of Kells, simply stared. But they did not question it. They followed the wizard.

As they picked their way forth, through the carnage, it seemed as if the quiet whispers of voices were carried over the wind. An babble, just on the edge of hearing, the words just faint enough that they could not be picked out. And they soon found that it was not merely a battlefield that they walked through, for the corpses did not sit still.

They did not get up and walk, on their own. They flickered.

The first time it happened, Martimeos nearly felt his heart leap out of his chest. They were walking through the snow, surrounded by the ruined and mangled bodies of soldiers, when suddenly it seemed as if the world shattered like glass. And within the blink of an eye, they stood no longer in a field of old death, but rather in the middle of a chaotic battlefield.

All around them, red-faced soldiers howled and screamed and died. Farmfolk ill-suited for battle swarmed around a silver-clad knight of the White Queen, struggling to pull him from his prancing, shrieking horse. A Crosscraw warrior, young and beardless - barely seeming more than a child - fell to the ground, black blood bubbling from his lips, his chest heaving in a death rattle as he stared through them with eyes that could not see them.

Martimeos gave a shout of panic and drew his sword as another soldier, this one clad in the shining chain of one of the Queen's footmen, rushed towards him. But the soldier's halberd passed straight through the blade Martim bought up to defend himself, and through his torso as well, leaving behind nothing but a cold whisper. An insubstantial spirit; the ghost of a memory, and nothing more.

It was only for a few moments that the din of battle surrounded them; the world shifted and twisted around them again, blurring and blending like the uncertain haze of a dream, and once more they were surrounded by the quiet, snow-blown remains of the battle they had briefly born witness to.

They tumbled forward through the fields of the dead like this; brief echoes of the past bursting to life about them. It was impossible to know how long they traveled. Time here seemed a blurry, indistinct thing; memory faded quickly, draining away into the long, constant moan of the wind.

But they did stop to rest at least once; this, their minds could hold on to. Where the flat land rolled into hills and copses of scraggly, snow-rimed trees, they sought shelter from the endless dead around them beneath boughs and branches, among trees whose trunks seemed to swim with faces. Elyse tried to listen to the trees, here, in this dream-like world, and found that they did speak, though not as trees in her own world might. With the cold wind as their tongue, they whispered to her a song of wood whose roots sipped on blood-soaked earth.

And they spoke of the Bogge-King. Dream-Blighter, they whispered of him, their bare branches shaking angrily; ruiner and daemon. A creature so full of black, burning hatred that he gnarled their trunks whenever he walked near. Foul beyond reckoning.

And Elyse looked to Martimeos, as the wizard stood alone among the snowy woods, black-furred cloak flapping about him in the wind, smoking his pipe, and wondered what it was he thought of what had become of his friend.

The black sun, still wobbling and shaking in the sky, expanding and contracting, slowly set as they made their camp among the trees, lighting a pure-white flame on black and gray wood. But as they did, a series of shrill cries, warbling and ghostly, carried to them over the wind. And Aela, who lingered by the edge of the trees, still staring out at the battlefield with disbelieving eyes, gave a curse. "Ancestor's bones," she hissed. "Look. Look at th' horses."

For as the sun set and the shadows stretched over the carnage of the battlefield, the corpses of the snow-white horses of the knights of the White Queen began to twitch and move. Bones cracked and creaked as long legs struggled to find purchase in the ice. Their wounds opened, and blood flowed forth until their once white hides were stained black. Neighs and whinnies became ghastly screeches of pain that tore through the dusk. Teeth grew longer, sharper; and as the horses rose, pitch-black now against the snow, they lowered their heads to feast on the corpses around them.

"Ah cannae believe et," Aela whispered, barely loud enough for the others to hear, as they gathered 'round her to witness the grim spectacle. "Et's - they're -"

"Bogge-horses," Martimeos finished grimly.

Kells gave a worried glance out across the battlefield, then back to where they had made their campfire, biting his lip as if weighing whether or not they should move. Not all of the dead horses had risen as bogge-horses, and the creatures were far enough away, and did not seem to be moving towards them; they seemed to be moving away, in fact, as if drawn somewhere. "How can that be," he asked, finally, his fingers tapping warily against the hilt of his sword. "Is this not nothing but a memory? A dream? The bogge-horses are real. They ran men down."

"Half-dream," Elyse answered with a whisper. "Half-real."

They watched the bogge-horses stalk across the field of the dead, black silhouettes against the horizon that disappeared into the wobbling, twitching void of the black sun as they moved on, though their shrieking cries could be heard well into the twilight. That night - or whatever passed for night in this place - Martimeos and Elyse carefully constructed three separate rings of alarm sigils around their camp.

And while the others bedded down for the night, Martimeos remained long by the campfire, his face stark shadows and strange shapes in the harsh white light cast by the colorless fire. Elyse was the last to leave the wizard; she lingered by the fire as she rose, watching him. "Martimeos," she said quietly. "Perhaps it is best to sleep."

But Martimeos did not answer her. He remained staring into the fire, twirling his pipe in his hands. "Elyse," he asked, finally, "Why is it that, though the rest of the Land of Dim is devoid of color, your eyes remain blue? 'Tis the only color I have seen here."

Elyse gave a start. "My eyes are...?" she asked, raising a hand to her face. And then she broke out into a low, dusky laugh, as Martimeos looked at her curiously. "I was thinking of asking you the same thing, wizard. Your eyes stay green, here. Did you not know?"

Martimeos looked startled for a moment. It was good to see him looking something other than grim. "Oh," he replied, frowning, squinting his eyes as if that would allow him to look back on his own face. "Hmm. No, I did not know. Perhaps it is something to do with the Art."

He fell silent, and Elyse took a seat next to him on the rotten log he sat upon. In this world without color, the wizard was little more than a pair of piercing green eyes peering out of a silhouette. "It's funny," he said, after a long, quiet moment. "I cannot help but look forward to seeing Hadley again. It feels so much as if I am simply going home to pay him a visit. Isn't that strange?"

Elyse did not know what to say. She feared for his sanity. It did not seem right, to her, that a place such as this should feel like returning home, for Martim; and she worried what was going through the wizard's head upon hearing of his brother's complicity in the creation of the Bogge-King. But Martimeos had grown as quiet and cold as stone, here; this was the most talkative he had been. In a way, she could not blame him. The Land of Dim had a way of making one feel wrong, just by being there; as if even one's own thoughts were going crooked and broken, just like the world around them. But on the other hand, when she looked at the wizard, she could not help but feel as if she was looking at something darker and deeper staring back out at her from behind his eyes.

"Do not worry," he said, snapping her out of her reverie. He stared still into the fire, but now he looked up at her, his face hidden in shadow. "I will do what must be done." It was almost as if he had read her mind.

Elyse bit her lip, and opened her mouth to answer him, but she still found that she did not have the words. "Wizard..." she managed, hoarsely, before falling silent. What could be said? She knew a bit of what it was like to grow and love someone wicked; her mother had been very cruel. But what Hadley and Martim's brother had done here made even her mother's cruelty seem a very small thing. And she could not forget how tempted he looked, when the Dolmecs spoke of saving Hadley. "So tell me," she asked quietly, "What do you think must be done?"

Martimeos returned her question with a flat, heavy stare. "I would like to be alone," he said, his tone carrying an air of finality.

Elyse rose from her seat next to him as he returned to gazing at the fire, moving away almost too quickly. There was something in that stare that frightened her. But before she retired for the night, she paused, looking at him. "Whatever it is," she said quietly, "I am with you."

Martimeos did not answer her, and so, after a moment, she moved away. But she had not gone out of earshot before she heard the wizard whispering quietly to his familiar, in his bird-speech. And giving a quiet, mischievous chuckle.

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

The land, as they moved on, did not remain merely the bloody remains of a battlefield.

It warped and bent as they walked along, in ways that the land should not; steep divots and hills that arched to kiss each other, forming strange archs of stone that stretched overhead. And the very stone gave way to wood and brick and mortar, as they passed through these tunnels; blending into each other so smoothly that they almost did not notice the transition, until they walked not out amongst the wilds, but through snow-covered cobblestone streets lined with creaking wooden buildings; the remains of a town. "Durnholde," Torc said, his voice hoarse. "Ah remember et well."

Bodies lines the streets here, much as they had out in the fields; soldiers and servants of the White Queen fallen alongside the corpses of those who had served the Durnholde Concord. And many of the buildings, as well, were nothing but shells; black ruin, charred and skeletal frames standing burnt against the gray sky and the white snow. And it was not just soldiers whose bodies lined the streets here, either. Women, clad not in armor, but wrapped and bundled in thick linens against the snow, and with large packs on their back, as if fleeing; and by their sides their children, all struck down and silent now. Aela stared at these, hands white-knuckled and trembling as she clenched them tightly, and then looked to her brother, her mouth a thin line and her eyes hard and cold. And Torc met her gaze with a weary resignation, his face like stone, his eyes lost in the shadows of his face.

They walked until they came across a small plaza in the streets; a cobblestone square surrounded by the burnt ruins of wooden buildings, so crumbled and destroyed that they could not tell if they had once been shops, or homes, or something else. The center of the square was dominated by the statue of a stern-looking man on horseback, who had the weathered face of a farmer but wore the heavy plate of a knight, his helmet under one arm and a breeze-blown flag in the other.

And all about the plaza, spitted on pikes and spears driven into the ground, were a forest of bloody heads; the corpses of their owners piled high against the rubble of the buildings.

As they stepped into the plaza, the world flickered again.

Everything became blurry; the heads and the corpses vanished. The din of battle echoed to them from a distanced. And the plaza was suddenly full of the hazy, indistinct shapes of soldiers; foggy and unclear memories. Sometimes, odd features of them would swim into sudden, intense focus. A face, or the way a hand gripped a sword, or someone's boots.

But Martimeos did not have eyes for these spirits or dreams that surrounded him. For there, at the foot of the statue, sat Hadley. Hadley the weary soldier, not the boisterous and jovial man he was in Martim's memories; his face bearing bloody, fresh wounds held together by the stitches of black thread, wearing a chain hauberk and hood drawn over his head, his clear eyes tired and dim.

"Hadley...?" Martimeos called, stepping forward, but the man did not look up at his call. Instead, Hadley looked towards one of the ghostly soldiers as it approached him, a face swimming out of the indistinct mist of its form as it spoke.

"Sergeant," it said, voice echoing as if it came through a long tunnel, "We've captured near fifty men from the Queen's forces. Surrendered, once they were surrounded and cut off. What are we to do with them? We've not the supplies to feed this many prisoners."

Hadley's head rose, and his lips twitched upward in a cruel smile that seemed unfamiliar on his face. "Surrendered?" he replied. "Surrendered. Did they not look about them? Does it seem as if there is any surrender, here?"

And then Hadley himself flickered; his eyes became dark pits. With a whispering hiss, his own shadow crept up from the ground to wrap itself around him, until he was nothing but a man-shaped hole in the world. "No," he continued, his voice sounding faint and muffled from within all that darkness. "They were fools. Take their heads. Mount their skulls on their weapons. Leave them behind as a warning to the other servants of the White Queen."

And as Hadley spoke, a great pounding, like a heartbeat, echoed throughout the plaza. And with every beat, the shadows stretched towards him, and the darkness which wrapped him seemed to grow deeper, and the pounding louder, until, all at once, it was gone. In an instant, Hadley and the ghostly soldiers had disappeared, and they stood once more in the plaza as it was, a forest of mounted heads and frozen corpses.

Martimeos, reaching out toward where Hadley had sat, let his hand drop and hang loosely by his side, standing still in the falling snow, as the echoes of the vision faded away around them. He looked about with wild, wide eyes at the violence around them, the snow settling gently into his long, shaggy hair. "Just...a memory, I suppose," he murmured beneath his breath, as if in a daze.

They continued on, ever following Martim's sense of belonging, his growing certainty that his boots trod the path home.

The town about them became a jumble, a maze of impossible architecture. Buildings grew into each other, folded up over on top of each other; it became a warren of tangled, splintered and burnt wood, a long tunnel of walls and windows, as if the hand of some giant had crushed and folded and rolled the town up. But no matter how confusing or chaotic the path became, Martim seemed to know the way forward. The gray sky and its black sun disappeared beneath a ceiling of twisted roofs; Elyse summoned a glamour-flame to light their way in the darkness. And all along this tunnel were the doors of the buildings, gray and faded and peeling paint.

Curious, they tried the doors. Many of them were latched and locked, and would not open - and no matter how rusted their hinges or brittle their wood, they seemed as sturdy as stone when they tried to force their way past them.

But one of the doors, Kells found, was unlocked. They all peered curiously at the room beyond. It looked normal enough, at least for this place; a room of bare, dry wood, with a single glassless window that peered out upon a blue sky. But as Kells took a cautious step forward into the room, Elyse noticed that a faint, shimmering haze was drawn across the doorway, as if a small film of water fell across it. And, she thought, the sky was blue. Blue. When in the Land of Dim, nothing had color.

"Get back - not a step further - stop!" she cried, leaping forward to grab Kells by the wrist and yanking on the soldier with all her might, which succeeded only in causing him to stumble slightly.

But thankfully he drew back from the doorway, shooting her a confused look with his clear gray eyes. "What is it...?" he asked, his leather-clad hands straying towards his weapon as he glanced around, as if expecting an attack.

"Look - look closely," Elyse said, drawing near to the doorway, glaring at the others as they crowded around her - she did not want to be pushed through. "Look. See the shimmer, here? And the blue sky beyond? I wonder if this makes this doorway a...passage, back to the true world."

Martimeos stroked his chin as he held his own glamour-flame up to the twisted wood, peering closely at the haze that separated the room beyond. "I suppose it may very well be. It may be doors like this that the bogge-men use to make their way into our world. I wonder where it would spit you out? Somewhere near Durnholde?"

"I do not think it is worth investigating," Elyse snapped as Martimeos drew perilously close to the doorway in his curiousity. "If you were to go through, who knows if you would be able to make your way back here? You may find yourself stuck."

"True enough." Martimeos drew back from the doorway, nodding his head. "But perhaps we ought to remember this place. If ever we need an escape from the Land of Dim."

"Ah dinnae think," Aela said quietly, an edge of fear to her voice, "That rememberin' where things are will do much tae help us here."

They turned to face the Crosscraw woman. She stood behind them, looking down the tunnel, from where they had come. Mere moments before, sunlight had been visible not too far back - it had not been long since the buildings had closed in around them to block off the sun. But now, the tunnel extended backwards into endless darkness, a maze of wood that may well have extended for miles, for all that they could see of it.

Both Elyse and Kells let out a string of creative curses upon realizing that this place was changing around them; Aela swallowed nervously, closing her eyes in prayer to her ancestors, and even Torc muttered beneath his breath, glancing nervously at Kells as he did so. Only Martimeos seemed oddly unconcerned with this. "Do not worry," he told them. "My boots still know the path."

And so they followed the wizard downward, into seemingly endless hallways of old and brittle wood, moving in their little circle of light in the midst of this strange maze, past countless doors to who knew where. Sometimes as they passed them by, these doors would rattle, as if something were trying to force their way through, and they would flee. Other times, they could hear a strange ticking sound, far off in the distance, echoing down the hallways, though they never did see the source. And time, once more, seemed to stretch and snap in this place. They might have been on their feet for days, or merely hours. With their minds clawing through the fog of a dream, it was difficult to tell.

But the tunnel of doors did eventually came to an end, the wooden hallway gradually merging into tunnel of stone that led them out to a point of light in the distance.

They emerged from it, finding themselves walking out of a cave set into a stone cliff face, back out into the open sky. All about them loomed mountain peaks; mountains that, when they looked closer, seemed strangely familiar. Until Aela finally cried out in surprise, and pointed: one of the mountain peaks was very familiar indeed, and visibly carved into it were a pair of grand stone arches, and winding stairs. "Et's...Dun Cairn," the Crosscraw woman breathed. "Ah - hae we somehow crossed back intae our world...? Nae, et cannae be..."

For while the arches were undoubtedly that of Dun Cairn, they were far less weathered and worn by time than last they had seen them, in the real world. And though they traveled within the shadow of the peaks of the Witch-Queen's range, the crags here were very different from the snow-covered, bleak mountains the Crosscraw called home.

For here, everything was covered with a thick, lush vegetation. Though there was still no color in this world, if there had been, there was no doubt that everything they saw now would have been green. Heavy vines climbed up the cliff faces; the ground upon which they walked was a thick carpet of soft ferns, and a heavy, thick mist hung in air. Muggy and damp, dew dropped from leaves all around them, a constant patter from the canopy of leaves overhead. Elyse tried to listen to the trees here, but little of what they said made sense. They whispered to each other about roots stretching out across years and years, the same way other trees might talk about their roots stretching deep into the earth.

A small, footworn path wound its way through this familiar-feeling forest, lined by wildflowers; somewhere nearby, a creek babbled softly. It all seemed, Martimeos realized, so much like the forests by Pike's Green. He could not place his finger on the exact spot, but it was as if someone had described the forests of his youth to a painter, who had then created a skilled impression of them. He had felt the pull that had led them all here, and now more than ever it felt as if his boots walked the path back home.

As they walked along, something loomed out of the mist and fog. It was the figures of folk, carved in stone, covered in moss and damp with dew. And as Martimeos drew close to one, and realized who it was a statue of, he stumbled backwards in shock.

"What is it?" Kells asked, steadying him, as the others turned their eyes to his sudden outburst.

"These statues," Martimeos replied, breathlessly, trying to ignore the knot forming in the pit of his stomach that told him this was very, very wrong. "These are...they're folk I know. Folk from Pike's Green."

There were dozens of them, dotting the forest - simple farmfolk, frozen in stone. Here was Corm Haulden - a cow farmer, who provided most of the milk that Pike's Green drank; whose farm could be smelled from miles away. Aram Cam, an old man who had long ago become too old to keep up his farm proper but was too stubborn to admit it - Martimeos could remember frustrated hours of his youth being spent doing chores for him. Richard the Woodworker, a fat and slow-moving man who did not own a farm himself but sold his carpentry services to those who did; despite his lethargic looks, his hands were quick and skilled with hammer and nail. And dozens more.

But something was wrong with them. Many of the statues had - holes bored into them, as if some strange caterpillar or worm had been eating away at them. Some of them were so worn down and eaten away that they were unrecognizable, little more than piles of rock now. While others, others were -

Martimeos paused, feeling his heart seize in his chest, as he looked up at a statue of himself, next to a statue of Vivian. Not a statue of himself as he was now, no - a statue of himself as a younger child. As he and Vivian would have looked nearly ten years ago. And these statues were flawless, with not a single hole or crack in them. In finely detailed stonework, he saw an image of himself and Vivian as children, arms around each other's shoulders, laughing and carefree. His heart twisted as a thousand childhood memories flooded his mind. "Oh, well," he whispered to himself. "Can't turn back time."

"Wizard?" Kells called, from somewhere behind him, though the man's voice seemed very far away right now. "Are you alright? You look as if you've seen a ghost."

Martimeos shook his head to clear it, gave the statues one last wistful look, and spat upon the ground. "No. Yes. Yes, I'm fine. Nothing useful, here. Meaningless nonsense."

Further along the path, the statues thinned. It wound around what looked, at first, to be a gigantic, moss-covered boulder, but which they soon realized was the head of some monumentally large statue, easily larger than a house. It was carved much like the statues they had seen in Dun Cairn, in the form of some ancient Crosscraw chief, scowling and fierce, with a long, curling beard that was buried mostly in the earth, and a helmet whose ornamental spikes had been broken off long ago. But in his mouth, between teeth opened wide in some wild war cry, lay a stone door, rough and cracked, as if shaped from the very rock itself.

It swung open as they approached, on its own, with a harsh, grating, scraping sound. And beyond it lay a landscape, as if through a strange, watery haze; much like what they had seen in the tunnel of doors. Aela drew close to it, careful not to step through, and squinted. "Et...'tis hard tae tell," she muttered, as she peered through the door, "But...this looks as ef et leads out tae th' mountains, once more. Ef mah eyes dinnae trick me, Ah'd say et's...close tae Dun Cairn. Nae far off."

"No," whispered a dark voice from behind them, "Truly not far at all."

They spun around to find a bogge-man staring down at them, from his perch upon his bogge-horse; the wolf-skull bogge-man, with the yarn wound 'round his fangs, looking like an inkstain in this black and grey world, his eyes twin pinpricks of brilliant light in his bleached-white skull, his horse looking like nothing but a shadow beneath him. The same that had first offered them passage to this place; the same that had shown a skill with the Art.

Martim's sword rattled in its sheath as he drew it with an oath; Kells gave a curse about missing his spear as he drew his own. But the wolf-skull merely waved these off, idly, as he spurred his mount closer, hooves silent in the padded and soft brush of the forest. "I am not here to fight you," it said, with a voice like many whispers originating from somewhere beneath its helmet. "I want you to be here, after all. This is the very door I might have bought you through, to save you time. You chose a very strange route instead. But it matters not. You are here, now."

Martimeos suddenly realized something. "You - you speak without a head," he said quietly, and then spat on the ground. "Did you foul creatures ever need them to speak? Or did you simply enjoy using them?"

The wolf-skull seemed to leer, grinning, at Martim, as the bogge-man leaned forward. "Surely, you have noticed by now," it rasped, "That things are...different, in the Land of Dim. You may be surprised, Martimeos, at how different they can be."

Suddenly, its head whipped around to pin Elyse with the howling lights of its stare. The witch had crept close, while it had spoken to Martimeos, and stretched her hand out in focus, in an attempt to light the edge of its cloak aflame while it was distracted. "I would not do that, little witch," the bogge-man hissed. And without another word, the shadows of the forest sprang to life; dancing and twirling all around them, slithering between the ferns like snakes. Elyse gasped, then gave a shriek, as one of the shadows caught the edge of her dress and pulled. They were solid, as if they were truly real. And then, all at once, they were still once more. "I am not like the other bogge-men, to fear the Art. I think you will find that I am more skilled than you."

"What are you?" Martimeos asked, stepping between Elyse and the bogge-man as the witch scrambled back from it in a panic.

The teeth of the wolf-skull helm chittered and clattered; the bogge-horse danced beneath its master. "A faithful servant of the First," it replied with a mocking bow, sweeping its black cloak around itself in a flourish. And then clear, rabid fury entered its voice. "A stranger on the mountains. Forced into the pathetic little war your friend decided to wage." Its head swiveled, slowly, until the wolf-skull was grinning at Aela and Torc. "Though hardly could it be called a war, now could it? Hunting you inbred mountainfolk had its charms. For a time. But I have learnt all I might from these lands, for now. And I grow restless."

"Charms," Aela spat, her face contorting with fury. She reached around her back, to unsling her bow. "Ah'll show ye charms. Ah'll..."

In a flash, the bogge-man's cruelly hooked black blade was within its hand; the bogge-horse screamed like metal being torn apart and bared a mouth full of long, sharp fangs. "You'll do nothing but rage impotently," the bogge-man mocked. "Or I'll take your pretty head and make your bones dance. What is one more dead Crosscraw to me, now?"

Aela choked out a half-scream, half-sob, and the bogge-man's laughter rang through the forest as Kells struggled to hold her back. "What is it you want, daemon?" the soldier snapped, as he pinned Aela's arms behind her back while tears streamed down her face. "Do you come only to mock us?"

"He wants," Elyse answered, before the bogge-man could speak, "To be freed." She peered up at the bogge-man atop his horse, lips drawn into a curious frown. "Isn't that right?"

"I only want to serve the First," the bogge-man replied innocently, nodding towards the witch. "So long as he lives. I am only here to ensure that your meeting with him...goes well." The bogge-man turned to look at Martimeos, its bright, burning eyes drilling into him. "I will be nearby, wizard. Watching. You're almost there, Martimeos. You're almost home."

Martimeos gave a start at that, but before he could say anything, the bogge-man had melted into the shadows and mist of the forest. And even when they ran forth to catch him, they found that he was no longer there.

But the bogge-man was right. Martimeos could feel it. He felt like he was nearly home after a long, tiring journey. Every step of his boots made the feeling grow stronger. Until, finally, at the end of the forest path, the trees opened up into a bright clearing.

And for a moment, Martimeos wondered if they had made a mistake. If they had somehow crossed back into the real world. For there was color, here. The sky was a clear, cheerful blue, the grass a rich and vibrant green, seeming all the more beautiful for the time they had spent in a world without color. Flit chirped happily, on Martim's shoulder, to have his scarlet plumage back.

But there was no way this could be the real world, Martimeos quickly realized. For what lay before him was a tiny corner of Pike's Green.

The smithy. It was unmistakable. The smirthy of Pike's Green as Martimeos remembered it from his childhood, brightly painted in festive colors; red walls, a bright blue roof, and the stones of its forge-chimney, which contained a merrily-glowing orange flame, were painted a kaleidoscope of rainbow colors, yellow, purple, green, red, orange, giving it an almost ridiculous air. The cheerful and silly-seeming building in which Hadley had learned smithcraft from his father.

And there was no way that this smithy could be the real one, because that one had been burnt down the day Pike's green was attacked. Oh, it had been rebuilt, eventually. But after losing so many children, Hadley's parents had never been able to bring themselves to paint their shop in such bright and festive colors again. The smithy in Pike's Green now stood drab and gray. This was nothing but a memory of a happier time. No matter how much it felt like it - no matter how much this place had called to him across waste and battlefield, town and forest, through the dreams and memories of the Land of Dim - this was not truly his home.

But as he stepped closer, a wave of bittersweet nostalgia and grief erupted from the depths of his mind. It might not truly be his home, but damn, did he wish it was. It felt so much more like home than the real Pike's Green had, ever since the attack. Before the day everything had burned, his village had been a carefree, safe, happy place. Folk might not have been very rich, and farm chores might have been a constant source of pain, but everyone had always had a cheerful, friendly spirit about them. A love of life that was hard to describe or capture. That had been taken, the day the attack happened, and Martimeos had slowly realized over the years that it was never, ever coming back. Too many empty spaces - too many reminders - too many grieving parents, widows, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters. It was not just the smiths who had chosen not to repaint their homes in bright colors once they were rebuilt. Pike's Green had never really felt like the same place, afterward.

And so, whispered a small voice within him, doesn't that make this memory more your home than anything?

"What is this place, Martim?" Kells was by his shoulder, muttering under his breath, as he hid behind the trees at the edge of the forest and peered out suspiciously at the colorful smithy that lay before him. "This is not what I was expecting. Does our path end here...? The Bogge-King....this is where he makes his home?"

"Aye," Martimeos replied quietly. "If Hadley is anywhere in the Land of Dim, it would surely be this place."

Kells eyed the wizard skeptically, but Martimeos did not turn to face him. He remained staring at the strange smith's shop, transfixed. "Alright," the soldier said quietly. He turned to face the others; Elyse, Aela and Torc remained hiding behind the trees, staring out at the bright clearing with confusion written on their faces. "'Tis not what I thought to find," he said to them, drawing their attention, "But I suppose it could certainly be worse." He pointed with one leather-clad hand to the two Crosscraw. "You two, I think, ought to remain well-hidden until we know more about the situation we are in. Woed knows the Bogge-King would make a special target of you." Aela gave a deep frown, and looked as if she was about to fight, but kept her silence. Torc merely nodded his agreement, as if he thought this was a wise decision. "As for how we scout, I-"

"Kells," Elyse said, her eyes growing wide as she interrupted him. "Martim, he's - damn it! Wizard! Martimeos!"

Kells whirled around in astonishment as Elyse rushed past him, the tattered flaps of her robes flapping in the breeze and Cecil following at her ankles. And then he cursed as he saw that Martim had begun to cross the clearing towards the smithy, strolling along as if he had not a care in the world through the tall grass, with the witch hurrying after him. "Burn and boil me, they really are mad," he growled. He glanced back towards the Crosscraw, holding up a hand in command. "You two - you - stay here while we sort this," he snapped, with no time for courtesy. Without waiting to see their reply, he hurried after Elyse.

Though the wizard ambled forth lackadaisically, the man was built for quick walking; his long legs had carried him nearly halfway across the clearing by the time Elyse and Kells caught up with him. "Are you mad," Kells hissed furiously under his breath, grabbing Martim's arm. The wizard looked back at him, dark green eyes full of confusion, as if he truly did not know what he was doing wrong. "What do you think you're doing...?"

"Oh - hello, Kells," Martimeos replied, dreamily, his voice relaxed and full of good cheer. "Elyse. I'm just going to visit Hadley. I suppose you can come as well, as long as you're around. I think he wanted to meet you as well."

"Visit?" Kells struggled to keep his voice down. He tried to pull the wizard back, but Martimeos frowned and resisted. The man might not have had a soldier's training, but he had no small strength to him. Kells did not think he could easily force Martimeos away if he did not want to go. "Don't be a fool. Come back to the trees-"

But Elyse hushed him as she stepped forward and held a small pale hand to the wizard's forehead, as if checking him for a fever, catching his eyes with her own. "Martimeos," she asked quietly, "Where is it that you think we are?"

"Pike's Green, of course," the wizard answered with a laugh, catching her hand in his own and taking it from his forehead. "What a strange question. Where else would we be?" From his shoulder, Flit twittered askance at her as well.

"No, Martim," Elyse cried, grabbing his hands. The look of fear and panic on her face seemed strange, in this place, where the birds chirped happily around them. "Damn it. You are beguiled. Think, we came here from the Land of Dim. Do you remember?"

A flicker of recognition passed over Martim's face. "The...Land of...." he muttered, blinking in confusion.

And then, the sound of a door slamming open rang out across the clearing.

Martimeos looked up, and smiled broadly. "Hadley!" he cried, waving. "It's good to see you."

Elyse and Kells turned slowly.

There in the doorway of the colorful smithy stood a broad-shouldered man, each of his arms well muscled and as thick as small trees. He wore a soot-stained smock, and bright golden hair cascaded in curls down to his shoulders. Sky-blue eyes twinkled with merriment in a jovial face that wore a friendly smile.

"Martim, lad!" the man cried, doffing a pair of thick leather gloves. "Feels like forever since I've seen you. You've bought friends?" He gave Kells and Elyse a wide, toothy grin. "Come on in. Any friend of Martim's is a friend of mine."