old god of the red void.

Órfhlaith

He loosens his hand, but she lingers a moment. Holds him a second more before she lets him go, too.

She seems to understand what he's doing as he does it: the branch, the test. Then, when he lodges it in place, she gives a little laugh: "Brilliant."

For the third or fourth time now, she takes his hand. Doesn't explain, but perhaps she thinks they could get split up on the way. She hardly knows; this isn't the shadow realm either of them were taught about. So she walks forward holding his hand, making sure not to go headfirst.

Conall

One after the other, they climb over that branch and land in darkness. The ground beneath their feet feels rough and hard, pebbles and dirt atop stone. It slopes down before them. The air is uncomfortably warm. Smells of smoke and some fainter stench. Thomas sounds farther away now, ahead and down, footsteps sliding and scratching on the unstable surface.

"Beatrice!" His voice echoes back up to them. "Beatrice, why do you hide from me? Why -- "

Abruptly, Thomas screams.

Órfhlaith

The scream makes Orla flinch. She keeps her hand on Conall's, since she cannot see him. For once, though, she does not run headlong towards the sound. She walks slowly, but

inexorably,

forward.

Conall

The wolf jerks, too. His hand tightens. Hard to tell if he'd rather bound foward or back, but doing precisely this -- this deliberate, slow progress -- makes him more uncomfortable than both combined.

It is what they do, though. They walk forward. The ground slopes. The air presses in. From the way sounds echo and propagate, they can tell they're in a tunnel. When the wolf reaches his arm to the side, he touches the walls -- makes a disgusted sound and pulls back, wiping his fingers on his shirt.

"Wet," he mutters by way of explanation. "Sticky."

The ground beneath their feet is becoming tacky, too. Their feet squelch slightly with every step. Ahead, the screaming has stopped. A sliding, dragging noise has taken its place. As their eyes adjust to the dark, they become aware of a diffuse, reddish glow that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. Brighter up ahead, perhaps.

Órfhlaith

Which was perhaps the wrong thing to do while holding hands with a witch who blew up a well today.

She pauses. He can hear a rustle of her sleeve, then a squelch. Of course she's touching the disgusting wall he just told her was wet and sticky. In the dark, she can't quite tell if it's the same stuff as the slime that was all over the monster they fought earlier. But she does know this: it's flammable.

Files that away a moment later, as she senses the redness. She frowns. He can see her, soon enough, frowning, her face cast in scarlet. She looks at Conall, and it's hard to tell what is in her eyes, but he sees her lay her finger across her lips. She goes on, as quietly as she can.

Conall

Quiet, then. He nods once. An instant later, that instinctive thoughtless magic of his again: the shape of flesh and bone changing, dense fur pushing through skin. He drops forward on all fours, a large wolf creeping forward on white paws.

They descend. The walls drip ichor. The ground is inches thick in it. The wolf's paws get dirty, and he can't help but lift one and shake it from time to time, disgusted. Still, he makes no sound. The tunnel curves as it burrows deeper and deeper, and as they round a bend they see -- a thing, something wriggling, human-sized.

It's Thomas. At least, it must be. Still alive, struggling feebly, but entirely encased, cocooned in layer upon layer of thin, sticky, glistening-wet material. Things are scuttling ahead of him, spider-creatures as big as hounds, dragging him behind them. They're pulling him toward a gaping hole in the ground, glowing red.

Órfhlaith

It's all right now, she thinks, if she loses his hand. She can see well enough in the darkness with the red glow. They're almost there, wherever 'there' is. Still: when his hand leaves hers so he can shift, she feels a momentary pang. Silly, she tells herself. She shakes it off. It's not like he's going anywhere.

Soon, though, they find Thomas. It's horrific, what they come across. Orla's heart twists. She stops going slow and rushes forward, hands splayed in front of her in a sudden, sharp gesture that coincides with her shout:

"Ignis!"

Not the first name of fire, hardly. But right now, in this era, the loudest.

Órfhlaith

[She is attempting to set the spider-hounds on fire. For teh lulz.]

Conall

[I FEEL LIKE I SHOULD MAKE YOU ROLL SOMETHING :D HOW ABOUT WITS + OCCULT.]

Órfhlaith

[wits 4: quick reactions + occult 4: witchcraft]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 3

Conall

Fire bursts forth, not from her fingertips but from her mind. Stark shadows suddenly paint the walls as fire licks from the jointed legs of the spider-things, flaring across the coarse-haired, armored backs. After so much darkness the light is blinding, throws the claustrophobic confines of their current situation into hideous relief. An ear-splitting whistle -- not from the creatures' mandibles but from steam escaping carapaces -- accompanies the mad scratch of too many legs on rock as the spiders scramble, writhe, rake at themselves in a futile attempt to escape their scorching bodies.

Two die almost immediately, shuddering. One rushes up the tunnel, aflame, and meets a quick end in the wolf's jaws. The three remaining spiders are devoted to their task, dragging Thomas through that hole with the last of their strength. Two fall through after him, dead or near enough. The last dies at the edge of the hole, eight glistening eyes shriveling in the conflagration.

From below, a thud as Thomas hits ground. A distant, inhumane chittering answers the noise.

Órfhlaith

She sees the fire in mind, first. Her mind goes black, and then fire is coming forward, bursting out of that darkness, erupting, consuming her thoughts. For a few brief moments, she is not so much herself as she is a vessel for a single, raw element of nature, the hungriest and most impatient.

The witch regains her senses just in time to see the first gout of fire that used to be a spider. Her pupils shrink rapidly to dark pinpoints in the blue, equal to the color at the center of the flames. There's no mad joy on her face, no awe or delight in her own power or in the pain of even these creatures. Just a sort of molten, melting look, glassy and dazed, as her body recognizes what she has just spent of its dwindling reserves.

For a while, she doesn't even move; the spiders die. She thinks that should have been enough, so she doesn't react fast enough when she sees that three of them, while burning, are still lugging Thomas along. She sees him at the edge of the hole. She hears him fall. It takes a moment for it to register what has happened: that she failed. It takes another moment for her to summon the strength to go forward, to head for the hole, calling out -

"Con!"

- as she does. She stands at the edge of the hole, looking downward. Beside her, a spider's corpse is burning. When he looks at her, he sees that her hair is still wafting in some kind of invisible wind, floating away from her in dim waves, like heated air above stone.

Conall

At once the wolf is beside her, looking down the hole with her. It's a long drop, but not unsurvivable. Ten feet, fifteen. Two dead spiders and an entombed man lie down there, the last of which is still feebly struggling. The wolf bares his teeth, then leaps down -- shifting in midair, landing in his largest form, flaming spider-corpses crunching beneath his weight.

He reaches handpaws up toward the witch. The meaning is clear: jump, and he'll catch her.

The chittering is closer now.

Órfhlaith

There was need in that call. Easy to see why: her already fair skin is pallid. Magic moves like a corona around her now, unchecked by will or control or whatever mortal leash keeps it subtle in normal, earth-bound realms. The steady burn of her power today has been more than she's done in most of her life; that last burst of energy has all but sapped her, left her almost... human, really. And no human being should be here, facing this.

But she is. And the only reason she can - and the only reason she can go on - is because he's there with her. She knows that. Isn't fighting or denying it, right now. Looks at him and calls the name that she gave him, because he had no other to tell her.

And she may as well be saying it in as many words: I need you.

--

So then he is there. Some of the energy around her calms a bit, settles, returns inward, filling her heart again instead of trying to escape her like a leaf on the breeze. She exhales. She can see, now, that Thomas is still struggling in the cocoon. She nods, as if to herself. Con jumps, and she doesn't yelp, but she does watch him, and

imagine that: has the energy to be amused. To cock a small half-smile.

She jumps.

Conall

They are both not quite human. Even in this age of mud huts and superstition, when mankind sees demons in every shadow and danger in every crevice, they are creatures that stretch the imagination. The raw power that burst from her; the otherworldly energy that seems to unyoke her from the pull of the earth itself. And the sheer scope and scale of him now -- nearly tall enough when he rears like this to grasp the edges of that hole and pull himself back up. Would be able to easily, if he leapt.

She jumps. It's hardly even a drop before he catches her -- a few feet at most. His handpaws are enormous, closing around her torso with surprising gentleness. He sets her down and she finds herself in the corner of a subterranean cavern. The ground slopes down and the ceiling up, opening up into a vast space.

Still that nameless, sourceless glow in the air. Still those weeping walls. Other tunnels and pits lead to this cavern, and that distant, approaching chittering comes from one of the larger tunnels. A faint wind blows out of that tunnel too. Not fresh air but a hot, stinking wind, wet with humidity, pushed ahead of whatever it is that approaches.

Something stirs in the murky depths of the chamber. A human voice, or something like one:

"You should have left him to die. Ran while you still could."

Órfhlaith

Since she first found him and cared for him, she's known he was warm. In fact, when he was injured was the coolest she's ever felt his skin, until he regained some health. It was a wonder to feel him against her bare skin that night on the outcropping; she marveled at the heat that suffused her body wherever she was in contact with his. But right now, her own skin feels uncomfortably cold, except in patches - her hands, her face - that are just a little too warm. Jumping into his arms when he is in this massive, ungodly form is like being buried in a pile of furs. She gasps a little at it, holding tight to him even though it wasn't a very big jump and he obviously has a good hold on her. She looks at him, fully, her eyes unblinking.

Say this much for her: even as drained as she is, she can look at him. And it isn't terror that fills her, but something more like awe.

Her feet, in her muddied and slime-covered shoes, set down on the ground. She exhales and looks around. She chokes a bit on the wind that hits their faces. She coughs.

And then:

"You may still run. While you can."

Conall

A faint, rasping laugh echoes through the acrid air. In the center of the chamber, something moves again. Something rises creakily, shambling forward.

The witch has seen this woman before. She's seen her carried up the rocky hills by her brother, her husband. She's seen her laid inside a healing circle. She cleansed her, drove the foul spirits from her, watched color come back into her cheeks. She has seen her before and knows her, but only because there is no one else this could be.

She would not have recognized her on sight. Beatrice is unrecognizable: a grotesque and naked figure, limbs cachetic and wasted. Eyes sunk deep in a skull-like face, the pupils faintly aglow as though that miasma in the air fills her from within. Innumerable weeping sores cover skin hanging loose from jutting bones. Her belly alone is engorged, bulging, full, traced with dark veins. Bony fingers caress that mass absently, and even from across the cavern the witch can see something move inside her in response.

"Brave," that-which-was-Beatrice wheezes. "And blind. Why would you die for them? For him? My husband. They are petty and small and cruel and evil, rotten to their marrow. You know not what they are, nor what they deserve."

Órfhlaith

Beatrice was in her care, once. And she thought she helped her.

Saved her.

For a moment, the witch closes her eyes, then opens them. Takes a breath. Says, of all things:

"Do not call him your husband. He was her husband." Shakes her head. "You cannot be Beatrice."

Conall

"I am Beatrice," she snarls, "but you are right. He is not my husband. He never should have been my husband.

"Ask him yourself. Ask my dear, faithful Thomas how our marriage came to be. He lives still, does he not? Alive a little longer, until my lord arrives."

Órfhlaith

There was hope in her, there, that this wasn't Beatrice. Isn't. It can't be. No human woman --

Orla feels sick. She looks grey. Goes over to the cocoon where Thomas is and, fighting her nausea, puts her hand on the film. Tries to tear it, if she can. Looks at Con for help, if she can't.

Conall

Through all this the wolf has been silent: crouched on all fours, his hackles raised, his eyes fixed on the thing Beatrice has become. When the witch starts to tear at the cocoon, he reaches to help her. His eyes never leaving Beatrice, he digs his claws in, tears the sticky, gelatinous material that encases Thomas. Layer upon layer upon layer shreds -- parting with wet snaps, opening in yawning ovals. As they go, the wolf shifts again, returning to his human shape. Finally, they free Thomas's gasping mouth, bulging eyes. He sucks hungrily at the air, then chokes on the stench and rolls pitifully to his side, retching, arms and legs still entangled.

Beatrice watches impassively, keeping her distance. She strokes her swollen belly. The thing inside her writhes and coils and settles, comforted.

"Beatrice?" Thomas catches sight of her. "What... what has happened to you -- "

He turns on his face and vomits. The wolf, baring his teeth in disgust, tears the rest of the cocoon away so roughly that he heaves the man from the floor several times before spilling him limbs-akimbo onto the filthy ground.

Órfhlaith

Despite the fact that what they're doing is grotesque, the look on the witch's face when Thomas's face is revealed is one of aching relief, of care, of nurturance. Even when he rolls and vomits, she stays with him, helps him on his side so he doesn't choke. Pity and rage and worry and disgust fly around inside of her, crashing in to one another.

"Con, careful," she says, low but clear, as the cocoon gets jerked around. Goes to Thomas when he's free, wishing she had water to give him, something. "Thomas, tell me how you and Beatrice came to be married. Tell me now. The truth."

Conall

"What?"

Blank incomprehension. Then bewilderment.

"What -- why would you -- this is no time to -- "

"Answer her," growls the wolf, impatient.

Thomas flinches. He coughs, turns his face to the side, spits. Wiping his mouth, he sits up. "'Tis a story like any other, I suppose. Her brother and I were playmates as children. She was oft in our shadow. You know how younger sisters are. When I became a man, and she a woman, things happened as they do, between a man and a woman. Soon she was with child," his eyes flicker to her bulging belly and then away, sickened, "and I begged her father for her hand. He gave her to me."

"Oh, how pleasantly you tell the story, Thomas." Beatrice's voice drips with disdain. "Speak the truth for once, worm. You were a man, sixteen and grown. I was yet a child! I had not seen my twelfth summer when you began to torment me, following me, cornering me, saying disgusting things, putting your hands where they did not belong.

"How I begged then. Begged you to leave me be, begged my brother and my father to protect me; begged to be sent away to a convent, begged to be kept safe. None heeded me. Before I was thirteen you'd planted your bastard in me, and then -- salt in my wounds -- my father, my brother, the priest, all the wretched men of the village stood by and let you have me. Let you do what you would with me every night of my life."

"Beatrice, I made you my wife!" Thomas is ashen, genuinely shocked. "I could have left you a fallen woman, carrying a nameless bastard, but I didn't. I loved you! Your brother knew it, and your father. God knows I speak the truth."

Beatrice laughs. "My brother is dead. My father too. I have a new god now." Her lambent eyes flick past Thomas, land on the witch. "Perhaps the witch of the hills will know this one's name."

Órfhlaith

Heat rises around the witch.

Thomas, whom she is crouched over, feels it first: a wave of dry, crackling heat lashing across his face and his wet, tainted flesh. Conall feels it, too, a wave rippling out from her. He can see the ends of her hair rising again. Stranger still, she seems to become somewhat borderless, as though the edges of her body are mixing with the air itself in eddies of energy. The only mortal left in this place is Thomas, and the gods only know what looking at her now is like for him. She is a terror: driving out evil spirits, lifting monsters into the air with a thought, engulfing her enemies in flame that needs no spark. But the uncanny veil of humanity is being stripped away in this dark, strange place, and there is a shifting light in the irises of her eyes that looks like water, clouds, lightning, fire.

Her eyes are, in some ways, not entirely unlike Beatrice's. The energy is all birthed from the same place, as all energy ever was. The line between purity and corruption is terribly thin. And a great tragedy, in life and in magic, is that someone else's action can push you over that line. You have so little control. And none at all, over what others do to you.

Perhaps none of them can tell what it is that causes this reaction in the witch: the way her eyes shine, the way the world around her warps and bends to whatever power she's gathered in her short, solitary life. It is easy enough, for all of them, to recognize it as rage. Blind, murderous fury. Ruthless, ravenous, wrath, the likes of which could bring cities down, could uproot fields, could tear bodies in half. That is often what power looks like. That is often how power is supposed to feel.

But as quick as her temper is, that has never been the root of it. Not for Órfhlaith. Nor her mother, who was also a fearsome master of her craft. There are deeper wells. There are older laws of nature, which are not about what will be rewarded and what will be punished but about what is owed: between earth and sun, between air and life, between the hearts and minds of living creatures. There are contracts, unspoken and unwritten and unremembered by most, that must be honored. The price of breaking such contracts is the corruption they are all surrounded by now. The price of breaking these contracts is always, ultimately, a grief so encompassing that no one is spared.

Not Thomas.

Not Beatrice.

Not the witch.

As steep as the price of wrath is, this price is dearer.

--

She says nothing to Thomas. She does not grab him by the hair and slam his head into the rock. She does not cover his mouth and nose and pin him down, starve him for air and kill him that way. She rises from him, turns away from him, and the air around him gets very cold with her departure.

Then she walks towards Beatrice. Her hands are before her, as if she were carrying a large bowl. She walks slowly, as if that bowl is filled. But as she walks, something is filling the space between her hands. Something Conall has never seen the witch create, has perhaps never seen anyone but another wolf make visible or manipulate. A pale light, clear and blue and shimmering, brighter than the red glow they saw earlier, and achingly familiar. It is so pure it cannot occupy the same space and time as rage. It is the essence of every healing talen made by every theurge since they learned to create it. It is, in truth, the essence of all magic, whether made by wolves or witches or faeries.

It comes from Gaia.

It is Gaia.

Orla is standing before Beatrice, holding a swirling, growing pool of gnosis. Like an offering. Like a gift. Like a sacrifice.

The fire in her eyes has revealed itself as unshed tears. One rolls down. Then another.

"This is not who you are."

And even quieter, a plea:

"Come back."

Conall

With every word from Beatrice, Thomas cowered.

With every flicker of wrath, of power rising in the witch, he flinches lower still, whimpering. He cannot bear to look at her. He cannot bear to look at either of them -- not the woman who tried to help him, and not the woman who tried to escape him.

The wolf looks, though. His eyes flick between she-who-was-Beatrice and his witch. When the latter begins to step forward, he rises to his feet. Takes a step after her before some older, deeper understanding passes through him, and he stops.

She goes on alone, then. She walks forward, step by step, power crackling through the strands of her hair, purity cupped in her hands. Filling between her hands like water from an unseen spring. That pale, perfect light shines out from what she carries, lancing through the dim baleful red. The squelching slime peels back from her feet, leaving her standing on dry stone. When that light falls upon Beatrice, a few sores on her body close. That which grows inside her writhes visibly, and not in delight.

Beatrice meets the witch's eyes. The rage and triumph twisting her face subsides; becomes uncertainty. That dull glow at the heart of her pupils dims. Hesitantly, she reaches out her hand. Stops just shy of touching what is offered.

"I don't know if I can," she whispers. "My master is one of the Old Ones. He has burrowed so deeply inside me. And he is coming."

A shuddering breath.

"Nogg-Htharth of the Red Void. That is his true name. You must run. He cannot die, but if you can seal what I have opened..."

She jerks, as though struck by lightning. Her limbs spasm. Her head arches back. The dull red glow in the air begins to thicken again. The ground beneath their feet trembles.

"He is almost here."

Órfhlaith

Deep down, she's not sure this is going to work. She's not sure it can work. She's not sure Conall will let her get near Beatrice. She's not sure Beatrice deserves this, even now.

But again: the witch is a fool.

--

Conall does not stop her. Everything he is comes from those ancient contracts, that well of grief at their breaking. His strength, and his rage, are simply other expressions of it. In him, that rage can be a holy thing, as holy and pure as the light forming between Orla's hands now. So though he does not instantly understand, it takes only a moment for his soul to recognize it. Honor it.

Beatrice does not stop her, either. The witch thinks she might attack. Thinks she might run. Thinks there are a dozen other possibilities she hasn't considered. But Beatrice stands there, and a part of her heals. Small healings, against almost insurmountable wounds. The witch does not look away from Beatrice's baleful eyes though. That is where the change must happen.

And then... it does.

"The Old Ones are not as old as this," Orla tells her, still holding the light. "You can trust it."

And maybe it is too late;

he is coming.

Orla takes a deep breath, and commits that name to memory. And she should save her strength, re-absorb what she has offered, do what she can to seal this gate or opening that Beatrice speaks of. But then if they fail anyway, then Beatrice's soul is also lost. The part of her that understands the old ways does not think she deserves to succeed, if she walks away from Beatrice and leaves her to that fate.

So the witch surges forward those last few steps, and the light between her hands moves between her body and Beatrice's, and she wraps her arms around the other woman's starved frame as she does so. For a moment the light is too bright to look at. It does whatever it can do: whether wrapping around Beatrice or entering her. It does not matter. It was a gift freely given, a willing sacrifice. Orla does not regret it, even should it fail.

"Tell me what we must do," she gasps into the other woman's ear.

Conall

As the witch closes those last steps, Beatrice -- whether out of fear and self-preservation, or because she is compelled by what is inside her -- flinches away. It is not fast enough. She is upon her -- wrapping her arms around her, tightly, holding her as that brilliant light dazzles them both.

It surrounds them both, that light. Fills Beatrice, flows into her through every pore and orifice, sealing wounds and healing bruises. Yet that which is clean and pure can also be ruthless and unyielding. When it meets what is inside Beatrice, as it inevitably must, a great spasm wracks the emaciated woman. Twists her spine back, turns her fingers into gripping, grasping claws. She shakes like a leaf, and to that desperate gasp she can say only one thing --

"Close the passageway. The hole between worlds. Close it. I don't know how, but you must -- you must -- "

She screams. Dark blood runs down the insides of her thighs, pattering down on stone. Then something thicker than blood, and darker still -- purulent and black, stinking. Her abdomen collapses as it pours from her. As it hits the ground, it begins to coalesce.

"He is here. He is here. You must flee!"

Her eyes roll back. She goes limp, says nothing more. It's impossible to tell if the woman lives or not. An instant later the wolf is at his witch's side, scooping the collapsed Beatrice up in one arm, hurrying her along with the other.

Órfhlaith

The witch holds Beatrice as she collapses. She eases that passage to the ground, even though blood and worse gets on her shift, even though the spasms going through Beatrice threaten to bruise her. She holds her as she falls, but then she lets her go. She is shaking when she stands, intending to move, to do as Beatrice says and close the opening. She looks down at what is moving, in the blood, and chokes on a scream. Conall grabs Beatrice and they turn to run.

Thomas is still there on the ground. Still wounded, still wretched. And in a better world, or in a purer state, she might stop for him, give him some words, try to heal his soul as she has tried to heal Beatrice's. But here is the truth: he has broken so many of the old laws. He feels no remorse, has staved off the pain that is his ultimate repayment. It will come for him eventually, no matter what. And there will be no true justice for him, in their world. Orla knows that.

And here is the deeper, darker truth:

she just has so little left to give, right now. Especially not for him.

They run. And they leave him behind.

--

"How do we get back?" she pants to Conall, as they run. "The hole - we jumped - how are we going to get back up?"

Conall

Thomas is screaming as they pass him. He thrashes against the last of the biofilm that coated him, scrambling to his feet, slipping in the muck, falling again. He reaches for them, his fingers brushing the witch's ankles.

The wolf shifts. Turns into something huge and horrifying. Turns on him, snapping his jaws at the man. Thomas is well and truly screaming now, incoherent, scrabbling away.

They turn. They run.

They leave him behind.

--

"I lift you." In this form, the wolf's words are grating growls, barely intelligible. He runs on three paws, the fourth carrying the unconscious Beatrice. "Then I jump."

The ground quakes, sudden, much harder than ever before. Even the wolf stumbles. A crack runs across the cavern's ceiling. A foul wind blasts out of that yawning tunnel. The red glow in the air is suddenly incandescent, casting everything into sharp bloody relief, throwing their shadows ahead of them. They don't dare look back. They can't help but look back, eyes drawn by a force they cannot understand.

Nogg-Htharth roars into the cavern: a gargantuan presence so profane that the mind cannot quite grasp its true shape. Only impressions linger -- its size, its stench, its blindness and its walls of bulbous, pulsating flesh the dull red of organ-meat. Its noise is deafening, and if the witch listens to the cacophony she'll hear -- she'll understand, somehow -- the insinuations, the intent, the revolting things it wants to do.

It finds Thomas first. It descends on him, and his wordless wails follow them as they flee.

Órfhlaith

Well... that sorts that, then. Orla doesn't argue. She just runs, as fast as she can, even though her limbs feel like they are about to detach. She does fall, for a moment, only to feel a handpaw yanking her up again, putting her on her feet to run again. She is choking on dust from the crumbling earth above, though she doubts it's the earth she knows.

She knows it isn't.

When the roar of the old one echoes through the cavern, she covers her ears as she runs like a child. She is crying; at one point she screams. She is very afraid, and she is exhausted, and all her energy is reserved for the last thing she knows she must do. She has no time to worry about controlling tears or stifling screams.

They get to the hole, though no light comes from above. She holds tight to Conall's fur where she can, as he hefts her up. Grabs the edge of the hole when it's within reach and hauls herself up, scrabbling across slime left from Thomas's cocoon, ash and char left by the spiders she ignited. And perhaps it would be wiser if she ran, without waiting, but

that would take greater strength of will than she has left. So she waits for Conall to join her, still clutching Beatrice, and then she runs onward. Back up the slope, around the bend in the tunnels, gasping for air now, sweating, trying not to listen to the voice in her mind that make every thought pulse an ugly, violated red.

She runs until she sees, sticking out of nowhere, the end of a branch.

Conall

Neither of them have any delusions of battle. Neither of them imagine, even for an instant, standing to face the horror at their backs. They run, and the first time she slips he hauls her up. The second time, he lifts her altogether, carrying her as he carries the unconscious woman.

They reach the hole that dropped them into this cavern. He heaves her up. She scrabbles her way up, up where the air isn't so red, so thick, so distorted with the mindcrushing presence of Nogg-Htharth. The respite is brief. The old one has finished with Thomas; a mere snack, an appetizer. It is not Thomas it wants, or even Beatrice, or even a witch or a wolf. It is the world it wants, their whole entire world with all its light and beauty, and even though the opening between its world and theirs is so very small right now it can find a way through. It is patient. It is very old, and very strong.

The ground trembles again: the wolf, leaping up through the hole, squeezing through a space not really intended for monsters out of myth. He is panting. She is running again. He is running with her, helping her along, pushing her along, sometimes dragging her along when he must, running until they see, sticking out of nowhere, the end of a branch.

He shoves Beatrice through first. Truth is, left to himself he would have tried to kill her. He would have left her behind, too. But he is not alone and that is not what his witch wants, and so Beatrice is the first of all of them to escape. She plunges through that stupefying gap in midair, disappearing head-first exactly in the way that so disturbs the wolf.

Then it's her turn. He pushes her toward that passage between the worlds, looking over his shoulder to see the walls of the tunnel quiver and shake. The air is growing thick again, thick and red. It is hard to breathe; so warm and filthy.

Órfhlaith

"Con-"

and she is through the gap between worlds, tumbling out beside Beatrice in the mud,

"-all!"

A heartbeat that threatens to kill her, then. She feels it breaking inside of her,

and then he's there. He wasn't wrong: it's beyond unsettling, watching pieces of a person come through the air like that. She feels such relief she doesn't mind, though. And then panic: Nogg-Htharth is still coming.

So she scrambles forward. She goes to the branch and shoves it out of the way so it cannot wedge the door open, as it were. And then she casts about, trying to figure out what to do, and how, until she looks down.

Her shift is covered in the blood and worse-than-blood that left Beatrice's body when the light entered her. And she knows: this is a part of him. So she puts her hands on it. Still wet. Cold now, and coagulating. She shudders, but gets it all over her palms, getting as close to the spot where she knows the opening is as she dares, and then moving her hands just that much closer. Stops just shy of her fingertips entering the other world.

"I bind you, Nogg-Htharth of the Red Void, Old One, Undying. With your own essence, I bind you. With your true name, I bind you."

The witch takes a deep breath.

"I bind you, Nogg-Htharth of the Red Void, Old One, Undying. With your own essence, I bind you. With your true name, I bind you."

Another breath.

She begins again. And even as the roaring from the other side grows louder, and the roaring of her own thoughts in her ears grows piercing, she goes on.

I bind you.

Conall

The air is so sweet on this side. The ground so firm. The trees, the sky -- all of it so clean, even if they live in a preindustrial world of mud huts and rutted roads, even if personal hygiene meant a monthly dip in a stream to most, even if refrigeration and antibiotics and hand soap haven't even begun to occur to the population yet. It is clean. It is pure here, and sweet, and clean.

She tumbles through. She falls over the tangle of roots and branches; she scrambles back up. He's right behind her, barely a second behind, an eternity behind. He bursts through, yellow eyes and white fur, white paws caked in thick red-black filth. She knocks the branch aside. He faces the invisible gap between worlds, panting, ears laid back, snarling.

It is clean here. It was clean here. But already Nogg-Htharth is coming. Already that profane beat in their minds; already the air congealing in their nostrils. She slathers her hands in filth. She holds her palms just shy of the doorway between worlds. She speaks words, and they have power. Or rather: she speaks words, and she has magic. She has magic because her mother raised her. She has magic because her mother taught her. She has magic because her mother had magic, and her grandmother, and her ancestresses back a thousand generations or more, and they have died and been murdered and sacrificed and bled so that it could pass on, down through the centuries, into her.

It is in her blood. It is in her bones. Even exhausted, stripped down to the barest bones of will, it is within her.

She speaks the words once. The palms of her hands feel hot. The air trembles, wavering like the air above a fire. That terrible red corruption is seeping through, curling contagion into the edges of leaves, spreading dark over the branches.

She speaks the words twice. Her hands burn. Through empty air itself she can see the other side, swelling closer by the second. She can see Nogg-Htharth closing, can feel the weight and heft of that mighty old one, can feel the earth beneath her feet begin to tremble as well. He is so close now. He is howling, somewhere between desperation and triumph, reaching through and any moment now she'll feel it, feel his touch against her fingertips, meeting across that thinning between worlds.

She speaks the words thrice. Her breath burning in her throat, her vision darkening, her bones aching, her senses dulling into numbness, she pushes the words out.

I bind you, Nogg-Htharth of the Red Void. Old One. Undying.

With your own essence, I bind you.

With your true name, I bind you.

She speaks the words thrice, and all at once,

a great silence.

--

A pressure lifting from the mind. She can see again. She can feel again -- the ground beneath her feet, the wolf at her side. His fur brushing her cheek and her arm; then the solidity of his body as he stands beside her, human again.

There is nothing where the passageway used to be. Only air, a few charred leaves. Little by little, birds begin to sing again.