"...don't see why you're in such a damned hurry that we have to do this now!" said Chester. He kicked emphatically at a rock jutting from the old road. The stone skipped down the dirt path ahead of them, then hit a hard spot and bounced into the trees. While Chester looked for another rock to kick, Berston Groad scanned their surroundings for surprises... doing so more out of habit than any expectation of trouble. Between and slightly ahead of them both, the young but stately Jerimiah Trisk set a lively, animated pace... despite being weighed down with two arms full of hefty books, all of which older than the three of them put together.

"There's no time like the present," Trisk said half-heartedly, without turning to look at Chester. It wasn't a real answer... but then, Chester's objection didn't really deserve one. If it were up to Chester, they would never do ANYTHING 'right now'... it would always be done later.

"Yeah," said Berston. His voice was about an octave and a half away from being a growl. "...and PRESENTLY Joe Markum is sittin' right in the middle of Goldree's Tavern, waiting on some trouble to mysteriously spring up around him like it always does. THAT'S where we ought to be."

"That's a wasted effort and you know it," said Trisk. "We lock him up tonight and his father will have him out on the streets by morning-"

"But at least he'll be locked up tonight! For gods' sake, he almost killed that boy last week-"

"If this pans out the way I think it will," said Trisk. "Then what we find here will be more important than what Joe Markum may or may not do on any give night."

"That's sayin' a lot, Trisk," said Berston.

"Yeah, I'm afraid I gotta agree," Chester added. "Seems like a fool's errand to me. There's a lotta other things we could be doing... or NOT doing... than creeping around some old church that hasn't moved since the day it was built. But we gotta go 'check it out' like you think its gonna skip town or something."

"It's just a hunch, Chester." Trick shot a deep, pleading glance back at his companion, and then an identical one at Berston. "Indulge me just this once. Please?"

"Yeah, yeah," said Berston. "I wouldn't be here if your 'hunches' didn't turn out right more often than not."

"You really think something's going on out here?"

"Yes," Trisk answered. "Logic points to an outside force influencing events in Bephal. MAGIC points to something supernatural."

"And just the other day you were saying that there was no such THING as 'supernatural'" said Chester.

"I use the word because that's what you two know. But once you've been in this stuff long enough-" Trisk jerked his chin down toward the books he was carrying. "-you realize that nature encompasses a LOT of things that are beyond casual comprehension. 'Supernatural' is just what we call that part of nature that we don't understand. Yet."

"Casual comprehension? What the hell-"

"So NOW he's a philosopher, too!" said Berston. He said it with a smile. "Our little flame-thrower sure has come a long way, eh Chester?"

"From Fireballs to Philosophy!" Chester blurted loudly, shattering the reverent silence of the old dirt path. "Sounds like the name of one of those books!"

Trisk nodded, smiling.

"If I wrote one, I think that's what I'd call it."

"Well I liked it better when you were just plain old Trisk... mage-school dropout."

"I didn't drop out," said Trisk. "I just felt that what I DID know would be of better use here. Good thing, too. You two wouldn't last a week without me."

"You'll get no complaints here," said Berston. He stroked the hilt of the golden dagger he wore on his hip, opposite his custom-made sword. "This magic knife of yours has gotten me out of a few."

"And that was just the beginning," said Trisk. "A test, to see what could and couldn't be done."

"If you want to 'test' a few more of my weapons, you go right ahead."

"I'll keep mine natural, if you don't mind," said Chester. Chester carried a seldom-used short sword on one hip, and a well-worn crossbow on the other. He was decent with the first, but downright frightening with the second... and without the aid of Trisk's nature-enhancing magic.

"Don't worry, I'm beyond that simple stuff now."

"Simple...?"

"The spell I'm going to do in the church is much more involved than that dagger. I'll actually be bringing aspects of the spiritual realm into-"

"Spare me the details," said Berston. "As long as nobody gets hurt and I don't have to fight anything uglier than me."

"So, you really think there's something goin on in this old place, eh?"

They had reached the end of the dirt road. The heart of downtown Bephal was behind them, and the outlying farmlands continued to stretch for miles ahead. But here in an unsettled ridge of trees between the two was an old deserted building. The place had been empty for as far back as Jerimiah Trisk's parents could remember.

Had Trisk known his grandparents, they could have told him of a time when the old wood and stone structure was an object of much concern for the tiny town. Bephal had always been homogeneous in its religion... either one worshiped exactly as everyone else did, or worshiped nothing at all. Other religions were tolerated only to the extent that they resembled the familiar... if only by another name. But Bephal was not in the habit of being unkind to strangers... even to a coven of dirt-worshippers who prayed regularly to plants, rocks, and unseen spirits living deep underground. The odd refugees from a less tolerant town were even allowed to build their own church and conduct their boisterous ceremonies at the most unholy hours... as long as they paid their taxes. But, as to be expected, the strange religion failed to win any new members from Bephal's faithful, and so the coven dwindled... and eventually died out.

Their church still remained, however. It was never torn down. Never vandalized. Never converted to another purpose. The church was dedicated to strange gods, and even if one didn't necessarily BELIEVE in strange gods... it was best not to trifle with their belongings.

The church had been abandoned and sealed decades ago, but years of neglect had left hardly a mark on it. The stone walls still stood straight and tall, with only a light dusting of moss on the shaded side of the building. The windows were beveled holes chiseled out of the pale stone and then... after protests from passing townsfolk... covered with wooden shutters. The shutters were still there, untouched by the rot and ravenous insects that should have turned them to splinters years ago. The massive wooden door looked brand new.

"Anybody bring a key?" said Chester.

"Yeah," Berston placed his hand on his sword. "If we need in, we're gettin' in."

"And we definitely need to get in," said Trisk as he stepped off the dirt path and lead his friends toward the church door. The grass surrounding the church was unruly and unwelcoming, but not nearly as much as it SHOULD have been. Berston regarded it with suspicion, as if he expected something to jump out of the weeds and attack him.

If something DID, he would make it apologize before killing it.

The church door had an large, iron latch. Trisk stacked his books on the ground outside and touched the door gently, as if caressing the skin of a beautiful woman. He tried the mechanism... when it started to move, he lowered his arm and turned to Berston.

"It's unlocked," he said, whispering. "I think someone's been here."

Berston started to draw his sword, but Trisk held up one finger. He shook his head slowly. Berston gestured for Chester Fanning to move back. Chester did so... backing out into the grass while loading his crossbow. Berston pressed his back against the stone to the left of the door while Trisk grasped the latch again. He glanced around.

Fanning had his weapon aimed at the door. Berston had his sword half drawn... the soldier's eyes narrowed, manifesting the dark, angry look that made him famous... and later, infamous... among his enemies on the streets of Bephal.

Trisk pushed the door gently. At first it wouldn't move, but as the mage applied more pressure, the hinges responded in ominous silence.

The church's windows were completely sealed. The building's stone roof was still intact, with no holes for the evening sun to filter through.

There SHOULD have been nothing inside but darkness.

But as the door swung slowly open, a pale bluish-green light spilled across Trisk's drawn face and slim frame. The mage frowned deeply... visibly fighting the urge to back away from this sudden, flickering glow. The light was not glaring, or even very bright... but the fact that it was THERE was a sign of bigger trouble than Jerimiah Trisk had expected to encounter at the old, supposedly-abandoned church.

The door stopped moving, and Trisk's hand rested limply on the wooden surface.

He peered into the shimmering blue-green haze that seemed to fill the building.

But no... it didn't exactly FILL the room. There were still shadows. Plenty of darkness hugging the perimeter of the room... and plenty of things hiding IN that darkness. Or maybe not... maybe that was movement that Trisk saw from the corner of his eye, or perhaps it was just a trick of the light.

The light was coming from an arrangement of candles on the floor near the center of the room. The candles were tall and thick. Six of them burnt with the sizzle and thick odor of animal fat. And just as the 'wax' was not wax, the 'fire' was not real flame. Amorphous globes of blue-green luminescence undulated above the black wicks... as if the candles were giving off this thick glowing gas instead of fire.

The floor surrounding the candles... and all of the floor that could be seen in their dim light... was riddled with dark cracks, as if the stone had been struck by a giant iron fist. The cracks were wide and deep... and they grew wider and deeper as Trisk's eyes followed them back to some point in the darkness that he couldn't see. Somewhere back there... in the dark... the floor had been ripped open. And somewhere back there... where Trisk's eyes did not want to linger... something was definitely... DEFINITELY... moving around in the shadows.

"There's trouble," he said to Berston, who was watching him with fading patience. Trisk didn't bother to whisper. Whatever was inside undoubtedly knew they were there.

"Well then," said Berston. "Lets go on in and introduce ourselves, eh?"

"I don't think-"

Berston Groad nudged Trisk aside and pounded on the door with his fist. The door swung open, and Berston stepped boldly into the odd light of the candles.

"WHO'S IN HERE!" he demanded. "This is OFFICER GROAD of the TOWN GUARD! STEP FORWARD AND..."

Groad's challenge ground to a sudden, gulping halt as a shape slid out of the darkness. At first Trisk was unclear as to what it was. It's shape SEEMED human, but even at a young age, Trisk new better than to judge something by shape alone... especially if that shape stayed hidden... coming toward the light, but never moving fully into it.

"Who are you?" Trisk's demand was less belligerent than Groad's, but a hint of growing unease ran through his words.

"Who... am I?" said the shape. The voice was a low, crackling groan.... the labored hiss of something very, very old. It was a woman's voice. Trisk could hear the shape inhale with a wheeze, as if those three words alone had winded it. "The mob comes to ask my name? You knew me then... and now you come to know me again? Mmmmmm, not this time, I think... Perhaps I will know YOU first!"

The words didn't quite make sense. But then, neither did the shape that was addressing them. If the thing standing just beyond the candlelight was human, then it was a human with more than the normal allotment of moving parts. There seemed to be a kind of... rhythm... to the thing, even though it was standing still.

"I've already told you," said Groad. He approached the shape... slowly. His right hand rested on his sword, but his left hung at his side. Groad slid his left hand slightly behind his thigh and flicked his fingers at Trisk.

Trisk muttered a quick spell. The air thickened around him and suddenly coalesced into a small glowing sphere above his head The fist-sized ball grew brighter as it levitated toward the ceiling, casting its light farther as it rose.

Berston Groad yelped in surprise as the light washed over the figure that was addressing them. He drew back, visibly fighting the urge to turn away from the old woman.

...but perhaps 'old' was not the best description. The thing he saw had been 'old' centuries ago. Since then, it had gone past 'ancient' and found some new, unnamed territory on the far side of it. The woman... her sex discernable only by the lingering hint of femininity in her rasp and the dress-like arrangement of her layered rags... had skin that resembled thick, dry parchment that had been scratched by small clawed animals. Her flesh, what little there was of it, was not dead or rotten, but it looked as if it SHOULD have been.

But worse than the condition of her body... a condition that Trisk immediately thought of as 'shriveled'... was what had been done TO it. Or was BEING done to it.

What Trisk first mistook for a thick rope holding the woman's rags in place was actually some kind of creature... or a part of one. It looked like a tree root, but it moved, clutching her waist and wiggling deeper into the rags around her thighs. There were several of them scattered around her body... stroking her exposed skin like the fingers of an amorous lover. Each of the roots moved with its own separate rhythm that caused the woman's clothes to pulse rhythmically-

-and the woman herself to moan and smile at Trisk with lusty, toothless grin.

"So this one brings magic," she hissed. One of her eyes fixed on Trisk. The other was a milky white orb that, if it could see at all, certainly couldn't see anything of THIS world.

Disgusted, Trisk backed away. But he did not LOOK away. His eyes followed the probing, undulating roots down the hag's body to the floor, where they coiled around her vein-riddled legs before trailing off into a place in the darkness that his mage-light could not reach. There was something there. Something large, and undoubtedly INhuman. The hag was attached to it-

-probably in more than one way, including some that Trisk didn't want to consider.

He needed to find out what it was. With a thought, he sent his light-globe floating toward it. The shadows in the room shifted... but they didn't retreat. The room stayed just as dark as it had been before... possibly even growing a little darker. There was magic at work here. But was the magic coming from the woman? Or from the thing in the darkness?

"And what do you wish to see, little magic boy?" said the hag.

"You'll talk to me, witch," said Berston Groad. The swordsman had regained his composure. He was not within beheading-distance of the woman, but he could be with three small steps and a swing of his weapon. Trisk had seen for himself what often happened to people who thought themselves safely out of Groad's reach. "Who are you and what is that thing back there?"

"You knowww ussss," the woman hissed. "You came before... I knew you'd come again. You think I didn't hear your scratchings outside my door? You came upon us like thieves... but now the grass and the trees and the flies whisper their secrets to meee. Surprise, surprise... the mob comes again... heeheeeeeeee...."

"Trisk?" said Groad. He risked a glance at the confused and disgusted mage. "You know this woman?"

"Never seen her before in my life."

"A pity the mob is so small this time," said the hag. "Tell me, magic boy... where are the others, with their torches and pitchforks. And knives... ohhhhh, yes, the kniiives, kniiiives, bloody kniiiives..."

"Clearly this woman is deranged," said Trisk.

"Clearly," Berston mocked him. He glanced at Chester, who was standing in the doorway. His crossbow as leveled at the hag's chest. Berston jerked his head to the right-

Chester's crossbow swung toward the unseen thing in the shadows behind the witch. Chester closed one eye and took aim at the center of... whatever it was.

"HEEEHEEEHEEEEE!" The hag cackled. She actually... cackled.

Jerimiah Trisk had never heard a 'cackle' before. He took an instant dislike to it.

"Wiser, are they?" she hissed. "They send men with swords and magic. Men with boots to dance on my flowers while they wait. Wait their turn, they did... after all, there was only one of me. OHHHHHhhh, how we fought and cried. And prayed... but there was no help for us... but now we make our own help... no more prayers... no more cries... except for yours..."

"HEY!" Groad barked. He hoped the shout would snap the pieces of the hag's scattered mind back together. She looked at him.... gave him a deep scowl that sent wrinkles arcing across her leathery skin like tiny bolts of lightning.

"What do you WANT!" she snapped angrily. "WHY are you HERE!?!"

"We're here to ask you those very same questions," said Berston. "We have reason to believe this place is connected to... ummm... recent troubles. We came to take a look, and here you are-"

"YOU WON'T TOUCH ME!" the hag spat.

"Believe me," said Chester. "Nobody here has ANY intention of touching you. Trust me on this."

"NOT AGAIN!" the hag continued her delusional shouts. "NOT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN!"

Trisk's light globe floated over and above the hag... trying to expose more of the shape behind her. It was no use. The darkness moved to conceal it.

"...cloak of shadows..." Trisk muttered. He recognized the spell... now if he could only remember how to counter it. He'd seen the counter-spell once, but somehow he doubted the woman would let him fumble through his books to find it. He'd have to try it from memory. "...ummmm, hmmmm..."

Meanwhile, Berston Groad had taken one bold step toward the woman... drawing her attention away from Trisk and Chester.

"STAY AWAY!" The woman pointed a crooked, shriveled finger at Groad. "You DO know I will kill you!"

"I know nothing of the sort," said Berston. "But threatening a member of the Town Guard is jailing offence... deranged or not. And, since our jail tends to be full more often that not, I'd just as soon you attack me so that we can cut you to ribbons and be done with you. What do you say... deal?"

"HEEEE! Youuu and your worrrrrds. No better than the others. NONE of you! Come to take me... come to BEAT me... come to drag me off into the woods and... Kniiiives, kniiiives, bloody kniiiives... But nooooo, not this time!"

...no one caught the sly smile dawning across Trisk's lips...

"You caught us once! Ohhh, how he wept and screamed when you did those things. But you had him... you held him... but now he holds YOU! He holds you ALL in his poison embrace! HEEHEEEEE! We will see this place DIE SLOWLY for what you've done!"

Jerimiah Trisk thrust his hand forward and spat a rapid string of words. The palm of the mage's hand threw off a single pulse of pure, white light.... filling the room with a near blinding, heatless glare. The shadows that clung to the walls, ceiling, and the concealed shape behind the hag vanished-

The hag shrieked in sudden shock, throwing one bony, shriveled arm over her eyes to shield them from the glare. The light poured past her, revealing the monstrous crack in the church's stone floor. Rising from the heart of that dark chasm was a thick column of writhing plant-flesh topped with a crown of tentacles that had spread across the ceiling, completely concealing the stone under a layer of squirming roots. The thing's body was thicker than a tree, and instead of bark, its turgid torso was covered in a gnarled, pulsating skin that had split open in random places to spill forth knots of grasping, probing roots... some of which had attached themselves to the hag in sickening and unholy ways. Now the entire mass writhed angrily... not in response to the light, but to the woman's scream. Roots began slithering across the floor toward the intruders.

"BACK!" The hag shouted. She pointed to the hole in the floor...

-only Trisk saw what she was doing with her OTHER hand-

"AWAY! THEY WILL NOT HURT YOU AGAIN!"

The hideous thing moaned. The sound was almost human. Rage and... concern?

"GO!" The hag's pointing finger shook.

Then, with a single, massive heave... the root-thing yanked itself down into the floor, taking all of its tentacles with it. Those holding the hag were the last to vanish slither away into the cracks of shattered darkness. Just before the last of them went, the hag brought her other hand around before her, slashing at the air as if it was an enemy. Blue-green light trailed from her fingers as she swept them down... across... and back, tracing a symbol in the air.

"HEIANEHTOAN!" She snarled.

Something took shape in the air... something reptilian and translucent uncoiling from the fading embers of the summoning spell-

But before the thing solidified, a single beam of light stuck its heart, shattering the spell and sending the summoned creature slithering back into the ethereal plane from which it had been summoned.

The witch's eyes... eye... burned with fury.

The remnants of Jerimiah Trisk's banishing spell still hung around him in a glowing haze. His hand was still outstretched, fingers slightly curled...

...he straightened them, pointing them at the witch.

"BURN!" He shouted. An arrow-thin bolt of flame shot from each fingertip. The hag thrust her hand out as if she were going to catch them. Four of the bolts exploded in the air, but he fifth struck her left shoulder, forcing her back toward the wall. Her rags began to smoulder... the flesh of her shoulder blackened, and a smokey stench began to fill the old church.

Chester Fanning and Berston Groad both moved in. Fanning fired his crossbow while sprinting across the room, away from Jerimiah. Groad was closer. With his sword drawn, he charged-

Fanning's bolt changed direction and struck Fanning in the arm, just above the elbow Had the swordsman not turned during his charge, it would have impaled him through the heart.

"URRGH!" Groad's charge faltered, but he caught his balance and-

-flew across the room, flung away by a casual sweep of the hag's hand. Groad landed on his buttocks and slid hard into a wall, just managing to avoid bashing his head open on the stone.

The hag was quick with her incantations. Trisk didn't even SEE her cast the missile deflection spell... this one was going to be a challenge.

The hag obviously though the same of him, because while Fanning reloaded and Groad got to his feet, she turned her attention to him.

"NOT GOING TO TOUCH ME AGAIN!" She spat. She clawed at the air with her gnarled hands, extending her arms toward Trisk.

Trisk had been using Fanning and Groad's distraction to prepare a more powerful spell, but his incantation faded when ten sharp daggers of pain sank into his chest.

"ARRGH!" Blood soaked through the mage's shirt... radiating from ten spots where the witch's fingers seemed to be digging into his flesh-

-from across the room.

"DIE!" the hag howled. "DIE LIKE THE OTHERS! MURDERERS AND FOOLS AND MURDERERS!!"

The fingers curled around Trisk's ribs, ripping though his flesh and tightening around his bones like a vice. She could kill him so easily... but she wanted him to suffer first.

-CRACK-

Two ribs snapped in his chest.

"...ungh..." Trisk dropped to his knees.

Berston Groad charged again. With his sword in one hand and his enchanted golden dagger in the other, he-

-halted in mid stride as the hag moved one curled hand toward him. Five jolts of pain vanished from Trisk's chest, but the mage knew that they were not gone... merely relocated. Groad growled as he tried to step forward, but it was as if the witch were holding the big man back with her tiny, almost skeletal arm.

"You came in the night with your LIES and your KNIVES!" said the hag. "You killed him! You KILLED HIM! But I brought him BACK! Now your LIES will do you no good! Now your KNIVES will rust in the ground with your rotting corpses! We will WRING the life from this TOWN like blood from a beating... HEART!"

Trisk's vision went red as another rib cracked in his chest. He'd been trying to form a spell, but the pain scattered his thoughts-

zzzzz-THUCK!

The hag jerked upright as Chester Fanning's crossbow found its mark. The ugly wood and iron bolt protruded from the center of her chest as she staggered back, gasping and gurgling in surprise. She looked down at the missile.

"What.... thought I only had ONE?" said Chester. "...crazy bitch."

With the witch's spell broken, Trisk collapsed. Groad stumbled forward, then paused to catch his breath.

Fanning loaded another bolt into his bow.

"Trisk...?" Groad huffed. "You... you okay..."

"S-so far..." Trisk forced himself up into a kneeling position. "...not so good..."

The witch had backed herself against the wall, where she peered out at them like a cornered rat... her one good eye jerking from man to man as blood poured from her wound.

Then, she smiled.

The fatal bolt turned to dust in her flesh. She clutched one hand to the wound it left behind and pointed with the other-

Chester's crossbow hit the floor. The grown man screamed like a child as long, slender strips of flesh began to peel away from his forearms.

"DOWN!" Trisk shouted, gesturing as fast as he could.

The light-globe that had been hovering above them suddenly turned blood-red and shot downward toward the witch. The sphere sprouted angry red flames-

Then, it exploded. Thirty dart-sized slivers of solid flame pelted the woman, who had been prepared to deflect the single large missile, but not a shower of smaller ones.

The hag shrieked as the shard of flame burnt through her rags and began to bite into her flesh. Each one was merely enough to wound and annoy... but thirty of them at once...

"REEEEEEEEEEEARRKG!"

The blazing hag streaked across the room, running not for the door, but for the crack in the center of the stone floor.

"HELP MEEE!" She cried.

"GET HER!" Trisk shouted.

Groad sprang into the old woman's path. The woman SCREAMED at his sword-

"AAAAAGH!"

Groad dropped the suddenly red-hot weapon. The flesh of his hand was still sizzling from its touch-

-but he still had Trisk's dagger. He pretended to step out of the hag's way, but then spun and plunged it into the center of her back as she sprinted past.

The hag stopped silent, stiffening as the blade nicked her spine. She gasped... then staggered away from him. Or she tried. Her legs went limp and she fell, landing on her back so that her own weight forced the blade deeper into her flesh.

"...hhhhhhelllp meeee..." she gasped as she lay there, eyes boiling with rage. She pointed at the man who had killed her... fingers curling into claws once again.

Berston Groad snatched up his sword. The metal was still burning hot, but he gripped it tight and swung it-

-removing the hag's gnarled hand just below the wrist. The severed hand flew into the darkness. Trisk heard it hit a wall, but couldn't see where it landed.

"...strike her down!" he said. "Before she-"

Groad raised his weapon and thrust the hot steel through the hag's chest.

"DIEEE!!!" The word came not from Groad, but from the hag's trembling lips. She barked out her last full breath in a curse, then went limp on the floor... blood pooling beneath her wounds. It had taken three fatal wounds to bring her down... not counting Trisk's flames. But woman was STILL not yet done.

She lay there, wheezing and gasping... her one good eye slowly losing focus. Her toothless mouth opened and closed breathlessly for several seconds before she found words...

"...all for nothing..." she moaned. Berston Groad still hovered over her, but she was not talking to him. She wasn't even SEEING him. "...lies... all lies! The children! only ...trying to help... trying to cure... the... childrennn....."

The hag's last word became a wheezing, raspy sigh. It was the last breath her lungs would ever draw.

"Could use some help over here!" said Chester. The archer had managed to take off his shirt and was trying to bandage his ravaged arms. He wasn't doing very well... and was now kneeling in a pool of his own blood. "I'm... I'm getting dizzy, I think..."

"Groad-" Trisk pointed to Chester. "Help him. My books..." The mage crawled back toward the door and retrieved two of his books. Ignoring the finger-sized holes in his own chest, he began frantically flipping pages. "...got to find out what that thing was... I've seen it... seen it somewhere... one of these books..."

"It was a crazy old woman, that's what it was," said Chester... joking even as he bled. "Even I could tell... ungh... that. Damn, she got me good."

"You'll be fine," said Groad. Berston's hands were burnt and blistered, but he ignored the pain as he tore Chester's shirt into strips. "Just need to stop the bleeding. Trisk, who was that woman?.... Trisk? Trisk, you pass out on me?"

"Not yet," said Trisk. The mage's bloody fingers stopped on a page with a drawing of a large tree. "...no, that's not it..." He turned the page. "Hmmmm... I think... -oh, no..."

"What?" said Groad. "You find it?"

"No," said Trisk, looking up from his book. "But I think the floor just moved."

All three men turned toward the center of the room. There was sudden shudder, and then the floor heaved upward as the plant-thing erupted from the stone, widening the large hole that was already there. The creature's crown slammed into the ceiling. Tentacles spread across the stone and then down each of the walls-

The room suddenly got darker as a curtain of roots descended across the open doorway.

Berston Groad gasped... and did nothing. He would have TRIED... but the thing was too fast. By the time his eyes fully realized what they were seeing, tentacles were spilling out of the cracks in the floor, turning the church into a nest of a hundred-thousand snakes.

Chester Fanning screamed as something wrapped around his legs and yanked him away.

"CHESTER!" Groad ran back for his sword... still protruding from the witch's chest. Another tentacle... long and thin, and tipped with a scorpion's sting... plunged into his back. "aRRRGH!" Groad stumbled and fell. Roots covered him instantly, turning him into a man-shaped lump on the floor.

"BEGONE!" Trisk finished his most powerful banishment spell. Light erupted from his hands, spraying the massive core-root.

The root shuddered. And then a vertical mouth yawned open on its torso, and a cluster of tiny tendrils sprayed across the room, striking Trisk in the chest and knocking him back. He landed on top of his useless books, struggling valiantly as the roots entangled him like a net. But the more he fought, the tighter the roots bound him.

Before the tendrils pulled over his face, he saw Berston Groad's mummified body being dragged toward the hole in the floor. Chester was gone... Trisk didn't see him anywhere.

His friends...

...his only friends in the world, and he had brought them here to their deaths.

It wasn't supposed to be like this! They weren't supposed to DIE!

Trisk wept as the roots tightened around his throat.

Then something sharp plunged into the back of his neck-

-and everything was all right.

---

"...the luckiest man in town."

"And he ain't even FROM this town," said Floyd D'Arcy. He and Grigory Roff stood together in the makeshift infirmary... formerly a bakery... looking at one of the patients. Floyd didn't know the old man's name, but if he had to guess, he would go with 'lucky'. "Say he slept through the whole thing?"

"Not all of it," said Grigory. "He saw enough. If they hadn't found him when they did he'd have probably died."

"Yeah, but who IS he?"

"A pickpocket," said Grigory.

"Really now. He get anyone I know?"

"I don't know. Sheriff locked him up last night before... before all this happened. This morning we emptied the jails... sent him and a few others to check the farms, bring back anyone they found. He was the only one that came back. Whatever happened out there must have been bad. He could have taken off for the woods... but he didn't. This old man with his weak heart ran all the way back to town to warn us. "

"Guess that makes him a hero, then. Hope he makes it. This town could use more like him."

"And you," said Roff.

D'Arcy shook his head.

"Noo. No, not me."

"Yes. I want to thank you for... volunteering. Out there..."

"Hell, I'm just an old man. Nobody would miss-"

"You've got a daughter and a grandson. You didn't have to go... but you would have."

"So would you," said Floyd.

"I've got nothing left to live for," said Roff.

"That ain't true. You've got Bephal."

"A town that wouldn't even elect me mayor?"

"Well now ya got it by default. We're better off for it, if ya ask me.... and this is from a man who didn't even vote for ya."

"Thanks, Floyd. That... that means a lot."

"You're not gonna cry, are ya?"

"No."

"Good." Floyd turned away from the sleeping man and took in the less hopeful sight of the other patients. There were a lot of them, with wounds that were too much even for the hardest men to look at for more than a little while. He and Roff had watched a few of them die already. They currently had corpse-duty... carrying out the dead to make room for the living. They were quite busy.

"I should have been a healer," said Roff. "Damned politics... I thought I could help people, but here I am and I can't even dress a wound."

"Don't be so hard on yourself," said Floyd. He was watching Francesca, who was helping some of the other women hang curtains from the ceiling... creating 'walls' to separate the patients who were definitely going to die from those who might live to see the next day.

"This is bad," said Roff. "All these wounded..."

The mayor thought for a moment, then called out to the middle-aged woman who was giving orders to the others.

"Can any of these people be moved, Dina?"

"What?" the woman replied. She was tired... and bloody. Her left arm had been ripped open from elbow to wrist by one of the undead. But it was only an arm, and it would probably heal with time. The wound was minor compared to some of the ones she was treating. "Move? Don't be ridiculous-"

"I'm just thinking that... with all of the wounded gathered in one place, we're creating another target."

"Well who in the world said this was ALL of them?" said the woman. "We've still got people bleeding in the street out there!"

"We need to use the other buildings. Spread these people out a bit. But not TOO far."

"Whatever you say," said the woman. Then she added: "But none of MY patients is going anywhere, dammit! You can go talk THAT nonsense outside! I don't think anybody's gonna die in the next few minutes, so go find someone else to bother!"

"Still get the same amount of respect as always," said Floyd.

"Mmmhmmm...."

"But I see your point. No need for everybody to be clustered around each other like this. If I was wantin' to hurt people, this is the first place I'd come. ...which is probably a good reason not to hang around here when we ain't needed. Francesca, I'm going outside!" Floyd called to his daughter. "You help these folks as much as you can-"

A small, and high-pitched noise filled the air. A scream. From a child.

"CASEY!" Francesca spun. She dropped her end of the curtain and ran for the door. "I'M COMING, CASEY!"

"What the hell is THIS about?" said Roff. "What NOW!?"

---

"....aaaaaAAAAAAAAGH!"

The first thing Hemingway Shaw felt was his own scream rattling in his throat. The force of it vibrated his entire torso as he howled back the madness.

Then there were hands. Hands on him. Someone grabbing him. He opened his eyes-

"THE TOWERS!" He shouted at the faces staring down at him. Faces that he thought he SHOULD know... but his mind was too busy wrestling with other things to remember their names. "GREAT GODS! DID YOU SEE THE TOWERS!!!"

"Hem! HEM, Wake Up!" Emerson had him by the shoulders and was shaking him. Or trying to shake him... Hemingway Shaw was a very big man. "Wake up! It was a dream!"

"...dragons..." Hemingway's mouth continued to mumble nonsense even after his brain jumped back to the here and now... wherever the here and now was. "...steel dragons in the... the... sky? Huh? What happened?"

"You opened your eyes didn't you," said Gallows. "And here I thought you were the SMART one."

Hemingway sat up. He and the other members of the Night's Bloom were standing in street. Well... everyone ELSE was standing. HE was sitting on his arse in the dirt, looking like he'd suddenly decided to take a nap in the middle the road.

"What happened?" he said.

"What do you remember?" Hars asked him.

"No!" Gallows blurted. "Best if you don't try to remember anything. Anything at all. What you saw and heard wasn't for us; it was for somebody else. If you don't try to hang onto any of it, it'll go away on its own... Understand?"

"Yeah," said Hemingway. The memories of what he had seen were already fading. But they weren't fading fast enough.

"You've done this before, eh Gallows?" said Yexhill Thane. Gallows ignored him. There were clearly more important things to worry about.

"Where are we?" said Hemingway.

"Right back where we started from," said Gallows. "Only about forty years ago."

"N'Doki got us here like he said," said Thane. "So lets do our part and get the hell back to our bodies."

"And how exactly ARE we going to get back?" said Emerson. "I don't see any magic portals around here... do you?"

"That's a damned good question," said Hars.

"It probably takes magic to keep one of those things open," said Thane. "Maybe he'll open it again when we've got the... uhh... goods."

"Yeah, but how will HE know-"

"Same way he knows everyt'ing!" said Emerson. "De Spirits! OoooWEEEEEooooooweeeee!!"

"Shut up, Shaw," said Hemingway as he finally got to his feet. "I think we've just been double-crossed."

"But why?" said Thane. "Why send us all the way back here just to leave us-"

"Get us out of the way?"

"If N'Doki wanted us out of the way, he'd just kill us," said Gallows. "And there's nothing December could do to stop him. I think he's up to something... we just don't know what it is."

"So what do we do?" said Hemingway.

"We do what we came to do," said Hars. "Once we've got what we came to get, THEN we'll worry about who's double-crossed who and why."

"Hey guys," said Thane. "Should I be able to do this?" Yexhill Thane had bent down and picked up a rock. Now he was holding it in the palm of his hand. "I thought we were ghosts."

"We are," said Gallows. "But we're ghosts with substance... another promise that N'Doki carried through on."

"So can people SEE us, or are they just seeing this rock floating in the air?"

"Well, considering that those guys over there are sizing us up..." said Emerson, pointing at the group of four rough 'gentlemen' looking at them from the doorway of a tavern. "I think we're definitely see-able. Is that a word?"

"No."

"Well, it should be."

"We'd better get out of here before we cause trouble," said Hars. "Remember... anything we do can change history, so don't speak to, touch, or look hard at anything. Got it?"

"But the future we came from..." said Hemingway's. "Isn't that the future that assumes we've already BEEN here?"

"Huh?"

"What?"

"Which means that anything we do in the past has already been done. That's why Trisk couldn't find that witch's hand... from the future's point of view, we'd ALREADY traveled to the past to retrieve it. So I wouldn't worry about changing anything, because everything we do has already happened."

"Ummmm..."

"Riiiiiight...."

"So why was N'Doki so reluctant to let December-"

"Don't start with him, Thane," said Emerson. "He's still a little... you know... from the trip."

"I'm not crazy, I'm just trying to explain-"

"Awwww, hell... here we go-"

The four thugs from the tavern were approaching them now. Each of them was armed. And each was smiling. Smiling in a way that meant trouble.

"You Gentlemen Look Lost!" one of the man called out to them. The other three spread out beside him... positioning themselves for a fight. "Might I be able to offer my services to you?"

"And what might those services be, eh?" said Thane.

"Wellll..." said the thug. "You give me... ohhh... HALF of your money, and I only kill two of you. But you give me ALL of your money, I'll not only let you go about your business, but I'll give you directions to wherever you're going. Assuming you're headed to Hell, of course."

"This man is trying to rob us?" said Hemingway.

"US!?"

"-in the middle of downtown, in broad daylight?"

"Welcome to Bephal!" said another of the men. "Now hand it over and be quick about it!"

"You come and GET it!" said Emerson. "I DARE ya! C'Mon!"

"Emerson... please shut up..."

"What? We're just supposed to hand over our money to these BUMS!"

"We don't have any money," said Hars. "We're gho... we're poor travellers from far away."

"Let's just have a look for ourselves then, eh?" said the lead thug. "Empty those pockets-"

"How about I empty your skulls-" said Gallows. The assassin stepped in front of the others... his black cape billowing back in a nonexistent breeze. Suddenly, he was floating. His black boots left the hard dirt and he hovered a few feet off of the ground. His gloved fingers curled into fists. "-After I turn you all inside out."

"...uhhh....mage..." one of the thugs said to the leader.

"Well then!" the leader said suddenly... the nature of his smile changed completely. "You gentlemen have a wonderful afternoon! Welcome to Bephal! Come along, boys..."

The thugs turned away and walked... quickly... back to the tavern.

Gallows floated back to the ground.

"Even dead... he's still creepy..." said Emerson.

"What, you expected him to be LESS creepy when he's dead?" said Thane.

"Oh. Good point."

"Let's go," said Hars. "I think the church is this way."

Hars started walking, and the others followed.

The streets of Bephal were not crowded by Montfort standards... but they were absolutely packed compared with the Bephal of the future. No matter what direction any of them looked, they saw fifteen or twenty people... with at least five of them staring back at them with varying expressions of suspicion and/or criminal intent. This younger Bephal seemed like a much harsher place. The street they were on was lined with taverns... all of which were closed, demolished, or converted to other uses in the time that the Night's Bloom had just left. Despite the fact that it was only mid-afternoon, there were prostitutes openly plying their trade on the streets. Some had children with them. Others were only children themselves.

The population of the town seemed to be younger. There were a few elderly drunks... of both sexes... wandering the row of taverns, but most of the people were still in their prime. A prime that they apparently spent looking for trouble.

"Now THIS is my kind of town!" said Emerson... earning him a stern but silent glare from his brother.

"It's like the exact opposite of the town we just left," said Thane.

"No," Gallows corrected him. "That town is this town's corpse."

"I wonder what Montfort looks like," said Emerson. "HEY! Can we go meet our grandparents!?"

"If your grandparents met you, Emerson, they'd swear off sex forever," said Thane.

Everyone laughed. Except Emerson.

"Huh? I don't get it."

"We need to get off this street," said Hars. "Too much trouble waiting to happen." At the first alley wide enough to not be a trap, Hars cut through to the next road. There were fewer bars here. And fewer people. This was a commercial district. The storekeepers and patrons all regarded the Night's Bloom with wary suspicion... as if they somehow knew that the five strangers belonged on the OTHER street.

"I wonder how many of these people will remember seeing us in the future?" said Thane.

"Most of them will probably be dead," Hemingway replied. "The Bephal we came from doesn't have nearly this many people in it. When you see the difference like this, It's amazing nobody ever caught on..."

"Caught on to what?"

"That something was wrong. Something was killing the town."

"Just slow enough for nobody to notice," said Gallows. "Like a slow poison. By the time you notice the symptoms, its already damaged enough of your organs that the cure won't do you any good."

"Oh, THAT was a pleasant thought," said Emerson. "Remind me to eat out when its your night to cook. Hey, what's that over there?" Emerson pointed to a small crowd about a block ahead. "Looks like-"

"Children," said Thane.

"Oh. Never mind then... I thought it was something interesting."

"It is interesting."

"Thane!"

Yexhill Thane trotted away from the group and approached the crowd of about thirty children which had gathered around a poorly-constructed stage in front of a butcher's shop. On the stage was a thin young man... barely out of childhood himself... giving a very animated puppet-show. As the children watched, the man pretended to have conversations with shoes, gloves, and other household items that he brought to life with his talented hands. The high-pitched singing, dancing, and joking was horrid... but the children loved it. Raucous squeals of laughter erupted from the crowd... even when nothing overtly funny was going on.

And, to Thane, there WAS nothing funny about the man on the stage. The hardened fighter felt himself getting sick just standing there....

"Thane, what is this?" said Hars when the others caught up with him. They stood at the edge of the giggling, squealing crowd of happy children.

"It's him," said Thane, pointing to the stage. "My gods... It's HIM!"

"Who?" said Emerson.

"We have to kill him!" Thane started to push through the crowd, but Hars grabbed him and yanked him back.

"What the HELL are you doing!"

"THAT'S HIM!" Thane shouted... drawing the attention of some of the children. An older girl... almost a woman... was standing with a young child, watching the show. The girl turned toward them and regarded them with keen curiosity.

"That man!" Thane pointed to the stage. "That man is a MONSTER!"

The girl frowned, as if the statement were ridiculously silly.

"That's no monster," she said. "That's mister Filkus!"

"YOU stay away from him!" Thane shouted back. "ALL of you! ALL OF YOU GET AWAY FROM HI-"

Hars clapped his hand over Thane's mouth.

"Never mind him..." Hars said to the girl. "He doesn't like puppets, is all. Come along, Thane..."

"MMMMPH!"

Hars dragged Thane across the street. The Night's Bloom followed, with Hemingway Shaw bringing up the rear. When he looked back, he saw the girl staring at them. She smiled and waved.

Shaw waved back.

"That's one person that'll remember us," he said to Emerson.

"eh?"

"Like I said... this has all happened already. She already remembered us. At the alley. In forty years-"

"Would you mind explaining yourself now?!" Hars snapped after he removed his hand from Thane's mouth.

"THAT MAN IS A KILLER! Maybe not now... but he's going to kill a lot of children before Trisk stops him! He's going to torture them to death! And then he's going to come back as a zombie and kill MORE! But if we stop him NOW-"

"We can't," said Hemingway. "And even if we could... we shouldn't."

"WHAT?! WHY!??"

"Because everything you said has already happened-"

"Oh, will you SHUT UP WITH THAT!" Thane shouted. "We CAN change it! We CAN stop him! All we have to do is kill him and... and BURN the body so he can't come back! We should do it RIGHT NOW-"

"So you're just gonna snatch him off the stage and run him through in front of all those children, then?" Hars said with uncharacteristic calm.

"Uhh... w-well YES! YES I AM!"

"No you're not."

"But the CHILDREN! We can save-"

"We're not here to save children, lad. Unless you count the ones waitin' for us in the future. And how can you be so sure that this is the man you think-"

"Because I SAW him, Hars!" Thane was pleading now. "I SAW him in the future! Please... we've got to stop-"

"No, lad. I'm sorry."

"But some of those same children that were laughing and smiling at him... he's going to... he's going to DO THINGS to them... oh, my gods... YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!"

"No, I don't," said Hars. "But I do understand that we DIED to come here... partially because December couldn't be trusted to NOT do what YOU wanna to do right now! We're here to grab the item and get back to our bodies WITHOUT changing anything else in the past."

"But-"

Gallows leaned over Thane's shoulder and spoke.

"That man you see out there..." he said. "HE was a child once... just like those others. How do you know that one of those kids won't be an even bigger monster? Maybe one day, one of those smiling faces will kill hundreds... thousands. But that won't happen now. All those people will live because right here in this small town, a handful of innocent children got their throats slit by a madman. Do you really want to stop that from happening, Thane?"

"Gallows, what are you TALKING about!? We can't know-"

"Can't we?" Gallows dark eyes peered across the street... and Hemingway Shaw found himself wondering if the assassin's empathic powers worked as well in death as they did in life. Or maybe they worked better.

And just WHAT was he looking at? It certainly wasn't the man on the stage.

"Things happen for a reason," Gallows whispered into Thane's ear, yet still loud enough for the others to hear. "If you don't believe that, then you may as well just stay dead."

"I'm not going to just let-"

"Yes, you are," Gallows' voice was as smooth as a razor's edge.

The assassin whispered something else. Something that only Thane heard... something that made Thane's eyes widen with shock, and then squeeze tight as if shutting out the sight of something hideous...

"No... no.... that's not true..."

"Now let's get going," said Gallows. "I don't like it here."

Then Gallows walked away, leaving the others behind to follow... or not. He didn't seem to care.

"Now THAT was... interesting," said Hemingway.

"That's one way to put it," said Hars. "What did he say-"

"Nothing," Thane lied. "Let's... let's just go."

Hars and Hemingway looked at each other. Hemingway shrugged. Then they all followed Gallows... leaving Filkus and his puppets to entertain the children of Bephal.

---

The sudden re-appearance of Casey D'Arcy... complete with crying, screaming, and associated drama... failed to nudge December from his state of moderate concentration. Still sitting amid the motionless bodies of the Night's Bloom, December parted his eyelids slightly and watched the child cry loudly for his mother on the nearly empty street.

Ordinarily, the site of December sitting guard amid a garden of half-frozen corpses would have drawn a crowd, but there were enough dead, wounded... and miscellaneous pieces thereof... to keep the idle onlookers to a minimum.

But at the boisterous arrival of the D'Arcy child, dozens of people converged to see what new disaster was about to befall them. December himself was mildly curious... but not completely surprised. After all, N'Doki was mixed up in this business, and any dealings with the necromancer tended to result in screaming of one sort or another.

Still...

"CASEY!" Francesca D'Arcy managed to weave her way past the gathering crowd and scoop up her son before anyone else could get close. The boy's screamed stopped when he found himself in the comforting arms of his mother, but then Francesca herself became the center of attention. She turned on December and approached him accusingly. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE NOW!?"

"Keep your distance," December warned. "The cold may cause you significant harm."

It was a lie, of course. The air around had thickened in a sharp chill... but it was nothing that would cause lasting damage to a person... assuming they smart enough to step away when their extremities started going numb.

The crowd kept their distance nonetheless, although the bodies of the Night's Bloom probably had more to do with it than December's warning. There was serious magic at work here, and no one wanted to get caught up in it.

"What happened to Trisk?!" said someone demanded.

"How odd that you would inquire about the safety of a ghost... rather than the well being of that child," December said.

"That boy can't do anything for us! But Trisk came here to save us!"

"Are you certain of that?"

"Never mind him!" Francesca snapped. "What happened to my son!?"

"The boy appears frightened, but unharmed," December replied.

"But what about TRISK!? He said he was going to save us! But now he's gone! We've got women and children that need protecting!"

December frowned. He'd been calmly enduring the crowd's inane questions until this point, but now...

"What is your name, sir?" he said.

"Dole!"

"Well, mister Dole, despite the efforts and sacrifices made to secure your safety, anyone who has not taken steps to evacuate Bephal by now has taken their safety in their OWN hands."

"What are you saying!?"

"I am saying, Mr. Dole, that after the events that have transpired in this town, you are a fool to remain here... regardless of what Trisk or anyone else has promised you. Instead of taking the only sensible course of action remaining... evacuation... you chose to stand here and wait to be saved by someone else."

Mr. Dole stepped forward... then stepped back... then regarded December with an expression of uneasy bewilderment. He was not alone.

"But... but I thought you were helping us!"

"I am. But my involvement, and the sacrifices of my men, do not relieve you of the responsibility of helping yourselves. By now, our enemy... YOUR enemy... has had ample opportunity to devise another plan of attack. Do you wish to remove yourselves from its reach... or are you going to stand around and wait to see how Trisk and I MIGHT...or might not... protect you?"

An grumble of annoyance and confusion went through the crowd. A few people began to wander away, and others remained to scowl at December for a few moments more before finding somewhere else to be. After a few minutes, only Francesca D'Arcy remained.

"Yes?" said December

"Where's your friend?" she challenged. "YOUR monster? Where is he?"

That was a very good question. December had no answer for it... and that bothered him more than the crowd. Both N'Doki and Trisk had vanished onto the ethereal plane during the spell, but now the D'Arcy child had returned... minus the supposedly 'reformed' ghost of Jerimiah Trisk. Clearly, N'Doki was up to something...

"He tried to kill my son once already," said Francesca. "And now my son is crying, and your friend is nowhere to be seen. What's going on here?"

December didn't answer.

"You have no idea what's going on, don't you?" she said.

"Everything is progressing according to plan," he replied.

"Yes, but WHO'S plan? Answer me THAT!"

When December did not reply, Francesca turned and walked back to the infirmary, carrying her silent but squirming son with her. Behind her... sitting in the middle of the street, surrounded by corpses... December wondered.

"...who's plan indeed..."

---

They found the church without further incident. It was exactly where N'Doki had shown them... although they didn't have the benefit of moving buildings out of their way to get to it. It was early evening when they came to the end of the dirt path. The last of the day's light seemed to cling to the old church like a mist.

"Are you sure this is the place?" said Emerson. He was joking... even without the memory of N'Doki's vision, they all knew instinctively that this was the place that they had come here to find. They could feel it.

And, more importantly, it could feel them.

"I think we're being watched," said Hemingway. He looked, but could find nothing in the trees around them. But then, the feeling wasn't coming from the trees.

"It knows we're here," said Gallows.

"What knows we're here?"

"What do you think? We have physical form, so it could sense our footsteps. But it can't hurt us."

Hars walked up to the wooden door. The latch rotated in his grasp, but the door would not open.

"Blocked," said Hars. "Something's holding it shut on the inside. We'll have to break it down-"

"You go ahead and do that. I'll be inside..." Gallows said as he walked past Hars... and THROUGH the closed door. His seemingly solid form passed into the wooden door as if one or both of them was an illusion.

"HEY!" Emerson protested.

Gallows reappeared, leaning back through the door.

"What now?" he said

"Can we do that?" said Thane. "I thought we had solid forms... if we're solid, we can't just go around walking through things... can we?"

Gallows looked at him... and then the others... with an expression of un-amused pity.

"...simpletons..." he said, ALMOST to himself. "If you think you can do it, then you can do it. If that doesn't work, just close your eyes and walk. Gods, I'm surrounded by..." Then leaned back into the church.

"Okaaay..." Emerson closed his eyes and started walking. "...but if I break my nose I'm gonna-"

He walked through the door without breaking his nose... or even touching the wood. The others followed quickly. Hemingway was the last. He wanted to try it with his eyes open, but he decided at the last instant to shut them-

-and when he opened them, he was inside.

The interior of the church was lit by a group of ceremonial candles in the center of the room. The candles cast an eerie blueish green light into the room.

"Roots!" said Hemingway. He could see them climbing the walls... and slithering out of the cracks in the floor. He reached for his hammer-

"Don't bother," said Gallows. "You can fight them if you want, but they can't hurt you. Can't even touch you if you don't want them to."

Hemingway extended his arm toward the nearest wall. A few tendrils tried to grasp his wrist. He felt them tighten around his arm, but when he pulled back, the roots passed through his suddenly ghostly flesh without resistance. The roots that had coiled around his legs equally unable to find a solid grip.

"We have the advantage here," said Gallows. Roots had descended from the ceiling around him, but the assassin stepped through them as easily as a silk curtain.

"This is new," said Emerson. He'd grabbed one of the tendrils and was taunting it. He could touch it... but it couldn't touch him. "Nyaa! Nyaa! Nyaa! Can't kill me; I'm already dead! ...now that I think about it, that isn't all that funny..."

"Whooaa... what's this?" Thane pointed to the thick column of roots that had... at some point in the past... smashed its way up out of a large hole in the floor. There were three human figures tangled within the web of tendrils... three motionless bodies wrapped in a living shroud. Some of the tentacles appeared to have attached themselves to the bodies, and were injecting a greenish sap into them. The faces of the men had already taken on a greenish tint...

"It's corrupting them," said Hemingway. "This is what it did to December. What it's doing to people in the town... what it would do to us if it could."

"Yeah, but we're already corrupt," said Emerson.

"So's December. There's always room for improvement."

"Why does this thing look so much smaller than the one we fought?" said Hars. "I could hack this thing down with my sword..."

"I'd just grow back," said Gallows. "It's smaller, but its still the same. You can't kill it."

"Which one of these men is Jerimiah Trisk?" Thane asked.

"That would be this lad here..." said Hars. He stood before one of the entombed men and leaned in to get a good look... ignoring the tendrils that tried to reach out and strangle him. "Nasty piece of work, this one."

"And this is how it all started," said Thane. "With the three of them. I wonder what would happen if we just killed them right now?"

"We can't," said Hars.

"Why can't we? Here they are... and here WE are... we could save December the trouble..."

"Then who would help send US back to save the town, eh?" said Hars. "...and who would kill that lad you were so worried about back there?"

"But I was thinking... if we killed them BOTH-"

"Just stop your thinking and start lookin'. You know what we're here to find."

"I found the original owner." Gallows was standing over a pile of bloody rags on the floor. Someone had stabbed them with a sword... impaling the ancient woman who's shriveled body was almost completely hidden by the rags. Gallows nudged her arm with his boot. She was missing her right hand.

"Damn, she was ugly," Emerson said as he looked down at the hag's corpse. "Hey, Hem... see if she's got anything interesting in her pockets!"

"No thanks."

"Hmph. Coward."

"I wish there was more light in here," said Thane. "I can hardly see. Gallows can you-"

"It's over there." Hemingway pointed to the far corner of the room. Thane squinted, but couldn't tell if there was anything there or not.

"Remember what Trisk said about the blood?" said Hemingway. "Look at the roots..."

The roots had completely covered the walls and floor of the chamber... almost. The area around the hag's corpse was free of tentacles. The body lay on bare stone. The creature's tendrils would not go near it, or near the pool of drying blood around it. There was another splatter of blood on the wall near where Hemingway was pointing. The entire area was devoid of growth...

"Emerson..." said Hars.

Emerson reached into the dark corner and swept his hand back and forth across the floor directly under the bloody splatter.

"I think this is it..." He pulled out a severed human hand. Blood dripped from the stump when he held it up for the others to see. "...unless there are some OTHER severed hands laying around that we don't know about."

"Congratulations," said Hars. "You finally did something useful. Now-"

Emerson's body began to glow... first becoming translucent, and then emitting an orange glare as if lit from within.

"Uh-oh!"

"Emerson!"

The glow shifted across Emerson's body until it was contained entirely in his right arm-

"It's moving! The hand is cursed! N'Doki didn't say the hand was cursed!"

-then it flowed out of his body and into the hag's severed hand, which glowed like a small lamp while Emerson returned to normal. Slowly, the glow subsided.

"What... the hell... was that?" said Emerson.

"A stowaway," said Gallows. "Some kind of spell. Probably to preserve the hand after we stash it."

"What was it doing inside ME!?"

"N'Doki put it there," said Gallows. "...or maybe you weren't paying attention?"

"Oh yeah. That. Can somebody else carry this thing now? Any volunteers?"

"Nope."

"Nuh-uh."

"No."

"Nah, you keep it."

"So this thing's gonna let us walk out of here with this hand?" said Thane, suspiciously. "I mean... It's got to know why we're taking it."

"What do you expect it to do?" said Gallows. "Stop us?"

"I was just... expecting... ya know... more of a fight."

"We didn't come here to fight anything," said Gallows. "And even if we did, I don't think there's any fight left in it." He looked at the hag's corpse, and then at the creature that she had summoned. "It wants to die now."

"Huh? Why?"

"He... it... came back for her. For the woman. Now she's dead."

"Sounds like you're talkin' about a person," said Hars. "But this here is just some monster..."

"Is it?" Gallows gave Hars a curious look that none of them liked.

"Sometimes I think you know a lot more than what you say," said Hars.

"I do," Gallows replied.

"Now we have to find a place to hide this thing," said Thane. "Somewhere were it won't be disturbed. N'Doki said the spirits would guide us-"

"Well, I'm a spirit," said Gallows. "And I know just the place..."

---

"We got another one!" Sterl Herman shouted to the others. He was perched uneasily on a large plank protruding from what USED to be Loyd's Curious Goods... a pawn shop. Loyd Goodwinn was dead. They had already found most of his corpse further down the street, mixed in with bits and pieces of what may have been his wife. But the Goodwinn's had a daughter and a son-in-law, both of whom lived in Loyd's store. It was a strange arrangement that raised a few eyebrows around town, but none of that mattered much at the moment.

Sterl reached down with his good arm... his bad one was hanging limp in a sling... and grabbed the length of wood at his feet. He nudged it over, bringing a sharp stab of pain from his already tortured back. He ignored it and pulled again.

The piece of wood slid to the right... just enough for him to see into the hole beneath. Loyd's Curious Goods wasn’t the best-constructed building in town. When the zombies started pulling at it, the entire structure had just collapsed, burying Loyd's wares under a pile of wood and debris that looked dangerous to even stand NEXT to... let alone climb on. But Sterl was the very top of the heap... looking down into the heart of demolished building.

"HEY!" he shouted into to hole. No one shouted back, but he heard movement. The hole below him was just wide enough to see the remains of a bed. The roof had fallen on top of it. Half of the bed was crushed, but one of the huge wooden cross beams had fallen at an angle, and was now holding weight of the roof... keeping it from crushing the lower half of the bed.

And there, in the darkness under the bed, Sterl had seen it. He didn't see it NOW... but he was absolutely certain he wasn't imagining things. Not this time.

"HEY, ANYBODY DOWN THERE!"

No answer. No movement.

"ANYTHING!" Someone on the ground shouted up at him. Sterl shook his head, then waved at them to stay where they were. The last thing he needed was for some ham-handed farmer to climb up here and send the whole pile sliding straight to hell.

Sterl stepped back, then inspected the debris around him. It looked sturdy enough. He lay down flat... his bandaged chest screamed at him as he pressed it against the wood and reached his arm into the hole. His fingertips just grazed the bedpost below.

He slid forward a bit, groaning at the pain.

He grabbed the bedpost, but decided against shaking it. Instead, he made a fist and knocked on the wood.

"Anybody there?" he said.

"...help me..." came a voice from below. "Somebody..."

"I'm here. Can you move?"

...pause...

"Yes."

"Can you climb out from under there? Can you do it without touching that big beam right next to you?"

-because if she accidentally kicked that beam...

"I don't know," the frightened voice cried.

"That's the only way you're gettin' out of there. If you can crawl out and grab my hand, I'll pull..."

"NO! I'm SCARED!"

"So am I!" Sterl barked. "And I ain't gonna lay here chattin' with ya forever! Either yer coming out now, or yer gonna die here by yourself, understand!?

There was a muffled whimper from under the bed. And then a hand appeared. The woman reached out and-

"DON'T GRAB THAT!" Sterl shouted. The hand froze. She'd been an inch away from grabbing the WRONG thing. "Don't pull yourself out... just crawl... stay flat and slide, try to touch as little as possible!"

"...okay..."

The hand retreated... then a mop of disheveled red hair appeared. The woman crept forward, sliding herself out from under the bed one inch at a time.

"-Stop!" Sterl ordered. "You're close to that beam. Slide a little to your left."

The woman did as she was told.

"Now keep coming straight out...."

There wasn't a lot of space for her to move, but there was just enough for her to pull herself out into the open, turn over, and reach up. Her legs were still under the bed, but if she tried to move any further, she'd likely end up crushed to death.

Sterl reached for her hand. His fingers brushed across hers.

"Lift yourself up a little..." he said.

The woman's hand came closer... almost close enough.

"Another inch or two and you'll be out of there."

The woman adjusted her position, trying to get her legs underneath her so she could stand-

"NO, DON'T DO-"

Her knee jostled the bed... which then struck the wooden beam holding up the remains of the roof.

The beam began to sliiiiiide...

"GRAB MY HAND! QUICK!!"

Sterl's fist closed around the woman's hand so hard that he felt one of her fingers snap. The wooden beam fell away with a CRUNCH-

The woman screamed as her pocket of safety collapsed around her-

"NOOO!" Sterl's arm tightened and he pulled HARD. Bracing himself against the wood and yanked the red-haired woman out into the open. She curled her other hand around his neck as the wooden plank Sterl was bracing himself against tilted back-

-and began to slide down the side of the collapsed building.

"WHOOAAAAAA!" Sterl fumbled to get the woman in his arms as he rolled onto his back and looked down. The entire pile was shifting now. They were going down the hard way. Bones were going to start breaking at any moment. Sterl and the woman screamed into each others ears as-

-as the sliding plank caught on a piece of wall and came to a sudden, jarring stop.

"..gods almighty!" Sterl huffed.

"Thank you!" The woman was hugging him now, with both arms around his neck, bloodying her white nightshirt on his bleeding chest.

"Your husband," he said. "Was he...?"

"They were coming! Clawing at the walls! He went... he went downstairs to..."

Sterl didn't need to hear the rest. If her husband wasn't under that bed with her when the building fell, then he was dead.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking down. They were almost to the ground, but Sterl wasn't going to risk moving just yet. The others would just have to come up here and get him.

Sterl's right hand holding the back of the woman's head. He felt something wet on his fingers...

"Are you hurt?" he said, looking at his hand. There was blood on his fingers... blood, and a few drops of a thick green goo.

"No," the woman replied, hugging him closer. Sterl ran his fingers through her hair and felt a wound on the back of her neck, just below the skull. He couldn't see what it was from his position, but it FELT weird... slimy...

"You sure?" he asked.

"I don't know... I feel... bad..."

She hadn't winced when he touched the wound, so it must not have been serious. Either that, or she was in shock.

"It's okay," said Sterl. "They're coming up to get us now. Everything will be okay."

"Thank you," she said, hugging him closer still. "Thank you..."

---

"Why is it that just being here make me really... REALLY... regret coming on this little trip."

"I don't know," said Gallows. "After all... we're dead. There aren't many things that can hurt us. And this place certainly isn't one of them."

"Yeah but.... this just feels... wrong."

"I'll have to agree with the lad on that one," said Hars. "I don't know what it is, but I don't like bein' here. Are you sure-"

"Positive," said Gallows.

After leaving the infested church, Gallows had led Night's Bloom around the perimeter of Bephal to bring them almost full circle to where their adventure had begun. And it would have BEEN a full circle... were it not for the forty or so years separating them from their original arrival.

The woods around the old hunter's cabin... not so old in this time... were still as thick and unwelcoming as they'd been the first time they'd come here. The grass was wild, and the trees overhanging the clearing would have darkened the place even had the sun not set two hours ago. The dark gray clouds that rolled in as the sun died only worsened the ominous dread that Emerson and the others felt as their eyes fell upon the old wooden shack.

"We hide the hand here," said Gallows. He walked up to the cabin door and passed through it. Then opened it from the inside before Emerson could discover that the witch's hand couldn't pass through solid matter. He closed the door behind them, then looked out the window at the sky.

Gray.

Just like in the future.

"I thought we'd hide it in a cemetery," said Hemingway. "Nobody would disturb it there."

"Maybe not," said Gallows. "But the fact is... we DIDN'T hide it in a cemetery. We hid it HERE." Gallows pointed to the floor in the middle of the cabin's single room. "Right there. Under the floor."

Kneeling, Gallows thrust his ghostly hand through one of the boards, grabbed it from the underside, and then yanked it up to reveal the black dirt beneath the cabin. Then he started digging...

"You... knew it was here when we first came here, didn't you?" said Hemingway. "That's what you felt?"

"No. Not exactly." Gallows dug pit just small enough to hold the hand. "Drop it in."

Emerson Shaw gladly deposited the hag's hand into the hole. Gallows covered it with dirt, then replaced the wooden board.

"How can we be sure nobody will disturb it," said Thane.

"Because-" Gallows stomped the board back into place with his boot. "-we're staying here with it."

"Ummm... excuse me?" said Emerson.

"There's not going to be a portal back," said Gallows. "And if there is... we're not taking it."

"This is one of those times where you know something the rest of us don't," said Hars. "And each time I like it less and less.... so out with it, whatever it is."

"I've already told you: We're not getting back the same way we got here."

"N'Doki betrayed us again," said Hemingway.

"Maybe. Maybe not," Gallows replied. "I don't know, and it doesn't really matter."

"He got us here and did everything ELSE he said he would," Thane said in the necromancer's defense. "So why strand us here in the past?"

"Because he wants Bephal to fall," said Hemingway. "He traps us here in the past, and then-"

"We're not trapped," said Gallows. "We'll just have to take the long way back."

"And the long way is...?"

"We wait."

"For what?"

"For forty years."

"WHAT!?"

"You're crazy!"

"We can't just SIT around here for forty years! We have to get back to our BODIES!"

"Our bodies will still be there. At least this way we can control EXACTLY when we get back... because we'll already be there."

"How do we KNOW that N'Doki betrayed us?" said Thane. "How do we know there's no portal waiting for us back in town-"

"What IS it with you people!?!" Gallows snapped angrily. "You aren't listening to what I'm SAYING! There could BE a portal back in Bephal, but the FACT is that we didn't take it. It's like Hemingway said... everything we did here has already HAPPENED, and what DID NOT happen was us taking any magic portal back to the future! When I came to this cabin the first time, I felt something under this floor. That something was US! All FIVE of us... RIGHT HERE! UNDER THE FLOOR with that hand!

"Uh-oh, I think he's mad," said Emerson.

"Yeah, but which kind of mad do you mean?"

"And why didn't ya bother ta tell us any of that? Or is that one of them things we're better off not knowin?"

"Would you have believed me?" said Gallows.

"So we're just going to STAND here for four decades!?!?" said Emerson. "We'll all be OLD MEN-"

"...bloody morons..." Gallows muttered. "We will NOT be old men because we are already dead! We're disembodied spirits... and if you'd been paying attention before, you'd know that spirits have no concept of time! To a ghost, forty years could feel like four weeks... or four hours..."

"...or four hundred years..." said Hemingway.

"If you want it to, yes."

"-but for us 'bloody morons' in the room," said Emerson. "How am I going to keep from going crazy just standing here staring at the WALLS for YEARS!"

"Don't look at the walls."

"I'm usually a very friendly person," said Emerson. "But now you're starting to make me angry!"

"We're still very close to the physical world... but we don't have to be. If we pull back... step away from the physical plane... time will become more fluid. Less linear."

"And how do we do THAT?" said Thane.

"Same way you walked through that door. You just concentrate and... do it. Try it right now... you'll see. Concentrate on something OTHER than the world around you. If you'll just think about it-"

"Well I'm thinking and nothing's happening," said Emerson.

"...why am I not surprised..."

"You seem to know a whole lot about being dead," said Thane.

"Goes with the job."

"I say we at should at LEAST go back to town and see if our portal is there."

"You do that, Thane. You either won't find one... or you'll find it and won't take it."

"Why wouldn't I take it if it was there?"

"I don't know why... I just know that you don't. You were right here with the rest of us."

"Even if there is a way back," said Hemingway. "I'd rather not trust anything to N'Doki if there's another way. If there's a portal, who knows WHERE it will really take us."

"You keep expecting him to betray us..."

"I know he's your new best friend, Thane, but the REST of us have had an entirely different experience. If we can get back on our own, I think we should do it."

"So do I," said Hars. "IF it can be done."

"It already HAS been done," said Hemingway. "This is how we get back to the future. It's already happened."

"So how do we do this, again?" said Emerson. "I don't think its working..."

"Of course it is," said Gallows. "We've been standing here having this conversation for a little over six years."

---

Dina Morester had spent exactly one year as a healer's apprentice before she'd decided the work wasn't for her. It was too hard... to much to remember...

...and too bloody.

Yes, she definitely remembered telling her father that the work was just too bloody, and she just couldn't do it.

Indeed.

And now, years later, she was standing in a room full of the dead... the dying... and the living who wished they were dead. The floor was covered with blood. Literally. Running back and forth from one spurting wound to another had turned most of her clothing red as well. And that wasn't even CONSIDERING her own wounds.

Dina reminded herself to be violently nauseous later. Maybe tomorrow. Possibly tonight. But for now, she had too much to do.

As one of the few people in town who had ever SEEN surgeons tools in use, she had been elected Healer-In-Chief... at least until the emergency was over and REAL healers could be brought in. That meant she was personally responsible for the eighty or so people who had survived the zombie attack with serious wounds. Those with LESS than serious wounds... wounds that wouldn't kill them before tomorrow... were out helping the others or standing guard.

She had had people helping here, but when the D'Arcy boy... whom they CLAIMED with Jerimiah Trisk returned from the dead... started screaming, most of her nurses went to see what was happening. Dina had sent the others... those most qualified to the task... to the other buildings where some of the other wounded were being treated. For the moment, she was alone. And, for the first time since this whole mess started, she realized just how tired she was.

And her arm hurt. She'd been to busy for it to hurt before, but now that everyone here was either stabilized or dead-

Hmmmm... perhaps NOW would be a good time to be violently nauseous...

She was putting the matter to serious consideration when she saw something move in the corner of the room.

"Oh, no, no, no..." Dina said, frowning. The reason she'd chosen the bakery as a place to treat the injured was because the building was reasonably clean. No rats. Not very many insects. She'd been MARRIED to the baker, so she knew he kept a clean establishment.

...but unless she was mistaken, she had just seen a very large SNAKE under one of the tables!

Dina Morester wasn't afraid of snakes. But she didn't want any of her patients bitten-

-or maybe she was too late.

She was walking past the long countertop that served as a bed for two of her patients, when she noticed that both of them were...

...green.

They were sleeping calmly, but their faces had a definite greenish tint to them. Dina checked their heartbeats and breathing... there was no sign of trauma (other than the wounds that had brought them here to begin with). Snakebite? No... these men were high enough off the floor to keep any snake from getting to them, so...

Dina felt something wet behind the patient's head. There was a small puncture at the top of his neck, and as she examined it, the untreated wound wept a few drops of greenish ooze.

"Why wasn't the wound treated?" Dina asked, inwardly cursing her own negligence. She had treated this man herself... how could she have missed THIS?

And now it was infected!

A very SERIOUS infection that had... somehow... spread to the patient next to him.

Could infections do that? She wasn't sure, but she thought it was possible. Both men were on the same table, after all-

But as she looked around the room, Dina saw that there were OTHER patients with the same symptoms! Over HALF of them!

Dina swallowed the lump of unease in her throat. She knew how to treat wounds, even serious ones. But diseases and infections were far, far beyond her. She was no healer, after all.

"My gods..." she gasped.

"...hey..." One of the patients on the far side of the room... one who was thankfully NOT green... raised his arm and reached out for her. "...hey... where am I..."

It was him. The old man.

He'd hidden in one of the building when it collapsed on him, probably saving his life. They'd brought him here to get his wounds sewn, but Dina couldn't tell when... if ever... the man would wake up.

"J-just stay right there," said Dina. With patients turning green around her, she had to get this man out of here before his wounds became infected, too. She rushed to his side. The man reached up and caught her shoulder in a weak grasp.

"W-Who are you?" he said. "Where am I...?"

"My name is Ms. Morester, and you're in the... uhh... bakery. You've been hurt, but I think you'll be okay."

"Bakery?" said the old man. He sat up... pulling himself upright with the help of Dina's shoulder. "You mean... I'm still in Bephal?"

"Y-yes," she replied. "Now please, lay back down."

The old man frowned. His hand tightened on Dina's shoulder.

"I almost died trying to help you people," he said, his frown becoming a sneer. "And you know what...?"

"Ouch! You're hurting me-"

"I don't even LIKE you!"

The man's hand slid to her jaw while his other hand grabbed the back of her head. He twisted her skull sharply... snapping her neck with a wet pop.

Dina's limp body slid out of Marillius's grasp and collapsed on the floor.

The old man hopped off the table and looked around.

"...this damned town..." he growled. "Not gonna die for you bastards... I'll kill you all myself first..."

The door opened, and a woman entered. She was carrying a child.

"Oh!" Francesca D'Arcy yelped when she saw him standing there. "Ummm... where's-"

"She went to get help," said Marillius. He smiled. "There's a lot of sick people in here, ya know. Very sick people."

"Yes, I... are you all right? You look ill..."

"Me?" Marillius stepped over Dina's corpse and moved in front of an adjacent table. Still smiling, he slid the bloody surgical knife into his grasp. "No, I'm fine now. Jusssst fine..."

[To Be Continued]