A Little Lady & A Big Cock

December 19th, 2018 -- Early Afternoon
Solomon Pond Mall
Marlborough, Massachusetts

Richard yammered incessantly in his ear.

“It’s perfect. Let me out. There’s so many here. You know you want them dead. You’re not a nice person, are you?”

The mall was packed, hundreds of shoppers having taken the day off work to buy Christmas gifts. The drone of voices and faint thunder of footsteps was near deafening to Jason’s ears, eating at his composure.

“You like hurting people, don’t you? That’s why you came here, after all. Let me hurt them for you. Let me out, mask-maker.”

Somehow, amidst all the noise, Richard’s voice was as clear as if uttered in the dead of night. Jason glanced down at him, looking into the empty eye sockets of the decorated leather mask that was the gamecock’s new body. He could see the floor through those little holes, repeated black and white tiling. Yet, some intuition buried deeper in his brain told him there was more there.

In the satchel slung over his shoulder, Jason felt the Traveller. It didn’t speak, but somehow he felt it was reassuring him.

Jason surveyed the mall around him once more from his place on the bench. People forced their way past each other, offering only quiet and insincere apologies. The shops were crammed full, queues for the registers trailing out of the entryways. Shoppers clutched paper and plastic bags, boxes with toys that light-up and beep, stuffed animals.

The skylight above let in what remaining daylight there was, the skies soon to begin their transition to orange. He shivered, feeling the cold of the outdoors despite the warmth of the mall and his heavy jacket.

“Mask-maker!” Richard began crowing again, and Jason nearly clapped his hands over his ears to shut the voice out. Instead, he simply squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw.

He heard a soft female voice then, cutting through the white noise hammering on Jason’s ear drums in much the way Richard’s voice did.

“I love you.”

Charlotte.

“I love you, too.”

Jason’s eyes flew open, and he looked around with a haste only manageable by men who are either paranoid or manic.

A young couple was standing some dozen paces away, a pair of rocks in a tide of faceless people. The young woman was the spitting image of Charlotte, her dark hair long and braid, her face soft and pale. She smiled with the same unabashedness, her eyes twinkled with the same infatuation as she looked into her lover’s eyes. Not Jason’s, but a man who looked much the same as Jason imagined himself growing up to be when he was younger. Before he realized he was genetically destined to be short, and scrawny, and plain.

It was uncanny, disturbing to the core. And only after a long while of staring at the couple as they held each other, squeezing each other’s hands, did he realize just how faceless the crowd around them was.

Jason blinked hard, and bit his tongue. Slowly, the wax covering the world began to give way, heated by some alien force. As it melted, Charlotte and the Jason-that-could-have-been melted with it, replaced by a much shorter woman with blonde pixie-cut hair and a man of much sturdier dimensions. The faces of the shoppers around him returned as well, caught up in their own inner monologues and their own symptoms of insanity.

He trembled and shut his eyes again, using one hand to cover his face as the other clutched Richard’s.

591

“Excuse me. Pardon me. Sorry.”
Courtesies left Alyssa’s lips with little effect as she forced her way through the crowded food court, bumping and shoving against chair and person alike, dragging a suitcase behind her.
About halfway through a large shape blocked her path; she blinked twice and realized that it was merely an unfortunately large woman, doling out food to a horde of young children.
“Just going to sneak by you miss” Alyssa said, trying to squeeze past. This apparently startled the woman, who turned around surprisingly fast, smashing a tray full of drinks into Alyssa’s face.

Alyssa found herself on the ground, covered in at least five colors of sugary soft drink. Her coat had been spared the worst of it on account of being unzipped, her shirt having taken the brunt of the spill. The woman loomed over her, spit flying as she shouted incoherently, something about ruining the kids’ lunch and how much those sodas had cost. Alyssa sighed, tossing a handful of cash from her purse. The large woman seemed to grudgingly accept the peace offer, giving Alyssa enough space to stand up and walk away.

By the time Alyssa reached the bathrooms her clothes were beyond hope of saving. She darted into the lone restroom meant for families or the handicapped. She did so without too much guilt: she was, after all, technically disabled. Safe from prying eyes she removed her oversized coat, revealing the second pair of arms she’d grown beneath her originals, hidden in the jacket’s much-too-large sleeves. They didn’t speed up disrobing all that much, though it was nice to stretch them out. The arms were useful in cleaning up: a shower would’ve been ideal, but she managed with dampened paper towels.

Which left the issue of clothes. She’d washed everything in the sink, taking care of the soda. Alyssa could deal with the damp underwear, but the shirt and jeans were a no-go. Her coat had picked up an annoyingly sticky layer of sugar off her shirt, taking it out of the game.
Rummaging through her bag turned up limited options: Hoodie, sweatpants, costume. They’d have to do.

Navigating the food court more carefully this time, Alyssa managed to find a table. Sitting down proved awkward with her lower arms held tightly against her sides. She had to shove them into her sweatpants, and their elbows didn’t quite line up with her hips.

Alyssa pulled out her phone; one missed call. She opened the message.

“Hey Alyssa, it’s me, Cindy. Thought I’d check in on you; I heard from your parents that you moved out and are living in Chicago now. I’m really happy that you’re up on your feet again after what happened. We really need to catch up. I’ve, uh, got a more ‘relaxed’ schedule now, so maybe I can drive out there for a few days. Call me when you get the chance.”

She hit the callback button; the phone ringing until it hit voicemail.

“This is Cynthia Reynolds. I’m probably busy or away from my phone at the moment, so leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Hiiiiiii Cindy! I’m really really glad you called! I’m actually in your area right now for, uh…” She hesitated: vigilante heroism was a job, right? Her contact said she’d get paid, and she was working. “…a job interview! The drive was reeeaaaalllllyyyy long so I’m just going to take the rest of today to sleep or something, and tomorrow is my interview. I have no idea what my schedule is after that so we can definitely hang out. It’s been, like, forever, right? It feels like forever. Oh! I uh don’t mean to be a burden or anything but you have an apartment right? I got a hotel room but they are waaaay expensive. Does your building have any vacancies? Or, hey, we could be roommates! Don’t worry, I only need a fridge and a couch or chair to sleep on, and I can pay rent once the whole job thing happens. Think about it. Anyway, I gotta go, bye-bye!”

Alyssa pulled up the message app on her phone. Nothing from the mall’s auto-center; so much for a three hour estimate. She selected the conversation labeled ‘Conduit.’

	__________	hey
	__________	im in-state now
	__________
How was your drive?	__________
	__________
	__________	loooooonnnng
	__________	ive had a day
	__________	lost two tires on 290
	__________	found a mall with a shop but it’s been *three* *hours*
	__________
The one with the Sears? Expect to be there for a while longer.	__________
	__________
	__________	so i know you wanted to meet tonight
	__________	and do all the business stuff tomorrow
	__________	but i might just collapse when i get to my hotel
	__________	is it fine if we just do everything tomorrow?
	__________
Of course. Make sure you get some rest. As I said in the ad, I’d like to see your power in action before deciding if you’ll work out.	__________
Oh, and if you don’t mind, I’ve got my eyes on another potential recruit for the team.	__________
	__________
	__________	more the merrier
	__________	so long as they get to be the sidekick
	__________
Don’t mean to disappoint, but I think she’s stronger than you. I don’t know yet though, still have to reach out.	__________
	__________
	__________	just remember
	__________	you talked to me first
	__________
Naturally. I’ve got a meeting to catch. Hope your day goes well from here.	__________

Alyssa put the phone away. An uneventful afternoon couldn’t be too much to ask for, could it?

Jason reached into his jacket pocket, his hand clenching into a fist around the plastic container there with a strength that surprised him. He was overdue for his dose. He could shut them up, mute them for a few hours, keep Richard and Changer at bay.


The Traveller spoke to him again in its wordless, silent voice. It warned him.


That’s right. It was right. There would be no escape if he took those pills. The Traveller wouldn’t be able to offer him sanctuary. Yet, Richard was becoming too much of a burden, his ceaseless crowing becoming too difficult to resist.


Still clutching the container of pills, Jason looked around the mall once more. Changer had quit its tricks, settling for a projection into the material plane, invisible to all but the mask-maker: a pale blob, leaving streaks and drops of wax wherever its body twitched out of place as it stared facelessly at him.


Richard, too, had fallen silently and looked at him expectantly, the anthropomorphic rooster’s beady eyes seeming to gleam with excitement and malice. Occasionally and seemingly out of reflex, the gamecock’s head would twist about and pluck a damaged feather from its uncanny and grotesque body. Blood ran from the featherless patches of flesh, and mixed with the plumage at his feet.


And there was the Traveller, towering over the crowd with digitigrade legs of bone clad in wooden plates. From beneath its leaf poncho, two skeletal arms protruded, staying still at its sides. From each joint in its limbs, half a dozen bone protrusions mimicked the knots and knurls in an aged tree.


And there, that familiar but totally alien face: carved and notched wood in place of skin, a dozen marbles of various colors in place of eyes. They floated silently and re-arranged themselves slowly. The Traveller’s only means of speech.


What came next felt like the reversal of jolting awake. Richard’s screech set Jason’s scalp afire, and Changer began to coat the world in wax. Jason stumbled away, clutching at his hair and at the container of pills. Across the food court, down the hall, into the men’s restroom. As he shouldered the door open, Jason began to pop open the container and tap a pair of pills into his palm.


Nearly blind and deaf, and feeling suffocated by the wax that now made up the world, the mask-maker didn’t notice the man until he slammed into him. The pills dropped from his hands, clattering on the wet floor before beginning to dissolve.


Jason looked up at the man and saw the same face Changer had covered up earlier. The face under the wax mask of the Jason-that-wasn’t. And before the man could apologize, the mask-maker turned and scurried out of the restroom.


A minute later, when the man came out of the restroom, he felt an impact in his abdomen and something being forced onto his face. Jason kneed him a few times as he struggled to latch the final clasp of the mask, just barely out of his reach. He felt a click as he was shoved hard backwards into the side of the corridor. Dazed, he looked up in defeat, only to be greeted by a smile.


Enter Richard.

539

Alyssa watched the crowd idly. Little stood out: the nuances and subtleties of life were lost in the sheer mass of people. The whole was less than its parts implied.

The crowd’s movement shifts as a man rushes by the edge of it, shoving people aside with each glancing impact. The man makes a hard turn at the hall leading to the restrooms, skidding enough to bump into a petite woman with blonde hair, causing her to drop the carryout boxes in her arms.

“Jerk. Fucking creep.”

Alyssa was close enough to hear the woman curse. She’d seen the blonde earlier, waiting in line at the teriyaki place with a man who could only be the woman’s boyfriend. He had gone to the restrooms, leaving the woman to pick up their order.

The woman had called over the security guard.
“I’m sorry miss, but accidently bumping into someone isn’t a public disturbance.”
“Did you see him? He looked fuckin’ crazy.”
The young man shrugged and tried to console her, but the woman kept demanding he do something. He shot a look at his older partner, who smiled and rolled his eyes.

All three seemed oblivious to the sound of a scuffle from the end of the hall, right where the restroom entrance was. The crazed man had been shoved to the ground. A second man wearing a rooster mask towered over him, smiling.

Alyssa realized that the masked man was none other than the boyfriend as he walked back into the food court. His demeanor had changed: once relaxed, his muscles were now tense. He put a hand on his girlfriend’s shoulder. She turned around and hugged him, her face against his chest.

“I’m so sorry honey, that creep bumped into me and ruined our lunch.”
She looked up and saw the mask, recoiling away.
“What the fuck?”

Down the hall the crazed man had stood up, his face blank, as if in a daze. The woman glared at him.
“Is this some sick joke? What did you do to my boyfriend?”
She turned back to him, reaching up towards the mask.
“Did he hurt you, honey? Let’s get that ugly thing off.”

The moment the blonde woman’s hand touched one of the clasps, the tension in the man’s stance disappeared. The smile on his face widened.

Blood splattered on the mask as the man’s fist connected with his girlfriend’s face. The young guard tried to intervene, but was swatted away. The rooster-man strode over to the fallen woman, planting a boot on her chest. She clawed at his leg as he pressed down, tears streaming across her shattered visage, gasping for air.

The snap-tick-crackle of a taser filled the air.
“G-Get off of her.” The older guard stammered.

Rooster-man’s muscles seized from the electricity, but he managed to move anyway, pulling the leads out with one hand. With the other, he grabbed one of the blonde’s arms.
“Sorry sweetie, our relationship just wasn’t visceral enough.”
With a sickening crunch and the sound of tearing flesh he pulled the woman’s arm off. He lifted his foot off her collapsed chest, grabbing her intact arm and whipping her body into the now-panicking crowd.

Alyssa ducked under the table as the broken body passed overhead. She pulled her bag under the table with her, as people tried to flee. Her instincts told her to run with them, to get away. A single thought banished the urge:
I’m a Hero, damn it!

She tore open the suitcase with her lower arms as her originals removed the sweatshirt. Upper arms grabbed her ballistic vest, slipping it on while her lower arms pulled off her sweatpants, revealing her spandex costume in full. The muscles in her face stretched and shifted as she put on her mask; her eyes shifting to blue from their natural hazel. Finally she took out her weapon, buried under a blanket in the suitcase.

Alyssa stood up to see the rooster-man beating the guards to a pulp with the severed arm.
Oh fuck, I’m a Hero

Alyssa tried to look imposing, holding the bone weapon out towards her enemy.
“Hey chicken-shit! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size!”

"Hey chicken-shit! Why don't you pick on someone your own size!"

Richard's head snapped in the speaker's direction. Somehow, seemingly in defiance of biology, his grin grew wider. Locking eyes with the costumed insect, Richard effortlessly snapped the severed arm and threw the jagged point of bone down into the abdomen of the barely-breathing rent-a-cop at his feet.

The gamecock took a few steps in the girl's direction, barely managing the ignore the screams of the crowd fleeing in all directions. He had a new sort of toy today. He could play with the others later.

--

Jason barely reacted to the carnage as it unfolded, part of him rationalizing the experience as a dream. Crimson spray painted a trail through the air behind Charlotte's body -- no, the blonde's body -- like dull fireworks in slow-motion.

Only the hum of the Traveller brought him back to his senses. It wouldn't do to stay here. Not when everyone else is running.

Jason, his eyes still blankly staring into the heart of the mayhem, pulls the Traveller from his satchel and places it over his face.

And then he was gone from this world.

--

Richard stopped in his tracks between two tables, emitting a low growl that vaguely resembled a chuckle. His grin never wavered, supernatural stamina staving off the muscle fatigue.

"I like 'em small."

He crouched, arms held out from his sides slightly.

"You seem confident, but I'm not so sure a little lady like yourself can handle such a big cock. I suppose the extra hands might help."

At once, Richard grabbed the tables on either side of him and exploded forward, flinging one at the four-armed woman and readying the other to use as a ram and bludgeon.

288

Try as she might, Alyssa found the rooster’s stare enticing. They were the eyes of a predator, cast upon their prey. A challenge that demanded it be met. When the man snapped the arm in half, she felt nausea advancing: borne not of disgust, but of fear. It gnawed at her, pushing her to run away from what could only be certain death.

Running away only meant dying later; enough to satisfy selection. Alyssa had spent her life running, ignoring problems as if they’d just fade away.

Alyssa wasn’t strong enough to take the other path; Mitosis didn’t need to choose.

Adrenaline hit her in the same moment the rooster threw a table in the air. She leapt into the air, flipping backwards. Mitosis kicked against the table in front of her as she rotated, raising it enough to deflect the other. The aerial one passed within inches of her stomach, deflection slowing it enough for her to push off it as it followed its trajectory, regaining lost rotation.

Mitosis lands with a roll. She tries to sidestep the rooster-man’s ram, but the effort is too late. Instead of bracing against it she loosens up, remaining just tense enough that the tabletop will push her along. Tables and chairs batter her as the rooster continues his charge; had they not been loose, the blows would’ve broken bone. Her upper left arm gets caught in some of the furniture, dislocating the shoulder.

She reaches inward with her power, flexing the muscles individually, popping the joint back into place. She reaches deeper and the tendons begin to thicken, new ones forming alongside them, the process repeating on every joint in her body. At the same time she manipulates the tissues, making them flexible, the joints almost loose. Mitosis will bend, but she will not break.

The masked man’s charge slows, his momentum depleted. Mitosis takes the chance to roll out from in front of the ram.

“You’re a big guy, sure.” Mitosis smiles, readying her weapon with all four arms. As the rooster bowls past, she swings the hammer-like head at the masked man’s left shin.

“But I’ll bet mine’s bigger!”

Small target. Narrow field of view. Richard takes the full force of the blow, and releases a primal shout of pain as the bone connects with his shin. Richard swings himself around and releases the table at the apex of the turn, flinging it in the woman's direction.

As blood pumped through his legs, Richard could almost feel the immediate swelling of the impact site. He took a step, and stopped, his shin so afire with pain that it could almost grow itself a mouth to scream with. A distant thought voiced itself from the back of his mind: hairline fracture.

Richard crouched again, eyeing the woman.

107

Mitosis raises her arms, bracing against the impending collision. Neurotransmitters flood her system in the moment of impact, a force borne mostly by her lower left forearm, the rest knocking her to the ground.

The pain of a shattered ulna is extreme. It breaks her concentration: receptors in her brain start working again. Mitosis fades, Alyssa emerges.

Alyssa was already tired, exhausted from a day of driving. She can feel the shards of bone suspended in the meat of her arm, the pain evoking the primal fear felt when one is reminded of their own fragile mortality.

The hand above the fracture, already limp, begins to collapse as its insides dissolve, drawn back into her reservoir. A burning sensation passes through the arm, starting just past the elbow and traveling down it. The flesh begins to harden, ossifying.

A stump remains where the hand once was. Skin on the forearm dissolves, revealing fresh white bone. The bone lengthens, growing out and tapering to a point where the hand’s finger-tips had once reached.

Nerves threaded through the ossified limb cry out: they are fresh, and their signals are a pain she has never felt before. In that, the pain is a familiar one, and it washes away the pain of the fractured bone.

Mitosis stands, breaking into a charge of her own. She leaps at the rooster, weapon raised above her head with three arms, its point ready to be brought down. The odd arm out, rendered into a weapon of its own, is pulled back and primed for a thrust at the masked man’s stomach.

Richard leaps to meet her, pushing out of his crouched position and into the air with sudden force. The tiles beneath his feet give way and crack slightly in response. As he ascends, he reaches for the upper half of the woman's club with one arm. His other arm swings haphazardly outward, intercepting the bone stake aimed at his abdomen. Bone grinds on bone as the stake buries itself in the meaty limb. Without concern for his own well-being, and nearly in the same motion, Richard twists his arm some to leverage the bone-stake awkwardly.

All the while, the rooster growls with pain. The force of launching into the air has further stressed the hairline fracture in his shin, weakening the limb substantially.

123

The rooster’s hand catches the femur’s body, preventing the point from finding its mark. Mitosis feels muscles tear as her spike-tipped limb gets twisted by the arm it is buried in. She dissolves the muscles, reforming them into taught tendons.

Her skin shudders as a web of muscle beneath it contracts, pressurizing her reservoir. The bone-spike’s tip begins to round out, erupting into a bulb, pinning it between the long bones of the masked man’s forearm. At its base two leaves of bone begin to grow, curling around the foreign limb.

Above the rooster-man’s fist the head of the femur ripples, channels forming in the body below as it begins to dissolve. The viscous cellular mass flows down the channels and over the man’s hand, where they set and begin to ossify.

At the same time, Mitosis slides her right hands further down the grip, letting the lower one drop off the weapon’s handle entirely. Her upper right hand begins to swell as it ossifies, forming into a knot of bone secured around the femur’s grip. The lower right hand follows the lead of its opposite, morphing into a spike, though it is longer and flatter.

She takes her upper left hand off the femur, pulling it back. A row of fused teeth grow out along the hand’s knuckles.

Again she lashes out at the rooster-man: the new spike thrusting up to slide under his ribcage, and her dental fist aimed at the man’s throat.

Jason paces nervously, one hand loosely cradling the Traveller and the other running fingers through his hair. Again and again he parts his hair, smoothing it and rearranging it.

The Changer is there as well, projecting its image into the mycellium growth fifteen feet away. Others milled about, minor and largely inconsequential entities. They watched Jason with interest between mouthfuls of food as his shoes clacked gently against the mossy cobbles of the ruin.

Occasionally, there was a glimpse of Richard among the stones and between the trees. Feathers bloody and beak agape, the gamecock thrashed at an invisible foe and crowed with fury.

Jason stopped and turned suddenly, met with the sight of the rooster leaping into the air and crashing down. The gamecock's movements were restricted by something, if only partially. A turn of events that all but begged for interference.

---

As the pair crashed to the ground, Richard does his best to force his right arm into his opponent, keen to hear the breaking of bone whether it be his or hers. At the same time, the shapechanger's own right arm begins to slide into his chest; the force of the impact and the positions the pair landed in forces it through to the back of his ribs instead, its upward trajectory diverted some. Richard's lung is punctured and his breathing becomes even more ragged than before.

The dental fist is likewise diverted by the impact, but not so severely. Teeth dig in just to the right of Richard's esophagus, releasing small spurts of blood with the impact but failing to crush his throat or puncture any major arteries thoroughly. Regardless, the strike brings with it a significant amount of pain and coupled with the punctured lung, it takes his breath away.

Dazed and confused, Richard manages to place his weight on his knees and begin to rise from the floor. Instead of standing, however, he slams the shapechanger back into the tile, allowing her embedded weapons to rip further into his body as he does so. Bleeding from seemingly everywhere and his lung filling with blood, he repeats the action as hard and fast as he can, as many times as he can.

Jason appears somewhere behind Mitosis, shouting.

"Get the mask! Take it off and you've won!"

382

Alyssa screams as the first impact pulverizes her tailbone. The second fractures a hip. The third shatters several vertebra, and the fifth nearly cracks the back of her skull.

As the rooster lifts her off the ground for a final blow she manages to pull herself inward, reaching for the leather bound mask.

Her fingers just barely manage a grip on one of the clasps. As before the rooster's rage is immediate. It pushes outward with such force that Alyssa’s lower left arm is snapped in half.

The mask falls to the ground.

The world seems to snap into place a piece at a time. The mall settled in first, appearing almost alien to his eyes with the furnishings scattered about and the crowds nowhere to be seen. Pain came next, only sudden in clarity. Before, the bone fragments suspended in soft tissue had been static, background sensations, white noise. Now, he could feel that each one was like white-hot splinters, and each breath or heartbeat brought more pain than he could ever before imagine.

The sounds of the world around him came next, and it was only then that he realized he was beginning to drown in his own blood. He coughed mouthfuls of crimson at a time as his body began desperately trying to purge his airways of the foreign agents. The woman was in pain beneath him, largely unable to move. She whimpered and moaned, and the rhythm reminded him of a tide going out to sea. Her noises seemed to space out further as the seconds ticked by and grow quieter each time.

He rolled off of her and choked some more in doing so. His body still had bone spears embedded in it, and it took what little conscious effort he could muster to avoid breathing sharply inward with the pain of movement.

Far off to his right, through the mess of tables and chairs, he sees blonde and crimson. If he wasn't already choking, he would have started then.

With the veil of red stripped away, the horror of his actions bears down on him.

Boots pound against tile, and he hears someone scrambling over furniture in the opposite direction. Voices, near and distant.

"You should be proud, miss. You stopped him. I'll take this."

"Suspect is neutralized! Bring in the EMTs! Where'd the other guy go?"

As the shouting continues, Chris Hall closes his eyes and tries to die faster.

314

Bone grinds on bone as Alyssa’s chest rises and falls in shallow, ragged breaths. Her ears are ringing, drowning out the first responders’ voices. Despite the blur in her vision she manages to make out the individuals, person-shaped blobs of navy blue.

She feels the body of her weapon tug against the man’s hand, some of the blurred people moving him.

“Wait.” She says, weakly.
The deformed femur shifts, the solidified flow expanding outward, freeing the man’s hand. The spike buried in the man’s torso expands slightly, new mass of bone filling in the wound, staunching the flow of blood. Bone dissolves as the spike sheds the new layer, allowing the modified limb to be pulled free.

The bleeding stump that remains of her severed arm waggles, as her remaining hand points at the stump’s counterpart.
“I need that.”

Alyssa can’t make out the voices of who she presumes to be police officers. She can’t even be sure her own speech is clear.
“Just… jam them together or something.”

A moment passes awkwardly, the blurs moving about. She feels a sharp pain as the stump connects with its severed half, a sense of burning emanating from the flesh that begins to stitch the two together. The coiled leaves of bone soften to become rubberesque, the knurl buried in the arm dissolving away. With neither structure nor muscle to support it, the binding falls from the man’s arm.

Adrenaline and shock begin to fade, exhaustion and pain taking their place. She feels herself get moved onto a stretcher and in the last moments of consciousness wills her body to heal.

Jason clambered over rocky mounds and stone bricks, the forest around him eerily silent save for his footsteps and the burbling of a stream some abstract distance ahead.

A variety of ferns carpeted the forest floor, thriving despite the perpetual twilight cast by the mile-high trees. Occasionally, Jason spotted crumbling stone structures. Each was reminiscent of a building he’d seen in his world, though no amount of conscious thought helped him in identifying them. It was that uncanniness surrounding each arrangement of stones that eroded the confidence he held in his sense of direction.

The mask-maker stayed his course, occasionally guided by a dream-like intuition for the geography of this world; perhaps it was one of the Traveller’s many gifts.

As earlier, Richard began yammering on. His voice was quieter now, some of his power expended by his recent escapade in Jason’s world. It was frustrating still, but that overwhelming clarity that accompanied it a mere hour ago was absent.

“I had her, mask-maker. You’re a traitor. She was dying and you took that from me.”

The gamecock’s form was hazy, barely visible in the half-light of the feywild. Jason allowed himself some minor satisfaction regarding that.

It left only the Changer to be concerned about. The mask-maker couldn’t see it now, but he felt that it was close. Perhaps it was disguised among the trees and ferns and stones. Perhaps it was simply lurking in the corner of his vision, always overlooked.

Jason’s journey had taken him some miles away from the mile, he estimated. Surprisingly, none of the entities that had gathered there earlier sought to follow him and his captives. He would have to learn why that was, someday. After all, how do you fully harness the power of something you can not fully understand?

When he reached the stream, the Traveller silently directed Jason to follow its flow downhill. It bothered him, but he heeded the Traveller without question. He’d followed the stream downhill every time he travelled through the feywild, even when simply making a round-trip between two points. It made no sense to him, but the Traveller had never steered him in the wrong direction.

And it appeared that was still the case. The stream led to the ruined castle that corresponded to his hide-away, and Jason could already hear Aubrey feasting and Graham restlessly pounding his feet against the forest floor. As he had every time before, Jason circled the ruins three times, finding no entrance until his third lap was finished. Once inside, the Traveller released him back into his world.

---

Frantic, Jason dug through his belongings: a disorganized heap of trashbags and shopping carts filled with books, clothes, and ready-to-eat food-like substances. After a few minutes of spreading the heap across the floor, he found what he was looking for. Carefully, he popped open the container of pills and selected two.

It took time, but the fey eventually faded, their voices muted and their forms only half-visible. Finally at peace, Jason curled up on the floor and slept.

508