Venom

Venom v1.98
Tags: Surinen, Simmerscale, cuteanon, light smut content, horror, action

With thanks to cuteanon.

	The first thing Surinen was aware of was the moist warmth, slowly traveling over his groin. It repeated the stroke, again, and again, no matter how much he wished for it to stop. There was a sensation of pressure at the base of his rod, and he uttered a frustrated groan as he woke up enough to finally recognize what was happening. “Simmerscale, please!”
	“Good morning, yep!” the squeaky voice replied, cheerful as ever.
	“Simmer, let me sleep!” he grumbled, his eyes cracking open sluggishly when she did not. He propped himself up by an elbow, his face the picture of disgruntlement as he looked down at the green-scaled kobold licking at his morning wood playfully, one of her tiny green hands wrapped around its ridged length. A few trails of smoke naturally drifted up from his form where she touched him, but she had grown long accustomed to such a hazard, and kept her head carefully positioned beside his member rather than above it. “Simmer! It is barely dawn!”
	“Dawn’s always the right time to wake up!” she said in the tone of an effervescent songstress, looking at him with her inscrutable lizard-like face and yellow eyes.
	“It is most certainly not, not if you were kept up by a barbaric dragon woman till midnight,” Suri sighed. She nodded rapidly with youthful energy that seeing only drove the pale man deeper into exhaustion.
	“Yeah, I could hear it!” she said, the corners of her mouth curled slightly in the kobold equivalent of a smile.
	“Listen, I appreciate the intent, and your… enthusiasm, but this has got to stop. This is quite simply inappropriate on every level. Surely you realize that?”
	Simmerscale seemed to pause in perplexity at his words, her eyes darting around anxiously. “I don’t really care? I just do it because it’s fun,” she said.
	“Look, I don’t know how to put this as delicately as I want to,” Suri sighed, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand before yawning loudly. “I’ve been trying to find the right words, but I don’t think I can stand this any longer. This kind of behavior makes you seem like a… well, a harlot. Doesn’t that bother you?”
	“Not really!” she shrugged, his words seemingly dripping off her like water off a fish. She reached for his length once more, only for him to grab her by the wrist and shake his head with a harsh, disapproving glare. He let go of her, and she scampered to her feet, walking away with a crestfallen stare at the ground.
	He tried to think of something to say as she went, something clever and wise that would serve as consolation to her, or a revelation, or at the very least make her laugh and alleviate some of the awkwardness. As if to spite him, all intellect voided itself. She vanished down the winding, labyrinthine stone passages that made up the cave they all shared as a home, leaving him with a dangling jaw and a sigh of impotence. He twisted his neck around to peer at the small crack in the wall of the chamber he had claimed for himself that opened to the outside, the first rays of the morning sun casting themselves at the floor by his hand, providing a tiny, comfortable warmth for his fingers.
	As his grogginess gradually faded, his heart sank to recall the kobold’s expression as she trudged away. However, he thought, all his pent-up exasperation at her antics was bound to come out sooner or later. It was probably for the best, he told himself. He did not mind if the diminutive little imp was briefly depressed about her misbehavior as long as it meant there was a chance that she could learn some dignity and composure, like the dragon who had scooped him up from his aimless wanderings exuded in spades.
	Surinen’s stark blue eyes wandered the confines of the chamber around him, eventually running across a bucket of water that Simmer must have set out for him. He crawled over to it, cupped his hands in the clear fluid, and splashed it over his face with a deep breath. Though he dearly wished to crawl back onto the bedroll and go back to sleep, the dull hunger in his gut was undeniable. Slowly, as the surface of the water settled, his face appeared in the reflection. A alabaster doll was the first thing that came to his mind. His skin was so pale that it was almost plaster, and his fingers rose to trace over his gaunt cheeks, as if to make sure that it was still flesh. Those fingers twitched when he glanced at them. Like his forearms and lower legs, they were covered in deep indigo scales that thinned out at the knees and elbows. They were an unfortunate holdover from his transformations into a dragon, or so he had been told. His lack of skill in the art left him unable to fully transform into a human.
	A crack suddenly formed in his skin, rising from his jaw to his eye, and he followed it with his fingers, watching tiny curls of smoke pour from it, only for it to slowly seal itself. Moments later, another seam spawned on his shoulder, trailing down to his bicep. It was wider than the other, and an eerie blue glow seemed to emanate from beneath it. These tiny flaws, or ‘imperfections’ as Linda called them, would always appear and vanish at random all over his body, following no pattern nor reason. Sometimes he went days without one, sometimes he had as many as a dozen on different parts of his body. For Suri, they served as reminders of his true nature as an artificial being. Of course he hated them. But they never physically hurt, and he hardly noticed them anymore.
	Surinen tore himself away from the bucket, tired of just looking at himself dumbly as he had done for the one or two years of his existence that he could recall. He was well awake, now, and ready to face the day’s challenges. It was not long until a vicious roar echoed through the cave, followed by several echoing thuds of rampaging anger that had become routine for every morning. “Now, if only the other miscreant could be convinced to get her act together…” he whispered under his breath.




	“Hey, you. It’s time to fuck. Go dragon. Now,” the scarlet-scaled, leonine-maned Amazonian beauty barked, jabbing a sharp finger into Surinen’s chest and pushing him backwards with her brute strength.
	“Ugh. It’s been a terribly long day, Grill. And I really can’t stand the way you phrase that,” he sighed, rubbing his face in his hands and brushing his dark locks out of his eyes.
	“Fine. Transform into a dragon, or whatever you want to call it. My pussy and your cock have a date tonight, and the venue is me riding you until you pop,” Grill growled, pointing her index finger down at the smooth mound between her legs and then at his package as if to help him understand the logistics.
	“That was not what I was talking about. To be perfectly frank, Grill,” he muttered in a disinterested tone, “I am simply sick and tired of you and your petty demands. I am not some sex object to be dragged around and ridden at your leisure!” To his surprise, she did not react with immediate violence. Instead, she lifted a hand to her chin, and squinted one of her brilliant russet eyes at him.
	“Wait. Linda told me about this. This is that ‘playing hard to get’ thing, isn’t it?”
	“No! That is absolutely not it. Grill, you are barbaric! You are nothing more than a clod who thinks herself a sage, and you only do whatever you want with no regard for the consequences that others must contend with! Why would I ever want to have sex with you? The novelty of it has long worn off by now, I assure you, all that remains is me putting up with your tripe because you would likely beat me if I didn’t give you what you want!”
	“…What is a clod?” she asked, as if her brain had caught onto that and that alone, and ignored everything else.
	“Read a book!” Surinen groaned, grinding his teeth. “This is exactly why I can’t stand you!”
	“Books are boring. And lame. No!” she roared defiantly, putting her hands on her hips and shaking her head. “Now hurry up and do the dragon thing. If you make me wait any longer, I’ll have you put that tongue of yours to work,” Grill added, waving her fingers at him dismissively.
	“Argh!” Suri yelled, raising his fists into the air furiously. “Since you don’t seem to understand what I’ve been telling you – I’ll make this easy so your pea-brain can comprehend.”
	“Pea-brain?” Grill snarled, balling her hands into fists and baring her teeth. But he would not be intimidated by such barbarism, not anymore.
	“I am not going to have sex with you anymore. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not next week, not next year. I get nothing out of this except a bruised pelvis and utter exhaustion when I’d rather be using my energy to learn and explore! And you aren’t even doing this for the pleasure. You only do this to soothe your bruised ego because you’re not even a real dragon anymore!”
	He was not able to see the scaled fist rocket towards his face. Mercifully, it hit him so hard that he also did not feel anything except a brief moment of surprise before his brain shut down.



	Unfortunately, unconsciousness could not protect him from the pain forever. Before his vision or hearing returned, there was the dull aching in his skull, fading for a moment before pulsing back to life with every thump of his heart. By the time his wits and ability to perceive the world around him had returned, he already partially regretted provoking the dragongirl. He cracked open one eye and found Linda staring down at him from above, and realized he had been placed on the old bloodstained stone table in the larder that had once been used for slaughtering animals.
	“Awake?” the ethereal beauty asked quietly. As usual, he found himself staring into her graceful features, her olive complexion, her long, lustrous black hair, and beautiful bronze irises. Of course, with his blurry and swimming vision, it was difficult to truly appreciate it. “Can you hear me?”
	“Yes,” he mumbled, though the act of moving his jaw sent a sharp tinge of agony through his skull.
	“Can you tell me your name?”
	“Surinen.”
	“And mine?”
	“Linda.”
	“How old are you?”
	“One or two years?”
	“Do you recall who did this to you?”
	“That brutish shrew.”
	“Mmhmm. How many fingers am I holding up?” she asked, proceeding to hold up two of her fingers over his vision. But in his sight, two became much more.
	“Looks like… eight? Ah, wait, it must be two,” he corrected himself as he blinked several times.
	“Hm. You’re definitely concussed, but it does not seem you’ve suffered permanent damage. You should be fine with some rest.”
	“Isn’t it bad to sleep with a concussion?”
	“Nonsense. If you’re capable of holding a conversation, you’re in no danger. And if it was bad enough that going to sleep would pose a risk to your health, you wouldn’t be in any position to discuss that – you’d most likely still be unconscious. Honestly, whoever created you imbued so many misconceptions into your mind, and left so many gaps in knowledge, both academic and practical. If nothing else, it serves as strong evidence that whoever did create you was oh so very mortal.”
	“Are you saying you could do better?” Suri asked, sitting up and rubbing his sore jaw gently.
	“I am not an alchemist, no, and I doubt any dragon ever bothered to learn beyond the fundamentals of the discipline. The underlying purpose of alchemy is essentially pointless in the eyes of my kind. That being said, the inherent flaws of mortals can still be perceived in all their works. Even, or perhaps especially, in a masterpiece like yourself.”
	As if to drive her point home, a crack manifested and twisted down the length of Suri’s arm to the very tip of his index finger, and faint bluish glow could be seen just beneath it. She reached out and traced a soft fingertip along the fault, so gentle against his skin that he couldn’t help but reflexively shiver. She giggled, raising her hand to conceal her mouth with a balled fist, only the curled corners of her lips visible.
	“You told me once that I could learn to stop this from happening,” Surinen said, trying his best to ignore the after-tingles where her fingertip had been only moments before.
	“Yes, if you learn more about yourself, and come to master your own abilities as a transforming being,” Linda said.
	“Linda, I’ve got to get out of this cave. I’ve already read – or tried to read – all the books you have about alchemy. They’re so damned arcane that I feel like I’m reading some other language, even if it’s in one of the alphabets I recognize.”
	“Oh, they can prove difficult even for me, I assure you,” the raven-haired dragon in human form said, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear.
	“I’m not learning anything here. I can’t stand Grill anymore. I’m sick of Simmer’s shenanigans. I’m going insane!” the alabaster-skinned fellow shouted, holding his head in his hands.
	“Then go out and see the world. You don’t require my permission. It is your world, and you should come to know it,” Linda said plainly. “If anything, I think it might do you some good.”
	“Then it’s settled. I already have some idea of where I want to go,” Suri said, pondering the matter with a finger on his chin. “And Simmer goes there frequently. I think I’ll join her on her next trip.”
	“Very well. Enjoy your trip, and try not to overdo it,” the amused woman said, planting a friendly peck on his cheek before strolling out of the room.




	A short while later, Surinen knocked on the roughshod wooden door that Simmer used to muffle the various noises that came from her chambers for the others’ sake. “Come in!” she said, though there was a strange tremor to her voice. He pushed the door open, only to find the energetic kobold laying sideways in her hammock, slowly rocking in the air, her arms bouncing up and down rhythmically. And there was a sound. A slight, moist schlicking, in tempo with the movements of her limbs. She stared at the half-nude artificial man with brief surprise, as he rarely visited her quarters, which slowly evolved into half-lidded bedroom eyes. “Ohhh, hello Suri, come in,” she said as she put a little more vigor into what she was doing, and the lewd noises grew in pitch. “Just wanna say, I’m super sorry about this morning. I promise I won’t wake you up like that anymore,” she said.
	He froze in place. He could not see what all she was doing to herself, since it was concealed by the hammock, but it was obvious enough. He had heard Simmerscale relieve her stress before, but never had he actively observed it in such a personal setting. The fact that he had her attention as she did it was making his heart beat a little faster. A mildly embarrassed and slightly aroused blush spread across his cheeks. “Er, apology accepted,” he mumbled. “You’re really not that bad – it’s Grill I’m fed up with more than anything.”
	“Mmm,” Simmer moaned as she worked herself over, squirming sensually in the fabric of the hammock. “She can be a right handful sometimes, and not always in the good way. She’s really upset about what you told her, you know!”
	“Upset? Furious, more like,” Suri muttered, rubbing his still-sore jaw. “I don’t regret what I told her, though. I feel much better now that I’ve stood up for myself, though I might have to sleep with one eye open, I imagine.”
	“Nah, she’s too busy moping in a corner about it.”
	That made Surinen raise a confused eyebrow, but the kobold dropped the subject. Her smile widened a little as something occurred to her.
	“You’ve found me in a precarious situation, you know. It’s pretty rude to just leave the door open like that!” the green-scaled one pointed out, clearly playing on his manners. He jumped in place, realizing he’d left the door open behind him, and shut it. Of course, with the only opening in the room sealed, the lustful scent of Simmer filled his nostrils. “Thank you,” Simmer hummed pleasantly as her reptilian eyes flicked back down at what she was doing for a moment.
	“Simmer, I-I was wondering if I could go with you on the next trip to Poliaht?” he stammered awkwardly, watching her slow down what she was doing and draw out each movement and quietly moan as if to tease him.
	“It’s pretty rude to stare when a lady’s taking care of personal matters, too. Unless you’d like to help?” Simmer added as her tongue flicked out and licked her lips seductively. Surinen gaped at that, and slowly shook his head to clear his mind of the painfully arousing image. What was so different now than in the morning? he wondered. For one thing, he wasn’t groggy and exhausted, some part of his head answered. He gulped loudly, and cleared his throat to compose himself as much as he could.
	“My, uh, apologies. I’ve got… other business to take care of at the moment. But about the trip?” he asked, desperately hoping she would not press the propositioning any further. He had enough of that from Grill.
	Her eyes were on his crotch, not his face. And yet, she left the matter settled. “The city, huh? Mm. What brought this up all of a sudden?” she asked.
	“I want to find an alchemist to teach me the Art,” Suri began, trailing off to a squeak when Simmer pulled something out and lifted it up into the air, glistening with her juices. It was a large, smooth wooden dildo, roughly the same size as Suri’s own member (a fact not lost on him). And fluids covered every inch of it. Just how did she fit the whole thing in there? She gave it a few cursory swipes with her tongue and lowered it back down to continue the sounds of her lewdness.
	“I see. Ohhh. Hsss. Have you ever been to a city before?” Simmer queried as she shamelessly frigged herself harder. The man rubbed the back of his neck, as if an invisible collar was constricting his throat. “Sorry, is this making you nervous? I can stop.”
	“No! No. You can do… whatever you want in your own room.”
	“I’d like to hold a proper conversation, though, and that’s hard to do if you’re standing all the way over there to avoid what I’m doing!” Simmer pointed out, stopping her sensual movements.
	“I assure you, it is not a problem,” Surinen said bravely. It was definitely a problem, but it was only his problem, and he did not like the idea of barging into someone’s place and interrupting whatever they were doing arbitrarily. After all, he had only just that morning gotten fed up with Simmer for failing to be so considerate. He steeled his burning nerves and strode forward till he stood beside the kobold, struggling to resist the unbidden urge to look from her eyes to what she was doing between her legs with that toy. She blinked in surprise, then accepted his gentlemanly words at face value and continued to masturbate freely.
	“That’s sweet of you. Okay then!” she exclaimed, pumping the dildo in and out of her smooth, puffy vulva with little pleasured grunts. He realized he was watching her do it and averted his gaze, but she paid his embarrassment no heed. “So you’ve never been to a city before?”
	“No, I… actually never visited a mortal village, even. Actually no, there was one time, when I was still roaming, lost and bewildered. I tried to enter a settlement, and the moment the people of the village saw me, they gathered tools they could use as weapons and chased me out.”
	“That’s terrible!” Simmer gasped lewdly.
	“Well, at the time it was, but now I understand why: I was nude at the time and covered in glowing cracks on my skin. I looked a little worse than the common vagabond.” He accidentally glanced back down at her lascivious act out of pure reflex, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was too preoccupied with slowly dragging every inch of the dildo out so that she could push it all right back in, throw back her head, and sigh pleasantly.
	“So, do you think you are prepared to visit a city?” the kobold asked, cracking one eye open at him, her voice rising in pitch as her movements grew shaky and needy.
	“Of course! I’ve learned much more about the world since then. I won’t do something foolish like needlessly approach strangers. And I’ll wear clothes.”
	“Ah, a bold strategy!” she giggled with half-lidded, leisurely aroused eyes. “Alright. I’ll bring you along. Linda asked me to make a trip soon, so we’ll leave in three days.”
	“Brilliant! You have my gratitude, Simmer!” Surinen said with an earnest smile. Of course, at that moment, she suddenly tensed up and moaned as her body was wracked with the tremors of hot orgasm, and as her eyes fluttered shut he could not help but watch in total enrapture. She remained still like that for a little while, then blinked her eyes open and immediately picked up where she left off. When it became apparent the kobold would continue to masturbate for the foreseeable future, Suri briskly headed to the door, mumbled out a farewell, and stepped out, glad to be out of there, because it was no longer possible to conceal the burgeoning erection in his pants. Unfortunately, it took some time for him to calm down, for his thoughts were burdened with a number of vivid memories of sight, sound, and smell that he found difficult to exorcise.





	“Simmer, there’s something that’s been bothering me,” Surinen said as they marched down the road, both with large packs of supplies and travel rations on their backs.
	“What’s that?” Simmer asked.
	“Kobolds typically live in tribes, right? Subterranean communities?”
	“Yep!”
	“Why don’t you live with your own people?” he asked. The kobold blinked in surprise, the cheerful grin on her face fading rapidly. He realized too late that it was a clearly personal question. But in the same instant, the smile returned as if it had never left her snout.
	“Because I’m an adventurer, silly! How many human adventurers do you meet who still live in their home towns?” she giggled.
	“Oh, right. But you haven’t done much adventuring lately, have you? Or at least, not since I came to live at the cave with you three.”
	“Haven’t had the time! Too busy making sure Grill has enough to eat, and eats her vegetables, and stuff.”
	“You really don’t have to take care of her, you know,” Surinen said. She turned and shot him a look.
	“It’s not like I don’t enjoy it! Besides, if I wasn’t around, nobody there would be able to cook anything. Linda might be able to hunt for herself, but Grill can’t eat raw meat. And you only know how to make stew.”
	“Grill can just cook with her fire breath, can’t she? Let her learn to take care of herself.”
	“You’ve never seen her try that, have you? She has no patience to slowly roast anything, so she burns it with one big breath and forces herself to eat the charred remains of whatever it used to be. It’s not what you would call healthy!”
	“Then you should definitely stop supporting her. She’ll learn the hard way how to cook things and be better off for it!”
	“She’ll learn when she’s ready to learn,” Simmer said, irritation creeping into her tone. “Why are you so hard on her, anyways?”
	“Why are you so gentle towards her? She has no redeeming qualities! All she does is eat, sleep, and screw. You and I both know she’s stealing all the stuff in her hoard from travelers, too.”
	“Oh, she’s stolen more things than just valuables from them…” Simmer said under her breath.
	“Huh?”
	“Don’t worry about it. We’re gonna cut across the forest here, save some time,” she said, stepping off the beaten path and into the foliage. Surinen followed her, accidentally walking into a high tree branch and banging his head.
	“Ow!”
	“Sorry!”
	“It’s not your fault,” Suri sighed as he rubbed his forehead. They walked in silence for a while before the kobold piped up again.
	“I know Grill is hard to get along with, but she’s not the type of person to just open up to somebody unless she is given a reason to. She’s been mean to you, but the fact that she felt comfortable enough around you to have sex with you is proof that on some level, she regards you as worthy of it.”
	“I’m pretty certain she only wanted to do me because she wanted the thrill of having sex with a dragon so badly she was even willing to take an imitation,” Suri scoffed.
	“Sure, maybe for the first few times, but I think any sort of excitement like that would have worn off pretty quickly,” Simmer pointed out. “At some point, it became a comfortable routine for her.” Surinen listened and thought deeply, raising a finger to his chin as he strolled. He was having a hard time refuting that, as much as he wanted to.
	“Be that as it may, it does not excuse her behavior. Even if true, it’s just a justification,” he grumbled. Simmer sighed, clearly frustrated, but she shut up, rather than prolonging the argument. They covered a few miles before Suri stepped on what looked like a tree root – and that ‘tree root’ immediately lashed out, fangs stabbing deep into his ankle. He let out a panicked yelp and saw the snake as it recoiled from the lightning-fast bite. As he stumbled backwards, the green scaled girl moved in a flash, fingers clasping the hilt of her weapon. He blinked, and in that instant, she pierced the snake’s throat with her long knife, pinning its dying corpse to the ground with brutal efficiency.
	“Suri! Lay down!” Simmer shouted, her attentions immediately turning to him.
	“Wha-what?”
	“Lay down right now! If you move, the venom will spread faster! And stay calm!”
	“It… was venomous?” he mumbled, but as life returned to his limbs, he slowly sat down and leaned against a tree. A burning sensation was already beginning to emanate from the rapidly swelling bite wound.
	“Yes, it was a viper. Stay exactly like that. We’re too far from the cave to get help, so it’s safer if you don’t move at all. I’m going to go find some water. Stay with the bags,” the kobold explained, pulling her heavy travel pack off and laying it beside Suri. “When I get back, I’ll make camp.”





	Surinen spent the night in agony, writhing pitifully with only Simmer to assuage his fever by wetting a cloth and laying it on his forehead to cool him down. His whole body felt both numb and on fire; breathing alone was a trial of will. He found it impossible to keep any food down, and he was drenched in his own sweat, and soon discarded all of his clothes so that he could stay as cool as possible in the small tent.
	At some point, the suffering dimmed, and sleep came quickly to the exhausted lad. By the time he awoke, he only felt tired, rather than as if his life was ending. On the other hand, without any clothes on, a terrible chill came over him, and he cuddled closer to the sole source of warmth by him – wrapping his arm tighter around the warm scales pressed against his chest. A moment later he cracked open his eyes, and realized he was cuddling with Simmer, who had her snout buried against his chest snugly, her gentle breath tickling his flesh. Butterflies fluttered in his gut, and his mouth suddenly felt dry. This was the closest and most comfortable he had ever been with someone, and for it to be Simmer of all people – it felt bizarre. Worse, she was just as nude as he was, and his cheeky morning wood was sticking against her warm legs. In fact, her whole body felt marvelous to the touch, soft, smooth, a sensation he had the feeling he would never be able to forget.
	The only thing he could do was carefully extract himself from the situation so as to not wake her and spare them both the chagrin of waking up together like that. Unfortunately, the moment he withdrew his arm laying over her, she immediately stirred, yawning wide and nuzzling against Suri’s chest some more before her eyes finally opened. She glanced up at him with a dopey, early-morning smile. “Mornin’!”
	“Uh… good morning,” Suri murmured awkwardly, turning over away from her.
	“Feelin’ better?”
	“Much, thank you. Just tired now.”
	“Do you feel up to another day of hiking? We’re only one day out from the city, and two from the cave. If you think you’ll need a chance for proper rest, it would come sooner if we went to the city.”
	“I think I can handle the rest of the trip fine. I just hope we don’t run into another snake on the way…”
	“Oh, one came into the tent last night,” Simmer mentioned off-handedly as she sat up and stretched out her arms with another long yawn.
	“Uh!”
	“I caught it and released it far away, relax. It was just curious what was in here, not looking for a scrap or anything. You can’t call yourself an adventurer if you can’t handle a snake or two,” she said, as if it was perfectly natural.
	“I may not be cut out for adventuring, then,” Suri muttered.
	“Even if you aren’t, the wisdom of adventurers should never be scorned. Rule one of traveling through a forest: watch your footing,” she said sagely.
	“What’s rule two?”
	“Don’t step on a bloody snake.”




	Fortunately, the rest of the journey was uneventful, and Surinen found himself almost fully recovered before they even saw the outskirts of the city in the distance, where merchant caravans pitched tents to sell their wares. As they neared, Surinen pulled his hood over his head to best conceal his unusual visage, and any puffs of smoke or cracks in his skin that might otherwise be noticeable.
	“Those look interesting,” Surinen noted as the duo passed by several tall tents containing countless baubles, carpets and rugs from faraway lands, silverware, pottery, and countless odds and ends.
	“You can find good deals around here if you know how to haggle, and a little about whatever it is you’re buying,” Simmer said, glancing back and forth on either side of the road at the various merchants showing off their wares. “Normally I’d browse a little, but we’ve got plenty of other things to do, so we should keep moving.” They walked on to the city gate, a tall archway in the stone walls that marked the edges of the city and protected its denizens from the outside. Just as the kobold was about to pass through, one of the guards stepped forward and stuck his spear in her way.
	“Halt. We don’t like your kind here, scaleling,” he barked. Surinen was struck dumb with shock, but Simmer seemed well-acquainted with that sort of treatment.
	“I understand. I’ll stay out of the finer districts,” she said with a respectful bow.
	“It is well that you know your place, but the count insists we charge any of your breed a small duty, to make sure only those of you worth having around enter our city.” The watchman held out a mailed gauntlet insistently. The green scaled one chuckled and a placed her hand in his, sliding it away to reveal a few gold pieces, which the guard tucked into his sash. He cleared his throat and raised his spear out of her way. “Very good, move along,” he said.
	Surinen could not help but bristle at what had just taken place, but before he could raise his voice, Simmer clicked her tongue at him to follow. With a deep sigh to release his tension, the artificial man stepped forward, only for the spear to impede his progress as well. He glared at the guard, who stared under his hood suspiciously before reaching out and pulling it back to get a better look at his face. His unnaturally pale skin was exposed, and the guard squinted.
	“Never seen someone look like you before. You an elf or something?”
	Suri opened his mouth to speak, but the kobold pre-empted him, sensing what the gentleman had to say was likely not going to help the situation. “He’s just an ordinary man with an unusual pallor. Worked with a little too much quicksilver, is all!” she bluffed to the guard, who raised an eyebrow.
	“He ain’t diseased, is he?”
	“Of course not! We’ve been walking for days! He couldn’t have come all this way if he was sick!”
	“Hmph. The count is gonna need a little assurance he won’t be a problem.”
	“Of course, of course, yep yep!” Simmer said cheerfully, not a hint of defiance in her tone or eyes as she handed over a fair few more golden coins. The guard carefully examined them to make sure they were real, then stuffed them away and allowed Suri to pass. After both of them had walked a fair distance into the streets of the city, out of the hearing of any watchmen, Surinen groaned in frustration.
	“This ‘count’ character is beyond reprehensible! Demanding money because you’re a kobold? Because I don’t look like a normal person? Just who is it that runs this city?”
	Simmer giggled, looking up at Suri in amused surprise.
	“What’s so funny?”
	“I don’t think you’ve ever been so infuriated before. You know, the count did not levy that tax.”
	“What?”
	“So gullible, Suri. You shouldn’t take people at their word in a place like this.”
	“You mean there was not some decreed tax on undesirables? But that would mean he was extorting you!”
	“Yep, yep he was.”
	“That’s a crime!”
	“He’s a lawman in these parts, lawmen can get away with many things.”
	“But – no, but the other watchmen were standing right there! Why wouldn’t they arrest him?” Suri asked insistently.
	“Because they take turns coming up with reasons that travelers should pay them fees and pulling one over on them. The reason for me was because I was a kobold, the reason for you is because you look strange, the reason for some merchant might be that there’s a tariff on his goods that was not announced. That’s just how things work around here.”
	“That’s awful!”
	“It’s just money. Not much that can be done about it. Yep, yep.”
	“Surely their employers would be livid to hear of this?”
	“No, they know what’s going on, but it’s not something they particularly care to fix. Keeping the watch happy means they’ll be more loyal. Besides, locals aren’t treated the same way. We’re outsiders, so we don’t really have a right to complain.”
	“That’s not true!” Surinen said vehemently. The kobold sighed and rubbed the ridge of her brow.
	“Listen, Suri, I’m going to give you some advice that my closest friend gave me once. Choose your battles.”
	“What?”
	“Choose your battles. There are many out there. Don’t run headlong into every one that you can. Look at them carefully, and decide if fighting a battle like that is worth the time, worth the risks, worth the pain it’ll bring you,” Simmer explained, poking him in the chest.
	“Are you saying rooting out corruption in this city is an unworthy goal?” Suri asked, astonished.
	“Of course I’m not. I’m saying there might be more worthy ones out there that need you more than this one does. The business of this city is the business of its citizens, not visitors. Yes, you could fight for justice and reforms, but it’s not your responsibility, is it? And it’s not like this is something that hurts a lot of people. Travelers are rare outside of merchant caravans, and they can easily cover any sort of additional fees. Compared to problems like bandits that rob the caravans naked, or kill people who have no valuables to give, city guardsmen extorting you at the gates is relatively minor.”
	Surinen did not know how to respond at first, and hesitated to open his mouth. “It sounds like you’re speaking from experience, as an adventurer.”
	“Of course I am! You don’t become a successful adventurer by taking on every issue you come across as your own. You look for problems that need you specifically, and then you solve them. Human politics have no need of either of us.”
	“I suppose not. But it’s still just so frustrating!”
	“It’s fine that you feel that way. Just don’t get reckless.”
	“I’m not Grill, you don’t have to worry about that,” Suri snorted.
	“Yes, I suppose you’re right about that, yep, yep!” Simmer giggled, glad to see that Suri had calmed down enough to make witty snipes. “Now, let’s go find some lodgings. I’m exhausted!”




	Surinen found himself quite appreciative of the comfort a room and a bed offered after the trip. Simmer brought them to an old favorite lodge and paid for a room up front for a few days, tipping the innkeeper a little extra to keep their names off the ledger in case anyone asked. Surinen was curious as to why the kobold would take such a measure, and she just shrugged and muttered something about adventurer wisdom. They would, of course, be sharing the room, but there were separate beds for each of them.
	Even so, Suri felt at least a little embarrassed to watch the kobold strip down to the bare scales she usually pranced around in back at the cave. He had gotten used to seeing her in traveling clothes, and the sight of her undressing was strangely exciting. As she loosened the strings of her shirt and let it slink down off her shoulders, she noticed his intent gaze and glanced curiously at him, only for Suri to immediately flush and avert his eyes. She returned her attention to disrobing, and he hesitantly peeked at her a few more times when he was sure she wasn’t looking.
	“So, what do you think of the city?” the green scaled girl asked.
	“It’s not as bustling as I expected. The streets were practically deserted.”
	“Most folk go out to the fields outside and work all day. The people who don’t are the wealthy, merchants, and the housekeepers. It livens up considerably in the evenings when the farmers and guards are coming home and there’s money to be made off of them,” she explained.
	“I see. Well, the buildings are certainly impressive. This inn looks to be at least a century old, if not more. I feel like there’s much history to be learned about.”
	“Yeah, everyone has a story to tell, here. You can make friends pretty easily just by listening to them.”
	“Hmm. I’ll keep that in mind.”
	“Good! Now, since we have a few hours before dusk, I think I’ll try to steal some winks.”
	“Is that more wisdom of an adventurer?”
	“Yep yep! Always rest whenever you can. You should have a nap as well.”
	“Alright,” Suri said, leaning back on the small bed and staring at the ceiling thoughtfully until his eyelids drooped shut.




	As evening twilight descended on the city of Poliaht, Simmerscale roused Suri and the two of them quickly prepared to take to the streets. Their destination was the marketplace, where Simmer could browse for food supplies and Surinen could search for an alchemist to teach him.
	“Now, don’t wander off,” Simmer warned him. “It’s too easy to get lost in the alleys.”
	“I have no intentions to,” Suri replied, following her closely. He glanced around, getting a real look at the town for the first time. The streets were narrow and winding, following no particular design, but rather simply created from the gaps between buildings. The buildings themselves came in two primary styles. In the inner circle of the city, there were many older buildings built from stone and mortar, fairly aesthetically unappealing from the outside, but benefitting from the robustness of a simple design and strong materials. These were clearly from a century or two ago, and yet showed no signs of major decay. Outside this inner ring, the majority of houses were made of wood and clearly much newer, yet also much more sophisticated in their architecture, as they used newer design techniques. Although it was unusual, the wealthy lived in the outer ring of the city, as the newer homes were considerably more popular. As a consequence, the modest stone houses were inhabited by the poorer folk. There was little concern for safety, as the walls of the city served as adequate protection even for those living near the edge, and in a time of danger, the nobles and merchants could simply flee to the fortified keep situated at the far end of the city from the main gates.
	No longer seemingly deserted, people strolled down the streets in varying states of inebriation and celebration for pay well earned. Despite the rowdiness and general excitement among the citizens, Simmer and Suri seemed almost invisible to everyone else, though he had no clue why that might be. In fact, the throngs of people actively parted to stay well away from the duo.
	“Simmer, are we being avoided?”
	“Kobolds don’t exactly have a good reputation, and anyone who is with one is usually given the same treatment,” the kobold explained patiently. “Don’t let it get to you. No self-respecting business owner will turn anyone with coin away, so we’re fine.” Surinen acknowledged what Simmer said, but found it difficult to be as okay with it as she seemed to be.
	It wasn’t long until they arrived at the marketplace, where dozens of stalls selling various wares were set up, sprawling across the plaza. Unlike the tents outside the city walls, every stall was run by a local citizen, and overseen by the city’s merchant council. While the goods found in the bazaar were considerably less exotic than what one could discover in the outskirts, they also had a much higher quality control. Poliaht’s local produce consisted primarily of wheat, potatoes, cotton, apples, a local variety of cherries, and pecans. Naturally, the vast majority of stalls consisted of sellers of these very items, but there were a few covering the other basic necessities of life. Simmer led Suri right to the stall where she purchased most of the goods for the cave and struck up a friendly conversation with the merchant there, who eyed Surinen suspiciously for a moment before putting on his most welcoming smile and conducting his business with the kobold.
	While they haggled and bartered with each other, Suri glanced around, curiously scanning the nearby stalls to see what they were selling. One man had carpets and rugs on sale, another featured freshly tanned leather ready to be crafted into clothes, many more had various food items. All of them were calling out the virtues of their wares to the potential customers wandering around, and some of the things they said piqued Suri’s interest, like one claiming to be selling specially grown carrots that would cure indigestion, while another insisted to some foreigners that their hammers were nearly indestructible and would last a century without any maintenance.
	It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. He had watched life and the behavior of the myriad creatures in the forest for months, but this was life on a scale unprecedented to him, interactions more complex than anything he had ever seen taking place all around him, things he longed dearly to watch and absorb and learn from. His legs moved automatically beneath him as he was lured away by the siren scents, sights, and sounds of the marketplace, drifting from one stall to the next, keeping an eye on Simmer in the distance so that he could find his way back whenever he wanted to, right up until he stumbled past a couple of quarreling spouses and completely forgot to pay attention to where he was.
	When a small child dressed in rags casually strolled by and grabbed an apple from a fruit stall, slipping it into his pants and walking away, Suri’s wandering interest zeroed in on it. He walked up and took a look at the bowls full of fruit, picking out one particularly big and ripe green apple and taking a hefty bite out of it. It tasted way better than the ones Simmer brought back – nothing really stayed perfectly fresh in the time it took for her to make the trip back from the city. Pleased enough to smile, he took another bite, and another, chomping away at it until it was nothing more than a core, then looked around for a place to deposit it before spotting the cores laying on the ground and tossing it down, turning to head back to Simmer.
	A calloused hand seized his shoulder and yanked him back, and Surinen came face to face with the stallkeeper, who had a furious grimace on his face. “Uh, can I help you, sir?”
	“You think I’d just let you walk away after helping yourself to my merchandise? You’re gonna pay for that, or I call the guards,” the older man growled.
	“What? I thought they were free!” Surinen said, shocked.
	“You really think I’d fall for that? Show me the money!”
	“I don’t have any money,” the pale man sighed, deflating.
	“So you’re just a damned thief!”
	“No! No! I promise! I didn’t know! That child took one, so I thought you were letting people have them at no charge!”
	“That child? You mean that filthy orphan brat? Why I oughta…” the merchant said, shaking his fist angrily. “Just because some dirty kid steals my goods doesn’t mean you can, whelp! Guards! Guards! Arrest this man! He’s a thief!” the man shouted, and a pair of the many guards watching over the marketplace immediately came running. There were surely few offenses direr than theft in a city so dependent on trade. Surinen froze up in shock and terror as he watched the armored watchmen run at him from the distance, fearful of what they’d do to him.
	“Excuse me sir, many apologies, he’s not a thief, I’ll pay for it,” Simmer said, trotting over with her coinpurse out and the friendliest smile she could muster.
	“Gods, the thief has a kobold for a friend. One apple, one shilling,” the angry merchant huffed, folding his arms.
	“Of course,” Simmer said, pushing the coin into his hand, grabbing Surinen by the wrist, and dragging him away quickly before the guards could start asking questions.
	“Sorry, Simmer,” Surinen mumbled, feeling at a loss for words for just how upset he was at himself. It was such a stupid error to make. She glanced at him inquisitively as she pulled him onwards, noticing his expression.
	“Don’t worry about it! It’s your first time in the city,” she said with a reassuring smile. Her kindness only served to deepen his regret for disobeying her. They arrived back at the stall of Simmer’s personal trader and she started the negotiations back up again with a brief apology for interrupting. This time, Suri didn’t wander off.




	They returned to the inn with a basketful of goods in each arm. While it was perfectly practical to subsist at the cave indefinitely for the four of them, it was the foods and spices that Simmer’s supply runs brought back that kept their meals interesting. Grill in particular became sour and moody when stocks of alcoholic beverages and sweets ran out.
	When they stepped into their room and deposited the supplies on the ground, Simmer sighed loudly and turned to Surinen. “Suri, I’m not mad, you don’t have to be all quiet and sulky. Don’t you have tons of questions about the city to ask? Like, you were having a blast just looking at the market!”
	He averted his eyes from her to the ground, as if he felt unworthy to meet her gaze. “I should have known better. I made a terrible mistake.”
	The kobold blinked a few times, staring at him incredulously. “What?”
	“I’ve read many stories in Linda’s library that describe how trade works. Of course you have to pay for something you take from a stall. Of course you do. Why did I think it would be free?”
	“I don’t know, Suri, how could you have known what that kid did was stealing? Today is literally your first day in a city, your first time experiencing a marketplace. Don’t beat yourself up just because you misinterpreted something!”
	The artificial man listened to her, but even though her words rang true, they didn’t seem to be enough to cheer him up. He sat down on the bed. “Even so, I can’t help but feel depressed about the whole thing. I disobeyed you when you told me to stay nearby.”
	“Listen, just because I tell you to do or not to do something, doesn’t mean I’m going to be mad if you don’t listen to me. It’s just advice. You’re your own person, you’re not dim, you are absolutely qualified to make your own decisions. If you want to explore the city, I don’t intend to stop you,” Simmer explained patiently, sitting beside Surinen and taking his hand, rubbing it in her hands gently.
	He smiled, somewhat consoled. “Thanks, Sim.”
	“Don’t mention it! As far as mistakes go, this is pretty harmless, yep. I know you haven’t really made many of them before, but they’re a fact of life. Take it from me, you’d better get used to making them, and learning how to make up for them, because they’re not going to stop. All you can do is take the lessons you can from each one, and try to avoid making similar ones in the future. Got it?” she asked cheerfully.
	“Yeah, I think so,” Suri said, nodding and breathing deeply to relax. Satisfied, Simmer released his hand and lifted her arms over her head to stretch lithely, falling backwards onto the mattress. He looked down at her beside him as she began to unlace her clothes and kick off her boots onto the ground, watching her fingers glide over the surface of her traveler’s garb and slowly pull each layer of fabric off of herself until only her green scales remained. She didn’t seem to mind him watching.
	“I still feel a little bad about not listening to you. How can I make it up to you?” he asked, in a quiet tone.
	She didn’t respond immediately. When she looked up into his eyes probingly, he did not reflexively look away like before, locking gazes with her. Then his dazzling blue eyes slowly trailed down her tiny, soft frame, looking at her belly, then between her legs, where her scaled vulva lay in plain sight.
	He looked upon the petite beauty of her scales for a few tense moments, then reached out and slid his hand between her thighs, his fingers cupping her womanhood experimentally. She made no movements and no sounds. Suri began to slowly rub his fingertips over her smooth, puffy flesh, and that’s when her hand shot out to grab him by the wrist, causing him to look over at her, where she slowly shook her head. He withdrew his arm and coughed into a hand, standing up awkwardly, the tent in his trousers quite obvious.
	“Sorry, Suri, while I appreciate the sentiment, we should save that stuff for when we get back to the cave. I don’t really feel comfortable getting hot and steamy in a place like this.” Her words were a bit odd to him, since this was the kobold who had tried to wake him up so salaciously for weeks.




	The morning brought with it overcast skies and a lazy drizzle that came and went just enough to keep the streets and roofs of the city slick. Surinen couldn’t help but wake up when he felt tiny feet pitter-pattering around him on the floor, the place he had chosen to sleep - for his own sake more than his friend’s. He sat up and rubbed his eyes groggily, peering over at the dressed kobold who was just about to climb out of the window. “Simmerscale, what are you doing?” was the first sentence that came off his tongue.
	The green scaled adventuress glanced over at him, sitting halfway on the other side of the windowsill. “Oh! Good morning, Suri. I’m just gonna go meet up with some old acquaintances. I figured this would make less noise than if I had to unlatch the door and all that. Anyways, I left some coins on the table for any needs you might have while I’m out. If you want to explore the city some on your own, that’s fine too. Just try to keep an eye on landmarks so you can find your way back. Expect me back by evening!” And then she was gone in the blink of an eye, and to Surinen’s amazement, he did not even hear her land on the ground, even though she must have dropped at least two stories.
	Although part of him wanted to go right back to sleep, there was a smoldering ember in the back of his mind that just wouldn’t go out. The more he thought about it, the livelier it became, growing into a full-fledged wildfire of yearning. He wanted to explore the city, and find an alchemist who could teach him. That was the whole point of his coming on the journey! He stretched his lithe limbs out and climbed to his feet, turning to look at the mirror in the room and seeing his dark locks had smushed up against one side of his face in his sleep. He did his best to comb his unruly hair back into a respectable shape with his fingers, and dressed for the day in a comfortable set of traveling clothes, an outfit he had come to prefer simply for its practicality. Stopping only long enough to grab the handful of shillings left for him, Suri shut the window and stepped out the door, not brave enough to mimic his companion’s questionable way of exiting the building.
	Of course, the moment he hit the streets proper, he took a good look at the weathered stone and ostentatious wooden buildings surrounding him, the trickle of pedestrians wandering the streets, the couple of late farmhands running to get to the fields outside the walls, and realized he had absolutely no idea where he should go. The only advice Simmer had given him was to not get lost, and a quick glance at the sun’s position, barely detectable through the clouds, told him which way east was, so that was at least some manner of directional certainty. He considered simply asking one of the citizens for directions, but they all seemed to be rather busy, making it difficult to establish eye contact for the beginnings of a conversation.
	It only took a moment of consideration for his excitement to win over his anxiety of getting lost. After all, he knew the way to the marketplace and to the southern gate – two major landmarks, so even if he did get briefly lost on his way he could just keep an eye out for those and be fine. Resolving himself to find an alchemist who would train him, and not to return to the inn until then, he took his first steps into what was, for him, an unknown world, heading due north - the direction of Poliaht keep, if his guess was correct. He chose to ignore the uncomfortable weight in his chest, thinking it merely some meek fear or doubt.




	Surinen was tired, frustrated, starving, soaking wet, freezing, and worst of all, lost. Just how many narrow alleyways, tiny streets, unremarkable buildings, and circular pathways could there be in such a compressed place? He ran into dead end after dead end, kept running in circles when he wanted to find a way out, and finding himself in unknown territory when he wanted to trace back to an earlier position. The sun was no longer shining through any gaps in the clouds because the light rain had metamorphosed into a relentless deluge. He had no compass, his wool cloak was totally saturated with water along with everything else he was wearing, and visibility was pathetic with the wall of rain right in front of him to the point that he couldn’t see from one end of a street to the other. Naturally, the streets had been abandoned by the city’s inhabitants, who were all staying warm and dry indoors.
	Suri would have gladly been back at the inn, having warm soup and bread and cheese, delicious cheese, if not for the utterly absurd misfortunes that had struck him, one after the other. To start off with, he had nearly been run over by a carriage and sported several bruises as testament to that fact. After violently cursing whoever was driving the vehicle and their mothers, Suri went about his business, looking into the fair few alchemists who lived in Poliaht.
	The first alchemist he found was an old woman who called herself a witch. Interested, Surinen asked if she was taking students, and she smiled and nodded happily, as if overjoyed to hear it. Introducing herself as Sheba, she explained that she only took students who passed a simple test to prove their aptitude, and that, in order to keep the numerous aspirants at bay, asked for a small fee per attempt – five shillings. When Surinen explained sadly that he only had six, and that he needed to save them for food, she said she’d give him a ‘first try’ discount, and only charge three. Pleasantly surprised, he took her deal, and she gave him a block of lead and a bucket of water, and asked him to change the lead to gold.
	Surinen stared at the dense metal in his hand, peered into the slightly muddy water, and wracked his brain for the solution to the test that obviously some sort of trick to it. He considered if her wording was unusual or betrayed a hint as to what she was really asking for, and tried to scratch away the surface of the lead to make sure there was no gold hidden beneath a lead leaf, but there was simply nothing weird about what she’d said and the soft lead gave way to more lead. Finally, out of desperation, he simply dropped the lead into the water and sat and waited patiently for some sort of reaction to occur. It was only after he’d spent at least three full hours struggling with all his intellect to figure out the test that it dawned on him that it was impossible. On a fundamental level, this was not a trial that could be conquered. It was not measuring anything, no aptitude, no talent, nothing. The further realization that he had just been swindled out of half of his money jolted through him.
	With that and a little more cursory examination of the homely shop while Sheba wasn’t looking, he discovered a few more things. The ‘witch’ clearly didn’t know any actual witchcraft – she just brewed ‘potions’ all day, and it only took Surinen a moment of inspection to understand that she was just a fraud who sold colorful draughts of poor-tasting, but harmless liquids, advertised as being able to lengthen your lifespan, make others fall in love with you, and plenty of other totally nonsensical claims.
	What surprised him was that this crafty old woman actually had a thriving business and quite a number of customers, who were entirely sold on the faux-witch routine and believed what they were getting were valuable vials of vapory solutions and not colored porridge. He left, more amazed and bewildered by the willingness of some people to accept obvious fakes than bothered by the dishonest business the old woman ran. He had no real desire to get into an argument with her over his money, either. He felt a little too embarrassed that he’d fallen for her tricks so easily, just because she seemed like such a sweetie. Perhaps that was why so many people kept shopping there, rather than revealing her to be a fake?
	The next alchemist he discovered, running a shop on the corner of a busy street, was definitely the real deal. Just walking in, the establishment exuded propriety and education, and the young owner was an aloof, sharp-minded nobleman with a stern disposition. Surinen asked him for tutelage, and his immediate response was no. Suri asked why, and the answer he received was that the alchemist had no intentions of sharing his highly sought after work with others. The artificial man had no real way of arguing against such a policy, and walked out feeling indifferent about the matter.
	 The third one he found had a stall in some alleyway that reeked of rat poison, and, while the middle-aged, slightly buck-toothed fellow was plenty friendly and helpful, he was not in a stable enough financial position to take on and support an apprentice at the moment, so he was forced to turn Suri away. However, remiss as he was to send someone away without any help, he instead told him about the rest of the alchemists he had not visited yet – and where to find them. Feeling pity for his situation, the pale lad thanked him by buying a vial of ‘vermin remover’ for a shilling.
	On his way to the next locale, Suri bumped into a couple of dirty kids running after each other in some sort of lively, cute game. He watched them go with a pensive expression, wondering if he, too, had ever played like that, or if he had even had a childhood. After shaking his thoughts off, he headed to one of the shops he had heard about from the poor alley rat alchemist, finding it to be a fairly respectable building with an intelligent-looking woman running the business. Unfortunately, she already had six disciples, and voiced a lack of interest or means to take on another, but suggested he try the alchemist five blocks to the southwest, who she knew had a vacancy for a potential student.
	It was on the way to that one that he realized he had gotten rather hungry, so, stopping by a nearby inn, he rifled through his pockets for his money to purchase a hot meal – and found them quite empty. A few moments of shock passed as he wondered just where the coins could have gone. Then, it hit him. The children who ran into him. They pilfered his pockets.
	Doing his best not to yell out his dismay and outrage at having been pickpocketed, Surinen retraced his steps back to where the incident had occurred, then tried to follow the path the kids must have taken, asking the wives sweeping their doorsteps and gossiping with each other like chickens if they had seen the children. They all seemed to recognize his description of them, but only a few were honest about which way they had seen them going, which was frustrating to no end for him, like squeezing water out of sand. Worse still, Suri suspected he was, in fact, traveling beyond the sight of recognizable landmarks, and felt his understanding of how precisely to return to familiar territory gradually slipping. He could only hope that he found the thieves before he wound up lost entirely.
	It wasn’t long until the dark and stormy heavens ceased their dilly-dallying and poured their watery burden to the ground in earnest. And when that began, all hope of maintaining a sense of direction was lost – the wives went inside their homes, and it got so dark and difficult to see that he wound up having to place a scaled hand on the walls and follow them along, but that could not prevent him from becoming well and truly lost.
	For what felt like hours, Suri wandered aimlessly in the cold rain, hoping dearly that he was making some sort of progress, but unable to quell the dread fear that he was heading into dangerous territory. At some point, he changed his mind, and just wanted to get back to the inn where Simmer would be waiting for him. But it was already too late for him to know the way back. The only option he had was to press onward, whether it led him to familiar places or not.
	Hundreds of pairs of gleaming eyes watched him through narrow slits in doors, boarded up windows, and raggedy curtains. Growing desperate, Suri banged on door after door, begging to be let in, just long enough to wait out the worst of the storm. Not a soul answered his calls. Even despite the downpour, it was obvious that he was now in a slummier part of town. Amongst the sulfuric scent of rainfall, there was the smell of poverty, distinct even through the hail of water. It was like smelling hell itself. Thunder boomed and cracked deafeningly, each bolt of lightning closer and closer, as if hunting him down. Somewhere, an infant cried. He wished to cry as well. Just drop to his knees and wail out his anger and despair, at all these strange people, at the alchemists who could not help him, at those kleptomaniacal kids, at Grill, at himself. Why did he exist? Just to endure this vile storm? Was it his fate to be struck by lightning and incinerated at any moment, or to freeze to death as his arms and legs slowly went numb? How could there be so many people all around him, yet he could be so alone in his suffering?
	Surinen was going to die. Every step he took felt as though it brought him closer to the warden of souls himself. Muddy ground gave way under his foot, and he plummeted into the flooding earth, inches of chilling water washing around his hands and knees. He stared at the pooling bleakness, wondering what his reflection looked like now. But the puddle was disturbed by hundreds of raindrops, too unsettled to even grant him that. He raised a fist and slammed it into the center of the water, splashing it outwards. As if obeying his wish, as if the rain itself contrived to allow it, the puddle reformed into a tranquil surface, and Suri stared into his own eyes that blazed azure and consumed him in memory.




	“I despise this rain!” Surinen sighed as he trudged up the forest trail towards the cave.
	“Yeah, it’s been pretty bad lately, huh?” Simmer laughed as she went alongside him. “I haven’t seen a rainy season this bad since… well, for a long time, anyway.”
	“I’m so bloody cold,” he mumbled, gripping his arms and shivering violently. Neither of them were wearing more than pants – they hadn’t exactly expected a storm to roll in out of nowhere while they were foraging for mushrooms and berries. And worse, it was such a violent downpour that not even the trees served as adequate cover.
	“Me too, me too,” the kobold agreed. “Listen, if you start to go numb, try running for a while, warm yourself up a bit.”
	“I’m already numb all over!”
	“I thought you looked unusually pale, heh. Then you should run on ahead. Don’t worry, I’m right behind you. Oh, when you get back, could you ask Linda to tell the storm off for me?”
	“Right, sure,” Suri said in a slightly slurred voice before he picked up his legs and forced himself to run as best he could. It did not really make him feel any warmer – the rain simply shed any heat as quickly as he could build it - but at the very least, it would get him to the safety of the cave faster. In his cold-induced poor judgment, it never occurred to him to ask if the kobold was doing alright.
	When he arrived back at the cave, Grill was lounging on a bed of rocks by the entrance, watching the storm and the occasional flicker of lightning lazily. As he set down his basket full of foraged food, she glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. “Where’s the half-pint, meatstick?”
	“S-she’s coming, she’s coming, she just told me to run on ahead. Where’s Linda?” he stammered, hopping in place to try to warm up.
	“Flew off. Said something about teaching some impertinent wizard playing with powers beyond his control a lesson,” the blonde dragongirl muttered, picking her nose with a pinky.
	“Simmerscale requested that Linda quell the storm… which I only just now realize is fairly unusual. I can’t recall her ever even asking for a favor from Linda,” Suri said, glancing up at the ceiling. Grill raised an eyebrow, turned onto her other side, and curled up again. As Surinen spent several minutes rubbing life back into his skin, the kobold still did not appear. Grill’s sharp fingertip tapped on the stone beneath her, as if increasingly irritated about something. Finally, just as Surinen’s body stopped shaking, and he realized that Simmer should have arrived several minutes ago, she rose to her feet, growling in frustration.
	“I’m going out there,” she said, strolling right out into the roaring downpour without a moment’s hesitation.
	“Wha-wait! You aren’t even wearing clothes! You’ll freeze to death!” Surinen shouted after her, feeling loathe to follow – quickly he sprinted for his room, grabbed the hooded leather cloak Simmer had sewn for him, and threw it on over his head. He was still wet, and the wind was strong, so just that wouldn’t be enough to keep him warm, but it was better than nothing. Steeling himself for the heat-devouring torrent of water and gale, he bolted out of the cave, splashing through puddle after puddle in his haste to catch up to Grill.
	Her march had not taken her far in the interim, and he quickly reached her, trotting alongside her as she stomped unflinchingly farther. “Grill! Go back! You could get sick! Or even perish!”
	“Says the guy who could barely speak a minute ago,” she said, rolling her eyes.
	“This isn’t the time for bull-headedness! I know you don’t want to, but you have to listen to me! This is dangerous!” Surinen exclaimed, grabbing her by the arm to try and stop her by force. That was a mistake. She turned on him, seizing his hand and wrenching it off, then grabbing him by his waist and hoisting the poor lad into the air, using him and his cloak to shield herself from the rain as he dangled helplessly above her. “Grill, put me down! Grill!”
	She didn’t even dignify him with an answer as she struck deeper into the forest, following the trail that was entirely mud. It was not long before the pair came across the green kobold, curled up in a ball beneath an uncommonly tall and sturdy tree that seemed adequate as protection from the elements. Simmer glanced up at them, and experienced an instant of surprise, confusion, and then amusement all at once, coming out as a stifled giggle.
	Grill tossed Surinen down beside Simmerscale with a discontented huff, glancing away in annoyance, as if to pay neither he nor she any attention, like a displeased cat. The dragongirl ran scaled fingers through one of her totally soaked locks that hung straight down thanks to the added weight of the fluid they held. “So this was all just a waste of my time and energy. Typical.”
	“It’s a good thing!” Surinen snapped, entirely fed up with her brutish antics. “I mean, what, were you hoping for Simmerscale to be in peril?”
	“I was hoping you’d shut up at some point, but we can’t all have nice things, now can we?” Grill retorted, kicking a bit of mud onto him, to his dismay.
	“Are you just going to stand out there in the rain, Grill? There’s space for you under here, too!” the kobold pointed out cheerfully, patting the oaken bed of roots and moist soil on the other side of her from Suri.
	“No thanks. Unlike you dorks, I don’t need to rely on trees to stay warm. I am a dragon! Behold!” Grill said, extending her arms out on either side of her and roaring upwards into the sky, a great gout of red dragonfire erupting from her lips and coiling up into the air. She sustained the flame as long as she yelled, and the sheer heat emanating from it dried her and everything nearby off nigh-instantly, evaporating the rain in the nearby vicinity before it could even reach the ground. Even Suri and Simmer received a pleasant wave of heat, warming up completely in a matter of moments. Of course, the moment the air in her lungs ran out and her voice cracked into a girly squeak, the deluge came crashing down once more, wiping out her little pocket of comfortable heat as quickly as she had created it. She gripped her arms and began to shiver in earnest with the most unhappy, dejected scowl Suri had ever seen on her face before. Poor Grill could only endure a few more seconds of being rained on before crawling under the tree on the other side of the kobold like a wet cat looking for refuge.
	By the time the storm let up, the three were fast asleep against the tree’s trunk. Tiny rays of sunlight peeked through the cracks in the leaves above them. He awoke when light footsteps neared, and he opened his eyes to see a smiling Linda looking over them.





	Surinen awoke on the street, glancing around himself groggily. He unfolded his limbs from beneath himself, sitting up and leaning against the dusty wall as the sun shined brightly overhead. Children and mothers were strolling down the street, and there was not a speck of water to be seen. “What- what the hell?” he asked nobody in particular, just to hear the sound of his own voice and confirm he was not dreaming. He rose to his feet, and, stopping a lone wife carrying a bundle of cloth, asked her where the storm had gone.
	“What storm?” the homely woman asked.
	“It was raining heavily, wasn’t it?”
	“I don’t believe there’s been so much as a cloud in the sky, sir,” she answered in confusion, before walking onward. But Suri’s perplexity was much more considerable than hers. A look at the dirt street told him that there had not been a speck of water on it for days at the least.  He quickly checked his pockets and found them as empty as he recalled them being. A quick scan of his surroundings confirmed that he was in the very area he last remembered seeing in that watery hell before his memory terminated. He could not be certain how much of what he saw and felt prior to his unconsciousness was true and how much of it was some terrible hallucination.
	Surinen asked another passerby where in the city he was, finding out that he was actually on the far end of the city from the inn, as he feared. Feeling quite hungry and thirsty, sore from sleeping on the ground, and a little tired from all his wanderings, he decided to just go back to the inn and wait for Simmerscale. He received directions from a friendly woman and followed the path she told him of. It was only a few blocks that way before he happened to glance at a small, old brick townhouse cramped between two larger masoned tenements. A wooden sign propped up against the wall of the house read, ‘apothecary.’ Oddly, the impoverished alchemist from earlier had not told him there were any alchemists working in the eastside.
	It was curiosity that changed his course to that door and led him inside. It was some sort of cramped and crowded store, with tiny glass bottles lining shelves all around the entrance, and a counter with a small brass hand-bell on it, ostensibly for summoning the owner of the establishment. Quickly examining the bottles, Suri saw they held numerous different colorful liquids, and labels on each that described a purpose. It was a bit messy and dusty, certainly not like the prime alchemy shops he had seen so far.
	With nothing better to do, he rang the bell a couple of times, patiently standing around for a few minutes. But nobody showed up. He leaned over the counter and glanced around, not noticing anything unusual. He rang it again, and this time he heard a muffled voice from through the shut door in the back of the room. It gradually became clearer until the door swung open and a short, old, balding man with spectacles sitting on the ridge of his pronounced nose came plodding forth. “Alright, alright, I heard you the first time! Whaddya want?”
	Suri bowed respectfully to him. “Hello, my name is Surinen, and I’m looking for an alchemist to study under.”
	“Ah, beat it, kiddo. Ain’t nobody in this city got time to teach some scruffy fellow from out in the countryside,” the grey-haired man said with a dismissive wave of his crooked fingers.
	“Forgive me for asking, sir, but do you already have an apprentice?”
	“As a matter of fact, I do, and I ain’t taking another one. Too much work just trying to beat some sense into one brat to deal with a second,” he sassed, wagging his wrinkled finger to emphasize his words.
	“Figures,” Surinen sighed, all the vigor draining from his shoulders. The old man stared at him for a moment, as if trying to get a read on the stranger.
	“Look, kiddo, city life is tough, alright? And being an alchemist is about ten times harder than that. I wouldn’t wish this profession on my worst enemies, I tell you what. You spend your life learning the Art, ‘cause that’s what they call it, ‘the Art,’ thinking you’re gonna be the guy to figure out the missing link in turning everything you want into gold, and then you’re the poorest jerk in town. You need money for ingredients! Then you waste them all on failed experiments and you have to figure out where to get more! You can’t make gold without having gold! It’s all one big honey trap!”
	“That’s… not really why I want to learn it,” Surinen said after an awkward pause. The old man twitched and immediately changed his angle.
	“Sure, maybe you’re okay living without a coin to your name. But then everyone comes into your shop looking for miracles, and all you’ve got to sell them is medicine. The kids ask you to transmute lead to gold, and you do a little sleight of hand to fool ‘em and then send them on their way. You get no thanks for doing your job well, and if someone dies, it’s all your fault. How’s anybody supposed to live like that?  Alchemy is trash, it’s a load of manure, and no self-respecting guy oughta willfully pursue it. There’s loads of trades out there that don’t ruin your life. Go find one!”
	“No, I mean, I appreciate what you’re saying, I’m sure it’s great advice, but-” Suri started to explain, only to get cut off.
	“I already told you to get out of here, buddy, I ain’t listening to your sob stories! I’ve heard ‘em all before! You an orphan? You come here on a long, awful journey? You got no money? You going hungry right this very second?” Surinen frowned, keeping his mouth shut. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Look, I’m doing you a favor, kid. You’ll thank me later. Hey, maybe I can put in a good word for you with some carpenter pals of mine. They’ve been looking for a strong young lad like you! Carpentry’s a great job. Very fulfilling. Good pay, too!”
	Suri tried to open his mouth, only to get cut off again by the chatty elder, who seemed to refuse to let him get a word in edgewise. This routine kept going for a few more minutes, and then the pale man rubbed his brow in frustration. Even as the alchemist jabbered on, Suri allowed his human form to dissolve into nothing but dark fumes that puffed upwards in a constant pillar of smoke, his clothes crumpling to the ground as he became totally intangible. The old man could no longer ramble, because his jaw was stuck hanging down.
	“Are you going to listen to me now? I’m not interested in alchemy for the reasons you think I am. I’m not human. I’m not some naturally occurring creature either. We – er, I think I’m somehow related to alchemy. This ability to transform is definitely an alchemical process, but there’s no way for me to know what I am and why I can do this unless I actually learn alchemy,” Surinen said, his voice emanating from the column of smoke.
	“Uh – ah. You said transform?”
	“Yes, I did. I can take on a couple of forms. You saw me as a human, right now I’m… undefined, I suppose - in between other forms. And I can also turn into a dragon, or at least, something close to one.”
	“You can what?” the alchemist asked in amazement, stepping out from behind the counter and sticking an arm through the thick, pitch-black smoke and finding nothing to touch hidden within it. There was no chance that all this was just a bit of smoke from a spell or some such nonsense. When that fact dawned on the old man, and Suri’s words sank in, he was too stunned to think.
	“I suppose I’d better just show you,” the mass of wafting smoke said to himself, and suddenly all the smoke began to elongate and spread forward on the ground, slowly sharpening into a quadrupedal shape, and once the fumes thinned enough to see what lay beneath them, there was a black-scaled dragon with large, glowing blue eyes, close to the size of a horse. Surinen unfolded his wings as small tufts of residual smoke curled off of his new form. “See? I’m not lying,” he said, his voice a little deeper.
	The old man stared in shock and awe, frozen in mid-step, his hand that was half extended to the countertop trembling in the air. Something outside the window caught his eye, and he rushed over to it, hastily pulling the curtains closed. “Are you daft? You can’t just do something like that in the middle of the day! There are people outside! What if they saw you like that?!”
	“I wouldn’t have had to, if you’d have just listened to me in the first place,” the smoky dragon retorted.
	“Master, I found those volumes you asked for,” said a young, feminine voice from behind the counter. Both the stout old apothecary and Surinen turned to see who it was, and a young brunette woman with a long, pretty braid hanging over her shoulder stepped into the room, saw the black dragon, stopped, and said, “ah,” in a matter-of-fact voice. Then she fainted, flopping to the ground with a thud.
	“Oops,” Suri muttered.
	“Now look what you’ve done! Hurry up and turn human again!”
	“Oh, right.” He morphed back into human form once more, residual smoke from the transmutation lingering in the air. The alchemist trotted over to his apprentice and gently roused her with a good shake of her shoulders. She blearily opened her eyes, sitting up and catching her breath. When she glanced up at Surinen, her eyes drifted down to his crotch, and when he followed her gaze, he realized that he was utterly nude, to his dismay. As he scrambled to cover his obscene bits up with his hands, the rush of blood to her weakened head knocked her out cold for a second time.
	“Put your clothes on!” the old man grumbled.
	“I am! I am!” Surinen snapped, scooping them off of the floor and hastily dressing.




	After the girl awoke again, the old man brought Surinen into the back room of his shop. It was a dusty place packed to the brim with venerable tomes and alchemical ingredients stored in vases, vials, and wrappings. Still a bit shaky, but calmed down, the girl sat in the far corner of the room, a bit flushed in the face, avoiding Suri’s eyes. The alchemist lit a gnarled wood pipe and touched it to his lips, puffing on it leisurely.
	“So, kiddo, I think you’d better tell us who you are,” he said.
	“Well, sir, my name is Surinen. I’ve come to this city to seek tutelage in the art of alchemy.”
	“I’m Gaspar of Wodlet. Don’t call me sir. Now, given that you are a… special case, after some thought, I’m willing to at least teach you the basics.”
	“At least?”
	“If you prove to have an aptitude for it, I might show you more. But if you don’t, I won’t waste time and energy trying to impart more knowledge than you are capable of absorbing.”
	“How long will it take to learn these basics?”
	“A month. A year. A decade. It depends on your capacity to learn, kiddo.”
	“I’m confident it will not take me a decade to learn the foundations,” Surinen said.
	“Sure,” the elder chortled. “Before we get to business, indulge in an old man’s curiosity. Tell me your story.”
	“There is… not much to tell. I do not remember my birth, nor anything immediately after it. The oldest memory I have is of running through the wilderness as a dragon. I do not know if there were only days or years of life before that. It’s only been around a year since then. I’ve mostly spent that time reading books from the private library of my benefactor, who took me in from my wanderings,” the artificial man explained.
	“I see. Your benefactor – he got a name?”
	“She. And not one that you or anyone in this city would recognize, I think.”
	“Sure. What do you know about yourself?” Gaspar asked intently.
	“Mostly theories, nothing substantial. I know I’m not a real dragon, and I know I’m not a real man, either. I think I’m a being created from alchemy, because my transformation ability isn’t the kind that dragons have. Dragons change themselves from the top-down by simply choosing to. For me, transforming is like… carefully placing every tiny, tiny part of myself and arranging it as close to the target as I can, building the new form from the ground-up. It’s painstaking, and arduous.”
	“Can you turn yourself into anything other than a man and a dragon?”
	“Well, I’ve tried to. But for some reason, it’s like I don’t really ‘get’ how other creatures are made. I don’t seem to have the basis for taking any other shapes that I do for human and dragon. Even then, the forms I can take are clearly hollow imitations, at best. I suppose that, if I had more practice and spent time figuring my abilities out, I might be able to expand my repertoire of shapes, but right now I’d rather focus on deciphering my true nature. If I can figure that out, then the rest should come much more easily,” Surinen said, with a shrug.
	“Makes sense, kiddo. When can you start your learning?”
	“When?”
	“If I’m going to be teaching you, you’re going to need to be living here or nearby, because this is not something you can do for a few hours a day and become proficient in. Alchemy becomes your life – from the moment you wake up to the second you close your eyes to sleep, you will be studying, experimenting, and learning.”
	“Oh. I-I don’t know about that,” Suri stammered hesitantly. “My current home is so far away.”
	“If it’s a problem, then maybe you could make regular trips, staying for at least a week at a time? And I could send you back with books and experiments to study on your own.”
	“I, uh, I think that would be acceptable.”
	“Good. Now, I’m guessing you need to make preparations to stay here.”
	“Yes, I think I should sort my business before I start any learning regimen.”
	“Sure. Off you go. And don’t come back ‘til you’re ready to start your learning!” Gaspar said decisively, standing up and hobbling into the lobby to take care of a wife who had just arrived for a potion to soothe her daughter’s fever. Surinen watched him go, then climbed to his feet and prepared to leave, only for a nervous voice to stop him.
	“A-ah, before you go, sir,” said the pretty apprentice. She held out half a loaf of bread, and a block of cheese. “I could not help but notice you looked famished, so I fetched something for you.”
	“Oh!” Suri said, more surprised than anything, not quite sure what to say, or why she was being so generous.
	“I’m Sylvia. I’m Master Gaspar’s apprentice. Oh, you already know that. Ha ha ha, sorry! Sorry!”
	“Don’t worry about it. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sylvia. How long have you been learning under Gaspar?” Surinen asked politely.
	“Close to two years, now!” Sylvia said, her eyes going to his hands and arms. “Oh, you have such an interesting body. It’s like you were hand-crafted by one of the finest sculptors in the land! May I touch you?” she asked, turning her braid over in her fingers as a nervous habit.
	“Err, very well,” he said. It was a very strange request, but her curiosity seemed genuine enough.
	“Oh goody,” Sylvia said, reaching out and taking his hands in hers, running her pleasantly warm thumbs over the underside of his hands. “So smooth! No body hair?”
	“Indeed.”
	“Oh yeah, I saw!” she said, almost gibbering as her face flushed beet red. As she examined his hands, a small imperfection opened up across one of Suri’s palms. “Ooh! A tiny seam? Do these appear often?”
	“Irregularly, but chronic, yes,” Suri said.
	“May I poke it?”
	“Um, I suppose, but if you want to somehow stick something through it, it’s not going to work. I’ve tried.” She grabbed small tweezers and poked at the flaw in his being a few times, succeeding only in making his fingers twitch in reflex.
	“Fiddlesticks! And it doesn’t feel abnormal at all?”
	“Not in the least.”
	“And do you get erections?”
	“I – you what?” Surinen asked.
	“Sorry! I just kind of say what I’m thinking when I get nervous! But I guess I do want to know, ha ha!” she giggled, clearly embarrassed.
	He sighed. “Yes, my genitals are fully functional.”
	“Fascinating! Of all the things for an artificial human to have, a working reproductive system is among the most luxurious and unnecessary ones!” Sylvia said, poking the tweezers at her chin as she stared up, deep in thought.
	“I can’t really argue with that.” An uncomfortable silence settled in between the two, and Surinen shifted in place, deciding to execute his exit strategy. “Well, I should get going. Thanks again for the food!” he said, waving her goodbye on his way out the door. She meekly waved back and watched him go. Once he had gotten back into the streets and was well on his way, he scratched his chin. “What a charming gal.”




	Thanks to the directions from earlier, and with something to occupy his belly, Suri found his way back to the inn without much issue. To his surprise, the rambunctious kobold was waiting for him back in their room, though it was still just the afternoon.
	“Hey!” Simmer said with a wave.
	“Hello there,” Suri replied, shutting and locking the door behind him.
	“Any luck with the alchemists, then?”
	“Well, some. But it seems that if I intend to learn, I’ll have to come here to Poliaht often, and spend at least a week at a time studying, maybe more,” he explained as he sat down and pulled off his shoes. “I think, honestly, a week alone is a bit conservative. Poliaht is a several day trip by foot, so I think I’d rather stay here for at least twice that at a time, or maybe a month each, so that I’m not wasting many days going back and forth.”
	“Makes sense, yep!” Simmerscale nodded.
	“Does it? I’m not terribly keen on leaving the cave so often and for so long.”
	“Don’t worry about it! I can trap your room so that nobody can mess with it. Are you going to be staying here right now?”
	“I, I don’t know, actually,” Suri said. “I’d really like to, just to get started, but don’t you think I should go back and tell Linda the new plan myself?”
	“Nah. Linda’s smart. She probably understood what you learning alchemy here meant from the start!”
	“Well, what about the books I borrowed? I should return them, at the very least!” Surinen pointed out.
	“It’s alright, I can take them back for you.”
	“But you have to carry the supplies as well! And, erm, what if you’re attacked on the way?”
	“Relax, I’ve been doing this for years, yep. A couple of highwaymen couldn’t catch me, and a couple more books won’t break my back,” Simmer giggled.
	“Ah, uh, but maybe I’ve been too harsh on Grill. Maybe I should go and apologize!” he offered. The kobold glanced at him at an odd angle with a raised brow and a mischievous smile.
	“Now that’s pushing it, Suri. Why are you really so intent on going back?”
	Surinen looked at the floor to avoid eye contact, his cheeks flushing. “N-no reason. Don’t mind me. You’re right, I should stay.”
	“It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that I promised you sex when we got back to the cave, now could it?” Simmer asked, hopping off of the bed and strolling up to Suri in his chair, locking eyes with him as she neared. Her hands reached out and touched his thighs, rubbing over his pants seductively. “I was kidding about that, you know!”
	“No, of course not,” Surinen chuckled nervously, tugging at his collar, feeling strangely warm. “I simply find myself missing home, is all.”
	“I don’t mind. It’s flattering,” the kobold said, her strokes of his legs gradually traveling closer to his pelvis, still not breaking eye contact.
	“Er, Simmerscale?”
	“Yes, Suri?”
	“What are you doing?” he asked, swallowing down saliva as her fingers gently rubbed over his sensitive thighs.
	“Nothing. Just massaging your legs, yep.”
	“It’s really… nice,” Surinen said, at a loss for more eloquent words.
	“Good!”
	“…Are you trying to, er, arouse me?” he asked, sensing a dangerous, tingly stirring in his crotch.
	“Of course not. It’s customary in kobold society to massage close friends as a show of care. Why, are you getting turned on?”
	“No! No. Of course not!” Surinen stammered in an unusually high pitched voice, concerned as her fingers circled ever nearer to his growing stiffness in his pants. “You know me. I’m just clueless when it comes to these things. Ha ha!”
	“It’d be perfectly fine if you were. I could give you a massage between your legs, to relieve some of your tension. You must be awfully pent up, yes?” the green kobold asked as she stared him in the eye meaningfully. She must have felt the tightening of his pants as his bulge grew larger and strained against the fabric. For an instant, he was ready to take her up on her offer. But just as he opened his mouth to assent to her putting her fingers to better use, he automatically thought of Grill, the last person he’d had sexual relations with, and recalling how unpleasant she was caused his words to choke in his throat and avert his gaze from the diminutive temptress.
	He hesitated long enough that the kobold chuckled and twirled around to saunter back to the bed, her hips and tail swaying tantalizingly as she hopped onto it and sat down. “Just kidding!” she said, cheery as ever. The ivory man could not help but feel as though he had allowed quite the opportunity slip by. He berated himself mentally, wondering if he could somehow convince her to go through with it after all. But he simply had no idea of how to do such a thing, for women were as much a mystery to him as his own origins and purpose, and it frustrated him to no end.




	After supper, consisting of a warm soup, sausage, and fresh apples, it was decided that Surinen would spend a full month in Poliaht to attempt to master the fundamentals of the Art, while Simmerscale would depart for the cave come dawn with the supplies that Grill was surely desperate for by this point. The adventuress gifted Suri with enough funds to cover almost any expenses he might run into during his stay, and he remembered to ask her about his strange experience.
	“That’s strange. Maybe you were sleep-walking?” Simmer suggested.
	“I do that often enough that I know what it’s like, and this was not that,” Surinen said with a shake of his head. “Are there any known supernatural oddities in the city?”
	“Not that I’ve heard of. I certainly would have told you if there was!”
	“And it was not raining this morning?”
	“Nope! Clear skies and sunny.”
	“I… see.”
	“Are ya worried?”
	“No, not terribly,” Surinen said, now more perplexed than ever. “I mean, I’m fine, right? So it’s probably nothing dangerous, whatever it was.”
	“Good point! It’s probably just something to do with your strange physio – physi – anatomy.”
	“Physiology. How did meeting your friends go, anyways?”
	“Well, the ones who are still here haven’t changed one bit,” the kobold explained, rifling through her bags for something. “I didn’t just revitalize old acquaintances, though. I also asked around about you.”
	“You did?”
	“Yeah, I couldn’t find anyone who recognized you, let alone someone who knew anything about your past. It’s both good news and bad news. Bad in the sense that we haven’t learned anything.”
	“What’s good about it?”
	“There’s very little risk of running into anyone who might have business with you from the time that you don’t remember in Poliaht, so we can consider this a relatively safe city, barring typical sorts of crime. If you’ll be living at that alchemist’s place, you should do your best not to go outside at night, which is when thieves, drunks, and miscreants are out and about.”
	“Right, that makes sense,” Surinen agreed.
	“So be careful, and if something goes wrong, don’t be afraid to come back to the cave!” Simmerscale cautioned.
	“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
	“I hope so!”





	The first few days of his apprenticeship were dishearteningly dull. Surinen mostly just sat and watched Sylvia do her work around the building, who in turn seemed to shoot him the occasional awkward glance and quickly turned away whenever their eyes met. There were no sudden and sweeping revelations about his true nature, no amazing leaps in his own understanding of alchemy, absolutely nothing to get excited about. It was not as if he did not find what he was observing interesting, but it was nothing compared to everything he had been anticipating for so long. It must have been obvious how dismal he felt, because on the third day, she started to crack bad alchemy jokes she must have learned from her master, albeit ones delivered too nervously to really tickle his funny bone. But he appreciated the intent, and gave her his best hearty chuckles anyways.
	“So, what’s it like? To be a dragon, I mean,” Sylvia asked out of the blue one day.
	“Not so different from being this,” Surinen said, raising his arms to gesture at himself. “I can breathe out a lot of smoke if I want to, and being closer to the ground and four-legged means I can move a lot faster than when on only two feet. I’m light enough to fly if there’s a good breeze behind me, but admittedly not very well. I don’t really notice anything else about it.”
	“You can fly? That sounds so amazing!”
	“It is rather fun the first few times, but then you start to crash into things because you’re a bit clumsy and it’s just embarrassing and painful,” he said with a sigh.
	“You should practice, then!” she said cheerfully.
	“I don’t know how much practice would really help when I’m ultimately at the mercy of the wind. Still, I suppose I really should keep trying at it until I’m a bit more comfortable.”
	“Yeah! And then you can let me ride you!” she said innocently, but he could not help but think of scandalous things, vivid memories of Grill gyrating on top of him, writhing and moaning in the heat of sex – and he banished those thoughts when he realized his cheeks were flushing. It had been a long while since he’d last been laid, and somehow he didn’t realize how much a part of his routine it had become. He felt unusually sexually sensitive, and his eyes wandered over Sylvia’s form indecently.
	Her chest was average and perky, and her hips were healthy and fine, sporting a shapely rear that he got a good look at every time she bent down to fetch a tool or ingredient from the lower shelves. Suri struggled not to stare, afraid she’d catch him doing it – but the needs of his loins were louder than his reason, so he would look, glance away, look again, stare, tear his eyes off her, only to repeat the process again and again. And if he did immerse himself in the text of some tome or the other, he found his mind invariably drifting off to the sight, sounds, and scents of Simmer’s room, of her frigging herself gleefully as he watched and chatted with her, of her promise to make love back at the cave, of the sensation of her soft little body pressed against his in that tent.
	And he would always be snapped out of his daydreaming by Sylvia or Gaspar asking him something, and he’d feel sheepish and ashamed of himself. After all, he was a gentleman, and he had come to the city in the first place to learn, and he was goofing off and thinking of entirely crude things.
	“Would you like to try mixing this next batch of restorative balm, Surinen?” Sylvia asked one day.
	“I would, actually,” he said, getting up from his seat, happy just to have the opportunity to do something other than observe.
	“Let’s see how far you can get without my help. Have you memorized the recipe?”
	“I knew it by heart the first time you showed it to me,” he chuckled. It was not much of an exaggeration with the clarity of his memory.



	“Kiddo, come with me into the basement, I need you for something,” Gaspar said one day, leading Surinen down the dusty staircase into a small room stuffed full of boxes with the labels of ingredients on them. Suri stepped over the abundant mess of supplies, holding his candle up to see more clearly as he gave the room a once-around. As he turned in place, eyes scanning the walls, he saw something creeping towards him through the air in the corner of his vision. He glanced at it, and his legs gave out, sending him toppling backwards into the table behind him that creaked loudly and tilted as its legs suddenly took on his weight.
	“What’s the matter? Afraid of snakes?” the old man asked, walking up to the sand-colored snake that was stretching itself between the bars of its cage towards Suri, its tongue flicking out of its mouth every few seconds. He reached out and grabbed the snake by its head, pulling it the rest of the way out of its cage. On the ridges above its eyes, small horns jutted. “This is a horned viper. Its venom is known to be not terribly toxic, at least, compared to some of its kin.”
	“W-why do you have a snake in your basement?” Surinen asked, backing away until the whole table was between him and the serpent.
	“I’ve several in here, actually. The rest are all behind you,” Gaspar said, and Suri jolted in place and spun, holding the candle out to see the other cages with the coiled up snakes within them.
	“Gods! What good are these? I thought you were an alchemist to save lives, not take them!”
	“It is precisely because I wish to protect life that I keep these. It’s said in a religion found in the east that snakes are symbols of wisdom, and can impart the knowledge to heal the sick and wounded, as well as predict the future, to those who treat them well. Heck, some say snakes are guardians of the dead, binding the shattered souls of the dearly departed together so that they may be whole in death!”
	“And you believe them?” the alabaster-skinned man cried.
	“I believe there is much we can learn from snakes, kiddo. Fascinating creatures, they are! There’s no other animal that can boast to be the bane of great kings and destitute commoners alike. Even the largest and proudest of beasts, the elephant, fears the serpent. One misplaced footfall is all it takes to be brought low by sharp fangs and deadly venom.”
	“So, again, why are you keeping these?” Suri asked, unsatisfied. “Do you want to join the king and commoner in their graves?”
	“Have you heard what the great philosopher, Baras, said? Any poison, taken in minute quantities, can act as a medicine. Likewise, any medicine, taken in extreme portions, can act as a poison. I believe this holds true, even of the deadliest of snake venoms!” Gaspar said, adjusting his spectacles to get a better look at the viper in his hands, which was attempting to coil around his arm like a tree branch.
	“What do you mean?”
	“Have you ever seen a man whose heart is seizing? It’s a frightful affair, and there is little we can do to help it. While he may survive by his own strength, it is assured that he will suffer another attack, and another, and yet more until he does finally perish. But I have seen a healing man from a faraway land give a man a bite from a viper while his heart was seizing, and it seemed to alleviate his pain and anxiety to a degree.”
	“He survived it?”
	“Well, no. He died. But of the venom, not his heart’s difficulties!”
	Surinen sighed and rubbed his face with a hand. “So you think you can somehow refine venom with alchemy into a safe medicine for the heart?”
	“Yes! Precisely, kiddo!” Gaspar said, jabbing a finger at him. When his apprentice’s tone of voice sunk in, he paused and tilted his head. “Why do you sound so skeptical?”
	“I was recently bitten by one. I’d rather not subject any poor people to the same experience. How can you be sure that something so toxic can be useful as a medicine?”
	“I can’t, and I’m not. But I can’t let what I saw go. That’s what being an alchemist is all about,” the wizened guy said, putting the horned viper back into its cage. “Anyways, those stairs are hellish on my hips. You think you could feed these lazy turds for me? A mouse a day seems to keep ‘em healthy.”
	“And Sylvia cannot do it?”
	“Course not. She’s afraid of snakes!”
	“I’m afraid of snakes!” Surinen said, indignant.
	“Yeah, but you have nothing better to do, eh?” Gaspar said with a hearty chuckle.





	The long hours of studying simple formulae and watching both apprentice and master at work only grew longer, unfortunately. Even the excitement of feeding the snakes, often as quickly as he could, did little to break up the monotony of the routine. Surinen’s thoughts went to Simmerscale more and more often, and sometimes even to Grill, making him long even for another rough and impersonal roll in the hay with the beautiful, strong dragongirl. That weirded him out.
	But what he kept coming back to was Simmer’s constant teasing, wondering if she was ever serious about it, and what was with her strange behavior. She had not acted like the lurid kobold he knew so well from living in the cave since before the start of the trip. All along, whenever she woke him up by licking his morning wood, she would be completely unapologetic about it. On the trip, she played with him, but she always respected his space, and the moment he showed a degree of hesitance, she would immediately cease messing with him. Did he really hurt her feelings when he made her stop waking him up like that? He just couldn’t figure out what must have been going through her head.
	“Sylvia, can you help me with something?” Surinen asked, turning to the girl who was in the midst of re-organizing one of the shop shelves.
	“Oh! Of course. What is it?” she asked, energetic as ever.
	“It’s about this girl. I’m having trouble understanding her,” he said, and the brunette blinked in surprise.
	“A girl?”
	“Quite.”
	“…what is it that you are struggling with?”
	“For a long time, she was very aggressive in how she treated me. Sexually, that is.”
	Sylvia immediately flushed. “Go on…”
	“But when I put a stop to it, she got all respectful, though she hadn’t been for months.”
	“That’s what you wanted, is it not?”
	“Well… yes, but I think I’ve changed my mind. The issue is, now I’m not sure how to approach her!”
	“What do you mean?”
	“She’s been kind of teasing me since then, almost like she’s hinting that she’s still interested, but when I actually started to try to seduce her once, she put a stop to it and backed way off. Am I doing something wrong? Should I just give up?” Surinen asked, frustration creeping into his voice.
	“Oh. Hm. Well. I think, er, most women prefer to be pursued than to do the pursuing. It sounds like whoever this is might be unusual in that regard, but when you called off her typical method of approaching men, she probably changed her attitude towards you. I can’t really read minds, but I think, if I was in her situation, I would be trying to lure you in with those teases, to get you to be the one who makes advances on me. Since the previous strategy of advancing on you totally failed, that is. And I would be saying no as a way of building up your anticipation and urges, trying to get you to be desperate for me…” the brunette explained with a nervous smile, avoiding eye contact with the handsome lad.
	“You mean, playing hard to get?”
	“I suppose that is what it’s referred to as, yes,” she giggled, more out of nerves than anything being particularly comedic.
	“I see. I see! That makes sense. Thank you for the insider information!” Suri said in genuine appreciation.
	“Well, I can’t say it only benefits her to tell you to be a little more daring,” Sylvia mumbled, before turning redder than an apple, grabbing her books, and fleeing the room. Surinen watched her go, surreptitiously glancing at her hindquarters.
	“Down boy,” he muttered, grabbing his crotch to try and settle it. This was really starting to become a problem.




	 Later that day, Surinen was hauling chests full of papers and tomes around to reorganize the cluttered laboratory when, without any warning, his chest suddenly began to feel heavy. The sensation was nothing alarming, merely an annoyance, and he continued about his work regardless. But it did not fade, like most brief sensations. It sustained itself seemingly indefinitely, even well beyond the completion of the task. He leaned against one of the tables, holding his chest experimentally.
	Gaspar entered the room, and he crooked his head at his pupil. “Something the matter?”
	“Well, sort of,” Suri replied. “My heart feels strangely heavy. I don’t really know why.”
	“Hmm. This is the first time you’ve been away from your home for so long, isn’t it?” the wrinkly codger asked.
	“Indeed, but I didn’t think loneliness felt this way.”
	“You’d be surprised at how emotions can manifest themselves, kiddo. If you want to have the day to yourself, go ahead. You’ve been putting in more than enough work around here. Go get some fresh air and sunshine, it might help your pallor,” Gaspar said with an idle chuckle at his own wit.
	“I would, but I’m very fascinated with the subject of the prima materia, and I’d like to read more about it, if you have no objections to that,” Surinen said, as the leadlike sensation in his heart pulled ever harder to the earth. He rubbed the center of his chest and closed his eyes, attempting to will it away.
	“The prima materia? Such lofty concepts are not for the learner to even think of yet,” the master said with a brief shake of the head. “Just concentrate on learning the properties of the elements. After that, you’ll be introduced to magical ingredients, which are their own mess of old wives’ tales and unsubstantiated theories.”
	Surinen could not help but sigh. “Very well.” Then, he felt a curious wetness beneath his feet, and, glancing down, realized that there was a small puddle of water beneath him. “Huh. Where did that come from?”
	“Where did what come from?” Gaspar asked.
	“The water,” Suri said, gesturing downwards with a hand. “Did I spill something? Is there a leak in the roof?”
	Gaspar’s eyes searched the ground, then the ceiling, and he blinked and adjusted his spectacles. “Kiddo, unless these old orbs are failing me, there’s nothing there.” Just as he said that, a sudden wave of water came spilling out from beneath the door of the laboratory closet, washing over their feet and beginning to fill the room.
	“Uh, what the devil is going on?” Surinen asked, walking up to the closet door in utter bafflement.
	“I have no clue what you’re on about,” Gaspar said, shaking his head.
	Surinen threw open the door, revealing a literal wall of water, perfectly fitting the closet’s interior. For a moment, he could only stare at it, dumbfounded. Then, it began to crumble, washing out over the ivory man, sweeping him off of his feet, and flooding the laboratory to the brim. He floated in the great deluge, writhing, struggling to orient himself in the sudden darkness engulfing him. He managed to twist his neck around to look for his master, but where the old man had once been sitting, there was now only water.
	A sudden current pushed Suri backward, sending him hurtling head-first into a wall, and the impact knocked what little air he had in his lungs forth in a great spew of bubbles. Water saturated his lungs, filling them with pressure that did not belong, that offered no oxygen for him to breathe. His head ached violently, and in the fuzzy dark fluid surrounding him, he could see the scarlet of his own blood flowing out in a cloud. The pain began to fade as his vision darkened around the rims, allowing him only the sight of two tunnels that continued to shrink with his fading consciousness.




	“So, uh, what are we doing here?” Surinen asked, peering down into the subterranean lake’s murky blue as it lazily flowed by.
	“Linda told me to teach you to swim, or else,” Grill said, kicking a rock into the sluggish current and scratching at her bare bosom lazily.
	“Why you?”
“Wish I knew. Not my fault you’re useless.”
	“Do you know how to swim?” Suri asked.
	“Of course. Only idiots don’t. In case you didn’t know, you’re an idiot,” she said, poking him in the chest for emphasis.
	He rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Grill.”
	“Don’t mention it. Idiots can never tell that they’re stupid.”
	“Can hardly agree more,” he muttered under his breath.
	“So jump in already, you slow idiot.”
	“Must I?”
	“What are you, scared?”
	“Uh, something of the sort. I don’t know how to swim, and it’s a deep lake.”
	“Hah, so you’re useless, an idiot, and a wimp!” she said, patting her fist into her hand as if it was an epiphany.
	“And you just dove right in when it was your first time swimming?”
	“Damn right.”
	“And you didn’t drown?”
	“Of course I did,” she said, puffing her soft chest out with pride.
	Surinen could not help but lay his forehead against his palm. “Grill, that’s no  accomplishment.”
	“Says you!”
	“Yes, says I. And most other people, I believe.”
	“Yeah, well, you’re all wrong. Now jump in before I toss you in!” Grill shouted, holding out her scaled hand threateningly.
	“What will you do if I start to drown?” Suri asked, looking back at the river with uncertainty.
	“Nothing. I can’t swim.”
	“You what?”
	“I can’t swim. I’m too heavy. Sink right to the bottom.” Her tail swung up and down.
	“What?! And Linda sent you to teach me?”
	“You sayin’ I can’t?”
	“Uh, yeah!”
	“Well, you’re wrong!” she yelled, grabbing him by the waist.
	“Wait, no, don’t, I’m sorry!” Suri shouted, trying futilely to pry her fingers off him. But the strength of a mere man could never best the strength of a slightly-dragon girl. She swung him up above her own head in an instant, then hurled the unfortunate lad through the air, directly into the deepest part of the water. Splash.
	Surinen was immediately engulfed in cold black weight, bubbles tickling his flesh as he sank rapidly by his own momentum. He could not breathe. Water flooded his nose, and his jaw dropped, his precious, vital oxygen escaping the confines of his body. He flailed. He twisted and kicked his legs out and swung his arms back and forth and screamed into the cold, cruel fluid. But he sank. Somehow, he felt his hand breach the surface of the water, and the light air against his wet digits. He desperately clutched for that atmosphere, but it ran through his fingers just as easily as nothing at all.
	 He had no air, and no time. All Suri had was his thoughts, and though he fought so hard to think clearly, merely processing the pain of his inability to breathe consumed him. The sudden sensation of skin against his back jolted a bit of life back into his mind. It was a hand. It was warm. Another placed itself on his waist, and he could feel himself tugged around in the murky depths. He could see and hear nothing, but he felt the arms cradling him, pulling him upward.
By the time he realized it, he was already on the dry stone beside the underground lake. Somehow, he managed to roll onto his hands and knees; gravity and his diaphragm heaved forth every ounce of freshwater it could, voiding his swamped lungs with desperate force. For every drop that was hurled from his lips, a life-saving mite of air could be breathed, no matter how badly it hurt. He sputtered and coughed for what felt like ages, focused entirely on the all-consuming task of survival.
	When Suri’s burning arms gave in and he collapsed against the ground, utterly exhausted, but breathing freely, he finally twisted his neck to see just who had saved him. His eyes widened in astonishment at the sight of the naked blonde girl sitting with her knees against her chest. Just as soaked as he was, she was shivering, her normally wild and poofy hair hanging flat down across her face. She glared directly ahead, not even glancing in his direction, a grumpy frown on her lips. It was Grill. But unlike before, she had no horns, no tail, no scales. She was completely and totally human.
	“Grill?” Surinen asked between pants.
	“Shut up.” She planted her palms on the cave floor and slid herself around to face away from him.
	“Where did your, y’know… dragon bits go?”
	“You can’t fly. You can’t learn to swim. You can’t even drown right. What a total failure at everything,” she mumbled to herself.
	“You threw me into the water!”
	“If you were so afraid of it, why didn’t you just turn into smoke?”
	“Grill, that’s absolute nonsense! How could that possibly…” Surinen began to snap, only to trail off as he actually considered it. Even a dragon would find it difficult to hold on to a cloud of smoke. “…be of any use?”
	“I told you. You’re useless. Don’t expect me to dive in after you again,” she said at the wall, refusing to grace him with the sight of her face.
	“Worry not, I have no such expectations. We’ll see what Linda has to say about your methods of instruction,” Surinen said, slowly climbing to his feet with the assistance of the wall.
	“Fine! Go ahead! I don’t care!”
	“You perhaps should, Grill. If there is one thing Linda takes seriously, it is teaching.”
	“She can shove her books up her feathery arse for all I care! Fuck this,” the blonde girl said, rising to her feet and storming off through the ancient carved passage that wound up towards the surface like a serpent. Suri was left alone. He glanced over at the water, reaching out a hand to dip his fingers in it.





	Surinen awoke back in the laboratory, with both Gaspar and Sylvia looking down at him concernedly. A quick check of his periphery revealed that he was laying on one of the patient cots, and he sat up, holding his aching chest with a hand. “What happened?” he asked.
	His teacher and peer shared an awkward stare. “W-well, we were hoping you could tell us that,” Sylvia spoke up.
	“You started talking about things that weren’t there, then opened the closet, and just crumpled, totally unconscious,” Gaspar explained, pressing the back of his wrinkled hand to Suri’s forehead to check his temperature. “You struck your head on a table, and opened a bloody- but-harmless flesh wound. Then, a short while ago, you began to cough up water. Not body fluids, water. Cold water.” He gestured at the large wet spot on the pillow by his head.
	“I saw… water, everywhere, flooding the room,” Surinen said. “I hit my head on something, and then dreamed of the past. I don’t understand. This happened before, but it was a different hallucination, and a different memory that I recalled. Ow,” he said, rubbing over where his heart was.
	“Does it hurt?” the old man asked.
	“It’s a bit tender, yes,” Suri said with a nod. “It is beating normally, though.”
	“I’ve seen no ailment of the heart that causes one to observe phantasms and produce pure water by lungs,” Gaspar said, rubbing his chin in utter bafflement.
	“Well, I’m no usual human,” the alabaster-fleshed man said, glancing at a fresh new smoking seam that stretched from his elbow to his palm.
	“Indeed, but by what mechanism could that water have formed within you? Moreover, diseases of the heart and diseases of the mind are rarely one and the same. Questions, questions… More importantly, do you feel as though you are recovering?”
	“Yes, I do. But I do not know if this will happen again. Does two constitute a pattern?”
	“No. But it forebodes one. Can you speak of any shared symptoms or signs between them?”
	“Well, nothing really stands out, except that my chest – sorry, my heart – seemed to feel unusually weighty just before each episode.”
	“Odd, most odd,” Gaspar said.
	Sylvia quietly listened to their conversation, occasionally giving Suri a comforting rub on the back. When a lull came, she piped up.
	“Perhaps Surinen should have a day or two to rest?”
	“Quite.”
	“I don’t need rest, there’s still so much to learn!” Surinen said, his brow crinkling in dismay. “I feel very fine now!”
	“If we do not know the cause of your affliction, nor whether it is truly done with or not, then it would be foolish to allow you to exert yourself, for a time. It’s just good sense, kiddo,” his master said, gently pushing him onto his back again.
	Surinen blinked at him, then stared up at the ceiling with a long sigh. “Very well.”
	“It’ll be alright, Suri,” Sylvia said as Gaspar hobbled out of the room. “You’ve learned much faster than I did when I began as an apprentice. A few days in bed won’t slow you down in the least!” The pretty girl smiled and pulled her long auburn braid over her shoulder, toying with it nervously. “Just, you know, focus on staying healthy!”




	Surinen’s health proved not to deteriorate. Not physically, at least. The dismal boredom of laying in bed all day did little to temper his crawling curiosity and burning greed for knowledge. The old man and the vivacious girl both had to usher him back under the sheets whenever he attempted to steal a book or two from the shelves, or watch them at their work. By the second morning, Gaspar came to Suri with an expression of resignation, and told him he could continue his learning in the afternoon.
	Just as Surinen had dressed himself, the bell in the lobby sounded. Knowing that Gaspar was in his study, and Sylvia was out fetching goods from the market, he strolled in there, expecting another patient with a fever or a broken limb. When he rounded the corner and stepped foot into that room, he blinked in surprise. “Linda?”
	“Yes, Surinen,” the olive-skinned dragoness-in-human-flesh said, leaning with her elbows on the counter and raising an eyebrow at him. “Why are you so surprised? Am I not allowed to visit?”
	“I never expected you would come to a human settlement,” he said, drawing nearer to speak more comfortably. He glanced at her ostentatious sky-blue dress which hung from her shoulders and exposed her arms and much of her slender chest. It was not even subdued in the least from her typical wardrobe. Then again, of all people, Linda probably had the least to fear from petty brigands. “What brings you here?”
	“I wanted to check in on you. Is this the place you’ve decided to learn the Art from?” she asked, glancing around casually at the tables and shelves stocked to the edges with various products.
	He nodded, nervously adjusting his shirt.
	“Hmm. And what have you discovered?”
	“A great deal, though, perhaps not what I wanted. I’ve come to know that I know so little about the human body, and various illnesses, and the simple elements of matter. And the topic of magical ingredients has not even been broached yet in my studies. There is so much to learn - too much to master, it seems like,” he explained with a wave of his hand for emphasis.
	“It is said by the great scholars of the college at Yvid: ‘one only becomes a true master when one understands the oceanic vastness of truth, and the insignificant blot of islands that constitutes one’s own knowledge.’ While the allegory is mostly pretty words to impress the youths at Yvidian oratories, there is, as ever, a drop of briny Veritas to it,” she said, idly examining her purple fingernails as she spoke.
	“Does that mean I would be thought of as a master in Yvid?” Suri asked, jokingly.
	“No. Masters are the ones who find a way to hoodwink the senate out of enough coin with their metaphysics that they get a formal title and lands, regardless of how competent they may or may not be.”
	“It sounds like you have a very dim view of Yvidian masters, then.”
	“Was it that obvious?” she asked, glancing out the window at a passing march of guards, and a few servants carrying an extravagantly furnished litter, down the street. Once they had gone from view, she sighed. “Mortals can be so conceited. Discovery is often a group effort, despite what those who gleefully steal glory for their own names would claim. And none of you would make any progress at all if not for the work of those who came before. You would do well to remember that.”
	“Not like dragons?” he asked.
	She turned, her face impassive. “No. Not like dragons.”
	“But you hoard knowledge. What knowledge would there be without mortals to write it down?” Surinen asked, raising an eyebrow.
	The corners of Linda’s lips curled upward. “Do you believe I am the only dragon who gathers knowledge? Do you know why I hoard knowledge? Why other dragons hoard gold and silver? Or legendary arms and armor? Dragons certainly do not press valuable ores into ingots and coins. Dragons do not forge bronze and iron. For that matter, why do great serpents like myself steal castles and fortresses, built by mortals, for their lairs? Why have I taken up residence in that ancient, forgotten network of caves and tunnels dug out for aeons by people of many races?”
	“Well…” Surinen said, scratching his neck awkwardly. “I really do not know.”
	She blinked slowly at him, her coy, almost smug smirk maintained on her expression. “You have done well to come this far. Remember, this is the only path you may take to know thyself. You are fortunate that such a course exists for you; most mortals cannot and will not ever know their true origins, nor their true purpose. I recommend that you not stray from it, even if you are daunted by the heights you will have to climb to.”
	“That was… a lot of pretty words,” Surinen said, taking a deep breath.
	“Yes. Words are wonderful sometimes, are they not?” Linda said with a nod.
	A quiet settled over the room as Surinen glanced around awkwardly, clearly struggling with something.
	“Words are wonderful, Surinen, so you should use them,” she said.
	“Er,” Suri sighed. “Is Grill still moping?”
	“She’s been quite moody, as her inner flame has extinguished again.” That was the way  has gotten rather sick lately, due to the lack of proper food. I fear my ability to take care of her nutritional needs leaves much to be desired. Of course, she’s rather poor at it herself. Alas, I suppose I am somewhat of a poor guardian,” Linda sighed, lounging over the counter lazily.
	“Simmer hasn’t returned yet?” he asked, glancing at one of the ledgers and grabbing an ink quill to correct an error.
	“Who?”
	Surinen blinked at the paper. “Simmerscale.”
	“My apologies, I do not seem to recall a Simmerscale. That is a… kobold name, yes?”
	The ivory-fleshed man gradually looked up at Linda, a jagged crack spawning horizontally across his cheeks and the ridge of his nose. “Linda, I should hope this is not your idea of a jest.”
	“Jokes? As best as I can tell, you are the one attempting a joke, and I fear it is beyond my comprehension,” she said, unamused.
	“Is this a dragon thing? Forgetting that people exist?”
	“Dragons only forget if they choose to. And I do not recall choosing to forget anyone in recent memory.”
	“You would remember such a thing?” Surinen asked. “That makes no sense.”
	“I wonder if, perhaps, it is not your memory that is at fault,” she said, leaning in closer to peer into his electric blue irises, her dress slinking over her lithe figure as she shifted in place.
	“My memory is close to flawless!” Surinen said, insulted.
	“So you claim. Have you experienced any other lapses in memory or consciousness lately?”
	Surinen stared at her, his jaw dropping slightly.
	“So you have. Seeing things nobody else does?”
	“Maybe, but I am not mad! I am holding a perfectly reasonable conversation with you right now! Am I not?”
	“It is often the greatest madman who does not wonder if he is so.”
	Surinen glared away at a wall. “More pretty words.”
	“Are you certain that your own faculties are reliable? We know ever so little about your true nature and physiology,” Linda said. She reached out and pressed her thumb into the crack on his face, a tiny plume of smoke wafting up from the point of contact. “Perhaps these tiny fractures in your flesh are present in your thoughts as well?”
	That chilled him.
	“I wanted to meet your master, but I think it best that we settle our talk here. Perhaps you should begin to keep a diary, or something of the sort, just in case this happens again. Words on paper cannot lie.” She spun on her heel and strolled to the door, throwing it open, and leaving into the beaming sunlight. “I’ll return in the morn.”
	Surinen laid his elbows on the counter, holding his head in his hands, and staring at the glossy wood. “Good gods,” he muttered. Was that kobold all just some phantom of his mind?





	As dusk settled over the grey homes of the city, Surinen held up the small tome filled with vellum pages, examining its leather surface and the small lock that bound it closed. It was a gift from Gaspar, who, upon hearing Surinen voice his desire to keep a journal, lectured the lad heavily on his responsibility as an aspiring alchemist to record his every thought, feeling, and discovery, so that his work could be passed on to the next generation.
	But that was not why he wanted it.
	He dipped his quill in the inkwell, setting the tip to the candlelit parchment with a deep breath to clear his thoughts.
	“The fourth day of the first week, third month of spring, two-hundred and fourth year of the Yvidian calendar,” he wrote.
	 “Simmerscale has gone missing.”
	“Linda does not remember her.”
	He scratched through both lines, sighed, and began on a new line: “I have been experiencing bizarre and vivid hallucinations that seem to have some sort of link to my memories.” He paused to carefully consider the next words.
	“They appear to have a tangible effect on my body. I suspect that in the first attack, I suffered from a chill of the body as if I was truly lost in rain. In the second, my master and peer both observed the physical effect the vision had upon me; a flooding of the lungs with water. In both cases, I felt a gravity within my chest, then lost consciousness. The symptoms are not consistent with any known ailments.” He stopped, rubbing his forehead in exhaustion and frustration.
	“It is conceivable that, in the course of whatever has been afflicting my person, a fictitious memory came upon my thoughts; be it a desperate invention of a mind bedeviled, or yet another symptom of the blight, I remain convinced that it is regardless caused by the greater malady.”
	He stopped writing, and set down the pen to let the ink settle. He returned his gaze to the beginning, and his brow furrowed.
	The space where he had placed Simmer’s name was blank.
	Suri blinked and grabbed the pen up again, re-writing her name and picking up where he left off, beginning a much more in-depth account of both illusionary experiences. He continued inking his thoughts and suspicions for several minutes, eventually taking another break to look over what he had.
	Simmer’s name was gone.
	He looked around. He looked at the ink. He looked at the parchment. At the pen. His fingers.
	He flipped to a new page and quickly scribbled her name once more, in a new place, large and in the center of the sheet.
	Surinen only glanced away to pour some of the wax out of a drowning candle, and it was gone.
	He leapt out of his chair, snatching one of his candles and holding it up. He searched his quarters, finding only the presence of no-one. He grabbed a fresh new pen and a full inkwell, then took the quill-tip to the stone floor. The name he wrote was gone the moment he blinked, vanished without a sound or a trace. He threw open a drawer and withdrew a piece of charcoal, frantically scribing “Simmerscale” across each wall of the room. And every time he turned to write a new one, the old one was already gone.
	The artificial man stopped only when the stick of charcoal had worn down to a nub, every well of ink had been exhausted, and his fingers were bloody from clumsily pricking himself with his pens. Discarding it, he stared at the walls, the vellum pages, his own hands, weariness leaving his features haggard. None of it was there. It had all been stolen, as spontaneously as Simmer had vanished.
	He of course considered the possibility that he was seeing things again. Perhaps the fatigue was playing tricks on his eyes. He laid down on his cot, preparing to rest, accepting his helplessness. And the first rays of dawn spilled through the shutters of his window into the room.
	Surinen arose, scratching his messy hair, rubbing his eyes, and glaring restlessly at the ground. He stumbled over to his desk, looking at his diary. Simmer’s name remained gone. The reason why his bloodshot eyes widened was because something else had disappeared.




	“Linda’s gone!” Surinen shouted, bolting into the hallway. Sylvia turned, looking at him in his disheveled state. His hair was fiercely tangled, bags hung beneath his glowing eyes, there were ink and charcoal stains all over his shirt and breeches and arms, and an unusually thick amount of smoke rose from his body. “Sylvia!” he yelled, charging at her and grabbing her by the shoulders. “We’re in danger! We’re all in danger! We have to leave!”
	She stared at him in utter shock and confusion, slowly shaking her head. “Huh? You look terrible…”
	“Where’s Gaspar?!”
	“He’s… cooking breakfast,” she said, pointing a finger. Surinen had no need to go that way, however, as the old man came hobbling in to see just what the ruckus was about.
	“Gaspar! We might be attacked!” he shouted.
	“Settle down, kiddo. By whom, now?”
	“I don’t know!”
	“Okay… why are we being attacked?”
	“I don’t… know…”
	“And when might this happen?”
	“I don’t know,” Surinen mumbled, grabbing his face and rubbing it.
	“Slow down and explain,” Gaspar said, walking up to rub his back supportively.
	“Simmer’s gone!” the man with ivory skin said.
	“Who?”
	“The kobold!”
	“What, here in Poliaht?”
	“No… she was my friend back where I lived with my benefactor. Linda’s gone too!”
	“Sorry, who?”
	“The d- my benefactor. They’re both gone, and their names, too!”
	“Now you’re speaking nonsense. Just what do you mean?”
	“I mean, they’re missing, and every time I write their name, it just disappears! It’s like someone or-or something has stolen their name!”
	“I do not think names work that way, kiddo,” Gaspar said. “You look bushed. How about you take forty winks? Sylvia can handle your morning chores, and I’ll feed the snakes for once.”
	“No, you don’t understand! It’s like-it’s like…” Surinen said, his voice cracking as he trailed off.
	“Get some sleep. Come on, let’s go back to your room,” he said, gently guiding him by the arm back to his room. They stepped inside, and he sat Suri down on his bed.
	“I wrote their names all over the walls, the floor, even my skin,” Surinen said. “I just don’t understand…”
	“Things never make sense after a long night of thinking,” the old man said kindly. “Sometimes the best thing you can do is stop thinking, and instead just be.” With that, he blew out the stubs of candles that were still burning, and left him to rest.




	It was already midday when he roused. But it felt as if he had only just shut his eyes. He stumbled onto his feet and went walking through the house, searching for a basin of water to wash his face in. He found one in the drawing room, and refreshed his features in a splash of coolness. When the unsettled surface calmed, and his own reflection came into focus, Surinen could not help but stare at his own visage grimly.
	“Oh! You’re finally up,” Gaspar said, coming into the room with a platter covered in various neatly sorted ingredients in his hands. “Good, good. We need the garden tended to.”
	“The garden? The herbs?”
	“Yes, quite.”
	“Sylvia does that,” Surinen said, looking back down at the water.
	“Who?”




	Surinen stared at his diary, quill in hand. Her name, too. Just like the others. Surinen’s questioning of the old man proved immediately fruitless. Naturally, he could not remember if she had left the building at some point, or if she had been there the whole time before she was stolen away. And how could he? He did not even recall that she existed in the first place. When confronted with her belongings, Gaspar simply did not recognize them, and assumed they belonged to the ones whom he had purchased the home from.
	The artificial man felt like stabbing the pen into his own eye. Nearly did, too. If only he had been awake that morning.
	If only he had been there.
	Maybe he could have saved her.
	And so he grieved.




	“By what machination dost my mind retain these names and memories where others do not?” Surinen wrote into his journal. He underlined the sentence twice with a flourishing flick of the pen. “The most likely truth is such that it is the result of mine unusual being. Be that the case, it is beyond me to protect anyone. But if it is not, then perhaps I can find a way to safeguard the ones I have not yet lost.”
	He left the rest of the page blank for further investigation on the matter, and flipped to the next.
	“By what power do these events occur? Evil? Unnatural? A god could surely work these damnations, but for what purpose? Deities have grown distant from the mortal peoples of this world. A malign spirit, perhaps? Could such a thing hold such strength over even the very minds of mortals, and the words we write? By what agency would a mortal magician be capable of such acts? That the perpetrator has not been so much as observed, nor nary a trace of its presence discovered, fills within my breast the grimmest dread.”
	“I am terrified. I do not know who or what I face. I do not know if writing this will even serve as an adequate safety in the case that my own memory is lost. But if I do nothing, then my heart will pound the bars of its prison until it rends itself asunder within the hour. I shall not risk the comfort of dreams until I have answers.”
	He closed the diary and set it aside. A creak of wood floorboards by the open door seized his attention, but there was nothing there. He rose to his feet, his nerves like lightning as every muscle in his body tensed from the apprehension. Slowly, like a feline stalking prey, he crept foot-by-foot forth. When he reached the doorframe, he jolted forward to peer down the hall, twisting his head to see the other way, but finding precisely nothing. His fingers tightened around the wooden frame.




	Surinen found himself checking on his master constantly. For the whole day, he shirked many of his responsibilities solely to keep a closer eye on the only person he had left. To his surprise, the old man was not taken by sundown. But after he retired to his chambers, Suri took a up a new vigil, sitting outside the old man’s door, staring down the hall. There were no windows through which an assailant could sneak into Gaspar’s bedroom. The only way someone or something could get to him was through Surinen.
	Surinen held his candles in hand, letting the molten wax drip over his fingers. It burned, but the pain kept him awake. It kept him sharp. In his other hand, laid across his lap, he bore a long, quick knife, usually used to prepare ingredients for potions. It would serve as an adequate weapon. Against another person.
	Drip. The first droplet of hot wax fell to the wood of the second floor. Drip. The second splashed. The white wax began to settle and cool. He would have to clean it up in the morning. The scent of lavender rose to his nose, a single soothing sensation that whittled a chink in his mental fortress against weariness. It was unfortunate. He had accidentally taken one of the scented candles. But, he thought, to whom did it belong? He could no longer quite recall.
	He felt his eyelids drooping. A stray thought wandered into his consciousness, and he imagined himself engulfed in the limbs of a certain blonde dragongirl. He could almost see it…
	No. Not yet. Sleep had to wait. He squeezed his fists. One, around the leather handle of a killing tool. The other, around a soft wax candle, snapping it in two with effortless ease. The pooled, heated wax around the neck poured over the back of his hand as the whole thing crumbled, scalding his skin. He would not sleep so easily. Surinen lit a fresh candle by his foot with the remnants of the previous. He released his deathgrip on the shattered wax, allowing it to thump to the ground as he stooped over to wrap his fingers around the newly lit one.
	His back began to ache in the hardwood chair. His legs fell asleep, tingling like thousands of ants crawled under his flesh. The cold of the air left him shivering, the cotton blanket wrapped around his shoulders far too thin to protect him entirely. Even the heat of the candle failed to warm him. But even so, despite all his discomfort, it was a true struggle just to keep his eyes open.
	When the sun’s rays peeked through the window at the far end of the long, dark hallway, Surinen’s irises finally shifted a degree from staring at the blackness for so many hours. He rose to his feet, the half-melted lump of wax in his wounded hand clinging to his palm even after he straightened his fingers. He pulled his dead legs forward, pushed open Gaspar’s door, and there, in the alchemist’s bed, there was no-one.




	“I” he wrote with a trembling, tender hand. Then he set the pen down, and stared at the blank page. He turned back to other pages. There were empty spaces where, ostensibly, names should be. He took up the quill once more, dipped the tip in ink, and set it down on the vellum. He slowly circled those spaces, shaking his head slowly. Surinen arose from his desk, leaving the journal behind. He nursed his injured hand with his other, staring out the window with a blank expression.
	He went down to the larder and took cheese and bread. The cheese had been gotten into by mice, and the bread was stale and hard as bone, such that even the mice refused it. He took not a bite. He deposited them where they belonged: the refuse.
	Every shutter and drape was pulled shut. The sun was denied entry, as were any who came looking for poultices or healing. He had not the expertise to help them on his own. He could not set bones, he could not brew any cures, he could not even provide simple comforts. For all that he had learned, no theory or principle alone could heal the sick.
	As the alabaster-fleshed lad wandered from room to room like a wraith, the hours passed both quickly as the rain off a mallard’s feathers, and slowly as a bleeding slug. How many days did he roam the haunted home, following after phantoms of his own delirium? Did he ever shut his eyes, or even blink? The glow of his irises dimmed to suit the shadows that were his only guest.
	In his solace, he began to speak to no-one. “I must remember the three. The three? No, the two. What were their names? Who’s names? The two. The two? Stop speaking madness, Surinen. Two names. I have to remember two names. Two. Two. Two. Who? Who? The journal. I wrote them in the journal.” He would climb to his room and open the leather-bound book, finding a mass of words he could make no sense of, and no names to recall. He would fall to his knees and search the floor, the walls, even his own skin, desperately seeking the things he must remember.
	The terrible roving only ceased when, at once, there was a sudden pounding that echoed through the building. Then, a voice. It was a familiar noise, one that harkened back to a memory that felt so distant. His starved frame shook with recognition. The door. He burst into a fit of flight. He slipped and fell mere feet away, scrambled back up, and threw it open, allowing the sun into the dusty home once more, blinding him.
	For a moment, he thought he could see a familiar silhouette of someone in the iridescence. Their blonde hair seemed to only magnify the intensity of the light, making it impossible to make out any face. Then, there was a loud thump as something fell from it to the ground, and when he finally blinked to clear his vision, the figure was gone. Where it had once been, a small leaf of parchment slowly fluttered to come to rest upon a thick, ancient tome.
	He snatched them up at once and slammed the door shut. Depositing them on the nearest surface, he unfolded the page. It read: “Grill, a certain unfortunate circumstance has come to pass. I will not be returning any time soon, or perhaps, not at all. No doubt you do not even remember whom I am by the time this reaches you. Be that as it may, I write with the most sincere urgency. If you wish to ever eat baked confections again, you had best do as I tell you.”
	“Do you still recall who Surinen is? If so, then we may still have some luck. I need you to fetch one of my texts from my shelves, the one with the name, “Wone Compleate Volyume on the Matter of Danjyerus Beests,” in Yvidian script. Since you probably do not know what that is, it is the one where the first page shows a horridly inaccurate diagram of a spirit’s anatomy.”
	“Deliver it to Surinen, who has taken up residence at an apothecary in the poorer end of Poliaht. I’m sure one of his peculiar appearance will be easy to find by merely asking passersby. Once he has it, attempt to leave the city as soon as possible. You will be in danger as long as you stay there. Do not worry about him. Surinen seems to have some sort of resistance to the tricks of this predator. It will be up to him to solve this, if he can.”
	“If you do not remember Surinen, or, I suppose, if there is only empty parchment where a name should be, burn this note and never go to Poliaht. You will be on your own, though you won’t remember ever not being on your own. I know you are currently exhausted of your inner flame, so survival will be difficult. If you starve, go to the road and beg for food from travelers. Go to towns if you must. But never go to Poliaht.” The last sentence was triply underlined.
	“I would sign this with my name, but I know it will just be stolen once I am taken. I cannot evade my foe forever. Still, I doubt it is clever enough to intercept a slip of parchment carried on the wind. Good luck.”
	Even as he read the letter, the smoking fellow’s face contorted into some sort of twisted imitation of a grin and despair. The name at the beginning had already faded by the time he finished. He tossed it away, and turned his attention to the heavy volume, and opened its cover. There, on the first page, there was a pathetic attempt at laying out and classifying the parts of a common wood spirit, drawn by an unskilled hand. On the second page, there began a second-hand account of an ogre-creature that ate men whole and grew larger with every devoured morsel. The oral legend that was recorded in the book claimed that it grew to the height of the largest mountain on the continent before an indignant young dragon and an angry farmgirl joined forces to topple it with a magic rope that tied up its ankles.
	The third page told another fable, as did the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth. Where Suri had hoped to find a scholarly examination of various unusual beasts and spirits, he only found unsubstantiated hearsay, unreliable narration, and old wives’ tales.
	But still he read.
	It was on the hundred-and-seventieth page, the last of the volume, just after a somewhat dull tale of a tiny fairy-thing that mostly just cursed anyone who wrongly entered into its domain with indigestion and incontinence, he found what he was searching for.




	“Yea, on the eve of the winter solstice, the northern kingdom of Shyld lost its lord the King of the Coldseas. For no strong wereman nor good woman, no learned skald nor clever bard, no venerable elder nor curious child, no wise pine nor sweet maple, no inked sheepskin nor engraved stone, kenned his rightful name. Upon the throne sat nothing-dust, and the troubles of the many could be answered by no ruler.”
	“Unto the people his liegemen asked, ‘who do we serve?’ and unto the liegemen the people asked, ‘who does us good?’ and neither could answer the other. For verily there had to be some king; for there was a father-king who surely sired a son-king; the father they kenned, but the son they kenned not. Verily there had to be some king! For the queen-lady Helfwyr had sung ninety-nine and nine songs in the name of her lover, but now knew not a name or a love to sing. Verily, there had to be some king. But the kennings of men failed them that eve, and the feast-gifts to the gods to bring back the warm days could not be begun without a king.”
	“The people and the liegemen went to the god-woods. Sought they the wisdom-beyond-men. Helfwyr sung her loveliest songs, the liegemen offered up their finest wines, the people took the blood of the sheep and the fowl and spilled it in the gods’ names. The god-high, Aldr, descended from the mountain and told the people and the liegemen and Helfwyr that the gods, too, kenned not the king. For evil power had stolen him and his name, evil-beyond-kenning that came from the Hotlands where the Water-Wyrm Slithered.”
	“The evil had many names: Weigher of Hearts, Heart-Glutton, Devourer of the Dead, Fear-Beyond-Terror, Great of Death, Beast-Above-Men, God’s Executioner, Eraser of Damned, and Tyrant of the Underworld. Its name in the tongue of its land was Ammit.”
	“Aldr thus spake that three of the demon-beasts had come to Shyld. Verily, though the king be lost, many more were lost before him, but were kenned not. The god-high warned never to commit sin, raise a voice in anger, lie, utter curses, steal, act violently, judge in haste, or treat poorly the children. For all these were vile in the Hotlands where the Water-Wyrm Slithered, and it was the pleasure of the Ammit to hunt the sinful and devour their hearts once they had perished; all such sinners were to be forgotten in whole, for no graver a punishment was there.”
	“These the Ammits had tasted the living, and found them a finer feast than the scraps of souls of the departed sinners. Their fell hunger insatiable under the rule of their gods, they fled the Hotlands where the Water-Wyrm Slithered and roved the Shyldland.”
	“The people were frightened and went to their homes to hide. The liegemen were cowed and fled to their holds to guard only themselves. Only beautiful and brave Helfwyr faced Aldr’s counsel, and for her glory, the god-high granted her a shield-ward against the predations of the Ammit, who would surely seek her next, for they had learned to destroy the entire family to leave no traces.”
	“Helfwyr took the throne, for a kingdom must always have a king. Before her came the troubles of the people, and she dealt them fair. Before her came the troubles of the liegemen, and she dealt them wise. By her decree a great bounty was placed for the heads of the demon-beasts, and every year, on the winter solstice, a Great Hunt set forth to claim it. For the first head, the champion would hear the glorious songs of Helfwyr. For the second head, the champion would lay with beautiful and fair Helfwyr. For the third head, the champion would have the throne, and Helfwyr as good-wife. Fifty brave souls took part each year, heroes all; fifty names were carved at the feet of the statue of Shyld the Great; fifty great men searched the nearest and farthest shores of the Shyldland; no names, no souls, and no heroes remained by the deep thaw.”
	“And so winter forecame the loss of fine-men, and Helfwyr’s grief grew greater with every passing snow-season. The foemen proved too clever to be found, too mighty to be slain, and too maleficent to grant the fallen name-in-death.”
	“Yea, upon the sixth solstice of the winter since Helfwyr took the throne of Shyld, no-men came to embark on the Great Hunt, for five and ten score had failed, and to be forgotten and unkenned, the foulest fate of all. Feasts and banquets were laid before all, and no-men came. Riches and glory were offered all, and no-men came. Holdings and holds were promised all, and no-men came. And lo, did the people and the liegemen and Helfwyr despair, for abandoned they were to their doom.”
	“For a dozen seasons did the Shyldland suffer alone. For a dozen seasons the weremen and women were weighed by their hearts, and by their hearts were they drowned. The fields went unplowed, the livestock unherded, the women and children unguarded. Evils of men and spirit ran rampant and unchecked. Misery were they.”
	“When came the new solstice of the cold days, came the hunter in snakeskin boots. Came he to Shyldland, partook he of the feast-gifts, offered was he riches and glory, promised he was holds and holdings. Gone he went, the hunter in snakeskin boots, with nary but his bow and arrows in hand. Returned he with three heads upon the back of his mule, and to Helfwyr did he gift them. To her, to the liegemen, and to the people did he tell his story.”
	“For six moons, he hunted the demon-beasts to their darkest den. Found them, he did, amongst the bones of the dead. Lo, did they weigh his breast, lo did they challenge him! Greatest fear! Greatest fury! Greatest grief! Greatest regret! Against Ma’at’s feather was he judged, and wanting they found him not. They sought his life through strife, but in battle they could measure and match him not, for though they took the form of the great wild man-eater beasts, it was the hunter’s domain to conquer all beasts.”
	“One by one, the beasts were laid low, for his arrows struck true, and coldly did he aim. Raged his bowstring like the tundra winds of Shyld, hailed his arrows like the avalanches of the high mountains. Judged they men; by the Shyldland were they judged. And by their hubris and gluttony were they found unworthy.”
	“On the first night of his conquest, Helfwyr sang for him ninety-nine and nine songs of love. On the second night of his conquest, into her bed Helfwyr took him, and there did she gift to him the pleasures of her beauty beyond compare. On the third night, when he was to be crowned, the wise skald Jorgann looked upon the heads the hunter brought, and uttered a savage cry.”
	“For the master of kennings knew the forms before him, and they were naught but the skulls of water-crocodiles. Demon-beasts they were not. Thus did the liegemen heed his wisdom and arrest the hunter in the snakeskin boots for his deceit. There, as the people cheered, the hunter was drawn and quartered, and one limb sent to each corner of the realm, while his head was hung above the king’s gate for all to see. At Jorgann’s behest, none spoke his name while they yet lived, for the lot of the coward and liar was to be forgotten.”
	“Helfwyr was struck with womanly melancholy, and abdicated her reign. In her place, Jorgann was given the crown and scepter for his wisdom. His first act was to decry the Great Hunt and the myth of the Ammits, for only Helfwyr had witnessed Aldr’s supposed teachings of the unknown creatures. The murderous folly of the Great Hunt was unveiled for all to see, five and ten score dead for the madness of a woman. The only one who had stolen names was undoubtedly the one who had invented the tale of the Ammits, a witch who rose to the throne by her vile magicks and seductive beauty. For had not the kingdom fallen to despair under her reign? Evil could beget only evil.”
	“And so the Witch Hunt was decreed, and whomsoever brought the head of Helfwyr would have a fief and eternal glory as their reward.”




	Surinen finished the tale and set down the book, rubbing his aching eyes. “Nothing! Nothing at all!” He rose to his feet, taking the dusty tome in shaking hand. He hurled it across the room, slamming it into the wall and letting it fall where it may. “Ammits? Witches? Damn this half-written legend! Atrocious verses! Useless words!” he yelled, and screamed, and shouted. “I can’t save anyone! I can’t remember anyone! I cannot even save myself!”
	Jaws clasped over his heart.
	He seized his chest.
	And he whirled.
	“So you’ve come at last! Show yourself at the least, you coward!”
	But his words fell on cold stone and hard wood.
	The vice tightened, and the blood in his veins turned to ice.
	His vision narrowed, and his limbs grew heavy and numb.
	Painfully his left arm throbbed.
	His skull ached like a hammer to his temple.
	The heart pounded harder still.
	Feet carried him to a redwood door. He could not feel them, but they were surely his. The door was ajar, and easily budged to his clumsy fingers. Where there would normally be impenetrable umber shadow, to dark-learned eyes it was just a stairwell down. Surinen descended, his hands braced to the wall. Whether by fortune or the mortal strength of his limbs, he came to the basement unfallen.
	But he did not know why he had come there, to the place he hated and feared most. It was difficult to think, as his thoughts were delicate and easily displaced. Only the harrowing chill in his spine warned him of what was next to come. Then, the hiss.
	He strode forward, and a keen agony struck his ankle, spearing through all the other pain. It scraped over bone in an intimately familiar manner, the burn of something all too well-known to him washing through his flesh. He did not need to see the green scales and long, slender shape of the serpent. He did not need to see its sliver-pupils that looked forward at nothing as it channeled venom into its prey. He knew that it was a woodland viper ages before his glowing blue irises focused upon its form, and his fingers tensed in panic. He kicked his leg out.
	It released him, flying into the wall with a violent thud. It stopped moving. But the hissing did not end. It grew louder, and multiplied.
	And then, the same sensation.
	On his forearm.
	When he looked upon the viridian snake that had fallen down and buried its fangs into the meat of his arm, his hand was moving before any part of his mind had registered the image before him. Fingers wrapped around its neck. Then it was pulled off. And then he swung it down into the table, an audible crack echoing as many of its ribs shattered from the force.
	Red-hot agony spread through his body as quickly as his heart spasmed, melting and shattering his frozen arteries with magma. He opened his mouth, and a weak cry spilled as he fell back to the ground, not because he once heard that it was safer to lie down when bitten, but because his legs could no longer support him. With such haste did he gasp for air, such fear did run through his nerves, as like lightning burrowing the length of steel in a god-storm.
	There he lay, paralyzed in vital terror, watching the serpents come nearer. One, two, ten, forty. From behind chests and trunks, from beneath chairs and tables did they come. Coiled they did from the ceiling low, hanging by tails long as the vines that choked the life from venerable oaks. Even the stairs served only as entry for the legion of ophidians, raining down the steps in an avalanche of scales and fangs outstretched. And the hissing, the hissing grew into nothing but a cacophony of death, as their tongues stabbed the air wildly, hunting for the one that was to be their prey that eve.
	There was to be no escape.
	This was to be his grave.
	The bites came with every fevered breath. They came from all directions, struck every part of him, even his burnt hand, without mercy. His pale flesh swelled around each pair of bloody punctures, turning darker, his veins rising beneath his skin.
	From every bite, a seam in his existence stretched to the next, cracks and fractures in his very being spreading like spider’s spun gossamer. His indigo vital fluids flowed forth freely and generously from each wound, as though the floodgates of his heart had been opened.
	Every lash of his hands and feet in desperate struggle only exposed him to yet more fangs. Every inch he moved, the grip around his icy heart tightened, and the venom’s rampage through his vessels intensified.
	Screams. He did not realize they were his screams until fangs dug into his throat, and he could scream no longer.
	Smooth scales wound around his limbs, around his waist, around his neck, tightening, trapping him, like a net of living beings seeking only his demise. He could not move. He could not breathe. His face was marked with twin blue stabs, and his cheeks and eyes grew puffy and engorged with blood. All he could do was squint up at the darkness, the burning brimstone inside him bursting his veins with blue flame.
	It was -----------------------------




	Funny.
	It was funny.
	The feeling of all those snakes around him kind of reminded Surinen of that moment in the tent, with Simmerscale.
	He wished he hadn’t run away from her embrace.
	He wished he’d been a little more forward with her.
	Even if it would have been ungentlemanly.
	Yeah, it was funny.
	His swollen throat choked out a chuckle.
	He probably shouldn’t have been so harsh to Grill.
	He knew she meant well.
	…Even if she almost got him killed, once or twice. Or thrice.
	He kind of lost count.
	Sylvia was such an effervescent sweetheart, just in the weeks he’d known her, that he badly regretted not sneaking into her room at night and making mad, passionate love to her.
	Gaspar was a good teacher, too. Better than Linda. That dragon was indecipherable.
	Surinen awoke. The basement was pitch black, no light to be had in the least, but somehow he could see with his shimmering eyes. He looked at himself, and saw a snake bite on his ankle. Yet, though fresh blue blood slowly ran from each puncture, there was no swelling. There was no pain.
	He rose to his feet, exhaustion forcing a groan from his lips. From within the snake cages, the motley collection of serpents stared at him with hypnotic gazes, their forked tongues flicking out from their lips to taste the air. “Taste the air?” Surinen asked no one at all. “How do I…?” He glanced at his hands in confusion, but there was nothing to be found there.
	“Ah. I forgot to feed you.” He trotted up the stairs and ran to where the mice were kept, bringing a box of them down to toss one in each cage. The ophidians made short work of their meals, all except for one. A rattlesnake ignored the mouse that was trapped in its compartment, and slowly slithered out between the bars of its cage door.
	Surinen shivered reflexively at the sight, but took a deep breath, summoning his will, and walked up to it. He gently took hold of it and attempted to push it back into its cage, but, as if refusing, the creature slowly wound its body around his arms, slithering up to his shoulder. “Oh, come on, just get back in there!” he said, his voice cracking as he began to shake.
	Then he felt its tongue tickle his ear. And then he heard a wispy voice through a hiss.
	“Life in death, and death in life.”
	He froze.
	“The spirits do need to be taught their place every now and again. Bring me with you, one who envenomed himself. I will show you to where your nemesis resides.”
	He turned to look at the snake, staring into the black slits of its pupils, like staring into a crevice through which the infinite universe stared back. It said nothing further, but its pink muscle shot out, swishing through the air every few moments.
	Something convinced Suri to take the animal with him back up the stairs. It seemed content to lounge on his shoulders as he searched the house and shop for everything that might be useful. In Gaspar’s wardrobe, he found an old greatcoat of leather, which he threw on, concealing the snake. Hanging above the hearth was an old scythe from the old man’s farming days. Surinen took it down and tested its edge, finding it still razor sharp, even if covered in dust. Stowing the ingredient carving knife within the coat, he worried briefly whether he could make it around the city, armed as he was. But in a city full of farmers, a man with a scythe had to be a common sight.
	He walked to the front door. His gut ached with hunger, his throat was parched with thirst, his eyes heavy with exhaustion, and a dull throb of pain washed through his head every couple of seconds. His right hand was still tender to the touch, and hurt whenever he tried to grip anything with force.
	Surinen threw open the door and strove out into the night with long, heavy strides, the blade of his scythe gleaming in the moonlight as brightly as his eyes.




	The snake he brought with him shook its rattle whenever he turned to face the right direction, its head peeking out from under the collar of the coat every now and then to taste the cool night air. It was like a living compass, and under its guidance, the artificial man was led slowly through the empty streets. Surinen nodded respectfully to the few drunken louts who came stumbling past, and they laughed and sputtered out friendly insults at him. The guards on watch eyed him cautiously, but did not approach him. Perhaps it was something in the air that filled them with apprehension about the man who looked like he had come crawling out of hell itself, on a dirge-like march down the dusty streets to drag another soul back with him.
	It was in the outskirts, where the buildings thinned and foliage returned, that Surinen came across a massive cemetery, plotted with what seemed like hundreds of gravestones, each bearing the name of dozens of deceased that had been buried in that plot of land. As he wandered deeper through the hallowed grounds, the stones grew larger and more magnificent in craftsmanship; soon mere stones gave way to entire crypts, stone vaults adorned with gargoyles to ward off malignant spirits and corpse-thieves.
	It was gravely quiet. No owl hooted. No bat squeaked. No insect chirped. Not even the crickets, which cared not for the solemnity of mortals and played their game of life and death freely in the grass and the trees and the air. Not even the fireflies, which would dance merry above the dead, above where all the tears of men had fallen. But the snake still hissed and shook its tail. So dread be the presence that had fallen over the grim necropolis, that no life dared speak except the snake.
	Surinen tightened his hold on the tool in his hands; it was a large and clumsy thing. Even if he had affixed the blade vertically, to make it a war-scythe, he held no great confidence in its use. He, himself, was by no regard a warrior. An unwieldy weapon, in the hands of a man who knew not how to wield, was but a switch in the hands of a child.
	Yet, nevertheless, he continued onward. Towards his destiny, or towards his doom, he walked.




	And he came upon the abode of death. It was a massive tomb built of ancient stone, as old as, or older than Poliaht itself. The walls were faintly electric – a mere touch rendered a static discharge to Surinen’s fingers. The air around it was stagnant and thick, and no breezes blew. It was a mark of godhead, that once a god had touched the mausoleum. No elements nor men could bring it to harm, and the corpses inside would never decompose.
	But the massive stone door, more like a boulder than anything that could be called a door, had been pushed aside, a feat beyond the strength of mortals. The stairwell down to the subterranean catacombs was open to any and all who dared to tread where the dead dreamt restlessly.
	The pale man boldly stepped forward. His shining eyes pierced through the darkness, so it offered no protection to what dwelled within. “Tarry not. The Great Hunt begins afresh,” a shrill voice whispered in his ear. The rattlesnake came out from beneath his sleeve, coiling down to the ground, where it began to slither down the steps ahead of him.
	Water dripped, echoing through the vast and labyrinthine halls. It was the only sound there, aside from Surinen’s own footsteps, which he hushed as best he could, but still the soft footfalls could be heard. The snake turned and seemed to glare at him, and he glared back – what could he do about it? The duo crept deeper and deeper into the damp tunnels, looking past the rotted wood coffins and the rusted and tarnished offerings beside them.
	At last, the snake froze just before entering an expansive chamber that seemed to be where a massive stone with ancient carvings etched upon its surface stood. It glanced up at Surinen, giving a tiny shake of its rattle, then peered forward. It slithered.
	Something fell.
	Something huge fell.
	It came from the ceiling, and its leonine paw crushed the serpent’s neck instantly, even cracking the rock floor beneath it from its weight and force.
	Surinen looked upon it.
	And in that instant, he knew fear.



	------------------ It was no simple creature.
	Its hind and rear legs were that of a water-horse, the great, fat, mighty animals of the rivers in the aridlands.
	Its abdomen and forelimbs belonged to a lion, lord of the beasts.
	And its crown was none other than that of the crocodile, long-snouted, with dozens of fell teeth curling around its lips.
	It was thrice his mass, all of its parts taken from the creatures that devoured men.
	But this thing ate more than mere flesh.
	Souls were its sustenance.
	Its yellow, reptilian eyes narrowed upon him, the man-thing who dared intrude on his domain.
	Ammit, it had been called, in that legend of Scyld.
	In Surinen’s tongue, it could only be titled hell-beast.
	And so his spine thundered with pangs of absolute terror.
	He did not even see himself raise the thing, but he was already bringing down the reaping blade before the Ammit touched the floor.
	It was a clumsy tool, and in his haste, he failed to align the sharp under-blade with the beast’s bulk. He stabbed the tip of it into its side, but it was shallow.
	He was flung back into the ground when the creature simply exerted the power of its limbs and smashed its mass into him. No strength of men was sufficient to maintain his grip on the scythe, which fell to the earth, and its wooden shaft was snapped in twain by the massive rear-foot of the monster.
	Surinen hardly felt the pain of being thrown like a ragdoll. He was already scrambling to his feet the instant he landed, but he was too slow. No man could outrun the Ammit by strength of leg alone, despite its hulking size.
	Fearsome jaws wrapped around his outstretched arm, and closed. Crunch. With the power of the salt crocodile, even bone was as a twig. Surinen was jerked back by the death-grip, and looked over his shoulder, a scream of agony and horror leaving his lips as he saw the teeth sinking even deeper into his pale flesh.
	Some might not have even felt anything, by their own rush of excitement and urgency.
	He was not so fortunate.

	What he felt was as if someone had smashed his arm to pieces with a hammer, and stabbed him with a hundred tiny shards of glass, constantly digging them deeper as what was left of his bones were ground around by jaws tightening ever harder.
	If there had been anything in his gut to void, he would not have been able to hold it in. His legs shook, and his every breath was taken only to yell and cry out louder.
	Yes, this was an exquisite pain.
	The Ammit twisted its neck and pulled with its monstrous weight, dragging him to the ground, not that his limbs had any strength to resist. Its evil eyes remained locked on him as smoking blue blood leaked from his arm onto the ground in slow drips. It tasted him, tasted his blood, his very life force.
	And then, its jaws slammed shut completely, a shapeless mass of smoke flowing where the man had been laying mere moments before, only a pile of empty clothes beneath it. Just as quickly as he had vanished, the smoke blew away to reveal him again. Though his left arm remained shattered and broken, it was no longer in the hold of the beast, and his right hand dug into the discarded coat, drawing forth a deadly knife.
	The chimera had not yet understood what occurred when the blade was driven into its wide-open eye, and it reared and retreated as red poured from the ruined organ. Surinen arose, panting for air to fill his taxed lungs, brandishing the knife and gritting his teeth. He pursued it with staggering steps, the wild look of a man driven to kill in his eyes.
	Crimson and deep indigo intermingled on the ground.
	Once more Surinen entered the chamber with the stone monument, and there he saw the Ammit backed into the corner. His breath hissed through his teeth, his chest heaving. The monster, too, breathed sharply, clearly in pain, as it eyed him with its one good orb warily.
	He glanced at the slain rattlesnake, and saw its body still spasming. He looked back up at his foe, and dropped the knife, which clattered to the ground. It would do him no good.
	Surinen closed his eyes, his wounded arm still shaking slightly in pain.



	He had known since the moment he awoke in that basement.
	He had known why the Ammit could not defeat him by striking at his heart.
	A master alchemist, or a true hero, perhaps, could conquer such weaknesses of humankind, and become invincible to such methods.
	He was neither of those things.
	Surinen had been bitten by a viper.
	Ammits were said to hold incredible power over the dead, and the workings of the underworld, and even the hearts and souls of creatures.
	But if there was one being that was beyond even them in that domain, it was a snake.
	It was a snake that tempted Man to wickedness in the oldest stories of the West.
	It was a snake that gave Man the knowledge of life and death, of good and evil, in those same stories.
	It was a snake that gave Man the wisdom to heal, and delay death, in the oldest stories of the East.
	It was a snake that coiled around and bound the parts of the soul together after passing, so that Man may go into the afterlife whole and unregretful, in those same stories.
	Yes, for snakes were the ones who shed their own deaths like mere skins.
	Of course all creatures feared them. Even kings. Even demons. Even gods.
	Some uppity thing like an Ammit --------




	-------- was not even worth regarding as anything but a pretender to the Throne of the Underworld.
	Surinen opened his eyes.
	Now, long, narrow black slits served as his windows of sight.
	Now his body had become long, and slender, and coiled up around him.
	There were a few broken ribs, and some shallow lacerations on his form.
	But they would not slow him down. Not anymore.
	That serpent looked as though it were crafted from ivory, or alabaster. Speckled with dark, dark blue diamond patterns along its back. Some imperfections crackled along its scales.
	It looked upon the Ammit. He looked upon the Ammit. Not with eyes, but with tongue that read the scents of everything. Everything in the catacombs, he could sense.
	And the Ammit loosed a harrowing screech, some mockery of a lion’s roar and a hippopotamus’s scream.
	It was the last, desperate attempt to intimidate a foe it could not best, nor flee.
	Such a clever thing it was,
	learning the art of ambush from humans.
	But no good were any human tricks, anymore.
	Surinen slithered upon it, slowly, enjoying it writhing in its place, in fear.
	For all those it had taken from him.
	For every soul it had devoured.
	He would punish it a thousand times over.
	He came close.
	It dared to rise upon its hind legs, swinging its lion’s paws wildly in the air, ready to bring them down and crush him.
	He struck, a single bolt of lightning faster than any eye could see. He struck on its blind side, and it could not see him, nor did it feel the first bite.
	Nor the second.
	Nor the third.
	With each, a lash of Surinen’s serpentine neck, as he dug his fangs deep into its flesh and poured his venom into its veins.
	And then, he coiled into a circle beneath himself, and rose his head tall before the Ammit as it fell to its side, foam spilling from its mouth.
	Smoke poured over the wyrm, and when it passed, Surinen was a man once more, standing before the fallen beast.
	He looked down upon it coldly, holding his arm.
	“I do not know if spirits go to any place after their passing. But I’m sure that if there is one, you will burn in Hell.”
	The chimera looked up upon his visage, and let out a chilling death rattle, before at last its body went limp.




	Surinen watched the corpulent corpse for a while, then went back to his clothes, and dressed again, and tore cloth from his shirt to bind his arm as best he could. He returned to where the rattlesnake had been left, only to find just an empty snakeskin lying there. Before he could investigate, a strikingly familiar yell rent the air. He ran through the tunnels towards the source, and there he found the tall, curvy blonde that was Grill laying halfway out of a smashed casket that seemed to have fallen from its alcove in the wall. She was in full human form, wearing only some scraps of cloth around her chest and nethers, and she groggily glanced up at him, blinking slowly.
	“You. Where the fuck are we? What the fuck happened to your arm?”
	“You were in that coffin?” Surinen asked, holding out a hand towards her, which she automatically slapped away to clamber to her feet.
	“No shit, genius. Why do I feel like I got stampeded by a herd of cattle?” she asked, holding a hand up to her head as she swayed awkwardly.
	“It’s... a long and complicated tale. More importantly, help me open the other coffins,” Surinen said, gravely.
	“Don’t tell me what to do!” she snapped.
	Ignoring her, he walked to the next alcove on the wall, pulled the warped grey wood cover off the coffin inside of it, and saw, beneath it, the old man. Gaspar. Though for a brief instant Surinen feared the worst, he saw his chest rise and fall. He was alive.
	“There are people in all of these coffins!” Surinen said, stepping back and finding himself at a loss for air.
	“Why?” Grill asked, brushing a cobweb off of her shoulder irritably.
	“Because…” Surinen paused, thinking intently. As realizations began to dawn on him, he could not help but shake. “The Ammit must have learned agriculture, or the ideas of it, from mortals. It wasn’t just devouring souls anymore. It was taking them alive, and storing them in sleep, and… eating them at its leisure.”
	“The hell is an Ammit?” she asked with a frown.
	“There’s no time to explain. Linda and Simmer are in here somewhere, too.”
	“You sayin’ they coulda had their souls eaten?”
	Surinen did not reply. The first person taken, that he knew of, was ------
	He tore the coffins apart.
	There was Sylvia. Asleep. Alive.
	Linda. Beginning to awaken. Alive.
	Then, there, interred within the next casket, was the green kobold, Simmerscale. She was motionless.
	He reached out to her chest, holding it. He did not feel her breathe. He could not feel her heartbeat.
	“Do not worry about her. It’s just the exposure to the godhead of this tomb. The longer one stays, the more one petrifies, as the curse attempts to make all things remain as they are,” Linda said, standing behind Suri, sweat rolling down her svelte dark skin.
	“Linda?” the alabaster man said, backing away in surprise. “You, er, got up quickly. Are you alright?”
	“I may possess the frailties of a human when I am as a human, but if I am struggling not to return to my true form, I begin to change in many ways, my ability to overcome fatigue and curses among them,” Linda said, a wild look in her eyes as she spoke, baring her teeth. Without any warning at all, she grabbed Surinen, wrapping her warm arms around him, and he felt silken flesh clasp upon his lips. His senses were suddenly full of the scent of Linda's sweaty sensuality, like foreign delicacies dancing within his nose, and he felt the lush softness of her bust tightly bound to his chest. She was kissing him. He had never been kissed before. His cheeks flushed. For a moment, all he could do was enjoy what was happening, and then he felt her wet muscle worm its way into his mouth, locking with his tongue and wrestling it into submission as a moan of desire vibrated from her throat into his skull.
	As suddenly as she had embraced him, she pulled away, a strail of saliva extending from her mouth to his as she smiled seductively and stared into his eyes with the most come-hither expression he had ever seen before. Her tongue flicked out, and she licked the saliva up idly. "Apologies, Surinen. A dragon often finds it difficult to express gratitude through words alone. I shall have to leave, quickly, before I lose myself. The indignity of having been dealt with like this by such a lowly spirit is simply… intolerable!”
	It took him a moment to compose himself and muster the most important question at hand. “But what about Simmer?”
	“The curse can only affect those within this tomb. Bring her out of it, as well as any others who haven’t awoken yet. You help him, Grill. I shall go and spread my wings,” the exotically beautiful, yet now seemingly maddened, woman said, before turning to walk very haltingly down the catacombs, a few vermillion feathers falling out from underneath her dress.
	Muttering complaints, the blonde woman did still throw Sylvia and Gaspar over her shoulders, as Surinen grabbed the kobold, held her on his good shoulder, and took the lead out of the mausoleum. Grill unceremoniously deposited her burden on the grass, the natural color of flesh returning to the alchemists as their hearts began to beat more soundly. Grill turned to go check for more bodies, and Surinen gently laid Simmerscale down as best he could with one functional arm, her small, slender form feeling almost fragile in his hand.
	The first rays of dawn peaked over the distant mountains, washing their warmth over every living soul in the cemetery. Surinen waited there for minutes, holding Simmer, staring at her face. At last, he felt a thump in her chest, and she drew breath again. It was not long after that her eyelids slowly rose, and her yellow orbs slowly focused upon him.
	“Dawn is always the right time to wake up,” Surinen said, before he smiled, and smelled the fresh dew.




Epilogue

	“How many folks were dragged outta there, anyhow?” Gaspar asked.
	“A dozen, you all included,” Surinen said. “There were around thirty other victims, according to the people of the city.” He reached up to his arm, which was bound in bandages and suspended in a cloth sling, wincing as he tested touching it.
	“The idea of things like those wandering around is just downright terrifying. Getting in your head, making you think they aren’t even there as they traipse around, dragging people away to their pits to be devoured alive… Gods, I hope there are no more out there…” the old man sighed, swatting Suri’s hand away like a parent dealing with an unruly child.
	“Well, the local adventuring guilds have been informed of everything we know, and they’re spreading the word about what happened. They’ve already found another Ammit den in a kingdom to the west.”
	The master alchemist reflexively shivered when he heard that.
	“From what Linda told me, she’s only come across one or two stories of an Ammit leaving its homeland as a ravenous beast in all her years.”
	“So why are they appearing now? How were they exiled?”
	“I don’t know. She doesn’t know, either. They must have tasted the soul of a living being somehow and become addicted, but as far as we know, that should not ever be something that can happen where they come from, due to the strict laws that govern them.”
	“Sounds like trouble,” Gaspar said.
	“Linda agrees. She even suggested that we make a trip down to the aridlands to see just why all these Ammits are getting loose. I think all of us are interested in taking up her offer.”
	“The aridlands, huh? How many months is that by foot? Wouldn’t you need a ship, as well?”
	“Oh, we have a way or two of getting there faster than by marching and sailing. Still, I wouldn’t expect me back for quite some time,” the artificial man chuckled.
	“So be it, kiddo. It should be a good experience for you.”
	“Well, hopefully not quite as… eventful… as coming here to Poliaht.”




Epilogue 2

	“So, Linda, about that legend in that book you had Grill bring to me – you know, the one about Scyld?” Surinen asked, as he slowly packed a leather satchel full of essential supplies.
	“Yes? Not the finest crafted story,” the olive-skinned, winsome, and graceful woman said, glancing over from the meticulous task of reorganizing the books on her shelves.
	“Quite. Do you know what happened afterwards? Since it’s clear now that the hunter was not actually lying, and he probably did kill those Ammits like he said he did. Which means the queen was honest and not a witch, right?”
	“Hmm,” Linda hummed, resting her chin on a shelf. “If I recall, I read elsewhere that the kingdom of Scyld was utterly wiped off the map when their patron deity suddenly went on a rampage without warning. There have been a few theories about it, but I heard from a traveling performer that once lived up there that it was because the queen asked Aldr to wreak vengeance for her slain lover. And since all had participated in the murder of the rightful king, Aldr slew each and every human being in that land, with the exception of the pregnant Helfwyr, who went into a self-imposed exile. I do not know how that bard came to know such things, but I do know that the land is still thought of as forbidden and cursed, and avoided by most travelers and settlers.”
	“Oh.”