[written down by Johana Passerin]
It might have been between two and three in the morning when Tazriel Itraniel Vedrax came to. The effects of the Elixir slowly wore off. He realized that Klaes was sitting beside him, and an ugly, disheveled raven was staring at him from the back of the opposite chair.
“He’s weird!” the monstrosity croaked. “They gave the Elixir to a stranger, and nothing for me again.”
Klaes snapped at the raven. “You’ll get yours too. Shoo!” Then he turned to Tazriel: “Perhaps you’d like to rest for a moment, eat and drink something.” Tazriel nodded languidly. Klaes accompanied him into the adjacent room and left him there alone.
“What do you have against that Vezan?” he asked Shard when he returned.
“He’s weird,” Shard answered.
“And how is he weird?”
“He’s a bigger monster than I am. If I were to take a swig of something poetic, he’s midnight and noon combined. A hybrid! He has an accursed halo!” Shard hollered.
“He has a what?” Klaes asked.
Instead of Shard, who started babbling again about the Elixir and injustice, Loverd answered Klaes: “Xalgonians paint the accursed halo over the heads of people who, from their perspective, are morally degenerate. For instance, those willing to sacrifice their lives to commit evil. Evil from Xalgon’s point of view.”
“I want the Elixir! But not for seeing, you fools! You promised me! And instead of me, that weird guy got anointed! Give me what you promised me! Elixir! Elixir!”
“Quiet, not so loud!” Klaes stopped him. “I always keep my word, so don’t worry. I just don’t know if now is the right time.”
“It’s time! It’s time for the Elixir!”
“Hush! Our guest is still next door, so that’s why it’s not possible right now. Right now we have to focus on what we’ll propose to Vedrax.”
“We’ve discussed that many times. We have no chance of getting there in person,” Loverd said.
“Personal contact is out of reach, but from all sides dreaming calls to each,” Klaes said, and then marveled at himself for somehow casually composing a verse. He remembered Jarn then. Was Jarn still Jarn? And was he alive?
Fox, who had hitherto been watching everything apathetically from the sofa, barked enthusiastically. “Yes! In a dream! I already tried it with Vedrax. I have a gift! We’d just need the woman to know we’re trying to connect with her, or perhaps have some prop upon which she could anchor her imagination.”
“Ha! The Inn at the Three Foxes!” Klaes exclaimed. “If we sent her that coaster, for instance, she could meet us there, in that imaginary place!”
Just then came the creak of a door, and Vedrax stepped out of the room, neat and composed once more. Only faint shadows lay beneath his eyes, though they could easily be attributed to the fact that, as a mourner, he hadn’t slept for days out of pure grief. He was completely sober now, but everything seemed strange and unreal to him.
“I will have to return,” he said in a quiet but firm voice.
“Yes, I understand. But before you leave, I would like to discuss our cooperation with you,” Klaes said.
“How did you envision that?” Vedrax asked, his voice sounding somewhat sad.
“Since it’s not possible to reach the woman directly, we would like to establish contact with her in a dream. To do that, we’d need to hand her one small object, or at least a message,” Klaes explained.
“An object? That will likely be difficult, if not impossible,” Vedrax shook his head.
Klaes pulled out the coaster from the Inn at the Three Foxes. “It is this object. Perhaps it could be disguised as a tray under her food.”
Vedrax marveled. “How could that help you?”
“It is a personal object from Fox’s home. If you handed it to that woman, it would help us pave the way for shared dreaming,” Klaes explained.
“Shared dreaming?” Vedrax cast a brief glance at Fox. She seemed smaller to him now than before, when he had looked at her under the influence of the Elixir. About the size of a small dog, only with a bushy red tail larger than her whole body. Then he realized that something fox-like had tried to enter his consciousness the previous night, when he had not been sleeping. He hadn’t been able to fall asleep then.
“I do not know where this creature acquired the abilities you speak of. However, it is difficult to penetrate the Chapter—in reality and in dreams. One idea occurs to me for how I could approach her: give me the Elixir,” Vedrax said slowly and deliberately.
“No! Don’t give it to him! Give it to me! You didn’t promise him, you promised me!” Shard shrieked again and began flitting back and forth beneath the ceiling of the room. Had Vedrax not been a guest here, he surely would have killed the hideous creature by now. Its screeching tore at his ears.
“If I had it on me, it would be a good reason for them to let me see her. I would bring it to her as a cure,” Vedrax whispered, looking straight into Klaes’s eyes. “What do you actually want to know from her?”
“We need to verify whether Master Talantius is near Xalgon. He is the creator of the Elixir, and we need the Elixir—we need a lot of it and as soon as possible. The Chapter needs the Elixir, too. As I understand it, the University does not share it with you. That woman is a messenger, a link to him. If that is true,” Klaes answered.
“In the Chapter, they are trying to cure the woman, though so far unsuccessfully. She is not a prisoner, but a patient. She is delirious about all sorts of things: about seeing the sun rise in the west, about Lady Nazqawn, and about that Talantius of yours,” Vedrax said.
“Lo! I hear the name of our lady. Lady Nazqawn chose us both for honor and service. This is the way to fulfill honor. Take that amulet to her. Klaes cannot give you the rest of the Elixir. It is very precious to us,” Loverd joined the conversation.
Vedrax shifted uncomfortably: “My relationship with Lady Nazqawn is my own affair, as is how I fulfill my obligations to her. I offer you this option: give me a sample of the Elixir, and I will try to contact her in person and give her that amulet. The coaster, as you call it.”
Klaes pulled out the vial and held it up to the light. It was about three-quarters full: “Approximately seven doses. This is all we have left. We risked our lives, and some of our friends even lost theirs, to bring a far greater quantity than this to Xalgon. We handed ourselves over to the University, and now here we are begging and haggling because the powerful aren’t willing to share fairly! In the name of science! What would you want to do with that sample!?”
“I experienced its effects on myself. It was—an unveiling. I have hope that it could cure that woman—after all, the illness is in her eyes—and then no quarantine would be needed anymore. She could then go freely wherever she wished,” Vedrax replied, and it sounded convincing.
“So you are asking us for one dose of the Elixir as a cure for her?” Klaes clarified.
“Yes, precisely,” Vedrax confirmed. Shard raised a commotion again and even started swooping down at them, but Loverd drove him off. He threatened to catch him, lock him in the cage, and throw a carpet over it if he didn’t keep quiet. “Do you want to set the guards on us?”
Klaes fished a suitable small vial out of his coat pockets and poured off exactly one dose. Then he corked both vials and handed the small one to Vedrax. “I wish you much luck with it. Our fate is in your hands,” he whispered.
Vedrax tucked both the vial and the coaster into the inner pocket of his black garment and bade farewell with a slight bow.
No sooner had the door closed behind him than Shard spoke up again. “Me now, me now! Now it’s my turn!” He squirmed and practically did somersaults mid-air.
Loverd said: “My condition is that he goes into the cage.”
“You’re locking me in there? Ouch! Nooo!”
“Oh yes. Only for the duration of the experiment,” Klaes said, opening the cage door and gesturing Shard inside. He climbed in very reluctantly. Klaes secured the lock and prepared roughly a third of a dose, the smallest amount he could separate with handy utensils. He considered that given the raven’s weight, the dose could be even smaller. He reached his hand with the pipette between the wires of the cage, but before he could bring it to the raven’s eye, the creature snapped at it with its beak and slurped down the contents of the pipette like a quail egg. Klaes jerked back. “What in the…!?”
Everyone simultaneously felt a tingling beneath their skin. The walls seemed to ripple, and as if below a surface, thousands of wings flickered. The raven began to expand inside the cage, growing until it filled the entire thing. The wires started to bend. The raven thrust its wings through the openings, then its head and tail, and finally its legs. It let out wheezing sounds. It moved unsteadily about the room with the cage fitted over its body like armor. It was now larger than Fox.
“No! No! I didn’t want this!” it shrieked desperately. It began spinning on its axis, quite obviously against its will. It spun faster and faster until suddenly it vanished. From that spot poured out tokens for the Amusement Park, as though someone had slashed open an invisible purse. The walls stopped rippling. Right at the start of the experiment, Fox had fled into the adjoining room with her tail tucked between her hind legs, as it reminded her of her worst nightmares, but Klaes and Loverd watched the whole spectacle in mute wonder.
“Perhaps we misjudged the dosage,” Loverd dryly remarked.
“It is not to be administered orally,” Klaes added to the observation and nudged the tokens lying on the floor with the toe of his boot. He went to get Fox.
“It’s alright now. It’s all over!” he soothed her.
“No! This is only the beginning!” she snapped nervously.
“If you wanted to get into the Amusement Park, then it certainly is the beginning,” Loverd laughed and pointed at the pile of tokens.
“No, I don’t want to go to the Amusement Park. Thank you, I don’t. I can dream without having to get high,” Fox hissed, taking a wide berth around the pile of glistening tokens.
While Loverd set candlesticks with aurán light around the spot where Shard had vanished and where the tokens had appeared, Klaes paced back and forth, thinking aloud: “How are Shard, the Elixir, and the Amusement Park connected?”
“There’s still something here! Something like a rift! The place is soft or ajar,” Loverd exclaimed, pointing into the air above the pile of tokens.
“Ha! The trail is still warm,” Fox noted ironically. She grabbed one coin in her mouth and tried to spit it into the rift. But nothing happened at all; it fell back onto the pile with the others. She shook her head. “Watch out so you don’t fall in there,” she remarked sarcastically. Even so, various unfamiliar scents struck her snout: perfumes, coatings, oils, chemicals, human and non-human urine, and other unidentifiable odors. A rawness wafted from there. She shuddered and settled on the sofa as far from that spot as possible.
“We’ll be careful, don’t worry,” Klaes reassured her and put on his spectacles. He saw ugly torn strands of spacetime; rifts led in various directions: to the Horologium, to the Amusement Park, and to other places in the city whose significance he had no clue about. As he bent over that spot, he had the feeling at one moment that familiar laughter came from the pile of tokens. He jumped back. Loverd heard it too.
“I would recommend that we go to sleep fully clothed and with a pouch of those coins in our pocket. I wouldn’t be surprised if we woke up there. Not for nothing is it called spatiotemporal magic.”
No one said anything to that. Nevertheless, at dawn Klaes took his favorite book about the Amusement Park to bed with him and read. The House of the Moon is connected with the dreaming of colorless green ideas. Dreams here are reality and reality a dream. The House of Endless Gaze is based on reflections; a person can run into themselves in many strange caricatures. The House of Hollow Children is dedicated to puppets with human faces. Loverd stuffed several tokens into his pockets. Finally, they drew the heavy window curtains, closed the door, and went to sleep. Confused dreams came to them that no one remembered, not even Fox. Except for one thing: something kept trying to lead her to the Amusement Park. I don’t want to go to the Amusement Park. I’m afraid of losing control. I perceive that divination is also a loss of control, but somehow I know I’m safe, I’m home. But the Amusement Park? That’s simply too much for me. I just want to fall asleep and dream, go home, and meet that woman there, she thought upon waking.
In the hours before dawn, when the virtuous of Xalgon kneel before the dark icons of those whose blood fed the heart of the city, Knight Vedrax requested an audience with his superior. Vemirith Zar-Kaorth, Last Singer of the Nameless Litany, Who Walks upon the Ash of Lost Kings, sinister or lieutenant of the order of Xalgonian Knights—pale, tall, and clad in full armor—nodded in greeting, and Vedrax bowed to him.
“May thy heart guard the beauty of ruin. What dost thou request, umbrifer?” Vemirith addressed Vedrax by his title as squad commander.
“I apologize, sir, for disturbing you. But I have a matter here. Surely you have heard of those adventurers who brought the Elixir to the city to aid us in battle,” Vedrax said humbly.
“Who hasn’t heard? Yet how is it to help us in battle when the University keeps it for itself? Heroes are the pawns of the University,” the pale man countered. Had he not been encased in armor, he would have shrugged.
“I managed to obtain a sample of the Elixir,” Vedrax said.
His superior let out a surprised sigh, but waited to hear Vedrax’s explanation.
“I believe it could cure that woman in quarantine.”
“All our options have failed. We can try it,” the man said impassively.
“I would like to personally attempt to apply the remedy,” Vedrax suggested.
“I approve thy proposal. Thou shalt do so under the supervision of chaplain sir Chiraqar Xaeltýr Velkia.”
With that, the matter was settled. Itraniel Vedrax was astonished that it all went without questions or conditions. Perhaps he had caught his superior in an exceptionally favorable, darkly contemplative mood. Under strict measures involving mantras and amulets, accompanied by a healer and an untypically un-depressive chaplain, they arrived at the entrance to the quarantine cells. They stepped inside.
The woman had transformed greatly. Instead of eyes, she had something resembling snail shells. Her body was covered in blisters from which white feathers sprouted. She lay curled up against the wall.
“Under no circumstances must thou touch her,” the healer said. Vedrax nodded. He carefully stepped up to the woman and dripped one drop into each of her eyes. The woman cried out weakly. The shells she had in her eyes thrust out violently. The feathers sprouting on her body grew. The woman writhed and screamed. Vedrax backed away, but before doing so, he placed the coaster with the symbol of three foxes beside her. The walls around him rippled, and beneath them, as if below a water surface, wings fluttered. Ravens forced their way inside through the walls and hurled themselves at the woman. Vedrax drew his sword and killed two birds, but more and more kept arriving. They no longer attacked only the woman, but lunged at him as well.
