“Where do you need to go, Branwyn?” asked AT.
“I need to follow the pattern of the town and interact with parts.” She glanced at the ground, which seemed awfully far away given that the horse’s feet were on it. “I can touch them from here, I think…” She focused on the Geometry again, pushed herself into the vision, and reached out for the line underneath her. To her surprise, it was easier to reach than when she was touching the earth. It was something about the horse, she thought. It had as many nodes as a human, each filled with something she couldn’t parse, and arranged differently.
Well. That was an interesting bit of trivia to share next time she needed something from a wizard. She filed it away and returned to focusing on the pattern of the town. When she spotted the nearest swelling self-knot, she waved. “That way.”
Once she was close enough, she reached down and stroked the line. The knot was hard, like an inflamed cyst. It resisted being smoothed out; it was far denser than she had expected. She looked closer and recoiled so hard she almost fell off the horse. “Oh my god.”
The knot was a person, or at least the pattern of a person. Another ghost, she realized, bound very small and tied into the nightmare. And there were hundreds throughout Tucker.
The horse backed up and sidestepped beneath her, and then AT caught her elbow. “I don’t want to say what? because I can probably guess, but don’t fall off, Branwyn.”
“No,” Branwyn managed. She leaned forward, wrapping her arms around the horse’s neck. It was probably rude, but she needed the support. Then she watched as the knot pulsed again. She’d thought she could just smooth them out—they’d knot back up again as time passed, but that would take time, time they could spend finding another solution. But she couldn’t smooth out a soul in torment.
She’d said she’d do this, though. She’d promised a client, without even making sure it was possible. Once again, she’d set herself up to fail, and this time, what would fail with her?
Severin. Severin would, at the very least. Severin, who should have heard those thoughts and laughed at her, pushed her, teased her, distracted her. Inflamed her. She hated him, yet she wished he was there now, pushing her past her limits instead of slumped like a broken toy on the ground.
From somewhere, she thought she heard her great-grandmother clearing her throat. Her great-grandmother: who had died when she was a teen, who had been sweet and dreamy and unstoppably fierce in her own way. She’d raised Branwyn’s feminist grandmother alone, and the two of them had raised Branwyn’s mother, and all three of them had raised Branwyn. Suddenly she was furious at herself.
Rhianna and Brynn were here. Her little sisters believed in her.
Hah, she said to herself. Look what he’s done to me. I don’t need some sadistic bastard to get stuff done. I can go past what’s sane all on my own. Right, Mom, Grandma?
The last time she’d been this frustrated, she’d grabbed a Machine Sword by the blade and used the forge of her soul to invert it. She’d fought a battle for her name, and tiny fragments of the sword had leached into the wound. She suspected they were still in her now.
And what had she learned from that? Before that experience, she’d only ever used fragments of the celestial Machines to make things more. But when she’d first learned of Machines, she’d been told they ordered the structure of the universe and devoured celestials that got too close. And she’d used a bespoke Machine shard to repair Penny’s soul once.
Somehow, they could bring power to inanimate objects, but they also ate angels. They could inject energy into a system, and they could take it away.
Some things couldn’t be solved with a gentle touch. She knew that.
She slid off the horse’s back and took her hammer in the hand Belial had marked. Then she focused on the knot and brought down the hammer.
It wasn’t a violent blow, but it shivered through the twisted soul. The nameless Machine fragment in her hammer couldn’t actually damage a mortal soul, but she didn’t want it to. All she wanted to do was temporarily remove energy from the system. So she used the hammer to unlock the soul while she reached out with her other hand and squeezed.
The swelling knot diminished, the energy that inflamed it flowing into the black diamond on the hammer. The transfer happened quickly, and when it completed, the knot was only a lump, and the black diamond was warm and dizzy in her mind.
Branwyn rubbed the stone. A moment’s evaluation told her much more than she needed to know. She picked out the important details: the energy of the corrupted node would only remain a brief time, and the black diamond could not possibly hold all the energy she had to extract from the nightmare system.
“I need something,” she rasped. “Quickly. A battery. I need a battery that can hold souls. And I’m going to have to walk so I can swing the hammer..”
“Oh hell,” said Yejun.
“Um,” said AT. “Yeah. Yejun, stay with her and I’ll go get Brynn.”
Brynn.
Branwyn remembered, on that troubling Halloween when the Wild Hunt had been reborn, that Brynn had been covered in tattoos, tiny dark marks like writing that had unfolded into souls when the time had come.
Branwyn bit her lip hard, then shook her head and walked to the next knot. Some things couldn’t be solved by a gentle touch. She still knew that. She knew that. No gentle salvation for lost souls, no shelter for her own feelings by keeping Brynn from what she’d been remade to do.
She went through four knots before AT returned with Brynn. The black diamond on the hammer was sparking fitfully as it tried to make room for a fifth charge. Rhianna came with them, her hands behind her back like she was out for a stroll.
Brynn eyed the sparking hammer. “AT said you needed me to hold some souls.”
Branwyn ground her teeth. “I need something. I don’t know how to load them into you though.”
“I’ve been watching you,” said Yejun. “I think I can do it. I’m not actually sure anybody else could.”
“Great. How do I get them to you?”
Yejun grinned at her. He was disturbingly cute in a far-too-young-for-her way. “You don’t have to. You just squeeze those babies and I’ll catch what’s released. AT, you and the dogs have to help me.”
No gentle touch. No time to argue, or even be skeptical. Branwyn said, “Fine. Keep up,” and ran to the next node.
And Yejun’s plan seemed to basically work. He had to adjust parts, and when he did, AT’s dogs chased down bright energy streamers like they were Frisbees. Over and over, Branwyn swung her hammer and squeezed knots. Dark marks shimmered onto Brynn’s skin, while Brynn looked more bored than troubled by the proceedings. At one point Branwyn thought she saw Brynn glancing at a phone. Later she looked again and there was no sign of it.
That was the point at which Rhianna tripped Branwyn as she dashed to the next node, then tried to catch her as she fell. Branwyn tumbled down anyhow, pulling her sister down with her and bruising her shoulder on the shaft of her hammer.
Stunned, Branwyn lay still as Rhianna sprang to her feet. “Sorry about that. I felt like I should tell you this isn’t going to work.”
She glanced around, seemed to realize everybody was semi-stunned, and kept going anyhow. “Look, it comes down to math, doesn’t it? I’ve been timing you, and I know how many people died here, and Angel back there, or, uh, Not-Umbriel as I keep reminding myself, uh, anyhow, that guy said we’d have at least until dawn to sort this out, which means ‘at most until dawn’ for this plan. I mean, we all heard him. But Branwyn doesn’t hear anything when she’s focused. Which is why I had to trip her. And you guys didn’t tell her. Even though I bet you can do math, too.”
Branwyn frowned. Her first thought, that Rhianna was unusually nervous, was quickly superseded by the news of the deadline nobody had told her about. She sat up, around the same time the stunned kids started moving again. But all they did was glance at each other in some silent communion and listen to Rhianna.
“So anyhow, you just don’t have the time. Too long per stop, too many stops. Too much running.” She paused significantly. “Way too much running. Because way before dawn, Branwyn would die of exhaustion. Interval training isn’t meant to be done for hours on end, guys, especially not 3x interval training targeting aerobic, anaerobic, and Geometric systems!”
She stopped and dragged in another breath. “Right! Right, so anyhow I thought I should stop you and ask a question. It might be important, and if it’s not, we’re not losing much, are we? Mathemagics. So. Um.” Her eyes were very bright as she looked around. “Why are you running to the souls rather than making the souls come to you?”
Branwyn frowned, trying to parse the question, but once again, the three younger members of the Wild Hunt exchanged looks.
“We’re the Hunt,” said AT.
“We do have to hunt them down,” agreed Brynn apologetically.
“The Horn doesn’t have any real range, ma’am.” That was Yejun, politely charming and so wrongly attractive. Branwyn rubbed her face and tried to climb to her feet. It took a few tries.
“Why would it need to? You were going to tear down this whole hellscape down from the south edge. Do whatever you were going to do, and just stop before you swallow. Er, or substitute the right metaphor there.”
“It’s not that easy!” AT looked annoyed. “It’d only work… on…”
Yejun picked up where she’d trailed off. “But we’d need help. Something to slow it down suddenly…”
“A plug for the horn.” Brynn’s eyes widened, and she jumped up and down. “A mute. Like what Tia did in our first episode!”
Branwyn blinked again and shook her head. She simply couldn't follow what they were talking about. The night sparkled and sang around her, and in the distance she thought she saw a line of ghostly dancers. She said, “Are things are getting weird?”
Rhianna rubbed her arms and watch the Wild Hunt jabber at each other. “Yeah, I kind of noticed that too. There was a lady in a princess hat earlier…”
Suddenly all three Huntsfolk turned and ran back to the rose house, waving and screaming in excitement, the dogs chasing them. Branwyn and Rhianna stared after, until Rhianna said, “Uh. Do you think they liked my idea?”
A moment later, Brynn came running back, still waving her arms and screaming. She skidded to a halt in front of Branwyn, her hands clasped for a boost. “Come on, come on,” she panted. “Get up, let’s get back there.” Somehow Branwyn found herself half on a moving horse that seemed to fly back to the edge of town.
When she fell off the horse at the rose bower, there was a four-way argument going just outside the perimeter. As Brynn pounded up and dived into it, Branwyn realized it wasn’t an argument, it was a collaboration. Only AT stood apart. She smiled as she helped Branwyn to her feet. “You’re so bruised already, Branwyn. I wanted to thank you for trying this, but I can’t thank you enough. Take it easy for a few minutes. We will make this work, somehow, and we’ll need you then, too.” She squeezed Branwyn’s hand and pointed her at the cot in the interior of the rose house.
Then she grabbed Rhianna’s hand with both of hers, bringing it to her chest. “And you! I will never be able to thank you. If we can do this… oh my God. We could really make some progress. Come explain it to the others, won’t you please?”
As Branwyn sank down onto the cot near Shatiel, AT pulled Rhianna into that massive, insane collaboration.
“What… what is going on?” Branwyn asked. She realized everybody else was over in that huddle. It was just her and Shatiel, and of course the living corpse of somebody she—of a monster.
“Several things. Good job, by the way. Out there. Figuring this out.”
Branwyn snorted. “I didn’t figure out a winning solution, so you might hold off on the praise.”
He smiled. “Didn’t you? Well, I’m not disappointed. When you ask what’s going on, what are you really asking?”
Branwyn gestured at the collaboration in progress. “Why are they suddenly so excited?”
He dropped his voice in a confiding way. “Well, my theory is that they’ve been puzzling over a way to non-destructively deal with corrupted souls and their haunts, and something your sister said gave them the missing piece of the puzzle.”
“Oh,” said Branwyn, slowly.
“I could tell that with you, they had hope. But it was such an unlikely idea and they’ve found so many other ways to fail.”
“Oh,” Branwyn said again, still watching the huddle.
“That’s just my theory, and honestly, it may draw too much on my own experiences.”
That finally pulled Branwyn’s gaze away from the cluster. She glanced up at him. He continued to occupy the same position he’d been in when she left: one hand out, clenched in a fist. But he smiled again. “When you ask what’s going on, what else are you asking?”
“Uh. How long do we have? I’ve got a whole list.”
“Good question,” Shatiel murmured, and that was all.
It made Branwyn smile though. He was peculiarly likable, even with his strange experiments that would never pass any reasonable ethics board. She studied him. “You’re somehow suppressing both the ghost and Severin, right?”
“I am,” he said, glancing at her. “It was all I could do to stop him. All I would do. We both have our limits.” He shook his head wryly. “Accelerating Imani’s growth clearly wasn’t his first choice, but when it was the only choice he had left, my choice was also made.”
“Why did he—” Branwyn cut herself off, pressing her lips together.
But Shatiel answered anyhow. “Oh, he couldn’t endure watching her destruction, not when he’d already failed her once. I hadn’t realized how much of his remaining ability to care he’d invested in her, or I would have been more careful about reintroducing them and reminding him of what he’d lost. Perhaps I ought to have left well enough alone? But I really don’t like my research partners destroyed unnecessarily.”
Branwyn listened to Shatiel’s musings, her gaze on Severin’s shuttered form. She realized what a different—and alien—perspective Shatiel had on his ‘little brother,’ and shook her head.
“So how long can you keep that suppression up?”
Shatiel inspected his fist. “As long as I have strength to do so. Unfortunately, both tasks are challenging, so I expect my strength will run out around dawn.”
“Thought so,” said Branwyn. She eyed the Wild Hunt. There they were, trying to build some kind of soul engine. But going faster wasn’t the only way to make the impossible possible. You could also change the deadline.
“You’d have more strength if you freed him, wouldn’t you? And he might be handy if you do run out of juice. As, you know, lunch for the angry ghost. He’d probably slow her down for at least a few minutes.”
“Would he? You know, I’m actually stronger with him. I’m actually not suppressing him so much as containing him. An idea of mine, another theory getting tested. It isn’t the, ah, executioner’s cut, but I think it may be like what you were doing to those souls out there. And while I hold his name, his unsundered energy has to go somewhere. It bounces around within me. It is… tiring in its way. But also strengthening, just as your hammer is now stronger.”
He glanced up at the ghost. “Probably not as strong as I think, though.”
“Um,” said Branwyn, alarmed.
He looked down at her again. “Ah, I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve scared you. I’m sorry. You’ll have a better warning than that when that moment comes.” His fist turned over. “For one thing, you’ll again have my little brother to deal with. Even if freeing him would strengthen me, Branwyn, I couldn’t do so. Bringing him back won’t bring back that last spark of preserving nature he lost. That will require something more than just telling him everything is now okay. I’ll deal with him presently, but… after the current crisis.”
Branwyn scowled. That sounded just as bad as she’d imagined it could be. “Who is sh
e? Why does he care so much?”
“Hmm. I could answer that, but I won’t. I’ve already betrayed him enough. Ask him yourself, once I’ve brought him back?”
“Hey!” shouted AT. “Branwyn! We need you!”
The Wild Hunt did things only they understood. In the end, most of them clustered around Jennifer and the Horn, all except for Yejun, who followed Branwyn like a shadow. The Hunt communicated in that creepy silent way they had, and then Jennifer blew the Horn. The sound was different, but the nightmare world still trembled.
“Yes, I do think it’s best my little brother is sleeping through this part,” murmured Shatiel.
The nightmare world trembled, and knots in the Geometry slid down the pattern toward the belling of the horn. Strange things happened, but that was when Branwyn had her own work to do, so she didn’t pay much attention.
For a long time, too long, so long, the knots along the pattern of the ghost town came to her, and she unlocked them with her hammer and pulled the energy out. Yejun took the energy from her and passed it back and somehow it ended up stored on Brynn rather than swallowed by the Horn. It was hard and exhausting, and even though it was much faster than Branwyn’s original approach, it still took hours.
But when no more knots approached, and the nightmare world was crumpled around them and blotting out half the Hunt, dawn was only the faintest glow on the horizon.
Branwyn collapsed onto the ground and waved at Jen. The woman had been playing all this time. That was definitely some inhuman stamina. Branwyn needed some of it.
That weird ripple of communication travelled through the Hunt, and Jen stopped playing, releasing the nightmare world to expand to its full size once again. There it was, just as it had been before, but now it was… simplified.
Cat collapsed into a heap just like Branwyn, and she gave him a prone thumbs up. He gave her a sleepy smile and closed his eyes. Everybody else sat down.
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