The Reaper comes for me. He pulls at the webbing surrounding me, and holds out a hand for me to take.
"I don't belong here."
"I know," he tells me. He tells me I have to take it up with the one who pulled me.
Peter the Troubadour.
I tell him again that I don't belong here, but he doesn't seem to care. I have to talk to Peter the Troubadour, and that's all he can say. I take his hand and he pulls me into his boat. There are four others. I don't get a good look at them right away, because Kaiden, definitely female, and bearing a bullet hole through her head, squeals my name.
She sits next to me on the boat, and we hug for a moment. However, I feel flat, numbed and, if you'll pardon the pun, dead. Most unlike my normal self.
The Reaper introduces himself as Daniel, and invites us to ask questions, as we won't get a chance once we land.
I begin to gain back the fire I have always felt in life. A sidhe is in the boat with us, and she asks, all very prim and proper in her bloodstained dress, if this is the boat that will take her to Arcadia. Daniel and I answer at the same time: "No." She shoots me a dirty look. I can't help it. I'm in a bad fucking mood.
I ask Daniel, "Why the fuck am I here?"
(I vaguely notice one of the others in the boat is a young kid, maybe twelve, with scars all over every bit of skin we can see. Kaiden seems worried about me swearing in front of him, but I don't give a shit.)
He tells me the only thing he will tell me: I must seek out the one who tapped me.
The last one in the boat is a woman, about five years older than me, with smoke issuing from her mouth whenever she speaks, even though none of us need to breathe anymore. She seems very confused about everything.

We land in San Francisco, and I'm keeping my eyes peeled for Peter the Troubadour.
You will be mine, soon.
I watch the most amazing display by the haughty sidhe. See, the Wraith-lands are San Francisco, and we can see mortals walking down the street and everything. They're all ... incorporeal, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, she suddenly freaks out, picks up a rock and throws it into this one shop. The really strange part is that it affected the living world. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out what she was freaking out about. Then she stopped and sat there, staring off into space, shaking her head slightly every once in a while, acting truly crazy.
The rest of us from the boat had wandered out slightly, but we had all stopped to watch her. She walks over to us after her little display and starts talking down to all of us, almost as if she thought she were being friendly, but that doesn't last long. From behind us, this cowboy asks if we're all new. He introduces himself as Simon, and tells us he'll take us to get marked into our legions.
Then the crazy fae starts asking a bunch of questions about legions and wandering around as citizens, and I'm so tired of everything and impatient to find Peter and get back home that I can't help pushing the psycho sidhe a little, telling her if she doesn't get marked, she'll likely get forged into a sword or a door jam. Or a paperweight. Simon mentioned that one.
I, of course, ask where Peter is. Simon says, at the Bazaar, and he'll show me after we get marked.
So, we finally get to the building, and Simon gives us a bit of the money he got for bringing us in, and we stand in line to get marked. Kaiden and the haughty fae get put into the Grim legion, the smoker woman the Gaunt legion, and the little scarred-up kid the Penitent legion.
Then the woman looks at me, and doesn't name a legion, but says, oh, I see, and puts a mark on my shoulder, a triangle with some dots and other markings.
The sidhe gets in my business, trying to make the woman tell her what my Legion is, and the woman just shoos her away.
I admit, I am much less annoyed at not knowing my own legion (I doubt it's the I-don't-fucking-belong-here legion) because the nosy sidhe doesn't know it either.
Anyway, I walk off to find Simon, to find the Bazaar. He gives me directions, and I get the hell out of there.
Peter the Troubadour's sitting there under a tree, playing his Spanish guitar with one normal arm and one skeletal arm, and he looks up at me.
I'm still in a pissy mood, I think, so I tell him, "I don't fucking belong here, what the hell am I doing here, send me back!"
He tells me he can't, we talk for a while, and it finally registers that I have to do whatever it is he pulled me for. He promises that after that I can go to the Summerlands. He says something about the King of Tears, which rings the slightest of bells for me, but I can't figure out why, until he tells me my great-grandparents fought him.
I tell him I so tired of all of this shit, I just want to go home, I just want to rest. He tells me I have to find someone, someone in charge of another kingdom, someone I will know when I find him -- her, he corrects himself, and says something about "his predecessor". He tells me I must go to her kingdom, go beyond the grey and into the orange and bronze.
He also tells me that I can do it the long way or the short way, that the long way will grant us wisdom and make it more likely that I get to my afterlife, after he had told me that both ways will get rid of the King of Tears, and after I get rid of the King of Tears, I can move on and go home. What the fuck?
I give him the dirtiest look I can muster and say, "More cryptic bullshit," and turn to walk away.
The smoker woman -- died of lung cancer, maybe? -- is also in the park/Bazaar, watching this display put on by wraiths. It's kind of like a play, and it's in color, somehow. I walk up to her and ask her name. Castrina. Interesting name. Whatever.
I point out Peter to her, and tell her what he told me: that the five of us in the boat are all needed for this quest-thing, and we have to do it. She starts to dissemble, saying she has things she wants to take care of here, and I start to grab her arm and pull her with me to find the others.
I turn and see Blaize standing in front of me, nude woman with flaming hair floating in the air, surrounded by flames, with the wings spreading out behind her.
She says, "Sunburst, I am still with you, I can't stay long in this form, but I wanted to tell you that I am still with you. I can still give you some of your Mage powers. You don't have to listen to what he says, you don't have to do what he wants. There's a way to get out of here that involves figuring out what ties you to this world, and resolving it. I can help you with that. I can't stay long, it costs me too much. But I will still be with you, in your dreams, and speaking in your head, like I always have."
Then she disappears, and I fall to the ground. Kaiden and that kid are there, but not the sidhe. They had all seen Blaize, of that I was sure. It was in their faces.
I turn to Kaiden, and ask if she can talk to her Avatar still, and she tells me what I already know, that our Avatars are cut off from us when we die.
But she was there.
And others could see her, which had never happened before. Everything about this place is twisted, turned about.
I leave, with the others, to find the fae, with my head still spinning from everything that had just happened.

Oh, and by the way, before I go on, can I just say that that little boy is creepy as fuck? Kaiden tries to protect him from my "foul language", but honestly, I think his tongue's worse than mine. He talked about cutting mine out, sewing my mouth shut.

We find the haughty fae, and she comes with us very reluctantly. She seems to think that I'm orchestrating this, that I purposely chose the others to piss them off, all for my own enjoyment. I don't fucking think so.
While she's going on about shit like that, I talk to a passing regiment of militia, and ask for directions to the orange and bronze. Five blocks. Oh, well.
So I tell them all we're going, and we go.
There's this odd barrier, like charged air, or something, and beyond that ... is desert, pyramids, sun shining down on the world, and it's all shades of orange and bronze. Color.
I walk up to the barrier, and stick my hand through it. My hand looks normal, living, and colored. I just sit there staring at my hand for a while before stepping through. I am – we all are – colored, if a bit more orange and bronze than we would be normally, but that doesn't bother me at all. This is what I expected out of my Afterlife. Well, after I got used to the phoenix.
We walk around a bit, then find some men working on something, dressed like slaves, which is to say, nude. I ask where we can find the woman in charge, and one says, or sings, rather, that "Ahura is in the pyramid, Aidan of the Will."
Aidan of the Will, huh? That one's new.
So, I lead the others to the Pyramid of Ahura.
The guards ask: "Who comes to see Ahoura?"
I reply: "Aidan, of the Will, apparently." (No, my bad mood's not gone.)
Inside, there are spiderwebs everywhere. Kaiden cringes, and I might have too, but I am distracted by odd flashes of light in the webbing. As I'm looking around, I suddenly catch one of the lights, and it expands, or I am taken into it, and suddenly I am watching Kassandra give birth to a girl-child that shines in Mage-fashion.
The light contracts, and I look at Kaiden, expecting to see a smile on her face, or something. "Did you see it?"
She shook her head. "See what?"
"I watched Kassandra giving birth! She is, or will be, or did."
The fae and the little kid both act like I'm crazy. I look up, and another light catches my eyes, and again, it expands – I'm pretty sure it's expanding, not that I'm being drawn into it – and I see a soldier in the trenches, a newspaper dated 1918 at his feet, and he looks up in my direction, and meets my eyes – and then the light contracts, and I'm back in the vision-giving temple.
I start to tell Kaiden about it, and it suddenly occurs to me that there was something odd about that soldier, or the vision, or something, and as I'm thinking about it, I can see the vision again. No, I'm there again. That's odd, I wasn't looking at the light. But I'm back in the trenches with the soldier and the newspaper, and as his eyes lock with mine, I realize that his name tag says Constantine.
I come back to the pyramid, and tell Kaiden about the vision. I then continue walking, keeping my eyes firmly ahead of me and a little down, so as not to waste any more time seeing past present future in the spiderwebs.
We walk into an empty chamber, and suddenly, tons of little spiders come down from the ceiling to the center of the floor, and gather together and coalesce into a woman. Ahura.
She greets us: Aidan of the Will, Kaiden of the Will, Countess of the Fae, Castrina of the Sword, Roy of the Mad.
Castrina of the Sword? Huh? Roy of the Mad, though, that makes sense. And, great, I've got a certifiably crazy child and a bitchy fae countess (she was acting rather bitchy ... perhaps in response to my grumpiness at being stuck here, but still ... ), and they are required for this quest I have to go on.
Anyway, Ahura says, "We have met before."
I tell her, "I don't remember."
She starts talking about the last time I was in the Wraith-lands, on the boat, and I look at her, sort of fascinated, and I say, "Spider-man. Only I don't remember his name."
She says, "We are all Ahura or Ahuru."
Ah. And if she hadn't started going into the whole King of Tears bullshit, making it sound like this huge mysterious cryptic thing, I might have been more interested, but she just starts talking the way Peter had, and I get pissed off again/more, and I let her know, I don't actually care about any of this shit, I just want to go home, so tell me what I need to do and save the cryptic bullshit.
"Impertinence," she says. And I just don't give a shit.
She mentions the door behind her, and how it's the door to wisdom ... the long way. She keeps going on, and I get impatient, and make smartass remarks, and she calls me impertinent again, and she loses her temper, too, and screams at me stuff about honoring the memories of those who came before to try to stop the King of Tears. Then she said something about how "we must go through the door to wisdom, come back when you are ready. Go!"
I am confused as fuck. Were we to go through the door or not?

As we walk out of the temple, I check out another light. I see a woman in a castle, all mediavaly, reading a book. I'm betting good money she's a Mage when a man walks into the room and asks, "How go your studies, my wife?"
She produces a flame in her hands, and he congratulates her, and takes the flame from her. Oh, how I long for that again.
I come out of it, and see the fae talking to Kaiden, so I go over there to find out what's up. Kaiden said the fae was asking about me, and that she was nice. Nice!
Then I listen to the fae asking the other guards about the King of Tears. She seemed to want to know what he was like, like she was considering helping him out, or something.

I tell the others not to disappear, so I can find them again, and I go to the Bazaar to find Peter. As soon as I walk in, I see Darcy. I stop dead. Darcy.
He looks up, and sees me. "Aidan?" he says.
Oh, Darcy!
I run up to him, and hug him. He's real, he's solid, and his voice tells me he's not the Angel anymore.
I ask, "How did you get here, what happened, why are you here?" And I'm thinking, wondering, If Darcy was going to be pulled out of his afterlife, too, why wasn't he in the boat with us? He obviously had to be pulled for the same reason I was, it makes no sense, otherwise. Why not the same time?
He told me Peter the Troubadour pulled him, confirming my suspicions, and that he was here looking for Peter, but couldn't find him.
He and I leave the Bazaar; he wants to show me this little place he'd found where no one goes, where we could live. "This is our second chance," he said. "Let's just forget everything else and live. Together."
I am so happy to have Darcy back, my real loving Darcy, and not that hideous creature I could only bear to see once that I follow him into this decaying sad little warehouse, and sit with him for a few moments, unable to even say much. I keep touching him and holding him, just to reassure myself that he's real.
Eventually, though, some of the things he's saying starts to filter through, and not all of it sounds like Darcy. He's telling me to give up whatever I'm doing, whatever quest I'm on, and we can live out our lives, we've been given a second chance.
I say, "I don't want to live here forever, Darcy."
He says, "Just forget whatever quest you're on here, Aidan. Don't make me second-best again."
I say, "What? What does that mean?"
Then I finally ask the question that has been slowly bubbling up inside me ever since I first saw him, ever since I ran into the sick room in the Horizon Realm and saw the sheet pulled over his head. "Why did you leave me?"
"I left – "
"Why did you leave?"
I can't even remember what he said, because it was bullshit. Something about being made second-best. It's still not my Darcy. I curl into a ball and started crying.
When I look up, Darcy's not there.
I get up and go to the Bazaar and find Peter where he's always been: under the tree, playing his guitar with his one whole arm and his one skeletal arm.
I walk right up to him, and demand to know where Darcy is.
He looks confused or troubled, and pulls a wispy bit of what looks like webbing from me, and then tells me, "Darcy's safe."
"He was here."
He says, "I don't know what you saw or who you thought you saw, but Darcy's still living."
I say, "Funny thing for a dead person to be doing."
We talk a bit about Ahura. He tells me I have to go through that door, and that I probably upset her, but nothing about how to undo the upsetting so we actually can go through the door.
Anyway, after not very long, I decide to make sure about Darcy. I turn around and head to the hospital where Darcy's Angel spirit had been last time I saw him.

As I approach the hospital, a great golden glow blinds me. It's coming from the hospital. Whatever. I keep going. I go up the stairs to the door, and – am blocked from entering. What?!
Someone speaks up behind me, in this really fucked up/annoying accent accent: "You can't go in there."
"Why the fuck not?"
"There's a Sanctified Presence in there."
Darcy. "Yeah. I'm trying to see the Sanctified Presence!"
"You can't go in there."
After a bit of this nonsense, I thank him, even though he's done absolutely nothing for me, and he goes away. I call out to God a couple times, but he doesn't appear to rectify the situation. So I stand outside the doors for a bit, trying to figure out what to do.
I hear the marching of a regiment behind me, and I turn. This man in an older-looking uniform tells me I can't go in there with a British accent.
Yeah, no shit.
He goes into a lot more detail than the first guy, telling me why I can't go in there: there's a Sanctified Presence, it's a Catholic hospital, therefore it's holy ground, and since I'm not in Heaven, I can't enter.
He says when the Sanctified Presence leaves (and he apparently does leave, which boggles my mind, since it's not like he has to eat or sleep or anything), I'll be able to go in. Which doesn't mean shit to me, since I want to talk to the Sanctified Presence, not go in the hospital. But the dude – his name's Henry – seems to think that talking to him shouldn't be a big deal, as long as he's not in some Catholic building. (and he sits there describing the Sanctified Presence to me, all golden or silver glowy, and I'm just like, "don't worry, I know what he looks like. I am intimately familiar with what he looks like.")
He tells me my marking isn't complete, that I should go to my Legion Hall, and he tells me I am part of the Legion of Fate. (He also tells me some really weird bullshit about how it's "Heirarchy" rules that we can't enter the hospital, and since I'm the Legion of Fate which isn't really part of the Hierarchy, I am allowed to enter the hospital, even though I can't physically enter. "So, I'm allowed in but I can't physically?" He concurs. I say, "That's not very comforting." He says, "It's not supposed to be.")
Anyway, his regiment escorts me to my Legionhall, which is this great museum. A woman named Clotho greets me with: "You are Aidan." Pause. "You are not supposed to be here." (Then she names herself, and I say, "You are supposed to be here?") Black robes are covering everything but her mouth. She tells me I have powers, calls them Arcanoi: Fatalism, which is apparently a big one for the Legion of Fate, and involves reading fates and futures and pasts; Embody, which means I can interact with the Skinlands, as Clotho calls the land of the living; and Castigate, which is a really odd power. Apparently, all wraiths have something called the Shadow, which lives in wraiths' minds and tries to ... drag them into Oblivion, or something? Anyway, Castigation allows a wraith to weaken another wraith's Shadow, somehow. That must be what Simon the cowboy meant when he mentioned the Pardoners.
Anyway, she also tells me I'm in the military branch of the Legion (as opposed to the civilian branch), "for as long as you am with us." I say something about how I've got things to do, and she says, "Exactly."
She also tells me there is training offered by the Hall, training both in fighting and in Arcanoi, which interests me a bit. She asks if she can read me, and I allow it. I'm a bit interested. She tells me I will travel far and very far, far into the past, farther than I have ever traveled. So I gather I won't do all of this fighting the King of Tears right here in San Francisco.
Then she tells me my friend is looking for me, at the Bazaar. So I leave.
I go to the Bazaar, and Kaiden runs up to me, and tells me she was talking to Kassandra, and that Kyril is trapped in that nasty book made of Mage-skin locked in our special warded room, and how he's trying to get out. Also, that Kassandra talked to Hope, that weird vampire-not-a-vampire, and according to her, Kyril's soul is trapped by the King of Tears. We have plans to meet around eight in the evening tomorrow.
Everyone else is at the Bazaar, and Roy and Castrina start talking to us. Roy seems less ... creepy than he did earlier. We get to talking about Legionhalls, and Roy's been to his, apparently, but Castrina and Kaiden haven't been to theirs. The fae's around, but not in our conversation.
The four of us go to the Legionhall of Fate so they can tells us where Castrina and Kaiden's Legionhalls are, and this one dude greets us all by name, of course. He tells Roy, Castrina and Kaiden about their Arcanoi, and tells Castrina and Kaiden where to find their Halls. The fae comes up out of nowhere, and gets told her Arcanoi, and she starts asking about "someone", but is trying to be ambiguous while getting straight answers.
Anyway, eventually, we see Clotho again, who greets the Countess fae as Elyria. Clotho requests privacy for a reading for Elyria, and after a few minutes, calls us all back and talks to us for a few minutes.
We go to the Hall of the Grim Legion for Kaiden, who is asked her "real name". Huh. I didn't know Kaiden wasn't her real name. Then we head off to this children's cancer hospital for Castrina's Gaunt Legionhall.
We meet a little boy with leukemia, and there's this shadow covering him, and somehow I know he's close to death. Very close. And when I say meet, I mean it. He can see us and talk to us, somehow as if the Gauntlet is thinner around him. Maybe because he's a child, maybe because he's so close to death. Maybe both. He turns to go, running off down the hall, and wings spread out behind him in spirit fashion as he runs.
Kaiden and I both lament the loss of Life magick, and suddenly I remember, Darcy's a Healing Angel/Sanctified Presence! I turn to go find Darcy . . .

And I wake up, a few hours later, in the Chantry mansion. Weird as fuck. First, I didn't know I needed to sleep now that I'm dead, and secondly, what the hell am I doing here?
Whatever.
I go to the hospital again, and Darcy's not there. No glowy golden light. Well, shit. Because I have no idea where he might be. What do angels do when they're off-duty? (Off-duty angels?)
I'm sitting there, thinking about Darcy pretty hard, and suddenly, I'm in his apartment. The apartment he got when he left the Chantry. It's spotless, which is pretty creepy, considering what it looked like the last time I saw it.
I can hear the shower going. Shower? This is getting weirder and weirder. I sit down on his couch (not entirely sure until it supports me if I can sit on things, but I figure since I'm standing here, and his apartment's not on the first floor, that I should be able to), and wait.
The shower stops, and he comes out. He's got a towel around his waist, no wings, no golden glow. His hair is still wet. My heart aches. He doesn't even notice me.
Damn! He could see me when I was the phoenix! Why can't he see me now?
Fuck everything!
I remember what Clotho said about being able to interact with the Skinlands, reaching across the Gauntlet – what she called the Shroud.
I concentrate on appearing before him. I want him to know I'm here, to know I want to talk to him. He looks up, and looks right at me, and gets this really scared look on his face, and waves his arms a bit, mumbling something. Angel magick? Suddenly, I'm shot out of his apartment, through his window, landing on the grass, looking up at his window. I turn my head, and Blaize is sitting on a park bench.
She says: "We need to figure out what this hold Darcy has on you is. I know you, you're not like this. You don't like being held back, you don't like being tied to one person. What is it that ties you to Darcy? We need to figure this out so you are no longer held by him. Remember when you were together, you felt trapped, and turned to another to get you out of that. I know you've been looking at other men since getting here: Simon, Peter, and any of those Amenti. I don't mean this as a criticism, Sunburst," (I must have looked insulted, that's how I felt) "that's who you are. Any man you see, you can't help but wonder what he'd be like in bed. You need to be free to be who you are. Think about it. Darcy's holding you back."
And she vanished.
What the fuck, Blaize? I love him. I do. Yes, I still wonder about other men, but ... I don't feel the same pull I used to, compelling me to find out.
Henry walks up to me, blond hair, cleanshaven, still in that old-timey uniform. I'm trying to place it, but I don't really know that much about war uniforms. He's got a British accent, as I said, so it's safe to assume he fought for Britian. (What's he doing in San Francisco?) I don't recognize the symbol on his shoulder, though, and he doesn't have an obvious death-wound, so my guess is he didn't die in battle. Kaiden and Elyria's Legion, the Grim Legion, is the death by violence Legion. I'm getting that most people are sorted by manner of death. Except Fate, so far.
"You look troubled," he says.
No shit. "My ex-boyfriend-turned-Sanctified-Presence just expelled me from his house, and my Avatar who's not supposed to be here anymore is telling me to forget about him!"
He ends up telling me about Puppetry, which involves going into people's bodies. He likes to drink coffee this way. I guess you can feel what they feel and all that.
I think it's pretty odd, but ...
And I'm also feeling ill at ease. He hasn't really looked at me twice, let alone ... asked for my number, or whatever you do in the Shadowlands. But I still feel awkward, talking to him.
He asks how I died, if you don't mind me asking. He wonders why I wasn't in the Silent Legion, Legion of martyrs and suicides ... which of course reminds me of Darcy. But, he supposes Fate has a reason for me being where I am. They always do.
I ask how long he's been dead, and am embarrassed when he has to tell me he was in the Revolutionary War (Redcoats, obviously ... or, Greycoats, I guess.)
He tells me some of his stuff's in a museum nearby (is that why he's here?), would I like to see them? Still somewhat ill at ease, I ask, "Weren't you going to get coffee?"
He says, "Well, I've got the whole day off, I'm not in any rush."
So I agree. It seemed polite. This was my musket when I was alive, and you say, Oh, it's very nice, even though you personally think all guns look alike. That sort of thing.
Anyway, I like museums. It's okay.

Afterward, Henry goes off for coffee, and I head to the Chantry to find a Spirit Mage. The Medusa-head chats with me: "Everyone's in the Horizon Realm, I can't reach them there, Kassandra has moved out, and I don't now where she is, but I'll be sure to leave them a message that you're looking for them."
I go in for a bit, hoping the Horizon Guardian will be able to carry a message for me. I forget how limited it is. It holds a sword up to me, simply telling me I'm not allowed to enter over and over. I walk away. And hear a voice in my head, Aidan, Aidan.
It's creepy as fuck, and I leave. Suddenly I no longer feel safe in the Chantry. How is that for ridiculous? This was my home for years. I helped make the current Horizon Realm. I was part of the Council of Elders for a very brief time before I died. And now it's foreign and alien, scary and somehow life-threatening.

I go to the Bazaar.
At the Bazaar, Castrina asks us all to help her haunt her mom, who's trying to take custody of her son from her husband, and getting rid of all her stuff without asking her husband. I know what it's like to have a less-than-perfect mom, so I agree that since we can't do much else, a good haunting might make her think twice about trying to control Castrina's family.
We sit and plan it, and during the planning, we're almost like old friends, almost like my cabal. I don't even feel any animosity toward Elyria.
Then we head to Castrina's house, where her mom is putting all of her clothes in a garbage bag. No one else is home.
Kaiden mans the bedroom door, Elyria is stationed near the mom, Roy and Castrina and I are all supervising. Roy does the normal ghostly tricks: Cold drafts, lights flickering and dimming and going out, mist. Then Kaiden locks the door, just as the mom goes to leave the room. Elyria Puppets the mom, makes her fog up the mirror in the closet and write Leave Anthony and James alone in the fog. Then I speak across the Shroud: "You're not wanted here. Get out. Get out!"
She completely freaks out, and tries the door which is still locked. At this point, we look to Castrina: open the door for her so she can flee, or leave it locked?
Castrina doesn't seem to care either way, so we wait for a bit, and suddenly the mom grabs her chest, breathing funny, and Kaiden unlocks the door, saying something about not letting her have a heart attack.
She stumbles out of the room, and we're all mostly hanging out in the bedroom, feeling hopeful that she'll leave Castrina's family alone from now on.
Suddenly, we hear a tumbling sound, and huge crack, and we run out into the hall. Roy is standing at the top of the stairs, and Castrina's mom is at the bottom. We go down the stairs. The mom is still breathing, and her leg is bent funny. Suddenly, this grandfather clock topples over and falls on her. We can hear her heart beating very slowly, and she's being eclipsed by the same shadow that had fallen on that little boy. Castrina doesn't look too concerned.
As I'm staring at the body, everything darkens. I look up and look around. There's a wind from behind me. I look behind me and up, there's a sail. I look ahead, and see a dark city, grey and black, with tall spires. The man in the crow's nest calls out, Stygia ahead!
I'm suddenly back in the room, and then two things happen at once: out of the corner of my eye, I see Castrina fade a bit and come back solid; and the mom's heart stops beating. This is a very strange world. Kaiden is accusing Roy of pushing the mom. She says she saw it.
After not very long, some police show up. (How they knew, I'll never know.)

I leave for the Bazaar, to ask Peter if any of my cousins had come to the Bazaar.
When I get there, he's under the tree, strumming the guitar, as he always is. I ask, "Are you always here?"
He says, "I am where you are."
I say, "Someday you'll have to tell me how that works, but right now, I'm wondering about something else. I left a message for some living Mages to find me here, I'm wondering if they came by."
He says he hasn't seen them, but he also hasn't been at the Bazaar all day.
"Because you are where I am? Actually, why don't you tell me about that now?"
He tells me he has things to do, and so is not always at the Bazaar, but he knows when I am here, looking for him, and so he comes. (Fatalism?)
Anyway, some of the others show up at this point, and he greets them. I wander off for a bit, drawn by a colorful guy with a sign that says Sweets on it. The guy is Indian, and I cringe inside slightly when he greets me. Turns out he's selling Turkish Delights, and you can actually eat them. I decide to buy one, for one bit of the odd coin Simon gave all of us. (It breaks into eight pieces) I eat a piece. It's divine, first of all, and secondly, fortifies me in a way regular food (and candy especially) shouldn't. It reminds me a bit of the Quintessence fruit we grew in the Horizon Realm when we were alive.
Anyway, I eventually wander back over in Peter's general direction, and he asks me to walk a while. I shrug, and we walk off. There's something about his manner, still playing his guitar while walking, that puts me in mind of Darcy. (Which of course makes me like him a bit more than I did before, which of course makes me think of Blaize and pisses me off.)
He says, "There's a way for you to leave here as soon as you want. I brought you here because there's something only you can do."
I ask, "What, be sarcastic?"
He says, "Not quite. You are tied to someone."
I ask, thinking of Blaize, "A certain Sanctified Presence?"
He says, "Yes. You can go home, if you do this."
I ask, "What about Darcy?" I desperately want him back-to-normal-Darcy and with me.
Then he says, and his manner changes somewhat, and my skin crawls, "That's the thing. The Master, he wants Darcy dead. Kill him, and you can go home." Then Peter sort of steps back and fades into nothingness.
I go back to the main Bazaar, my mind still reeling from all of this, feeling utterly lost and confused. Suddenly, I look up and across the Skinlands park where the Bazaar is set up, I see Darcy, sitting on a park bench, reading. He looks normal, like a regular living person. I start walking toward him.
A couple wraiths go up to him and smack the book out of his hands. He looks around, startled, and I go up to the wraiths. "Leave him the fuck alone!"
"Who the fuck are you?"
"I'm his girlfriend."
They look at Darcy, then at me. "He's alive, you're dead. How does that work?"
"All relationships have problems, we're working on it."
One them then says to me, "You know, if you ever want someone on this side ... "
And I tell him to fuck off. He calls me a fucking bitch and starts to walk off.
And then Henry comes up behind us, and tells the thugs to keep a civil tongue while speaking to the lady. How quaint. I'm about to tell him I don't really care, and I've said worse, when Henry pulls out this crazy-ass black sword and talks about resisting arrest and an officer of the law and prison, or should he just kill them now?
It's kinda cool.
They run off, and Henry asks if I'm okay, then turns and leaves.
I sit down on the bench next to Darcy for a few minutes. He's reading my journal. It's the part where I'm ranting about him leaving the Chantry and why the fuck won't he give me a real answer, I'm so sick of being lied to, and he looks sad, and upset.
I whisper across the Shroud: "I love you, Darcy."
And he turns, and looks me in the eye, and says, "I killed myself because of you." Then he rots away. I jump, startled, and yell out.
Elyria the fucking bitch comes over, and asks, "Practicing for when you meet someone?"
I get up and slap the bitch. Or try to. She ducks away, and then, lowest of the lows, she calls out for help, and uses one of her Arcanoi, Keening, which does something with making people feel whatever emotion you want.
This huge guy comes over and tells me to leave her the fuck alone. Oh, bitch. I want to slap her again, but I have no doubt that guy would pound me into a lovely soul-forged tiara for little miss princess if I did. So I leave, with as much dignity as I can.
I head to the Chantry, more determined than ever to find a Spirit Mage. I've seen so many versions of Darcy in the past twenty-four hours, they can't all be real. A Spirit Mage with healthy doses of Prime and maybe Life would be able to find the real Darcy and help me communicate with him.
I get to the Chantry, and everything is all wrong. The door is busted open, the Medusa-head door-knocker is broken in two on the ground, the spirit gone. Inside there are signs of struggle. I run to the Horizon Realm entrance, and the guardian spirit is gone.
I hear the voice again, calling me. Aidan. Aidan.
I turn to get out of this fucking creepy place, to find Kaiden and then get Kassandra. As I get to the outer door, Kyril is standing in the doorway, looking weird and creepy and grey and white, instead of grey and black like a normal wraith.
He says, I'm going to kill you, Aidan.
I pull out one of my knives, but he's faster than me and swipes at me with thick, sharp fingernails before I can stab him. I duck out of the way, then stab him. He reaches for me again, his fingers dripping with this disgusting black stuff. I try to dodge out of the way, but he hits me in the chest, pulls out some of my – body, and this weird green stuff drips out of my flesh.
I try to stab him again, but he avoids my blade.
I realize I can walk through walls, and turn to run away. Blaize's voice sounds in my head: I can help you be faster, I can manipulate Time, if you want.
We don't have Time Magick!
I do.
Too thoroughly confused and freaked out to argue anymore, I agree to her help, and I run past Kyril through the wall out of the Chantry, just missing Kyril's black-drippy fingers. I have the nasty feeling this attack was going to be even worse.
I race back to the rest of San Francisco, and find Kaiden coming up to the Chantry. I tell her about Kyril, and she wants to go fight him, and I say, "No! We have to find Kassandra, find others to help us."
She persuades me to get my wound fixed (she got her bullethole removed, I notice), and we get Castrina to fix it for us, because Castrina can do that (it's called Moliate).
We suddenly get the brilliant idea to go to Richard's coffee shop because Kassandra will either be working there, or Richard will know where she lives. (Oh, my gods, why didn't I think of that before?)
Richard's in the front, and we can hear Kassandra's voice in the back. Kaiden runs into the back, and I speak across the Shroud: "Richard! Kassandra! Spirit Sight!"
Richard seems really pleased to see Kaiden, and they would start going on about "You're a girl!" and reminiscing, but I interrupt them, we steal Kassandra away, and she gets Rick, her werewolf mate.
We go to the Chantry, Kyril's no longer there, Kassandra checks with Time and tells me (us) that a bunch of (probably) Nephandi Mages came in, tore the place apart, ripped the Horizon Realm's tether out (now it's basically a Horizon bubble floating in the Umbra) with all my family in it, then opened the warded room, destroyed the wards and brought Kyril out.
I ask about Julia. Kassandra says she's fine, her mind is fine, it's taking time for her to be perfectly okay (but that makes sense), and she's got an apartment somewhere in the city. That makes me feel so much better. There was a load of tension I wasn't even aware of feeling that melted away. I guess I was really worried about all of that, since that's basically what I died doing, rescuing her. But she's okay.
We decide to go to Hope, and tell her about it all, and see if there's something she can do. On the way, I explain to Kassandra about Darcy, and how I've been looking for someone to help me talk to him. She agrees to do so after we talk to Hope.
We get to Hope's shop, and there are police everywhere. Kassandra steps into the Spirit World, and we all go in the shop. There are bodies of her werewolf bodyguards all over, and in one room is this huge pile of dust, which I gather from Kassandra is what happens when a vampire dies. She does Time again, and it's those same Mages, in black and purple robes.
Kaiden nudges us and points to this one police officer, who's directing the clean-up of the room, telling the others that CSI will clean up the big pile of dust, and tells us there was something funny about him, that she's seen him before, and he can see wraiths. And sure enough, he is sort of eyeing us. When the other officers are out of the room, he looks at Kassandra and tells her to clean it up.
The two of them talk a bit, him asking questions about Did we know her and Did we see what happened, and Kassandra asking him things like Who are you and What are you. He tells her his name's Sully McPherson, but to any kind of What are you question, he replies, we don't like to talk about that.
He also says to Kassandra, "Congratulations," which reminds me I had my own congratulations to give. I also let her know her daughter is shiny.
Finally, we leave, and we decide to head to Darcy's.

back to the Prelude