Everything is wrong here. The three of them should not be here, and should not be, as they are. Crowhame and the Dark Carnival declare the other to be wrong, and perhaps both of them are correct, but how terrible the argument, here for all to witness. Lucien, the Professor, they belong somewhere other than between the two. And whether or not they make it there? It ought not to depend on a gangly fox with no name. But here is Coleman, riding in Sasha - so big now! So grown-up! - the rain hissing off her hide, iron whining, low and curious. Here is Wolf, a bundle of unbreakable twigs, and here Wolf will be, even if she is gone a year and a day. All of them, huddled around an upturned cart; this is right, and maybe that will be enough.

You’ve never seen her smile like this, Coleman. She’s only ever had the two; smiles atop smiles, when she is too lost in her books to think, and smiles atop fear, when she thinks it’s the safest way for her face to be. But when you look at her now, she has found something new to build a smile upon. “Words, Coleman. All that I’ve ever had.” She pets Sasha, on the tippy top of her head, right in the space where a fox might like to scurry and cling to. “We’ll have some more passengers soon. I think, you should get ready to leave, Conductor.” Out she goes, from safety into the downpour. Stops. And looks back, square at your cabin, Coleman.

“Wormwood wasn’t your fault.”

And there’s a second chain. That’s not enough words to explain how she could say them with such certainty. So she’ll have to say more. She’ll have to come back.

She steps into the wavering boundary of Crowhame, and of all the books in all the pockets in all her cloak, she reaches for the one she’d never read before. Tempted to, on many an occasion. Peek ahead, at what she might find in the depths of the Heart. But if she did, would she ever make the journey herself? Would it be another fox who discovered a perfect, precious name? Or would she read some terrible prophecy, and live the rest of her days crushed by it? So it went.

She flips to the one spot that was safe to read. Or, rather, the one spot it was safe to flip to. The present. Her present. Still being written. Not quite ready to read. And what would she write? What could she write? Just about anything. The second reason she’d never opened it.

The right words still elude her. Which, wasn’t to say she had no words. Always too many to choose from. But as it was with Wolf, and as it was with Coleman, she opens the book of a book, and the words pour out of her...

Peace! Peace! The Jackdaw walks the woods!

Unlatch your doors! Uncover your treasure-vaults! Let all that is precious to you walk free in the black rain!

Sit, sit, and do not watch for her. Do not wait for her. You waste your time. You waste your worry. Peace, peace. She who has no name, how will you recognize her? What cry will pass your lips, to give her form? Frustrate the robber, but the word is not thief. Resist the enemy, but the word is not foe. Welcome the friend, raise the daughter, abide the neighbor, obey the king, suffer the Flayed, forevermore be the present, but the word is nothing, and the word is Jackdaw.

Nothing to bind. Nothing to catch. You will not see her. You cannot stop her. Everywhere, nowhere, anyone, no-one.

Peace! Peace! The Jackdaw walks the woods!

Ailee!

Surma’s laugh comes with a ridiculous snort in the tail. One moment she’s a mouse, the next she sounds like a piglet. And there’s not a trace of self-consciousness in it. She just is herself, loudly.

“You’re crazy and going to lose,” she says. “That much is obvious. But I got here by betting on dark horses and I’m not about to stop now. Besides, when you lose, you’ll need someone to pull you back up.” She doesn’t say that you’ll just dive back down. She doesn’t need to. That’s as easy to understand as her teasing.

“That being said, if you get phenomenal cosmic power down there, can I at least get the arm back out of the deal before you obliterate me with your laser eyes to hide the secret of your mortal origins? A girl deserves to go out whole and with no regrets, after all.” She glances at your chin(?) while she says that and arches an enigmatic eyebrow. Very confusing.

***

Jackdaw!

A shapeless name, a nameless shape, an empty cowl, black backwards footprints from where she twists herself all around to look back on her trail: these are the Jackdaw. The shape between two shapes, the optical illusion, the present-in-absence, the loss of words as they become slush on the tongue: these are the Jackdaw.

There is a standing-stone that was once a foolish man who wanted to be immortal. Crowhame knows immortality. It is the forever now. It is being your self always throbbing out into the world. The book that is the encapsulation of Crowhame lies pinned between stone fingers, and Crowhame flows out through it larger and larger like an inflating bladder-balloon, no, like the air that fills it, and the pages the thin skin, and the book the pinch-point.

There is a piece of meat that used to be a funny man in an extravagantly understated shirt. Its nerves are red flash-fires in a dying sack of broken bones and contusioned flesh. It is thrown down into the snow to wind down its clock to zero midnight, to cool and melt into the story of always here. Above it, something that also used to be a man grips ribs in huge taloned paw-hands and begins the terrible final wrench that will tear his own self apart.

Above you the Long unwinds, coil upon coil, and then snarfs down a huge tent like it’s devouring an egg. Maybe if everyone in the world is lucky, it was the one where that terrible Grail sat in state, black blood frothing from its lip, holy of holies, the clown-birth and the beginning of a replacement forever. As if there is any forever that is better than the heart of Crowhame.

***

Coleman!

Wolf has to be defended. Jackdaw needs time bought for her to do whatever the fresh hell she’s doing. And the world is a mosh pit full of clowns and crows and flung pies and little snakes and a giant snake that is eating the Big Top.

Sasha’s boiler is running hot, and she is groaning with the stress of restraining herself, not releasing the energy that is building up inside her.

Tell us how the Battle of the Dark Carnival was won. Tell us about Sasha’s whistle-roar. Tell us how she makes you proud.

Things fall down into the Heart. People, religions, ideas, seeping down from the distant surface like rain into subterranean oceans. But of all the things that have been sent below the greatest is the grand city of Lothbruk.

Grand Jelt and Skotsheim were eternal rivals; two petty kingdoms struggling for control of the same muddy island. Skotsheim chose to invest its resources in a mighty army, a glorious city and overseas colonies. Grand Jelt chose to invest its resources in magic. Turns out that was the winning evolutionary strategy, because on the glorious Seventh of August the Arcane Council wove a mighty spell to hurl the entire city of Lothbruk physically into the Heart. The anniversary of this terrible weaving was made a national holiday and referred to euphemistically as 'The Act of Union', the day when Grand Jelt truly became grand.

As for Lothbruk itself? It was the payment taken by King Dragon and the perfect canvas for him to express himself upon. What could be more Wasteful than to have an entire city to oneself? What could satisfy one's Curiosity more than rummaging through every house and office, learning every secret in the entire fallen kingdom? What Judgement was more mighty than acting as adjudicator of nations? What better target to vent one's Wrath on than one of the world's greatest cities?

And what would be a greater boost to a king pride than to make one's solitary nest here in this dark and sunken city?

Bit by bit, Lothbruk was sinking. Here and there it was burned. It had fallen far, even though it still had much falling to go. It still made a worthy throne for a dragon, but before too long it would be time to seek out another.

Engines are not meant to run this hot.

Coleman knows this. You run an engine too hot for too long, and, well… You hear the stories, right? Of engines that have burst, their boilers ruptured. Of flayed innards, derailed cars. Of entire crews that perish with their gods. They're meant as cautionary tales, as rumors and legends of Things One Must Not Do.

And still he feeds her.

Instincts he does not know jam the coal chute open. Fire roars from the firebox with every open and shut. Sasha glows with energy--first cherry red, then passing through molten orange sliding towards white.

And still, he stokes Sasha to greater heights. Dimly, he's aware that his clothes have started to burn, the denim smoking and charring, the brass buttons and fittings running and pooling around his feet. There are clowns outside. He knows this, can see them through the portholes, can hear the demonic ovens spitting the battle pies. Feels, more than hears, the movement But here, in this moment, he sits in the furnace that is Sasha and can only feel peace.

Sasha pricks at his mind, needles to be let in, and he could no more say no to her right now than he could sprout wings and fly. (Though, with the euphoria he's feeling, he's not ruling that last bit out either.) She's uncomfortable, he can feel--every seam is stretched fit to bursting, every rivet whines with the effort of holding things together.

He falls deeper, senses stretching out, every sense attuned to what Sasha is feeling. Reaches out with her, feels the minds around them. Sees themselves from the views of the clowns, views the terrors of the jet coaster from those trapped on them, listens to the world around them. Feels the line between them blur, blur, slide…

Their scales hurt. They're coming apart, they can tell.

Well, of course they are. That's the point, after all.

Is it? That makes no sense. If they come apart, then they'll die.

No! It's not pain of dying. It's the pain of growth! Of a shell that's too small, a chrysalis that's reached its limits!

And they understand, now. Understand why it has to be a kobold. Why they seek the hottest part of the Heart. Understand that getting an engine hot enough to molt is so dangerous as to make the journey to Terminus tame by comparison.

Does every engine egg come to this realization? Do they all come to a point where either they reach Terminus and are hatched safely, or burn themselves out at a threat? And in this case, do they have another choice?

Together, they reach for the throttle.

There's no line between them, now. They think in tandem, act In unison, pull from all minds around them. They're a golden god, bowling through the clowns like a hot knife through butter. Flames belch, clowns sizzle. Keep on eye on Wolf, make sure she's following.

They're never far from Jackdaw or Wolf. But they make a point of taking apart the carnival one ride at a time.

Ailee!

Lothbruk is not empty. Lothbruk is teeming with pilgrims. Lothbruk’s streets steam with the King’s blood, gushing from rents and sores, hardly missed, for his heart is invincible; Lothbruk’s buildings are strung with rope bridges, a teetering garbage metropolis. It is here that the Rats of the Dragon attempt to refine their natural essence to be allowed to draw near to King Dragon without being obliterated. Only that which is of the King is permitted near the King; one glance on what is Not will consume it utterly.

And so the rats draw up the blood in corroded buckets and pour it into vats, and they drink of it, and many die in agony; but some begin to learn the secret of being as the King. To become a living avatar of his vices is their dearest desire, for it comes with incredible power.

You do not need to deal with them, Ailee Sundish. Surma has her hand on the tiller of your boat, a groaning thing made from the carcass of a train, split and gutted. It can withstand the blood of a dragon, at least for a time.

No, what you must deal with are the trials of the King. Show your vast disregard for the world, display your Wasteful nature, take it into your throat; peel back shrouds and dig your talons into the world, display your Curious heart, take it into your eyes; pass sentence on the unworthy and enact your declarations, show that you have the power of Judgment, take it into your hands; vent your fury at all that has denied you your rights, let no barrier restrain your Wrath, take it into your gut; and crown yourself in dripping Pride, worthy to speak with your King, and erase doubt and modesty from your heart utterly.

Do this, and Lothbruk will open like a flower to reveal the shining hoard of the King. Do this, and you will look upon those wounds, that torrent of blood, and know them to be yours. Do this, and the King and you will be one.

***

Jackdaw!

You’re here. Ouch.

You’re here with two bodies and a book and Lucien’s not broken but he’s not there and the Professor is going cold and still like the stone and you’re on the very edge of the story now, Crowhame spilling out behind you like a vast puddle of a mess.

(In the distance, there is a series of honks that suggest a very elaborate pratfall. In the distance, there is the chime of hag stones knocking against each other that is almost laughter. Those things need to stay in the distance. Those things very need to stay in the distance, actually.)

You could... just not close the book, you know. When you close the book, you won’t have a lot of time to convince the two they aren’t dead. And there’ll be just a mess of clowns all around. You saved them. You could just stay in the moment of having saved them forever, and there’d never be any question of what happened next.

(But you’re going to close the book, because you want to know what Lucien says next. Better to try than to exist in an always might-have-been.)

***

Coleman!

The Long looks at you with eyes the size of moons, Coleman, and for a moment you consider each other. Maybe it is thinking of the two of you as a beautiful symbiosis; maybe it sees you as an upstart and a challenge. The moment is... well, to fall into the joke, Long.

Then it looks down— down, down, down— and the eye is drawn to the struggling figure of Jackdaw, so pathetically tiny, down there at the edge of the white and black and red.

The huge vast blackness of the Long, scales only defined by the half-moons of white at their very edges, eyes as red as dying suns, considers Jackdaw. Then it turns to you; then it turns away.

Not every story ends with glorious battle. The Long is patient and forever.

Besides, even gods of flint and root and blood can acknowledge their inferiors; though the gulf of communication is so vast, almost as vast as the Long itself, that you will never know why.

Go scatter the clowns around that closing book and show Jackdaw the beauty of the two-in-one.

It's the easiest thing in the world to be as he is. She just has to, for the first time, really relax.

Do you know what it's like to go through the world with a mind like hers? Always aware that she could rip out hearts, abuse and torment, escalate to violence before anyone else would dare to think of it? To be a fountain of will in a world of retiring sheep, having to cloak her true nature in fluff to avoid spooking the herd? Harsh language was not a sign of rudeness, it was a soft wrapping around the fury in her blood. She casts it aside here now.

Now to cross her is obliteration. Not in blood or death but in the shattering of the ego, the psychic demonstration of exactly what the hierarchy of the cosmos was and where you fit in it. Her thigh-high boots step across kneeling backs.

To have a fire like Ailee does is to be afraid. Constantly feeling out the edges of people to know how hard they want you to step on them. Making decisions to reveal jagged edges to those who you guess are foes and hope that you're choosing the correct enemies. To pretend that you're not imagining those before you on their knees and struggle through a conversation with them as equals. Now she lets that resonating willpower speak all of its hidden toxic whispers. Now she lets her magic, infinite if you're prepared to pay an infinite price, boil out of her. And that's the secret the rats are blind to. They seek to maintain themselves, to scratch at the dripping blood of power, to be their wretched selves but somehow more. It's the same secret the so-called Archmages of the University were blind to, thinking themselves mighty if they could bind a single word at the end of a lifetime of study. She bound five in an afternoon.

Her father once told her that if you borrowed ten pounds from a bank it was your problem, but if you borrowed a million pounds it was the bank's problem. She feels King Dragon stir. She doesn't think he expected this, even as he dreamed fitfully of her approach. He thought like she had thought, of the world as a vortex of sycophants and delusional slaves, scratching around the edges for a power they could never look directly at. Now here she is, cutting directly towards the Heart, looking him in the eye.

It would be a mistake to say that they are the only two people in the world that matter, because neither of them would for a second acknowledge the other's validity. One of them is the King Dragon, the King of the World, the Heart of the Heart, and the other is just like everyone and everything else - a subordinate, a slave, a toy. But as Ailee steps deeper and deeper into that violent rainbow both realize that this toy is insane. It is insane to dream itself a king, and it must be fixed and broken.

"Get out of my Heart," said Ailee.

The world is quiet. All is still.

Her mind was a whirling mechanism of epiphany, each thought setting the next into motion, free of jam or ill-fitting conclusion. Nothing could grow stagnant when all was in proper order. Nothing could rot, poisoning her heart, dulling her eyes until all she could see was herself.

You see? You see! Wasn’t that lovely? She could tell you the pages of the novels she’d cobbled that together from. She’d held onto those words for years now, thinking that it would be the perfect way to explain such things should the moment ever come for her to express the thoughts. But that was all backwards, wasn’t it? She’d held onto them not because they were perfect. But because they were perfect to her. Picking out the one right answer in a sea of infinite words had crushed her into a useless stone time and time again. Picking out the words she adored, to be whatever they needed to be for the people she held close to her heart? So much easier. So much more fun!

Love. Always kept turning up in the best stories, didn’t it? She really ought to have noticed the throughline sooner-

And that shadow of a memory kept her at the boundary of Crowhame. Because she wasn’t a machine. Not really. Not in the ways that mattered. All that ran well in this one, beautiful moment would, in time, wear down, skip, clog, fall apart, drown, descend into a useless pile of anxieties all over again. Even the act of trying to hold onto this perfect clarity would squeeze her to the point of breaking. Wouldn’t it be nice, to never have to fall from this height? To never endure the cycle again? Hadn’t she climbed enough?

Can she rest, now?

Perhaps.

But then again, she did have a rather good memory. If she found her way here once, she could do it again. And this time, with better company.

She took a step. And gently closed the book behind her.

***********************************************

“Ack!”

A black-cowled figure stumbled into the clown-rich chaos, the victim of a sudden lesson in comparative body mass. But before she could fall to her knees, where a death of pies surely awaited her, a second pair of shoulders came under her burdens, and a second pair of paws marked her path forward. Wolf wasted no time on words; they had precious little to reach safety, and less still to complete the miracle.

Soon the four of them were huddled behind the now-flaming donut cart, mere seconds of safety left. Just enough time for the figure to hurriedly transcribe one, last edit to their reality...

Lucien!

You can’t be dead.

You smell fried pickles.

No, more than that, you hear fried pickles, Crackling, sizzling, fresh from the fryer and ready to eat.

Worst of all, you want fried pickles. Don’t lie. We all know you do. And when was the last time you heard of a dead man wanting anything?

Now then, are you going to wake up and taste them? (Mind your tongue, they’re still hot.)

Professor!

So. You’ve finally wound up dead, have you? After all this time, the boogeyman finally caught up to you, like you knew it would. All those years of worry, and now that it’s here, does it seem so bad? Was the ending really worth all that fuss? I bet it seems rather silly, in hindsight. You’d think that simple logic would’ve steered you right. By what merit does the last day get weighted more heavily than all the others that came before? The rest of your life outnumbers the end of it, after all. So by that logic, the end shouldn’t be all that important.

You think so too?

Ah-ha!

And how exactly is a dead man agreeing with me? Unless, of course, you’re not really dead! You never were! Members of the court, I rest my case, we may all recess for fried pickles now. (Yes, yes, there’s some for you too, Professor. Get up already, before Lucien scarfs them all down!)

Ailee!

It is Curiosity that stays the fires. Curiosity, vast and bottomless. Curiosity at this broken, malfunctioning toy. Curiosity at thinking it ever thought itself separate. His eyes are vast and molten gold, his pupils large enough to be doorways.

When King Dragon moves, it is wet. Terribly wet. He bleeds his self out into the world. Where he is not harder than steel and stone and hate, he sloughs. He arrays himself before you, his wings unfurling for the first time in untold years, and when he opens his jaws, poison sloshes out and runs in fiery rivulets down to your feet, down towards Surma who hangs back in the boat still.

“Welcome back,” he says to this reflection of his power, his might, his self. “Welcome back,” he says, his mouth a hole in the world that you could fall into forever. “Welcome back,” he whispers, and the Judgment falls on you like an anvil. That you are worth only what insight he may glean from you; that the fragment of his nature inside you is all that there is.

How dare he? There is only room for one queen in a hive, only room for one dragon in the world, because otherwise they will find their opposite out and fling themselves headlong together in a crushing embrace, thrashing, stinging, brutal, until only one remains.

And you, Ailee Sundish, are more than your self. The dragon nature roils and burns within you, here, where the essence of the King shines crimson from every surface, where he has extruded himself into the very fabric of the world, so pliable here. Only one! Only one!

Give him his death. Take his throne. Take the room to become your inner self, great and grand and red, red, red.

There is a difference between asking someone to not-be-dead, and asking them to live. The inertia that keeps you going can also keep you gone. The hard part's done with, and when the last thing you remember is being used as a flesh-mallet, it doesn't inspire soliloquies of rapture for the joy of living.

Lucien wanted to be dead, in a past tense that was still a present tense. Weren't all the soul and body scars too much a price to pay for birth?

It wasn't that he had wanted to die. It was just that he'd already lived. There was nothing in the Heart for him. He wasn't here for a purpose, a reason. He was here for an epilogue. And if, at the end of all this, he had found a good and final way to make himself useful to someone deserving of it, then that was more than he could ask for. It was easier than thinking about a what-came-next.

He had assumed he had lived what life was worth living, and this had all overstayed its welcome, ever since the bloody owls.

Which was fine! He was fine with that, he'd made peace with it. It had been wonderful fun. It's just - he'd earned his rest, hadn't he? He'd earned his triumphant finish, his final bow before being dragged off. Let the curtains fall with him He'd earned his rest. He was tired. He was so tired.

And Jackdaw had to go and ask for an encore performance. And worst of all, she deserved it. And, worse than that, he found himself wanting to give it.

The problem was, he'd smashed all his instruments on the stage for the grand finale. There was nothing left to play. Every instrument a shattered wreck on this stage or another before it. What was he coming back for?

Fried pickles? Really? Was that it?

A dead man couldn't think of a better reason than that.
...

Thank Goodness he'd done the philosophizing when he was still dead. Thinking got much harder when it was constricted by roiling meat and screaming nerves and warped chemistry and everything that agonizingly reminded him he was alive.

Lucien had died. That was the hell of it - it wasn't a near death experience, it was a profound undoing, a mortal recoiling.

Recoil is the word, indeed.

The pickles are grounding. They're overwhelmingly sharp to the senses and if pickle's brine's good for a hangover it stands to reason it's good for a hangman's do-over.

Don't question it, reason went out the window a long time ago. Extrapolate from incomplete data. Here's Jackdaw, and she's positively glowing. By any other name, just as sweet, but it seems like she's made peace with this one. She must have, to do all this - she'll have to fill him in on what this is.

Lucien pops another pickle slice in his mouth.

"You know," Lucien rolls his freshly burned tongue in his mouth, "dying was a very solid plan. I had the rest of my life figured out. Now? Now I have no clue what to do. Professor? You?"

Formerly Professor Pagliacci, Lucien supposes he's just the Professor now, stays lying on his back, staring at the cavern ceiling, a brilliant imitation of the statue he was.

"You know, I think you might be the first person alive to get over a fear of death from exposure therapy. There's a paper in that."

The Professor turns his head, creakingly, to give Lucien the most withering stare it is possible without moving a single facial muscle.

Lucien offers him a pickle. The Professor takes one. He puts it on his tongue. He has not yet learned to chew again. That's fine. You can just suck on these for a bit, as long as you clean your teeth after. Otherwise the taste might stick between them for the rest of your days, and who knows how many there'll be of them.

Who knows.

Lucien sits for a bit, chewing. He has no idea what to do. In fact, he'd explicitly come back without having a good reason to do anything at all.

"What now?"

Of course the trains must run. What else could they do with all this power? Feel how it pulsates through them, pushes one limb after another, jogs them into a gallop? With a belly full of steam and a carnival of terror, what else but put that power to use?

No wonder the knights exist! How else could the engines live, if there were not people who cleared the way? Would you dream of taming the Engine? Of reining it in, when every rivet and plate ache with awful energy?

Even now, there's a part of them that insists that the only proper response to this insult is to kick the jet coaster off its moorings, and aim salvo after salvo of laden cars at the Long. How dare you not justify them with a fight? Do you not acknowledge them? You would simply leave?

But they know, terrible as it is, that this power is not infinite. Either the coal will burn through, or they will burn out under their own fury. They...

They must part. Must cease to be one, and become two, and the thought is agony. They finally understand what Mister Conagher had said, and will now separate again.

So, if they must be parted, they will make the most of it. Will shove the throttle to full, barrel through clowns, and run. There are friends to save, friends who must live, if they are to make it home.

Come, Lucien. Let them show you why you must not fear trains. Behold their beauty, their grace. Come, meet the new Sasha.

Some people, some stories, confused Ailee. Stories about people giving up power. Stories about people who weren't tempted by power. But far more than that, stories about people who were tempted by the wrong kind of power.

Oh, there is such might to be had in the red. In the concentration of force, in the capacity for unspeakable violence and immense, unstoppable presence that speaks its vices so convincingly the world must obey. The heat of being the one, the only one, the orbit around which all revolves - it sears her from the inside. The power to have everything you want at the tiny cost of having this be everything you want.

She could cast her body aside like a glove. Throw away her memories of home, her memories of lanterns as a burden. Never have to think about what happened to Lucien because she could burn his silhouette from her mind along with all the rest of it. She could ascend, return - come home. And coming home would be a battle - an eternal battle, the King locked against the King, one against one, casting fragments of herself into the world until they came back to engage in masturbatory showdowns once again. All the world could be the backdrop to her perfect solipsism, and would that not put the cosmos in its place like nothing else? To look upon all its wonders and all its terrors and decide, instead, that one's own self was far more interesting?

Thus her judgement: That only she mattered
Thus her wrath: That she was the only outlet that mattered
Thus her curiosity: The destructive, tearing search for something else that might matter
Thus her waste: That nothing else mattered
Thus her pride: That only she mattered

Every word followed in sequence, in eternal circular logic. They were written on the gleaming green sigil-tattoos that wrapped her arms, they slipped from her lips, an oroboros proof against the world. King Dragon opened his jaws to swallow her once again.

She took a step towards those jaws. Welcome home. This is where I belong, what I am for. Blood pumped from the heart and now returning for another circuit. Nothing matters, Ailee. Not Lucien, or Jackdaw, or Coleman or any of it. Nothing matters.

And this, Ailee thought, was what all of the stories got so wrong about tempting someone with power.

If she had judged power by how many kilograms of force she could apply to the strength tester in the Carnival then this offer couldn't be beaten. If she had judged power in the ability to resist being hurt or capacity to hurt others then this was the ultimate boon. If power meant becoming one with the status quo here was its ultimate manifestation.

But what kind of person had such a flimsy idea of power?

Thus her pride: My dreams matter most of all.

Her tattoos wheel and spin as her hand reaches for her vest pocket.

Thus her waste: Anything that stands between me and my dreams is worthless.

Soft fingers close around the handle of the revolver.

Thus her curiosity: The more I learn the grander my dreams become.

The revolver whirs open.

Thus her wrath: Anything that asks me to give up my dreams will burn.

Five bullets, one after another, are loaded as she plants her foot on the Dragon's tongue.

Thus her judgement: My dreams are bigger than myself.

She fires five shots. The traditional number, the ritual number. All that was needed for this fight to conclude as it always did.

The jaws begin to close around her.

But she has one more bullet.

Thus her heroism: Power that does not help my dreams come true is worthless.

In the jaws of the dragon, Ailee fires her final shot.

The Dark Carnival

What now? What now? The Dark Carnival lies in ruin all around, crushed and torn and smashed up by the gods of a terrible noplace, and the Grail at its heart is sinking into torpor. So two rather alarming things happen roughly at the same time.

The first is that the Grail's blood begins to flow freely. If you followed that thick, viscous blood, flowing from pipes and down gutters and oozing up around your feet, you'd find your way to the desecrated Big Top, to a shining cup and a promise of honking immortality forever. Really, this would just be gross and awkward and require some serious disinfecting once you left (because nobody wants to catch clown) if that was all that was happening.

The other thing is that the Dark Carnival begins to fold in on itself like a flower closing its petals. Boardwalks tear up out of the ground and become inclines, then walls. Tents come crashing down in on themselves in huge storms of canvas and tangling electric lights. Fried pickle carts become meteors. Clowns go flying with doleful honks. It would take a miracle to escape alive.

(And Jackdaw nearly doesn't, tumbling backwards and getting Grail Juice all over her coat, a ridiculous little bundle bouncing down to the Big Top until a certain wolf in a tatty red-and-gold coat of her own tackles her and pins her down into the Wicked Sauce, holding her tight and close and safe until a claw the size of a fried pickle cart scoops them up, and even then she has a hand on the back of her head smushing her into bones and thinning fur and a smell like a burning candle wick, and the thumpa-thumpa-thump of a heart more important than the one you all dared plumb.)

(Lucien clinging to the stiff-limbed professor and a tent pole, limbs still unsure about whether or not they were really supposed to be whole and unbroken and thus whether or not they were supposed to be holding this much weight at all? Much less homoerotically charged.)

And the whole farce ends on a short scrubgrass hillside. The cavern roof overhead is beginning to twinkle with black stars, the walls sloughing away as the nature of this inbetweenaplace changes, the Forest beginning to predominate. In the distance are the hoarse croaks of migrating owls, and this place won't be safe forever. But it's a beat of respite, a safe place to watch as the whole Carnival goes right down some cosmic drain, there to pupate again.

Grail-soaked clothes are tossed aside. A blanket is retrieved from somewhere inside Sasha. In undershirts and underthings, almost everyone lounges, and fried pickles are shared, and some hot ham and jam and biscuits. There is a conspicuous bossy absence, but Lucien is (of course) sure to reassure that Ailee's somewhere safe and fine and good, probably. Almost certainly.

In the ceiling-sky above, neon-teal bees dance in geometric angel-banishing patterns. Sasha radiates heat as her boiler slowly cools. Distant and far away, there is the sound of another Sasha's roaring horn, as Black Coleman races off to chase a better world. Jackdaw finds herself in the lap of a scruffy Wolf, and those bare arms around her torso are saying more than a hoarse and starved voice ever could, except in the unlight of something not a candle, and her heart is a drumbeat against Jackdaw's bare spine.

Even down here in the crucible of worlds, there is goodness. You bring it down with you.

***

Coda

And so died King Dragon, Goldmouth, Ratlord, Point Constant, the Consuming Fire, destroyed by a pawn that made it all the way across the chessboard. Lothbruk melted in the fires of his unraveling, and with it melted the rat cults, and with them melted a web of wickedness and vile intrigue, and with it all melted the dark dreams of Control, Consumption, and Greed that found their nexus in that figure of Sin. One day, one day there will be something that is like King Dragon, an accretion of the desires he embodied, but it will not be for a very, very long time. And until that day comes, we can sleep more soundly, knowing that Sin itself has been diluted and made, if not harmless, at the very least purposeless.

All because of the sacrifice of one brave soul. All because Ailee, Angel of the Heart, chose her dreams over His power, chose meaning over meaninglessness.

Chose, in the end, Love.

- Surma Sundish, "On The Death of King Dragon: A Narrative," retrieved from the Heart by the Bransmuth Literary Society's Detritus Branch.

Let us return, for a moment, to a sad soaked bundle, held twice tight. The first grip looses, and deposits two passengers on solid ground. Collect all your things. Mind the gap. Ride again, soon! The second grip relents only that eyes may see what hands cannot. Are there tears? Does she breathe? Does she fear? Maybe. Possibly. Probably. The cloak intrudes. Were both of her arms not unquestionably occupied, Wolf would have already torn it to shreds. An anxious growl builds in her throat as she waits, and waits, waits for trembling arms to peel away the layers.

The cowl falls back, and Wolf falls into a dream of enchantment and cunning. A vision of fiery orange and creamy whites, of fur invitingly soft and glowing with color. A curiosity of pointed, fluffy ears and a precious dollop of black dotting a perfect nose. A promise of poise, power, and so much more, wrapped in limbs curving with lithe muscles. An eternity of shining emerald; stare, please, stare, lose yourself deeper and deeper and deeper in her, without hideous lenses to get in the way.

Wolf stares. Wolf waits.

Blink. And the dream is put aside. Back to waking. Back to gangly limbs and patchwork, speckled coat. Back to ill-kept and tangled fur. Back to spectacles perched on a snout all the wrong shapes. Back to a low rumble in Wolf’s chest, felt through paws, through cloak, filling her with unconditional approval. Back to lying weightless in a strength that could hold her forever. Back to a closing distance, and foreheads meeting, and one last, precious word spilling from Wolf’s lips.

And the name was

”Jackdaw.”

Carefully, the Engineer takes his boots off and lays them by the cab door.

Iᴛ ᴅɪᴅɴ'ᴛ ɢᴏ ᴡᴇʟʟ, ᴛʜᴇɴ.

He snorts. That obvious, huh?

Yᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏs ᴇxᴛʀᴀ ᴄᴀʀᴇғᴜʟ ɴᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ sʟᴀᴍ ᴍʏ ᴅᴏᴏʀs ᴡʜᴇɴ ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ᴜᴘsᴇᴛ.

Coleman pauses, one hand mid-overall-unbuttoning. Is he really?

Iɴᴅᴇᴇᴅ.

Huh. Well, ain't that a thing.

Nᴏᴡ, ᴛʜᴇ Rᴏᴜɴᴅʜᴏᴜsᴇ.

Coleman scowls, folds up his overalls, and leans back against the firebox. It's quickly become his favorite place on the train. From here, he can see every gauge, every dial, can keep track of what's going on in his baby girl.

It's not that the council of Engineers doesn't believe him, naturally. You don't get to be an Engineer without a good dose of common sense and more than a good amount of cunning, and you'd have to be blind not to see how the number of accidents have skyrocketed since Wormwood imploded. Roundhouse lookin' a whole lot emptier'n normal, bunch of conspicuously empty spots for Engines that've gone missing.

But, well, he's also the newest Engineer, and he was there. Some blame him, others don't but feel he coulda done more, others just think that more seasoned voices--theirs--should be leading, and others still that just want to go their own way. Conagher's on his side, thank goodness--not sure what he'd'a done if the Mighty Natascha turned away from her daughter. It's not a faction, not yet, but it's at least a start--the beginnings of a new way of doing things, of working together, of coming to each others' aid. It's no Wormwood, for sure, but maybe it'll be enough.

Maybe Lucien could wrangle the rest of the Roundhouse for him? Coleman snorts to himself. Lucien'd have a coup for him within days, no doubt.

He'd sit there all day if he could, listening to Sasha hum. Would let Sasha's warmth suffuse him, seep through every scale, work out all those aches and pains he'd almost forgotten about. Would sink into her, watch through her senses, let himself be still for a moment.

But, alas, he has jobs to do. There's a man here to talk about that stained glass, and some kobolds waiting to be interviewed, and always, always some bits of brass to be polished.

He rubs a claw across the scrollwork as he turns to go. The patterns of Pappy's wrench are beautiful where they ran, the brass and gold melding with Sasha's hide. The history of the past, now molded into the history of the future.

"Come on, Sasha," he murmurs. "It's time to go home."

Lucien had always said that he’d go into the Heart until what was ahead of him was worse than what was behind him. But you know what? He just died. He got killed. He bit the big one. So there it was.

He had learned much, down here. But if he had learned anything, it was that his story was best told when it was told through his relationship with someone else.

Dwell on the legendary gambler he had shared a prison cell with, in his early thirties. The gambler’s own casino was a put that didn’t pay off, couldn’t be paid off. But the insurance on it?

He’d spoken to Lucien of his friends.

Sarah “Bulletin” Bullock, crime correspondent with a trigger finger as fast as her mouth. Broke the stories that’d break anyone else. He would talk about every headline she ever made.

Chiara Scuro, warlock hunter, paladin pedagogue. Silvered plate meticulously etched with Truth. Folk hero who found that schooling the peasantry got faster results than any lone wolf protector. He could teach Lucien everything that paladin had ever taught, and Lucien kicked himself nightly that he could only remember about a tenth of it.

Rowan Oake, the broad, kind, handsome adventurer who could shape lightning with his hands, and his best friend Nickel, playful prankster inventor, who would find the most clever things to do with it. They were madly in love, but too shy to admit it. They were never out of arm’s reach of each other, though, and still wished to be closer.

And, of course, his wife. His pregnant wife. The tequila songbird with the blood of swamp royalty, a touch of the true sight. A high note that could shatter any crystal glass but the ball she used for her séance. She picked it special. It was the gambler’s voice that broke, describing her.

Lucien had never met any of them, but he’d heard of them. The gambler would tell stories about them for hours, and hours, and hours. The most wonderful stories. As if they’d happened only yesterday. As if they were sitting just behind his shoulder, waiting to add what he missed.

He’d killed them. Cut them down in their prime.

Not on purpose. An accident had to occur, a meticulously planned one, that would engulf his mansion in flames. One last gamble. He would use the insurance to pay off his creditors and move to a cottage in the country, a modest one, where his family would be all he needed for his happiness. But for it to work he’d need witnesses, unimpeachable ones.

They were all meant to be on the lawn when the bombs went off. They were meant to watch the fireworks together. None of them had known- That had been the whole point. They couldn’t have known.

The gambler had been the only one who survived. The last of his bad luck. Tears leaked from eyes that had grown old enough for milky clouds of cataracts.

And the gambler had said: As long as I remember them, they’re still with me. As long as I remember them. But it’s been so long, and the memories…

Every time I forget them a little more, the gambler said, it is like I am killing them again. So I can never forget them. I have to remember that last day, again and again and again. Or else I let them go. Do you understand?

And Lucien had thought; That’s the trouble with friends like that. You’ll only lose them in the end.
And Lucien had thought; The best way to avoid this would be to only make plans that relied on yourself, and to be able to make reliable plans.
And Lucien had thought; What sense was there in the gambler moving on, if all his happiness was in his past? We live one good story, and we hope we do not outlive it.

He had been an idiot.

Lucien knew differently now. Was different, now.

He’d made friends like that. Coleman. The Engineer, Last Witness of Wormwood, The Unionist. And Jackdaw, The Jackdaw.

And… Ailee Sundish. The pawn who made it to queen. She always suspected he’d die without her. He always thought the same back. In the end they got each other killed. They’d danced together at Wormwood, just before it fell, and he asked her a question. She wouldn’t give him her answer then, so he had suggested his own at the Carnival, and it seems she wasn’t too proud to take it.

He thought of something else.

The gambler had told him that if he picked up a deck of cards, if he played again, he would forget everything. There was only him and the game again. All he needed to do was start playing and never stop, and he could forget everything. It had made him forget everything that had been important in his life before. It could do that for him again.

He was good at it. He would win. And as long as he could win he could live in an eternal present, without past and without future.

Even as stupid as he was then, Lucien had felt his heart break at that. He wasn’t ready to understand why. But, he thought, he understood exactly what the gambler felt. The Fool of the Sky Court came from that toxic place. Feeding on that manic addiction. Cutting so close to death that nothing else matters but surviving the next moment, and the thrill of pulling it off.

The gambler would burn his future and his past in the furnace of that long present. They both knew it. The question was why that wasn’t a happier ending, if both only brought him pain?

He was with that gambler for two weeks. Not once did Lucien take out the deck of cards that were in his jacket pocket. The weight of those fifty two pieces of cardboard became unbearable, even though each one had something important on them in invisible ink, something that could have got him out sooner.

He was ready to understand, now, it was not the burden of keeping them hidden. It was the secrets that had made them so heavy. Printed on playing cards, seeing them for what they were...

...

Lucien couldn’t return to the surface. Too many people were out for him, and he would escape them, because he was better than them. It would be fun. He would be a cat amongst the mice again, the shark amongst the shoals. There was a Game and he would play it again.

He would be the best again.

He wanted to be so much better than that, now.

He could only stay better if he stopped playing, and it was time to tell a better story.

And Lucien had learned his story was always told best through his relationships with others.

There are those who seek the Heart. Their reasons are as varied as their character. It is a dangerous journey, often lethal, and many will not find what they are looking for. From the Houses of Parliament to the Forest of Stone, the Blade Graveyard and the Fortress in Misted Chains. The Screaming Archives and the Flood and the Crystal Desert and the Mycological Labyrinth. Yet there are people who will journey through.

At the surface there is a spiralling tower of books, where a Professor raises goats and mules. He is who you must go to, if you want to inquire after the Tour Guide.

The wait may take months, the Professor will tell you, if he ever returns at all. It is a very dangerous job, after all, and a very long journey. But you’ll know him when you see him, he is sure.

Many will set off without waiting. Their journey is too urgent to wait.

Others are patient. He is, after all, the best.

And when he returns - and somehow, he always does - he picks a handful of his favourite likelies. His favourites are those that could never make it on their own, and know it. They’re going to try anyway.

A funny thing usually happens on the way down, with the Guide. By the end of their journey, they have become who they needed to be to have made it. And usually - but not always - they find what they needed was the journey and not their intended destination.

For the rest, the Guide never goes all the way to the end. There’s nothing at the end for him, and there never really was. Those last steps are always taken alone, because that is the only way they can be taken.

And every trip the Guide takes makes the next trip easier. Because with each trip, someone else finds their place in the Down There. They stick around, they make a home of it. And they’re always happy to help a friend.

And every new trip, the groups will linger. And they will ask him if he was really there to see the Jackdaw first take her name. And they will ask if he rode the last train out of Wormwood with Coleman of the Roundhouse. And they will not ask him about Ailee Sundish, because they know that is the one question you cannot ask.

And every trip the Guide takes makes the next trip more interesting. Because with each trip, there is someone new to check in on, and there are more friends to visit along the way. And he does love to catch up on old friends, doesn’t he?

And with every trip, the Guide adds a book to the Professor’s library, for the people who wait. It is filled with the stories of the ones that went before them. They serve as warnings as much as encouragement. The Heart is a dangerous and changing place. Sometimes even for the better.

It has been many trips, now. And Lucien has a collection of other people’s stories. Far more than that gambler, who could not imagine a future past the ending of his first story.

And it was more than the ending he would have given himself, if he had not been touched by the story of The Jackdaw.

Nobody lives just their one story. They play a role in the story of everyone they meet. And those stories will always be more special than the ones we could ever tell on our own.

It was an honour to tell this one with you, and for all of you to allow me to add to yours.