"Good afternoon, Miss Thea!"
"One moment."
Thea climbed the stairs first, dumped the armload of purchases onto the floor of her flat, gave her hands a perfunctory rinse, then went back down to meet Annelise.
The coachman had already laid out the carpet. Annelise descended with one hand on the rail, careful as porcelain, and the instant her slippers touched cobblestone she gathered her skirts and trotted forward to throw her arms around Thea.
"I heard you took leave the past few days to go to Silverkeep!" Her voice lilted up half an octave, breathless and delighted. "Did you visit the cathedral? And Isenbel Pleasure Gardens, and the aquarium, and the St. Roland Museum, and—"
She ticked them off on her gloved fingers, one after another.
Thea nodded along at the right intervals, drawing on her stockpiled memories of novels and travel magazines to murmur agreement here, a vague impression there. Easy enough, when she does all the talking herself.
This was, in fact, one of the things Annelise loved about her. The other noble girls at school always spoke with a kind of mannered stiffness — less friends than correspondents exchanging dispatches. And the common-born girls came at her with either a queasy fawning or a cold distance, as though the two of them inhabited entirely separate worlds.
Mid-sentence Annelise gave a tiny startled "oh!" and hurried back to the carriage to retrieve a sealed envelope. She held it out with both hands, slightly sheepish.
"I came to deliver a letter to you, Miss Thea!"
"A letter?"
"Yes! I heard that Miss Thea has a hobby of corresponding with pen pals... so I thought I might try writing to you too."
Pen pal nothing, Thea thought, expression undisturbed. Client.
The truth was that most of the herbal tinctures Thea brewed and sold weren't legal — and the illegal ones reached her by the most insultingly inefficient route imaginable. A buyer wrote to a black-market broker, the broker passed it to another broker, and only after the chain of middlemen had taken their cuts did the request finally land in her hands. Forty-five percent skimmed off the top. Bloodsuckers, every last one.
She'd taken on Canaan Ogre's commission for exactly one reason: he'd come to her directly, no intermediaries. And look how that had turned out — the one time she'd shipped factory-direct, she'd picked a deadbeat.
Thea took the envelope and offered a small smile, faintly teasing. "If it's a pen pal correspondence, shouldn't it be delivered by post? Hand-delivery rather defeats the romance."
Annelise gave a flustered little gasp. "Oh! Is that how it works? Then next time I'll have the postman bring it to you directly!"
Thea slipped the envelope into the pocket of her trench coat.
"Well then. Annelise — would you like to come up?"
"No, no, that's all right!" A flicker, very quick. "Does Miss Thea have time right now?"
"Oh?" Thea tilted her chin down to glance at her own ankle boots — paired today with white cotton stockings, the faintest lace edging visible above the leather. Not her usual style at all. "Something new?"
Annelise turned scarlet on the spot. She wanted it. Already she could almost smell the warmth at the tip of Thea's foot, almost feel the long elegant toes wrapped in cotton — but not today, not today.
"No, no, not that!" she whispered urgently. "Evelyn is with me in the carriage today. Next time, please. I — I actually wanted to ask about something else. Has Miss Thea given any thought to her future? University, I mean. You do so well in your classes, you're so clever, and — and so lovely. The Crown National and St. Roland's would both accept you without question. I want to go to St. Roland's with you. And be your friend forever."
Crown National University and St. Roland's College — both crown jewels of Silverkeep's academic crown. The former was the Queen's own endowment; the latter, a six-hundred-year-old church institution that had finally secularized about eighty years ago.
Thea's elder sister Aveline taught at Crown National.
"The future," Thea said, with a polite, unreadable smile, "is best left to the future, I think. But — if it comes to it — St. Roland's is the more likely choice."
Master Daniel had already mentioned writing her a recommendation letter.
A pause. Then, smoothly: "Speaking of which. Could I trouble you for a favor?"
"Please, anything!"
"In a little while I'll be attending a ceremony. I'll need a bottle of wine — twenty years or older, ideally — and a walking cane. Could you arrange them for me? I can pay—"
"The cane is easy. The wine..." Annelise's brow furrowed in pretty calculation. "I can try to steal a bottle from Father's cellar."
Thea opened her mouth to suggest a less treasonous alternative, but Annelise was already barreling on, voice rapid and bright, drowning out the unspoken syllables.
"The cane — what sort were you thinking? Material, finish, length—"
"Nothing elaborate. Copper at the foot, cat's-eye stone set into the head."
"That's clear enough. Anything else?"
"That's everything."
The dried wolf's head she could not have Annelise procure. A noblewoman's daughter buying a mounted wolf's head from a gunsmith for no reason — the suspicion alone could spiral. And besides, in the Great Harbor and Clocktower Districts such things hung on every gunsmith's wall and dangled from every hunter's belt. No need to risk anything.
Annelise jotted the items down in a small notebook, hugged Thea once more, scattered three or four farewells over her shoulder, and climbed back into the carriage.
Up in the bedroom.
The materials she'd just purchased lay piled in the corner. Two wicker cages held the serpent and the nestling pigeon respectively. The whetstone had been tossed onto the floorboards; the mirror was already hung on the wall; the dagger she didn't need to buy — the sacrificial knife she'd pried out of St. Vincent's Chapel that night was rusted enough to pass for ancient.
She'd also returned to the Clocktower District gunsmith and bought down the mounted wolf's head he'd hung on the wall as a trophy. On the way back she'd picked up a fresh ox heart, which she now tossed onto the floor with the rest.
That evening, Evelyn — Annelise's chief lady's maid, tall and immaculate as ever — arrived at the door with a parcel. The cane and the wine, delivered as promised.
The cane was beautiful work. Cat's-eye stone gleaming at the head, brass cap at the foot. The price tag still attached showed it had come straight off a shelf in the Great Harbor District market.
The wine bore no label, but it was clear, deep, and unmistakably good.
All nine items, accounted for.
The ritual could begin.
The Iris-Kingdom Alchemical Guild called their version Hildegarde's Wheel of Flame. The Eastern temple-order called theirs The Great One's Ascent.
Both unfolded in two stages.
First the Diving Ritual. Then the Advancement Ritual.
The two were technically independent — but the Sequence Nine advancement required them performed back-to-back, in that order.
The pile of materials Thea had gathered was for the Advancement Ritual. The Diving Ritual itself was, by comparison, almost insultingly simple.
One black candle. One white candle. One yellow candle. One red candle. Set at the four corners of the room.
Two drops of patchouli oil. Two drops of cedarwood. One drop of frankincense. A two-to-one blend of silver fir and blue tansy. A three-to-one blend of cinnamon and myrrh. Each oil applied to its assigned candle.
Light the candles, and the ritual begins. Let them burn down, and the ritual ends — the practitioner waking naturally from whatever deep place she had descended into.
Thea paced the four corners once, slowly. Then she lit the black candle. As the flame caught, she touched a sprig of sage to it; the dry herb crackled and gave off a long, bitter, humus-rich smoke. The signal that the ritual had truly begun.
"—I accept the shards unseen."
She murmured it under her breath as she walked the circuit again. Lit the white candle. A small white-quartz bracelet at her wrist caught the candlelight; the air filled, very faintly, with the sweet-sour scent of dried plums.
"As quicksilver flows, so shall true knowing show itself."
She unscrewed the turmeric oil and drew a small sun-wheel on the back of her hand, then lit the yellow candle. The oil stung pleasantly, peppery and bitter.
"As above..." she breathed, "so below..."
The Diving Ritual placed no demands on time or location. So long as the steps were followed correctly and the calming tincture wasn't outright fraudulent, the descent would happen.
Diving — that was Thea's mental shorthand for it, anyway. Back on Earth, the occultists she'd read about always described meditation as rising — ascending, like the cultivation novels, drifting upward toward enlightenment.
But this was the opposite. The very word on the scroll meant to submerge, to sink. And the incantation phrased it as such, plainly.
Three full circuits now. She came to a halt. Uncorked a phial of sulfur-and-camphor sleeping draught and tossed it back in one swallow. Then lit the red candle. In the candlelight, she touched thumb to forefinger, forming a small circle.
"We beseech the Ouroboros, god of the long continuance."
"We beseech the Ouroboros, god of the coiled encirclement."
"We beseech the Ouroboros, god who falls into the Nightmare."
Sleepy. Unbelievably sleepy.
The moment the last syllable left her mouth, Thea's eyelids became unbearable. They wanted to close. They demanded to close. She could feel the strength draining out of her shoulders, her arms, her ability to stand — let alone any strength left over to lay out the second ritual, the Advancement Ritual.
Hold on. The dose of calming tincture had been small — deliberately. There was no chemical reason it should be knocking her down like this. It felt as if she'd inhaled a lungful of pure ether.
She managed, barely, to sit. The room blackened at the edges. Then her consciousness was pulled, sucked downward, and she felt the sudden crushing weight of water pressure clamp around her skull.
She could feel — distantly — the depth ticking past, as if some invisible gauge hung in the water beside her.
250m.
850m.
1,600m.
5,500m.
12,000m.
29,000m.
And at each new depth, fragments of the impossible drifted past. Bands of light no spectrum could account for. The barest edges of vast moving shapes. She glimpsed something thousands of meters high — taller than any pyramid, taller than any cathedral — gliding past her in silent procession. Old blood scabs along its flank cracked open and re-formed as it moved; whatever color its blood was, the water refused to show her.
Around 30,000 meters, something soft and warm caught her like an upturned palm and held her there.
Her descent slowed. Stopped. The terrible pulling sensation drained away.
Down here, in the impossible deep, she closed her eyes — and lines began to extend outward from her body. Lines, like a draftsman's rendering, like architectural software building a model. They sketched the shape of a building around her in the dark water.
Dome. Nave. Transepts. Apse. Load-bearing walls.
St. Vincent's Chapel.
But inverted.
Yes — the entire chapel hung upside-down. The dome at the bottom, the foundation pointing up. Several pale, milky cords, anchored to nothing she could see, suspended the inverted dome and kept the whole structure from falling.
At the heart of the nave, set on what should have been the floor and was now the ceiling, stood an altar. And upon the altar — a statue of a faceless figure. Inverted too. Head pointing toward what had become the ground, feet toward the dome. Like the Hanged Man from a tarot deck.
The faceless figure opened its eyes.
Nothing of Thea Sorelle's features remained on its smooth blank face. She tried to move — and several ropes uncoiled from "above" and looped neatly around her wrists, her ankles, binding her in place.
...Bondage play. Wonderful. The Ouroboros has a particular sense of humor.
"Where exactly is this," she said aloud, voice flat. "And is this still my house?"
"Black iron coin... silver coin... gold coin... copper coin..."
Evening, somewhere across the city. Vera — Elvira Salvia, the chestnut-haired girl who had once introduced herself simply as Vera — paced the length of a sparsely-furnished room, double-checking the two rituals she was about to attempt.
A tall woman in clerical power armor stood guard beside her, hydraulic war-hammer at rest, lips moving in soft cadence. Sister Isabella. Tactical Sister, sworn to the Church, and currently chanting protective wards over her niece.
Vera shifted from foot to foot, anxious in spite of herself. She uncapped vial after vial of essential oils, dabbing each onto its assigned coin, then lit a bundle of sweet-smelling herbs and let the smoke wash over the coins one by one.
"You don't have to be quite so nervous," Isabella said gently. "Even if you die in the Nightmare on your first descent, there are no lingering effects. You simply can't attempt the ritual again within the same month."
"Auntie, you make it sound so easy." Vera's voice came out tight. "But this is Avengarde. I'm performing an alchemical advancement ritual on Avengarde soil. If I'm caught, I'm an illegal Transcendent."
She lit a second bundle of herbs, drew a long breath, and still could not steady herself.
"I made a promise to your mother," Isabella said. "I'll shelter you. Whichever path you choose."
"...Thank you."
"Now. The incantation."
Vera halted in her pacing. Lit the third and final herb bundle.
Beside her, Isabella raised a consecrated taper and began to purify the air, the candlelight catching in the chestnut of Vera's short hair as the younger woman drew herself up and began to recite:
"We beseech the Ouroboros, god whose sacred number is eight."
"We beseech the Ouroboros, god of the head devouring its tail."
"We beseech the Ouroboros, god who falls into the Nightmare."
The final syllable fell — and the world stopped.
The breeze at the window stopped. The clock on the mantel stopped. The flame on Isabella's consecrated taper hung suspended in its own light, a perfect frozen tongue. The curling smoke held its shape mid-curl.
Vera's eyes went wide. Behind her, Aunt Isabella stood exactly as she had been an instant ago — taper raised, lips parted in mid-chant, utterly motionless. As if she'd been carved.
Time has stopped?
No — that wasn't quite it. Time was a relational measurement, the perceived difference between two states. If everything else had stopped and she had not, then it wasn't that the world had paused.
It's that I have been separated from the world.
She steadied her breath and looked at what had appeared in front of her.
The four coins she'd consecrated were no longer on the floor. They hovered in the air, slowly rotating, and from each of them extended a fine milky-pale thread. The four threads anchored themselves to nothing visible — and supported, suspended in the air, a small shrine. A miniature thing, no larger than a mantel-clock.
The shrine was a cross-section of a temple in archaic style, at least five centuries out of fashion. At the very top, a small set of brass scales. And dangling from the scales by four delicate threads, head down, was a tiny masked puppet.
Click.
The puppet — Thea, peering out through the eyeholes of the puppet's mask — looked through the openings and felt her own jaw very nearly drop.
"...Vera?"
In front of the shrine, Vera sucked in a sharp breath and dropped immediately into a posture somewhere between supplication and panic.
"No offense intended, great one! I don't know which step I performed in error — I never meant to drag you out of your Nightmare!"
"If I may ask — for what purpose do you appear before me? Murder, arson — I am at your service, whatever you require!"
Vera's eyes flicked sideways. Behind her back, hidden from the shrine, her fingers traced rapid signals in the air, gesturing frantically to Isabella.
Every twitch was perfectly visible to Thea, from where she hung.
This little...
For reasons Thea did not yet understand, she had been yanked sideways through some unseen door and deposited in front of Vera. Bound upside-down by four threads of milky light. And evidently, somewhere in that translation, Vera had mistaken her for something tremendous.
Thea opened her mouth. The voice that came out was not her own clear voice at all — it shuddered and warped, vibrating as if a tuning fork had been jammed sideways into her throat. Distorted past recognition.
"Speak your true name."
"Vera — no — Elvira Salvia—"
Yes. Of course. That girl. Thea knew Vera's body intimately by now — she had run her hands over every inch of it the night they'd shared a bed.
"...Transaction."
"Transaction?"
A transaction — the authority of alchemy itself. Drawn from the principle of transmutation, of equivalent exchange.
Vera shot another glance at Isabella, confirmed the older woman was still frozen in place like a statue, drew a deep breath, and — without further hesitation — tore a clean page from her ritual notebook. On it she scrawled the highest-ranked ritual she personally knew the full text of:
The Unceasing Holy Seal.
A sacred rite practiced exclusively by power-armored knights of the Church, militant clerics, and Tactical Sisters. Once laid, the ritual granted its practitioner ten full minutes of complete damage immunity against anything Sequence Five or below — after which the accumulated damage detonated all at once in delayed catharsis.
By any reasonable standard, a ritual that powerful should have been a tightly guarded secret. In practice, however, the incantation itself was already public — embedded in three separate fragments scattered through the formal oaths sworn by priests, sisters, and templar-knights, none of whom realized what they were reciting.
Yet even so, the knowledge was nearly useless to most people. The ritual demanded an absurdly extensive list of materials, an elaborate setup process, and a practitioner whose purpose in casting it fell strictly within "to guard" or "to give of oneself." The practitioner also had to be Sequence Seven or higher.
And finally — for one full week after performing the ritual, the practitioner ran a continuous random risk of falling into the Nightmare while asleep. Completely unpredictable. No way to anticipate it.
The Sequence Seven requirement alone filtered out the overwhelming majority of Transcendents. All the other restrictions filtered out most of what remained.
Vera finished transcribing the procedure in a small, precise hand, then placed the paper on the brass scale at the top of the shrine. She looked up cautiously.
"Does this offering satisfy you, great one?"
Satisfy? Thea had no opinion on satisfaction. She had said one word — transaction — by something close to accident, and now she was apparently mid-bargain.
But the moment Vera's paper settled onto the scale, Thea understood, with a cold certainty she could not have explained: if she did not complete the trade, the ritual would not release her.
She rifled through her own knowledge. Anything she'd taken from the alchemist Canaan was useless — recycling stolen Iris-Kingdom secrets back to another Iris-Kingdom alchemist would be both insulting and traceable.
What else, then?
Earth knowledge?
She rummaged in her memory almost on instinct — and her thoughts caught on a single battered cover: Multivariable Calculus. She remembered the cover. Nothing else, just the cover.
A second later, a book materialized on the brass scale.
Thump.
The scale tipped violently toward Thea's side. The textbook's value was, evidently, immense.
Vera nearly leapt out of her skin. A white-and-green hardbound book of incomprehensible provenance had appeared on the scale — and the scale was crashing down under its weight.
Thea, half-amused, mentally split the book in two and placed only the upper half on the scale. The balance leveled out, with a slight remaining advantage on her side.
Clack-clack-clack.
The inverted puppet swayed on its threads. Through the mask, Thea spoke:
"The transaction is complete."
In the next instant a flood of arcane knowledge poured into Vera's skull. She buckled forward with a sharp gasp, both hands pressed to her temples. Pounding, hammering — chalk on a blackboard, a lecturer's voice rising and falling, an entire syllabus being driven into her brain at speed. The language was one she had never heard in her life, and yet, somehow, terrifyingly, she understood every word.
It was as if the puppet on the threads were some violent, methodical professor, force-feeding the curriculum directly into her cranium.
The exchange complete, the milky threads holding the shrine aloft began to dissolve. The shrine itself blurred at the edges, going translucent.
Just before it vanished entirely, Vera, head still ringing, scrambled to her feet.
"Wait — please — your name, great one—!"
For a single beat, Thea's mind went entirely blank.
Then she opened her mouth, and heard herself say:
"In the eternal manor — in R'lyeh — the slumbering witch awaits you in dream."