“Good night,” I said. My voice came out squeaky and weak—but I wasn't going to beat myself over it.

  The creature crawled over the hills, coming terrifyingly close to me. It was good I wasn't running away! Running away would only make things worse! It's not as if I could move faster than it. It's not as if I had anywhere to hide.

  I knew that, but when the creature lowered itself to give me a better look, I almost turned around and ran, all the same. I didn't want a better look at that thing's bald oval of a head, or the liquid globes of its eyes, and I didn't feel one tiny bit better by realizing it was intelligent.

  “A human soul!” For something so massively huge, its voice was comparatively high-pitched. But then, it was speaking into my mind, wasn't it? Or something like that. It sure couldn’t be speaking Rellian, no matter what it sounded like to me. Its mouth barely moved and it didn't make the right shapes. “Lost, aren't you?”

  “Well, yes,” I managed to say. “If you'd be so kind—”

  “And you smell like Jaano-Baari. He was delicious.”

  Jaano-Baari? We smelled simir? That had to be Jano Bariskol! I knew the stupid old man would find a way to get me in trouble from beyond the grave! I was so angry, I almost missed another thing.

  The creature didn't seem to be talking to itself, not with the unnerving way it had of making eye contact with me. If I had to guess, it spoke like someone who knew I could understand its words, but it didn't expect me to answer.

  So it couldn't hear me.

  “Delicious human!” The creature smmed a gigantic paw on me. It didn't hurt me, which was a very good thing, because otherwise I would've been turned to mush. I could just about feel the weight of the creature on top of me, though. No way I could shake it off.

  That's what a mouse trapped by a cat sees right before it's ripped apart. I had no hopes being eaten wouldn't hurt, either. Even if I survived, I'd be damaged in ways I couldn't even guess at.

  “I must ask you to release him.” Yet again, a low drawl that had soon become familiar to me. And more than that, a very welcome presence, though I couldn't see him from my position. “Will you, Rizazhiin-Gyaan?”

  That's how the creature's name is written. The way Vanth pronounced it, it sounded like a creaky door being opened.

  “Why should I?” Rizazhiin-Gyaan replied. At least it'd turned in the direction of Vanth's voice, so that I didn't have to look at its unnervingly huge eyes.

  “Because he's mine. I wouldn't expect you to release him without getting anything in exchange, of course. You may have my blood.”

  Rizazhiin-Gyaan removed its paw, but it didn't move very far away. “I thought you'd gone away. Didn't you?”

  “I did. That was ten years ago. It's not so brief a time for a human.”

  “Oh, yes! A human! That's what you are.”

  This creature was such a weirdo.

  As I cautiously got to my feet, Vanth casually strolled into my viewfield and helped me stand, wrapping his arms around me. Unlike the st couple of times we'd met, he was looking all prim and proper again. Well, his own idea of prim and proper.

  I wasn't going to reject a source of comfort at a time like this. I hugged Vanth back, resting my head on his shoulder. He felt as solid as usual, but something was wrong. Of course—there was nothing wrong with Vanth. I'd become more insubstantial than I used to.

  “Your blood,” Rizazhiin-Gyaan insisted.

  Vanth disentangled himself from me, removed one of his gloves, unsheathed that knife he seemed to always carry, and made a deep cut across his palm. He'd barely had time to remove the bde before Rizazhiin-Gyaan pped at the wound, wrapping a big white tongue all the way around Vanth's hand. If Vanth wasn't careful, that creature was going to eat his whole hand off.

  “That's enough,” he said after a while.

  Rizazhiin-Gyaan licked its lips. “You still have more blood left.”

  “And I need it to live.”

  “I'll never get used to the idea.”

  Despite that weird remark, Rizazhiin-Gyaan seemed happy with the bargain, or at least willing to uphold its side of it. It sat back on its haunches, still leaning over us with a curious look. I would've felt much better if it went away.

  I took a couple of steps closer to Vanth, so that I could grasp his wounded hand in mine and use a healing spell on the cut.

  Vanth examined the skin of his palm, opening and closing it. “Not bad for a disembodied spirit. Of course, if you didn't have a living body somewhere, you wouldn't be able to do it. Still remarkable in these circumstances, though.”

  “Thanks. Hey, can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  I rested my head on his shoulder, sighing with relief. “Thank heavens! I still don't know what is going on and I really want some answers.”

  He gnced at me sideways. “So you can’t talk for a while and you become even more incapable of shutting up than usual?”

  I punched his shoulder as hard as possible, just to make sure he felt my disapproval. Unfortunately, I'm not sure he did.

  Vanth ignored me, turning to Rizazhiin-Gyaan instead. He did that neck-stretch that technically counts as a bow. “Thank you for your understanding.”

  “I suppose you'll be eating the human bit by bit,” Rizazhiin-Gyaan said, interested. “Because your stomach isn't big enough for that much meat.”

  I don't care if my living body had been left somewhere far away. I know it shuddered.

  “Let's go back,” I said.

  “Let's.” Vanth unsheathed the knife again and pricked his finger, allowing a drop of blood to fall on the ground. “May the world open its gates.”

  That's what he'd done to send the ghost—Karolina Leni—away that first night. I was just seeing things from the other side. That drop of blood glowed with power. It swirled, spread, opened a rift into this reality and toward another. I thought I could see clouds on the other side.

  Yes, this was a power I could only dream of.

  Vanth picked me up in his arms. I couldn't tell if it made any difference, but I clung to his neck all the same. He jumped into the rift, into open air, and I fell right along with him. We fell through a sky—not the sky I'd always known, not a blue sky, but still some kind of sky over a dark earth where things seemed to grow. And as we fell, I glimpsed some kind of sun in this sky.

  It's alive. It's conscious. It sees you.

  This time, at least, I wasn't alone. I could trust Vanth wouldn't have jumped if we had no hopes of surviving the fall, at least. And to be honest, I liked the view. I could see so far away! The pins beneath rose into hills, and further on, into mountains. Something seemed to grow in the distance, some kind of pnt life as big as the hills.

  I turned to Vanth, to ask him if he knew what were those things. He had his mouth closed tight, as if he was trying not to throw up. Oh, well.

  A huge white thing caught up with us from Vanth's right side, the one I was facing. It looked vaguely birdlike, a short stubby body and vast V-shaped wings to catch the wind with. Its surface looked soft, but not feathery or furry. It unrolled a long prehensile tail-like appendage and wrapped it all around Vanth's torso and armpit. Seeing how we didn’t lost our bance, I suspected another one was doing the same from the other side.

  With the white bird-things to support our weight, we started to softly glide down. Beneath us, a herd of six-legged animals marched toward a boiling, erupting orange river. Some rge shapes here and there looked very much like buildings, and I thought I could see small creatures surrounding them, maybe even human-sized ones.

  I wanted to see more, and I wanted to stay all day catching the wind with the bird-things—maybe even glide closer to the herd animals and the gigantic pnts and the building-dwellers. But we touched ground in one of the first hills. As the bird-things released Vanth, I jumped out of his arms. He didn't look particurly steady and I didn't want to unbance him, even if I was just a spirit.

  The bird-things lifted their tails up to Vanth. He opened a wound on his palm again, and both of the bird-things pressed their tail-tips to it. If you looked closely, you could see Vanth's blood going up their tails—or whatever those were—and into their bodies.

  At least the bird-things were more polite than Rizazhiin-Gyaan, because they let Vanth go without being asked to. Once they had collected their payment of blood, they caught up another wind current and flew away.

  As I healed Vanth's wound again, I checked he didn't look any paler than usual.

  “Are you worried about me?” The way Vanth asked those questions, he sounded as if he thought I was stupid just for considering the idea.

  ”Just wanted to make sure you're fine.”

  “I am.” He looked into the distance, dark curls swaying in the wind. “You're the one who ended up away from his body.”

  “Yeah. I don't know how. I just fell asleep without noticing and woke up in that pce. Not gonna lie, I do find that a tiny bit concerning.”

  “You should. If entering someone's dreams is hard to do, drawing a third party into the Underworld is magnitudes harder.”

  “You're saying the necromancer is way more powerful than we'd guessed, is that it?”

  “No.” He was avoiding my eyes, I knew it. “I don't know how many separate parties are targeting you, but this wasn't the action of the same one who summoned the needleteeth. They never could’ve accomplished something like this.”

  I wished I could kick one of the tiny pebbles at my feet. Then again, maybe they were alive too.

  “I don't think this one meant to harm you, though.”

  “Because if they did,” I said, “they could've drawn me somewhere even worse. Or, like, trapped me up somewhere.”

  “You're smart.”

  “Yeah, well. Sometimes I think that's for the worse. I can think of all these awful things, but I can't dodge them.”

  Vanth looked at me then, and there was something almost soft in his eyes. “You still have me.”

  “Yeah.” I tried to smile at him, but I couldn't quite manage it. “And you did came for me! No matter what anybody says, you're always there when I need you.”

  He looked away once more. Strangely enough, I got the feeling he was almost bashful this time.

  What a weird guy.

  “For that matter,” Vanth said, very clearly trying to change the subject, “you haven't consumed hallucinogens since we st met, have you?”

  “Just a joint. Half a joint, actually.”

  “I suppose that might've helped the second necromancer along, but not to a very rge extent.”

  “Y’know, I did shrooms a couple of times and didn't even have any weird trip then. Kinda disappointing, but I guess it’s for the best. Anyway, do you think the second necromancer might have something of mine? Or something from one of my parents?”

  I was almost sure Vanth had arrived too te to hear Rizazhiin-Gyaan mention Jano Bariskol. If that name even meant anything to him.

  “I do think so,” he said.

  “Well, let me know when you find anything out. Drop by my dreams if you have to. Try to knock first though.”

  Vanth made a weird thing with his mouth, as if he was trying to smile, but immediately stopped.

  As I said, what a weird guy.

  I looked around. Those things slowly crawling over the mountains still looked like immense pnts. I kinda liked the look of them, but admittedly they seemed to be too far to be a threat. In the opposite direction, the way we'd come from, a long snaking road crossed the pin, ending on a tall severe structure that looked very much like some sort of castle or tower.

  “The Dreaming Monarch's pace,” Vanth said. “The gliders who broke our fall are her creatures. So is everyone who lives here, to some extent. I did her a good turn a while ago, so she's well-inclined toward me.”

  “And if she wasn't,” I asked, “she would've let us go spt?”

  Vanth raised his eyebrows. “Go spt?”

  “Yeah, that's what I said. Because her gliders drank your blood. Isn’t that payment?”

  “Yes, the basic currency of this world. What I meant is she allowed me into her country without any questions asked.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, then. No offense, but I think I'd rather go back to my body.”

  “Absolutely. Remaining here wouldn't be good for you. I simply wanted you to know not all of the Underworld is made of barren nds where everything is trying to eat you.”

  “I do appreciate that.” I took one st look around. “This is actually a really nice pce. Hey—is this one of the heavens?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Probably not? What does that even mean?”

  Vanth wielded the knife again. “It means the Underworld is unfathomaby vast, and most pces in it have very little to do with humans. Now stay still. I'm going to send you into your body.”

  I stood straight with my arms firmly against my sides. “If you get distracted, can you send me into another body?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “No. But that's no reason not to shut up.”

  I made a point of rolling my eyes at him. Vanth, naturally, didn't deign himself to recognize that.

  “Closing your eyes might prevent disorientation.” He pricked his finger again, and went down on one knee to write on the ground. Again, I recognized something he'd done that first night, when he'd cast that protective spell on my family's farmhold. I think it was the same script, but I couldn't be sure.

  I closed my eyes. Like in my dream, I felt weirdly insuted from the world around me, though I could feel the wind, the sunlight, the ground beneath my feet.

  Then, none of those things.

  Then, a new sensation, so strong it almost felt as if I was being spped. Something against my back. Something undoubtedly, wonderfully firm. I was back on my bunk, and the train rattled and creaked beneath it. I opened my eyes. Looked at the compartment, half in the dark and half in grey moonlight. With a deep sigh, I closed my eyes again.

  Now there were two necromancers, weren't there? Though at least only one of them seemed determined to murder me. Joy. And I'd barely set foot in Omedura before Mayor Retana dragged me into their ploy against the bck market.

  At least Vanth was on my side.

  At least Vanth—

  —Vanth had showed up just in time, just like that first night—

  —that first night he'd showed up right in time to help me, and I'd mistaken him for the necromancer, because the needleteeth were afraid of him.

  What if I hadn't been wrong, though?

  What if there was no necromancer? The first one, I mean. What if Vanth was the one who'd summoned the needleteeth?

  I curled up on my side. That was a baseless conjecture. Vanth had nothing to win from something like that. If he wanted to py the savior, he wouldn't have hit me. I only thought that because I was tired and scared.

  But neither could I trust Vanth. Not until I knew everything he wasn't telling me.

  broccolifloret