Two bodies lay in the circular chamber.

  Starting at the head and right down the middle of their bodies, the two women were fused to the floor as if they had been lying on their sides facing one another with their hands clasped and had simply sunk into the cold rock. One of the women was an elf. The other a sheep-kin with curly red hair.

  Judging by the diary, the bodies must have been there for almost five centuries, but their royal clothing looked new and they showed no signs of normal decay. Rather, they were still animated. Their positions were fixed wherever their flesh met the floor. Neither could they move much of their mouths or tongues nor anything along the plane of their spine. However, each had a free arm and a free leg which continued to hold to one another.

  The elf’s simple dark dress and the sheep-kin’s black tunic and trousers were divided along the same line.

  Witmie and Durn looked away gagging.

  The room was decorated with time-worn, once-cozy furniture, some of which was also embedded sideways in the floor. Countless books and strange objects were littered including a few bronze coins engraved with various designs.

  Sure enough, the mirrorless half of the vanity was there. A scribble of bloody runes surrounded the women and behind the elf sat an open grimoire.

  The mobile eye of each body turned toward the entering party.

  Thesa retched and Merijest looked on solemnly.

  Yabba was unbothered and, laying on its side, seemed to want in on the game.

  “Wha–what…” Thesa started to ask but couldn't find the place to start.

  Each woman's eye followed Merijest as she stepped slowly over to the grimoire and picked it up.

  Crouching, she flipped through the pages. “A lot of this is related to either the Dead Tongue, Chymistry, or both,” she said in a quiet voice as if she were in a library. “But there’s references to a lot of esoteric schools of magic…a lot of obscure Mystery Cults and some ethereal elements related to inter-realm communication and travel. It keeps mentioning ‘[Travelers]’ but I’m not clear on what that means.”

  “What do we do?” Thesa asked. “I don't want to hurt them but, um, this can’t be in-line with the cycle of life and death,” she added, recalling her contract with Merijest.

  “They must be in pain…” Merijest nodded.

  The elf woman knocked her hand on the floor in a deliberate pattern, drawing everyone’s attention, but she couldn't speak so it wasn’t clear what she wanted to communicate.

  Then the Foxtapus came barking into the room with the Bronze Motif jingling behind.

  Approaching through the corridor was a humanoid. The left side of its head with a curled horn and red hair, the right side an elf. Their clothing was half dress, half tunic and trousers, having been merged along the same seam.

  In a harsh voice produced with the mismatched halves of their vocal tract, the amalgam spoke. “Leave.” Their speech seemed less practiced than their movements. “Why here?” They coughed.

  Thesa was reminded again of the Otomoid Human she vaguely recalled from her childhood. She started to move behind Merijest in a panic but caught herself as she remembered her responsibility to protect her demoness. She stepped in front of Merijest.

  As the amalgam moved, the halves of each body set into the floor moved in tandem. The amalgam’s two hands, one elven and the other sheep-kin, held one another.

  Merijest stood to face them. Her voice remained calm and quiet. “We are taking this passage to the castle on the other side of the mountain.” The amalgam made no readable expression.

  “Forgive our intrusion, please.” Merijest continued. “But might I ask a question before we leave?”

  The amalgam nodded. A slight difference in the length of each half of their neck caused the motion to tilt to one side and Thesa initially mistook this for a gesture toward something in the room.

  “Death is my domain. How did this happen? And why did you disrupt the natural cycle of death? Your spirits are fused in that chimeric body but also present in your separate halves. I've never seen something like this and I would offer any help I can give.”

  “Not death,” the amalgam replied. With their sheep-kin hand they gestured to the elven half of their shared body. A few centuries was nothing to some elves. “Place and being.” It was clear they chose each word carefully to minimize the amount of talking they would need to do.

  Merijest tilted her head. “What happened? We read what was left of that diary. If your lover was dead then how is she part of you now?”

  “Flini,” the amalgam replied, pointing now with their elf hand to the sheep-kin half of its body, “not killed. Sent past void realm.”

  “What’s the void realm?” Thesa asked.

  “The name is misleading,” Merijest explained. “It’s not exactly a ‘realm’. Every realm we know about is arranged in a cluster of multidimensional space, and all of those realms are surrounded by a complete vacuum of all matter and energy and magic and even time. Plenty of mages have conjectured wildly about what might be past that vacuum, but it’s all guess-work and hypotheses.”

  “Not guess now,” the amalgam choked out. “Flini sent to world. No magic. Wriv,” now they pointed to the elven-half, “brought back.”

  Nobody in the party knew how to respond to this. It sounded impossible.

  “Who would have enough power to send someone there in the first place,” Thesa asked, breaking the silence.

  “Vrulch. Knight,” the amalgam replied uncertainly. “With divine help.”

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  Everyone looked at Thesa.

  “That’s the name of one of one of the early [Archknight Superiors],” she said. She crouched down, too overwhelmed to remain standing up.

  “Crossing void-realm without divine help dangerous,” the amalgam said, gesturing with both hands to itself. “Easy done. Hard controlled."

  “But aren’t you in pain?” Thesa asked.

  The amalgam gave another tilted nod. “Worth more,” they said as they joined their hands together and interlaced their fingers.

  Merijest nodded. “I don’t know what to think of this,” she said. “But I can’t very well interfere in something I understand so poorly.”

  “You believe them?” Durn asked in a [Group Message].

  “I’m not sure,” Merijest replied, “but I’m not certain they’re lying either. There’s definitely something going on here that goes beyond what I know.”

  Thesa let out a sigh.

  “But we should keep moving,” Merijest continued. “We need to follow the other half of this tunnel.”

  The amalgam spoke up again. “[High Devil], help us?”

  “Didn’t you just say you don’t mind being merged?” Thesa asked.

  “Love together!” the amalgam interlaced their fingers again to emphasize that they were referring to the merged body. “Not apart,” they continued with a gesture to the floor-bound halves of their bodies. “Elf life spans long. Not forever,” they added.

  Merijest looked at the scene. “I don’t have the power or the knowledge necessary to do that safely,” she admitted after a long pause. “But I can look for something on our journey. Then in the future I might be able to return.”

  “Do you want to become a [Familiar]?” Thesa said. She was proud to have remembered to ask. “You don't have to come with us if you don't want. You would just create a magic connection with Merijest and we can even communicate over long distances with her [Message] spell.” Thesa realized she hadn't even explained the purpose of it all. “Oh right, and the reason is because Merijest is trying to gather power to take on Beautuk. Have you heard of him?”

  The amalgam shook their head, no but also shrugged with uncertainty.

  “Back then, I believe Owtem still had a greater presence in this region,” Merijest cut in.

  The amalgam nodded.

  Thesa continued, “Beautuk is Owtem's son and he's supposed to be a [Deity] of life and light but he's been tricking everyone and taking advantage of them and holding people in an endless torment. It's hard to explain. But the more followers, and especially the more [Familiars], that Merijest can gather the more powerful her [High Devil] class becomes. So, yeah.”

  “Actually,” Witmie added, “Isn't it possible that the divine help Vlurch got was from Beautuk?”

  The amalgam nodded. Their face contorted with anger on the left side and sadness on the right. “Yes, [Familiar]. Not travel.” They gestured to their trapped bodies. They needed to protect themselves.

  Merijest asked, “Before I create the link, what should we call the two of you as a unit?”

  The amalgam shrugged.

  “What about WrivFlini, or FliniWriv,” Witmie suggested.

  The amalgam shook their head. Again, they spoke economically, “Name first wrong. Name last wrong. No first or last.”

  Merijest replied, “what about Zynchra? It’s a name from an old legend.” The amalgam nodded with recognition as Merijest continued, “A pair of fairy women who disguise themselves as a single human to blend in with society.”

  “Aren’t they the villain in the story?” Thesa chimed in.

  “Not if you’re willing to question the narrative,” Merijest shrugged.

  With a thought and a nod, Zynchra agreed.

  The party decided to rest in the chamber with their new ally/allies. Apparently, the path to the other castle could be challenging.

  ***

  Later, as the party prepared camp on the side of the room, Thesa stared at her arm where her Peppermint Wyrm had once been incubated. Frostbite chittered and skittered on her shoulder. The disruption of my body… Why does it scare me so much… If Merijest was taken and that was the only way…could I give her that much? She looked away from her arm and breathed slowly.

  “We’re looking for information on a village called IsterNgiv,” Witmie explained. She was holding her map aloft for Zynchra to look at while the party proceeded. Witmie was still hesitant to look directly at the new party member, but she was determined to overcome it.

  “If I/I rightly recall, that name appeared in a map,” Zynchra [Messaged]. Without the physical pain, Zychra’s communication were lavish but somehow still in-sync, creating a unique, mental echo. “Yes, yes. Let us see what I/I can find. I/I believe it is not terribly far from this very [Hex].”

  At that, everyone, especially Thesa, perked up.

  “Could you point it out on this map?” Witmie asked.

  Zynchra nodded unevenly then walked over to a pile of books on the floor. After a quick search they looked up again. “Indeed, I/I think this is the book. When she/she and I/I remember it is likely to be certain,” they [Messaged].

  The book’s title was Plume and Granby's Atlas of Candigth 4132 and sure enough one of the pages showed a dated, local map.

  Thesa began to ask, “Candigth, is that…?”

  “That's an older form of ‘Candix’. The sounds drifted over time,” Witmie replied as she furiously copied information onto her own map.

  Zynchra shrugged, one shoulder raising higher than the other.

  “I think I get it,” Witmie said. “The placement of IsterNgiv on this map seems to line up with the Boglands near the center of the region in modern day. For some reason I never wondered where the bogs came from.”

  “That's a good point,” Merijest replied. “In MunFi novels terrain emerges gradually over time and while that does happen in reality, most large features like this had some sort of magical origin.”

  “But if that’s true, was it ever in ItherBeau to begin with? It’s way further than I would have thought,” Thesa asked. The mountains in-between were confusing enough. How did mom and I cross mountains so quickly? she wondered. Her head was heavy. “So before we can get there, we have to make it out of ItherBeau after all…”

  “Wait,” Witmie interrupted, “not to get off track, but didn't Zynchra mention a realm without magic? And Beautuk can send people there?”

  “That is concerning,” Merijest nodded. “It makes me wonder why he hasn't done that to all of his detractors.”

  “To depart across the void is imprecise. Without unbelievable amounts of energy, one often sends or receives extras,” Zynchra [Messaged]. Their research had clearly paid off. “And indeed, the recovery period is terribly long.”

  When Thesa looked over at Zynchra, she noticed the Bronze Motif no longer appeared frightened. In fact, Zynchra held out their elven hand for the Bronze Motif to perch upon.

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