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Chapter 19 - Forsy in the Record

Palais was dead. Marianne would recover from her injuries and her curse, but Palais had died, and it was the Sphynx’s fault. I failed to notice myself falling to my knees. I snapped back to awareness, only to discover that I was nearly prone.

Hawthorn was quick to grab the stunned, bleeding Florence, and with the aid of Zippo, she was carried easily to the door of the maintenance building. Heinrich-slash-Mako appeared, and joined Ciro in escorting Jacksie and Rowena into Louisiana. The both of them were limping, seemingly too injured to walk normally, though they still ran through the doorway after Florence had been taken. Touchstone bolted immediately towards the two mammals carrying Florence in order to console the fox, and Zuma was quick to rush to my side. It was at that moment that I noticed that Beck was nowhere to be seen.

“Hun, are you alright?” Zuma’s words were the only ones I heard.

“Beck, Beck’s not-”

“Are you OK, look at me?” I thought that I was speaking intelligibly, but I then noticed that my words were a dazed mumble. Palais was dead.

I mustered my willpower together and enunciated. “Zuma, Beck’s still in Michigan with Clare.”

Hawthorn’s pointed ears twitched as he picked up on our conversation, right as he made it to the stone wall. “OK, everybody go back through the door, we’ll look for Beck, but we all have to leave. It’s over.” Killing the Archlitch, even with Marianne in our ranks, seemed an impossible feat, and now she was gone. I didn’t have the heart to tell anyone that we could have killed it. Only Palais and I were there to see the cat stop me from using the poison.

But I had enough of my wits about me to stop everyone from retreating immediately. “Wait, guys, Clare’s Daggrebosko is still in the house, be careful.”

“Zuma,” barked the wolf, “What does the Daggrebosko do?”

“It’s mostly focused on sneaking around, casting glamours, nullifying sounds in an area. Clare never ordered this Daggrebosko to kill people, but other Summoners in history used them for assassinations.”

“OK- shit, shit! We can’t let it find Beck first-” Then, Touchstone appeared from behind the wolf, seemingly out of thin air, and laid a wing-paw on the one-eyed wolf’s shoulder. “I got it.”

Hawthorn wore a look on his face full of deep worry. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Hawthorn nodded once, and the two animals exchanged a brief, one-armed hug. “Check Marianne’s lab first.” The blackbird slinked off into the house. Florence sat down against the stone barrier. The Mracksiogne continued his orders. “Zippo, Zuma, you two are Apothecaries like Forseti, right?” The two mammals nodded. “Raid Marianne’s laboratory, see if you can’t patch up anyone with broken bones, treat the wounds on Florence’s face, and make as many Xianne’s Wards for Errant Minds as you can- Anything else you’d think might be helpful. We cannot let ourselves get possessed.”

“What about me?” I asked.

“You need to go with Heinrich and find Clare. If you find Beck before Touchstone, all the better. Ciro and Claudia, you and I will wait in the hallway and prevent anything else from getting in. Florence, I want you in our sights at all times, OK?”

Ciro cocked his head in opposition, “Shouldn’t we just take the key out?”

“Forseti’s right, we have no idea how the Oiggy’s teleportation magic works. It might even be waiting in the house for all we know. But we’ll wait by the door, and if we see it out here, we’ll rip the key out ASAP.”

Florence then asked, “What about Marianne?”

“She’s in her werewolf form now, there’s nothing we can do. Now, go!”

The lupine Mracksiogne’s disciplined plan and clear voice had done a marvelous job of pulling everyone out of their shock and getting them out of the beach as soon as possible. Before the big cats could carry the smaller fox to the lab, though, I took the dull purple vial of poison from my hip pouch and thrust it into Florence’s paws.

“What are you doing?” asked the vixen.

“We don’t have any Foulgydan to watch our backs anymore. The Archlitch is coming for you, and I’m not leaving you unprepared.”

“But what about the rest of-”

“We don’t have time!” shouted the Apothecary tiger, “That cut isn’t that shallow, we need to treat it immediately.” Florence begrudgingly accepted the poisonous vial, and everyone continued towards their prospective positions. Touchstone lingered in the Frote Foulgydan’s main hallway, “Lab’s clear.” And in no time, Heinrich-slash-Mako and I were alone in my house.

The entire structure was still and silent. I remember what Zuma had said about the Daggrebosko’s ability to deafen sounds, but the subdued ambience wasn’t too dissimilar to the Upper Peninsula’s normal milieu. No feral frogs nor insects would sing in the wintery cold, and the wind had died down enough to bring the nocturnal air to a sudden stillness. Still, the otter and I crept slowly, keeping our steps as light as possible. I remembered an old trick that Touchstone taught me, to walk as close to the wall as possible in order to prevent any floorboards from creaking. Heinrich followed suit, and in no time, we hugged the borders of my living room quickly enough to escape the stuffy air of my house and enter into the fresh night air. The stillness and silence remained present outdoors as it had indoors.

I then almost asked the necromancer if he’d seen Marianne’s unusual glass-plane imprisonment spell after all, but now wasn’t the time. I instead whispered, “Heinrich, do you have any sensing magic?”

The otter’s voice remained low as well. “I can’t scry without the otter’s implements. I can try and sense magic, but that’s not accurate. What does the Record say?” the Summoner lurks nearby.

“Yes to Clare, nothing on Beck.”

“Does he see us?” he watches the door.

“OK, yeah, he just saw us leave the house.”

“That stealthy façade was for naught, then. Joy.” Heinrich-slash-Mako then extended from their stealthy, hunched-over stance and opened up their arms wide as if to announce an award ceremony. “Come out, dear little pine marten, and let’s nip this in the bud.” Even coming from a comrade, the sudden rise in volume caused me to startle, and I saw myself standing back-to-back with the Necromancer in order to watch if the Daggrebosko would attempt to sneak up on us. Nothing moved in the house or in the woods. Heinrich continued, “Come, come, Clare, don’t be a tease-”

“Heinrich, the Daggrebosko makes him paranoid.”

The hyena puppeteered the otter’s arm in order to stroke the long fur on his chin. “Hmm, that’s inconvenient. What else can he summon?”

“At the moment, only a fire-breathing chicken.”

“Ahh, of course, the Basan. And I’m correct in assuming he learned how to summon that first?” That would make sense. The Basan was far less powerful, and I recalled Zuma even telling me that Clare kept it around as a pet more than anything.

“Yeah, I think so.”

He then broke into a whisper again, in order to obscure the plan. “The pact-bourne habits of a Summoner are stronger the longer the pact is upheld. Have you recalled anything about the Basan that would draw him out?”

My eyes went wide, “Oh wait, he eats fire!”

“That can be easily arranged. And people mocked my pyromania.” Heinrich brought his paws together, and the hyena performed Cast Fire. The spell worked almost exactly the same as when Hawthorn performed it, and a few pre-chopped logs that I kept near a stump ignited immediately into a small campfire; this time, with what almost seemed to be a purple tinge. “Once we see the Summoner, I’ll let Mako do his thing.”

And so, we waited, silently watching the crackling fire and casting our gaze towards anything our minds registered as movement, real or imagined.

A minute went by, and I doubted that the old hyena was correct about his assumption regarding Summoners. We simply stared at the flame, patiently. And then, finally, a tangible shape in the distance began to stir.

Heinrich shuddered once, and his flamboyant tone of voice disappeared completely, replaced with Mako’s far-more-normal affectation. His stance went wide, he brought his paws together, and traced invisible sigils into the air, chanting, “Avgrosd Ghorlgnam, I release you, Avgrosd Ghorlgnam, I release you…” over and over again. The unseen glyphs manifested to the naked eye, and glowed as though there were a blacklit neon tube inside of the symbol’s borders. Mako needed no herbal components; he could perform the spell by intuition. A deep growl manifested from the bushes which stirred. The voice was certainly unsettling and guttural, though not nearly as demonic as Marianne’s earlier, and then I heard Clare shout; or moreso, a corrupted being within Clare shout: “Kill me! Kill me!”

Mako’s chanting continued, and the pine marten’s body started to become rigid, standing up with completely stiff legs. His elbows were bent in perfect ninety-degree angles. He started physically vibrating, and his eyes glowed with an uncanny, almost blacklight-looking violet light. I could almost hear distance, discordant whispering from behind me.

After a minute or so had passed, the lights were extinguished, and Clare fell to the floor. The mustelid was still conscious, and his gaze was immediately affixed to the glowing fire, which he crawled towards. The otter didn’t notice at first “I don’t know why Heinrich didn’t let me go earlier. He knows I can resist that sort of possession-” But then he saw the shambling mustelid and panicked, “Shit, I can’t unsummon fire! Clare, stop!”

I was already running over to the pine marten, attempting to grab onto him with both arms before remembering that one of mine was severed. He writhed like a maniac, as he often did whenever he saw an exposed flame, but I could tell he wasn’t abnormally possessed anymore. Mako stamped out the fire before Clare could hurt himself, and the Summoner was able to collect his wits and calm down. His breathing was labored, and he sounded completely exhausted. “God… God, that was horrible.”

“Everything good upstairs, Clare?”

“That was one of the worst experiences I’d felt in my life. The Archlitch made life, killed it, and shoved it inside of my brain. It both didn’t understand life and wanted to die, because all it knew was pain.” The Summoner’s eyes were glazed over, and his voice settled into a monotonous drone. He was not good upstairs.

“OK, we’re gonna get you over to Zippo and get a Ward for Errant Minds cast on you immediately-”

Clare then suddenly snapped into an entirely different trance; one of wide-eyed concern instead of dazed hypnosis. He only said two words: “Crossbow bolt.”

The context of the pine marten’s seemingly random declaration failed to penetrate my memory, until Mako responded first. “Florence’s friend bought a crossbow.”

“Fuck,” I spat, “Marianne’s lab.”

The otter Channeller helped our Summoner compatriot to his hindpaws as he pushed my uninjured shoulder with his other paw. “Go on, I’ll help Clare.” I started dashing towards the magical door, fearing the worst.

Touchstone ended up seeing the most. He was scouring Marianne’s great abode for either signs of a scared hedgehog or a supernatural assassin, and had finally found odd, aberrant scrapes in the plaster in various corners of the ceiling. He was able to follow the direction in which the blades scratched the ceiling, and was able to deduce that the Daggrebosko was making a circuitous route throughout the first floor of Marianne’s home, seemingly waiting for someone to be alone. When Mako began to perform the exorcism, the Daggrebosko began to symbiotically feel the effects of a spell being cast on the pine marten. It panicked, and broke from its glamour in the main hallway, with Touchstone waiting in the lounge. The door to the laboratory was left open, and Jacksie had the perfect vantage point to watch as Touchstone shouted a brisk, “There!” The tabby cat’s black crossbow was never out of arm’s reach, and she pushed the Apothecary puma aside as he was applying a painkilling poultice, landing a miraculous shot in the shoulder of the Daggrebosko, causing it to shriek and slink off before it could cut the red-winged blackbird’s head off.

The Daggrebosko does not make for an easy target. Its dark gray torso and limbs are composed of thin strands, bound together, almost looking like a taut grouping of vines no larger than four or five centimeters in diameter. The vine-like appendages end in sharp, almost metallic phalanges that look like silver blades, save for a sickle-like thumb that allows it to cling to the ceiling. Its head is a complete mystery, and due to the creature’s infamous paranoid nature, it is wrapped up in a perpetual glamour. No one has ever witnessed what the head of the Dabbrebosko looks like. Not even the Daggrebosko itself has the ability to dispel it.

I could only perceive the aftermath of the scene. Zuma was caught up in a taut, surprised pose, not uncharacteristic for a frightened cat. The puma’s fur practically stuck out on end due to the fact that he was almost skewered by a crossbow bolt. Jacksie paid him no mind and grunted hard as she attempted to pull back on the heavy string and load another bolt, just in case.

But there was little use to being distracted by each and every individual threat. Zippo was lucky enough to have found the Sphynx’s stash of pre-made poultices and sachets; some of them even being the Ward for Errant Minds ,luckily already prepared. Mako brought the panting pine marten as far as the hallway before the both of them collapsed. Clare felt a sharp pain in his shoulder. His connection to the Daggrebosko had been maintained far longer than his previous connection with the Adacaius; the pain was sharper and more tangible. But the Teleraine Summoner was able to fight through the pain and announce, “I’m in control now, I’ll find the Daggrebosko and treat his-”

“You better take this immediately.” The white tiger tossed a sachet towards the smaller mammal.

“That I can do. Pi-weiye Yiushiou!” The little cloth back disintegrated into dust. From around the corner, in the other arm of Marianne’s hallway, I could hear Hawthorn shouting. “Watch out, more are coming!” Without verbal details, I could only pray silently that another corrupted flock of birds hadn’t appeared. Having made sure that the stakes of this current scene weren’t particularly dire, I made a mad dash into the hallway to watch as Claudia slashed at mid-air with the Bey-Ohrial Blade, and Ciro made the necessary hind-paw stamps required to mold earth into what I assumed were sharp spikes. The threat seemed to be terrestrial.

“All good, guys?” I called out.

Hawthorn, being the only witch not actively casting any spells, replied, “Just more corrupted animals. No sign of the Archlitch.” Which meant that we couldn’t safely close the door. “All good in the lab?”

“The Clare situation is handled. Beck is still missing.”

“What does the Record say?”

I never enjoyed consulting the Record if one possibility involved a close friend’s death. they’re in the woods.

“Oh shit, Beck’s in the woods!”

I assumed that the animals in the laboratory could hear me. Clare was busy tending to the Daggrebosko’s injury, having pulled a reluctant Zuma from the lab to help with that task. Touchstone took the puma’s place and helped apply the pre-made herbal remedies. Mako was busy systematically making sure that everyone performed the spell to strengthen their psychic defenses. After making my announcement, I assumed that one of the animals would have followed me back to Michigan. And perhaps I was too quiet, or too unclear, but my assumption was wrong.

The all-too-familiar uncanniness of my dark, quiet home tricked me into thinking that stealthy threats still prowled within its walls. It could have been true, considering how little I knew of the Archlitch’s ability.

And I had suddenly found myself out in my front lawn, without having any memory of walking towards there. My eyes felt heavy, and my mouth tasted weird and stale, as though I had been abruptly woken up from a midday nap. It didn’t feel like teleportation, and I had the vague, indescribable inclination that time had passed.

Something knew that I was within range of something horrible, and pulled me away before it could happen.

Marianne had cast the spell for Ball Lightning. Zippo had prepared Agdwar’s Straightjacket and the Eternal Burning of the Pagan’s Blood. And though she would never be found without it, it didn’t make Claudia’s Bey-Ohrial Blade any less useful.

It shouldn’t have come to my surprise that the Archlitch had prepared a spell to level the playing field as well. It was called The Carving of the Moon, and Zippo was the first to recognize it.

I wasn’t present for this particular plot development, and had to ask the white tiger later about what had transpired. Hawthorn, Ciro, and Claudia watched as the body of the Oigd’yiadttigdeit finally materialized in a location; on the sandy beaches of Illinois Beach State Park. The wolf’s paws were perpetually hovering over the temporal key for just the occurrence, but having the element of surprise, the Archlitch was quicker. A dark, cryptic sigil appeared in the sky; a crescent moon with a horizontal squiggly line running through the middle of the heavenly body, accompanied by other minor, esoteric glyphs. Instead of glowing like Mako’s sigil, however, it appeared as a black line that almost seemed to fold space around itself and suck up what little light was in the symbol’s vicinity, appearing almost like a black hole in the middle of the air. Its sudden appearance was accompanied by a quick boom of thunder. No one could bring themselves out of their momentary, horrified stupor.

And one by one, the light seemed to fade from everyone’s immediate area. From the animals at the front lines, to the injured in the lab, light itself faded, as if sucked away by some magnificent force of gravity. No one could even see their own paws in front of their face. No one could even breathe.

The following action took place over the span of a minute. Otherwise, everyone would have died.

The Carving of the Moon is an old, ancient spell, thought for a long time to simply be a myth and nothing more, like the Archlitch itself. Its methodology and components had been lost to time, and no living animal could remember how it was performed. Even less known is how the witches of yore could have even gotten onto the moon, for the name of the spell is almost thought to be entirely literal. Scholars believe that a hidden, buried section of the moon itself was carved away, and as long as the spell is sustained, the victims of it are banished to the heavenly sphere until they choke to death. The ancient texts fail to mention how a teleportation at such a massive distance could be achieved, when the furthest known teleportation spell only worked within the bounds of the Earth itself, with the aid of the temporal keys. And the ancient texts fail to mention the moon’s blistering sunlit heat, or chilling cold on its dark side, which could kill an animal far quicker than the lack of oxygen could, but no one in recent times had found themselves unlucky enough to be a victim of the spell to perform such research. Until today.

No matter what was true or what was myth, everyone had been ripped away from reality and were slowly being choked to death as long as the Archlitch maintained the spell.

Everyone except for me.

And except for Florence, who stood before the great beast on the beach in Illinois, staring down the horrifying five-limbed monstrosity. For the only thing that the Archlitch needed was Florence to be alone.

The arctic fox couldn’t have known the nature of the spell, and couldn’t have figured out where her friends had disappeared to. But somehow, she was able to deduce that the Archlitch couldn’t cast any spell of real significance as long as her friends remained vanished. And so, she waited for the span of time it took me to run back into my house, then Marianne’s, then the beach. Ten seconds of running.

I lingered in front of the stone wall, having squeezed through the tight gap as quickly as I could. The other fox merely stood in a wide stance, not even so much as breaking eye contact with the infernal being’s praying mantis eyes. But she didn’t stand close enough to prompt the Archlitch from possessing her. In her claws was Jouxlya’s poison clutched, but she was too far away to cleanly break the vial across the Archlitch’s flesh. They were both waiting. the fox, to become poisoned. the Archlitch, for nothing in particular. in rage, and grief. it failed to trap the Godhead. for how could it?

I wanted to call out to her. I wanted to snap her out of this daze, and have her run back towards me. Away from this situation. I couldn’t have known about the Carving of the Moon, and the thin thread from which my close friends’ lives hung. I couldn’t have known what the arctic fox had planned, once I had somehow defied the odds and made it to her side once more. So when I yelled out, “Florence!” She turned. Four long, red lines remained etched in the fur of her face, scars that would never completely heal. And her eyes were so suddenly wet with snot and tears as soon as she returned my gaze.

“Thank you.” She spoke so quietly that I couldn’t hear the words. I could only read her lips.

She then ran towards the Archlitch.

I don’t even remember screaming. I only heard my own voice, somewhere in the distance, echoing in a resounding, “No!” The Archlitch remained, perfectly still, an insect in waiting. Adrenaline coursed through me, enough to propel me towards the fox and monster. Florence ran with the measured temperance of someone who knew they were about to die, and I ran in a mad dash as if I could prevent it. The Archlitch remained, perfectly still. it only thought of revenge.

Only a few more seconds had passed. Florence smashed the vial against the being’s hard, bony skin. She didn’t even so much as yell. It didn’t appear to be the sort of flesh that could soak up fluids, but the Oigd’yiadttigdeit’s body sucked up the dull, violet fluid all the same, as if it were a sponge. The Archlitch remained, perfectly still. I had caught up to Florence. And then, reality began to warp around us. The Archlitch was dying.

For a brief moment, we were in some abandoned factory. Then a parking lot to a diner that had closed down for good. Then a back alleyway in Chicago. And finally, Mary Johannson’s home. I’d only been there twice, for no longer than a few seconds either time, but I recognized it immediately. the key lies in a pocket. I also recognized the eerie whale song, the same noise that the Oigd’yiadttigdeit had made when it died, now being bastardized by the entity that killed it in the first place.

I turned to see the massive, five-limbed monstrosity, somehow crammed into the space of this meager living room. Its limbs folded painfully onto themselves, in order to compensate, and still, it writhed in its death throes, knocking over lamps and tearing gashes into the upholstery of furniture. And then, an inky darkness began to manifest from the shadows of the home, clinging to the Oigd’yiadttigdeit’s body like little puffs of pitch-covered cotton. It was being entirely consumed by the thick blanket of shadow, despite the fact that it wouldn’t live much longer either way. The Oigd’yiadttigdeit was now becoming the Shadow, and I was almost too late to realize what that meant.

I spun around and gripped Florence’s arm with my good arm. But I didn’t cause Destroying Angels spores to infiltrate her bloodstream like with my bluff from before. Even with the expedited effects of the poison, it would have taken far too long for the toxins to take. I knew I could buy enough time if I utilized Amanita bisporigera. Now, there was no time to opt for anything other than the Death Cap.

“You petty bastard!” I growled, feeling my hackles raise, completely unable to keep the presence of hatred from my voice. “You get nothing from this! You lose, you’re- You’re dead!”

Florence’s lips moved. “I have nothing to say to you,” said the Archlitch.

Tears stung in my eyes, and I strengthened my grip on the fox’s forearm. I could practically feel my claws digging past the epidermal layer of her skin. The Archlitch didn’t smile, not did it laugh, nor did it contort Florence’s face into a visage of anger or sorrow. It simply stared into my eyes, entirely composed until the life drained out of them. The death of the Archlitch happened much faster than I figured it would take my spores to kill it. It was as though it had left of its own accord.

I fell to my knees, then completed the trajectory by landing on the right side of my face. I landed on my dismembered shoulder, but couldn’t even so much as register the sharp, sudden pain as anything other than a dream. Liquid poured from my eyes and nose, pooling in the acrylic plush flooring of some fox’s home in Chicago. Somewhere, out of the corner of my eye, a massive shape dissolved into nothingness. I held my gaze on Florence’s arm, half expecting her body temperature to suddenly snap to that of a corpse. She was still warm, but I could feel that her pulse was gone. I could feel that her heart had stopped.

I let Florence die, after everything. So much had happened, and it all ended up in this situation, regardless of it all. It was as if Florence had never come up to my cabin, as if Florence had remained in Chicago, scared to blindly follow the trust of some mysterious note. All possible routes lead to the fox dead in this home. I cried, deeply and uncontrollably. And then I noticed a sharp, metallic shape, digging into the pads of my good paw.

I couldn’t fathom how it had gotten there, but I was in too much grief to perceive the sudden twist of fate as reality. For there lay one of Marianne’s temporal keys.

There was no world in which that was possible. I found myself clutching the piece of metal once more, hard enough to hopefully draw blood and convince myself that it was, indeed, an aspect of reality. My breathing slowed, and my sobbing had died down. I didn’t have a plan, so much as I allowed my body to go through the motions, as if it were being puppeteered by someone smarter.

I pushed the key into the first lock I saw and opened the door. Marianne’s empty hallway lay on the other side, completely quiet. I gripped on Florence’s body, forgetting at first that I could only make use of one of my arms. She was heavy, as is any body when you’re only able to pull on it with one arm, but despite the strain of pulling a seemingly impossible weight, adrenaline won over, and I was able to drag her across the plush flooring, into the hard wood of a hallway in Louisiana.

I once again forgot about my severed arm, and attempted to open up the second door with it, before remembering myself. I let Florence go, opened the door leading to my own home, and dragged the fox’s body once more across the threshold. I stumbled into my house like a zombie, meandering towards a backpack in my bedroom that I vaguely recalled having what I needed. Moments later, I was standing over Florence’s body, gripping onto a mason jar stuffed with herbs; the Andle’ehnban Doorway.

Time skipped one last time, and I stood in the lair of the Fungal Entity, standing before Florence’s body.

The musty smell of mold penetrated my palette, warm and comforting. The subtle green glow of foxfire, emanating from the jack-o’-lantern mushrooms, or a few stray lilac bonnets, worked well to light the warren. I could vaguely make out the moist, soil walls of the cave, held together by roots and rhizomorphs. The air was uncannily humid and hot, the moisture seemingly coming from nowhere. A shape lurked in the shadows, the light of the bioluminescent fungi proving too weak to let the figure’s presence be noticed in full detail.

What brings you here, my child? The voice in my head sounded as though it completely lacked pitch or tone, as if consonants and vowels were being forced through a body without working vocal cords, as if rumbling thunder tried to speak.

“Please, I- I poisoned her, and I need your help, because I can’t cure her.” My voice slowly transformed from a hypnotized drone into a panicked warble. The shape snaked through the shadows, weaving dexterously towards us as if the body didn’t belong to a bear.

There is a way in which I can cure this.

The Fungal Curse. I hesitated. “Wait, I don’t think-”

My child, my loyal Acolyte. You worry that I may bless her, in the same way I blessed you?

I swallowed hard. I didn’t feel comfortable subjecting Florence to the Fungal Entity’s mycological influence without her consent. “Wait, I don’t know-” But the voice filled my mind telepathically once more, washing over me with their soothing, comforting presence.

You worry in error, my child. I can cure this poison unto itself, without the need of blessing the fox.

I gripped my torso tightly, almost as if I were ashamed. My mycelium connected to the network beneath the soil. Spores began to flow into me automatically. Comforting, soothing, mind-altering spores. My broken voice cried out once more, “P-please?”

You have done so much for me. You have been my truest friend, and you have taught me more than I could ever hoped to have learned. I would aid you anytime you beckoned me to, my child. You only need but to ask.

I woke up.

The ground beneath my paws was smooth, like glass. It almost looked like a salt flat, reflecting the sun. I reached down to touch the floor, and it was cold. It was then that I realized that both of my arms were attached.

The sky was a swirling tapestry of psychedelic colors, though none in particular were neon or vibrant. Streaks of blue, red, purple, green, and brown, all in robust earth towns, danced and folded around each other as though the sky were made of liquid. Below my paws, glass. Above my head, color. Both extended into infinity.

And off in the distance stood a fox. He was too far away for me to make out the color of his eyes, but as I started to walk towards him, I noticed that he wore a burgundy beret, a light blue, short-sleeved button up shirt, and a tie with diagonal orange-and-blue stripes. His fur was yellow, and his headfur was red.

It didn’t take long for the other fox to notice me as well. Where I was shambling as if in a daze, the other fox walked casually, as if he’d been here many times before. As we drew closer, it didn’t take me long at all to realize that I was looking at myself.

His smile was friendly, and his eyes shone with anticipation for something exciting to transpire. Unassuming brown mushroom caps grew from the sides of his face. “Hey there,” he said, “Which one are you?”

I furrowed my brown in confusion. My head throbbed suddenly, a headache just short of being a migraine. “Um- sorry?”

“Like, uh- Which one are you? I think we look pretty close to each other, I can’t tell if you’re younger or older than me.”

I scratched my head, “I’m so sorry, what?”

“Like- what’s the last thing you remember happening?”

Our gaze broke as I stared off into an infinite horizon. “I, um… I think I just saw Florence kill the Archlitch, and-”

The other fox’s casual demeanor dropped, and he stared at me as if the headlights of a car shined into his eyes. “Oh, shit… Shiiit, you’re, like- Oh wow, you’re the first one.”

“The first what?”

“The first one to, like, be in the Record. This is your first time here, right?”

I shrugged, “Yeah, I think so.”

The other fox scratched at the headfur under his hat as he mentally put the pieces of a puzzle together. “Damn, I was not expecting to be the one who- Or, like, I was not expecting today to be the day that I gotta introduce you to all this.”

I decided to just let him speak, though the both of us waited awkwardly for a moment while the other fox waited for me to speak. He waved his paws as if cleaning a window, hoping to mitigate any awkwardness.

“Oh, shit, sorry. I’ll explain. So, you just brought Florence to the Fungal Entity, right?”

“Right.”

“So- OK, so that whole arc, the book you’re writing and everything, that’s your first steps towards the Godhead- Which, OK, I’ll explain. I think that word’s probably been floating around in your head a bit, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, the future version of you- or, um, of us- Not me, I’m still totally an ameteur with this sort of thing. But, the future version of us gets, like, really, really good at accessing the Record. So much so that he can just, um, get into the Record.” He made a three-point turn with his arms raised like he was introducing a show. “Which is, like, uh… This is the Record. Kind of.”

“It’s just colors, and also whatever’s going on with the floor.”

The other fox shook his head. “I don’t really entirely get it yet either, but an older version of us kind of explained it. This is sort of like a waiting room, or the space just outside of where the Record… is, I think? I don’t know. But it exists in its own little realm, and since Fate is real- Sorry, had to pull the Band-Aid off on that one. Fate’s real and there’s nothing you can do about it. But it’s still really cool, because this place exists without time being… like, a thing. So, if Fate’s real, that means that time sort of happens all at once, because it’s fixed or something, and places like this can exist. The future version of us can pull past versions of us into this space to meet up, exchange important information; mostly just to tell past versions of us really important stuff leads to the future version of us becoming, well… The Godhead.”

I squinted in disbelief. “So we, um- We become God?”

“I think we use the term ‘Godhead’ so it doesn’t sound so pretentious-”

“That sounds even more pretentious! I think it’s from Dune-”

“No, that’s God-Emperor.”

“Oh, right. So…” I then found myself scratching my own head. “OK, so, the future version of us forces past versions of him to meet up to make sure that we do things that lead to us becoming God- er, the Godhead?”

“Thank goodness you understood all that. If I weren’t talking to myself, I feel like this conversation would be a nightmare.”

“So… Like, how do we become God then?”

The other fox shrugged. “I don’t know yet, the Godhead never told me. I’m still pretty young.”

“How old are you, if I might ask?” I didn’t want to ask any spoiler-related questions regarding my own life, if it turned out that free will was a lie and that I’d go mad if I thought about it too much.

But the other fox narrowed his eyes accusingly. “How old are you, again?”

“I’m twenty-six.”

The other fox cast a thousand-yard stare, out into infinity. “Oh, God-”

I reached out to touch his shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“Dude, I’m, like, thirty.”

The both of us then broke out into cackling, vulpine laughter. “Man, shut up,” I said, bullying my older self. But then, the other fox suddenly grabbed me by my shoulders and shook me around a bit. “I totally almost forgot. This isn’t the only thing that the Godhead can do with the Record- I mean, obviously, we can read it. But there’s more! Once we become the Godhead, we could go back in time and basically possess ourselves to make sure that we do the necessary steps required to, like, become God and not die and stuff. So the good news is that you’re essentially immortal until you become the Godhead, but the bad news is that you’re going to have missing time and wake up in weird places sometimes, especially if you’re in a dangerous situation.”

“Wait, but, like-” Before I could continue, the other fox bulldozered over me.

“That’s how the door to the Archlitch’s home got unlocked the night that everyone was looking for the Oigd’yiadttigdeit. You did that. And that’s how that note with your address on it got delivered to Florence in the first place. You drove all the way down there and dropped it off yourself.”

“Wait,” that seemed too far-fetched. “But I don’t remember losing an entire day.”

“Nah, man, you’d be surprised how much you don’t notice when the Godhead possesses you. You get used to it, though. Sometimes I’ll trick myself into thinking that I just spent an entire day getting high, not really doing anything, but oops! I took a little trip to Cincinnati unconsciously- That’s not a spoiler, that’s just a hypothetical.”

The existence of Fate still proved to be the most uncomfortable aspect of this encounter, but the distance between first and second place wasn’t altogether that wide. But then, my mind focused on something else entirely. “Wait, is Florence-”

“Yep, Florence is safe! Florence is good, she’ll get through this.” I hugged myself right there, feeling tears once again well up in my eyes. The other fox returned the hug immediately, squeezing tightly as he continued. “That’s why the Godhead set this up as your first encounter, actually, so that you’ll know that Florence makes it through. Just a little treat, for after I explain everything.”

I broke the hug off and wiped the few errant beads of moisture from my eyelids. “So, Florence is a pretty important person in our lives?”

“Spoilers, but yeah-”

Another thought occurred to me. “Wait, so- Is Palais still dead?”

The other fox broke the gaze and stared off into the distance once more. “Yeah, that was inevitable.

I nodded, processing the information. “And Marianne still…” I couldn’t find the words to articulate the question well, but the other fox knew the answer regardless.

“Yeah, she fucked up big time. That’s just… that’s how these things play out, you can’t change it.”

And still, I asked, “Is Marianne OK?”

The other fox looked back and smiled, “She’s alive! She- Oh shit, I don’t think I remembered what happened, and I even wrote the book and everything. Did the Archlitch, like, break all her bones, or-”

“No, her lycanthropy took over.”

“Oh, right! Right! Nah, they find her- Oh, yeah! Your friends are stranded in Illinois right now, but half of them live there, so- Ah, shit. I think it’s Florence’s gay friend, Damien, that picks them up? They go out and find Marianne while- Well, I guess they’re doing that right now, if you’re hanging out with the Fungal Entity and all that. They survive the Carving of the Moon though.”

I blinked in confusion. “The what now?”

“Oh, right. Make sure to ask Zippo about it before you write this chapter. It’s complicated. They’re all good, though- er, safe. Our friends.” The other fox then teasingly wagged his pointer finger. “No more spoilers, though.”

I nodded earnestly. “Yeah, no, totally.”

“So, uh… yeah! Welcome to the Record. This is, like- OK, I’ll say one thing, this is a pretty big revelation, but the Godhead’s good about not giving you every little piece of information. You can still maintain the illusion of free will… for- OK, so that’s not the most comforting thing I could have said-”

“Nah, that makes sense, though. You probably only know slightly more than I do, anyway.”

“Bingo.”

“Wait, does the book do well-”

“Bitch, spoilers!”

I paused, but couldn’t help myself. “Does Zuma get good at the-”

“Bitch, spoilers, I swear to God! Zuma’s fine though. I didn’t mean to say that in, like, an incredibly ominous way.”

“For sure, for sure.” The two of us stared at each other for a moment, dawdling in another awkward silence. “So, like, what now?”

“We just kinda wait until we snap back to reality.”

“What do we do in the meantime?”

I saw, for a brief moment, the other fox look down, and then up into my eyes again.

“Wanna make out?”

I gasped, ever so briefly.

“Yeah, sure.”