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Maybe Tomorrow

-

Princess Kimmi and the

Temple of Bloom

Part 11

Conclusion

Epilogue

by Dissident Love

copyright 2017 and 2018

Hir Royal Grace the Princess Kimmi plucked one blunt black claw along the back of the blade protruding from hir belly, and was rewarded with the familiar high, singing tinnngggg that could only belong to Shingen's blade.

"Huh," shi mused. Shi slid that claw back until it reached where cold steel met the deep, near-white fluff of hir belly. There was a tingle and a flare of warmth in hir paw, but sure enough that blade seemed to merge, seamlessly and painlessly, with hir flesh.

STARLIGHT! I DID IT!

Kimmi's head rang with the psychic sounds of Shingen's hysterical shouting. Shi suddenly realized why the little rat was annoyed at hir own inability to control hir volume. SHINGEN! WHAT... EXACTLY... DID YOU DO?

I PIERCED THE VEIL BETWEEN OUR WORLDS! PRINCESS, YOU HAVE BEEN ABDUCTED!

The huge taur looked around at the ring of figures, easily four deep. Sparkling, terrified eyes stared out at hir from the depths of those hideous black and white robes, and to a one they were now looking at the misbegotten husky with something they couldn't recall feeling for more than a lifetime: hope.

All except for one.

The snow leopard standing before hir was tall and well-built, clearly and amply female below those shapeless smocks. Black and white fur, struck through with grey and silver spots and highlights, seemed a remarkably similar counterpoint to Kimmi's own, marred only by the self-inflicted streaks of blood cross-crossing the feline's chest and the twin trails of crimson leaking from her punctured lips.

Kimmi hoped to find out the leopard's name, if they survived, but for now shi knew shi was staring into the eyes of Seriphos, the patron goddess of this subterranean hell.

"I figured that out," shi muttered under hir breath, making sure that little internal door was open to allow Shingen to hear. "Can you do any more than talk to me?"

I... uhm... I don't know, now that you mention it. The... the ritual didn't exactly specify what would happen, precisely. I am hoping that, with time, I can-

"BOW YOUR EYES AND GIVE YOURSELF OVER UNTO ME!" Seriphos screeched, pacing gingerly to the side. She fairly vibrated with fury, droplets of blood actually flicking from her fur and splattering onto the bark-strewn earth.

STARLIGHT!! WHO IS THAT?!?

"Does it even matter?" Kimmi sighed, circling the enraged deity. Shi wasn't surprised to see that Shingen's sword still seemed to be emerging from hir torso however shi moved, even though it barely projected beyond hir immense breasts. "I mean, really, after all this time, does it matter WHO wants to kill me? Or why?"

THIS HAPPENS TO YOU FAR TOO OFTEN!

Kimmi declined to answer. There was far too much happening, far too much at stake. Seriphos's eyes remained locked on the blade. If Kimmi could have seen below the level of hir bust, shi would have observed that the pure, brilliant white light was emerging not from the metal itself, but from where it met hir flesh, as though shi were filled with the light of a cold sun that could only escape around the edges of the sword.

Shi discovered, with some grim amusement, that Seriphos's eyes actually blinked and flinched away when shi could manage to direct that light towards the leopard's face.

She's not a fan of the light...

LIGHT? WHAT LIGHT? ARE YOU UNDERGROUND, AS WELL?

You wouldn't believe me, it's this GIGANTIC chamber, and it's all built around-

-A TREE ENORMOUS BEYOND THE BOUNDS OF RATIONALITY?

That is a good term for it.

Kimmi saw double for a moment, hir mind filled with images sent from hir soul-bonded partner. The descent from the tiny, pyramidal peak of the temple, nearly falling through the humped, collapsing ceiling of the vast central chamber. Hir gorge rose at that recollection, even though it wasn't even hir own memory.

Hir own teeth bared with fury when shi saw the bottom of that chamber from Shingen's perspective, an endless plain of sticks and bones.

... so many dead...

PUT IT OUT OF YOUR MIND FOR THE PRESENT, STARLIGHT! CONSERVE YOUR CARE FOR THOSE THAT YET LIVE! I CAN SEE THEM THROUGH YOUR EYES, AND THEY LOOK TO YOU FOR SALVATION!

Kimmi doubted there was salvation in their eyes; as far as shi could tell, this was simply the next grim disappointment in their immediate futures, another tick of time slipping away being carved into the stone prison cell of their interminable servitude.

There'd be a lot more salvation if you could come help me!

I AM WORKING ON THAT!

WORK FASTER!

Seriphos snarled, unaware (hopefully) of the conversation that had been taking place in Kimmi's mind, but then the twisted fury on her face was replaced by utter, unnerving calm. "If Occam thinks shi can wrest control of this nexus from me with the help of a talking taur, shi is sorely mistaken," the leopard said, once again all smooth and dulcet tones. This contrasted rather horribly with the blood dripping from hir fangs, and reminded Kimmi of Ninos. "Can shi hear me, little one? Is shi speaking to you now?"

Kimmi thought furiously. There were shouts in the distance, the line of robed figures that had transported Seriphos's essence dispersing. More young furres were pounding down the ramp, and frantic discussions sent even more back up. Two by two, the prisoners were pairing up, more than a few of them shedding their robes and standing fully nude, paws clasped together. They were too thin, uniformly bedraggled and dirty, but they clung to one another regardless.

"Shi says you're scared," Kimmi said, pulling hir lips back in a grin shi did not feel.

STARLIGHT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

I DON'T KNOW! WHEN DO I EVER KNOW!?

"LIES!" Seriphos barked, that powerful voice cracking from the exertion. Just as quickly, it was back to being warm and charming. "Maybe shi isn't speaking to you after all. Maybe... not anymore. That wouldn't be it, would it?"

The leopard's smile was wide and knowing; it took all of Kimmi's self control not to swallow fearfully.

THAT'S IT!

WHAT IS IT, STARLIGHT? DO NOT DO ANYTHING FOOLISH!

IF THERE WAS AN ALTERNATIVE TO FOOLISH, I'D TRY IT!

Kimmi had spent many days and nights training with Shingen, working with hir devastating steel gauntlets, working with twirling staves made from small cherry trees, even working with spears purchased from local garrisons. The focus was always speed over strength, accuracy over force, timing over size, patching the many, MANY holes in hir martial prowess. While his compliments tended to start with "While you never would have even been accepted as an acolyte by my order...", he had to admit that shi had come a long ways in the half year of their travel together, and shi had been looking forward to trying hir hand at a proper opponent.

All of that went out the metaphorical window. Kimmi rose to hir full and terrible height, towering over the possessed snow leopard, and rushed forwards. Hir great arms swept in from either side, fingers curled, claws as extended as shi could manage. Hir aim was a little difficult, for shi kept hir spine arched as far back as shi could endure, until shi could barely see the leopard's hood over the twin swells of hir breasts.

This meant that shi was leading with Shingen's blade, and the intent was clear: to simply cling to the vile body-snatching goddess, and drive Shingen's enchanted sword home.

I AM SORRY, shi wailed at hirself, WHOEVER YOU WERE!

- - - - -

Shingen's own head ached from the double-vision, sifting through the random deluge of Kimmi's memories. Whereas he had descended from the apex of the vast subterranean pyramid, shi had apparently awoken in its deepest cellars. He smiled with grim satisfaction as he saw hir, through hir own eyes, simply smash hir way free from the heavy iron chains and split the dungeon door asunder.

Hir mind's eye then flickered to an endless sea of black and white robes, a vertigo-inducing vision made all the worse by the bizarre, crawling, wholly inorganic tilework that seemed to be spreading through the temple Kimmi found hirself in. He remembered seeing similar onyx and alabaster tiles during his own descent, but those decorations looked to be receding, melting away, peeling back like frost on a window.

Of course, he thought. The temple on my side has served its purpose, while the next... is still growing.

He stared down at his sword... or where his sword had been only a minute before. He clung desperately to the handle, knuckles groaning with the strain, even though there seemed to be no resistance, no weight whatsoever. The simple copper hiltpiece gleamed brilliantly, and he was forced to squint to make out any details. Where there should have been more than an arms' length of cold, intricately forged steel beyond that hiltpiece, there was nothing.

He had struck forwards with the blade, aware of not just his place in this Universe, the droplet of existence he danced upon that had been drawn from the pool of time, but aware the pool itself. His mind had reeled, comprehension flooding him of the true scale of not just his world, but the brilliant suns that spun and flowed like countless grains of sand through a blackness that made even this tomb-like temple seem warm and welcoming. He did not know the word 'galaxy', or the word 'universe', but he was grasping their meaning nonetheless.

With a sound as deafening as a collapsing soap bubble must seem to the gnat, his sword had pricked, punctured, and passed through that infinitely vast and infinitely thin barrier between realities, and he truly beheld, for the very first time, his true size and significance, his importance, in the scheme of all of Creation.

In spite of all that, he somehow found the strength to push that blade forward, until there was naught but a sliver of steel remaining, nothing but a blazing source of cool, unearthly white light the likes of which he'd never before seen.

That sensation of abyssal insignificance threatened to send him slumping bonelessly to the ground, content to close his eyes and join the countless bones that littered this graveyard...

... until it was replaced with the simple, pure, ineffable joy and fury that was Kimmi's voice in his mind.

Communicating with hir now, he could still feel the bleak memories of that moment of true, fundamental awareness, memories he knew he would have to reconcile, but he found he could direct his focus to the task at hand, and to the sights and sounds pouring through their shared mental connection, through the portal between realities.

He was, perhaps, not as surprised as he thought he might have been to discover that the Princess was apparently involved in a bare-knuckle brawl with an angry goddess. If it could happen to anyone, he mused, it would almost certainly have to happen to hir.

I AM SORRY! shi wailed into his mind, the sudden rush of panic and determination causing him to flinch as though from a physical blow. Through hir mind's eye he saw hir self-image, a distorted projection as though painted on the inside of a hollow sphere, and there, protruding from hir belly, was his blade. It moved as shi moved, as though shi had sprouted a gleaming steel spike from hir navel. Flicking back and forth, time speeding up and backpedalling, he saw hir lunging for the goddess, wrapping hir arms around her, simultaneously smothering her and driving the blade, his blade, clear through the feline's body.

STARLIGHT, NO! he roared, as best as he could. YOU DON'T KNOW-

WHOEVER YOU WERE!

In that moment, he knew that the Princess had committed hirself to hir actions, for better or for worse. He'd often told hir over the last few months of their travels together that while shi was headstrong and impulsive, shi shied away from truly making decisions. Shi would mull hir options over, seemingly endlessly, and more than once had made their generally untenable situations that much worse. You must act, he had scolded hir. The warrior acts not with his limbs, or with his mind, but with his heart. The mind knows too much while the body knows naught, but the heart only knows that which is most dear, and most certain. The heart does not hesitate in an arena which knows no patience!

He regretted those words now, staggering under the weight of the sadness that already seemed to be burying hir heart.

Shingen's mind seized upon the idea to simply withdraw his blade, remove it from the portal and spare the possessed mortal's life, but instantly he was plagued with the terror that he might never again be able to re-establish the connection between their worlds. He had, in the last hour, unraveled one of the most enduring mysteries of the Humble Ancestor, of the chot-mei, of the entire society in which he'd been raised... but what unseen forces had elected to intervene in his life and guide his destiny could be counted upon to do so twice?

While he wrestled with that uncertainly, his heart acted. Good that it had done so, he would wonder later. If he'd tried to come around and convince himself to try the Forms of Unreality in this moment, while maintaining the thinnest of passages between his world and wherever Starlight found hirself, he would have laughed.

The Forms had worked only a smattering of times over the last few years, and only for a few seconds, but with any luck, that would be all they needed.

---

Seriphos, and the spotted leopard shi violently manipulated, sprang back in shock at Kimmi's sudden charge. Her wicked claws, still dripping with her own blood, rose up to shield her face, though her eyes never left the searing radiance of the sword that seemed to emerge from the taur's belly. She was fast, impossibly fast, legs pumping with a power far in excess of mere muscle and sinew, nerve and bone, but Kimmi's advantage lay in the more mundane dimensions of sheer size and fury, and shi just barely managed to keep pace with the fleeing feline.

Hir great arms came crashing down, all but clubbing at Seriphos. Kimmi cried out, feeling as though shi'd driven hir forearms against wrought iron. The leopard might have been a seamstress or a librarian or a hostler before her abduction, but now she felt like a living statue of stone, implacable and indestructible.

Shi drew hir arms in, which more caused hir to drag hir barrel forwards than to drag Seriphos back, but it was enough. In hir mind's eye shi could see the sword piercing the deranged goddess. Shi'd expected to feel a splash of blood against hir belly, fur still cool and damp from the vast overflow of hir own seed, but there was... nothing.

Seriphos froze as she was pressed against the taur's torso, Kimmi's breasts piling up ponderously against the feline. Kimmi froze as well, every sense screaming out for input, wishing shi could see below hir vast neckline.

One of the watching couples gasped, eyes wide and fearful. Others pointed, murmuring to one another, sibilant utterings of amazement and disbelief. Kimmi only managed to catch one snippet, and for a moment shi thought shi'd been victorious.

"... went right through..." a nervous and knock-kneed young goat hissed, almost hiding behind the considerably larger and wider canine grrl he clung desperately to.

I DID IT! Kimmi thought, hir moment of triumph feeling very small and insignificant indeed beneath a crashing wave of sadness.

NO YOU DIDN'T! Shingen snapped in hir mind. SEE ME!

Shi reacted instantly, knowing well those words from Shingen. The pair had spent months honing their mental connections, and with that command shi threw hirself fully into seeing what the little rat's mind put forth.

What he imagined seemed to confirm what hir own arms were telling hir, that shi'd skewered Seriphos on the blade protruding from hir belly, but that mental picture, ebbing and flowing as though shi were moving invisibly around the scene, was accompanied by a strange form of understanding. Shi didn't _know_what the Forms were, or exactly how Shingen had attempted to use them, but shi knew well what at least one of them could do.

The sword had pierced Seriphos only because Shingen had, for the time being, rendered the cold and impermeable steel as ethereal as star light.

"What...?" the husky asked, sliding hir hand down Seriphos's back and expecting, almost hoping, to feel the back of Shingen's blade. There was nothing but the strangest sensation of heat and cold as hir fingers passed through it, causing more gasps from the audience.

"Spineless," Seriphos spat in disgust.

Kimmi tightened hir grip, but it would have been as easy to hold back an avalanche. The leopard drove her knuckles hard into the Princess's ribs, forcing them apart and blasting the air out of the much larger taur's lungs. Feeling hir bulk leaning awkwardly to hir right under the onslaught, shi twisted hir barrel as Shingen had shown hir, trying to drop to hir left knees and slashing across with hir elbow. So far shi'd only ever attempted it on small trees, but those trees had most definitely taken the worst of the exchange.

The point of hir elbow connected with something small and hard, and even an ancient deity could have occasions to bow to the simple rules of inertia and physics. The upward blow lifted the feline from her feet and sent her soaring through the bubble of ruddy torchlight that marked the base of the Tree of Life.

All around Kimmi, every single figure, either naked or still wearing the hideous black and white robes of Seriphos's sycophants, screamed a single hoarse cheer when Seriphos slammed into the distant, mountainous trunk with a dense, reverberating thud.

Kimmi panted, hir left arm cradling hir freshly tortured ribs, pushing slowly back to hir full height. Shi swung hir wrist down and was not surprised to feel that Shingen's sword was once again solid. SHINGEN!?! WHAT THE HELLS!?!

I COULD NOT LET YOU TAKE AN INNOCENT LIFE, STARLIGHT! I HAVE SEEN YOUR MEMORIES... THERE IS AN INNOCENT WOMAN UNDER THE CONTROL OF THAT SPIRIT!

THAT 'SPIRIT' IS ABOUT TO RIP MY HEAD OFF!!!

AND YOU WOULD HAVE SACRIFICED ONE OF THE GOOD PEOPLE OF ASHCROFT IN YOUR FIGHT WITH THE LAW? THROWN THEM BENEATH THE BULL'S HOOVES TO BE CRUSHED AS A DISTRACTION TO SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE?

WHAT? I... NO! NO, NEVER!

Seriphos screamed once more, a grotesque sound that reminded Kimmi unpleasantly of the ancient rusted hinges on hir prison cell, during hir time with the slave-trading creatures beneath Estragonia. She stepped over and around the tumbling, twisting roots of the Tree of Life, each one as thick as Kimmi's barrel, stalking closer but apparently in no hurry.

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?!

WE NEED TO GET THOSE AROUND YOU THROUGH THE PORTAL TO THIS WORLD, TO MILFORD!

WHAT ABOUT THE ONES FROM THIS WORLD!?

I DO NOT BELIEVE ANY OF THEM ARE FROM THAT WORLD!

HOW CAN YOU KNOW?

SEE ME!

Kimmi's vision doubled as hir physical eyes tracked the slow, deliberate approach of Seriphos, while hir mind's eye was flooded with an explosion of confusing memories, snippets of conversation amidst an endless panorama of blue skies, green leaves and brown bark. Shi understood that Shingen had spoken to this Occam, the entity that Seriphos had referred to, and that Occam was somehow tied to these trees that existed in more than one place or perhaps more than one universe simultaneously.

Shi remembered, vicariously through Shingen's mind, the conversation they'd held in the boughs of the unfathomably large, and yet small, tree. Hir stomach lurched, visualizing a vast collection of spheres floating through an infinite void, and yet connected by weblike strands of pure cosmic light. Within each sphere was a Tree... and yet, within each sphere was a tiny fragment of Seriphos, each forever determined to fight, infect and eventually bring down that tree. In many worlds Occam had been the victor, surviving the onslaught, but in many others, far too many, the Tree had been severed from its counterparts. From all of these worlds, dozens, maybe hundreds, Seriphos plucked folks two by two, conscripting them against their will in her never-ending war.

Can they... ever get home? Shi asked hopelessly, unaware that shi had, for hir, started to whisper in hir mind.

I do not know, Starlight. Occam is not all-powerful. But there are passages, portals... and some of them can be repaired, in time, I believe. BUT FOR NOW YOU MUST DEFEND YOURSELF, AND WE MUST FIND A WAY TO DISTRACT SERIPHOS!

Kimmi shook hir head, the disorienting double-life resolving itself into the cruel smile of Seriphos's leopard-host. She stood a handful of yards away almost casually once again, no longer the hunched, slavering beast Kimmi had struck hard enough to shatter every bone in her body. "You are a remarkable beast," she purred, tapping her lips thoughtfully, an eerie mirror of the mannerism she'd affected when possessing Ninos's body. "A little... brutish, perhaps, but there is a certain appeal. Perhaps you will make a fine chariot for me."

With a brush of her leonine paws, Seriphos seemed to inspect the bleeding wounds she'd inflicted upon her own body. Rubbing a red stain distastefully between thumb and forefinger, staring at it as though wondering from whence that liquid could possibly have sprung, a shiver passed through her body.

Kimmi's eyes widened and hir spirits dropped further still when shi realized that the seeping wounds upon Seriphos's puppet were gone; the leopard stood whole and unharmed once more. "I must apologize for my behaviour," she said, eyes wide and concerned. "I so seldom get guests who are any fun at all, and I have forgotten my manners."

Kimmi's tail twitched at the tone; it was one shi knew well. That smug condescension shi heard so often from the lips of those first encountered when shi and Shingen arrived at a new town. Word of the 'talking taur' had spread, but it was rarely ubiquitous, and even more rarely believed. While shi kept hir muzzle shut, porters and carriagemen and bailiffs and farmers would crack jokes about hir physique, hir ridiculous outfits, and ask why such a powerful beast wasn't more securely leashed.

That tone...

Hir Royal Grace the Princess Kimmi sniffed and plucked at a barely-visible thread protruding from hir cleavage. Hir ribs screamed as shi straightened hir posture, hir knuckles burning with bright purple agony, but shi wasn't about to let on. A plan was forming.

STARLIGHT, THAT IS TOO DANGEROUS!!

DO YOU HAVE A BETTER IDEA?!?

"Chariot?" shi asked, affecting hir most cultured tone. "Am I to pull you across the sky, forever in pursuit of the transit of the sun? I remember that story from my youth."

For just a moment, Seriphos frowned, and a flicker of confusion passed over her face. Kimmi could have shouted for joy, broken ribs or not, but shi kept hir emotions under lock and key. "You think perhaps too literally, or perhaps the opposite," Seriphos replied, once again casual and pleasant banter. A sword still protruded from Kimmi's belly, and a crowd of imprisoned, brainwashed slaves still watched from a safe distance, but for all of that there still seemed to be nothing beyond this polite conversation. "These bodies are the... unpleasant requirement of my duty."

STARLIGHT, Shingen cried out in hir mind. THIS SERIPHOS SEEKS TO CONSUME ALL LIFE IN THE WORLDS IT INFECTS!

"Duty?" Kimmi asked, cocking hir head.

"Unity, little one," Seriphos said grandly, spreading her paws as though the answer could not be more obvious. "From chaos and disorder, there come multitudes, and endless sea of confusion and struggle and pain and despair and futility, but from the many come One. A million brief mortal lives can become infinite."

THE BONES HERE! Shingen continued, his voice bouncing off the inside of hir skull. THESE TEMPLES ARE ITS MIDDEN HEAPS! ONE SINGLE TOMB BUILT AROUND A SINGULAR POINT OF POWER, BUT EXISTING IN COUNTLESS WORLDS! A SEA OF BONES, THE REMAINS OF THOSE CONSUMED!

"Infinite," Kimmi said with exaggerated dubiousness. "That's what you call becoming your... snack?"

"Our snack, little one," Seriphos purred, stepping closer so slowly Kimmi had to keep double-checking the leopard's faint footprints in the sawdust-strewn dirt. "As my chariot, you can bring unity to this world! A world that has done you nothing but wrongs, despised your existence, from the very day of your birth."

The taur's tail twitched, just once. "And you'd put a stop to all that, hmm? No more birth, no more death, right?"

"You don't understand," Seriphos sighed. "You are young. I've watched the chaos you... creatures have wrought since you first sprouted tooth and claw, wave after endless wave of poor misbegotten souls cast violently against one another. Occam saw this misery and was so delighted shi strove to overrun each and every world with you squalling, mewling sacks of flesh and worry."

"Some of us rather enjoy those," Kimmi retorted, remembering the first time a hesitant young mother had allowed the colossal husky to hold one of her babes. He had fit into the palm of one of Kimmi's paws, no larger than what shi would consider a small sandwich (one made with only a single loaf of bread), and when shi'd brought the wrapped little bundle up to her nose, he'd started giggling uncontrollably. In the end, Shingen had nearly been forced to pry the baby from Kimmi's paw, so reluctant was shi to stop holding him.

"Knowing what's waiting for them? A thousand meals later and they're big enough to start fighting one another for made-up, meaningless concepts of wealth and power and love. Ten thousand and they're ready to go to war and kill in another's name. That isn't a 'precious gift'... it's a death sentence."

Closer... just a little closer, you bitch...

STARLIGHT!!!

You just focus on the portal, Shingen! You focus on getting them out of here!

YOU CANNOT FIGHT HER!

I know.

"And you just... want this 'flesh sack' so you can save the world, hmm?" Kimmi asked, barely able to keep the snarl out of hir voice.

"It is an impressive body, I am forced to admit, by the standards of this plane," Seriphos nodded. "Large and strong, if a little ungainly. The world above is quite different from yours. Strange hairless creatures, great towers of stone and glass, machines of steel that float through the sky, and weapons the likes of which few even here can comprehend. It wouldn't be long before they use them to scour this entire planet clean of their pestilence, but I am a merciful Goddess... I can spare them that untidy and withering end. With your... help, of course."

"Of course."

STARLIGHT!!

If I can save these people, and I can save this world, then it's worth it!

BUT WHAT IF-

MY HEART HAS SPOKEN!!! Kimmi roared, and in another plane of existence Shingen was driven to one knee by the force of hir conviction. BELIEVE IN ME, SHINGEN! IF YOU WANT TO GIVE ME THE SLIGHTEST CHANCE OF SEEING THE SUN RISE WITH YOU ONCE MORE, I NEED YOUR FAITH IN ME!

"Your world," Seriphos said softly, now close enough to touch. "Estragonia... Ashcroft... Milford... even those repulsive little slavers under the mountains... you have a fondness for them."

"I do," Kimmi said thickly.

"I remember that world. Occam's acolytes nearly drove me out, nearly destroyed my cognizance. Hir doomed little pets darkened the hills for miles in every direction, there were so many. Shi cares not for their pain, their suffering... all shi wants is more. Eventually, I will turn my attentions to that world again, now that they've forgotten me."

The leopard's expression turned sly. "Of course, I don't need to... certainly not right away. I am a patient Goddess. Ten years, a hundred, a thousand? I am patient. I would be willing to wait, let all you've ever known eke out their little lives, even that scaly creature, Bister. It would be an entirely different world when I return, not one that would ever have even known of your existence. I can wait, and spare them all... if you desire."

Thought so.

"You're very generous," Kimmi snarked, letting hir doubt and derision show plainly; it was no great feat of acting to do so.

"You would be wise to respect my offer, little creature," Seriphos snapped. "I do not enjoy patience, and my magnanimity has limits!"

Kimmi tapped the blade protruding from hir midsection. "You sound like someone I know," shi chuckled dryly. "It's a pity you two cannot meet."

LEAVE ME OUT OF THIS! STARLIGHT, IF IT KILLS YOU, I AM NOT SURE I WILL BE ABLE TO MAINTAIN THIS PORTAL! EVEN NOW I'M NOT ENTIRELY CERTAIN HOW I'M STILL MAINTAINING IT!

Then I better not let her kill me until you've done your job! I'm quite good at not getting killed, you know.

THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO BE FLIPPANT!

On the contrary...

Seriphos extended her claws, still covered with chalky red flakes, and held them poised over her breast. "Or, if it is preferable to you, more... honorable, I can eviscerate this puppet while you watch. And then maybe... that little pony right there," she said indifferently, gesturing seemingly at random. "Then those two girls there. Then I can arrange to have Ninos brought before me, and you can watch one of your own kind remove her own entrails. Then maybe-"

"ENOUGH!" Kimmi snapped. "You've made your point!"

"Have I? Maybe a better example needs to be made, your Highness."

Kimmi glowered, hir mitts twitching into fists. "You think you have what it takes to handle this body?"

"You pathetic little thing, I've devoured empires mightier than your world has ever known!"

"Aren't we special." Kimmi lowered hir head until shi was nose to nose with the possessed leopard, staring into eyes that would have been a bright and lively blue, but were now dead chips of ice. "You want this body so bad? I'll give you one last chance to take it from me. But only one. All or nothing, I believe is the phrase."

Seriphos blinked again, but this time the momentary confusion gave way to mirth. "And you feel you've somehow... pulled a fast one on me, hmm?" She laughed, her shoulders shaking. "Oh, you are a remarkable little creature. Perhaps I should let Occam have a way with you some time. An entire world composed of you would certainly give me a smile!"

STARLIGHT!!!

Do your duty, Shingen, Kimmi said calmly, closing hir mind off from their shared connection. And let me finally try to do mine.

Seriphos reached up, and touched Kimmi's cheek.

---

Farther than could be measured but still somehow close enough to touch, Shingen initially recoiled from the sudden absence of Kimmi's presence. It was different from waking up in Milford the day before (could it only have been the day before?) and being unable to sense hir, the vague disassociation caused by the great distance between them difficult to properly grasp or identify. This was as though a leaden door had slammed shut on his face, a palpable physical sensation of of both weight and void. Kimmi, hir boundless energy and optimism, hir helpless sense of worry and anxiety, hir somewhat terrifying rage... all of it gone.

He sensed something, but it was cold, and pale, and did not bear further scrutiny.

"Do my duty," he mumbled, wondering if shi had somehow picked that up from his memories. They were three simple words, that undoubtedly had been joined in such a fashion countless times before, but it seemed jarring that the most final passage writ during his recent readings of the chot-mei would also be the final words of the Humble Ancestor before he departed forever.

Surely it was just a coincidence, his mind assured him, but his heart wasn't listening.

He stared down at his hands, and the point where his sword disappeared into thin air. The portal existed, but it was hardly more than an inch high. He pushed the blade down, and it moved, with great reluctance, but the portal seemed to close in its wake like waves on the open sea. He couldn't help but wonder if that meant that the sword was also moving down hir body... and, for that matter, why did the sword appear right there? Shi was his beacon, his anchor, the focus of his intent and his energy, but it still prevented many frustrating logistical issues.

Think, his heart spoke. Think of the words of the Humble Ancestor. Think of the path His words have taken through the chot-mei.

And that was the weirdest part of all, perhaps. The goddess of the Tree of Life, this Occam, seemed to know rather a bit about the Humble Ancestor, despite not having met him personally. Shi (and the voice had been rather clear on the pronoun vernacular) explained that hir predecessor had been in contact with him, and in a rather circuitous way had a hand in the writings of the chot-mei. It had been difficult to follow hir exact words, but shi had quickly explained that the texts upon that scroll were not written, in the strictest sense, in order. Or rather, they were written in order, chronologically, but not in the chronology of a single plane, or a single incarnation of the author.

He was still trying to figure out how the chot-mei could have been written by not one, but DOZENS of Humble Ancestors, but realizing that there were a thousand thousand realities besides his own, each with a Tree of Life, each with a Temple of Seriphos, and each taking part in their eternal struggle, it didn't seem so strange that there might be more than one such progenitor. That they apparently were aware of one anothers' existence from a young age raised more questions, but now that he knew at least one of the secrets of the scrolls, he was confident he could decipher more.

For his present issue, though, he was still trying to figure out the scroll's enigmatic writings concerning traveling between planes of existence, which were written more like drunk poetry than anything instructional.

Think, his heart urged again. Do your duty!

The bizarre ramblings (his heart twinged at referring to the Humble Ancestors writings so dismissively, but there were not many words more accurate!) kept referring to the passage between worlds in metaphors and euphemisms. Many mentions were made of the Humble Ancestor's Sword, which defended his life countless times and yet never once had drawn blood, quite like Shingen's own. Many more references were made to fruit, and fingers, and the 'riddle of steel', which was as familiar to him as any children's riddle.

His tiny paws gripped the handle of his sword as though letting go meant certain death, which he supposed was true. He could see no steel... just short white fur, the bronze hiltpiece, and then a brilliant star of white.

Steel becomes brittle, but is powerful when guided by flesh.

Flesh becomes weak, but is powerful when guided by will.

Will is indomitable.

It seemed so obvious. The obvious solution was almost never the correct one... but, as Kimmi had often pointed out, what was obvious to one could be inscrutable to another. Was this another of the Humble Ancestor's riddles?

Feeling only the cold, damp, dead presence on the other side of the portal, Shingen did not try to withdraw the blade, or to cut the portal larger.

The little rat set his heels, and pushed forwards.

The hiltpiece disappeared into the blazing point of white light.

And then his left paw.

And then his right.

---

Hir Royal Grace the Princess Kimmi knew this room well. There were only two rooms in the whole castle in which shi was allowed, the warm room and the cold room. The warm room was bright and fuzzy, with ever so many wondrous toys and dolls and stuffed bears and cats and dogs and unicorns for hir to cuddle with. There were blankets and pillows, mounded higher than shi could reach even standing on hir hind legs, and tapestries for hir to try climbing when the Tall People weren't there to put a stop to such adventures. There were warm naps by the little fires, there were warm snacks by the book shelves, and there was warm tea whenever shi wanted. Shi liked the warm room.

This was not the warm room.

"Shi's really quite intelligent," one of the Tall People was saying. Kimmi couldn't really tell them apart; except for King Papa and Queen Mama, the Tall People all sort of looked the same in their warm beige smocks, and smelled the same, a mixture of soap and soup. There were a few who seemed... happier to see hir than the others, and shi was starting to figure out which was which, but sometimes shi was wrong and there were screams when shi hugged the wrong pair of legs.

"I'm sure shi is," King Papa said softly. He always spoke softly. Kimmi had once heard a storm through the high, high windows in the warm room, a sound that was quiet and unfathomably far away, but still filled hir with the impression of strength and power. That was King Papa; far away, and powerful. "Shi still... wags."

Kimmi wagged hir tail harder, hearing hir name.

"Shi brings us books to read to hir, and shi'll find the page where shi wants us to start. I swear, Your Highness, sometimes I can hear hir humming along with the words!"

Queen Mama sat with her hands folded in her lap, next to the warm table, the only warm part of the cold room. When Kimmi was brought in to see the King and Queen, hir favorite pink blanket was always brought in and spread out on the table for hir, to make hir comfortable. "Shi seems happy."

Kimmi yipped, wagging again. Shi tried to crawl forwards across the pink landscape, but a pair of gentle hands pulled hir back. Hir ears drooped, but shi had expected that. Shi was Not Allowed to get too close to the King and Queen.

"How are hir language skills developing?"

One of the Tall People cleared their throats. "As I said, sire, shi hums along with the story books."

"Shi is only two. Almost two. Two next week. It's perfectly normal for the first words of an only child to be de... layed... a... bit..."

The cold room became the quiet room, with both Tall People seeming to shrink into their beige robes. Kimmi twisted hir barrel around to face them, smiling as hard as shi could to try and cheer them up. Shi didn't like it when the Tall People were sad. Shi didn't like it when the King and Queen were sad, either, but shi didn't seem to have any ability to cheer them up.

King Papa leaned forwards. He was dressed in finery of black and silver, with designs of purple so delicate and intricate that Kimmi just wanted to sink hir little claws into them and stare at them forever. Queen Mama's robes were even more fanciful, but hers was gold and silver with nearly identical purple scrollwork. There was never a thread out of place on their clothes, or a hair out of place on their heads.

Kimmi looked down at hir blanket, already with a fine dusting of hir own silvery-grey strands. Shi suspected that was why shi wasn't allowed to touch them.

"I'm sure shi'll speak soon, Your Highness," the other Tall Person said. "We talk to hir, we read to hir, and we're absolutely certain shi understands quite a lot of what we say. Why, just the other day, we played a little game at supper time, saying the names of all the foods, and shi picked up everything on nearly the first try. That's still quite remarkable for hir age! Hir paws... er, hir hands are quite dextrous."

Kimmi, hearing the word 'paws', lifted hir upper arms and waggled hir fingers with a hopeful glance at King Papa and Queen Mama. Maybe this would make them smile!

It did not.

The Queen leaned forwards. Kimmi admired the way her silvery-grey fur shimmered and rippled when she moved. The King had a nearly identical coloring, but he never moved, so it was harder to admire. "Do you know who I am?" the sleek, dark-eyed husky asked, tilting her head.

Kimmi tilted her head in a mirror of hir mother's gesture. "Yowlp," shi barked brightly. Shi made another attempt to cross the blanketed table, all four paws paddling, but the Tall People held hir back, gently.

Queen Mama sighed, steepling her fingers and leaning back. She exchanged an extremely long glance with King Papa. Kimmi could hear the Tall People stop breathing, and hir ears drooped in dismay. The cold room was never a particularly fun room, but shi'd never felt quite so... alone here before.

The Queen's muzzle wrinkled and she turned her head further away from the child-sized taur and hir two handlers. "Thank you," she said too quickly, waving her hand, waving the Tall People away. "That will be all."

One of the beige shapes behind Kimmi opened her mouth, and the little taur could sense the tension in her posture, but the other one cut her off smoothly. "Of course, your highnesses, and Gods bless."

With military precision, the corners of the blanket were drawn clockwise like the folding petals of a flower, and the small Princess, already as heavy as any teenaged biped, was nestled into a nest of pink fabric and hoisted into the air. Working as a team, the two Tall People carried their precious cargo out of the cold room, through the long, dark corridor, and then up, up, up to the warm room.

Kimmi watched all of this from the perspective of a dreamlike observer, looking down on the room from great invisible heights. Shi remembered that day, in the faintest and foggiest of impressions, the day when shi was brought before hir parents and examined. Inspected. There would be other days such as these, a great many others, but this was the last day shi could remember where, if shi'd really tried, shi could have reached out and touched hir parents. Hir family.

"They never even looked directly at you after that, not really," Seriphos said, her presence swirling around Kimmi's like some stray wisp of cold fog. "Your servants brought you out time and time again, showed them all the tricks you learned. You recited the National Anthem for them, all nineteen verses, including an extra one you added, when you were five. You showed them some of your naturalism sketches, drawings of the leaves that sometimes blew in your windows, better than the real thing. They looked at your drawings... but never at you."

Kimmi didn't try to deny it. They were in hir mind; obviously Seriphos had access, somehow, to hir memories. It didn't feel as though shi were sharing hir mind, but shi supposed that might change if the entity somehow won control. And she would have to win it; Kimmi could no more imagine handing over the reigns to hir bruised and battered body than shi could leaving these good, innocent folks down in this hellish pit to slave their lives away, only to be devoured by Seriphos as their last reward.

Shi grit hir teeth, or shi would have done if there were any physical presence; shi seemed to float, tingly but insubstantial, through hir own recollections. "You can't imagine how difficult it was for them," shi responded, feeling hir rage building but keeping it tamped, burning low. Shi didn't want to lose control here. "Their only heir, after decades of trying... was me."

"What's wrong with you?" The lilting voice asked, all supplicant innocence. A wheedling voice. "You apologize... for them. Why? You harbor such resentment for your upbringing, a lifetime of captivity in their castle's highest oubliette. Even your country's worst prisoners, the criminals, the most deplorable convicts and thugs and murderers are allowed to stretch their legs beneath the open sky, to put their bodies to work for the good of the Kingdom. Was that not all you wanted?"

Kimmi didn't try to pretend there wasn't a layer of resentment there, but it was a middling and pitiful thing now. Growing up, feeling the first blooms of adulthood on hir body, shi'd gone to bed every night cursing the cruelty of hir parents, but shi'd been still many years from hir self-imposed exile when shi came to terms with hir station in life. Shi was not 'over it', as hir housemaidens would have said; there would be a great many conversations with King Papa and Queen Mama before those feelings could be laid to rest. But that would be a task for a later day.

"We all wanted more," shi said to the strange void as the cold room faded into the mists of time beneath them.

---

Gartha Buckhold was having a most peculiar day.

One time, at the start of that last year's long and damp spring, he and Mayne had gotten into the hoss's uncle's stash of homesteader cider. The Buckhold plantation was a huge, sprawling collection of loosely-connected fields, gardens and orchards, with the family matriarch getting a bug in her bonnet every year to 'try something new'. Years before, it had been the radishes and the celery. The next year, two small thickets were cleared and dozens of rows of searing hot peppers were planted, to mixed reactions from the good people of Milford. The next, one of the radish fields had been tilled over and fenced around with the high rolling knoll next to it, and a half dozen varieties of apple had been planted.

Matron Buckhold had been quite put out when, after a year's tending, she'd discovered it would take three more years for the trees to actually bear fruit. Washing her hooves of the whole silly endeavor, she'd given control of those orchards to her brother Bishop, who had some plans of his own. By the time Gartha was tall and strong enough to work the fields himself, unsupervised, Bishop's Homesteader Cider was a regional favorite.

Gartha and Mayne, to celebrate their one month anniversary, had absonded with one of the tiny showpony barrels that Uncle Bishop used to distribute free samples and lure in new customers, and decided to see what all the fuss was about.

When they'd eventually wandered out of the thick Bask Woods some two days later, smelling of sweat and cider and lust and remorse, skulls aching, blinking at the painfully bright sun and confronted with two very different but equally enraged families, they'd vowed never to touch the demon alcohol ever again.

Waking up on the Tree of Life's platform, partially pinned by a talking taur, finding himself a mile underground and wearing strange and scratchy robes, his head thrummed and pounded and reminded him far too much of what he and Mayne had taken to calling the 'morning after'. It hadn't seemed like two days they'd been away, but either two hours or perhaps a month. Not just his muscles had ached, but his skin, and even some of his individual hairs. Every step seemed to tilt the entire world first one way, and then the other. He could not find his balance, could not orient to the horizon, on more than just a physical level; his mind seemed to have come unbolted from the inside of his skull, and now rolled and rattled around on its own strange path.

Clinging to Mayne's reassuringly solid chest, he felt the tiniest bit better, but the disassociative sensations were being replaced by far more oppressive feelings of immediate terror.

Gartha, Mayne, and the hundreds of other abductees, stood in a rough circle around Kimmi and Seriphos. The hoss's eyes wrinkle, his jaw clenched, even his knuckles flexed and popped, when he thought of that second name. His memories of the last few... weeks? Months? Years? However long, they were muddy and jumbled, each one soaked in that headache-inducing miasma that reminded him of that cider-filled morning after. There were no specifics, just impressions... the Tree, axes, shovels, barrows, endless trudging and dumping and carving away like ants at the Tree... but he clearly remembered Seriphos, the mouth with a hundred voices, the shape with a thousand bodies.

His was one of the loudest cheers when Kimmi lashed out, and with a single blow launched Seriphos fifty feet through the air.

His grip tightened on Mayne's huge torso when, far from a killing blow, Seriphos stalked slowly and deliberately back to stand in front of the huge taur. The urge to hide behind his lover was overwhelming, but so too was the desire to stand in front of Mayne and protect him from what must surely follow: Seriphos simply killing the impudent talking taur and then turning her attentions back to her slaves. Her prisoners. Her larder.

Gartha most certainly did not expect for Seriphos to reach up, touch Kimmi's cheek... and then collapse into a limp heap at hir feet.

For several long seconds, the recently-awakened slaves shuffled their paws and looked around awkwardly. A few people squeaked and jerked in fear when a thin, quavering voice rose out of the darkness.

"What the heck just happened?!"

The taur still stood, a sword protruding from a patch of searing white light on hir forebelly. Tiny blue petals continued to fall around them, a ceaseless rain from the flowers that grew in boughs so high above that their source could not be seen. A hundred candles and torches crackled and sputtered fitfully, giving everyone present a dozen dancing shadows. More and more, the confused wanderers had paired up.

In a flash, Gartha remembered the moment his memories became grey and dreary. He remembered the night in the clearing not a mile from the heart of Grim's Woods. He remembered Mayne leaning against a huge spreading oak tree, shirtless, powerful, painted in shades of silver by the moonlight. He remembered meeting his lover's gaze, remembered running to meet his arms at the center of the clearing, remembered the tiny motes of light and the searing flash of blue, and the most bizarre sense of well-being and contentment...

... only to wake up in chains of torture and fear, his mind ploughed under like a field of radishes.

It has been years, Gartha thought, staring down at his hand. It was gangly and bony as it had ever been, but there were the tiniest flecks of grey at his knuckles. His uncle had flecks like those, and he was still in the hale and hearty years of his life, working the fields, plying his cider, drinking away the nights with a steady procession of pretty locals who had almost certainly once been young. Hale and heart or not, Uncle Bishop was on the far side of fifty.

He looked up at Mayne, the colossal black bear he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, and saw splashes of grey at the ursine's boxy muzzle, and more at his temples.

"Maybe we did spend the rest of our lives together," he said, his voice dry and sour.

Mayne had been staring at the taur, but now looked down at Gartha, his eyes widening. The much smaller hoss watched the bear's eyes trace across his face, taking in the signs of age that must also surely have been there. A huge mitt came up, and a single claw touched at Gartha's hairline. He didn't need to ask what Mayne was investigating.

"It's been a while," Mayne rumbled.

"It has." Gartha looked around, not willing to remove his hands from around Mayne's chest. "I should probably feel... more, about it, but I'm mostly just tired."

Mayne nodded. He wanted nothing more than to lay down with his arms around Gartha and sleep, but only the worry that doing so would seal their doom kept him upright. "Is... is shi saving us?"

Gartha didn't need to ask who the bear was referring to. "I don't know. I don't think shi started out trying to save us, but now shi might be."

"Does shi have a sword sticking out of hir?"

"Yeah, I'm... I'm not sure what that's about-"

He'd just about come to grips with the reality of a talking taur with a belly-mounted steel blade, when the blade seemed to sprout paws from its base. Tiny white paws, pushing out of the brilliant white patch of light. Kimmi still wasn't moving, standing straight with hir fists clenched by hir sides, and Seriphos, or at least the body she had most recently occupied, lay in a robed pile before hir.

The crowd stood, rapt and stunned, watching while a small white rat wearing simple white vestments stepped out of the strange glowing portal, or at least while most of him stepped out. One foot touched down on the sawdust-strewn earth, one paw gripped his blade, while his other limbs seemed to be keeping the aperture open.

Gartha couldn't resist a chuckle when the white rat looked up, and saw nothing but the underside of the taur's heavy-furred breasts.

The rat looked from side to side, and cleared his throat.

"Good day," he said, loudly but a little uncertainly. "Uhm... I believe I'm rescuing you?"

---

Kimmi walked through the outskirts of the little town. Shi remembered passing the livery, the post office, the blacksmith, a few market houses, a great squat cold storage, all of these bracing the wide and well-worn road coming up from the south. It must have been a busy road, shi thought, to have all of these before even reaching the first little clusters of urban homes and cottages, before even reaching a single tea shop. Lots of commerce in this town, lots of travel. Lots of money. That would be nice, shi thought. Lots of money meant there were any number of ways Kimmi and hir tiny partner could entertain some of it away. Their most recent misadventures had left hir with only one serviceable outfit, and a whole lot of scraps that desperately needed-

"Haw haw haw, Pa, lookit that one! S'got clothes over its boobies! Haw!"

Kimmi's steady trot faltered. Shi flicked an ear towards the source, but shi needn't have bothered. Shi'd have to have been deaf and blind not to spot the little 'yote child standing recklessly on the elevated boardwalk out front of another market house. One lanky, bony arm was slung around a dusty wooden post, and the 'yote was swinging around it heedlessly, skipping from rail to rail. Skipping or not, his eyes never left Kimmi's form walking by, or more specifically Kimmi's torso.

"S'a pretty one, no doubt!" a much larger, much older, but equally watery-eyed coyote guffawed. He was wearing simple coveralls and looked to be sitting in one of the boardwalk's benches while repairing a stack of other such seating, tools poking out of his pockets every which way. "Might be your type, Giffford!"

"HAW! No way, Pa!"

"YEAH, way! Lookit them jibblies!"

Kimmi kept hir eyes on the road, kept hir paws at hir side, kept hir bushy tail swinging low. Hir current dress was a sturdy double-stitched article of heavy green cotton, but even the repeated alterations and adjustments couldn't hide the fact that it was straining mightily to contain hir bust, and that which could not be held was bulging out the tops of the short sleeves, to say nothing out of the wide neck where shi could not manage the top three buttons. It hugged hir waist tightly, which only highlighted how top-heavy shi had become, and then flared out hang along hir barrel like a harvest picnic tablecloth. A dull brown rucksack twice the size of Shingen hung from hir shoulders, and although there were numerous harnesses at the livery that could affix a goodly-sized shipping crate to hir broad back, shi adamantly refused to be fit with one of the repulsive devices.

"Lookit the dress, Pa! E'en Ma don't got a-one that nice!"

"Your Ma looks lovely in whatever she wears!" the older coyote said automatically, and this brought a few chuckles from the other pedestrian traffic.

Starlight, be at peace, Shingen spoke into Kimmi's mind.

CAN I HIT ONE OF THEM!??!?!

That would be... rude.

THEY'RE NOT BEING RUDE?!?!?

You are not responsible for the deportment of those that know you not, my dear.

OH MY GODS YOU EVEN THINK LIKE SOME DUMB POEM DON'T YOU?!?!?!

This discussion took less than the length of a single breath, and it ended with Shingen accelerating away from his companion's side and climbing the short steps to the top of the market's boardwalk. Kimmi strained hir ears to detect what he might be saying to the pair of canids, but he was all but whispering. Worse, he was blocking out his words from his mind; Kimmi could sense nothing through their bond but polite static, and the faintest hints of plinking music that he apparently used to keep his thoughts still.

Of course, shi didn't need especially good hearing to catch the response.

"Son, you ain't gon' be talking to neither me or my boy like that!" the older coyote hollered, clearly loud enough for the benefit of passers-by. Even Shingen's neat little bun of glossy black hair was blown back by the ferocity of the final few words. "'e's just havin' a litte fun! Us small town yokels don't get to see none big-city taurs wearin' fancy clothes that often, and ye ken admit, it's a little funny look-"

The man didn't get to finish, as it was difficult to speak when one of Shingen's tiny but iron-strong paws was pinched with surgical precision around one's windpipe.

"Shi," the rat said calmly, and just loud enough for Kimmi to hear. "Not it. 'Shi'."

The coyote's eyes bulged, his jaw working soundlessly. He raised a fist and brought it crashing down on Shingen's head, to absolutely no visible effect. The smaller coyote, Gifford, had been jumping up and down and hollering for the rat to "quittit quittit quittit!", but even he was somewhat cowed by the implacable warrior's utter indifference to being struck.

"Say it," Shingen continued. "Say it for me."

His fingers loosened, and there was a crackling squawk that echoed up and down the boardwalk. Dozens of folks had stopped now and were staring openly at the strangely unmoving tableau just outside the market hall's main doors, while others were still taking in the sight of Kimmi walking slowly and resolutely north, towards the center of town.

"shhllrrrkkk"

Shingen shook his head. "You can do it. Come on."

The coyote tried to straighten, looming head and shoulders over the rat, but he couldn't. All strength seemed to have left him, and all he could feel was focused on a small point at the front of his neck that he'd never considered to be that much of a weak spot.

"Shi-i-i," he rattled, sounding in desperate need of a drink of water.

"Louder," Shingen said. "For everyone here."

The coyote inhaled desperately, and Shingen released his trachea just in time for the coyote's attempt at appeasement. "SHI!" he shouted, immediately clapping his paws across his muzzle in surprise.

Kimmi was just detecting the first faint sounds of fresh baking on the breezes when Shingen caught up to hir some fifty yards further along the road. Hir cheeks burned, but shi blocked it out. Shi hummed a tune shi half-remembered from hir youth, something that hir housemaidens used to sing to hir. There were no words, just nonsense sounds and vocalizations, sometimes rising and falling in harmonies. It had always made hir happy, a song with no words; it could mean whatever shi wanted it to mean. At the moment, the tune had acquired a rhythmic staccato beat, coinciding with the marching cadence of hir heavy paws.

"My apologies, Starlight," he said out loud, matching hir speed once more. "I thought that would-"

"Don't."

Shingen blinked, speeding up slightly to pull quite literally abreast of the towering taur. Any further back or ahead of hir and he had quite some difficulty seeing hir expression over hir bust, particularly when shi wore an outfit such as this which elevated hir already eye-catching curves. "I'm sorry?"

"Can we go into one town without you trying to beat people up for being stupid?"

Shingen blinked again, which would be akin to a normal person throwing their hat onto the ground and stomping on it, perhaps while hurling empty beer bottles and swearing. "Whyforever not?" he asked in a perfectly level, perfectly reasonable tone.

Kimmi didn't reply, instead just hummed a fraction louder. Shi could feel Shingen trying to peer into hir mind through their bond, sifting through not just hir thoughts but hir moods and hir insecurities, and shi'd had plenty of both lately. Shi'd learned one of his lessons very quickly, if accidentally; the nonsense housemaiden tune was creating hir own wall of static. Shingen could probably cut through it, force his way through, but the mere presence of that wall was all the response he needed.

"I apologize, Starlight," he said softly, bowing and turning his own attentions back to the road.

No more words were spoken between them that day, not even when talking to the proprietors of the town's largest commonhouse regarding indoor lodgings for 'the amazing talking taur'.

Kimmi remembered that day all too well, staring down at the well-worn and wagon-rutted road from the heights of hir own internal theatre. Shi remembered the rage that had burned in hir chest well into that night, throbbing with such ferocity shi feared shi might remain awake until dawn. It wasn't anger at the pair on the street, and it wasn't even really at Shingen, as much as shi tried to keep it focused on him.

"You know," Seriphos murmured from all around hir, "they didn't really learn much of a lesson. They were at the commonhouse that night. Everyone for miles around had heard the story of the Great Talking Taur, Watch Hir Feats Of Strength, Marvel In Awe As Shi Reads Out Loud From A Book."

"Probably," Kimmi sighed, or would have sighed if shi had lungs in this place. "Can't really stop them from wanting another look, can I?"

Below them, a small parade had formed, with Kimmi at the lead. This was a common occurrence in new towns. Since that first encounter with The Law in Ashcroft, many months before, they'd yet to enter a new town, or village, or even hamlet, where someone hadn't heard tell of 'this great big bloody husky taur, wearing clothes, and talking like you or me, and you wouldn't believe what shi looks like'. Carts and caravans and free hold travelers carried tales of Kimmi's exploits far and wide, and shi was always pleased when some of the exploits were actually accurate.

"Of course not. Who could resist the allure of such an oddity?"

She's playing to your insecurities, said a small, child-like voice in the back of hir mind.

No, really? I hadn't noticed, Kimmi replied, and tried to roll hir nonexistent eyes.

"Come and see the freak," Seriphos continued, and for the first time Kimmi wondered just how much actual CONTACT this so-called goddess actually had with mortals. She clearly inhabited the minds and bodies of her victims, and from the brief scuffle at the base of the tree she was clearly not above torturing her own vessel. Shi could recall half a dozen childhood stories and fables where spoilt children would always get their way, either through brute violence or unreachable irrationality, and every now and then those children would get what hir housemaidens referred to as 'their just desserts'.

It had taken a few more tries to explain to the impressionable and quite literal young husky pup that it didn't mean those children got even more treats for their behavior.

Kimmi did hir utmost to try and manage a little whimper. "Why show me this?" shi asked softly.

Shi could almost hear the intangible essence of Seriphos pounce. "Why would I show you the sort of people you're trying to 'save' with some misplaced sense of morality and nobility? Dirt-grubbing yokels all too happy to think of you as some dumb animal that has learned a particularly difficult trick? No doubt some of them were jealous that you'd managed feats they'd only dreamed of, bathing not being the least of them."

"No, I mean... really? THIS memory? This is what you're going to try and break me with? A dumb yote and his dumb kid yelling at me on the street?" Kimmi felt the embers of hir rage blooming with new heat, fueled by hir disbelief that such a powerful entity could be so stupid. "What about on the streets outside Yarrow Downs, where that bailiff caught me on the ear with a half-rotted head of cauliflower? Why not that midsummer storm where Shingen and I tried to help haul a caravan out of a flooded rut, and three of the porters tried to get their hoss to mate with me, taunting me with radishes? I wanted to pop their little necks like dandelions! Those would have been MUCH better memories to show me!"

Kimmi, inasmuch as shi was able to, whirled around and stared into the darkness that seemed to exist just beyond hir vision. The memory of the dusty street faded away into the fog of hir subconscious once more. "Was it just because of how angry I was? No, I didn't talk to Shingen at all the rest of the night. I had a tummy ache and couldn't eat dinner, I was so angry. I wanted to smash, I wanted to just reach up and grab hold of one of the rafters and literally try pulling down the entire building on my own head. I wanted, just once, to be the beast they thought I was! But I was never, never, angry at those people who looked at me and didn't understand! I only pitied them!"

Shi fought to keep hir fury under wraps, but shi did allow hirself a brief moment of satisfaction by adding, "In the same way that I pity you, Seriphos."

There was no earth below hir, no sky above hir, no body to orient hirself to, but there was no mistaking the gale-like winds that buffeted hir from all directions, winds that seemed to carry on them a chorus of frustrated screams from a thousand, a million tiny throats.

---

A great many of the assembled slaves and prisoners just stared. Just when it seemed this auspicious day couldn't get any more peculiar, a rat appeared out from the belly of the colossal husky taur that had apparently arrived to free them from their bondage.

"No-one is going to believe this," Gartha muttered. "I mean no-one. At all. Can you imagine me trying to tell Pa and them 'No no, seriously, and then, after I was whackin' away at this tree for like thirty fuckin' years, this dog appears and punches out this cougar that done taken us, only she weren't no cougar, she's a ghost, and then this rat pops out of the dog, and then we all went into the light.' I mean.."

"Shut up," Mayne rumbled fondly.

"I don't think I can!"

Shingen leaned forwards, tilting as far side to side as he could manage without removing his limbs from the portal. This was all most definitely new territory for him, and in all likelihood new territory for the entirety of his people and his Order, but he was reasonably sure that his arm and leg were the only thing keeping that portal open.

Once more he glanced down at the unconscious feline body at his feet, and then up at the underside of Kimmi's breasts, which was another little issue he was having. "Excuse me," he called out, "could someone please tell me if Kimmi... er, the taur... is awake? Is shi aware? Does shi know I'm here?"

After a long moment of silence, broken only by the rustling and crunching of footsteps as still more furres came down the huge ramp twisting around the base of the Tree of Life, or approached from the direction of the distant torch-lit masonry walls of the improbably vast chamber, a small and decidedly rough-looking avian raised a sparsely-feathered arm. "Er... no, sir," she chirped. "Shi... uhm... got into a fight... and then it touched hir. Seriphos, I mean. Touched hir. So they're... they're both in... in there. Sir."

Shingen did not miss the implication of those last words, particularly when shi pointed up at Kimmi's head.

I begged you not to, Shingen thought sourly. Occam warned me to warn YOU! You foolish grrl!

Kimmi still breathed, and for the time being shi still stood, but a prod of one rigid finger into hir ribs produced not so much as a peep. Considering he could tell from that one poke that said rib was broken, he did not think shi was reachable in any sense of the word he was aware.

But he had to admit, it was perhaps the most 'Kimmi' thing imaginable.

"Shi is fighting," he sighed, gesturing with his sword to address the assembled crowd, which was steadily creeping closer. "Shi is fighting, even now, for all of you, to buy us time, to buy you freedom. I have spent the last half year trying to teach hir how to fight with not just hir body, but hir mind, hir soul, hir heart... so really, could I expect any less?"

The group, or perhaps more now a mob given its size, continued to shuffle their assorted feet and paws and hooves. They stared at the little rat, though it became more of a squint the closer they got. Years, perhaps decades in the near-total darkness of the temple, lit only by the greasy and unwelcome flames of the torches and the tiny motes of faint blue light that continued to rain down on them in the form of sickly lotus petals, had left them ill-equipped for staring into the blazing light of the portal Shingen had carved between universes.

A portal that was pressing more and more insistently at his limbs.

"OK, let's go!" he snapped, hopping one one foot and trying to shift his lithe figure to one side, while still trying to hold the portal open with his arm and leg. He couldn't quite feel the extremities that vanished into the white light, not exactly; he could wiggle his fingers and toes, and knew they were wiggling, but they were tight and numb as though he'd slept with his neck propped up by rocks once more. "Everybody through! I do not know how long I can maintain this portal!"

More shuffling, but this time Gartha was the first to find his voice. "Go... where? Where does that... go?"

Ah, Shingen thought, yes. I... suppose that is a reasonable question. Well... heck. "Kimmi and I are from... another world, a world quite like this one, I understand. Or like how this one used to be. It is... look, it is very difficult to explain, but almost none of you are from this world, and some of you are almost certainly from mine."

"This... isn't my... world?" spoke a tiny sheepgrrl, one that would have to tilt hir neck to look up at Shingen. Shi was holding hands with a scruffy, heavy-muzzled mutt that couldn't have been any older than Kimmi, both of them naked as babes. "Where... but how?"

"_I wish I had time to explain the intricacies to you!" Shingen snapped, now starting to grow alarmed. "There are many worlds, and there are many Trees such as this one, and there are many such edifices of onyx and alabaster and stone eager to drain their power, and they are all interconnected by the entity of Seriphos, and right now I would like you get you out of _this one before it comes back to kill us!"

As vague as that explanation was, as many more questions it raised than it answered, it spoke to the primal, fundamental reasoning of everyone present: almost anywhere was better than here.

"And if it's a world with magic rats and talking taurs," Gartha said with a weak smile up to his beloved, "how bad can it be?"

"You're joking, even now," Mayne responded. It was not a question.

"Can you think of a better time?"

The hulking bear, though considerably less bulky after years of near-starvation, could only shrug helplessly and nod. The little hoss had a point.

"Any time now!" Shingen cried out, a little desperately.

Moving hesitantly, the sheepgrrl approached Shingen and the portal. Shi cowered beneath Kimmi's immensity as shi approached, and despite the ample headroom shi still ducked when shi passed beneath the taur's expansive bosom.

"Will it hurt?" shi whimpered, still clinging tightly to the mutt's paw and all but dragging him along behind hir.

Shingen managed to soften his expression, taking a moment to allow himself the luxury of pity and sympathy. "It didn't hurt me," he said, wiggling the arm that disappeared at the elbow into the blazing curtain of light. "But when you get through, do not wander off. I need everyone to stick together."

The young sheep inhaled deeply, and nodded. Hir eyes fixed with grim determination on the portal. Shi extended hir free paw and poked at the veil, pulling back hir fingertip and examining it closely.

When there seemed to be no damage, shi looked back at hir mate, nodded again, and then hurled hirself through, dragging him along with a startled bark that took a very, very long time to fade away.

Shingen exhaled with relief when, far from scaring off any further volunteers, he found he now had to order folks to stop pushing and shoving. By ones and twos, the mob streamed past him, creeping or stepping or lunging through the portal that seemed to hang in the air just in front of Kimmi's forebelly.

Feeling that there might now actually be a real chance at seeing sunlight once more, the little rat stared up at Kimmi's underbust and squinted with worry. Come back to us, Starlight! He commanded, trying to focus on their mental link. He could feel the thinnest of threads connecting them, but it seemed to be passing through a hail storm of interference. Shi was still there, but something monstrous, and ancient, and powerful, was trying to drag them apart.

Come back to me.

---

Estragonia seemed to be bursting at the seams with music and joviality, decorations and finery.

The small nation (and only now, at this time in hir life, could Kimmi properly see and understand that it was indeed quite small) lay nestled in a wide, scooped-out flood plain on the western side of the Estragon Mountains. Bracketed on three sides by virtually impassable snow-capped peaks of jagged granite, as well as densely-wooded swamps at their lowest slopes, the empire really consisted of a single great city built on the northern shores of the Great Placid Sea. Virtually all trade and communication was by ship, and this was kept to a minimum by the refusal of any visiting merchants and sailors to trespass any further than the docks.

Estragonia was for Estragonians, as the housemaidens had always told hir, though it never seemed to be voiced with much conviction.

Today, though, as Kimmi walked through the wide, clean streets of hir homeland, there were guests for the first time. Galleons filled with travelers from afar had been arriving for weeks, and more than one home and business had been transformed into the new concept of an 'inn' for the duration of the celebrations. Foreign currencies mingled with the simple, solid bronze Estragonian chits, tiny discs of silver and gold and even squares of paper that, the locals were assured, represented actual value. New songs were being learned and sung by the hour, new types of clothing were being copied and worn, and countless new foods were being introduced to a prim, reserved populace.

Formerly prim and reserved, Kimmi noticed with a chuckle, when a small gaggle of Estragonian bankers went barreling by, arms looped around shoulders in order to steady their drinks. Each wore a different, brightly-plumed hat, clearly purchased from one of the new streetcart vendors that had set up in recent days. The banks were now closed one day out of every eight, and there was word that might become even more frequent.

"This is... not how you described it," Shingen said carefully, his formal robes spotless.

"Things changed," Kimmi replied, also with a hint of marveling uncertainty.

"I would assume so," the little rat smiled, glancing up at one of the many, MANY banners that stretched high above the streets, hung between the tall, narrow, functional buildings that so readily defined Estragonian architecture. The banners were all different, but they generally depicted a very singular theme: a four-legged husky wearing a golden crown.

This banner in particular seemed to have really captured Kimmi's... physique.

The Princess blushed, one hind paw patting at the skirts that mostly hid hir maleness. "You know, they don't REALLY need to make those quite that accurate," shi muttered, although it was nice that the banner seemed to have been created with respect, if not admiration. Shi had expected much more in the way of vandalism and graffiti than honorifics.

"Some of the other ones definitely focused more on your front," Shingen agreed with a straight face. "Did you like those better?"

"I... shut up."

The closer they got to the Castle, a cluster of marble-shrouded towers looming over the city like a stern denmother, the more the crowds thickened. Kimmi had worried that it would be almost impossible to reach the gates, given the throngs of locals and visitors filling the streets, but the crowds parted for hir quite easily. More often than not, they were accompanied by half-whimpered apologies, begging 'hir Grace' for forgiveness. Hir Royal Grace the Princess Kimmi was always ready to wave away their protests, urging them back to their feet and thanking them for their consideration. When this gesture caused hir citizenry to burst into tears of joy, shi changed hir tactics and simply nodded politely.

"They are pleased to have their Royal Protector back," Shingen grinned. "And, perhaps more literally than expected. I have inspected some of your Royal Estragonian Army, and I feel most of them could be replaced by your Grace alone, in a suit of chainmail and wielding a very, very large stick."

Kimmi blushed again. The tallest of the locals barely came up to hir breasts, and Captain Allolario of the Royal Protectorate Force, a mountain of a man who seemed perpetually sheathed in plates of solid steel, did not even reach hir chin. The RPF had escorted Kimmi and Shingen from the Gates, the only entry to the nation through the mountains, to the edge of the city, and it had taken several minutes of extremely subservient arguing before he would concede that his little brigade did not needed to guard hir any further.

Shi smoothed hir paws against hir dress, a wonderfully silky, multi-layered and heavily-bodiced construction that had cost most of hir remaining coin, but which shi felt properly captured hir royal bearing. The fact that it also put several square yards of silvery-furred cleavage on display was also an esteem-boosting bonus, albeit one that Shingen still thought was a little much.

"I think I'll keep them around," shi giggled. "I'll be much too busy running a country. Er... I'm sure it's harder than it sounds."

"I am not so sure, your Grace," Shingen drawled, bowing slightly. "Many's the lord and king and emperor I'd not trust with an especially sharp spoon, let alone the running of the world."

Kimmi frowned. "Well, how sharp are we talking?'

"Oh, wickedly sharp, ma'am. Lethal."

"You're making fun of me, aren't you?"

"If that were true, I'm sure you'd know it. Your Highness."

The huge taur glared down at hir little bodyguard, but shi couldn't hide the glow of appreciation and love that filled their mental bond. No matter what happened in the next few days, or months, or years, with the ascension to the lofty heights of Crown Princess, and eventually Queen, shi could always count on the unflappable and almost obscenely deadly little rodent to keep hir grounded.

The pair worked their way through the crowd, a hundred little celebrations merging into a single cacophany of exultation, and eventually found themselves passing through the Queen's Court. Kimmi had looked down on that immense open courtyard for most of hir life, a crescent moon of polished marble paving stones where the Queen would preside over any number of civic events. The inner curve of that moon shape was framed by the outermost walls of the Castle, pierced by the Queen's Gate. Beyond those walls was the smaller, but even more grandly appointed King's Court, which was reserved for only the most important, and exclusive, proceedings.

Today, the Queen's Gate was open and both courts were open to, and full of, the general public, for the first time in anyone's memory. The King and Queen themselves were waiting just beyond those gates, as Captain Allolario had explained. Kimmi was to make hir way there before high noon, where there would be the briefest of coronation ceremonies, and then the proper continuation of hir royal commencement.

Shi sighed and grimaced, remembering how hir hired mercenary and unexpected abduction had somewhat marred the previous one.

"You can do it," Shingen said, patting the Princess's hip. He could feel the guilt and apprehension coming off of hir in waves. "They summoned you... they requested you. They threw open their iron gates to the world in order to get their message out, ten thousand letters scattered to every corner of the globe, just to find you. To bring you home."

Kimmi sniffled and nodded vigorously, sending hir bust quaking. "I know! I know. I... I can do this." Shi squared hir shoulders, clenching hir mitts and wishing shi'd brought hir gauntlets. Shi felt naked without them. "I... I kinda just wish I was doing something simple, like fighting that dire basilisk again. Remember that?"

"He nearly melted your tail," Shingen pointed out.

"Good times," Kimmi agreed.

The pair approached the Queen's Gate, which was a largely ceremonial affair. Bracketed by metal-shod towers and bristling with color guards resplendent in their purple, silver and gold embroidery, Kimmi was reminded once again of the importance of this day to not just hir own royal station, not just to hir family, but to the nation as a whole. Estragonia had maintained a seventeen-generation continual lineage of royalty, dating all the way back to King Heoric The First and Queen Yara The Cunning. The cessation of that line, which was more ceremonial than political, would throw the court into disarray as any number of noble families vied to advance from their position as mere advisors, and ascend to the throne themselves.

According to Shingen, who was quite well-read in what he called the 'historical dramas of the Lowlands', said this was just about as unpleasant an affair as could be imagined: a nation going to war with itself.

"You will be fine," Shingen said for the hundredth time as they passed beneath the steel-spike-lined maw of the Queen's Gate, and into the King's Court. The din of the populace lessened considerably, now more reserved, respectful. Considering.

A thousand reserved, respectful, and above all considering eyes turned to face Hir Royal Grace the Princess Kimmi as if drawn by invisible strings. Standing head and shoulders, and immense bosom, taller than the entire assemblage, Kimmi assumed this would be as good a time as any to make hir introductions.

"Hello!" shi grinned, waggling the fingers of one paw in greeting, as shi had so often greeted hir housemaidens.

WAS THAT ROYAL ENOUGH? Shi asked, whispering directly into Shingen's mind.

It was perhaps as royal as can be expected under these grim circumstances, Starlight.

YOU'RE MAKING FUN OF ME AGAIN.

Never.

At far court, Kimmi could see the great purple and silver awning that had been erected, providing shade to the raised dais of the Court's throne. The Imperial Throne Room, nestled in the depths of the castle, was only used for the most austere and sacrosanct ceremonies. Wherever possible, affairs that could be conducted outdoors, particularly ones requiring an audience, were held in the King's Court.

Kimmi squinted, and could just make out two tiny figures beneath that awning, the only figures in Estragonia permitted to wear both purple and silver, or purple and gold, together.

"There they are," Kimmi gulped. "I can see them."

Shingen nodded. Sometimes, he knew, it was best just to let Kimmi reach the end of hir own wagon train of thought.

"And they can see me."

"Mmm."

"They haven't seen me since... that night."

"Mm hmm."

"When I... ruined everything."

Shingen looked around. "Well, they've done a marvelous job of repairs. I can't even tell where you destroyed the kingdom."

The taur's jaw dropped and shi stared down at the little rat. "What...? I didn't say I DESTROYED THE... ok, ONCE or TWICE I said that, but... you don't have to be... I mean, it's not nice to... I thought you were supposed to shut up and let me follow my own thoughts! I heard you think that! What happened to that?"

"You were stuck in a rut," Shingen deadpanned. "I merely... pushed you out of it."

The King's Court dimmed as a thin veil of hazy clouds slipped across the sun. "Is that your official stance when you become the Imperial Retainer To The Crown Princess? 'Just push hir out of it'?"

"Not at all. I am expecting there to be a legion of volunteers to provide that service for you."

"I can still smush you," the taur muttered, trying to block out the snickering shi could hear in the back of hir mind. "I wish I'd gotten some of those foods on the way in. They smelled heavenly, but I didn't want to have food in my teeth or sticky mitts when I met... when I met them. But now I could eat a whole cart. Seriously. The whole cart. Wheels and all. Can you go get me one?"

"A cart?"

"NO! Just... something on a stick! So many of those foods were on sticks!"

"How fancy."

"How about just a warm drink? It's starting to get a little chilly."

Shingen nodded slowly, glancing up at the sky. "Indeed. The warmth of day seems to have fled. I had thought that merely because of how close your city lies to both the ocean and the mountains. A squall seems to be blowing in."

Darker swirls of cloud seemed to hover just above the tops of the castle's many spires, the tallest of which had housed Kimmi for most of hir young life. The polished and intricately cut and laid marble stones of the King's Court had provided a reassuring warmth beneath hir paws, but how drew the heat seemingly out of hir body. The pennants high atop the color guard's spears and lances flapped vigorously, and a dozen banners sporting various representations of Kimmi's silhouette shook and rattled.

"Unseasonal," Kimmi frowned. "Winter's been past for months, the spring blows should have all pushed back south. I used to have a book about the weather, taught me all abut cloud formations and seasonal variations in the ocean currents that affect the _air_currents, and I checked against my almanac every year, and they were usually pretty correct-"

"What kinds of clouds are those?"

The taur paused. Shingen never interrupted. Hardly ever. Sometimes, if he was practicing out humor, he would attempt it for comedic effect, but his tone was deadly serious now. Kimmi looked up, squinting into the hazy sun, but shi needn't have bothered. The sun was gone, hid by clouds that seemed as though someone had poured soot into hir cereal, the milk forming swirls of black and white. Oddly geometric shapes of black and white, for the normally endless recursive ebb and flow of the coastal clouds.

"I don't... wait..." Kimmi paused, frowning. "How did we get here?"

"We walked."

"No, not that... here. Here. Estragonia. We... Captain Allolario escorted us from the mountains, but... but he was due to retire shortly after my coronation. My first coronation. We... we didn't approach from the mountains on the other side, though, I'm sure of it. We... we were just at the Gate, that's all. And walking... walking..."

"What kinds of clouds are those?" Shingen asked again.

Kimmi's mind seemed to lurch in hir skull. Overhead the clouds moved with an improbable speed, jerking to and fro whenever shi blinked. "Milford," shi mumbled. "Milford, at the Inn. Pastries... and a doe. We weren't there long, hardly two nights. We were... heading south. It's summer. It's still summer, a late summer! These can't be the storms of spring!"

"What kinds of clouds are those?"

"I DON'T KNOW!" Kimmi barked.

Instantly, the King's Court was blanketed by silence as deep and unfathomable as a sunken tomb (temple, it was a temple). All eyes continued to be on hir, focused, intent. Shi recognized a great many of the nobles and statesfolk from hir brief period in the limelight, but many faces were pale, gaunt, withdrawn. Hoods were turned up against the rising wind, although there wasn't so much as a drop of rain (not underground, there woudn't be, no)

The swirling, twitching clouds ceased crawling across the sky and instead flowed earthwards, as though pouring over the edge of an invisible dome. Tendrils of cloud darkened and took on firmer, more defined outlines, no longer drifting but lancing down from those lofty heights.

"What kinds of clouds are those?" Shingen repeated, staring dully at hir.

The eight ebon tentacles drove like spears into the earth, bracketing the castle, seeming to form a cage around it. The clouds immediately overhead darkened, puffs of white streaming and boiling away. It wasn't that the clouds were darkening, Kimmi realized, but were simply being pushed aside. Those eight legs supported some leviathan of a body, wider than the entirety of the royal castle... and it was descending.

"How did we get here?" Kimmi whispered, shaking hir head violently. Shi felt of two minds, two simultaneously overlapping sets of memories peeling apart, and it was a struggle to hold on to any of each. This all seemed familiar, but wrong. Shi'd never seen anything like this, or imagined it... but it was being imagined for hir.

On the fringes of hir vision shi could see tiny flecks ascending into the sky, carried up along the surface of those eight grotesque, sinuously jagged limbs. One of the tentacles had struck not too far from the Queen's Gate, and shi watched in horror as the color guard, holding firm and steady along the tops of the outer walls, were drawn slowly through the air by unseen force. Drawn towards that inky black spire, where they stuck fast, and slid, _flowed_skywards.

Seriphos, shi thought, as dream and memory and horrifying reality finally merged.

As though waiting for hir realization, an extremity as black as deepest night could never be lifted up out of the ground, trailing stonework and wooden debris and even a few flailing bodies, and pulled inwards to loom over the King's Court.

"No," Kimmi managed, but it was a tiny, pitiful sound.

All eyes remained focused on Kimmi, despite the carnage and destruction. No one so much as spoke, or blinked, or seemed to breathe. The world was a still tableau, except for the writhing shapes being dragged into the clouds by those hungry, feeding tentacles, hungry beyond any possible satiation. Even Shingen, the one constant that had given hir a sense of balance on this day (a day which never existed, and would never exist) was just another grey, blank figure amongst hundreds.

The limb that hung poised overhead plunged down, smashing into the purple, silver and gold awning at the far side of the King's Court. Where once the Royal Dais had stood, there was now simply a column of black flesh a dozen yards across at the narrowest point.

"N-..."

---

Shingen's body burned. Holding open the portal was more than just a mere physical effort, but nonetheless it was his flesh that ached and screamed for respite. The portal wanted to close, was never meant to remain open for this long, but he was blocking the membranes between worlds from sealing through willpower and grim determination alone.

And he knew all too well that, in the fight between the fabric of the universe, and his body, he could not possibly hope to win. At most, he was delaying the inevitable.

In the back of his mind, he knew what Kimmi would say to that. Isn't that the whole point of being alive?

"Come on," he urged through clenched teeth.

The crowd was almost entirely through the portal now. Volunteers had sprinted off through the darkness, waving torches and screaming to attract any who might remain behind. The priestesses that had formed the line from the temple chambers to the Tree of Life, who appeared to be Seriphos's personal harem of disposable bodies, seemed fairly certain that no others were wandering the halls, but some folks still had not found their significant others.

By his count, there couldn't be too many left. Those that remained formed a single line, of which he could see the entirety. A handful of minutes, no more.

"How is shi going to get through?" asked an elderly bovine woman, though with the voice and cadence of a much, much younger person.

Shingen glanced up at Kimmi's bust. "I... do not know. I have been assured that shi will return to me-... return to us, safe and sound. Please, hurry!"

The old cow nodded, doubt clear on her face alongside her tremendous gratitude, and stepped through the portal.

To Shingen's left, Kimmi's paw twitched. His head jerked around, a scream of elation on his lips, but he held it back, kept it in check. It was a twitch, nothing more. Kimmi's breathing had not changed, and he still sensed nothing but dull fog from hir mind.

Come back! He shouted through their bond, not sure if anything was getting through.

More and more prisoners, now all divested of their black and white robes, passed into the light, and by ones and twos more appeared breathless out of the darkness. Some of them practically dove through the portal, some paused to give Shingen a handshake or a hug or just a helpless sigh of relief, but it was only the last that stopped dead, his eyes full of panic.

"There's still one in the wall!" he gasped, his thin lapine chest rising and falling like a bellows. The rabbit looked middle aged, but his no doubt athletic body had withered over the years in Seriphos's servitude, and he seemed on the verge of some sort of fatal attack after his sprint. "There's... one... in the wall!"

"Who? Can you bring them?" Shingen snapped. "There is not much time!"

"I... no, she... she's IN..." His arms moved in a strange dance, paws describing what seemed to be nothing more than some vague round shape. "There's something... I don't know... I mean, she's STUCK in the wall! She's... she's as big as a house!"

One of the women in line squeaked, a tall squirrel with streaks of white in her chestnut fur. "Oh gosh! Yes! That's right! Seriphos... when we were chasing Kimmi... told us not to touch her, on pain of death! She's the one that arrived with Kimmi!"

Shingen's eyes bulged. "Isima?! Isima is stuck?!"

"That's her name!" the rabbit nodded eagerly, still gulping breaths. "She's... she's a little out of it."

Others passed through the portal while the two tried to explain the situation. Eventually even Shingen found the time in between panicking to blush and marvel at what Kimmi must have done to not only transform Isima's body in such a fashion, but to destroy a solid temple wall in the process.

His mind raced. There had to be some way! The only ones here he could be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN were from his world, who were even from Milford, were Isima and Kimmi. His entire mission had started from the small, furious, resigned confessions of Isima's grandmother, sitting by the embers of a dying fire in the Milford Inn's common room. He had promised to return her granddaughter.

And she hadn't believed him.

Those remaining in line shifted their weight back and forth anxiously, desperate for their turn, but at the same time having heard that there was still one more poor soul trapped down here in the bowels of the earth. Shingen pondered various plans, gauging how many stout bodies and strong paws remained, the distance from the portal to the far side of the temple wall, the potential average speeds of moving overland with a phenomenally overfilled doe...

All the while, the pressure of the portal's penumbra on not just his limbs but his mind continued to steadily climb. He swore he could feel bones grinding, though even that paled to the sensation of his brain being squeezed in a vise, seemingly to be forced out through his eyeballs. Every which way he calculated it, every possible scenario that flashed through his mind, they all ended with his little body being cut in half by the healing wound between the universes. This would leave Kimmi with the most gruesome of souvenirs, should shi ever return from wherever shi had gone to battle Seriphos in the recesses of hir young, troubled mind.

Kimmi's other paw twitched, clenching just for a moment before going slack once more.

"Go," he said hoarsely, gesturing through the portal.

To their credit, both the squirrel and the rabbit looked pained, anguished even. They exchanged looks with one another. They glanced back at the paltry dozen prisoners that still remained, then at the far wall of the temple chamber, and then back to Shingen and the look of strained urgency on his face.

"Seriphos is going to come back," the squirrel whispered to Shingen, after the rabbit had gone through the portal. Her eyes blazed with fear, the kind that Shingen recognized from his youth: the fear of not necessarily the true believer, but of the one who knows what the zealots can do. "She's going to come back here!"

Kimmi's chest hitched, and the portal quaked and shimmied in the air as the huge taur's torso shuddered for breath. Half a dozen cries of alarm went up, the last remaining souls in the chamber seeing their avenue of escape wavering before their very eyes.

"Go!" Shingen barked, and this time there was no hesitation. In moments, the only two that remained were a skinny, knobby hoss and a fearsomely-built bear, gently lifting the unconscious leopard between them.

Gartha looked up at Kimmi, at the ripples of what looked like confusion passing over hir otherwise slack, drowsy face. "Shi said shi came to save us."

"Shi did," Shingen insisted.

"Who is going to save hir?"

Shingen's back twinged, the portal now feeling like some great maw starting to chew away at something tough caught in its teeth. "Occam... the, the goddess of that Tree," he grunted, gesturing at the nearby trunk. "Shi said that shi could save Kimmi, but I had to bridge the divide between us, I had to make contact. I... I don't know how shi... how either of them... I don't _know!_But you must hurry!!"

Gartha and Mayne didn't need any further prompting. They each paused, just for a moment, to pat the brave husky's hip.

And then they were gone, and it was only Kimmi and two-thirds of Shingen standing in a pool of radiant white, surrounded by the flickering, sputtering ochre torchlight. The silence was oppressive, and even as he fought to control his breathing, it was as though he could feel the dome of illumination shrinking around them. The darkness, squiggling and writing like some living creature, pressed inwards on their bubble of light.

"Starlight!" he barked, swinging his elbow around into hir ribs once more.

It made a pathetic, soft little thump. Kimmi made no reaction whatsoever.

The little rat squeezed his eyes shut. His rear leg shook, and he fought the desire to step fully through to this world with every fibre of his being. The scales of justice, always so plain to him, were rusted and crumbling. On the one hand, there were hundreds, many hundreds of lost, scared folk waiting for him in the sea of twigs and bones he'd left behind, an it was an absolute certainty they would never find their way out in the darkness without him. Occam had promised them safety,but shi needed Shingen to return to make good.

On the other hand, Starlight... Kimmi, his bonded mount, his companion, and perhaps his only friend in this or any other life, could not pass through the portal. That was, he was realizing, what the subtext of the Humble Ancestor's writings had alluded to. He had made the connection, he had pierced the membrane between realities, but it was not to rescue hir.

"If I'd had time," he whispered, speaking through clenched teeth, "I could have taught you the Low Path, taught you the chot-mei. I could have trained you for this moment, perhaps... I might have been able to show you how to return to our world. But... of course... I withheld it from you. I taught you the simplest, most basic forms of martial combat, and I thought... I thought that was enough."

Kimmi shivered and rumbled again, apparently laboring for breath. It was not the sound, Shingen new, of a body in proper working order.

"I will find a way to return for you," he sniffed, blinking away a tear. "I will find you, and I will find Isima, and I will find Occam and Seriphos and anyone and anything else I must, and they will be made to answer!"

"No..."

"I will master the chot-mei, and I will return. Not life nor death can keep me from... I'm sorry, what?"

The huge taur's lungs rattled and wheezed, but they were breathing stronger now. Shi was practically gulping for air. He could see Kimmi's fists clenching rhythmically now; even hir toes were digging furrows in the soft, sawdusted earth. "No!"

Around him, the portal grew jagged, shrinking faster than he could possibly hope to resist. "Starlight!" he cried out, reaching out to grab hir wrist, reaching out through his panic to touch hir with his mind. "Fight it! Come back to us-"

Some great force yanked Shingen back through the portal, tearing his fingers from hir fur. White light filled his vision, static and thunder crackled in his ears, and he was falling through heat and cold as he tumbled backwards into his own universe.

The portal shrank, drew in on itself like a careless pupil directed into the sun, became a single point that might as well have been a distant star. Even at that singular state, Shingen's mind was filled with Kimmi's presence once more, that boundless optimism swept away under a cataclysm of rage.

And as the star blinked out of existence, so too did Starlight.

---

All around hir, the nobles and merchants and working class folk and street peddlers, resplendent in their coronation best, began to float skywards as if on invisible strings.

Kimmi stumbled backwards, scattering the levitating shapes like chess pieces. Shi still struggled to come to grips with the sight of the entire Royal Dais, with its awnings and courtiers and color guard, disappearing under a coal black limb the size of one of the castle's huge spired towers.

This can't be happening! Shouted one voice in hir mind.

You aren't here! This isn't real!

What is that thing?! Is it the end of the world?

It's Seriphos!

The sky over Estragonia was a swirling marble of pure black, festooned with strands and ribbons of cloud that clung stubbornly to the vast bulk of Seriphos's body. The eight bulbous, sinuous limbs could have stretched from one end of the city to the other, but now simply bracketed the Castle, and little by little they bowed outwards, lowering the distended orb of perpetually ravenous flesh. So vast was the scale that Kimmi couldn't tell if it the hideous deity loomed a yard or a mile above the highest flags flying atop the castle.

"Shingen!" shi cried out. "What do we do?"

He did not reply, not in hir mind or hir ears. Shi watched, horrified, as he drifted up into the air, already out of hir reach. Kimmi fought a rush of vertigo, imagining hirself standing on some palatial marble ceiling, while all around hir the good folk of Estragonia fell slowly to their deaths.

"Is this better?" hissed a sibilant, familiar voice in hir mind. "Is this more of what you wanted for your world? I can make this dream come true, little thing. It's easy, so very... very easy..."

Flecks by the hundreds flowed up those greasy black limbs, Seriphos quite literally drawing folks off the streets. It was sucking them up as a young Kimmi might have chased bubbles around the bottom of hir glass with a straw.

"Not so different, you and I?" The voice was not coming from anything that had ever possessed a throat of its own, sounding like wet strips of decaying meat drawn tight like violin strings, rubbing against one another in a gale. It was musical, and simultaneously made Kimmi want to vomit. "I've brought unity to many worlds, little one, so many worlds. I've ended wars... famine... strife... disease... all of it erased, simply and painlessly."

The air was filled with people now, furres of all shapes and sizes speckling the black-capped sky like confetti. Their faces were blank, serene, staring at nothing as they tumbled lazily heavenwards.

"But it doesn't need to be painless, little one... I assure you, it so very does not need to be. But with you as my vessel, we could be a tender, relentless mercy to this world. Save them from a gruesome, nasty, brutish fate. You would fill the sky, you would touch the stars, and you would shepherd their souls, united as one, forever."

...starlight...

Kimmi jerked, and hir mind was suddenly filled with the image, the _memory_of an underground temple, spacious beyond imagining and filled with bones like some deathly grain silo. There were two lights in that endless night, a speck of blue... and there, blazing with a familiar intensity and a familiar outline, one of pure white.

"Shingen," Kimmi mumbled.

...will return for you...

Seriphos straddled the land, the only goddess left in a world that had moved on from mysticism and superstition. Kimmi was a speck of dust against the weight of just one of those horrid tentacles. Hir people, hir subjects, the citizenry shi'd sworn to protect (or would have sworn to protect had hir coronation ceremony gone on just a little bit longer) were sprinkled like salt across the ravenous beast's flesh, being absorbed one by one, blinking out of existence only to be replaced by the next tumbling, soaring morsel.

What am I forgetting, what am I missing?!? Shi pawed at hir face, moaning and growling and trying to tear hir eyes away from the sight of hir world being consumed. Did I loose this upon the world? Is this... my fault?!

"You can end this," spoke the voice "You can end all of this, little one. You could wield this power, guide my benevolent hand. Only you are strong enough to carry my essence..."

Kimmi spun, hir claws scrabbling at the worn marble stones. The high walls of the King's Court seemed more of a prison than ever before, the gates now shut and bolted tight. Spires and towers of stone surrounded hir, but seemed as durable as beach sand against the terrible might of Seriphos's incarnation. The court was empty of life now, every last man, woman and child having drifted up to their doom. Shi was the Crown Princess of an empty kingdom, and for all shi knew of an empty world.

...come back to us...

"NO!" shi wailed, hir fists pounding uselessly at hir body. Hir flesh bruised and buckled, a familiar stabbing appeared in hir breast, spiking fearsomely with every breath. Shi'd tried, and shi'd failed. Shi'd brought this ruin to hir family, to hir kingdom, because shi'd been too proud, too scared, to acquiesce. Shi was but one life, and shi'd doomed countless lives with hir selfishness.

"Simply accept me, little one. Accept... and let me in..."

Kimmi's lips pulled back, baring fangs slick with bright blood; shi'd bitten clear through hir tongue. There was no other way, shi could stop this before it went any further, maybe shi could restore what had been lost. There was always a chance, shi thought, there was always hope. If shi could contain Seriphos's essence, maybe shi could truly use that power for GOOD, shi could save hir friends, save hir family... and the world would not miss one taur, after all.

Shi opened hir mouth, hir head already starting to nod. Shi would let Seriphos in. It was the only way. Shi just had to-

A tiny paw tugged at the thick, bushy floof of hir tail, and Kimmi whirled around in shock. "Auughh!" shi cried out, flinging hir mitts up to protect hir face. The courtyard was empty, had been empty just a moment ago, shi was certain. Nothing remained, not so much as a single slipper, nothing at all...

But now shi stared into three faces that were strange and yet intensely familiar, each one bearing the nearly identical streaks of black and silver across the tops of their long, delicate muzzles. Kimmi had to lean forwards to see the smallest of the three, a plush and bushy youth with a bright, watery sadness in hir eyes.

"Let me in..." The voice was becoming steadily less supplicating.

"Kimmi," said the tiny huskytaur, wearing a simple purple smock that was cut perfectly to fit hir peculiar physique. Hir voice was high and clear, and perched on hir head was a simple coronet apparently woven of silver and gold strands. "This doesn't need to happen!"

Kimmi's eyes bulged. Shi hadn't been allowed mirrors until shi was well into hir teens, for fear that it would upset hir, but there was no doubt that shi was staring at, frankly, hirself. The miniature and far younger reflection was considerably slimmer, with a modest bust that would have been perfectly acceptable on any two-legged woman, but the young talking taur could be no-one else. Hir arms were raised at hir sides, one paw holding hir father's hand, the other hir mother's.

The King and Queen of Estragonia stared up at the fully-matured Kimmi, regal in their royal attire.

"Princess," spoke hir father, his voice rich and deep, just as shi'd remembered from the brief visits to the cold room.

The Queen blinked rapidly, smiling a small, hesitant smile. "My daughter," she said, little more than a whisper.

Kimmi swallowed, hir eyes flicking about. In the distance, the royal dais was still wholly obscured by Seriphos's tentacle, the marble stones of the court heaved and buckled for a dozen yards around it. Before hir, the tiny version of Kimmi was smiling confidently now, rocking back and forth on hir heels and apparently thoroughly enjoying hirself.

"I don't understand..."

"Let me in!"

"You're still in the temple," the toddler-sized Kimmi chirped. "Seriphos is digging away at your memories. Soon there won't be anything left of you to dig, and you won't remember enough of yourself to say no to her."

"We are not here," said the King.

"We are not dead," added the Queen. "We're not even real."

"This is a highly improper time for you to be daydreaming, young lady," the King said grimly, but there was the faintest of twitching to his lips that might have been the beginnings of a smile.

"Seriphos... is in my head," Kimmi grimaced, squinting as a hammer started pounding against the backs of hir eyes. "I remember... there were all of those slaves, those prisoners. One of them... Gartha... he asked if I was rescuing them!"

"Let me in!!" Wind started to pick up in the court, raising little clouds of dust and grit.

"Shingen made contact, and he's rescuing them! You bought them time, enough time for all of them to escape back to your world!" The tiny Kimmi was bouncing up and down now, the way shi remembered doing when hir housemaidens brought hir a surprise dessert in the middle of the day.

It felt as though shi were struggling to wake up from a dream. Shi could smell the rich, sharp smell of the colossal tree in hir nostrils, despite standing in the middle of the King's Court. Sensations washed over hir, and shi was briefly dizzy, fully aware and cognizant of being two places simultaneously. The figures of the King and Queen shimmered before hir like mirages, solidifying once more.

"What do I do?" Kimmi whimpered, kneeling and staring into hir own eyes. "What does he want me to do?! I can't... I can't remember it all, I can't focus, I can't escape! Everywhere I go, it's just more... memories..."

Hir parents reached out and, for perhaps the first time in Kimmi's recollection, touched their only child. The King squeezed Kimmi's shoulder reassuringly, the Queen resting one dainty paw against the side of the taur's thick neck.

"This is your mind, Princess," said the older husky gruffly, his eyes dark and stern. "No-one, no authority or state or person or even deity has dominion of anyone's mind, especially not any daughter of mine's!"

"Shingen taught you how to fight, dear, how to use your mind and your heart, how to listen to them, when to obey them. But you already knew when to fight, and it was never for yourself."

"Isima still needs you," the tiny taur chimed in. "She's alone, and she's scared right now."

Isima...

Kimmi's blood ran cold, terror digging at the pit of hir stomach. All of this, everything that had befallen that poor, kind-hearted, wonderful, perfect doe had been hir fault. One night, just one illicit tryst in the midnight hour, and now she was condemned to some ancient, sacrificial oubliette, in a world of lightless silence without end.

"If there's a way out, you know that it's with her." The youthful version of hirself wore a very serious expression now.

Slowly and quietly, but building force, Kimmi began to growl. "It's not fair," shi rumbled, staring up at the sky-filling dome of Seriphos.

"We believe in you, little one," the King said, now smiling openly. "We always have. We... cannot condone how we treated you, for so very long..."

"... but you were the rightful heir to the throne, and you were to be granted coronation," the Queen continued. "We watched you grow up to be kind, and learned, and wise. It was we who should have listened to our hearts more."

Kimmi knew that hir mother and father were not actually here, knew that these were just figments of hir own imagination, and very likely the most rose-colored of hir interpretations for hir childhood. And yet, there was no doubt that Kimmi's last night in Estragonia had indeed been at hir own unveiling, where the vast four-legged husky was introduced to the ruling class shi would be presiding over. Shi had been bequeathed the crown, and it wasn't as though shi would have been elevated to the status of Queen that night! Hir parents were still strong and vital, and would likely rule for many more years, giving the young dauphin time to learn the intricacies of not just law and society, but royalty itself.

And shi had run away, and caused how much destruction in hir wake?

"LET ME IN!!!"

"If you let her in, you'll just be running away one last time," the Queen warned.

"And make no mistake," added hir father. "It will be the last time."

The little memory-Kimmi released hir parents' paws and stepped forwards, reaching out to clasp one of the older taur's mitts. "Remember what happened the last times Seriphos tried to possess you," shi urged, squeezing so hard that Kimmi actually winced. "Remember! This isn't the first time!"

Kimmi found that shi could remember, more and more of hir disjointed reality falling into place. True experiences had merged with fantasies, fantasies with tortures that Seriphos had created for hir, but shi was able to sort them accurately now. The cold room... the monsters in hir high tower... the shame and anger and despair at being alone.

"I'm not alone," shi snarled. Isima had embraced the huge, woefully-endowed huskygrrl of her own free will, with nothing more than adoration in her dark eyes. Shingen had somehow tracked hir down between the Universes, and then crossed over just to try to rescue hir. In all honesty, shi couldn't decide of those two events which had seemed less likely.

But Shingen's final act had been to say farewell, unable to free the taur from the vile temple. Worse, shi'd abandoned Isima at the urgings of nothing more than a voice in hir head, and even now the doe was still trapped and immobilized, all thanks to Kimmi.

"They came to you," the little taur said. "Now go to them."

Kimmi blinked away a tear and started to reply, but they were gone. The King's Court was a blank marble oval once more, devoid of life. Around hir and above hir, the specks filling the air had all vanished, likely consumed by the ravenous world-ending force that was Seriphos. An icy wind sluiced through the kingdom now, carrying with it the musty scent of age and decay, but Kimmi scarcely felt it.

Alone in the land of Estragonia, perhaps alone in the entire world now, Kimmi stood straight and tall once more and threw open the cast iron doors of hir fury. The rage shi'd struggled hir entire life to control, fueled by hir own anxieties and insecurities, the fears that shi would never be accepted, never find friendship, never find love. Once shi was actually out on hir own, shi'd discovered far worse things to be afraid of, and shi'd been powerless in the face of many of them, choosing to cower or surrender or simply flee far too often.

"I'm not alone," shi growled again, shaking hir fists at the sky-filling expanse of Seriphos. "You hear me?! I'm not alone!!"

"** IF YOU REFUSE ME, YOU SHALL FOREVER BE ALONE!!!"**

Kimmi had once read of a volcano's explosion in a far off land, an explosion that was so concussively loud that all living beings within two miles of the blast, those that survived at least, were permanently robbed of their hearing. Those afflicted had tried writing about the experience, writing that the detonation was somewhere so far beyond mere sound that even in their last moments they could not recall actually HEARING anything. It was as though their other senses had to fill in, describing the weight and pressure and the heat of the initial shockwave, while any sound they experienced had been a soft, muffling, smothering experience.

Seriphos's voice was on that order of magnitude, Kimmi decided, with the meaning of the individual words remaining comprehensible despite the volume being immeasurably beyond description. Shi flinched, hir ears flattening against hir skull, but hir eyes never left the inky black blob that dominated the sky.

"I AM NOT ALONE!!" Kimmi bellowed. Heat suffused hir body, making hir acutely aware of every follicle, every pore. "YOU CONSUME, AND IMPRISON, AND TORTURE, BUT YOU HAVE NOBODY! YOU! HAVE! NO ONE!"

"** I CONTAIN MULTITUDES!"**

The black columns of flesh seemed to draw closer to Kimmi, closer to the spires and towers of the castle, hir castle, squeezing in. "YOU DEVOUR, NOTHING MORE! YOU SILENCE THOSE WHO WOULD SPEAK, SEPARATE THOSE WHO WOULD LOVE! YOU KNOW NOTHING!! YOU HEAR ME?! NOTHING!!!"

The towers, shi realized, were not collapsing onto hir... it was shi who expanded. Kimmi's four heavy legs filled the entirety of the King's Court, and with a crash and a rumble that shi barely noticed shi simply kicked the castle's walls aside. A smith's forge burning with the heat of that far-off volcano was erupting in hir heart, filling hir with more than just raw anger: shi felt purpose. Shi saw Isima with crystal clarity in hir mind, shi saw Shingen, shi saw hir parents.

And barring hir way, Seriphos. Not Seriphos, the devourer of worlds, the patron deity of the full moon in the starless night, of endings and beginnings, of the great Unification Of All Unto One, but Seriphos the vile and nasty little black bug.

"** I AM EVERYTHING!"** Seriphos exploded, and all around the countryside of Estragonia went dark. It was as though every light, every candle, every star, and the sun itself, had simply been extinguished. Kimmi could not explain how shi was still able to see, to recognize the outlines of the castle falling away to one side, to identify where the eight tentacular legs joined at the repugnant carapace of Seriphos's body, but shi assumed that was simply one of the quirks of being awake in one's own dreams.

Kimmi was beyond caring about dignifying Seriphos's nonsense with a response. Shi was more than a mile in height now, wind and fog streaming past hir so turbulently shi felt as though shi might have been falling from some great distance. Hir paws flattened great swaths of Estragonia, little more than pebbles beneath the pads of hir toes, but the world of dreams would endure even this.

Shi balled up hir fist, which was now clad in the comforting, soothing weight of hir steel gauntlets. As shi rocketed ever higher, ever larger, shi drove hir armored knuckles into the center of Seriphos's silhouette with the force of a meteor.

I wish I had something witty to say right now, shi thought with peculiar amusement. Something like 'get the hell out of my mind'. That would have been good! Oh, but it's just not the same when Shingen isn't around to hear. Oh, well. I'll add that part when I talk to him.

---

"What... what happened?!"

Shingen leapt to his feet amidst a cacophany of whimpers and moans and sobs and dry, dusty crunching. Although streaks of purple and green still danced across his vision, he knew he was back in the world of the endless field of bones by the oppressive weight of darkness pressing in on him.

Not just me... on everyone, he realized.

Shingen stood at the center of a huge, milling crowd, the entirety of those imprisoned by Seriphos in the world just next door, as the Humble Ancestor had apparently described it. His portal had been the sole source of light for the refugees, and when it winked out of existence it took with it what little stability and reassurance had remained.

"Oh fucking hells, they're bones! THE GROUND IS MADE OF BONES!"

"WHERE ARE WE?!?"

"MARIA, CAN YOU HEAR ME?! SPEAK TO ME!"

"WHAT HAPPENED!?"

"THIS ISN'T BETTER!"

"I WANT TO GO BACK!"

"I WANT TO GO HOME!"

"SOMETHING TOUCHED MY LEG!"

"EVERYONE, BE STILL!" Shingen roared, drawing upon decades of practice controlling his breath and expelling it precisely and methodically. Kimmi had been impressed when Shingen, on a dare, had shattered a window from five paces way with nothing but a single word in the rat's native tongue that shi was positive had been obscene.

With the force of a thunderclap, that order was met with mewling and whimpering, but in general with silence and compliance.

"Thank you. Now then, first order: NO WANDERING OFF. I'm sure you all know how large this chamber is."

He winced when, a moment later, the import of those words sank in.

"WE'RE IN ANOTHER TEMPLE?!?"

"WHY?!?!"

"WE'LL NEVER BE RESCUED!!"

"I JUST WANT TO LAY DOWN HERE AND DIE!!!"

"OH MY GODS THIS IS A SKULL! I JUST STEPPED ON A SKULL!!"

"SILENCE!"

Once again, the group was still, but there was a definite thread of restless terror that Shingen could feel. He supposed it was very understandable. To the casual observer, their situation had not improved.

Here goes nothing, Shingen thought. Occam, you had better keep your word!

He reached into his robe and removed the small handful of bright blue petals he'd managed to collect during his brief time in the world next door. In the abyssal darkness, faint streamers of blue light slipped between his fingers. They were not straight streaks as he would have expected, akin to beams of light creeping through the clouds on an overcast day, but wavered and swayed as though he clutched a handful of luminous seaweed.

There were gasps, and a few more whimpers of fear. The blue light was new, and in their current state anything new was likely to be extremely off-putting. He held his fist aloft, and the crowd watched awestruck as the tendrils of light slowly oriented themselves in one direction, as though being drawn by invisible currents of air.

"This way!" he said, loudly but no longer trying to draw breath from the base of his spine. "I am going to need your help! ALL of your help!"

The crowd was not especially thrilled to be forced to walk across what were undoubtedly sticks and bones. Shingen could hear many of them whispering to one another, making the connection that this was a temple where, at some point, a similar Tree of Life had been successfully demolished... and it was fairly obvious what had become of the slaves brought down and forced to commit that act.

Before long they reached the lip of the crater-like mound at the heart of the chamber. The refugees continued to trudge with dark bemusement, many helping their weaker compatriots up the incline. Shingen's vision, normally so clear and sharp, could only barely make out the bedraggled and emaciated figures in the near-total darkness, the glow from the petals hardly brighter than a handful of stars in the night sky.

"Be careful," he called out, the first to crest the edge of the indentation. "There is a short down slope now, and then we-"

"AAHH!!"

Shingen winced, but he remained at the top of the slope, paw held aloft as a beacon to all those still climbing. By ones and twos they attempted to descend towards the center of the crater, but a significant portion of them ended up tumbling and sliding their way to the bottom. Cries of dismay rang out in the darkness, but they were hushed and soothed by those next to arrive at the base of the bowl.

"Good people," Shingen announced when he was positive there were no more stragglers still attempting the climb. "I beg your patience for one more minute!"

He skittered down to the edge of the crowd, moving nimbly between them. Even those that clung to one another for warmth had shed their robes, that last reminder of their time in the graces of Seriphos. Tiny wisps of azure light, as faint as smoke, continued to draw him towards the center of the crater, and soon he stood over the little mound of dust-dry debris that sheltered the ghostly effigy of this universe's Tree of Life.

There were gasps and yelps of surprise when Shingen started to dig, revealing the much brighter glow of the eldritch little tree. The radiance was still less than that of a single candle, but to those that had already become accustomed to the permanent night it was too searingly bright to look directly at.

And yet they gathered around, peering around one another fearfully but helpless against the alluring draw of the light. Countless little sticks and bones shifted and ground and creaked against one another, reminding Shingen of the way Starlight tended to grind hir teeth when shi went to bed angry. Shi denied it, of course, but he had to respect that shi was a grrl... a young woman of powerful emotions.

Shingen held his loosely clenched fist over the tree and slowly released the petals, letting them drift down on top of the impossibly tiny, intricately detailed boughs of the microcosmic tree. The distorted senses of scale make him smile, strangely enough; each petal, if the tree were the size it seemed during his vision, during his conversation with Occam, would have been larger than the Inn at Milford. The thought of a dozen huge buildings tumbling out of the sky nearly made him giggle.

"Occam," he said softly, once the azure lotus petals had rained down. "We have arrived."

It was more than a minute after when someone finally worked up the nerve to clear their throat. "Er," said the tiny feminine voice, high and sweet despite the raspiness it had acquired from lack of use. "Is... something supposed to happen?"

Shingen said nothing. He simply stared down at the little tree.

After another minute, he carefully extended his paw into the eerie oval glow that it produced, as though the tree were somehow encased in a nearly transparent crystal egg. He felt a moment of heat, a moment of cold, and then just the crumbly, mossy texture of what could have been simply a pile of lichen.

"Huh," he managed, in a small, angry, tired voice.

---

Kimmi's wild swing looped high over hir own head, slamming hir own bicep into hir muzzle and rattling what few marbles shi still possesed. Shi staggered to one side, feeling the wrenching in hir shoulder. Shi felt dizzy, disoriented, felt like a giant looming over the mountaintops and yet as tiny as a speck of dust drifting on the breeze. Hir stomach lurched, and shi had to fight the urge to throw up whatever might actually still exist in hir stomach. Oh, ye gods, how long has it been since I've EATEN?!

The sullen ochre light of the chamber's guttering torches brought hir back to hir senses. Shi felt the jagged mulch beneath hir paws, felt the weight of darkness bearing down on hir. Shi was back in the temple, standng at the base of the devastated Tree of Life. All around hir were the discarded tools and overturned barrows of Seriphos's slaves, the decades of ceaseless labor brought to a sudden halt by the appearance of a single lost taur.

"Everyone," shi croaked, feeling as though shi's swallowed rocks. "Everyone, we need to... to... uhm, everyone?"

Kimmi turned in a slow circle. All around were the empty robes of Seriphos's slaves, crisscrossing tracks in the soft, mouldering debris, and nothing else.

The slaves themselves were gone. Even the priestesses that had brought the entity of Seriphos to battle, even the leopard that the ancient deity had possessed, were gone.

The husky's jaw moved silently, opening and closing as shi fought to consider this revelation.

How long was I gone?!

Hir hands flashed to hir belly, but Shingen's blade was also vanished. There was naught there but fur, and shi fancied that there might even be less flesh behind it. If shi went much longer without eating, shi feared shi might start feeling hir own ribs.

"A-anyone?" shi quavered.

Waking up in the deepest pits of this unholy effigy, shi hadn't felt alone; shi'd been imprisoned, which meant there had to be someone to imprison hir. It was just a matter of finding them. Now, though, shi was acutely aware that the temple was well and truly empty.

Hir ears flattened against hir head, and hir proudly curved tail drooped.

"Shingen?" shi called out, with hir voice as well as hir mind.

There was no reply.

He was here, shi thought. I know he was here! I remember it! He talked to me! He told me to fight! He told me... he told me to come back to him...

"Fool," shi snarled. "He has gone and left you! Abandoned you!"

At this, Kimmi blinked. Shi shook hir head, muzzle flapping, and cocked hir head to one side, ears at the ready. "What was-"

"You were right about one thing!" shi barked cruelly. "You are not alone!"

As shi started to laugh, Kimmi brought a paw up to hir face in horror. Seriphos!

"Did you think you could punch out a GOD?!" shi roared, the voice clearly hir own but wholly alien and unfamiliar to hir ears. Kimmi felt hir body straighten, bones creaking and joints screaming in protest, but it was a distant pain. "You've done nothing but prove your inability to bow down to your betters, little thing."

"GET OUT OF MY BODY!" shi screeched, skipping backwards in a panic. Hir hind legs froze and shi tumbled over, pawing uselessly at the air. "GET OUT!"

"Where would I go?" shi smirked, hir traitorous lips responding to hir own question. "Someone seems to have stolen my previous chariot. Fortunate it is that I know whence they've gone. A dull world... but one that has most definitely piqued my interest."

Seriphos guided Kimmi's limbs smoothly, standing hirself up once more. To Kimmi it were as though shi were fighting against the strings of a puppeteer, but whenever shi grasped at those cords to control hirself they slipped through hir paws as if they were greased. This can't be happening! I won! I WON!

"Did you?" shi asked, inspecting hir mitts with curiosity and mild disgust. "Eugh. Such filth. Have you any idea the sheer number of _germs_you've allowed to infest my new avatar? Honestly, such repugnant behaviour. The creatures of this world are hardly better than those horrible little slimy things that first crawled out of the mud."

Kimmi focused all of hir intensity on hir hands, trying to force them straight down to hir sides, desperately seeking to reassert control. Hir fingers trembled, and Seriphos tittered. "Oh. A tremble. How mortifying."

SHUT UP! Kimmi roared in hir thoughts, when it became clear shi no longer posessed permission to use hir own mouth. Shi pictured hir legs very clearly in hir mind, hir leaner forelegs and their powerful shoulders, hir mighty hind legs bracketing the base of hir maleness. Shi visualized digging into the earth with hir large, blunt claws, and leaping for freedom.

Hir gait faltered, but only for a moment.

"You will grow tired of that, I assure you," Seriphos sighed offhandedly. "They always do. I must say, it HAS been a long time since I've had to share a vessel in such a fashion. I must commend your stubbornness, but it is all for naught."

How can you expect me to believe that?!

"It's quite simple," Seriphos grinned. "I am still here... and they are not. In the end, who do you think won? Who do you think ALWAYS wins? Who could not BUT win?"

IT CAN'T BE THAT SIMPLE!

"Can't it?" Shi... _they_began walking once more. "We have much to do, little thing, so much to do. My pantry has been depleted, and I have you to thank for that. Ooh! You almost twitched your tail that time! Keep fighting, little thing, keep fighting. It's the only chance you have, but I'd be lying if I said it was a real chance."

Kimmi howled and raged against the inside of hir skull, feeling as though shi were sealed inside some sort of pressure cooker that was being heated by hir own impotent fury. Hir eyes burned, and hir wails continued long past shi should have exhausted hir breath.

"You will never struggle for breath again, little thing. Won't that be wonderful? You can scream forever. I won't mind. I find I rather enjoy it."

~down here~

Kimmi started, still trying to look around with hir physical body.

~be quiet~

The four-legged taur was trotting with a spring in hir step through the darkness, heading for the distant and sparsely-lit chamber walls. The only thing that would have completed the image of the self-satisfied maiden would have been if Seriphos had started humming.

~listen to me~

Kimmi was silent, retreating as far as shi could from what shi somehow percieved to be the front of hir mind. The small, blank space behind hir eyes was constricting, reminding hir uncomfortably if being chained once more, but these were chains shi could not break with mere muscle.

"Oh, now you're sulking," Seriphos said indulgently. "It's no matter. I have ways to amuse myself with you."

Who are you? Kimmi asked, with as small of a thought-voice as shi could manage.

Somewhere in the depths of that black space Kimmi saw, or rather remembered, the tiny version of hirself from Seriphos's torturous delusions. A small, puppyish huskytaur, now just wearing the simple white nightdress that shi normally lounged around hir tower in. Hir tail wagged happily, but hir eyes were hard and serious.

~you can't beat Seriphos~

The words fell like anvils around Kimmi, and hir heart dropped. What... what? Is this just another dream? ARE YOU HER?!

~you can't beat Seriphos with your anger~, the little Princess said again, patiently. ~she has lifetimes, countless lifetimes, of wearing down the strongest, mightiest, most defiant defenders of the land. Kings, queens, knights, priests, sorcerors... you don't stand a chance~

"Giving up already?" Seriphos taunted, giving hir new skull a little rap with hir knuckles. "I'd expected more from you, little thing. You seemed so... forceful. I'm disappointed."

THEN WHAT DO I DO? HOW DO I DEFEAT HER?!?!?

The little Princess rolled hir eyes. ~you always think in terms of battle, of winning and losing, of triumph and defeat. not everything in life can be vanquished. I thought I would grow up to know that~

The tiny taur thumbed through a book that Kimmi hadn't noticed hir holding before. It was a slim tome, encased in rich purple velvet with brass binding and capping. ~I hope you manage to find another printing of this~, shi said softly. ~it always was my favorite~

Kimmi remembered that book, one of the first volumes from the Royal Reserve Library that hir housemaidens had been allowed to bring up. While it was ostensibly a collection of stories for small children, they were of a very different ilk than the ones shi'd been read from hir youngest ages. These were far more complex than 'small girl gets lost in the woods, and fights some bears over their breakfast' or 'small boy runs away from home and then comes back with a magic duck', the sort of fare that Kimmi had always enjoyed but not really thought twice about.

No, the stories in that velvet tome were far darker. Young children found themselves wandering alone after bandits slaughtered their parents, witches abducted pets for their meals before moving up to larger, craftier folk. There were some happy endings, but not always, and those that could be said to end on a positive note were most decidedly earned. They were vicious, bloody stories intended to educate in the most memorable, and haunting, ways possible.

It went without saying that they were instantly Kimmi's favorite stories.

~you remember~

I remember.

"Remember what?" Seriphos asked innocently, holding a single claw up to hir right eye.

It couldn't be that simple, Kimmi thought, but at the same time... why couldn't it? How many times had shi gotten hirself into some sort of improbable mess, and how many times had shi been forced to think hir way around the problem? Shi was starting to lose count. Back in their cottage in Milford, hir satchel contained a small ledger that shi'd spent a small fortune on. Every night, shi forced hirself to fill an entire page with the smallest writing shi could muster, recalling hir adventures since leaving home, but at Shingen's urgings shi focused very specifically on hir mistakes, on hir failures.

Anyone can write about their successes, he'd said. You tried something, and it worked. It takes far more integrity, far more honesty, to write about one's disasters, but in the end, those are the only lessons worth repeating. Some day, shi wanted to turn that horrible mess of notes into a real book, a volume with hir name written on the inside, in the hopes that, somehow, shi might achieve something positive with hir time on this Earth. But for now, shi simply contented hirself with constantly re-reading hir worst experiences, and trying to take meaning from them.

The little Princess held both books in hir paws now, one purple and brass, the other purple and gold. The colors of the Queen of Estragonia.

Inside the vast chamber at the heart of the Temple of Seriphos, the taur that so recently called hirself Kimmi stumbled, tripped, and fell flat on hir bust with a surprised grunt.

I remember.

"What?!" Seriphos spat, pawing awkwardly at hir face, spitting out sawdust. Shi struggled back to hir feet, slapping at the filth that clung to hir new fur. "What did you do?!"

Isima, Kimmi thought, picturing only the doe's dark, warm, accepting eyes.

Hir tail wagged once, and shi turned slightly, heading towards the smudge at the base of the wall, a small circle of sputtering torchlight on the vast, empty horizon of darkness. Shi raked hir fingers back through hir hair, feeling sticks tumbling free, and shi took a huge, grateful gulp of air. "I'm never going to ignore another chance at a bath again," Kimmi laughed, pleased to hear hir own voice once more. "Not that I ever really DID, but sometimes I would postpone them. Never again."

Hir paws trembled and shook, hir legs moving falteringly, but still shi kept up hir general pace. "What are you doing?!" Seriphos shrieked through thick lips, tongue tangling itself up. "You believe you can fight me?! AGAIN?!?"

"No," Kimmi said simply, and the shivering stopped.

"FRRGHHHT MRRR!!" shi roared, but it was a strangled sound.

Kimmi's steady walk became a trot, lifting hir paws high into the air, the way the festive taurs had done while pulling the parade floats in the town of Squamish. They'd arrived just before the Celebration of Wide Earth, which was the region's midsummer excuse to party. While the days were far too hot for any sort of gathering, with the sun baking the countryside and sucking the energy out of the locals, the nights became bright, raucous dedications to garish excess and extravagance. It was considered the height of propriety to wear as many different articles of clothing at once, in as many different colors as possible, and Kimmi had joined in the parade wearing more than four dozen sashes and strips of fabric, wrapped around hir body in an endless spiral. Some of the lengths of material had been actual drapes, but shi hadn't minded. The good people of Squamish had accepted hir almost instantly.

WRETCHED LITTLE THING! Seriphos roared, exploding with fury like a volcano.

But Kimmi heard nothing but hir own humming, remembering the jaunty tune they'd played during the midnight summer parade.

---

It can't end like this, Shingen thought. I did it. I did everything! I deciphered the chot-mei_, I followed in the footsteps of the Humble Ancestor himself, I walked the void between the worlds. I found Starlight! I rescued ALL OF THESE PEOPLE!! IT CANNOT!! END!! LIKE!! THIS!!!_

Quaking as though struck by lightning, the little rat sprang to his feet, threw back his head, inhaled deeply, and for the very first time in his life a single obscene word passed his lips. He roared on and on, those nearest to him shrinking back in terror from the bellowing warrior.

When there was no more breath within him, his shoulders slumped and he simply stared up into the void. He knew how far above him was the heaved, crumbling roof of this structure, and how far beyond that the apex of the pyramid itself, that sole portion extending above the surface. He'd given up on the foolish fever-dream of trying to usher the refugees up through the temple, a journey he'd found arduous enough just descending... but now, what seemed to be the alternative?

"Sir?"

What do I tell them? he thought morosely, the unaccustomed stench of failure filling his nostrils. That I rescued them from one hell, only to condemn them to a long, arduous, and by no means certain trek towards the light? Half-starved, half-blind... why can't Starlight ever be kidnapped somewhere ABOVE ground?!

"Mister Rat fellow, sir?"

Shingen steeled his nerves, shuddered, and forced his palms flat against his sides. He straightened his back, squared his shoulders, and turned serenely towards the voice, which was once again coming from the ragged-looking gull whom he'd met upon first appearing in the other temple. Her black and white markings were marred with grey streaks of dust and a grimy yellow matting that could only be from the Tree. Without careful upkeep over the years, he doubted her plumage was in any shape to fly, and might never be again.

And yet, she stared at him with hope in her eyes. In her outstretched palm, he was immediately struck by the sight of three crumpled blue petals, still giving off the very faintest of illumination.

"Will these help?"

"I don't think the petals were the... the key, I had thought they were," Shingen sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "But thank you, young lady. I... I just need a minute to think."

There was rustling from the crowd, and in his mind's eye Shingen could just see the looks of dismay, frustration, even resentment on their faces. He had succeeded where countless others had failed, where the entire Brotherhood had failed, where perhaps the entire purpose of the Order had failed, and yet... he'd not been able to save Starlight, he'd not been able to save the slaves, and unable to abandon them he'd likely doomed himself to share their fate.

It were as though a faint breeze were blowing through his hair, so numerous the whispers and discordant sounds coming from the mob."I am sorry," he said, softly, wishing he could be so quiet as to not be heard. "I... I was not wise enough to see..."

"I have some..."

"Look, they're in my hair."

"Hee hee, that tickles."

"Three more!"

"Here, give those to me, I'll bring them..."

Shingen's eyes popped open, and he was floored by the scene around him, not the least because he could see so much of it. The tree still gave off its faint light, but around him seemed to be a constellation of azure fireflies. Shadowy figures rummaged around and seemed to be producing more petals from their hair, from the tangled and knotty fur of their tails, even those caught between their toes. Handful by handful they were brought forth, showering in an endless rain onto the improbably small, immeasurably vast oak growing out of the ancient golgotha.

The light grew more intense as it became focused on that single spot, the tree almost invisible beneath a knee-high drift of luminescent lotus petals.

"Is that enough?"

"They're so pretty!"

"Where did that one come from, I'm POSITIVE I checked there!"

"Ack thwpp, that one wath under my tongue!"

And still they rained down, the mob shifting and folding in upon itself as more and more escaped furres brought out their little treasures. Shingen felt the beginnings of a giggle rising in his throat, but he stamped it down. He was sure to hold on to that little nugget of mirth, and the hope that had allowed it to form, but there would be time for frivolity later.

Had I given up... so easily?

~Indeed you had, mighty one~ the voice chuckled, full of warmth and understanding. ~Considering the circumstances, I suppose I can allow you the benefit of the doubt for giving up on my promises. Just don't let it happen again.~

Shingen's whiskers twitched, the giggle now forcing its way into his sinuses. Occam's voice filled his mind once again, bypassing his ears completely. "I... humbly apologize," he said thickly. He knelt by the tree, brushing away a few of the petals that had covered the upper boughs. "Starlight-"

~Your friend is... safe, surprisingly~ Occam said. Shi sounded genuinely pleased, if the tiniest bit puzzled. ~I have much to discuss with hir, if shi is able to complete hir journey. But for now, shi is temporarily beyond my power.~

The mob buzzed excitedly, hundreds of shapes turning around, ears cocked and eyes wide with surprise. Shingen realized that the voice wasn't just speaking to him; Occam seemed to be carrying on many conversations at once.

"Why do you sound like my mom?"

"Thank you, I've always loved my hair! Though it needs a wash..."

"Oh, it was nothing. Anyone would have helped hir..."

"Can you get us out of here?"

"Are you going to bring us home?"

"Do you know where my home is?"

~Shingen~ Occam spoke, for the first time switching from hir perpetually-amused tone to one that almost sounded as though shi were giving orders. Which, he supposed, he was in no position to refuse. ~Everyone. This is important. My essence is only clinging to your world by the barest of threads. If I am to save you, if I am to erase the damage done to your world by Seriphos, I require your Devotion.~

"Er," Shingen frowned. "What... what do you mean, our Devotion? We are grateful, of course, but-"

~Without the life force given up by the acts of Devotion, I am nothing but a voice in your heads. If I am to once again manifest in your world, once again raise the Tree of Life, I need your gifts of Devotion!~

Shingen did not like the way that sounded. After all of this, the supposedly-benificient Occam demanded what was sounding all too much like a sacrifice. The Celestial Path eschewed the tenets of all gods, all religions, as detracting from the natural mortality of the self. "What gifts?" he snapped, becoming anxious. Worsening his fear was the knowledge that he was, in Kimmi's parlance, now getting uppity with a deity. "What do YOU demand in order for us to be saved?!"

The response that he recieved, and indeed that everyone in the temple received, was most definitely NOT what he'd expected. His mind was suddenly filled with images, memories, fantasies, full of sound and color and texture and far too much warmth for his liking. He'd shared his bond with Kimmi for the better part of a year, and he was reminded rather uncomfortably of what it was like to prod too closely when shi was dreaming.

There were countless gasps, purrs, rumbles and moans from the crowd.

~I do not demand your Devotion to be given to me~ Occam said slyly. ~I merely require to be in the presence of Devotion to others. I am the Goddess of Birth, after all...~

Shingen's brow began to sweat. It seemed every time some vision of carnality in his mind ceased, there were two more fighting for his attention. Some of the fantasies he recognized from his own youth, before he'd learned to control his thoughts, his passions, his urges. Some of them were definitely Kimmi's, the sheer physical improbability of which nearly caused him to go cross-eyed. Even more were new to him, and he found himself simultaneously captivated and horrified by his accidental voyeurism.

~You know, I have temples in some Universes where folks line up for DAYS just to offer up their Devotions in my name~ Occam giggled. ~Apparently, my blessings are known for their, uhm, reliable potency.~

As if to drive the point home, Shingen was presented with a remarkable vision of Kimmi and Isima's last moments together, a single act of lust that managed to destroy a section of fortress-like masonry. Hidden from the taur's view, but plainly visible to Shingen's mind's eye, a bluish-green sigil began to glow on the highest portions of Isima's vastly overfilled womb. A sigil that looked very similar to a lotus flower.

~I am afraid it is I who must apologize to you, Shingen~ Occam added, hir voice now filled with sorrow. ~Those were were abducted using the perverted remnants of my power in your world are already paired.~

Indeed, Shingen felt a blush rising in his cheeks that seemed destined to spread all the way to the tip of his tail. All around him the tired, worn, bedraggled figures were wrapped around one another in passionate embraces. The air was filled with the sounds of long-overdue kissing, the soft hiss of paws caressing fur, the little whimpers and moans of desires that had been suppressed for years, or in many cases decades. Two by two, the former slaves sank to the ground, heedless of the sharp twigs or dry, powdery bones beneath them.

~If you like, however, I can offer you a little... gift. Call it a thank-you for not just freeing one world from Seriphos, but allowing me to return to another~

"Uhm.. ah..." Shingen squeaked, clearing his throat. "What s-sort of... g-gift?"

~Oh... just a little something I picked up from Kimmi~

Afterwards, Shingen would not have been surprised to discover that his eyes then turned a bright, radiant blue. He sank to his knees, completely unaware of the rising cries and groans and teeth-clenched snarling rising in a steady chorus around him.

He found himself in a pleasant glade, a sinuous S-shaped pool marking a low, marshy point in a small stream's journey. Garlands of multi-hued vines seemed to hang and droop between the branches of the silver-barked birch trees, and speckles patches of wildflowers filled the hollow with color and light. It was immediately familiar, the location where he'd first discovered Kimmi. He remembered hearing the crashing and splashing from some distance away, approaching from high in the trees, moving as silently as a ghost.

His tail went ramrod straight when he blinked, and saw that the pool was now occupied.

"Hey, you," Kimmi grinned, sprawled out on hir back. The clear, warm water of the glade lapped at hir body, shallow enough that shi could still wash but never fear drowning. One paw was cupping water to hir hair and then running its fingers through, hir black mane lustrous and radiant in the sunlight sprinkling down through the canopy overhead. The other paw was, with exaggerated casualness, tracing back and forth across hir mightly maleness. Both hir hindlegs and forelegs cradled it as best they could, but it extended far beyond hir barrel, beyond hir breasts, beyond even hir muzzle, so girthy that Shingen wasn't sure he could get his arms around it.

"Can you give me a hand?" shi asked innocently, batting hir eyelashes at him. "I've gotten so dirty, and I just can't seem to get clean. Can you help me... reach some places?"

---

"Hmm de dumm dumm dumm, we got candy and we got corn, hmm de dumm dumm dumm, baby grab the bull by the horns..."

Kimmi had moved on from trotting, and was now fairly skipping across the desolate rubbish-pile landscape of the temple's great chamber. Hir tail swished gaily behind hir, and even the constant scraping of hir undercarriage against the dirt wasn't bothering hir. Hir fingers twitched in time with the music shi was orchestrating in hir head, expanding upon the simple little ditty and adding in all manner of instruments shi could think of.

The brass section was really helping to drown out Seriphos.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!? STOP THIS!!!

"Hmm de dumm dumm dumm, whole lotta shakin' going on," shi sang, only partially off-key. "I'm igno-o-o-oring you!"

YOU CANNOT IGNORE ME! I AM BEYOND TIME AND DEATH!

"And yet, here were are, laa laa laa," Kimmi grinned, attempting to accelerate once more but quickly discovering hir naked body's natural frequency did not like to be exceeded. Hir mitts flew up and forced hir breasts back down, elbows bracing their side-to-side motion.

I CANNOT BE... PUSHED ASIDE! Seriphos howled. YOUR VESSEL SHALL NOT BE FREED!

"Hmm ah humm la humm, I can't he-e-e-ear you-u-u-u..."

STOP SINGING!!!

Kimmi had been afraid to even entertain the thought, but now that shi seemed to be fully in charge of hir own body once more shi very carefully allowed hirself to peek the very edge of it: shi really hadn't believed that it would work.

Somewhere inside of hir mind, in the wide open and empty places that shi rarely used but was starting to explore, with Shingen's help, Seriphos raged and stomped and smashed and generally was making quite the ruckus. If there were some spiritual equivalent to fine pottery or antque furniture, Kimmi had no doubt the furious entity would be throwing all of it against the wall out of spite.

HOW?!?!

"Do you promise to behave?"

SILENCE, LITTLE THING!!!

"Just for that? No. You never heard the story about the Morbid Kitten, did you?"

I WILL FEAST ON YOUR ENTRAILS WITH YOUR OWN MAW!

Kimmi clucked hir tongue and rolled hir eyes. "Such language. Anyways, it was a story I read as a pup. It wasn't my usual bedtime fare. It was something that had been snuck up by my housemaidens, though to be fair it was at my insistence. Even back then, I had ways to make them do as I wished... though, looking back, I feel that they really wanted to do all of those things as well."

Warm thoughts spread through hir, tingling hir scalp and causing hir to hug the vast bosom before hir once more. "But in this case, I just wanted more stories. BETTER stories. Stories about more than just itty bitty toddlers who did stupid things and learned a lesson. Have you ever read those, Seriphos?"

BE SILENT!!

"Mmm hmm, fascinating. Anyways, this story took place in a little hamlet, which I always thought was a thing you made with eggs, but it was located on the edge of a haunted wood. Tiny towns in these stories were ALWAYS built near haunted woods, or evil swamps, or naughty witches, or whatever. Terrible planning. Every year on the Night of the Evil Eye, which was the last new moon before the solstice came and the snow started to fall, a ghost would emerge from the woods, and it would entice a child to return to the afterlife with it. Every year, without fail. Hey, I wonder if you had some help inspiring this little tale."

YOU WILL LIVE FOR AN ETERNITY ONLY TO WATCH YOUR WORLD DIE A THOUSAND DEATHS!

"I see. Anyways, all year the adults warn their children not to be out on the Night of the Evil Eye, but of course some kids are ALWAYS wanting to sneak out and see the ghost for themselves. I mean, who wouldn't? A real life ghost!" Kimmi paused, pursing hir lips. In the distance, shi was able to make out a spherical shape lit from all angles by discarded torches, and hir heart swelled. "You know what I mean. But every year, the windows were nailed shut, and the kids had to stay in their beds. But, without fail, one kid vanished, every year."

I HAVE DEVOURED A BILLION CHILDREN!

"I think you're inflating those numbers a little. There was one little kitten, though, who looked FORWARD to this night. A tiny white kitten, who wore all black. She wrote dark poetry, she sang to the spirits in the woods, and she would howl at the moon from her roof top. Her parents were at their wits end, and everyone in town was sure that if ANY child would be taken, it would be her. She was spooky. She was different. She was wrong."

Seriphos had descended into wordless gibbering now, which Kimmi had to admit was kind of a relief. The entity was easier to ignore when she couldn't be understood.

"So, on the night, she is preparing to sneak out to see the ghost... but her parents come in. And the neighbors. And all of the village elders. And before she can escape, they GRAB her, and tie her up, and they put her in a little black wagon and drag her to the edge of the woods. And that's when she realizes... the ghost only takes the one child per year, because the adults decide which one they can be better off rid of."

Kimmi didn't know if Seriphos was listening anymore, and shi didn't care. It was just nice to relive this story.

"So, bound and gagged and just furious at her parents, which I can sort of understand, everyone watches as the ghost emerges from the woods. It's silver and purple and see-through, as all the best ghosts should be, and she's a horrible, withered, ragged looking old woman. The ghost stalks towards the wagon, reaches out a bony finger and pulls away the gag, and then asks the kitten what her name is, so they can be friends. The BEST of friends. Forever."

"And the kitten, see, just looks at the trees."

"'Tell me your name!' shouts the ghost."

"The kitten looks back at her parents, and then back to the trees."

"The ghost looks at the adults, and then back to the kitten."

"See, the ghost needs to be able to call the child by their name to cast a spell over them, and Morbid was no fool. So the kitten, now free of her gag, looks over and says 'Father Tatum, mother Kassy, why am I in this wagon? And why are you standing with Goodie Oldsbridge and Mister Frond and Missus Danaver and Mister Appleperch...'"

"And one by one, she lists off the names of everyone standing there, and one by one the ghost casts her spells."

"And when morning comes, the children come out to discover that all the adults have gone, and the Morbid Kitten is fast asleep in her bed."

Seriphos's demented raving was now the droning of a thousand angry bees, if the bees happened to be made out of rusted iron. Kimmi found that if shi tried, shi could hum near enough to match the pitch, and it was like being able to hum in harmony with hirself. It was a pleasant sensation.

"For a long time, I didn't get that story. I thought it was just about how my parents were cruel and some day they'd disappear and I'd be happy. There were a lot of stories where the parents got their comeuppance just as often as the children did. But in the end, I realized, it was about problems, and the problems that others PUT on you. And sometimes... just sometimes... the best thing you can do is just ignore them. Stand aside. Don't make it YOUR problem."

Kimmi's own private, personal ghost was definitely still there, still a pressure at the base of hir skull, still a keening whine in hir ears, still a headache just starting to form behind hir eyes, but for the time being it was subdued.

And shi wasn't about to waste that opportunity.

Hir steps slowed, the huge taur's hackles rising anxiously. It had been, what, not even thirty minutes since shi'd last seen Isima, but it felt like vastly more. Considering the battles in the center of hir mind against Seriphos, fighting the eldritch abomination for control of something shi'd never lost in the first place, it might as well have been weeks or months.

The tingling returned to hir loins, and shi felt a stirring despite how recently shi'd expended hirself. Still, Shingen was always saying shi had the boundless energy of youth, and much pity to the brave soul who caught hir eye.

"Isima?" shi quavered, walking slowly around the wonderfully spherical mound of doe-colored fur. The majority of the wildly overinflated young woman was white, hir bellyfluff stretched out beyond all reason, but as Kimmi made hir way around to the far side, there were darker markings, now a yard wide and many more long.

A few more steps carried hir to where shi could see the doe's twitching tail, the curvy and much too inviting swell of her rump, and then the arms and legs splayed out against the springy, faintly sloshing tapestry of hir body. The doe's eyes were half-lidded, her cheeks pressed up against her heavy breasts, which had themselves been pushed up awkwardly but adorably high by her belly.

"Hey, you," Isima murmurred, wriggling against herself as though rousing from a sound night's sleep. "We were just talking about you."

Kimmi approached carefully, leaning against Isima's back and embracing her as much as shi was able. The doe's hooves waved uselessly more than a foot above the ground, which meant Kimmi could nuzzle the back of her head without having to stoop. More than half of the overstuffed doe still remained trapped inside the granite chamber beyond, which boggled Kimmi's mind. Is that going to happen EVERY time I... like someone?

"I told you I'd come back," shi sniffed, joyful to see Isima once more but saddened by the reality of their situation. Somewhere in the distance, Seriphos was cackling and screeching, and she was getting more difficult to ignore. "Look, I... I don't know how... wait, 'we'?"

Isima nodded, hiccuped and giggled. "Mmm hmm. You brought us closer together."

"Who is 'us'?"

There was a sound on the breeze that sounded almost like a polite throat clearing, and them Kimmi's ears twitched at yet another voice that seemed to exist only within hir mind.

~You don't know how happy I am to speak to you, darling!~

---

Shingen struggled to retain his composure, but it took even his most determined efforts just to stay more or less upright. He swayed back and forth on his knees, aware of two different worlds overlapping, aware of his existence in both, and fighting to remember which was which.

In one world, he knelt before a tiny glowing tree, nearly buried in lotus petals. The azure aura pulsed and throbbed like a heartbeat, diminishing a fraction less than it swelled, until soon it was nearly too bright to look at.

In another world, he found himself stretched out across Kimmi's forebelly, his head resting against breasts, each of which were larger than he could encircle with both arms. Both taur and rat stared at the sky, but both their views were blocked by the twitching, delicately creaking column of Kimmi's maleness. His hands reached up, laughably tiny and white against that inky flesh, stroking back and forth, while further along hir huge silvery mitts did the same. Their breaths were fast and labored, synchronized after several minutes of stimulation.

That never happened! I swear!

~Maybe not, but Kimmi is a young woman in the greatest peaks of passion and discovery of hir life. Shi has entertained MANY such daydreams, even if shi would never act on them. Tis a pity, though... you two would make the most ADORABLE little babies.~

No! No babies! No! I... shi... we're just friends!

~Friends cannot make new life?~

That's not... shi... I don't... we're very different people!

~That's the BEST reason to do it! But I won't push the issue. You are a peculiar little rat man, and I feel you and I are going to have to have a long talk when this is over. And besides, it's probably for the best. Your path has not yet concluded, the pair of you.~

In the first world, the one Shingen was almost entirely certain existed, even if it was notably less fun, he was at the quiet little center of what was rapidly becoming an orgy. Hundreds upon hundreds of couples were engaged in all manner of lustful acts, some of which he had only seen illustrated, and as time wore on some of the groups seemed to merge. All wore expressions of rapt ecstasy, which Shingen was only able to see due to the faint illumination cast by the hundreds of pairs of eyes that were starting to emit a faint bluish-green light.

This... is your devotional?!

~I am very popular on some worlds~ Occam said, with a not-very-subtle trace of smugness.

A gutteral, feral-sounding intensity entered the cacophonic chorus. Claws were being extended, toes were digging into the soft earth, which seemed to be decomposing before Shingen's very eyes, and the thrusting became more frenzied by degrees. Many times he caught someone's eye, and was rewarded with a wink, an inviting nod of the head, or a blatant gesture that... Shingen dared not consider too closely.

~You are a spoil sport.~

"I... have... a mission!" Shingen hissed, adjusting his robes frantically, as well as the anatomy underneath which had grown as rigid as his trusty blade in the last few minutes. Normally this was something he could control, as easily as he controled his walking or his breathing or the beating of his heart, but some outside force was churning his suppressed passions. Try as he might, he could direct his attention elsewhere but he couldn't escape it.

~Your MISSION, young man, would be expedited by you actually lending your CONSIDERABLE power to the Devotion!~

That gave him a start, and brought him once again away from the superimposed image of Kimmi, lounging in a lagoon, utterly bereft of clothing or shame. The tree's glow was brilliant now, and seemed to be rising up out of the very earth itself. It rippled and wavered and spread, as though an ocean of viridian light were rising up from beneath the ground, which no longer seemed to be twigs and bones, but soil and mosses and tiny, tiny flowers.

A motion above caught his eye, and he glanced up. The tree's aura had acquired a shape, though it was one he had quite a difficult time properly categorizing. High above, there were clearly two arms and the outline of a sleek, wild-haired muzzle. One of the paws was waving back and forth, and the gaze of those blazing emerald eyes was focused clearly on him. Somewhat more confusingly, though, was he ethereal impression of four legs dangling overhead, and the entire figure perched upon some vast orb of crackling, vibrant energy.

~Vast orb?~ Occam snickered. ~I suppose that's not the worst thing my womb has been called today. But I am going to insist you break out some of that famous Low Path poetry for me sometime, to make up for it.~

In his mind's eye, the vision of Kimmi was replaced by an image of another taur, this one composed of all manner and shades of green. He hadn't been too far off with his assumption; the taur's legs were splayed out across a colossal green belly several times larger than the rest of the creature combined, and this was somehow topped by the taur's anthro belly also being clearly and gravidly pregnant.

~Hello!~ the wolfskunk greeted, waggling hir fingers once more. ~Oh, it feels so GOOD to be semi-corporeal again! I must make a note to visit your world more often, and perhaps set up a permanent address at the base of the tree. I am a busy goddess, but I can always make time for such a passionate people.~

Shingen had fully expected, someday, to have to face the ineffable gods that ruled the universe, separating the realms of the living from the realms of unlife, and he would be compelled to justify his existence. He hadn't expected to meet one of those gods so soon, and he certainly hadn't expected one to be quite so... naked.

"S-semi... corporeal?"

~Mmm hmm~ Occam leered, somehow bending down and bringing hir translucent muzzle right up to his own, until their noses were touching. He felt the light from hir eyes searing his retinas, but it wasn't painful; if anything, it was an experience of such intensity that he feared blinking and missing any of it. ~Just a little bit more, and I'll be able to fulfill my promise. But don't worry, I'll make sure ALL the credit goes to you. Goodness, you certainly earned your penance today, little one!~

The debauch was reaching fever pitch. Shingen could barely hear his own thoughts over the roaring and bellowing, the whinnies and whines and growls of almost unfathomably delayed declarations of love. With each new voice adding itself to the whole, Occam's outline, a circus tent of green erected over the tiny flame-bright tree, grew more solid. Shafts of light speared out of the ground, cracks rippling and spreading, radiating outwards, but somehow managing to avoid the participants in the festivities.

Shingen got to his feet, one paw groping for his sword, the other reaching for his pack, and the chot-mei that he valued far more than his own life. "What is happening?! Occam!!"

~Oh, it feels so GOOD,~ hir voice boomed, filling the chamber as easily as Kimmi's voice might fill a tiny tea house, ~to be BACK.~

As hundreds of lovers threw back their heads and bellowed, the sparkling apparition of Occam exploded. Light blossomed like the sun in the immense chamber, illuminating the furthest corners as bright as midday. Shingen felt the ground fall away from him, all sense of scale obliterated by the alien geometries of the temple interior. He wanted to sit, wanted to cradle his head in his hands and wait for the vertigo to pass.

Except the ground literally had fallen away from him, and he found himself falling, surrounded on all sides by the plummetting but still intertwined figures, frozen at the very apex of their ecstasy.

---

"Occam, I presume?" Kimmi asked, hands on hips.

~In the... well, not flesh right now, there's a slight issue with that. But yes, in the intangible celestial potentiality!~

The voice came from everywhere, which was quite different to how Seriphos's voice burbled up like a fetid pool in the back of hir brain. "Uh huh. Shingen mentioned you."

~We did meet just before that, you know, but I realize it's been a hectic day.~

"We've been talking," Isima yawned, cuddling deeper against herself, if such a thing was possible. "Shi's very nice. Shi says I can be hir ambassador in this world. Tell people all about hir."

Kimmi's eyes narrowed. "Call me needlessly paranoid, but that sounds kind of familiar."

~Seriphos and I share the same planar ubiquity, this is true, and as such we are bound by many of the same rules. But by the same comparison, you and Queen Kz'inthi of the subterranean kingdom of Qellack are pretty familiar, too. Six legs, royal lineage, boys lining up just WAITING to obey hir every whim-~

"OKAY! I get it! Jeez." Kimmi snapped, exasperated. "YES, it's been a long day! You could just... wait, you know hir name?"

~I have quite a lot of collateral, non-specific knowledge of your world, thanks to my brief connection with you. It would take a while to explain the network of collective intelligence. I'm sure Shingen has some flowery metaphors to help you through it later.~

"If I ever see him again," the taur sighed, under hir breath.

~Oh, you will! Probably before you've gotten rid of that thorn in your fur. You know, the one under your left-~

"Hey, personal!" Kimmi squeaked, scratching at hir left breast and wondering just what else this Occam was capable of knowing. "But... how?? He's gone! Everyone's gone! I was... I was trying to buy him a little bit of time, trying to distract Seriphos, and when I came to it was just me. Me and Isima, I suppose," shi added, reaching up to stroke the doe's hair. Isima rumbled appreciatively and arched her back into it.

~Folks these days have no faith in the gods, I tell you what~ Occam sighed dramatically. ~Shingen and those he rescued are working hard to re-establish my presence in your world, and you've done a WONDERFUL job re-establishing it here!~

"Are you being sarcastic?"

Occam's laughter was like the polite tinkling of crystal, and Kimmi felt hirself blush slightly at the implication that a goddess might be getting snarky with hir. ~Not at all, darling! Your devotional was just the thing I needed to be more than a VOICE in this hellish temple.~

Kimmi opened hir mouth, a dozen questions and a few more demands all fighting one another to be first, but all that shi managed was a hoarse, raspy growl. Isima squeaked, glancing back over her shoulder in surprise. "Are you all right, your Highness?" she whispered.

It had been a wonderful memory, shi realized, that story from hir youth. The morbid kitten was nobody's fool. There was a vast gulf between a ghost in the woods, and some abomination from beneath the earth that fancied itself a devourer of worlds.

HOW LONG DID YOU THINK YOU COULD JUST IGNORE ME, LITTLE THING?!?

"I... can't..." Kimmi gasped, taking a tiny step away from Isima. Hir legs were stiff and moved awkwardly, hir mitts clenching into mighty fists. "I thought I c-could..."

YOU THOUGHT YOURSELF MY EQUAL BECAUSE OF YOUR LITTLE TRICK? I CAN WAIT FOR MILLENNIA!

As dimly lit as the decrepit corner of the chamber was, Kimmi found hir whole world darkening around the edges of hir vision. The pressure behind hir eyes climbed enormously, and although shi remained in control of hir arms long enough to get away from the helpless doe, shi was horrified to discover shi was not the one guiding hir legs. "It's Seriphos," shi gurgled, hir throat tightening beneath invisible talons. "Occam, s-save... Isima..."

~Oh, pshaw and nonsense,~ the incongruously unconcerned voice said, and Kimmi could just imagine the light green paw waving dismissively. ~Come on, embrace Isima once more.~

Kimmi shook hir head wildly. Shi feared what hir body might do when shi was no longer able to make hir own decisions. Shi had seen hir fists destroy doors of solid stone, rip hir iron chains out of the walls. Any number of trees between here and Estragonia had been pulverized or simply uprooted as part of hir training. Isima might be a sturdy young woman, but the taur knew that wouldn't even be close to enough.

Seriphos also knew that, and started walking forwards.

"No!" Kimmi barked, one of hir arms cocking back. Shi flapped at it with the one shi yet controlled, but hir expansive bust prevented it from even getting close. Shi cursed hir body, cursed its seemingly never-ending development, and Seriphos's cruel laughter filled hir mind.

YOU COULD HAVE BEEN MY VESSEL WILLINGLY, LITTLE THING! NOW I SHALL HAVE TO FIND ENJOYMENT IN SLOWLY DEVOURING ONE MERE MEWLING, CRAWLING, PATHETIC WASTREL!

Kimmi choked back a sob, trailing off in a piteous wail of regret. Hir legs set themselves, and hir right arm snapped forwards. Isima was as captive as a fly in honey, upright but still prone against the immensity of her belly. It was all hir own fault, shi knew that for certain, and hir hopes that shi could somehow make things right, somehow correct the mistakes of hir existence, drained out of hir.

Isima raised one paw curiously as the blocky fist whistled through the air towards her head. Her eyes flashed, and Kimmi was startled to see that this was not some flowery poetic description; Isima's eyes had changed from a brown so deep it was nearly black to a brilliant, blazing greenish-blue.

Kimmi's fist struck, or at least hir eyes told hir that it must have connected. Shi could feel nothing below the crushing weight behind hir eyes, nothing but the most distant awareness of hir skin and muscles and bones fighting against themselves. Shi roared into the caverns of hir mind, but it was the uncertainty that kept hir level. Shi couldn't lose hirself to the seemingly endless, impending despair, because hir one last thread of hope was somehow being tugged by Isima's new eyes.

It took hir a moment to realize that hir body was frozen, motionless, hir knuckles ever so gently brushing the locks of hair that tumbled over Isima's brow.

"Good morning, dear cousin," Isima smiled, her lips twitching with an uncharacteristic smugness.

Kimmi knew that hir muzzle was trying to open, hir tongue was trying to form vowels of a most obscene and unladylike manner, and hir hackles were standing so straight shi might almost be mistaken for a hedgehog. None of these were accomplished, however; shi was held rapt and captive in the warm, inviting, comforting glow of Isima's eyes.

When did Isima's eyes start glowing? Shi thought.

OCCAM!!!

Kimmi was taken aback by the voice in hir mind, and not because of the staggering volume and fury, both of which had reached a new plateau of intensity. No, shi was stunned because for the first time since encountering the entity known as Seriphos, after enduring threats and boasts and the most encouraging and debasing of promises, there was fear in her voice. And not just a thin, thread-like undercurrent of fear. This was a raging river of wrath and terror.

"You've hurt my new friends," Isima continued, sounding as unconcerned as one of Kimmi's housemaidens explaining that there would be more toast sent up from the kitchens. "One world devastated, the other descending into darkness, how many others in your wake?"

Seriphos would have been foaming at the mouth, were she still in control of the huge, battered taur's body. Kimmi could hear every wordless snarl and bluster, felt claws scrabbling uselessly at the inside of hir mind, but it was dawning on hir that shi might not be quite as doomed as shi'd expected. Which was a nice change of pace.

"You know what? You've given my little precious enough of a headache for one day. Why don't we continue this somewhere more private?" Isima's eyes became positively imperious, that one hazel brown paw reaching towards Kimmi's cheek. "Get on out here, girl!"

The paw reached behind Kimmi's ear, and there was a twist, a horrible lurching that momentarily turned the world upside down. Everything flattened inwards from the sides, the taur feeling as though shi'd become no wider than a piece of paper...

... and then shi was sprawled out on the ground, gasping for breath, chest heaving.

But shi could feel the ground, feel hir lungs burning, _feel_hir paws cupping the sides of hir head to keep hir brains from leaking out hir ears.

"Hah.... hah..." shi barked, trying to laugh but still not quite capable of summoning the proper energy for it. "I'm... I'm me again!"

Shi looked up at Isima, the doe's hooves kicking girlishly above the ground, her entire body suspended at the mercy of her belly, which if Kimmi was any judge actually seemed to be growing larger. Except it wasn't really Isima anymore, shi realized. Not entirely, at any rate.

Isima/Occam held something small, and black, and wriggling. A multitude of asymmetrical legs flailed uselessly, squeezing out from between the doe's fingers and lashing futilely at her arm, her belly, even at her face. The paw squeezed once, the tiny forest of tentacles stiffening and emitting a squeak that was almost... cute.

"That's better," the doe sighed. "Your highness, I REALLY must apologize for all of this, you've gotten into a... uhm... family dispute that was not yours to busy yourself with. Seriphos has a way of wrecking her toys when she gets upset." The squiggling mass of legs and ichor screeched defiantly. Isima paid it no mind.

Kimmi struggled to hir feet, and was reminded for the tenth time just how many little injuries shi'd picked up since shi shared hir first real kiss with Isima, in that long-ago and almost-forgotten glade, under the light of the moon. "It's... no problem," shi winced, feeling hir ribs shifting and poking hir in ways that were not intended by nature. "Happy to... ow... help."

Isima's eyes softened, and Kimmi somehow felt bad for hir sarcasm. "You are... a remarkable young woman, Kimmi," she smiled, her free paw playing across her immensely overfilled belly, nuzzling her own upthrust breast while she spoke. "And quite unique for your world, I see. Born in the wrong era, as they say."

Kimmi stood, and stretched, feeling some things pop back in to place, while others protested at being used in such a cruel and unusual fashion. Shi could feel grime between hir toepads, splinters continuing to dig into hir various nooks and crannies, and only the gods knew how much crud messing up hir hair, which shi'd washed four times in preparation for hir date with Isima.

"So you're just going to... live inside of her now?" shi asked bluntly, moving back a respectful distance from what was apparently another deity. It was hard to believe, but shi felt no presence, not even the loosest trace of Seriphos's filthy intelligence inside of hir skull. "Yanked that one out of me, but found yourself a new home?"

Isima/Occam blinked. "Not at all! Isima is acting as my host and agent in this world for the time being, true, but that's only so I can talk to you, and with any luck get you home! Oh no, I have my own semi-corporeal manifestation that I much rather enjoy. No offense."

"None taken," the doe responded to herself, and Kimmi gasped when shi realized that was undoubtedly Isima's voice. "Kimmi... your Highness... it's all right. Come here, please. It's all going to be all right."

"Isima," Kimmi managed before hir voice cracked. Shi sniffled, hir chest hitching as shi fought back a sob. "I'm so sorry! I just wanted to have... one night... of happiness... with you... and-"

"Shhh, shhh, shhh," Isima whispered, beckoning the taur closer with the hand that was not still clutching the furiously thrashing bug-like abomination that was apparently Seriphos. "We're going to make it all right. The three of us. Together."

Every instinct screamed at hir to keep hir distance, not to get to close to another unpredictable deity. Shi'd had quite enough of them for one day. But it was Isima's familiar, comforting smile that eventually broke hir, in spite of the way her eyes continued to glow like aquamarine flames.

The furious ball of tendrils squeaked and squawked, and recieved another squeeze for its efforts. "And you hush down there!" Isima snapped angrily. "LOOK at what you've done to the Princess! You're lucky Occam won't let me squish you!"

That was all Kimmi needed. Shi tried to move at a stately pace, but ended up slamming bust-first into the doe's broad back, embracing her belly as much as shi could. Craning hir neck forwards, shi buried hir muzzle in Isima's wild tangle of curls, inhaling her scent and finally surrendering to the tears that had been threatening to spill forth. "I was so worried!" shi moaned, kissing at the doe's thick neck, nuzzling her cheek. "Everything I do, I just end up... wrecking!"

_ _

"And the sad part is, you probably believe that," Isima smiled, tilting her head as much as she could manage to return the kiss. "Your Highness, you've done incredible things here! You can't know how many lives you've saved!"

"But all those bones," the great huskytaur hiccuped, fighting for breath. "I saw them! In Shingen's world, in my world! All those BONES! All the people here, kidnapped, STOLEN from their homes! All those years lost!"

"And how is, quite literally, ANY of that your fault or your responsibility?" Isima chided, and Kimmi wasn't sure if there wasn't a little bit of Occam in those words. "Most of it happened ages before you were even born, and when you discovered them, what did you do? You sacrificed yourself to give them a chance at freedom! Freedom that only you and your warrior friend could possibly have provided! There was almost nothing you could do, and you still saved everyone!"

_ _

Kimmi, on some level, thought that some of those words might have been true, but shi could do nothing but press hirself against Isima's wonderful, bloated beauty, and scold hirself for not doing enough. Shi could never do enough. There would always be more. "Thank you," shi whispered, squeezing hir eyes shut, trying to block out the sound of wind rising in the vast temple chamber.

"It is we who are thanking YOU!" Occam laughed, and it was clearly the goddess in control again. "My goodness, little one, you are very difficult, aren't you? Still, I suppose that's to be expected. It's always the true heroes that refuse to allow themselves to be happy."

"I'm not-"

"And you're going to shut right the heck up with saying no to me, your Highness," Occam added, in a tone that brooked no argument.

And without the ability to argue, Kimmi had nothing further to say. Shi simply tried to burrow closer against Isima, or Occam, or whoever it was. Warm fur and flesh against hir paws, the heady scents of flowers and ginger and sap and sex mingling in hir nostrils. Shi felt a familiar tingle in hir loins, and marvelled that after all of that, shi felt hir bulky, sore endowments swelling anew against hir hind legs.

"Mmmm, I knew I picked the right one," Occam giggled, hir words being swept away on the winds that continued to build in intensity. "Would that my new ambassador had the capacity to appreciate your devotion yet again! Oh well. There'll have to be... another time..."

Kimmi wasn't sure what most of that meant, but shi didn't care. Shi might have ruined everything around hir, but for the moment, just this brief moment in time, with hir tears mingling with the lotus petals that speckled Isima's hair, shi felt shi could be happy with hirself.

"I'll just have to find a different way to prove my thanks to you, little one," came Occam's voice one final time, most definitely from inside Kimmi's mind. "Now you might want to hold on. This is going to feel... a little wierd."

Kimmi opened one eye, peeking around, suddenly curious where all the wind could have been coming from...

... when the earth cracked and rippled and shuddered beneath them, and they were falling, falling into the darkness.

---

Grim's Woods had stood mostly silent for decades, barring those few Milford celebrations every few years at the end of particularly long winters and at the heights of especially hot summers, when the locals would flood the normally-dark forest and do their best to frighten away their own fears and worries. A slow, muddy creek tracked its way in from the north and out from the south, a creek where no fish swam. No-one had penetrated far enough into the heart of the wood to observe the impassable hedge at the center, which surrounded a tiny golden pyramid protruding from a small lake of black, acrid ooze. The top of the pyramid had been sliced clean off by Shingen's sword, and now lay in a patch of spitting, smoking slime, the gold eaten away and the stone beneath dissolving like ice under a torch.

So it was quite the pity that there was no-one for at least two miles in any direction, when the sludge started to churn and boil, the very ground opened up, and the entire polluted miasma was swallowed up whole. One might have expected great gouts of lava to burst forth, or vast choking clouds of dust and smoke and noxious gasses.

One would have to be most peculiar indeed to have expected an oak tree of truly, spectacularly impossible size to explode out of the ground, growing as if from a single seed at a pace where decades passed in mere seconds. Foliage whooshed and roared past the highest treetops of Grim's Woods, new branches forming and sprouting forth from the steadily-thickening trunk. The rumbling and roaring of tortured earth being shoved brutally aside continued, the tree's great canopy already reaching the boundaries of the hedge, the oak's very lowest limbs now dozens of yards above the tallest trees in the land.

And still higher it grew.

Many miles away, the people of Milford rushed from room to room, building to building in a panic. They'd never experienced an earthquake, and so had no basis for comparison when the entire world started rattling down, knocking cups and plates from high shelves and scattering furniture around like nervous bugs scuttling for safety. Those who happened to find themselves outside stared in awe, and no small amount of existential and religious terror, at the new horizon being created to the south-east.

A single tree rose above the distant woods, rose above the hills themselves, growing as if it might eventually touch the clouds and blot out the sun.

A collective sigh of relief was shared by all when, eventually, it _did_stop before conquering the entire sky. But it still left them with the knowledge, and worry, that something of great import had just split the infamous Grim's Woods, where only two nights before the tiny rat had gone off in search of his companion.

None would have admitted it, but both lives had been all but written off by the population of Milford, and they had now been settling once again into their routines, confident that time would eventually erase the pity and shame they felt.

In the upper floors of Milford's third best boarding house, typically occupied by young unmarried maidens and their most elderly of relatives, a small doe of exceedingly advanced age turned away from her knitting, leaned out the south-facing window, and nodded.

"Thought so," she said, frowned her approval, and then turned back to her needles. She hoped the rat liked the scarf that she was making him.

---

The first sound Shingen recognized when the creaking, groaning and endless rolling thunder of expanding wood ceased, was laughter.

He paused and had to mentally re-center himself, positive that he must be mistaking the signs from his senses, but he was apparently correct. Laughter. Deep guffaws, high hysterical giggles, belly-deep cackles, and everything in between. More confusingly, they were coming from above him, below him, near and far. Am I still falling? I don't remember... there was darkness... and thunder...

_ _

He opened his eyes, and stared up at the familiar sight of sunlight streaming through a dense layer of rich oak boughs. Branches as thin as his pinky protruding from heavy limbs thicker than his body were festooned with vines and mosses, and innumerable blue lotus flowers.

Am I imagining this?

_ _

~Not this time, mighty warrior.~

_ _

OH MY GODS SHINGEN IS THAT YOU IT CAN'T BE YOU I THOUGHT I'D NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN PLEASE TELL ME IT'S YOU AND I'M NOT DREAMING I THOUGHT I WAS FALLING FOREVER AND IT WAS SO-O-O-O-O LOUD SHINGEN SHINGEN SHINGEN SHINGEN SHINGEN SHINGEN!!!

_ _

Shingen winced, his ears flattening to his head... but then his laughter joined the chorus around him. Starlight?

_ _

SHINGEN SHINGEN SHINGEN SHINGEN SHINGEN!!!

_ _

~Shi's very exciteable, isn't shi?~

_ _

You have no idea.

_ _

I CAN HEAR BOTH OF YOU!!!

_ _

The rat got to his feet, more than a little surprised to feel the his pack's strap wound through one paw, and the pommel of his sword in the other. He checked them both quickly, and discovered that everything seemed to be in order. He was standing on a single stout oak branch, easily as wide as the trunk of the next biggest tree he could ever remember encountering. There were a hundred such branches around him, and each one held pair after pair of laughing, crying, hugging furres. He recognized many of them, having ushered them through the portal... less than an hour ago? Had it really been so recent?

SHINGEN SHINGEN SHINGEN SHINGEN I'M UP HERE I CAN SEE YOU YOO HOO LOOK UP LOOK AT ME OH MY GODS LOOK AT US SHINGEN I FOUND ISIMA ISIMA ISIMA ISIMA ISIMA ISIMA ISIMA!!!!

_ _

Shingen had the impression of hir four huge footpaws stamping impatiently, hir tail swishing back and forth so hard that not only hir barrel was rocked violently, but all the way to hir bust. He'd seen hir this excited before, but only where desserts were involved.

He dutifully looked around, and it didn't take him long to find the silvery-grey cloud of Starlight's body, quite a distance above. Shi was perched just back from the crook of a branch, and nestled into the cleft of that limb was a single soft, round, brown orb. He cocked his head, wondering if the tree somehow also contained acorns of unusual size, but a blush shot through his cheeks when he realized that the sphere had little arms and legs.

O-oh my.

_ _

ISIMA SAYS HI AND SHE HOPES YOU DON'T MIND THAT SHE'S NOT IN A POSITION TO PROPERLY GIVE YOU A THANK YOU HUG HEE HEE I DID THIS TO HER CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!?

_ _

... yes.

_ _

Occam laughed in both of their minds.

It took the better part of the afternoon for the tree's inhabitants to make their way down to ground level. Occam's physical manifestation was apparently partially the tree, at the moment, and Shingen watched in awe as the bark shifted and split and reshaped itself into a winding, circular staircase. Considering the girth of the mighty tree's trunk, and the sheer elevation, he calculated it would be a three mile journey just to get back to feeling grass between his toes, and he was trained for journeys of that magnitude. Most of the escaped slaves from Seriphos's dungeon were tired and weak, clinging to one another for support.

Gartha and Mayne were the first to properly thank Shingen, shaking his hands up and down so hard the rat had to re-adjust his robes when they were done. Gartha sent along his best wishes to Kimmi, and absolutely insisted that shi find them in town before shi moved on. With any luck, he said, there was still a Buckhold Orchards for him to return to.

An older woman found him next, and he was briefly taken aback to see that it was a husky. She was supporting a large, curvaceous snow leopard, both women naked and dusty but unable to shake their relieves smiles. The husky introduced herself as Ninos, the leopard as Solaphina, and both of them begged tearfully for Kimmi's forgiveness. Shingen couldn't quite get the entire story from them, but he gathered enough impressions from his shared bond with Kimmi to understand that, perhaps, the women had not been entirely in control of their own actions back in the temple.

Once he was sure that the majority of them were safely on their way, with the rest lining up, cuddling on the branches or just enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, he scampered nimbly up the tree to Kimmi's branch. In the back of his mind he could hear the taur conferring with both Occam and Isima, three feminine voices forming a single hushed susuration. Women always seemed to do that when he was nearby, he noticed, but it was a very peculiar experience to have it happening on a psychic level.

He approached cautiously. Kimmi's back was to him, and hir tail was still wagging with a speed and force that could knock him onto a very, very long arc down to ground level, one he didn't think he'd enjoy. He recognized Isima, more or less; she was naked, and she was also technically facing away from him, but her head was turned such that her cheek rested against her bare breasts and there was no mistaking that pretty muzzle. He was slowly coming to terms with the fact that she seemed to be clinging to the side of a fuzzy globe larger than the cabin they'd rented in Milford, in what felt like another lifetime.

"Hello," he said, out loud.

"Hello!" Kimmi nearly shouted, hir voice thick with emotion, hir face still buried against the doe's neck.

"Hello!" Isima said, waving in a friendly fashion.

"Hello," came a third voice, and although it had come from Isima's throat, it was noticeably different. More sultry, if such a thing were possible.

He scuffed his bare feet. Nothing in the chot-mei or his other education had really prepared him for this sort of a tete-a-tete. If that could apply to three confused mortals and one extraplanar entity of apparent benevolence.

"So..." he started, deciding it was a sensible opener. "I-"

"I owe the three of you an explanation you couldn't possibly appreciate, an apology I could never live up to, and the gratitude of a powerful but unfortunately rather narrowly-endowed goddess. Metaphorically speaking, of course," the avatar of Occam added with a lewd wink.

I'm almost positive deities aren't supposed to be... lewd.

_ _

YOU HAVE NOT READ THE SAME MYTHOLOGIES I HAVE! YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE WHERE MOST OF THEM SAY THE WORLD CAME FROM!

_ _

I stand corrected.

_ _

ONE STORY HAS A THREE-EYED GIANT HAVING SEX WITH THE SUN, WITH THE MOON UP HIS-

_ _

You can stop thinking about that story any time.

_ _

"Seriphos is... not my cousin, exactly, but rather a related station to my own. I am the Goddess of Fertility, of New Births and New Beginnings, and I'm dabbling in some tertiary territory of general love, family relationships, and possibly board games."

Kimmi was nodding slowly, but suddenly straightened and barked in surprise. "That's how you're talking through Isima! She... I mean, I... uhm... she..." The huskygrrl poked hir finger against the side of the doe's belly, countless gallons of seed causing her to spring back and jiggle hypnotically.

Occam giggled and nodded. "Yes, that was an EXTREMELY impressive Devotional, from someone who ISN'T an observer of my sect! More's the point that young Isima here was in an extremely receptive state for this sort of act. From my position above your world, it was like a... uhm... do you have lighthouses here?"

"Yes."

"Imagine a giant red lighthouse with alarm bells and a nuclear powered spotlight. Do you have nuclear power?"

Kimmi and Shingen exchanged glances, and shrugged.

"Good. Don't worry about it. Nevermind. Anyways, it would have been impossible for me to NOT see that sort of Devotion, even sheltered as you were inside Seriphos's thrice-damned temples. That's what she does, you know. Goes world to world, brainwashes people one by one, and builds her stupid prisons for my lovely Trees. Then she dips into my power and starts taking young couples in LOVE, who are drawn to my energies, and starts CUTTING MY TREES DOWN! Without my trees, I don't have an anchor to your worlds..."

Kimmi rumbled, looking around for the squiggly little beastie that was apparently Seriphos's form, but couldn't locate it. "And what happens when a world loses... the Goddes of Fertility?"

"Nothing good," Isima nodded sadly. "Too many people can cause wars, but so can too few. People fear dying out, leaving nothing behind. Nations conquering nations just for their women, their children. Until there's almost nothing left."

"But this world had no such tree," Shingen protested. "I found the temple, filled with naught but sticks and bones, and that tiny, impossibly tiny tree."

Isima nodded again. "That was all of my power that remained here. Seriphos nearly scoured this land clean many millenia ago, but I managed to leave enough of my power with some of the more distant, reclusive tribes."

That twanged something inside Shingen's heart, but Kimmi spoke first. "But WHY!? You said she is your cousin, sort of? She said she was the goddess of rebirth, of unification! Why would she want to KILL everyone?"

"She... had an important job. She was the essence that cleansed mortal souls on their passage to and from the afterlife. She would absorb their pain, their loss, and carry them on to what lays beyond unfettered by their mortal worries and fears. Many of those souls would make their way back to me, ready to be born back into the world." Isima stretched, rubbing her paws happily across her belly. "Again, great job here, Kimmi. For a first-timer."

Kimmi blushed, but slipped hir paws down Isima's arms, to cover the doe's hands as they caressed. "My pleasure," shi sighed happily.

"Anyways, Seriphos, at some point, got sick of the business, absorbing woe, seeing the worst in people. Cleaning up butchers, murderers, criminals of every stripe, to say nothing of soldiers leaving behind wives and husbands, parents and children. Souls that died so full of sadness they left echoes on the fabric of reality. Almost no-one ever, EVER died at peace. Those that did were rare enough to get stories written about them. No, Seriphos decided to be a little more... pro-active with the whole business."

Kimmi squeezed Isima, sending her jiggling again. "And obviously, you'd be the one standing in her way."

"We never really got along."

"So what's happening in the other world? Where your tree is in that temple... prison... thing?"

"It's not good," Isima nodded sadly, her eyes dimming. "I miss that world. They weren't perfect, and most of them would just as soon run you over as stop to let you cross the street, but they've got potential! I can't see much beyond the temple, but with Seriphos's drones no longer hacking away at it, I can start the process of returning there."

"How? Ask for help?"

At that, Isima finally looked sheepish. "Er... sort of. Look, I'm going to go away for a few minutes, all right? I'm sure you all have some things to talk about. I'll-"

"Ahem."

The three ladies paused, turning to regard the lone tiny male in their midst. "Oh, Shingen, I am sorry for my rudeless!" Isima/Occam squeaked. "I owe you a... completely different explanation, don't I? Gosh, I would forget my head if it wasn't screwed on. Ok, you girls have a lot to talk about, I'm going to visit your friend for a moment, all right?"

Kimmi watched in amusement as Isima's eyes faded from a bright viridian green to their more familiar limpid mahogany. At the same time, a faint greenish glow appeared around Shingen's pack, of all things, that boxy contraption that held all of his sacred scrolls, and the little rat trotted off a ways, talking to himself.

The taur looked back to Isima, tilted hir head to make sure that this was finally, truly hir first lover, and leaned in to kiss hir with what passion remained in hir bruised and battered body.

When they separated with a wet 'pop' that made Kimmi giggle, Isima cleared her throat. "Well! That was... I'm happy to see you, too, your Highness!"

"Hee hee, don't call me that," Kimmi grinned foolishly, nuzzling the doe's cheek. "This was... some first date, hmm?'

"Definitely in my top three."

"Hey! I punched out a GOD for you!"

"Top two?"

"I'll bite."

"No-o-o, you'll pop me!" Isima squealed, kicking her legs uselessly.

The pair laughed long and loud, which felt immensely wondrous with the sun shining on their faces and the fresh breeze blowing through their hair. The land was spread out around them through the tree's colossal canopy, and in the distance Kimmi saw the sprawling speckled terrain that had to be Milford. "I guess it's time to get you home," the taur murmured. "Your granny must be worried sick about you."

"Y-e-e-a-ahh," Isima said slowly, chewing her lip. "All right, uhm... see, here's the thing..."

Kimmi's jaw dropped as Isima started to explain her new plans, or rather her plans with Occam. "Occam has no avatar in the other world. Shi just has a huge, injured tree, inside a huge subterranean prison. And... I am, for the time being or so, a... nexus of power, for hir. When we, uhm... when we mated..."

Kimmi blushed, hir maleness giving a tremendous twitch that Isima could feel clear on the other side of the husky's body. "Yes, I remember," shi whispered, nibbling the doe's ear.

"Well, when we mated, shi was there. The petals. Shi made a connection to us, or rather, I guess, to me, as the recipient. As the... mother."

The wind rose and fell, and Kimmi's eyes widened so far shi worried shi was going to lose one of them. "As the... mother," shi repeated flatly.

"Yes. That's the thing, uhm, with Occam. Shi is the goddess of fertility, and shi is EXTREMELY, uhm... potent, when hir prayers are answered. That was the only way we were going to get out of there."

"Mother."

"Mmm hmm," Isima smiled, reaching back to stroke Kimmi's muzzle, brushing a few more lotus petals out of hir hair. "I'm going to have... well, let's just say a VERY big family. The sort of brood that not even Milford, with everyone pitching in, could really accomodate."

Kimmi stared in awe at the doe's massive womb, trying to imagine just what that would look like with new life developing inside of it. "M-mother."

"But... as hir avatar, in the other world... with hir help... I would be able to hold hir essence, hir true celestial essence, and we could bring down the temple and rise into the sky once more, and... do great things. It's a big world over there, but it needs help."

The taur kept nodding, hir hands playing across the doe's body, caressing her hips. "I'm the... father...?" shi asked hesitantly.

Isima blinked, and burst out laughing, sending ripples cascading across her body. "In some ways, I guess the most important way, YES! You are! And that's why I told Occam I wouldn't go with hir, I couldn't go with hir... if you didn't agree. Because this is just as much your decision, this is just as much your... your family. Your Highness," she added, feeling as though a little more respect was due to the Princess who had rushed into a dungeon in a different world, just to rescue her.

Kimmi's jaw worked silently again. This was a little more to deal with than shi'd expected. It had all supposed to have been just a midnight tryst, finally discovering what lay beyond the warm, furtive glances, the tingling thoughts, and the exploring paws at night when the candles were out and the curtains were drawn. It was just supposed to have been... fun!

And now...

_ _

"My own army of husky-deer..." shi mumbled pensively, hir entire body going numb from bemused shock.

Isima snickered. "I knew you'd go there. Hey, they'll be my army, too, you know! A nice army, though. One that brings people tea and baked goods, and mends fences, and picks fruit."

Shi was doing hir best to weigh the options impartially, but every tiny facet shi looked at fairly burned with wonder and loss. A new world! A family of hir own! An avatar for a goddess! Working to defeat Seriphos! Fluffy, squeaking, little babies, armfuls of them, maybe with tiny little deer hooves on some of them, stubby little tails, hirs to love and cuddle and care for and raise... but so many of them that even the good-sized town of Milford would buckle under the strain. Of course, there were other towns, larger towns, but still... Shingen... Isima... Estragonia...

Hir mind whirled, and shi sagged bonelessly against Isima's backside. "It's too much," shi whined, hir tail drooping, hir ears drooping. "It's too much! How am I supposed to make a decision like THAT?! I have a hard time deciding whether or not to have a bath before dinner or after dessert, and since I can't decide I do BOTH! Now I have to weigh maybe my own chance at a family against the fate of a WORLD!? What am I supposed to say!?"

The desperate pleading in hir eyes was returned by Isima, the doe's deep, dark pools brimming with tears. "I told hir you'd say that," she sniffled, leaning in to kiss Kimmi's nose. "It's not like I wouldn't have help! As hir avatar, I wouldn't need to give birth until I was... until _we_were ready. Shi's got a little bit of pull in that department, you might say."

"A whole world," Kimmi grumbled miserably. "S'not fair. Not FAIR! How am I supposed to think?!"

"If I may, your Highness," Isima said, tilting her head as far back as it would go, to bring her nose to nose with the somber taur. "It's not like you won't ever see me... or them... again."

Kimmi sniffled, feeling some sensation returning below the neck. "Wha?" shi managed.

"Occam exists in many, MANY worlds. Hir ties are these trees, and now the one in both of these worlds will be restored. I can be hir ambassador, hir avatar... for a time."

Sunlight bloomed in the darkest depths of Kimmi's mind. "You'll... you'll come back?"

"I didn't want to start by saying that. Ma always said, never tell 'em the price first. Tell 'em what's on the table, then see how much they want it. That's why she always sold more sticky buns than anyone else at the Inn." She nuzzled Kimmi's jaw, sighing deeply. "I'll come back. We've got a lot of work to do, and I do owe Occam my life. And... frankly, I owe hir yours, too. Shi saved us both."

Kimmi nodded; shi hadn't wanted to admit that last part. "Doesn't mean I have to like it," shi muttered, squeezing Isima. "You know, my housemaidens always warned against me rushing into... you know, things. If I started meeting people, and having... feelings." The taur, always so verbose and eager to fill in the silence, found hirself at a loss for words. "Don't just fall for the first person who calls you pretty, they said. And what do I end up doing? Starting a family with someone when I don't even know her last NAME!"

Isima blinked, pulled her head back... and exploded into laughter. Shingen glanced over, concern on his face, but just sighed and rolled his eyes when he realized what was going on.

"It's not that funny," Kimmi pouted, which only caused the doe to laugh even harder.

"M-my last name's... Ca... Ca... Cawson," she eventually managed, still quivering. "Oh, goodness, I didn't know!"

"I wanted to ask you while we were kissing in the meadow," Kimmi grumped. "I thought it would have been... cute. And you would have laughed. And it would have made us more comfortable. I... sort of ruined that, too."

"Oh, you hush! You didn't ruin anything! If anything, Seriphos ruined it, and you came stomping in, fought a deity, and rescued the girl! I grew up reading stories of people who wish they were half the hero you are, my Lady."

It was peculiar to find oneself being called a hero three times in one day, and Kimmi didn't bother trying to protest it this time. Shi had far too much to think about when shi next found hirself wrapped in thick blankets and full of food oh gods food I haven't eaten in how long?!?

_ _

The deafening rumble from hir stomach answered that question indisputably.

"You must be starving, poor thing," Isima frowned, leaning in to smooch Kimmi again. "Personally, I'm stuffed."

"Ha ha."

"Oh, come on, WHEN ELSE am I going to get to make a joke like that?!"

Kimmi, in spite of hirself, laughed. It was a soft, sad sound, but shi meant it true. Shi couldn't lie to hirself, not now. Not with hir life the way shi'd steered it. Shi took a deep breath, lips still turned up in a smile, and brushed the hair out of Isima's eyes. "You go get 'em," shi purred. "You go... and you save a world. You're more of a hero than I, Isima. And I'll be here when you come back."

Isima's entire face seemed to quiver, sadness warring with the smile that struggled to form. "I knew you'd say that," shi said eventually, hiccuping. "You're too good of a person not to."

"You bring all of them back," Kimmi added, rubbing hir paws across a belly that wouldn't even have fit in the main hall at the Milford in. "I will... uhm... work on affording some nannies. Like, a lot of them."

The doe snickered, wiggling her rump against Kimmi's forebelly. "I know you'll do amazing things, your Highness. But... I just want you to do one thing for me. Well, two. Three. Eh, most of them kinda go without saying, so one thing. Can you do that for me? One thing?"

Kimmi nodded rapidly. "Anything! Oh, gosh, you name it, anything."

"Love others."

Kimmi's nodding stopped, and shi blinked. "Ah. Uhm... what? Do you mean... like, what are you-"

"I am literally the first girl to work up the courage to kiss you, and yeah, sure, it nearly ended the world, but I don't want that to stop you from meeting more people! You are... more special than you can know, Kimmi, and there's a whole world of people out there that needs to learn that. And, trust me, I AM NOT the only person who's looked at you with more than a little.. uhm... admiration," she finished with an uncharacteristic blush, reaching back with one paw to gently stroke one of Kimmi's nipples.

It hardened instantly beneath her ministrations, and Kimmi inhaled sharply through hir nose. "I... I mean, are you-"

"YES, I'm sure, jeez! I don't want to be the person who deprives a creature like YOU the sort of sex life shi deserves!"

Kimmi grinned, pressing hirself as tightly to Isima as shi could manage, without dislodging the both of them from the crook of the tree. "You met me at a very strange time in my life," shi chuckled, nibbling at Isima's ear once again.

"I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

"And that makes you the hero here."

"No, you."

"You!"

"YOU!"

Some distance away, with his back resting against the trunk of the tree, Shingen just sighed. "I am somehow not surprised that not even that nightmare could dampen hir spirits for long."

~Shi is a wondrous creature, no doubt about it.~

_ _

"You're going to take good care of Isima?"

~Shi's carrying the sort of brood that only a goddess can handle. Shi could not possibly be in better paws.~

_ _

"And they will see eachother again."

~Cripes, yes! What, do you want me to draw up a contract written in blood?~

_ _

Shingen pondered that for a moment, and the wind soughing through the mighty oak's trees sounded like gasps of exasperation.

---

The sun was just nearing the horizon when Kimmi gave Isima one last, final, parting kiss. In the deepening shadows of the tree's boughs, Kimmi and Shingen both became aware of a presence floating in the air next to the woefully gravid doe, a spectre of shimmering green luminescence. Shingen instantly recognized the tremendously overfull womb, dwarfing even Isima's.

Kimmi gasped, pressing hir mitts to hir mouth. "Oh, ye gods, shi's a taur!"

Shingen nodded. "Shi wanted to surprise you. Shi says there's worlds, so many worlds, where taurs are... well, not 'common', because I don't think anyone could ever mistake you for common... but are well known, and respected, and just as worthy of love as anyone. And shi hopes that this one can be again, too."

Like the merging of dreams and the morning's early rays piercing hir blearly, rheumy eyes, the ghostly apparition of Occam drifted and encompassed Isima, blazing with emerald light where their bellies overlapped. Isima squeaked and squealed and laughed, and cried something about tickling...

... and then the tree was empty, save for the last two travellers.

Kimmi heaved a huge sigh, slipped hir paw around Shingen's shoulders, and shook hir head. "That was... interesting."

"Indeed."

"I am so hungry."

"I am not surprised."

"And oh ye gods, so tired."

"I would imagine so."

"And I think I've got a lot of broken bones."

"That was what I would have mentioned before the food and the nap."

Shingen ducked a half-hearted swat from the Princess, and skittered towards the natural staircase that had formed in the tree's trunk. The bark here was yards thick, and the steadily descendng ripples were impossible to distinguish from the natural wrinkled features. Far down below them, easily a quarter mile if Shingen was any nudge, there seemed to be a celebration happening at the base of the tree, where black ichor had been replaced by a lush green meadow.

"The good folk of Milford have arrived," he said, squinting through the golden afternoon light and spotting wagons and carts and lanterns by the dozen from below.

"I figured they would," Kimmi yawned hugely. "Tree's kinda... kinda conspicuous."

"Indeed." Shingen pursed his lips. "We need to see if there's a doe down there named Delena. She would be Isima's aunt, and she was apparently one of the first locals taken, many years ago. I feel news of Isima's current... state of employment would best be delivered to Isima's grandmother by someone of closer family than a tiny rat or a talking taur."

"What did you two talk about? When me and Isima were having our little heart-to-heart."

Shingen kept his face carefully neutral. His mind went blank; even the surface thoughts that Kimmi could normally make out, drifting like smoke signals between their shared connection, were gone. His mind had become a perfectly clear, perfectly impenetrable ball of crystal.

"Many things," he said simply. "And we will discuss them, you and I. You deserve far more knowledge than I have been willing to give you, and for that I can never apologize sufficiently."

"'f you bring me biscuits, I'll forgive anything right now."

"Would that could solve all of my problems, Starlight. Would that it could. But I feel... it might be time for me to return home."

The pair continued their descent, a seemingly endless vertical horizon of tree unfurling before them. "Home? Like... way way up in the mountains, home? Where you totally insist you weren't exiled from?"

Shingen's tail twitched. "Yes. That home."

"Where there's thousands of warriors, like you?"

"Indeed."

"And you want to go back there."

"I do."

Kimmi rolled hir neck, squared hir shoulders, and stifled another yawn. "Sounds like a plan," shi nodded. "But... can we start in the morning? I really wasn't kidding about the biscuits, or the broken bones."

"Yes, your Highness. We can start in the morning."

"Thank you, Shingen."

"Think nothing of it."

"Shingen?"

"Yes, Starlight?"

"Thank you for coming to find me."

The sun slipped below the horizon, and Shingen smiled in the darkness. "You should know by now, I wouldn't let something like the edges of the Universe keep us apart."

"Indeed," shi agreed, smiling right back at him.