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ONE

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TWO

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He looked left. Then right. There did not appear to be anybody there; most of his communemates were gathered at the Master, but yet the wyrden folks were unmatched in their subterfuge, and so he walked away from the Ravenwood stump again. When he was sure that he was not being followed, he returned and pressed firmly upon its bark. A rustling of leaves and a creaking, a parting of vines, and he was inside.

 

Wings twitching nervously, he blinked to adjust his eyes to the darkness, and soon the austere antechamber of the guildhall materialised around him. The aroma was cloying, dank, rich with decay. It had almost brought him retching to his knees when his mentor had first brought him to this place, but now he barely noticed it. Now it was the breath of a lover beside him: beautiful, yet striking in its subtlety.

 

A shuffling. He froze. Stilled his breath and strained his ears. It was probably just Damien going about his duties; if acoustics were strange in Glomdoring, they were utterly bizarre in the passageways of the Blacktalon. Just to be sure, he bonded to Wolf and took a deep sniff. The inevitable scents of entropy were stronger now, richer, multifaceted and stratified, as complex as the universe itself. Or... as complex as the multiverse. Resolutely, he pushed away the thought. A man could not make a decision that he had already made; it was imperative that he remain impartial. For now. Sensing no adventurers but himself, the faeling released the spiritbond. With deep, slow breaths, Versalean looked around again before following the staircase downward, deeper into the bowels of the guildhall.

 

It grew darker, warmer with each careful descending step, and soon the moisture in the air clung jealously to him. Finally his tread landed on the suppleness of an earthen floor which punctuated each step with the crackle of dead leaves and the crunch of myriad tiny bones. Around him loomed the huge, gnarled roots of the Ravenwood, cradling a hidden alcove that would have been pitch black but for the feeble light of the lichen upon those roots.

 

He had spent weeks scouting this place, and so it took him scant seconds to locate the circle of black stones. Once they had been part of some sacred fire - of this he had little doubt. But now they served as a beacon of another sort. Quelling a feeling of mounting foreboding, he reached out and placed his hands upon the rough, runed surface of the stones. Usually it took him a moment to find the connection to the ethereal plane, but today it found him. That strange moment of weightlessness and he was tumbling into nothingness.

 

 

He'd forgotten about that. The bog was fetid, and something in the water slithered past his leg. He fought down a surging revulsion and pushed forward through the tree-lined path. A thick fog pervaded the place, pierced intermittently with tiny red lights. Eventually the ground rose up triumphantly from the bog, leading him to a lonely hillock. Yet if walking in the bog had been difficult the hillock was no easier to traverse. The soil undulated beneath his feet, like ripples in an algae swamp, but he continued determinedly, fighting through the steadily thickening undergrowth, weaving through the Ravenwoods that now stood proud all around him. With a last push of determination, after what felt like an eternity, the faeling quietly reached a clearing. He looked left and then right, then stepped into the clearing itself.

 

And there, at the centre of the clearing was the one he had come to see. His goal. A living legend. A small god. Lasher Wyrdenwood.

 

"You are late," said Lasher.

 

The faeling froze, straining his senses for whoever the Wyrdenwood was speaking to. He thought he'd Scented after the transversing. Had he forgotten? Or had somebody masked their scent with the gifts of Skunk?

 

A rasping, moaning sound came from Lasher, and it took the faeling a moment to realise he was laughing.  The Wyrdenwood spoke again. "This conversation will be far more efficacious if you stop trying to hide from us, little one."

 

He almost fainted. There must be some kind of mi-

 

"Very well. If you wish to simply stand still, that is a game we can certainly join you in... Versalean. But you will learn that our kind are uncannily good at it."

 

Light-headed with fear, he stepped out into the light, forsaking the forest's concealing embrace. "I-I'm s-s-sorry I ju-"

 

"Just came to steal our dreams. Yes. We know. We know more than you can possibly imagine, little one. Have you ever felt that you are special, Versalean? That you are destined for great things?"

 

The fear retreated like mists before the morning light, and in its wake a rising excitement. "Yes," he breathed. "Yes."

 

"Well, you were wrong, you arrogant little fool."

 

 

Another rasping laugh from Lasher. "A bitter realisation, to learn that one is literally nothing, isn't it, little faeling?"

 

"I will be great!" Versalean shouted, surprising himself. Where had that passion come from? "You don't even know me."

 

"We know you better than you can possibly imagine, child. Yes, smirk, for you believe us unaware that you are a Changeling."

 

His jaw fell open, and his hand slipped unbidden into his pocket, feeling the reassuring coolness of his cameo. But he had not told a single person; how had Lasher known?

 

"There is not a single secret you have that you have from us," Lasher continued. "You are more like him than we could have ever imagined. Come, have you ever wondered why you learned Dreamweaving despite every piece of advice you received? Ever pondered why you have been drawn to us since the time we came to this reality? Yes, you doubt that we are what we claim to be; you do not believe that we can really be the last of the true Wyrdenwood. But we shall come to that. Has it ever occurred to you that we were not always Wyrdenwood..?"

 

Versalean gasped. "You mean-"

 

"No, we do not. That arrogance! It will be easier if we show you. Do what you came here to do, little one."

 

With a determined nod, Versalean gathered himself. And fell asleep.

 

Even as his body fell to the rippling thick soil, his dreambody leapt free of its meaty cage. Things were duller, more hazy; the physical things, that was. But the colours were brighter, the symbolism stronger. The thick wyrden bark upon Lasher was the boundary separating that which was Wyrd from that which was not. The crepuscular light that seeped from the Wyrdenwood's eyes was no less than the unquenchable fire of change. The wyrden sap that seeped within his treehollow was the honed might of the commune itself; it was Wyrd set free from Taint; glory refined from trial; it was the distillate of progress from the wine of cha-

 

Focus! he warned himself. Be disciplined; either you master the dream or it will master you. Whatever you do, don't lose yourself.

 

"Aye," muttered Lasher, and the candles in the room darkened with his profound sadness. "My brother also found it difficult to control the dreaming. How I miss him. How I miss it all." The gentle sound of rain. He spoke again, with increasing urgency. "Do it, child of two worlds. You who would name me charlatan!, I name you the mercurial." The wind rose to a cacophony, yet the Wyrdenwood's powerful tones boomed out above it, and Nature herself punctuated each word with the contrapuntal symphony of thunder and lightning. "You dare ask who I am, child that is no thing? Mask without a face! You are neither him nor her, you who is elfen and fae and neither and both. You who are proud of your humility and strongest in your weakness! You! Child of chance: constant in inconstancy, you who stand for nothing but everything. Come! Take my dreams, for whilst dreams do not speak the common tongue, nor can they ever lie."

 

Nodding, drawn by those words of power, the faeling's dreambody darted forward, swift as the spark of inspiration, and he whipped out his dreamcatcher and reached deep into the Wyrdenwood's mind and -

 

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THREE

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"We don't have sixty seconds," I say to him, breath quickening. "Are you sure it will work? Are you sure?"

 

 

 

"CHARGE!" screams the krokani commandant. His warriors scarce need to be told.

 

 

 

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FOUR

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"Versalean. Wake up."

 

He opened his eyes. He was back in the clearing. Physically rested yet emotionally more tired than he had ever been. Eventually, he said, "I... was that really me?"

 

"No. Yes." Lasher sighed, and wiped a rivulet of sap from his eyehollow. "It was who you might have been."

 

"But..." The faeling shrugged and fell silent.

"Say it," urged the Wyrdenwood.

 

"But how do I know which one is the real me?"

 

One of Lasher's branches whipped out so quickly that Versalean did not have time to cry out in panic before it slashed across his face and dealt him a ringing, stinging slap. The force knocked him backwards, but the faeling rolled up onto live feet. "What in Nil was that for!?" he shouted, quivering with rage as he wiped blood from his lip. Then he felt the unmistakeable symptoms of crotamine poisoning, and frenetically ravaged his pack for the antidote. "Are you crazy?" he demanded when he had cured himself.

 

"Why did you drink the antidote?" Lasher asked, patiently.

 

"Because I didn't want to die!"

"Would you have died?"

"Of course I would have!"

"You are sure?" Lasher prompted.

"Damned sure."

 

"Then this is the reality with which we will concern ourselves for now."

 

Oh. "Fine. I'm real and so is he. He is... who I was supposed to be?"

 

"Versalean. When you entered this clearing you looked left and then right. In another reality you looked right and then left. In some realities you favour the dracnari race, in others the illithoid. In some realities you joined the Nekotai, and in others still, the Tahtetso. And in many realities your great-great-great-great-grandmother died a virgin, and in many more her mother did instead. You want to know about what you are supposed to be? Well, statistically you never should have been born at all! But chin up, young fool: There is no real nor unreal. No 'supposed to'. There is now and there is here, and here and now the Wyrd is glorious and alive, yet not invincible. I have shown you what might have been, and yet you must understand that it might yet be.

 

"So now, young faeling, you, who wear my brother's face and apparently his mind too, I shall ask you a question: What are you willing to sacrifice to ensure that the future you witnessed does not come to be?"

 

He could still smell the burning trees. Taste the ash. Hear the screams of the Harbingers.

Don't lose yourself.

 

Could still feel the cold, dead weight of his wife's branch in his. He clenched his fist. "Everything... brother."

 

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FIVE

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