I Loaded the Occult Panel

First, Richard took stock of everything on the shadow:

The burlap-wrapped Smoking Mirror pressed under the left ribs, three Soul-Devouring Beast Tooth Needles pinned inside the cuff, and the Light-Storing Pocket Watch resting against the hollow of the chest.

Grafted right onto the center of its chest was the stroke for ”Cry,” severed from that Peruvian Whistling Vessel and waiting for a single breath to blow into it.

On its face sat the [Mask of the Reverse Envoy], the golden snake biting its own tail, the door bolted shut from the inside.

The mask, at least, would return to his hand on its own when the time came.

He had already drained the infused ether from the Smoking Mirror without impairing its function; losing the Soul-Devouring Beast Tooth Needles and the Light-Storing Pocket Watch here would be a pity, but it was a loss he could live with.

The two Virtuosos had already turned toward him.

”Turned” wasn’t quite the right word for them. The great maw had no front, and the mirrors had no back; an immense pressure simply closed in on the shadow from every direction at once.

With the back of his neck pressed to the pillow, cold sweat trickled from behind Richard’s ears and down into his collar.

The great maw spoke first.It had no tongue. Its meaning welled up from deep within its throat, carrying the echo of something just swallowed.

”This is the work of the Hearth Fire Tradition.”

Grenade shrapnel was still wedged inside its mouth as it smacked its jaws and passed judgment:

”This craftsmanship—the file marks lean right, the annealing was rushed... Must be the work of that old Neuchatel watchmaker’s apprentice. He’s had that bad habit in how he teaches his apprentices all these years and still can’t break it.”

The maw spat out a few fragments and turned toward the inverted pyramid.

”Old priest, you told me no one on the Wild Hunt’s side would know about the pocket.”

The pyramid gave no reply.

”And those seven shadows pledged to me—did you let them back out yourself?”

”It wasn’t me.”

The Black Earth River Master’s voice was firm.

Telling a lie caused one to sink—that held true for Virtuosos as well, though they could break free whenever they pleased. When the words fell, the inverted pyramid did not budge an inch.

The maw waited for it to drop, but nothing happened.

”Then what about that Smoking Mirror just now?”

This time, the old priest made no sound.

Thoughts could not be contained in the Deep Realm, not even by Virtuosos, though they were much better at hiding them.

The upturned mirrors tucked inside the folds of the pyramid trembled one after another.

The great maw sensed something amiss. ”Hey! What are you hiding?”

It was pure hunger through and through, which meant it didn’t know how to lie; a predator was just that straightforward.

The Black Earth River Master was concealing its own deductions:

The Smoking Mirror was in this Honored Envoy’s hand, and he had stood out the most tonight; everyone else was climbing upward, yet he alone remained in place, waiting for something; at the very least, he belonged to the lord of the hunt’s inner circle, closest to the one who had stolen the name. At the end of that chain of reasoning, its innate suspicion made it reluctant to strike first.

Something sitting dead center in the pocket without dodging or running could be prey—or it could be a bear trap.

It had seen plenty of tomb raiders bury clay jars along burial passages, jars packed with scorpions and other venomous creatures just waiting for someone with itchy fingers.

Unwilling to go in itself, it goaded the Abyss Virtuoso into testing the waters: ”Your Excellency, why don’t you take the first taste to test the quality?”

The great maw didn’t hesitate for a second: ”I can go first, sure, but it’ll cost you extra.”

”Two shadows,” the Black Earth River Master said through gritted teeth.

The great maw smacked its jaws again. ”One of the ones you gave me last time was a fake. I’m docking one upfront to settle the old debt.”

”...Three. That is my final concession.”

Clearly, the Abyss Virtuoso wasn’t interested in bargaining in good faith:

”The seven shadows you pledged last time got away. This time, I want your Name-Illuminating Mirror held as collateral.”

The light inside the pyramid darkened, erupting with fierce fury: ”You’re asking for my life!”

While they turned on each other over there, Richard kept his right index finger braced against the Silver Needle, tracing lightly across the bedsheet. He was preparing to sever the thread to his shadow for good.

Cutting it too early would leave him unable to control the shadow and easily arouse suspicion on the other side.

So he pared it away stroke by stroke, until by the time their infighting broke out, only the final stroke remained on the thread.

By the window, Gerard watched his grandson’s finger moving nonstop beneath the bedsheet and raised an eyebrow.

Above the mouth of the well, the Horn sounded.

Just as arranged, the lord of the hunt blew a short blast—purely a feint.

The trap the Black Earth River Master had set was ”see who the lord of the hunt rescues first,” so it naturally assumed the lord of the hunt was trying to fish the envoy out, and that the meat already in its jaws was about to be snatched away.

”Since neither of us trusts the other, we take it together,” it was forced to propose.

”You take the lower half, I take the upper half. We each inspect our share first, then trade.”

The maw was reluctant, but with the Horn still echoing from the wellhead, it knew what mattered most.

”The lower half is mine.”

Mirror light and darkness closed in from either side. On one side was a mirror disk extending from the inverted pyramid, its rim razor-sharp, illuminating the name of whatever it reflected right along with its form; on the other were the upper and lower jaws of the maw, lined with what could have been either teeth or broken stone tablets.

The shadow tore off the burlap and raised the Smoking Mirror, wedging it squarely between the two—half reflecting the mirror light, half reflecting the dark.

Both Virtuosos recoiled at the same instant; the old priest had lost seven flutes to this mirror, and the maw had lost seven pieces of collateral to it.

In that brief recoil, Richard moved his lips on his bed in the Imperial Capital and hung a name upon the shadow: ”Curtain.”

At once, the shadow melted into the surrounding darkness and slipped into the largest, nearest patch of shadow.

Those were the shadows the old priest itself extended outward to use as arms—some sixty of them crowded together, which only moments ago had been reaching out from the pyramid’s shade to prop open the pocket.

Tomb-painting artisans, Franc scholars who had followed Napoleon... the shadow blended in among them like a drop of ink falling into an inkstone.

The maw snapped at empty air.

Unable to find its target, it simply plunged straight into the mass, skimming against the pyramid and gulping down two shadows belonging to who knew who.

Every mirror inside the pyramid flared at once.

The suction crashed into the mirror surfaces and rebounded straight back, wrenching the corner of the maw’s mouth crooked.

”You’re sticking your mouth out too far!”

”You left your shadows too close!”

They roared at each other; a chunk chipped off the rim of the mirror disk, and a gash tore open across the maw’s lip.

Seizing that exact moment, the shadow slipped out from the pile of Black Soil River shadows.

Riding the shockwaves of their clash, it glided to the far side of the pocket.

After that exchange, neither side held anything back.

The mirror disk unfolded anew, and the maw stretched to twice its former size, drawing all the surrounding darkness surging into its throat.

Richard knew he had only caught them off guard a moment ago by exploiting their infighting; there was no dodging this next blow.

He hadn’t planned on dodging anyway.

Then the shadow did something Richard hadn’t ordered: its featureless face slowly turned toward the mouth of the well.

The hound pack crowded at the very front, the lame little dog clamping the Antler Token in its jaws, its drool soaking a corner of the slip that read ”Whoever holds this stands in for the lord of the hunt.”

The little dog barked at it. Through that stroke for ”Cry” on the shadow’s chest, a thin, drawn-out sound emerged from where it had no mouth.

Over a thousand years ago, the people of the Andean Plateau had clay birds cry out once on behalf of the dead.

Once the cry sounded, the dead knew which way to go.

Back then, the one seeing off the dead had been interrupted with the vessel only half-tilted.

This time, no one interrupted.

...The mirror disk and that ring of tablet-like teeth came crashing down together.

In the Imperial Capital, Richard’s fingertip finished tracing the final stroke across the bedsheet.

”I. (Settle!)”

He had designated the landing spot long in advance: the narrow gap between the two Virtuosos.

The thread snapped, and the echo plummeted along the direction he pointed, dropping squarely between the mirror and the teeth.

Richard’s chest went hollow. The inverted tree of light in the Seat of the Sun shuddered violently, a branch snapping clean in two near the middle.

He drew in half a breath before his lungs locked up. The vitality stored in [Gushing Spring] welled out from the roots of the light-tree to wrap around his heart, plugging the hollowed-out space first.

At that same moment, Richard sank into complete unconsciousness.

By the window, the chair creaked, and the Silver Blade in Gerard’s hand clattered to the floor.

Without sparing it a glance, he leaned down and gripped his grandson’s wrist, only letting out a slow breath after a long moment.

...The pulse was very slow, yet unmistakably beating.

The boy wasn’t dead, and where there was life, there was hope.

Over in the Spirit Realm, the great maw held the lower half in its mouth, savoring it for a long time while several newcomers up at the wellhead began to tremble at the sight.

”Empty,” it said, smacking its jaws again.

”Just a wisp of spirit wrapped inside a shadow, thin enough to see through. The severed link is fairly fresh, and cut very cleanly...”

Its upper and lower jaws ground against each other with a fine crunching sound.

”Feels a bit like a Moon-Hunting technique, yet not quite. Either way, your true name isn’t on this.”

That last line was directed at the Black Earth River Master, and the maw didn’t sink after saying it. The Black Earth River Master had no choice but to believe it; this mouth couldn’t lie, as it had proved on itself just tonight.

It lowered its head to examine the half in its own grasp.

The few fragments wedged on the mirror disk were thin enough for light to pass through, and it shone its light over them again and again.

...Nothing.

The old priest brought the mirror disk close to the fragments of the Honored Envoy, and after shining the mirror on them, lowered its head to sniff at them for a long while.

The Black Earth River Master knew full well that the hand that stole its true name would carry the scent of river mud—it would recognize that smell even if it were burned to ash.

It straightened up and spoke slowly:

”The shadow is clean, and the spirit is clean. The hand that stole my name is not his.”

As for the true name, Richard had never once schemed after the creature’s true name from start to finish; the panel’s trial mechanism had automatically adjudicated it and shoved it straight into his hands as a bonus.

At the cost of a shadow and spirit shattered to bits, he had bought back his ”innocence” in the eyes of the Black Earth River Master.

A single cut made by the ”Severed Branch” Spell Formula still remained on the Honored Envoy’s remnants. The old priest spared it a glance:

”A cut like this... it’s a Moon-Hunting blade.” Shaking its head, it slowly withdrew the mirror disk.

”That miser of a lord of the hunt—tossing away one envoy to keep the rest of his fortune safe. He’s always been shrewd with an abacus.”

Up at the mouth of the well, tens of thousands of riders had all watched the Honored Envoy shatter with their own eyes.

The Lobsterback was the first to lose his composure, clamping his legs around his horse’s belly to charge straight down the well while bellowing:

”Out of the way! I’m going down to fish the Honored Envoy out!”

The lord of the hunt merely raised a hand, and the Lobsterback’s horse came to a dead halt at the rim of the well.

”Halt.”

”Going down the well was the path the Honored Envoy chose for himself. It isn’t your place to panic on his behalf.”

Beside them, the Old Scholar flipped open the ledger. Next to the Honored Envoy’s entry, a tiny word—”Shattered”—was written, the ink long since dry.

He then flipped further back to Coleman’s line, where a row of small script followed: ”Entered into the ledger following the Envoy (Envoy: Shattered, not Deceased).”

The lord of the hunt leaned over for a look. So that was why the boy had insisted on writing ”Shattered” instead of ”Deceased.”

So long as the Envoy was not ”Deceased,” Coleman remained registered under the Envoy, and the lord of the hunt couldn’t simply shift him into its own column as private property. Riding in the middle of the formation, Coleman kept his head bowed from beginning to end. Ever since the Honored Envoy went down the well, he had caught the scent on him—a mix of paper, ink, and a trace of lamp oil, the smell of someone who sat writing at a desk all day and laid his head down on the wood for a nap whenever he grew tired.

He couldn’t say where he had smelled it before, only that catching a whiff of it settled his heart.

Now the Honored Envoy’s scent was gone, and Coleman muttered under his breath, ”...Still owed.”

On the other side, Loki’s mind raced so fast that before he could nip it off, a thought leaked straight out the top of his head:

’Ha! Now that the Honored Envoy’s shattered, that slip ought to come to me, Loki, right?!’

Tens of thousands of riders heard it loud and clear, right down to the glee he hadn’t managed to suppress behind the thought.

Freyja let out a ringing sneer that echoed back and forth around the wellhead.

Flustered, Loki tried to reel the thought back in, but once a thought slipped out, not even a Virtuoso could take it back; all he could do was crane his neck and stare hard at the sky.

Carrying the slip in its mouth, the lame little dog was already limping through the pack of hounds and weaving between the legs of the riders’ horses.

As it reached the back half of the column, Loki reached out to take it.

The little dog ducked right under Loki’s hand and padded all the way to the very end of the line.

Moments earlier, seeing the Honored Envoy surrounded by the two Virtuosos, Lillian had nearly leaped into the well after him. The wind and snow of the Goddess of Winter had poured in just in time, chilling her all the way to the center of her brow until she gradually calmed down.

She dismounted and patted the little dog’s head first before taking the slip from its mouth, not minding the drool on it in the slightest.

When Loki looked over, all he could see was a vast white expanse of howling blizzard.

Ignoring him, Lillian opened the raven eyes of The Morrigan first.

They had been left behind after the battle with the Celtic Corps; MacFie had let her off the hook and hadn’t taken the raven eyes back.

With those raven eyes, she fixed an unblinking stare on the mouth of the well.

She hoped and believed; she couldn’t shake the feeling that the person she held in her heart could never die so easily in a place like this.

Down inside the well, the two Virtuosos were equally unwilling to walk away empty-handed, and the more they mulled it over, the more convenient the Honored Envoy’s shattering seemed.

The Black Earth River Master intended to use the mystery of ”Substitution” to piece this pile of fragments back into human shape.

Once pieced back together, it would become its puppet and naturally spill every secret it was hiding.

The great maw was far cruder, grinding its upper and lower jaws back and forth like millstones to chew the fragments even finer.

Once chewed to a pulp, whatever information was inside the fragments would naturally separate out. Both Virtuosos went to work at the same time—one stitching the fragments together, which amounted to tearing a book apart and rebinding it; the other clamping the fragments tight in its mouth, which amounted to holding a book hostage and refusing to return it.

Just as they were getting into the swing of it, the last lingering wisp of spirit revealed a tiny red stamp: ””...

At the sight of that red stamp, the Black Earth River Master’s painstaking splicing froze on the spot.

The great maw also tasted something off in its mouth and smacked its jaws: ”Tastes like ink... and glue. Pah, disgusting!”

Before it could finish complaining, a desk lamp with a green glass shade lit up in the Deep Realm.

It was the kind most commonly seen on bank counters and in reading rooms—one look at it made a person want to lower their voice.

The moment the Librarian cast His gaze over, His reading room established itself within the Deep Realm.

This Master’s stance was crystal clear:

If someone died outside, that was their own business, but if a book was held hostage, He would step in—and if an author who had left an impression on Him was kept from writing in peace, He would step in all the more!

And so, in that flat, even tone, the Master reiterated His rule:

”No eating or drinking on library premises!”

Had Richard and Mortimer been here to see it, they would have burst out laughing.

A Master’s rules had to be obeyed by everyone—whether Practitioner, Major Adept, or Virtuoso!

The great maw’s jaws jammed on the spot, forced to heave up the meat it had swallowed piece after piece.

First it spat out the shadow fragments, then the entire loot pocket, followed by the Vasa’s brass ring and half an iron nail.

Over on the other side, the lord of the hunt let out a surprised sound full of delight; it had already braced itself to lose its treasures down here.

The Smoking Mirror was spat out as well, landing neatly inside a wooden cubby labeled ”Lost and Found.”

Two human figures slid out from deep within the throat, pushed all the way up toward the mouth of the well.

Both were newcomers who had given their true names after falling into the well; not a single one of those who had given false names came out, as the library only recognized registered names.

Richard had warned them beforehand: ”Once you go down, give your true name.”

These two were the only ones among the fallen who had listened, and it saved their lives.

The Librarian’s second statement was directed at the Black Earth River Master:

”Borrowed items are overdue!”

A commotion broke out inside the inverted pyramid as several shadows tucked in its folds began actively wrenching themselves free.

A number of forcibly seized shadows slipped their hooks entirely, each flying back toward the grave where it belonged.

The old priest reached out and clutched at empty air; it opened its mouth to say something, but the empty chair beneath the lamp did not budge.

For the third statement, the Librarian turned back to the great maw:

”This book already has a reader.”

Just this month, a paper had come off the press in the Bulletin of the Oriental Society in Berlin.

Its author was a Czech scholar from Austria-Hungary named Hrozny.

Among a pile of clay tablets dug up from the Anatolian plateau that no one could read, he had deciphered a single sentence: nu NINDA-an ezzatteni, watar-ma ekutteni.

(Now you will eat bread, and then drink water.)

Of the Hittite language, unreadable for three thousand years, the very first sentence deciphered was such an everyday remark.

”Watar” and ”water” looked so much alike that they matched up across three millennia. For a dead language to be understood once more was the same as placing it back on the shelf.

Once a shelved book had a reader, no one else was permitted to hold it back.

Deep inside the maw’s throat, something began to surge upward.

It disgorged an entire Bronze Age city: clay tablets and cuneiform script, while that sentence about bread echoed in a Czech accent.

A single tongue drifted upward, flying toward Lillian.

Lillian reached out and caught it.

The tongue felt very light in her palm, cool to the touch and still twitching rhythmically.

Looking down at the tongue, she suddenly understood.

Back then, Ms. Holloway had asked Lillian to follow the Wild Hunt down on the winter solstice and bring something back from the Spirit Realm, telling her, ”You’ll know when the time comes.”

Emptied out, the great maw held its jaws wide and slowly turned toward the inverted pyramid.

”You owe me.”

The old priest said nothing. Beneath the lamp, the Librarian added one final note.

”This reader’s borrowing privileges are suspended for a term of three solar years.”

Every mirror inside the pyramid flashed at once.

The upturned ones flipped over, the outward-facing ones turned inward, and in every last mirror only a single line of text remained: Library access is temporarily suspended for this reader.

To its horror, the Black Earth River Master discovered that its mystery of illumination seemed to have been sealed away.

”The library is closed.”

Inside the green glass shade, the lamp went dark all at once.

Before the light went out, Lillian’s raven eyes were still open.

Behind the great maw, she saw row upon row of bookshelves stretching out of sight, and the Abyss Virtuoso itself was nothing more than a single catalog card tucked among them.

When the lamp went out, this stretch of the Deep Realm went dark with it.

The black tide froze in midair, the city walls froze half-collapsed, the great maw’s jaws froze half-open, and even the echoes froze the instant they left the mouth.

A steady force buoyed them up from below, like a librarian ushering the last few readers out the door at closing time, a hand resting against their backs to guide them all the way down the steps. Everyone was pushed back into the shallows, and the massive forms of the two Virtuosos were shoved up out of the Deep Realm, scraping right along the edge of the Material Realm as they passed.

Beneath the St. Gotthard Pass, the ice across several alpine lakes cracked simultaneously.

In the shallows, tens of thousands of riders had just found their footing.

As the lord of the hunt gazed at that darkened expanse of black, the frost on its antlers finally fell away.

”...Since the Librarian tossed you both out the front door, don’t blame me for not holding back.”

First it picked up the Vasa’s brass ring and iron nail, cradling them in its hands and kissing them twice while the Hunters nearby all looked away.

The lord of the hunt raised the Horn and blew the three syllables held within its chamber.

The entire inverted pyramid seized up, every shadow of the Black Soil River convulsing in agony.

Now came the time to pay for blood with blood. The lord of the hunt drew those three syllables in the horn’s chamber out into a single long blast.

The old priest tried to fold itself up and flee, but nothing remained on its mirrors now except the Librarian’s line: ”borrowing privileges suspended.”

Left with no choice, the Black Soil River brought out that Eye Without Pupils once more.

On that night in the North District of Briston, this very eye had loomed behind the Chief Responder. When it opened, a wide swath of riders across the shallows bowed their heads in unison.

Several newcomers clapped their hands over their eyes on the spot, blood trickling out between their fingers.

The lord of the hunt, of course, did not lower its head. It untied a sling from beside its saddle.

Ever since the Celtic table had been devoured, this sling had passed into its hands without being used once; today was the perfect day to blood it.

The Old Scholar recognized it.

”In the myths... Lugh used this very sling to shatter Balor’s evil eye.”

”I know,” the lord of the hunt said. ”It’s not as if I don’t read.”

Bending down, it dug a pebble out of the mud and tucked it into the pouch.

The stone whipped out, and the eye shattered on impact.

That blow sent an echo rippling through the Material Realm as well.

In the North District of Briston, a gust of wind swept simultaneously across all thirteen old sites along the canal.

The wind passed from the old sluice gate of the Black Trench over the low bridge, pausing before Lizzie’s surname-less headstone to blow the dead leaves off its top. In the small dormitory building behind Greenwood School, Mr. Hutton sat up in his dream.

He stared wide-eyed at the ceiling for a long while before realizing he was already awake.

In the closed storage rooms of the Cairo Museum, a crack split across every Black Soil River Bronze Mirror at the exact same instant.

In County Meath, Ireland, at a farmhouse beneath a hill, a dog howled at the night sky all night long.

The old woman of the house draped a shawl over her shoulders and got up; there was nothing on the hilltop, only the wind.

She crossed herself, and before heading back inside, said to her half-asleep son:

”Lugh has been back. Once spring comes, don’t go running into town so much.”

Her son mumbled something indistinct, rolled over, and fell back asleep.

On the docks of Marseille, a man carrying lavender to Grasse for someone collapsed beside a mooring bollard.

When he was found in the morning, his hand was still clutching an undelivered note.

In an alley in the Port of Alexandria, someone sat down against the wall and never stood up again.

The Black Earth River Master could hold out no longer. Outmatched, it looked to flee.

Its old method had always been mirrors: anything capable of reflection was its door.

The surface of water, glass, a polished brass basin, the unspilled glint of tears in a person’s eye—it had always entered through such doors, and naturally left through them as well.

There was no shortage of reflective surfaces in the shallows: the ice of the alpine lakes, the armor of the riders, the wet eyes of the hound pack.

Picking out the nearest sheet of ice, the entire pyramid tilted toward the frozen surface.

Yet at an observatory north of the Alps, someone pulled taut the threads between her fingers.

A faceless woman sat beneath the telescope tube, all ten fingers wrapped in strands of starlight.

Reaching out through the snow clouds beyond the skylight, she plucked a star from the severed head carried by Perseus.

Algol.

The Arabs called it the ”Demon’s Head”; on Medusa’s severed head, it was that very eye.

It was a restless star, dimming once every two days or so like a blinking eye.

Pinching the star between her fingers, she waited until the moment it blinked to its dimmest and pinned it straight onto the coordinates she had calculated: St. Gotthard, the roof ridge where four rivers divide, on the night of the winter solstice. Algol closed its eye.

Within those coordinates, every reflective surface went blind at once.

The ice could not reflect the moon, the armor could not reflect the firelight, and the hounds’ eyes turned into dark, empty hollows without a single speck of light left.

The old priest slammed against the sheet of ice; the doors had turned to dead glass, not a single one yielding, forcing it to wheel around in search of another.

The faceless woman plucked two more stars from the sky—Castor and Pollux of Gemini—and pinned them to the left and right of the pyramid.

Pinned together, the twins stood shoulder to shoulder on the spot; if either wanted to slip into the other’s shell, it would have to wrench itself off the nail first.

”Substitution” lost its effect here. Nailed in place, the old priest had nowhere left to hide.

In the shallows, the lord of the hunt hooked the Horn back beside its saddle, brimming with high spirits.

The hour of reckoning had come!

”Draw your bows!”

Tens of thousands of riders reached beneath their own ribs in unison, tens of thousands of bones joining into a single expanse, some still trailing threads of blood dried for centuries.

The lord of the hunt pulled out its own rib, bent it into a bow, and nocked an invisible arrow. This arrow was called ”Schuld”—”What Is Owed”—the ledger of debts accumulated by the Wild Hunt over thousands of years.

Every night the Wild Hunt rode across the northern wastes, it kept the books: who owed whom, who had taken what wasn’t theirs, whose prey had been poached.

Precisely because that debt was older than any living Virtuoso, it could pierce a Virtuoso through.

The lord of the hunt drew the bow:

”Call it out! Let them know who this arrow is loosed for!”

The Old Scholar called out first, one hand resting on the bowstring while the other still held the open ledger.

”This arrow is for those who couldn’t climb out of the fissure tonight!”

The Lobsterback drew his bow to the full, the hole in his chest expanding and contracting with the motion, righteous as could be.

”This arrow is for the stolen dreams and stories!”

Beside him, the fellow carrying the charcoal basket had a much looser tongue and bellowed at the top of his lungs: ”This arrow is for the Vasa’s ship ring!”

A roar of laughter swept the shallows, tens of thousands of bowstrings thrumming.

Yet the lord of the hunt nodded. ”Well said!”

Holding his breath, Coleman flushed red before squeezing the words out between his teeth:

”...This arrow is for everyone who is still owed!”

Lillian had no rib for a bow; the bones of the living could not be drawn out.

She took her own needle from her cuff and spoke only a single line: ”...This arrow is for him alone.”

Loki drew his bow as well: ”This arrow is for my door...”

Halfway through, Hela kicked him in the calf.

Loki stumbled forward, swallowing the second half of his sentence whole.

”For your door what?” Hela asked again.

”For my... doorway! They held me up from sweeping the snow in front of my house!”

The moment the words left his mouth, a small puff of ash rose from the top of his head, smelling so foul that the two horses beside him snorted.

Hela turned her face away.

Last of all came the lord of the hunt, drawing its bow to a full moon. The bowstring pressed against its antlers, shaking loose flakes of frost one after another.

”For the Honored Envoy!!!”

Squatting beside the hooves of Lillian’s horse, the lame little dog let out a bark toward the invisible arrow.

Tens of thousands of bowstrings were loosed at once, yet only a single arrow flew forth.

It tore through the inverted pyramid nailed to the spot, and through the great maw before its jaws could close.

Both Virtuosos were at their absolute worst tonight; the arrow didn’t even slow as it punched through them, scattering fragments ripped from their forms all across the shallows.

Unspent, the arrow streaked straight across the entire expanse of the shallows and shot out through the veil above St. Gotthard.

On the Devil’s Bridge, the young sentry was stamping his feet.

He saw a streak of light rise from beneath the bridge, skimming up the sheer rock face of the gorge, flying faster and thinner the higher it went until it vanished with a flash against the underside of the clouds.

His jaw dropped, his feet mid-stamp.

The older sentry took his pipe from his mouth, and before he could speak, a muffled rumble rolled down from overhead.

On Mount Juchi, an entire face of snow collapsed. A whole winter’s accumulation clinging to the slope was shoved outward from within, pitching down in a single sheet until all the two men could see was an overwhelming wall of white crashing down from the sky.

The wall of snow surged through the upper valley, burying the tracks outside the northern portal of the St. Gotthard tunnel deep beneath the drift.

At the foot of the mountain, people were jolted awake by a clatter of hooves.

Chamois bolted down the snowy slopes in herds, knocking over the sleds outside the bakery door.

They huddled together in the middle of the street, not a single one willing to head back up the mountain.

Marmots were startled out of hibernation, crawling from their burrows onto the snow; even as they froze to death right there, their faces all pointed in the exact same direction.

Yellow-billed choughs wheeled around the mountain caves, refusing to land even when dawn broke.

Further west, the Rhone Glacier split open across its entire length.

Sounds echoed from deep within the crevasses—some said it was the ice groaning, others said it was the water.

An old shepherd claimed it was weeping, starting and stopping only to start up again, just like a woman who had lost her child.

North of the Apennine peninsula, the Furrow Virtuoso was jolted awake.

Hurriedly, it drew a boundary line across the southern slopes of the Alps, stretching from the ridge of Mont Blanc in the west to the glaciers of the Ortler in the east. In the end, the avalanche failed to crest the ridge, and the glacial fissures halted right at the line without advancing another inch.

Guarding the boundary from within the furrow, the old city-wall builder clicked his tongue in wonder.

There was real power in that arrow, unmistakably beyond what a Virtuoso ought to possess.

Masters stood on another level entirely, so they were another matter.

Yet if a Virtuoso wanted to loose an arrow like that, most would have to trade their lives for it.

The Furrow Virtuoso thought of that antlered old creature.

”You miser... just what on earth did you run into?”