"You're back." Little Taylor said.

I didn't say anything, but I nodded. There was a strip of paper in my new hand that I handed to the cuter, littler version of me. Taylor just worked through the sentence with a little more ease than she'd done before.

I have found somewhere safe for you. New line. Have you seen your sister?

While Teilgean's advice hadn't lead me to a new arm, it had maybe helped me take a step in that direction. It wasn't ideal, but it spoke of his honesty, if only to an extent. How that spoke of the rest of his character remained to be seen, but I had been convinced the chapel would be safer than this place.

Her sister was something I was still worried about.

"I haven't." Her voice quivered. "She didn't say anything to me. I think she just left to find mom, but she forgot the music box too. I don't understand."

I didn't either, so I held her close, rummaged up some food and the like, then we started moving towards the chapel.

The walk over went better than the walk to Iosefka's clinic. Even the big flaming ball that had been pushed down the aqueduct bridge had come back when I died, but I had already dealt with that. This time I had approached from the side of the graveyard and it had been me that lit that thing up. I wouldn't have called it satisfying, but I did feel some catharsis from watching the flaming ball fall down to the sewer knowing it wouldn't be a problem until the next time I visited the dream.

Now I was herding little Taylor across the bridge, I took a moment to ponder on why my arm hadn't stayed. I came up with nothing, and soon we were at the chapel. My transformed bugs were left behind as the incense became too strong, and I homed in on the chapel dweller.

"Hello… heh." He couldn't help himself from laughing nervously. "I wasn't totally sure you heard me the last time you were here."

I held a strip of paper in front of him. He reached up with thin and bony hands and took it with fingers a touch longer than I would've thought natural, and fingernails that really needed some trimming.

"Ah, ha. I'm afraid I never took the time to learn." He chuckled breathily. "Can you speak english?"

"I can." I said, but he didn't understand.

"I can." Little Taylor volunteered. I took the paper and handed it to little Taylor. She stumbled through the letters. "See. Ay. En. Um… San?"

"Can." I said, hoping it would get through. The little girl repeated it the word after me, so it did.

"Tee. Eighch. Eye. Ess. Ah! This!" I nodded approvingly of her getting it. "Um… See?"

"G."

"Gee." She nodded. "Eye again. Arr. Eye?"

"L."

"Girl." Taylor affirmed, sounding out the word slowly until the word clicked. She pointed at the fourth word and looked at me. "I know this one. Stay."

A smile touched my lips and I ruffled her hair, then remembered that Gascoigne tugged her ear to show his pride, so I did that too. Taylor smiled for the first time. I found myself staring at her embarrassed but proud expression.

"Of course she can." The dweller added with conviction before Taylor could get started on the fifth word, also bringing me out of my thoughts.

I nodded and took the paper back.

"There's more though." Taylor protested. I let myself smile and ruffled her hair again. The last word was 'here' and it had a question mark. Then I handed her another strip of paper.

It took a while since the only way I could ask questions was through a girl that was still expanding her vocabulary, but the exchange went smoothly enough.

How much incense do you have?

"Enough to last until the dawn." The dweller answered. Then he laughed nervously. "And then the next dawn, should the hunt persist."

I arched an eyebrow, but moved on to more pressing questions.

Food and water?

"Some, but not much."

I made a note to myself to do some scavenging.

Keep her safe.

"It's safe in here." The dweller assured me, but that laugh he followed up with undid any assuaging he managed.

Then I gave Taylor another strip that she instantly recognised most of the words on.

Stay here. New line. Stay strong.

Taylor nodded absently and I stood to go, but I had to stop when she gave me one of those 'don't go' hugs. She needed it, so I didn't break it except to crouch back down and give her a goodbye one in return. Or half of one. Still only had one hand.

But eventually I had to break it and go. I realised that she had started to shed silent tears during the embrace and wiped them away for her. Then I tugged her ear and left through the lamp.

I had unfinished business to deal with.

~drip~drip~drip~

*****h*** ** *ea* *** *i****i**

He was leaned against the wall when I appeared. Teilgean watched me as I stumbled to find my footing on the uneven floor. I felt his eyes scan my body, lingering where my still missing arm would be, before flicking up to meet my eyes.

I waited, my hand next to the handle of my axe, but not holding it.

Teilgean was the one who gave out. "You'll find no closure here."

"No disarming comments this time?" I shot back.

He snorted through his scarf. "I'm sure I can think up one or two if that's something you desire. As for what's at the top of those stairs-" He gestured to the now closed doors into Iosefka's clinic proper. "She's in a frenzy now. You'll have a harder time killing her now that she understands you."

I raised an eyebrow. I hadn't realised that was a method to getting myself understood.

Teilgean's demeanour shifted darkly. "Don't misunderstand, she knows your habits and tactics now. Your echoes flow through her. It will have made her more maddened than before."

"I've fought worse." I said.

"She's already killed you. She can do it again. The only thing you'll find with this pursuit is frustration."

"Are you going to keep warning me away from this, or are you going to say something that will help, because in case you didn't realise," I raised my stump in front of me. "Your advice didn't get me my arm back."

He tilted his head a fraction, almost like how Doll had. "You don't sound particularly disappointed."

I shrugged. "I saved the world and died without an arm. I'm used to it."

He gave me a long, hard look. I had seen that kind of look, it was how Chevalier had looked at me so long ago. The hero, like the enigmatic character before me, had enough obscuring himself that it had been difficult to guess at what his expression might have been like. But there was a certain air people adopted when they were evaluating something or someone important.

In the past, it had been because I'd just killed one of the world's most well known superheroes. Now, I wasn't sure what I was being evaluated for. I wasn't sure I liked it, going by the evident conflict going on in Teilgean's head.

"How?" He eventually asked.

"Left eye." I said. He blinked, then flinched back as a fly flew into his left eye. My swarm wasn't as thick as I was used to, having just appeared, but there was enough that I could make it clear they were moving to me. The bugs that were climbing up my clothes were climbing on the outside rather than the inside right now.

"You control them?" Teilgean asked, still holding a reserved tone.

I made the bugs between us form into the letters for 'YES' rather than answering verbally. That made him become even more thoughtful.

"Powers are the standard here." I told him when I felt he was being too indulgent in his thoughtfulness. "Everyone's a brute to some extent, and I think it's because a wet tinker has distributed something through the blood. It's not Iosefka, her tinkering presents itself differently. You're a mover and brute. I'm a master and now a brute, in more ways than one. The dream is a trump." I didn't know what Teilgean's impression of Doll was, so I chose not to mention her by name.

Teilgean still didn't speak, prefering to take that in in his own time. But my little spout of information caught his attention. "Those are interesting words you've put to what you've observed."

"They are standard PRT classifications." I explained. "You might have noticed that I'm not from here."

"That much was a given. You don't fit in here."

"You've underestimated just how far away I was snatched from."

"Oh?"

I sighed. Time to give the spiel again. "I saved the worlds. My reward was to be getting shot twice in the back of the head, and I suspect I was to be delivered to another world where I could have lived a normal life. Instead, black smoke snatched me away and I came here." I gestured broadly around myself. "I started dreaming and I can't wake up."

"That doesn't explain why you were brought here, to the beginning, when you should be at the end." He spoke cryptically. Softly. More to himself than to me.

"Are you going to keep speaking like a crazy person, or are you going to explain what it is you know that I don't?" I demanded.

"All in good time." Teilgean told me, like a crazy person.

I snorted and swept up the stairs to the door. Frankly, I was done with crazy people talking around issues with their crazy talk. There were a few things that mattered to me right now. Little Taylor's wellbeing was one of them. That Iosefka answered for what she had done and tried to do was another.

As it had been before, the door was closed. The handle on my side didn't turn when I gripped it, and when I kicked the door it didn't budge. Not even a little. Reaching through the broken glass proved fruitless when my hand impacted an invisible wall. I braced myself and threw myself against it even harder to less effect. I got in a good position to kick rather than just hitting it, and my boot impacted the wooden barrier where the tooth was.

Nothing.

I got out my axe and swung at it with all of my enhanced strength.

It bounced off the fucking glass. The way Teilgean had said that he'd tried 'quite hard' to break down this door came to mind. This thing was reinforced by powers. It was bullshit that Iosefka was a wet tinker and could use her power on doors.

The shroud seemed to be back up as well. I couldn't sense any bugs beyond the door, and I'd peered through until I noticed a small black speck moving across the room. There were definitely bugs in there, but this was quickly turning out to be a fruitless endeavor.

At the very least, Teilgean wasn't smug when I came back down.

"No closure, huh?"

"Not for a while yet." He said, sounding like he agreed with me. But then again, it sounded like he was drawing that conclusion from something he knew that I didn't.

"I'm getting real tired of this." I told him in a low growl.

"Everyone does." He admitted. "But I suppose it's time I did something more towards fulfilling my role." He pushed off from the wall. "Your arm, I assume you've tried with whatever you found in the workshop?"

"I have questions about how you knew that and why you told me." I said.

"So you did inspect the workshop. Good. How did the projection fare? Don't tell me there wasn't an improvement."

"Before I say that, what do you know of the Great Ones?" I asked, paying attention to his reaction. He recognised the title, but he kept his reaction in check. Nothing more than a reflexive squinting of the eyes when I dropped the title. A muted reaction, but one that recognised significance in what I said. "You clearly know something."

He spent long enough deliberating that I preemptively decided to deny whatever he said. "Sideways beings, them. Your arm."

"No." I said flatly. "Do better."

Teilgean gave me a long look before allowing himself the smallest of sighs. "Learning of the Great Ones is a paradoxical pursuit. What holds true at this moment may not hold true the next- to some extent. They are, in a way, what this city is built on. Which is the exception to the rule I just laid out."

I raised an eyebrow. That had several implications.

"They left, long ago." Teilgean continued. "This material place held nothing of interest to them, or maybe they were simply bored, or maybe they couldn't stand to be around us lowly mortals with our flesh and our drama, or perhaps they did it to protect us from themselves. As to how they left…" Teilgean spread his arms wide in a shrug, then made a show of shrugging. "It was long before my time. Word has it that those they gifted with the knowledge of where they went, uh, went mad."

"How long ago?" I asked.

"We can't be certain, but three hundred years or more sounds about right."

Now it was my turn to become thoughtful. There had been an assumption building in the back of my mind that the Great Ones were related to the powers here, but the timeline didn't pan out. Powers only started appearing roughly thirty years ago when Scion showed up on Bet. Still, there was a fact to check.

"How long has the blood been around?" I asked suddenly.

"I suppose one day you'll be interested in something that actually helps you." Teilgean muttered. "It's, ah… a few years past the twenty fifth anniversary of the founding of the Healing Church."

Which didn't help.

"I can see this is troubling you hunter." Teilgean spoke, his voice shifting to a different tone. Much like I expected he wanted to change the topic of conversation.

"I had a suspicion." I admitted. "How long have powers been a thing?" My question was met with a blank stare and I waved it off. "It's clearly something you don't know the answer to."

"Hm." He hummed in agreement. "But on the other hand…" I sighed. I should've expected that. "I think I understand why it's a little difficult for you to juggle at the moment."

I arched an eyebrow and waited for him to get on with it.

"Projecting an arm and maintaining that arm strikes me as more than mundane." Teilgean said, and I immediately got what he was getting at. "Your trick with the bugs seems along that alley, and it's not something I've had the pleasure of observing before. I thought the reason there was a writhing mass on the Cleric Beast was a simple pungent blood cocktail. That being said, it isn't enough for you to visualise the right shape and get by on what you have. You need to brush up on your arcane."

Meaning it was time to get back to robbing people's experiences from them through their souls. I grimaced. Although…

I looked up the stairs to Iosefka's clinic. "She would be perfect." Wet tinker that had the ability to shroud herself and her house from my bugs. Powers were more than mundane. Yeah, she fit the bill.

Teilgean got an anxious look about him. "All you would be doing is constructing a more difficult obstacle down the road. You'll come back to her. I'm absolutely sure of that."

I glanced back at him. "You said your role was to point out the next best thing. Tell me. What's the next best thing?" It wasn't like I had a way inside anyway.

"Well, given your predisposition I can't imagine you're going to be happy with my answer, but the answer is to hunt."

He was right. I bristled.

Teilgean spoke. "There is a beast through which arcane flows strong. All you need do is travel to Cathedral Ward and you'll eventually come upon them. Put her down, use the dream, and that will let you more easily overcome the next obstacle to arise."

"And then?" I asked testily.

"You will more easily be able to overcome the obstacle that arises after that one, assuming you use the dream as it was intended to be used." He said. "And then the next obstacle after that, and so on until eventually you come back here."

"And in the meantime what does she do?" I gestured up the staircase. "She has my echoes now. Not many, but some, and most importantly, mine. Whatever crazy things she was getting up to before, she's going to be doing stuff that's worse now. Do I just accept that?"

"Considering that she's locked you out," Teilgean spoke sagely, "You don't have much of a choice."

"I don't like that." I deadpanned, but I didn't deny it. Now that I was aware of the shrouded area, I was able to feel around it with my bugs. From what my creepy crawlies had explored, there wasn't any way inside for someone my size.

Teilgean offered no defence. Eventually I sighed.

"To Cathedral Ward."

"I'll leave you to it, then." Teilgean barely finished the sentence before using his power to disappear. It left a bad taste in my mouth. Movers were always like that. The fact that I'd been dealing with them in one form or another for years did nothing to quench the annoyed feeling that swept through me.

And so I went to Cathedral Ward. Not five minutes into that part of the town I got hit over the head with an unreasonable amount of force and stuffed into a body bag.