"And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's, / My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, / And I was frightened. He said, Marie, / Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. / In the mountains, there you feel free. / I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter." - Dorothea MacKellar

Jonquil, NSW, was every rural Australian town. No more than five people had walked Main Street independently of one another at the same time since 2003. A hotel on the corner had three competing bars across as many floors. The post office shared a building with the bank. Nothing grew on the wheat farms to the north of the town, and wheat grew bountifully on the abandoned golf course, refusing to die. The current mayor had forgotten that he held the title for two months last year, and nothing changed as a result. But most Australian of all the townfolk was Ruth.

She lived at house number 9 on Second Street, as she had for the past four years. She didn't quite like it, but it was harder than most to leave a house numbered nine. Nine is forever. Nine is the number of numogrammatical emanations, one for each major celestial body in the Solar System, their orbits ongoing and unbreaking. Every multiple of nine's digits sum to nine, and thus end up right back where they started. It stands one short of ten, the number of completion, as in the number of the sefirot or the dashavatara, both groups which break free of and transcend eternity. If you ever find yourself living at number 9, count your blessings if you do not spend your life there.

Ruth Cahill-Madigan was not a superstitious woman, rather, she was substitious. She practiced small rituals not based on irrational beliefs, but irrational disbeliefs. When the Sydneysiders arrived at her house, they found her sitting out on her verandah and watching the sunset. An innocuous activity out of context, but she had been staring it down and ensuring that it behaved itself. The empirical evidence of every day before now having an end was not an indicator that this one would.

In the day's last moments, a prematurely country-track-tainted Mazda6 cruised onto her street. She bolted out of her chair and flagged it down. It hauled itself onto the side of the road so gracelessly that a lesser curb would be offended, and out poured four exhausted-looking young women:

-Premium enchantress and community leader of the magical girls of the Sydney metropolitan area, Lorna Tyrell.

-High school prefect and community leader of the magical girls of the Sydney metropolitan area, Sloane Torrence.

-Grassroots political activist and community leader of the magical girls of the Sydney metropolitan area, Hope Fearnley.

-And some arsehole, Marie Crawford.

"G'day, g'day!" Ruth beamed, and glared aside to ensure the Sun didn't. "Hope, Lorna, Sloane, and...?"

Marie nodded. "Marie Crawford. I'm Fearno's plus-one."

"Ah! Lovely! Well, I hope you all had a pleasant trip here, but I'm enough of a realist to understand what four hours on gravel roads does to a person's sanity."

Sloane snickered at that. Nobody else did.

"Well, cheers for dropping Hope and..."

"Marie."

"Marie off, you two. I think the others've already got you a room down at the hotel."

"The pleasure's ours," Lorna smirked, ophidian, "we'll be seeing you."

And with that, she and Sloane returned to her car, and glided off down a cautious U-turn. Marie and Hope waved them off, and then, once out of sight,

"Jesus," Marie huffed.

"You see what I have to contend with now, don't you?"

"They're like... worse me."

"I wasn't gonna say it. Hey, Auntie Ruthy."

Hope and Ruth embraced as the day's last light gave up the ghost.

"Is Edith here yet?"

Ruth shook her head. "Nah, heard she's been busy all arvo, but she'll be here in the morn. The Canberra girls are here, though."

Hope nodded in no particular direction. "Right, right. And how's Sarah?"

"Oh, blimey. You'd know better than me. Come on in, I'm sure she'd be glad to see ya."

The trio ventured a short way indoors before Marie was set upon by a giant rose, with thorny stems like crab legs, and with a cutout of Venus de Milo where a carpel should have been. She gasped and drew her hammer. Before either could move, though, a hand caught the back of Marie's shoulder, tight enough for her to lose her grip.

"Et tu, Fearno?!"

But Hope wasn't looking at her. "Hey! Sarah! Good to see ya! Happy Birthday! This is my mate Marie. She's a little antsy right now, so be good to her, would ya?"

Venus caught alight, and then went out just as quickly.

"Chur. You're looking well, by the way."

Marie pulled her aside. "Hang on," she whispered. "That's Sarah?"

"No, darl. I called her that because I felt like it. You nong."

"Why didn't you tell me she was a witch?"

"I didn't want you to have the wrong impression of her before you met her."

"What? The way you talked about her, I thought you meant she was disabled or something!"

"Nah, course not. What did I say?"

"I... can't even remember now!"

Sarah made a sputtering noise analogous to clearing her throat, and the two girls stood back up. Marie bowed uncertainly.

"Sorry about that. Normally I make first impressions better than- well, okay. No. I really don't."

Sarah responded by flashing and blaring like a klaxon.

"Is that... good?"

"No idea," Hope shrugged.

Ruth realised she had not been followed for some time now, and returned to her guests. "Come on, you two. Get a wriggle on. Is Sarah there?"

"Yeah."

"D'you reckon you could let 'em settle in first, Sarah?"

She settled down and scuttled back into the loungeroom. Ruth followed her without realising, and Marie and Hope stayed close behind.

"So, any reason Marie's here instead of Zoey?"

Hope smiled bittersweetly. "She's retired. Said she taught me everything she knew how to, soon she's popping down to Melbourne to do the same."

Her plus-one recalling these events in the future cursed herself for forgetting this had already happened, and wondered what other changes to her life had been so consequential that she took them for granted now.

"Oh, good on her! You gonna stay in touch?"

"Hah, hope so. And Marie over here's having trouble controlling her powers. Thought I'd bring 'er out away from the noise of the city to hone 'em."

"Good thinking! Never could stand the noise of the city myself. I'm a farm girl, through and through."

"This isn't exactly a farm though, is it?" Marie smirked.

"Course it isn't. Didn't Hope tell ya?"

"Tell me what?"

"I sold the farm to buy you the Citadel. Sold everything."

"Oh, I had no idea! I'm sorry!"

"Nah, no worries. Tell you what, it's less to look after. Plus, I don't have room to keep all the guests under my roof."

"After the ride here, I can see how that's a good thing."

"Oh!" Hope jumped. "Just remembered! Got a couple old majjo poems that might tickle your fancy."

"That so?"

"Yeah! Remind me in the morning, I'll show 'em to ya."

"Righto. I take it you're not planning on staying up?"

"Honestly..." Hope swung her arms back and forth. "I am shattered."

"Me too, I could fall asleep on the spot," Marie mumbled.

"Fair enough. Well, you two get to bed, I'll head out and check on the others. Hope, show Marie where everything is."

"Will do." Then to Marie, "Bedroom's sort of up the back this way. We should get an early night, I reckon. We've gotta pick Edith up in the morning."

Pyotr stumbled blindly out of a portaloo and into an onslaught of light and sound and smell and-

"Hey! Hey you!"

He raised a hand to the Sun and caught in the glare the shape of a man in high-visibility overalls. "Yeah, you! What do you think you're doing out here?"

"Oh! Great question! Can I have a hint?"

"Wha-"

"And where is out here, anyway?"

"You had a few, mate?"

"No, I don't touch the stuff. Why, you thirsty?" He walked off. The construction worker jogged along up to him.

"Nah, you shouldn't be here in the first place, mate."

"Oh, I know. That's why I'm trying to leave."

"How'd you even get in here?"

"Well, if I knew that, it wouldn't have happened, sir, would it?"

"Are you-"

"Hang on, are we in Narrabeen?"

The tradie adjusted his hard hat. "Well, yeah. Where'd you think you were?"

"What am I doing in Narrabeen?"

"Disrupting a construction site, by the looks of it. What's your name, anyway?"

Too bad 'Pyotr Sloethorn' was on the record now. He thought it was clever.

He scratched the back of his neck and looked away. "Albert. Albert Coincidence."

"Your last name is Coincidence?"

"I mean, sure."

"Strange name to have."

"Yeah, and what are the odds that a coincidence like that'd happen?"

"What's..." the worker shifted uneasily. "Sorry, what's the coincidence?"

"You know, that it's my last name, and the fact that it's my last name is a coincidence."

"Piss off."

"Yes sir."

Marie slumped further down the bus stop bench, down far enough to feel thankful for the long-term spinal issues she wouldn't live to see. "Dude, I'm sweating my arse off out here."

"How do you think I feel about it?" Hope smirked. "I have to stand here and listen to you complain about it."

"When's the bus supposed to be here?"

"9:30."

"Not to judge Jonquil too harshly, but did she say which year?"

"Alright, alright. You think you've hit the depths of boredom?"

"There is not a single thing you could do or say to make me more bored than I am right now."

"I spy with-"

Marie groaned so gutturally, so foul, that the approach of an as-yet unseen mosquito was completely dissuaded.

Slight adaptations of this performance were rerun at irregular intervals throughout the next few minutes, until a small, grey bus hummed its way over the horizon.

Marie sat up, clicked something in her neck, and huffed. "Motherf- is that her?"

"Yep. Just said hi to her."

"What's her name again?"

"Edith. She's lovely, really, clever, down to earth... oh goodness, yeah, she probably won't like you then."

"Oh, piss off."

"I'm using 'umour, Marie. I'm only pulling your tit."

"Is that a real saying?"

The bus pulled up, and out strolled a tall, bespectacled woman with a backpack and an Akubra.

"Fearnooo!"

"Edith, darl! How are ya?"

The two embraced, but there was an underlying larrikin sarcasm to the way they held each other.

"Oh, not bad! You?"

"Could not be better! Hold up, what's that on your hat?"

Edith removed her Akubra and held up a section of its band with two flags stitched onto it, one divided into black and red halves, with a yellow circle between them, and the other a six-stripe colour spectrum.

Hope nodded. "Only flags worth respecting, I see."

It was not at this point that Edith first noticed Marie, but she did a good enough job of acting like it. "Hello hello! Zoey's gotten short, hasn't she?"

"This is my mate Marie," Hope explained. "Brought her out here hoping we could get a stronger grip on how her powers worked."

"I can introduce myself..." Marie moped.

"And you didn't."

"Pleased to meet you, Marie." She extended a hand. "Oh, your eyes..."

"Yeah, I know. It's heterochro-"

Marie took her hand, yelled, and let go before she could finish that thought.

"Oh Jesus," Edith grumbled, and slowly orbited a particular tree. "Excuse me? You right, mate?"

Marie followed her and quickly discovered who she was looking at. Or, now, what.

She was stunned into silence by the translucent image of Edith's dead body, propped up against the tree, and surrounded by half a dozen large, ghostly figures. Naturally, of course, its should-be owner took it far worse, doubled over and heaved breathlessly.

Red gravel and yellow grass gave way to black fog and a familiar brassy wail. Marie's heart sank when the shadow of a tremendous golden dragon fell over her.

The Knight's image was clearer now. She could make out all its scales individually, all their shifting positions and every movement of its muscles predetermined by an impossibly dense mechanical system built into every iota of its body.

And each of those scales was a glistening, polished, glowing gold, and each of them whistled a completely distinct, gut-wrenching note, and she could see now that it had no eyes nor ears. Predetermination necessitates no senses.

But still with it was all the elegance which accompanied Marie's first meeting, all the dread of its sheer presence, now in clear enough detail for Marie to understand without a doubt that Lara was right. This was far more than a mere deity before her. This was something so primordial to the very logic of reality, given terrible form. What was she to feel? Awe? Terror? Anger? She could count very few things she did not feel.

"What would you take for the ghosts?"

Edith glanced up at the Knight and scrambled backward.

"I understand you are a firm businesswoman, but I have a millennia-old promise to uphold. What's your offer?"

"On... on the ghostly things? I... I wasn't selling them, I don't understand what's-"

It plucked two of its own scales from its skin and passed them to her. "There are old myths about a custom of placing coins on the eyes of those who have passed, when they are buried. You will know her eyes when you see them: one will be red, and one will be blue. This, I believe, is a fair trade: they will prove as invaluable to her as these spectres will to me."

"Wh... what, are you offering me some kind of... trade?"

"And might you refuse? I am, quite literally, acquiring them over your dead body."

Slowly, Edith extended her hand. "And what are these... ghosts, you said, anyway? They're hurting my head just by being here."

"The people of this world call them paradox artefacts. Not their true name, of course. Byproducts of contradictions in reality, as evidenced by the presence of your corpse where, and when, it shouldn't be."

"Oh God, please don't talk about my... if I think about it I'm going to be ill."

"Of course. All I ask is the artefacts come with me to prevent a terrible disaster in your near future."

"For these two coins?"

"Yes."

"Can I ask why?"

"Not yet."

The vision stopped in place. Even Marie found herself unable to move through it any further. But the Knight moved. It moved to face her.

So this was it, then. Their second, and final encounter. Well, it wasn't all bad. At least she wouldn't dread the end after it came.

"I imagine you must have some questions."

Marie tried to speak. Her mouth wouldn't move. She tried to blink, again, nothing. She projected, "You're going to kill me, aren't you?"

"I said you would die when next we met. I hardly think a psychometric hallucination of me counts."

"And yet, here we are, talking like we're face to face."

"Our respective visions of past and future are nothing if not useful."

"So tell me, then. How and when is it that I'm going to die?"

The Brass Knight said nothing.

"You can't just tell me that I'm going to and leave it at that."

Still nothing.

"Tell me, you bastard! Tell me how I fucking die!"

"I don't know."

If Marie's heart hadn't stopped already, it would have now.

"What? You're supposed to be some kind of future-sighted elder god! You can't not know that!"

"I don't know. It's on the furthest periphery of my future vision. I see you alive and well for some months now, and then I see you unexpectedly perishing. All I know is that I will have to be there when it happens."

"...Fine. So why are you here now, then?"

"I am neither here nor now. Follow me."

The primordial fog thickened and curled around Marie. Once it began to settle, it stretched and hurtled away before her - either that, or it was she who was thrust through it.

"Where are we going?!"

"Only three kilometres from the setting of your vision. I want you to meet my daughter."

Marie tried to wave off the haze clouding her vision, and to her surprise, found that she could. "Does being a giant eldritch dragon run in the family?"

"She was spared the curse of resemblance."

"'Was'?"

"Her life was cut short ten thousand, eight hundred and forty-three years before yours began."

"...So when you say 'only three kilometres', is that an Incubator-style half-truth, or just sarcasm?"

Even the titan itself sank into the fog. When it cleared, Marie found herself standing in a deep forest.

The Brass Knight was here too, but its body was worn and tarnished now. There was another figure, a roughly human shape slightly taller than Marie, encased completely in the black fog.

"My daughter," it explained, "though she has asked not to become apparent to you, so I cannot let you see her or hear her or know her name."

"Any reason for that?"

"When I explained to her that you would be joining us from another world, she requested that my affairs with her and with you be kept as disparate as I can allow."

"You told her I was from another world?"

"You must understand how rare your culture's conception of time is that you can think of the future as something completely alien to you. And this is what distinguishes me from the Incubator. He believes in truth, so firmly that he will use it to deceive you. But there is no such thing as truth. Only models by which we understand what we experience. Now," it turned to face its daughter. "Have you made your choice?"

"Before I do," and Marie did not hear a word of this, only distant thought-shapes, "I wanted to ask you. You're not my father, are you?"

"Does it matter?"

"I'd appreciate the comfort of knowing one way or the other... if it's all the same."

"I am only your father insofar as I prompted another to conceive your soul. Neither of us bore you, and neither of us raised you. I have told you (both) some things which don't align with the reality of your situation. I have even told you things which are outright false. But never have I done so with the intention of deception, quite the opposite: all I have given you is the information most useful to making informed decisions. I am certainly not your father, but to tell you that I am explains our relation simply and elegantly."

"...That makes it even harder for me to tell if I'm supposed to be a human, or some kind of brood parasite, or..."

"There isn't a name for what you are. I believe you're free to think of yourself however you want."

"So, I'm alone in this?"

"You are not the first. And there will come to be others of your ilk. Not here, not now, not even remotely... but they will be your sisters. Four thousand, one hundred and sixty-four years from now, your younger sister Kua will be born, then Nedjem, then Lakshmi, then... well, the gift of anonymity is accepted by more than just yourself. A pathetic and vague comfort to offer you, I'm sure, but you are not alone."

"And they'll all have to face this same choice."

"All but one, who will be killed before she has the chance."

"So that means this plan fails. Right? If you need their help just like you need mine."

"Only so that one day, one of your sisters will succeed. For now, I do not seek triumph. I simply have to stay one place ahead. A comparison might be... well. Is there any sport you're familiar with?"

"Sure, but I'm not the most athletic person around. I don't get what that has to do with...?"

"Disregard that, then. You've done well to understand without me presenting a meaningless oversimplification."

"...Thank you."

A pause. Marie couldn't tell what the daughter of the Brass Knight was doing, but she imagined her sighing.

"Well... even if I'm something more like you, it was the world that raised me. Not you. It wouldn't be too much to ask that you leave it alone, would it?"

"That, I'm afraid, not even I can promise. Might I offer a compromise?"

"Sure."

"Your family. Every single descendant of your grandparents for the remainder of eternal time will have complete protection both from and by me. Neither I nor any of my fellows may ever bring them to harm. Their safety will be my first priority. And when a great-niece of yours is threatened by a distortion in reality, I will intervene to protect her. In exchange, your ka."

Another pause.

"Very well."

The fog left the girl's body (although now she faced away from Marie, who was not offered another angle to watch her by from the Knight) and returned to its channeler. It reached out and grabbed something in the heart of the dark cloud. It made a fist. Marie could hear glass breaking, and watched the girl before her dissipate in the breeze.

"You... killed her," Marie gasped.

"I would say I regret it already, but the curse of future vision is regretting your actions before you make them."

"That's it?! That's all there is to it? You killed your daughter, and now what?"

"Nothing."

"She died for nothing."

"That's correct. Her mother could have intervened, but she didn't. And now, our only daughter for millennia is no more."

"But you knew that was going to happen already."

"And therefore, I couldn't avoid this. Nobody could. She was doomed to die regardless, as all mortals are."

Marie didn't have a good comeback to that. "Why me, though?"

"Why you what?" At last, the Brass Knight faced her again.

"Why are you showing and telling me all this? Why does it have to be me?"

"There is an answer to that question. A complete, logically satisfying answer. The only trouble is it's too much for a mortal to understand."

"Is that right?" she huffed.

"The closest there comes an answer that would make sense to you is that it had to be somebody. And of all the people of the world, it happened to be you."

"Bullshit."

"Neither of us will gain anything further from continuing this line of conversation. Wake up."

Marie bolted awake on the lounge in Ruth's house.

"Gah! Pfah! Blah! Bastard!" she spluttered, all over a small, blonde, and she had to admit, exceptionally beautiful woman in front of her.

"I'm sorry!" the woman shouted.

Marie shook her head. "Sorry, no, not- what? What's going on?"

Edith leaned over her. "It was the strangest thing. You shook my hand, and then passed out mid-sentence. Now Hope says you've got-"

"-Suffer from-" Hope corrected, just outside of Marie's peripheral vision.

"-Suffer from psychometry, so I don't know if, uh..."

"The Brass Knight."

Edith and Hope both went very still.

"So you've seen it too, then," the former whispered.

"What do you two mean, 'seen it too'? You don't suppose it's real, ay?"

"Is it some whole thing?"

Marie sat up. "Not really a fan of getting into this conversation right now! What happened after I passed out?"

"Hang on, this is a matter of the myths I grew up reading having a basis in fact!"

"No! No it isn't! It's a matter of the apparently ever-present possibility that touching anyone or anything at all could knock me out cold! One's a bit more of an immediate problem than the other!"

"Please, stop fighting..." the new girl mumbled.

Hope sighed. "Bleeding hell, Abigail. I would've thought growing up in Canberra would prepare you for unnecessary, circular arguments."

"Sorry, Miss Fearnley."

"Oh, I'm only joshing. Marie's right, I'm getting ahead of myself."

She walked across the room and sat in an armchair opposite Marie.

"How are you feeling now, then?"

"What kind of a question is that?"

"...So! What happened was after you passed out, the bus driver called the hotel for help, seeing if anyone knew first aid or anything. Abigail here-"

"Hi."

"-has some training, although me and Edith kept trying to tell him we did too, but hey. Three heads and a kit from the hotel are better than two and none. Plus she has a car, because screw me, we weren't carrying you into town on a thirty-degree clear day."

Marie put a hand to her chin. "Wait, wait, go back."

"Yeah?"

"First aid? Did I have any physical problems while I was unconscious?"

"You weren't breathing, and you were sweating like a cu... a lot."

"The weird thing is," Abigail picked up, "your airways weren't blocked, your pulse was..."

"My airways...?"

"Well, saying it 'was' feels like a bit of a stretch. And your sweating-"

"My airways...!"

"-didn't look like a reaction to anything. Except maybe, I don't know, fear? Did something, uh-"

"Question."

"Shoot."

"How did you know my airways weren't blocked?"

"Well, I thought we established I know first aid. I opened your mouth and checked."

"Yeah, but if I wasn't breathing, that suggests something was blocking it."

"Au, uh, well, see... the thing is, there are more accurate ways to... eahm..."

"Like, mouth-to..." Marie trailed, "-mouth...?"

Abigail went red in the face. She followed suit.

"The Brass Knight, dumbarse!" Hope interrupted, or perhaps saved.

"Right!" Marie flinched. "Right! Right! Yes, um... It appeared in front of me, back when that thing I wrote down happened. That vision, or poem, or whatever."

"And in front of me, too, months ago..." Edith tried, "but I'd rather not talk about the circumstances. He told me... oh! Right! Marie!"

She handed her two gold coins.

"What are they?"

"No idea, but he said to give them to you."

Marie put them in her pocket. "I suppose I'll find out."

"And what did it say?" Hope urged. Edith and Marie answered simultaneously.

"I don't know, I don't get it."

"It said I was going to die."

Hope faltered. "Sorry, what was that?"

"I dunno, I didn't get what it was saying either," Marie repeated, because this was what she had said the first time.

Ruth entered with a polypropylene bag on each arm, Sarah silently creeping in her shadow. "G'day, girls! Got you all some stuff for lunch. Is Marie up yet?"

Marie raised her hand.

"Goodo. Hope, you and Marie want to show me what you brought over now?"

"If, if that's alright!"

"No worries. I've built a bit of a study in my bedroom, come with me."

They left Edith and Abigail to their own and followed Ruth into her room. It purported a grandiosity not found elsewhere in the house, suggestions of late-Romantic Europe in its woodwork, all along the bed, and the bookshelf, and the desk. The two chairs already pulled up to the front of the desk looked almost comical in their simplicity. Ruth set down her bags and sat in an armchair fit for a woman twice her size.

"Take a seat, if you'd like."

The girls did just that.

"So, what is it you've got?" Ruth drew a glasses case from a desk compartment and donned its contents. Without a word, Hope passed her the two fragments Marie had given her not all that long ago. She scanned through them both, and promptly handed them back.

"Where'd you get these, girl?"

Marie leaned back in her chair. "I intercepted photos of the first one from the deeplighters. It's by someone called Julia the Voyager, I think. The second one... actually, I saw someone have that vision."

"What, you mean recently?"

"Yeah, January."

"How's that possible?"

"She's... sort of an anomaly. So I guess there are sixteen of these floating around now."

"An anomaly, you say?"

"Sort of a one-in-a-gazillion fresh new type of majjo," Hope explained, but signalled to Marie that explaining what Thalia was would give Ruth unrealistic expectations of her relationship with her daughter.

"Interesting. Actually, I tell you what. I've got a couple of these myself that I've never shown off." She crossed to her bookshelf, and perused the spines of its population.

"Do what?"

"One of 'em's by Old Annie Holzknecht, too, in fact."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It was in that old book of hers. I just never put any of it in the collection I gave you because I reckoned it was a bit too grown-up for you then. Marie, you ever heard of Anneliese Holzknecht?"

"Here and there. I figure she was a big deal, right?"

"Oh, definitely! Not as big as some others, but did a lotta the research behind what we know about magic today. I'm guessin' Hope's mentioned her before."

"Y-yes. How did you know?"

"Because she takes after me," a grunt to draw a particular dusty tome from its dustier shelf, "and I'm the world's leading scholar on the Holzknecht family."

"There's a whole family of them?"

"Yeah. Well, nah. Well, maybe. Some people livin' in her house generation after generation, claiming to be 'er kids."

"I thought she was a magical girl."

"Hence why I can spend the past twenty-odd years of my life studyin' 'em," she slumped back into her chair, and Sarah curled up on her shoulder, "and still not know if they're related. The biggest piece of supportin' evidence is their strongest commonality, but aside from that, I ain't got much to go on."

"And that is...?" Hope leaned forward.

"They're a bunch of bloody weirdies, is what! I ever tell you how I heard about them in the first place?"

"...I don't think you did."

"It was while I was over in the States, back in the eighties. I was over there not too long after Sarah turned, tried to find out if anyone knew what could've happened to her. That's how I ended up working with Sylvia Carlos. Now Sylvia's boyfriend, Stevie, he was telling me about when he was a boy, and his family was trying to get outta Hamburg. To be clear I don't think he was makin' this up, but he never really talked that much about his childhood, and when his dad passed away, he'd make up all these strange and funny stories about him, so who knows? Maybe that was just part of his relationship with the man, or maybe that was how he dealt with things that were hard to talk about. We all sort of had our own ways of dealing with grief, this was the Reagan era. Well, what he doesn't tell me is none of my business. But I'm getting ahead of myself, see!"

"I didn't want to say anything."

"Right. I digress. He was tellin' me about his youth. Said there was this man named Sebastian Holzknecht, standing at about three metres tall. Some kind of entertainer at the harbour he'd be leaving from. He'd annoy passersby with magic tricks and riddles, but the Gestapo wouldn't lay a finger on him, just because of how imposing his physique was. Okay, so maybe a tall man with a hobby was scaring some fascists off. Fair doogs. He didn't think all that much of it until the day before he left."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Some officer gettin' too big for his britches pulled aside Mr. Holzknecht to have a word. So the two of them went off and did that, and when they came back, the officer was holding his eyes shut tight. Walking around, talking as if nothing was unusual, but his eyes were closed. Twitching, too, like he was trying to shake out of some kind of nightmare. Now, of course, I was fascinated at this point. I wanted to track down this man, or his descendants or something. I asked Stevie what he looked like. And you know what?"

Marie and Hope both shifted in the tension.

"He went really pale all of a sudden. He said that, come to think of it, it had just somehow never occurred to him to look at the man's face. In all the time he'd known him. And he said he couldn't remember seeing anyone else meet his eye, either."

Marie's mouth hung ajar. "What the... hell...?"

"That's what I said! And I figured, alright, something don't add up, but I do a little digging, and lo and behold, there was a Sebastian Holzknecht working the docks in Hamburg at the time. I actually wrote him a couple times! Hope, love, you might remember him as a contributor to your encyclopedia."

"I read that thing religiously. Not a chance I wasn't gonna recognise the name."

"Ha, good on ya. But yeah, I asked him a few questions, a bit about his family, all that. He was confused by Stevie's story, about as confused as me. Said he didn't believe in that kind of thing, but did remember meeting the lad even half a century on. And he told me about his dad, Magnus, absolute madman - collected all sorts of random paraphernalia, other people said he contradicted himself at least a couple times a conversation, disappeared off the face of the planet until World War One was over - but mostly about his gran, who needs no introduction."

"Yeah? What did he say?"

"Said she travelled a lot as she got older, when his dad was very young. And while I was compiling her writings, he said her last journal was one she lost on these travels. He asked if I'd ever be able to find it for him, I said sure, maybe, but when I pressed him for details his story stopped making sense. So he or his dad must've muddled some bits up, and... well, it's been nearly a century and a half. Someone woulda found it by now."

Hope nodded, and aside to Marie, elaborated, "The death of Anneliese Holzknecht is something I've been stumped by my whole life. Some accounts say she died in battle, but then the question becomes, why did she take her ten-or-so-year-old son with her if she was going off to fight? We know he must've been with her, because Sebastian kept saying his dad would tell him about it in vivid detail, and he himself could recite what he'd heard."

"But- no. Hang on." Marie frowned. "I was saying before. How does a magical girl have a child? Especially... you said Anneliese was forty-ish at the time she passed away? So she would have been a magical girl for about ten years at least before giving birth to him."

"Aha! That's the elephant in the room!" Ruth grinned. "She couldn't have had a kid! Couldn't even have adopted. Not a single remark by any of her contemporaries - or indeed even herself - ever mentions a child. And yet, here is a man claiming to be her biological descendant!"

"You think he was lying, then?"

"Not at all. See, he was a cautious man, didn't trust the idea of sending his photos to a rando out beyond the black stump in Australia. But I did a little digging, and..." she pulled three pieces of paper out from her tome.

"That first one's a calotype print of Annie when she was about fourteen, second's a photo of Magnus that was put up when he went missing, third's Sebastian - God rest him, but thank goodness he'll never know I found this - caught getting into a fistfight in the background of a photo someone managed to snap during the bombings."

"Oh my God..." Marie gasped.

"Yeah!"

"What's up with Anneliese's face?"

"Put aside her disfigurement for two seconds."

"Right... I mean... beyond that, the three of them look nearly identical."

Ruth snatched the photos back. "Y'see?"

"I don't know. Maybe Magnus was her nephew?"

"Annie was an only child. Her dad probably was, too."

Marie opened her mouth, hesitated, and shut it.

"Nothing?"

"No, I honestly have no explanation."

"Me neither, and I've put nearly a quarter-century into this. Oh, gosh, what's the time?"

Hope checked her watch. "12:24."

"Oh, I'd better feed Sarah, then. I'll write you two up copies of these poems to take home with you at some stage. Oh! And Hope?"

Hope was already starting to stand. "Hm?"

"You planning on watching the sunset tonight?"

"Oh. Probably, yeah."

"Then you'd better make sure Sarah doesn't get out with you again."

When Marie and Hope left the house that evening, they spent a few minutes trying to ensure as much, but Sarah was more stubborn than either anticipated. Eventually, Edith and Abigail returned to the house, and Edith deterred her with a pair of water pistols.

"Where'd you get those?" Marie laughed.

"They're my magical weapon."

"That's a bit of a dogshit magical weapon."

"Yeah? And what have you got, then?"

"...That doesn't mat-"

"She's got a hammer," Hope snickered and rested her elbow on Marie's shoulder.

"Yeah? What's that do?"

"Nothing an ordinary sledgehammer can't."

Marie grumbled. "Alright, well... where is it we're off to, then?"

"There's a hill about five kilometres out of town. The view there is sensational."

"Oh, good! Then maybe we can stop trash-talking each other's magical weapons?"

"Hey, you started it. Besides, fat chance."

"Why's that?"

"We're walking."

The quartet hiked down a red-dirt back road. Marie found that she never felt tired from walking now, even up a hill. She initially assumed this was a good thing, until she discovered that for that very reason, Hope never ran out of breath. That said, she at least had the decency to tease Marie no further. But to her, that was somehow worse.

"So how's the cleanup going?" Hope leaned Edithward, and then aside to Marie, offered, "Edith here's working a cleanup business for the Concordance, see: sometimes their low-orbit equipment falls to Earth, and she can get pretty much anywhere in the state and a fair way offshore in about a day."

"Managed fifteen hours southwest to northeast last time, actually."

"Crikey! 'S good time."

"Cheers, heheh. There was a funny thing a couple weeks back - you might like this, actually - a small satellite landed on this old farmer's property, bright pink face, wide-eyed, big bushy beard kinda guy. You know, the works. Anyway, he'd taken the thing to bits and been pawning most of it off. Well, no problem, it was getting old and most of it was junk. Except..." and she leaned in for this part, "the oblivion resonator."

"Shit!" Hope cackled.

"What?" Marie wondered.

"I know, right? I didn't believe it either!"

"No, I mean... sorry, continue."

"Right, so the thing was fully functional, he was keeping it in his house, heating his tea with it! I don't think he realised just what he was playing with, I mean who knows what'd happen if he kept it there."

"Ahaha, Jesus. Imagine that."

"I didn't believe it either."

"Still, though. Reckon you'd get bloody good tea with an oblivion resonator."

"No doubt. So I go in, ask to buy it off him. He's a little hesitant at first, but he comes around on it. He says $120, or I can get stuffed."

"$120?"

"Yeah."

"For an oblivion resonator?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, tell him he's dreaming."

Marie stammered, "uh, how much is an...?"

"Oblivion resonator?" Hope cracked a smile. "I'd say $90, in good condition. Depends, really. How much was it in the end?"

"Once I walked him through the quality of the thing - not superb, you know. The thing had fallen from orbit, and then he'd been taking it apart on his own. In the end, he settled for $75."

Hope's grin only spread. "$75?"

"Yeah!"

"Bloody ledge! That's a bargain!"

"Well, I try. And what about you, what have you been up to?"

"Oh, you know. Bits and pieces. Local politics, mostly."

"Yeah, Fair enough. And how's it going with Dante?"

Hope struggled to find the words. "Just... Sonia, if you would. She's no longer with us."

"Oh, I'm so sorry!"

"Nah, nah! Life goes on. It's just that calling her Dante now is a bit how's-it-going, you know what I mean?"

Edith frowned. "I don't think I've ever known what you mean by anything."

Marie fell back to Abigail, who didn't want to interrupt the conversation and had tailed behind.

"Hey."

"Hi."

Not another word passed between them for what felt like minutes. Abigail swallowed and said,

"So, are you and Hope Fearnley, like, um...?"

"What? No! I... I mean, no, she's just my housemate, and I guess mentor now too."

"Oh! Oh, right."

"No, she and I aren't... well, I myself am not..."

"No, no. I get it."

Hope led the party far out into the bush. Marie thought she saw the hints of movement out of the corner of her eye again, and again, until they became frequent enough that she was sure of one of two things: either she hadn't gone insane and imagined it, or she had gone completely insane.

"Did anyone just-" Abigail whispered, but Hope raised a finger.

"Stay still, don't say anything, if you can help it, don't even think anything."

It took all of her strength not to add that the last part should be straightforward for Marie.

Slowly, all manner of strange and wonderful and terrible things crawled and writhed and marched out of the bush. Despite Hope's instructions, Marie and Abigail found themselves cowering behind her. They were familiars of some sort - well, of all sorts, really, about a dozen in number, wandering around the four girls, taking in the sight of them and the scent and whatever else it was that familiars knew.

When they relaxed, the four girls took that as invitation to do the same.

It was Marie who asked, "What's all this about?"

"Just give them a sec to see we're not gonna hurt them."

"Is this a Sarah kind of situation?"

"Nah, bigger than that."

The familiars abated into the bushes, and Hope resumed leadership. She urged her companions further up the hill, along what they could only vaguely infer was intended as a path. Abigail tripped on a clump of spinifex. Marie caught her wrist just in time, and they shared a glance more bashful than either could admit without re-evaluating their sexual identities.

"Come on, you lovebirds," Edith chuckled.

They let their hands drop and glared uneasily into each other's eyes. Marie turned and followed Hope further, and Abigail hurried after her.

Hope was staring out at the horizon and grinning like a madman shagged a toothpaste ad. "How's the serenity, ay?"

"What are all those down there?" Marie deliberately avoided saying until Abigail did the work for her, making her look superficially more intelligent.

Her smile faded. "Witches." Hundreds of them, in fact, thronged across the earth at the base of the hill. All shapes, all sizes, marching out into the approaching night on legs and fins and wings and stilts and countless other appendages. "Not all of them are flesh eating monsters. Some of them, they run from that. They end up in all the forests, and bushes, and deserts, anywhere they can get away from people who can see what's happened to them."

"So what do they eat?"

"They don't. This is where they come to disappear..."

Marie stood stunned for a moment. "Wait, what about Sarah? Is she going to...?"

"Oh! Nah, nah. Her mum's taking good care of her, helping her hold it together. And some of these witches, well, they can help each other like that too. They can last for donkey's years on emotional support alone. Funny you should mention that, actually. See that mountain out over there?"

"Over there, actually," Edith corrected, and pointed fifteen degrees left of her.

Hope's hand dropped. "You sure?"

"Yeah, I come through here once every couple months. Last I checked, that's the mountain."

"Right. That mountain?"

"Yeah?" Marie snapped, hankering for a reason to give a rat's arse about which specific mountain it was.

"It ain't a mountain."

"What?"

"You bring Aunty Ruthie out here, she can't see it - her, rather, my bad - at all."

"That's a...?!"

"Yup. Four hundred years old, she is. They call her, ah." She put her palm to her forehead and strained. "Oh. Oh. Bloody hell. I can't remember, actually. She's nice, though. Great listener. Well, presuming you don't climb her. But I don't think anyone's a fan of being climbed. Check this out."

Everyone else took a step back, but if they were to ask one another why, not one of them would have a satisfying answer.

Hope raised her hands to cup the sides of her mouth and shrieked,

"Coo-EE!"

Two seconds later, the hills reflected in chorus,

"Coo-EE!"

"Coo-EE!"

"Coo-EE!"

And then the mountain's deep, sky-shaking roar,

"WEEAUUUH-OUNGH-PFTZM."

Marie, Edith, and Abigail all cracked up laughing and cheering, and shouting half-coherent words of praise at the mountain.

The sun kissed the horizon ever-so-sweetly. Silently, but openly, everyone agreed it was time to turn back before the two engaged in more intimate acts.

"Well, I suppose I need to properly unpack," Edith admitted. "You heading down the pub, Fearno?"

"Me? Oh, nah. I'm three-and-a-bit months more or less sober."

"Oh, good on you! Still, though, if you need me in the night, my room's on the first floor over there."

"Chur, brah."

"Abigail! You wanna head back?"

"Ah, right! Yes!"

So the two of them departed, and night, realising the time, decided it should start falling already. Hope waited until she was certain they were out of earshot.

"I've told nobody about your parasitism, by the way."

"...Thanks."

"You getting it under control?"

"Yeah... but I have been trying to keep my leeching to just you."

"Oh! Hardly noticed it."

"Really?"

Hope smiled, then glanced back out at the horizon. "Tell you what, I reckon we should get going too."

COMINGS OF AGES

So far, the evolutionary history of magical girls has been detailed in depth. But certainly, just as much could be said of their cultural history - altogether a far more interesting affair, and one ensnared in strange layers of esoteric thought. Those privy to the dualistic nature of the universe, and by extension, the importance of two, understand the significance of cycles of six:

1 x 2 = 2

2 x 2 = 4

4 x 2 = 8

8 x 2 = 16 (and 1 + 6 = 7)

16 x 2 = 32 (and 3 + 2 = 5)

32 x 2 = 64 (and 6 + 4 = 10, and 1 + 0 = 1)

64 x 2 = 128 (and 1 + 2 + 8 = 11, and 1 + 1 = 2)

Et cetera, so on eternally down this pattern of 1, 2, 4, 8, 7, 5. Thus, some 21st-century magical philosophers have matched the ages of magic to a six-stage karmic cycle. While the specifics are rarely agreed upon, consensus dictates the following eras:

The first age, the Arrival Age in the words of contemporary scholars, began some two million years ago with the arrival of the Incubator on Earth. This age saw primitive humankind divided, with one species torn away from its cousins and given the power of the Concordance. Some say there is no reason to believe homo erectus would have survived without this boon. The name is misleading, however: despite being named only for its beginning, this age continued for almost the entirety of human history.

The second, the Immortal Age, began only one hundred thousand years ago, with Terrans adopting new ways to think about the long term. The oldest structures which still stand today were built around this time, and there is archaeological evidence to suggest that this era bore the first enchantments designed to outlive their creators. As with all others, this age's beginning was marked by an acceleration to the cosmic expansion, although whether these events are connected, and if so, which caused the other, is a matter given up on by most at this point.

The third, the Semiotic Age - a personal favourite for obvious reasons - began with the invention of written language about ten thousand years ago. Beyond this point, the culture of sigilsmithing (much as in Hope's tattoos) became hundreds of times more complex, with each symbol suddenly given countless modular permutations of meaning. This technology did not become available to all sapients worldwide, of course; thousands of cultures had gotten by well enough on oral tradition alone, and for the time being, writing was confined to what is now China. But it was change enough to spurn on the manifestation of more dark energy, nonetheless.

The fourth was the Global Age. Residual use of magic had woven telluric currents in leylines so thick around the Earth that anywhere could be, in some capacity or other, sensed from anywhere else. Now, circa 1000 C.E., magical girls the world over found themselves developing power honed in traditions from places neither they, nor anyone they knew, had ever known or would ever know existed. At time of writing, there are exactly eight hundred and sixty-four magical girls kept in deep-space laboratories by the Concordance (most famously... well, you already know), and every measurement taken in the past millennium has only confirmed that their distance from Earth has greatly diminished their strength, almost to the levels of the first magical girls.

The Broken Age began in the middle of the nineteenth century... on a technicality. It would be more accurate to say that it had begun with the start of the universe simultaneously, because at this point the highest-end magic had evolved from conjurings and miracles and elemental powers into shaking the foundations of reality. This manifested in a myriad of ways, some prosperous, but most disastrous. The 1871 Breach of Mombasa, as described previously by Hope Fearnley, is one such early instance, and what role the distortion of reality played will, at least in part, be explored in due time.

The sixth began within Marie's lifetime. This, uh...

Hang on, I think my notes on this one are a bit lacking. Would you mind asking the Overseer what it's called?

Hm?

Oh, that's...

The sixth age is the Abyssal Age.

Did she say what that meant?

Weird.