"Anentropy," Faith said slowly.
"Anentropy," Fred repeated. "What do you wanna know about it?"
"What is it?"
"Um...it's the opposite of entropy." Faith worked her mouth as if grinding her teeth, so Fred hurried on. "Entropy's a way of measuring disorder. It's more complicated than that...um...something with really low entropy can behave in strange ways like...like flowing up and over obstacles. Liquid helium does that."
Faith leaned forward suddenly; the motion was nearly a lunge. "Liquid helium has really low entropy? How do I get some?"
Fred tried not to stare. Or crack jokes. Faith looked ready to kill over this-not angry, though, just desperate. It had to do with fixing that cocoon device, the one that might cure her. "Well...on Earth you mostly get it from natural gas deposits. I...guess you might find one on an island, but gas deposits tend to be pretty deep. You can make it with nuclear fusion. You can find it in our sun...maybe this sun too. And I guess you can find anything in the Wyld."
Faith sagged. "Fuck. I ain't going back into the Wyld and I'm sure as hell not tryin' to get it from the sun. This city run on fusion power?"
"I've been working on a backup," Fred explained carefully. "But not yet. There are some kinks I gotta work out."
"Shit. How do I find natural gas?" Faith looked ready to start hitting something from pure exasperation.
"We can consult Towers and check the maps. The seabed's more likely than an island." Faith wasn't gonna like that.
"You gonna get it for me? I sure as hell don't fit in SCUBA gear." Faith waved back at her hindquarters.
"Faith, I promise you won't need SCUBA gear. Ask around. If Buffy were here you wouldn't need anything, but this used to be the HQ of the entire navy." Fred tried a comforting smile, but Faith was too on edge. "I bet we have a hearthstone you can use."
"To breathe underwater? I ain't a California girl, Fred, but I guess I'll try it." Faith turned and started to trot away, her tail flicking irritably.
"How're you gonna liquify it, Faith? It's no good as a gas." Faith turned at the waist with a groan. "It only liquefies at nearly absolute zero."
"Jesus Christ! Maybe I'll try something else. What else can I get for this anentropy thing?"
Fred spread her hands. "I couldn't tell you. And anyway, these components are always hard to get. It's part of the process. Just be glad you don't have to build your cure from scratch."
"Damn it, Fred, I'm just about ready to give up and spend my life as a centaur. This is ridiculous." She stamped her back hooves on the deck. "God damn it! You know why I don't? Nearest head I can use is halfway across town. I gotta go take a piss. We're not done, Four-Eyes. Not near done."
Fred nodded. "I promise we'll get you fixed up, Faith. Hang in there."
Faith snorted and galloped off.
Chapter 65: Blood-Dimmed Tide
Xander swung Wavecleaver in a shining arc, severing three or four zombie heads with each blow. He was really coming into his own. Standing there on the gore-stained deck as essence-cannon fire bloomed around him, he was the perfect shining image of a Solar hero...and a perfect distraction.
These skirmishes happened daily, and rumor had it that the fleet had been joined by another Solar-one on the Silver Prince's side. Willow clambered out of the netting with several zombies that had been swept overboard. Out here, far from Skullstone and fighting a running battle, such ordinarily cheap casualties cost dearly.
Willow shambled across the deck as if heading for a preprogrammed duty station. Then, hidden behind a bank of cannon and boarding hooks, she pried open a hatch and scurried inside.
The first room was a holding area for off-duty zombies, currently empty; all the walking deadwere currently manning simple duty stations or being prepped for a boarding operation. Across from it was the first of several simple crew bunks for the mostly-living, likewise empty. Willow abandoned the shambling stance and the ragged shirt she wore to hide the soulsteel bustier Tara had taken from Ebon Siaka. Somewhere down this U-shaped corridor, probably all the way in front-yeah, there was the captain's cabin, with a simple palm-scanner that no doubt held the locals in awe. Willow focused her gaze on it, and black lightning burned it out in an instant. The door popped open. "Needs to read the Evil Overlord list," she whispered to herself, and stepped inside.
The cabin's arrangements were spare but meticulous, which was no surprise; a new commander had just taken over. The hatch directly overhead that led to the bridge was no surprise; it meant the admiral could be wakened and on duty at a moment's notice.
The surprise came when the hatch burst open and a pirate with an eyepatch dropped to a crouch in front of her, sword already drawn. "Traitor...or intruder, at least. I'll have you keelhauled for the glory of the Sun and the Silver Prince," the pirate growled. "You face Moray Darktide now."
Tara rolled sideways, evading Hamoji's grasp. The obviously deranged volcano god groaned piteously, clutched his stomach for a moment, and grabbed for her again. Thirteen mouths, each of them craving its own food, and possibly thirteen brains dividing up his thoughts-it was no wonder he wasn't being satisfied by the offerings he was getting.
She'd prepared to fight demons and the undead. Gods, though, she was at a disadvantage against. "Dawn! You said you could manipulate realityhere?"
"It's a Wyld pocket," Dawn agreed, scrambling out of Hamoji's reach. "Going directly against its theme won't be easy, though."
"Don't," Tara warned. "Try and counter it someother way."
Dawn lifted her hands, and walls sprang from the blue lava, still bubbling. They were solid, though; Hamoji's hands pressed against them futilely.
"What can you do here?" Tara wondered. The Wyld was hidden away from the world she knew, sealed off somehow. Even Creation limited the rakshasomewhat. But supposedly this...place was the raksha's playground.
Dawn stopped still, right next to the wall, and ranher fingers through the flames of her hair. Hamoji beat helplessly on the wall. "Um," Dawn said. "It seems like...anything."
Tara blinked. "Anything?"
"I can't change your body because of your tattoos," Dawn said. "And I think you can ignore what I do by...well, concentrating. Hamoji's too hungry to think straight, so he's stuck. It'd be hard to change this place's theme, but I think I could do it if I tried."
"Wait," Tara asked. "You could change me if not for my tattoos? What about Faith?"
"She wouldn't come out here with me. I'm not sure she's wrong. You know she made me her hostage, right?" Dawn stretched herself like a cat. "I told her I wasn't mad, but I could change my mind." Dawn's body shifted and shimmered, and suddenly she was a centaur herself, with a tail and mane of flames and little dancing fires that rippled across her lower body. "Nice. Out here I could turn her into anything. I could make her do what I wanted, even kill herself. Well...that'd be hard." Dawn returned her legs to normal. "She's got some resistance now."
Tara's viewpoint began to shift around. Looking down, she saw that she'd begun to dance. "Dawn?"
"Huh. I can still change what you do." Dawn did a little pirouette.
Before Dawn could join in, Tara forced her legs to stop moving. "That's not very nice, Dawn." She was just experimenting, but Tara couldn't let her get into the habit of controlling people. "Can you make his extra heads go away?"
Dawn considered that. "Probably." Dawn's own head became fuzzy, smoothing into a featureless blur, and retracted into her, leaving a smooth patch of skin in place of her neck. "Yeah, think so." Not having a mouth didn't impair her speech in the slightest. Two heads sprouted in the first one's place. "Oops. Easier making more than less. And Tara, it won't last if he stays here."
"Can you change the crater to something thatwon't cause problems like this?" If Dawn was serious, she ought to be able to make this place into anything, or nearly so.
"As long as no other raksha are keeping it this way, I think so. But it'll change again, in the long run anyway." Dawn raised her hands, and the walls of lava melted, shifted, and began to multiply. "Watch this."
The bubbling lava walls reached the crater's solid rock and reshaped the area into multiple rooms, even as the floor began to rise. School desks emerged from the lava and blackboards melted out of the walls. Still the floor rose, and an office shaped itself from the room they occupied. A nameplate formed itself on the desk: "Principal Hamoji".
Hamoji's form was suddenly clad in a suit formed from friable black rock,cracking here and there to reveal the heat within. His heads melted and merged, though several of the mouths tried to form protests. Finally the scene solidified, and all was still.
"There," Dawn said. "That should last a little while."
"Hamoji," Tara asked tentatively, "do you feel better now?"
"I...I feel very strange," the deity said. "Should I have...students?"
Tara shot Dawn a baffled look. "Your students and teachers should make their way to you soon," Dawn explained. "All the creatures of the island want to learn from you."
"People?" Tara mouthed.
"Oh," Dawn said softly. "Only if they're in the Wyld places. Priestesses, probably. But that's okay, right?"
Tara thought that over. "I guess. Just try to be careful, Dawnie. You don't want to change people if you can help it, not unless they ask."
Dawn put a lock of hair-or was that a tongue of flame?-in her mouth. "Um. I guess not."
Tara wished Dawn sounded more confident about that.
Shadow sped quietly away from Luthe. The little skiff left a wake of dead and dying seaweed which Faith watched anxiously. "You know this stuff is spreading, B2?"
"I know." Shadow acknowledged the problem with an uneasy hunch of her shoulders. "I'm causing it. I'm not sure how to stop it without going away and killing things. Well...me and Will. I kinda wish I'd told Owl and the Heron no."
"It's screwed up, B2. You're the heroes and I'm the villain. How come you get stuck with this?" Faith clopped around the deck. She didn't have a safety harness, but then, she didn't really need one, even with hooves.
Shadow laughed bitterly at that. "I know. I'm an Infernal and an Abyssal now. But I know why now. I'm not a hero, Faith."
"Shit, B, how many times you save the world now?" Faith's hand came down on her shoulder.
"Merrick told me I was the only one who could, and I told him where he could stick it, Faith. Don't get me wrong, I went on and did it anyway, over and over again. And it was a trick, did you know that?" Shadow reached up and put her hand on top of Faith's.
"Huh?"
"He knew how I'd answer. I didn't have the power yet. He could've told me, 'A bunch of people are really subhuman monsters and the world needs an exterminator,' or...or 'You can have the power to do anything you want if you'll kill this one little thing for me.' He had to set me one of those test of character bits, so I could fail it. He told me I had a responsibility because he knew I wasirresponsible." She locked in the autopilot and turned around to face Faith. "And if I'd said yes, there weren't any loose Solar Exaltations around, so I'd have died and someone else would've been the Slayer, so who knows what would've happened? I'm done worrying over this fish-kill thing. I just have to fix it. It's what we do. We become heroes. We meaning Exalted, not just Buffy."
"I haven't fixed anything," Faith muttered.
"That's a lie," Shadow told her. "The first thing you did when we met was tell me all about the things you'd fixed. And later...you tried to steal my life, Faith. My life, the Chosen One's life. And you got exactly what you were bargaining for because you couldn't stay away from stuff that needed fixing. You're a Solar, Faith. You're the Night." She studied the console and flipped a switch. Music blasted out of the speakers. Shadow couldn't follow the lyrics yet, but it was obviously made to dance to. "So come on. Let's party while we can."
"B," Faith said-actually blushing a little!-"This body ain't built for dancing."
"Here's a secret, Faith: it's also not built to go toe-to-toe with pro wrestlers. But you can. We can."
Faith raised her eyebrows at that. She put her hands up. And she danced.
"I'm not here to fight you," Willow said. At least keeping a straight face was easy when said facewas dehydrated past the point of expression. "I call myself the Pilgrim Through the Endless Void, and I'm here as tech support."
"I've never heard of you, 'Pilgrim'," Moray Darktide snarled. "I see you've drawn the Last Breath, but you might have come from the Bishop, or the Mask of Winters."
"From what I hear you didn't know about the Black Fleet either," Willow bluffed. "I do. I know my way around this technology." She hadn't studied these particular ships, and that might bite her on the hinie, but she understood Luthe's pretty well. Moray was known as the Prince's second best admiral, but he hadn't been with this fleet till Ebon Siaka died, and he was a Solar. The Silver Prince probably hadn't fully trusted him.
"If you're so good at it, help me blow this Robertsoff my deck, and I'll accept your word." Moray was also known for being honorable to a fault.
Fortunately they'd planned for this. "I'll go roast him for you," Willow agreed. She popped up through the hatch into the bridge. Xander wasstriding through the fray, cracking jokes left and right while Scoobies made of sunfire burned zombies and ghosts. Willow stepped outside the cabin and lifted her hands.
Black lightning shot from them and crackled around Wavecleaver as Xander brandished it at her. She wanted to quote Palpatine, but "If you will not be turned..." didn't make any sense here. Had he said anything else apropos?
"You know I'm sorry it came to this, Will. I thought a scholarship would have been a good thing for you." He dramatically pointed the daiklaive at her, and a shining image of Tara hurled a fireball herway. It burned her left hand away, but skeletal fingers emerged from her sleeve at once before covering themselves in dry blackened flesh.
"Using Tara against me? That's a cheap shot, Xander!" He might not have meant to, but she really was a little miffed. She gestured with the freshly-regenerated hand, giving a canvas that had been covering some drums-oil? ammunition?-a telekinetic flick. Xander swung Wavecleaver at it, but air currents shoved the open canvas wildly around. His blade slashed it open, but it wrapped around him anyway and sent him sprawling off the deck.
Willow ran over to take a look. Still tangled, Xander flailed about in the ocean. His hearthstone ensured he wouldn't drown, but he was an easy target. More bolts shot from her eyes, probablyhurting him a little but incidentally spinning him loose from the canvas. At once he dove beneath the sea.
A pair of spectres began to follow, but Darktide called out "Hold!", and they held. "I'd have preferred his capture, but at least he'll have to swim back to his skirmish boats. You know each other."
"We were friends once," Willow explained, "but he doesn't believe me when I say the living and the dead can work together. He hates all undead."
She felt a tiny tingle. "You speak true," Moray said.
"You could've just done that when I said I was here to help," Willow protested mildly, as Xander's battle group began to withdraw.
"I could have, but I did need some assistance with Roberts." Moray began to wipe down his blade. "I brought down two birds with a single stone thisway. How did you come here?"
"I'm a sorceror," Willow explained. "I know how toteleport. I left my boat, but it probably got sunk." Since she had deliberately holed it before leaving.
"We'll keep an eye out," Moray said agreeably. "How fares the New Order on Skullstone?"
Great. Now to really break out the bullshit.
Faith sank. And sank. And sank some more. "These hearthstone bracers are the shit, B2."
"It's not the bracers so much as the stone, Faith," Shadow explained. "At the place it came from you could just attune to the stone itself-only who knows where it came from." Currents swirled them around through the black water. "Watch out for the hydrothermal vents. They're gonna be hot."
"What's the plan again?" Faith trusted Shadowpretty far, but she wasn't sure she understood how they were extracting helium here at the bottom of the ocean.
"Supposedly there's a First Age mining outpost down here." The currents tried to flip her over, and Faith had to hold her steady. "Fred said Leviathan was kind of closed-mouthed about it, but it was run by people who'd been engineered to breathe water."
"Freaky," Faith started, just as something scaly loomed out of the water and slammed into Shadow, closing its monstrous jaws around her waist. Faith lashed out, grabbing for a hold on the creature, and caught a flipper. They weren't the only ones here! Some sort of rigging lashed onto its back held people dressed in minimal clothing but lots of bling.
A cheer rose up from them, but Faith couldn'tmake out a word of it. The water garbled the words, but more than that, they didn't seem to be speaking any language she knew. Some of the people were half-shark, like in Luthe, and one of them let go of the rigging to lunge at her. Faith shoved her dagger through his right eye and into his brain. There were too many of them to justbruise them up; it was her life, and Shadow's, at stake.
The monster they were riding convulsed and vomited, losing its grip on Shadow. She hung limp for a moment, but only long enough for the currents to toss her back into the pirates. Then she was on them, stakes darting through the water and turning it black with blood.
Looks like the Sea People are still here, Shadowsaid in Faith's head. Did you hear them say "Jalarin"?
I'll take your word for it, Faith thought back. Shadow sounded as if she were screaming, but it wasn't the volume. It just made her head hurt, and she really didn't need that with four-no, five-more sharkpeople coming at her.
Jalarin is supposed to have owned the outpost,Shadow said. It's one of their cities. I don't know anything else about it, though.
Whatever the beast was that had bitten Shadow, she hadn't killed it. The scaled monster lunged for Faith, who managed, barely, to dodge above those nasty jaws. She reached out as they snapped shut on the empty water and wrapped her arms around them. Like a croc, it didn't seem to have nearly the muscle power for opening that it did for closing, but it was still forty feet long with a jaw inproportion; she could barely keep her hold. She swung her horse body down as low as it would go and drove a powerful kick into each eye with her back legs. Goo covered her hooves, and the monster thrashed about in agony, sending everyone she could see sailing off.
Where the fuck is that outpost, B2? Faith swung her fists down to brain the nearest enemy.
Still straight down, the best I can figure, Shadow answered. She'd gotten herself stuck grappling with a sharkwoman. Finally she managed towrestle an arm free and jam a stake into its throat.Though I might've gotten a little turned around.
Faith tried to orient herself by the weight of her lower body, but that was useless. She tried searching for the glimmer of light from the surface, and even that failed until she brought her enhanced vision to bear on the problem. She pointed down, smacked a couple of headstogether, and broke away in that direction.
Shadow managed to follow a few moments later, but even as she started down Faith felt the water surge around her with a force that made the monster they'd already faced look pathetic. Only the turbulence prevented her from slamming into a wall of rubbery flesh, a great black and white monstrosity of a whale. Orcas were big, but this thing might as well have been Moby Dick.
I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN, the giant said, though Faith had no idea how it was conveying such a message. HERE YOU ARE AGAIN TO DISRUPT MY WORK.
And you'd have gotten away with it, Shadow sent to Faith and the whale too, if not for us meddling kids.
Faith made a throat-cutting motion at her. Trusting it could understand her as well as she understood it, she spoke out loud. "I wasn't lookin' for you, I was lookin' for helium. Had no idea you were here or what you were doin', but I'm tryin' to solve my own problems like you wanted. If you don't want us here we'll go."
YOU WILL FIND THAT DIFFICULT, Leviathan boomed. THE PIRATES OF JALARIN SHOW NO MERCY.
"Yeah, well, you seem buddy-buddy with 'em," Faith said. There was not antagonizing a guy who could swat you like a bug, and then there was cringing. Nobody ever accused her of the latter. "I bet if you say the word they'll let us go."
NOT EVEN I CAN SO CASUALLY COMMAND THE TALEBOUND, Leviathan rumbled. BUT IT CAN BE DONE. HELIUM? ALL YOU WANT IS HELIUM?
"That's the sitch," Faith agreed. "Get us that and we're five by five. I need it for repairs."
Laughter shook the ocean like a tidal wave. YOU HAVE SURELY TAKEN THE MOST DIFFICULT ROUTE, LITTLE NIGHT. I WILL TRY NOT TO DISAPPOINT YOU.
Willow emerged from under the console. "Just some shorted-out wires," she said. "You really don't know how to fix any of this?".
"The Silver Prince did not even tell me this fleet existed until he had no choice," Moray said, mouth twisted and tone wry. "He favors Deathknights above me, though surely he must understand that we are merely sides of a coin. As we Lawgivers rule the living by day, so the Deathknights govern the dead by night. There is no reason we should fight."
"I won't argue that," Willow said. It sounded like it ought to be true, but there was plainly something wrong with her and with Shadow. "I was wondering, though. This is a heckuva lot of soulsteel. Everything that can be is. Where does it all come from?"
"A hekatonchiere," Moray said without any real concern. "The behemoths of the dead are often vast beyond measure. I have heard that the Linthaonce lived on a living island behemoth that once rivaled the Blessed Isle, and now it is dead. Good riddance."
Willow slid back under the console to replace some of the wires. "I'm guessing you and the Lintha aren't exactly of the friendly persuasion."
"Hardly. Even their ghosts hate and fear ours." Moray sounded disgusted at the thought.
"You know, we've been seeing Lintha and Skullstone fleets working together?" Willow followed the cables to the socket and swapped them out.
"Ebon Siaka's vile plan," Moray grumbled. "I don't care if she did mean to betray them in two months. If she hadn't proposed smelting theirentire race for more soulsteel, I'd have refused the entire ploy. As it is, it's far from honorable."
"You'd rather just fight them."
"Naturally. If you must destroy an enemy, let it be in open combat." His face appeared below the console. "We need the material, though. I can only imagine the Silver Prince didn't realize there was a First Age city below the waves."
"He's clearly not all-knowing," Willow agreed. "Even though I don't see anything wrong with his philosophy, I kinda doubt him sometimes. You follow me?"
"I follow the Silver Prince," Moray demurred, taking her hand and helping her slide out. "But I understand you better since Ebon Siaka's death. I warned her to take more care of sorcerors, but she scoffed at me. I did not reckon with the vast force she commanded and must have put her faith in, since he had not revealed it to me. The Prince errs rarely, but he is, as you say, not beyond failure."
"Do you know how she died?" Willow Tara was off the hook.
"Only that some sorceror reshaped her into an animal and slew her in that form. She was arrogant, but I had hopes for her to die better than that, at least. She served the Silver Prince."
"Powering up," Willow said, and mashed the "on" glyph. Lights flickered on all over the room. "Looks like we're good. I'm sorry she died, if only for her loss to the cause."
Moray Darktide shrugged. "I'm not sure she was that much of a loss."
"So. You got a name?" Faith had been shuffling around the ancient mining facility for what seemed like hours, guarded by a single sharkman. Leviathan had to know this one guy could never stop them. It had to be for show.
The sharkman shrugged. She'd asked him severaltimes before and gotten no response; she justdidn't speak his language.
B2 sighed and pointed to herself. "Unconquerable Shadow," she said.
Faith rolled her eyes. Even if he got it this wasn't going to be much of a conversation. "Faith Lehane," she said anyway, and pointed to thesharkdude.
His eyes narrowed in comprehension. "Hak tkcha groot," he said.
B2 began to snicker. "Hak?" she said, pointing at him again.
The sharkguy shook his head. "Groot," herepeated.
Shadow broke down in uncontrollable laughter. Faith tapped her on the shoulder, but she just kept giggling. "Shadow," she said urgently.
At that moment, Leviathan strode in. He was wearing his true human form, not the sailor's body she had seen him in back on Luthe. "Ah," he said. "Thank you."
"Thank you?" Faith asked.
"The Talebound are extraordinarily difficult to break from the Wyld, but it can be done," Leviathan explained. "One need only make them care about something beside their story. In general that requires powerful magicks. Groot here is free, but the more he feels-"
"Groot," B2 said again, all but rolling on the floor. Leviathan gave her an unappreciative glare.
"-the more he feels outside his story, the less he risks relapsing. The Jalarinites deserve better;they were once among the Wyld's greatest is her problem?"
Faith shrugged and gave B2 a front-leg kick in the ass. "Comic book," Shadow managed to wheeze. "'I am Groot.'"
"It's another story," Faith said. "Prolly one she didn't expect to find here."
Leviathan growled under his breath. "Jalarin is only the beginning. I have but little time. Luthe is not the only city to have sunk beneath the waves, and I would prefer to have allies at my side when I breach the Underworld, if only to expedite the evacuation. Even mortals can aid with that."
"Who else is down here?" Shadow asked.
Levi stared flatly at her. "It does not matter. None remember, and I think only I have discovered them. In my madness I did not care; they too were Traitorspawn. But time grows short if Creation is to be saved, and they are among its greatest survivors.
"Sure you couldn't use real help?" Faith wondered.
"I need only warm bodies to move the peoplealong," Levi insisted. "The rest will be a trivial matter." He produced a compressed gas cylinder as long as his arm and bigger around. "Here," he said. "It is not liquified; I shall leave that to you. But you have come this far. You do well. Though I would have thought you would seek out the Daystar."
Faith shrugged. "Not big on getting close to the fire."
She wasn't sure why that made Leviathan laugh.
"Truly?" The Feathered One raised both eyebrows at the raksha and her Lunar companions.
"The Wyld had him messed up," the raksha said. "I helped Tara fix him."
"I didn't do much," the long-haired girl said,blushing. "Dawn did the heavy lifting."
"It's done," the queen disagreed, "and you carried it out. You made an alliance with a raksha, and that's not easy."
Tara stared at her. "Fred, this is Dawnie. She's not like other..." The girl trailed off, glancing at the fiery raksha. Dawn just looked back at her, expression neutral. "How much do you remember, Dawn? You're still Dawn...aren't you?"
Dawn sat there as if in thought. "You're still Tara," she said at last. "How much do you remember about Ma-ha-suchi?"
Tara shivered visibly, as if she remembered something she would very much have preferred not to, but she said, "Remembering him doesn't make me him."
"Then remembering the thought of Ea Gso doesn't make me an Unshaped," the raksha said as if that explained everything.
The Feathered One cut into the uncomfortable silence that followed. "By the terms I set, we have...an alliance," he said slowly. "Guard our shores, and you may take our ancient craft to repair. I will try to find you crewmen for them...but you must know many do not trust you. Some still fear for my life. Others no doubt would slay me for speaking to you, let alone making a pact."
"Anya will be working on that," the queen said. "Old fears are...um, something you've gotta get over if you want to see the future. Okay?"
The Feathered One knew this response should not have filled him with confidence...and yet somehow it did. Was this what it meant to be ensnared by the Anathema?
"Next stop," Tara said, "the Neck. I'm thinking it'll make this look like a cakewalk."
The Feathered One could only nod solemnly to that.