The ghostly figure of a fox was an odd companion, but Judy found she didn't mind his company as she continued her progress through the seemingly endless tunnels under Phoenix. Part of it was that he was another set of eyes, and as she searched for any sign of the traitor he did the same. But the other part, the part that almost felt more important, was that she was glad not to be alone.

It occurred to her, as she carefully looked over the cracked and broken tiles lining the tunnel walls, that she had never really been alone before. As a kit, other bunnies had always been around, and when she left the family holdings to join the City Guard the barracks had been only somewhat less crowded. All of her classes and training had always been with other cadets, and it was only once she had graduated that she had truly been alone. For only a matter of days before she had been assigned to escort the hated fox, it was true, but it had been the longest stretch of time she had ever gone completely separated from the wider web of connections that made up the kingdom.

But you don't have to be alone to be lonely.

The words popped into her head in the voice that her current companion and the loathsome Nicholas shared, but the ghostly other Nick hadn't opened his mouth. Was she remembering something that Nicholas had said? He had been rather fond of talking, after all, and it seemed like the sort of thing he might have said to play on her sympathies. She had been lonely, and she had felt isolated, and—

Judy shook her head to clear it, and as she did the other Nick looked over at her. "Something wrong?" he asked mildly.

"I just can't let the traitor get in my head," she said, and he nodded slowly.

"Ah," he said, "I see."

For an instant she thought that he might have something else to say, but he didn't speak again, leaving her to her own search. And her own thoughts.

After coming to her agreement with the phantasmal fox, she had carefully considered his advice for how best to proceed. In his opinion, it was likely that Nicholas would try setting a trap for her. He had a head start on her, after all, so it stood to reason that he'd eventually hole up somewhere and prepare himself for her. It really left two major possibilities for how to proceed. Either she had to move fast enough to catch him before he could finish whatever he planned, or she had to go slowly enough to spot a potential trap before blundering into it.

Judy had considered his words for what had felt like an eternity, her mind racing and seeming to end up in knots. Going fast appealed to her sense of duty and justice; every minute that the fox spent free was a mockery of the kingdom. Then again, was that what he was expecting her to do? If he knew that she could be impatient and would hurry, would she be playing into his scheme? It made going slow sound appealing, but then she'd be giving him more time to set up a trap.

In the end, she had decided that they had to go slowly and carefully. Some part of her rebelled against the idea, but it seemed the best approach even if she hated it.

The sure sign of a compromise is that no one's happy.

The words sprang to mind in the same voice, and Judy looked up sharply. "Did you say something?" she asked.

"Not in a while," her companion said, and then he sighed.

"Although I wouldn't mind a little conversation. This is awfully dull, isn't it?" he said, stretching his arms out and yawning widely, "I'm getting tired."

Judy simply looked at him for a moment and blinked. "You get tired?" she asked.

"Why wouldn't I?" he asked, his tone seeming to betray that he found it an odd question.

"Well... You..." Judy began, groping for the right words.

It struck her as bizarre that the fox—who by his own admission and her own attempts at stabbing him had no body of his own—would have to stretch or could wear out, but she didn't know how to phrase it. It seemed a little silly, but she didn't want to offend him; he was the closest thing to a friend she had. "Oh, the whole incorporeal thing?" he asked, thankfully saving her from having to come up with something.

He grinned, and stuck a paw through his chest, waggling the fingers. His ghostly translucence didn't change, and Judy could see both his paw and his body quite clearly. Unlike when he was apparently solid, his passing through something didn't make her head hurt; it was like seeing one piece of frosted glass move behind another one. "I guess you're right that I shouldn't," he said cheerfully, "But it feels like I do. I just hope I don't get hungry."

It occurred to Judy that it'd be a terrible torture to go through, to feel hungry and thirsty but never able to eat or drink. "So I don't know," the other Nick continued, seemingly oblivious to the frown crossing her face, "Maybe it's because you're getting tired."

Judy was about to protest that she wasn't even a little tired, but she realized it'd be a blatant lie. Searching the tunnels wasn't too difficult—she had a very bright alchemical torch and an eager companion—but it was mentally draining. Every time she blinked it was like the pattern of tiles had been burned into eyes; she could still see it. Rather than stifle her own yawn, Judy gave in, which brought an appreciative chuckle from the fox in her head. "We're in this together, you know," he said, his tone sympathetic, "If you die, so do I."

"We can take a short break," Judy said, letting herself fall into a sitting position, "Just a few minutes, though."

"Just a few minutes," her companion promised, and he eased himself down until he was apparently sitting on a rock.

"If it helps, he's probably getting tired too," he offered after stretching himself widely, "He might make the first mistake."

"He won't make a mistake."

The words were out of Judy's mouth before she could really think about them. But it wasn't admiration, of course; it was simply being unwilling to underestimate her opponent. The fox seemed to want to be underestimated; it was practically written in every aspect of his being. The plain and unadorned torc at his neck, for instance, which he had worn until receiving the golden one of an officer. He had swapped it out for one of his own making, a replica that didn't actually work.

A replica that didn't actually work.

The words seemed to stick in Judy's mind; there almost seemed to be some higher meaning behind them. But as much as she thought it over, she couldn't imagine what it could be. Maybe as a metaphor for the fox himself; he was not what he appeared to be. He was cruel where he pretended to be kind. Inexperienced where he feigned mastery over alchemy. Conniving where he pretended to be friendly. He was—"Getting lost in your head over there?" the other Nick said, the words snapping her attention back to him.

Judy almost jumped, startled by how quickly her focus had wandered, and she offered him a somewhat abashed smile. "I guess so," she said, and he nodded absently.

"You have a lot to think about," he said, "Do you mind if I ask a question? Besides that one, I mean."

"Sure," she said, a bit curious as to what he'd ask.

"When did you first figure out what Nick—the real Nick—was like?"

On its surface, it was a simple question, but Judy didn't seem to be able to come up with an answer for a moment. She had hated him from the moment she met him, after all. He was smug and cocky and seemed to have an endless love of needling her. But...

Her loathing of him was bright and hot, burning with a fiery passion unlike anything else she had ever known. Judy had never before hated someone as much as she hated him. But he had been far from the first mammal to act unkindly toward her; she could think up countless examples of mammals who had thought less of her for being a bunny, who had told her that she would fail and never make it through the City Guard's academy.

But she hadn't hated any of them.

She had done her best to prove them wrong, of course, and there had been a fierce satisfaction in graduating that made every hardship she had faced and overcome worth it. But with Nicholas...

"When I first met him, I guess," Judy replied at last, "I saw right through him."

The words should have been right. Should have felt right, as though she was telling her companion that fire was hot or water was wet. But they seemed oddly hollow, and before that awkward feeling in the pit of her stomach could grow, she asked the ghostly fox a question of her own. "What's it like?" she asked, "Being like you."

He smiled widely, his fangs bright in the light of her torch even if they didn't reflect any light. "Why, it's kind of you to ask," he said, "No one ever has, you know."

"No one else has ever met you," Judy countered, but her tone was light.

In contrast to her own words at her opinion of Nicholas, bantering with the other Nick felt right in a way Judy couldn't quite describe. He was charming, in his own odd way, and rather attentive. He nodded and rolled one paw with a mock formality. "That's true, yes," he acknowledged, "But you didn't have to care, you know."

"Why wouldn't I?" she asked.

With the very notable exception of Nicholas, she had always done her best to genuinely care about other mammals. It was why she had joined the City Guard in the first place, after all. Not to serve her own selfish desires—as she was sure Nicholas had by becoming an alchemist, no matter what story he had spun for her—but to actually help the kingdom and make it better.

"Not everyone would," he replied simply, and Judy nodded; Nicholas wouldn't have, she was sure.

"But as for what it's like..." he began, before trailing off.

He raised a paw—in front of his face rather than through his chest again—and looked at it. "It's... different. I have his memories, so I know what it should be like. I should be able to feel things. I should have a heart beating in my chest. And I don't."

His words were almost solemn, and not for the first time Judy felt a wave of empathy for him. He hadn't asked to be created, after all, and it was only through the carelessness of Nicholas that he did. What would it be like, she wondered, to never be able to touch anyone? To never hold a paw, to never kiss, to only have a single other person in all the world who could even hear you. "I'm sorry," Judy said, "I shouldn't have asked."

He waved a paw airily. "There's no point in letting it bother me," he said, "It's not like I can change it."

"You shouldn't have to accept things the way they are," Judy said.

It was something she firmly believed, and he seemed to consider the words for a moment. "I suppose not," he said thoughtfully.

"Besides, you're stuck with me for the rest of my life, right?" Judy asked, trying to give her words a sort of half-sympathetic, half-teasing spin, "I want to get along."

He smiled a little at that, but only a little. "Maybe," he said, "But just because I'll die if you do doesn't mean that I'll live as long as you do. If you go into another anti-alchemy circle, it might get rid of me. Or I might just fade away over time. I really have no idea."

It was a surprising vulnerability he had revealed to her, and Judy felt a lump in her throat. She was sure she could trust him, but he had just volunteered a possible weakness with no apparent second thought. She had no more of an idea than he did if something that nullified alchemy—like a Nopalayotl or the prison in Phoenix—would actually succeed in killing him, and at the thought she spoke. "No, not get rid of you," Judy said, "If those things happen, they'd kill you."

"If you want to think of it like—" he began, but Judy cut him off.

"I do," she said firmly, "You're alive. And anything that stops that would kill you."

He stayed silent, and Judy stood up and walked over to him, wrapping her arms around him. It was, perhaps, a pointless gesture—her arms passed right through him, without so much as the slightest indication that he was there—but he had seemed to need a hug. But as she carefully positioned herself and looked down, the illusion seemed almost perfect.

They had set off again shortly after that, and Judy had felt more willing to talk as they searched. It helped keep her alert while engaged in their endlessly monotonous task, particularly when neither one of them spotted any sign of Nicholas. There hadn't been any sign of him since she had chosen the side tunnel leading away from his paw prints, and she turned to her companion. "Do you think he tricked us?"

"That he didn't really go this way?" the ghostly fox asked.

He tapped a claw against his mouth, frowning as he considered it. "It'd make sense if he did. He could have set up a fake trail, and then made his real trail look fake."

Judy blew out an exasperated sigh. The idea of having to backtrack wasn't particularly appealing, although it would be easy; the tunnel had been running continuously in a straight line without so much as a single deviation. "Or he did go this way and we're turning our backs to him," Judy said.

It was the problem with chasing a mammal, particularly a dangerous one. In the gloomy tunnels under Phoenix, there was no guarantee that they'd stay behind him. For all she knew, the tunnel might branch off in a dozen directions just beyond the limits of what her alchemical torch let her see. Or it could continue straight until it hit the foundation of the Outer Wall itself. There was no way of knowing; her companion was no more familiar with the tunnel than she was. "I suppose it's a matter of what you think he's trying to do," the other Nick mused, and Judy nodded.

That was important. Maybe he was just running away to save his own skin, in which case he'd simply be trying to get far enough away to give everyone the slip and make it back to the Middle Baronies. There, he might be able to blend in, making a fake torc and with it a new identity. Something about the torc seemed important, but it was just beyond Judy's grasp and after a moment's consideration she let the idea go. It probably wasn't important anyway.

But what Nicholas was trying to accomplish was. "He's not done with me," Judy said, feeling quite certain of her answer.

She couldn't say why, but something told her that Nicholas wanted something more from her and wouldn't give up until he had it. "Let's try going back and seeing if we can pick up another trail," she said, and the other Nick nodded.

It was quicker going on the way back, although Judy still did her best to look for signs they might have overlooked when they were going the other direction. She still saw nothing, which only fed into her certainty that she had been fooled. Irritation seemed to pool in her belly; it was galling that the traitor had tricked her. And, perhaps, himself, since her companion hadn't seen it coming either. Still, she couldn't blame him too much for that; the real Nick was a much worse mammal. The other Nick should be happy to actually have the positive traits the real one only faked.

Everything looked exactly the same as it had, until something new caught the light of her torch. It was lying on the floor of the tunnel in a red puddle, and it took Judy a moment to recognize it for what it was. It was vaguely cylindrical, wrapped in red fabric and from the center of one ragged end something gleaming white and jagged protruded.

It was an arm.

The puddle it was in was unmistakably blood, and as Judy got closer, moving cautiously, she could see the splayed out fingers, each dark brown and with a pad. The wrist was brown too, but where the other end—a bit short of where the elbow should have been—ended, Judy could see coppery fur where it wasn't covered in blood or the remains of a City Guard tunic sleeve.

It was Nicholas's arm.

Judy looked at it numbly, wondering if she was too late to capture him. Something icy but paradoxically hot seemed to run up her spine. She realized she didn't want to believe it, and she looked around desperately. As she played her alchemical torch along the corridor, though, she saw the signs of what could have only been an awful struggle. Blood was not just pooling around the arm; it was splattered along the walls and ceiling. Bloody paw prints led away from where she was standing, wobbling and uneven, and a spot along one of the walls looked to have been melted into glass. At the center of the scorch marks were charred bones that looked as though they could have come from an Ehecatl. The bones weren't alone, either. There were the blackened remains of at least half-a-dozen other monsters scattered throughout the hall, all of them showing the signs of being incinerated by unimaginable heat.

Judy turned and looked at her companion; ghostly though he was he looked somehow even more insubstantial than usual. "It might— It might be a trick," Judy said over a tightness that had suddenly come into her throat, "It has to be."

Her voice sounded weak and uncertain to her own ears. Could he have really made such a scene with alchemy? The horrible smell of burning meat hung in the air alongside the coppery scent of blood, and there was no doubt in her mind that the arm on the floor was real. It had clearly been torn off a mammal, yellowy tendons jutting out from ruined muscles. It was too ghastly to be fake, too perfect in every detail. The way specks of dirt clung to the wet and raw parts turned Judy's stomach as what must have happened rushed into her mind. Nicholas had been overcome by monsters, and despite doing his best had ended up having one arm torn off. He might have killed all the beasts attacking him, but from how the paw prints leading away from the arm wove back and forth she felt that he probably wouldn't survive much longer if more monsters came.

The other Nick squatted to take a closer look at the severed arm, a queasy look on his face. "He's not a strong enough alchemist to do all of this," he said, shaking his head and gesturing to take in the carnage.

Judy remembered how he had collapsed after what he had done to her arm; if her companion said it was beyond Nicholas's abilities she believed him. Still, that only made it even more important to be careful; she could remember exactly how dangerous the Ehecatls had been. "I'll watch our backs," the other Nick said, turning around to face the way they had come; even though Judy was the only one who could hear him had had spoken in a low whisper.

Considering the circumstances, she couldn't blame him. Judy could feel her fur starting to stand on end; she wasn't frightened, exactly, but her heart had started racing faster and for some reason her eyes had started to water. She wiped at them uneasily, not wanting to go a moment longer than necessary without being able to see properly. The sound of her footsteps sounded impossibly loud to her ears, and her alchemical torch, which had been so bright not too long before, seemed suddenly weak and feeble. The light it threw off didn't seem to reach far enough, leaving a yawning void of darkness ahead.

Judy strained for any sort of sign of what was before her, but there was nothing. There was no slither of the scales of an Ehecatl against stone or the terrible rustle of their wings. She plunged onward slowly, willing her every sense to be as sharp as possible, and then suddenly she heard something. A high, keening scream came from further down the tunnel, echoing as it did, and there were words interspersed with the screams. "Help! Someone, please!"

The voice, like the arm, was Nicholas's.

Author's Notes:

The Nopalayotl was mentioned first in chapter 29, as a giant turtle-like monster with an anti-alchemy array on its shell. Ehetcatls, the horrible feather-covered snake-like monsters, first showed up in chapter 31.

Otherwise, I don't really have anything to add. As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought.