Judy froze as the voice came again, desperation making the word ragged and raw. "Help!" Nicholas's voice cried.

She played her torch down the hallway, but it was coming from too far away to be able to see exactly where it was coming from. The blackness yawned before Judy, seemingly endless, and the splatters and pools of blood continued for as far as the light went. "It could be a Ehecatl," the Nicholas who lived in her head cautioned.

He was standing at her side, his ears pricked up and swiveling slightly as he peered into the gloom. The insubstantial fox turned to look at Judy and added, "I can't see far enough to be sure."

Judy was barely paying attention, though. It was entirely possible that it was a trap, one either baited by the fox she was hunting or by a monster. The real Nicholas might already be dead, with some feathery beast over his corpse mimicking his voice to lure her in. None of that mattered. Judy's heart was in her throat as she charged down the corridor, her sword at the ready, and she strained her ears to their limits.

She had to capture Nicholas. She had to. It was beyond any explanation Judy could give as to why it was so important to her; if the fox was dead her mission would still be accomplished. But she needed to drag him out of the depths below Phoenix and make him pay for his crimes.

I need to see him again.

The thought, as sudden and bright as a bolt of lightning and just as distracting, came to Judy as she ran. She almost stumbled but caught herself just in time, pushing herself to run as fast as she could. The Nicholas in her head was running beside her, but the glimpses of him she caught out of the corner of her eyes made it look as though it cost him absolutely no effort. His face was almost placid but it seemed to be touched with concern, and when he spoke his words were just as even as though he was doing nothing more physically demanding than sitting down. "You're off balance," he said, and Judy knew he didn't mean how she had almost fallen over.

"I— need— to— catch— him," Judy managed to say as she ran, her words coming in tight bursts.

"You want to catch him," the ghostly fox replied, "You don't need to."

Judy didn't have anything she could say that would counter that. It wasn't something that she could have explained, even if she hadn't been running and could have spoken freely; it was an almost overwhelming impulse running through her head. The desire, the need, to catch him was only building, blotting out any other thoughts as she sprinted down the corridor. "You need to slow down," the other Nicholas urged, "Whether it's a monster or him, all you're—"

"Have to," Judy hissed, interrupting him.

Under less urgent circumstances, it might have been touching that he cared about the risk she was taking. But there was no time for second thoughts, not when the fox she was pursuing might be in mortal danger. Nicholas's voice hadn't come again since she had started running, but the blood dripping from the walls and pooling on the floor was only increasing in volume, sticky paw prints leading through it showing where he had been. Judy's alchemical torch bobbed as she ran, its cone of light throwing everything into the sharp relief of its harsh life.

The Nicholas in her head said only, "Be careful," in a quiet voice before he fell silent, his head turning in every direction as he seemed to keep watch himself.

And then, when her lungs felt about ready to burst and spots were starting to dance in front of her eyes as her blood pounded through her veins, Judy saw a rag-covered lump caught in her torch. The rags might have been a bright red once, but they were so blood-soaked that they had turned a deep maroon color. Even more blood pooled around the lump, and there were tracks in the blood that looked like finger marks from someone desperately scrabbling for purchase.

Judy's heart seemed to miss a beat as she took in the awful scene. She was too late. Whatever had killed the fox was already gone, blood streaking randomly along the walls in lines that almost looked as though they had been painted there. Judy slowed to a stop, and helpless tears filled her eyes.

She had failed.

As she looked at the remains of what had been her quarry, the few spots of red-orange fur making it clear that it really was the body of the fox who had tormented her so, she couldn't help the memory that filled her head.

Nicholas had given her a small golden carrot, teasing her as he said she could wear it on her torc when she was off duty. "If members of the City Guard are ever off duty, of course," he had said, and a hatefully smug smile had crossed his lips.

He must have known, in that moment, that to give a doe from Totchli Barony an ornament for her torc was to propose to her; his act of complete innocence must have been exactly that. Judy was sure of it, completely and utterly, but something nagged at her mind. Wasn't there something she had said to him, once? Something that had been...

"Judy!"

She looked up dully at the other Nicholas, who had said her name as though he had already spoken it several times. She realized she had been too distracted to realize he had been trying to get her attention, but focusing on his words seemed harder than usual. Her blood seemed to have gone cold and sluggish in her veins, and even the grays of the tunnel seemed more colorless than they had before.

Her ghostly companion, though, had a face filled with a sense of urgency Judy wasn't sure she would ever feel again. How could she, when she had already failed? "What?" Judy asked flatly.

"You need to get out of here now!" he said, the gesturing toward where they had come from, "It's a—"

The ghostly fox never got the chance to finish his sentence. The bloody smears and dabs covering the walls suddenly filled with a brilliantly pure light of almost blinding brightness. What had seemed like random splotches and lines caused by nothing more purposeful than a brutal mauling hid cunningly concealed patterns and symbols, and as they activated something seemed to tear at the inside of Judy's head.

Judy fell to her knees, clawing at her forehead, and barely even felt the scratches she left in her own skin. The pain was unbelievable, and it accompanied an awful pulling sensation as though a farmer was pulling up a stubborn weed with its roots wrapped around her mind. A terrible scream filled the air, and it was only when Judy's throat began to feel raw that she realized she was the source.

Her thoughts were a swirling mess that refused to sort themselves out into any kind of order. There was an awful kind of duality to them, and even her vision swam before her. Judy's intangible companion was fading into even greater translucence, his eyes wide with horror in what seemed to be an echo of the pain that she felt herself. As he faded Judy felt another wrenching sensation in her head even as she desperately reached out her paw but managed to close over nothing. Her alchemical winked out, but in the instant before the light vanished Judy could see only the wall of the corridor.

He was gone.

Judy was already on her knees but she slumped even further to the ground. "Nicholas," she said, and her voice was hoarse and raspy from her screaming.

The tears that had filled her eyes flowed down her cheeks and were absorbed by the thirsty ground. I never even gave him a name of his own, she thought to herself. The ghostly fox had been her loyal companion, assisting her as best he could with no reality of his own. He had even tried warning her, and she had ignored it. Now he was gone, probably forever, and—"Carrots!" a familiar voice interrupted her thoughts, "Sorry for the scare, but I'm glad to see it worked."

The fox was standing before her, a relieved smile crossing his face. But he was undeniably solid, and Judy saw the trail of bloody footprints he had left in his wake. It was the real Nicholas, and for a moment it was all Judy could do to look up at him, frozen with emotion. "A pretty good fake though, wouldn't you say?" he continued, seeming to speak to fill the silence, and he gestured at the slumped and ragged form on the ground by his side, "I had to be sure you'd get close enough to walk into the anti-alchemy array I drew."

He gestured widely to take in the circle he was standing in and Judy was on her knees in. There was, now that he had pointed it out, a distinct resemblance to what had been in the cell; the patterns were somewhat more elaborate, perhaps, but they glowed in a similar serene fashion under the blood that had hidden them, and the alchemical torch at Judy's feet was completely nonfunctional.

And the other Nick was gone.

He had warned her. Not just about the trap she had foolishly blundered into, but about what might happen if she set foot inside an anti-alchemy array. He had warned her that it might destroy him, whatever complex magic had given him life fading into nothingness the way her alchemical torch had. But the torch, Judy knew, would start glowing again the instant she stepped out of the circle. As for the fox who had lived in her head...

"Nicholas," Judy said again.

"It's alright," the fox standing in front of her said, his voice quite gentle, "It's alright. Let me just get that torc off your neck."

He bent over and reached for her neck, his eyes looking straight into hers. "How do you feel?" he asked.

His voice was still gentle, the words filled with concern. Judy studied his face for a moment, considering the question. The answer came as slowly as the fox's paws moved as they grasped the sides of her torc.

Nicholas had murdered the version of himself that lived in her head, and her loathing for him reached a level it never had before. Without any further thought, Judy's paw closed around the hilt of the sword she had dropped as she fell to the ground.

And then Judy thrust it upwards into the fox's unprotected stomach as hard as she could.