"I'm sorry," Dierdre sniffled, finally regaining enough control over his breathing to speak. "I don't- I don't know how that happened."

"It's okay. Really, it's okay Di. It's hard to come to terms with this stuff," Abel whispered.

"We know better than anyone else," Hunter said, with a watery smile. "It's okay."

"I didn't want to stop thinking he loved me. If he didn't, who did? I- I had nobody."

"We love you," Fitz said. "You have us now."

"Really, you do?" Dierdre wiped his eyes with a watery laugh.

"Of course we do," Ember said, shaking Dierdre lightly. "Even Bernard. Though he isn't the best at showing it."

Bernard rolled his eyes. "Okay, yeah. That's true."

"Is it okay if I take a nap now?"

"Yeah, of course. You take as long as you need, Di. It's my turn now anyways, I can take over from here."

"Okay. Someone wake me back up for Fitz's, I haven't heard his yet."

"We will. Promise."

Dierdre nodded, yawned, and sank into the ground, leaving stunned silence in his wake.

"I thought he was never going to come around," Bernard whispered.

"If I'm being honest, I sort of hoped he wouldn't," Ember said. "He was... happy."

"And he can be happy again," Hunter said, his hand still pressed to the ground that Dierdre lay under. "It'll take some time, but he can be happy again."

Luz- his sister, really- leaned her head against his shoulder. She could tell he was speaking from his own experience, and it was comforting to hear him sound so certain.

Abel finally cleared his throat and wiped his eyes one last time. "Alright, we've got another story, haven't we? Get your notebook ready, kid."

"Yeah," Ember ran a hand across his short hair. "Okay. Well... I guess I'll start with when I found out about the Draining Spell. The discovery was quite shocking..."

My hands shook as I sounded out the letters on the page.

I'd recently gotten it in my head that I wanted to learn how to read. Uncle said it wasn't necessary for the longest time, but I felt so ignorant. I was seventeen after all. When I turned eighteen in a week, I was to become the Golden Guard. Uncle claimed none of my missions would require knowledge like that, but what if there was an emergency?

What if I couldn't rely on anyone else to know?

So I reached out to the head of the Plant Coven. They had seemed so surprised then that I didn't know. That "the Emperor never taught you". They had taken it upon themselves to explain to me the letters, how they linked together to form words, and this whole new world opened up to me.

I felt that I should be proud to tell my Uncle. But I kept my mouth shut. Whenever I thought of telling him, it made me feel so uneasy. I didn't know why then. I should love and trust him. I did love and trust him.

Which made it hard when I found the plans. And I could read them. I saw, and I knew.

We were all going to die.

For a few weeks, it was easier to pretend I hadn't seen it. How could I confront him when he didn't even know I could understand it? He would know I went behind his back.

Then it became clear to me. Fuck that. He went behind the backs of everyone, everyone who got a sigil. Wild magic wasn't evil, that wasn't the reason for the sigils. He was going to use them- and me- to get what he wanted, and he was trying to keep us all in ignorance with lies about the Titan and illiteracy.

The proof had been right there, so close, but I had never been able to understand it before.

"Wait, why did he let me learn how to read then? And don't you..." Hunter asked, glancing toward Bernard.

Ember shrugged. "Trial and error? I guess he learned his lesson. He can't keep us in the dark that way, it won't make a difference. We Grimwalkers are just as smart as other witches."

"Well, some of us," Fitz muttered, glancing at Bernard.

"Hey! Not fair."

"Quit squabbling, let me finish! Anyways..."

Gaining the resolve to do something was only the first step. I quickly found that I didn't know what I could actually do to stop this.

Until one cloudy night, in the market, I stumbled upon a meeting of some sort.

The demon entering the tent had looked shifty, glancing around, hand in his cloak pocket that sort of stuff. I followed to investigate, announcing my presence as the Golden Guard here to ensure no shady business was happening. Several maps were whipped off the table and stuffed into the shirt of a guilty-looking witch with green hair.

"What? Shady business? In my establishment?! Never."

I raised an eyebrow and pointed at the chalkboard behind them. Operation Overthrow Emperor Belos was written at the top. It had been crossed out, and now Operation Overthrow Emperor Bitchboy was scrawled underneath.

"Shit. Um, does that say overthrow? We- that's a misspelling."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah, um, it's meant to say... throw a party for..." the demon I had followed lamely supplied.

"And bitchboy?"

"Is a term of endearment?"

I let the awkward pause stretch on for several long moments. I removed my mask, which I hadn't done in front of civilians ever before. I kept my expression carefully neutral as I walked forward. The witch with green hair shifted awkwardly but didn't say a word. The only noise in the whole tent was the sound of my boots- still a little too big for me, with socks stuffed in the toes- clumping on the ground. I reached for a piece of chalk.

Then I crossed out overthrow and replaced it with eliminate.

"If you're going to start the job, may as well finish it too. It's the only way to make sure he doesn't regain power."

The group stared in silence. A few jaws dropped.

"What?" I asked. "Please excuse my handwriting. I'm not supposed to know how to write."

That was how I met the best friends I would ever have.

"I still don't know why you had to scare them like that," Abel snorted.

"It was funny," Ember shrugged. "Birch nearly pissed himself. Thought he was going to get petrified."

"So, you joined the first rebellion you accidentally stumbled upon?" Hunter asked.

"Basically yes. They called themselves, Rebels Against the Throne..."

"The RATTs!" Birch grinned.

It was about a week later. I had proven myself trustworthy under truth serum and been invited to another meeting.

"The rats? You couldn't come up with a cooler name?"

"See, this guy agrees," Harold nodded.

"Rats aren't bad," Birch's sister, Elena, scratched her palisman behind its ears. It squeaked, snuggling closer against her shoulder.

"It's a good acronym. You got outvoted, deal with it. Anywho, we're so glad you decided to join. I'm sure you have plenty of valuable intel about the Emperor's plans. The Coven system is sinister, there has to be something shady behind it!"

"Oh, there is. It's going to kill everyone."

The group fell silent. "Wait, are you serious?" Harold asked after a while.

"Yeah."

"Oh."

Birch cleared his throat. "How... how is this going to kill everyone?"

"Everyone with a sigil, that is. He's planning something big. It'll take years to come to fruition. It's called the Day of Unity..."

As you can imagine, the news did not go over very well. My three new friends looked rather pale and shaky when I was finished explaining.

But when they had recovered, we were left with a new sense of urgency. We knew that we were on a time crunch, plans for the Day of Unity were already starting to roll out. The gears were turning, we needed to figure out how to stop them.

The easiest way, I reasoned, was to assassinate the emperor.

"If he isn't around to set up the spell, the eclipse will pass harmlessly." I had grappled with the possibility for weeks, but there seemed to be no other way out of it. I knew hardly anything about magic after being kept from it for so long, and my friends weren't powerful enough to cast a counterspell if one even existed. We could put Coven heads out of commission, but they could be replaced quicker than we could ever do that.

"But how are we going to get close enough to- ohhh," Birch got this look that I had come to learn meant the plan was already coming together. "We have his Golden Guard!"

I grinned. "What method are we going with?"

"Ah, I had the best time of my life brewing that poison."

Abel looked slightly uncomfortable at that but didn't say anything.

"You gonna tell him about you and Birch?" Bernard asked, wiggling his eyebrows up and down.

"SHut the fuck up!" Ember's voice cracked slightly and Bernard cackled. "We weren't- well, we weren't ever official. It doesn't even matter in the story, nothing you need to know about."

Hunter discreetly scribbled down "tragic rebel love affair?" then looked back up and nodded. "Go on, what did you put the poison in?"

"Well, Belos was planning a celebratory banquet. He had finally perfected the art of petrification. It used to be rather hit or miss, with parts of witches still being flesh and bone while the rest of them were stone. They could cry sometimes. He found it rather bothersome..."

"...but we won't have to listen to that anymore," the emperor said, with an even tone. I imagined he was probably smiling under the mask though. My stomach twisted in knots, but I offered a small smile even so.

"I want you to attend to the banquet as well, Ember."

"Yes, Emperor Belos." I bowed. I guess he thought my happy expression for the next few days signified how pleased I felt to be attending such an event, or even pride at the accomplishment of his regime being able to kill people more efficiently. In reality, I was happy an opportunity to kill him had popped up so soon. Birch was thrilled of course-

"Just how thrilled?" Abel grinned.

"Not you too! Shutupshutup!"

ANYWAYS, I planned to sneak into the palace kitchens right before they served the food, and get the poison into that big, ornate goblet that Belos always- does he still use that one? The one with the ruby? Arrogant prick. Doesn't matter. He was using it that night, and the head of the kitchen staff had always been fond of me. She was such a nice lady.

"Does Linda still work there?

"She retired when I was five," Hunter sighed. "I miss her."

"Oh. Well, I'm glad she got out of that hellhole."

She pinched my cheeks, told me I was getting so tall, and told me to help myself to an hors d'oeuvre or two, nobody would notice they were gone. I was a growing boy apparently. I'm pretty sure I'd stopped growing and was just short, but food is food and I'm also pretty sure I was malnourished. So.

I went ahead and helped myself to three while I wandered around, looking for the wine.

But I ended up bumping into the head of the Potions Coven, who really hated me. "What are you doing here, brat?" he sneered.

"Just having a snack?" I blurted, hoping I didn't sound too guilty. He stared at me, hard. I didn't look away. I squeezed the vial of poison in my pocket. His nose twitched. Could he smell it on me? I could feel myself starting to sweat.

He huffed and turned around, his chin tilted up. I wished I could smack that haughty expression off of his face. "Don't bother the cooks. They're working."

"I'm not."

"Your presence is nauseating."

I bit back an insult of my own and decided to just get out of there. On my way out, I ended up passing the tray with the goblets on it.

I glanced around quickly to see if anyone was coming and rushed to yank the cork out of the vial. Birch said one little dose should be fine, but in my haste, I fumbled, spilling the entire contents of the vial into the blood-red wine.

Footsteps were growing closer in the hallway, and I shoved the now-empty vial back into my pocket. One of the servers rounded the corner and raised an eyebrow at me. "Sneaking a taste?"

"I- no, of course not!"

To my surprise, he snorted. "Teenagers! Don't worry, I won't tell. I did the same thing. Curiosity gets the best of you."

I laughed too, somehow both relieved and a little more worried. That was close.

When the emperor dropped dead, I would have to get out of there even faster than I had originally planned. He had seen me near the tray, he might (rightfully) suspect me of tampering with the wine.

Birch and the other RATTS had all offered me a place to stay once the emperor had been killed. As much as it warmed my heart, I knew that I would probably be considered a wanted criminal. I knew that once the plan had been enacted, I needed to get off the Boiling Isles completely, going into hiding.

I might be in hiding for the rest of my life.

But if that meant that my new friends' lives were improved, that they would never have to get sigils, and that they wouldn't have to live in fear of petrification, then it was worth it to me.

Luz sniffled, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. Ember paused to look at her, concerned.

"I'm sorry, that's just so sweet! Go on, I won't cry too loudly."

There were all sorts of pomp and circumstance having to do with this banquet. We all took our seats and waited at the table for Belos to enter the room. I stared at the torchlight reflecting off of the nice gold plates and silverware, making sure my hands didn't shake or fidget.

The Potions Coven head was seated right across from me. I could feel him staring, but I didn't meet his gaze.

Viktor, the Plant Coven head, had snuck in a book. He withdrew it from the inside pocket of his robes. "Let's do something useful to pass the time, huh?" he smiled at me.

"Rather disrespectful, don't you think? We should have our full attention on matters at hand." The fun-ruiner across from us said. Viktor waved him off.

"Oh, please. Nobody else here minds."

It was true, the other Coven heads were completely absorbed in their own business. Unlike that snide little snake of a man-

I'm getting off track. When Belos entered, the book was hidden again and we all stood, hands clasped behind our backs. He gave a speech, but I was too nervous to even listen. All I could hear was the pounding of my own heart in my ears, and all I could think about was how close he was to me right now. How alive he was. And how dead he was about to be. Was it a little fucked up, how happy I would be? Maybe a little.

I started wondering if I'd packed everything. The wine glasses were being passed out. Mine was full of water. Damn, he couldn't even have sprung for apple blood? I thought, then almost laughed at the mundane thought. Who cared if it was obvious that I wasn't of age to drink? Why did I even care what the other Coven heads thought of me right now, I was about to skip the entire country altogether. They would never see me again, and I would never see them.

When everyone else raised their goblets to drink, I did too, but before even one drop of wine could touch the emperor's lips, that motherfucking snitch of a Potion's Coven Head yelled "Stop!"

Belos paused. I cursed him in my head. So close! "What is it?"

"I sense something is wrong." That Titan-damned weasel took the goblet from the emperor's hands and made a big show of examining it with his powers. My heart sank. The assassination attempt was botched. We would have to try again. It was the perfect opportunity too, and that slimy bitchass just had to ruin it.

"Oh, Birch must have been so disappointed," Hunter sighed.

"Well, I never did get around to telling him, so I'm not sure. See, I naively thought that I was going to get out of this one scott-free and I could just lie low for a bit. What I didn't expect was the Oracle Coven Head divining that it was me."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Well, I forgot that she could do that. Wouldn't have mattered if Belos was already dead, but he wasn't, and I was in huge trouble."

"No!" Luz groaned, flopping backward. "You were so close! I actually had hope!"

"Well, getting petrified wasn't too bad. The new and improved process made it a quicker and easier way to go." Ember pushed aside a rock near the cave wall and reached into a cool, damp hole in the dirt. "Here's the biggest piece I found after he pushed me over the side." He presented a leg, from the knee down. "And here's the second biggest piece." It looked like the curve of a shoulder. "The rest of me is buried over there," Ember pointed to a mound of dirt.

"Put your body parts back, man, no one wants to see that," Bernard sighed.

"You okay?" Abel asked. He laid a hand on Hunter's shoulder. The living boy was looking a little queasy.

"He just... he really had no problems doing all of this. He didn't even think twice." They all heard the unspoken he wouldn't have thought twice about killing me.

"Hunter," Luz inched her hand closer to her brother's, letting their fingertips just brush so he knew that he could seek comfort if he needed it.

Instead, he cleared his throat. "It's time to wake Dierdre up, I guess. Fitz is up next."

"Wakey wakey..." Bernard stuck his head into the soil. "Dierdre, time to wake up!"

Dierdre screeched, jolting awake. Hunter heard the ghosts' heads smack together and Bernard passed through the soil again, groaning. "Titan, Di!"

"Don't wake me up like that! You're so mean!"

"Sorry, I thought it was funny! Thought it might cheer you up a little. Sue me."

"Just start the story," Dierdre grumbled.

"Alright. You sure you're good to hear another, kid?" Fitz asked.

Hunter nodded. "I'm ready. It can't be worse than the others."

"Well, I guess that's really subjective. But if you say so, I'd say a good place to start the story would be my apprentice."

You might have heard of him once or twice, I'm not sure where he ended up because I've been in this pit for... well, a little over sixteen years. He was on a good track to becoming Coven Head someday, real good with abominations, that kid- he was starting to get his doubts. And I was too.

One day he asks me, "Sir?"

And so I say, "Yeah, Dari?"

"Wait, Dari as in Darius? Deamonne?"

"You know him?! Titan, how old would he be now..."

"He's my sort of dad."

"Dad? Wow, it's been... longer than I realized. Sixteen years." Fitz suddenly looked so pained that Hunter felt bad for interrupting.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay, kid, I'm okay. It's just... it's a little hard knowing that it all went on without me. But that's the way it is. Is Dari doing okay?"

"Yeah. He was Coven Head, still is, but he's planning on stepping down in a few years. He says it's too much paperwork. He goes to therapy. He's teaching me how to embroider," Hunter held up his sleeve and pointed to the abomination patch on it.

Some light seemed to chase out the pain in Fitz's expression. "Really? That's great. He was always a bright kid."

He asked me about my family one day. He didn't get all personal often, and neither did I, but I guess we'd been working together a while, and we were becoming better friends.

I told him what Belos told me. My family were all dead, except for Belos. We only had each other, which was why it was important that he took me in and we stuck together. Even though I was nearly forty, I was still so close to my uncle because we had no one else we could trust as much.

"Where did they die?" he asked. Which was kinda invasive, but it made me think about it.

"I don't know."

"How many were there?"

I didn't know that either.

"So... how are you related to Belos again?"

And y'know, I couldn't remember which side of the family he said he was from. "I'm pretty sure he was on my dad's side. He always talks about a brother." And never a sister. In fact, he never talked about any of them often.

I asked Dari some questions back to distract him, but the thought lingered in the back of my mind until it was time for bed.

Now, keeping up with my health was a full-time job in itself. Ever since I was twelve, I'd always had a litany of issues to deal with. It started with some gastrointestinal issues. Certain foods just didn't agree with me anymore. So I made some changes to my diet.

Then my joints started giving me troubles a few months later. My knees. Then in the winter months, I was unusually susceptible to the mold, I had it twice that year, and three and a half times the following year. I developed headaches in the back of my head, near my neck.

Uncle didn't believe in traditional healing medicine. He wouldn't even let Hettie see me for years. But a number of other alternative healing methods were recommended to me, and they eased the symptoms at least. I could keep doing my job, given enough time at the end of the day to recover. I kept to my strict, bland diet and added more supplements that Uncle recommended. Weird rashes broke out on my face, but the mask covered them so I didn't think it was that important. By the age of twenty, I was popping seven pills with breakfast. It was ridiculous.

Eventually, he did let Hettie see me about once a month to realign my spine. Hand me down bones are not it.

Now I know that many of these problems could have been avoided had I not been constructed out of hand-me-down body parts. Not that I knew that at the time. I was less focused on finding a cause, and more on keeping it secret.

No one could know that the Golden Guard had such weaknesses.

No one knew, not even Dari, just how bad it was getting at that point. And his questions made me think, what if this was hereditary? What if I had gotten it from someone in my family, could they have helped me with the management?

And even if it wasn't, and they couldn't have, why was I never allowed to know about my family in my childhood? Why was I never told once I became an adult? Why was I just thinking about this now?!

"You can't blame yourself, you were so busy!" Dierdre protested. "You spent hours just trying to keep healthy. If you were allowed healing magic, maybe that would have freed up the mental energy to wonder about these things."

"But you were twelve when you had to start dealing with a chronic illness pretty much on your own," Abel added. "Di is right."

"Man, Di, you caught on quick. Maybe you guys are right. I shouldn't be so hard on myself. It just feels a little stupid that I waited until I felt like I was on the verge of collapse to finally try to find some answers..."

After several failed attempts to bring the subject up to Uncle- who still treated me like a child sometimes, even after all those years- I decided to search for the family records myself.

If anyone would have them, it would be Belos. So one night, after recovering from a fainting spell, I chugged some tea that was probably just bullshit and might not have actually helped at all, then I snuck into his chambers.

I found answers, that's for sure. But not the ones I wanted.

I found a trap door and thought it might lead to some kind of storage room. So I pulled it open, and reached down into the darkness-

Immediately breaking a rung of the ladder. When it comes to the places and things that the Boiling Isles don't see, Belos doesn't care to keep up with appearances. Or safety.

I landed in a tunnel. It was pretty nasty in there, dark, damp, with a weird smell. Still, I spotted a faint light at the end of it.

"Nooo, Fitz, don't go into the light!" Luz joked.

"Hey, even if I was dying, it still would have been a release from that bullshit. I still would have gone."

"Oh."

"Okay, everyone be honest. We were all a little suicidal as Golden Guards, right?" Bernard asked.

"No, I- well, maybe a little," Abel conceded.

"Most definitely," Ember nodded.

"Jesus Christ," Luz muttered.

Hunter raised his hand.

"Oh, wow. I was sort of joking, but... well." Bernard cleared his throat. "Anyways, go on."

Gladly.

Or- yeah, not so gladly. Because at the end of the tunnel was an underground laboratory where we were all grown. I found plots of soil, labeled with letters. There were five, G through K.

H looked freshly turned.

And G had a hand sticking out.

"Okay, freaky..." I muttered, turning away from the plots of dirt to the table. I scrambled backward at once at the sight of a ribcage just... lying out there. A ribcage and an arm.

My own bones ached both from the fall and from normal daily tasks. I couldn't remember if I had taken my morning meds that day. I braced myself, one hand in the dirt of Plot G.

Something twitched.

I'm pretty sure a scream tore itself from my throat because it started to ache, but I couldn't hear a thing. Just the rushing of my own blood in my head.

The finger twitched again.

Dear Titan, I'd never been so afraid. There was a person in there, moving.

"Did you pull him out?!" Hunter interrupted, looking up from his notebook where he had been furiously scribbling a rough map of the laboratory.

"I... sort of uncovered him. I looked at his face and saw an unscarred version of my own. It was like... like looking at one of you, but worse," Fitz said. His face had gone a little paler than it usually was.

His chest was moving up and down in very shallow motions. He was curled in a fetal position, one arm reaching up as if he was going to dig himself out. I had to turn away, feeling bile rise in my throat. I grabbed the first notebook I found and started to flip through it desperately. I needed answers, I needed to know.

I almost regretted it. I read the- recipe, if you will. What we're all made of.

Scales of a selkidomus, the wood of a palistrom tree, a galderstone, bone of ortet...

Whoever he made us out of, pieces of him were lying out there on that table. A copy of someone was in the dirt over there. I was a copy of someone.

There had been many before me. I flipped through the records. They lasted for a few days or weeks at first. He hadn't gotten the process quite right. Then they started coming out at older ages and lasting longer. Years. Sometimes he pulled them out and they were kids, other times he pulled out a fully mature adult. Once, he pulled one out far too soon in his impatience and little Humility wasn't able to breathe. His stonesleeper lungs hadn't grown into the rest of his body, they rattled around his ribcage and deflated after a while.

I can't even describe how it felt to be reading such detached accounts of all of our lives. Our creations, our failures, and our demise. Nothing of wants and dreams, nothing of personalities beyond what Belos felt were 'defects' to be conditioned out of the next. He never saw us as people. The more I read, the sicker I felt. And the more sure I was that this had to end.

I dragged my hand-me-down abomination of a body back over to Plot G. I looked in the face of another one of us and I felt the pain of being disposable. I never wanted another grimwalker- another person- to feel that way, and right then I could only think of one way to stop it.

"Titan, you didn't..." Hunter whispered.

Fitz looked nauseous as he nodded. "I did. I pressed the dirt back over his face, and I watered him. Belos had accidentally ruined a few in the early days by doing that. He convulsed a few times, the top of the dirt rolled like the boiling sea. Then he went still. But before I could move on to Plot H-"

"What do you think you're doing?" Belos hissed.

I whipped around, feeling a stab of pain behind my eyes. Eyes that might have been pulled from another skull before being placed in mine. There was no way to know.

"You," I rasped. "You are what's wrong with this family, not wild magic. You made me this way, you made me to suffer. All of us-"

"I made you to serve a purpose, and it seems that you have outlived your usefulness."

There was a fight after that. And I tried my best to get away, to kill whatever was in Plot H. I set a small fire at some point, hoping to bring the whole laboratory, maybe the whole castle down.

"I didn't succeed. And now," Fitz offered Hunter a weak smile. "Here you are."