Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

[(Torse) is choking on the blood filling (his) mouth. The gash (he) bit into (his) tongue hurts like a bitch, but the thumbscrews had hurt worse and (he) doesn’t want to know what they’re going to do to (him) if (he) stops talking. So, (Torse) insists] “I told you I don’t know anything! I— I just joined on a couple weeks ago— I haven’t heard anything about what they’re planning, I swear! The Professor’s super secretive, she only tells her inner circle—”

“We believe you, dear soul, and we will not hurt you. See?”

[The hands held in the air are metal and clawed, attached to a bruiser of an automaton that (Torse) knows is strong enough to break (his) bones, easily. The Corrodi don’t have (him) restrained, but it’s probably just some sick new game they’re playing, trying to soothe (him) so the next trick hurts worse. (Torse) scrambles further into the corner, pressing (himself) against frigid metal.]

“I told you about those guys, didn’t I? I gave you more info than you had before. Please, please, just let me go—”

[The Corrodi keeps its hateful gaze on (him), but makes a quick gesture to the spindly spider-looking one creeping behind it, and (Torse) knows better than to trust a damn thing it says.]

“Yes, you have indeed been very helpful. You have our gratitude, but it would be best if you stayed here while you regained your senses.”

[They’re never gonna let (him) go. That other Corrodi fuck is messing with a weird device on the desk— hissing something into it—]

“What are you doing? No. No— ”

[Gods, it’s carrying the thing over. What sadistic tool are they gonna use on (Torse) this time?]

“No, no, no, please, I— I don’t wanna die.” [(Torse) had thought (he) had (his) whole life ahead of (him). That (he’d) finally get to be the hero. Is it really going to end like this?] “Please just let me go. Let me go. Let me go, you mothe—”

[Static right by (his) ear.]

“-es, hello, Torse. I don’t quite know—“

[Who the hell is that? (Torse knows that voice.) No, they don’t.]

“—but your companion told me to keep talking since it’s apparently going to help you in some kind of nebulous way, so I’m just going to. Do that. I hope you don’t—”

[A stranger’s (a friend’s) voice is coming out of that weird crystal contraption (interplanar telephone). They feel (he remembers) really weird (himself).]

“—just going top of the dome here, um. The torrential downpour plaguing Utmany shows no sign of stopping, and it's apparently been pelting the rest of the Republic—”

[Where? (The Confederated Imperial Republic, in Gath.) They’ve heard of Gath, but not whatever that is. (He’s heard quite a bit, it is the setting of his friend’s origin.)]

“—created quite the gloomy atmosphere. Which is fitting, I suppose, considering the problems at hand, but it hasn’t been pleasant trying to investigate with the streets half-flooded. I know you said you’ve been experiencing quite a bit of rain yourself—”

[What is this guy talking about? They’re in Zern (yes) but there’s no water here, it’s a wasteland. (The deluge was initially a boon, but now the Aganti Zernai) Who? (are struggling to mitigate its dangers. This storm has become something of a problem.)]

[There’s no way that’s true.]

“—obably more welcome where you are. Or maybe it’s not.”

(Can’t you hear it?)

“—ever’s happening, I know you can do it, Torse.”

[This guy’s voice? Yeah, it’s kinda incessant. And it’s making them feel rea lly ssstra nge. The Corrrodi’s torture methods are way too convoluted.]

“You’re a warrior. A rebel and a gentleman. Nothing’s gonna get you down for long, friend.”

(No. The rain.)

The pattering has become so constant [their] his mind had relegated it to background noise, but not far away, countless droplets are falling against metal.

“I could chart a flight to Zern. Tonight. Or more realistically tomorrow, considering I’d need to check in with the crew about it and at the very least I’d need a pilot.”

Rain is falling in Zern.

[...What?]

“—arya, or Lud—”

It’s audible even with Maxwell’s voice being held close to [their ear] his head by [the Corrodi] Rerebrace, whose hatred for the Corrodi surpasses even his [their] own. Rain, with distant thunder. He [They] can see the flash of lighting in the porthole above Gorget’s [the bruiser Corrodi’s] head, warped by water battering against the glass.

“—ery good, Torse, I was honestly surprised by how good, but she is one of Marya’s protégés so I shouldn’t be too shocked. I think you’d like her—”

[They don’t understand. What’s— What’s going on? Whyy doesn’t th eir b ody feel like thei r own?]

Torse runs articulated iron knuckles along the curvature of his warm, ticking iron heart. In the last moments of his conscious control, he had opened the ribs protecting it, so his companions would have an easier time wrenching his heart out if he became a threat.

“I’m here for you, my friend. And I can be where you are if that’s where you need me to be. I—”

Torse says, “Because it is not your body, wanderer, it is mine.”

Gorget’s gaze flickers and Rerebrace’s grip on the crystal telephone shifts, but they do not move beyond that. Nor will they, until Torse confirms the presence within him has passed.

There is a throbbing ache in his heart. For a moment it feels like [theirs] muscle and blood and grief.

“The Corrodi killed me, didn’t they?” he allows the wanderer to ask with his voice. They sound so young— with a cadence uncomfortably close to Olethra’s. “It’s already happened.”

“Yes,” Torse confirms. “But with the very sight you are now using, I witnessed the downfall of the leading council of the Corrodi and their wretched Beast of rust. My companions and I have been hunting down the remnants to extinguish their power over the Braid, permanently. You will be avenged, wandering soul, I promise.”

“I don’t want revenge,” the wanderer mourns. “I wanted to live.”

Oil slides down Torse’s face and he does not [they do not] know which of them is crying.

“I am sorry,” he says, because this soul’s death was meaningless and cruel. Because he knows the bitter agony of dying alone and terrified— realizing in his last moments how badly he wanted to survive. Because they sound so much like his dear friend, for whom he’d burn every hidden Corrodi den to cinders if only to ensure she is never again in one of their hellish torture chambers.

“I am so sorry,” Torse repeats, because most wretchedly of all, he is not sorry enough to become a vessel for this wandering soul. “But I want to live, too.”

[ ]

[I un derss tan d .]

There is so much noise around him, the sound of rain and Maxwell’s voice continuing to flood the room, but the presence inside his mind, still lingering, is quiet.

Until,

[Th e tel e phhhone is me ssssing me up. I don’ t think I eeeven ge e et a cho ice to

stay, b u t be forree I I I I go

C c c c aaaan yoou sss ay m mmm mm my ]

It is agonizing to feel them struggle. With their minds soldered together the wandering soul’s desperation is Torse’s own— and for a moment he thinks himself as wretched as any Primarch.

Torse parts with his voice, one final time.

“Can you say my name?” The wanderer asks, so quietly, words drenched in static. “And— remember it?”

They sound like himself. Like someone he cares for. Like someone he never had the chance to know.

(Yes. On the mainspring of my clockwork heart, I vow to remember your name. Your existence will not be taken by the waves of time. I will anchor it in my memory.)

“Aster Yarrow,” Torse murmurs. “You will be remembered.”

Rain pelts against the vessel’s hull. Torse, suddenly empty and terribly alone, slumps forward.

“—ease let me know if you’re alright, Torse,” Maxwell’s voice crackles through the telephone, pitching high. “Or any of Torse’s companions, if he can’t.”

Torse shuts his ribs. “The light within me is my own.”

Gorget eases out of vigilance, leaning her heavy frame against the bulkhead, and Rerebrace collapses into a long-limbed heap beside him, shoving the telephone into his hands and wrapping all four arms around herself. Their inner lights are dim, likely as exhausted by the ordeal as Torse himself, if not more so. Since souls have begun wandering through the bodies of Zernian automatons, he and his companions have had to once more don the hypervigilance many among them had hoped could be laid to rest.

No rest has come. Only the storm and the ghosts.

“Hells.” Rerebrace snarls, slamming a fist against the floor. “These hauntings cannot go on.”

Gorget, staring steadily out the porthole and into the ceaseless rain, nods. “We must root out the source of this aberration. These souls should have long ago been remade in the Forge.”

“Instead of parading around in our bodies? Yes, I agree.”

Torse, spurred by the increasing urgency in Maxwell’s voice, fusses with the crystalline device. The light indicating simultaneous transmission glimmers.

“Maxwell? Can you hear me?”

“Torse!” Maxwell’s response is loud, breathless, and very much welcome. “Yes! Yes, my friend, I can hear you!”

Marya’s parting gift for Torse has been a bastion of warmth as the days in Zern have grown darker, colder, and evermore perilous. The interplanar telephones she and her protégés created, from nothing but Professor MacLeod’s research for the MechLeod’s radio and the crystal technologies of Zumhara, have allowed him, across planetary distances and through torrential downpours, to communicate with the companions he had worried would be lost to the horizon. Contrary to his expectations, the voices of his Wind Riders have graced his audio processors with astonishing regularity.

Maxwell, particularly, has been diligent in finding time to talk with Torse, periodically checking in to ask if he has a moment to spare. They usually only manage a brief hello, but during precious lulls in their schedules their time over the line stretches for hours, spanning topics so inane and personal Torse had never considered them worth discussing until he had the chance to do so with Maxwell. But no matter the length of their conversations, Torse finds himself lightened in the aftermath.

It is a luxury he is rarely afforded, as of late.

Mildly-hysteric laughter bursts through the speaker and Torse can imagine Maxwell’s hand worrying the hair at his nape. “It’s such a relief to hear your voice.”

“I feel much the same,” Torse easily admits, pointedly ignoring the good-natured snorts from Rerebrace and Gorget. His old tribemates and new crew had been delighted to learn of the companions he’d found at the end of the long, lonely stretch of years since the Aganti Zernai had thought each other lost. Their delight has only grown with the frequency of Maxwell’s communications.

In this moment, still feeling the absence of Yarrow’s presence, he doesn’t mind being a source of Rerebrace and Gorget’s levity.

But the lightness leaves Maxwell’s voice. “Are you alright?”

“I am fine, Maxwell,” Torse reassures, attempting to believe his own words amidst the others' scrutiny. “Do not worry.”

“Well, it’s several minutes and an extended monologue too late for that.”

Torse grumbles. He should’ve known better than to hope Maxwell would let the topic slide.

“The bridge has been crossed; I’m worrying. Tell me: what’s going on, Torse?”

Torse sighs. “It is a situation better discussed, I think, through means of communication not so easily spied upon.”

He has wished he could speak with his Wind Riders about the mystery that has befallen his homeworld, if only to glean a new perspective from their expertise. Unfortunately, Marya made it clear that the devices were not infallible, and Torse has spent far too long rebelling against a near-omniscient Queen to believe any modes of communication are truly secure.

Though perhaps it is better that the Wind Riders have thus far been unaware of Zern’s new plight. He does not wish to take them away from their own adventures and responsibilities, to lean heavy upon their strength when he should be relying on his own, and it is likely that if they knew the full scope of his struggle it would bring them grief— if not to his door.

There can be no overstating how badly Torse wishes Maxwell and the others were here. But this is his own burden, and his shoulders must carry the weight.

“Well, what can you tell me?” Maxwell insists.

“I—” Torse struggles to articulate an answer that would be both satisfying and reassuring for Maxwell to hear. He casts his gaze at Rerebrace and Gorget, but neither step in when his words fail.

“C’mon, man, give me something,” Maxwell pleads. Torse is never keen to disappoint him, and his friend’s urgency wears at his reticence. “Are you in danger?”

Ah, fuck. A yes-or-no question he cannot conscionably respond ‘no’ to. This is bad.

He does not wish to burden his friend, or make himself seem incapable of standing alone, but it has become clear that the hauntings his people are suffering are not symptoms of an acute problem. This mysterious curse— and the rain— shows no signs of stopping. On the contrary, their torment seems to be escalating.

Torse is in danger. All his people are. But that, at least, has been true for centuries.

“It is a complex—”

“Torse.” There is an undercurrent of desperation in the way Maxwell says his name. “Before your friend silenced your crystal, I could hear you shouting. Crying. You sounded terrified, man. I won’t be any less worried if you lie to me.”

That logic is hard to argue with. So he doesn’t. Torse yields the battle of restraint he’d already been losing. It isn’t worth it if all it causes either of them is distress.

“Yes. Yes, I am in danger. It’s— the situation is not quite dire—”

“I’d say it is,” Rerebrace finally speaking up. When he glares at her, all she does is shrug. “There’s something messing with the Aganti Zernai—”

“And all other automata we have encountered in our travels,” Gorget adds, joining them against the wall.

Indeed, even Sandy has been afflicted. There is not one automaton among them exempt from the hauntings. The only times Torse does not feel himself in danger are when he is communicating with the Wind Riders over the crystal telephone, but he had previously believed it was their conversations affecting his mood, not anything tangibly mitigating his vulnerability.

“Messing with you?” Maxwell questions. “Whatever happened to Torse is happening to all of you?”

“Yes,” Torse admits. “Quite frequently. The episode that you overheard was more... intense than any I have experienced before, but it seems communication through the interplanar telephone has some ability to combat its effects.”

“Though we would not deny your offer of aid, should you still wish to voyage in Zern,” Gorget says. Were it anyone other than his Welder, Torse would raise an objection, if only to defend his own pride. “Torse has spoken at great length of the feats you and your fellow Wind Riders have accomplished. The assistance of such competent adventurers would be invaluable, and an honor. The Aganti Zernai would be in your debt.”

Torse could scream at how ornately Gorget has fashioned her words. She is absolutely meddlesome. Calculating. Nefarious. His Welder has been eager to meet the Wind Riders and it seems she is even willing to use the horrors as leverage.

Rerebrace adds, “Plus, it’ll be useful to have some allies that aren’t at risk of these— episodes. It’s a guarantee those of flesh and blood will try to exploit our situation, but not many have earned Torse’s trust, let alone his regard. His judgment is sound. I’d rather have you here than not.”

Is there no one on the side of protecting Torse’s ego? The betrayal is endless.

He continues silently seething until Maxwell’s response takes him by surprise.

“Torse? What do you want?”

Ah.

The novelty of that question never fades. It still feels uncanny that anyone asks him at all, let alone on the more-than-daily basis he now hears it.

Well, if it’s a question of his wanting, Torse can say nothing but the truth. “Come to Zern. It would be less lonely if you were here.”

The yearning that tumbles from his voice box is one he’s been hesitant to admit to his fellow Zernai, but as he glances around he sees no judgment coming from Rerebrace or Gorget. Torse knows that they understand, more than most, how loneliness is a beast of many heads. Their silent acceptance is comfort and camaraderie.

“Alright. That settles it,” Maxwell says. “I’ll scrounge up a functional crew and get there as quick as I can.”

A beat, filled only by static and rain. “And— I’m not a big fan of debt. Quite a hater, actually. You guys don’t owe me anything. Torse is my friend.”

“A bond I find myself evermore grateful to witness,” Gorget says.

Rerebrace tacks on. “Keep your crystal contraption on you, if you can. And expect more frightening emergency calls.”

“...Right.”

“We’ll do the same.”

Torse cradles the telephone close. “Travel safe, Maxwell. Remain vigilant. And... thank you, my friend.”

“Of course. Anything, Torse, you know that.” Maxwell’s sincerity rings clear, unaltered by distance. “I’m on my way.”

Chapter Text

Maxwell slams a fist into his desk the instant his crystal dims. 

It’s solid wood, so it hurts him more than his grandfather’s ornately crafted heirloom, but the pain radiating up his arm centers him. Only Maxwell’s repulsion of being anything like Hatwell keeps him from bashing his forehead next. Instead, he presses a cheek into the ink-stained cherry-wood and tries to breathe.

Maxwell's fucking pissed, but he’s man enough to know the seething anger beneath his skin comes from fear. His heart is leaping in his throat. He wants to leap into action, but he won’t be able to convince anyone this sudden voyage is a good idea if he doesn’t get it together. 

It’s hard to calm down with that call looping through his head.

Torse had sounded terrified when his crew-mate— Rerebrace, if Maxwell remembers correctly— called through the interplanar telephone. Maxwell has heard Torse anxious, tense and anguished, but never desperately crying for help. It was new in a truly awful way. If he wasn’t so familiar with Torse’s voice he’d almost be convinced it was someone else. He wishes it was. Everything Maxwell had heard, and the silence that followed, left him nauseated.

When Torse finally responded to his pleas, he’d been a kind of exhausted Maxwell hadn’t known could be audible in an automaton’s voice. It reminded Maxwell of how he feels fighting far past his limit and then further, or how Marya tinkers through the night despite the ceaseless repetitive motions damaging her body. 

Torse had the air of a man trying to sustain the unsustainable. 

It’d be nice to know what the hell is happening, but Torse is so damn cagey about what they share over the line. Nothing they talk about can be sensitive. Torse isn’t even willing to speak of anything that happened within the past 48 hours.

And it’s understandable. Of course it is. Even without the Corrodi remnants— sensitive information Torse only revealed because one fear outweighed another— his friend has spent countless years rebelling against a regime that could spy through crystals and photographs. That’d fuck anyone up. Maxwell’s surprised he even accepted the interplanar telephone.

But none of that helps the vicious sense of uselessness that’s choking Maxwell out. He’d probably be halfway to the boxing club if Samwell hadn’t advised he keep a low profile, and if he didn’t have a mission at hand.

At least Torse asked him for help. Maxwell’s glad, because he isn’t at all convinced he would’ve been able to stand idly by, answering however many distress calls came in before he never heard his friend’s voice again. Torse is the strongest person Maxwell knows, other than himself, but strength isn’t invulnerability. 

Death only loses rounds; not matches.

The high of adventure has never clouded Maxwell’s vision the way it can others’. He has no illusions about the risks he’s already taken to keep Torse alive. Catching his cast-iron friend from the sky had been reckless, crossing the line into foolhardy, and he’s grateful Torse hasn’t learned how exactly he was saved. For one, Maxwell agrees with Marya’s assertion: Comfrey has extracted enough worship already. But more than that, the last thing Maxwell wants is Torse feeling indebted to him for what was an entirely self-serving decision.

Grandfather had seen the spark of adventure— and flame of anger— within Maxwell, but whatever light Maxwell has would’ve been extinguished if the last thing Torse ever said was his name. He’d hit terminal velocity flying straight down, been milliseconds away from death, and when he heard Torse say “Maxwell” in the Amphereon, he was certain that decision was completely worth it. He still is.

He chose selfishly then; he’s choosing selfishly again. 

Torse owes Maxwell nothing.

Maxwell tries to gather himself. He presses a thumb into the bloodstain he’d once left on the desk after he’d ducked into his grandfather’s office to hide from Hatwell; runs his index finger along the bird his grandpa inked around the stain as he spun a story of Monty LaMontgommery befriending the elusive Kabilian bleeding-heart, a dove that had become terrified of humans after years of being hunted and captured.

There’s bravery in trust, Maxie, his grandfather had said. And when you meet those marvelously lucky souls who earn yours, they won’t let you be brave alone.

Maxwell grabs the interplanar telephone, cleverly disguised as a pocket-watch by Marya, and stares into dormant crystal. Rain drums against the windows.

Come to Zern. It would be less lonely if you were here.

He wishes he were there already. There’d been a small, desperate part of Maxwell that had wanted to leap onto Torse’s vessel before the distance between it and the Zephyr was impassable. Torse had been looking back the entire time, and Maxwell knows his friend would have caught him if he miscalculated the jump.

Maybe the miscalculation had been not trying at all, but regret won’t change the reality he’s dealing with.

When the Wind Riders had returned to Gath, they initially split off to deal with personal matters that’d cropped up during the intervening months that had, apparently, passed. It was much more difficult to stage his dad’s dead body than he expected, since his entire family vanished out of thin air for three months and only three of seven brothers ever returned. It didn’t help that Longspot died from a fist caving in his face, and Maxwell is now the only living Gotch whose proclivity for bloodsport is an open secret amongst the elite.

At least they’d disguised the Mark I and had been obscured by the storm when they’d flown through the Effulgent Biangle over Eisengeist. And, according to Sam and Monty’s sources, Mordecestershire had been working under his Queen’s nose to get back in her good graces after the money he threw at MacLeod (from Her Majesty’s coffers) went up in smoke. 

Despite that cover and their collective story of Hatwell’s tragic, humiliating death driving their family into mourning and Longspot Gotch to drink, Maxwell knows it was reasonable for Samwell to request he “please avoid situations in which you might publicly get shark-eyed and bloody a man”. The concession was even tolerable when Gath was simply a detour, but a few days turned into two months of the Wind Riders getting caught up in the sudden surge of planet-wide paranormal activity. 

None of them have felt comfortable flying away from the ghosts in the wires, especially considering the eerie silence of the newly re-ministered Ministry of Deranged Science. 

But Maxwell is far less comfortable making the rounds in polite society— wearing dark suits he purchased to mourn his grandfather for two men whose deaths he celebrated— while Torse is in danger.

At least it’ll be easy to get everyone together and plead his case. The Wind Riders reconvened after they realized the extent of the poltergeists, and have been staying at the Gotch Manor in Utmany because of its proximity to— and distance from— Eisengeist, whose tyrannical Queen has been making gleeful use of the chaos to spread her influence. 

Maxwell is less sure of how easy it’ll be to convince anyone to leave one fight for another.

Well, there’s no use worrying when there’s doing to be done.

Maxwell shoves himself away from the desk and sets about summoning everyone to the first-floor lounge for a meeting. It’d be a simple task if the intercom hadn’t developed the delightful habit of crying with the voices of late Gotches when used. As it is, he’d rather alert his friends the old fashioned way than risk inflicting great-uncle Litswitch on anyone.

Monty and Samwell have been quite busy eking out information at soirées and gentlemen’s clubs— a job Maxwell detests when he doesn’t have an outlet to grapple afterward— but today he’s able to snag them from a witticism-laden game in the billiards room. In their free-time they’ve been going at it so often Van’s redone the doorway to fit Courtney, whose nuzzled greeting nearly knocks Maxwell off his feet.

It takes altogether too many called “Weal!”s and responded “Well!”s to locate Wealwell. By the time he finds his brother suspending himself in a hallway with his feet on one wall and his back against the other, Maxwell’s already pulled Marya out of the craft room she’s claimed as her workshop and asked Van to go find Pappy.

He and Van have developed an easy camaraderie ever since her impromptu decision to show him the ropes of being a bosun. That grueling training is probably the only reason he’s been able to follow Samwell’s guidance so well. The manual labor is an outlet for his energy, and the yelling is an outlet for his anger. The obvious purpose of every task is a relief after dealing with the circular, two-faced nonsense of the upper-crust.

It’s early evening, despite the rain making every hour feel like night, so it’s not hard to guess where Olethra and Ludmila might be.

Ludmila has been having trouble sleeping in the manor— though Marya insists that she’s been doing better than when they’d been in Scrapsylvania. Until recently, Ludmila has woken up screaming bloody murder, been trapped in night terrors, or lurched around sleepwalking nearly every night. In the mornings, or after everyone woken by the commotion rushed over, she’d insist that the problem was where she’d been sleeping. Ludmila could never explain what exactly was wrong, but her location does seem to affect her symptoms. 

After trying nearly every guest bedroom, regular bedroom, lounge and reading nook, they’d finally found a solution when Maxwell— in a desperate bid for everyone to get some goddamn sleep— showed her the secret room hidden behind a painting of his grandfather in the back of their library. Maxwell himself had found it as a young child and decided to make it his hideout, filling the small space with warm lights, books and valuables that weren’t safe elsewhere, and enough pillows and comforters to make a veritable nest. 

On the worst nights he’d pretend to go to bed in his room, stuff pillows under his comforter in the vague shape of a person, climb out the third story window and down the trellis, and sneak to his hideout through the first floor window with the lock he’d broken. Wealwell was the only Gotch he’d ever told about the room. By the time Hatwell discovered the sleeping Maxwell he’d been pranking was a dummy, Maxwell was at an age where his brother just assumed he was sneaking out to party or have sex. A misconception he had only allowed so his actual secret stayed safe.

Now the hideout is occupied by two new rough sleepers— Ludmila and Olethra.

Maxwell still prefers sleeping in the secret room when he has to stay at the manor, but it’s whatever. Ludmila’s actually getting rest, which means they’re all finally able to get rest. Olethra’s eyes have started to lose that awful— and awfully familiar— grief-stricken glaze. They both look and act a lot less like they’re dying. Marya’s happy. Olethra and Ludmila are happy. It’s fine.

He only slams the hidden door a little when he pulls them and Kočka away from the elaborate shadow puppet storytelling session they’re having. Maxwell is almost thirty years old. He’s a grown man who can handle sharing and has other priorities right now.

Everyone convenes. It’s only the hard part left.

“You have gathered us here so mysteriously, Gotch,” Marya remarks, balancing herself on the back of a chaise lounge. “What is the special occasion? Did we all forget your birthday?”

Olethra, cross-legged on the coffee table, chimes in, “Ooh, and this is like a reverse surprise party!”

“No—”

“It’s my birthday,” Wealwell declares. For no reason Maxwell can fathom, his brother is on top of the fireplace mantel.

“No it’s not, Wealwell. Get down from there.” Maxwell pinches the bridge of his nose. “Can’t all of you just sit normal?”

There’s a resounding chorus of “No” from everyone except Samwell, who is sitting in an armchair with perfect posture. 

“Okay, never mind, that isn’t important. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you guys about,” Maxwell says.

He breathes in, but falters.

Instead of an explanation, his mind conjures up the memory of Torse’s crackling terror. Maxwell’s hand clutches at his pocket-watch chain without his conscious input.

“What’s the matter, son?” Monty asks, furrowing his brows and shifting to rest his elbows on his knees. Maxwell can feel the naturalist’s gaze tracking him.

The others seem to pick up on his nerves, too. In an instant, his companions have gone from jovial to tense.

Van asks, “Did something happen?”

“Torse is in danger.” The words burst out of Maxwell. The buzzing stress under his skin has him worrying his hands as he rambles, “He called me about an hour ago— Or, actually his friend did. Torse was in the background and he sounded bad. Scared. She— Rerebrace— asked me to keep talking until I couldn’t. She said it’d help Torse ‘return to himself’, though I’m still not entirely sure what that means.”

“Like a fugue state?” Marya wonders, fidgeting with the crystal telephone she keeps on her chatelaine.

Olethra proposes, “Or hypnosis, like what—”

She and Marya glance down at Ludmila, who’s sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table so Olethra can braid her hair.

“—uh, happened at Mount Charuk.”

Ludmila frowns in thought, running a finger along Kočka’s spine. “Possession, maybe?”

Maxwell still isn’t sure what exactly Marya told her about the Queen or their adventure, but Ludmila’s gaze is distant while Marya’s stays locked on her first protégé.

He answers, “I don’t know, perhaps. Nothing was really clear.”

“Did your talking work? Is he alright?” Van prompts.

Daisuke retorts, “He just said Torse is in danger.”

“You can be in danger and alright. We do it all the time!”

Maxwell nods. “It took him a while, but whatever was affecting Torse... cleared, I guess. For the moment, at least. Rerebrace referred to them as ‘episodes’—”

“Plural?” Monty asks.

“Yes, and they’re not only happening to Torse. Apparently all the automatons in Zern are being affected.”

Maxwell collapses onto an ottoman and scrubs a hand over his face. 

After a heavy sigh, he continues. “I don’t know much more, just that us calling him through the interplanar telephone can work as some sort of... lifeline, I guess? I couldn’t really get anything concrete out of them. Torse still doesn’t wanna say too much over the telephone.”

Monty rubs his knee. “With their history I can understand erring on the side of caution.”

A thoughtful pause fills the room. 

Lightning flashes in the windows. Seconds later, thunder. 

Van asks, “He said it’s been raining over there, right? Could that be related to the episodes—? Like a Zernian version of what’s going on in Gath?”

What is happening in Gath is strange: the dead seemingly communicating through radio, telephone, and telegraph; automaton devices moving on their own, some human-like ones even replicating the last moments of the recently deceased; photographs developing to reveal extra subjects; and timepieces spinning out of control when a haunting is nearby. All happening in quick, unpredictable bursts. An object is haunted one moment and fine the next. 

More confusingly, the storm that rolled in alongside the hauntings has been relentless, but the water, like the ghosts, doesn’t seem to... stay. Gath is being beaten by the storms, but not drowned by them.

Marya hums, “Yes, if Mila’s guess is right, perhaps a storm of specters haunts Zern, as well.”

“I have no idea. Possibly,” Maxwell concedes, feeling himself losing the conversational thread to conjecture.

(Only his understanding that the hauntings are brief and erratic keeps him from entertaining the fear that the interplanar telephone might be speaking with the voice of his dead friend. Torse had been too coherent and responsive, the call had lasted far longer than a haunting would, and his office’s table-clock ticked steadily onwards.)

“Or, oh bleedin’ hell, was it me?” Van gasps, gesturing at her tentacle. “That surge of water did damn near kill us when I freed Jazzy Tazzy.”

“That could have caused the rain in Zern, maybe,” Monty interjects. “But I just can’t see how it would lead to the Zernians developing any kind of ‘episode’, or how it’d cause the rain in Gath.”

Daisuke snaps his fingers. “Could be making ‘em malfunction. Maybe the fellas in Zern ain’t waterproof. There weren’t hardly any signs of water when we got there, before Van did her whole—”

He gestures in a very crude pantomime of the ritual Van had performed outside the Amphereon, adding sound effects for the water she’d ended up summoning.

Olethra nods along furiously, as if the train of logic is still on its tracks. “They need to lay down in rice!”

Maxwell vehemently disagrees with where this is going. “I am not putting Torse in rice—”

“Brother,” Wealwell interjects loudly, sliding off the fireplace in one smooth motion. “Are we going on another adventure?”

Wealwell often speaks without consideration for the ongoing conversation, but the wink and attention he directs solely at Maxwell prove this time it’s deliberate. This kinda stuff is why he calls Wealwell solid.

“Yes,” Maxwell says, forcing himself to look away from the steadying face of his favorite brother to the people he has to actually convince. At least enough to get a trustworthy pilot. “That is, that is the thing. I promised Torse I’d go to Zern. And I know we’re trying to fix what’s going on in Gath, but—”

It feels near impossible to give a pragmatic explanation for this impulse. He has to and he knows he has to, but that doesn’t mean anyone else will feel that same need, or even indulge his. There’s no sensible reason for him, let alone anyone else, to abandon Gath for a problem planets away, but he needs to come up with one.

“What did I tell you?” Monty interrupts, eyebrow raised.

Maxwell stumbles, thrown off for a moment. What did...? 

Oh.

Oh, yes, right. With these people, it can be that simple.

“Torse is my friend,” Maxwell declares, squaring his shoulders. “He needs my help and I promised to help him, but to do that I need—”

“A pilot, at the very least,” Marya says. Her expression is neutral, which for her means she looks vaguely tortured.

“Yes.”

Marya’s face breaks out into a wide grin. “Well, then it is a good thing I know a pair of goslings who have been honking at me, asking when they get to spread their wings!”

“Really?” Maxwell, wide-eyed, choruses with Ludmila and Olethra. He shares a look with them, both women buzzing with the excitement he can feel under his own skin.

“Really!” She casts her gaze across each of them with a fond smile. “I think some classic adventuring will do all three of you some good.”

“Are you sure?” Maxwell asks, because he can’t help himself.

“Yes, Maxwell. Leave the political drudgery to the old-timers with our bad knees.”

He turns to Ludmila. “Are you sure? We’d be traveling to Zern.”

Where Ludmila had been stranded. Where a version of her had once been warped into becoming the despotic Queen responsible for Zern’s centuries-long torment, in stark contrast to the clever young woman who laughs at Olethra’s bad jokes and plays cards with Maxwell.

He knows Torse has complicated feelings about Ludmila, though he’s never outright said so, but Maxwell had been honest when he said he believed Torse would like her.  His fear mostly lies in whether Ludmila will be able to handle being in Zern again.

Ludmila straightens her spine and tilts up her chin. “I am sure. Torse is your friend, and you are mine. I will not live a life controlled by fear when I could be saving others from it. I will not be like her.”

“You couldn’t be,” Olethra says, squeezing her shoulder. Ludmila traps it there with her hand. “And you’ll have us with you, so that’s already a huge difference.”

Maxwell sees Marya wince and quickly diverts the topic. “Then I’d be grateful to have you both with me, and I hope there’s no hard feelings from the rest of you.”

Monty shakes his head. “While I cannot in good conscience leave Gath, you cannot stay away from Zern.”

“And,” Van says. “A dual-pronged investigation will be useful if it turns out what’s happening in Gath and what’s happening in Zern are related. You and Junker both have your fancy crystal doodads, so it’ll be more like a long-distance team effort than anything.”

Ludmila adds, “We modified the interplanar radio in Olethra’s mech, as well. With the MechLeod and Torse, we have four points of communication.”

“We’ll all be able to stay in contact,” Olethra says. “And help Torse through those episodes before we figure out what’s going on in Zern.”

Maxwell tears up a bit. This is one of those times his life feels like the daydreams he’d had as a kid hiding in a secret room. “Thank you guys, truly.”

Daisuke pushes himself out of his chair. “I’m going with them.”

“Ah, because you are a young teeny-bopper at heart!” Marya grins. “Aren’t you, Pappy?”

“Sure.”

Samwell says, “It is quite pragmatic to divide and conquer, Max.” 

"Thank you, brother,” he preens.

“And this way I won’t have to worry about you implicating yourself in father’s murder or publicly tossing more Eisengeistians off sky ships.”

He huffs. “I don’t see why you’re not concerned about Wealwell doing that.”

“Because he’s going with you whether it’s pragmatic or not. My words can’t sway him one way or another once he’s made a decision.”

Wealwell rocks back-and-forth on his heels. “I still need to get my hat back.”

Planning takes a while longer after that. 

Marya insists they take the Zephyr Mark II, since it was bequeathed to Olethra and they’ve already done so many upgrades to make it truly her and Ludmila’s vessel. The group devises codewords for emergencies and a schedule of regular check-ins. 

Wealwell decides to contact Silvio and Onion to see if either are willing to join the crew. Maxwell knows Wealwell and Silvio have broken up in a dramatic fashion at least twice, so he’s not sure what’s going on there and is very unwilling to ask. 

Olethra and Daisuke debate the necessity of bringing along Dawderdale, who is now a more seasoned adventurer, but who also sees Comfrey’s passing as an “in” with Pappy. If she or Silvio come, the relationship drama is going to cause Maxwell several migraines, so their skills had better be worth it or he’s stranding them in the first populated area the Mark II passes.

Van waffles between staying and going, pulled between two separate groups she wanted to protect. She only decides to stay in Gath after Maxwell points out his and Pappy’s capacity for brutal murder, and the likelihood that she’s probably still a target of any remaining Eyeless Hand cultists. Neither of them mention it aloud, but Maxwell suspects the training Van’s given him helps her decision.

Since Van is staying, so is Bert. Olethra mourns the loss of a cook for their vessel, but Maxwell is honestly relieved they got the guy who makes really good baked beans instead of the one that created pomegranate aoli on purpose. Even if it means he has to deal with Daisuke’s scary dog.

They’re probably ill-prepared to set sail tomorrow, but that was true of their last voyage, too. Maxwell doesn’t want to waste any more time getting to Zern, so if everyone else is willing to be equally impulsive he won’t try talking them out of doing the stupid thing.

When they finally adjourn, Marya pulls Maxwell aside.

“Tell me the instant you suspect Mila’s symptoms have worsened,” she implores, face devoid of any of her previous good humor. She looks nearly as anguished as when he and Olethra had found that photograph of Ludmila.

“I was wondering why you seemed so calm about this. But you’re not, are you?"

“I am terrified. My heart races whenever she is out of sight.” she admits. “But I will trust her when she says she is ready, no matter how terribly that decision went the last time.” 

Maxwell cocks his head. “If you’re so afraid, why did you volunteer her? You could go. I could, as much as I’d hate it, take Dawderdale and a Karakamachi blimp.”

“Because if I had not, Mila would not have spoken her wanting. I could tell she was enticed by the prospect of a rescue mission, but she is far too considerate of me. I will not allow my fear to impede her. Ludmila has been struggling so much in Gath, and I know a toll has been taken on you and Olethra as well. I am hoping an adventure will ease your spirits, or at least provide a sense of purpose.” 

Marya wilts. It’s almost painful to look at. Even after they’d saved Ludmila, Marya is still so frail and gaunt. “And I have always wanted to be left in the prologue of Mila’s adventure story. To do that, I have to be left behind. It is a small price.”

“Marya...” Maxwell reaches out and tugs her into a hug. She clings tight, shoulders shuddering. “If you feel you have to stay in Gath, I won’t stop you, but you’re not a prologue. You’re her mentor and our friend. Ludmila and Olethra think the world of you. Torse, too. He’d hate to hear you talking like this.”

“I will wean myself off self-deprecation when he does.”

“You’re both impossible,” Maxwell huffs.

“And you care about us so so so much,” Marya teases, pulling back to pinch his cheeks. “You are going on an entire adventure for your best friend, Gotch. I am quite impressed at how rowdy you become when Torse is involved.”

Maxwell flusters. “He asked me to.”

“Yes, and you leapt like a gazelle to the occasion!”

“It’s—” His playfulness flickers out. “He was so scared, Mar. I— I’m not sure I’m qualified to help him with something like this. I’m worried I won’t know what to do.”

“Oh, Maxwell,” Marya holds his cheeks with a sad smile. “Just do everything you can.”