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Star quickly discarded most of the plans. 1 or 3 were the only ones that made sense to him. “I should be the one to go to the flooded track,” he declared. “Yeah, Dandelion can, but it’s not his territory or anything, and it is mine. I’ve already run it while it was flooded once already, and I think I’ll be the fastest in and out. So I figure, anything else is up to you two. Dandelion will have to work on the circle in here. Dom, do you want to be out there standing watch, or do you want to stick together? I can see pros and cons in both.”

Dom made a face at that, slowly nodding. “…Listen, I get that it might be useful to have a warning sign if something were coming, sure. But… frankly, I don’t want to stand watch alone. I’m just a human dude and the thing we’re dealing with is a demon, right? I might get off a warning to Dandelion, but… like, what’d happen to me after? This is how the Black guy dies first in horror movies.”

“That is… that is a good point,” Star said. “Yeah. Please stay with Dandelion.”

Dandelion gave Dom a quick smile at that. “I’d be glad for the company. This situation is frankly making my skin crawl.”

Shoulders relaxing a little, Dom nodded. “Okay. Then… Dandelion and I will stay here and work on the circle here. Dandelion plays communicator. And… you go out to the track, Star. But… promise you’ll try to be safe? We don’t know if the nixie stayed behind or went with the demon to go check on things. Like, it’d be fantastic if she did. But…”

That wasn’t Star’s favourite thing to think about, but it was valid. “Good point. Dandelion, can you spare me some glamour? Nixies can’t use it well against each other.”

“I’m sorry,” Dandelion said, brows furrowed. “I want to and wish I could, but I’m going to need everything I have while working on this, especially if I’m going to try to communicate with you in the meantime. Which I’ll have to do.”

“Which you’ll have to do,” Star echoed, resigned. “Well, I’ll apply my own glamour and move quietly.” He couldn’t even use his bardic abilities, not until a fight broke out, because stealth and song did not go well together. “Wish me luck.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Dandelion said, and stepped closer, kissing him slow and long and deep. “Come back to me safely,” he said, when it broke. “I couldn’t endure losing you.”

Then he stepped back and, of all things, looked toward Dom like he was expecting him to take a turn on Star. Dom immediately flustered, grabbed Star’s hand instead, and squeezed it. “See you soon.”

Star licked his lips, unable to quite help it, and then pretended not to notice Dom’s eyes flicking to that. “See you,” he agreed, and peeled himself away before he wouldn’t be able to convince himself to go.

It was just around the corner and down a short hallway to hit the side door they’d crept into originally, and from there, not so far to the north end of the flooded track, the far turn. He was fairly sure he was moving stealthy, pale and quiet, barefoot across the dirt.

Yet, the moment his foot hit the edge of the water, a hand shot out of it and wrapped around his ankle, trying to drag him in.

Had he been unaware of the possibility, he’d likely have been swept off his feet. As it was, he nevertheless yelped like a dog whose tail had been stepped on, swinging a panicked kick at the hand. It connected, and he hauled back as the grip slackened.

He didn’t free himself, but he did haul the other nixie out, naked and furious. She bared her teeth at him—teeth that were more familiar to him than the rest of her face after the bite, a tragedy he decided was best left for his therapist to dissect—and growled, “You.”

“Me,” Star said. He drew a shaky breath. He didn’t have time for this. “You’re my younger sister.”

“Hah,” she laughed, a sharp tone. “You don’t get to claim me as any kind of kin, whatever your birth-herd and whoever your dam. Not when you altered the herd forever with your fracturing of it.”

She was posed with hands up and fingers curled into claws, ready to fight and grab, though the real risk would be her feet, especially if she transformed and came at him with hooves. Her flank when transformed would also be bad; if she stuck him to her, Star wasn’t sure he’d be able to fight her enough to change the circle underwater. He raised both hands as if trying to assuage her, though he was calculating his chances of getting around her and underwater fast enough to get anything done. “I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t fracture anything. They fractured me, by torturing people in front of me, by forcing me to eat those I wanted to release. I’d have stayed forever if they’d just let me choose who not to eat.”

“Humans are prey,” she spat. “And you didn’t just walk away and leave us unchanged, did you know? Every single colt and filly raised after you were under extra scrutiny. Constant judgment. There was no interaction with anyone outside the herd, only each other and prey. Should we get away long enough for a solo hunt and not come back with a feast, we’d be grilled and questioned and made to go to sleep hungry, no food shared to us. Any interactions we had were always suspect.”

Star could see how that would happen, admittedly. He licked his lips. “Okay, but,” he said, “that’s not my fault. You see how that’s not my fault, right? I left. I didn’t turn a hand or a hoof or my teeth on any member of my own herd. I simply left. What they decided to do after it was on them.”

Another laugh at that, bitter. “Blaming them, really? You made yourself into a cautionary tale. You were a loss. A grief. A horror. A fear. You stood for all the dangers of letting humans tame you, letting other fairies own you. If we feared bridles before, now we feared wilful submission. You did that. I thought I’d never escape it.”

And yet… “But here you are?” Star pointed out. He tried taking a step to the side, but she moved to block that too.

Any luck? It was Dandelion’s voice, not in his head but crawling through his brain and blood. Even being alright having Dandelion in those places didn’t make it easy to take. He could see why communication magic might be a bit odd, and tried not to visibly react to it. He sort of thought back the exact scenario he found himself in, unsure how else to communicate, and Dandelion responded with, Okay. Understood. But Ramullin just crossed my spore circle and the jig is, as they say, about to be up, if it’s not already. Hurry, if you can. If not, I’ll try sending Dom out with a halter.

Don’t, he thought back quickly. Not after what she’d just said. I’ll deal with it. “You’re here,” he said again; only moments had passed since his last words aloud. “You’re in Branwin’s Valley and have been for a while. So you must have got out.”

“I met Ramullin on a solo hunt,” she admitted. “They… cared for me. As much as they’re able, at least. They saw my resentment and met it. We talked about the things others can do to you by getting away, and our anger and fury found a home in each other. It did. So I went with them, and—”

“Wait,” Star said. “Hang on. You’re just like me, then. That’s what happened with me and Dandelion. I met him, and he offered me empathy to what I was going through, and I just went with him.”

“I’m nothing like you,” she shouted, and launched herself at him.

Star began singing to himself as he dodged, trying to increase his own speed rather than his strength, dodging and weaving. But even so, she was forcing him back, away from the water, and he found himself looking around wildly as he blocked and ducked and punched in return, as he kicked out, as he took a foot to the knee, and then she was changing, her weight increasing into her equine form as she slammed into him, and he thought, Fuck, she’s going to stick me—

But before she could, she was torn away from him.

He looked around wildly at the blur of black fur forcing her away from him, and realized that it was Georgio, forehead set into her neck rather than her side. She’d barely avoided getting gored by his horns, which were on either side of that neck, but he was forcing her to sidestep unsteadily up the slope to avoid being taken down under his bulk.

Star could have cried. “Georgio!”

“I GOT YOU, BUDDY,” Georgio panted. He was slick with sweat—how long had he been running? “Whaddya need?”

“Keep her occupied!” Star yelled, running for the water. “I’ll explain later!”

The water was miserably dirty, though not as cloudy as it had been earlier, but he felt nothing but relief as he broke through its ice-cold surface. He swam for where he remembered the center of the track to be. There’d been a tree there, he recalled, so it may have marked the spot.

Sure enough, at the base of the tree was a structure carved into the flooded turf. It had been cut out, but Star grabbed the tree, planting his feet on the trunk and throwing his weight back to haul a pointed branch off it.

Star— he felt/heard.

I’m here, he yelled back to Dandelion in his head. Hurry! What parts?

The next part, as Dandelion had implied, was relatively easy. Dandelion described a line, and Star used the branch to scribble it out, break its structure. Then another, and Star did it again. A third, and—

Star felt the growing energy just release, draining out like a plug had been pulled. He thought a tone of wordless celebration at Dandelion. While they still had the rest of this to deal with, at least the demon couldn’t activate a city-wide attack at a moment’s notice.

Dandelion did not return the celebration. Instead, crawling through Star’s blood, was: I need you back here, now. Then, as if he’d just changed his mind. No, maybe you’d better run away. It’s not safe. Ramullin must have set up a teleportation circle elsewhere in the building. They’re here now. Get away while you can. I’m sorry.

Star, obviously, was not going to get away. That wasn’t even a choice to him. Both Dom and Dandelion were in that room. He would never just run away.

He pushed off the tree with both feet, speeding through the water until he hit ground, and ran up the bank again. As he did, he saw that his sister and Georgio were still fighting; Georgio was stuck to her side now, but pound-for-pound was stronger than her, the same way he was stronger than Star. They were currently having a horrible tug of war over their own skin, while trying to kick and pummel and headbutt each other.

Star wished he could help, but the less time he gave the demon to work, the better. “Keep it up,” he called to Georgio. “I’m sorry! Keep her busy! There’s a demon in there, I have to deal with this somehow!”

Georgio let out a bellow instead of an answer, and Star sang him a brief bar from All Star as he passed, trying to increase Georgio’s stamina. 

As he passed, he saw up the road in the distance and noticed a large group of people, lit up by starlight and moonlight. The Twilight Council was on the move, and was on their way here. But they were a good ten minutes away, still, at the gentle walking pace in which they were moving. Star wasn’t sure that they’d make it in time.

Star slammed the side door open again, then switched to a jog, and a crawl, as he approached the office. He wasn’t sure what he could do—get the jump on the demon, maybe?—but he was sure he’d have less of a chance to do it if the demon saw him coming.

As he rounded the corner, he saw that the office door was open. He pulled all the glamour he had available to himself to hide himself in shadows, creeping up and peeking in.

Dandelion stood in front of the office desk, the magic circle currently deactivated, his arms spread. Star couldn’t see Dom from here, but could hear him, feel him; Dandelion must have shoved him under the desk for cover. If Star could tell he was here, though, the demon could too, if they bothered to have eyes for anything but Dandelion.

Whatever hopes Star had of getting the jump on this demon shredded in his chest as he looked at Ramullin for the first time. Black hair cascaded down a long back; they were a good seven feet tall, with an additional foot in horns that nearly touched the office ceiling. Their arms were bare, and they weren’t arms. It was like some sort of clay mannequin that cracks had appeared all over the surface of. Inside was a mass of eyes and wings, glowing brightly, dripping in and out of the gaps like lava bubbling. Star had met plenty of demons before down here, and even had met Ferthur when they cut through Abyssal territory a year ago. But Ferthur was untitled, and Ramullin was titled. Ramullin of the Wastes, who had legions under their command. Ferthur was just some sort of border guard, from what Star had seen of him.

This was nothing like Ferthur. There was an ancientness to this one that felt like perhaps the humans were right and that demons were fallen angels. Star had never seen an angel or heard of a way to a celestial realm, and didn’t know if they were real or not. If they were, this was whatever happened when one of them went wrong.

“The city is safe, Exile, but you are not,” Ramullin was saying, in a desiccated voice that sounded like wind that was too hot to breathe. “I can do quite a bit of harm here regardless of having that circle up. For example, Exile, if I were to dehydrate that human you’re hiding. I can take every bit of moisture from his body slow and steady so he feels every moment of it before it kills him.”

“Grotesque,” Dandelion said. He was keeping his tone conversational, trying not to goad Ramullin, most likely, but Star could detect the trembling horror and outrage behind that. “You could always not do that.,”

“I could always not do that,” Ramullin agreed. “My associate Seerose is likely killing your nixie right now, as we speak. That he got into the water there doesn’t mean he’ll ever get out, not by himself. But I can have her spare him. I can spare the human. I can not set fire to this building and all those around us. You could just come with me and accept the torture I’m owed for the things you’ve done. I believe it’d come with interest, at this late point.”

Dandelion said, “You understand that I’m reluctant to do that.”

“I understand your reluctance will have its costs,” Ramullin said evenly. The room heated up by a few degrees, near instantly; Star, who’d been soaking wet from his swim at the track, found himself dry.

Dandelion was trying to delay, but—it was obvious the moment he gave up on that, his shoulders sagging. And why would he delay further? He’d told Star to run, not to come here—and for good reason. What could Star do against this demon? And Dandelion didn’t know if or when the Twilight Council was coming. There was no indoor window here to show that they were a mere, what, eight minutes away now from surrounding the building and starting a banishment, was there? He had no reason to keep fighting.

“All right,” Dandelion conceded. “I see the point you’re making. But I won’t consent without setting terms.”

“That’s fair and valid,” Ramullin said. “Though you understand that I won’t let you put protections on yourself.”

“I understand that. But there are threats you made I will need to negotiate,” Dandelion said. “If I go with you, will you still harm this human? Any other nearby human? Will you reset the circles and damage the city? Will you call Seerose off or keep her attacking my nixie? These are the things of concern to me, and which my health will need to be traded for.”

Dandelion might be able to buy a little time with this, and having the demon agree to these things would be useful, but Star didn’t think he’d be able to buy a full eight or nine minutes of it. Star swayed back against the wall outside the office, trying to think.

Compared to a demon lord, Star was largely powerless. He had his own ability: His weak glamours, his bardic buffs and debuffs, his ability to transform into a horse and stick something to his side. He could kick and bite. That was not enough to deal with this power, not by itself.

So what should he do? He wasn’t strong enough to take this demon on in a mano-a-mano fight. He could think of several possible plans, yet again:

One: Should he let Dandelion barter himself away in the hopes that he was doing it because he secretly had a plan, and then try to rescue Dandelion before Dandelion could actually get taken away?

Two: Should he jump in right now and interrupt somehow, try to get that last few minutes of time back through his own actions as a decoy and if so, what should he do, what should he say? It’s likely they’d all get a bit hurt, but it might give time for the Twilight Council to get here.

Three: Should he get the demon out and away from his boys? That was possible, actually. He could stick Ramullin to him, and then drag him somewhere. But if he did, where? And Ramullin surely would be doing their best to get away and harm him back, and he’d just have to endure it.

Four: He could try to offer himself up instead of Dandelion. He wasn’t sure if this would work—Ramullin seemed pretty fixated—but it’d hurt Dandelion to have Star get taken more than it would hurt him to go himself, and pointing that out might win Ramullin over. It wasn’t a safe plan, but it might do something.

There was also the ambiguous fifth option which is that he’d somehow magically think of something he hadn’t already considered in the few seconds before he’d have to act. 

[Which plan sounds good, and how should he execute it?
Or do you have another idea in mind?
Leave a suggestion in the comments!]

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Another thought occurred to Star, as if some of his previous planning had fallen behind and got stuck behind a wall or some such. “….Ugh, could we have rigged the building to blow and delay the demon more? I don’t suppose you already did that before we came back, Dandelion?”

Dandelion laughed. “No, a spell like that, on a delay and over a wide area, is hard enough to do under good circumstances. There was enough iron in that building to bend almost any working I tried, since I use fairy magic, not witchcraft.” He paused, then added. “Also, we agreed we didn’t want to execute the folks in the truck, at least not while they were trapped and helpless, and that would fundamentally just be doing that, if it had enough force to harm a demon of that one’s power.” Another pause. “…Also, I’m rich, but I’m not rich enough to pay for the building and all its contents, and if I used a spell that large they would find my magical signature when they investigated.”

Star waved a hand at him. “Point taken, I guess,” he said, in a drawled voice of disaffected annoyance he put on in the hopes that it would get a laugh out of Dandelion. “We can’t go back in time and do spells we didn’t do, I get it, I get it.”

“Well, I did do a spell, though,” Dandelion said, and if he hadn’t laughed he did sound pleased. “I put a quiet marker down in front of the truck door so that it’d send me an alarm when someone stepped into it—that’d include the demon. If they don’t go to the truck rear doors to open them, we won’t get a notice of when the game’s definitely up, but if they do, I’ll know.”

Dom gave Dandelion a startled look. “Didn’t you just say it’d twist all your magics? How do you know it’s fine?”

“Because I didn’t interact with the building,” Dandelion said. “I spored a mushroom circle in the ground beneath it, instead. It won’t survive long, not buried, but it’ll last long enough for our purposes. And I couldn’t do anything else with it, sadly, no binding or damage or anything else, it’s too weak to act on anything. But it can at least tell.”

“That is,” Star said fervently, “such a help actually, I’m glad to know it. Anything else, like—with your magic, is there a way to communicate with Georgio? There’s no iron here.”

Dandelion made an apologetic moue of his mouth. “Well, it’s not quite so simple, no,” he said apologetically. “Communications are extra difficult magic, though not impossible. It has to send a sense, whether a voice or sight, from one person to another despite the hundreds of individual signatures out there. And then it of course depends on the style of magic someone can use. A fairy magic like mine relies on sympathetic magic, so we’d have to have some part of the person on us to call to them with. Hair or nails, oaths, things like that. Witches can use that too, but also can use identifiers, like names or appearance. We can’t use that, but it’s why witches are good at binding demons or fairies they know the name and shape of.”

Star saw Dom shift, and glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, noticing that Dom was a little enraptured with this magical explanation, with Dandelion having shifted into a calm, knowledgeable figure like this. Star knew that Dandelion was hiding his own anxiety with it, and tried to quell a jealous swell in his chest.

“So that’s a no,” he said, instead of any of the irrational things that tried to be said.

“No, without finding a witch who either knows Georgio well enough to contact him, or is strong enough to do so without that,” Dandelion said. “Since he’s a public …mount? Figure? …that might be possible, but we just don’t have the time. Alas, we cannot coordinate with the Manotaur.”

Well, whatever. Star gave up on would-haves could-haves, and shook himself. He put the rest to the side and drew a rough outline of the track layout on the table with the dregs of his coffee. “So here’s what I think. I think we should come in the far side here, through the stables. We can try to find Halle—”

“Shit, Star, that’s a great idea,” Dom said, startled. He turned to Dandelion. “She’s a gargoyle, she’s always somewhere on site. Like Star said, usually the stables.”

Star nodded. “If she’s there and we can find her, she can at least stand guard, or maybe even help out. She’s part of the track, so it’s probably nigh-impossible to ward her out of anything on the track. Anything that affected the building would also affect her, right?”

“Makes sense,” Dandelion agreed. “So we try to find her. Just move on if we can’t, though.”

“Right,” Star said. “We circle around the flooded track to the north, and enter the side entrance into the building up on the north end there. That way, we enter closest to the offices. Fewer traps than we might have to deal with crossing through the building itself.”

“Good call,” Dom said. “And when do we go?”

“Now,” Dandelion said, and rose.

Nerves seemed to catch all three of them as they headed down the street to the track. They walked quietly in the dark, not chatting, like their voices alone might attract too much attention. Coming in from the north took them down the back road into the stables area, and while the door into them was locked, Dandelion confirmed that they weren’t magically locked. Since it was the barn side, it was a fairly simple padlock, and Star picked it quickly. 

“In we go,” Dandelion murmured, and led the way. They took 3 steps into the dark before realizing that Dom wasn’t following and, yeah, probably needed light to see.

That was fair. “Maybe fine if we keep it low and only inside here,” Star suggested. “There’s more windows in the actual clubhouse so it should be easier to see there.”

Dandelion focused and grew a plant from his hand; he blew, and seed-heads flew up in a flurry, beginning to glow and float around them, making shadows swim and flicker. Dom made a noise that didn’t seem exactly happy about it, but he stepped in to join them, and the three of them proceeded down the main stable hallway.

It was in this uncanny, shadow-flickering horror lighting that they found the body.

Halle had been smashed into several large pieces. Dom and Star sucked a breath in simultaneously as they recognized what this strange combination of shapes was, and Dandelion shifted closer, bringing the dancing seed lights in. “This was your friend?” he asked, soft.

Was. Was. Star’s gaze traced over the torso, shattered into a Y shape, the hunched legs over in a far corner, tail nearby, both arms broken in two different places and flung away. He saw, after a moment of searching, that Halle’s beaked, bald head had rolled into a stall.

“Is there anything we can do?” Dom asked, numb and hopeless.

That made the shock leave, at least. This wasn’t a fairy. Not a human, either. Her body being broken to pieces didn’t mean she was dead for certain. If it were any of the three of them, that’d be the end. A soul torn out of a body, or a soulless body torn so what energies animated it dissipated.  “Maybe,” Star said, shaky. “I think it’s possible to repair gargoyles.”

“It’s possible,” Dandelion agreed in a murmur. “Magically, we’d need a witch with a strong alignment with stone. You can repair them physically, too, with a talented enough stonemason, but with that number of fractures, a witch might be the best choice. It still might fail, though.”

Star swallowed. “Well, we can see what the Twilight Council says once we get through this.” Not if. If they died, well, a lot more than just Halle would be down and out, that was for sure, so no point thinking about that. Fury pounded through him harder than grief, now; this was his friend, for all that she was hard to talk to sometimes. This was his track they were using to harm his city in the name of cornering his lord, and this had all kicked off because they’d decided to use his jockey to do it…!

He took a few deep breaths, trying to at least focus enough to not fuck this up entirely. “No point sticking around here, then,” he said shortly. “Let’s go.”

They headed out of the stables and, as planned, sneaked low and quiet across the lawn to the north side of the flooded tracks. It was nerve-wracking and uncomfortable; Star kept finding himself glancing at the flooded pond as if looking for something there. It might just be paranoia after what had happened last time he was here, though, his old drowning trauma rising up and all that. He didn’t see anyone or anything out there whenever he checked, at least.

Still, it was with some relief that they left the track behind and huddled around the side door to the north of the building. This was also locked, but not warded, which made some kind of sense; the road was off that way, and passersby might notice if something were unusual. Any traps would be inside, instead. 

It was fairly easily picked, at least.

It let them into a hallway that went first past a set of bathrooms, then the offices and conference rooms. As soon as they stepped out to face the offices—while of course keeping careful eye out for anything that seemed odd—Star spared a moment to be grateful that they’d brought Dom.

Every single office had a horseshoe over the door: a ward that prevented entry from the fae. Star or Dandelion wouldn’t even be able to approach those doors.

Beside him, Dandelion hissed out a breath. “All the doors are magically locked, as well as physically, as well as the horseshoes,” he said. “Likely only one room would be used for this, but I don’t know as there’s a way to tell which. The stench of demonic magic fills the hallway due to all the locks.”

Star could pick up the aroma, but clearly not as well as Dandelion could. “Hell. I can pick any of the locks, but that takes time too.”

Dom looked between them and the doors. He clearly recognized the horseshoe thing—Star had told him before, given the number of horseshoes in a place that had horses. “What would the room need to be appropriate for the ritual? I’ve been in all of these at one point or another.”

“I doubt any of them have sinks,” Dandelion said, “But if they did, great. Otherwise, some sort of closeness to running water. Demons, like fairies, use a lot of sympathetic magic in their rituals.”

“No sinks,” Dom agreed. “…One of them has a pipe that runs under it.”

Dandelion’s eyes lit up. “You’re sure?”

“Fairly sure. Whenever someone flushes those toilets back by the entrance we came in, there’s a big clunk and a rushing sound under the floor in that room,” Dom said. “None of the other offices get that.

“Ahh, bless older buildings,” Dandelion said happily. “All right, show us which one, and if you can remove the horseshoe…?”

“On it,” Dom said, seeming a bit pleased. He got a chair from a bit further down the hallway and put it in front so that he could take the horseshoe down easily, then just sort of tucked it into the seat and shoved that across the hall. “Good?”

Dandelion nodded. “Good. You’re incredibly helpful,” he said, and he went down on a knee to examine the lock. “Star, can you pick this? I can work on the magical side of the lock while you do.”

“Maybe get the magic first. Just in case,” Star said.

It didn’t seem worth arguing, Dandelion just shrugged and nodded. He focused for a while, and Star became uncomfortably aware of the time passing, but there was no helping it. It wasn’t fairy magic, so lacking the connection, he probably had to do something else to understand and counter the spell. Probably find its intention and then work around that in some way.

“Aha,” Dandelion said, after seven minutes had passed—a seven minutes they wouldn’t get back. “The spell’s looking at the lock to confirm that it’s in the right position, and if it isn’t, it forces it back to that one. Since it’s essentially looking, I can just—”

There was a glimmer of glamour, not of magic, and Dandelion rose. “The spell’s still on it,” he added. “It’s just blind right now, so it won’t see the lock change. Easy.”

“Easy,” Star echoed back, and picked the physical lock. It was a Kwock, which was actually horrible security for the offices themselves, but then, he supposed anyone here had already gotten in the building. He opened it in seconds. As he turned, he caught them both looking impressed and decided that unless they asked, they did not need to know how easy these locks actually were.

Star stepped back and let Dandelion take this one too, as the most powerful one and the one most likely to be able to identify the exact moment that something went wrong. Nothing happened when he stepped through, and it turned out that they also wouldn’t need to rely on Dandelion’s senses to find the spell.

The entire office was covered in a giant magic circle, painted all over the walls and down to the floor. “No harm entering,” Dandelion promised, and stepped in.

It was hard to feel so sure, but if Dandelion was going, so was he; Star followed, and Dom followed Star with equal reluctance.

Dandelion went back into the same semi-trance, focused attention on the new spell in the same way as he’d done outside. Although this spell was significantly better, Dandelion already knew the intention for it, so Star figured it’d take faster.

It did, but not by much. Around five minutes later, Dandelion said, “Ohhhh,” in a tone of sudden understanding.

“Oh? What’s oh?” Dom asked. He’d been standing really still the whole time, as if afraid that moving might trigger anything, seeming more and more agitated. The grief and fear had come back onto his face. Standing still had left him thinking unpleasant thoughts about what they’d already seen, Star thought, and let his hand brush Dom’s reassuringly.

“The reason it was hard to recognize is that half the symbols are in a second circle,” Dandelion said. “It’s not normally split like this, but he’s connecting the surface to the water and dirt in a way that—well, it’s unusual, but it’s harder to remove, which is why they probably did it this way.” 

Star did not like that. “Do we need a specialist?”

“No, we just need to access the second circle, and to undo them simultaneously. It’s simple. You don’t even have magic to undo this. Erase or scuff this line, then this one, then this one,” Dandelion said. “All the symbols in either circle will come undone. But it has to be done simultaneously and in the same order, or the power will overflow. That’s why it’s more of a challenge.”

“So should we start checking other offices?” Dom asked.

Dandelion shook his head. “I should have recognized it when we passed. Based on the angles of writing and the pull of the spell, and what I felt outside… the other circle should be underwater in the middle of the flooded track.”

Not done in paint, then, but built in some other way down there. Star made a face. “….so two circles that have to be dealt with at the same time in two different places. Can you communicate with whoever goes out there? We talked about communication magic earlier.”

“I could send a short message to you without any difficulty given how close you’ll be and that you’re my vassal and lover,” Dandelion told Star. “Dom would be a bit harder. Might be easier if we made out.”

“Here? Now?” Dom yelped.

“Sharing saliva is powerful,” Dandelion said. “Regardless, we have three people, so we’ll have to decide who goes where. Two people in one place and one in the other. Or, I suppose, one for each circle and a third to stand watch, if we felt that was important enough to risk our strength in numbers that way. I shouldn’t stand watch, though, if I’m supposed to communicate with the other to time the line-erasure. I’d at least have to watch what was happening. I need to be at one of the circles.”

“You and I can both handle water easily,” Star told Dandelion. “So either or both of us could go there. Dom?”

Dom didn’t look pleased. “I mean, if you could enchant me to breathe water, I’d try if you said I had to, but I don’t do a lot of swimming. I think I’d be best to be out on watch or in the office undoing the lines there.”

“Okay,” Star said. “I can go anywhere, though watch is boring. Let me think.” As far as he could determine, since Dandelion couldn’t be on watch and Dom couldn’t be in the water, there were then five possible options to pick from:

1: Dandelion and Dom stayed together in the office and worked on the removal of lines there. Star would go into the water at the track alone.

2: Star and Dandelion could go underwater together, and leave Dom in the office after setting things up so Dandelion could communicate with Dom. 

3: Star could go to the water, Dandelion could stay in the office, and Dom could head out into the main clubhouse to keep watch.

4: Dandelion could go to the water, Star could stay in the office, and Dom could stand watch. 

5: Star could stay on watch while Dandelion went in the water and Dom stayed in the office and the two talked secretly with magic while saving the city together, and Star himself just waited outside on the boring job and was left behind forever.

What seemed to make the most sense for them to do, though?

[So which option are we going with?
Who at which circle (water/office),
and do we have anyone risk standing watch?
Leave a suggestion in the comments on this for sure
but also anything else you think is relevant at this late stage!

Story is not ending tomorrow; the final part will most likely be on Nov 02.]

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When the question was put to him so bluntly, the answer was obvious.

Star wanted Dandelion there. 

It wasn’t just his own wants, though. He could overcome that in his fear for Dandelion, that much he knew. He did want to keep Dandelion safe however he could—but Dandelion was powerful. He was strong, much stronger than Star would ever be, and in a situation like this, it wasn’t just that Star was in danger. (Though he was, he thought helplessly, he was being personally targeted. He didn’t know what had happened with the nixie that they went with using Vayne to get Star instead of her, and that felt like a mine buried and ready to explode if he put too much weight on it). It wasn’t even that Dandelion or Dom were in danger. 

This whole city was in danger. He couldn’t afford not to make use of Dandelion, and if it meant he would have the comfort of being able to see him, being able to reach out to and touch him, to die with Dandelion at his side if this all went badly—well, that wasn’t selfish when it was for a good cause, right? 

“Come, please,” Star said, and squeezed Dandelion’s hand between both of his own, raising it and jamming it awkwardly against his own chest. “Please. Please. I need you there. We might all need you there. I just didn’t want—I just wanted to explore the option, in case it was best, but…”

Dandelion’s expression warmed again, and he seemed to relax into the touch, swaying forward toward Star. He winced almost absently as that put strain on the injury to his shoulder, and Star panicked, digging around and pulling out the remainder of his loaf of bread. “Eat some bread,” he ordered. “It’s healing bread. Speeding healing. Fast. Injury go away more quick.”

A blink, then Dandelion laughed. Eyes glittering, he took the bag from Star, then leaned in again insistently and kissed him.

Star made a whiny little sound as fireworks went off behind his eyes, and he wound his arms around Dandelion, holding on hard until the kiss broke.

Dandelion licked his lips, then drew a piece of bread out of the bag and handed that bag back. “You eat one too, then.”

“I was gonna,” Star complained, taking one out before putting the bag away again. “Don’t tell me to do things that I was already going to do, then I don’t wanna do ’em.”

“Okay,” Dandelion said gently. He wrapped an arm around Star’s shoulders, and they walked the rest of the way to Beanheadings like that.

It was much busier at this hour, which tracked with Star’s memories of the place. It was always doing some kind of business, but the evenings and early night were when it was the most active. Matthias was back on the till, or maybe still on the till—Star had to wonder if he ever left or if he lived here, and what kind of deal he’d made with Kearney Dillon, if he did—but he’d been joined by a human and a glaistig as servers, replacing the ‘get orders from the counter’ service by having them run to various tables as the coffee shop opened up the kitchen for slightly larger food orders and got the bar open for drinks that had a touch of something extra in them.

Good. What they needed right now was cover; if someone were to glance into the window while passing, it wouldn’t need much glamour to hide that they were there if the place was bustling. Star gestured to a table for Dandelion, then headed up to the front. “Hey, Matt! How’s it going?”

“Oh, can’t complain,” Matthias said back, equally cheerful. “What can I do you for?”

Star did not miss the innuendo. Now was not the time for reciprocation, though. “Just three americanos; a friend’s meeting us here but we can’t stay long.”

“Will do. Looks like you’re at table 8, I’ll have someone drop ’em off.”

Star inclined his head, then headed over, sliding in next to Dandelion, who was getting his phone out. “Ready for your first prank call?”

“I am always ready for a prank call,” Dandelion said. His phone shimmered as he shifted his outgoing number to Vayne’s, and he dialed. “Hey, boss.” Suddenly his voice was rough, Vayne’s kind of slimy tone sliding through. “Deal’s done, I have a freaky horse in love with me. I’m just gonna keep him in this form and hope he doesn’t get too frisky if it’s all good with you.” A pause. Star strained to hear the demon’s voice on the other end, but couldn’t make out any words. “Yeah, yeah. Okay. You better keep your end of the deal. See you.”

He hung up and let out a breath. “Good?” he asked Star, winking.

“Sounds like the guy I know,” Star agreed. 

Dom slid in across from him right then, brows lifted. “Why are we pretending to be Vayne?” he asked.

Star upped his glamour so the sound of the crowd would cover his voice, and nodded to the human—whose nametag said Gray (they/them)–as the coffees were dropped off. “One of these is yours. We need you to be alert,” Star said, and then threw himself into it, explaining everything they’d learned and found so far that he hadn’t been able to cover in previous messages.

Dom let out a wincing breath. “Well, I came dressed in dark colours for a stealth mission, but I gotta say I’m a bit nervous about getting caught breaking into the track,” he said. “You sure this isn’t gonna backfire on us in mundane ways?”

Star shook his head. “I mean, anything can happen, but Viv’s gone right to the Twilight Council to explain what’s happening and that we’re heading in first to try to defuse it. It’s as close as possible to getting permission in advance. But… I’m glad you came,” he added, putting a hand over one of Dom’s. “You know the place really well, and besides, there’s ways to ward against fairies. There’s no way to ward against humans.”

“I’ll help however I can,” Dom promised. “I’m just grateful you got me involved. If I sat on the sidelines while you were putting yourself at risk… I don’t know, it’d suck. They tried to use me to start all this and get at you and Dandelion, you know?”

“Yeah. I know. You said you wanted to,” Star said softly. “I listened.”

Dandelion shifted, and Dom abruptly cleared his throat and lifted his coffee with his free hand, downing it. It had taken awhile to explain everything, and it seemed like it was now cool enough to chug. Star shrugged, and did the same.

“Shall I do the last call?” Dandelion asked. “Once I’ve checked in as Yuree, we’ll just have to wait for a few minutes to give time for the demon to head out, and then we’ll want to head in ourselves as soon as possible.”

Star’s heart was suddenly pounding too fast. Maybe he shouldn’t have slammed the coffee after all. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

Dandelion’s phone shimmered, and he called again. “Heyyyy, babes,” he said, in a flirty feminine voice that wasn’t his own. Star wondered what kind of power Dandelion had where he could do that—had he met Yuree sometime before? If she’d dated Adrien, he may have. Or maybe he was just picking her voice and speech up through his own strength of glamour. “All good here, the satyr is just taking a liiiiiittle nap now. Looks like we got all three of that bard’s bitch babes tied up nice and tidy.” A pause for an answer. “Yuuuup, just like that. You probably wanna come out here asap, though, babes, Queef or whatever her name is, she’s looking kinda sick from the iron cuffs, and Vayne might be in danger from too much stallion.” Another pause. “Yeah, uh-huh, see ya in a few, then!”

Shoulders relaxing, Dandelion hung up. “They should be on their way in just a minute. They seemed eager to get out and get control of the situation,” he said mildly. “Now, we wait.”

It turned out that waiting—for a demon lord that you couldn’t see leaving the premises of a place you couldn’t directly watch on a timeline of their own choice—sucked. The three of them sat in silence but for Dandelion’s occasional sips of his coffee, which, after about half a cup, he handed to Star. Star drank the rest, even while regretting his first coffee. No point letting it go to waste.

Whatever happened, Star decided to embrace it. He was going with two people who, if they weren’t his boyfriends, were something to him. Beloved of him. And soon there’d be no more waiting at all.

He tried to plan in those few minutes they had before leaving, running over his mental map of the track. The clubhouse was on the immediate west side of the track itself. It was a 10,000 square foot building with a large dining hall, event space, and kitchen. There were terminals all over the building for the betting, with large windows overlooking the patio that then faced the track.  To the north of the building were the conference rooms and offices. The offices were the place that Star considered most likely to have the spells set up in them as the most private areas; plus, he remembered finding several of them locked and smelling of sulphur. That probably wasn’t unrelated.

Detached from and just north of the clubhouse were the stands: the grandstand and the judges stand. That’d overlook the track, but as an outdoor space visible from a bunch of angles, he doubted much would be happening there.

Annexed to the south side of the clubhouse was the enclosed paddock, with temporary holding space for the mounts, various places to clean and pick and saddle up and all that, and of course the main indoor exercise area for warm-ups and teaching lessons to students. This was where Star and Georgio had been when Star had seen Ramullin walk by on the clubhouse side and the track had flooded just outside.

To the east of all that was the track, a long oval space that was now fully flooded. From what Star had heard, it sounded as though it were currently standing water and had not yet drained. 

On the far side of the track, again further to the east, were the on-site stables where horses could be boarded and cared for. Halle, who couldn’t leave the area and thus would definitely be at the track somewhere, usually stayed at the stables so she could watch the horsies, but since the horses who stayed there would probably have been moved elsewhere after the incident, it was hard to say if she would be there or somewhere else on-site. Unless she’d been enchanted or bound by the enemy somehow, she’d probably be on their side and willing to help.

Entrances to the clubhouse were: the main public entrance on the west, a side entrance near the grandstand to the north, and then the patio entrance from the east, overlooking the track. It could also be reached through the attached paddock, which had two entrances of its own: one from the side to the south and the larger barn-door style entrance to the east near the track. 

What was the best way to enter? Where should they go first? Was it as simple as going in through the front door and heading right to the offices, Star wondered.

And was there anything else he could reasonably do or prep in the last couple of minutes before they headed off to the track?

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Obviously, Star had to be really sure of the situation before deciding any of the specifics. He shook himself again, uneasy. “Éabha, you didn’t answer Dandelion directly. They are setting up at the track.”

“Yes,” Éabha said. She tensed as Dandelion approached with his sword, but he was carefully cutting a gap in the fallen shelving so she could step out of the ring they’d formed. Still, she waited until he offered her a hand before letting herself be guided out. “It’s in a good position in the web of magics. Part of why the magical leagues are held there, apparently? And then after flooding it, they’ve created a connection through the concept of ‘flood.’ They have to set up some destructive demonic magics before they can do anything with it, but then they can trigger it. Like a fuse.”

Star thought, cartoonishly, of a pump on TNT getting pushed down and then water exploding out of the dynamite instead of fire. Ah, yeah, there was the hysteria, he thought. “Cool. Great. And the timing is… you said soon. How soon is soon.”

“I don’t have that information,” Éabha said. “I wasn’t exactly in close with my captor. But it sounded like, if this attempt at a hostage situation failed, they’d step it up and do it ‘as soon as possible’. It could be tonight at the earliest. It could be later if we’re lucky. You still have a few hours before they decide it’s failed, and then it’s up to whatever ‘as soon as possible’ means to them. Once they have it set up, I imagine they’ll contact Dandelion to show their threat.” She slowly dropped Dandelion’s hand, standing awkwardly holding her harp, which seemed to thrum softly even without the tuning pegs.

Caoimhe croaked, “A few hours?”

“Well, they were giving their agents time to bring everyone in,” Éabha murmured. “I checked in once I captured you. Vayne wouldn’t have, since he failed to capture Star. I don’t know whether or not Yuree got a chance to call after capturing Adrien.”

“She didn’t,” Miette said, putting their fingers up in a V.

Adrien let out a weak laugh. “You know, you’re pretty cool,” he told Miette. “Saving me like that. If the world doesn’t end tonight, I’d like to get to know you better.”

“Hey now,” Star said. “We’re talking about the city, not the world. Don’t go heaping even more pressure on.”

It was bad enough as is, especially if they had so little time to act before Ramullin moved on to worse things, as Éabha was implying. He eyed the rest of his group. Everyone was tired and some degree of injured. He and Dandelion were the best off, but both had several wounds from the bone pegs. Adrien and Caoimhe were iron-burned and iron-poisoned. Éabha was battered and burned from the iron shelves collapsing as Dandelion had corralled her. Viv was uninjured, but at the end of her magical reserves. Miette was fine, but hadn’t been volunteering more help than taking the injured back to the Lindwyrm.

If they had more guaranteed time, Star would for sure suggest everyone just go back and rest, contact the authorities, get other people better suited to it to act. But there wasn’t enough information there. If it could be so soon, they couldn’t rest.

Well, if they didn’t have strength to lean on right now… “What about deception?” he wondered aloud. “Maybe we could use Éabha to bring us all in as captives and then we… I don’t know, attack while they think we’re harmless?”

“I don’t think… I mean, perhaps,” Éabha said dubiously. “But there was a set plan. Without the others checking in, it’ll look very suspicious, and I imagine they’d want to make sure you’re all well and truly helpless when I brought you in. Besides, the plan was for the demon to come here to deal with the hostages. Not for me to bring the hostages there.”

“It might still be possible to use this whole thing as a base for trickery,” Dandelion said, warming visibly to the idea. “With my illusions and glamour, I might be able to set up a distraction rather than an ambush. If that demon lord plans to come over here after you all call in, we can make you all call in. That way, we guarantee Ramullin’s out from their headquarters for a short time, which might give us a chance to undo the magics they’ve set up.”

“But even if we woke Yuree and convinced her, Vayne is gone, and his phone with him,” Star pointed out. “Unless—”

“I can magically spoof a phone number,” Dandelion said. “That’s easy. Simple fairy trickery. Star has Vayne’s number, and we can certainly get Yuree’s phone off her. And you must have that demon’s number yourself, Éabha.”

“…I do,” she agreed. “So your plan is to pretend to be Vayne and Yuree, call in as them, and send the demon here to make sure they’re away from the track when you have to go in?”

Dandelion nodded. “It might give us a better chance. Turn their own plan against them.”

“You’d have very limited time,” Éabha said, “before Ramullin realized that it was a trick, and headed right back to the track.”

“We would,” Dandelion said. “Which is why I wouldn’t suggest we actually make it an ambush—that’d put whoever we left in grave danger, and besides, the goal here is to get rid of their leverage by undoing their spells and rituals. We have a few hours still, as you said. So I believe that Star and I should go to a safe place near the track, and call in then. It maximizes our time at the track while the demon’s away. We just go in, find the setup, erase the magic circles. In and out.”

Star brightened. This was starting to seem workable. “Maybe we CAN use this as a chance to get some additional power, too. We get Miette to take our injured out and to the Lindwyrm for protection, as planned. But, Viv, instead of going with them, can you go to the Twilight Council? I think they’d have a pretty strong reason to get involved here ASAP.”

“They’re infamously slow-moving,” Viv said. “But yeah, if I can impress on them that some demon is actually trying to put the whole city under threat, I imagine I can call an emergency all-hands. They’d still have to vote, but I imagine they wouldn’t want to take too long doing that. I wouldn’t wait for them, you should go in anyway, but I hope I can convince them to move in to support you after you’ve gone in to erase the magic circles and all that.”

Star nodded. “And the Twilight Council are involved with the Branwin governing forces, right? They can decide if it’s worth going to the human police or if it’d just raise new problems.” The humans in the city above the Valley found them dangerous, so sometimes things like this were better swept under the rug. But with the city at danger, they might risk it. Regardless, if the Council was in the know, they could make that call, not Star.

“In the meantime,” he continued, “Dandelion and I can go down to… hmm, Beanheadings, maybe. It’s just like a 10 minute walk from the track. Faster on horseback, and it’s relatively protected and neutral. A good place for it. Dandelion can call pretending to be Vayne. I’ll get Dom out to join us; he knows the track really well, and knows the offices and so on better than I do. I don’t usually handle that side of things. Then, after we’ve waited for a bit and caught Dom up, Dandelion can call pretending to be Yuree. Say all the prisoners have been got, and encourage the boss to come on out. Then we wait a few minutes for the demon to leave, and we head over.”

“Got any bruisers in case there’s guards?” Viv asked.

Star had one in mind, and he pulled out his own phone, dialing the stable again. They picked up quickly, sounding harried. “Hi,” Star said, in a chipper voice. “I wanted to see if Georgio had been sent back?”

“Well, about that,” the stable-hand said, tense. “We told him that he’d been asked for and he just… hauled ass and began running down the road. Hopefully he knows what way the city is. And hopefully you have a place to put him up for the night.”

Star winced. “I’ll deal with it,” he said, and hung up. “We might,” he answered Viv. If Georgio showed up, he showed up. There was no contacting him if he was busy running in a random direction on the freeway. “But we might not even need a bruiser. The two of us have glamour, and the stables have way less iron than a warehouse. Plus, since it’s shut down, it should mostly be empty. I’m confident we can sneak better without a bruiser anyway.” 

“The plan sounds good to me,” Dandelion said. “You go ahead and call Dom, Star. I’ll get the phone numbers I need and see everyone else to the door.”

Star did, and his heart leaped when Dominic picked up on almost the first ring. “Hey.”

“Hey. Everything okay?” Dom sounded worried.

All of a sudden, Star felt weak and tired. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. He could have a meltdown later. Just someone asking after him so sweetly didn’t need to be a cause for one now. “I’m good. Things have kind of got more intense, though, and we have to break into the track tonight. I could use your help. You know, knowing your way around, not being a fae in case there’s anti-fairy traps, being moral support. Come meet us at Beanheadings, if you still want to…? I’d understand if you didn’t. If you couldn’t—”

“I’ll be there,” Dom said softly, his voice low. “Thank you for asking me.”

“Okay. I lo… love… that… you’re doing that,” Star said, and hung up.

He practised mindful breathing, and soon enough Dandelion rejoined him. “We’re leaving the guards locked in the truck,” he told Star. “We don’t want them getting out and warning that demon, and we decided against executing them; it’s likely more than one of them was coerced. Maybe the demon will stop to get their story and it’ll buy us a little more time than if they got here and simply found the whole place empty and trashed.”

“Fair enough,” Star said. “Ready? Dom’ll meet us at Beanheadings.”

“Ready,” Dandelion said, and took his hand. “The others have all headed off in a group. Viv will peel off to go talk to the Council and call for an All-Hands. The rest is up to us.”

Star swallowed. Dandelion’s hand felt cool in his, fragile, almost tacky with silvery blood. Together, they carefully picked their way around the fallen shelves and headed for the door; Dandelion had somehow left them a path out. He was almost too skilful, Star thought.

For a long while, they walked in a tired silence, Star occasionally stealing glances up at Dandelion. It was getting dark, and the street lights were coming on; they caught in the white hair haloing his head and lit it up. He really was uncannily beautiful. 

Star found himself squeezing Dandelion’s hand a little too hard. “Do you think you should actually come with me to break in?”

“That’s… the plan, isn’t it?” Dandelion looked at him a bit askance, glancing down at him out of the corner of his eye. “My powerful glamours and all that.”

Swallowing hard, Star put his head down and kept plunging forward. “Yeah. But there’s a chance it’s a trap. We’ll do the phone calls and all that like we planned, but maybe you should stay in Beanheadings? What if they set up something for you personally if you came? On the other hand,” Star found himself babbling, distressed at the way Dandelion’s hand tightened on his, “I want you there. You’re so strong. Your ability with magic is real, too, you don’t just have glamour like me, you actually have magic. And you’re cool. And you’re… comforting. Of course I want you there.”

“I do not want to stay behind and let you and your human go on without me,” Dandelion said, voice falling into a more formal cadence, which was a surefire sign that Star had hurt him. “In a worse case scenario, I should be there, because if Ramullin can activate those spells already, I might be the only one who can stop them. And… if everything went to the dogs, I’m the one they want.”

“That’s true,” Star said, grabbing Dandelion’s hand harder as if to reassure him. “And I do want you there.”

“I doubt it would be a trap. After all, this was a trap. Why trap both places, but keep them separate? And they know you’ve been sniffing around the track, probably, so there could be a trap there for you. If there is, I may be able to defeat it. But… the truth is, I might be too close to the situation to say what the best option is,” Dandelion said, tone aching.

“Dandelion…”

“Should I leave it in your hands, Star?” Dandelion asked, voice low and rough in his distress. “What does your heart say? Should I go with you when it’s time, or wait nearby for your return?”

[Should Dandelion come with Star & Dom to the track,
Or should he stay behind at Beanheadings?
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The others were looking back at Star. He closed his eyes, for a moment wondering how it ended up like this. Dandelion was his leader, the one Star was used to making all the decisions. But Star was the one who’d met her previously, so of course Dandelion was leaving this up to him.

Though actually, Star had only met her in passing before this, he realized. Caoimhe was her friend, and might either feel very strongly about saving her for their friendship, or killing her for the betrayal. Star didn’t think it was passing off the responsibility to at least ask her which should be done, not when speaking over Caoimhe would be a betrayal of its own.

The fact that he didn’t have much more of a stomach for killing other fey than he did for killing humans… that had nothing to do with it.

Regardless, he was hardly going to kill Éabha in front of Caoimhe, unless she wanted that. Which she might. She wasn’t the least murdery fairy Star knew. He knelt down beside her, wincing at the raw sight of her wrists, and brushed her hair back. “Hey. I know what I want, but what do you want done with her? She clapped you in iron, and was going to use you to sell Dandelion to his enemy. But she’s desperate, and is bound herself to do what her master would wish. So what do you say?”

Caoimhe winced as she half-sat up, still straight-backed and serious. Her gaze searched over the fallen, bloodied Éabha. “I should want her dead,” she murmured.

“Do you?” Star asked softly. If Caoimhe wanted it, he’d do it.

But after a long moment, Caoimhe shook her head. “She’s bound. If he has her skin, she belongs to him no matter what else is true. If she wants to be her own again, she must find her skin and get it back. She’s hopeless. Desperate. Let’s help her if we can and see if she can re-earn my trust again after.” She pointed at Éabha, flesh flaking from around her wrists. “And if we cannot help her, let her die on her choices, not ours.”

It was a relief. Star he nodded, rising, spinning around and clapping his hands together. “Well, there you have it, then,” Star told Éabha. “We’re not going to kill you, so instead of falling into despair over that, let’s find your path to freedom.”

She blinked slowly, tears making wet tracks in the dirt on her face. “My path…?”

“What series of choices can give you that kind of chance?” Star asked. “Here’s what I think.”

He spun and began to pace, feet making slapping sounds against the concrete floor. He knew she could hear it, and imagined it’d have the same dramatic effect as watching would. “We have to take on the demon. We don’t have any other choice, you get me? They’ve decided to target Dandelion, and maybe we could run, or maybe we couldn’t. Either way, they’re clearly focusing on emotional damage, given this whole hostage scenario. They want Dandelion to hurt on more levels than just the physical, so running away wouldn’t prevent that. We brought my friend to the Lindwyrm to keep him safe, but he’s got a life to live and so do we. So we have to take on the demon sooner rather than later. More to the point, we’re not going in assuming we’re going to lose. We have to go in assuming we’re going to win. With me so far?”

Éabha made an annoyed, confused noise.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Star said. “So, we’re going to beat the demon. If we find your skin, we’ll bring it back to you. In this case, it’s in your best interests to help us beat the demon. That’s the surest way to get your skin back.”

“But if you can’t win—”

“Going to,” Star said. “But if we can’t win, you might as well go out for a big betrayal of the demon instead of a small letdown. If it’s a ‘you’ve failed me for the last time’ scenario that’s just kind of embarrassing, right? Might as well have it be a ‘You? YOU turned on me?’ moment.”

Slowly, Éabha began to frown. “I feel like you’re not taking this all that seriously.”

“You have no idea how seriously I’m taking it. This is my defence mechanism,” Star retorted. “But can you say I’m wrong? One’s a path to your freedom. Why pick a path that’s a guaranteed dead end?”

Unlike other monsters, unlike humans and witches and even vampires, fairies didn’t have souls. The end was surely the end. It’s why when they made that ancient pact to tithe souls to the demons, they had to trick and gather humans for it. The nobles likely wouldn’t be unwilling to harvest from the fairy host to pay their debts, but they couldn’t. A fairy lived as long as they weren’t killed, and when they died, that was known to be the end.

“But then what happens after?” Éabha asked. “The Lindwyrm…”

“Right,” Star said. “I don’t know if you know this since we didn’t talk all that much, but you didn’t turn on any of the Lindwyrm‘s people. A friend, yes, an ally, and I don’t think he’d be happy with you if he found out, but not someone he’s sworn to protect.”

Miette made a little scoffing sound, and when Star glanced over at her, they just kind of shrugged. 

Star shrugged back and added, “and, like, of course he’s going to find out. Even if one of us didn’t say it, and Miette here didn’t say it, it’d probably come out at some point. So isn’t your best bet to actually work with us so we can in good faith say how you helped us solve the problem in the end? I don’t think he’d kill you if we spoke for you, not when he’s offered you protection. And even if he kicks you out, or you leave on bad terms, well, that’s not great but if you have your skin back, you don’t need his protection anymore! The demon would be gone and you wouldn’t need the Lindwyrm to live.”

For a long moment, she was bitterly silent. Then she began to laugh; not a particularly humorous sound, but nevertheless, there was an edge of relief to it. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. You’re completely right. Why give up when there’s still a chance? I don’t remember what hope feels like, and I don’t think I’m feeling it now, but I would like to feel it again sometime.”

Star did not let his legs go weak, though he stopped pacing. “Good, okay,” he said.

“That was very attractive,” Dandelion called over to him.

Star felt himself go scarlet. Just because Éabha could hear it regardless didn’t mean he shouldn’t have whispered. “COOL! Cool. Anyway, uh.” He shook himself all over. “We have questions. Then we’ll need to get you somewhere safe…”

“We don’t need to tell the Lindwyrm right away,” Dandelion said. “I think Miette could take Éabha, Caoimhe, and Adrien back to the Lindwyrm and tell him that I up my donation to protect my band-mates while they recover. They’re in too much pain to do anything now anyway. Yes?”

Miette scratched their chin. “No fur off my tail. I can do that.”

“Great. So once we have some answers, and in exchange for your phone number so I can ask you other questions if I think of them later,” Star said, “we’ll get you to safety before we go to deal with the demon. Now: What’s the demon’s name? We weren’t even sure until recently that it was a demon, not a witch.”

He supposed it still wasn’t 100% confirmed, but Éabha fixed that a moment later: “Ramullin of the Wastes. They believe you owe them many years of torture, Dandelion, and their legions were decimated in exchange for their part in failing to retrieve the tithe. It did not affect the other two so badly because they were not as eager to go to war; Ramullin invests in their legions.”

Dandelion grimaced. “Ah,” he said. “Politics. And there’s nothing I could do to bring that army back, so what’s left is for me to suffer.”

“Yes,” Éabha said. “To my understanding, a year ago they learned not just that you were alive but what gate you came out of.  I’m not sure how they learned it, but they did. So they spent some time digging up connections you had—rather, not just the connections that you’d made, but finding those who’d act against them. ”

A year ago was when they’d met Ferthur, as part of Viv’s whole incident, and the demon had been furious to see ‘the exile’ moving around between worlds instead of staying in the human realm. He must have gone back to the others and complained about it or some such, and Ramullin was the one who’d decided to do something. Star glanced aside at Viv and found her looking stricken and guilty—as if it were her fault, but Dandelion had insisted on helping her. 

She swayed abruptly, and Star revised at least some of the reaction to sheer exhaustion. He remembered that she’d been actively casting over and over since getting in here, turning off alarm spells and cutting through metal, over and over again. She probably was almost out of her reserves.

He turned back to Éabha, putting that aside as a worry for a later Star. “By the people connected to those connections, you mean yourself for Caoimhe?”

“And his succubus ex Yuree for Adrien, and your sister for you,” Éabha said off-handedly. “Though I think there was an issue with the sister or some such? At least, they switched to using one of your rivals at the track, yeah?”

Star almost didn’t hear the last. He was reeling with the thought. The nixie in the water on the track had looked like him, as they’d said, but he hadn’t recognized her. 

Then again—perhaps it wasn’t his older sister. Perhaps it was his younger. She’d just been a chubby little filly when he’d left, centuries ago, and he didn’t think he’d recognize her now if he saw her. Perhaps he already didn’t.

“Star—” Dandelion was next to him now, sliding an arm around him. He collapsed gratefully against Dandelion’s side, fully gearing up to throw a big tantrum, and drew deep breaths to try to get himself back under control. “Star.”

“I’m here,” Star whined, butting his head into Dandelion’s shoulder, hard. Only the wince reminded him Dandelion had just injured that. “It doesn’t change anything. I don’t know her, and if I did, she clearly bears no love for me.”

Dandelion didn’t answer, just squeezed him briefly. Star tried to breeze past that, put that echoing your sister, your sister into the past instead of the present. “And where are they now? Weren’t they going to come check on their hostages?”

“Yes,” Éabha said. “But no. We were all supposed to check in, and they’d come here after we all had. I did, I don’t know if Yuree did or didn’t get a chance to, but obviously your jockey did not. Once enough time has passed and we haven’t checked in, they might nevertheless come check it out themselves.”

“You don’t think they will?”

She shook her head. “I think they’ll consider that one a failure and stay at the track, where they’ve set up their main base. Instead, I think they’ll speed up their plans, since they’d know you’re onto them if you’d managed to deal with the hostage situation so quickly. I think they’ll go after the other thing Dandelion loves, and do it as soon as possible.”

Star glanced up at Dandelion, but he was also looking confused, a frown between his brows. “I don’t have any people I care for more than my three vassals. Who would it be?”

“I didn’t say person,” Éabha said. “I said thing. Perhaps I ought to have said place?”

The confusion only lasted a moment longer before Dandelion’s eyes widened. “They’re going after the city?”

“The city’s still not entirely stable,” Éabha said. “Physically, the damage from the Valleys sucking the geography down has left a number of instabilities under the ground. Magically, the gates themselves destabilize land masses; that’s why streets move around in the deepest part of the Valleys. It’s not something that could happen accidentally, but someone deliberately going in and setting up nearish to the gate to pinch and tweak and divert energies, yeah, that could get in under the city, couldn’t it? That’s on the magical side. And on the physical… they have a fuath.”

It wasn’t a term from the area of the world Star himself was from. There was a reason he called himself a nixie; he was the exact sub-breed of the brook horse fairy that had grown up in the area of Faerie closest to Germany. One who grew up close to Scotland might be a Kelpie, one near Orkney a Nuckelavee. They had slightly different appearances and abilities, but they were all essentially the same thing. 

But he nevertheless knew what a fuath was to the Scottish and the Irish fairies, and that by their reckoning he would count among them. Fuath were malevolent water fairies: drowning fairies like merfolk or like brook horses, river weepers like washerwomen and banshees, manifestation of water weeds like fideals, river-cursers like beithirs. Somehow, Star didn’t think Éabha was talking about the beithir they currently held captive in the truck. A nixie had a closer tie to river water since they actively drowned others.

Still, there was no major river that ran through Branwin, and it was pretty far from the Great Lakes or anything like that. Some streams, sure, but not enough to be a major threat. “What does that matter?”

“The geography, like I said,” she said. “What’s under the ground everywhere on this whole human planet?”

“Groundwater,” Dandelion answered for Star.

Éabha nodded. “The track wasn’t just to give that nix a place to hide out, or to eliminate guilty witnesses. It was a test. From what I heard, they made tens of times the amount of water the trucks were supposed to carry gush out of them. Now, what if they get themselves deeply embedded enough into the magical webs coming up from the gate and running through this town and then made ten times the amount of water there? What do you think would happen to the Valley? Or the city above, if its precarious balance shifted when the Valley did again?”

Star shook his head. He was imagining it, unfortunately, and didn’t like what he saw. He’d survive a flood, but who else would? At what costs?

“And they’re setting up at the track?” Dandelion murmured. “…Then we have to get there. Make sure we can stop them.”

Star had to agree. It should be done, they needed to get there and kick the shit out of whatever magic circles they were setting up there, whatever rituals they were doing. 

Was there anything that needed to be done first? How much time could they afford to take?

Who should he bring along for this? And what kind of advance planning could they even do?

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