Victim of a Sudden Adventure

By The Guindo

Notes: RO’s world setting isn’t mine, it belongs to Lee Myung-jin and Gravity Corp. But I made it AWESOME, okay, and the characters in and of themselves are all mine, just based in a world that’s not.

Feedback of any and all sorts would be appreciated and I will love you forever if you give me a detailed critique filled with constructive criticism. For. Ever. Can’t improve it if you don’t know what’s wrong, right? Right. So if you see something you like, don’t like, or something that stands out to you, point it out to me so I know. That kind of thing is important.

Above all, please do enjoy the story. That’s the whole point of it, anyway, isn’t it?

Antonio Rodriguez was a quiet young boy in a high-collared thief’s jacket and an intimidating mask that covered only half of his pretty face. His Morrocan heritage gave him a bronzed complexion, but the one eye that the half a mask left visible was a deep blue; bone-straight hair hung in a dark curtain to his shoulders, contrasting with the soft earth-tones of his uniform. He couldn’t have been much older than fifteen or sixteen, according to his minute height and slender, almost feminine form. His voice, when he spoke, was a soft one, prone to cracking on occasion, much to his chagrin. He had the faintest hint of a Morrocan accent, mere undertones that left him sounding foreign in an oddly indistinct way.

And he now found himself hanging upside-down from the rafters of the storehouse, the strong rope encircling his lightly armor-plated shin suspending him a mere foot out of reach of the ground.

“Not good,” he whispered, his eyes roaming the darkened grounds of the place. There was nothing nor nobody useful within reach. He knew that if he didn’t get himself down soon, his intended larceny victims would find him and be none too happy. This place had not been a good target. He’d have to send the thieves’ guild a nice thank-you in the form of a very colorful letter. “Lack capability for defense maneuvers” indeed.

His knife! How stupid he was to have forgotten his most vital piece of equipment next to his lock pick. He reached down—well, up—to pull his knife out of his belt. It wasn’t anything fancy, a simple switchblade stiletto, but it served him well when he needed it.

It took him a greater amount of effort than he’d expected to pull himself up in order to cut the rope. He had to climb himself to get his blade within reach of his caught ankle; one slash didn’t suffice, either. The blade bit into the chord and then bounced off and he fell back to his original position, having lost the inertia to stay up. He heaved a sigh, staring off at the upside-down nothingness. Things weren’t looking too good for him right now. What would they do when they caught him in the morning, he wondered. Chop his hands off? That was the most common punishment for thievery. He shuddered, and suddenly found the renewed energy to pull himself back up and try again.

This time he made an attempt to saw through it, though his knife was not serrated to aid the task. When he fell, it was so sudden that the ground meeting his back was a huge shock and he had to stifle a cry of surprise. Oddly, his fall was partially broken by a thing which did cry out when he landed. He quickly scrambled away and crouched, knife brandished, staring into the darkness to discern what it was he now faced.

The shadow moved, coming to a similar crouched position, like a tiger, and both froze, trying to make out one another in the darkness.

A barking dog and a mumbling farmer snapped their attention to the now-open front doors of the storehouse. Antonio leapt to his feet and ran to hide before he could be spotted; he found a spot behind a stack of crates and settled there to wait for the owner to leave. He sheathed his knife and worked at untying the piece of rope still knotted around his ankle in the meantime.

Just as he’d worked it free, he heard a hiss from above him. “Oni!” His head snapped up, eyes wide.

The shadow was over him, crouched on top of the crates, leaning down into the space he occupied between them and the wall. In the very dim glow, the only light provided by the half moon shining in through the one open window in the place, he could make out the faint outlines of what looked like the figure of a young girl.

“Oni!” the stranger hissed again, holding an arm down to him. “Always in trouble, stupid Oni. Time to go home, come on.”

“What was that?”

The voice of the farmer. Antonio glanced back, in the direction of the front doors. The silhouette seemed to ignore this danger and thrust its hand further to him. He looked back to it, swallowed his fear, and reached up to take the proffered hand. It was inhumanly cold, like ice, or a corpse; a touch that seemed to seep through his skin into the bones of his fingers as he was yanked up onto the crates with a preternatural strength. Once there, he saw the nearby hole in the planks of the wall which he’d used to enter through, and before he even realized it he was plotting the quickest course there and to safety.

A loud racket made him glance over as the farmer knocked something down, accompanied by a loud swear, and that was when Antonio decided it was time for him to leave. Ignoring the mysterious something that had helped him and seemed to have him mistaken for somebody else, he made a break for the broken wall and dashed out into the desert night.

“Oni, wait!” cried the shadow, reaching out to him but not giving chase.

He was very far away by the time he stopped running to catch his breath. Once relatively secure in his oxygen intake, he resumed walking through the familiar desert sands of Morroc’s outskirts. He was currently outside the retaining walls of the city, but he was certain he could find them, and from there the way home to his mother’s cozy little house in the northwest near the pyramids of the guild was easy enough to find. She knew he’d been sent on a mission tonight; she was probably waiting up for him. He decided it would be best not to leave her worrying much longer than she needed to. So he looked up at the sky as he walked, navigating by the stars to find the way back north to the walls of the city.

He realized when he found the very unfamiliar sandstone fortress, run-down and ancient, that he’d never been very good at navigating by the stars.

Perhaps it would have been a much better idea for him to turn back and try again to find the walls or the pyramids, to go back and go home, take off his mask and sleep until noon and then wake up having forgotten the entire affair. But Antonio Rodriguez was a curious boy by nature, and he could not let this sudden appearance of a deserted desert fortress beat him. Never giving thought to the veritable cornucopia of deadly beasts roaming the southwestern portions of the Sograt Desert and the fact that a sand-fortress ruins was a perfect place for them to hole up, he strode forth under the cover of darkness to the foreboding structure. Adventure loomed in its silhouette, and he was overdue for one.

The entranceway was a large stone arch with no doors attached, but iron hinges, bent and broken, indicated that some had once been present. He stopped there, looking up at the red sandstone structure, eroded to a pockmarked roughness by the wind and sand. A word, faded by the literal sands of time, was carved above the arch, just barely legible under the pale moonlight.

Sandaruman.

It rang a faint bell somewhere in the back of his mind; a name he’d probably heard in history class but could no longer place. No matter, he told himself, it wasn’t very important whose fortress it had once been; it obviously wasn’t anymore. He stepped through and observed the moonlit landscape before him.

The outer wall stretched out for what seemed like forever, ending on both sides when the perpendicular walls hit the edges of an enormous chasm. That chasm was spanned by a rickety rope bridge, with frayed ropes and missing planks. Beyond were the buildings of its interior, sandstone structures in various states of decay; people had once lived in those deserted buildings, but obviously not for many long years. People with possessions, of course. Weren’t rare ancient artifacts worth millions nowadays?

That was that, then. He walked to the bridge.

“Stop!”

The sudden high-pitched command did as it intended; Antonio stopped, frozen as if turned to stone.

A rambling of gibberish approached him, accompanied by the shifting of sand beneath tiny, quick feet.

A goblin jumped up in front of him.

He nearly screamed with surprise, but instead threw his hands over his mouth and stepped back. Half of his fingers lay over the cold ceramic of his mask; he could feel the exaggerated features of the Payonese demon’s face that overlaid half of his own.

The goblin wore a mask as well, but his covered his whole face, as all goblini masks did, reducing him to a round white plate with crosses for eyes and a jagged line for a mouth. He held up his miniature bow, one arrow prepared to fire should the thief give him cause to, and said in an oddly accented shrill voice, “Who is intruder?”

Not Antonio Rodriguez Morrocan thief extraordinaire, that was for sure. “Oni,” he said, remembering the thing in the storehouse.

A strange sounding gasp came from the two-foot tall creature. “Oni!” he repeated back.

“Oni,” Antonio affirmed, folding his arms over his chest in an attempt to look imposing. Honestly, the mask was the only imposing thing about him.

He of course had no idea who this Oni person was or what sort of reputation he had, but the goblin archer seemed to know it and that was all he really needed right now.

“Oni no does belong here,” the challenger said. “Oni should go home.”

“I’m going home.” He hoped the thing would let him pass soon. He had places to be and artifacts to steal.

“Oni is going through Sandaruman’s fortress to be getting to Niflheim?” the goblin questioned, lowering his bow. He must have been staring up at the boy in confusion from beneath that round white plate of a mask.

“Uh, yes.” He gave a nod. “Yes I am.” Niflheim was the land of the dead. The real one, not like the ruins of Glast Heim where the bodies of the dead still walked, seeking vengeance for the curse that made them suffer. It was where people went when they died, where the spirits of the dead and—he caught his breath—demons resided. Was this Oni person…?

“Would Oni like faithful Ace-Lieutenant Ah’arha Nulan Mirknu Datrak VI to lead him in Sandaruman’s fortress?”

Did all goblins have names like that, he wondered? What a mouthful for angry mothers. “Um, sure,” he replied, shoving his hands into his deep pockets; deep for the storing of stolen goods, pockets he planned to be using before too long. A guide would be excellent, and would double as a guard against any monsters that might be lurking in the shadows of the sandstone buildings. And he could always knock out a goblin no problem if it decided to protest him lifting anything valuable.

“Oni must stay with Ace-Lieutenant Ah’arha!” said the goblin, shaking his tiny bow at the Morrocan thief. “No stray or she be angry!”

“She?”

“Ace-Lieutenant!”

The goblin was a female. Who knew?

“Go come go!” She scurried off toward the bridge. It caught Antonio by surprise and he took off after her. She moved amazingly fast for her short legs and he had to run not only to catch up but to keep up.

She hit the bridge and slowed to cross it, hopping from plank to plank. He followed, hands on both of the rope handrails. The bridge swayed under the weight; he looked down at the chasm below, not seeing anything that looked remotely like ground in the darkness.

That didn’t intimidate him. The bridge had been there for a while, obviously, which meant it wasn’t going to collapse and plunge him into oblivion any time soon. He just followed the goblin across.

She reached the other side and hopped off into the sand, and waited for him to join her there, fidgeting restlessly with her tiny bow. As he stepped off the rope bridge, she took off again. Exasperated with her boundless goblini energy, he ran after her, wishing she knew how to just walk where she needed to go. Hopefully the riches she surely led him to would be worth it.

One of the buildings caught his eye as they ran past. It wasn’t particularly fancy or different from the other rundown sandstone structures, but a pattern was painted around the door, faded to brown over time, and the same word carved above the entrance to the fortress was painted over the open doorway. The way Ah’arha had said, “Sandaruman’s fortress,” had made this Sandaruman person out to be a very important figure. Antonio stopped, glancing to make sure the goblin ran on without him, and then sprinted for the doorway before she turned and realized he was gone.

He ducked into the dark building, leaning against the wall as he stopped to catch his breath. It was as dark in here as it had been in the storehouse he’d attempted to rob earlier. Not much would get stolen in here if he couldn’t see to tell which artifacts were rare and expensive. But he had no light sources to speak of. A puzzle indeed. His hand slid along the shelf beside the doorway, searching for something of use. Perhaps there was a—

A clatter of metal on stone as his hand inadvertently brushed something from the shelf as it roamed. He froze instinctively, waiting to find out whether the noise had been heard. A gust of sudden wind blew past, which made no sense since he was indoors, and there was a faint popping sound as the lantern he’d knocked to the ground flickered to life. Too surprised by the sudden light to ponder the unexplained wind, he stared as the small dancing flame cast large dancing shadows.

Who was he to ignore such a fortunate coincidence? He stooped to pick up the lantern and turned up the flame so that it bathed the room in a dim orange light. Shadows flickered menacingly as he moved the circle of his vision to examine the room’s entirety by examining its parts. Chairs, a table, some fallen broken things littering the ground. Nothing of any concern to a thief extraordinaire.

But there were stairs, off to the left. They led to adventure, obviously. He was overdue for one, anyway.

Without a second thought, he started up them to the next floor. The landing was devoid of anything of any particular interest, aside from an open doorway leading to a room he couldn’t see the details of beyond the dancing shadows of the door. But something told him not to explore this room, to keep going higher. Strange urges weren’t something he got very often, at least not those outside of his normal natural curious urges; he walked up the next flight of steps.

The next landing presented him with a plethora of closed doors down hallways extending to his left and right farther than his light could reach. He chose left, like he always did when faced with such a choice, because left reminded him of his left-handed twin brother. Amelio, who had disappeared almost a year ago during just such an adventure. But he made this decision instinctively, without giving thought to the reason he knew was behind it.

He opened the first door he came to and looked inside. The room contained a bed of straw covered by a tattered blanket and the remains of a chair scattered nearby. Out of the corner of his eye and out of reach of the light he saw a person crouched on the ground, a shadow bathed in menacing shadows, malicious in its silhouette. Quickly shifting his lantern, he revealed his mind to be playing tricks on him. There was only a pile of blankets where he had seen a frightening shadow seconds before.

A shelf sat beyond that pile. A shelf full of valuable possessions? He walked to it, kneeling to examine what lay thereupon.

Books he had no interest in. A miniature figure of a clay warrior rested on the top shelf. Its head was gone.

He picked up the decapitated soldier, examining it under the lamplight. Red clay, just like the red sandstone all the buildings were made of, and very detailed. Almost as if a man had been shrunken through magic and painted with the rusty red. His sword was thrust over his absent head as if he were declaring the start of a battle and encouraging his troops onto the field. Across the flat base that kept the figure’s balance and let it stand upright on the dusty shelf was the same name he’d seen here twice already: Sandaruman.

Somebody was watching him. Leaning over his shoulder, baring fangs, claws moving out to tear into the fabric of his beige jacket and the soft flesh beneath, leaving bloody gashes in his body, red eyes glinting with the malicious intent to make it happen.

His head and the light snapped around to look behind him. Nothing. Nothing at all. His imagination again. He breathed a faint sigh of relief and set the clay figure back on the shelf, deciding it wasn’t worth his interest. People didn’t pay for broken ancient artifacts, they had to be intact. Of course, he ensured that it was not originally manufactured minus the head first, because then he could have sold it whole; but that was not the case, the clay was rough and gritty where the neck had been severed. It was broken, worthless.

Nothing else of interest was there, only two shelves of books. He decided to occupy himself by looking over them anyway; who knew, perhaps a rare magic book was there, hidden in the other uninteresting ones, something that somebody might pay millions of zeny for. But none of the titles caught his eye, none of the spines looked interesting or called to him. He moved to leave, but as he stood, he noticed a book lying open on the ground near his feet. He could have sworn it hadn’t been there when he’d sat down.

He held the light over the page, bending over to read it. It seemed fairly new; an account of the assassin lord Sandaruman and his famous stronghold in the Sograt Desert. It spoke of his final defeat by the monster lords of the desert, how he’d been struck down by the Gryphon and the rest of his forces had succumbed to the monster hordes.

Sitting cross-legged and setting his lantern beside him, he picked up the book and flipped through the pages. It felt very new, almost like a textbook. It reminded him of reading the thieves’ guild history during his training classes. A picture caught his eye and he turned back to it, examining the portrait it portrayed in the lamplight. It was supposedly a countenance of Sandaruman; strong facial features with a defined, straight nose and a square jaw and eyes that looked like they could pierce stone. The caption below explained that he’d been famous for his cruel treatment of prisoners and the unwavering discipline he trained into his assassin soldiers. Antonio shuddered; he wanted to become an assassin when his thief’s training was done. He couldn’t imagine being an assassin soldier under a master like that. He thanked fortune for putting the current assassins’ guild into better hands than that.

Deciding there was nothing of worth in the room, he closed the book and set it on the shelf, feeling an eerie sort of foreboding when he found the only spot on the shelf that was not filled, the spot that it fit into. He didn’t bother to give thought to how it had been moved or why there was a fresh trail in the dust on the shelf where it had been pulled off. He retrieved his lantern as he stood and walked out of the room, careful to hold it out in front of him so he could see any oncoming menaces that might attack him.

The next closed door in the hallway was locked. So were the next three after that, but at the last he became so frustrated with curiosity that he stooped to peek into the keyhole, to see if he could make anything out in the darkness inside the room. It was indeed dark, and he stared for a moment or two until he thought he saw a shadow within shift, move ever so slightly toward the door. He jumped back and leapt to his feet, and decided to move on. Curiosity was all well and good, but when real shadows really moved, lines had to be drawn.

When he tried the door across the hall from that one, the knob turned beneath his fingers and he shoved it open, holding his lantern out into the room. It was largely empty, but for a small table set in the center of the room, square-shaped and standing to a height of about his waist; a child’s table. A doll lay upon it, made of rags and straw, one arm, partially ripped off at the seam, hanging over the edge. He walked toward it, staring at the cloth concoction as if it were an actual child in such a partially dismembered state, holding the lantern out in front of himself as if it would protect him from demons which might leap out of the shadows beneath the table at any time.

Somewhere in the corner of the darkest shadows a patch of darker shadow flickered, moving, one of those demons in his mind. The faint sound of something slithering by whispered through the air. He shifted his light again, flinging the orange circle to the corner of the room. All it revealed was a disconcerting emptiness, which made him more nervous than he’d been before.

Obviously, he was paranoid. Imagining things as his mind ran circles around him. There was nothing here to be afraid of, nothing at all. He probably just needed some sleep. He always got paranoid like this when he was tired; he remembered the times when he and Amelio would stay up into the early hours of the morning, two or three o’clock, and they’d be unable to fall asleep despite how tired they were because shadows would shift and monsters would appear every time they closed their eyes. This was just like that. That was all, just his tired mind playing tricks on him.

He turned to leave this room as well, but as he swung back to the doll he froze, seeing instead a bloody child with its arm hanging off, attached just barely by a few layers of muscle and gore, its dead blank eyes staring up at nothing in a horrified plea for help or mercy. Almost dropping the lantern, he gave a gasp of shock and stepped back, but by then the macabre image had resolved itself back into the straw doll that had been there before, gazing up at him with its stitched smile and button eyes. He breathed deeply, trying to calm the sudden rapid pace of his heart as he let logic tell him that it had been his mind playing another trick, just like it had so many times already in this fortress of Sandaruman, but for some reason that didn’t comfort him so much. Finally he swallowed the lump in his throat and decided he needed to leave this room and the creepy straw doll behind.

When he opened the door to the next room, he realized his hands were shaking. The orange circle of light was jumping around the hallway, just slightly, and his hand on the doorknob reminded him of the one time he had been in a place cold enough for there to be snow and with it a severe shivering problem. That one winter visit to Al de Baran with Amelio, to see his father. That was the only time he ever remembered shaking so badly, and then it had been from the cold and not from fear.

Maybe he should just stop; go home and lay awake in bed until the sun came up, unable to fall asleep for fear of the things that may lurk in the darkness of his dreams, and then get up in the morning to the smell of his mother cooking breakfast. It would be fried andre, even though he didn’t really like andre, but he’d love it in the morning because he’d be home and with his mother and eating breakfast and not here in this decrepit fortress full of imaginary ghosts and horrifying visions. Yes, he’d love fried andre in the morning for the normality of it. He should go home now.

But he didn’t. Antonio, though he may have been a bit of a coward (survivalist, Amelio had always said), was a curious boy, and this place got curiouser and curiouser by the minute. He swung the light into the room and was greeted by the sight of a skeleton bathed in the orange circle.

He screamed. Jumping back, he tripped over something behind him and dropped the lamp; thankfully it didn’t break, but the light fell to just a dim spark of a glow. The thing he’d tripped over gave an indignant cry, but he was already scrambling away, trying to find his security blanket, his lantern, his only real lifeline to the security of reality, the only thing that could drive away the demons of his imagination. Before he even found the light, he had his knife out and brandished at whatever thing was in the hallway with him, though he couldn’t see it at all.

He heard a scraping sound as it got to the lantern before he did and he backed away instinctively, against the wall so he couldn’t be snuck up on; his trusty switchblade stiletto guarded him against all dangers as he held it out in front of his chest, one hand around the handle and the other braced against the top of it to drive killing blows further home.

Ah’arha turned up the glow on the lamp as she said, “Stupid Oni, Ace-Lieutenant told you no to stray!”

He heaved a sigh of relief, seeing that the perpetrator was just the goblin archer he’d acquainted himself with before. Rising to his feet, he tucked his knife back into his belt and held his hand out for the lantern. “You scared me,” he said.

“Oni is scaring Ace-Lieutenant!” she screamed, stamping her tiny three-toed feet, swinging the lantern angrily at him while she shook her bow menacingly with her other hand. Goblins, it was widely-known, were unable to stand to any degree of stillness for any amount of time, more often than not trying to keep all body parts moving at once. But they also had a reputation for being intelligent and mechanically minded; he wondered, looking at the Ace-Lieutenant Ah’arha, how true that knowledge was.

She stopped, standing almost still, her body swaying back and forth from the waist as she saw the grimy pile of bones in the room behind him. Were she not a goblin, she probably would have been standing dead still in shock or fear. He didn’t look toward her line of vision, not wanting to see that image again; once had been enough.

Suddenly holding the lantern high above her large pointed head, she declared, “Sandaruman’s home is not being a good place for Oni and Ace-Lieutenant.”

He nodded and took the lantern from her, which she did not protest as he’d expected she would. She took off running down the hallway, and this time he didn’t even waste energy in the thought process of being annoyed with it.

They ran for what seemed like forever, without hitting the stairs. They both stopped suddenly, wondering if they’d gone too far, and then the cold wind hit them and the lantern light flickered and popped, making their shadows jump and dance along the ground and walls. Antonio shuddered, looking to Ah’arha to see what she would do; she knew more about this fortress than he did. Maybe frigid indoor winds were common in Sandaruman’s assassins’ guild, who knew?

A sudden cacophony of voices began emanating from the walls, repeating softly malicious things which he couldn’t clearly hear. The color drained from his face as he realized, seeing Ah’arha’s relative stillness at the phenomenon, that this was not another trick of his tired mind.

He bolted, back the way they’d come.

Ah’arha cried out for him to wait, but he ignored her; the stairs, he discovered, they’d passed without seeing somehow, and he ran back down them, stopping so suddenly at the second floor landing that she, right behind him, rammed into his legs and nearly tripped him up. As it was, she was knocked back onto her rump by her own force thrown back at her, and she muttered goblini curses as she stood, until she realized why he was standing there so still and so suddenly stopped.

The door that had been slightly ajar before was now emanating a faint glow, like another lantern had been lit inside of the room, and a low rumbling poured forth from that lit doorway, like a tiger’s growl.

He shrank back towards the steps, but tripped over Ah’arha, causing both of them to fall this time, removing her newly regained footing from beneath her. She didn’t bother to mutter any goblini curses this time, instead climbing over his legs to crouch in his lap, holding her bow protectively to her chest.

“Wh-what’s in there?” he whispered softly, his voice cracking just slightly in the middle of the sentence, but more out of fear than as a side-effect of the things boys his age normally went through.

“Gryphon!” she hissed, tapping her miniature bow against his chest. She reached out and shoved his lantern hand down to his side with her entire body weight, hoping the glow would be hidden behind him. “Go go, no can let Gryphon see Oni!”

Taking the advice, he pushed her off of his lap and scrambled to his feet, making a mad dash for the stairs. She let out an indignant cry as she followed after him. Halfway down, both froze, hearing the sounds of heavy footsteps on the landing above. This pause was only temporary, because they both knew it was the gryphon, and thus they both continued their rush to the front door and to what they thought must be safety.

Once outside, they ran to the back of the nearest building beside the one they’d just exited, Antonio pressing himself against the wall and trying with all his might to slow his breathing and keep his heart from pounding its way out of his chest. Ah’arha snatched the still-lit lantern from him and turned the flame off, setting it on the ground by the wall. She fiddled with her bowstring, making it twang so softly and high-pitched that it was more like a twing. “No are safe,” she said, softly, her white painted plate of a face turning back and forth to scan for dangers.

“Will it chase us?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder around the corner of the building. Never mind that gryphons had wings and were told to be very skilled fliers. It could probably sneak up behind them and they’d never know.

Ah’arha screamed suddenly and without warning; through some paranormal instinct alone, Antonio whipped out his knife, flipping the blade out, and spun on whatever had just assailed her.

Gryphon was a huge beast, almost as tall to the shoulder as Antonio, which was impressive despite the fact that the boy was quite short for his age; it reared back on its hind legs, the tawny legs of a lion, raising itself to twice its height as it gave a bone-chilling cry. Falling back to the ground with a harsh loud thump, it buried its face, blood running in its feathers and dripping down its wicked hooked beak, in its taloned front limbs, like a dog that had been hit over the snout. The enormous brown and white feathered wings sprouting from its shoulders were half-furled, making it look even larger and more menacing, despite its wounded and pained state.

Antonio was so frozen with shock, not only by the sight of the beast but by the fact that his insignificant knife had managed to wound it, that he could only stare at the half eagle-half lion creature, wide-eyed.

Very suddenly it thrust its head up, screeching as it moved toward him at a speed faster than his mind could register. Before he had the time to realize it had happened, he was pinned against the wall by its talons pressing his shoulders back into the sandstone, digging into the fabric of his thick thieves’ coat. He winced, turning his face away from that deadly beak that clicked menacingly at him. It stopped suddenly, and he risked opening an eye to look at it; his left eye, behind the emerald glass that made the eye of his half-mask, which bathed the image in a very eerie spectrum of greens. It stared at him, its beak hanging half-open, head cocked to the side as if it was examining him. Was it frightened by the mask, he wondered suddenly? Did gryphons fear Payonese demons for some reason?

Ah’arha took the chance to load her bow up with one of her tiny arrows and fire, the result of which Antonio saw from behind his mask as the weapon struck his assailant in the eye, the force of it flinging its head to the side. Gryphon fell away from him in the direction its head had been thrown, clawing at its face and screeching a pained, horrible screech as it tried to get the offending object out of its eye, now bleeding profusely along with the slash Antonio had given it across its forehead.

He managed to find a reserve of courage somewhere within himself, perhaps because it reminded him of the matyr that had attacked his twin the day he’d disappeared, and how he had slashed it across the face but had been too scared of the devil dog to finish it off before it had recovered and leapt on his brother. That reserve, fueled by the thought that if maybe he’d been brave enough to strike at that matyr that day his brother would still be around, led him this time to strike at the gryphon, driving his knife into its neck at the base of its skull. It gave a last pitiful cry and crumpled to the ground, twitching intermittently, its wicked beak hanging open and its eyes staring up into the open starry sky. He couldn’t tell whether it was actually dead or just paralyzed by the severing of its spine, but either way it didn’t matter.

He stepped back, letting out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, dropping his knife as his astonishment with himself made his arms go limp at his sides. Ah’arha ran forward, climbing Gryphon’s body, straddling its bloody neck and poking its head, staring into its glassy black eyes, making sure in her own way that it was really dead. She looked up at Antonio, her tiny fingers hitting against its skull repeatedly as she fidgeted like goblins could not help doing. “Oni is killing Gryphon!” she exclaimed with wonder.

It was a shock to him, as well. He dropped to his knees, staring up at her, now just barely below her eye level, unable to find the strength to speak.

She hopped down and walked over to him. He watched as she picked up his knife and examined it; blood dripped from the blade and stained the sand by her feet. Shouldering her bow, she hooked her tiny triangular thumb beneath the edge of her mask and lifted it just far enough to expose her mouth so she could lick the blood from the cold metal of the knife. He’d never seen a goblin’s face before; her teeth were even and pointed, perfectly white, and her mouth was more like a slit that spanned half the width of her jaw; her tongue was long, pointed, and black. She licked only one side, so that one side was clean, and then pushed her mask back down, ensuring it was situated properly on her face, and she held the knife back up to him. “Strong blood makes stronger,” she explained, her cross-shaped painted eyes staring up at him. He wondered what her real eyes looked like beneath that, and then wondered just how many people could say they’d seen even as much of a goblin’s real face as he just had.

He took back his knife, staring at the one side that was still bloody, and then glanced at her. She was fidgeting with her bowstring again. “Stronger?” he questioned, thinking he knew what she meant but hoping that wasn’t it.

“Strong blood,” she said. “Makes stronger, eat get big get strong like Gryphon.”

He wondered how badly he would offend her if he refused to lick the blood off of his knife like she had, whether she’d turn that tiny bow and arrow on him or not. Deciding it wasn’t worth it and that one smeared knife-edge of gryphon’s blood wouldn’t kill him, he steeled himself and tentatively moved the blade to his mouth, touching his tongue to the cold metal. It wasn’t as horrible as he’d imagined it would be, but it was still blood. He remembered the taste of blood from licking it away from his own wounds when he was younger; he’d never liked it, but he’d always heard that it helped them heal faster if you couldn’t bandage them right away. Amelio had always done it too. He wondered if Amelio had ever tasted the blood of his enemies before, and then realized that he was being very morbid and decided to put his knife, now clean again, back in his belt and stop.

“Ah’arha is promoting,” the goblin declared suddenly, pointing dramatically to the sky with her tiny triangular finger. “Be Arch-Captain or Sergeant General for be killing Gryphon!” He didn’t bother to correct her on the fact that he had been the one to kill it. “Or maybe…” she paused, with a small gasp, and continued with a sense of awe, “Penultimatationary Master Colonel!”

Antonio ignored her rambling, not even bothering to note the absurdity of the goblini rank system, and he stood, turning to leave.

“Wait!” she said, rushing forward to wrap herself around his shin-plate, stopping him with the suddenness of her weight attached to his leg. He looked down at her as she pleaded, “Oni is being only witness! Come come tell Sergeant General Ace-Lieutenant is killing Gryphon!”

“But I killed it,” he said, staring at her.

He imagined that behind those cross-shaped painted eyes she was giving him a wide-eyed puppy-dog stare. “Please Oni come with her!” she begged, clutching his leg tighter; her tiny claws screeched against his light armor as her grip tightened.

“But my mom—”

“Please Oni!” Again he pictured those puppy dog eyes behind that white mask, and he sighed. He really should be getting home soon, or his mother might start to worry. He knew she’d waited up for him, she always did when she knew he was going out at night. She had been paranoid ever since the day Amelio had disappeared, and he had a feeling that she specifically requested of his guild leader that he not be assigned to any particularly dangerous missions.

But what harm could it do to stay out until morning? So she would worry the whole night, stay up on the sofa waiting for him to open the door and walk in, maybe be half asleep and wake herself up every so often as she imagined the sounds of the doorknob turning. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t made her worry about him before; she’d be angry with him for a little while, but be so relieved that he was all right that it would be forgotten before any punishment could be dealt to him. He could spare the time to help Ah’arha out.

“Fine,” he said.

She gave a squeal of joy and disengaged from his leg to run off to her Sergeant General and brag to him about how she had killed the gryphon with absolutely no help from “Oni” the thief extraordinaire. Said thief chased after her again, once more exasperated with the boundless energy of goblins.

They ran for a long ways, through red sandstone alleyways to a run-down town square where she finally stopped running; Antonio bent over, bracing himself against his knees, gasping deeply for breath. It had been a long time since he’d run so far, especially in his thief’s boots.

A kobold archer stood there, disinterestedly standing watch. It was a dog-like little creature, about as big as Ah’arha. Once Antonio noticed it, he straightened, watching with interest. He’d seen pictures of kobolds before, but he’d never actually seen one in person. It almost looked like a white and beige beagle standing on two legs, dressed in simple leather armor not too different from Ah’arha’s and wielding a similar tiny bow. It was far calmer than the goblin, however, as evidenced by the way it was actually able to stand still.

Ah’arha ran up to the kobold, hopping down on all fours and running in a tight circle in front of it, reminding Antonio of a dog chasing its tail. Then she sat on her haunches and scratched behind her ear with her foot, very much like a dog. The kobold dropped to all fours as well and copied her actions and then gave a deep “woof” and looked up at Antonio with its soft doe-brown eyes.

He shoved his hands in his deep pockets, unfortunately still empty, and stood there waiting for something to happen.

“Oni!”

The kobold gave a yelp and ran away at the same time that Antonio found himself assailed from behind by a thin pair of arms. Ah’arha stood and stared, while he almost panicked and screamed; almost, but not quite.

It was the thing from the storehouse; he recognized the voice. It slid its arms from around his waist and moved in front of him so he could see it in the moonlight. A girl, looking to be about three or four years younger than himself, in pigtails, striped socks, and a large black belt with a gigantic golden buckle that covered half the width of her small waist. A long-sleeved and loose-fitting blouse covered her strangely well-developed chest and there was a black cat doll with a small red bow tied to its tail draped over her blonde head. She held her arms out with a big grin, saying, “I found you, Oni!”

He stared.

Her grin fell. “Oni, it’s Ruri.”

“Uh…” Since he wasn’t Oni, he wouldn’t really know the people who knew him. A detail he’d overlooked.

“Oni forgot Ruri.” She pouted, staring at her feet, clasping her hands behind her back and poking at the dirt with the toe of her shiny black shoe, covered at the top by another large gold buckle.

He felt guilty suddenly, even though there really was no reason he could see that he should. “Um, Ruri, I’m—”

“You’ll remember if you come home!” she declared suddenly, slamming her fist into the palm of her other hand. “Somebody put a spell on Oni! We’ll take you to the witch, she’ll fix it!”

“I-I don’t—”

“Oni is helping Ace-Lieutenant!” Ah’arha interjected, running up to Ruri and glaring at her. She had to crane her head back so far that her would-be imposing stance wasn’t at all.

“Oh.” Ruri blinked a few times, and then turned her large red eyes back up to Antonio. “What is Oni helping her with?”

“Ace-Lieutenant is killing gryphon, Oni is telling Sergeant General he is seeing her and she is getting promotionated!” She gave another happy squeal and quickly hugged his leg before skipping away joyfully.

He shrugged at Ruri. “I gotta go, Ruri. I’ll see you around, okay?” A blatant lie. He hoped.

“Ruri will come,” she said.

That could be a problem. He really did need to get home sometime tonight, before his mother went sick with worry. He couldn’t be running off with every strange person or creature that demanded his attention. Let Ruri come with him to help Ah’arha, he decided, and when he was done he’d tell her that he really had to go and couldn’t accompany her to wherever it was she wanted him to go. Give her the slip. Something a true thief would do. Yeah, that was it. He had a plan now.

“Come go come!” Ah’arha said, making a run for a nearby building in the rundown square. At least it was close this time, Antonio thought as he and Ruri ran after her to the door.

As soon as they entered, Ah’arha stopped, so suddenly that Antonio almost ran into her and Ruri nearly ran into him. Inside there was a staircase, guarded on either side by a goblin wielding a shield in one hand and a knife in the other. They had simple toothy grins carved under their cross-shaped eyes, which stared emotionlessly up at the thief and the girl with him. Ah’arha stepped up to the two guards, chattering in the odd, hyperactive language of her people. They glanced at each other and their fake grins nodded to one another. They stepped aside, the one on the left motioning to the stairs with his small round wooden shield.

Ah’arha walked—much to Antonio’s surprise—up the stairs. The thief followed with Ruri close behind. Two more goblins stood at the top on either side of the doorway there, these wielding axes almost as big as their heads and having malicious smiles painted on their masks, with slanted eyes rather than the normal cross-shaped ones. She told them something and they stepped aside, one of them pushing open the door with the top of his axe.

Inside of the room sat the largest goblin Antonio had ever seen. Not that he’d seen a great deal of goblins in his lifetime. It wore a crimson sheet as a cloak, tied around its neck with a large untidy knot, and a battered aluminum crown sat atop its pointed head. Almost like a child playing at being king. Its white mask bore a fearful scowl beneath the cross-shaped eyes.

Ah’arha walked up to him and gave him something like a salute. It reminded Antonio of the guild, and how he would have to thump his fist over his heart in salute whenever he reported to his higher-ups for assignments. He’d heard the assassins’ guild had a similar tradition as well, and he found himself wondering just how many of the world’s job guilds had something like that in their courtesy procedures. She began chattering in goblin, but since he couldn’t understand it he wasn’t really listening.

Suddenly the large goblin addressed him; he hadn’t even realized Ah’arha had stopped talking. “Ace-Lieutenant Ah’arha kill Gryphon?” it asked. Its voice was no less obnoxious than Ah’arha’s. Maybe even more so.

As a reflex he snapped the thieves’ guild salute as a gesture of respect before he responded, “Yes. I saw her. Shot it in the eye, Sir.”

“We see.” The large goblin stood, moving to the door. Antonio shifted aside, pulling Ruri with him so the Sergeant General could pass. He commanded them to stay while he went to look, which made Antonio suppress an annoyed sigh and Ruri gave a faint whine. But they stayed, despite their unvoiced protests.

“We need to go home, Oni,” said the girl, pouting dejectedly. He shrugged, though he knew he really had to be getting back to Morroc. Not only to report home to his mother, but to tell his guild that he’d failed his mission as well. They’d have to give him a new one, and hopefully it wouldn’t start this convoluted process all over again. One grand adventure every now and again was all he really needed; this was already grander than any adventure he’d had since Amelio had disappeared. He was long overdue for one, of course, but that still didn’t make him worry any less about his mother and her worrying about him while he was gone.

Antonio realized suddenly that Ruri was staring intently at his face. “What?” he asked, stepping back from her.

“Ruri thought Oni had brown eyes,” she said, putting a finger to her lips thoughtfully.

“One of them is.” He reached up to take off his mask, revealing the left half of his face. He was very pretty beneath the ceramic demon, and nothing was out of place about the half he kept concealed except for the mismatched color of his eye. The right was a deep blue, and the left was a soft brown.

Ruri gave a gasp, leaning closer to him. “Pretty,” she said, a sense of wonder in her voice.

He quickly replaced the mask, unnerved by the attention, again covering his pretty face beneath the ugly painted demon’s. “Mom always told me it was an omen,” he said, hoping to turn her attention from staring at his eyes to listening to him, something far less uncomfortable for him to handle.

“An omen?” She cocked her head to the side, like a bird.

“That I was destined for big things.”

She grinned. “You are, Oni! Big big ones!” she said, holding her hands as far apart as she could, to show just how big the things he was destined for would be.

He just looked back at her blankly, silent.

When the Sergeant General returned then, Antonio caught his breath. Surely he would be rewarded too, if not by the general then by Ah’ahra out of gratitude. What sorts of treasures did goblins keep? Rare weapons? Gold? Jewels? Anything that could be sold for copious amounts of zeny? He schemed the possibilities, missing the conversation that passed between the two goblins entirely.

“Tell goblin leader tomorrow,” the Sergeant General said. “Go.”

She nodded, an exaggerated motion, and moved to leave, tugging on Antonio’s trouser leg to urge him to follow her out. Snapping out of his reverie, he did, and Ruri with him.

When they got outside, Ruri whined, “Can we go now, Oni?”

“But—”

“Bye Oni!” Ah’arha said, waving broadly, an exaggerated motion like her nod had been. It seemed all motions that goblins made were exaggerated. “Ah’arha is grateful for helping.”

No, he needed his monetary reward. He couldn’t leave empty-pocketed. They were too deep and too empty, they needed to be filled with valuables strewn upon him by gratefulness. “But—”

“Yay!” Ruri threw her arms up, jumping in joy, as if being given the go-ahead to leave was like being told she was having a birthday party. Out of nowhere, a large crescent moon appeared beside her. It was golden, and big enough for her to comfortably sit on the bottom curve of it, almost like a prop for a school play. She grabbed his arm and pulled him onto it, shoving him down and sitting beside him too suddenly for him to protest to any useful degree. By the time he actually thought to say anything meaningful, they were in the air.

It flew. Well, that was new, he thought, as he stared at the quickly receding ground, his arms wrapped tightly around the upward curve of the strange vehicle so that he wouldn’t fall off. He felt a profound disappointment as he watched the tiny goblin grow tinier until he couldn’t see her anymore in the distance. His hope of secret lost riches vanished with her, so he sighed and contented himself with the blurring scenery that flew beneath them.

“Why are you nervous, Oni? You’ve ridden Ruri’s moon before, you won’t fall off.” He glanced at her, believed her because obviously she’d known this Oni person a while and probably knew what she was talking about, and released his vice-grip on the crescent, laying his hands instead on the smooth gold beside him.

The desert dunes below gave way to hilly terrain. They were at the edge of the jungle now, by the lake he could not for the life of him remember the name of, the one that the dangerous tribe of Anolians lived near and which travelers had been advised against approaching for just that reason. And there, the caves wherein lay the Nightlife City of Comodo. This strange vehicle moved very fast for them to be in sight of Comodo already. Normally it took days to get there on foot.

And then the vast dense jungles of Umbala spanned beneath his feet; glimpses of wooden pathways showed through breaks in the foliage, built by its pygmy inhabitants. He realized, and then wondered why the thought had occurred to him, that Umbalans wore masks all the time, just like goblins did. Perhaps they were related somehow. But that was silly, Umbalans were just small humans, and goblins were, well, goblins.

In the quickly approaching distance he saw a tree so huge that it would take days to circle its trunk on foot. He stared in wonder. Every child knew that tree. It was the first legend of Rune-Midgard that anybody learned. How, from the roots of that tree, all the world’s life had been birthed, and how those same roots led to the three different worlds; Asgard, Midgard, and Utgard. The wondrous tree of Yggdrassil. And it was this place, this magnificent ancient tree of life that they now approached as their destination.

The sun began to rise over the jungle, bathing the world in an orange glow and turning the clouds on the horizon pink. He’d missed his chance to sleep tonight, he realized with a sort of disappointment. Good thing he’d managed to snatch a nap the day before in preparation for his late-night mission. The bad thing was that now his mother would be frantic with worry, wondering just why in the world he wasn’t back yet and fretting that something had happened to him during his mission.

The tree rushed toward them, silhouetted before the pink and purple clouds, cutting a very intimidating and awesome figure. He just stared, taking in the majesty of the image. The birth of all mankind lay before them, standing tall as it had since the dawn of time.

Despite their impressive speed, it seemed to take an eternity to reach the tree. Ruri dropped them into the jungle before they were very close, and they landed on a wooden platform that had been built by skilled craftsmen. A walkway led off behind them, and built around or through trees were things resembling homes, though in miniature. Before them was a set of planks resembling stairs, leading down to the earth below. Ruri, with an exaggerated marching motion, like a child playing army, started down those stairs. Antonio followed more nonchalantly, hands thrust casually into his depressingly empty pockets, eyes roaming and taking in the foreign surroundings.

His mother would be waking up soon, if she’d bothered to sleep, which he doubted she had. The sun was filtering green light through the dense treetops. He really should be getting home very soon, he feared the consequences if he didn’t. But, he thought, it would be horribly un-thief-like to interrupt an adventure in progress, and if he ever wanted to be a decent assassin he had to start being very thief-like in the meantime.

They reached the bottom of the stair, where the trees above them were so thick that the little light they had was nothing more than a dim green glow. Before them lay the base of the tree, its huge jutting roots standing so far above their heads that they had to crane their necks just to see the tops of the massive structures. Between the two roots they could see was an enormous crack in the tree, leading into a sort of black oblivion. It was toward that crevice that Ruri now led him.

He followed her silently, wondering where the interior of the tree would lead them. What sorts of strange things would they find within? Creatures from the dawn of time? Fantastic jewels? Strange natives with strange treasures? Perhaps it was a bit disrespectful to think of purloining valuables from the tree responsible for his existence, a bit like stealing your mother’s wedding ring off her finger to pawn it, but then was it any less disrespectful to just march through here like they belonged? Wasn’t this tree kind of a hallowed thing? Suddenly he almost expected to be struck down by lightning before he reached the entrance.

But he wasn’t. They passed through, plunging into shadow. Ruri murmured a few words and they were surrounded by a soft, ambient light. Dozens of colored lights glittered back at them, reflected off the surfaces of huge gemstones that jutted out from the wooden floor. The floor was smooth and polished, as if an experienced carpenter had carved a castle within the tree; the rings could still be seen in it, as far apart as the width of his foot and so numerous that he couldn’t have counted them in a thousand years. This tree was older than time itself.

His eyes went wide at the sight of the glittering stones. The very smallest of them was at least the size of his whole foot. Of course his feet weren’t very large, but it was nonetheless impressive.

Ruri summoned her moon once more instead of opting to walk, and a very deadly looking scythe came out of nothingness along with it. She floated along, only a foot or so above the floor, and slowly enough that he could follow on foot. She assumed by virtue of his being Oni that he followed close behind. Of course, he wasn’t Oni, and he didn’t. Instead, he stopped to inspect the closest gemstone, a few feet away from where he stood.

It was the size of his head; what could be seen of it above the wood was, anyway. Like an iceberg, he suspected, most of its bulk was concealed below the surface. The floor at its base was splintered and torn, as if it had grown up through the wood. As if the stone were as alive as the tree.

He reached out, laying his hand on the large purple stone. It was warm; he could feel it even through the leather gloves of his uniform. Was that…? He leaned closer, squinting as if narrower vision would block out figments. Inside, the purple jewel glittered, as if a myriad of tiny fireflies swam within. It wasn’t a trick of the ambient light that hadn’t left with Ruri, either. The shimmering specks found where his hand lay and congregated just below the surface, lighting up a violet glow beneath it.

As the surface grew warmer beneath his fingertips, he pulled his hand away. He had considered digging out one of these jewels, but now thought better of it. If he touched it now, it would probably burn him, even through the thick leather gloves. A natural defense system of some sort, for some reason. But why, and how? It was a rock growing inside of a tree.

He stood and tried to discern where Ruri had gone so he could follow. He considered briefly running away and heading back home, but it would take him weeks to walk through Umbala’s jungle to Comodo and from there back to Morroc, even assuming he could do it without getting lost. Navigation was not his strong suit, that’s what had gotten him into this adventure in the first place. Amelio had always been the one with the sense of direction.

Luckily there seemed to be only one path through the tree. As he walked, staring in fascination at the random gemstones and glittering glowing patterns on the ground, he realized that the walls were as smooth and polished as the floor, and they were curved, as if the path he took was a huge spiral road to the center of the tree. What was in the center, he wondered. Then he recalled what Ah’arha had said and halted, forgetting to breathe in his astonishment.

Oni made his home in Niflheim. The land of the dead, in the realm of Utgard. Home was where Ruri was taking him.

He nearly panicked. He’d been due for an adventure, but not one that could possibly kill him. What would his mother do? She’d suddenly have no sons where once she’d had two. Please, he pleaded to whatever fates might be watching over him, let him live to return back home to his mother so she wouldn’t have to be alone without a son.

A faint buzzing reached his ear and he looked around for its source; it grew louder as it approached him. A stainer swooped out of nowhere, landing by his feet and tucking its delicate wings beneath its hard black-spotted shell. It crawled a little ways, adjusted its wing-case, and settled there. He knelt down to examine the insect. He’d seen them before, but they weren’t exactly common in the Morroc sands. Usually he only found them when they went to visit his father in Al de Baran.

He reached out to the stainer, slowly. Without prompt or warning, it fluttered onto his arm with its charming buzz, and crawled up his jacket to sit contentedly near his elbow. The thing was nearly as big as his hand. Of course, like feet, he had rather small hands, but it was nonetheless impressive. Where the light caught it just right, its shell shimmered like a rainbow.

Briefly he wondered if the shell was worth anything, but quickly dismissed the idea, deciding not to ruin the creature’s majesty. He stood, brushing it away from his arm. It buzzed off into the darkness, perhaps to resurface later.

It was a ways down the road before he encountered anything else. This time it was an enormous black-shelled beetle, crawling along leisurely. The thing was as large as a cat and had a horn on its head that was half as large as it was. He decided not to bother that one and kept walking.

Out of nowhere, a rock hit him in the head. After his initial, “ow,” he turned to see the perpetrator and ducked just in time to avoid a second stone.

The offender was a large apelike thing covered in shaggy fur and armor carved from wood, painted with intimidating reds and blacks. It gave a low whoop and loaded another rock into its slingshot.

There was no way Antonio could take on this thing with his simple little stiletto. As it took aim at him again, he bolted. He heard the next shot clatter to the ground as it missed. The ape let out another whoop and gave chase, but the thief was the faster runner and he was soon out of reach of the threat.

Of course, he ran right into the reaches of another one, as he came across the lumbering totem-like thing. It vaguely resembled a tree, with a huge maw carved into its base right below the rest of its horrifying face. He backed away from it just in time to avoid being burned to cinders as a shoot of flame burst from that huge maw.

Who knew that the tree of life was so deadly?

From behind it came the silver glint of something and the tree-monster fell to the ground in two pieces, with Ruri, mounted on her moon, emerging behind it out of the shadows. Antonio looked up at her and she huffed angrily. “Stupid Oni,” she said, “always in trouble.”

Despite himself, he grinned at her.

“Stay with Ruri this time,” she threatened, before floating away again on her ride. This time he followed.

No other dangers presented themselves on the remainder of their journey. As they neared what seemed to be the center, they found mushrooms in a growing number, and what looked like stacks of lumber, neatly carved into two-by-fours and four-by-eights, and all sorts of other by sizes. They passed a small, empty looking shack; it appeared to have been built of the same wood as all the planks lying around.

“Who lives here?” he asked, stopping.

She stopped as well, looking to it. “You should know by now, Oni. The Carpenter.”

“The Carpenter?”

She nodded. “He built the path, remember?”

“Yeah…” He didn’t, of course.

They continued on.

As they came across another shack, this one in process of being built, its two adjacent walls gaping emptily at the floor, he asked, “So who’s this Carpenter?”

She gave a sigh. “Oni, have you forgotten everything?”

“Humor me.”

Another sigh and then she launched into explanation. “The Carpenter is an old old Wootan man who lives in the tree.” She recited it with an air of exasperation.

“Wootan?”

She made a frustrated noise, which sounded oddly catlike. “Big monkey people!” she shouted, throwing her arms out wide like she had when she’d described how big the things he was destined for were. That thing with the slingshot, had that been a Wootan then? Had that been the Carpenter? “But he’s really nice and doesn’t attack us like other Wootan do.” Guess not, then. “He builds everything in the tree and makes sure it stays nice.”

“Oh.” What a strange task in life to have. How much did it pay?

Before long they reached a large round cavern where a door was carved into the wood. Nothing fancy, just a door in the ground, like an outside basement entrance like the ones they had in Al de Baran, which lay open and led down a long stairway. It was down this stairway that Ruri took him; it spiraled and turned strangely, disorienting all sense of direction.

The place they emerged into was more of the same, but the strange gemstones were more sparsely scattered and the oddly luminescent patches of color on the ground were more common. The path was no longer a singular one; it was more open than the floor above. Looking up, he could see higher ground above them to their right, a plateau carved into the tree with a vine ladder leading up the sheer edge. In front of them he could see a trunk with a dark doorway carved into it. Trees grew here, within the tree, though there were only two that he could see where he stood. How strange.

Ruri drove her moon to the top of that plateau; Antonio followed by way of the vines. They were thick and very strong, and he seemed to imagine that they moved of their own accord beneath him. But of course that was only his overactive imagination. He crawled up onto the platform; there was a faint slithering sound from behind him. Was it only his imagination? After tonight, he didn’t know anymore.

Ruri led the way. They moved down a curved slope, following a rounded wall toward what he suspected to be the center of the place. That slithering sound came again, but this time from around the corner, moving toward them.

It was a woman, or something like one. From the knees down she was encased in thick vines, which moved her along like an octopus on the sea floor, and at her hips she bloomed as a flower from a ring of large thick leaves. Her skin looked as if it had the consistency of bark, up to about her stomach where it faded to a sapling green. The bark pattern still snaked upwards, leaving swirling brown patterns on her green skin. Her arms faded to bark at the elbows and her hands were twisted gnarled claws. Claws which she used to strike out with at Ruri.

The attack came suddenly and caught Antonio off-guard. Ruri responded speedily, giving a cry that sounded like a Halloween cat as she raised her scythe high over her head and swung it down. The tree woman fell to the ground with a wooden thud, her body split in two pieces, diagonally from her stomach to her hip. He had expected to see blood, but instead she withered up like a dead flower, and faded away.

Whistling happily, Ruri led on.

Antonio stared at the spot where the woman had been as he followed, wondering what he had just seen.

As they rounded a curve, foliage appeared overhead, making the experience even more surreal. They followed it, and came around into a large hollow. There was a path carved right into the wood, like a ditch with a stairway at the bottom, which led down into a darkness his eyes could not penetrate. Branches hung over it in a curtain, as if they presented to him something of great importance. Ruri abandoned her vehicle and weapon to venture down, and the boy went after her, following the smooth wooden wall with his gloved hands as they descended.

This time the place was vastly different. Water surrounded them, and they stood on a lone grassy path through it, a very long thin and branching island in the clear, crystalline water. Flowers sprouted randomly from the ground; pretty shimmering bell-shaped flowers as tall as he was. Of course he wasn’t very tall, but he was tall for a flower.

As his eyes strayed upwards, he gasped. Trees hung in the air, on their own miniature floating islands, and waterfalls gushed from the walls which were surely the sides of the tree itself. Ruri’s magical ambient light was gone, replaced by a shimmering glow from something like a silvery sun in the ceiling of the gigantic cavern. Rainbows filled the sky, refracting from the spray all the waterfalls left in the air.

It was the most pure, clean, and beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his short teenage life. It made him feel very small and very important all at once.

The scent of grass that was most common after a fresh spring rain mixed with the pleasant fragrance of the large flowers, and beneath that was the underlying smell of the wood of the tree itself. It perfected the peaceful atmosphere; he felt like he could stay here forever.

But Ruri began walking, and he followed reluctantly. The long winding path led to a dark doorway on the other side, identical to the one they’d come through. Ruri took her time walking, though. She seemed to enjoy the place as much as Antonio did.

The way led beneath a waterfall, and as they passed under it, he stopped to look up. A rainbow, fluttering in the spray like a flag in the wind, hung over them, a multicolored archway.

As they continued on he realized that the island trees spun slowly as they floated, and made sounds as they spun like crystalline wind chimes. Had the Carpenter built this magical place too? If so, he was more than a Carpenter. He was a blessed servant of the gods of Valhalla, for only they could sanction a place so hallowed and majestic and wondrous.

But their stay in the interior of the tree of Yggdrassil, the amazing portal between worlds, was too short. A lifetime would not have been long enough. They reached the dark doorway, through which no light leaked. There should have been at least a faint circle over the threshold cast by the silvery light above them, but, inexplicably, all light stopped at the exact line of the doorway.

It was too foreboding. He wanted to stay on the magical path instead, but Ruri took his hand and led him through. Her ambient light did not return, and he doubted it would have accomplished much anyway. The stairs this time led up, and they creaked eerily with each step. He kept one hand on the wall, which was no longer smooth and polished but was rough and gnarled, to guide his path upward. They walked so long that he felt like a tireless golem, endlessly climbing step after creaking step.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they emerged out of the darkness into a different sort of darkness.

The moon hung high in the sky, oddly giving off enough pale silver light to fully illuminate the world below. Unlike the silver light inside the Passage Between Worlds, it did not feel pure and clean and benevolent; it felt malicious and mocking. The ground was dead and grey, like hard-packed ash, and here and there the bones of strange things poked through; narrow pathways laid down in dim purple snaked through the black ashen ground. He could see a few scattered homes between the sparse dead trees, with limbs reaching up in tangled cries of pain and rage as if they sought to tear that mocking silver moon from its place in the sky. The homes were built out of some sort of dark grey wood, and had oddly slanted roofs, as if they’d been haphazardly thrown onto the four walls by some giant child.

A sign painted on that strange dark wood hung before them, with words painted on it in crooked white letters. “Skellington” and then beneath that, “A peaceful village on the outskirts of Niflheim.”

His heart sank. They were in Utgard, the realm of the dead, and more specifically, they were in Hell. Not to mention his mother was probably worried sick and he’d only had about four hours of sleep in the past twenty-four. And his pockets were still empty.

“Almost home!” Ruri declared happily, skipping to stand in front of the sign.

He gulped down his demand to be released to go back home to his mother and just nodded.

The girl hopped along the path and despite his nerves he went after her; she was the only thing he knew here, so he made sure to keep close.

At its edges, the road sloped downward like a melting wax plate. A glance off one of these edges revealed a swirling angry vortex of fog. He suspected that if he fell, he’d fall forever.

One of the homes they approached seemed hastily stuck onto the ground, and was on the edge of that slope. It seemed as if it would slide off into that swirling fog at any time. Out front was a ghost-like thing with a tattered red scarf wrapped around its neck and mouth. Rusted chains hung from its wrists as it tended dead flowers in a decrepit window-box before a shattered window with shutters hanging off their rusted hinges. It looked up at Ruri and waved; its chains rattled eerily. She grinned and waved back. Antonio made sure to stay very close to her.

It had been a mistake to let her pull him here. This was no place for a Morrocan thief extraordinaire, not at all.

A black stuffed bunny hopped up to them, moving with a life all its own. He recalled the doll in the fortress and shrunk back from it. It held up its little round arms, like a child begging to be held, and in the air above it he though he could discern, just barely, the figure of a young boy in a heavy winter coat and cap holding his arms up similarly.

Antonio backed away further from the ghost boy-bunny and his pleading translucent eyes. Ruri saw him move and turned, her eyes falling on the stuffed bunny and its ghostly controller. She stepped up to hug the little stuffed animal, picking it up and holding it to her overdeveloped chest. The figure of the boy hugged her back as the toy did. When she set it back down, there was something in her hands. The bunny hopped off like it was being controlled by strings and the boy’s form ran with it.

She turned and presented her prize in both hands to Antonio. It was a heart-shaped pillow, large enough to just cover both her hands. A couple of sewing pins were stuck into it, and it was covered in little pinprick holes where others had once been stuck.

Seeing his confused look, she said, “He’s a Heirozoist. A child possessing a toy. He gets very lonely. This means he likes you.”

“Oh,” was all he could say.

She tucked the needle packet into her blouse and kept walking.

The rest of their trip through Skellington was uneventful. Despite its appearance, it really was just a peaceful little village on the outskirts of Niflheim. They passed through a graveyard in which sat a group of ghosts cheerfully having a picnic. A white bridge led to the end of the town, which floated mysteriously without support of any kind. He would not have trusted it at all had he not been certain it had been traversed many times before. Ruri went across, heading for the white archway that marked the edge of town.

When they passed under it he could see on the horizon a huge city, its spires tilting and uneven. The path there was winding. In some places going off the road only led to a valley filled with fog through which twisted bare limbs of trees poked like eerie fingers. In others, it led to the bottomless angry mist. He didn’t want to try visiting either.

The spirits here were sparse, folks wandering the path from the city to the town or vice versa, or out for a leisurely walk. A large man in a bloody manteau and a contorted goblin-like mask waved pleasantly at them, even with a huge stained cleaver in his other hand. Antonio waved back out of instinct; he could feel the color drain from his face.

A suit of hollow black armor walked arm-in-arm with a white girl who held her head cradled in her free arm. Little white wisps with candy buckets and bandanas with upside-down triangles on their foreheads cavorted with little black wisps with shadowy horns and tiny pointed tails. A girl with a scythe and moon similar to Ruri’s hung in the air, legs swinging idly as she conversed with a gnarled and marred hangman’s tree, with badly stitched cloth dolls hung from its branches.

“That girl,” said Antonio, not bothering to say more. He didn’t feel he could manage to. But he was curious as to why she looked so much like Ruri, with the same outfit and pigtails and cat doll on her head.

Ruri looked. “Oh, I haven’t seen her before. She must be a new Loli.”

Loli? So was Ruri, in her pigtails and knee-high striped socks, just another breed of monster? A moon-riding scythe-wielding Loli?

“Let’s go!” She took his arm and they ran to the other girl, whose pigtails were straight and black as opposed to Ruri’s voluminous golden ones. The cat doll draped over the other girl’s head was a striped grey tabby rather than the plain black one on Ruri’s.

She looked up as they approached and gave a pleasant smile. “Hi!”

“Hi!” Ruri responded. “I’m Loli Ruri.”

The tree snuck closer to Antonio, not wanting to interrupt the two girls. He stared wide-eyed at the ragged, stained dolls swinging from its branches, trying valiantly not to look frightened.

“I’m Loli Dari,” said the other girl, leaning her head against the scythe’s shaft as she gave a cute grin. “Are you here for the party?”

“Party?” She blinked, looking back like she had no idea what the girl meant.

“The annual Graveyard Gathering.”

Her big eyes went bigger. “That’s today?”

Dari nodded. “It’s already started. You’d better hurry.”

“Yes! Thank you!” She quickly summoned her moon and hopped on, grabbing Antonio as she flew past and pulling him up beside her with her unnatural strength.

He watched the ground speed away as they flew high, over the city’s outer wall and past its crooked towers.

“The Graveyard Gathering!” she exclaimed as they flew, as if he knew what that was and was supposed to care. He gathered that it was some fun and important event and did not feel the need to ask more about it.

As they flew over the city, they could see the throngs of Niflheim natives in the streets, and hear the ambient music that grew louder as they descended.

He thought he saw, at the edge of the crowd, a boy in a thief jacket and a Payonese demon mask much like his. But that was only a brief glimpse before they were in the town square, landing on the ground near a woman in the uniform of a Kafra employee.

Wow, Kafra really will be with you everywhere you go, he thought, watching as the rotting woman extended her services to a ghostly couple.

They disembarked and Ruri said, “Let’s go, Oni!” She dragged him to the edge of the square, shoving through crowds of spirits as they celebrated.

At the edge of the crowd, on a platform that had been built for today’s purposes, was a very tall man dressed entirely in white armor, dancing with a horde of skeletons and zombies to oddly hyperactive music. Though the beat was fast and seemed as if it should be cheerful, it was as foreboding as Niflheim itself. A perfect song to fit the city.

“Who knew the Lord of Death could dance?” said Ruri, as she abandoned her hold on Antonio’s arm to dance herself.

He heard somebody nearby mutter, “Lord of Death is just a wannabe Dark Lord,” derisively, and Ruri snapped suddenly to find that person and begin yelling at her. He took that chance to slip away from her, slithering through the enthralled crowd. He wanted to find that boy he’d seen. It had probably been only a doppelganger, but he had to know for sure.

He slipped away through a door. The sign above it, painted just like the Skellington town limits sign, said, “INN.” It was strangely empty; apparently everyone was outside partying. Quietly, trying to pretend that he belonged, he slid onto the bench at the table and looked around, trying not to seem like he was a tourist.

“Hey, Oni.” There was a fluttering of wings and he looked up at the chicken that had scrambled onto the table before him.

A chicken. Of course it was missing flesh in a few places and its eyes were bloodshot and glowing red, but it was still a chicken.

“How’s it goin’?” said the chicken.

“Um, good—” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat and tried again. “Good enough.”

It scratched at the tabletop, pecking with its battered looking bill. “Hear you been hangin’ out with the witch lately.”

“The witch?”

“Yeah, up on the hill, southeast side o’ town.”

“Oh.”

“So I take it ya haven’t?” It preened the dingy feathers under its wing.

“No, not really.” At least he could say that honestly.

“Oh, well okay then. See ya later, Oni.” It hopped down from the table and vanished into obscurity somewhere outside of his vision.

Niflheim was so weird. And he’d thought he’d seen strange things in the Sphinx. How mistaken he’d been.

He decided to leave. He stood, but as he moved to the door, the innkeeper stopped him. Amazingly, the man was fairly normal looking, for a corpse. “Hey, Oni,” he called out, leaning over the counter.

Antonio stopped and looked at him.

“Found this on the floor in here the other day,” he said. He set an ivory piano key on the counter. “I don’t have any use for it, figured you might want it.”

A piano key? Well, ivory was ivory, and that was at least worth something. He took the key, examining it for a moment before slipping it into his empty pocket, now not so empty anymore. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a plain old piano key, looking well worn and a little dingy. “Thanks,” he said.

“Hey, no problem.” He went back to scrubbing the insides of glasses.

Antonio left. He walked down a somewhat paved pathway to the north, running into a strange-looking spirit on the way. Without warning the corpse attacked him, sinking its teeth into his arm.

He screamed and jumped back, holding his wounded arm as the thing grinned a bloody, fanged grin at him. “Ow, my vein!” he said, immediately realizing how stupid it sounded as soon as he said it. The gems that lack of sleep helped him create.

The grinning spirit laughed wickedly and said, “No worry, me am not trying to kill you. Me am trying to eat you.”

Antonio backed away from it, staring wide-eyed at that bloody grin.

It laughed again, genuinely amused in its maliciousness, and walked past him. “Me play again later, Oni.”

Once it was gone, he inspected his arm. The teeth hadn’t pierced his jacket, but it was starting to stain red. He rolled up the sleeve, wondering how that thing could break the skin but not the leather over it. Sure enough, there was a bleeding wound there in the shape of a mouth full of teeth. Thank goodness any thief worth his uniform always carried a first aid kit, even if all it consisted of was a few bandages. He settled behind the inn and took out the kit from the inside pocket of his coat. Out of habit generated by his childhood, he licked the blood from his wounded arm as he opened the case of his kit with his other hand. He froze like that suddenly, remembering Ah’arha and the gryphon’s blood on his knife. After a brief pause to feel disconcerted, he quickly forgot about it and went about the task of bandaging up the wound. When he’d finished, he put the first aid kit back in his inside coat pocket and stood, pulling his bloodied sleeve back down over his bandaged arm. The bandages were already staining all the way through. He hoped he didn’t die from blood loss, that wouldn’t be very good at all.

Behind him in the town square he could hear that music still playing. It was almost inviting now. But he wanted to find that other thief. He suspected that boy was the real Oni, and he wanted to know more about this Oni that everyone mistook him for.

His wandering took him northeast, to a graveyard, which seemed odd. There were lone graves scattered all over town, the whole place was one huge graveyard. At the rear, near the white picket fence, there floated a book with large teeth instead of pages. He recognized it from the bestiary at the guild: a Rideword, very fast and able to rend a person apart in a matter of seconds with their deadly razor-sharp teeth. But this one made no motion toward him, just floating there quietly.

He decided it was best not to mess with the thing. He only had so many bandages in his kit.

Instead he slunk away to wander the edges of the city, since all the citizens gathered now in the center for their party. At the west edge was the city wall, a high imposing silhouette on the horizon. Before he reached that, he reached the bridges that spanned an abyss. A man stood, staring forlornly down into the swirling mist, on one of them. Antonio went over to talk, hoping that this man wouldn’t also try to eat him.

He was well-dressed, with a conservative blonde haircut. He looked up as Antonio walked over. “Oh. Oni,” he said.

The thief stood beside him and also stared down into that foggy oblivion. “How’s it goin’?” he asked, trying not to sound nervous, trying to sound like he knew this person and this place and was not lost and frightened and confused.

The man sighed. “Not so well. I haven’t figured out a way out yet.”

“Way out?”

“Yeah, you know how it’s impossible to get out of Niflheim except by magic. The monsters can, but we humans can’t.”

His breath stopped and his heart skipped a beat. He was stuck here? He’d considered it an innocent adventure, fallen into it because he was curious to a fault. But now he could never leave? A one-way path through the Tree of Life to the City of Death.

“Most I know is that the witch may know a way, but she won’t talk to anybody.”

The witch. The witch in the southeast corner of town that the chicken had mentioned. He needed to find her.

“Niflheim’s a great place and all, but I’d like to see my wife again.” He looked up at Antonio, who looked back, his one blue eye staring in an expression of suppressed shock. “You’re not Oni,” the man said suddenly, looking quizzical.

The boy shook his head. “I’m Antonio.”

“Antonio.” The thief nodded. “Where did you get that mask?”

“I stole it from a vendor in Morroc.” No harm in the truth here, was there? He very much doubted anybody would arrest him for that here.

“Funny, that’s where Oni said he got his.” The man seemed to think for a moment.

“Where is Oni?”

“We haven’t seen him in a while.”

The boy he had seen, that had to be Oni. He had to find him. “See you later, mister,” he said, and then he took off running, toward the tower he could see in the southwest.

He stopped suddenly as he passed by a lone grave, seeing a glint of white in the ashen dirt. Despite how upset he was, he was still a thief at heart, and he had to check it out. He went to inspect, and pulled another piano key, identical to the first, out of the black dirt. He brushed it off so that it was fairly clean, and stuck it into his pocket beside the first that the innkeeper had found. Not that it mattered anymore; he couldn’t sell them for zeny back in Morroc because he’d never get back to Morroc.

That thought renewed his panic and he started running once more. He found a path of small floating islands at the south edge of town, which he followed up. Briefly he stopped in his climb to look over the city. It was vast and gothic, but somehow in the silvery moonlight it was also majestic and pretty. Not in the same sense as the Passage Between Worlds, but in a way that still took his breath away.

If he weren’t so worried about his mother being left alone, maybe he’d stay. What better place to have an adventure than here? Where else was as full of curious things for a curious boy to explore than here? But he couldn’t stay. He couldn’t leave his mother home alone with no sons where once she’d had two. He kept walking up the path, stepping from island to island like stepping stones on a pond. Not that Morroc had a lot of ponds, but Al de Baran did.

He suddenly remembered playing in the canals and the lakes with his brother when they went to visit their father, and he stopped, staring down at the island pathway. It was depressing to think that not only would he never get to see his mother again, but he’d never get to go to Al de Baran to see his father, either. He loved Al de Baran, it was so pretty there, and he could look off the cliffs north of it into the sky and see the shadow of Juno, the floating capitol of the Schwartzwald Republic. He’d always wanted to go to the Schwartzwald, and his father kept telling him they’d go when he turned sixteen. Only two months from now, he was supposed to go with his father on his first trip out of country, and now he’d never even get to go on any more trips out of city. It took a lot of control not to cry as he continued walking up the path.

A wrought black iron streetlamp greeted him at the last island, which housed the tower he’d seen from afar. A sign hung over the door, with a white silhouette of a broom-riding witch painted on it. Also standing there was Ruri, with the thief he’d seen earlier.

“I thought your eye was blue,” she said, leaning toward the other thief’s also-masked face.

“My other one is,” he answered, in a voice Antonio recognized immediately.

“A…Amelio,” he managed to say, frozen completely as if he’d suddenly turned into a statue.

Oni, the real Oni, turned to look at him. They stared at each other, like somebody seeing their reflection for the first time. They were mirror twins, after all, perfect reflections of each other down to their mismatched eyes on opposite sides and opposing dominant hands. They wore the same ceramic horned demon masks; they’d stolen the pair of them together at the bazaar the year before.

“Antonio,” Oni managed, surprised beyond words.

Ruri stood and stared in confusion as Antonio walked up to her Oni, tentatively reached out, hesitating before laying his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Is it really you?” he asked, looking up at the soft brown and hard green glass eyes that looked back at him.

Without warning, Oni snatched his brother into a strong hug, saying, “I thought I’d never get to see you again!”

After they separated from their hug, Antonio asked, “How did you get here?”

“I wandered in.”

He stared disbelievingly. “Through Umbala? On foot from Morroc?”

Oni smiled, a half-smile that hid something important, and shrugged.

“Through the tree and everything?”

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

Ruri stepped between them suddenly, before Antonio could respond, and shoved them apart further as she thrust her hands up straight out from her sides. “Why are there two Onis?” she demanded, glaring at each of them in turn. “Ruri deserves an explanation!”

Oni laughed, and Antonio watched him as he explained. “Calm down Ruri, there’s only one Oni. This is my brother Antonio, he looks just like me.”

“No, his eyes are different,” she said, like he’d just called her stupid.

“Yeah, that’s it. Everything else is the same.” Obviously, he didn’t want to take the time to explain the fluke of biology that had made them perfect reflections of one another.

She stepped up to scrutinize Antonio. “So Mr. Blue-eye Oni is fake,” she accused. Turning to the other twin, she added, “And Brown-eye Oni is the real Oni.”

Oni shrugged. “Sure.”

She whirled on Antonio, angry. “Why did Oni’s brother trick Ruri?” she demanded.

He shrugged in response. For wealth and riches? For adventure, mostly. He was overdue for one. It was supposed to be his trip to Schwartzwald in two months, but, well, adventure struck when you least expected it.

Oni stepped forward and set his hands on Ruri’s shoulders, gently guiding her away from his brother. “Go play, Ruri. I want to talk to him alone for a while.”

She made a noise that sounded like an upset cat, but obeyed him and ran off to rejoin the party in the square. More likely that wasn’t where she was actually going, but as long as she wasn’t there, Oni didn’t seem to care.

The twins looked at each other and Oni said, “Come on,” as he began to walk down the stepping-stone islands the way his brother had come up. Antonio followed, and they were silent for a while, just reveling in each other’s company for the first time in a year.

Finally Antonio said, “Doesn’t it remind you of Al de?”

Oni stopped, looked back at him, and then realized he meant the stepping stones. He smiled. “Yeah, it does. I haven’t thought about dad’s house in a long time.”

“He was going to take me to Schwartzwald for our birthday this year.” Even when Amelio had disappeared, he’d still never said “my birthday.” It wasn’t just his, it never had been and it never would be, no matter what happened to his brother. It was always their birthday, both of theirs, and when people had asked him when it was he’d always answer, “Our birthday.” They’d be confused and ask who he meant by the plural, but he didn’t care. It was Amelio’s too.

“Lucky!” Oni said. “You were going to Juno?”

His smile fell into a disappointed sort of sadness. “Well…not anymore.”

Oni’s expression became similar. “Oh… We can’t get out…”

He shook his head. “So I’ve heard.”

With a sigh, Oni walked over and sat on the edge of the island, with his feet hanging into the open nothingness below them. Antonio followed and did likewise, and they both stared off into the distance. Amazingly, the view was quite pretty. Somewhere below the swirling fog was a horizon over which a strange red sun was beginning to rise. It lit the mist with all sorts of iridescent reds and pinks and oranges. Somewhere through the vibrant fog he could make out the shapes of massive roots, and far, very far in the distance, the tree itself. So far that it hovered on the edge of vision as if it were just a clever mirage. He wondered at the magic that had brought them so far from the tree on their journey through it.

“How’s Mom?” asked Oni suddenly.

“Good. She misses you.”

He nodded. “I know. I’ve been really worried about her since I got here.”

“I’ve been taking care of her.”

He nodded again and said nothing, staring off at the Yggdrassil tree in the distance.

“Why did you leave?”

Oni thought for a moment before he said anything. “Our last adventure together was when we were in the Sphinx, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Because all we knew was that there was this big lion west of Morroc with a door between its front paws, and we decided we were going to open that door and see what was inside.”

“A maze.”

“Full of monsters.”

“The matyr.”

He gave a nod and rolled up his sleeve, holding his arm out to show the scars that the black dog’s teeth had given him. It was the opposite from Antonio’s freshly wounded arm; another reflection to match the rest of theirs. “Matyrs are poisonous. It makes you delirious.”

“Really?”

Another nod. “All I remember is that I woke up later in Comodo. I don’t know how I got there, but I doubt I walked that far.”

Antonio remembered it well, when he’d first realized he was alone. He’d slashed the matyr across the eye but had been too afraid by it to finish it off. And while he hesitated, it had attacked Amelio, and bitten him so that the blood covered his whole arm and dripped onto the ground. Amelio had killed it then, but Antonio had always felt guilty because that hesitation had been what gave the monster the chance to attack. They’d bandaged up Amelio’s arm and tried to go back to the surface, but the Sphinx was just one enormous maze from top to bottom and they’d gotten horribly lost. When they turned a corner into a dead end, Antonio had turned back around to tell his brother that wasn’t the way, only to find him gone completely. He’d searched for hours, hiding from the beasts in the maze, trying to find his vanished brother, with no success. He was finally forced to find his own way out of the maze and go home to tell both his mother and the guild that Amelio was gone.

“What happened then?” he asked.

“I found Ruri. She really likes Comodo, she thinks the fireworks are pretty.”

Comodo, the city of eternal night, was lit constantly by a supply of fireworks in the sky. Antonio had never been there, but he’d heard about it. “And Ruri took you here?”

“Well, Ruri became my friend first. She really liked me. And she kept saying she wanted to take me home. I asked where her home was and she said it was in Niflheim. Not too appealing at the time, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to see what it was like.”

“Didn’t you ever worry about Mom?”

“Yeah, a lot. But I knew you would take care of her, so I wasn’t too worried about it.”

And now nobody was there to take care of their mother. As long as one of them was there, it was fine. But now, with both of them gone… He didn’t even want to think about how heartbroken she would be.

Antonio neglected to respond now, instead pulling his knees up to his chest and folding his arms over them. He rested his chin on the basket created by his limbs and stared vacantly at the alien sunrise.

“I tried to leave last night,” Oni said. “Mortals can cross the threshold back as long as they have a monster accompanying them. Ruri and I have been out before, a few times. Never very far though, it gets harder the farther you get from the tree. Alone, once you’re outside of Utgard, you can make it as far as the Carpenter’s Workshop before the city pulls you back.”

“You made Ruri come with you and ditched her as soon as you hit the waterfalls.” Not a question. He knew his brother. They were both sneaky, conniving survivalists. But Antonio was the one who was curious to a fault. He was the one who took Amelio on all their adventures, always the instigator.

“Yeah. She knew I was going to try to go back home to Morroc, and I guess she tried to head me off there. Instead, she found you. Thought you were me and took you back here instead, when I was already here.”

Antonio heaved a sigh and craned his head back to look for the branches of the tree. Its mirage trunk vanished into obscurity before any appeared. What was in the branches, if Utgard was in the roots? The Carpenter’s Workshop had to be that first section of the tree that they’d entered through. Did it have another path, one leading up? There had to be. Maybe he could make it to the top before the city decided it had to have him back.

Maybe Asgard was up there in the branches, with Valhalla and all the gods. That would be a grand adventure indeed.

“Have you ever climbed the tree?” he asked, thinking he knew the answer already and being disappointed by it before he even heard it.

“No.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer. A silence spread out between them, which made Antonio feel very lonely. That was one thing that had always bothered him about his brother, that he never felt the need to see more. He never found a locked door and went crazy trying to figure out where it led, he never followed the narrow trails leading off the main paths just to find out where they led, he never saw abandoned buildings and wanted to know what was inside so badly that he broke into them to see.

“I’ve been talking to the witch,” he said finally. Antonio looked up at him. “She says she knows a spell that’ll send me to Umbala and cut my ties to Niflheim. The city won’t have its pull on me anymore.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “But she says she can only do it once a year. Apparently it’s a pretty big spell.”

“Oh.”

He gave a deep sigh and then climbed to his feet. Antonio followed suit as his brother began to walk away, down the island path. While they walked, his eyes strayed to the city itself. Its skyline was stark, crooked, and strangely majestic. An iron rooster that he hadn’t noticed before stood imposingly on the roof of the inn, and he remembered suddenly the legend of the Ragnarok, when the black rooster in Utgard would crow for the first time and signal the beginning of the end of the world.

From up here, the purple paths over the ashen ground that wound through the black city were pretty. It was a much lovelier sight than dusty Morroc seen from the same altitude.

Maybe being stuck here wouldn’t be so bad after all. Especially not with his brother to keep him company. They could try to climb into the branches together, go on another grand adventure, just like old times. Sure, he’d miss out on going to Schwartzwald with his father for their birthday, but wouldn’t it be worth it to see Asgard?

They headed down into the city, leaving the stepping stone path in favor of one of the violet roads. They walked in silence, both deep in thought. Then Antonio stopped suddenly, catching sight of something out of the corner of his eye. Oni sensed the halt and turned in time to see his brother go to inspect the grave at the side of the path. His eyes went wide as Antonio unearthed a third non-descript ivory piano key. As he scraped the caked-on dirt from it as well as he could with his gloves on, his brother stepped up to him and stared down at the item like a starving man seeing somebody else’s feast.

When his brother grabbed his arm, his left arm, the one that was bandaged and hidden beneath a bloodstained sleeve, he gave a gasp of pain and glared up at him, about to yell. His words died in his throat when he saw the way Oni was looking at the piano key, though, and he stared back at his brother, fear rising in his eyes. He winced as the grip over his wound tightened, and he said, “L-let go.”

Suddenly realizing what he was doing, snapping out of it like he’d been in a daze, Oni snatched his hand back and stared down at the blood on Antonio’s sleeve. “How’d you hurt yourself?” he asked.

Antonio wanted to respond with something accusatory, but refrained, slipping the third piano key into his pocket because that seemed to be what had caused Oni to react that way. “Somebody bit me,” he said.

“Oh. Stay away from him, he’s a weird one.”

He shouldn’t be too surprised that Oni knew who he was talking about. After all, he’d been living here for a year or so. Of course he was acquainted with the natives.

“Have you slept yet?”

The question came suddenly and caught him off-guard. “What?”

“It’s morning here. That means it’s been morning for a while outside. I know it took you and Ruri a while to get here. You probably haven’t slept.”

He shook his head. “No, I haven’t.”

“Come on, you can sleep at my place.”

His place happened to be an apartment complex toward the west side of town, built in the same towering, crooked architecture as the rest of the city. As they walked up from floor to floor, Antonio caught glimpses of life as it was for the dead. Another Heirozoist in the form of a stuffed dog played in the hallway with a real three-headed dog. Two floors above that was an ensuing argument between a one-legged swordsman and a one-armed acolyte, both corpses in middling stages of decay. For the most part however the place was empty. Because of the party, he suspected.

Oni’s room was on the top floor. Ruri waited for them, sitting in front of his door, looking forlorn and dejected. She nearly tackled Oni when she spotted him, and launched into a serious of berating comments about his abandoning her. He pushed her away, holding her at an arm’s length, telling her to stop and calm down. He instructed Antonio to go on inside and make himself at home while he dealt with the girl.

He did so, leaving the two in the hallway. While normally he would have stayed to eavesdrop, he was too tired now to care. It was strange how he hadn’t even realized he’d been that tired until given the option of fixing it. That was how it normally went; he suspected it was some sort of internal defense measure known to all humans.

Oni’s apartment was fairly normal, given the setting. The wallpaper was black and peeling from the walls, the carpet was a poor, threadbare specimen of the species and a sickly shade of grey, and the furniture that he could see was twisted and distorted to the very edges of what its functionality allowed. Cozy, really.

He walked down the short hallway and took the door on the left. It was a fairly standard bedroom, the macabre bed covered in black sheets and a comforter the same shade as the carpet. A chest of drawers stood in the corner, just as distorted as the chairs and table he’d seen while entering.

He wanted so badly to look through his brother’s things, to unlock the one locked drawer and rifle through it, but he was just too tired right now to do any snooping. He’d do it later, he decided. As he sat on the edge of the bed to remove his shin plates and his boots so he could sleep, he realized, remembering the way his brother had reacted to seeing him pick up the piano key, that he should probably hide the three he had. Oni would steal them if he needed them, just as he’d do the same if the situation were reversed. They were thieves, the pair of them, trained by their guild to think like it. So, after taking off his boots, armor, gloves and jacket and setting them all neatly at the foot of the bed, laying the half-mask on top of the pile, he stood and went to the chest of drawers, doing the ingenious thing and hiding his things where his brother wouldn’t look for them: among his own.

Secure in the knowledge that his piano keys were hidden safely beneath a drawer full of socks, Antonio went back to the bed and lay down under the black sheets and grey blankets to sleep. Despite how tired he was, it took him some time to actually fall asleep; his mind kept drifting to the things he’d seen on this adventure. Sandaruman’s fortress with Ah’arha and the ghosts of the deserted place, the bird’s-eye view of the world and then his trip through the tree of life, and now the city of death which wasn’t so bad after all. When he finally drifted into sleep, it was into dreams of these things.

It was several hours later that he finally awoke. At first he was dazed, confused as to where he was and why. It took a few seconds for the memory of the night before to come back to him and for him to realize where he was. He climbed out from under the covers, moving to the foot of the bed so he could put his gear back on.

Even though it was all piled how it had been when he’d left it, he could tell it had been moved. Oni had come through looking for those three piano keys, just as he’d suspected he would. He worried for a moment that his brother may have found them where they were hidden, but knew that while Amelio was sneaky and conniving, he wasn’t as much so as Antonio. He didn’t think like a thief extraordinaire. The chance of him thinking to look there was slim.

Antonio pulled on his boots, clasped his shin plates on over them, and set his mask and jacket beside him on the bed. A glance at his arm revealed completely blood-soaked bandages, the stain so dark it was almost black. He took out his first aid kit, untied the old bandages and re-bandaged his wound. It looked nasty, the sort of thing that grade school kids would show each other to gross out their friends. He hoped that was normal and not a sign of infection or something really bad. After that was done, he slid his jacket back on; the bloodstain on the sleeve that lay over his fresh bandage was also so dark it was almost black, something which happened to blood when it was dry, he supposed.

After securing his ceramic mask over his face once more, he stood and moved to the chest of drawers, going to retrieve his three keys. They were exactly where he’d left them; he took them out and slipped them into his deep pockets. And now that he had time, he took out his lock-pick, which he kept beside his knife in his belt, and picked the lock on the top drawer of the chest.

The first thing he found in there were four ivory piano keys identical to his three. With them was a folded up note in a very neat and curvaceous script, written in a very dark red that was almost black, just like the blood on his coat and old bandage. “Dear Oni,” it said, “If you can find the seven missing keys to my piano, I’ll send you home. I have no idea where they’ve got to.” It was signed, “The Witch,” with a stamp of the same image that hung over her door.

So that explained the way Oni had looked at the key when he’d found it. The seven piano keys were his ticket home.

He took those four keys and added them to the others in his pocket, along with the note, and then closed the drawer. It was wrong of him, he knew that. But Amelio had been dead to the world above for almost a year. Wouldn’t it be more of a burden on their mother’s mind for him to return home and not Antonio? For her supposedly dead son to return without the living one accompanying him? Besides, it was him that their father was going to take to Juno in two months, not his brother. Amelio had never been as interested in going as he had been, the significance of the trip would have been lost on him.

With his theft complete, he left the room to find his brother. He found him in the living room, asleep on the sofa with Ruri curled up like a kitten on the floor beside it, both still in their full uniforms, not even having bothered to take their shoes off. He suspected they’d been out all night at the party. Something told him that his brother was only pretending to sleep, however, and that when he tried to go to the door he’d be stopped and his true intent discovered. So he turned back down the hallway, back to Oni’s bedroom, and went to the window.

A rickety fire escape clung viciously to the side of the building, refusing to fall off as gravity seemed to demand it do. He shoved open the window and climbed down, heading southeast for the witch’s tower once his feet hit the ground.

It was unfair, really. Oni had been the one to go through the trouble of arranging the deal, and of finding the other four piano keys. He’d been away from home for longer, he wanted to go back worse. But he was adapted, he had friends here, he had Ruri. Antonio would leave and go back and it would be like he’d never come, nothing would change, the way things were would stay the way they’d been, and that was simplest. This was the best choice, really. The logical thing. It was strange, really, he’d almost convinced himself he’d wanted to stay, until he found a way to leave. Just like how he hadn’t realized how tired he’d been the night before until he was told to sleep.

Being distracted as he was, he didn’t notice where he was walking until his foot struck something and he tripped, falling to the grey ground. As he picked himself up, the offender hissed his name. Rather, his brother’s name. “Oni.”

He looked back and froze in the middle of standing. It was a Rideword.

The book’s jagged fangs stared up at him like prison bars. Then it spoke; its voice was slurred like its paper tongue couldn’t place itself properly to make the sounds. “Where you goin’, Oni? The party’s over now.”

Of course, just another denizen of Niflheim. Nothing unusual. He finished standing and dusted himself off. “Nowhere,” he said, casually.

“The witch? You like her, don’t you.”

“No.”

“Oh, okay.” It paused, briefly, and then snapped its book binding jaw once before continuing. It reminded him of the way people fidget when they’re nervous. “Hey, um, tomorrow you wanna go check out that house in Skellington?” Its accordion grin hung open, staring up at him in anticipation of the answer.

“House?”

“Yeah the one at the edge of town. The creepy one.”

How bad did it have to be for one of the natives to say that the place was creepy? If something scary thought something else was scary, that made it twice as scary, didn’t it? He didn’t really want to think about that, but his natural curiosity made him wonder just how creepy the house was. He wanted to run off with this Rideword friend of his brother’s right now to check it out, but he had a mission that he had to accomplish before Oni woke up and realized what had happened.

“Um, sure,” he said, knowing he was lying and getting his brother into something he probably didn’t want to be in.

“Okay! I’ll see you tomorrow!” It gave a flip and then floated away with some innate magic that monsters just seemed to have.

He continued on, finding the island pathway again, going up to the tower that loomed overhead. He felt a sudden sense of foreboding, but he ignored it just like he always did. Foreboding interfered with curiosity, which in turn interfered with filling one’s pockets with curious valuables. Not that he intended to snatch valuables from the witch; that would be counter-productive. But she’d send him to Umbala, where he may be able to pilfer a thing or two and make his adventure worthwhile.

When he reached the door, he turned the knob and pushed it open; it creaked maliciously as it swung back on its hinges. Inside, the place was a vast mansion. Stairs followed the walls up on both sides to a balcony and a door. An enormous painting of a girl in very renaissance clothes hung over the balcony. Her eyes, through some trick of technique, seemed to follow him as he stepped into the large open room. The door slammed shut behind him with the same malevolent creak. He whirled on it, only to ensure that there was nobody there. There wasn’t.

Something told him to use the door at the top of the stairs, so he climbed. The open floor below seemed to gape at him like a huge angry maw.

He really shouldn’t be doing this.

As he laid his hand on the doorknob, a voice called out to him. But it didn’t call for Oni, it called for Antonio.

He turned, looked down at the speaker. It was a girl, standing in the center of the empty floor. She resembled the one depicted in the painting.

“Come down, Mr. Rodriguez,” she said, holding out her hand, beckoning to him. The other was missing, two broken off bones protruding from the flesh of her forearm.

He did. He climbed down the stairs the way he’d come, walking past the omniscient painting. As he passed it, he imagined he heard a whisper from it, speaking incomprehensibly; if he stopped to listen to it he knew it would discern itself into words and he’d know he wasn’t imagining it. He didn’t stop.

As he approached her, she melted into a sort of normalcy, her ashen skin flushing with color and her peeling, decaying flesh sealing itself up and becoming once more whole over her skeleton. She held her arms out to him; both were there now.

He wondered whether the decayed or the whole state was her real one, and which was adopted for the benefit of her guests. He wanted to believe that this normal body was real and the corpse was adopted, but he was in a world where the visions he perceived to be normal were not. The reverse was equally likely to be the truth.

“What brings you here?” she asked. The leather gauntlets on her wrists were polished black, and glinted under the soft light of the chandelier.

He got the feeling she already knew. This girl, in the elegantly revealing costume of a mage guildsman, was the witch everyone spoke of. “Nothing,” he said, despite his surety of her knowledge.

“Don’t lie, Antonio.” Her arms lowered to her softly curved sides and she stepped toward him. “You brought the keys to my old piano.”

Despite himself, despite the reason he’d come in the first place, a sudden urge overcame him and he knew what he was really here for. “No,” he said.

She smiled faintly as she reached up to pull off his horned mask, her fingers slipping beneath the edges at his temples. The strip that covered his forehead, with the two red horns jutting from the black paint, was the only part of the mask that crossed his whole face. Her hands lowered, taking the mask with it, and her violet eyes stared piercingly into his mismatched ones. “Oni has told me of you. He speaks well of you, his twin brother Antonio that he left behind.”

Now he felt guilty. He decided that he didn’t really like witches.

She continued. “So you came to speak with me, then.” She knew. He knew she knew what his original purpose had been, and she knew that he knew that. But she shied from the topic, which only served to bring it to the forefront of his mind. He felt so horrendously guilty for even thinking about it. That was probably her intent. He really didn’t like witches at all.

“What’s it like here?” he asked, half out of honest curiosity and half out of need to have something else to speak of.

“You’ve glimpsed it. Mysterious and wonderful. Malevolent, benevolent, no different, honestly, from your own world but for its malignant appearance. It is filled with all sorts of adventure for a young, enterprising thief. Your brother did quite enjoy it here, until he was struck by a contagion of homesickness.”

She was trying to convince him to stay, he realized, as he stared back at her soft smile. Why? Why did it matter so much? They had Amelio Rodriguez, they had their Oni. Why did they need Antonio Rodriguez too?

“Take your time and explore, Antonio,” she said. “You may find yourself more at home here than you were in the pyramids of Morroc.”

He doubted that, but as his initial discourse faded from his thoughts he realized that she was probably right. He’d already explored almost every curiosity there was to explore in Morroc. The only thing there that he couldn’t get into and wanted to was the mysterious assassins’ guild out in the middle of nowhere in the Sograt Desert. He realized the real reason behind his want to leave. Not because his mother would be left alone without him; if Amelio went back she’d still have one son to take care of her. It was because, stuck here, tied to Niflheim, he thought himself to be at a loss for adventure. Never again to see places like the haunted fortress of Sandaruman, or find that mysterious assassins’ guild once he was ready, or to go to Schwartzwald Republic with his father two months from now. His adventures would be severely limited if he were tied forever to Niflheim.

But, he remembered now, one could leave with the company of a monster. One such as Loli Ruri. So all would not be lost. Also, he really did want to climb into those branches to see what was up there. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad here after all.

Besides, he realized now, the only reason he’d stolen the keys and tried to leave was because he felt obligated to need to go home. Not because he really wanted to, but because he thought he should want to.

“Go, Mr. Rodriguez.” She handed the mask back to him. He took it. “You and you alone know what you will do.”

He nodded.

“Go.”

He went. It was time to go back to his brother, give him the seven keys so he could go home. A trade-off. Fair enough, wasn’t it? One of them would go and the other would stay. Maybe a year from now, it would somehow happen again and it’d be his turn to go home.

At the door he was suddenly tackled by a very familiar figure. As he hit the ground, his thief training made him instinctively kick up and roll, throwing off his assailant and moving himself into a crouched position. His opponent had the training too, and rolled into a similar crouch as he hit the ground.

Antonio’s mask lay between them on the ground; he’d dropped it when he’d been tackled. Oni glared back from behind the ceramic demon’s twin.

“Traitor!” he shouted.

Traitor? Suddenly angry, Antonio responded, “As if! You weren’t even going to tell me!”

“I did tell you,” he growled from behind the scowling mask.

“Not about the keys! You practically tore my arm off for one of them!” With one hand instinctively on his knife in his belt, he stood. “You tried to steal it as soon as I fell asleep. I know you did, my stuff was moved.”

Glaring, Oni stood as well. “Pretty fair considering your thievery.”

“So you chase me down like an animal.”

“You’d do the same and you know it.”

Yes, more than likely. Thieves had it drilled into their heads by the guild to be ruthless in whatever they needed to accomplish. If somebody had something you wanted, you took it. No questions about it. Antonio had never really had much of a problem with that rule, and apparently neither had his brother.

He realized suddenly, glaring into Oni’s face, that his brother’s eyes were filled with unshed tears, and he knew suddenly exactly how much going home meant to him. He wasn’t made for elongated periods of adventurous living. He had to have a normalcy, a place to go back to at night where he knew he’d be safe. He had to have that waking up to the smell of their mother’s cooking breakfast, that falling asleep to the familiar sound of the desert wolves howling outside the city walls. Not like Antonio who loved being away from home, who loved curious things and making them not so curious anymore.

How dare he put his own selfishness above his twin brother’s well-being.

With a motion that still spoke of his dying anger at his brother attacking him, he shoved his hand into his pocket and threw the seven ivory keys down at Oni’s feet. They landed like scattered stars in the night sky beside the mask Antonio had dropped, which lay on its face, showing the white inside, a half-moon to complete the image.

Oni stared at him, some unspoken emotion unable to express itself on his face. The tears fell, streaking down his pretty face like a shooting star falling from the sky.

“Go,” said Antonio, throwing both his hands back into his deep and once more empty pockets. His brother’s tears made him want to cry too, but he held back, trying to seem still upset, though his anger had now all but faded.

Oni continued to stare, like he didn’t even know how to accept what had just happened.

“Go!” he shouted. “You wanna leave so bad, take them and go, eh?” His accent came out thicker now than its usual subtle undertones, like it always did when he was upset. “Just… Tell Mom I’ll miss her.”

He wiped away his tears with his leather glove and asked, very simply, “Why?”

Antonio smiled and gave a shrug. “Hey, I was overdue for an adventure anyway, right?”

Oni returned his smile, and he stepped forward to collect up the keys. He pocketed them and then took up his brother’s mask, walking over to hand it back.

The porous white inside of the mask faced him, the green glass of the one eye staring up like the thing it represented. His name had been painted on the inside of the forehead, to identify it from his brother’s. He took it, but did not immediately don it.

“I’m sorry,” said Oni.

“Yeah,” was all Antonio said.

There was a long pause, and Oni, looking down so that he didn’t have to look at his brother, said, “Tell Ruri good-bye for me. Take care of her, okay?”

“Okay.”

There was another pause. Finally, unprompted, they both moved forward and hugged each other. Their last embrace for a long time.

“Take care of Mom,” was all Antonio said, before they separated and Oni gave a nod, turning away. And then suddenly, “Wait.” Oni did, turning back to him. “Have fun going to Juno with Dad, too.”

He smiled, sadly. “I’m sorry.”

Antonio knew what he meant. He gave a shrug and said nothing. After a very brief hesitation, Oni walked into the witch’s tower, where he would vanish a second time from Antonio’s life, the only difference being that now he was the one who would go home.

Oni’s brother watched him go, knew it would be a long time before he ever saw him again, if he ever saw him again. Oni would be the one to get to go to Juno with their father, he would get to be the one waking up in the morning to the smell of their mother cooking breakfast, he would get to be the one who finished up his training at the thieves’ guild and went to join a higher level guild. Probably not the assassins’ guild, though; Oni just wasn’t assassin material.

Well, curiosity had always been his biggest fault. Antonio settled his mask back over his face, and he turned and walked away, back down the island path, back to Oni’s apartment which was now his, and back to Ruri, who was now his friend.

He knew that, even though everyone seemed to know who Oni was, his brother had only been a mediocre member of the community at best. They probably knew him because of Ruri, or because of the mask, not so much because he did anything of any great importance. He planned to change that. He’d be an Oni who aspired to something, he’d make a real name for himself in Niflheim. He’d be the Oni that his brother was too shy or scared to be.

Maybe in the morning, he’d try to climb the tree. Maybe he’d go with that Rideword to check out that house. Who knew? Certainly not him. That was the thing about adventures: you couldn’t plan them. They just had to happen, or they weren’t adventures at all.

Perhaps it was best this way, he thought. Because he was the one of the two who could appreciate the value of a sudden adventure.

Oni’s brother descended into Niflheim, and into the role that had been left behind for him.