#they both probably need a coat of resin on their visors

[twilighthomunculus]

Reef and BunGuy are officially finished :D

[solivar]

WIP: Ghost Stories On Route 66

And this will be the last teaser for this chapter for Reasons.

The entrance to Terrifying Smoke Gabe’s sanctum (“Brooding Lair of Broodery.” “The desert is vast, Jack, and there are so many places I could hide your body.”) lay beneath a trapdoor at the very back of the Special Care Exotics greenhouse, easily the largest inside the hacienda’s walled compound, and by far the most oddly shaped: four geodesic dome segments joined together by short lengths of rounded corridor. The entrance vestibule was an actual airlock, secured by both biometric locks and a security keypad, and contained three spotlessly clean stainless steel tables and a half-dozen freestanding storage cabinets loaded with filtration masks and protective goggles, hazmat suits that wouldn’t look at all out of place in a CDC-run infectious disease laboratory, a whole rack of basic gardening tools lying cheek to jowl with test sample extraction equipment and air-tight storage containers.

Hanzo eyed the hazmat suits with a certain species of alarm welling up in the back of his mind. “We’re not going to need those, are we?”

“Nah, not right now.” Terrifying Smoke Gabe assured him, smooth and comforting. “We mostly keep them out of an abundance of caution -- one year we got a super pollination followed by a super bloom of one of the more...potent aphrodisiacs and the consequences were...Well. Okay. They weren’t exactly unexpected but they were kind of dire, especially when some of the pollen escaped containment.”

“We ran out of lubricants and anti-chafing cream and antibacterial ointment and also materials to make more.” Jack set the case he was carrying down on one of the tables and snapped it open, began screwing the components inside together. “Fortunately we managed to keep the effects isolated and cleaned up before we accidentally triggered a local baby boom.”

“And it also showed us we really, really needed to improve the the air filters and isolation protocols in some of the enclosures. Thus the suits. But unless you’ve got a noticeable plant allergy, you’re probably not even going to need a respirator.” Gabe flicked a glance past Hanzo’s shoulder. “You about ready, babe?”

The last few components slotted into place, resulting in what was unmistakably a slim, lightweight rifle, scope inclusive, each bit incised with glittering letters-that-weren’t-letters, including the magazine that Jack slapped into place, two more going into the pouches of the vest he was wearing. The last item he removed from the case was a visor, clear glass ending in connector leads that attached to the implants in his temples with a soft but audible click. “When you two are, pumpkin.”

“Do you think we’re going to need that?” Hanzo asked softly, gesturing at the gun, as Terrifying Smoke Gabe opened the inner door of the vestibule airlock.

“I know you’re familiar with Jesse’s exorcism rounds -- these are the same principle, higher muzzle velocity.” Oh so dryly. “And we might -- just might, but in this particular matter it’s significantly better to be safe than sorry. Trust me on this.”

The airlock cycled with a soft hiss of displaced air and Terrifying Smoke Gabe led the way, Hot Vampire Jack bringing up the rear, with Hanzo kept firmly between them as they made their way through greenhouse. The central corridor, to which they kept, was lined on each side in individualized habitat modules, clearly labeled with their inhabitants’ common use name and scientific designation and a list of entry rules and care requirements, all of which made him absolutely itch with the desire to stop and read and ask questions at considerable length, one that got harder and harder to resist the deeper they went, one he put aside for later only with extreme difficulty as they reached the geodesic dome at the far end of the structure. That dome was isolated from the rest of the greenhouse by a secondary airlock, biometrically sealed, and opened into a space completely dominated by, to Hanzo’s vast surprise, trees: trees whose roots were twined around a carefully landscaped environment of lichen-coated boulders and whose crowns brushed against the upper reaches of the dome, whose branches were weighted down with vines the thickness of a large man’s arm and as thin as embroidery floss, bright green against their denser, woodier cousins. Artificial waterfalls sheeted gently down the sides and in channels between several of the largest tree-and-boulder conglomerates, gathering in a collecting pool floored in smooth rounded stones to be refreshed and recycled back into the irrigation system, edged in beds of fern and moss.

The trapdoor lay in the very back of a recessed area deep enough and dark enough to be legitimately described as cavelike, right down to the occasional drip of water and the scuttling of unseen creatures that were almost probably bats. Gabe knelt and, for an instant, the edges of the trap flashed crimson at his knees, replaced by a warmer, flickering glow as he lifted the door, offering Hanzo a hand down the first few slightly damp steps. The stairway was claustrophobically narrow, barely wide enough for him to walk facing forward with one shoulder brushing a wall, Gabe and Jack having to take it sideways, the carved stone stairs themselves thankfully long and shallow and illuminated at regular intervals by tall, jarred candles set in niches.

“Most of the more heavily mined areas are up in the old state park, but this whole region is riddled with delvings -- some shallow, some deep. The oldest are more than a thousand years old,” Gabe’s voice, underground, took on a hollow echo as their descent continued. “This one’s deep and old and we’re reasonably sure it was only a mine in the loosest sense of the term.”

“What he’s saying is, it’s the archetypal example of the ancients delving too deep and breaking through to something that was mad, bad, and dangerous to find.” Jack added dryly. “Though the only such things down here right now are, well, us and have been for quite some time.”

The stairway ended, the base widening into a room just large enough to hold them all, its pale sandstone walls marked in pictograms, charcoal black and an astonishingly still vivid white and ochre of a shade disturbingly close to dried blood: humaniform figures, hunters wielding weapons, a masked figure holding a staff, a tangled mass of unnaturally slender bodies with too many limbs and too many teeth, ringed in bands of solar and lunar disks, lightning slashes, the triangular forms of mountains, all centered around the roughly triangular gap in the far wall, shockingly dark after the golden warmth of the stairs. The hair on the back of Hanzo’s neck shivered upright and a cold pulse throbbed in his chest and he knew, knew in his bones and his blood and to the depths of his soul that they were more than just decorative, even now.

“If you wish to stop,” Terrifying Smoke Gabe said, with an awful gentleness, “we need to do it here. Once we pass this point, we will be stepping between worlds, and the way back will not be as simple as walking through the door again.”

“No. I do not wish to stop. I must know -- it is the only way forward from here.” Hanzo took a steadying breath, Jack’s hand a warm comfort on his shoulder. “Lead the way.”

Gabe smiled, a slight curve of his lips, and slipped through the door, all-but vanishing into the dark beyond. Hanzo closed his eyes for a moment, breathed slow and deliberate, and stepped through, as well. The exposed skin of his face and hands and even his eyes prickled wildly as he took that step, the brand on his palm burning with the intensity of it, the thing beneath his breastbone pounding like a second heart -- and then he was through, half-stumbling on the rough, not-precisely-even floor beyond, and Jack was catching hold of his elbow to help keep him up. He leaned against that support, blinking away tears, as his breathing came back to normal and the pain in his chest faded back to normal.

The space they occupied was clearly not entirely natural -- the ceiling was too perfect a dome, the thick columns supporting it too perfectly spaced, the walls closest to the door visibly marked by the traces of tools. It was, Hanzo suspected, perfectly round, or close enough to it for the differences not to matter, an enormous circle whose far side was lost in shadow, with an inner circle sunken beneath the level of the floor, its sandstone walls perfectly smooth, unmarked, illuminated by a circle of candles surrounding a bowl, beaten silver and dark green stone. A cushion sat on each side of it, flat and rectangular, unpatterned.

“Step down,” Gabe’s voice seemed to come from everywhere, a hollow echo, Hanzo catchinging on the faintest glimpse of too many red eyes in the dark beyond the candlelight as he moved. “The circle waits for you.”

Hanzo shivered, sat on the edge of the depression, and slid down, crossed to the cushion closest to him and sank into seiza. Up close, he could see that the bowl held something -- a liquid, dark and gently fragrant. A moment later, Gabe poured over the edge, as well, his form more smoke than substance, the shadows of fur and feathers and membranous wings, a hundred pinpoints of crimson glittering in him, his hands only barely solid enough to hold the casket he carried and set down as quickly as he could. It was old, Hanzo could see that at a glance, the points and edges of its lid worn smooth, but its mother-of-pearl inlay and brass clasp and hinges were clearly, lovingly cared for by expert hands. It opened smoothly at his touch and from it he withdrew a tiny plate of white jade carved in the shape of a serpent coiling around itself, fangs sunk into its own tail, three sticks of incense, richly resinous even unlit, and a long, slender needle, its pale substance stained dark at the tip, the eye carved in the shape of a grinning death’s head. Hanzo exhaled a shuddering breath as he tasted the power rolling off that unassuming object, looked up, and froze.

Gabe’s face was also a pale death’s mask, an ivory skull-face over shifting shadows, his eyes gleaming crimson in the depths of their sockets, the whole shadowed by the cowl belling wide over his shoulders, the pall of smoke around him a cloak, a shroud. Even so, the corners of his mouth pulled back in a comforting smile and when he offered his free hand, palm up, Hanzo laid his own in it without hesitation.

“The guiding principle here is this: you are the question, and I am the answer.” Gabe’s voice still seemed to come from everywhere but his own mouth, a whispery susurrus of a thousand softer, different voices echoing after. “Your need guides my magic. What is your need, Shimada Hanzo? Why have you come into my house?”

“I seek the wisdom and counsel of my kinswoman, the warrior Shimada Tamiko, who may know the dangers of the past and the perils of the future.” He looked up and met those eerie eyes. “That is my need.”

A coil of living mist wound around his free hand, leaving behind the bone needle. “Three drops of your blood, no more, no less, is the price for what you ask.”

That same curl of mist placed the incense in its bowl, both sticks lighting and beginning to smolder without so much a flicker of fire. In his hand, the needle’s skull-carved head was cool and smooth, worn that way by the passage of countless other hands, and before he could think too deeply about what the was doing, he slid its bloodstain-darkened tip into the meat of his magic-scarred left palm, just below the thumb. Blood welled as he withdrew it, made three concentric rings in the surface of the offering-bowl’s contents as he let the drops fall. A smoky tendril whisked away the needle and a second brought the bowl to Gabe’s mouth, or where his mouth would be under normal circumstances, tilted it as he drank deeply, as their hands came together, resting back to palm on opposite sides of the candle ring.

Gabriel drew a deep, deep breath with a sound like wings rushing, wind howling through desolate places, and began to sing -- a song that held within it dozens, hundreds, thousands of voices, a song that slid into Hanzo’s mind and soul and flesh, drew his eyes closed as the breathed deep of the incense, sought the places inside him where his blood beat in time with a warrior long-lost, and he wordlessly allowed them passage. Icy pain lanced through his chest, pressed the breath from his lungs, even as Gabriel’s hands closed tight on his own, growing colder and colder until the ache of it sank into his bones. Hanzo opened his eyes as the quality of the light touching their lids changed, cooled, the candle flame between them washing from golden to blue as Gabriel’s form...changed, warped, twisted, writhed almost in pain even as his grip on Hanzo’s hands never faltered. The song changed, as well, thousands of voices becoming hundreds becoming dozens becoming one -- rough with unaccustomed use, deeper, singing in a language that Hanzo knew as well as his own breath, the halls of his family’s ancient home, the scent of the sakura blossoms in the spring and the falling maple leaves in the autumn. Gabriel’s shape collapsed in on itself, grew paler and paler, grew still. Armored -- iyozane dou, white as moonlight on snow, helm a snarling wolf’s head, stormcloud gray and silver fur gathered around the throat as a gorget, falling down the back as a cloak. Milk-pale braids tumbled from beneath that helm, some thick, some thin, at least a half-dozen, even as the face remained in shadow. The hands that gripped his own were small but strong, striped in callus, fingers tipped in claws.

“Tamiko-dono?” Hanzo asked, softly.

Her head tilted, wary, listening, and the candlelight fell across her face, her high cheekbones and sharp jaw, her golden eyes and the golden markings beneath them.

“You,” Tamiko’s voice, when she spoke, was as rough as when she sang, husky and darker than he expected. “You have come. At last you have come. Give me your name.”

“Hanzo,” He replied, softly, “I am Shimada Hanzo, Lady Tamiko. And I...I have many questions.”

Her head moved, a quick jerk, as she scented the air -- eyes narrowing as they fixed on something beyond his shoulder. “And that? He is not of the Clan.”

Hanzo dared a quick glance, found Jack standing almost deceptively relaxed, his weapon’s muzzle pointed toward the cavern’s floor, finger well away from the trigger, his visor glowing pale blue in the dark. “A friend -- he means no harm. He is here for my protection, and yours.”

“Protection?” Her gaze flicked back to him, her eyes narrowing still further. “Why would a son of the Clan require protection, from a mortal armed with mortal weapons? What --” She stopped, as her gaze roved over him, seemed to see him, truly, for the first time, and it was all he could do not to shrivel in shame where he knelt, only barely resisting the urge to bow his face to the floor despite the ring of candles. When she spoke again, her voice was a toneless rasp. “How long has it been?”

“Lady Tamiko --” Hanzo began, gently, only to be cut off by her wordless snarl.

“How long, Shimada Hanzo?”

“Many hundreds of years.” He replied, drawing a steadying breath as her eyes flashed, her lips peeled back from her teeth, sharp and long as the wolf whose pelt she wore. “At least five centuries.”

“Centuries.” Her eyes slid closed, her face a mask of despair. “And my Clan sends a half-fledged child to finish my task. Fools. Fools.”

“They did not send me.” Hanzo found the words falling off his tongue before he could stop them. “The Clan...they do not know that I am doing this. They did not know you were here, or what became of you, or why you came to this place.”

“What.” It was not quite a question, the tone so similar to his mother’s when she was not-really-asking that he had to repress a slightly hysterical giggle. “What do you mean?”

“Much has changed. The Clan has changed -- and much that we should not have forgotten has been lost.” The bitterness of that admission twisted his heart and his stomach. “Lady Tamiko -- I need your wisdom. I must know what happened, and how you came to be here, in this place. I beg this of you, for the lives of innocents that are at stake.”

Her beast-golden eyes caught his own and he found himself unable to look away, as transfixed as he had ever been by the ranger-who-was-probably-Coyote, and her chin dipped as she nodded slowly. “I came here on the hunt -- pursuing one who had betrayed the Clan and shed the blood of our own in murder, a kinslayer. His name was Shimada Kazutaka...but you, I think, may know him by another name.”

The icy thing in his chest throbbed and shuddered as she spoke its name, his stomach churned and it was all he could do to swallow it back down. “The Serpent-Wolf.”

“Yes.” A heavy weight of sorrow in that single word and he was shocked by the depths of the grief, of the guilt, in her eyes. “He was as near to me as a brother, once. We suckled at the same breast -- his mother was my mother’s sister, and they bore Kazutaka and I but a few weeks apart. Fever carried away my mother away, and her sister took me into her household to raise, that I would grow to protect the son who would one day lead the Clan, as she had been. And it was that way, all through our youth -- we learned statecraft and diplomacy, literature and music, the ways of the bow and the blade and the fist, side by side, that he might rule and I might advise him cannily, and be his sword where his silver tongue could not hold sway. He was clever that way, with his words and his intuition, his way of knowing what others thought and what they most desired, even as a young man, and I knew the ways of battle, of the hunt in dark places, my father’s blood telling in me. We...complemented one another, and the Lord and Lady I know hoped that we would choose to marry.” A ragged sigh. “Had he wished it, had he asked it of me, I would not have told him no. But he did not ask, and then we were summoned to the shrine. Our time had come, and we thought we were ready.”

She released his gaze, her own falling to the floor, the candlelight striking in the depths of her eyes. “Kazutaka and I both expected to be chosen by the dragons. Instead, the wolf mothers came to us both, chose us both, a thing they had never done before.”

Hanzo’s hand tightened convulsively around hers and her eyes flicked to his face, narrowing slightly, and it was all he could do to ask, strangled, as the blood pulsed in his head and the breath caught in his lungs, “The wolf mothers?”

“Sakuya and Tatsuya.” A trace of alarm crossed Lady Tamiko’s face. “The Okami -- the mates of Lord Minamikaze and Lord Kitakaze, the mothers of the Clan. They chose their champions, but not often, and only in times of dire need, and never from among Minamikaze’s line, never before the heir to the Clan. It was...a matter of much concern.” Her brow furrowed, a frown curling the corners of her mouth. “How much has the Clan forgotten that you, who bear their mark, does not know this?”

Hanzo could not breathe -- the part of him that remembered how was as frozen as the rest of him, as stunned, as utterly stilled by shock and empty of thought. He felt a laugh crawling up the back of his throat, sharp and spiky and more than a little hysterical, and it took all his strength to swallow it back down, to breathe, to not think. “Much. Very much. Lady...what happened?”

She gazed at him, steady and even, until he could not hold her gaze and looked away himself, blinking away tears. The grip on his hands gentled, ever so slightly. “The Clan was in an uproar. There was some talk of asking Kazutaka to step aside in favor of his brother -- particularly when Kazetatsu was chosen by the dragons less than a season later -- but he did not, and the elders subsided...but things were different afterwards. Between us, and within him, though I did not know how different until…”

A ragged breath. “Too late. Until it was too late. I allowed my love for him to blind me to what he was becoming, how the anger ate away his heart, how the jealousy poisoned and twisted his soul. And he hid it well -- he married, and fathered children, he ascended to the rulership of the Clan when his father retired, and to all eyes he governed well and wisely. He sent me away from Hanamura often, to hunt the rumors of great evils abroad in the land, to the find the purpose for which we had both been chosen -- and, I think, to hide what he was doing from my eyes, from the path that he had taken in the dark of his bitterness, of his belief that he had been denied what he truly deserved, the dragon-bond that should have been his birthright.” Her clawed thumb traced across his scarred palm. “He told me that he believed a darkness from beyond our world had come and he was...not wrong. What he did not say is that he was harboring it -- that he had knelt before it as a supplicant and begged its wisdom, learned the terrible things it taught.” She swallowed, a convulsive movement. “He used them to twist the essence of his own bondmate, the wolf companion of his soul, into a ravening monster. He used them to slay Kazetatsu, to consume his flesh and blood and soul and enslave Natsuokaze, his dragon, the only daughter of Lord Minamikaze. He used them to flee from me when I confronted him, to open a door to this place, where he could carve out a kingdom of horrors and no one would be able to stop him.”

“Why here?” Hanzo heard himself asking from a vast distance, pathetically grateful for whatever degree of shock was holding his voice steady. “Why this place?”

“He followed the path his teacher tread, as I followed his when I pursued him.” A faint, grim smile. “He could not conceal his tracks, now that I knew what he had become -- but it took me long, too long, to reach this place and by the time I did…” Her grip on his hands tightened again, claws drawing blood. “He was great in his power -- greater than I imagined possible when last I saw him, a monstrosity that had cast aside any illusion of humanity.” The horror of the memory shone in her eyes. “It took all my strength, all of my skill, to weaken him enough to strike a killing blow with the sword I had sworn would be his ending -- and, when I did, he did not die. He did not die, and he struck me down, and as I lay bleeding my life on the sands, he mocked me with the knowledge that I could never have slain him, for his life was no longer married to his flesh but bound apart where none would ever find it. But he was wrong.” The tips of her fangs flashed in the candlelight. “My wolf found the god-seed he had corrupted with his power, the thing that held his life, and bore it away -- his black heart, without which he is not nor can ever be whole. He raged, oh how he raged, but he could not prevent my Hoshi from escaping -- but he could bind me, and did, to the place where we fought, where my bones lie still beneath the sands. And he, wounded with many wounds and weak, crawled away into his witch-home, taking the sword that will be his death with him.”

“I will find you bones and return them to the Clan, and tell them the story of what became of you.” Hanzo promised softly. “I will...finish what you began. I --”

“I know that you will, wolf-child.” And for the first time she lifted her hand away from his own, to rest it against his chest. “For you carry within you his heart, and you need only the blade, blessed by Minamikaze and Kitakaze, Sakuya and Tatsuya, to break his magic and end him forever.”

“...I…” Hanzo dragged a painful breath through the ice cold rage and hate and terror throbbing in his chest, “I give you my word.”

“Thank you, blood of my blood. I will await your coming.” She gathered both his hands in hers, bowed deeply over them, and he scrambled to catch Terrifying Smoke Gabe as her presence withdrew, more swiftly and suddenly than it had come, tumbling them both sideways away from the candles, Gabe’s arms closed tight around him, both of them trembling, for different reasons.

[solivar]

WIP: Ghost Stories On Route 66

In which things are about to get very real, indeed.

The entrance to Terrifying Smoke Gabe’s sanctum (“Brooding Lair of Broodery.” “The desert is vast, Jack, and there are so many places I could hide your body.”) lay beneath a trapdoor at the very back of the Special Care Exotics greenhouse, easily the largest inside the hacienda’s walled compound, and by far the most oddly shaped: four geodesic dome segments joined together by short lengths of rounded corridor. The entrance vestibule was an actual airlock, secured by both biometric locks and a security keypad, and contained three spotlessly clean stainless steel tables and a half-dozen freestanding storage cabinets loaded with filtration masks and protective goggles, hazmat suits that wouldn’t look at all out of place in a CDC-run infectious disease laboratory, a whole rack of basic gardening tools lying cheek to jowl with test sample extraction equipment and air-tight storage containers.

Hanzo eyed the hazmat suits with a certain species of alarm welling up in the back of his mind. “We’re not going to need those, are we?”

“Nah, not right now.” Terrifying Smoke Gabe assured him, smooth and comforting. “We mostly keep them out of an abundance of caution -- one year we got a super pollination followed by a super bloom of one of the more...potent aphrodisiacs and the consequences were...Well. Okay. They weren’t exactly unexpected but they were kind of dire, especially when some of the pollen escaped containment.”

“We ran out of lubricants and anti-chafing cream and antibacterial ointment and also materials to make more.” Jack set the case he was carrying down on one of the tables and snapped it open, began screwing the components inside together. “Fortunately we managed to keep the effects isolated and cleaned up before we accidentally triggered a local baby boom.”

“And it also showed us we really, really needed to improve the the air filters and isolation protocols in some of the enclosures. Thus the suits. But unless you’ve got a noticeable plant allergy, you’re probably not even going to need a respirator.” Gabe flicked a glance past Hanzo’s shoulder. “You about ready, babe?”

The last few components slotted into place, resulting in what was unmistakably a slim, lightweight rifle, scope inclusive, each bit incised with glittering letters-that-weren’t-letters, including the magazine that Jack slapped into place, two more going into the pouches of the vest he was wearing. The last item he removed from the case was a visor, clear glass ending in connector leads that attached to the implants in his temples with a soft but audible click. “When you two are, pumpkin.”

“Do you think we’re going to need that?” Hanzo asked softly, gesturing at the gun, as Terrifying Smoke Gabe opened the inner door of the vestibule airlock.

“I know you’re familiar with Jesse’s exorcism rounds -- these are the same principle, higher muzzle velocity.” Oh so dryly. “And we might -- just might, but in this particular matter it’s significantly better to be safe than sorry. Trust me on this.”

The airlock cycled with a soft hiss of displaced air and Terrifying Smoke Gabe led the way, Hot Vampire Jack bringing up the rear, with Hanzo kept firmly between them as they made their way through greenhouse. The central corridor, to which they kept, was lined on each side in individualized habitat modules, clearly labeled with their inhabitants’ common use name and scientific designation and a list of entry rules and care requirements, all of which made him absolutely itch with the desire to stop and read and ask questions at considerable length, one that got harder and harder to resist the deeper they went, one he put aside for later only with extreme difficulty as they reached the geodesic dome at the far end of the structure. That dome was isolated from the rest of the greenhouse by a secondary airlock, biometrically sealed, and opened into a space completely dominated by, to Hanzo’s vast surprise, trees: trees whose roots were twined around a carefully landscaped environment of lichen-coated boulders and whose crowns brushed against the upper reaches of the dome, whose branches were weighted down with vines the thickness of a large man’s arm and as thin as embroidery floss, bright green against their denser, woodier cousins. Artificial waterfalls sheeted gently down the sides and in channels between several of the largest tree-and-boulder conglomerates, gathering in a collecting pool floored in smooth rounded stones to be refreshed and recycled back into the irrigation system, edged in beds of fern and moss.

The trapdoor lay in the very back of a recessed area deep enough and dark enough to be legitimately described as cavelike, right down to the occasional drip of water and the scuttling of unseen creatures that were almost probably bats. Gabe knelt and, for an instant, the edges of the trap flashed crimson at his knees, replaced by a warmer, flickering glow as he lifted the door, offering Hanzo a hand down the first few slightly damp steps. The stairway was claustrophobically narrow, barely wide enough for him to walk facing forward with one shoulder brushing a wall, Gabe and Jack having to take it sideways, the carved stone stairs themselves thankfully long and shallow and illuminated at regular intervals by tall, jarred candles set in niches.

“Most of the more heavily mined areas are up in the old state park, but this whole region is riddled with delvings -- some shallow, some deep. The oldest are more than a thousand years old,” Gabe’s voice, underground, took on a hollow echo as their descent continued. “This one’s deep and old and we’re reasonably sure it was only a mine in the loosest sense of the term.”

“What he’s saying is, it’s the archetypal example of the ancients delving too deep and breaking through to something that was mad, bad, and dangerous to find.” Jack added dryly. “Though the only such things down here right now are, well, us and have been for quite some time.”

The stairway ended, the base widening into a room just large enough to hold them all, its pale sandstone walls marked in pictograms, charcoal black and an astonishingly still vivid white and ochre of a shade disturbingly close to dried blood: humaniform figures, hunters wielding weapons, a masked figure holding a staff, a tangled mass of unnaturally slender bodies with too many limbs and too many teeth, ringed in bands of solar and lunar disks, lightning slashes, the triangular forms of mountains, all centered around the roughly triangular gap in the far wall, shockingly dark after the golden warmth of the stairs. The hair on the back of Hanzo’s neck shivered upright and a cold pulse throbbed in his chest and he knew, knew in his bones and his blood and to the depths of his soul that they were more than just decorative, even now.

“If you wish to stop,” Terrifying Smoke Gabe said, with an awful gentleness, “we need to do it here. Once we pass this point, we will be stepping between worlds, and the way back will not be as simple as walking through the door again.”

“No. I do not wish to stop. I must know -- it is the only way forward from here.” Hanzo took a steadying breath, Jack’s hand a warm comfort on his shoulder. “Lead the way.”

Gabe smiled, a slight curve of his lips, and slipped through the door, all-but vanishing into the dark beyond. Hanzo closed his eyes for a moment, breathed slow and deliberate, and stepped through, as well. The exposed skin of his face and hands and even his eyes prickled wildly as he took that step, the brand on his palm burning with the intensity of it, the thing beneath his breastbone pounding like a second heart -- and then he was through, half-stumbling on the rough, not-precisely-even floor beyond, and Jack was catching hold of his elbow to help keep him up. He leaned against that support, blinking away tears, as his breathing came back to normal and the pain in his chest faded back to normal.

The space they occupied was clearly not entirely natural -- the ceiling was too perfect a dome, the thick columns supporting it too perfectly spaced, the walls closest to the door visibly marked by the traces of tools. It was, Hanzo suspected, perfectly round, or close enough to it for the differences not to matter, an enormous circle whose far side was lost in shadow, with an inner circle sunken beneath the level of the floor, its sandstone walls perfectly smooth, unmarked, illuminated by a circle of candles surrounding a bowl, beaten silver and dark green stone. A cushion sat on each side of it, flat and rectangular, unpatterned.

“Step down,” Gabe’s voice seemed to come from everywhere, a hollow echo, Hanzo catchinging on the faintest glimpse of too many red eyes in the dark beyond the candlelight as he moved. “The circle waits for you.”

Hanzo shivered, sat on the edge of the depression, and slid down, crossed to the cushion closest to him and sank into seiza. Up close, he could see that the bowl held something -- a liquid, dark and gently fragrant. A moment later, Gabe poured over the edge, as well, his form more smoke than substance, the shadows of fur and feathers and membranous wings, a hundred pinpoints of crimson glittering in him, his hands only barely solid enough to hold the casket he carried and set down as quickly as he could. It was old, Hanzo could see that at a glance, the points and edges of its lid worn smooth, but its mother-of-pearl inlay and brass clasp and hinges were clearly, lovingly cared for by expert hands. It opened smoothly at his touch and from it he withdrew a tiny plate of white jade carved in the shape of a serpent coiling around itself, fangs sunk into its own tail, three sticks of incense, richly resinous even unlit, and a long, slender needle, its pale substance stained dark at the tip, the eye carved in the shape of a grinning death’s head. Hanzo exhaled a shuddering breath as he tasted the power rolling off that unassuming object, looked up, and froze.

Gabe’s face was also a pale death’s mask, an ivory skull-face over shifting shadows, his eyes gleaming crimson in the depths of their sockets, the whole shadowed by the cowl belling wide over his shoulders, the pall of smoke around him a cloak, a shroud. Even so, the corners of his mouth pulled back in a comforting smile and when he offered his free hand, palm up, Hanzo laid his own in it without hesitation.

“The guiding principle here is this: you are the question, and I am the answer.” Gabe’s voice still seemed to come from everywhere but his own mouth, a whispery susurrus of a thousand softer, different voices echoing after. “Your need guides my magic. What is your need, Shimada Hanzo? Why have you come into my house?”

[solivar]

WIP: Ghost Stories On Route 66

Okay, I lied. THIS is the last teaser, for Reasons.

The entrance to Terrifying Smoke Gabe’s sanctum (“Brooding Lair of Broodery.” “The desert is vast, Jack, and there are so many places I could hide your body.”) lay beneath a trapdoor at the very back of the Special Care Exotics greenhouse, easily the largest inside the hacienda’s walled compound, and by far the most oddly shaped: four geodesic dome segments joined together by short lengths of rounded corridor. The entrance vestibule was an actual airlock, secured by both biometric locks and a security keypad, and contained three spotlessly clean stainless steel tables and a half-dozen freestanding storage cabinets loaded with filtration masks and protective goggles, hazmat suits that wouldn’t look at all out of place in a CDC-run infectious disease laboratory, a whole rack of basic gardening tools lying cheek to jowl with test sample extraction equipment and air-tight storage containers.

Hanzo eyed the hazmat suits with a certain species of alarm welling up in the back of his mind. “We’re not going to need those, are we?”

“Nah, not right now.” Terrifying Smoke Gabe assured him, smooth and comforting. “We mostly keep them out of an abundance of caution -- one year we got a super pollination followed by a super bloom of one of the more...potent aphrodisiacs and the consequences were...Well. Okay. They weren’t exactly unexpected but they were kind of dire, especially when some of the pollen escaped containment.”

“We ran out of lubricants and anti-chafing cream and antibacterial ointment and also materials to make more.” Jack set the case he was carrying down on one of the tables and snapped it open, began screwing the components inside together. “Fortunately we managed to keep the effects isolated and cleaned up before we accidentally triggered a local baby boom.”

“And it also showed us we really, really needed to improve the the air filters and isolation protocols in some of the enclosures. Thus the suits. But unless you’ve got a noticeable plant allergy, you’re probably not even going to need a respirator.” Gabe flicked a glance past Hanzo’s shoulder. “You about ready, babe?”

The last few components slotted into place, resulting in what was unmistakably a slim, lightweight rifle, scope inclusive, each bit incised with glittering letters-that-weren’t-letters, including the magazine that Jack slapped into place, two more going into the pouches of the vest he was wearing. The last item he removed from the case was a visor, clear glass ending in connector leads that attached to the implants in his temples with a soft but audible click. “When you two are, pumpkin.”

“Do you think we’re going to need that?” Hanzo asked softly, gesturing at the gun, as Terrifying Smoke Gabe opened the inner door of the vestibule airlock.

“I know you’re familiar with Jesse’s exorcism rounds -- these are the same principle, higher muzzle velocity.” Oh so dryly. “And we might -- just might, but in this particular matter it’s significantly better to be safe than sorry. Trust me on this.”

The airlock cycled with a soft hiss of displaced air and Terrifying Smoke Gabe led the way, Hot Vampire Jack bringing up the rear, with Hanzo kept firmly between them as they made their way through greenhouse. The central corridor, to which they kept, was lined on each side in individualized habitat modules, clearly labeled with their inhabitants’ common use name and scientific designation and a list of entry rules and care requirements, all of which made him absolutely itch with the desire to stop and read and ask questions at considerable length, one that got harder and harder to resist the deeper they went, one he put aside for later only with extreme difficulty as they reached the geodesic dome at the far end of the structure. That dome was isolated from the rest of the greenhouse by a secondary airlock, biometrically sealed, and opened into a space completely dominated by, to Hanzo’s vast surprise, trees: trees whose roots were twined around a carefully landscaped environment of lichen-coated boulders and whose crowns brushed against the upper reaches of the dome, whose branches were weighted down with vines the thickness of a large man’s arm and as thin as embroidery floss, bright green against their denser, woodier cousins. Artificial waterfalls sheeted gently down the sides and in channels between several of the largest tree-and-boulder conglomerates, gathering in a collecting pool floored in smooth rounded stones to be refreshed and recycled back into the irrigation system, edged in beds of fern and moss.

The trapdoor lay in the very back of a recessed area deep enough and dark enough to be legitimately described as cavelike, right down to the occasional drip of water and the scuttling of unseen creatures that were almost probably bats. Gabe knelt and, for an instant, the edges of the trap flashed crimson at his knees, replaced by a warmer, flickering glow as he lifted the door, offering Hanzo a hand down the first few slightly damp steps. The stairway was claustrophobically narrow, barely wide enough for him to walk facing forward with one shoulder brushing a wall, Gabe and Jack having to take it sideways, the carved stone stairs themselves thankfully long and shallow and illuminated at regular intervals by tall, jarred candles set in niches.

“Most of the more heavily mined areas are up in the old state park, but this whole region is riddled with delvings -- some shallow, some deep. The oldest are more than a thousand years old,” Gabe’s voice, underground, took on a hollow echo as their descent continued. “This one’s deep and old and we’re reasonably sure it was only a mine in the loosest sense of the term.”

“What he’s saying is, it’s the archetypal example of the ancients delving too deep and breaking through to something that was mad, bad, and dangerous to find.” Jack added dryly. “Though the only such things down here right now are, well, us and have been for quite some time.”

The stairway ended, the base widening into a room just large enough to hold them all, its pale sandstone walls marked in pictograms, charcoal black and an astonishingly still vivid white and ochre of a shade disturbingly close to dried blood: humaniform figures, hunters wielding weapons, a masked figure holding a staff, a tangled mass of unnaturally slender bodies with too many limbs and too many teeth, ringed in bands of solar and lunar disks, lightning slashes, the triangular forms of mountains, all centered around the roughly triangular gap in the far wall, shockingly dark after the golden warmth of the stairs. The hair on the back of Hanzo’s neck shivered upright and a cold pulse throbbed in his chest and he knew, knew in his bones and his blood and to the depths of his soul that they were more than just decorative, even now.

“If you wish to stop,” Terrifying Smoke Gabe said, with an awful gentleness, “we need to do it here. Once we pass this point, we will be stepping between worlds, and the way back will not be as simple as walking through the door again.”

“No. I do not wish to stop. I must know -- it is the only way forward from here.” Hanzo took a steadying breath, Jack’s hand a warm comfort on his shoulder. “Lead the way.”

Gabe smiled, a slight curve of his lips, and slipped through the door, all-but vanishing into the dark beyond. Hanzo closed his eyes for a moment, breathed slow and deliberate, and stepped through, as well. The exposed skin of his face and hands and even his eyes prickled wildly as he took that step, the brand on his palm burning with the intensity of it, the thing beneath his breastbone pounding like a second heart -- and then he was through, half-stumbling on the rough, not-precisely-even floor beyond, and Jack was catching hold of his elbow to help keep him up. He leaned against that support, blinking away tears, as his breathing came back to normal and the pain in his chest faded back to normal.

The space they occupied was clearly not entirely natural -- the ceiling was too perfect a dome, the thick columns supporting it too perfectly spaced, the walls closest to the door visibly marked by the traces of tools. It was, Hanzo suspected, perfectly round, or close enough to it for the differences not to matter, an enormous circle whose far side was lost in shadow, with an inner ritual space sunken beneath the level of the floor, its sandstone walls perfectly smooth, unmarked, illuminated by a ring of candles surrounding a bowl, beaten silver and dark green stone. A cushion sat on each side of it, flat and rectangular, unpatterned.

“Step down,” Gabe’s voice seemed to come from everywhere, a hollow echo, Hanzo catchinging on the faintest glimpse of too many red eyes in the dark beyond the candlelight as he moved. “The circle waits for you.”

Hanzo shivered, sat on the edge of the depression, and slid down, crossed to the cushion closest to him and sank into seiza. Up close, he could see that the bowl held something -- a liquid, dark and gently fragrant. A moment later, Gabe poured over the edge, as well, his form more smoke than substance, the shadows of fur and feathers and membranous wings, a hundred pinpoints of crimson glittering in him, his hands only barely solid enough to hold the casket he carried and set down as quickly as he could. It was old, Hanzo could see that at a glance, the points and edges of its lid worn smooth, but its mother-of-pearl inlay and brass clasp and hinges were clearly, lovingly cared for by expert hands. It opened smoothly at his touch and from it he withdrew a tiny plate of white jade carved in the shape of a serpent coiling around itself, fangs sunk into its own tail, three sticks of incense, richly resinous even unlit, and a long, slender needle, its pale substance stained dark at the tip, the eye carved in the shape of a grinning death’s head. Hanzo exhaled a shuddering breath as he tasted the power rolling off that unassuming object, looked up, and froze.

Gabe’s face was also a pale death’s mask, an ivory skull-face over shifting shadows, his eyes gleaming crimson in the depths of their sockets, the whole shadowed by the cowl belling wide over his shoulders, the pall of smoke around him a cloak, a shroud. Even so, the corners of his mouth pulled back in a comforting smile and when he offered his free hand, palm up, Hanzo laid his own in it without hesitation.

“The guiding principle here is this: you are the question, and I am the answer.” Gabe’s voice still seemed to come from everywhere but his own mouth, a whispery susurrus of a thousand softer, different voices echoing after. “Your need guides my magic. What is your need, Shimada Hanzo? Why have you come into my house?”

“I seek the wisdom and counsel of my kinswoman, the warrior Shimada Tamiko, who may know the dangers of the past and the perils of the future.” He looked up and met those eerie eyes. “That is my need.”

A coil of living mist wound around his free hand, leaving behind the bone needle. “Three drops of your blood, no more, no less, is the price for what you ask.”

That same curl of mist placed the incense in its bowl, both sticks lighting and beginning to smolder without so much a flicker of fire. In his hand, the needle’s skull-carved head was cool and smooth, worn that way by the passage of countless other hands, and before he could think too deeply about what the was doing, he slid its bloodstain-darkened tip into the meat of his magic-scarred left palm, just below the thumb. Blood welled as he withdrew it, made three concentric rings in the surface of the offering-bowl’s contents as he let the drops fall. A smoky tendril whisked away the needle and a second brought the bowl to Gabe’s mouth, or where his mouth would be under normal circumstances, tilted it as he drank deeply, as their hands came together, resting back to palm on opposite sides of the candle ring.

Gabriel drew a deep, deep breath with a sound like wings rushing, wind howling through desolate places, and began to sing -- a song that held within it dozens, hundreds, thousands of voices, a song that slid into Hanzo’s mind and soul and flesh, drew his eyes closed as the breathed deep of the incense, sought the places inside him where his blood beat in time with a warrior long-lost, and he wordlessly allowed them passage. Icy pain lanced through his chest, pressed the breath from his lungs, even as Gabriel’s hands closed tight on his own, growing colder and colder until the ache of it sank into his bones. Hanzo opened his eyes as the quality of the light touching their lids changed, cooled, the candle flame between them washing from golden to blue as Gabriel’s form...changed, warped, twisted, writhed almost in pain even as his grip on Hanzo’s hands never faltered. The song changed, as well, thousands of voices becoming hundreds becoming dozens becoming one -- rough with unaccustomed use, deeper, singing in a language that Hanzo knew as well as his own breath, the halls of his family’s ancient home, the scent of the sakura blossoms in the spring and the falling maple leaves in the autumn. Gabriel’s shape collapsed in on itself, grew paler and paler, grew still. Armored -- iyozane dou, white as moonlight on snow, helm a snarling wolf’s head, stormcloud gray and silver fur gathered around the throat as a gorget, falling down the back as a cloak. Milk-pale braids tumbled from beneath that helm, some thick, some thin, at least a half-dozen, even as the face remained in shadow. The hands that gripped his own were small but strong, striped in callus, fingers tipped in claws.

“Tamiko-dono?” Hanzo asked, softly.

Her head tilted, wary, listening, and the candlelight fell across her face, her high cheekbones and sharp jaw, her golden eyes and the golden markings beneath them.

“You,” Tamiko’s voice, when she spoke, was as rough as when she sang, husky and darker than he expected. “You have come. At last you have come. Give me your name.”

“Hanzo,” He replied, softly, “I am Shimada Hanzo, Lady Tamiko. And I...I have many questions.”

Her head moved, a quick jerk, as she scented the air -- eyes narrowing as they fixed on something beyond his shoulder. “And that? He is not of the Clan.”

Hanzo dared a quick glance, found Jack standing almost deceptively relaxed, his weapon’s muzzle pointed toward the cavern’s floor, finger well away from the trigger, his visor glowing pale blue in the dark. “A friend -- he means no harm. He is here for my protection, and yours.”

“Protection?” Her gaze flicked back to him, her eyes narrowing still further. “Why would a son of the Clan require protection, from a mortal armed with mortal weapons? What --” She stopped, as her gaze roved over him, seemed to see him, truly, for the first time, and it was all he could do not to shrivel in shame where he knelt, only barely resisting the urge to bow his face to the floor despite the ring of candles. When she spoke again, her voice was a toneless rasp. “How long has it been?”

“Lady Tamiko --” Hanzo began, gently, only to be cut off by her wordless snarl.

“How long, Shimada Hanzo?”

“Many hundreds of years.” He replied, drawing a steadying breath as her eyes flashed, her lips peeled back from her teeth, sharp and long as the wolf whose pelt she wore. “At least five centuries.”

“Centuries.” Her eyes slid closed, her face a mask of despair. “And my Clan sends a half-fledged child to finish my task. Fools. Fools.”

“They did not send me.” Hanzo found the words falling off his tongue before he could stop them. “The Clan...they do not know that I am doing this. They did not know you were here, or what became of you, or why you came to this place.”

“What.” It was not quite a question, the tone so similar to his mother’s when she was not-really-asking that he had to repress a slightly hysterical giggle. “What do you mean?”

“Much has changed. The Clan has changed -- and much that we should not have forgotten has been lost.” The bitterness of that admission twisted his heart and his stomach. “Lady Tamiko -- I need your wisdom. I must know what happened, and how you came to be here, in this place. I beg this of you, for the lives of innocents that are at stake.”

Her beast-golden eyes caught his own and he found himself unable to look away, as transfixed as he had ever been by the ranger-who-was-probably-Coyote, and her chin dipped as she nodded slowly. “I came here on the hunt -- pursuing one who had betrayed the Clan and shed the blood of our own in murder, a kinslayer. His name was Shimada Kazutaka...but you, I think, may know him by another name.”

The icy thing in his chest throbbed and shuddered as she spoke its name, his stomach churned and it was all he could do to swallow it back down. “The Serpent-Wolf.”

“Yes.” A heavy weight of sorrow in that single word and he was shocked by the depths of the grief, of the guilt, in her eyes. “He was as near to me as a brother, once. We suckled at the same breast -- his mother was my mother’s sister, and they bore Kazutaka and I but a few weeks apart. Fever carried away my mother away, and her sister took me into her household to raise, that I would grow to protect the son who would one day lead the Clan, as she had been. And it was that way, all through our youth -- we learned statecraft and diplomacy, literature and music, the ways of the bow and the blade and the fist, side by side, that he might rule and I might advise him cannily, and be his sword where his silver tongue could not hold sway. He was clever that way, with his words and his intuition, his way of knowing what others thought and what they most desired, even as a young man, and I knew the ways of battle, of the hunt in dark places, my father’s blood telling in me. We...complemented one another, and the Lord and Lady I know hoped that we would choose to marry.” A ragged sigh. “Had he wished it, had he asked it of me, I would not have told him no. But he did not ask, and then we were summoned to the shrine. Our time had come, and we thought we were ready.”

She released his gaze, her own falling to the floor, the candlelight striking in the depths of her eyes. “Kazutaka and I both expected to be chosen by the dragons. Instead, the wolf mothers came to us both, chose us both, a thing they had never done before.”

Hanzo’s hand tightened convulsively around hers and her eyes flicked to his face, narrowing slightly, and it was all he could do to ask, strangled, as the blood pulsed in his head and the breath caught in his lungs, “The wolf mothers?”

“Sakuya and Tatsuya.” A trace of alarm crossed Lady Tamiko’s face. “The Okami -- the mates of Lord Minamikaze and Lord Kitakaze, the mothers of the Clan. They chose their champions, but not often, and only in times of dire need, and never from among Minamikaze’s line, never before the heir to the Clan. It was...a matter of much concern.” Her brow furrowed, a frown curling the corners of her mouth. “How much has the Clan forgotten that you, who bear their mark, does not know this?”

Hanzo could not breathe -- the part of him that remembered how was as frozen as the rest of him, as stunned, as utterly stilled by shock and empty of thought. He felt a laugh crawling up the back of his throat, sharp and spiky and more than a little hysterical, and it took all his strength to swallow it back down, to breathe, to not think. “Much. Very much. Lady...what happened?”

She gazed at him, steady and even, until he could not hold her gaze and looked away himself, blinking away tears. The grip on his hands gentled, ever so slightly. “The Clan was in an uproar. There was some talk of asking Kazutaka to step aside in favor of his brother -- particularly when Kazetatsu was chosen by the dragons less than a season later -- but he did not, and the elders subsided...but things were different afterwards. Between us, and within him, though I did not know how different until…”

A ragged breath. “Too late. Until it was too late. I allowed my love for him, my dearest friend, to blind me to what he was becoming, how the anger ate away his heart, how the jealousy poisoned and twisted his soul. And he hid it well -- he married, and fathered children, he ascended to the rulership of the Clan when his father retired, and to all eyes he governed well and wisely. He sent me away from Hanamura often, to hunt the rumors of great evils abroad in the land, to slay monsters and put the dead to rest, to the find the purpose for which we had both been chosen -- and, I think, to hide what he was doing from my eyes, from the path that he had taken in the dark of his bitterness, of his belief that he had been denied what he truly deserved, the dragon-bond that should have been his birthright.” Her clawed thumb traced across his scarred palm. “He told me that he believed an evil from beyond our world had come and he was...not wrong. What he did not say is that he was harboring it -- that he had knelt before it as a supplicant and begged its wisdom, learned the terrible things it taught.” She swallowed, a convulsive movement. “He used them to twist the essence of his own bondmate, the wolf companion of his soul, into a ravening monster. He used them to slay Kazetatsu, to consume his flesh and blood and soul and enslave Natsuokaze, his dragon, the only daughter of Lord Minamikaze. He used them to flee from me when I confronted him, to open a door to this place, where he could carve out a kingdom of horrors and no one would be able to stop him.”

“Why here?” Hanzo heard himself asking from a vast distance, pathetically grateful for whatever degree of shock was holding his voice steady. “Why this place?”

“He followed the path his teacher tread, as I followed his when I pursued him.” A faint, grim smile. “He could not conceal his tracks, now that I knew what he had become -- but it took me long, too long, to reach this place and by the time I did…” Her grip on his hands tightened again, claws drawing blood. “He was great in his power -- greater than I imagined possible when last I saw him, a monstrosity that had cast aside any illusion of humanity.” The horror of the memory shone in her eyes. “It took all my strength, all of my skill, to weaken him enough to strike a killing blow with the sword I had sworn would be his ending -- and, when I did, he did not die. He did not die, and he struck me down, and as I lay bleeding out my life on the sands, he mocked me with the knowledge that I could never have slain him, for his life was no longer married to his flesh but bound apart where none would ever find it. But he was wrong.” The tips of her fangs flashed in the candlelight. “My wolf found the god-seed he had corrupted with his power, the thing that held his life, and bore it away -- his black heart, without which he is not nor can ever be whole. He raged, oh how he raged, but he could not prevent my Hoshi from escaping -- but he could bind me, and did, to the place where we fought, where my bones lie still beneath the sands. And he, wounded with many wounds and weak, crawled away into his witch-home, taking the sword that will be his death with him.”

“I will find your bones and return them to the Clan, and tell them the story of what became of you.” Hanzo promised softly. “I will...finish what you began. I --”

“I know that you will, wolf-child.” And for the first time she lifted her hand away from his own, to rest it against his chest. “For you carry within you his heart, and you need only the blade, blessed by Minamikaze and Kitakaze, Sakuya and Tatsuya, to break his magic and end him forever.”

“...I…” Hanzo dragged a painful breath through the ice cold rage and hate and terror throbbing in his chest, “I give you my word.”

“Thank you, blood of my blood. I will await your coming.” She gathered both his hands in hers, bowed deeply over them, and he scrambled to catch Terrifying Smoke Gabe as her presence withdrew, more swiftly and suddenly than it had come, tumbling them both sideways away from the candles, Gabe’s arms closed tight around him, both of them trembling, for different reasons.

***

Hanzo was not quite certain how they made it back to the surface -- his recollection of events flickered in his mind like a broken holovid, vividly clear one moment, stuttering and jerky the next, Gabe’s weary, hoarse voice, speaking words he did not understand in a language he did not know, Jack’s around his shoulders guiding him into the sitting room, reaching down to help Chad’s desperate scrambling efforts to climb into his lap, Jack pressing a cup of something that steamed and tasted of honey and spices into his hand and telling him softly to drink, the comforting warm softness of cushions against his cheek. When the world made sense again, he was curled against the arm of the world’s second most comfortable couch, draped in a fleecy throw blanket in covered in dogs, Chad and Fluffy and Dog, Terrifying Smoke Gabe occupying the opposite end, likewise blanketed and snoring softly. A fire burned in the hearth, but the sitting room was otherwise dark, and from nearby he heard voices, familiar ones, and stirred himself to find them, his canine companions remaining on guard over Gabe.

He found Genji, Hana, and Lucio gathered in the dining room, still shucking off their jackets and school bags, a dozen pizza boxes neatly stacked at one end of the table, talking in low voices. Hana saw him first by virtue of her place with her back to the kitchen entrance. “Hey, aniki. Are you okay?”

“I --” Genji half-turned to face him and the look on his brother’s face told him everything he needed to know about how any form of evasion would be received. “I have felt better. I trust everything went well for you today?”

“As well as could be expected.” Genji replied, a wry smile curling the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think my student visa’s in jeopardy, let’s put it that way.”

“Good.” He found a significantly more sincere smile lurking and let it come out. “There are things we must discuss.”

A burst of cool air filtered through to them as an outside door opened and then banged shut, more voices -- Roadie and Jamie by the sound -- being greeted by Jesse and Jack on the opposite side of the wall. A moment later all four bustled around the corner, Jack carrying an enormous salad of mixed greens and tiny tomatoes, Jesse a stack of plates and silverware and glasses, Jamie the dressings caddy, and Roadie a cardboard box that he set on the sideboard.

“Is Zen…?” Hanzo asked, as he helped lay out the plates and silverware.

“Here.” Zenyatta replied, from the sitting room entrance. “Gabriel is well, Jack, just very drained. I left an orb with him but he wishes to sleep a bit longer.”

“Thanks, Doc.” Jack bustled back out and returned with two pitchers of iced tea and one of lemonade. “He’s...not usually quite that enervated after doing a...thing. Hanzo was pretty beat, too.”

“So I see.” Hanzo had the rather horrible feeling that he did, in fact, see and couldn’t bring himself to meet Zenyatta’s eyes. “Do you wish for help, my friend?”

“No, that -- that won’t be necessary. I am fine.” Hanzo flashed him, and his perfectly neutral, assessing look, a quick smile. “I promise.”

“As you wish.” But Zen pulled a chair out for him and guided him into it, brooking no resistance.

Jesse settled next to him, their hands finding one another beneath the table without any will or thought on Hanzo’s part, and he allowed himself to be comforted by his ranger’s warmth and closeness as loaded plates and the salad bowl and pitchers were passed. Hanzo accepted a serving and nibbled his slice without appetite as the others dug in, a fact that did not escape the attention of anyone sharing that end of the table with him, nor did his silence in the midst of the friendly back and forth chatter.

“You sure you’re okay, darlin’?” Jesse asked, low and soft, as he leaned close under pretext of passing the salad back to Zen.

“No,” Hanzo replied, just as softly. “I am not.”

Jesse’s grip on his hand tightened fractionally and stayed there through the rest of the meal, parting only when Hana begged him to help her carry the leftovers into the kitchen, returning when the task was finished. Genji poured everyone a round of their libation of choice, settled back down, and immediately opened on the attack. “So -- you want to tell us why Terrifying Smoke Gabe is making like a sessile mass and you look like you were run down in the street by someone that kindly backed up a couple times to finish the job?”

Hanzo took a deep, steadying breath and meditative sip of his tea. “First of all, how do you even know I call him that? Secondly, we may wish to wake him up -- there might be questions only he can answer.”

“Firstly,” Genji replied, world’s biggest asshole little brother style, “you call him that when you talk to yourself, out loud, while you’re thinking and he’s probably the only person in this house who hasn’t heard it yet. Secondly, we tried and his face did this thing and you’re absolutely right about the terrifying part. So spill it, already.”

Hanzo breathed in peace, laced his fingers together with Jesse’s, and told them, sparing nothing. The silence that followed his last words was weighty, thick with unspoken questions, and of course it was Genji that broke it.

“So what you’re saying,” His tone was elaborately calm, even, contemplative, as was his expression, “is that this...thing...is our umpty-greats-grandfather?”

“Yes.” Hanzo replied, tersely.

“Wow. Okay, now I feel the need to be ritually cleansed and it didn’t even lick me.”

Zenyatta’s long-suffering sigh, and the sound of his hand briskly impacting the back of Genji’s head, broke open the floodgates.

“We’ve got a plan to get this thing out of him, right?” Hana asked urgently. “Because we’ve really, really got to get this thing out of him. I’m having amazingly strong feelings about that.”

Zen and Lucio exchanged a speaking glance, which Zen helpfully, reluctantly translated for everyone else’s benefit. “It...is not that simple, Hana. The magatama does not appear to possess physical substance any longer -- or at least no substance separate from Hanzo’s own.”

“So if it’s...not its own thing any longer how do we --” Hana’s face went through a sequence of increasingly distressed expressions as horrified realization ran her over like a shinkansen made of small innocent things dying hideously in the dark. “That -- that is not okay. That cannot mean what I think it means.”

“Wait.” The serene contemplation slid off Genji’s face as though it had never been. “Is she saying what I think she’s saying?”

“The Serpent-Wolf’s heart, his life, is part of me now.” Hanzo replied, with a calm whose origin he dared not consider too deeply, even as Jesse’s grip on his hand tightened nearly to the point of pain. “In the place of my gift. In the place of...a great many things, I suspect. And the only way to undo it, to make it mortal again, is to destroy it. Like Koschei’s needle. Or the tip of Coyote’s nose.”

“No.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Of course not.” Jack amplified both Genji and Jesse, firm and calm and even. “Well, okay -- if that’s the key, we’re going to have to destroy this thing. That’s a given. What’s not given is that you --” His stare pinned Hanzo to the back of his chair, “are going to have to die with it. That is not happening.”

“The Serpent-Wolf’s heart is distinct in essence from your own -- it may have no physical substance yet but we can change that.” Zen added, even more firmly. “We can find a means of isolating it and removing it and binding it to a new host.”

“And, in the meantime, we find the sword.” Jack flicked a glance at Roadie and Jamie.

“Well, not so sure about the sword, but we’ve got some ideas about how to find the critter’s hideout.” Jamie rose and brought the box to the table, extracting a handful of objects -- a heavily modified tablet, a collapsable theodolite, a handful of camera-mounted drones. “This critter leaves behind a very distinct signature in the local aether -- we picked up strong readings at yer condo t’other day, weaker at yer school and up in the old state park. Wish I’d thought to take scans of yer car but, well, I didn’t at the time. Our thinkin’,” and he nudged Roadie gently with the tip of one bony elbow, “is that we can use the traces left behind, and the path you followed from Shiprock to Cerrillos, to try and triangulate the location. Or at the very least narrow down the possibilities. Somewhere in there you musta come close enough to draw its attention.”

“I still have the GPS data saved on my phone,” Hanzo said softly, something fluttering around in his chest that he almost dared to call hope.

Genji rose and fetched his bag, phone inclusive, and he pulled up the relevant information, passed it along to Jamie. “Now, unfortunately I only have one set of gear finished -- I got two others in process, but I’m gonna need a couple days to get everything put together an’ properly configured. It won’t do to go in half-assed on this.”

“Agreed.” Hanzo smiled wryly. “We will, I think, not have more than one opportunity to do this -- it must know that the sword is its weakness, its death, even if it does not realize we know that yet. Once we find its lair, we must be prepared to act quickly.”

“Yes. And, in the meantime, you need to be kept safe -- so I’m going to argue against you being one of the ones who goes out doing the looking part of this plan.” Jack agreed, pinning him down again, this time with a terrifyingly fatherly smile of his own.

“But --” Hanzo began.

“Nope.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Get the idea out of your head, man, you’re not going out there.”

“It would be unwise in the extreme to allow such a thing.” Zen put the final nail in the coffin of his objections. “Please, my friend.”

“As you wish. Because you asked so nicely.” The corners of Zen’s mouth twitched at that, the closest he’d come to a smile since the day prior, and Hanzo decided to consider that a victory of a sort. “I do not want anyone else going alone.”

“Of course not. Safety in numbers is a legitimate consideration.” Jack agreed with perfect ease. “Three groups of three.”

“I,” Hanzo said softly, “will leave those decisions to you. I...am still rather fatigued.”

Jesse let his hand go with physically palpable reluctance. “You sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’m sure.” He only barely resisted the urge to bend down and kiss him in front of everyone. “Today was just...a lot.”

“I can believe that.” Those dark, dark eyes searched his own and the tension in his ranger’s shoulders relaxed the barest fraction. “Get some rest, darlin’. I’ll check on you later, if you want.”

“Please.” And now he did lean in and press a quick peck to Jesse’s cheek, Hana’s squeaks of glee and Lucio’s offer to make him another mix chasing him up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs he paused and considered and before he could think too deeply about all the reasons it was a bad idea, he turned away from his bedroom door and climbed the second, narrower steps that led to the upstairs practice rooms, navigating by the light of his phone until he came to one where he could see the moon rising fat-bellied and coldly bright over the ridge of the northeastern hills. He had, he reflected distantly, as he investigated the contents of the storage chests stacked in one corner, always found the sight of the moon rising a soothing balm to his soul and now that made at least a little more sense. From the chests he extracted a candle that exhaled the fragrance of the cool autumn wind through falling leaves and a bowl to hold it, three sticks of incense rich with spice and resinous woods, a box of matches. The floor cushions were flat and firm, upholstered in silk, perfect for sitting seiza for potentially lengthy periods of time, and he assembled his little ritual space carefully, so the rising moonlight would fall over him as he worked.

He touched flame to wick, and the warm candlelight caressed his face, lit the the incense in the candle’s flame, set it in the ceramic holder he had selected for it. Fragrant smoke coiled and danced, both filled the air with a scent sweet and clean rather than cloying, and he drew it deep into his lungs, allowed his eyes to drift closed, let his mind slowly empty of thought as he concentrated on nothing but breath and breathing, the silence of the room, the beating of the heart in his chest and pulse of the blood in his veins. Allowed his mind to drift further, into places of memory that he had not touched in years, not wishing to face the grief and desolation that lay there, and now having no choice but to do so.

Slowly, slowly, the perfume in the air changed from autumn leaves and spice to winds scoured clean by the storm, the taste of lightning hanging thick on his tongue, moonlight transmuting to radiant stormlight and as he drew his next breath --

Something long and sharp and cold pierced him to the soul. When he could see again, all was a tangle of sapphire-scaled coils and icy silver eyes, Lord Minamikaze unveiled in his glory. It took him a moment to realize that the thing that pierced him was a foreclaw black as jet and as long as his arm, placed perfectly through the center of his chest.

You ask me for wisdom and thus do I grant it to you, son of my sons. Lord Minamikaze’s voice curled through his mind, serpentine and venomous with contempt. You are not a dragon and you will never be one.

He jerked his talon free and Hanzo fell -- fell into strong arms that lowered him gently to the throne room floor, held him against the curve of a scaled cuirass, warmed by the heat of its wearer’s body. Beneath his ear, Lord Kitakaze’s voice thundered. “What have you done?!”

Silence, broken by the low whimper of agony that crawled past his own lips as the emptiness in him pulsed and ached and throbbed, a void where something had once resided, torn away in single cruelly precise blow, something that now rested in the bowl of Lord Minamikaze’s hand, something that pulsed desperately in the cage of his delicately clawed fingers, pale and silver and frantic. “I? I am giving him the gift he asked for, my brother, nothing more and nothing less.”

The majordomo approached, face bowed to the floor, bearing with him two caskets -- one worked metal, silver and brass hammered together to form the image of the moon rising full over the mountains as an archer took aim with his bow, the other wood, lacquered so darkly that light seemed to fall into its surface, clasps too heavily warded for such a small box.

“You cannot mean to do this thing,” Lord Kitakaze’s voice dropped to a whisper, something of horror in it. “Minamikaze --”

“Can I not?” He took the silver casket from his cringing servant and spilled the contents of his hand into it, like pouring moonlight or water, and slammed the lid shut, the whole room darker for its loss, despite the sunlight slanting across the walls and floor. “You would deny me justice after all this time, my brother?”

“This is not justice, Minamikaze! He is a --”

“He is a son of your blood and mine -- a son of the one who first broke faith with us, who perverted the gifts he was given in his arrogance, who murdered my daughter to steal her shape.” The air trembled, shook with the force of his rage and grief, hard and sharp as a clap of thunder. “He is the perfect vessel for my justice.”

“For your vengeance.” Lord Kitakaze snapped, unafraid.

“They are the same.” Lord Minamikaze held out his hand and the servant placed the black casket in it. “Step aside, my brother -- or would you prefer to let his soul perish in your arms?”

Hanzo felt the barest ghost of fear, then -- the idea that he might die here, his soul draining away as his ancestors argued the best use for him, should have frightened him more than it did. Beneath his ear, Lord Kitakaze growled -- and then lowered him to the floor, held his head pillowed in his lap. “Make it quick, Minamikaze -- you have wounded him deeply.”

“Of course.” The locks on the casket slid, the lid opened, and the carrion reek that spilled forth made Hanzo gag, helplessly, the sickening bilious light that poured between Minamikaze’s fingers as he approached and knelt seared his eyes and kissed his flesh with hideously knowing intent. It was all he could do not to scream as it poured into him, into the wound, into the hollow empty place within him, filling him with its own corrupt, viscerally repulsive substance.

“It is done,” Minamikaze’s impossibly beautiful mouth curled in a sweetly perfect smile. “You asked me for wisdom, and you shall have it, son of my sons. The wisdom of pain will be yours. You asked me for a companion, and you shall have that, as well. You shall seek him, in the place where he hides from my sight, and by your hand you will destroy him. If you cannot find him…” He rose, cold and regal and still smiling, “You will destroy yourself, by your own hand, and his life will wither and fade with your own. Thus will my justice be served, and the death of my child avenged, and the last of Kazutaka’s stain be cleansed from our blood. Go now, and complete your task.”

Hanzo fell and fell and fell just short of forever.

When next he opened his eyes, the world was entirely different. Overhead, a river of stars spilled across the arch of the heavens, some brighter, some fainter, what some people called the Milky Way and others called Yikáísídáhi, playing hide-and-seek with the firelit branches of the pines ringing the clearing in which he lay. A cool breeze holding the bite of winter yet to come swirled the sweet-smelling smoke of the fire that warmed half his face, one of his arms, the rest of his body covered in a heavy woolen blanket, patterned in the faces of the moon and sun, lightning and clouds marking the edge.

“Well, well, well.” A wooden spoon scraped the inside of a pot, releasing a puff of mouthwatering steam. “Long time no see, cousin.”

Slowly, Hanzo sat, shedding the blanket and schooling his face with care. Across the fire, the ranger who was not, who could never be, his ranger offered him a smile more warming than the flames and the wool, eyes shining beast golden in the dark.

“Do not,” Hanzo said softly, “come to me wearing his face, not now, not ever again.”

“Really?” The smile widened an impossible, inhuman degree, grew sharp and jagged. “Well. If you insist.”

His form changed, between one blink and the next: tall, sturdily built, with a high-cheeked, aquiline face, long black hair pulled back in a plait decorated with beaded leather ties, clad in the bloodstained remnants of a heavy red plaid jacket, tattered flesh still clinging to his collar and breast bones, ribs picked clean along with the hollowed-out wreckage of his torso, the empty mass of shredded connective tissue where his organs should have been clearly displayed above his crossed blue jean clad legs, caked with blood and less immediately identifiable substances. His eyes still burned beast golden, ancient in their malice and mockery.

“Was it you?” Hanzo asked, just as softly, refusing to look away. “Did you teach Shimada Kazutaka?”

The corpse of Marcus Whitehawk sighed and shook his head and said, “I should make you pay for this, cousin, I really should. A favor for an answer.”

“But you will not.” Hanzo replied, mouth dry, “Because there is something you want from me more than mere favors.”

His companion looked up, eyes flashing hotly, grin stretching tight over his teeth. “Well. You’re not wrong.” He laughed, soft and low. “Yes. I tasted his anger and his hate on the wind, so strong and so sweet and so, so not willing to be a good little wolf, what others expected him to be, so willing to reach out and take what he wanted, instead. Yes, I went to him. Yes, I taught him. Yes, he was a...wonderfully apt pupil. One of my best. And, like all my best efforts, he turned around to bite me in the end.”

“You did not expect him to follow you.” Hanzo replied, darkly amused, and couldn’t help the not so friendly smile that curled his own mouth. “To challenge you.”

“Admittedly, no. But I had to admire the ambition. A horror to rival the naayéé at their greatest, and their worst, and I couldn’t even trick him into breaking his own legs or pulling out his own teeth, because he knew me too well for that. It was,” His teeth flashed in the firelight, “vexatious in the extreme, and all I could do was wait.”

“For Tamiko.”

“Even so.” He produced two bowls and poured a measure from his pot in each one, steaming and fragrant, offered one to Hanzo which he, reluctantly, accepted. “For the one who could kill him -- who could not, in fact, kill him. Weakened him, yes. Forced him deep into his áńt’íí ba’hooghan to lick his wounds and sleep and heal -- until you came to finish the job.”

Hanzo bowed his head over the bowl, breathed deeply of the steam, gazed at his firelit reflection in its dark surface. “I...do not know that I can do that.”

“You can. Of course you can. You carry all the tools you need, cousin, all you really require,” Soft, soft, sweet and silky, “is to be taught how to use them.”

Hanzo jerked backwards, halfway to his feet, hot liquid washing over his hand, scorching his skin. “No. No. Not by you -- not the lessons you would teach.”

“Oh, cousin, please.” Those golden eyes glittered, hot and hungry, tongue darting across his jagged smile. “Why else would you come here, knowing already what you would learn? Nothing I’ve said to you was a surprise. And I’ll even give you one for free, right now --” Strong clawed hands settled on his hips from behind, heat and blood-smell curling against his back, hot charnel breath on his cheek and neck and ear. “Power is power, little wolf. Fear it, fear what you can do with it, what it can do with you, and you are already lost. You cannot become what you were meant to be alone, little wolf, and who else can show you what you need to know? Think on it. Think deeply. I can wait.”

Claws pierced his flesh, drew blood --

And Hanzo jerked awake. At his knees, the candle guttered in a pool of its own wax, and the last of the incense curled away to nothing.