(This is the story text from the corresponding Radio Cataclysm podcast episode. If you prefer audio, you can subscribe here. Read and listen early on Patreon.)

It was hours since the walls of Shorem Co'Horen had faded from view. The purple tinge had returned to the sky, though they only caught glimpses of it through the looming trees bearded with Spanish moss. This land seemed to be nothing but swamp, with dry patches firm enough to walk or ride on growing fewer as they went.

Steven led the group on a horse with the bloodhound plugged into its navigation system. Zeck had trouble riding with one hand, and they only had three horses anyway, so they folded out the dickey seat on the horse's rump and he rode behind Steven. Niewt went next on his own horse and John brought up the rear. Their progress slowed to a crawl as they picked their way through the mud and muck. They had to make their way single file with the horses on semi-manual control to keep them from misstepping.

“Perhaps we should find a relatively dry place big enough to shelter for the night,” said Zeck. “We'll be losing the light in a few hours. It wouldn't do for the horses or ourselves to stumble into a mud puddle and get stuck. We all remember what happened to Artax.”

“Destroyer will have his soldiers eating and sleeping in the saddle,” said Niewt. “He'll force days on end of riding or marching if he has to. Or wants to. They have chemical stimulants to keep them awake. He won't stop until he finds us. We should keep going. Only brief rests. Call of nature. Stretch the legs to stave off blood clots. No more than ten minutes at a time. We can't let them catch up with us.”

“I'm inclined to agree with Niewt,” said John. “We should sleep in the saddle, if we can. We can do shifts of two people on watch, two off.”

“I'll take the first watch,” said Steven, “Seeing as how I'm lead rider on the point horse, anyway.”

“Hold up a second,” John called from the rear. “This ground is mudding up fast. My horse won't step after the two of yours have passed. I'm gonna go around on your left.”

After a minute or so of squelching and muttering under his breath, John managed to coax his horse onto another path that ran a few feet to the side of the others. A stand of trees tangled with thick vines and Spanish moss separated them. “Good to go,” said John, waving. He was barely visible through the vines.

“Just keep each other in sight,” said Niewt. “Remember what that creature said. We need to stick together.”

“I've got a strong signal from the lead horse,” said John. He trotted his horse forward. “As long as we stay where we've got line-of-sight and within close earshot, we should-” he paused as he disappeared behind a tree. They waited for him to reappear on the other side. He didn't.

“John?” Niewt called.

“John?” Steven and Zeck said in unison.

There was no answer.

“What did I say?” said Niewt. “It's happening already. The swamp is separating us so it can pick us off, one by one. John! He took a different path, that's the trouble. We have to go back for him. There's a slim path here that I think I can cross. We have to stay together, on the same path.”

“It's not like the labyrinth,” said Zeck. “He can't have gone far.”

“Niewt, don't go back, mate!” Steven said. He trotted his horse as slowly as it would go. “Keep right close behind,” he called back to Niewt. “Zeck, you keep an eye on him.”

“Small problem there,” said Zeck, looking over his shoulder. “He's already gone.”

The Keeper practically spat the Colonel's squad onto the shore of the lake, expelling them with the barest care necessary to keep from harming them. “Be gone from this place,” he said darkly. He turned his back on them and dove underwater with his mouth parted, eager to cleanse himself.

“Colonel,” said Sheryl, a plaintive tone making its way through her mouthpiece, “do you think it wise-”

“I think it necessary, whatever you were about to say,” said the Colonel. “Every second we delay, the traitors draw closer to the Cormorant. On your horses, all of you.”

Sheryl hesitated a moment, but she got on her horse. Captain Irving followed suit. Her hands trembled as they gripped the reins. Sheryl sent her a private message through HUD chat. Irving nodded, and the trembling subsided.

“The creature could at least have stowed the loot away if he didn't want it,” said the Colonel. He lifted the chest and returned it to the packhorse. “Shame about Chad,” he said. “A true sacrifice it was, at that.” He sighed. “All in service to the Empire. Still, it makes no sense to have a rouncey without a rider. What's your first name again, Jaut?”

“Bob, sir.”

“You're an attercop, so I assume you've been through the Academy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Congratulations, Bob Jaut, you are no longer a captain in the Imperial Guard. You've just been promoted to squire.”

“Where the heck did you guys go?” John said aloud. “Steven! Zeck? Niewt? Well, shit. I guess if it was bound to happen, it was bound to happen.”

“To whom are you ssspeaking, mage?” came a voice from behind him. He slid down from his horse and turned around, holding his staff defensively.

A snake with a head the size of a bus sat there, its body half submerged in the swamp and longer than John could see. Possibly, it had no end. “Seraphanta,” said John. “Is it really you?”

“Do you doubt your own eyes?” the snake said, her voice soft as cotton. “Have you not sssought me, year after year?”

“All the more reason to doubt what I see. I've spent half my life trying to find you, and now I just happen to turn around in a swamp of illusion and there you are?”

“Were you not told that what you find here is not illusion, but real?”

“Real, but maybe not true,” said John. “Which it seems to me is coy elder god speak for 'don't trust what you see.'”

Seraphanta flicked out her tongue. “You only half believe that, herpemancer. You have spent so long in pursuit of an audience with me, but you alone have kept yourself from it. You have not been chasing me, but rather fleeing yourssself. Yourself, and your brother.”

“What do you know of my brother?” John shook his head. “No! It's this place, whatever you are, whatever dwells here, it's in my head. My mind is an open book to you. You'll say whatever it takes to get me to do what you want.”

“How then can you trussst your own actions?” said the Queen of Snakes. “Whether you flee my presence or remain, you cannot know which the ssswamp desired.”

“You're trying to get me to psych myself out,” said John. “That's what things like you specialize in. You use the truth to lie, and you trick people into doubting themselves until they don't know what's real and what's not, and then they never manage to come to a decision about any of it. And if I said it wasn't working, you'd know I was lying.” He waved his hand dismissively. “You're irrelevant. I'm all I have. Think, John. What do you do?”

“After all of your sssearching, will you really take the chance that I am but an illusion?” She flicked her tongue out again, and its cold fork grazed John's cheek. “That which dwells here peered into your mind, but it was I who heard the call of your heart. It cries out to me, unmuffled at last by that which came before. We are in its realm, it is true, but it actsss with neither malice nor kindness. It merely lays bare what you have hidden from yourssself.”

“And what would that be?” said John.

“You desire your brother's fate for yourssself,” said the snake. “To be devoured by Ssseraphanta, Queen of Snakesss, and either thereby perish, or reunite with the brother I devoured, so many years ago. It is a truth you hold in your heart. You desire them both in equal measure. To find your brother in this realm or another, and finally know joy again. Or to perish from this world and end your despair for good. After all this time, after all the serpents you have summoned and tormented in a desperate call for my attention, will you truly flee, and never know what could have been?”

The snake opened her mouth as high as a doorway. Her fangs curved down like stalactites. Beyond tongue was a darkness more vast than any gullet. John stepped in.

“Hello?” Niewt turned as far as he could without falling from his saddle. He was sure Steven and Zeck had been right behind him. He'd only turned his horse around a second ago. “Fellows? John? This is exactly what I was trying to avoid. And now I'm talking to myself.”

He trotted his horse forward anyway, looking for the path John had taken around the trees. He thought he'd found it, and he managed to navigate his horse over a thin strip of firm ground to the other side of the stand. His eyes lit up when he spotted the sleeve of a robe behind a clump of vegetation. “John! Hold up a moment, if you will.” But when he rounded the clump of foliage he found not John, but his old mentor. “Father Tuin,” he said. He climbed down from his horse and bowed his head.

“Brother Murkle,” said Tuin.

“Private Murkle now, Father.”

“You are still a brother of the Pyrosterion,” said Tuin.

They hugged, briefly.

“You will always be Father Tuin to me,” said Niewt.

“Ah, but I am not Father Tuin, am I?” said Tuin. “I am merely a figment of your imagination, given form by this swamp.”

“Nay, Father. A swamp cannot give vital form to an illusion. When we embraced, I felt the solid weight of you. Even now, I can smell the incense that's always burning in your cell. I see the hem of your robe wick water from the pool at your feet. No living thing has the power to produce these things out of the air.”

“There is much you do not know about the world, young Murkle. You've met a living god with the power to spin centuries like wool. Coaxing your mind to see what it already sees is no great feat. But you know that already. You were warned to be wary of this. Think, boy, why on Earth would I be standing in this swamp, so far from the temple? How could I have even come to be here?”

“The Fornax has brought us together,” said Niewt. “It is known to happen. 'Through fire he walked, and through fire he came, and the sky burned black beneath him.'”

Tuin laughed. “We are as ants to Hephaestus, my boy. As if I could walk as he did. You know the truth, Murkle, that's why your mind has conjured me. Tuin would never tell you this, but I will, for I am you, and you've found the truth of it at last. The Fornax has power, to be sure. You've healed a cut or two. But its power is a candle compared to the blazing sun that ferried you here. You insulted the Keeper because you fear him, and you fear him because you felt the depth and weight and heat of his strength, and you know that you have given your life in service to something weak, something false and duplicitous.”

“That's not true,” said Murkle.

“But it is,” said Tuin. “You have already begun to follow Gh'orek Thosh Amurga Pergin Foffnet, else you would not have heeded his warning in this very swamp. You know that his power is greater than any you have ever drawn from the Fornax. And he is but one of many. There are other beings like the Keeper. You stand among one now. You've given your life to Causticism, and for what?” Tuin reached out and tapped each of the sigils of the litany that covered Niewt's head. “So many burns, and a fresh one each day,” he slapped the back of Niewt's hand, “and for what? And what of Sister Caren? Corporal Bunting? What is a candle that has burned away?”

“They're equal,” said Niewt. “Even Bunting, though he might yet live, but if he has perished, even he, though not through flame, is equal. A candle that is spent is warmth given, and a light in the dark.” Desperation crept around the edge of his voice, and his eyes welled with hot tears.

“Yes, nothing is equal to nothing,” said Tuin. “A candle that is spent is a candle no longer. The flame gutters out, and all you're left with is the cold and dark.”

Niewt's litany ached. The sigils blushed red. “You're right,” he said. “You're not Father Tuin. He wouldn't say such things. You speak only lies.” His scars were burning now, as if he's been branded anew.

“I only tell you things you already know,” said Tuin. “When your flame gutters out, all that will be left is the cold and the dark.”

Tuin was gone. Niewt screamed as his litany glowed and sparked and burst into flames.

“Stay close together,” said the Colonel. “We don't know what sort of a place this is, and we don't want a repeat of Captain Solomon's disappearance.”

“Sir?” said Bob from atop the rouncey. “I'm not sure how to tell you this, but it appears we've already been separated from the Sparassa. I don't get any result when I ping them on my Scrowall. It's just you and I.”

“Oh, beautiful,” said the Colonel. This must be Hell, I suppose. I never suspected it to be real, but what other explanation could there be for such a turn of events?”

“If you please, sir, I might be better able to serve from inside the rouncey. There's a great deal of equipment in there, and the console is-”

“You have not earned that honor in the slightest,” said the Colonel. “You are not a tenth of the squire Chad was. You think I'd let you befoul his rouncey's cabin with your presence? Never in a thousand lifetimes, if you were the last squire in existence. In fact, I'm giving you a demotion. Climb down.”

Bob did as the Colonel ordered, dismounting and standing at attention. The Colonel climbed down from Ouroboros and opened the rouncey's hatch. He reached inside with one hand and pulled out Chad's limp body. His throat still grinned where it was slit, red and wet.

Bob had stowed his guard's mask, unbefitting a squire, and his face was bare. He did his best to keep his countenance blank. He felt his gorge rise, and his hand went to his mouth. “I thought the creature in the lake devoured him,” he said weakly.

“To call you a fool would be an insult to jesters. I was going to make you a horse, but you're not even fit for such an honor. You're an ass, Jaut. Get on all fours. You'll be Chad's new mount. Chad, you've been dead for far too long. You're promoted to squire.”

“You are mad,” said Bob. “I didn't want to believe it. I've turned a blind eye. But it's true. You're insane.”

“Asses don't speak,” said the Colonel. “They bray. All fours, ass. In the muck, where you belong.”

The Colonel still held Chad in front of him like a ghastly rag doll. Bob moved without thinking. He saw his hands reach behind his back and grab his blunderbuss, but they felt like someone else's hands. His movements felt slow and dreamlike, as if walking underwater, but at the same time it all happened too fast for him to notice. He did briefly hear a passing thought, far away in his mind, wondering why the Colonel didn't move to stop him. But that thought was gone in an instant when the shot rang out.

The Colonel was a shadow in the air, gone in an instant as the gritty black chaff that echoed his form fell like tiny leaves. Chad was gone, too, and Ouroboros. All that remained was a heap of chaff and a wisp of dark green dust.

The rouncey was still there. The blunderbuss was still in his hands. Bob gave himself a moment to think on what had happened, and a further moment to nearly be sick behind a tree. After a thorough examination of its cabin, he climbed into the rouncey, shut the hatch after himself, and trotted away.

“Well, at least we're on the same horse,” said Zeck. “There's no possible way we can get separated.”

“See, it's right after people say things like that that they always get separated,” said Steven.

“Look, if I reach out I can touch your shoulder,” said Zeck. “I can see you, you can feel my hand there. If we stick together, we can find the Cormorant. If we find the Cormorant, maybe it'll help us find the others. Hopefully. I really have no idea what to expect when we find it. If we find it. No, when we find it, damn it!”

“I hate to say this,” said Steven, “but your relentless blathering is making me feel a little bit better. Although I'm sure I'll come to regret saying that.”

“You will,” said a voice behind them.

“No,” said Zeck. He laughed. “No, that would be too obvious. Turn the horse, Steven, let's have a look.”

“Are you sure?”

“What choice do we have?”

“Keep going,” said Steven. “Turning around is exactly what it wants us to do. It's trying to distract us.”

“What if turning around is exactly what it doesn't expect us to do, and it's trying to get us to keep going?”

“Nah, you can't start double-guessing everything like that. You'll drive yourself mad. We have to trust our guts. Right now, my gut's telling me to ignore the voice and keep going.”

“Just like you, Steven,” said a different voice. “Never doing what you're told.”

“Oh, you've gotta be kidding me,” said Steven. He turned the horse around. Sitting on a fallen log, side by side, were Zeck's father and Steven's father.

Without thinking about it, Steven and Zeck both climbed down from their horse. Something in the back of Steven's mind told him to keep one hand on the horse's lead. He wrapped it tight around his fingers. “Right,” said Steven. “Now I know you're not real. My dad's in state prison, probably for the rest of his life.”

“S'right,” said Steven's dad. “I'm in the big house, an' it's all thanks to you.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“Nothing, same as you always do. You never help out when you're asked-”

“I do all the bleedin' chores around the house!” said Steven. “I do all the repairs. I pay half the bills outta the odd jobs I do for people all over town.”

“Yeah, but what've you ever done for me? You're selfish, child. You only care about a roof over your own head. You didn't testify on my behalf. You didn't even come to court.”

“Well, you know, if you can't say anything nice. You really think I'd've helped your case, Dad? A teenage son, left home alone while you ran raids with your little gang? What about Charlie, the son you sold to pirates? I wonder what he'd have to say.”

“You could at least come visit me. At least once. Say goodbye to the man who brought you into this world.”

Zeck's dad shook his head and handed Steven's dad a cigar. “It's no use, Marty. Sometimes you just get a bad egg.” He lit their cigars. “You can't blame yourself for the shortcomings of your offspring.”

“Shortcomings?” said Zeck.

“You know very well what I'm talking about,” said Zeck's father. “Trying all your life to be as good at things as other people were. But you never found something you yourself were good at, because you never stuck with anything. You were never good at any sports. Not that I cared, but you certainly did. You tried your hand at cooking and nearly burned the house down. We had to renovate the whole kitchen.”

“The stove was faulty.”

Zeck's father nodded. “Always blaming your tools. 'The stove was faulty. These pencils aren't dark enough. The oscillator is on the fritz.' That was the last straw, you know. It's why your mother left. You were always fiddling about with the Beast, messing up her patches, touching all the knobs with your grimy fingers, trying to make something that resembled music. She got sick of it, so she up and left. I wasn't really going to sell her synthesizer, of course. I was packing it up to ship to her. The plan was for me to leave you behind and join her. We were gonna start a new life, free from our son, the mediocre dilettante. But then you packed up and saved us the trouble. You took some of her best modules, but it was a small price to pay to be rid of you.”

“You're full of shit,” said Steven.

“I beg your pardon?” said Zeck's dad.

“Beg all you want, you won't get it. My mate Zeck is a literal wizard on the synthesizer. He's probably a sonomancer, whether he knows it or not. The music he wove out of that console in the woods created vistas in my mind beyond the ken of mortal eyes. He might not be as good as his mum, but that's like saying somebody's not as good as Bowie. Nobody's half as good as Marina Strauss was, but I'll tell you something, arsehole, she was too good for you.”

Zeck's father smirked. “Was? She's still alive, Zechariah. She's here, you know. With me. You could see her. Only, she doesn't want to see you.”

Steven put his hand on Zeck's shoulder. “Remember, mate, it's real, but it's not true. That's not really your dad. And that's not my dad, either. And it won't be your mum.”

“I know,” said Zeck. “I know it's just a simulacrum constructed from our psyches. But I never got a chance to say goodbye to my mother. Even if it's not really her... It just, it feels real. I can smell his cigar smoke, for crying out loud. If they can do that, they can show me my mom. I could forget for just a moment that it's fake- I'll be all right if you keep an eye on me. You can snap me out of it after a minute.”

“No,” said Steven. “That's what it wants us to do. As soon as you forget, it's already too late for both of us.” He pulled on Zeck's shoulder. Zeck turned to face him. They locked eyes. “You don't want to see your mum here. I know that, because I don't want to see mine. She left, too, same as yours, only I was younger when it happened. For a while, I thought she'd had enough of the family and scarpered. But I found out later she'd been sick. Some rapid onset bone wasting disease, or something. She hadn't let on, because she didn't want to worry me and Charlie. So she found a doctor in Lexington who said she could help, and took a train to see her. It wrecked on the way there. Derailed. Only a handful of survivors, and she wasn't one of them. She's gone. Maybe your mum's gone, too. Maybe she's still out there. But she's not here. You don't want to see her again here, like this. Just look at me, corsair. Don't look at them. Look at me.”

“Zeck?” His mother's voice. “Your father's teasing. He always had the worst sense of humor. Of course I want to see you. I heard you in the forest, you know. Playing the part of Ruby Cadence. I'm glad you took my modules. I always wanted you to have them, anyway. I knew you'd make good use of them, and you have. I'm so proud of you, Zeck.”

“Don't even look,” said Steven. He gave Zeck a slap on the cheek, then held up his palm. “That's real. You and me, we're real. You and me and the horse,” he tugged on the lead, “that's all that we can count on here.”

The swamp was quiet. Zeck and Steven turned back to where their fathers had sat. The log was empty. A friendly chime rang out from the horse's mouth, followed by a steady beep.

“That means we have a strong signal,” said Steven. “The Cormorant. It's close.”

The fog was dense, but not blinding. What had started as little wisps of mist had quickly bloomed into a thick bank. Sheryl sent a ping through her HUD to pinpoint her colleagues. No pings came back. She did it again. Only silence returned. She cycled through the optical settings on her eyepiece, but the fog looked the same in every one. She pulled her mask off. “Colonel,” she called. “Request company halt. I have a malfunctioning helm.” There was no answer. “Irving,” she called. “Bob.” Only silence and fog.

Only it wasn't silent. And it wasn't fog. She smelled it now. Wood smoke, mingled with the noxious stench of burning plastic. She heard the crack and roar of a house on fire, getting closer even though she stood still. And she saw it now, flickering in the gloom.

She found herself walking towards it. As she came closer, she heard the screams. There were many, and then there were fewer as some were cut short. The house took shape in the smoke. This was the house from the day before, the last house in the Hinterlands. “The labyrinth has taken me back,” she thought. “A second chance.” She rushed inside. The family were in the kitchen with the Colonel. She tried to extend her wristblades, but they weren't working either. She ran at the Colonel, fists swinging, but he was so much taller, and she had no gauntlets on, no armor, only her pajamas.

The Colonel picked her up by her arm, breaking it. “What have we here?” he said.

She looked around. This wasn't the house at the edge of the Forsaken Quarter. But it was familiar. She'd seen it most nights just before she woke, ever since the Plumwine incident. She saw her parents' bedroom, where she'd found the Colonel. She saw their faces, eyes open but unseeing. Her mother and father, lying side by side, red seeping through their sheets. Her brother sat huddled in the corner, sobbing with a fear and grief too heavy for a child to bear.

“There's a lot of fight in this one,” said the Colonel as Sheryl kept swinging and kicking, even as he held her by her broken arm. “So unlike the other one,” he said, pointing at her brother. “Survival is a choice, child. Leave the boy some rations, Lauren. It'll likely be dead within a week.”

The Colonel's squire, a girl of about sixteen, set a crate of rations in front of Sheryl's brother. He didn't seem to notice. He raised his head and met Sheryl's eyes. “Valeria!” he cried. She flinched at the sound, but didn't answer.

The Colonel dragged her, kicking and spitting, out of the house. This was no nightmare, no memory. It was real again. She saw more than she'd ever remembered in her dreams. Outside her childhood home, she saw her neighbors running through the streets, soldiers with flamespitters chasing them. Every house was on fire, and the air was thick with smoke and ash. She passed out, but found herself still awake in yet another place.

She stood amongst the smoldering wreck of a house. The faces of the family from the Forsaken Quarter stared up at her, charred and twisted as if they hadn't escaped the fire. She turned away, but there was the face of the young chicken from the farmhouse in the Hinterlands. Michael. She turned from him, and there were the faces of every person she had ever seen the Colonel slaughter. Every child he had orphaned and taken. Every orphan he'd left behind. But there were not just his victims. That was a comforting lie. Hers were there, too. Countless. She tried to run past them, but there were more and more. Everywhere she turned, she came face to face with another. All of the departed, and all of the survivors. She remembered each one, and they remembered her.

She shut her eyes and buried her face in her hands. The smell of smoke was gone. She felt hard wood floor under her bare feet. She opened her eyes.

She was back in the house, in her parent's bedroom. Her brother sobbed at her side. A Churlian soldier stood over them. Her hands were fists, but when she turned to swing, it wasn't the Colonel standing there, but Sheryl herself. Anger and revulsion welled up inside. She looked into her own cold, distant eyes. She wanted to attack, wanted to punch and bite and kick and tear herself apart. Instead, she ran.

She turned and fled and was back in the swamp, splashing through muddy pools. The smoke was fog again. “It's not time travel,” she thought. “It's nothing but a vision. Ashmara or something.” She was back in her armor, her mask hanging from her belt. Her right arm wasn't broken after all, but her vambrace was cracked. She rummaged for a pill and swallowed it dry. “Hello?” she called. “Is anybody there? Anybody at all.”

A looming figure, more than a foot taller than her, shimmered through the fog. The familiar glisten of enchanted copper-plated armor. The reddish glow of tactical silk. She saw the outline of his chelicerae. There were no other shapes in the fog. He was alone. Sheryl wouldn't have cared if he wasn't. She extended her left wristblade as far as it would go. She lunged through the mist as fast as her greaves would allow. The blade sunk into her target with the barest resistance, a spoon through pudding. She barely had time to wonder why it was so easy when she heard a voice, small and surprised. “Lieutenant?”

She looked down. The armor she'd pierced with her blade was not copper, but gray. This soldier didn't loom over her; she was half a head shorter. Sheryl reached up and pulled off the Sparassan's mask.

“Irving?” she said. “I didn't- I thought you were-” She retracted her blade. Irving jerked back, spitting up blood. Sheryl fumbled at her utility belt. Several items fell and disappeared into the muck as she yanked out a tube of medigel. “Here, quick, eat some of this.”

Captain Irving pushed her away. She tried to say something, but it only came out as a wet gargle.

“You need it,” said Sheryl. “I might have to perform surgery, but this will stabilize you until we can find a horse. It won't choke you, you don't even have to swallow it. It absorbs right into your body.” She pushed the tube at Irving's mouth. Irving slapped it away weakly. She shoved at Sheryl and stumbled backwards, falling on her back into a puddle with a muddy splash.

“I didn't mean to stab you,” said Sheryl. “I thought you were someone else. I'm sorry. Please, you have to take this. Even with the silk compressing the wound, you need first aid.” She knelt beside Irving and put her hand beneath her head. “You're in the mud,” she said. Irving tried to push her away, but she was feeble as a kitten now. The puddle around her was more blood than water. Sheryl squeezed a generous stream of medigel into Irving's mouth. She unfastened Irving's chest plate and rubbed the rest onto her stab wound. Irving didn't react. Her eyes were open, but unseeing.