This night of sleep is, without question, the worst night of sleep I've ever had.

  Now, I rationally understand that my "ever had" is a lot shorter than most other people's. But given that effectively my every single night is full of horrible nightmare specters of death, I think I'm entitled to acknowledge when things are particularly bad.

  The entire night is the most visceral that my relived memories have ever been, barring one specific circumstance. I always experience those memories as though they're mine, but they're still remembered.

  This night is full of things that feel real and ongoing. Like I’m actually playing an active role in making decisions — giving in to the urges to take essence and knowledge from everything I see and can grasp at. Entire towns, hundreds of people who all feel personally familiar — people I've lived my entire life around — fleeing or fighting, but always in vain.

  [Traveler's Sleeping Bag]

  [Fabrica, Ignia, Hydrus, Aero]

  [Handcrafted by Vito Kortesan]

  A traveling bag enchanted for temperature regulation and general comfort. Very rugged by design to allow the sleeper to rest anywhere.

  "Olly!"

  Nothing ever gets away. Once I'm aware of something, it doesn't really stand a chance. Not least of which because with every person I consume, I gain their knowledge of all the others alongside their skills and magic. Weaknesses, histories, specialties, how they'll fight, things I can say to wrongfoot them, weaknesses to exploit.

  [Traveler's Pillow]

  [Fabrica, Aero, Hydrus]

  [Handcrafted by Vito Kortesan]

  A traveling pillow enchanted for comfort and to provide a cool place to rest ones head.

  "Olly! Wake up!"

  At the apex of one such life I live, I'm jarred awake by a sudden sharp pain that snaps my eyes open and jerks my head to the side.

  Lilly is…straddling my chest with a knee off to either side of my torso and looking deeply worried. She's also shaking out one of her hands, nursing it after, presumably, smacking me to wake me up. I feel her other hand is pinning my right hand down.

  Trying to take in everything around me, I'm not quite where I fell asleep, either, and my sleeping bag is nowhere to be seen, my pillow either. Instead, I'm laying in a pile of magically collapsed dust…which also explains the new information about those two items sitting in the forefront of my mind.

  "Please tell me you're back, Olly. I really don't want to hit you again. Your skin was really hard. Also, you should dispel that ability before you break some floorboards." I peer up at her and really take her in for the first time since waking. She's wearing a sheer nightgown, pearlescent like most of the fabrics she likes — but substantially thinner than anything, leaving much less to the imagination than I've ever seen before.

  On the tail end of my dreams and memories, feeling that rising, cloying desire that I always feel around her or anything essence-rich sends me into a momentary panic and I frantically try to move my right arm out of reach of her and to scrabble out from underneath her, which inadvertently knocks her over with a small yelp of surprise.

  Once I'm what I would consider a safe distance away, I look down and see I'm missing the sleeve Lilly made me — though missing is the wrong word. She's holding it as she daintily picks herself up off the ground looking annoyed.

  It’s been a couple weeks since I last really saw my arm — I try to keep it covered at all times to prevent situations like this. Mentally, it’s jarring. While I never can really “forget” what I’m dealing with, when I go so long without seeing it, it helps me start to feel at least a little bit closer to normal – something that is shattered the moment I do witness it again.

  “Little bit rude, Olly. I know I smacked you first but it’s bad manners to shove a princess. I would have expected better.” Her tone is flat, humorless, but I see the tiniest twitches of muscles at the corner of her mouth. A tiny tell that I’m not sure even Ayre recognizes, but stands out to me since I see it and whatever this “calamity” thing is that infests me helps me pick out things like that. In my minds eye, looking at Lilly or Ayre, I see the averages of my memories of them, so whenever they look or feel different, it makes those differences stand out in stark contrast.

  “Sorry, Lilly. I—”

  “Oh shush, you. Don’t apologize for that. I hit you and I’m not going to apologize.” After her dress is straightened, she looks down at me on the ground — my breathing coming in sharp, panic still sitting at the fringe of my mind. "Wanna sit and talk about it? I was already up before you apologize for that, too." She offers her hand down to me. It takes a few moments of staring at it, but I eventually reach up with my left and stand with her help, feeling exhausted.

  "Yeah, sure sor— I would like to talk." Lilly tosses the sleeve at me after inspecting it for damage and being apparently satisfied. The sleeve is something she personally made for me out of essence-resistant fabric that has proven to be able to restrain the passive "draining" effect of my arm. It gives me a constant, background-level haziness in my head since I'm entirely unable to parse anything relating to Lilly's magic or other fae stuff. But that's better than being constantly inundated with objective information about the world around me or accidentally touching something and turning it into magically inert dust in a second or two.

  I shake my head as I plop down on the couch as far as feasible from Lilly, keeping my right arm on the opposite side. "I guess it isn't really news, and I'm sure you can assume what was happening. But It was just a very "real" memory this time. A particularly bad one." I go through, detailing the broad strokes — avoiding the nitty-gritty specifics because Lilly, like most Fae apparently, is very uncomfortable with death and harm in general — and how I felt once I woke up.

  "What do you think caused it?" Normally, Lilly is eminently distractible, but since we had that last blowup over communication issues, she's been making a point to be much more attentive to me and my condition.

  "If I had to guess, according to the other…thing like me, it's because I haven't been consuming anything dense enough to actually sate me. I think it's this curses way of telling me what I need to do to keep myself well based on what's around me. Now, I know it's not actually intelligent or alive, I think. But I just mean that whatever I am has a strong motivation to feed, and I think I'm starving, so I'm dreaming about fixing that. And what am I surrounded by? People who probably couldn't stop me if I actually tried.

  "Add to that being shown that people here seem kind and easygoing, and I just have this thought burning a hole in the back of my brain telling me I need to eat something and to learn about this place and everything in it the most efficient way possible.

  The worst part…" I hesitate for a long while, processing, thinking of the best way to say the next part. Lilly waits patiently though, she never gets impatient with my longer pauses while thinking, gratefully. "The worst part is that I want to, Lilly. I'm experiencing those memories and feeling great during them, only to wake up and feel miserable."

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  In response, Lilly sits quietly, clearly thinking. I wait. I'd be the worst kind of hypocrite if I didn't allow others time to think. Plus, it's not like anything I'm saying is remotely sane-sounding, so I can't fault her for not having a planned answer.

  I let my mind wander while she thinks — sometimes it feels like I have all the time in the world to think about things. Like the world is putting itself on hold for me to complete a thought.

  What around here would be the easiest source of dense essence that isn't people? All of the essence in the region is diffuse, but traveling along conduits in the ground or in the air and then being distributed. I noticed that much while walking around… But where does it actually come from?

  "Learning is satisfying, right? Like, even without "eating" something, I mean."

  "Yeah. The emotional damage aside, the most calm and satisfied I've felt without consuming anything was after Ayre spent a few hours telling me about the heavens during one of the evenings in her cabin before you came back. Every new little piece of trivia put me at more ease. It's why I always try to ask questions about things, I think, even if I haven't been consciously thinking about it."

  "Right, so then, can I maybe tell you some secret, extra tasty knowledge? The Veiled —my father's counterpart in the Court of Secrets and Shadows — has always said that 'A secret is only as valuable as the effort taken to conceal or uncover it..'"

  "I guess I never really thought about it before. I don't know if I've learned 'secret" knowledge at any point. but I have to admit that the idea of doing so has me feeling excited in a way that's hard to define. Please, go ahead."

  When Lilly next starts to speak she closes her eyes, making a display of trying to remember really hard. But after a few moments of the performance I catch myself leaning forward towards her, feeling eager and having my eyes drifting over her dress again. So, swallowing hard, I make a point of pressing myself into the couch and closing my eyes.

  "This actually works great! I wanted to talk to you about the Demon King when we got the chance, and this is the perfect opportunity. It's secret knowledge and something I need to get off my chest! Alright, so I told you that what happened with the Demon King was the Fae's fault, right?" I nod, keeping my eyes closed as anticipation builds, "And you remember that I mentioned I learned something I wasn't supposed to know? Well, that's how secret it is. My father wouldn't even tell me, his daughter!" She pauses, clearly for dramatic effect. "So, now that you know exactly how secret it is — one person in the world, or two, I guess, since I know — that means it should be extra satisfying!"

  "Only if I actually learn the secret, Lilly." I say with a wry smile.

  "I'm getting there. Be patient. It's important for novels to build up suspense before a reveal, and someday I'm going to novelize this whole thing and I might as well prepare!" Without a doubt, she's sticking her tongue out at me, so I return the favor and she giggles before continuing. The sound wrenches something in my chest, so I focus doubly hard again.

  "The Demon King was one of the fae royalty, like my father. Those born at Dawn. She apparently went a little mad because the world back then was a hateful place, and she decided to try to wipe the slate clean with that terrible war.

  I've told you how the fae feel about intervening with the mortal races. Well, things got so bad that the fae as a whole wound up needing to get involved. This was back before anyone had courts. Nobody was organized into neat groups with common ideals, so it came down to The Traveller and his…siblings to do something. Siblings isn't the right word, but it's the closest one I have.

  Oh actually, not entirely correct. There was one court. The court of the royal who went mad. The Court of Guides and Guardians."

  "Did that royal have a title too? What are those titles for, anyways? Does your father have a name?" My interest is beyond piqued, and it does feel satisfying in a strange way to learn. I want to know more.

  "Uh…yeah. She did. She was The Watcher." Lilly goes quiet for a second, the only sound in the room being both of us breathing for a few moments. The name rings a bell. One of the other two entities that make up the local pantheon of gods. Are the fae rulers gods? So many questions can stem from that. "Well, the titles are what the royals are. My father is The Traveller. Like I'm a fairy, Ayre's a dragon, and you're mostly a human. It just…is.

  Sorry, I don't really know how to communicate the idea. It's something complicated and I don't fully understand it, really. But he does have another name. I know that. Everyone has a true name. Even mortals. But that's not something that can be spoken — so I don't know The Travellers or anyone elses. I don't actually know mine, either. Father always refused to tell me — citing that it would be safer for me if I didn't know. He also refused to tell me why that was the case.

  And not in his usual "I don't want you to know now so I can tell you later when it's appropriate" way. It's something he's been vehement about and asked me to stop peering into because it was legitimately for my own safety. I figure that a true name can be used to hurt someone. Or maybe that by bringing it into being, it goes away forever, or something.

  Regardless though, I got distracted. The secret. The fae are responsible for the devastation that came from the war a few thousand years ago, and the defeat of The Watcher — or the Demon King, if you're still paying attention — marked the beginning of the era we're all living in. That's why they're so bad. Our essence, Elysia, is the essence of creation and love, whimsy and joy. They forsook what it meant to be fae to kill entire continents of mortal kyn. And in doing so, they made that essence, the Infernos essence that you talked about identifying."

  Lilly peters off, so I open my eyes and see that she looks utterly morose and doesn't seem either capable of or interested in continuing. In this half-light, I see little droplets of silken gold dripping down her sharp cheeks to fall onto her lap. "Are you okay, Lilly? I don't want you to talk more about this if it hurts you so badly." Cautiously, I reach out with my left hand and put it on her shoulder to try to pass some of this attempt at comforting me back to her. "It's all fascinating, but…"

  "It's not that, Olly. I've always had really mixed feelings about it all since I heard the truth of the matter. When the Demon King was just some faceless, nameless villain in my fathers books, they seemed like an unreasonable monster. The sort of thing that it's black and white about what you do about it. Of course father worked together with the other royals and the mighty Champion of the mortals. It's the right thing to do." She trails off, sniffling and leaning into my hand.

  "Finding out that it was another fae — one of the most important fae in the world, even — puts the whole thing in substantially sharper context. The fact of the matter is that they did what they did because the world was awful back then. And it ultimately led to the current state of things. Which are all objectively better based on what I know about how things were before. So, was she in the right? Was she justified?

  I always chafe at our non-intervention because we can do so much good, so it makes me think about what I might do in that same situation. And thinking of all of the life lost makes me feel awful. Death is terrible. If we could have avoided killing those monster-slaver people I would have much preferred it. Their deaths solve a small evil, sure, but what if they were pushed back onto the path of good? Turin was strong, smart. He could have benefited the world. But when someone dies that just ends."

  "Sorry Olly, I've got myself all wound up. Just like Ayre, I'm an elemental of a kind, too. Just one of our Elysia essence, so it shapes a lot of me." She adds by way of explanation before seeming to dispel the mood in an instant. Our shared bond normally gives me some insights into her moods, but coming to the city has largely obscured it, so I'm left with an unerring feeling that it's a distraction and avoidance, rather than her actually feeling better. "So, pretty good secret, huh?"

  "I'd say so. It brings a lot of your fathers books and lessons into clarity, too."

  Both of us snap our heads to the door to see Ayre wearing some basic utility clothes she bought back in Silverbrook. Simple shorts and a shirt. No shoes though, revealing that her legs and feet are just as draconic as her hands — something I've not really seen until now since she usually wore long and baggy clothes before leaving home..

  Similarly, the shorts show me something else I've never really noticed before, or maybe something that's changed? It's hard to say. Her lower legs looks slightly elongated, ever so fractionally lifting her heel off the ground by a degree but seeming to not affect her balance at all.

  "Ayre, Eavesdropping is rude. I was telling Olly a secret in confidence."

  "Good, I'm glad, and I'm quite confident that I would have liked to know too, so I'm glad I do. Thanks for sharing, Lil'. " Ayre spits a bit of smoke in Lilly's direction, punctuating the sentiment with a smile. "It's not like either of us are going to go blabbing about events that happened thousands of years ago to strangers, you don't have to worry. I promise I won't share it with anyone who doesn't need to know."

  The promise sees a spark of gold build up and cross the distance between the two women, reinforcing a link between them that normally remains ephemeral thanks to the words.

  "Besides, seeing what happened in here, we should probably make plans for today and include finding something that Olly can safely rely on to take care of his problem. If we can exchange these things for just about anything, finding something essence-rich for him shouldn't be too bad."

  context. It's something that is an important thing for Olly coming in this second book that he lacks the true experience and context needed to understand a lot of what he has going on. Like, when we strip away the whole "living with horrors beyond human comprehension in my head", he doesn't know what love or lust feels like. With one of the two essences plaguing him being the "essence of desire" among other concepts, lacking the context of the difference between "Ah, I could really go for a magic rock right now." and "Oh, Lilly is quite attractive." when they feel the exact same way to him is something I wanted to explore.

  Also, it's fresh new horrors for Olly, omnipresent as always. Thankfully he's got two steadfast friends for now to help him take the edge off. The question is if they'll be able to make living in this city work.