Viv stood before Thistleburr's red door, and a hundred dire visions of what she'd find inside crowded her mind. They blackened by the moment.
To her left, Iridia stood with feet planted in a pool of lantern light, a half dozen Gatewardens behind her. Viv had prevailed on her to keep her distance, but she didn't know how long that would last.
Staring at the saber gripped tightly in her right hand, she blew out a breath and deliberately sheathed it.
No sounds issued from within the bookshop. The curtains were drawn. The bells of Murk were silent, and only the roar of the distant sea accompanied the thump of blood in her ears.
Viv tightened her arm against Varine's book, grasped the doorhandle, and pushed it inward.
Unlocked, because of course it was.
She was expected.
"Come in, my dear. And close the door behind you."
She strode in warily, her nerves sizzling with belayed violence, eyes squinting to adjust to the bright lamplight of the interior.
A wreckage of literature greeted her. Jumbles of books in drifts, shelves knocked aside and asunder, loose pages tangled, torn, and bunched in the mess.
To her left, Fern and Gallina hung suspended above the floor, bound in cocoons of bone, as though entrapped by some skeletal spider. Skulls with eyes of blue flame and ragged scraps of armor studded their prison, the cages surely woven from several of Varine's wights.
Tears streaked the fine fur of Fern's cheeks. "Viv," she mouthed helplessly, breathlessly. Beside her, Gallina struggled against the bones that constrained her, her face white with fury.
Alive. Both of them.
A chunk of ice in Viv's chest melted all at once, and her guts went watery with the runoff.
Then her gaze fell upon the other occupant of the room, sitting at her ease in one of the padded chairs. The sheer force of her presence rendered it a throne.
Viv recognized her at once. After all, she'd seen her quite clearly in her dreams.
Varine was beautiful, a sculpture of ivory elegance and icy amusement.
Her eyes were just as black as Viv remembered, her hair somehow even blacker, cascading in lightless waves across her shoulders.
A furred robe the color of glacial snow radiated a palpable cold.
Her bloodless blue lips widened, framing a sliver of perfect teeth.
One of Gallina's daggers was embedded up to the hilt over her right breast, bloodless and disregarded.
"Such a pleasure to meet you at last. The dream so rarely measures up to reality, but my, you are impressive." Her narrow brows rose as she flicked a gaze to the grimoire under Viv's arm. "And so deliciously cooperative."
"What took you so long?" said Viv defiantly, hitching the book up. "I've been emptying this thing for weeks."
The necromancer rose, tucking her robe tighter around her body, as though warding off a chill.
"Oh my, Viv. The bluff is cute. We both know the only thing of mine you've been brave enough to take is strapped to your back.
Although you did confound my pursuit with the wards.
I'm surprised at that." Her eyes narrowed, and she glanced at the satchel.
"Or perhaps not. My beloved assistant may have something else to answer for."
"What's to stop me cutting you down right now?" asked Viv, although Gallina's inconsequential dagger provided a very compelling answer.
Varine's flat and unamused gaze said the necromancer knew Viv's thoughts as well as she did. The bony cages in the corner tightened with a creak, and Gallina gasped, hollering, "You bitch!"
"I'll thank you to hold your tongues," snapped Varine, and her face traversed the distance between beauty and ugliness in an instant. "It's no fault of mine that you've taken what belongs to me, and it's my infinite patience that guarantees your continued breath."
Her brow smoothed, and she returned her attention to Viv. "You knew the answer to that before you asked. I understand you a little already, Viv. I will say that I've enjoyed perusing your dreams, as amusingly contradictory as they are."
Viv startled at that, and Varine laughed, a surprisingly pleasant sound.
"Oh my, yes, there's a cost to keeping something of mine so close.
Did you imagine there wasn't? Blackblood held the door open for me, and I couldn't resist peering inside.
It's sad, really, watching you wrestle with your concern for the tiny people you fully intend to discard when you're done here. "
Viv's mind raced, wondering how much the necromancer had seen. She could only pray to the Eight it hadn't been too much.
"The struggle must be so exhausting. You've so few days in your short life. Even I can mourn the loss of them. Does that surprise you?"
"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."
"Don't be obtuse. I'm not here for a book, Viv. I'm not here for him." She stabbed a finger at the bag over Viv's shoulder.
"Then I hate to break it to you, but this has been a big waste of your time."
Varine laughed again in honest delight. "And yet you've stumbled onto the right answer. I'm here for my time. All the days, decades, and centuries I invested into priceless treasures you're hauling about like books or luggage."
"You're the one who named him," growled Viv.
The necromancer's black eyes flared with blue pinpricks, and she seemed to swell, growing in stature and presence.
"He is my long ages distilled. His value is what I put into him. It's always about time.
It's the only thing that matters, and I am ravenous for it.
" Varine's words were as sinuous as the coils of her hair.
"I revere the moments you squander on inanities. It's only your poor luck to have plucked what's mine from Balthus's corpse while you wasted your every day. "
"If time is what you care about, you sure do spend a lot of it talking," said Viv. "Maybe you let my friends go, I hand your things over, and we put an end to this."
"An end to this," Varine mused aloud, quirking her blue smile. "Yes, well, I've never been fond of endings. I thought that would be self-evident. Your friends will stay where they are."
Viv held up the book and shook it. "I think the only reason you haven't taken this from me yet is because you know I can destroy it. I think that worries you, and I think you want this book more than you want them."
"And I think you want them alive more than you dare to risk my anger," snapped Varine, voice cracking like lake ice in the thaw. The necromancer extended one pale hand. "But you're right, it is time to put an end to this. Either test my resolve, or give me what is mine."
"You'll let them live?"
"Let's not pretend you'd trust my word. Any pact between us is a pantomime. My servant, first."
Viv carefully unslung the leather satchel from her shoulder. Her fingers tightened on the strap, and then she extended it toward the necromancer, holding her cold gaze as she did.
"Don't," wheezed Gallina, but Viv ignored her.
Varine plucked it from her grasp, and then twitched it open.
She sketched a cursory glance over the contents.
"I'll deal with you later, little thrall," she purred, and Viv's skin crawled at the curdled avarice in her voice.
The necromancer tossed the satchel carelessly onto the chair behind her and stretched out her arm once more.
Slowly, Viv extended the book toward Varine with both hands.
A book containing a thousand pages like mirrors, reflecting nothing but their owner.
Viv almost pitied her in that moment.
Almost.
Varine impatiently lunged forward and snatched it.
Viv's fingers jerked toward her saber, but she stayed her hand, glancing with concern at Fern and Gallina.
"Ah," murmured Varine, running her fingertips over the cover. The glyphs inscribed into its surface fluttered alight behind her touch. "I've missed you so, my dear one," she said, her words rich with longing, a greeting for a long-lost lover.
With a twist of her wrist, a cascade of bones slithered from beneath the hem of her robe, piling one atop the other into a grotesque lectern, upon which she placed the grimoire.
She flipped back the cover, and then suddenly frowned, her perfect brow wrinkling in dismay. "What … ?" She turned to a page in the middle.
Varine gazed in annoyance at the dog eared corner, curled over the black void of the page itself, and reached across to fold it back.
In that instant Satchel's hands burst from the darkness and seized first her wrist and then her forearm … and pulled.
The necromancer shrieked in surprise as her arm was dragged into the shadows, her black eyes wide with fury. She braced her other hand on the open book and hauled with all her might to withdraw her arm from the night-dark page.
Her gaze snapped to Viv even as the orc unlimbered Black-blood, her fangs bared.
"You," snarled the necromancer, muscling herself upright even as Satchel's hands climbed higher along her arm, undeterred.
She snapped her free hand toward Viv, fingers contorting and flexing.
Blue traceries webbed her palm and wound around her fingers like burning thread.
In that blue light, Viv saw her death gathering.
She wound up with the greatsword, putting all her weight into it and praying she'd complete the swing before Varine could bring her awful magic to bear.
But then a hooting squawk rang out, and suddenly Potroast was sailing through the air, catching Varine's free forearm in his beak and knocking her entirely off balance.
She screamed, a terrible, ragged sound. The gryphet's beak sank deeper into the bloodless flesh of her arm.
Viv brought her swing up short as Satchel seized the moment, and Varine's head and neck disappeared into the page.
Her cry bubbled into a muffled wail that echoed into nothingness.
The skeletal hands grasped and pulled, grasped and pulled, and the gryphet clung tenaciously to her flailing arm, even as her shoulder plunged into the book.
Viv gaped in astonishment as Varine's body vanished into her grimoire. The physicality of it made no sense, a distortion that hurt Viv's eyes, as though the woman's flesh compressed as she passed through the page.
And the gryphet went with her.
"Potroast!" cried Fern as her companion vanished into the darkness, followed by Varine's hips and then the kicking train of her robe.
Viv flung aside her blade and lunged for the book, plunging her own arm in after.
Her fingers touched fur, but nothing living. The trim of Varine's robe. Viv stretched deeper, dreading the moment when one of the necromancer's hands would curl around her wrist like cold iron.
Fur again, but warm, followed by the silky brush of feathers.
She dug her fingers into the ruff of Potroast's neck and yanked back, dragging him into the light with a sucking noise like a boot from cold mud.
Viv tumbled backward with Potroast on her chest, shattering a chair and falling hard on sticks of wood and scattered books.
Fern cried a wordless sound of relief.
The gryphet scrambled away as Viv leapt to her feet and reached the book in two long strides. She seized and closed it tightly, pressing hard from both sides.
Not a moment too soon, as the book pulsed, heavy blows striking the interior of the covers. She grunted, pressing harder and baring her fangs in a grimace. The veins on her forearms stood out as the book fought her with a force that should have been impossible.
Viv dropped to her knees and slammed the book onto the floor, bearing down with both hands as the pounding from within continued … and then weakened … and then ceased altogether.
The four of them waited in breathless silence for seconds that stretched like minutes, and then all at once the bones that bound her friends collapsed with a clatter and a plume of dust. Gallina and Fern fell to the floor amidst gray clouds and brittle shards.
The lectern followed in a fountain of phalanges.
"Faithless fucking hells!" cried Fern, pushing herself up to her knees.
"I have to get him out," said Viv breathlessly.
Or maybe he crumbled just like the rest of them, she thought, and felt her stomach twist.
She reopened the book and frantically tore through the pages until she found the dog ear.
She let the tome lie still, fearing that at any moment Varine's wrathful countenance would surge from the blackness and grab her instead.
Rising to eclipse that worry was a sick dread that nothing would emerge at all.
Then bony fingers caught the borders of the page, and a horned skull with eyes of blue flame emerged.
"Satchel!" cried Viv, and grasped him by the shoulders to drag him into the open air.
Only his rib cage followed. Viv set him aside as quickly and gently as she could before slamming the book closed and scrambling to her feet.
She snatched Blackblood from the floor, strode to the side table, and placed Varine's awful book atop it.
With two hands on the greatsword's hilt, she drove it through both the book and the table beneath it, with a purring rip of leather and a crunch of splintering wood.
A shrieking wail arose from the grimoire, and a cold blast of wind burst from between the covers, twirling the loose pages in the room into a blizzard of print.
Satchel clambered onto the chair, and the rest of his body emerged from the bag, snapping into place. On his own two feet again, he cautiously surveyed the book and the blade piercing its heart.
They all stared at one another as pages drifted to the floor like the ashes of a forest fire.
"Well," he said. "I must admit, I cannot believe that worked."