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9.

“I saw all of existence all at once. I saw a dark storm, a living hunger eating it from within. But I saw a brilliant light heralded by seven souls, fleeing tirelessly from the storm. I saw seven souls: the Owl, the Mongoose, the Bear, the Stag, the Butterfly, the Ant, and the Spider.”

10.

Avi set up the spelltech so they could watch the battlewagon race from the moonbase. The moonbase. Angus still wasn’t used to that. How did they keep it aloft, anyway? He asked Avi when he first got here but Avi didn’t know.

Angus did know a lot of things now that he didn’t before. Like how his parents and his grandma died – killed by a militia who ransacked their temple to find the Philosopher’s Stone. Like how there was a magical object in the world that would let him go back and make it so that never happened.

Angus didn’t think he could be a Reclaimer like his three friends. He would fall for that Grand Relic for sure.

He attached himself to the Director, because Angus wanted to know more about the Bureau, and he could learn the most about it from her. The live feed from Goldcliff came on, showing the crates disgorging battlewagons into the desert.

Angus gasped at the sight of the ram’s head battlewagon. Killian hollered, “Fuckin’ sweet!” And it was. A halfling drove the battlewagon with a ram’s mask and a fierce grin. Merle had an owl’s mask and waved a giant wrench, yelling into the wind. Magnus’s bear mask had transformed him into a ferocious beast atop the battlewagon. And Taako had given up his usual flourishes in favor of a plain leather jacket and a safety harness, topped off with a cute but toothy mongoose mask.

Most of the room was just excited to see the star Reclaimers in action, especially when they came off like such goofballs when they weren’t in action mode. But when Angus turned to look at the Director, he saw something different.

Her mouth had fallen open. Tears streamed silently down her face. Her shoulders shook. Nobody else had seemed to notice, but Angus did.

The Director was hiding something. Not just from him, from all of them. And Angus intended to find out what it was.

1.

Lucretia and Danel were on the short list for the IPRE’s maiden mission, but the final step was finding a group of seven who would work well together, not just shine on their own. They were about to have their first trial run: tea and cookies with five others of the Institute’s best and brightest, along with Captain Davenport.

“I’m sure we’ll get along fine with them,” Danel said, swinging on a strand of silk from her sleeve to her neck. “Everybody’s interesting once you get to know them, aren’t they? But it’s not so easy to get along with us.”

Lucretia nodded, took a deep breath, tucked her journal under her arm, and went in.

A cleric with the plain brown muslin robes of Pan, buttercups in his gray-streaked hair, and a screech owl dæmon on his shoulder spread jam on a sugar cookie. Lucretia had heard of Merle Highchurch – he was famous for being the only cleric in the Institute who applied for the mission. She had been desperately curious about what sort of cleric would want to leave behind his flock and wander the multiverse.

“Oh! Hey there,” said Highchurch, dropping his sticky knife on his plate. “My name’s Merle. Merle Highchurch.”

“And I’m Bless,” his dæmon said. “Nice to meetcha.”

“I’m Lucretia Tehinah.” She held her fingers to her neck so her dæmon could crawl onto her hand. She held him out to the owl dæmon so she could get a good look. “This is Danel.”

“How did you come to be named Bless?” Danel asked the owl, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say, and he didn’t want to be the one to make the party awkward. “It’s an interesting name.”

“Oh, Bless is a nickname,” she said. “My parents named me Blessings-Be-Upon-The-Forest-Creatures. They were big Pan fans. Thought it would make me all reverent.” As if she hadn’t then gone on to become a cleric of Pan.

“I can call you by your full name, if you’d like,” Danel said. “I don’t mind.”

“Oh, please, it sounds so self-important. Just call me Bless.”

Lucretia could feel Danel’s spinnerets twitching with the urge to weave, so she flicked him at the wall and let him get started. She poured tea for herself and Highchurch, and when Captain Davenport came in, she poured another cup for him. She and Merle introduced themselves. “Hello, I’m Davenport,” he said, making no move to introduce his ant dæmon, who Lucretia couldn’t see at the moment. “I’ll be the captain for this mission.”

“It’s an honor to meet you,” said Lucretia. Her hands itched with the urge to draw the two men, but Danel had made her promise that she wouldn’t take notes the whole time. I’ll be spinning it all in the corner, he’d said. You keep your hands and eyes free.

“Davenport,” Highchurch said, slurping down tea – some of it speckled his beard. “Is that first or last? And what about your dæmon?”

She crawled out from Davenport’s sleeve and flicked her long gleaming wings. “Don’t bother with those. Our names are Gnomish, and people who don’t speak our language can never pronounce them right. Davenport goes by that name for convenience. And me, you can just call whatever you want. Unless you want to try saying Æødyvwå.”

Lucretia quietly swore to herself that if she was chosen for the mission, she would learn to say her name, and Davenport’s real one too, but for now she just smiled and shook her head.

Two elves who had to be twins burst into the room. The one with the stag dæmon wore black shorts, tall leather boots, a flowing pirate’s blouse, and a bandana folded into a headband to hold back a frizzy mane of hair. The other had a multitude of long neon yellow braids, an embroidered bolero, a paisley flare skirt, and a unicorn dæmon with a rainbow mane – which wasn’t actually possible, since dæmons didn’t settle as magical creatures. “What’s up, homies?” the impossible dæmon said, with a toss of the mane.

Everyone stared. Half a cookie tumbled out of Highchurch’s open mouth.

“Don’t mind my brother,” the pirate-looking twin said. “I’m Lup, he’s Taako, my dæmon’s Chispazo, his is – ”

“Garyl,” the unicorn said.

“Your name is not Garyl, Milagrona,” said Chispazo.

“You never let me have fun,” Milagrona complained, and with a whinny, she changed into a walrus and lay in a heap like the world was very trying.

Lucretia couldn’t take it anymore – she got out her notebook. “You’re still unsettled? As an adult?” This she had to take notes on.

“What can I say?” said Taako, smirking. “I’m young at heart.”

“Don’t listen to a single word he says, ever,” Lup butted in. “Milagrona constantly wastes spell slots transmuting herself into different forms, but when you dispel all the magic, she’s a completely fucking normal settled dæmon just like yours or mine.”

Normal was not a word Lucretia would have used for Chispazo, who had a vast spreading rack of antlers with flame-colored jewels hanging from them on chains. But it was reassuring to the integrity of her worldview that Taako’s dæmon was not, in fact, unsettled as an adult, or a rainbow-maned unicorn named Garyl.

“Tea’s gone a bit cold, huh,” Lup said, picking up the teapot. She furrowed her brow, and steam rose up from the spout. She poured herself some. “So, who are you people anyway?”

They were about to all introduce themselves again when Barry Bluejeans came in, his monarch butterfly dæmon fanning her wings on his shoulder. Lucretia recognized him from the magical studies library at the Institute. Her lips twitched in a smile at him. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh! Hi Lucretia, Captain Davenport. I’m Barry Bluejeans.”

“Samite,” said his butterfly dæmon.

Taako raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t samite some kind of fancy-ass fabric?”

Bluejeans shrugged and smiled shyly. “What can I say? My family’s really into textiles.”

As another round of introductions ensued, Samite caught sight of Danel’s web spreading across the wall, a sketchy tapestry of the people in the room and their dæmons. She flew and landed on a silk strand near the edge of the web. “Oh, wow,” she said. “How did you learn to do this?”

Lucretia’s face heated as every eye in the room turned to look at Danel’s web. “We wanted to be able to record as many observations as possible,” she said. “I’m ambidextrous, and I can take notes with both hands at once – when Danel learned to weave pictures, we could record three streams of information at a time.”

“That’s remarkable,” Davenport said, and his dæmon flew over to perch on the edge of the web, too. “The detail is astonishing.”

Finally, the last member of their trial team came into the tea parlor. First came a black bear dæmon, followed by an enormous human man, with bushy sideburns and skin nearly as dark as Lucretia’s. “Sorry I’m late! I hope you didn’t get everything started without me!” he boomed. “I’m Magnus Burnsides, from the security staff.”

“And I’m Reggie!” the black bear said.

Lucretia poured tea for Magnus, and he took it, dwarfing it in his huge hand.

Milagrona changed into a brown bear, towering over Reggie. That startled Magnus so badly he nearly dropped his teacup. “Reggie?” she said. “Did your parents name you Reginald and you got embarrassed?”

Reggie blinked up at the other dæmon. “Uh, no? I named myself. That’s what we do in my village. We pick our names when we settle. I liked the way Reggie sounded. It’s a good, solid name.” She cleared her throat. “So, uh, how did you do that?”

Milagrona opened her mouth, probably to tell another tall tale, but Barry waved his hand at her and cast Dispel Magic. Milagrona yelped and shrank down to a little mongoose. “Transmutation magic,” he said. “I’ve heard stories about you two and frivolous magic.”

“Two?” Chispazo said, indignant. “I don’t transmute myself every five minutes!”

“Yeah, but you do make magical fireworks for every campus party at the Institute,” Barry said. “They’re… really cool, actually.”

Reggie poked her nose at Milagrona. “You’re so small!” she said, delighted.

“Tiny but fierce,” Milagrona said, flashing a toothy smile.

Danel spun his web, weaving all seven of them and their dæmons into shape: Bless picking out cookies for Merle from the plate, Davenport describing the interplanar ship to Barry with sweeps of his hands, Milagrona and Reggie sizing each other up, Chispazo and Magnus stretching to see who was taller, Lup and Taako adjusting each other’s hair, and Lucretia and Danel in the corner, watching it all.

“I think I could get along with these people,” Lucretia whispered to Danel. “I think I could get along with them for a long time.”

7.

Lucretia and Danel had known this day would come. She had prepared herself. Practiced in front of the mirror, even. But still she reeled at the sight of three of her dearest friends ignoring their own dæmons, just like her poor broken captain.

Danel at least could whisper soothing nothings to Æødyvwå, since she was too fragmented to understand what Danel’s presence meant. But Danel had to hide in his usual place up her sleeve, and Lucretia had to pretend she couldn’t see Reggie hanging back, Bless and Milagrona on her back, their people ignoring them like they were part of the wallpaper.

It was hard to treat her family like strangers. But after so many years watching Magnus fall asleep wrapped around Reggie, listening to Bless hoot along when Merle sang, rescuing Taako from sticky situations while Milagrona whined and fretted over him, it was much harder to see them treat their own dear souls like scenery.

“That’s kinda how it works. We get stuff and you pay for it,” Merle said, hard-eyed, as if he hadn’t spent a hundred years changing currencies so often the very thought of caring about money had become laughable.

“I’m but a simple idiot wizard,” Taako said, easily, as if he and Milagrona hadn’t taught themselves to be fluent in mongoose language inside of two months.

“No, he’s not selling himself short, it’s pretty accurate,” Magnus said, as if he hadn’t admitted to Lucretia over too many drinks that Taako hid it well under aloof sarcasm and clowning, but he was probably the greatest wizard they’d encountered in all of reality.

While Lucretia finally secured the gauntlet, she heard Danel whisper inside her sleeve, “It’s safe, Chispazo. It won’t hurt anyone ever again.” Then came the tell-tale tickle of silk against her skin that meant he was spinning a new image.

That evening when she took off her robe, she shook out her left sleeve over a notebook, and Danel’s newest web fell on the blank page: a portrait of Reggie, Bless, and Milagrona on Lucretia’s throne, revered on the dais, seen and honored by all.

2.

“I say we should try talking to deer,” Chispazo said. “I’m sure they have much more interesting things to say than a bunch of dumb mongooses.”

“We’d have to go chasing them through the woods,” Milagrona shot back. She pointed to the mongoose family burrow with a paw. She had, thankfully, dropped the transmutation magic since the destruction of their plane. What’s the fun in keeping them guessing anymore? she’d told Chispazo when they first landed here. It looks like we’re in it for the long haul together. She went on, “I’d rather stick with the nice convenient burrow of mongooses right here, thank you very much.”

“Well, at least of these mongooses are anything like you, figuring out the language will be a cinch, because all they’ll talk about is food and naps,” Chispazo said.

“Actually, that brings up an interesting question,” Lup said, leaning back against her dæmon. She cast an eye toward Barry, who was hanging back near the Starblaster. The loss of their home planar system had been harder on everyone else than on Lup and her brother, she suspected. They’d grown up there, but it had never been home – their only true home was each other, and they still had that. But everyone else was still reeling from the loss, and some good old-fashioned metaphysical speculation might be just the thing to cheer Barry up. “Could the animals here all be dæmons without their people? They certainly seem to have a culture, the way beings with dæmons from our plane do.”

“Can’t be,” Barry said, only just loud enough for elf ears to hear. “Dæmons don’t have to eat or make waste – they’re made of Dust. These animals do. They must be some new kind of consciousness we’ve never seen before. One that doesn’t keep its Dust in the form of a dæmon.”

“Does this plane have sapience-typical Dust levels?” Lup wondered. “We should check the instruments on the Starblaster.”

Barry’s eyes lit, and Samite took off from his hair to fly in excited circles around his head. “We should! And on the planar system as a whole, to see if the other planes have the expected Dust levels, too.”

“If you two nerds are done jerking off, I think the mongoose family is waking up down there,” Taako said.

Milagrona popped up from the burrow. “I’m not sure if ‘hrr-hnn-fuh’ means ‘Hello’ or ‘Get the hell out of my burrow.’ What do you guys think?”

8.

The first thing Lup felt was fur beneath her hands. Chispazo, she thought, then, I’m Lup, then, son of a BITCH.

It felt like it took a whole year to say it – maybe it did – but Chispazo said, “Hoist by your own petard.”

“A petard is a kind of bomb,” Lup shot back. “I’d never get hoist by a bomb. I practically invented bombs.” And then she remembered the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet, and it wasn’t so funny anymore.

“Gods, I hope we don’t get rescued,” Chispazo said. “If they find the Umbra Staff, they’re sure to find the fucking gauntlet.”

“Maybe there’s a way to get out,” Lup said.

“It’s taken us like a month just to have this conversation. And we can’t sense anything outside this stupid staff we made.”

“Then I guess we’re gonna finally have to listen to Barry and Samite,” Lup said, pulling herself up by her dæmon’s tall flanks, “and learn some godsdamned patience.”

And after years inside that staff, meditating and talking and pushing their senses in ways they could barely even call senses anymore – they learned. And Taako came for them.

They couldn’t see Taako and their dear friends, exactly, but they sensed them: Magnus and Reggie’s solid warm strength, Merle and Bless’s well-meaning bumbling, and dear Taako, dearest Milagrona. But they felt wrong, somehow. Hesitant. Wounded. Apathetic.

Lup and Chispazo spent a lot of time at Taako’s side, listening, watching, storing magic. And when Chispazo realized what had happened, he shoved his face into Lup’s, frantic. “They don’t know their own dæmons, Lup! They don’t remember anything beyond this plane! They’ve been – maimed! Taako doesn’t remember us – or Milagrona!”

Lup clutched at Chispazo’s neck and gasped against his soft nose. She could sense it too, now, how Taako was broken, lost without the memory of the one person who looked after him all those years on the road, anchorless without quick-tongued Milagrona whispering her commentary in his ear. “They don’t remember – Fisher must have – I am going to kill Lucretia!”

But when they paid attention to Lucretia, their anger cooled to a simmer. The relief in her voice when she talked about how the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet had committed terrible atrocities and wouldn’t hurt anyone else. The unnatural age beyond her years, some terrible cost she’d paid, maybe while trying to retrieve the Temporal Chalice. The way she told her family not to sell themselves short, that they were capable of great things. The careful blankness in her face when she tried Taako’s macaroons for the first time in a decade, the slip in her dignified Madam Director persona to the Lucretia she knew when she said, “Hot diggity shit, that’s a baller cookie.”

“I’m still going to kill her, you know,” Lup told Chispazo. “But only, like, metaphorically.”

3.

In the next cycle, they found another world of thinking animals, which made Magnus and Reggie’s heart hurt. They had felt such a bond with the Royal Bear, like they finally understood why Reggie had settled as a bear in the first place, and now he was gone. They would do better by this world, learn from their mistakes.

This plane was not the last plane, though. They had cities, if simple compared to the ones they were used to, and here, the animals had dæmons – elf and gnome and orc and human dæmons. Communications had been really confusing at first, but they managed to get a foothold in a coastal city off the ocean, where the Light of Creation had landed.

The problem was that the magitech of the plane was not up to the task of a deep undersea journey. Magnus and Reggie guarded the ship and felt useless as the magic-users worked tirelessly with a group of whale scientists to try to retrieve the Light. Taako struck up some kind of relationship with a dolphin with a handsome elf dæmon that Magnus tried not to think too hard about.

They didn’t make it to the Light that cycle. On the last day, Magnus hugged a bear while Reggie told her tiny halfling dæmon to be brave. The next day, the Hunger had taken them, and the IPRE had moved on to another plane.

From orbit, this plane seemed to have people more or less as they knew them. They decided to land in an advanced country bordered to the north by a great fortified wall. Just like on the first two worlds, Magnus and Reggie insisted on being the first out of the ship, in case there was trouble.

They had landed in the woods just south of the border wall. It was a summer evening. Reggie heard the rush of a nearby creek and led Magnus to it.

Lying on the bank was a human girl wearing a school uniform. She laid very still, hardly breathing, and she was surrounded by shining silver bells. Magnus’s heart caught in his throat when he realized she had no dæmon.

“Maybe she just has a little insect dæmon, like Davenport,” Reggie said. “We can’t always see her.” But they rushed toward the girl all the same.

Magnus gripped the girl’s shoulder and shook it gently. She was colder than she ought to be, lying outside in the height of summer. “Are you all right?” Magnus said. “I’m here to help you. I can get you to a healer.”

The girl’s eyes opened. “What?” She startled and gathered the bells onto a bandolier across her chest. “I – I’m fine,” she stammered, taking in Magnus and Reggie with wide eyes.

“Where’s your dæmon?” Reggie demanded, sniffing all around and pawing at the ground as if she could dig him up somehow. “Did someone do something to him?” Barry had told them about magic like that before, a kind of necromancy that severed human from dæmon into a kind of zombie.

“What’s a dæmon?” the girl said. “Are you a being of free magic? What is happening?” Her irises were rimmed all around with white out of fear.

Magnus wrapped his arm around his dæmon. “Like my Reggie? The animal that’s the other half of you?”

“I don’t have another half,” the girl said. “I’m whole just as I am.”

And so it turned out that there could be people who didn’t have dæmons. According to Barry and Lup’s readings on the ship, they were like the animals from the first cycle – they had sapient-typical levels of Dust, but they kept it all inside themselves, not in the form of a dæmon. It took some getting used to, seeing people who looked like necromantic constructs to the IPRE crew, and all of them freaked out the locals big time, except Lucretia, Davenport, and Barry, who could easily hide their dæmons up their sleeves. But it turned out this world had some pretty sweet technology and magic, and the girl who Magnus had first met was a world-class necromancer herself. A bunch of ghosts ended up leading them to the Light of Creation. They spared the plane the worst of the Hunger, and what of the Hunger did attack, they met with cannons and spells blazing.

It turned out that on most planes, people didn’t have dæmons. They kept them on the inside, or their Dust took much stranger forms, as elemental furies or shadows who talked to the people who cast them. It made their job that much harder on all the worlds where they had to explain the shapes their souls took. But it was also strange and beautiful and amazing – even to a non-scientist, non-magician, and all-around non-nerd like Magnus – all the different ways reality had found to make a soul.

Still, much later, Magnus would curse his luck at ending up on a plane where there was no space for a soul like his.

11.

“Taako,” Kravitz said on their date at the Chug ’n’ Squeeze. “Are we ever going to talk about your mongoose?”

“Is that some of kind of secret sex word?” Taako said, a strand of pink hair falling across his forehead as he shaped his vase. The mongoose, standing on its hind legs at the base of the potter’s wheel, touched its paw to the clay, but a turn of the wheel smoothed the mark away. “Because you don’t have to use euphemisms with me. I don’t think there’s anything shameful about the beautiful spectrum of elf sexuality.”

“Oh, no, sexuality is fine, it’s great, yeah,” Kravitz said, though privately he thought it might be a little awkward to have sex with a mongoose watching. “It’s not that. I told you about this when we first met. You, Magnus, and Merle all have animals that – ”

“Drop it,” the mongoose said. Kravitz nearly dropped his glass of Cabernet. Its voice had Taako’s expressive cadence, but it was higher and smoother. “I’ve tried, Kravitz. I’ve tried for years. He never notices me, no matter what I do. Please, just drop it.”

“You all have animals that, um, symbolize you,” Kravitz finished lamely.

“Oh, did you watch the battlewagon race in Goldcliff?” Taako said brightly. “Those animal masks were pretty sweet. You think the mongoose suits me?”

“Yeah,” said Kravitz weakly, looking at Taako’s nimble fingers on the potter’s wheel, his mongoose’s clever paws shaping a stray piece of clay on the floor. “Spot on.”

On their second date, Kravitz found that it wasn’t so awkward to have sex in front of the mongoose after all – it just curled up in a nest of pillows and rolled around like a dog getting the best petting of its life. Elves didn’t need to sleep, but Taako drifted off all the same after the seeing-to Kravitz had given him. Kravitz watched him fall asleep, petting his hair, transmuted purple for this date. Once he was sure Taako was dead to the world, he rolled over bed it look at the mongoose. It was awake and watching him with beady eyes.

“So,” Kravitz murmured. “What’s your name?”

“I don’t know. I get a strong impression that I’m supposed to have one, but I don’t know what it is.” It ran a paw over its face. “Gods, this is weird. I haven’t spoken to anyone but Owl and Bear in…” It stared off into space. “Huh. I don’t know how long, actually. You and the ghost bots and that creepy Red Robe are the only people who can see me. Though sometimes I could swear the Director looks right at me.”

Kravitz’s head was spinning. He knew there were holes in Taako’s story – nine deaths weren’t minor details you ought to forget – but a talking animal that followed him around all the time was a whole other level. He latched onto the first question of hundreds that crossed his mind. “That’s what you call Merle and Magnus’s animals? Owl and Bear?”

“They don’t know their names either, and it doesn’t feel right to make up names when we know we have real ones we just can’t remember, so we just call each other the animals we are,” Mongoose said. “They’re in the same boat as me. We know about each other’s existence, but nobody else does, except you, the ghosts from Lucas’s lab, and Mr. Ominous Robe – and let me tell you, it makes it really awkward every time we train with Noelle. You know how much of a relief it was when Taako met two guys with their own animals who could see me? I thought I was the only one in the world. That’s why I put up with those two goofs. The number of times I’ve had to cast Reduce on Bear to get her to fit in an elevator, it’s amazing I have spell slots left for anything else.”

“Wait,” Kravitz said. “You’re a wizard? Can mongooses do that?”

“Well, Taako’s a wizard, isn’t he? Why wouldn’t his soul be magic too?”

Kravitz shifted to his reaper form and looked at Mongoose, really looked. He didn’t know how he hadn’t seen it. He knew souls, and this mongoose was Taako’s. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, wow.” She was tiny and fierce and could take down deadly snakes and she was Taako’s soul. “Is it weird to say this is kind of a turn-on?”

“It’s not bestiality when I’m actually an elf soul,” Mongoose said.

“Any idea why only Taako, Magnus, and Merle have secret animal souls only the undead can see?” Taako had mentioned the Red Robe in their conversation in his home about whether or not Kravitz should reap him. He didn’t like the idea of having something in common with a lich who defied the laws of his Queen. Then again, Taako might also be a lich who defied the laws of life and death – the jury was still out.

“None,” Mongoose said. “And I’ve been thinking about it for years.”

“I’m sorry,” Kravitz said. “It sounds like being Taako’s soul is a tough gig.”

“Better gig than being Merle’s soul. Poor Owl face-wings at him every five minutes. Can’t talk any sense into him.”

“I need to apologize to her,” Kravitz said. “On second thought, using their god against them was a pretty low blow.”

“Find her later,” Mongoose said. “She likes to perch on the coat rack.”

The bed stirred, and Taako’s dark liquid eyes slitted open. “Using your Stone of Far-Speech in bed? Tacky, Krav.”

Mongoose winked at Kravitz and curled up in her nest of pillows. He rolled over to face Taako. “I’m sorry. That was tacky. I’ll have to make it up to you, won’t I?”

“Hell yeah you will,” said Taako, and Kravitz did.

After that round, Taako went to his bathroom to freshen up, and Mongoose was obliged to follow him. Kravitz stepped into the hallway. Sure enough, a screech owl was perched, head tucked beneath her wing, on a standing coat rack that had been almost certainly been built by Magnus. “Hello, Owl. Ah, Pan’s blessings.”

Without taking her head out from under her wing, the owl dæmon said, “You don’t need to wish me Pan’s blessings. I’m not that devout.”

“I don’t know about that,” Kravitz said softly. “You seem devout to me. Devout enough that I was able to take advantage of Merle’s love for his god and nearly got him killed. I owe an apology for that.”

Owl’s head poked up for that. She was adorable, really, no bigger than Merle’s head and seemingly half made of huge yellow eyes. “Eh,” she said. “You were just doing your job, right? Nothing personal. It’s all sorted out now, isn’t it?”

Kravitz blinked. The impression he had gotten of Merle was not of a forgiving dwarf. But here was his soul, forgiving Kravitz. Perhaps he had misjudged. “Yes, I suppose it is. Thank you for understanding.”

Owl’s feathers puffed out. “Do you mind if I fly to your shoulder? Merle just got up to go to the bathroom and I have to move…” She flinched. “To stay in range of our bond.” Kravitz held out his arm for her, and she glided noiselessly to him. “The number of times he’s gotten into trouble by pulling at our bond without knowing it – it’s no wonder those three goof up all the time!”

Kravitz bit his lip. “I’m sorry about whatever happened to… erase you from the sight of the living. If you ever get lonely and I’m here, I’m happy to provide whatever company I can.”

Owl hooted softly. “Aw, I’m practically spoiled for company this past year or so, what with having Bear and Mongoose to talk to. It got real lonely before then, I don’t mind telling you. We turned each other’s lives around. When I first met Taako and Mongoose, their magic was kind of out of control, you know? Transmuting things all over the place. All of us had been through some tough times. And for us animal souls, there was nothing to do but sit back and watch it all happen. Merle, Magnus, and Taako aren’t much for sharing, but me, Bear, and Mongoose? We talk to each other about anything and everything. We were all just so cut off from the world, there didn’t seem to be any reason to cut ourselves off from each other.”

“That’s – a very moving story. I hope one day your other halves will get to hear it.”

“I try not to let myself hope for it,” Owl said flatly. “I prayed to Pan for years to tell Merle about me, but he never gave me the time of day. Mongoose has tried every spell she could think of. We’re ghosts in the machine, Reaper Man, and that’s just how it is.” She tilted her head. “Taako’s done with the bathroom. Go finish up your date with your boyfriend.” And she flew back to the coat rack and tucked her head under her wing.

“My boyfriend?” Kravitz said. If he’d had a working heart it would have skipped a beat. “Is that what we are? Did Mongoose tell you that?”

From under her wing, Owl snorted, but didn’t reply.

5.

When they were each three shots of vodka into the bottle, Milagrona wrapped herself around Chispazo’s neck and said, “So, when you go lich, what happens to you, Bambi?”

“I dunno, Riki,” Chispazo said, turning to rub his cheek against her nose. “The only really solid examples we found on record from our world went totally crazy and lost their dæmons completely. I dunno what happens to me when we do it right.”

“If you get lost when Lup goes lich, I will chase you down to whatever plane you fucked off to and drag you back, so don’t you dare,” Milagrona said.

“I’d like to see you drag me anywhere, pipsqueak,” Chispazo said, and Lup winked and poured Taako another shot.

On the day of the ceremony, Taako held Milagrona tucked up under his chin, like he hadn’t done since he was a wandering child of the roads. She trembled against the delicate skin of his throat as Barry and Lup’s bodies fell to the grass, and Chispazo and Samite disappeared.

Two spectral robed figures, weirdly distorted, rose from them, not four. Taako’s heart stopped. His hands tightened in a vice grip around his dæmon. Then the specters struggled out of their robes, and Taako’s jaw dropped. Barry had faceted eyes, antennae, and four vast monarch wings on his back. And Lup, his beautiful sister, had furred ears, legs ending in hooves, and a huge pointed rack of antlers.

“You’re Lup and Chispazo,” Taako cried. “You’re – you’re – Lupazo!”

Lup and Barry laughed as they sank back into their bodies, their dæmons separating back out into their own shapes.

“And you!” Taako said, pointing at Barry. “You’re Samitejeans! Samite and denim, can you imagine? Those two fabrics look awful together!”

Lup and Barry rolled on the grass, laughing until tears streamed down their faces. “Hey Barry!” Lup hooted. “Am I sexier with that giant rack?”

Chispazo ran over, and Milagrona leapt from Taako’s arms onto his face. “Barry,” Taako said, stalking toward him, “I don’t care if you date for two hundred years, if you say anything about my sister’s rack, I will cast Evard’s Black Tentacles on your nards.”

“Don’t worry, doll, I won’t let him!” Lup cried, and tackled Taako to the ground.

That night at dinner, none of them would explain where their bruises and grass stains had come from.

12.

“Now, boys,” crowed the female elf after they showed off the Wheel of Sacrifice, “you three simply must tell us about these three animals you’ve brought with you. They’re so adorable!” Their cold sharp eyes looked right at Mongoose, Bear, and Owl, and Mongoose choked on panic. These elves were undead, like Kravitz and the Red Robe and Noelle. They could see her. And she was not getting a good vibe from these creepy elves or their Wheel of Sacrifice.

Mongoose cast Message and told Owl and Bear silently, Do not say anything to those high-fashion freakazoids. We have to make them think we’re just animals or they’ll come with something to fuck with us too!

The others couldn’t telepath back at her, but they put on their best impressions of a normal owl and bear, for all that Owl was riding on Merle’s head and Bear had flowers in her fur Mongoose had woven in there while they hiked through the Felicity Wilds.

“What animals?” Magnus said, frustrated. “You’re like the fourth person to bring that up! We wear animal masks to one battlewagon race and no one ever shuts up about it.”

“Maybe she’s talking about Steven,” Merle suggested. “How’s your little buddy doing?”

“Steven’s fine,” Magnus said, putting a protective hand to the pocket where he kept the goldfish.

“They really don’t know,” the male elf said to the female elf. “Isn’t that interesting? A mystery for later, perhaps.”

Well, thank fuck for that, Mongoose said silently to Bear and Owl.

But the worst was far from over.

When Magnus was knocked loose from his body into the ethereal plane, there was a spectral bear floating beside him toward an all-too-familiar window to the astral plane. “You,” Magnus said, choking up. “You’re the bear. The one all those liches and ghosts keep talking about.”

She was too ghostly to be sure (how did he know she was a she?) but from her size and shape, she seemed to be a black bear. “Yes, Magnus. I’m the bear.” Her voice was so sad Magnus’s heart broke to hear it. But before he could say anything else to her, Taako appeared on the ethereal plane too, and there was a mongoose with him.

“Hey, Bear!” the mongoose cried. “Get back here, you big doofus!” She grabbed onto the bear, and Taako took hold of Magnus. In the material plane, it would have been ridiculous for Taako to drag Magnus anywhere, or for a mongoose to pull along a bear. But on the ethereal plane, Taako could be the strong one – and apparently, so could his mongoose.

When Merle pulled him back into the material plane, and Magnus into a mannequin body, the spectral bear was still there. So was the mongoose, sprawled across Taako’s neck, and a tiny owl on Merle’s head. “Who are you?” Magnus asked the bear, but looking at his body, which seemed so much less himself now than the bear did, he thought he might know the answer. “Do you have a name?”

“As far as I can tell, Magnus?” the bear said. “I’m you.” She shrugged her big bear shoulders. “I think I do have a name. But I can’t remember what it is.”

“Well,” Magnus said. He looked down at this beautiful, strong bear, and he felt more himself, somehow, than he’d felt in his own body in years. “It’s an honor to meet me!”

6.

Merle played his next card on the table: the Hanged Man, who looked so weird in this world’s version of the tarot deck, without his bat dæmon hanging upside down beside him. Bless was perched on the back of his chair, studying Merle’s hand, while Davenport browsed through his own hand with Æødyvwå on his cheek. She liked doing that, in private, because whenever Davenport went out into this dæmonless world, she had to hide in his hair to blend in with the populace.

“Do you think we’ll be able to have normal lives after this?” Davenport said.

Merle raised an eyebrow. Did he mean because they were impossibly old interplanar travelers, because they had made the artifacts that sparked off global war, or because they were the only people here who kept their souls on the outside?

Davenport read Merle’s face. “I meant, just the normal stuff. Staying in one place. Getting older. Gods, Merle, will I ever get to introduce my friends to my own dæmon?”

“Sure you will!” Merle said. “Telling everyone you’ve got an ant for a soul, that won’t be weird, it’ll be cool! Remember that world where everyone said we had a special connection to nature because of our dæmons?”

“There was also that world where the paladin freaked out and nearly swatted Æødyvwå flat,” Davenport said dryly.

“So you tell the people you trust, and suddenly you’re the most interesting guy they know,” Merle said. “I like interesting. That’s why I signed up for this mission in the first place. I wanted something different. You know where Bless and I will go? The beach. Because with the ocean, the scenery is always changing. Bless can fly through the storms, I’ll collect driftwood in a million different shapes… that’s the life right there. Change it up, man! Keep it interesting!”

Suddenly, Davenport dropped his cards on the table, sending them scattering: the Seven of Swords landed atop the Hanged Man. His amber irises were rimmed all around with white. “Merle,” he said, choked. “Why is there an ant crawling on my face?”

“I don’t know,” Merle said. There was a huge ant on his face, and they were on a ship up in the sky for some reason – why? From somewhere behind him, a feminine voice was shouting at him, but he didn’t know who it could be.

The strange gnome’s hand cupped over the ant on his face, and he said, “Her name is – my name is – Davenport – ”

Milagrona watched Samite crawl across the map of sightings, her antennae waving in distress. Images flashed before her eyes: long brown limbs, the white knife of a wicked smile, a tall furred shape. It made her heart hurt to think of them, but she couldn’t resolve the images in her mind, or figure out why they were so important.

“Taako, what if she’s just gone?” Barry said.

“Who?” said Taako. Someone important, but the puzzle was coming apart.

“What are we…?” the other man said. “Oh, god, Lup… Taako, I’m – I can’t remember her face, Taako. Taako, where – ”

“Whose face?” Taako said, and Milagrona turned pleading eyes on the butterfly dæmon on the map, hoping she’d know.

“Mila,” she said. Mila? What did that mean? “Kill me! Right now! I’ll – I’ll remember if I’m a lich, I can – please, Milagrona, just kill me! It’ll – I’ll be okay! I can’t forget, I’m, begging you, please, Mila! Please!”

The mongoose didn’t know who the butterfly was, but if she wanted to die, the mongoose could do that for her. She pounced, crushing the butterfly’s delicate wings in her paws, and she dissolved into nothingness.

Somewhere distant, a man cried out in pain, the scream receding as he fell. The mongoose realized she didn’t know her name. She turned to Taako, her other self, who looked around in fear at the strange impossible airship around them, and asked, “Taako, what’s my name? I don’t know my name!”

He turned to her. “I don’t – I don’t know – ” And then a terrible blankness spread behind his gray eyes, and he couldn’t seem to see her at all.

Lucretia finally had an edition of Magnus’s memories she could feed to Fisher.

She’d drawn Reggie in loving detail, capturing her puppy eyes and her quicksilver growl. She wrote down the story he’d told her of how he’d gotten into the IPRE, how he’d taken the written portion over and over again until he got it right. She’d included the tea party where they’d met, the practice drills on board the Starblaster, drew the look his face as he’d watched their world disappear, piece by piece, into the Hunger.

She opened the port into Fisher’s tank, and allowed herself a single tear before feeding the journal in.

On her cheek, Danel gasped. Lucretia turned. Magnus and Reggie were there, holding a duck that looked like her. A terrible confusion furrowed his brow. Tears stood in his eyes.

“God, Magnus, no. You weren’t supposed to see this, I’m so sorry, Magnus.” She came over to embrace him as he swayed on his feet. Reggie was nosing at him, calling his name, but he didn’t seem to feel it.

Danel dropped on a strand of silk from Lucretia’s robe and landed on Reggie. “Reggie, darling, this’ll be over soon,” he said gently in her ear. “We’re going to stop this, what we’ve done to this world. We’re going to find you a place where you can be happy.”

“Magnus!” Reggie cried, butting into him again and again. “Why doesn’t he hear me? Why doesn’t he hear me?”

Unable to hold his weight, Lucretia eased Magnus gently to the floor, trying not to look at Reggie as she wailed his name. “I can do this, Magnus. Please, just lie down, I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Magnus, I love you. I love all of you. This’ll be over soon.”

Finally, mercifully, they lapsed into unconsciousness. Danel stroked his front legs over Reggie’s face. cooing softly.

“We’ll have to levitate them,” Lucretia said, through tears. “I can’t drag Magnus, and I certainly can’t drag Reggie. We’ll find them a woodworking shop – I saw one on the ship’s viewscreens – he won’t have to explain Reggie, he’ll just be another guy, and she’ll still be there, Danel, she’ll still be there when we make everything right.”

13.

There was a small tongue licking off the tears on Taako’s face.

“Milagrona,” he said hoarsely, cradling her in his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

There was so much he could see now that he couldn’t before. Reggie, up on her hind legs, losing herself in Magnus’s embrace. Merle, leaning his head against Bless’s on his shoulder, eyes closed, tears sliding silently down his face. Barry, his read hood back, wings and antennae showing through the robe, holding Davenport as he shook under the weight of what he’d lost. No, not Davenport, Afsjøgty and Æødyvwå, who for fucking years could say only the name he’d made up for the sake of people who hadn’t learned to say his real one.

Lucretia, under her bubble, Danel spinning glowing webs of magic around the Animus Bell as she watched them with eyes as big as saucers, her mouth open as if to cry out in pain.

Lup. Chispazo.

“Not your fault,” Milagrona whispered. “You didn’t hear me when I tried to tell you, but it wasn’t your fault.”

“No,” Taako whispered back. “It was hers.” With the hand he wasn’t using to hold Milagrona, he raised the Umbra Staff.

“Ten.”

4.

Over time, John made concessions. Merle was never really comfortable in the slick sterile room with wide windows where John chose to hold Parlay. But then John added a perch for Bless next to Merle’s chair, lacquered wood shaped like a tree. Then he started serving the bitter bark tea Merle had complained to his parents about as a child but missed with a secret fierce ache as an adult.

Merle sipped his tea, took a moment to admire Bless’s perch, and realized that for all his questions, John had never asked what Bless was, the way people from worlds without dæmons always did. He looked back at John. He was tall, pot-bellied, soft-spoken, with streaks of gray at his temples, and no dæmon in sight. Merle had assumed John kept his dæmon on the inside. Maybe he’d assumed wrong. “Tell me, John,” he said. “Are you supposed to have a dæmon? Did your boss do something to her?”

“I do,” John said, smiling over his teacup. “His name is Stargazer. He’s a colorful little bird we had on our world.”

“Where is he?” Bless said. “Is he okay?”

John leaned back in his sleek gray office chair. “The bond between human and dæmon is the strongest bond there is. Bonds work differently inside this plane. Stargazer is here, he’s just… somewhere else.”

Merle studied John’s face, but it was carefully blank. Maybe Stargazer could separate impossibly far from John, or maybe something more sinister had happened to him – there was no way to tell. Merle drank his tea and prayed silently to Pan: if you ever gave a blessing to a forest creature, give one to that little bird dæmon.

“My turn,” John said. “Tell me about when you settled, Bless.”

Bless’s feathers puffed out in surprise. John usually didn’t ask questions that wouldn’t help him in the quest to track down the Starblaster. But then, Merle had asked a pretty personal question, so why shouldn’t John? Finally, Bless said, “It was a lot of pressure. Our whole commune was devoted to Pan. Settling as an owl, a forest creature known for wisdom… it got everyone thinking we were destined for great things in the commune. Like maybe we’d lead it someday. It was a lot to put on a teenager’s shoulders.”

“And instead you became an interplanar wanderer,” John observed.

“That’s much more my speed,” Merle said, not mentioning that it if he’d stayed with the commune, he’d be consumed by the Hunger instead of having a tea party with John. They never talked about that, what had happened to Merle’s home plane. “The scenery’s always changing. I like that.”

“I wish I could see reality the way you do,” John said. “Maybe if Stargazer were an owl, I’d be the kind of person who could. But he settled as an anyoron, a bird that can never hold down a territory for long, because the waves drown the islands, and it has to move on to find a new one, combing the vast ocean for another green rock. So you see, Merle, I fear it may be in my nature to never be satisfied.”

His hand lit with black fire, he reached for Merle across the table, and Bless screamed as she dissolved into Dust.

14.

Bless looked into the monstrous black opal figure, now down to its last legs. She tried to have an open mind. Just because this was a giant monster that shot out black necrotic smoke didn’t mean it couldn’t be John, somewhere under there. She really looked. But he was nowhere in there.

“It’s not him,” she whispered to Merle. “We’ve got to have a bond to him, after all those years. We could bring him here.”

“He might just join that thing and fight us instead,” Merle said.

“Come on, Merle. Do you really think that?”

They reached out through the network of bonds, warm and vibrating all around them. John. Stargazer. Come. We need you.

He stepped down toward the deck as if walking down an invisible set of stairs. He looked like he always did, plain-faced in his gray suit. But he also looked completely different, because Stargazer was perched on his shoulder, and he was so beautiful. He had long trailing wings, and an even longer forked tail, and he was bright gold with patches of dark red on his face and wings.

John stopped and studied Magnus and Taako in their battle stances, while Stargazer looked right at the monster they were fighting. Bless realized that John had never seen Magnus and Taako before. She said, “Hey, Stargazer. Nice to finally get to meet you. Where’ve you been?”

“In the Hunger,” Stargazer said in a fluting voice, “the rules for dæmons don’t apply, and I can go wherever I want. I went flying, Bless. All over the Hunger. I thought maybe you’d understand why I’d want to do that.”

“Sure,” said Bless.

“Hey,” Merle said. “I know you kinda made the Hunger happen because you didn’t like to play by the rules. I get that. I’ve felt that way myself. Not about the laws of physics, but you know. Still.” He gestured around, at the shadows screeching and pounding at the barrier, at the enormous monster howling for their blood. “If you’ve changed your mind about whether it was worth it… now would be a good time to step up.”

“Do you know,” John said slowly, “this is the first time Stargazer and I have been together since my plane became the Hunger. You summoned both of us, so we came. I think both of us may have forgotten something important, after all that time apart.” He smiled at Merle. “The power of bonds.” And Stargazer opened his beak and sang.

“John was a motivational speaker,” Merle said to Bless. “Remember that? He was a bard. Like Johann!”

Stargazer’s song was sweet and piercing and made Bless tremble all over like a struck tuning fork. The monster clutched at what passed for its ears and screamed as it melted into black opal. The remaining orbs around it vibrated into nothingness. The song kept going, and it felt like the air itself might shake apart. Bless dug her talons into Merle’s shoulder, and he grabbed onto Magnus’s leg to keep from flying off on a current of song, and Reggie had clamped her jaws down on Magnus’s shield, and Magnus held onto to Taako, who held onto Milagrona in one hand and the immoveable rod from his pack in the other.

When Merle twisted in the wind, there was no sign of John or Stargazer. But then the world turned to blinding light under Lucretia’s barrier, and there they were, sitting on a beach.

Bless could accept that. It wasn’t the weirdest thing that had ever happened. “What happens to them now?” she asked Merle, quietly. He didn’t respond.

John smoothed the sand next to him and said, “Sit with me, Merle. You don’t have to talk. Just stay with me.”

Bless could only bear to watch the waves in silence for a moment before she asked Stargazer, “What happens to you now?”

“The Hunger was our plane,” Stargazer said, still watching the surf. “We made it what it was. That plane is gone now. With the bonds broken, it’s all gone to ash. So I guess we’ll just go away, too.”

“Hey,” Merle said. “My plane got destroyed once. Did I just roll over and die? No! I found a new one to live in! And let me tell you, it’s a pretty good one.”

“You,” John said, and swallowed. “You want me to come with you. After everything I’ve done.”

“You changed your mind when it really counted,” Merle said. “That’s good enough in my book. Literally. I think there’s a passage about that in the Extreme Teen Bible.”

Stargazer laughed, a pure note like a tuning fork. “How do you know I’ll get to come with you, just because you want me to?” John said.

Merle grabbed onto John’s arm. Bless hopped down onto the sand and gripped Stargazer’s tail in her beak. “Maybe you won’t,” Merle said. “But I think I do get to go home next, and I’m not letting go.”

15.

When Angus got hurt, he thought, Merle and Bless got killed forty times by John and they kept holding parley with him anyway, and he kept on fighting.

When Angus saw a friend get hurt, he thought, Lucretia and Danel saw all their friends turned to stone and they saved the Starblaster anyway, and he kept on fighting.

When Angus got tired, he thought, the Starblaster’s crew fought the Hunger for a hundred years, and he kept on fighting.

And then the tendrils of darkness exploded into brilliant light. It felt like Angus had been fighting for years. But now, the battle might finally be over.

Angus turned around, toward Barry and Lup. Lup wasn’t goring shadows on her antlers anymore. Barry’s wand was tucked away, and Samite’s little body wasn’t made of magical flame, but just a butterfly on the back of his hand. And their faces were lit with joy, because the rest of their family was back.

Angus took a moment just to stare at them in awe, the seven of them and their dæmons, all together. He’d thought he’d known them, Lucretia, Magnus, Taako, Merle, Davenport. He was the world’s greatest boy detective, after all. But now, he felt like he’d been listening to them talk in a language he only half knew. With their dæmons at their sides, nuzzling each other, sniffing the air, flicking their wings, Angus felt like he was finally fluent enough to know his friends.

He waited until they were done embracing each other, because he didn’t want to be rude, but then he walked up to them and said, “Hello, sirs.” He looked around at their dæmons, cleared his throat, and said, “And, uh, madams. Is it over? Did we win?”

All three dæmons smiled when Angus called them “madam” – he hadn’t even known owls could smile – and Milagrona, draped over Lup’s antlers like a furry ribbon, said, “You know what, little man? Believe it or not, we did.”

All at once, Magnus had Angus up on his broad shoulders. “Let ‘em know, kid.”

Angus cast one last spell, prestidigitation to amplify his voice, and shouted, “Hey everybody, Johann was right! We won!” And all around, the Bureau of Balance laid down their weapons.

Magnus let Angus stay up on his shoulders. It was a good view from up there. He saw Merle calling through the crowd for someone named John, Bless flying over his head to try to find him. A beautiful bird found her and warbled sweetly at her, leading her and Merle to a man in a gray suit. When the red-gold bird landed on his shoulder, Angus realized he was another person from beyond this plane, because the bird was his dæmon. The man in the suit crouched to catch a hug and a slap on the shoulder from Merle, whose arm sprouted and bloomed into red and gold flowers.

Reggie tilted her head up to intercept Samite in the air, her mouth falling open in a grin at the tickle of the butterfly’s legs on her nose. “I’m sorry, sir,” Angus blurted out. “I always knew there was something different about you three and the Director – I mean Lucretia – and Davenport, but I never figured out what it was. If I’d figured it out and told you, you could have fixed this all faster – you would have known about Reggie sooner! I – ”

Magnus tilted his head up to look at Angus. “Hey. Ango. I’m pretty sure nobody, even you, could have guessed that we were aliens who had secret animal souls. This isn’t your fault.”

“But you look so much more right with her! Everyone else too!” Angus cried. “I can’t believe you had to go so long without her! It’s not right!”

“You heard the story,” Magnus said. “You know how hard it was for us to live normally on other planes with our dæmons around. When we forgot about our dæmons, we could at least belong somewhere.”

“But now you can belong here!” Angus said. “Everyone knows your story. They know your dæmons. You don’t have to hide anymore. And you shouldn’t. Reggie is really cool, sir.”

“Yeah,” Magnus said warmly. “She is.”

Angus thought about it a little more, then said, “If your souls are animals, then where’s my soul, sir?”

Lucretia must have overheard him, because she turned to look at him. Her short hair stuck up in weird clumps, and her face was streaked with sweat and dirt, but Danel hung from the frayed sleeve of her blue and white robe, weaving a picture in his web that Angus couldn’t make out yet. “There was a world we went to, with a place called the Legato Conservatory,” she began, but when she saw Angus open his mouth to reply, she blinked in surprise. “Oh. Right. You know all about that. Everyone does. Huh. Well, anyway, instead of dæmons, they had soul-songs. Just like our dæmons spent our childhoods changing shapes until eventually they found the right one, the people in that world had to learn music until they found their songs. And when they found them, the songs caught in their hair and their eyelashes and made a veil of song all around them, so you could hear a part of it every time you came close.”

She smiled. “I don’t know where your soul is. But maybe you just have to go out there and figure it out.  Find your song, Angus. I’m sure it will be a good one.”