Yes, not totally failing to exist sounds like a very sweet deal, if you ask her.

And about this Other... do the people here care about it at all?

Not really, mostly because of a lack of information. It's just another predator as far as the council's concerned, even if being an Other makes it technically "their" "business." Larger magical towns might have designated monster hunters, but this is rare enough here that it doesn't become a problem unless it eats someone's pet or something.

And does it at any point seem called for to offer to go investigate?

Called for? No. If she volunteers out of nowhere no one would object, though they might be curious about Sadde's motives.

Yeah, she'll keep quiet for now and go investigate on her own, anyway, and return with her findings if there are any.

It's always better to ask neither forgiveness nor permission. Probably no one knew any more than what was said anyway, just what was found and where.

She has been keeping a habit of writing the discussed stuff down on a notebook (if anyone asks, she's doing it in a sufficiently oblique way that it probably looks like fictional worldbuilding), so she notes the what and where and when there.

Does anything else of interest come up?

No, just the usual. Behaims and Duchamps jockeying for position over nothing while Rose Thorburn looks inscrutable at them and Mara almost audibly shuns everyone.

Of course.

She waits it out.

A few of the younger practitioners roll their eyes along with Sadde occasionally. That's pretty much the extent of the agreement from anyone who isn't Crone Mara.

The meeting eventually concludes, having accomplished nothing important to most of the practitioners.

Of course not. And what time is it again?

By now, about 8:30. Late enough that it's definitively after sunset. 

Hmm. She doesn't (yet) want to go after Others at night. She goes back home and sleeps.

(Oh, and she lovingly pets Bob before going to bed. Bob is very nice. She likes Bob.)

The next day, he gets up early, ducks away from his place, and goes to the last place someone found a half-digested corpse.

The remains of a bird, is what he'll find, with its feathers and bones all intact. But it smells worse than dead, and it seems to have shrunk, as the meat has been eaten away. 

No insects or scavengers are to be found. But with glasses removed for the Sight, he'll notice a large ring of stones that have moved, so it's wider than how it looks with. 

...huh. Weird. He goes to inspect it a bit more (with the Sight).

The stones form a ring several meters across, though there's no sign of why they were there. The bird's not inside it (and neither is he) but they're both of them close to the edge.

While the pieces themselves look like regular rocks, with their sizes from "gravel" to "huge," the connections between them stand out in the Sight and the spirit-world ring slowly grows.

...wait, really? It's just—how is it growing, are the spirit-rocks just being dragged or, what?

They are sliding not rolling, it's glacially slow, and he almost can't see it at all. The physical stones haven't followed it yet, or they have but they haven't caught up.

He finds a twig somewhere else and throws it in the middle of the circle.

And it doesn't respond.

He finds a longer twig and uses his glasses to try to poke one of the real rocks from a distance.

Then it tips like a normal rock should.

And it doesn't roll suspiciously towards its spirit self more than the laws of physics strictly ought to allow it to?

Well, not while he's watching. Things need an excuse to match up with their alternate selves. It could have rolled farther and didn't? But moving back needs a plausible cause.

And can he poke the rock's spirit-self with the twig?

The rock is (materially) not even here. The stick passes through like it's air.

That's... okay, to be expected he supposes. How slow is glacially slow, anyway, how long would the ring take to reach the bird?

If the stones all began at the centermost point, it must have been days at this pace. Another few hours, or maybe a day, until the ex-bird is inside. But since it's expanding in every which way, the bird probably isn't a goal.

And how did the other practitioners miss this...?

...hmm.

........hmmmm.........

He uses the stick to try to roll one of the smaller rocks until it's not inside the outer spirit circle anymore.

The other ones probably just never looked. Why should they, it's just a dead bird. There's weird things that happen all over the place, and this one's not all that unique.

The material rocks will fall down and roll out just as much as they normally should. It makes a brief stop when it perfectly fits where the spirit world says it should be, but doesn't prevent him from pushing it more.

Okay good. Now he grabs the rock that's not a circle anymore and... well, he's not sure how to do this, so first of all he'll try to pull on it and see if that works as sympathy magic to dislodge the equivalent spirit one from its position.

It doesn't respond. It just stays where it is while its counterpart moves in his hand.

What if he announces his intent to move the spirit version of the rock out loud and drips some Bob on it before doing the same thing again very dramatically?

It works, in the sense that the rocks got attached. The illusion one shudders and shakes. But it stays where it is, and the physical stone now refuses to move any more.

Really? What if he tries putting it down?

It still doesn't move; he attached it real good. Now the rock will just hang in the air.

Whoa. That's kinda cool. And if he tries, say, pushing it towards its spirit self? ...and if that doesn't work, maybe he could try doing it while declaring an intent to do so?

Its counterpart's static, so neither will move. He can break the attachment with Bob, but other than that it'll stay where it is. (Well, presumably both of them drift.)

Yeah he'll do that. So useful, Bob is.

The stone, once released, tumbles suddenly down, and lands standing on end on the ground. On the same patch of ground where its counterpart is, now that Sadde provides the excuse.

That's really cool. Does anything happen if he pokes the connection between the rocks?

Not really, it's like any typical rocks that just happen to be in a ring.

Okay... and if he nudges all the rocks to their places in the spirit circle?

Then the stones will arrange themselves, settling down, exactly where they ought to be. The circle's still growing, but slowly and so the rocks all fit near perfectly.

...and nothing else happens, right, that's not very interesting.

(It occurs to him the spirit world might've somehow nudged him into doing this. This is a terrible system.)

Okay, what about the li'l corpse?

It's only a bird. More dissolved than decayed, indigestible parts still intact. There is no clear connection with it and the ring, but coincidence doesn't exist.

No it doesn't. And, digested, ew, what.

...what if he pokes the bird into the circle.

Then no change in either. It flops past the line, and the circle grows at the same pace.

Well. Alright. He'll check on this later; for now he'll go to another place on her list.

The other reported location of prey does not have a circle of rocks. What's left of a deer—this one not in one piece—is its skeleton stripped clean of flesh.

But some of the bones have been merely stripped clean, and others look more like they're stone. As if half the skeleton fossilized while somehow leaving the other half there.

What, really? He pokes it a bit with a stick.

It seems some of it's dolostone, some of it's bone. And then some of it's both in one piece. At one end a fossil, the other just dead. And no, this makes no sense at all.

No. No, it really, uh, doesn't.

Anything else weird around?

There's nothing at all. Just the fossils and rocks. But while Sadde examines the site, there's a dull sounding "pop" and more fossils appear, out of nowhere, completing the set.

What. Where. Are they replacing bones that were already there or just, like, appearing?

They're extruding on top of the ends of the others, adjacent to all the right joints. And some of the new ones are even attached, like a broken bone grew a stone half.

Does anything happen if he pokes the bones that are growing new fossils?

No, they just remain there, don't try to react. They're normal inanimate junk. (Except they're composed of both marrow and dolostone; that part's not really the norm.)

...alright. This. Is definitely very bizarre. Is there any pattern to where the fossils are growing?

They only appeared at a point that's connected—or next to, depending on size—to some piece that's younger: some rock next to stone, or bone next to some bone in lesser decay. Or fossils attached to a bone, as before, but never that one in reverse.

Hmm. And they only appear in places where bones are missing, right? Sadde will try to touch a part of a bone where a fossil's liable to appear with his stick and keep it there, and wait to see whether anything happens.

The deer's left hind leg's growing longer, he's right, and it pushes the stick til it slips.

And that was the last of the incomplete bones. It might still be missing some whole.

...okay.

Next place?

It also might not be. No more bits appear, at least while he's watching it close.

Hm.

Alright, were there any other carcasses found?

No, only the two. There's no more that got found. It's possible others just weren't. It's clear that the first had more stuff going on, with the circle as well as the prey.

And were there any patterns in them that might help him find a third?

It is hard to extrapolate. Sample of two. The deer one is far from the bird?

Yeah. Ugh. Okay back to the bird he guesses.

It's roughly the same as when last it was seen, though the circle is bigger around. The bird's undisturbed. Or at least not more dead than it was when he saw it before.

And still inside the circle, presumably.

It's right where he left it, just barely inside.

While Sadde was gone, some of the larger stones moved, to the edge of the growing expanse. They're at the same radius now as the others, the smaller ones he himself placed. Their former locations do show an indent from the weight that was recently there.

So someone probably moved them. And he has the Sight so maybe he can find a connection between them and someone/somewhere...?

If anyone did, they weren't here enough to create a connection with rocks. (Which isn't surprising; connections to things are much rarer than people or homes.)

Okay but what if he squints, come on, he didn't make his own body her implement and became permanently Sighted to no gains, surely he can see more connections now.

(He hopes and crosses his fingers.)

Still no way of telling what moved all the rocks. There's no line from him to the stones, and he moved the smaller ones where they are now.

Ugh. Worst drawback ever.

He's pretty sure there are ways to figure this out better, though. Divination books, maybe? Now he's curious and he's not about to go tell the other practitioners about it without having something concrete. Surely Johannes will be able to help.

He turns around and starts making his way out of the woods, keeping an eye out for more weird stuff.

Nothing obviously magic-predator-related.

There's a cacophony coming over from between Sadde and civilization, a lot of discordant voices. It somehow audibly smells bad.

...audibly smells bad. Of course. How about he just not go that way and go back to civilisation around them...?

Would work a lot better if they weren't coming toward him.

"There! Her!" one of the smaller ones points. The crowd briefly devolves into clamoring about whether it's her or him, and describing various unpleasant ways of finding out, but they all agree Sadde is the right person.

The goblin they're pointing for is huge. The average goblin is about up to Sadde's knee, the median smaller still, but this one is a towering four foot five. He roars like a bull and charges, swinging a club in random dramatic-looking directions as he goes.

Hooookay, time to act arrogant and self-sufficient and very sure of his skills. Also to dodge, he can just dodge, right, he knows by now that one of the advantages of getting his body to be his implement is having lots of fine control over it.

The big goblin is at the moment concerned as much with impressing the crowd as with starting the fight in earnest. Mostly that means scary-looking swings at approximately head height. Hard to duck under because the goblin is still much shorter than Sadde, but slow enough that dodging works very well. Occasionally the mace glances off a tree and blasts a piece out of the trunk while barely seeming to slow down.

The crowd of goblins circles around. They probably wouldn't do much more than slow Sadde down if he wanted to just run through, but slowing him down might be enough. The available space shrinks as the crowd clamors for better seats, until it's just Sadde, the goblin, and the ring of stones surrounded by the throng.

He really shouldn't keep Bob so out of the way. It's not so easy to reach for it inside his backpack while dodging. He really needs to get some more materials to do actual magic with, ugh.

The next time the big goblin swings, Sadde tries to reach for a couple of stones, with an idea in mind.

He's got a long enough window to grab two or three rocks. One of them is a piece of the circle.

Two. He's not sure whether this will work, but he'd darn better act like he is. With one large rock in each hand, he throws the first at the goblin's head.

The goblin pauses, stares, and waits for it to bounce unimpressively off.

Okay, could've gone better, but still, he uses the distraction to get Bob from a side pocket in his backpack and smear the rock in his other hand with blood. After the first one bounces off he uses the one in his hand to pull, hoping that the sympathetic link might be enough to surprise him with a suddenly returning rock going faster than just its thrown velocity.

(That's the plan at any rate.)

The goblin briefly buckles under the impact, but stays on his feet. Either goblins don't get concussions or it just doesn't occur to this one to care.

After glancing off the top of his head, the rock lands behind him. When Sadde pulls, the thrown rock imitates the motion of the held one: it leaps in the direction of the combatants and slightly up, striking the goblin from behind at a bit above knee height. But it stops before following through very much. Sadde only moved its counterpart one arm's length after all.

And the goblin has recovered from the first throw and is now charging.

Ugh stupid goblin. Okay maybe he should run, how surrounded is he—

Pretty darn. The individual goblins vary in size from tiny up through small, but there are a lot of them. None are very close but nor are there gaps in the crowd. He, the goblin, and the circle of stones are pretty thoroughly boxed in.

Improvise, improvise, he sticks two fingers into the jar of blood (seriously, infinite magical blood is just the coolest thing), grabs a Swiss army knife from his pocket (it's refined metal, right? Goblins are weak against that, right? improvise improvise), then flips a blade open and smears it with the blood, "pulling" it to make it longer and wider.

The blade absorbs the glamour and grows until it's almost a short sword. With a four-inch Swiss army knife handle. His opponent barrels into him while he's doing it, and both of them go sprawling. The goblin gets up first.

Ugh! He tries to roll with it, and gets up, and this time tries to go at the goblin instead of dodging, swinging his Swiss army short sword ferociously.

It's as effective as the rock wasn't. Sadde's opponent reels backward, clutching the slash across his midsection. The goblin grips the skin on each side, since physically holding the cut closed is what passes for goblin field medicine. The next assault is slower and warier, but for one reason or another he doesn't call in the audience to mob Sadde.

Eee! Time to be theatrical? Time to be theatrical!

"Foul beast! You dare think you can take me? I swear on my mother's memory, I am bringing you down."

Chaaarge!

The oath matters. He feels himself get slightly stronger, noticeably more energetic, even thinking faster. Of course, it also raised the stakes.

"So you are as stupid as you look. I wondered."

The goblin swings for the sword, and the collision should probably have knocked the weapon loose but it decides to stay in Sadde's grip.

Well. If it stays in Sadde's grip, Sadde can swing back! Atttaaaaaaacccckkkk!

Sade doesn't actually know how to use a sword. This does very little to stop him. His opponent takes some injuries that on a human would be much too deep to call superficial, but still doesn't look worried. He charges and starts grappling. Sadde's stronger, but the goblin has the advantage of being disgusting.

Sadde has once walked home naked because of this he is not afraid to get some disgusting on him he is a-slashin'.

"I've fought fairies. That sword's fake, and it's stupid. Doesn't even make sense." He spits on the blade, and it bends.

"Doesn't need to make sense for me to kick your ass with it," he says, lunging for the goblin and trying to stabbity-stab him through sheer force of will.

The goblin blocks. Defensive. "See that?" he appeals to the crowd. "The moron admits it!" On the next parry the blade shatters.

Sure whatever it was just for show and—" Still gonna kick your ass, sword or no sword you're still just a disgusting little piece of garbage who can't even hold his own against a Swiss Army Knife just 'cause it's well-made."

Lunge again, trying to grapple bodily with the goblin and to cut him with the knife's various tools while using another hand to try to keep the club—or the club's hand—away.

Grappling goes worse than armed combat did. He can keep the club away, but the goblin is holding his own and Sadde gets smeared with it's-probably-blood.

Close combat is hard work. The extra energy from the oath goes a long way and is still going, but it's not clear whether goblins get physically tired at all.

Stabbity stab stab what if he tries to like stab a neck or an eye or something ugh—

The goblin doesn't so much have weak points as hit points, but does move to protect his face.

While clutching at Sadde and swinging the club with his free hand, he abruptly stumbles. Both of them fall, and land inside the circle of stones.

He wonders if he could do anything about it wait actually he is magic now that they stumbled what if he gets some of Bob no he'll do that later pepper spray—

The pepper spray works. Not as much as it should, but the goblin goes down with a snarl.

Then the circle of rocks seems to leap in the air, each one lengthening into a spike. At the same time, the scene with the goblins outside seems to flatten as if they're cartoons. And the spikes launch straight inward, with the points at them both, while they somehow stay rooted in earth.

Just how rooted, can he dodge, can he dig himself out, can he not be impaled by spikes—

They're dodgeable, sure, since he's still by the edge and there's space between one and the next. They grow on, straight past him—and also pass over? Geometry's going all weird.

He's almost enclosed now, a dome of stalagmites, each one of them perfectly straight. The crowd in the background's still visible, though it's confusing as much as it's flat. The cardboardlike cutouts extend to a third dimension, but not like they were. Instead each one traces its way through wherever the goblin passed through coming here. The trees are the same: by peering just past the direction that used to be out, he'll see every path that the branches traced out when they last bent around in the wind.

The largest goblin is just as trapped as Sadde is, and is cradling his head while making no move to grab his weapon.

...well whatever freakiness is going on is not actively hurting him and he does have a promise so he makes a move to grab the goblin's weapon.

It's harder to move, like he's pushing through air. But the gets to the club like he planned.

The goblin looks up. "Too late. We're both dead." It doesn't look all that true, since only one of them has been impaled (horizontally) by a (vertical) stalagmite. (Sadde goes involuntarily cross-eyed if he tries to look directly at whatever happened there.)

He remembers something—

"I'm not. And I heard goblins can yield and become weapons. Yield, and I'll let you live for now. Then I'll ask you for an oath, and you can choose between living with it or dying anyway."

"Too late. Both eaten. Rather stay as me."

He hauls himself off (around?) the spike and falls again. And expires. He's looking straight at Sadde with an expression that might or might not be analogous to spite.

"Fucker," he snarls, and wonders how this is gonna affect his oath.

But now he has more pressing issues. Like what the heck is going on. He looks around trying to figure out the answer to that question.

Inside the enclosure, space works like it should. Though it is growing harder to move. The air's almost liquid and pressing him down. At least Euclid is still in control.

But the outside is worse. He can still see the crowd, though it's flat once again. Now the trail from each goblin is short. It's the trees in the center: for each tree in the front there's a series behind, like a flip book was spread page by page. For the small ones, they have fewer pages to stack, while the large reach as far as he sees. 

The goblins' new presences dwindle away, by comparison as the old grows. And from their point of view, Sadde doing the same. For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

Argh. Okay he gets it this is some time duckery, he should get out right now. Can he get out right now?

Nope.

Moving around is still not trivial, but the real obstacle is the barrier around the outside. The stones lengthened into stalagmites when everything got all twisted, and more of them sprouted up from the ground. The stone thicket is much too dense to get through.

Sight. He has the Sight. What sayeth the Sight?

The Sight saith that he's barred in, standing on nothing in particular, and slowly sinking into the void where the ground isn't. He can still feel himself standing on earth regardless of whether he's wearing his glasses. The Sight does confirm that despite all the weirdness the area outside the stalagmite fence isn't more magic than it should be. An unusual change of perspective, but nonmagical trees didn't start glittering.

What, really? So the whole 2D effect is just for show and the things are still tridimensional there?

Things on the outside didn't become magical where they weren't already. It's just a perfectly ordinary three-dimensional stack of two-dimensional trees.

In other news, the front layers of the stacks are beginning to disappear, and be replaced with the similar layers from immediately behind. It's fine-grained enough to make a credible illusion of motion. The Sight believes that the illusion is "moving" at the same speed that Sadde is sinking, even though the sinking looks slower if considered separately.

That is not how trees work.

Can he sink less? Can he jump or something? How fast are the trees going?

It's at flip book speed, not Star Wars hyperspace speed. The trees just look like they're moving in a strong wind, the rocks look stationary. People and animals flit in and out fast enough that it's mostly the motion that's recognizable. They're moving backwards.

The sinking is completely out of his control. He can jump as usual, and then comes down as usual. The space between the ground he's standing on and the top of the dome expands regardless.

...yeah okay he's pretty sure he's going back in time now. He rummages in his backpack and grabs a pencil and tries throwing it out.

He doesn't have a very clear shot—what used to be a ring of widely spaced rocks and then stalagmites are by now a thicket of spikes gnashing together—but after a couple tries it makes it through. It vanishes once it passes the edge.

Okay, he'll try... pushing the thicket of spikes. Just, using raw strength, see how sturdy it is.

They're stalagmites, so it seems to be exactly rock solid.

He kicks them.

It stays rock solid. That might not have been the best idea.

Ow. But whatever, okay, magic, he can do magic, he can use Bob and make himself stronger, maybe? Or, or can he make his fist made of stone?

The glamour doesn't help much with strength, but giving his fist stonelike properties works perfectly. Doesn't even restrict his movement.

Okay.

Punch.

The two sets of rock grind into each other. This really should be hurting the non-stone part of wrist something awful, but the glamour apparently took care of that too. There's no visible damage to either his hand or the spike.

The cavern rumbles. May not have made progress, but he did get a reaction.

Punch. For the nth time he argues with himself that he made his body an implement it has to serve some function other than being slightly more agile and being screwed over with the Sight.

He is literally punching a wall. After a few strikes pieces start getting chipped off. It's not making a human-sized hole, but it's progress.

And the spikes are still growing upward, or he's sinking down depending on point of view, so the progress inches out of view. (The thicket is also getting thicker. There's progressively less light coming in from the outside.) The area rumbles again, sounding almost like a very low laugh.

Ugh no. "Stay still!" Bob may be best at glamour but that's not the only thing it can do, it's a thing of power. Improvise, improvise—" I will not sink," he declares, inserting his left hand into the jar of blood before closing it and putting it back into his backpack, which he slings again over his shoulder. He grabs the wall with the bloodied hand and says, "My body is my tool, my word is my will. I will stay right the fuck here, for my hand will hold me." And with that he pushes with the bloodied hand, trying to make it stick there, serving as a magical handhold so he will at least not sink.

A power source is a lot less useful without something to power with it. It may or may not be a coincidence that two of the stalagmites cross right there (despite both still being perfectly vertical). There's a handhold and he's successfully dangling.

He's not questioning it.

Punch punch punch punch punch does the Sight say anything useful are there weak spots—

It looks pretty much the same with the Sight as without it. Some pieces are thicker than others, but breaking out by hand is pretty ineffective even with having better hands than most.

He manages to break a spike, and a low roar bells up from no discernible source underneath him.

Okay, he's using his left hand to stay up, he can reach inside his backpack—which he left open—and get the bloodied Swiss army knife, and switch to the saw. "This saw could be much larger and sharper," he says, getting some blood there (ugh doing this one-handed is a chore and a half) and shaking it, like he's trying to get the tool to extend like that.

He's running through Bob faster than ever before. It works. The saw grows and sharpens, and hardens while it's at it. It's marginally less ineffective than breaking rocks by hand.

Now would be a great time for some Deus Ex Machina to appear but if none does he'll just keep sawing.

The whatever it is that's doing the objecting objects. It's slow even by sawing-through-rock standards; he gets another two stalagmites before it moves. The wall, including his handhold, jerks upward. He's briefly near the top of the geometrically questionable dome, with the spikes above him gnashing and grinding together, then it returns back down just as suddenly. And repeats. It's hard to hang on.

Aaaah okay he'll try to hand on with both hands now can he do that.

At the cost of not sawing any more, yes. It's not inclined to stop as long as he's attached.

Ugh. Can he use the saw to hold on?

Not while using it, and it doesn't hold on nearly as well as he does—

At least when he crashes to the ground it was from relatively low down. Once he's down the cave goes still again. He lands by the body of the goblin.

Stupid goblin.

...can he do anything with the goblin. The goblin had a club.

Neither the goblin nor the club is doing much of anything at present.

...the club was probably magical, right? Maybe? Can he use that against the wall?

Earlier on it did go through some small trees like they were a small-tree-size quantity of butter. It doesn't take many strokes to crumble a stone spike.

There's another roar from below, and the stalagmites start gnashing up and down again, but this time he doesn't have to hang on. It just means he's aiming at a moving target.

Smashity smash smash! He can aim, and he doesn't need to hit the same spot all the time, really, he just needs to do away with the structural integrity of the place.

This creates clouds of dust, and the occasional falling rock when a piece gets jarred loose at the top, and most importantly a hole.

The roar grows higher-pitched. It's the equivalent of a shriek from something much too big to recognizably shriek.

Yeah whatever, club backpack corpse lunge through—

Still a moving target— he hits it, and worms through in a cloud of gravel.

Cloud of gravel! Woo!

He turns around to look at whatever it was.

It was a ring of stones. Closer together than the one he stepped into, but otherwise the same. Rocks arranged in a circle.

...he throws a rock into it.

Nothing happens.

He gets a stick and scatters all the rocks.

They scatter like rocks should, just like the last circle.

He starts searching the goblin (ew ew ew ew ew) for anything useful or valuable or magical.

The goblin, when he finds the body, is significantly less ew than might be expected. It's a fossilized skeleton.

—fine, he'll think about the obvious implications later. Now he'll search the not-ew body for anything of use.

Nah. It’s just a stone skeleton, incomplete and deteriorated enough that it could almost pass for a regular hominid. There’s nothing to find.

Hm. Alright.

Club in hand, backpack on back, he steps into where the circle used to be.

The spikes reappear from the former sites of the rocks he scattered. Stalagmites, weird dome made of parallel vertical lines, outside world going flat. It happens faster this time, and bars him back in.

He swings the club left and right lazily. "How would you like it if I just, you know, hit you with this until your teeth were dust?"

It doesn't speak a reply, what with not having anything even analogous to a tongue. The response is more along the lines of the walls shooting upward or the ground dropping away under him, depending on point of view.

"Aack!" He can try to stay near the ground. "I'll take that as a no," he says, attempting to steady himself. "But I have an alternative proposition."

It goes still. Now that the walls are done shooting upward he's at the bottom of a pit with light coming in between the spikes at the top, but it's no longer getting deeper.

"See, I have nothing against you eating random animals or things that are already about to kill or maim other people. I have a thing against you eating people who were just, you know, not doing that. So I'd like to propose a deal."

It continues the not being capable of speech, but doesn't resume trying to eat him.

"It is, shall we say, a different version of the Seal of Solomon, which is meant to encourage more cooperation between humans and Others without limiting them in their ability to retaliate in case they are acted against or to prevent others from coming to harm."

The surroundings rumble at the name "Solomon," but the Other is hearing him out.

The contents of the Seal are approximately thus:

Anyone under this oath vows not to harm any innocents, informed but unawakened people, or beings under this Seal or that of Solomon unprovoked, where the definitions of 'harm' and 'provoked' are stricter than those used by the Seal of Solomon, taking consent into account. They are allowed to do harm to beings that can swear binding oaths to defend themselves or others, provided no less harmful alternative course of action presents itself. Harm must not be done beyond what's necessary to prevent further harm from occurring. If one would harm another being capable of swearing oaths that has not already sworn this, they must offer them the option of swearing this oath instead, and abandon pursuit if it's sworn.

The phrasing of the oath balances comprehensibility and simplicity, and there are different versions of it for less intelligent Others that will in practice be no different.

The phrasing deliberately allows those who swear this to do harm to others in the hope that they will then accept swearing this oath to escape it.

Sadde himself has sworn the most complex version.

He explains a simpler one, and waits.

Simplicity was probably a good idea—the giant tooth monster isn't the kind of thing that'd really understand a balance of harms in the clause about defense of others.

It stays still, considering the deal, then decides it has the being who's trying to threaten it literally in its mouth and goes back to eating him. The walls resume shooting upward as Sadde sinks down, the opening a distant point of light.

That's a no.

So Sadde can, first, swing against the walls.

This far down, it's less stalagmites jutting upward than it is a solid wall of rock. The club is just as effective there as against other chunks of rock. The dents and gashes rise upward with the walls around them as soon as they're created.

Ideas, ideas, how will he climb—

"Ever heard," he says, with affect casualness, while painting his palms and the tip of his shoes with a thin film of Bob, "of Spiderman?" And just to be dramatic, he chooses this moment to plant one hand and both feet on the wall, the other hand holding his club.

It hasn't.

He doesn't literally stick to the wall, but happens to land exactly on some hand- and footholds. It's nearly as easy as a ladder. As soon as he has a grip on it, there's an upward jerk as the wall stops moving relative to him and the floor drops away.

He can climb back to where the hole he made is—or used to be, in case it's no longer there.

It's a long climb, and the monster is trying to shake him off. When he gets high enough that he's climbing a thistle of stalagmites instead of a wall, it adds in grinding its teeth to crush him.

He's much less tired than this climb should be leaving him.

Yes he is, and when he feels safe enough he can continue swinging and merrily damaging his way inside the monster. He hums the Spiderman song softly under this breath.

Safe is a relative term. There's several narrow misses but eventually he makes it up near the edge.

So he's hanging from the edge and he can continue clubbing and breaking off more bits and pieces right? Because he did threaten to do so.

He can. Still has to hang on to avoid falling and watch out for teeth stabbing toward him from interesting directions.

The pieces broken off are kind of pathetically small compared to the size of the pit. But he is getting each spike at least chipped.

"You can still opt to accept the oath," he singsongs, hanging on for dear life but pretending it's cake.

It rejects it a second time. The earth quakes, rocks slide, and it speeds up its attempts to crush him.

Yes but he is on a roll and he is pouring magic and invincibility here, isn't he, "I'm going to keep hanging on. I am smarter than you, more resourceful than you, more agile than you, I will keep hanging on and I would dearly love to stop hurting you. All I ask is that you restrict your diet to things that don't have the brain capacity to object. You heard the oath."

Hanging on is apparently not enough to punctuate that threat. Nothing changes.

Oh sure but he's still swinging, see, and widening the hole, but perhaps he should look for other threats—" You sent me to the past, didn't you? I wonder if I could maybe create some paradox that would prevent you from continuing to exist in the future like you do."

That gives it pause. It's familiar with the concept, of course, what with all the time shenanigans it does, but normally things it swallows aren't in much of a position to cause a contradiction out of spite. It goes less active while it considers, which allows Sadde an opening to knock out another stalagmite.

Yep, he can continue to merrily knock its teeth out. Forward momentum! "Hey, maybe I could even hang out here a while longer so you could send me farther into the past and then the paradox would be even greater! Butterfly effect and all, maybe Jacob's Bell never exists and these woods burn down and allll the things you've done have not been done."

It continues considering the threats. Stops.

Retracts teeth and provides him a path out.

"Is that a, yes, I swear to abide by the Seal of Sadde, by any chance?" he asks, still hanging on, wary of taking the offered exit.

It rumbles something unhappy-sounding that might be an assent but isn't exactly comprehensible English. Teeth continue retracting and the floor reappearing until he's almost standing in an ordinary circle of stones like before.

Well he has the Sight, has anything changed about this creature?

With his glasses off, it looks more solid, figuratively. More rooted in the spirit world. That's probably the effect of the Seal of Solomon, since he included that in his superseding version. Sadde's own seal doesn't have anything like the kind of oomph it'd need to be visible at a glance.

Yet.

"Thank you. I would say I'm glad to do business with you but I'm not, I'm sorry I had to hurt you to cause this. Hopefully I will be able to work towards a world where people don't gratuitously hurt each other." And he walks out.

He is in what's recognizably the same woods around Jacob's Bell. The landscape features are the same, the trees aren't, and it's colder than before.

Naturally. And now he has a magical club and—what's Bob's state?

Nearly empty. He used a lot of it today, or will in the future depending on point of view.

...yeah. He will cherish and take care of Bob like his own child. Is the fossilised goblin still there?

Not yet.

Just how far—

He'll fix that. Worst-case scenario he will have to reinvent chronomancy from scratch to do it, but the woods changed little enough that Jacob's Bell probably still (already?) exists. He cleans up the club as best he can and—" Are you sapient? Perhaps you used to be a goblin and stuff?"

If so, it's doing a very good impression of an inanimate object.

"If you are or used to be a goblin, I could free you if you sworn that same oath I gave the thing that tried to eat me."

...sounds hypothetical. Is that an offer?

Yes it is indeed an offer—" Where by 'same oath' I mean the more complex version I have for smarter things, if you'd like to hear me out."

It continues doing its inanimate object impression.

So he spells out the more complex version of the oath, just in case.

That's more permissive than what the monster agreed to. More exceptions and the goblin can actually understand the implications about forcing others to swear the same.
The weapon morphs into an ugly and pale humanoid, nearly the size of the goblin Sadde fought earlier, and it runs into the woods.

(Fortunately. Would've been pretty stupid to be talking to a regular club.)

"Thank you for your help!" he calls after the goblin.

Okay, now it's back to Jacob's Bell, probably.

Jacob's Bell is smaller than before but has in fact been founded. No one here is recognizable even if there's a good chance they have family members he knows.

Hmm. He—probably doesn't want to actually cause a paradox, so, interacting with lots of people is out. Talking to the Behaims might be just straightforwardly the best choice but on the other hand that carries a significant risk of lots of people knowing about him. Perhaps he should just find head Behaim and hope they're smart enough to not destroy the future?

...yeah that's. Probably the best idea.

He looks for Behaims.

The Behaim house is in the same place it will have always been.

The door opens shortly after he knocks. "Malcolm Behaim. What can I do for you?"

"Hi. Erm, can I talk to whoever currently heads the, ah, family? I can't lie and it is somewhat important and I expect of interest," he says, hoping the meaning is caught.

"That's me. Why don't you come on in, and can I get you something to eat or drink while you're here?"

Hospitality rules, of course. "Yes, I think I'll accept something to drink, thank you."

"Juice, milk, water, you don't look old enough I can offer you a drink.

What's your name, by the way?"

"Juice's fine, any, and I'm Sadde. Sadde Woods. Pleased to meet you."

Malcolm pours a glass of cranberry juice, and another for himself.

"Pleased to meet you too. Welcome to Jacob's Bell."

He purses his lips but doesn't correct the assumption. Malcolm probably won't recognise his attire as from the future, either, just as weird. "It would be ideal if as few people as possible heard about my presence here or interacted with me at all, so if there's any way to minimise the chance anyone will, er, interrupt, I think you will in hindsight agree that this precaution should be taken."

He raises an eyebrow, but agrees. "There's privacy to be had if you need it. Long-term secrecy's harder, but if you follow me to my study no one'll overhear anything."

"That should be enough, I'll leave long-term secrecy up to you and your—expertise." He sips from the juice to make use of hospitality, and follows.

Once they're both there and seated, Malcolm skips directly to business.

"You knew to come find me, but not to recognize me, that's interesting on its own. What's the issue?"

"I'm from the future, got brought here by some Other, Laird Behaim is the head of the Behaim family when I'm from."

"I don't know a Laird, must be a ways out. Nineteen forty-three."

"Two thousand three."

"Sixty years, that sounds big. It wasn't us that did this?"

"No, it was some creature that disguised as a circle of rocks. A goblin ambushed me and we both fell into it."

"I'll ask you to show me what and where, after.

It'd be possible to send you back, but I can't spend the family's reserves lightly. I'll try and work something out."

"Thank you. My biggest concern here is avoiding paradox—I'm sure some people I've met—will meet?—are already—still?—alive nowadays."

"You don't need to be too worried. Time doesn't like to change, you won't avert the future you knew with one misstep. Just don't do anything that you'd expect to change things. If the universe has to go too far out of its way to right things, you're the obvious person for the wrongness to rebound against.

If Laird were born yet and you met him, I'd tell him that in the future he should act around you like this never happened and that would be enough."

"Yeah, there were only a couple of people old enough I actually saw—Rose Thorburn and the Crone Mara—and I guess the fae might count, too."

"Fae are definitely old enough, but there aren't any here. Yet, I should say. I'll keep an eye out.

Rose is about your age. Apprenticed to her mother Elizabet, and both of them are the kind of dangerous you're familiar with. Mara's the same as she has been for human history."

"—she's immortal? How did this never come up. How is she immortal. Why is no one else. Is it a terrible immortality or something."

"Did that never come up? That has to have come up.

I don't know the details, but she kills a child whenever she rejuvenates."

"Oh, so it's a terrible immortality," he sighs.

"She's also very powerful, which is why no one takes exception to all the murders."

This is not the face of someone who has just resolved to destroy Crone Mara when he returns to his timeline.

"What about other people, though? Unless I literally live hidden in your house or something like that—and while I am thankful for your hospitality I wouldn't want to impose like that—I will invariably interact with other people."

Malcolm shakes his head. "That's only really dangerous on a large scale. Don't try to change the course of history, don't be so memorable anyone will recognize you sixty years later, consider introducing yourself with a less unique name. You don't need to worry about accidentally making your parents never meet or the equivalent unless you go out of your way to find them."

"Not being memorable is almost against my nature," he says, with a smile. "But alright, I guess my name's Sam for now."

"Metaphorically speaking.

You knew to come to the Behaims for this, I take it that means we're still a power in 2003? Not something I'd try to avert, obviously."

"Yeah, you are, and dealing with chronomancy meant that, well, you were the obvious people to ask."

"I'd have come to us, too.

Sixty years is a lot of time. Would you mind showing me where you last saw the Other that got you?"

"Sure. Right now?"

"Sure.

Or, you might want to change into clothes that blend in better first. I can find you something of my nephew's, bit big but less conspicuous."

"That would be very kind."

"We have some of his things boxed up for when he comes back from the war. He won't miss it."

Some mostly-fitting 1943 clothes are found easily.

"—oh, duck, the war is still going on, isn't it."

"It is.

Try to resist the temptation to dictate a history book to the Prime Minister."

He rubs his temples. "Christ, there'll be—no. Ugh. No." He shakes his head. "Sorry. I should show you where the creature was."

"Right. That.

It's not the biggest issue, but it's the one I'm more positioned to do something about."

He nods, and after having changed starts leading the way.

The circle of stones is where it was left. The rocks representing the tips of the teeth have managed to shift back to their designated spots, so it looks the same to ordinary eyes as to a practitioner's. Barely stands out at all.

"Kick out a rock, and there's still a spirit rock there. When I stepped inside I was in the creature. I—managed to seal it."

"That was you? This is old, I would've expected it to be sealed long ago or not at all."

"I'm not sure 'long ago' is a meaningful concept for this."

"Fair enough.

If you were inside, and I'm assuming here you mean something more three-dimensional than standing in the ring, how'd you get out?"

"Goblin that attacked me had a club, I used the club to smash it from the inside, then while I was hurting it and after I'd made a hole I threatened to create a paradox if it didn't agree to be sealed."

"Actively trying that would've been a very bad move on your part. Potentially bad for it, too, though.

What exactly happened when you went in? It does just look like a set of rocks from out here."

"First few times, nothing, but then when I fell in with the goblin the rocks jutted up like stalagmites and I was trapped inside a stone cage."

He nudges a rock inward with a fallen branch. It rolls over in exactly the way the tip of a buried spike wouldn't.

"So it's still dangerous? To Others and animals and practitioners, if not to innocents. Well done on that part."

"I actually made it agree to a tighter seal than Solomon's, but—" Pause. He's never heard of his Seal before. No one's ever said his name was familiar. So knowledge of the Seal of Sadde had not reached Jacob's Bell by 2003. "I'm not sure it's wise to tell you."

"You're probably being overly cautious again, but it's better than the reverse. 

Thing is, it affects what I do about it. If it's dangerous I could try and shut it down for sixty years somehow, if it's not dangerous that's a waste of some potentially very expensive effort."

He chews on his lip for a bit then says, "Remember when I said I wanted to be memorable? I want to supplant the Seal of Solomon with something better designed."

"You do realize that's most of what's protecting all the bystanders. Not a good thing to mess with unless you're really sure you know what you're doing, and probably not even then."

"The one I designed augments Solomon's and references it—" and he explains it again "—so whoever has it automatically has Solomon's, too."

"Supposing it does catch on, then the Seal of Solomon gets clearly labeled the kind of thing that can be changed. The next person to come along might not have the same motives you do."

"It didn't change, though—the creature, whatever it is, has the Seal of Solomon, too. Mine just gets tackled on, on top of it, and it's never contradicted."

"Right, you succeeding would not itself be a catastrophe. What it would do is make the status quo less absolute. It'd involve a step up in this case, but at the cost of making the hard-won situation we have more precarious."

"Solomon made the status quo less absolute," he points out, "until it just became the new status quo."

"Counting on the fact that it's the next thing to impossible to work in your favor there?"

"If it fails to take at all... nothing changes. I might die or worse in pursuit of it. If it works, my name will carry enough power I will be able to enforce the new status quo."

"For a while, and wherever you happen to be.

There's very little risk of a success making the world worse off. What I'm worried about is if someone else comes along after you, and both seals together are less stable than Solomon's."

"Less stable how?"

"It's stood for a thousand years, being reinforced by each practitioner and most Others. Solomon succeeded hard enough that by now it's the way things are. Assuming for the moment that you manage to add to that, it means the status quo gets seen as changeable and that means it becomes more changeable."

"I'm not sure I see that as a bad thing—the status quo is kinda terrible and given that people change much faster than it does if it changed to keep up that doesn't sound like a negative. Moreover, even if something does change, my Seal's wording is tight enough that there will be very little room for the status quo to change in an undesirable direction, no matter what 'desirable' may turn out to become as time passes."

"If it's malleable, the next guy could make room. Mind, this is all unlikely enough that it'd be a waste of resources if I were inclined to try to stop you, but you had to have known that going in.

For now... this thing's safe from here on out, its time?"

"Probably, yeah. It won't eat any Practitioners, anyway."

"And the innocents are covered by the Seal of Solomon. Informed non-practitioners? We don't have any of those here at the moment, but they exist."

"Covered that, too—actually this thing's version of the oath is simpler than the one I made for things that can understand the most complex version, it's more restricted—" and he explains it.

"Clever. Signing Others on to a simplification and turning them loose does mean that which version reaches fixation is mostly out of your hands, but it's a step up any which way.

Most Others would be safe to leave alone, then, but you say it did eat you. Sixty years from now it might not have sworn yet. Without knowing how time works for it, we can't say when it turns dangerous again."

"Or whether it's even consistent, it could be dangerous in two thousand three but alright in two thousand four and not exist at all in two thousand five, as far as we know.—do you know what it is, by the way?"

"A guess. It'd be smaller than the specimens are supposed to be, but I might owe some crackpots in Chicago a letter."

"What's the guess?"

"Mythological whirlpool monster. When Charybdis is swallowing, it's completely inescapable. It's not just some force pulling toward the inside, it's that all possible future paths lead downward. It's got a very long serpent's body, but you can't see it because only the teeth are always pointed at the present. Or so the story goes.

I heard about it from some cryptid hunters wanting to know if that was possible. There aren't a whole lot of chronomancers to ask. I more or less told them no."

"It seems possible, though," he says, looking at the circle.

"Well, the completely inescapable bit would have had to be exaggerated. Other than that...it's as good a guess as any I've got."

"I had to be pretty clever to escape and I'm not sure I'd have been able to without the goblin club, so maybe it's mostly inescapable."

"There had to have been a possible timeline where you don't die, so the legend was wrong on that point.

I'm thinking it might be enough to just keep an eye on the monster, check whether it's sealed or not, and hold it inactive if it changes. That could keep indefinitely. Do you know if Laird knew about it?"

"He did, I heard about it because the, ah, 'corpses,' for lack of a better word, of the thing's victims started appearing and it was mentioned at a Council Meeting."

"Sounds like he didn't know what was behind it, then. I suppose I could leave a note for my eventual successor saying not to tell theirs. Going against what the universe expects to happen would be more risk than it's worth."

"You could leave a note saying it shouldn't be opened until a certain date, I'm guessing this carries more weight in a family of chronomancers."

"We do try to keep things linear, but it wouldn't be unheard of."

"Linear?"

"Causes and effects happening in the right order. We'd be telling people to do or not do something based on an event that won't happen until 2003. No rule against it, it's just never a first resort.

What was the date, by the way?"

"April twenty-seventh, but I'd actually prefer to be awoken a couple of days earlier."

"I'll make a note of it.

This thing shouldn't take any active managing yet. There might be a while before I can come up with a good way to send you back, do you have preferences about what you'll be doing in the meantime?"

"I'd like to continue working on my magic and stuff like I've been doing? And, ah, what day is it today?"

"29 March."

He nods. "Anyway, if you say I won't really change a lot unless I really try to I could probably find a way to sort myself out, here, get some unqualified job—the biggest problem will be I expect mannerisms and culture."

"A job would be easy. War footing and all. Magic is in just as much demand, but that would mean more questions to dodge about who you are and where you came from.

You'll stand out as not from around here no matter where you are, but you have a lot of leeway before people start telling their grandkids about you. You could get even more by relocating to another city, if you're worried about being too memorable."

"The problem is not so much being worried as—I'd like to matter, I'd actively prefer to be memorable, and if I continue working on that little project and it succeeds I will necessarily be. As for dodging, I could just say it's unsafe for me to reveal more about myself?"

"If you're planning to keep working on your project while you're...now...it'd be hard to make sure word doesn't get back to Jacob's Bell in six decades. You should definitely try it somewhere else and if you make much progress distance probably wouldn't be enough."

"Which means I will not, in fact, make much progress, probably—or at least not on this."

"Right. You could take steps to hide it from your past self, but since the whole point is to get it well known and accepted hiding would be counterproductive."

"It would. But maybe going elsewhere would be better in any case—" Pause. "Er, you don't have the internet yet. Or even personal computers."

"No to both. State of the art in transportation is cars and railways, and computer is a job title."

"Right. How much do you want me to share about the future?"

"I think you can mostly talk freely. I know the risks, not exactly well, but better than most, and can definitely avoid trying to avert it. Feel free to hold back anything you think could be tempting; if something does go wrong it might rebound on you as well as whoever messed up."

He nods. "Cars are still a thing, but they're better than the current ones. Railways are less of a thing, we mostly use commercial planes for long-range transportation. Computers are—I'm sure they used some in the war, they're machines that do calculations except when you remember that everything is calculations this becomes really impressive. The internet is harder to explain."

"Everything is calculations? I know a universe or two that might disagree..."

"I—don't think it'd be productive to get into a philosophy discussion, here. I would still say everything is maths even taking into account magic and spirits and stuff—just more complicated maths—but anyway, point is, robots, access to information from anywhere on Earth instantaneously, more information being created in a year than had been created during the previous hundred, this sort of thing."

"That sort of thing. Wow. No, we definitely don't have that."

"Yeah, I know, I'm just mourning the lack.—hey if I impersonated some famous person—let's say an author—from around now how likely is it that I was that author all along? Not that I'm planning to do that, just curious about the time thingamajig."

"I suppose it's not impossible... you'd have to pull it off well enough to match the spirits' idea of that person being that person. Since the universe thinks there was such a person, and if you don't pull it off that well then it must have been someone else."

"Unfortunately I don't have access to the huge online encyclopedia that'd let me find the appropriate target even if I were so inclined." He shrugs. "So, what next, in your opinion? Should I go elsewhere? What—it should be asked, what do you want in exchange for helping me?"

"I'd recommend it. Montreal or Toronto are nearest, and Toronto has a branch of the Behaim family in it, so Montreal's safest. Finding mundane work would be easy but a bit of a waste, the practice has the downsides we discussed. I could ask the city's Lord not to pry, no idea if he's the kind of person to do it anyway.

Payment... what about time? You're already going around forcing Others to agree to things, maybe you extort some of their time from them until it adds up to the sixty years. Longer-lived Others would be a better bet, obviously."

"Hhhow exactly do I extort time from someone?"

"Get their agreement to give it to us, we handle the how. We meaning Laird, probably, so you aren't chasing Others this early."

"—you want sixty years of Others' time in the future, okay. That's probably easier to do than now while pretending I don't exist."

"Yeah, now would be an unnecessary risk, and we can afford to be slow."

He nods. "So, supposing I accept this and you find a way to get me back... I go to Toronto and Montreal and how do you contact me there?"

"Telephone or telegram. I'll write down how to contact me and you can tell me where to reach you when I have something."

"Sounds good."

"Are you going to want to stay here for a bit while you get more used to the century? You'd be well advised to keep your head down in Jacob's Bell, but you're welcome to stay with us if you want to."

"...thank you. Yeah, I think so, and at least get some clothes."

"Clothes, colloquialisms, and maybe even a halfway plausible backstory. That last one might be pushing it."

"Colloquialisms... are going to be difficult. The backstory can remain mysterious, I think."

"You'll pick up language over time. Blending in completely is a lost cause, but you don't need to be perfect."

"I can be eccentric, sure," he shrugs.

"You'll pass well enough as merely that, probably. For now, back in and we can worry about lying low for a bit?

A few days of Sadde getting acclimated go by uneventfully, that being most of the point. It's not hard to come up with excuses for "Sam" to talk to random people, get used to avoiding anachronisms, and make some progress toward talking like a local. Malcolm does advise Sadde to avoid practitioners, but that's hardly a setback.

Yeah. And eventually she should probably go, yes?

Whenever he's more or less acclimated– wait.

"Sam?"

"Yes?"

"You're dressed as a girl. Why are you dressed as a girl."

Sadde's appearance is very convincing, too, which doesn't make it less...everything.

"My gender identity is not entirely fixed and static," she explains.

"Those words made sense individually. How does it add up to you dressing as a girl?

There are some who might even see it as a lie."

"I mean, they can feel free to see it as a lie that I dress however I like. It so happens that about fifty percent of the time I prefer dressing as a girl and being called 'she' pronouns and wearing makeup."

"Okay. Um, you'd probably already know about the honesty-related risks. You in particular have to worry about being too memorable. Can you pass for less, deviant, if you try to look the same around the same people?"

She slowly mouths the word "deviant." "I'm not sure I can keep track, and I think part of the reason I'm going elsewhere is exactly so I can be memorable without that being so problematic."

"Definitely. It's just that safety is relative; this is going to cut into your admittedly very large margin of error."

"—say, what's California like nowadays?"

"An American could probably give you a real answer to that one. Most of what reaches international news about California is that some of the States' most controversial war measures center on there."

"Ah. I see. When I'm from, California—and particularly the Bay Area—has become sort of a... cultural centre for, what did you call us, 'deviants.' Although Canada as a whole is pretty okay with all sorts of deviancy."