Subject and object; that's another binary division. Self and other. That's something Nico gets about the Archetypes, something he suspects most people haven't really internalized: you relate to them, but they relate to you, too. They almost can't. They're almost too big, too narrow. But not quite.

The things he's talking to now won't be like that. At most they were parts of people, memories without values or instincts to contextualize them. They can't do the whole work of personhood themselves, any more than the other two souls could. But they still reach out. They still want...connection.

Nico can use that.

He'll step through the rain as calmly and steadily as he can, and walk straight down the little slope to the lakeshore, and then further into the water. He doesn't want to go far into the lake, he doesn't think. Just ankle deep, just enough that the water can touch his bare skin.

It doesn't react to his mere presence, does it? That would be bad.

The lake is wild and choppy, lashed by wind, and boiling with chaotic fury. So, pretty much the same as it was before you stepped into it.

Adam is still behind Nico, holding the safety rope, ready to drag him away at the first sign of trouble.

_{^{If he does have to drag Nico into the car in a hurry, how should he do it?}}

I am the one who called to you. I am the one who speaks to you. I am your hope of resurrection!

That was how Nico planned to start, as he was walking toward the shore. Now that he's here, now that he can feel the lakewater slapping at his knees and soaking into his socks, it feels empty. Dissonant. Where is that feeling coming from?

I resent that I have to do this.

Well, that thought sure popped right up as soon as he allowed it to. It isn't a surprise: Nico wanted, and expected, to be done with the hardest parts by now. The cards promised him he doesn't know what went wrong or why. But, yes, he is not fully unified behind this ritual. It's awful that it's necessary. That's not what's wrong with it, exactly, but it's why he didn't land on the right thing at first.

Is that the only reason, or is there more?

I am afraid.

Not of death, particularly; Nico realized long ago that every safe alchemical discovery had already been made, and he's still satisfied with the choice he made back then. It isn't even that he fears uncertainty; Nico is not in general afraid of the dark, physical or metaphorical. He trusts that he can navigate it better than anything that might try to hunt him, has made that confidence one of the cornerstones of his whole personality, and now that certainty is under threat. So many strange things have happened, in such a small space of time. Is he coping with this better than his adversary, really?

Is there more?

At some level these are not new thoughts. He's just been pushing them all to the side, not quite letting them surface, and that made tactical sense for a while but it's blocking him now. He's been all kinds of places this morning, physical and spiritual, and he's gotten caught up in the flow of things a little bit. There's a part of him that feels...trapped. Yes, there it is. At some point he let the consequences of failure become unthinkable, rather than just awful, and now his shadow is rebelling.

So, think it clearly: he could leave. He could abandon the ritual, abandon the cards, just thinking it gives him vertigo but he could do it. He could flee New Hampshire like he fled Reno all those years ago, and let the Masons clean up the mess he's left behind. He could let them try to study his cards, let them painfully work out how to use them for their own purposes. They'd certainly try to trace him, through the cards and Kyle's body both. He has ideas for how to deflect that but he doesn't know that he could beat their best efforts, and he might not win the conflicts that followed.

All of these things are possible. He could do them. He doesn't want to, but he could. Is it worth the fear to avoid it? Is it worth the trembling in the long-laid foundations of his psyche?

Even thinking about leaving the cards behind is spiking his adrenaline, wearing at his nerves. For once he doesn't use his energies to soothe them down or work them up. Let his glands do whatever they want; this isn't the moment to control his feelings strategically. He's an alchemist, right? He wants to understand, wants to know, wants to see? Let's see what he's really thinking, all of it with no inhibitions.

Is it worth it?

The cold water helps center him. He's still feeling that link between ground and sky, and now he's connected to the sea, too. Three elements out of four -- four out of five, if you count his own spirit. Only fire is missing, just like it was at the ritual site. Curious.

He's faced choices like this before. He thought his shadow would want to show him imagined futures, but no: he's thinking back to lower secondary school, to his life before initiation. Before he learned to live deliberately. His personality has changed so much since then that it can barely hold that little boy's thoughts, but in broad strokes he remembers: always scared, always angry, rejecting a world that seemed to be made of only worthless grime. And then old Sofia Apostolou -- who must have been younger then than Nico is now, what a thought -- sat with him in a small closed room, where the smoke from her cigarette gathered at the center of the ceiling and the coke in his bottle didn't quite sit level, and challenged him to see what he was looking at.

Even that simple thing wasn't easy for him then. The mind always struggles to accept a mystery where there should be nothing at all; that's what the word "eerie" means. But it was less complicated, in certain critical ways, than the so-called "normal" school life he'd had up until then. Under the grime there was shining gold, if you could nerve yourself to see it.

He could have run away. People often do, at that moment; Nico used to lose a lot of employees that way, before he learned to maintain a little distance. He almost did back then, back into his safe familiar world of bullies and lectures and insane, incomprehensible expectations. In that world he knew what was going to happen, even if he didn't quite know why, and parts of him really did want to cling to that, despite everything.

That's why he's thinking about this now, he realizes. He was ready for profound new surprises, at the peak of the ritual, but nothing quite as surprising as what he actually got. Now, if he wants, he can step back. His new enemy might follow him, but whatever happened with his card, he doesn't think she can beat the explosives at his house in Agriosikia, let alone the other things he's stored there. The Masons maybe could, if they kept trying and learned from their first failures, but he's fought them before. Their limits are considerable, but he knows them. It would be grimy, but familiar. Difficult, and looking at it objectively he sees now that he'd probably die...but he could die in a way he understood and expected. That's what he can win, if he stops right now.

Nico laughs out loud; he can't help it. He's laughing at himself, at his life, at the endless cycles of experience. At what flawed things human souls are, no matter how long you spend refining them.

Say this for Adam, he does not startle easily. Laughter is a good sign, probably. He'll keep holding the rope, but won't interfere.

"Earth, air, water, spirit," Nico hears himself say. "Let this moment be defined by what it lacks."

Now. What was Nico looking away from, before? Why did he come up with that false ritual? What was missing from it?

Friendly invitations worked, but right now he doesn't need a neighbor. Tyrannical commands also worked, and Nico thinks that's what he was trying for, but he sees now that it wasn't quite coherent. He wanted a soldier to order into battle, while he stayed safe behind in some kind of metaphorical command tent, but he doesn't, actually, know how to command the spirits that finely. However this fight goes, he and it are going to be there together.

What I need is...help.

Or, no, even that isn't quite right. Try again.

What I need is...protection.

There it is.

It's not that Nico can't rely on other people. He relies on Christopher and Adam, every day, and he's happy to do it. But it took such a long time to find them, though so many ugly false starts, and it took time to build their relationship up to its present peak. Even now it isn't perfect; he sent Christopher away, in the last moments before the ritual, because he didn't want to be seen hesitating. He knew it reflected a flaw in his refinement even then. He just...thought he could put off fixing until after he attained unfathomable knowledge and power. Not an unreasonable plan, he still doesn't think, but it didn't work, so now what?

He doesn't need to get over it all today. He just needs to take one more step. Needs to exhale something depleted, and inhale something sustaining.

He'll glance over his shoulder at Adam, for both their reassurance, then kneel down in the lake. Can the waves reach his face? If they can't he'll bend over further, pressing his face down toward the water so that his breath can pass over it as he speaks. He wants the water to track his breath, wants it to feel the connection to his airy thoughts rather than his earthly body.

"Hear me. Understand me. Know me. I have called out, and been answered. I have reached out, and felt another hand in mine.

Now I am in danger. Now, I come to you in need.

You, who are formless and expansive, bear me up.

You, who once tied earth to heaven, hold me securely.

You, who once shaped a fragment of the divine, come forth and mark this world again.

Protect me, until the danger is past.

Come forth and shelter me.

Come forth!"

As you speak, the waves begin to flow away, with little white crests like messenger birds. Behind you the wind is blowing forward, and the sheets of rain race past you to dive into the lake. As you speak the last word everything seems to stop, for just a moment: the lake holds its breath and the rain trembles in midair, starkly illuminated by a flash of captured lightning.

Then, suddenly, every wave in the whole lake is rolling toward you.

"Ἀκτὶς ἀελίου, τι πολύσκοπ’ ἐμήσαο"

Huh, Greek again, but awfully distorted. But never mind that, it's clearly time to go! "Back to the car!" Nico shouts, then he'll stand, turn, and sprint for it.

The water swirls around your ankles, pitching you sideways as soon as you try to stand. You wind up back on your knees, with waves splashing at your waist and more lake water rapidly incoming.

"ὦ μάτερ ἀμμάτων, ἄστρον ὑπέρτατον

ἐν άμέρά κλεπτομενον, τί δ' ἔθηκας ἀμάχάνον ἰσχύν τ’ ἀνδράσι καὶ σοφίας ὁδόν

ἐπίσκοτον άτράπὸν ἐσσυμένα,

ἐλάννεις τι νεώτερον ἢ πάρος"

Why is getting wet and knocked over the theme for today?

Floodwater can knock a grown man off his feet at ankle depth, even moving at as little as five miles per hour! Thank you for subscribing to Meteorology Facts!

That doesn't matter because we have a SAFETY ROPE! Adam will haul his boss' dumb ass across the wet sand to the car, dive through the passenger side door to the driver's seat, drag Nico face-first into the passenger's seat, and start driving before the door's even closed.

"ἀλλά σε πρὸς Διὸς, ἱπποσόαθοάς,

ἱκετεύω, ἀπήμονα..."

The BEST henchmen!

As soon as Nico can scramble upright, he'll twist around and look back toward the lake. Is it working? Is it still following?

"Boss. Seatbelt." Adam will swing the car south, away from the lake. It's the same road he took to get here, except he's really worried that it might have some new fallen trees since last night. He's trying to go slowly enough that he'll have a hope of braking (on the wet pavement!) if they run into encounter one. But, you know, not so slowly that they get swallowed by the sea.

Sure, fine, seatbelt; Nico's probably not going to want to leave this car any time soon. He buckles his seatbelt.

But, for real, is it working?

It's hard to tell through the rain exactly how much water is following you, but something certainly is. The dock by your cabin is totally invisible, immersed, and something dark and shiny is puddling up over the road behind you.