10. Everything Sucks Until It Doesn’t
Everything Sucks Until It Doesn't
Timeline: Forty-eight hours until the Great Fetter
Elian
The dense, humid heat of midsummer had settled over the market square by the tenth day, thick enough to make breathing feel like inhaling hot medicinal vapours.
Business had been brutal.
Fern hit a goldmine with his Glacier-Mint Cordial, which lowered the drinker's core body temperature on consumption and gave them a puff of fresh, misty breath for added novelty. Whoever could get their hands on them walked around the market puffing away and inciting jealousy in the unlucky puffless ones who’d come too late.
My indoor cooling enchantments proved so highly sought-after that punters had fought over them.
Or they would have for sure if Kill’em hadn’t run our stall with an iron fist. I’d continue striking Frost-Veil matchsticks every couple of hours like a person possessed, just to prevent the air around our booth from simmering.
This small luxury had nearby vendors weeping with gratitude.
My head, however, pulsated with a dull tension due to the constant alchemical expenditure.
Still, I had a spring in my step. That evening, the highlanders from Dun Steorra—the rugged, mountainous territory where deep mineral mines and forestry supplied half of Everend’s wealth—were staging their traditional cultural dances in the central plaza.
Morrigen, who had spent his childhood in the chilly northern hills of Bryhurst, had been looking forward to the event all week.
Demonstrating a whole routine of intricate leg sweeps and jumps, he’d promised to teach our group the fast-paced northern jigs.
The prospect of dancing with Kill’em had kept me smiling through the worst of the afternoon rush.
But we never made it to the plaza that day.
When we returned to the cottage to wash the market sweat from our faces and don a fresh change of clothes, a hurried banging rattled the front door.
“Who’s using their knuckles like a hammer?” Kill’em reached the latch first and pulled it open.
Morrigen and Verity stood on the porch. The humid evening air pressed in behind them, but neither moved to step inside.
Verity held a hand raised to his chest, the skin across his digits blooming with red.
Morrigen seemed flustered, his usual scholarly composure absent.
Postures stiff, their gazes held a brittle, uneasy urgency.
“Oh, hello,” I said, stepping up behind Kill’em’s shoulder, my brow furrowing. “I thought we were meeting directly at the plaza? Where are Fern and Settie?”
“Never mind that now, Elian.” Verity’s tone sounded flat and jagged. This odd lapse in his usual courtly manners stopped me short. “Morrigen needs to speak to you both.”
We followed the guests into the kitchen.
An icy prickle of disquiet settled into my stomach. Still, I moved toward the counter, my hands shifting towards the teapot by pure habit. “I'll pop the kettle on. You both look like you've been running—”
“Don't bother with the tea,” Morrigen interrupted. He sat heavily at the wooden table, unrolling a dense, ink-scrawled parchment he had pulled from the depths of his robes. "There's something you need to know.”
I froze, the ceramic pot turning slippery in my palms. I put it down and exchanged a brief, alert look with Kill’em.
His expression remained calm, settling into the calculating stillness of a commander preparing for a frontal assault.
I lowered myself into a seat, and he moved to stand next to my chair, his hand a heavy, comforting weight on my shoulder.
“Tell us,” Kill’em said.
Morrigen ran a tense hand over his mouth and chin.
As he began talking, his speech took on an increasingly rapid cadence.
“I’ve spent the last eight hours in the archives with the senior scholars, dissecting the latest theoretical hypotheses on multidimensional rifts.
Since Ke?lhem’s accidental summoning, the mechanics around his arrival have become a fixation amongst my colleagues.
Everyone is combing through the texts in search of a historical precedent.
Nobody has found one, but after hours of cross-referencing their data and tearing through their own theories, it’s clear I’ve missed a critical variable. ”
He tapped a complex cosmological diagram on the parchment and lifted his eyebrows.
Kill’em and I continued to stare.
Morrigen tsked with impatience and turned the picture around, as if a better glance would enlighten us.
“We didn't account for the lunar transition. The moon wanes to total eclipse on the twelfth day of the market. In exactly two days.” Morrigen glanced from Kill’em’s face to mine.
“It’s known as the Great Fetter. As the moon dies, the veil between the planes will experience a violent, localised surge of pressure.
It’s a closing window. Before the night passes, the threshold will seal itself completely. ”
“Permanent isolation.” Verity clasped his hands together in demonstration.
I felt a wave of dread building behind my ribs.
“What does it mean in plain terms?” Kill’em asked, his voice level. “That I’ll be trapped here?”
Trapped.
“No,” Verity muttered, “it actually gets worse.”
“It means that after the eclipse, an alien to our plane cannot continue to exist here.” Morrigen looked right at Kill’em. “In two days, the ambient magic of Everend will begin to reject your presence. It will slowly drain your spiritual energy to compensate for your displacement.”
Verity’s expression grew even grimmer. “Your heart and lungs will likely fail.”
The ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner turned deafening all of a sudden. An ache split my chest and I bit my lip so as not to gasp.
“Is there a solution? One that we know of?” Kill’em continued to ask, his tone and posture dispassionate. As if the discussion didn’t revolve around his life or imminent death.
“A tethering ritual,” Morrigen replied. “Performed with one of Elian’s matches containing a high-tier binding enchantment. It would essentially glue you to the here and now, doing the trick just fine.”
“You don’t happen to have one knocking around, do you?” Verity regarded me with zero optimism.
I forced myself to respond by shaking my head. “H-how about sending him back? Would that still work?” I somehow managed to pose this question with superficial calm, keeping my voice from cracking. “I mean, would that be safe?”
“Yes, the opposite approach is also possible.” Morrigen nodded.
“Ke?lhem needs to be tied to either this plane or reattached to his old one. So the correct enchantment would transport him back and at the same time, bind him anew to the energetic lining of his own realm, preventing any drainage, implosion or fragmentation—”
I shot from my chair, the sudden force scraping its legs against the floorboards as I darted towards my workshop.
A heartbeat later, I flashed back into the kitchen, my knuckles white around a small, golden box.
I walked up to Kill’em, thrusting the item forwards until his hands closed automatically around it.
“What is it?” Kill’em asked, his fingers touching the smooth edges of the container.
I raised my gaze, locking onto his eyes even though the weight of his stare made my throat tighten. “The Match of Interdimensional Return,” I replied. “I’ve… invented it.”
“When?” For the first time, Kill’em’s voice wavered to reveal an edge of emotion.
Verity and Morrigen exchanged a loaded, heavy look.
“Two days after the Spousal Audit.”
The crippling silence that fell over the kitchen stretched tight enough to snap. Sensing a sudden, private moment brewing between us, Verity and Morrigen quietly slid their chairs back and stood.
“We’ll leave you to… discuss things between yourselves,” Verity murmured, stepping towards the hallway. “You know where we are if you need us.”
Morrigen’s gaze lingered on the golden box. “You have forty-eight hours to decide what you want to do. By the night of the eclipse, you must either use this match to send Ke?lhem back or invent the reverse spell to keep him here. There’s no in-between anymore.”
Before slipping out into the humid night, Verity reached out and gave my hand a brief squeeze, while Morrigen offered Kill’em a pat on the shoulder.
Neither of us moved a muscle or uttered a syllable until the front door finally clicked shut.
“Why didn’t you say anything? About the matchstick?” Kill’em asked at last, his voice dropping into a quiet, unfamiliar tone. The sound of it made me shudder.
I could’ve lied and tried to save some face.
But the only thing I could offer him now was blunt honesty.
That much I owed him. I had to own my pettiness, my absolute selfishness.
So I blurted, “Because I couldn’t bear the thought of you leaving.
” A hot, stinging wave of shame flooded my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“You should’ve told me,” Kill’em whispered.
The words cut through me.
Now he despises me. Detests me. Now he knows who I really am. Worthless.
I couldn't look at him for a second longer. The kitchen felt suffocating, devoid of air. My mind spun, unable to think. “I’m sorry,” I choked out, turning on my heels.
I ran into the garden, all the way to the back, towards the overgrown raspberry bushes. I halted there, my hands pressed hard against my chest to try and stop my heart from fracturing.
A short moment passed before the grass rustled behind me.
“Elian, look at me,” Kill’em said in his commander's voice. The one he’d use when I would spiral from nerves and overthinking. Or when we were in bed.
“I’m sorry about the match. I—”
“Stop apologising and listen to me,” Kill’em interrupted, stepping in front of me. He reached out, his large hands grabbing mine as he pushed the golden box between my palms. The movement was firm and charged with intent. “I don’t want it. I am not going to use it. Just destroy it.”