Ava sat in silence. Her body felt alien, like she was an intruder in her own flesh. Like it was a sack of meat she was just distantly attached to.

Somehow, she did not really care.

“How am I supposed to stab with my hips?” Rita’s voice washed over her.

She was vaguely aware of Rita and Samual doing… something off to the side. But if she wanted to see, she would have to turn her head. And that was more effort than Ava felt up to at this point. She simply did not care enough to try.

“I am following through! If I follow through any harder, I’m going to rip my arms out of their sockets!”

She was also vaguely aware of the piece of dried meat she had been chewing for several minutes now, just going through the motions. Gora had stuffed it into her hand and so she had eaten it. It had felt like the right thing to do, and she did not really care enough to think of what else she could do.

“But it feels uncomfortable if I spread my legs any further apart!”

Were they…? No, surely not. Besides, who cared, even if they were? She considered wondering how she had gotten in this state, before sheer apathy crushed even that thought. After all, what did it matter?

“Ow! It doesn’t fit! Stop trying to force it!”

Ok that was it. Her curiosity could not take it anymore. She had to know what those two were up to.

With agonizing effort she turned her head… to find Rita awkwardly stuck. Someone had carved two notches in her spear and threaded some kind of crude sling made from leather straps through them, designed to make it easier to carry. Unfortunately, it had turned out to be too small to fit over her body and now her arm was dangling helplessly above her head as Samual tried to pull it off.

A giant spider-thing stuck in a leather loop, flailing her arms helplessly. Despite her condition, a slow smile crept onto her face, straining against the haze in her mind.

Then, suddenly, the feeling of apathy that had been overwhelming her cracked and shattered, dumping her back into her body and leaving her numb and cold and shivering. Like a limb that had fallen asleep, except spread through her entire body.

At the same time as she started feeling pins and needles in her extremities, the memories of what had happened came rushing back and Ava had barely enough time to lean over to the side before everything that she had been eating in her daze spewed out over the broken, cracked stone.

A pounding headache was matched only by the horrible muscle aches. Oh gods, she felt like shit.

As she lay there shivering, Gora squatted down next to her.

“Hey, welcome back to the land of the living,” she said, grinning. “How does it feel to be only half dead?”

Ava groaned.

Rita had thought that Samual just meant to give her a few pointers. A few verbal tips on how to hold the thing and not stab herself. Perhaps a demonstration or two at worst. What she had not been expecting was to get drilled until she almost couldn’t stand anymore. And not in the fun way, either.

It turned out that despite always using his dinky little mace, Samual was quite the armsmaster. Over and over he had made her repeat the same thrust or block or strike while he repositioned her many feet slightly or made minute adjustments to the angle of her arms, as he adapted standard spear drills for her unique form on the fly.

At least he had made her a sweet little strap for her spear so she could carry it across her back. His first attempt had been a little tight in the chest area, which had led to some momentary awkwardness, but once he had adjusted it to handle a certain amount of chestiness it was actually pretty cool. It made Rita feel a bit like a real warrior. Even though she was still at the ‘pointy end goes in the other guy’ stage.

Somewhere along the line, Ava and Zaxier had also come out of their funk. They were not exactly their old selves again, but at least they had started responding to questions, which was nice.

“Alas, I was brought low by the most repulsive of vermin,” Zaxier lamented tiredly, sprawled out in his usual position on Bob’s shoulder and looking even more boneless than usual. “To be devoured by a pack of Rats! How humiliating! What a complete waste for someone of my talents to be made to perform the task of a common housecat.”

His task had been to clear out a barn of vermin, except it appeared that the tree had not bothered to inform him that said ‘vermin’ were highly intelligent and coordinated, having set snares and traps. He had missed a trap, gotten stuck, and had promptly been swarmed by a whole bunch of hungry rats. A pretty grisly end.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Mister Zee. I must’a gotten lost or something,” Bob replied.

The cat waved his paw limply. “Do not concern yourself about that, Boy, I am proud of you for having survived your trial without suffering undue harm. You did me proud.”

Then he turned to where Ava was still sitting, staring at the fire. Her whole figure was hunched, and her face still had a bit of an unhealthy pallor to it. She had not bounced back quite as quickly as the cat had. Seemed Gora was right, being partially magical really was a balm for the soul.

“What, pray tell, happened to you, lovely Ava?”

Ava closed her eyes and shivered. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said softly.

“She got eaten by a potato,” Rita said with a chuckle, trying to inject a bit of humour into the situation. Ava just gave her a cold, flat stare until she awkwardly fell silent.

Sheesh, this soul thing was serious business. Rita was not quite sure how you took half of a person’s soul, but apparently it did a number on you. She was counting her lucky stars that she had not died to the damn trapeze artist-thing or she could have ended up in a similar state to Ava.

Unless… did she even have a soul? Was that a thing monsters had?

“Alright folks,” Gora said, walking up. She had been outside, staring at the ‘sky’ with what looked like some kind of telescope. Turns out, when your world is along the inside of a sphere instead of the outside, finding out what was going on in the world was as easy as looking up. “As I expected, pretty much everyone and their grandmother is headed here as quickly as they can. That means we should probably be looking at meeting up with whatever Delvers we can while avoiding everyone else, just to avoid any awkward questions. Until we get to Grailmane, you lot are still under my care and the last thing we want is for some curious Magelord to figure they might be able to torture some answers out of you.”

Rita swallowed nervously. Magelord? Torture? What the hell kind of place was this?

“Our best bet for that is to head straight for the Outpost. It’s Delver’s Guild territory which means the other groups will at least think twice before just trying to scoop us up. But even the Guild is going to be asking some pointed questions about what exactly happened here. By now everyone will have seen that the Tree’s down, so I’m going to suggest we downplay our role in all of this for everybody’s sake. Yes, Rita?”

Rita lowered her hand. Some gestures were universal. “What’s the Delver Guild?”

Gora nodded. “Ah, right. You wouldn’t know. Basically, it’s a group of people like me. I’m a certified member of the Guild. It’s a bunch of people that are crazy and/or strong enough to do organized expeditions into the various Nightmares for profit. They’re divided into Lodges, where each Lodge specializes in one Nightmare Domain. The Grailmane Lodge, which is the one I’m from, was linked to this place,” she said, pointing behind her in the general direction of where the Tree had once stood. “The entire lodge was basically built around profiting from it.”

Rita winced. “So… they’re going to be mad that we broke it?”

“Hmm. That’s a bit complicated,” Gora replied, scratching her cheek. “Tronics are definitely going to be a hell of a lot easier to scavenge now that the Nightmare Spawn are less hostile, so groups who specialize in that are probably happy. But with the tree gone, certified guides like myself are out of a job. And without the Tree renewing this place, it will eventually get picked clean. So in summary, short term no, long term yes.”

“And that’s why you want us to lie?” Ava asked softly.

Gora grimaced and sucked her breath through her teeth. “’Lie’ is such a strong word. All I’m saying is we don’t help anyone jump to any conclusions, okay? We won’t be able to hide that Ava and Zaxier are both suffering from soul depletion, so sure, we were in the Tree. But do we really know what happened or that we caused it?

“But…” Rita began, but Gora cut her off.

“After all, it began shrivelling up after we left, didn’t it? All I’m saying is, let’s stick to the facts and let people higher up and more qualified draw the conclusions, okay?”

“I agree,” Samual added just as Rita tried to speak again. “We don’t know what happened. Let’s not muddy the waters with speculation.”

“Besides,” Gora went on as Rita tried to interject for the third time, “the last thing we want is for one of the Magelords to get the mistaken impression in their head that one of us has the power to kill a Nightmare Tree, right Rita? Especially since you are already going to be drawing a bit of attention when it gets out that you used to be one of the Nightmare Spawn. If anyone asks, you joined us after the tree broke.”

“But I…” Rita started again before she noticed the very intent gaze on Gora’s face and it finally clicked. They were trying to help her not draw attention! Because attention would be… bad? Yes, bad, based on the look Gora was giving her. The phrase ‘torture’ sprang to her mind again. “Nevermind. I get it.”

“Good. Because we need to get moving again. Grab your stuff.”

“But I just sat down!” Rita exclaimed in anguish.

“So get up. Unless you want to stay here. Alone.”

Rita glanced around at where something big was moving out in the distance between the buildings. “No, I’m good, thanks! Be right behind you!”

Soon they were on their way again with Gora in front and Rita at the back. She had the unfortunate tendency to spend half her time staring up in awe, the other half looking down to fight the vertigo and no time at all looking where she was going. It meant that she occasionally either wandered off or bumped into Samual, who was walking in front of her.

This kept Bob/Zaxier and Ava safe in the centre of their group. They were still a bit out of it and most vulnerable in case of an attack.

Rita shuddered again as her eyes were once again drawn to the ‘horizon’ curving upwards. It was just so wrong! She kept feeling like she was going to fall up.

She darted past the others until she had caught up to Gora. “Hey.”

“Hmm?” Gora grunted back.

“That thing you said about the Magelords or whatever… would they really torture us?”

Gora sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “They’re the magicians who run Grailmane and… sort of. It’s complicated. Let’s just say that some would, if they thought they could get something out of it. Some would do it just for giggles. Best if we just avoid their people, just in case. General piece of advice, by the way, not specific to our current circumstances.”

“Okay… but the Delver’s Guild will protect us?” Rita asked.

“They should. It’s bad for business letting your clients and employees get swiped. And while maybe not on the level of the Magelords, the Guild has a couple of seriously strong people in it, as well as being international.”

“International?”

“Yeah, there’s Guild lodges all over the place, many far beyond the reach of a couple of local Magelords. If they piss us off we can be a pain in the ass for a very long time to come.”

Rita breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like she had lucked out, hooking up with the one group who could keep her safe from what sounded more and more like a bunch of tin pot warlords with magic.

Gora glanced off into the distance, lowering her voice. “It’s not the Magelords I’m really worried about though. I also spotted a few Shine-Nosers flying in this direction. You never know what those fuckers will do next."

"What's a 'Shine-Noser'? Is it some kind of bird? " Rita asked, confused.

Gora blew out a breath. "Right. Forgot it's not just the Nightmare Domains you don't know anything about." She raised a hand and pointed at a large mountain range rising up in the distance ahead of them, sticking up behind the ocean of broken buildings ahead of them. The peaks were tall enough that they obscured a large portion of the view in one direction. "You can't see it from here, but Grailmane is at the foot of those mountains. That's where we're from. With a looking glass, you can make out some of the lookout towers higher up. Once we hit the Wilderness Zone, you'll see it."

Then Gora turned about sixty degrees and pointed in another direction. In the distance a shimmering blue ocean disappeared into the haze about halfway up the inside of the sphere.

"That way – you can’t see it from here, the buildings are in the way since it’s a bit too close - lies the Holy Mitlan State of Pious Devotion. Nobody in their right mind wants to keep saying that so we just call them Shine Nosers,” she explained.

“Oh… so they have shiny noses or something?”

Behind them, she heard Ava snort in laughter.

“No, not exactly,” Gora chuckled, her voice a deep rumble. “Their god, Mitla, is a very hands on fellow. He has very strong opinions on what is allowed and what gets smited. He also hands out blessings like candy to those that dance to his tune. The result is that basically the entire populace is a little overly zealous and filled to the brim with ‘holy blessings’.”

“But why ‘Shine Noser’?” Rita insisted.

Ava helpfully interjected: “Like a ‘brown-noser’, but with their heads stuck up their god’s arse instead.”