The eyes were looking at him through the window.

The walls of Lord Och’s fortress kept them away, but as they infested the Domain’s ceiling like moss, he couldn’t escape them.

“Val… mar…”

They had watched him since the moment he was born, though he couldn’t see them then. He thought his grandfather’s death had left him orphaned, but in truth, he had never been alone in his life. Not for a single second.

His family had followed him everywhere.

“Valde… mar?”

Valdemar looked away from the eyes outside and locked his gaze with a smaller pair of them.

“Valdemar?” Marianne asked him with concern. The teapot between them let out a small puff of steam. “Are you alright?”

“No,” he replied, his throat dry. “Are you certain of it? About… ”

About my father.

“I can’t be sure,” Marianne admitted. “But it’s the most likely explanation from the clues that I gathered so far. Shelley’s facility and the… the clones inside point in that direction.”

They cloned his mother.

They made a cup out of her bones.

Was his mother even the original Sarah? Had his two grandfathers cultivated her in a flask like a homunculus? Was Valdemar born inside a womb, or a vat of glass? A piece of eldritch flesh wrapped in human skin? Maybe the derros weren’t such pioneers after all.

Marianne had been true to her word. The investigator told him everything with unflinching bluntness, though she had looked more and more concerned as she went on. By the time she was halfway through recounting her case, Valdemar took everything in stoic silence. He simply couldn’t muster the strength for emotional distress anymore.

He thought it would have been impossible to top the Silent King’s revelations, that he had reached an emotional bottom. But as it turned out, you could always dig deeper.

“Val… mar?”

Valdemar blinked as he realized he had zoned out again. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “It’s… a lot to take in.”

“I understand.” Marianne’s eyes wandered to his hand, as if she considered taking it into her own. But she hesitated. Perhaps she thought it would be inappropriate? While they had agreed to work together, they weren’t friends either. “We can continue later, if you need rest.”

As if sleep would be any escape. If anything, Valdemar was afraid of slumber like never before.

He would dream of the well again.

“When you visited the false Vernburg...” he rasped. “What hour was it?”

Marianne frowned. “I can’t tell exactly. We arrived late, and explored the village for a few hours until morning. Why are you asking?”

“I dreamed of you while you were away,” Valdemar admitted. “I was at the bottom of a well, and you were looking down on me.”

Marianne’s curiosity turned to unnerving focus. “You were at the bottom?”

“And when I tried to reach you, the well collapsed on me.”

His bodyguard digested the news in silence, her gaze thoughtful. “What’s your sleeping schedule?” she asked, having reached the same conclusion.

“I have an irregular sleep cycle due to nightmares, but I usually go to bed late and wake up early,” Valdemar admitted. “I have been dreaming of the well you saw since I was little. Sometimes I had nightmares of rats watching me from above, or tossing me bones and meat.”

“Shelley’s rats, most likely,” Marianne said, joining her hands. “So you have a mental connection to the Nahemoth trapped inside the well.”

“If it is a Nahemoth,” Valdemar pointed out. It would fit, but he was now considering another, darker possibility. “What do you know about oneiromancy?”

“I have a well-protected dreamscape, but oneiromancy is not one of my strong points,” Marianne confessed. “I was only ever interested in defending my thoughts rather than invading others. I have started to research the subject after learning more about the Outer Darkness though.”

“I couldn’t learn the basics, because my dreamscape is dysfunctional. I haven’t been able to shape my own dreams. Frigga and Lady Mathilde said it was because of my personality and subconscious thoughts, but now…” Valdemar glanced at the hedge maze beyond the window. “Now I wonder.”

“From what I read in the Bestiary, the Primordial Dream shared by mankind is a self-defense mechanism created by sentient life to protect itself from the Qlippoths,” Marianne said. Valdemar made a note to borrow and read that book later, if only to complete his own knowledge. “Maybe that’s why? You can access the dream world as a human, but since you share a connection to the Qlippoths, the collective unconscious fights off your attempts to alter it.”

“That,” Valdemar said. “Or I have a fully functional dreamscape, but I don’t materialize it in the Primordial Dream.”

Marianne’s eyes widened in shock. “The Vernburg village disappeared when you woke up from your nightmare.”

Valdemar nodded. “Now the question is… do I have a connection to a Nahemoth and passively summon him when I dream, or is the thing at the bottom of the well my unconscious self materializing the Qlippoth hamlet as a physical dreamscape?”

“What difference would it make?”

A big one. “In one case, I’m a mere summoning conduit, a living portal. In the other, my unconscious mind warps reality itself and births Qlippoths into existence.”

Marianne didn’t respond. Her expression became a blank mask as the implications dawned upon her.

Valdemar’s laughter broke the silence.

It surprised him and startled Marianne too. For it was not laughter of joy, or even sadness. It was a laugh that burst out of his lips uncontrollably, like water overflowing out of a broken cistern. The kind of laugh that left the throat dry and the soul sickened.

“I mean, that’s funny,” Valdemar continued, unable to stop himself as he laughed maniacally between each sentence. “Frigga mocked me for having a defenseless, unremarkable dreamscape, but I conjured a whole town with Qlippoths as private security! They play humans in my head! Like me! If it’s not my subconscious at work, I don’t know what—”

A flash of anger passed over Marianne’s face as she raised her voice. “Don’t say that!”

Her sudden reaction startled Valdemar, the laughter dying in his throat. “Say what?” he asked.

“That you play human, instead of being one,” Marianne said. “Because you are one.”

“I’m not,” Valdemar replied grimly. “Never was.”

“A monster like Shelley is not human,” Marianne insisted. “The creatures inside the Vernburg village aren’t human. You might have inhuman origins and peculiar abilities, but you breathe like a man, behave like a man, eat like a man.”

Shit like a man? Valdemar thought back of his grandfather’s echo, and how he had wished it could become the real one. “Even if a pictomancer made the perfect portrait of someone and breathed life into the pigments, it would still be a painting rather than the real thing.”

But Marianne wouldn’t back down. “But what if the portrait has a soul? If the copy has emotions and dreams, then its life has value.”

“The inquisitors would say otherwise,” Valdemar gazed down at his empty cup. He felt just as hollow. “Why am I even alive, Marianne? By imperial laws, you should have given me up to the inquisition or executed me yourself.”

She frowned. “Inquisitor Penhew suggested that I execute you because you were too dangerous to live. That was before I visited Vernburg, and all that followed. If word of what I learned reached his ears, the Knights would hunt you down.”

And for once… Valdemar was tempted to agree with them. His very existence might serve as a portal for interdimensional monsters. Many had been executed for less.

“I am not a Knight,” Marianne declared. “I will not execute people because they might threaten the empire, but only if they do.”

Valdemar looked away to avoid her fiery gaze. Somehow the eyes outside seemed less oppressive. “I nearly killed you while dreaming.”

“But I survived your nightmare, and you had no control over it. Besides, Lord Och wouldn’t let you run around if you were a lost cause. Instead of dissecting you or transforming you into an Earthmouth, he tutors you. Why do you think so?”

Obvious. “Because he has plans for me.”

“Because he thinks you can master your abilities.” Marianne sighed. “A Master once told me that centuries of undeath had divorced Lord Och from human emotions. He plays with us like we’re ants, because it amuses him. But when it comes to genuine threats? He is a supremely rational being. Many Dark Lords have come and gone over the centuries, but Lord Och was never dethroned. He has slain everyone who ever endangered him.”

Valdemar couldn’t help but snicker. “So you say he didn’t kill me because I’m not that huge of a threat?”

“I trust Lord Och’s ruthlessness and survival instincts. If he tutors you, it means he intends to exploit you in the long-term and he believes the risk is manageable.”

That… that was the kind of cold logic Valdemar expected from the lich.

The summoner gathered his breath and tried to consider things rationally. He was not fully human. There was no denying it. After surviving multiple lightning bolts, he wondered if his regeneration would even let him die. The Qlippoths bent to his will, he could dream a village into existence, and open doors to other worlds. The Stranger that masterminded his birth wanted him to serve some mysterious purpose he couldn’t fathom yet.

Imperial safety demanded that he die.

But Lord Och knew all of this and yet decided to spare him. Though callous, the lich had accumulated centuries of experience and wisdom and seemed dedicated to protecting the empire’s status quo; even if for purely selfish reasons.

Marianne had a point. If Valdemar were a lost cause, Lord Och would have killed him the moment he stepped inside the Institute. Instead, the lich cultivated his apprentice like a flower and encouraged him to seek answers on his own. And even though Valdemar was only half a man, he was close enough to humankind that inquisitors never identified his unholy origins.

There’s hope for me, the summoner realized, though a cynical part of his mind told him hope could only carry you so far.

“But what if Och is wrong, Marianne?” Valdemar asked. “What if my dreams or my very existence cause a disaster, and I have to be put down for the good of everyone else?”

“If we can’t find another solution…” Marianne glanced at the rapier attached to her belt. “Then yes, I will do what must be done. But it won’t come to that.”

“Hopefully not.”

Valdemar had too many things left to do. Too much to learn.

Where sadness once filled his heart, anger took over. He refused to be a pawn in someone else’s game, whether his grandfather’s, Lord Och’s, or the Strangers’. No more. He would cut all the strings pulling him, and for that, he had to find them.

Marianne’s expression softened. “To go back to our first topic of discussion… as far as I’m concerned, you’re a human being.”

“Half of one,” Valdemar said with a dark chuckle. “At least I took more from my mother and only have two eyes.”

“Is that supposed to be a reference to something?” Marianne asked. “If so, it’s lost on me.”

“Wait, haven’t you taken an Elixir of True Sight?”

“No,” she admitted. “I can request Lady Mathilde to make one if needed.”

Lady Mathilde… she took the elixir and was close when the eyes all looked at me, Valdemar thought. No way she didn’t notice our interaction. Yet she said nothing.

His thoughts turned to the private interaction between Och and Loctis. How they had cast a silence spell to prevent Valdemar from hearing anything. Some of the Masters are in on it, he thought. The Dark Lord had given them instructions.

Plots within plots, and he had to figure them all out. “Then you haven’t seen the eyes outside,” Valdemar said.

Her confused face told him everything. “I would like more details,” Marianne said as she sheepishly checked her teapot’s temperature. “Do you want more tea?”

“With pleasure,” Valdemar replied. “You prepared it well, even if it was your first time.”

“Did I?” Marianne asked as she sheepishly poured tea into their empty cups. “I’m relieved.”

You’re such an open book. It astonished Valdemar that this woman could fight a man-eating wererat in close-quarters without flinching and then get embarrassed over something so trivial as teamaking.

“Your expression gave it away,” the summoner said while sipping the brew. “Between us, I could never afford this kind of tea. Too expensive.”

“I let Bertrand deal with shopping duties.” Marianne’s gaze wandered to the hedge maze outside, her lips curving into a sorrowful scowl. “Master Malherbe doesn’t think she can cure him.”

Now it was Valdemar’s turn to cheer her up. “Even if she’s an expert, it’s still just one person’s opinion and she doesn’t have the full picture. If we trust your theory, the same black blood runs through my veins. Maybe we could compare samples and find a cure.”

“I hope so,” she replied with a sad smile. “Do you have any idea what this blood belongs to?”

As a matter of fact, he did.

Valdemar spent the next minutes enlightening Marianne on the true nature of reality. To her credit, she took the news remarkably well. Valdemar guessed that after seeing the walls of Underland bleed beneath Verney Castle, learning that an invisible creature occupied the tunnels didn’t sound all that surprising.

“This is disturbing,” Marianne admitted, her eyebrows arching as she sipped her tea. “I will take an Elixir of True Sight to see it for myself. I never progressed past the Potion of Insight due to the risks involved, but I will need it to complete the case.”

“So we think as one. The eyes and the bloody wound you saw beneath Verney Castle both belong to the same entity.” To my ‘father,’ Valdemar thought, though he doubted the entity even had a gender.

“It would make sense. And this Stranger is connected to the Qlippoths somehow.” Marianne sipped once more from her cup. “If the Knights’ Bestiary is correct, then they are psychic manifestations of this enormous creature. And if the Primordial Dream appeared to protect sentient life from them—”

“Then this entity has been coexisting with us since the beginning of life in our world.” It had been here before men crawled into the depths of Underland. It had watched the Pleromians come and go, witnessed empires rise and fall.

“But if it is hostile to us, why do we still exist?” Marianne asked in confusion. “If it covers the entire world as Lord Och implied, then we literally live inside its bowels.”

Valdemar didn’t know. The eyes were everywhere, with no place to hide from them. Yet Shelley had been blissfully unaware that his ‘red grail’ had survived the purge. “What did the wererat say when the entity manifested?”

“That the ‘master of masters’ finally answered his prayers,” Marianne quoted from memory before putting the two and two together. “Ah, I see. The entity ignored Shelley until that moment. It never informed its agents on the ground.”

“Maybe it can’t communicate.” The eyes did blink when Valdemar directly addressed them, but it could be because they were… related. The Stranger might have considered lesser entities beneath its notice. “Or not the way we humans do.”

“I don’t think so. The Verney cult received instructions from their patron, though they must have been vague or misunderstood. They mistook their red grail’s vessel for a cup rather than a…”

“Than my mother,” Valdemar said bluntly as Marianne struggled to find the words.

His answer made her wince. “A woman’s purpose does not stop at her reproductive organs.”

The story hit close to home for her.

Valdemar shivered, as he suddenly wondered if his mother had been born only for the purpose of creating him. He wouldn’t put it past his two grandfathers to go to such lengths.

ABOMINATION.

Maybe she had never wanted him in the first place.

But whether she had been the original Sarah or a clone, his poor mother had been a pureblooded human; a frail woman consumed by mental illness in her last days. She didn’t share her son’s peculiar abilities, and the coroner never noticed anything wrong when she perished. Sarah Dumont had been a mere human, used to fulfill a dark purpose and then discarded.

But what Valdemar should make of her appearance in Astaphanos? If he checked Marianne’s timeline of events, it happened soon after the collapse of Verney Castle. Could that have been a surviving clone of her?

Valdemar brushed off the possibility. The Domains of Astaphanos and Horaios were located on opposite sides of the empire. Unless the clones could teleport, they could never have made it in such a short amount of time.

Wait a minute…

“You said Shelley moved unnaturally fast?” he asked Marianne.

She took the sudden change of subject in stride. “Even if he used a modified rat to transmit his plague inside our walls, it shouldn’t have crossed such a vast distance faster than a riding beetle. I still can’t explain it. He was quicker than a man when we fought, but not nearly as much as a trained mount.”

Valdemar had only ever seen Lord Och being capable of teleportation, a feat made possible because he spent the Light knows how many years coating his fortress in advanced spells. He wondered if it would be possible for a summoner to call a wererat to their location from afar, before deciding against that possibility. The Dark Lords protected vital areas of their territory with wards or detection spells.

The fact Valdemar saw a vision of his mother right after Marianne shattered a lab full of her clones couldn’t be a coincidence, though the nature of the connection escaped him for the moment.

Maybe another clone of his mother had escaped Shelley in the past and taken refuge in Astaphanos? It struck him as far-fetched, considering the wererat could only make malformed copies. Or maybe the eyes had toyed with his mind, as Hermann suggested?

Valdemar didn’t know what to think of it. The idea of his mother being alive in some form should have been cause to rejoice, but his gut told him that her appearance only heralded troubles to come.

“So, to summarize,” Marianne said, eager to change the subject. “The entity can communicate with its cult, but its instructions are either vague or very rare.”

“Maybe it’s restricted somehow,” Valdemar guessed.

“Restricted by what? Magical laws?”

Maybe. Even Qlippoths couldn’t enter the material realm without a summoner’s help, although their godlike progenitor occupied every inch of Underland’s tunnels. “I don’t know,” Valdemar admitted. “That’s the root of the problem. Unless we understand what that entity is, we won’t figure out what it can do or even want.”

“We can surmise the latter,” Marianne pointed out. “To reach Earth.”

Valdemar shook his head. “I’m not so sure. That was my grandfather’s intention, yes, but the cult wanted power and immortality alongside their promised land.”

The Silent King had shown him a vision where he transformed into a monster. Something unlike the Earthmouth his grandfather planned to turn him into.

Marianne crossed her arms and hung back in her chair. Valdemar could almost see gears turning inside her head. “Could it be…” she whispered.

“You figured out something?”

“Someone betrayed Aleksander Verney’s cult soon after your birth and made the purge possible,” Marianne explained. “Inquisitor Penhew never learned their identity, nor why your grandfather and mother were spared by the Knights. How could I miss it…”

No way… “You think my grandfather sold out the cult?”

Marianne nodded. “Inquisitor Penhew thought that your rumored father, Isaac Verney, betrayed the cult to save your mother. Maybe he was right about the motives, but wrong about the culprit. If we assume that your two grandfathers had diverging agendas, Pierre Dumont makes an ideal suspect. It would explain why he and your mother were spared from any kind of retribution by the inquisition, as he would have negotiated an amnesty.”

It fit. “So the fate the cult had in store was even worse than turning me into a gate between worlds,” Valdemar deadpanned. “Wonderful.”

“Maybe,” Marianne said with a softer voice. “Or he wanted to protect you because you were his grandson.”

Valdemar snickered. “The Silent King—”

“Showed you why you were born. But did your grandfather ever try to prepare you for the sacrifice?”

“He nursed me with tales of Earth, until I believed in his dream.” Until Valdemar would do anything to achieve it.

“But he never tried to indoctrinate you into pursuing the Earthmouth ritual. As Lord Och told you, you only need to consent to it. Age is not a barrier. He raised you to adulthood without ever crossing the line, even after your mother perished.”

Valdemar frowned in disbelief. What nonsense was that? Couldn’t she see the obvious, that his grandfather manipulated him since the day he was born? That the strings had been subtle? “What are you implying? That he changed his mind?”

“Maybe,” Marianne replied. “Maybe your mother talked him out of his plan. Mine said that parenthood changes people, for good or ill.”

Valdemar wasn’t a parent, so he couldn’t tell. Maybe she has a point, he thought. His grandfather had been nothing but kind in their time together.

Or maybe Valdemar simply had a hard time reconciling the happy memory with the unsavory goal his grandfather created him to fulfill. Whether or not he changed his mind, Pierre Dumont worked with a Stranger cult to turn his grandson into a gateway between worlds. Valdemar wasn’t sure he could ever forgive him for this, even if he balked out halfway through.

“I can’t say,” the summoner replied, trying to banish these thoughts from his mind. They only made it harder for him to focus. “The echo inside my portrait can’t answer half my questions.”

“Could it answer this one?” Marianne gathered her breath. “Who is Crétail?”

“Crétail?” Valdemar raised an eyebrow. “You mean Créteil? With an ‘e’?”

“I think it was with an ‘a,’ though I may have misheard. One of the Qlippoths in Vernburg spoke of a child with that name, probably you.”

“Créteil was my grandfather’s hometown on Earth. It’s not one of my names.” Valdemar tried to remember in which context he learned that information. “I always bugged grandpa about it.”

“Did your mother ever use that word?” Marianne asked. “I’m grasping at straws, but any clue, no matter how circumstantial can help.”

“Grandpa never used the word in her presence,” Valdemar replied, wincing at the mere memory. “The one time he did, it caused a crisis.”

“A crisis?” Valdemar looked away, causing Marianne to clear his throat. “If this is sensitive—”

“My mother was… unstable.” The summoner shifted on his chair, the memories painful to remember. “She… she was very kind and gentle, but… moody. Sometimes she cried without warning, or she didn’t answer when called. At the end of her life, she spent most of her time in an asylum for treatment.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” She sounded genuine too. “How old were you?”

“Old enough to understand what was happening, too young to do anything about it.” Valdemar gazed at his reflection in his tea. “I thought she was ill, but knowing everything you told me… I think she was just traumatized by what she went through with the cult. It can’t have been easy.”

She probably didn’t even consent to having a half-Stranger for a son.

ABOMINATION.

Maybe Valdemar had just been a burden she had to take care of.

“While I apologize for unburying painful memories, I believe we should investigate that ‘Créteil’ lead,” Marianne said, oblivious to Valdemar’s dark thoughts. “Call it gut feeling, I believe it’s an important detail.”

“I’ll look for it inside the journal,” Valdemar said as he rose from his seat. “And investigate that creature you saw being summoned in Vernburg Castle. I have my suspicions about its nature, but I need more time to confirm them.”

“Well, it’s late,” Marianne said with a chuckle. “I think you should go to sleep. We have been at it for hours, and we leave for Sabaoth tomorrow.”

“I can’t sleep until I complete my Painted Field,” Valdemar pointed out. “Or I might manifest the hamlet.”

“I have potions that can give you a dreamless sleep. I’ll give you a few, since your metabolism will shrug off weaker doses.” Marianne smiled sadly. “I have nightmares too.”

“About your family?”

“In a way.” Marianne fidgeted like an imprisoned animal trying to shake off her chains. “I… I know it sounds hypocritical after we discussed your family history, but…“

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Valdemar replied with a chuckle. “Unless one of your parents is a Stranger? Then we could work on solving that case too.”

“Not yet at least,” Marianne mused. “You have a pretty dark sense of humor.”

He had to.

When faced with pain, he would rather laugh than cry.