ABSCHEULICH

German, "hideous; abominable; horrible"

We are all someone's monster. -- Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

"My name is," the man began, then stopped short and looked mildly uncomfortable. "My mother's name was Vanadel. You can call me that."

"Vanadel is a woman's name," Diarnlan said flatly. An Avallese woman's name, at that. Just what was this man? A half-glacier-sprite like Karandren?

"Well, of course," the man said. He sounded as if he thought she was very stupid. "My mother was a woman."

Diarnlan decided it wasn't worth the effort of trying to make him understand. "A human woman?"

He nodded. "She found her way through one of the rifts in the veil. For over a year she survived on the outskirts of the city, attacking everyone who came too close. My father was sent to stop her. They fought for days before their battle finally ended in a draw. My father brought her back to the city and they were married soon after. I was born a year later."

"Has she never tried to leave?" Diarnlan demanded suspiciously. The idea of a human willingly staying in this place -- and marrying one of these things; if Vanadel Junior was half-human then she didn't even want to imagine how unsettling the full-blooded ones were -- just didn't seem plausible.

Vanadel made a strange motion with his arms that suggested he was trying to shrug but didn't quite know how. "I don't know."

"Have you never asked her?"

"I can't. She died when I was born. My father killed himself after her death." He saw Diarnlan's shocked expression and explained, "It is our custom that a married couple must die together."

And what about their son? Diarnlan thought indignantly. Who do they expect to look after him when his surviving parent re-enacts Sioria and Ghirmar[1]?

She'd encountered some stupid customs in her time, but this one was by far the stupidest.

"I have always wanted to visit my mother's homeland. But my grandparents won't let me go in person until I'm two hundred. Until then I can only look through the veil. And that was how I saw you. It confused me at first, why you kept repeating the same days over and over. So I looked closer and noticed the time-loop. And you saw me."

Diarnlan had read enough atrocious novels to have a horrible suspicion of where this was going. A strange man interested in a woman who was unique for some reason, and whose interest prompted him to kidnap her? It was a premise favoured by many imbeciles who believed they were romance novelists and didn't realise they were much better at writing horror stories.

"If the next words out of your mouth have anything to do with love I will throw this chair at you," she warned him.

Vanadel just looked blank. "Why would I say anything about love?"

"You didn't kidnap me to propose to me or hold me prisoner until I agree to marry you?"

Now he looked appalled. "Certainly not! That's a jǫtnar custom. We don't do it."

This seemed like as good a time as any to ask, "What are you?"

He opened his mouth, coughed awkwardly, and said, "The best approximation in your language is Khaicinae. We have another name in our language, but... well..."

He made another attempt at a shrug. Diarnlan's ears began to ache again at the mere memory of his language.

"Alright," she said slowly, going back to the most important part. "I saw you, you saw me, so you decided to kidnap me. Why? Why didn't you kidnap Karandren? He's also caught in the time-loop."

"But he didn't see me. He's never tried to find the hole in the veil. You have. So I want to find out more about your magic. How can you, an ordinary human, live and die again and again? How can you look through the veil when your eyes should not be able to see it?"

I don't know, Diarnlan thought. She suspected he wouldn't believe her if she told him so. "And how exactly do you intend to find the answers to any of those questions?"

"By restarting the time-loop and seeing what happens."

Vanadel raised his hand. He held a knife that she knew he hadn't had a minute ago. Suddenly it dawned on her what he meant by 'restarting the time-loop'. Diarnlan's eyes widened. Dying by skrýszel or Karandren was one thing. Being murdered by this lunatic was another.

She threw the chair at him. It disappeared before touching him.

Internally Diarnlan screamed every swear word she knew. Externally she tried to stay calm. "Wait! Wait just a minute! This is the Óhreinnjǫrð, isn't it? Well, how do you know what effect that has on the time-loop? It might not work at all here and I refuse to let you kill me permanently!"

"It will work," Vanadel said calmly, as if he was only discussing the weather. "Can't you see the magic still clinging to you? It's part of you."

That was a very disturbing thought but one she refused to think about until she'd dealt with this knife-wielding maniac. "What about the skrýszel?" she demanded to distract him. "Why do they keep attacking us?"

"Skrýszel?" Vanadel repeated, as if he'd never heard the word before.

"The monsters! The things that come through the veil!"

"Oh, those. They're our pets."

Everyone who'd ever encountered the skrýszel could think of a hundred descriptions of them. Never in a thousand years would they have included the word "pets" in that list. Diarnlan tried to comprehend that. It was a very difficult task when her mind insisted on picturing the frog-like skrýszel being taken for walks on a lead.

"Pets?" she repeated faintly. "Pets?" Anger quickly replaced shock. "Can't you people keep your pets contained? Have you no kennels or fences here? Look at the chaos they cause when they get out!"

Vanadel didn't seem remotely concerned by this. "Of course we keep them contained. Some of their owners send them through the veil deliberately."

Diarnlan felt as if the floor had dropped out from beneath her feet. "What?"

"It's like your horse races," he explained cheerfully. "The owners send their pets out, then assemble their friends and make bets on how far the pet will go before you humans kill it."

Diarnlan grabbed hold of the table to steady herself. It wasn't much help because it turned out to be made of something soft and with the texture of marshmallow, even though it looked like wood. In a strange way the shock of that discovery helped her deal with the shock of all the others. "You mean your people deliberately send their pets to be killed? And to kill everyone in their path?"

"Of course. Just like your people send their dogs to fight bears."

"That's outlawed in Avallot," Diarnlan snapped. "What will make you stop?"

Vanadel shrugged. "I'm not involved in it. For the people who are, it's their main source of entertainment. Why take it away from them?"

"When I get my hands on them I'll take a lot more than that away from them!" Diarnlan was already picturing exactly what she'd do to them. By the time she was finished they wouldn't be in a condition to watch anything ever again.

Vanadel looked mildly surprised at her reaction. "But why does it bother you? You have killed the... the sha-kroy-shels," he stumbled over the unfamiliar word, "so many times that their owners are losing money. If you keep this up they'll eventually stop of their own accord."

"It bothers me because your bloody pets have killed me so many times I've lost count!"

Diarnlan took a deep breath and tried to consider the situation calmly. She knew deep down that there was no way she would leave this place alive. Either Vanadel would kill her for the sake of his curiosity, or she would find a weapon and kill herself. Vanadel claimed the time-loop was part of her. It was safe to assume it was also part of Karandren too. So would it be possible to exploit that?

Ever since producing the knife from who-knew-where Vanadel had held his arm out in front of him with the knife aimed directly at Diarnlan's chest. A human would have long since gotten tired of holding their arm in that position. Vanadel didn't even seem to notice.

Maybe it didn't make much difference in the end, but Diarnlan would much rather die on her own terms than be killed by someone else.

"I have one more question," she said. Vanadel waited patiently while she tried to find the right words. "How does the time-loop affect you people?"

"It doesn't."

Diarnlan took several steps forward until the knife was level with her heart. "What do you mean it doesn't?"

"Time works differently here. The sha-kroy-shels die in your world and immediately reappear in ours. Some of their owners make alterations to them in the hope they'll be more successful next time."

So that's why the skrýszels looked and behaved differently. Diarnlan filed that information away for future use. She took a deep breath and tried to focus her mind on Karandren.

I'm not going to that in-between place. I'm going to Karandren, she told herself firmly. Then grimly, This is going to hurt.

Then she grabbed Vanadel's wrist and pulled him forward. The knife sank into her chest.

None of her other deaths had been quite like this one. None of them felt like being ripped out of her body and thrown around like a ragdoll.

I'm going to find Karandren, Diarnlan repeated over and over again. I'm going to find Karandren.

The pain and confusion finally faded. She opened her eyes and found herself in the only-too-familiar main hall of Karandren's palace in Miavain. Once again there was a priest's mutilated body on display at the door. Surprisingly there was only one this time. The last time she'd been here there had been twelve, all killed in different ways. And the stench of dark magic that had hovered around the place was now conspicuous by its absence. But in spite of the unexpected differences this was definitely the right place.

It worked! was her first thought. Her second was, Wait. Why am I so high up?

Within days of the politicians forming some sort of government, Karandren began to have serious second thoughts about this ruling-a-country business. It was much more work than he remembered. Every day someone came to him with yet another urgent matter he needed to hear about. Karandren had never given any thought to tax systems or judicial reforms before. Nor had he ever expected to spend days reading dull old textbooks on trade and economics.

At first he made the mistake of leaving all of it to the politicians. That idea ended very quickly when he learnt some of them were robbing the people under the pretence of taxes. There were now seven fewer politicians in the parliament and seven corpses hanging from the palace walls. At least their friends' deaths had taught the other politicians not to try a similar stunt. None of them dared to do anything without first telling Karandren all about it and ensuring he knew everything they did was legal.

Not that legality meant much. In Miavain under the Bone-Worshippers it had been legal for priests to kidnap children from their parishioners and keep them as sex slaves. Karandren had abolished all those laws, but the damage done in five hundred years couldn't be undone in two weeks.

Running away and leaving the politicians to sort the country out on their own was an increasingly appealing idea. But he knew only too well that if he left them to their own devices they would go right back to how things were before.

When not arguing with politicians he continued work on his dragon. There was plenty of metal lying around the palace in the form of statues and shrines, so he very quickly had a dragon that actually looked like a dragon. It stood in the middle of the main hall, twice as tall as Karandren would be when he was fully grown, with its mouth open wide and all its carefully-crafted teeth on display. All he had to add to it now was its wings. Then he could move on to making it breathe fire.

After sending the politicians away for the day, Karandren gathered together several candelabras and the metal boxes formerly used to hold fragments of bone. He brought them down to the main hall. Spread out in front of the dragon was his blueprint. He set down the metal and studied his drawing of the wings.

Clank. Creeeeeeeak.

Karandren froze. That sounded as if-- But it was impossible! Right now the dragon was just a mass of scrap metal! He hadn't used any magic to animate it!

He raised his head and came face to face with the dragon. It had lowered its head until it was nearly on a level with his. And its eyes were glowing an unnaturally bright shade of blue.

Karandren screamed bloody murder.