Cooper had officially met the Mythrain historian Sir Barnaby Daniels. He was an old, rotund faun, with tight, curly brown hair that had greyed at the sides, with two large stag horns protruding from either side of his head. He wore more colours than a Bannaheiman jester, in a shocking array of fabrics. His monocle had cracks and a hole suggesting it was pierced at some point, and it may well have had. He scratched at his untamed beard as he stared her down.

"Cooke, correct?" he asked, looking up at her with pinched eyes. "What're your qualifications? Can you fight? Read?" His face lit up with possibility. "Ooh, can you wield flame like my boy, Finn?"

Cooper swallowed. "It's Cooper, sir. And yes, I can fight. I've wielded a sword since I was a child and-"

"A child? How barbaric! I suppose you're quite good?"

"I...Yes. Yes, I'm quite adept. I'm a lieutenant with..." she trailed off. She was not going to admit to being a Templar. Not to a Mythrain who viewed them as parasites. "Uh...The military."

"Oh, at Stykes Academy, correct? My daughter has written a lot about you." He grinned as her blood ran cold. Daughter? Omera's followers had no contact with parents or the like. "You seem quite the rival. Oh, Eris? Or you know her as Jac, I assume."

The names did not ring any bells. She smiled and nodded as if she knew. If it meant a step ahead, she absolutely knew who Jac was and she will absolutely not answer questions about her.

"Heard the worst, I assume?" she asked, shuffling her weight between flesh foot and wood.

"No, no. Quite the opposite in fact."

Oh. So this Jac's a liar. Good to know. At least it came in handy here. Cooper cracked a grin.

"Then it's all true. I have done nothing wrong in my life," she said, like a liar. Sir Barnaby nodded, seemingly pleased, which wasn't as encouraging as it should have been. Was she about to take money from a naive old man, no matter how moral? Yes. Yes, she was.

"Then welcome aboard, Cooke. I hope you're ready for some travelling."

This is how Cooper found herself chasing down the old man through the main shopping centre. The natural chain of progression of any job, of course. Next would likely be her throttling the old stag if he slipped out of her site yet again-.

And he was gone. Again. With no Finn or Raelyn in sight to help. If she knew that the job was closer to babysitting than 'hit bad guy with sword', she wouldn't have even bothered. And why should she? She was a Templar, no matter her feelings on the subject.

She cupped her hands over her eyes to shield her from the midday sun, bright gold shining over the market square and gleaming from crystal blue fountain water. She'd never sweat so much in her life, skin itching. The cold breeze bit at her through soft cotton, far less than the townsfolk wore and yet there she stood as if it were the peak of summer, overcooked and uncomfortable. That would have to be an issue to file away for later. Good thing that Raelyn was into medicine these days, she supposed. She wiped her dripping brow, squinting at a flash of colour the opposite side of the market. Barnaby. It had to be, no one else seemed eccentric enough to wear that many clashing colours. Her legs moved on their own without a second thought, faster and faster.

She was a hunter. One tall predator against a fat little deer. Her throat closed at the thought, swallowing hard. She didn't need a repeat of what happened when she awoke in that tavern. The taste of blood haunted her enough as it was.

The faun was quite happily shuffling through a stack of books in a crate as if he had always been there. Cooper panted by his side, heat rather than exertion. She could run far more than this, she was certain. She was twenty years old and fit as can be, after all. Besides the coughing up maggots. And blood-drinking. And the sweating. Fine, perhaps she wasn't so fit any more. Gods, was she always this tired?

"Oh! Cooke!" Sir Barnaby seemed genuinely happy to see her, which she didn't want to question or get into. He had bloody run off enough times without notice that frankly she didn't care. "You mind carrying a few books?"

Not her job, yet she found herself muttering a 'yeah, sure' with no hesitation. Didn't want to be fired after hours of being employed, after all. A stack of books quickly found home within her arms without a second thought.

"Would you like anything?" asked Sir Barnaby, peering up at her with large doe brown eyes behind his cracked spectacles."Are you much of a reader, Cooke?"

"Never really learned." Cooper shrugged, face heating up with sheer embarrassment. She didn't know how to be her age. She was never taught. Hell, past eight she wasn't taught much of what a normal child was. The sword was pretty neat though. "I'd like to try, now that I have the option."

"Admirable! Here, this was one of my favourites growing up." Sir Barnaby carefully placed a thin red book with a dainty fabric cover on top of his selection. "Both mysterious and intriguing, while also easy to read. Perfect for someone like yourself."

Perfect for an adult with the reading ability of a small child, she wanted to say but bit her tongue. "Thank you, sir. I look forward to reading it."

"Please, child, call me Barnaby. It's my name, after all."

"As you say, si-... Barnaby."

The old faun seemed pleased, paying for his purchase and scuttling off, thankfully slower this time around.

It was far later in the day when Sir Barnaby Daniels had given up on whatever his whims were. Raelyn, Val and Finn had returned from wherever they had ventured during this ordeal, with Raelyn patting Cooper's shoulder and gesturing for her to follow her out of the market.

"Hope you're not too tired," she said with a grin, "because there's one last favour."

"Oh yeah?"

"So there's this brothel-"

Cooper scrunched her nose. "I'm fine. No thanks."

"Not like that, you prick." Raelyn rolled her eyes, "By Luka, you know I have a boyfriend back home. No, it's not like that."

"Then what is it like?"

Raelyn sighed. "I'm only travelling with Barnaby because his wants align with mine. He wants the sword of Valcari, I want to learn about my ancestor. This brothel was once a plain old boarding house, one that allegedly has records. That's why I want to go there, not for sex, weirdo."

"You said brothel, what am I supposed to think?"

"You're not even into that!"

"Fuck off. Fine, let's go to your precious whore house and not get fucked."

Raelyn rolled her eyes. "We really need to work on your dialogue, babe."

Cooper grumbled and toddled alongside Raelyn, hands firmly in the dark woollen pockets of her trousers, wishing that she wasn't travelling to a house of ill repute as she was. She was sterilised for a reason, but the ring around her throat burned with the thought of entering that building. Helping her friend won the non-existent battle, but she wasn't sure if she should tell Iarden of her entry regardless. She could only hope that she won't spontaneously combust from worry.

The building sat near the border of the town, further out than Cooper had ever ventured even when she had lived in Southden. Untouched by modern developments, its crumbling stone walls stood in harsh greys and washed out browns, its roof barely intact.

"You take me to all the best places, you know?" Cooper rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. "Just where I always wanted to go."

Raelyn punched her in response, not taking her eyes off the building. "This is it, alright. Let's try to keep this quick. yeah? We look at the records, and then we leave. Don't make this weird, Templar."

Cooper opened her mouth to protest, closing it just as quickly. She instead nodded her head towards the door, "after you then."

The inside wasn't any nicer. The door opened into a thin, seemingly endless corridor, desperately in need of plastering and fresh paint. Spiders made their home in thick webs across dark corners, their scrawny bodies scurrying over grey ceilings. There weren't doors, so much as curtains. Filthy rags hung in chipped archways, making no effort to muffle the sounds that near echoed throughout the building like a dissatisfied ghost. Cooper cleared her throat, though whether to distract from the dust settling in her nostrils or the waning grunts was anyone's guess. Raelyn patted her shoulder, not sparing a glance, walking straight ahead past the precarious stairway. With no choice, Cooper stayed close to her heels, hurrying across loose floorboards.

The house contained a vast collection of things; jewellery hanging from the bannister, paintings and portraits hanging from loose nails or leant against the skirting boards. The Templar ran her hands through the string beads that hung low from the ceiling, the glass clinking against each other as they swayed and settled. Their cracked bodies shining colour over the two women, a strange display of life in the harrowed hall.

"I-" started Cooper, stopping as quickly as she started. The two women slowed as they reached the door, denying the other eye contact as they stared at anything but the other. "Look, before we go in I feel like I do need to explain-"

"If you're uncomfortable, you could have just said-"

"No, it's not that." Cooper swallowed, shaking her head, eyes firmly on the floor. "It's just- when you found me, I was..."

"Now? Cooper, for Gods' sake, are you kidding me?" said Raelyn in less of an annoyed tone than her words warranted. She sounded tired, if anything, as if she had already run through possible outcomes already and Cooper's admission was one of the duller routes. "I want to hear this, but can it wait?"

Cooper pressed her lips tightly together, much like a vice. "I suppose."

Silence overtook them once more, an unavoidable wave crashing and breaking the precariously made pillars of whatever unspoken truce they had. Cooper had made it weird, she knew she had.

"You ready?" asked Raelyn, oblivious to Cooper's internal torment and frankly better off not knowing.

"As I'll ever be."

Three knocks. The sound rang hollow as if the thin wood would open into sheer nothingness. A woman appeared behind them, as if she had always been there. Perhaps she had, maybe followed silently. Stranger things have happened.

"Oh! Hello." Raelyn gave a winning grin that may have won over investors and businessmen throughout her life, but the woman remained unmoved. She cleared her throat and held her hand out, "I'm Raelyn Godrick? I'm here for the documentation on Albert Godrick?"

The woman stared at her blankly, long enough for Cooper to clear her throat due to her adept social skills, what else was there to do? The woman, presumably the owner although that was uncertain, simply nodded and ushered them into the office. She cut off any 'thanks' from Raelyn, pointing at the bookshelf that took over half the room and leaving as quickly as she arrived.

"So that was strange, right?" asked Cooper, unhelpfully picking up a thick leather tome and flicking though yellowed pages. Of course, on top of finding Mabrisian hard to read, it had to be in Adain, her long forgotten language. She peered over swooping calligraphy as if she understood, hoping to pick out something of use.

Raelyn shrugged, taking the tome from her hands and rearranging it so that it was the correct way up. "We're outsiders, hell, you were the same when we met."

Cooper scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Can you blame me? I was sixteen and unsocialized."

"I could argue that you're still rather unsocialized."

"Prick."

"Tin can."

Cooper rolled her eyes, returning to her book as if the slight pause had made it any easier to understand the scrawl that danced along the page. An eyesore, truly. She didn't have to understand the words to see the mess that it was. She squinted at it, hoping to at least look like she was helping so that Raelyn might send her outside for being an agreeable young woman if she were in fine humour. She longed for anything that wasn't the dusty room with books she couldn't care less about. She'd take playing swords with Finn over 'reading'. It's not that she didn't want to help Raelyn, but the fact of the matter was; she was in a brothel and she couldn't read.

Raelyn paid her no mind, flipping through books with record speed. Admirable, really, if each flick of a page didn't send a new waft of dust soaring into the air. Cooper busied herself by seeing how many of the books she could carry back and forth to the shelves, which quickly turned to how many she could lift above her head without dropping them. The answer was fifteen thick and thin, before Raelyn snapped at her to sit out of the way. Of course, the Templar whinged, sure in her heart that she could bench at least twenty-five though that number may never be proven. She flicked a pen around her fingers in protest.

"Oh,that's odd," said Raelyn finally, "here, look at this."

Cooper stretched and made her way over slowly. Scanning her eyes over the book until Raelyn pointed at a specific line in the gridded paper. She sniffed. "A scribble."

"No," sighed Raelyn, "come on, even I know you're not that bad. Try again."

"I can barely read print, what makes you think I can read this...looping monstrosity?"

"It says Alice. As in, Albert's sister."

Cooper squinted as if it would help to draw forth memories. "Oh, the guy who hunted down the Valcari woman?"

"Yes - well, who we all thought followed Artemis. Can't say I'm sure any more."

"Could he have signed in under her name?"

Raelyn licked her lips, and Cooper had to restrain herself from staring. "Perhaps. It's definitely possible at least. Either way, he didn't sign in alone - look, there's Sheridan Sørensen."

"Sørensen."

"Yes. Our Danny was named after her, you know."

Our. As if Little Danny Sørensen was their kid, and not the child that Raelyn took in when she was still a child herself. Cooper felt her face flush a bit, cheeks warming with the blaze of an old infatuation. In exchange, she caught a look that she knew full well-meant 'please don't be weird'. She'd received it many times over the past four years and didn't know what exactly it meant. Her chest constricted, and she averted her gaze.

"So what about them books?"

Raelyn rolled her eyes, only to slam the book shut in one hand, another cloud of dust flying into the air. "Try to find out anything about Alice, you can do that much right?"

Cooper shrugged with one shoulder. "I can't say I understand why this is so important. It's been, what? Several centuries? I didn't think you were that interested in family."

Her words struck a chord, though it was closer to throwing a hammer at a harp and hitting many on the way down. Cooper could practically taste the electricity in the air. "I don't need you to understand family, Cooper."

Well, she started so she may as well continue. She never could back down from a challenge. "Don't get a tone with me, you know that your father would have sold you too if he had the chance. Just because mine actually did it."

"What happened to you?"

"Because I'm saying the truth?"

"Because you went missing for over a year and you come back-" Raelyn fought to get the words out, though whatever she had prepared to say next drowned out in a flood of blood rushing through Cooper's ears.

A year.

Over a year. She counted several months in the woods at most. Had she been dead that long? She supposed it would explain her little grubby friends that partied in any orifice that they could writhe their way into. Raelyn ranted on in silence, hands moving rapidly as if to help her point across. Not that Cooper could focus on her.

She had died, and no one had noticed.

The ring was heavy in her hand. She wasn't sure when her hand had moved, as if it had a mind and intentions of its own. Which, she was sure, it didn't, though it would make a horrible explanation for the murder. The motion wasn't lost on Raelyn, who stopped in her tracks, her hands were frozen where they hung mid-action; almost as if reaching for the spiralling corpse. Almost, but not quite.

There was a town in the west of Mabristan that is said to forever burn with witchfire. The green-blue flames rose high and fell as if the town were a living thing. Hellishly hot, the average Kirian unable to withstand being within a three-mile radius. Though, being in the centre of the burnt-out husk of Duskvein would have been a godsend compared to standing in a brothel facing down Raelyn Godrick.

"What happened?" Raelyn asked again, voice lower but by no means less angered. The Leader voice. The voice Cooper hated. The voice she so desperately tried to emulate. "Cooper. What. Happened."

Cooper, a petulant child at heart, scoffed.

"I died, innit." Her cheek stung with the quick hit that followed. She rubbed at her jaw, tongue brushing over her teeth. "I did though."

"Course you did," huffed Raelyn, "because that's completely normal."

"You turn into a dog when the moons get funky."

"That's - that's normal, that's a thing that's happened since the dawn of Kirus. Don't change the subject, people don't come back from the dead. You of all people should know that."

She of all people also shouldn't have been haunted by Mycah upon death, so swings and roundabouts.

Cooper couldn't say she didn't try. Not very hard, but an attempt at least. She supposed it didn't matter. It hadn't mattered for months. While she was off being buried in a land not her own, Raelyn had had a chance to grow. Jealousy was an understatement.

"Did you get everything you need?" said Cooper, gracefully changing the conversation. She could feel the distrust rolling in waves.

Raelyn grasped that olive branch, or perhaps simply shelving the topic for later as she turned back to the books. Flesh fingers flicked through at a pace too rapid to read. Metal hand softly grazing the leather of the tomes. Cooper copied at a far slower pace, glancing up every now and then at her companion who seemed far more agitated than angry. She could practically see the cogs turning over the possibility that Cooper was indeed telling the truth. The implications, the outcome.

The future had never scared Cooper that way. Perhaps due to the likelihood of not having one. The ending would never change, and thus there was no reason to worry or plan ahead. From ashes they came, and ashes they would return. Specks of dust in the grand scheme of things. It was oddly comforting. But Raelyn... Raelyn was her opposite in many ways. She was a planner, she planned things, she liked planning things. To be safe in the knowledge that she set the fickle blocks of destiny in place, and that she knew what would happen and when. Tedious work with very little payoff, but it was to Raelyn as impending doom was to Cooper. Comfort.

It was only then that Raelyn dropped the book to the shelf with a sigh. Squaring her shoulders and tensing her jaw, she finally looked up at Cooper. Brown eyes as dark and deep as the void bore into her own.

"You died," she stated, calculating. "You died, and you're here. How?"

Cooper wished she had the answer. Under Raelyn's inquisitive gaze, her certainty failed.

"I don't know," sighed Cooper, "I may not have died, I guess. Whatever it is I'm... I think I'm sick. I don't know what happened."

That caught Raelyn's attention. Flesh hand met damp forehead, metal fingers brushing over bruised jaw as Raelyn studied her. Cooper was no better than a frog in a jar, there to be looked at and pulled apart.

"Are you taking drugs?"

"Not that I'm aware?"

Raelyn hummed, pulling away enough to crack the bronze of her hand like the lights they sold at fairs, the tip of her now bent-back finger emitting a bright yellowed light. She shone it into Cooper's eyes, holding her still with a firm hand on the shoulder.

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

Raelyn hummed and released her. "Can I study you?"

"What about the books?"

"Fuck the books, if you keel over I won't know whatever the hell is going on. The history's not going anywhere."

"So you really did just bring me to a brothel for no reason."

"I've learned that you're a bigger prick than usual, that's something. Now come on, let's go."

"But I never agreed to-"

And Raelyn was gone.