"And you're sure you don't know what happened to her after that?" Captain Sarmon asked heavily.

"I really don't," Lara groaned, her voice muffled by the cage of her hands covering her face. She wanted to leave. She wished she'd never been called to this meeting. She wished, oh, how she wished, that the captain had never asked Mabb and her to look into the disappearances in the first place.

She didn't mind meeting the captain as such, but she was just so tired, and without Mabb there she had to bear the full brunt of his questioning. Around and around about Norn the Herbalist and the weird humans who'd attacked them. Question after question about what Norn had said and done and what her mental state had been, and about how the ferals had looked and behaved, and if Lara was absolutely sure that she couldn't Inspect them and that she hadn't received any notifications after killing them. Just the same questions again and again, phrased a little differently each time. Like the captain was interrogating her, and trying to get her to slip up.

At least if Mabb had been there Sarmon would have been too embarrassed to push too hard, but he wasn't. Big brother Mabb was sick.

Four days had passed since they fought the ferals. Three since they returned to the outpost. They'd dragged Norn to Master Trislain, and he'd done what he could for her — meaning he gave her advice on how to keep her cuts and scrapes clean and gave her a small vial of healing potion to apply twice per day until they were healed. He could have just healed her, but no — she just had to be difficult! She'd called him a pervert, accused him of trying to poison her, then took the vial and fled without even offering to pay.

Lara wasn't usually bitter or vindictive, but all she could think as the Herbalist disappeared out the door was Good riddance.

Mabb had politely asked to have his own blessures tended to, and Trislain had happily — so far as that word ever applied to the man — complied. There'd been a few cuts that remained an angry red, which seemed to bother the Healer, and Trislain must have asked Lara a hundred times if she was sure that she herself was entirely unhurt, over and over again until she wasn't sure if it was him or her own voice in her head asking — gods, his voice was annoyingly similar to her own! It only ended when her patience ran out, and she offered to strip down right there and let him inspect her himself. He finally left off then, in a fit of red-faced spluttering.

In the end Trislain told them not to worry. These things happened sometimes in the swamp, he said. Mabb was simply to return the next day for another treatment, and they'd get it taken care of. Then they'd reported to the captain, and he'd asked them to stay in the outpost for a few days while he and his staff considered next moves.

Now Mabb was laid up in the clinic with the worst fever Lara had ever seen on anyone. Simply based on that she would have expected Norn to lie dead or delirious in her home, but when the Captain had asked Lara to check on the woman — which she had, despite her own wishes — the shack had been empty. There was no trace of the Herbalist, other than her kit being scattered on various surfaces, as though she'd been tending to it.

Mabb was sick. Norn was gone, and besides her, two more people had been reported missing since their return. And Lara sat facing Captain Sarmon alone, wanting nothing more than to drink herself into oblivion. After checking on Mabb again, of course.

"The people I sent to retrieve the bodies have returned," the captain finally said. He sounded almost as tired as Lara felt. Badgering people must really take it out of you. "All of them were there, just as you said. None seem to have risen as revenants, which is a small mercy in all this. The question is who in all the swamps they are. Much of what's left of their clothing is odd, made of strange textiles and in patterns that no Tailor I've spoken to recognized. And no one so far has been able to identify a single one of them, which is ridiculous considering the small population of this place, even taking the… state of the bodies into account. We can't discount the idea of them all being Accidentals, but if so… how? And wherever they came from, we have no idea what's wrong with them."

"Those fucking crystals, for one," Lara groused. "Can I go now?"

"In a moment, Miss Lara. Please. There were no crystals on the bodies when we burned them, nor did Master Trislain find anything odd about them. Are you sure—"

"Yes, I'm fucking sure!" Lara snapped, kicking the captain's desk hard enough that the wood complained and bottles and papers shifted on the surface.

She expected Sarmon to yell at her for that, or at least to have some kind of angry reaction. It was a good desk, after all.

But he didn't. Instead he said, "I'm worried about him, too."

It took Lara a moment to parse that. "Mabb?"

"Yes. I'd like to see him, but… I doubt he'd appreciate that."

"Well, he ran all the way to here to get away from you," Lara said, then immediately regretted it at the pained look on the captain's face. "Sorry. Long couple of days. I… I'll tell him you wished him well, alright?"

"I'd appreciate that."

Once the captain finally let her go, Lara went to see Mabb at Trislain's clinic. It was late, damned late, but she needed to see him, and it was worth checking if the door was still unlocked. Besides, the latch on that door opened if you knew just where to kick it. She could just pretend that it hadn't been locked in the first place.

Beyond wanting to see her only real friend in the world, she also had an excuse. She knew that Mabb had been bored, so she'd gone to his home and picked up the book he'd been reading — something about mushrooms. How anybody could write such a thick book about the things, she had no idea. All she knew was that some were delicious, some killed you, and some let you have a really weird time, with the overlap between the three being considerable.

When Lara arrived at the clinic the door was indeed locked. And with the right kick at the right place, it popped right open. She went right in.

There was something strange in the air. She noticed that immediately. There was usually some residual Life-mana there, warm and comforting, and Lara's Connection was more than high enough to feel it without trying. But that night there was something else. A sense of cold and stillness, very distantly familiar. A stray wisp of Frost-mana, perhaps? She couldn't quite tell.

"Master Trislain?" She called out into the still and silent building, a little surprised that Trislain hadn't responded to the bell that rang whenever the front door was open. He'd have usually bustled out by now. She opened the door that led to the short hallway where the patient rooms were, and called again. "Master Trislain? It's Lara. I'm here to see Mabb?"

Still there was no reply for a few moments, but Lara's Perception told her that there was someone shuffling about in there. She was about to call again when Trislain spoke.

"No!" he called out, his tone as anxious as always. "Um, bad time! Closed! Come back tomorrow!"

As if. Lara had one person she wanted to see, one chance to keep herself from ending the evening at the bottom of a jug of hooch, and she wasn't about to back off just because the only Healer in the Splinter was a bit twitchy. "It's alright, don't worry about me. Just keep doing what you're doing," she called back, stepping through the door. Hell, it might be better if she didn't see him. It was always vaguely uncomfortable, like looking in a slightly skewed mirror and having her reflection not match her own movements. "I know where he is. I'll just pop in for a bit, drop off a book, and I'll be out again."

"No, no, it's really not a good time!" the Healer said, jerking into the hallway from… Mabb's room, Lara realized. He was wiping his hands on a towel. "You need to leave, Miss Silvervale!"

"Not a Silvervale anymore," she grumbled, which made the Healer's eyes widen a tad. "Captain wanted me to bring him a message," Lara continued brusquely, her stomach twisting. "What's wrong with Mabb?"

"He's… I'm sponging him down! He's not decent!"

"He has no interest in women, I have no interest in men, and we've seen each other naked before. He won't mind," Lara said, approaching the Healer. The words were entirely true, but they were as much an excuse as Trislain's own words. There was something indefinably wrong here. Something had her Danger Sense… not screaming, like it might for an unseen attack, but whispering. And while she'd never been interested enough in people to get her Sense Motive very high, it definitely wasn't telling her that Trislain was speaking the truth.

And there was that cold stillness in the air again, getting stronger as she approached. "Hey, Master Trislain," she said, "do you have a cold-box somewhere? With a leaky Engraving, maybe?"

"What? No," he said then set his feet and straightened his back. "Lara, you need to leave! This is my establishment, and—"

Lara neatly side-stepped the Healer and looked into the room. She got one good look inside — at the runes surrounding Mabb's bed, the candles, the awful pallor of her friend's skin and the little patch of milky-blue crystals erupting from it, and above all, the multitude of bloody pits that pocked it. Beside him, on the sheet, lay a thin knife, a pair of long-nosed pliers, and a pile of those crystals, bloody and with bits of flesh clinging to them.

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Then that cold stillness flared, settling in her soul like the voice of a dead loved one telling her to just let go, that the guilt and the loneliness could be over if she just let them. It would be so easy.

Her Danger Sense screamed, drowning out anything else. Lara didn't think. Technically, she didn't even react. Her Ability, Survival Instinct, simply took control and moved her. She threw herself forward onto the floor at the foot of Mabb's bed as there was a crack, like a bone breaking, accompanied by a sickly green light all throughout the small room. Lara twisted, laying eyes on Trislain. His eyes were wild with panic and despair, and that same green light wreathed his left hand. The towel in his right, she saw, was stained crimson. He started to reach for her, no doubt to unleash another… whatever that had been.

Lara threw the book at him.

Normally, that might not have done much. Especially not considering Lara's less than ideal position. But the damn thing must have weighed at least two pounds, and Lara had pushed her Strength to 25 and her Throwing to 15. Her Strong Back Enhancement didn't help at all, but her three Throwing Perks, one of which was Throw Anything, most certainly did.

The only reason Trislain survived was that Lara deliberately aimed for his hand, not his head. As it was, the book flew in a practically straight trajectory, smacking into the Healer's hand with a smack and a concert of wet, popping sounds as every bone below his elbow shattered. He immediately folded up around his ruined arm, howling at the agony. Lara didn't hesitate. She followed her attack with her repulsive Shaping, sending the Healer crashing into the opposite door and crumpling to the floor.

Lara just sat there for a moment, propped up with her hands behind her and breathing heavily as her conscious mind caught up with the last three or so seconds. Trislain had attacked her. She'd put him down. He looked like he was out cold. Was he alive? She didn't know, but probably. She checked, and no notification. That should mean that he was still alive. And Mabb was…

"Oh, gods, Mabb!" she cried, scrabbling to her knees. Mabb lay there, stretched out on the bed, his huge frame filling it. It was a wonder the thing could hold him. He was pale, and still, and silent.

"No," she whispered, taking his hand. It was cold, but not deathly cold. "Oh, please, goddess, please," she begged as she moved up to hold her hand over his mouth, to look in his eyes for a reaction.

His half-lidded eyes were wet and staring at nothing, but twitched every so often. His jaw hung, his mouth forming a dark, stiff oval, but there was a slow, faint movement of air.

"Oh, big brother," she said, carefully laying her head against his chest. His heart, so strong that she sometimes found it distracting during their quiet breakfasts, beat slowly but firmly.

"Thank you," Lara whispered, not sure whom she was addressing. Anyone would do. Any god who was listening and wanted to take credit could have it. "Thank you. Thank you!"

Then there was a groan from the door, and a clench-jawed, half strangled howl of pain. Lara turned, ready to blast the Healer with her repulsion again, but he was on his knees, his whole arm held straight up while he held the other in his lap. "Need…" he forced out. "Need to finish! The crystals… need to remove them!"

Lara just stared at him with a mix of fury, horror, and incomprehension. "Why— why didn't you just tell me? Why the hell did you attack me?! Was that fucking Death-magic?!"

"I—" Trislain's eyes went wide with horrified realization as much as pain. Then he folded forward slowly and banged his head on the floor, over and over, muttering, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Stupid! Stupid!" Once he'd finished, and with his own healing having muted the pain in his arm, he told her, in a voice that was still weary with remembered pain, "It needs to be finished. The crystals are the source of the infection. They need to come out. All of them. The others all died, but I had to try. This one might survive, brute that he is. But only if you finish what I started."

"You think I'd—" Lara began incredulously, but Trislain cut her off.

"Trust me, or don't. I can't heal him. I can't bring the fever down with the infection rampaging. It's out of my hands now, anyway. Do it, or watch him die."

"You said that you had to try," Lara said later, as she sat slumped against the wall. She was too tired and relieved to even be angry. Her hands were stained with her friend's blood, but Mabb was still breathing. Not any easier than before, but breathing.

She was exhausted. Letting Trislain heal Mabb as she worked, trusting the ritual circle on the floor to do what Trislain claimed it would — which was to keep Mabb's mana channels from collapsing as each crystal was removed — had been nerve-racking. She'd made him perform every Shaping slowly so that she could taste the mana he Channeled, ready to blast him into the wall if she detected even a hint of Death-alignment. But he'd done what she'd told him, directing her and closing the cuts she left behind. Now he sat across the room from her, a broken mirror image, probably more exhausted than she was.

"I had to try," he confirmed in a long, weary exhalation. He'd used the last of his stamina on his own arm, which was by now a swollen, blue and black mess.

"Why? You said the others all died. You tried to kill me for seeing what you were doing. What was the point of all this?"

Trislain shook his head. "Wouldn't have killed you. Just knocked you out so I could buy some time."

"Why?" Lara asked, more firmly.

"I thought… for some idiotic reason I thought you knew. I could taste your suspicion, and I thought you knew about the others. And I panicked. Simple as that. But I had to finish, to try to save him."

Lara scoffed. "For what? Pride? I doubt it's for compassion, Death-mage."

Trislain didn't flinch at the accusation. Nor did he deny it. "Pride, yes. Had to save one of them, at least. But also, because he's your friend. The only one you have."

Lara blinked. Of all the things he might have said, from the admitted pride to wanting Mabb beholden to him to some kind of infatuation with the big man, this had not even been up for consideration. "Because he's my friend?" she echoed stupidly.

"Really, Lara, formerly Silvervale," Trislain said, with a small, infinitely weary smile. "Don't tell me you haven't figured it out."

"What?" Lara asked. Then her eyes widened with bewilderment. "Master Trislain, I— you know I have no interest in—"

Lara cut off when Trislain closed his eyes and smacked his head back into the wall in sheer exasperation. "Gods above, Lara, no! Just look at me! Listen to me!"

And she did. She really looked at the near mirror-image of her across the room. She thought about how his voice was close enough to her own that sometimes Mabb had mistaken which of them were speaking if he wasn't paying attention. And she thought about Mabb's question when Trislain had first arrived, and at the way he sometimes looked back and forth between them. She'd thought he was just having her on, after that first question, but…

Trislain must have seen something in her. "They gave me away," he whispered. "They named me then foisted me off on the temple of the Lifegiver. A hidden spare. I didn't even know until a few years ago. Came to bring me back. So I ran. Here."

Lara just sat and stared. Her throat felt too thick to speak. Her heart was pounding in her ears, too loud for Perception to filter it out. She barely heard herself when she managed to force out a choked, "When they disowned me?"

"When they disowned you," Trislain confirmed.

"Why?" Lara asked again. She felt so tired. Overwhelmed. She wished that Sense Motive might tell her that he was lying, but all the traitorous Skill did was to scream Truth! Truth! Truth! and Level up. "Why come find me and… and then not say anything?"

His answer was simple. "I didn't come find you. I had no idea you were here. And when I saw that you were, well… I don't want to be found. Everyone here knows you. You drink, and you ramble. How long would it take for everyone to know that Lara Silvervale's twin brother had joined her in Misery Splinter?"

The words felt like a slap.

"I'm leaving," Lara said to the captain sitting across the desk from her. "As soon as the cycle ends, I'm leaving. This outpost can collapse for all I care, and the Splinter with it."

"That's a little harsh," the captain said, but it didn't sound like he disagreed.

"This fucking place turned a Healer into a Death-mage. Just beat the hope right out of him. Does that really sound like a place that should exist to you?"

The captain's silence spoke for him. When he finally spoke, it was to say, "People are still disappearing."

"I know. And for the next sixty-seven days, I will do what I can. But I have a price."

"What?"

"I want you to help me convince Mabb that he should come with me," Lara said. "You owe him that much."

The captain squirmed, clearly uncomfortable with the idea. Then he sighed and said, "Alright. I can— I doubt he'll listen to me, but I can try."

"And I want Trislain."

The captain sat up straight at that. "What? Why?"

"My reasons are my own. I want to take him with me. Non-negotiable."

"But… he's a murderer! He's to stand trial!"

"He's a Healer whose patients died in his care, as the result of a desperate, experimental treatment," Lara said coldly. "It's unfortunate, but far from the first time. Disposing of the bodies in secret is… yeah. Not great. But I want your promise that he comes with me when I leave, or I'll sit on my ass and drink my money away until the Waystone opens. Figure it out."

She was bluffing, of course. She'd try to stop the disappearances no matter what. Knowing what she did, she couldn't just sit and let people die. As soon as Mabb had recovered his strength, they'd be heading out again.

But the captain didn't know that, and Lara wasn't letting Trislain hang until she figured out how the hell she felt about all this.

Before the captain could answer, there was a knock at the door. The captain's secretary didn't wait for a reply but entered the room immediately. "Captain," he said, his eyebrows knotted with concern, "that woman, Norn? She's turned up. You should come."

The captain threw an apologetic look at Lara even as he stood. "I should—" he started, but Lara was only a moment behind him.

"I'm with you," she said simply, and the three of them headed out.

Trislain had sworn that when he last saw the Herbalist, she was still alive. He'd recognized the signs of infection in her and had gone to her shack to either bring her back to the clinic, try to treat her in place, or dispose of her. As it happened, she was more wily than he'd given her credit for — when he knocked on her door and announced himself, she'd snuck out an escape hatch she'd installed in the corner behind her bed. She hadn't been seen since.

Now she was on the square. And not only on the square, but at the Waystone, doing something that might or might not be obscene — Lara was glad for the angle sparing her the details. What Lara could see clearly was that the woman was naked and rubbing herself on the obelisk, muttering under her breath.

Lara was so glad she'd finally made up her mind to leave. This damn Splinter just kept getting worse and worse.

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