The great rush of water swept all four of us up, carrying us out of the chamber as the door was flung open. I tried not to gasp in shock and instead held my breath as well as I could as the wave carried us up the stairs, rapidly flooding the outer room. Despite how strong its push was, the water was gentle with us, and never battered me enough that I feared injury or having the wind knocked from my lungs.

The wave crashed down, shoving us into and through the channel, back out into the cavern and up through the well. The impurities that we hadn't fully cleansed on our way down fled at the wellspring of clear water, banished into nothingness at its passage. The firelight that had shone down into the well earlier seemed dimmer somehow as we neared the surface.

With a tremendous splash, I was hurled from the well first. I spread my wings and managed to land on my feet, skidding to a stop on the muddy ground. Not all of the others were so lucky, and Arthur and Brand tumbled away from the well as Griffin alighted carefully beside me.

«We're back in the village,» I said thinking out loud. «We need to get out of—!»

I stopped when I turned to look back at the well. The clear waters were pouring from it like a fountain, washing out over the stone brick walls and soaking into the ground, even as saturated as it was. Surrounding the well were what appeared to be most of the village, lying on the ground. Dead. They didn't have any apparent injuries, but even those that laid away from the well or had their heads facing to the side, out of the rain, spilled water from their mouths, as though they had been drowned on dry land. They were still fiendish, an impurity I guessed the clear water couldn't cleanse, even as it purged the mud of soaked blood and rotting matter.

«They're all dead,» Griffin breathed.

Arthur righted himself and cast a morose look over the bodies. «Guess that's what the spirit meant when it said it had "business" up here,» he said grimly. «At least they won't be able to stop us from going home.»

Griffin knelt down before the ring of bodies around the well. «I feel like it didn't have to be this way,» they murmured. «This is so gruesome.»

«If there was another way, we couldn't have known about it right now, let alone used it,» I said. I went to their side, holding a wing over their back, trying my best to comfort them as a leader and a friend. «They were too far gone. Not to mention part of a cult, I think. I doubt they would have even wanted a cure, if they were offered one.»

«Hey, can we talk about that?» said Arthur. «I'm not remembering wrongly, right? That house over there, that's where Vicar Barbosa grew up?»

I glanced up at the ruins of the house. In the time since we had descended into the well, it had fully collapsed from the fire, the last embers burning themselves out in the rain. Now it was little more than a charred wreck. «I think that's what they implied,» I said. «They called it "the temple" and the "prophet's home".»

"Prophet of what?" Brand wondered aloud.

«We might never know,» I said. «All his worshippers are dead.»

"Except the city," said Brand. "He's growing a new garden there."

«If we wanted to search their houses, now's the time,» said Arthur. «No one to stop us.»

«True,» I said. «We might as well try and get all the information we can about this place.» I nudged Griffin. «Do you want to…?»

They finally stood up, taking a deep breath and pressing a hand against their head. «I'm still hurting,» they said. «I'll come. We shouldn't split up too much. I just wish we could bury them. Or something.»

Brand was suddenly on their other side, keeping them steady. "I will come with you," she said. "We can burn them. Return them to fire. It purified the water, perhaps it will purify the dead as well." She glanced at me and jerked her head towards Arthur. "You two search."

I nodded and took a few slow steps back. Griffin leaned against Brand's shoulder, keeping their eyes on the bodies. But they were supported. Brand stayed close.

«We'll do that,» I said.

Arthur and I spent nearly half an hour tearing every house that even looked like it had a difference to the others apart. Sometimes literally, since he insisted on checking for things that might be hidden beneath the floorboards or in the ceiling. All in all, there was very little. Each house seemed to have a bed, some of which were full of discarded snake skins, and a few storage containers filled with rotting food. Bloodstains that had a human smell were everywhere, but they were especially noticeable on the tables, and I disturbingly wondered if they had been subsisting on the flesh of people wandering the woods. Based on what the man with the cannon had said, it wasn't a bad guess.

In terms of anything that might give us some information, most of what we found were small charms and baubles made from bone. Most were abstractly shaped, splintered and snapped into geometric shapes that didn't have any clear meaning, and the rest were skulls, which seemed to have a place of particular reverence. There were far too many skulls to have just come from the village, though, and they didn't look like the skulls from the catacombs.

In a few houses, we also found small scraps of parchment, shards of bone, or strips of leather, all written or engraved with a symbol, the same one we had found underground:

«This has to mean something,» I said after we found the third copy of the rune.

«Maybe it's a holy symbol for their cult?» said Arthur. «Like the Luminary Cross is for the Church?»

«That's probably true, but the cross represents Gideon's execution,» I said. «It's a symbol, but it has a meaning. But I have no idea what this is supposed to represent. And I want to know, because it might give us some kind of idea about Barbosa's plans.»

«Well, we're definitely not going to find out ourselves,» said Arthur. «It's not like these bones have a lot of context. Maybe Provost Dulin can tell us.»

«I think that's our best option,» I agreed. I glanced over at him as he nodded, prodding a little further through the chest in the house we stood in, and gave him a nudge with my elbow.

«Hey,» I said. «You did good.»

He rubbed his shoulder where I elbowed him. «Thanks?» he said.

«In general,» I amended. «But I mean down there, there was that silver on the altar. And it didn't seem to distract you at all. I know there wasn't much of it, but it's still a huge improvement over what happened this morning with Lady Florence.»

Arthur's mood immediately soured. He dug through the chest more fervently. «I guess,» he said. «I don't know how much that counts. I couldn't smell it over the stench of the water and blood in there.»

«I don't think it's just the smell that gets us when it comes to precious things,» I argued. «I know that I can tell gold by touch. It feels good to hold, even if I can't smell or see it. So you being able to leave that treasure alone was impressive, and a good sign.»

Arthur sighed. He didn't look convinced, but he put on a fake smile for me. «We'll see,» he said. He abruptly gave up on the chest and marched outside, looking towards the building Brand and Griffin had chosen. It was one of the smaller shacks, and they had just finished dragging the bodies inside. Brand did the honours of starting the fire, gently heating boards on the wood with her breath until any moisture had boiled away and the wood caught fire. The flames sustained themselves after that, spreading slowly to engulf the house from the inside out, large enough by the time they breached the walls that the rain couldn't fully dampen them, only contain them to the house's perimeter.

Arthur walked out to stand behind those two, watching as the flames grew, and I followed behind. None of us spoke. We had to stay until the fire died, to make sure it didn't escape and set fire to the forest. Though Brand's work had made the flames spread quick, and the rain would help them die once the work was done, it was still a long time to wait. No one spoke, except for Griffin continuously muttering small prayers under their breath, giving the rest of us a lot of room to be with our thoughts. Too much time, perhaps.

I went back to how I had breathed fire. The flames that had burst from my tail had gone out, and I wasn't certain I could summon them again, but the Fiend in my head was still quiet. At this point, it actually felt bizarre to be alone in my own mind. It felt freeing, but in a different way than I expected it to. Less like I had cut something out, and more like I had put something back. I thought about Grace's advice. Had that really been it? Just…try not to hate that part of me so much, and it would go away? I wasn't sure, but whatever had happened, there was a sense of unease that I couldn't shake. I didn't think that struggle was over, even if it had died down. For now.

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«I think it's dead.»

Arthur's comment brought me back to the moment. The fire had dimmed, and the roof of the shack finally caved in, burying the corpses inside beneath a mound of charred rubble that steamed in the heavy rain. Griffin flinched at the sound, but turned their head up with a look of satisfied catharsis once the debris had settled.

«Yeah, it is,» they mumbled. «I think it's time to go. Morning is getting closer.»

I sighed. They were right, and I didn't want to hear it. I wasn't looking forward to whatever little amount of rest we were in for tonight. We held long enough for Brand to inspect the wreck of the shack and ensure that there were no cinders left that could restart the fire, and then walked back up the hill to ready ourselves for take off.

«Which way do we need to go?» asked Arthur. «We got a little turned around out there, what with the pig and the darkness and the rain.»

«South, I think,» I said. «The path from the college went north, so south should be close to the right way.»

«…okay, which way is south?» Arthur added.

Griffin pointed towards where the village was from the hill. «That way. But we should be able to see the lake pretty easily if we go in that general direction. Then we can keep the shore on our right and we'll eventually find the college.»

Arthur made a sound that was probably supposed to be a whistle, but came out as a serpentine hiss. «You're good at this,» he said.

Griffin shrugged. «I had to be,» they said. They spread their wings. «Come on. I want to go to bed.»

We kept our formation tight so we wouldn't lose each other in the night. It was only a few minutes after we climbed into the air that the exhaustion started to set in for me. The spirit's pure waters seemed to have purged the weak feeling that the corrupted water had instilled in me, but all the running and swimming and breathing fire and the lack of sleep still got to me. But the college wasn't far, and I kept it up long enough that it came in sight, and we landed in the courtyard, all of us too tired to bother with the formality of landing outside and walking all the way back to the study hall.

We could hear Provost Dulin still on his rocking chair on the balcony, so we didn't bother with knocking and headed right in, climbing up to the second floor and then back outside. He was asleep, apparently wholly unbothered by the rain. His aged face seemed to sag even more in the weather, giving him the appearance of a half-rotten corpse or a melting candle. I cleared my throat and he stirred, pulling his eyes open one at a time.

"Ah. You have returned." He glanced up at the black sky, as though able to glean anything beyond the fact that it was raining. "It is past midnight."

«My apologies, sir, we ran into more trouble than we expected,» I explained. «Were you aware that there's a village of cultists just north of here?»

«Northeast,» corrected Griffin.

"As I said, we so rarely leave the college these days," said Dulin. "I do recall mention of an old 'Wynnon' village, though I had thought it to be abandoned, with the corruption the Witchweald has suffered as of late. I suppose you must have had an unfriendly encounter?"

«Yes,» I said. «They were all infected, and feeding people—maybe each other—to a corrupted spirit. I think the spirit stole your item, but we were able to get it back.»

Arthur retrieved the snail shell from his pack and handed it to Dulin. The provost reached out for it with both hands, like he was reaching for a baby, and gently cupped the shell, holding in his lap as he gazed lovingly at it. The depth of emotion on his face made me a little uncomfortable to be watching.

"Ah, dear augur, how we have missed you…" Provost Dulin murmured.

I shuffled in place, a little afraid to ask one of the many questions in my head given the reverence the provost had for the empty husk in his hands. «So…what is it?» I eventually settled on. «It just looks like a shell.»

"Though it appears empty, it is not," said Dulin. He stood, his joints loudly protesting as he did, and hobbled to the metal frame at the edge of the balcony. The shell slotted into a small round depression at the bottom of the innermost ring of metal, hanging down and slowly dribbling amber slime on the apparatus below it.

"These are precious creatures," Dulin continued. "Living proof of a truth the Church wishes kept quiet. That we stand where greater beings once stood. The wise Great Ones were the first to touch this earth, and these creatures that shine with the amber of starlight are witnesses of their passage, and heralds of their presence. The infinite room within its shell has provided ample time for our dear augur to retreat and turn its attention to the greater cosmos, but with time, we will coax it into the light, so that we can witness its knowledge first-hand. Thank you for returning it to us. Years' worth of work have been saved from annihilation by your actions."

I was starting to understand why the people of Yorving weren't so fond of the college. This talk of infinite space and the greater cosmos and witnesses and augurs sounded like mad rambling. If what Dulin were saying was true, that would mean that a snail, a simple pest, had received direct contact from the enlightened Great Ones, putting it on the same level as the prophet Gideon. I wasn't especially religious, but that sounded deeply blasphemous.

«So how does this help us find the Pure Serpent?» Griffin asked. «Do we need to wait for it to come out of its shell?»

Dulin laughed a deep, ominous laugh. "That would make many things easier. But I can't imagine it being achieved within our lifetimes. No, this augur provides us with a potent source of magical power for our lens. You see, an ordinary glyphic lens can reveal distant locations when pointing towards water. But the augur's slime is amber. It holds powerful vis of a peculiar character, one which can bridge gaps of insight. The release of all vis allows the bridging of gaps to create magic—the gap between the idea of fire, spoken as a Primaeval word, and physical fire, for example—but this ancient vis, soaked in the presence of enlightenment, can connect things that the wielder has no knowledge of. An ordinary glyphic lens can only scry on locations the user already knows, but with our augur returned, this one can show us one we do not know. One perhaps, in the realm of spirits, where the Pure Serpent may be hiding after its wounding."

«Oh,» said Griffin. «Good.»

We stood in awkward silence for a moment as Dulin sat back down, until I cleared my throat and pulled a small piece of leather from my own pack. «Since you're so knowledgeable,» I said, «there was something else I wanted to check about that village before we went back home. We found this symbol in many of the homes, and…underneath their well, in the catacombs they broke into. Do you know what it means?»

I presented the strip of leather, and that odd wavy symbol etched into it. Dulin squinted at the piece for a moment, then suddenly recoiled, nearly falling out of his chair in horror as he turned his head sharply away.

"No!" he cried. "Do not show that carving here! Please, you must destroy it!"

I hastily put it back into the bag. «Saints, I'm sorry, it's just a drawing. Is it a spell of some kind? Something dangerous?»

"Dangerous, yes," said Dulin, finally calming back down. "This phrenic carving is a special kind of rune, which captures the essence of a piece of knowledge. We have found them in ancient, sacred places, where the Great Ones themselves spoke. And that carving possesses knowledge most foul, something no true Great One could utter. Please, destroy it at once. Merely witnessing its contours is enough to contaminate an otherwise clean mind."

«It can't be that dangerous, if it was all over the walls of the catacombs,» said Arthur. «Wouldn't it have killed the builders? Or us?»

Dulin grimaced. "There are some who find the strength granted by corruption enticing. And there are those who seek knowledge without restraint. This is how forbidden ideas, once formulated, become immortal. Which is why I must ask that you destroy that carving, to contain what knowledge it threatens to reveal."

I glanced at my bag, unsure. «I don't think I got any kind of knowledge just from looking at it,» I said. «It just looks like wiggly lines to me.»

"You may not know precisely what you have learned," said Dulin. "For which, you may count yourself lucky. But having seen a phrenic carving, its information must fester within your mind somewhere."

I felt worry take hold of my heart as I remembered how the Fiend had been silent. Maybe it was being changed by the carving? Or maybe it was containing the knowledge it held? None of the others seemed to know what sort of knowledge Dulin was talking about, so that could also explain how Arthur had avoided losing it to greed at the sight of the silver in the spirit's chamber. Judging by his growing look of horror, he was having the same realisation.

«…Right,» I said, suddenly even more eager to get home. «We'll get rid of it as soon as we can. Thank you for your assistance, Provost Dulin. I assume that you'll contact us when you find the Pure Serpent?»

He nodded. "I will endeavour to. If you wish to return sooner, however, I would not be opposed. I think that it may do us some good to have external allies here at the college in these uncertain times."

«We'll see,» I said, moving over to the side to take off for our return journey. Dulin lethargically waved his cane at us as we rose into the dark sky of night so deep it was nearly morning. The rain was finally beginning to slow, at least, giving us some more visibility to find our way back home.

«Do you think he's…okay?» asked Griffin.

«He might catch a cold if he stays out in the rain all night,» I said. «Or pneumonia. Hopefully not that.»

«No, I meant, did anyone else think he sounded a little crazy? I didn't understand any of what he was saying.»

«I got it a little, I think,» I said, and Arthur gave an agreeing nod. «But I doubt most of it was relevant. Whether gods were ever here is just history, and that realm-of-spirits stuff hopefully won't matter after we're done healing the Serpent. I'm curious what that other "phrenic carving" in the ruin meant, the one with the circle and line. And where they came from, if they're a direct translation of information.»

«I don't know,» said Griffin. «Well. Maybe I know, but I don't know I know. I think. It's confusing. I feel like I got nothing from those carvings at all.»

«Maybe it'll just spring into our heads eventually,» I said. «Like something you thought you forgot a long time ago and suddenly remember. I just hope that "corrupt" carving doesn't do anything too awful. Actually—» I tossed the scrap of leather to Brand. «Can we burn it now? I don't want to risk the others seeing it before we destroy it.»

Brand duly sparked a jet of flame from her mouth and held the leather up to it. All the moisture rapidly boiled off before it began to char and curl up, the symbol rapidly fading into unrecognisability. I was satisfied with that, and just to be sure it didn't affect any of the rest of the flight, we dropped the ashes over the fields between Yorving and our castle.

The rain had stopped by the time we arrived back. I was so exhausted that I nearly curled up in the courtyard and just accepted that I'd be dirty in the morning, but I managed to haul myself upstairs and into our room. Grace was already asleep, but she sat up when I entered.

"You're back late," she observed. "I was worried. Productive day?"

«Yeah,» I said. «It was.»

Grace tilted her head, hearing the hidden emotions in my voice. "Want to talk about it?"

«In the morning.» I flopped down on the floor, curling up and resting my head near Juniper's slumbering form. «Right now, I want to sleep.»

Grace obliged, and returned to sleep herself.

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