By the time the small concert dinner slowed, it was already late into the night. Just an hour before the soldiers would turn to their cots, ready to swap with the sleepers for a night shift on the walls. I sat on a table, lute on my lap, plucking strings and strumming simple chords as the soldiers around the tables swayed. None were drunk, but many were buzzed. They relished the warmth of mead soaking into their bones.

Mugs thunked against hardwood tables. A steady beat, bouncing against the crisp sound of my lute. A chorus of voices rose into the air. It was the singing of smiling men and women, over tables of food and good news.

Pour a glass to our great army, our mead and our wine,

Together we make history, and laugh and dance and dine,

Down a glass for our victory, raise your voices with mine,

Sing the end of our tragedies, and the start of good times.

Cheers to the end of our journey, and the end of our pain,

Beyond our meals today, let’s laugh together again.

Epilogue, the song was called. The song of endings and beginnings. It was sung when the Coalition of Four formed to beat back the enemies from Beyond. It was performed in my village, whenever soldiers passed through after a successful battle. Or when mercenaries drunk their fill in taverns. Fighters mourning the dead.

And it was the anthem of Riftwalkers, who brave the darkness of distant, alien realms.

Epilogue was a song of victories and tragedies and defeats. In its lyrics, I saw rolling hills and vast mountains. Distant roads, spilling over the edge of the horizon. Trees in the night. Glowbugs in the dark. Warm fires and soft blankets, draped over grass and soil. Music was a powerful thing, and when shared, it was even stronger still. While I played and the soldiers sang, the world slowed. Like it always did, when I played my lute. We were isolated in that moment. A fragment of the world that spared the time to reminisce of the past.

I closed my eyes and imagined all the hundreds miles behind me. The shallow lakes, the vast forests. The blighted lands and the flooded earth. And when I opened my eyes again, I looked forward.

Mountains waited ahead. A long climb up, up to where the Heartlands were.

Where father was waiting.

Seeing him alive with my own eyes would be my ending. The long, awaited resolution to all the things I’d lived through over the past few months. I didn’t know what came after that. I didn’t care.

I just wanted to see my old man smiling again. My previous existence was a small price to pay for that.

An arm draped itself over my shoulder and I felt myself smile. Aami sat beside me, grinning brightly under the firelight, pulling me in to sway with her as she stuffed her face with a turkey leg. We moved side to side and enjoyed the music. The company around us.

I stared up at the sky. If this is what life would be like from now on, then I wouldn’t mind.

Immortality wasn’t so bad with friends like her.

The song I played ended with the final tak of mug against table. There weren’t any cheers or clapping after. The song finished and we simply sat in comfortable silence, the low murmurs of conversation around us. A few laughs here and there. Smiling, I nudged Aami on the side with an elbow.

“Thanks for dragging me out here,” I said. “I didn’t know I needed that.”

She shrugged with a bemused look, “It was obvious that you did. But you don’t know a lot of obvious things, so that’s not a surprise. You’re a bit too single-minded for your own good.”

“Am I?”

“Remember that time you noticed a smudge on one of the crow lady’s instruments? Vivian? You spent two hours trying to wipe it off until you realized the smudge was on the inside.”

I smiled wryly, “So you saw that.”

“I have a lot of eyes,” she said, and an eye opened on the side of her face as if to prove a point. It closed, and Aami grinned. “I see a lot of the embarrassing stuff you do. I don’t think you even realize you do them, half the time.”

“Oh yeah? Pray tell, what exactly am I supposed to be embarrassed about?”

“You sing while bathing, right? One time, I saw you choke on water after pouring a bucket over your head. Then you looked around to check if anybody was watching.”

“Damn. You saw that?” I asked, before frowning. “No—the real question is why you were watching at all.”

“I was curious what amarid anatomy was like. And once that was done, I just started feeling smug about not needing to bathe,” she said, waggling her fingers at me with a smirk. “All the pores on my skin are miniature mouths. I just eat any dirt that gets on me, Rowan. I’m self-cleaning.”

“That’s gross, Aami.”

“You’re just jealous that I’m objectively better as a life form.”

Snorting, I smiled and flicked a finger at her forehead. Aami recoiled.

“Ow.”

“Leave my bath time alone,” I told her. “It’s my precious me time.”

“Your precious me time involves choking on water?”

I raised a hand to flick at her again, and Aami laughed, leaning away to dodge. She raised her hands in surrender. I shook my head and stood up, then yawned, stretching my arms over my head. The shoggoth gave me a curious look.

“It’s rare for you to be sleepy,” she said.

Another yawn escaped me. “I got a part of my Name back,” I said, rubbing at my eyes. “Since losing it was the trade I took to become immortal, it looks like a bit of my mortality returned to me. I actually feel tired, now. I forgot how annoying sleepiness was.”

“I tried it a few times. Sleeping. It was nice. And kind of addicting.”

“Well, you’ll be fine as long as you don’t indulge too much.” I turned and set my lute down on the table next to her. The soldiers around us were still relaxing, waiting for curfew, but I’d had enough of performing for the night. I was tired. Exhausted, even. Who knew working for seven straight days would be so tiresome?

Bemused, I turned my eyes to Aami. She was fiddling with my lute. Poking at the strings. She met my eyes and grinned, and I jerked my thumb towards the camp.

“Know a good place to sleep around here?”

“They made me a house with a few beds in it. I call it the Happy Room.”

“The Happy Room? I’m convinced,” I laughed, before that turned into a yawn too. My eyes felt heavy. Annoyed, I shook my head. “I’m going to go and sleep before I end up passing out here, so… good night? It’s strange, saying that again.”

“Isn’t it? Bassau kelar, Rowan,” Aami replied, and I blinked. A grin came over her face. “Impressed? Priscia taught me some Old Caeri. I’m going to go and help her clean up here, so go and sleep without me. I can’t be your blanket all the time, you know. You need to learn to live without me every now and then.”

How cheeky. It seemed Priscia was a good influence on her, helping Aami learn how to joke like this. Being a friend that could help the shoggoth open up. I was happy for her. Smiling wryly, I turned and waved Aami goodbye.

“Your real form’s a comfy blanket, but not that comfy. Don’t get cocky. You’re twice as good as my cloak at best.”

“Oooh, you’re going to take that back one day. Watch.”

Hmph. She’d get along plenty with Venti now, I was sure. The two wouldn’t fight nearly as much now that Aami had gained a tongue to bite back with. It would be fun to watch them argue, once we were reunited again.

But that was for another time. Now, only one thing mattered, and that was a nice, comfy bed.

I yawned and made my way to the ‘Happy Room,’ which ironically looked like a murder house. Dark windows, claw and teeth marks spelling out the house’s name, and a patch of poisoned soil to the left. Approaching, I frowned at the melted loam. The poison had soaked into the earth, which should have killed the surrounding trees by now. But someone had come by to fix it. The poisoned soil was dead, but a counter agent had killed the poison before it could spread.

And it was done recently. Just tonight. I turned back to Aami’s home and found a small tray, set aside next to the door. There was a cup of tea placed on it, kept hot by an activated fireseed at the bottom. The familiar spiciness of my favorite schaa drifted up to my nose.

Only one person I knew heated tea like this.

I reached down and picked up the cup, before noticing a piece of paper folded beneath it. I opened it.

Come to work tomorrow, it said.

My eyes lingered on the familiar handwriting, and the letters practically leapt from the page, speaking the words into my head in a voice I knew all too well. I sighed. Then I looked down at the cup, a deep coffee-brown. Strong tea. Good for cold nights and the rainy season, warming the bones and helping with sleep.

I downed it all with a few gulps.

And it tasted exactly the same as I remembered.

I entered the house, my thoughts empty, and found a bed in one of the rooms. I fell into it face-first, dumping my head into the single pillow there. I’d had my fun today. My break after a week of work. But that was over now. The welts of phantom lashes burned on my arms; a reminder of times long gone. I closed my eyes.

Tomorrow would be mother and I again.

When I came to work, mother was the same as always. Stern-faced and focused. Professional. It was as if the argument yesterday didn’t happen, and something that she’d decided was better swept under the rug. That was fine with me. Ancestors only knew how much I dreaded a conversation with her after yesterday.

This was good. This was fine.

“Extract the amalgam,” she said, and I nodded. I took an enchanted scalpel from the tools we had available and leaned over the mana cauldron. Inside, there was a quivering mass of mercury, rapidly forming pillars of amalgam with a small piece of aluminum. The resulting alloy blossoming out was lined with fragile, white lines. Like cracks. Light waited to spill out from within.

My scalpel sliced through the alloy with ease, avoiding each of the cracks on the exterior. I grabbed a piece with the tweezers and brought it out. Out into a petri dish, which mother placed inside a second activator.

“Testing quicksilver-aluminum amalgam,” she said, and I wrote down her words on a clipboard. “Inserting drop of poison from capsule B-33.”

The poison hissed against the amalgam. The lines of white light turned red and angry.

“Activating.”

Mother turned up the dial on the side. Magic flooded the inside of the activator’s chamber, condensing. Thickening until it was a tangible purple mist floating over the compound.

The amalgam sucked the mist in. The red light intensified.

And then it turned black.

My eyes widened. I lunged for the bottle full of negative energy beside me. Too slow. Mother tilted the activator up and to the side and—

A torrent of black metal exploded out from the device. A million little needles, stabbing straight up until it slammed into the ceiling and took out one of the lights. The room shook. Dust drifted down from the pierced ceiling and I sighed, slumping down on a chair next to the table. Mother stared at the massive pillar we’d stabbed into the roof, then turned her eyes to the gauges on the activator. She tapped on one and nodded.

“Potency increase of two hundred thirty six percent,” she noted. I wrote it down. And as soon as I did, the door to the room opened, and a bunch of Shissavi stationed to the lab came inside. They stared at the black metal, slowly corroding the wood around it. Turning it into bubbling, grey goop.

I waved a shooing hand at them. “Nothing to see here. Just a small mishap. Now get out before you breathe in any more of the air. You don’t have the immunities we do.”

One of them puked.

I sighed again. Mother tossed the poor man a vial without looking as the other Shissavi dragged him out, away from the poison-choked air. The door closed behind them with a hiss. Enchantments on the frame. Keeping the air inside. Mother ignored the toxins floating around and simply retrieved a bottle from one of the tables. She poured it over the black metal, and the silvery mixture immediately began to spread. It ate away at the poisonous alloy. The reaction hissed, releasing dark smoke that filled the lab.

Mother glanced at me, “What’s your resistance level?”

“Grade B. Last tested seven months ago.”

Which was high, normally. Even overkill for most alchemists. But this was a toxin the Blight Witch made. Even the aftereffects of breaking it down were deadly—enough to have pushed me to the limit of my resistance. It was a familiar feeling: the tips of my fingers heating up, the numbing in the back of my neck. It was the feeling of artificial antibodies inside me depleting themselves faster than they could reproduce.

Mother nodded at my answer and headed for the door. She opened it.

“Out,” she ordered, and we stepped outside. The air here was fresh. Safe. She walked the two of us down the stairs, into a waiting room in the floor below. It was a simple place—nearly unfurnished, save for a small tray of snacks and a table. An open window to the left of the door let air from the outside in. I could see the swaying trees and the druidcrafted buildings outside, rustling under storm winds.

Mother stepped past me and into the room, calm as ever. She turned on a heater placed atop the tray and placed a familiar bag inside.

The scent of tea filled the air. Citrus.

She poured herself a cup and I sat down, facing the window.

While we sat here, the purification runes above would filter the air in the lab. Rid it of poison while our antibodies replenished themselves. I let my mind wander to other things, yawning again. Mother set down a cup of tea in front of me and sat on the opposite end. She stared out of the glass as well, taking long, measured sips from her tea.

I looked down at my cup. Ashran’s face was reflected on the tea. But it was a different face. One that wasn’t like the two before.

That was the price this weave had to pay for flexibility.

Ashran was many things. He was an alchemist, a smith, and a bard. He was an adventurer, a traveler, and a stranger on the road. A mortal. His name meant adept, in Old Caeri. A mask to summon, adapting its rules to the skills I meant to use. But he would never have one face. He would be different each time. Hard to remember, and even harder to grow.

After all, how could a Name get stronger when its reputation was split between so many different identities?

But I didn’t regret it. Few things were worth more than freedom.

Mother set her cup down with a tak.

“Your face is different today,” she said, her gaze staying on the window. I nodded.

“It’ll be different every day. Tomorrow, too. And every day from that point on. The rules I follow don’t allow me to use the same face twice.”

She moved. A small nod, barely noticeable from the dip of her chin.

Silence passed between us for several long moments.

Mother broke it again.

“I taught you alchemy,” she said.

“You did.”

“When did I start teaching you?”

“Five years old.”

I saw her grip her cup tighter. By just a little bit. I leaned to the side, staring at the wall, my chin resting on the back of my hand. My tea was untouched. Mother took a sip from hers.

“How old are you?”

“I turned eighteen two months ago.”

“...Do you know?”

“Know what?”

“What year it is.”

My throat twisted into a knot. The answer was no. I didn’t. But I had my suspicions. I’d had them for a while already. My eyes moved to the tri-point compass fastened to my hip—something was still supposed to be under development. Now it was a common product. I carried one. Some of the Shissavi carried them, too.

Then I looked at my aged mother, with her shriveled hair and her wrinkly face, and…

I shook my head. Mother turned her eyes to her cup.

“I turned a hundred and eighteen this spring.”

She was ninety-seven when I was taken. Twenty-one years ago, time gone within the blink of an eye. Silence. She took a sip, and her eyes were distant.

“The Fae didn't just take your name. They took years from you, too. I don't know why. No one does," she said, sighing. "While you were gone, Rugsh and I moved to Felzan, where it's nicer for a family. I retired. Your younger brother turned twenty last week. And all of that... they took that all away from you.”

I stared at her, for a moment. Silent. Who was this woman in front of me, pretending that she cared? That she had a shred of empathy in her bones, when she'd used all my life to prove otherwise? I shook my head and turned to her, watching her stare out of the window as if she were in pain. As if this were her tragedy. I stared at her brittle, old frame. She was practically a stranger to me.

My eyes turned down, “You don’t remember anything about me, do you, mother?”

She shook her head. I nodded.

“And father?”

“He’s the same. But he's alive. Healthy, thanks to you.”

“And you saved him. You cured cancer and had another kid.”

“…We did.”

She didn’t look at me. I don’t think she would’ve been able to, even if she wanted to do it. I thought I was ready for that. Vivian had already explained the nature of my Namelessness to me, and I'd hoped that retrieving a part of my Name from the Traveler would do something. That it would bring me back.

I was wrong.

And I was ready to be sad about it. I was ready to cry and scream and break things in anger. I’d prepared myself mentally for all possible scenarios, and yet now, faced with the truth, I felt nothing. I’d gotten my answers. These were the facts, cold and unbending. There was no emotion I could use that could express what I felt about that. So I just sat and stared and I drank my mother’s schaa.

It tasted just like I remembered. And only I remembered.

We sat in silence for a while. The air was dead and dry and waiting, but what it waited for never came. A device around Elanah Kindlebright’s waist beeped.

And just like that, our break was over. I stood and headed for the door.

Elanah released a question into the empty air.

“Was I a good mother, Ashran?”

Her voice came from behind me, and I turned my head. I met her gaze, her desperate eyes. She looked at me now. Really looked. And for the first time in my life, she couldn’t hide the churning anxiety behind her gaze, threatening to tear her apart from the inside.

I could have saved her the pain. I could have lied to those eyes of hers, validating her. Making her believe that whoever I was, I’d loved her as my mother.

That wasn’t something I wanted to do. I turned the knob. Opened the door.

“Not really,” I said, and I stepped outside, and the door closed—

And then I was finally alone.