Silence. Stillness. Pain in my arm. The Huntsman watches me, expression inscrutable. My blood drips onto the dirt.

Come on, bite. Fae like names, don’t they? That one’s a classic.

When he speaks again, his voice is deathly soft. “You would offer your name, and all that entails?”

“I would.”

The Huntsman smiles. “You surprise me yet again, curiosity. Let us discuss terms.”

Yes! Yes! Yes! Inwardly I’m dancing, but outwardly I try to keep up my cold, confident mask. I can’t let him know how much I’m winging this. “Can you grant me the boon I desire? I need something that can guide me to places I don’t even know the existence of, on vague headings like ‘the nearest safe space’ or ‘a potential ally.’ Is that possible?”

“I possess such a spell, and the authority to bestow it. Pathfinding is a specialty of my kind.” His posture is amused and relaxed now, seeming to relish in the details.

“Excellent. It needs to interpret my requests benevolently and intelligently, that’s very important. I want it to act on my intent, not screw me on the letter. Oh! Can I cast it infinitely or does it have to be limited-use?” I’m getting excited now, fantasizing about my soon-to-be magic spell! I shouldn’t be letting my enthusiasm through but I can’t stop the smile that’s spreading.

“Do you think your name worth a thousand discoveries?” the Huntsman chides me. “Your compass shall be called upon thrice, and not a single use more.”

I don’t like hearing that, but now that we’re in the thick of the deal I have to be careful not to overstep. “Fine, not infinite, but only three? That’s so few. At least five.”

“Three has greater symbolic weight. If you wish for longevity, would you sacrifice benevolent intent?” The tone of his voice makes it clear he knows my answer.

Bad idea, very bad idea. “Three it is! I’m good with three, that’s a nice round number.”

“Then we have an accord. Thrice-seeking for a name.” He looks at my hairpin again, then back to me, and asks, “Have you invoked before? Or will this be your first contract?”

I don’t know what invoking is, though I can guess from context, so, “No, never.”

Amusement flickers across his face and passes. “How interesting. Well, simply follow my lead and do what feels right. The Dreamweaver will guide you, if you listen to her.”

Dreamweaver? Damn, I really want to ask about that but I get the feeling he’ll charge me for the information.

The Huntsman holds out a hand palm-up and summons green-gold flame. He calls out, “Azathoth, O Dreamweaver!” Eh? Azathoth? That Azathoth!? “I claim the right of channeling you granted my kind at the Fall of An Talamh. Bear witness to this contract and give it meaning. Hear our words and make them binding.”

The pressure in the air rises. A weight descends upon me, smothering and all-encompassing: the weight of a god’s attention. The world beyond fades into nothingness–not invisible, not gone, just not important compared to what’s happening right here. That pressure, that attention, it slides over my body like a thousand hands caressing me, studying me, cherishing me, dissecting me. I am a bug under a microscope, a treasured possession being held, detritus in a petri dish, a child in her mother’s arms. I want to vomit. I want to stay like this forever.

In that instant I feel more vulnerable than I did when the Huntsman’s blade was at my throat, and I don’t know–I can’t know–if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

The Huntsman shivers and closes his eyes, perhaps lost in the same internal conflict, but then he opens them again and those glowing orbs burn like golden fire. “The Dreamweaver watches. Let us not disappoint her.”

My mouth is dry, and I mutter dumbly, “Yeah.”

The Huntsman speaks, clear and bold, “The contract is thus: a bestowal for a name. I offer my library of spells to pull from, and my mana to serve as a vessel for the Dreamweaver’s grace.” The flame in his hand flickers. “Speak your dream, invoker.”

That oppressive, joyous, terrible weight settles on my shoulders and whispers to me in a language I can’t even begin to fathom, but some part of my brain knows exactly what is being said and obeys. My mouth moves without my will. “I want a compass that will lead me to destinations I don’t yet know exist. I want a pathfinder to all my desires.”

The flickering flame becomes a disk of fire, and then that crude circle becomes a wheel with three spokes. “I believe the spell [Find the Path] meets those criteria.” The Huntsman lowers his hand and the burning wheel stays fixed in place, floating in the air between us. He smirks again. “It would seem Azathoth agrees. But all magic comes at a price. I have offered a spell to be bestowed, the mana to bring it to life, and the grace of the Dreamweaver to bind it to your soul. What price shall you pay for this great gift, invoker?”

Deep breath. Goodbye, Morgan Mallory. I speak my old name and it vanishes from my mind. For a moment there is only emptiness, a hollowness in my chest, but then the void fills up as I take my new name and make it mine, make it the only name that rings true. Malice. I am Malice. I am whole again, as much as I can ever be.

My hand is lifted by the will of a god and the burning wheel sears itself into my palm. I grip my hand tight, an act of my will, not hers, and fight through the pain. The flames flicker out, but when I open my hand I see the wheel’s brand burned black against my pasty white skin. I feel a pulse of magic within my palm just waiting to be called forth.

The Rider’s gaze follows the motion of my hand with keen interest, an unreadable expression crossing his face. He continues, “The bargain is made, the contract etched. You have my seeking spell, and I have your name. It is complete.”

All at once the pressure falls away and the world comes back into focus. The Huntsman and I, the dirt and the creek, the trees and the sky. The world, free for a moment of that thing. I stumble and have to catch myself, shaken by what I just experienced. I take in deep gulps of air and will my body to relax from some of the gathered tension.

But not too relaxed. The Huntsman still watches me, so I can’t afford to let my guard down.

“Are you satisfied?”

I nod. “Yes, thank you. I will remember this.”

“See that you do.” The Huntsman draws his cloak about him and takes a step up the slope, but then he pauses and looks back at me. “Oh, mortal, before I go… I wish to know what new name you took, when you sacrificed the old to my care. What did you try to seal it with?” He smiles, and it is a cat’s smile, wicked and full of cunning.

Shit. Shit shit shit. He figured it out. I’m too shocked to respond, so I just stare at him mutely. I can’t deny it, I’ve already shown too much of a reaction.

The Huntsman smirks at my sudden freeze-up. “You are clever, girl, but you are not as clever as you think you are. You gave your name so freely because you believed you could replace it with something new. You thought you could escape the consequences of your deal while slipping away with the prize. Did you think you were the first to try and cheat the fae? You are not. The only thing special about you is that you didn’t even need to be convinced. So many have taken the deal when I offered it, confident in their little trick, and let me assure you, it does not work.”

He says a word, my word, my name, but it slips out of my grasp before I can understand any syllable of it. My whole body stills, paralyzed, trapped inside my skin. I try to move but my body won’t listen, I try to speak but my throat is closed and my lungs are burning and I can’t breathe, why can’t I breathe, I–

He says that name again and I gasp, greedily gulping in fresh air. “A trick for a trick, and so the old rules are observed. A name once given has hold for all eternity. You are mine for all eternity.” He laughs and the fury blooms inside me, but it’s tempered by the pain in my arm and the memory of being breathless. “Don’t worry, I won’t take you now; I wish for you to go out into the world and use that little spell to become exceptional. Grow, change, evolve, and become worthy of joining my collection.”

This is bad. This is really bad. I fucked up. I already regret this deal, but what choice did I have? “Collection? What do you mean ‘collection?’”

The Rider just laughs again. “Poor, deluded creature. Now: your name.”

I still hesitate. “You can’t have both. I’m not letting you own me twice over.”

Even more smugness creeps into his stupid bastard face. “Oh, child, what bedtime stories have you been listening to? There is a whole world of difference between offering your name in dreambound contract and introducing yourself by it. You have my word as a Huntsman that telling me your new name will not give me further power over you.”

The air shivers at his proclamation, yet still I hesitate. I’ve already made one fatal mistake today. The Huntsman narrows his eyes and adds, “I could just make you say it, but I’m being nice as a reward for your entertaining behavior.”

I grimace. I square my shoulders and try to put some fire back into my voice. “Fine. But I want to hear your name too, fae. That’s only fair, isn’t it?”

Amusement returns to his expression. “An exchange of information, then, as our third and final transaction.” He makes a sweeping bow and introduces himself, “You may know me as Eirdryd Llewellyn of the Wild Hunt, your master-to-be.”

I curl my lip. “Eirdryd. You can call me Malice. Malice of Nowhere.”

A pause. A long pause, and I can see mirth glittering his eyes and a thousand barbs waiting on his tongue. He starts laughing, practically cackling, and when he finally gets a hold of himself it is to say, “Malice? Really? That’s what you went with? You could pick any name at all, and you chose Malice?”

I cross my arms defensively and pout. “What? It’s a cool name! It’s like ‘Alice’ for wonder and adventure, but then you add an ‘M’ in front to make it dark and spooky. Malice, the incarnation of ill will. It’s cool!” He stifles a snort and I die inside. “It’s…it’s supposed to be intimidating. To make people take me seriously.”

“Good luck with that, Malice. And I do mean that sincerely; become worthy of serving me, lest I regret this investment. You would not like to disappoint me.”

Eirdryd Llewellyn turns away from me with another laugh and starts walking toward the tree line. I curse him out under my breath as he leaves. Bastard asshole fae thinking he gets to decide what is or isn’t a cool name.

In fairness, Malice is an extremely edgy name, and we knew that when we picked it. At least we didn’t go with “Shadow” or “Lady Ravendark” or any of your other old characters.

So I’m an edgelord, so what? Edgy is cool!

Sure it is, sweetie.

I glower at my treasonous inner monologue. I know I’m just trying to distract myself from the awful fact that my stupid trick failed and I’m now bound to a faerie until the end of fucking time. Stupid idiot girl trying to outwit a monster out of myth.

You are not as clever as you think you are.

By now the Huntsman is thoroughly out of sight so I can finally drop character entirely and clutch at my arm, teeth gritted through the pain. Pretending to be a badass is hard. There were so many moments I thought for sure he’d call my bluffed confidence and murder me on the spot, but now I realize the bluff never mattered; my life was never in danger because it was my autonomy he wished to take, and I just handed it to him.

I’m more and more weirded out that I wasn’t afraid at any point in that conversation; I really, really should have been. Was that lack of fear what made Eirdryd interested in claiming me? Was it something about the hairpin he kept glancing at? Could he tell I’m from another world?

Another spike of pain forces me to consider my arm. The wound hurts but it isn’t deep, and if there’s any poison I haven’t felt the effects yet–and with all the running I did, the poison should definitely be in my system by now. So it’s probably not going to kill me, but it still slows me down and I really need both arms. Do I drink the potion now and risk not having it later, or save the potion for later and risk losing because I wasn’t in top form? Not that my top form is very impressive.

Maybe we should run another experiment. I have a sneaking suspicion that I drank more than I needed to that first time in the stairwell. This time, when I pull the potion out of my backpack and remove the stopper, I try to drink only a sparing amount. When I lower the potion there’s still nearly half of it left, but I feel that warmth coursing through me just as before. The wound on my arm closes up like it was never there, and the warmth slowly passes.

Welp. I definitely drank too much last time. I stow the potion and contemplate what I’ve learned from my encounter with the Huntsman.

Eirdryd gave me a lot of data to work with, and I think I had my first proper encounter with the god that put me here: the Dreamweaver, Azathoth, who happens to share a name with the blind idiot god of the Cthulhu Mythos. In the Mythos, Azathoth is a mindless force of chaos who dreams the universe into being by accident, but the presence I felt in that moment seemed anything but mindless. Whatever she is, the Azathoth of this reality is neither blind nor an idiot.

I still need more data, ideally from someone willing to give me baseline exposition about this setting without having to bargain for it and play word games. I can’t make any real conclusions about Azathoth–about anything–until I have a basic understanding of this world and its rules.

I can start by getting a taste of the magic system. It’s a fascinatingly strange experience to hear square brackets around a word. I hold out my hand and focus on the spell within the brand. “[Find the Path].” The three-spoked wheel of flame comes forth once more, gently spinning above my hand, but as I summon it I see a diagram in my mind’s eye, a dazzlingly complex array of interconnected shapes and symbols.

I have no idea what any of those mean. I imagine one of the shapes moving and it starts to shift in an arc. I focus on a symbol and see other symbols surrounding it, and I find that I can connect them together, split them apart, or select one to be the focus of a particular part of the diagram. The diagram seems extremely malleable, but I have no idea what any of it means.

When I focus on a symbol below all of the others, disconnected from the rest of the diagram, it expands into what is very obviously a text box: it is a wide black box with a white border, and there is a white underscore blinking in and out just above the bottom left corner.

Okay! We are definitely in litRPG territory! Bracket-named spells that bring up arcane code and a text box? Now this is starting to feel like a more conventional isekai. More of the video game mechanics and less of the horrible monsters and asshole fae, please and thank you.

I dismiss the spell by willing it to dissipate; I want to try it out, but I need to finish my business here first.

I start digging through burnt husks. The tarantula-dogs are mostly ash and char now, but on one of them I find my faithful companion still embedded in spidery flesh. I rip the knife out of the dead monster. Knaifu, I missed you! But, oh my, what’s this? Just an ordinary kitchen knife, but that’s no ordinary kitchen knife!

I had expected the Huntsman’s flames to warp the knife past the point of usability, but instead the blade is longer and thinner, its shape closer to that of a dagger. There’s a dull heat to the knife, and no matter how much ash I wipe off on my skirt there’s still more clinging to the knife. When I dip the knife in the creek a few bubbles rise up, but the blade doesn’t emerge any cleaner.

Magic item? Please tell me it’s a magic item now. I swing the knife around experimentally and find more weight behind my swings, yet paradoxically I seem to be moving a little bit faster, or maybe my motions are just more precise. I still feel limited by my paltry arm strength and lack of training, but it’s like the dagger is helping me along, nudging me to be more efficient. Definitely magic. Fuck yes! First magic item!

I grin wide at the dagger and hold it out parallel to the ground. “You and I are going to do wonderful things together, my beloved blade. And like all magic weapons, you need a name. I think I shall name you…the [Ashthorn]!”

The blade catches fire. Like an idiot I tighten my grip instead of releasing it, but when the green flames wash over my hand they don’t hurt me. I’m holding a flaming dagger and my on-fire hand is not burning.

“YES!” I scream. “Fucking yes! Yes, yes, yes!” I twirl around giddily and sing, “I’ve got a flaming dagger, I’ve got a flaming dagger!” I whoop and swing the dagger around wildly, enraptured by the trail of fire.

It’s the same shade as Eirdryd’s fire, or close, and I can’t help but draw a visual comparison to Greek fire. Curious, I dip the dagger into the stream and am delighted to see the flames continue to burn unaffected by the flowing water. When I retrieve the dagger a few flickers of flame cling to the water, though it doesn’t take them long to die out.

Very cool that it can’t be extinguished by water, but that does pose a question: how do I extinguish it? The dagger lit up when I named it, so maybe saying the name again will deactivate the effect. I wonder… I didn’t hear Eirdryd speak the spells that killed the spider-dogs or the spell that let him walk on water–if those were spells–so maybe just thinking and focusing will do the trick? I focus on the blade and will it to extinguish. [Ashthorn].

The fire goes out. Hells yes! That is awesome. Okay, magic item acquired, now let’s put that spell to work.

With the dagger in my left hand I turn my attention back to the brand on my right hand. “Alright, compass, let’s give you a spin.” [Find the Path]. I summon the burning wheel, but something feels…off. I can’t remember exactly how the diagram looked before, but there are definitely shapes and symbols missing from it now. What the fuck?

I dismiss the spell. “[Find the Path].” The wheel flickers to life and the diagram is back in its full glory. Are you fucking kidding me? The spell behaves differently if I think it or if I say it aloud? Do all spells work like that? Argh, I hate that but I can’t do anything about it yet. Okay, focusing.

I focus on the text box with its blinking underscore. “For my first wish I want you to lead me to the person, place, or thing that my future self would most recommend I ask you to lead me to.”

Nothing happens. Or to be more accurate, I see my words appear in the text box and then the whole box turns red and the text vanishes. Yeah, I kind of figured time fuckery was off the table, but I had to check.

“Okay, how about this: lead me to that which would give me the greatest gain at the lowest cost, accounting for the tools at my disposal and my ability to travel.”

Again, the text goes red and vanishes. Damn, that’s still too vague? Am I giving it too many variables, or just the wrong variables? Okay, let’s try again.

“I want to find someone who is amenable to becoming my ally, can teach me about this world, and will help me get stronger.” This has to be specific enough.

Sure enough, the text goes blue this time. The whole diagram shifts, shapes clicking into place and symbols appearing, disappearing, and drawing lines to each other. Too much of the diagram changes for me to make any sense of it, but it is a fascinating insight. The shift in diagram only takes a few seconds, and when it’s done moving a symbol in the very center of the diagram–which had stayed still through the whole process–starts blinking.

I focus on that symbol and it flashes blue, and then the diagram vanishes. The burning wheel spins and the three spokes shift from being radial lines to being the three sides of an arrowhead. After a few seconds of spinning the wheel stops in place with the arrow pointing downstream. I move my hand around and the arrow adjusts each time to keep its direction stable. Alright, there’s my heading.

I stay by the water’s edge and take a leisurely pace, feeling more confident now that I have a spell and a magic dagger. I hum a song to myself as I stroll. I can finally get to the adventure part of this fantastical adventure. Of course, I’m sure there will be more nightmarish horrors blocking my way, but what’s the worst that can happen?

Don’t answer that, Azathoth. I know you’re listening.

I have no way to gauge time so I don’t know how long I’ve been walking, but I’ve gone through a full album of anime openings by the time my surroundings finally change. As twice before, the transition is sudden: one second I’m walking along with no end in sight, the next second I’m at the end of the stream and standing on the edge of a cliff that falls away into a vast nothingness.

The slope is gone, the dirt I’m standing on level and stretching off to either side of the river with no sign of trees. The gentle creek is now a tumultuous waterfall, water cascading off the side of the cliff and falling down, down, down into an infinite open space. The pale blue sky darkens as it falls below what would be the horizon, becoming utter blackness directly beneath me.

In front of me, a ways past the waterfall, I see the sheer cliff face of a floating island. Another floating island, I correct, because that’s almost certainly what I’m standing on. Past these two islands, in the infinite expanse, I see dozens more chunks of land drifting in an empty sea. Lush jungle, icy mountains, rolling plains, and even one chunk with what look like sand dunes.

The islands aren’t all at the same elevation, but they are arrayed in a loose ring formation around a central point. The scattering of islands curves away in either direction and meets together far in the distance.

In the center of the ring, at the heart of it all, floats a tower of jagged black glass.

Well then. Guess we found the final dungeon.