“Pippy,” Livia greeted as she emerged onto the roof. “You wanted to talk to me alone?”

“Yes, I do,” Pippy answered with a flatter tone than was usual.

Livia raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong?”

“Well… that’s just it. I can tell there’s something wrong, just…”

Livia sighed and plonked herself down next to Pippy. “Alright, let’s here it.”

Pippy regarded her fellow outlander with a soft smile before continuing. “So… I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that I keep correcting names for things.”

“Everyone has noticed that, Pippy,” Livia prodded.

“Yeah, yeah,” Pippy half laughed, “I know it’s getting annoying, but… there is a reason I keep doing it.”

I knew it, Livia thought. “Which is?”

“They’re… wrong. Krey, Emilie, Tecal, the rangers— all of them. They’re all…”

“Wrong? Wrong how?”

“Wait, no… it’s not them, it’s… Berodyl. There’s something deeply wrong with Berodyl.”

“What?” Livia’s brow furrowed. “How so?”

“I don’t know, but…”

Pippy stood up. “Think about it; Berodyl, a crossroads world at the centre of the worlds, at the seat of magic, and… it gets abandoned. Why? And not just abandoned… the gods are still working their will here— and I don’t mean the Decakon. Well, I do… I mean Fyren. He’s acting on orders from higher up the chain, right?”

“From the high gods, supposedly, I think… right?” Livia stood now too.

“Exactly! But… why? Why is any of this happening? Why would the gods impose a severance on such a central realm? We’re neighbours with Nexia, for crying out loud! The foundational link in the chain of all the connections of the gods’ worlds! We were even poised to fight for Nexia, help the gods fend off their enemies and preserve that incredibly important world… but, right as we were about to leap into the fray…”

“They cut us off,” Livia finished. “They cast Berodyl aside as if it meant nothing. No… not nothing…”

“Yes! Now you’re seeing it too! There’s something wrong with Berodyl! Something the gods actively despise!”

“That’s why they ordered Fyren to execute his fellow creators,” Livia elaborated. She pinched her chin and bit her lip. “But… ah, okay, I see. I understand the problem. Something’s wrong, but…”

“Exactly!” Pippy would’ve jumped for joy had they not been standing on the sloped roof of a treehouse. “The thing that’s really got me thinking about this is the… what did Emilie call them? Gnomi?”

Livia nodded.

“Right, the gnomi… ugh. They’re not gnomes.”

“Well… yeah. We figured that one out.”

“No, as in they’re not proper earth elementals. They’re… wrong— the most wrong thing we’ve encountered so far. Emerelda put a pit in my stomach, Livia, I could feel it, and Sajni, for all her politeness, is the same. I’m telling you: something is very, very wrong with this world, and it’s the answer to this whole mess we’ve found ourselves in. Not just this business with the baby, but all of it, our entire adventure so far. None of this is right.”

Livia sighed. “You might be on to something… but, if so, what can we do? How do we figure out what’s wrong? And even if we figure it out, how do we fix it? Remember, Berodyl is severed; there’s no way in or out now… except for…” Livia’s eyes widened. “Oh… shit!”

“What? What is it?”

“Fyren; he has the answers. And, more to the point, he still has the power to overcome the severance; we’ve seen him do it. And, furthermore to the point… this is all his fault. He’s doing this for some reason, acting on some kind of orders from the high gods, right?”

“Apparently,” Pippy agreed. “But we can’t exactly stroll up and ask, can we?”

Livia straightened her back and looked to the sky. “Either way, we’re after him, and one way or another, we will catch him. We’ll get our chance… even if we have to choke it out of him.”