Rana stood atop an ocean of ink, black and glistening in all directions. A drop of ink landed on her head and trickled coldly down her neck. A lie, a simple white lie she’d told at some point. Another drop hit her and dripped down her face. Then another landed on her hand. Two more lies. There were more drops now, landing coldly all over her body and trickling down her skin. So many drops, so many lies. They were bigger now, and faster, and colder as well. Somehow even with all of them drenching her they still managed to hit with cold fury each and every time.

The ocean she stood in had begun to rise. It had reached her waist, then her chest, then her neck. Still the drops came as she desperately scrambled to keep afloat. Her face was all that was above the surface now and drops landed in it. Soaking into her nose, her eyes, her mouth. Filling her mouth with cold black lies. She couldn’t breathe. She was drowning. Yet she swam anyway. On a tide of lies she swam higher and higher, toward the sky and the being there that was raining lies down upon her.

The Inkdrop Queen wandered through the forest letting her aching legs drag her ever further, down and down the mountain. Out of the Wilderness, toward civilisation. It was a great slope the Wilderness and leaving it was easy, you just had to fall down. That was something the Inkdrop Queen had become good at of late. She staggered down the slope.

She heard a commotion, a rusting in the leaves and froze, her hand instinctively grabbing the hilt of her deadly blade. The rustling could have been anything, any manner of monster or beast ready to tear her apart, but it had a voice. A human voice.

She didn’t let her guard down entirely but felt hope rather than fear. She was starving, bedraggled and likely doomed to die in this forest without someone to save her, this person might be her only chance.

What the voice was saying wasn’t clear, it mainly sounded like it was cursing and swearing at the surroundings, something the Inkdrop Queen could relate to. Then the bearer of the voice staggered out in front of her. It was a soldier, one of her soldiers. The soldier stopped in surprise and looked up at her in shock.

“My... my Queen,” the soldier said and bowed. “How did you find yourself out here away from our company?”

The Inkdrop Queen didn’t reply. Her soldiers had mutinied against her and left her to die in the forest, this one should have known that. Unless he was also lost in the forest.

“Give me your own name and intentions and I shall give you mine,” she replied cautiously, ever more suspicious.

“I was in a scouting party, your majesty,” the soldier replied. “But I was split from the group in all this rain, I’ve been wandering the woods ever since. Name’s Tarkin.”

“You’re in good condition to have been wandering the woods, when did this happen?” The Inkdrop Queen was suspicious now. If Tarkin had truly been lost in the woods before the mutiny he’d be looking far worse than he did now.

“Well it can’t have been more than-” Tarkin lunged and the Queen drew her inky blade to meet his. He wasn’t skilled, he wasn’t even strong and she easily parried his blow, driving him back. But then something flicked out of the trees beside her and before she could move a blade was at her throat.

“If you don’t drop the sword right now I will kill you,” a voice said behind her. She recognised that voice, she knew it well. Rana, the liar. She almost called the bluff, knowing it was a lie she was ready to spin around and attack but she thought better of it. It could be a lie because Rana wasn’t going to kill her if she didn’t drop the sword but it could also be a lie that Rana was going to kill her anyway.

So she paused and thought and as she did Rana took the sword from her weak and frightened hand. Then the blade disappeared from her throat and Rana vanished back into the woods, followed by Tarkin. The Inkdrop Queen stood there in shock, that blade had been all she’d had in this Wilderness. It had been her only hope.

Rana and the Jackal walked back through the woods, the Jackal quickly changing back into their original form. Rana held the great inkdrop blade, the Cleanser of Names. The Jackal had come to her and promised to help her in evading the medusae and escaping. She’d agreed and had told them she wanted to get as far from all the medusae as possible. She looked down at the terrifying blade, dripping with the devastating black ink. She’d lied.

The Dragonfly guarded the door to the cave. It was a stone door built using ancient medusae magics that let those on the inside see through it like glass while those on the outside would see nothing but stone. So they looked through it tirelessly, terrified that some day soon, the Monster would come. That ancient enemy of the medusae who had slaughtered their kind once and driven them back to cower in this cave long ago. They had thought it dead, gone, as it was, for so long. But it was back, the tracks were unmistakable and scouts had reported that it had been troubling the humans.

Back when they’d fought it the first time they’d had the Spider. A dark and sinister medusae who constructed the Inkdrop Blades. The only blades that had been able to properly pierce its skin. The humans had the blades now and the Spider had been killed by the Monster. Now they had few weapons, if any, that could hurt it. Now the Dragonfly watched the door and waited for their doom.

But the Monster was not the first thing to come to the door. Instead it was a human, a very familiar human with an ink-scarred mouth and an inkdrop blade. She was wielding it as brazen as anything, seemingly unafraid of the ancient beings within the cave. She called out into the cave and spoke far too clearly, far too well.

“Your most hateful enemy has returned after many years. If you wish to battle the Monster you will need this.” She brandished the blade. “I will give you the Cleanser of Names but only if you release my companion, Sessryn of the Hallowed Company.” She stared down at the entrance to the cave and the Dragonfly stared back in shock. Those were all true, everything she’d said was true, but she’d been scarred by the ink, she couldn’t tell the truth, the Salamander had told them as much. Was this a medusae impersonating her? Had she somehow fixed her condition?

The Dragonfly flung open the door and stepped out, bow at the ready. “You do not speak in lies?” they questioned, walking slowly forward. “Why is this?”

The human smiled. “I have made peace with your mother Irasada. She has released me from my curse.”

The Dragonfly’s eyes narrowed, they were still very suspicious. “You will give us that blade of your own free volition and in exchange we need only release your companion?”

Rana nodded, she slid the blade back into its sheath, the sheath she’d coated in the ink from the real blade not minutes ago.

The medusae continued. “I will need more confirmation. If you can speak honestly then answer me this: What colour is the sky?”

Rana suppressed a smile. From what she knew of the monster it wasn’t hateful, just hungry, if anything she was a more hateful enemy of these people than it was. They also didn’t need any weapons just to wish to fight the monster, nevermind the Cleanser of Names. And of course she planned to give only the fake blade that she had held before if her demands were met. She hadn’t broken any curse, she’d just become better at working with it.

“Blue,” she replied and the Dragonfly nodded, forced to accept her words as the truth. Of course, in the cloudy and dreary Wilderness, the sky was gray.

The Jackal sat gagged and tied to a tree. The trickster woman had made them tell her everything. All about the monster, about the cave, about the medusae. They were supposed to be a shapechanger, a liar and a deceiver, but they’d spent their whole life locked up in a cave with no one to talk to but other medusae. They’d never interacted with humans and had no idea how they acted. And then there was her voice. Her mouth and face was blackened and scarred but somehow her voice made you want to believe it. There was something there, something as convincing as the lies of the medusae themselves.

So here they were. Bound and gagged in a forest with a monster that specialised in hunting their kind. The woman had said she wasn’t coming back. That meant the Jackal was all alone. They started struggling against their bonds.

It had been almost an hour by their reckoning when they felt it. They heard nothing, saw nothing, all seemed much the same in the forest. But there was something there, something that hadn’t been there before. Something huge. Something hungry.

The Jackal stopped struggling, in all honesty the bonds seemed unbreakable, and simply sat there and tried to stop trembling. The presence moved around. Circling and circling through the trees. Always out of sight and always blending in with the sounds of the forest. But the Jackal knew it was there. Round and round it went, slowly approaching, slowly slithering forward, its eyes boring into their body, their face, the back of their neck.

The Jackal had fled the monster once before and been saved by the Umberlago. It knew all the stories of the creature, of how it was unstoppable and how it devoured hundreds of medusae. What had never been in the stories was the monster’s chain. The Jackal might have been the only medusae to ever see the Monster’s chain and live. It was a great ugly black thing, not unlike the chains the medusae used to bind Irasada, wrapped around and through the monster’s many legs. It jangled and clinked when it ran but maybe when it was moving slowly it could keep the chain silent. Or maybe this wasn’t the monster at all, maybe this presence was something else. Something harmless.

The chain clinked and the Jackal’s eyes jerked to see the last few links of chain sliding off a rock and into the trees. It was the Monster. It wasn’t just some random animal or creature. It was the Monster and it was here.

The Jackal began to struggle frantically, their heart hammering and driving pulses of terror through their veins. In the fear they completely lost track of where the Monster had been, they likely never had a good bead on it anyway. They struggled and struggled and their heart hammered and hammered and then suddenly the restraints came free. Rana’s restraints, able to withstand hours of struggling without budging an inch, simply came loose. The Jackal staggered off into the forest at speed, not noticing the great claw marks in the ropes where the monster had shorn through them from behind.

The young medusae staggered off through the trees tearing the gag and any remnants of rope from them in fear. They staggered away, rapidly picking up pace and rapidly moving toward the cave of the medusae. Their new home. Their new sanctuary.

Slithering quietly but quickly through the forest, the Monster followed.

Sessryn was brought out of the cave and into the light where her chains were undone and left to clatter to the ground. Her eyes adjusted to the light and there she saw Rana looking up at her.

“You... you...”

Rana stepped forward and whispered in her ear one of those infuriating riddles. Luckily this one was fairly clear. “You should not leave as fast as you can. You should not escape and find your Inkdrop Queen to the east not far from the river, unnarmed, unprotected and defenseless.”

Sessryn nodded slowly, she still needed to process what she was hearing but she was able to do it fast. She picked back up her weapons and belongings the medusae had returned to her and mounted her horse. She looked down at Rana.

“Do you have a plan?”

Rana smiled with her black scarred mouth, Sessryn had never seen her do that before. “No, not at all.”

Then she stepped back to the cave and the medusae surrounding them closed in, forcing the two of them apart. Hemming Rana into the cave entrance and pushing Sessryn out.

“You can have the Cleanser of Names,” Rana said holding the Inkdrop Queen’s sword, all dripping in black ink, aloft. “I know you would be honourable and would not take more than agreed in our deal. I know you would not capture me and attempt to use me to prolong the existence of your species. But I go with you anyway for your sake and so none may say I did not honour the deal.”

To everyone’s surprise including Sessryn’s and the gathered medusae Rana strolled into the cave of her own accord, still holding the dripping black sword. Taken by surprise the medusae all followed leaving just Sessryn and one lone medusae behind. They all similar to her but this one she recognised. This was the one from back in Meduramanth who had led them through the shifting walls. The one who’d run away with Rana in the first place.

“What is she doing?” Sessryn asked him. “Is she going to be okay?”

“For once since I met her I have no idea what she’s doing,” Sal replied. “For once she is lying and obscuring the truth. The closer she gets to my mother the stronger her curse will grow and it will be all the more difficult to disbelieve her. But even that may not be enough to save her from my people.”

Sessryn nodded idly, she really had no idea what was happening. “I’m sorry I chased you and tried to drag you back to the Hallowed Company,” she said. Then she rode off into the forest, fully intending to never lay eyes on any of the medusae or their like again.

Rana marched through the caves and halls of the lair of the medusae. All around her were intricate murals and sculptures of abstract shapes which she ignored. Instead she walked deeper and deeper into the cave, toward the room where the medusae kept their mother, Irasada, the Goddess of Lies. As she walked she felt as though the ink was brimming up inside her. Filling her body, filling her mind, filling her mouth with lies. She was on the brink of drowning in them and the only way to stay afloat was to keep going, to keep getting further and further into this cave and into this lie.

She walked through a room with broken chains. The room where the special sorcerer had once been bound before he’d escaped. The room right beyond this was the one where Irasada was bound, she was sure of it. The medusae marched behind her, all just as caught up in her lie as she was. Just specks in the rushing current of ink. Caught up in-

“Stop!” shouted a voice and she stopped. So close to her goal. So close to the goddess who had given her her curse with a weapon that could kill it. But the voice came from a medusae and this was the home of the medusae. They could stop her if they wanted to, as soon as the lie dissolved it would all be over. So she stopped and turned around feeling her hope drain slowly away.

The medusae was tall and thin and wearing an old robe of feathers. They walked through the crowd toward Rana who stood still, fighting the urge to make a run for it.

“You promised us a sword,” the medusae said, reaching her and towering over her. “You stroll in here so brazenly without giving-”

Rana thrust the hilt of her sword at them and gestured for them to take it. Painstakingly slowly the medusae took the hilt and drew the blade from the scabbard, the black ink that coated it dripping everywhere. The medusae all gazed in awe as they were finally reunited with their ancestral weapon. The strongest blade they had that had wounded the Monster before.

Rana turned away and kept walking, leaving her old sword, coated in ink in the hands of the medusae, the real Cleanser of Names in her old scabbard at her side. She saw a great door ahead of her and briefly wondered how she was to get it open when the entire cave shuddered.

They all spun around to face the mouth of the cave and heard screams as well as the rattling of chains. The chains meant nothing to the medusae, they hadn’t heard the Jackal’s experience but Rana knew what they meant. The Monster had arrived.