Corvayne had entered his tent and was preparing to fall over, exhausted already from hearing Wick's story, when he spotted papers on his bedroll, face down with a small rock to keep them in place. He lifted the pages and saw flowing elven script, only marred a few places by running liquid but still legible.

Corvayne,

I'm sorry, I wanted to tell you, but Anastasia and Wick both wanted me to wait. I had hoped we could make something work, but I can't be the woman you want, and I can't live as a wedge between you and her.

You remember that we had gone back into the tower? That first discussion was us trying to figure out what was going on, and what was up with the cores. The first time we didn't learn much. Wick had theorized that if there was a meeting of minds to be had, it was part of the tower's job to do it, and the Inn was the way it did it. So we entered after you had left and let the rest of the party disperse so we could discuss the things we had in common, namely that I learned Wick also had the vessel power... and because Wick might need emotional back up. I sort of understood what the ability would do from Growl-Whine telling us, but we needed to be sure. We could not use audio recording, so these pages are prone to how I remember it. Pardon if I paraphrase anything.

Wick had spoken with me before about what our goal was, so we moved a few tables away to lose ourselves, and announced her target as 'The thing running the tower' then we started off walking through the isles of the bar. At first I saw comely men and women, elves and humans who's beauty made even you look lame and ugly by comparison (Not that you are unattractive, in fact so much that my heart hurts as I think of all that has happened). These strangers looked at me with hunger too. The inn showed me versions of my loves mixed in too. Scarred warriors who looked like you, a cocky warlock with your face and a pet beckoning me, another with a halo of lightning and no shirt... as well as Wick as a concubine, her as a valkyrie, an elven Wick combining my races cruel beauty with her fetching glasses. Even my old crushes and my one ill-fated fling were there, a prism of unspoken lusts. Around them I saw fairies and astral beings who filled me with more desire than even Wick did with her wild eyes. Deeper in I saw stranger forms, things of hard to fathom flesh and materials that made the same offers in oblique ways I didn't understand. It was a strange trial, one I would not have minded failing, but I kept Wick in my sights and followed her.

As with many things, these rows of beauty gave way to warriors, some resting, some sleeping, and some dead at their tables, wrapped in funeral clothes and given a last drink as their bones grimly claimed a spot at the greatest gathering point for heroes that ever was or will be. They were armed with a thousand different weapons, the kind you surely would name in that offhanded way you do, but to me were mysteries. They had scars, muscles, eye patches and missing limbs. All of them had weight too. Not fat, but the sort that begs for a bard to strum a lute as they tell their tale. I longed to sit at their tables and drink from their words, to train under them, to fight with them, to die together for their causes. Again, Wick was a lantern, somehow immune to the call of blood to blood for blood. The endless fighters vanished.

We pushed on into shades. Dark things of shadow. Images of places and people who never were, or whom had faded into the past. I don't know how I knew what they were, but there were hints of things I could have been, too. I saw a shadow of myself married at one table, another where I wore Undine's gear and treated with generals over a map. I saw Wick sitting on a throne pulled up to a table, staring at it with such a bitter look it nearly pulled me from the real one.

Then the shades too faded, and we walked empty tables. The minutes became what must have been an hour. It could have been a year, the monotony of my feet pulling me forward a sort of hypnotic trance. In this case there was no appeal to this empty stretch of bar. I felt if I sat or stopped it would consume me, or at the very least I would step back to where we started and never come back.

Sometimes I would look at Wick, and think to reach my hand for her, but she did not look at me, only forward, pale from effort.

The last part was odd. It was a mix of everything, and I saw races I'd never seen before. Some of them equipped with small scraps of technology that resembled the great star-ship we had seen before I died, chrome and steel and wires and glass eyes. Others looked primitive, wearing crude jade weapons and simple robes that radiated power. And near the back, creatures that were hard to look at, glowing with halos of power and intent and history. Many of them were wearing a red rain coat, marked with the same symbol.

We navigated around what felt like the feet of titans, even though some were shorter than me! In the far reaches of the bar, we reached a corner booth, one with a window looking out at nothing, and that's where we spoke to what we had called to us, a power that represented the Tower.

Corvayne, if you're reading this, it might mean we did something irreversible. I love you, and I love Wick, and I hope you will understand that I would never hurt either, or take her away. Nor, if things go wrong, must you blame Anastasia. The world was not kind to her, and that you loved parts of her and helped her survive count for much. I don't know how much she spoke of her ordeal, but please think of it when you consider what happened. We do not know what we do.

Corvayne flipped to the next page. It looked less orderly.

I am writing as we meet. I will try to keep up, and pray my hand is swift enough. If the words are not perfect, then I captured what I understood of their intents.

Wick sat across from her, and I slid in.

Wick: Thanks for meeting us. I'm Wick, and this is Hari. I suppose you already know that.

I can sort of describe the woman as short, pink hair, and mouse-like features offset by a simple robe of incredible quality. I think there are tiers of item far beyond artifact. It was implicit of power and authority. I will also state, more importantly, that I had seen this woman before, in my mindscape. She looks patient as I write. Perhaps she is giving me time to note all this?

Woman: I am the Tower's representative. You are either brave or foolish to seek me out.

Wick: Cut the crap. You've been putting your thumb on me and Corvayne's scale from day one. I'm not asking you to change your ways, but instead be direct. We need real help.

Woman: I can guess. The glue holding you together is straining. Seeing him frays you.

Wick: I know I'm two parts but I don't know where I came from, I have to get hints from myself and only what Mister I can tell me from watching me act, and what I've told him I was like before and how I changed. What the hell am I?

Woman: You are a Wizard. The name isn't in the magic sense here, but the word is a good cover for what's going on. Think more of a cheater, hacker, or someone who's will is beyond the keen of the normal mortal.

Wick: Well, I'm dying or splitting and my will isn't doing shit to keep me together. You said seeing him, Corvayne right, seeing him frays me. Why?

Woman: Anastasia hates and fears men, you don't. She seeks peace, you seek answers. When you were wounded, trapped without options, you were kin. Now? You are divided.

Me: Can I take her on? I obtained a power, Vessel.

Woman: You'd probably die Hari. You can't contain Wick yet. Perhaps if Lady Blood Claw unlocked her own ability and you split it. But that might kill Wick. Wizards break rules, but not all of them are doing as well as Wick.

Me: Such as the Spider?

Woman: She does have Wizard status, but in her case it's a very powerful core overpowering a weak monster and then building it into something able to carry it. I suspect it's why she's unable to communicate. Still, a brilliant hack from her. I want to know how the bone core she reincarnated into found a spider who had been through a tower or been touched with a power.

Wick: So she wouldn't be able to carry two, I take it.

Woman: I wouldn't recommend moving her into Hari and you into her. You are more valuable than Anastasia is.

Wick: Fuck you.

Woman: It's true. But I want to save you both. You understand what you have to do. If Hari is to take you on, she needs time. But every moment he's by Anastasia, he simply does damage to them.

Me: What are you asking?

Woman: Hmmf. I pulled Mosh because I needed Lythandies's abilities. Corvayne will live. He found Spears. He has you.

Me: You picked me too?

Woman: If I said yes, that I put you in his way because he needed a number of things, all of which you are, would you spurn him? I grabbed a woman he could love, but also a woman whom could help him get at the system. I didn't make you do anything, nor him.

I had a moment of anger, and I forgot to write down what followed until The Tower's representative pointed at the paper. I ranted for a while and Wick defended me (and I think Ana did too, for I feel the princess loves me even if sometimes when Wick was weak and she was strong she feared me) and told her to shove off.

There is some back and forth about free will right now, and if I had been violated, and then if Wick had done grave wrong apon Anastasia while in her body.

Listening to her, I add that it sounded like the being would have done something if it could, both in terms of power and it's manipulations.

Me: We are here because Wick needs protection, and we're wandering around clueless. There's all these things happening and you understand it.

Woman: Wick is a weapon. She is getting stronger. Her vessel is carrying part of her that she can't handle herself, and needs to contain it. If she goes back, there's a chance that The Magus figures out what I'm up to and if he wins we all lose. So I'm not telling you the plan because he will get his hands onto you eventually, and there's a chance that he recognizes what sort of threat we're making before we spring it on him.

Wick: I don't give two flying FUCKS about The Magus. I want you to at least say what your dancing around telling me what to do!

Woman: You need to dump Corvayne.

Wick interrupted her, and while she was mad, at some point she calmed down after she had spun out a series of curses that were difficult to understand at the rate and distress she was pitching them out.

Calm Wick was another person. I suspect she is still partly her, as the memories didn't seem to change, but Ana is reserved, calm, controlled.

Ana: I would like to, but it would fracture our fellowship, would it not?

Woman: Grunt understands. Mister I understands. Nyx would oppose it because he both likes Corvayne as a friend and equal, and also knows where Spears would go. Horton would side with Wick. Bearer of Burdens and her minions? Hard to tell. Mosh goes with him if Corvayne asks, and June would follow him. But... if he sets off alone... depends on you Hari.

Me: Me?

Ana: I would plead with you to help me. I enjoy your company, even if your contact is often too much for me.

Me: You've been avoiding me. You're a stranger inside a woman I love.

Ana: Hari, you say that. Yet you've touched me. Possessed me. Known me.

Woman: You have to be more literal because she doesn't read those sorts of books in Cascadian.

Ana: You took me? You... we had sex.

Me: You wanted me. Wick did. (I was upset and had to collect myself a moment here. I might have missed a few lines like the ones above)

Ana (eventually): I did not blame you. Nor Corvayne.

Corvayne had to squint to read the newer note at the bottom, smushed under the last line:

(I must be honest, to be accused of even cursory assault, I felt very guilty for it, because I had started to understand that I perhaps was the worst of villains, and I think in reviewing this conversation it was planned on the part of the woman, who knew guilt and a debt would help Ana convince me)

Ana: I need a friend. While I know it would hurt you...

Me: You also need a backup vessel, because if you fail, Wick dies if I don't catch her.

Ana: I do not always like Wick, but I understand her. We are closer than any two sisters. She loves you, and, I... I do as well. More importantly, we both love you. And thus, with you, we are two halves of a whole, rather then stuck together.

This is where it hit me like a hammer. That there were parts of Wick I did not like, and that some of that was because I was hurting someone I didn't know was there, and Corvayne was certainly hurting her too. Now, the woman who I loved more than I thought was hanging in the balance with the man I loved and his heart.

Me: Fuck you two. This wasn't about getting Wick here, was it? She didn't know what she was walking into.

Woman: If I told you what we needed, you'd say no. You have to come into painful truths sometimes on your own.

Me: Fuck you! You can't do this. You pushed me into his arms! You can't take him away.

Woman: The one I wronged most was Anastasia. In this, I wronged you too. You are my chosen champion. If you cannot do this, don't. You can run away with him, and perhaps I can push Lady Blood Claw to attain the burden for you and Wick. But the odds that either of you will be ready...

Me: Don't tell me the odds.

Woman: Five percent as you are. Almost none for Lady Blood Claw. Wick has thousands of levels. What happened to Corvayne would happen to your soul. So your options are to almost certainly kill Wick by leaving her to the whims of her fate, letting her return to a core that can not hold her, or almost certainly killing yourself and her by trying to carry her...

I broke down here, because I am after all an emotional fool and the most human elf there had even been, but I also understood what was happening. This whole errand had been a sort of last adventure for us together.

Ana and the woman were trying to be comforting, but the options were clear. I had to keep Wick together. In forming a little polycule, playing at gathering myself a harem, I had bound myself to two lovers, and it was not lip service to say that I really love them... love you both.

I had to be like you are then, because at the moment I wanted nothing more than to plunge my sword into Anastasia. I would have rather have Bellithca sitting on me than spend even another moment with Anastasia, who's own weakness had pushed me now to say what was saying, pretending it was in any way okay, holding Wick hostage, and by extension Corvayne as well.

I have never been smart with people. Undine had called me foolish, and again and again I had played wrong moves, done childish things, and had for a moment thought I was a lucky fool with you, and so I was so cursed with a moment of absolute clarity that I had been pushed like a chess piece from the start, with my desire to be with both man and woman, that a misshapen elf like me who loved humans would excite the loins of not only a trapped princess and whatever Wick was, but Corvayne as well.

You love Wick more then me. I know this. It had almost broken me when you were was dying. Now, like a blade coming around, I knew that if I let Wick die, you would come to hate me. That the difference in love you have for her was greater then what you have for me.

So I put on a brave face.

Me: I'll stay with Wick.

Woman: You can explain it to Corvayne. He will understand.

Me: No, he wont. And you know he won't.

I am sorry. I have been holding onto this for two months and had been afraid to hand it to you. I hoped in the war, we'd... find something. A new path. But after our night together, and how angry you've been with me, I have to do better.

I'm going to go work on our quest, finishing the wood and bindings. Even if we are not together, I still love you and I'm sorry that I've left you when you needed me most, and I understand if you hate me. Even if you hate me I love you.

Someday, when this is all over, please let us try again. Please.

-Hari.