Travel entads were weird. Inter had become a series of disconnected places to Marsh, separated not by distances but by whatever item he needed to get from one to the other. Dondrian was a tube he needed to crawl through, only barely wide enough for him and claustrophobic during the middle bit. Plenarch was a crystal he needed to grip while he closed his eyes. His den was a hoop with a ladder he climbed down. And getting to Hannah used a bracer that needed to align with the one she wore.

Hannah was in a different place every few days, and when Marsh teleported to her, which he did almost every night, he was often quite confused about where he was. He had done his best to roll with the confusion, to not let it get to them, whether they were in a palatial lake house loaned to them by a wealthy mayor or in the guest room of a farmhouse. Hannah had Lutopia Two, of course, but she liked to take guest rooms where possible, and where it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience for anyone. She thought it helped her connect to people and get a sense of community with those she was staying with, much more than just stepping into a lute and being closed off from the world.

She was having fun with it, in a hands-on-her-hips get-down-to-business sort of way. She didn’t talk about the people she was having her discussions with, mostly because of a duty to confidentiality, but she would sometimes have conversations with him that were clearly inspired by whatever she was hearing from the laity.

Marsh, meanwhile, was doing dungeons at what would have felt like a breakneck pace, if not for the fact that the dungeons required very little effort. After the disaster with the thirty-seven people, they had gone a full month without any kind of repeat incident, and the dungeons had never been richer. Toward the end of the month, they didn’t even really have monsters in them — they were pathetic creatures that Marsh felt sorry for, rather than snarling beasts ready to take off a limb. Most could be dispatched with the stomp of a foot. That was more or less where Grig’s progress hit a wall.

“I don’t understand why you’d feel bad about it,” said Mardin, after Marsh had crushed something with three legs and pale skin that could just have easily been scooped up and put into a biscuit tin. “They’re monsters. They’re dungeon mad. They’d kill us if they could.”

“But they can’t,” said Marsh. “Why not just leave them and let them disappear again once the dungeon is done?”

“Seems like a risk,” said Mardin. “Better to be safe.”

“This is a good dungeon,” said Tilde as she looked over their growing collection of entads. “Nice work Grig.”

“Thank you, thank you, I will take all praise,” said Grig with a smile. “There’s almost nothing left on the list of things we need, which means I’m going for the best value. Hopefully some of those will be extremely long distance and high capacity unbound travel entads.”

“That we sell to the government?” asked Josen.

“We’d almost certainly be forced to sell to the government,” said Grig. “But it’s untaxable income, and the prices are fair, so why not?”

“I’m not even sure why we’re doing so many dungeons,” said Josen. “We’re approaching one every day.”

“We’ve got the advantage,” said Grig. “We have to press it while we can. We need to make money while we can. In another year, there might be as many as a dozen parties doing what we’re doing. In another five years, I have to imagine it’ll be standard practice, and probably there will be fewer dungeoneers overall. Think about it, we could probably go as high as three dungeons a day with the right collection of entads, and we’ve already got a counterparty. That means that our share of the entad market is huge, right? And we’re getting better entads. Think about how many useless or near-useless entads get pulled right now.”

Grig was like this, more and more, enthusiastic about the business of dungeons and the future of the profession, and simultaneously worried about ‘riding the dragon’ while they could. It seemed as though not a day went by that Grig didn’t talk about how this ‘would change everything’ and ‘they were on the cusp of a revolution’.

Marsh didn’t really want to do three dungeons a day. He didn’t really want to ride the dragon.

They had a full warehouse now, and a counterparty working under them that was responsible for selling off entads, henlings, and dungeon materials. Their process, such as it was, involved going into dungeons, grabbing everything they could see, putting the poor dungeon creatures out of their misery, and then dumping all that stuff off at the Plenarch warehouse. It took about two hours for the average dungeon, sometimes more, sometimes less. More and more, they were splitting up to get through the dungeon faster, which was only possible given that there was so little danger. Even the worst of the monsters they were finding could be handled by any one of them with relative ease, especially because they had entad weapons and armor from previous dungeons.

The party’s hoard was worth millions of rings, maybe tens of millions of rings, and Marsh had thirty entads that were personally bound to him. If he never saw a ring of the earnings, he would still be set for life. He had entads to provide him food, a small home he could move around, and a pot he could put his clothes into to mend and clean them.

“Just tell them you don’t want to do so much,” said Hannah.

They were sitting in a huge hammock stretched between two trees, eating meat off a stick. The hammock was an entad, one which would stretch between whatever stable anchors were available when thrown into the air. The stick was also an entad, which could summon up food from nothing, though the quality varied, and you couldn’t refill the stick until you’d eaten everything on it.

“We’re trying to set things up for the rest of our lives,” said Marsh.

“You’re already set,” said Hannah. “And what’ll you do when you’re twenty-five and haven’t worked a day for five years? Go crazy?”

Privately, Marsh thought that they’d have children by that point, which was more or less the answer to that question. But instead of saying that, he said, “I’ve always wanted to take up fishing, I suppose. Or go explore the world. When I’m twenty-five, I could go sail on a ship, stop in for dinner and drinks at a port, walk through the famous gardens of the world, somethin’ like that.”

“I s’pose when you’re twenty-five, I’ll be twenty-seven, and we’ll have children by then,” said Hannah.

“Mmm,” said Marsh. His heart had started to beat faster.

“We’d have to be married for that,” said Hannah. “Or perhaps not have to, but it would be nice, ay?”

Marsh had a ring in his pocket. It was one that he’d taken from one of the dungeons, a dazzling diamond inset into a ring of thick brass, and he’d had it taken to a cleric of Xuphin, to get it resized for Hannah’s finger, then to a cleric of Garos, to symmetricalize it for her. He’d worried about the asymmetry of that, a ring on only one hand, but the cleric had explained that it wasn’t a matter of being symmetrical with yourself, it was a matter of being symmetrical with your partner.

“We’re a bit … adrift,” said Marsh. “You’re wandering all over Inter, it seems to me.”

Hannah sat up slightly and turned to look him in the face, which swung them in the hammock. He held the meat stick, which had coiled shrimp on it, up and out of the way, so it wouldn’t get everything sticky.

“Do you wish I weren’t?” she asked. She was staring into his soul.

“I love you,” said Marsh. “And I want you to be happy, and if this is what makes you happy, if it’s what you think you should be doing with your life, then no, I don’t wish you weren’t.” He paused, running that over in his mind. “‘I don't wish you weren’t’, I’m not sure that’s right.”

“It makes you not want to get married?” asked Hannah.

“I want a marriage that’s … solid. Stable. Firm,” said Marsh. “Those are things I love about you, how you feel like you’re a rock. It’s not that I don’t want to get married, it’s that you’re in a different place every day, or that’s what it feels like, and —” he was having trouble putting it into words.

“I’m not feelin’ solid,” said Hannah.

Marsh shrugged. It seemed like a mean thing to say to a person, but maybe it also felt true.

“True, I s’pose,” said Hannah with a sigh. “I’ve been almost half a year goin’ between these places. I’ve enjoyed it, you know? But a marriage that came with a house, or a house that came with a marriage, might be better. And a community I stuck with, rather than comin’ in and learnin’ the people and their problems all over, that’s the usual way of bein’ a cleric.” She leaned down and kissed his chest, then looked in his eyes. “But the church won’t have me. Hard to do what I want without a church.”

“I know,” said Marsh. It seemed like the ring was going to stay in his pocket forever.

Hannah laid back down in the hammock beside him. “I had some bad news from Pucklechurch today,” she said, seemingly changing the subject. “Lemmel has fallen ill.”

“Your old mentor?” asked Marsh.

“Co-worker, more like,” said Hannah. “I spoke with him often though. I was to be his replacement.”

“Will he be okay?” asked Marsh.

“There are two kinds of falling ill,” said Hannah. “Those that can be fixed and those that can’t. He’ll have clerics and entads and all sorts of things, but as you get old …” she trailed off. “It takes more and more to keep a man healthy. He’s not that old, but there’s a reason Pucklechurch keeps havin’ new clerics come in to be his replacement.”

“Do you need to go there?” asked Marsh.

“I may,” said Hannah. “I was supposed to be in Tentrich in a few days, but I can reschedule that, or maybe skip it, though I’ve heard they’ve been wantin’ for quite some time.” She frowned. “If it’s an illness of the sort they can’t do much about, somethin’ in the brain, and if he dies …”

“You’d preach in Pucklechurch?” asked Marsh.

Hannah turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. “No, not at all. I was goin’ to say that I might accompany him.”

“To the Spirit Gate?” asked Marsh.

Hannah nodded. “The spirit walk is not often done these days, but he was a steadfast cleric, and … I don’t know.”

“It would be an adventure,” said Marsh.

“Ay,” said Hannah with a sigh. “Not how I would put it, and not that it would be a fun trip, not when someone I care about is passin’ on, but it’s an old rite, a pilgrimage of sorts. He’d appreciate it, I think, and all the more if I let him know that I’m goin’ with him ahead of time.”

“It would be good to do,” said Marsh with a nod. A month.

“And when that’s done, I think I might be done with travel,” said Hannah. She reached down and touched her hand, then laced her fingers into his. “And would settle down, be stable and firm. Petition the church again, see if enough time has passed for me to be put into a place more suited. I’ve mellowed, though I wasn’t tryin’ to.” She reached over with her other hand and touched his pocket, the one that the ring was sitting in. She shifted, turning on her side, so she was facing him again. He could feel her breath against his chin. “Maybe then I’d be in a better position to be a wife to the loveliest man I’ve ever met.”

“A proper life together,” said Marsh.

“I’m sorry to say this,” said Hannah. “But you’ve got sauce in your beard.”

“Then come,” said Marsh. “I’ll go clean up, and there’s something I want to do with you that isn’t best done in the outdoors, where people could see.” He hefted himself out of the hammock, leaving her swinging there for a moment before she came out too. The skewer got set into a small container he’d had made for it, the shrimp still on it.

“And what could that be, Mr. Marsh,” asked Hannah. “What would you possibly want to do in private?” She smirked at him.

He kissed her on the lips, leaving a mark of sauce there. “I guess we’ll see.”

~~~~

Lemmel was sick with the sort of thing that clerics couldn’t cure and entads couldn’t touch. It was the brain, that most vital of organs, the seat of personhood.

Hannah had overseen deaths before, and cared for the dying. That had been an important part of seminary, going to see those in hospice, to understand what it meant for a person to be dying, and what it meant for there to be a death. Funerals, like weddings, weren’t strictly the domain of any specific god, but they leaned toward Kesbin (God of Endings) or Qymmos (God of Stories) more than the others, in the same way that weddings leaned toward Xuphin or Garos. Hannah had given funeral rites only twice, and it had felt momentous.

It was different when it was someone she knew. Lemmel had never really felt that old, but on his deathbed he looked withered and ancient. The time would come for a death of mercy, administered by a cleric of Kesbin, swift and painless, but it would take some time.

For a year, Hannah had worked alongside Lemmel, and talked to him more than she’d talked to anyone else. They’d had discussions on theology, her side always excitable, his always sedate. If she had mellowed, and she thought that she had, at least part of that had been because of his influence. She wouldn’t quite consider him a mentor, but a colleague, definitely, and a steady hand with a kind heart. He’d never had children, and was without a partner, seemingly more by choice than circumstance, but she found that hard to deal with. It made her sad.

“I have had my community,” said Lemmel in a moment of lucidity. “I’ve watched it grow, seen the men and women take heed of my words. And I have had, always, the companionship of Garos.” He reached out a withered hand and touched Hannah’s arm. “And I have had those I met along the way. That’s all I’ve ever asked of this world.”

She cried more than a few times, though she wasn’t prone to tears. She called in what favors she could, just to see whether there was something obscure or expensive that could help him live another decade or two. Most of it had already been tried, and in Inter, there wasn’t much more that you could get with a pile of money and friends in high places that you couldn’t get as a simple country cleric.

He chose to take Kesbin’s way, as most people with a bad illness did.

Hannah administered the funeral rites and gave a sermon on Garos. Lemmel’s extended family had shown up, a surprisingly large collection of people who’d come by way of an experimental airship owned by a cousin. And of course the town of Pucklechurch had come out, as Lemmel had been a mainstay for almost thirty years. Hannah had learned a lot about him in his last days, both from quiet conversations when he had the strength, and from the people she talked to. He was a quiet man, quietly helping, and she could only hope that she’d given him at least a fraction of the eulogizing that he deserved.

That night, with bags that had been packed for a week, she set off on the spirit walk.

It was five hundred miles to the nearest Spirit Gate. The trip would take a month, a pace of sixteen miles a day, and without the warp. She’d prepared as best she could, but the way that everyone talked about the spirit walk, it was a difficult thing to prepare for. She would be followed by Lemmel’s spirit, and would need to trust that he was along with her, which was a difficult thing for the mind, even when you had some faith. It was only in the last ten hexes from the Spirit Gate that his spirit would be visible, faintly at first and then more strongly, and until that time, she would just have to trust.

Hannah spoke with Lemmel as she walked. Lemmel didn’t speak back, of course, but it was custom for the walker to speak and reflect. At first Hannah felt a bit silly, speaking out loud to herself, but by the second day it was becoming second nature. There were silences, of course, long stretches of silence as she crested a high hill or took in the beauty of a low glen. She wished, sometimes, that there was a way for him to speak to her in return, to tell her more of his long life — but of course there wasn’t, and even if there had been, much of his life had been spent in service to others, conversations that shouldn’t be repeated.

The spirit walk was a solemn and sacred thing, but no person could be solemn and sacred for an entire month, and the spirit walk didn’t require it.

Marsh came with her sometimes, which was easy enough for him to do with the entads he’d collected. He was along for the ride with Vertex, who were piling up entads by the barrelful and producing so many henlings that the counterparty was having trouble finding places to sell them all. They had a new warehouse, one that could travel, its boundless interior crafted by Alfric’s hands, and Marsh described it as ‘endless junk’, a consequence of the fact they were pulling everything out of the dungeons, good or bad, and stuffing it away to be sorted later.

Marsh wasn’t really a dungeoneer anymore, he was a mover, hauling things from one place to another. He wasn’t particularly thrilled with the work, except it was making him more money than he needed, and he was going to have hundreds of entads bound to him before he was really ready to be done. He was doing it with his friends, which was the thing that kept him going more than anything.

The winter was a bad time for a spirit walk, and for a while, Hannah had wanted to brave the cold and snow. A blizzard that set upon her in the first week had dissuaded her from taking that approach, and entads were brought in from the Vertex hoard, after which she’d have been perfectly fine ensconced in an ice block. Her footsteps were flames, and a wake of heat followed her, which took some managing to not cause problems when she came into the small towns and villages along the way.

She was a week and a half into the spirit walk when Verity came to visit. Her old party must have decided amongst themselves that they would all walk with her for a few days, but they didn’t mention the coordination or discussions.

“I’ve been making beautiful dungeons,” said Verity with a sigh. “I only wish that others could see them.”

“You could do that with entads, couldn’t you?” asked Hannah.

“Oh, perhaps,” said Verity. “But it wouldn’t quite be the same, showing it like that. I’ve been painting more, and sometimes trying to show it that way, but it’s not the same either.” She shook her head. “And it’s more than just what it looks like, what it smells like, even what it feels like. Every time, we go through and we don’t know what we’ll find. I try to shape it, but I never know exactly what it will be, and there are always surprises.”

“The unknown,” nodded Hannah. “But you can’t subsist on the unknown.”

“Can’t you?” asked Verity.

“It’s common wisdom,” said Hannah. “But it’s common wisdom for marriages, not for life, so I s’pose I couldn’t say for certain.”

Verity pursed her lips. “I’m not sure I would like that, to be with a person and not have any surprises left. To know them down to the bone and have heard all their stories, to not even need to speak to them to know their opinions on things.”

Hannah shrugged. “Seems you’d need a constant stream of new people then.”

“Well, is that so hard?” asked Verity.

“No, I s’pose not,” said Hannah. She pursed her lips.

“Oh come on,” said Verity with a little laugh. “We’re friends, even if we only see you once a month these days. You don’t need to play coy and clerical. Say what you think.”

“What you’re sayin’, I think it’s somethin’ that’s more or less out of my system,” said Hannah. “I had my flirtation with adventure, with the new and excitin’, and I can hardly remember what it was like to want to adventure.”

“Isn’t this what this is?” asked Verity. She looked around. “No offense, Lemmel.”

Hannah laughed. “Oh, we had that conversation while he still lived, and a few times again while I’ve been on the road. It’s a way of honorin’ him, but yes, it’s about me as well. There’s a marriage waitin’ for me at the end of the road, so it’s a last hurrah as Lemmel goes off to his next adventure and I go off to mine. There is, you may note, a nice symmetry to that.”

“I suppose,” said Verity. “If he hadn’t gotten sick … you’d have stopped and settled down some place with Marsh?”

“Ay,” said Hannah. “But it might have taken me longer to find a good endin’ for myself, somethin’ that felt right. I think I chase that, the feelin’ of rightness. It’s one of the best things about me, I’d say. It felt right to go into the seminary, felt right to leave the church for a spell of adventure, and felt right to call it quits when I did. Six months or so wanderin’ around Greater Plenarch, and now this.”

“Complicated feelings?” asked Verity.

“Ay,” said Hannah. “But that’s how feelin’s are, sometimes.”

They talked about other things, from bits of gossip to Verity’s new girlfriend to news of distant parties who had taken the first steps of using her technique. Verity was with Hannah for four hours, all told, most of the walking for the day, side by side with Hannah’s warmth radiating out and protecting them both from the snow and ice.

Two days later, it was Mizuki’s turn, and she came in full of energy, talking excitedly about ‘her’ wizardry, about the entads that Verity had made, a dungeon that felt like walking through the ribcage of a nymph, and in hushed tones, her plan to trick Alfric into marriage. She had her own protection from the snow, her staff rather than an entad, and fiddled with it a dozen times in the course of the two hours she was on the spirit walk, and then with a surprisingly tight hug, she was off again, returning twenty minutes later to hand over a hot lunch she’d made and forgot to bring with the first time.

Alfric came after, and he was more subdued, which wasn’t saying much. He had learned what they called ‘laundoncraft’ from Quinn, and gifted Hannah a flagon that held several gallons, which she told him she’d cherish.

“Verity is terrifying,” said Alfric. “We’ve done six dungeons since getting back into it, and they’ve all been — well, I’m sure they’ve told you.”

“Not as much as you’d think, no,” said Hannah. “When the spirit walk is done, I imagine that we’ll have a big dinner, like old times.”

“With fresh-baked bread?” asked Alfric. “I miss that.”

“Of course,” said Hannah. “Marsh keeps bringin’ me entads for bakin’, seems as though I should use them. You were sayin’ about the dungeons?”

“We had a dungeon of bones,” said Alfric. “It was a single huge building, but everything was bones, cabinets filled with them, tools made from them, displays showing them off, all kinds of things. I had thought it was a malformation, but Verity was perfectly pleased. Apparently she’d felt like it would be appropriate to the mood of the dungeon, and I suppose she was right, because we walked out with twenty-nine entads.”

“All bone?” asked Hannah.

“All bone,” nodded Alfric. “We haven’t hit the high of finding a hundred lutes yet, but we’re getting there, I can feel it. The bone dungeon was very creepy though, perhaps because it seemed like an explanation for why there were so many bones was just out of reach. And then right after that, we had a dungeon where half the things we touched would explode. That one was a malf though.”

“Sounds dangerous,” frowned Hannah. “You stayed safe, I assume?”

“Oh, it wasn’t actually dangerous,” said Alfric. “They exploded into edible liquids, or sometimes semi-liquids. The very first one was a table, and it blew apart into strawberry jam. We’d thought it was blood, at first. Quinn was caked with it. But the only real danger was in getting messy, or possibly getting a bit in your eye.”

Hannah shook her head. “I’m not so sure I’d have enjoyed those dungeons.”

“You’re welcome to do one with us, for old time’s sake, though they’re much different dungeons now,” said Alfric.

“I do think there’s somethin’ to be learned,” said Hannah. “But I’ve the spirit walk to do, and after that, there’s a good chance that Marsh proposes to me. A better than good chance, to be frank, as he’s got the ring and everythin’.”

“He’s the best of them,” said Alfric. “I’m glad it worked out for you two.”

“Well, don’t jinx it,” said Hannah. “I’m not sure this was the best thing to do, if I’m to be his wife.”

“I’ve talked to him,” said Alfric. “He understands.”

“You’ve talked to him?” asked Hannah.

Alfric nodded. “It’s been a long road to patching things up with Vertex. Some were easier than others. Marsh has always been likable.”

He said that, but there’d have been a time Alfric would have been singing a different tune.

It was good to see Alfric. She’d always gotten along with him, in part because he was a good man, but also because they shared some sensibilities. He’d offered her a chance to do another dungeon with them, and the offer was most attractive coming from him, even for these weird new dungeons that didn’t seem quite like they were Hannah’s style — though why she thought that was difficult to say, and a question she pondered to Lemmel.

Isra came so long after Alfric was gone that Hannah thought perhaps she wasn’t going to come, but the party druid arrived in the midst of a blizzard and then carved a path through the snow and ice, which fell everywhere but right on top of them. She had no heating entads, nor did she seem inclined to stick close to Hannah. Instead, she’d simply bundled up against the cold. The spirit walk had taken them further south than even Pucklechurch, and deeper into the winter, though most days it was clear, rather than with driving snow.

“I’m glad you came,” said Hannah. “I had thought you might not.”

“Of course I came,” said Isra, giving her a quizzical look. “We’re sisters.”

“Ay,” said Hannah. “But this is a burden I’ve taken upon myself, and I’m more than strong enough to spend a month on the road, even in weather such as this. I’ve got entads.”

“Yes,” said Isra. “But a sister should still be there for you, shouldn’t she?”

“I s’pose,” said Hannah. “But my sisters-by-blood most likely won’t be comin’ like you have.”

“I could get them,” said Isra.

“No,” said Hannah. “I’ll return home to Cairbre, sooner than later, and see them then. I send letters back home, though perhaps not as much as I should.”

“I wish I saw you more often,” said Isra.

“That’s sweet,” said Hannah. “I do come by, but it’s all entads, and none of them really mine. And with the spirit walk, I can’t leave the path, not by much.”

“I know,” said Isra. She cleared her throat. “I went to a cleric of Garos for guidance.”

“Oh?” asked Hannah. “Can you say for what?”

“I had a strange childhood,” said Isra. “I wanted to talk to someone about it, someone who could give perspective, who wasn’t a friend who would be nice to me.”

“And?” asked Hannah. The snow melted before her footsteps.

“He was handsome,” said Isra. “But he wasn’t a cleric like you are, and I think he wasn’t prepared for what I said.”

“It can be difficult, first meetin’ someone,” said Hannah. “Especially when you’re older, there can be so many things to say that it feels like an avalanche, from both sides.”

“He tried his best,” said Isra. “I liked that about him. He didn’t give good advice, but he asked good questions, at least.”

“I’d give him another shot, knowin’ nothin’ but that,” said Hannah. “He was befuddled by you, then he’s probably spent some time thinkin’ it over, askin’ advice from other clerics, tryin’ to figure out how a druid’s life might be different, or a girl who grew up alone in the woods, or all kinds of things.” That Isra and Verity were still in a party together might be a needle that another cleric might thread: though Hannah didn’t mention it.

“I won’t be seeing him again,” said Isra. “I asked him on a date.”

“Oh,” said Hannah. “That … isn’t really somethin’ you should do, when talkin’ in confidence with a cleric.”

“He was handsome,” said Isra. “And a good listener.”

“Well, still,” said Hannah. “I’d hope he said no, let you down gentle, that’s what we’re trained to do. It’s never a good idea, crossin’ lines like that.” She looked to her left, which was instinctively where she thought of Lemmel as being. He’d given her a lecture on professional boundaries, only once, just to make sure she knew, and she’d appreciated it, even if it was something she’d already heard in seminary.

“He said no,” said Isra. “He was polite. So I waited outside the church and asked him again as he was on his way home. Then, he said yes.”

“Hmm,” said Hannah. “The way you’re tellin’ it, I’ve got qualms, but I’ll chalk that up to how you’re tellin’ it. Otherwise I’d have to ask a hundred questions to see whether that was proper.”

“We’ve been on two dates,” said Isra. “I like him.”

A part of Hannah still wanted to protect Isra, to shelter her from harm, but she knew following that instinct couldn’t come at the cost of Isra’s own independence. It wasn’t a good way to meet a partner, not at all, at least in Hannah’s opinion, but that didn’t mean that it was unworkable, and as transgressions went, it was somewhat minor. She did wonder what the cleric had said that Isra had waited for him, whether his rejection had been as entirely professional as it should have been, or whether their talk had gone in directions that it shouldn’t have — but she kept those questions unvoiced, at least for the time being. If it grew serious, she would meet this man and get his measure.

After Isra had left, Hannah had a lengthy conversation with Lemmel, and she laughed, because it was almost like her days in Pucklechurch had been with him, with her talking perhaps a bit too much and not letting him get a word in edgewise.

Toward the back half of the spirit walk, as they went further south, Marsh came by two or three times a week. He seemed scared that something would happen to her, and at first this felt like he didn’t trust her to be on her own, but with a little time to think, she saw it more as his anxiety over the fate of someone he loved. It was something to work on, to be sure, but it came from a good place rather than a bad one.

A hundred miles from the Spirit Gate, Lemmel became visible, a faint outline that could only be seen by moving her head from side to side. She breathed a sigh of relief, as it meant that he really had been with her the entire way, and after a moment to take a celebratory swig of whiskey from her flask, she continued on her way with renewed vigor.

She saw other spirits, and they grew more obvious as the two of them closed the distance to the Spirit Gate, the outlines getting sharper and filling in. The spirit paths were like rivers, which collected creeks and streams, getting thicker with almost every mile traveled toward the Spirit Gate. If Lemmel had been alone when he’d started at Pucklechurch, he was far from alone this close to it.

He was still silent, of course, but it was good to see him. If he had any awareness, it wasn’t showing on his face, but she’d been warned of that, and the fact that he clung to her, always nearby, was, to her, proof enough that the spirit walk wasn’t for nothing. She quickened the pace, putting on more miles every day. Her body had adapted to the road, and she’d lost a bit of weight around her waist, along with getting calluses on her feet.

The Spirit Gate was visible for a long way away. It was built beyond the scale of people, thrusting up from the ground taller than any building ever created by the hands of human, dwodo, or feili. It was the eye of the world’s largest needle, with the shaft sunk far down into the bedrock, keeping it immovable beyond the power of the strongest forces in the world.

It was so large and imposing that it was difficult to believe that there were more of them.

“This is it,” said Hannah as they approached the small town that sat at the base of the Spirit Gate. “The end of the walk. It’s going to be strange, not having you with me. It’ll be strange to not fill my days with footsteps.” She didn’t know if he could actually hear her, but it was common knowledge that the spirits were vaguely aware of what was going on around them. He had stuck by her all this way, after all, not getting left behind, not forging on ahead while she slept. “You lived a good life, helped many people, and gave glory to Garos.”

She had expected him to leave her side then, at what felt like the fitting moment, but he stayed with her, so she kept walking to the towering gate. The entrance was a hundred feet wide at the base, which felt small given the size of the arch above it, and here, the flow of spirits felt like a never ending torrent. They moved around her, not actually touching her or passing through her body, but it was unsettling all the same, the signature of death. There were people who lived here, at the base of the Spirit Gate, who were used to moving through the rivers of the dead, but for Hannah it was novel, and not more than a bit frightening.

It wasn’t until Hannah had stepped close to a marked barrier that Lemmel moved forward more. Hannah stopped, and the gap between them grew. She watched him for as long as she could, until he was lost among the others, and then she waited until he was through the gate itself, passing into the metal maw. The Spirit Gates were made of a substance unknown to men, adding to their eerie quality.

What happened after a spirit moved through the Spirit Gate was unknown. They were mentioned only once in all the holy books, the Qymr Mos, which had led some people to think that the Spirit Gates were of Qymmos. The passage was brief though, and inconclusive, giving no hints as to what would happen to the spirits, other than a contentious wording most people only agreed referred to ‘beyond’. Hannah had not studied the Qymr Mos and its intricacies in any depth, let alone the foundational words from which the translations were created, but she preferred to think that the dead went somewhere else, a place where they’d be taken care of by their gods. It was a common view, and a rosy one, but perhaps so rosy that it couldn’t possibly be true.

Hannah stayed in the town only briefly, just long enough to add her name and Lemmel’s to an immense ledger that was kept by an interfaith church. This too was tradition.

After a month of walking, Hannah teleported to Plenarch and laid down in a comfy chair in the house that Vertex had bought. There would be a celebration later, but for the time being, all she wanted was to think and rest.

Marsh waited three days to propose to her, and then they spent the rest of their lives together.