Stone daggers jutted from the sandy outcrop, stained by salt and time. They arched inwards, forming an arch towards the cavernous depths; assaulted by the foam of the ocean water. Cargo and debris littered the ground, half-buried amongst the sands, at least the wreckage that hadn’t been claimed by the stones.

  Oddly, there were no bodies. The ocean dragged remnants of The Envoy from the wreck in the distance, each wave soaking my feet. Vesper panted, slender, pale arm holding onto the outcrop of stone as she desperately panted for air.

  “We only walked for like eight kilometres,” I judged, crouching down into the beachfront to look for anything.

  A hermit crab popped out from underneath some mechanical doodad that should have been part of the ship, one pincer-like claw holding onto its new home, as the other poked forward in its attempt to scuttle away.

  I let it.

  “Yeah!” Vesper panted. “But… I figured there’d be a gravel path to the beach or something, you know?”

  “No? Isn’t that the point of your Whispers? I didn’t even know this place existed till you told me,” I responded, but turned my head towards the cave entrance. There were no paths or any signs of any motion towards the cave either.

  “Not my Whispers, it’s just Whispers. My patron,” she began, before gulping for air again. I wasn’t a [Chirurgeon] at the moment, able to scan her lungs and see what was her issue.

  I was a [Harvester].

  The cool air of the ocean felt inviting to me. I allegedly worshipped this Goddess – Nyla, the Unending Deluge, the Great Ocean, the Healer – but I had figured this was a clandestine affair. Yet, the ocean water pushing against my feet was exceedingly gentle.

  Hermit crabs are terrestrial. I know some people don’t consider ‘crabs’ insects, calling them a crustacean which are close to insects, but that’s just a matter of perception. I slid my hand underneath the scuttling hermit crab and lifted it gently to my face.

  Vesper was saying something, I believe about the Dreaming Ones and their relationship with her Whispers. I nodded along, but my attention was elsewhere.

  Its black eyestalk peeped out of the mechanical doodad. I brought it closer to my own eye, so it could see me as much as I could see it. It slowly extended out its red leg, hollow and light to touch my palm. The hair – the setae – rubbed against my skin, and slowly, it unfolded its legs to scuttle freely between my fingers.

  When Adrian held my hand, he’d tap his index finger against my dorsal side. He’d follow the motion, pushing to his middle, then ring, then pinky. His thumb would squeeze the ‘heart’ of my palm.

  I never once squeezed it, or returned the touch.

  Would it have made a difference?

  The many legs had a similar sensation to me, feeling like small taps that each craved my attention. But if I gave this thing attention, I’d crush it.

  I’d kill it.

  That’s what I’m supposed to do, right?

  “Ashley! Wait, can you talk to crabs? Wait, are crabs insects?” Vesper pushed my shoulder, and my entire body spasmed. I jolted upwards, clenching my toes, feeling my chest heave in from the sudden touch and sensation breaking me out of my thoughts.

  Except my hand. Steady and as calm as ever, my fingers didn’t even touch the mechanical-excuse for a shell.

  So, is this a slug, or a weed? Will anyone care if I kill it? It’s a crab, not a child. But it didn’t do anything to me either, but no one would think I’m a murderer for killing it. No one would judge me.

  “Are you sure there’s undead in there, Vesper?” I remarked, forcing my body to ease, and return to a crouch.

  “Yeah. Lorelai, the Drowned Queen commands them,” she said, peering over my shoulder at the crab. “You’re ignoring my question, what’s with the crab?”

  I regarded her second question, but moved on. “And we can’t talk to her or anything?”

  “Well… it’s a Lair, and most undead or monsters don’t really like talking to people. And besides, the only talking the Drowned usually do is ‘braiiins’, you know?”

  “So, they’re okay to kill?”

  “I mean… it’s not really killing if they’re undead, you know?”

  I nodded, and flexed my fingers over the crab. It remained scuttling, but not away – just the same curiosity I held towards it, reflected back to me.

  “How is that different from killing bandits? Or like… peasants?”

  Vesper pouted at the question. “Well, bandits aren’t really considered people since they gave up their ‘person status’ when they went against the law, but for peasants? Well…” she tapped her chin. “For one thing, I think the law actually cares when I sacrifice one to the Dreaming Ones.”

  Of course she did.

  I leaned in closer to the Hermit Crab, who in response stopped scuttling. The twin black eyestalks stopped gazing around, and locked eyesight with mine.

  It was so tiny compared to me.

  “Peasants? Why not noblemen, guards, or whatever?” I asked.

  Vesper inhaled, though it sounded like a suppressed laugh. “Well, they actually investigate that. But a peasant family not so much. I’d offer a whore or a drunk, but they need to be virgins. Hey, what –“

  ‘About you’, she wanted to finish. I am a [Necromancer] after all. “Yes,” I responded. “I am a peasant, and a virgin. And my parents are also dead, so no one would know. My friend was going to be a [Whore], but she luckily managed to get out of that.”

  Vesper said nothing, but regarded the crab. “You should just crush it and get it over with. You’re not…”

  I exhaled loudly to cut her off.

  Hermit crabs are not insects, but they’re close enough. They’re also terrestrial, so while they like bathing and keeping themselves wet, putting them into the ocean drowns them. One of my classmates - one of the boys, I’d have to ask Add…Adrian – drowned a tortoise once. Tortoise’s are also not able to swim.

  The ocean wave lapped against my foot again, and I watched it recede. I lowered my hand near the high point, and my welcome passenger lingered for a moment longer. Finally, with no change to its situation, it scuttled away, moving towards the wet sand and covering itself to remove the alien god’s stench.

  Would it tell everyone? Or is it not able to comprehend what just happened to it? I could keep it, but Mirchie would get jealous.

  I stood up, and turned towards the Den. My skin was cold, and I could feel Vesper’s heartbeat. I could hear the ebb of her frantic Symphony, mixed with her ragged breathing. This mindset was alien. Predatory.

  Hungry.

  “There’s no bodies nearby,” I changed the topic.

  Vesper didn’t even do me the courtesy of looking around. “Of course not. The sailors are with Lorelei, and are being given the choice of three.”

  She grinned as she finished that sentence. She didn’t continue, and I let out another exasperated sigh. “What is the choice of –”

  “What is your problem?” Vesper finally exclaimed. “If you don’t want to be here, you can just go. Otherwise, act like an adult and –”

  “Shouldn’t your Whispers tell you what the issue is?” I shot back.

  “It’s just Whispers!” She interrupted my interruption. “Look, if you don’t want to talk to me, then don’t ask me questions. You can’t have it both ways – Either act like an adult and converse, or act like a sullen skeletal peasant and leave.”

  My hand flicked, and the Abyssal Dagger slid between my fingers. I inhaled, and the dagger slowly began to levitate. I guess for this, it’d act as my fang.

  Vesper didn’t move. She peered at the dagger, then at my eyes. No fear, no confusion.

  Just annoyance.

  Her hand shot upwards, and my chest crumpled in. My back collided with the stone arch behind me and my vision slowly returned. Pain shot through my body, and while I didn’t hear a bone crack, I felt my skull bounce off the rock.

  The black tendril coiled around her arm like a snake, before disappearing back to being a tattoo. The air smelled of ink and salt. And blood – my blood, of course.

  My body hurt, my legs felt like they were going to crumple again. The old me would have been dead already.

  I raised my hand, feeling my brain, my will, to take over.

  Green wisps of life energy extruded from Vesper’s body, and since I was a [Harvester], I could increase the tithe. Each of my fingers tugged on a note in the Symphony, as five tethers to her Anima connected with her body. The flow of life moved away from her, and into me.

  Vesper screamed in pain, but I could already tell something was wrong. My other hand weaved, but Vesper was far quicker than I.

  This time I saw the tattoo lunge off her arm, but that was the only thing I could see. I could feel the bones in my hand crack, before breaking into shards. The pain was the Other Ashley’s problem.

  “What, have you been attacking dogs and goblins with that?” she mocked. “You really are inex–”

  There was no scream this time, as the Abyssal Dagger pierced her hand. Just shock; that blade was too sharp for her to feel anything. There was no ‘give’ in the Symphony, and unlike when I used [Skeletal Grasp] to work with the wolfbone daggers I had scrapped, the Abyssal Dagger had no such ‘issue’. It was a knife carving through the smoothest bone.

  “I know,” I responded. “Yield, Or I’ll carve up your arm.” I could taste blood in my mouth, and I couldn’t just keep ignoring my broken leg, my shattered hand, or my concussion.

  Vesper looked at me again, and then the dagger in her hand. She turned her hand around to see the tip; sizzling and steaming the droplets of blood into whatever form of ‘vapour’ it’d become. It was inaccurate to call it ‘steam’.

  And then she laughed. “Whispers was right! You are the crazy one. Look, I’ll do it for you.”

  Vesper was too casual, as if her stabbed hand and her ‘drained’ body was a moment. She moved forward beside me…

  And stepped on the hermit crab.

  “Stop complaining about who you are, ‘virgin peasant’. You want to do this? No holding back. Except this dagger, get it off my hand or I will make Whispers rip your skull out.”

  The mechanical doodad cracked under the pressure. It wasn’t a good shell after all. That didn’t mean much for it.

  See, crabs have something called Hemolymph in them. It’s not like blood. It’s what insects have, generally. And the hermit crabs Hemolymph pooled underneath its splayed body. Its black eyestalk popped from its torso, and the claws yielded away to become flat.

  It didn’t even twitch, or go through its death rattle. I don’t think insects can do that.

  I flicked my finger, and the Abyssal Dagger reappeared in my hand.

  My broken hand.

  My fingers didn’t grasp against the hilt, but the dagger stayed where it should have been despite something as simple as ‘Gravity’, if that’s what Rhyvesta referred to it.

  Vesper’s toes pushed into the mess below, smearing the broken body into a pulp. She lifted the corpse up by the toes of her boots…

  And flung it into the ocean.

  “Out of sight. Pray for that bastard if you want,” she ‘calmly’ stated. She sucked in her breath, and hid a whimper. Her blood was red that dripped onto the sandy beach.

  The pain was coming back to me as well, and I collapsed onto the sands. My arms wobbled, and I couldn’t bend the fingers in one arm. If there was something here I could [Life Drain], it’d fix itself, but there wasn’t. Instead, I slid the backpack off my injured arm so my uninjured hand could open the latch.

  At the very top, one of Madeleine’s healing potions popped out of the… black nothing? Weird.

  I pulled it from the bag and uncorked the flask, letting it drop onto the beach. I hated waste, but I couldn’t hold it with my shattered fingers. The only thing to do about it was make sure the ocean didn’t claim that too.

  Cherries. Not even real cherries. It tasted like a syrupy sweet mixture of what some alchemist had decided a cherry could approximately taste like, if you had never tasted a cherry before and wanted it to make it feel like consuming sludge.

  I almost hurled.

  Though, its effects were immediate. I could feel my bones crack again and shift into place, and my skull to stop ringing. The pain in my legs stopped, and they ceased wobbling as well.

  Soon enough, the shattered bones and ringing were just a faint memory.

  Unlike this disgusting taste. I’d have to learn how to make this tolerable if I continued on with my studies.

  I reached into Madeleine’s backpack again, and out came a second healing potion; I only had one remaining.

  I handed it to Vesper, who leaned against the arched stone and drank it all – and then slammed the glass bottle into the beach.

  “Disgusting,” she bemoaned.

  I snickered at that. Vesper joined in, before both of us were laughing. I slowly stood up, wiping the sand off my dress. “You alright?”

  She rolled her shoulders. “Better than you are. Are you still mulling over if you want to be a killer or not?”

  I bit my lip, trying to form the words.

  “No one cares if you are or aren’t. They just want to hear what they want to hear. Sure, you could have spared that crab if you wanted. Or you could have killed it. Or you could have chucked it back home into the sea – “

  “Hermit crabs are terrestrial.”

  “You’re terrestrial,” she immediately responded, and I don’t think she realized she was technically right. “What I mean to say is that you might have been a peasant before, and I imagine, looking at Ms. Raggedy Anne nobody reading a Harlequin romance that you’re just lower class. Was lower class.”

  “What, because I’m a [Necromancer] I don’t need to concern about that stuff now?” I needled.

  “Who the hell cares if you’re a [Necromancer]?! I don’t, and you shouldn’t. I’m not an [Oracle] first, Raggedy Anne. I’m Vesper, and I want my Dreaming Ones here. An [Oracle] is just something I happen to be.”

  We both said nothing for a moment, before she spoke again. “The only thing that should matter to someone like you is 'can you accomplish your goals?'. Can you, or are you going to accomplish nothing by being indecisive?”

  “Can we just get this stupid Den over with? I don’t think I want to see you anymore.”

  “Too bad,” Vesper responded. “You can’t just run from your problems and your, dare I say, friends? The list of people I let stab me with a knife and still breathe after just consists of you and my mother. And one of those two is going to be Eaten by a Yasha-Nib, the other is my friend, so pick which one you want to be in.”

  “I’d kill you first,” I boredly stated, but I knew I was ignoring her main point. “Look, I’m not used to just killing things for the sake of it, being a [Necro–]”

  “Oh My Gods, shut up,” she interrupted. “What, do you think you’re the first person in the world who realized that they have a dangerous job or one that people won’t accept? Here’s the thing, Raggedy Anne, everyone in this world kind of fucking sucks. My mom tried to kill me and when that didn't work, sell me off to a lord when I was twelve. It turned out that the lord liked being intimate with donkeys and one of them caved his skull in. But he was too important for THAT to be the gossip.”

  “Your mom tried to marry you off when you were twelve?”

  “Wrong thing to focus on, Raggedy Anne! Besides, arranged marriages like that aren’t even uncommon. I take it your parents didn’t want to marry you off young? That's why you have such a short love life? No!” she ranted. “You are ultimately responsible for yourself. Not anyone else. They wouldn’t give a rat's ass if you drowned or were starving. Do what you need to do.”

  That’s not true.

  I did give the pain to Other Ashley, so it makes sense that Other Ashley would hate her words. I wasn’t a psychopath.

  I hoped.

  Even if it weren’t… “What’s your point? That because other people are selfish, I’m allowed to be too?”

  But they aren’t selfish. Her premise is wrong.

  Not now.

  “No! No one cares about you. They are too focused on themselves that they rightfully don’t care what you’re doing as long as it doesn’t affect them. The guards don’t care if peasants or homeless people go missing, but the moment a guard does, it becomes a national crisis. The nobles don’t care at all, until you sacrifice one of them for a Midnight Ritual.”

  She approached, and my body tensed. Her arms tried to reach up to my shoulders, but she wasn’t tall enough.

  She settled for my hips, which was worse. I forced myself not to twitch or push her off.

  “Sister Necessity, if you are going to be…” she paused, and the space beside her shifted. She nodded. “...A farmer, I guess? Really, a Farmer? You’re doing all of this to save on labour costs for a farm?!” She took a breath. “Wrong thing to fixate on Vesper, focus. Anyways, whatever you're going to do, it has costs and consequences that only get solved by focusing on your job. I don’t know what farmers do, but I guess making an… undead… farm… to make… I don’t know… Corn?”

  “No, I hate corn.” I instinctively responded.

  She glared at me with dispassion. “Not the point! I have to do my job as an [Oracle] to be a [Dreamer]. All actions come with consequences. You don’t learn to be a better [Wizard] by staying in your comfort zone. Now, are we done, or do I need to [Charm] you to use a meatshield?”

  I shook my head. “You wouldn’t be able to,” I dryly responded, my [Forsaken Will] still as strong as ever. “So what, are you just happy being a murderer and monster then? I can’t imagine the Dreaming Ones awakening is good for anything, coming from you.”

  “Oh no, they want to violate reality, tear it asunder, and paint the skies with the same colours as their homeland of Forgotten Berisia. I don’t know if they’ll succeed, but I hope they do,” she gleefully responded. “And, frankly, I am. I don’t care about those peoples opinions of me. I don’t care about yours either. Do you care about mine?”

  Yes.

  “No,” I tried to lie. Vesper peered at me.

  “I think you’re cool, Raggedy Anne, Sister Necessity, Ashley, [Necromancer] whatever you want to call yourself. You're clearly starting out, so you’re worried about what people who don’t care about you think and their opinions. Just stick to people you like.”

  That’s a lonely path.

  Vesper nodded, somehow. “It is a lonely path.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I know you didn’t,” she tapped her head again. “Whispers. An [Oracle] is ‘blessed’ by a God, a spirit, or whatever. My ‘gift’ was to read other people's minds. To hear their thoughts. Though, it means I hear everything and then some, and it’s hard to make sense of it. It’s why I know people are shit. Do what you want. But if you try to please everyone, you’ll end up with no one, like what you did with Ad-”

  “You finish that name in any of these conversations, and I will rip your throat out, and raise you back as, I don’t know, a skeleton with no jaw.”

  Vesper grinned. “Yeah, I know you will. Now, are you going to be a [Necromancer] and find whatever this… [Reaper] of yours is? Or going to go home?”

  I looked towards the Den of the Drowned.

  Did I want to do this?

  Next Interlude Character? (Poll closes 1 March 2026)