The Third Floor staircase was unkept.

  It was a singular thought that had burned through my brain in stark contrast to the clean, almost sterile second floor and the homey feeling first.

  Spiderwebs. Dust. Decay, mold, and rot stained the wood over the five steps it took to the door.

  The door.

  I had gotten used to the macabre and the strangeness that came with my other life, but this door was something different.

  My Pa wasn’t a rich man, so for small trips during the summer, or when there wasn’t much to do at the farm, we would go to the forest to forage, and spend the night underneath the stars.

  Pa had brought wooden spikes with him to hammer into the dirt, to thread rope around and then set the tarp to be our tent. It was domestic, homely, and warm. I was too young to hammer in the spike, so Ma would let me read while she and Pa got to work.

  The rhythmic slamming of a hammer to drive the spike into the dirt created this ear-grating clang. It would shift, making the dirt crack in unnatural spider-web designs, arching outwards into whatever fractal it wanted to make.

  But the steel spikes against the wall had none of that. There wasn’t rope around it either, but steel chains that coiled against it, and finished with a humming green glow.

  To state the obvious, it was designed to keep something inside.

  The symphony around it was cold and miserable. The music that created its existence was dark and low, a rumbling sound of chains and metal grating in a silent night. The coiling metal scraped against the dirt and cobblestone, disappearing into the fog in the distance.

  I bit my tongue, pain releasing me from reverie.

  “What is this, Myrrh?” I softly asked. I couldn’t make my legs move, and my heart beat rapidly. Sweat formed on my forehead, which I quickly wiped away.

  “A Staircase, Dr. Anise, or do you prefer Ms. Hart?”

  “Dr. Anise,” I responded. It definitely had prestige to it, unlike Ms. Hart. “And I can see it’s a staircase. I mean, the door?”

  “...It’s a door, Dr. Anise. I am not allowed to open it, so I have not seen what’s beyond it.”

  “Surely you would have kept the steps clean, or at least the chains?”

  Myrrh said nothing, and looked at my face. Her forest-green eyes looked a lot like her grand-daughter's, and outside of how her skin clung to her bones, she just looked like an ancient elf to me. Her gown was ancient, even by elvish standards. It was not unsimilar to how I normally felt when Addy and I were talking too loudly at church, and Old Granny Muriel would stare at us angrily.

  I broke eye contact, looking anywhere but at her. Myrrh leaned down, and her gloved fingers pushed against the wooden step. She inspected the pad of the glove, and just stood up.

  “I apologize, Dr. Anise, but I don’t think I can make the floor any cleaner?”

  I nodded, and moved against the creaking steps. I moved towards the door, and the metal chains slowly began to undo themselves. Metal ground against metal as they disappeared into the aether. The noisy, authoritative click of the door unlatching was met with the foul odor of decay. It hissed inwards, which was even more confusing to me since the chains were on the outside.

  I looked at Myrrh who was rather calm. Her hands were atop of each other at rest, and she stood like a proper old lady.

  I inhaled and closed my eyes. I really didn’t like the realm of the dead.

  “You coming, Myrrh?” I asked, and then stepped through the threshold.

  The Attic, because that’s what this was, was… not of this time. Everything below the house seemed like it was city architecture. Warm heating, floorboards, a hearth, carriages, fancy dresses. Oakheart was a bit behind, but it had buildings with internal consistency.

  This was gray rock atop of that. The warm floorboards below housed an ancient invader for the lack of a better word in my head. The gray stone looked like ancient mud and clay, melded with water and baked in Amaril’s Gaze until it hardened. It was splattered atop not for any sense of design, but for the most basic of needs.

  Shelter.

  It was, as the Academy would say, Utilitarian in design – which was just a fancy way of saying ‘you don’t need to give a pig a bathtub to house it’. City folks really liked using big words for simple ideas.

  Myrrh’s footsteps came from behind me, and she stopped at the door. Her next step was slow and hesitant, before crossing the threshold too.

  I quickly looked at her to see if any expression would come upon her ancient face; confusion, recognition, or just general frustration like I was feeling. Rhyvesta and Levan could have at least told me how his house functioned if he was making me live here.

  She had no such expression, since her gaze was locked at the object in the centre. I should have noticed that too, but I had always liked looking at the room first. The best corners, where I could sit to read, before noticing the silly little details like a glass cage holding a velvet cushion with a beating heart.

  The glass cage had four similar looking iron chains positioned around it, their jagged hooks ‘linking’ with the glass but not ‘cracking’ it. The four chains were taut, connected to the corners of the ceiling. Each corner had a gray-ash shaped skull, its eyes burning green and its mouth open; creating the look of a tongue made of chains wrapping the phylactery.

  “Do you think this is all a matter of taste?” I asked Myrrh.

  Myrrh’s eyes broke their reverie from the encased, beating heart, and turned her head to face me. She said nothing for a long moment, letting my words linger in the air.

  “Doctor Anise, what?” she finally responded, eyebrows raised and lips curled in confusion.

  I pouted! “Oh come on, that was funny. Jazzy would have laughed!”

  “Are you making a joke while observing my master and your mentor’s phylactery?” Myrrh asked again, but there was a rising ‘irritation’ to her voice.

  I stared at my feet. “Yes, yes I am.”

  Myrrh scoffed, exhaling loudly. “You and the young boy both. Same person.”

  “Hey! Addy and I are nothin’ alike! He’d find this right horrifyin’ y’know!”

  “Addy.. Who?! What? No, I’m speaking of Levan. He always loved to make light of a situation.”

  “You knew him when he was young?”

  “Relatively. He and his wife were fairly young at their age. I don’t think either of them had even hit their first century.”

  I stared at Myrrh. “That’s… really old. I don’t think humans live to be past a century?”

  “I know! That’s why Dr. Levan wanted to be immortal,” she impatiently added. Her arms harshly moved, pointing at the heart. “Get moving.”

  She gently guided me forward, and I stumbled against the glass cage. My hands rubbed against the sides, and my fingers pushed over the pane. The glass was smooth and incredibly cold. It slid against my skin.

  But it wasn’t stuck.

  I also realized another thing. I didn’t want a beating heart near me? There’s really no way to explain it, and I wasn’t really willing to travel with it on me!

  And that led to the second question. “This… heart is nice, but what am I supposed to do with it?”

  Myrrh’s eyes furrowed, but she remained at her respectful distance. “You have his Scythe, right?”

  “Yes…?”

  “Then put it with his other phylactery. Bazerie has the third one which is why you’re here.There used to be a fourth but that’s already destroyed. You just need the phylactery Bazerie is holding hostage to bring Levan back. He’ll be weak since one part of his soul is gone, but that can be fixed.”

  Oh! Right!

  I took out the scythe I was holding, and placed it with the heart. A green, dark light connected the two, and the room felt heavier. The air was colder, and the veil between the Symphony and the other side was sounding… like they were almost the same song.

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  I shook that feeling off. I rolled my shoulders, but then my attention turned back to the bigger issue.

  “Hey, Myrrh?”

  “Yes, Doctor Anise?”

  “Why did Bazerie even have Levan’s phylactery?”

  “Oh! She didn’t! The old [Necromancer] of this region did. The one that Bazerie killed. Levan’s life is just a thing a few of us know about. That Phylactery isn’t common knowledge. All she thinks it is is a potent necromantic artifact, since, well, it is. I heard my master made you your first one too! I wonder what that’ll eventually become. Anyways, yes, Bazerie stealing it was unfortunate, and we didn’t have anyone available to retrieve the Scythe after Levan was killed. Especially when the first phylactery was destroyed and most of the order was hunted down. And here you show up claiming to be the successor of the [Lich], and you DO have the scythe! As Levan said, his successor would be one willing to grab life by its throat.”

  “I just want to sell some carrots,” I grumbled.

  “And Levan only wanted to cure more patients, and he ended up becoming a [Lich]. He too found a similar conversation about history with me just as boring. History doesn’t often repeat, but it does rhyme.”

  “Okay?” I refused to engage. This was becoming a massive waste of time, something being tacked onto my already busy workload. I moved past her, and back down to the door. “So, my real goal is to just get a Phylactery back right?”

  “I believe so, Doctor Anise?”

  “I was told by the Goddess to deal with the Arbiter though. This seems more like something Levan wants.”

  “Yes? You had become a [Necromancer] on your own, and only found Levan for guidance. He gave you the medical knowledge you needed to improve your own craft, and is asking to be brought back. Rhyvesta’s goal is primary, but your mentor’s goal is just one additional step after.”

  "It isn’t much trouble, and I was planning to do it anyway. But I just wanted it to be clear that it’s my choice to do so.”

  “Is it, Dr. Anise? Dr. Anise was a man of great pride, and hated being helped. He knew his wife sacrificed a lot for him, and the only way he could return that debt he owed her was to undo that sacrifice. You strike me as similar, and you pay back your debts, no matter how inconvenient. That kind of pride often makes a choice an obligation.”

  I sighed. I owed Dr. Anise a lot. He saved me, and taught me medicine, and has been helping me out. I understood I was already aiding him, but a debt was a debt, and a gal’s only as good as her word.

  Ma or Pa wouldn’ like a daughter who couldn’t pay her dues.

  I closed my eyes and calmed my nerves before leaving the upper floor and descending two flights of stairs back to the main room. Myrrh closed the door behind us, as she followed along.

  I hated improvising. I needed to make a plan, but that required me to organize my thoughts and figure out what I knew, what I didn’t know, and find out things I didn’t know that I didn’t know. My professor used to call that ‘known unknowns and unknown unknowns’ to drive the difference.

  I pulled out all my books, placing them neatly on the table.

  The Mortis Agrariae, that I hadn’t needed to write anything new in for a few weeks since there weren't enough things to note. The Libre Sanitas, which was Dr. Levan’s notes.

  I had purchased a new book for my activities - which I had named the Statio Cervi (Station of the Stag - Lit. “Hart Stop”). I even got to embroider the front with a picture of a stag! It was with black gems on the gray book, and Ophelia had called it a waste of time.

  It was never a waste of time to make your books look good.

  And finally was the small black book from The Stranger. There was no seal, just a singular latch that was hooped. I could tamper with it easily. The ‘skin’ was black leather, but had no identifying marks. The only thing I had found interesting was the paper was lined, a small detail I could notice when the cover shifted. Most parchment I had seen was blank; it seemed like a waste of ink for a [Miller] to handcraft blue lines on each page.

  A sharp hiss snapped my attention toward the hearth.

  Mirchie was sniffing about, moving cushions and soft things to be near the hearthfire. Myrrh had tried to recover said cushions, and for her effort Mirchie angrily stood off. The ancient [Wight] put her arms up in surrender and went back to, what I assume, was her version of maintaining Levan’s abode.

  I shook my head and opened the Statio Cervi. Its blank pages called to me, unlimited possibility and potential. I leaned into the pages and sniffed; it still had the off the mill scent. I never agreed with my classmates when they said a book shouldn’t be opened fully! It was meant to be enjoyed, read, cracked, written in, and utilized!

  Instead of writing anything useful, I just drew. I already drew from life to make images of plants, zombies, bones, hearts, muscles, herbs… and even my friends. Keeping an image of what a proper stalk of Belladonna looked like made identifying it easier in the fields. And, I wasn’t going to see Jasmine for who knew how long, so sketching her face was a way to remember her by.

  Since this was my Hart Stop book, I drew the head of a stag – a Hart. I rolled the quill against my hand, and decided to not give it a title.

  Alright, now for the actual work.

  What did I know?

  Bazerie had the phylactery.

  Bazerie had the entire Silent Path to her beck and call.

  I had Madeleine, Noel, and I could ask Adrian for help.

  I had the undead, if I could find a way to acquire bodies. That was an ‘unknown’ - but I wasn’t working there right now.

  Flowers-By-The-River wasn’t the capital of Evergreen, but it was the trade hub.

  And I was doing this to control the Black Market here to start selling goods as well.

  That was a start!

  What didn’t I know? What were the unknowns?

  Well, what is the phylactery Bazerie owns?

  I looked at that question. That’s not unknown. I could easily figure that out. “Hey, Myrrh!”

  “Yes, Doctor Anise?” she called from another room.

  “What does Bazerie have – the phylactery I’m looking for?”

  “Oh! She has Levan’s Pen! It’s able to sign deals with the dead and living alike.”

  I tilted my head. “Why is it a pen?”

  “Master Levan had selected items that his friends had given him and asked them to hold onto it. The pen was a gift from his first apprentice. He had returned the pen to him and told him what it was.”

  I bit my lip. That is… exactly what I did with Adrian’s amulet and gifted it to Ophelia. “Thank you, Myrrh!”

  “Of course, Doctor Anise. I will remind you that my granddaughter is expecting you for tea in an hour. I will get your clothing set and prepared.”

  “Any chance you can tell her to not hold onto that?”

  “I can’t,” Myrrh said. “It was in our contract with Lyranil. It’s part of the upkeep.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman who actually owns this house, Doctor Anise.”

  I nodded, and went back to work.

  The Phylactery wasn't unknown, but what was was everything around Bazerie.

  I didn’t know who she was, how strong she was, why she was ascending to a [Blood Witch], or anything about the silent path.

  But Madeleine should. I missed her, and, after tea with Selenia, I would go visit her. Oh, and Noel! He had been here for a while, came with Addy a few days ago.

  I pulled my quill away from the page, and the pattern was becoming clear.

  The entire plan was just taking care of a bad harvest. It was a field overrun by weeds, and all this planning around was just trying to avoid the real issue.

  This was another culling, and the reason this plan was coming to the front was because of a farmhand’s tendency to avoid the bad crops with the good.

  That only worked when the infestation was manageable.

  Pa had shown me insects eating the leaves of a cornplant once. He said that if this is here, that must mean the eggs are in the roots, the larvae are eating the helpful insects, and the infestation would spread.

  So, both of us got to work just threshing and deweeding and deplanting. We pulled up each of the stalks of corn, and then applied lye to the ground to kill off the bugs.

  We did need the Church’s help to sustain ourselves for this period, but when Pa returned to our fields, it was clean. Sure, the harvest wasn’t as early as we would have liked, but we would have a harvest.

  And this was the same idea. The same principle. Trying to find out which plants were bad and which plants were good was a waste of time. I’d just rip the roots out, take them all down, and whatever wanted to return would be allowed under new management. If they fought back, they were an infestation that was meant to be burned. If they ran, well, it wasn’t our problem anymore.

  Honestly, people really made jobs too difficult. They were meddling around from the simple truth of an extermination, and while they were people, they were also criminals that stepped out of line. Their lives were already forfeit - what changed if it was me or Adrian doing the culling?

  It wasn’t anything like Lyric Bay. Those were slugs; they had to be in the garden. These are weeds, and no one cares about their removal.

  I closed the book, and Myrrh handed me a cup of tea. I smiled up at her, and she rubbed my head before returning to the other rooms. I placed the cup of tea down… right beside the stranger’s journal.

  Right. He said bringing Levan back was a terrible idea. But he said it was also because of Volkova; the Ice Court Princess. That was definitely someone I was going to have to meet, on my route of figuring out who Bazerie even was.

  I picked up the book and put it back in my inventory.

  I had the basics of a plan, and a goal in mind. I’d just need to get this sorted.

  The first thing was visiting Selenia for tea, then seeing Madeleine again. At some point, I’d have to go to the Academy and see my old teachers, the Headmistress, and Volkova.

  Then I could figure out how to deal with Bazerie.

  I pushed back against my chair, tilting the front legs off the ground. I looked around the room. This sounded incredibly stressful.

  “Myrrh!” I shouted into the room.

  “Yes, Doctor Anise?”

  “Is there a place I could do some gardening? If I’m going to be stuck here, I want to grow some plants.”

  “Why.. yes? This is Lynaril’s house, after all. Tell Selenia to give you the keys to Building 18. Levan and his wife used that place to store and grow all of their herbs.”

  I nodded, slamming the feet of the chairs back down. You can put a country girl in the city, but you can’t take the country out of her.