Phantom faces at the window, phantom shadows on the floor

[skeletonenigma]

Characters: (CLOSED) Skulduggery Pleasant, Erskine Ravel, Anton Shudder, and the fourth-wall Dead Men.
Date: April 15-30.
Location: Throughout Keeliai, but mostly in Erskine's new Earth Sector shelter.
Situation: The Dead Men haven't created something lasting together in a very long time. It's led to some spectacularly stupid decisions. This? This is their chance to fix things.
Warnings/Rating: Intimacy / non-serious flirting between grown men, some jokes of a sexual nature, massive spoilers for the entire Skulduggery Pleasant series (but notably the last two books), mentions of murder and betrayal, gratuitous amounts of violence and punching in response to said mentions of murder and betrayal (the Dead Men actually communicate by punching each other in the face). Also, broship. Lots of broship.


With Erskine and Skulduggery's relationship somehow even more strained than it was before Skulduggery vanished for a month, and Erskine growing maybe a little too dependent on Anton while living at the Hotel, the Dreaming's been getting a lot of wishes -- subconscious or otherwise -- for the arrival of very specific people.

They arrive on the 15th, scattered around the turtle. Over the day, they find each other, two or three at a time. There are hugs. There are punches. And when they all come together, they spend most of the following two weeks helping Erskine build and prepare a shelter for the kedan -- in between needing subtle reminders that the point of the reunion is to forgive each other.

Or, if not forgive, at least accept each other, flaws and all.

Comments

April 15th | Saracen's Arrival | Erskine

[ruefulnosetap]

It's not unusual for Saracen to wake up somewhere different from where he fell asleep. Usually it's because he got very drunk the night before and his memories upon waking up were hazy. Sometimes it was because he'd jumped back an hour or two.

So when he wakes up with the very ripe smell of a stable in the air and straw all around him, it takes a couple of minutes for Saracen to remember that he hasn't been anywhere near a stable in years -- and that he's definitely never seen a... whatever-the-hell-that-was before. It looked like a horse, if the horse actually looked like a cow and was also covered in feathers.

Saracen gives the horse-cow-bird-thing a wide berth as he leaves the stable, but the city he finds himself in is more confusing than the animals. He wanders, half in a daze, through bustling streets and marketplaces trying to find anything which looks even vaguely familiar. An old wartime instinct has the back of his mind racing, trying to figure out what happened and what brought him into this strange place -- shunting? Maybe, but he can't see how. Ireland's problems with shunting ended five years ago.

Unbeknownst to Saracen, he looks disheveled and messy. He still has straw in his hair and a particular smell on his clothes he stopped noticing somewhere back in the stable. He looks, basically, like he got really drunk and slept in a stable all night.

[edgeoftheknife]

The morning has already been eventful and Erskine's barely out of bed. He'd been trying to catch a little extra sleep after Anton left the bed and went to work, only to be roused by the thunderous noise of the College imploding. After he'd emerged from the bedroom wide-eyed and disheveled and been promptly reassured that no, everything was fine, he'd gone right back to bed. Funny how certain sounds could bring the war all screaming back in a second, despite the intervening century.

Sleep has been elusive since then. Even Anton's record-player can't soothe him back into more than a kind of groggy doze. Finally he drags himself out of bed, showers, and uses the time to formulate his plans for the day. Most of his chores for the day are done already, done yesterday, so that he can have the day off to work on the shelter. The place still needs a lot of work, but he has time. Oh, does he have time. So he'll take a day off here and there and work on it as he's able, and eventually it will be ready.

One piece of toast later he's out the doors of the Hotel, for once wearing a simple t-shirt and work trousers--or what passes for them amongst the kedan--with his hooded jacket over the top. For the first time in months, however, he leaves the hood down when he emerges from the Hotel.

[ruefulnosetap]

It doesn't take long to find the centre of what apparently was some kind of explosion. Half of a building is missing. People are clustered around it. There's smoke in the air, and the smell of fire. Saracen takes a few minutes to ask questions of some of the bystanders, heedless of how annoying he comes across or how snappy the responses get, and then he erases those few minutes and walks on.

The city's called Keeliai. Saracen isn't the first to appear out of nowhere inside it, and no one seems to know how that happens. There are several places newcomers can go to find out more about their situation. The building was a college, and even though part of it had collapsed, it was looking more and more like no one had gotten hurt.

A few streets and a couple of side-alleys later, Saracen turns the corner, scans the path ahead for any obvious reasons to steer clear of it -- and freezes.

He'd been wandering in a daze until then. Now, his mind snaps instantly into the present, sharp and alert, and Saracen's next few decisions are barely preceded by thought.

"Ravel!" he shouts, his tone equal parts relief and fury.

April 15 | Arrival | Hotel + Anton

[shopworn]

So a very nice young woman escorts Ghastly to the Hotel, which is-- well. It's the Midnight Hotel. Ghastly stands outside it for several minutes. It's obvious that the architecture doesn't fit with what's around it: there's no way this is a building constructed here which coincidentally resembles the Midnight Hotel he knows so well.

But its proprietor...

Ghastly's hand comes up, almost against his will, to touch the scar at his throat that he really could come to hate. Maybe, if he's here, then there's a chance.

His shoulders are a little hunched. Consciously, he drops them, and drops his hand, and he opens the door and heads into the Hotel, hoping. Looking for a familiar tall shape, and not knowing if he'll find it.

[gistful]

"There's been rumours," Muf had told Anton an hour ago. "New people of yours, in the city, like last year. Might be they've been drawn in by the weird explosion."

"Update me when you've more information," Anton had asked at the time.

He should have known better. Muf had a slightly larrikinesque streak wherein he took Anton's requests facetiously literally. Anton didn't mind, so he didn't bother to censor himself in those requests, but it meant that he had only as many drips and drabs of information as Muf deigned to give him until Muf decided he had enough to make it worth his boss's while.

Which meant that Anton wasn't quite in the know, but was enough in the know to be counting linens and making a shopping list.

"Welcome to the Midnight Hotel," he said without looking up from his desk. He was on the wrong side of it, leaning over the low barrier to make an upside-down note on the ledger. "Please take a seat; I will be with you shortly."

Gone were the days when he'd immediately look up. Too many kedan around, laughing and talking and being social, even in the lobby. If anything was untoward, their reaction would tell him all he needed to know.

[shopworn]

Anton.

Ghastly had to remember the last time he'd seen Anton, in terrible, full-colour glory, and he shuddered at the recollection. But Anton was here, somehow, alive and standing and in one piece--

His breath caught, and his balance wavered for a moment, and then he was crossing the lobby with great strides, completely ignoring Anton's directive to take a seat. Hang it all, Anton's note-taking could wait.

Ghastly reached the front desk, realized belatedly that perhaps he should say something as a warning, settled for "Anton," and, judging that enough to be getting on with, pulled Anton into a possibly too-tight embrace.

Late on the 15th | Strangers on a Train | Dexter

[larrikinism]

Mole-people.

Mole-people.

Hatal was a giant city built underground -- or inside a mountain, whichever -- and it was populated by half-bird people and mole-people.

For the first hour or so, Rover walked around trying to find a way out into the sunshine, desperately staving off a panic attack for as long as he could. Then, when he could breathe a little easier and think a little clearer, he came up with the bright idea of asking someone, and it turned out Tu Vishan with the city on its back was docked only an hour or so's walk out of Hatal. Rover hugged the half-bird person who told him where to go and ran off, leaving a wave of perplexed confusion behind him.

He was still wearing the clothes Skulduggery had tailored for him the last time, the Oriental silk-embroidered shirt and cotton pants. That had to mean Skulduggery was still here, right? And Anton. And all the other friends he made -- Alistair Krei and Valdis and those kedan --

It took most of the day and a little judicious air magic to speed things up, but eventually Rover made it to the tram station he remembered on the outskirts of Keeliai. He nearly walked right past it to go and find somewhere with a console so he could contact Anton, but then he stopped. Why would Anton settle for a simple video message when he could have Rover, in the flesh, right there in front of him?

So Rover took the tram. He went straight to the open space near the back free of seats and hung as far outside of it as he could, one arm wrapped around a pole, waving cheerfully at anyone who so much as glanced over. He actually looked a little out of place with no sleeves when so many others were bundled up against the early-spring chill, but his ready grin and occasional shouted compliment got him far more smiles than strange looks.

[vexingshieldbearer]

Since being tended, Dexter had slipped out of the Healer's Guild. Probably against advice; he didn't really care. He'd spent too long there as it was, though at least the explosion hadn't actually hurt anyone so he'd gotten first-grade attention right off. Being about to die would do that, apparently.

He didn't really have anywhere to go. Something something soul-gem, Foreigners, influx--the explanations were something of a haze of pain and apathy. He'd have preferred to be dead.

Dead meant he wouldn't have to continue feeling like this.

Or maybe that was the Remnant possession. Dexter was fairly sure he was remembering more than most should, even if they were barely snatches.

Not thinking about that, though. Not thinking about the hotel he'd been directed toward. People called it like it was the only one in the city, like it had a capital H, and that just reminded him of--

Not thinking about it. Instead Dexter wandered through the city in a widening circle, wearing mismatched clothes given to him in lieu of the ones ruined by dying; looking but not really seeing, filing details away due to long experience more than desire. He's making his way to a tram station to seat in a seat for another hour when one passes by to approach the station, and his gaze caught on it and then flitted away.

Snapped back. Stopped. His chest felt tight all of a sudden, and even though Dex wanted to stop looking, he couldn't.

There was a Rover on that tram.

No, it's not right, he's--

YOU'RE--

Shit. Maybe he was dead. Maybe the pain didn't end when you died. Maybe Skulduggery wasn't missing anything after all.

[larrikinism]

Not much had changed since the last time Rover saw these buildings and streets. How long had it been? Months? Years? But nearly everything looked the same, right down to the various shapeshifting kedan who walked along the tram line. There was one man with comically large nostrils, and another with shaggy fur covering half of his face -- probably to keep him warm. He looked very handsome in it and Rover told him exactly that, hanging half out of the tram with a wave and a smile. The tram turned a corner before he could hear any response.

Hey, that one there looked a bit like Dex. Same blond hair, same chiseled shoulders. Rover grinned at the tall kedan, held up a hand to wave while simultaneously trying to figure out where in the city he'd ended up -- and then abruptly the Dex-kedan had his full attention.

He didn't just look like Dex, Rover realised. He was Dex. Dex stared back at Rover, ashen, recognition written all over his face -- and that face was disappearing far too quickly as the tram trundled on down the rails --

Too ashen. Too pale. Before Rover could really consider what that meant he gathered air at his back and shot out of the moving tram only a little slower than a bullet fired from a gun. He yelped when the split-second decision nearly had him crashing into the wall of a building, angled his body at the very last minute and tumbled head over heels against the ground, summoning as much air as he could to soften the blows.

Then he jumped back to his feet, looked around, zeroed in on Dex, and ran towards him with a whooping cry, the joy on his face belying exactly how much danger he'd been in just a second ago. His body ached and was probably covered with bruises now. He didn't care. It was Dex.

Any day after April 15 | Here We Are Again | All

[edgeoftheknife]

Erskine had been kicking the idea around for months. He'd been working with the kedan in his spare time--the homeless, the hungry, those in need of some kind of helping hand--and though it had seemed to help his own state of mind for a while, fill the emptiness, it wasn't enough. Cleaning the Hotel and serving a few bowls of soup, helping mend a broken window on a run-down house... they were ways to pass the time, and cleaning the Hotel was part of his debt to Anton, but at the end of the day he still found himself staring at the walls, wondering what came next.

Months ago Anton had asked him about Hopeless, about what Hopeless had suggested he do after the war. Hopeless had wanted him to help people. Somehow Erskine had always envisioned the mind-reader being there for it, if not directly then at least in the background, and what Erskine had actually gone on to do was destroy the Dead Men a century later.

But maybe... maybe there was something to that line of thinking after all.

The building he purchased in the Earth Sector had been a small textiles mill once, though when he first found it there was every indication that it hadn't been used, or even occupied, for several years. For all that it was remarkably intact, but it was going to need a lot of work to turn it into the kind of business he was intending. On his own, after his work at the Hotel, it was going to take ages to fix the place up. It was a project though. It was his.

Now that the rest of the Dead Men were here--now that Hopeless was here--Erskine wasn't sure if he was going to get any work done on the shelter at all. Maybe he could steal a few minutes here and there, unless the others decided they'd rather not have the traitor around. At least he could show Hopeless his idea.

He never quite intended the shelter to become a bonding experience for the eight of them, but their luck hadn't always been terrible either. There had been a time when being a Dead Man hadn't meant loss and regret.

[shopworn]

Somehow, incredibly, the shelter, Erskine's project, becomes something safe to do with himself. Ghastly lifts and carries and there is no small amount of hammering, and usually this means he is too tired to punch anyone.

Every day, the confused tangled ache of hurt and loss unties itself a little further.

It strikes him as odd when the others leave him and Erskine alone together, though Ghastly supposes that's because Hopeless won't be too far distant and will be able to step in if something goes horribly awry. Mostly he doesn't say anything about it, only keeps at the work. Work to help people, rather than fighting.

(Occasionally there is sewing instead, because he can and because some people need better clothing than they currently have.)

[skeletonenigma]

There are a few different times Skulduggery keeps Ghastly company while he's sewing. It's not constant, because as much as Skulduggery missed Ghastly he's self-aware enough to know when his presence hurts more than it helps. It's more time with his best friend than he expected, and Skulduggery's perfectly happy to take that time on Ghastly's terms.

When he's there, he talks. About Keeliai, mostly, stories of the other Foreigners and of Malicant's defeat (leaving out a few more salient details). He talks about the kedan and their culture, about Tavimbi and Hatal and their culture. Sometimes he's griping about the lack of official law enforcement making his job more difficult, and sometimes he's griping about only having one bulletproof suit.

At one point, after having talked at length, he pauses.

"If there's anything you'd like to know," he says, "I'll do my best to make it more palatable."

He's referring to what happened after Ghastly's death back home. Somehow, Skulduggery doesn't think he needs to specify.

18th or so;

[scryinghope]

Hopeless has Plans. One thing they've all known from the beginning is that most of them don't have much time here--that means they have to make the best of it. The shelter itself is a wonderful way to spend the time, and looking at Hopeless makes it seem as though nothing is wrong at all. He works while humming with languid contentment, delivering tools, food, and bandaids to various Dead Men around the place--when he isn't doing some smaller, or aesthetic tasks.

Hopeless isn't a builder; but he is, after a fashion, an artist. After a fashion, they're all artists. He does little engravings for the bedrooms, the kitchens, making signs--creating little touches to make the shelter a home once it's done.

Except for one day, when he appears beside Erskine to snag his sleeve and tug it. "Come with me," he says, smiling mysteriously.

He's had something delivered in what will be an antechamber linking the lobby and Erskine's room--somewhere private he can go, but which he can still guard the lobby if he doesn't want the door closed.

[edgeoftheknife]

As unbelievable as its been having everyone back, everyone alive and whole and together in the same place for the first time in a century, Erskine has found himself horribly distracted while they work on the shelter. He's not going to complain about the help--on the contrary, it's more than he could have hoped for. Except half the time while he's supposed to be working he's thinking about Hopeless instead. Idly watching the mind-reader work on his engravings. Wondering where he's gone when he's not in sight. Smiling like a fool every time he reappears. Half the time Erskine doesn't even realize he's doing it, and the other half he doesn't care. It's been too long. Surely he's allowed a little time to act like a fool, in between the pain and the mistrust from the others?

For once, on this occasion, he's actually managed to concentrate long enough to get some 'heavy lifting' done. His hands are raised in the air, guiding a support beam he's been levitating. Just as the beam slides down into place, fitted perfectly, he feels the tug on his sleeve and turns his gaze--and smiles as soon as he sees Hopeless.

The smile quickly turns into a puzzled little frown. Hopeless is smiling himself, and looking entirely too pleased for there to be something wrong. Which means he's plotting something.

He's only been in town for three days, how is he plotting something already?

Regardless, Erskine looks around the room one more time to make sure he's left everything in a state where it won't fall or collapse or hurt anything/anyone before nodding to the mind-reader and brushing his hands off on his work trousers. "I suppose I can take a break from making everyone else look bad for a minute or two."

Erskine;

[vexingshieldbearer]

After Dexter's emotional fog had broken, he found it easier to actually ... be there. In the moment. With the rest of them. Easier to laugh. It felt like relief, to laugh. Felt like daggers too.

But it wasn't until Hopeless prodded him that Dexter actually considered trying to talk to any of the others, one-on-one. Letting the camaraderie seep in, turn from fragile and edged, to something smooth and more closely approaching what it should have been, had felt like enough of a gift (a bladed one) to work with. Building the shelter, laughing, scuffling, falling in each other's laps; all that was enough. Why couldn't they just stick with that?

Except ... there was the Erskine thing. There was always the Erskine thing. (Like there'd been the Vile thing.)

"Don't you think you should let him know what you've decided?"

"I really hate that you know what I've decided before I did. Also, I missed you."

Which was why Dexter was not paying complete and total attention as he nailed in a beam that Erskine was holding aloft with air, and his Roveresque stream of dialogue as to the angles and dimension of the room cut off with a yelp as hammer hit thumb.

[edgeoftheknife]

Erskine hadn't known how to behave around Dexter at first, short of quietly shying away from him as he'd been doing with Ghastly. It was true that Erskine hadn't plunged the knife into Dexter's back himself, at least by the point when he'd come to Keeliai--he didn't even know how Dexter had died, honestly--but he knew that it was his fault. The war, the state of the world when he'd left it... it was all his fault, more or less. Eight of the strongest, most talented sorcerers the world had produced, and Erskine was responsible for the deaths of all but three of them.

Even he himself was dead by his own hand, after a fashion, and would be in a very literal sense if he ever returned to their own world.

For someone who was deceptively gentle, Dexter had been particularly vitriolic after Ghastly and Anton's murders. Erskine couldn't blame him, but it left him at a loss as to how to occupy the same room with the energy thrower. Only the presence of the others saved the situation, Erskine suspected. So they found themselves working on the same section of the shelter, Erskine holding up a beam with a current of air magic while Dexter chattered to anyone who would listen. Erskine started at the sudden yelp and his magic slipped, dropping the unsecured half of the beam a good foot before he caught himself.

"All right up there?" he asked quietly, his hands moving in front of him as he manipulated the air.

20th or so; Rover

[vexingshieldbearer]

For a while there, it had seemed as though Dexter might be able to make it through without contributing to the mental breakdowns. He'd managed to remain calm in the face of Erskine, in the fact of Ghastly and Anton in close proximity to Erskine--mostly because he'd been so tired. The emotions had escaped into exhaustion.

That might've been a good thing. He hadn't been able to muster the urge to kill Erskine, at least. Hopeless would've objected.

Except that, a few days after they started collapsing on each other in Erskine's half-renovated shelter, the dreams started. Foggy dreams, at first. Snatches of when he'd been Remnanted. Then times of when he hadn't been.

Dex doesn't remember which dream does it. He does remember waking up with an ache in his chest he doesn't realise at first is because he's not getting enough air. He's too busy trying not to cave under the weight of all those memories, the fact that the sleeping men around him are sleeping on the murdered and on the murderers--

Frantically Dexter shoves off blankets, shoves off limbs, and crawls away into the next room. It's as far as he can make it before the wrenching sobs stop him from going any further.

Dex how dare you go AWAY from the bed

[larrikinism]

Dex might have thought being so calm was a good thing, but Rover noticed that distinct lack of reaction. He noticed, and connected it with when they first met by the tram line. He didn't know why, exactly -- something to do with being Remnanted? -- but Dex never wanted to talk about it and Rover was a little distracted by the explanations of what Erskine did a century after the war ended.

He stayed cheerful, for both Dex's sake and his own. Thanked their lucky stars Descry was around to talk some sense into Erskine. Rover went on doing what he always did when problems were mounting and he couldn't do anything about them -- he overcompensated.

That stops working one night when Rover's woken up by being shoved roughly to one side.

For him, it's only been a couple of weeks since the war. He's still a light sleeper. He wakes up instantly alert and rolling, but he's also on a mattress and that's strange and when he rolls out of the way of the potential attack, he rolls right off the mattress and falls a short distance to the ground with a yelp. He's still bruised from leaping off the tram. Not badly, but enough that the jar against his muscles takes a second or two to recover from.

Then he's up, scanning the mattress and bundled blankets, noting who's missing, and following Dex into the next room.

"Hey," he says as he enters, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. "You're lost. Bed's that way."

Then he hears the sobs, and all false cheer falls out of his limbs, leaving Rover shaking and cold. "Dex?" In an instant he's by his husband's side, arms wrapped around Dex's shoulders, silently encouraging him to use Rover as a blanket. Or a mattress. Or whatever Dexter needs. "It's alright. Whatever it is, it's going to be alright. Nothing a good night's sleep and unrestrained cuddles won't fix. We're all here. No one knows their true name. It's going to be alright, Dex. It's going to be alright."

He's babbling. He knows. Right now, that's all he can manage, just a steady stream of platitudes and reminders.

[vexingshieldbearer]

At first Dexter doesn't realise Rover's there; he's bent over against the floor, coughing and gasping and sobbing. It's half a panic attack, but not quite; it's a flood of emotion coming so fast and so thick that his body can't keep up with its reactions.

Then Rover's arms come around him and Dexter flinches. He can't stop, though. He doesn't even know how to begin to stop this. He turns into the embrace instead, pressing himself into Rover as though it was possible for them to occupy the same space.

He can't answer. He doesn't have the breath. But Rover's words made him shake his head.

It's not going to be alright. It's never going to be alright.

Of the eight of them, six of them are dead. Of the two still alive, one's a murderer. And of those who don't live in Keeliai, one's going to go back to hell, and the rest are going to go back to dying.

Dexter presses his face into Rover's shoulder and clings, trying to breathe and not really doing a great job of it.

Saracen; Skulduggery

[scryinghope]

Saracen: Fathers and sons

During the war, the Dead Men's lives had relied on secrets. As it turned out, so did their deaths, so since arriving in Keeliai Hopeless was less inclined to keep some of them. Not that he went around blurting out the fact that he and Saracen were related, but he didn't ... hide his pride as much as he maybe could've.

They hadn't said much in public, yet. Hopeless and Saracen's relationship had, in so many ways, been unspoken. But Hopeless had been worried to see how much weight Saracen had lost, and how his face had dulled.

Ten days of constant, very good feeding had changed that. Now, as they worked, Hopeless couldn't help but glance over every so often, smiling. Saracen was more inclined to non-muscular bulk than most of them. It looked good. It looked healthy, and well-lived. Like he'd been at peace long enough to do it.


Skulduggery: A long overdue conversation

Time was getting on, and there were still some conversations that needed to be had. What with everything else the Dead Men had talked about, there was one thing that had slipped through the cracks. Ghastly was about the only one who didn't know it.

But there was someone who needed to know how many of the others did.

Hopeless didn't say anything to Skulduggery, but as they were winding up for the day and starting to gather in the kitchen, around Shudder's cauldron, Hopeless drifted toward Skulduggery and inclined his head toward the next room.

Fathers and sons

[ruefulnosetap]

If Hopeless was being a little more careless than was perhaps wise, Saracen didn't notice. Keeliai was very, very different from the world where revealing their relationship would have put them both in danger; here, no one would care. Short of someone blurting the secret out, Saracen would remain adrift in a happy state of surrealism where nothing he did would have lasting consequences, and save Skulduggery, Anton, and Erskine, none of the other Dead Men would remember him.

It was a little like purgatory, actually. It felt real, but it didn't feel like anything had any weight.

He definitely did notice when Descry kept smiling at him, though. It was nice, but equally disconcerting, like someone was planning a joke behind his back. The ninth or tenth time it happened Saracen veered off course from his quest to find more nails and stood over his father, arms crossed. "Alright," he said, "out with it."

[scryinghope]

"What?" Hopeless widened his eyes with faux innocence as he straightened and turned toward Saracen, entirely unsurprised. "Am I not allowed to gaze upon my son? Am I not allowed to be proud?"

He grinned, completely ruining any chance of having Saracen believe he wasn't plotting anything. Even if he wasn't.

A long overdue conversation

[skeletonenigma]

Hopeless wanted to talk. That, in itself, wasn't a bad sign. In fact, given the last century, it was a very good sign. It piqued Skulduggery's curiosity just enough to deliberately overlook that Hopeless was asking to talk silently, subtly, as if hiding from the others.

Which was what Hopeless no doubt intended.

Skulduggery slipped into the next room a minute or so after Hopeless did, closed the door quietly behind him (it had just been attached earlier that day, in fact -- another odd coincidence), and turned. "Yes?"

April 28-ish | Hopeless

[edgeoftheknife]

The shelter was farther along than Erskine had dared to hope when he'd first committed to the project. The Dead Men had taken to the renovations with gusto, turning the old, dusty mill into a sleek, gleaming new facility that was every bit what Erskine had imagined. Most of the raw labor was over by this point. What was left was a lot of fine tuning, little finishing touches here and there: another sigil from Anton, a delivery of sheets for the beds, stocking the kitchen with more than just the essentials the Dead Men had been living on for the last two weeks.

Unfortunately the looming end to the project was also a reminder that the Dead Men's tenure in Keeliai was almost at an end as well. That knowledge was an ache in Erskine's chest, although surprisingly he wasn't nearly as morose about it as one might have expected. It was more a kind of sad resignation, which was frequently overshadowed by the happiness that had settled in early-on in the fortnight.

At the moment he was in the grips of one of those moments of happiness. He'd just come from the room he'd claimed for his own--his faery bower, as Hopeless had dubbed it--and had passed through the antechamber with the loom in it, pausing to inspect the small amount of progress showing on the loom. It wasn't much, but the weaving was even and the yarn Hopeless had found for him was beautiful. It was a start.

There was almost a spring in his step when he came back out into the main rooms of the shelter, automatically seeking out Hopeless, and stopped short. Something was wrong. Hopeless wasn't facing him completely but even at this angle he could see the look on his face, the look the mind-reader wore when something was hurting him.

"Descry?"

[scryinghope]

Among those finishing touches were some of Hopeless's little hidden blessings and scrolling engravings. He'd gotten the idea from the girl in Anton's Hotel; there wasn't time to create a library of books. There was time to leave something tangible on the door-frames, the bed-frames, on the sides of the tables and counters.

He'd been using a scalpel to carefully carve blessing in Irish in the lintel over the door leading toward the bed-rooms when something rolled across his mentalscape. It was dizzying, the suddenness of that mind's appearance; and that was leaving aside the mind itself. It was powerful--and savage. And he recognised it immediately, because it was from his world.

Hopeless didn't realise he'd leaned against the door until he felt Erskine's warm concern cut through the overpowering sense of Darquesse. He stirred and lifted his head, managed to smile despite the pain-lines creasing his eyes. Erskine ... was a bit blurry. So was everything around him. Not an ordinary headache.

"The population just got a bit overwhelming," he said, leaving out why. No way he was going to mention that if he didn't have to; and this wasn't the first sudden migraine he'd had since he'd arrived. Large populations had that effect sometimes. There was no reason for Erskine to think anything untoward.

Please let Erskine assume that's all it is.

"Can you--" Hopeless swallowed. "Tea, please?" He could ... maybe ... get to a chair on his own.