"I think we all need better weapons than a pocketknife. If we're going to be doing this at all."

"Guns take practice, don't they. I wonder how much. --If it doesn't take a bloody harpoon to take one of those things down."

"I'm trying to think if there's anything here that I won't make dramatically worse. There were principled reasons I left an entire country to not get conscripted, but it turns out I am also just terrible at-- fighting and combat and seeing bad things happen to people."

"I-- I can't say I feel much different. But if it comes down to it I hope I can pull it off anyways."

"Yeah. And I don't have a plan here, or anything, I just-- think it would probably not make things worse, if I had options other than running."

"...I can't think of any obvious way to use my one magical power here."

"Tell us if we're all going to die, Oscar. If you can actually see the future that's more information than we've got and we could really use more information."

Is she bitter about how he keeps avoiding this, ha ha, why would anyone be bitter about that.

"...do we in fact know that whatever Oscar sees would have been true whether he looked or not."

"I don't know. I've been avoiding it because Sano said-- magic is bad for you if you use it a lot. I got really depressed when I first learned about it and most of the people I know other than Inaaya who have pursued it are deeply evil or unwell. So-- I can't imagine being pressed into actually doing it will be good for me. But since we're possibly going to die anyway-- I don't have a good excuse, do I."

He can tell he's being petulant but Sal's tone was quite snitty if you ask him.

Well it's just that you keep talking about how useless you are, Oscar, and how you can't possibly do anything to change that.

But he has, like, half a point, maybe. "I suppose it wouldn't be particularly helpful if you somehow ended up evil from using a spell."

"I didn't say I'd become evil from one use."

She's so tired. "I don't think we have any evidence that magic other than reading the King in Yellow turns anyone evil, as opposed to being traumatizing."

"Reading the King in Yellow doesn't necessarily turn you evil," Oscar says. "It's bad for your reasoning, but, it depends on the person. Like-- you're apparently a lot more suited to use magic than I am, it's different for different people."

"But I guess I can use the spell if you think it's a good idea. I just am afraid of using it often."

She doesn't know if she thinks it's a good idea. None of them know how any of this works. Sometimes you are going to have to do things based on your own judgement. She does not endorse being this annoyed.

"I don't know, Oscar. I don't actually know everything." Wait no that's the kind of annoyed she doesn't endorse being.

"I asked because Sal seems to think I'm dragging my feet. And it affects all of us!"

"Not that you don't have a point, Sal, but the point is I'm trying to get more information, because when I think about it my brain just goes to 'magic is terrible and eats your brain'."

"If the circumstances start getting dire enough for this on a regular basis I think we might actually be doomed. Which I suppose doesn't actually mean they won't."

Not the argument he started that sentence intending to make. But it does seem to be where they've ended up. 

"I wish I at least knew how the spell worked."

"And yes, Sal, I know we might be doomed, unfortunately. I've spent a lot of time wandering around recently imagining in vivid detail, no thanks to traumatizing encounters with the supernatural."

...If they can't get Oscar to do this Sal is actually going to read Der Wanderer himself. He's getting so tired of not knowing.

This is going around in circles. "I would like to find out whether or not we're near-term doomed right now about this in particular. Not that I have any idea what I'd do about it if we were."

"Okay. That's-- a fair thing to ask. So I'm going to try to look at what happens if we intervene. If I start freaking out, sorry in advance."

"Oh and I have to make the Yellow Sign with my hands to cast this, so try not to look."

What a trustworthy and benevolent spell; isn't it great it's in his brain. He waits for them to avert their eyes then tries to make the Yellow Sign.

A ballroom, one wall of which is made of a succession of tall glass doors all giving onto a long balcony. Advancing, surrounded by Inaaya and Sal and Terrence and and Jing Yi and Roby, you can see the terrace where the summoning is taking place. It is below you. Steps curl down from the balcony onto the terrace from both left and right. Beyond is the dark water of Lake Hali.

The overwhelming impression is of the byakhee. There are hundreds and hundreds of the beasts outside, thick on the balustrades, roofs, and walls. Streams of the creatures are still flying down from the sky to join those already here, thickening the ranks each minute. These usually raucous monsters are silent, rapt, facing inward. They are focused on the small group of men in the center of it all.

"DeVil's reaching the end of the King in Yellow," Roby says.

An actress is striking an actor repeatedly with a sword and it’s clear that the attack is real. Blood is everywhere: soaking the actor's robes, pooling underfoot, and flying from the sword tip — yet still the actor delivers his lines, just audible to the group from where they watch, and somehow he still stands! His preternatural recuperative powers are knitting his body together even as it is being slashed apart.

You recognize the face. It belongs to the nurse you saw as Montague Edwards.

During the vision, Oscar's face is distant and calm, almost serene.

He jerks into consciousness like he's woken abruptly-- and immediately bursts into wordless tears, his shoulders shaking, his expression grotesque.

Well, fuck.

That certainly isn't comforting. Not that it was going to be regardless.

Nothing he's seen helped him. Everything he's seen has made the world immeasurably, ineffably worse, a vision of byakhee swarming like vermin, more than they'd ever be able to counter. Endless byakhee. And Edwards' body, unnaturally broken and fit back together, an endless cycle.