Sadde idly wonders if she'll ever get used to that sort of appearance.

"Good evening." And because she can't help herself: "Has it ever occurred to you demon types that if you prettied yourselves up you'd probably have more takers for the whole 'madness and destruction' dealio?"

"I am as you see me," Hauri rumbles/squeaks. "Who knows how mortals think?"

"Mortals do. I could show you the latest edition of Playboy or Men's Health if you're going for sexy, or Vogue or GQ if you're going for classy."

"Do not offer the demonspawn magazines," says one of her colleagues. "It might accept.

Hauri! We have a proposal for you. Have you heard of the Seal of Sadde?"

It hasn't.

"So today might be your lucky day!" she says, and explains it in detail.

"In what way is that lucky, little diabolist? Why would I or anyone agree?"

"Because if you don't," the next diabolist explains, "we kill you."

"Still not lucky," it counters, "meaning that one lied." Its arm slaps wetly across the ground, pointing toward Sadde. "And there are very old rules against calling beings merely to threaten and kill them."

"I said 'might,'" she says, rolling her eyes. "And anyway, here's the thing, this is gonna replace Solomon's seal, if what we're planning works. This is not a threat, this is an—opportunity to be a part of the new order." Wow that sounded villainous, she wishes she could do a proper evil cackle.

"The protections are in place, and you are the ones violating them. Your kind put them there."

"Yeah. They're not good enough."

"But they exist. You could not kill me even were you strong enough, which you are not. Find a better proposal or you fail to convince me, fail to kill me, and are rent limb from limb."

"Dantalanos would probably disagree with your prediction, now, if it still had a head to disagree with," she shrugs, nonchalantly. "Anyway, we're going for the flourishing of all sapient beings, here. What would you like in exchange for agreeing to the binding?"

"So you've killed a stranger to me. Your kind never did like following your own rules.

But if you're down to bargaining," it thinks for a long moment, "I'll agree. Let me go, free to act in the world under the terms of the second Seal."

It's not obvious that a Sealed imp is any safer than a dead one. None of the other cabal members bring that up.

She taps her chin. "You do realise that the Seal's definition of harm includes pretty much anything your best sincere model of the individual would consider harm, yes?"

"I heard."

She opens her mouth, closes it, thinks, then says, "And I would consider myself rather harmed if you helped hurry along the dissolution of the fabric of reality, or if you caused property damage on your way out of here. I'm sure my colleagues would agree."

"I offer to be bound, not to obey your every word. But I do not plan to destroy your world any more than I do by existing in it and acting."

"Right, I know, I just mean that people often find things other than 'physical harm' harmful and that this is a thing you should consider and keep in mind. Knowing that, if you also promise not to take the loophole and go around harming everyone once, I'm okay with this deal."

"Acceptable," it rasps.

"If we call you again, will you answer?" asks one of the people who will no longer be able to threaten it.

"Maybe," Hauri replies.

She smiles slightly.

It's only slightly visible beneath the hood.

The diabolist with the rod pronounces that "on your agreement to be Sealed, you are otherwise free," and Hauri laughs.

It's a horrible clashing sound that only barely doesn't physically hurt. Its two voices talk to each other, hissing sounds unintelligible to the humans, and then they speak together again. "Yes. I am bound and free and will follow the terms of the Second Seal. Now release me." It continues laughing.

"Don't forget the part where you won't take the loophole nor hurt anyone even once," she singsongs.

"I agreed to that," it insists. "I will spread your Seal, but not as if it were my own."

The lead diabolist reaches out the rod and erases part of the triangle-around-two-crescents diagram. Hauri steps/flaps/slithers out, still laughing.

She rolls her eyes. "So dramatic."

The last thing it says is "your Seal is the best plan I've heard since I don't know when."

Diabolists are split on that.

"That's not the best endorsement" is the first reaction, mostly balanced out by "that was much easier than anyone expected from the first Sealed demon" and "and now we've got one more imp's respect."

"Not sure it respects us or thinks we're crazy. Given. You know. Its choir."

"Respects us enough to negotiate. That's what matters. If we ask some other imp for something, anything that recognizes its name is that much more likely to pay attention."

"Yeah. We'll need to work to not let it become a trend that only demons get this Seal, though."

"This one said it'd spread it, and there aren't very many demons around to spread it to."

"Yeah, I suppose."

"It's going to try to use this to weaken the first Seal. I'm not very inclined to care; that could take centuries."

"And in any case for Others this Seal subsumes the first, agreeing to it is tantamount to agreeing to the first plus some restrictions."

Shrug. "You and I see it that way. And we do have the advantage of being right. Not really our problem anyway."

"I guess. And, hey, good news, we won't have to have the headache that was washing these last time," she says, removing her robe.

"Or the headache that was making them need washing. We don't really know that we would have beaten Hauri."

"Counterfactuals are useless, and we didn't have to find out."

"Yeah. Best-case result, this time."

And Sadde waits a couple of days—dealing with demons always brings some bad karma by default, animals and people being more aggressive, bad things happening—and after he's reasonably sure he's good he calls Diana up and asks her out on a date.

That...in retrospect should have been less surprising. What with him having been her favorite person this side of the magic/mundane divide in a long time. She's all in favor.

Awesome! Does she have preferences about venues?

She mentions the name of a bookstore before thinking. (Then she realizes that probably makes her the kind of person whose first thought that is, and sticks with it.)

Sounds great! Time and place and he'll be there.

She's there.

They'll end up in the attached coffee shop doing very little reading, despite being loaded down with books (mostly science fiction in her case).

He's getting fantasy and some science, and he thinks she's adorable.

She is well aware of that, and kind of already thought the same about him. That being a decent fraction of the point of a first date, she barely has to think twice before suggesting a second one.

Oh good he thinks that's a great idea. How about she show him a place he's unlikely to have visited since moving?

He's new; there are lots of places like that. She picks one.

It's a second date, then.

Now, how inclined is she to kiss him, he wonders?

It doesn't immediately occur to her, but once he signals it occurred to him she's not opposed!

Oh good! This date was a Success.

Diana can't hear the capital letters, but Agrees.

He wants to wait until they're closer to the prospective next date before setting a specific day and maximise the probability he'll be a boy, but once that happens they can have another Successful Date.

That probability is a bit of a sticking point, yes.

(She might not have been the easiest person to explain it to, but was pretty strongly motivated to see Sadde's point of view.)

And after the date they can nerd about magic some more, right? ...that can even be part of the date, you just have to include some kissing!

That is the world's best verbed noun, so yes. Definitely. They do both have a pretty much infinite appetite for magic nerdery.

The topic wanders (he makes sure it does) and he wonders aloud about these light-based constructs, golems and weapons and such.

"They aren't made of light, exactly, just glowing. How brightly depends on how well the stars are aligned, so it helps eyeball whether it's about to fade."

"They're not? What're they made of?"

"Could say it's spirits? There isn't really a material substrate involved."

"Huh. Cool. They'd probably be super-effective against anything darkness-themed, yeah?"

"Maybe. Depends what you want to do with the darkness-themed thing. Yes if you're fighting it with a construct shield or weapon, no if you want to store it in a cup, and I don't think the sextant would have acted any differently."

"Now what would work if I wanted to store it in a cup...?"

She answers, and they're back to the nerdery. (It's the cup, of course; it'd just be less effective depending on what's being stored; also: distinctions between a cup as a storage mechanism and some other container that's mostly irrelevant because there's no box constellation, brief mention of the chalice as an implement...)

Oh has he mentioned he made his body into an implement?

He had not! Does that, like, work? She looks at him, presumably through her Sight and not for any non-magic-related reason to stare at his body.

He teases that she doesn't need this excuse to stare at his body, but explains that it did work and that he is not in fact nearsighted.

She glances away and is maybe slightly embarrassed, but then resumes the nerdery and starts questioning him about the effects.

He needs the glasses to see the mundane world, but he has a lot more control over his body, better reflexes, gets less tired, is stronger, faster, all that jazz.

She is on the whole happier with her spindle—it's more useful for complex workings—but that sounds several different varieties of really cool. Except maybe the glasses thing; protecting against nearsightedness is inconvenient enough when it's not life and death. She compliments him on the symbolism, with the absolute self-ownership and all. Too few practitioners would be able to do that one.

The spindle is cool, too, but he didn't really have access to anything like that, so.

Yeah; the spirits infusing it are some of the same ones behind the astrology setup. It would have been harder without an existing tradition making professional contacts, so to speak.

Tradition?

She's the successor to a not-very-long line of Astrologers. Sort of like having a recognizable family name, but less so.

How'd it get started? Is it always only one person?

Doesn't have to be; she wasn't the Astrologer at the time. Being part of or even just working alongside a group that's been doing the same thing for a while can make you more recognizable to the spirits they interact with.

This one started with someone a couple decades back with a whole lot of maps and lights on timers. Once the astrology analogy got going, their little "tradition" followed along.

What inspired them to start this particular way of doing magic?

Diana wasn't around then, but apparently someone just thought it'd be cool. There are lots of types of popular entertainment fake magic that have some sort of analogue, if not a very close one. Hers is based on modern constellations, too; so it's not as if it's descended from a practice based on smoke signals before European contact or anything.

How the originator got it to work she has no idea. No way should the effects have been this dramatic when it was just light backed by one practitioner's request.

And they have no records of why they thought it would in fact work or anything? A diary perhaps?

Doug would know; he learned from and worked with her; but she didn't leave notes on why. Just a lot on what.

Nor on how? That sucks.

Some of how! But mostly the mechanics, the stuff that'd be useful to successors. So more on how to stay on good terms with the relevant spirits than on how she got them to associate earthbound constellations with particular effects in the first place.

How does one stay on good terms with them? That might give them clues.

Well, there are offerings, mostly zodiac-themed, in particular times and places. Some weirder things, like "retell a certain myth at this address." The way to add a new light to the network involves going around to all the existing points, getting the spirits' attention, and telling them what the plan is, then visiting the site and performing a ritual involving scale diagrams of all the constellations you're picturing using it. None of it makes no sense; it's just hard to picture bootstrapping up from a standing start.

So it probably wasn't a standing start. The lack of magical history books is annoying. Perhaps he'll ask Isadora or Conquest.

Should probably make it Isadora. Not that either would be more likely to know than Diana was, but at least the Sphinx is less dangerous to talk to than the Lord.

Oh he means ask stuff like whether there was some practitioner who disappeared shortly before this astrology thing started, or anything that could've served as a base.

Sounds like a long shot, but Isadora's definitely the person to ask if it's worth asking.

Yeah he'll probably do that then. Can't hurt.

It can't hurt if he's sufficiently careful and doesn't get eaten for lying or answering a question wrong or whatever. (Did she mention she's less than thrilled about Sadde dealing with potentially dangerous Others? Because it's not like it should stop him or anything, but that's a thing.)

He'll be careful. Isadora isn't even the most dangerous thing he's gonna face, although that part he doesn't mention.

He should probably do some research on what exactly makes Isadora eat people, though.

Telling a lie is the quickest way. Being confidently mistaken when asked a direct question. If you are like really obviously doomed, she might want to give you a clean death. Breaking from a tradition can do it, but it'd have to be a tradition that already established in 1200 BC and she doesn't go around killing people very much, so that's probably not much of a risk.

How much leeway someone gets depends mostly on how much she likes them, which depends mostly on their karma. Sphinxes in general are very sensitive to that. But anyone can navigate a conversation just by watching what they say.

...hmm. Karma. Right. He'll wait until he's more sure that that demon thing isn't gonna bite him in the arse to go talk to Isadora.

No hurry. Isadora does mostly think on a human time scale despite being thousands of years old, but this genuinely isn't urgent.

Yeah.

In the meantime, he and his cabal have heard about this extremely dangerous goblin...

Relatively. The Hyena is dangerous enough that Conquest had his minions ward the area a long time ago so nobody driving past decides to stop, but not powerful enough to be worth binding. Or so everyone so far has apparently thought. The Hyena itself is just an unusually powerful goblin. Most of the danger is from the half-alive Others and mutilated ghosts of its victims. They'll probably evaporate or something if someone removed the monster.

Which no one has done, probably for the cabal's reasons. It's more or less contained, capturing it could be tough, and what you get at the end is basically just a rabid animal on a leash. They don't want in on this.

...it's still finding victims every now and then and killing them. That's. Like. Bad.

Very few. These days it's just whoever wanders into a segment of national park that's clearly labeled as dangerous and is also magically warded against being wandered into. Maybe not none, but it's basically taken care of.

Hmm.

...he might want to suggest doing this anyway to the Lord. He has a suspicion.

Conquest is easy to find. Boredom isn't part of his incarnationly portfolio, so when he isn't actively Lording he's probably available.

"Hello, my Lord," he greets Conquest when seeing him again.

"Sam. Welcome. What brings you here?"

"I'm... interested in more thoroughly containing the Hyena."

"The goblin?"

"Yeah."

"This is about your attempt to alter the Seal of Solomon."

"I prefer to think of it as shoring it up, but yes."

"You are not seeking to capture and bind it for your own use?" He's half disapproving, there.

"...what? No I don't want to use other people."

"Or beasts?

But if your aim is to seal it, you have my blessing. Force it to take a more orderly place in the world and I do not care what other promises you extort."

"My bar for 'person' is I think lower than most practitioners'. But thank you, my Lord." ...he hesitates, then—" I was also wondering if there was any aid you could provide me with—information, or tools, or anything like that."

"I will send you an ally. Matthew." When he says the name, the connection flares. "He is on his way. He will help you seal it, but if any harm comes to my servant because of you I will hold you to account.

You might also be able to persuade the Shepherd to assist, but everyone else considers the Hyena no business of theirs."

—well that's a lot better than he'd expected. "I thank you, my Lord. Where would I find the Shepherd?"

Conquest tells him where, but it turns out it's a bit of a moot point because apparently Matthew is driving him. Once filled in on what he's doing, he doesn't look happy about it.

"I'm sorry about this," he says when he notices.

"Not your fault. Well, this part is. He's sending me because I spoke against your plan. But it could just as easily have been anything else."

"...why's he doing that."

"Because he likes it. He's not the world's best boss.

If he were trying to help you, he wouldn't be sending an illusionist. He'd be sending the Eye. But he doesn't care how obvious his motives are, so he doesn't bother sending both."

"So he just wants to—I don't know, hurt you, or something?"

"He doesn't want me hurt, no. But he likes watching people forced to act against their own beliefs."

"...what a—no, no sarcasm." Sigh.

Their destination is one of Toronto's hospitals. The Shepherd moves between those, waiting for people to die in ugly ways. He wears a dark shroud and holds a crook in one hand. He looks almost spectral himself. For some reason, no one else notices the strange-looking man. Magic, probably.

...Sadde supposes he'll walk up to him, then.

Matthew comes with him, a step behind.

The Shepherd notices them, of course, and turns to face Sadde. He does not speak.

"Greetings. I understand you do not talk—does that mean you do not communicate at all?"

The figure shakes his head from side to side. The loosely hanging shroud wafts around his shoulders. An ominous gong inexplicably fails to toll in the distance.

He nods. "I'm... going on a self assigned quest of sorts. Have you heard of the Hyena?"

Nod.

"I want to Seal it, and... I think this might be something you'd be interested in helping with."

He removes the part of his costume covering his face and raises an eyebrow. He manages to make it clear that he's listening, but his face is somewhere between neutral and a frown. Not the easiest of customers, apparently.

With the shrouded mask off, the Shepherd still looks old. Maybe not chronologically—Matthew is in his forties and could be older than him—but something about his affect unmistakably says that he has seen a lot (of what, who knows) and is old.

"I'm not gonna hide my motives, here. They're twofold: one, that new Seal is a good idea, I think, and to Others that's just an extra, in addition to Solomon's, which means they can coexist with other people; and two, people are in fact dying, that thing kills them and then keeps their ghosts and I'm not super happy about that."

The Shepherd shrugs and doesn't blink.

"...why do you collect ghosts?"

That one is hard to answer with facial expressions.

He removes a pouch from a pocket. (A custom-made shroud? Normal clothes underneath it? Anyone's guess.) He dribbles out a line of salt in a ring, not touching any of the salt himself. Then he makes some passes with his implement.

A ghost materializes. He's dressed in a hospital patient's gown, and is sitting up with a smile on his face. Then his expression changes to shock and pain, and blood starts spewing from his mouth. Despite the salt circle, the surprised feeling from his last moments leaks through. While he says "why is this happening to me" around a mouthful of blood, the three of them experience some fraction of what it felt like during the death.

Then the Shepherd steps into the ring. He must be feeling all of it, but if so there's no sign. The ghost looks at him and stops repeating its phrase, then calms and returns to the Shepherd's staff. The practitioner gestures twice, once from the site of the "death" to himself, and once from there out into the ether.

"—you want to help them? Find peace, or something?"

He nods.

"He does also torture them," Matthew interjects. "The ghosts. The finding peace is for the actual people."

"Is that true?" he asks the Shepherd, knowing full well about the power of technical truth in this system.

Nod.

"Why?"

He doesn't answer.

Matthew sighs. "They're ghosts. Impressions of one specific moment, usually a messy death. There's not much you can do with one that isn't giving it more of that, and he's hardly going to dissipate them all."

"What a misleading way to describe the situation 'torture' was." It does speak of the Shepherd's character, though. "Whether you think what you do counts as torture or not, it's still probably better than whatever those ghosts are going through under the Hyena's care "

He nods, but then looks straight at Sadde and shrugs.

The experiences of the ghosts, it seems, don't matter to him.

He frowns. "If you don't actually care, why do it at all?"

He doesn't reactivate another ghost, but he repeats the second gesture from his last display. From the site of the death out into the ether.

"And the people the Hyena killed don't get that, then? I suppose they could be out of your jurisdiction, you can't psychopomp the whole world..."

He balances his staff horizontally. The lower end points eastward in the direction of the Hyena. The end with the curve, heavier, points toward the hospital ICU and tilts downward.

"They'll still be here, and they're not something you can fix. The Hyena you can fix, you can get rid of that problem entirely. Right now they're a neglected scar, lots of people dying and not moving on under your watch."

He doesn't say anything. But the staff wavers and ends up back closer to horizontal.

Aha.

"Do you not also have a responsibility towards them? It's your jurisdiction, and your duty to help them move on. It's a solvable problem."

He considers. Looks back at the hospital. People die, occasionally. Once each. But they don't have anything actively preventing them from going on, and he'll be back.

The staff rotates. It passes horizontal, keeps moving, then the tip of the end strikes the ground.

He beams. "That's the spirit. Pun unintended."

He doesn't look very spirited. More like he's embarking on an unpleasant errand.

Matthew doesn't either. "We'll need you to handle the ghosts surrounding it. I can probably avert most of the other Others, and won't be useless against the Hyena either. Sam, what are you expecting to need in the way of equipment?"

"I'm an illusionist, anything can be a tool, but anything that will hurt the thing and can be made—more—would be good."

"It's a goblin. Advanced technology, worked metal, anything refined. I'll be shooting, but it can almost definitely take that."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Last time I took on a goblin I used a Swiss Army Knife—and, er, a Charybdis—but there are better options."

"Pocket knife is good, but not going to be enough. You know how to use a gun?"

"I do not know anything about it beyond aim and pull the trigger and also there's recoil."

"Not a gun, then.

Besides, we should try to be refined about this and you want it alive anyway. Trapping it in a cage would be ideal, but probably nothing we can fit in my car would hold it."

"How big is it exactly?"

"I've never seen it myself. Wolf-sized, maybe. But goblins of any size tend to be stronger than they should be, so I'm speculating."

"I heard it was bigger than that—and wouldn't it grow, with time and enough victims?"

"It can grow, but it's old. Would have hit diminishing returns long before coming here. Where'd you hear about the size?"

"...I'm kinda seeing Diana—the Astrologer. We nerd about all sorts of things."

"Huh. Did she mention where she heard it from?"

"I didn't ask and she never mentioned. She's also not super happy about me doing all of this."

"Understandably. No matter how good you are something's going to get you eventually."

He grimaces. "I might just cut it out while I'm ahead. In the future."

He shrugs. "Up to you. You don't have to, if you're ridiculously self-sacrificing, but I'd recommend it. For today, I was thinking leashes and snares out of steel cable..."

And they can hash out a plan while the Shepherd stands by looking inexplicably not bored.

Sadde finds this fun and fascinating despite himself.

He might also notice that Matthew refers to the Hyena as a mid-tier goblin instead of the "extremely powerful goblin" story he got from the cabal. Either he just has a different frame of reference for the most powerful goblins, or he just bought in to Conquest's line that the Hyena wasn't worth the trouble to deal with. But asking might spark more questions about where the conflicting version came from.

Eventually they'll have a fully functional plan. Not safe, but probably not ineffective.

Oh good! So how will this plan fail?

They can't really account for any of the other Others in the forest? There are enough ambient ghosts to overwhelm the Shepherd? The Hyena gets the drop on them?

And how do they patch those problems?

The Others probably aren't much of a threat. You don't last very long alive and free if you aren't strong or clever, but that's not in effect when practitioners have been avoiding your location for centuries. Matthew can go in prepared for the widest variety of low-level threats; this kind of thing used to be his day job. Not a whole lot to do about ghosts. Keeping everyone well supplied with salt can buy the Shepherd time. For the Hyena...they can have at least one person keeping a lookout with the Sight at all times. Pretty much everything is going to be linked to that.

And how does that fail?

In ways they can plan for.

Eventually they have a strategy, and disperse to collect their gear. ("Disperse" mostly means the Shepherd goes his own way for a bit; the other two are mostly picking up mundane hardware.) Once equipped, they can head to the Hyena's territory. If Sadde takes his glasses off, he'll notice the signs of earlier illusionists or enchanters subtly influencing passersby on the otherwise normal highway to keep going, drive past, nothing to see here. Matthew pulls over.

And they start unloading their gear.

They haul things to the nearest clearing past the tree line. Out of sight from the road, but not far to flee if they need to flee.

Sadde and Matthew can start setting up, Sadde's glasses off, when the first ghosts start to appear. Some more ethereal than others. All are disfigured by severe bite wounds.

The foremost ghost is among the clearest, and is speaking. "It hurts...why does it hurt. Why does my arm hurt, Day, it's supposed to be your arm. The car hit your side. Your arm, my legs! Day? My legs!" At the end, a stab of pain runs through all three living people's legs. It gets stronger as the ghost gets closer, then fades almost to nothing as the Shepherd completes a large ring of salt. Then he turns to the ghost and starts gesturing. His implement, to the ghost. His right hand over his left arm, corresponding to the bite marks the ghost bears. Pointing to the ghost again. Each time, the ghost gets more indistinct. Fuzzier around the edges, more transparent. And even less of an ache penetrating through the salt circle.

This is absurdly creepy.

He keeps an eye on the connections between the ghosts and... everything else. They will probably have a sort of nexus, which he should watch.

Visibility isn't great, so the only ghosts he can see are the ones in their clearing. The ghosts have only one or two connections each, always including one pointing off to the east. Hyena. The lines look roughly parallel, so they've got some distance for now.

Whatever it is the Shepherd's doing is slow but effective. The ghost unravels, echoing fainter and fainter. There's a last scream of "my arm" and both the arm and the legs start bleeding profusely. The feeling stabs at them, their legs being crushed and then heaved out of a wrecked car. The Shepherd's protections mitigate it, but it's still distracting. Finally the ghost is gone, and the Shepherd turns to the next one. By now more ghosts have arrived and more are coming. Most are more dissolved than the first, but he's not going to get all of them this way. Doesn't look worried.

"...you're sure you can get all of them this way?" he asks after he's recovered from the pain.

He shakes his head but pats his sack. While he may not have explained what he's got, there's definitely at least something he didn't have on him during the planning.

...is the Sight insightful?

It confirms that the bag itself is not magical. The Shepherd goes back to ignoring him and dissolving ghosts. He's not capturing or binding any of them, presumably for reasons.

An almost human howl of pain comes from the eastern edge of their clearing. A hulking figure moves just barely in and out of the edge where Sadde can see. If not for the Sight, it'd blend in to the trees. Bipedal, long arms almost dragging on the ground despite its height, and doing its best impression of a lurk. At least until the howl. Most of its movement is aimless, confused, almost random.

...is that the Hyena or some random Other?

(He continues setting everything up.)

Judging by the connections, the Hyena is still off deeper in the park. Eventually Matthew notices the Other. He gets its attention (visibly, to the Sight), then reverses the connection and repels it. "Let me know if there are more. The smart ones won't come while the ghosts are around." (For them, the ghost-related pain is an occasional unpleasant distraction. The Others don't have the Shepherd.)

They have a lot of cables to set up. The connections from the surrounding ghosts stop being parallel before they run out.

Sadde connects a car battery to the cables so that a current's running through them.

And they're—rather larger than what Matthew could have strictly brought with him in the car. Bob's to be thanked. Thank you, Bob.

The others aren't using their Sight as lookout, so the Shepherd keeps dispersing ghosts more slowly than they arrive and Matthew keeps laying snares.

Sadde will inform them of anything he thinks they should be aware of that they won't notice.

When they know the Hyena's coming, they hurriedly finish their current task and circle the wagons. Matthew checks his shotgun and the Shepherd starts acting faster. He lobs something over the edge of the circle, and several ghosts billow out. No, something else billows out. It looks horrific, and also absurd. Like seven different spectral shapes were crammed into a water balloon that was designed to hold only two. It's wailing with several voices, each of which is louder than the ghosts around them. And it rampages. Each of the ghosts it strikes unravels quickly, receiving several fatal wounds at once, and a few get absorbed with a scream. Subsequent strikes inflict that ghost's death on the target as well. The combined structure is unstable, but replenishes itself nearly as fast as it decays. Screams and fading echoes fill the area. The ghosts aren't gone, but they're lessened to the point where it's just a vague feeling of a crowd of different violent deaths. The affected area spirals outward. Eventually the monstrosity falls apart, leaving a much decreased number of active ghosts.

...well, then. That explains a thing or two. And buys them some more time to continue setting up their trap.

Not really. The ghosts were never the time limit.

The Hyena doesn't look like a laughing sidekick villain from a Disney movie.  It looks like a formerly bipedal dog, broken and reassembled until it's on all fours like it should be. Malnourished, with the flesh sucking in enough for its ribs to be clearly made out. Claws are untended and broken. They aren't going to cut anything, but might rend. And it's big. Probably six feet excluding the stubby-looking tail, and strong despite being half-starved.

Matthew shoots it.

...that's big.

But they're protected. A big part of their setup is a shark cage of sorts—complex, electrified for the extra element, modern. The Hyena effectively can't cross it. They're not done but they don't need to be. They can still take their time.

They're cornered, but safe. All according to plan.

The Hyena howls, then retreats. Its prey can stay besieged in their fortress without being able to shoot it. Tracing the connections shows that it's stalking around the clearing, coming between them and the road.

Predictable. They keep working. Almost done now.

They'll get a chance to finish. At least as much as they can finish while staying within an easy dash of their cage fortress. The Hyena isn't inclined to charge them in person.

Instead, it sends a wave of ghosts. A few scattered Others, too, that it managed to get under its thrall. And it blows at them from the edge of the clearing, harder than it should be able to manage. Fact: it has really bad breath. This doesn't directly do much of anything worse than make them want to vomit, but it also weakens and removes a segment of the salt circle.

They brought about four times as much salt as they thought would be strictly necessary, they can shore up those defences fairly quickly.

Yeah, running out of something they'd need so predictably would just be embarrassing.

But Others are walking across it, smudging the circle, and it's not going to stay a closed ring for long. Not to mention the fact that the Hyena can huff and puff again. The Shepherd is throwing salt as a weapon as much as he is creating a line, only to get outdone by a shotgun blast shredding every part of any ghost in a narrow cone. Rock salt rounds: hilariously ineffective against humans at any serious distance, but against ghosts he could do worse. It's messy.

Ghosts project their impression of dying horribly. Cold, pain, blood. Horror. The Shepherd is doing his best to make it less bad, but he's distracted too. Metal screeches as another car accident ghost continues echoing.

Then metal screeches. The ghost couldn't affect the physical world, but it could affect perceptions. Metal screeches. Glamour snaps and their everythingproof shark cage turns back into its pre-Bob form. Some strong bars remain, incongrously pointing out from the tiny wire job they can't even think about hiding behind. Not that they're in a state to think much anyway, what with feeling like they're dying eight times at once.

—fucking ghosts—

The brutish-looking Other rushes headlong into one ghost, then turns and flees into another. This does not do wonders for their salt circle, but at least it's not a threat right now. The ghosts themselves aren't actively trying to affect the practitioners, but they're fleeing the Hyena and every ghost's affect reaches a wide area. When they're aware enough to be more targeted, it's usually because they're running through their script trying to talk to one of the maddened Others. It's not pointed at them. So there is some good news.

Fuck fuck fuck okay though they still have enough to make a leash with—

Most of the snares are still in place. (The bogeyman or whatever it is gets tangled up in some and drops down whimpering. Other predatory Others are more interested in it, now, since the three of them aren't the weakest-looking target.)

The Shepherd must have gotten his act together, because the ghosts are effecting progressively less. But the Hyena sees its chance and starts moving. Matthew's gun is still loaded for ghost, and he's not recovered enough to aim well anyway. He grips one of the remaining steel bars that used to form a defensive cage, as much to steady himself as to use as a weapon. He's about to toss another toward Sadde, but thinks better of throwing things and extends it to him instead.

He takes it, and looks around for more things. The cables are still electrified, that's something...

The Hyena steps over the cables with a look of distaste, but they doesn't serve as a barrier. Until one of the snares draws tight around a hind leg, which does. The goblin has a long line with far too much freedom of movement but is, technically, tied to a tree. Still coming at them.

Aaaaaaaaaaa electricity do your thing please while he dodges and weaves around trees—

Goblins don't really run on biology the way animals do. Electricity's thing isn't stopping the Hyena's heart or making its muscles spasm; it's just going to represent an annoying elemental charge and an even more annoying modernity.

The mad scrabble around trees is working, barely. There's no way of telling in advance how securely the monster's hind leg is caught. But eventually the Hyena runs out of slack with a jerk and a snarl. It starts retracing steps while trying to slide the loop off. Matthew swings his improvised weapon, and it connects but what's left of the glamour shatters. He drops the stick of wire and backs away from the canine.

"Good time to shoot it in the face," he comments.

He unloads the gun in the direction of the thickest remaining group of ghosts, and reloads it with actual ammunition.

"Get more loops around it!"

"On it," he says, and starts doing it (and maybe when he's out of sight of the Hyena he can get these loops to be slightly longer than they really are?).

If he wants to spend the time and power, sure. (And if this glamour breaks, the worst case is that a shortening line slices the Hyena in two. Which would actually be kind of bad.)

Not that much longer. Round and round and round—

Casting loops at the goblin from a distance, most of the lines are too loose to do much. Most isn't all. Especially with the occasional bullet to take its attention away, the Hyena gradually gets more and more tied down.

Okay. Okay, they're wrestling this situation back into control, that's good.

There are fewer ghosts now that the Hyena isn't chasing them toward them. The Shepherd has even gone back to getting rid of them neatly instead of quickly. There are more miscellaneous Others, but nothing has charged them yet and it's a pretty good bet that the Hyena's hangers-on are less of a threat than it is. Keeping them uninterested is taking most of Matthew's attention, though.

He can... probably multitask at also making himself look less interesting? Not uninteresting, that'd probably take more concentration, but...

He might have some difficulty keeping ahead of the the Hyena situation while trying to change his appearance and also watching where he's going.

Tree, tree, branch, snare, tree, paralysis from the legs down, ground. A very indistinct and motionless ghost is echoing "my legs. Why can't I feel my legs."

He doesn't cry out while he's falling, he's trying to be inconspicuous, but shit. No his legs need to move he can't just lie around—

– okay, his legs do move, they just don't feel like they're moving. Or like anything at all. It's more obvious now that he's looking down, but walking will be a chore.

Whatever he has a very good body it's his implement if he needs to—maybe—actually can he—he tries to extend his Sight to his proprioception—

His Sight declines to switch metaphors, and is really more about seeing the rest of the world than himself anyway. He's moving, more of a stagger or a crawl than a walk, but the ghost is faded; he can't have to go far.

A voice calls out "Sam!" and there's a gunshot. The Hyena switches from pushing toward Sadde to just writhing.

And then there's a blinding amount of pain and the feeling of blood running down the side of his face. Another illusory injury– no. Something like a four-foot bear with long claws skitters away and back up a different tree.

Okay now he screams—now the pain is real—his hand raises up instinctively to the affected area—

He feels blood. Sees it too. The Other maneuvers around the low branches and is getting pretty close to directly above him.

—he'll stop focusing on the pain he's been doing this all along he can just pretend it's fake pain and he reaches into a backpack and now he's holding a sword which he slashes straight up.

It is well outside effective swording range but it turns out swords are not an effective deterrent! It drops. It's pretty badly injured, but the most important effect was that the impact made its claws miss this time around.

He reminds himself he doesn't want to kill that thing, whatever it is, and runs away, resuming his looping and trying not to faint.

The Hyena gradually loses its freedom of movement. Sadde has crossed it several times by now, so the main effect of struggling is to strain the cables against itself rather than to actually get away. Matthew ties it off. "We should sit you down and take a look at that before you try talking to the Hyena. Unless you want to look extra dramatic, which probably isn't worth it."

"If it breathes in my face again my face might fall off," he agrees.

"Head wounds bleed a lot. That's bad, but it also means it might be better than the blood makes it look."

His first aid kit managed to survive when everything came crashing down. He wipes the wound clean and looks as best he can. "It's not urgent enough to need me to stitch it here and now. If we were being responsible, I'd tell you to try not to move until we get you to a hospital. If you'd rather be reckless, I'll tape it and wrap it and you can deal with the goblin."

"We went through all this trouble I'm not backing away now."

"I could just kill it. It's still a win. But yeah, thought you might say that."

He bandages the injury, and warns Sadde that it's not properly sealed and if this somehow turns into a physical fight he should back off then.

He walks up to the Hyena and levels a deeply unimpressed gaze at it. "I could kill you. I don't want to. I could turn you into a creepy weapon. I extra don't want to. You have two options: either you die anyway, that's no skin off my nose, or you agree to my terms and you get to live."

Snarling. That is the best activity for a Hyena right now. It's doing a lot of that.

He ignores that, and starts listing his terms.

There are a lot of clauses and subclauses in there, but it gets as far as "no murder" and strains against its bonds.

Well, not that many clauses and subclauses, the Hyena gets one of the dumbed down versions.

"Choose: die, or live without murdering anyone."

(Now would be an amazing time for Matthew to dramatically threaten it or something.)

Matthew picks up on Sadde's look. "The Lord of Toronto sent us to get you sealed or killed. He and Sam would prefer sealed. Now agree." He fires into the ground, and the Hyena yelps at the sound.

"I'm running out of patience and I need medical assistance, you're on a timer to make your decision here and I'm not telling you how long you have."

The Hyena hangs its head and growls.

Its shape seems to change. Some of the discontinuities get smoothed over and its muzzle shortens. Its hind legs look less like a biped's got broken off and reattached at a ninety degree angle. It ends up looking more like an extremely unhealthy dog than a vaguely dog-shaped monster.

"Atta boy. Girl? I'm not sure how you do gender." He starts unleashing the thing.

The goblin-dog of unspecified gender (if any) growls at him. A lot. It slinks away instead of trying to retaliate, but not before howling. It's an incongruously triumphant howl.

The few remaining ghosts flee, but the forest's more physical Others start appearing just as the Hyena leaves. Some of them look aggressive.

...he considers taunting them, then discards the idea. They'd better go.

The Shepherd declines to fight. Anything that follows the Hyena around is used to ghosts; it'd be a waste of resources. Matthew casts a handful of powder into the air and the Others become more interested in each other than the practitioners, but he says that against this many it won't last long.

But the car is close by, so they grab whatever supplies they don't mind losing and head back.

Yeah, back is good, he's starting to feel a little woozy.

The others give him a hand back into the car. (The Shepherd's arm is inexplicably not cold and clammy. He's just a guy who happens to dress like an old-fashioned corpse.)

When they drive back it's not to the same hospital; there's a nearer one.

Oh good. Hospital's good.

Matthew and the Shepherd aren't too hard to convince that they don't need to stick around, so Sadde can avoid pseudonym problems.

Hospitals are kind of unpleasant and slow, but it's a very safe kind of both. He gets an uncomfortable row of stitches down his face, is advised to have them removed in about ten days, and is completely unable to tell them what animal attacked him.

He can say 'it looked kinda like a bear' which is strictly true, he's pretty sure he can get away with not detailing species and food habits.

It gets recorded as another tragic case of unspecified.

Do Others even get rabies? Who knows. Hopefully the doctors having taken care of all the mundane risks is good enough. The entire procedure is reassuringly routine. He's eventually released with instructions on how to keep the injury clean and a warning that facial expressions are fine but he should probably not do anything that'd stretch the skin too much.

Yeah.

And, er. He should. Probably go see Diana.

Probably, yes. She's happy to meet him, what with not knowing recent events and all.

"Sam! How are y— your face, what happened to your face."

"Erm. You. Remember the Hyena?"

"What hyena?"

"Big bad goblin in a park, liked collecting ghosts."

"The goblin did that to you? Why were you fighting a goblin, no, I can guess—"

"No, one of its Other hangers-on, I think my face wouldn't be—here—if it'd been the Hyena."

She breathes. "Okay. You decided you had to fight a ghost-collecting goblin and you made it back out.

I could probably have helped, you know. If you were going to do it anyway."

"...you could've gotten hurt, though."

"Says the person who did. It would have been much less dangerous than doing it alone."

"I wasn't alone, the Shepherd and Matthew came with."

"Conquest's man and the Shepherd.

Okay, I see why you didn't tell me ahead of time."

"I originally asked Conquest for tips since he's been around for a while and should know more and he—kinda offered help. In the form of those two."

"And the fact that Conquest wanted you to succeed didn't make you rethink whether you should?"

"Not really. He's Conquest, he likes conquering, Sealing a bothersome Other is appropriately conquerful."

"But that just means it made him some little bit stronger, and you risked your life doing it!"

He purses his lips—

—then says, "My name's not Sam. It's Sadde."

She stops. Gets a confused look. "Okay? Oh. Sadde. Like the Seal I've apparently been mispronouncing all along."

He giggles. "Yeah, that one."

"So you're really committed to fighting dangerous Others, enough to be named after it, and the pseudonym is...not just because you're on the run from home, is it."

"I wasn't named after it."

"Coincidence, then?" She looks skeptical at that one.

"Absolutely not."

"That one you might have to explain."

"I made it. The original idea is—someone else's—but I'm the one who wrote it and its versions and have been pushing it."

"Congratulations, I guess. You must have been really successful really quickly.

I didn't know the Seal was new, but now that you mention it of course you would have let me assume the money hadn't changed if you weren't admitting to being the one who convinced Montreal to add it."

"...how new it is is complicated. It's been on the money since it was invented six decades ago, though. And I'm also the one who came up with the money idea."

"Time travel, or secretly immortal? If it's the first one I want in.

Or the second, for that matter."

He grins. "First one, and not in a controllable manner, I'm afraid. There was this little beastie..." And here goes the story of the Charybdis again, and going to the past, and the Behaims, and money, and returning to the future. Rose's not mentioned, though.

Diana is thoroughly impressed. Smiling at all the right parts, too. "So the Hyena was, was that just Tuesday for you?"

"Oh no, not at all, I did get a scar that's possibly gonna stay there forever, but I like to think I'm rather resourceful."

"Okay. Well, since you are already way too committed to this, you can ask me for help next time. Equipment at least."

He grins. "Thank you. ...it's not too late to back out and decide not to have anything more to do with me, though."

"That wouldn't solve the problem where you're going to get yourself killed. I did mean it about you being way too committed; you just also don't sound very deterrable."

Well he thinks she should be kissed for that.

An excellent way of changing the subject.

He's not really changing the subject, he feels like this should be discussed. "I'm an ambitious person and this system is terrible. I'm really, really going to do my best, but that does mean I'll risk my life repeatedly. And of course every success gets the spirits on my side—and the fact of the matter is, the Seal that goblin is under has my name on it, not Conquest's. So I got more powerful than he did, doing that. And the world is—a tiny bit better because of it."

She hasn't felt the need to let go of him.

"Every success helps. Maybe even saves lives, if you pick targets well. But any failure could get you killed, and you came close today."

He nods. "Yeah. I'm writing my story here, the spirits love narratives, and mine is the powerless nobody who became somebody through cleverness, bravery, and sheer force of personality. In the end I'll either be dead or powerful enough to change big things."

"Dead. There are always bigger things, and the narrative you're writing doesn't have a stopping point. At least decide on some achievable goal where you'd declare victory and then stop."

"Lordship over a city," he suggests.

"Well, at least that's something that some people have succeeded at ever. Okay. You become a Lord, or some equivalent amount of success if that comparison works, then you stop going looking for mortal danger."

"At that point I expect mortal danger will come looking for me," he muses.

"Probably, but if you were a Lord now I wouldn't tell you to quit. Besides, by then you'd be a Lord and could probably handle it."

"Mmhm. How about this: I can promise that when I'm a Lord I'll at least take a sabbatical and establish some power before revisiting the subject of going after bigger things?"

"It's probably a bad idea to actually promise, but more importantly, no? The point is for the story to end with "happily ever after," not "until the sequel."

Except then you'd just put off aiming for a Lordship, wouldn't you. Never mind."

"I want to make the world a better place, I don't want power for power's sake. If I reach Lordship and conclude that the best way to improve things is staying there then I'll do that, and that's not too unlikely—I do get in more danger the more powerful I become, at some point the balance will in fact tip."

"It has already tipped. You're almost punching above you weight with the Hyena, let alone the Charybdis, and you're planning to keep going."

"I don't mean tipped in the sense that I'll be fighting stuff more powerful than me, I mean tipped in the sense that the probability that I'll succeed times the rewards becomes less than whatever I'll get if I stop."

"That too. On the probability you'll succeed front. There'd be a lot more fights before you get anywhere close to a Lordship."

"Not necessarily. And I needn't personally fight all of them."

"Just don't die, okay?" Her eyes are kind of fixed on the column of stitches.

"I'll do my best."

"I'll hold you to that.

I'm being so hypocritical. You didn't even know the Hyena's victims, just that they existed, and of course you can say that doesn't matter.

I've been assuming for a long time I'll probably go against Conquest eventually. And that's at least as dangerous."

He raises an eyebrow. "Is that so."

"Not— I'm not planning to. His promise not to kill me expires if I do anything, and I'm pretty sure plotting would count. So. Not that. It's just, I don't want to never try."

"But if you were to, say, only hypothetically answer questions about how to best deploy certain tools in certain hypothetical nonspecific situations..."

"With the number of unnecessary fights you get in? Of course I will. I'm not going to not help just because you'll probably end up opposed to the Lord eventually too."

"'Unnecessary' is a matter of point of view."

"Fair. Point being, he has to know already and if being a likely future enemy doesn't count as acting against him then helping one can't either."

"Has to know you'd want to challenge him, or has to know I might?"

"Huh. He might know about you too. He's hoping I will, and he probably knows I'd want to because he has Doug."

"Well. Don't do anything without talking to me?"

"Oh, don't worry. I won't even decide to do anything without talking to you."

He smiles. "Good." Then frowns again. "...how long has Doug been there, exactly?"

"A bit over a year. That wouldn't be very long for time between credible attempts on the Lordship, but I don't need to go that far for a rescue mission. Though you might want to if only to get rid of the current one."

His frown deepens. "We shouldn't do anything until we're sure we'll win. It's—horrible—that he keeps Doug there, but doing anything without being certain we'll win is just throwing our lives away."

"He's not actively being tortured as far as I know. And I think his time perception is...more like a ghost's. Not that that's good, but it makes things less urgent?"

"Yeah. We'll figure it out."

"We will probably decide on something, eventually. It's got to be pretty much inevitable." She's choosing her words carefully, as much for her own benefit as anyone else's.

So is he. He hugs her.

Possibly relatedly, she hugs him. Hasn't stopped since trying to convince him not to get himself killed, actually.

Sigh. "Don't worry, this kind of—miscalculation is unlikely to happen very much."

"As long as it doesn't happen at the wrong time. Or against the wrong enemy."

"Mmhm. Today I learnt that car crash ghosts are very good at distorting the appearance of metal so that mistake I won't make again."

"How does appearance lead to you getting slashed by an Other?"

"I'm an illusionist, the shark cage we were using for protection was—not entirely real."

"Ah.

And ghosts are something he has a lot of, even if we don't count the Shepherd."

"Yeah. Your magic, though, is—extremely powerful."

"It is. Subject to terms and conditions, void where prohibited by calendar, but strong.

I wouldn't recommend plotting anything. Conspiracy. But I bet if we calculate what date we'd have the best options open we'd get the same answer. That'd be interesting. And then never tell each other what it is or suggest which year."

"Of course. There'd be no reason to tell each other, really. After all, how important can it be?"

"Very, if we were going to do anything with it. So let me know if you have another Hyena fight coming up and schedulable, I guess."

He nods. "...I should probably take a shower and not move much for a while, though."

She can let him do that, and starts definitely-not-plotting.

They can probably actually-definitely-not-plot together after his shower (as long as they're careful of his face), that's a good way to end a tiring and stressful day.

This is a good plan. (She might be overly careful of his face, except forget entirely every so often and then overreact more than he does.)

She's adorable.

A few days later Sadde judges herself clear enough of demonic influence to go talk to Isadora.

Isadora is in her human guise, in an office with her name on it. She does not instantly give any sign of smelling demon.

"Hello, Sam. What can I do for you?"

"Hello. I was curious about some of the history of the place."

"Ask away. Though I may need to evict you if some of my students arrive. They do have the stronger claim."

"What I'm most curious about is actually how the Astrologer's thing appeared, since apparently it didn't exist before and most other forms of magic seem very old."

"Everything was invented at one time or another. Someone contacts a powerful Other or collection of spirits, and trains them the way a man might a dog. Over time they reinforce the connection between a particular action and its effect, and they can gradually earn more leeway. I see no reason to suspect the Astrologers are doing anything different."

"'Cause as I understand it, they were much... faster than that."

Isadora shrugs. Her shoulders move back as much as up; she's not bothering with pretending to be naturally humanoid.

"The number of generations varies. It could be that their predecessors stumbled upon some unusually responsive spirits, or simply that they are not hoarding their power. Building a practice can be done in a single human lifetime; it would not be unprecedented."

"Huh. So there wasn't some practitioner that used to be around and disappeared around that time?"

"Would you expect there to be?"

"It'd explain where it could've come from."

"How so?"

"I don't know, that's why I'm asking you, but if you say a new form of practice could appear like that over a single human's lifetime then that must be all there is to it."

"Not must be. Can be, and is likely to be. Imprecision is irritating. But yes, there has been more than a minimum time for their practice to have evolved away from an arid ritual of meaningless form."

"I apologise for the imprecision. Thank you, though."

"The practical implications should be obvious enough, but I will leave them to you to determine."

"Obvious enough, yes," she says, smiling a bit.

"You may say your inferences, if you wish to demonstrate your ability." She doesn't ask it as a question.