The next day found Dorian and Talyndra in the heart of Lirethel, standing before a leaning, decrepit tenement building in the city’s oldest and most labyrinthine quarter, quite unlike the marble spires that flanked the main thoroughfare.

“Those posters really are everywhere,” Talyndra whispered, glancing at a wanted poster of Emily on a wall across the street.

“Good thing Emily isn’t with us,” Dorian whispered back. “Bounty like that, we’d have half the city after us.”

“Is it a normal human thing to hunt people like this?”

“Not usually without good reason,” Dorian said. “But Elara belongs to a powerful and ancient bloodline, and that means she can bend some of the rules.”

Talyndra rolled her eyes. “My grandma’s got warts older than your ancient human bloodlines. Anyway, are you sure this is the place?”

A trio of rats scurried out from under the building’s dilapidated doorway, earning a series of angry stomps from Talyndra.

“It’s a bit more rundown than last time I was here,” Dorian admitted. “But he’s definitely here. Top floor.”

They climbed five flights of narrow, rickety stairs that groaned under every step. The door to the garret at the top was unlocked. Dorian pushed it open slowly.

The room was a maelstrom of controlled chaos. Books were stacked in precarious pillars, scrolls were stuffed into every niche, and strange, intricate brass instruments lay half-dismantled on every surface. The air smelled of dried ink and burnt toast. In the center of it all, a small, wizened man was fast asleep in a large armchair, snoring softly.

Dorian and Talyndra exchanged a look. “That’s him, all alright,” Dorian whispered. “Hardly looks a day older.” He cleared his throat and spoke up, “Hail, Master Olenius! Your student has returned.”

The old man did not respond, continuing to snore in his chair.

Dorian frowned. “Still a heavy sleeper, then. But I think we have a good way to wake him up.” He smiled at Talyndra slyly.

Talyndra nodded, pointing at a stone hearth on one side of the room, flanked by a pile of firewood. It was surprisingly free of detritus. Dorian placed some of the firewood in the hearth and then produced a small, dry stick from a fold in his cloak and dropped it in the middle of the hearth.

Earlier, Emily had set fire to this stick, and Dorian had placed a spellbreak on it to suppress the flame temporarily. He now spoke the words to release the flame. The stick flared to life, and the flame quickly spread to the firewood, casting a warm, flickering light across the cluttered room. They’d figured out this trick during their time on the road, and this wasn’t the first time it had come in handy.

Talyndra smiled and twirled the index finger of her right hand. A pulse of green magic traveled from her fingertip and along a whirling path, as if along an invisible string, out of the window and down. “Message sent,” Talyndra said.

Back at the campsite, Emily and Aria sat on a smooth treetrunk before the ashes of the previous night’s cooking fire, waiting for the signal to teleport. Seeing no reason to burn any more perfectly good clothes if they could help it, both were naked, and Aria shivered slightly. “During my time as a statue, I forgot how… sensitive skin is,” she said, shivering in the slight breeze. “It gives me a new appreciation for everything you’ve been through, Emily.”

“I’m surprised to hear that, given how often you seem to forget you aren’t wearing anything,” Emily replied.

Aria blushed, chuckling softly. “Being able to remove anything from my person without a chisel is still quite novel,” she admitted.

“I wish I could forget sometimes, and just relax,” Emily replied. “But having powerful, evil magic around my neck at all times, waiting to possess me… that makes it difficult to take it easy. Every time I feel a leaf or a bit of moss on my skin, I worry that I’ve allowed the Nightmoss to gain a foothold.” She glanced down at the Stoneshell. “I haven’t had a moment’s rest… except last night.”

Aria’s eyes flashed with curiosity. “You and Dorian returned to camp quite late. Did you… enjoy the festival?” She punctuated this question with a sly wink.

Emily felt her own cheeks warm. “It was really nice, taking a break from all of this,” she said, gesturing at the necklace and her painted skin. “I felt so normal. Almost like I was… back home.”

“I’m glad,” Aria said, her tone genuine. “You deserve some normalcy. Did he…?”

She was cut off as a pulse of green light traveled through the air, creating a crude arrow that pointed towards Lirethel. Emily beamed at the sight. “They’ve found him!” That meant their plan was working so far.

Taking Aria’s hand, she closed her eyes and pictured a Stoneshell fire. “Olenius’s study.”

The woods vanished in a roar of flame, instantly replaced by the cluttered garrett. Emily and Aria landed barefoot upon a plush rug, kicking up dust. The Stoneshell fire was warm against their backs.

Dorian and Talyndra beamed at them.

The sudden flash of light and heat in his study was enough to jolt the old spellbreaker awake. He sat bolt upright, his spectacles askew, his white hair standing out in all directions. He blinked once, twice, his magnified eyes taking in Dorian and Talyndra by the door, and then the two naked women who had just materialized out of thin air in the middle of his room.

At the sight of Emily, the Stoneshell and the glowing blue runes that criss-crossed her otherwise bare skin, a slow, delighted grin spread across his wrinkled face. He sprang from his chair with the vigor of a much younger man. “Fascinating!” he exclaimed, circling Emily. “Truly fascinating!” Turning to Dorian, he said, “I’ve been looking forward to this ever since you started writing to me.”

Doctor Olenius Vane was a whirlwind of focused energy. He had immediately shooed them away from the rug, insisting it was a priceless heirloom from the Sunken City of Y’ha-nthlei. “Mustn’t mix these magical energies, now, who knows what could happen!”

Olenius hastily scrawled a chalk circle over the wooden floorboards and ushered Emily into the center of it. “Now stand perfectly still, with your arms out to the side,” he said, producing a small telescopic device with a vast array of brass lenses.

Emily did as she was instructed, and the man began examining her from every angle with each of the lenses in turn. “Get your feet out a little wider… yes, that’s right.”

She cast a doubtful glance back at her friends, standing anxiously to one side of the room. Despite Dorian’s best efforts, she still didn’t understand all that much about spellbreaking. Perhaps all the poking a prodding was necessary.

“You sure this is purely scientific?” Talyndra whispered to Dorian, as Olenius traced a line of Azure Essence down Emily’s side with a wizened finger, making her flinch.

“I’ll have a word if he gets too familiar,” Dorian said, loudly enough for his mentor to hear.

“And I’ll smash his head in with a piece of that hearth,” Aria said, flexing the Bronzeband. She stood holding the dress that Talyndra had brought her in front of her body, watching too anxiously to put it on.

But Olenius was far too absorbed in his investigation to note either of these threats. He now produced a silver rod from one of his endless array of pockets and passed it slowly over Emily’s skin. “The symbiosis is nearly complete,” he muttered, mostly to himself. The rod hummed violently as it passed over the Stoneshell.

“Could you remove the necklace for me, please?” Olenius asked. “Only for a moment.”

Emily hesitated, looking to her friends for support.

“I need to see this… Nightmoss,” Olenius continued. He took a beaker from his desk and tossed out the contents, which sizzled violently on the floor.

With shaking hands, Emily released the Stoneshell’s clasp and pulled it from her neck, dropping it into the waiting beaker. Instantly, the gray shell turned black, and Nightmoss surged out of it.

“Ho ho, it’s lively stuff!” Olenius cried, his eyes almost popping out of his sockets. “That should be enough, thank you.”

The necklace jumped from the beaker and landed back on Emily’s chest, where a small burst of flame destroyed its Nightmoss covering.

Olenius set the beaker back down on the desk, the Nightmoss bubbling violently within. “Please hand me the Azure Essence, Dorian,” he asked.

Dorian produced a small vial of Azure Essence and handed it to Olenius, who retrieved his brass lenses. He then uncorked the vial and poured a few drops into the beaker, watching the reaction intently through the largest of his bronze lenses. “The Azure Essence acts as a retardant, yes, but it’s like trying to hold back the tide with a sieve.”

He then tipped the rest of the vial into the beaker. There was a small explosion as the Azure Essence attacked the Nightmoss. “By the Founders!”

Stepping away from the desk, Olenius applied his lens to the Stoneshell pendant once more. “The Nightmoss is woven directly into the Stoneshell’s enchantment matrix.” He then moved his lens up and along Emily’s neck and over her jaw, until he was staring her directly in the eye. “It’s also thoroughly permeated the aura of the bearer. They’re completely entangled.”

“W-what does that mean?” Emily asked, uncomfortable and not a little frightened.

Olenius stepped back, set aside his tools, and pushed his spectacles up his nose. His expression shifted from curiosity to something more grave. “The Nightmoss is a parasite of immense power and singular purpose. It was a key ingredient in the Stoneshell’s creation and is responsible for much of its power. But it is an all-consuming void, held in check only by the pressure of its natural environment. Outside that environment, it cannot be stopped.”

“Can you remove it?” Emily asked, her voice tight. “Dorian said you were the greatest spellbreaker in Lirethel.”

Olenius smiled at Dorian. “While I would be the last to argue with that designation, there are limits to every art. This isn’t a curse to be lifted or a ward to be undone. This is a magical lifeform that has bonded with another. To tear it out would be to destroy the Stoneshell itself.”

Emily gulped. “D-destroy the Stoneshell?” Her mind raced at the thought, and she felt a tightness in her chest.

“The Stoneshell draws its strength from the Nightmoss,” he explained. “They are, in some sense, one and the same. From what I understand, the Stoneshell was contained by the curses placed upon it centuries ago. But your ritual, my dear, blew the doors clean off the hinges. Now, its power is unbound.”

“So we bind it again?” Dorian suggested. “We reapply the curses?”

Aria gasped.

“I didn’t mean—not the same curses, anyway,” Dorian muttered.

“It would be a temporary solution at best.” Olenius waved a hand dismissively. “Like putting a lid on a boiling pot. The pressure will only build. And the cost in itself is great. One does not lightly cast curses.”

Aria glared at Dorian.

“No, no, the Nightmoss must be returned to a place where it is inert. A place of immense pressure and absolute magical nullity.” He stopped pacing and looked directly at Emily, his eyes sharp and serious.

“There is only one such place in all of Thessolan,” he said, his voice dropping to a somber whisper. “The Trench of Trule, at the bottom of the deepest ocean.”

“That’s where the Stoneshell comes from,” Emily said. “Where Thurseus Irontail mined the materials he made it from.”

“Precisely,” Olenius said.

“So if we return the Stoneshell to the Trench of Trule, the Nightmoss won’t be able to spread anymore.” Emily was already wondering if she would be able to enlist Caelum’s help for the quest. He might not be overjoyed to help her throw away an artifact with such significance in merfolk history.

“Speaking of spreading, look at that beaker!” Dorian cried, pointing at the beaker of Nightmoss on the worktable, which had eaten through the last of the Azure Essence and begun to overflow.

“Ah!” Emily cried, instinctively launching a fireball at the desk. The Nightmoss burst into flame, and the whole room filled with smoke.

After a few minutes of chaos, the fire was put out, leaving only a scorch mark under the now-destroyed beaker. Somehow, this was not the only scorch mark on the desk—if Olenius was bothered by the damage, he didn’t show it.

Talyndra had opened all the windows in the room, allowing the smoke to slowly waft out.

“Now then, where were we?” Olenius asked.

“You told us we need to return the Stoneshell to the Trench of Trule,” Emily said, tapping the pendant.

Olenius made a strange expression, and hesitated for a long time before replying. Up to this point, he had been unable to take his eyes off Emily, but now he looked everywhere else in the room. “That is… half of the problem.”

“What’s the other half?” asked Talyndra.

Olenius coughed. “The Stoneshell is not… it’s not merely a necklace. It is that, of course, but it is also the Nightmoss. And it is also the bearer.”

“What are you saying, Olenius?” Aria asked. She had still not put on the dress and hugged it close to her body.

Olenius looked gravely at each of them in turn and violently cleared his throat. The words seemed to catch in his throat as he spoke them. “I am merely saying that to protect our world from the threat of the Nightmoss, the Stoneshell must be returned to the Trench of Trule, the only place where its magic can be counteracted, nullified. And the Stoneshell Bearer must accompany it.”

A grave silence descended on the room.

“Okay, so Emily has to take the Stoneshell to the Trench,” said Talyndra, breaking the silence. “Guess she won’t be able to teleport there, but that doesn’t sound too bad, does it Em?”

Olenius frowned at Talyndra. “It is not merely a case of taking the Stoneshell somewhere. As long as the bearer remains active, the Stoneshell and the Nightmoss will have an unseverable link to the world above, a foothold from which to grow. Emily must accompany the Stoneshell to the Trench, and she must stay there.”

“For how long?”

“Forever.”

The room suddenly erupted with heated arguing. Talyndra was yelling, Dorian looked stricken, and Aria had started to cry.

“It’s the only way!” Olenius shouted, growing frustrated with the cacophony. “You can play at containment, perhaps even for the rest of her life. You can make new curses, twist this land and its people with new magical afflictions, and maybe that will help for a little while! But there will be another Stoneshell Bearer, and she will do all the same things as Emily, until the Stoneshell is once again at full power, until the Azure Essence is exhausted. And then the Nightmoss will consume everything.”

“You’re telling her to sacrifice herself!” Talyndra exploded, stepping forward. “You’re telling her to go to the bottom of the ocean and just… die? That’s your brilliant solution?”

“It is the only solution that guarantees the permanent nullification of the Nightmoss,” Olenius stated. “A terrible choice, I grant you. But the alternative is for this world to be consumed by an unthinking, unfeeling, insatiable magical energy. One life, to save the lives of millions.”

“That can’t be the only way!” Aria shouted.

“It’s the only effective way,” Olenius retorted. “Others have been tried. I have done my research. Arctulus thought he could contain the Stoneshell’s power through curses. Victus, whom you’ve met, thought he could destroy the Stoneshell with a simple dispellation, performed at the Nightmoss’s most concentrated point. They were both wrong. Dangerously wrong.”

“But the Azure Essence works!” Talyndra protested. “We can keep painting her! We’ll get more from the Azure Coast if we have to!”

Olenius shook his head, his expression grim. “For how long? A year? Ten? A hundred? You would be treating a symptom, not the disease. And the Nightmoss is a powerful magical entity, capable of learning and changing. Eventually, the Essence will fail. And all you will have done is delay the inevitable and prolong the bearer’s suffering. Already, she is forced to go naked. What more shall she have to endure?”

Emily felt the floor tilt beneath her. She thought of her quest, her friends, her journey. She thought of the life she had started to build in this strange, vibrant world. To have it all end in a cold, dark trench at the bottom of the sea… sitting and waiting until hunger, thirst, or pure despair took her… it was unthinkable. Was that truly the future that awaited her in Thessolan?

“No,” Emily said, shaking her head, a single tear tracing a path down one glowing blue cheek. “There has to be another way.” And she knew there was.

“There is no other way!” Olenius insisted, his voice sharp with the certainty of a scholar who has examined every variable. “The magical principles are absolute! To neutralize the entity, the artifact must be returned to a state of nullity. It is the only—”

“Wait,” said Dorian.

Olenius stopped mid-gesticulation, turning to stare at his former pupil. “Excuse me?”

Dorian stepped away from the wall. His eyes weren’t on Olenius, but on Emily, a fierce, protective light burning in their depths. “You said the Nightmoss must be returned to a place of absolute magical nullity. You’re right. But you’ve only considered one such place.”

Aria looked up, wiping a tear from her cheek. “Dorian, what are you saying?”

Emily smiled through tears. “He’s saying that the Trench of Trule isn’t the only place that nullifies magic. There’s another place like that, and it’s called Earth.”

“You mean… the world you came from?” Aria asked.

Emily nodded. “During the ritual, I went somewhere else. There was a knight there, a knight who had no body—an empty suit of armor. He—she?—it?—took me to see Evangeline, who explained something like this to me. That the only way to neutralize the Nightmoss would be for me to return to my own world, where magic doesn’t exist.”

Olenius raised an eyebrow. “Return to your world? Hmm… yes, I did detect a certain discordance about you. I chalked it up to the Nightmoss’s influence, but perhaps there’s more than just that.” He picked up the brass lenses once more and passed them slowly over Emily’s body, stopping at the end of her long braid. Slow, dawning comprehension spread across his wrinkled face, followed by a gasp of pure, unadulterated delight.

“By the celestial spheres,” he whispered, scrambling towards a cluttered workbench and snatching up an astrolabe comprised of spinning silver rings. He held the device near Emily’s braid, and the silver rings began to spin violently, clinking loudly against each other. “Yes, that’s it! That’s it exactly! Instead of sacrificing yourself in the Trench of Trule, you merely have to return to your own world, taking the Stoneshell with you! It’s the perfect solution!”

“But how?” Emily asked.

Olenius looked her in the eye and then burst into guffaws. When he realized that the rest of the party shared her incomprehension, he stopped laughing. “You really don’t know?” he asked, puzzled.

“Of course not!” Emily shouted, her face red with anger. “I came here in a bathtub! Naked! If I knew how to get home, I would have done it right away!”

Olenius shrank back at Emily’s sudden outburst. “Alright, point taken. But the truth is, you’ve had a way to return to your world all along.” He lifted the end of her braid and held it before her eyes, pointing at the twisted black elastic band that held it in place.

“What?” Emily asked, bewildered. “That’s… just a hair tie.”

“Oh no, it’s much more than that,” Olenius said. “It is a powerful magical artifact. A portal to another world.”

“Really?” Emily asked, carefully scrutinizing the hair tie.

“Try it if you don’t believe me,” Olenius said. “Take in your hands, pull to expand, and speak the name of your home world. That should be all you need to do.”

Taking the braid from Olenius, she pulled the hair tie off and let her hair fall loose around her shoulders. Since leaving Paja Abbey, she had worn her increasingly long hair in a tight braid to keep it out of the way when she needed to have the Azure Essence reapplied to her skin. Just like the hair tie had survived her fiery teleportations, it had survived the ravages of the Nightmoss. This, then, was the reason why. It had been a powerful magical artifact all along.

A wave of dizzying relief washed over Emily, so potent it almost buckled her knees. She didn’t have to spend the rest of her life in a dark, cold place beneath the waves. She could just go home. The thought, which had once been her singular obsession, now felt strange and bittersweet.

“She can go home,” Aria said, her voice cracking slightly. “She can save Thessolan and go home.”

“It is the perfect solution!” Olenius declared, clapping his hands together with a loud crack. “Elegant! Efficient! Far superior to a dreary demise at the bottom of the ocean! Whenever you’re ready, just say the—”

He was cut short by a blinding flash of light from the far side of the garret. The grimy window overlooking the alleyway exploded inwards in a shower of glass and splintered wood. A wave of force swept through the room, sending scrolls and instruments flying and toppling a pillar of books with a deafening crash.

An all-too-familiar animal shriek punctuated the destruction—the cry of a gryphon. A figure in armor of silver and gold leapt through the destroyed window and into the room, golden eyes blazing with malice. A cruel smile twisted Elara’s lips. “You’re looking a little less… overgrown… today, Emily.”

“Elara!” Aria gasped, instinctively stepping in front of Emily, though she was no longer made of nigh-indestructible stone.

“You!” Talyndra snarled, drawing her twin swords in a flash of steel.

Dorian grabbed several instruments from the floor and kicked a heavy table onto its side to create a barrier, already muttering the words of his most trusted spellbreaks.

Elara ignored them all, her gaze fixed on Emily. “You should be more careful, my dear,” she said. “Intervening in alleyway squabbles, throwing fireballs around, even signing autographs! I would keep a low profile if my face and bosom were on a wanted poster!”

She reached into a pouch at her belt and pulled out a roll of brown parchment, letting it unfurl. It was a copy of Emily’s wanted poster. A signed copy.

Dorian’s face went pale. “The merchant… that wretch!”

“A cunning little weasel, tried to get much more out of me than his information was worth,” Elara sneered, letting the poster drop to the floor. “But it was a help. I knew you were in the city, and all I had to do was watch the skyline for a bit of smoke. “And then you attempted to burn this hovel down! Not that it wouldn’t be an improvement.”

She took a step forward, her armored boots crunching on broken glass, holding her staff ahead of her. It was carved to look like two intertwining green snakes. “But perhaps I have underestimated you,” she said. “That is the mistake I made in our last meeting. You have found a way to unlock the full power of the Stoneshell, and that was no simple task. Quite impressive for a girl who cannot even dress herself.”

“Don’t come any closer,” Talyndra threatened, drawing her twin swords.

Elara didn’t even look at her, keeping her eyes focused on Emily. “On second thought, I don’t think I’ve underestimated you at all. The symbols on your skin are containment wards. You’re afraid of the power you’ve unleashed, aren’t you?”

Emily made no reply, but knew that Elara could read her face like a book.

“Oh Emily, you’ve suffered so needlessly,” Elara said. “All this time, you could have been living a life of comfort and pleasure by my side, without the terrible burden of the Stoneshell, the most powerful magical artifact in all of Thessolan. I have offered, so many times, to relieve you of that burden, have I not?”

“She’ll never let you have it, witch!” Dorian snarled.

Elara twisted the staff in her hand, regarding the heads of the intertwined snakes. “No, I suppose not. She’s not the forgiving type, are you, Emily? What’s a little magic slavery between friends?” She cackled at her own joke and took another step forward.

Talyndra’s sword glowed brighter, and there was a loud crack from the hearth as several segments of stone began to levitate under Aria’s direction. A large fireball blazed in Emily’s palms.

“Very spirited, I like that,” Elara said. She glanced at Aria, who had dropped the dress without ever putting it on. “Taking fashion advice from Emily, I see. Weren’t you a statue? I’m not sure skin suits you, dear.”

Elara ducked just in time to avoid having her head taken off by a square mass of stone. “Four against one is hardly a fair fight,” she said. “For you.”

She flicked the head of her snake staff, barely moving her hand. No visible light shone from the snake’s heads, but instantly Aria screamed and fell to the ground, clutching her head. Talyndra rushed to her side.

“Aria!” Emily shouted, her eyes wide with fear and anger.

A blast of Stoneshell fire caught Elara in the armored chest, causing her to stumble back. Aiming her staff at Aria and Talyndra, she flicked it again, but this time a wall of white light sprang up across the room, separating Elara from the others.

“I just needed a sample,” Dorian said, peeking up from behind the table. “And a bit of help from an old master.” Olenius, who had found his way to Dorian’s side, made a thumbs-up gesture.

“Spellbreakers,” Elara spat, her armor still smouldering from the Stoneshell fire. “I never liked spellbreakers.” She muttered a few words below her breath, and her staff changed from green to purple. She pointed it at the table, and a purple bolt shot from the snakes’ eyes, vaporizing it instantly. Olenius’s spectacles nearly jumped off his head.

“Leave them,” Emily said, preparing a second fireball. “It’s me you want.”

Elara looked her up and down. “Oh, how right you are!” She spoke another series of words, and the staff in her hand turned gold. The snakes began to move, writhing against each other and hissing. “Since the last time we’ve met, I’ve learned a lot about the Nightmoss, and the Stoneshell, and its bearer.” She took a step forward, easily dodging Emily’s fireball. “They’re all intertwined, you see. Quite closely.”

“We know,” Emily snarled.

“Then perhaps you’ll anticipate my next move.”

Before anyone could react, Elara thrust her staff forward. The snakes hissed viciously, and two lengths of golden light shot from their mouths. The light twisted into a chain, whipping through the air and wrapping around the Stoneshell pendant. There was a coldness against Emily’s chest, like nothing she’d ever known before.

The Nightmoss reacted instantly. Black tendrils erupted from the Stoneshell, meeting the golden chain, fighting it. Emily screamed, falling to her knees, caught between two overwhelming, parasitic forces.

“Emily!” Aria cried. Columns of stone burst from beneath the floorboards around Elara’s feet.

Elara sneered, her armored boots glowing as she levitated a few inches higher to avoid them. “Pathetic,” she spat, her focus never leaving Emily. The golden chain tightened, and Emily cried out again, her body convulsing. The protective blue lines over her skin were fading fast.

The moss began to spread rapidly down the golden chain, swiftly reaching the heads of the snakes. Elara seemed unconcerned at this, watching dispassionately as her staff was consumed by Nightmoss. She didn’t see Talyndra sneak up behind her.

Leaping over a stack of books, Talyndra brought her twin swords down in a deadly arc aimed at Elara’s unprotected back. But Elara was too fast. She spun in mid-air, blocking Talyndra’s swords with the butt of her staff. Steel met enchanted wood with a percussive boom that shook the small garret, sending Talyndra staggering back, her arms numb from the impact.

“I’ll have no further interruptions, if you please,” Elara snarled. The Nightmoss had spread from her staff and was now rapidly moving up her arm. Beneath the black moss, the golden chain of light pulsed, shining out of the gaps.

The familiar, comforting whispers of the Nightmoss filled Emily’s mind, but there was something else as well. She heard Elara’s voice, taunting her. Not from the room outside, but inside her very mind.

The Nightmoss told her to relax into its embrace. Elara told her that the Stoneshell was useless on its own, that it required a bearer to direct it. The Nightmoss told her it would always protect her. Elara told her that she was weak, incapable of controlling the Nightmoss. The Nightmoss told her that everyone would be happy once they too felt its warm embrace.

The world outside was growing more distant. Emily saw Talyndra attempt another attack on Elara, swinging wide and missing. She saw Elara stamp an armored foot viciously on the floorboards, sending a shockwave that slammed Aria and Dorian into the wall, winding them. She knew she should help them, but it all seemed so far away. She raised a hand to throw a fireball at Elara, but what erupted from her palm was not fire, but a stream of black Nightmoss. It shot across the room, missing Elara and striking the wall, sticking and beginning to spread across it.

The Nightmoss told her that she would have no enemies once it covered everything. It was taking care of Elara, and soon it would take care of Aria, of Talyndra, of Dorian, and Olenius. Soon, it would take care of all of Lirethel. She felt herself sink to her knees, felt the Nightmoss wrap itself around her body.

The Nightmoss had fully covered Elara and seemed to be digesting her armor. There was a pained expression on her face, warring with a triumphant smile. In her psychic voice, she told Emily to rest, to let go. She would take things from here, would control the body and mind of the Stoneshell Bearer directly. All Emily needed to do was lie back and let it happen.

By possessing the body of the Stoneshell Bearer, Elara would finally gain control over the Stoneshell and the Nightmoss. With her mastery of magic, she would direct both to her own ends. All Emily had to do was let her in. And if she didn’t, well, Elara assured her that the process would be painful for them both. But mostly for Emily.

A searing pain ripped through Emily’s mind, the worst headache she’d ever had. She screamed and collapsed to the floor, convulsing, desperately fighting the foreign presence in her mind, along with the one that had become all too familar.

She knew that even Elara would be no match for the Nightmoss’s power. That it would use her, just as it had used Emily. Her friends were down. She was down, trapped between Elara and the Nightmoss. Whatever she chose, the Nightmoss would win. It already had.

In her mind’s eye, she saw a vision of creeping darkness, stretching out from the decrepit tenement and spreading across Lirethel, covering its buildings, roads, and people. She saw the darkness stretch further out, overwhelming the city walls and spreading out across the plains and forests, the farms and villages.

She saw it cover her friends, saw it crawl across the faces of Aria, Talyndra, and Dorian. She saw it reach further out, saw it conquer even Sigrid, her wild axe swings futile against its overwhelming mass. She saw it devour them all, just as it had devoured Richard Stoneheart.

And at the center of it all, she saw herself. Not Emily the Stoneshell Bearer, or Emily the Painted Lady, or even Emily Corlett, but Emily, Queen of Shadows, sitting on a throne of writhing moss, the Stoneshell a vortex of black energy on her chest, the blackened bodies of her friends standing at either side of her throne, silent as the dead. She felt a strange elation at this, a sense of great power and potential—the ability to remake the world in her own image. This was the power that Elara saw in the Stoneshell, in the Nightmoss, in its Bearer. The power she sought for her own use.

Perhaps the vision she had seen was Elara, Queen of Shadows—it would make no difference. The Nightmoss would cover the world, and there would be a great stillness, a final, restful peace.

Another jolt of pain shot through Emily’s mind, and she felt her foot kick against the floorboards. It had not been her doing—Elara was gaining control of her body. An awful triumphant cackle filled her mind.

But then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the gold light at the end of Elara’s staff spark and die, followed by a shout of triumph from Dorian. She heard a cry of surprise from Elara, not in her mind, but through her ears. “You think that cantrip will stop me! A mere temporary annoyance! Try it again and I’ll end you!”

The voice of the Nightmoss remained. But the haze of magical mental assault had cleared just enough for the outside world to become clear again. Emily’s eyes to fell on something small and dark on the floor near her hand, knocked loose in the chaos. Her hair tie.

Emily heard the scream with her ears and felt the pressure in her mind release. It was the only opening she needed. She looked back at her friends.

The portal.

Home.

She had known this was coming. Ever since she arrived in Thessolan, she had been on a journey to return home. A long, winding journey, full of distractions and detours, that had now reached its end. She missed her home, her friends, and her family, but she would also miss Thessolan. She thought of her long sessions under Aria’s patient tutelage, of the jokes she shared with Talyndra, of Dorian’s gentle touch as he applied the Azure Essence to her body. She thought also of the Nightmoss that threatened to consume them all.

Fighting against the crushing pressure in her mind, Emily reached for the hair tie with both hands. Her trembling fingers closed around around it, even while Elara’s voice told her that she would have time to do her hair later, and the Nightmoss told her that she wouldn’t need to.

She looked up, not at Elara, but past her, at the faces of her friends. At Talyndra, struggling to rise, sword still in hand. At Aria, pushing herself up, her face a mask of defiance. At Dorian, whose eyes met hers and were filled with the terrible realization of what she was about to do—what his latest spellbreak had enabled.

There was no time for a proper goodbye. But they understood what she needed to do.

“I’m sorry!” Emily shouted. “I love you all!”

Emily began to pull the hair tie, stretching it far beyond breaking point. It held, and continued to stretch. When it was bigger than her head, it began to expand under its own power. The air within it seemed to ripple like water.

Emily focused on memories of home—the smell of chlorine in her apartment building’s pool, the worn texture of her favorite reading chair, the annoying hum of the ancient refrigerator she shared with her roommate. “Earth,” she whispered.

The hair tie expanded to the size of a doorway, hovering unsupported in the air. In this ring of impossibly stretchy elastic, there shimmered a vision of another world, faint but growing clearer by the second. Emily recognized it at once—the white tiled wall of her own bathroom, the chipped porcelain of her bathtub, and the faint light of a streetlamp filtering through the frosted window.

“What is this?!” Elara screamed. The heads of the golden snakes began to glow as she rushed toward Emily, Nightmoss oozing down her body. Her armor had already been completely disintegrated.

Talyndra screamed Emily’s name, a cry of desperate protest. Aria reached a hand out, her face a mask of anguish. Dorian met Emily’s gaze, a torrent of unspoken words passing between them. Placing his hands on Talyndra and Aria’s shoulders, he gave Emily a single, firm nod.

Tears falling from her eyes, Emily turned and threw herself through the shimmering tear in the world. The surface of the portal was impossibly cold, and she felt a strange, wrenching sensation as she passed through it, as though she were being pulled through the eye of a needle. Something grasped at her ankle.

With the sound of a rubber band breaking, the portal snapped shut. An inhuman scream tore through Emily’s mind, and then all was silent.

Emily landed with a jarring splash in the lukewarm water of her porcelain bathtub. Her book—the one about the pirate and the heiress—floated beside her, its pages a swollen, pulpy mess. For a dizzying second, she was just a girl who had fallen asleep in the tub.

Then a second body crashed into the room, landing hard on the cheap bathmat. Elara scrambled to her feet, still wielding the golden snake staff, which had ceased to move. She was naked and filthy, with patches of black dirt smeared across her skin. But more than that, she was furious. Raising the staff above her head, she spoke a litany of harsh words in a guttural language, then thrust the snakes’ heads at Emily.

Nothing happened.

She tried again, her face contorting with confusion, then panic. As if it were mocking her, a crack sounded from the middle of the staff and it broke in two, the top part landing on the tiled floor. Under the dim light from the streetlamp, it looked like a particularly cheap and tacky ornament.

Emily looked down at her chest. Black muck dripped from the Stoneshell pendant, discoloring the water in her bathtub. The voice in her head had gone quiet. She tried to summon a flicker of fire to her fingertips. Nothing.

“What is this place?” Elara whispered, her voice stripped of its power, small and afraid.

“Welcome to Earth,” Emily said, a weary, hollow feeling in her chest. She stood up, water sluicing from her body. “I don’t think you’ll like it here.”

Elara lunged at Emily with a clumsy tackle. A pathetic, non-magical scuffle ensued on the tiled floor. Stripped of her power, Elara was just a frantic, panicked woman. Emily was younger and stronger than Elara, hardened by months in the wilderness, and possessed the body awareness that comes with constant nudity. She easily ducked Elara’s panicked swings, grabbed her arm, and used her momentum to spin her towards the open bathroom window.

Elara stumbled, lost her footing, and with a cry of alarm, tumbled out of the low, ground-floor window, crashing into the damp bushes outside. She scrambled to her feet. With a single, fearful backward glance at Emily, she ran off into the night, a filthy streaker from another world.

Emily stood on the tiles, dripping and shivering. She examined the Stoneshell. The black spot in the middle, which had symbolized the Nightmoss’s infestation, was gone. The Nightmoss itself seemed to have been reduced to a black residue around the rim of her rapidly emptying bathtub. Inert, harmless.

The bathroom was dark and silent. Emily felt along the wall for the light switch. She flicked it a few times, but nothing happened. It seemed that the electricity really had gone out after all.

Emily grabbed a towel from the rail and wrapped it around her body. When it neither slid off nor caught on fire, she let out a deep sigh of relief. She padded out of the bathroom, the layout of her small apartment both achingly familiar and strangely foreign. She found the fuse box inside the hallway closet and reached up on her tiptoes to flip the main breaker.

The lights hummed back to life, and Emily felt the towel start to slip.

At that exact moment, the front door of the apartment opened.

“Hey, we’re back early!” a familiar voice called out. “There’s a storm coming in, so we decided to turn back. Nothing worse than being cold and wet all weekend.”

Emily turned to see her roommate, Chloe, stop dead in the doorway. Beside her, Chloe’s boyfriend, Mark, stared, his jaw slack.

“What the hell, Emily?!” Chloe snapped, covering her boyfriend’s eyes. “We have company! And what’s with the ugly necklace?”

Comprehension slowly dawned on Emily that her towel was lying pooled at her feet, and she was standing naked in the middle of the hallway. A slow blush crept up her neck, and she squatted to retrieve the towel. “S-sorry,” she stammered. “The power went out while I was in the bath.”

Chloe clucked her tongue, unimpressed. Mark smiled sheepishly, averting his gaze as Emily secured her towel.

She had not, as she had feared, been missing for months. It seemed that no time had passed at all since her disappearance. But for the stone necklace around her neck, she might have come to believe her time in Thessolan had been nothing but a long, strange dream.

Over the weeks that followed, Emily settled into the familiar but distant motions of her job and her life. The world was exactly as she had left it, yet everything was different, because she was different.

Chloe treated her with suspicion for a while, somehow suspecting that the towel incident had been a deliberate pass at Mark. It didn’t help that Emily forgot to put on clothes after her shower for the next few days.

“You’re so absent-minded these days,” Chloe told her. “At least, I hope it’s that.”

A list of ten house rules soon found its way onto the old refrigerator—number five read “No nudity in shared spaces.” Mark seemed slightly disappointed at this, but he didn’t say anything about it, fearing reprisal.

For her part, Emily was only too happy to embrace normality again. That was what she had traveled to Lirethel for, after all—a way to defeat the Nightmoss, so she could wear clothes again. But normality, she was discovering, felt surprisingly strange.

She put on a bra, the first one she’d worn since before her adventures began, and the underwire felt like a cage, the straps a harness. After months of unbound freedom or, at most, the simplicity of rough-spun tunics and hareskin, the confinement was almost suffocating. She spent half the day unconsciously adjusting the straps, trying to get comfortable. Underwear was even worse. The synthetic lace of a pair she’d once considered cute now felt scratchy and foreign against skin accustomed to nothing but air, water, and Azure Essence.

“Are you going through a minimalist phase?” Chloe asked one afternoon, watching Emily fold a stack of plain, gray t-shirts. “You used to love sequins.”

Emily just shrugged. How could she even begin to explain? She still wore the Stoneshell, hidden beneath her tops and sweaters. It was heavy and cold against her skin, an inert lump of matter, but taking it off felt wrong. She could be wrapped up from head to toe, but, ironically, she still felt naked without the necklace.

Sometimes, in the early mornings and late evenings, she’d stare wistfully at her naked body in the mirror, adorned only by the Stoneshell, and imagine that her friends were standing behind her. A couple of times, she even applied a few lines of blue makeup to her face and fiddled with a lighter. The tiny flame produced by several seconds of effort almost made her cry.

During her bathroom cleaning shift, Emily found a broken hair tie under the bathtub. This was the same hair tie that had followed her all across Thessolan and had acted as a portal for her to return home. She attempted to fix it by tying the ends together in a misshapen knot, but it was now nothing more than a simple elastic band. No more portals were forthcoming.

One rainy Tuesday, Emily sat in a small, cozy coffee shop, drinking an iced latte and scrolling through the news on her phone. There was a strange headline near the bottom of the homepage, which read, “Unidentified Woman Transferred to Psychiatric Facility.”

The article described a middle-aged woman, found wandering naked in a nearby park, muttering incoherently about magic spells. There was no accompanying photo, but Emily could envision the scenario well enough. Elara, naked, filthy and quite out of her mind, being led away by policemen. She felt a strange pang of something that might have been pity, but quickly closed the tab.

Elara had tried to possess her, and very nearly succeeded—any pity for her was misplaced. If anything, Emily felt relief that she could not longer terrorize Thessolan, could no longer hurt her friends. It seemed a fitting punishment, after all she had put Emily through, that Elara was now the naked woman lost in another world. And as far as she knew, Earth didn’t have any magic necklaces.

The coffee shop was crowded with people sheltering from the rain, but there was an open seat next to her, against the long counter by the window. A man came in from the rain and asked her if it was free. She looked up from her phone at his cautious smile and unruly dark hair and immediately dropped her plastic cup.

Emily screamed as the lid of the cup burst off, spilling iced coffee on her sweater.

“I’m sorry I startled you,” said the man. “Can I help?” He was the spitting image of Dorian.

Blushing furiously, Emily pulled her sweater off and started wringing it out. It appeared to have saved her blouse from the worst of the ice coffee. She glanced around, spotted a stack of napkins on the counter, and quickly grabbed one, dabbing at the dark, spreading stain on her sweater. “I’ve… got it,” she stammered, knowing it was probably hopeless but feeling the need to do something. She sighed, abandoning the effort and placing the damp sweater on her lap. If she were still in Thessolan, the sweater would probably be on fire by now… along with the rest of her outfit.

“I’ll leave you be, then,” said the man, looking sheepish and turning to go.

“Wait!” Emily called after him, her mouth making the words before her mind could catch up.

The man glanced back.

“This seat is free,” she said, motioning at the chair next to her. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I was just… startled.”

“Thank you,” he said, taking his seat. “That’s an interesting-looking necklace, by the way.”

Emily smiled.

“Let me buy you another iced coffee,” the man said. “As an apology for startling you.”

“Thank you,” she replied. “I’d like that very much.”

The End