You walked towards the exit, nose buried in your black-screened smartphone,  your free hand shoved deep into your pants pocket.

You winked at the guard on shift as you approached his desk. “Don’t stay up too late, Greg!” You told him.

“Demons don’t sleep, Diesel,” Greg grumbled, blowing on his soup as he kept his eyes fixed on the security monitors. “Someone’s gotta keep these spirits in their cages!”

“True, true!” you said, chuckling just a bit too loudly.

You walked past Greg, passing the last checkpoint. Home free, you thought, shoulders slumping with relief.

…but then again, what if Somchair woke up? What if he raised the alarm? What if someone found him in the interrogation room? Gods, what if you hit him on the head too hard? What if he was never going to wake up?

Sweat trickled down your back. The porkpie hat––no, the Demon Sealing Hat––sat in your backpack like a stone, its cold aura tickling the base of your spine.

Jace and Janice should be fine, you told yourself: the Demon shouldn’t be able to hurt them physically…

Oh god: what if the Demon’s attacking their minds?

Oh god: what if the Demon’s gotten inside your mind?

(At the time, I wanted nothing more than to tell you to calm down and stop worrying about demons invading your mind...

...but that would have revealed I was inside your mind.)

You pushed open the front doors of the Black Forest Sect, and vaulted down the steps two at a time. You drew your hand out from your pocket, letting the bloody gash near your wrist breathe in the open air.

Ahead of you lay one last obstacle: a simple chain-link fence, the gate sealed with a simple bike lock. Once you got through that barrier, you’d be home free.

You put your phone away and reached for your keys...

“Dieselnoi,” your Father said.

Your blood ran cold.

You turned and saw your father standing on the doorsteps behind you, a blank, stone-cold look on his face. He wore the same gaudy leather jacket you’d picked out all those years ago.

“...evening, sir,” you said after a moment. “I, uh, didn’t realize you were in tonight. Do you need…?”

“I know what you did, Diesel,” he said.

You flinched.. “Is this about the dispatch reports?” You said, trying to play it cool. “I could have sworn I sent them out…”

“I know what you did to Somchair,” your father said. “I know about the prisoners. I know you took the hat.”

“...oh,” you said.

The two of you stared at each other for a minute.

“Come back inside, Diesel,” your Dad told you, holding out his hand. “We’ll sort this out together.”

For a moment, you were sorely tempted to take that hand, to abandon your mission, to leave all your questions unanswered…to play it safe.

“I can’t promise there won’t be consequences, Diesel,” your Dad told you, “but I promise it’s not the end of the world. Not yet.”

No, you told yourself: this was never about your safety.

“What’s going to happen to those two?” You asked your father.

Your Dad blinked. “For now, they’ll be returned to their cells,” he told you. “I understand the Research Division wants to question them….”

“Jace and Janice didn’t commit any crimes,” you told your father. “Well,” you allow, “nothing worse than killing dissecting a squirrel and stealing blood from a clinic. Somchair crossed all sorts of professional boundaries during last night’s mission...”

“Diesel,” Dad said softly. “Forget about the necromancer and vampire.” Desperation colored his voice: “Don’t you realize what you’re doing?”

You thought about Somchair’s cutting words and the shame you felt back in the crypt.

You thought about Jace, an inhuman vampire desperately leaping in front of his sister to shield her mortal flesh with his immortal body.

“What’s the purpose of our Sect, Dad?” You asked. “Are we supposed to be cops, or hit men?”

“Stop trying to change the topic, Diesel,” he said.

“No,” you said, shaking your head. “I’m not going to change the topic, because I’m not going to pretend that everything’s fine and dandy.” More softly: “Do you remember those Buddha tales you told me as a kid? About Alavaka and Hariti?”

You Dad stared at you with a blank expression. You fell the hat in your knapsack burning cold, chilling the base of your spine with frosty malice.

“They were the foulest of Yakshas,” you continued, “but they became better...”

“Yes,” your Dad said softly. “But we aren’t Buddhas, son.”

"And Janice and Jace aren’t monsters, Dad,” you replied. “Or maybe they are, and I can’t see any real difference between them and me."

“Diesel…” your Dad whispered, grief in his eyes.

You took a step towards your Dad and held your hand out. “Please,” you said. “Help me help them. If we both speak out, maybe we get them fair treatment...”

You let the words hang, desperately waiting for your Dad to say something––anything.

“If they are innocent like you say…” your Dad mused.

The feeling of tightness around your heart loosened up. Maybe, just maybe...

“...then death may be an act of mercy,” your father went on to say. “They’d be freed from their tainted lives and reborn into better ones, their Karma lightened...”

You drew your Ink Machete from the inner lining of your coat and took a step back.

“Diesel!” your Father said. “What are you doing? Why are you looking at me like that? I’m not going to hurt you!”

You turned and swung your Ink Machete towards the chain-link fence three times. Three razor whips of ink cut a triangular hole in the fence.

“Think, Dieselnoi!” Your father hissed. “This isn’t like you! That vampire’s gotten into your head! If you continue down this path…” He raised his voice: “THAT HAT’S TOO DANGEROUS!”

You stopped in your tracks, your father’s words lancing into your heart.

What if he’s right? What if Jace used his power to mess with your head? What if you’re being tricked into betraying your order and family? The tattoos on your back should protect you from such things, but…

...you don’t feel brainwashed. Granted, people who are brainwashed rarely realize they’ve been brainwashed…

(I considered speaking up to reassure you that your mind hadn’t been tampered with, but realized that wouldn’t help.)

“Okay,” you told your father, slipping your bag off your shoulder “I’ll let Jace and Janice out of the hat.” You reached for the bag’s zipper. “We’ll give them a head-start. And then I’ll hand it back over…”

Your father drew his Daab Sword from his sheath, a motion smooth as silk and abrupt as lightning.

His ink-slash carved through the fabric of your bag and left a stain on your arm. You felt the ink seep beneath your skin, twisting into the image of a pair of tigers….

“Suera,” your father said.

The left side of your body seized up. You hit the ground, dry clods of soil digging into your cheek.

“This is my fault,” your father said mournfully, walking towards you. “I let you go on field missions too soon.”

Your right hand clawed desperately at the dirt, tearing up chunks of brittle sod. “Bleh,” you said, trying to force words out of a numb pair of lips.

“Hush, Diesel,” your father told you, crouching down and reaching for your bag. “I’ll do what I can, I promise…”

You grasped the hilt of your Ink Machete. Your swung your enchanted blade up and made a single, point-blank cut.

You heard your father help. Quickly, before he could recover, you pressed the edge of your Ink Machete to the gash in your left arm. With an effort of will, you injected your own Ink into your skin, mixing it with your father’s own ink to draw it out like venom.

Sensation returned to the right side of your body. You picked yourself off the ground and sagged against the chain-link fence, flexing your right hand to banish the lingering feeling of numbness.

“Dad,” you say. “Wasan. I don’t want to hurt you…”

Your father swung his Daab Sword towards your throat. You raised your Machete to block: Ink exploded outward from the point of impact, staining the ground and nearby shrubs black.

“Stop,” you pleaded, falling back as he hammered you with blow after blow. You griped your Machete with both hands as you bat his swings aside. “Don’t make me do this…!”

You father stepped back and drove his sword into the earth. The ground beneath you started to bubble and churn, gallons of pigment building beneath your feet, ready to burst from the earth and send you flying.

You extended your hand towards your father, clenching your fingers into your fist.

“Suera.”

Your father collapsed, paralyzed by the ink you injected into his skin like venom. The earth beneath you stopped churning. You kicked the Daab sword out of his hands …

...and that was that. Your victory was complete. You’d surpassed and crushed your father in battle. This should have been your moment of triumph!

(Even now, looking back on this memory, I still can’t fathom why you felt such bitter sorrow.)

You covered your hand with your mouth, trying to stifle the acrid taste at the back of your throat. Your Machete fell from your nerveless fingers, sinking point first into the dead soil.

“Heh,” your father chuckled, his laughter halfway between a nervous giggle and a hollow sob. “He-heh-heh.” He rolled onto his back and gestured weakly at his coat sleeve, torn right down the middle by your ink strike. “What did I tell you, boy? It’s not monster proof at all.”

You grabbed your bag off the ground. With the flap open, you could see the rumbled porkpie hat you’d stuffed inside it.

Such a simple looking thing. Such a monstrous thing. And you chose it over your own father.

You reached out with trembling fingers to zip the bag shut….

My arm bursts out of the bag. I wrap my long, talon-tipped fingers around my throat and squeeze.

“Gak!” You croak, tripping and falling over. “Hnngh!” You claw at my arm, tug at my golden bracelet, desperately trying to make me let go.

I shall not let go, Dieselnoi Worawoot. I shall never let you go. Like the Albatross of legend, I shall hang from your neck and drag you down into the depths of hell!

“Heh-heh-heh,” your Father chuckles, gesturing weakly at his coat sleeve. “What did I tell you boy? It’s not monster proof at all.”

“...!” You croak, the last gasp of hair escaping from your lungs.

“Shush,” I say, slowly pulling you headfirst into the darkness of the bag. “Shush. It’ll hurt less if you stop struggling…”

You stab your discarded Ink Machete into the side of my arm, injecting talismanic Ink directly into my veins.

“Aggghh!”

I let you go for a moment. You grab your messenger bag and hurl it away from you

“...the hell?” you croak, massaging the red finger-marks around your throat.

“Heh-heh-heh,” your Father chuckles, gesturing weakly at his coat sleeve. “What did I tell you boy? It’s not monster proof at all.”

I emerge from the messenger bag, tearing the canva fabric to shreds with my mighty claws. I pluck the Ink Machete from my arm, hurling the cruel, poisonous blade down into the dirt and crushing it into dust with my foot. “How dare you,” I hiss.

“That’s the downside of nightmares that can hurt you in real life,” you croak, rising up to your knees. “They work you.” A frown crosses your face. “This is one of those nightmares where if you die in the dream, you die for real, right?” you ask me. “If this is purgatory, I’d feel super awkward.”

I step towards you, my strides shaking the very fabric of the dream. “Ever the sharp-tongued brat,” I muse. “You stand before a god, a resplendent creature who could erase you from Wạt̩s̄ngs̄ār with a single thought...and yet you still feel the need to run your mouth.”

“Admit it,” you say, flashing one of your stupid, empty grins. “You love it.”

“It is...cute,” I admit after a moment’s pause. “Like a fuzzy lapdog barking at a lion.”

Down by my feet, the dream image of your father flickers and starts repeating itself all over again.

“Heh-heh-heh,” your father chuckles, gesturing weakly at his coat sleeve. “What did I tell you boy? It’s not…”

I roll my eyes and crush the memory of your father beneath my foot.

The blood, guts and bones that splatter beneath my feet are hollow, empty illusions: hardly tasty at all.

But the look of horror on your face…now that is scrumptious.

“What’s wrong, Diesel?” I ask him. “This is just a dream–– your words. Besides, didn’t you leave your father for dead?” I pick up your dream-father’s severed head and brandish it before you. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

Tears brim in the corner of your eyes. You snatch your father’s Daab from the ground and swing, hurling a ribbon of consecrated ink through the air towards me.

I swipe my hand through the air, repelling the poisonous ink with a gust of wind.

You vault over the chain-link fence and flee into the dark forest, fleeing like a coward towards the soft soothing glow of reality.

“You can’t escape, Dieselnoi Worawoot!” I shout at your back. “The humans you betrayed will spit in your face. The monsters you groveled before will turn their back. No one will save you when I arise…!”

#

You open your eyes.

You’re lying facedown on medical cot, head and shoulders awkwardly propped onto a squishy pillow. You feel a wet spot under your mouth from where you drooled onto the blue pillowcase.

You’re alive, you think with no small sense of relief.

You try to get up. A thousand little scrapes and bruises along your skin throb with a dull pain. As you bend your back, the stitches tug at the wound they hold shut.

White-hot pain pierces you to the core.

You collapse back onto your bed, moaning softly. Tears pour down your cheeks and add fresh stains to your pillow.

Your vision starts to clear. The more you notice, the more your thoughts start to align.

You’re on a lumpy hospital bed, hooked up a humming machine that beeps every now and then. You’re inside a wide room with a slanted ceiling supported by steel girders. Many other beds surround you.

There’s an IV pumping slurry into your arm through a taped-down needle.

You feel a hot surge of panic. You’re still in the slaughterhouse! They’ve caught you! They’re going to stuff you with food and carve you up on a rotary saw––

No, you tell yourself, looking more closely. This isn’t the warehouse space. It’s a lot smaller, for starters. The beds are arranged differently. The floors are wooden instead of marble.

You turn your head to see familiar faces lying on the beds next to you: the prisoners from the meat locker, the Humans, Kobolds, Nymphs and Fish-men. Some of them are sleeping, a few are reading books, and a large number of them are complaining loudly to the harried look nurses wearing patched-up scrubs.

Two tall figures with Charlie Chaplin masks stand by the doors, both of them leaning on their bamboo canes.

You smile.

Why do you smile, Diesel?

The monster hunter you tried to trick stabbed you in the back! You lost the Demon-Sealing Hat, the hat containing my infernal power! You even failed to rescue the changeling child your sickly client asked you to save!

So why do you look so relieved?

“Screw you,” you whisper under your breath. “That’s why…”

“Diesel!”

You tuck your arm beneath your ribs and gingerly raise yourself up on your elbow. You raise your head just in time to see little Fortuna run up to your bedside.

“Hi!” Fortuna says, blowing a stray lock of curly hair off her cheeks.

“Hi,” you wheeze by way of response.

“You got real messed up,” Fortuna informs you soberly.

“Yeah,” you mumble as the events—no, the mistakes—of yesterday come back to you. “I messed up real bad.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Fortuna frowns.

“I know,” you say softly. You chew your lip. “Is your mom all right? What about Mr. Lynn?”

Gods, you think: what the hell are you going to say to Lynn? Forget his real son; you couldn’t even get his fake Ogre son back…

“Mom’s fine!” Fortuna chirps, tucking her hands behind her head as she stares up at you. “Mr. Lynn and Cookie are here too!”

As if on cue, a white-and-black blur bounds to your side and licks at your dangling hand.

“Ha!” You chuckle, scratching the pit-bull’s flopping ears. “Hey, buddy!" You stretch your arm too far. "Ugh," you groan, feeling more pain rip through your torso.

“Don’t move!” Fortuna shouts, eyes narrowing in a startling imitation of her mother. “Mom said you shouldn’t move until you’ve gotten better!”

“Your mom’s probably right,” you admit, settling back down onto to your spit-soaked pillow. “Is she around? I need to tell her stuff.” You feel your heart sink. “I also need to talk to Mr. Lynn,” you add.

“Um.” Fortuna tilts her head to the side. “Mom and Mr. Lynn were talking to the cop you saved.” Her nose wrinkles. “They were all shouting at each other. It hurt my ears.”

Oh dear.

“I need to talk to them now!” you declare, gripping your hospital bed’s railings and pulling yourself up to a sitting position. The bandages on your back pinch sharply.

You’re shirtless, you realize. No, worse than that. Somebody took a pair of scissors and sliced your lucky shirt into ribbons. All those hours of computer coding and spellcraft, wasted!

No, you tell yourself. Focus: You can mourn your shirt later.

“Have you seen C around?” You ask Fortuna.

“Which one?” Fortuna asks you earnestly.

Good point. You take another look at the Cs standing watch by the door. One of them seems human, while the other has a scaly tail protruding from the waistline of their pants.

“Any one of them’s good,” you say to Fortuna. “Could you tell them to bring me a wheelchair?”

“I’ll lend you my wheelchair, chum!”

You look up. Sarah Mankiller rolls toward you, her hooves planted firmly in her wheelchair’s plastic stirrups. She squeezes her chair brakes and grinds to a stop, popping a wheelie in the middle of the hospital ward. “I don’t need the thing, really,” she explains, resting her hands on the porcelain Chaplin mask in her lap. “But it’s fun to drive around.”

“I’ll take it,” you say gladly. “I owe you one.”

You do a double take and stare at the mask the Deer-woman has in her lap. You look up again and things click.

“You’re with the Commune?” You blurt out. You stare into Sarah’s eyes, paying close attention to her left eye. “But you’re…!”

“What?” Sarah says with a chuckle. “A forager? Herbivores can be interested in social change too, you know!” She shakes her head at you ever so slightly, her smile stiff and brittle. “But maybe we should be talking more about you right now, capiche?”

“Capiche!” You say hastily. “Message received.”

Sarah visibly relaxes. “Good,” she says, “because we’ve got a lot to talk about…!”

Cookie the Dog leaps onto Sarah, tag wagging furiously as he tries to sniff and lick her face.

“Agh!” Sarah cries, desperately tugging at the pit bull’s jowls. “Get it off! Get it off!”

“Cookie!” Fortuna screams, voice cracking as she tries to grab her pet. “No! Bad! She’s not food!”

Next Chapter: Episode Fifteen: Bedside Manners (Revised)