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“First of all,” Augustus said, and was pleased when his voice didn’t shake too much, “I would have you make me a cup of tea. Herbal. I need to calm my nerves and get my thoughts in order.”

Enmity’s eyebrows lifted—for all of what Augustus liked to think of as their domestic bliss, Enmity wasn’t much in the habit of being ordered around for trivialities. But again, he decided not to say anything about it this time, slowly releasing Augustus and sliding his legs off the workshop bed, then heading for the stairs.

Augustus imagined his demon lord husband tinkering around naked in the kitchen and swallowed a laugh that threatened to be more of a hysterical giggle than anything else. He sat up and crossed his legs, clenching cold fingers into the fine material of his trousers and forcing himself to breathe.

When Enmity returned—still naked, of course, carrying a teacup with a strainer in it, and a separate bowl to remove the leaves to when the tea was appropriately steeped—Augustus was feeling, if not better, as if he had at least roughly managed to line his thoughts up.

“I’ll start from the moment it shifted to the cave,” he said, since that was when Enmity had stopped talking originally in the memory-divination, and did so, describing the icy cold waters, the warm current beneath him, his sudden decision to get back out of the water and head into the caves to follow the voice. It was hard to describe what he’d seen when he emerged out into that central cave opening that the ritual had clearly occurred in, but he did his best. “So, as you can see, something went very wrong,” he concluded. He knew he was talking stiffly, but couldn’t not. It felt like trying to forcibly recall a nightmare. “I don’t know if it was accidental or sabotage. The things Soren was yelling could have been aimed at either Vii or myself. Or it could have simply been an inaccurate stream of consciousness, given his lack of mental stability at the time. Considering that we were playing with forces beyond our control, it could have been accidental and he was simply blaming himself. But I do wonder if there was foul play involved. And by whom, if so.” 

Because that was the rub, wasn’t it? Emotions were high. Vii and Soren had issues with each other, but were also drawn to each other, and Augustus knew himself well enough to suspect he might have been playing them off each other for the thrill of being so desired. He didn’t want to think he would have actively sabotaged either of them, but he didn’t have enough memory to confirm.

“You weren’t there at the start of the memory,” Enmity pointed out, interrupting Augustus’s spiraling thoughts. “You were somehow in a pool of water, deeper in the cave system from what was happening. Do you think you might have been the one who ‘abandoned’ them, since you weren’t there at the time?” He made scare quotes with his talons around abandoned.

It was strange; he wasn’t used to emotional pain. He sat with that feeling for a moment, an accusation of abandoning people who were still, to his current self, near strangers. “Perhaps,” he said. “Entirely possible. Say that when the ritual started, I got afraid. Or when it started to come through—I could have become insensate and fled. If I fell into a pool of ice-cold water, it might have shocked me back into my senses and allowed me to go back to try to help after all. Or perhaps I was coming to the ritual through the caves and was late, and they got started without me. One way or another, whether I was there and ran away, or if I hadn’t been there at all, I was clearly too late to help.”

“Dost thou ache, worm?” Enmity asked, tucking fingers under Augustus’s chin, curling claws against the soft flesh there.

It made him smile, at least. “I don’t know. It’s a bit intriguing, I’ll admit. Well. Whatever the cause, and whether or not it was intentional, it looks as if Vii was consumed in some way by the Beast Beyond. Clearly not the intended outcome, given how we’d been talking. And then I lost my memory, and Soren lost more than that … I don’t think the ritual itself wiped my memory, but … perhaps that scream at the end. It felt like it cut right through my mind and seared parts of me away. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it did damage to me.”

“While I couldn’t exactly take a look around your ritual area, obviously, I don’t think you had any kind of useful warding up,” Enmity said. “How could you? It was something you’d never encountered before. It’s just lucky that rift slurped it back in, or who knows what other damage it might have done to the world?”

As if Enmity could talk. Augustus gave him a fond look, and earned a coyly innocent expression back. “Well, that’s what planar definitions are supposed to do. Be a failsafe against things going where they don’t belong for too long.”

“And here you are trying to change them.”

“Of course I am, darling. If my world is your world, then it couldn’t possibly deny you. Who could?” Augustus leaned up and kissed Enmity’s nose. And then, sitting back suddenly, “And given my stolen research, I might not be the only one trying to change the definitions. Especially given that you told me that you felt someone try to reach for something beyond the planes recently already. If someone who knew about the Beast had an idea of how to define to allow its entry, they might be able to cause some major havoc.”

Enmity sighed. “I’m not getting laid tonight.”

“You’re not, sorry. I need to plan, and then I need to rest without nightmares, if you can do that for me.”

“I can do that for you.”

Augustus nodded. “Well. Tomorrow, I don’t have plans until the afternoon. So first thing in the morning, I can go to the library, see if there’s any news about Vii. Things are only shared through magical interlibrary loan if they’re of interest, so it’s unlikely but not impossible there will be student records. But given that suddenly Soren became unwell and Vii disappeared without a trace, there might be a news report. That’d be shared.”

Enmity hmmed absently, tracing shapes over Augustus’s forehead with a talon. 

He could feel the sleepiness start to sink in. “Depending how long that takes, perhaps I can then break into Fitzfleming’s office. See if I can find the proof that she’s the one doing it. And if not … well, maybe I can lay a trap. Tell folks that I’ve got an exciting class planned. If I get all the evidence I need before that, sure, I can run a class. Otherwise, I can make everyone think I’m going to and then skip. See if someone tries to get into my office while they believe I’m busy.”

“Lie down, maggot,” Enmity said, pressing him back and sitting on him, tracing more patterns down his throat and chest. “I need to finish this before the spell ends, if you want a good sleep.”

“Mm, yeah, exactly. Then I’ll go home. Bring you home to me physically. Voidspace takes so long to set up compared to a physical summoning. And you can’t stay long when it’s like this. Physically, we can only trick the planes for a day or two before it’ll kick you out. But I want you there when Soren comes over, and if things are going to kick off soon … I need you. I need you.”

“Sleep,” Enmity said, and Augustus fell into a dreamless sleep.

***

When Augustus woke, he was, as expected, alone. But that was fine. He was calmer now, prepared.

He got up and ate his leftovers from dinner rather than taking time to prepare any breakfast, dressed quickly in a fairly simple charcoal suit with opal-swirl lining, and strode off to the university library. He nodded to Fernandez as he passed, heading right for the section relevant to arcane universities.

As he’d expected, Pwent’s enrollment history didn’t make it over here—he could request an interlibrary loan if it was incidentally both approved to get scanned in (which it might not be, if any politician’s children had been in the classes) and then someone had the time to magically scan it. But he did find news from the same year, pulling things out and making his hands stay steady. 

Incident at Pwent, One Student Injured, Another Missing.

That was certainly it. He began to pull it out and froze when Fernandez came over.

“Pennywright.”

“Fernandez,” he agreed. “Can I help you?”

“The other way around, I think. I told you I’d do inventory. You were correct; some titles that seem relevant have been late in being returned. You may want to talk to Professor Fitzfleming if you want them back.”

Disappointing, but not unexpected. “I see. Thank you,” he said, and turned his attention back to the article, skimming it for names. He searched for his own—didn’t find it—and skimmed again for the others.

Yes, there was Soren Kincaird, poor thing, ankle broken, described as incapable of explaining what had happened.

And then he saw Vii’s full name: Violin Spiders. 

It could be a coincidence, of course. The Spiderses were a large, multi-branched family. 

It didn’t feel like a coincidence.

“Pennywright?” Ferdanez asked. “Are you well?”

[What should Augustus do?
Stick to the plan? Change it up?
Comment with details.]

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No, Augustus decided, he shouldn’t go toward the warmth. He didn’t know where it led, or, in fact, what was causing the warmth. And if it was a way out—if the warmth came from areas nicer than this horrid, dark cave, should he really do it alone?

That thought jarred him and for a moment he almost failed to keep treading water. He couldn’t think of it like that, he reminded himself, not and risk losing the ability to observe the divination. If he began to conflate the past with the present, the divination could take him all manner of places. He wasn’t his past self. He was simply observing it. No matter what he did here, the past wouldn’t change.

He moved his numb arms, swimming to the edge of the pool and slowly pulling himself out of it, shivering as a howling wind through the caves stole any warmth he might have from his soaked, icy clothes. Carefully, he touched the dragonfly on his chest, which shifted around a little and dripped warm blood over his heart, though Enmity didn’t speak. Perhaps he was too busy observing. 

Or perhaps it was becoming difficult for him to simultaneously maintain the divination spell and his intrusion into the voidspace that Augustus had temporarily created to summon him into.

Like Enmity had said, it would be better to not waste time. Augustus had to make his decisions and stick to them. Screwing up his courage, he felt along the walls until he found a tunnel entrance, and ran into it.

He did is best to angle toward the screaming voice, even if he couldn’t tell for sure if it were friend or foe. The tone was urgent and incoherent, terrified and furious and in pain, and it was as liable to be hunting him as it was to be begging for his help, but it might be Vii. And even if it wasn’t, it had to have information about what went wrong. The last memory he had explored had been right before the ritual. Was this one still before? Was it during or even after?

He slammed into a wall in the darkness, sucked a pained breath, and felt along until he located the bend. Keeping one hand on the wall, and the other out in front of him to help prevent other accidents, he ran. The icy, wet stone scraped against his hand, and he couldn’t hear himself running, couldn’t hear himself thinking, not for the echoing screams and shouts and babbled, impossible words. If only he could see where he was going, it might be easier to angle himself toward it, but all he could do was keep turning to wherever it seemed louder, and louder, and louder. He went down twice, three times, four, he ran into another wall or two despite his best efforts. Everything felt scraped raw: his skin, his throat, his nerves.

But: eventually, as the sound became louder and louder, as the incoherent wailing almost began to form comprehensible words, as he began to pick up another strange sound under it, crackling and singing and glittering, he realized he could see the outlines of the tunnels, the shapes of the walls. There was light up ahead somewhere, filtering down, and with the advantage of vision, he put on a burst of speed.

Gasping and wheezing, he stumbled to his knees as he came out into a large, central cavern. It was lit with a fire, with candles, and opened to the outdoors; a cold wind ran through it, and moonlight filtered through. Here was where the ritual was done, he thought, and the proof of it was the

the thing

the thing that was pulling itself through

no it wasn’t pulling itself through it was

it was halfway out of a

tear?

a rent?

a gash bleeding unreality into the cave, it was a thing which

it was almost deer-like

it was a little snake-like as well

serpentine, too long, malformed

there were too many legs for the body and they bent the wrong way but they were

almost

deer legs? something like deer legs

because the thing was deer-like, and its neck was too long the same way that its

body? was too long

its antlers split fractal like a lightning figure and they made the world bleed

bleed wherever they were touching and it was familiar he remembered

seeing? this? had he seen it?

the legs ended in human hands instead of hooves, and they were grabbing onto the cave floor, trying to pull itself forward 

or, actually, to keep

to keep itself from being pulled back

the rent between planar space and non-planar space was trying to pull it back in, Augustus thought

and then thought vanished again because he realized that one of the beast’s hands was wound around Soren’s ankles. it did not bend like a hand should, and Soren’s ankle was no longer bending the way an ankle should.

it was pulling Soren into the rift or, rather, it was failing to keep from being sucked back into it itself, its fingers losing its grip off the rough floor, and it was simply dragging

dragging Soren with it as it scrabbled and tried to pull itself free. he was screaming. Soren was the one who was screaming. He was begging. Incoherent.

Focus.

Augustus made himself not look at the beast and instead ran for Soren, trying to listen to his words. They weren’t formed very well, but given what was happening here, Augustus could hardly blame him. “Why did you come back? You abandoned me! You abandoned him! You abandoned you! Didn’t you free yourself! Why did you come back! Don’t I deserve to die to this! Don’t I deserve to live like this! Didn’t you abandon me! You never loved me! So why would you come back! Augustus! Violin! Augustus! Violin! Abandon me! Claim me! Take me! Leave me! Don’t I deserve it?”

(Violin? Augustus thought? Was that Vii’s given name? Terrible. Dreadful. It felt right, for all that it was a horrid name for someone to give their son. Soren yelled it like vee-oh-lihn, not Vie-oh-lin, but still—) He almost laughed and knew he was crying, feeling heat pouring down his cheeks. 

But he didn’t have to control his body, at least, because his past self was doing it for him again. He felt himself grab onto Soren, trying to pull him away from the creature, and then when that was unsuccessful, he grabbed the hand that was on Soren’s ankle, the hand that was attached to the end of that broken, spider-like deer leg, and as he touched it, he felt it freeze.

The movement was so still after all that scrabbling that he turned to look up at the head at the end of that giraffe-snake-deer neck, and that head had a human face, and that face was Vii’s.

Augustus shoved away from it, pulling Soren back in a horrified recoil, and between that and its sudden stillness, it lost its grip altogether. The rift in space sucked it back in, and Vii’s mouth opened and it let out a scream that was both human and not, a sobbing, shattering sound that felt like drinking broken glass.

His mind lacerated.

All went blank.

And he lunged upward, sucking a deep, horrified breath, sobbing. For a second, he thought he was back there and the creature had him, had wrapped its limbs around him, but instead it was Enmity, holding him hard. He was awake, he was alive. The last couple of decades returned to him in a rush and gave him some distance from the dream, or memory, or whatever it was.

“Sorry,” he heard himself say. “Just a moment. I need to calm down.”

“Yeah,” Enmity said, for once not adding any additional commentary.

Calmness returned remarkably fast. He wasn’t sure if Enmity was doing something to hurry it along, or if his own mind was just wrapping the memory back up to protect him, muffling it, or what. But his crying stopped, though his shaking didn’t quite. “Okay,” he managed to say, after however long that took. “Did you see that?”

“I saw the most of it,” Enmity said. “But thine mind wast not understanding the last part, so all I saw was fragments. I could but see the parts thou couldst share with me.” He seemed … worried. It was a little touching, given who and what he was. 

“That might have been for the best,” Augustus murmured, low.

“What dost thou think happened?” Enmity asked. “And babe, what the hell should you—and I!—do about it?”

That was a good question. He still hadn’t seen the actual ritual—might need Soren himself for that, he understood. But what could he piece together, nevertheless? And then … what should his next steps be? Tomorrow was Thirdsday, he reminded himself, feeling infinitely far from concepts like a workweek existing. He needed rest, but at least he had the rest of the night, and then tomorrow morning free. Then, a three-hour class to teach in the afternoon. An evening when he’d invited Soren over. 

Previously, Augustus had suggested that he perform the ritual that would let Enmity temporarily manifest in physical, human-guise flesh—which could last a day or two, but then it would be be hard to bring him back for a while again after, as the planes’ borders would identify him after a time and try to shut him back out. So even if he did do that, should he do it now, or later?

It was so hard to try to plan for tomorrow with his mind still aching like this.

[What does Augustus think happened?
What should Augustus plan to do tomorrow?
Comment with details.]

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Augustus turned slowly, taking a moment to get his bearings and to try to see a clearer image of what was around him. He felt odd, off balance, in a body that was nostalgic and yet lost to him, no longer his own, young and angular, shaped differently than he was now. The corridors looked like school hallways, he realized, pictures of old faculty on the walls, though each vanished into mists. 

The room behind him was more familiar: it was a bedroom, his own from back at Twent. He knew it likely only because he’d had it both before and after the blank period, and it wasn’t likely tied to any of the things that had caused the memory loss. It was, at a glance, as he remembered it: his bed, personal belongings, wardrobe. Likely, there were secrets hidden in it, of course.

There was one more thing to do before he made his decision. Enmity? He called in his mind. Are you there?

Space warped in front of him briefly, and then a strange dragonfly appeared on his sleeve—not the outfit he was last wearing, he noticed, but a pale, tan suit more suited to a younger man. The dragonfly had too many wings lining the whole length of its body, and its legs were hooks. It bled red blood, human blood, as it crawled its way up Augustus’s sleeve to his front, leaving a long smear to mark its trail. There it perched like a brooch over his heart, wings fluttering and spraying fine droplets. “That’s cute,” the dragonfly said, a tiny whisper of Enmity’s voice. “That’s disgusting. You’re taking the time to think about me instead of exploring.”

“That’s—”

“Don’t worry, thou lovesick mite. I’m watching. But you can’t waste time, got it, babe? With only two focus items we have some pretty damn limited space to explore.”

Augustus had relaxed a little at that familiar whiplash between high and low diction. He didn’t respond, knowing he’d get chided again if he did, but just made a decision: the thing that had to be the most important here was the person Augustus could not remember, the young man from the ambrotype. His bedroom was likely tied directly to himself and thus possibly easiest to return to if divining again; the paths into the mists was the most undefined; he already knew a little about Soren.

He turned to the left and broke into a jog to meet the young man.

The youth’s features became clearer as he approached: he was gangly and short, with long brown hair loosely tied back in a braid like he were a civil servant, and he had freckles scattered across his face. He was dressed finely but inappropriately in shirtsleeves and brocaded vest with no coat. His eyes were bright green and merry; he laughed as Augustus approached, reaching out to snag Augustus’s hand and suddenly Augustus found himself being pulled along.

It felt familiar, and he couldn’t help his heart lifting as the two of them ran together through the hallways, heedless of the noise of their shoes and laughter, to tumble into another room together. It too was a bedroom, and laid out similarly—all the dorms must have been—though Augustus didn’t remember it.

The young man threw his arms around Augustus and kissed him, laughter bubbling up against his mouth, pressing Augustus against the wall, a leg pressing between Augustus’s thighs carefully. He found himself gasping, kissing back fervently, and then his hands came up involuntarily, pushing the familiar stranger away, though only a little. “We shouldn’t,” Augustus murmured. “We don’t want to spend too much of ourselves before the ritual. We need as much energy as we have, since we don’t know what’ll happen.”

“Soren told you that.”

“I mean, he didn’t say it about fucking.”

“I bet he was thinking it,” the young man said. “I think he wants to find any excuse to keep us from fucking again.”

Augustus found himself huffing out a fond, frustrated breath. “I know you think he doesn’t like you, Vii.” Vii? Was that this youth’s name? Or simply a nickname?

“I don’t think he doesn’t like me,” Vii murmured, thumbing Augustus’s lower lip and forcing his mouth a little open. “I think he’s fascinated by me, and who can fucking blame him? I’m powerful and awesome and gorgeous and I have you. And I know for a fact he wants you, but you’re mine, aren’t you?”

“Ihh hhyhh,” Augustus said. He wished he had more insight into his past self’s thoughts, not just the whirlwind of sensations, to know how he’d intended to answer.

“Wow,” the eldritch dragonfly clinging to his chest whispered to Augustus alone. “You got a type, huh, babe?”

He must, at that. He could feel the love pounding in his chest, and knew that his younger self had been completely besotted with this person he now couldn’t remember. 

“Probably we could get all over it if we just gave up on being coy about it and had a threesome,” Vii was saying thoughtfully, his thumb hooked into Augustus’s mouth, which was incredibly distracting. “But I’m really enjoying monopolizing you here. Is that fair of me? I don’t know, Auggie, you tell me.”

Augustus managed to lift a hand to gently remove Vii from his mouth. “We’ll see if it matters one way or another soon anyway,” Augustus said. “The thing we’re going to do will either fail or it’ll work, and either way, we’re all soon going to be sharing an experience that goes far beyond anything we’ve experienced before. Or we’ll die.”

“Or we’ll die,” Vii said, more somber now, resting his forehead against Augustus’s shoulder. The dragonfly should be crushed between them, but then, it wasn’t real to his past self, only to the current Augustus. “Have you made any preparations for that possibility?”

Augustus snorted. He felt scorn, and could recognize the reasons for it even before his younger self spoke. “What preparations could I make? I don’t have any family. What about you?”

“I left a message,” Vii said. “Nobody will find it unless they’re dealing with my personal belongings after I’m gone, so hopefully I can just burn it unopened later.”

Augustus shook his head, a fierce denial. “I wish you didn’t feel like you had to. I don’t think we’ll die. I won’t let you die.”

Vii pressed a hand to Augustus’s cheek and leaned up. “Oh, if only I believed I could have such a fierce defender,” he said, and kissed Augustus again. This time, Augustus didn’t resist as Vii pulled him back toward the bed. They hit the mattress and—

—Suddenly, everything was icily cold. His mouth was full, the heat of Vii’s tongue turned to ice, and he thrashed upward, gasping for air as he surfaced, finding himself in a pool of frigid water. It was dreadfully dark. The air tasted like minerals, and he could hear a slow, echoing drip.

And something else, in the distance. Someone was screaming, words he couldn’t make out due to the overlapping and distant echoes. He thought it was for him, and fear stirred inside him. He couldn’t tell whether he was afraid of the person or for them, not with the distance of his current self versus the emotions of his past self.

What were his options? He couldn’t keep treading water in this pool forever. He could, he decided, try to avoid the person, or he could try to find them. He was pretty sure he was in a cave, but he wasn’t sure how many tunnels there might be; still, the sound would be some guidance.

There might be a third option as well, he realized abruptly. A warm current had brushed his ankle; there might be an underground stream here, a below-water cave that he could try to dive down and into to see where it led.

Surely, he reminded himself, cave diving was safer when he was lost in magically-divined memories than it would be in real life.

[What should Augustus do? Comment with details.
Whichever gets the most votes will take it.
If it is split, I will pick randomly between the split votes.]

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Yes—it would be best if it weren’t now, Augustus decided; he was on the spot, and he didn’t feel great about impulsively using sex as a way to get bodily fluids and help divine his past. It wasn’t out of the picture if it came to it, and it wasn’t entirely atrocious if he ended up doing it; every mage knew what a part of one’s body could be used for, and took their chances. He’d be taking the same risk that Soren might do something with his. Still …

“I would like to,” he said, and he meant it, really; Soren was lovely, if too mysteriously connected to him for his comfort. “But I’m afraid I have plans tonight I can’t get out of. I’m calling my husband, and even if I hadn’t already been planning to … I really should make sure he knows about our interest before we go ahead and act on it. He has no issue with that sort of thing, but trust is about communication.”

Soren looked surprised, and an initial defensiveness that had begun to creep in seemed to relax a little at that. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

“So—would you like to come over to my place tomorrow evening?” Augustus leaned forward a little. “Even if we decide not to, well. I think we will want to talk more. Get to know each other better.”

“Tomorrow?” Soren seemed to hesitate, then nodded. His complexion hid much of any blush he might have, but he seemed a little flustered. “Tomorrow evening is fine. I can make it work.”  

“Excellent. Wonderful. I’ll look forward to it,” Augustus said, clasping his hands together. And then, impulsively driven to a surprise honesty. “There’s one more thing. I’d like to do some divining into our shared past. Would you give me a lock of your hair?”

He didn’t actually expect Soren to say yes; mages did, in fact, know what these things could be used for. And he wasn’t about to tell Soren that it was a demon who would be doing the divining, so if he asked, Augustus would have to demur.

But Soren just nodded again. “All right. I’ll trust you, Augustus.” He found a small pair of scissors in his bag—a common implement for mages who might need to gather materials when out and about—and snipped a curl off, folding it up in a piece of paper and handing the improvised envelope over.

“Oh! Thank you,” Augustus said. Excellent. Odd, too, that Soren would trust him this much, but then again, perhaps the two of them had a connection that nobody else in this world could understand, given their shared past. “I’ll leave for now, Soren. But I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Awkwardly, Soren rose, holding out a hand to shake. Augustus took it, then turned it over and kissed the knuckles lingeringly, watching that hunger spark in Soren’s eyes again, that sad need. “A gentleman,” Soren managed.

“I certainly try,” Augustus said with a chuckle. “Good afternoon, Soren.”

He headed out at that, heading back home immediately; his office hours were nearly over after all the talking they’d been doing, so there was no point going to them this late.

This was probably the better decision, he decided as he walked. He could see what he and Em could dig up together between the essence left in the hair and on the mug, and take that information forward into tomorrow. He could spend some time tomorrow trying to look into that third person, too. The library might have some records of other school enrollment or graduating classes—though based on what happened with Soren, there was no guarantee that other boy graduated in the same timeframe as either of them, if at all—or other strangenesses that might have occurred. And even if it didn’t, he’d be able to find contact information to feed into a farspeech spell so that he might inquire from the Twent enrollment office more directly. 

He got home and locked up, making sure all the curtains were pulled, then headed down into his home workroom in the basement, setting the materials to prepare. Then, he went up and made himself a protein-heavy dinner of steak and sausages with a parsnip and carrot side, of which he only ate a single portion—he’d likely want the rest later tonight, depending on how much the combination of summoning and divining took out of him. 

Then, he spent some time preening, tidying his hair, changing into a nice evening suit the color of blood and ash, adding just a touch of kohl under his eyes. He swept his hair back into a loose ponytail—Enmity always enjoyed undoing it—and headed back downstairs to finish the ritual.

Reality tore, darkness pouring out, space warping around him.  Enmity stepped through and immediately sank back onto one elbow on the bed Augustus kept down here, tail thumping the bedsheets. 

“Good evening, thou lowly beast,” Enmity purred, letting his impossibly black hair pool on the sheets as he leaned on his side. “You look gorgeous, babe. This is a personal visit, right? There’s no way you’ve learned more yet.”

“You know I love to mix business and pleasure,” Augustus replied, sitting next to him, helpless to keep from touching, sliding a hand up his side and feeling the aching non-burn of Enmity’s skin. He leaned down to kiss his husband, feeling flesh split and needle-sharp teeth catch at his mouth.

Surely had time to make out a little, he allowed. He’d been so productive lately! He sank into Enmity’s arms, twining his own uselessly mundane, flesh and bone fingers into Enmity’s voidsilk hair.

But as Enmity slid talons through his hair and pulled the ribbon out, as Enmity slit his cravat open with a teasing, implicit threat of how easily he could do the same to Augustus’s throat, he forced himself to pull back with a gasp. “But probably business first,” he managed. “I have to focus. And you’ll want to hear this.”

“Ughhh, thou art such a fucking tease, thou coquet.”

“Consider it a promise for later, thou lonely sufferer,” Augustus retorted breathlessly. “Have you ever heard of the Beast Beyond?”

Enmity pulled back a little, sitting up more fully and crossing his legs. His interest hadn’t flagged yet, from the look of him, but his iridescent gaze had become clear—and perhaps even concerned. “In rumor and legend.”

“What is it?”

“Well, the name is kind of the fucking description, babe. It’s a beast beyond. The here there be dragons of planar space. There are a few things like that in legend, and with all my experience and study, I could not tell you the differences between them, but one is called a beast, another a wyrm, a third one the lurker. The waiter, the watcher, the woebegone. Perhaps they’re all individual creatures, or are all names for one thing, or for aspects of one thing, or for something that is both multiple things and one at once, like a hive.”

Augustus looked at Enmity thoughtfully, sitting on the edge of the bed, one knee up. “What do I dream of when you block my nightmares of the past?”

“More blood than something should be able to hold, reality falling to pieces, something coming through. More than that I cannot see. You don’t remember, so it’s undefined even in thine own petty mortal dreams.” Enmity ran a sharp fingertip over Augustus’s shoulder, then began to toy with his hair again. “Tell me why you ask.”

Augustus did, start to finish, leaving nothing out: everything he’d done since they’d last talked, everyone he’d talked to, everything they’d said that seemed relevant. He took out his satchel and presented his prizes, the mug and the envelope of hair, putting them on the bed between them, feeling remarkably like a housecat presenting a bird as he did so. “Soren is willing to come by tomorrow evening. I’ve already said it may not be for sex, but the option is theoretically still open.”

Enmity opened his maw to speak.

“Yes, he’s hot.”

Enmity closed it.

“You can be here too, if you want,” Augustus offered. “Though if we don’t want to show too much, we might want to spend the resources on letting you physically come through in mortal disguise for a short time.”

“Thou brilliant, miserable acarid, yes,” Enmity said promptly. “We can decide that after we’ve divined on the things you brought with you. It might help us determine where to go with this and what we want to reveal or what we want to hide. It may not get us everything—these are sparks, parts of essence alone, rather than the other full mind here. But if nothing else, I hope we’ll get direction.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Augustus said. “Now?”

“I cannot stay here forever, though if thou art capable of making this world mine, I may yet be able to one day. So yeah, let’s do it now before you gotta burn another four hours and expensive bullshit to get me back with you.”

Augustus nodded. This was … new to him, and he found himself nervous. Whatever was hidden here might be hidden for a reason. And yet … “What do you need to do?”

“Trust me,” Enmity said. He put his knife-capped fingers against Augustus’s cheeks, tilting his face up and gazing into his eyes. “Thou hast put thy heart and thy soul in mine. Close thine eyes, open thy mind. Let me inside thee.”

Demons did not need to cast spells to do magic, and Augustus could feel it swelling around him, the metaphysical wind and pressure making sharp electrical sparks between himself, the mug, the lock of hair. He closed his eyes.

This wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a choice. He had nothing to debate about this. He simply did it immediately. He felt Enmity’s mouth open and open and open, and he knew he was being swallowed whole.

His name was being called in two voices, overlapping.

He opened his eyes.

Augustus was standing in a doorway, a room behind him and a T-intersection in front of him. The hall directly in front of him led away into mists. The hallway ran left and right as well. Down the hall to the right stood Soren, as young as he’d been in the ambrotype, calling for him. Down the hall to the left stood the young man from the ambrotype who Augustus had not been able to identify, calling as well. And behind him, of course, a room, unexplored. 

He could only pick one to do right now, with no knowledge of what options would change after he made this choice. 

[What should Augustus do? Comment with details.
Whichever gets the most votes will take it.
If it is split, I will pick randomly between the split votes.]

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“Now is a great time,” he told Olivia firmly. “One moment.” He grabbed a sign that he kept just inside his office, hanging it on the door to indicate his absence. “And now nobody will wait around for me.”

“What a gentleman,” Olivia said dryly, with an almost odd air of amusement. “You’re such an odd one.” She gestured to him to come walk with her.

Augustus raised his eyebrows at them. “Am I?”

They nodded, tossing their hair over one shoulder. “I’ve always found you quite the mystery, Pennywright. You’ve got that mysterious husband you brought to that one work party, but you live alone, you never talk about your past, you publish the strangest things.”

“I hope at least people do talk about my work, even if they think it’s strange,” Augustus said demurely. “If you aren’t making a scandal in academia, are you really doing any work at all?”

“Hah! You’re right about that. I have a paper I’ve just refined and turned a draft in,” Olivia said. “I’m hoping that it’ll make waves too.”

“Oh, what about?”

“I’d love to talk about it later,” she said brightly, gesturing. “We’re here.”

Before he could ask anything more, Olivia knocked on the door. “Soren? You in?”

“Yes—Liv? Come on in.”

Liv? So they were friends? Augustus thought back to earlier when he’d asked Olivia about Soren, and realized that they hadn’t indicated their level of closeness to him or not. He’d known they’d interacted some, which is why he thought to ask them for an introduction, of course. A bit surprising to be on nickname terms, though, given how new Soren was to the school.

Olivia opened the door and waved, then gestured toward Augustus. “I’m not staying,” she said brightly. “But I thought I’d introduce you to my colleague, Augustus Pennywright. He’s a Doctor of Conjurations, specializing in Planar Research, so you two should have plenty to talk about.”

Soren’s face jerked up, expression going almost blank with surprise. Too much surprise, Augustus thought, but he wondered what his own face was showing. That level of familiarity was hitting him again, a strong spark of I know you that he hadn’t been able to brace for. 

How was he going to do this? Just … have a conversation about things? He was tired of trying to be delicate. Okay with being ominous, though, and mysterious. Perhaps he should even be direct. Not too direct, if it wasn’t working—he didn’t want to be kicked out of a second office today!—but he needed to know what was going on with Soren. He needed to.

“Professor Pennywright,” Soren was saying, in a sort of airless, faint tone. “It’s a pleasure to meet you properly. Do come in.”  

“I—” Augustus’s voice didn’t seem to want to work correctly. He cleared his throat. He was suddenly desperately aware of the mug he’d stolen sitting in his satchel, since he’d not had time to go home yet. He’d better not open that in front of Soren, just in case he spotted it. “Yes, I’d love to.”

Olivia’s brows seemed to be disappearing into her hairline. “Well! I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said, and showed herself out, waving, heading down the hall. She had to have an incredible strength of will to just leave while she was radiating that much curiosity.

 Augustus shut the door behind himself and came closer, pulling up the spare chair and sitting across from Soren, the desk between them. For a moment, there was just a charged silence.

“I know you,” Soren said.

Perhaps Augustus could bluff a little. “Of course you know me,” he said airily. “What do you mean? We went to school together. I was wondering if you’d come and say hi.”

A hungry light seemed to spark in Soren’s eyes and he half-stood, leaning over his desk. “Wait, you remember? You remember? What do you remember? Who were we to each other? What did we do, Augustus?“

“Well, we—that’s—” No. He couldn’t bluff around this. He didn’t have enough details; he’d have to straight up lie, and then he wouldn’t be able to get anything from Soren at all. He sighed slowly. “No. I don’t remember. I was hoping you did, and that you’d tell me.”

“Fuck.” Soren didn’t seem like someone who’d swear often. Augustus was pretty sure Soren had always been too uptight for that—although the man across from him didn’t look uptight. Just uneasy, a bit sad, stressed. Soren slowly sat back in his chair. “Then how…?”

“I saw a picture of us together.” That was true. Augustus didn’t have to say he’d broken into Soren’s office to do so; he tried not to look at the turned-over frame still on Soren’s desk. “Our class picture, I suppose.”

“I saw that too. I’ve kept a copy with me,” Soren murmured. “Is that it? I remember a bit more than that.”

Augustus didn’t have to say that he didn’t remember more than that. “Tell me,” he said, simply.

“It’s not much,” Soren admitted, scrubbing hands through his tight curls. “It’s just flashes. The doctors considered it a period of insanity, and perhaps it was. I don’t know. But I’ve got fragments. I recognize your face from when you were younger. I have dreams sometimes.”

Augustus used to get dreams; he’d had Em protect him from them. “Yes?”

“There’s a beast. A beast beyond,” Soren said, haltingly.

The Beast Beyond. Augustus had a chill run through him at the title, though he couldn’t say why. An ominous name, he supposed. Perhaps the research assistants were right and you didn’t become a professor unless you were very capable of ominous and mysterious statements. “Tell me more.”

“I can’t. I don’t know. I think we used to be friends, you and I.” Soren said, and for some reason he seemed to get a bit flustered at hearing himself say it. “The two of us. Maybe there was a third as well. I sometimes remember someone else, but I don’t think I liked him very much. I think I was jealous of him.”

Augustus thought of the third person in the picture, the one his younger self had been leaning on. He thought of Soren, too, superior, remote. Nothing like the person he was talking to right now, but nevertheless, he knew Soren. He knew him, he felt close to him in a way he couldn’t remember feeling close to another human being. He knew Soren must feel the same way, given how openly he was talking. “I don’t remember him. Go on?”

“I think that we were in classes together. Conjuration, of course.”

“Of course.” 

“And I think we tried to do something we shouldn’t.” Soren made a face, obviously hearing himself say something so very vague. “I think we summoned something. And it shattered us. At least, it shattered me.”

“I don’t think I left school or took any breaks—did you?” As if he didn’t know.

“I did. I did not handle whatever happened well, I suppose. I needed time away, and came back later to finish my degree, after I had become … calmer,” Soren said. It was clearly embarrassing to him, and he sounded slightly defensive, so Augustus raised his hands, shaking his head. He wouldn’t touch it further. Not right now, anyway. “If you didn’t have time off, Augustus, what did you do? I had an entire breakdown!”

“I don’t know. I finished my schooling, I suppose, or at least I got a degree. I don’t really remember much of it early on. More towards the end. I suppose I was on auto-pilot, or just losing my memories as fast as I gained them, or simply blocked off whatever it was that happened and carried on,” Augustus admitted.

Soren sighed, eyes lowered. “I could envy that.”

“I don’t envy what you told me, for sure. I’m sorry to hear it.”

After a moment, Soren shook his head. “Thank you. I don’t know what we could have summoned. It could have been demonic—if you don’t have the proper wards, it goes badly. But it doesn’t feel demonic. I have my soul, and I’m alive, and a period that your mind cannot handle is not … traditional. I think we found something out there beyond the planes. The thing from my dreams.”

Augustus nodded slowly. “I think so too. I’ve been studying. Trying to understand more of what happened to me. Were you also studying that?”

“I tried to leave it behind. Just live my life,” Soren said. “But I don’t know if I can. It haunts me.”

“I suppose academics are terrible at ignoring a mystery,” Augustus said gently.

That earned him a smile from Soren, even though it was only a faint one.

“But,” Augustus said, still gentle, “why did you come here? I know you’re a recent hire. Surely you were working somewhere else first.”

Soren swallowed. He said, “I saw your name on a faculty list. And I recognized you with … such intensity that I knew you must have some answers for me, somehow. I pulled up my roots and did everything I could to get hired by that dreadful von Beekeeper. But then I saw you around and somehow just … couldn’t bring myself to talk to you.”

“It was mutual,” Augustus admitted. “I wonder if something was actively trying to sabotage the meeting. It could have been the thing we did, the thing we called, or just our own minds trying to save us from a second mistake. Perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” Soren said. “I do feel like … things are clearer even now. If we overcome whatever this is, if we work together, maybe we can figure this out. I already feel closer to remembering … something.” That last word rang with frustration. 

Augustus nodded slowly. Perhaps they could. Perhaps they shouldn’t, though; perhaps he should simply take what he’d learned and bring it back to Em. He didn’t feel in control of this situation with Soren; it felt like he’d taken his hands off the reins and the horses were picking up speed, throwing him around in the trap. 

“You’ve come into things at an odd time,” he said, half to put off feeling pressured to answer right away. “I’m sure a lot of it is simply departmental nonsense, but things have been strange.”

“Oh?” Soren asked.

Augustus summarized in brief, telling Soren about the book disappearances, the things Fitzfleming had said, even von Beekeeper’s recent pressure on the department. He didn’t mention how odd Yujin had been acting, half out of an attempt to hide his using Yujin to dig up information on Soren, and half to protect them in case they weren’t involved at all in any of this, somehow.

Soren was frowning. “Very odd,” he admitted, and there was a bit of that old, familiar coolness in his voice now. “Do you believe it’s related or that it’s tangential? It does seem that whoever is doing this is taking materials that can be used to research the same thing we’re studying to find out more about. Things beyond the planes.”

“Yes, though truthfully, most of the things they could steal from me would be about that,” Augustus said. Not all, though, he had to admit; the rest wasn’t his active research, and it wasn’t cutting edge, but he had plenty of work about demons, and even about other ethereal spirits. And some of the books had involved those too—in terms of creating definitions, at least.

“We could ask Olivia,” Soren suggested. “They’re working on something similar,” 

“Are they?” Augustus asked, almost forgetting himself in his surprise; it might have been better to play it out as if he were familiar to hear more about it, but oh well. “Why would a specialist in Contract Law be studying non-planar entities?”

“I think she’s writing a paper about it,” Soren said. “Perhaps I misunderstood, but she’d asked me a lot about my research due to her interest. I imagine she might be interested specifically because our lack of definition for them means that if there is anything out there, the Spiritual Contract department doesn’t have any terms around them to help confine them.”

“How very odd,” Augustus murmured. But he was aware that if Soren and Olivia were friends, questioning it too much might make Soren defensive. “Well, never mind that. Let’s get back to your situation. I haven’t told anyone about my memory loss. Who knows for you?”

Soren seemed reluctant for a moment, but slowly shook his head. “Beekeeper likely has some idea, since he would probably have looked into my … public historical record, but he hasn’t said anything about it to me if so. Olivia knows, since we’ve chatted a lot over drinks, and have become close. I thought they might have some insight given our similar field. They didn’t, unfortunately, though they’re interested in helping me find a solution at some point. Nobody else should know, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t. My … recovery period was public record at a hospital, and besides that, if I’d gone to school with someone during that time period, I wouldn’t necessarily remember them. They, however, would remember me.”

Augustus hadn’t had anyone approach him, but by the sounds of things, he’d covered his own loss with more aplomb than Soren had been able to. 

“Do you want to work with me to try to figure this out?” Soren said. “We could talk more. You could come back to my apartment and we could see if we could figure this out tonight …”

Oh! Oh. Hm.

Well, Augustus wasn’t sure. This did seem like a proposition, which seemed awfully sudden, but Soren seemed awfully hungry for Augustus. Some shared thing he couldn’t remember, perhaps. It wasn’t that he didn’t find Soren attractive, mind, he thought Soren was gorgeous. But there was a lot there that he had to sort through before he’d be willing to potentially get involved. Then again, that might be one way to get more of Soren’s … essence.

He could also invite Soren back to his place very easily. Not that he could just summon Em without prep work; obviously, it was a whole process. But he could probably find a way to distract Soren if he wanted to have him there for it. Literally tie him up, perhaps. Still, that also felt like it’d be a betrayal of this connection Soren had clearly made with him and wanted so badly. Plus, he’d have to reveal his whole demon husband situation to Soren unless he were very careful. 

On the third hand, he already had the mug. Maybe he should just say he needed time to think, and take that mug back to Em along with the story he’d just gotten, and see what Em could make of it all.

[What should Augustus do? Comment with details.]

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