After we descend from the fire room fleeing from the bats.
“Alexis, we have talked about what ‘anchor’ we might use to return to our own time. We have also talked about how Hedonis is diligently still pursuing us.
We have, up to this point, assumed he was trying to follow in our tracks and head us off on our path to the tear.
But there are more than one way to catch us.
What if he is building a new working. A summoning not of demons, but of us.
Hedonis wants us to return to him, in this time…. with the Tear in hand.
What if we plan on that. We use Hedonis as our anchor. We create a plan to beat him at his own game?
It might be a long shot, but it also might be the one real shot we have to return home with the Tear and to actually keep it.”
Alexis listens, and something between recognition and distaste crosses his face.
“Gross.” He almost smiles. “But you might be right.”
He reaches into his pack and produces the bundle of Hedonis’ effects. Sets them out one by one without enthusiasm. The rolled skin. The copper disk. The bloody hooks. The rest.
“I was going to put all of this into the fire lake.” He looks at Ethelred. “Might still be the right call for most of it.” He turns the copper disk over once. “But if Hedonis is working a summoning, having a piece of him on each of us might be exactly what pulls us through.” He looks at the items spread out. “One each. Something to hold when the moment comes.”
He starts dividing them up in his head, adjusts his whip, then stops.
“Though I’d still rather come back on my own terms.” He glances at Ethelred. “Four months before we left would suit me. A year, even better. A year outside Frostbite Pass, scouting Bandesingh’s fortress properly. Time to see what actually happened at Felsby. At the Greyfax estate.” He pauses. “Time to make something useful in a place where we’re not being hunted.”
He looks back at the implements.
“But you’re right that Hedonis might be our best shot at getting home at all. Fitting, given how much I’d like to drop him into that lake up there.”
He looks at Ethelred with the easy comfort of someone who has worked a problem alongside the same person for years.
“Good thinking, Red.”
Ethelred listens, grimaces and smiles as Alexis move through his own emotion.
“Yeah I do not like it either. But better to be prepared for Hedonis than surprised by him.”