Returning to the sender (We’re chasing Santa to the ends of the world)

Harow’s excuse had been that Bao’s expertise in Malevolence would let him talk shop – he himself didn’t know better, and agreed to take the lead in talking things over with the chimera while the Beacon hung back, marinating in a silence of his own making. Jane, meanwhile, led them through the caves to a particular bank of the underground river.

“I’d been hunting that damn thing all week for trying to claim this underground, when I’m clearly living here, and it wasn’t for lack of trying that the thing kept coming back every time I put huge holes in it,” the chimera explained as the trio padded along soggy sand. “For some reason, it kept coming back here to heal and regenerate. I tried getting close, but it got super defensive. I could never get a close look at its trick till now.”

“More Malevolence?” Bao’s suggestion was only met with a shrug from Jane.

“I asked the Spirits about it, but they keep saying it’s not how I think it is.”

“I wonder…” Bao mulled in silent contemplation, with an expression showing he didn’t want the answer in his head to be true.

Harow wasn’t sure what to make of the two. The more he looked at them, the more it seemed certain that those were the faces of the priest and the forest-borne syhee who had fought by his side once upon a time. But every detail was askew, from their posture to their cadence. Jane was a cat syhee, not the mish-mash Jane was – and she loved the forest. She would have never been caught dead boasting about living underground, nor would Yulien have stammered and staggered about like Bao did.

But it was so close to the right thing that it hurt.

Harow, however, was good at keeping his tongue bit down, especially after that earlier embarrassment, and so watched Jane introduce them to what was doubtlessly the scene of a crime.

It was the broken form of a barge that had washed onto the bank, its sides broken and thrown apart like the peel of a fruit, and strewn about were the remains of a working space – splinters of a table and chair, the fragments of a lamp, and the dry remains of a stray arm and leg here and there.

There were also a few crates whose sides had been split open to spill their contents. More shards of glass and string littered the ground, but at the very bottom, possibly ignored after it offered too little, was a bauble full of violet light.

Jane reached down to pluck up the bead and hold it over her eye with some contempt. “Velstrik told me that Forness has been smuggler central after some war ended, so I’m guessing someone here was ambitious.”

“Malevolence can be tempting, even to the smallest of creatures,” Harow explained, expression grim as he surveyed the wreck. “Whoever was smuggling these vile trinkets, I’m certain they didn’t expect a pest to start consuming all of it… and then I can imagine the smugglers paid for it with their lives, before Jane’s monster started looking elsewhere to keep eating – and growing.”

Jane would have kept talking, had a new voice, a woman’s voice that was distinctly not ethereal at all, echo in her head.

(Bao, if she’s looking at a glass gem full of Malevolence, Paul and I have seen those stupid things too. This stuff has to be coming from somewhere.)

Then she heard Bao mutter under his breath, in an attempt to be quiet, but her ears were too good at picking up whispers.

“Damn, sorry I wasn’t there to investigate,” he said, clearly responding to a message that had also been addressed to the chimera.

It didn’t take much for her to put two and two together.

“Hold up, why am I getting a magical conference call with you and two others?”

Bao turned, eyes flicking between Harow’s look of surprise and Jane’s discovery in horror. “Wait, you’re hearing them too?”

Harow was on the ball, too, with a growing look of suspicion. “You’re in contact with the other corrupted beings?”

Jane boggled. “There’s more of you?”

It took a lot of begging before Bao and the other voices permitted Jane to have her enquiries. Before long, Harow, Bao, and Jane were crammed in a familiarly secured sitting room, with Maer and Humei joining them to offer their expertise. On the table were some of the few still solid pieces of evidence that had been collected from underground, including the one remaining bauble and several journals that had been dampened by the humidity of the subterranean river.

(To be precise, it was the three of us, before you, uh, joined the call,) The second woman’s voice echoed in the chimera’s mind after introducing herself as Trudy.

Harow wasn’t privy to the conversation, but it was what let him keep fixing an unamused look at Bao. “So you’ve been working together secretly.”

“I mean… we keep each other company, but we’re not operating on a master plan. Really, we’re just trying to keep a low profile and not get into trouble. Everyone freaked out at Fortress Town a while back, and we’re just trying not to rock the boat,” Bao argued – it was feeble, and Harow knew it.

“Does conquering the northern fringes and causing a ruckus in a neighbouring Kingdom count as 'low profile'?”

“Look, Paul just overcompensates, and I’m sure Trudy is very sorry–”

(I am not overcompensating; I am simply addressing a problem.)

(I am–Wait, I actually should apologize to the University when I can.)

Bao brushed the jockeying of his distant companions aside, while Jane made some interesting facial expressions as she learned more about her new companions.

“–But they were both really caught up with this evil jewellery business. Hell, we don’t even know where it’s coming from, just that someone’s apparently just packing them up and sending them out.”

Harow sighed, and turned to look at the swordsman’s handler. “Humei, did you know about their mental connection?”

The priestess guilefully shrugged, face blank with practice. “I suspected, but I wanted to respect the privacy of my bodyguard. Bao’s like a big, wet cat – you need to start slow with him or he clams up.”

Maer watched her husband’s face scrunch up in distaste and figured it was time to intervene.

“The real question is where this jewellery came from. Did it come from Forness, or from elsewhere? And who knows how to make them?”

“I’m assuming you think the books here hold the answer?” Jane drawled, and everyone turned to the damp tomes, the one element yet to be addressed.

“Well, they’re not going to read themselves,” Maer countered, holding one up. “I’d rather have Bao’s friends help us solve this mystery before we start panicking about them.”

The distraction was enough of a peace offering, and Harow let his wife pass him one of the journals as she did the others.

Poring through the texts, it was he who finally found a paragraph of interest in the manifests, which he read aloud.

“... ‘Upsets at UBH makes supply uncertain. I’ve strongly advised that we lay low for a while until we can ascertain the situation with the Archhag, but Liev insists the site will be safe-’”

“Liev!” Bao seethed, jumping up from his seat, and Jane immediately felt a stereo reprise of equally angry voices, such that she winced in the face of their unchecked and distinctly grudge-laden fury.

(LIEV THAT FAT SANTA CLAUS.)

(I am going to hunt that guy to the ends of the Earth!)

“To Belzac it is, then?” Maer said, sensing that her husband was far too outvoted here.