It was raining in the Sprawling Garden. It was a light rain, little more than a sprinkle, and the sky still seemed as blue and pleasant as ever, despite the rain. The Garden was a botanical wonder: miles long, open to the air, and home to nearly every tree, plant, and flower that could be found on Geonara. Winding stone paths wound lazily through, all soft curves and grassy edges. At regular intervals along the path, wooden benches provided a place for people to stop, to rest, or simply to enjoy the beauty of the Garden.

On one such bench, under the slouching branches of a willow tree, Annalee V’ray sat with a genuine, contented smile on her face. Her blond hair was pulled back and held in place by her wide-brimmed sunhat. In one gloved hand, she held a light parasol that helped keep off the rain. The parasol was a subtle shade of pink, a perfect match for her tight-waisted hoop dress. The dress’s cut was perhaps a bit less modest than custom suggested, though modest enough to be neither shameful nor scandalous. It was a pleasant day, perhaps even a wonderful one, and all things considered, Annalee was happy.

It was a day for contemplation, for reflection, and for pride. Geonara was a beautiful world, for the most part, but even beautiful worlds had a share of ugliness. Annalee had been born here, and had lived here for all but a few weeks of her comparably short life, and had always known the name of Geonara’s ugliness.

Slavery.

Geonara had been a world divided in two. There were slaves, and there were free men. There were the enslaved gargoyles, and the slaver humans. There were lands that promoted slavery, and there were lands that outlawed it. There were places like the Sprawling Garden, where peace and beauty covered those who walked there like a homemade quilt, and then there were places like the Slavers’ Market, where fear and decadence chilled to the bone. Geonara was a beautiful world, but not a happy one.

Annalee V’ray had been born the daughter of a wealthy landowner, and while they lived in one of the slaver lands, they themselves had always shunned the idea of owning slaves. Annalee had been raised to the full benefit of her father’s fortune. She received an excellent education and a love of letters. She never wanted for the finest foods or the latest fashions, although she herself never felt the need to demand the best when less would suffice. And although she would see slaves and slavers in the marketplace, she was mostly spared from thinking about their existence.

Until one evening, when an old slave woman died in Annalee’s arms.

It had been a pleasant evening, not unlike tonight, though then it had yet to rain. Annalee had decided to take a brief constitutional, and with her thoughts on little more than her most interested suitors, she had found herself near the tree line that marked the edge of the V’ray property. Her musings were cut short when an elderly gargoyle stumbled out from the trees and collapsed into Annalee’s arms. The gargoyle’s wings were clipped, marking her as a slave. The slavers did that as a way to control the more mobile gargoyles. The young woman tried to ask who she was and where she had come from, but the gargoyle did not respond. When Annalee had asked if the gargoyle had escaped, she nodded. When Annalee asked if the gargoyle had been whipped, as her fresh scars suggested, the gargoyle nodded harder.

But when Annalee said that she would do what she could to help the older woman, the gargoyle grabbed her by the wrist and shook her head. She swallowed, struggling to breathe, and then spoke the only words she would ever speak to Annalee V’ray, the last words she would ever speak to anyone.

“Help my family.”

Tears had filled Annalee’s eyes, and her world started to spin as the reality of slaves and slavers, the reality of Geonara, crashed in on her. As she felt the gargoyle’s heart stop beating, that reality melted away, leaving Annalee someplace else, someplace that she could not understand. The next few weeks were the most horrendous and confusing of her life, and she was still not sure what had happened, but eventually, through sheer force of will, she found herself returning, and with power she had never imagined, and never wanted.

And she used that power to fulfill the dying gargoyle’s wish. She found that, since leaving and returning to her world, she had become much more persuasive. It was not easy, and she knew most of the slavers and slave owners were not happy about it, but Geonara was now no longer divided. There were not slaves and free men, but only the free. There were not slave lands and free lands, but only lands where slavery was outlawed. Geonara was a beautiful world, and perhaps in time, it would be a happy one.

Now, though, Annalee simply wanted to return to her life. There were some on Geonara who thought of her as a heroine, others who thought she was a demoness, but she had taken great pains to keep her name from them. The stories and histories of Geonara would remember the things she had done, but hopefully, it would not remember that it was she who did them. To them, Annalee V’ray was just the eldest daughter of a wealthy but ultimately unimportant family. She could return to the soft falling of the rain, the fragrance of the Sprawling Garden, and the thoughts of her potential suitors.

As her thoughts turned to this final topic, she caught sight of a man who had just turned the corner and was walking towards her, and her breath caught in her throat. As he locked his hazel eyes with her blue ones, he seemed to hesitate, as well. For the second time in her life, Annalee felt Geonara begin to spin around her, but this time, she was not about to leave. The man was handsome, tall and lean with dark hair and a trimmed goatee, but it was not his appearance that fluttered her heart. She had known handsome men before, and it had never felt like this. This was something else, something deeper.

Time itself seemed to pause as they continued to stare at one another. The thoughts of all other suitors melted from Annalee’s mind as she hoped he would become one of them. Eventually, sounds began to register in her ears again. She heard the singing of nearby birds, and the conversation and laughter of other people not far from her bench. She heard the rain as it struck her parasol, and the soft song of the wind around her. Finally, the man smiled and approached her.

“Hello, dear lady. My name is Raiker Venn, travelling poet and, from this moment on, your humble servant. Might I have the honor of your name?”

Annalee stood up from the bench and took one step toward him, smiling widely. There were few things she appreciated more than a handsome man with manners. She held out her free hand as she introduced herself. “I am Annalee V’ray, good sir. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

Raiker took her hand with his and leaned in, kissing her glove gently and slowly. He let go of her hand then, and shifted his silver cane, which Annalee had only just noticed, to his other hand. “Would it be too much of an imposition, my dear Miss V’ray, if I were to ask to sit and speak with you for a time? I do not wish to be too forward, but I would very much like to know you better.”

Despite herself, Annalee felt her cheeks flush. “I would like that, Mr. Venn.”

The two sat and talked then in the Sprawling Garden as hours slipped by. Annalee found Raiker to be charming and intelligent, and exceedingly easy to talk with. They talked of her life and her family, her tastes in food and in décor. They talked of Raiker and his travels, his preferences and his poetry. They talked, and they laughed, and they found themselves, without either intending to, moving slowly but steadily closer to one another. At some point in their conversation, the rain stopped, and Annalee put away her parasol and removed her hat, allowing her hair to fall down about her shoulders. She found herself pleased that Raiker appreciated the look.

Eventually, the sun began to set, and Annalee made her apologetic goodbyes. But when Raiker asked if she would meet him again the next day, she found herself quickly agreeing, and the next day, she was early to their meeting. Her heart skipped again when he arrived, and again they spoke at length. They continued to meet like that, always at the same bench in the Sprawling Garden, for weeks. Sometimes, Raiker would recite her his poetry, and other times, Annalee would sing softly to him, but most of the time, they simply talked. As the days wore on, the initial attraction they felt grew into something Annalee could only describe as love.

After several weeks, Annalee felt like she could trust Raiker, and she was both relieved and terrified of the feeling. Ever since she had first found herself ripped from Geonara, she had wanted somebody to confide in. She could not tell her friends and her family what had happened to her. They would not believe. It had been difficult enough to try to explain away her missing weeks, and her mother and father still suspected that something scandalous had occurred during that time. But while Annalee could not explain why, she felt like Raiker would perhaps understand, even if she herself could not.

“Raiker,” she said one day, in a low and shaking voice. “May I…may I tell you something? Something that is perhaps difficult to understand?”

Raiker laughed a pleasant laugh. “Of course, my dear. Please do.”

Annalee furrowed her brow, unsure of how to proceed. “Have you…I mean, do you…do you believe…that there are…other worlds?”

Raiker cocked an eyebrow. “Other worlds?”

Annalee blushed, and almost gave up on the idea, but decided to press on. “Yes. Other worlds, perhaps like Geonara, yet different. Worlds that maybe some people can reach?”

Raiker stared at her then. They often locked gazes with one another, but something about this stare felt different to Annalee. It was more intense, and somehow, more exciting. Finally, after a long moment, he smiled. “People like you, my dear?”

Annalee looked away, blushing fiercely. Was Raiker mocking her? Did he think she was joking, or perhaps even insane? She didn’t know, and she hated any of the options. She was about to back out of the topic and try to play it off as a joke when Raiker stepped in close to her. He placed one hand gently on the back and side of her neck, his thumb caressing her softly just behind the ear.

“People like you?” Raiker repeated. His voice was soft, caring, and bore not even a hint of mockery. He smiled and leaned in, but just before his lips touched hers, he spoke again, his voice a small whisper. “People like me.”

He kissed her then, and her eyes grew wide with surprise, and then closed with pleasure. It was a long, tender kiss, and for a while, Annalee almost forgot about their conversation. When the poet finally pulled away, she opened her eyes and stared into his. “You? You’ve seen them?”

Raiker laughed slightly. “Well, some of them, at least.”

“How many are there?”

“More than anyone could ever know, even in our lifetimes.”

“What do you mean, ‘our lifetimes?’”

Raiker stared at her for a moment as he seemed to realize something. “Annalee, how many planes have you been to?”

“Planes? Do you mean the other worlds?” Annalee was confused, but Raiker simply nodded. “Well, just the one. One other than Geonara, that is.”

“How long ago was it that you first left this world?”

“Not long,” Annalee said with a shrug. “A few months.”

Raiker smiled even wider. “So you are new to the Spark, then.”

“The Spark?”

“You are a planeswalker, my dear, as am I. We are a rarity in this life, the very stuff of myth and dreams. While lesser beings are trapped like beasts in their planar cages, we are free in a way that few others can be. There is almost no place we cannot go, and almost nothing we cannot do.”

“You speak as if we were gods,” Annalee breathed, excited and frightened.

“Some of us are,” Raiker said. “Or at least pretend to be. There are planes where our kind is revered as gods, or feared as them. There are planes that have been crafted by planeswalkers, and planes that by planeswalkers have been destroyed. But mostly, my Love, the planes are infinite possibility. Anything and everything you can imagine, and a very great deal more than that, is waiting for you there.”

Annalee’s eyes danced as she listened. When she had left Geonara, it was sudden, and frightening, and completely against her will. She had seen wonders in that other world, but mostly she had just wanted to return home. Now, though, she was beginning to understand what it had meant, and beginning to imagine what was ahead for her.

“And more than that, my dear,” Raiker continued suddenly, “planeswalkers are ageless. We may live for centuries, millennia even, and never grow old. We will never die, unless killed, and there are few who exist who could kill us.” He paused, and Annalee imagined. There was so impossibly much to see, and all of a sudden, she had learned that she had time to see it. When Raiker spoke again, his voice was like wine. “I want to show you the worlds, Annalee. Will you come with me to see them?”

Something Annalee could not explain cracked within her. She wanted to go with Raiker. She wanted to see everything that existence had to offer. She wanted to share Raiker’s immortal life, and wanted him in hers. But there was something, some distant voice, that was telling her to say no. Or, at the very least, to say not yet.

And that was exactly what she did.

The look on Raiker’s face almost broke her heart, as she feared she had broken his. She hastened to tell him that she loved him, but that she wasn’t sure yet. She told him that it was all new to her, and that she had no idea what to think. Raiker nodded sadly, and kissed her again, telling her he understood. She suspected he was lying, but it was a sweet lie. As she had for the past few weeks, she bid Raiker farewell, and arranged to meet with him the next day.

For the rest of that evening and all through the night, Annalee thought. She wanted to share her life with Raiker, as she knew Raiker wanted to share his life with her. Ever since she met the poet, her thoughts drifted to him constantly. That night, though, her thoughts seemed to drift away from him, and towards the infinite array of worlds he had told her about. She loved him, but she wanted to explore the worlds alone. If her love for him were real, it would survive any amount of time away. If his love for her were real, he would agree to it.

The next day, when she told him her decision, she could tell that he was fighting back tears. Yet still, through it all, he nodded, and told her that he understood. Finally, after a very long talk about love and life, poetry and planeswalking, they made an agreement. Annalee wanted time, time to learn and explore the Multiverse. And time she had, now that she knew her Spark would preserve her. And so, Annalee V’ray and Raiker Venn made a promise to one another, a vow of eternal love. For one thousand years, they would wander the Multiverse alone. If their love was strong enough to survive a millennium apart, they would meet once again, here, in the Sprawling Garden on Geonara.

And if they did, they would be together forever, undivided, and happy.

Raiker Venn had not returned to Geonara since Annalee had left it. There was no point. When he had first arrived there, he had enjoyed the scenery, and the people were more or less to his liking, and there were three or four drinks that were worth his time, which was more than the average for a plane. But once he had met Annalee V’ray, nothing else on that plane could compare. At first, he had wondered what had gotten into him. Annalee was beautiful, sure, but Raiker himself had been with women who were even more so. She was intelligent, but he had known smarter women. She was a planeswalker, but he had known more powerful ones.

But there was something about her that pulled him to her.

More than two hundred years had passed since he had met her. More than two hundred years, and they had only spent weeks together. And yet, Raiker thought of her every day of his life. He saw her in his dreams, and he imagined her while awake. He had been with countless women since meeting her, but when he closed his eyes, they bore her face. At times, his temptation to track her down was almost too strong to resist. He could do it. He was, in fact, powerful enough to have found her without her knowing. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He would not violate the trust she had in him.

For the first time in Raiker Venn’s life, he was truly in love.

Being without Annalee was a torment to the poet, and so he turned his mind to his work. On one hand, she served as an amazing muse for him, and he considered the work he had produced over the past two centuries to be some of the best he had ever created. He could see an image of Annalee in his mind, could picture the way she would smile if she heard his poem, and it would inspire him to create something worthy of her. When they finally met again, in that same garden by the same willow tree, he would recite them to her, and they would be happy again.

On the other hand, though, his constant thinking of her slowed his work immensely. While he was producing work he and his fans considered great, it was taking him longer and longer to produce each poem. Somehow, it was becoming difficult to think of tragedy when he thought of Annalee. She produced entirely different emotions in him, and more and more, he found himself wanting to write about her. And that would be an entirely different sort of poem, because he wanted nothing more than to spare her the tragedy of the Multiverse.

Still, it would be centuries before he would see her again, and his work gave him something to focus on, brief moments when he could stop himself from thinking about the one person he wanted with him, but could not have. It was maddening. Everything reminded him of her. Even this plane of Cartrevard, though its skies were darker and its grass less green, bore certain similarities to Annalee’s Geonara. The men wore similar suits, the women, dresses tight around the waist and flowing down into wider skirts. It was a similar style, only darker, which Raiker assumed Geonara itself must be now that Annalee V’ray was no longer in it.

Cartrevard also resembled Geonara with its social structure. On Annalee’s home plane, the humans were the top class, and the gargoyles had, until recently, been the slave class. On Cartrevard, humans had also asserted their dominance, this time over the diminutive kithkin. It was, in fact, this very dynamic that had brought Raiker to the plane in the first place. Class and race tensions had been building on Cartrevard for generations. The humans had been so casually oppressive toward the kithkin that it was only a matter of time, and the kithkin population was growing too large for the humans to control. The kithkin were on the verge of revolt. It was their time for heroes, for champions, for freedom.

It was the perfect time for tragedy to strike.

It felt like an eternity since Annalee had been home, and it would be even longer before she would be. She thought about Geonara often. It had bothered her at first, after thirty or forty years of traversing the Multiverse, that her mother and father were likely dead. She had almost returned then, to check, or to check on her sister or her three brothers. Or, by that time, likely their children. But she didn’t. Geonara was where she had been born, but the Multiverse was her home now. She would not return to the Sprawling Garden until the thousand years had passed, and she could be with Raiker again.

She may have thought of Geonara often, but she thought of Raiker far more. She missed his eyes, his voice, the feel of his gentle, caressing touch. When they had parted, she felt like she had loved him more than she could ever love anyone, and her love had only grown since then. Sometimes, at night, she would cry herself to sleep, cursing her own name for demanding that they part, and for so impossibly long. But she had been given eternity, and an infinite painter’s canvas to explore.

And explore it she had!

For two hundred and forty-nine years, she had been exploring, and she had been loving it. She had seen worlds of unparalleled beauty, worlds where endless forests stretched into the distance that put the Sprawling Garden to shame, or worlds where endless seas made Geonara’s oceans look like a half-filled bathtub. There were worlds of endless peace, and worlds where she had been able to help stop wars. Some worlds were thoroughly beyond her ability to describe them, and she loved that. She thought, when on those worlds, that it would take a poet to describe them.

And then, of course, she would think of Raiker again, and wish that he were there with her.

But though thoughts of Raiker still warmed her heart and flushed her cheeks, she had discovered things in her travels that gave her pause. When she first stumbled on a collection of Raiker’s poetry, she had been surprised. While he had described himself as a poet, and while she naturally knew he was a planeswalker, she had never thought he would have been not only published, but celebrated, on other planes. Annalee read his verse religiously, seeking it out on every plane she found. Many had never heard of him, some thought they had, but too long ago to remember, and others named him their greatest poet. But in her extensive, multiplanar reading, Annalee discovered a disturbing trend.

Raiker Venn’s poetry was universally tragic.

At first, Annalee had thought little of the observation. It could well have been the selection she had discovered, or the literary tastes of the planes she had wound up on. But as she continued to collect anything with the poet’s name associated with it, she found that the pattern was unchanging throughout every plane. Far more disturbing was when she began to turn her attention to historical research. When she did, she discovered that not only did Raiker write exclusively about tragedy, but his timing was inhumanly impeccable. Nearly every poem was dated the same year as the tragedy it immortalized. Some planes, which seemed to prize greater degrees of accuracy, listed the precise date of the poem’s composition. In every one of these cases, the poem was within a week of the event.

And in one case, the Chiming on the plane of Cartrevard, which killed nearly eighty percent of the kithkin population, the poem was dated before.

In her rented townhouse in the city of Cogdon, Annalee V’ray sat with a book of Raiker Venn’s poetry in her hands. On the table next to her, there was a history book, open to the description of the Chiming. Annalee shook as she read, because the similarity was uncanny. She read:

Raiker Venn ran a hand through his hair. He had barely written anything in over a decade. One or two minor poems, here or there, with only minor tragedies. They were things that were hardly affecting, hardly worth the effort that went into them. Since becoming a planeswalker, Raiker had never had a drought of writing like this before. Planes were beginning to forget his name. Places where his popularity should have been peaking barely bought his collections anymore. They were all old news now. Those planes and their fickle tastes had moved on, because Raiker had been unable to provide them with anything new. He had been able to maintain his appearances for a time with public readings, and then with poems of other planes, but so many years without anything new or relevant had cost him dearly.

And yet, Raiker couldn’t care less.

All he could manage to care about was Annalee V’ray. When they had parted ways, nearly five hundred years earlier, he had hoped against hope that it would not be forever. He loved her, and he believed her when she said she loved him. But Raiker was not a hopeful man. He had seen, had caused, too much tragedy in the Multiverse to be anything but a cynic. While he hoped it would be otherwise, intellectually he could not believe that either would remember the other after a thousand years. Raiker expected to miss her for a few months, perhaps a year or two, and then forget about her.

But he had not forgotten. He could not. He saw Annalee every night in his dreams. When he had first realized how often he thought of her, and how the frequency of those thoughts had increased, not decreased, over time, he had first presumed he was merely envious. He had seen it in men before, in many of the subjects of his poetry, in fact. He himself had felt it, wanting to possess the object of his desire as if she were an thing to be collected. But then he came to realize that this was different. He did not want to possess Annalee V’ray.

He wanted to be with her.

Raiker Venn had a very good memory, and his recollection of Annalee’s face, even after nearly half a millennia, was still quite good. He vaguely remembered the shape of her ears and the curve of her shoulders. He was reasonably certain that his image of the shape of her chin and brow was accurate. Her nose was fairly clear to him, and he was comfortable that her hair was blond. Her eyes were flawless to him, almost without a doubt. But the biggest thing, the thing he remembered with precise clarity, was her smile.

And it was her smile, more than anything else, that he wanted to see again.

He remembered how he would recite his poetry to her in the Sprawling Garden, and while she would smile brightly as he began, that smile would always dip, barely perceivably, when he got to the end. The tragedy of his work was not to her liking. As the years went on, and especially over the past ten years, whenever Raiker would sit down to write his poems, or prepare to create the tragic event upon which they were based, an image would flash in his mind. It was an image of Annalee’s smile, fading just slightly in disapproval. And just like that, Raiker had no further desire to complete his work.

Raiker tossed his quill down on the blank parchment and leaned back in his chair. With both hands, he reached up and scratched his head vigorously, as if trying to punish it for not cooperating. He thought that he had everything set up so perfectly. There was a coastal town on this plane that had been cut off from the rest of the mainland by an unseasonable flood. Food was becoming scarce, and the people were growing desperate. They were mere days away from sending the village’s favorite son to brave the waters and find help. His journey was to be one of ultimate heroism, and ultimate tragedy.

Raiker would have seen to that.

But now, as he sat preparing the verses of the poem to immortalize the tragic figure and his equally tragic village, he found he couldn’t. All he could see was Annalee’s smile, dropping slightly. She would not want to hear about the boy sinking beneath the waves, just as he came into sight of his target. She would not want to read about how he would have been saved, if only the lighthouse keeper hadn’t fallen asleep at the most inopportune time. She wouldn’t want to know that the villagers would starve to death, one after another, until they contemplated the unthinkable, or perhaps resorted to it. No, Annalee V’ray would not like any of that.

And somehow, that made Raiker not want to write it.

That thought frightened Raiker. And excited him.

“Please don’t do this, Miss V’ray!”

Annalee looked down at the kithkin elder and frowned. She had been working for decades, centuries even, for some way to unmake the vile Clock Tower and its insidious Bell. She had studied everything she could, both on Cartrevard and off, for some way to undo the Bell or the Doom Clapper than hung from it. When she had first left Geonara, Annalee had had no magic to speak of, and in the intervening years, she had not been particularly studious in obtaining it. Over the past two hundred years, however, she had studied, practiced, and learned. Counterspells and spell redirection were her specialties now, and she intended to use them.

“This must be done, Elder Hearth,” Annalee said. The old kithkin stood next to her, wringing his hands.

“But, Miss V’ray, it won’t do any good! At best, it will start a war, and the ‘kin can’t win a war against the humans! Please, just let it lie.”

“You can’t just let him get away with this!”

“Him?”

Annalee froze for a moment, then shook her head. “Them, then. You can’t let them get away with it. How many times does that damn Bell have to decimate your people before you say ‘no more?’ No, Elder, I need to stop this.”

“Even if you can destroy the Bell, what then? They’ll reforge it, or they’ll find some new way, or they’ll just kill us outright! Please, Miss V’ray! The ‘kin are frightened. Panicking! The thoughtweft is shaking from it. Please!”

Annalee slammed a hand down on her desk, annoyed. “What do you think I’ve been doing all these years, Ben? What do you think I’ve been researching and studying for? Just to let you and your people continue to be slaves to them?” She indicated toward a pile of books and papers in one corner of the room. “This is everything we know or can guess about the Bell and the enchantments on it. I…” she paused, remembering that nobody knew it had been her for so many generations, “and my mother and her mother before me, have compiled this, and now the time has come to put it to use!”

“But, Miss V’ray…”

“This must be done!” Annalee yelled, grabbing her black parasol, a perfect match for her dark, corseted dress. “This will be done.”

Without another word, Annalee stormed out of her townhouse and toward the Graveyard. Two human constables stepped in her way as she approached the gate, but she brushed them aside with a wave of her arm. She was not a particularly powerful planeswalker, she had learned, but she was, in fact, a planeswalker, and no mere mortal was going to keep her from her goal. As the constables staggered away, undoubtedly to raise the alarum, Annalee casually opened the gate and strolled into the Graveyard.

The planeswalker barely looked to her side as she strode confidently through the Graveyard toward the Clock Tower. The hand of the clock was pointing almost straight down; it would be many years before the next Chiming. If Annalee had anything to say about it, there would never be another one. Occasionally, one of the Scarecrows would cross her path, but the lumbering monstrosities left her alone. Had she been a kithkin, they would have been trying to tear her apart, but she was a human, as much as she regretted it at times.

The Scarecrows angered Annalee, but did not frighten her. They reminded her of the Wickers of Geonara, and in some ways, served the same purpose. They were tools of the humans to oppress. Here, the humans had placed them around the Clock Tower, the very weapon of their tyranny over the smaller kithkin. On her home plane, the Wickers had been allowed to wonder the outskirts of slave owners’ lands, and they brutally attacked any gargoyles who came too close.

Different planes, same humans.

By the time Annalee reached the Clock Tower, she could hear the commotion being raised throughout Cogdon. The humans were coming, undoubtedly hoping to stop her before she could stop them. From the sounds of the city, something big was going on, as well. Perhaps Elder Hearth had convinced the kithkin to revolt. Annalee hoped so. If it would do anything to undo Raiker’s poem, to turn his tragedy into triumph, it was worth the risk.

After forcing the door and climbing the stairs, Annalee found herself in the Bell Tower, and stood for a moment staring at the abomination Raiker Venn had helped to craft. It was a large, brass bell hanging in the center of the tower. Along the far wall, complex mechanisms whirled on in their work as occasional spurts of steam escaped from their valves. She could hear angry yells beneath her, perhaps already inside the tower. Annalee took a deep breath and opened her parasol, the outside of which were inscribed with mystical runes to aid her spellcraft. She whispered a few practiced words, gave her parasol a spin, and cast the strongest counterspell she knew.

Nothing happened.

Annalee’s heart froze, and then sank. She reset herself and tried again, even as the constables were surging into the bell tower, but again, nothing happened. She just stared. She couldn’t let it happen. She couldn’t let Raiker Venn win. Why wasn’t her counterspell working? It had always worked before, whenever her teachers cast a spell at her, she could always counter it, or shrug it away. Why couldn’t…

Then she realized it. No spell was being cast at her. This spell had been cast over three hundred years earlier. The Bell and the Doom Clapper were enchanted, and while Annalee had made herself an expert on counterspells, she knew nothing about disenchanting. And besides, she thought darkly, what good would it do? Raiker Venn was too powerful, too strong. He had been doing his act for far longer than she had been alive. What did she hope to accomplish? What did she think she could do?

“You are under arrest, kith-lover!” One of the constables yelled, and suddenly, Annalee was angry.

She turned to them, and the moment she did, the mages in their ranks started hurling spells at her, fire spells, lightning spells, spells meant to restrain or incapacitate her. She countered the first few easily, and then started redirecting them, sending them back at the humans without mercy. Several fell, and several more retreated. If she could not disenchant the Bell, maybe she could lay the entire tower low with the magic of the tyrants themselves. She began to laugh as the mages prepared a final assault.

Unfortunately, the next attack that came was neither fire nor lightning, but was a strong, concussive burst of pure force. Annalee shrugged it aside, and prepared for the next, but felt her entire body shake as the bell began to ring. The planeswalker’s eyes widened as she looked behind her and immediately saw that she had redirected the strike directly into the side of the bell. From beyond the Clock Tower, beyond the Graveyard, she could hear the collective scream of the kithkin as the scream of pain and loss tore through their bodies and their minds.

Annalee V’ray did not even bother with the remainder of the constables. She ran right past them, down the stairs, and through the Graveyard. What she saw beyond the gate sickened her. There were kithkin everywhere, their bodies slumped in the streets, blood trickling from their noses, mouths, and ears. Others of their kind still lived, but stared blankly at the death surrounding them, their grief and disbelief paralyzing them. Annalee was shaking. She had done this. This was her fault. If she hadn’t been so determined to stop Raiker…

Suddenly, Annalee became aware of the fire. Some of the houses in Cogdon had been set ablaze. For just a moment, she thought it must have been part of the revolt, and her suspicion was momentarily confirmed when she saw a few kithkin with torches, but then she realized what had been set on fire. It was her own townhouse, and in front of it, still carrying a torch, was Elder Benjamin Hearth himself. His white eyes were flowing tears, and as she approached him, his face contorted in rage.

“See what you’ve done to us!”

Annalee didn’t answer. She just stared back for a long moment, then ran headfirst into the house that had served as her home for hundreds of years. The flames were consuming it, and everything in it, and she did not have much time to decide what to save. She ran to her study, where all of her research on the Bell and the Doom Clapper stood. She could save them, and perhaps try again in a century, or get them to some kithkin who could use them in the future. As she reached for them, though, her eyes fell on a second pile of books and papers. It was her collection of Raiker’s poetry, and the histories that proved his atrocities. With them, she could confront the poet, perhaps beat him at his own game.

As a main support beam of her townhouse collapsed, Annalee V’ray grabbed the Raiker collection, and vanished from Cartrevard forever.

Raiker was walking, nearly skipping, down a street on a plane called Lyva. He was whistling softly the tune to a song that Annalee had sung to him one evening in the Sprawling Garden. The song made him smile. Everything that had come from Annalee V’ray made him smile. It felt like so long since he had seen her, but he reminded himself every day that he had less to go than he had gone. His dreams and daydreams both were dominated by visions of the day he would return to her.

As he made is way down the street, Raiker noticed a young woman running in his direction. Two armed men ran behind her, evidently intent on catching up. Raiker watched with piqued interest as the two men grew ever closer to her, and she grew ever closer to Raiker. Grabbing his cane tightly in his right hand, Raiker braced himself for a little bit of fun. The young woman reached Raiker just moments before the men reached her. He motioned for her to stop and then, standing casually, he focused his attention on the men.

“Is there some problem, gentlemen?”

The woman moved to stand behind and to the side of Raiker. The men frowned. “This doesn’t concern you. Get out of my way.”

Raiker shrugged. “I am a poet, good sir. All good stories concern me, and this seems to have all the marks of a good story.”

The man on the right drew his sword and held it out threateningly. “You’ll be concerning yourself with bandaging your wounds if you don’t get out of my way.”

Raiker smiled, and glanced over to the woman. “Not particularly friendly, is he?”

“Please,” she said, still trying to catch her breath, “please don’t let them take me!”

Raiker looked back toward the armed man. “She puts forth a solid argument. Your rebuttal?”

The man sneered and moved to stab the poet. Raiker grinned, and quickly struck with his cane. It looked like little more than a light tap to the man’s wrist, but he howled in pain and dropped his sword. He clutched his right wrist with his other hand even as it began to swell. The other man moved to draw his sword, but before it was even a quarter of the way out of its sheath, Raiker had pressed the button on his cane and withdrawn his own silver blade, its tip pressed against the second man’s neck.

“I award this debate to the young woman,” Raiker said. “Your arguments, while technically sound, were simply not phrased convincingly.”

“Attacking the city guard is a high offense,” the second man said.

“The city guard attacked me,” Raiker observed. “But regardless, what does the city guard want with this young lady?”

“She was caught in an attempted break-in.”

“That’s a lie!” the woman interjected.

Raiker glanced over at her. She was dressed in the typical fineries of a noble, including an intricate diamond necklace. “She does not look like a thief to me.”

“I never said she was a thief,” the man said through clenched teeth. “She was attempting to break into the dungeon.”

“Curious,” Raiker commented. “And why was she doing that?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. My job is to bring her to justice.”

“He’s lying!” The woman insisted. “He’s being paid by my father. He’s supposed to keep me away from my Marcan!”

“I begin to see the picture,” Raiker said, turning his attention back to the guards. He smiled, and then slipped his blade back into the cane. “Gentlemen, this is a fascinating tale, full of heroics and tragedy. Sadly, your characters are no longer necessary for it. Thank you for your help in bringing this to my attention. Sleep well.”

Before either one could react, Raiker struck each on the side of the head. Again, it looked as though each strike was little more than a tap, but both men dropped like stones to the ground. Raiker smiled, turned to the young woman, and offered her his arm, which she reluctantly took.

“Thank you, sir.”

“You are most welcome, my dear. Now, please tell me all about this Marcan you mentioned. I should be very interested in hearing your story.”

As they walked, the young woman, whose name was Reeda, told Raiker about Marcan, the man she loved. It was an old story, one Raiker had heard countless times before, yet somehow, he heard it with new ears. Marcan was, apparently, a young suitor to Reeda, but as fathers so often do, Reeda’s father disapproved. Reeda rattled off a list of reasons why her father disliked Marcan, but most of them had to do with local customs and politics that Raiker could not be bothered to remember. What mattered to him, though, was that Reeda’s father had had the man arrested. The two lovers wanted nothing more than to be together, but they were being kept apart.

In his imagination, Raiker pictured himself as Marcan, trapped in a cell, and kept away from Reeda, whom he imagined as Annalee. This seemed like a story very much suited to his poetry. At length, Reeda came to the end of her story, and when they stopped walking, she was surprised to find that they had arrived at the city dungeon. Raiker turned to her then and turned serious as he spoke.

“True love is dangerous, my dear. It challenges our reason, and changes the way we think. The way we are. Your love is held within. You have tried once to rescue him, despite the danger. Now that you have tried, they may be even more ready. Will you risk your life for the one you love?”

Reeda did not even hesitate. “Always.”

Raiker nodded, reached into his pocket, and withdrew a small, ruby ring, which he handed to her. “This will give you a chance.”

“Won’t you come with me, sir? Won’t you help?”

“You must go alone, my dear.” Raiker smiled broadly at her. “Trust me.”

Reeda nodded, slipped the ring on her finger, and moved off, creeping into a low, first story window. Raiker smiled and sat down on a nearby stone bench, pulled out a small book and quill, and began to write.

A small bell chimed as the bookshop door swung open. Annalee cringed. Ever since Cartrevard, the sound of bells grated on her. She had lost. She had lost so much. And Cartrevard had not been her only defeat. She had started to lose count of the planes she had visited where she had found Raiker’s work, tried to set it right, and failed. After more than seven hundred years, she was getting tired of the whole thing.

Wearily, Annalee folded her parasol and stepped up to the counter, where a woman greeted her with a wide smile. “Hello! Is there anything I can help you find?”

“Venn,” Annalee said simply.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m looking for anything written by a poet named Raiker Venn.”

“Oh!” The woman exclaimed. “That is an excellent choice! Raiker Venn is the greatest. We have several of his collections here.”

Annalee narrowed her eyes at the woman. “I’d like to see them.”

“Of course,” the other woman seemed to hesitate for a moment. “How much were you thinking of spending today?”

The planeswalker reached into her bag and withdrew several large, golden coins and laid them on the counter. “Money is not an object.”

The woman’s eyes grew wide, and after a moment, she bent down and reached under the counter. She withdrew four books, all bound in leather, and set them down in front of Annalee. “We have most of his collections,” she explained, “except for the ones that have sold out, of course. But, if you’re really a serious collector of Venn’s, you’ll want to see these.” She arranged them reverently on the counter. “These, if you can believe it, are Raiker Venn originals.”

“How long ago did you obtain these?”

The woman smiled. “They were given to us when we opened the shop. We sold two or three right away, probably for less than they were worth, but it’s what allowed us to get set up.”

“So Venn is popular around these parts, I take it.”

“Oh, yes,” the woman said, beaming. “He’s a genius. A great man, truly.”

“A great man?” Annalee asked, her voice rising. “A great man! A great man would never commit the atrocities that Raiker Venn has committed!”

Caught off-guard, the other woman hesitated at first, but then set her jaw and exhaled sharply. “Well. If that’s your feeling, I don’t think I can sell these books to you. I would hate to think how someone like you would treat them.”

Annalee smiled a wicked sort of smile. “You want to know how I will ‘treat’ these? I’ll tell you. I’m going to read them, find what I need of them, transcribe only what I need, and then I’m going to burn the rest, along with everything else on this world that Raiker Venn ever created. That’s how I’m going to ‘treat’ them, and even that is more than Raiker Venn deserves!”

The woman’s mouth dropped open, as if she could not believe what she was hearing. “How dare you!” She said, reaching for the books. “I don’t care how much money you throw around, I’m not letting you hurt Raiker or any of his books. I’d die for that man!”

“Good idea,” Annalee said, and stabbed the other woman through the stomach with her parasol. The woman screamed in shock and pain as Annalee withdrew the parasol. She reflected briefly on her decision to place a sharpened tip on the thing, turning it from a simple spellcasting tool into a weapon. She glanced down at the woman, who was clutching her wound with both hands as blood seeped out from between her fingers. Annalee scoffed. “You Venn cultists are almost as bad as the man himself.”

“Reeda!” A man’s voice resounded through the shop as a shape appeared from the back room and rushed to the side of the woman. He grabbed her as gently as he could, cradling her head with one hand and grabbing her hands with the other.

“Marcan,” she managed, but barely. “I…”

“Don’t try to speak,” he said quickly.

The woman ignored him. “I love you, Marcan.”

“I love you, Reeda. Please! Please don’t die.”

Reeda did not reply. Her eyes did not close, and her chest did not expand or contract. She simply died in Marcan’s arms. As his eyes filled with tears, he looked up at Annalee. As he spoke, his voice cracked. “You monster.”

Annalee shrugged. “Devotees of Raiker Venn have a poor understanding of what monsters are. He knows, and causes, nothing but tragedy.”

Marcan’s lip trembled, and then he lunged toward Annalee. She drew her parasol back to strike, but the man was not coming at her. Instead, he grabbed one of the leather-bound books. He flipped it open to the first page, Reeda’s blood from his hands dripping on the paper. He pushed the book toward her. “Read! Then tell me he only knows tragedy!” Before Annalee could reply, he turned his back on her and returned to cradling the body of his love.

Reluctantly, Annalee looked to the page and began to read:

For a long time, Annalee stared at the page. Then, talking perhaps to herself or perhaps to Raiker Venn, wherever he was, she said, “Damn you, Raiker. You did this. You set this up, didn’t you? Didn’t you!” She was screaming now, and Marcan stared at her, convinced she was insane. But Annalee didn’t care, and didn’t stop. “I can’t beat you, can I? You won’t let me!”

She slammed the book shut, and tossed it on the floor. She spun around, leaving the collections where they were. As the bell above the door rang, Annalee snapped, grabbed the bell, and ripped it from where it was hanging, crushing it in her hand. She took two more steps, then stopped, drooping her head. “I’m done with it, Raiker,” she said in a whisper. “I’m done with you. If I see you again, it will be in hell.”

And then Annalee vanished from Lyva, leaving the one good thing Raiker Venn had ever done shattered and broken behind her.

Raiker Venn could barely contain his excitement. One thousand years had passed. One thousand years since he had been to Geonara. One thousand years since he had walked in the Sprawling Garden. One thousand years since he had seen Annalee V’ray. Raiker was surprised that the Garden had changed so little in so long a time. The plants, trees, and flowers there were all different, of course, perhaps stemming from those that were there the last time, perhaps entirely new. Raiker didn’t know, and he didn’t care. He vaguely remembered the willow tree above Annalee’s favored bench, and a willow stood there still, but beyond that, it was just a garden, and the garden was not where his memory dwelled.

All he wanted was to see Annalee again.

Raiker carried two gifts with him for Annalee. The first was a bunch of flowers. A strange gift, he knew, considering they would meet in a garden, but these were some of the rarest flowers in the Multiverse. Raiker had been cultivating them on a remote plane for well over a century, until their aroma was perfect, and their color the precise shade of pink that Annalee’s dress had been the first day they had met. Even if the flowers only brought a moment’s smile to her face, the effort would be worth it.

The second gift he had wrapped in simple wax paper bound with a blue ribbon. It was a book, a collection of Raiker’s poems from the past few hundred years. Not tragic poems, but love poems. Poems that spoke of the strength and the beauty of love. Never in his long life had Raiker ever thought he would write that kind of poetry, and never in his life had he been happier to be wrong. On the first page of his book, which he had never sold on any plane, he had written a simple dedication: “To my beloved Annalee V’ray – The only true tragedy has been the time I have spent away from you.”

As Raiker Venn approached their bench, his heart sank a bit as he saw it was empty. He paused for a moment, then shook his head. He had hoped to see her, but clearly he had arrived first. That was alright. He had waited a thousand years. He could wait another hour or two. With a sigh, Raiker Venn sat down on the bench and waited. He waited for hours as people passed by. Some simply walked past, others seemed inclined to talk, but Raiker ignored them all. Hours dragged by as the early morning drifted into midday, and finally into night. Raiker could hardly believe it when the sun began to set.

Annalee didn’t show up.

Raiker Venn was a planeswalker. He didn’t need to eat or sleep, or do any of the things that mortals needed to do. So, heartbroken and despondent, Raiker Venn simply sat there, in the Sprawling Garden on Geonara, until the sun came up the next morning. Throughout the darkness of the night, Raiker managed to convince himself that he had miscounted the days, and so he waited again, barely moving, for another day, and then another, and another. He waited until the flowers he had brought for Annalee wilted and died.

Eventually, Raiker was approached by an old gargoyle man. “Excuse me, sir, you’ve been coming here every day,” he said, unaware that Raiker hadn’t left. “Are you alright? Did something happen?”

After a very long, uncomfortable silence, Raiker nodded. “Tragedy,” he said.

“It was a tragedy?” the man asked, confused.

But Raiker shook his head. “Tragedy is all about point of view,” the poet explained, more to himself than to the gargoyle. “The Chiming. That was a tragedy, but only to the kithkin.”

“The what?”

“But I wonder what the humans thought.” Raiker raised his eyes, and for the first time looked at the other man. He paid particular attention to his wings. The gargoyle looked concerned. He should have been. “I wonder what she will find tragic.”

Annalee V’ray stepped out of the Blind Eternities and back, for the first time in a thousand and one years, onto Geonara. She had assumed that Raiker Venn would have shown up for their scheduled rendezvous, if for no other reason than to torment her, so she had resolved not to return until a year afterward. Even Raiker would never stay around that long. He had too many other lives to ruin.

As Annalee stepped into the world, she knew instantly that something was wrong. The air was choked, and her eyes burned as she looked around. She had intended to come out of the aether in the Sprawling Garden, but instead she found herself in an endless field of ash. Only the meandering stone path beneath her feet hinted at the truth.

Almost without thinking, Annalee took off in a run, following a path buried deep in her memory, a path she had not followed in over a millennium. As she ran, she saw the ruins of war all around her, and sights that she could scarcely believe. She saw humans driving wagons of gargoyles with clipped wings. Slaves. Annalee’s blood boiled at the sight, but she continued on toward the home she had been born in. Before reaching it, she saw another wagon, this one filled with humans, whipped and beaten by the hands of gargoyles, gargoyles with full, healthy wings.

When she reached her childhood home, she found herself surprised. She was not surprised at the pile of ashes where her home had been. She was not surprised to see the ground salted so that nothing would ever grow there again. She was not even surprised at the shambling Wickers that were picking their way through the skeleton of her family’s past. What surprised Annalee V’ray was that she somehow managed to cry at the sight.

Annalee was a planeswalker. She had lived for more than a thousand years, and had seen countless mortals die. After a while, it just became another sight that the Multiverse had to offer. After all of Raiker’s tragedies, and all the lives they had cost, and all the lives Annalee had taken trying to set them right, she should have been inured to it by now. But as she thought of everything she had tried to do, a thousand years ago, to help Geonara, and everything that had happened to it now, undoubtedly because of her, it was more than even she could take.

Geonara was a divided world. There were slaves, and there were free men. There were the enslaved gargoyles, and the slaver humans, enslaved humans and slaver gargoyles. But now, there were no places like the Sprawling Garden, only places like the Slavers’ Market. There was no peace or joy, only fear and decadence. Geonara was once a beautiful world, but it was no longer a happy one.

Annalee V’ray wiped her eyes and planeswalked, hoping to find a world that Raiker Venn had never touched.