Afternoon in the Black Bloom Bazaar's largest market building meant the fungus-stained sunlight was streaming through the cracked dome above, filtering in soft and sickly through panes of amber glass and vines of overgrown creepers. As usual, the market's scent was a cocktail of roasted locust oil, stale fruit, sweat, mildew, and just a little bit of formaldehyde—just how Gael liked it, but Maeve was still getting used to it.

They didn't come here often enough.

Together, they elbowed past a giant man trying to hawk cured beetle ribs to someone's grandma. The main ground floor was packed. They were shoulder to shoulder with slumfolk, beggars, masked exiles, and everything in between. Meandering through the rows of crooked stalls and patchwork kiosks, Gael stopped at a stand selling courier-grade boots stitched from resin-pressed snail hide and began eyeing a pair in Evelyn's size.

"Stop that," Maeve muttered, already six steps ahead with her arms folded.

Gael tilted his head. "What? She needs better soles. The ones she's wearing have holes like rat nests. Can't even kick a wall without catching tetanus."

"You've already brought her ten pairs of new shoes, but the problem is she flies recklessly and tears them up all the time. We shouldn't buy her new shoes until she learns how to control her flight better."

"She's doing her best already," he muttered, holding up a boot and examining the threading. "If she's late delivering our medicines and elixirs to our clients because she's too busy worrying about her shitty shoes, we starve. Therefore, boots are an investment. Look here. This sole is profit. The arch support is dignity—"

Maeve grabbed his sleeve and tugged. "How about that shirt over there? Do you think it'd look good on Liorin?"

"Why?"

"So he stops looking like a haunted pinecone, for one."

"Eh. He's a boy. He's fine the way he is. He's got the whole 'feral prince of moss' aesthetic going on."

Maeve gave him a sharp look, and he sighed, so the next twenty minutes turned into a spiraling spree neither of them could fully justify. Maeve bought a half-mask with decorative wing motifs for Liorin, while Gael quietly slipped two reinforced courier bags into his satchel for Evelyn, alongside a few bottles of ink and quill set so she could learn how to write properly. Maeve added socks so Liorin wouldn't get cold at night. Gael added goggles so Evelyn wouldn't get dust in her eyes while flying. Maeve bought a little flower brooch so people would recognize Liorin as one of their own.

They'd both chosen their favorites, but at least they weren't trying to hide it.

"You know," Gael said idly as he compared two long scarves: one dull brown, one a hideous purple stitched with silver chitin patterns, "we could've just taken them shopping instead."

"No," Maeve said flatly, selecting the purple scarf for Liorin. "They'd start fighting again. I don't even know why."

"It's because they're both twelve and allergic to happiness."

"Evelyn gets mad when Liorin talks to you."

"Liorin gets mad when Evelyn talks to you."

"Are we the problem?"

Gael gave it a long, reflective pause.

"Definitely not."

Just as he was about to grab another pair of gloves for Evelyn—her sixth, maybe—he caught sight of a crooked wooden sign hanging above a dark little storefront on the far wall of the ground floor. It was a bookstore, crammed between a taxidermy clinic and a knife vendor, and outside the door was a lopsided stand full of paperbacks.

The top volume caught his eye.

"Oi," he said, jabbing a finger. "Isn't that the horror chronicle you've been reading?"

Maeve's head swiveled, and her eyes lit up immediately. "Volume Nine!"

She ran over without hesitation, and he watched her practically pounce on the stack like it owed her money. She began flipping through the books, holding them close like they might vanish if she didn't pay immediately.

"Collecting the full set?" he called out.

"I need to know how the hospital arc ends!" she shouted back.

Gael chuckled and stepped aside to let her pay. While she dug through her coin pouch and tried to barter with the shopkeeper, he wandered a few paces away, brushing past a stand selling beetle-husk dolls and accidentally making eye contact with a masked seller who clearly hadn't bathed since last winter.

It was then he noticed something odd.

Down a narrow gap between the bookshop and the knife vendor—barely wide enough for a person—he spotted a cluster of shapes.

Three men, one cornered figure. The men were leaning in, masked and armed in a casual, gang-sort of way. One of them jabbed a finger forward. Another held a pipe. The cornered figure was small—child-sized, or maybe a short adult—wearing a full leather suit and a polished gas mask that covered their entire face.

Gael sighed.

Idiots.

Are you seriously trying to harass someone in the Rot Merchant's neutral, no-violence territory?

…

The Exorcist will be gloomy if she has to see the Rot Merchants executing hooligans so early in the afternoon, so I guess I'll do you guys a favor.

Feeling magnanimous today, he reached into his coat and withdrew a thumb-sized vial filled with a viscous yellow-green liquid. He gave it a shake, then flicked it casually over the vendor's roof and into the pipe overhead.

The glass broke with a faint clink, and the reaction was instant. Thick, chalky green gas hissed from the broken vial and billowed downward over the gangsters like a fog curtain. The three men immediately started coughing, clutching their throats, masks or no masks—their cheap filters weren't built to handle his more colorful concoctions—while the small figure they were harassing didn't cough. Their mask's filters were airtight. Industrial-grade.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

As the gangsters cursed and scattered—and Gael debated shouting 'you're welcome' at all of them—the figure looked up in alarm and scanned their surroundings.

Then their lenses locked onto his from afar.

Gael stared back, one hand still tucked in his coat, and a frown pulled itself taut beneath his mask.

That leather suit, that breathing system, and that kind of filter…

Huh.

That's a Gulcher.

The hell's a Gulcher doing up in—

But then the small person bolted deeper into the gap like a startled squirrel, vanishing between rusted pipes and billowing steam.

Before he could do anything about them, Maeve chimed behind him.

"I got all of them!" she said cheerfully, reappearing with a satchel now stuffed to the brim with novels. "And I only had to threaten the vendor a little."

"... Charming," he mumbled. "Shall we?"

Maeve nodded. "Top floor?"

He rolled his shoulder and turned, glancing one last time down the now-empty alleyway before they began ascending the crowded building—each level more crooked and overgrown than the last. Vendors thinned as they rose, the ceilings grew lower, and the walls leaned like they were trying to whisper secrets to each other.

The top floor of the Black Bloom Bazaar was more suffocating than usual.

Vines curled across the ceiling like veins trying to strangle the light, and crooked lamps flickered above the crowd, casting every figure in jaundiced amber. The two of them pushed through the mass of bodies—and they weren't elbowing anyone impolitely, but moving them instead. No gas flasks this time. The two of them were stronger than most of the slumfolk here, so while Maeve looked mildly apologetic every time someone bumped her shoulder, Gael didn't.

So we really are stronger now.

How many more levels in strength do we need to literally be able to part the crowd like a sea?

Food for thought. Quickly, though, the storefront came into view like a break in a fever dream: dark wood, faded signage, and two Rot Merchant guards in full gemstone masks flanking the sides of the store.

Juno's antique shop.

Over the counter, the ladybug herself leaned against the counter with a delicate but sharp elegance, polishing a prosthetic arm like it was an old lover. The metal fingers clicked softly under her rag, but she didn't look up as the two of them pushed their way to the front of the queue.

Gael would rather she didn't look up, anyways. That grotesque, half-warped crystalline face of hers was hardly any pleasant to look at.

"Well, if it isn't my favorite wannabe Plagueplain Doctor," she drawled, voice sweetly poisonous. "And his blushing bride. What brings the two of you here today?"

The two guards tensed as Gael and Maeve stepped up to the counter, but Juno waved a hand without breaking her rhythm. Gael grinned and leaned against the counter himself, crossing his arms.

"Nice to see you too," he said. "You know, I heard a fisherman hooked up a massive leviathan in Wraithpier just a few days ago, and it half-destroyed the Drowned Parish—"

"Cut the shit, Gael. What do you want?"

He sighed dramatically. "Information. Where's the safest, closest entrance to the Gulch Pipelines relative to my clinic?"

Juno paused mid-polish. For a brief moment, only the faint sound of a ticking clock in the far corner of her antique store filled the space, and the Rot Merchants flanking the two of them shifted subtly, alert.

Then Juno tilted her head and said slowly, "Why do you want to know?"

"... So I can open a pipeline beneath my clinic," he said as casually as he could, eyeing the guards around him. "I want fresh Gulch water routed into my clinic. It helps accelerate natural recovery, and it'll also quench my trees' insatiable thirst. You know about my trees? I—"

"The ladybugs told me," Juno murmured. "The Heartcord Clinic looks quite different now, doesn't it?"

Then his gaze shifted toward the back of the store where one of the Rot Merchants was stacking wares—and munching on something. A soft crunch reached his ears. The man was eating a fruit.

One of his fruits.

"Oi," he barked.

The man flinched and disappeared deeper into the store. Juno didn't even glance back. She just smiled faintly and set the prosthetic hand down as she leaned forward across the counter, her nose nearly brushing Gael's beak.

Up close, her lenses glinted with wariness, and her voice dipped low.

"I know all the entrances," she said coolly, "and I know the one closest to your clinic, but my tongue is hard, and it must be softened."

"I've got the coins."

"Coins aren't enough. You still owe me a favor. Remember the Vile Eater?"

Gael groaned. "I was hoping you'd forgotten."

"I never forget," she purred. "But I am curious—how did you fix it in the end?"

He tilted his head toward Maeve, who cleared her throat and answered in his stead.

"I... fed it my blood," she said. "The Nightspawn inside was too starved and weakened to filter in the Vile, so I acclimated it slowly with small doses of my poisonous blood every single day. It started sucking in the Vile after three weeks or so."

Juno made a soft sound of approval. "Interesting." Then she poked Gael's forehead lightly. "But you still owe me a favor, so I'll be cashing it in now."

Gael narrowed his eyes.

She smiled.

"While you're down there in the pipes, I want you to stay neutral," she said. "Be a 'Doctor' all you want, and your dearest wife can be an 'Exorcist' all she wants, but don't act like a Plagueplain Doctor down there. Give me your word, and I'll give you your information."

The temperature of the entire floor seemed to shift.

He scanned the storefront again, taking in the guards, the heavy shadows, and the idle movement in the antique store behind Juno.

"...This 'favor' wouldn't happen to have anything to do with why the Repossessors haven't been spotted for the past month, right?" he asked, smiling lazily.

Juno returned his smile, so he tapped the counter once, then twice, thinking.

I mean, the favor could be a lot worse. She could've asked me to kill someone, and then I'd be put in a horrible impasse.

Even still…

What does she want my neutrality for?

What's going on down there?

"... Fine," he said, shrugging. "You have my word."

Juno tilted her head, evidently pleased.

"But I want a discount," he added, jabbing a finger at the Rot Merchant moving wares around behind her. "That guy stole a fruit from my trees. That's theft. I suffered emotional damage."

Juno rolled her eyes. "Five percent off a thousand Marks."

"Nine."

"Six."

"Eight."

"Seven. Final offer."

"Eight," he repeated, tossing her a pouch of coins. "Done."

Shaking her head slowly, Juno reached beneath the counter and withdrew a rolled-up parchment. A thin leather strap kept it sealed.

"Here's your entrance. Mind the fumes and the things that scream, won't you?" Juno handed it over with a gloved hand and a fox-like smile. "Happy navigating. I do hope I'll see the two of you again."

"No you don't."

"No, I don't."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.