Inglewood, CA- 2 Years Ago

Ghouls in California were a relatively new phenomenon. 

Isabella had found, upon her return, that the world had not changed appreciably in many ways, but that in other ways it assuredly had. Perhaps it was that she had changed, become more aware of the world and its workings, and thus she saw things more clearly. How they truly were. How they’d always been. 

Or maybe she was just jaded. 

Nobody believed her about elves, obviously. She hadn’t expected normal people, who’d never been exposed to the fantastical in their lives, to believe her. But she’d gone looking for others who would believe her, survivors of monsters and users of magic. This had led her to the Damocles Guild, who had happily welcomed another hunter into their fold, especially one with her own Enchanted Weapon. She’d apprenticed under Quentin Jeong, who believed her about elves, and his compatriot Joshua DaSilva, who saw no reason not to believe her. Their overseers at the Guild, however, were less than convinced about elves, just as they were less than convinced of a world beyond ours accessible via a Boston subway station. Seemed arbitrary to her, but they’d been at this longer than she had so it wouldn’t kill her to defer to their judgment. She stopped mentioning it around them rather quickly, resolving to keep it as a side-mission. 

Besides, ghouls were a more immediately pressing concern. Her first hunt had been against ghouls. In fact, barring a few manticores and jorogumo, they’d mostly been hunting ghouls. There seemed to be more and more of them lately. 

They drove through Inglewood under the cover of night. The neighborhood was an eclectic mix of houses, apartments, and businesses coalescing in an odd sort of harmony. The night sky was hidden behind clouds and light pollution. Los Angeles was much bigger than Boston, both geographically and population-wise. Everything was so stretched out, decompressed, human sprawl across an inland coast bordering a brutal desert. They were in Quentin’s winnebago- this job paid so much that once they completed it, they’d finally be able to buy a second one. Joshua and Quentin had both agreed Isabella got first pick, since she was a girl and would probably be using it for herself. Quentin drove, his suede greatcoat draped over the driver’s seat. He concentrated on the narrow road, clogged on both sides with cars like cholesterol blocking up a vein. He brushed his long black hair from his face and hummed. Isabella had to remind herself not to stare at him too much, even if he was six feet of muscle and handy with a sword; he had a girlfriend he was nuts about, after all. And besides, he was a good friend and that would complicate things. Her life was complicated enough already.

Joshua, an even taller and even more muscular man, sat on the opposite-side seat to her, sharpening his buster sword. It was terribly impractical on urban jobs like this, but Joshua insisted on keeping the thing on him as much as possible. Isabella couldn’t fault him for that: she kept World-Carver in her scabbard wherever she went, hidden beneath the length of her black duster. Joshua held his massive hands over his buster, muttered a few words under his breath. The metal came loose and reforged itself into a dozen much smaller daggers. He left the hilt of the sword on his seat and stood up, safely placing each dagger in the innards of his coat. “Let’s recap,” he said. 

“Good idea!” Quentin exclaimed. 

“Let’s,” Isabella said. “Report from the Guild said four ghouls?”

“Correct!”

“Okay. How long since their last estimated feeding?”

“Could be two years,” Joshua said. “Could be two days.”

“How’s that work?”

Joshua shrugged. “Report we got says they saw a dead body there two days ago. Last report of ghouls in Inglewood is from two years ago, almost to the day.”

“Why’d nobody check it out last time?” Isabella asked. 

Joshua shrugged. 

“The Guild did send someone two years prior,” Quentin said. “However, they found nothing after expending three months worth of time and four months worth of Guild budget on said endeavor. After that, they were recalled.”

“What the shit?” Isabella said. 

Quentin gestured to the jar on the passenger’s seat. 

Isabella grunted, reached for her purse on the ground, retrieved a dollar bill, and deposited it in said jar. 

Quentin chuckled. Joshua smirked.

“Anyway,” she continued, rolling her eyes, “Why were they recalled?”

“Too much time, too much money, not enough dead ghouls,” Joshua said. 

“Or mayhaps an element of despair crept into the hunters’ heart and lodged itself in place, causing her to relent her efforts. Certainly that could be a factor as well,” Quentin said. 

Isabella’s mouth opened, and her eyes narrowed briefly. She put her left index and middle finger on her temple. “What are you talking about?”

“It was her, wasn’t it?” Joshua asked. 

Quentin drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. 

“Quentin.”

Quentin switched to a white-knuckled grip on the wheel. 

Isabella looked to Joshua. “Who-”

“Yes, it was,” Quentin said in a low, soft tone.

“I see,” Joshua said. 

“I don’t,” Isabella said. “Who are we talking about?”

“Guinevere Albrecht,” Joshua said. 

“Gwen,” Quentin said. 

“Albrecht?” Isabella said. “Why do I know that name?”

“She’s Sovereignty,” Joshua said, wiping the bottoms of his boots with a moist towelette. 

Isabella balked, then shot her gaze over to Quentin. “Excuse him?”

“She has blood-ties to two of the Five Great Houses,” Quentin said. “However, she is not with them. Emphatically so.”

“How do you know?”

“I know her.”

“In the Biblical sense?” Isabella cocked an eyebrow. 

“Yes,” Joshua said.

Quentin blushed beet red. “I… Do indeed. Don’t tell the Church Elders, please.”

“And you didn’t think to mention this-”

“You’ve met her,” Quentin cut her off. “She was the one that brought you to us.”
Isabella blinked, then said, “Wait, you mean that sloppy drunk hobo with the white Destiny Star? That’s Gwen? She’s an Albrecht? Jesus fucking Christ!”

“Isabella!” Quentin chastised her.

“Okay, really?”

“You took the Lord’s Name in vain, and you cursed!”

Isabella fumed, then deposited another dollar. She crossed herself. She said, “Okay, I’m sorry, but it’s a little jarring when you tell me your girlfriend comes from a family of fascistic cult leaders AND was living in a cardboard box a few years ago.”

“We were broken up at the time,” Quentin mumbled.

“Isabella, you were trapped in another dimension,” Joshua said. “So you were homeless as well.” She had to give it to the big guy, he certainly knew how to play devil’s advocate.

“Be that as it may,” Isabella said, “I think it’s a fair question to ask why she was given this job in the first place. Or how she’s in the Guild in the first place.”

“Technically, she’s not. She’s a freelancer. She was given the job because I vouched for her,” Quentin said. 

“Okay, that makes sense. But why did she walk away from this job?”

“Her illness plagued her,” Quentin said. “She was in danger of relapsing.”

Isabella untensed her shoulders. “Fair enough. I’m sorry for being rude.”

“It’s quite alright. You can apologize to her next time you see her.”

Isabella’s stomach sank. “Right,” she exhaled. “Okay, so what was Corpse Princess’ take on this place before she had to bail out?”

Quentin pawed the air to clear a scent. Isabella glanced outside, and saw a tall white man and a short white girl light up a bowl of the devil’s lettuce on their balcony. Quentin continued, “the trail ran cold. The ghouls kept moving, and became impossible to track. Gwen chased them all the way to the Inland Empire before she submitted to the Guild that she be recalled from the mission. After that, she was blacklisted for a time.”

Isabella gave a consoling smile. “I’m sorry.”

“Like I said, you can apologize to her when you see her. She was under the impression that she was tracking three ghouls, however, not four.”

“They did the ritual? Without getting noticed? How?” Isabella said. “You need what- five fresh sacrifices for that?”

“Could be a new ghoul came to town, joined up with his cousins,” Joshua said.

“I mean, maybe, but I doubt it,” Isabella said. “Ghouls are usually wicked territorial, try to limit themselves to as small of groups as possible- would they really just accept a new member to their pack?”

“Only if they have a new king,” Joshua said.

“Well there’s a scary prospect,” Isabella said. 

“Indubitably,” Quentin said. 

“Anything else?”

“No other thing that I’m aware of,” Quentin said.

“Well then let’s hop to it,” Isabella said. “I, for one, am looking forward to spending that hotel stipend on an actual bed tonight.”

“Here here,” Quentin said. “I’ll maintain watch. You two know what to do.”

Isabella and Joshua both nodded. 

They left the winnebago five minutes apart, Isabella circling the block before she came back. Four of the apartments blared rap music into the night, and the streetlamps gave off a sickly orange hue. A medium-sized orange cat and two orange kittens darted by her and retreated into the bushes behind one of the buildings, while a white cat the size of a medicine ball sat contentedly in a massive pile on the sidewalk. Isabella navigated around it, and it meowed lightly as she walked by. 

The apartment in question was a two-story affair made of white stone. It sat at the edge of the residential street, where it met a busy expressway throbbing with cars in both directions. She entered through the door Joshua had picked the lock of, and found herself in a building stripped bare. The doors were off the hinges, and the carpet was torn from the floor. The windows were taped over, and there was a thick and unavoidable air of claustrophobia. 

Joshua waited for her at the door to the basement. Funny how she always found herself doing the thing everyone screamed at you to avoid doing in horror movies. Isabella held World-Carver at the ready, and Joshua gathered a few of his daggers into a short-sword. They braved the steps down into the basement. A hideous odor filled the air, nearly choking Isabella. The sight of the source was far worse: an old man, eyes and tongue torn from his body, his belly slit open and laid flat on his back, bound to the cement floor in iron chains. Four ghouls gathered around their meal, plucking organs from his belly and sliding them down their throats. They were in mid-decay, their skin saggy and rotting and flaking, but their faces were still relatively human in shape. Bones pressed out of the skin at awkward angles, but had yet to start piercing through the flesh. One ghoul reached into the old man’s stomach and plucked out an entrail, gobbled it up greedily like a child reaching into their candy bag after a long, fruitful Halloween. 

Isabella tightened her grip on World-Carver. Stardust ran through the sword and ignited on the spark she lit in the air with her swing. She would have to be conservative- Joshua would need Stardust as well. She’d have to limit her range of teleportation, and she’d have to be careful about how many portals she opened. For now, though, she swung, and the skin of the world broke open. A pulsing doorway of gold and silver light appeared before her. She fell through her portal and manifested behind the furthest ghoul, swung her blade and cleaved its head from its shoulders. 

She’d first realized what World-Carver could do by accident. Shortly after she returned to earth, a ghoul had attacked her. She’d swung the sword through the air while charging the monster, and the first portal appeared in front of her. Her momentum had been too great to stop, so she’d gone straight through it, and wound up reappearing behind the ghoul and crashing into the brick wall of a building. It had taken a bit to get used to the thing, but she liked to think that by now she was pretty handy.

The other three ghouls screeched as their compatriots’ heads tumbled to the ground and landed between the legs of their food source. 

Isabella smirked. 

They made quick work of the remaining three. Isabella took another head while Joshua claimed the other two. When it was over, they nodded at each other and smiled, only to be interrupted by a gurgling sound: the old man on the floor. The victim. 

Isabella looked down at the old man with no tongue and no eyes, bleeding to death, his lips wrapped around words he could not say. He was begging. 

Joshua froze. 

Isabella didn’t. 

She lowered World-Carver, and the man died. 

Isabella forced herself to look, to look around her, to see what she’d done and what she would continue to do and what had already happened and what was happening now, and the world came at her like a stormwall, tossing her about and turning her around and making her dizzy. She clutched her chest, right above her left breast, to try to stabilize her trembling heart with her spasming hands. She collapsed to her knees amidst the red lake below her, and she plunged beneath it into the dark. 

Somewhere in the distance, she heard Joshua calling her name. Further away, she heard Quentin. Nothing reached her. She slipped further and further into the dark, and it surrounded her, engulfed her, overpowered her through an unyielding sensation of nothingness and entropy. Like the ocean of unreality surrounding the world, through which no sound carried and all who dwelt within would fall forever. 

The Pale was somewhere behind her. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she knew it just as much as she knew the earth was somewhere ahead of her. She couldn’t move, though, and she couldn’t speak or hear or smell or feel. She could see, but only an unyielding darkness that stripped everything else away. 

No light. No anything. Not even World-Carver to protect herself with. 

She was pulled backwards, a puppet on a string getting dragged back into the toy chest. The Pale wanted her back. The Elf-King wanted her back. It would take her back, he would take her back, unless she did what she had to do.

But it had been years and she still hadn’t done it. 

So she was alone in the dark, with nothing to help her. 

Endless nothing.

And then a light. A train rushed by her, a subway like the one that had taken her to the Pale all those years ago. The driver wore a stetson and sunglasses and smoked a cigarillo, and he looked at her but turned his head so quickly she barely registered her face. The train drove away, leaving her behind as it hurdled towards the earth.

Darkness. Then another light. 

A woman with flowing white hair and gray eyes appeared before her, engulfed in Starlight. She reached out a hand, and when Isabella could not move herself to grab it, the woman instead lunged forward and grabbed her. Isabella flinched, went stiff, but then realized sensation had returned to her body. 

She wasn’t in the ghoul’s nest anymore. 

She was in a hotel room, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. It was a standard beige affair, beige carpet and beige sheets and beige wallpaper and beige ceiling. It didn’t necessarily help with the surreal numbness that covered her like a coat of congealed slime, but the sight of her friends did. 

The woman from inside the dark was there. She looked different- heavier around the hips and stomach, chin-length hair dyed neon pink, bags under her eyes that seemed too big for her face. The eyes themselves, however, were the same shade of pure silver. 

The infamous Guinevere Albrecht had saved her from that darkness.

The infamous Guinevere Albrecht sat on a chair next to her bed. 

The infamous Guinevere Albrecht blew a puff of cigarette smoke into Isabella’s face. 

The windows to the room were shut and blinded, and all the lights were off. A White Star hung above them, dancing across the ceiling. Isabella’s eyes went wide at the sight of the thing. It seemed to suit Gwen far more than it had the first time they’d met. She’d grown into it. 

“Heard you been talking shit,” Gwen said, smiling gently, and then automatically reached for her purse on the ground, retrieved a dollar bill, and handed it to Quentin behind her. 

“Maybe,” Isabella said, then she frowned. “No, no I definitely was. I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you,” Gwen said. “I was a complete wreck last time I saw you.”

“Thank you for… For… Whatever it was that was- what was that?”

“At first, dear Isabella, we merely assumed you were experiencing a dissociative episode,” Quentin explained. 

“I mean it certainly felt like one. But not a normal one- this was one was… Supercharged, somehow. I went somewhere. I fell into the dark and it went on forever and ever.”

Gwen bit her lower lip. Joshua stroked his chin in confusion. Quentin kept his hands shoved in his pocket. 

“It’s called the Liminal Void,” Gwen said. “I don’t know much about it. It’s the space between worlds. Between our world and-”

“The Pale,” Isabella said. 

“The what?”

“It’s where I was,” Isabella said. She explained. 

Gwen nodded. “I was gonna say the Elvenlands.”

“Is that what they’re called?”

“According to my family, yeah,” Gwen said. “I dunno know much about that either- I suspect it’s ‘cause my family doesn’t know as much about it as they claim they do, or that they think they do. My father always talked about how magic came from somewhere else, from a place beyond, but we’d erected walls to keep the magic out and that’s why it’s dying.”

“Yeah, the Guild gave me the load-down on all that; preaching to the choir, by the way: I can’t use magic at all, I just happen to have an Enchanted Weapon and a few potion recipes, which apparently only work for me because I can’t do magic.”

“You got those from the Pale?”

“Yeah. I call the sword ‘World-Carver.’”

“Good name for a weapon,” Gwen said, looking up at her Star as it tumbled across the air. “Do you know where it came from originally? Who might have made it, and when, and for what purpose?”

“I just figured it was always there,” Isabella said. “But I guess it makes just as much sense that someone went and put it there.”

“Someone who fell. Like you.”

“The first time, though, I didn’t fall. I was taken there.”

“By the white fox?”

“I think so. It’s the closest thing to an explanation I’ve got. I’m guessing you don’t know what that thing is either?”

“No,” Gwen said. “How are you feeling, by the way? Physically, I mean.”

Isabella cracked her neck. “Honestly? Starving.”

They ordered room service: Isabella got a burger and fries, Quentin a cobb salad, Joshua a plate of steak and eggs, and Gwen a tuna burger. They each sat on the floor in a circle, eating their food and reviewing the information at hand. 

“So what do you think of all this?” Gwen asked Isabella.

“I’m not sure.”

“I mean you were the one who was there, who saw the place.”

Isabella wiped her hands and mouth on her napkin. “Yeah, but there wasn’t anything actually explaining what the Pale is. Of the books there I was able to read, most of them didn’t actually talk about the Pale itself- they talked about the earth, and our magic, and a bit about the elves as well.”

“Anything salient on the pointy-eared bastards?” Another dollar.

“Just that they came to earth a few times in the past- Trojan War, ancient Ireland, something to do with Russia, I think. A proper noun called ‘the Deicide’ is mentioned a few times. It’s all a wicked inscrutable.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Gwen said. “I wish I had some information for you, but that’s more than I knew a few minutes ago. So yeah.”

“And what about the Pale?”

“Place between places is all I’ve got. The Elvenlands, they’re considered the Cosmic West, and we’re the Cosmic East. The Pale, if I had to guess, is where it all started.”

“That, uh, that has some interesting implications about the nature of reality.”

“Probably,” Gwen said, taking a massive bite of her tuna burger. 

Joshua nodded along sagely. 

Quentin wiped his mouth on his napkin and said, “However, there is perhaps a detail we are overlooking?”

“What’s that, handsome?” Gwen said, smiling sweetly at him, instantly switching gears to undressing him with her eyes.

Dear Lord, Isabella thought, it’s worse than I feared.

“Isabella, my friend, I have seen you fight ghouls before, and in significantly closer quarters against significantly greater numbers amidst significantly worse odds, and nothing like this happened. If I may be so intrusive as to inquire: why did this happen now?”

Isabella put a hand under her chin, and thought back on the brawl, and the fall into the Liminal Void. For a moment, she felt a pang of darkness, of emptiness, of decay. She took a whiff of her food, of the rich smell of fried red meat, and it pulled her back to earth. “He was begging for death.”

“Hm?”

“The old man,” Isabella said. “He was begging for death. That was what I was doing for a while there. When I was in the Pale. I sat in my room every night, staring into the fire, hoping I wouldn’t wake up the next morning, that it would all be over.”

A moment of silence fell over the room. 

“Yeah, I’ve been there. I get that,” Gwen said, almost flippantly. “That’s what therapy and medication are for though, ya know?”

Isabella chuckled, and the chuckle blossomed into a proper laugh. She looked at Gwen long and hard, and she smiled. “You got me there. I should probably start looking into one or both of those.”

“Sounds like a good idea moving forward,” Gwen said. To that they all agreed, and they toasted to their camaraderie. 

“There’s one more thing, though,” Gwen said. “One more wrinkle to all this that I can’t help but think ties in somehow.”

“What’s that?” Isabella asked. 

Gwen told them all of the Prophecy of the Chosen One and the Dark Lord.

Isabella feigned surprise, and made note of Gwen’s apparent role in all this.