Chapter 8: Creature Comforts

Bram Thistleside had only just crossed the crooked stone bridge into Briarbrush
—a bridge so bowed and begrudging it seemed to resent being stepped on—when the familiar smell hit him like a hug from an old aunt who meant well but had goats. Fresh-baked bread mingled with sun-warmed wool and the faint, ever-present tang of damp moss.

“Home,” Bram muttered, adjusting the strap of his satchel.

From within the bag, Croaksley poked out his froggy head, blinking against the dappled sunlight. “Has it always smelled like regret and cinnamon?”

“The regret is the smell of the goats,” Bram replied. “Cinnamon’s my mother’s futile attempt to convince visitors they imagined the regret.”

Briarbrush bustled in its usual tilted charm. The cottages leaned like gossips in mid-whisper, their thatch caps slightly askew. Children darted down the muddy lanes, shrieking with laughter as they chased marbles that sparked and changed color mid-bounce—one even sprouted wings and fluttered indignantly over a fence.

Mrs. Whistlewood stood on her porch arguing bitterly with her broom, which had jammed itself under a flowerpot and refused to sweep until its labor demands were met.

“Don’t you ‘purpose clause’ me, you twig-legged tyrant!” she barked.

A clothesline nearby drooped under the weight of damp tunics, one of which appeared to be whispering questions about the futility of laundry in an impermanent universe.

Bram passed all of this with a nod here, a raised brow there, occasionally tipping an imaginary hat to avoid getting roped into conversation. Familiar faces turned toward him—some smiling, some wide-eyed, a few whispering. The soot on his coat, the scuffed boots, the slightly singed net slung over one shoulder—they all told stories the villagers hadn’t heard yet, and dearly wanted to.

He kept walking.

Briarbrush hadn’t changed.

But he had.

The Thistleside cottage sat just beyond a patch of stubborn marigolds and a gate that opened only when asked nicely. Bram hadn’t yet reached the worn front step when the door creaked open with theatrical timing.

His mother filled the doorway like a domestic storm cloud—hands on flour-dusted hips, apron tied in a battle knot, and eyes sharper than her breadknife.

“You’re late,” she announced, not as an observation but a universal truth.

“I wasn’t aware I was expected,” Bram replied with a mischievous smile.

“Exactly,” she said, stepping aside.

The scent hit him first—smoke, rosemary, and the warm tang of stewing root vegetables with something that might have once been goat. Then the heat, soft but insistent, wrapped around him like a quilt that didn’t care whether he’d earned the comfort.

Inside, the hearth glowed with the sort of cheer that had opinions. The fire crackled like it was telling stories, and the stew pot hanging over it burbled ominously, as though daring anyone to ask what exactly was in it.

A shriek of laughter shot through the rafters as Bram’s younger sister zipped overhead on a broomstick that clearly still had steering issues. It bounced off a ceiling beam, wobbled drunkenly, and veered left at last—but only out of spite.

“We’ve had bolting cabbages again,” his mother said without preamble, dusting her hands off on her apron.

“Again?” Bram blinked. “Didn’t we salt the soil after last time?”

“We did,” she said. “Apparently they liked it. Your brother tried reasoning with them, but they ran off. Now, he’s afraid of the soup.”

Bram’s father sat at the sturdy kitchen table, whittling a spoon with the patience of a man who had once tamed a wild boar using only stern language. His beard was a little more silver than ashwood, and his eyes were soft and shrewd beneath the bramble of his brow.

“Boy, you look tired,” he said.

“I’m fighting glowing rats, cows that recite philosophy, and dairy products with existential issues,” Bram said. “Tired is my new operating speed.”

Croaksley, now lounging atop a wooden beam like a carved gargoyle, interjected, “He also wrestled a poetry-reciting cow into submission. It was hauntingly beautiful.”

“Good grip then, lad” his father said with a nod of approval.

Bram chuckled and leaned against the edge of the table, letting his body unspool just a little from the coil it had been carrying for days.

“Something’s wrong out there,” he said. “Something’s stirring the magic, twisting it. And it’s no accident. I’ve seen enough now to know that much.”

Without a word, his mother placed a steaming bread roll in his hand—still warm from the oven, crust dusted with herb salt.

“Well,” she said, wiping a strand of hair from her face, “you fix it.”

She turned back toward the stove, voice casual but firm. “But eat first. You’re no good to the world unfed.

***

The salon was modest by court standards, which meant it only had three chandeliers and less than six types of imported citrus on display. Eleanor stood near a table of candied plums, staring at a tapestry with far too many cherubs, when Lady Lysandra glided to her side like perfume given form.

"That tapestry’s been here since my grandmother’s debut," Lysandra said, flicking her fan open with a snap. "And every generation, someone considers having it removed. No one ever does."

Eleanor smiled politely. "Perhaps it keeps the rest of the room humble."

"Or perhaps it reminds us that ugly things survive by being too awkward to address directly." Lysandra sipped her wine, then added, "Present company excluded, of course."

"You’re unusually complimentary today."

"You're unusually present. You’ve spent years ducking out of these little nests of niceties. Now you're standing still. Observing. Choosing words. Someone’s learning."

Eleanor flushed slightly but held her posture. "If I’m to lead, I need more than a sword arm."

"You need a memory for names. A tolerance for wine that tastes like cough medicine. And the skill to ask the same question three ways without sounding like you’ve asked it at all."

"I’m working on it."

"Mm." Lysandra’s eyes scanned the room. “There’s Lord Thrab, who thinks you’ll trip up before the year’s out. Ask him about his rare book collection—he’ll talk until he forgets he mistrusts you. And Lady Vellia? Compliment her shoes. She's sharp as vinegar but melts when admired.”

Eleanor followed her gaze. "And what about you, Lysandra?"

"Oh, I’m unreadable," she said with a wink. "But I do like when a woman in armor learns to wield conversation like a blade. It's very in vogue."

***

Later that evening, just as the sky slipped from gold to gray, Bram was elbow-deep in reinforcing the garden fence with his father. They worked side by side in the twilight, patching the cabbage-proof barrier with copper mesh and rune-bolted posts. The cabbages, having tried to overthrow their planter box twice this month, were now confined behind a containment ward shaped like an embarrassed duck.

“Hold that taut,” Bram muttered, looping the binding wire.

His father grunted, steady as a stump. “Should’ve just paved over the whole garden like I suggested in ’09.”

That was when it happened.

From the far side of the yard came a shriek—shrill, wet, and definitely not avian.

Bram’s head snapped up. “We don’t have hens.”

Croaksley poked his head from Bram’s satchel, eyes wide. “Then who’s screaming in the henhouse?”

Bram dropped the pliers and sprang to his feet.

He tore across the uneven lawn, boots crunching dried clover and shed onion skins. Croaksley bounced behind, ribbiting expletives with each jostle. The rickety henhouse came into view, its slanted roof glowing faintly in the moonlight.

Inside: chaos.

Snarlbats. A whole colony of them.

They clung to the rafters and the nesting shelves—six small, furry creatures with batlike wings, overlarge ears, and muzzles that twitched like angry bellows filled with sharp teeth. Their beady black eyes reflected moonlight in unsettling shades of amber. Coarse fur bristled down their backs like warning flags.

One dropped to the floor and snarled at Bram through a mouthful of old straw.

“Velvet-winged snarlbats,” he muttered. “Because of course it’s snarlbats.”

Croaksley landed beside him, springing up into the rafters. “That one appears to be flossing with your mother’s embroidery thread.”

Another bat pounced toward them, screeching midair.

Bram sidestepped, drew his copper-threaded net, and whirled it overhead like a lasso. The net caught one by the leg mid-dive. It shrieked and thrashed as Bram yanked it to the floor and pinned it beneath a thick wooden bucket, sealing the top with a quick tap of his boot.

The others scattered, wings beating with angry flaps.

An old nesting shelf collapsed under their weight. A broken rake flew sideways and impaled a weathered turnip crate. Dust and dried feathers filled the air like confused confetti.

From the far corner, a broom suddenly sprang to life—an old enchantment left from the “haunted housekeeping” experiment his mother had regretted.

“SWING LIKE YOU MEAN IT, YOU GRUB-STOMPING TURNIP!” it bellowed, sweeping furiously at thin air.

“Not helping!” Bram shouted, ducking as a snarlbat swooped low and nearly clipped his ear.

Bram scrambled up a pile of scrapwood, seized a half-empty bucket of potato peelings, and flung its contents in a wide arc. The bat dodged easily, but two more became entangled in the mess and flopped to the ground snarling, tangled in skins and their own wings.

“Three down!” Bram cried, lunging forward. He slapped runed lids onto a pair of jars and stuffed in the squirming creatures with quick, practiced hands.

Just as the last snarlbat tried to escape through a loose board in the roof, Bram snatched a feed scoop and hurled it like a discus. It struck the beam above the bat’s head with a solid thunk, dislodging a small cascade of dust and startling the creature into a backward tumble.

Bram was there in a flash, slamming a feed sack over it, twisting the opening shut, and holding it tight until the muffled snarling subsided to an exhausted growl.

He sat down on an overturned crate, breathing hard.

The henhouse door creaked again. His father stood in the doorway, hammer in hand, pipe stuck between his teeth.

“You alright?” he asked.

“Define alright.”

The older Thistleside surveyed the room—dislodged boards, tangled shelves, scattered straw, flapping broom.

Then he looked at the collection of jars, each now softly rattling with an irritated snarlbat.

“Bit messy,” he said, puffing once. “But you move like your Uncle Tibben.”

Bram wiped sweat from his brow. “Didn’t Tibben fall into a well chasing a gopher that kept on changing colors?”

“Yes,” his father said, stepping forward to examine one of the jars. “But he fell with remarkable grace.”

“Ha! I remember that he did, Dad!” Bram paused to look through the henhouse door, past his father, at Briarbrush village in the distance. “I don't think I ever told you, but Uncle Tibben is the reason why I decided to work in magical pest control instead of going to the university in Plynocco to become a mage. The mages lock themselves away in dark towers all day. They think that what they're doing is helping, but they don't ask anyone what they need because they think they're better than the rest of us. A pest-controller listens to people and solves their problems everyday.”

“Your mom and I know the decision was tough for you, but we're proud of the choices you've made”

Croaksley cleared his throat to change the subject and the mood. “I, for one, give that performance of pest-controlling a seven out of ten, Bram. Excellent form, but you lost points for being bitten.”

“I wasn’t bitten.”

“You will be when they wake up,” replied Croaksley with a wry smile.

***

Far to the south, deep within the stonework heart of Plynocco Keep, Princess Eleanor moved like a shadow through a lesser-used wing of the royal archives. The ancient halls here felt different—quieter, yes, but also weightier, as if the stones themselves remembered things no one had spoken aloud in decades. Dust motes hung in the cold light filtering through the high windows, swirling lazily in the still air like secrets that refused to settle.

She had followed a whisper—not a voice, but the hint of one, buried in a steward’s inventory list from thirty-two years prior. A cryptic line: “Alchemical wing, western base, sealed for renovation. No reopening date scheduled.”

Renovations, Eleanor had learned, were often where truth went to rot.

It took careful prodding. A gentle conversation with an aging scribe. A brush of fingers over an unused seal. A smile at the right moment, followed by a polite but persistent tug on the thread of forgotten logistics.

At last, a door.

Half-hidden behind a shelf of misfiled edicts, the stone archway revealed itself with a faint click, as though the keep itself sighed and reluctantly admitted her. Behind it: a narrow spiral staircase that wound downward, steep and damp, lit only by the faint glimmer of her rune-glass pendant.

She descended in silence, hand brushing the wall for balance.

At the bottom, a warped iron door barred her path. No handle. Just a glyph—an old one, etched into the center like a memory trying not to be noticed.

Eleanor pressed a palm to it.

The glyph shimmered. The door hissed. Then, with a groan like the yawn of something long asleep, it swung inward.

The chamber beyond was no broom closet.

It was a vault of silence, a shrine to secrecy.

The air was heavy with the scent of old iron, scorched herbs, and dried ink. Rows of glass tubes stretched across the stone walls, some still fogged with residue. Rusted clamps and burnt-out glyphstones clung to cracked worktables, their designs oddly elegant despite years of disuse. Thin filaments of copper wire ran like veins through the flagstones, converging into a wide spiral carved into the floor.

At the spiral’s center: a shallow basin of blackened metal, slick with something thick and darkly iridescent, like oil remembering how to be blood.

And on the far wall—branded into the stone in permanent defiance—Morvaene’s mark.

A spiral flanked by twin stars. Elegant. Balanced. Patient.

Eleanor’s breath caught in her throat. This wasn’t a forgotten workshop. It wasn’t storage. It wasn’t idle theory.

It was intent.

A prototype. The shape of a spell, perhaps. Or a device. Or a design for something far worse, shaped and refined beneath the very bones of the castle.

He hadn’t merely studied forbidden paths. He had walked them. Quietly. Methodically. Directly beneath the crown’s nose.

Eleanor stepped back, pulse pounding in her ears. Every detail etched itself behind her eyes. The basin. The spiral. The seal on the wall. All of it spoke of one truth: Morvaene hadn’t been conducting experiments.

He had been building.

Testing.

Preparing.

And he had hidden it here—buried beneath the throne like a seed waiting to bloom.

She closed the door behind her with practiced care. Sealed it again with a whisper. And ascended the spiral stairs as if carrying fire in her chest.

When she stepped out into the evening air, the sky above Plynocco was streaked with the soft purple of twilight. Banners flapped overhead. The tower bells chimed for supper.

But Eleanor did not head toward the great hall.

She moved like a blade being drawn.

And this time, she would not sheath herself in doubt.

***

The next morning, Bram sat on the porch steps, sipping strong tea.

Croaksley yawned from his perch. "So. That makes half a dozen towns, multiple species - wild and domestic, and one mystical bog. Still no grand solution."

"No," Bram said. "But we’re gathering pieces. And I think Morvaene’s behind every single one."

Croaksley blinked. "You said that with actual conviction."

"That’s because I’m too tired to second-guess."

Back in the city, Eleanor stood in her chambers, pen poised over parchment. Her notes sprawled in careful order: times, locations, symbols. A map forming in ink and instinct.

"He’s moving," she whispered. "And so will I."

Two minds, two paths.

But they were heading toward the same storm.