Teenage career criminals weren't a laughing matter in Fairy Kingdom. There were lots of them, forged by desperation and poverty and years of growing up listening to stories of evil queens and dastardly sorcerers. Who wouldn't dream of slaying a giant if they knew it meant riches beyond measure? The giant's innocence would never matter.
Claude was twenty-one. Sicilienne had only left something like a week before. Everyone knew, at the time, that the Ugly Duckling was still in Fairy Kingdom, because she'd been spotted vanishing from the site of a robbery in one of those nice neighborhoods filled with stacked white houses—where the upper class lived. You see, the problem with Fairy was that there was really no middle class. There was the very rich and the very poor and that was all, and with large gaps in quality of living came spikes in crime. The poor would steal from the rich and sometimes the bodies of the poor would turn up in alleyways, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Not in a place where virtually every type of magic was legal, where creatures of every species, big and small, gathered in communities that were supposed to be accepting but sometimes just ended up with the stronger ones at the top of an unspoken hierarchy.
Now, once the word got out that the Ugly Duckling had gone after one house, it was inevitable that she would go after a few more, because no one went overseas for one haul and then went right back to where they'd come from. Claude heard word of her arrival and figured he should watch his back—there were endless rumors about the Ugly Duckling back then: that she could control birds and make them peck your eyes out, that she would rob you blind and vanish before you ever saw her coming, that she could be anyone and everyone you knew and make you entirely lose your senses. Stuff like that.
The first thing he noticed about the Ugly Duckling when he encountered her was that she wasn't ugly at all. There was no questioning that she was a Villagetowner; the telltale sign was plainness. And she was plain indeed: thin lips, a slightly bumpy, hooked nose, muddy gray-brown eyes. But she wasn't ugly. Ramona told him later that when she was just a bit younger her wings had been brownish, crooked and disheveled, her frame frail and bony, which was likely where that nickname had originated. She'd grown into herself. But she never grew into her reputation. She didn't at all fit the tales of a girl with a hideous curse, or an invisible killer. The 'invisible' part, maybe, was true. Claude had joked once that her superpower was being utterly beige and boring, and she'd replied that for all intents and purposes, it was. Ramona Swan disappeared in a crowd and never came back. She could be everyone, no one. Somehow while being completely noticeable one could still overlook her, and no one who'd seen her could identify her. It could be some form of magic, but Claude suspected there was no magic in it at all, no secret to it. She was just that ordinary.
But while seemingly invisible at times, she was no killer. In fact, Claude had learned that she not only hated death, but cowered in the face of it. And on the day they met, he saved her life.
He'd fully intended, really, to throw his life of stealing away after Sicilienne left. Don't laugh—he had! No longer having someone else under his care meant maybe he could afford to sacrifice having food and shelter here and there again so that he could find himself a respectable job. But whether it was fate or luck or something else entirely, he went around the back of a drugstore to search the dumpsters and entered a scene he hadn't expected that day. The supposedly legendary and fearsome Ugly Duckling looked suspiciously like a teenage girl way out of her league, and she was being pinned to the wall at gunpoint by three men twice her size, the contents of her pockets emptied on the ground. Everyone knew the street rules in Mab. Pickpockets, if caught, would have a hand or several fingers cut off. Sticky fingers. Oftentimes the punishment for girls was much worse. And as one of the men whipped out a blade and advanced closer, the young thief trembling with fear and saying nothing, Claude felt something consume him. It was this little feeling that occasionally came around to say hello. He liked to call it his conscience. So he stepped into full view and flashed a smile, holding up his hands—which at the time, weren't gloved—and did what he did best.
Talk.
He couldn't even remember what he'd said that day, but he forced every bit of suave and charm into his monologue, maybe even dished out a couple of good old-fashioned bloody noses, and one way or another he'd left with a skimmed wallet and a grateful eighteen-year-old criminal. The thing was, Claude wasn't anybody's hero. No one knew his story. He was a nobody, someone who only served to sit on the sidelines and fill up empty space. That was what he'd always been, and, unless the entire natural order of Fairytaletopia decided to flip upside down, he always would be. But that day, just for a single, fleeting moment, a stranger grinned up at him with red-soaked teeth and he wondered if this was what it felt like to be the good guy.
Once they'd run three streets over, panting and thankful to be alive, the girl he'd saved promptly turned to him as if nothing at all had happened and held out her hand to shake.
"Ramona Swan," she said breathlessly. Godmothers, her haircut was terrible.
Dazed, he'd taken it. "Claude. Claude Verelia."
"What'd you help me for?"
"They would have killed you. Or worse. Believe me, I know."
She shook her head. "So what? Why's that matter?"
Claude had found himself short-circuiting. "Well... I dunno," he said eventually, dumbstruck at his own actions. "I guess I just think us thieves would be better off looking out for each other than going around killing each other. The nobles kill us off just fine already without our help."
She had smiled wryly. "So you fancy yourself a thief, do you?" He'd held up the wallet and she'd barked a laugh. "You wouldn't be interested in robbing the Brimstone Street Bank...?"
Call him simple-minded, but that was a very, very tempting offer. "What have you got?"
"A beat-up van with a few nice add-ons. A handful of fake passports. Stolen gold. The kind of protection only thieves can offer each other. And a reputation I'll never live up to."
A smirk crept its way across his face, and Claude smoothly slid the wallet into his pocket, straightening.
"Sounds like a hell of a good time."
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One heist. One heist. It was only ever supposed to be just the one. But the friendship that bloomed along the way was more precious than anything kings and nobles had to offer. Claude and Ramona talked about forming a crew for a long time before they finally found Minerva. Then Penny. Then Bear. It seemed fairytale losers attracted each other.
He'd never told her about the sister he'd lost, the way that had affected him. He'd almost said it hundreds of times—once, when the two of them were sitting outside in the freezing night because they couldn't afford a roof over their heads. "You ever regret the life you left behind?" she asked in the silence.
Claude had opened his mouth to tell the truth, but a lie came out instead. He shouldn't have been surprised. That happened often. "Never had one to begin with."
It was too difficult, even still, to linger over Bernadette's name. There was cruel irony in the way Sicilienne had been born with magic after Claude had lost his older sister—the sister she never knew existed—to the stardust plague. He'd always figured the Writer had to have a sense of humor. All his guilt—could I have done more, could I have done anything—and all his love for her had to be shoved into Sicilienne instead, even when she didn't want it, even when it didn't fit. He was a fatherless child caring for an infant, a bizarre sight to see that made no one bat an eyelash because they went so criminally unnoticed. Every time little Sicilienne would get sick, even with just a cough, terror consumed him.
He had to wonder what Ramona's childhood was like. How different or similar they might have been. She had the air of someone who'd always cared for herself, but not other people. How lonely must it be to grow up taking care of yourself and no one else. She had told him stories from prison, humorous stories, but they were always laced with a little bit of something catastrophically sad: a teenager, a child, locked up in some cell in Middle-of-Nowhere, Snow Kingdom surrounded by adult criminals. Making her rougher, sharpening the soft edges of her mind, turning her into something more sinister than before. She didn't say it, but he knew, knew because he understood how that felt, what it was like to bury the gentle parts of yourself that were too dangerous for the world around you. In a way, Claude had been both a brother and a father, all at the ripe age of seven, carrying his sister through a great big world that would eat her alive at the first opportunity it got. He refused to give it that opportunity. It cost him. It had cost him his dreams, his childhood, his sanity.
"Tell me something I don't know," Ramona said in a voice so soft and so intimate that a part of Claude wanted this moment to last hours. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so vulnerable around someone. Not physically-wounded vulnerable, that was easy, but spilling his thoughts, raw and bloody—that sort of vulnerable. He couldn't decide if he hated it or wanted to remain here forever, letting everything go.
He exhaled a shaky breath. He didn't let himself think—then he'd slip into a lie—and just allowed the first words that came to mind to tumble from his lips.
"I first picked up a bottle when I was... ten," he said, first slowly, and then the words came faster, crashing together in a rushed heap. "Sicilienne didn't figure it out till I was fourteen. I used to be so good at hiding it. And every time Penny throws out my liquor I get this panicky feeling in my chest. I always feel like I'm losing the only thing I've got left. I can't cut it out of my life, but whenever I start up bad again I'm reminded of when my sister looked at me like she was disappointed. She used to look so disappointed with me, Mona. Not even angry like you saw her about the thieving. Just like she was sad for me." What Ramona saw today was the most sober he'd been since he'd developed the problem. Even though the others made jokes about his frequent bar visits, relatively, he hardly drank at all. Sicilienne, on the other hand, had seen him at his worst—passed out in a heap of twenty empty bottles levels of bad. His mind was always running at a million miles a minute. When he drank, it all just... faded away.
Ramona ran her fingers along the laces on her underbust corset, watching him intently. Nothing in her expression suggested judgment, but his face felt hot regardless.
"Well," she murmured, "I guess it's only fair that I let you in on a secret. I can do magic. I do it every day. Just the one spell, the one I've done since I was in school—I don't remember exactly when. I thought the other kids would accept me if I didn't have wings, so I figured out how to get rid of them. It hurt so bad the first time that I cried for hours. But the funny thing is, I always told myself I was getting rid of them, when I was really just shoving them in, shrinking them inside myself. They never actually went anywhere at all. And maybe we're all doing that to a part of ourselves, just a little."
So it wasn't natural for fairies to retract their wings. A spell. Ramona had always acted so repulsed to the idea of performing magic, like it was a shortcut, and she wanted to do things the hands-on way. Claude thought of how he'd drowned out his grief or his stress with all the alcohol and how Sicilienne had looked at him, how he knew she wished he wouldn't act the way he did but he ignored it. The eyepatch she wore was a constant reminder of his failures. They both referred to it as the 'accident', and she didn't quite remember how it had happened, but he did. He'd never forget the way he let her down that day, how he'd let his six-year-old sister end up half-blinded. She insisted that it wasn't his fault. She didn't know any better.
"Yeah," Claude replied finally. "We probably are."
It was then that a dark flash erupted in the green in front of the house, jolting the both of them. Ramona flicked into her hand one of the knives strapped to her clothes, and Claude slid his hand along his waistband, finding the golden revolver in its holster. His attention roamed their surroundings. Four figures were emerging from clouds of fog, and he quickly shifted to high alert to make them out. As they approached the Bears' front lawn, they became recognizable almost immediately from all those hours spent studying in the Writer's tower:
Corpse Flower. Queenie. Goldilocks. Ponzi.
Ramona made a strangled sound in her throat. "They followed us."
Claude was off the balcony railing and on his feet in an instant, mentally reciting what he knew in order to form a plan. The assassin could manipulate them, if he so desired, with his voice, and it was possible he had some mechanic that allowed him to sometimes vanish and reappear on command. The bee witch had those violent pollinators at her beck and call. There was no predicting what that Aurele girl could do with her ancient spells, and though the pirate kid was obviously much less of a threat, he did carry weapons at all times and according to Sicilienne possess a magical artifact that gave him illusionary and hypnotic abilities. He did suppose they didn't call themselves the Alliance of Darkness for nothing.
They would have to take out the girl with the runes first. He'd already figured out that the assassin was careful with his violence, and had he wanted to kill them, he would have done it much earlier. But the unlimited nature of Aurele's power was an immediate threat, regardless of what these four came here for. His mind spun through possible solutions to this two-against-four, but he came to realize that even if he went for Aurele, the others would retaliate far too quickly for them to actually gain the upper hand. They would have to retreat into the house. What could they possibly be here to achieve?
"Ramona," he said, quietly, slowly. "We don't win this fight."
"Then don't fight," she replied. She had not moved from her position leaning on the railing, either frozen with fear or with stubbornness.
Corpse Flower, leading the pack, came up the steps real casual and easy, approaching Ramona. The others remained where they were, standing in front of the porch. He stepped too close for comfort, but still she did not move, wings shifting ever so slightly.
"Allow me to make you an offer," he said.
She didn't even make eye contact, focused on the others, searching for threats. "Shoot."
"You'll stay out of my work, and I'll stay out of yours."
"I didn't think I was competition."
"You're quickly becoming a thorn in my side, Swan."
Claude wondered if she was relieved he'd refrained from weaponizing her real name again.
"How so?" she asked coyly, leaning back and beginning to scrape at her nails with one of the knives she'd brought to the Blackhearts. Claude stopped looking at the two of them, eyes scanning back and forth between the assassin's three patiently waiting companions. Queenie was looking on smugly, bees and wasps buzzing about her head; Aurele stood on her toes as if waiting for something; Ponzi toyed with a ring on his finger mindlessly. Were they backup? Or there for some other purpose entirely?
"With the Writer puppeting you, you have the potential to become more than just an irritating pest, duckling."
"I am nobody's puppet."
"But aren't you?"
"Aren't you just a glorified errand boy?"
Claude's eyes flicked to them again. Lucien's eyes were sharp through the mask.
"You're going to listen to me very closely. Keep to your thieving and out of our way. And watch your back. I am not like the villains you know, Swan. Grandeur is only worth so much to me. I have never set out to achieve something and failed."
Far away, Sicilienne stared at the book sitting across from her bed—The Servant Who Retrieved Rumpelstiltskin's Name—and knew something was wrong. She flipped it open, confirming her sudden feeling that danger was afoot, snatched it up, and flew up the stairs.
The Writer already looked frazzled, hair all a mess and eyes rimmed with shadows of gray. He was pulling books from the shelves, one, two, three. "Writer, sir," she began, but he waved her off, dumping everything on the desk, sweeping aside his previous work, and uncapping a fresh pen with his teeth.
"I know. I know."
Siciliano was frantic. "Can't you do something?" Truth be told, she didn't quite understand what, precisely, was happening, but something was happening, and that was enough.
But he understood, for he felt every death. And this one was coming too early. "I'm trying, Sicilee, if you'll let me be," he muttered, reaching out to fumble for the book she was holding without looking up from the others. She pushed it into his hand and he dropped it immediately onto the desk, flipping it open. "I've told you before, I'm all-knowing, not all-powerful." He thumbed along the pages, trying to think of a solution as quickly as possible. Mind spinning, he hastily scribbled a diversion into the story, and it began shifting to accommodate his change. With horror he watched as it started to write itself faster. He glanced up at the rest of the page, skimming names. Aurele. No. Not her. Anyone but her.
"Shoot her," he whispered suddenly, and with no thought at all Claude drew his weapon and fired a shot.
Ramona spun, eyes flared wide. The bullet whizzed and thousands of whispers filled Claude's ears, before it hovered just short of striking Aurele's chest, melting into useless brass that fell in droplets to the grass. Drip. Drip. Gone.
"He tried to kill me," Aurele said, and it came out like a half-amazed laugh.
"Bold for a magicless thief," Queenie remarked wryly.
Aurele shook her head, eyes gleaming. "No, not him. The thief is a pawn like the rest of us."
Her gaze shifted over his shoulder, and Claude hadn't a clue what she was looking at.
The Writer slammed one fist on the desk, hunching over to retaliate the newest developments with his pen. Aurele was dodging every save, every helping hand he was offering to his heroes. Like she knew what to expect. Like she could spot the holes in his logic and easily rake evil through it. No, no, no. Something was about to happen, he could feel it, and she stood between him and preventing it.
"What is it?" asked Sicilienne nervously.
"Alter a person's story one too many times," he said breathlessly, hardly realizing he was speaking aloud, "shift them and guide them onto the desired path over and over again, and eventually, they'll learn your tricks and how to avoid them."
"What are you talking about?"
He jerked his head up, meeting Sicilienne's eyes with his own crazed, frantic ones. "She feels the pull. But unlike everyone around her, she's strong enough to ignore it. I've meddled with her too much, Sicilienne. I can control her no more."
Sicilienne pulled at her gloves. "What is she going to do?"
She'd never seen such terror on his face.
"I... I don't know."
Her heart plummeted.
"I like to think I'm polite enough," said Corpse Flower, diverting Claude's attention again. "It seems only fair for me to leave you with a warning." He moved closer, so that there was only a sliver of space between himself and Ramona, and whispered in her ear. "This is the only warning you get."
He stepped back, retreating down the porch step,s and Ramona's head slowly tilted as she processed what that meant.
"Who are you killing today, Radiata?" She, too, chose to respect his false name. A dance of masks.
Claude's chest began to pool with dread. Lucien turned back and smiled, and his teeth were pearly white, glimmering in the sun.
"Oh, I don't kill commoners." He nodded behind him. "But she does."
That was when Ponzi's hand dropped, finally finished fiddling with his ring, and Aurele vanished. Just faded away, like a wisp in the wind. What had the kid's speciality been? Illusions.
Claude's fingers tightened on the gun in his hand. There was no telling how long she'd really been there and how long she hadn't. He remembered the way all the doors had mysteriously locked on the day of the queen's death—locks. Only one fairytale name was notoriously associated with those. He spun towards the front door.
"She's in the house."
Ramona was close enough to drive her knife through Lucien's heart, but she did not test the harbinger of death, leaving the Alliance members behind and lurching for the door. It did not budge. Surely a wooden door could only be so sturdy. She thrust a kick toward the hinges, and then a second one, panting when nothing happened, and turning back again.
All three of them were gone. Claude shot at the door's hinges, wasting several bullets, before coming up empty. It was locked by no mechanic either of them could destroy. There had to be a rune on the other side of that door.
Ramona banged on the door, hurled her bodyweight into it, picked up logs from the porch and swung them towards it. No dice. Claude just sank into a crouch, hand over his mouth, waiting.
He thought of who was inside. Penny. Lindsay. Minerva. Bear. Bear's mother and father and sister.
Aurele Luemont, too.
A warning.
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Aurele stood idly in the doorway of the kitchen, sliding a pair of lockpicks out of her sleeve, twirling through her fingers, and into the other sleeve again.
"Remember me?" she asked coolly.
Everyone was staring at her in shock. The three Bears she recognized easily—the mother and the father looked quite the same, although little Baby Bear wasn't so little anymore. It came as less than a surprise; they had to be roughly the same age, and by now he was just as monstrous as his precious pa. There was a new one, too. Younger sister. Had to be the biggest preteen girl Aurele had ever seen, but the level of fear in her eyes at the sight of an intruder was downright childish. Then there were the others. Pretty much the average fairytale misfits you'd encounter at the Blackhearts, she figured, a brunette and a blond in eccentric clothing that matched the Bear son's ridiculous costume fairly well. She frowned, realizing that even including the two helpless dorks outside someone was missing from Swan's crew. She'd come in through the back door and hadn't noticed anyone, but the sixth person must be somewhere else in the house.
Oh well. One less witness wouldn't make much of a difference.
Mother Bear or Mama Bear or whatever she was called looked astonished. "Goldilocks?"
Her lip curled. She'd always despised that nickname. Aurele lifted her chin.
"Just look at this big, happy family. And a few strays. They always veer off the path, don't they? Children never seem to learn. Not to leave the beaten path. Not to wander into strange places. They always need to be corrected. Correction is brutal, often." Her tone had a patronizing tilt to it. "I remember you very well, Bears. You were not kind to me."
Papa's eyes narrowed. "I had no obligation to extend kindness to someone intruding on my home."
"That's true. But you could've." She cocked her head. "So gracious to your neighbor until that neighbor is a lost orphan who stumbled upon your cottage in the woods."
Bear lurched for an ax hanging on the wall—half-decoration, half-available for emergency—but Aurele's fingers had been at work at her side, silently looping through a spell, and a dark red glow began to snake around himself and the others, freezing them in place. No one moved.
Aurele's eyes shifted to his, as though she was speaking only to him now. "No matter how he tries to stop me through you, I will be a step ahead. Don't waste your time. You and I are not friends. But I will let you in on something secret." She leaned forward slightly. "The Writer is merely mortal. He cannot save you. The Sandman knows your hopes and dreams and wishes and desires, and he can grant them, but he can also take them away. We know what you love. And in an instant, it can all trickle away, like sand in a glass."
The hanging light in the hallway suddenly snapped from its chain, hurtling towards Aurele's head. She smoothly avoided it, stepping aside and laughing—actually laughing.
"Pathetic attempts, honestly!" She pulled her notorious golden hair, which fell in short waves to her chin, out of her eyes and leveled her gaze at all three of the thieves standing before her. "Consider this your invitation back to the path. Do yourself a favor and return to it."
The force of their glares would've killed her had they the ability to shoot laser beams from their eyes, but no such power was miraculously granted. Lack of creativity on the Writer's part, she thought. The glowing red string around the crowd in the kitchen tightened, keeping everyone statue-still, before abruptly loosening, snapping towards first the mother. Bear emerged from the paralysis spell immediately darting to her, already suspecting the danger. Any idiot could have predicted what was about to happen. Out of the corner of her eye Aurele caught the blonde undoing a bangle from her hair and expanding it into a bow. Ugh, magical weapons. There was no time to bask in the sense of vengeance. She couldn't fight and execute the job at the same time, so she'd have to do this quickly.
It all happened in a single, hair-splitting moment. The dark red rope spun around the mother's neck, her gasp cut off short with a faint shing. It shot towards the father. Then the sister. Then it evaporated, Aurele's work done.
She didn't stay to hear the bodies collapse, conjuring a teleportation spell right as the arrow flew. She vanished with a flash, and it lodged itself harmlessly somewhere in the wall. A wide-eyed Minerva lowered her bow.
Bear was frantically checking his mother for a pulse. "No, no, no no no no no," he muttered uselessly, cradling her head. "No no no no no no nononononononono—"
"Bear?" Lindsay said hesitantly.
Slowly, very slowly, he stood, eyes blazing. He grabbed the ax off the wall and spun, hurling it across the room, and let out a blood-curdling scream—no, a roar—that reverberated through the entire forest.
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"Where the hell were you?" Bear snapped, shoving Claude in the chest and sending him skidding backwards several feet.
"They cornered us!"
"Who's they?" he demanded.
"The assassin," Ramona filled in, glaring at Bear for the unwarranted display of violence. "And several cohorts. Then we were locked out. There was nothing we could do, Baby."
"Well, they're dead," he said finally, his anger falling flat. All that was left in his eyes was... defeat. "She killed my family." The words felt final coming from his mouth. Dead. No, killed. Which meant that someone was responsible. Someone whose face he would never forget.
"We're being warned off." She shook her head. "I never should have listened to the Writer. I led us on a suicide chase. We should've stayed in our place."
Bear was incredulous. "Are you kidding me? That's exactly what these guys want." He leaned closer. "This was not our fight before. Now it is. Now it's personal."
His head fell back against the wall, fingers curling into his hair.
"I had the chance to make them proud, Duckie," he whispered. "I wasted it. My parents died disappointed in me. My sister died hating me. I never amounted to anything. I threw it all away. And now—now it's too late."
A hush fell over the three of them in the hallway. None of them spoke, and Bear did not speak again until the thieves had carried an unconscious Penny out to the car, abandoning the house in which he'd grown up. He didn't know what to do with the bodies, where to bury them, so he carried his mother, father, and sister one at a time up the stairs and into their beds. Tears fell onto the sheets as he pulled up Libby's covers, brushing his hands over her eyes to grant her a final rest. She had been so young. Twelve, he recalled her saying.
And he hadn't even known her age.
He kissed her on the forehead, whispered to a last goodbye, and pulled the creaky bedroom door shut behind him.
Bear and Ramona were the last ones standing in front of the van, looking out upon the cottage to which they would never return.
It was then that she realized—he had not turned. He was still human as ever, towering and menacing in his Blackhearts clothes, and somehow this was more terrifying than if he had lost control. He hadn't turned. Ramona didn't know what that meant, and she suspected she wouldn't like it.
She handed him his club, giving the house one last look over her shoulder before turning back to the van. "I know you hate this thing, but I suspect you'll need it."
Bear's voice was steady as a mountain, and in this moment, slinging the monstrous weapon over his boulderous shoulder, he looked like one, too. "You don't need to worry about weapons, Ramona."
She eyed him warily.
"When I find that golden-haired witch, I'll kill her with my bare hands."
-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈
So that's a wrap for Act 1! I'm truly very sorry that this chapter was generally sad and never particularly funny, but it had to happen...
It took me about a year and a half to write Act 1 of this book. Crazy. I started working on the prologue in late 2022 (November/December), nearly 2023, and it's currently the beginning of May 2024. So I wrote fourteen/twenty-seven chapters in a year and a half. I don't think it's a stretch to say that finishing the rest of the book could take two or three more years, which is a really terrifying prospect, but you know what? I'm going to choose to be excited. I finished my first novella this year, so I know I have it in me to finish something. Thank you so much to anyone who has supported this book thus far (there's not a lot of you, but I take your votes and comments to heart, and I love you).
There's a lot coming in Act 2, and I'm just crossing my fingers that I can pull it all off. In case anyone is curious, my Act 1 writing document is 255 pages long, so at least I didn't spend all of 2023 doing nothing. We did almost 120K words this act, and even though this beast is far from perfect, I'm really proud of how far the story and its residents have come. I look forward to the future. Maybe updates will be quicker, or maybe they won't. My life is a little chaotic lately, so I really can't say. Anyway, thanks again for sticking with Lost Destinies through its crappy title, monstrous chapters, and rambling author's notes.
Today's poll: most overrated book or movie you've consumed? Toodles :)