It had taken an hour of solid oration, but by the time Brand had reached the fifth stanza of Archdeacon Ferzinand's theory on the metaphysical properties of the Magicka Majora, Glamma had quickly fallen asleep. She lay sprawled out amongst the many pillows on the bed, heavy bosom heaving in slow, rhythmic snores.

She looked beautiful there, all still and quiet, and Brand would have loved nothing more than to lay there with her and feel her touch, but he had more pressing matters to attend to.

It was obvious from the start Keela was trying to hide something from him. Tossing him into the brothel with barely a goodbye had been his clue, and given the countless times she'd disappeared only for trouble to rear its ugly head, he was keen to investigate.

The witch was up to something, and Brand was going to find out why. He pulled the hood of his cloak tightly around him and pulled back the slat of his window. It was a small drop from the second story down into the nearby alley, the magick in his staff helping him fall as gently as a feather to safety. He hit the ground with a soft crunch, walking quickly till he'd reached the adjacent street and melted into a nearby crowd.

The festivities had only grown during Brand's absence, people hooting and cheering, smiling and drinking, jostling scarecrows hung on poles with nooses around their necks. He got a good look at one of them as a villager meandered past. Straw hair poked out of the back of its head, a mean sneer painted over its canvas face with charcoal.

He tried to get a closer look, but another man ran past and knocked him over, not even stopping to apologize. Someone caught him by the shoulder, pushed him back up, toes teetering to stay upright before he collided into a woman's backside, both of them screaming as they went squawking down the street.

"Shit!" The world rolled in Brand's eyes as he barreled over and over, gravity accelerating his momentum. He heard more people starting to shout, some jumping out of his way, some starting to laugh. One person thought it funny to kick him and keep him tumbling. His fall came to an abrupt and painful end as he reached the bottom of the road and came to a skidding stop facedown in the dirt, staff following after like a faithful dog.

Brand didn't want to get up. He wanted to lay there and die where he knew he belonged. In the street with the worms. How he ever thought of finding Keela in the first place was beyond his reckoning now. More people were starting to laugh, gathering around to stare at his blundering idiocy. He sighed, puffed out dust, and decided it was high time to stop eating dirt.

There were a few amused onlookers, a few concerned ones as well. Brand peeled himself off the ground and flopped into a nearby bench where a few drunks were laying about to sober up. He didn't bother wiping the muck off his clothes. More than likely he'd be up to his chin again with the stuff once Keela decided to continue their mad journey skulking through the woods.

His hand dangled over the edge of the bench, the tips of his fingers tingling as dirty rivulets of water plopped off onto the ground. Wet and filthy. Truly a divine combination of sensations. He never felt closer to Nido than he did now. Why in all the seven hells the Vangen liked worshiping a dead Goddess in the first place he would never comprehend, but she was likely spinning in her divine grave with laughter at the sight of him either way.

"Ow!" Brand jolted upright as something barbed scraped against his fingers. He looked down, half expecting some monstrosity crawling out of the ground to devour him, but it was only a black cat. It stared up at him with yellow, glowing eyes, a tiny bell jingling on its collar.

"Well I'll be," he murmured under his breath. "How did you survive this long, little guy? I'm surprised the people here haven't snatched you up and cooked you for supper by now. You must be quite the clever thing."

He reached out a hand, and the cat sniffed it before pressing its face against him, rubbing this way and that. He ran a hand down its glossy back, sleek, dark fur catching every iota of candle light.

"Wish I could be as clever as you," Brand said. "I'm trying to find one person in an entire city, and I can't even take two steps without stumbling over myself. I might as well crawl back to the brothel and read more of Deacon's Thesis to Glamma. Least she gets paid to see me make an ass of myself. All these people got to see it for free."

The cat looked up and gave him three, slow blinks, front paws kneading gently against his lap. For a while they simply sat there, Brand petting its soft fur, the world somehow oblivious to the muddy idiot and the town's next meal.

"Say, you wouldn't know where to find Keela, would you?" Brand asked offhandedly. "I read somewhere that some witches take cats as their familiars. Maybe your hers?" He smirked, imagining how silly he sounded asking such a thing. As if the animal had any capacity to understand him.

To his surprise, however, the cat jumped off his lap and bounded off towards a side alley. At first, he expected the animal was simply running off towards its next destination, but it stopped and stared at him, as if beckoning to be followed.

"There's no way," Brand muttered under his breath, and yet with weary legs he stood up and obeyed. They slipped down a side street together, away from the meandering crowds and down towards the northern edges of the corkscrew town. The cat always kept a few paces ahead of him, watching him with one eye, ears cocking in all directions. Amazingly, no else seemed to notice the animal, not even when they walked through a busy crowd or through multiple market stalls, people talking, yelling, celebrating, merchants hawking their wares.

Brand blinked in surprise when they finally came to a stop, both of them standing before an old wooden watchtower at the base of the hill. The festivities were some distance behind him, the sounds of cheering and music blending together into a chaotic noise, easily drowned out by the wind.

The black cat sat at the foot of the stairs of the watchtower, looking up towards the very top.

Brand followed its gaze, a sinking dread overtaking him as he realized with sickening clarity of the cat's intentions. If he'd been right all along, and the cat was Keela's familiar, then it had led him directly to her. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He couldn't sense her magick, but the thought of her up there made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Brave. He had to be brave. He was here for a reason. Crouching down, Brand slowly, methodically, ascended the rickety steps. The wood creaked and groaned with his every nervous step, the tower more than likely decades old from constant use. He could only pray Keela was either distracted or too focused to hear anything else.

A figure sat with their back facing him by the time he reached the top. If it was Keela, she was alone, back hunched over as she fiddled with something in her hands.

Branch crept closer, keeping low and out of sight. His heart thundered furiously in his chest, the little aches in his body resurfacing from this earlier hard tumble. He was so close now, close enough to hear her speak, the noise of the city having long since faded away.

"What are you doing out here all by your lonesome, boy?" The figure turned around. Instead of Keela, it was an old woman with gray, gold hair and tired eyes staring back at him, her voice like crunching gravel. She had a thin block of wood in one hand, a whittling knife in the other, the rough edges of an ornate chair carved along the grain.

Brand felt the heat drain from his face and looked down the stairs, but the black cat was already long gone. He looked back, swallowed, mind racing on what to say.

"I could ask you the very same thing," was unfortunately all he could muster out at the moment.

The old woman smirked, the edge of the knife flashing as she stowed it away in her pocket. A rag replaced it when she pulled her hand back out.

"Wipe your face, dear. You've got mud all over it."

Brand winced, but obeyed. The rag was practically black by the time he was done with it.

"Keep it," the old woman said. "And to answer your question I was trying to find a nice, quiet place to get away from the noise, but alas it would appear a child has wandered into my peaceful domain.

Brand felt his brows beetle together. "Who are you calling a child?"

"Everyone's a child to me, nowadays." The old woman slid over, revealing a free space on the bench. "I wanted to spend some time here alone, but I suppose the company can't be helped either way." She produced something else from his pocket. A pastry by the looks of it, but where she'd gotten the flour and butter to make it there was no telling.

"Come now, sit and eat with me. Better than hiding in the dark like a common burglar."

Brand eyed her warily, then sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Couldn't be helped, it seemed. Sometimes you take a tumble into the mud. Sometimes you eat pastries with strange women. That's life, and life was chaos, after all. Better to embrace it now then run from it later.

So he sat down, took the pastry, and bit into its flaky surface. Which had been a lie out course. Past the misleadingly delicious outer coat, it was hard as a rock, and filled to the brim with boiled cabbage. No wheat. No butter. Just dried Mushrooms, water, and cabbage.

Nido's tits but he how missed the sun.

"Thank you," Brand said through gritty mouthfuls.

The old woman smiled and stared out at the countryside, watching the miasmic clouds swirl overhead, somehow making shadows in the dark. "You are most welcome," she chuckled. "Ah, manners. It is something I sorely miss from the youth. I take it the festivities are not to your liking?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, you're here. Aren't you? You wouldn't be down here talking to an old lady in an old watchtower if you didn't like what was going on in town."

"Do you not like it?" Brand asked.

"Nah," the old woman spat. "It's all rubbish to me. Someone will eventually notice and this whole place will be burned to the ground like all the others. My only hope is that I'll be dead before that happens."

"That's...a hard way of looking at things."

"It is, but it's better than what they're up too, I reckon." She jabbed a thumb up the hillside. "People think they can delay death by ignoring it, laughing at it, celebrating when there's nothing left to celebrate about. So The town's assigned Chosen got her head smashed in. Huzzah. A new one will take her place in due time."

"So they should just sit in their homes and live in fear instead?" Brand didn't know why he'd gotten angry so suddenly, but the fire in his chest had flared out of nowhere. "Better than hiding away in an old watchtower waiting for death to come."

The old woman smiled at him, but there was no mirth in it. "There's nothing wrong with preparing for the worst, boy, but you have to be realistic. Death comes for us all. It's how you face it that truly matters. These people want to ignore it, make light of it, but I see it coming, and I won't look away."

Brand stopped himself from taking another bite of the pastry and sighed. From watchtowers to the morbid philosophies of death. If nothing else, he would have fond memories of tonight. But he had wasted enough time. He needed to move if he wanted to avoid arousing any suspicions from Keela. He stood up, brushing crumbs off his robe.

"Thank you for the food and the wise words, madam, but I must be going. Good night." Brand turned to leave, when the old woman shot out a hand, grabbing him by the wrist. He gasped as pain lanced up his arm, her grip deathly cold and iron tight.

"She's lying," the old woman muttered, face hidden in the shadow of the eaves.

Brand tried to pull his arm free, but it was like trying to shake free from a manacle. "Let me go, damn it! Let me go! Who the hells are you?" He tried to call his magick, but he couldn't feel its presence around him. How was that possible?

"She's lying to you." The old woman repeated as she leaned forward into sight her kindly features scrubbed clean and replaced with an ivory mask, devoid of love and affection, its mere presence burning into his vision.

Brand tried to scream, but something pressed against his face, smothering him, choking him as the old woman's words rang in his head.

She's lying...She's lying....lying...lying...lying.

"Wake up." Keela kicked the bed, jolting Brand awake. He sat up from the smothering pile of cushions, wiped the drool from his mouth. He was back in the brothel, Glamma absent from the bed. He looked around, panic rising in his chest. He remembered jumping out the window, tumbled down a street, then the watchtower. But how had he—

No. Brand paused his train of thought and shook his head. It would have been best not to dwell on things, and yet the memories of the old crone's message wormed their way back inside regardless.

She's lying.

She's lying.

She's lying to you.

"Get dressed and come downstairs when you're ready," Keela said. "We've a long road ahead of us and I need you in tip top form." she looked him over and smiled. "Although, judging by the haggard look on your face, it appears Glamma wrung you out dry last night."

She gave him a sly wink as she sauntered out. "That girl's worth her weight in gold, I swear."

***