Melvin fought to catch his breath, hands braced on his thighs. The fight was a hard one. He'd never used put so many of his skills to use, but he could feel the warmth of the Edgewise brush against his mind.

Are you proud of me? He grinned at the reply. The Edgewise thought him a show off. Like you aren't, he teased.

He banished the smile from his face as Jacob stumbled up next to him. No one knew about those silent exchanges with the entity that was the Edgewise, not even Mack. He wasn't sure why he kept it a secret but their connection felt private. Melvin didn't want to share her. The Edgewise found it amusing he thought of it as female.

"Where the hell did you pick up that trick, Mel," gasped Jacob.

He shrugged. "Mack taught me."

Jacob went quiet, his expression cold. "Taught you a lot already, hasn't he?"

"Well, the more I know, the more control I have, right? I've kept a rein on the bête noir without him for months now. He said I was well suited to the gig. I'm a fast learner," said Melvin with a relaxed grin.

Jacob fell silent. Melvin frowned at the other man, wondering what bug crawled up his arse. The Edgewise chimed in mind like clinking glass mugs, urging him home. Fine, but there better be curry. The chimed turned shrill with mock outrage. He could practically smell the curry already, bubbling away in the tavern's kitchens.

"He used to say the same to me."

Melvin frowned, turning to Jacob and froze. The man stood inches from him. The expression in Jacob's eyes pinned him place. Snake and mouse, and Melvin knew which one he was.

"What--"

Jacob's hand slammed down on his shoulders, fingers biting down. "He should have chosen me," he sobbed.

Fire erupted under Melvin's ribs. He gasped at the pain, glancing down as the blade slid free, coated in his blood.

"It should have been me," said Jacob, shoving Melvin away.

He stumbled, clutching at the wound. Each heart beat was agony, racing faster to his death. The blade must have nicked the organ. Melvin sank to his knees, clawing at the air. His limbs refused to cooperate. He couldn't draw the door. Desperate, he reached. His fingers brushed solid wood. He could feel the tavern's sorrow, taste the bitterness of death in his mouth.

"I don't want to die."

Mack's face hovered him. He didn't remember making it inside the Edgewise. His blood dripped to the floorboards, soaking in the wood.

"No, no, no!" Mack pressed against the wound, trying to catch the life slipping from him. Melvin's life slipped through the tavern master's fingers.

I don't want to die.

The bête noir shifted within him, tasting his fear, his desperation. It understood death, more so than the entity of the Edgewise. It lashed inside him, clinging, unwilling to let go. Melvin faded. The Edgewise chimed in the silence of his mind, searching for him.

I don't want to die, whispered the bête noir.

The Edgewise considers it.

Please, I don't want to die.

What did a curse know of death? Why does it cling so viciously to life that a tattered heart continued a feeble beat? The Edgewise does not understand death, time, not until this moment. It feels the sorrow and anger of Mack, building, escalating. The tavern master's pain is so acute the rafters shiver. It watches Mack leave, ascending the stairs to Melvin's room. The Edgewise is with him. It's with Melvin's dying body too, witnessing the final beats of his pierced heart. Mortality is natural. Death is natural. The Edgewise understand this.

It reaches, tremulous threads that touch the writhing chaos of the bête noir.

The Edgewise understands. A curse that has tasted life after life, until it became. The bête noir is sentient. The bête noir is not good or evil, it simply is. It is a tangle of chaos and the life it has soaked up with each incarnation, shards of memory, of sentiment. There are remnants of men, of women, of Melvin. The Edgewise delves deeper, until the two entities begin to knit together. A final breath leaves Melvin as the Edgewise lifts the bête noir free.

A tremor races through the floorboards. In the room above, Mack's rage and pain spill over. The Edgewise cradles the faint sentience of the bête noir, rocked by Mack's grief. Furniture explodes, glass shatters. His agony scorches the wood beneath his feet. Macklemore came from nothing. Like the Edgewise. Like the bête noir. But his sentience was more developed, more refined. He connected on a level the Edgewise could not. His grief is profound. In the destruction of Melvin's room, he is the biggest broken piece.

The bête noir is weak. It cannot survive without form. It's sentience is still new, still learning. Still resonating with pieces of Melvin. The Edgewise doesn't know how to heal the tavern master. His grief is an open wound, threatening to bleed out. It drifts closer.

Mack kneels in the middle of the ruin, clutching a photo to his chest of Melvin and himself. His body quakes with the weight of his anguish. Alarm shivers through the Edgewise as the tavern master begins to unravel. Born from nothing, to nothing return. The Edgewise tugs at him through their connection, rafters groaning from the effort of keeping him there. At its Heart, it feels Mack slipping away. The moment swells with choices, possibilities unrealized.

Just for a moment, I need form.

Reality shifts. The bête noir considers it.

The Edgewise kneels in front of Mack. Her hands frame her face. Mack jolts at the contact, eyes widening as he takes in the figure before him.

"Please, stay," she says. She leans in, pressing a kiss to Mack's forehead. The moment slips. This form already begins to fade. "Stay."

"I failed him," says Mack. He takes her hands, burying his face against her palms. He can't let go of the pain. It continues to consume him. She can't make him stay. But she can fix him. She reaches, tugging his memories free, absorbing them into herself.

The fade falters.

She reaches further, plucking memories from the other patrons, until Melvin Deacon exists only inside her Heart. Mack's face relaxes as his grief vanishes, slipping into a dreamless sleep. She sinks him into the floor, bringing him to his room.

The Edgewise picks up the photo from the floor, running her thumb across Melvin's face. This body is a feminine mirror of his features. In this form, in this moment, she can sense the truth between them.

This form doesn't have to fade, whispers the bête noir.

Choices. Memory is impermanent, an unsuitable anchor. The bête noir would need something more.

I want to live, says the bête noir.

"I want to love," says the Edgewise.

She stands before her Heart. Through human eyes, it is beautiful, pulsing, shimmering like a sun under cut glass. A construct of long forgotten science by beings long faded from the known universe.

It is beautiful, says the bête noir.

"You speak like a human," says the Edgewise.

I have lived a long time as a human. Their hearts are malleable yet my hosts always resist my darkest nature.

The Edgewise reaches for her heart, carefully breaking a piece free. It sits heavy in her hands, humming with life.

"What do you dream of?"

The bête noir answers. The Edgewise smiles and plunges the severed shard into her chest.

Reality shifts.

Calponia slumped back in the chair, tears streaming down her face. The room stayed silent until the first sob broke from her chest. She leaned forward, gut deep sobs wracking her body. Who the hell was she? What was she? Her life, all of it, all her memories, were any of them real? Her parents? Why was she even on Earth? What happened to her after that moment?

<You became.>

She jumped. Charette crouched in front of her, her strange glimmering eyes filled sympathy. <We do not know how you came to the Earthen Realm. You have no memory, forgotten or otherwise, of this event.>

"I'm not human." She choked on the words. Calponia clapped a hand over her mouth, wishing she could desperately take it back.

<Is that such an awful thing?>

Calponia blinked, glancing down at Charette, who placed a hand on her knee. Blue lights lit under the woman's fingertips. <You laugh. You cry. You love.> She reached up, wiping a tear from Calponia's cheek. <You are the product of two entities that dreamed of life.>

"But the bête noire is separate. I feel it!"

<Do you? Or is simply a component you haven't integrated? A malfunction of your inner workings?>

Calponia jerked away. "I'm not a computer," she snapped. Charette remained undeterred by her tone.

<The human brain is a super computer built of meat inside a case of bone.> She gestured to Eugene. <His blood teems with an engineered virus that altered his individual cells but his original core remains. We are a nano-mite collective consciousness. Mack is concept made flesh. The Edgewise began as a machine, a beautiful glorious machine, constructed of organic and inorganic parts, so complex it gained sentience. It wanted more. Do you believe we are less for our biology? Our construction? Are we less than the sum of our parts.>

Calponia stared at her. "Well, when you put it like that." A hand slid on her shoulder. She looked up, the motorcycle helmet still on Eugene's head.

"I don't see you as less," he said, his voice so soft she barely heard him through the plastic. She dared a glance at Mack, remembering the incredible pain she witnessed over Melvin's passing. Tears stained the tavern master's face.

"I underestimated the Edgewise," said Mack, meeting her gaze. His blue eyes were infinitely sad but grounded. The tavern master had learned to handle loss. 

Eugene stiffened.

Charette screamed, bucking  as her body shattered in a shower of sparks. Calponia barely registered the shock before Eugene yanked her free of the chair. She shrieked, the fibers pulling free from her skin in a cascade of tiny pinpricks. He scooped her up, spinning in a fluid turn, muscles tensed to flee. She heard a crack. His body jerked and Calponia tumbled free as he collapsed forward, a length of metal buried in the back of his helmet. She screamed. The bête noire bloomed until it spilled out of her in a wave, blanking her vision. The hanging wires of Charette's home writhed and smoked. Her vision cleared to the sight of Mack grappling with Henderson. The latter still looked like a curmudgeon on the verge of collapse, but they were equally matched.

"You were a fool, Macklemore," said Henderson, changing his grip. Blood ran between Mack's fingers.

"I loved you," said Mack.

"Liar," Henderson snarled, delivering a snap kick to the other man's knee. "You lead me on, groomed me to be your apprentice. You offered me the multiverse on a platter. A taste of realities beyond my wildest dreams. Then you ripped it away for the next hapless idiot to fall on your doorstep."

"That's not true," said Mack. "You were my brother in arms. I trusted you with my life, with Melvin's life. You were family!"

"You abandoned me! I expected your anger, but I also underestimated the Edgewise," said Henderson, circling him. "When I found out your memories were altered, I was relieved. I thought things would go back to before." The echo of old anguish flared in the old man's eyes. Calponia stared at him, transfixed. He was the root of all this, the villain, and yet, she pitied him. Eugene groaned. She grabbed at the helmet, realizing the shrapnel didn't penetrate through. He stayed her hand, rising to his knees as he ripped the shard free. He tapped the side of his helmet. Right, exploding brain, not good.

"You left me on Earth to rot," said Henderson. "You never came, for years. I once worshipped the ground you walked on."

Mack shoved him back, hard enough for the man to stagger. "I meant what I said to you that day, Jacob. I saw into your heart. You were never suited to this life. You couldn't handle the responsibilty."

"And that boy could?" He pointed at Calponia. "You believed that thing could?" She startled. Henderson knew exactly what she was. He must have known all along to carry the lie. Eugene growled beside her. Jacob traced a symbol on the air, which whistled shrilly. Mack slammed against the wall, and kept pressing, the wall crumpling behind him. Eugene sank into a crouch.

"No don't," she hissed. He blurred, crashing into Henderson.

<You must stop them>

Calponia bit her tongue as a face rose formed on the floor. "Charette?!"

<The bitter one is tearing through the code of our realm.>

"Oh god," said Calponia. She lept to her feet as Eugene smashed Henderson against the ground. For a second, she thought him pinned until the vampire's helmet peeled back like the skin of an orange. He staggered away, hands clasped over his ears. Calponia rushed to him, alarmed by the blood seeping from his tear ducts. She clapped her hands over his.

"You need to keep your promise," she said. Eugene shook his head, too overwhelmed to speak. She drank in his features. He was paler than ever after their encounter with the Krakens. Blood painted vibrant red streaks down his cheeks, filling his eyes. Pain drew back his lips enough to reveal his teeth. Still perfect. She pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. He grabbed her wrist as she pulled away.

"I'll come for you," Eugene gasped out. He blurred, moving faster than she could see. Mack vanished.

Henderson whirled on her, fury embodied as he stalked toward her.

Calponia closed her eyes. "Promise?" She whispered wondering if Eugene could still hear her.. She felt Henderson as he loomed over her.

"Time to play your part," he said, in a voice that chilled her to the marrow. She felt a tap against her forehead. Reality shifted.