Delph ran from the Catary, fueled by alcohol and haunted by the Counsel's words. He'd never known such fear, or such loneliness. Where was Fiepet? Where was Ursa? He raced through the night, uncertain and under the influence. The borrowed shoes hurt his feet, the robe was a trip hazard, and his flushed face was wet with tears.

The clouds in his mind would not clear, and nothing was making sense. Ten had gone to fetch something, was it the man that stormed towards their room he'd brought? Had they discovered that he and Ursa had started the rumor of the witch? What of Ursa? Had they caught him? His temples throbbed under the weight of confusion.

His feet had led him far across the plain, long before he realized the lights of the Catary had all but disappeared. Stumbling forward, he fell to his knees and stared up at the unfamiliar sky. The constellation of the witch shone down on him in judgement. This stupid witch! This stupid place! Had Fiepet not insisted on playing hero, they'd never have come here.

There was nowhere to run, but it was all he could do; a drunk purple butterfly, fluttering towards the forest in the moonlight.

Hen was the first to catch sight of him.

Maphis had fallen from Hymm. The divine and desperate beauty appeared to be dancing, but in truth, Delph was frantically trying to free his robe from the sharp thorns of a bramble bush. When the Counsel left the Catary, the crowd had swarmed in in search of the witch. Dispersing in every fathomable direction, it was only a matter of time before someone found him.

Lyre was the first to spot the rabble closing in.

Speaking her dolls to existence, five purple-clad figures floated in the air between Delph and the men chasing after him. While three obscured him from view, the other two deftly removed the thorns from Delph's robe. Their sudden appearance had frightened him, and he tried to loose their grip as they guided him back to the clear and solid path.

"My prize!" said Lyre, the words greedily escaping before she thought to temper herself, "Hurry now, this way!"

A trio of her dolls remained to distract, while she and the others dragged Hen and Delph towards the dense part of the forest. For a path forger such as Lyre, it proved to be no obstacle; the thick trunks parting, and blocking their escape as they closed once more behind them. They did not stop until they were safely hidden, deep into the trees, and beyond where another soul might hear them.

Delph was crying so loudly, afraid that he'd been caught, afraid of what was to come.

Lyre caught her breath beside an ancient oak, as Hen wrestled with the dolls to release their captive. A wave of Lyre's hand and the pair vanished into nothing.

"Was that really the best way to save him?" asked Hen, "Grabbing him like that? Of course he'd be terrified!"

"I did what I could," answered Lyre, "In light of the situation. Are we not all safe now?"

Hen removed the scarf tied about her curls, and dried Delphin's cheeks, shushing him like a child as his sobs continued to pain her empathetic heart. "You are safe," she assured him, "We mean no harm to you. We want to help you."

Two large, green, glistening eyes stared up at her. Hen smiled at him softly.

"I think..." said Delph, the trees beginning to spin, "I think I'm going to be sick..!"

Lyre pulled Hen away just in time, as the stench of sweet wine and stomach bile was strewn across the forest floor.

"It wasn't me this time," Lyre promised, "But it seems wherever you go, pretty one, someone tries to liberate you from your senses. Who fed you so much wine?"

It was the dancer from the Sirrup House.

"Fetch some water," ordered Hen, "Let him recover before asking him questions."

Lyre humbly acquiesced, leaving the two alone in the shadows. Hen wiped his mouth with the corner of her apron and stroked a hand across his back. She wanted to give him time, but it was fast running out.

"Are you Delphin Strahl?" she asked him.

He nodded weakly.

"My name is Mistress Hen and I have met with your brother. He is looking for you."

Delph's pitiful tears were wept with newfound joy. "You have seen Fiepet?" he asked, "Where is he?"

"I will help to take you to him. But quickly, tell me what you know of the Maddening Witch!"

In the journal, Hekse Strahl had written that his son knew nothing of his past. Delphin could be the witch and not know it himself. If that were the case, the Innate would have nothing to fear from him; they could send him home without issue. But then remained the problem of the Warlock. The world would end if he did not find his bride.

Delph's eyes were cautious, but the numb of alcohol had dampened his reluctance to speak.

"Ursa... he thinks father was the Maddening Witch... but I told him not. I think not. And then..."

Hen's touch was soothing.

"We lied," Delph confessed, "We told the men on the road that the witch had come back. And now they know it was us... they will hurt us! The ghost will come and hurt us!"

Delph broke into sobs and burrowed his face into the crook of Hen's arm as Lyre returned with a procession of her dolls. Each one walked carefully, so as not to spill the water cupped in their hands.

"How else was I to carry it?" asked Lyre, "There isn't much can be used as a vessel in the forest."

The Counsel was beginning to grow anxious. The closer they got to the forest path, the more his hope dwindled that Fiepet Strahl would be waiting. 

"So he was the reason you came west?" Elion asked of Ursa's tied and sleeping body, "You weren't looking for someone else, perhaps?"

Buck had informed him that the witch's children were on the isle, and that the Counsel was involved in helping one look for the other. The survivor of Hofingrad was an entirely different matter. A happy coincidence? Or had Ursa been his motivation from the start?

"Why are you here?" asked the Counsel.

"To do my part for our nation," Elion told him with a smile, "There were rumors from the Sirrup House, and it felt right that my former comrades should know of them."

"You were not at the Sirrup House," the Counsel asserted.

"No... but I had friends in attendance. When a stranger appears talking of lands no one has heard of, then you-"

"You think him a madman. Surely?"

"I mean, if that were the case then-"

"Then you would have another motive for seeking the Warlock and butting your nose into business that does not pertain to you." 

Elion had not recalled the gullible Min being so difficult to manage.

"The question then," continued the Counsel, "Is what benefit there would be to you in any of this. What would you gain from your interference?"

Maybe he'd been lucky when he messed with Rel, or maybe the others were so far removed now from the hapless men from Hofingrad he'd met a century ago.

On the Counsel's horse, Ursa was beginning to stir.

"Go back to sleep," the Counsel told him.

That familiar voice, and the familiar feeling that he could not free himself.

"Why?!" cried Ursa, "Why must you make me your prisoner?! Let me go! Untie me!"

"The journey to Relmund is long. Go back to sleep."

Ursa refused compliance. He could not bear to kept once more, sedated and solitary under the guise of safety. He would rather let the Warlock end the world than live in it as the Counsel's pet. And would never have started the rumor so thoughtlessly had he known it meant a return to captivity.

"What is it now?" asked Ursa, "The Protectorate are gone, and no threat to me remains. So why? Why can I not be free?"

"The man you were with. Do you know his identity?" asked the Counsel.

Elion's ears pricked up.

"Piglet? Piglet is the reason I am tied to your horse?!"

"That man..." said the Counsel, "I believe him to be the Maddening Witch."

Ursa closed his eyes and steadied his breath. "Fuck this stupid rumor," he muttered, "You told me yourself, the witch is dead!"

"And I believed it to be true. Until I saw him."

Ursa's early suspicions appeared to be have been confirmed. Delph must look more like his father than he could have imagined, for Min to have mistaken him as such. He truly was the witch's son.

"I'll admit that Piglet may be his spawn, but the demon lies dead. It was I that spread the tidings of the Traveling Men! We only meant to buy Piglet some time to return him to Grunterbad."

"To return him?" asked the Counsel, "Is that why you brought him to the house of debauchery in which I found you? Was there a portal there I did not see?"

Elion was intrigued by their conversation. Not only was news of the witch and his children readily welcomed, but the relationship between the pair had aroused his curiosity. The Counsel sounded jealous.

"We were on our way to Hofingrad," said Ursa, "Return and find my cart to see the offerings there if you do not believe me! I meant to pay my respects before the world met its end."

"There is no reason for the world to end," the Counsel told him plainly, "For the witch lives. I will not tell the Warlock that you brought his bride to such a place, but now we must find a solution. You vowed to kill the witch should he return, but I cannot let you."

Ursa tried to struggle free. "The witch is dead!" he cried, "Piglet is no more a demon than I am a monk! Untie my hands! I have no desire to kill him!"

Those eyes had haunted Min's dreams for a century. Ursa was wrong, or lying. 

"I will have the Warlock send you away to Grunterbad. I cannot risk you putting yourself in danger for the sake of your vendetta. He would not spare even you."

"Min!" cried Ursa.

"Did I hear him correctly?" asked Elion, "The witch is dead?"

Ursa was startled by his voice. From his vantage point, he had not seen the other figure riding beside them. He presumed if there was a second horse, that it was Remora, stuck as always to his master's side.

"Yes!" Ursa declared, "You heard it well enough."

"And yet, the Counsel seems to disagree with you," noted Elion.

"Do not speak with him," the Counsel decreed, "Both of you speak nothing but nonsense."

Had Rel been there, he would have said the same.

"This again?" moaned Fiepet, the Warlock continuing his interrogation as they walked the path to the clearing, "You speak such nonsense, I don't know how to answer you. I have told you as much as I know."

There was something in Fiepet Strahl's nature that warmed even the coldest of opinions of him. They had not traveled far when the Warlock reached his conclusion; that Hekse Strahl's eldest child had proven to be no threat. But there was another. A mysterious brother, whose arrival at the Printworks was neither remembered, nor documented.

Was it the younger Strahl he should have been on guard against? Could the missing Delphin have been the son of the Protector?

"Look." Fiepet said, "I do not know above that silly little play, anything about witches or Protectors or heaven knows what! As I explained it to you clearly, my brother and I jumped into the water to save you! And now we are separated in this... well! In this bloody well maddening isle! Pardon my language but I am quite put out!"

"So, if I were to recover my power and send you back, you would go without a fight?"

"I would thank you greatly!" Fiepet replied, "As long as my brother left with me. I promised my father I would keep him safe."

"Your father favored him?" asked the Warlock.

"The youngest," Fiepet offered, "Is often favored. Not to mention, father saw something of himself in him."

The Warlock's desire to meet the second son began to grow; beyond merely allaying his suspicion. Once the book was found and Elion was killed, if the Strahl brothers were innocent as Fiepet claimed, he would send them home in honor of their father.

"Your brother," said the Warlock, "Do you know where was he going? How did you know where to find him?"

Fiepet waggled his foot at the leader of the Madning Isle.

"An enchanted shoe?" asked the Warlock.

Fiepet sighed and slipped his foot right out of it. "The Counsel assured me he does not do magic, so I had to assume that you did. But even he could find my brother with this shoe."

"Give it to me," the Warlock demanded.

Fiepet defiantly put it back on. "What do you want with my brother?" he asked.

"To ask him some questions," the Warlock replied, "And ensure he is who you purport him to be." He surprised himself with the explanation he provided, where ordinarily he'd have answered such a question with a swift and violent kick.

 "Not that it will do you much good," said Fiepet, pushing the shoe over to the Warlock, "Since we're without the means to reach him quickly."

A circle drawn in the dirt, the shoe placed at its center, a drop of green liquid...