Belladonna

wandered the paths, playing the songs he heard in each access point to a landscape. Shoring up the bedrock, that's all he was doing, but the tunes were starting to shift nonetheless. Maybe they were meant to, but he would hold on to them for as long as he could.
    He spent a day on each circuit within the walled garden. But he never stepped beyond that. Never went past the gate and up to the house that was now his — the home he had yearned for. Still yearned for. Nadia grew impatient with him sometimes because of it, but his self-imposed exile was the only reason Lee could tolerate dealing with him when they had to meet for business.
    Since the Eater of the World was caged again, and it was safe once more to connect landscapes, Lee had done his duty as Bridge and created a stationary bridge that connected the Island in the Mist to Sanctuary. From Sanctuary, another stationary bridge connected to Aurora, the Den, and Darling's Harbor, giving him easy access to his family and the places Glorianna would have wanted him to be able to visit.
    Not that he ever used the bridge that led to Sanctuary. It was within sight of the house — and within sight of the bed of turned earth that held the piece of granite and the heart's hope that was his heart's symbol for home.
    Putting the bridge there, where he would be reminded of what Glorianna had given him every time he used it, was a piece of calculated cruelty on Lee's part — payback for a broken arm and a lost sister. He understood that well enough.
    So he did his duty to the world and played his tunes while his heart froze in a winter that would never end.

    *
There was no Light.
    At first, It had felt gleeful that the surviving currents of Light within the school had been so diminished that they were little more than starved threads, easily snuffed out. It had reveled in the despair and anger that had flowed from the surviving humans in Wizard City, as well as gulping down the fear that had flowed from the Dark Guides.
    But the glee had faded with the Light's currents. It found no pleasure in the dark landscapes. It took no satisfaction from the knowledge that the True Enemy was trapped within Its landscapes. It had come to realize that It, too, was trapped. With her.
    So It felt no glee, no pleasure, no satisfaction. The feelings that fed, and were fed by, the Light were snuffed out almost before they could form.
    But It did know fear. It crossed the rust-colored sand of the bonelovers' landscape and found mounds of half-dissolved carcasses. It discovered death rollers impaled on the branches of thorn trees, hanging in the sun like some obscene, rotting fruit. And It watched humans, gathered in hunting parties for safety, grimly butchering one of those death rollers before the meat spoiled.
    When It rested, images crept into Its mind. Nasty dreams about Its fluid, natural form becoming stiff as leather; no longer able to flow beneath the skin of the world; just barely able to hump over the surface, defenseless and exposed. Or It would get stuck in the transformation between one shape and the other, stuck between a land creature and a sea creature, unable to live in either landscape, gasping to survive. Or It would change into the middle-aged gentleman, but the body would divide at the waist, becoming the gentleman and one of the female prey. Sometimes the gentleman had a knife, sometimes claws. Either way It would rip and tear Its prey, screaming in pain because It ripped and tore into Itself.
    This was Its purpose. This was why the Dark Guides long ago had shaped It from the darkest desires of the human heart and brought It into the world: to destroy the Light. But ...
    It didn't like the Dark. Not this much Dark, where there was no hope of a successful hunt, where the human hearts were already so dulled by despair they couldn't hear It — and didn't care when they did.
    The Light was gone. It should be happy. But happy belonged to the Light, so the feeling withered before it bloomed.
    It didn't like this landscape. And It was afraid of the thing that walked in the Dark because she could sense Its wishes as swiftly as It could make the wish — and destroyed the manifestation of that wish the moment after It realized It had gotten what It had asked for.
    No, It didn't like this much Dark. This wasn't what It wanted. This place was too cold, too barren, too bitter. Too lonely.
    World? It whispered. Ephemera? Where is the Light?
    Its only answer was Belladonna's cruel,