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Author's Chapter Notes:
a watery grave
Max continued to struggle against hands that dwarfed his own, against the grim specter of a man he had grown accustomed to the lonely prospect of never seeing again, now getting a cruel, twisted answer to his childhood question of what would hurt more, if his father never forgave him, or if he did.

The water itself seemed heavy, sluggish, as if it were trying to hold him down. Even as this ghost of the high seas continued to half-drown, half-strangle him, dunking his head each time his struggles faltered even slightly. It seemed the watery grave that nearly claimed him back then had finally caught up with him.

Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled, even against the din of storm and waves, and though it sounded like a bell-buoy, he somehow knew it was really a clock. Spots began to spread across his vision, and water threatened to fill his lungs. That suicidal clock chime he felt he should know from somewhere filled his ears, starting to drown out even the storm.

At some point, his brain had stopped cycling panicked apologies to the unforgiving ghoul that wore his father’s pale, drowned, face, and latched on to those he would regret if he should die.

Bandit. Justin. Shades.

At visions of their faces, he felt something changing. All at once, those iron hands began to loosen, even as the storm started to let up. As his mind cleared along with the clouds overhead, the deck railing became a fountain again.

No longer a child, Max pushed back with all of his renewed strength, sending the phantom stranger stumbling back several paces, looking less and less like Robert of Layosha with each step.

As if waking up from a nightmare he didn’t even realize he was having, Max stood up straight, squared his shoulders, and stared the foul creature down.

“You are not my father.”

For its part, the shambling thing seemed to turn sepia tone, like some of the old photos from his parents’ chest back in the Islands, the color draining and washing out of it by the second. Before Max’s eyes, it began to shrink and desiccate, its skin turning to brittle parchment, its tongue to a shriveled black root. Eyes sunk and collapsed into empty, dark sockets as its whole form crumbled to a fading pile of dust that was already blowing away on a cool breeze.

It was only then that he noticed the ground was dusty dry, without a hint of cloud in the sky. There was crumbling stone fence, but not a single tombstone, and no droopy trees like on Kinsasha, That the fountain itself was empty, the basin lined with a thin film of dried pond scum.

The only reason he was all wet was because he was soaked in his own sweat after that harrowing ordeal.

On closer inspection, Max noticed a shape in the muck, and when he reached into the basin on some unknown impulse, he came up with a rust-encrusted badge, much like the one he had seen Sheriff Duhan wearing.

Wiping both it, and his hand, as best he could, he put it in his pocket and turned back to the house, stepping back in spite of himself at a newfound sense of just how dangerous this place was. The idea of going back in struck him as at least as insane as re-entering the Harken Building, but the thought of Justin and Shades, as well as this Melissa, still wandering around in there cut a blazing streak through his fear. Steeling himself against unknown dangers, he strode back in through a side door he found hanging wide open, letting in to a pantry full of funky smells.

Even as he entered a large kitchen, he noted that more sunlight seemed to find its way in through the windows than he recalled before. The long dining room he passed through also seemed somehow less ominous than he expected. In the great hall, he found a crystal chandelier smashed on the floor in the center of an arcane circle he didn’t recall seeing there before, and when he reached the landing, he also found the carpet runner swept aside, though for what purpose, he wasn’t sure.

He stood there for a long moment, trying to figure out where to go next, he heard a plaintive meowing from the right-hand side. Torn between wariness at another possible trap, curiosity about what was going on in this place, and concern for what sounded very much like a feline in distress, he finally decided to get to the bottom of this.

Up the stairs, at the far end of the hallway, his flashlight lit on a black cat, which he was somehow sure was the same one he saw before, only now she was ranging about the house as if searching for something. Or someone. Caught in his flashlight’s beam, she turned to him, head tilted in feline curiosity, and he found he couldn’t help but give the cat a second chance.