When I knocked on Rayngo’s door I heard what I believed to be the sound of raised voices before I realized it was only a single voice that was shouting from inside headquarters before anyone came to answer the door. The door was thrust open in frustration, but when its assailant spied me on the other side, he had a look of slight embarrassment. He had short black hair and brown eyes creased in an anxious squint. His face was clean shaven and tense around the jawline in a manner that appeared calmly studious in contrast with the impression of his eyes. He wore all black leather from his boots to his jacket with many loops and pockets that look like they might be used for holding tools. I thought that his outfit might be one useful for exploring a deep forest and perhaps mountainsides as well.

  I recognized him. He had been there the day we left for the front lines, but had taken the other carriage to a different camp. The man whose name I had never caught awkwardly nodded his head then scurried past me leaving Rayngo in his place to greet me.

  “Well if it isn’t our intrepid king among paupers, or better yet our pauper king”

  I grinned feeling refreshed that Rayngo was keeping at his normal nonsense despite all that had changed. It was one of the few signs of normalcy I couldn’t resent.

  “So I must be the poorest man in the world? I’ve been wondering this for awhile, but even if you weren’t saying the same sort of stuff to all of us, what exactly would a leader of scrubbers be expected to do?”

  He was hobbling over to his tools as we spoke and I seated myself in a chair closer to the work station than the beds I would usually occupy. He began using the same flask he usually used for mixing the tonic for preparing tea instead. It gave him a sloppy appearance, but I knew he washed his tools well enough that there would be no unfortunate mixtures.

  “Well I imagine your first job would be making sure none of your subjects jumped down the throat of a poor old attendant just because a decision made outside his power. You would think I was personally keeping him under confinement, but my name isn’t circumstance, its Rayngo Hob.”

  He poured the contents of the flask into two mugs and placed one down on the table beside me before taking a seat himself and sipping his.

  “You mean that scrubber that just left. I had thought the scrubbers from the other carriage had already left. What exactly happened to him?”

  They could have, like Thomas and Karen, decided to stay in Duskhovel for a short time I suppose, but I neither saw nor heard of them when I arrived so I assumed they quickly passed through.

  “Well, you see, it’s because of that order for all the scrubbers that were sent to the front lines to meet in the capital after a month. Yes. He’s from down south you see. It would be slightly over three weeks for him to reach home leaving him less than a week even if we graciously interpreted the order to mean he only had to start traveling in a month. Well, no ones telling him he can’t go home, there just isn’t any point in doing so is there? What’s this poor old man to do for him? I was never meant to be a mouthpiece for the capital.”

  Something about his explanation seemed off to me and it only took me a moment to figure out what it was.

  “Three weeks south? How did he join our expedition in the first place?”

  It would have been impossible. It couldn’t have been even a week before they arrived in Duskhovel. Raechel was from Vealt, normally six days out but rushed, Thomas from Mapleboro, roughly five days away, and Karen…

  I’m surprised to only be realizing this now. Obviously, Karen couldn’t have been sent from Monderlow and the same goes for the other scrubber from the south. The disease would have been much farther along even if they had rushed when they heard of it, so they must have already been somewhere nearby.

  “Ah yes, he was visiting the Night Custodian Academy to negotiate a transfer. It’s part of the reason he’s got himself in such a twist to be sure. He plans to move to Tembalburg, a place roughly a nineteen day's ride to the northwest. He had all his things in Vealt while waiting for the academy to help him with the move, but after everything that happned he wanted to visit his old home before the move. What's more he isn't gonna be able to take anything with him to the capital, so now he’s going to have to zip up to the capital, zip all the way back down south to Thumblrook, and then zip all the way back up to his new home through Vealt to make the move. I imagine he was already irritated at having to go back and forth between Vealt first and now this.”

  Then was it the same for Karen? Regardless of how she might feel towards me she had been far too ready to make the transfer to Duskhovel. Even if we had the need of a new scrubber and even if she had her reasons not to be attached to her home, I felt like it would have normally deserved further consideration. It would make more sense to me if that was something she had already been seeking out.

  She may also have been near Vealt at the Night Custodian Academy when the order had been sent out, trying to negotiate a transfer. The academy acts as something of a national headquarters for scrubbers and if you want to change the location of your work it’s the place you need to go. We are generally able to stay in the same area we hail from for work since on average no one place has an abundance of applicants, but we can’t move around at our own discretion since coverage has to be maintained. If you want to move it will generally have to be done with someone willing to trade places, or when the location you’re moving to has less scrubbers than the one you’re moving from. You can start the process through the etherways, but the end it in person with some paperwork and assistance with your move. Usually it isn't finalized until both scrubbers that are switching are in Vealt. Since Karen is from the capital, she would have surely been able to find someplace without trading places if the actual location didn’t matter, so she was probably already on her way unless she hadn't settled on a new terriotory already. Was it because of the matter concerning her sister? Just how much tension existed between them when she claimed they got along?

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “And may I know the name of this unfortunate scrubber?”

  “Yes yes, of course. He’s Matt Yeddle. A fine young man. Indeed a larper among paupers or dare I say a pauper larper.

  “So, he’s faking being poor?”

  Rayngo must have actually been angry since he didn’t normally bestow insulting titles on us.

  “Then he may very well be the king among us. But never mind, never mind him for now. Just take him out for a night on the town one of these days and he should simmer down just as well. Out with it then. You didn’t visit me today just to discuss the plight of the paupers; you have some serious business you’re carrying along with you, yes?”

  I sat my mug down on the table and gripped my hands together as my face darkened.

  “Are there few enough people wearing the waking hour that you’d be able to identify one if I described them to you.”

  “Yes yes…that would be it yes.”

  Rayngo’s voice dropped to something somber, and he twiddled his thumbs together.

  “If we are speaking of a demon possessed, there is no reason to be sure our life’s coincided with each other’s.”

  He would have heard of my report when he was detailed with the order for us to be sent to the capital. I don’t respond to his challenge and instead I start describing my experience putting special emphasis on my description of the unnamed scholar and his words. The more I speak the more his eyes widen in horror…and recognition. By the time I’m finished, I’m hardly able to recognize him for the expression on his face.

  “Well well”

  His voice is gruffer than normal and there seems to be something indefinable sad in it. He gets up and walks to his bookshelf filled with academic tomes, a few of which I know to be written by him himself, and pulls out a large dark blue book with a blank cover and drops it on the table in front of me.

  “You won’t find that book in any library. Its author only made a single copy and left it with me before he disappeared. Tembralvain would have never let him have it published and I myself contested his conclusions, but it’s good work regardless of the lens he saw it through. I won’t tell you his name. As far as I’m concerned, that name died when he contracted with a demon.”

  I flipped it open. The pages were messy scrapes and jotted with penned notes rather than typed words.

  “Then this is…”

  “Yes that’s the research of the man you encountered and from what you told me likely the research that drove him to what he’s become.”

  I flipped a few pages and read random highlighted excerpts. Indeed, it all seemed to parallel the ideas the scholar had madly ranted about. It spoke of controlled experimental localized outbreaks and of samples taken from flora and insects. It listed properties that were similar to known diseases found within them. I read one of these excerpts out loud.

  “The change in the fly’s blood mimics that of the cilithema carriers that spread fog breath and the change in the blood is maintained after the decaying of the fly’s exoskeleton heals, disappearing in a similar time frame in which a fly would be expected to develop immunity to cilithema. In a plant’s leaves I found stains in the midrib that were reminiscent of gildphia. In a similar fashion even after the surface level wilting vanished the gildphia like symptoms remained eventually killing the plant.”

  “There were similar experiments done in the past, but the current academia wouldn’t sanction even controlled outbreaks. I will admit, I actually assisted him in his research even if I ultimately disagreed with his thesis. Don’t get me wrong, the findings in this account are verifiably true and I think if Tembralvain would just accept them it would move our understanding of the disease forward by leaps and bounds. But the end result of those findings, immunity through exposure, I couldn’t agree with that. In the first place, we still know too little about the actual source. Even if weckenrot mimics natural illness in some regards, there is no guarantee of immunity forming when it doesn’t proliferate from an equivalent source. And the cost? Unthinkable. There can be no vaccine for the subconscious, it would take mass perpetual exposure to be far reaching and lasting, and there is no way for that to be controlled in a manner that wouldn’t lead to thousands of deaths. And that may very well be…”

  I closed the tome and held my breath. My mind was dizzy with information. Why was I even seeking it out? What could I possibly do or say in response to what I have learned? I was haunted by the words of the unnamed scholar and just wanted an answer that could help settle my spirit, but all I found was more confusion. I didn’t want this knowledge and I didn’t want to hear Rayngo speaking in a manner that reminded me of the deranged scholar. I wasn’t only looking directly into the depths of the filth, I was seeking it out in my waking hours. To this day I have no idea why I said what I did next.

  “If somehow that source could defined, if that issue was circumvented, could there actually be some merit to this?”

  What did I even mean by that? Rayngo hesitated at my question.

  “That’s really oversimplifying the issue, but…my intuition tells me that even in such a circumstance it would be inconceivable as long as the source of exposure comes from a place as detached as the ether ways only…”

  He chewed at his lip in search for the right words.

  “Only if somehow those lines and splotches could be brought into the waking world then with that kind of controlled exposure…maybe in a world such as that a cure could actually be found. But the opportunity of such a circumstance…that would take some form of miracle wouldn’t it?”

  The very idea of the waking world being filled with the filth being called a miracle sent a shiver down my spine. But if it really could be cured would I want that world, one where the filth could be left to be so others would just have to deal with it? Or would I desire to erase it away regardless?

  I put on my jacket finished my tea in one gulp and walked towards the door.

  “Thank you for today Rayngo. You’ve given me a lot to think over.”

  “No no lad, that isn’t right at all. Don’t get lost in everything we discussed today. It’s all just obtuse fluff when it comes down to it. Never forget Douglass, what you and others call the filth is a natural phenomenon and cleaning it is a natural response. If you forget that then no matter what else you learned, I wouldn’t have taught you anything at all.”

  “Right.”

  I let his words sink in and walked back outside where the evenings sunset was beginning to fall.