It occurred to me that I now knew where the boundary was thanks to Steeve's silliness, silliness which was wandering around inside the boundary line between strange and normal. It was planting the flowers, which sprayed around once placed like some sort of manic dancer, heads whipping back and forth and water flying. It had a whole garden of them.

Knowing where it was didn't help me see what it did, though. Before we could go in and rescue István, we had to figure out how to defeat this problem, or we'd just be throwing good after bad.

The partially completed version of me was where I'd left her, slowly unravelling. I'd given up the project, unable to determine what the route forward was. I'd tried several things, but was unable to capture the correct feeling.

Without giving my me more 'me', the field of nonsense around the town would just continue trying to infect me, the real one. It was good at it, as well. It would get to you in any way possible, then subtly play with your inhibitions to make you want to stay in its field of influence longer.

The edge of it seemed somewhat fungible, but stayed in roughly the same place enough that I could see the way my footprints went up to and then turned away several times in various places, showing the boundary without providing a direct visual indication.

But how do you deal with something you can't see or interact with?

I turned back to the statue of Nebula, grabbing ahold of the power again. Time to do something with it. It firmed up almost instantly once I touched it, my will flowing back in immediately, as though it'd never left. The behavior twigged a thought in my head.

When I'd made the memory with my father, back in the strange city (or rather, the first one… I seemed to be having an overabundance of strange locations lately) I'd given all the very strong feelings I'd had about that memory to it, essentially injecting it with my Will. The uppercase kind Celistar walked about when she referred to Will of the World.

The 'me' in that scene had felt so real that for a moment I could of believed that was me, as though I was creating the memory in real time. It was very odd, but that was the sort of feeling I was trying to capture here, to fool whomever was keeping us away from Elder Scholar.

Keeping that last moment of creation in mind, I applied it here, feeling my way around this new shape, and feeding it all the worry and frustration I had about István. As I watched, it began to fill out, gaining color and opacity.

"That feels more like you," Viktor said, as if to confirm I was on the right track.

After a few minutes, it seemed to hover there, just on the edge of unreality. I couldn't figure out what else to push in, to tip it over. What would this Char be missing that I had?

Oh right.

Sass.

It was surprising how easily I got to the edge of the town. The outermost buildings were more run down than the inner ones, like they were taking the brunt of the weathering. The wood had gone all gray, and shrunken in on itself like a little old man, all dried up and craggy.

"I'll name you former Sect Master," I said to a particularly wizened one. It had a slight hunch - a lean - to it. Someone had propped it up with a thin and long branch from a tree, making it look almost like it was leaning on a cane. The comparison fit well.

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This close to the city, I could feel the inhibition-lowering field clawing at me, trying to get in. The 'hibition' field? What is the opposite of inhibition, anyway? I stopped for a moment, checking the feeling to verify it was just normal Char-level strange thoughts, and not anything else.

I could feel those eerie fingers sliding off me, unable to grab hold of my form. With each step closer, I could feel it becoming more desperate, concentrating on me more and more, as if the frustration of its failure alone would drive me to success.

It wasn't going to work, and all it was doing was giving me a better and better idea of what direction to push towards, as in its desperation it had thickened the raking of its tendrils to the point that they weighed more heavily on my form in one particular direction.

There was a bar in the center of the town, or so the sign above the door said. Said door was mostly on its hinges, with the top one having let go at some point, allowing it to cant away from the wall a bit.

I pushed my way through, not using a ton of force on the off chance it gave up. Not that it would hurt me, but I would feel bad damaging it. It swung oddly well for something in its condition. Why would you grease the hinges on a door but not fix them?

Oh, that's why.

A tiny wisp of an old man sat behind the bar counter, maybe coming up to my shoulder if I was lucky. It'd take him two stools just to reach that top hinge. No one else was inside, so I walked his way.

A little soul patch was on the center of his chin, looking more like a wisp of smoke that had given up on rising into the air and decided to just hang out there. He had more hair coming out of his ears than he did on all of his head, and a pair of little round glasses with dark lenses that sat below flamboyant eyebrows. A tattoo peaked out of the shoulders of his sleeveless shirt and a little around the neck.

"Why hello there, young lady," he said. A kind smile spread across his face. "I don't see many like you around these parts. Anything I can get for you?"

"Hi!" I said brightly. "Do you have something interesting to drink?"

"I do, actually," he said. "We've been seeing a lot of new faces around, and one brought by something I'd never had before. I like it so much, I bought the whole barrel off him. Cost me a fair bit, but it was worth it. Been the talk of the town."

He pulled out a perfectly polished glass from below the bar, disappearing from view entirely to reach it. He slid it over to a spigot, pulling a lever to dispense a rich and foamy brown liquid from it. Then he slid it over to me as I pulled myself up to the far side of the bar, a practiced hand allowing it to stop directly in front of me without spilling so much as a drop.

I lifted the drink to my face, and scrunched my nose up as little bits of fizz jumped up into it, tickling the inners, as it were. I took a sip.

An explosion of flavor filled my mouth, rich, but not too sweet.

"Wow!" I said, almost in spite of myself, the exclamation sounding almost as childlike as the wonder I felt at the flavors. They were nostalgic, yet original all at once. "I can see why you'd pay so much for such a thing!"

"Yes! I am glad you agree." He said, wiping another glass in what had to be a habit of some kind. "But what brings you this way?"

"I seem to have lost my friend," I said, and I felt the sharp corners of the claws frantically scrabbling at me. They were very close, ahead and to my left, away from the kindly old man, who was off to my right a little. I'd been deliberate in where I sat down, and it had paid off.

"I last saw him around here when we were walking through," I continued, and he nodded along politely. "He's tall and immaculately dressed, the very essence of a Scholar." Using István's 'Elder' name only felt right.

At the mention, the claws began to slam into me, so hard it felt almost dizzying. Whoever was controlling them definitely knew I was here and what I was here for. Too bad he couldn't do anything about it, and would never be able to.

The barkeep blanched a little at the mention, more or less glaring at the door to the back once he came back to himself. "He's there," he said, tilting his head towards the entrance, the framing of which was tilted enough to match the lopsided door at the front. "They likely won't be happy to see you, though."

It said in such a way that anyone listening in could plausibly interpret it as referring to István, but the way he used his face left it clear that he was warning me.

"I guess I'll be the judge of that," I said, and the claws turned into fists, banging against me with wild abandon. I let them slide off as everything else had.

"But first," I said, lifting the glass, "I'm going to savor this."

"Wise idea," said my companion, his cheerful laugh splendid company for the drink.

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