"Do I know you? No, no, really—do I know you?"

"What? How'm I supposed to know?"

"Uh, look, kid, I... I really dunno. Tryin'a figure that out too. But g'luck, right?"



Winn got a lot of answers like that to his questions that day. Bare tree limbs rustled scratchily over vivid red bushes next to an orange-leaf-carpeted street. The cobblestone was wet and the wind biting cold, but the sky overhead was clear and blue, and the sun fiercely bright.

The red-coated boy walked quietly along as he had been for some time, unsure of where he was even going. To his left, an empty park behind a wrought-iron fence, shining with the colors of fall; to his right, steep-roofed little buildings, two, three, and four stories, all nothing but closed shops, barren restaurants, and empty lofts, all on a downward-sloping hill toward a faraway bay; behind him, a backdrop of factories, but not a single smokestack bearing a plume. Ahead, the city continued to thin out as he neared the outskirts.

He held a pencil and pad of paper in his hand. Scratching, scribbling, taking useless notes of his lack of knowledge on a completely mysterious subject and deriving no conclusions from any of it, it was a terribly vain effort, but one he felt a strong compulsion to keep up anyway.



Nobody I've met knows anything. As far as I've discovered, not a soul in the whole city remembers a thing. No one knows where to go to work, so no one's working. Some people on the streets can't even go home, because they were out when whatever-it-was happened, and can't remember where home is.

That means it's useless for me wait around my apartment. My family won't find their way home any time soon. But I don't know where I should go now, either. What should I do? Is everybody like this? What if it was just something strange that happened to our city?

Where is the next city from here, anyway?



Winn stopped writing, stopped walking, and stared off to his left. There was an opening in the iron fence, and a walkway winding through the yard toward a distant, great, gloomy cathedral. It wasn't really the building that caught his attention so much as what was in front of it, though. In the expanse of yard leading toward the immense structure was what looked like a marketplace... but not as busy as one would expect it to be.

Carts were here and there, and lots of empty tables were lined up. People talked, milled about, and some even sold things—mostly food— from their stands. Few succeeded in looking casual or comfortable, though, given the circumstances; an anxious kind of gloom hung over the whole scene, and voices stayed hushed, as if everyone was afraid to talk too loudly.

Winn stared at it for a while. He put away his notepad and adjusted his backpack and his footing, then squared up to face the strange-looking scene. With a deep, stinging breath of cold air, and a slow exhalation of steam, he trudged forward purposefully into the market, and toward the congregation within.

As if the scene weren't awkwardly stilted enough, there in the decidedly thin crowds meandered a sore thumb, if ever there was one. Utterly calm amid a sea of anxiety drifted a girl, thin and relatively tall for her age of what looked to be vaguely fifteenish (not that she knew it), with hip-length tresses of white gold, a wide-brimmed pointed hat, and a fat, visibly aged crow perched precariously atop her right shoulder. Yet that was far from the oddest thing about her; it was the way she seemed to float more than walk, bemusedly observing the muted panic of the passersby with her piercing green eyes and serene smile.

She strolled along with all the urgency of having precisely nowhere important to be, entirely at ease pushing a stubby, squeaky-wheeled cart, upon which sat a large, leather and tapestry carpet bag, maw agape and insides rattling with the clinking of glass.

"Potions," called the girl, in an airy chime.

Attached to her buggy was a sign reading,

*~ Rhiannon's Magical Remedies ~*
• Charms, Potions, Spells •
• Lost items found •
• No love potions or malicious sorcery •

"Potions for sale~"

For the most part, people seemed to be avoiding her.

The quiet jingle and rattle of Winn's own backpack ceased along with his steps at the sight of the girl.

He stood there on the path like a statue as she came closer with her squeaky little buggy. Something about her pointed hat jutted out to him as particularly strange, as if he felt for certain it was unusual or out of place. As he was beginning to learn, though, he could not remember the reasons for any such feelings he encountered, whether nostalgic, fond, or foreboding. This puzzle floated in his head as he continued to watch the hat and its wearer until her sign was in legible reading distance.

He squinted a bit. It occurred to him in that moment that his eyesight wasn't great, either, but it wasn't bad enough to justify spectacles. At least, that's what he told himself, not wanting to have to wear glasses.

"Potions?" he echoed her call with a skeptical twist. The way he snapped his mouth shut and looked a little more alert immediately following may have indicated it to be an unintentional blurt.

There were answers in this city, and Phantom - if that was his real name (it probably wasn't) - was going to find them if it killed him, though it was more likely someone else was going to get hurt if anything. People who weren't purple-clad assassin guys running along rooftops.

Talking to the locals wasn't going to work. They were just as lost as him, amnesiacs all around, and even if they did learn details about themselves from their belongings as he had, they weren't going to talk to the masked man in the snake scale pattern outfit who could not possibly look more sinister if he tried. No, it would be far simpler to break into their homes, gather information directly from their living spaces, and then disappear before he could get caught.

That's what he was doing right then as he went over all of this, searching the drawers of some random civilian's room. Other than a bizarre amount of top hats in the closet, there was nothing here of interest. Nothing bringing him closer to this white-eyed man who had a mysterious reward for him.

Phantom closed the last drawer and, after giving the room a quick once over to make sure everything was as he found it, went to open the window to make his escape. No one would notice him slipping out. It was the perfect getaway.

At least that's what he thought until he actually pushed the shutters open.

At eye height, apparently floating above the street to his left, was a face. It was a flat, blunt face full of bear-trap teeth; above the teeth were horns, and between the horns and the teeth were a pair of eight-ball eyes, with icy-gold irises appearing to float in the murky black sclera around them.

The creature’s mouth opened. It spoke.

“Hey!” it said, in an alarmingly non-demonic girl’s voice that, while shrill, managed to avoid actually being offensive by a margin of at least three hertz, “kind of an odd way to get in and out if you live here, isn’t it!”

“What are you doing?” she said, cocking her head in apparent interest. The creature wore thick clothing of a decidedly foreign make; she was wrapped up to her neck in clothing of a variety of different fabrics and weaves.

Further investigation would reveal that the owner of the face was not actually floating over the street. She was standing on the shoulder of a gargantuan creature who stood underneath her with calm patience. It was about twenty feet tall, and clad in similar clothing as the girl, but scaled up to a ridiculous size, even constructed as it was out of alarmingly normal materials. Instead of cloth it had layers and layers of padded, died leather, instead of thread, for stitches, it had great loops of cord. Eye hooks were gigantic hammered metal contraptions. Buttons were the was the size of bucklers. It had similar horns, (scaled up to several feet long), and a similar shape of eye as the diminutive imp sitting on its head, but instead of clear, almost white irises, the bigger creature had deep, black pools. If it had an visible iris, it was lost in the rays of the sun.

Bright gold and coffee-black eyes regarded the stealthy assassin with varying degrees of interest. The girl was fidgeting with a handle tucked into the immense padded thing that covered her midriff. Too heavy to be a sash, she nevertheless did not seem to wear it as armour. It was as part of her ensemble as everything about her clothing seemed to be, from the intricately stitched cloth band that was looped around her into the form of a skirt, to the soft leather boot that abruptly terminated at a steel-framed open-toe, through which razor-sharp claws could be seen.

Her left foot was wrapped in a bandage, which was half-soaked through with blood. She did not seem concerned.

Below her, the larger creature—clad in layers of died leather, wrapped with strings of what seemed like flags, and relatively less antagonistic than the barking, questioning girl standing on it—watched him intently.

"Yes, of course potions," repeated the girl, as though she were selling something no less ordinary than apples. Her head fell to a cant, spilling an array of blond wisps across her face, as she regarded the potential customer with a placid smile. Slowly, she pushed her little cart of wares towards the boy, rolling to a noisy, well-announced stop just a few feet shy of where he stood.

"Are you in need of any?" she inquired, without subtlety or malice, as she peered intrusively into his face. "I've got just the thing for that eye of yours."

Winn's mouth drifted open for a second, then snapped shut. His eye wasn't injured! It just... didn't match!

"My eye is fine," he answered with face frowning and eye contact immediately broken. He subconsciously took a single step back, grasping his own hands, maybe a little offended or made uncomfortable by her proximity, or both. "Isn't it a little... weird to be selling potions here, anyway?" he asked nervously, deferring attention from himself.

"Is it?" asked the witch, evidently oblivious to any offense she may have caused. Blinking slowly once or twice, the girl, Rhiannon, apparently, turned slowly in place, observing the twenty-or-so-foot berth people carved around her with a sort of detached amusement. The disheveled bird brayed impatiently, and took off, alighting on a nearby overhang, where his deep, blood-red eyes continued to boar into the boy. After a moment, she re-affixed her gaze on Winn, adjusting her hat, which had shifted in all her looking around.

"Well," began Winn, who intended to deliver a matter-of-fact answer, but stopped short. He wrung his gloved hands a couple times, then let them drop limply to his sides.

"... Well," he repeated, "I don't really—... I mean, I guess?" He blinked a few times and hazarded a look at her again. "I can't really remember why, so... maybe it isn't?"

"On the contrary," replied Rhiannon, still staring unnervingly at Winn. "I think those are the sorts of thoughts that we ought to give particular consideration to right now..."

At last, her eyes drifted upward to some indiscernible subject of musing, while thin, spidery arms drifted behind her back, fingers lacing thoughtfully together as she at last concluded with an oddly self-satisfied nod. "Yes... now that I think of it, that makes perfect sense."

Being caught by two strange creatures was slightly less expected that getting caught period, which Phantom hadn't even considered a possibility. That was stupid of him. Phantom wondered if he was this overconfident when he still had his memory and decided it was unlikely seeing as he was still alive and not in a prison.

He gave the two beings a once over, black eyes the only feature not hidden behind his purple hood and black mask. The girl...thingie seemed to be the brains of the duo, given that thus far she had done the entirety of the talking, though the other thingie looked like it was not an opponent to be trifled with. He could probably get away clean if he wanted to.

But that would deprive him of an important learning opportunity.

"I'm a...building inspector."

They were the first words he had spoken out loud since awakening. He was surprised at how deep his voice was.

The girl standing on top of the bigger thing leaned forward and gave him a super-critical stare.

"Really?" she said.

"So do you know who you are?"

"Because," she said pointedly--beneath her, the garguantuan creature shifted and she swayed slightly with it--"because," she repeated, "no-one else does, so far."

Winn paused and touched his hand to his chin thoughtfully. "I guess!" he chimed, as if this was an actual revelation. "Subconscious leanings and all, revealing inner truth, et cetera..."

He paused again and blinked rapidly. His lips pursed.

"I... guess you don't make potions for memory loss, huh."

"Well, I do... Or did, at least, according to this price list I found," Rhiannon replied, pausing to rummage (rather improbably deeply, at that) through her bag, and emerging with a fanciful sheet of heavy cardstock that looked rather like a wine list for an expensive restaurant, covered from top to bottom in lovely, sprawling calligraphy. She tapped it somewhere down the column, and apologetically added,

"But I've forgotten how to make it."

Her momentarily vapid smile gave way to an impish grin that encroached on her lower eyelids, as, with a brisk shake of her head, she amended, "Just kidding!"

"Really, I have a few, but unfortunately, memory elixirs don't work that way."

Phantom folded his arms over his chest, not realizing he was still standing on the edge of the window sill like it was no big deal. Not exactly building inspector-level behavior.

"I awoke and discovered a scroll that contained my identity." At least that wasn't a lie. "Did neither of you find belongings that served the same purpose?"