"I think it is a very bad idea."

"If I didn't know better Wink, I would say that you were on a campaign to keep me miserable," Eli responded, voice echoing strangely in the enclosed space as he forced himself deeper into the cupboard.

Something heavy and wet rested on his back, like a sack of seaweed.

"You know that's not what I am saying. I have looked out for you longer than anyone you know. All I am saying is you need to think about the potential inevitability of it happening again."

Eli emerged from the cupboard for a moment to set down a couple of open jars, hands slowly curling into fists at his sides, "I don't want to talk about that Wink." He gook a deep breath, "Peter isn't like the others. He has nowhere to go and nothing else to do, he has no family and no friends." He reached his hand back to set another dusty jar on the stone floor behind him," I find it highly unlikely that it would happen again.''

"You could have said the same thing about your parents."

At those words, Eli froze, slowly withdrawing himself from the darkened cupboard and turning to look at Wink. The expression on his face was hard and cold.

Wink oozed backward slightly, "Now hold on, don't give me that look. You and I were both thinking it. I am not trying to stop you from doing what you want, but I feel it is my duty to let you know what I think. This happens to you every time. And next time it happens, the Exclusion isn't going to drop its hold so easily."

"That isn't going to happen," Eli muttered, grabbing the jars off the floor and walking them back over to the table.

The door to the tower was open, and outside, he could just see Peter's silhouette as he walked along the rocky pebbles of the beach, occasionally bending down to pick up a stone before tossing it into the waves.

He wouldn't dare follow Peter's outside. He worried, worried continually that it would happen again, that he would wander out into the Desolate and be gone forever. Despite the walls of the tower, he could still feel the urge, a sort of aching in his bones: a hunger to be alone. He was safer inside because even if he didn't want to admit it, Wink was right. Exclusion was too comforting and one day he might just do it again.

Eli shivered and turned back to the door, watching Peter.

They had spent the last few weeks in a state of fevered planning and study. Eli was already preparing for his next trip, and he felt that Peter deserved a little break. Despite his concerns, Eli urged Peter to spend time outdoors as the outside would be nice in the middle of the day despite being so silent.

This was the outer edge of the Desolate, right before where the Sheer began, and so it wasn't so heavily oppressive as the Desolate might have been. When he was younger, his parents had allowed him to play outside during the day, as long as he kept in sight of the tower.

He gave Peter those same instructions now, though staying close, to keep an eye on the young man as he made his way up and down the rocky beach.

A part of him would have liked to tell Peter that it wasn't safe, that he should stay inside the tower, but he did his best to force down those thoughts. Peter was an adult and deserved his freedom, but still a part of him worried: worried that when he looked up, he would find the silhouette vanishing into the distance, and he would be alone once more.

"Eli listen-"

"I am done talking about this, Wink. Unless you have something productive to say then you can be quiet."

Peter sat now, resting his weight against one of the bone white logs of driftwood producing a book from his new satchel, not unlike Eli's and began to read.

Peter was like that, he liked to do things in quick spurts of energy and concentration usually lasting around fifteen minutes to half an hour. He wasn't like Eli, who was prone to getting lost in his thoughts and research for hours on end until the daylight waned and he was no longer able to read the words on the page. Granted his concentration was a little less focused now that Peter was here, asking questions and occasionally making observations, but still the differences were evident.

A part of Eli resented Peter being there, disturbing his quiet, but the greater part of him pushed those thoughts aside reminding himself that he was grateful for the company. Being alone, or being with someone was just like anything else, a matter of practice, and he had practiced being alone for a very, very long time. It would take him time to grow acclimated to a new presence in his life.

He turned back to the table, where Wink glowered at him morosely and he began to spoon grain into one of the jars. His supplies were meager, and although it satisfied one's hunger it didn't satisfy ones's cravings. Now that there were two of them, Eli knew that he would need to head into the city for supplies, whether he liked it or not.

A passage from one of his father's books came to mind just then: a passage that had detailed a purportedly true account of a woman who had found herself trapped in the Desolate. She talked about wandering through Isolation, left with only her own thoughts. She chronicled bright and vivid hallucinations dredged up from her own mind as she tried to comprehend the vast loneliness. On more than one occasion she mentioned the slight chill to the air that, while not cold, was never warm enough for her to be comfortable, along with the constant moaning of the wind that made the silence seem even more bleak. She did mention that Exclusion had one interesting characteristic, and that was it provided for her, or gave her the means to provide for herself.

She had a theory that Exclusion didn't want her dead, just lonely and so had sustained and watered her while she wandered.

Eli wasn't convinced as his own experience demonstrated some notable differences. He did, however, remember the cold. A cold that he carried with him even today, a cold that called him back to the vast Desolation.

He shivered and tried to shake the thought away slamming the pack down on the table just to give himself some noise, to bring himself back into the present. He had to keep moving, had to keep thinking.

His hands trembled as he put the things into the bag readying themselves for their trip. He had to get moving soon, had to learn more about the Dreads before it was too late.... He could feel that he didn't have long.

Exclusion had a habit of drawing you in slowly, making you think you were doing it to yourself, making you think that you liked it. It made you resent the people around you and the ever present noise of having others in your way.

Eventually you embraced it with open arms.

Many people, like him, toed a dangerous line by living in the Desolate. As far as places to live went, it was pretty safe and secure in comparison to other locations, but he knew that, eventually, Exclusion would take him too.

Sooner rather than later.

"Eli?"

He nearly jumped out of his skin, as he turned around to find Peter standing in the doorway, white collared shirt tugged slightly by the wind blowing in from the sea.

"Yes?"

"I think we should lockup."

Eli glanced out the door, finding himself nodding as he watched dark brooding storm clouds roll in from the sea. The wind picked up and he motioned for Peter to close the door as he walked up the stairs to pull the tarp into position.

The room grew dark, but Peter had a fire going by the time Eli climbed back down, and together the two of them sat at the table, huddled in the darkness of the tower as rain began to pound the stones outside. Eli could hear it as a faint drumming against the glass above.

"Is this, Tempest?" Peter wondered, but Eli shook his head.

"No, just a regular storm."

Peter gave a weak smile. "Even the normal is frightening at times."

Eli chuckled, "That is the truth of it."

Peter traced a finger absently over the cover of his book, resting silently on the table before him, "Are there... records of how things were before the Dreads came along? Do we know what it was like?"

Eli shrugged, "Not really, the oldest record I ever found chronicled the last war, but that wasn't particularly helpful. Scholars have theorized what a world would be like without the Dreads."

Peter leaned in curious, and Eli went on, surprised to find he was pleased to have an audience, "First, civilization would change as our lives would be determined by the world around us; for example, weather patterns, geologic formations, soil consistency, natural resources and plant life would replace a Dread"

He could see the look of skepticism on Peter's face, but kept going.

"The Dreads would still be there but only as an emotional force, not a physical one. I could still be lonely and isolated, but without the same consequences. People would still get sick, but there would be no acolytes.... The world is.... Very strange and very difficult to explain. Some researchers think such a world never even existed and cuuldn't have existed."

Peter nodded slowly, taking a sip from his still steaming cup of tea, "I agree with them."

Eli grunted, "Either way, I hope to one day find out.' He had looked into the history of the Dreads, and by extension the history of what came before the Dreads. It was, to his great displeasure, difficult to find any information as to the world before the Dreads. A few volumes remained here and there that contained scraps of what had come before, though the scraps were so obtuse and out of contexts that it was difficult to unravel, and like the rest of today's scholars Eli was inclined to believe that much of the literature that had been written before the Dreads, had been destroyed sometime during the first war.

The war that, some scholars postulated, created the Dreads.

A war that had been so violent so inhumane and so horrible that the very fabric of the world had been torn. Legends contained accounts of the war being so horrible that fear, once just an emotion, was given physical form. He could not escape the narratives he had read which described the atrocities committed by men: women and children hiding in burning houses, families running as fire fell from the sky, men torturing and brutally killing others and the hatred which filled the world

However it had begun: greed, hate, envy or deprivation, manuscripts had been lost, and it had taken less than five generations for the world as it was before to be forgotten.

Now their origins were nothing more than conjecture and speculation.

Eli opened his father's journal, taking a sip of the tea as he looked through his notes on the Exposed. He had never really liked tea, it tasted like leafy dishwater to him, but Peter liked it, and always made him a cup. The hot beverage felt nice going down into his stomach despite the taste.

"So, we're heading to Genua next?" Peter asked.

"That is the plan. I am hoping to get a new perspective on my studies." He looked up at Peter, "Each of us sees information through a different lens. Yours was through Affliction, mine is through Exclusion. What we really need is a more inclusive perspective, maybe another can see the things we cannot."

"And how do you plan on doing that?'

"My father had a contact in Genua who goes by the name Tykhe. She spends her summers in Genua and then heads out during the fall. We should show up just in time to catch her on her way out. Hopefully, she will have information that could be useful to us."

Peter took another sip of his tea, "Information to save your life you mean/"

Eli hadn't put it that way, but ever since picking up Peter, the younger man had latched onto the idea of saving Eli's life, and worried at it like a dog with a bone, "Yes, among other things."

Peter nodded, hands cupped tight around his tea, "Tell me more about the Exposed, how does it manifest?"

Eli paused, "Simple, there are no secrets, and there is no privacy, not even in your own head."

"That's impossible."

"You say that, but it's true."

"How?"

"Well, first of all, the city is made of glass."

They stayed in the tower for another week to recuperate and research before setting off. There wasn't anything more that could be gleaned from the books that Eli hadn't already found, and having Peter look it all over to give his opinion would take years they didn't have.

So it was with that in mind that they set out in the early morning dawn, weighed down with supplies and books, which Peter intended to read on their journey..

Eli didn't know how much reading they would have time for, but he respected Peter's dedication to their cause.

A solemn fog hung low over the coast. It tugged the air down, attempting to smother them with its weight, making the Desolate seem even more isolated, but they were prepared. Eli felt the comforting yet dragging rope around his waist, leading back and connected to Peter who walked behind him, a book in one hand. Eli was mildly impressed that the man could walk and read at the same time, but he doubted it would be so easy when they made it to more rocky terrain.

Instead of heading towards the Lost, like he had done before, Eli bore west and south down the coast, setting a punishing pace in fear of being caught in the Desolate when darkness finally came. The Exclusion was not the only Dread to fear in the Desolate. With wide open skies and complete and overwhelming darkness at night, the Sheer was a significant concern; one that he would like to avoid as much as possible.

He knew Exclusion could drive you mad slowly, but from what he knew about the Sheer, it was a one-hit experience if vast spaces were something that bothered you.

The fog burned off sometime before noon when they turned east and headed inland over the forbidding and rocky waste of the Desolate. The Desolate was a lot like the Lost in terms of being difficult to navigate, but rather than looking the same everywhere, it had a tendency to muddle your mind with your own thoughts, so that you weren't in the right state of mind to even notice you were wandering.

But Eli was used to it, and when Peter started to wander, there was always the rope to keep him in place.The sky overhead was still a cloudy steel gray and as smooth as a sheet of metal.

Eli's mind wandered, though his steps stayed true to their course. He wondered about the truth of the Desolate, wondered if there were people wandering out here, sustained by the very place that kept them trapped. Would he perhaps, one day, see a man wandering on the horizon, who looked like him and spoke like a scholar, or a woman wearing white? He wondered about a small tree encased in a perfect circle. And he wondered about his new friend, whose escape had brought with them a legion of Outbreak nipping at their heels like wild dogs.

His musings were cut short as a shape appeared in the distance. He couldn't see it so well right now, but he'd come this way enough times to know what it was. The ground around them was a vast expanse of cinereal dirt, cracked like baked desert clay despite the overwhelming chill. It stretched out into all directions, as flat as a chess board and blending into the sky at its edges. The sky was not overcast as before in the Desolate, but it was gray and oddly devoid of the sun despite the sky being bright. Clouds rolled overhead, long tendrils that stretched from horizon to horizon moving faster than he thought they should have. Even though Eli liked silence, here it was oppressive, a weight that bore down on his chest and choked the words that formed in his mouth.

Of course, Peter managed to force something out, "What is this place?"

They had just come to the edge of a rickety line of fence posts. Most of them had rotted and broken many years ago, petrifying under the strange sky above. The shadows of the fence posts stretched before them, though again, there seemed to be no sun to cast such shadows."

"We are at the cross-section where worlds bleed together," Eli said softly. "The demarcation of the different realms are difficult to identify, and not set in hard edges. They melt into each other; bleed like ink through water. Where we are now is a cross section of the Lost, the Desolate, and the Uncanny.

His voice fell heavy from his lips as if each word was weighed down by a thick steel weight.

Conversation trailed off as their boots padded over hard packed dirt. As always, he found the site of a single rock sitting in the center of the quaint, discarded pasture to be strangely out of place. The dark shape on the horizon grew larger in his vision until he could see it sitting there hunched under the rolling sky.

It was a ramshackle little cottage, as gray as the landscape around it and surrounded on all sides by that same crumbling fence. Its roof sagged with the weight of the world, in a state of continual decay. The slats at the side of the house were cracked, leaving gaping wounds of blackness looking out on the world, bloodless, like gashes on a corpse. A small well was not far from the front door of the house, a monument of hope in such a barren landscape.

The little cottage had no door, but simply a black unwelcoming hole which led into darkness, and emerging from that blackened hole, lay ten lines of identical gray rope, four of which were attached by the ankle to four stiff and waiting bodies, standing in an unnaturally straight line on the front stoop

Eli watched as Peter shied away, riveted by the frayed ends of the six unused ropes, noting how they appeared to have been cut.

Four sets of eyes followed them as they approached, eyes that belonged to people as gray as the landscape around them. Their skin, their hair, and even the whites of their eyes were gray; one small figure appeared to be no older than twelve.

Eli paused before the tallest figure, reaching into his bag to produce a small black leather book, which he pressed into the man's gray calloused hand.

The man nodded, familiar with Eli and his work, looked up at the sky, and then down at the ground pointing with one disconcertingly long finger off to his right. Eli bowed his head in thanks before turning and staring off into the vastness with Peter tripping at his heels. It seemed as if they had taken no more than twenty steps when Peter glanced back to see the house had vanished, and all that stretched behind him was Desolation.

Eli anticipated Peter's question this time, before he had the chance to verbalize it.

"The edges of the different realms are physically safer places than living under the direct influence of any one Dread. And yet, at the same time the way the powers mix can be very strange. A lot of people live out here, though you wouldn't know it trapped in limbo between powers. Such powers vie for control and so things are in such a state of flux," he paused before continuing. "The first time I came here, they had nine children..."

Peter shivered, glancing back over his shoulder again even though he knew he wouldn't be able to see them, "What did you give him?"

"The book?"

'Yes."

Eli adjusted the rope around his waist and pulled up the collar of his wool coat to block out the chill, "Payment for showing us to where we need to go. The junction of the three Dreads is particularly dangerous; the Lost and the Desolate make navigation nearly impossible and the Uncanny causes things to appear differently than they are, but Abraham has a way with direction."

There was a long silence, "What about you?"

Eli lifted his head and turned to look at Peter, raising a curious eyebrow, "What do you mean?"

"Well, you live on the edge of the Desolate, and yet you don't seem all that weird to me."

Eli laughed and turned back to his walking, "Peter, I live in a lonely tower by the edge of the sea with a minor fear and in my free time I like to visit places like Veerus city? Does that sound particularly normal to you?"

Peter's argument died on a stiff tongue.

That night, to Eli's reluctance, they were forced to make camp under the stars. Eli refused to light a fire knowing it would garner them unwanted attention, but the moon was very full that night, bright enough to cast the dismal landscape into sharp contrast. And as the night fell, the sky above seemed to grow closer, bearing down on them as if the stars were threatening to hurl themselves to the ground below.

Looking up, they could see thousands of shimmering pinpricks punctuating the sky, the delicate blues and purples of the distant giants filling the night sky.

Peter raised a hand to the sky at one point, eyes full of stars. The world around them jolted markedly causing Eli's stomach to drop.

Eli reached out, anchoring Peter to the ground as his body threatened to just float away. He made sure Peter's vision was obscured and in time the feeling faded away. Peter was resting against Eli's shoulder where the stars could not threaten his sanity, though when he looked up he saw Eli staring fixedly up at the sky, unmoving and seemingly unperturbed by the vastness that had overcome him before.

"Never stare straight at the Sheer Peter, not unless you have something to ground you," Eli's voice echoed through the void as Peter turned his face away from the stars to land on the thin wan light reflected from Eli's white shirt.

Peter fell asleep there and by morning the sky had gone distant. By the time he woke, Eli was already packing their things, ready to begin their walk.

Wink stared out from inside the satchel where he made his home, eyeing Peter in that disturbing way he had.

By midday the ground before them grew grassy, and for a moment Peter felt as if they were walking back into the Uncanny.The fog of the Desolate and the Lost had lifted from Eli's mind; beside him.

Peter blinked a few times, watching as color rushed back into the world. The sky overhead was a bright eggshell blue, the land around them awash in hues of yellow and green with knee-high waving grass, a sliver of a brown dirt trail led them forward. Bright spring flowers dotted the pathway, yellow and delicate purple swatches on the landscape as they walked. A few times they caught sight of birds in the sky overhead or deer bounding through the grasslands.

"This is nice," Peter muttered.

Eli grunted, "Yes, a lot of people chose to live here, but it is Exposed domain and the fears here are different from what you have experienced before."

They crested a rise just then and the valley before them widened out stopping Peter in his tracks as his jaw dropped in awe.

Eli stopped to stand with him. The city glowed like a diamond against the horizon, alluring and bright, reflecting rainbows in all directions as light fractured, split and rolled over its surface.

Genua city sparkled with the noon day sun, beams of light stretching out in all directions.

A city made completely of glass.