And now, for our final course, the denouement. But how will it end? In confession? In violence? In the cold precision of a sickly sweet poison pill, or the white hot bite of black widow? Perhaps. The only things guaranteed in this, our final curtain call, are the same things that are always guaranteed to grow from the soil of spilled blood: lawyers, guns, and money.

Our interlocutors do as the Romans do and pipe up, sweating through their first interrogation, but Cass finds himself in the cruelest court of all when his paper trail leads the way to new suspicions and old desperations. Not even a nice liberal government can save you from some things, like the smoking, still-warm barrel of a gun.

As blood pools upon the thick pile of the Boddie Estate's imported rug collection, our players, and the game, are afoot. Bodies on the move in voluminous pants and long, dark secret hallways. Revelations and aspersions fill the air of the mansion like fingers between the keys of a grand piano, like a sky-darkening murmuration of starlings, as our heroes begin to uncover the culprit behind this murder most...fowl.

To whom it may concern, you have been cordially invited to the Boddie Estate, alongside many established as well as up-and-coming luminaries, gadabouts, learned scholars, loyal compatriots, mysterious servants, long-time friends with complicated backstories, blackmail artists with hearts of gold, liars from your past, traitors from your present, not-mysterious-at-all servants, and of course, one very, very wealthy corpse. Spoiler alert.

The cast assembles to look back at the end AND the whole of Book One. Ends and wholes, that's what it's all about, baby! Join us on our Patreon for more like this! Coming Soon: Music Chat! A whole episode about the "what ifs" of Book One! And so, so much more. See you there!

Behold the Future of Worlds Beyond Number! Here's a rundown of all the great stuff coming your way, taken from the most recent Fireside Chat where the gang goes deep on dissecting that WILD finale. Listen through to the end for an announcement about our upcoming album drop! What!?

We gotta go.

Remember this when you wake up: The greedy, hungry awful things. Some small part of you will miss them. The lost letters, the old home movies, the people you put on the same path as you, the dumb and silent stars of the southern sky. One last show, and then I can't be here. Don't ever let me forget this: who to kiss, and who to kill.

To make the new world, to free tomorrow from the clutches of not done, we must bury the old world, shove ourselves inside the bone white sand, and there meet ourselves and everyone we have known. A wizard in her tower, oh let down your hair. A wild one, his one foot out the door of the prison cell. And a witch astride the world, who simply cannot leave any door closed, any stone not flipped like a table in the temple. We are all the pallbearers of what was. Roll up your sleeves. It's time to clean up.

GET TEASED, LISTENER! With this, a teaser of our first Horner Corner and our first guest*, Grant O'Brien. Join this infamous Dropout sex-haver as he is RAILED by questions from our hosts Aabria and Erika. Feelin teased? Then come and get the, ahem, hole thing on our Patreon!

This is our endeavor. To blade! To tongue! To plow! To grind our name into the bones of tomorrow, until the horizon is lucid smooth as liquid mirror, sharp as cut glass, clear as cool water rising, Irrigating in our throats the dry river bed of ambition. A witch in the gut of the tower. A wild one embraced by blood. A wizard in the court of the sword. All days divided into the days before and the days after, like the two sides of a shut window of black glass.

Everything that rises must converge. In the gloaming, where the tide of one world washes and runs across the sands of another, we pass through the center of things like a gate, like a river, like the sea of the sky, champions on parade at the crossroads, a place we know, a place we find familiar, before the night, as it ever does, arrives. 

Shining, shimmering, splendid. Endless open doors, in a countryside of vapor. Everyone's invited. Do we have enough food? This is what you wanted. You leapt out the window, you walked through the door, you sent up the flare. But that's the past, and we're not headed there...are we?

You are weightless and powerful. Whatever you were on the way to being, this can be done too. This world is a dream, yes. But whose? It's time to go home.

In the sky, war. On the ground, blood. There goes the neighborhood.

Lou Wilson hosts this special sample of his latest game show masterpiece: CLASS ACTION!

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water. When the dead tree bears the fruit of empire, it will all be this. You can't shake it. You can't shake me. Or the burning sky, or the blood, or the ink, or the ash. But there is a part of us that lives forever, and chances taken are rewarded. Stretch your legs, use the space, and I will show you your shadow at evening rising to meet you. I will show you fear in a handful of dust and freedom in the shadow of man. Deep breaths.

Across the night, with the dawn, this version of her, our gilled mage. Suvirin Kedberiket, amphibious and unalone. In the ice cave abattoir, our survivors, the otter and the otherworldly. The fresh hells of a secret past. And then, the trail, far beyond the broad road, taking them to whatever gifts the past has left. The task at hand. A good feeling. Dark river water. Bodies at the bottom murk, and above us: nothing. Exactly where we want to be.

The keen mind is king, and you are not in your tower. You are here with us, underground, haunting the foundations of the world, a shadow, here to offer and support the force. In front of you is a cellar door and a brush of blood. Choose quick: Wear the muzzle, or grow some teeth. By a turning of the coin, you are awake and remember you are dreaming still.

The road is a door, and it beckons wide and open. Turns out, you can, in fact, get there from here. If there is a town, a bag, the throat of the ravening beast, the back room of a humble butcher's shop, your end at the bottom of the mighty Lydwyn. Towns are like Empires, they are made of people and promises. Roads are like graves, they are made of dirt and the space you fill. And along the road, like pallbearers: wild, wild things.