No way--wait. It was Artemis? Honestly, you were the person I least expected.

Major plot twist.

Great job. 

@Celeste: here's the grand finale! thank you <3

@Hex: haha yeah, I think I confused myself there for a moment. thanks!! *colors in marker*

@Echo: yep! glad it was surprising; i was a bit afraid it would be obvious. ty!

@Hawkstar: well, here's the end! it's slightly more freak-out-worthy, if i do say so myself. but you can read it for yourself~

part fourteen! i'm so glad i actually finished...

---

"Hello, my darlings," I said. I closed the door behind me. No point giving them somewhere to run.

"But -- but -- it was you?" Strawberry spluttered, agape. "It was you, all along?"

"Well, it wasn't Artemis, if that's what you mean," I said. "I'm Calloway, of course."

"Daniel," Sapphire murmured, her forehead creased in thought.

I started a little at the sound of my real name spoken aloud. "Well. In a manner of speaking."

"Pix is right," Hex said. "You shouldn't do this."

"Oh, come off it," I said, a bit irritated. "You aren't actually going to play the noble virtuous hero now, are you? These are the facts, kids: I have a knife. You don't. I've killed the others, and now I'm going to kill you, and sorry, but there isn't anything that you can do about it. Reciting epic speeches isn't going to benefit anyone in the long run."

"What -- you've killed them?" Amethyst gasped. "You mean -- Lyra and Eclipse and Darkling and Hawkstar and --"

"Reuby?" Strawberry breathed, her green eyes wide with shock and fear, and perhaps horror at my depravity. "She's -- she's dead?"

"Of course she's dead," I said. "How else d'you think I escaped?"

"But the door was locked," Darkvine said.

"I magic'd it open, just as Sapphire said I would."

"But what about Pix -- Rose?" Hex demanded. "Why would she let you past?"

"Well, she didn't have much choice," I said flatly. "Seeing as I have my magic and she doesn't, and I'm about twice her size. I locked her in. But it doesn't matter. Nothing much matters for you, anymore."

I could see their indecision. Artemis wasn't physically stronger than them, and it was four against one, but again, I had the knife, and I was a shapeshifter. Not to mention magical. The odds were not in their favor, when calculating with the last. I crossed the room and stabbed Sapphire in the stomach.

She screamed and crumpled to the floor. Darkvine grabbed hold of the knife's hilt and tried to wrest it from me. It was simple magic to thrust her away from me -- she stumbled back as though she'd been pulled back from behind by invisible hands. She sank to the floor. Hex was next, again. She nearly managed to get the knife from me, but, as aforementioned, I was a magical shapeshifter and she was a human girl, and in two minutes she joined the other two on the floor. Strawberry took half that.

I looked around and frowned. Amethyst had gone. I could feel the world sated a little by Sapphire's and Hex's deaths, eagerly awaiting Darkvine's, but it still hungered. It always hungered. The undeniable presence of one more life it had been promised, so close by, was excruciating.

But Amethyst wasn't here, among the study's tall shelves, in front of the desk among the discarded journals. I rounded the desk and saw her crouching on the floor underneath it, an unmistakable black book balanced on her knees. She didn't look up at my footsteps; she seemed to be searching for something in her pockets.

"That's not good form," I told her, frowning a bit. "Hiding from death is only delaying the --"

Suddenly she found what she was looking for -- a pen -- and quick as a flash she uncapped it, setting its tip to the ski lodge's page.

A moment too late, I realized what she was doing. I started for

Calloway freezes, held stone-still by some invisible force. The knife drops from his hand. He looks shocked, angry, and almost begrudgingly admiring. It's strange to see his emotions on Artemis' face. I emerge from beneath the desk, still holding the ski lodge, and I stand in front of him, pausing a little in my writing to look him in the eye. We're just about exactly the same height.

Or, no, Artemis and I are about the same height. He's still wearing her stolen face.

"Shift into yourself, please," I say. My voice wavers a little from leftover fear, and grief for my three friends who are still lying dead on the other side of the desk, the five in the locked room downstairs, all the rest who have died before. But I do not look away from his eyes as he, freed from the freezing magic that came from who-knows-where, that was summoned only by these words on this page, shifts into his own self.

He's slightly taller than me, and looks about thirteen. His hair is dark brown, a shade lighter than Artemis' was, and cut a bit shorter. His skin is light, but tanner than Pix's. Rose's. They have the same ocean-colored eyes. He's also shifted into different clothes -- it's a bit illogical that he can do that, but it's magic, so I don't question it. They're unassuming, earth-toned, and look like they belong to a time a little removed from the one I live in.

It is very strange to see him with his own face, after all this time of thinking of him as this strange, shadowy figure who's killing us off. He's just a boy. He's a child, though he calls us children. Perhaps he's grown older than his face, inside, but I don't think so. I think the boy, the Daniel, has grown smaller, suppressed by his murder, by his relentless escape into a world that doesn't exist because he can't face the real one that doesn't have his sister in it. I don't know. He's a strange person.

I stoop to pick up the knife, slipping it in my pocket, and his eyes follow me as I do so. He doesn't look surprised or angry anymore. Just a bit sad, and a little ruefully amused. I've beaten him at his own game.

I have one more thing to do before I let this ski lodge write itself again, because my friends are still dead. If this were real, that would be that, and I would have to go on living anyway, somehow, the way Daniel has to go on living, somehow, even though Rose is gone. But, fortunately, the Castle by the Lake is not real, and my friends can be resurrected with only a few words. Here they are:

Artemis, Azalea, WiLdSoNg, Ame, Celeste, Poinsettia, Writing, Tilly, Echo, Lyra, Eclipse, Darkling, Hawkstar, Reuby, Sapphire, Darkvine, Hex, and Strawberry come into the study, streaming in through the door Daniel locked by magic. They are alive.

They all looked a little surprised and a little dazed, but they were okay. They noticed this fact suddenly, and with exclamations or thanks or just movements, hugs or handshakes, they reunited with each other. Poinsettia and Sapphire embraced each other fiercely, Amethyst ran up to join them, leaving the ski lodge behind, and Lyra cried, but this time because Echo was alive, not because she was dead. Strawberry jumped up and down and Reuby looked mildly annoyed and ecstatic at once. Hex and Darkvine high-fived, WiLdSoNg and Ame laughed as if they weren't just dead for two days, Artemis suddenly hugged Azalea, Eclipse and Tilly fist-bumped, and Writing shook hands with Celeste and Darkling at the same time, flapping their wings to make sure they were really there.

I watched the festivities from behind the desk. They were all so happy and free and living. They were everything Rose isn't.

I slipped around the celebrating ski lodgers and out the door, climbing down the stairs and into the library. It didn't take me long to find the room I'd locked Rose into, and when I did, I unlocked it.

She got to her feet quickly, staring. The bodies of the other suspects were gone.

"Danny," she said, and crossed the room to reach me. "They disappeared -- I don't know what happened to them -- and you have your face again -- what's happening?"

"Amethyst found the ski lodge," I said. "She wrote her own ending. She took my knife and made her friends alive again."

"Well done her!" Rose said fiercely, crossing her arms. She stared at me for a moment, brows furrowed, and then she asked, "What are you going to do now?"

"I," I said. I wasn't sure how I wanted to finish the rest of my sentence. I wasn't sure how I wanted to finish the rest of my life. "I don't think I can do it, Rose. I -- I don't want to kill people."

"But you did," she said. "And you told yourself it was okay, because it was for me."

"It was for you!" I retorted. "It was all for you. I -- don't you want to be alive, Rose? How can you not want to be alive? How can you wish I didn't have you?"

"Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett," Rose said, exasperation dripping from her every syllable. "Daniel, you know that's not what I mean. Yes, I want to be alive. Yes, I want you to be happy. What I don't want is for you to freaking kill people to make that true. It's not right. It's not what I want. I don't see how you think you could be happy here, in this made-up world with this made-up version of me, after killing people. I just don't see."

I sighed. I ran a hand through my hair and glanced away from her fierce blue gaze and then said, quietly, "I don't know how to live without you."

At last, then, her steel broke, and she looked at me with shimmering eyes. "Oh, Danny." She hugged me, and I hugged her back. I don't know which of us was crying. Maybe it was her. Maybe it was me. Maybe both of us.

"You have to find a way to live," she told me, when she lifted her head and met my eyes, oceans and oceans. "You have to find a way. You can't just... run away. That's not how life works."

"But why would I want to live in a world where everything hurts?" I asked her.

"You have to find something in it that doesn't hurt," she told me. "You have to find something beautiful. It doesn't matter what it is. Maybe sunsets are pretty or the sound of the ocean is calming or there's a song you like or chocolate is sweet or there's a person who you like being around or there's someone who needs you to be their Rose. It won't fix pain or death or anything, but it will convince you that life is worth it for the little beautiful things, and you'll be happy again, someday."

I looked at her for a long time, and then I said, frowning, "When did you become a philosopher when I wasn't looking, Rose? You're eight."

She grinned at me, suddenly that sunlit little girl who would race me in the lake by our grandparents' house even though she always lost, because someday, she was certain, she would win. "Inside I'm secretly a sixty-year-old woman," she said confidentially, and we both laughed a little. "I'll go take them home," she said. "Where did you say they were?"

"My study," I said, and she nodded and answered, with a bit of a grin, "Of course they are. They're so dashed clever, aren't they?" And then she was gone.

They flew away into the last of the evening sun, winged shapes that gradually shrunk into stars and then nothing. I waited just outside the Castle's doors for Rose to return. After a while, she did, coming down to alight beside me, green wings spread.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked me, and I replied, "Everything."

She smiled a bit, a complicated smile, and looked over the Lake, following my gaze. She was so young and old and she was my best friend, really, despite everything. I was afraid to live without her. But I said, "I'm leaving."

"Going back on your deal?" she asked. "What will the person say?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't know if they're even real."

"None of this is real, Danny," she said, and for a moment my face reflected her smile. "Yes. I know."

I hugged her tightly then, but too soon we broke apart and I took her hands and I stared at her for a long, long time, trying to memorize her freckles and the shape of her nose and the way her flaxen hair fell over her forehead and her eyes. I did not want to forget.

Then I kissed her forehead, and she said, "Good luck, Daniel," and I said only, "Goodbye," and I walked to the edge of the Lake and rowed across to the dock. I tied the boat to the post and climbed onto the pier. For a moment I sat on the edge and watched her small green-clad figure from across the Lake, watching me watching her.

And then I opened my eyes. The Castle by the Lake was gone; there was only my grandparents' house, old and familiar, and their little green-blue fishing lake. It was the color of her eyes.

---

Dead: Rose

Alive: Artemis, Azalea, WiLdSoNg, Ame, Celeste, Poinsettia, Writing, Tilly, Echo, Lyra, Eclipse, Darkling, Hawkstar, Reuby, Sapphire, Darkvine, Hex, Strawberry, Amethyst, Daniel

I love the ending. I loved the whole thing! This was the first ski lodge I've every been in, and it was wonderful. Full of excitment, sadness, mystery, and unexpected turns and twists. I am sad there is no more, but congragulations on finishing! You are the awesome!

Ahhh that was so good :0

Ah, thank you. Thank you for my dramatic reviving.

Lyra is, along with the rest of my old AEs, retiring now. She was the second AE I made, so I hoped this Ski Lodge would be special.

It truly was.

Thank you so much, Artemis!

-Echo 

First of all, apologies for not commenting until now! I kept saying I was going to when I was caught up, but you wrote this impressively quickly! Plus, midterms were this week :(

But holy lizards this was delightful! I never thought I would get to read a dramatic description of my own murder and funeral. Anyway, things I loved about this:

- The Regular Poetry Thread book! What an awesome concept; if it existed I would buy it.

- The fourth wall breaks! The meta-ness and thoughts on the "real"ness of fiction! The humor and poetic descriptions!

- The ending, of course. A few things I predicted, but I TOTALLY was not expecting most of it and I loved it, especially when Amethyst literally writes her own ending. Kudos to you, Artemis <3

sorry i did not post erlier.thank so much this is my fav solo write im crying

this ski lodge is honestly better than anything I could write if I tried my hardest. you are amazingly talented, Artemis!