Our first night in Ludopolis began to fall. Stars glinted anxiously in the darkling sky. I caught glimpses of the Shards now and again, between the rises of buildings, peeking over the walls, always revolving.

The tedious work of lamplighters began. We passed two in the following hour, both wearing the same starlight sash as the gate guards, setting alight the gas lamps of which there were, ultimately—like the city’s guardsmen—far too few to be effective. As an irresolute twilight descended and we squeezed across bridges and streets, past oddly proportioned statues of historical personages, Helmgarth explained over his shoulder that the guardsmen were known as the city’s “Irregulars,” the closest thing it had to a police force or a standing army. I remembered the potted plant at the gate and concurred that no two of then shared much similarity. I wondered if Luciano and Dylan were at this very moment settling disputes and sending newcomers one by one into the city at the south gate, or if the gates closed at night. Or perhaps they had been given reprieve for the festivities?

Masked children (and young sentients that I had to assume were child-like or close enough) darted across our path, boo-ing strangers and scampering away into allies or the safety of larger groups. Groups of revelers began to form, laughing, blipping, blooping until they formed critical masses and could sustain no further company. They blocked streets, clogged hallway passages, overflowed on balconies. Despite the very present survival effort in the city, private parties were visible in residence windows, on rooftops, and any accessible space that could be claimed. A green-haired woman with wings waved at us, casting spells to the delight of her co-revelers.

We made for Helmgarth’s home, our new prison. It was in what Helmgarth called the Green Quarter of the city, though I saw no color encoding upon the walls or signage and discerned no delineations or anything else that hinted of an organized civic plan. One, perhaps, long ago—but ages of new layers had been stuffed into the city, between, next to, and sometimes on top of existing features. It was dizzying to think about.

After some time and no small struggle, Helmgarth stopped in the road.

“Let’s not stop here in the street,” said Commander Zideo, as a series of citizens excused themselves past us. “We’ve gotta get to where we’re going.”

“But m’lord,” said Helmgarth. “We are here.”

Zideo looked in either direction. On one side, there was a crowded park whose greenery had been trampled away some time ago by food carts and pickpockets. On the other, side, a wall dotted with shady windows and fire escapes and iron grating loomed above a cowering citizenry, unfortunates in rags scanning the passers-by for marks.

“We’re where?” asked Zideo.

“Home, m’lord.”

Zideo looked again in all directions. “Where, though?”

Helmgarth motioned to the wall of fire escape ladders and grating balconies. Not to the bottom, I noticed, nor even the middle, but the top. “Come,” he said, and disappeared into a door I had not even noticed. A short, mushroom-headed urchin with sooty cheeks nodded, squeaking a greeting.

“Hi Helm,” he said. The urchin sat by a wall beneath a message that he had chalked. The message was simple enough for me to memorize but not interpret: “100 = 1up.” Helmgarth flipped a golden coin into his cup, and he squeaked appreciatively.

The stairwell was darker, tighter and more claustrophobic than that of the tower, and we constantly had to negotiate past dwellers walking down the stairs. It smelled damp. Flight after flight, door after door. Zideo’s mood fell as we ascended.

At the top of the echoing stairwell, there was only one door left. Helmgarth produced a key from his pack, and to my surprise, cool night air rushed over us. It was not an unwelcome feeling, but Zideo gaped at Helmgarth and would not walk out onto the roof with him.

“What is this?” he asked.

“This is home,” said Helmgarth.

“You live on a roof?”

“A far cry from Cobble-Hall, to be sure. But space and accommodations enough for m’lord.”

“Do… you even have a bathroom?”

“A what?”

We were shown in, or out as the case may be, scattering a flock of pigeons of various resolutions. Tin tubes roared beside us, and Zideo was openly horrified when Helmgarth retrieved a bedroll from his pack and began unrolling it in the creche beneath. Books lined the lip of the roof floor, and Zideo, stepping back away from the “bedroom,” kicked one of them inadvertently and sent empty bottles clattering to the floor. Helmgarth looked embarrassed.

“Woof,” said Zideo. “You drinking alone up here?”

“Indeed not,” said Helmgarth, rushing to straighten them. “Those are potion bottles.”

“You still shouldn’t leave them out,” said Zideo. He glanced around, but found no drawers, wardrobes, or any such space to organize the warden’s belongings. Helmgarth waved him off.

They both sighed, for different reasons I think. The crowd below was growing. A fiery-headed clown juggled ugly cleavers in the street as onlookers cheered, some masked.

“You never told me what the purpose of the goats was.”

Zideo watched the streets. The crowds began to surge. Buildings disgorged people who were inexplicably happy. Agile beings hung streamers from protruding architecture and craggy ruins. There was a flowing movement on the streets now; they seemed to know where to go, wandering as a brook wanders, although I found this baffling. Crowds rallied around goat effigies and individual surfed atop revelers’ heads, buoyed by a group effort of hands holding them aloft. One flat person with belts and sheathed blades shouted and fell in to the depths of the people, but surfaced a moment later, laughing and lifted by his comrades. I realized that this was becoming what humans call a “parade.”

Fate’s Eve had begun.

Helmgarth was staring at Zideo as he watched all of this. I believe this is considered to be “awkward.” He was slightly taller than Zideo, but still somehow looked upward at him.

“M’lord,” he said, after moistening his lips to speak. “I must… there is something you should see.”

“After all that work?” said Zideo. “Pass. You got any food?”

Helmgarth continued to stare. Zideo glanced at him, noticed, forgot, and after some time, noticed again.

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“Bruh,” he said.

“It is a matter of great importance,” he said.

“Is it gonna be hard to get to?” asked Zideo.

“Well… yes.”

Zideo did a cross between a long sigh and the word “ugh.” “Well, you’re the prison warden. I guess we have to do what you say, right?” Zideo would try to elude him if we went back out into the crowd, and all three of us knew it.

“I suppose,” said Helmgarth, who rubbed a circle onto his forehead, something he seemed to do when embarrassed, which was often.

Back down we went through the smelly stairwell. Out into the street where the smell of wine on the breaths of humans and non-humans alike offended my nose and the sounds of mirth became indistinguishable from those of conflict. I saw the space soldier with the dirtbike helmet wrestling with a slender-armored dignitary with a holographic weapon on her arm, and the crowd for some reason chanted “Shep-herd,” although neither looked much like a shepherd to my eye.

I was tired from the long day of walking, but dogs can summon as much energy is needed for the goal at hand. The problem was that I did not know what that was, as Helmgarth had not told us. As the crowd of revelers laughed and swore and screamed around us, Helmgarth reached down and patted my back. “Psst,” he said. He pointed to himself, and to me, and then to the other side of the street, with a mischievous look at Zideo, who did not see this. I took this to mean we were to leave my human, which was the absolute last thing on my list of priorities—a list that, I assure you, is very real and which I can recite for you at any given time. The top is to follow close to the best human ever, followed by Get Some Food. The bottom two are Make Human Angry, and Leave Human Alone.

But he winked, and produced a strip of jerky from his pack. So, what choice did I have?

He motioned for me to follow quickly. We threaded through the flowing crowd, ducking into spaces between people as temporary as waves at the beach. (I’d never been to a beach at that point, digital or otherwise.)

We gathered on the steps of a building whose purpose was obscured through streamers and banners. A pang of guilt struck my heart as I saw my human looking around for us, only partially anesthetized by the delicious jerky Helmgarth rewarded me with. We had a clear view over the heads of the revelers, and Zideo saw us after a few moments. Helmgarth gestured for him to come to us, but pointed up the street, against the flow of celebrants–meet us that way, it seemed to say.

I followed Helmgarth upstream, and looked back often at my human. While we fought our way through, he was making his way not through but above the revelers, jumping nimbly from a light pole to a statue base to a fence. He swung from bars beneath a foot bridge, skidding along the side of the dried-up fountain, and finally ran out of space. Unwilling to give up, Zideo jumped up on top of a food cart that advertised blocky treats of some kind, lunged to another to the dismay of its operator (a villager of some kind with clothing of the same ochre color palette as Helmgarth’s).

We ducked through an alley that was surprisingly overgrown with moss and vines. For a moment, I thought Zideo had disappeared beneath the waves of the parade, and watched intently. He was ejected and fell between us, sliding on his shoulder.

“Nailed it,” he said, swatting dead leaves and dirt off of his shirt. Helmgarth beamed.

“That was amazing, m’lord! It makes one almost certain…”

“Not my first platformer,” joked Zideo. “And you,” he stooped to pet my head as I chewed jerky. “Bribed, huh?”

I wagged my tail in hopes that he was not actually mad, which he rarely was.

“So this is what you wanted to show me?” said Zideo. “An abandoned alley?”

“Through here,” he said. Just when one thinks one understands the layout of Ludopolis, one’s guide moves aside some vines in an alley and one opens out on a graveyard.

Two skeletons, one half out of its own gravestone, rolled dice. “Hi Helm,” croaked the more pixelated of the two, its hand instantly snapping to a wave and back.

“Good evening, ladies,” said Helmgarth, walking past. The graveyard was overgrown and unvisited. “You will not join the celebration?”

“Eh,” shrugged the pixelated one. “Too busy.”

The far end of the graveyard terminated in thick vines and branches through which patches of a stone wall peaked out. My paws tapped against a stone floor. Helmgarth looked around, then drew back a clump of brambles. I was reminded of the boarsquirrel’s den, and tensed.

Beyond, there was light–candlelight, if I was not mistaken. Helmgarth ushered us through a dim passage and into an arcade. (Not Zideo’s usage of the word, but a series of freestanding arches that seemed old, perhaps older than the tower.) Natural rock formation wove in and out of masonry, a cave added to by ancients. A grotto big enough to cup Lisa’s entire house within its grasp, I was sure.

Disfigured human shapes stood in pools of candlelight, surrounded by low halos of flickering flames. Some missing arms, others heads–statues it seemed, on closer inspection. Niches carved into the rock wall enclosed smaller statuettes or cracked vases with scenes painted on their surfaces.

“The temple district is not far,” said Helmgarth in a quiet voice, “where we each worship what gods we bring with us from our own worlds. But the Ludic Grotto is different.”

Zideo, never one for admiring art, bent in front of one of the statues. “This one… I think it has a controller?” The faceless human held one hand in a mudra of peace, and in the other, one of the button-devices that Zideo spent much of his time holding. “That’s definitely what it is. What the heck?” A fluffy, hooded garment was sculpted in marvelous detail; it looked almost real in the candlelight. Wax dripped to the stone floor at its feet, running over a half dozen coins of different shapes and sheens. A bundle of fresh flowers dropped petals onto a donated coin purse.

“The Cozy,” said Helmgarth, perfectly patient. “The relaxer in evenings. She brings peace to her followers.”

A child and an adult sat beside one another like Rodin’s Thinker, focused on something in the near distance yet both holding half of a controller. “The Siblings,” said Helmgarth. “Younger and Elder. They reward teamwork, doing one’s part for society, helping those who cannot help themselves.” We continued to stroll.

The next was a bulky man wearing glasses, whose curled fingers clawed the air. “The Furioso,” said Helmgarth. “A wrathful deity. He cannot suffer injustice, nor even the most harmless slight. But his rage powers dark deeds when they must be done.”

A graceful odalisque wearing hefty headphones and little else emerged from a circular tub filled to the brim with coins and gifts. Zideo gawked at her bathing suit. “The Streamer,” said Helmgarth. “She forsook digital worlds long ago, retreating to the ocean of gold. Fools doubt her strength.”

Staring enviously at the Streamer was a sage, his arms clasping scrolls and books to his chest. In that usual way that mythology never totally makes sense, a sensational beard flowed tucked beneath the books and flowed to the floor, locks like tendrils. The beard did not originate from his chin, but rather his neck. “The Sage,” said Helmgarth. “Keeper of the gate. He permits only the most worthy adepts.” The Sage’s nose turned up, refusing the viewer.

The last was another chimeric mixture of a person. Its head was missing. It offered a controller to the heavens, or at least the ceiling of the grotto. Horned masks piled at its feet–which were those of a beast, bifurcated and agile. Its hands looked furry.

“What’s this one called?”

Helmgarth took a breath. “The greatest and worst among them. Maker, trickster, destroyer. The beast-eyed meddler who serves no clear purpose but his own caprice. He bends the world to suit his whims. He is the most talented of all the gods, but uses his talent for the joy of using it. A boastful warrior and athlete who will never accept anything but the best, the first, the top. He is the pinnacle of players. The Gentleman Over All Things, in many traditions.”

“Where’s his head?” asked Zideo. But we knew what belonged there. I could tell by their discomfort that they could see the implied snout, the lolling tongue, the curling horns. They could, like me, almost hear the bleating of the Goat echoing in the half-made cave.

“The old religion does not sit well with all,” said Helmgarth. “We do not speak of the grotto outside these walls.”

“You know what these are, right?” said Zideo.

Helmgarth nodded. “How many times I have wondered what is on the other side. What the world of players must be like.”

Zideo looked like he wasn’t sure how to break it to him. He continued to stroll, letting the mystique of the Ludic Grotto draw him. “This one doesn’t look like the rest.” A hooded and cloaked figure held its hands out to either side in shadow. It was fully intact, and no candles lit its boots–neither did any offerings gather at its feet. A draft moved its clothing. “I think someone actually put a cloak over this statue,” said Zideo. “This isn’t stone. It’s fabric.”

“That,” said Helmgarth, drawing his trowel, “is no god. It is a terrible assassin.”

The statue frowned.

“Really, really bad,” said Helmgarth. “I cannot imagine falling for this.”

The statue said, “Weeelllllll….”

“Step back, m’lord.,” said Helmgarth, and drew back to strike the statue. “I will pull back its hood.”

There was a sound of unfolding metal, and blades appeared at the statue’s sleeves, sliding past its palms. It lunged for Zideo, and I cursed myself for not smelling the trap sooner.