The ground escaped us, though I pawed and grasped at it. We were soon deposited upon hot stone. The winds died down surprisingly quickly, which to me implied a certain kind of intent which is not common, I think, to storms. Now it seemed obvious–the whirlwind had sought us out, scoured the lands for us, hunting for the maker of the melody. When the last gusts subsided, we were much worse off than when we had stood stuck at the edge of the Rolling Green.

The heat, violent in its extremity, closed in around us like an iron maiden. Magma pooled and flowed beneath the outcrop of obsidian over which we huddled, unable to make the slightest move for fear of slipping in. Thick, hot fumes rushed upward, blowing my ears and Commander Zideo’s hair like their own devilish wind.

Bubbles surged and sagged like balloons left on the helium machine too long. They popped, sending sprays of superheated liquid in all directions.

Although this was perhaps the least welcoming plot of ground in the entirety of Platformia (and I include in that appraisal the stalactite-lined maw of the Blunderworld beneath us), there yet remained a sense of the path. If I looked for long enough, it occurred to me that one rock island could be used as a means of reaching another, then a long and perilous isthmus that would require utmost balance to traverse. This was all still part of it, whatever “it” actually was.

I observed a peculiar behavior upon the surface of the lava—droplets of molten rock and flame the size of softballs erupted in the gaps between stepping stones. They seemed to jump straight up, perhaps my human’s height and half again, then dropped straight back in, sputtering. Each leaping lava droplet was incredibly regular, although not matched to its brethren, like deadly and unsynchronized metronomes.

“I think we warped,” said Zideo, “into a volcano.”

“Yep!” said a voice like a child’s, but spoken through a mouthful of smoke. We both looked for its source.

“It’s the coziest!” came the voice. “Volcano! This side of the!” There was a pause. “Shard!” A toothy smile flashed inches from my head, and we realized simultaneously that the voice was that of one of the leaping lava drops.

“OH,” said Zideo, wiping thick sweat from his forehead. “Oh. Wow.”

“Hi!” said the creature, if that is the right word for it. It only had time to speak a word or two during the zenith of its jump. “A conversation!” Splash, sputter. “What fun!” Splash. “Wheeee!” It was happy to have someone to talk to, but also enjoying itself immensely.

“What are, uh, what’s your name, li’l drippy guy?”

“Oh wooow!” Splash. “Named by a!” Splash. “Player! What!” Splash. “Fun!” Splash. “Hee hee hee!” I will cease to record every splash, allowing the reader’s imagination to provide it. “I’m Siz’l!” said the droplet by way of introduction. “This is my! Workstation! Careful jumping! Over me! I’ll getcha!”

“You are kind of adorable,” said Zideo. “Even if you can burn straight through my skin and skeleton and stuff.”

“Haha! Yeah!” said Siz’l. The spelling of the creature’s name has been the subject of immense debate among my human editors, but this is what we landed on. The truth is that it was a Lavish name, which is what I have very naturally termed the tongue of the speaking lava droplet, and to my fairly trained and capable ear. Siz’l spoke to us intelligibly in human English, somehow, but where a small lava droplet living in a remote part of a newly formed planetoid learned human English, I could not say.

“Hey! Watch out if! You’re jumping! Over me! Okay?” said Siz’l, in a way that I found almost conspiratorial. “It’s danger! Ous and we’re! Really good at! Our jobs! I can tell! My brothers! And sisters to! Watch out for! You!” He—and here I hazard a guess at the lava’s gender based on nothing, but I feel compelled to give him more respect than calling him “it”—was oriented at a different angle every time he flew up into the air to speak with us. He smiled upside down at us, then sideways, then nearly upright. Sometimes he did a little flip, and he often said, “Wheeeee!”

“You can do that?”

“I just! Did! Wheeee!”

“Are we safe from all future lava drops? Are they going to try not to burn us?”

“Haha! No way! But they’ll! Say hello! If they see! You!”

“We’re trying to get to Xue-Fang’s armory,” said Zideo. “Do you know the way?” I thought this a silly question, and knew that Zideo, being the most cunning and wise of humans, likely had a further meaning in the question, though I could not fathom it. The land would lead us to our own final goal on Platformia, although whether that was toward the Radian contained in this final zone, or a confrontation with its master, I could not say for certain.

“Sure! But it’s! A long way! And dangerous! But maybe not! At least not for! The Shlomp! -killer!”

“What?” said Zideo, pulling his sweat-stained shirt over his mouth to filter out some of the smoke in the air. I had no such luxury, but kept lower to the ground.

“Oh yeah! Word gets! Around!” said Siz’l between splashes. “Us environmental! Elements talk! To one! Another!”

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“I didn’t kill any Shlomps,” said Zideo. “I wouldn’t even know how! I rode one for a bit, sort of….”

“Not you! Silly! Him!”

Zideo’s eyes moved first, then the rest of his head. He looked at me with a look I had never seen in his eyes before: wonder. Awe. It is one thing to receive physical rewards from my human—pets, scratches, rubs, even a nice wrestling match or tug-of-war. But to earn his respect was quite another altogether.

I would have flushed if I knew how.

“Dang, buddy,” said Zideo. “Sounds like I missed some things. We’ll circle back to that. Maybe Addrion can fill me in?” He gave me a rub on the head.

“Or you can! Take the short! Cut!” said Siz’l.

“What’s the—”

The sky above us was framed by the jagged and blackened stone of the crater, the exit wound, as it were, of the volcano’s hot viscera. I would say the sky darkened, but it was already choked with a miasma of black ash clouds. Beyond them, we saw shapes moving. The black stingray shapes of the Empire of Sorrow’s aerial vehicles circled, and a second thing stretched from one end of the crater to the other. It reminded me of the toy trains that had belonged to a young Zideo, which Lisa kept in a closet, unable to let go of his childhood long after he had put it behind himself. The thing was segmented like that, a series of cabins or cars perhaps, held in the air by buzzing propellers that twisted and stirred the billows of smoke.

From it, vast cup shapes lowered on cables, scraped and charred with use. They plunged into the lava and then retracted upward, hauling up sizzling lava quite literally by the bucketload. We narrowly avoided the drips of lava hissing back downward and burning streaks against the protruding rock. The great wormlike air train moved forward, segment by segment, bucket by bucket.

“One day! I’ll go in the great! Sky bucket! And hopefully! Decorate some part! Of the master’s palace!”

“He’s decorating with lava?” asked Zideo.

“Sure! He’s a Boss! They’re all into! That stuff! Wheeeee! We’re just not! Allowed too close! To the Armory’s! Clock core!”

Zideo looked at me, and in his eyes was a message for me and a message for himself. To me, they said “Bingo.” To himself, they said “Don’t mess this up.”

“Hey, Siz’l, can I ask you something?”

“Sure! Shoot!”

“What happens if you go to the clock core?”

“We’re dismissed! From serving! The master!” said Siz’l. “I don’t even! Like to think! About it!”

“No no, I mean… the clock core is in the Armory, right?”

“Tick Tock Armory! Yep! A marvel of! Mad science! Designed by Victoria!”

“And if lava comes in contact… I mean, what happens to the facility itself if you get in there?”

“Catastrophic! Failure! Wheeeee.”

“Yeah?” said Zideo. “Shuts down the whole place?”

“More than that!” he said. “We’d lose all of! The bots!”

“Bots?” said Zideo. “The Ohmpressors? Would the animals in them die?”

“Worse!” said Siz’l. “They’d be freed!”

“Huh? How?”

“It’s where! Victoria sends! Their brain-washy! Signal! I don’t know! Man I’m just! A lava drop! -let! Wheeeeee!”

The walls shook. The lava flowed in tumult to either side of us as though shaken by a giant. Large rocks broke loose from above us, splashing openly into the lava and raining molten droplets onto the very outcrop of stone on which we stood. “Ooh! Eruption!” said Siz’l. “My favorite! You’ll love this! If you don’t! Die!”

The air train moved away, fleeing like a snake. The stingray escorts moved away in what I perceived as a hurry.

“Come on, Cormac!” said Zideo. A temporary passage across the lava looked promising—one fallen stone larger than a Honda Micro-Commuter EV was sinking, its usable surface rapidly being consumed by liquid fire. He jumped across to it, and my heart thudded watching the ring of lava gradually claim the ground around him. A spark caught his hair on fire, and flailed to put it out, slapping the crown of his head. I jumped across and we clambered along the side of the crater.

“Bye!” said Siz’l.

The lava was rising, its surface disturbed. Their was a tension in the air we could almost hear, a buildup of pressure that I could feel in my fur and my bones. Jets of gas broke through the surface of the lava like an unstirred skillet, lighting on fire and blasting flame into the chamber. Zideo looked ahead and gauged the distance to the top. “No time. Hold on!” He produced the conch from its secret place, blew into it. The roiling lake of fire muted, and I heard it as clearly as if he had played it in an empty auditorium. The melody rose and fall, a little wistful, a little mysterious.

The airborne sparks and smoke changed direction all at once. There was a new wind, one that did nothing to cool the heat of the crater, and drew a whirlpool in the lava. Hot rocks spun in the air, one burning a hole into Zideo’s tie-dye shirt. He screamed and clutched at it, but more from fear I think than pain.

The funnel cloud reached down and took us. The volcano revolved underneath me.

“Oh,” said Zideo, pushing himself up onto his knees as the winds died down. We were in a small house. “I actually hate that thing.” The intense heat gave way to a drafty cold. The windows were fogged and frosted over. A young pengoon in overalls cowered under a kitchen table. Zideo realized quickly that we must be in Pengoon Peaks. “Hey little guy,” he said. “Guess what? We’ve got your zone’s Radian!”

The pengoon quaked beneath the table, clutching a table leg. He pointed at Zideo with his flipper—no, past him, to the door. A banging issued from it, causing Zideo and myself to jump. Something wanted in.

“Troopers,” he said with a glance at me. “Let’s see how many of their asses we have to kick. And maybe see if they know where Gobo is now.”

The door pounded again, almost flying off its hinge. “There’s not enough room to air dash in here,” he said to me. “Get ready.” He turned the young pengoon. “Stay there, little buddy. We’ll protect you.”

The door latch exploded in splinter’s and the door flung open, slamming against the wall. A blast of cold air tensed my skin and dulled my attack reflex. I crouched to lunge at the invader, but it was not who I expected.

“Peligrosa?!” said Zideo.

The little pengoon darkened the doorway, snow blowing behind her and frost accumulating on her adorable bow tie. Her eyes were grim-set beneath a red bandana, tied tight across her forehead. Behind her back was slung some kind of bazooka.

“Human,” she stated, as though she expected to see us. She waved us out of the house, turned around, and began waddling. The long, steel tube traced a line behind her in the snow.