I had forgotten how permeating the cold of the Blue Frost zone could be. It pushed against one like a pressure, slowed every joint, seeped into every nook and cranny of a body. Past certain joints, it cordoned off entire limbs for use.

Pengoons hustled between housing, shouting single-word updates or commands to one another. Previously wearing a single article of clothing each, I now noticed the addition of individual parts of Sorrow Trooper armor: a pair of vambraces or gauntlets here, a single pauldron there. Weapons had been commandeered and distributed as well. Commander Zideo’s ushanka-wearing jailer carried a high-tech-looking baton in addition to his spear strapped to his back.

Peligrosa lead us to a part of the clearing on the mountaintop unclaimed by trees, where a fat stingray-shaped transport sat idling, its nubby wings at rest and its jaw-like loading ramp open. Pengoons milled in and out of it, webby feet clanking against the mesh.

“Where’s Gobo?” asked Zideo.

“Rescue,” she said, turning to face him. The weapon on her back drew a half-circle in the snow. I saw in her something more than determination, because determination implies more than one possible outcome. It seemed to me a tactical error on the part of the Bosses, or the Empire of Sorrow, to abuse their helpless subjects beyond their ability to obey. The whole of Pengoon Peaks was prepared for war, and a fire burned upon their brows. Though I thought it unlikely they would get very far with their limited resources, I had to wonder how many other villages, towns and peoples were like them, at this very moment, on this very Shard? The threshold of revolution is a tremulous thing, vigilant for the slightest lean in either direction to understand which scale will fall.

Peligrosa did not tarry when Zideo informed her that we were not able to spare the time to help her. He was not so foolish as to try to change her mind, to get her to reconsider her plan. The sickly buzzing of propellers started up and the pengoons took to the air.

“How did they learn to fly that thing?” he asked. “How are they steering with little flipper hands?” No answer was forthcoming from me or the gods. He waited until they were out of sight to blow once more on the conch, and the funnel cloud twisted down out of the overcast skies, grasping for us.

* * * * *

A scenic waterfall poured into a lake below a stiff drop. Colorful vegetation surrounded us, leading to deeper jungles even than those of the Screenwilds. When the winds of the conch’s magic ceased, they revealed the sounds of war: the shouting of harsh voices and the thundering of feet.

Still wary of rivers, we got to our feet by the banks and made our way to high enough ground to see what was happening. To our surprise, we happened upon a rider standing in the shade, watching the battle—or, I should say, the siege.

Her back was to us, but she turned only far enough to judge that we were no threat, and did not turn her gleaming lance. The visor of a burnished sallet coaxed back long hair between decorative wings. She wore something that was neither a dress, nor a knight’s armor, but both. Her brown mare snorted at us.

In the valley below a stone tower rose, unwalled amid a clearing in the jungle. Hundreds of Street Toughs swarmed over it, pulling, bashing, kicking. Their hands did little against masonry.

“Who puts their tower in a valley?” said Zideo.

The rider breathed out a single huff through her nostrils, a distant and unclaimed kin of a laugh. “Bosses,” she said. “That is who. Specifically, Cruelius Geezer.”

Zideo scrunched up his nose. “The old guy from… shit, don’t tell me.” He closed his eyes, palms up to stave off hints. “Romans Subjugated My Neighbors (19Ω3)? Right?”

She dipped the point of the silver lance forward, ever so slightly. “Speaking of whom.” A frail man with laurels tucked behind his ears leaned from an archer window high above. He waved frantically and called down curses upon the Street Toughs for their betrayal, but his cruel, impotent voice was drowned out by a hundreds-strong chant of “Crime! Crime! Crime!” Sorrow Troopers were forcibly crowd-surfed out of the way across the surging mass, and I heard a loud electrical pop from the center of a knot of cheering Street Toughs, of the sort I had only heard once before when lightning hit a streetside electrical box in Airy Zone. A group of hooligans had overpowered and pried open the chest cavity of an Ohmpressor. A dazed rabbit stumbled out, irises whirling.

“They remembered!” said Zideo. Possibly, I thought, for there were several charred gouges in the green earth which were yet smoldering. More than a few of the attacking horde had lost their lives in the attack on the armored defender; perhaps strength in numbers and dismemberment had been their only option.

“Thou art him, art thou not?” said the rider. Now she did turn–her head, at least. On her head was a slim golden tiara set with an uncut sapphire, no less beautiful for its irregularities. I would have liked to exchange a few words from the horse, to ask how the battle had gone, how many their numbers were. But horses are not counted among the fur-brothers of canine-kind, and I have yet to meet a horse that speaks Dog.

Zideo got sort of a funny look in his eye. He knelt to one knee.

“What art thou doing?” she asked, amused.

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“You’re Queen Guenevere, right?”

“Hey,” she said, raising the lance just a little. “That’s Sir Guenevere to thee. Rise, if you please.”

So this was her–the dragonslayer who had so captivated W. H. Gobo, though it may have meant his death.

“There’s one thing I don’t get,” said Zideo. “How are there so many of them now? And how’d they get here so fast? This is part of Rolling Green, right?”

A shout of carried to us over the shushing hiss of the waterfall behind us. A dozen heads appeared at its precipice, all whooooing together with hands in the air. They cheered as their crude raft hurled them over the edge and into the lake below, scattering familiar plywood painted with the designs of cars and business facades. Another shout, and another raft disintegrated over the top of the waterfall, raining parts and Street Toughs onto their comrades below. Then, another, and another.

“Okay,” said Zideo. “But there’s still like a zillion more than there were. How are they multiplying?”

One of Sir Guenevere’s eyebrows rose, disappearing behind her tiara. “Do you really want to know?”

Zideo considered it. “No. Absolutely not.”

Sir Guenevere raised her lance to the burgeoning cloud of wet Street Toughs in the river. Its gleam caught their eye, like a dog locked onto his trainer. Their heads followed it as she dropped its point toward the tower. The battle-cheer rose, and down into the valley they charged.

“I have some news you’re going to want to hear,” Zideo told her. Her eyes shone keener than the lance, brighter than her sallet. “But we don’t have much time, and I need to know something first.”

She nodded. “Speak.”

“Have you seen any powerups in this zone?”

The Street Toughs swarmed like ants around the base of the tower. Through sheer volume, they began to ascend the sides like an angry, denim- and leather-filled amoeba. A crack issued from the tower, and a stone block fell into the crowd of Street Toughs, pinning a man down by his mohawk. (I counted him fortunate.) More blocks separated. Now the Street Toughs fled from the tower’s base. A black crag appeared in the side of the tower, and it began to shed its stones like a serpent does its skin. The structure leaned as though for a better view of us, and collapsed into a blowing cloud of mortar and dust.

“I can provide thee better succor,” she said, “than powerups.” The smoke and dust began to clear, and a light more green than I had ever beheld changed the valley into a dreamlike emerald-scape.

* * * * *

It seems ideal for me to cease including every description of every funnel cloud that carried us on its warping winds. I will only say this–that never, not once, did I feel accustomed to being swept up into the air and spun by the whims of the trickster tornado. We dogs are quite good with patterns, as indeed are many animals on the more intelligent end of the spectrum. But no matter how many times we repeated the same thing, the trauma of being tossed about overrode any sense of a routine.

We found ourselves in dark, torchlit halls of baked mud bricks and limestone. Snakes hissed from untended niches; spider webs draped thicker than the bungee cords Lisa used to transport the holiday tree back to the house during the cold months.

“I have to wonder,” Zideo whispered, stepping over a pile of rubble, “if this came from a specific g-word, or if it just, like… formed.” He heaved a sizable rock through several layers of web barring our path. It tore through the webbing as though it were mist, and shattered with the brittle sound of dropped chalk. “Ya know. Just from like… the tropey-ness of it. The kitsch. Ya gotta have temple ruins, right?”

I conceded the point silently, although in truth I wasn’t sure I followed.

He plucked a torch from the wall, scraping out of its sconce, and waved it toward a dark corner. Beetles and other critters scattered away at the edge of the light. A stone chest cast a black streak of shadow behind it, its glyph in stark but flickering relief: “?”

“Jjjjjackpot,” said Zideo, elongating the initial sound as though he were revving up. (For dog readers, “revving up” is what your humans’ cars do as they get started driving, if they are not Honda Micro-Commuter EVs.) He grabbed one end of the stone covering and leaned his body backward. Stone ground against stone. Then it tipped and broke against the hard floor.

A rotten scent reached me then, the pungent smell of decomposing meat. It reminded me of the time Lisa opened a cooler and found weeks-old hamburger patties that had not found their way to the grill at a cookout. But after a moment’s examination, I realized the odor was coming from behind me.

I turned, and a dozen oily eyes gleamed in the firelight, cast in green and brown and purple. Pinching mandibles worked greedily. I barked myself crosseyed, startling Zideo so badly that he fell over. He swore and plunged one hand into the chest while fumbling with the conch in his other hand. The webs blew in the gust like banners, and the enormous spider was sent flying back down the dark hall as the winds became opaque once more.

* * * * *

They were not all winners, as it were. Several times we found ourselves in empty caves in the Blunderworld, little light and only the sound of dripping waters to accompany us. Once, the conch placed us in the middle of one of the Empire of Sorrow’s transports, whirling through the turbulence, its troopers dazed. One quietly shouted something and pointed at us, but had little time before Zideo blew the conch again and they were hurled around inside the tossing transport once more.

Another time, we found ourselves underwater and surrounded by sharks from a slew of different origins, not to mention squids that swam in a herky jerky motion. It was unclear which zone that was, and we never found out. Zideo was unable to play the conch’s melody underwater, and running out of breath quickly. His expertise saved both our lives, as he tugged me toward a corrugated clam shell that was periodically releasing enormous bubbles of air, allowing us to catch our breath and him to blow the instrument again.

In a graveyard, chased by werewolves and skeletons and hopping from headstone to headstone, he said, “This is kinda reminding me of a montage. Except games don’t have those.” The careless use of the g-word sent the werewolves howling and the skeletons clawing at their own fleshless faces.