The drummer’s vertebrae poked through thin skin to touch the rugged stone wall. His hands moved up and down as he slapped the drum’s taut skin. The same beat looped for years as his arms moved. Bones pulled by sinews like a windup puppet. The skin tanned and hard and mummified. The drummer’s lipless grin as constant as his rhythm, as he sat in the corner of the tavern’s main room.

Around him, the tavern splayed, and Zoe walked in through the entrance, her eyes widening — roaming — as the dead beat played on and became the pace of her footsteps and the beating of her heart.

“Do not dance to the music,” Oriz said as a guitarist slouched on stage to join the drummer. “Such places as this are possessive, and their traps are countless.”

The tavern was a nest of small buildings surrounding a central square. Each outer building was a single room shack of wood or sheet metal or whatever they could find. They all had a missing wall where they touched the courtyard. These rooms held barrels, doorways, lounges with lounging customers. Some hid behind silk curtains of multicolored hues, silhouettes suggestive behind the gauzy screen…

But what grabbed Zoe’s attention was the building’s center.

What Zoe thought was a three-story building in the center — what she called the stack — were roofs and walls built to encompass a courtyard of ancient stones.

Dead music. A sound marching after the act. Not even a death rattle, but something further into the abyss. The guitarist stopped tuning and hooked his instrument into his Skein. He wailed, and his nails thrashed the string.

The abyss filled with souls, and they screamed.

Oriz hurried Zoe along toward the courtyard as patrons crawled from their dark rooms to dance. All kinds of aliens, mostly humanoid, their skin colors a drab riot, their clothes stained by decades of survival, their eyes gleaming with the softest blue light.

The same light that thrust up from the still in the center of the courtyard. A garish beam bathing the interior in shades of sapphire as it shot through a square hole cut into the high wooden ceiling. Tents surrounded the still, and curtains of silk hung between them and obscured the sightline to the center… but there was something wrong with the sight. Something wrong with the sounds of people walking between tents.

Oriz took Zoe’s hand and led her into the courtyard. A single step raised it from the surrounding shacks filling with dancers. A burning pain spread through Zoe’s groin and thighs as she crossed the threshold. She looked down, worried someone stabbed her, but her eyes widened at the truth.

Her legs were stretching. Skin tore as the distance between her front foot and back foot grew beyond the capacity of her anatomy. The music slowed as it grabbed at her mind, and beckoned her to retreat, but her leading foot pulled her forward. Oriz yanked her across the threshold from dirt floor to stone, and reality shifted.

The square courtyard expanded out. Each edge a mile long, but the tents still crammed the space to overflowing. An overlapping babble struck Zoe at the same time as she smelled the faint sweat and cooking odors that pervaded the area. Her feet slipped on wet refuse. A mess of paths led between the tents, and people, aliens, monsters, and dreams hurried along them. Oriz’s grip tightened around Zoe to stop her getting lost as they moved deeper into the square.

She felt bloodied scratches healing along her thighs as they continued.

Some tents were market stalls selling scavenged weapons of ivory and flint, barbed steel and hardened mucus, or dried centipedes, crushed weeds, and wax-sealed jars of bright blue baboon powder. Some closed walls leaked narcotic smoke — sweet, pungent, or sour.

Walls of colored silk hung between, demarcating areas, and shading off most of the brass mechanism in the center. Pipes wound from the monstrous still along the ceiling and drooped down into a multitude of tents. Steam circled the brass pipes as they dripped condensation.

Zoe understood the purpose of the curtains as strange echoes bounced between the tents. The stone underfoot came from mined labyrinths, and it carried that strange, reality warping property with it. The way they were placed created a courtyard larger than it should be. The space wasn’t big enough, couldn’t be big enough, for all these people, and yet it was.

A headache built behind her eyes every time she gazed out toward the edges of the square. It compiled with the nagging buzz of notifications at the back of her head. With every step, she felt as though she were inside a vice, and the music followed. Wailing guitar and steady drums rose in tempo, and now a singer joined with a whispering melody like a haunting winter wind. Sounds that plucked at her fishskin suit and begged her to turn around, join the throng, lose herself…

She stood in the middle of a path, turning. People pushed past her, strapped with weapons or naked or robed, their voices gruff or high, and the smell of alien chemicals and smoky meat, chatter bounced, music in the air but not moving, already there, she felt reality rising, walls surrounding her, waves rearing filled with a cacophonous reality — why couldn’t anyone else see it? — bearing down upon her head to the beat of an undead rhythm she opened her mouth and —

Oriz pushed her into a tent.

Zoe stumbled and fell onto a pile of soft cushions. The tent was tall, conical, with padded seating surrounding a brass pipe in the center. The pipe led from the ceiling down to about a foot off the ground. It did not seem structural, but the tent hung from it like a water drop from a tap. The brass pipe ended in a nozzle, and a clear fluid beaded from the tip.

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Princh sat in the room, but she stood when Zoe entered. Before Zoe could react, the green-haired woman wrapped her up in a furry-fingered hug. The saltwater smell of her fur filled Zoe’s nose.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” Princh said.

“Um, me too?”

Princh stepped back and looked away as she lit her pipe. When a black cloud dripped to the floor, she turned to Oriz.

“Is Trinch here?”

“He said he would meet us here.”

Princh nodded, still not looking at Zoe, and gestured toward the closed tent flap.

“Crik is out getting us something to eat.”

“I don’t know how you can eat right now.”

Princh took a long puff of her pipe and let the smoke dribble down her chin.

“In times such as these, the little pleasures are all we have.”

“Who’s Crik?” Zoe asked.

A booming laugh sounded from outside.

“That’s him,” Oriz said as she got comfortable on a pillow. “Might as well sit. We’ll go over the plan once Trinch arrives.”

Zoe sat beside Oriz, and Princh relaxed on the other side of the tap. As Zoe settled into the plush seating, Oriz leaned over. Her voice was the barest whisper as it tickled Zoe’s ear.

“You are about to see the other reason you shouldn’t burn Skein.”

The tent flap burst in and a man stumbled in ass backwards. His yellow hair buzzed short, his body as emaciated as the mummified drummer whose beat still ransacked Zoe’s mind. The new arrival, Crik, appeared the same grey-skinned race as Oriz, but where her skin was smooth and flawless with the youthful promise of a high level Vitality, Crik was covered in sores. Deep, gnarled, puckering pustules coated his skin as though he were a waxen figure sprinkled with coals. He carried a silver tray of delicate pastries and leaned down to hand them out to the ladies. With every movement, his skin stretched, relaxed, and the glowing sores changed. The burning holes in his flesh formed faces, chewing maws, reaching fingers, as though demons born in his skin chewed at him from the inside out.

He popped a pastry into his mouth and groaned when he caught Zoe staring at the leaking wound on his cheek.

“Oh yes,” he said. “High and treacherous are the paths of the warrior. Long is the fall. Beware, ye young un, beware the shortcut, for you shall find it is just as high, and just as treacherous, and the fall is just as long.”

Zoe took a pastry and looked away.

“I’m sorry.”

And she was. As a doctor, she had seen so much worse, but some part of her had assumed that Vitality could cure all. Though the twitching scars upon her lips should have been evidence enough.

The pastry was buttery, and the filling tasted like Nutella. It was the best thing she could remember eating in years. She licked her fingers and reached up to take another.

Crik balanced the platter on his head as he filled brass mugs with the clear fluid from the tap in the center of the tent. Loud snickers crept from him, though his lips didn’t move. The laughter came from his wounds.

“You were at the labyrinth,” Zoe said for something to say, to break the silence she felt crushing down. “You were the third camper. I heard your laugh when I was hiding from you all…”

“Guilty, guilty,” he grinned. “And I suppose you are the one who will get us home?”

“Say it louder,” Princh hissed. “Why don’t we tell everyone?”

“Exactly?” Crik handed out the brass mugs. “Why don't we tell everyone? I know the big boss of the tavern likes his petty kingdom but, surely, if we can open a way home, shouldn’t more come?”

“First,” Oriz held up a finger. “Only those who fell through the Mirrorbell dungeon can return with us. And,” she said before Crik could interrupt. “Zoe’s ability to stabilize the incursion is not infinite. The fewer people we transport, the better chance we have of crossing.”

Crik shook his mug.

“One should never argue sober. A toast, to new friends and the burning of dimensions.”

They clinked their mugs together and it surprised Zoe to hear Oriz and Princh mutter along to the toast.

“... to the burning of dimensions.”

“It’s a common enough toast,” Princh explained. “You’ll understand once you serve the Crimson Armada in war.”

“You served, I thought the Crimson Armada raided dimension thousands of years ago?”

“The war is as wide and constant as the system itself. They grow by consuming each other. Reality is in a constant state of conflict because reality cannot share,” Princh refilled her empty mug. “I like to think I would be different if I had that much power, but nobody makes it that far down the path without an appetite for destruction.”

Zoe sipped the drink. Warmth flowed down from her tongue to her toes, like dipping into a pool of honey. Above her, Crik waved his mug and argued with Oriz.

“You’re only giving excuses. Everyone in this dimension knows the risks of the path we walk. We should present them with the option, and let them decide for themselves. None of you can convince me otherwise,” he stood, suddenly incensed. “I’m going to — ”

“Do nothing,” Trinch growled.

The green-furred behemoth stood in the tent. His furry peaked hair brushed the tall ceiling. Chains rattled as his presence pressed upon them. The tent walls pushed inward, the poles groaned, Zoe couldn’t breathe. It was as though her lungs were frozen. Princh and Oriz wheezed, but Crik had it worst of all.

His knees wobbled. Burning, smoking blood leaked from his wounds. Spit foamed out the corner of his mouth as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Trinch leaned down close, lice crawling through his smile, and whispered for all to hear.

“We will tell nobody, because they are all scum. None are worthy of our favor. None are worthy of freedom. Everyone in this wretched tavern has wronged me. Everyone deserves a long, and agonizing demise,” he glowered and the tent creaked on the verge of collapsing. “Except for you four, of course.”

The tent returned to its original form. Zoe fell over and gasped for air. Her pastry rolled out of her hand and brushed Trinch’s foot.

He glanced down and scooped up the pastry with a chain. It vanished between his crooked grey teeth. Bugs clawed at the food before it even touched his tongue. He swallowed and smiled.

“As much as the cook here is a dog-souled bastard, he is good with butter,” he clapped his hands and smiled, though it did nothing for the tension in the room. At his feet, Crik sobbed. “Now, shall we discuss my plan?”