From nowhere, Glory pulled out a sword that appeared to be made of stained glass. Shards of it hovered between the separated hilt and blade, catching the already strange light even more strangely.

“How long have you had that?” Will asked, eyeing the magic blade warily.

“I was born with it, actually,” said Glory. “In a manner of speaking, at least. I am restricted from using it on the material plane as part of the spell binding me to Virgil as his eidolon.”

“Hm, okay,” Will said. He pulled out his own magic weapon, feeling strangely like he had shown up underdressed to a special occasion.

Hope pulled out a pair of daggers made of that same stained glass, but Honor did nothing.

“You humanoids and your weapons. It’s almost quaint.” He snarked.

“Are you this obnoxious with everyone or just with your big brother?” Will countered, feeling unreasonably proud of his improvised zinger.

Honor didn’t respond directly. “Let’s just let our skills do the talking.”

Glory traced a line from a garbage can to the larger end of Honor that was probably sort of like a head. Then, faster than Will could blink, the trash can accelerated across the hall directly into Honor’s maybe-face, shattering into a million tiny pieces.

“That’s our cue!” Hope said, dashing towards Will with glass knives held in a cross-shaped position.

Will jumped straight up to avoid being sliced, then turned in midair to cut through Hope with his whip.

Instead of the flood of interpretable information that typically followed Will’s first attack on anyone, it was like he had just put on TV static directly into his brain at max volume.

Disoriented, Will landed on his fuzzy rump, twisting just in time to avoid a constricting swipe from Honor.

Each end of the interlocking chain that made up Honor swiped and stabbed at a foe, Will and Glory each locked in a struggle across from one another.

Searing pain cut across Will’s shoulder as one of Hope’s daggers cut through the muscles like butter. Will turned, grabbed the blade with his functional hand, pulled it free, then sliced off a piece of Honor’s chain.

Despite the pain and the fact that a knife had just been pulled out of it, Will’s shoulder appeared physically fine. Was that what it felt like when he struck someone with his magic weapon?

“Ach!” The piece of Honor Will had lopped off said, sounding more frustrated than harmed. It shrank into nothing in Will’s grasp and reappeared attached to the angel’s main body.

The dagger also tore itself from Will’s grasp, returning to Hope with a flourish.

Glory slashed through the tangled metal of Honor’s body like he was swinging a baseball bat, cleanly severing the top from the bottom.

Each half of Honor went for a separate target, slithering quickly through the air. The half fighting Glory kept its distance, taking shots from beyond the sweeping range of Glory’s sword.

While he was distracted, Hope had snuck up behind him and was about to stab Will through the head before being interrupted by Glory grabbing the blade in one hand and shattering it.

“Getting stabbed through the head by that magic knife won’t kill me, right?” Will asked.

“No, you’ll just be trapped in a wakeless nightmare orchestrated by Hope is a Weapon for a subjective eternity,” Glory said, which wasn’t very helpful.

“He makes it sound worse than it is!” Hope said defensively, pulling his remaining dagger over his chest like a shield. “It’s like a hotel! There’s a minibar, and I’ve got one of those… goodness me, what’s the word? The wooden thing men have sex in.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“That describes like seventy percent of all architecture here, narrow it down!” Will said. “Or actually, don’t, and we can go back to beating each other up.”

Hope dropped his dagger, which vanished. He sat down on a padded bench and assumed a thoughtful position. “No no, it’s going to bother me until I remember. Give me a minute.”

“Is it, uh, bigger than a breadbox?” Will asked. He was currently trying to avoid being strangled by Honor, and really wishing he could fight more enemies without prehensile tendrils.

Honor stopped strangling Will, too taken aback to continue. “What the dickens are you talking about?”

“It’s like, uh, twenty questions. You know, like the game.” Will said sheepishly. “That’s the question you’re supposed to start with.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Hope said, pointing a finger at Will. “Yes, it’s bigger than a breadbox.”

“This is unbelievably stupid,” Honor said, throwing Will through the reconstruction of a window of a jeweler’s shop, but added “Is it bigger than a house?”

“No, definitely smaller than a house.” Hope said.

“Do you store things in it?” Glory asked, cutting the half of Honor he was fighting into another set of perfectly-even halves.

“No, not traditionally,” Hope said.

“Uh, bathroom,” Will said, tossing aside a fuzzy reconstruction of a diamond necklace. “Are you thinking of a bathroom?”

“No,” Hope said. “Not bathroom-related.”

The disparate pieces of Honor again vanished, reappearing into a singular, seamless flowing mass of, like something between a kinetic sculpture and an amoeba. This swirled like a drill as it darted forward, intent on skewering Will.

Glory intersected again, blocking the attack with crossed wings. There was a terrible scraping noise, like nails on a chalkboard, as Honor flattened out from the sudden stop.

Glory grabbed part of Honor and pulled harshly, like he was playing tug-of-war with some unseen force, and dragged more of Honor’s extradimensional body into a range Will could perceive.

The entirety of Honor’s body consisted of a single, long tube of soft-looking silver, which dipped in and out of from ana. Being pulled across dimensions was unpleasant but not, strictly speaking, very damaging. It did mean that he was bound by gravity.

The snaking form of Honor lashed towards Will like a striking cobra, but Will managed to kick the end away.

Hope was still sitting at the bench, waiting for someone to ask another question.

“Is it temperature-regulated?” Glory asked, half-turning to face his brother.

“Yes!” Hope said, smiling. “Will, you go.”

“Hey!” Honor said, though he took the opportunity to snake behind Will while he was momentarily distracted.

Will made what he considered a smart guess. “A sauna. Are you thinking of a sauna?”

“Yes! A sauna! Thank you!” Hope said, clapping his hands quickly and excitedly. “It was just on the tip of my tongue. So to speak.”

Will smiled. “You know what, I should have started with that. Seems obvious to me.”

“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty-twenty,” Honor said, resuming his crushing of Will’s jugular.

Glory and Hope watched their brother, their disappointment palpable.

“What?” Honor snapped, though he loosened his grip enough for Will to breathe. “We were fighting!”

“My heart is frankly no longer in it,” Hope said, shrugging. “It’s no fun anymore.”

Honor dropped Will in disgust. “Fine! But I want a rematch. I’m keeping the mall up until then.”

“Surely you have better uses of your energy than maintaining this pointless illusion?” Glory asked, though he didn’t expect to get Honor to change his mind.

“I do!” Honor agreed in a tone that suggested disagreement. “So if you don’t want the fifth sphere of jubilation to break again, you won’t keep me waiting.”

There was a brief pause that then became a too-long pause.

“Are we done here?” Will asked. “I’m done here.”

“Hm, oh, yes, we should be going,” Glory said. He teleported behind Will, putting a hand on his neck to heal the bruises left by Honor. “This was… something. Fun, maybe.”

Glory pulled Will kata (to a lower point in the fourth dimension) back to the material world, where the sun was beginning to rise.

“I can see why you like it here,” Will said after he spent a few minutes throwing up. “It’s so empty up there.”

Glory looked at Will with a puzzled expression on his not-face as he stretched tiredly. “Oh, yes, right, the architecture would look slightly… nonexistent from your point of view. Sorry. A limit of a three-dimensional viewpoint. Everything here looks flattened out to me, like a landscape of paper cutouts might look to you.”

“So why do you come here, then?” Will asked.

“The terrain may be lacking in depth, but the company more than makes up for it.”