Glorious Purpose analyzed Will’s emotional state and surface-level thoughts and cross-referenced them against similar situations. The results were not good.

This wasn’t because of the ice worm, which was currently chasing after Glory. Will had found out a piece of information that upset him, which was why Glory hadn’t felt the need to share it.

If Will had asked, Glory would have answered honestly. At least, this was what he told himself.

The fact that Will could not ask because he had no way of knowing it was a question with an answer was only a slight wrinkle in Glory’s otherwise-flawless logic.

Will wanted to know how many men from earth had come here, and how many had gotten to go home. These were fair questions, and ones with no answer that would make Will feel better.

The ice worm was of secondary concern, a footnote in Glory’s assessment. It was, admittedly, a long footnote.

Using a massive, heated horn, the worm could burrow through ice and soft stone. The plan to use it to break into the gnoll’s laboratory and rescue Will had been a very impromptu one.

Things were not going according to that plan. Will had talked down Skullfuck Bonecrusher on his own, for one thing, rendering the worm obsolete. The worm was not willing to accept its own superfluousness.

For another, Will wasn’t grateful to be rescued. He was deeply annoyed more than anything, which was an actual worst-case scenario.

Keeping Will invested was the most important thing, which meant that him being truly annoyed beyond a margin of sardonic error was something to be avoided at all costs.

Glory improvised. “You seem to be handling things well,” he said congenially as he was crushed under the worm’s coils.

“I was,” Will agreed. “We need to talk.”

“Can it wait until after we defeat the worm?” Glory asked. “I think that’s a fair request.”

Will took a deep breath. He recalled the feelings in the bar, the anger he had felt. He thought about slipping into it again, but stopped himself. He wasn’t going to risk his life to prove some kind of stupid point.

Instead, Will leapt up the wall, using a twisting plant like a spring to jump up to a worm’s-eye view. On the floor above, Virgil was frantically flipping through a book.

A tremor loosened a number of icicles from the next floor up, which dropped en masse. Without looking up, Virgil shielded himself from the volley, with only one icicle slipping past. Will broke that one into harmless powder with a crack of his whip.

“What are you doing?” Will asked. It came out harsher than he had meant to sound, and Virgil looked up at him in surprise.

“I know I have something to deal with the worm, I just need time,” Virgil said urgently, barely moving. Suddenly he looked back up at Will, meeting his gaze. He looked like he wanted to say something, but didn’t.

“Okay,” Will said, averting his own gaze. “I’ll buy you time.”

Will leapt off the floor and grabbed onto the worm, which was flailing confusedly. Unable to dig through the metal laboratory, it slammed against the walls and floor, roaring. It seemed unable to wriggle out, and as it attempted to do so it only wedged itself deeper. Will jumped again to the other side of the chamber, just on top of the metal ceiling of the lab. He considered what might grab a giant ice worm’s attention.

“Hey!” Will shouted, simply running down the short list of things he thought might motivate such a creature. “Over here!”

If the worm was aware of Will’s existence, it didn’t show it. Below him, Glory and Skullcrusher were pushing the worm away from the botanist’s research with adequate success.

“Where are the others?” Will shouted, though he knew Glory didn’t need to actually hear Will to converse.

“Dio’s alive but unconscious,” Glory said in Will’s mind. “Rex was eaten.”

Will winced internally. Even if Rex would return later, that had to be a terrible way to go.

“Actually, he’s alive,” Glory corrected. “The worm barely chews and Rex has extra acid resistance courtesy of another potion. This was part of the plan.”

“Okay,” Will said flatly. “How are we planning to get him out?”

“I can extract him safely if we can hold the worm still,” said Glory.

“And if we can’t?”

“The potion wears off in about six hours.”

Will grumbled. “Ask Skullcrusher if he’s got any more of that moss.”

Glory was silent for a moment. “Yes, he has clippings of it in a storeroom to the east. I can fetch some if you take over down here.”

Will nodded and jumped down back into the lab, where the worm had taken up most of the area. Skullcrusher was hitting the worm with what looked like a steampunk weedwhacker, but was backed into a corner with one of the piles from earlier.

“Your friends have an interesting definition of rescue,” Skullcrusher said ruefully.

“Yeah,” Will agreed. The worm slithered around, whacking the both of them with its tail as its head wrapped around to look at them. It roared and tried to snap at Skullcrusher.

Will jumped up and grabbed onto the worm’s snout, which felt like cement on a hot day. It was actually kind of nice after dealing with the cold, Will thought stupidly, as he wrapped his whip around the tip.

He pulled, causing the worm to swerve upwards and bash its head into the wall. The worm bellowed, swinging Will into the wall as well, where he smashed into it with a nasty crunch. He laid there limply, groaning incoherently.

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Glory appeared, dumping carnivorous moss onto the worm’s head. He guarded Skullcrusher and Will as the worm thrashed, slowed, and eventually stopped.

The only sound in the room was the worm’s labored breathing. Even though it had stopped moving, it still took up almost all of the room.

Glory brought an unconscious Will and Skullcrusher to the floor above next to Virgil, then disappeared into the worm to fetch Rex.

Will opened his eyes, attempted to get up, and swore. “Jesus Christ that hurts!” He said, clutching his leg.

“You broke your leg,” Virgil said matter-of-factly. He was now sketching a series of interlocking circles in the snow with a finger.

“I can see that,” Will said, wincing. “Can you do anything for it?”

Virgil blinked, again apparently wanting to say something. “Yes, of course. Sorry.”

Virgil sat down perpendicular to Will and grabbed him by the ankle and thigh. Golden light swirled around Will’s leg as Virgil muttered something under his breath.

Virgil pushed Will’s leg up until his knee was sharply bent, which Will had expected to hurt but didn’t. Then Virgil let go and stood back.

Will got up to a sitting position but Virgil forbade him from trying to stand.

“You should give it a bit,” Virgil warned. “I’m not as good as Glory is at that.”

“Thank you,” Will said. “You did great.”

Virgil smiled and returned to whatever magic he had been doing before.

Glory reappeared, setting an exhausted and clammy Rex down a short ways away.

“How was the worm’s digestive tract?” Will asked.

Rex gave a thumbs-up and smiled with more enthusiasm than Will thought was warranted.

“I’m going to grab Dio, then we should head back into town,” Glory said. “Will, can you give me a hand?”

Glory put a hand on Will’s shoulder, giving him one final burst of energy that made him feel like a million bucks.

“Sure,” Will said, getting up. He turned to Skullcrusher, who had been sitting on the edge of the floor staring down at the worm for the past while. “Can you guys keep an eye on our… prisoner? Make sure he’s doing alright?”

Virgil and Rex both nodded. Will hoped this was good enough, and turned to join Glory as he floated down an icy tunnel.

“Are you certain you want to know?” Glory asked. “I don’t think you will like the answers.”

“Well when you put it like that I feel like I need to,” Will said.

“That’s true,” said Glory, sighing. “Okay. You are the sixty-ninth person that’s been brought here.”

“Okay, and how many of them were from earth?” Will asked.

“Sixty-nine,” Glory said.

Will considered this. “So you only grab people from earth,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” Glory said with slight hesitation. “The first connection was with earth, and once that doorway is open it’s easier to use it again than to open another.”

“And why was the first one from earth?” Will asked.

“Virgil told you when you first arrived,” Glory said. “Earth is not so different from here, and so it’s less dangerous to transfer between the two. That part was true.”

“But it wasn’t the whole truth,” Will concluded.

“No,” said Glory. “Don’t blame Virgil for that. He didn’t know at the time either.”

“You kept that from everyone,” Will said, voice perfectly flat.

“You think we are deliberately targeting earth,” Glory said. “But that’s reductive.”

“I don’t think it’s fair that you’re kidnapping people from just earth,” Will said, though of course Glory already knew that.

“So would it be better if we kidnapped more sentient viruses from six multiverses down?” Glory asked. “Or from the baby-eaters of Iridium XII?”

Those weren’t rhetorical questions, Will knew, but he found himself annoyed all the same. “I’m just saying, that’s sixty-eight other men. How many of them got to go home?”

“Thirteen,” Glory supplied automatically. “But an important piece of context is that many of them didn’t want to return to earth. They chose to stay here.”

Will was about to derisively ask why anyone in their right mind would stay here, before remembering that he wasn’t the target audience. “Okay, that actually is good context.”

“We don’t just find people randomly,” Glory said. “You’re very unusual in that you’re not…” Glory considered what to say.

“Gay,” Will supplied.

“Yes,” Glory said, nodding. “Though technically that’s not the only angle of compatibility.”

“I get it,” said Wil, waving a hand dismissively. “I don’t like that you kept that from me.”

“I know,” Glory said.

“I need to be able to trust you,” Will continued.

“I know,” said Glory.

“It… God this sounds corny… it hurt my feelings that you didn’t trust me,” Will said with some finality.

“I know,” repeated Glory. “I do need to trust you.”

“I’m not going back to earth,” Will said. This was something he had known for some time, but had never articulated. “At least until we’re done. But you knew that already.”

“I’ve known that for a long time, yes,” Glory agreed, smiling faintly.

“We should probably actually find Dio,” Will said, reminding himself of what they were actually meant to be doing.

“Oh, he made it back on his own a short while ago,” Glory said.

“Okay,” said Will, turning around. “Are there any other bombshells you need to drop on me before we head back?”

Glory considered this. “There’s one, but—“

“Lay it on me,” Will said. “I can take it.”

“I really don’t think you’ll want to hear it,” Glory warned. “It’s not my place to—“

“Glory, tell me. It’s not your job to decide what I need to hear.”

“If you insist,” Glory said. He sighed, thinking about how to put it.

“You’re stalling, just tell me!” Will said, exasperation creeping into his voice.

Glory told Will this final secret. Will did not, in fact, enjoy hearing it.

“I don’t believe you.” Will said.

“I know,” Glory said.

“I’m not gay.” Will said, his heart rate and breathing beginning to accelerate. “I’m not!”

“That’s correct,” Glory said, entirely unsure of what to do. “But you’re not straight, either.”