How deep does this world go?

Below the streets and bakeries, below the grassy lots, the old stumps. Below even the sewers and constructed tunnels, where ancient chasms yawn darkly, unseen and unplumbed. How deeply could such a crack reach?

Perhaps to the dark center of the world?

Water streamed around me as I fell, a swirling cyclone, the liquid seeming to delight in the motion as droplets flew and splashed.

I did not delight. I faced the darkness below me with grim determination. I was here to fight, perhaps to die.

The floor below the hole was a metal grid, a lattice of beams that allowed the water to flow through into hive-like caves below.

The beams looked scarcely wide enough to support the points of my feet, and only my bunrunning allowed me to land with grace, the sugar needles capping my legs clacking against steel as I landed precariously astride the mesh.

If the tunnels had been dark, then the chamber below the nexus was beyond dark. It was as if the space had never seen light, as if light was a property of some other dimension, replaced in that forgotten pit by rushing water and roaring sound.

I passed through the curtain of crashing water, feeling the spray eating at my sugar blades as acid might eat at steel. As I entered the space beyond I flicked them, sending the moisture still beading them spraying out to the sides.

The room was wide, at least twice as wide as the nexus chamber above, and almost every inch of it was occupied by one kind of detritus or another – shapes looming in the dark, taller than I was.

Driftwood, fragments of crates, lost jewellery, broken tools. All the lost detritus of the city, forming a maze of twisting passages and dead ends.

I could see no sign of Guppy, but even the giant fish would find no shortage of hiding places in this labyrinthine lair. Places in which to sit, and wait, and watch as your prey became lost.

Luckily I was not bound to these terrestrial paths. I hopped, somersaulting once through the air, and landed atop one of the larger pieces of refuse.

From on top of the shattered remnants of a breadbox, the entire geography of the maze was laid out below me.

The pattern was of an ingenious design. Larger items formed walls and barricades, while smaller debris plugged the gaps. The effect of the disarray was to create corridors and rooms. A palace of disorder and decay.

From my vantage point I was able to see one more thing, the faintest of golden glows, coming from a distant chamber.

I braced myself and leapt, flying a dozen inches through the air to another outcropping of detritus, then repeated the movement, making my way towards the golden glow.

What I found wasn't a pretty sight. I didn't know if this particular room was Guppy's larder, or its torture chamber. Old Biscuit was lashed to the neck of a bottle, what was left of his body held in place with fishing hooks and line.

Both of his legs and his remaining natural arm were gone, bitten away by Guppy's vice-like lips. His head remained, and of course his ginger heart, embedded in a torso that was now little more than a stub. He retained his prosthetic arm, the constructed thing perhaps the least palatable thing on him.

As I watched, the gingerlight spread over his body, straining to heal his battered form. It made some progress, a fraction of an inch's worth of gingerbread growing back at the torn edges of his wounds.

It wasn't enough that he might fight or run, but it would provide Guppy with a few more mouthfuls of flesh. Was that to be Old Biscuit's fate, then? Endlessly healing, endlessly consumed? An inexhaustible supply of sweet and spicy meat for the beast.

As I hopped down into the chamber, Old Biscuit stirred. He strained to lift his head, his single remaining eye wet with raisin juice.

"Dough Boy, ya came for me," he wheezed. "C-cut me down, partner. We gotta get outta here."

I stepped up and raised my glazer blade, drawing it across the fishing line. The cord was tough, but split quickly enough. What remained of Old Biscuit slid to the floor.

"You'n got your mystic art! I knew it had it in you."

A moment later Old Biscuit's single remaining eye began twitching as it looked around, as if searching for something. "You hearing that, partner?"

I only had moments to wonder what the gingerbread man was talking about before there was a fishook flying at me, arcing towards me over the mounds of debris from a distant unseen asssilant.

I twisted and shifted to the side as it approached, swinging my blade down in a powerful stroke that cut clear through the line. The hook bounced away through a gap in the grated floor, and in the distance there was a screech, as if Guppy had felt the pain of the severing.

"I'm sorry, Dough Boy. I'm sorry I got you'n into this," Old Biscuit muttered behind me. "I had such big plans for us. I was goin' to make you'n an arm!"

I turned half towards him and twisted my body slowly from side to side. Save your apologies, old man. This isn't over yet.

In the distance, parts of the debris palace began to tremble as Guppy started making its way through the maze, knocking walls and disturbing loose items.

"I don't think I'm gonna be walkin' clear of this one, partner," Old Biscuit wheezed out. "The'n gingerlight only goes so far."

Closer sections of the palace shook. Guppy was approaching with alarming speed. I hopped up onto the closest wall item – the torn bowl of an enormous hat – and looked out, trying to get a better idea of Guppy's position.

I could see it now, a fin and the upper part of its monstrous body, sliding through its mazelike lair. It was fast, turning with unerring accuracy, as if it had the layout memorized.

"It's'n like us," Old Biscuit called up to me. "Animote. Stronger than I ever seen it."

The fish paused, seeming to notice my attention. It lifted itself up on its forefins, two bulging, bulbous eyes raising over the level of the debris, meeting my gaze with aquatic malice.

There wasn't time to secure Old Biscuit to my body and flee, not with Guppy so close, and I doubted my ability to dodge the fishhooks it had been throwing if I were encumbered.

I didn't wait for it to come to me. I leaped, from close enough that with my puff body I was able to make the distance in a single bound.

I landed on the cracked iron helmet that formed part of the wall there, and immediately had to dodge as Guppy brought its long tail smashing down on the spot I'd just been standing.

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I jumped for the wall at the opposite side of the passage, spinning upside down as I tumbled so I could slash downwards with my blades as I passed.

My glazer blade made a shallow cut in Guppy's back, the fish screeching in anger as the wound welled with sticky ichor.

I landed, scarcely giving myself time to regain my balance before I hopped onto the beast's back, stabbing down at the wound I'd opened.

The fish thrashed, trying to throw me off, but the crystal-clad points of my feet sank into its flesh, and I concentrated on growing spikes sweeping back from their tips – barbs to keep me anchored.

I narrowed the tips of my blades and drove them downwards, driving them as deep into the open cut as I could. They sank an inch deep into the beast's flesh, foul ichor splashing across my face as Guppy howled.

Unable to throw me off, the fish writhed, twisting onto its back. I quickly relinquished my barbed grip, allowing myself to be thrown free before it could crush my against the ground.

I tumbled end over end across the metal floor, crashing to a stop against a broken sign board.

I placed my feet back on the ground, standing back up with the help of my blades and the balance-force. By the time I was upright, Guppy had twisted itself back onto its belly as well, leering down the passage at me.

We had a moment of staring at each other, then Guppy moved, hurtling down the passage at me on its trail of slime.

I held my ground until the last moment, then stepped to the side, raising my blade to draw a long cut all the way down the length of Guppy's right side. It didn't even bother to screech, simply flicking its long tail at me at the last second, slapping me off my feet.

The impact with the wall was a hammer blow against my back. I felt my sides splitting from internal pressure, and hot jelly stained the floor. I staggered away from Guppy, my vision growing cloudy.

Guppy slid towards me slowly, a smug look in its bulging eyes. It paused at a clump of spilled jelly and dipped its fin into it, then brought the substance to its mouth.

It seemed to shudder as it sucked the jelly from its fin, its eyes rolling up momentarily, before turning back on me.

Beast! Monster!

I was moving before I realized it, all pain and weariness forgotten. I saw a moment of surprise in Guppy's expression as I sprinted towards it as fast as my sticky legs could carry me.

I leaned to the side to begin skidding to a stop. I lowered my swords in a scissors blade over Guppy's fin as I passed, then pulled, shearing the offending limb from the fish's body.

I twisted and resumed my sprint, moving past Guppy, only stopping when I was clear of its dangerous tail. I turned back to look at it, waiting to see what it would do.

The fish turned towards me and began advancing, but slowly. With only one fin it was barely able to move along its slime trail, unable to build up the momentum it used to attain its highest speeds.

It opened its mouth and spat a pair of fish hooks at me, but I batted them aside with a sweep of my blades.

It was injured, for now, and moving slowly. I had a chance.

I rounded a corner to block any more fish hooks it might try, then hopped up onto a pile of wine corks. Three great, puff-body assisted leaps brought me back to Old Biscuit's cell, where I set about trying to lift him.

"Partner," he coughed, "Hol' up, Partner."

Perhaps if I were to rest his body against my back, I thought, I could secure it there with angled glazer spikes.

"Dough boy, stop," he whispered.

I pulled back, looking down at the old sweet.

"I don't know what you did back there, but it ain't gonna take. Mah body's wracked an' broken, partner, and you'll never get out haulin' this old gingerbread."

Even as he said the words I heard a distant screech, the sound of trembling flotsam walls. Guppy was already starting to heal.

"I want you to promise me somethin'," Old Biscuit said. He waited until I nodded my body before he continued. "Promise me you'll take care of my daughter. Promise me you'll take care of Lemon."

I half turned away. Old Biscuit wanted me to care for that little jelly bean? I wasn't a carer, I could barely look after myself. I had no security, no sure future. I wasn't ready to raise a child.

And yet, as I looked at Old Biscuit's anguished face, his battered body, I realized that this wasn't about me. I would still be floundering without his help, and it seemed I might fail to save him now. This was my last chance to repay him.

I nodded, slowly, heavily.

Old Biscuit nodded back, then he seemed to inhale at length, the breath impossibly deep. The glow from the ginger crystal in his chest dwindled to a point, even as his gingerbread flesh began to give off a strange yellow light.

He raised his arm to his chest, prosthetic fingers closing around the crystallized ginger, then pulled. A muffled scream escaped his icing lips as the crystal came free.

He held it out to me, expression agonized.

"Take'n this. You'll'n be able to access some of my'n mystic art with it."

He pressed the crystal against the tip of one of my blades, which I blunted, then tipped with three angled spikes, holding the crystal securely.

The light shining from his gingerbread body began pulsing, slowly at first, but with increasing frequency.

"You'n best get going now," he said, his voice strained, as if he were trying to hold his breath. "Don't worry about me. Reckon I got one last surprise for Guppy."

When I hesitated to leave, he shouted at me, "Go!"

I turned and ran, hearing Old Biscuit's voice calling after me. "And save my daughter!"

I caught glimpses of Guppy as I ran back towards the swirling waterfall that marked the entrance to the drainage chamber. It saw me as well, but it didn't change direction, still heading at speed towards the cell. Seeing me leaving without Old Biscuit must have raised its suspicions.

Old Biscuit's regularly pulsing light was getting brighter and brighter. View of his body was blocked by the walls of the structure, but I could see the glow pulsing in an ever-growing dome over his section of the complex.

I splashed through the spinning curtain of water, braced the points of my feet against the metal grid, and launched myself upwards in a four-foot vertical leap.

I rose up the hollow column of water, soaring up above the swirling nexus. As I reached the apogee of my jump I realized that I was still directly over the hole, in danger of falling straight back down, but I raised one leg to the horizontal and spun myself quickly enough that I was pushed back over the water by air resistance.

I was pumping my legs before I hit the water, beginning to sprint as soon as the tips of my feet touched the surface. I ran up the curving furrows of liquid, around and against the fast-flowimg current, until I could hop onto the encircling platform.

The blinking glow from Old Biscuit was now so bright it was shining up out of the center of the whirlpool, an intermittent floodlight, bathing the tunnels in sharp shadows.

I began running down the tunnel, back toward Old Biscuit's base. The light was growing brighter and brighter, casting my own shadow out ahead of me, my silhouette made huge and monstrous by the light.

Finally it reached a peak, so bright that even my shadow grew bright as the light shone throw me, the variations in my silhouette showing me the internal line between my jelly and outer edge.

Steam began rising off the water and I realized the light wasn't going to abate this time. This was it's final moment, it's crescendo.

I was lifted off my feet, and the world went white.