Maxwell did not know how much time passed in the darkness, but eventually, he found himself able to open his eyes. When he did, he discovered his hands and legs bound and tied together behind his back. When he tried to move, a sharp pain exploded across his limbs.

“Best not to fidget,” a voice said.

Maxwell was on a table in the central hall. He turned over onto his other side to see the Scholar kneeling in front of him, busy tracing out the same pattern that Maxwell had seen turn Rena into light in the Scholar’s mind. He could see Marigold as well, lying on another table a short distance away. She was still unconscious.

“We’ve studied every kind of common knot in existence,” the Scholar said. “The one you are currently bound with is inescapable, not to mention excruciating if you insist on moving.

“Are you going to do to us what you did to the other Scholars?” Maxwell asked.

The Scholar turned around to face Maxwell. “Yes, quite right. You will be the first outsider we’ve ever absorbed. The first of many, of course, but the first, nonetheless. We need to get everything right, for your sake and ours.”

“I don’t think this is what you are. I think you might be unwell,” Maxwell said.

“Do you now? And what do you base that on?”

“The memories you showed me. I could feel what it was like to be you, and you didn’t seem like someone capable of this.”

“No?” The Scholar thought about this for a moment and then shrugged and went back to his work. “You may be right, but in losing myself we have become much more. You’ll understand soon enough.”

“When you eat me, you mean,” Maxwell said.

The Scholar chuckled. “It won’t be like that at all. We’re sorry the thought of merging causes you pain and confusion, but it will prove insignificant in the long run.”

The creature tried to smile reassuringly, but the result was terrifying. They turned around and continued drawing the pattern on the empty table, talking as they worked. “Very little magic works anymore. A few spells that have no practical replacement, but most were turned off hundreds of years ago.”

“Turned off?” Maxwell said.

“Sad, isn’t it? Overnight, so many spells, so much arcana rendered dead. That’s why this ritual is so special. It’s from the book you saw in my mind. This one right here.” The Scholar pointed to a thick leather-bound volume at their feet. “The ritual is fairly straightforward, though extremely painful, sadly.”

Maxwell let out a sound that was halfway between a groan and a sigh.

“No need to worry, it will be quick, and then there’ll be no more you, just us. The curse will be broken and at long last, we’ll be able to leave this place.”

“Wonderful,” Maxwell said.

The Scholar chuckled again.

Maxwell could not see much from his position, but it looked like the last details were being completed. There was nothing more to do but anticipate the shame of the Scholar learning all his small, pathetic secrets.

Beep.

A sound resonated from somewhere deeper in the building. It might’ve been lost if not for the silence of the Archive.

The Scholar turned to Maxwell. “What was that? Was that you?”

Maxwell shook his head.

Beep.

“Perhaps someone followed you,” The Scholar said.

The Scholar stood up and headed toward the exit. Maxwell waited until they were gone and then turned his head toward Marigold. She was still unconscious.

“Marigold,” he whispered. “Marigold, wake up. This thing wants my essence.”

Nothing.

Maxwell scanned the darkness of the room. He could not see much in the dim lighting, but a voice there called out to him.

“Human.”

He tried to turn and see where it was coming from, but he found that the effort only caused him pain.

“Are you awake, human?” the voice said from somewhere in the dark.

“Who’s there?” Maxwell whispered back.

“It’s Walter.”

Maxwell thought for a moment. “The demon with the hat?”

“It will take the creature a moment to find the pager, but we must move fast.”

Maxwell felt a sharp, cold object move between his wrists and sever the binding. Walter sliced through the rope at his feet too, and he was free.

“Get Marigold,” Maxwell said.

Maxwell rubbed his wrists and stretched out his back as he scanned the doorway. There was no sight of the Scholar for now, but the beeping had stopped. He turned back to see Walter using his talons to cut through the rope binding Marigold. The movement was enough to wake her.

“Walter?” she said, bleary-eyed.

He nodded, helping her to her feet. “We have to get going?”

Marigold quickly came back to her senses and rubbed her wrist where the binding had been. “Where?”

“Down. See that golden portal at the far end of the room?”

Maxwell craned his neck and saw nothing, but Marigold seemed to know what he was talking about. “That was the way down you were talking about?”

Walter nodded. “I’ve already taken care of the lock.”

“Alright, let’s go,” Marigold said, nodding.

They stood up and turned toward the way out that Maxwell still could not see, but as he took his first step forward, a mouth yawned open at his feet. Maxwell looked down and jumped as he saw a smile in the middle of the carpet. It wasn’t alone either. Another smile soon joined the first, and yet another beside that. All the little crescents and marks that lined the white floor smiled up at him, transformed into mouths. Maxwell wanted to scream, but no voice came out. Instead, he threw himself onto the nearest desk as far from the lipless grins as possible.

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A voice echoed through the hall. It was the Scholar, but they no longer spoke with the weak rasp Maxwell had heard before, they now spoke with the voice of a multitude.

“Did one of you lose something?” The hundreds of mouths that lined the floor moved in unison. The sound was deafening.

The Scholar emerged from a door at the end of the hall. They were holding up a crushed plastic box. More smiles lined the Scholar’s body, large and small, cutting jagged lines across the creature’s pale frame. The creature’s feet merged into the floor so that it was impossible to say where one began and the other ended. The carpet and the Scholar were one, and the creature’s frame surged along the floor like a boat on the waves.

Maxwell didn’t need to be told to run. He was already hopping from one desk to the next as the floor chomped up at him. The mouths rose on white liquid tentacles, trying to sink their teeth into Maxwell’s leg. What had seemed a carpet moments ago was transformed into a grinning ocean, and the tide was rising quickly.

Maxwell had hoped that Marigold would run over and hoist him over her shoulder, as had become the norm, but she was too far away, and the Scholar’s tentacles were moving toward her, too. She bounded across the room to the black trapdoor that Maxwell could finally make out. She heaved and pulled, but it refused to budge.

Open or not, Maxwell moved faster than he thought possible, but he was still not as fast as the Scholar. A wave of mouths shot out from where the creature was standing, and Maxwell leaped to his right. He almost tumbled off a three-legged desk, throwing himself onto another table nearby at the last moment. There was a clear path forward now, just a half-dozen more desks, and he would catch up to Marigold.

At that moment, a ghostly form arose from the floor directly in front of Maxwell and brought him to a teetering stop. Maxwell barely stopped himself from plummeting into the welcoming bone-white arms of the Scholar. He dove left, but there was another version of the Scholar waiting for him there, too. They were everywhere, replicating themselves from the uneven rows of mouths that lined the floor, dozens of Scholars, hundreds.

In that moment, despair overtook Maxwell. Wherever he turned, the same distorted, ghostly face was leering back at him. It didn’t need to move across this hall. It just needed to fill it, and it was doing it at a pace that Maxwell couldn’t outrun. He closed his eyes and waited for it all to be over.

“Sorry, pardon me,” Walter said.

From above, a pair of talons reached beneath Maxwell’s armpits and hoisted him into the air. Maxwell opened his eyes and looked up to see Walter flying him up into the higher reaches of the hall. Two blazing wings of fire extended from the back of his suit. The heat of them almost scorched Maxwell’s face.

More tendrils shot up from the floor. They snapped at Maxwell’s dangling feet, but Walter flew higher. With a few heavy beats of his wings, he swooped up toward the ceiling, beyond the reach of the Scholar. Then, he plunged straight toward Marigold and the door. As he drew closer, her efforts finally paid off and the door slid open. She jumped through, seemingly into thin air.

Maxwell wasn’t sure if they would make it. His mind conjured up images of a bloody smear on the stone surface. A second later, Walter snapped his wings together, sending them into a free fall. They surged forward in a desperate burst of speed, hurtling out the hole in the floor and down into a sheer drop toward the forest below.

Maxwell closed his eyes in fear, but he heard the door slam closed behind him. On the other side a low, guttural scream echoed from inside the Archive.

*

Maxwell opened his eyes. He wished he hadn’t. He was standing on nothing. Marigold and Walter were doing the same. He felt an instant surge of vertigo as he looked down at the forest several hundred meter below them. They were all perched on some kind of floating platform and it was completely invisible.

“We’re not falling.” Maxwell said.

Marigold shrugged, looking for the first time almost as perplexed as Maxwell did. “No, we’re not, are we?”

“It’s a magical platform,” Walter said. “Meant to test your faith and whatnot. It’s very impressive when you’re a child.”

“So, this was the way down you meant?”

Walter nodded.

Marigold looked annoyed. “But you knew we couldn’t open it without you. Why tell us to come this way?”

“Well, I didn’t actually think you would listen to me. I just wanted to make you leave and feel as if I had helped if I’m being honest.”

“Why did you come?” Marigold asked.

“And how did you find us?” Maxwell added.

“Yes, well, a moment please,” Walter moved slightly to the right and then sat down on what was apparently a magical bench.

“Gorall,” Walter said at last. “He told me that a Caretaker and a human were descending the Core along with a robot.”

“And he went to the authorities?”

“No. He wanted to check with me first, but that caused the authorities to come looking. They had several questions for me. I took that as my cue to escape. My coworkers all started asking questions. I knew what was coming next, so I ran.”

“I hope you didn’t tell them anything,” Marigold said.

“I kept my mouth closed, but they knew something. You were right. It didn’t even take a day. As soon as they left, I decided to follow you. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

“Well, you’re doing the right thing, even if you had no choice,” Marigold said.

“It doesn’t feel like the right thing. I think the path to the right thing has fewer mouths. At any rate, we need to figure out what our plan is. Perhaps you could fill me in,” Walter said.

Marigold thought about this for a moment. “I suppose we should all be present then.”

She reached into her bag and retrieved the vacuum cleaner that had been shouting at Walter a few hours ago. She placed it on the invisible floor and turned it on. It didn’t speak immediately, nor did it seem to notice or care it appeared to be floating on thin air. Instead, it spun around in a slow circle, stopping first at Walter, then at Maxwell, and finally at Marigold.

“How dare you,” the robot said.

“Oh please,” Marigold said.

“You don’t know what it’s like. It’s dark and lonely. It’s barely an existence at all.”

“It can’t be that different than when you were in the computer.”

“Exactly,” IT said.

IT rolled over to Maxwell and parked itself next to him, nudging into his arm for security. Maxwell reached down and patted the vacuum cleaner on its plastic shell. It paused for a moment as its sensors took in Walter and made a connection.

“I see you came to your senses, at least,” it said to Walter.

Walter nodded. “Or lost them completely.”

“This is good,” IT said. “We can do this. You can commune with the Voice of the Flame. We might be able to fix things.”

“How can you be so sure? I made the blood pact, but I’ve never addressed the Voice directly. I’m not sure how it works.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Marigold said. “This will work. I’m certain of it.”

“Don’t you think you’re getting ahead of yourself? I’ll admit you’ve made it further than I would have thought, but the World Cauldron is still a long way off. We’ve still got to make it through the Forest and then down to the Hollows, where someone will question and most likely devour a stray human.”

“If we can get into the Hollows, there’s someone that can help us,” Marigold said.

This announcement baffled Walter. “You know someone down there? Why? How?”

“It’s not important. What’s important is getting by the guards. They don’t just let anyone walk in.”

“Surely, nobody comes this way. How well guarded can it be?” Walter asked.

Marigold shrugged.

“Why are the Hollows so dangerous?” Maxwell asked.

“It’s where those who wouldn’t or couldn’t adapt went after the war,” Walter said.

“The battle that happened back on the Wailing Plains?” Maxwell said.

“Yes,” Walter replied. “Deep in the forest there is a cave that leads down toward the Flame, but before we reach it is the Hollows. It’s a kind of underground city.”

“It’s where the actual monsters are,” IT added. “The ones that aren’t like Marigold and Walter. They’ll be less interested in what you’re doing here and more interested in how you taste. Also, they’re not very fond of technology, but I notice nobody’s concerned about me.”

“Like the Amish?” Maxwell asked.

IT thought about this for a second. “Amish looking to eat stray humans, sure.”

“Alright then,” Walter said. “We’ll go with your plan: through the forest, down into the Hollows and somehow reach the World Cauldron below that.”

“And past the seal,” IT said.

“Enough about the seal,” Marigold snapped back.

“You say that now, but wait until we reach it, then it will be all, IT do you know anything about getting through seals, take a look at this for us, what does this arcana mean?”

Marigold and IT fell into an argument, and Walter looked over at Maxwell who could only shrug. Embarrassed, he looked away, and focused on the forest rising up toward them through the invisible floor of the platform they were on. He still could see no end to the ribbon of forest below him. It seemed to stretch on forever. A few of the strange geometric objects that apparently ran the universe sprouted out of the forest here and there, connected to the world above by railroad tracks but these tapered out and all but disappeared somewhere in the distance. One thing that didn’t disappear was a dark, worn path that cut through the green.

“Is that a road?” Maxwell asked Walter.

“Not a road, the road. The Old Road. The creatures down in the Hollows are somewhat extreme examples, but plenty of creatures prefer to live outside of the Core and the rail network. The path connects those communities. The forest and the Old Road are all that remain of the original Backend.”

“How many creatures live down there?”

“Along the Old Road? Thousands, I would imagine.”

“Would they all want to eat me?” Maxwell asked.

“Oh, most certainly,” Walter said with an easy smile.