Emerging from the wreckage, Walter took stock of their situation. IT had cracked his screen and Walter had torn his already scorched vest, but there were no injuries. Vehicle safety standards at the Ægency were unexpectedly high. The moment the ship connected with the stone wall, giant bubbles of air shot out of every surface of the interior and absorbed the worst of the impact.

Despite his shaky legs, Walter feigned confidence. He would need to lead Marigold and the group into the labyrinth. It was the first time he had been there since he was a child centuries ago, and it was so much more beautiful than he remembered. Completely unlike the barren stone corridors of the Hollows, the walls of the maze were alive with color. There were no figures in the glowing ancient wall paintings, only patterns. Galaxies of opal, gold, and silver striations, sparkling spirals that shone emerald. All of it was untouched by time. Walter was also glad to see that the decorations mesmerized the others. They had yet to notice that he had completely forgotten how to traverse the maze.

He knew there was a trick to this place. He remembered that much, but the ridiculous unhelpful thoughts dancing through his head were distracting him, thoughts like: Our breath is hellfire, or our blood is ichor, or Marigold has the most pleasant eyes. Walter tried to remain cool and rational, but the closer he got to the flame, the more trouble he had with keeping his thoughts at bay. They were close to something magical, and the scent of magic always stirred up his worst tendencies. If Walter’s mind would just shut up for one second, he was sure he could remember what they needed to do to reach the World Cauldron.

He had told himself and the others it would be easy, but they had been wandering for nearly half an hour. No matter which turn they took, they ended up back at the same glittering mosaic.

“We’re lost,” Marigold said.

“Yes, well, it is a maze,” Walter answered.

“But children were supposed to solve it. It can’t be that hard.”

The frog is unimpressed with us. We must be more decisive if we’re to win her affection. She craves fire and carnage, not sandwiches and ill-fitting suits.

“Stop it, I need to think,” Walter shouted.

Everyone turned to look at him. “Not you, sorry. I just—I’m having trouble focusing. There was a trick to this place. It had to do with order. You could only reach the flame if you truly accepted order over chaos.”

“So, we all just need to believe or something?” IT asked.

“No,” Marigold said. “According to this poorly sketched out map, each section of the maze is spatially separate from the rest. The maze is quite small, only a few bends, but if you’re unfocused, you won’t notice, and you’ll become stuck.”

“And how do we do that?” IT asked.

“I’m not sure. That’s all it says.”

Walter thought back to his childhood, back when his name was Wathrendaries, and he thought only of blood and fire. He didn’t want to come on the Pilgrimage, but his parents, fearing his wildness might lead to exile, had sent him down to the World Cauldron. The trip was a disaster. Walter was uninterested in the history or mechanics of the universe. He only wanted to fight and spew fire, but the kindly and patient gorgon that guided the young monsters on their journey had done her best to keep him in line. She had shepherded him and the other children from the top of the Core to the bottom with only minor injuries, and it was here at the beginning of the labyrinth that she had told him he would need to make a choice. He was the least likely member of the group to solve the puzzle, but the burden was to fall on him. The gorgon had bent down and looked him straight in the eyes.

“You don’t need to choose order,” she said. “There is nothing wrong with being wild and free, and you’re not wrong to be wary of rules and manners. They often lead to the worst kinds of suffering.”

“Then why make this journey at all?” Wathrendaries asked, trying to add a heavy dose of adolescent snarl to his voice.

“Because all of this will end one day. You will die, the Backend will decay, and the universe will stop, but before it does, we can come together and give meaning to it all. We can create something out of the chaos.”

The little demon rolled his eyes and looked off to the side, embarrassed by the intensity of the gorgon’s kindness. As his eyes fell on the wall behind her, he noticed something strange.

“The squiggle there is less squiggly than the others,” he muttered.

The gorgon smiled and nodded.

How had he forgotten that memory? That was the moment that had set him on his present course, but he hadn’t thought about it in centuries. He looked around at the walls.

“The map is right,” Walter said. “The hidden order has to do with the patterns on the wall. We just need to . . .”

He reached out and touched a blue line on the wall. Unlike the random assortment of tiles around it, this one was unbroken. He traced the contours with his talon as they wound their way around the bend. The familiar stretch of corridor with the crashed ship did not reappear in front of them this time. They emerged into a new section of the labyrinth. Colorful patterns also filled this part of the maze, but they were not static like before. They danced on the walls.

Marigold smiled. “Good job.”

Don’t you like it when she smiles? The smooth green bumps on her face, the sinewy—

“What now?” IT asked.

“Same thing as before,” Walter replied. “Just look for a coherent and repeating pattern.”

They all scanned the corridor as they moved forward. It was much harder when the pattern was moving, but it wasn’t long before Maxwell called out. “Over here, this dot is moving differently than the others.”

Walter looked at it. The boy was right. While the other dots were pulsing and moving in spirals through the green, this one was jittering up and down, pulsing regularly like a heartbeat.

“Go ahead then,” Walter said.

“What like this?” Maxwell put his finger on the dot, and it zipped forward along the rocky surface. They followed it around another bend and found themselves in yet another stretch of maze. This time the pattern was no longer confined to the walls. The rainbow of colors bled off into the air itself, forming ribbons of dancing light.

IT was already waiting for them in this new corridor, which was strange, as the robot should not have been able to travel that fast. Even more troubling, when Walter looked down at his side, IT was also there, smiling back up at him. Looking back up a second time, Walter finally realized that the robot now standing at the end of the corridor was not their friend. It was the Scholar. The smiling face on its display flickered and an image of a far less friendly mouth appeared on the screen.

“Hello friends,” the robot said. It moved toward them. “It’s good to see you all. You may not recognize us in our current form, but I assure you we’ve met before. Only 24 hours ago, though it seems much longer. So much has changed since then.”

“Maxwell, get behind me,” Marigold said.

“We must thank you for setting us free. Who could have imagined what was waiting for us? It’s a little embarrassing to think of how small-minded we were last time we met.”

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“No more talk,” Marigold said.

“No, quite right. There’s no more need for conversation, as you will soon discover.”

The robot charged toward the group. Marigold and Walter both prepared for an attack, but just before reaching them, the robot stopped, slumped, and then straightened itself out with the normal digital face back on its display.

“Hi, guys.” IT’s voice sounded from the robot’s speakers. “Look what I can do.”

Walter looked down and saw IT’s former shell slumped in a heap.

“You can switch bodies?” he asked.

“Apparently.”

“Not bad,” Marigold said.

“How many times can you do that?” Walter asked.

He pointed to the end of the corridor, where dozens of more robots were swarming toward them.

“Should we run?” Maxwell asked.

“I don’t think that’ll work this time,” Walter said, looking behind them.

More robots were swarming toward them from behind. They formed a wall on both sides, one which slowly closed in on them through the neon-ribboned dark.

Marigold did not hesitate. Each robot that drew near received a swift kick from her good leg. In the space of a few seconds, she tore through five murderous machines. There were no acrobatics this time. The unicorn’s attack had left her vulnerable and slow. Instead, she relied on brute strength, plowing into the wall of robots and smashing as many as she could with a single kick or swing of her bag. For a moment, she seemed to forget her injury and jumped over a robot running straight toward her, but the moment she landed, she gasped with pain and almost fell over. At the last minute, she steadied herself and cracked the display of an opportunistic robot with an unyielding headbutt.

IT charged forward as well, using its flail-like arms to send other robots flying. Its fighting technique was wild and clumsy, but it did not need finesse. Whenever an attack was about to destroy it, IT would switch bodies and take the place of the assailant.

“Ha, ho, take that,” IT said, clearly enjoying itself.

Marigold, not able to distinguish IT from the other robots in the heat of battle, lashed out with her bag and smashed the display of the unit IT was currently in.

“Hey, ow,” IT said before switching to another robot.

More digital adversaries appeared. They did not need to be agile or skillful. They had numbers on their side, and Walter did not like the look of the glowing blue wires that hung from their arms. He had a feeling that eventually, one would connect with Marigold or Maxwell, and their journey would be at an end.

Walter was trying to take care of the robots surging from behind by clawing his way through them one at a time. The boy did his best to kick a few over, but his help was minimal. They couldn’t keep this up for much longer.

You know what to do. Let it out and save your friends. Incinerate the aberrations, reclaim ascendancy.

Walter wasn’t sure about ascendency, but the intrusive thoughts had a point. Better feral than dead.

“Everyone lay down,” Walter said.

“What?” Maxwell asked.

“Down on the ground, now.” The words came out in a demonic growl.

Maxwell fell immediately to the floor, and Marigold clutched the unit that was currently housing IT and cradled it close as she, too, dove to the floor. Walter’s eyes burned red, his fiery wings extended out on both sides, and he let out a screech his vocal cords hadn’t produced in several hundred years. A brilliant blaze erupted from his mouth and shot down along the corridor. It burned its way to the robots and incinerated them. He did not relent. He continued to breathe fire, calling it up from some long-neglected reservoir deep in his body. The Escherian architecture of the labyrinth carried his flame back to the beginning of the corridor and set the robots at the back ablaze. Finally, the inferno engulfed Walter too, bathing his body in fire and burning away his suit and hat.

He collapsed to the ground, his eyes still glowing red.

Maxwell was the first to reach him. “Are you OK?”

“Away, human,” Walter snapped, batting Maxwell back with a hand. He was panting, trying to remember himself. “Sorry, sorry. A moment—just—a moment.” His voice was hoarse and raspy.

Marigold walked up to his body, still wreathed in smoke.

She put a hand on his shoulder. The heat didn’t seem to bother her. She reached into her bag and pulled out a brown hemp cloak. It was a little small, but Walter slipped it on and felt slightly less embarrassed. He sat and waited for the chaos in his head to settle into something solid. When it did, he found it strangely quiet. The thoughts were gone, and he felt a calm that had been absent for the last day, perhaps much longer. He stood up and looked at the others.

You could do that all along?” IT asked.

“It’s kind of a one-time deal. It’ll be a long time before I can manage that again.”

“Still, I’m impressed.”

Walter chuckled. “We should get moving. Let’s spread out and look for the pattern.”

“It’s the blue neon ribbon over there,” IT said.

“What? Really? How did you figure it out so fast.”

“Well, when I was switching bodies a minute ago, I saw the corridor from a dozen different vantage points. The blue ribbon is doing this kind of flappy thing the other beams of light aren’t doing.

IT was right. Walter stood up and waded through the heaps of molten metal and plastic to reach the pattern that IT had identified. He ran a claw through the intangible blue light, tracing its shape as best he could.

“This place is filthy,” IT said as they turned the corner.

“Well, nobody’s been down here for hundreds of years. What do you expect?” Walter said.

“I don’t like it.”

Walter chuckled. “Perhaps you miss being a vacuum.”

“Of course not. This body is far superior. That would be ridiculous . . .”

The labyrinth was at an end. In front of them was a golden archway with darkness beyond.

“This is the seal, right? Maxwell asked.

IT moved forward several times and repeatedly bounced off an invisible barrier.

“Seems about right,” it said.

“What now?” Walter asked in a low rasp.

Marigold got out the map and read. “Traversing the seal entails a ritual of journey.”

“A transmigration ritual,” Walter said. “It bypasses the seal by turning the gateway into a metaphysical path.”

“I thought magic was turned off,” Maxwell said.

“Mostly turned off. We’re close to the World Cauldron here.”

“And the Cauldron is magic?” Maxwell asked.

“The Cauldron is everything,” she replied.

“It’s not a complicated ritual, but I think I have everything we need.” She searched through her bottomless bag and pulled out candles, sawdust, and several unidentifiable herbs, handing each one to Walter until his arms were laden with spell ingredients.

“What about Maxwell?” Walter asked.

“What about him?” Marigold said. She finished retrieving the last of the materials she would need for the crude recipe scribbled on the bottom of the map.

“He doesn’t know how magic works,” Walter said. “Nor do you, I suspect. You were born after it disappeared.”

“So?”

“So magic is demanding.”

“Oh, is it going to be one of those magic-requires-a-sacrifice deals?” IT asked.

Walter shook his head. “Not just sacrifice. Magic is a rearranging of the way things are. It is not a shortcut, just another way of doing something. This spell won’t simply teleport us to the other side of the portal. It’s a spell of journey and if we don’t go on foot, it will make us travel by other means.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Maxwell said.

“It can be,” Walter replied. “Reality is shared. It’s the sum of experiences, perceptions, and imaginings of all living beings, and it doesn’t easily break for a single individual. It will resist you and challenge you, and if you fail, it will end you.”

“Do you see another way?” Marigold asked.

Walter thought for a moment and then shook his head. “I just thought he should know what he faces.”

“We’ll all be fine. We’ll stay calm, and we’ll get through this,” Marigold said. She consulted the map and traced out a pattern on the floor, lighting candles and sprinkling herbs as she went.

Walter looked down at IT. Despite its constant need for attention, Walter had grown fond of the little robot. For that reason, he had resisted breaking the news to his mechanical friend.

“I don’t think you can follow us,” Walter said.

“I kind of figured, yeah.”

“What, why?” Maxwell asked.

IT rolled over to Maxwell and looked up at him. “It’s part of the treaty that ended the war. Machines can’t go near the Cauldron. The creatures in the Hollows didn’t trust the Analysts not to muck around with reality.”

“That’s what it says here,” Marigold said, holding up the map. She pointed to the last line on the map, where the guesteater had scrawled in thick black lines, “NO MASHINES ALOUD!!!”

“But we need you,” Maxwell said.

“Trust me, I’m disappointed too, but to be honest, I’d rather not mess around with the ritual. Somehow, I don’t think whoever came up with it had robots in mind.”

“Here, hold on to this too,” Marigold said. She handed IT her watch, phone, and a few other devices buried in the bottomless bag.

“Gee, thanks,” IT said, its hands full of Marigold’s possessions. “Just remember, you need to ask the flame why Maxwell is here and how we can fix the System.”

“We’ll need you to stand guard,” Walter said. “The robots were waiting for us down here, which means the Scholar knew where we were going. There could be more on the way.”

“Will do,” IT said. The robot’s voice was enthusiastic, but Walter could detect sadness behind it.

“We’ll only be a moment,” Walter said, as he patted the robot gently on the head.

“All done,” Marigold said. She stood up and threw the ritual ingredients back in her bag, produced a match, struck it, and tossed it on the floor in the center of the pattern. Nothing happened to Marigold’s drawing, but behind it, the golden arches burned white.

“Who’s first?”

Everyone turned to look at Maxwell.

“We’re not all going through together?” he asked.

“We each have to make the journey alone, but we’ll see you on the other side. Just remember who you are and what you’re doing,” Marigold said.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Walter said.

Maxwell looked down at IT, who looked back at him. “Be careful. We’ve come a long way for one of you to mess things up now,” it said.

“We’ll be fine,” Maxwell said. This comforted Walter, and as Maxwell walked over to the gate and walked inside, he fooled himself into thinking it might be true.