The Armory stood again on familiar stone, surrounded by walls of familiar rules lit by torches in iron sconces burning with familiar fire. Behind them the black door onto space still yawned. In the distance tall, narrow shadows were crossing the uneven steel to the altar and the dead Craftsman.

"Seal it," Dagger ordered, and grabbed one side of the heavy double doors. Vice helped her, and the rest of The Armory grabbed the other door, straining and shoving until the heavy, iron-banded wood met in the middle and closed away the stars. Dagger dropped the crossbar in place and made a sound that might have been a sigh.

"We have to get out of here, boss," Powder said, her voice shook.

"Pitch," Dagger said. "Might be time for another dose."

Pitch produced the same vial from earlier and freshened it with a pinch from one of his pouches. "We'd better be quick about it, though. We don't have much more of this. After that we'll have to rely on our will. Which is a problem."

Dagger stared at him. "Why?"

Pitch shook the vial to activate it as he spoke. "We've been experiencing this place for however long now. The drugs just keep the worst of the tension at bay, but our bodies are still aware of and affected by it. When they wear off, there may be a cumulative effect." He indicated the vial. "We are essentially borrowing sanity."

"Borrowing sanity," Saber said, snorting hard, "I like that."

At the far side of the room was a brass cage with an open door. There was no other way out of the room. The cage was paneled in gleaming, polished wood and red velvet, and there was a brass plaque covered in buttons on one side.

"Maybe it's bigger in there than it looks?" Powder asked.

Dagger grunted and led them inside the cage. It was not bigger than it looked.

And the gate shut with a cheerful ding.

"Oh, kiss my ass," Saber muttered.

Dagger pushed a button and the brass cage shot straight up. As their stomachs hit their boots, wind that smelled of mold, dust and machine grease rushed around them. They clutched the walls for seconds that stretched on far too long, and then the cage halted with a deafening screech. The Armory bounced off the walls and each other like marbles in a jar.

"They should call this the Citadel of Fuck You," Powder said, crawling out from under Vice with difficulty.

"It is starting to feel a bit personal," Pitch said as he checked his rig for broken vials.

Dagger went to the panel and pushed button after button. Each time some unseen mechanism whined, and the cage hummed with repressed effort. Saber looked up.

"Vice," he said, "give me a boost."

The monk made a stirrup of his hands and lifted Saber to the ceiling. The duelist drew a stout knife and pried at a panel. It fell open with a bang and a shower of dust. Coughing, Saber grabbed the edge and hauled himself up and out.

"I think we can climb," he called down. "There are cables. This cage must be lifted by pulleys somewhere. But the shaftway leads up."

"You assume," Pitch said, "for all we know that isn't up at all. Could be down. Or sideways."

Saber poked his head back through the panel. "Can you climb and ponder the nature of reality? Or you want to wait there until you grow moss on your balls?"

"You're usually the one who ends up with something growing on his balls, Saber," the alchemist said.

"And when that happens, do I whine about how bad your medicine tastes?"

"Yes."

"Just give me your hand."

Dagger boosted up Pitch and Powder, who then reached their hands down for Vice. Finally, Dagger jumped up and grabbed the edge of the hatch and hauled herself out.

They were in a dark shaft that stretched above them to what might as well have been eternity. Several cables attached to a winch on the roof of the cage thrummed with its weight as they shuffled around. Dagger grabbed hold of one, braced herself on another, and climbed. Vice went next, then Pitch, while Saber and Powder brought up the rear.

They climbed and climbed. After a time, Pitch swigged desperately from a vial and paused, gasping as he held himself in place.

"Pitch?" Dagger asked.

"Don't mind me, boss. Just a little something extra. Not built for this sort of work."

"We have you, alchemist," Vice said. "You will not fall."

Vice and Dagger climbed down next to Pitch, and each wrapped one arm around the panting, exhausted scholar. Powder and Saber climbed up until his feet rested on their shoulders. They twined their limbs around the cables and rested as best they could. Pitch sagged with relief and let them carry his weight.

"I'm sorry, boss," Pitch said.

"Never mind that," Dagger said. "If we all pulled the same kind of weight, there wouldn't need to be five of us. How many times have you kept us going?"

Pitch nodded and fell silent, but Dagger could see his jaw clenching with frustration. "Saber, Powder," she said, "climb around us. See if there's a way out up there. Vice and I have Pitch."

"Yes, Captain," Powder said.

The sharpshooter and the duelist reached for another cable and climbed for dozens of more feet, their hands shaking.

"Wait," Powder said, wrapped her body around the cable, and took a foot-long, fat cord from her pocket and sparked it alight. Warm, red fire dashed itself against the dark walls of the shaftway. She held the other end in her teeth as they climbed on. Saber squinted and winced as sparks fell from the makeshift flare and landed on his back and shoulders.

After several more agonizing feet, Powder stopped.

"Think I found it."

Saber grabbed onto another cable and climbed up next to Powder. In front of them was the suggestion of a doorway with a narrow sill. A golden seam ran down its center. There was light on the other side.

"Help me with this," Powder said.

With Powder's help, Saber stepped across to the sill, thrust a knife into the seam and levered it open enough for them to slip through.

They were in a sparsely lit room full of tables separated from each other by low walls. The air was filled with the funk of moldering paper, and somewhere water was dripping. The only light came from big squares on the ceiling, many of which had gone dark.

Powder went around one of the low walls and beneath the table, she found a coiled stack of strange black rope. One end led to a machine with a blank, glass face and the other vanished through a hole in the floor. With her knife she sawed both ends of the cables free and dragged their length in until she had a few dozen feet wrapped around her arm.

"What is it?" Saber asked.

"Some kind of rope?" she suggested. It was coated with something, but inside was a tight bundle of metal filament. "There's wires inside. It was a bitch to cut."

"Will it hold him?" Saber asked.

"Give it a hard tug."

They grunted as they wrenched the black rope between them. It didn't even stretch.

"Good enough," Saber said.

They secured one end of the strange rope to a handy steel ring inside the shaftway and dropped the other down into the darkness. Powder looked down into the shaft, took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"I'll go," Saber said and took the burning cord from her.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm good," the duelist said, his mouth set tight. Powder could see his hands were still shaking.

"Saber?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't fall."

"Powder," Saber said with a tired grin. "I'm touched."

"Close as you'll ever get to me touching you."

"Oh, I don't know," Saber said as he clamped the cord between his teeth, "thish hash been in your moush. Itsh shtill wed."

"Asshole," Powder chuckled as the duelist took hold of one of the steel cables and stepped out into the shaftway, sliding down the cable in bursts until the lumpy shadows of the rest of The Armory were in view.

"Saber?" Dagger grunted.

Saber took the burning cord out of his teeth. "We found a way out. It's just a few more feet. Use this to secure Pitch," he said, gesturing to the black rope they'd tossed down into the darkness.

Dagger gave the alchemist a worried look. "We'll climb first and pull you up after.

"I'm fine," Pitch said, his face twitching and his jaw sawing back and forth.

"What did you take?" Saber asked him. Even in the dim light of the flare, Pitch was a white as a sheet.

"Too much," the alchemist said. "Heart's pounding. I'll need to rest once we get up there, but I'll get up there."

"Stout fellow," Saber said, as he and Dagger wrapped the thin, black rope around Pitch's waist a few times and then tied it off. Dagger gave the rope a hard yank while Pitch still had hold of the steel cable, but it felt sound.

"Let go, Pitch," Dagger said.

The alchemist took a deep breath and unclenched himself from the cable. He dangled, his legs kicking. "This is undignified."

"A bit," Saber said. "You look like bait on a hook."

Pitch looked down into the shaftway as if there might be a giant fish eyeing his twitching legs with interest. "Saber?" he muttered.

"Yeah, Pitch," the duelist replied. "I know. I'm an asshole."

Dagger and Vice climbed up with a huffing Saber leading the way. At the doorway, Powder helped them to cross into the strange new room. Dagger and Vice then turned and grabbed hold of the black rope, pulling the dangling Pitch up hand-over-hand and hauling him across the threshold.

"This is not a place of our world," Vice said, looking around the room. He went to one of the tables and picked up a device covered in buttons. Each had a letter of some alphabet on it. "Pitch, do you know these letters?"

But Pitch was sitting down with his back against a wall, his breath coming in small gasps. Dagger held up a hand to Vice and the monk fell silent.

"Pitch," Dagger asked, "you going to be alright?"

"I... just... need... a minute," he fumbled in his clothes for some vial or jar or packet, but Dagger knelt down and covered his hand with hers, stopping his search. He looked up at her with a question on his drawn face.

"Just take your time," she said softly. Then she turned to the others. "We could all use a moment. Saber, Vice, Powder, clear this place. Then we'll rest."

They nodded and fanned out through the room, their gazes coasting across the various objects of curiosity as they listened for footsteps and kept an eye out for fast-moving threats. When they found nothing but dust and strangeness, they returned, and there The Armory sat in the silence.

It was just an hour of calm. But it felt like a banquet.

*

After a while, Pitch nodded. "I'm ready. My heart rate's slowed down. Show me what you found, Vice."

Dagger nodded and helped him to his feet as the others stood and Vice brought over the strange device with its buttons and letters. Pitch took and it and turned it over in his hands.

He shook his head. "I don't even know what it's made out of. It's not wood or metal. Too light."

One of the glowing rectangles on the ceiling flickered like a firefly and went dead. A layer of dust covered everything, and the floor was carpeted in a rough gray material. They walked between the cubes. Each was identically furnished: a table on which rested a box with a dark glass face, and a flat device with letter-adorned buttons.

At the end of the row of cubicles, they found room with a much larger, long table. Chairs were arranged around it at intervals, each empty but for the dust.

"What is all this shit made out of?" Powder nodded, rapping on the table with one knuckle.

Dagger was staring at the far end of the room. "Look," she said and went over to a large white rectangle propped on an easel. It was covered in writing and diagrams, all rendered in bright red. Pitch leaned close. Symbols spiraled their way up the sides in a language he couldn't speak and a system of calculation he didn't recognize, but the pictures were clear.

"It's the Citadel," he said. "Look. Look at how the design repeats and overlaps."

Four towers were drawn on the white surface, arranged into floors and linked boxes. Each tower's layout was slightly different, but the outside structure was the same. Scrawled notes crept up and down, with arrows pointing to different rooms inside the diagrams.

"What does it mean?" Dagger asked.

"This is a home of the gods," Vice said. "The ones who built the tower. We are staring at the plans of celestial entities."

"I'd argue the gods part," Pitch said.

"Pitch," Vice growled, "your stubborn refusal to—"

"No," Pitch interrupted. "Not because it's not possible. Obviously, gods are possible. But this many diagrams... I don't think this is about planning."

"What else could it be?" Vice countered.

"I'm not arguing with your faith, Vice. But have you ever seen the Vigil's servants write out notes or plans?"

"No," the monk admitted.

"No. Exactly. Gods don't plan. They think, and it becomes so. This is study. Analysis. You don't take notes because you already understand something. You take them because you are trying to. See these?"

He gestured at a row of symbols. "I think these are numbers. See the way these symbols repeat many times but in different configurations? And these others are must letters, there's more variation in the characters."

Dagger swept her hand through the dust on the table and looked at the gray furring on her palm. "Whatever it was, they gave up a long time ago."

"It does look that way," Pitch said.

"Do these notes indicate any direction or a kind of map, do you think?" she asked.

Pitch shook his head. "They're too crude. Whoever made them knew enough that they didn't need an exact representation of the tower. Anyway, I can't understand the language. But they suggest that the Citadel has a definite verticality."

"So?" she said. "It's a tower. Up is the only direction that matters."

Pitch smiled wryly. "You make that sound like a small thing, Dagger. We guessed we had to keep going up. But now we know that as long as we go up when a direction presents itself, we should eventually reach the top."

"Assuming what we want is at the top," Dagger said.

Pitch nodded. "That is a blind spot."

"Any indication from the drawings how far we have to go?"

"None at all, boss."

Dagger swore under her breath. "Okay. Let’s see what else these scholars were hiding."

The Armory left the room and continued along the low hall. In a tiny antechamber they found a vat and several dirty clay cups. Saber gave one a sniff and laughed.

"What?" Pitch asked.

"Coffee," Saber said. "They were drinking coffee." He opened the vat and peered the inside. "Very, very old coffee."

"Humans then," Dagger mused. "Pitch, what do you make of that?"

"Only a little more than I can make of that," he said, pointing to a framed picture on the wall. The image was of a kitten fighting to cling to a branch. "The letters are the same as on the devices on the tables with all the buttons. And the notes in the meeting room."

"What's the kitten supposed to signify?" Dagger asked.

"Perhaps it is a metaphor?" Vice suggested. "A reminder to hold on no matter what."

"Come look at this," Powder called from outside the room. The Armory followed the sound of her voice to the other end of the hall. They found her staring at a rip in the fabric of reality with glittering, shifting edges that flashed shades of purple and yellow. Through it was another world with a set of gradual stairs that headed down from the rip toward a circular platform lined with columns. Their tops vanished into the sky, and their bottoms fell away into an unfathomable darkness. The sky boiled with fast, dirty gray clouds, and in the distance something massive and hidden disturbed them with its passing.

Powder took out her telescope and trained it on the platform. Then she passed the glass around. On the platform was a figure sitting in a dejected hunch. Thrust into the stone by its side was a greatsword.

"The stairs head down," Dagger noted. "Pitch, you said we should always go up."

"It's just a theory," Pitch said "In reality we can't count on perceived directions as being accurate. We've already seen how little sense this place makes. And I don't see another way out of here."

Dagger grunted. "I'll go first. Wait a moment, then follow."

She stepped through the rip and onto the stairs. When she glanced back, the portal and the room behind were gone. Behind her the stairs continued up for an uncountable distance and disappeared into the rushing clouds.

Dagger grunted in mild surprise. "Well, fuck."

With only two options, Dagger walked down the stairs to the columned platform. As she got closer, she realized it could only be one thing: an arena.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Perhaps this waiting warrior could offer directions.

*

Back in the room, The Armory watched as Dagger glanced at them once, but her eyes were distant as if she was looking beyond them. Then she turned and descended the stairs.

"Going next," Saber said, and moved to walk through the cosmic rip in the wall. Instead, he smacked into what felt like hard air. The view was a moving painting for all that he could step into it. He struck at it with his sword, but the weapon bounced off.

"She's not waiting," Pitch said tensely. They all shouted for Dagger, but she didn't seem to hear them.

"She has seen something, but it is not us," Vice rumbled.

"We have to get to her," Powder said.

"Well," Pitch muttered tapping at the see-through, solid wall, "we're not getting through this way.

They watched helplessly as Dagger descended the stairs, ever closer to the hunched figure in the arena that rose and drew the greatsword from the stone. Its tip had a cruel barb.

Then the view through the rip blurred, faded briefly to a wall like all the others in the room, and then changed to show a ruined cityscape snarled with staircases. Rows and tilts of steps wrapped and twisted around each other, coiling about the buildings at impossible angles and in directions no living being could logically, or safely, walk.

"My turn," Vice said, stepping forward.

"Hang on a second, Vice," Pitch said.

"A test in every moment," Vice intoned.

"No," Pitch grated. "What's that even mean? Just wait a minute, you fucking lunatic!"

But Vice went through the rip and the alchemist's lunge failed to reach him. Pitch wasn't even sure he'd have been able to drag the monk so much as an inch.

"Vice, you asshole!" Pitch yelled as he slammed against the now obdurate view and tried to push through. Saber and Powder grabbed him and pulled him back. They watched as Vice, just like Dagger, turned to look back without seeing them.

*

Vice looked out onto the stair-snarled city, its buildings rotting under the weight of time. There was no path behind him. No strange room. No Armory. Vice stood under a sky made of stairs. The platform that held him was one of many, he could see them out there suspended among the steps. He breathed deeply of musty air that held not one hint of a living smell.

"A labyrinth within another," he said.

He sat down, crossed his legs and closed his eyes. He clasped his hands beneath his chin and wound his fingers together in shifting patterns until he found the one he wanted. The metal on his hands rasped. The sound was a comfort.

Any sound louder than his heartbeat was a comfort.

*

Pitch, Powder and Saber looked at each other and at Vice, watching helplessly as the rip in the wall shifted again and Vice disappeared.

"I don't care what we see next. Don't you two fucking go anywhere," the alchemist said from between clenched teeth.

"We're here, Pitch," Saber said. "We won't."

"Can you feel them?" Powder asked.

"It's faint," the duelist said, "but the tickle's there."

"The tickle?" She asked.

"That's what I call it."

"You would," Powder said.

"What do you call it?"

"The tug."

"And that's better?!"

Pitch rounded on the duelist and the gunhand. "Can you two stop fucking bantering for five seconds?"

They watched the wall, waiting for the next scene.

— DAGGER —

Yeah, how 'bout no?

There was no sound but the wind that rushed around Dagger as she descended the railless steps. It butted at her and tricked around her ankles like a cat, and so she walked as slowly and heavily as she could. Somewhere behind her was her crew, trapped in another aspect of the Citadel.

Alone.

Bereft.

She had to get back to them. But first...

The sky was a boil of clouds resting on the giant stone pillars that seemed to be the entirety of the landscape. As she studied them, one of the distant monoliths gave up its structure to time's force. It fell, shuddering and dissolving into a black expanse so far below she couldn't hear it hit the bottom, if there even was one.

She walked the last few steps to the edge of the arena and stepped between two of the columns. Stairs led down to a flat area and the seated figure she'd seen was standing now, with its barbed greatsword in both hands. Dagger stopped.

"You've returned," the warrior rumbled in two voices, "it has been so long."

"You know me?"

"I know conflict. It is all," said the figure. "It rests slumbering in the heart of every visitor to this circle. I have waited and waited. For you. And here you are. Again."

"Uh huh," Dagger muttered. "I'll ask again. We've met before?"

"I have met you a thousand thousand times."

"And what happened?"

"Fallen. All fall. You will fall again."

"No," Dagger said.

"No?"

Dagger sighed impatiently. "I don't have time for this."

"Time is all you have. We are the recipients of a squandered wealth of ages, of eons."

"Coin or time, if there's nothing to do with them, they're worthless," Dagger said.

"A contemplative fighter," the warrior said. "A rarity."

Dagger peered around the warrior to the other side of the arena. There was another set of stairs that led up and vanished behind a column and a cracked obelisk of black stone. She wondered if the warrior was a god or just the child of one.

"Are you a giant?" she asked.

"Are you a gnome?"

"Just let me pass. I'm not here to fight. I need to get back to my crew."

"But you have come to the arena."

"Not by choice."

"Choice," the figure snorted. "Choice is a dream we never wake from, a single step in a staircase we cannot fully see until we have finished walking it."

"You sound like somebody I know," Dagger said, wishing Vice was here to distract this overgrown, stabby poet so she could sneak behind him and cave in his skull.

"Is he also a wise man?"

"He might be," she replied. "He talks like you. Like he's unwinding a ball of yarn."

"Come, warrior. Fellow contemplator. Fight. Spend what's left of your coin of time. We can be, for some moments, as two reformed misers tossing their gold into the ocean. Let us stretch a moment into a lifetime."

"You've clearly had too much time to think," Dagger muttered, and wondered how much of any of it was real, and how much the Citadel's creation. Was she even still inside its walls? Or had it opened a door into an ending world? Could she reach those distant places? How long would she have to walk?

The giant brought his sword up into a guard stance. "When you are ready."

"No," Dagger said and began walking around the edge of the arena.

"No?!" The warrior thundered.

"Nope," Dagger repeated without stopping. "Not interested."

"You can't refuse!" The warrior shouted but did not pursue her or even move more than a step or two from his spot in the center of the killing floor.

"Eh," Dagger shrugged. "Sure seems like I can."

"There... There are rules!" the warrior cried. "I have waited a thousand years for a worthy opponent!"

"Not my problem."

The warrior's shoulders slumped. "But how will you ever know which of us is better?"

"Don't give a shit," Dagger said.

Dejection gave way to anger. "Coward! I name you coward. If you turn your back on me, I'll strike you down," the giant said, hefting his great, hook-tipped sword. His knuckles cracked as he tightened his grip.

"Doubt it."

"You doubt my word?"

Dagger had nearly reached the far side of the arena.

"Listen, big guy," she said, "you're telling me you've waited on this platform in full view of two sets of stairs for a thousand years?"

"Yes. Such is my dedication."

"And you didn't leave?"

"I—"

"You just sat here that whole time? Waiting."

"Yes. That is my purpose."

"Says who?"

"It has always been so!"

"Right. One of those. You like rules."

"What?"

"Rules. Fair combat. Valor and honor," Dagger couldn't keep a tinge of disgust out of her voice. "You want to compete. Not fight. Well, I wish you good luck with whoever shows up next. Maybe you'll get lucky in another millennia."

"No! Face me!"

Dagger reached the far side of the arena. The warrior had not taken a single step toward her. "Maybe think about leaving?" she said, as she put her foot on the first step. "This place is falling apart."

Behind her came a crash. She glanced over her shoulder. The giant had dropped its sword and sat down with its face in its armored hands.

"I... " it mumbled into the cup of its fingers. "I cannot."

"I figured," Dagger said. She began to climb the stairs, but stopped after a step or two, muttered "shit" under her breath and turned back.

"Hey!" she called to the giant.

He lifted his face from his hands. "You'll face me after all?"

"Hell, no."

"Why do you taunt me then? To simply leave would be kinder."

Dagger rolled her eyes. "Fuck me, I've met bards who're less dramatic. C'mon. Let's go."

"Go? Fight?"

"No, dopey. Leave. Come with me. You want to wait here forever? I'm gonna find a way out."

"You would bring me with you?"

"That's the idea," she chuckled. "You're the size of a house. You'd be useful in a fight, and where I'm going there's gonna be a shitload of that."

"Worthy opponents?"

"Yeah. Sure. Whatever. So, get up. Quit moping. I don't have all day."

The giant paused, considering it. But finally shook his head. "I must stay. It is my duty. I have to guard the way."

Dagger gestured around the quiet. "Says fucking who? Do you see anybody else?"

The giant was about to answer, and then paused and looked around.

"I cannot remember."

"Then whoever they are, fuck 'em and feed 'em fish. Let's go."

The giant looked hesitant but got to his feet and grabbed his sword. He walked tentatively closer to Dagger, the massive weapon resting on his shoulder. "Are you... are you sure?"

"I'm sure waiting here's a shit idea."

Dagger turned back to the stairs and the giant's heavy footsteps followed. When she'd gotten to the fifth stair, she heard a thunderous ring of falling metal. She spun, her hand going to the haft of the hammer.

The giant was gone. In its place, on a patch of stone just past the pillars, was a pile of empty armor. The giant's sword lay beside it, and as Dagger watched, armor and sword rusted over and began to flake away on the wind.

"Shit," she muttered to the swirling rust. "Guess you were right. Sorry about that."

She turned and walked up the stairs.

— VICE —

Nice labyrinth. Shame if something happened to it.

Meditation brought Vice no clarity when the sky was a staircase filled with stone-platform clouds, and so eventually he opened his eyes. He saw a flash of movement on a distant set of stairs. He narrowed his eyes.

People.

They were little more than specks moved around the distant snarls of elevation and descent, and they were too far away for his voice to reach them, but if they hadn't been he might have asked why they were running.

He walked to an ascending staircase, the only one attached to his platform.

"Pitch said always up," he whispered. "If this place is still within the tower, perhaps this holds true."

Vice set his right foot upon the stairs.

The world spun and inverted.

Vice crouched and put one hand down to steady himself. He looked above him and saw the platform on which he'd been standing when he first arrived. There was now no direction to go but down. But was it truly down? Or was it really up? The idea of stepping backward onto the ceiling twisted his perception so thoroughly that feared he might take a single step and fall up into the sky. With breath and moments, he mastered himself.

He climbed the stairs to another platform and then another, and in doing so adjusted to the abrupt rips of perspective. He walked sideways and upside down. Direction as a core concept lost all meaning.

"This is absurd," he muttered, stopping on a platform with a single small house made of stones. Inside he found a table and one chair. On the table was a clay carafe and matching cup. The jug was full of the clearest liquid Vice had ever seen. He poured a cup.

"A moment of grace woven like a knot into the chaotic pattern of the world," he said, and sipped.

It was a delicate honey wine that tasted like sunlight and blackberries.

Vice went outside the hut and looked into the distance past the uncountable stairs and platforms. He wondered where the light was coming from in this twisted place where the singular law of direction seemed to be that there was none. He couldn't see even the hint of a sun. Then he heard steps, moving fast and getting closer.

A tattered man in a panic sprinted down, or up, a set of stairs onto Vice's platform and then dashed past the surprised, drinking monk.

"Wait!" Vice yelled.

"No!" The man shouted back as he dashed up, or perhaps across, another set of stairs and away.

"Why are you running?" Vice shouted after him.

"Why aren't you?" The man called back.

Vice thought about that. It was an interesting question. He smiled. Why not run? Why stand still? There was much to ponder in this place. A bubble of gratitude rose from within him, through his chest and then burst out in a giggle. He looked down into the cup suspiciously.

"Uh oh," he said, and giggled again.

His suspicion turned to anger.

"I am drunk," he said to the empty platform. "From a single sip. Like some novice!"

He clung to his anger, which was difficult when half of him seemed keen to dance with joy at the strangeness of this place. He flung the cup over the side. It stopped in the air for a second, and then shot to the left in a perfect, straight line and out of sight. He heard it shatter somewhere. Shaking his head to clear the moonbeams, he stared hard into the distance. There was an indistinct curtain there, a constant downward haze on the horizon. It almost looked as if it was raining, but the largest, dirtiest drops he'd ever seen. He screwed his eyes down to a squint.

It wasn't rain.

No.

Falling stones.

Then an entire platform shot up past his own, trailing a breaking staircase and a pair of screaming people who looked to Vice as if they were standing upside down. He ran to the edge and watched as the platform continued to rush toward the sky, tearing through other staircases and shattering platforms as it went with the roar of stone hitting stone.

"Why aren't you running indeed," Vice whispered.

This labyrinth was falling apart.

The monk felt a brief spike of fear, and he turned to look at the stairs branching from his platform. Fear told him to run, but with breath and effort he brought his pounding heart to heel and clasped his hands.

"I watch and observe," he whispered. "I do not panic. I run when I choose. I stand when I like. I do not react to the world's random conspirings unless I choose to do so. Vigil! Watcher in the Darkness! See my vigil. Action without purpose soothes only a scared piglet squealing for its mother in the lonely dark. If these are to be my final moments, they won't be filled with screams. I will not mistake panic for purpose."

He sat. He would watch dispassionately as this world crumbled.

"If it is to be now, let me not wish like a child for it to be later. I will not buy trivial moments with mindless choices. I will not turn my face."

His heart calmed. The aggressive joy of the strange liquor faded.

Finally. There was the peace he'd been seeking.

— PITCH, POWDER AND SABER —

At play in the fields of WTF.

"Now what, Pitch?" Saber demanded as the rift flickered and closed behind Vice.

"How should I know?" The alchemist shot back, clenching and unclenching his fists.

"Well, I sure as shit don't."

Pitch looked at Powder, but the sharpshooter could only shrug. "Do we go on without them?"

"Machines," Pitch said under his breath. "This place is a mass of untended machines."

"So?" Saber asked. "The fuck does that even mean?"

Pitch, filled with a new energy, pointed at both of his fellows.

"Quick! Look around," Pitch said. "Don't leave this room, don't walk through any strange doorways. Something has to be powering this gate. Find it."

As he said this, the hazy rift reformed to show what might have been an idyllic forest clearing. As the three watched, the vegetation rotted and the limpid pond at the center filled with scum and fallen leaves. Behind the canopy of degraded trunks were patches of stone. It wasn't a vast forest, but a garden. A faun staggered from between the trees and approached the pond. Its tongue hung from its mouth with thirst, but before the faun could reach the water, it keeled over and died. It decomposed at speed. Its fur fell away to reveal gangrenous muscle and pitted, corrupt bones.

"This is the shittiest job," Saber said.

"Worse than the one in Rinlek?" Powder asked.

"For the last time, Powder," Saber said with exasperation, "they only looked like babies, it wasn't my fault, and they were fucking cannibals."

"Oh, right," Powder mused, "I forgot about the whole babies eating babies thing."

"One of them ate a fucking cat right in front of me!"

"Kid have no impulse control."

They searched the workspaces and narrow corridors, their steps muted on the rough, hard carpet. They found room after room down narrow corridors with nothing but more blank, dead machines and dust.

Then Saber found a locked door with a small square of glass in the center. It was too opaque to see through, but when he pressed his ear to it, he heard a faint humming on the other side — not a human voice in absent song — but a steady noise that reminded him of distant factory din. He tried the knob, but the door was locked fast.

"Pitch, Powder!" he called. "Over here."

"Let me take a look," Pitch said after he'd run over, and the duelist moved aside. Pitch knelt to stare into the lock. It was a tiny thing he'd never seen the like of — the opening little more than a slit in the metal. He knocked around the lock plate.

"It's not steel."

"Is that good?" Powder asked.

"Well, the door is metal," Pitch said, "maybe tin? I can't tell without testing it. Ordinarily, I could pick it, but I've never seen a lock as slim as this before. I'm not sure I have anything slender enough."

"Saber, wanna give it a shot?" Powder asked with a suggestive glance at his crotch.

"I don't know, Powder," Saber replied. "A battering ram kinda seems like overkill."

Powder laughed. "You're disgusting."

"Now, now, Powder," Saber said, "Pitch said no more banter. I can hear something on the other side."

"I know," Pitch said. "I hear it too. Some kind of machine."

Saber stepped back and kicked the door near the lock.

"You can see it opens out, right?" Pitch asked irritably.

"Oh," Saber said.

"Step back, both of you," Powder said.

"What are you going to do?" Pitch asked. "Shoot it?"

"No," the gunner said. "You're being too intelligent about this."

"There's no such thing as too intelligent," Pitch said.

"There is if you're dithering over a decision instead of making one."

Powder took a small iron bomb from her bag and uncoiled a long fuse. She considered the door and then the hall behind them. She cut the fuse to length and shoved one end into the bomb.

"Pitch, can you make me something sticky? Fast setting?"

"Putty or glue?"

"Glue."

Pitch produced a wood mixing bowl and set a piece of tree gum in the center, adding liquid from a vial and a pinch of white dust. He stirred the mixture into an acrid paste and Powder dipped one side of her bomb with it and stuck it to the lock.

"Count to thirty," Pitch told her.

The gunhand held it against the metal and counted until the bomb was stuck fast, then herded Pitch and Saber ahead of her as she played out the thin fuse along the ground. She gestured for them to kneel behind a wall.

"Do we really need to take cover?" Saber said. "It's just a little bomb."

"Just get down, Saber. I'm not gonna pick shrapnel out of your ass. Again."

She lit the fuse.

A moment later the lock, and much of the door, was a twisted, blackened wreck.

They entered the room and Pitch stamped out a few burning papers. If the deserted worktables and corridors of the strange, colorless rooms behind them was a desert, this was an oasis. Every surface was stacked with pages, each covered with printed words in the same inscrutable alphabet and scrawled with handwritten notes in red and blue. Against one wall was a massive black glass window. Beneath it was a table covered in buttons.

Pitch collected a small stack of papers and shuffled through them. He put them aside and turned his attention to the table beneath the screen.

"What is it?" Saber asked.

Pitch grunted. "It's all got the same language as everything else in here. I can't read it, but judging by the buttons, I'd guess it’s a control panel of some kind." He knocked one knuckle against the table, and it made a hollow sound. He ducked under it and found a pair of thick rubber cables.

"Those are like the one we cut to use for your rope," Saber said. "But much thicker."

"You cut something in here?" Pitch asked, his tone reproachful.

"We needed a rope. For you."

"Fair enough," Pitch said, and followed the cables along the sidewall to a cabinet under a worktable on the other side of the room. He opened the doors to a machine painted a vivid red. The cable ran to it and on the machine was a single switch. Pitch sniffed the air. Then he leaned in and sniffed at the machine.

"Don't know this scent," the alchemist said. "It almost smells a bit like coal oil."

"What do you think it does?" Powder asked.

"Well, if it's coal oil, or something like it, it’s fuel..."

"Then what?"

"One way to find out." Pitch flipped the switch and the machine sputtered into life, trundling happily in its cabinet home. Pitch watched it.

"It doesn't seem to do anything," he muttered. "Maybe they just liked the vibration or the sound?"

"Uh, Pitch," Saber said, "turn around."

The glass window against the wall had lit up. On it was a scene like a moving painting or a tapestry. Pitch got up and peered into it, and then put his hand against the glass. It was a moving picture, but not a portal like the one Vice and Dagger had vanished through. It was solid.

The glass showed a gold-hued forest glade — the grass, the trees, each leaf and even the pond at its center, all were a burnished hue of dull yellow stained green in some places. It was an exact copy of the rotting forest they'd just seen.

"Is that gold?" Saber asked.

Pitch shook his head. "Brass. See the verdigris?"

On the screen, a mechanical faun crept out from between the brass tree trunks, crossed the yellow, metal ground, which was etched to suggest individual blades of grass, and bent down to mime at drinking from the pond. A key sprouted from the faun's back like a fairy's wing. It turned very slowly, then paused and stuck. The faun stuttered, stopped and then began moving again when the key did. It turned from its pantomime drink and left the way it had come.

"Like a big version of some children's toy," Powder said.

"And it's winding down," Pitch said. "Saber, stick your head out and tell me if the portal's showing the same thing as the screen?"

"Why would it be?"

"Just go look."

Saber left the room and came back a moment later.

"Okay, that's weird," he said.

"Same scene?"

"I could have walked through. Want me to go steal the faun?"

"What? No. Why?"

"Want me to shoot it?" Powder asked.

"Why in the— " Pitch said, before noting their sly grins, " Oh, for fuck's sake. Focus. We need to get Vice and Dagger back. And I think this is how."

Pitch pushed a button on the far-left corner of the panel and the screen shifted again, this time showing a snowcapped tower. The top had already partially collapsed, and as they watched another stone fell from it and then another, crashing down the side of the tower and falling into the abyss that surrounded it.

"Saber," Pitch said.

"I'm going," the duelist said, and darted from the room and back. "I can see the tower."

Pitch pushed the last button again, and the brass glade reappeared. They watched the fawn totter back out to drink.

"It's the same scene again?" Power asked.

"I think it's just repeating itself," Pitch said. "Everything we've seen. Remember what the queen said about the tower's experiments?"

"So?" Saber asked.

"At the academy, sometimes students would resign, often with their experiments still running. It was a big place, not much oversight. But the students knew who'd left what. And sometimes we'd watch as the work of some failed student ran way past schedule. Sometimes it even worked."

"Worked?" Powder said. "What do you mean, worked?"

"Unintended outcomes were sometimes better than the intended ones."

"Like what?"

"You know that tincture I use to keep us sharp?"

"Yeah."

"It's supposed to blind you."

"Pitch, what the fuck?" Powder cried. "If you fucking blind me I'll—"

"You'll what? Shoot me?" Pitch smirked. "Obviously, it's perfectly safe. Anyway, sometimes an experiment spawned an unintended discovery. Other times, they just fell apart. Slowly. Like this place."

Pitch pushed another button, and then another. And another. The screen flickered through scenes, some ordinary, some so strange that in the brief moment they were on the glass they burned themselves into the three mercenaries' brains.

"There!" Powder shouted.

Pitched went back to the last button he'd pressed.

In the glass was Dagger, walking slowly down a narrow staircase in the sky, her hammer balanced on her shoulder like she was taking a country stroll over the abyss that yawned beneath her feet. The clouds on the far side of her rippled as something very large and fast moved within them.

Saber dashed out of the room.

"Dagger!" He shouted through the rift in the air. The narrow staircase was close enough for him to step onto it. Dagger stopped, glanced behind her and then resumed walk slowly toward the rift. Her pace was agonizing, almost aggressive in its leisure.

"Hurry!" Saber shouted. "I don't know how long this stupid magic door will hold.

But Dagger would not speed up. She did make a gesture in front of her mouth, but it was too far for Saber to see what it was.

"Dagger!" Saber shouted again.

She waved her hand at him.

"What?" Saber shouted.

The clouds on the other side of Dagger rippled, bulged, and then something burst out of them with a roar like thunder.

Dagger glanced behind her and broke into a sprint up the stairs. From the clouds unwound a black, serpentine body. The front end opened up in a mouth of triplicate jaws lined with dull, strangely human molars. It bore down on Dagger.

"Run!" Saber shouted through the rift.

"I am fucking running!" Dagger yelled back as the beast closed in.

"Powder!" Saber shouted behind him, "Rifle. Now. Biggest fucking bullet you got!"

But Powder was already there. A rifle barrel reached past Saber's face and came to rest on his shoulder. He stood tall and firm, closed his eyes and covered his ears. The sky serpent was closing in on Dagger and its dull teeth were gnashing as it screamed. It shattered the staircase behind her as it closed in, and both Saber and Powder's hearts leapt in their throats.

But the stairs held.

Dagger ran and ran as brick and mortar fell down into oblivion at her heels.

Powder aimed into the monster's screaming throat and fired.

The bullet ripped past Dagger's shoulder as she leapt for the rift, and Saber, deafened by gunfire, opened his eyes and reached out ready to grab her.

Powder's bullet ripped into the serpent’s mouth and burst out one side, trailing purple mist. The creature snapped its jaws shut with a deafening crack and reared back in pain as Dagger burst through the rift and tackled Saber as Powder stepped delicately out of the way.

The beast collected itself to lunge again, and a ripple blinked across the skin above its mouth as several bright red eyes stared into the rift. It roared and shot toward them. A gust of wind that reeked of mold and dust blew across their faces.

"Pitch!" Powder shouted. "Shut the door!"

"It's not strictly a door!" Pitch called back.

"Fucking close it!" Dagger yelled, still on top of a wheezing Saber.

The rift shifted just as the beast reached them. One moment they were faced by jaws, the next by the brass mechanical fawn bending down for yet another drink, this time much slower and with a palsied step as its mechanisms wound down.

"Where's Vice?" Dagger said as she rolled off of Saber, who made a theatrical gasp for air. "Oh, shut up," she muttered at him as she got to her feet and pulled him up after.

"Hopefully, he's next, Captain," Powder said. "Pitch has a handle on the machine. What the fuck was that thing?"

"Didn't stop to ask," Dagger said.

"Why were you just strolling along if you knew it was there?" Saber asked.

Dagger gave him a steady look. "It's nearly blind. Only responds to sound and fast movements."

"So it didn't know you were there until I... " Saber trailed off as he connected the dots. "Oh."

"Yeah," Dagger said. "Oh."

Saber looked down at his boots. "Sorry."

"Let's just find our fucking monk."