Vice walked like a man going to the gallows. Pitch met them halfway down the corridor.

"Can you do it?" Pitch asked, having already guessed the plan.

"Be quiet, alchemist," Vice said, turning the last word into a derisive snarl.

"Vice," Pitch said, "this is just about getting the job done. Not desecrating your god."

"You could not desecrate the Vigil if you tried. Do you know what you're asking me?"

Pitch stared at the outraged, grieving monk for several moments. "Yes."

"Impossible," Vice said and walked back to the window to face his false god.

Pitch muttered under his breath: "I'm asking you to make a rational fucking decision."

"Easy, Pitch," Dagger said. "Whatever your feelings, he's saved our hides more times than any of us."

"Dagger," Pitch said, "one day they'll all be gone. The gods. All of them. Because people will finally have the answers, not them."

"Not the time," Dagger said. "Now, quit being a cunt. Unless you want to take over as resurrectionist?"

Pitch snapped his mouth shut and went to the button. He looked at Vice, who took a deep breath and nodded. The alchemist held the button down.

You seem troubled, my little watcher in the darkness.

"I thought you dead," Vice said.

Only imprisoned. How do my followers fare without my guidance? Do the machines run down without me?

"Well," Vice answered, though he was surprised at the question, "well enough. Your acolytes and I have cared for them. In our way."

How?

"We," Vice began but paused, "we have had to improvise. Your acolytes had their suggestions. Without recourse, we have followed them."

You are evading the question.

"We..."

Ah. I see it now painted in your mind. You have slaughtered multitudes in my name. You have stolen others from their afterlives. This was never my way, but you know this. The pain you feel is great.

"You were gone!" Vice shouted. Grief cracked his voice. The fearsome battle monk with the iron hands sounded like a wounded child. "No, it is not your way. But there was little choice! Should we have abandoned those who believe?"

The rest of The Armory looked at each other with discomfort. None of them had ever seen Vice in this state before, and none of them thought it was a very good idea to scold a god, even a false one.

You are right.

Vice blinked. "I am?"

Ways change. They must change. This place has taught me that. I see you. Your faith was tested, but you held. Your faith is being tested again now. Will you continue to hold? We will speak together now, just you and I. Tell the god-hater not to remove his hand from the button. The cell will silence my voice without it, but I will speak only to you. Together we can put to rights what has happened in my absence.

"Yes," Vice said.

The dry voice left The Armory's minds as Vice's shoulders rounded under the weight of what only he could hear. The monk gesticulated but did not speak out loud. He swept his hands to indicate the room or perhaps the tower itself. He seemed to be painting some picture of a larger world. After a few more minutes, Vice clasped his hands and bent to one knee. Then he turned and came back to the group.

"We good?" Dagger asked him.

"The..." Vice paused for a split second on the word as if it was a hard-to-swallow bite of food, "...Vigil will help us. It can see most of the tower. It can help us chart a course through the maze."

"To a way out?" Saber asked.

"Not yet," Dagger said.

"Uh, why the fuck not?" the duelist asked.

"The job's not done, Saber."

Saber threw up his hands. "The job also wasn't supposed to rip us out of time! Do you even know how long we've been in here?"

"That's not the point," Dagger said.

"It kind of is, though, isn't it? There was gold waiting for us. Who knows what's happened out there since we've been in here? Maybe the queen's dead. We could be keeping a deal with a ghost."

Pitch nodded. "There is something to that, Dagger."

"Doesn't matter," Dagger said. "We took a job, and that job is over when it's over. Don't forget the promise we made to..." Dagger trailed off and glanced at the god in the cell. "Anyway, this is about more than gold. Forward is the only way."

"We don't even know which way forward is in this shithole," Saber said.

You dither in petty argument! The Vigil's voice boomed in their minds and half-buckled their knees. Are you warriors or children? Free me and your task becomes simpler. Though still, not easy. My power is muted in this place, but I have some.

"Pitch," Dagger gasped as the god stopped speaking and its mental weight lifted, "see if you can get the cell open."

The alchemist ran his hands along the locking mechanism — a shadowed recess that seemed to go on forever. He lit one of Powder's cord flares and tried to shine a light into the keyhole, but the darkness not only swallowed the light, it dimmed it by proximity. Pitch dropped the brightly smoking brand between his feet and took a pair of metal picks from his pocket. He gently probed the void, then snatched his hand back like he'd been burned.

"What happened?" Dagger asked.

"The lock ate one of my picks," the alchemist said.

"Oh, good," Saber muttered.

God-hater. You are the one called Pitch.

Pitch leaned back from the door and looked in through the glass at the vastly shifting form of the Vigil that might be.

"Yes," Pitch answered.

You are an... alchemist. A student of science.

"That's correct."

But science alone does not bind me here. It is a different force. One I understand better than you, I think.

"Perhaps."

Your denial clouds your beloved reason, god-hater. It amounts to the same thing, does it not? You are outside the door and I am imprisoned. Still, which of us is really confined? Who decides which side of a door is within and which is without?

"An interesting philosophical question," Pitch said, "but in this case, I think the answer is obvious."

Perhaps. Perhaps your cell is just larger. In any case, muting wards line the cell — that is magic — but the devices that power them feed off the pain and despair of confinement, as much of this tower does. That is your science at work, hand in hand with the forces you reject. The lock exists in several times and existential planes at once, each a fixed and perpetual point. You would need their key to open it, or more than a thousand pairs of hands and picks.

"Which we don't have."

No. But consider: A jail cell, as I am sure you have found at least once in your life, is only as good as its door.

Pitch nodded thoughtfully. "And a door is only as good as its hinges."

Just so, god-hater. Our ways and means are not so different.

Pitch examined the hinges carefully and then mixed two different powders into a vial of liquid. He corked it and shook hard, blending and filling the rest of the vial with smoke. With his sleeve covering his nose and mouth, he gently poured the mixture over the hinges. Metal smoked and melted, and when the hungry acid had finished its feast, Dagger thrust the spike on the end of her hammer into the thin seam of the door and levered it open, skipping back as it fell with a shuddering clang.

The inside of the door was deeply carved with sigils in repeating patterns that covered it from edge to edge. They all stood back as the Vigil left the cell, flickering rapidly between watchtower and robed figure. It hovered an inch above the ground.

"The world believes you are dead," Dagger said.

Yes. Vice has told me, though I suspected as much. But it was never my way to involve myself directly in the events of the world. I stand Vigil, yes? But as I told Vice, it is possible the time has come for those old ways to change.

"Based on what we've seen here," Dagger said, "quite a lot is possible."

Yes.

"Holy Watcher," Vice said, choking out the words as Dagger winced at his tone, "we came here to destroy the Citadel's hold. Can you show us how to reach the top of the tower?"

Yes. That serves us all. I can see the way. I can see many ways. Though the word "see" is imprecise, it may serve best for your understanding. Tell me, how does the tower appear to you?

"Like a series of rooms, regions and times, even worlds, connected by doors and stairs," Pitch said. "It seems to change at random. There must have been a functioning system once, but from what we've seen, it is breaking down. It has become random."

Your limitation is fascinating. I see a multitude of towers at once, imposed over each other again and again. All exist simultaneously. What your eyes perceive and minds process as a move between rooms is actually a step between entire towers.

"I see," Pitch said, and scratched his chin. "Yes, that would make as much sense as any explanation. But Temker's Clock would only affect time. They must have other such devices. We have seen a few of them."

They have many times many. How do these devices look to you?

"Like broken down machines and untended experiments."

As you have seen in what Vice tells me is left of my afterlife, so it is here. Devices — be they magic or machine — must be maintained. They have life spans just as you do. But even toward the end of a life, weakened by time and inattention, a device or a being may still effect change, though its purpose and power might become warped.

"So," Dagger said, "which way do we go?"

As in any tower, no matter how many are imposed over each other, which are the most important directions?

"Up and down," she said.

Exactly. But the ones who created this place have altered such distinctions.

"You are remembering," Vice said, awe and hope creeping back into his voice.

That word is imprecise. The room they kept me in obscured much. It dampened my sight, but as their devices fell to disrepair, a fog lifted. Outside the cell, it has lifted even further. I see. Come. Follow me.

As the god led them past the other cells, their occupants battered themselves against the glass windows. They thrashed and slammed — the sound of their impacts were bare whispers against the magic and science used to lock them away — but none of them were able to so much as crack the glass.

They cannot escape any more than I could. Be glad of that. Some of them are quite savage. More so now that they have gone mad with eons of confinement.

"I have no doubt," Dagger said.

The Vigil paused in front of the first cell The Armory had seen, in which something invisible was again assaulting the glass. The slamming and pounding intensified, and though still intact, the transparent partition bowed out even further, nearly into a bubble.

Especially this one. This one must never be allowed to escape.

The glass flexed again. The wall and floor buzzed with a faint vibration.

"What is it?" Pitch asked.

I could not hope to describe it to you. There are no words in any language that can. I could implant that knowledge in your mind as a kind of image, but your reason would melt like snow in the rain.

The thrashing within the cell intensified as if whatever it contained could hear the Vigil speaking of it, as if it wanted to make the same promise right back.

If we had the time, I would ask you to help me destroy it. For now, leave it. The cell will not fail, as mine did not. They did at least that much right.

The Vigil continued on, leading The Armory to the hatch through which they'd entered the floor of cells. It stopped and the robed figure brought its sleeves together as the flame atop its watchtower form blazed into a blinding bonfire. Vice staggered at the sight and fell to one knee before he could stop himself, his face a mass of conflicted anguish. A single tear fell down his cheek.

"Steady," Pitch said, laying a hand on the monk's shoulder fully expecting to be rebuffed, but the monk suffered the comfort.

It is alright, my little watcher in the darkness. I see your pain. Be strong. I am here now. I am clearing a path. Both for you all to move forward and for your pain and doubt to be assuaged.

Vice huffed. It might have been a choked sob or a suppressed gag.

The metal floor and stairs creaked and groaned. The Armory looked around nervously, waiting to dodge back from some trap or chasm, or leap to the relative safety of the corridor if the ground gave way. Instead, the metal around the hatch ripped loose and reformed, and the ladder that led down twisted up like a snake, uncoiled, and burst through the ceiling with the shriek of metal on stone. Rubble rained as the staircase bored its way toward the top of the tower. The roar became deafening for a few seconds and then settled into a low rumble. Finally, it stopped, and the Vigil seemed to sag. It dropped its sleeves, and its watchtower fire dimmed again. The ladder was again a tightly spiraled staircase.

It is done. Now climb.

"The stairs are too small for you," Dagger said, looking up at the god's blazing fire.

I do not need them. Climb.

Dagger nodded and led the way. The Vigil rose into the air next to the staircase, keeping pace with The Armory as the crew climbed past anonymous, empty stone. The walls offered no hint of progress, and the ground below soon faded. The sound of their endless steps lulled their minds, and The Armory found themselves locked into a worry greater than any they'd felt at the horrors and dangers they'd faced thus far. What if this was just another trap: To climb these stairs forever?

"How much further?" Dagger panted out the words.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I apologize for the distance I have created. It is necessary.

Dagger paused her climb. "You're making it take this long to reach the top? Why?"

Your minds are fragile things. They need rules and boundaries. Time. Distance. They are crutches, but for the wounded or the weak, crutches are necessary. Time and distance are two constants that let you establish equilibrium with your material world. To do away with them is to unpick the fabric of your perception and your minds along with it. This distance allows you to adjust gradually. We are climbing through towers innumerable in their variation, through layers of dimension. If I had taken you directly, your minds would have broken from the strain of trying to see so many worlds and planes at once. You have single minds. It is dangerous for a single mind to be forced to see the overlapping nature of this place. My mind, if such a word can even apply to me, has no such limitations.

"I see," Dagger said, and glanced at Pitch to see if he'd heard and could confirm the claim, but the alchemist only shrugged and made a yeah sure gesture.

The Armory pushed on. They climbed for a year. They climbed for minutes. Finally, when it seemed as though time might finally grind itself into irrelevant dust, the Vigil's satisfied voice boomed in their minds.

We are nearing the top. Be ready.

"For what?" Dagger asked.

They have mounted a defense.

"Because we've been really unprepared so far," Saber muttered.

I apologize for my presumption. Next time I won't warn you.

"I wouldn't go that far," Saber said.

Your jokes and my created distance are similar, don't you think? I did so to ease your minds, you chatter like a wind-up bird to do the same.

Saber chose not to reply.

They emerged from the staircase into a narrow alcove that, in scant feet, would open into a grand hall, the path through it more bridge than floor with a deadly drop to either side. The distant walls were curved and made of constantly spinning stairs. At the far end was a force of beasts and men. Some were already fighting each other, but when The Armory stepped out into the echoing hall, the petty skirmishes stopped, and every head turned their way. Something that looked like a giraffe draped in raw meat warbled a war cry, or perhaps just a plaintive demand to be put out of its misery. It would have been pathetic, if its head didn't split into several fleshy lips that exposed a pink throat studded with teeth made for rending. The other creatures that stood in The Armory's road were similar things that looked less grown than assembled. The human warriors among them, at least, carried familiar weapons and wore armor.

"Fuck," Powder muttered, looking up and then glancing over the edge of the bridge, "no cover and no high ground."

High ground, I can provide.

"How do—"

The Vigil grabbed Powder by the shoulders of her leathers, lifted her up, and flew her in revolving patterns toward the advancing monsters and men.

Can you shoot from here?

"Fucking hell!" Powder yelled, legs kicking, "next time warn me!"

The one with all the stabbing implements seemed offended when I did.

"He's an asshole!"

I will remember. He is an asshole. You are not. Shall I put you down?

"Shit, no! This is perfect. Just hold me steady."

The Vigil paused a moment, waiting for something.

"Please?" Powder asked.

Your courtesy becomes you.

Powder sighted down her rifle. The fanged giraffe thing that looked like it was wearing its own insides — and those of several others — warbled at Powder and the Vigil as they passed overhead. Powder fired and the giraffe's head exploded, splattering those around it with dental shrapnel and blood.

"This is fine," Powder said, "can you keep your flight pattern random, in case one of them has a gun or crossbow, but pause on my word?"

I will. But you need not speak. Watching is my way. I will know when you want to shoot.

As Powder dangled over the battle in the god's grip, the rest of The Armory rushed to meet the force standing between them and ornate, towering doors at the far end of the bridge. Trapped and battered heroes who had come before The Armory looking to solve the truth of this place fought next to the Citadel's creations. Did some shadowy factor of the Citadel's construction approach them with a better offer? Or it may have just been futility that drove them: a common acceptance of their fate to be just another threat encased in a glass of time. As they stood in The Armory's path, bravos shoulder to shoulder with the horrors they'd sworn to wipe out, distinctions ceased to matter. In front of their makeshift army was an enemy, and only five strong.

But they'd never faced five like this.

Dagger and Vice led. The monk, boiling over with rage at deceiving even a questionable version of his dead god, caught a swordsman's downward cut with one hand. As the surprised warrior tried to snatch back his weapon, Vice snapped blade and arm, dropping both as he met the next threat. His fists drew great, rending swaths of blood from something that bubbled beneath its skin with poorly connected muscles and bones. Its teeth broke on his armor, his fists brought it low, methodically, as if Vice was grinding wheat between wheels of stone. Dagger laid about her with her hammer, until another armored giant shoved through the throng toward her.

"Have they got all the fucking giants," she muttered, as the figure swung a sword as tall as it.

Dagger rolled under the cut, and it continued past her, too heavy to stop, and scythed through two hyena-like beasts. Dagger leapt out of her roll and drove the head of her hammer into the armored giant's face as it tried to recover for another swing. It reared back, its visor dented and cracked, and Dagger swung low, smashing through both armor and the knee it protected. As the giant staggered and fell on its shattered leg, she leapt into the air and brought her hammer down on its head. After it fell, smashing something else to pulp under its weight, Dagger dented it into immobility where its armor was designed to bend. She left the giant face up, helpless as a turtle on its back, staring up at the sun.

"Dagger!" Saber shouted as he ran toward her, "boost!"

Dagger knelt. Saber stepped on her knee and then her shoulder as she straightened mightily, catapulting the much slimmer man into the air over the fray. He sailed over the force's slapdash front line, revolved in the air, and landed in the midst of men and monsters with a short, curved sword in one hand and a long knife in the other. If Vice and Dagger were blunt instruments of raw power, then Saber was an unseen blade on a moonless night. His weapons found flesh between thin gaps in fang and armor. He redirected slashes and thrusts in the thick of the scrum so that they found homes in allies' chests instead of his. Fanged mouths on long necks, tentacles, and broadswords tried for him, and missed as he ducked, spun and sidestepped. His heart soared, his mind went blissfully quiet. He noted with a distant pleasure that the rough surface he danced upon was a porous stone that absorbed the blood and gave him perfect footing.

At the rear of the battle, Pitch threw back his coat to allow full access to the wide bandolier that decorated his chest with vial after vial. These he threw with a practiced accuracy. They broke against shoulder and skull. They were snatched from the air by foolish jaws. Green and blue fire burst out in waves and raged across skin. Steel and flesh sizzled as acids ate them away like scalding water washing wet paint from a wall. He created barricades of unnatural flame that gave Vice, Dagger and Saber avenues to fight between and boxed their foes together so that groups of five became clumsy single files of grain, ready for the scythe.

Far above the battle, Powder's keen eye and steady hands picked out the greater, larger threats and riddled them with bullets. The lead slugs were crosshatched. They went in small, warped with the impact, and punched out in large, wet holes that coughed insides out onto the ground or propelled beasts and men over the edge to the meat grinder of the revolving stone-stair walls.

She thought about going low. To swoop just over their heads.

The Vigil was already in motion.

They dipped sharply in the air and Powder's heart hit the back of her teeth as her boots dangled inches from grasping hands and tendrils. She slung her rifle strap in the crook of her arm and drew her scatterguns. Both spoke at once, and a hail of lead and fire chewed several of the things below down to their poorly manufactured bones.

Dagger fell under the weight of four of them, one man with a sword and a trio of beasts connected by membranous threads. She caught their weight on the handle of her hammer, but the sword scored her side and rasped across the leather. Three of her ribs creaked, and dimly she was aware of being bitten by a fang or a blade. The beast-trio screamed in her face, spattering it with spittle that reeked of a cannibal's garbage trough. As it kept her pinned, the warrior picked up a spear and took his time, lining up its point to drive between her and the beast, and into her heart.

Dagger kicked out trying for something's ankle, but the beast snapped at her face every time she tried to summon the strength to push. One of the beast's heads creaked with a tearing sound and its neck grew, bringing its jaws ever closer to her nose and mouth. The growth must have hurt. It sobbed in a child's voice, even as its jaws closed in. The warrior, a man Dagger could see now through the grates of his helmet, grinned and held off his spear thrust to let the beast have the coup de grace.

It cost him his life.

Something fast and covered in sharp metal hit the side of the warrior's helmet, caving in the steel. The face inside crumpled up and burst red from its eyes, mouth and nose. Then another iron hand reached over, grabbed the warrior's helmet by the face grate, and twisted until it faced the other way.

Vice had arrived.

But Dagger was still pinned beneath the beast-trio's weight on her hammer, and the growing neck had almost reached her with its snapping jaws. She was able to turn her head from first snap, as the beast wasn't quite close enough. It whimpered. Another centimeter and it could start biting chunks from Dagger's face.

Something flickered through the space between them.

The beast seemed to hiccup and wore almost a look of shock as one of its heads fell and smacked into Dagger's nose on the way down.

Only Saber could have moved that fast, made a cut that precise.

With two more delicate slashes, the duelist severed the membranes that connected the beast trio, and it howled as it fell to pieces. Vice and Saber mopped it up, blunt and sharp, rendering the creature into pieces.

Free of the weight, Dagger raged to her feet and swung hard for Saber's head. The swordsman ducked and rolled between her legs to run through the fighter behind her as she broke the chest of the one who'd been about to stab him in the back. Vice push-kicked something like a mastiff with too many legs and a mouth in its side so that it met Dagger's backswing and was smashed to the ground to squall and buck, its spine in two halves. Dagger used her hammer like a broom and shoved it over the edge.

To the rear of this force something moved. It had been hidden until then, but trundled out onto the bridge on dozens of small, mechanical legs upon which was balanced an orb of lumpy, pulsing flesh. Driven into one side, the flesh growing out of and around it, was a grunting machine that belched gouts of black smoke. The Vigil and Powder were about to fly above it. The fleshy sphere struggled as if trying to hold something inside, then split open like a flower in the sun. From inside burst a swarm of snarling larvae of metal and wing that shot toward Powder and the god that held her in flight.

The have artillery, Powder thought, just before the blast hit her and the Vigil.

She felt some of the impact like punches and other like jaws as the larvae latched onto her armor and skin. As she fell from the Vigil's grip, she was dimly aware of their chewing and the twinges of pain as their teeth got through her leathers. Powder had only one thought as she fell.

God's got a fucking weak grip.

She hit the ground and slid for several feet, senseless. Those half-metal maggots not killed in the impact continued to gnaw at her idiotically. The machine or monster that had launched them beetled its way slowly toward the fallen sharpshooter.

She did not rise.

"Form up!" Dagger shouted when she saw the gunner fall. The Armory made a blunt wedge with her at its point. Overhead, the Vigil hovered but did not intervene. It flew circles around where Powder had landed like a vulture.

You must reach her fast, it intends to absorb her. To use her to... reload.

"Then do something!" Dagger shouted.

I am the watcher in the darkness. I do not directly intervene.

Dagger shot Vice a dirty look over her shoulder and saw genuine awe and hope on his face, as if the god's inaction was the strongest proof yet that it might truly be his lost deity. With a disgusted growl, she brained a human and then kicked aside his broken form to face the next. As The Armory battled its way slowly along the bridge, two human warriors at the back detached and headed toward to the easy meat of Powder's limp form.

The trundling meatball on metal legs was closer still.

The rest of the force held their position, keeping The Armory divided.

Instead of rushing to meet them in ones and twos, the tower's opposition made of themselves a barricade of shields and sharp limbs. The humans had sheathed their swords for spears. Dagger's heart sank even as her blood raged in her ears.

"We have to get to her," Dagger yelled.

"We have to get through that," Saber countered. "Pitch, can you throw anything?"

"I'm out of the smaller vials," the alchemist said through clenched teeth, "We're all too close for anything else."

The fleshy orb was nearly upon Powder, who had not so much as twitched since she'd fallen. Dagger screamed and swung her hammer overhand at the phalanx of men and monsters, but the group split and her hammer hit the floor between them, cracking only the stones under their feet. One of them thrust a spear at her face, and Saber ducked in to parry it up and over Dagger's head as she dragged back her hammer and reset for another swing.

"This will not stand," Vice growled. He pushed past Dagger to the front of the wedge and pulled his cloak around him and his hood down over his head. "Pitch, I would blaze with righteous fire."

"Are you sure?"

"Do it."

As Vice stalked forward, Pitch threw a clay orb at the back of his cloak. It shattered into green and yellow flames that rushed across Vice's cloak, his shoulders and head. A spear thrust out from the phalanx and took him high in the chest near his shoulder, but it only made him pause a moment. He brought down one arm, snapped the spear in half, pulled the blade from his body and thrust it into the face of a squealing wild boar with four human arms instead of legs. Then he crashed through the rest, laying about with his armored fists as the flames spread to them. They screamed as he struck them.

The phalanx wavered.

Burned.

Broke.

"Now!" Dagger shouted.

Her hammer held crosswise, and Pitch just behind her adding force to her push, she shoved four of their adversaries off the edge of the bridge. Saber engaged the others with sword and cleaver, chopping through spear shafts and into the hands that held them. He left them that way, ineffective and diminished, howling over their missing pieces. He had no time for mercy, no interest either.

But The Armory was still too far. The two warriors reached Powder's limp form, and the wad of meat on metal legs was upon her. Several delicate steel arms extended to grab her by the boots and hold her down. Its flesh unseamed along the top just as the two human warriors raised their spears to finish her. The wad twitched as if just noticing them. It had other ideas about just who got to finish the fallen sharpshooter. Two very human, very wet arms shot out of the seam along the top, grabbed the two warriors and dragged them inside it. It rumbled back and forth with a whirring, grinding noise, convulsing with some internal struggle. After a series of metallic clicks, it finally settled back.

It turned from Powder to face The Armory.

Beware, the Vigil said. It has reloaded.

The waddling artillery dumpling tilted its organic chassis forward, its machine legs spreading out to compensate as its weight changed. Danger to Powder or not, Pitch took a chance then and threw a clay globe at it. The little firebomb bounced off and sailed over the side to explode harmlessly somewhere below them.

"Rush it before it can fire!" Dagger shouted and charged the device, her eyes locked to that faint seam that bisected it, ready to dive to the side should it open.

But they were too fast.

The Armory fell upon the contraption with blade, fist and hammer. They hacked and bashed at its rubbery body, but the weird creature just rocked back and forth as its little metal legs scrabbled to keep it upright.

Pitch ran around it to Powder, dragged her clear and checked her vitals as he plucked off and stomped the maggots still chewing on her. The rest of The Armory managed to slide the meatball around, but there was no other effect. Its clawed legs had a wide base and a solid grip on the stone.

Dagger called a halt to the futile beatdown.

"This is stupid," she muttered, and looked up at the Vigil. "Since you're just gonna watch, got any ideas?"

"Dagger," Vice hissed, and then doubled over his spear wound.

"No. Let your god pull its fucking weight," she growled.

What weight do I need to pull, Dagger? the Vigil asked, still hovering somewhere above them. Do you need me to lift it up and shove it over the edge for you?

Dagger paused and looked at the artillery dumpling.

"You gotta be shitting me," she sighed and then went around behind it, grabbed it by two of its meal legs and lifted. It came up easily, and even gave a tiny, gratifying little squeal as Dagger tilted it further. Its seam opened and the two wet arms re-emerged, but Saber chopped them both in half and kicked them over the edge. Dagger kept pushing, kept tilting, and as the dumpling neared the edge of the platform, it finally fired its payload. The barrage of metal-and-flesh maggots spattered and died against the stone platform. With a roar, Dagger shoved it the last bit and it toppled over the edge. It hit the bottom with an anticlimactic squelch.

The Armory stood panting, weapons ready and eyes cutting through the air for the next threat, but they were alone on the stone bridge.

"What did I miss?" Powder asked, her left arm across Pitch's shoulder, her right arm bound to her body with a length of cotton.

One obstacle remains, the Vigil whispered urgently from above them. Be ready.

"Whatever," Dagger muttered.

As if in answer, a sound between a roar and a squeal filled the air.

"Oh, calm your tits," Dagger yelled without looking, "we'll be with you in a second." She turned to Powder. "You gonna live?" she asked as Pitch poured a tiny vial down the sharpshooter's throat.

"For the moment. Arm's broken," the sharpshooter said, and gagged at the taste of Pitch's medicine with a wan grin. She gave the alchemist a grateful look. "How long's that stuff gonna last?"

Pitch grinned. "Probably right up until you really need it."

"Great."

Pitch went to Vice next, and waved aside the monk's protest as he pasted a thick salve over the wound in the monk's chest. It sizzled and cauterized the wound, leaving even the stoic Vice gasping with pain.

"Try not to use that," Pitch said, gesturing to his left arm.

The squealing roar came again.

You must hurry, the Vigil said.

"Oh, must we?" Dagger asked. "Why? It's probably just more tentacles and teeth. It can wait."

The Vigil did not answer. Its silence almost seemed reproachful.

Dagger turned toward the sound they'd heard. At the far end of the platform was a roaring, round pustule that was mostly mouth and grasping tentacles.

"I fucking knew it," Dagger said under her breath as she stopped and installed the spike in the head of her hammer.

It shrieked at them in defiance even as it slowly retreated, but it had nowhere to go. Dagger thought about all the monsters they'd felled in the Citadel, any of which could also have been sent in on the same errand as The Armory. She'd assumed they were creations of this twisted, breaking place, but maybe their roars were not challenges, but pleas to stop or attempts to explain. Then she put that idle contemplation in the box in her mind where she kept all the things that don't matter, and marched slowly toward the monster, the rest of her crew at her sides.

The beast lunged, its jaws distended, wide enough to swallow Dagger whole, and its teeth shot forward on a neck of extra, wet skin. Dagger lunged into the bite, but instead of finding her, its jaws closed on her hammer, wedged vertically into the roof of its mouth. Howling, the creature tried to close its jaws around her, and only impaled itself further. It tried to yank back its extendable jaws, but Dagger dug in her heels and Vice grabbed her belt with his good arm to anchor her.

Pitch tossed a vial past the creature's teeth and down its throat. When the contents hit the volatile acids of its stomach they detonated, and the beast heaved a gout of purple-tinged smoke that reeked of ignited bile. It slumped. Dagger's hammer was the only thing holding it up. She grabbed her weapon's haft, kicked it loose, and dead horror sloughed bonelessly to one side and oozed off the platform to hit the spinning tower walls below with a thunderous, wet smack. Distantly, there was a sound of bone and meat being ground to pulp.

"Any more? You had the high ground," Saber asked the Vigil, panting and blood streaked.

They all turned to look at the doors ahead, even the Vigil.

Beyond they wait.

"I didn't bring enough acid for that," Pitch said, eyeing the gargantuan portal.

It is unlocked.

"How do you know?" Saber said.

Vice muttered something under his breath.

My little watcher in the world knows. Tell them. I permit it. There is no need for subterfuge. I know you believe I am not your true Vigil, but whether I am or not is irrelevant. I am. That is all that matters.

"They seem to have given..." Vice paused and clenched his teeth.

Say it, my little watcher in the darkness. Speak the truth. You are bound to by my teachings, after all. The Vigil sounded triumphant and amused.

"The Vigil keeps watch. It is the great watcher in the sky," Vice said, though speaking the words almost seemed to hurt him.

I am reborn, though my little watcher in the world fights not to believe it. Though none of you ever believed, he did despite his best efforts. Even as he mourned. And now his faith pains him.

"You are not the Vigil," Vice said between his clenched teeth.

"Vice!" Dagger hissed.

Stop. There is no deceiving me. My gift is sight. I watch. More than that, I see. And I ask, am I not the Vigil? If you believed your Vigil dead, and here I stand, then it seems you must rejoice. Welcome me into your heart.

"Let's just get these doors open," Dagger said, eyeing the phasing figure of the counterfeit god.

That will be easy.

And it was. The doors opened at a single push, without groan or creak.

The Armory and the Vigil entered.