The vigilante's face was red from who-knows-what. I had to nudge him back to reality. "Where exactly did they come from?"

He blinked. "Who?"

"The people you just killed."

"Oh." He motioned his head towards a thin opening in the wall, easy to miss. "Those were Dreams, not people."

I set off towards our exit, too tired to move at any real pace. Now that I think of it, am I still going to need blood to sustain myself?

I shuddered again at the taste of Wanderer's cut. "Well, either way. They looked like people to me."

"I did not realize people exploded into piles of Dream Essence."

So that's what that stuff is. "Gods, it is delightful not to have another voice crowding my head."

"What do you think got rid of it?"

"A mix of everything, probably." I stopped mid-step. "Would you carry my pack and sword? I never realized how heavy these things were." And I offloaded some of my weight to the man beside me.

The crevasse in the wall opened up to a towering spiral staircase. It rose in the center of a shaft, and the steps were about three foot lengths away from the wall, just enough not to threaten a fall while still allowing one for the unlucky. The steps were made of stone, just as everything else in Blink seemed to be, but they held a greater sense of history than any other area. Their middles were heavily worn, enough that the staircase could've been mistaken for a ramp, or a slide.

"Do you think they slide down?" the vigilante asked.

"Easier to climb this than that pit's wall. Come on."

I had said as much, but with each step, the risk of slipping grew more worrisome, and I was one exertion from exhaustion. I clasped onto the center rod that the stairs were attached to, hugging it tightly while maneuvering my feet onto the flattest part of each step.

"Are you really a thief?"

"Why?" I asked. "Am I struggling that much?"

"Well, you were a thief before, no? It is rare to find the same occupation twice."

"Is it?"

"And that conversation with The One Who Lives in Darkness, you left something out, did you not?"

I stopped, leaning to the side to glance how far we were from the top. Far. "Well, I would say I'm still a thief. But that certainly isn't my Name. You may call me Ferrowill."

Overhead, a faint grunting sounded from, presumably, the top of the staircase.

"More Dreams?" I asked.

"Likely, maybe I should take the vanguard."

"If you're able to get past me, sure."

"Just hug the…" A gentle thudding came from above, gradually increasing in volume. "What is that?" the wanderer asked.

I steadied myself and listened. It sounded of two dull objects clattering against each other. At the rhythm of a warden's wooden bat thudding against the bars of a cell. "You don't think—"

"It's someone sliding down the stairs?"

The sound quickly approached, and I grasped the center column as tightly as I could, wrapping my arms and legs around it. Soon, the noise thundered on the steps just above, and the red-robed figure swirled into view, the clunking came from a weapon dragging behind his hip. He brushed past my back, and I spun my head around to see if Wanderer had gotten out of the way as well.

He hadn't. Instead, the vigilante's sword was dug into the outer wall, for stability, and his foot was held up at waist height. The red-robed figure's head crashed into his heel and then slammed back into the spiral staircase. His body went limp and tumbled over the edge of the stairs, falling to the bottom. A couple of extra thumps sounded up through the stairwell, until one final heavy thud, followed by a chilling silence. I peeked down to find a pile of dust wafting out from underneath the red robe.

We climbed the rest of the stairwell without another word and soon emerged into a wide hallway. On either side were rows of plain wooden doors inset into the walls. The entrance that stood directly ahead of us held a filigreed doorknob at its center and an intertwining wreath of sticks and dried plants above it. The rest of the doors held similar eccentricities, but the hall itself was eerily devoid of activity.

"Residential area?" I asked.

"Commercial, I believe these are the specialty stores," the wanderer said. "If they are, I know which way to the tunnels. Then it's just a matter of finding the exit itself."

I followed closely behind his sprint but soon pestered the man to slow down. We settled at my staggered walking pace when a sound like ten thousand feet landing on the floor burst into the hall. I clapped my hands over my ears instinctively, but there was no further noise. Instead, all of the doors in the hall had flung open and out stepped a red-robbed figure from each. At the end of the hall was the familiar stature of the pudgy man who'd brought me into Blink.

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"Kill them!" he cried, and each figure rushed out towards us, forming an amorphous wave of red.

The vigilante looked at me to see if I understood the task at hand. I don't think I did, but I nodded nonetheless, and he drew his blade. As soon as the wave met his sword, he began cutting into the horde like a frantic child hacking his way through a dense forest. But the wandering vigilante was anything but frantic, his stretched blade only feigned frenzy, while his clutched fist flowed through a series of striking poses, too fast to notice him pause at any specific point.

Shreds of red robe fluttered in the air as we ran further into the crowd of charging figures. Each one soon replaced by a mass of white dust, painting the rest of the hallway with a hazy filter. The man's motions slipped into the unreal every couple of steps, and I lost track of his blade, only to find it again, slicing another robe in two. Just what kind of person have I stumbled across?

Before I knew it, we'd reached the end of the long hall and the pudgy man stood firmly as our only remaining obstacle. "Don't kill him!" I yelled to the wanderer, and he skidded to a stop, his blade one twitch from slicing the man's throat.

Behind us, there was another group of Dreams, but they weren't chasing after us. I didn't blame them either, even I was growing scared of the vigilante wanderer the more time I spent with him. And I'm Fear.

"Your sympathy will earn you no quarter from the Goddess Alta's wrath. You have angered fire itself, and whether I live or die, you will be burned."

"I'll be sure to let Harry know about my little screw-up," I said and then placed a hand on the vigilante's shoulder for him to lower his blade. For a brief moment, I wondered if I should be eating things without fully understanding what they would do to me. The best way I could describe it would be 'instinct.' Whatever, I'm starving.

Consume. But something was different this time. My upper body morphed into a familiar open orifice, but my lower body shifted too. It grew and propelled me upwards, spiraling as high as the underground ceiling would allow me. My open jaws widened, and I crashed down on top of the pudgy man's cowering form, my gelatinous self absorbing him instantly, before splattering across the floor. I felt my sense of being grow thin for a moment before I pooled back up and reformed into my regular form.

I stood, slightly satisfied, and dusted my cloak off. "Shall we?" I asked.

The vigilante looked shocked and—to my somewhat shameful delight—the faintest bit afraid, or so I ventured to imagine.

We followed the length of the hall, leaving the last horde of Dreams alive until it finally gave way to a tunnel I recognized. Wanderer's scabbard scraped along the rough wall as we continued down the winding halls until it opened into a node and split off in another dozen directions.

I have a phrase memorized for this don't I? ‘Barn cats eat flying chickens deserted and alone.’ Why did I come up with something so morbid?

I looked around at the tunnels, soon realizing that the phrase would have no use if I didn't know which node we were in or which tunnel led to the commercial district.

I looked to the vigilante. "Are you as lost as I am?"

"Maybe. I have only lived a few weeks in Blink. I could find the mess hall, the housing, the brig, the athenaeum…"

"What about the market?"

He looked to me, quizzical, and led the way once more.

As it turned out, we hadn't even been on the correct set of nodes for my mnemonic. When we got back to the market, the floor was still caved in, but I could point the vigilante towards the entrance I knew. We took a roundabout way until we finally ended up somewhere I could navigate from. I almost headed down the second tunnel to my left, for 'barn,' but stopped myself and reversed the sentence: "Alone and deserted chickens, flying, eat cat's barn."

Satisfied with the appropriately absurd image, we navigated through the tunnels without delay, and soon emerged into the grandiose hall from when I'd first arrived in Blink. I could now identify the woman standing in the middle of the hall to be their Goddess, Alta.

I wasn't surprised that I hadn't considered the possibility of religious fanatics, even with a statue of their deity at the entrance. Sure, it was large, but it wasn't particularly divine. Statues of deities often portray them floating on clouds or with wings sprouting from their backs. This woman looked excruciatingly human. Normal, but strong. If I had to guess, I'd have said she was the founder of the village. I doubted very much she would've been pleased by the state her village was in.

"Do Names, or people without Names, die of old age?" I asked.

"Nameless," he corrected and shook his head. He'd also been staring at the statue. "I would not be surprised if Alta had once existed. I found no books on the village's history, they only seemed to study the sciences. It was likely more convenient for the Dreams to control the villagers with a goddess and a torched past than anything else."

"Why are Dreams trying to control villagers?"

The vigilante looked to me, forlorn, and said not a word. He only gave a sigh that decades of not having an answer can forge.

We reached the small room that held the ladder to the carriage, and my Globetrotter, which sat inside. I made the wanderer help me lift it to drink a taste of the blood, and it wasn't quite as bad as his, but nowhere near as satisfying as it had been before. Though it did still energize me.

Inside the wagon, we both worked to turn the stack of wheels in the middle. Lifting the carriage was a much harder job than lowering it, but we soon began to emerge from below. The elevating carriage surfaced into the cold darkness of night, and the deep blue of the fake sky reminded me of Mauler's blood.

Once again, I had no clue how much time I'd lost on my detour into Blink, but I couldn't imagine it'd been more than a day. I wonder if Keeper will care that I'm late.

"You said you were headed to the Skypiercer Tree?"

I nodded, pulling out the map that I'd forgotten about. "We only have to cut through—"

"The Valley? Unlikely. We can detour around it. Here, let me see your map."

"Around it? How long will that take?"

He leaned over my shoulder, tracing his finger along our path. "Not long at all, a couple of weeks at a good pace."

I let out a shocked piece of laughter. "Weeks? No, I only have days. Why can't we cut through it?"

"Oh. Days?" The wandering vigilante rested his forehead against his hand. "Oh. I guess we would have to cut through it. Oh… Oh no."

"What? What's wrong with the valley? We can climb, I have more rope and hooks—"

The man held a hand for me to stop. "Rope and hook won't be necessary," he said. "You don't know, do you?"

I did not know.

"Well," he sighed. "They call it the Valley of the Dead… and it is home to Kafk, The Third Ancient Nightmare. The Leader."