They were on the bridge, outside the Witch’s temple, and the small lassertane was looking up at Eolh, expectantly. Her large black pupils, ringed by gold, almost like an avians’ eyes. She was tiny, basically a hatchling and far younger, even, than Poire when Eolh first found him.

So when Yarsi said, “I go with you, okay?” Eolh knew she would be crushed by his answer.

He crushed her anyway.

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“Go home, Yarsi. I’m not arguing this.”

When she crossed her arms, and furrowed her brow, she almost looked like a gaskal, one of the sticky-toed reptilian folk who lived in the Cauldron, except her head was more angular, and her coloring nowhere near as vibrant. Instead of bright violets and orange and greens, her scales were mottled brown and gray, speckled with spots of white. Perhaps to camouflage her in the ice and snow.

“You not go far without me.”

“Are you serious?” Eolh crowed. “We’re headed to the center of your planet, to speak with a deity who we don’t even know still exists. We’ll be hunted the whole damn way, not to mention the sheer madness of this world-” he gestured off the ricket rope and scrap metal bridge, down to the mind-breaking emptiness below. Thousands of enormous beams of various sizes, intersecting and weaving together like stone spiderwebs, holding the world together.

One false step, and there was nothing but miles of empty space to stop your fall. And the blowing of a cold, forever wind didn’t help. As if the world wanted to pull them off.

“I am not taking a hatchling through that.”

“Does cold make you stupid?” How quickly her innocence turned to insults, “This my home. I know it better than you. I good scavenger, I good pilgrim.”

“All right,” Eolh said, “Why don’t we go ask your father, then?”

She glared at him. He glared back, folding his arms in mock imitation of her. Finally, she let her gaze drop.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Then what? Who take you? My father sick. He no help, not for a long time. Others not want help you. They scared of you. Scared of him,” she nodded knowingly at Poire, who had nothing to offer but his frown.

“Go home, Yarsi. We don’t need a guide. We can take care of ourselves-”

Agraneia muttered something under her breath.

“Oh, not you, too,” Eolh said. “Are you serious?”

“Mhm,” Agraneia hummed.

“Then she can just draw us a map. Look at her. She’s barely out of the egg.”

“I am not! I am almost big now!” She stretched her height, rising up on the tips of her claws and holding out her arms to make herself look bigger. She succeeded only in making herself look ridiculous.

“Not much younger than I was,” Agraneia grumbled, “When I left home for the academy.”

“This is a matter of life and death.”

“So was the academy. Besides, she knows more about those machines than any of us.”

“I escape them three times!” Yarsi shouted proudly, holding up her fingers as if that somehow proved she was ready. “I not even get scratch!”

Eolh sighed, and turned to Poire. I must be truly desperate to ask him to help these two see reason.

Only this time, the human who had been so reckless so many times before surprised Eolh. Poire seemed to take the question seriously. Frowning, he walked a slow, quiet circle around Yarsi. His brow furrowed in deep thought. The gear the Witch had given them - canteens and knapsacks filled with rations - was slung over his shoulder, and clinked lightly with each step.

“Why do you want to go with us?” Poire asked.

“You need guide-”

“No,” he cut her off. “Why do you want to go? Why not just tell us where to go?”

It was the way he talked to her, as if she was an equal. Not fledgling to hatchling. Nor even god to mortal.

Still, Yarsi bowed her head when he spoke to her.

“Because I remember the way.”

“How? You said no one has been in hundreds of years.”

When Yarsi bowed her head, Eolh’s first thought was, Is she praying to him?

A polgyonal device, the shape of an elongated gem, protruded out of the back of her scaly neck. Coppery and dark with newly-dried blood and ancient rust, it reflected the light in a way that didn’t quite blend in with her scales. The flesh around the device was still raw.

“What is that?” Eolh asked, and even Agraneia leaned in to look.

Yarsi put her hand over it protectively.

“Where did you get this?” Poire asked.

“Princess Altanbaturzh. She gave to me.”

“How much did she give you?” Poire asked, though the question made no sense to Eolh. The corvani could see only one device.

He looked at Agra, who shrugged.

Even Yarsi seemed concerned as she answered, “I not know. The memories still new to me. I feel-” she made a vague gesture at the scaled ridge of her head, “Different. But in here, I can see the way.”

Poire stooped down to her level. Eolh hadn’t realized how much he’d grown until now. The human searched the lassertane’s face, as if he knew she was holding something back, and he wanted to coax it out without frightening her.

“Yarsi, what else did the Princess give you?”

Yarsi wrapped her arms around herself, avoiding his gaze. The same look thieves gave when they got caught.

“We can’t even trust her,” Eolh said, “How can we bring her with us if we can’t even trust her?”

“You can!” Yarsi said, baring her tiny, white fangs. “Yarsi is friend, stupid!”

“Then tell us,” Eolh said, ignoring the insult. “Why do you want to go with us so badly?”

“Because if I not go, no one go. And if no one go…” She stopped, and shook her head. There were tears brimming in her eyes, and she tried to hide them.

When Poire spoke, his voice was steady and so certain. So unlike the fledgling he had first met.

“She’s seen something.”

Eolh felt his stomach drop like a stone. He crowed a sigh, because he knew he had lost. They were going to take this scrawny, half-grown hatchling with them.

But he wouldn’t let it go so easily. “Explain.”

“She has someone else’s memories.”

“Whose?”

“All the stewards,” Yarsi said. “I think.”

“In that little thing on your neck?” Eolh asked doubtfully. How big was a memory? And how could you put a memory into a rock, anyway?

“How far back can you see?” Poire asked.

The hatchling child let her eyes shut, her face going soft with inner concentration. Eolh had seen the same look on the old avian priests, deep in prayer. “I see far.”

“Can you see Sen?”

Her eyelids flickered, but did not open.

“Yes. She climb up her shrine. She stand there and a light… Very bright. And sharp.”

“Sharp?”

Yarsi formed an uneven circle with her clawed fingers. “Round, and sharp.”

“I have no idea what that means,” Poire said.

“She is still there,” Yarsi said. “Stuck.”

“Great,” Eolh said. “Means she should be easy to find. Tell us where she is and-”

“Eolh,” Agraneia’s soft, rumbling voice cut through the chill breeze. He wanted to be mad at her. Knew she was right. Eolh sighed, wrapping his winged arms around his body, suddenly feeling too old and too cold to be here.

Poire raised his eyebrows, as if to say “Well?”

“Absurd,” Eolh said to himself. Nobody else was listening. That was the problem, wasn’t it? That was always the problem. “She’s a hatchling.”

“She likes us, and she knows this planet better than us.”

“If we say no, do you really think she’ll listen?” Agraneia said. ”Look at her.”

Yarsi jutted out her chin, trying to show a tough face. On a lassertane as small as her, it had the opposite effect.

Agraneia leaned in, and muttered so only Eolh could hear. “I’ve been on other worlds. Nothing like this. Don’t know what’s waiting up ahead, do you? We need a guide.”

“She’s a hatchling.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Different world, different rules. Look at her people. They’ve been dying a long time.”

“So we should help her die faster?”

Agraneia shrugged, her face as solid as stone, but there was something stiff about her shrug. “Maybe we could help her.”

“This is mad.”

Yarsi was letting Poire inspect the device embedded in the back of her head. The fledge’s eyes were bright with curiosity, and then he got distract by the spiny ridges growing up her neck. Poked them, which made her laugh suddenly and jump away.

Then, he showed her his wrist, and how he could make the skin glow with that implant of his. But Yarsi was more intrigued by the soft springiness of his skin than anything else. Her eyes wide as inspected him, trying to understand how he wasn’t covered in scales.

Eolh turned back to Agraneia, “Fine.”

“Fine?” Agraneia arched an eyebrow. Eolh noted how her chin didn’t move down, as if she was afraid to even catch a glimpse over the edge of the bridge.

“She does not leave our sight. And we bring her back safe. No matter what.”

Agraneia grunted her agreement.

Eolh turned back to the two of them, who were making stupid, childish faces at each other and trying to make the other laugh. Yarsi was currently losing.

Eolh lowered his beak between the two of them, “Ok.”

“Ok?” Yarsi asked.

“You can come with us.”

“Good!” Yarsi said. “Good choice.”

“Good choice?” Eolh said. That’s all she has to say?

“Yes, because you can’t get to Sen by walking.”

“Then how…?”

“Elevator!”

Right, Eolh thought.

Yarsi hoisted her satchel over her shoulder, laden with canteens and sacks of food and small supplies. It must’ve weighed as much as she did. She started marching across the bridge, leading the way, and Eolh thought he heard her say something under her breath: “I hope elevator still works.”

Their troop followed her across the bridge. Through tunnels burrowed in the hanging mountains. Down ramps, down steps, down more bridges, growing narrower and more rickety as they went. Eolh was surprised there were no other lassertane around. All the cut-out windows were shuttered with scrap metal or tattered fabric, and even those glass hanging gardens were shielded and closed.

But the world didn’t know it was nighttime. The semi-occluded light from below still shone through, casting jagged shadows across the mountains. Spreading an ethereal and gray sunlight over everything, even through the slats of the bridge they were walking on. Thousands of beams, some near and some hundreds of miles below, intersected the light, breaking it up.

It must be thousands of miles to the center. A dizzying thought. Eolh was used to flying, often going from street level to the tallest rooftops. Sometimes, he had flown across Lowtown to the cliffs. But if you fell here, you would just … keep falling. How can these people stand to live up here?

Then again, what choice did they have?

They crossed from bridge, to mountain, and back to bridge. Light, to dark, and back to light. At once, surrounded by sturdy stone, and then exposed to the cold, walking over open air. At each bridge, Agraneia would pause. Lift her chin up, not looking down, and inhale deeply before taking a step. Her hands never left the ropes that served as rails, and he thought he could hear her talking to herself.

“Shut up,” she was whispering over and over. “Shut up.”

Yarsi led them into another upside-down mountain. Its steep faces were littered with bolted-on scrap metal windows and pocked with holes the lassertane had burrowed through. Some windows for sunlight, some with balconies made of wood and fabric underawnings stretched out to shade from the sun. There was a small garden growing on one.

Inside, there was a set of cramped steps, carved into the rock. Eolh had to hunch over as he followed her down. Agraneia had it worse, but she squeezed through without complaint. A pale light beckoned them to the bottom of the staircase, many winding steps below.

When they reached the bottom, the world simply seemed to fall away. Eolh’s stomach seemed to fall with it.

Below, Eolh could see the spindly tip of the mountain, trailing away. A beam, an octagonal pillar the color of dull metal, jutted out from the tip of the mountain. It went straight down until it intersected another beam, hundreds of feet below. And beyond, the interior of this dying world was made up of a latticework of intersecting beams. Tens of thousands of them, growing thicker as they gathered towards the center of the planet, towards that bright glowing core.

Agraneia was not going to like this.

“There it is,” Yarsi was crouched at the open mouth of the tunnel, as if she wasn’t bothered in the slightest by the drop. She was pointing far across the horizontal beam that ran below them, but Eolh couldn’t see anything special about where she was pointing. A faint shadow, in a world of light.

“Is there another way down?” Eolh asked.

“Only way down is down,” the lassertane said with a shrug. Then, she stood up, and took a step off the ledge, and fell.

Eolh threw himself forward, clutching at the rock, about to yell when he saw her hanging outside. Over nothing. Clinging to the rock as if it was flat ground. She waved at him, oblivious to the heart attack she had nearly given him.

The rock was made for her, or she was made for the rock. Her body clung to it effortlessly, her claws finding purchase at every angle. Eolh spotted a few iron hand holds bolted into the stone, but Yarsi ignored them as she scampered lower, paused, and turned. Waiting impatiently for the others to follow.

“Come on! Going down is easy part!”

Eolh didn’t move.

“What is it?” Agraneia grumbled behind.

Poire, who was standing between them, stuck his head around Eolh’s side, and said, “Wow.”

And when Agra saw it, she let out a painful grunt. As if she was about to be sick.

“Ags.”

“No,” she slammed her eyes shut, and took a step back, bumping into the rough wall of the tunnel.

“Ags, I can fly you down. You can close your eyes and-”

“Gods, no.”

“Agraneia,” Eolh said, using her name like a hammer. “Listen to me. There is no going back. There is nowhere for us to go, but forward. If you want to stay here, I can’t make you leave. But,” Eolh lowered his voice, so Yarsi wouldn’t hear, “You’ve seen this world. There’s not much left.”

Agraneia slid down the wall until she was almost laying on the tunnel floor. Taking deep, shaking breaths. Refusing to look at the sheer drop just a few feet from her. Her scales were changing color, going pale and bloodless.

“Agraneia?” It was Poire. Kneeling next to her, talking so softly to the battle-hardened cyran. “Do you mind if I try something?”

She blinked a few times, as if she had forgotten he was there at all. Poire offered his hand. His liquid armor was writhing in snakes up his elbow, and around his forearm.

Agra lifted hers, uncertainly. Her fingers were shaking.

The liquid armor slid up Poire’s wrist, streaming off his fingers and wrapping around Agraneia’s. The shock of metal on her scales made her pull back, as if it was cold to the touch. She breathed out, and held still, allowing the liquid metal to settle on her hand, her arm, and sliding across her chest like a fractal tide made of glittering chrome.

Poire had given her a piece of his armor, enough to stretch out across both arms.

“Touch the wall,” Poire commanded gently. Agra moved her arm automatically, and before her fingers touched, the metal on her fingertips stretched out and embedded themselves into the stone. Sticking, becoming harder than liquid, like the jagged, geometric roots of a silver plant growing into the stone, and holding her arm tight.

“Now, try to let go.”

“I can’t.”

“Try harder.”

Agraniea tugged. And again, harder now. Gritting her teeth, grabbing her arm with the other, and straining. She could not budge.

“No,” she said, her chest heaving. Her voice weak. “I’m stuck.”

“Put your other hand on the wall, and try again,” Poire said. For a moment Eolh forgot who was the adult, and who the fledgling. “Try it.”

Agraneia slowly reached her other hand towards the wall. Uncertain. The rest of the liquid metal reached out and latched to the rough stone. And embedded itself, growing roots of metal into the stone.

“Now, try to move your other hand.”

Agraneia’s first hand came unstuck. The roots let go immediately, while her left hand was still planted to the wall.

“One will always be stuck in place,” Poire explained. “It will not let go until the other is fastened.”

“How does it know?”

“It’s smarter than you think. It won’t let you fall. It is as certain as walking on the ground with your own two feet.”

Eolh thought he could actually see some color filling back into Agraneia’s scales. She still looked rotten about the idea of climbing at all, but this was something…

“And I’ll catch you,” Eolh tried to help, “If you do fall.”

Agraneia let out a sound, halfway between a gasp and groan. The color gone from her scales once more.

“What?” Eolh said, as Poire stared daggers at him. “I will!”

“I don’t think she wants to think about falling.”

Agraneia had taken a few steps back down the tunnel, and was leaning against the wall, shaking her head left and right, saying, “No, no, no.” The metal on her arms kept growing new roots into the rock, almost locking her in place. Poire padded over to her, and kneeled in front of her again, whispering things at her.

“I was just trying to help,” Eolh grumbled.

Yarsi poked her head back up. “I go down and no one follow. I come up, and you still here. Why? Must go faster! Not safe to stay. Machines know him and they come. We must go.”

Eolh poked his head out of the ledge once more, gazing down the near-vertical cliff face that greeted him. Down to where the beam seemed to sprout out of the rock. There was a set of metal plates stuck to the side of the perfectly flat face of the beam, forming a crude kind of staircase. With no rails, of course.

What are we supposed to do? He wouldn’t leave Agraneia. But, they couldn’t stay here, either.

Poire was sitting in front of Agraneia. Saying whatever a god says to a mortal. Crouched down to her level, so their faces were even, though she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the floor.

“You want to know something?” Poire was whispering, “I’m scared too.”

Now, she did look up. Her face hard with disbelief. “Gods do not know fear.”

“How would you know?”

She frowned at the question, stumped.

“Fear only means that you are awake to your future. That’s what my caretaker used to tell me. That’s all it is. A way to see ahead.”

“I can see. But I cannot go. I don’t want to fail.”

“But you will,” Poire said. “You must fail. That’s the only way we become more than we are. Through failure.”

She held her hands in front of her face. The liquid armor writhing over her trembling fingers. “I can’t do it.”

“Maybe not alone,” Poire said gently. “But we are here to help.”

“They’re laughing at me. They know I can’t. They know…”

“Who?” Poire asked, confused. But Eolh knew what she was talking about.

The faces.

“Stop it!” She was shouting now, curled back into a ball, her voice muffled by her own arms. The armor was writhing over her, long dancing strands skittering over her body as she thrashed against nothing. “SHUT UP!” She roared.

Poire looked at Eolh, helpless.

Eolh padded over, crowing at Agraneia, “Take it easy-” when she lashed out, striking with a closed fist. Not aiming for Eolh, though she would have caught him if he hadn’t jumped back. He caught her hand, and her sheer strength almost tugged him down before he got his words out, “Whoa! Whoa, Ags. Where are you? You’re right here, okay? Right here with me and him.”

“They’re laughing…” she whimpered. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face stretched with some desperate, internal agony that could never be seen from the outside. “I can’t. They know I can’t- They’re- They’re telling me- Telling me to fall. Shut up. All of you. SHUT UP!”

She was rocking back and forth, her hands clenched into fists and her arms wrapped around her head, so that Eolh almost couldn’t tell where her head began and body ended.

Yarsi whispered from the light at the end of the tunnel. “What happen? Is she okay?”

“Please,” Agraneia was saying, begging, but Eolh didn’t think he was talking to any of them. “Please.”

Eolh put a feathered hand on her shoulder. She flinched, a sharp intake of air, muffled by her arms, but he didn’t let go and she sank into his grip. That’s a good sign, right?

“Agraneia, I want you to do something for me.”

A sharp, muffled, “What?”

“Tell the faces to fuck off.”

“What?” This time, there was more confusion than anger in the word.

“Tell them. To fuck off.”

She stared blankly at him, her eyes red from the stress.

“And tell them Eolh says ‘fuck off’ too.”

She blinked at him, as if he was the stupidest avian in existence. Maybe I am, gods damn it. He had no idea what he was doing, only knew that he wanted to help.

And for once, she seemed to be listening.

“Go on,” he crowed at her.

“Fuck off,” she said meekly.

“Good. Now, tell them I said it too.”

“Eolh…” She started. Swallowed. And tried again, “Eolh says fuck off, too.”

“Now, tell them if you’re going to fall, it’s going to be on your terms, when you say so. And not a moment sooner. And I promise, I will be there to fall right alongside you.”

Agraneia gazed up at the cramped, rocky ceiling of the tunnel, addressing the faces that only she could see. “Did you hear him?” she said to no one.

Eolh heard no answer, but Agra was climbing to her feet. Rolling her shoulders. Taking huge, deep inhales, and slowly blowing them out. “I asked you a question,” she growled at the ceiling. “All of you! Fuck! Off!”

She slammed her fist into the wall, making chips of stone and dust fall. Tensing the muscles in her neck, rolling her shoulders as she stomped slowly to the edge of the tunnel, to the light. Yarsi scurried out of her way.

They all watched her come to the edge. Stare over the abyss that turned even Eolh’s stomach.

For a long moment, she didn’t move. Her jaw clenching and clenching. Her chest heaving, as if she had just sprinted a mile.

“Is she-” Poire started to ask, but Eolh hushed him.

Agraneia turned around, her back to all that light. And crouched, until Eolh thought she was about to curl back up into a ball. Instead, she planted her arms on the edge of the tunnel. The tendrils of liquid armor raced down the curving muscles of her arms, and sank their metal roots into the stone, planting her firmly in place.

Eolh heard her whisper something that sounded suspiciously like “Fuck off,” and took her first, backward step over the edge.

On the way down, Agraneia froze up. Her hands were gripped around the wrought-iron handholds. She wasn’t staring at the rock ahead, gasping for breath like a fish out of water.

Eolh flew to her side, hooked one talon into the rock, the other into a rusted hand hold.

She said nothing. Her arms were shaking, though Eolh didn’t think it was from the strain of climbing.

“What is it?” he asked.

“The godling said I wouldn’t fall.”

Eolh cocked his head to the side. Waiting for her to continue.

She shook her head, as if she didn’t understand. “I let go. My hands let go. But he was right. I didn’t fall.”