“So you’re just going to leave, then?” Muqwa shouted at the scattered throngs of priests and clerics. “You cowards! Apostates!”

Avians of every feather hung their heads in shame, but they did not stop walking away. They abandoned their temples and the libraries that grew up the cliff walls and against the tower itself. Most of them carried knapsacks full of books or relics.

Poire and Muqwa were standing in the shadow of the easternmost tower. Ages ago, a huge section of the cliff wall had collapsed here, and the landslides wrapped around the base of the tower. Stone workers cut at the landslide so that the tower seemed to have been chiseled out of the rock itself. Walkways and switchbacks crawled up the cliff, leading to dozens of shrines and homes for the siblings of the Faith and the working clergy.

Now, those siblings were running away. Most of them were avian, but Poire spotted one creature with bulging yellow eyes and green, leathery scales wearing a priest’s walking clothes. Some were rushing. Others tried to move with a quiet dignity, as if they thought they were doing the right thing.

“Where are you going to go, then?” Muqwa shouted at the throngs. He pointed at one red-feathered avian. “Sister Inakah, what are you going to do?”

“Survive,” Inakah said. She was just as old and round as Muqwa. “At least, I hope to. And if you know better, you will leave too, Muqwa.”

“What about the Oracle? What about our order?”

“The Oracle is silent, as always.”

She was already walking away.

“Brother Osul,” Muqwa called to another avian, who was carrying a bulging knapsack over his shoulder. Silver and other precious metals glinted out of the top. “Are those from the temple? Are you stealing from the gods?”

“Mind your own roost, Muqwa. The gods help those who help themselves.”

Muqwa opened his mouth to argue when Poire tugged at his robes. Reminding him of their purpose.

But Muqwa was too worked up. His jowls quivered with fury. “You call yourselves faithful. Pwah! Faith would have you here to protect our sacred home from these ransacking cyrans. What if the Savior returns? Where will you be?”

One or two of the priests stopped long enough to look back at Muqwa, at the temple and the tower. But they would not change their minds. The fire over the Midcity was growing taller. The clouds, blacker.

Brother Osul, on the other hand, was still standing there, his brow feathers cocked high.

“Who’s this?” Osul nodded at Poire.

“A lost fledgling, that’s all.”

Osul stared.

Muqwa put a protective hand out, pushing Poire behind him. “I found him on my way from the garden.”

But the answer didn’t seem to satisfy Osul. Poire could feel the brother’s gaze lingering on his robes, searching for his face beneath the shadow of his hood. Poire shifted uncomfortably, and even his armor began to stir again somewhere beneath his clothes. He pulled his hood tighter over his face.

There was a shout behind them. A patrol of cyrans were shoving one of the priests around, pulling a knapsack off her shoulders and dumping its contents onto the ground. She threw up her hands, letting them take it, letting them tear through the books and papers.

“Quickly,” Muqwa whispered to Poire, turning him away from Osul, “let’s get inside before anyone sees you.”

The easternmost tower, just like the leaning tower, was not how Poire remembered it. Huge stone walls had been constructed around the tower, completely walling in the central pylon. Still, the tower was unmistakable. It soared hundreds of feet above the other buildings.

Arches ringed the base of the tower, forming dozens of entrances to the inner monastery.

Muqwa went in first to make sure that it was clear to enter. And then, he beckoned Poire to follow.

Inside, the sound of the world changed. Footsteps became shuffling echoes, and every breath sounded like the rumbling earth. Torches and pockets filled with candles lit the dusky atrium. There was a kind of excitement in the priest’s gait as he led them down a set of steep, seastone steps that curved around the center of the tower.

“Right this way. And watch the stairs, they’re sharp.”

The steps were cramped and worn smooth from centuries of use; Poire’s feet wanted to slip on them. Candles and torches were replaced by gaslights encased in fragile, cloudy glass. A glow ushered in shadows from below.

Here, the lights numbered in the hundreds. A cavernous basement stretched as far as he could see, filled to brimming with the steady warmth of lanterns and the glint of gold. Precious metals had been crafted into symbols of the Faith that hung on the walls and the heavy, stone columns. Color had been worked into the stones so that the polished floor was one enormous mural.

The smell of natural gas was so rich it was hard to think. All Poire could hear was the hissing of fuel flowing through a network of pipes that crawled across the corners of the floor.

The ceilings were covered with paintings, flecked and peeling. Each one showed another scene, often of human beings. Sometimes they were tending to plants or feeding animals. This one was a woman whispering into the ear of a bird. Here was a man reaching into the water where a scaled hand rose up to meet his. And directly above Poire was a human sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed, a whole forest of trees growing out of his flesh. Each scene was a new masterpiece.

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They built all this? Burning gas to see and carving with such crude tools?

There was a gleam of metal from the center of the temple. One of eight pylons, built by humans so long ago. The pylon held up all this stone, just like it once held something else.

But Muqwa drew his attention to an altar covered with a pale linen cloth. Gold stitching embroidered the cloth in an intricate pattern.

“There it is.” Muqwa bowed at the altar. “The Oracle.”

“It’s a control panel.”

“Hmm?” Muqwa said.

But how could Poire explain? This waist-high station, this dome, was just an access node. The tower’s manual control, mostly used for troubleshooting. The chrome shell was worn with a patina of scratches, scrapes, and smudges of tarnish where generations of hands had touched the shell in the same spots.

Maybe it still has power, Poire thought.

“It looks like it needs maintenance.”

“Hmph,” Muqwa crooned defensively. “We take the utmost care of it. For over a thousand years, our order has followed the Oracle’s instructions to the letter.”

“Since when do control panels give instructions?”

“I’ll admit, the Oracle’s words have been . . . sparse these last . . . well, I’ve heard it speak once. I think.”

“You think?”

“Yes. We’ve pieced together what we can, and we never fail in our duties. Or at least we have not failed yet. But as long as I draw breath,” he said, breathing deep and straightening his back, “I will attend the Oracle.”

“Muqwa?” A thought struck Poire. Maybe it was the gas making him light-headed.

“Yes?”

He hesitated. “Thank you for helping me find my way. This world is strange to me. And the people . . .”

“Your presence is all the reward I could ever need.” Muqwa bowed his head.

Poire swallowed. What was he supposed to say to that?

What can you possibly see in me?

Beyond the control panel, Poire saw a shape in the metal pylon: the outline of a door.

Judging by all those scratches, it looked like someone had tried to open it and failed. Arcane symbols were painted over the arch in a silvery paint that glistened in the gaslights.

“What do you keep in there?” Poire nodded at the door.

“Ah, that is called The Door Which May Never Open. As its name would suggest, no one has ever been in there. Some say it leads to a secret gate, which leads to gods-know-where. Others say it is a symbol left here by the gods, a reminder that we are mortal and there are things we cannot do. Some paths will always be closed to us mere mortals.”

Muqwa appraised the door with a wondering curiosity dancing in his eyes.

“There are others still who say that a great treasure lies inside. Wonders from the gods that await their return.” Again, Muqwa gave him that expectant look, as if Poire might have all the answers.

This time, Poire thought he knew the answer. The door leads to an elevator. One of the maintenance shafts for the pylon. That’s it.

But as Poire thought about it, he realized that maybe, to these people, to Muqwa, such a simple fact could be miraculous. Even the emergency lights seemed to fascinate them.

A shuffling sound stole his attention. He tuned his ears. Are those footsteps, or is the gas just getting to me?

“Something wrong?” Muqwa asked.

“Do you hear anything?”

Muqwa tilted his head, listening to the silence.

“It is quieter than normal in here. Normally, it takes three of us to tend to the lights and the offerings. Speaking of which, let me show you. This is how we speak to the Oracle. Or attempt to, at least.”

Copper wires crisscrossed the floor in front of the control panel, braided over and into each other as they fanned down from the dome. They fed into crude generators, simple engines that were hooked up to open tanks.

Is that gas? In open containers? No wonder it was so hard to think down here. Do they know how dangerous that is?

“Awakening the Oracle,” Muqwa said, “is a very complicated, drawn-out process. It requires the utmost attention to detail. One slip, and we must begin the whole process again. First, we attune the alternators.” Muqwa gestured at the generators. “That’s the Oracle’s word for these engines. Now—”

Poire put his palm on the dome. The moment his fingers grazed the chrome surface, a light sprang up. Holographic displays swirled around the dome, coming to a stop in front of him. Towering blue and black letters spelled out: “Welcome, New User.”

He heard a strangled gasp from Muqwa.

“How—how did you—”

And then the letters changed: “Tower 3 Status: Offline.”

Around the corners of the display, new menu options materialized. All but one were greyed out: “Need Help?” These letters glowed faintly.

Muqwa’s beak worked at empty air. A hundred emotions played across his feathery face. His eyebrows twitched and bounced, his beak opened and closed. Slowly, he sank to his knees, muttering a prayer. “By the Divine, I am not worthy. I am a worm beneath the dirt.”

Poire crouched down next to him, leveling his face with the priest’s. He wanted to tell Muqwa to stop debasing himself. He wanted to show him how it worked. “It’s just a control panel. Here—”

“There!” The voice echoed across the temple. It cut through the hiss of gas like a blade through flesh. “There he is! I’ve found them!”

Brother Osul was crouched on the steps. And behind him, more shouts. The stomping of boots, the jingling of metal, the rushing of soldiers in uniform.

Poire threw his hood back on, but it was too late. They had seen.

Muqwa threw his arms out, spreading his wings to cover Poire.

“You will not touch him!” he shouted, his whole body quavering with righteous fury. “You shall not lay a finger upon his Divine being!”

A gunshot.

Muqwa jerked and dropped to the floor like a sack of grain.

“No!” Poire was screaming. “No!”

“Don’t shoot!” another cyran shouted. “Can’t you smell the gas? Don’t shoot, damn you!”

Poire fell upon the old avian, trying to press his hands against the wound as if somehow that would help. There was so much blood. How is there already so much of it? It dripped down the avian’s beak and shone on the side of his head where one of the bullets had ripped away those graying feathers and the skin underneath. It even spattered across the black chrome of the control panel.

“Muqwa, can you hear me?” Poire grabbed at his robes, trying to pull him back up to a sitting position. Poire’s armor rippled and dripped through Muqwa’s feathers as if trying to help Poire hold him.

A faint whisper. “Look.”

One feathered finger stretched out, pointing beyond the control panel. He was smiling. Why is the stupid fool smiling?

“The door opens for you, Poire.” A gap formed in the wall of the pylons. “Just like the prophecy said . . .”

The priest’s eyes closed.

Unlike the door, they would never open again.

Tears were streaming down Poire’s cheeks. His hands were red with blood that was not his. A dozen guards gathered around him. Those blue-and-black uniforms were just shapes, blurred by the tears in his eyes.

“Grab him.”

The soldiers moved in, forming a loose circle around him, but none of them wanted to touch him. They were afraid of him.

“What are you doing? Grab him, you fools! Grab him!”

Poire was the first to move. He ran through a gap in their circle. Two cyrans tried to close ranks against him, but as Poire’s body collided with theirs, the liquid armor lashed out. Vicious spears of metal pierced through Poire’s clothes, ripping his cold suit and stabbing at their palms and arms, riddling them with holes.

One of the cyrans was screaming.

Poire dashed up the steps and ran through the open door of the pylon.

The door slammed shut behind him. The light from the temple was gone.

Wrapped in the safe silence of darkness, there was nothing but the cold metal floor and Poire’s heaving gasps.

A machine’s voice broke the silence. “Are you real?”