The liminal space didn’t seem to be getting easier to traverse as he became more familiar with it – almost the opposite, in fact. Each time he had passed through, it seemed to take a little more effort.

Today, the space took the form of a shining crystal spire. Lu’s hands bled (no they didn’t) each time he pulled himself higher, jagged crystal (it was smooth, perfectly smooth, gliding over his armour like silk) piercing him down to the bone as he went.

The others were on his back (no they weren’t), tethered to him with long ropes. It had a certain symmetry to it; as they had carried him, now he carried them.

He pulled himself another arm’s length along the spire, wincing at the pain (there wasn’t any; there wasn’t anything) as the sharp surface went through his palm like a butcher’s knife. It hurts so badly… But I’ll endure it. This is nothing, just the last step on the road home – I can do it forever, if I need to!

…Ah, not that I’d like that. A nice, orderly trip through the realm between realms would be nice, okay? Maybe I can have that, like the first time?

The towering spire, extending infinitely in all directions, didn’t answer his thoughts. Well, it was worth a try. Lu could only sigh silently, and pull himself up another arm’s length.

This continued for an eternity, or perhaps two eternities. Though he really should have run out of blood at some point it never seemed to happen, he didn’t even feel faint, or fatigued at all. Bull and Tai Sho and Cobo and Stingy continued to hang onto his back, always just slightly outside the range of his vision no matter how far he turned his head.

But that was fine. He knew they were there, just behind him, and that was enough. It isn’t like I need encouragement, or anything. I can climb this! I can save everyone, carry everyone, all by my own power!

So he continued to climb. But gradually, too slowly to notice through anything but hindsight, the crystals began to extend further and further out from the spire. Where in the beginning, they had merely sliced through his hands, after several eternities he needed to impale himself through the body and legs to maintain leverage.

I… can do it! If it hasn’t killed me by now, it isn’t going to! The crystals arced out further and further, and after another short eternity, he was crawling at a noticeable outwards incline.

Then he was more upside-down than anything.

And then, before he could think, he couldn’t move at all. The crystals had gone so far out, they had reversed themselves, pinning him from all directions at once.

Lu attempted to wiggle his arms, and failed. He tried to move his legs, or his fingers, or his eyelids, or his tongue… but it was no use. Gleaming crystal needles locked every muscle in place. He couldn’t even breathe in or out.

Another eternity passed, but Lu did not give up. This is… the final test! I’ve been almost entirely useless so far, being rescued by happenstance, dragging my friends into danger… But this time, I’ll succeed!

I have a special relationship with space! I can navigate this place more easily than anyone – after all, every time we go through as a group, I come out first! This is a unique ability, and I’m going to use to save everyone!

His entire body flexed, failing to move a millimetre. The crystal prison held him tight, squeezing a little deeper with each passing moment. The gleaming lustre dulled, turning grey, then black.

I’m-! I’m-!

I’m not going to give up! You won’t beat me, you cur! You won’t!

The expanse of black crystal was silent as a grave. There was no sound, no smell, nothing and no one.

No, that isn’t true! My friends, and Tai Sho, are here with me!

…Aren’t they?

The grainy crystal, streaked a thousand shades of pitch, did not answer. Did not move, or change at all, except to hold him even tighter.

…Bull? You’re here, right? I didn’t leave you behind?

There was a warm feeling on his back… but maybe he was imagining it? Tai Sho? This isn’t some trick of yours, is it?

Stingy? Cobo? Someone please answer…

But there was nothing. Surrounded on all sides, Lu may as well have been buried alive. There was nothing anymore, no pain, no sensation; he was like a corpse, waiting to decompose.

…I didn’t… I couldn’t possibly have died, right? Pulled too hard on my stomach and just, ah, burst..?

Surely not. Surely this was just a particularly strange manifestation of the liminal space. A hallucination. I have to believe it’s a hallucination.

But no matter how long he waited, there was nothing. No light, no sound or movement, no-

No. There’s something. The warmth. That’s real, isn’t it? It had to be. He couldn’t even feel his body anymore, and yet the warming presence remained.

I just have to reach it…The crystal crushed in from all sides, like soil filling a grave, moist and black. I just have to figure out some way to..!

The solution hit him with such force, he had the urge to laugh. Of course, it’s so obvious! How could I have forgotten? Even if my body can’t move, my spirit-

My spiritu-

My spiritual sense..?

Why can’t I..?

…Am I really dead?

No, absolutely not. Every cell of his body rejected it. Not now, not right at the end! I refuse! It’s not as though I expect to live forever, but-! This is too cruel, too cruel to be real!

He writhed. With all the strength in his soul, he writhed. Even as the grains of sandy soil compacted further, he rejected their reality. This is a dream! A terrible nightmare, nothing more!

This is..! This is..!

This was familiar.

For a moment, Lu’s spirit was still. …Sir Bones, this wouldn’t happen to be your doing, would it?

No answer. It’s… reversed, isn’t it? Before, I dug you out. Now, I need to be dug out.

…Did I solve it? It was a puzzle, right? By understanding what’s happening, I should wake up, right?

No answer. The soil pressed in on him, so heavy he couldn’t tell up from down. Did I even enter the liminal space, or did you trap me from the start?

No answer. No, no, I definitely entered. The liminal space, it’s a bit like a dream, isn’t it? That’s why you can control it, isn’t it?

No answer. …Come on. No cryptic questions? Not going to ask me how I feel about skulls, or coffins, or my opinion on cheese?

…No answer, hm? And yet, Lu was absolutely convinced he understood the situation. Think, think, there has to be a way out. In the first dream, I dug him up with a sharp rock. Do I have a sharp rock on me now?

Not that he could feel. There was nothing around him but that faint warmth, the surroundings providing absolutely no sensory feedback except pressure. Okay. Can I just… dream something up?

Lu concentrated, and with all his heart and soul imagined something to dig with appearing in his hand.

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Cobo was in a place without sense.

Not a place that didn’t make sense, that was too narrow. He was somewhere that was neither some nor where, a narrow crack without pointless things like time or space.

…But no, that wasn’t exactly right. He was here. He, Cobo, had a shape. He had a past, and a future. A small room with stains on the floor, and a grand tapestry outlining his success.

And so this place had them too. He could move, and so there was motion. He could remember, and so there was causality. Chaos stretched out in front of his eyes, but it was his chaos, something he could control. Something that was made out of himself.

He turned to the left, then the right. Stingy was here, and Lu, and Lu’s clansmen too. They were moving, just barely, the motion only perceptible because he forced himself to perceive it.

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Around his neck, on a loop of thick string, the chisel pulsed like a heart. It was alive, because he was alive, because it was alive. My treasure. My blessing.

He was the only one moving at a sensible pace – the only one holding the power of a god. And just like that, he knew exactly what he needed to do.

When Stingy-Eye invented murder, she used a sharpened stone. Is this that stone? Is every stone that stone? The black wedge, only barely sharp, came free from his neck with the slightest pull. “My legend…” It was warm in his hand, fitting into his palm like it was a part of hit body. “Begins now!”

He brought the sharp edge down towards Stingy’s head, the flat point grazing across her temple and cutting the skin. She shocked, suddenly mobile, and turned to him as her tongue flicked up to lick at the thin trickle of blood.

“Hey, what was that for?”

Her hand went down to her sword, but he could tell she wasn’t actually angry. No, her eyes were darting, taking in the environment.

He was already moving. The scarred man took his wound to the cheek, and unlike Stingy he actually retaliated. Cobo’s chest bent under the weight of the punch, his feet leaving the lack-of-ground as he was flung away – but when he stood it was with a savage grin.

“Hm?” The man looker around, then at himself, the frozen figures, and finally back to Cobo. “…Well, this is new. Any idea what’s happening?”

His words were in Lu’s foreign nonsense language, but the chaos realm didn’t care. There wasn’t even any air to move sound anyway; it was pure understanding. He knew what he was saying, so Cobo knew what he was saying.

“I have a magic rock.” He could taste blood on his breath. Wow, fucker hits like Ded drives. “Also, I’m incredibly powerful.”

The man’s face screwed up. “That wasn’t even close to an answer. Fucking telepathy, doesn’t work for shit…” He poked at the other man, in his white armour, then struck him across the helmet when that failed to draw out a response. The nearly-frozen figure didn’t move at all, except to advance imperceptibly slowly.

“Does too. Only I can make them move.”

The scarred man looked at his fist, where the knuckles were torn up from his ineffective punch. “Well then…” He cracked his neck. “What are you waiting for? Do Lu, then…” The feeling of bloodlust that Cobo had felt returned as the man smiled. “…Do Tai Sho, too. This place is too good for him.”

Cobo huffed. Obviously I’ll do Lu last. He deserves to squirm a little for what he put me and Stingy through!

----------------------------------------

Time had no meaning, here, buried in a shallow grave. He could feel the ages passing, seasons turning like the hands of a timepiece, and yet he remained exactly the same.

He couldn’t feel his arms or legs anymore. His skin, his muscles, his organs, and even his very bones had calcified as he slept. It wouldn’t even be right to say he had a body anymore; he simply was, without reason or substance.

He could feel the stone, though.

However long it took to craft from mental effort alone, Lu couldn’t have said. He just knew that it was real, realer than anything else in this rotten dream. Made from black sand, and bloody-minded effort.

For the ten-thousandth time he imagined moving it – and finally, finally, it did. The dull rock, too crude to even be called a tool, scraped against the soil around itself. And very slowly, Lu started to dig himself out of his grave.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

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…And then, like waking up from a dreamless sleep, Lu’s eyes cracked open to reveal the light of day. The black expanse of gently rolling earth was the same, the pile of ancient bones sitting at his feet was the same.

But there were other things here, too, that made for an entirely different atmosphere from that long-ago dream. A dark forest took up one horizon, a city of glass and steel the other. And above, a bright moon illuminated everything in soft white light, craters like eyes peppering its surface.

Lu simply stood for a moment, breathing. When he eventually opened his mouth, his voice was hard. “…Sir Bones. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

The only answer was a lonely wind blowing across the barren plain.

“Alright then, remain silent.” The black stone was still in his hand, imaginary and yet more real than even his own body. He pointed it towards the pile. “I’m going to take my leave now. Are you going to try and stop me?”

The scent of grave dust, of something too dead to even rot.

Not much of a conversationalist. You’re something of an ungracious host, aren’t you Sir Bones? With a sniff Lu cocked back his arm, then swung the sharp stone downwards across his field of vision. The air parted, a yawning gap swallowing him from all directions as the corpse stared with hollow sockets.

It did not move even a little. And yet, why do I get the impression of tension being released?

And then he could move again, for real this time. He stumbled, catching himself as all his senses reappeared. Touch, the pain of his empty stomach and hair matted with sweat and bruised fingers; taste and smell, Granny Poison’s corpse-stink breath still clinging to his body; sound-

An impact behind him, meat hitting meat, and Lu turned to see the familiar scene of Bull putting someone on the ground with his fists.

What in Hell’s name are they even- no, don’t question it. Just stop it. “Bull, this isn’t the time! Whatever Cobo did to antagonise you, save it for later.”

Stingy was also here, and Tai Sho as well. The former was twirling a sword in one hand, while the latter looked on with a blank-faced expression.

Bull flexed his fingers. “Lu? Ha, I shouldn’t have been worried.” His smile was a little more normal now, more mocking than murderous, though Lu took note of the way he very carefully avoided looking in their senior’s direction.

And then Cobo coughed, standing, and Lu was somewhat surprised when he could understand the warrior’s words. “Cheap shot, old man. That’s a real good way to thank me for saving your asses.”

For saving..? No, later, later; I’m not going to assume Oldest Bones won’t try to trap me again. “Please, Cobo, we need to get going. Our various enmities can be hashed out once we’re free of this place, agreed?”

Bull nodded his head, then a moment later Cobo did the same, but not before spitting blood onto the- the whatever it was they were standing on.

“Good, good.” Dragging his eyes across the horizon, Lu finally took in the shape the liminal space was pretending to be today.

It was not a crystal spire, or a canvas of a thousand colours, or an empty void. It was just… a tunnel. There were walls and a ceiling and a floor, though they weren’t visible to his eyes. Instead, they stood out starkly to his ears, as though he had suddenly gained a bat’s echolocation. It should have been disorienting, but as he smoothly moved one foot in front of the other he found it was just as easy as navigating visually.

More dream logic. Sigh. “Can everyone see- ah, discern the path?”

“Eh.” “I can tell there is something, but my sense of direction fails me, junior brother.” “There’s a path?”

Lu’s face brightened. Ah, it seems I’ll get to be a little useful after all! “Then I believe I should lead the way. Come, come, let’s hurry!”

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It couldn’t have taken more than a tenth of an hour to reach the end – and they were obviously at the end, because there was a barred door.

That wasn’t a metaphor; a literal door, welded together bars of iron like one would find attached to a jail cell, stood at the end of the tunnel. Both pushing and pulling elicited no response, and there wasn’t any sort of handle or keyhole.

“…Well, this is strange.” There’s never been any sort of obstruction before. Actually, the liminal space has been acting oddly this whole time – we’ve all kept our bodies and everything. Very mysterious.

While Lu was pondering, Stingy’s sword struck the iron bars, producing a ringing sound that would put any city bell to shame.

“Ack-! Lady Stingy, please!”

Her head dipped, and Lu struggled not to avert his eyes – her teeth were crocodilian, a mesh of interlocking triangles sticking out from thin lips that failed to obscure them. “What? It was the obvious solution.” She turned her sword over, inspecting the edge. “Didn’t work, though.” Neither the door nor the blade seemed to have been so much as scratched.

Next, Tai Sho felt around the edges of it. After a minute he stepped away, shaking his head.

Lu would have expected Bull to try next with one of his many combat spells, but it was Cobo who stepped up.

He held a crude stone chisel in his hand, the shape disconcertingly familiar. Lu’s right palm tingled, aching with something like loss. Why does he have..? No, it can’t be the same one. That makes no sense. It isn’t even dream logic.

He must have had his own confrontation with Oldest Bones, and… brought his out, somehow.

With great ceremony, Cobo placed the sharp edge of the chisel to the centre of the door. Then he drew his pistol from his hip, reversed his grip, and used the back of it as a hammer.

The thick iron shattered like glass, fragmenting into a thousand thousand splinters that fell to the ground. Then the wall around the door shattered as well, then the wall around that.

The walls and floor and ceiling disappeared, the entire space breaking up into pieces. Gravity ceased to exist as chaos reasserted itself, reality dissolving into a mess of disparate impressions.

But the doorway was still there, so Lu gathered up four shining stars in each of his hands and dived for it.

----------------------------------------

He landed on cracked, dusty ground. Firm and chalky, like the silt deposited by a long-dry river.

Something hard made light contact with his back before whisking itself away. Then three somethings of varying softness pressed their full weight onto him, forcing just a little air from his lungs as his semi-flexible cuirass gave slightly.

He looked up, ignoring the mass on his back as it untangled itself, to see crisscrossing walkways rising from off the ground. In the background were crumbling stone edifices, once smooth and polished but now ruinous. And above…

A blue sky. Cloudless, unblemished.

He shrugged off the last of the weight on his back – were those two wrestling? Children! – and stood. Off to the side Tai Sho already had his helmet off, letting the sun hit his face without obstruction. A very good idea, senior.

Lu’s hands went up even as his sense felt around the inside of the helmet for the release flag, and he tugged it off in a swift motion-

Only for a blade to appear against the base of his throat.

Everything stood still.

Then, a voice. “Friendlies. Dismissed.” Lu’s eyes slid to the side fast enough to catch a glimpse of a person, too insignificant for his mind to note their features, before they reoriented towards the direction of the voice.

There was a man there. An Elder, unless Lu’s senses were deceiving him, one with a familiar face.

Not anyone he had ever seen, no – but still familiar. One of his eyes was the colour of ice, the other a milky white where a perfectly straight vertical scar bisected a quarter of his face from the rest. His hair was pulled back in a short imperial bun, and his robes were a red-on-gold dragonscale pattern.

The faceless disciples – there could have been as few as two or as many as twelve, the number seemed to change from moment to moment – stepped away, tucking knives and swords back under their robes. A single one stood out for the shock of red staining their robes, and flowing from their right sleeve.

Ah, that one must have failed to ambush Stingy. The thought had a small tinge of satisfaction; for all that these were almost certainly his sect brothers and sisters, having a blade held to his neck put him in a vindictive mood.

Then a flare of sense brought his attention back to the Elder. “Tai Sho,” he directed at the kneeling disciple. “I am gladdened to see you well.” He did not look glad in the least, but then again an Elder’s expression was more an affectation than anything.

“Thank you, master.” Master? Hmm.

Turning to the rest of them, he continued. “Disciple Lu, disciple Bu Guanyin. I am equally glad to see your safe return.” Don’t make a skeptical face, Lu! Comportment! “Please rest in the medical wing for now; I’m certain you don’t wish to recount everything right away.”

It was an order, obviously. Very politely worded, though.

The Elder gestured for Tai Sho to follow, and gave one more sentence before turning. “The Salt natives might begin to feel quite ill soon. Do not panic; junior sister Aiya Yu has devised a series of very effective treatments. But it is best they remain in the medical wing as well.”

He left, long strides carrying him through the cracked entryway as Tai Sho followed behind. The core disciple looked back, very briefly, an inscrutable expression on his face, before they disappeared behind the curve of the hallway.

Then Cobo made a grinding noise deep in his throat, and Stingy replied with a whistling nails-on-glass screech, and Lu could only close his eyes.

Well… Well, it’s good to be home!

Warts and all.