As Imbertri unloaded a fresh round of bullets, I edged towards the Rein on stiffened legs. My movements creaked audibly to give away my position, but I did my best to mitigate it. Based on my typical Rein experiences, he’d likely try something heroically dense such as jumping out at me. Or worse, saving his would-be killer.

A decoy vegetable smashed against the opposite side of the road. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I knew exactly where he was. Even if I hadn't, and despite my case of premature inflicted arthritis, I’d still been doing this for a while.

Still, I’d play. Turning my back, I set out after the lure, ducked at the sprinting footsteps and caught the descending blade in an arm instead of my spleen.

I used it to transport us both to the Vein.

The Rein let go of the knife, spluttering, and scrambled away. His suit was unwieldy, made of a rough reedy material that captured the dust. Half crawling on hands and knees, he disappeared through the nearest rift.

His blade came out clean. It did hurt – a lot – but the damage wasn’t nearly as bad as it once would have been. I tied it securely into my belt, ensconced in folds of Garrison fabric.

The next universe was icy and dark. My feet were like blades and my eyes like headlights. I skated effortlessly to the helplessly skidding man and pulled him back to the Vein again by the scruff of the collar.

“Don’t bother,” I told him. “You're going in a nice, friendly universe for a bit so I don’t have to kill you ahead of schedule. I’ll put you back later.”

“Why... why would you kill me?” the Rein stammered, head twitching from side to side. His eyes were wide, only now seeming to register the scale and nature of our surrounds. He clawed at my grip with his fingers, unable to pry it free.

“Be more concerned about the other guy. He was going for it now, in a much more permanent fashion, so I wouldn’t be complaining.”

“I don’t want to be killed now or later. You must have me mistaken. I'm not important enough to have any enemies.”

Still holding the collar, I put my unstabbed arm around the small of his back and hastened him in the direction of Makiwa. “You will be. You’re the special chosen one destined to be ruler of some other universe somewhere – I don’t know which one – and I haven’t been trained yet to have this conversation.”

The Rein gulped, clearly conflicted by the apparent likelihood of the statement and the equally unlikely vista lending it possible credence in front of him. “Then you have to keep me alive!" he babbled. "I can't do that if you kill me. Why would –"

"You wouldn't understand," I said.

"Try me.”

I let out a small laugh. “We have. History tells us you’re not good listeners. You don’t really do ‘calm and rational’. You think you do, but you don’t. It’s easier to violently rip you away from your family whom you probably won’t miss or think about that much anyway. Also, it’s a biology thing.”

Case in point, the Rein’s face was already partway to turning red. “How dare you –” he growled.

I'd never talked to a pre-death Rein before about the world they'd be diving into, being strictly forbidden. What I was doing now was unprofessional, unhelpful and probably damaging. And I didn't care. “Don't worry. It doesn’t matter what I think, because obnoxiousness and saving the world aren’t mutually exclusive. And we’re here.”

I lifted my hand and pushed him in.

No time had passed on Grey Dust, placeholder name. Hastening back to the downed inter-dimensional fugitive, I saw Imbertri refresh her round of shots to keep pace with his regeneration. There had been no change here.

No signs of consciousness stirred Jadal Cai’s features, but his versal signature continued to blaze.

“Kill him,” I recommended. “The other one’s gone, so now he’s got nowhere to run.”

Imbertri moved the barrel of her pistol from the base of Jadal Cai’s neck to his skull. “You’re sure?”

I wasn’t, but we could keep up the chase through as many universes as needed. If his soul needed a Rein to latch onto, hopefully the lack of one would trap it here or force it on to the Chapel. If not, then Imbertri and I would note his escape route. My biggest concern was that he'd lure us unprepared onto a hostile world like Stabula or worse, letting the environment make up the shortfall.

If he could cross universes with just a soul and no body, then we’d know.

“I –” Imbertri began.

Near Miss triggered. A highly improbable sinkhole opened up under our feet, sending us both plummeting down. I glimpsed Jadal Cai's body teetering at the edge, spiking with versal magic, before losing sight of it in the fall.

Imbertri fired, yelling, but it went wide.

She had the Garrison's shield. I activated the construct, hunting for its interface in the system. Too slow and unfamiliar, with chaos screaming for my attention. Crumbling earth and rock rushed past just out of reach. I lost track of which way I was facing, flailing reactively on my own descent. Gear Shift and its crossbow tower wouldn't help. With its low tech materials and rigid structure, it gave me an even higher chance of breaking apart on impact.

The hole was far deeper than I would have expected, with the bottom nowhere to be seen. With nothing to push off from, I couldn’t reach Imbertri. Abandoning the shield, I launched through instead to the Vein, turning to wraith smoke before impact, then retained the form and dove back in. The shape didn’t last, forcing me back to my human state, but the transit reset my rate of fall. By staggering jumps back to the Vein, I stuttered my way down.

I caught up with Imbertri at the eventual bottom, landing in a jarring thud. We were a long way down in a cave made of more dusty grey. She’d hit hard with a terrible crack, splitting fractures in the earth upon impact.

And she was dead.

I double-checked. Her versal locus hadn’t gone out; it remained taking up space in my head. But her first-tier body was broken well beyond repair. Her legs were both broken, a pool of teeth lying next to her shattered skull.

I felt for a breath and a pulse just in case. There were none. It had been over in an instant.

It didn’t feel real. Imbertri had only needed one more augment to reach second-tier. If she’d had it, she might have survived. I even had one with me. So what if it was another World Slide – I could have given it to her and it might have made the difference.

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And Near Miss – my supposedly legendary Arch – had allowed it. Participated in it. Right after Imbertri had practically sworn loyalty to it, it hadn’t saved her. If anything, it was Jadal Cai who’d had the close escape. Why lead us to him, let me shoot him in the head, only to let him go free again?

His signature was up there at the sinkhole rim, already moving. Regeneration undoing our work in seconds.

I’d never seen a Chapel assassin die. I knew it happened, especially at the lower tiers. It had almost been me once or twice. I hadn’t expected our magic to linger, even after seeing the ancient mound of the wraith. My vision blurred. I wiped at my eyes.

I reached for Imbertri's body.

From above, half a dozen points of versal energy bloomed in my awareness. For a brief moment I thought Flinpen had returned with a Chapel contingent faster than expected, but they felt too weak to be third-tiers.

When I viewed the group through the Garrison's database, however, I saw names. The Garrison had arrived in search of me.

Near Miss activated again.

The resultant haze of bright anger threatened to consume me. My nails clawed shallow trails in the bottom of the ravine. Now you’re making a sympathetic appearance.

The Garrison was engaging Jadal Cai. I was too far down to make out anything that was being said. Faint echoes of voices reached me, but the sounds were mere indistinct fragments. It didn’t sound hostile.

I stared at Imbertri’s terrible corpse in the luminous dark, blood still fresh and flowing, as some kind of multiversal negotiation happened above me. It went on and on, and no one came for me. Imbertri’s blood dwindled to a trickle, stopped, and began to dry.

Then all of them – Garrison and Jadal Cai alike – winked out. For some reason, I'd been forgotten.

When they were gone, I screamed.

I should have kept following our target according to Flinpen's plan. Instead, I spent a few minutes working myself up to what came next, and split my friend open with the knife I’d been stabbed with.

The augments were lodged in her throat like they’d only been swallowed that day. I pulled them out one at a time and found the core, still whole and bright. I could feel how it differed to the others in a way I couldn’t explain.

I added it to my row of specialisation pouches with the others, feeling like a monster for it, and dragged Imbertri's corpse back to the Vein.

In the time since it had departed, the Garrison had given Grey Dust a database entry and marked it empty of Reins.

[Auspice – No threat. Found on a powerful day. Seed.]

Before I left, I Functioned my way into activating Imbertri’s Defective Naked Eye. It showed up on the database unmarked and unregistered; a new point of note waiting to be entered. I did not enter it. Through time, effort and some unholy interaction with my versal sense, I managed to force the trigger anyway. The interface clearly hadn't been designed to be used like this. But I was an agent of Fate, with magic it partly recognised and could only half see.

Like World Slide #2, Naked Eye lent me its power from outside rather than within. I immediately noticed the Defect. My vision fell temporarily dark, colours and shapes draining away along with the versal landscape.

But I wasn’t blind. The vegetation beneath my feet clearly displayed grass and softness; the emptiness beside it chasm and vast. When I looked at the window to Auspice, it showed me travel, door, and recently familiar, plus a host of complex minutiae.

I looked at the concept of rocks and found them under my hands, and the protection adorning my feet. Elegant and dirty accompanied the latter, with more concepts to sort through underneath. Everything as clear as it would be with regular vision, just without the obscuring aesthetic veneer.

Imbertri’s corpse showed me fresh death and murder, which was what I expected.

I undid my outfit’s pouches to take out Lucky Guess.

In it was Imbertri. Imbersol, I supposed. All of her. Reduced and asleep, but safe.

Hope flickered in my mind.

Advancement wasn't permanent. Everyone telling me otherwise had been only partly right. Proof was in front of me. True, there was the small problem of first having to die, and the secondary small problem of losing a body, but we regularly dealt with it happening to Reins. Second-tiers in the Chapel might have an idea what to do.

Naked Eye itself posed an irregular sprawl of defection. I could see its intricate, jagged growths spitting out of its designated confines as far as they could reach. They crawled around the hand that held them, seeking a way inside.

I was tempted. Imbersol had considered them improvements, and I was starting to come around.

Even after it all, I still wanted to climb. The emptiness of my unfulfilled capacity ached, like Alusept had warned.

And suddenly, conveniently, I had three more augments in hand, enough to take me directly from Tri to Hex – even Sept if I included the third World Slide in my growing collection. Was there any limit to the number the Garrison could carry around? Was there someone out there with twenty? A hundred?

Was this my fault?

“If you made this happen to give me the ingredients I needed, I’m never speaking to you again,” I uttered, feeling sick. Naked Eye no longer seemed so attractive. Deactivating it, I allowed the world to fade back to normality and slid Imbersol back in a pouch. I didn’t dare activate her the same way.

I’d thought I’d been making progress. It had been going so well. We’d had Jadal Cai at our mercy with a solid plan to follow.

Then, when it mattered, this. No escape from the hole, from the Garrison, from Imbersol’s death – no Near Miss and nothing at all.

I gave it a while to cry out my tears, then slid through to Makiwa.

The Rein was long gone, but his footprints weren’t. I followed the trail to where they stopped in a scuffle of deeper indents, looked up at the asteroid above where the tracks picked up, and took a whistling leap into the air.

My reflexes took over and turned me the right way up for the landing, coming to an amateurish but more dignified halt than the Rein, whose trail showed he seemed to have collided head and shoulders with the sand. It hadn't deterred him from trying it again a short while later.

A few more jumps and the footprints became redundant as I found him in my senses. Speeding through the next few, I found him wet and covered in clinging sand. Not far off, I saw where he was headed – a small cottage on one of the beaches.

Between the pistons and musical whistles, I was easy to hear coming. He seemed to realise he wasn’t going to win this race, though, and didn’t try to run. Reins usually didn’t for long, preferring to face trouble head-on.

I looked at him through Naked Eye. As expected, he had a soul. Though unlike the one kept safe in my pouch, the Rein’s had one additional overarching characteristic.

Seed.

“Are you going to kill me now?” he asked, voice strained.

“I hadn’t planned to,” I said tightly. “But things have happened and I’m fairly sure you’re at the appropriate stage in your cycle. I could take you back to your dusty grunge for now, and they might not even come for you. Or I could slit your throat with the knife you gave me, and we could see what happens.”

Between my versal sense and Naked Eye, tracing his soul to its destination could potentially teach me something about how to help Imbersol. I retrieved the Rein’s knife from my belt.

“Don’t,” the Rein said quietly. “I want to live. Especially now, with..." He nodded at the asteroids around us. "...this. You could leave me here. You don’t have to be a killer.”

“You’re a bit late,” I said with a laugh. “I’ve killed thousands of you.”

“Then you don’t have to keep going.”

“It’s necessary for the survival of billions,” I replied, not sure if I still believed it. “At least your next life will have meaning. Give it a few months and you’ll be happily off conquering your own path to victory.”

“I couldn’t.”

“That will change,” I assured him with certainty. “It’s in you, like a beast. You already had no problem stabbing me. I’m sure it felt good. Made you feel powerful. It won’t be long before you surpass me.”

“You’ve got it wrong, stranger. I have no interest in becoming like you.”

Like me? The dismissive click building in my throat failed to escape. I supposed I could see how I’d given off that impression. I was upset. Betrayed. Angry. And we were on the same side in the end. I still didn’t enjoy him pointing it out.

“Well, maybe I don’t need a reason to kill you,” I said uncharitably, feeling my insides twist. “Maybe I’ll do it simply because I’m in the mood.”

I belonged to the Chapel; no one else could put chains on me. As long as I did my job to the expected standard, I was well within my rights to do what I chose. As my target froze, I struck forward with a blade rife with inevitability.

My core triggered, and the Rein tripped backwards on the sand. I sliced through air.

So, then. It was back to working against me.

“Tch,” I uttered. “It’s your lucky day.” Sheathing the knife in my belt, I extended a bitter hand. “Don’t try anything foolish. I’ll take you home.”