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Step by step, I wade through the shimmering, simmering, red-hot desert of light.

The fabled Wall of Light. The vast barrier of sorceries that guards the timeless city of goti.

You wouldn’t think light is a dream material to build walls from, but it’s not your standard flashlight beam. Photons are magically captured and looped through rigid tile forms, stacked to form a blazing isolation field thirty-two miles long, nine hundred meters high. Not only does it take up space sideways, it’s thick too, with layers upon layers, like in onions, or ogres. Every photon vibrates a quarter-trillion times per second, rendering each loop into a never-dulling chainsaw that could dice a diamond and which you can’t even see without an electron microscope.

Not getting through here with a saw or pliers. Touch one tile and you’re ashes faster than if you took a dip in raw dragon fire straight from the hose. It’s almost like they don’t want people in there!

And you know what the really crazy part is? Every segment of the wall all the way around and through is consciously maintained by a dedicated caster in real time, and they don't turn it off for a minute, or stop for coffee. The Wall has been up and running since the War of the Gods unfolded somewhere around 18,000 years ago. Goti don’t know holidays, they never sleep, and they never die.

Oh boy.

This thing is going to obliterate the CGI budget of our movie. Will they have anything left for marketing?

Crap! Nearly lost an elbow there.

Gotta focus.

There are only two working ways to get into Val Astea in one piece.

One, you wait for the Promised Day, once every thousand years, when they have open doors. Only eight hundred and seventy-six years left until the next opportunity. You have to be a chosen champion to qualify for a visa. Unfortunately, nobody's going to cast a ballot for me, and I’m not going to live long enough to announce my candidacy either. But thankfully, there's another way: you’re a genius magician and you do it the hard way, the less legal way, and don’t let the prospect of capture and a body cavity search get to you.

That's our way.

I drag my feet forward.

Step by step.

I’m not doing anything too exciting, to tell you the truth. I simply hack the eidos of every barrier tile on the path and alter its dimensional data to create a temporary gap to slip through. A lot of menial brain labor, nothing more. If you can solve sudoku, you can do this too. The main challenge is in doing it without the natives catching on. Can’t keep the gap open for too long. Can’t be too pushy. You have to make it seem as gentle and natural as possible. Like lifting the slimy tendrils of an undead pirate captain to get the key he's got in his pocket.

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Fortunately, the Wall being made of light and nothing but light works to my advantage.

Light is my friend. It never leaves me in trouble.

That's right. Nothing to see here.

Just me, Zero. Your friendly neighborhood Warrior of Light.

Everything’s fine. All's good. We're good.

Don’t think about how far there’s still left to go. Just move your feet.

One step at a time.

“—Gahhhh…”

I get a short breather midway through.

Between the outer and the inner rings of the Wall opens a high canyon free of traps. It’s not half as hot here either, a bit of wind from the open top passes through. But I have no time for ice cream and soda. There's only about half an hour left until the bad guys free the ancient monster sealed in the city, and the world as we know it comes to an end. I can rest when I'm dead.

So I whip myself on and jog along a narrow steel bridge across the vibrating red haze, a seemingly bottomless gorge below my feet.

This isn't the speediest of roads, but it should be fine.

See, light, time, and space have this very funky polyamorous triangle thing going on; you can’t mess with one without affecting the other two in tandem. I know you have no idea what I'm talking about, but the gist is that due to the high concentration of the light element here, time passes at a different rate inside the Wall, relative to the outside world. An hour spent here is only a minute in Las Palmas. Which is exactly what I need.

Not a trip to the tropic.

Just a bit of time for myself.

Because on the way to stopping the world-destroying evil from waking up, there’s a certain asshole I have to kill first.

Near the halfway mark across the bridge stands a solitary platform, round as a plate. Only a flat, hard surface on top of short stairs. There isn't a vending machine there, or an EVSE to charge your Tesla. The view isn’t too uplifting either. But despite the lack of attractions, I’m not the only tourist there today.

Up on the lofty platform stands a tall man in a golden suit of armor.

There’s no point in trying to hide. He already knows I’m here.

There’s no way to circle around him either. The only way in goes straight through him.

Not that I’d skip this date, even if I could. Ever since our last clash, I’ve been waiting for our next meeting excited like a maiden, unable to sleep a wink. At long last, it’s here: the day we get to go at it like in a Sergio Leone movie. Mano-a-Mano, a girl against a wanker.

“Come, Zero,” that man, Yaoldabath, beckons me. “Let me be the end of your suffering.”

As you fucking wish, tooth fairy.

I told you this in the beginning, didn’t I?

This isn’t a romance story.

This is a story about hot-blooded revenge, with a vengeance. Our revengeance. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves now.

How exactly did I earn myself the undying wrath of the evil, pointy-eared twin brother of Ziggy Stardust, I’ll tell you all about it—after another beer.