Kranen sweated heavily; exhaustion attempted to consume him as he kept up his barrage of lightning bolts, fireballs, and ice-balls that he kept throwing at the Hydra, even as it steadily advanced toward him. He was doing damage to it—he could tell by the blackened singe-marks on the thing’s heads and neck, from where the fire and lightning had both hit. But the problem was, he wasn’t doing enough of it, and couldn’t at one time. He thought once or twice about turning and running. But no. That wouldn’t do. The beast would just chase after him and roast him then eat him if he tried that. So, he kept up the attack, but merely slowed its pace to rest a bit between bouts.

Then, he saw Gadgorak and Teif in the adjacent corridor. Gadget’s ghost-incarcerator fell to his feet, and he kicked it hard, so that it would roll underneath the Hydra where it currently stood. The foot pedal unit dropped to Gadgorak’s feet as well. This time, though, he didn’t press the button that would imprison the Ectoplasmatronic entities. Instead, he used his foot to tap the other button. The release control.

In a flash of brilliant yellow and purple light, the Interoseter opened up, its top doors swinging wide open, and out came the Wraiths. At first he thought—aloud:

“Gadgorak are you nuts?” he yelled. Then the ethereal forms of the Wraiths emerged from the trap, winding around each other in serpentine fashion. Gadgorak immediately “lassoed” them with the particle-stream from his weapon, even as the beam also hit—and burned through—the Hydra’s flesh. It screamed in fierce agony, as the Wraiths wove into and out of it, within and without, curling into a tornado of haunted energy inside of the Hydra, while the confing particle-stream that held them kept drilling a blackened-bloody hole into the side of the Hydra. Electrical arcs from the particle-stream surged through its body. It froze. Stopped breathing flame. Its eyes widened. Then it fell to the floor, dead, crushing the trap, the light going out of its eyes . . . and the Wraiths continued to feed on it, their hungry spirits devouring their prey at a rapid pace.

“Let’s get . . . the hell . . . outta here,” said Teif, backing up and away from the dead Hydra and the currently-busy Wraiths.

“Good idea!” Shouted Kranen and Gadgorak at the same time.

Kranen ran around the Hydra, and joined them. Then he leaned against the wall and crumpled to the floor, sweat pouring from his forehead, mixed with tiny rivulets of hints of blood, as well.

“I can’t, can’t go on,” he wheezed, panting for breath. “I just . . . I just can’t. That thing used up the last of my strength. I’m a goner now.”

“No you’re not,” said Teif, crouching and putting her arm around him. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying right here with us.”

“Yeah, well,” said Gadgorak, eyeing the still-busy Wraiths with unease, “they are too, so let’s hurry the hell up and get out of here! C’mon now, Kranen!”

With some unsteadiness and trembling, Kranen rose to his feet, still huffing for breath, his fists clenched, as did Teif, keeping a wary eye on him and the Wraiths. They all three exchanged glances, and then looked on as the Wraiths continued to devour the remains of the Hydra. It wouldn’t be long before they were finished with it, and then came after them in search of new prey to feast on.

“We have to get out of here,” said Gadgorak.

“Well,” huffed and puffed and panted Kranen, “you’re the one who knows anything about the interior of this place. Where does this corridor lead?”

Gadgorak looked down the bumpy, checkered-tile corridor. In the gloom of the black-lights, he saw another hallway there, parallel to the one they had just been in and perpendicular to the corridor they currently occupied. A set of huge, double, iron doors—a gateway he did not recognize or remember from Gadget’s past—stood at the very end of the corridor, against the opposing wall, in the midst of the other hallway. The pair of doors was seven feet tall and made of solid, riveted iron, and its builders had mounted it on huge iron hinges. Good.That meant the Wraiths couldn’t move through them. Iron—and to a much lesser extent, steel—and its accompanying, inherent (though not at the moment in flux) magnetic properties were anathema to the Wraiths’ etheric composition.

“Let’s head that way,” he said, pointing to the doors. “Through there. The Wraiths will be powerless to penetrate it, and we’ll be safe.”

“Yeah, for now!” added Teif and Kranen, at almost the exact same time. They regarded each other oddly for a moment, then Kranen shrugged.

“Let’s move,” said Gadgorak. They all three moved down the corridor toward the doors, with Kranen leaning on Teif for support as he hobbled forward. Behind them, the Wraiths let out a terrible shriek. Uh oh. That signaled that they were almost finished with their meal—and were still hungry. “Let’s hurry,” he said. “C’mon, faster!”

“Going . . . as fast . . . as I can,” muttered Kranen with some difficulty. Using all that magic at once had certainly taken the liveliness out of his step.

“Well, go faster,” said Gadgorak. Teif and Kranen sped up slightly, to keep pace with him.

Finally, they reached the iron doors mounted to the adjacent side of the adjoining hallway. They were locked.

“Hang on,” said Kranen, though weakly. “I’ve . . . got this!”

He flicked on his laser-sword and with some effort, he took the blade of light—which mysteriously stopped in midair, still, somehow—that emerged from it, gave a yell of chi energy. and then thrust the laser-sword into the Iron doors, melting right through them. He moved his trembling hands so that the beam cut a big, circular hole into the iron, big enough for all three of them to at least duck and amble through one at a time. The Wraiths couldn’t follow them because for them, that would mean getting too close to the ferromagnetic properties of the iron. If they so much as brushed it, they’d wink out of existence in a heartbeat. Again, thought Gadgorak, so much the better if they do. Kranen finished burning the hole in the iron doors and Teif had to catch him before he collapsed. She propped him up and they all three moved through the self-made doorway, with Kranen hobbling as he came along.

Once they were through, all three of their jaws dropped at what they beheld. They were inside a massive glass crucible, rectangular by the look of it, and longer than it was wide; all around them, they could see the universe in all its fantastic, intergalactic glory, unencumbered by leftover light from city buildings, the kind of things they had in Gadget’s world—they were called streetlamps and traffic lights, right?—and for a moment, a shiver of revelation went up each of their spines as, each to their own, pondered their insignificance in all this vastness. Every bright star, every multicolored nebula, every rainbow-hued gas cloud, and scattered planets—Gadgorak knew enough of the Philosophers’ Guild’s subject of “astronomy” to wonder if they were in fact rogue planets, unattached to a sun like their own, or if these were indeed Aeòthánia’s sister worlds: A gas giant with a swirling vortex in one spot; a strange, blue, stone-like orb that had no signs of life nor vegetation on it, surrounded by a thin cloud of green gas; several small moons orbiting the gas giant. The planets seemed impossibly close to one another for their observations of them to make any real sense . . . Gadgorak knew—perhaps instinctively?—that this wasn’t the real center of the universe, nor anything like that . . . instead, it was a carefully created projection, a wraith-like image constructed three dimensionally. There was a word for that. Holograms! Yes, it was a hologram of some sort. But what purpose it served, he could not tell.

They proceeded to the center of the room and as they did, the air began to thicken with something. Particulate, and tiny, like part of a dust cloud or sandstorm, only much less intense than either of those would be. Here it was merely—somehow—“sandy clouds” that were—again, somehow—still breathable. The faint motes within it glowed now and then, like tiny stars themselves. And that was when Gadgorak noticed the smell of the air. Hmmm. A strange mixture of paprika, garlic, and cinnamon . . . a spice of some kind, perhaps. Gadgorak felt his grip on his senses loosening as every breath was full of the stuff, and it was definitely hallucinogenic. He began to see other holograms, inside the room with them. Episodes from his life as Gadget; episodes from his life as himself; episodes of still other scenes that were unfamiliar to him. He couldn’t make heads or tails out of them . . . but these holograms seemed real and solid enough, though. That was for sure. He was tempted to reach out and try to touch one, but instantly withdrew his finger. Who knew what wicked new Magick the Castle was about, now.

Floating ahead of them, about four feet off the ground, there coalesced a shadowy, hazy shape. As they all three grew closer to it—their sense of adventure and curiosity spurring them on—Gadgorak could pick out more and more detail. They were roughly ten feet away from it, now, and he could easily see that whatever it was, it was alive. He could see it breathing, and could see its breath in the billowing, spicy dust clouds around what he presumed was its head. It glowed orange, and looked like a giant slug, or some snail-like creature, with tiny human arms extending at the front and bottom, and rising up from there, one big enormous brain with eyeballs planted inside it, widely spaced apart. Its mouth looked weird—somewhat embarrassed, Gadgorak at first thought he was staring at woman’s vagina, only split down the middle with a thin skein of rough, patchy skin . . . then he realized it was just the thing’s mouth after all; that was where the dusty—and decidedly amber colored, alive with their own bright orange glow—clouds around them were billowing to and from. That being itself glowed orange, like the air here, only much brighter, giving off an almost golden illumination that threatened their view of the universe around them.

The tiny human-like arms at the creature’s front, near its mouthpiece, waved and flexed their infinitesimal fingers as they approached, and its eyes roamed, looking out for intruders. The eyes mounted on either side of the enormous “brain” that sat atop the creature’s front end, looked around eagerly, anticipatorily.

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And then, those silvery eyes settled on them, and Gadgorak—and the other two, very shortly after—stopped moving. Gadgorak froze, uncertain of what to do now that they had met it. The creature was unarmed; that was a relief. And it appeared to not have any hostile intentions toward them. If it did, it would’ve moved on them as soon as it had spotted them, somehow. Instead, something that looked like relief, or maybe even a kind of disbelieving overjoyed-ness, filled its brainy brow and silver eyeballs. When it spoke, its voice sounded distorted and wheezy, as though someone spoke for it through the blades of a fan.

“You are transparent,” the creature said to them. “I see through you. I see plans . . . within plans. I see a Noble Quest . . . and great difficulty . . . in achieving it. You have faced . . . braved . . . many dangers to come here. Thus far—and . . . somewhat recently—you have faced . . . the monsters that dwell within this place . . . keeping me captive. Keeping me alive for reasons even I, in all my wisdom, cannot grasp.”

At long last, Gadgorak’s eyes widened—as did Karen’s—as they both at once realized just exactly what they were looking at . . . a creature of pure and utter legend, whose existence they had both (probably) ruled out as being the mere fantasies of their most ancient of ancestors. But, no. It was quite real, and solid, in the here and now, as it floated there, defying gravity, inhaling and exhaling the spicy air. This was . . .

“Yes,” it said for him, before his lips could even party. “I am . . . a Wayfinder. The only one left. And it is my job to . . . guide . . . to use prescient sight to see beyond . . . the here and now . . . and as I said . . . guide . . . Heroes such as yourselves on their way through this treacherous place, toward whatever treasure they seek. I have long been imprisoned here. I long to escape. But I have seen my own future . . . and I know that will not happen. The spice in the air all around you nourishes me, keeps me alive, and gives me the ability to see beyond, and to double-over and crease the fabric of spacetime, and for that alone . . . I am thankful. And to you as well, now. For lending me even the briefest of company to keep. Thank you. Thank you all. It is my honor . . . to Guide you, as my ancestors once guided yours. To help you . . . Navigate to your destines . . . as I once did a young ducal heir in his time, on another world; he became one who changed the universe. Perhaps you will, as well.”

Gadgorak fell to his knees, as did the other two, all three of them wearing expressions of mingled awe and mystic wonder on their faces. Gadgorak took off his hat, and held it to his chest in honor of the Wayfinder. God, they were real. Had been real, too. And yet he sensed . . . more borrowing had been done. From Gadget’s world. But not . . . from Gadget’s external world. Rather, something in his head. Something that he had seen somewhere that had made a vast impression on him, and formed what was possibly an early memory. The memory of an image, projected on a silvery screen of some kind somewhere . . .

“How can we honor you?” asked Kranen for all of them.

“Complete . . . your epic quest,” said the Wayfinder creature. “I will take you to where, in the Castle, you need most go . . . to face your final challenge . . . before claiming the sword, Dràchynthýr.”

“It is not for us,” said Teif quickly, as though apologizing.

“No, she’s right,” said Gadgorak. “It is for . . . the Lady Desirée Discordia. Do you know her? Or of her?”

“She and I share a common, ancient bloodline from when I was still . . . Human. Before the air here . . . brought out this . . . creature from within me . . . over the past four thousand years.”

“That’s how long you’ve been here?” asked Teif, incredulous. “Four millennia?”

“Yes,” it answered. “I too vied for the sword. But then realized, upon breathing the air in this chamber, that it was not for me to take; not mine to have and use. It belonged to another. Another who had not yet been born when I was Human . . . but who walks the Magic Planes . . . Even now.”

“He must mean the Sorceress,” said Kranen, putting his hand on Gadgorak’s shoulder, and causing him to jump-scare a little. He turned back to the creature. “Do you? Do you mean the Sorceress herself?”

“I know that the Childlike Empress was but a placeholder for her, and yes, I know of her, though we have never met. And I have witnessed her destiny—her glorious victory—or . . . perhaps I just imagined it, conjuring one more hallucination from the gas around me. Either way . . . I know you have a part to play in her existence, this destiny of hers. How it will end—none can really say. Time is dynamism. Time is change. Time is . . . wibbly-wobbly, and timey-wimey, is all that I can say. It is rather like a ball of yarn, in that way.”

“So . . .” said Gadgorak, licking his lips. They were so close to success now, if what the creature said was true! “So you know where the sword Dràchynthýr lies within this cursed place?”

“Yes,” it said. “I do.”

“And you can take us there?” asked Teif, astounded. “What, just like—” she snapped her fingers, “—that?”

“Yes,” it said again. “I can. And will do so willingly. Unlike the last traveler here I encountered. He forced me to use my power of prescient sight to . . . guide him to the sword. I do not think he prevailed over it. Instead he became its prisoner, trapped in steel . . . and silicon . . . forever . . . becoming its guardian forever, for all others whom might seek to claim it.”

“Well that doesn’t sound good,” said Kranen. Teif nodded along.

“Will we have to fight this guardian if we want the sword?” she asked, just as Gadgorak was about to. But they were “ka-tet,” as a prescient Prophet King of Lobster City on the Great Northeastern Shores of the West—with arcane knowledge, though he knew it not—had once written down in a book that Gadget had read. The title, he could not recall; but yes they three—or four, who knew?—had mingled destinies and a shared sense of waking life as dreams made of flesh and bone. So it was no surprise they thought along the same lines, as well.

“Yes,” said the creature.

“Dammit,” said Kranen, “I knew that was gonna be the answer to that question. Just knew it. Why can’t we ever get a day off from facing perilous evil all the time? I’d like to at least take a sick-day once in a while.”

“Tell me Wizard,” said the creature. “Do you now . . . see beyond, as well? Has the atmosphere here granted you its secrets, or have you wormed them out of it . . . using your natural talent for Magick?”

“I assure you,” said Kranen, holding up his hands in a peaceful gesture. “I meant no harm. But yes. I can see quite clearly now the path we must take. Thank you, your Eminence.” He bowed his head and his pointy wizard’s cap almost fell off his head.

“That is good, then,” said the creature. “You, Wizard, have more within you to give the world still. I see you still alive at the end of the journey. Not so sure . . . about you two, sad to say. Something—I do not know what—clouds my prescience. But I give you—all three—my blessing. And I did not say this . . . for I . . . am not really here. And I warn you now: Even the wisest of us cannot see all ends.”

And with that, the creature retreated from them, into the billowing orange smoke that sufficed as breathable—but certainly spice-ridden—air in this place. In front of them, a passageway opened, a hole in the air itself, an Impossible Doorway carved from the very gas around them and leading . . . someplace other than here.

Specifically, it opened onto a long, narrow, archway-covered corridor made of bluish stone, at the end of which they saw a bright, shining light of some kind. Torches in golden sconces, spaced evenly along its walls and roughly seven feet above the stone-paved and checker-tiled floor. They lit the corridor with a fiery, flicking, yellowish glow that clawed and bit at the cobwebbed shadows around them.

Gadgorak and Teif exchanged wary glances. Gadgorak exchanged one with Kranen, and then with Teif. She nodded to him. Kranen nodded too. Gadgorak gulped a ball of what felt like hardened clay that was somehow stuck in his throat just now. He then nodded back at Kranen. And Teif. She warily pulled an arrow free of her quiver—one of her last—and nocked it in her bow, holding it ahead of her but pointed down at an angle for the nonce. Kranen drew his dagger and gripped his crystal-topped staff a little tighter and closer. Gadgorak turned back around to face the corridor, and down it the three of them proceeded, step by careful step, inch by methodical inch.

“Never have I drawn blood with this sacred Athame,” said Kranen, holding up the dagger. “But today—who knows—I might have need of it.”

“Indeed,” said Gadgorak. “And here I stand, the only one with his particle-stream weapon still intact. Don’t I feel lucky.”

“I’ll take bows and arrows over wibbly-wobbly, spacey-timey particles made out of infinitesimal, wriggling strings any day of the week.”

“Aye,” said Gadgorak. “I hear you. But that bow and arrow would’ve been useless against those Wraiths . . . and you . . . you really came through for us there. Thank you, Teif.”

“My pleasure,” she replied. “Any time I get to kill something—even if it’s technically already dead—I’m a happy camper. And a helper.”

“By the Horned God and the Moon-Goddess!” said Kranen. “This corridor . . . is extremely long.”

“Long enough for us to—perhaps—bid farewell, old friend?”

“Indeed,” said Kranen. “Nice working with you Doctor Gadgorak. And praise be to your alter-ego in that other, somehow less—somehow more—real world you visit from time to time when your mind is idle.”

“Aye,” said Teif. “Sometimes it all feels like the scattered dreams of other peoples’ dreams, themselves living . . . with a dream. A Storybook Story so Meta It’ll Give You A Matrix of the Pain Migraine.”

“Where did that come from?” Asked Gadgorak.

“It’s the subtitle of a Storybook Meta-Story That’s So ‘Meta’ It’ll Melt Your Brain Into a ‘Matrix’ of ‘The Pain’ of a Meta-Migraine. ‘So Buckle Up, Buttercup . . . Because The Floorin' From Beneath You . . . Is Goin' Bye-Bye.’ As It Devours. It’s written by a man who is Himself nothing but a Storybook Story, and a dream as well of someone in your friend Gadget’s world, on top of that,” replied Teif. She shrugged and then added, in a mutter, “I mean, obviously. I—I dreamed that last night. Just so you know.”

“The way your mind works amazes me, sometimes,” said Gadgorak, smiling at her. “You sure you’re not . . . what did he call himself . . . a Wayfinder at heart? Because your mind . . . I swear sometimes, it moves in strange . . . directions.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Or maybe I will be, but not for another four thousand years and massive exposure to that gas back there,” said Teif. “If, that is, if we live through any of what awaits us up ahead. Which I gotta be honest, I’m kinda scared of?”

“Who says we’re even really real right now?” Muttered Kranen. The other two just looked at him in stunned disbelief. “Hey,” he said defensively, “I’m just picking up where she left off. Don’t blame me. It’s her world; I just lived in it, for a few seconds.”

“I get that same feeling all the time, with Gadget,” said Gadgorak. “But with someone different. Gadget. Maybe he’s the one writing the ‘Meta-Story,’ sometime in his future or past.”

“Either him,” said Kranen, “or his Alter-Ego in a parallel reality zone, yeah?”

“Right, right,” said Gadgorak, nodding, but keeping his eyes focused on what lay at the end of the corridor they trode through. “Just what I was thinking, just now. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit, really.”

They emerged into a vast chamber whose ceiling vanished into the cloud-cover above them—the clouds were not white and puffy; they were dense, bruised, purple thunderclouds occluding any sight of what lay above them—except for a hint of moonlight, perhaps—as it was so incredibly high up above them. The rest of the room measured about three hundred feet by three hundred feet, square. No other doors or windows. No glass of any kind. Just stone-hewn walls and a stone-paved floor, and in the center . . . lay their prize.