The next thing I knew, we were back in the tea garden, beneath a starry night. A chilly breeze played with the collar of my coat. The end of my tail brushed against the soft, dewy moss underfoot.

I stared at my arms and hands; I was half-pangol again.

I looked around, alarmed, dizzy, and vertiginous. It took a moment for me to reorient myself. I kept looking down at the ground, expecting to see streets and buildings, only to find rushes and irises by the side of the pond.

“Genneth?”

Turning around, I saw Mr. Himichi standing behind me, human once more, back in his familiar beret, vest, and slacks.

My heart leapt at the sight. “You’re alright!” I shouted, running up to hug him, and then quickly backing away in embarrassment.

“It’s good to see you, too, Dr. Howle,” he replied.

I don’t think I could have lived with the knowledge that I’d lost my idol’s soul to the shadows of Hell.

“What happened?” he asked.

“It, uh…” I looked around some more. “It looks like we’re back in that tea garden.”

From behind his glasses, Mr. Himichi shot a wary glance at the pagoda and the Moon bridge. He pointed at them.

“Is the architecture going to try to kill us again?”

I stared at them for a moment before answering.

“I hope not,” I said.

Mr. Himichi pursed his lips. “Curious… there are no traces of the destruction from before.” He turned to face me. “You did touch the pillar of light, didn’t you?”

I nodded. “Yes. Now, I’m here.” I spread my arms and shrugged. “Well… what’s the last thing you remember?”

Mr. Himichi stared at his hands and shook his head. “Agony,” he said. “I felt the darkness bearing down on me. It was like fire and ice at the same time.” He pressed one of his hands onto the small of his back. “I could feel my shell melting away. The next thing I know, I’m standing here, talking to you.”

I clenched my fist and lowered my head. “Darn it. I…” I sighed. “What was the point of all that, then? Does the Hallowed Beast have a message for you or not? I—”

Suddenly, Mr. Himichi’s eyes went very wide. He tilted his head back and grabbed me by the shoulder.

“—G-Genneth… I think you may have spoken too soon. Look.” He pointed.

I looked up.

I made the Bond-sign twice, staring, mouth agape.

The ground was… lifting away. All around us, the city was breaking up into chunks that rose up and moved away, slowly fading into nothing. Second by second, the break up moved closer to the park until all that remained was the small patch of garden by the Moon bridge over the pond, floating in a vastness words nearly failed to describe.

Mr. Himichi just stared and stared.

At least I had some idea of what I was looking at. I knew one of the names for what I saw, though, doubtless, there were many others.

“Stars…” I whispered.

I sank to my knees.

Have you ever experienced something so profound—so beautiful and ineffably true that it reduced you to tears?

Well, that’s what happened to me.

We stood on the mossy earth, he and I, in an island of a garden cast adrift on eternity. There was darkness here, yes—but peaceful darkness. Gentle darkness. And it wasn’t alone.

No.

Oh how beautiful they were, the stars! Sew the night with diamonds and rubies and topazes gleaming, weave them into a tapestry, do whatever you like; next to this, it would be humbled and ugly. I saw spirals and swirls, clouds and flashing trails, quivering lights and dreaming strands; the glistening, the glistening, the glistening! And it went on and on, a skin for time and space, alive in its motionlessness.

I wept. More than anything else, I wanted to hold my family in my arms. I wanted to show my children this wonder. What kind of father could live with himself if he knew he’d kept his children ignorant of this beauty?

It was greater than any dream I’d ever dreamt, and deeper than any hopes I’d ever held.

I wanted to know everything about it.

“What I wouldn’t give for a piece of paper and colored pencils right about now…” Mr. Himichi muttered.

I tried to will some into being, but unfortunately, my mind-world powers were still on the fritz.

No, not on the fritz. This was the darkness’ doing. It was interfering.

“Is this… vastness also one of the darkness’ inventions?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, but, if it is, I’m afraid I’m going to have to tell Andalon that she’s on the wrong side.” I chuckled. “Wait. Andalon?”

I looked around, but I couldn’t find her.

“Where is she?” Mr. Himichi asked.

“I don’t know. She… I don’t think she was here when I appeared.”

“What does that mean?”

“Maybe nothing,” I said, “or maybe everything.”

Silently, we stared at the expanse.

“Do you think this is Kléothag’s message?” Mr. Himichi asked.

I thought about that for a while, but the Hallowed Beast answered for me.

I made the Bond-Sign for a third time.

“Oh my…” Mr. Himichi whispered.

For a moment, I thought the Sun was rising. A great brightness emerged from the edge of the garden. But it was not the Sun; it was the head of an incredible beast

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Mr. Himichi staggered back in shock.

There was no one here to tell me that this was the Hallowed Beast of Lassedile faith. For all I knew, it could have been something else, entirely: another Angel, another god, a forgotten myth. But… I had a feeling—call it an intuition if you like—and it said, this is the Hallowed Beast. All the lore, all the scripture, all the sacred art and endless contemplation—everything I’d ever thought I’d known about the Hallowed Beast seemed paltry in comparison to the thing itself. It was a legend come to life; a dream made real.

Its body was covered in ochre fur. Its head was like a lion’s or a wolf’s, with ivory fangs extruding from Its broad snout. The Beast’s mane was fire and sunlight, and profuse and billowing. Thick, pointed ears stuck out from the sides of its head, beneath Its massive ram-like horns. It had feathered wings, spread wide on Its back. Their argent plumes were as thin as gold leaf. The same feathers tufted the end of Its tail, the tip lolling down below. Starlight streamed from Its body like dew.

I made the Bond-sign.

The Hallowed Beast opened Its mouth, ready to speak, but then the island garden shook, and the stars did die, winking out all at once. The Hallowed Beast turned withered and gray—a howling corpse—as darkness exploded from its every pore. The substance crystallized as it spread, reaching and wide.

It swept through everything, and then everything was gone.

— — —

At the risk of repeating myself, the next thing I knew, I was back in the Thick World, staggering through a pair of double doors. A quick memory check told me they were the doors I’d been going through right before I’d got whisked back into the Thin World—and from there, into the body of a kaiju inside a memory of a dream that wasn’t mine.

The plexuses I was using to balance myself flickered and faded, drained of their strength. Without them to assist me, I teetered over, and I would have fallen flat on my face, had a pair of arms not reached out and grabbed me.

I looked up.

“S-Suisei?”

He looked even worse than before.

“A little help here?” I asked.

Nodding, he helped me stand up straight—mostly—by leaning me against the wall.

Stepping back, Dr. Horosha sighed as he plopped onto the floor and settled into a cross-legged position in front the wall opposite mine.

We should have been in the lobby—or maybe outside of the maze altogether—but instead, we were in yet another hallway.

Space itself was getting twisted around.

Would it break, I wonder?

As I surveyed my surroundings, I was sure as salt that at any moment, something was gonna leap out of the darkness and strike us, but nothing did.

It made the experience that much more unnerving.

My thoughts swirled. Memories of a kaiju. Memories of being a kaiju. The other Himichi’s words. And the Hallowed Beast.

Kléothag.

Fudge me, I’d seen the Hallowed Beast with my own two eyes. But didn’t It have a message for us?

Or was what I’d just seen the actual message?

No.

I shook my head.

It couldn’t have been, and that wasn’t just wishful thinking on my part. I could still feel something writhing within me, still as desperate to get out as it had been before. That had to be the message. There was more of it; I was certain of it.

The fungus must have interfered. That’s why the message was interrupted. I tried to focus on the message. I pleaded with it, begging it to open up to me, but it didn’t. Or maybe it was stuck.

I felt like crying. I clenched my fists, steeling myself as best as I could.

“It’s the darkness, Mr. Genneth,” Andalon said. “It’s gettin’ in the way.”

I looked up to see her floating beside me.

Wonderful, I thought. Just when I was about to get some answers, the enemy stole them away from me.

“Dr. Sushi still has his secrets!” Andalon said. “Maybe he can help.”

I let out a long, deep breath.

Andalon was right. Suisei did have secrets. Granted, he’d promised to reveal them after the current crises had abated, but, right then and there, I made an executive decision to press him to skip that part and just get to the sordid details, for both our sakes.

I looked Dr. Horosha in the eyes with a self-assured nod. There were just enough spores drifting around in my hazmat suit that Suisei’s skin seemed almost green beneath the headlight in his suit.

“Where did you go?” I asked. “Where’s Heggy?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Suisei said.

“What do you mean?”

Suisei shook his head. His expression turned grave. “Genneth, I’ve been wandering these hallways for hours.”

“So, it’s not just a spatial labyrinth,” I said, “it’s a temporal one, too.”

Closing his eyes, Suisei nodded. “I concur.” His breath condensed on the inner surface of his visor as he sighed.

“So,” I asked, “when was the last time you saw either Heggy or myself?”

“When we were together, after having stepped through that door. One moment, I was standing with you and her, the next, I was here, in these endless hallways. Then several hours passed, and you came through the doors.”

“About that place we were in, through the door…” I said. “That was the past,” I said. “It has to be. I know my history well enough.”

But Suisei shook his head. “That woman used pataphysics to put the spilled water back into her bowl,” he said. “It may have been the past, but…” he sighed, “it is not this world’s past.”

I chuckled softly. “I can’t believe it.” I said. “For once, I think I might actually be ahead of the game.”

“What?” he asked.

“I was actually suspecting the same, myself; multiple worlds, I mean.” I pointed at the double doors I’d come through. “I saw stars back there, you know.”

Suisei stared at me. “Once again, you have genuinely surprised me, Dr. Howle.” He scowled playfully. “I worry you might be getting good at this.” He smiled in resignation. “When did you start to suspect multiple worlds were involved?”

“I have Yuta Uramaru’s spirit within me, as well as Geoffrey Athelmarch’s—the leader of the time-traveling knights that appeared in this very lobby. There were stars in Yuta’s skies. He showed them to me, and we discussed them at length.” I glanced at Andalon. “Considering Andalon told me the fungus is attacking time itself, I’ve been waffling over whether to blame the absence of stars in our world on the fungus interfering with the time stream or on Yuta hailing from a different world.”

“I suspected Lord Uramaru was from another world when I heard his daughter was named Hoshi. That is the Munine word for star, you know.”

“Then there’s the Lantor Incursion, and the stuff Brand and I discovered.”

“The what?” he asked.

“I’d be happy to tell you all about it,” I said, “but first, I’d rather know how you know about other worlds.”

“I told you I would explain myself once we were done with this,” Suisei said.

“I know,” I replied, “but, due to an unforeseen Kléothag, I’ve put your reveal on an accelerated timetable.”

“Kléothag?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” I said.

After looking around at our utterly creepy surroundings, Dr. Horosha let out a sigh. “Fair enough.” He paused, and then sighed. “Though it is less than ideal.”

“How so?”

“In my line of work, before sensitive information can be shared, there are two conditions that must be met: trust, and security.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Most likely,” he replied, “but, at this point, it hardly matters.” Suisei stared into the dark depths of the hallway ahead of us. “I am far more concerned about security.” He shook his head. “This is not a safe place for me to tell you all that I have to share.”

I furrowed my brow. “You think someone—something… is listening to us? I mean, I understand why I’ve been experiencing interference with my mind-powers—the fungus is to blame. But you’re not infected, how would the fungus—”

“—Given what I have to say, I do not want to take any chances,” Suisei said. He looked around. “This place seems to violate the laws of physics and causality. Who knows what else it might be capable of.” He stared at me again. “And then, there is the matter of Andalon. She is here, yes?”

I glanced down to where Andalon clung to my leg, staring up at me with her big, blue eyes. Their glow had brightened.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“All the more reason to be cautious,” Dr. Horosha said.

“I mean, I can understand being wary of her,” I said. “It took me a while to warm up to her, especially when I learned she was the one responsible for turning people into wyrms without their consent.” I glared at Andalon as I said those last three words.

She turned distraught at that, but then I smiled and rubbed my hand on her head affectionately.

I looked back at Suisei. “But… I’m confident she means well. Her goal to save people from the fungus is a noble one.” I sighed. “I just wish I could save people before they die, instead of only after.”

“I agree with all of that,” Suisei said. “However…” he sighed. More condensation blossomed on the inner surface of his hazmat suit’s visor.

The air really was dreadfully cold here.

“You, yourself, said Andalon does what she does by manipulating the fungus. The fungus—the darkness… it might very well be listening. And if not it, then possibly something else altogether, and… until I know where Andalon stands in the grander scheme, I…” Cutting himself off with a gulp, Suisei let his eyes go half-closed. “I may have said too much already.”

Stopping, Dr. Horosha muttered an apotropaic prayer while making the Bond-Sign.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

A tear glinted in the corner of his eye. “What if it is not we who need God, but God who needs us? And what happens if God appears to you, and begs for your help? What would you do? What would you be willing to risk?”

I bit my lip. Anxiety fluttered in my stomach. Andalon sat down beside me, bobbing up and down in concentrated anticipation.

This was it. Had Suisei somehow met Kléothag on his own? Or perhaps another of the Godhead’s hypostases?

I had to know.

I looked him in the eyes. “Does the name Kléothag mean anything to you?” I asked.