The Hunter insisted on walking a few feet behind me, and I was in no place to argue. We hobbled over the broken rocks in the direction of the Lower Court, trying not to trip on the fractaline ground. I barely had a free thought to think, to collect myself, and my shoulder was getting worse, turning a blooming shade of purple. My stitches had held, though, but the rune had been twisted too far out of shape, it was unstable. And without it, she was a better fighter than me. She had every advantage, I was at her mercy. The small part of my mind free to wander tried to puzzle out why this place existed, what in the history of London had made this place so nightmarish. The blitz, the fire of london. The city was old, so many versions of itself piled atop one another, literally in some cases, it was a small miracle something this cohesive existed.

I didn’t talk to the Hunter, that was the name I’d devised for her. A bit melodramatic, but not inaccurate. The silence between us grew thicker and thicker, like a wall. Good. Anything to put between me and her. I didn’t know what she knew, so anything I said could be surrendering information.

Maybe it had been the bomb. Maybe the magical energy had torn this world apart, let another plane leak in. Were there other planes, beyond just my world and the other? It was a possibility, mythologies always had other planes, multiple ones. Heaven and Hell, Olympus and Tartarus, the nine realms. Enough magic released like that, it could do strange things. But no, that didn’t work, Katrine said, the otherworld is a representation of all thought, if there was a hell, it was just a part of this place. One giant dimension enveloping the conceptual. The sliver of green on the horizon was starting to grow, waxing faster than we were walking.

“How far is it?” the Hunter eventually asked.

“We’re about halfway there.”

“You’re guessing,” how did she do that? ”besides, can’t be.” She said, “Look at the crack patterns. They’re radiating outwards from a point. We’re walking towards the center.” I didn’t see any pattern. “They’re getting narrower. We’re close.”

If I focused I could just about see it, rings and rings of cracks, radiating from one central point. Other breaks shot off at odd angles, webbing everything together like broken clay, but lines that had once seemed parallel converged on the horizon, only a little way off our original route. And at that convergence was-

“I think that’s a building.”

A tower, frozen in its own destruction. Chunks of stone and rock had broken off and hung in the air, too large to be moved even by gravity and left to float around the structure in a loose, lazy orbit. It seemed impossibly big, a hundred stories high from my perspective, but proportioned as if it were only three or four.

“I’m getting a closer look.”

“We don’t know what’s in there.” I protested.

“Walk.”

As we got closer, the tower shrunk. Or rather, it didn’t shrink, but it stayed the same size, shrinking relative to our view. As we got closer the cracks grew closer, more chaotic in their pattern, the gaps larger. Large enough to fall in, even, fall through. Straight to Hell. The Hunter had put away her gun, and we both had to use our hands to clamber over the ripples and hills of rock. She clearly didn’t trust me, but she knew that I couldn’t make a break in any direction, not faster than she could grab the gun. She wasn’t behind me anymore, but she wasn’t close by either.

Orbiting the largest rocks were smaller ones, some the size of me, most small enough that I could bat them away from my face. They spun off on nonexistent air currents and into other, less predictable arcs.

“What is this?” The Hunter asked, with only a hint of wonder.

“Nothing good” I said, a gnawing sense of unease pulled me towards the tower, I didn’t like the idea of following it much further.

“Find a door.”

“That’s a terrible idea, unless you’re trying to get us both killed.”

“We’re going to explore. We’ve been walking hours. I want to document this.”

“There’s no door.” The walls weren’t much either, suspended in the air, held unwillingly in the shape of a tower

“There’s a gap in the brickwork over there, we can squeeze through.”

The Hunter had me go in first, at gunpoint. I scrabbled through the crack in the walls, hoping dearly that the rock didn’t shift and crush me. What started as an easy squeeze, especially for me, tightened as I got further, locking my legs and then my arms into flat, rigid movements. Open faces of broken brickwork scraped at my cheeks and my temples until I couldn’t even turn my face. There was nothing either side of me, no light, no darkness, and nowhere to look except the walls. I could only squirm, a directionless, thoughtless motion, fueled by the animalistic desire to be anywhere but here. For too long, I didn’t even feel like I was moving, until my head shifted and a sliver of darkness divided two bricks I thought had been cemented together. I pushed , both against the stones and the feeling in my mind screaming at me to get away from the darkness, till eventually my head made it out. The rest of me followed, my now-free arms tearing me from the gash in the wall. The dark receded, just a bit, and I touched my forehead. My temple was bleeding. For a moment I reached into my necklace to stop it, but there was nothing there. “You there?” The Hunter asked, and before I could stop myself I said

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Yeah. It’s a tight squeeze, but you should be able to make it.“ Whatever tactical advantage I’d lost by saying that, the fact that I wouldn’t be in this place alone made up for it.

If I could have chosen to stay in the cracks, I would have. There was no light, only an occasional lack of darkness, when it forgot to cover a certain spot. Wherever I looked, something looked about to fall inwards and crush me, and there was no noise. Save the deafening echoes of shifting rock and The Hunter pulling herself out of the wall, which looked uncomfortably biological. There had once been furniture, but it had been dashed against the walls and burned, and lay in sad heaps at intervals. Tapestries and carpets too, identifiable only by the deep green of the latter, were frayed and smouldering, but didn’t seem in danger of catching, for fear of threatening the darkness.

Two corridors led off in the same direction, one uphill, the other down. I couldn’t see the end of either.

“Which way do we go?” she asked

“I don’t know. Back out.” I said. She didn’t reply for a moment, and looked back at the crack. “Has it gotten smaller?” One of the rocks had shifted, closing out the gap. If either of us went in, we would get crushed, slowly, over hours.

“There might be a way out up there. It’s better than down here.” She was shaken, and it was dark. Perfect for an ambush, slip into the dark for a moment, take the gun. I followed her, through corridors that were growing to be eerily familiar. Around us, the broken walls shifted in a way that felt like pulsating, digesting us. The corridor levelled out into a row of doors, none fully attached to their hinges. I could see behind a few, as they drifted in and out of their doorways, to charred plaster and walls, undulating like some eviscerated creature was trapped under it all. I paced the length of the corridor, while it felt unending it was only about ten paces from one end to the other. There were three doors on one wall, four on the other. The metal of the doorknob on the second door to my right crumbled at my touch, but stayed solid enough for me to twist.

“What are you-” The Hunter called before the door blew off its hinges and a silhouette burst out.

Like the rest of the building, it was destroyed, component parts of its body held together by a vague memory of where it ought to be, leaving spaces where parts of itself were gone. It was burned, hair and flesh had been cooked off and charred, leaving its face twisted into a visceral grin as blackened bone tore through resolidified skin. Two bullets passed through its head, from The Hunter, tearing off a flap of loose skin, but it was only partially tangible, and wrapped its hands around my throat, pulling me into the air with it. I tried to draw magic from it, with no intent but destroying it, but it wasn’t fae. There was magic in it, but it was stagnant, fetid. Instead, I punched it. Its face solidified in my fist, and it broke like wet clay. The ghost howled, but didn’t stop, and sharp, thin bone dug into my hands. The Hunter appeared in my periphery, butting it in the head with the base of her pistol. Her hand passed through it cleanly, leaving no marks. I hit it again, caving it further, blooming its head into a flower of pinkish slime that burst one of my stitches under the bandaging. I grabbed it, ignoring the pain, and slipped my thumb into what had once been an eye socket. Wherever I touched became solid, and The Hunter’s next hit landed with a sickly thud.

“Shoot!” I gurgled, and drove my other fist down into its wrist. She shot it, the bullet passing so close to my hand I could feel it, and its head burst like overripe fruit. It crumpled to the ground, dropping me.

The Hunter checked her ammunition and then helped me up. “How did you do that?” she asked, “Punching that ghost, I mean.”

“It’s not magic.” I said, trying to reassure her, “It’s just… A thing I can do, affecting fae creatures.”

“Can you use it on me?”

“Not unless you’re secretly a ghost.” She nodded at that.

“Good. We’ll clear each room, same tactics. One of them ought to have a way through.”

“Wait, I want to get a closer look at this one.” The creature looked familiar, or it once had. Now that it was fully tangible it seemed to be decaying before my eyes, and I hadn’t taken a look at its face before I’d smashed it in. It only had one leg, its left leg, the other had been torn off by something heavy and blunt.

“Nash. Door.” The Hunter was set up behind the next room, a low moan was emanating from it. “On my mark, kick it in and engage the thing inside, okay?”

“Can I have a weapon?”

“I have the gun, It’ll be enough.” She said, entirely confident behind her human shield. “Ready? Mark!”

I barely had to kick for the door to fly off its hinges- literally- and hit the wall opposite. In the moment of unbalance before I found my footing I saw the next ghost, the side facing me was mutilated, like it had been carved out, blended, and shaped back into something humanoid. I landed oddly, but barrelled into it all the same, knocking it, surprised, backwards. In the next moment, It was gone, burnt jelly slopping out of a bullet hole in its head.

I dropped it before it got on me and wiped my trainers on its clothes. It was wearing all black, heavy cloth, like a cloak but more form fitting. The Hunter came in to inspect the room, silently, and knelt down by it. She set the gun down and started shuffling through a pocket I hadn’t seen. “What are you looking for?” She produced a small metal rosary, and her face dropped.

“This was one of ours. Part of the mission.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we’re still in your building.” It clicked, and the surroundings shifted to match. Shades of colour adjusted themselves to what I knew them to be, curtains regained their pattern from the burn, even the ghost seemed a bit more human, its limbs solidified to only have one elbow rather than three. The damage remained. I sensed something, and moved like I’d been taught. I shoved The Hunter, distracted, grabbed the gun, pointed it and squeezed the trigger. The third ghost, the one that had been inches from my back, howled, and I shot it again. My gunshots were more effective than hers, but not that effective, so I threw myself at it and caved its skull in with the grip. It hit the ground. It was wearing a khaki shirt. I recognised it, one of my neighbours, I’d never talked to him, I didn’t even know his name, but I saw him every day. The last bullet I put in him was a kindness.

I dropped the gun before The Hunter took it from me, and kicked it back to her. She paused, a knife half-drawn from under her shirt, and said nothing, but nodded in assurance. She rose, and pocketed the medallion. “His family would want this. Not many of us had family.” I nodded in turn. There was a window at the back of the room, it was a drop, but neither of us wanted to stay here much longer, especially now. She’d seen enough friends die.