After everyone had rested, we pressed deeper into the palace complex. The rooms we passed through were mostly barren. After all this time, I suppose items made of wood or cloth would have turned to dust, but it was curious that there were no ordinary objects made of stone or ceramic, which would have endured. The emptiness hinted that the people who had dwelled here had time to pack before they abandoned the place. On the other hand, it was tough to ignore the gems and gold embedded in the countless mosaics. Certainly, if people had time to pack up their dinner plates and chamber pots, they would have taken their valuables as well.
With Aurora gone, everyone was sweating profusely. The narrow passageway we followed descended at a rather sharp angle, and stretched for what must have been at least a mile. It made me wonder what the ancients had been digging for.
“It doesn’t make sense,” the Menageries grumbled. They were once more in their human forms, walking in mirror symmetry; as one miniature Goon swung his left foot forward, the other moved his right.
“What doesn’t make sense?” asked Tower.
“We’re heading toward a temple, right? This doesn’t seem like a good location to attract followers. Why put it so deep inside a mountain?”
“Muhskuh wuh thuh,” said No-Face.
The Menageries chuckled, a sound like chattering chipmunks.
“What did he say?” I asked.
The mosquitoes were worse then, answered Relic.
“Obviously, they were a mining culture,” said Zetetic. “You don’t produce the gold and gemstones we’ve seen simply panning in streams. These people spent a lot of time underground.”
Relic nodded. “There was spiritual significance to the depths as well. The trees sink their roots deep into the soil. The ancients deduced that the earth was the origin of all life; the ground was regarded as sacred. Digging into the earth produced precious metals and priceless gems, further evidence that the divine dwelled beneath the surface. The deeper they dug, the greater the treasures produced. Temples were built as deep as possible so that the gods could better hear the prayers of the priests.”
Father Ver shook his head. “How sad to live oblivious to the truth.”
“A truth contained in a book your own church didn’t discover until a mere thousand years ago,” said Zetetic. “You have plain evidence men existed long before then. Does it strike you as unfair that your Divine Author condemned so many generations of men to ignorance by hiding the book?”
Father Ver started to answer, but Tower raised his gauntlet. “This is the wrong time and place to debate this. According to the map, we’ve reached the entrance to the temple.” He glanced at Relic. “I assume you can verify this?”
Relic nodded. We were in a long narrow room filled with arches covered with pale blue tiles. At the end of the hall there was a circle of stone, nearly fifteen feet across. Relic pointed to the stone and said, “That stone rolls aside. Beyond is a spiral stairway built of human bones leading down seven hundred seventy-seven steps. At the bottom is a natural cavern filled with gleaming crystals hundreds of feet tall; this was the most sacred spot in the kingdom.”
I perked up. “If Zetetic is right, and the veil between the spirit world and the realm of the living is thin in temples, could I escape? Could I come back to life?”
Relic didn’t look at me as he led the others toward the stone door. He replied mentally, saying, You’ve already escaped the pull of the spirit world, Blood-Ghost. Abandon hope; you will never be alive again.
“You know, you could sugar coat that a little. There’s no need to be rude. You still need me as your spy, remember?”
For all the information you’ve so far gathered, I believe my circumstances would be materially unchanged without you.
I punched him in the back of the head with a phantom fist. It passed right through, but I felt a teeny bit better.
We reached the end of the hall. I’d seen this type of door before, a giant disk of stone sitting inside a matching groove. The ancients were marvelous engineers. Though the stone weighed several tons, no doubt it was so well balanced even a child could move it.
The disk was ringed with cup-sized indentations. Tower placed his hands into the holes, then flexed to roll the stone aside.
The door didn’t budge. Maybe it wasn’t that well balanced after all.
“It’s locked,” said Relic.
“I see,” said Tower. “How do we unlock it?”
Relic ran his gnarled hand along the blue tiles that decorated the arch surrounding the stone. He found the one he was looking for and pressed it. It slid aside, revealing a shaft about six inches wide. He thrust his skinny arm into it. “There’s a lever that releases the…” A muffled SNAP caused his sentence to go unfinished. He pulled out his hand, opening his fingers to reveal the rusty remains of an iron rod. He sighed. “Not all ancient artifacts are as well maintained as the War Doll.”
He looked back over his shoulder and motioned that Infidel should step forward. She placed her hands into the same holes Tower had tried. The muscles of her back bulged in sculpted relief as she strained to move the door. Whatever mechanism held the stone resisted even her magnificent muscles.
“This looks like a job for a ghost,” I said, poking my head into the wall to examine the lock mechanism. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the jumbled of rusted gears and levers embedded in the wall. I drifted through the door completely, into the stairwell on the other side. I discovered that it no longer contained a staircase; the seven hundred and seventy-seven steps of bone must have crumbled to dust, though I could see the spiral holes in the wall where they’d once been anchored. Far below, in what must have been the temple, there was an eerie orange light that looked like boiling lava. The heat was unbearable.
I poked my head back through the door to tell Relic that it looked like the temple had been claimed by the volcano. I flinched when I found the Gloryhammer flying toward my face. Fortunately, it passed straight through my nose and sank into the two-foot-thick slab of stone I was ghosting through. Shards of rock flew everywhere as cracks spread across the surface. I drifted aside as Tower brought the hammer around once more, delivering a second blow. The door crumbled. He kicked aside shattered rock and looked down the shaft on the other side.
“There are no stairs,” he said. “I do see a green glow far below.”
Green? I looked back down, and found that the previously orange light was, in fact, green. As I watched, the green broke apart into blue and yellow swirls, which were washed away by waves of purple. If this was lava, it was like no lava I’d ever seen.
“Missing stairs are no problem,” said twin squeaky voices. A pair of squirrel-sized spider monkeys jumped to Tower’s shoulders. “I’ll check it out,” they said, before leaping into the shaft, bouncing back and forth across the gaps in the stone where the bone stairs once stood.
Since stairs were optional for me as well, I decided I’d beat Menagerie to the bottom of the shaft. I dropped down, passing them, the heat growing in intensity as I descended. The disk of light at the bottom continued to change colors and patterns in a chaotic, unpredictable fashion.
My ghost skin tingled as my body emerged from the shaft. What I saw defied my understanding. Relic had said the temple was in a crystal cavern, but this didn’t look like any cavern I’d ever been inside, and there wasn’t a crystal in sight. Imagine, if you can, a large, turbulent cloud, ever-changing as it drifts across the sky. Now imagine what it would look like if you were inside the cloud. The stone around me was an undulating, amorphous shape. The walls looked solid, despite their refusal to stand still or maintain a single color. The room was full of bones, no doubt the remnants of the stairwell. Fragments of skulls, femurs, and chalk-white teeth were scattered in all directions, resting on the ceiling and walls as well as the floor, though if I wasn’t looking at the round opening of the stairwell, I couldn’t be certain what was a floor and what was a wall. I closed my eyes, since the shifting walls left me feeling seasick. It didn’t help. I lost all sensation of what was up or down. My ghost form had only a tenuous connection with gravity at best, but here there was nothing at all to orient me. Fortunately, when I envisioned the bone-handled knife, I felt its familiar tug.
I turned my face in its direction, glancing back up the shaft. The spider monkeys had reached the opening to the room, staring at the chaos with wide eyes. Further up the shaft I saw a shadowy figure clambering down the walls like some human spider. As it drew nearer, I saw it was Zetetic.
The monkeys glanced up. Perhaps feeling a sense of obligation to be first into the room, they jumped, dropping lightly to the writhing stone. The monkeys stumbled as the stone shifted beneath them. Though they didn’t sink, it looked as if they were riding waves. One of the monkeys managed to rise on all fours, his tail wrapped around a shimmering polka-dotted stalagmite, but was toppled a second later when the pillar sank back into the surface. The confused monkeys tapped the stone beneath them with their knuckles, then rubbed their tiny fists. The stone was hard, despite its fluid nature.
The Deceiver’s head popped out of the shaft and looked around. He dropped onto the shifting floor and landed on his knees, giggling. “By the unanswerable questions! False matter!” He looked around, delight in his eyes. “I saw a nugget of it once, preserved inside an enchanted pearl in the palace of the mer-king. I had no idea that such a large volume of the stuff still existed!”
The monkeys had been carried by the shifting floor until one now stood perpendicular to Zetetic, while another was surfing a wave of stone fifty feet away. The monkey near Zetetic looked slightly green as it said, “What the hell is wrong with this place?” He rode the chaotic stone higher, until he was looking straight down on the Deceiver. “Shouldn’t one of us be falling?”
The Deceiver shook his head. “Ignore your eyes. Think of down as whatever direction you point the soles of your feet.” Zetetic rose on trembling legs, holding his hands out to steady himself. His eyes were closed. A few seconds later, he cautiously opened his eyes. He grinned as the monkey was carried back and forth on currents of stone. “Imagine you are perfectly stationary. You are the center of your world, and let the room orbit around you. Everything is relative here.”
The monkey responded by vomiting. The clear, frothy broth pooled around his feet. He closed his eyes and moaned, “Make it stop.”
Zetetic shrugged. “I don’t know what else to say to help you. Your body is made of true matter. It still obeys the same physical rules it always has. You can control your physical response with simple willpower.”
Menagerie was still two very sick little monkeys by the time No-Face, Relic, and Father Ver made it down the shaft on a rope ladder. No-Face and Relic were quickly toppled by the changing landscape. Father Ver managed to remain upright as he dropped from the shaft, frowning as he took in the bodies in motion around him. He responded by holding out his arms and turning around slowly. The stone in a ten-foot disk beneath him flattened out and stopped moving.
He crossed his arms and said, in a firm tone, “I’m standing on the floor.”
No-Face, who was directly overhead, suddenly plummeted onto the circle of motionless stone, landing at the Truthspeaker’s feet. The monkey who’d been speaking with Zetetic leapt from his perch on the wall and landed on No-Face’s chest. I had no idea where the second half of Menagerie had gotten to. It was impossible to estimate the size of the chamber. It seemed to stretch out for miles, but the rules of perspective were completely useless. Relic was just a little speck, seemingly a hundred yards away, then he reached out and tapped the edge of his staff onto the circle that Ver had calmed and suddenly he was close enough to touch, crawling onto the island and collapsing next to No-Face.
Zetetic didn’t seem bothered by the sudden emergence of a floor. He continued to ride the shifting stone, as surefooted as a forest-pygmy on a swaying vine. “Fighting it is only going to make you more disoriented.”
“Fighting falsehood is my sworn duty,” said Father Ver. “The truth of what has happened here is plain. The pagans corrupted the true matter of the cavern, infecting it with falseness, which has flourished in isolation. In the beginning, before the Divine Author dipped the sacred quill in the holy ink, matter was devoid of such truths as width and length and breadth. By worshipping false gods, the ancient priests weakened the walls surrounding them. The stone has gone feral.”
“This is going to shock you,” said Zetetic, “but I concur. We’re surrounded by the original stuff of creation, matter unshaped by mind. With practice, we could mold it to anything we can imagine. This is the greatest treasure we’ve yet discovered, far more valuable than gold, and you’re wasting it by turning it into mere rock.”
“Stone must learn to respect the truth that it is stone,” said Father Ver, striding forward, calming more of the undulating rock into smooth gray solidity. Soon, he had an oblong island fifty feet long and a few yards wide frozen into rather mundane looking granite.
Relic pulled himself back to his feet and said, “At least there is no question that we have found the perfect location to attack the dragon’s spirit. In a place like this, we should have little difficulty ripping the veil between the physical and the spiritual worlds.”
Looking around, I realized that everyone was present and accounted for except Tower and Infidel. I flew back up the shaft, homing in on the bone-handled knife. I cut a path through stone and emerged in the hall where I found Tower with his helmet removed, on his knees before Infidel, holding her hand. He was kissing her knuckles.
“My love, before I go below to face the dragon, there is something I must give you.”
“Great!” she said. “I hope it’s chocolate this time.”
Tower brought a gauntlet to his breastplate, directly above his heart, and pressed a small panel there. A tiny door slid open and something glowing fell into his palm.
My eyes bulged as he slipped a dazzling ring studded with diamonds and glorystones onto Infidel’s finger. Infidel’s mouth fell open slightly, but she made no sound.
“I’ve carried this over my heart since the day you vanished. I always knew the moment would come when I would have another chance to give it to you.”
“Um,” said Infidel. “Why now?”
“I’ve won every battle I’ve ever fought, my love. Still, I can’t underestimate the danger that waits below. It may be that I shall perish. But I would die a happy man if I knew this ring was on your finger, testament to all the world of our eternal love, my princess.”
“Ah,” she said. “Hmm. Uh, it doesn’t really go with my disguise, you know? Father Ver might figure everything out if I go below flashing this around.” She slid the ring from her finger.
“You won’t be going below,” said Tower. “The danger is too great. I want you to go back to the surface. I’ll find you after the battle. I couldn’t bear to see a single hair on your head singed by the dragon.”
“It’s a little late for that,” she said, running her fingers through her spiky locks.”
“That fact that you can jest is testimony to your courageous spirit,” said Tower. “Still, I beg you…”
Infidel sighed. “Don’t beg.”
“But my love for you is-”
“You aren’t in love, you idiot,” she said, grabbing his gauntlet and dropping the ring into it. “At least, not with me. You don’t even have a clue who I am.”
“You’re Princess Innocent, daughter of-”
“Stop,” she said. “You know my family tree. You don’t know me.”
“But your lineage is part of who you are,” said Tower. “Your royal breeding proves that you’re a woman of beauty, grace, and wit, matchless in-”
“Please stop talking,” she said. “You think I haven’t heard this crap growing up? Being a princess means you stop being a real person. You’re just an actress following a script written by history. In case you didn’t notice, I tore up that script. I’m not sweet little Innocent anymore.”
“Oh, I know this,” he said, rising, looking down at her with a leer. “You’ve grown into a very, very naughty girl. You may even require a spank-”
“Try it and I will rip your arms off,” she said, smiling sweetly.
He cocked his head, looking confused. “I’m sorry. Since you’re wearing leather pants, I assumed you might enjoy such rough treatment.”
Infidel sighed, powerfully enough to stir the dust in the room. She closed her eyes, rubbing them as she contemplated her next words. Finally, she said, “It’s time to come clean. I’m not going to marry you. I don’t like you. At least, not romantically. It’s possible we could, I dunno, be friends. You seem like a decent guy who would probably make the right woman happy.”
“Yes!” he said, squeezing her hand. “And you are that woman!”
“You’re sure of that?”
“With all my heart.”
“You know me that well?”
“I’ve known you since before I met you!”
“What’s my favorite color?”
His face went blank. Then, he smiled softly and said, “I remember the green ribbons you wore in your hair. Green is your favorite color.”
In fact, she hated green. She didn’t enlighten him, however, hitting him quickly with a second question: “What’s my favorite food?”
His face brightened. “Cake!”
“A good guess, but the correct answer is fried monkey.”
He furrowed his brow, trying to figure out if she was joking. He waved his hand dismissively. “We shall have years to learn this trivia.”
She shook her head. “I know I’ve been giving you mixed signals. You ran into me at a very confusing time. I’m still mourning the death of someone I truly loved, wondering how to move forward without him. Plus, I’ve been given some unexpected news about my future, and you seemed like you might, maybe, be a candidate for helping fulfil a little prophecy. Any daughter I had with you would at least have pretty eyes.”
“Any son you had with me would some day be king!” Tower said. “Think of your destiny!”
“I don’t really do destiny. I escaped from my father’s plans for my future. The Black Swan told me something about my future that messed with my mind a little, but I really don’t have any reason to take her seriously. I thought maybe you played some role in my future, but you care far more about potential kings that might fall out of my womb than you care about me as a person. I’m sorry, but I’m just no longer interested.”
“But… but… but…” said Tower, his voice trailing away.
“I should have told you this earlier, but Aurora thought you might have the Jagged Heart and I played along to find out if it was true. Now that she’s gone, there’s really no need to humor you.”
Tower set his jaw as his eyes hardened into an angry stare. “Yes,” he said, his voice low and trembling. “Yes, my princess, there is a need for you to humor me. You’re still a fugitive, accused of crimes beyond imagining. I’m your sole path to forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness is a vastly overrated commodity,” she said. “Also, are you really trying to win me over with blackmail?”
Tower said nothing as he put his helmet back on.
“So, what, we fight now?” asked Infidel.
“Yes,” said Tower. There was something strange about his voice. I poked part of my face into his helmet for a look. He was crying. “Yes, we fight now. But not each other. Not yet. My first mission is to slay the dragon. Then… then I will return to my sacred duty of smiting infidels.” His shoulders sagged. “Flee if you wish. I won’t pursue you.”
“Flee?” Infidel cracked her knuckles. “There’s more proof you don’t have a clue who I am.”
Flashing a grin, she jumped down the shaft.
Down below, the Truthspeaker had carved out a hundred-foot circle of calm stone amid the chaotic false matter. The cavity seemed even larger than it had before, as if the false matter of the walls was retreating from the holy man. The heat was as horrible as ever; Father Ver’s armpits were stained with dark circles of sweat. The second Menagerie spider monkey had rejoined the group; the two tiny primates were fanning one another with triangular wedges of shoulder bones to keep cool.
Infidel dropped from the shaft, landing on the stone island. She looked around, her eyes wide. I floated toward her, wondering if the veil between the spirit world and the material world was as thin as Zetetic claimed. I placed my lips by her ear and whispered, “Your favorite color is black, even though that isn’t really a color. I could have answered the monkey question in my sleep. Tower might know your family tree back a dozen generations; I know ten thousand things that make you smile. And when you smile, I smile.”
She didn’t smile. She didn’t respond at all, other than to look toward the shaft just as Lord Tower flew through the opening. He shot off sideways at blinding speed, slamming face first into a wall, sending out a rainbow spray of undulating false-matter gravel. He rose on hands and knees, perpendicular to the others, and said, “By the sacred quill! What madness is this?”
A huge stalagmite grew beside him; he placed his hand upon it to try to rise. The stone fell away just as quickly revealing Zetetic, his hands behind his back, looking amused.
“You’ll find it difficult to fly. If you’re not in contact with a surface, up and down don’t really exist. The Gloryhammer has no objective gravity to resist.”
The steel spikes in Tower’s boots sprung out and dug into the rock. He rose to his full height, using the Gloryhammer as an impromptu cane. He sounded nervous as he asked, “This cursed landscape is where we fight the dragon?”
“Not exactly,” said Zetetic. “This is where I send the Truthspeaker into the spirit world, and open a tunnel for you to launch a sneak attack.”
“When?” asked Tower.
“I can cast the spells at any time, but I assume you wish to pray or meditate or drink some holy water. Whatever it is the righteous do to prepare themselves for battle.”
Tower looked toward Infidel. With his faceplate down, there was no way to tell what he was thinking. After a gaze that lingered long enough to make everyone uncomfortable, the knight said, “I’m as righteous at this moment as I will ever be. Let’s do this.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
Zetetic crossed his arms. “Is there some reason to rush? Maybe you feel ready to fight, but the rest of us are hot, tired, and hungry. Let’s set up camp, rest a little, get some food in our bellies.”
“Let’s not talk about food right now,” said Menagerie.
“Agreed,” said Tower. “This is no fit place to make camp. The less time we linger, the better. Open the portal.”
Zetetic grumbled something beneath his breath, then reached out to grab Tower’s gauntlet. He turned toward the calm stone island where the Father Ver stood and towed the knight over the shifting stone to join the others.
“Maybe I’m not hungry,” said Menagerie, “but I wouldn’t mind a little rest before we face the dragon. What’s the hurry?”
“Zetetic is no doubt gambling that more of you will die if we delay our mission,” said Father Ver.
Zetetic pursed his lips tightly together.
Father Ver continued, “His powers draw on the beliefs of others. Tower and I offer him no fuel for his corrupt arts. If only the three of us had made it this far, he’d be powerless, since the Deceiver doesn’t truly believe his own lies. And, if he were powerless, we’d be unable to open the doorways to the dragon. He imagines this would save his life.”
“That’s a pretty elaborate theory,” said Zetetic.
“We both know it’s the truth,” said Father Ver.
“Whatever,” said Zetetic, with a dismissive wave. He faced the monkeys and No-Face. “I want the two of you to give me your full attention.”
The mercenaries turned their heads toward him with weary stares.
“I have… I have the power to open gateways that lead from this chamber to anywhere I wish, even other dimensions.”
The monkeys nodded simultaneously. No-Face, in his expressionless stare, also seemed convinced.
The only one who looked doubtful was Zetetic. He studied the ground at his feet, taking a deep breath, before stepping up to Tower. His face was mirrored in the knight’s gleaming faceplate as he said, “I’m going to send you to Greatshadow’s lair. So far, my mental shields haven’t detected any of his telepathic probes. He won’t know you’re coming, but you only get one shot. Make it count. If you merely wound the dragon, you might condemn the entire world to burn.”
Tower nodded. “I’ve prepared for this moment my whole life. Though some among us may doubt the purity of my intentions, I will not shirk from my duty… or my destiny!”
Tower opened the compartment on his hip and pulled out his magic book, swapping the Gloryhammer for the Jagged Heart. The searing heat of the chamber instantly cooled from hellish to merely unbearable.
“Ready?” Zetetic asked again.
“Do it,” said Tower.
Zetetic grabbed the knight by his biceps and suddenly jerked him from his feet, holding him overhead. He looked like he was getting ready to throw the knight, and, as it turned out, that was exactly the plan. With a grunt he hurled Lord Tower at the nearest wall. The stone swirled as Tower approached, forming a vortex, like the cone of air that forms when water drains from a tub. Tower shot down this ever-lengthening vortex, until he became little more than a speck, flying toward a pinpoint of bright white light.
“Your turn,” said Zetetic, grabbing Father Ver by the arms. Their gazes met. The Deceiver’s voice was little more than a whisper as he said, “You heard the speech. For the sake of mankind, do not fuck this up!”
He snatched the holy man from his feet, holding him overhead for a few seconds as his eyes studied the swirling stone, searching for the exact spot where the barrier between dimensions was at its weakest. Suddenly, his eyes brightened. He could see it. I could as well. At the edge of the platform, at a ninety-degree angle from the direction he’d tossed Lord Tower, a vortex of brilliant white light began to spin. I raised my hand to shield my eyes from the radiance, but no one else on the platform save for the Deceiver seemed aware of the light show. The vortex quickly grew, becoming a hole in the air several yards across. From the other side of the hole, I could hear the wail of a terrible wind, a sound that sent shudders through my soul, though, again, the others remained oblivious.
With all his muscles straining, Zetetic tossed the holy man toward the spirit door.
The Truthspeaker never reached the portal. Instead, in mid-flight, he was struck by a flying body that shot out from the vortex Tower had flown down. Father Ver landed on the stone platform face first, then flopped to his back unconscious, revealing a huge gash along his left eyebrow. His twitching legs kicked Zetetic in the ankle and the Deceiver went down as well, cursing as he landed on his butt.
At the far end of the platform, Lord Tower, or something that looked a lot like him, slid to a halt near Infidel’s feet. She jumped back, landing on the shifting false matter, spreading her arms to keep her balance. The figure before Infidel wasn’t Tower, but instead a statue of the knight carved from dull gray stone. The Jagged Heart was nowhere to be seen. Infidel stared at the statue with a confusion that rivaled my own as the fluid stone beneath her carried her away. She jumped to return to the island, but wound up even further away, thwarted by the room’s meandering geometry.
Meanwhile, I heard the rattle of No-Face’s chain, the familiar sound that always rang out when he readied himself for a fight. The twin monkeys were suddenly replaced by a pair of snarling wolverines. I looked to the stone vortex, squinting to make out the shadowy figure approaching.
The thing that stalked toward us was human in form, mostly. It was transparent, but not invisible, more like murky water than air, so that anything beyond appeared distorted. The fluid it was composed of had a slight brownish hue, like sewer water. It was carrying the Jagged Heart, but showed no signs of freezing.
As it walked toward us, it shouted, “O stone! Be not so!” It then shrieked with laughter, a high-pitched, slurred barking that reminded me of the forced, empty cackle of a drunken whore who hadn’t truly understood her client’s joke.
The unpleasant sounds of the liquid man before us were matched by a shrieking behind us. It was the Deceiver, looking at the approaching figure, crying out with terror until his lungs were emptied of the last drop of air.
Just as the Deceiver’s voice faded out, the liquid man stepped from the vortex and placed his feet on the stable stone island. Now that he was closer, I recognized he was formed not of water, but of booze — whiskey judging from the smell. He was an impressive figure, as tall and muscular as Aurora had been.
“If you’ve got a straw handy, I can tackle this,” I said to Relic.
He didn’t find it funny.
This is the old god I spoke of! he thought back. Nowowon, the god of destruction!
“He sounds fun,” I said.
Nowowon turned his liquid eyes toward me and said, in a solemn seriousness, “I lived, evil I.”
This will not be fun for anyone. Nowowon had no match for cruelty among the old gods. He delighted in tormenting the dead as well as the living.
“Party pooper,” I said.
“Party boobytrap!” said Nowowon, licking his liquid lips. “Are we not drawn onward to new era?”
Behind us, Zetetic finished filling his lungs with air, and screamed again.