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“Oh, Aldunya," Kavaia said, bowing her head in prayer. “Grant us the safety of your branches."

Sadik stood beside her. Around him, the Neheamatt's roots swallowed the horizon, snaking across the land with the same majesty as hills and rivers. Valleys of bark, mountains of soil. It almost did not feel as if he was approaching a living creature—instead, it felt as if he was crawling between the fingers of some primordial force, something so ancient and vast that it had existed long before the world was young.

He tightened his grip on Dusksong.

“We have labored in your garden," Xaeyr said, “and spread the bounty of your grace. Oh, Aldunya, giver of life. Grant us comfort and repose."

Sadik looked up. On his left, the blood storm continued to rage over Acheron, sagging with lightning and gore. Directly ahead, a colossal trunk impaled the sky. While standing directly at the base of the tree, it was impossible to see the sky—there were only miles of glowing bark and a canopy of branches and leaves, shimmering amongst the clouds.

“Aldunya," Kavaia said, spreading her arms. “God of gods. Take us within your leaves, for we are troubled and weary. Give us the succor of your sap, for we are hungry and dull." She craned her snout to the sky. “Aldunya, grant us life."

Tremors passed through the soil. Around them, the glowing bark swirled faster, pulsing and bright. The wind began to rise. Sadik thought he heard a voice, just on the edge of the gusts. There was anger. Pain. A language that needed no words.

Both gods grew tense. Xaeyr held out a cautionary hand. Kavaia pushed Sadik behind her, using her thigh as a shield.

“She's in agony," the baboon said.

Aldunya's voice drifted away. The wind changed direction, growing calm. Vines slithered across the hill-sized roots.

Slowly, a section of the trunk began to shift inward, sliding back into the tree with the sound of cracking wood. A dark tunnel was grown. Instead of entering, Kavaia and Xaeyr looked up the face of the trunk, centering their gaze upon the branch where the pantheon rested.

Fires burned among the leaves. Slivers of marble poked through the swirling bark. Below, mushroom caps grew along the trunk, like half-buried discs. A fungal infection. Fruiting bodies. The disease in her core had finally spread to the surface.

The two gods glanced at each other. Apprehensive.

“Need help pickin' your arse?" Zaria asked.

Isaac elbowed her.

As one, Kavaia and Xaeyr entered the newly formed tunnel, with Sadik, Amira, Yasmin, Isaac and Zaria all following close behind.

Operation Severed Sky was now in progress.

They continued on for a time, walking through layers of dead wood and glistening tissue. The tunnel steadily grew deeper. As the light faded, Sadik held Dusksong above his head, and Kavaia did the same with her double-headed warhammer, which she had begun to call Dawnstar. Xaeyr focused his shattered moon like a lighthouse. Together, they lit the way ahead.

Eventually, after some minutes, they passed through the final layers of the outer bark, reaching the beginning of the sapwood. The tunnel opened into a small chamber. Here, the walls and ceiling were composed of transparent, needle-like cells, all of them white with sugar and glowing with streams of raw Glimmer. Sadik thought of a clouded, starry sky.

Kavaia and Xaeyr continued ahead. A xylem vein waited at the other end of the chamber, the water flowing up toward the leaves, with an open vacuole sitting at the edge of a platform, like an elevator made of cells. Everything flowed.

The two gods walked inside. The five mortals followed behind. With a shudder of its membrane, the vacuole slid closed, detached from the wall of the xylem, and began to rise with the flow of water, pulled into the sky.

That was it. The xylem should take them directly to the pantheon. For now, all they had to do was let the water carry them to their destination, hoping that nothing waited in their path.

Sadik remembered the fungus growing from the trunk. Fires in the sky.

It was a dim hope.

“L-let me see," Yasmin said, rubbing her seven-fingered hands. “The equipment."

Both Kavaia and Xaeyr had been carrying packs laden with machinery and capsules, the same equipment Yasmin would need to harvest Glimmer from the phloem. They shrugged them to the floor.

“Careful, careful!" The rat began to tear open the packs, tapping on the lighted panels. Data reflected in her eyes. “Containment integrity holding . . . resonance factor nominal . . . if I can adjust the entropic limiters, there should be—I mean, I could calibrate. . . ."

“Yas," Amira said, anchoring her greatbow. “Fourth time you've checked."

“The settings need to be very finely tuned. I've never—I mean, no one has ever taken Glimmer from the source, sap and all. I-I did all the calculations, but there could still be. . . ."

“Yas," Sadik said. “I'm sure you'll do well."

The rat paused, licked her buckteeth, and moved to the membranous wall of the vacuole, still rubbing her hands.

The organic elevator continued to rise. Sadik attempted to gaze out into the depths of Aldunya's trunk, but the darkness was barely pierced by his sword—he couldn't see the outer bark where they had entered, or the heartwood deeper toward the core. In fact, he quickly lost all sense of direction. There were only glimpses of needle-like cells, thinly layered and rising in rings. Oozes of resin and sap. It continued for miles.

When he glanced above, trying to peer through the flowing water of the xylem, he could see dense pockets of Glimmer shining throughout the width of the tree. In the darkness, it looked like a brilliant night sky. The dots were stars, the slashes were nebulae, the great splatterings of light like distant galaxies. All the glory of the heavens, growing closer by the second.

Rushan's voice began to echo in his mind.

We used to walk the stars, not scrabble through the dirt!

The jackal might have returned to the pantheon. He might already be fighting amongst the gods, trying to crush Lanir's rebellion. Maybe he was already succumbing to the plague, driven even further into madness, like Gidros before him.

Sadik took a deep breath, centering himself.

“Miri," he said.

Amira looked up from her greatbow, still testing the string. “Sir?"

“I'm sorry," Sadik said. “For how I've been acting."

She blinked at him. Even though she had returned her main species to human, her double-pupiled eyes were still as slit as a feline's. Like Sadik, she had also modified her body with the goal of climbing through branches and leaves—curved claws, a prehensile tail, and four long insect limbs, two on each side of her back. A pair of gliding wings lay sheathed beneath her skin.

“I have been selfish," Sadik continued, “and I shouldn't have pushed you away." He looked straight into her eyes. “I'm sorry. If there's anything I can do—"

Amira stepped closer. Sadik closed his mouth. Slowly, she pulled him into a hug.

“Nothing needs worryin'," she said. “We're good."

Sadik gingerly patted her back, avoiding the insect limbs. “I know I've made this all harder for you."

“How long we known each other?"

“Four decades, at least."

“How many times you saved my life?"

“A modest amount, surely."

She snorted, pulling back to meet his face. “This's been a drop in a bucket, far as I'm concerned. You'd have to fuck up quite a bit harder to get me actin' pouty." Her smile began to fade. “I don't blame you. Been hard on all of us. Cracks just started showin' on you before they did on me." A clap on his arm. “But, hey, I mean, glad you're better. Needed to hear it."

Sadik felt himself smiling. The expression had been coming easier, the last few days. “I couldn't have done any of this without you."

“Sure ya could," Amira replied. “Just wouldn't have been half as charming."

“I'll have you know that I am quite funny."

“Funny-lookin', maybe."

He made a rude gesture. She punched his armor.

There was a snort off to the side. Xaeyr and Kavaia were watching the two of them, coy and amused. Outside, cellular needles passed through the dark, like rows of glistening teeth. Water churned and thrummed.

“I always forget how young they are," Xaeyr said.

“Likewise," Kavaia said. “It's refreshing."

“The fuck's that mean?" Amira asked.

The two gods glanced at each other, smiling.

“Goddess?" Sadik asked.

“Nothing, nothing," Kavaia said. “It's a kindly arrogance, you could say. Patronly love."

Xaeyr's moon began to spin faster. “Imagine a gardener, tending his flowers. He has seen many flowers before, but, when they bloom in the spring, and the petals shine with life, their beauty is always worth a pause." He leaned above Amira. “In fact, sometimes, he likes to bend down, dirty his knees, and take a long sniff."

She swiped a claw at his face. He straightened his back, still smiling.

“Oh, fuck off," Amira said. “If godhood means talkin' like an all-knowin' bag of cocks, then I'll start pissin' in my own grave, thank you very much." She turned to Sadik. “Does Kivie do that metaphor shit with you?"

“All the time," Sadik replied.

Kavaia gave him a wink.

“We mean well, of course," Xaeyr said. “You see, like a flower—"

“Shut up," Amira said. “Just for that, I'm fucking you later."

Xaeyr began to laugh. There were whoops and screeches.

“Make that twice, monkey boy."

“Every rose has its thorn."

“Fuck off!"

Xaeyr laughed harder. Amira jabbed his shin with her greatbow. Beside them, Kavaia rested Dawnstar on the floor, watching for Sadik's reaction. He gave a prayer and a bow. Her eye grew lidded.

To the side, Yasmin had steepled her seven-fingered hands into a tree, praying to several gods. Isaac and Zaria stood by the back wall of the vacuole, gazing out into the depths of the tree. He had leaned against her, and she had wrapped an arm around his shoulder, pulling him into her side. With most of the squad bickering around them, they stood quietly together, watching the cells and Glimmer fly by in the darkness. He whispered into her ear, and she responded with a snort, bending over to lick his mop of blond hair.

Sadik felt a warmth in his chest. When he had woken this morning, he had felt like he always did before a battle—nervous, electric, imagining every scenario.

Now. . . .

“What I'm saying," Xaeyr said, “is that every god has tasted the small fruit before. It's expected, really. Even Casvian, goddess of flies, was able to sate herself, and she's practically an Exalted." He shuddered. “Honestly, mortals will fuck anything."

“Xae," Kavaia said, “I never violated my faithful. Don't act like your sins are shared."

“Oh, that's right. You fucked Rushan, instead. Much better."

She gave him an angry, crocodilian stare.

“Hoi, Yas!" Amira shouted. “Can you mod me a bit? I need some stretch, down in the lower regions. No reason, of course."

“Ewwwww," Yasmin replied.

The warmth in Sadik's chest began to spread. At the moment, they were surrounded by darkness, riding miles into the sky, braced for every danger imaginable—angry gods, virulent plague, the wrath of Aldunya herself. Besides Isaac and Zaria, there was a curse of blisters visible on every face. Pale complexions, thinning flesh.

And, despite everything, most were in good spirits. The sound of laughter rang loud in the small compartment. He smiled, remembering his time as a battle commander. Raising morale. Scattering his foes. Shouting with his men.

It was a good feeling. One he had sorely missed.

“So," Amira said, standing in front of Xaeyr, “can I touch your moon?"

“You can try."

Amira leaped onto Xaeyr's arm, attempting to climb. In response, he held his arm out straight, leaving her dangling nearly ten feet off the floor. As a counterattack, Amira coiled her tail around his arm and hung herself upside down, beginning to pound her chest like a fearsome ape.

“Hoo hoo hoo," Amira chanted, “haa haa haa."

“Is that your human impression?" Xaeyr asked.

Amira howled. Xaeyr tried to shake her off his arm. To the side, Kavaia attempted to hide her toothy grin. Sadik stepped forward, ready to grab—

The vacuole slammed to a stop.

There was a crash, followed by a shuddering squelch of membrane. Everyone in the elevator was thrown into the air. Darkness, bodies, and motion. Sadik tumbled head over heels, eventually landing on top of Zaria's legs and Xaeyr's arm.

“Hoi!" Amira shouted, grunting. “Sound off! Who's hurt?"

Everyone stumbled back to their feet, out of breath and slightly bruised. Once the confusion passed, lights began to swivel with purpose—Sadik braced Dusksong, Kavaia held Dawnstar above her head, and Xaeyr sliced the light of his moon across the membranes and cells, searching through the darkness.

Outside, the water trembled, fast and pooling.

“Xotra's cunt!" Zaria shouted, looking up.

A giant eye loomed above. Its gaze was unblinking, and its white sclera was ringed with sickly blue veins, all surrounding a twisted green iris. With the pupil pressed directly between the membranous walls, Sadik received the impression of a large, hideous creature peering into its drinking glass.

“Sadik," the eye hissed.

Yasmin began to scream.

Vines slithered from the depths of the iris, tearing dozens of holes into the membranous ceiling. Water gushed through the gaps. Soon, the pupil revealed rows of human teeth, distending out from the sclera, contracting like a black, hungry mouth.

Sadik ran for the side of the vacuole. Their elevator had stopped halfway into a gap junction between the rows of cells outside—through the layers of transparent membranes, he could see open ground nearby, a small alcove inside the layers of tissue and wood. It was their only chance for safety.

Amira loosed a wyrmkiller into the pupil. There was a violent, wrenching scream. As black ichor clouded the water, eye lashes began to grip the walls of the vacuole, like the angry tentacles of an octopus. Water flooded, membranes collapsed.

Sadik fired a sunbeam. The yellow lance tore a hole through the vacuole, pierced the dozens of needle cells, and kept travelling through the darkness beyond. Steam roared in his face. Before he could do anything else, Sadik was slapped backward by a torrent of water gushing into the breach, slamming him flat against the floor. He could do nothing but thrash and drown.

Xaeyr raised his arms. The water lifted from the floor, collecting into streams. With his moon glowing bright, the baboon lashed his arms to the side, shooting hundreds of gallons of water back through the hole in the vacuole, like a flock of birds coming to roost. Once the worst was gone, he began to brace himself, putting all of his divine might into halting the upward flow of the xylem. Water churned with deadly force.

“Please hurry," he said, groaning.

“You heard him!" Amira yelled. “Go, go, go!"

One by one, they raced through the tunnel that Sadik had seared into the cells—leaping out of the vacuole, crawling through ruptured membranes and thick, oozing fluid. Kavaia was the last to leave, waiting at the edge of the burned hole to help Xaeyr across. Once she had pulled the god to safety, he released the water, letting it smash through the crumpled frame of the vacuole. The eye screamed again.

Sadik crawled through the last of the ruptured cells, emerging onto solid ground. They were standing in a gap junction between the walls of the sapwood, where water and sugar would flow horizontally between the tissue layers. Tens of thousands of cells stretched far in every direction. There were so many overlapping walls that he felt like a dust mite chewing its ways through an onion.

He held the flat of Dusksong's blade out into the darkness, trying to gain a sense of direction. They needed to leave. Right now. He had to find another xylem. A growth ring capable of climbing. Something.

A mile in the air. Nothing but organic tissue surrounding them, forming a sunless tomb.

They were trapped.

“Goddess!" Sadik yelled. “Where are we?"

Kavaia had been attempting to wipe the cellular fluid off her dress. Instead, she paused, craning her head to the streaks of Glimmer above. Her maw opened in shock.

“Goddess!"

“Silty marsh," Xaeyr said.

Sadik raised his sword.

A black cloud spread above their heads. The Metal Plague. Black mass, steel tendons, snaking tendrils, sucking mouths, distending rot, festering eyes, throbbing with blood, dripping with ichor, moaning in voices, screaming in tongues, all of it congealing into a dark, bulbous cloud that squelched and smothered and heaved and bled.

Sadik thought of the clouds of smoke that often hung above a battlefield. While staring up at the plague, he received a disturbing vision—black, heavy clouds descending upon a battle, engulfing the dead within their smoky wisps, and rising once more upon the land, fattened with flesh and blood. Once risen again, the cloud would display its sickly belly to the world, as if it wanted the mortals to know what evil they had wrought amongst themselves.

Things began to move. Masses crawled. Rot poured from tissue. Hundreds of metal tendrils slithered through the layers of cells, their membranes popping like grapes. Everything was spreading in a canopy. Squirming down. Closing in.

The blackness quivered. A thousand eyes wormed to the surface, birthed from flesh and metal. Sadik felt their gaze upon his skin.

“Sadik," the eyes cried, voices rising as one.

Yasmin screamed again.

Amira loosed several arrows. Xaeyr weaved the water inside the surrounding cells, blasting tendrils with steam. With a wave of his arms, Isaac began to cast lances of fire, aiming for the thickest masses of plague. Flesh burned and rained.

It was not enough. The blackness closed in, like streams of writhing tar.

Sadik almost fired Dusksong. Instead, something caught his eye. Off in the distance, there was a small, burning light. Yellow fire. The same color as his sword.

Aldunya's heartwood. The structural core of the tree, where all the dead wood collected into a pillar of strength. He had fired his sunbeam moments before—apparently, it had set a small section of her inner wood aflame, stripping the layers of hardened tissue. Between the flames, he saw another light. It was red. Blinking. There was. . . .

Metal. Beneath the wood, there were rods and struts and tubes, bending and twisted, far more flexible than steel could ever be. Scaffolding. Between them all, wires crawled, like the arteries of a snake.

Suddenly, his flame disappeared. The red light was gone. He blinked, squinting through the darkness. Whatever he had seen—if he had seen it at all—was lost beneath layers of wood and tissue.

Around him, the tree began to shudder. A wordless voice roared in pain.

“Sir!" Amira yelled.

The battle returned. Fire and screams.

Sadik ran to the other side of the gap junction. He knew which direction the heartwood lay. And, if he knew the direction of the core, he knew which way was out.

Straight through the bark. Back to the sun.

“We are leaving!" Sadik shouted.

He fired across the gap. Cells exploded with steam, belching their organs to the darkness below. In seconds, a hole was burned in the thin wall of vascular tissue, and his sunbeam continued to tear its way through the many layers beyond, scorching wood and boiling water. Yellow flames created a tunnel of light. A path to follow.

“Go!" Sadik yelled.

Amira and Xaeyr provided covering fire. Isaac and Zaria took a running start, leaping over the chasm between the cells. Kavaia pulled Yasmin into her arm and followed behind. When Sadik jumped the gap, he unfurled the wings beneath his skin, using them to easily glide across the gap.

The noise of battle echoed through the dark. They were thousands of feet in the air. If they fell between the cell layers, they would fall for nearly thirty seconds, spending the entire journey bouncing and shattering against the membranes.

Focus, Sadik thought.

Xaeyr was the last to leap across. Amira clung to his shoulders with her tail, still loosing arrows from her greatbow. Behind them, a storm of death engulfed the cells—undulating masses, squirming pseudopods, many tendrils sprouting limbs to crawl like centipedes. Mouths opened inside the largest streams of plague, shaped like funnels and bristling with teeth.

The voices spoke again. A thousand stolen souls.

“Communion!"

Isaac pointed his finger. An explosion of sound, piercingly loud, slammed into a mass of black fluid. Metal shattered, bone sprayed. When Xaeyr pressed his hands together, an entire pseudopod was crushed like a slug, falling limp into the dark.

They worked as a team. Isaac, Amira, and Xaeyr provided covering fire. Kavaia and Zaria led the way ahead, using hammer and axe to cleave a path through the layers of cells. Sadik remained in the center of the squad, firing Dusksong into plague and cells alike, always keeping an eye on their progress. Everyone leaped and dashed.

Above, the starry expanse of Glimmer seemed to be moving. Diffusing through cells, crawling through veins, their light spearing shadows across the length of the trunk. Sadik could feel a quivering in the cells at his feet. Something was coming.

“Sir!" Amira screamed.

A blackened tendril shot across the gap, quick as a snake. Sadik threw himself backward, narrowly avoiding the human hands that poured from the flesh. He rolled, slashing. The tendril was cut. Screams echoed through the dark.

“Sadik!" the voices cried. “We are born!"

Sadik spread his wings, leaping across another gap. He felt a thousand eyes burrowing into his skin. Watching, thirsting.

The Metal Plague drew close. No amount of violence could halt its progress—it was bloating through the cells in its path, drinking the plasma, devouring the organs, healing every wound that they managed to inflict. When Sadik glanced at the full size of the infection, it was shaped like the roots of a plant, freshly pulled from the ground. A snarled web of feelers, tendrils, and branches, with the clods of dirt as masses of flesh.

He stopped, holding his ground on the membrane of a cell, waiting for Isaac, Xaeyr, and Amira to clear the gap behind. Above, the Glimmer had disappeared. There was no starry sky any longer. Instead, a swarm of blackness had spread like a canopy, rushing through the layers of cells in a swarm of giant fingers. The frontal assault was only a distraction—the plague was trying to cut off their escape.

“Faster!" Sadik yelled.

“Come and see!" A mouth opened beneath a dozen blinking eyes, its teeth made of human skulls. “Come and see!"

Ahead, Kavaia and Zaria reached the layers of the outer bark. Both crocodile and hyena began to cut their way through the thickening wood, while Isaac and Xaeyr harried the masses of plague with ice and water. There was shouting, confusion, growing panic.

The Neheamatt roared. Everything trembled. Sadik stumbled to a knee, clutching his ears against the wordless voice. The god of gods screamed in wretched fury.

“Fuck!" Kavaia yelled.

Tendrils squirmed from the cambium. Kavaia tackled Zaria to the floor as the wood was torn to splinters, consumed with a writhing black. On the other side, Xaeyr fled before a wall of tentacles, leaping across the gap with Amira clinging to his shoulder.

Isaac was alone, still on the other side. His spellcasting had left him weak. As the plague advanced, he forced himself into a run, preparing to jump.

“Isaac!" Zaria shouted.

He leaped. He did not get far enough. Sadik threw himself forward, barely managing to grab Isaac's hand as he missed the landing and slammed into the wall of cells below. The human scholar dangled over a darkness that spread for thousands of feet.

“Isaac!" Zaria screamed.

Sadik used all his strength to pull Isaac back to solid ground. Both of them collapsed to the ground, breathless and bruised. Around them, the plague circled in—staring, grasping, drooling. It oozed from the path behind them and solidified into the path ahead, cutting off their escape. The entire sapwood disappeared into a spreading film of black.

Before he abandoned his family, Sadik remembered chasing insects through the foothills of his hamlet. He would catch them in his hands, feeling the way they thrashed and skittered. As a boy, he had often wondered how his actions would appear to such a small, timid creature.

A colossal beast descending from the sky. Fleeing in desperation. Capture, imprisonment, the hands that wrapped around it so utterly massive that the grooves of skin were trenches, the hairs as dense as a field of fallen trees. A tremendous eye peering in. A vast, alien intelligence.

Here, now, flesh was expanding. Metal dripped and coiled. A black dome formed above their heads, solid as chitin and throbbing with fluid. Beyond, a sea of eyes peered through the cage, their irises swollen with vines.

They were trapped.

“Sadik," the voices hissed.

A central mass presented itself. Several eyes rolled across the mounds, collecting like the face of a spider. Every pupil focused on Sadik. Below, mouths opened like wounds. There was tearing and squelching, breathing and moans.

“Communion. We are one."

All members of the team huddled together. Zaria ran for Isaac. Kavaia nudged Yasmin behind her leg, while Xaeyr pushed Amira further down his back. Sadik kept a sunbeam boiling at Dusksong's mouth, ready to fire.

The plague remained still. Above their heads, there was a shroud of flesh, dripping and raw. All it would take was a single burst of spores, a single heave of meat, and they would all be infected.

The central mass leered forward. By now, it almost looked like a human face. Metal cords like cheekbones, a sharpened spike like a chin. Several mouths combined together, forming a large, gaping maw.

“We are born," the face said, focusing a dozen eyes. Its words were a harmony. Dozens of voices. “We ascend through dissolution."

“What does that mean?" Sadik asked, bracing himself.

The maw opened. Inside, there was a swirl of teeth, a ring of arms beckoning from the depths of a throat. Inviting inside.

“Come and see," the voices said. Around them, the tendrils pointed to the waiting maw, gesturing inside. “Come below. We are born."

“Sir," Amira said. “Don't jump in the mouth."

“Thank you, Miri."

“I'm just sayin'."

“Yes, thank you."

Arms beckoned from the rim of the throat. Eyes squirmed above the waiting maw, always focused on Sadik.

“Free yourselves," the voices said. “Calisto shall not—"

The cells quivered. The air trembled. From above, a surge of light came screaming down, followed by a wordless scream.

Glimmer struck the plague like a rain of fire. There was a blinding glare, a flurry of motion, a thousand voices crying out in shock. When the plague shifted, trying to face its new opponent, the Glimmer sank deep into the putrid black masses, melting the flesh as easily as sugar in the rain.

A war began. White light, festering black. Spores exploded. Flesh recoiled. Metal dust brewed into a storm.

Through it all, Aldunya continued to roar.

A stream of Glimmer poured over the tendrils at the outer bark, burning them away. Behind them, the plague launched a counter attack, the bulk of its mass crawling up the layers of cells like water boiling in a pot. The path was now clear.

“Go!" Kavaia yelled.

They ran for the outer bark. Sadik fired a sunbeam into the glistening wood, setting it alight, while Kavaia and Zaria continued to chop and smash, throwing all their strength into the blows. A tunnel was dug. Wood splintered and burned. Slowly, the thin layers of vascular tissue became thick layers of bark.

Something slammed above them, impossibly heavy. The plague was thrashing. Cells splattered and popped. Aldunya's roar became a cry of pain.

After many blows, and thousands of wooden splinters, light appeared through the bark. The sun. With a final, desperate swing, Sadik brought Dusksong crashing down, smashing the last of the cracks.

Light met his eyes. Through the hole in the Neheamatt, there was a sky above, blue and endless, with a sea of red clouds hanging below, bristled with lightning. Beyond, a desert stretched to the horizon, gnarled with cliffs and rock.

They had made it outside.

“Sadik!"

An eye watched from the end of their tunnel. Bulging, rotten, the iris bristling with vines. Slowly, black tentacles began to squirm into the tightened space, reaching like a bed of snakes.

Cold wind tore at his back. When Sadik turned to face it, he saw the same mushroom caps he had glimpsed from below, growing out from the linings of the trunk. Each one of the fruiting bodies was easily the size of a small lake. They were pale orange, spotted with brown dots. He did not particularly like them.

He liked the plague even less.

With little hesitation, he jumped out of the tree, landing onto the fungal outgrowth with a roll and a spongy sigh. The rest of his team quickly followed. Many bounced against the orange flesh. There were shouts and yells, nearly lost to the shriek of the wind.

A rumble came from behind. When Sadik managed to find footing on the squishy mushroom, he saw the hole in the trunk began to close with a rapid proliferation of bark, like two bricks sealing with mortar. Glimmer boiled in motion. Through the growth, black tentacles attempted to escape. There was the shadow of a crawling eye, a harmony of voices.

The Glimmer finished building. The bark sealed shut behind them, bright and swirling, while the black tentacles fell to the mushroom cap below, severed and blind. Most died in seconds.

For a moment, there was only the sound of the wind.

“Does anyone require healing?" Kavaia asked.

Sadik moved along the flat surface of the mushroom cap, personally inspecting every member of his team. The curse in their bodies had left them in a delicate state—though no one had taken any direct hits, there were a number of bruises and torn muscles, and the internal bleeding could easily be seen through the pale, thinning skin. It took Kavaia some time to heal every wound.

No one was infected, at least. A small miracle.

Away from the group, Isaac and Zaria stood by the edge of the fungus, unaffected by the curse and locked into a hug.

“Told you to watch your spells," Zaria said. “You start gaspin' like an old fucking whore, and then you're dead."

“I know," Isaac said. “I know."

“Don't get careless, love. You promised."

“I . . . yes. I'm sorry."

Zaria growled, hugging him tighter.

Sadik walked to the outer edge of the fungus. The world stretched beyond. Red rock cliffs, the wrinkled skin of dunes. Above, the sky darkened to a deep blue. Below, the blood storm stretched across Acheron, the red clouds seeded with glowing pockets of Glimmer. If he looked carefully, he could see the remnants of the Lord of Bones' siege, just on the other side of the cerulean walls—trash, broken tents, abandoned trebuchets.

Sadik admired the view. He took the chance to breathe.

Before long, the words of the plague began to fester in his mind, the same way its spores would have festered within his flesh.

We ascend through dissolution.

Free yourselves. Calisto shall not—

Sadik frowned, his gaze lost in the horizon. The name 'Calisto' meant nothing to him. What was it supposed to mean?

Why was the plague trying to speak with him at all?

“Sir!" Amira called. “What now?"

He glanced overhead. The pantheon was only a thousand feet above their heads. Its branch stretched from the trunk like a river of golden brown, studded with branches and leaves. There were gaping holes in the marble, places where the floor had shattered and broken through. Some of the bark was scorched into a gnarled black, and, below the high-altitude wind, Sadik began to hear the sounds of battle. Shouting, yells, crashing stone.

Once again, Rushan's voice echoed in his mind. He remembered the jackal ripping the mask from the Vizier.

The brand of a slave.

Rushan pacing through the throne room, blood on his hands, bristling with fury.

This farce of a culture, this lie of a civilization. It needs to end. Only through destruction will we be saved.

“We climb," Sadik said, marching toward the trunk. “We're not going back inside, and we're not jumping down. The only way out is up."

Yasmin had already been struggling to contain her fear. When she heard his words, her robes began to shake.

“Suppose so, yeah," Amira said. “You said you jumped from the branch before, in one of them seeds? Right off the branch tip?"

“It was not pleasant, but yes."

“If we're climbing up the trunk, we'll need to leg it across all of godland to make a retreat. Right through the warzone."

“Looks that way."

Amira snorted. “Figures." She turned to address the squad, displaying the wings and insect limbs on her back. “Right, Sadik and I are sorted on climbin' mods. Xae? Kivie?"

In response, Xaeyr walked across the mushroom, eyed the swirls of bark, and jammed his fingers straight inside, cracking all five through the wood. He began to lift himself on the newly formed holes.

“Right," Amira said. “Fuck me, then. Uh—Zaria? Isaac?"

“Packed some rope," Zaria said, unfurling a spool from her pack. “Figured I'll tie my squire and I to one of you lot, so we can trail below."

“Good thinking," Sadik said. “We should all be tied together, just in case."

Zaria quickly wrapped everyone's waist in a length of rope, expertly working the knots. She had clearly spent many years as a sailor. When she finished, everyone was connected by a series of slacking lines. If one person fell, the entire squad could support their weight.

Sadik attempted to sheathe Dusksong. As he did, he noticed more blemishes on the blade. The greatsword had begun to melt after their escape from Kohav Yaran, and, after firing it so quickly inside the Neheamatt, the steel had deformed even further, slagging into drips and bubbles. More runes had gone dark.

The blade used to say Nihayat Alnuwr. The End of Light. Now, with several letters no longer glowing, the steel simply said: The End.

In his mind's eye, he saw Faustine shattering the blade. He remembered her anger. The tears.

Sadik grimaced, sheathing it quickly.

“As you can see," he said, gesturing above, “the discs of fungi continue up the trunk. We'll have places to rest, should we need it. Take your time, and be careful. Always make sure your grip is solid." He stretched his fingers. “Let's go. If we hurry, we might be able—"

“S-Sadik," Yasmin said.

She was standing behind the rest of the squad, tugging on the rope at her waist. When everyone turned to face her, she nearly lost her balance on the spongy mushroom floor.

“I. . . ."

“Yas?" Sadik asked.

She began to fidget with her seven-fingered hands, unable to meet his eye. “I. . . ."

Sadik traced a path between gods, mortals, and barbarians, heading toward her.

“I'm sorry, I. . . ."

He bent down to hug her. By the time his arms wrapped around her robes, she was already breaking into tears.

“I'm sorry," she said. “But I—please, I can't. . . ."

“Yas," Sadik said. “You have to do this."

She trembled within his grasp, like a leaf in a storm. The tears only grew worse.

“I can always bring you down." He unfurled his gliding wings. “If necessary, I will. But, for now, the mission takes priority. We have to keep going."

She buried her snout against his shoulder. “It's horrible. The—the—the thing in there, the blackness, the voices! It's everywhere!"

He nodded.

“Sadik, this is a fruiting body. A mature fungi. It's going to spread its spores." She gestured out to the sky. “There. Everywhere."

He continued to rub her back. A gust of wind came screaming across the mushroom, sharp and cold. She shivered inside her robes.

“Yas," Sadik said. “I will protect you. So will Amira, and all the rest."

She tried to wipe her tears, conscious of everyone's stares.

“You'll be fine," he said. “I promise."

“Can I . . . hang on your back? I'm not modded for strength, and I don't trust—"

“Of course. Whatever you need."

She pulled back, wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and took a deep breath. It took several more breaths for the courage to stick. “Okay. Okay."

Sadik turned to the rest of the squad. Xaeyr nodded. Isaac and Zaria stretched their fingers. Amira slung her greatbow across her body, and Kavaia sheathed her warhammer behind her dress, the glowing runes shining the scales along her neck. All of them were ready.

Together, they began to climb.