“Hm,” Gwil said. “The matching tattoo is tough to argue with. I guess that did happen to me.”

  “Ha!” Cort said. “I said you died twice, and Leira said that was stupid. Who’s stupid now?”

  “Shut up,” Leira said. “Maybe that’s true, but…” She nudged the corpse with her foot. “This dead body’s been here for a few centuries, at least. What’s up with that? And Gwil has memories from his childhood. There’s no clean answer here. Why the Erithist? This temple grew out of the corpse. That’s super weird. And how could Gwil have escaped from such a fate? And what the fuck are they even doing this to people for?” She stared at Gwil as if waiting for an answer.

  He threw his arms up. “Don’t ask me. The Yalda’blood drained away, though. That’s good, I think.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “We still don’t know shit. You’re making assumptions, Cort. It’s nothing so crazy to die twice. People escape from the Hells more often than you might think.”

  “I know that,” Cort cut in.

  Leira continued. “Of course, this dead person didn’t go to any of the Nine Hells. I’m reasonably sure of that. A god took them to its domain. Presumably whichever god is worshipped by the folks behind this ghastly ritual.

  “Anyway, regarding Gwil, what I meant was stupid about what you said is this: He became Hallowed after I killed him. Hallows that go to the Hells and come back don’t lose their powers. If Gwil had died once before, he should’ve become Hallowed that time.” She raked her fingers back across her scalp. “Unless… maybe a person isn’t necessarily marked for Hallowdom at birth, rather it can happen any time.” She shook her head. “This is such an unusual case that we can’t say anything for certain. So scratch that, I guess. I don’t fuckin’ know. But also, if he had died from this ritual, then came back to life, it probably would’ve been through resurrection, which would mean he should have gotten a new body, without the scar. My point is, don’t go thinking you’re so clever, Cortemius.”

  Gwil and Cort looked at each other.

  “Huh?” Cort said.

  “I don’t think I died,” Gwil said.

  “Why not?” Leira asked.

  He shrugged. “I just think it’s something I’d remember.”

  Leira laughed. “Like I said, we don’t know shit. I know some things about magic and divinities, but only a drop in the bucket, really. I’ve got plenty of blind spots.”

  Gwil stretched his hands above his head and arched his back. “How interesting. This is the last thing I expected to find down here.”

  “Crazy world,” Leira muttered.

  “Should we… do something with the body?” Cort asked.

  “What’d you mean? Like bury it?” Leira said.

  Cort scuffed the ground—which was transfigured and petrified flesh—with his boot. “I guess not that. But something. We could at least cover the body.”

  “We should burn it,” Gwil said as a twitch ran up his spine. He set his backpack down on the ground and pulled out a shirt. He draped it over the corpse’s face.

  “I guess that’s a good idea,” Leira said. “The thing is probably flush with dark magic. We don’t want it to wind up being used in another ritual.”

  Cort took a tube of ztuff from his pocket and placed it in the corpse’s still-chained hand.

  Leira rolled her eye and then plucked a petal from her eyeflower. She made to give it to the corpse and then seemed to think better of it. Instead, she stuck the petal into her mouth and swallowed it.

  “Can’t risk even the ashes of that falling into the wrong hands,” Leira muttered. “We still have no clue what’s going on here.” She took a doubloon from her pocket, placed it in the corpse’s other palm, and closed the stiff fingers around the coin.

  “Happy now, you nervous ninny?” she said.

  “It’s just respectful,” Cort mumbled.

  “You’re right,” Leira said. She smiled at him. “I was being an asshole. And I bet this dead person deserves kindness more than most. Too bad we can only offer a sliver.”

  “Do you mind if I… do it?” Cort asked, looking between them both.

  “It should be you,” Gwil said, clapping Cort on the back. “You freed them.”

  “I’ll make it quick,” Cort said as he unstrapped the Kaia torch from his bag. “The smell of Gwil’s fishy vomit is making my eyes water.”

  Cort turned the stove on and then rooted around in his bag. “I’m gonna try something weird.” He took a tube of ztuff and squirted it along the length of the corpse’s leg, as if putting ketchup on a very burnt sausage.

  “That is cannibal shit if I’ve ever seen it!” Leira squealed.

  “Every time I taste ztuff, I detect a subtle hint of a specific flavor, and I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I finally realized—it’s kerosene! So, I think it might be flammable.”

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  “Tasty and useful!” Gwil said.

  “I’ll just…” Cort tore off a piece from his sleeve and set it alight on the stove top. He took the flaming scrap and touched it to the ztuff.

  With a whoosh, a cloud of flame exploded into existence, engulfing the corpse, the ground, the walls.

  Cort was smart enough to throw the Kaia torch out the door ahead of them as they all scrambled out.

  It turned out that both the flesh and the Zippy’s were very flammable.

  “Shit!” Leira yelped. Covering over the eyeflower with one hand, she dashed back and reached into the flaming entryway with her other hand.

  A second later, she ran past them—screaming her head off—with the Erithist spike in hand.

  They went a healthy distance away from the burning temple and then turned to watch.

  It was entrancing. Columns of pure white smoke billowed toward the chamber’s high ceiling. The silhouette of the temple sagged within the flames, melting away.

  Gwil saw the semblance of a woman’s smiling face form in the smoke. He grinned back at her. The apparition mouthed a single word: Hypatia. Gwil heard her voice clear as day inside his head, and he knew she'd told him her name.

  “I can’t believe we almost left without this,” Leira said, brandishing the spike.

  Gwil backed away from her and clenched his jaw. The thing was a bit longer than his arm.

  “This much Erithist is worth, like, hundreds of billions of doubloons. You could buy several small nations with it. The Leviathan would get on their knees and beg for it.” She laughed. “And we found it by accident.”

  “We should just leave it,” Gwil said. “What do we need money for? Just looking at it makes me feel sick.”

  “Gwil, this is way too valuable to throw away,” Cort said. “It could save our lives one day. Lemme see it, Leira.”

  She handed it to him. Cort wrapped it up in three layers of clothing and then stuffed it into his pack. “Is that better, Gwil?”

  His nausea subsided and the chilly stiffness left his joints. “Yup.”

  They turned their attention back to the pyre. In silence, they watched for a little while longer.

  “Well, if anyone lives here, I expect they’ll be mightily pissed off at us,” Leira said. “We probably don’t wanna wait around anymore.”

  “Yeah, let’s go,” Cort said. “I hope the cult’s here. I wanna smash ‘em up. Do we go back up? Gwil and I didn’t make it to the end of our paths.”

  “You think this is a dead end?” Leira asked.

  Gwil flashed his Mir. The flames turned the same shade of white as the smoke, and the shadow of the temple disappeared. He turned around to scan the rest of the chamber.

  “It’s not a dead end,” Gwil said. On the far side of the room, the swirling veil was warped by a channel, and the mess of colors there was denser. He pointed to it. “There. We can go deeper.”

  “Then we go deeper,” Leira said.

  They made their way across the chamber. During their time in the temple, the storm had swelled into a fury. The sound of roaring thunder pervaded the space, underscored by a concert of pattering rainfall.

  “Now,” Leira said, “I fully agree that we are obligated to investigate this place. But we have to be prepared for the possibility of something darker than a bunch of bumfuck cultists. The tattoo thing coupled with everything else. Very troubling…” She trailed off.

  “If you say we need to run,” Gwil said, “we’ll run.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  Cort puffed up his cheeks and exhaled, trilling his lips. “Isca was right about everything.”

  “Of course she was,” Leira said. “The woman survived a point-blank Kaia explosion, and you doubted her?”

  “You guys gave me cause to doubt,” Cort mumbled.

  Leira wrapped an arm around Gwil’s shoulder and pulled him close as they walked. “That’s some creepy shit. Are you scared?”

  Gwil laughed. “More excited. I never thought I’d find out what happened to Caris. But now? Maybe.”

  “What about the rest of it, though?” she asked.

  “Eh, I don’t care. I’m seeing the World with my friends, so I’m good. Things that I can’t remember don’t matter to me.” He bit at his lip. “But those spike things are really bad, Leira. The Yalda’blood is horrible. I can’t describe it properly, but if there’s really so many of them…”

  “I get it,” she said. “Well, I don’t. But I believe you.” She smiled at him. “Let’s do something about it.”

  They reached the far side of the chamber and started looking for the door. But after moving along the entire length of the wall, they’d found nothing.

  “You’re sure it’s not a dead end?” Cort asked as he tapped the butt of his hammer against random stone blocks.

  “Uh.” Gwil used Mir and scanned the featureless surface. “Aha! There!” He ran to the place where an irregularity wrinkled the veil. “Ooh, secret passage!”

  “They’re keeping this place hidden, then,” Cort said. “Should I smash it?”

  “We’ve already made a racket,” Leira said. “No reason to act shy now.”

  Cort started beating the hell out of the wall with his hammer. It proved sturdy, but eventually a single block broke loose, and that started a cascade.

  Gwil peered into the widening gap as Cort attacked the compromised areas.

  “Ooh!” The hallway beyond was architecturally similar, but in far better shape. Pristine, even, and lighter in color. These blocks had the soft white color of limestone.

  It was well-lit thanks to the ornate candelabras that hung from the walls. A narrow white rug ran down the length. In smashing the wall, Cort had also destroyed some sort of shrine. A broken idol lay on the floor amidst the rubble. It had been decapitated. Gwil saw the head rolling across the tile floor.

  “I don’t think this place is as abandoned as we thought,” Leira said.

  Gwil slipped past Cort and wormed his way through the hole. He took one step and felt a shift underfoot.

  Sching!

  “Bugaghwaha!”

  An array of spikes had erupted out of the floor. Three impaled Gwil’s left foot. Two others went straight up his right leg.

  “Shit!” Leira yelled.

  Cort grabbed her wrist, stopping her. “Careful. Where there’s one booby trap, there’s many booby traps.”

  “Owowowhoho,” Gwil whimpered. He flared his Nirva, and the pain faded. He tried to lift his foot, but the spikes were barbed. They were packed tight throughout a two-meter by two-meter block and stood knee-high. Gwil was very glad they were not taller.

  Leira and Cort clamored behind him, but Gwil was concentrating.

  He wriggled his foot free, but the trap was so dense with spikes that there was nowhere he could set it down while he worked on extracting his other leg.

  He got himself twisted up, wobbled, fell.

  If Cort had not grabbed him by the arm, Gwil would’ve looked like a fishing net.

  Gwil grinned up at them. “Well, this is a coincidence, isn’t it?”

  Leira laughed.

  “Just shrink, Gwil!” Cort grunted, straining. He was leaning precariously close to the spikes as he reached out to hold Gwil up.

  “No!” Leira cried. “One of those could pulp his whole body if he’s small.”

  Cort looked at Gwil. “You’re not gonna let that happen.”

  Gwil shook his head and let the syrup take him. Externally, it happened in an instant. But inside, he had a measure of control.

  This was something he’d been wondering about: where exactly did the shrinking happen within the scope of his body? Usually, if he wasn’t airborne, he wound up flat on the ground, as if he shrank down into his feet.

  But now, in the limbo between big and small, he saw he could sort of swim his shrunken self into the right place before it manifested.

  Pop.

  As small as a mouse, Gwil hung in the air above the spikes. As he fell, he threw his arms and legs around one and clung to the spike as if climbing a tree trunk.

  “Ta-da!” he said as he shimmied his way down to stand in the forest of spikes. The barbs even resembled the tiered layers of a tree.