When Gwil grew back to normal size, he found that his foot and leg had already healed. Curious, he rolled up his pant leg, which was wet and sticky with blood.

  He gasped. No, ‘healed’ was not accurate. Rather, the wounds—a hole through his foot and a nasty gash that had split his calf open—had remained shrunken.

  A thin slash was the only mark on his leg, no worse than a cut from a rose thorn. He pried open the hole in his boot so he could look inside. The puncture in his foot was as small as a pinprick.

  He grinned. Now that was useful.

  “Get out of the way,” Cort barked.

  Cort started hammering the spikes, knocking them flat so that he and Leira could cross over the trap.

  Gwil looked down this new hallway. It was lit by torches, and its end was blocked by a fancy metal gate. Through the gaps of the woven pattern, he glimpsed a grand, colorful space.

  “Gwil,” Cort said. “Check for more traps. I don’t like how we’re caged in.”

  Gwil hurried forward and then buckled as three arrows shot out of the wall—one took him in the neck, ripped clean through.

  He pressed his hands over the gushing wound and tried to say something to Cort, but only garbled nonsense came out. Nirva burned in his neck as the tissue reformed and veins rejoined.

  “Gwil!” Cort shouted.

  “What?” Gwil rasped. Cort was being awfully demanding today.

  He and Leira had made it past the spikes. Cort pointed ahead as a cloud of pink spores plumed from Leira’s eyeflower.

  Gwil whipped around and saw the gate opening. Armed warriors poured in. Ten, twenty, more.

  “They came from the Oubliette!” one warrior at the head of the group shouted as they charged in. “Demons from beyond the Gracestorm!”

  “The what now?” Gwil said, waving his hands at the horde.

  He went unheard over their primal war cries. They were rabid, furious, but as they filled the hall, Gwil noticed their hesitation. They were scared.

  Gwil backed up a few paces, drawing his fork and letting his Nirva flood through his body.

  These warriors were much cooler looking than the guards in Podexia. A mix of men and women, they wore colorful, feathery robes that hung from their left shoulders, and elegant sashes around their waists. Most had dark skin, and where it was exposed, it was often painted with intricate patterns.

  Most wore their hair in long, thin braids that whipped around as they screamed. Dangling fetishes—bones, beads, and other trinkets—were tied into the braids. Stacked metal hoops adorned their forearms and their necks, perhaps serving as armor. A few of them—leaders, Gwil guessed—wore headdresses made of carved wood, feathers, and reeds.

  They carried bladed clubs and shields decorated with matching symbols—a sun with weeping eyes.

  The warriors formed up and closed in, cautious and deliberate. They pounded the flats of their weapons against their shields in a steady rhythm. Gwil caught a few words through the racket, like “Monsters!” and “Demons!” and “They came from hell!”

  As Cort and Leira came to stand beside him, Gwil made eye contact with the man who’d shouted before, and still held the foremost position. He had a headdress, and was the only one who wore purely green garb.

  “Wait! We’re not demons!” Gwil shouted at him.

  A thrown club came spinning through the air. Nirva shot through Gwil’s hand. With one motion, he snatched the club out of the air and then threw it back at them. The warriors did not seem open to conversation.

  Pop. Gwil shrank and steadied himself under the weight of his fork, which had maintained its size and was now like a giant spear. That suited him just fine.

  At Gwil’s sudden disappearance, panic broke the warriors of their resolve. Their rhythmic drumming ceased, and they charged. About forty of them, packed tight in this narrow space, several got tripped up as they advanced.

  Cort stepped forward to meet them, his hammer sweeping across the entire width of the hall. Metal clanged against metal and thudded against meat. Bones crunched.

  “Get out of the way!” Leira shrieked, waving her hands frantically through the cloud of pink smoke that drifted toward Cort.

  Gwil hurled himself into the fray. He landed among the feathery scarf of the green-robed warrior. His headdress had a beak and resembled an eagle.

  Unaware of Gwil’s intrusion, the man pushed his way through the fight, trying to make it to Cort, who was wreaking havoc on his comrades. Gwil climbed up through the feathers to stand on the man’s shoulder.

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  The guy still had no idea. Gwil spun his fork over his head and plunged it into the soft above the man’s collarbone. Blood spurted from the three-prong wound. Gwil grinned—the fork worked a treat. He’d thought stabbing someone with an eating utensil might be less effective than with a weapon. That was not the case.

  The eagle-man screamed, clutched at his wound. Gwil skirted away from his grasping hand as the warrior fell down onto one knee. A few of his fellows realized his plight and dragged him back from the front line.

  Gwil wrenched the hilt of the fork, twisting the prongs through the wound. The man collapsed onto his stomach at that.

  “We don’t have to fight!” Gwil squeaked, trying to scream over the commotion. “We just want to know what’s happening here!”

  The man bared his teeth and growled in answer, but his eyes betrayed his utter terror.

  One warrior who was trying to assist the eagle-man swung her club at Gwil. Seeing it coming, he tensed, and the weapon cracked against his tiny spine with an almost metallic clang. He barely felt the blow, and did not even lose his footing.

  Gwil laughed. Thanks to habits he’d picked up from trying to keep his Nyx running, he’d gotten better at containing the overabundance of Nirva in his shrunken body. He still felt a bit jittery, but he was brimming with so much Nirva that the blow from the club felt like a feather.

  The green-haired warrior woman swung again, and this time Gwil was not ready for it at all. He clung to the fork, and then was blasted away into the wall, ripping the prongs out of the eagle-man’s shoulder.

  Cort plowed through the enemy force, swinging his hammer with abandon as if he were reaping wheat. Leira sat on his shoulders, pink spores streaming from her eye like a hose. All around them, warriors collapsed as they drew breath. Glistening blood soaked the white carpet.

  Those that were still standing fled through the gate as Cort rampaged after them. Gwil caught sight of the eagle-man stumbling through, assisted by his companions.

  Cort made it to the gate and blocked it with his hammer as the warriors tried to lock them in. They reached through the gaps to beat on Cort with their clubs, but as they did so, Leira sprayed them with more spores and they dropped like flies.

  Gwil ran after them, and though he tried to grow back to size, he failed. Shit. Why now? Whatever, he didn’t need to be big right now. He passed by towering heaps of broken and sleeping bodies. None of the warriors that remained in the hall were fit for any fighting.

  Gwil jumped up onto Cort’s back and climbed onto his shoulder, whereupon Leira grabbed him and put him on top of her head, well out of reach of any swinging clubs.

  He could see the other side properly now, and it was a marvel. Beyond the gate, a massive, multi-story atrium. Five tiered balconies ran around the perimeter, each bustling with people. The place was built from tan limestone and the surfaces were covered with multi-colored tiles. Lit by hundreds of flickering torches, it looked to Gwil like the most enormous and immaculate bathroom in the World.

  Running water flowed through a labyrinth of channels and chutes, many of which crossed through open air, rising and falling throughout the space. Lush plant life filled countless troughs that ran adjacent to the water. More plants hung suspended from pots and lattices.

  “Ooh! So pretty!” Gwil said. Now this was a proper temple. “Maybe we can see-”

  Cort dove away from the gate, sending Gwil and Leira tumbling. A barrage of arrows clattered against the gate. The remaining warriors took the chance to try to shut the gate, but Cort caught it with his foot.

  Gwil ran out between the bars and surged his Nirva. He went from giant leg to giant leg, slashing open exposed achilles tendons with his fork—the warriors wore sandals.

  As fallen fighters dragged themselves across the blood-slicked floor, a shadow fell over Gwil. He crouched and held his fork straight upright as a foot came crashing down.

  Gwil jumped away and saw that it was the eagle-man that had tried to squish him. “Wait!” he yelled. “Talk to us!”

  But the man was too busy screaming at his comrades, signaling the retreat. Carrying their wounded and incapacitated, the remaining warriors fled.

  Something within the walls groaned and then stone scraped against stone. Gwil whipped around in time to see Leira and Cort dive through the gate. Behind them, the entirety of the hallway’s ceiling crashed down, revealing that it was yet another trap—a single massive block held by a chain pulley system.

  “Dickheads!” Leira spat as she and Cort got to their feet. “They killed a bunch of their own people with that. I’d only put them to sleep.”

  The warriors had cleared the area, giving the trio a moment to breathe. They stood on a balcony on the vast atrium’s second level.

  “A few of the ones I hammered might be better off crushed,” Cort said, grimacing. “Dammit, they didn’t give us much of a fucking chance, did they?”

  “They think we’re demons or something,” Gwil said, absently. Looking out at the incredible sight of the atrium, he realized that the terraced walls were packed with staircases, and doorways and windows. These were living spaces, hundreds of homes, all stacked together. A maze of pathways ran throughout, almost like little roads. The main balconies appeared to serve as thoroughfares.

  “Yeah, I heard them going on about that,” Leira said. “Very rude. Xenophobes, I bet.”

  The balconies were suddenly overrun with warriors. Hordes of them approached from every direction, a thousand at least, and surely more that they couldn’t see. Archers appeared over the railings from numerous vantage points. They drew their bows and fired.

  Gwil, Leira, and Cort rushed back, ducking into the gate’s alcove and cramming themselves against the wall. They were protected from their left side and from ahead, but still exposed to the right.

  Pop. Gwil embiggened and threw himself over Cort and Leira as the hail of whizzing arrows struck with a symphony of plinks and cracks and squelches.

  He yanked a couple of arrows out of his back and then turned to face the next volley. Nirva erupted throughout Gwil’s body; ethereal vapor streamed from his pores.

  Gwil swatted away the arrows as if they were gnats. Razor-sharp arrowheads struck his palm and bounced off as if they’d struck iron.

  “How the fuck are we fighting an entire army all of a sudden?” Cort barked.

  Screaming warriors were closing in on both sides of the wrap-around balcony. They’d be overrun in a matter of seconds.

  “Not only did they try to crush us,” Leira said as she pulled a couple more arrows out of Gwil’s back, “But they blocked us from escaping.”

  “Time to go,” Cort said. “Grab on.”

  Leira climbed onto his back, wrapping her arms around his neck. Gwil shrank and jumped up into Leira’s hand.

  Hammer aloft, Cort sprinted out of the alcove, rushing right between the two converging bands of warriors. He vaulted over the railing.

  “Argh!” Cort screamed as they plummeted. He raised his hammer over his head and slammed it down on the tiled floor of the atrium at the exact instant before they landed.

  The floor exploded around them. Gwil had barely realized they’d continued falling before they hit the ground in a chamber that was lit by bright green light.

  “Cort, could you stop fucking doing that?” Leira screamed.