Word­lessly, Jaruna helps Gil to his feet. The mystic’s nose is gush­ing blood. He wipes it on the inside of his robe’s sleeve. He looks dazed, like he is sleep­walk­ing.

Gil is afraid to turn around. Right now, Kiddu could be alive, or she could be dead. If he turns around, one of those pos­si­bil­i­ties will be brought into real­ity. So he just stands there, frozen—

A jolt of dis­charged sta­tic lashes his arm—from a grin­ning, alive Kiddu, who had just grabbed it. Gil nearly col­lapses into her with relief. Her eyes are a bit glazed, and her hair is once again a frizzy, puffed-up mess, but she seems unharmed. It occurs to Gil that the sor­cerer was hold­ing back quite a bit when he shot her, com­pared to the huge blasts of light­ning he had shot at the mys­tic.

Gin­gerly, Gil touches his mouth. It feels numb. His whole body and mind feel numb. He coughs, and spits out blood, try­ing des­per­ately not to think about the ragged geom­e­try of the wound in his mouth.

He wob­bles a bit, which causes Ayan to gasp.

Gil steps away from the sorcerer’s corpse. His heart is pump­ing so fast that he is afraid to move.

Jaruna fin­ishes rewrap­ping his cloth fin­ger­guards and then nocks his bow. In the process, he seems to switch from dazed teenager back to fear­less war­rior.

They jog down the cor­ri­dor, fol­low­ing Jaruna’s lead. Hinged doors line the hall, sag­ging and rot­ted, lead­ing into dark rooms. Gil fig­ures that this build­ing must be a part of the Divid­ing Wall complex—a dis­used old fort absorbed into the half-mile-long tri­an­gu­lar bul­wark.

Even­tu­ally they pass a huge gravitic por­tal, a heavy stone slab engraved with the ziggurat-and-eye emblem of the Akka­dian Empire. Gil can hear sol­diers shout­ing out­side the por­tal.

Jaruna is count­ing the hinged doors. He leads them past the por­tal, and then abruptly turns to kick down hinged door num­ber six. It opens into an unlit stair­well, wind­ing down into black noth­ing­ness.

Gil hears a puls­ing sound—wohm-wohm-wohm.

Then he hears the sound of stone slid­ing against stone. Behind them, the gravitic por­tal is open­ing.

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