Tubes swarmed all around Hugo. Their creeping, gurgling sounds grew louder, crowding his ears into a noise he consciously tuned out, but unconsciously his neck bristled.

His pudgy fingers clattered on the mini-keyboard that extended from his belt. On the other side, a table folded out, carrying a small monitor screen: a black screen with a lime-green bar—a bar filled nearly to the brim. Extending even from that monitor, a thin stick of metal, practically a wire that balanced on its top, the Heart of the Dome itself. The weight of the heart caused the metal line to wobble, but Hugo swayed his hips to counterbalance it like a waiter carrying a stack of plates.

A plastic tube caught his foot.

“Bah!” He kicked it off with contempt. “Try as you might, Terra. You should have known better than to betray your master.” He knew she could hear him and he loved it.

The petulant bitch deserves worse than death, and if the last thing she ever hears are my curses, it would be too good for her.

A long thread of black metal slinked over the lip of the Dome’s roof, tangling its way towards him.

Even here at the very highest point of the Dome, he knew he had to keep moving, but even the slightest maneuver could cause the Heart to fall to its destruction.

And that would be disastrous for everyone—and most importantly, himself.

Damn, Terra, I have to give it to you. You were smart enough to build in every possible failsafe. If the Heart is destroyed even a moment before she dies… I can’t let that happen.

He took out his laser cutter, a small ball with a trigger on it, and aiming it at the snaking wire, he pulled the trigger. A short red laser burned the wire into a melted pool of metal.

That should buy me a second more.

“Hugo!”

Damn that boy! Just like his father. He’ll run a marathon through Hell if he thought it was right to do so.

Peering down, he saw Winsor and his Horse, with him a woman and a Phoenix.

Let them.

They can all go to Hell, now.

Who needs this world of miracles?

What is here. What is now. These are all that matter. Let the flower children dance into their graves. Let them sing their sonnets while they decompose into beautiful corpses. Let the worm make love to them.

“The Dome is empty, there is no one left,” Winsor called out. “Just give the heart back and let’s leave!”

“You think I needed you, bald dummies? With all of you gone, I can make my own world, now.”

I can even make my own people, now. With all these machines, I can make my own—perfect society. Machines filled with every ounce of my knowledge. Made in my image and likeness. They will obey, and in time the world will see how perfect I am, and then, in time, all will see me for the god I am.

Something gray nearly grazed Hugo’s shoulder. In a swipe, it snapped the metal pole that held the Heart of the Dome.

He looked down to see another bald boy catch a dark gray boomerang.

The Heart! Where is it?

It had already fallen.

Down.

Into the Dome.

You bastards! Catch it, damn it!

Winsor caught it.

Hugo grew hot all over. Not even an ounce of relief.

He took another look at the foolish boy whose toy almost destroyed them all. When he saw the beast he rode on, his heart grew black.

No. He has no right.

It was not enough that magic did not bestow any power on Hugo. It was not enough that his dreams of a new world were stolen. But to think that the greatest of the ancient beasts, the one he had spent countless nights secretly praying would be his, had chosen some random boy to become his friend.

Cerberus, the Great, bore this boy on his divine shoulders?

A knife pierced his heart.

No—No!

The insults were too much now. The fools had distracted themselves enough for Hugo to pull down enough rope and slide down towards them. He slid under squirming tubes that no longer noticed him.

He hid among them like a tiger in the field.

Those idiots. Twiddling with such a powerful machine. They have no idea what to do with it. What’s all that magic going to do now?

Tell me, wizards, can Unicorn horns unlock the Dome’s security mainframe? Can Phoenixes dismantle Terra’s protective matrices? Can beauty and stories save you when she dies and the Dome has lost all moral framework? Magic seems infinite, but when faced with the technological wonders of the Dome, it seems quite finite.

I’m not even mad about Cerberus anymore. These magical creatures would only get in the way; Terra couldn’t even keep control of them. No.

He raised his laser cutter.

It’s time for the magic to die, now.

He pulled the trigger.

A beam of concentrated heat sparked from the gun and, like a lance, shot a hole through the Heart of the Dome.

Winsor dropped it as it burst into an orange spark and a puff of smoke.

With a hollow chattering clink, it fell to the ground like a dead mollusk.

The Tubes deflated. The Wires crumbled. What spark of light was left in the Dome faded.

They stood now, in the rib cage of a dead god.

Hugo’s heart sank.

No, this was your only option.

He stood up. The pile of rusted parts and deflated plastic lay about his feet. He kicked at it as he approached them.

“I’m not going back there,” Hugo snarled.

He could see Winsor’s stiff neck turn toward him. The utter horror meant nothing to Hugo, but he could see the heart might as well have been Winsor’s.

“What did you do?” the boy asked.

This is the final and longest chapter of Dome, and you may not be able to finish reading it in your email. Click below to read it on my Substack.

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What is taking Titus so long?

If Rona had stopped climbing, she would have felt her stomach grow sick, but Titus told her to keep climbing. So she did.

Knowing him, he was probably doing something incredibly stupid.

But also brave.

All the more reason to worry. I just wish he could trust me enough to let me in.

The gray butt of a Citizen snapped her back to the moment. She peered over to see a line was now forming.

Conversations and murmurings rustled up ahead, making their way back down.

Rona rolled her eyes. Even now, some lazy cog is gunking up the machine.

Heads turned back in her direction.

Eyes widened.

Fingers points.

A scream.

She followed the gaze.

The Dome was standing. It had grown massive metal legs. A chest like a woman’s formed around the Dome’s round cover. Two arms unfolded from the chest and, finally, flipping up from its back, a woman’s head.

Rona’s brain swam in her head; her vision became blurred for a moment. It was as though her mind were trying to turn itself off. She shot herself back into the moment.

No. I have to keep focused.

A shriek came from the line as a leg rose and the Dome walked towards them.

She stood in the same field from her dream. The oncoming storm had now arrived.

The wind whipped at her flesh with cold barbs, serrating her arms. It pulled her around to face the Weeping Woman.

Any semblance of beauty and majesty distorted into its true form. Her now naked body was white. White like the Dome. The white of a burial shroud absorbing the puss and mucus of a decaying body.

A white that, on closer inspection, revealed it was truly yellow. A pale yellow. A grotesque yellow that browned the shadows, making one feel it in the pit of their stomach. Wretching you until you desired to expel it out of your mouth.

Thumping in the center of her emaciated chest: a hole. A sucking and throbbing hole. Black. The Black of Oblivion. No god would create something so hideous as the black of that hole. It belonged to another world. A world that lost all love. All beauty. All truth.

It was that hole that sucked at her. Pulled her towards it. Into its emptiness. Wanting her. Shaped as her.

This is where you belong. A voice in her mind. You are mine. Become one with me and make me whole again.

Is that not what a daughter is?

Is that not what all children are?

A plug for this sucking hole?

A hole she both knew and did not. And it called for her, and it yearned for her.

Terra’s face contorted in the sorrowful agony of loss. A twisted snarl of a cry that moaned and howled in pain. Anger. Torment. Damning whatever gods she gave herself over that left her this mangled, blasphemous crucifix.

I can fill it.

I can end it.

I can make her whole again.

The wind waved Nadia’s black hair like a flag of surrender.

“Mother!” Her voice was small like a child’s. “It’s me, Mother, it’s Nadia.”

She rushed toward her mother.

The twisted form was too deep within her own sorrows to see her salvation drawing closer.

“Mother!” Nadia called out to her. The vacuum was now far more powerful. Her black hair whipped her eyes, caught itself in her mouth, but it was nothing compared to the agony her mother must be feeling.

If you take me, I know I will lose myself, but I know I will free you from the pain.

Her mother looked down at her. The tightly closed lids lifted, eyes as black as the hole looked down at Nadia.

Pain struck her heart, and her desire to free her mother overtook her awareness that the face had slithered down toward her like a snake.

Nadia touched the pain-stricken face.

Terra’s mouth exploded open, stretching so far open that it would engulf Nadia. Her teeth, like a cobra’s, slimed with venom and grew into long, sharp fangs.

Her mouth became an empty hole. Much larger than Nadia. Much larger than the universe itself.

What could fill it? Who could fill it?

Not I.

Fear now struck Nadia. This was no noble sacrifice. This was not love she was giving into. No. This was gluttony. An envy. A hatred and desire all at once. Wanting something that she had and hating that she had it.

I am not enough.

A shriek called out from the emptiness, horrifying and deep.

From behind her, a hand snatched and grabbed her.

“Nadia!” Winsor’s voice called out from behind her as the meadow vanished and, in its place, squirming tubes and wires were torn apart as Go’El galloped and Winsor slashed through them. She felt his arm around her, felt Go’El’s hooves thudding beneath her.

She remembered now.

The Dome began to stand up on its own. Schicksal was swept by a Tube, and she fell.

The Guts of the Dome burst forth; the sun kissed Nadia’s cheek as Go’El leapt through the air.

They all looked down.

The earth was now too far away. They were falling to their death.

Nadia wrapped her arms around Winsor.

Go’El’s feet skidded against the Dome’s body; the scraping pierced their ears; Go’El tripped, and they tumbled toward the ground.

A wind blew beneath Nadia, and she found her descent cushioned by a warm gust.

Winsor, too, was falling at a gentle speed.

She touched his hand. He held hers, and they spun together. Their eyes never once turned from the other as tears floated from their faces.

The gust faded, and they stood facing each other. The whole world was now a fading memory. All there was left in the world was the one in front of the other.

A scratchy, lyrical call broke Nadia’s concentration. Schicksal stood over them, her wings folding to her side.

“That was you, wasn’t it?”

An affirmative chittering was the Phoenix’s reply.

Go’El galloped down from the Dome.

She could feel Winsor’s eyes on her. A gentle gaze. Like the sun rising from the horizon, dispelling the night and bringing forth light. This was what she thought she would see in her mother. What she hoped her mother would see. And yet. It was that which Mother desired.

She did not want to give love to Nadia. She did not want to embrace her daughter. She did not want to give herself into her and take and multiply. She only wanted to absorb. She wanted this all to herself.

If only you could see me the way Winsor sees me.

Heart thumped. She knew what had to be done.

Go’El called out a thunderous neigh.

Two massive white fingers reached down towards her.

Winsor picked up Nadia as though she were weightless, and he ran for Go’El. Mounting him, they rode as the fingers crushed the earth.

Go’El ran.

“I know what I must do,” she told Winsor. “We have to go back.”

“No.”

“She won’t stop until she has me.”

“All the more reason to get out of here.”

A shadow followed them. At first she thought it might have been Schicksal, but it was much too big and moving far too fast.

She looked up.

A hand reached down toward them.

As if Winsor leaned in deep. Nadia felt herself crushed between his chest and Go’El’s back. The wind whipped faster through her long strands of black hair. She gripped him fast. Her muscles clenched, bracing for impact.

But the impact did not come.

She looked behind him. Vines, branches, and leaves strung themselves around the hand. The cords of wood enmeshed themselves into every possible opening. The strings of branches held tight; a spider-web of forest held the hand at bay.

Velldani!

The hand retreated as they rode away into the depths of the forest.

Winsor did not stop. Not until they were far enough. Whether they had been riding for an hour or a minute, he did not know.

Keep moving forward.

A gray figure caught his eye.

Was it the Dome?

No.

He slowed down. The figure was descending from the trees.

A Citizen!

Go’El slowed to a fast trot.

Squinting, Winsor could see the Citizen coalesce together like a lonely cloud of mist.

Nadia’s eyes followed Winsor’s.

“They made it out,” relief in her voice.

A relief Winsor could not feel. Hugo’s cold warnings bristled the back of his neck.

What did I do?

He never thought he would make it this far. Nor would he have tried to free them this way. There was so much he hoped he could do before they made it here.

If only I had a chance. An opportunity to tell everyone the truth.

But now, they were facing it whether they wanted to or not.

Go’El approached the crowd. The thud of his hooves was the only sound as every eye moved up to Winsor and Nadia.

Murmurs grew from the crowd.

“It’s X-13.”

“What is he on?”

“He’s a troublemaker.”

“I bet he made the hole in the Dome.”

“This is definitely his fault.”

Winsor’s stomach twisted into a knot.

Hugo warned him this would happen. He destroyed the only home any of them knew. It was a lie, but it was still home. People crave comfort, but that was the trap.

The only way out is to face the truth.

“It was all a lie!” Winsor cried out to the Citizens.

They looked at him.

“And whether it falls today or tomorrow, it was never going to stay forever. And it shouldn’t. We all know it. There was something wrong there. Look around us. Can’t you feel it? The light above. It feels different from the Dome, doesn’t it? The air here does it not smell better? Just look at this place. Is the Dome more beautiful?”

“Beauty doesn’t keep us alive!” A voice yelled.

Murmurs and shouts echoed the response.

No. Beauty and truth won’t feed us.

He looked up at the trees. With everything that had happened, now was the first time he had a chance to take it all in. The specks of yellow sunlight peeking in between the leaves. The fresh scent of earth and air. It smelled like colors. The blues, the greens, the browns, and the yellow of the sun.

“No, it won’t, but this is where we belong.”

“And how do we live?” A voice called out from the crowd.

“Where do we get our pills?” Another asked.

“What do we do without Mother?”

“We will figure it out,” Nadia answered.

The crowd looked at this strange, beautiful figure.

“Who is she?”

“Where did she come from?”

“My identifier was N-85, but my name is Nadia. I fell out of the Dome, and I’ve been here long enough to know we can survive. It is dangerous; we only have each other, and you will come out like me. Changed. But you will find out who you truly are.”

Silence.

What did she know?

A prick struck Winsor’s heart. How odd was it that it was Nadia who explored the world outside the Dome and not him. He would have thrown himself into this world. Embraced the weirdness around him and returned to these people with everything he learned.

And yet he was not chosen.

A silent chuckle bubbled in his chest as he thought about how N-85 must have hated becoming Nadia.

But here she is.

And that is why she was chosen.

A creature of this world.

He will embrace this world. Find every secret. Master it. Conquer it. Rule it. Love it.

How could he tell these Citizens they could succeed here when they always knew he did not belong in the Dome? No. They needed a Citizen. The best of the Citizens to show them they could as well.

Perhaps everything is guided by Something. Maybe not Mother but Something.

He smiled.

A piercing screech struck everyone’s ears.

Descending from the branches, black skeletal figures from the Pit slinked down. Maws snatching. Wet, slobbering teeth. Giggling mad laughter. They crawled down, snatching, clawing, and threatening anyone close to them.

From between Winsor’s thighs he could feel Go’El shake with rage.

“Enough!” the Unicorn cried, and stepping forward, he lifted his horn, and it glittered. It glittered, then shone with blinding, radiant light.

The ghouls stared at him. Their small red eyes no longer glowed from their bulbs; rather, they reflected Go’El’s light with their own unique aurora: an autumn moon, a tropical wave, a jade stone.

Their jaws slouched open. Saliva drooled. Their bodies—present, yet their souls were somewhere beyond imagination.

Even the Citizens stared.

A warmth poured into Winsor’s heart. Hope. Strength. Confidence. Courage. Renewed in his spirit. The journey was far from over, and yet he knew he held everything to see it through to the end.

Whatever that end may be.

Go’El’s light faded. The creatures returned to themselves. The Citizens’ eyes turned to the threatening creatures.

It was clear something transpired between Go’El and the beasts. A conversation no one was privy to but those of an ancient way.

The creatures looked at one another. Not an expression of malice. Nor an expression of hunger.

Something dark: dangerous not to the Citizens but to the beasts themselves.

Shame.

With heads held low. With hearts so heavy even Winsor could feel the weight the shadowy forms turned.

Vauhn climbed his way up Winsor’s shoulder to join the mourners. He knew the reason for their gloom.

They don’t belong here. They betrayed us, and now that we’re free, they belong nowhere. But where will they go?

Nowhere. Into nothingness. We are not of this world but of another, and we broke our vow. So we forfeit our existence.

‘We?’ You can’t mean yourself as well, Go’El.

I do.

But you’ve done so much for us.

And I have more to do, but once I have accomplished my task, I will fade to nothing.

But why?

Because I must go the way of the Oath Breakers. Betrayal is a sin much too great for one to live.

But I am not angry. I don’t hold it against you.

Do you mean to say that I am forgiven?

I would forgive you all if it kept you here, my friend.

You do not know what you have given us.

The white plastic of Vauhn’s body cracked. Something warm and fleshy pushed through.

Like a bird hatching, the Dome’s coverings shed to reveal a grayish blue body with big shiny black eyes. His wings illuminated like stained glass.

“Skald!” Nadia’s voice turned Winsor’s head.

Another little bug like Vauhn floated from behind Nadia. It was lavender, and while Vauhn’s body was hard and rippled with small muscles, hers was soft and covered in fur that made her look like a floating ball of cotton. But her dark wings glistened in the sunlight.

They looked at one another.

They knew each other.

They swam through the air towards each other and embraced. The way they cradled each other’s face. Looked into one another’s eyes. If such creatures could cry, they were.

Nadia met his eyes.

Before they knew it, they were surrounded in a whirlwind of feathers and scales. Metal and plastic shells fell from the trees, releasing beings of another world, climbing, flying, and fleeing into the woods.

Scales.

Tails.

Snouts.

Claws.

Talons.

Slithering things.

Beautiful things.

Dangerous things.

Beasts that wore plates of gold and held wings.

Kings of the air and sea.

They flew up and high into the air.

Winsor smiled.

Life, the hidden life no one else saw but him, flew high above all to see. They watched, and they stared, but not Winsor. Not Nadia.

What called his eyes were hers, and hers called his.

His head leaned toward her, and she rolled her mouth toward his as though asking to receive something she did not yet know, and his mouth moved to give it.

But the earth shook. Screams cried out and a distant thud! came closer.

No. It’s still not time.

“Dome comes!” A deep, gravely voice barked out.

A fat, muscular beast made of rock burst out of the trees, standing on all fours.

Winsor knew this creature.

And the fact that Hugo hung tight around his neck only confirmed Winsor’s suspicion.

“Carbon!”

From the shadows of the trees emerged an even larger beast. A three-headed monster with teeth that knew no end and eyes sharp enough to pierce through the strongest heart. And yet, sitting on top of the middle head, was a Citizen Winsor knew immediately.

“T-7!” he called out.

“It’s Titus,” the man called out in return.

“Be still your pleasantries,” the Middle Head’s voice sliced through, severing what happiness there was in their reunion.

It was the Right Head’s turn to frighten everyone with a voice like an inferno, “The Dome comes this way.”

The rush of emotions. No time to feel anything. It was still time to think.

Winsor could hear the steps coming closer. No time to get everyone out. Not unless the Dome could be distracted.

He turned to Nadia, “Take everyone and get out of here. I’ll lead it away.”

Nadia stared at him, frozen and wide-eyed. It made it easier for him to help her down, but once her feet touched the ground, it seemed as though she were aware enough to protest.

“It’s me that she wants.”

He gave no answer except to ride off on Go’El.

With every ounce of herself, Velldani held the machine down only for it to tear through her and move forward.

She ripped and ached as the strands of wood, vines, and leaves splintered, cracked, and broke.

But she would not stop. Even though all her strength was gone, she would hold until she was gone.

Hooves pounded the earth–hooves she knew. They were light. Graceful. They did not tear at the earth with clumsy force, leaving a trail of broken seeds and murdered soil. It was hooves that moved the earth. Placed life with every step. Respected her soil and treated it like a partner rather than the clumsy foot of a man.

Go’El!

His thunderous feet moved across her, and she could feel every movement of the Dome through its godforsaken feet. Feeling its torso rotate as its head twisted to follow Go’El’s path. Then its feet changed directions to chase after him.

“Go’El,” she called.

“It is good to see you again, Velldani.”

“I feared we would not.”

“So did I.”

“Why does the machine chase you?”

“We are driving it away from the humans so they can escape.”

An aura exuded from Go’El’s back. Like a radiant light. Strong and bright but carefree and beautiful. She would have mistaken it for the Spirit of the Wind.

“You are the one, are you not?” she asked the source.

The aura was confused. Much like Nadia’s when they first met, but he still responded to her voice.

“I don’t know what you mean?”

“Are you the one who made the gift of love?”

She could feel the Dome coming closer, and the masculine aura seemed only more confused.

“Did you make the face out of glass?”

“My sculpture?”

A warmth swelled through the whole forest.

“I knew it was you. Ride, and know the forest will always be your friend.”

They sped toward the open plains, and Velldani felt inside her enough strength to destroy the Dome itself. She gathered herself completely into her youngest tree; the oak which birthed Nadia’s staff. She swelled into it all the power of the forest.

She savored the minerals of the earth. Drank the dew of every leaf. Laid herself naked under the sun.

The oak grew.

Grew and roared.

Leaves and wood sprang forth from out of the ground, and bursting forth, she poured out branches of solid wood. They wound and tied themselves around the Dome. Wrapped themselves around her waist. Around her arms. Around her neck. They pulled her down and grew into her joints. Seeking anything by which they could cram and jam and grind the machine to a halt.

It was not enough.

The Dome was slow to understand what was happening, but when it did, it wiped Velldani’s wood and leaves like cobwebs.

She knew where Velldani was. She knew Velldani.

It was then that Velldani knew who she was. Her heart was crestfallen.

Of all the beauty you had in your life, you chose to become this? I weep for you.

She felt the metal fingers dig into the earth toward her.

I survived the Days of Fire. I am as old as the earth. Men have loved me. They have ruined me. I have given. They have taken. I create life, and I have watched it all be destroyed.

She could feel the cold steel touch her.

What is there for you to take from me? My life? Do you not know what you take from yourself? I may be gone, but you will persist even after you die, but what awaits you outside the veil? For me it is nothing; for you, it shakes me to think about it.

Velldani was pulled forth from the earth, and for a moment she felt The Wind.

There you are, my love.

The Dome’s thumb pressed down on her, but she was not afraid.

A shadow fell over Nadia’s heart.

A shiver tingled her spine.

A groan moaned in her gut.

Someone is dead.

Who or how would have to be discovered later.

Later.

So much to do later. So much to do now. An impossible amount. A city’s worth of people migrating through the forest. Following along a path that has not been driven towards a fate unknown.

They tripped over roots, stubbed themselves on rocks, scratched and tore through the forest.

They waded through the swamp. Fear, anxiety, disgust. No one had time for those emotions. They steeled themselves together. One people or death–the only option.

When they reached the Burning Mountain, she found a miracle marching towards them.

The people of Dento were on their way.

Who would have told them?

As though it were the answer to her question, a shadow passed over. She looked up expecting Schicksal, and it was indeed a winged figure with a tail, but it did not move with her grace, nor did the wings glow in a rainbow of radiance under the sun.

No.

It slithered like a snake, and its wings were stretched leather-like, like a bat that glowed an orange color under the sun.

Its head was sharp, angular, and scaly.

Like a kite drifting down from the wind, the creature rested before her. A large lizard with claws on its wings crawled toward her. Sitting on its back, Zoraster.

“Father!” Nadia cried. The anxiety of death left her, and she could feel herself light as the wind as she ran for him.

His expression did not meet hers. Agitation exuded from him. A shifting of his head. A rushedness to his posture.

“Get on!” he told her.

Her gut held her fast. “Are you here to help?”

“I’ve brought the people of Dento. They’ll help your citizens. You did bravely, but it’s time to go!”

His voice—like a father telling his daughter to come home for dinner.

Child.

Home.

Dinner.

A feeling of something she never experienced and yet knew immediately.

Was this his magic or was this something deeper?

Whatever it was, she brought back to her mind what actually mattered.

“Winsor! He’s out there. He led the Dome away from us so we could escape.”

Zoraster’s chest puffed up as though fighting something from coming up. “Then your friend is making the ultimate sacrifice for you. Come back with me so it won’t be wasted.”

Nadia looked back.

The Dome was now on all fours, slapping at the ground.

It wasn’t Winsor who had died.

Who was it then? Vell?

The wind blew across her cheek.

She could hear Zoraster behind her, though she was hardly listening. “Once she realizes you’re not with him, she’ll come here. Let’s go before it’s too late.”

Velldani was dead. The hand of the dead Citizen in the Dome.

Winsor only has seconds.

So much death. In one small moment she had seen more death than she ever had.

What even is death? To be gone from the body, but where do you go?

A chill ran down her spine.

One more death means one less person—that was enough for Nadia.

She owed it to Velldanie, to the dead Citizen, to all the other Citizens who died in the Dome, and to Winsor to save every life she could.

Zoraster’s voice faded back into her conscious mind, “Without her heart, she’s just a killing machine. I don’t know if she can be stopped.”

“Take me over there.”

“No.”

“You made a choice, but we paid for it. I least of all. I met my father. And though my mother caused all of this, she did it for me. No one else was given that privilege.

“Look at Winsor; he was suffocating in there. So much in his heart he wanted to share with the world. Share his beauty with all of us and Mother wanted to kill him for it. Even now, she’s trying to finish the task.

“I owe it to them, and you owe it to them. I will pay my debt, and if you wish to, now is the time.”

Zoraster heaved a heavy sigh. “You are making the choice I could not. I am proud of you. I only wish I had more time with you.”

The earth crumbled between the Dome’s fingers. The light closed between her fingers. Winsor leaned forward, pressing himself against Go’El, his thighs tightened around the massive ribcage of the Unicorn. He could feel the sinewy muscle and thick bones as Go’El barrelled forward, expending every ounce of strength to reach the ever-slimming sliver of light.

Winsor closed his eyes and held tight as the palm came crashing down around them.

For a moment the world around them came dark. The end was here.

Hold on!

The earth exploded. Dirt, rocks, dust, and sand blew from his face as Go’El leapt to their escape and landed on the green grass of an empty meadow.

The Dome was distracted for a moment, crushing something in its hand, and Winsor swore he heard a woman's voice cry. It pained his heart, but the Dome was so quick to return to her pursuit that neither of the two had time to think of anything other than run.

And run Go’El did. With the speed worthy of his species. He ran as the Dome pursued them on hands and knees, slapping the earth like a rampaging child trying to snatch a fly.

The earth shook, and many times Go’El galloped on nothing but thin air. But he moved. He strove and refused to stop for even a moment. Until they came to the end of the earth.

Go’El reared back. All the world still stretched before them, but a drop to the death was all that stood between them and escape.

They halted at the cliffside and time stood still.

Thud!

Their doom approached.

Thud!

Winsor looked out at the empty blue sky. The snow-capped mountains. The green grass that ran on forever and the rivers that streamed to lands unseen.

Thud!

The Dome rose behind them.

Thud!

A butterfly rolled past Winsor in the wind. All the world before him—so young and fresh and yet ever ancient. He gave it a single tear goodbye.

I am sorry I never knew you.

Thud!

They turned to face their pursuer. Winsor unsheathed his sword.

“Thank you for coming with me.”

“The honor is mine.”

Go’El lowered his horn. Winsor raised his sword.

I will not survive this, but know this, Nadia. I died as I lived. Honest. True.

Nothing holding me back.

Just remember that all it takes is one person. One person to look up at a white ceiling and say. There has to be more.

Take it all in, Nadia. Take as much of this world as possible for both of us.

Go’EL galloped forward, and Winsor sat erect, sword pointed forward. They charged a single rider against the devastation of a demiurge that hated him.

Hated him for the crime of wanting. Wanting to know beauty. Wanting to know goodness. Wanting to know truth.

They charged, and with him Winsor brought his own army. The army of the oppressed. The army of the fallen. Those rebels who knew the sweet death he would endure; to die spitting in the face of evil and say, “No, I will not.”

He watched as the young rider on his steed. Go’El, himself, chose this young man. He was found worthy to ride the King of Nature. He who brings the spring. Who calls the dawn. The first and the last Unicorn. Who only exists in tall tales and lullabies. This young man was found worthy.

And yet–is he worthy of her? My daughter?

Any other man would boast to the whole village that such a man would court his daughter, but Zoraster knew how little time he had left.

He may have been rejected by the Dome, but here he will find his true home. Can any woman tame a Wild Man?

It is not my choice, it is my debt.

They drifted down.

“Winsor!” Nadia cried to the young man.

“Nadia!?” His confusion gave his face a blankness that only agitated Zoraster more.

“Get on!” she urged. “We can stop it.”

The excitement in her voice stabbed his heart.

She does not know.

Winsor climbed onto Zoraster’s wyvern, Rasti. So much he and Rasti had been through together, and neither one of these two will ever know it. Did it even happen at all? What happens to dreams and experiences after one dies and no one speaks of them? Fade? Is there a way they can know about him, about his life?

Nadia knelt to help Winsor. Zoraster smoldered with rage.

He should do it himself. She loves him. She is doing it because she loves him.

A silent groan hissed from Zoraster’s chest.

“Father!”

He looked to his daughter, who held this man-boy’s arm tight against her. She stared up at him with eyes that worshipped this fool who was moments from throwing his life away.

I’ll never know what it is like to be looked at this way. I hate you, Winsor. I must let it go. I cannot leave this world with even an ounce of hatred—if I ever want to see her again.

“This is Winsor,” her voice a lyrical laughter of joy.

I will not. I cannot sin when I am so close to the end.

“So I assume,” his cold voice disguising the pain in his heart.

He looked to Winsor, the blushing oaf.

“You were a fool for charging at the Dome.”

Winsor’s cheeks flushed an even deeper red.

I would have done the same–would I? No hope but certain death, I don’t know, but he charged.

As a man should live, as a man should die.

“But a brave one.”

A bashful glance was Winsor’s only response.

The earth shook. His time was here. He knew where to go.

The scaly creature rose from the ground.

Winsor’s arm wrapped around Nadia, unconsciously. It was only when her hand lightly brushed his chest that he noticed her. Staff in her other hand.

Her large green eyes looked up at him. A smile on her lips. A confidence of what was to happen next.

Together, we go.

The winged serpent soared through the air.

Winsor held Nadia fast with one arm and the other to the saddle Zoraster stood on.

The force of air was nearly suffocating, but he held. Refused to let go, and when the Dome thrust an arm at them, Zoraster flipped them in a loop that rushed blood straight to Winsor’s skull.

Fear was no use here. It would only slow him. He needed to choose another feeling. He thought about Go’El, his thundering across the Dome, the exhilaration of the moment. Had he not feared for his life, he would have embraced it. Let the wind enrapture his soul until he roared a mighty sound.

“Woo!” he screamed as the dragon spun through the air.

Every eye stared back at him. His heart sank. Even now he was still the odd one here until Zoraster gave him a small gesture. A sign that the two were connected, even if only for a moment. Across his stoic lips, Zoraster gave the slightest smile before he drove straight into the Dome’s chest.

The time was now.

Nadia rose by her staff.

The tubes and wires already made their descent, but Winsor slashed. The dragon bit and hissed. Zoraster shielded her.

The wind roared just as it did in her dream, and across the long black metal hall there hung like a decrepit mocking crucifix–her mother.

A black pit in her chest sucked the very air from Nadia’s nostrils, but she would not be moved. It was not fear she felt. Nor anger. Nor vengeance. Nor triumph.

It was solemn. Humble. Liturgical.

Reverent.

Zoraster led her like a priest beginning a mass.

He held his staff up as a sigil that parted the darkness and led her to give her offering to fulfill what had been made empty.

Her Mother’s head stared down at her. She stared up at it.

Humanity was replaced with a demonic machine that had only one purpose: consume. It gnawed at the air. Gnashing its serpentine fangs. Eyes twisted in rage and sorrow.

Nothing but resentment.

“Mother.”

The face turned its eyes at her, and for a flash the black creature became a woman. A mother. Staring at her daughter—now a woman. A woman stepping out of the world. Releasing herself from her.

Nadia touched her face, “It is time for you to be free.”

The face twisted in agony. A struggle. A battle within herself. She bit her lip as though holding something back as it jittered and thrust. Silent screams split her mouth open, revealing her fangs. Her eyes sprang far too wide, revealing mad yellow eyes hidden behind her black, serene eyes.

Her body–a mask for something else. A conduit for things beyond even Terra’s own knowledge. They had possessed her. Through her resentment, they had seized her soul, and now they acted through her body.

Nadia did not move. She did not fear. Her soul knew what she was facing and knew what to do.

Atop her staff, her sculpture glowed. The luminous specks and fragments of emerald, viridian, and seafoam swirled into a galactic cloud of cosmic purity.

Like a cobra, the face lunged at her. Fangs snatched, but Nadia moved with a speed not her own and with a thrust she pushed her staff toward the empty black hole in Terra’s chest.

She struggled against the force of Terra’s hate. Refused to relent against her mother’s insistence. A swarming power that overwhelmed her. Her muscles tensed. The glow in her sculpture flickered. She faced gravity itself. And it would crush her. Crush and absorb her.

Her strength weakened. Her feet were pulling in. The staff nearly slipped when a hand touched hers. A chest pressed behind her head. A faint scent she knew wafted in her nose.

Winsor.

He held her hand tight around the staff, and together they lifted it forward.

She could feel his strength emptying into her. A strength made greater by her will. Together they pressed forward, pushing the staff into the black hole. They felt the soft wet meat of Terra’s flesh deep inside.

A scream roared from the demonic maw, but they pushed. And when Nadia felt the end, a strange mix of muscle and steel holding them back, she pulled back fast, feeling the top of her staff snap clean off and her sculpture roll right into the place her heart once was.

Nadia fell backward into Winsor. His arm, her shield.

Zoraster stepped forward between them.

“Go, now!” He ordered them, “And don’t look back.”

Long have I waited for this moment, my love.

The warmth of her brown skin emerged from her shriveled ivory white. Life returned to the sunken cheeks, and her eyes, once more dark, shone with a light of their own.

I called to you. For twenty years I called to you. You refused to hear me.

She looked up at him. A moment before, her face showed recognition.

Do you see me now? Do you see her now? Do you see who we created?

A tear ran down her eye.

I am sorry, Terra. For twenty years I meditated on my sin, and every day I prayed for forgiveness; I know now that I received it from Above, but now I come to beg it from you.

She pulled away from him.

I have sinned against you, my love. My wife. You were the one I should always have been behind. That was my sin.

But we have both sinned. We both sinned against the future. We both took from them what cannot be given back to feed our wounds now.

That is a most ancient and evil sin.

But it is not too late. There is redemption, but you have to let go.

The anger returned to her. The darkness swelled inside her.

We do not live forever, Terra. Our time is shorter than ever. Let go of the hate, or you will be consumed by it forever.

The horrors behind her eyes returned.

We leave this world in peace, or we leave it in torment, Terra. I do not know where my destination will be, but I am choosing to leave this world in peace.

Come with me.

Her mouth stretched again, her fangs rose.

His heart ached.

If this is your choice, then I go, and may you find your fill.

He entered the mouth. It closed behind him.

The creature writhed in victory. Screaming a joy that tingled spines.

A light glowed in the chest. Glowed and burned.

Shrieking and convulsing, the demonic form twisted in agony until, at last, it broke. Broke and shattered.

All that remained was a green orb with a young woman’s face carved into its surface.

Go’El met them in a meadow where one could see the cliffs. They watched as the pieces of the Dome hollowed out of all life and collapsed. Tumbling down the cliffside in a pile of plastic and metal. Sand and dust rose up in a cloudy brown mountain.

Winsor breathed a sigh. All the anxiety. Fear. Excitement. Knots in his stomach all released, and in a moment of sheer exhaustion he laughed.

So did Nadia.

They laughed until they cried. They cried until at last they blinked until they could see each other clearly once more.

The warmth of a late sun surrounded them. A wind blew through them.

They both heard the laughter of a man and woman make love in the wind. Twist and turn filled with desire for the other and happiness to have what the other yearned so much for.

The dragon flew away; a painful cry echoed as it swam into the sky.

They shared in the sting of that sorrowful sound, but it only brought them closer together.

Winsor touched her face; she received it, felt it, and enraptured herself in it. Drawing herself as close as she could to him.

He held her.

She peered up at him.

Together they brought their faces close to the others and finally, after so long, gave in to the other’s spell and kissed.

They filled and emptied themselves into the other. Squeezing as much as they could. They gave in to the selfishness and gave selflessly as they fell to the grass.

Schicksal found them lying in the grass. Skald and Vauhn followed as they landed next to the two small figures. Go’El clopped toward them.

Nadia lay next to Winsor, but he was not lying. He was sitting. Sitting and staring. Staring out at the rubble of the Dome.

The crowd began to notice his intense gaze, and they looked but saw only a mountain of broken plastic coverings, deflated tubes, and broken wires.

Winsor thought—and felt. Something welling in his heart. A truth. A new reality. Memories of things Hugo taught him. Feeling a future he did not know would be possible.

But what a possibility it would be!

“Hey!” Nadia called to him.

Her voice—the only thing that could ever break his concentration. He turned to her.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

He looked back at the pile of broken parts, the picture forming. “I have an idea.”

The forest awoke as the sun transformed the sapphire blue trees into a dazzling emerald. A green that rivaled even the most stunning veridian in Schicksal’s feathers.

A smooth silver white shell traumatized the rolling green hills and lush forest.

The Dome. Its smooth perfection molested the eyes. Its reflection blinded one from nature’s beauty.

Nadia shielded her eyes from its glare and guided Schicksal to avoid its blinding light. Doing so, however, revealed a shock to her.

The shell was open.

As Schicksal soared over the Dome, Nadia looked down. Voluptuous grubby worms squirmed through the streets of the city, tightening themselves around the buildings, crushing them into dust. Hundreds of Citizens swarmed the monorail stations. People on top of people.

Her heart seized. Even the strange black skeletal droids that had hunted her were desperately clawing their way up. Ripping Citizens off the deck and falling to their deaths with no care in mind.

The screams.

The fear, the terror, the hope in them. Her stomach wanted to heave at the sound of the screams.

Schicksal screamed.

She did not realize how deep her feet were pressing into the Phoenix’s neck.

“I’m sorry.” She relaxed her body and, pressing the horror down, she looked for any answer, though no question came to mind.

A man sat with his legs wrapped around the spire of a monorail station. He waved at her with desperation.

Winsor?

Circling around him, she could tell he was not, but she did recognize him, T-7. He looked tired but unrelenting.

“Are you here to help?” he called out.

Help?

She hardly knew what she was going to do to help Winsor, let alone the whole Dome.

Her eyes searched, her mind raced. Nothing was the only answer.

I can’t let them know that. There’s chaos enough as there is.

So she gave only what she could, a promise.

“I’ll try.”

Her fingers gripped the wood of the staff. Its grain scratched her skin. Its ruggedness resisted her thumb with a dull, sharp pain.

A splinter struck the pad of her thumb.

“Ow!”

As though the splinter was a message from the staff itself her mind threaded the connection.

Wood. Tree. The Trees. Velldani… but how?

It didn’t matter. Velldani was their only hope. Whether she would was another matter; she remembered that, though Velldani seemed to like her, she did not have a high opinion of humans en masse.

A pained puff of air escaped her lungs.

Hugo ran for the edge of the platform. He skidded to a stop when he saw the squirming and wiggling wires climbing up towards him.

He squealed a pig-ish sound as he turned back and tripped in front of Go’El. Each clop of the Unicorn’s white hooves echoed through Hugo.

Winsor, who, despite being betrayed and hovering over Hugo, wore a face of pleading rather than judgment.

“The Dome is falling apart,” Winsor’s voice reminded him of someone in his past. “Let’s return the Heart and leave.”

Hugo grimaced. This boy, who knows nothing about the world, thinks he’s coming down to my level? He has no idea what he’s turning down. How could he know? He can’t understand. Once Terra dies, he can go back to sleep like everyone else.

“We can remake the world, Winsor. We just have to hold on a little longer.”

“What makes you think we can do better?”

We?–there’s still a chance. Hugo stood up, confidence brimming in his chest. “Vision, Winsor, that’s what makes us better.”

“Killing was not part of the deal. I’m not going to start a new world through death.”

Ah! What a sap! You can’t blame him; he never lived outside the Dome. Terra thought that putting him in time-out would solve the problem of a revolutionary, but there is only one way to deal with them, or they’ll do the same.

“That’s how it always has been, Winsor.”

He can’t understand, but what he will understand is what he’ll lose.

“We’re too far gone!” A boisterous chuckle huffed from Hugo. “Right now, as we speak, Terra has sent all of the Dome out in search of the Heart. Reason. Logic. Gone! Just a machine trying to perform a task, and once it fails, everything resets back.”

“What about the Citizens?”

“Survival of the fittest.”

He leaped off the platform and with the same strange agility as before, Hugo’s stubby feet found a clear spot. Skipping through the Dome like he were crossing a river.

Leave him! Go’El’s deep voice echoed in Winsor’s head. It is not for you to save him.

Save him? That was a strange idea. If anything, Hugo seemed to be in the position to save them.

The guts began to swarm closer around them.

Go’El reared up and turned around. He boomed a mighty neigh that erupted from his throat. His horn shone. His hooves pounded the ground with a powerful Clod!

The Guts of the Dome parted as though in their unconscious senses they were aware of Go’El’s presence. Aware and frightened.

This is your path.

Before Winsor could react Go’El charged forth with a speed that filled Winsor’s senses. Light flashing around him, the wind through him, the air filling his lungs. His mind seemed to have awakened to a dream world of infinite possibilities. Nothing was beyond their reach but no danger was impossible either.

He braced Go’EL’s body with his thighs and the white horse galloped past writhing metal veins and rolling plastic intestines. With every stomp of Go’El’s hooves, however, the path was made clear.

The Dome itself seemed to bow down to the Unicorn, as though he were the true lord, here.

Even in Go’El’s white sheen there was something the Dome lacked. Where the Dome was a cold, faintly sick yellow like bleached bone; Go’El was sleek; almost wet. Clean, pristine, detached but elevated as though it looked down and you looked up and in that pool of pearls one’s true persona is reflected back.

Would Hugo see that as well? Is there a beauty in him that will look back? Winsor wondered.

That is for him to see.

Up ahead a light peeked out at Winsor. Not a dead fluorescent light but a bright orange that made his skin come to life at its touch. Goosebumps furled as his skin drank in the light. Go’El sped faster towards it. A glint peaking from behind guards of cement and twisted metallic spears.

No one could pass without ensuring their death and yet Go’El charged faster.

This was no time to doubt the impossible. So much impossible has become possible. Now is not the time for reason. Now is the time for miracles. The Dome shook with a boisterous Bong! As debris bursts forth. Cement clods crashed into the ground, metal clanged as it bounced back.

From the dust emerged Go’El. His white refused to be touched by a single particle of dust. Winsor, too, clean as though the Dome itself could not touch him.

It could not.

It never had a right to him, or any of them for that matter, and now sitting on Go’El’s back he made it clear. He looked up once more to the ceiling to give it one more look of defiance but what stared back was something he could never imagine in his whole entire life.

A cosmic lavender swirling in a light cerulean, being consumed by a soft bright orange light that came out from a distant horizon. He followed that light and saw dawn itself coming to their aid. The sun awakening over the horizon. Bright red burning the black night sky awakening the blue of the day.

Not even in his most exciting imaginative vistas could he ever imagine the world to look as it does.

She knew why this little lost daughter was here now. Returned after a prolonged absence and, as with every human, the only reason for her visit is because she needed something.

If Velldani had lungs she would have heaved a sigh.

“I am sorry,” she added emphasis to the word hoping it would close the matter, “but humans only cause problems for forests. I’ve given too much of myself already. I lost myself when you humans tore me apart and covered me with cement and asphalt. My babies were sacrificed to your god of progress. While I wept for them you kept tearing at me more and more.”

“But I didn’t,” Nadia replied.

Children bear the burden of their parents’ sins, Velldani told herself. It has to be this way. You give them a little, and they will take more.

She felt the sting of her callousness. It was clear to her that Nadia only wanted to do what was right, but Velldani also had to do what was right for herself.

Humans know nothing of others' boundaries. They only care about what’s theirs and take it even when it doesn’t belong to them.

If those humans were trees, would Nadia even care? No. She wouldn’t even be able to hear them.

But I do. I hear them cry for me every time they fall.

Nadia was silent, but she would not leave. Her slender nose pointing toward the Dome. Her large green eyes–tired, swollen, near the brink of tears.

Velldani truly adored this human; she was a specimen among her species, and if she had asked for anything else, she would give it, but this was too much.

“Vell…” Nadia placed her hand on her trunk. It was such a soft hand Velldani could hardly feel it beneath her bark, but it felt like the whole earth was now pressed against her.

Every tree in the forest was Velldani’s to explore and peer through, and like a spider she saw everything through a kaleidoscope of organic glass, but at this moment, every one of her infinite eyes fell upon Nadia.

“...I don’t know what the world was like before,” she continued. “But what was done to you sounds unforgivable. I cannot change what happened before, but I can change what happens next. We need you now at this moment, and in return I will give myself to protect you and the forest so that what happened may never happen again.”

Velldani smiled. She was used to heartfelt promises by humans. They always do mean it. And they do try to keep them, but events unfold in ways they do not expect, and soon covenants become promises that become chores that become reminders that fade with time.

“There is no promise you can keep, Nadia. I know the ways of man. And though your heart is true and you wish to make a covenant humans rarely can. It’s never your fault, but you will find that once I save these people, they will have needs and those needs will come at the cost of me. I give, and they will all take, and you will try to stop them, but in time you will realize that stopping progress is like stopping the waves.

“If there is a promise you can keep, then keep this one: consider my trees. They take so long to grow and so quickly we are destroyed.

“Yet that is the nature of creation.

“It takes so much to bring beauty into the world, and it costs nothing to destroy it. It’s difficult. So many of my babies are miscarried by the heedless foot of men or die of thirst in a drought…and yet that is why when just one thrives enough to grow into one of these mighty trees it’s all the more beautiful. It is molded through its struggle; every gash, broken branch, and scar is what makes my children beautiful.

“You will see when you have children of your own.

“So, make this promise: be like a tree. Do not be hasty to be the first. Do not push time faster than it can go. Consider what is good before what is expedient. It is slower. You may not have as much as others, but what you will have is the greatest gift you humans can possess in this life–beauty.

“Live a beautiful life for me, Nadia.”

She felt Nadia’s arms wrap around the trunk.

“I will.”

“Then go, Nadia, and watch.”

Nadia went to the Phoenix, and though Velldani always thought of those creatures as feathered matchsticks, she could not help but consider the Phoenix’s turquoise, viridian, and amber feathers.

“What have you been through to be so beautiful?” she asked herself.

From the back of Schicksal, Nadia looked down to witness the miracle:

Every leaf on every tree in the forest swayed violently. With each sway the branches grew higher into the air. Twining like vines on a lattice, the branches grew over the Dome. They rolled over one another and thickened and hardened into great wooden arms that reached out.

It was T-7 who first reached out and grabbed hold, but rather than climbing towards safety, he slid down from the precipice, guiding others to climb into the branches. Soon the great arm itself divided into smaller branches, allowing more people to climb up.

As the morning sun greeted the day, the whole Dome was now covered in branches. Humans and droids alike climbed into the trees and disappeared into their protective leaves.

One of them had to be Winsor.

Her fist knotted tight. She didn’t believe it. As much as she wanted to.

She landed Schicksal before T-7, who guided the last Citizen onto the branch.

“T-7!” Nadia called out.

“It’s Titus!”

A laugh escaped her, “And I am Nadia.”

She could see him squint his eyes at her as though trying to remember who she was.

“Have you seen Winsor?” she asked.

His eyes widened. “You’re that N-unit, aren’t you?” He paused for a moment, trying to understand better what he was looking at. What’s that?” He gestured to the top of his head.

She giggled self-consciously; it was the first time anyone had mentioned her hair. “You’ll get some, too–I think.”

He put his hand on his head as if he was trying to feel it on himself. “That much?”

“Winsor! Have you seen him?”

“Right–no. I haven’t.”

Her tongue scratched her teeth. It is possible that he’s somewhere in the crowd. One of them has to be them.

“But–” Titus’ voice broke her concentration, “I know he’s still in there.”

“How do you know?”

He shook his head. “I feel it. He disappeared when the hole in the ceiling showed up. I believe he’s in the Dome somewhere.”

“You mean down there?”

“No, I mean he’s in the Dome.”

Her stomach churned at the thought.

He had to be crushed by now. No one could survive that.

No one but Winsor. He would not let something like this stop him. He was smarter than that. In fact, something told her that all of this was his doing.

Schicksal lifted up into the air.

I’m going to find him.

They soared down into the chaos as undulating tubes rose and fell. They were close, too close, but she needed to see. Any sign of life. The slightest glimpse of pink flesh moving in the writhing orgy of white and black machinery.

“Winsor!” she called out, frustration deep in her voice.

Something pink caught her eye.

Her heart froze.

A hand-still. Buried under the rubble of a crushed building.

Before Schicksal could plant herself on the ground, Nadia had already leaped off and run toward the hand.

A massive slab of cement pinned the wrist down. If she could only lift it high enough.

It would not be moved. No matter how hard she tried. Prying it with her staff yielded nothing.

Zoraster said I could use magic. I need to focus my will and creativity to build something. But what–

She looked at the chunks of cement, the bent wires, and the slab itself. Impossible for her own body to move, but perhaps with her mind something could lift it.

Closing her eyes, she pictured it in her mind. Stacks of rocks piling under the slab, lifting it up just enough to pull Winsor out.

Her hands gripped the staff.

The sculpture glowed a bright green.

Concentrate. See it clearly. Make it happen.

Rocks rumbled, vibrated and shifted, piling themselves and squeezing themselves as they built a stack that lifted the slab and tilted it back, exposing the body underneath.

Nadia opened her eyes.

Lying on the ground was a man covered in blood and dust. He did not move.

She knelt down beside him.

Turning him over, she found a thick twisted piece of rebar had pierced through his torso.

Her heart burned with every beat. She dared not look at the face and know the truth.

From a distance she heard Schicksal calling, but it felt as though she were far away from her.

It can’t be Winsor. He would not let himself die. There’s too much he’s wanted to see. He wouldn’t let death have him until he saw it all.

The thought gave her enough courage to look.

She turned his face and found the face of a man whose death was long and painful. The only small consolation of looking at this lifeless body was the unsettling relief of knowing it was not Winsor.

Skald crept up from behind Nadia’s shoulder.

The Sprite looked at her, and as though the small creature knew what was about to be asked of her, she shook her head–solemn.

I have to keep going.

But before Nadia could stand up, something large and cold pressed itself down on her.

In the shock of the moment, Nadia thought the slab had fallen on her, but the strange sound of hissing and clicking behind her told her that something very much alive had caught her.

She struggled to take a look, but the black claws that held her down were enough to tell her she was in the clutches of one of the monstrosities from the Pit.

Her neck bristled as she felt the thing breathe over her.

She heard a loud crash before she felt the hand taken away from her. She turned over to see.

In the bright yellow light of day, she caught only the shadows. A beast with a long, stinging tail and the body of a predator faced a four-legged king.

Though all she could see was the king’s shadow, she could tell he was beautiful; his silhouette was a sleek, sinewy design with two heads. One with hair that flowed like her own. The other of a man. His head was bald, but his chest was bursting with strength and pride. He wielded something long and sharp; the only thing that rivaled the weapon in his hand was the spectacular horn that erupted from his second head. A horn that aimed itself toward the predator.

A predator that now seemed more like a combatant than a hunter.

The beautiful shadow rose on its hind legs and smashed its forelegs down on the beast’s head while the man swung his weapon at the tail, deflecting it from its sting–cutting off its long black talon.

Black splurted forth from its tail, and the beast retreated.

Nadia stood as the shadow turned itself towards her, and as the great sun rose and the silhouette came closer, she saw a man; his uniform and bald head said he was a Citizen, but his rugged face, eyes filled with determination, and sword in his hand said he was a man. The man.

“Winsor!” she called out.

Her voice was weak, but his head lifted at the sound.

He leapt from his horse.

She ran for him. Her staff fell from her hands. Her feet moved without effort, yet she felt every second before their arms wrapped around each other. Their bodies collided with the force of passion. It should have shaken them, but their bond held them firm. His arms pressed her against him, and she squeezed him, taking as much of him into herself. His smell, his chest, his back- she dug herself greedily into him. Consuming as much of him in her embrace, not knowing if this would be the last time she would ever feel him again.

They looked at each other.

Winsor’s mouth agape at the sight of her hair. Her eyes took in a jaw that was now bluish with stubble. None of it makes sense to them and yet both are taken away with the beauty of the other.

“I have a new identifier,” Nadia’s voice trembled slightly.

Winsor smiled at her. His eyes examined her in a way that reminded her of Zoraster’s stare when he saw her for the first time. “What is it?” he asked.

She blushed for a moment. The stare overwhelmed her a little. “Nadia,” a blush in her cheeks.

It was not clear that he even heard it. He was still looking at her as if it were the first time he ever saw her, but after a moment he repeated it back. “‘Nadia…’” his voice drifted as though he were recalling a dream. “It’s perfect.”

What had happened?

One moment he was looking at this strange, beautiful face that reminded him of N-85’s; the next, it opened a mouth. A mouth he did not want to remember. Its teeth: White. Long. Sharp. Her jaw opened up, extending so large, unlike anything should. And yet, that was not as frightening as the dark. The dark inside the mouth: Empty. Black.

He could not unsee what he saw, and it would not escape his mind.

“Winsor!” Go’El’s voice was strong and clear. It shocked him back to the present. The horror–fading.

Mind scrambling back into reality, he looked down to see Hugo. His hand deep inside a hole in the woman’s chest. Winsor’s stomach churned as he watched Hugo give a faint tug as though he were snapping something from a string. With the nonchalance of a maintenance droid removing an oil filter, Hugo pulled out a small black mechanical device.

Winsor did not need to look closely to know what it was.

The Heart of the Dome.

He did not know what to expect. Some kind of large mass of wires. A big ball of metal. Tubing reaching around in a labyrinth of technology. What he did not expect to see was a Citizen like him. Like T-7, R-0… like N-85. A lot like her.

His heart stung. Why does this thing look like N-85? Is this what a woman is? Hugo seemed to have a very low opinion of them. Could this be why? Or is this how we all are? Is this the reality that Mother has been keeping back from them? That deep down inside every Citizen is some grotesque monster with an insatiable jaw, gaunt, unholy, damnable?

Or is this Mother?

The only one who could answer these questions fingered the Dome with greed in his eyes.

“What did you do?”

Hugo held up the Heart. Black sludge drooped from the torn wires that still thumped feebly as though reaching for an arterial tube.

“The Dome is ours now.”

A pale shadow moved over Winsor’s heart.

All he can think about is control. When will Hugo understand that it’s not control that I want? I just want to be free.

“And now, what?” Winsor’s voice grew in heat. “You killed her. For what?”

A scritch, thud, and moan echoed from the dark around them. The sounds increased in volume.

“Not quite,” Hugo answered.

From behind him, Winsor spied something in the dark moving closer towards them. Like a wiggling, white maggot, it moved closer to them with a globbing menace. Underneath like the tingling a thousand black spiderlegs wires were prickling their way towards them.

The Dome, it’s coming to life.

A massive tube burst into the light and came smashing down towards Hugo.

He leapt like he was expecting it and dashed towards Go’El.

“Come on,” he called out to the Unicorn, his agitated body thumping like he was about to dance, “be a pal and let me on!”

Go’El reared back with a brutish neighing, warning.

Get this creature away, Winsor could hear Go’El’s thoughts. My body will break his black heart.

At that moment, Winsor realized they were surrounded. Machinery broke through the walls, forming long skeletal arms. Tubes burst through, worming and writhing. Wires crept all about. All the very guts of the Dome had come alive and its focus–Hugo.

Fear snatched Winsor without him realizing it.

How are we going to escape this? We are all doomed. Even if we get out of here, what next? The Dome has no opening. N-85. What about N-85? I still haven’t found N-85. These things will get to N-85 first. What am I–

Winsor!

He could feel Go’El’s inner voice wake him again. His eyes focused; he could see the stairway ascending.

Fire in his blood. The desire to survive reawakens. Ice-cold air in his nostrils.

I will find N-85.

He ran and leapt onto Go’El, who kicked Hugo in the chest. Just enough to keep his grabbing hands away. The mighty beast jumped and landed on an ascending step.

Staring down, they watched as Hugo fought against the raging darkness.

Climbing and leaping, he showed himself to be more nimble than his short, fat body might have implied, and scurrying, he reached for the bottom step, snatching it in his thick hand. Huffing, he pulled himself up the step.

Frustration steeled Winsor’s admiration.

“Give back the heart!” Winsor called down to Hugo.

“Don’t you get it?” Hugo’s own frustration now made itself clear. “Terra is the Dome. If you want to rebuild it, she has to die to reset the system.”

“I don’t want to rebuild the Dome; I want to free us from it.”

“Then leave! You won’t like what happens next.”

Winsor felt his heart flinch. “What happens next?”

A wicked smile split Hugo’s mouth. “You can’t create something new without destroying the old.”

It had only been half an hour since that horrifying sound echoed through the Dome. Rona heard it with her own ears. Moments after they had fixed Carbon.

A decision that she now felt the weight of.

We violated one of the primary directives: Interactions with machines are limited to commands and feedback.

If only Titus, or T-7, or whatever he is now, had just left it all alone. Now there are these words, nonsensical sounds that stick in the head. Rona. What does that even mean? What even is a Rona? Who is Rona?

The droids are now alive. Alive! The responsibility was heavy on her. The Dump itself, it isn’t even a dump. It’s a graveyard!

What does any of this mean?

She longed for the shelter of Mother. Everything was better when Mother could explain it away. Keep the truth from her. Have Mother think for her.

Now she was free, but she never wanted it. She didn’t want to be free. Mother carried all of it for her; now she was forced to carry all this herself.

And now Mother is angry.

Of course, she would be.

She saved them all and made herself complicit. Now they are all complicit,

Damn you, Titus. You couldn’t have just left everything alone.

She looked up at him. He stood very close to her, and even though his face showed concern, there was something else there. She could feel something emitting from him. From his chest. A strength. If she opened herself to it, it would lend itself to her, but the last time she opened herself to him she heard the shattering scream echo through the Dome.

But she also found something else—

Titus.

What has happened—happened. I cannot go back. There is no road for us now—but Titus… he will know what to do.

She let the glow fill her. It shocked her to realize how cold her heart was. Like a glass bottle filled with a golden, warm liquid.

“What do you think that was?” She asked.

She watched his gray eyes search the ceiling. His lips formed a tight line. His eyes sharp.

“Winsor,” he whispered.

Him again? They definitely have a bond. How he could assume this was Winsor was beyond her, but she at least felt the comfort of believing, however vain it might be, that the scream could be squarely blamed on Winsor, as usual.

A clank erupted from all sides of the Dome. As she looked around, she realized that Citizens were exiting their apartments. Confused. Exhausted.

The Dome is shutting down. Nothing is functioning, and everyone is awake. What does this mean?

From above a heavy repetitive thud… thud… slow thuds the time between each increased.

Thud.

The Ceiling flickered.

Thud.

The Ceiling flickered?

Thud.

The Ceiling does not flicker.

The grinding sound of something halting.

Black.

Nothing—not Titus, not his glow, not Carbon—nothing could quiet the fear in Rona’s heart.

“What did we do?” she screamed.

She felt Titus’s warm arms wrap around her. “No, it’s ok. I know it.”

Where does this faith come from? How does he know? Blackness is everywhere. How does he stay calm? Is he just placating me to the end?

Thunderous rolling sounds boomed and bellowed.

A line appeared in the sky. A dark blue. Brighter than the black on both sides and yet not strong enough to illuminate the inside.

But the line grew.

It widened.

The sky itself was splitting in half like an egg. Revealing something new. Revealing an ultramarine ceiling dotted with small yellow holes of light and one massive pale white orb that hung over everyone looking down at them. Illuminating the dark Dome in a faint blue light.

A cool spring breeze drifted the sleeping sun’s breath about to stir.

Rona cried.

In the hollow belly of the Pit, a clittering-and-clattering of metal hands, feet and claws whispered. Tingle! Clang! Tingle! Bong! Like ants rousing from their slumber.

The fiery red eyes in the dark were the first thing that came to Titus’ mind as the whisper grew into a shout of Thud! Bang! Bong!

The ground rattled underneath him.

Wild cackles joined the chorus. Cackles and screams. Cackles, screams and shrieks.

We have to get high. It’s the only way.

He grabbed Rona.

“Listen!” The crowd looked up at Titus. “Get as high as you can, now!”

It was too late.

Bursting from the Pits, thousands of metallic bodies erupted. Lean skeletal figures. Skullish heads of demonic form. Emaciated wings. Dangling limbs. Sharp teeth. Running. Gnashing. Galloping. Flying. Screaming in terror as they collide towards the Citizens. The terror in their eyes as they grew closer. Shrieks that were not wholly mechanical but devoid of anything animal as well. Even in their fear, they were a nightmare to behold.

Citizens climbed to the top of the hills of trash; few found themselves dragged under the cold, steel stampede. Their screams were inaudible as the spectral parade passed through, leaving red stomps, broken limbs, and mashed flesh.

The ghastly sounds evaporated in the distance. Survivors climbed down.

Carbon let Titus down, but he barely noticed. His eyes still focused on the dusty trail of ghoulish machines. Searching.

Where’s Cerberus?

He should have been the most noticeable of the creatures, and yet he was not among those fleeing.

Titus ran towards the Pit.

“Cerberus!” he called out into the darkness.

The response–immediate. “Run, boy!” All Three Heads boomed at once. Fury and fear mingled together. “Run for your life!”

Before Titus could move, the earth erupted as a massive white tube emerged from The Pit, an obese maggot flapping about, flattening hills of garbage as it violently crashed down back and forth upon the earth. Beneath it, spindly wires crept out of the Pit.

A black metallic vine wound itself around the leg of a Citizen.

Titus went to his aid, but before he could reach the man, a large metal hand picked him up.

Helpless he watched as the wire, without malice or even recognition wrapped itself around and with no care for the life within its grasp it spun its way around the man’s whole body who screamed and pleaded for help but when the wire realized what it had in its grip was not what it searched for it simply pulled itself into a tight knot eviscerating the screaming Citizen into a cloud of red mist and pink clumps of meat.

The scream left Titus before he realized his mouth was open.

It took a moment for Titus to realize where he was. It was Rona’s voice that woke him to the realization that they were on Carbon’s shoulder. Carbon, who was crawling, dodging and maneuvering around the living organs of the Dome purging itself from the cancer of any living thing. He had to think now. Focus.

Tubes and wires were all he could see.

We have to get above all this.

He looked straight out beyond the Dump and into the city. Tubes were now crawling around the building, looking like grubby insects sniffing the ground.

If we can get to the top of one of those buildings, I can see what’s going on.

He clambered toward Carbon’s giant metal head. “Get to the top of one of those buildings.”

The beast maneuvered on all fours. Ducking from the Dome’s intestinal sentries. A heavy, fat tube collapsed before them, narrowing the hole between the city and their crushing death. It did not seem to affect Carbon. Leaping forward, he tucked himself and rolled past the gargantuan tube before it smashed the earth behind them.

In Titus’ heart, he pleaded to something—he didn’t know what—but something greater than him, begging that the others escaped in time. The Tubes were now wrapping themselves around the buildings. Crushing them in smoke and debris.

That’s not going to work.

Titus’ eyes darted.

There.

The solid white poles of the monorail stations were still standing.

It’s not much, but it’s something.

“The monorails,” Titus pointed.

Carbon understood and leapt over a stampede of squirming Tubes to reach the pole. His massive metal hands squeezed the poles as he climbed with all his might.

Titus watched as the Tubes grew smaller and his view became wider.

Now, let’s get a look at our situation.

He watched as the Tubes, Wires, and Metal moved. Not random, though. It spread with deliberation. As though guided by something. It was not attacking the Citizens. In fact, everything seemed unaware of the Citizens as long as they stayed away.

We just got to get everyone out of the way.

“Listen, Carbon.”

With great effort, the Golem had reached the disk-shaped platform of the station. He was tired, but hopefully Titus’ request would not push him any further.

The Golem stooped down. “We have to get as many Citizens on the monorail stations as possible.”

The Golem grunted an affirmative sound. No more needed to be said. Leaning back on his haunches. Carbon’s already large chest expanded. His mouth stretched, revealing long, sharp metal teeth. His great fists pounded his chest; the sound exploded over the chaos with a resounding Gong! Gong! Gong!

His voice called out an earth-shaking, “Harooph! Aroo!”

Titus stood back.

He knows what he’s doing.

Something reached out and curled itself around Titus’ hand. His spine prickled a cold shock but quickly it became clear in his mind that it was not hard, cold, metal, or plastic. It was soft and warm.

He turned to see Rona’s fingers, intertwined between his. His eyes traced her forearm to her shoulders and up to her eyes that met his.

“If this is where it ends, I’m glad it’s with you.” Her voice was gentle. It cracked his heart open, releasing something golden inside.

Hugo stood over Terra’s sarcophagus. Nothing about this large, circular metal disk would make one think that a human was lying beneath it, but then again, Terra lost her humanity a long time ago.

That’s why it is so much easier to do this, Hugo chuckled to himself. He pulled a metallic thread from a spool on his belt and began feeding it through a small crack that split the disk down the middle.

The sweet and naive girl with the short temper. She was gone. Had been. Even before they constructed the Dome.

He remembered the day she left Zoraster and arrived at his home.

She was not sad. She did not break down and cry. She did none of the things that one would expect a woman to do.

Rather, she walked in, right past him. Determination. Focus. Like he taught her, honing that anger into passion. That should have been the first sign of her betrayal.

He felt the thread make contact with something, and with a quick snap, he cut it.

The first person to understand the beauty of technology. The person I gave everything to. You were my daughter, Terra. You were my best friend. I knew I was not the kind of man you would want, but that did not matter to me because I cared about you. And how did you treat me?

He plugged the string into a console on his belt.

This is what you get.

His plump finger tapped a button on his console.

The crack split open as the plate divided into two halves, opening up, revealing a dark hole of wires.

Come on out, you little bitch.

Steam gushed forth from the hole as a shadowy mound rose from the pit. The hot white clouds evaporated, revealing what looked like a large black tub covered in tubes and wires. A glass container was the last guard for what lay inside.

Hugo smiled as he peeked over.

A green light illuminated the shallow hollow. Inside a woman laid on her back. Naked. Her skin was a sickly pale white. Whether it was green from the light or beginning to show signs of decay was not clear.

Her emaciated arms crossed over her chest. Her breasts shriveled into something resembling two rotten onion bulbs. Her face is gaunt. The natural wrinkles of a woman her age were exaggerated, like stab wounds.

Large metal nuts stuck out from her abdomen, shoulders, and neck. Twisted into each nut a thick black cord that wound back behind her to some dark data-driven hellscape.

Her long black hair was now replaced with more black cords that seemed to stretch the skin of her face taut enough to slice off with a breath.

“You forgot my first lesson, Terra,” Hugo sneered as he pressed another button. “No one is worth your trust.”

The glass shield slid open.

From above, two long black robotic arms descended. They lifted her by the arms. Her body slumped forward as her arms were dragged up.

A crucifix in a cathedral of technological hubris.

This is who you always were. This is where your anger truly came from. Not from a fear for the children. Not from the injustices of the council. Not even against Zoraster, himself. No. You were angry because no one treated you like the god you believed yourself to be.

Hugo snorted a chuckle, “And here’s the last lesson, I never thought I would have to teach you.” He pulled out a small blade from his belt and, with surgical precision, made an “X” shaped incision in her chest. Putting the blade back, he then retrieved a detestable device, damned by the gods of technology. Anathematized by science itself.

A thousand black needles crowning a black rod. At the top, it sparked red. A burning red. A fiery red. The red of hate.

He lifted it up to the incision. The skin twisted and churned like a whirlpool. Then, as though a lance struck through her. A massive gaping hole erupted from her chest. Her flesh, her blood, her muscle, her bone, all present at once. Twisted within one another in a torturous orgy, forming a conical hole that led straight to the object of Hugo’s desire.

He stared at it.

He could hear the whirring of its gears. It had grown slow over the years.

With no one to maintain it, it’s a shock it lasted this long. However, being suspended in eternal slumber must reduce the need for cardiovascular activity.

Such information he would leave to wizards to talk about. What was before him, now, was the source of the Dome itself.

“Don’t believe your own lies.”

A massive thud shook the room.

Hugo looked up.

A white light met his pupils. His mind went blank for a moment. Stunned. Horrified.

Then anger.

No. Not when I’m this close.

The main entrance of the threshold had been opened, and the staircase leading down was manifested.

How? I sabotaged the main terminal. Even if Winsor got around the Beast, the moment he touched the console, it would self-destruct. The horn. It had to be, but his knowledge of technology was so limited that there would be no way for him to know the makeup of the console.

It had to be something else.

It had to be–

The thought turned his heart into a mud puddle of resentment.

Magic.

When the light had faded and the forms were clear, he was able to judge the situation fully.

Descending the stairway was a Unicorn.

The Unicorn.

The Seal of House Tao.

He could see it again.

The Pearl White Unicorn for the Goodness of Order. Framed with the Gold of Glory. The Red Streak of the Blood of the Valiant draping and The Blue of the Noble Heart of the People flowing next to it.

These symbols once meant something to him. When he was a little boy. They filled his chest with a puff of air. He felt that puff again, and it filled his eyes with tears. His desire to serve the Great House Tao, the king of Dento, and his son, Hugo’s friend, Clive, who loved him like a brother. The only person who did not care about magic and would rather look at frogs down on the river and stare at blades of grass for hours.

He loved him.

He loved Dento.

That was why all of this happened. To prove that even someone who did not have the power of magic could give something. Could make the world better. Can make Dento better.

All the more reason why I have to do this.

He reached his hand into the hole and, feeling the beating heart, ripped it out.

How far the Scream reached is still hard to say. There was a scribe who had recorded the claims of peasants as far as the edge of the Great Sea. They reported hearing a woman’s distant scream, but seeing as there was no telling where the source of the cry came from, it was assumed to have been the call of a distant Siren.

However, it did reach Nadia’s ears, for as the sound passed through her, she dropped a small clay bowl of tea on the table she was sitting at in Zoraster’s workshop.

What is this? Another trick? No. This is real.

It rattled through her like an earthquake. Her stomach dropped like a child’s when their mother shouts. Fear shot through her heart and passed as quickly as it came.

Zoaster was at his desk when the sound came, and at its arrival, he stood like a stone attacked by a wave. “My doom has come.”

Nadia did not hear him. Her mind was still reeling from the Scream. “What was that?”

Sullenly, Zoraster approached the table. “Someone has stolen Terra’s heart.”

Heart?

Stolen?

“I don’t understand.”

An exhaustive sigh escaped Zoraster’s lips as he sat across from her. “The Dome is about to be destroyed.”

A knife stabbed Nadia’s heart.

The Dome. Winsor. I can’t–

She leaped to her feet and ran to the door.

Zoraster spoke in a voice that made Nadia more aware of what a father is. “Where are you going?”

Whether it was a spell he knew or the spell a father has on his daughter, it froze her in her tracks.

I don’t have time. Winsor is going to die.

She turned; defiance blazed in her eyes. “They need my help.” She could feel a Spirit pass through her, into her arm, and up her staff. It felt familiar, like the Spirit she felt when she faced Urdhu. It possessed her, and unconsciously she smacked the ground with her staff.

The sole door in the workshop popped open, but it was not the Temple of the Elders on the other side. No. It was a dark forest.

Zoraster pursed his lips with bemusement but in a flash returned to the stern countenance of a father, “Everyone inside will die. There is nothing you can do.”

“Then I’ll die with them.” The words left her before she was even aware of what she was saying, but it felt right. It is who she is. She will not run when others need her. No. Winsor saved her, and if it means sacrificing her life to save his–that is the greatest good.

She turned to the door, but before she could take a step, it slammed shut.

“I will not let my daughter throw her life away.”

Daughter? What even is that? By what authority does he think he has to tell me what to do?

She turned halfway, the words forming in her mind as she spoke. “Daughter… Father… Mother… I don’t even know what these words mean. I barely understand what a man and a woman even are. I thank you for your vision. It filled in many of those empty places. Answered questions I was forming, but if it were not for Winsor, I would not have known that there were even questions to ask.”

She turned toward Zoraster to ensure he heard what she would say next: “The only reason why your daughter is here is because of him. For that, you owe it to him to help me.”

“You don’t understand–”

With that, she had heard enough, and striking the floor with her staff, the door burst open. “You don’t understand. My mother and my father want to control me, but Winsor–he wanted to free me. And I’ll fight for him with or without you.”

The fire of conviction, the flame of love, smithed the steel of duty in her soul. She turned on her heels and stepped out into the night sky.

Her father followed.

A bright full moon hung over the clear night sky. Stars glittered all around her. The vast colors of the cosmos cracked the blackness of the night like a geode.

What if this is a Dome, too? How many Domes can there be? Do they end?

A bright blue streak in the sky extinguished the thought. Schicksal was making her way to her.

“Is that your familiar?” Zoraster asked as he approached her.

More words she did not know.

She deliberately kept her eyes on Schicksal. “I don’t know what that means.”

His head tilted as though accepting that response. “Is that your friend?”

“She is.”

He smiled. “Friends are often a reflection of those who choose them. She is a Phoenix; they are very powerful, but, more importantly, very loyal. Just like my child.”

Nadia’s heart fell. She was formulating a better idea of what a father is, and her entire conception of a mother had exploded wide open, but there was something about this man standing next to her. This man who waited for her. He must have loved her.

She turned toward her father.

Schicksal landed; a light breeze puffed past them.

“There is still a lot you need to teach me, father.”

He grabbed her arm as though he just wanted to know what she felt like, “Too much, but there is no time.”

“You’re not stopping me?”

“Nothing can be stopped, Nadia. We are merely actors on a stage, performing a ritual. One that has gone on as long as the universe and will outlast you and me, but we will see each other again when our parts have concluded.”

Her heart was overflowing for this man. A golden liquid pouring out, mixed with both sweet and bitter, but the bitter only made the sweetness sweeter.

“Come with me…” her heart begged, though her voice asked.

“I will, but the time is not right.” He helped her onto Schicksal’s back. “But please take this.” From out of his sleeve, he pulled out a long red sash. He wrapped it around her bald head. “There,” he said as he tied it, “now your mother can see you.”

He held her face in his hands. It awoke something in her. Made her feel small. Made a word inside her. One she was not sure if she should say, but it was floating away like a bubble with only seconds before it was out of her reach to pop it.

“Daddy,” she whispered.

Tears poured from Zoraster’s eyes as he held her. “I love you, Nadia,” he choked out.

They cried together.

When their hearts had emptied into one another’s, enough for the journey ahead, Zoraster stepped off Schicksal with the respect of one who deals with powerful beasts. He looked up at Nadia, and she looked down at him.

“I will return,” her voice calm but the vow true.

His response was a small shrug. “I won’t be here even if you do.”

Her stomach pinched at his words, “Will I see you again?”

A smile appeared as though fading through a fog, “Those you can’t see are closer than those you can. Go now, Nadia, and meet your destiny.”

Nadia could have stayed there forever, and it seemed as though Schicksal knew, but time was not on their side. Raising her head aloft, unfurling her enormous rainbow wings and sprinting, the mighty bird took to the night sky, leaving a piece of Nadia’s heart behind.

The black sky was illuminated by the moon's bright white light. It was not fluorescent like the Dome’s light. While the moon itself was enormous and its light strong, as Nadia looked down, she saw it gave the earth below a very faint ultramarine tint, but it was a beautiful blue. The color of sapphires.

She could see moments when the land gave way to water as the moon reflected back up to her, shimmering like a broken mirror in love with its fractures.

The wind pilling and dragging across her face like smooth ethereal hands caressing her. Preparing her for what was to come, and she let them. Let them soothe her face swollen in tears. Soothe her body, broken by a journey that was approaching its climax. And then, without her knowing, as though an invisible hand reached around her head and undid Zoraster’s knot, her scarf blew away free in the wind, but released from Nadia’s head a river of black hair that shimmered in the moonlight.

Stomach aching with anxiety, but eyes keen and sharp, Winsor stares back. His fingers grip the hammer, which now seems so much smaller compared to this black mass.

There’s only one chance at this. I have to wait until the time is right.

The hammer shakes in his hand.

Even if I do hit it, would it even make a dent?

All that work. All that effort. Worthless.

Just like all those sculptures in his room. What are they all for? Just metal and scrap jumbled on top of each other. Not like what Hugo could do. With all his tools and knowledge, he’s left him to face the Beast alone.

But what is all that knowledge worth when you just run?

Even if all of it is worthless, my sculptures, this hammer, at least I did it. At least I made things. I did what no one else did, and I tried. When everyone else kept their heads down, at least I looked up.

The red eyes glow in Winsor’s eyes. There is nothing behind them, only the electrical current that illuminates the bulb.

This thing is alive, though, just like Vauhn. Maybe if I just tried to talk to it.

“I know you are alive.” It sounds more like a command than a statement.

The Beast whinnies with aggression.

“You are not a machine. You are real, like me.”

It begins to buck and holler as though it were having a temper tantrum.

“You have a name.”

It’s having a war with itself.

Winsor watches as the Beast screams and snarls, rolling about the ground.

It knows. It knows it’s alive, too. It just needs help.

“I am Winsor.”

At this, the Beast becomes aware of Winsor’s presence again. Steam hisses through the holes where the nostrils and jaw would be. Its eyes are losing their blood red and fading to a white glow, illuminating the shine of its long, flat teeth.

It seems less like a hunter now and more like prey. A wounded animal trapped, desperation and fear emitting a violent energy. A coin standing on its edge, a breath from falling one way or another.

Winsor drops his hammer and lifts his hand up to the Beast’s head, his palm up as though offering it a handful of water.

“What is your name?”

Its eyes narrow into small beads of light. Its mouth froths with something that glows a thick white.

Jolting back, the Beast leaps onto Winsor. Its legs crash down on his chest. A desperate gasp of pain as his back slams the smooth metal beneath him.

No time to feel the pain.

Rolling to the side, Winsor’s face escapes a heavy hoof. Another metallic clod as the Beast’s other hoof traps him between its legs.

Black metal gears, cold steel, and crushing weights stomp down on him. His right arm is his only defense for his head.

I have to get out. I have to fight. It will kill me whether I lie here or if I get up.

Pulling whatever is left of his adrenaline, Winsor thrusts the horn at the Beast, only for its hooves to smack it aside, twisting Winsor onto his stomach. His spine exposed.

A flash of blue light.

The Beast rears back. Its bulbous, bright eyes joggle about trying to follow the blue streaks.

With seconds to spare, Winsor crawls away. Looking back, he sees Vauhn zipping around the Beast’s face. Teasing the creature. Dodging its vicious chomping bites.

Strings of pain shoot up Windsor's fleshy, bleeding arm into his brain. Filling his mind with agony as blood tingles from his burning exposed meat.

I have to focus.

Breathing a hard breath, he clears his mind long enough to find his hammer.

This is my last chance.

He picks it up.

The Beast’s teeth chomp. Its head bobs. Its intelligence is gone. Whatever name it had is lost. This is nothing more than a dumb brute. Nothing left to be afraid of.

With a loud clack, Vauhn’s wings are caught between its long white incisors, and thrusting its head back, it whips the little Sprite into the ground.

Winsor could feel the ground thump from the impact.

No! He runs toward Vauhn but stops.

Pulling itself back, the Abomination stands. Its forelegs jostle in the air. Its eyes are now red. Not from some mechanical filter in the globe, no. It is fire. The fire of hell. The stare of death. The ancient dark that man fears. All in its eyes.

It has a name. Satan.

Cowardice presents itself as Wisdom to Winsor.

His eyes turn down to Vauhn. The fear, the weakness, the vulnerability, and the bravery it took to save Winsor—all hidden inside those small blue eyes.

No. I will not leave you behind.

He pulls the hammer back and aims between the Beast’s eyes.

From the pit of his stomach, Winsor lets out a full, bellowing grunt as his shoulder flings his arm, and at the height of the arc, his thumb flicks a small switch on the hammer.

The switch releases the guard, allowing a spring to pop, sending the weight of the hammer to snap forward, and with the combined effort of Winsor’s thrust and the impact of the hammer’s head on the chisel, the sharp black stone flies forward.

It rotates with violent speed as it glistens a small white streak across the platform.

A perfect arc. It’s going to hit.

The Beast looks up, but before it can react, the chisel strikes right between the eyes.

Winsor stares into the Beast’s eyes as they stare back at him. The sound is the first reaction. A small clink. The world stops as the chisel falls to the floor with a gentle echoing tap.

His heart sinks.

It did nothing.

The red in the Beast’s eyes pierces through Winsor.

It was a long shot, anyway.

Vauhn flitters away as the Beast’s hooves scratch the cold, black floor of the platform.

This is how I die.

There is no emotion to the thought. Just a simple statement. A preparation. An awareness.

He looks down at the horn in his arm.

I don’t even know what to turn this thing into, but it’s all that I got. It seems better to die this way than any other way. Throw myself straight into death and see what happens next.

Lifting the horn in front of him, Winsor charges; whether or not the Beast does likewise, he cannot tell, but he can hear a hard metallic clodding sound growing louder. Whether the heavy breathing is his or the Beast's, he is not aware. He closes his eyes, and with a thrust, he juts the horn in front of him.

At first he could feel it make contact with a hard metallic surface before it slides and enters into a soft, empty space. He could feel his arm merge into something. Become one.

Gravity dies for a moment as his body flies across the room, not violent like an explosion but gentle, placing him on the ground as though he could break.

He opened his eyes.

A light, a fire, not red, nor hot. White. It shimmered rainbows of cyan and magenta. It was more like a liquid pearl dancing into shape than a fire.

He lifted his left arm to shield his eyes and was greeted by his left hand, an old friend returned home. Whole once more, a scar where his hand had been pierced through.

The light was taking shape. Becoming physical. Taking form.

A bone-white hoof stepped forward, thick and enormous, covered in a mighty bush of white hair. Its legs muscular as though carved from marble. The chest bold glistening from a light that came from nowhere but itself. A sinuous white neck like milk poured out and draped in hair of silver. Real silver—as though spun from a spinning wheel. Each strand shone a divine light and radiated its kingly sovereignty as it flowed from an ethereal breeze that could not be felt by any but this mighty mane.

Crowning it all was the great horse god’s head. The elegance and fair beauty of an Arabian with the proud strength of a Clydesdale. Standing above its radiant sapphire eyes is an iridescent alabaster horn that drove tears out of Winsor’s eyes.

Every muscle in his body released. Tension ceased. The fear, anxiety, anger empty like a hollow glass bottle. There was as much threat here as there is in the arms of a mother and yet the gentleness only seemed to make this horse lord more dangerous.

From its chest, a warm and deep male voice boomed. “Rise, son of man. Do not fear. I am free from the Dome’s spell.”

Winsor rose.

In response, the horse trotted silently toward him. His four massive hooves pounded the ground, the fur spraying with each step like a celebratory spark, and yet not a sound reached Winsor’s ear. It was as though he was both there and not. A physical spirit.

An itch burned in Winsor’s left hand. A desire to know what this creature felt like, and as though he spoke his feelings out loud, the horse gave him a nod to invite him to touch.

He placed his scarred hand on the body. A warmth entered through him and overwhelmed his heart. A tearful gasp escaped Winsor’s mouth.

Everything he ever created paled in comparison. It was as though he was experiencing the very source of his desire to create. The force that inspired his thoughts and fueled his body to bend, wrap, and stack pieces of trash to try to create something that could never compare to the beauty that he was experiencing at this moment.

Then why? What is the point of creating anything? It is pointless; now that I stand before true beauty. Goodness incarnate.

“All is vanity,” the White Being answered. “To create in and of itself is pointless, but that is not why you create. You create because it is the nature you were blessed with, and though to you the weight of your work is emptiness, to others it is their cornerstone.”

“You can read my thoughts?” Winsor asked.

“As you are hearing mine. We are one, Winsor. I am here for you. As I was here for your fathers, and I will be for your sons.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Go’El.” At the sound of his name, a tremor ran through Winsor’s heart. “And you, Winsor, are the son of kings. Long have I served your ancient line, waiting for the one I was sent for and who is yet to be. When your father died, I was lost in the woods and captured by the sorceress, Terra, but you brought me back to life, Winsor. You have restored your ancestral order.”

Something old came rushing forth into Winsor’s heart.

Order. Ancestors. Kings.

None of it made any sense, but it still called to his heart, like a home he never knew.

“Who am I?” Winsor asked.

“That is for you to answer, but do not worry, you will learn soon.” With that, Go’El stood on his hind legs and lifted his head, emitting light from his horn.

It was as though Winsor stared into the sun for a moment, but as it faded, he could see the shadow of an object fall quietly down. At first, he could make out the silhouette of a cross, but as it descended, its edges became refined, sharp, metallic, beautiful, and dangerous.

A sword, its hilt golden, encrusted with red and blue gems. Its scabbard, an emerald green traced with gold.

Winsor held out his hands and received it.

“This is the sword of your fathers. I held it in secret so that Terra could not take it. Even with my own soul lost, it was kept safe. You will need it for what is ahead.”

Sword. Father. Soul.

More words that made little sense to Winsor, and yet he was filled with certainty.

Technology. Magic. They are not what made Winsor. This sword in his hands is his true self. A side of himself that connected him to others he did not know, but with whom he could feel their pride and love.

I am Winsor, and that is all I need.

Vauhn landed on Winsor’s shoulder, and turning to the Sprite, Winsor smiled.

He knows who I am, as well.

As though bowing, Go’El’s forelegs bent.

“Get on, Winsor, your final test awaits.”

Winsor stepped over Go’El’s back, and the mighty steed rose.

At that moment, it became clear to Winsor just how tall Go’El was. Whether it was the sudden elevation or his renewed sense of self, his mind was now sharper, keener than ever.

Whatever comes next, I know who I am.

“Hold on,” Go’El warned.

To what?

Instinctively, Winsor’s legs tightened around Go’El, who reared up and, with a booming neigh, his horn glistened, gleamed, and sang a piercing note.

The platform opened, revealing itself to be a spiral staircase descending into an empty black abyss.

Except for the pit.

The pit and the hole. Though the hole itself was now at full containment and 90% complete. With all the work done, the Sanitation Sprites would have it repaired before the next production cycle.

That is not what she is here for.

I should be in my sleep pod now, but… T-7.

Whatever he saw down in the pit had some kind of effect on him.

It’s not surprising; the Golem that was recovered was an absolute mess when it was lifted from the pit. It would have been discarded had it not been for T-7.

His eyes were wide and mad. What did he see down there?

“They’re alive,” was the last thing he said.

Alive… What does that even mean?

The empty blackness of the pit feels even darker, calling to her, seducing her into falling into its vastness, even from where she sat, its event horizon reaching this far. Like the hole in the ceiling. The kind of anxiety one feels when standing at a tall height, looking down at certain death and forcing silent the small voice that screams, “Jump!”

T-7 entered that abyss. Is this what happens for those who return? Changed.

That might have explained X-13.

X…

She often saw him talk to the machine inside the pit. That fool, whatever is in there, probably made him just as crazy. And that’s why she has to be here. She can’t let the same thing happen to T-7.

Scraps of trash move around the broken Golem. She stands up, eyes squinting. From out of a pile of trash, T-7 digs his way out.

I knew it.

Leaping across the room, she runs down the stairway of the platform.

You have no idea what trouble you could have got yourself in, T-7, but when I’m done with you…

Her anger burns through her legs, pushing off the final turn and giving her the strength to sprint across the dump, up to the pit, and as she turns to face him, she takes out her emergency light and shines it in T-7’s face.

“T-7!” she shouts, making sure her voice sounds as authoritative as she can. “You are in direct violation of Sanitation Code–”

“R-0?” T-7’s voice is not what she expects. It’s not fearful, caught in the act. It has a momentum to it. He leaps from the Golem’s shoulder and runs towards her. “Listen, R-0, Carbon was hurt trying to get me to Cereberus.”

“‘Carbon?’” There’s a ring to the name; she has heard it before. Probably another one of X-13’s nonsense identifiers.

T-7’s mouth rambles, something about machines that attacked him. A mechanical being called Cereberus. He even pulls out a strange, long piece of trash, saying it’s a gift of some kind. It was clear now that whatever this thing that infected X-13 was, it had infected T-7 as well.

What was it called, again? Cree–a–tivity?

That must be what’s happening here.

X-13’s disappearance- that must be the final phase of creativity. It must make you go insane until you are terminated.

The hole in the Dome! It must radiate creativity.

How many more people have been infected? There may be a pandemic.

The whole Dome is in danger.

Something grabs her by the wrist. It’s warm. Strong. Focused.

She looks down.

T-7’s hand.

Her eyes meet his. They are wide. Bright. Focused. What she thinks is insanity becomes clear.

Passion.

“They’re alive, R-0! The droids are all alive!”

That word, again, “Alive.”

Yes, they move, they operate, but… “alive?”

“Here!” His hand, never losing its grip, pulls her. Weightless like a sheet, she allows him to guide her to the Golem.

Was this the rush he and X-13 shared?

No, this is more. X and T were only playing with the things around them; there is something more here. He needed her. He was giving something to her.

He places her hand on the trunk of the Golem. It’s cold. The dry, dusty surface dims her excitement.

“Go ahead,” T-7’s eyes sparkle, “talk to Carbon.”

Her spine tenses. “We’re not allowed to do more than command them.”

“I know,” his voice filled with a frenetic energy, “but I think Winsor was on to something. The droids all know him. Go on and say something to Carbon.”

The droids are just machines. Machines built for ease of command, which made them seem more complex than the Citizens, but they are only machines.

She hesitates, “T… this is getting to be…”

“Please, R!”

An indignant snort from her nostrils. “Fine!” Eyes slit, dart back at the stupid machine. “Hello… Carbon.”

The metal expands. Not moves. Expands. Labored breathing, wheezing through Carbon.

“HE-LL-O…” the voice booming but labored.

She screams.

Her eyes expand, open, blank, frightened, awe.

What would Mother say? They broke a forbidden rule, and this is a consequence. Can you hide it? Is there a way to shut it up? Is there a way to go back? How can she? Her eyes are open. These things, these metal parts, these machines are alive.

Her body tells her to run, but as she turns, her head is met with T-7’s chest. His scent is the first thing she experiences: sweat, heat, salt, warmth. His arm wraps around her. She can feel his muscles squeeze her closer.

The fear is still there, but so is something else. She looks up at him.

“You can get in trouble for this.”

The determination in his face does not fade. “I couldn’t help Winsor, but maybe I can help Carbon.”

This is who T-7 is. Truly. He helps. That is why he ran around with X-13’s schemes. Not because he desired chaos but because he saw a Citizen who needed someone.

X may be gone, and there may be nothing he can do about that, but this creature is here, and he can do something for it.

And here R-0 has cared so much about letters and numbers. The way she groveled for the N-class Citizen when X was being investigated.

This is my chance to make a difference.

She looks up at him.

“What do we do?”

0416 hours.

Citizen R-0 initializes emergency directives.

Sanitation Center 4 Citizens are awake and reporting.

A small group of Citizens gathers at the Dump. Their confusion and suspicion met with no answer, except for two figures standing atop a damaged Dump Golem.

Some recognize R-0 first.

If R-0 is here, something bad is happening, but what can be a greater emergency than the hole in the ceiling?

Did something go wrong?

Their stomachs tighten at the foreboding possibility.

Others recognize T-7 and, rolling their eyes, wonder at what new mischief this Citizen is up to.

Now that X-13 is gone, T-7 has taken up the responsibility of causing inefficiencies, apparently.

And few went to their Portable Mothers to ask her to tell them what to think, only to find that Mother also seems slow this early in the Production Cycle.

What no one expects is T-7’s plan.

“You want us to break the law!” One voice called out.

“What are they going to do if we all do it at once?” is T-7’s answer.

The Citizens look at one another.

“No one has ever done it.”

“For what purpose, though? It’s just a Dump Golem.”

“What would Mother say?”

“What is the punishment?”

“X-13 disappeared; we could all disappear.”

“You think they can make us all disappear at once?”

It seems to the group that R-0 is aware of their whispering because, after a moment, she takes T-7’s place.

“I have spoken to the Dump Golem,” her calm but assured voice allows some ears to listen. “Its identifier is Carbon, and it needs our help.”

The Citizens murmur among themselves.

“R-0 says she spoke to the Dump Golem?”

“R-0 does not break the rules.”

“If R-0 broke the rule, there must be a good reason.”

“I don’t believe it,” a voice calls out from the crowd. A male Citizen with a pale brown complexion steps forward. “This seems like a trick.”

“What good would a trick like this do?” T-7 asks.

The Citizen shrugged. “Maybe Mother is testing us. Trying to see what we will do.”

“Then try it yourself,” R-0 calls down in reply. “Put your hand on him and call him Carbon. We don’t have much time. If you’re not willing to help, then get out of the way for someone who will.”

A grimace passes the Citizen’s face.

The crowd watches; the collective inhalation of every breath can be heard as everyone waits to see his decision.

He steps forward and placing his hand on the Golem’s chest says, “Helllo–Carbon…”

Silence.

R-0’s fingers slip around T-7’s hand. She grips it.

No one can see what the Citizen sees, but those close enough see his eyes widen, his mouth drop, his teeth shine through as he screams.

“It’s alive!”

A rope of electrical cords lands in T-7’s hand, and jumping off Carbon’s shoulder, he swings the cord around Carbon’s armpit. Climbing over the backside of his shoulder, he pulls the cord behind him, successfully looping it around the Golem’s right arm.

He looks down at the Citizens who threw the cord at him. They cheer at the sight of him.

The exhilaration of the swing. The adrenaline that coursed through him. As great as it all feels, the sound of his fellow Citizens shouting for joy gives him a taste in his mouth. Strong. Metallic. Like blood. He wants more.

His chest expands as he lifts the cord up. The cheers increase in volume.

We can do this.

He turns to see R-0 secure a cord around Carbon’s other shoulder. She turns to look at him.

Her dark eyes flash over to him. His heart stings. Their eyes lock.

It never occurred to T-7 the sharp edges of her eyes. They reflect her keen observation and intelligence. It awakens in him a desire to be more.

The shoulders shift, breaking his focus on her. Looking down, he can feel them lifting up.

Two Dump Golems on either side lift the cords, hanging Carbon in the air. His legs dangle from his shattered hip.

Judging the height, T-7 turns and looks down at the crowd of Citizens standing in a small oval mass.

I hope it works.

He lifts his hand.

A line that snaked its way from Carbon’s foot to the crowd suddenly snaps straight as the Citizens pull together in one united effort.

A complicated series of cords around Carbon’s leg tightens, lifting his hip up and aligning it to his torn pelvis.

The cords strain. The Citizens hold.

T-7 looks up to the ceiling.

Hurry.

A buzz echoes through the Dome. A cloud of small black dots seeps out from one of the ceiling panels.

“Hold on!” T-7 calls to the crowd. “They’re almost here.”

The swarm grows bigger, and their forms become clearer. Sanitation Sprites. They amass around Carbon’s side like a colony of mechanical bees. Sparks fly. His frame lifts.

Citizens begin to let go of the cord as the tension releases.

The cord around his leg drops.

The Golems lower Carbon down.

T-7 smiles. He can feel a warm glow in his heart.

Titus.

The word does not come from his mind, nor his heart, but from his stomach.

Titus.

Nothing ever felt as real to him as that word.

Carbon’s feet reach the ground, and the jolt startles T-7 back to the present. Looking over at R-0, he sees her leaning over the edge, the vibrations making her lose her balance. He reaches out to her. His arms wrap around her waist. He pulls her back. Her face in his chest.

She looks up. A glint of gold in her brown eyes catches his attention.

The sound of Citizens yelling fades into his ears. Joy. Excitement. Relief.

R-0’s hand touches his, and without thinking, he wraps his fingers around hers.

“You did something amazing.” R-0’s voice touches T-7’s soul.

I did something? No. Mostly, I told people what to do.

“You guys did all the work. I just saw a friend in need.”

A smile parts R-0’s lips. The first time he ever saw one on her. It makes his heart rupture. A pain of desire and a pain of sadness.

This is who you’ve held back, isn’t it?

Her eyes dart away. “I don’t know if this is the time to tell you…” Her voice is small, fragile.

His head nods in anticipation.

Red and warm are her cheeks, “I don’t think I’m R-0.”

A sharp wind of air enters his lungs.

Titus, that’s what it is. Isn’t it?

“Did you hear it, too? Just now?”

Her eyes brighten as they meet his. “A sound, like an identifier.”

“A true identifier.”

She nods.

“What is it?” excitement in his voice as though she were opening a gift.

She hesitates, looking away, and faintly her voice whispers, “Rona.”

Rona…

He let it linger in him.

Rona…

I could call her that forever.

Lifting his hand to her chin, he guides her face towards his.

“I am Titus.”

It took fifteen weeks of intense geological survey, soil tests, and microscopic observations of dirt particles; no one can quite understand the pain of arching one’s neck to peer into a microscope while seven months pregnant, but it would be worth it. Once the elders see what they found, they have to agree with the research.

“You cannot be sure of anything,” Hugo told her once. “The elders have always been suspicious of science. It was science after all that led to the Days of Fire.”

How? It’s simple; what is is. You discover how something works, and now the world is less mysterious.

But it seemed to Terra that people like mystery, or need it. Most people don’t know how crops grow; they just need them to grow.

Her stomach dropped. Here she was now, asking that they burn an entire season’s worth of crops because the dirt told her to.

It sounds as ridiculous as a bone reader.

She huffed a tired breath from her lungs.

The door behind her slid open, and a guard appeared at the door. Her muscles tensed.

“They’re ready for you,” his voice low, quiet, heavy. Her fists clenched. He heard everything the elders talked about. He knows already.

Waddling to the side, she tried to get up, but her large, pregnant belly was making it all the more difficult. She was in her final month now, and it could not be over soon enough.

The guard stooped down to help her, but she pushed his arm away.

No, I don’t want to see your face. I don’t want to see the pity, the fear. I don’t want to know what you know yet.

Placing her hand on the floor, she pushed herself up to her knees and, leaning on the wall, lifted herself to her feet. The guard stood there, mouth agape, bumbling about, not sure what to do for her.

She lifted her hand to him. “I can do this!”

His cheeks flushed red as he grimaced.

I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, but his fumbling is enough to make the mountains lose patience.

There I go worrying about others’ fragile egos as though it’s my responsibility to reassure everyone.

Following the guard, she entered the elder’s chamber and, climbing down to her knees, resumed the seiza position at the center of the room facing the stage.

A familiar knock as the door to the stage opened, and seven men dressed all in black wearing white masks walked onto the stage.

The lives of hundreds of villagers lay in their hands, and they still followed the ceremony. Resuming their ridiculous positions.

Zoraster was one of them. She didn’t know which. She did not want to know. It would only make her angrier to think of him sitting (or lying) in one of these idiotic positions. His devotion to their dying authority. No one took them seriously anymore. Not even the king. But it meant everything to Zoraster to be the youngest elder; they even gave him the title of Child Elder, though he was entering his thirties.

She suspected, however, it had less to do with Zoraster’s talents as a mage and more with the elders’ attempt to recapture the youth, a gesture that no one wanted nor accepted.

Yet, with all that in mind, the elders still managed the village's daily operations, which is why she was subjected to their banality.

Clear the mind.

Clear the heart.

Her anger was getting the better of her again. She didn’t know yet what their decision was. They may side with her.

There is no past.

There is no future

There is only now.

Be in the now.

A sigh strained through her lips, putting in as much effort as possible not to make it noticeable.

Zoraster knew her contempt for the elders, but as for the rest of them, she hoped to make as strong an impression as possible. There are lives at stake here, and these men’s egos are the line between saving them and destroying them.

Men and their egos. If anything caused the Days of Fire–

Stop.

You’re making yourself angry again.

Clear the mind.

Clear the heart.

Hugo taught her that. He had seen her anger and taught her to control it. Everyone else saw her anger as a danger, but Hugo taught her to channel it.

“Let it fuel your passion,” he told her. “Your anger will propel you, and how much sweeter it will be when they see your success.”

They were both misfits. Hugo was unable to use any magic even though he burned with the desire to learn. Terra was mediocre at best, but she lit up when Hugo showed her science for the first time.

Science, another type of magic, but knowable. No guessing. No trusting old men with their old traditions. No authority of the past on the future.

No. Science is knowable. It has rules. Clear rules. Follow the rules, and you obtain a result. Information. Data. The world made plain and clear.

A world they could make.

He had shown her his plan. His secret. His dream. The Project. The Dome.

“Terra, Sorceress of Dento,” the middle elder called in a deep, husky voice.

She did her best to bow in acknowledgment, but, being in the ninth month of pregnancy, her stomach hit the floor before her back could even form an angle.

At the sight of her struggle, the men on stage looked at one another until the middle elder lifted his hand to signal his acceptance of her attempted reverence.

“Terra,” the middle elder began, his voice utilizing the tonal mysteria to disguise everything about his voice but his words, “we thank you for your efforts in compiling your agricultural research. As is the custom in a situation like this, we would like to hear your closing statement before the verdict is given.”

Knowing that the custom to address the elders required the speaker to bow while giving their oration, Terra bent her neck to make as clear a bow as possible.

“My lords,” the word feeling dirty in her mouth, “thank you for listening to the data and research I humbly compiled. Please consider that these are the facts of the matter. The winter was particularly harsh this year due to fallout from the Days of Fire. The rains carried with them toxic radiation that polluted our soil. This year's crops are harmful to villagers, cattle, and our children. Therefore, I present my opinions humbly, lords, that we must exterminate this year’s crops.”

Silence fell over the room. Some of the masked men turned to one another; some fixed their stares toward oblivion, but Terra could feel a mournful cloud hanging over them all.

The middle elder’s voice sliced through the cloud like a beam of light. “Right, Elder, present your verdict.”

The elder on the far right is in a genuflecting posture with his right hand looped under his right thigh, the tips of his fingers touching the tips of his left fingers.

Zoraster had once explained to her that each pose held significance and channeled certain magical properties, but any further information was kept secret by the elders. Even if he did want to indulge her, it would have passed through one ear and out the other. Positional magic was utterly too ridiculous for her.

Like a sprouting plant, the elder untwined himself to his feet.

“The Council of Elders has convened,” his voice also using the tonal mysteria. “A final vote has been reached. In a tally of four to three, the council has decided to maintain crop supplies for the seasonal cycle.”

Terra could feel water forming in her eyes.

“Farming and harvesting are to resume on schedule.”

She covered her mouth, fighting every urge to scream.

“To avoid hysteria, all data on soil research will be sealed–”

Her face glowed red.

“–and all involved from researchers to the council are barred from any public discussion on the matter.”

Her fist pounded the mat floor as she let out a small cry.

For a moment, the decorum faded as the seven men watched a pregnant woman mourn the deaths of hundreds. The leftmost elder got up first and moved back to the door they had come from. The rest followed, solemn shadows preparing for a funeral procession.

“No!” Terra cried.

They turned.

“No, you don’t get to make that decision.” Tears streamed from Terra’s face as she looked up at them. The burning rage in her gave her the strength to lift herself up. The ceremony, the lies, the secrets, she was going to make the truth clear. “Their blood is on your hands!”

“We accept that reality,” the middle elder stated.

“But the reserves.”

“That was discussed and taken into consideration.”

“And? Is it possible for us to survive on the reserves?”

Silence as the elders looked at one another. An unspoken answer.

“Rest assured,” the middle elder’s head tilted in the direction of her belly, “that your family will be safe.”

Her eyes widened as the words unlocked the full truth. “You’re keeping the reserves for yourselves.”

A warm breeze whipped through the room, and embers appeared around her face. Fading into a sharp glow of hot red light.

“Terra!” a voice came from one of the elders; it was not clear which, but at the sound of it, she calmed her storm. The embers evaporated into smoke.

Zoraster…

The other elders turned toward a tall elder wearing a small, square white mask and a naive smile. His height immediately shrank at their unseeable glares, and without a word, he was the first to exit the stage.

Typical.

She now felt loneliness like she had never known, a rabbit surrounded by wolves. Her stomach convulsed as she felt the baby in her stomach kick. She doubled over from the pain.

“I understand that your…” the middle elder’s head once more nodded to her belly, “...condition can cloud your judgment. For that reason, we will ignore this transgression. I’m sure once you see whose life you saved, your opinion will change.”

With that, they left.

The pieces of wood lay on the floor; Zoraster stood over them, contemplating how they were to be assembled into a crib. While he had seen carpenters at their tasks, he himself had never attempted it, and even though it would probably be more efficient for him to pay someone himself, or even use magic, he found that since Terra had told him about the pregnancy, he had a strong desire to do more with his hands.

Besides, he thought as he rolled a wooden cylinder in his hand. It would mean so much more to them if it were something their dad built himself rather than bought, and even if I am better at magic, they can see that being good at magic doesn’t mean you cannot be good at other things.

He picked up a longer piece of wood from the golden wood floor.

This must be the railing.

He stuck the cylinder into a hole in the railing and found it was far too big to fit.

Maybe this is the leg.

Muffled sobs echoed from behind the thick wooden walls of the house.

He knew where they were coming from and whose they were. A part of him knew that he was building this crib to hide from those sobs.

There was nothing to be done. The Council made its decision; he was only to add one more vote.

The actual number, though, shocked him. Elder Caiaphas assured him that the Council would vote unanimously.

But three broke. If he had voted against the Council, even as a protest, it would have swayed everything.

He could hear a sob through the wooden wall.

His heart stung.

I can’t go in there. She’ll find out.

She always found a way to twist the truth from him. Her words, she could use them better than he could use magic.

The wood door to the bedroom slid open. Terra stood in the doorway, her black hair over her pale brown face in a stringy tangle. Beneath her large pregnant belly, he could still see the slender form that ignited his passion. Even now, greasy and sullen, she looked like the specter of a haunted princess, whose decay only accentuates her most beautiful aspects.

The sting in his heart worsened. What could he do to make it better?

It was his fault. His deciding vote.

How do you take back murder?

Maybe if he could finish the crib.

She passed by him, her soft feet silent on the wood floor as her hand glided over the carved floral patterns on the wall.

He avoided her glance, pretending to estimate the correct size of another piece of wood that he could not identify.

The phantom passed by him, and he sighed a breath of relief.

Perhaps I can hire a carpenter and pretend I did this.

A loud thump echoed from the hallway. It sounded as though Terra was in the pantry.

Good, at least she is eating again.

He found a thinner wooden cylinder, and after pushing it into the hole in the railing, it seemed either too small or the right size. He squinted at it, trying to figure out if he did it right.

His heart stopped as a scream rang down the hallway. A banshee could not heave anything more harrowing. Pain, sadness, and frustration ran down the wood floor to his ears.

Scrambling to his feet, he turned the corner and stepped down into the cool, shaded pantry to find Terra sitting on the ground, crying, in her arms a loaf of bread.

He held himself back.

This is dangerous. One wrong word and she’ll know.

He bent down, reaching out to her. “Did you slip?”

She slapped his hand away. “How many people did this bread kill?”

“Terra,” his voice dry, “you can’t think of it like that.”

“How else is there?”

“Our child needs to eat; we have to feed them.”

Her fingers clutched the bread, drilling holes in it with her nails. “And how many mothers and babies had to die so I could feed mine?”

He took a deep breath.

There is no argument that I can give her. She doesn’t want ideas. She wants me to feel with her.

He bent a knee to move closer to her.

“I don’t know, none of us do. You did your best, but the Council gets to decide these things. You did your best, you tried, but it’s not your failure.”

Her eyes soften. He pets her hand.

She’s calming down.

“After all,” Zoraster continued, “it’s possible nobody will die.”

Hatred flashed in her eyes for a moment. “You think I’m stupid?”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong…”

Be careful.

“...but, look, you said that we’re looking at a sickness, right? Eating it will make people sick?”

She nodded her head.

“The body is strong, Terra. We’re a strong people. Consider the possibility that people can fight the illness and survive.”

“That’s not what Hugo thinks.”

Hugo.

Zoraster blew air through pursed lips.

He also studied under Hugo. It was required in the academy to have a primer on technology from before the Days of Fire. The only reason the elders required it was to remind everyone of its evils, but he also suspected that it existed to give Hugo a job.

“Hugo may know a lot about math and technology, but what does he know about people?”

“Enough to know they can’t be trusted,” her words filled with venom.

“But Hugo can be?”

“He cares about the truth.”

Zoraster rolled his eyes as he got to his feet.

Not this conversation, again. The accusation. Her black-and-white thinking. Her inability to see the gray in truth.

“And I don’t?”

She hesitated as though the words that she wanted to say were trapped. Trapped behind what? Zoraster could not tell, but he sensed she was withholding something from him. It made his stomach hurt.

Whatever she’s holding on to, I’m not afraid. Just tell me.

“What?” Pride in his voice as his chest puffed up. “What were you about to ask?”

She glanced up at him. Calm, serene. Her black eyes pierced through his green. The dark pools reflected the galaxy; she didn’t need magic; they had their hold on him.

“Which way did you vote?”

He blinked before his eyes could give it away.

“The vote was four to three.” Terra’s eyes became darker like a shark that smelt blood. “One vote made the difference. Which way did you vote?”

It was inevitable. There was no way out of the conversation. It was one that would have happened regardless.

His eyes broke her hold. “I voted for what I thought was right.”

Please, let that be enough.

She knew he couldn’t divulge the vote.

He peeked back over to her. The predatory stare gone. Replaced was something worse.

Disappointment.

Her voice was quiet, and yet what she said next drifted in his mind forever: “Then their blood is on your hands.”

His eyes became moist. He clenched his jaw and tightened his fists.

It’s not fair.

Air flowed through his nose, stinging his nostrils.

What did she know? Had he known, he would have voted the other way. If he voted against the Council, it would have made their lives so much worse. It was the right decision.

“You have no right to judge me,” his voice cold.

“That doesn’t stop you from judging everyone else. You think you’re so intelligent–so pious, so much better than the rest of us, but look at you. You can’t even build a baby crib.”

He gripped the wood in his hand. She was right, for all the information he had, for all of his devotion to the elders, he knew so little about what was real.

But one thing was not true. He did not think he was better than other people. Truly, in his heart he knew. Maybe others were intimidated by his knowledge and abilities, but he believed anyone else should be able to do what he could. He believed Terra could, but when he tried, she would accuse him of being too demanding, too insensitive, too inflexible.

That’s what excellence takes.

But what is excellence in being a mage if you fail as a man?

What would his father say? Would he be as ashamed of him as he was with himself?

No, I can’t go there right now. This isn’t about that. She’s just angry that we voted against her. This is just another one of her tantrums.

“If we destroy the crops, we all starve. This way some can survive.”

Focus on the moment, press those feelings down.

“And who gets to decide that?” accusation in Terra’s voice. “A bunch of feeble old men and their pet?”

Now, she is just trying to anger me. Trying to get me caught up in my own emotions. No, I’m not playing into this.

He stared directly into her eyes. “You’re getting emotional.”

She stared back. The black portals into the universe became the gates of hell.

The pantry grew hot. Flames swarmed about her. The dark pantry brightened in a red heat as the flames formed around her.

Zoraster sighed.

Fire bellowed from the pantry as she stood up. Flames licked from her mouth as she spoke. “I wish I were emotional.”

He stood like a pillar of stone, refusing to give in. He knew the flames were not real. He knew she wasn’t even trying to intimidate him. She was wrapped in her emotions, and her energy was simply manifesting into illusory flames.

This is why you cannot master your powers.

“I see things more clearly now,” her voice, the sound of a storm. “Even my own husband is only a man, and we women are too fearful to stand up when we need to.” In a whirl of smoke and fire like a tornado as it all sucked down and in a puff, Terra stood in the doorway Here eyes narrowed, head high and proud. She stepped past Zoraster. “So, I shall leave.”

Zoraster rolled his eyes as he folded his arms. The theatrics.

“Where are you going?” An unconscious chuckle escaped from him.

She turned, all emotion smoldering inside her stare, “There are things that not even Zoraster, the Dragon Lord, knows.”

His eyes widened, “Hugo.”

It was now her time to chuckle, “Hugo is also a man, and it will only be time before he betrays me. I know what is right and no man will stop me.”

Before she could walk away, Zoraster reached out and snatched her by the wrist.

“I won’t let you. That child doesn’t belong to you alone; it’s my child as well.”

She smiled at him before he felt the sensation of electricity run through him. A painful vibration coursed through his entire body. Burning everything within him. He fell back.

“You men thought you could keep magic to yourselves. Enslave us with your secrets. What none of you realized was that there was something even more powerful. Science. Combined with magic, I will remake the world. No men. No women. Equal. Square. Like Science itself. No emotions and no pain.”

A pillar of fire rose into the air, and with a flash, fire sprayed across the room. No longer an illusion. Real, Burning. Consuming the hard carved walls in black and red.

On the floor where Terra once stood, a black scorch mark, like a black widow.

A gasp. Nadia’s lungs pounded against her chest with every desperate breath. The darkness fades. Zoraster’s face is the first thing she recognizes.

His eyes calm, gentle, healing.

“It’s ok, my baby, daddy is here.” She can feel his rough hand caressing her bald head as his voice becomes clearer. “You’re going to be ok.”

Somehow, his voice, the sudden awareness that he was holding her. It soothed her fear. Made her feel safe.

“I’m so sorry, Nadia.”

She realized that he was cradling her. Sitting on the stone ground and holding her as close as he could. He smelt of wood and fire.

Mother. Father. Daughter. Pain. Sadness. Loss.

All of it merging and forming like clay in her chest. With every understanding, a question. With every fulfillment, a loss. Her heart twisted as her mind made the connections that brought her to one truth she was sure of.

“Father…”

Nadia squinted, her eyes adjusting to the dark room. The guard pressed towards her, letting her know that she had no other choice but to enter. Passing through the threshold, she found herself on a wooden platform raised above the ground.

“Remove your boots,” the guard’s voice echoed from behind her.

She did so. The wooden floor beneath her bare feet felt cold, smooth, strange. She couldn’t stand the sensation. Every crevice of wood grain under her foot made itself known to her. Her toes wiggled to comfort her, but only enhanced the sensation more as her large toe barely scratched the wood as if the floor itself were inviting her feet to be cut on its teeth.

Goosebumps run up her spine.

When the guard was satisfied, he slid the door shut, the echoing knock her only company in the warm darkness.

Taking a moment, her eyes adjusted to the candlelight.

She found she was standing on a small platform that ended at about a step and dropped half a foot into a lower floor. Across the room, a stage no higher than the platform. All the angles of the room led the eyes straight to it.

Using the tip of her staff, she pressed the ground, finding it both firm and soft. Stepping down, her feet felt relief as the scrunchy sound of straw creaked under her. The compact straw lay in small mats that covered the floor and seemed to absorb the aching, swelling pain Nadia’s feet endured from her journey.

The dark-red wood walls, polished with delicacy and care, the spicy scent wafting through the air, and the soft candlelight from tall wax candles gave the whole room an amber glow. As though she walked through a fossilized tree.

Her feet guided her to the center with cautious steps.

This place seemed to demand respect.

Respect towards what?

Faces hung on the walls. Furious faces, serene faces, horrifying, and beautiful. Faces made from wood with the eyes hollowed out.

It was clear to Nadia that these faces were something one could wear, and that they were not to be touched.

This place hides its true self. As though all of infinity made itself present in this room. There but not. Hiding around every small detail. One wrong move and it would escape, desecrating this palace.

Somewhere in the pit of her stomach, a voice whispered.

Sit on your knees.

She did as her gut told her.

In front of her stood the stage, not much higher than her in this position, but that did not take away from its aura of importance. It was magnified, now, aware that something was watching her.

A familiar knock echoed through the room, and seven short black figures walked onto the stage. Though with their hunched-back bodies and uniquely shaped masks, they made them appear to crawl rather than walk.

Each assumed a specific position as though beginning a play. The center elder sat erect on his knees, almost a mirror to Nadia. Some reclined in lying positions that seemed less relaxed and more dramatic. Like wooden silhouettes of men lying rather than men relaxing. And even some sitting on their posteriors but their legs in positions that seem, again, more like they were projecting meaning than comfort.

Skald crept out from behind Nadia’s sculpture.

“Nadia, sorceress of the Dome,” the center elder began, his mask an oval with two horizontal slits for eyes, “What brings you here?”

She took a deep breath; perhaps the Hymn of Oblivion would be helpful to recite, but the words were not there. Something else, though, was an alertness, a sharpness. Survival.

“I am here to speak to Zoraster,” her words calm and measured.

An elder with a longer vertical mask, which seemed mournful, answered, “What could Zoraster do for you, exactly?”

“I was told Zoraster was powerful enough to help.”

One elder, a massive black shadow with a small square mask, replied, “So, it’s power you seek.”

Skald flittered out from behind the sculpture.

“Someone I care about is in danger. I was told he could help.”

An elder on the left end speaks, “You plan on freeing the children of the Dome, are you not?”

Nadia’s eyes stretch wide open at the thought.

Free the Citizens? Why?

The thought never occurred to her.

“I never thought of it, but if that is what needs to happen… then, yes.”

A silence fell over the room.

Skald’s wings hummed as she lifted off toward the elders, her head cocked in curiosity.

“Do you know how that will affect us?” a fifth elder asked.

Nadia could feel a tug at her heart.

No, I don’t know.

But, so integrated with the Dome, she understood the delicate ecosystem on which the Dome itself survived. It was why, ultimately, Mother could not let Winsor live, but seeing as there is a world outside of the Dome, why couldn’t she have just let him live out here?

“I don’t but–”

“Of course you don’t,” the sixth elder interrupted. “Your concern is placed only on your friend.”

It is true. How could she help Winsor escape without risking the Dome’s entire system? By now, others in the Sanitation Center would have noticed Winsor’s disappearance.

“I did not,” Nadia admitted, “to be honest, I did not know that anything existed beyond the Dome.”

“Then how did you escape?” the seventh elder sitting at the right of the center elder asks.

“I fell; I was about to be terminated, but I escaped.”

“How do you know your friend is alive, then?” the second asked.

The thought hung in the air; the hidden dread that she locked away returned.

It isn’t likely that he is alive.

“I don’t know,” the words dry to Nadia’s mouth.

The room grew quiet as though the elders had decided to show her respect, or rather, to plan their next series of questions.

“It seems you are not a sorceress,” the third asked, “and yet you carry a staff and rode in here on a phoenix.”

A chuckle echoed through her chest. Sorceress? Staff? Phoenix? She shook her head.

“I don’t know what any of those words mean,” exhaustion hollowing out her voice.

“What you hold in your hand,” the fifth called out. “How did you attain it?”

Nadia looked up at her staff. Even though it had been hours since she last saw Velldani it felt as though it were days. Her friend. The spirit of the forest.

“It was a gift,” Nadia replied.

“From who?” the sixth elder.

“Velldani.”

A collective but inaudible gasp was felt from the stage.

What did I say?

Her heart sank; it was clear to her now that they were deliberating on their final decision. The ache of the journey was now catching up to her. Pain in the small of her back radiating and spreading up through her spine. Her toes were snapping inside her boot, and the bottom of her feet felt flat as though they had been pounded by large hammers for hours.

Was it all in vain?

What else could she have done? Allowed Mother to take her? Allow herself to be terminated? Is oblivion worse than this?

“Nadia,” the seventh elder’s voice rang, “a decision has been made.”

She straightened herself, more aware of the moment than she was before. Her stomach was gripping at the next sentence.

“You are to remain here.” The seventh elder’s voice was factual, emotionless.

She waited for more. Silence was the only continuation.

“Thank you, but I did not come here to seek shelter,” Nadia replied.

“Are you denying our refuge?” the second elder asked.

“No,” Nadia rose to her feet, “but I came to speak to Zoraster, and I will not leave until I do so.”

The third elder, “You will flood us with people whom we cannot sustain.”

The fourth, “Sacrifices need to be made for the good of the majority,”

The fifth, “What is one life in comparison to our entire city?”

The sixth, “Let us not forget the fact that none of you even know how to survive out here.”

Nadia’s fist tightened. “You’re just as bad as the Dome. All of you!”

“Silence!” the first elder’s voice rang out.

In the quiet of the moment, Nadia’s eye slid toward Skald. She was floating directly in front of one of the elders, and he was completely oblivious to her. Plain as the day, but he did not swat at her, flinch, or even realize she was in front of him.

The entire situation ran through Nadia’s mind. The strange movements of these men. The fact that they stay perfectly still in these strange positions. They don’t seem to even look at one another. They deliberate without even talking. Could they possibly be… machines?

At this point, the first elder had continued talking, but her thoughts drowned his words; the fact that she was standing was not a concern to him. She stepped forward, and there was still no response until she finally reached the center elder, who had not changed in his demeanor.

Lifting her hand, she grabbed his mask. No response, not even an attempt to stop her, and with a pull, all seven forms evaporated, leaving Nadia alone on the stage holding a mask and one long black cloth reaching end to end.

“Impressive,” a gruff masculine voice echoed from behind Nadia.

She turned and standing before was a man on the later end of his fiftieth years, thick beard of brown and white with more white than brown, a ruddy red face that had seen much of the sun. His clothes were like those of the other villagers, but while theirs had a worn, hand-me-down appearance, his seemed newer. The leather that wrapped over his white shirt and denim pants appeared fresh, rich in its brown and yellow marble. His white undershirt was immaculately clean, with the upper sleeves puffed as though air had been blown in and tightened together at the forearm. Likewise, his denim pants were of a rich, deep blue as though they had just been dyed. On his head, he wore a large gray hat that shaded his shoulders and rose to a pointed top that fell back in a way that seemed meticulously placed to appear effortless.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Nadia.”

While this man’s appearance was inspiring, and as much as she wanted to be taken aback by his presence, she knew that she must remain focused on her mission.

“Are you Zoraster?” her tone measured.

His deep red cheeks squeezed into warm circles as a smile cracked his mouth, “I am.” He placed a rough, meaty hand on her shoulder.

Her spine shivered with goosebumps even though the rest of her body felt warm enough to enter his embrace.

The journey was reaching its end, the tension in her spine melting as she accepted the warmth. Her fear subsided. Hope in reach. The answer finally here. She wanted to roll up in a ball and let him take care of the rest. Finally, she could feel her desire to be weak overcome her.

Yet, the last strain of focus kept giving her the strength to tell him everything that had happened, and in a whirl she did her best to explain, in what simple terms she had, the events that led her here. Starting from her rehabilitation of Winsor, she could only get as far as her attempt to explain, as best she could, the drawing he made when Zoraster raised a calm hand.

“Everything is going to be ok, now,” his warm, deep voice activating something in her. Something that made her feel small and safe.

She looked up at him, her whole body stiff and leaning upward to this mighty man who was her last hope, “Are you going to help me?”

His hand made its way from her shoulder to her head. His eyes seem to search her face, or explore it, taking in every small detail. His eyes were a vibrant green, large and expressive, even with heavy brows and wrinkled edges.

“You don’t need to concern yourself with the Dome anymore,” he told her.

A stroke of terror awoke in Nadia. “That’s not what I asked.” Her eyes glanced up at him, squinting as she studied his eyes. They shift away from her.

His broad chest expanded to a size somehow even larger as he bellowed a heavy sigh. “Come with me,” resignation in his voice as he pushed her toward the door on the stage that the elders entered through.

The door slid open only to reveal black.

Blackness that reminded her of the Sanitation Center. The uncanny black that trash dropped into. The demiurge she believed surrounded the Dome, she entered it and found, on the other side, a room.

Heavy, massive stone rectangles spiraled from the center of the room, making the floor a dizzying pattern of masonry that erupted from all sides, rising to the top of the tower, and fading into darkness before Nadia could see the roof.

Shelves hugged the walls as they too aimed skyward into the abyss. In those shelves, multi-colored rectangles sat squeezed close to one another.

Nadia turned her head about as she walked through the room. A window above revealed a starry night sky.

At the center stood a desk. Glass vials, tubes, and bulbous shapes sat scattered across the table, filled with strange-colored liquids. Flames boiled green, bubbly serums in hollow glass bowls.

“Where are we?” Nadia asked.

“My lab, about forty miles north of Dento.” Zoraster walked toward the desk.

Nadia’s head was overwhelmed by the room. So much to take in, so many things she did not know or understand. It would take her whole lifespan and only scratch the surface of everything here.

She turned back at the entrance, looking at the orange light of the elder’s room. As harsh as that world was, there was comfort there. Things she knew. She could return and leave before the unknowable made itself known.

A last familiar knock as the door to the elder’s room closed shut.

Zoraster stood at his desk, pouring something out of a vial and into a goblet. It foamed a pale purplish foam before receding back into the cup.

“You’ve had a long journey.” Zoraster’s voice seemed aloof, focused on what he was doing as he swirled the solution, but when he was satisfied with it, he turned to Nadia with a warm smile. A smile that made her cheeks grow red. A sudden feeling of being noticed as benign as her noticer may be. He reached the goblet over to her, “Here,” his voice a thickly soft blanket on a cold night, “drink this.”

Receiving it from his hands and looking into it, she could only see a black liquid tinged with a purple outline. It wafted a smell that soothed the tension in her shoulders, which she was not aware of until now. Her sinuses opened up, and in a series of pops, awakening her senses, sharpening her sight, the goblet more present in her hands.

She drank it.

The liquid poured down, filling every muscle in her body with life. She could feel her ligaments popping and releasing all their strain, the strain reaching all the way down to her feet, causing her toes to crinkle and a cool relief that restored her burning, tired feet.

“I’m glad you’re here, Nadia.” A harsh smile made his words feel authentic, though it concealed something beneath.

As much as she knew she should still be on her guard, the exhaustion of the journey and the drunkenness of hope overwhelmed Nadia. “Were you the elders?”

A guilty nod is his response.

“But why?”

Zoraster’s chest once again filled up before giving a very heavy blow through his thin red lips, “The elders have all died. I am the last one.”

“How?”

“Age or guilt,” he stared down at his table, his mind far off. “I tend to believe it was guilt.”

“Guilt for what?”

His eyes flash up at her with a heavy brow, “Nadia, I don’t know what Terra has told you, but you’ve lived your whole life only hearing one side of the story.”

“‘Story?’” irritation began to settle in Nadia’s heart, “I’m not here for stories, and I don’t know who Terra is. I just want to know if you will help me. Winsor–”

“Winsor?” Zoraster interrupted.

She nodded her head.

“How do you know Winsor?”

“I told you, he made these marks on paper that looked like me; he stole trash and turned it into things I didn’t know, but now that I’ve been out here, I think he somehow remembered all of this. How do you know him?”

“I don’t, but I knew his parents.”

“‘Parents?’”

Zoraster squinted, looking at her as though it was the first time. Nadia blushed at the sudden feeling of being studied. His eyes scanned from the top of her head to her uniform before resting on her identifier on her lapel.

He stepped forward.

“N-85,” Tears welled in Zoraster’s eyes as he read her identifier. “What did she do to you?”

Nadia’s eyes darted back and forth, noticing his large hands reaching out to her face. Fear struck her like a deer at the sound of a hunter. She stepped back.

His eyes dropped, sadness, shame, anger running through his face. His fingers crumbled into his palm as he pressed his fists into his eyes. She could hear air suck into his nose and spit through his lips as he looked up, maintaining as much composure as he could, though the redness in his eyes and tears coming down his face betrayed his rock-like form.

“You’ll understand soon enough,” Zoraster said, facing away from Nadia.

Nadia’s vision blurred, her muscles lost all strength as though she were leaving her own body. She could feel the goblet fall, a hollow metallic clang. Her eyes closed as she faded into darkness.

After some time, he found that the horn could take the shape of something if he could make a clear image in his head of what he wanted it to become.

“I still say,” Hugo’s voice breaks his concentration, “that you use it as a weapon instead of building one out of your little hammer and chisel.”

Hammer.

Chisel.

Chiseling, that’s what Hugo told him he was doing when he described Nadia’s sculpture to him. A very ancient way to create something called “art.” Something older than the ancients. A tradition with no clear beginning and survives even in a world without color. Perhaps that’s why it exists. To add color.

There’s a joy to it. He could feel as though something in his chest opened every time he began creating something. Then, after it was created, there was the task of making it the way he saw it in his head.

A game.

A game he played with himself to see how well he could match reality to what was in his mind. That’s why he did it. For the thrill of finding out how close he could get until eventually the steam began to escape, and slowly he would begin to feel tired, and before long it would turn into a chore, and he resigned the game to this Psychic Game Master in his head.

But then there were those other times. The times when he won. When everything aligned so precisely that it even transcended the Psychic Game Master’s own vision.

“Why would I?” Winsor asks, “Making it is part of the fun.”

Hugo chuckles to himself. A sound not of condescension nor of dismissal. Something warmer. Familiar.

Winsor looks up. Vauhn sits on Hugo’s lap. The hole in his side is still there, but a ball of silver ribbons replaces the broken, sparking wires. His blue digital eyes droop. Whether the Sprite is tired or sad, Winsor cannot tell.

A small cloud floats into Winsor’s heart. There had always been something about those little Sprites. Something un-machine. A little extra you couldn’t put your finger on. A moment’s hesitation. A turn of the head. A lack of efficiency that made all the droids of the Dome seem a little more than just machines.

Hugo removes the plastic casing from Vauhn’s wing. As though emerging from a plastic cocoon, Vauhn’s true wings unfurl. A bright blue with black trimming. An electric cerulean glow.

“That should make maneuvering better,” a rare satisfied lilt to Hugo’s voice as he packs his tools into a box attached to his belt.

A joyous flutter is Vauhn’s reply as he dances through the air. Leaving bright streaks of blue.

Winsor blinks, and the streak turns colors behind his eyelids.

The Reclamation Center. The sparks.

The beautiful rainbow of colors exploding in the center of the whirlpool. Each spark a life. Breaking into a prism of colors.

He turns to Hugo. His stalky body crouches over a small terminal across the large, round platform Winsor sits on.

“Are they all alive?” Winsor asks.

“Every time they go through Energy Reclamation,” Hugo’s voice carrying a distracted tone to it, “their souls break down until they become full and complete slaves like that thing chasing us.”

Winsor’s eyes move up to Vauhn, who drifts down onto his shoulder. This gentle, vulnerable creature. The thought of him turning into one of those black oozing drones that he saw in the library invades Winsor’s mind.

“That’s why Mother monitors the trash, or why we can’t talk to the droids.”

A grimace moves across Hugo’s face. “I wouldn’t feel too sorry for them. All these monsters chose to become droids.”

Winsor’s stomach tightens as a puff of air escapes his diaphragm. Carbon? Vauhn? They chose this.

“No,” Winsor shakes his head, “they hate it here. They’re slaves like everyone else. They couldn’t have agreed to this.”

Hugo answers with a scoff. “That’s why I’m telling you. People want to be slaves, Winsor. Even the droids. You have no idea what these creatures were like before the Dome. Radiant, beautiful creatures. Powerful. Mystical. And they gave it all up. Why, Winsor?”

Winsor looks down.

Hugo puts a hand on his shoulder, “Because it’s easier to be a slave.”

Goosebumps run up Winsor’s spine. The thought feels wrong. Blasphemous–but not untrue.

“Freedom is messy, Winsor. It’s why few actually fight for it. I studied history and found that even when people had freedom, they weren’t responsible enough to keep it.”

All the Citizens of the Dome flash into Winsor’s mind. Their heads down in their Portable Mothers.

T-7 can embrace that responsibility, maybe N-85, but R-0…

Everyone else–what happens when their Portable Mothers are gone, and no one is there to tell them what to do?

“There’s nothing out there,” Hugo’s voice seems almost excited, “just empty land. None of you know how to grow your own food, hunt meat, or even sterilize your water. You’ll all die within a week.”

Winsor’s stomach churns. His face feels warm. He can hear a choir in the back of his mind echo Hugo’s thought.

Who are you to take everything away? To subject everyone to the demiurge's chaos.

But there is something, a ray of hope in Winsor’s thoughts. Hugo is proof of it. He’s older than the Dome–

How old is unclear.

But, there has to be some way he survived before the Dome. If Mother and Hugo exist, maybe there are others. No. There have to be others. Unless… everyone died, and the Dome is the only way to salvage what is left.

Hugo did say that all of their parents were dead.

Parents… What even is a parent?

Some kind of Citizen that existed before them. That much is clear, but how these “parents” relate to them is still unclear.

“Then what do we do?” Winsor asks.

Hugo leans towards him. The excitement in his eye draws Winsor in, “Stay, we can rebuild the Dome.”

A heavy sigh squeezes out of Winsor’s nostrils.

This again.

“The Dome wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Hugo’s hands exploding with each word. “None of these bald heads. Boys and girls, ignorant of what they are. It’s insane.”

What would a rebuilt Dome even look like? I don’t even know what the outside world is supposed to look like. What is the alternative?

Yes, he hated the white of the Dome, the bland blank canvas, but what is the point of dressing color onto it if everyone is still dead inside? The droids still slaves. Willing or not.

“Either way,” Hugo gets up, “you want to make a decision soon. We’re at the threshold.” With a small click, Hugo snaps a small device into a nearby panel. “Once I bypass the security system, we can enter the inner chamber and get the heart.”

Winsor looks down at his horn. The soldering iron collapsed back to a point. There is so much to this horn, and his knowledge only scratched the surface. This is something far more complex than he can begin to understand and yet…

There is a thrill to being new at something.

“Hugo,” Winsor calls, to which a gruff “Hrm…” is his answer.

“You said this…” he motions to his horn, “...is magic. What is magic?”

Hugo bristles at the question.

Magic—

The word itself always causes the skin in the back of his neck to tighten.

The Creative force of the universe. The force by which ambition is born out of. The ability to will something out of your imagination.

With that force in his hands, he could change the entire laws of reality. Make the world better than it is. Architect a world where intelligence matters as much as strength. Existence can be balanced in a law of equality. Of shared power flowing within states evenly and perfectly–belonging to nobody and working through everybody.

That was the point of the Dome.

To do what magic cannot or will not do.

Make the universe fair.

“An ancient technology,” Hugo’s voice dismissive as he refocuses on the security panel. “Not much is known about it, even by the ones who wield it,” he unscrews part of the chassis and plugs a cord into the motherboard. “It has something to do with creativity.”

His eyes grow warm at saying that.

Creativity…

I’ve built so much with no help from magic. I did not just will these panels, I built them. I planned them. I developed the software. I created this entire network.

Sure, Terra’s magic put this place together, but not even she had the creativity to figure out how this place would work and yet…

And yet, magic did not choose him.

“How did you know how the horn worked?” Winsor’s voice small–distant.

Because you have to know these things when you’re dealing with sorceresses and wizards. They think they know so much, but none of them could even begin to know how technology works.

Magic.

Electricity. Energy. Power. Wires. This is real magic. The Dome is a damn miracle compared to those old stone buildings and candles. I am a god compared to these people…

And still, they reject me. Hid me away in the basements of the academy, and even the one person who understood, even she, my own, betrayed me.

“There are people who know how to use magic. Terra is one; that’s how she built this place.”

“Built,” what a joke.

“I combined my knowledge of technology with her knowledge of magic.”

Magic did all the work on her end. Magic and I. We built the Dome.

“For my part, I wanted to make a better world, but our elders…”

An Old Man sits with Hugo, his wrinkled smile showing under his thick mustache and beard.

I don’t want to remember this.

He blinked a tear away as he remembered the Old Man’s withered fingers wrap around Hugo's rough hands. They were shaking. Strong, muscular hands, but shaking.

He is back now, looking inside the security system panel. His eyes drift to his hands.

They’re getting withered.

A sigh escapes Hugo, “...they wouldn’t listen.” He checks a small digital monitor on his belt. A loading bar near completion. “Then the plague came. Many died, and even more children were left orphaned. It was an opportunity to prove ourselves.”

“An ‘opportunity?’” Indignation in Winsor’s voice.

“You can’t let a tragedy go to waste,” spite in Hugo’s.

“We were your experiments.”

Hugo reaches into his toolbox and pulls out a device, a handheld device with a trigger and a knob at the end.

I’m not making the same mistake again, boy.

He tucks it into his pants discreetly.

“You can’t understand what we did for you,” Hugo stands to his feet. “You’re too privileged with a life of comfort to even begin to understand what we saved all of you from.

Turning towards Winsor, Hugo sees two red lights appear just over his head.

Perfect time to finish this.

“Looks like your decision has been made for you,” an angry smile crosses Hugo’s face.

You foolish boy.

The beast leaps out of the shadow, screaming an ear-piercing shriek. Winsor falls on his back as the beast hovers over him.

The loading bar on Hugo’s belt chimes a victorious tune.

You made your choice, Winsor.

In the center of the platform, a green light appears and grows, forming a glowing disk just about the size of Hugo.

He steps towards the light, watching Winsor as he approaches. The fear in the boy’s eyes. The beast ready to claim his prize. Hugo’s heart thumping harder.

Damn it, boy, if only you weren’t so stubborn.

His fists clench as he steps onto the light.

“You certainly weren’t an idiot,” Hugo calls out, “just a fool.”

With that, Hugo disappears into the black polished metal platform.

Ash fell and blew all around her. Her nose clogged with black filth. Her mouth, huffing–each breath harder than the last.

Skald’s small body landed on her shoulder like a gentle hand. Looking over, they looked at one another. Her large black eyes stared into Nadia’s with a soft perplexity.

She must not need to breathe, Nadia thought. How fortunate.

Another huff as Nadia pulled herself forward. The pain in her chest made her imagine her lungs crusting and hardening into ashy rocks like the ones that surround her.

Steam whistled as a powerful puff of hot gas escaped from a crack in the earth.

Is that what happens here? Could these gray rocks have been people at one time? Tired and exhausted, fallen into the ash to become a rock?

The speck on her desk flashed into her memory.

That troublesome speck. The reason for her outburst. The moment she showed Mother her frustration, hiding underneath. The questions. Questions without answers. If there were no answers, why did they exist?

Except that there are.

Hidden underneath the clean sterility of the Dome. Only for a small, ugly black head to hint at something else.

Millions of these small specks now descend from the sky. Covering her. Merging into her.

N-85. Mother. The Dome. White. Sterility. Perfection.

Meaningless.

What was it all worth? When facing something like this mountain. How long has it been here? How much longer will it remain?

Yet the Dome, her world, her perfect world so small in comparison. The city itself, even the tallest building insignificant to this enormous pile of ash..

And she had to climb it.

No matter how small she was. She had to climb it.

She lay in the dirt, letting the ash cover her.

What does it matter? Even if she does find this Zoroaster, it’s probably too late anyway. Her life is as meaningful as each piece of ash. Perhaps that’s why she hated that speck so much. It was a reminder of what she is. A speck. Falling ash, blown by the winds of fate, piling onto one large pile of ashes until the pile becomes a mountain.

Her body was covered in a layer of ash. Her skin had been growing into a lush reddish-brown, but it was now gray. Gray to black. Soon, a small mound on the side of the hill.

The struggle, the pain, the anxiety. None of it matters in the face of an immortal monstrosity like the Burning Mountain. What is the struggle worth when, in the end, she and Winsor would also become one with the ash? What is one speck of ash worth?

Winsor’s sketch of her comes to her mind.

Her heart flutters at the thought of the beautiful young woman in the drawing.

Who is she? Why would she be worthy of someone making markings on a piece of paper to make her face? What was the point of it?

To create, the thought faded into Nadia’s head. Create. So easy for Winsor to do. I could never do something like that. At best, my face only inspired it.

Is that all I am? A face. What even is a face?

The warm ash tightened the pores of her skin. The smell of burning relaxed her nostrils.

What am I? I cannot create the way Winsor can. I was trying to free him from it, but it would be like trying to free him from his own body. Maybe it is possible, but if I did, it would kill him.

There was something enviable in that. To have something so you that to take it away would be to erase yourself entirely.

What is it in me that’s worth fighting for? What could be taken from me that would kill me? What am I?

She sniffs a flake of ash. Her lungs contract as her whole body jolts out of the pile of ash in a panic.

Gagging. Coughing. Exhaling. Inhaling.

Sprawled on the ground, she arches up her body, begging for life.

“I’m tired.”

Skald drifted to Nadia’s forehead. Placing her small, soft hand on Nadia’s brow, she closed her eyes.

A warmth flowed through Nadia, followed by a cool puff of air that blew into every muscle of her body, inflating them with a small burst of energy.

She pulled herself up the staff when she felt the earth beneath her shake. It shook and even dipped a little. The muscles in her legs tense, waiting for another tremor.

It came.

Small at first, but before she could react, it grew into an explosion of dirt and dust as a massive orange trunk emerged from the earth.

She stared up at the strange shape. Like a long orange finger with a curved black nail at the end.

It retreated back into the earth.

Nadia’s mind raced, trying to gather together every possible memory to try to piece together what she saw. Nothing. It was so strange and bizarre that, even though her body told her to run, the desire to know what it was led her to the hole.

As she approached it she could see that not far down into the dark hole, there was something glowing a deep orange hue that danced into other colors, turquoise, jasmine, and aqua. She looked down into the hole to find an eye.

A large eye.

A big, round, wet eye, its iris an amethyst galaxy. It peeked out of the hole. Searching. Contemplating. Planning. When it found Nadia.

Her two small green eyes were lost in its one large round portal.

Its red, fleshy lids blinked, and what appeared to Nadia to be a large, sparkling tear poured out. A knife struck Nadia’s heart.

She is trapped.

It was not clear to her that it was a “she,” Nadia did not know. All that was clear was that she needed help.

She thrust her staff into the rock and pushed.

Skald waved at her to stop, but the eye, the sad eye in her memory, told her to push.

Little by little, bit by bit, rock by rock, it tumbled.

A thump beneath Nadia’s feet. A thump of life that reverberated from her feet into her stomach. Whatever she was, she was with her. Trying.

Stones tumbled off one another. The thump grew stronger until a deafening crack echoed through every grain of sand in the mountain.

An even louder, deafening shriek cried from within the mountain. It seemed to break the very mountain itself as the earth burst open in a blur of orange, red, blue, and green.

Nadia fell on her back. Skald tucked behind the nape of her neck.

She watched the creature dance through the sky. Its dark gray wings flap with a power that bursts holes in the ashy gray sky. Blue light penetrated, transfiguring the gray clouds into golden orange and pink hues.

With every flap, the creature’s form became clear.

A long, sinewy body slithering across the sky, sparkling in a rainbow of colors.

Her apartment. Winsor’s sculpture. The lights they made.

All those images connected to this creature dancing around her. Shimmering from emerald, to sapphire, to ruby. Its wings were two large feathery triangles that moved, less like a machine keeping itself in flight but more like she was embracing the air around her, embracing her colors, embracing life.

Gliding down from the air, she swirled around Nadia and Skald.

Nadia stood up. The creature’s feathers, glinting impossible colors, shone all around her.

One large purple eye on each side of the creature’s narrow head that tapered into a long, sharp beak that glowed a hot orange and red. Crowned with a feathery crest of prismatic colors and a bob that hung like a crown jewel.

Her long tail had two feathery bulbs glinting like gems as they flicked.

The two stared into one another’s eyes.

Nadia’s chest expanded as she felt a familiar feeling overwhelm her heart. She placed her hand over it as she stared up at the magnanimous bird.

She speaks to me, but not in words.

A word formed like a bubble from her chest and up to her mind, Schicksal.

“That’s your name, isn’t it?”

Voiceless, the great bird opened her wing toward Nadia, presenting her back to her like a royal entrance.

Nadia accepted the invitation.

Saddled on her back, Schicksal rose on her orange hind legs and leaped into the air, and with a strong flap, they took flight.

Skald held tight to Nadia’s shoulder and Nadia to the great beast as she ascended. Through the ashy white clouds, past the glowing red peak of the burning mountain, and up until they broke the breaches of smoke and death.

The sky was a soft purple haze. Nadia could see hints of stars peering through the atmosphere. Beneath them, an endless ocean of clouds illuminated in a soft golden tone from the sun’s rays, flecked with rose and lilac hues.

As she scanned the vista, she saw the sky's purple fade into a hot red glow as it neared the earth’s atmosphere, and as they reached the end of the cloudscape below, she saw a world so vast and undiscovered. Mountains, rivers, forests, and plains in the setting sun appeared as though they were all cast in gold.

There is so much to what is real. So much more. The boundaries of the Dome that once felt so large to her are now nothing compared to everything beyond.

Nadia closed her eyes to let the sun touch her. Feel its rays brush her skin. Smell the warm air of the evening. The coolness of the clouds sprayed her cheek.

She laughed.

The warmth of the sun evaporated as something dark and cold rose above the clouds, enveloping Nadia.

She could feel a cold finger run up her spine, but she did not open her eyes until she heard the scream. So loud it filled the infinite expanse around them. She felt her blood coagulate and twist in her veins.

She opened her eyes.

A black shadow eclipsed the sun, engulfing all three of them like a pebble. Its body—an ashy earthen curtain with veins of dying magma. It was as though the mountain itself had come to life.

Its head a sharp black triangle with huge orange disks. Hot and angry. They stared down at her, glinting with a hungry desire.

Another bubble of a word flowed up from Schicksal to Nadia. A soft and frightened voice, Urdhu! Urdhu!

Nadia tightened her grip on the bird’s feathers.

Urdhu’s sharp beak opened. Lava flickering like saliva from its maw, but shot down at the three like asteroids.

Schicksal plummeted down. Nadia hadn’t noticed until she felt her stomach lifting up. The black head followed them as the purple haze of the sky faded back into the grey smoke below. The beak, however, always near. Snapping. Screeching.

Holding her staff close, Nadia pressed her body closer to Schicksal’s as the bird soared through the spinning, dipping, and ascending until Nadia felt a jolt that traveled from Schicksal’s back to her beak, freezing her in place.

Turning back, Nadia saw the enormous fiery orange beak closed tight on Schicksal’s glittering tail and had to reach out and grab hold of Schicksal’s back as the momentum of flight left her, leaving her limp in Urdhu’s beak.

The great head reared back, dragging the small party, and with a great thrust, she threw Shicksal against the side of the mountain.

Nadia and Skald fell to the earth. Hot pain coursed through Nadia’s body as it struck the rocky earth. She pulled herself up to see Urdhu descend over them, wrapping them in a small, feathered arena. The head of Urdhu cast a dark stare at Schicksal.

The once proud and beautiful gem-speckled bird that Nadia knew was now a small and frightened worm compared to Urdhu.

A low but loud growl echoed somewhere from Urdhu, while Schicksal bowed her head and began pecking at the earth.

Nadia and Skald watched; it was not them Urdhu was after. It was Schicksal.

They watched as Schicksal pecked a tunnel into the earth.

Nadia’s eyes darted toward Urdhu. Her large orange eyes, squinting solely on Schicksal. Watching not in bewilderment, but in observation. Ensuring Schicksal continued.

She’s forcing Shicksal to bury herself.

Gripping her staff, Nadia rose and ran toward the two, but before she could even come close, an enormous black wing blocked her path.

Able to get a closer look, she realized that the wing itself is part of the mountain. Dry, dead twigs, ash, rock, steam, fire, all part of this enormous being’s body.

It’s hopeless.

Her stomach seemed to release from an unconscious knot. Her muscles untying themselves.

Urdhu’s head snaked over the wing and bore down on Nadia.

Nadia’s body did not flinch. If it was going to happen, it would be quick.

How meaningless is anything when confronted by something so vast, ancient, surreal?

Urdhu’s mouth opened, the fiery heat tightening Nadia’s flesh as she observed the world writhe into a hot, steamy blackness.

A dark fire is waiting for her and Skald.

With a roar that rang in Nadia’s eyes for days afterward, Urdhu pulled away.

A small bright beak was attached to her throat.

Schicksal!

Her beak snapped hard and hung on to Urdhu’s neck. Urdhu swayed back and forth, struggling to throw the small, colorful creature off her.

Nadia ran with Skald hanging on to her neck. The two raced across the mountainside. Where she was going and whether she would make it was lost on her. All she knew in that moment was to run.

The ground dipped, wound, and rose. As long as her feet touched earth, Nadia moved one more foot in front of the other, never giving a moment to look back or wonder where she was, until the edge of her boot caught on a jagged rock and she fell.

Off the side of the mountain and into the grey white ash.

The gloomy clouds swirled. Light broke through. Schicksal shot out, the smoky clouds exploded as she breached the crest of the smoke. Burning golden light glittered on her feathers.

Nadia rose to find herself once more on Schicksal’s back.

She turned, her staff as well lying on her back, Skald frightened beyond her wits but still clutching to her neck.

Everyone was once again together, but Nadia’s heart kept her from relaxing. The danger was still present.

The volcano boomed. Fire so bright grew beneath them that the clouds themselves glowed white-yellow. For a moment, they seemed to grow like a bubble before hot magma erupted in an apocalyptic column.

Burning ash and rock came down like comets.

Schicksal dodged.

Nadia saw a clod of burning rubble breaking apart. There was no way they could outmaneuver it. Not without Schicksal dropping them to their deaths to save herself.

She needed something to cover her, but all she had was her staff.

Her heart once more spoke, and again not in words but in feelings. A desire to pick up her staff.

She did as he was compelled.

Something was now moving through her, from her heart and extending through her limbs to her head. She could feel it begin to overwhelm her, a warm feeling of blue and purple swirling through her.

Eyes closed, she took the staff and squeezed it against herself as though she were a conduit, transferring the swirls from within her to it.

Her sculpture began to glow. Refractions and dispersions of light danced inside the glass like a prism. In her mind, she pictured the fiery debris evaporating into smoke.

Lifting her staff up, she opened her eyes to see the burning debris now coming down, surrounding them in fire. Red rock and fire surrounded them, and yet, looking up above, Nadia could see that something invisible was keeping the rocks from touching them.

She held the staff up, her arms exhausted, but her fear focused her energy to not let her staff down. Not for a moment.

The debris gave way, and finally, the deep, dark purple and orange of the evening sky became visible.

With the stars visible, Nadia set her staff down. In the deep, distant night, she could hear something old, powerful, and sorrowful calling out.

As though in response, large droplets of shimmering water flew by Nadia. It could have been the condensation in the air, but she knew it was Schicksal’s tears.

It had been several decades since a wizard arrived in the village of Dento, and the old villagers were not expecting a new one to arrive.

However, it was a leathery-faced old man, finishing a day of harvesting corn in the wasteland, who looked up and saw something. It reminded him of his youth, when he saw Zoroaster riding his wyvern, Mainyu.

His heart ached at the sight.

Could he have returned? It’s been so long.

For twenty years, Zoroaster had disappeared. What would bring this on? Either the greatest of tidings, or, and he braced himself because he lived long enough to know it was most likely “or,” the most horrible of omens.

More villagers had begun to notice the old man looking up, and they too stared up with tired, wrinkled eyes.

Heavy eyes. Knowing eyes. Fading eyes. Dying eyes.

As the shadow descended, it was clear that it was not a large flying lizard, but rather a large colorful bird, a young phoenix.

Whispers grew. Some fearful. Some hopeful.

“It’s a young phoenix; it means children will return.”

“How? There’s no one left to make them.”

“It means death is coming.”

“That’s old phoenixes.”

Guards, the youngest being no older than forty, swarmed in a circle where they could estimate where the creature would land.

Their old spears, rusted tin on shaggy sticks. Their entropied muscles, sitting on saggy skin, trembled as the bird came for a landing in the center of the village.

A flap of her wings and the dirt below swirled a small sandstorm. Dirt covering the glass bottle windows. A gust blew over an aluminum shingle from a shack.

As the sand settled and the air calmed, they could see a figure standing atop the Phoenix.

A woman.

A young woman.

A strange young woman.

Her head was bald, and though her skin was burned, it was clear she was much paler than they. She carried a large wooden staff with a shiny green glass orb on top. Some would later claim that they saw a Sprite on her shoulder, but others would say Sprites are only an old wives’ tale.

Whatever disagreements they had, what all recalled was how she descended from the back of the Phoenix as though she were royalty and spoke, addressing the guards as though they should have expected her, “My name is Nadia. I came from the Dome, and I seek Zoroaster.”

R-0’s heart flutters in her chest. She would grab it but that would affirm that the sensation is real.

Clear the mind.

Clear the heart.

It was now near midday and the hole containment had only reached sixty three percent.

That remaining thirty seven percent, an empty finger pointing down at her.

Now, this.

Her nostrils suck in a thick swirl of air waking her mind.

Her eyes shift to the large Mother Terminal at the front of the Control Center.

In large red letters the word OBSTRUCTION blinks on the screen.

An obstruction?

The pit never has an obstruction. Trash just goes into the bottomless pit. What happens after that could be any infinite number of possibilities. All of which never once occurred to R-0.

And why would it? Her only purpose is to ensure trash goes into the pit and recyclables on the conveyor. Everything after that–

Mother knows and that is sufficient.

X-13 insisted that there was some large droid at the bottom of the pit.

What did he call it? She shakes her head. X-13 and his droids. Where is he anyway? Maybe he can talk to the pit or at least be eaten by it.

She turns to the nearest Citizen to see everyone in the Control Center staring up at the screen.

A gasp escapes her lungs. So few Citizens take Mother’s wisdom seriously. Instead of focusing on the moment and figuring out a solution they get shocked by the light, the blaring sound, the large word on the screen.

“You!” she snaps to a gaping Citizen.

His dark eyes dart to her glare and her intense squint sends a jolt through him.

“Yes, R-0?” he stammers.

“Get me status on X-13.”

The Citizen fumbles for his Portable Mother.

Her eyes roll, no one knows how to do anything without Mother. They think Mother serves them but it’s the other way around.

“It’s not worth querying Mother,” R-0 states, “has X-13 checked in yet?”

He shakes his head. “I haven’t seen him.”

The words sink into R-0’s mind.

Citizens always arrive for duty.

She looks up at the hole in the ceiling. According to the progress bar it is still only sixty three percent contained.

What is a hole in the ceiling capable of, exactly? Could a Citizen fall into it? Without knowing it the whole Dome turns upside down and they just slip inside?

All the more reason to contain it.

The red light brings her back to the moment. Whatever this obstruction is, it’s keeping the Pit from generating material for the Repair Sprites. With every second it takes the hole could be consuming more Citizens into it.

I’m sorry, X-13, but I won’t let anyone else fall in.

She turns to the male Citizen, “Find me T-7.”

“You want me to go into the Pit?” T-7’s blond eyebrows furled in incredulity.

She stares into his gray eyes, the color of metal, clean, strong. She darts her eyes away from his.

“With X-13 missing, you seem to be the next expert on droids.”

A shrug followed by a nod is T-7’s only response.

“I know I’m asking a lot of you, T-7, but I have a feeling that hole might be the reason why X-13 is missing.”

She felt it before she could see it. Like a spark passed through her and into him, tightening every muscle in his body. He seems more frightened by her statement than her command to go into the pit.

He knows something.

He knows something and he’s holding on to it. Why? I could help too.

His terse face told her everything.

I’m not to be trusted.

Her heart thumps a dull thump. Her hand touches it.

I caused it, I know. He fears me. He knows that I cannot be trusted. What have I done to gain that trust? I spent so much time trying to catch them in their little games. They have no choice but to see me as what I am. The monitor.

But I am more.

“T-7,” she looks up into his eyes, not with reprimand but with pleading, “If you know anything about X-13 or the hole, please tell me.”

His lips purse, his eyes staring back at her but not looking at her. A deep concentration. His forehead unfolds.

“Ideas,” the word parts his tight pink lips, “but nothing for sure.”

He might let me in.

“T,” she begins, her expression softening, “I want X-13 back, too.”

His fist clenches. The pain, the anguish, the loss.

Her hand moves without her knowledge, without her permission. It touches T-7’s fist. His fingers unwind. He looks down and meets her eyes.

“We can find him,” her brown eyes wet and shiny.

T-7’s fingers curl in hers.

The Pit stares back at Carbon. The silence–audible.

Kneeling on Carbon’s shoulder, T-7 reaches out and pets his massive head.

“Do you know what’s down there?”

A groan echoes from Carbon as he crawls towards the Pit, “Dark things.”

The metal beast crawls down on its belly and throws its legs over the edge into the Pit.

From the moment the gap begins it appears to be a solid black but squinting closer T-7 recognizes that the walls of the Pit are made of thousands of long metal pipes. Tall and twisting.

Carbon’s foot slides onto a pipe that groans under his weight.

T-7 grabs Carbon tighter.

“No fear,” the giant warns, “they know.”

“They?” T-7 feels the word plop into his stomach as the shadow of the Pit consumes them both.

“Hold tight,” Carbon’s mechanical voice echoes in the dark.

T-7 fumbles, blind in the dark for Carbon’s face.

A thud echoes through his body as he feels Carbon’s hands lock around a pole and with a long squee, they slide down.

The initial rush passes through T-7. The force not feeling that much different than being inside the monorail.

Giving his eyes a moment he can make out the small amount of light reflecting off the metal pipes. An organized tangle of vertical and horizontal lines that seem to increase in mass as they descend deeper down. All the while small glints of light flash.

Colorful, bright, little balls of light. They seem to even burn into T-7’s own retinas making it hard to tell how many of these little balls there actually are.

Bright greens, reds, yellows. Small little bright circles.

Always in pairs. Always close together. Always focusing on them.

“What are those lights?”

“Slaves,” Carbon’s voice low and slow. “Must go faster.”

A clitter-clatter echoes through the Pit. Something small, metal and numerous growing closer towards them.

The sound of something laughing as though it were rolling on its head echoes.

The gibbering of hungry things approaching.

Salivating, sucking, cawing, licking, moaning.

Violent, obscene, predatory round lights growing bigger, closer, revealing themselves to be eyes.

Big, bright, angry, greedy, gluttonous, lustful, bold eyes.

They screech and cry from behind the steel pipes, teeth, beaks, jaws, fangs. White, black, yellow, bone and metal. Jawing and screaming, distorted faces pressing against the metal.

Something dark and bright swipes at T-7 but he pulls away just in time.

Hands, thousands, fingers of three, five and more. Sharp, angry, groping.

T-7 holds tight to Carbon. He stops sliding and is now climbing. Strafing across the wall, pulling away from the hands but they move with a speed even greater than his.

With every step T-7 can feel it a hundred times more. The vibrations pulling him across Carbon’s long flat shoulder. Sliding across, his hands slapping tight to the metal hoping to get as much friction as possible to hold himself in place.

“Hold!” Carbon calls.

He can feel the large creature’s knees bend.

T-7 grabs hold of the edge of the Golem’s shoulder as it throws its arm back. He can feel the metal muscle tense.

It’s going to jump.

Eyes closed, he curls his legs up cradling his entire body around the corner of Carbon’s shoulder.

The force blows through his whole body but his fingers and thighs squeeze to the creature’s plates feeling the acceleration fade off as they reach the apex of the leap but before the descent he could feel a sudden stop.

Its foot is caught or something has caught it.

Carbon’s shoulders move first, rolling down dumping T-7 into the abyss.

The sting of copper and salt filled T-7’s mouth and nose. The back of his head throbbed. Beneath him the ground felt wet and slick, yet rough and hard.

His body ached as he waddled his torso up propping himself up by his elbows. Darkness breathed on him, at least, what he thought was the dark. He listened.

A deep but soft breathing. Something large. Looming. Moist and stinking. Hovering just over his chest.

He tried to get up but something big, hard and wet pressed itself against his chest. A deep but quiet roar flowed out of the thing pressing against him. The sound vibrated through his whole body as though it could rip him apart.

T-7 complied.

A jangling sound echoed through the Pit as the thing backed away. A patt-patt like something with four large feet moved toward what sliver of light was left.

A massive black shadow moved toward the light. Each metallic detail reflected just enough to be comprehensible.

First, six little red orbs eyes appeared, glowing the eyes hiding in the Pit, but as it entered the light they became six black eyes. Six black eyes mounted on three massive metal heads, with three gigantic round mouths, and two fat, sharp tusks jutting from each maw.

“Cerberus?” T-7 asked.

The metal monster roared a sound he recognized. The roars he heard outside the Pit so many times. Here, now, he felt insignificant to something so powerful but as it announced its presence a loud whizzing sound stopped its roar.

Its middle head shook in frustration, hacking and coughing.

The obstruction, T-7 thought. It’s caught in its throat.

“Can you talk?” his voice, less cautious and more observant.

The middle head thrust itself forward. A growl escaped, not aggressive or threatening but rather to show.

Squinting into the mouth he could make out something dark and bent lodged deep within its throat. Caught between two sharp metal propellers. Pulling his focus back T-7 realized that its entire mouth was full of hundreds of sharp metallic propellers. Grinding tracks, chopping knives, slicing propellers, shredding gears.

His throat dried up, “If I get it out, do you promise not to swallow me?”

Cerberus grunted an ambiguous sound back.

T-7’s eyes moved around the Pit. He could see the same small glowing eyes from before yet he could sense less hunger and aggression replaced with fear.

What would X do right now?

He looked at the obstruction in Cerberus’ mouth. It seemed to cause discomfort in the thing. He recalled watching X-13 pull the Trash Goblin out of the pile.

That was just like him, a Trash Goblin simply removes unusable pieces and collects them in their burrows. If it had fallen in the Pit it would either have been eaten by this thing or probably become one of these other things. Perhaps that’s why this place feels so angry. Forgotten, forsaken, left behind things wanting to be seen again.

He knew what X would do.

The air stank of something damp and wet but T-7 breathed it in until he could feel clean air fill his lungs. Gripping his fist he walked forward toward the mouth.

The beast’s metal lips expand, its teeth protruding even further out. Leaning its head down it envelopes T-7 in its fangs.

Every movement has to be perfect, T-7 thought.

Saws, blades, edges, points all seem to focus on him. His eyes focused on any smooth surface, flattening his arms to fit between grooves, ignoring the small scrapes, scratches and jabs until he reached the dark gray object.

It was a dark but smooth object. Like a metal blade that had been purposefully bent in the middle. With a firm grasp on it T-7 threw all of his strength into his shoulder and was answered with pain as he nearly pulled his deltoid while the obstruction stayed unmoved.

T-7 rubbed his shoulder and cracked his neck.

Strength alone might not do it but maybe weight could.

Placing both his hands on both sides of the corner, he hung on the obstruction.

A metallic thung! as it slid only slightly.

Frustrated T-7 used whatever strength he could to pull it down when he heard a growl humming from deep inside.

Propellers and grinders begin to whirl.

His eyes pop open.

Feet dangling, arms tiring, heart racing T-7 pulls down and with a slow grind from one of the stuck propellers he fell to the ground an, “Oof!” as the wind knocks out of him. The dark obstruction his his arms.

A mighty roar echoes through the Pit.

“Finally!” Cerberus, his voice deep and powerful.

From the ground T-7 stares up in awe at the powerful creature, his three heads shaking as his body moves with pride and majesty.

“You’re Cerberus, aren’t you?” T-7 asked.

“And you must know Winsor,” the middle head replied.

At the sound of his name T-7 jumped to his feet, “You know where he is?”

“We know more than that Titus, son of Paul,” the right head answered.

The word pierced through him, Titus.

Titus.

It sounded familiar.

Is that like Winsor? A word instead of an identifier?

“What is Titus?” T-7 asked.

“You,” the left head answered in a humored voice, “keep it in mind but keep it secret.”

“Why?”

“The Dome is in danger,” the left head answered.

“A great evil is loose,” the right head now.

“One head that knows his name can do more than all the empty heads in the world,” the middle head concluded.

“Take this,” the middle head motioned to the obstruction in T-7’s hand.

He looked at it. A shiny black blade bent down the middle giving it a V-shape. It was light, he swung it and found that it sliced through the air with ease with a deep whistling tone.

“What am I to do with it?”

“When the time comes,” the right head began.

“Aim for the heart,” the left head followed.

“And throw it,” the middle head finished.

Then turning to the small glimmering eyes in the dark, Cerberus’ chest expanded, revealing a frame even larger than Titus had first assumed. All three heads roared in unison and Titus could tell that many of the eyes were cringing.

“Listen, slaves,” all three heads now in unison, “this man is under our protection. Take him above. If any of you lay a careless or malicious finger on him we will answer in kind.”

From behind the pipes and wires long skeletal metallic arms and hands reached out. They grabbed Titus ever so gently and yet with the multitude of hands on him passing him from one to another he felt almost weightless.

Cerberus grew smaller as Titus felt the light of the Dome touch his head.

This was my fault.

The makeshift pulley lifts the gigantic hunk of metal that was once Carbon.

T-7 nowhere in sight.

There is no past.

And yet X-13 is still missing, the hole in the ceiling is still there, and T-7…

T-7.

The past has to be real because no one else had ever died on her shift. She knows that because she also knows this feeling in her heart, in her stomach is new.

There is no future.

And yet something in R-0 tells her that when she wakes up from her sleeping pod tomorrow X-13 will still be missing, the hole in the ceiling will still be there, and T-7 will still be dead.

There is only now.

What does that even mean, anymore? Now is starting to feel like the only thing that isn’t real. Just a mix of the past and the future. Fleeting with every breath she takes, the only thing making it real being the memories and the hopes.

“R-0?” a voice from behind.

Her eyes expand as she recognizes the voice.

It can’t be.

She turns.

T-7, covered in some form of black substance, both wet and dry, like oil but somehow, older. Red blood caked in the back of his head, a vibrant contrast to the muddy black all over.

“T-7!” her voice cracks, “That fall, I thought you–”

“Where are they taking Carbon?”

With those words he plunged a metal rod through her chest.

Carbon? Of course, he scares the Sanitation Center and leaves me with these–feelings and what does he care about? A Dump Golem.

A faint huff hissed through her nostrils. “It’s going to be torn apart. It’s broken.”

Lifting her toes she turns herself on her heels flinging her arms with indignation but before her left hand could finish its arc it stopped.

Something warm, soft, firm has her by the wrist.

She looks down.

A gasp.

His pink squared fist wrapped around her pale yellow wrist.

The warmth of his hand, the shock of the moment flows through her like electricity. Warming her entire body.

“They’re alive,” T-7’s voice splashing cold water on her.

If only he knew the wave of emotions he causes me. I will always hate you for it T-7.

And even still part of her wants to feel all of it again. A rush like nothing that can be experienced in the Dome.

She pulls away, her disdain intentionally visible.

“Go,” is all she can muster out of her lips without falling apart.

“But–”

This damn uncooperative bolt. If he only knew what he was doing to me.

“Now!”

A look of anxiety on his face and she realized that there was something else he knew, something he’s keeping secret.

“Don’t do anything to him,” T-7 warns.

He darts away in a blur of nervousness. Leaving R-0 with the Dump Golem.

She turns to it. It’s gears groaning, hydraulics gasping, an aching roar with every failed attempt at movement.

All of this to be expected from any functional machine that barely escaped an encounter with a trash compactor.

Inspecting the Golem’s shell proved much of the same, areas crushed, ripped and chopped, however, a repeating pattern of slashes that seemed to come from something long and sharp causing both scratches and gashes seemed like something the trash compactor would not create.

The trash compactor destroys, chews up into something fine to be reused.

This seems more like torture. Not destruction but purposeful cause to harm.

She turns her head towards the Golem’s front, where his two black sensors observe and for a moment she can understand how X-13 could see them as eyes.

Sad eyes.

High above the hot pool Winsor and Hugo follow a catwalk. Hugo striding with purpose as Winsor stares down the catwalk at the small orange sun.

Just above his head, the pit, the dump, T-7, R-0. Everything he had always known and yet this side completely unknown to him or anyone else.

“All the shredded metal goes through here,” Hugo began pointing at the giant thick metal pipe overhead, “melted down and reforged into new parts.”

A loud groaning.

Winsor smiles. A familiar sound.

“Is that Cerberus?”

Hugo’s head turns back to Winsor, “You’ve been talking to the droids, haven’t you?”

Winsor shrugs, “Who else would?”

“No wonder you were in prison. If the droids become aware they become more difficult to control.”

Aware?

Winsor’s stomach churns.

The catwalk ends at a metal pole.

“The Dome was built to be self-sufficient,” he wraps his foot around the pole and slides down.

Winsor follows.

Flickers of small lights slide around him as he descends. A shock runs up his knees as he hits a solid metal floor with a clang. Winsor scrunches himself down to slide under wires and pipes.

“For that reason,” Hugo’s voice echoes just ahead of him, “the guts of the Dome, as I like to call it, wasn’t designed with human mobility in mind.”

Squeezing out of a tight spot Winsor plops to the ground of a small chamber. A high ceiling and a long slab of metal in front of him.

“Lucky for us, I designed this place so I could get around. As a precaution.” Hugo helps Winsor up.

Investigating the slab for a moment Winsor notices the frame around it. This wasn’t a solid thick wall of steel. This was a door.

“Our first gate,” Hugo announces, “Dome Central is on the other side. It’s getting in, that’s the problem.”

“You built it. What’s the problem?”

“That,” Hugo points a thick round finger at two strange holes that sit next to the wall. “Terra removed the entry code pad. She probably wanted to make sure I couldn’t get in if I escaped, but we have something she didn’t expect.”

“What’s that?” Winsor asks. His eyes pop open as Hugo tugs his horned arm forward.

“This.”

Hugo pulls Winsor to the small holes and aims the horn at them.

Winsor holds his arm forward, aiming it between the two sockets. He moves it closer. A tink echoes through the small chamber as Winsor’s arm taps the metal wall. He taps again a little more deliberately.

Nothing.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Winsor shrugs, “I’ve been figuring this thing out as I go.”

Hugo’s face wrinkles before an explosive, “Bah! I knew it would be too easy.” His hip bumps Winsor over as he squats in front of the holes. Pulling a metal box out of his pocket he begins unfolding little metal hinges revealing a small work station with foldable tools.

Leaning his shoulder against the wall Winsor watches the short man squint his beady little eyes at the holes.

Regardless of his abrasive behavior, stern demeanor and ugly visage there was much to admire.

If only I had a small amount of his knowledge.

Hugo pulls out a small edged tool and works it around the plate the holes are punched into. Like handling a thin plate of glass he slides it out revealing a large cable attached to the back end of the holes.

Winsor folds his arms. Something ugly rises in his chest.

So much knowledge Hugo possesses. Words that Winsor never heard off, skills that he never considered existed. Even if he did leave the Dome, what is on the outside? Could he handle it?

What if there is nothing. Hugo said something about Days of Fire, dead civilizations, things that don’t make sense but point to something.

Maybe Hugo is right. Maybe the Dome is everything we need. Maybe there might not be “nothing” but it’s possible that it’s just as good as nothing.

In that way Mother might be right. She is everything because there is no hope for survival without her.

His heart trembles. He closes his eyes.

I need to focus on what’s going on right now, Winsor thought. Once I know the truth maybe the choice will be clear.

Turning away from the door Winsor begins looking at the other walls. A giant transparent tube full of broken droid parts. Arms, legs, heads, sprites, goblins, and some droids he had never seen move down in a slow glub, glub motion.

Watching the mass of metal limbs a small silhouette tumbles and turns, the torso of a Sanitation Sprite with the number 13 printed on the back.

Could it be?

Winsor steps past Hugo, too preoccupied to notice him cross the room and tap on the thick plastic tube. The torso turns. Two familiar digital lids inside a black screen encased in a white oval.

“Vauhn?”

The Sprite’s eyes open and with another glub Vauhn is sucked further down the tube.

“Vauhn!” Winsor slaps his palm against the plastic, unable to touch the little Sprite.

His little black hand reaches up, their hands connecting though separated by plastic. Winsor hears Vauhn’s voice in his stomach.

I’m sorry.

GLUB!

Vauhn disappears.

“Where does this tube go?”

Hugo points a sharp-edged tool at a hole on the opposite side of the chamber, unaware of what is happening, “Over there.”

Squeezing through Winsor’s foot catches onto a skinny metal pipe. He yanks the rest of himself out and looks down to see a black whirlpool of dead droids tumbling towards a glowing ball of light at the center. Its color changes from orange to teal to magenta as it absorbs the droids with a thump that shocks through his body. Hundreds of tubes encircle the pool vomiting out droid parts in thick explosive coughs.

Winsor leaps off the wall and onto the edge of the whirlpool, a platform that only seems wide enough for a single occupant. Probably something Hugo designed.

Striding along the edge Winsor searches for the Vauhn.

“What are you doing down there?”

Winsor turns back to see Hugo’s head poking out from the hole. He waddles down the wall with surprising agility but huffing as he makes it to Winsor.

Winsor eyes searching for any sign of Vauhn, “What is this?”

“Energy Reclamation,” Hugo’s calm demeanor–a stark contrast to Winsor’s anxiety, “Broken and self-aware droids are sent down here to reuse their energy.”

There was that word again, aware. Self-aware, even. Is Vauhn aware? Is Carbon aware? Is Cerberus aware? They are different from the other droids. They respond in a way that is unique to them. As though they have their own way of communicating, observing, even thinking. They didn’t just understand commands, they understand him.

Is that aware?

Then being self-aware might mean being able to understand yourself.

“Does that mean–” Winsor stomach seizes. “Are the droids alive?”

A grave shadow passes over Hugo’s face, “That’s why you don’t talk to them. Best not to think about it.” He backs away, returning to the wall, “We have more important things to worry about.”

A flicker of blue light catches Winsor’s eye. Vauhn struggles against the vacuum of the whirlpool.

Winsor runs down the path following him.

What can I do? He’s broken anyway. Just like me. Both of us don’t fit in here.

He sees Vauhn struggle, injured, a vain effort but still struggling.

All the more reason I have to help him.

A loud metallic clang bursts through the dark room, it’s sound wave sending a shock even stronger than the glowing orb. Winsor falls back.

Two red glowing eyes cast their stare down at him. The long sharp snout with two large incisors, stretching back into its head making two round empty holes ending with massive white molars.

The Beast’s metal feet only a few inches from Winsor march with a slow clop! Clop! Steam hisses from the empty holes on the side of its face.

From the corner of his eye Winsor can see Vauhn continuing to fight the current. Winsor’s fear fading into something red and hot.

As though moving through a dream Winsor leaps off his back and dives into the whirlpool.

The heavy metal pieces immediately pile themselves onto him, crushing him. His horned arm a weight dragging him.

No, Vauhn needs me.

Pushing, struggling, every inch of blood pumping through his veins, straining his muscles. Winsor fights, climbs, and claws his way until he finds the small blue eyes, the little white body, the small black wings. He cradles the small creature in his arm.

“Listen, kid!” Hugo’s voice breaking the adrenaline and providing a moment of comfort. Winsor looks up to see the beast standing at the whirlpool’s edge staring his red eyes at him and across the way, Hugo waving at him.

Why is it ignoring Hugo?

“Kid!” his voice forcing him to refocus, “Point your horn at me and imagine it pulling you over here.”

Imagine.

Another new word but this one Winsor knows.

Pointing his horn in Hugo’s direction he imagines himself gliding across.

He can feel the tip begin to open and with a loud puff something shoots out and stabs the wall just to the left of Hugo. A black line connecting the pullet and the horn strains as it pulls Winsor and Vauhn with a torque that causes Winsor to worry how bad the impact will hurt.

With an “Oof!” the two collide with the side of the pool. Hugo reaches down with a rough hand to pull them up.

Winsor can hear the metal feet pounding towards them.

“Here,” he hands Vauhn to Hugo. Take him and go.

Hugo complies, “Listen,” his words rushed, “your horn, it’s not tech, it’s magic.” The clopping grows louder, “Imagine something and it will turn into it, the better the image the better it will work.”

With that Hugo jumps onto the wall scrambling up as the beast charges between the two of them. Winsor, twists on the edge losing his balance and falls back into the whirlpool but not without grabbing onto the ledge.

He hears the clopping fading but circling back around.

Thrusting his leg up he pulls himself back onto the walkway. The galloping drawing closer, time closing in on him.

He can’t climb the wall fast enough, not with the horn, but he might have something.

Getting up on his feet he watches the beast gallop further towards him.

If I can’t escape this thing, then maybe I can trip it into that pit.

Pulling his arm back he imagined something he could throw at its legs that could trip it. Something long that would spin if thrown. He formed something in his mind, bent so its angle can be the axis, sharp, metal, sleek.

The feet pounding closer to him he could feel the change happening in his arm.

He can hear its breath steaming out of its jaw.

With a thrust he throws his arm across his chest. He can feel something release from his horn as a shiny, black, metal object flies out of his arm but to his horror the beast stops. Its feet skid as Winsor’s metal invention smacks against its perpendicular knee cap sending the spinning weapon to ricochet and bounce off into the darkness.

Winsor watches it as it flies off, up into the endless black void above them.

His eyes glance down to see the beast rising.

Scrambling with his right hand and looking for a place to put his foot, Winsor climbs up the wall but he cannot get far before the beast pounces on him. Its hooves now pounding on Winsor, his hand stomped, his back torn, his head gashed, Winsor falls to the ground.

The beast looms over him.

As though dancing the beast rises on its hind legs, its forearms rotating is celebration.

The horn broken. His body bruised Winsor tenses to receive the beast’s blow when he notices something in his pocket. Reaching in he feels something sharp and metal.

My chisel.

It’s not much but it’s more than I can hope.

He pulls it out, not sure what to do with it when out of the darkness from above a roar echoes through the dark silo.

The beast falls back.

The ground shakes.

Debris falls from above.

Making the most of the beast’s confusion Winsor grabs a pipe in the wall and climbs. Refusing to look back he hears the creature scream as cement clods, dust and dirt fall, hitting him and the creature but he climbs and does not stop until he finds the hole he squeezed out of and squeezes back inside.

His face covered in gray dust and red blood.

“Damn kid,” Hugo squatting over Vauhn yellow sparks emitting from a strange pen-like device poking at Vauhn’s innards. “You had me going there. Thought you were done for.”

A weak chuckle escapes Winsor’s throat.

“I got some good news, though,” Hugo rises. “Your Sprite friend is fixed.”

Vauhn dances in the air.

“And…” he begins with a sway in his voice as he presses on a device next to the metal slab and with a booming thud it opens, “We’re in.”

His head still on the ground Winsor smiles, the hope of moving forward enough to make him forget the stinging and swelling. He looks at Hugo.

He’s amazing, if I were to ask him, could he teach me this?

Pulling himself up Winsor watches as the short man marches through the doorway with the Sprite buzzing alongside him.

Upon entering Winsor finds himself in another dark room, enormous and at first it appears empty but when looking down the stairway it became clear that they were entering a labyrinth of machines glowing a sick teal color.

“Welcome to the Central Dome,” Hugo boasts.

Winsor watches as Hugo strolls down the stairs. Feeling the weight in his pocket Winsor feels for his chisel and whack. What he would have done with them seemed vain but looking at Hugo he can’t help but wonder.

Maybe he can show me how to make something with it.

That’s what these paper-y things were called, leaves.

At least that’s what Velldani called them, and Nadia was more than happy to have a word to begin to understand them.

Their walk together had illuminated much to Nadia, and though she could see clearly in this world, having words somehow allowed her to see it more accurately. Refined. Edges sharper than they were when she first woke up here.

Apparently, they were inside a “forest,” and the strange pillars were called “trees.”

She watched as Velldani’s face slid from tree to tree.

“And what are you?” Nadia asked.

“I am Velldani.”

“Yes, I understand that, but… I guess what I’m trying to ask is, ‘What is a Velldani?’”

Velldani stopped, her face hanging on the trunk of a tree.

“I don’t know. The earth made me, and when I awoke, I was many little sprouts in the ground. In time, I covered the whole earth until your ancestors came.

“They took from me, and at first I didn’t mind. They appreciated what they took from me. Building homes from what I could give. They loved me, and I loved them.

“Over time, they lost appreciation for me and continued taking more. There was so much of me at one time that I didn’t mind, but as there were fewer trees, I lost more of me. Until finally I fell asleep back into the earth.

“The last thing I could remember before the darkness was a fire. A fire that filled the earth.

“I woke up again. Small sprouts peeking out again.”

Nadia contemplated these words.

There is no past.

That’s what Mother said, and yet Velldani was talking as though there were decades, centuries, millennia.

“The past is real?” she asked.

Velldani looked at her, shocked.

“Child,” Velldani began, “how could you be here if it were not?”

Nadia thought about it. Strained for a moment to see how far back she could remember. The last thing she could recall was her last Substance Intake before her fateful conversation with Mother.

“I don’t remember much of anything,” Nadia admitted.

“Well,” Velldani replied with compassion, “I can see why you were confused enough to mistake me as your Mother.”

Mother. The word hung in Nadia’s mind.

“Good or bad?”

“Both, nothing is all good or all bad. Life is a little mix of both.”

“And Skald?” she asked, glancing back at the little Sprite dangling behind them.

“A Sprite,” Velldani replied with a hint of annoyance, “a nuisance much of the time but this one has become a sort of friend of mine until she stole my gift.”

A tiny groan emitted from Skald.

“Why did you steal her gift?” Nadia asked.

“There’s no use talking to her,” Velldani’s voice a trifle aloof, “very few humans can hear Sprites talk.”

Skald drifted down to Nadia’s shoulder. Her head tilting towards her, Nadia returns her look. The two stare at each other for a moment.

“I don’t hear anything,” both of them look disappointed.

Velldani laughed, her voice dancing like the wind, “You humans use so many tools you forgot how to be humans.”

“What do you mean?”

“You try to hear with your ears but look at me. Do I have ears?”

Nadia looked at Velldani and noticed that not only did she lack ears but she also lacked a nose.

“No, you don’t.”

“And yet I can hear you.”

“Then why do you have eyes and a mouth?”

Again Velldani laughed as if a toddler said something adorable to her, “This is not my true form, I am everywhere in this forest but my grief at losing my youngest tree was so strong that it took form into what you see here. You heard me cry not with your ears but with your intuition, even now, it’s not through your ears you hear me. But you humans and your brains need to see a face and so your mind perceives my grief as a face.”

Nadia took note of the sharp angled eyes and smooth lips in the wood grain, “I like your face though, it’s…nicely arranged.

“Then you must have a nice heart, but I cannot deny that humans often perceive me as beautiful, at least the ones who look for me.”

The smell hit Nadia first. A noxious, gaseous, smell. The decay of leaves, plants, and animals overwhelmed her to the point that her head began to hurt.

“What is this?” Nadia asked.

“What is wrong?”

The smell so powerful each breath became increasingly labored. “Every time I breathe it’s like something disgusting is going into my nose.”

Velldani’s head slid up to the nearest branch to Nadia’s face, “I believe this is what humans call ‘smell.’”

“‘Smell?’”

“Yes, it allows you to know things before you see them. In fact, you must be quite good at it because we are getting closer to the swamp now.”

“How do I turn it off?”

“I don’t think you can. Humans who enter the swamp just get used to it.”

The trees began to fade into white. Not like fluorescent white of the Dome that illuminated everything, rather a thick white that obscured and hid. Nadia could feel small bubbles of water in the air touch her face as she moved closer into the mist.

“Is this the swamp?”

“We’re very close.”

The ground beneath Nadia’s feet began to lose its firmness. Black mud sloshed under Nadia’s boot causing her to both slip and move with more effort as it stuck to her. She found herself relying more on her staff as she leaned on it to keep her balance and pull herself from the muck.

She thought about the dust in the Dome. The agitation it gave her. The fear she felt at looking at it. Whatever all of this was she was marching through was so much worse. It snuck up on her. From the beauty of the forest to the gradual shift into this murky swamp.

The agitation now setting in as Nadia looked at the loose clods of thick black soil. Stick and plants shooting out in all directions. The ground increasing in its dark slippery grime. It made her feel itchy, aware of every pore on her body, aware of anything that so much as touched her.

The mist lifted to reveal a black lake, covered in unknown green scum. Foaming eddies and shapeless silhouettes drift about.

““I cannot go any further,” Velldani’s sudden voice sending a shock through her. This would be when Nadia would need her the most.

“Why not?”

“I go where there is life. This is a place where things go to die.”

“Where do I go?”

“Across the swamp.”

Nadia’s eyes widened, she turned to face the scummy water then back at Velldani.

“How?”

“Every human who wishes to cross it finds a way. Some tread and swim through the water, though I wouldn’t recommend it, you don’t seem built like those who do. Others use boats or find some way to float. Do you know any magic?”

Nadia shook her head.

“Well… I don’t quite know.”

A sloshing and hard, hollow knocking catches Nadia’s attention. A large log thumped up against the shore of the swamp.

She approached the log and gently tapped it with her foot to test its buoyancy. It bounces in the thick black water pulling up more green muck as it bobs up and down.

A high-pitch “Eee…” squeaked out from between Nadia’s teeth.

Skald’s large black eyes seemed to roll as her long lavender legs rested on the front edge of the log daintily. Her knees glided down under her cottonball body giving her the appearance of a swaying dandelion as she sat on the log.

She looked back at Nadia and gestured for her to get on the log.

Aiming for the center of the trunk Nadia placed her forefoot on and dipping her staff in the marshy water she pushed the rest of herself on board. The force pushing the log deeper into the misty lake. She screamed as her body balanced itself on the log causing it settle

In all of her terror Nadia realized she didn’t know where she was going. She looked for Velldani only to find fog.

“Velldani!” Nadia called out.

Her voice faint in the fog but clear, “Continue straight.”

“I hope to see you again.”

“You are always welcome here.”

If I ever do make it back, Nadia thought.

Gripping her staff she dipped it in the water and finding mushy soft mud in the swamp floor she paddled the log forward drifting off into the fog.

It did not take Nadia long to understand how to row. The way some things in the outside world functioned was quite intuitive. She found that she had to move her staff from one side to the other to make sure she remained straight and not drift to one side or the other.

Her shoulders were beginning to ache as she moved her staff from one side of the log to the other pushing it against the murky ground. Each time she pulled it up out came nameless green clods that gooped and burped on her staff. Plit-Plats of thick slime dripped on the log releasing an odor that made Nadia’s head swim.

A breeze drifted through and Nadia could inhale again.

The veil of the mist opened allowing a pocket of warm sunlight to kiss Nadia’s skin.

She looked up to see a small disk of blue surrounded by a bright golden ring of mist.

A cold shadow engulfed the blue. A clashing like lightning. The breeze now a gust. The gust now a storm.

The heart of the black shadow exposing an orange-red light in its underbelly, twisting with a smoldering heat.

The water rippled beneath the log, putrid water sprayed across Nadia’s face.

The shadow danced across the sky, streaking black and red before two giant tails waved past Nadia. The shadow and the storm–gone.

She stood, the small hole of blue sky now blown wide into a canyon gray clouds and up ahead she could see the shore.

Mustering as much strength as she could she lifted her staff but stopped.

Skald was gone.

Her eyes darted about, scanning the scummy waters.

The faintest PLOP entered her ears. Following the sound she could see Skald. Her arms flailing her small mouth gasping for breath.

“Skald!” Nadia cried as she steered the log toward the struggling Sprite.

Lifting her staff Nadia stuck the point out to Skald, but the shortness of her arms made accuracy both crucial and nearly impossible. The staff twirled and stirred the soupy waters while Skald’s skinny arms flung about.

Turning the staff around to scoop her up Nadia lost her balance and with a voluptuous SPLASH her whole body submerged under the green sloppy water.

The force of the splash allowed Skald’s wings to bob free from the water for a second. A second she used to fly free. Hovering over the water she searched for any sign of Nadia.

Only still black water was the answer.

A brown thin hand exploded from the water. Followed by an arm, a shoulder, a head, a mouth screaming.

Nadia’s limbs thrusting, fighting, searching for stability against the shapeless force. Black-green water poured into her mouth, the mossy water stinging her mouth. Gagging, nausea, fear.

Her heel slid on the slick mud floor. Her eyes popped open as she realized she was lying in a shallow pond.

Tumbling and sloshing Nadia pulled herself up, the water only going up to her waist.

Green puss, strings of decayed plants roped around her, the stinging moss water in the pit of her stomach finding its way up to her esophagus. A flush of water she didn’t even know she had in her forced black sludge out of her mouth.

Standing in a pool of unknowable filth covered in her own stench she screamed.

The log bounced off her. Skald looked up at her, she too, covered in filth. Her large black eyes, however, unaffected.

A smile split Nadia’s face. What can be done?

She scooped marshy sludge water and splashed it on Skald, who returned by sucking up more black murk and spitting it at Nadia in a stream.

Nadia laughed.

There was no escaping this world. It had to be embraced. Absurdity, horror, danger, beauty, mystery. All of it hers to embrace or be consumed by.

Staff in hand Nadia waded to the other side with skald on her shoulder.

It was now past midday when the mist cleared and Nadia found herself in a vast golden field.

The aging sun entered its blood-red sacrificial sky as Nadia looked up to see a black mountain glowing a boisterous orange at its peak.

The Burning Mountain, Nadia thought.

She looked at Skald, who looked back, apprehension in her big black insect eyes.

Winsor finds himself having to duck and maneuver around the tubes and wires that seem a little too low, while Hugo marches along unfazed.

He observes the short man as he checks around the thumping tubes; he looks like he could get slurped up by those thumping machines. Winsor stifles a snort of laughter, thinking of such an image, but regardless of the man’s stature, it cannot be denied that Hugo has an air of competence that gives Winsor the faith to trust him in whatever pursuit they are undertaking.

A shudder runs up his spine.

He gave Hugo so much trust so quickly; perhaps he ought to have been more cautious.

“Where are we going?” Winsor asks.

Hugo crouches down, pushing a fat tube over with his foot, revealing a dark, empty space where ground should be.

If there is a time to leave Hugo to whatever designs he has, this is the moment, but Winsor’s heart aches; he knows this is the only way he’ll ever find the truth, however much there is in this world.

If something were to happen, would I be able to–

Once again, Winsor finds himself unable to find the word.

–incapacitate him?

He looks at the short man struggle with the tube.

“Come on!” he waves at Winsor.

Following Hugo’s instructions, Winsor climbs down the dark space. His horned arm making it difficult to slip down into the small hole.

His whole body tenses as his feet search for ground. He sighs as his toes touch a hard surface.

Strange hard surface. Not metal or plastic like the whole floor of the Dome.

Hard but rough.

Letting himself go, he steps down into darkness. The light from above is the only source of illumination.

Hugo leaps inside behind him, covering the hole with the tube, sealing them both in the void.

Thick and warm, the blackness surrounds them.

“Give it a moment,” Hugo whispers.

Holding still, Winsor’s eyes dart around the darkness.

He feels the light before he can see it. His skin aware of what his eyes are not.

As the small amount of reflective light became visible, Winsor felt his entire body relax.

The walls shaped in rectangular stacks made of something not plastic but not metal. A rugged and smooth texture that reflects enough light to see.

“Follow me,” Hugo’s voice breaking Winsor’s focused wonder. His hand caresses the wall as he follows Hugo’s stumpy silhouette. The small holes and hard, slick surface remind him of something he cannot recall.

They come to an opening. A set of stairs descending into a massive, empty chamber illuminated by a large, round circle high above them.

“The past is real, isn’t it?” Winsor asks as he follows Hugo down the stairs.

A guffaw from Hugo, “What do you think this is?”

As they came to the bottom, Winsor noticed rows of what seemed to be brown shelves, and in those shelves, many large rectangular objects.

Winsor walked to the center of the room, mesmerized by the large circle above. He became aware of a strange fact. It was bright, with light, but not white. It was covered in colors and shapes.

Looking down, he found that the colors and shapes even projected onto the floor, creating a glowing tapestry.

He stuck his arm out, the colors and shapes now printed on his own arm. Pulling back into the shadow, causing them to fall back on the floor.

“What is this place?”

“A library,” Hugo’s voice distant. Winsor turned to find him groping at a wall, feeling it as though searching for something.

“Before the Days of Fire,” he continued, “the ancients would come here to learn.”

Ancients.

Days of Fire.

Learn.

“What happened?”

The sound of a click echoes from Hugo’s direction. Winsor watched Hugo push a small, rough rectangle in the wall. A larger doorway opening. With a modest pull, Hugo slid the piece of the wall to the side to reveal another dark emptiness.

“Man ascends; God trips him,” Hugo snarled as he marched into the darkness.

The room was much smaller than Winsor’s apartment, and yet, a table in the center, shelves with rolls of paper, and thousands of scraps of metal assembled in an innumerable combination were strewn all about.

The view made Winsor miss his apartment for a moment.

Studying the objects, he found they were much more complex than his sculptures. They had a functional element. If he played with them long enough, he could figure them out.

“Welcome to my lab,” Hugo boasted.

Boxes of gears, circuit boards, wires, Winsor pulled them out, “What are these?”

“Failed projects,” Hugo grunted as he strolled to his shelf, reaching for a roll of paper, “half-backed ideas.”

Winsor pulled out a series of pods tangled in a wire bundle. Unfurling it, he realized that it was a grid of white buttons connected by a single wire.

“What is this?”

Hugo’s face was deep in his workbench with bunches of oversized papers covering the tabletop.

“Wha’s that?” his voice grumbly as he looked up, “That’s for teaching children how to dance.”

Children.

Dance.

In this cold, damp place, those words invited a little warmth.

“Here!” Hugo’s arms waved to Winsor, “Let me show you something.

Wandering over Winsor studied Hugo’s desktop to find a mess of scattered papers, a stack of large drafting paper, blueprints of the Dome itself, though most of it was just scribbles to him. Attached to one paper was something Winsor had never seen before.

“What is this?” he asked, reaching down to grab what appeared to be a drawing on a small square; however, it wasn’t a sketch like the one he drew of N-85. The people in it looked real, like they were frozen in a moment in time, with all color removed, leaving only their light and shadow.

“That’s me and Terra–or “Mother” as you call her.

“You? But how can you be there and why do you look… not so–”

“Old?” Hugo finishes snatching the photograph. “They don’t have photographs in the Dome?”

Winsor shook his head.

“For crying out loud!” Hugo rubbed his forehead. “You’re all tapped into an advanced computer network, and none of you have seen a photo?”

A shrug is all Winsor can give him.

Hugo stared, “It’s old tech, one of the few that survived the Days of Fire, I’m sure you don’t know what that is, either. Well, that’s what you get when you get a spiteful woman building the world in her image and likeness. Dull, sterile, boring, and nothing that could possibly invite controversy. We’ll fix that. Give me a moment while I find it.”

Papers shuffled. Images of labyrinths, machines, creatures, droids, metal, flesh, robots, animals.

“Why?” Winsor uttered.

“‘Why’ what!?” Hugo’s focus on his papers.

“Why did you build the Dome?”

Hugo stopped shuffling. He stared into the grains of the table’s wood.

“I’ll be honest. I can’t tell you if it was the right decision, especially with Terra being as treacherous as she turned out to be, but just know, for my part, I thought I was doing the right thing. We saw a chance to make a better future and, well–I guess Terra had a different vision than I did.”

“What’s outside the Dome?”

“Not as much as there used to be,” Hugo sighed. “We live in the remains of a dead civilization. Amazing cities with technology that made the Dome look like a toy wiped out in a massive war. It broke the earth itself, now it’s just a lot of trees, bugs, and nature with a few dying cities like Dento.”

Trees.

Bugs.

Nature.

Winsor turned to Hugo’s boxes.

“I have a few questions myself,” Hugo called.

Deep inside the box, Winsor pulled out a small metal ball. He rolled it around in his hand.

“Sure,” Winsor shrugged.

“What’s this ‘identifier’ business? Mother numbers all of you?”

Winsor nods, “As far as I know, I’m the only one who knows my name.”

“And how did you come about that?”

The ball freezes in Winsor’s hand. He looks away.

“I saw things during sleep cycles.”

“Dreams?”

“There’s a name for them?”

Hugo’s eyes expand, “The pills, of course. She’s suppressed everyone’s memories with them.”

Winsor laughed, “I knew it!” and tossed the metal ball in the air with triumph. As the ball fell, he fumbled to catch it. Sticking his horned arm out a little to stop it, the ball touched the horn.

On contact a light expanded from the ball illuminating the room with a blinding white for a moment.

Hugo stared at Winsor, who was holding the ball in his hand.

“That’s an emergency electric flare; it should be out of charge, unless…” He looked at Winsor’s horned arm. “Put the ball away before we–”

A clicking sound echoed from outside the workshop.

“They’re coming,” Hugo whispered. Silently, he moved through the workshop, making his way back to the doorway.

“Who?”

Hugo lifted his hand, and Winsor took it as a sign to be quiet.

From a distance, Winsor squinted to see a small black droid hovering outside. It looked like a Sanitation Sprite, but broken, black ooze dripping from it. Its eyes small and red. Its wings buzzed coarse and aggressive.

It stopped just short of the door and turned.

Holding his breath, Hugo slid the door shut.

They listened to the buzz.

It faded away. Hugo returned to his workbench. Winsor followed.

“If you want to find your friend, you’re going to need two things: some sense and this,” he unfurled one blueprint, and out popped a small sheet of paper. He handed it to Winsor.

Winsor looked at the paper and saw a sketch of a strange metal object. His limited knowledge of the world prevented him from understanding what he was looking at. Had he been born outside, he would have said it looked like a metal heart.

“The Heart of the Dome,” Hugo whispered, pride dripping from each syllable, “It controls everything here.”

“Can I find N with it?”

“You can take control of Mother.”

“And learn the truth?”

“The Dome will be yours.”

“We can leave?”

“‘Leave?’”

Winsor’s chest puffs with determination as he snatches the paper, “Let’s go!”

“Why leave the Dome?” Hugo called out to Winsor, who was already ascending the stairs. “You have everything here.”

“We don’t want everything.”

“You don’t want everything.”

“Shouldn’t we get a say?”

“Sure, but you’ll be the only one who will leave.”

Winsor freezes.

“People love freedom until it’s inconvenient. Some may go with you, but you don’t know what is out there. The Dome is set to a perfect 20 degrees Celsius. Have you ever experienced 0? Do you even know what these numbers mean? And that’s just the temperatures; you’ve never dealt with wildlife.

“Stay! We can rebuild the Dome, make it the way it should have been. This place could be beautiful, with your imagination and my ingenuity, it’ll be like the Days of the Ancients.”

Hugo looked up at Winsor. Young, strong, determined, dark eyes.

Just like Clives, but can he be reasoned with?

Just like his father, Winsor stood, wild, untamable, magnificent.

A braying screech tears through the darkness.

Winsor and Hugo look up the stairway to see two small red eyes staring down at them.

It moved down the steps, its eyes locked onto Winsor.

A metal skull with a long protruding snout, black like the rest of its body, except for a set of two white teeth at the end and a set of molars far back into the jaw. Between its hateful eyes a round empty hole.

Hugo watched.

Trapped by the narrow stairway, Winsor backed away from the approaching beast. Its red eyes burned down into his heart as its heavy feet stomped the stone steps. Steam rose from its face with every breath.

Distance closing, a wall finding itself behind Winsor, time evaporating, his mind racing.

Taking his horned arm, he swung it at the beast, but its pace remained steady, unafraid of Winsor’s threats.

The distance—unnervingly close.

Hugo climbed up the side of the stairway until he was enough steps above the beast and dashed for the top.

Looking down, he watched as Winsor pulled out the emergency flare from his pocket, tossed it into the air, and with a well-timed swing smacked the ball.

The light flashed, blinding the beast. It reared back, screeching a high-pitched whinnying sound.

He shouted down at Winsor, “Come on, kid!”

Leaping past the blinded beast, he ran for Hugo.

A scream echoed through the chamber, followed by the frantic sounds of heavy feet. Hugo watched as Winsor ran toward him, eyes focused ahead as two red eyes mad with rage followed behind.

Hugo opened his arms and waited for Winsor to be just in reach.

The hooves trampling closer with every second.

It was all on Winsor to make it to him before the beast did.

He felt Winsor’s chest hit him, and with every effort, Hugo tackled Winsor through the entryway just in time to hear the beast scream as it crashed into the wall.

Hugo pulled himself up, panting. He stood over Winsor.

“You’re resourceful, kid,” He gasped, offering his hand, “Let’s go now before that thing gets up.”

He lifted Winsor up and noticed that even though he had lived a relatively docile and easy life in the Dome, he was just as thick as Clive was.

You would be proud of your boy.

His chest pounding, his lungs heaving, a taste of copper in his mouth and nose. Doubled over his knees, he tries to regain his strength.

X, he thought, I warned you.

A full lap around the dump yielded nothing. X-13 is not here.

Nobody has never not reported in.

He has to be somewhere. Unless.

The crack bears down on T-7.

If he’s anywhere, he’s there.

Fire in his chest, his legs weak, he leaned on the side of a stationed Golem.

From a distance he can see the pit standing about a hundred yards away.

A howl echoes from within.

The gears are changing.

X didn’t think so.

What did he call it?

Cerberus.

He said it was a massive droid with three giant mouths full of blades that shred trash into a fine dust.

“How would you know that?” T-7 asked.

To which X-13 shrugged, “I asked Cerberus, myself.”

There was so much to X-13’s world.

Trash is art.

Droids are friends.

Something about that way of seeing the Dome.

There is no past, the mantra reminds him.

Does that mean X-13 was never real?

If X-13 was never real, does that mean no one is?

A shiver runs up his spine.

One last option.

Taking out his Portable Mother T-7 types, “Query: X-13.” Submit.

Immediately, he slides the Portable back in his pocket.

Something about the question feels wrong. Like Mother will not be happy that he even asked the question.

His stomach churns.

The Portable shakes in his pocket.

His nostrils suck in the air around him.

The small rectangle weighing on his hip.

His chest expands.

The Portable gives another impatient nudge.

His hand slides into his pocket and pulls it out.

A response from Mother, “Query not valid, there is no Citizen identified as X-13.”

His bald head leans back on the cool metal of the Golem. The hole in the wall staring at him.

He’s in there somewhere.

T-7’s fist clenches. His heart thumps. A warmth in his eyes gives way to a cool drop of water. He closes his eyes.

“Don’t leave, Winsor, I want to go to.”

The Golem begins to rumble, and T-7 steps away from the droid, expecting it to clamber off.

Instead, he hears a voice.

Not through his ears but in his stomach.

“Winsor?” A low but powerful growl.

Turning around, he sees the Golem turn to face him. His large ape-like face and small black, beady glass eyes stare into T-7.

“You heard me?” he asks.

A slow, heavy nod.

A howl from the pit echoes from behind T-7. His spine spasms.

“Do you know where X-13 is?” he asks the Golem.

“Winsor in here but not here.”

Its mouth opens slowly as the words drip out. T-7 had never seen it talk. He saw Winsor talk to a Sprite, but he never saw a Golem open its large, jutting fangs to speak.

“‘In here but not here?’” T-7 repeated. “Do you mean he’s in his apartment?”

The Golem shakes his head.

“Deep in here,” it replies, “Where no one has been.”

For the first time, T-7 is aware that he has toes, feeling them curl inside his boot.

There is something in there.

He thrusts his finger, pointing at the black hole in the ceiling. “He’s in there, isn’t he?” T-7’s voice cracks with excitement.

The Golem’s head rises slowly to inspect the crack in the ceiling. It twists as it observes the black spot in the white ceiling.

“Yes, and no.”

This thing can’t seem to give a clear answer.

“That’s as much as I’ll get from you, isn’t it?”

Its shoulders rise.

“Answers true. Questions wrong.”

What questions should I be asking?

Turning to the crack in the ceiling, T-7 studies it.

From the moment he first saw it, there was this strange sensation. A nag.

If the Dome can have a crack and if we’re all still alive, what does that mean about what’s outside of the Dome?

“What’s outside of the Dome?” T-7’s eyes still fixed on the crack.

The Golem’s head nods, “Everything.”

“Everything?” T-7 turns back to the metal beast, “What do you mean ‘everything?’”

“Dome small world in big world.”

The strange growths on the ground were particularly troublesome. No clear pathway, just large growths from the ground, either large thick rough pillars with small green papers covering their tops or short scratchy wires that snatched at her clothes, leaving small spikey balls in her boots.

She found a knobby old pillar bent in such a way that she may not be able to sit, but at least lean on and get some of these spikes out of her boot.

Pushing her back against it she took off her boot with an audible PLOP! The sound echoes a disturbing thought in her mind.

This is the first time I’ve ever taken my boot off.

The sudden blood flow through her foot caused a sudden sensation of fragility and with every movement of her toe, a satisfying CRACK!

Her eyes rolled unconsciously from the sensation, her nose breathing in the fresh new air, filling her lungs with the cool afternoon.

Winsor would love it here.

It didn’t seem quite fair that she was here while he was still trapped inside there.

Looking up at the polished metal of the Dome’s surface, she noticed her reflection. Her forehead stretched with the curve of the Dome.

Walking towards it her reflection becomes less distorted, and the slightly textured surface obscures her details ever so slightly.

With the tenderness it deserved, she looked at her sculpture. The refined features, her nose and eyes. What any of this meant was still a mystery to her, but in the end, she preferred the sculpture over the Dome’s reflection.

From a distance, her ears could perceive the faintest sound, carried to her by the faintest breeze.

Breathing.

Heavy, labored, as though someone was weeping.

For a moment, the woman in her dream shot into her memory. She turned her head in the direction of the sound.

Could she be following her? Who was she? Is she dangerous?

All N-85 had at the moment was tired feet, thick annoying brush, and no answer yet on how to open the door.

Perhaps the crying woman might know something.

Her choices seemed quite limited, keep wandering the Dome, hoping to find an entrance or follow the voice and hope for an answer.

She turned to the Dome.

Her heart ached.

Every second. Every moment she delays Winsor could be in greater danger. A choice had to be made.

She placed her hand on the Dome.

I’m not leaving you, Winsor. Just hang on, I will return, and I will get you out.

Her hand slid off the Dome as she turned to the sound of the weeping.

Any sign of life out here might be a clue to save him, and if there is even the slightest chance, she knew she had to take it.

Following the voice led her deeper into the strange land of rugged pillars. From their thick trunks thinner, scratchier pipes emerged with more of those odd green papers attached to the ends. Beams of light squeezed through the papers and pipes only enough to give N-85 enough light to keep moving forward, though the weeping was a better guide than her own eyes.

Bundles of crunchy, scratchy wires crowded her path, forcing her legs to lift high in order to move forward. They crunched under her foot, but some that were less crunchy would spring her foot forward, causing her to stumble.

There were even hidden pipes in the ground that sat without warning, waiting for her foot to catch on and trip her.

From a distance, the Sprite observed the pathetic creature stumbling through the wood. Even a child could navigate a forest better than she was, but it also occurred to her that this woman was not like any human she had ever seen before. Bald head, strange, thick baggy clothes and skin that clearly had never seen the sun before.

She wondered for a moment if she might have been one of the children she saw that night. That night, she lost Vaughn.

Realizing how close they were to Velldani the Sprite flittered into the branches, hoping to hide. While she did feel guilty for making her friend cry, she feared Velldani’s wrath much more.

Exhausted and stumbling from another springy green bush, N-85 grabbed a branch to balance herself, and pulling back on it revealed the source of the sound. She froze. Her fatigue forgotten.

Light streamed down from the forest ceiling to illuminate a small green clearing. In the center, a bluish black spring offered a stage for the golden rays to dance on.

Beyond it she could see a sinewy, long, brown figure. A woman flung to the ground, weeping with her face down.

N-85’s heart ached at the image, not just out of this person’s distress, but even more strangely, there was something about this image that called to her heart. A desire to be enraptured in everything around her and weep with this beautiful creature.

It was not like the weeping in her dream, full of fury and desire. There was a longing to it and a loneliness.

Stepping down into the clearing, N-85 approached the figure but as she moved closer, it became clearer that there was something not human here. Though her body heaved loud guttural sighs, her chest didn’t move; nothing moved. Just a voice echoing through more

“Hello?” N-85’s voice tentative, cautious.

It was then that she realized that what she perceived was a body was in fact she would later understand to be a root.

It twisted in her direction and a large round bare patch of wood rolled into her view. The grains of the wood shaped in a way to create the faintest impression of two closed eyes and a mouth twisted in sorrow.

The eyes open to reveal two round brownish red blotches like the rings of a branch.

The oddity of this strange woodish face was lost on N-85 as one thought came across her mind.

A Mother Terminal!

A sigh of relief, “Good morning, Mother. Kindly, scan the Dome’s structure and report any known areas for re-entry.”

The face construed from sorrow to perplexed.

“Did you hit your head?” The face asked with a voice that was as soft and gentle as it was indignant.

Realizing that she both made a mistake and insulted some unknown entity blew through N-85’s body as though this creature’s words slapped across the clearing. She gasped to regain her composure.

The face slid through the roots with a serpentine motion.

“What are you?” N-85 asked as she followed the face.

“Certainly not your mother,” the voice replied as the face slipped behind long, low-hanging branches covered in bright yellow-green leaves.

Pulling the branches back like a veil N-85 revealed the thick trunk of a weeping willow. A throne in a shady turquoise chamber.

“If I were,” the voice continued as the face found its place at the center of the trunk, “you would know to introduce yourself first.”

N-85’s eyebrows ticked at this being. Mother Terminals did respond but they never talked back.

Winsor would know how what to do.

But without him the best thing to do would be to comply with the demands of whatever she found in this strange new world.

“I am N-85.”

The face seemed to jerk back. “Enyatee-Vive… What a strange name.” She seemed to shrug it off. “I am Velldani, the gardener of this forest.”

None of these words meant anything to N-85.

“Was that you I heard crying?”

“Ah, it was,” she replied with an embarrassed sniff. “Something beautiful was stolen from me.”

N-85’s foot began tapping unconsciously. Every moment she wasted with this thing was a moment Windsor’s danger grew.

“I’m sorry but, I need help, it’s an emergency.”

She might as well had told the tree to get copped as the look in her eye was one of absolute horror.

“‘An emergency!?’” Her voice quivering, “I was robbed!” There sins began to work themselves back up, “The most beautiful thing in the world was stolen from me!”

N-85 took a deep breath fighting every urge to hit this strange, ridiculous thing. Full of blubbering emotion.

The sculpture began to make its weight known to her at that moment. Taking it from the crux of her arm she held it up for a moment.

It never occurred to her what it would be like for something of hers to be taken. Particularly because she never truly owned anything.

If she lost her Portable Mother she would have just told her Mother Terminal and another would be available on her desk when she was awoken from her sleeping pod.

Her apartment like everyone else’s was equally as empty. Winsor was the first Citizen she ever met that actually had things in his.

For the first time, looking at this sculpture that Winsor had made for did she finally feel like she owned something. It was her, made for her. She cradled it against her chest, her head tilting over it as though protecting it from something, perhaps her own imagination but she could feel the ownership, the responsibility, the desire to protect it.

She looked up at Velldani, “Who took it?”

“A nuisance,” a sob worked its way back up, “It was a work of true love.”

If she continued on like this they would get nowhere and yet N-85 couldn’t help but sense that Velldani seemed to understand things through her feelings.

Gripping the sculpture tightly to her chest she could feel a fire well within her. She let herself be consumed with rage until she was fully incensed.

“That’s horrible!” Letting the emotion drive her, N-85 stuck out her sculpture before Velldani. “Here!”

Shocked Velldani’s weeping ceased as she stared at the green orb.

The silence cooled N-85’s emotions from burning rage to a warm shock of embarrassment. Her offering to this pitiable spirit was something so personal, what would she want with it?

“It may not be as beautiful,” N-85 muttered, “but it’s at least something you can look at until–”

Before she could finish the branches around her descended and twisting around her sculpture they lifted it out of her hand.

Turning the orb around her vines Velldani seemed to perceive something about it that was not obvious by a mere glance.

“A work of true love,” she gasped.

N-85 blinked puzzled both by the word and by the strange feeling it invoked in her.

Love.

“It was a man who made this for you,” she continued as though she was seeing it more through her branches than her eyes. “An artist, deeply in love with you.”

Winsor’s hand pierced by the beast’s spike flashed into her memory. If he had to he would have given more to save her. She can’t fail him. Not again.

“I don’t know what many of your words mean,” N-85 began, “but the ‘artist’ that made it is in danger. Can you help me?”

Velldani looked at the sculpture for a long time, “To have a lover, again.” She sighed, “I have not seen my love in twenty years. The Wind would come every spring. He’d fly through me shaking the seeds from my trees, planting them into my fertile soil so that I can make this forest you see all around you.”

N-85 took a moment to observe the forest itself. Stepping away from herself for a moment and into this “forest” she was able to appreciate Velldani’s adoration. The fresh scent of growth in the air. The warmth of the sun when desired and the coolness of the shade when needed. The bubbling of the spring and its splashing as it fell off a jagged black rock and into a small pool below.

It felt like the first time she entered Winsor’s apartment, the same strange call she felt with his sculptures she now felt here surrounded by Velldani’s works.

“Where is the Wind Spirit?”

A darkness overcame Velldani. Not the weeping, something much deeper. “A giant metal rock appeared at the edge of my forest and its kept him from entering me. He plays his music calling to me all the time but–” the weeping began making its wake back, “I can’t reach him and the last gift he gave me was stolen.”

N-85 placed her hand on the tree near Velldani’s face, “That’s why you were crying.”

A solemn smile was Velldani’s reply.

“I don’t know if I can help you retrieve your gift but the man who made me mine is in danger. I need your help getting back in the Dome.”

Velldani’s eyes widened, “You came from that rock?”

N-85 nodded.

The branches unwound from the green sculpture and it fell. N-85 dove to save it from hitting the ground.

“You humans,” Velldani spat, “always hurting forests.”

An insect-like silhouette hovered around the two conversing, the Sprite, keeping her eyes on the orb.

“No one appreactiates my forest anymore,” Velldani continued as the Sprite quietly flittered on the orb’s surface.

Her small soft body reflected on the orbs green surface made her legs seem even longer than they already are, a feature desired by most female Sprites.

N-85’s eyes slid, observing the little bug enjoying her sculpture. She did not forget their last encounter.

“You’re the first human in twenty years,” Velldani was once again working herself up to tears unaware of N-85’s hand raising quietly and silently as she aimed to capture the insect once and for all, “not even Zora comes here. He and Terra brought so much love in here.”

The Sprite so enamored with her long legs that N-85’s very awkward attempt at catching her now seemed inevitable.

“And you come in here and you just want something. I’m tired of us trees always–”

LIke a trap N-85’s hands sprung on the Sprite/

“Ha!” N-85 ejaculated, “I got you… you… you little–”

“Skald!” Velldani shriek.

Both N-85’s head and the Sprites head turned to Velldani.

“You know this thing?” N-85 asked.

“Her name is Skald and she stole my gift.”

No surprise there.

“Give it back,” N-85’s hand squeezing her frustrations out on Skald.

As though they were the same height Skald stared straight into N-85’s eyes and gave an indignant head shake before gesturing to the sculpture.

“You like my sculpture?” N-85 asked.

A rugged nod in response.

N-85 breathed a sigh, “Would you like to share it with me, then?”

Shocked but enthused Skald’s head bounced in excitement.

“If I let you share my sculpture you’ll give Velldani’s gift back?”

A firm and honest nod and N-85 lets her go.

Swaying her little legs as she drifted through the air she led N-85 out of the weeping willow, back into the clearing and in a small empty spot.

She didn’t notice this the first time she met Skald but as she flittered to the ground N-85 saw particles shimmering from her large colorful wings. The light dancing as they seem to seep into the soil and with a gentle tap of Skald’s foot a small crack opened from the and out emerged a small seedling.

“My gift!” Velldani called out in joy.

They looked over to see Velldani’s face in a root by the seedling staring at it like a toddler observing an ant for the first time, “It truly is beautiful isn’t it.”

Nadia and Skald looked at each other.

“What is it?”

“My baby, of course,” Velldani could not be torn from the sight of the small twig emerging from the ground.

N-85 went down to one knee to observe the little plant, curious to understand what she wasn’t seeing that Velldani did.

It didn’t seem to have the same effort as her sculpture did and yet it seemed to be filled with something. Something neither she nor Winsor could give it. Life.

Could we create something with life?

“Have you made anything before Enyatee-Vive?” Velldani asked.

The voice from her dream echoed in her heart, “Nadia.”

“Nadia,” the word blurted from N-85’s mouth. “That’s what–I am. I think. Nadia.”

Velldani smiled at her, “It seems you’re beginning to create something.”

“‘Create?’ Creativity. Are those words the same?”

“Of course, creating is what makes someone creative.”

A ball falls into Nadia’s stomach.

I’ve been infected.

“How do I cure it?” N-85’s heart racing.

“You don’t.”

“Then what will happen to me?”

“You make beautiful things.”

“But isn’t creativity a virus?”

Velldani blinked in horror, “I’m crestfalled to hear that. Zora would be furious to hear a human say that.”

“Zora?”

“Zoraster, a human like you–I think. He knows the Old Ways. He may know how to save your friend.”

N-85 leapt to her feet, “Where is he?”

“Far–but not too far I would think. I can lead you out of my forest but you have to travel through the swamp and the burning mountain on your own.”

More words Nadia did not know but it was clear to her that if there was any chance someone could help she had to take it.

“Please show me the way,” Nadia asked.

“Before I do, I have a gift for you.”

Velldani’s face slid into the ground.

The earth around the sapling twisted as the small plant begin to emerge, it’s skinny body now exploding into a massive thick trunk that spurted branches tearing out swaves of leaves from its limbs.

N-85 and Skald leapt back to behold the small sapling was now a mighty oak, thicker and large than the weeping willow.

Velldani’s face slid on the trunk facing N-85 and Skald.

“Please take this for your journey, Nadia.”

The leaves and branches shimmered and swayed as a long but thick branch fell from the tree and pierced the earth allowing it to stand upright before Nadia and Skald.

The two walked around it admiring the branch with as much awe as the tree itself. The bottom the branch was narrow but thick while the top opened up to what seemed like a nice compartment. Perfect to place something in it.

Taking her sculpture Nadia placed it in the opening and Skald sat right on top.

“You’re coming with me then?” she asked the Sprite.

A knowing nod in return.

Velldani’s eyes opened, “Nadia,” she called, “my child asks that you mark him. So that you can know what it is like to create something, and in that way, he can be bound to you.”

These strange words, even though she didn’t understand some of them, her stomach seemed to.

She strolled to the spring, took a sharp stone and a flat heavy stone, and returned to the tree. Staring at the bark she wondered what she would carve, it seemed obvious to her that she could not carve an image like Winsor’s but after a second she remembered something.

Placing the sharp stone on the trunk, she chiseled a vertical line, then another next to it, and finally a small semi-circle.

N-85 stood back to admire it.

“Now, you’ll always be happy.”

Velldani smiled, “Come, Nadia, let me show you the way.”

“N,” he groans.

His body begins to contort as he stirs.

“N! No!”

The cell’s lights illuminate, filling it with the same sterile white of the Dome.

Gasping for air, his body jolts forward. The blinding white light fills his eyes. Blurry-eyed, he struggles out of the bed, half-blind, as the shapes around him begin to take form.

A heavy weight on his left arm drags Winsor to the floor.

The now brightly lit cell was even more disorienting in the light. To the naked eye, the room seems like an empty white purgatory. Infinity all around, and yet in reality, there’s nearly enough room to lift your arm.

A stiff metal bed frame with a thin white mattress to Winsor’s right and a toilet just above his head.

Where am I?

Trying to lift himself up, his left arm skids across the ground. His cheek smacks the cold white cement floor. Pulling himself up with his right arm, he looks at his left.

His eyes widen, then his mouth.

From armpit to his fingertips, his whole left arm is encased in a long black metal horn.

Air sucks into his stomach before he releases a long, bellowing scream.

“What’s going on in there?”

Just enough sanity left in Winsor’s brain to recognize the sound of a human voice. He stops to listen.

“Knock that rucks off!” the gruffy disembodied voice calls out.

A Citizen, or so it seems.

He sighs at the first sound of normalcy.

“Hello?” Winsor calls back.

A grimy laugh cackles from above Winsor’s head.

“Finally, some company,” the voice chuckles. “Let’s hope you’re not an idiot.”

Leaning on the bed, Winsor pulls himself up. The horn is a great weight on his shoulder, but with a little shifting of his hips, he finds he can balance himself.

He notices the small rivets in the horn's design; it seems as though it could bend with some effort, however, flexing his arm yields nothing. Trying to bend it with his right does nothing else either.

Turning his attention back to the room, he looks for signs of anything beyond the bed and toilet that can give him some sense of where he is or how to get out.

Nothing but white stares back at him.

“How do I get out of here?” he calls out to the seemingly all-knowing voice.

“You don’t,” the voice, like an old oil stain—slimy but stern. “I designed this place myself. It’s impossible.”

‘Designed this place myself?’

That can’t be correct.

“But didn’t Mother imagine us?”

A black cackle echoes in Winsor’s cell loud enough to make him cringe a little.

“You think anyone with an imagination would make something this boring?”

An unconscious snort escapes Winsor’s nose. Finally, someone who sees what he always has, “I thought the same thing.”

“I like you, kid. Eternity could be worse.”

Winsor places his right hand on the wall. The small grains of texture drag against his skin as he searches for something that he can use.

Nothing.

There must be some kind of opening; how else did he get in?

“Trying to figure this place out?” the voice asks with a tinge of pride.

“If I got in, there has to be a way to get out.”

The voice suddenly seems much closer now, “Oh—we got ourselves a thinker. The truth is, you can’t leave the way you came in. The door is modular and can open from any angle to keep prisoners from predicting anything.”

“But there has to be some kind of opening somewhere.”

“You won’t find it on the wall. Behind it is a complex interlocking system that aligns the wall panels to within 100 micrometers. Making the seams literally microscopic.”

“How can we hear each other?”

“Smart and persistent, if you can solve this, maybe there’s some hope for us after all. Take a look around.”

Following the echo, Winsor looks up to see a vent in the ceiling.

Reaching his hand out less to grab it and more to measure how high it is, he can estimate that it must be approximately another full length of his body.

He leaps, not that it would do anything, but something in his legs told him to at least give it a try. The result is exactly as one would suspect.

“I designed it to be out of reach,” the voice echoes. “Seems I built my own coffin,” his voice musing irony more than mourning.

Exhausted of ideas but not willing to give up, Winsor sits on the bed.

So, this is what it means to be terminated. Subjected to a smaller dome than the one before. His lips vibrate as he blows a harsh stream of air out of his mouth.

What happened to N-85?

The last he could remember, she was being dragged to the window, but before he could see what happened next, a flash of light, and now he’s here.

“What’s your name, kid?” the voice asks.

Name?

Kid?

Who is this strange voice?

“‘Name?’ “ Winsor repeats, looking for clarification.

“Oh boy! She worked a number on you kids. How do you identify yourself?”

“My identifier is X-13.”

“‘Identifier!?’ “ the voice repeats. “‘X-13?’ What has she done to you all?”

“Who?”

“Can you remember any other way you identify yourself?”

“I mean, I prefer Winsor.”

“Winsor…” the voice trails. “Where did you hear that?”

The golden woman in Winsor’s dreams comes to mind. Thinking deeply enough, she was the only person who had ever said that word. However, there is something to this voice that tells him not to disclose the woman to him.

“It sounds good,” Winsor replies.

“Hmm—” the voice hummed through the vent. “I’m Hugo,” he responds after a moment, “Teacher of the Forbidden Knowledge of Technology.”

“And they said Winsor was weird,” Winsor mumbles.

A squeak in the mattress awakens his mind. Moving his hips on the mattress, he notices a slight springiness to it.

“I was the teacher of the Old Ways in Dento,” Hugo opines.

Winsor stands on his bed, bracing his legs.

“I taught Terra the forbidden knowledge of technology,” a self-pitying cry in Hugo’s voice.

Winsor bends his legs low.

“And how does she repay me?”

Winsor jumps.

“Imprisons me for a minor disagreement.”

Winsor lands on the ground with an audible gasp, the wind knocked out of his stomach.

“You tried jumping off the bed?” Hugo asks.

A groaning, “Yeah,” from Winsor.

Hugo clucks a paternal “tsk,” “Sorry, son, you’re not getting out.”

Turning his head, Winsor notices something under the bed. Getting up, he rips the mattress off the frame to reveal horizontal slats on the bed frame. Grabbing the frame of the bed, he lifts it up against the wall.

The extra weight from the horn drags Winsor as he climbs up the slats. Sweat slides down his face as he forces himself up the bed frame.

“This horn thing, your idea, too?” he asks Hugo.

“What are you talking about?” Indignation poisons his tone.

The vent stares down at Winsor, who now sits on top of the bed frame, just out of reach. With just a leap, he could reach it, but then what? There’s still the issue of the vent cover itself.

His fingers tap on the horn, feeling the ridged metallic texture. Perhaps the horn could pierce it.

Let’s give it a try.

Focused, he aims for the vent and, leaping off the bed, stabs the vent with the horn. It breaks through, and instead of falling, he finds himself hanging from the vent, suspended above the floor.

“Winsor?” Hugo’s voice echoes from above; he can feel the vibration of Hugo’s voice against the horn.

A laugh bellows from Winsor before the vent snaps off, and he falls to the ground.

Lifting the horn up, he sees that the tip of the horn has split in half and grown sharp claws. They snap back together, forming the tip of the horn again.

Hugo sits on this bed, his head leaning towards the air vent. His beady little brown eyes squint as he focuses his ear, waiting for any new sounds. A short, little man, his face covered in bushy white hair, with a small empty spot on the very top of his head.

The sound of metal bending groans through the cell. His eyes shift following the sound.

This is a turn of events. I knew we could have done more with them, but Terra—she just didn’t have faith.

A thunderous crash echoes through the cell. The sound of metal twisting and falling over itself.

Hugo waits for the echo to clear.

“You ok, Winsor?”

Another crash, and Hugo ducks just in time to avoid being hit by his own vent cover.

Two big eyes peek out from the vent as Winsor pops his head down.

Hugo’s beady eyes bulge almost as big as his as he stares at Winsor in amazement.

“You did it—” bumbles out of his mouth.

Winsor reaches his arms out, and for the first time, Hugo sees it. A long, black, shiny horn, like someone stuck a thorn through Winsor’s shoulder.

“What happened to you?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Winsor waves him over.

Hugo looks at the black metal spike and considers whether to touch it. He would have an easier time reaching it than Winsor’s free hand, but this thing fell outside the peripheries of his knowledge.

“Come on,” Winsor calls.

Hugo takes a deep breath and grabs onto the spike, his eyes closed tight.

Winsor pulls, and Hugo finds himself sitting on the sloping roof of “his cell overlooking a dark, empty room.

As his eyes adjust, he can make out that they are in the North West Bubble.

A shadowy black dome ceiling, less finished than the rest of the Dome, but Terra and he understood that the purpose of this dome was to encase the prison, and materials were best spent reinforcing the City Bubble.

Long slivers of light from outside peek through, illuminating enough to see hundreds of dirt-covered cylinder prisons standing in perfect rows. Rounded tunnels connect the cells into an intricate spider-web formation.

“What did she put you in here for?” Hugo asks Winsor.

“I have a brain virus called ‘creativity.’”

Hugo’s face turns red. A huff of air puffs through his nostrils, “Creativity, a brain virus! That damn waif would say something that stupid.”

“It’s not?”

Hugo slides down his prison cell and lands in a thick cloud of dust.

Winsor coughs, but Hugo’s indignation keeps his nose from noticing the dirt sucking in.

“I can’t wait to give that stuck-up witch a piece of my mind.”

Winsor stares at the dwarf of a man; no one in the Dome is as short as him, and yet his presence fills the entire empty space.

Hugo turns to Winsor, “You coming?”

Winsor looks back out at the labyrinth of prison cells.

N-85.

“You can go ahead. There’s someone I have to find.”

Hugo scoffs, “We’re the only ones here.”

The statement stuns Winsor. He looks out at all the prisons. That can’t be.

“Then why are there so many cells?”

Hugo shrugs, “We figured we might need a few cells as you kids got older. Congratulations, Winsor, you’re the first child to be sent to prison. Of course, it would be because of creativity. Terra knew how dangerous it would be.”

Winsor slides down the cell and lands in a clump of dirt.

“Then where would N-85 be?”

“A friend of yours?”

Friend? Another word Winsor had never heard before.

“I don’t know—” the thought of N-85 squeezed his heart, he put his hand to his chest, “N is like no one else.”

Hugo purses his lips, “I see—you weren’t just creative. You’re a full-on romantic.”

“‘Romantic?’”

Hugo’s eyes widen, his mouth itching a smile before he bellows a hearty laugh.

Winsor stares at the strange creature.

“Terra must have really hated you!” his laughter begins to look painful. “Oh, kid, we’re going to have a good time together.” Sniffing, he recovers his composure. “Alright, follow me, and we’ll find your girlfriend.”

There’s that word again, friend, but with an adjoining strange word too, girl.

“What’s a “‘girl-friend?’”

Words printed on the screen in a new color.

Hot. Dangerous. Startling. Red.

“Due to a malfunction in the Dome’s internal shell, part of the ceiling’s architecture is damaged. Sanitation will need to find replacement materials to rebuild the Dome’s ceiling urgently.”

A spurt of blood rushes through his heart. The veins around his eyeballs tense as his eyes widen.

His fingers tap onto the screen, “The Dome’s ceiling? How?”

“Engineering is investigating. A summary will be available once more information becomes available. You must maintain focus on finding new materials.”

“Has the ceiling ever had a malfunction like this before?”

“Be assured that nothing happens without my knowing. I have begun all measures to protect you and everyone inside. You have not begun moving, and you must begin your task.”

“Yes, Mother.”

The monorail tram slides across the rails, its hum echoing in the small tram cart, penetrating T-7’s body. The other commuters hunch over their Portable Mothers while T-7 leans back against the bare wall of the cart. His legs cross and his fingers squeezing his thin pink lips.

The Dome’s ceiling.

His Portable Mother vibrating in his pocket.

Damaged.

The vibration seems to intensify.

How?

A shock from his Portable Mother wakes him from his thoughts.

Pulling out of his pockets a single message from Mother.

“You forgot to check in.”

“Sorry, Mother, I am in the monorail now and on my way to work.”

“Excellent, T-7, please make sure to keep me informed.”

“Yes, Mother.”

His eyes peek up from his portable and look out the dark-tinted window of the monorail.

Sanitation Sprites swarm up to a high corner of the Dome’s ceiling where he sees it.

A single black hole in the ceiling.

It stares back at him, an eyeball from another universe peeking out at him and observing him, letting him know that it sees him too.

The thought sends a shudder through his heart. He clutches it for a moment, not knowing what is happening. Not sure what he is seeing is real or perhaps a mistake.

A smudge on the window.

A black blotch in his eye.

A few blinks. Still there. The Sprites are swarming around it. They see it as well. It’s real. It’s there.

Something begins to swarm in his head. Gaining form, like a swirl of smoke forming into fingers and hands. A question.

What is outside the Dome?

Taking the Portable into his hand, he begins to type.

“Mother—”

No, if she can’t explain what caused the ceiling to crack, she probably doesn’t know what’s outside the Dome.

Who would, though?

He leans his elbows on his knees as he wonders.

Who would know what’s outside the Dome?

Definitely not R-0, she just solves problems. I doubt she ever thought of anything that wasn’t prompted by a problem.

The pale, vague faces of the other Citizens in the control center pass through his mind—their downcast eyes with a dull malaise. None of them would probably ever consider the question.

Except—

“X.”

Frenetic feet stride across the dump. Citizens search through piles of garbage for scraps of metal and plastic, then race them to the conveyor belt.

R-0, leading the charge, stands at the edge of the control center platform, coordinating the organized chaos.

While her focus and control were something that had always been a nuisance to T and X’s exploits at this very moment, seeing her focus outward to save the Dome itself makes him much more aware of the platform he is standing on. Its sturdiness straightens his spine a little more.

If anyone knew where X-13 would be, R-0 would be the one.

Walking towards her, he notices her silhouette. Short, quite short when compared to other Citizens, yet it does not take away from her presence, like a sharp, tightly wound spring that was holding back from a burst.

“R?”

Her squinting eyes pop open in shock as they meet his. Her focus gone. Her cheeks suddenly red. Her eyes were darting across him as though trying to understand what she was seeing.

Her confusion gives way to something much harsher. The red in her cheeks flows through the rest of her little round skull.

“T-7!” Her voice almost seems to stammer. “Where have you been?”

“Apologies, R-0.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the sky is falling right now.”

“Yes, R-0, it’s just that—” he found himself, now, very aware of the situation. The entire Sanitation Department is in an uproar over a hole in the ceiling. Reality itself has just been torn open, and the void itself is staring back at them all, but all he can think about is one single Citizen.

“Well?”

Like a box of trash shaken of all its contents, the words tumble out, “Have you seen X-13?”

Her nostrils flare as her dark, beady eyes narrow on his. Her short posture leans towards T-7 he feels himself bend away, shrinking with every word that she says.

“Mother woke me before anyone else in the Sanitation Department to stop a cataclysmic event, and all you can think about is where that miserable, no-good, malfunction is?”

She stands no taller than his chest, but he can feel her breathing down his face.

While everyone was panicking, his first thought was to explore the void. If X-13 invited him to jump through it, he would. Maybe that is foolish.

His cheeks flush red.

“I’m sorry, you’re right.”

Her eyes soften, as though she were realizing something. The shame and embarrassment seem to wash over both. T, ashamed that his passion got the better of him. R, ashamed that she poured her wrath and frustration on someone who gives her such strange and wonderful feelings.

Her lips purse. “I can understand that in times like these, familiarity is comforting.”

“No, you’re right,” R’s chest heaves a little as he utters those words, “it’s just—doesn’t this seem strange to you?”

Her eyes narrow, again, less anger and more suspicion, “Whatever it is you are thinking about T-7, it would be best that you forget it, and whatever you do, keep X-13 out of it. I can’t handle the two of you and fix this situation.”

“You do know where he is?”

Her eyes roll as she turns back to observe the dump, “He hasn’t reported in yet.”

The hole looms over T-7, staring at the bare nape of his neck.

“ ‘Not reported in yet?’ ”

R-0 looks back; their eyes meet. Her expression softens, “No, but he may just be late.”

His stomach churns.

The green orb.

The inspector.

The hole.

He turns and runs down the platform, his legs leaping down steps, but the tension running through him keeps him from stumbling. The moment his foot touches the dump ground, he runs out into the maze of garbage.

“X-13!” his voice a weak echo that drowns in the murmuring chaos around him.

In a dark, cylindrical room, Winsor lies unconscious on a flat, stiff bed. The spike still ran through from his palm and out the other side, blood dripping from his hand.

With each little splash, the spike seems to absorb his blood before its own metallic substance begins to change like black blood.

The tip of the spike lifts itself up like a small head and, bending itself, begins to wind its way up Winsor’s arm, covering his forearm and bicep, while below, the black, shapeless liquid fills the hole in his hand before covering the hand completely.

As the blackness covers his entire arm, and hardens itself, imprisoning his hand in a long metal spike.

Long black hair streaks across her face, waving in a calm, hypnotic pattern, unfazed by the sky’s tantrum.

Across her body, she can feel the whips and curses of the wind. Fierce and unyielding and yet neither hot nor cold, as though they were invisible fingers grazing over her.

Looking down, she saw she was wearing nothing but a single white sheet, covering her whole body except for her small, bare, brown feet.

Just beyond her feet, she looked at this new material she was standing on.

Not smooth and hard like the ground of the Dome.

This ground was soft, though small, sharp grains can be felt. Something both gentle and warm, but a warning to watch where she steps.

“Nadia.”

The voice whispers from the wind. A male voice like Winsor’s, however, it was not his voice. This one sounded older, sterner.

She turned in the direction of the source only to find more of the empty gray meadow.

Standing bare and exposed for the world to see, she strained to hear the voice again.

Her mind reeled to remember what she heard.

Na-dee-a.

Nadia.

What does it mean?

The first she had ever heard that word and yet—

Another mystery rides on the back of the wind.

A scream.

A woman’s scream.

Agony. Loss. Despair.

It ached at N-85’s heart. She knew she had caused it. What she had done and who she caused to scream, she did not know.

Her head chasing the vista for the source of the sound, and this time rewarded by a figure in the distance.

A brown figure, on her knees, weeping.

Every ounce of N-85’s heart screamed to run towards the woman, but her legs forced themselves to walk.

Her body knew something her mind did not. As though there was something more here than her eyes could see.

With every step, the figure seemed to grow in size, as did the grass.

Looking at her hand, N-85 could see her fingers becoming smaller, rounder, softer.

The world was not growing around.

She was growing smaller.

Tinier.

By the time she reached the figure, she was now a toddler. Long black hair reaching the back of her knees. Large green eyes on a plump brown face that was nearly half the size of her own body.

She looked up at the woman, her body collapsed on her knees, strange but beautiful red markings drawn on her hands that cover face.

As she came closer, she realized her brown robe was actually a dark, soft, velvet crimson. It too was covered in similar strange markings, but they glittered with gold.

The robe seemed to cover even her head, where a tiara seemed to stand, though she could not get a clear look as the sobbing woman refused to be seen.

Something, however, grew in the now very small heart of N-85. A sadness, a sadness for this woman.

There was nothing about her that she understood, but in her childish, small heart, in her childish, small mind, she could recognize that she was in pain.

What’s the matter? She thought. Why are you crying?

She reached out her small, round hand and touched the woman’s; she could feel the warmth of her skin; she could feel the metacarpals hiding in her hand. Giving the gentlest push so she could see the hidden face.

It fell away to reveal her own face, or that’s what it seemed at first. Like hers but older. Her jaw was longer, her nose a little thicker than hers, but her eyes were what gave it away.

Black. Black and empty.

She could feel them pull her in, and it was then she realized the wind was not a wind but a vacuum pulling. Sucking whatever it could into those two empty orbitals and yet, somehow out of those gaping portals came tears.

Red tears.

Red, thick tears stream down her face, leaving a blood-stained trail across her beautiful, dark face. Her mouth contorted in agony, foaming as something dark and stringy dangled from her maw.

The vision filled N-85 with disgust, horror, but most of all pity.

Whatever it was that gave her this pain, she felt responsible for and in her the desire to make it right, a desire to say something that would make it go away.

A sentence entered her heart and formed like a bubble in her mouth. Two words that seemed to have the power to sweep all this away.

If she could only say these two words, then, perhaps, she could wake up and return to her apartment in the Dome. Winsor, the sculpture, the lights, the colors, the dump could all be gone if only she would say these two words.

I’m sorry.

But as much as her past called to her, as much as she pitied the woman, as much as she even loved this woman, she could not bring herself to say it.

Instead, she reached her small hand and caressed the woman’s slender jaw, and for the first time, the woman blinked.

The howling stopped, the wind stopped, and out from her pressed lids a single blood-red tear squeezed out, and with the tiniest drip it splashed on N-85’s cheek.

Her eyes opened.

As N-85’s bald head rolled, she could feel the soft crinkling of small, paper-like debris underneath her. A cold, wet drop of something on her cheek. Wiping it with her thumb, she could sense it was a water-like substance.

Darkness all around. She might as well still have her eyes closed.

Stumbling, she got up to her feet and, holding out her palms, she groped at the darkness, trying to find anything to touch when suddenly she could feel, like a breath, a small breeze.

Fresh air was coming from somewhere.

She went in the direction of the breeze until she stumbled onto a hill of dirt and grass.

The smell of earth, grass, and dew flows into her nostrils. It was sharp, fresh, and it seemed to enter her brain. Her eyes seemed to see more clearly than before.

Getting on her hands and knees, she crawled up the hill, groping in the darkness, not knowing what she would find next until she seemed to have reached the peak.

Standing up, she looked out to see black.

An empty void of nothing stared back.

Was this the world outside the Dome? The empty void? Mother was right, there is nothing. She was nothing. There is just Mother and the Dome.

She had truly failed. Greater than she could have possibly imagined.

Winsor, creativity, sculptures.

What was it all for when staring into the void itself, and annihilation staring back?

It all meant nothing.

Not even Winsor could be with her in the oblivion.

She took a deep breath, resigning herself to enter the void of nothingness, and taking a step forward, she tumbled down the grassy hill. Her knee folded into he stomach, knocking the wind out of her, as she tumbled through the earth and, with an icy splash that jolted her nervous system, landed in a small puddle.

She sat in misery, contemplating what had just happened.

Is this what oblivion is? Tumbling around in darkness, surrounded by smells, dirt, water, and sensations that crawled up and down N-85’s skin?

It serves her right.

Mother told her there was nothing, and when it mattered most, she failed. She insisted on what she wanted, not on Mother's will.

She dropped her head in her hands and began weeping in defeat.

Just then, a warmth touched the top of her head and began to spread down to her hands.

Looking up, she could see a light, but it was not like the light of the Dome, cold and white. It was warm and golden.

Standing up out of the puddle, she looked out at the light to see it increase in size. The sky itself no longer black but revealing a pink, then lavender, and lastly giving into the most gentle of blue.

Keeping the light from fully revealing itself, she could make out the silhouette of an immense pile of rocks. Greater than any of the Golems she had seen, in fact, it would seem to take several hundred of them to reach the height of the pile.

As the light grew larger and hung higher, she could see that those massive rocks were white at the top, but as her eyes moved further down, she found large green and brown growths covering the rocks. It was too far for her to make out what these growths were.

Rising up into the sky, the light began to reveal itself as a giant white orb, and she had to shield her eyes from its intensity.

Diverting her eyes down, she could see that she was standing at the very edge of a cliff, half a step away from plummeting down a red-brown cliff, and her body would be left in a bright green meadow that expanded beyond her vision. Looking down the edge dizzied her enough to refrain from looking down again, so she scurried up the hill.

Reaching the top, she looked over to see the Dome.

A vast ocean of silver that reflected the white orb off its shiny metallic shell. It blinded her for a moment, but after shielding her eyes, she realized her own green orb was missing.

Searching down at the bottom of the hill where she climbed out of the Dome, she found the opening she must have emerged from, and running down the hill, she found herself under a type of antechamber of the Dome.

Massive tubes and machinery hummed and undulated around her until she found the pile of leaves she landed on, and lying next to it was her sculpture.

As she approached it, she could hear another humming sound. Not like the large transformer boxes around her. This humming seemed to move around her.

Follow her.

Everything was so new she had not yet considered if she was alone or not.

Reaching down she picked up her sculpture to find sitting on it something, large, with long dark furry legs, large white wings with colorful patterns printed on it and a round purple face with big black eyes staring right into N-85’s.

Throwing the sculpture on the ground, she gave a yelp out of shock.

The creature jumped up into the air, its wings humming, allowing it to float in place.

Its silhouette and movement felt familiar to N-85.

“A sanitation sprite,” she sighed. Relief washed over her at the first semblance of normalcy.

The creature’s head tilted at the comment, and before she knew it, N-85 had snatched her by the waist and brought her up to be face-to-face with her.

“You’re a strange-looking sprite,” N-85 commented as she twisted the little thing in her hands, observing the creature as if she were a mere piece of machinery.

Again, it did not occur to N-85 that she was not alone, as she did not consider any of the droids in the Dome as being alive, as Winsor insisted. If she had, she would have noticed that this little creature was losing her patience with this rude and stupid human who again dragged her up to her massive, stupid face.

“Regardless,” N-85 continued, “report back to your hive and inform your highest managerial—”

PHEW!

From out of the small creature’s mouth, she spewed her defensive green dust into the brutish human’s face.

Green glittery dust shimmered on N-85’s face as she coughed and wretched, the dust seeming to enter her lungs with every breath.

It had been a very long time since this creature saw a human, but never had she been treated so rudely by one as old as her. A human child is always dangerous because of their ignorance, so she knew to keep a distance, but the adults ought to know better.

She watched with satisfaction as the human coughed and hacked. It wouldn’t hurt her, but at least it would teach her to treat sprites with some respect.

With a dignified huff, the creature fluttered off, wishing she had a chance to get a better look at the green orb. It did an excellent job of accentuating the parts of her that she was most proud of, so she made up her mind at that moment to steal it, but it would have to mean getting rid of the other weight she was carrying.

As N-85 coughed the last bit of emerald dust from her lungs, she grabbed her sculpture and climbed back out of the antechamber.

The sky seemed more awake than before, the blue more pure than in the morning, and the light seemed to cover everything around her. Standing on top of the hill, she tried to survey the land, but all she could see, besides the Dome itself, was thick patches of tree tops all around.

What was she to do?

Winsor may still be trapped inside. He may have found a way out. He may be dead.

So, many if’s, no clear answer.

The only thing that seemed to make any sense was to try to understand the Dome a little more, so climbing down the hill and entering the forest, she began to walk alongside the Dome, trying to find an entrance. All the while, not aware that she was being followed by a very envious little sprite.

She wipes her eyes to find a strange, hard crust forming around her eyelids.

The room is filled with a soft gray light. The productivity cycle must be at an end, and in all the heavy emotions, she must have forgotten to enter her sleep pod.

Another knock from behind her door.

She slides away from her desk and opens it to find Winsor.

Something bundled in his arms. His eyes large, excited, his breath heavy.

At this hour, the monorails would be out of service. Did he run all the way here?

“I finished it,” he pants.

The grayness of sleep lifts from Nadia as she realizes his meaning.

“It?” she confirms.

He nods as he enters the apartment.

“I did it, N, I finally made something that looks like what’s in my head.” his eyes bright, the orb pressing into his chest, his crossed arms hiding N-85’s gift, “Close your eyes.”

She looks up at the orb, meeting his gaze. His excited energy, his happiness, all of it fills the room, squeezing out the anxiety and pain she was feeling moments ago.

The idea of indulging him makes the last aura of depression escape the room.

A faint smile crosses her lips as she closes her eyes and holds out her hands.

Her hands are the first to experience the cool, smooth sensation, but the sudden weight dragging her arms for a second fills her brain with a reminder that she, N-85, is still alive.

She opens her eyes.

Even in the pale gray light, the green shines and glitters. Something beyond her knowledge. Something beyond the Dome.

A hint.

A tease.

A reminder, but of what she cannot remember.

She lifts it up to face it at her eye-level.

This—is—me.

Her eyes feel warm. A blink. Tears swell in her eyes.

It’s not fair.

It was all about to be gone.

Why?

Why are they here? Why would Winsor make this? Why now? Why, when both their lives are about to be—

She clutches the sculpture to her chest as she falls to her knees.

The tears flowing free now. A wail escapes her lungs.

Why?

Winsor takes a knee next to her.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m real... aren’t I?” she sniffs.

A mix of a grimace and a smile form in Winsor’s lips. He puts his hand on her face. The truest thing she ever felt.

“You are to me.”

The desire, the urge, the feeling she had when he pulled her away from the pit, returns. A yearning to be closer to him. To feel him. To press something as soft and delicate as her own lips against his.

This time, she will not fight it.

Her eyes close as her face lifts towards his, and as she fades into the feeling, she sees his face move down towards her. She opens her mouth as though to taste something she had never tasted but desired all her life. Her hands lifting toward his face, she can feel his cheek, rough and yet soft, unlike the smooth metal and plastic around her, unlike her. She can feel his jaw open just slightly as his lips part for hers.

A scream echoes through the Dome.

Through her window.

Through their bodies.

A scream of pain, of agony, of hate.

Not machine.

Not human.

Jarring them from their spell and awakening them to a most ancient and primal emotion. Fear.

Winsor rises and walks towards the window.

Everything in N-85 desiring to stop him, not that it would stop what would come, but a desire to hold him as it does.

She turns her head to see what he sees.

Her eyes widen. A gasp escapes her lungs, and her fingers press against her lips.

A noise first, like static. A shadow emerging from the distance, growing and moving closer to the apartment fast.

As the shadow grows, the sound becomes louder, clearer, yet undiscernible.

Gibbering, cackling, screeching, laughter.

The shadow gains form as it reaches the apartment.

Metal.

Dark, sharp, dirty, metal.

Arms, limbs, beaks, tongues, jaws, teeth.

Metal creatures, unlike the Sanitation Sprites or Dump Golems. Something more akin to the Trash Goblins, but their eyes. Empty, black holes in shiny gray skulls with little beads of red light, all staring at Winsor and N-85.

Their sharp claws dig into the building as they climb up towards the apartment.

N-85 feels Winsor’s hand grab her by the wrist.

“Come on!”

As they race towards the door, she can see their shadows projected all around her apartment. Claws, heads, arms, bodies leaping up, snuffing out the light, and enveloping the whole room in darkness.

Never had she been in darkness like it. Her eyes open, and yet they may as well be closed.

She can feel Winsor stop at the wall. His hand presses against it as he guides her toward the door.

The sound is now deafening as the apartment echoes the muffled screeches and laughter of the machines outside. Nothing she can say would reach Winsor’s ear, no matter how close.

She can feel Winsor’s arm hitting against the door.

Locked? Doors don’t lock from the inside.

This is Mother’s answer. Her verdict. Her sentence.

She grabs Winsor’s hand with her other hand. He stops pounding.

Whatever happens from here it cannot take away from what she has here and now. It can be over; she gives it her permission if she can just end it with him. This person who changed everything.

She pulls him away from the door.

The room is silent, at least the noise, the mockery, the hate, at least they have been granted this small mercy.

She feels for Winsor’s torso as she wraps her arms around him, placing her head on his chest, dropping to her knees. He follows her. Wrapping his arm around her small body, holding her close.

Let them tear us to pieces.

Winsor lifts his head.

A faint sound approaches the door.

Ka-Klop!

Ka-Klop!

It grows louder.

She can feel every muscle in Winsor’s arm tighten around her.

He won’t give up. No matter how hopeless.

If only she can see his face. To see Winsor’s determination one last time. To believe, there is hope.

Ka-Klop!

Ka-Klop!

It grows louder until it reaches the door, where it stops.

Silence.

The door slides open, the dull gray light from outside, the only light, peeks around a large black figure.

A four-legged beast with thick legs, round metal feet. Metal ribs sticking out of its sides with a long spine, with hoses hissing and flailing about all around its head.

Its head, a hideous, strange metal thing, a long snout with two big, flat teeth at the end pressing down on two more teeth attached to a long jaw reaching back to its eyes. Empty, black, hollow sockets that would consume N-85’s soul if it were not first burned by the red, hot, balls of light in the center of its oculars.

Crowning its head is a massive black spike.

Steam hisses from its mouth as sludge drips from every orifice.

It lowers its head. Its spike staring at N-85. It’s swirling rivets mesmerizing her, dizzying her, keeping her from hearing its feet scratching at the cold metal floor. The steam blowing from its nostrils. Its feet hit the ground as it charges towards.

A hand reaches out from the darkness, breaking N-85 from its spell.

His hand crashes into the beast's spike, giving her time to roll away.

She looks up to see Winsor’s body tossing back and forth as his hand holds onto the spike.

How is he able to do it?

Her eyes squint at his hand. She gasps.

He’s not holding it. The tip of the horn juts out the other side of his hand, red blood and black ooze glistening on the tip.

She can hear him scream, and the beast rears back on its hind legs, trying to throw him off.

“Winsor!”

The window shatters. The shrieking, screaming creatures flood the apartment.

Black claws, red eyes, shining metal teeth rush towards N-85.

“N!” Winsor calls out as arms and claws drag her into the mass of metal bodies.

She struggles as they grab her legs, her waist, her head. She shakes their claws, but more come. Lifting her neck, she sees Winsor. His legs now wrapped around the beast’s neck.

He’s trying to pull his hand out, but the beast shakes its head, making it impossible.

A claw grabs her face, but she pulls free to see Winsor jam his chisel into the beast’s spike, and with a swing of his hammer, sparks shoot out.

Winsor screams as electricity courses through his body.

“Winsor!” she tries to pull herself toward him, but the claws drag her to the edge of the window.

She feels herself being lifted up. Looking down, she sees the very long drop to her death.

A scream echoes from above, the same scream she heard before.

The creatures shrink back, leaving N-85 standing, alone on the ledge.

Her eyes dart about searching the air to find the source of the scream, but as it screams

From a distance, a black shadow grows as it moves closer. Before she can understand what she is looking at, two sharp claws grab at her.

She tries to bat them away, but her sleeve catches a thick metal talon. That pulls her away from the ledge.

Instinct projects her forward, grabbing onto the claw as her feet dangle above the city. She looks up. She’s hanging onto the legs of a human-shaped skeleton, but where arms should be are long black wings, and where feet should be are the claws that snatched her.

Bending over the skeleton’s shiny metal skull, looks down at N-85. Empty, black holes like the beast’s with piercing red lights.

N-85 rips her sleeve free from the creature’s claw.

It screams and tries to grab at her with its other claw.

Swinging her arms, N-85 tries to keep the creature’s talons from her.

The wings flap as it spins, trying to get control of N-85.

Lifting her leg, N-85 kicks at the claw as she tries to pull herself up and, with a quick smack of her foot, knocks it away. With all of her might, she lifts herself up, but before she can have a moment.

Crash!

White debris and dust explode all around her.

Coughing N-85 looks down to see that they have broken through the Dome’s ceiling.

Screams cry out from above. She looks up to see the creature tangled in wires.

Reaching for a metal frame, N-85 pulls herself into the outer shell of the Dome.

Dark.

Only the light from inside the Dome illuminates the area, but N-85 crawls, trying to get away from the flying creature.

It thrusts about with the wires, screeching. She turns to see where it is, but just as her head turns, her hand slides on the Dome’s curvature.

Her body falls into the darkness.

A wiry clang as her back lands on a metal grid.

Whether light is peering from some unknown source or her eyes are adjusting, N-85 begins to make out vents, fans, tubes, and wires all around. They shift for a second before metal talons break through, reaching her.

She rolls out of the way, but as she does, a massive gust of air blows her up into the air. She sees the flying metal creature flap its wings in frustration, trying to regain control as the burst of air flips it around.

Looking down, she sees giant metal propellers spinning, and as they come to a stop, she and the creature fall to the ground.

The wind is knocked out of her as she makes impact with the metal ground.

Up ahead, a vent.

Above her head, the creature circles over her. If she’s fast enough, she might make it in time.

Jumping to her feet, she dashes for the vent.

A shriek from above. She’s seconds away.

The claws snatch her in the chest. It’s piercing metal tears through her jacket as it lifts her into the air. She gasps as her chest takes the blow of the impact, but it is not the talons that hit her chest.

Grabbing the creature by its leg, N-85 pulls herself up onto its leg, tearing away the part of her shirt caught in the talon and revealing her green sculpture in its claws.

Climbing up the large body, grabbing it at its pelvis and then its ribs, the creature dives and turns in the air, trying to shake her off, but, with every ounce of strength in her, she reaches its neck.

The fan starts up again.

Wrapping her arms around its neck, she pulls back, causing the creature to flip upside down.

The fan stops.

They drop into free fall.

N-85 holds tight to the creature’s body, forcing it to make impact with the ground before she does.

There seems to be no chance this will work, but it’s a better death than what this thing has planned.

Crash!

It hits the ground.

Its bones scatter across the metal grid.

N-85 feels the reverberation of the impact through her. Her body hit the ground, red and white flashes in her eyes. Her body flops into the air, forcing her to spin on her back. The smell of copper shocks her as the back of her head hits the ground, and the rest of her collapses.

Silence.

Darkness.

Her breath. Gasping. Heaving.

Her eyes open.

Every joint in her body screams as she tries to get up.

She closes her eyes as she focuses her breathing.

Time is not on her side. Whether or not anything has followed them is anyone’s guess. She has to keep moving.

Forcing herself to roll onto her stomach, she pushes herself up to her feet.

The world seems to be spinning. Time is running out. She reminds herself and pushes herself.

Her foot hits something cold, round, and smooth. Feeling in the dark, she finds it, her sculpture trapped in the creature’s claw.

Fumbling with it in the dark, she feels a metal switch, and with a forceful POP, the claw jolts open, freeing her treasure.

Holding it in the crux of her arms, she slides into the vent.

In the dark, all she can rely on is the sensation of her skin. Touching and feeling.

It is immediately obvious that the vent goes straight down. Where and how far she can not tell.

Lowering her body slowly, her feet search until her toes feel a slight bend in the vent. A sigh of relief, she lets go, and her body lands at the bottom of the vent.

However, what she does not know is that vents are very light and fragile, and as soon as she lands, the vent breaks wide open, dropping her into the abyss.

She screams as her body tumbles down, wires catch and snap, vents breaking as she descends down an agonizingly long and slow fall until she feels her body smack into something soft, wet, grainy, and dry.

Her nostrils filling with a new sensation, air but something new with it.
Something pleasant.

Something clean.

Something new.

Exhaustion takes her as she closes her eyes in the darkness.