They leave for the Spine within the hour. Abi is still wiping her tears; she never seems to run out of them. Coel holds her closely once again, just her hand this time, tightly squeezed between his own. Roach has bequeathed them new clothes from her piles: shirts and trousers all scribbled on and bedazzled with trash. She uses a rope to fashion a belt around Sen’s waist, pulling it taut enough to hold.

  “Why do I have to come?” The boy mutters, holding out his arms. “I need to rest.”

  “Think of it as a tour,” the girl hums, finishing the knot. “Aren’t you the least bit intrigued by our lives down here?”

  Sen turns up his nose. “Not at all.”

  Roach only smiles. “Pity, this will be torture then.”

  His eyes snap back. “Mind your tongue, trash.”

  Rivin steps forward from leaning against the door without meaning to, fingers twitching, but she raises her hand ever so slightly to heel him. She leans closer to the blonde, amber eyes studying his face even as it turns away. “Fine. Stay then.” Her smile is sickly sweet, like fruit decaying in the dirt. “You look too afraid anyway. The beasts can smell it, y’know? You should sort that out before we head off.”

  Sen’s eyes widen, and he swallows thickly. “B-Beasts?”

  The queen’s head tilts to the side, her smile stretching pleasantly. “Don’t worry. We won’t be long.”

  “Don’t be daft,” the boy hisses, “I said I’m coming!” He turns on his heel, marches away quickly to reach for the boiled water on the stove, ladling himself a glass before filling a bottle.

  Roach cheerfully twirls to face the rest of them, striding up to Rivin’s side. They share a grin. “Beast?” He echoes.

  The girl shrugs. Skips over the question. “Who else is coming?”

  Rivin looks over at Slink on the counter swinging his feet, Chip tripping up as he ties his boots, and Ricket helping him with the laces. His heart warms.

  Her face sours. “All of them?”

  “Yeah. Sounds like we’ll be away a while, right?” His eyes return to her.

  His answer must appease the girl, for her face softens. “Fine. Fine. Bring the lot. The more the merrier.” She begins to fill her pockets, replenishing the pack around her hips. “Listen, the General isn’t going to be happy; it’s best to leave the talking up to me.”

  Rivin raises a brow. “You think that’s wise?”

  She scoffs. Pauses. Takes a moment to chew on an answer before deciding. “It’s my responsibility. I vouched for you.”

  The older teen leans back again, crossing his arms. “I made the deal.”

  Her irises flicker over his face, curious. “You’d be cleaning up my mess.”

  It’s Rivin’s turn to shrug. “Our mess.” His smile returns. “This is our decision, remember?”

  Her lips curl to match it. “He might eat you alive.”

  His grin falters. “What?”

  “He might tear the flesh off your twiggy little body and drink from your skull like a goblet.”

  Rivin frowns. “Don’t try to freak me out. It won’t work on me. I’ve got this.”

  Her face softens once more. “Fine. Fine.” She can’t quite hide her relief before she raises her hand to extend her pointer finger, wagging it before him. “But we do it together, Ghost.”

  Rivin catches it in his palm, leaning closer. “Fine.”

  “You guys really think we won’t be noticed?” Chip asks, approaching them. He’s checking his borrowed cloak over, examining a large tear in the seam, rubbing his finger across it.

  “We’ll be fine.” Rivin reassures, releasing his hold.

  The girl nods her head in agreement. “For the most part.”

  Chip groans. “What does that mean?”

  “We blew out that tower in the sanctum—”

  “You blew it out,” Slink corrected, sounding more jealous than scolding.

  Roach sighs. “Okay, I blew out that tower,” she amends. “They may not know who we are, but they’ll be looking. The Spine isn’t safe right now. Expect Angels on high alert.” Her gaze darts between them. “We should keep to the outskirts.”

  “What are we walking into?” Chip worries his bottom lip with his teeth.

  “The Angels are friends of Halidom,” the queen informs them. “We’re not walking into anything. Around. It has to be around.”

  “Angels and Halidom?” Chip’s voice rises. “Since when?”

  “They worship the same God,” Roach continues. The room falls quiet, the words circulating between them. “Angels are not like us. They aren’t born here. They’re chosen.”

  “From the temple…” Sen’s words are breathy and whispered. Several sets of eyes dart towards him but the boy only swallows hard and refuses to elaborate.

  Roach resumes, brushing her hair from her face, tightening it back. “They’re sent here. A new batch every sweep.” The word draws shivers.

  Chip releases a shuddering breath. “Th-They don’t do sweeps anymore…”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “We’re due for one.” She tells them. “Overdue.”

  “That’s not the concern right now,” Rivin steps in, ignoring his own rapid pulse. “Tonight, we get Coel and Abi home, and we settle our dues with the Swill.”

  The room falls quiet once again, and Slink is the first to break it with a bitter chuckle. “Not a daunting task at all.”

  “No one is being forced to come.” Rivin follows, annoyed.

  “I am,” Sen chimes.

  “We know, Riv,” Chip murmurs. “Just… nerves is all.” The boy manages a tight smile. “We’ll come. We’ve got this.”

  Relieved, the dark-haired teen relaxes.

  Roach is watching him. Curious again. “Right…” She turns and claps her hands together. “Are we ready to play follow the leader again?”

  Before long they’ve headed off, Roach at the forefront and Rivin by her side, the others chattering behind them for the first half hour before dropping off into silence as they grow closer to The Spine, closer to people, closer to being discovered.

  As predicted, the vendor strip is an unfamiliar chaos, heavily guarded by Halidom forces and Angel priests alike; navy uniforms and rags all peppered in white particles, each face hidden beneath a mask or sealed helmet. The square itself is closed, shops locked up and shackled, stalls cleared and abandoned.

  It's bleary to scout, and it's growing harder and harder to breathe the further they go in. Above, thick plumes of steam spew from each vent to devour the smoke and burn in the air, shedding layers of white across the landscape like snow. They're very quickly covered in it themselves, the glittering dust catching against hair and cloth. It doesn't disperse right away, and soon enough they're simply part of a whited-out canvas.

  Rivin has never seen it like this before; it’s never been this thick and he’s growing worried. Painfully so. The world has already changed. Already felt the shift of their actions.

  “There’s so much of it…” Chip breathes, glancing at his speckled palm.

  “I'm tired…” murmurs Abi, wiping at her eyes.

  “I know,” Coel tells her. “I feel it too.”

  “Quickly, move quickly.” Roach hisses, pulling up her collar to cover her nose and mouth. “Don’t breathe it in.”

  The others follow suit, covering their faces, but fatigue hits them quickly, with euphoria just as close behind.

  Rivin’s muscles feel weightless, his bones of jelly, and an oil slick of colour begins to bleed from the walls and floors. He moves his palm through the air, watches gravity warp around his fingers, his knuckles pulsing. “What’s happening?” He asks, and the words appear before him like text printed across the sky, puffing out of existence.

  “Come here.” The queen stumbles towards him, sluggishly reaching for his fingers but missing. She rolls her shoulders too slowly, tries to shake something free from her head — tiny blue birds quiver out from her ear canal and spread their velvety wings to dart between the opal dunes, chittering like windchimes, like a pickaxe in the stone.

  “Did you see that?” Chip squints at the distance.

  “It’s beautiful.” Ricket confirms, looking in the opposite direction.

  “I can’t feel my face…” Slink hums, smooshing his cheeks together with two knobby knuckles before his face drops, his pupils—already enormous—devouring the rest of his iris. “Is this my face?”

  “No,” Sen exhales, “it’s mine. Stop it…”

  Slink chuckles lowly and too slow, the sound rippling like waves from his mouth. “Cool…” He palms his cheeks and lips and squeezes his mouth and nostrils shut.

  Sen swats at him sloppily. “You swine,” he says, the words sounding backwards, “stop it, stop it now—”

  Something bites Rivin’s hand right off. He gasps, draws back but cannot escape. An eel—no. Roach. Her fingers threaded through his own like a ribbon pulled tightly and neatly, and the finishing bow blisters from their flesh, curving out in soft ribbons.

  “What’s happening?” He asks again.

  “Link up.” Is all she says in return, but when he doesn’t move, her voice booms over him, loud as a shotgun, blowing back his hair. “Now!”

  He turns, reaches for Ricket’s wrist, and somehow finds it even while his hand appears to melt right through and fuse into flesh. “Link up,” he echoes, his voice of water and storm.

  Ricket stumbles back, grasps Abi, who is already tight onto Coel, her eyes as wide as saucers, bulging and rainbow against her lashes. “Mama?” She calls, the words sailing across the sky. Coel follows them, stepping away from the path, from their already disappearing trail.

  “Link up!” Roach cries again. Slink finds himself for long enough to listen, gripping for Chip and together they link up with the rest of them. When the Queen sighs her relief, it sparkles and slithers away. “Don’t let go.” She squeezes her eyes closed, features twisted as she strains herself to be present. When they open, they are completely white. “I mean it. Do not let go. Cover up.”

  Again, they shift their shirts and jackets over their faces, bodies heavy and tingling as they trudge the endless banks of exultant sleet. It might feel like a lifetime before the vents vanish in the periphery, veiling less and less of the desolate lands in bleached colour.

  The further they get from the steam, the clearer their heads become, and the easier it is to breathe; however, alongside the departure goes the warmth, each step colder than the last. Roach lowers her mask, inhaling deeply before giving the rest the go-ahead; her exhale a dance of fog.

  Once more, they follow suit, drawing in the scent of the familiar, dank dungeon and something else too, all too familiar now. Decay. Ahead, they can see cracked arches bent into the stone and columns half buried, the beginnings of civilisations most forgotten people stacked upon themselves in vertical alcoves once home to stone beings, marble deities who didn’t need much else, now replaced by a creature that does.

  Roach turns, glances at the sibling pair. “Your turn, kids. Lead the way.”

  Coel swallows thickly, his jaw ticking before he nods his head, hangs it heavy, and steps forward, his sister still clinging. They lead the rest of the way, guiding the children through the depravity of the slums. Mattresses are flung about everywhere, propped on stilts or soggy and moulding in puddles. Ropes connect the vertical alcoves, each room hidden behind tattered fabric. The floors themselves are slick, pungent and ever bleeding, coloured like rust.

  Somewhere deeper, incense burns en masse, poorly covering the scent of sex, sweat and sickness by choking it. In the walls, devoured over centuries, are mosaics of creatures and gods alike, faces swallowed by rot and lichen.

  “We’re close,” Coel tells them. He still hasn’t looked up.

  Rivin slows, drifting to the end of the pile. His heart is racing, thrumming hard and mean in his ears. Sweat has begun to gather at his brow, his pits, and the small of his back.

  Chip notices, finds his shoulder to squeeze it gently, his eyes gentle with understanding. “You don’t—”

  Rivin interrupts. “I’m fine.”

  He’s lying.

  Chip knows. “We’ll take it slow.” His smile is just as kind.

  Rivin doesn’t answer. Only nods.

  They walk a distance further, past bones and bodies and the sick sputtering in the dirt. The more they walk, the more certain Rivin feels about where they’re headed. He holds his breath. Won’t release it until they’re there, until—

  The siblings pause, the narrow passageway gaping outward and into a wide and circular dead end; each wall stuffed with crowded homes and sheet metal, rope ladders strung and cut and burned and falling, flimsy bridges barely connecting through different levels. At the centre, rung by a moat of brown water and bleeding warm golden light from a front room adorned with floor-to-ceiling mosaic murals, is a multi-storey building topped with a chimney shaped like a serpent's head, cracked and ribbed with hard, splintered wood, spewing dark fogs of thick herb against a low ceiling.

  Abi lifts her arm, points ahead, but does not move forward.

  Rivin can’t hear her. Can’t hear anything.

  A sign on the front blinks with the only source of electrical light.

  The Triple Wick.

  And beneath it, in dull and flickering red, reads:

  Le Fossa.

  Rivin can’t remember how to release that breath he’s been holding.

  He can only hear the sounds. The thump of flesh. Blood — he can smell the blood. Taste it running down his lip, into his mouth.

  Someone takes his hand. Not Mouse this time—no, it can’t possibly be, and yet he hears her voice, hears it so clearly in his head, her throat still clogged with tears like her green, green eyes.

  'Come home, Rivin. Come ho—'

  “Home,” Abi tells them. “That’s home.”

  The Pit.