“I’m ready if you are,” I tell him, though my stomach’s tight with nerves.

“If the giant closes its mouth, I don’t know if we could get out. Maybe only one of us should—”

“Don’t tempt me,” I stop him. “You and Shark risked everything to help me. It’s only fair I do the same in return. So don’t give me the option of cutting out on you now. I’m afraid I might take it.”

Dervish grins. “Then let’s go for a dip in the mouth of Moby Dick!”

Cavernous. No smells or sounds. Just the spectacle of legions of vicious demons wriggling over and around one another to take turns attacking the lonely but resilient Shark. They spot us when we enter. Dozens peel away from the main assault and hurl themselves at us. Small, furry, dark demons, like tumbleweed with claws and fangs. We swat them aside without slowing. We’ve come too far and seen too much to be scared by these hangers-on.

Shark glances up as we close in on him. His eyes are distant and I see that he thinks we’re another couple of demons. He aims a fist at me, but I stop out of range. Dervish dips lower, trying to direct a tube of air at Shark so they can communicate. But Shark must think it’s a tendril or tongue. He ducks, throws demons at Dervish, edges away from him, further back from the mouth. I flash on an image of what would happen if the monster swallows now. Quickly try to purge my mind of it.

I slip behind Shark and send out a tube of my own, all the time battling the demons. Shark spots the tube, dodges it, then leaps, hands outstretched, intent on throttling me.

Dervish flies forward and collides with Shark. They crash into me and our limbs get entangled. Now that we’re touching, sharing our force fields, we can hear Shark. He’s screaming madly, vile curses, words that make no sense, desperation and isolation thick in his throat.

“Shark!” Dervish roars. “It’s us! Dervish and Kernel! We’ve come to rescue you. Stop fighting. We can get you out of here.”

Shark screams in response, raises a large tattooed fist to pound Dervish flat, then pauses, faint lines of realisation rippling across his face.

“It’s really us, Shark,” I tell him. “This isn’t a trick. We came for you.”

“Impossible,” he croaks. “How could you get here? You’re illusions. Lord Loss sent you to torment me with hope.”

“Don’t be a dope,” Dervish snaps. “Could any illusion look this good?”

Shark blinks—then grins. “How?” he whispers. “How did you find me?”

“We used magic.”

“But it’s empty space out there.”

“So?”

“You mean… all this time… I could have left? I wasn’t trapped? I didn’t have to spend months… years… whatever… fighting these horrible furballs?”

“Nope,” Dervish says lightly.

Shark’s expression darkens. He grabs one of the demons and rips it to pieces, then uses its fur to wipe blood from his face. When he tosses the rag away, his features are composed. He sniffs as if what’s happened is no big deal. “So much for the tour,” he says casually. “Let’s go find a bar.”

Laughing, Dervish pats Shark on the back, points him towards the open mouth and guides him out of the maw of the monster, away from the gnashing teeth of the furious furry creatures, into the empty depths of darkest, coldest space.

Floating, the monster having drifted on, we tell Shark about our adventures and theory that we’re in a chess board-shaped universe of thirty-two different zones. He listens quietly, distracted, looking around twitchily. Sighs when we finish, then says softly, “Thanks for coming.”

“We need you,” Dervish says.

“For what?” Shark snorts. “You were doing fine without me. You figured this place out and dealt with it. All I did was stay where I had something solid underfoot. I thought that was going to be the rest of my life, that mouth and those demons. Part of me wanted to surrender and let them…”

He shivers, looking very different from the Shark I first met. The fight has drained him of much of his confidence and strength. I want to say something to make him feel better, but Dervish speaks before I can put my words together.

“I think Lord Loss knows you’re the strongest of us. He wanted to break you, wear you down and kill you off, so you couldn’t help Kernel. That’s why he stuck you in the bleakest spot he could find and did all he could to destroy you. But he failed. You’re alive. You survived where any other would have perished. So forget the self-pity. You had it tough, you dealt with it—now move on, soldier.”

Shark laughs. “Nice speech.”

“But true,” Dervish adds.

“Maybe.” Shark’s laugh turns to a chuckle. “I guess I’m not cut out to suffer nobly, am I?”

“No. You’ve had your few minutes of moping—now put them behind you and let’s work on getting out of this place and finding that bar you mentioned.”

Shark grunts and faces me, recovering in the blink of an eye. I wish I had skin as thick as his, that I could go from the depths of despair to normality in the space of a few heartbeats. “Are those marbles still working?” he asks.

“I guess.”

“Think you can use them to find this thief of yours?”

“Possibly.”

“Then set the hounds loose, boy—it’s time to kick demonic ass!”

THIEVES

Nothing happens when I ask the marbles to lead me to the demon thief. So I ask them to find Cadaver instead, and they immediately set off, guiding us through the vastness of space. We’d be lost without the marbles. Impossible to tell up from down in this void. We couldn’t even find our way back to the panels we came through. I wonder if Lord Loss knew about the marbles when he sent us here. Perhaps we have an advantage he didn’t count on.

After what feels like less than a day we come to a pair of white panels. The marbles hesitate, then split, one going left, one right. I stop them before they slip through. Glance at Dervish and Shark for their opinions.

“Looks like it doesn’t matter which way we go,” Dervish says.

“But Cadaver can’t be in two zones at once, can he?” Shark frowns.

“Maybe he’s straddling them,” Dervish suggests. “A foot in each world.”

“Or maybe the marbles are trying to split us up,” Shark says suspiciously. “We don’t know where their power comes from. This might be the work of Lord Loss—he separates us, throws us together, then splits us up again.”

“I doubt it,” Dervish says. “Anyway, if that’s the case, it’s easy to outfox him—we just don’t part. We go through one panel together. Kernel, which do you prefer?”

I shrug. “I’ve no idea.”

“Then let’s go left,” Dervish decides. When neither of us objects, he moves to a spot just behind me, Shark slides up in front, and in a close line we follow the marbles through the panel, into a new zone of fresh horrors.

Guts everywhere. Every sort of inner organ imaginable. Stacked in piles, splattered around in pieces, some draping off trees of bone. A foul stench. The ground beneath our feet slippery with blood, mucous and all sorts of slime. I choke from the stench, vomit spewing out of my mouth. Dervish and Shark are the same. All three of us on our knees, vomiting, clutching our noses shut, gasping for air.

Demons are slithering through the mass of guts, ripping them apart, bathing in the blood and goo, feeding greedily. Most are worm-like, some as short as caterpillars, others several feet long. They’re blind. They carry on shredding and guzzling, ignorant of our presence. One slides over the back of my legs, sniffs at me, decides there are richer pickings elsewhere and moves on.

“Magic!” Dervish gasps, eyes red and watery. “Create a… field… like in… the last place!”

It’s hard to focus. The magic doesn’t come easily here. The stench is foul, but it isn’t fatal, so my body doesn’t automatically generate a magical force field. After a minute or two of fumbling, I construct a weak field of air around my face. It’s not as strong as the field I created in space, and some of the smell seeps through, but it blocks out the worst and allows me to breathe normally.