“We need to go,” Threadbare said, starting toward the exit...

...only to haul up short as Anne darted in front of him, two pistols leveled at his head. “What did ye DO, bear? What half-arsed treachery did you try?”

“We didn’t. You were there for every bit of the planning. Someone else attacked the Bad Still, and he thinks it was us.”

“We should tell him that!” Fluffbear squeaked.

“Yeah no, I just told him to go to hell and broke his little doll of me,” Celia said, backing away from the shattered jar. “I don’t think he’ll listen. I hurt his pride.”

“Someone be playin’ let’s you and him fight,” Zuula said. “Dreadbear got de right of it. We...” her face twisted in frustration and rage. “We should not fight him... now. GAH! Zuula hate dis!”

“There will be other fights!” Thomasi called, running for the exit.

“Was me ship involved in this here attack?” Anne said, still keeping her guns on Threadbare.

“No,” he told her.

“Well then.” Anne said, tucking the guns away and sitting on stage. “This be sounding like it’s a YOU problem. Have fun wi’ that.”

“You’re betraying us now? Here?” Celia snapped.

“Nay. I told ye I’d help ye as I could after I got paid. I ain’t been paid yet. And if I fight him with ye, I won’t be.”

While she spoke, Threadbare tried to nudge people toward the door, waving and getting them moving. Slowly they started to get into gear, following Thomasi.

He knew what they were in. He knew they had to leave the dungeon before the Phantom resumed his place in the core chamber.

“In fact...” Anne said, tapping an earring, “I’ll do ye one better. Activate Wind’s Whisper Stormanorm III. Dealing with somethin’ complex. Ye have the helm. Help the princess escape.”

Threadbare felt a surge of relief and turned and fled with the others.

The relief didn’t last long.

NO MASTER DETECTED IN DUNGEON 01010111 01100001 01111001 00100000 01001111 01100110 01100110 00100000 01000010 01110010 01101111 01100001 01100100 01110111 01100001 01111001

PLEASE ASSIGN NEW MOB TO COMMAND VARIABLE TO CONTINUE OPERATION.

Whomever the Phantom had put in the column had stepped out of it.

Threadbare put on a burst of speed. The door was only a hundred feet away now. If they could reach it before—

NEW MASTER DETECTED!

No. No they couldn’t.

Sixty feet.

The doors ahead of them, the doors with nothing but darkness beyond, slowly started to swing shut.

“Boosters!” Celia called, and the roar of flames filled Threadbare’s ears, as a metal hand closed around him, and he was speeding forward...

Twenty feet now, but the doors were halfway shut, and he twisted to look behind him, looked and saw the Fandom starting to pour in from the sides of the theater, weapons at the ready, turned to see that his friends were falling behind, almost seeming to run in slow motion, getting slower by every second...

No. Wait.

They were slowing. Everything was slowing and stuttering to a stop, frozen where it was. The jets of flames from Celia’s boosters were turning into solids, evenly shaped horizontal pyramids of burning orange, and the steam clouds above were still pillows of vapor.

What had happened here?

“Threadbare,” whispered a voice to the side, and he looked over to see a face that he very much hadn’t expected to see here.

“Oh. Hello, Midian.”

She sat there in a seat, wearing a black dress, slathered with diamonds. In her hand she held a bag of popcorn. As he watched she brought up a handful in slow motion and devoured it, and the kernels that fell as she chomped carelessly fell about a foot from her face before they slowed and stopped midair.

“You did this?” he asked.

“Some of it. But someone else did more of it. You’ve been... you’re being... you will be played. It’s how he works. How they work.”

“I’m a toy. I’m used to being played with,” Threadbare said, looking back to the closing door, now stopped half open. “Are you going to play with me, too?”

Midian turned her head away a bit but not before he caught a flash of grief. “I’m out of options. Out of time. It’s all broken, and now I’m broken too, and I really need someone who’s good at mending things. And I think you’re it.”

“I can try,” Threadbare said, looking back at the door. “I think we’ll make it, but can you get my friends out of here?”

“Yes. But then I’ll have to leave. You’re going to have to escape the city on your own.”

“We can do that.”

“Good. And after we’re both safe, I’ll find you again. And we’ll see about mending a world. Maybe two.”

“Agreed,” Threadbare said.

And Midian stood, and walked to each of his friends, in that frozen time, and tapped them on the shoulder. And as she did so, she said “Haste.”

She finished with Celia, then booped him on the nose, and when she pulled her finger back, she was moving in slow motion, before she tapped herself and said “Hhhhhhhaaaaaaaasssssstttte.”

And then she sprinted for the door and was gone, and the second she left, the world began moving again.

The popcorn fell to the floor, drifting down like snow.

The Fandom mobs were audible again, roaring their anger at those who had dared to disparage their idol.

Anne sat on stage, finally touching a slowly burning match to the pipe she’d hauled out to pass the time with puffing.

And Threadbare and all his friends ran the hell out of the dungeon.

The air was cool; the night was as dark and fog-filled as they’d left it, but bells were ringing all across the city. Belltollia was living up to its name, and Threadbare knew that the city would be out in force within minutes. He could tell the spell Midian had cast on him was already wearing off by the way the bells went from long, deep wailing tones to more frantic, spastic peals, so he used the time on the buff that he had left to send messages.

“Wind’s Whisper Cagna. We need to escape. Fall back to the pickup point, advise if you cannot. Wind’s Whisper Madeline, we are running for our lives. Pick us up, please.”

Your Wind’s Whisper skill is now level 29!

Noise from overhead, engine noise, and Threadbare nodded. This was expected. The silencing enchantments he’d put on the engines weren’t powerful enough to run full-time, they’d need to recharge before they could be used again. Eight or nine hours would probably do it, but they didn’t have that kind of time.

A whisper of air past his face was followed by a sharp CRACK, and Thomasi gasped in pain as he rocked backward, blood spraying.

“Musketeers on the walls!” Jean cried out. “Get to cover!”

“Oh no you don’t! Greater Healing!” Fluffbear yelled, rushing over and leaping on Thomasi’s back. “And Bodyguard Thomasi, too!”

The group ran to the nearest pile of rubble, as Fluffbear darted back and forth like a fish on a line, her armor spanging and ringing as bullets ricocheted from it.

“Stop that!” Celia yelled, adding her own miniature cannon to the mix, and part of the wall went up in smoke as someone yelled. “See what that gets you!” The cylinder of her gun arm revolved, and a smoking cartridge the size of a mug of beer spat out the side of her armor.

“We fighting? We fighting! YES! WE FINALLY DO DIS TING!” Zuula roared. “Beast Shape Four Utahraptor!” she yelled, instantly bulging into something towering, plush, and pointy that Threadbare had never seen before. It hissed in joy and was simply gone, in a blur of feathers and scales, moving so fast that for a second he wondered if her haste spell was still going.

And then the dragon roared fire.

Madeline swept the northern wall like a comet, leathery wings illuminated in the backdraft as rabbit beastkin in fancy outfits screamed and leaped down to avoid the flames. Some survived the fall, some didn’t. Threadbare winced to see it. Not only was this pointless, but each and every death would make straightening this mess out harder.

Then he looked west and saw Zuula using her form’s spiky bits to very great effect and sighed. This was going to be messy regardless.

But maybe there were a few things he could do to minimize the slaughter, without risking his friends lives.

And so as the bullets whined past and occasionally into him, he pointed at the unmoving bodies both at the bottom of the wall and left in Zuula’s wake.

“Zombies. Zombies, zombies, zombies, zombies...”

Your Zombies skill is now level 9!

Your Zombies skill is now level 10!

Your Zombies skill is now level 11!

And once he felt there were enough on the battle field, he drew in a deep breath and shouted “Command the Dead! Give every living musketeer really tight hugs!”

Your Command the Dead skill is now level 30!

The dead rose and sought to embrace the living.

The living were less thrilled with the idea, and the musketfire pinning the group down slowed, as the ones still alive turned to dealing with the undead in their ranks.

“The landing zone’s as cleah as we can get it!” Madeline bellowed. “Drop the laddahs!”

And as the airship came to a stop twenty feet up, filling the sky with its bulk, rope ladders rolled off the sides. Scattered shots rang out from the deck as the few crew who had free hands plinked at the musketeers.

“Go, go, go!” yelled Fluffbear, as she steered Thomasi up to the ladder. He scrambled, got his hat shot off, nearly fell as he tore a hand loose to catch it, then kept climbing.

A bit slow, Threadbare felt. “Animus,” he commanded, hopping over and slapping the ladder. “Command Animi, carry them up faster.”

The rope ladder shuddered and drew up on its own, as musket balls whipped through the space they’d just occupied.

Threadbare nodded in satisfaction. “Everyone, we are leaving. On board, please!”

That’s when the first cannon roared, and the airship shuddered in the air, turning to the side as the impact sprayed planks and forced it into the wall. The wall gave first, crumbling at the top as the horrible groan of crackling wood and falling stone filled the night.

“Fump!” shouted Celia, and once more Threadbare felt her gauntlet close around him, as she flopped on her back and yelled “Boosters!”

They shot into the sky, and Threadbare had enough of a field of view to see Jean scrambling madly onto deck, barely just in time to avoid being crushed against the wall. And across the way he saw the thing that was Zuula making a ludicrously far leap onto the deck.

That was everyone.

Anne Bunny has left your party!

Well, that was no great loss, he thought and immediately chided himself for it. Was she dead? He hoped not, for all she was flawed and problematic. They were not truly enemies, just at cross purposes for far too long

And as they touched down on the deck, he heard Karey’s voice yelling, still a bit squeaky in its new shell. “Healer! We be needing a healer! Stormy’s down!”

Threadbare started that way, remembered he couldn’t do anything for the living, then remembered that he could certainly do something for the dead. “Soulstone,” he chanted and hurried up to the helm.

Just as he got up the stairs and saw Karey fighting with the wheel, getting the airship skyborne again, the wind puffed in his ear. Cagna’s voice. “Running! It’s after us. Help!”

“Where is he!” Missus Fluffbear squeaked as she bounded past him.

“Port side, aft corner!” Karey shouted.

“Where?”

“Back and to the left o’ me!”

“We need to get to the extraction point.” Threadbare told her, as Fluffbear ran to the crumpled mass of cloth barely visible in the smoke, fog and darkness. “Our friends need help.”

“Help me brother, and I’ll help yer friends!”

“All right, but get us there very quickly,” Threadbare told her and went to join Fluffbear.

“Lesser Healing? Lesser Healing!” Fluffbear cheered, as Stormanorm groaned and sat up. “Yay, you’re still alive!”

And Threadbare stared, as Stormanorm shook his head, face charred and robe falling off in tatters from the near-hit of the cannon.

“What?” Stormanorm snapped, staring down at the two little bears. “I mean... thank you...”

He stopped. He reached up and felt his face, which no longer had a veil covering it.

Then looked down at this chest and the two bound breasts that the robe had concealed very well.

“This is all very confusing,” Threadbare told him. “I thought you were male?”

Stormanorm pulled the tatters of his robe over himself... herself? They looked away.

“Okay, you’re alive, I’m going to go give out all the healing!” Fluffbear ran down to the lower deck.

“I am male,” Stormanorm muttered, so low that even Threadbare couldn’t hear it. “I just was born in the wrong body. That’s all. I’m trying to fix that.”

“Oh. Okay,” Threadbare said.

That brought him up short. “Okay?” The beastkin looked upon him, eyes startled and wide.

“I have a great many friends who are in bodies they didn’t start with. They’re still them,” Threadbare said. “And really, when it comes to gender, it all seems very arbitrary. Why can’t you be who you feel you ought to be?”

Stormanorm looked down, their face relieved. “Thank ye. Can ye keep this a secret, though? There’s many who wouldn’t understand.”

“At the moment I’ve got bigger worries,” Threadbare said, moving to the railing, looking over, and nearly getting his head taken off as a whooshing cannonball missed him by inches. “I’ll start repairing the ship if you help get us safely and quickly to the second team’s extraction site.”

“Deal,” Stormanorm said.

From what Threadbare understood of it later, it had been a very dicey run through the fading whispers of the fog. The Belltollians had extremely good hearing, which gave them an edge on shooting in the dark... but only for the first few shots, before the roar of the other cannon started throwing the gunners off.

Still, there were a few hits. And Threadbare spent a frantic eight minutes running around the ship, mending the hull and darting back every couple of dozen seconds to Tinker at the engines and keep them from catching on fire.

Afterward they told him of the expert piloting that Harey Karey used to zig zag across the city, dodging summoned flying beasts and the worst of the cannonfire. They told him how Stormanorm belted out a some serious sea chanties, barding it up to keep everyone alive as the cannons struck and the shrapnel splintered throughout the vessel. Zuula and Fluffbear went full on healing, and Madeline strafed and dove, drawing fire from them at risk to her own unlife.

But for Threadbare, it was just a lot of rushing and chanting, feeling his sanity dip low. Then the worst of it died out and they were descending, and for a brief moment he thought it was another crash. But a mad scramble to the deck showed them heading down at a controlled clip, towards a clearing not far below.

A clearing, where four people huddled, and something silvery and fast and human sized flowed through the trees like a ghost, arrowing straight toward his friends.

“Wind’s Whisper Renny. I’m coming down the hard way. Please catch me.”

And trusting to his friend, Threadbare hurled himself over the side.

It wasn’t as much of a gamble as most might think.

He was small and light, and he’d fallen similar distances before. At worst he’d have to heal himself before he got back up.

But the gamble paid off, as a whirlwind with eyes intercepted him. Renny’s summoned elemental broke his fall, and deposited him gently with the others.

“We can’t stop it!” the Muscle Wizaard said between coughs. “And if it gets too close...” the rest of his voice descended into a bubbling wheeze.

Cagna simply growled.

“We don’t breathe, so it’s up to us!” Glub said, grabbing a tree branch, and saying “Manipulate Water!” Moisture formed around it, freezing into jagged spikes as he jogged forward. “You with me and Renny for support?”

“Good plan,” Threadbare said, triggering his claws and heading out with him...

...only to stop cold as the thing emerged from the edge of the trees.

It shone silver in the weak moonlight, silvery and metallic and loose, with vague features where anyone else would normally have a face. It stopped and studied them, and wisps of vapor rose from it as it stepped forward.

“Create Water! Manipulate Water!” Glub yelled, as he brought icicles down on it from above, but they slurped through its liquid form and red ‘0’s rose to the sky.

The thing turned to Glub and stretched out a hand, the fingers elongating...

And Threadbare said “Command Golem. Deactivate.”

Your Command Golem spell has been resisted!

Glub tried to dodge, but the spikes were too fast, skewering him and flicking him off into the trees as it loped forward, the indentations that were its eyes fixed on Threadbare.

Threadbare backed up. He knew this thing.

And he knew his sanity was low, very low, and he could only try this a few more times.

“Command Golem. Deactivate.”

Your Command Golem spell has been resisted!

“Defensive Stance,” he barely had time to speak before those long, stabbing fingers came for him...

...and skewered an illusion, as a dozen Threadbares appeared and dodged in different directions. Renny was in play, and Threadbare took courage from that.

Courage and a precious second to try a new command. “Command Golem. Destroy yourself.”

There was a long pause.

The thing froze, quivering and shaking.

And Threadbare relaxed, as words rose in front of his eyes.

Your Command Golem skill is now level 35!

He went and checked on Glub as the golem shook, spraying droplets of itself around it, shrinking as it did so. It got smaller and smaller and smaller, until the area around it was a glinting puddle of poison.

Poison that Threadbare knew would taint the land for decades if he wasn’t responsible. Fortunately, he had enough sanity left to Clean and Press the grass until it was gone, and fortunately it was close enough to fabric that the spell didn’t misfire. Either that or Nurph was being kind and not standing on ceremony for once.

“What the hells was that?” Glub and Renny said, while the others clambered up a ladder to the airship behind them.

“A Mercury Golem,” said Threadbare.

“I’ve never heard of anything like that,” Glub said.

“As far as I know there’s only ever been one,” Threadbare said. “And I made it.”

And for the first time anyone could recall hearing, his voice held anger.

Silence for a moment, as the toy and the doll haunter looked to each other, then at him.

“Boss...” Glub began.

“Someone has been very sneaky and very malicious,” Threadbare said, that taut, controlled tone belying the raw anger beneath. “And now I think I shall have to take this personally.”

They were silent, as he finished cleaning, and not even the notifications of his level ups from the conflict and escape cheered him.

But the words that came across his view next did nothing more to help his mood.

GARON HAS ISSUED A NEW DECREE!

Castle’s fallen. Revolution underway. Retreat from Cylvania City, regroup at site 7.

He clambered up the ladder to see his friends gathered in a circle around Madeline, solemn and shocked as she relayed the news.

And through his anger, it tugged at his heartstrings to see his little girl slumped in her armor, sagged in the middle of the deck, legs sprawled, staring at her hands.

He moved to her, hugged her for all he was worth. And let his rage go, because she needed him, and that was more important.

“Threadbare,” she whispered, closing her arms around him too. “We were tricked. We were duped, this whole time. They just needed us out of the country so they could steal it away.”

“Maybe,” Threadbare said. “I don’t think we did things the way they expected us to. And nothing’s certain yet. This is not over.”

“There are no happy endings, because there are no endings,” Celia said, holding him up so she could look into his eyes. “Nothing ever really ends. But will you help me finish this properly once more?”

He patted her gauntlet. “Whenever and however many times I must.”

For now, they escaped into the night, putting the clamor and rage of Belltollia behind them. They left it a mess, but there was nothing to be done about that now.

Right now, they had a reckoning to deliver.