A bleak wind howled against surging waves; waves that rose as high as three story buildings, before crashing down onto jagged rocks. The sound was so loud and so incessant that Saskia couldn’t hear her own thoughts.

And yet, in this slender channel carved through the choppy sea, the water was calm, and a gentle, steady breeze carried the boat forward without so much as a wobble. The tempest was in her element here, effortlessly parting the raging storm, and sending them slicing across the sea toward a tiny island beneath a floating tower. That tower was the Pillar of Strife, otherwise known as the Vortex Roost.

Circling around to the far side of the island, they arrived at a small dock, enclosed in its own pocket of calm air. Saskia could tell this stillness wasn’t Zarie’s doing, because otherwise the boat already moored there would have been dashed against the rocks or torn away from its anchor. Their boat pulled up on the other side of the pier, whereupon Zarie threw a noose around a pole attached to the wooden platform and reeled them in.

Stepping gingerly onto the pier, Saskia felt it creak ominously beneath her. Clearly not built for trolls. She wasted no time making her way to the shore where the others were gathering. They dashed up a winding path over the rocks, dodging the lashing waves on their way to the summit of a small hill.

“The dwarrows should stow themselves away now,” said Zarie.

“Och bollocks,” said Ruhildi.

“You heard her,” said Saskia. “Get in my belly—I mean backpack.”

Still grumbling, Ruhildi climbed into the pack, and Saskia drew the drawstring closed. Kveld did likewise with Rover Dog’s oversized backpack.

On the way here, Zarie had warned them that the dwarves shouldn’t make their presence known to the mer in the tower. Trolls would be hard enough to explain, but dwarves as well? Their presence would lead to some very uncomfortable questions.

In a flash of insight—or stupidiocy—Saskia had proposed the ol’ bag o’ dwarf trick. Her friend had not been happy with the suggestion, but she’d eventually agreed to the plan, because what was the alternative, really?

With the dwarves safely stowed away, Saskia’s attention turned to the tower looming overhead. A huge chain dangled from each corner of its base, anchoring it to the island. Staring up at the underside of the tower, Saskia couldn’t see anything else they could use to get up there. No ladders and no ropes.

Zarie pointed up at at the featureless white stone, and as she did so, Saskia felt her draw on a tiny thread of essence. A moment later, a square of stone decoupled from the floor of the tower and began to float down toward them.

“Are you doing that?” asked Saskia.

“No,” said Zarie. “I just stirred entry chimes. The Pillar has magic all its own.”

Saskia’s eyes swept over the floating tower and the inverted tornado surrounding it. “I can see that. Kinda hard to miss. This is just…” Saskia trailed off as a thought occurred to her. “Are we gonna fly the entire Pillar to another branch?”

Zarie gave a light, airy giggle. “Would that we could. What a sight that would be, yes? Alas, the Pillar’s magic is tied to the seed of storms.”

“Why is that a problem?” asked Saskia.

“Worldseeds can’t be moved, Sashki,” came Ruhildi’s muffled voice from within her backpack.

“Not even if they’re already floating in the air? Huh, that’s weird.”

The floating platform stopped about half a metre off the ground. The others hopped onboard, but Saskia hesitated, eyeing it dubiously. She had visions of it tilting sideways and dropping them tens of metres onto jagged rocks.

“Are you sure it can support all of our weight?” she asked.

“Easily,” said Zarie. “It has bourne heavier things than you.”

The platform slid smoothly into the hole in the bottom of the tower. They found themselves in a large room, facing a pair of arched doors. Here, it was indeed warmer, though by no means warm.

Zarie shucked off her makeshift cloak with a sigh of relief. “I do not know how you drylanders can stand to wear…what you call them?”

“Clothes?” said Saskia, speaking the forest tongue, because the sea tongue had no word for them.

“Yes, clothes!” The tempest shuddered. “They are so…itchy.”

“Princess should listen to aquatic squishy,” said Rover Dog. “Always more comfortable unclad. More convenient for making babies too.”

Saskia rolled her eyes. “Nice try, bud.”

Zarie inserted a ring-shaped key into the keyhole, and gave it a twist. The doors creaked open, revealing a pair of spear-toting mer women. Their eyes widened as they looked at Saskia and Rover Dog.

“Zarie!” said one of the guards. “By sea and sky, where have you been? And what are these monsters you bring into our home?”

“I bring new matriarch for the trow clan,” said the tempest.

What the hell? Trow clan? Matriarch?

Zarie was lying about her reason for bringing them here, of course. Saskia’s truth sense told her that much. But at the same time, she could tell there was some kernel of truth to the tempest’s words.

The guard turned her gaze to Rover Dog. “And what about him?”

“She would not come without her mate,” said Zarie. “Do not worry, Adie. He is quite placid.”

Saskia suppressed a laugh. Placid was not a word she’d use to describe Rover Dog.

The guard—Adie—frowned. “First you leave without a word to anyone, then you return with trows? This is very strange, even for you, Zarie. Where have you been? Where are Yusie and Vell and the others?”

The tempest’s face fell. “They…did not survive. It has been a long journey. Now kindly step aside, yes?”

The guard stood there for a moment, then sighed and backed out of the way. She motioned for her companion to do likewise. “Very well. Just get them out of here quickly, before they cause a ruckus.”

When they were out of earshot, Saskia rounded on Zarie. “You’d better explain. There are other trows in the tower?”

“A clan of your people lives in upper reaches,” said Zarie. “For many spans, it was…mutually beneficial arrangement. They gave us blood for our elixirs. We gave them challengers to feast on.”

Saskia shuddered, and a dozen more questions bubbled up in her head, but they had to move. The rooms and passages of the first few floors were home to hundreds of mer. She could see the crowds on her map, but it was impossible to avoid them all. Those whose paths they crossed either turned and ran or demanded explanations from Zarie, who fed them the same story she’d given the guards.

And it wasn’t just mer in these halls. There were garden variety elves too, looking even more downtrodden than their hosts.

“Refugees from Laskwood and the northern lands,” said Zarie. “Vell persuaded the other conservators to let them in.” A look of sadness crossed her face as she spoke of her friend—one of the assassin’s victims.

On the fourth floor, the makeshift accommodations gave way to green fields and lakes teeming with fish. This had once been teeming with monsters, as part of the tempest trials, explained Zarie, but in recent months the mer had converted it to an agricultural enclosure to feed the Pillar’s growing population. Before coming to this world, Saskia would have been surprised to see so much greenery growing in an interior space that got no sunlight, but now she barely batted an eye. Whether by arlium or magic or some natural alternative to photosynthesis, the plants thrived in here.

“You know, for a place called the Pillar of Strife, I’m not seeing much strife,” said Saskia.

“You will, when we get higher up,” said Zarie.

“I can hardly wait.”

Sure enough, though the next floor was also devoted to agriculture, she could tell from the stronger armed presence that the farmers here were having a harder time of it than their downstairs neighbours. Elves and mer stood side by side with swords and spears and bows. There was even a leathery-skinned beastmaster roaming the crystal-lit fields with a crocodilian pet in tow. Saskia gave him a wide berth.

It wasn’t long before she discovered what they were up against. One of the elven farmers cried out in alarm as a swarm of eight-legged beetles came scurrying and fluttering through the trees.

“Bugs,” said Saskia. “Why does it always have to be giant bugs?”

Rushing to defend the farmer, Saskia hurled her magical axe, Jarnbjorn into the swarm. It returned to her hand covered in the innards of several beetles it had sliced through in its way back. She and Rover Dog made short work of the creatures, and by the time the guards and the beastmaster arrived, there wasn’t much left for them to do.

While the elves and mer were laying into the remnants of the swarm, Rover Dog stood munching on a beetle. Its legs kicked feebly as he chomped through its hard shell. The elves and mer stopped what they were doing and stared at him, looking slightly queasy.

“Not let it go to waste,” said Rover Dog around a mouthful of bloody meat.

With a shrug, Saskia started chowing down on her own crunchy morsel, tearing into its shell with claws and fangs to get at the delicious, chewy centre.

“Trows,” muttered the beastmaster, stalking off with a disgusted expression.

This was the end of the ‘civilised’ portion of the tower. From here on out, they’d be on their own, aside, perhaps, from the odd intrepid conservator—if there were any left alive.

The next floor contained what might once have been a verdant jungle. No longer. Ice rimmed the outer walls, and the plants within were wilting. Littering the floor were the shattered exoskeletons of a variety of oversized bugs. The beetles had been the apex predators here, explained Zarie, and without enough tempests and challengers to keep them in check, they’d run amok.

The beetles, too, looked like they’d seen better days. Their shells were pitted and scratched; their feelers torn. Many were missing limbs. Piles of upside-down, hollowed-out shells lay amidst the dying foliage—quite possibly devoured by their own starving siblings.

Watching the incoming swarm with pity in her blue eyes, Zarie raised her hands, and a miniature storm cloud gathered across the ceiling.

“I can’t take this any longer,” said Ruhildi, crawling out of her backpack. “I need to kill something.” She pressed her hands to the floor, which began to tremble slightly at her touch.

Taking a cue from her, Kveld burst from Rover Dog’s bag, crushing a beetle shell with his hammer, even as he gathered essence around himself, hardening his skin to iron.

By the time the five of them were done, the floor was strewn with blood and ichor and shattered shells and dismembered limbs.

The seventh floor contained different varieties of plant and fungal species, and the bleached bones of what looked like reptiles and birds. And the pattering feet and clacking mandibles of…more beetles.

On the floor above that, they found barren tunnels full of traps. And beetles.

After dealing with the pests, Zarie showed them where to step to avoid the traps. As did Saskia’s oracle interface, which she shared with all of her vassals. Easy peas—

“Ow,” said Saskia, looking down at the axe embedded in her leg. It had swung out from the wall after her clawed toe clacked onto a pressure plate. Any of her smaller companions would have been cut in half.

“Princess feet too big,” said Rover Dog.

“Look who’s talking, Mr Paddlefoot,” she spat back.

They sat around waiting for her leg to heal enough for her to walk on. It didn’t take long. Zarie watched, fascinated, as her wound sealed shut.

“You heal faster than other trows,” she said.

“Yeah, well, I’ve had a lot of practice,” said Saskia.

“Princess clumsy,” pointed out Rover Dog helpfully. “Always having accidents.”

“I have to ask. Why go to all this trouble…” Saskia gestured at the traps. “…just to test your prospective tempest…uh, makers? The number of people it must have taken to maintain this place just boggles the mind. I can see why it’s falling apart now. Surely there are simpler, more effective ways. Like, I dunno, have them duke it out against each other in an arena or something.”

“Mer fighting mer?” said Zarie, looking aghast. “We would never allow that!”

“I’m with Sashki on this,” said Ruhildi. “’Tis an absurd waste.”

Onward and upward they went. Some floors were barren, some trapped, some guarded by dangerous creatures, big and small. The beetles were soon replaced by bigger and nastier animals. A few of them she’d encountered before, on the surface and underground and in the Underneath. There were big cats, striped bears, crab lizards, twin-tailed snakes, and threshers. No deepworms yet, but she wouldn’t put it past the mer to try to squeeze one in here. Others, such as the jumping slugs and land squids were all new—and all nope.

This was the closest thing to a video game dungeon Saskia had encountered on this world, and by the time they reached the middle floors, she was heartily sick of it.

It was on these floors that they ran into the first members of the troll clan Zarie had mentioned: a trio of mangy males in simple tribal clothing catching pond fish with their claws. The moment they caught sight of Saskia, the trolls dropped what they were doing and approached with silly grins on their faces, eyeing her up and down.

After a few minutes of conversation, she was struggling to keep her disappointment from showing on her face. They spoke a bastardised version of the sea tongue, rather than the native troll language she’d learned from Rover Dog. And all they wanted to talk about was…

“Oh dogs, not this again,” said Saskia, backing away slowly.

“Where you going?” said one of the trolls. “We not humped yet.”

Saskia gave a little snarl, and they halted, ears drooping. Then she beat a hasty retreat.

“If princess want harem, I not mind,” said Rover Dog, falling into stride beside her. “I happy to share.”

“I don’t want a frocking harem!” Saskia turned to Zarie. “What is up with these guys anyhow? Don’t they already have a…matriarch, was it?”

“Frostlings devoured her last summer,” said Zarie. “They have been like this ever since.”

“Can’t they just…I dunno, hook up with another one, from within their clan?”

“No clan sister would have them,” said Zarie. “They failed to protect their matriarch. This makes them worthless to the other sisters, yes?”

“That’s pretty brutal,” said Saskia, now feeling a bit sorry for the trolls. “I’m sure they tried to protect her. Sometimes stuff just happens. Not that I’m volunteering to be their new matriarch or anything.”

“You are princess,” said Rover Dog. “More than mere matriarch.”

“I’m sure they’ll be okay,” said Saskia. “They can just designate a patriarch or something.”

Zarie blinked at her. “Pat-ri-arch?”

“You know, male head of a family?”

The mer woman gave a little laugh. “Males are too stupid to lead a family.”

“Wow, that’s pretty sexist,” said Saskia. “Rover Dog isn’t stupid. Most of the time.”

“Methinks Doggi isn’t like other trows,” said Ruhildi.

“These trows savages,” said Rover Dog. “I not savage.”

Those were not the last trolls they encountered during their ascent, though the others kept their distance. The females mostly ignored her, but their eyes tracked Rover Dog wherever he went, their lips parted, and she caught some of them flashing parts of their anatomy she’d rather stay hidden—not that she hadn’t gotten an eyeful already, with Zarie around.

On the twenty fifth floor, they stumbled upon the bloody skulls and bones of two mer. From what remained of their belongings, Zarie identified them as her fellow conservators.

“It is as I feared,” said the mer woman, giving a resigned shrug of her shoulders. “I am the last.”

They took a few minutes to bury the remains under some rocks, and continued on in sombre silence.

As they approached the upper floors of the tower, the tempest gave an ominous warning. “Be on your guard now more than ever. We enter frostling territory.”

“What are frostlings?” asked Saskia.

“The most deadly creatures you will ever meet,” said Zarie. “We have been struggling to keep them in check since the day they came to the Pillar. It has never been easy, but now the frostlings are on a rampage. They…” She swallowed. “…terrify me.”

“Okay…” Saskia didn’t like the sound of that, but what choice did they have but to enter?

The floor and walls beyond the door were thick with ice. Saskia began to get a funny feeling as she stepped through the chilly tunnel, eyeing a multitude of blue markers on her minimap gathering near.

Fuzzy little critters followed them through the wide tunnels, peeking out from behind icy stalagmites, and chittering creepily from dark corners.

Saskia let out a strangled laugh. “Oh no, it’s the scary mer-eating adorribles!”

Zarie, stared up at her with wide eyes. As more and more of the tiny creatures gathered nearby, the tempest let out a squeak and darted behind Saskia’s legs.

“Oh come on,” said Saskia. “They’re loveable little creatures once you get to know them. I mean sure, there’s the ice thing they do, but…”

She trailed off as she found her path blocked. Hundreds of hungry murderfloofs stood on the steps and hung from the walls, gazing up at her with liquid eyes. They turned to Zarie and hissed.

The fact that their map markers were blue meant they considered Saskia a friend or ally. Which was a little odd, come to think of it. How the news of her friendship with their cousins in the Underneath reached this separate group in the Pillar of Strife?

But whatever their attitude was toward Saskia and Rover Dog and the dwarves, it clearly didn’t extend to the mer. One of them darted forward and nipped at Zarie’s ankle. Saskia gently pushed the creature away, while the tempest leapt up into the harness on her back.

“Gather close, all,” said Zarie in a quavering voice. “I will do my best to fend them off.” She tugged at Saskia’s voluminous reservoir of essence. The air began to stir around them; the beginnings of a spell that would undoubtedly wreak havoc on the little critters.

“Don’t hurt them!” said Saskia.

The tempest looked at her as if she had bananas growing out of her forehead.

“Hold onto your spells,” insisted Saskia. “Let me try this my way.”

She dropped into a crouch before the gathered adorribles, holding her hand low so they could sniff it. Tentatively, some of them hopped forward.

“We’re just passing through,” said Saskia, speaking the stone tongue. The adorribles in the Underneath had seemed to understand that language, at least to some degree. “We mean you no harm, and trust me, we’re really not that tasty.”

Zarie let out a whimper.

“Your kind fought alongside us in the battle of the Underneath,” continued Saskia. “They sacrificed themselves for all of us. I can never repay them for that.”

As one, the adorribles blinked up at her, appearing to hang on her every word.

“Now I know the mer were on the wrong side of that battle, but this mer—Zarie—is with us now. She is my vassal, and under my protection. So what say you? Will you let us through?”

First one, then a dozen, then hundreds of the tiny creatures hopped aside, parting like a fuzzy white sea.

Saskia whooped. “Thank you so much!”

She stepped through the newly-formed gap, and motioned for the others to follow. Zarie was a quivering heap by the time they got to the top of the stairs, but she made it through unmolested.

The door to the next floor had been torn off its hinges. They hurried through, emerging onto a balcony overlooking an immense chamber. Storm clouds crackled in the air. Hanging from the centre of the ceiling was something that looked to Saskia’s eyes like a Tesla coil.

“The sacred storm,” whispered Zarie. Her name for the seed of storms, apparently.

The floor of the chamber was a seething, undulating mass of white fur. Saskia stared down at the adorribles, then hastily looked away.

Yup, they were mating.

It was in that moment that she realised the elves and mer and trolls in the Pillar—and beyond—were utterly doomed. When the baby adorrible tempests matured—and when they got their paws on some arlium—it would all be over. She could see it now: legions of fuzzy ice-flinging hurricanes descending from the tower and spreading out across the frozen land. This world was theirs for the taking.

Zarie hurriedly led them up to the next level—the top floor—before finally stopping in front of a wall with a familiar-looking palm-shaped depression formed out of blue arlium.

The tempest looked up at Saskia. “You can open this, yes?”

“I think so,” said Saskia. “How did you know?”

“Only a demon can open it,” she said. “You are demon, yes?”

“Yeah, but how do you know only a demon can open it?”

“So says the ancient lore passed down to me from conservators of old,” said Zarie. “The very same that told me only your kind could take us to the skies.”

Saskia pressed her hand against the depression, and sure enough, it began to glow softly, and a section of the wall slid downward, revealing a small room within—and Zarie, already standing inside.

“What the…?” Saskia trailed off, as she saw the hole in the adjacent wall that the tempest must have stepped through.

“My people already made another way in,” said Zarie, offering her a cheeky smirk.

This was a control chamber, as evidenced by the lines of blue arlium and the black monolith in the corner.

She brushed her fingertips lightly against the featureless material of the keystone. No response. Stepping around it, she let out a sigh. A large crack ran down the side of the monolith facing the hole in the wall. Collateral damage from the forced entry, presumably.

“Another black rock lies within,” said Zarie, eyeing the heavy door on the far side of the room.

A second keystone? Why would there be two?

The thought fled Saskia’s mind the moment she stepped into the next chamber, and saw what was inside.

In the centre of the chamber loomed a dark shape, crouching in the dim light. Saskia had to suppress the urge to back away as she came face to face with an enormous black skull with rows of pointed teeth inside a long snout. The skull was easily twice as long as Saskia was tall, and it was attached to a sinuous spine, from which protruded an immense ribcage. Spiny wings reached down, resting against the floor, holding the great beast upright.

“A bone dragon?” said Saskia. “We’re going to fly a bone dragon!?”

“A storm dracken,” said Ruhildi, her eyes wide with awe.

As she drew closer, Saskia realised that it wasn’t just a skeleton. It had been modified.

Attached to the wing bones were a series of wide, flat metallic blades that slotted together like feathers. They were most definitely not feathers, though—and presumably not part of the dragon’s original body.

The skull and bones were lined with exotic metals and blue arlium, perhaps acting as conduits for whatever magic would bring this creature to life.

But the clearest sign of the dragon’s purpose lay between its ribs. The base of the ribcage, where it rested against the floor, was fused together into a flat platform. And on that platform were an assemblage of dark shapes; tubes and boxes and—most revealing of all—a row of chairs.

One of the giant ribs held a panel with yet another of her father’s palm scanners. At the touch of her hand, some of the adjacent ribs lifted upward, creating an opening even she could squeeze through. She slid inside, and found what might, if she squinted in just the right way, resemble the cabin of an aeroplane. There were enough storage compartments to hold all their gear, and then some. The chairs were not built to accommodate trolls, but there was more than enough floor space for herself and Rover Dog to sit comfortably.

Near the back of the cabin was a familiar black monolith. The interior lit up around her the moment she placed her hand against the keystone. A message appeared in her interface:

Say your command, mouthlet of the master.

After some back and forth with the keystone, she turned to Zarie and Ruhildi. “Both of you need to touch the keystone to attune yourselves to the…uh, dragon. It will give you further instructions.”

They did just that, and several minutes later, Ruhildi began to draw a torrent of essence from Saskia as she channelled the mother of all command dead spells.

The bones and metal around them flexed, the floor lurched, and the dragon’s skull lifted into the air. At the same time, the pull of essence slowed to a steady trickle.

“Hell yeah!” said Saskia. “I thought it would take more essence than this to keep the spell up.”

“I tied it to the keystone,” said Ruhildi. “More efficient that way, and the spell won’t fade when I fall asleep.”

“Huh, I never thought of that,” said Saskia. “Wouldn’t want to fall from the sky when you take a nap.”

“It won’t be her spell doing the flying,” said Zarie. “But first we must get beneath the open sky.”

“Okay, so how do we…?”

Right on cue, she heard a rumbling sound from above. Light streamed down into the chamber. Slowly, they began to rise, carried atop a wide stone platform.

Several minutes later, Saskia found herself peering out between the ribs at a flat rooftop, pitted with a series of funnel-shaped depressions, many of which were clogged with ash. There was no storm raging outside—not this high up—but that didn’t mean the skies were clear. The air remained as hazy up here as it was on the ground, and a carpet of ominous black clouds spread from horizon to horizon. A fiery glow filtered down through the clouds to the north. Not the sun, but molten arlium, slowly cooling before it rained down across Ciendil.

Now it was the tempest’s turn to draw essence from her. The air hummed with gathering potential. Bright sparks leapt from crackling wingtips. The blustery breeze whistling across the rooftop abruptly changed direction, becoming a driving tailwind.

With a powerful flex, the dragon leapt skyward, sending Saskia’s stomach lurching into her throat. It rose higher and higher, electrified wings beating against the powerful updraught created by Zarie’s magic.

“Holy crap it’s actually working,” said Saskia. “Wait, why is it so warm in here? It should be freezing.”

“My magic creates a…barrier,” said Zarie, frowning in concentration. “It keeps the air in. Keeps it fresh.”

“Fantasinating. That means we might even be able to leave the atmosphere without suffocating. Although we probably wouldn’t be able to fly out there, with no air to provide lift, so for now, let’s stick close to the branches and the trunk.”

“Where will we go first?” asked Kveld.

“I…don’t know,” said Saskia. “The keystone suggested we search a library on Old Ulugmir, but no air there, so…nope. What else is nearby?”

“Lumium, the morning light,” said Zarie.

“She means the branch overhead,” said Ruhildi.

“Grongarg closer,” said Rover Dog. “Below, on other side of trunk. Not visible from here.”

“That’s the home of the trows, right?” Saskia turned to face the others. “I for one would like to check it out. Any objections?” There were none. “Grongarg it is, then!”

Saskia’s stomach lurched again as the dragon streaked forward, wreathed in wind and lightning. They headed northwest, across sea, then mountains, then frozen forests, sloping ever more steeply until the branch simply…ended. There they hovered, poised just shy of the brink of the world.

This was a test. If they could fly a little bit out beyond the edge of Ciendil, they could probably fly up and down the trunk as well. Tentatively Zarie edged them out past the cliffs, ready to pull them back at a moment’s notice if the air grew became too thin to hold them aloft.

Below was a hazy void, streaked with wispy clouds. Those clouds extended several kilometres out from the side of the branch. Where there were clouds, there was air. And where there was air, they could fly.

Overhead and to the east, the sky was a curtain of smoke and ash and faintly glowing arlium. Going anywhere near that burning shroud would be risky at best, so they kept well clear of it.

Skirting the edge of the branch, they flew north, toward the colossal column of the world tree. Even travelling by air, the journey to the trunk took several days, with three rest stops along the way. They slept in the cabin, glad of the relative warmth and comfort it provided. As they drew closer, the great column of the world tree grew to fill the sky, and she began to discern details across its mottled surface. Greenery clung even there, and water cascaded down its length. A vertical world, with its own unique ecology; one that had adapted to spit in the face of gravity.

After a final night perched atop the overgrown ruins of the ancient dwarven city of Climber’s Gate, they were finally ready to leave this dying branch behind, and venture out into the unknown.

They swung out and around the trunk, past walls of rock and waterfalls and stubborn cliffside creepers. There were ledges too, packed tight with vegetation. She could see how the trunk might be climbable, though it still boggled her mind to think that Rover Dog had actually climbed it.

As Ciendil fell away behind them, the haze of ash lifted, the sky turned clear and blue, and Saskia caught her first glimpse of what lay beneath them.

Branches jutted out from the trunk like spokes; each one a world unto itself, sprinkled with forests and seas and rivers and mountains. And people too, no doubt—in various shapes and sizes. Maybe she would meet them, someday.

One of the branches stood out from the others; a sliver of ice and bare rock, with not a hint of life across its frozen surface. Old Ulugmir, now known as the Deadlands. This would be Ciendil’s fate if they should fail.

Her eyes tracked further down the great trunk, and slowly widened.

Far below—inconceivably far below—was a malformed sphere; brown and red and hollowed out on one side. She’d often wondered what this world tree might be growing out of. Were its roots just dangling in the void? Did it even have roots? Maybe it was turtles all the way down? Well now she had an answer. That thing down there might very well be the half-devoured carcass of a planet.

On the far side of the trunk, with the lingering shroud of Ciendil finally banished from sight, they dipped sharply downward; a vertiginous plunge that left her alternately gasping for breath and whooping in excitement. They plummeted past knotty outcroppings and puffy clouds and stubby branchlets, sprinkled with fresh growth. Down past a great, dark gash in the side of the world, and the beaks that stirred within.

Down, down, down through endless skies, swooping toward a looming strip of blue and green.