Gia had her palm out towards the nearest rock needle. “Feels warm,” she observed, and shivered. Stepping back, she aimed the tip of the spear at it, a fragment the width of a fingernail.

Holding a finger to my lips, I put my hand in front of her wrist before it could make contact. “Not yet. The moment that thing enters Earth, Cave-Face will be on top of it like a ton of bricks.”

“I thought you said it could pierce anything,” Gia replied in a whisper. She drew back the spear. “Taken literally, wouldn’t that include any kind of fence or border?”

“Reason number two why you shouldn’t. It’s already unstable enough.”

“Then what do we do?”

I motioned towards the wall of rock extruding out from the large chunk of door. “Anything you can do to make that obstacle go away?”

Gia shook her head. “Everything I can think of is just another obstacle,” she whispered, huddling against the wall. “And even if I knew what to do, I don’t think I can. It’s like someone’s cut off the blood flow to whatever part controls that particular muscle. It’s going numb.”

I pursed my lips. I couldn’t think of anything off the top of my head, either. “I’ll take a look,” I said. “Don’t move. Anything comes through that isn’t myself or Mayari, poke it with the death stick.”

I retired another visitation – the one hanging out with Tru and Durga – to muster the energy I needed, and made my way through the gauntlet of rock shafts. I took it carefully, flowing around the spatial aberrations lest I be sliced in half, and ducked through the largest vertical column.

Only darkness awaited me on the other side. Without a visual reference for where the floor should be, the vague pressure under my feet disappeared into the general sense of disconnection, and it was only my position in relation to the dimensional abnormalities that assured me I wasn’t just falling towards the centre of the earth.

But I’d experimented with this sort of thing. Picturing a walkway under my feet, I made my way forwards in the dark. A jarring wrongness turned up to eleven occupied the space I remembered the travel station being; no one had come in that way. A hallway-shaped spatter of shafts stretching ahead and behind me also painted an inverse picture of the facility corridor on this side of the fold. I was willing to bet they’d resemble empty gaps from this end.

Guided by the concentration of thunderous cracks and crumbling noises, I homed in on what seemed to be the approximate source. The further I went from Gia, the harder it became to hold on. Just as I was ready to drop another visitation, the blackness gave way to a wall of glowing light, red at first, turning to yellow and finally a searing white. Under the cracks, I heard an out-of-place bubbling, and for a brief moment wondered if I was confusing that visitation with the one in the grotto.

I pushed through into a hollowed-out pocket of molten rock, spherical and only wide enough to fit a handful of people with flexible notions about personal boundaries. Its surface boiled with white-hot flares, hotter than anything Earth would produce on its own. Mayari floated at the centre of it, arms out and elbows shaking with strain. The available space was visibly shrinking, and Tepeyollotl was nowhere to be seen.

My mind pieced the situation together. One: it wasn’t the tyrant, which bought us limited time. Two: it didn’t look good. Mayari had come through and been noticed. I didn’t know if she or Tepe had collapsed the cave, but the latter controlled it now. As surgically effective as the moon goddess was, she had the double disadvantage of a personal energy drain and facing off against a deity in his place of power. Even so, there was a lot of concentrated power at play. Anyone foolish enough to step into that arena – if they could at all – would be instantly crushed by the Earth’s crust, overwhelming gravity, or most likely both.

Tepe was keeping out of sight, probably part of the rock by now, which meant Mayari couldn’t get a lock on him. Neither could she warp out without weakening the only thing keeping her alive. If nothing changed soon, the outcome would be a foregone conclusion.

I slid back through the nearest dimensional window in one of my less aesthetic moments, focusing much of my attention into making sure Gia didn’t stab me with the spear.

“Fuck,” I said, once I’d gotten my vocal cords back.

“Noted,” responded Gia, looking antsy. “Is that going to be followed by some kind of zany-yet-brilliant plan to get us out of here?”

I let the comment bounce off, pacing back and forth across the part of the aisle that wouldn’t leave me in pieces. Why was it always caves where I ran out of solutions?

“Here’s what we know,” I said, keeping my voice low to make sure my audience did the same. “The outer chamber has collapsed and is trying to crush everything in it to death. Mayari’s doing the same. Even if we could clear a space, we’d cop the rebound from her side. And I don’t know how far down we are, but there could be a lot more rock where that came from. Tepe’s in there somewhere, but it could be anywhere, and judging by the fact he’s still functioning, I’m guessing he knows enough to avoid dismemberment.”

“Dismemberment?”

I skimmed a suit sleeve carelessly over the nearest beam, and watched the scrap of fabric fall to the floor in tatters.

“Got you,” said Gia.

“We do have the spear,” I acknowledged. “But we could poke holes in things all day, and I don’t see how it would help us. That’s if the pressure didn’t crush it first. This is why pointy sticks are overrated.”

“You’re saying there’s no way out.”

“No.” It came out sounding more affronted than I’d intended. “I’m saying it would be a whole lot easier to find a way if we had more time and more disposable juice in the can.” Speaking of which, my ability to think wasn’t helped by the fact there were still four copies of myself floating around. Two of them were at least in close proximity. I muttered a quick apology to Pope Grace and let that visitation go. The improvement was still underwhelming.

“So, hypothetically-speaking, what would happen if we just,” – Gia wrinkled her nose – “picked a different edge of this enclosure and stabbed a hole in it? Maybe it would lead us somewhere else? Or,” she reconsidered quickly, seeing my expression, “…not.”

I put a hand to my chin and kept talking. “We could use the spear to lure him here. Into a beam, if we’re lucky. More than one, if Taonoui’s stars align. But then –”

“– others will know and come for it. You said already.”

There was also no guarantee he’d leave his place of power for the sake of a shiny trinket. Swindles worked better on greedy, disloyal victims. Tepe, what little I knew of him, was neither, which was presumably why he’d been suckered into a station at dirt heaven.

My thoughts felt like they were wrapped in a thin layer of fog, sliding off details they should have picked up. I didn’t want to lose another visitation; Janus was still working on Lucy and I wanted a window into how that played out.

Options presented themselves only for me to discard them one after another. Lucy might have been able to force a possession on Tepe long enough to make a difference, but was out of action. Primary Tez might have helped, but was who-knew-where and barely in better shape than a corpse. Everyone’s powers were fading fast, and we had to assume any external allies willing to throw themselves into a fight were trapped in an isolated bubble by our own machinations. Mayari was out there seconds away from defeat and I didn’t know how to save her.

Providence always, always won. Even when they didn’t even know who they were up against. It wasn’t fair.

We’d lost here. We’d fall back, join Xiānfēng in hiding behind the terrain. Worst case, shove the spear through a gap and hope it didn’t survive the trip. Defeat in one arena didn’t necessarily mean failure everywhere; the blows we did land could still be enough to turn the tide. It just meant leaving the others to die.

I opened my mouth and found Gia watching me, clutching the haft of the spear in both hands with something like hope in her eyes.

Another thunderous noise rattled through the holes in the universe, sending more shards spilling out through the cracks to skitter across the gallery floor. One jostled a piece of the door, flipping its beam around towards us far too close for comfort and stopping inches from shearing through Gia’s upper body.

Blood drained from the demon lord’s face, but I found myself grinning the deranged grin of someone teasing conquest from the jaws of insanity.

“Grab it,” I instructed, indicating the piece of door. “They only point one way.”

Gia moved the spear to one hand and dutifully crawled under the beam, wrangling with the fist-sized fragment with excruciating care. “Now what?”

I took her forearm and guided it up and down, aiming it in the vague direction of where the door used to be. The beam weighed nothing, and left only a satisfying trail of rock shards behind as I gave it a few experimental swishes, avoiding the direction Mayari was confined to in the adjoining dimension. After the third, a loud crack sounded from the targeted vicinity as the collapsed cave destabilised. “We mine,” I replied, swinging the first fragment in earnest. With the other arm, I pointed out Mayari’s position in the adjoining dimension, the failed travel station, and the main Xiānfēng cell. If anyone else got caught in the crossfire, it was a loss we’d have to take. “Avoid those three areas and me, and cover as much ground as you can.”

Gia aimed the fragment tentatively at the ceiling, and I gave it a firm push to get going, suppressing my impatience at working via proxy. Enough arms and vectors of origin, and I’d get it done a hundred times faster. “What is this doing?”

“Other than slicing the Earth into pieces?”

“What?”

As far as I could tell, the makeshift swords had no upper range limit, petering out only when they hit the edge of the pocket dimension. On Earth, they’d extended far further. “Gravity will hold it together,” I assured her. “Not nearly as bad as it sounds.” Except a certain amount of widespread collateral damage, but considering everything else going on, it would be a blip on the day’s news reports. “Importantly, we’ll get Cave-Face.”

It was more hope than expectation. The Aztec pantheon had no dimensional sense, but the place of power was giving him something. A not insignificant part of me also wasn’t sure we’d be able to truly hurt the cave god in rock form. If he was anything like me, a direct hit would be more of an inconvenience than final blow. On the upside, an attack by a repurposed hole in the universe was nothing if not surprising, and all we needed to do was take the pressure off Mayari. If she wasn’t already burning alive.

“How much longer?” I asked Vince as Gia danced, enunciating the words in Latin.

“Almost.” Janus’ shoulders were stooped and he swayed on his feet, the task taking more of a toll than I’d expected. He needed the pact gone as much as the rest of us did. “Then the edict falls. It can’t wait any longer.”

I hoped he was right. From where I was standing, I wasn’t sure he’d be able to chisel another barnacle, let alone unpick a masterwork by the most versatile god in existence. And I couldn’t hold on much longer; I was starting to see through my own fingers and I hadn’t even exceeded the usual proximity limit.

A sound almost as loud as the initial explosion rocked the collapsed cave beyond the shattered portals, and a fresh shower of stones poured out into the hall at a variety of angles. Several passed through me and struck Gia in the back, but she grit her teeth and kept a tight grip on the universal – multiversal? …versal blade.

“Do that again,” I said, trying to steer her arm. It was like holding jelly.

She saw what I was trying to do and repeated her last action. On cue, a second explosion sounded, smaller this time. Mitigated. On the third swing, nothing happened.

“We got him,” I grinned. “He’s moved. Try elsewhere.”

Instead, rock slammed into the corridor from every versal shaft, spiking out a right angles from the main elongated trajectory. Within the space of a second, the mostly empty hallway was filled with planes of fractured stone, already crumbling in many places. My ears rang with clatters.

Tepe had figured it out.

I looked down at the plane skewering my legs, and across at the demon lord next to me. She’d caught the edge of the same spike, slamming one shin backwards into a smear that should have tripped her off her feet. She was still standing, but only because a second, vertical slab had caught her entire left side from ear to toe and pinned her against the wall behind.

The Spear of Destiny lay less than a metre away under the rubble, clutched tightly in a hand no longer attached to its owner.

It was bad, but not enough to send her unconscious. Not right away. Blood welled up around the rocks. The moment they crumbled, there would be more.

“Gia,” I said, snapping my fingers in front of her face, “keep going.”

With what seemed like great effort, one eye wandered back to me. The other was squeezed shut by the rock pulling at the nearby skin. Her ear hadn’t been so lucky. Her remaining arm kept moving, and I nodded.

“There’s a rock in my side,” she said.

“I know. It won’t kill you. If Tru could blow himself up and come back, this is nothing.”

Her aim wavered, dipping worryingly close to Mayari’s position before moving on. “It doesn’t hurt at all.”

“Good,” I lied.

“And you’re fading.” She paused, grimacing. “I bet this would count as a foreign object,” she added in a weak voice. “Too bad I can’t seem to… access that laptop anymore.” The arm holding the door fragment sank lower. “Can’t feel my arm, anyway.” She licked her lips, which were covered in coarse grit. “I don’t think I’m doing a good job of this anymore.”

“Don’t have to,” I said. “As long as that beam stays moving, it’s attention not being spent on Mayari. Tepe knows you’re not dead, and he doesn’t have a clue who you are. For all he knows, you’re a bigger threat than she is. You just came at him with a piece of displaced universe, after all.”

“I’m not dead,” the analyst repeated, losing focus.

“Trust me, you’d know if you were.”

“Tell my parents I love them? And Sil. Such a doofus. But a professional one. Never seemed appropriate to spoil that. Not sure it matters now.”

“You’re not going to die,” I repeated. “But sure. Try to stay conscious; you’re my lifeline to this place.”

“You’re almost not here anyway.”

It was true. Too much of Rome pushed in from the outside, the crowded chatter on the streets below threatening to drown out events elsewhere. My seconds were numbered.

In the grotto, Lucy blinked. When his eyes reopened, they were back to their usual brown. Janus straightened and stepped back from his patient, only to immediately turn on his heel and face the centre of the chamber. He raised his arms.

With a sigh of relief, I dropped the visitation, buying myself a few more moments with Gia.

Another boom sounded from the collapsed cave, along with a long and bloodcurdling scream in Mayari’s voice. On instinct, I took a couple of steps forward, only to jerk to a halt as I nearly lost my connection to Gia. I wouldn’t be scouting that cave again.

Then the pressure eased. The thoughts in my head slid back towards clarity, and I realised I could no longer feel the threads of the pact that had been dancing around in it for the last few days.

Lucy had worked his legal magic, metaphorically-speaking, to find a loophole. The pact was dead.

Cracks rumbled through the aisle and didn’t stop. I made out the scrapes and thuds of many slabs grinding against each other, sliding off and dropping through new openings as the geological landscape shifted. In a way, it sounded oddly like rain – if rain could be sharp and threatening.

“Warm,” Gia murmured. Her fingers loosened around the door piece.

I looked up at the portals, and thought I could make out a soft glow near some of the more distant iterations.

“Drop the beam,” I commanded, grasping at her remaining arm. I couldn’t find a grip. “Throw it as far as you can.”

Gia moved her arm, but the swing didn’t land. The door fragment clattered to halt less than a metre away, its beam facing down through the floor.

The glow at the end of the entrance intensified, the rocks turning a dim red. It lasted all of a second before the red turned to yellow, yellow to white, and a series of synchronised, screaming blazes filled the aisle like performance art with flamethrowers. Molten sparks showered out of the cracks in violent fountains, dripped out of others and sent smoke billowing through the hallway. Rocks in front of the gaps shot outwards like bullets, embedding themselves in the walls, and it was only the existing stone shields filling the room that prevented Gia from taking a few more head on. Giant cracks formed in the corridor walls this side of the dimensional boundary as they bore the brunt of the gravitational backlash, riddling the passage until it resembled mashed eggshell. A series of further booms followed, topped off with a horrendous sucking crunch reminding me of a similar instance earlier in the week in a boat with Kali.

The clap that followed was one of the loudest yet, followed by more of the strange, reverberating rain of objects settling. Then the cracks seemed to focus, becoming directional, coming closer.

A distant beam shattered its contents onto the floor of the corridor, the loss of its markers causing it to vanish from sight. Two more followed after it. Bright silver light shone through the gaps, casting moving shadow along the aisle as it shifted position.

I nudged Gia as best I could. “Call out.”

“Mmm.”

I raised my voice. “Call out.”

“Hello?”

The cracks stopped moving, and Mayari’s voice called back. “Gia? Where are you? I can’t seem to find the door.”

I laughed and let myself slump to the ground, half my head and torso buried in the rock slab already crumbling to pieces. My powers were coming back slowly, but I didn’t need to inspect the cave outside to know it was going to be alright. "Tell her to use the light," I said to Gia. A little illumination at the right angles would reveal the portals for what they were easily enough.

And I withdrew to Rome to catch my breath, regain some strength, and find out exactly how much damage the last few events had done.