Rita felt a little sorry for the acrobat, or this place’s monstrous version of him anyway. Too slow to catch either her or Alice, he seemed doomed to a slow death as Alice methodically and strategically severed ropes as he tried to move. If he tried to move away, she cut the rope his front bodies hung from. If he tried to climb, she began cutting the ropes he was climbing. It was only a matter of time until he was completely cornered and plunged to his death below.

“Do you think we cheated a bit by coming in from above?” Rita asked, casually hanging next to Alice and watching her slowly whittle down the monster’s escape routes.

“I don’t give a shit,” Alice said. “This is survival. It wanted to kill us; we don’t owe it anything except a quick death.”

Rita watched as another rope snapped under Alice’s knife, forcing the creature to draw back and try a different route again.

“But it’s not exactly quick, is it?”

“Only because it’s being stubborn. If it just let go, it would all be over quick,” Alice insisted.

Rita frowned. She could not fault Alice’s logic. It tried to kill them, so killing it was only fair. It was just… did it ever really have a chance? The Guardian was supposed to be an ‘appropriate’ strength to challenge her, but this thing just seemed pathetic, really. What did that say about her?

Okay, sure, it would probably have killed them if it had gotten its hands on them, but how was it going to do that when it was so slow and clumsy? Had the Tree completely underestimated her? Or perhaps… was it Alice who was throwing things off? Was her having a second body some kind of bug or glitch in the system that the Tree had not accounted for?

Whatever the case, what Alice was doing to the poor thing was brutal. Each time it tried to go in a direction, Alice moved and cut one of the new ropes that it was hanging from. That forced it to stop, retreat a little and find another route, which gave Alice time to reposition and cut a rope in that direction as well. With the insane length of the balance pole, she could reach almost anywhere the creature could go with only minimal repositioning.

Rita just tagged along and helped carry the pole a bit while they moved. It was tiring work, though, and the pole was damned heavy. Quickly, they both were soaked in sweat.

“Do we have to kill it?” Rita asked eventually.

Alice turned and fixed her with a flat gaze. “You’re feeling sorry for it, aren’t you?”

“No! It’s just that this pole is heavy and there are so many ropes to cut and I’m getting tired… okay, maybe a little.”

Alice sighed and shook her head. “Ugh. Stop being such a damned wimp. It’s just a monster. A shitty one at that. Look, it’s not even trying to escape anymore.”

It had pulled inwards, its bodies clumping up and hanging from just a few ropes which were straining under the load. It was still moving, its bodies milling about, shifting from rope to rope, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

“Suits me,” Alice continued. “Less ropes to cut. Look, you don’t have to do anything, okay? I’ll take care of it. Just watch. One or two more should do the trick…”

She repositioned again to reach one of the ropes that the creature was hanging from. Each time she moved, she had to pull the pole in about halfway, tilt it vertical to stop it from getting tangled up in any of the other ropes, move to her new position, brace herself and then push it outwards again. She and Rita were almost above the creature by this point, forced to get close in order to reach the ropes on its other side.

This time, as she stuck out the pole, the creature shifted. Most of its mass suddenly surged upwards, the second layer of bodies rising to balance on the bottom-most layer, the one that had actual feet. Then another layer rose on top of them. Then another. The effect was like a blooming flower of human bodies, rising steadily upwards.

Almost its entire weight was supported by the bottom layer, several of them having looped rope around themselves while screened by the other bodies, clinging with both arms and feet to carry the weight.

“Oh shit!” Alice exclaimed.

She hesitated for just a moment before making a decision. Instead of pulling back and trying to get out of reach, she made a slash with her knife affixed to the end of the balance pole at one of the key ropes that the monster was hanging from. However, the pole was big, heavy and unwieldy. Her cut missed entirely as the pole bent and wiggled.

Before she could pull it back, the top of the newly forming mid-air human pyramid reached the shaft. Several pairs of hands grabbed onto it, holding tight. Rita watched in horror as it hauled the pole in, dragging Alice, who was still clinging on for dear life, with it until the rope that she was hanging from was stretched out diagonally towards the creature.

“Don’t just hang there watching! Help me!” Alice screamed.

“Just let go!” Rita replied, though she started moving to help regardless.

“Fuck that! It’s got my knife!”

Rita scrambled forward until she reached where Alice was now hanging, dragging as many ropes with her as she could. Then, she too grabbed on and tried to pull.

A fierce tug of war ensued. Rita and Alice both latched onto the pole with half of their limbs and onto as many ropes as they could reach with the other half. The monster tried to drag its end of the pole downwards, deeper into its mass where more hands could grab it.

The pole began to bend. It had never been designed to support a human’s weight, much less two spider-humans, and both sides tried to use their weight for whatever advantage they could get. It bent more and more as both sides pulled with all their might, before, suddenly, there was a loud crack.

The pole had snapped in half.

The sudden release of tension sent everyone swinging around like yo-yos and clinging on for dear life. When it stopped, Rita found herself hanging a couple of ropes in front of Alice, who had swung back to her original position. She found herself uncomfortably close to where the human pyramid was even now raising itself up again. This time it stretched up to its full height, towering over even where Rita was hanging.

As she watched, another loud crack echoed through the tent as the creature vindictively and triumphantly snapped the front section with the knife it ended up with in half again, a snarl on its face. It stared directly at Rita as it tossed the pieces down to clatter on the ground far below.

She tried to backpedal but found her most direct line of retreat stopping abruptly about a meter above her and out of reach, a victim of Alice’s aggressive rope reduction.

The acrobat’s face, at the very top of the pyramid, was twisted into a malefic grin of victory. Rita was still out of reach, though not by much. As the pyramid started to tip forward, however, she realized what his plan was. He was simply going to fall onto her.

The entire pyramid was tipping over in her direction and as it did, it was simply going to grab her in passing. Then, as its momentum dragged it down, it would simply pull her with it as it fell. Whether it was going to be able to hold its grip as it swung down was anybody’s guess, but that hardly mattered if it simply dragged her down with it. She would be quite dead either way.

In a panic, Rita looked back at Alice just as she looked up from staring dumbly at the broken half of the balance pole in her hands. Their eyes met.

There was no time to shout, no time to coordinate. But in that moment, they had no need to. After all, they were the same person, deep down. And somehow, something just clicked between them.

Alice lifted the broken half of the pole, lunging towards Rita as far as she could. For a moment, the pole hung in the air, held aloft by nothing but momentum. Then Rita’s reaching hands caught the tip before it could start to drop, dragging it around and continuing the momentum, turning as she thrust the sharp tip past her and into the path of the falling pyramid man.

The acrobat had time to see the tip rising to meet him, but by that point he had already tipped too far over to stop. His eyes widened and he flailed his arms comically as he tried regardless, but he had too much momentum and his centre of gravity was all wrong.

There was a wet sound when he impaled himself on the jagged, broken edge of the balancing pole, right below the left clavicle.

The force of the impact nearly ripped the pole out of Rita’s hands, but with Alice holding onto the back and the swinging ropes absorbing some of the impact, she managed to hold on. When everything settled he was hanging right in front of her, impaled through his top body and clearly in pain. He looked up at Rita with pleading eyes, mouth hanging open either in an effort to speak or just in silent pain and surprise.

She raised her knife.

“I’m sorry, but you died a long time ago,” she said.

Then Rita brought the knife down, impaling him through the eye socket.

The entire pyramid creature jerked once, then went still, slipping limply down into the darkness below.

“Wow. Looks pretty impressive,” Alice stated.

After the guardian had fallen and an eerie silence had settled over the tent, she and Rita had climbed down to the hard-packed dirt floor below. It turned out the tent poles had little ladders set into the side if you knew where to look.

“It looks tragic,” Rita replied. “Just like the first time he died.”

“Back then he wasn’t lying on a giant pile of bodies, though,” Alice added. “Does this count as one kill or a hundred?”

“It’s not a competition,” Rita frowned.

They were standing in front of what could only be described as a ‘mound of death’. All of the acrobat’s bodies that had made up its twisted human pyramid form lay where they had fallen, a broken heap of shattered limbs and crushed bodies. It was most certainly dead. There were far too many broken bones for it to not be dead.

“There he is,” she said, gesturing with her new spear to the head of the acrobat, its attached body lying on top of the pile.

Rita’s knife was still sticking out of his eye socket.

“Still can’t believe you didn’t just pull your knife out after you stabbed him,” Alice said.

“I didn’t expect I was going to kill the whole thing, okay? It slipped out of my hand before I realized,” Rita said, arms crossed defensively in front of her chest.

“I managed to get this thing out, you really have no excuse,” Alice said, resting the sharp half of the balance pole on her shoulder. It had been about the correct length for a spear, so she had promptly adopted it as her new weapon.

For a few moments, the two of them just stared at one another.

“Well? Climb up there and fetch your knife!” Alice commanded when neither of them budged.

“Me? Why? Why don’t we just find your knife that the thing threw away?” Rita replied.

“Because it’s lying somewhere on the ground in this massive dark tent, and I have no idea where. We know, however, exactly where your knife is. Right there. Now git.”

Rita sighed and carefully braved the treacherous footing to climb up the pile of broken bodies. She did her best not to think what it was she was stepping on.

“Ok, phew. Got it,” Rita said, relieved, when she returned after yanking the knife back out.

It was strange. Less than twenty-four hours ago she’d refused to touch a knife because it was covered in blood. Now she was climbing over a pile of bodies to pull one out of a fairly human eye socket and her biggest concern was slipping on a loose limb. It was amazing what you could get used to.

Alice was just about to open her mouth to make a no-doubt scathing remark, when a deep, sourceless and inhuman voice boomed through the tent.

“T̶H̸E̴ ̶G̴U̴A̴R̶D̸I̷A̷N̷ ̷F̵A̵L̵L̸S̴. S̷T̴A̸T̴E̸ ̷Y̸O̷U̸R̵ ̶D̴E̵S̴I̸R̶E̵.”

Both of them looked around in panic. The voice had the same screeching nails-on-a-blackboard quality that they had heard before.

“Was that…?” Rita asked.

“Yeah. That was definitely the same voice we heard over our phone,” Alice replied.

“T̶H̸E̴ ̶G̴U̴A̴R̶D̸I̷A̷N̷ ̷F̵A̵L̵L̸S̴. S̷T̴A̸T̴E̸ ̷Y̸O̷U̸R̵ ̶D̴E̵S̴I̸R̶E̵,” the voice boomed again.

“I think it wants to know what we want to know,” Alice said. “You talk to it.”

“Me? Why should I talk to it? You talk to it!”

“You’re the one that killed its pet, you tell it!”

“Ok, ok, fine. Er… creepy voice? We want to know, erm, how do I get home? How do I return to my old life?” Rita asked the air.

For several long seconds they stood there, waiting for a response. Rita had just turned and shrugged at Alice when the voice boomed again.

“F̷O̶L̶L̴O̵W̷ ̶T̵H̴E̴ ̷P̴A̴T̵H̵.”

“Path? What path?” Rita asked.

No response.

“Alice? What did it mean by that? What path?”

“I have no… oh, hey, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t there before,” Alice stated, turning to point at something off to the side.

In the middle of the floor stood an open door, with what appeared to be a corridor on the other side, lit by fluorescent lights. It looked like the backstage corridors at a theatre, with rough, bare walls and various pallets and rubbish stacked against it. Even the floor appeared to be bare cement.

Rita’s heart soared. She was going home. Maybe. But there was a chance that tonight she would be sleeping in her own bed, all of this being nothing more than a bad dream.

“Do you think that’s the path?” Rita asked, a note of excitement in her voice.

“Only one way to find out,” Alice stated and hefted her spear. “Keep your eyes open. I don’t fully trust the creepy voice.”

Rita smiled. “But there’s a chance we get to go home.”