Vice nodded sadly and turned back the way he'd come, walking toward the waiting, phase-shifting figure in the cell like a man being sent to the gallows. Pitch met them halfway down the corridor.

"Can you do it?" Pitch asked, having already guessed the plan.

"Be quiet, alchemist," Vice said, turning the last word into a derisive snarl.

"Vice," Pitch said, "this is about getting the job done. Not desecrating your god."

"You could not desecrate the Vigil if you tried. Do you know what you're asking me?"

Pitch stared at the outraged, grieving monk for several moments. "Yes."

"Impossible," Vice said and walked back to the window to face his false god. He took a deep breath and gestured for Pitch to press the button on the plaque. Pitch muttered under his breath: "I'm asking you to make a rational fucking decision."

"Easy, Pitch," Dagger said. "Whatever your feelings, he's saved our hides more times than any of us."

"Dagger, one day they'll all be gone. All of them. Because men will finally have the answers, not them."

"This isn't the time. And unless you want to take over as resurrectionist?"

Pitch closed his mouth and pressed the button.

You seem troubled, my little watcher in the darkness.

"I thought you dead," Vice said.

Only imprisoned. How do my followers fare without my guidance? Do the machines run down without me?

"Well..." Vice answered, though he was surprised at the question. "well enough. Your accolytes and I have cared for them. In our way."

How?

"We... we have had to find other ways. Your accolytes had their suggestions. Without recourse, we have followed them."

You are evading the question, Vice.

"We..."

Ah. I see it now. You have slaughtered multitudes. And in my name. You have stolen others from their afterlives. This was never my way.

"You were gone!" Vice shouted, real grief cracking his voice, and in a moment the fearsome battle monk with the iron hands sounded like a wounded child. "No, it is not your way. But there was little choice."

The rest of the Armory looked at each other with discomfort. None of them had every seen Vice in this condition before.

I was. I had no choice. But still you are right.

"I am?"

Ways change. Ways must change. This place has taught me that. We will speak together now, just you and I. Tell the heathen not to remove his hand from the button. Together we can put to rights what has happened in my absence.

"Yes," Vice said.

The dry voice left their minds, and the Armory watched Vice as his shoulders rounded under the weight of what only he could hear. They waited while Vice and the Vigil spoke. The monk gesticulated, and swept his hands around to indicate the room and perhaps the tower itself. He seemed to be painting some picture of a larger world. After a few more minutes of talk, Vice clasped his hands and bent to one knee. Then he turned and came back to the group.

"We good?" Dagger asked him.

"The..." Vice choked for a moment on the word, "Vigil will help us. It can see most of the tower, and it can help us chart a course through the maze. It says it can mitigate the effects of the clock."

"To a way out?" Saber asked.

"The job's not done, Saber," Dagger said.

"The job also wasn't supposed to rip us out of time! Do you even know how long we've been in here?"

"That's not the point," Dagger said.

"It kind of is. There was gold waiting for us. Who knows what's happened since? Maybe the queen's dead. We could be keeping a deal with a ghost."

"He's got something of a point," Pitch said, "which is surprising in of itself."

"Thanks, Pitch," Saber said. "I think."

"We took on a job," Dagger said, "that job is over when it's over. Forward is the only way."

"We don't even know which way forward is in this shithole!" Saber shouted.

Dagger's eyes opened wide and she took a step toward the duelist.

You dither in argument!

The Vigil's voice boomed in their minds enough to half-buckle their knees.

Free me and your task becomes simpler. Easier, even. Though still it will not be easy. My power is muted in this place, but I have some.

"Pitch," Dagger said, "see if you can get the Vigil's cell open."

Pitch went to the door and ran his hands along the locking mechanism, a shadowed recess that seemed to go on forever. He lit a flare and tried to shine a light into the keyhole, but its darkness swallowed the light and even dimmed the flare by proximity. Pitch dropped the brightly smoking brand between his feet and took a pair of metal struts from his pocket. He gently probed the keyhole and swore when he dropped one of them into the keyhole.

"What happened?" Dagger asked.

"It... the lock ate one of my picks," the alchemist said.

"Oh, good," Saber muttered.

You are the one he called Pitch.

Pitch leaned back from the door and looked in through the glass at the vastly shifting form of the Vigil that might be.

"Yes," Pitch answered.

You are an alchemist. A student of... science.

"That's correct."

But it is different force that binds me here. A force I understand better than you, I think.

"Perhaps."

It amounts to the same thing, does it not? But you are outside the door and I am imprisoned. Still, which of us is really confined? Who decides which side of a door is within and which is without?

"An interesting philosophical question, but in this case I think the answer is obvious."

Perhaps. Perhaps your cell is just larger. In any case, muting wards line the cell, and devices power them that feed off the pain and despair of confinement, as much of this tower does. The lock was built in several times and planes at once, each a fixed and perpetual point. You will need their key.

"Which we don't have."

Have you considered the hinges?

Pitch nodded thoughtfully.

A jail cell, I am sure you have found at least once in your life, is only as good as its door.

"And a door is only as good as its hinges," Pitch said.

Just so. Our ways and means are not so different, atheist.

Pitch nodded and went to the hinges. He began to mix a set of powders into a vial of alcohol. He corked the vial and shook hard, the contents blending and filling the rest of the vial with smoke. With his other arm clasped across his nose and mouth, he poured some of the mixture over the hinge and lunged out of the way as the hungry acid feasted on the metal. It smoked and melted. He did the same with the top hinge, and then Dagger came forward and thrust the spike on the end of her hammer into the thin seam of the door and levered it open, skipping back as it fell from the frame with a shuddering clang. The inside of the door was deeply carved with sigils in geometric, repeating patterns that covered it from edge to edge. They stood back from the door as the Vigil left the cell, flickering rapidly between watchtower and robed figure. It glided across the floor.

"The world believes you are dead," Dagger said.

Yes. Vice has told me, though I suspected as much. But it was never my way to involve myself directly in the events of the world. I stand vigil. But as I told Vice, ways must change.

"Based on what we've seen here," Dagger said, "quite a lot is possible."

Yes.

"Holy Watcher," Vice said, "we came here to destroy the Citadel's hold. Can you help guide us to the top of the tower?"

Yes. That serves both our goals, I think. I can see the way. I can see many ways. Though the word "see" is imprecise, it may serve best for your understanding. Tell me, how does the tower look to you?

"Like a series of rooms and regions, connected by doors and stairs," Pitch said. "It seems to change at random, but what we have seen of its mechanisms and structures are breaking down."

Your limitation is fascinating. I see a multitude of stone towers, imposed over each other again and again. What you perceive as a move between rooms is actually between entire towers.

"I see," Pitch said. "Yes, that would make as much sense as any explanation. But Temker's Clock would not be enough to create that. They must have other devices."

Many times many. How do they look to you?

"Like untended experiments."

As you have seen with what is left of my afterlife, so it is here. Devices must be maintined, they have life spans just as you do. The ones of this tower have been trying to find their own way to arrest the grip of time.

"Which way do we go?" Dagger asked.

As in any tower, no matter how many are imposed over each other, which is the most important direction?

"Up," Dagger said.

Exactly. But the ones who created this place have warped such distinctions.

"You are remembering," Vice said, his voice just slightly tinged with awe.

That word is... imprecise. But perhaps it is good enough. The room they kept me in obscured much. It dampened my sight, but as their machines began to fall to disrepair, a fog lifted. Outside the cell, it has lifted further. Come.

Saber sidled close to Powder, "He's seen fog?"

"Shut up, Saber."

Yes. I can feel the triggers and mechanisms of this place. Follow me.

The god led them down the hallway past the other cells, and their occupants battered themselves against the glass as they did. They thrashed and slammed, the sound of their impacts bare whispers against the magic and science that had been used to lock them away. Dagger glanced this way and that at the flickers of movement past the glass. But none of the creatures or creations in the cells were able to so much as crack the glass of their prisons.

They cannot escape any more than I could. Be glad of that. Some of them are quite savage.

"I have no doubt," Dagger said.

At the end of the corridor, standing once again on the steel-grid flooring of the landing, the Vigil paused. Within its shifting, the robed figure brought its sleeves together, the stone-looking things winding their fingers together beneath the cowl. The flame atop the watchtower form of the Vigil blazed into a blinding bonfire. Vice staggered in awe, and fell to one knee before he could stop himself, his face a mass of conflicted anguish. One tear fell down his cheek.

"Steady," Pitch said, laying a hand on Vice's shoulder fully expecting to be rebuffed, but the monk suffered the alchemist's hand.

It is alright, my little watcher in the darkness. I see your pain. Be strong. I am here now. And I am clearing a path.

Vice huffed. It might have been a choked sob.

The metal of the floor and the stairs creaked and groaned. The Armory looked around nervously, waiting to dance back from some trap of chasm, or leap to the relative safety of the corridor if the ground gave way. The metal floor ripped loose and reformed, the staircase leading down twisted up like a snake, uncoiling past their eyes and bursting through the ceiling in a deafening shriek of metal on metal. Stone fell like rain as the staircase burrowed its way ever up and toward the top of the tower. It took several minutes, and the roar of its growth became a deafening normal as the Armory waited. Finally, the Vigil seemed to sag. It dropped its hands and its watchtower fire dimmed again.

It is done. You may climb.

Dagger led the way up the spiraling stairs. The Vigil rose into the air, keeping a slow pace with them as they climbed past anonymous and empty stone, the walls yawning around them in winding turns. They climbed. And climbed.

And climbed.

The walls offered no hint of progress, and the ground falling away below them soon faded into a distant, hinting darkess. The ceiling above was hidden much the same. Distance and time stretched, and the sound of their steps lulled their minds. The timelessness of the Citadel of Stairs was a shout. The Armory found themselves locked into a greater worry than any of the horrors or dangers they'd faced thus far, that they might be climbing this staircase forever.

"How much further?" Dagger asked the Vigil.

I apologize for the distance I have created. It is necessary.

"Created? Necessary? Because the top is that much further away?"

Your minds are fragile things, used to rules and boundaries. Time. Distance. They are crutches for the crippled, but necessary in your case. They are two of the constants which allow you to establish equilibrium with your material world. To do away with them is to unpick the fabric of your perception, and thus your minds. I am creating this distance so that you might adjust without shock. We are climbing through towers innumerable in their variation, through layers of time and dimension. If I had taken you directly, your minds would have broken from the strain of trying to see that many worlds and planes at once. You have... single minds. It is dangerous to see the overlapping nature of this place. For you. My mind, if such a word can even apply to me, has no such limitations.

"I see," Dagger said.

They climbed for a year. They climbed for minutes.

We near the top. Be ready.

"For what?" Dagger asked.

They have mounted a defense.

"Yeah, because we've been so unprepared thus far," Saber muttered.

I apologize for my rudeness. Next time I won't warn you.

"Don't go that far," Powder said and glared at Saber.

They emerged into a narrow alchove. Ahead the path opened into a vast tunnel the size of a grand hall. The much narrower path through it was more like a bridge than a floor. The distant walls curved around the stone bridge, and were made of stairs that contstantly spun and revolved. To either side was a drop. At the far end was a massing force. As the Armory walked closer, the first of the force noticed them. There were beasts and men. Some were already locked in conflict with each other, but the moment the Armory stepped into the light of the tunnel, these petty skirmishes stopped and every head turned their way. Something that looked like a giraffe draped in raw meat warbled a war cry, or perhaps just a plaintive demand to be put out of its misery. It would have seemed pathetic, but its head split into several fleshy lips and exposed a pink throat studded with teeth made for rending.

"Fuck," Powder mutterd. "no cover and no high ground."

I can provide high ground.

"How do..."

The Vigil grabbed Powder by the shoulders of her leathers and lifted her up into the sky. It flew her in revolving patterns nearer to the advancing monsters and men.

Can you shoot from here?

"Fucking hell!" Powder yelled, legs kicking, "next time warn me!"

The skinny one with all the stabbing implements seemed offended when I did.

"He's an asshole!"

I will remember. He is an asshole. You are not. Shall I put you back down?

"Shit no! Just hold me steady."

The Vigil paused a moment.

"Please?" Powder asked.

Your courtesy becomes you.

Powder sited down her rifle. The fanged giraffe that looked like it was wearing its own insides, and that of several others, roared again as Powder and the Vigil swooped overhead. Powder fired and the giraffe's head exploded, shattering those around it with dental shrapnel and blood.

"This is fine," Powder said, calm now with her eye on a site. "can you keep your pattern erratic? In case one turns out to be a shooter. Pause on my word?"

I will. But you need not speak. I will know when you want to shoot. Watching is my way.

As Powder dangled over the battled in the counterfeit god's grip, the rest of the Armory rushed forward the meet the force standing between them and ornate, towering doors at the far end of the bridge. Trapped and battered heroes who had come before the Armory looking to solve the truth of this place fought next to the Citadel's creations. It may have been futility that drove them, or commonality, an acceptance of their fate to be just another threat encased in a glass of time. As they charged the Armory, bravos shoulder to shoulder with the created horrors they'd sworn to wipe out, their distinctions ceased to matter. Before them was an enemy, only five strong.

But they never faced a five like the Armory.

Dagger and Vice led the charge. The monk, boiling over with angst at deceiving even a false version of his dead god, stepped in and caught a swordsman's downward swing in one of his hands. As the surprised warrior tried to snatch back his hand, Vice grabed the sword and snapped blade and arm in one motion, dropping both as he met the next threat. His fists drew great, rending swaths of blood from something that bubbled beneath its skin with unconnected muscles. Its teeth broke on his armor, his fists brought it low, methodically, as if Vice was pounding wheat between wheels of stone. Dagger laid about her with her hammer. A figure half again as tall as she, with its body fully encased in armor, swung a greatsword the size of its body. Dagger rolled under the swing as it continued past her, too heavy to stop, and scythed through two hyena-like beasts that had gotten too close. Dagger leapt out of her roll and drove the head of her hammer into the armored giant's face as it tried to recover its heavy blade for another swing. It reared back, its visor dented and cracked, and Dagger swung low, smashing through iron plates and knee joint both. When the giant staggered, she brought the hammer down on its head. Once it was nearly prone, she dented it into imobility along the places where its armor jointed, and soon the giant was face up and helpless as a turtle staring at the sun.

"Dagger!" Saber shouted, "boost!"

Dagger knelt at the command, and Saber ran and stepped on her knee and then her shoulders as she straightened mightily, catapaulting the much slimmer man into the air over the fray. Saber revolved, spun and landed in the midst of men, beasts and monsters with a short curving blade in one hand and a dagger in the other. If Vice and Dagger were blunt instruments of raw power, then Saber was the unexpected and unseen knife on a night with no moon. His weapons found flesh between thin gaps in fang and armor, a deadly agility allowed him to redirect the slashes and thrusts aimed at him in the thick of the scrum so that they found homes in allies' chests. Fanged mouths on long necks, tentacles and broadswords that tried for him, he ducked, spun and sidestepped. His heart soared, his mind went blissfully quiet, and he noted with a distant delight that the rough surface he danced upon was a porous stone that absorbed the blood he let and gave him perfect footing.

At the rear of the battle, Pitch threw back his cloak to give him full access to the wide bandolier that decorated his chest that held vial after vial of fragile glass. These he threw hard over the battle with a practiced accuracy. When they fell and broke against shoulder and skull, or were snatched from the air by foolish jaws, green and blue fire burst out in waves and raged across skin. Steel and flesh sizzled and smoked as acids ate them away like scalding water washing wet paint from a wall. He created barricades of flames that gave Vice, Dagger and Saber avenues to fight between and boxed their foes together so that groups of five became clumsy single-files of grain waiting for the scythe.

Far above the battle, Powder's keen eye and steady hands picked the greatest of threats and riddled them with bullets, the slugs crosshatched so that they split and warped on impact. They went in small and punched out in large, wet holes that coughed insides out onto the ground or propelled beasts and men over the edge to the meatgrinder of the revolving stone-stair walls.

"Take me low," she shouted, "just above their heads."

I will.

They dipped sharply in the air and Powder's heart hit the back of her teeth as her boots dangled inches over grasping hands and tendrils. She slung her rifle strap in the crook of her arm and drew her scatterguns. They both spoke at once, and a hail of lead and fire chewed several of the things below down to their warped, poorly manufactured bones.

Dagger fell under the weight of four of them, one man and a trio of beasts joined by mebraneous threads. She caught their weight on the handle of her hammer, but a sword scored her side and rasped across the leather. Three of her ribs creaked, and dimly she was aware of being bitten by a fang or a blade. Vice grabbed his opponent by the shoulders and snapped down hard, sending the warrior's face into the ground. He spun and shattered the skull of a bravo standing over Dagger and aiming a spear to thrust. Saber danced in behind and with two delicate cuts severed the membranes conneting the other beasts. They howled as they were separated, shrieking and tooth studded forms lost themselves enough to be felled by Saber and Vice. Dagger raged to her feet, swinging hard at Saber's head. The swordsman ducked and slid between her legs to run through the fighter behind her as she shattered the chest of the one who'd been about to stab him in the back. Vice kicked a hound with too many legs and heads and a mouth in its side. It met Dagger's backswing and was smashed to the ground to squawl and buck, its spine broken in half. Dagger shoved it over the edge of the bridge.

"Form up!" Dagger shouted. The Armory made a blunt wedge with her at its point.

Only one threat was left standing upon the bridge, a roaring round horror that was mostly mouth and grasping tentacles. It shrieked at them in defiance even as it slowly retreated. Dagger stopped and installed a spike in the head of her hammer. She stepped forward as the beast lunged, its jaws distended and its teeth shot forward on a neck of extra, wet skin. Dagger lunged into the bite, but instead of finding her, its jaws closed on the hammer, wedged vertically into the roof of its mouth. Howling the creature tried to close its jaws around her, and only impaled itself further. It tried to yank itself back, but Dagger dug in her heels and Vice grabbed her belt to anchor her.

Pitch darted around Vice and Dagger and tossed a vial past the horror's teeth and downits throat. When the contents hit the volatile acids of its stomach they detonated and the creature heaved a gout of smoke tinged green and foul smelling with ignited bile. It slumped. Dagger's hammer was the only thing holding it up. She grabbed her weapon's haft and kicked it loose from the dead horror as the Vigil returned Powder to the ground. The beast sloughed bonelessly to the side and oozed off the platform to hit the spinning tower walls below with a thunderous, wet smack. Distantly, there was a sound of bone and meat being ground to pulp.

"Any more, Powder? You had the high ground," Saber asked, panting and bloodstreaked.

"Doesn't seem to be," Powder answered.

They all turned to look at the doors ahead, even the Vigil.

Beyond they wait.

"I didn't bring enough acid for that lock," Pitch said.

It is unlocked.

"How do you know that? Or any of this? You've been locked in a cell," Saber asked.

Vice growled and muttered something under his breath.

My little watcher in the world knows. Tell them. It is okay. There is no need for subterfuge. I heard every word you spoke anyway. Their sigils had degraded enough for that. For me to see and to hear with nearly my full power. I know you believe I am not your Vigil, but whether I am or not is irrelevant. I am. That is all that matters.

"They seem to have given..." Vice paused and clenched his teeth.

Say it, my little watcher in the darkness. Speak the truth. You are bound to by my teachings, after all.

The Vigil's sounded triumphant and amused.

"The Vigil keeps watch. It is the great watcher in the sky," Vice said, though speaking the words almost seemed to hurt him.

I am reborn, though my little watcher in the world doesn't believe. Though none of you believe.

"You are not the Vigil," Vice said between his clenched teeth.

Am I not? I feel as though I am. If you believe your Vigil dead, and here I stand, then it seems to me you must rejoice.

"Lets get these doors open," Dagger said, nervously eyeing the phasing figure of the counterfeit god that seemed to speak less as a lost creature with every moment.

That will be easy.

And it was. The doors pulled open with neither groan nor creak.

The Armory and the Vigil entered.