The fissure was shallower than he had expected, though it still sank into the ground a fair way. Its mouth might have been crude and ragged, but the further down the chasm reached, the neater and squarer its walls became. Moor could see Time Engineers working tirelessly, their violet glow lighting the depths. Some clung to the walls, smoothing and shaping; others worked at the very bottom, constructing what Moor supposed would be the partitions of interconnecting rooms.

Glancing nervously around at the forming landscape, ensuring no other Time Engineers were close by, Moor dipped a hand into his satchel again, this time producing a small terracotta jar. He ran a pale hand over the smooth and plain surface, feeling the charge of higher magic held inside.

The last of the Genii.

The other jars containing the essences of Moor's fellow Genii were already in place. Viktor Gadreel, Hagi Tabet and Yves Harrow now lay waiting among the bones of Labrys Town. This final terracotta jar contained the essence of Mo Asajad.

In Moor's natural time period, the war against the Timewatcher was over, and Lord Spiral had lost – or so his enemies believed. The rest of the Genii faced imminent execution, and the last of their allies among the Houses of the Aelfir had been vanquished. Every one of the secret strongholds Spiral had created within the Nothing of Far and Deep was being searched out and destroyed. There were no safe havens left for the only remaining Genii.

Moor could not take the other Genii to where he was headed; a tomb of his own awaited him, and his immediate future was too unpredictable to play minder to his comrades. The passage of time, while they lay hidden beneath the noses of their enemies, was the best weapon they had now. The higher magic that contained Asajad, Gadreel, Tabet and Harrow inside the terracotta jars was unstable; but with the energy of the First and Greatest Spell wrapped around them, they would be kept safe, kept strong, waiting for the day that Moor could return to reanimate them.

It was Lord Spiral himself who had taught Moor the forbidden thaumaturgy that had preserved the essences of his colleagues. Moor remembered the tortures it had inflicted upon them. He could not rid himself of the images and sounds of their suffering. Only Mo Asajad had refrained from screaming when Moor had reduced her physical form to ashes. She had glared at him throughout the process, gritting her teeth against the agony, and she had not stopped glaring until she no longer had eyes to glare with.

Moor studied the terracotta jar in his hands, struggling to understand why Lord Spiral had chosen Lady Asajad for the task. Her devotion to the Genii cause was pure, but Spiral was the only person Asajad would obey without question. When her essence was reanimated she would resent following Moor's orders. She would not function well within a group not under Lord Spiral's personal command. Mo Asajad lived to dominate, she craved control. She was an unhinged creature of higher magic, and Moor could foresee problems.

He circled a finger around the jar's wax seal.

It was not beyond the realms of temptation that he might compromise Asajad's containment device. He could hurl it down into the chasm, to the very bottom, where the terracotta would shatter and release the thaumaturgy it contained. And when Asajad's essence began its ravenous search for meat and blood and reanimation, the Time Engineers could have their way with her. They could recycle her thaumaturgy and grind it into the fabric of the Labyrinth. Getting rid of her now might cause fewer problems in the long run, Moor reasoned. And who would know what he had done?

No. Spiral had chosen Asajad, and Moor could not defy his lord and master.

Holding the jar securely in both hands, Moor stepped off the edge of the chasm and floated down.

Careful to keep himself away from the arachnids clinging to the sheer faces surrounding him, he continued descending until he neared the bottom. His earlier suspicions had proved correct; the Engineers were indeed segmenting the wide and long floor into rooms. The walls they had built thus far were incomplete, appearing as ruins. Moor wondered what manner of building would eventually rise from this great pit.

He landed in a half-finished room where a single humanoid Time Engineer, its glowing skin fractured by black lines like a network of veins, laboured away. The Engineer did not react to the Genii's arrival. It continued to build its wall higher.

Taking a steadying breath, Moor latched onto the thaumaturgy with which the First and Greatest Spell had saturated this land and flashed a quick command to the humanoid.

The Engineer ceased working and turned to face the source of the irregularity.

It had no features as such, just a swirl of black-veined violet where its face should have been. The glow of its body brightened and dimmed as though it was unsure how to proceed. Once again Moor touched the First and Greatest Spell. He didn't dare delve too deeply lest its power absorb his own entirely. He barely skimmed the surface, scratched down just enough to send the Time Engineer a simple but firm command which it could not refuse.

Moor placed the terracotta jar on the newly formed floor and stepped back. The Engineer stepped forward to kneel beside the jar. And then, just as the other Engineers had done for Gadreel, Tabet and Harrow, it proceeded to bury the essence of Mo Asajad.

It punched the floor, its fist sinking effortlessly into hardened time with a sound oddly poised between breaking glass and splashing water. The Engineer plunged its arm down to the shoulder before withdrawing it, leaving behind a perfectly circular hole. Moor held his breath as the Timewatcher's labourer picked up the terracotta jar and lowered it into the opening. The worker then began rubbing flat palms over the floor in circles as if washing it. Faster and faster it rubbed until, with subtle pulses of red and blue, the hole was filled and smoothed to black stone.

Moor relinquished his command of the creature. The Engineer turned away from him to continue working on the wall. Only then did the Genii sever his connection to the First and Greatest Spell; only then did he rise at speed, up past the arachnids clinging to the walls, out of the chasm and high into the blizzard of thaumaturgy.

Fast and silent, Moor continued to ascend, soaring towards the roiling slate-grey sky. To the north, the fire of the Timewatcher's mighty spell continued to drone and spit; below, the violet glow of the Time Engineers dotted the landscape. He did not stop rising until he came within several yards of the thick and churning primordial mists of the Nothing of Far and Deep. For a final time, he pushed a hand into his satchel and removed the last item, a simple wooden scroll case.

Moor slid out the scroll and unrolled it carefully, letting the case fall from his grasp. Upon clean white parchment were glyphs and symbols, swirls and shapes, strange configurations, written in black ink by a hand that Moor knew all too well. It was a complicated formula that decorated the page, more complicated than any other Thaumaturgist could create. These were the words of Lord Spiral himself, the language of higher magic, and they were for Moor's eyes only.

This scroll was one of two that Spiral had left Moor before his defeat at the hands of the Timewatcher. The first had allowed Moor to travel back to this early stage in the Labyrinth's creation. But the second ...

In this time period, Moor was as a single bee in a forest, a grain of sand in a desert, an unnoticed interloper, but he could only remain for a short while. He was not shielded from the raw elements as the essences of his comrades were in their terracotta jars. He was whole, alive, and if he lingered too long, the mighty thaumaturgy that had delivered him to this time would cease protecting him. The First and Greatest Spell would drain the higher magic from his body until only dust remained. Fortunately, Lord Spiral had given him a way out.

Moor began reading aloud from the scroll, the language of the Thaumaturgists hissing and sighing from his lips as quick and fleeting as the flakes of higher magic whipping around him. He intoned the words of his lord and master, his voice growing in intensity, barely able to contain his urgency.

As Moor recited, a grey churning disc appeared in the Nothing of Far and Deep directly above him. Growing darker and smoother, it swirled faster and faster until Moor read the last word and the disc collapsed into a portal, a black hole punched into the sky.

The scroll burst into flame, burning in a flash to ashes that blew from Moor's hand to be lost in the blizzard.

With his work done, the Genii gave a final glance below him to the landscape birthing a House. The Relic Guild would see Fabian Moor again, and at a time when they were not prepared to deal with him. Moor would return to wake his fellow Genii, and together they would search for Spiral. They would find the hidden prison that the Timewatcher would come to create for the Lord of the Genii.

All things were known in the end.

Moor rushed up towards the portal. Without hesitating, he flew into the black hole and disappeared from the Labyrinth. For now ...