Working independently but keeping the other somehow in view, Valiant and Plaster were a kind or type of solace or company to each other as the labour got hard, the light shifted and the noise became what Plaster called ‘more frightending’. Here and there in the rubble of the years, amongst the trash and the fallen valuables and the lost personal items of no real financial value, the two of them sometimes found edible items of food stuffs – discarded apple cores and half eaten sandwiches, sticks of candy, bags of own brand marshmallows or deep fried fragments of sea-creature for which neither of them cared to know the name. It was bad food for the most part, strange in combination and often ageing to the point of decay, but they ate it with enthusiasm and shared it willingly, sitting together and sharing stories and wisdom of their short lives, Valiant describing Olympica and Plaster telling about her own experience being held as a test subject in a lab where they experimented various horrible unregulated substances and from which she recently escaped.

The further deep they went in the underbelly of the Wheel of Misfortune the more Valiant noticed it was different atmospheres, moods and landscapes. One place it would be crowded with mechanical elements, the moving metal parts or forms creating dark walkways or apertures thru which they had to squeeze, other places the whole thing opening out into a clearing, or to a chamber with sand on the floor and a series of portals (?) or portholes above thru which natural light of some kind appeared to be spilling. As the atmosphere changed there were also places where the sound changed drastically and indeed Valiant felt her own sensitivity to the sound of that whole place growing with the days. What was at first just a blunt fist of racket and din slowly separated into layers and specific aspects of sound what she could identify – the whir or thwack of this or that, the shifting proximity of the yells and screams of those riding the great wheel or wheels outside, the friction screech or creak of this gear or cog, the click-clack or grind of some particular motor, or the proximate hiss, rumble or steam-burst of some piston. Sometimes, taking a break, days into their journey she imagined that from the sound alone it might be possible to map, understand or navigate that place.

*

It was somewhere in the sixth (6th) consecutive day of their travel below the Wheel of Misfortune, long after they lost touch, sight or any kind of contact with Broth and Suzette, that Valiant and Plaster found a small book dropped long ago and forgotten in the layers of discarded materials strewn all over the floor, its green cover moulded with old age.

The Gods of Endland

It said there, using that embossed kind of lettering that no one used anymore.

Plaster opened it.