Though I had managed to roll over, I was still unable yet to rise. Separated only by me lying at their feet, the two then clashed like pit fighters.

When I rolled onto my side, my head exploded in such pain I’d thought for a moment that the damned spoon had found me instead. I watched the melee as an emerged worm watching a street performance. The skeleton was dodging the slow, skull-crushing swoops while hissing his curses. The fat man, almost a light green, gargled through the slice under his bottom-most chin, while his engorged stomach jostled with his violent wiggling. With a loping swing of the giant spoon, something fell out from between two of Toadly’s glistening roles.

Landing upright, as if placed by a servant, the lapis lazuli hand stood before me. Toadly’s feet and Belot’s bones danced as I clasped onto it.

I had it! It was done! Soon Belot would fade, and if I were lucky, while I waited on the floor unnoticed, maybe he’d use that cane to break Toadly’s fat head.

From the floor, curiosity and confusion penetrated my euphoria, for right then the imp opened its cage.

My eyes were pulled from the fight when it reached out and stuck its scorpion-stinger fingernail into the lock that had been—or so I’d thought—preventing its flight.

Flew it did, to a shelf to latch its hands around a small black jar. Little bat wings gliding, the imp flew over Belot, Toadly, and myself, and dusted us with its contents.

The blue hand began to thrum. It began to burn my fingers, but I only held it tighter. A moment later I had been pulled to my feet, but by what I could not say. I was standing between both of my enemies. Belot’s bones flew against me, sticking to my arms and chest as if attached by paste. Belot’s teeth chattered in my ear while Toadly’s head was slung back and a fountain of noise and bile erupted from the gash.

It was as if the three of us were standing still while the room spun at a terrible speed. Toadly was smaller now—his eyes glaring up at me while his arms hugged my leg. What looked like maggots squirmed where Belot’s large bones had been just a moment before.

“No!” I cried as I heard Belot cry the same. “Not this! Not him!” we cried.

Toadly, now a hideous tadpole, made a slow, close orbit as I felt the putrid itch of Toadly’s fusion. Covered in the powder that started this, there was a sudden crowding in my mind.