The gobbos came out of nowhere. A hunting party. Jars of still-living milk-spiders (for they can only be eaten alive), a few rimstone cankerpedes on skewers – and something else, a wolf-like beast with hooves instead of paws and barbed quills instead of fur. They had it hanging on a spit, carried between a quartet of goblins – I saw its head hanging limp, pale tongue lolling. It had no eyes. A long, prodigious snout – but no eyes. I thought to hide as they passed, pressing myself into a crevice. They passed by, but then the final gobbo in the ranks – a young one by the looks of it – was playing with his milk-spider in the jar. Rattling the glass, tapping it. The bulbous white spider running around in circles. The gobbo fumbled the jar. It broke. The spider saw its opportunity and ran – right onto my foot. The young gobbo followed, wailing and gnashing its broken teeth. That’s when it found me. Shrieked in alarm. The others came. I pressed myself deeper and deeper into the fissure – I was by then quite thin and able to slide through the stone. Then one of the goblins thrust into the crevice a jagged spear. The lance struck me in my side. I screamed and pushed through the crevice, losing skin and hair in order to manage it. The spear-wound is already infected. I’m bleeding very badly. I fear this wound is a mortal one.

– from the Journals of John Atticus Oakes, Cartographer of the Great Below

“Is he dead?” Candlefly asks.

Sorago lifts and shakes the corpse with one of his tentacle-feet. The goat-man’s body is limp, his life having leapt the fence and left the paddock empty. “He’s dead. What should I do with him?”

“Take him into the Below. Let the roach-rats feast. Let the goblins have his flesh in whatever salacious way they choose.” Candlefly sparks a cigar. Puff, puff, puff. Victory, it turns out, tastes so much sweeter than failure.

They do not have the Ochre.

Because it was here all along! And then Mookie went and used it, opening the gate that they needed open. Yes, fine, Candlefly didn’t precisely intend to open the gate here: he thought it’d be a bit more dramatic to do at the Empire State Building observation deck, but the door was open. An unexpected triumph.

Mookie did not thwart their plans. He in fact guaranteed their success.

What a fool.

Puff, puff, puff.