Mookie and Nora stand at the lip. The ground trembles. He holds her hand.

“You’re gonna need to hold on to me,” he says.

“I know.”

“Tight. Tighter than ever.”

“I know.”

“That means you’re gonna have to trust me.”

“I do.”

“You do?”

“I swear.”

Beneath them, the worm-gods roil.

Another one pulls away from the others and begins to rise to the surface. Mookie shields his eyes, sees a flash of three mouths and not a hundred eyes, but rather one: a cyclopean orb the color of the sun at sunset.

“This is us,” he says.

Nora lets go of his hand. She gets on his back. Wraps her arms around him.

Mookie pops the top of the sheath, withdraws the cleaver.

The beast begins to rise.

Everything tells Mookie not to do this. Every inch of his gristly frame screams at him, a chorus of horror.

He jumps. Roaring as he falls. Nora screaming.

They arrive in the middle of the dance.

That’s how Candlefly thinks of it: a dance. Because it’s beautiful, really. Graceful as anything you’d see on a stage. And so much more real.

They step past the bodies in hard hats and yellow slickers. Necks twisted like wrung-out hand-towels. Limbs separated from bodies. Sandhog corpses strewn about.

It’s still going on. By the trailer. Even more of Vithra has emerged beyond the container of Zoladski’s flesh, a glorious evolution of form: the neck three feet long, the limbs long and lean like whip-cord saplings, all claws and teeth and ripping skin and eviscerated bodies. The men of the Sandhog union give back in violence. These are tough men, men of the earth, men of salt and stone, but they are still just men, and Zoladski has become so much more.

On the other side, by the elevator leading into the rather epic hole, Sorago continues his work. His really is a dance – as Sandhogs rush him he pirouettes, sidesteps, bites one as he shoots another and beheads a third with a curved blade. Another set rush him. One is flung into the pit, another finds his head cleaved, yet another finds himself embroiled in the deadliest kiss as Sorago’s jaw unhinges and swallows the man’s face whole.

Haversham looks the color of a green potato.

“Looks like they’re almost done,” Candlefly says. “Enjoying the show?”

“Of… of course.”

He isn’t, but oh well. One day perhaps he’ll learn to appreciate true beauty.

The cleaver buries into god-meat.

Thwack.

It takes everything Mookie has to hold on. As the god-worm rose to meet them they met the god-worm in turn, and the hit was violent. And now Mookie’s hand strains to grip the cleaver’s handle. He tries to bring his shattered arm forward to grab something, anything–

As the beast rises above the surface of the rim, a booming whisper:

PELSINADE

So that, then, is the name of their ride.