They slide part of the way along the rounded curve of the worm-god’s body. After that the drop is only fifteen, twenty feet – but with her weight on his back and his own bulk, his legs hit and pain jars up into his legs and a thought pops in his head like a muzzle flash (this is how Werth must have felt all the time) and then he tucks and rolls and Nora is flung from his back and he lands on his goddamn arm and–

He grits his teeth, bites his tongue. Don’t cry out, don’t wail, don’t make a noise you big dumb shithead.

He lifts his head.

He’s face to face with a gobbo.

Its eyes are closed, hidden beneath leathery, callused lids.

Its uneven mouth is open. Tongue flapping.

It’s breath smells like roadkill.

Mookie stands – so much pain, a fire stoked anew, now in his legs and his arms, but he has to go, has to move – and he sees Nora nearby. She holds up her hands; she’s OK. He waves her on, then points past the worm-god’s tail which lays coiled around a pile of animal corpses. Beyond it is an archway – an exit.

She nods.

They hurry forward past the chorus of keening goblins.

He’s panicked. And in pain. Nora can sense that. He’s like a zoo animal testing the limits of his cage: up and down one tunnel, then back out and up another tunnel. He grabs some nearby glowing fungus, has nothing to use as a torch and smears it all over his knuckles and holds his hand aloft. They’re bathed in a nauseating green glow.

She tries to ask him where they are, but he just shushes her – and a not insignificant part of her wants to bite back, wants to shush him, wants to let loose with a fusillade of cruel barbs. But she has to choke it down. Stop. Grow up. He saved you.

Another voice within asks, Did he really?

She feels her skin. Cold. Corpse-cold.

The walls are warm but she can see her breath.

She can’t see Mookie’s breath.

She feels a nervous, acid edge in her stomach. Who are you? What are you?

Finally, Mookie points. “Look.” He seems excited. Or agitated. Both.

It’s a vein. A blue artery in the dark wall. Brighter than a human vein, this is the color of electric lemonade, of blue raspberry, a color you don’t find in nature except on tropical birds.

Cerulean. Peacock Powder. The Blue Blazes.

Some of this vein has been tapped already. The lower portion broken apart, the blue long-gone. But not all of it. At Mookie’s head height, the vein is still strong.

He grabs a rock with his glowing fist. Brings it hard against the Blue.

Once, twice, three more times.

Chips of blue fall. A cloud of shimmering powder fills the air.