For the first time Misery enters the lower bowels of Angelsteeth, where the brig sits jowl to jowl with the research center. She has chosen Diamond and Lightning to follow her into the maw of this confrontation; the rest of them will watch from a secure room, safe in the steel heart of the station. The Archbishop. Duke Argan. Major Reyes and the General. A limited audience. Misery does not care to expose the wound that is Jericho to anyone else. Ruin strolls next to her, fluid as time, luminescent with grace. Zie seems particularly invested in this excursion, for reasons opaque to Misery. But she doesn’t mind. She needs the backup in case the Heretic tries anything. The full might of the Demiurge shall be her shield.

Their escort is a full detail of armored guards, faceless and bristling with weaponry. Dr. Sower, flanked by two assistants, leads the group with her concerted gait and omnipotent passcard. Beyond a door painted arsenic yellow and labeled AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY lies a labyrinth of clinical minimalism: walkways and steps distilled to metal bones, walls and ceilings piped with ducts and vents. Flat discs of holy opal bloom from the ends of wires, flooding the spaces with harsh light. Their path takes them on unguarded walkways over open-plan laboratories and workshops. In one, two engineers conduct an orchestra of drones over the rubble of their vanquished enemy, the Heretic warship, spitting fire and cutting loose small chunks of the unknown holystone. In another, a bubble of sleekly robed scientists floats in a wide circuit over a group of white saints, each sealed in a featureless cubby with a desk and scratchpad. Ghost’s siblings, perhaps? One of the bubble-scientists looks up and briefly catches Misery’s eye as their little contingent marches through the upper bounds of the room. Eyes widen, but zie says nothing.

In the next room over the walkway cuts across an enormous pool, clear and copper-blue, wide and long enough to be a lake. Massive spheres stud its crystalline depths, green-striped and smooth, each inscribed with a complex network of golden lines. Misery has never encountered this kind of holystone; the melody they play in her head is unfamiliar, yet alluring. Lightning seems unfazed by the size and scale of the room, but Diamond tenses, frightened and offput. “These are childstones,” Ruin says coolly, by way of explanation.

Misery frowns. Childstones? An urban legend, picked up from tall tales native to the unsourced wilds of online fora. There was a whole series of books, a fantasy epic centered around the idea of childstones, that Misery had inhaled while growing up. A pretty solid wave adaptation that she never watched. She was too old by then. She could not have imagined they were real.

There are a lot of things about her life now she could not have imagined, yet here she is.