“What in the name of the Deep and Noxious Places is that?” Krak mumbled.
Fingit glanced around and saw Sakaj hissing into Harik’s face, almost touching noses. Gorlana had wandered a short distance away by herself. Fressa, missing one arm where a spike had ripped it off, was leaning back against a tree and watching everybody. Fingit saw no evidence of Lutigan, which instilled some throat-clenching fear.
Fingit staggered as Krak’s elbow hit him in the shoulder. Damn, Father must have grown a foot here!
“Fingit… what the… what is this? Explain yourself!” Even in his degenerate condition, Krak scowled in a manner that would have immolated non-divine beings in a trice.
“It’s just what I said, Father. These are the Dark Lands, and the world of man is up there. The Veil is thin here. We can get through.”
“What are you talking about?” Lutigan yelled from behind Fingit, who spun, but no Lutigan stood there. “Where am I?” Lutigan roared from nowhere. “What did you do to me, you floppy rodent’s scrotum? I’ll elevate you every day for a thousand years!”
Good thing I used the acid too. Or maybe Lutigan just got obliterated at the end. I hope it was the acid. That would have hurt like molten lava diarrhea.
“Leave her alone, you depraved vulture!” Sakaj screamed at Harik. “The Freak is mine! If you ruined yours for all time, that’s just your own fault!”
Harik, one eyeball punched out and dangling on his cheek, said, “You fail to see that the most harmonious and beneficial approach is to share the resources available to us. Bitch!”
Gorlana stalked back over to the group and howled, “Aaaauuuu! Uuuuuuuuu! Aaaaaaeeaaa!” Her mouth had been dismantled by a spike, but that didn’t prevent her from having her say.
Fressa pointed at Gorlana. “Gorlana apologizes for being such an eternal bitch.”
Gorlana kicked Fressa in the shin.
“Everyone who doesn’t want to be heaved into the Bottomless Chasm of Nightmares had better shut the hell up right now!” Krak roared with the power of twenty bears, which wasn’t bad, but was nowhere close to old Krak, who roared with the power of fifty bears and sometimes a murderous hippo or two. All the gods shut up. Krak pointed at Sakaj and said, “Suicide girl—show me.”
If time had any intrinsic meaning in Unicorn Town, and Fingit doubted that it could, an hour passed before Krak nodded and said, “Enough.”
Sakaj and Fingit had demonstrated the link in the sky, how to move it, and how they had found people with it. They’d shown everyone the Murderer, the Nub, and the Freak. They talked about trying to find other sorcerers with which to bargain.
Harik begin whining about the Murderer and his open-ended debt, and how Sakaj and Fingit needed to share with him. Krak backhanded Harik and told him to shut up and collect the payments on the debt he was already owed, if he could figure out how.
“All right, here’s what we will do,” Krak said in his commanding, pre-Veil fashion. “We will come here every day. Fingit, you’re the only one who’s sort of sane on the other side. It will be your job to elevate us all every day and get us here.”
Fingit gaped at his father.
“You’re a smart boy—figure it out. As a reward, you get a monopoly on any trades with the Nub.”
All of the others stared venom at Fingit when they heard that.
“Sakaj, you work on the Freak. Find something she wants and break her down. Gorlana, Fressa, and Lutigan, you search for other trading opportunities. Harik, capitalize on the Murderer’s debt—we could use the influx of power.” Krak looked around at everyone except the incorporeal Lutigan. “Does everyone understand?”
This is what I wanted. Right? Old, Insane Krak is gone, and Mighty Krak is in charge again. I guess I forgot that Mighty Krak doesn’t like me that much.
Fingit nodded and added his voice to the symphony of affirmations.
Krak sighed and looked around. “All right, I’m bored. How do we get back?”
Everyone stared at Fingit. Fingit stared at Sakaj. Sakaj looked off into the darkness of Unicorn Town and pretended not to hear.
“Someone—and I don’t care who—has five seconds to tell me how to get home,” Krak said. “I may not be able to fry your nipples off with the impossibly searing light of the sun yet, but I can pound any of you thin enough to write poetry on.”
Fingit and Sakaj both began talking at once. Harik sneered at them. Fressa hurled a dirt clod at Gorlana, who threw up her arms and walked away, while Lutigan’s insubstantial voice cursed everyone in sight. Krak stood with his arms crossed and seemed to grow taller every second. It was therefore easy to understand why no one did anything useful when Cheg-Cheg’s head erupted from the ground beneath them.
The upheaval hurled gods in all directions as the monster climbed out of the prodigious hole it had made in the earth of Unicorn Town. Fingit hit the grass rolling and smacked against a black tree trunk. He felt at least one rib crack. By the time he’d dragged himself upright against the trunk, Cheg-Cheg’s entire self stood roaring beneath the prismatic Unicorn Town sky.
“Take us back!” Fingit yelled. “Get us out of here!” He staggered toward Sakaj, who was sitting on her butt and shaking her head one hundred feet away. The monster’s foot slammed down in between them, crashing into the ground like a meteor. Fingit tripped and fell backward, landing on the grass amid a hail of dirt clods.
Cheg-Cheg twisted, bent, and swept Fressa up with his clawed hand. She flailed her arms
