I'm in a hangar, somewhat like the one where V stabled his pegasi, and there is one very similar to, if less well kitted, my old Northwind. As it often is with memory, only a sense of fondness is elicited by such a sight. No recollection of the tension and struggle is brought with the nostalgia, or the fear and hate, or the confusion and maddening lack of foresight that moves us to commit so many acts of foolishness. Just a fondness twinged with melancholy; a bizarre longing for a time fraught with no less trouble than the one we're currently in.

When I finally met with Lord V, I was overwhelmed by such emotions. He reeled as well, though his long trained skill of hiding all feeling was in full effect to the others in the room. We mingled in each other's false memories, sharing a thing not our own, keeping hidden those thoughts that we had each formed since. Never had I felt so crushed by emotion. It was as if I'd met with every Kendra and Oscar and Dolores there had ever been, and had relived every crash of every ark and recognized the screams.

I had a presentiment of this as I traveled from Elvedon, along with a sense that in the wide, empty and level plain above the living tomb, there was a presence in the absence, an echo of what was once and should be there. Each time on entering the simulacrum, I felt a dread that I would not truly leave, so I tarried in my dream until I saw Astus, and followed his chiming voice to the waking world. I found myself looking for him as I flew, but only when Northwind coasted on his own, our destination being ingrained in his memory, I would hear his odd breathing behind me on the saddle. But never when I turned to see him was he ever there. I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever see him again, or if he'd served his purpose, leaving so another revenant could take his place. And so I was eager for nearly anything I saw to be such a beacon, listening keenly for the ringing of a bell, but dactyls were only dactyls, kestrels were only kestrels, and even on the ground I saw only beings of the material world. By the time I reached my destination I had lost Astus completely.

I was uncertain how best to approach Thirty-Third Day. Since my time in Elvedon, I had developed a sense of urgency, along with a sense of finality, fearing that I was not as undying as I'd thought, and that perhaps the place I traveled to harbored my doom. So I landed far from the magnacity at night, and approached on foot by the dim gloom of day, having left my mount in a crack in the earth where few eyes could see.

I had no reason to expect that I would be implicated in the theft of the pegasi unless I gave away my guilt, but I still felt anxious, and I allowed my anxiety to slow my pace, walking slowly enough to take the entire day. I approached very cautiously, waiting till night was at its blackest and using my dark sight to spot the patrols. I made my way furtively, often keeping still for long stretches of time to avoid detection. I worried that if I were to have passed between, I might have somehow been sensed by V, so I simply stalked and sneaked until I had my hands on the city itself.

There was no outer wall to Thirty-Third Day. It was one massive structure, with its tenements and townships housed entirely within. I walked for hours, groping along its unbroken hide, until I finally found a crack to slip through, only seconds before the pale drippings of the moon were lost to the black horizon.

When I peeled through the crack, a rift most likely blasted by a stray meteor fragment, either never seen or never worried about, I hugged the wall inside with my back, and walked sideways up a hill of debris until I was too pressed to continue. I could see nothing, and felt fear of being stuck, for when I moved either right or left I seemed to make no progress. I had in fact, and planted my foot into a piece of rubble that was precariously stacked. It gave way under me, and I found myself pinned on either side by the ruined matter that had so feebly held up whatever it was that gave way under my foot. I struggled to find purchase for my feet, which dangled, only kicking things loose too high to stand on, and soon I was wedged between two pieces of metal with hard edges.

Turk had warned me that the city would be exceedingly difficult to enter. No one migrated to Thirty-Third Day, nor were they taken there. They were born there, plain and simple. It made a certain kind of sense to me, having one's domain be a closed and self contained system. Only those known to be loyal to their lord were trusted as emissaries, and, as I would soon learn, V's military was beyond fanatical. Over and over, Turk indelled in my brain that I must avoid capture at all cost, and when we shared a dream, hoping to learn more of the Batch's final purpose from each other's perspectives, he saw that when I opened to the door for his and Jadus's troops to enter, V had indeed become aware of me.

"I would not be surprised if he's been watching you even more closely than I ever did," Turk had told me. I still cannot explain why every attempt he made to turn me aside from this course only hardened me towards it.

What Turk saw, in my lucid dream, was that while I reveled in the sensation of being a transient... a wraith, as indicated by my brand, that I did not see the ethereal Gorgon within the unseen fathoms, that Lord V was one of the many clusters of eyes observing others who made the traverse. But this was the undoing of Turk's urgings for me not to go. If V could pass between, then why did he leave our task undone, and what, if anything, could possibly be special about me? I usually toss questions aside when their answers prove elusive, but this I had to know.

"You told me I was the Dolomites' rebis," I reminded him. "How am I the completion of their great work? What did they do to me that they forgot to do to 33? Or 32? Or 31? Why did they have to bring so many broken boys into this already tortured world?"

I loathe to admit it, but I let my brokenness show in full that evening. I almost killed one of the sleepers in my tantrum, having taken to striking wildly at whatever objects were near. I looked down at the cadaver I was cleaning and I hated it. I hated this body that no longer did a single thing for the good of others, but slept on an alter and sucked life out of a machine that only now existed to keep those dead things from learning they were dead. I wanted to stuff my sponge down its throat, but instead I raised my fist, and Turk threw me to the ground as if I were a mere krupenichka. When my vision cleared he was on the ground, his knee on my chest, his utility knife on my throat.

We worked in silence for the rest of the evening. When we both were about to retire to our sleeping chambers, I thanked Turk for trusting me to continue my work for the night. His face then looked as strained as mine must have while I fought to free myself from that rubble, and he told me that it was he who was not deserving of trust.

"then earn my trust now, Turk. You've been like a father to me, and, like my earliest fathers, have told me very little. Please, be honest with me, and tell me why you don't want me to go to Thirty-Third Day."

"I'm afraid you'll never leave."

"Why?"

"Because, Victor, you're needed elsewhere."

"I know that. But why would I never leave Thirty-Third Day? Are V's jailers that efficient?"

"They are, but will be useless against you. I fear V warping your view of Tarthas, and of this mercurial purpose of yours. He may well have had the means to fulfill the objective, but not the heart."

I then pressed Turk with a question that turned a blade away from me that had often been held to my heart. "Tell me, Turk. Would Lord V have ever been content to live a quiet life with a sickly girl? Would he ever have been content to live within a stranger's tomb, so long as he and his sickly wife were together in peace?"

Turk could only shake his head.

"Then you've no reason to fear for my heart."

And then Turk asked me if I desired life. And I told him that since Eris's death, I haven't.

"And if you find the fragments of the founders, and lay them on their thrones, what then?"

I shrugged, almost laughing at the irony of Turk questioning me, and said that my hope was that I would no longer exist past that point. "As there will be no more need of my services, perhaps I'll be allowed to retire."

The following day, he revealed a second jinn in his possession, one I'd never seen him summon or consult, and that jinn showed me a map of Thirty-Third Day.

"How many djinn have you got?" I asked him.

"Only the one here, since my preferred servant died in the fire you started."

It was then that I remembered having placed it in Doctor Dander's antechamber. "I'd forgotten. It rose from its vessel and was doing something."

"He was learning the ingredients and procedures necessary to replicate Danders's formulas. Goth and I were working to be free of him."

While I will never regret killing the doctor, or destroying his madhouse of a clinic, I did regret that Turk's djinn was lost.

"I thought Goth tolerated him the way you tolerated Patches."

"I did more than tolerate Patches."

I changed the subject before there was any further discussion of Colonizer Kharn.

For some reason I thought of him, though, as I wrestled to keep my body from being crushed, or torn to shreds as I slowly fell. There seemed to be some sort of mechanism responsible for the rubble. Of all the places to stumble through. Somewhere deep underground was a hum, and the rubble began to shift. I then realized that there was some sort of doorway, a postern perhaps, nearby. I heard faint sounds that perhaps could have been footfalls, and when the rubble shifted again I managed to find a place for one of my feet.

It became tangled however, in what I couldn't tell, and I found myself hanging upside down by one leg. I bent my free leg and thrust my foot behind my back, hoping to prevent myself from making too loud a noise by striking the wall, then reached behind my back with my arms to unsheath my utility knife, which I'd taken to carrying scout style. There were voices, so I froze and stayed as quiet as I could. There was a yellow glow coming from a light embedded in the wall, just behind my head.

"Itten banz, bantzen itten!" called a shrill voice.

Then I heard louder footfalls, and soon a hand was furtively prying through the refuse around me, and soon I could see a small, scrawny figure climbing where I had moments before.

I had decided it better to risk being captured eventually than to ensure being captured immediately, but the furtive shape moved quickly, and I saw the person's face for an instant before I slipped between. It was a human girl, but no ordinary human girl. She was a targ.

She was frozen with fear. I didn't blame her. To see anyone vanish before your eyes must be frightening, and I look unnerving in my armor even to other soldiers. My shroud, along with my long skirt and tabard, give me an ethereal aspect, and my spear, which I have not yet described to you, shimmers faintly when it is very dark. Holding lt in three fingers of one hand both saved and hindered me, it being a weapon not carried by a simple man, yet so much more cumbersome than a dirk or sword.

I think, now, that I spared this girl. When another targ arrived behind her, he being very tall and very gaunt, but clearly strong, he seemed both angry with her, but also defused when he saw that she had found nothing. She stared blankly where I had been with wide, bloodshot eyes. Her hands, a curved knife in each, were trembling.

"Zook!" the man said in a harsh whisper. He scooped her up in one arm and carried her away. I marveled at their ability to traverse that cramped and treacherous space.

The light behind my head was beginning to strobe, and the hum resumed, louder than before. I decided to make things easier for myself, and floated through the rubble that had barred me. I did worry I might be seen from afar by Lord V, but I was searching for him then, and I was not fully submersed in ethereum, but 'in between', as I knew instinctively I was meant to be. That first jaunt into the unseen realm was far more perilous that I had known, as I dove into a vortex with only blind instinct to keep me from drowning. Here I hovered over the refuse pit, observing the rusted automation that creaked and groaned in their graveyard of steel.

I saw no people, having passed through walls and into sealed rooms, so I only flitted about for a few moments, then walked quickly and quietly, keeping as best I could to the shadows. I did sense that I had given myself away, though not my exact location, only that I was there. He was a presence in the fullness of the void, but not much more than an echo or a footpad heard for an instant after I had paused to listen for a tail. When I was only between, he was pervasive, omnipresent, but he was thin, an aging skin stretched taught over a drum. His kingdom was too large for him, I could tell, and while he was certainly bending his consciousness towards me with keen interest, he would not stretch it over me all the way, telling me that he had some threat within his gaze that he durst not turn his back on. It would be a game of wolf and ram, then, between the two Victors, and I swore to myself that the wolf would be crushed by my horns. Beware the weaponizing of sheep, for they are bold when given tools for slaughter.