Tythus waited patiently while I struggled through the duct, at last freeing myself and gulping in air. I sat for a moment, sweating more than I ever had and wishing I had eyebrows. The ceiling was vast, honeycombed with derelict wind machines and veritable spiderwebs of exposed rebar. I took our map from my sabretache, which was frequently catching on things in the tight spaces we'd been traversing, and unfolded it on the sheet metal we were sitting on. Our only source of light was the intermittent blinking of the djinni lamps that still showed signs of life, but both of us were well adjusted after an entire day in it. The map was smudged in a few places, but we could see well enough where we'd been. 

"The next one will be even more difficult to reach," said Tythus.

I handed him a charge, but he shook his head.

"They're quite safe to use."

He shook his head again. "I won't."

"You don't approve of what I'm doing?"

"I don't care what you do."

Then I shook my head. "You don't care what I do? Have you not yet learned who I am, and why I'm here."

"I..." then he turned, beckoning me on, and I followed him to a place so cramped I was caught three times in a join that I sincerely thought I would be trapped in. I yearned to slip into the quiet realm of interior lamps where I could float through a mountain as dust floats through the air. I came close, very close, in fact, but when I attempted to relax my hold on myself there was a tightening, and I remained wedged like the traced edges of an icosahedron. I managed to crumple myself into a cube, then push free into the hub where the food channeling tube was housed. There I made my incision, cutting through the ancient metal easily with my knife, reached in, and placed the sticky pad on the inside wall, activating it with slight pressure as my fingers passed on their return. 

Eight faces flashed in my mind, sitting each along the twelve walled class room. I was grateful, and more than a bit surprised, to have been allowed to teach these children with only one handmaid supervising, and I assumed her to be the one I'd seen meeting with Fergis and Alabaster's splinter group. Those eight pairs of eyes were entranced by my every word, but when our time had ended, I was shocked by how quickly they snapped out of the persona of belief they had adopted during my lecture, as if they found the whole event to be a drama in which we all played a role; an interactive story if you will, no more real in their minds as their fool's gold legends were in mine. Each time I found myself unable to progress on my path, I saw those faces, and found a way onward, though my feet were dragging through a mire, and my mind's sails would not unfurl. Now and then, when I felt close to breaching that thin fabric between me and the freedom to pursue my goal unhindered, I saw a sparrow brought into the water by a leaping fish.

But I continued on, leaning on what help Tythus was willing to lend, wishing that Astus had been a real child, game for anything dangerous or profitable. Tythus was a stalwart companion, but this sudden claudication of his had me missing my chiming paper lantern.

At last we found the last tube on our map, and I knew the poor young tyfloch urchin who stole it for us would likely regret doing so once I proved unable to bring him down where he could find a path to the ground level or below. But as fortune would have it I was no longer constricted when we met him, and I soon had him free of Red Side, the Judicator, and the Fomorians who sought to make him theirs.

"I suppose Nessus will want to see me before long."

"Why did you call him that? I thought you named him Janus."

"I had a thought, just now, that his blood is poisoned."

He blinked. "How could you know that?"

And my eyes turned red as I turned my ashen face, stringy lockes of grey chain dangling just beyond my hollow brow. Because I poisoned him- and the dream was over. Tythus cowered.

"What are you afraid of?"

He relaxed, then insisted we get out of Red Side.

"Is that a thing we could do?"

"I can go anywhere."

I didn't doubt him. "Leave if you need to. I want to stay and observe, and even help if need be, though I doubt I'll be called upon.

"What about Fergus and Alabaster's group?"

"They'll be fine." I was the picture of confidence. And they were fine, already having shown themselves resourceful. They used the skill of persuasion their bygone offices instilled, and had those close to them forming foraging parties, and in the space of a week they had crafted their own fungus farm. They supplemented their diet with vegetables, and once, as a reward, I felled a dactyl with my spear and left it in their meeting hall. But they did not eat it. Rather they took it to a patio and burned it, watching its ashes rise as once I too had done.

Anpiel's crowd fared worse. I actually began to worry for them, and then for her, but one of them spoke to their enraged fellows and convinced them to join with Fergis and Alabaster. They did so by offering, and not seeking, any sort of help that could be offered. So they were put to work, eagerly learning in days what I was beginning to fear would never happen. Of the handmaid I'd seen in their meeting hall on occasion, I heard little, and saw even less. She had elected to stay with her mistress, having forgotten the warmth that had drawn her in before. Anpiel of course abandoned her people. Too proud to give help to those who'd survived by faith (which is not blind, but the vision a believer of any plausible thing sees with), she left, going by her own secret ways to the same place my hired thief had gone. And I, I sat alone, invisible to the eyes of temporary women and men, and watched between whispers as a society formed in the ashes of an internment. This of course found the ears of the Judicator, and while I did go to him as he wished, I did so on my terms, when he was alone with only a few guards, and instead of being escorted I emerged into his presence, the White Shadow birthed in the void. As I expected, the younger voice behind spoke first, attacking at the older face with its infantile hands that would not let go their deranged toy.

"Demiurge!" it shouted. The old face rolled its eyes and mouthed an apology before turning and allowing the young voice to rave until exhausted.

"There," the old face said when it at last turned back around.

"Your young self clings to the covenants," I observed.

The forward face of Janus shook correctively. "No. It has  no memory of such contrivances. It merely screams wildly without thought. I've worn myself out trying to reason with it, but it only repeats words, not concepts, and always in a hateful way."

"Is it a part of you?"

And Janus shrugged. "Yes, but no. It was a gift from Our Lord, so that I could be more complete. Before, I was only one man. Now, I am both man and boy. Could a Judicator be better equipped than I? I give thanks to Our Lord."

"If you say so." To me he seemed impaired.

And Janus stepped forward, or lurched rather, though while his legs seemed pinched and pinned, his body seemed to float, his shoulders unaware of the bending of his conjoined hips. The two spears were now pointed at me. 

"You've made some independent decisions," Janus said.

I took off my shroud, as if to visually remind him of my nature. "This vexes you?"

And Nexus shook his head. "No. But the turmoil of a once pacified flock does."

"They were dying," was my defense.

And Janus pounded the butts of his spears into the the ground, and leaned forward with a look of indignance. "They were fed."

"Food, yes. But they had no purpose."

"They had diversions, which they acquired for themselves without any prompting."

"Better to feed them those, and let them forage for food. But what I gave them is far greater still. Now they must unite coequally to live, and in so doing, they will now value their lives."

"While they scurry like insects, looking for scraps? You've only made their empty continuance difficult. Ease was their one remaining comfort. Now they have cause to steal, and their ends will come far sooner."

"This generation will struggle, but they will grow strong. Do you honestly not know how crucial it is that we be forced to tear our way through our chrysalis that our wings may unfurl?"

I did not tell Janus of Fergus and Alabaster. I was confident that they and theirs would continue to thrive, and only authoritative interference would bring them to any sort of lasting harm.

"Is there a purpose for my visit? What's done is done, and I'll carry on as I have."

Then Tythus was brought to me. I'd left him in one of his safe spaces, I think the first he showed me, but he had been found and taken captive. As I write this I am pained. He was carried on a gurney, under a dirty blanket. The man I saw when I first met the Judicator was with the hunched servitors carrying the gurney. He held what looked like a serpentine spider in his hand. It writhed for a moment, then went limp, and Tythus tried in vain to reach for it.

"When one is as untouchable as you appear to be, their followers must be made to suffer in their stead."

I gripped my spear, and was ready to vanish from sight to quickly open the Judicator's throat, or perhaps the physician's. But then junior woke, and the Judicator became a storm of howling and cursing, and for a while he fought against himself. The long, strong arms that wielded the spears flailed the most, sometimes clutching at one throat, sometimes clutching at the other. The smaller two pairs of arms grappled with each other, and when the larger tore the toy away and flung it across the room, the hind head screamed and the long arms were his. Both hands dropped the spears and clutched at the older face's throat until the eyelids sagged and its jaw hung limp. The the head turned, seeking to look around the room though its body lagged. I saw a cannister that glowed on either end shake free from under Janus's robe, then with a soft whine it flickered and dropped to the ground. As the weak four legs beneath the Judicator gave way, the hind head gave a command and the physician unsheathed a small knife. By the time I plunged my spear in him the boy was gone.