Paul flew every which way, terrified out of his mind.

For a moment, he even thought of himself as his old self; as Lopé. But how could he be Lopé? Lopé's sister wasn't here to help him.

He blasted a hole in the wall with his powers and darted down it, then turned down a hall and raced that way, fleeing the doom of ice and heat radiating from the cursèd shadows.

He looked up.

The ceiling!

He could fly out of here! He could fly to safety, find Dr. Howle, and then wait for the Angel to come when everything would be fixed. God would help Nina see the light.

No matter what the blasphemers said, Paul knew the Godhead would fix everything. And his faith was faith beyond faith, for he had proof. The supernatural was real! What more evidence did you need?

If I can survive, I'll get my ticket to paradise.

In his mind, one of Paul's selves screamed like a baby crying for his mommy. Another one of Paul's selves was laughing so hard, he thought his lungs would explode.

He'd been waiting for his chance to escape. Waiting and waiting and waiting, and now it was finally here.

So why did he volunteer to go help Dr. Rathpalla? Was that fear?

No. He believed in the Angel. He would be saved. He was one of the Elect. He had no reason to fear.

God was real, and God was good.

Paul channeled a psychokinetic depth charge and blasted a hole in the ceiling, shot up through the hallway above it, and then blasted a hole in the ceiling above that.

Now he was home free—

—What?

Paul came to a stop midair, a shiver rippling down his spine. For a moment, he just stared. He looked down, and across, drinking everything in. Terms from the worlds of mathematics and physics that no longer mattered to him blinked across his mind. Manifolds. Tori. The gluing of space. Quasiperiodicity.

Somewhere within him, a tiny part of Paul's terror marinated in Lopé's awe.

It appeared that the labyrinth was a three dimensional quasicrystal.

Now even the laughing Paul was crying. If the space they'd entered had curved in on itself, that would explain why everything was twisted the way it was. At the same time, it would mean there was no way out. It would mean he'd be doomed to go round and round this house of unholy horrors till the end of time.

But I'm one of—

"—Scum! SCUM!!"

A shadow phased through a wall. It—he?—was a burning silhouette of living darkness, clad in dress clothes, with leather shoes as black as gleaming obsidian. The shadow's arms lengthened into twisted swords that burned with the same prismatic fire that raged in the emptiness it had in place of a face.

Paul mustered every pataphysical trick he'd picked up from the Norms.

His spray of projectile force bullets made tiny holes in the shadow as they passed through its body. They didn't slow it down in the least.

Paul turned around and flew as fast as he could, but the shadow was faster. It passed him by in a sequence of afterimages that rotated in unison as the apparition turned around, raised its blade-arms, and swung.

Paul dove to dodge, but one of the swords cut off a swath of his spines and dug into his back. The pain was so cruel.

Inside his heart, his mother cried for him. He'd shown her how much the Angel loved her, yet still, she rejected God's love. She fought it.

Paul couldn't understand why.

"SCUM!" the spirit shrieked.

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It warped ahead in another streak of afterimages. The tips of the swords in the lacerated fiery agony across Paul's flanks.

Again, he flew, racing through the hallways at blinding speed, but the shadow followed.

And then one of the Norms yelled.

One of the heretics.

"Hold on!"

— — —

Ibrahim yelled. "I'm coming!"

Lopé was fleeing a fully formed, blade-armed shadow.

"DEMONS! DEMONS!" the shadow Emperor shrieked.

Ibrahim glanced back; the Emperor was still on his tail.

Without hesitation and with only a chestplate-shaped forcefield protecting him, Dr. Rathpalla tackled Lopé's pursuer with his arms spread wide. Shooting pain blossomed on Ibrahim's underbelly as he collided, and grew deeper when the shadow responded by plunged its arm-swords into Ibrahim's chest.

He shivered. There were no words for this kind of pain. Even so, Dr. Rathpalla was unfazed. If anything, his thoughts were as clear as crystal.

His hunch had been correct.

Fighting these shadows had led Ibrahim to a remarkable discovery: sometimes—though not always—the shadows seemed to be attracted by pataphysical power. It drew their attention, sometimes even distracting them from whatever target they were currently pursuing, and, at least at the moment, it seemed to be working.

Could this be the discovery he'd been hoping for? Or was this just what happened when he gave it his all.

Ibrahim poured his heart and soul into a massive spherical plexus. But instead of skimming activation energy across it and turning potential into actuality, he shot the weave down the hallway, behind the shadow. At the same time, he reached out, grabbed Lopé, and threw him up out of harm's way.

The shadow spun around in place and then warped backward. It chased after Ibrahim's lure, repeating that movement again and again—spin, warp; spin, war.

Ibrahim spent a split second of slowed time basking in the warmth of knowing he'd done good. Had he waited a second longer, his third lefty wouldn't have seen the Emperor's shadow flying at him from behind.

Coating his claws in forcefield armor, Ibrahim whipped himself around with pataphysical propulsion and reached out and grabbed the incoming shadow. Touching it was excruciating. The thin line of aura blazing around the shadow ate through Ibrahim's magic and the flesh beneath it, but he kept pushing, using the shadow's momentum in conjunction with the force of his spin to launch himself forward, his enemy still in hand. The Emperor brought down his sword as Ibrahim grabbed him by the legs, but Dr. Rathpalla blocked the blow with his other hand, catching the darkness with his own, slowly melting fingers.

Then Ibrahim flew fast and flew hard, slamming the shadow into the floor. The shadow burned through carpet and everything underneath it, tearing open an ever-lengthening ravine. The shadow flailed in Ibrahim's grasp, but Ibrahim kept on pushing until the ground gave way and split down the middle, revealing an infinity of corridors spreading out in every direction.

Dr. Rathpalla's eyes went wide.

Somewhere in the chaos, Karl screamed. "Dr. Rathpalla!"

"Karl!" Ibrahim shot downward in a mighty tackle, pummeling the shadow into the floor—SMASH—and through the floor after that—SMASH—and the one after that, and again and again—SMASH SMASH—wrapping plexuses around his body to fortify against the endless impacts.

SMASH SMASH SMASH.

Then, finally, the floor beyond the floor changed. Instead of another hallway, Ibrahim and the shadow burst through the ceiling of the room floored by an exquisite grid of polished marble, white as the moon, inlaid with a hexagonal lattice of back opal tile.

Then everything began to slow, only this time, Ibrahim's thoughts hadn't changed their speed.

The Emperor's shadow blurred and melted in Dr. Rathpalla's grip, prismatic flames whisking off its body and spiralling toward the floor.

— — —

Karl stopped caring about his own life the instant he saw that shadow ram both of its arm-blades into Dr. Rathpalla's chest. He'd watched it happen from the other side of infinity. The psychiatrist flew with the shadow in hand, plummeting through the floor like a boulder.

Or had it been the ceiling?

Karl launched a repelling blast at the shadow of the man in white; Dr. Nowston did the same to the corrupted Archluminer. Both apparitions recovered almost immediately, but Karl didn't care, just as he didn't care that their blades came within an inch of touching him. He hardly even noticed the apparitions begin to dissolve as he dove through the tunnel of holes.

He just wanted to make sure Dr. Rathpalla was okay.

The psychiatrist came into view beyond the final hole. Karl's neck stiffened at the sight. The shadow in Dr. Rathpalla's hands was breaking apart into rivers and streams. More of those same streams streaked down from overhead, and Karl looked up to see they were coming from the shadows chasing after him.

They, too, were breaking apart. Yet these movements were incredibly slow, so much so that for a moment, Karl thought he'd set his thoughts at the wrong speed.

But he hadn't.

He flew closer, down to the marble floor down below, hardly aware that, to an external observer, it would have looked like he was moving more and more slowly.

Phosphorescent shadow spiraled in helices, descending toward the marble of darkness and light. Then, down below, beneath spirals, something flickered.

Karl saw a limb; a paw-tipped limb, thickly furred in icy blue. The limb faded, and then another member took its place higher up: a glorious wing, with feathers as long and lush as the Hallowed Beast's own plumes. Then the wing faded and a head appeared, elsewhere but near.

A head like a fox, with a third eye, large and terrible.

The body parts flickered on and off in a strange, unsynchronized ensemble, growing faster and faster as the spiraling dark descended toward the marble.

Then the two touched and waves of rainbow flames deluged in every direction. A creature stirred within the flames: a great winged fox with triple-heads and tripled eyes, as if reflecting the Godhead itself.

CRACK.

Fissures propagated through the air.

CRACK.

The three heads reared up and roared, prismatic fire streaming from all nine eyes

CRACK.

And then everything broke.

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