Alexa fell into the sky. Pechi was dragged alongside her like the limp animal she was, always being dragged about by the neck, and they fell through an interminable darkness into a place past places, the light coming up to swallow them as they fell through a new sky and into the core. The suits, which had almost felt vestigial in the forest, now began to do their jobs in earnest again, wheezing and panicking as the heat of the situation they had found themselves in overwhelmed them.

The sky overhead was a streak of red, giving no evidence of the darkness that had been. There was a faint haze that covered the whole land, due in part to the violent waves of heat that made the ground look like a mirage. Streaks of flame shot through the sky, landing beside Pechi and Alexa on either side, and similar meteors pelted the land for as far as they could see. Shadowy shapes appeared and disappeared in the murk, obelisks that existed for only moments, and the sand beneath them burned with thousands of jewels created by the heat and pressure.

Pechi wanted all of it.

Alexa was already half gone as Pechi picked up rocks, only to found they burned in her paws. She jumped back, frightened by how much they heated under her grip, and a ways off, Alexa mumbled something incoherent about what a disappointment and an impediment she was. Pechi lowered her ears to her back and stalked forwards. "I p-promise I'm c-c-coming. I'm j-just ch-checking. W-w-we can't p-pick up the rocks."

"Why would we want to?"

"I d-d-don't know!" Pechi said. "D-d-don't judge me."

"We just had a conversation on that." Alexa stared blankly back at her and kept walking.

Pechi stewed in her suit. "D-d-do we know where we're g-g-going?"

"Up," Alexa said.

Pechi looked across the landscape. "There is n-no up." The mirages continued to apparate and dissipate. Pechi's suit blinked with warnings. "W-w-we don't have much t-t-time, either."

Alexa kicked one of the rocks away. "I know."
"Wh-what are you doing?"

"Plotting," Alexa said.

As the Canis schemed, looking small and lost (or at least smaller and more lost than Pechi had ever seen her, she was still a presence) on the vast expanse of red sand, Pechi dipped out of the way of a sudden meteor and found herself knocked on the head. Her suit burned, as if the fires were licking it, and her breath caught as her fur was almost exposed to the air. As she braced for the flames to take her, her mouth opening to cry for futile help from Alexa, a dark shape reached a paw to her.

Something almost formless was watching her through the mists, and when it took its paw away, Pechi no longer felt pain or discomfort on the right side of her face. "Can't hold you long," it said. "You need to get to the top of the world. They will be following you."

"Th-they?" asked Pechi.

It nodded. "I can show you the way."

"A-a-and my friend," Pechi pleaded. It was strange calling Alexa a 'friend', seeing as she wasn't one. Pechi was at least thankful for the help. This was unexpected, but an earlier reading made her pause. She thought of unusual visions she'd had for those born in the Dog Days, as G'ana had been, allegedly. Those under the harvester Aina would experience a sudden moment of epiphany or clarity, followed by spiritual release... "Y-y-you wouldn't happen t-to be the sh-shade of a ce-certain someone, would you?"

"I can't stay long. I've been bending the rules. It's closing in on us. You're the one who understands fate, so you can see the vast strokes of darkness coming in behind us, can't you? It's bad and about to get worse," said the shade. "You know what happens if we fail."

Pechi did know. At some point, possibly extending up to this moment, Pechi had intended to leach off the power the rest of the group was providing, which might indeed cause them to fail. "I u-understand," Pechi said. "A-Alexa!"

Alexa swung her head. "What's the matter?"

"W-w-we're being guided! Look!" Pechi announced.

Alexa tilted her head, stalking past Pechi, through G'ana, and taking a severe look over the landscape. "You're kidding me."

Pechi's heart froze.

"Tell her to trust you, and that we're going to walk right up to the top of the world, where the seraph horn is."

"We're going t-t-to walk to the seraph h-horn now," Pechi explained. "Y-y-you're going to have to t-t-trust me."

"I shouldn't," Alexa said, "but there's also no other option, so with the caveat that I'll be leading when you fail to show me anything of note, I suppose I can allow you to lead for a bit."

Pechi's ears fell. "Fine. G-g-great. Appreciated."

G'ana moved back ahead, the tail of her dark form swinging and passing through the ruby-littered ground. She moved into a quick gait, and Pechi followed at her side, her heart pulsing quickly. Even with G'ana's assistance, she could feel her paws heating up and sensation, painful sensation, beginning to return to the side of her face. Her suit beeped small warnings about the end of its lifespan, never mind that this was an inconvenient place for it to die.

Alexa followed behind, watching the sky instead of Pechi. There was that same calculating darkness in her expression, though it was hardly visible from behind the mask of her suit. Pechi felt herself shake, again. "Why c-c-can't she see you?" asked Pechi, and her eyes widened with fear. "I r-r-r-really am going next."

G'ana did not answer.

"N-no. I won't do it. I have-- I have-- I have a m-mission, and D-Dusty and Alexa-- and my p-p-plants," whined Pechi. "I n-need to keep going a l-little longer. If we're not going to f-f-fail, then I-- then I have a chance--"

"You've already killed one family, Pechi," warned G'ana. "Don't kill a second."

Alexa was following at a distance, looking more recalcitrant by the moment.

The number of shades increased around them, figures emerging from the murk and growing slowly more solid. Alexa paused at one point to speak with one, then moved up towards Pechi, her fur stuck up so that she was practically prickling out of her suit, which had always been a mediocre fit at best. "They're other adventurers," Alexa said.

"O-obviously," Pechi said. The myriad of forms grew denser, but even this murk was less nebulous than those of past worlds. No one made it that far this often, and thusly, the 'trophy room' on this world was more than lacking. White eyes blinked out of shadowed forms, and as they grew more material, Pechi began to see muted shades of fur and feathers, skin and scales, as the creatures came to light.

"W-w-we're like you," Pechi promised. "W-w-we're going to t-take the s-s-seraph horn, wherever that is, and th-then we're going to g-g-go."

A dragon moved forwards from the string of foreign figures, and its mouth opened into rows of sharklike teeth, all of them glistening with displeasure. "We are pleased to find you've found us," it said, grimly, in a voice that in no way matched the contents of his sentence. "If you will, we need your assistance. Take the seraph horn from the top of the world, the pyramid above us, and return it down here. It will open the door that will allow us all to finally be free of this place."

A great pyramid rose, square layer by square layer, from the earth, its many steps opening into a maw that reminded Pechi of the first world's skull cavern.

"Y-y-yes," Pechi said, scanning the crowd for G'ana. The Canira seemed to have slipped away into the mists, which, as far as Pechi was concerned, was a bad sign. "Th-that would the plan."

"You can't do that yourselves?" asked Alexa.

The mass of shades shook their heads. "We were the warriors who fought the Lamb and almost caused his demise. Every time one of us great warriors is defeated, the Lamb places us here, at the core of this world, unable to touch anything. Only if we get back to the surface will we be freed and returned to our former selves."

Alexa nodded. The pyramid had now climbed to its fullest extent, and Alexa set paw on the first rung, testing it by leaning into it. "If you insist."

Pechi followed behind her. Her every step left a trail of murk behind, courtesy of the muck from the river in the woods, and as she tried to unstick her paw from the surface, she couldn't help but look behind her. Down below, all the shades were gathering close the exit, looking hungrier by the moment. "Is it o-out of line to s-s-say I don't trust them?" asked Pechi.

"It's good instinct, but you followed one here, didn't you?" asked Alexa. She was almost all the way up the face of the pyramid. "Hurry up. You're weighing me down."

Aren't I always, thought Pechi, coldly, as she ambled behind Alexa. The golden Canis emerged at the summit, seraph horn in her mouth. No guards. No tricks. Not even the slightest inkling of a trap.

The pyramid began to descend, drawing the pair even with the rest of the shades. As it collapsed, they noted that they were surrounded on all sides by dark warriors, all of whose forms became vibrant and living as they closed in on the seraph horn, which seemed to illuminate their bodies.

"So we'll go now," Alexa said. "And the door is open, or whatever it is you want of us. Consider that quest completed."

"I'm afraid we can't allow you to do that," said one. It moved inwards from the circling masses, all of whom were madly ravenous at this point as they stared up Pechi and Alexa. "See, we've all fought the Lamb, and lost, but we also had to fight each other as we came down here. Whoever takes the seraph horn off a living being--"

"We get it," Alexa said. "And I understand. We could never face up to such mighty warriors, so we might as well admit we can't fight."

"A-Alexa?"

"Appreciable integrity. A good warrior knows when to cut losses," said one, twitching its dozens of limbs.

"But you really shouldn't announce your plans like that. It's terrible strategy," said Alexa. "No wonder all of you have always been sent down here to lurk in the darkness. Pechi, the horn!"

Pechi grabbed the horn in her mouth just as several agile fighters skated forwards on long legs and broad wings, and Alexa swung Pechi around by the tail and out of the circle.

"Run for it!"

All the rubies on the ground were flung upwards in a cavalcade of force as Alexa's telekinetic grip rose outwards, flinging stones through the shades' bodies. One of Pechi's pursuers was hit through the head and fell, bleeding black shadows, as she dashed away, her chest violently heaving. Her side was burning from where she had fallen on the bed of rubies, but the door was not far off now. Horn gripped in her mouth, she made a frantic break for the door, only for something else to grab her by the tail.

"What are you, little beast?" asked one of the inhabitants, spearing Pechi through the ear. "You don't look like a warrior to me."

"A b-b-bystander," Pechi said, the horn quivering in her mouth. Strength coursing through her, she bit down just as the shade's long, trembling fingers reached to caress the horn, culminating in a pull that jolted her face upwards. Pechi's eyes looked deep into the sunken, hairless face, whose eyes were little holes that peered out of what looked more like a mountainside than a discernible face, so many were its wrinkles.

"An act of malice," it responded, yellow teeth emerging from the cavern of its mouth. "By the looks of it. Hardly just standing by. Why don't you give that up, and I'll let you live?"

Alexa barrelled through and with another wide swing, slung Pechi through the 'door', the two of them falling fast through the portal and into the charcoal-ridden aboveground, not far from their ship. The shades stared hungrily at them, banging with all their might at the door as it shrunk and grew progressively more opaque.

"Don't leave us here," begged one.

"Anyone who would have wanted to help you is gone," Alexa promised.

She watched as it closed. Pechi, too, stared on from the ground, coughing up soot and removing the seraph horn from her mouth. The wind blew over both of them, a relief from the muggy air down below, but this, too, brought on fresh new waves of pain. The winds began to die down as the planet darkened, the ground going from hot to tepid, then cold to the touch. Rivers of lava blinked out in the distance, and the heat continued to rise upwards, leaving only a husk of the planet, whose sun had once warmed it from the inside. The seraph horn, glowing with a violence unseen by any of the others, lay a ways away, sparking embers off in the ground around it.

The world without a sun was uniquely cold.

"S-s-so that's hope," Pechi said. "And we t-t-took it, of course."

"You don't remember our sun very well, do you, Pechi?" asked Alexa, picking up the seraph horn and placing it neatly on her back, where it spat like a cantankerous Felis.

"Odd question. I th-think my memory is f-f-fine. W-why?" asked Pechi.

"Felt just like that," Alexa said. "Nothing around here, on any of these worlds, has been the same since." She tilted her head. "Back to the ship. We don't have all day."

"W-w-we go home then?" asked Pechi.

"Naturally."

"A-and begin again," Pechi said.

"Two more times."

"D-d-do you think they're d-d-dead?"

"They were dead when they failed. Whether they remain or not is of no importance to me, nor to you. It's all a test, Pechi, and I'm always winning. That's why I'm still around when each of you drops off like flies." The door opened up to greet the pair of them, offering them the comfort of a cool breeze. As Pechi peeled the suit off, she realized that she was burned across her body, fur singed down close to the skin in places where she'd been touched in battle or while traversing easily the most physically dangerous world yet. The Canira who stared back from the gray sheen of the airlock door looked exhausted.

Pechi's heart grew hard. "I haven't l-lost anything y-y-yet."

Alexa placed the seraph horn on the table and moved to her position at the helm.

They ascended into space in silence.