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Wilson’s foot hurt.
It took a while to register, the same way it took a while to register when he was going in circles, the same way it took a while to register that he was humming tonelessly along with the endlessly droning machine tied across his back. He had been following the damn’ thing for hours without any progress today, and the exhaustion dulling his senses was almost euphoric.
It was a good thing for that. His foot really did hurt.
Why did his foot hurt?
Wilson looked down at the scattered chunks of marble in front of him, slowly coming out of his reverie. Oh. Yes. He had kicked…
The statues of the man he almost remembered were vaguely unnerving as-is, but seeing one destroyed settled ice water in his stomach. The clean fissues through marble suggested it had been methodically torn down, too, not incidentally broken by boars or frogmen or walruses.
He winced and rubbed his leg. He didn’t want to think about walruses right now. Definitely didn’t want to think about the possibility of a onetime lover’s head thrown to one corner in effigy. Now that he was back to himself, the low whining of the diving rod was irritating him again, as was the thumping.
Thumping?
Chester was trying to get his attention, bouncing back and forth between him and a…he supposed it was a doorway, he supposed they were in some level of inside, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to approach the noise that was coming from it.
His strategy so far had been to move very quickly away from noises, and it had been a good one, especially in the case of the deer so large as to be frankly impolite to the laws of biology. But if Chester insisted…
He pressed his back to the wall and looked around the corner nervously, slowly. He saw—
Wilson pulled back quickly, heart beating fast, then checked again. There weren’t any other human beings here. He was sure of it. He’d been here too long to have missed the presence of anyone else. It was simply against all odds that he could have possibly missed someone else. Granted, odds were fairly long these days, given the civilized-uncivilized walruses and bones that sprouted endless—bones that sprouted monsters, but really?
And a mime, no less?
He hesitated a long time, considering just leaving. He’d been caught in enough traps already, and followed enough strange shadows into enough dead ends.
On the other hand, if there was someone else here, and he left him, could he look himself in the eye again?
And on the other other hand, wasn’t he just wishing he could ask someone for directions?
He gripped his cane with both hands to steady himself, took a few deep breaths, and stepped into the next room, trying to appear upbeat.
"Hi! Hello, are you real? I’m real! I’d understand if you weren’t, it wouldn’t offend me."
The man stopped pounding his fists on thin air for a moment, regarding Wilson in disbelief, and it occurred to him that maybe it had been too long since he had been in polite company.
"I…I guess you’re real, then. Good. Good! And…you’re trapped. That isn’t good. Uh, can you hear me? I’m Wilson." He pointed to himself, saying the word louder and more slowly to help him understand. "Wiiiilsooooon."
The eye-rolling was strictly unneccessary, he thought. Try to be polite. And it was only safe to assume he wasn’t comprehending, really, with the gestures he was making. He didn’t seem half as interested in Wilson as in something behind him, probably…
"Chester? You want to know about Chester? Oh, I see. She’s harmless, she’s actually quite useful. You see, I named her that because she’s a little chest on legs—"
He saw the man wince and cover his eyes, and there was a split second of remembering that many things other than Chester had a tendency to creep up behind him before the shockwave hit.
Electricity shot through him, drawing him upright and tense, breath not knocked from his body but held motionless in it, muscles locked taut, and the pain was explosive, immense, all-encompassing—
—and then it was abruptly over, and Wilson staggered, heart pounding, trying to breathe again.
That had been…
…kind of enjoyable, really.
He opened his mouth to say so just as the clockwork horse hit him in the back of his head.
The switch from good pain to bad wrenched in his chest, and the blow itself was staggering. Wilson realized he’d bitten his tongue only by the coppery taste in his mouth, the world swimming black and red around him. He was going down, should have gone down, but—
Chester.
The whining was familiar enough to cut through the clanging in his ears, and Wilson swung around drunkenly to find her. She was pressed into a corner by one of the oncoming army of clockwork monstrosities. It kicked her, and as she yelped he saw a different shade of red, felt his pulse accelerate again. He spat blood.
"How dare…"
He shifted his weight heavily, lifted his cane in one hand.
"…you hurt…"
Moving forward was difficult, dizzy, but as he advanced on the bishop he was already swinging.
"…CHESTER?"
The world became a blur after that. Every time one of the chess pieces stopped moving, another took its place, and when his cane broke he picked up a chunk of jagged metal and started fighting with that. There was no pain, no thought, just blind rage at these awful creations, this awful place, at each day spent searching and searching without any relief in sight—
—until he finally realized he was swinging at dead air, that it was over, and oh God did it hurt.
Wilson slumped to his knees, then onto his side, his muscles nothing but burning snarls of raw nerves. Chester was there, and that was all right, but what about the man he’d been talking to? He tried to look around, but the movement shot pain from his head down into his neck. He reached up and touched the wound
Wilson pulled himself upright, his muscles screaming, his hands tingling. Chester was there, but he’d been…what had he been doing? He tried to look around, but the movement shot pain from his head down into his neck. He reached up and touched the wound
Wilson pulled himself upright, his body cold, hands numb. Chester was there. Hurt. Where was everyone? His head hurt. He reached up and touched the wound
Wilson’s head hurt. He reached up and touched the wound
"Goddammit, stop!"
By the time Maxwell grabbed Wilson’s hand, he had already put it to his fractured skull again, and he went limp in his grasp, face blank. Maxwell winced, but it was a slight relief. Better that he didn’t see him like this. He had avoided appearing at each door, and he was paying for it—stretching the rules was stretching him thin, and the pain in his back was bad enough that he couldn’t stand upright. His body was warped, his hands wrong, but watching Wilson fall over and over and over…
He could cheat this once. Just enough to keep him alive.
Maxwell had to extend his fingers painfully to keep his claws away from the wound as he put his hand over it lightly, shadows pouring from his palm. They knitted the splintered bone and sealed his bleeding scalp, but he could only hope to hell the damage beneath that was put to rights.
Wilson stirred a little, and Maxwell tightened his grip, seized by the urge to stay, to explain—
—but the hooks pulled tight, and he could only hold the embrace a moment longer before he was unable to resist the chains.
"Sorry, pal." His words disappeared with him. "You’re on your own."
Wilson thought he heard something as he…was he waking up? His head was killing him. He touched the spot gingerly and winced, stars bursting behind his eyes.
"R-right, don’t do that a-a-a—"
He stopped, almost shook his head, thought better of it. Chester whined and nudged against him.
"I’m okay, Ch—Ch—Ch-ch-ch—"
The word was…stuck, somehow. He could feel it in his head, but it wouldn’t come out. Well…nerves, probably. Nerves, undoubtedly. Why else would his hands be shaking so badly? He could remember the fight, kind of. Not entirely, but that wasn’t uncommon either. He’d feel better once he got some rest.
He surveyed the ruins surrounding him bleakly, the ruins of his cane moreso. He sighed mutely and pushed through the gears before coming up with an iron rod that’d do until he could craft a new one. Again. The metal bit into his hands as he pulled himself up, but it was better than nothing.
There was something important he knew he was forgetting, probably why he came in here in the first place. He hadn’t been chased, he could piece that much together, but there was nothing in here, either. Nothing except…
There was a balloon floating above a bare patch in the center of the room. Wilson approached it cautiously. Something was written on one side, and he leaned close, reaching out to turn it around—
It popped on contact, and Wilson clutched his nose as it began bleeding.
"Fuck. Today."
Satisfied that at least those two words came out all right, he started the long limp back toward camp.
It was about an hour later that the boar army showed up and found a complete lack of scary metal things to fight. As they celebrated their unusual but pre-emptive victory, their newly-appointed leader picked up the remains of the balloon and examined it.
"Hm."