Agents Lane, Herschler, McGee, MacMillian, Morrisson, and Kate Hennisson descended into the ruins of the Iron City. They traveled down an open street paved with metal, sheltered overhead by towers that had fallen and were leaning against the towers on the street's opposite side. Above that were countless tons of dead rock.
At the end of the street they found an entrance that was not blocked by rubble. Inside were the remains of some sort of exhibit. Frescos were carved into the walls of long, curving corridors.
The frescos seemed to tell a story. They began with an image of a tall, robed figure holding a scythe, stretching its skeletal hands over a raging sea. Where it stood, land emerged from the waters, and around its feet towers were being built. Beneath the tower, a sinuous staircase curled down to the bottom of the mural and beyond.
The next image depicted the robed figure gesturing towards a group of smaller figures in a gesture that suggested a blessing or the investing of authority. The smaller figures had robes and scythes of their own. Another part of the picture showed them taking up lanterns and setting off over the sea in tiny one-man boats, like gondolas.
A similar image further down the hallway showed the robed figure blessing/investing seven figures, also in robes, but each wearing a unique mask. Surrounding the feet of each masked figure was a crowd of ghosts, all having apparently died in a similar manner; i.e., the ghosts around one masked figure all wore nooses around their necks, the ghosts around another were emaciated; etc. Some of these "death marks" were somewhat obtuse — one crowd of ghosts all held thorny branches, another were all laughing. And apart from all of these stood one masked figure alone, with no supplicant ghosts at her feet. She wore the mask pictured in the mural around the entrance to the Our Lady of Fate Polio Ward.
At last came an image of the tall, robed figure standing outside the Iron City, preparing to do battle with an enormous beast. The monster's face had been gouged away, but by the shape and pattern of the damage, it seemed like this was not mere vandalism. The gouges in the metal wall were a deliberate part of the image, as though the only way to accurately depict the creature were to depict its absence.
The Agents came to a staircase, and descended to another hallway full of carvings. Where the first frescos were in a simple, almost primitive style of straight lines and iconic shapes, this new set were much more elaborate and baroque.
The first showed the masked figures, now more prominent in size and placement, reigning over the Iron City, an causing grand, ornate towers to be built. Where before the masked figures' robes were plain, now they were densely decorated with glyphs and jewels and badges of office. The curving staircase was no longer depicted beneath the city.
A second panel showed the masked figures banishing the smaller robed figures that had been seen in the earlier series of carvings. The smaller figures were depicted as bent and furtive, scurrying out of the Iron City. Some of them seemed to be changing into something else — something in ragged robes, with jagged scythe blades for hands.
A third panel showed the masked figures meeting with other masked figures from other lands. These others were depicted with exotic motifs — wearing strangely patterned silks or furs, and masks made of carved gemstone or the skulls of animals. Later panels showed huge metal barges crossing the seas to these lands, their holds filled with goods... as well as many lines of ghosts chained and shackled together.
The end of the hallway was collapsed, but the Agents were able to make their way through a crack in the masonry into some sort of ventilation duct, which eventually led to the inside of a huge furnace. Emerging from the furnace, they found themselves in an ancient foundry, dust covering the tools and molds and furnaces. In one corner, under a rotting tarp, they heard the sound of whispers and moans; removing the tarp, they discovered a pile of "pig-iron" — black metal that had been hammered into bars, but not yet forged into a specific shape for use. The whispering was from the fragments of souls that had been worked into the metal.
At the other end of the foundry they found a strange passageway of perfectly smooth, perfectly black stone, intersecting the wall at an angle slightly off from square. Entering it, they found themselves in a series of similar, branching corridors that changed configuration from one moment to the next: each time the Agents turned around, a dead-end would become a crossroads, a crossroads would become a spiral stair, a corner would become an open vertical shaft. In places the black labyrinth would intersect with the original rooms and hallways of the Iron City, but always at strange angles, interrupting or cutting off features of the more conventional architecture without regard for pattern or plan. As though the black hallways were invading or eating into the structure.
At last they entered a cathedral built upside-down, with pews and altar attached to the "ceiling" and the "floor" dropping away to tapering vaults far below. At the nadir of the lowest vault was another opening into the black hallways. That hallway led to a massive iron door. And in the presence of that door, the key held by Agent McGee began to warm in his hands.
The door itself was unlocked. A tall, muscular man with dark skin was chained to a pillar of black stone. The chain was fastened by a heavy padlock, which the key fit. When the chain fell away, the man dropped to his hands and knees.
The man claimed to have been waiting for the Agents to arrive. He told them that he was the "First Wraith," the first human ever to have been murdered in a pure act of spite. This act had itself created the Underworld — before, there had been no barrier between the worlds of life and death, and spirits moved easily through each in the course of a great cycle. But after the first murder, a "wound" appeared in existence, and at the foundation of this wound was Grandmother, the Maw of Oblivion, whose only purpose was to destroy everything. The First Wraith carried this Wound within him and was himself the embodiment of it — as he put it, he was "the reason this realm exists, and the reason why it is being devoured from within."
Therefore, the only way to stop Grandmother was to throw the First Wraith into the Maw. This would turn the paradox of Grandmother's nihilism on herself, force her to annihilate the very thing that had created her insatiable hunger. According to the First Wraith, this would set everything right.
According to the First Wraith, Grandmother dwelt in the Well of Souls, at the bottom of the Veinous Stair. The Agents wasted no time with further questions. They set off through the labyrinth to find it.
They came to an immense coliseum, with rows of black pillars encircling the open arena floor. The First Wraith warned them to be careful: the stone of the pillars crumbled away like dry soil at the merest touch, revealing hibernating monsters beneath. As they began to cross the open space, they heard a rumbling and a terrible baying, as of dozens of maddened hounds, coming from ahead.
"They have found us," said the First Wraith. "You must protect me. If I am destroyed before I can enter the Maw..."
Out of the darkness in front of them rolled a mountainous sphere composed of baying dog's heads, each the size of a house, hairless and diseased and snarling and snapping in their madness. It crashed through the outer ring of pillars, breaking them to powder and freeing dozens of giant, translucent-skinned, fetal spiders, many of which were crushed wetly beneath the dog-sphere as it continued to roll forward.
Morrison immediately grabbed the First Wraith, morphosed wings, and flew upwards, hoping to go over the creature. The rest of the Agents fanned out to flank it. Herschler ignited a patch of hellfire in its path, but the creature rolled through the flames unhindered. Morrisson unleashed his most powerful scream — the Requiem — on the beast from above, flaying the rotted flesh from one of its heads. The other heads screamed, and the sound of that scream rent the stone floor of the coliseum. Cracks radiated outwards, and suddenly the ground collapsed. The monster, along with all Agents still standing on the ground, fell down into blackness.
As the dog-sphere fell, its uppermost mouth opened wide, and a massive harpoon trailing a thick, black chain shot out of its throat. The harpoon struck Morrisson in the back, traveling up through his torso to emerge from his chest just below the clavicle. Morrisson struggled to stay aloft... but the chain snapped taut, and he and the First Wraith were dragged down with the rest.
Meanwhile, in the vast darkness below, the Agents continued falling. Far beneath them, a slender thread of silver drew quickly closer — it was a vast trestle bridge, spanning two invisibly distant points in the darkness. MacMillian morphosed wings to slow her descent, while Watts and McGee flickered to those in free-fall and transported them to the bridge, where they landed roughly but safely. Huge chunks of masonry rained down, clanging off the metal struts and causing the bridge to vibrate like an immense harp string. Spiders fell past, some of them hitting the bridge and bursting.
Watts flickered to Morrisson and the First Wraith, then flickered them all away again, freeing Morrisson from the harpoon. Morrisson, deranged from the pain and dying from the damage the harpoon had caused him, manifested his spite-fangs and bit into the First Wraith's neck, draining his vitality. The First Wraith roared and tore himself free from Morrisson's grip. MacMillian swooped to catch him, and Watts wrestled with Morrisson as they plummeted.
And then the dog-sphere slammed into the center of the bridge, ripping it free from its moorings and sending the entire structure into the abyss, twisting and crumpling as it fell.
The Agents fell again. They could see a floor, now — a jumble of massive gears and broken clockwork, frozen in time but still groaning with the strain of some long-corroded mainspring. Watts grabbed Lane and Hennisson, and flickered them down to where they landed between the teeth of a cog as big around as a baseball diamond. Herschler, who had no way to slow his descent, inhabited a hammer he had taken from the foundry earlier, hoping that it, at least, would survive the impact.
MacMillian caught the First Wraith, and was just starting to fly back up with him, when one of the truck-sized spiders slammed into her, sending her spinning back down. Watts flickered over to help, but could not dislodge the creature. Then Brett Morrisson twisted in mid-air, saw what was happening, and whispered, "I'm so sorry, Emma."
He released the Requiem, using up the last of his vitality.
The spider exploded in a spray of tissue and smoky plasm, freeing MacMillian and the First Wraith. And beneath Morrisson, an opening appeared, an extension of negative space that seemed to reach out and drag him into itself, and he vanished.
The dog-sphere struck the field of giant clockwork, broke through, and plunged down yet a third time. Gears rained down, others shivered, lurched, and began to turn once more after aeons of stillness. McGee, Hennisson, and Lane found themselves being carried towards the crushing teeth of another gear that meshed with their own. Cursing, Hennisson grabbed her two fellow agents and pulled them all down for one more fall.
At the bottom was a featureless black plain. Watts flickered down to safety. Herschler's hammer struck the ground and bounced but did not shatter. Hennisson slowed her, Lane's, and McGee's descent with a herculean outpouring of Pandemonium, then collapsed to the ground from a height of only three feet. And MacMillian glided down to a rough but safe landing, holding the First Wraith in her arms.
The First Wraith stood up, breathless. He said, "I think that's—"
And then a girder torn loose from the trestle bridge slammed down onto the First Wraith, impaling and crushing him instantly.
And now the surviving Agents stood around the corpus of the First Wraith, watching him slowly leak away into nothingness. He waved them off when they tried to transfer to him their own vitality.
"Do not waste it,' he gasped. "I am already gone.
"There is still... one chance," he told them. "It is given to me... the power to... invest... the wound... within another. One of you..."
Everyone knew instantly what he meant, and what the choice entalied. Emma reached her hand out...
...but Holland was quicker. For just a moment, it seemed to him that it was the real Holland Lane that lay before him, still a child, still with the red identity bracelet around his skinny wrist. And then their hands clasped.
There was a moment of stillness, and the transfer was done. The First Wraith dissolved into smoke. Holland Lane now possessed the Wound.
Nearby, as though waiting for them all this time, was an archway of stone, and through it ran a staircase made of some dark rock streaked with pale veins. It wound down into the depths.
The Agents began their descent.