I bound down from the mountain, the black walls of Kiamo Ko stark against the morning sky. The path is littered with rock and debris, years of neglect. Its bricks, once yellow, golden in the sunlight, are crusted with dirt and mottled green with moss. Dew glistens on the tips of rotting thistles jutting obstinately out of crevices. The way is clear, but the path leads only to darkness. Everything here is dead. Long dead.

The Dog and Pony Inn was exactly what I expected from a crumbling outpost halfway between nowhere and zombie-infested farmland: busted shutters, peeling signs, and the faint smell of vinegar and mold. It still had a roof. Plumbing of a kind. And rooms with doors I could barricade. What it also had were bodies. 

Sighing, I slid out of the bed, made my way to the bathroom, showered and dressed. We both kept some basic things at the hideaway. It was our place, the hidden house of debauchery that pleased us both. But it was time to get back to reality. I had a business to run, and she had a kingdom to rule.

The seconds ticked off in Ordinal’s head as he zigzagged through the maze of uptown Shiz alleys just outside the university grounds. Even if a tik tok were to appear out of nowhere, he knew, he would blaze by it so quickly the thing wouldn’t have a second to react. It could still call for more tik toks though, and that would be a problem for a resident outside in the streets after midnight. He couldn’t outrun a coordinated police effort, but he wasn’t going to find himself a subject of a public flogging, no matter what.

The tower creaked and moaned with every breath of the wind, but it hadn’t fallen yet. Neither had we. A small mercy. In fact, we’d got on somehow, this girl and I. It was almost like spending a quiet moment with Dorothy. Almost. Only a Dorothy with a tactician’s mind, always on alert, suspicion in her eyes as Turlo came and went, and I sifted through old memories laid waste at my feet.

Let nothing stand in your way.  Bring your Nimma the Ruby Slippers.  Bring back your lover.  Let no one stand in your way. Do what you do, Nick. Chop.

She reached out her fingers, careful not to move too much and wake the sleeping beast, and felt the soft down of her lover. Just at his waist she could feel it give way to naked skin, warm and alive like a real man, but vibrating ever so slightly, so satisfied, a rich, easy purr that made the mattress gently tremble, a soothing melody that filled the dark room.

e stared off into nowhere a long time, then he blinked and his eyes shifted to pieces of coal, then eyes again, the color fading until there was nothing but a ruddy texture to his face. “I’ll help you,” he said. “I’ll guide you. The land is dangerous, but I still know its bones.”

“And when we get to the slippers?” I asked.

Another smile. More subtle this time. “We return Oz to what it once was. Your grandmother loved it.”

I bent down to pick up one of her silky, satin robes from the floor intending to hang it back up. I couldn’t help but bring it up to my nose to smell her. Man… her scent so good. She never would tell me what perfume she wore, although I suspect it was one of her own concoctions. I always thought it funny how the smell of a woman could incite so much arousal in a man. I felt my pants tightening.

If you’ve never been chased through a decaying city by the animated corpses of your former subjects, I wouldn’t recommend it. Especially not when they’re moving faster than dead people have any right to, and especially not when a sentient fog is herding them toward you like some kind of morbid sheepdog. But maybe, just maybe, this was my comeuppance. My due. The Unseen God, after all the years of soaking my head, playing its final card and giving me what I’d so deserved on that fateful day.

“I’ve waited so long,” she says, laying beneath me. Her hips rise to meet me, her legs encircling mine. I feel heat. I feel hunger. My hands, my hands—fingers once forged in fire—dig into the flesh of her thighs and come away damp, sticky, red.

But still I do not stop.

Because this is what I wanted. Because I cannot stop.

Central Munchkinland remains in a heightened state of alert as the mysterious purple fog this station reported two days ago enveloped the villages of Bright Lettins and Old Pastoria. Reporting is spotty still, and there is no direct connection with either town, but reports are coming in that Old Pastoria is in flames and Bright Lettins is a ghost town.