Pry looked at her. Deliberately. “You like, cultivate, procure, and enjoy, as a pastime even, control – do you know that about yourself, Tenns? To the extent it's almost like a... hobby.”

She gave him a look, like, she was satisfied with that/herself, and that this, and her fostering, any control, to whatever extent she did, even as it concerned even tangentially – him, was even righteous. Also – she was neither going to sink to his level by discussing the matter in the same manner – nor discuss the matter – in the manner in which he had raised it. This was – in it too.

“I'll learn this whole religion and then I'll tell you what to do, okay?”

She laughed a bitter and knowledgeable laugh; but offered no response. She didn't have to.

“You've only blown the top off the Ascensor, so what remains will take us the rest of the way down?” This was a question of a more material nature.

“No, the whole shaft is blown.”

“– You're kidding, actually me – regarding this... no?”

“I am not. If they somehow access that thing – I'm not saying it's likely – through miles of impenetrable rock, but this is – even if not exactly in these terms, a supernatural universe, you know. – Which we should always keep in mind. Probably all the time. – If they get access to that shaft they have access to the entire Blind City. Every level. Every plane... All the way down.” There was another earth-shaking explosion; as if to punctuate her discourse – but in truth they'd been happening pretty constantly. She'd organised this to occur.

“What's the political situation? Are you like... the prime minister?”

She said ha but she didn't really answer that question either. “If they hit the Ascensor – they could pour a million demons in that thing. The first unfortunates might smash their skulls to smithereens; but when you care nothing for flesh, and your army is a literal 10 billion demon horde – you can fill a cavern with ten million corpses just to reach the – tunnels – so – that that – thing's going or is in fact.... – Gone.”

There was an explosion.

“So how?” He meant would they get below.

“I said tunnels.”

Through Sack Town Pry watched his people; old ladies and kids, prepare to move everything down. Carrying bedding and supplies out of the nearly toppled over tenements; loading them on various improvised carts, and even higher upon themselves; getting ready for the great trip through the tunnels. Down. What sort of society would they make down there, in the dark – he couldn't even... imagine. They were going down.

Dreaming, half dreaming; barely noting in fact where he was, just reflecting on – dreaming on the future, a future he wouldn't see, a marriage, even, he wouldn't see – he wouldn't even... consummate. Which, right now, and the way his body felt – the way she looked – was the worst... part. Obviously the worst part of it.

They passed through Sack Town and his dreams. He'd been trained to employ the power of them, barely seeing where he was, looking inside himself, really – until they turned up; always like this – or was that Pheel – or was – the fact of his consciousness being broadcast one way, of his only receiving – even current events beneath his consciousness – it influenced him. It had influence on him, made him; changed him in fact, into what he was. That plus. That plus learning how to see – by means of The Old Dark Weird Religion – below.

Passing through his mind; his dreams, and last Sack Town, he barely saw beyond the insides of his own head: a mode of operating in reality he'd perhaps picked up from Pheel – thought I mean, he thought – how much overlap was there really in all this. The shared – mind.

Eventually, they turned up, through the old town, here:

An alley turned and Sack Town vanished behind; maybe through his dreams he thought, but no, he'd been, merely, elsewhere.

“I was dreaming. We passed through Sack Town. And now we're here.”

Tenns pulled a torch off the wall; it was a cage on a stick, a brazier. In that light he thought he could see shapes down there, but again, in his mind.

“Are you already doing something?”

“It's the Blind City.”

“It is?”

“Yes.”

They followed the tunnel down; the flame off her torch ran shadows in undulating waves across the rock walls. Perfectly chiselled, perfectly straight, walls – in a squat trapezoid heading down.

“And this takes me –” making a leap – “through this religion,” he felt himself half-dreaming, as he went down/in; as if in fact he had to dream. For any of this to function. The City was doing this? It's blindness? He felt a humour, a mellow and even pleasurable movement inside him that made him pliable in a fashion he'd never felt, his mood, the spirit inside him, in this moment, increasing as he went down, like nothing and like nothing he had experienced.

It was solely that he was part of the undulating waves of shadows across the walls, that mellifluous movement in the absence of light – it was part of him and also the means by which he himself moved down. Glancing back he couldn't even see any kind of entrance; he couldn't recall how they'd even gotten here, entered this place via Sack Town.

It was just that, Tenns beside him, these tunnels were now the only means down, and would be – but perhaps not for much longer. For they too would have to be blown to smithereens. At least Tenns had indicated that while she'd tapered the remaining hairs off his skull, with that angry mechanism she'd cranked across it.

But if he failed; if he couldn't – he didn't even know what it meant; he didn't know where to begin. With his Eye? Here? Now? Through the tunnels, after the mellifluous movement that filtered him/them... down. He could barely even see her, in fact he couldn't; he was only aware of her; her presence here and that this city –

was the Old Dark Weird religion.

That they'd/he'd never understood what it really was. It was these tunnels; it was the means by which he had to now – the new/old way – it had been – to see reality.

This was something else she was saying now or had already said. Or he was. If he failed.

– A thousand years of stores – stories? No: stores – okay, even factoring in a slowly increasingly population – and then? After that? – If they hadn't figured out how to see reality through these walls. – How to see reality itself; flat, bare, untrammelled – by means of giant – individual – Eyes – the giant eyes in their heads – if they couldn't at that point – then they were a civilisation that deserved to die.

He, deserved, in fact, the subtext, to die – if he couldn't see reality enough – as a way out.