For Eirlys, a lot of the puzzle pieces slotted together when a number sprang out of her hand. She was spinning around in Saheel's desk chair while they waited for Greer to change into her mountain climbing gear.

"Oh. I think this is the count," said Eirlys. "Hmm. It’s going up quickly."

"Give us a look?" Saheel leapt off the waterbed and adjusted his glasses.

She studied him. The man dressed in a black priest's gown, and had somehow mastered the art of never flashing his bits when he moved around in it. Admirable, but the climbing harness she'd put him in was leaving very little to the imagination around the crotch.

"Here." Eirlys waved. "It just jumped up again, even though nothing happened. But when I speak, it goes up with every word I say."

"So it's sort of a word count, but only when we speak." Saheel bent down onto his hands and knees in an apparent gesture of prayer. He'd done this enough for it to start being annoying. "Looks like actions make it go up as well."

"Then we need to be economical," said Eirlys. "Next test. Don't distract me."

She shut her eyes and thought of blackness.

"It's stopped going u— oh, sorry," said Saheel. He clasped his hands together, which seemed to be a nervous tick. The way he kept moving around, even with the best of intentions — it was like sending someone with Parkinsons to disarm a bomb.

She shrugged and shut her eyes again. Despite his behaviour, this was correcting a lot of assumptions. The most difficult thing was accounting for the number jumping up in massive leaps.

"It just went up, even though I didn't say anything," Saheel said. "We were wrong. It's looking more and more like the currency we're working with here is thought."

Eirlys frowned. "Probably correct. But Saheel, you're being redundant. You don't need to say 'more and more'. I can't waste words correcting you."

"Right, sorry." Saheel bowed deeply — why couldn't he have just bowed normally? "Don't look at me so scathingly, sister. The count is only half of the problem. Our main problem is still being interesting."

"Then Greer needs to hurry," she shouted down the corridor. "We'll wait for her as passively as possible."

"You could have just said 'passively'... yeah, yeah, alright, whatever."

They waited, passively. A veteran of many mindfulness apps, Eirlys was easily able to focus on her breathing, but Saheel was not so adept. He was so... loud. Hard to believe he led a congregation of thousands.

He said, "So was the count 4,000 when you got it?"

She nodded.

"So assuming that the first person started at 0, do you think that I'm likely to get it next?"

She nodded, furiously, to try and shut him up.

"I know we talked about this, but do you think it's worth trying to explain—"

"—Can you just go and check on Greer?" she snapped. If he let slip to the audience about their strategy to find and kill the showrunners before the count ran out, then their plan was dead in the water. That 'democratisation of reality' was obviously bait to keep the participants working against their best interests. The only surefire way to have nobody die was a quick and decisive pre-emptive strike.

Greer's footsteps echoed through the marble corridor, speeding up and getting louder until she crashed into the room. She looked chubby crammed into Eirlys' climbing gear, but she was otherwise a rosy and pleasant woman. If in an ideal world Saheel could be persuaded to be economical in his speech, then Greer was a lost cause. Complete and total windbag.

"Guuuuuuuuuys!" Greer bellowed. "Hey, Eirlys, I thought we already nattered on and on about you needing to turn that frown upside down. Come on, let's see you cheering up sometime soon, love! We're off on an adventure!"

Oh god. Appeasement really was the only option with Greer. Now that Team Fear had possession of the wordcount, they couldn't squander it by arguing. Eirlys forced her teeth into the appropriate position.

"That's better," Greer beamed. "You're a comely lass when you smile like that! Who knows, maybe you’ll meet a sweetheart here? Ooooooh, you got the number! Are we live? Helloooo, ladies and gents in the audience, any takers for this lovely single lass?"

Saheel placed a patient hand on her shoulder as he radiated saintliness. "Let's rewind a little bit, sister. Why did you come here screaming and crashing about?"

A gigantic caw rumbled through the tower, shaking Saheel's tomes free of his shelves. They crashed to the ground.

"Oh, that's right!" Greer held up her finger. "Mr. Crowy friend has woken up! We need to get out now, or we're as good as worms!"

Eirlys' eyes widened, and her heart hammered in her chest. She wanted so badly to have the time to berate Greer, to question why she hadn't just said that in the first place — wait, no. She had to stop wasting words thinking about things that didn't matter.

"But how are we going to get to Eirlys' tent if—" began Saheel, before Eirlys shoved her hand down his throat.

"There's no time to think; no time to talk!" she snapped. "From now on, only action!"

She kicked open what was once the door to Saheel's ensuite and had to stop herself crashing forward into the empty drop.

"Ropes there!" She pointed at a support strut in the middle of the bedroom, stepping back to try and observe them working dispassionately. Deep breaths, in and out, in and out. Could she... could she think in bullet points?

— Probably?

— Greer and Saheel secured the ropes on their harnesses around the strut.

— Greer yodelled as she threw herself onto the side of the tower.

— Greer started abseiling down it.

— Deep within the tower, the giga-raven thrashed its way towards them.

— Harnessless, Eirlys jumped onto the wall, easily finding handholds between the slabs.

— Saheel didn't jump.

— Saheel swayed there, sweating.

— He whimpered.