She let herself sink deep into Minato’s mind.When her feet finally touched down, it was at the top of a staircase.Flight after flight of ancient stairs lay before her.With only the briefest glance over her shoulder, she began to descend.Time passed, and Bastion couldn’t tell any more than Ulla how long the steps continued, each heavier and darker than the last.Some distant part of herself knew this place, understood this magic was an echo of a future certainty.It was a maddening juxtaposition of terror and comfort.
Eventually, the smell of fresh water filled her nose, and with it, relief.
At the bottom, Ulla stepped into a shallow pool.It spread before her, contained by slanted walls carved with a labyrinth of twisting staircases that rose like steam.She and Bastion looked up, shivering beneath a watchful sky.Their minds rejected what their souls recognized.
Every road led here.
But this wasn’t the end for them.They were merely voyeurs in someone else's dream.
The current tugged at Ulla’s ankles.She dragged her eyes back to the bottom of this well of absolution.Across the water, a group of people stood before the mouth of a cave, their backs all turned, save one.
Bastion.
A deep knowing filled her as she met his eyes.What had barely broken through the surface in the waking world was fully formed and concrete here, the roots deep and inevitable.
He felt it, too.The draw, the pull, the bond resonating between them.A breath of fear lurked in his eyes, but he wanted her more than it scared him.Certainty filled her, like the scent of rain before a storm.
She ran to him.
Feverish hope carried Bastion forwards.In the center of the well, he swept her into his arms and buried his face in her neck, filled with the exultant relief of cominghome.
Their hearts pounded against each other, desperate to kiss through the bars of their ribs.For one brief moment, nothing else mattered.
Then a voice spoke in Bastion’s ear, as cold and final as a crypt.
Wake up.
Ulla fell into the pool as Bastion turned to smoke in her arms.Gone.She shot to her feet, teeth bared.
And stopped.
Before her, impossibly tall and wreathed in an amorphous black cloak, stood a god.
Ulla lifted her hands, one palm up and the other down, then inverted them.A certain amount of petulance accompanied the gesture.
He smiled, but no amount of gentleness could make it less skeletal.When he answered, his lips didn’t move.Yes.But it is not yet your time.This is only sleep, come with magic stolen from my direct line.
Ulla’s brow crinkled.
Wake them before it’s too late.
He stepped back and gestured with a spidery hand towards the cave.Ulla’s eyes caught on the manacle hanging from his wrist before it was swallowed in the folds of his cloak.
She lifted her hands, signing a question.
I cannot say.What they want is not yours to discover.
His ambiguity annoyed her.She scanned the crowd until she saw Minato at last.
Ulla took one step forwards and stopped.
The god raised his brows as she looked up at him.
With her thumb folded against her palm, she touched the hand to one shoulder and then the other, her expression curious.
Awake.Waiting for you.He pointed at her chest.Ulla looked down.A shimmering cord tugged at her heart and disappeared upward like a shard of moonlight.She suddenly knew, with absurd certainty, exactly where Bastion was within Moonwatch.
Ulla marched past the god, one final word nipping at her heels.
