The mine shafts she walked through were so much larger than what came before. When had the light disappeared? The crystals still loomed, bright as ever, but their glow could not stave off an increasingly hazardous darkness. Pitfalls opened beneath her without warning, and jagged crystals protruded from these openings, daring her to fall through. Orange lights flickered in the air.

Her head prickled. She changed into something small to light the way, her gears reformed into the shape of a lava bubble. Her fire glowed orange, embers crackled off her magma body. But the darkness did not respond. She could wink out like a candle here and no one would know.

The ground rippled up and down, a sinusoid swell. Orange lights whirled in parallax, above and beyond her vision. The ceiling now was so far beyond her reach. Stalagmites and stalactites of majestic size grew grotesque and contorted to meet each other, violating every rule of cave formation she knew.

"This is stupid," she said. "This is stupid. Where am I going? This is stupid."

No one answered.

Her sensors were going haywire. She tripped sideways onto the wall. A panoply of crystals twinkled silently at her. Their exteriors were pink, but their interiors were vivid orange. Why was it this dark? The ambient light of the crystals was more than enough to illuminate these massive rooms. But as she progressed each cavern was more massive than the previous. The crystals could not illuminate such an enormous blank expanse. There was a paucity of light here, the darkness hungered for her. It was not ordinary darkness. It was borne of a void between worlds. She'd been privy to the speeches where he revealed what would happen. The void would swallow everything so they could create a better world in its place...

No more caverns. She crossed a bridge now, a thin pathway in utter darkness, supported by phantasmal spires of crystal. The little light remaining was alloted to orange motes, spiraling, glowing and winking in and out of existence around her.

The depths beneath stretched fathomless, mirrored only by the blind expanse above. She could see no beginning or end. How long had she been walking? Surrounding her was something no light could pierce. Smoke wavered, tendrils of darkness invaded her treacherous space. Darkness swallowed her.

"Mimi?"

And as if things couldn't get worse, she was now hearing Dimentio's voice. On top of everything else.

"Mimi, what are you doing?"

She clung to the bare minimum of wits she had left and summoned a circle of rubees to fly out around her, scouting the darkness for an invisible presence, but they found nothing. "Where are you? Why are you here?"

"I could ask you the same question. You look like a wonderful lunatic. Don't move."

"Is that actually you?" Gosh, this was a level of mindscrewery above anything she'd done to someone else. Still, Dimentio's voice managed to center her. Where was she actually? How had she gotten to some bizarro bridge suspended in the darkness, with nothing but a weird orange light to guide her? That kind of thing was never a good sign.

Despite herself, she listened to the voice and didn't move. Her rubees fluttered around her. "Sooo, Dimentio? If you're really real, you'd know what you did after I borrowed your hat."

"Don't you mean stealing my hat and cloak to wear to some interdimensional party or other? And then hiding them in the spice drawer, of all places?"

"Okay fine, it was to sneak into Princess Star's twenty-sixth annual costume party and steal her—can you answer the question?"

That drawn-out sigh was very him. "It's one of my fondest memories, you know. I should sneak those Squigs into your bed some other time. I have your screams recorded so I can I listen to them while I eat. It's very satisfying."

"Gee, you're such an awful person. Is that actually true?"

"Why would I ever lie to you?"

She resisted the impulse to cover her face with her hands. She didn't have time for this. "Fine, I'll believe you. But where are you? What am I supposed to do now? What're you seeing?"

"I'm in some kind of... dream dimension. Possibly." Did he actually sound uncertain for once? "Wherever you are, I've managed to sneak myself in. After no small amount of effort, I might add. It seems there's a certain someone overseeing this realm, and whoever they are, they're not friendly to intruders. So I've adopted camouflage! I'm not sure what would happen if I was discovered! But I know what I'm doing. Most certainly. You should have the utmost confidence in me."

"That's not super reassuring."

"Also, when I last checked, you—" A burst of static interrupted him. The air wavered. A heat wave passed through her, jarring her innermost machinery.

"What were you saying? And can you hurry up? Something's gonna happen and it's probably not good."

"Right, right! As I said, you were about to sleepwalk off a cliff."

"I what?"

"Exactly! I hope you can tell why that would be a problem. But I know what to do, so why don't you hold still for a moment. Or two. Or three—"

The orange lights swirled frenetically. They grew rapidly more agitated. The light swelled.

Mimi said, "Wait—"

The world burst at the seams.

She thought she heard her name, but she wasn't sure. The bridge dissolved. Her own body dissolved. Air bubbled into acid, orange pustules sprouted between her fingers. Light dripped down and pooled at her feet and to escape she folded herself into something small. A buzzing Copta, a dragonfly. One of those winged things fluttering here and thereabouts in an endless marmalade sky.

Shafts of orange light pierced her, or tried to, but she dodged at the last second. She wove through the orange void, evading bright missiles. A screaming ball of fire burned above her. She looked again and it became a , beaming light from its innumerable wings. She looked again and it became a pyre, a pillar of light, a many-limbed something writhing at the center of her dream.

"Dimentio?"

The world tilted on its axis. She floated free amid a glut of gluttonous palaces, infinity pools spilling bright water into the darkness of a void, suspended beneath stars that cast luminous orange light into the water. Hunky lifeguards. Palaces greater than any she had been to, riches beyond imagining, a tower full of treasures plundered from the various worlds and worlds beyond worlds. It could all be hers. If she only accepted the—

Wait a minute, she said. No. Stop. She tried to wake herself up, searching in her memory files for dreams, but corrupt processes streamed past her and she gave up. If she broke her inner workings she might never come back from this. The dream stayed, she was held aloft in a globule of orange light, all the bounties of the world were spread before her. But in return she would forget her mission. She'd seen offers like this, even offered some on her end to people who owed her things. Short-term loans. This was an economics game. She understood economics. Economics was easy, more money good, less money bad.

This was a deal you couldn't regret, because by the time you got the chance you'd be dead.

I'm not taking your stupid offer, she told nothing in particular.

Her dream rattled. The walls of reality bled, she plunged into all-consuming darkness. She raced along the dark bridge, chasing a light that never drew closer. The bridge collapsed. She fell impaled on a spike of crystal. Her gears rattled out of her chassis, bouncing further into the void. Spider legs scrabbled at her.

Her head corkscrewed off her body. She had no body. She was a head floating in the infinite void. Colors traced rectangular paths up and down the nothingness. The darkness ate at her innards. Bits of her were gnawed away, piece by piece, her wiring decaying to a state of higher entropy. Her gears free-floated in the void. She wondered what it would be like when the void plucked you apart.

She was shutting down. She wasn't shutting down, because this wasn't real. If she believed that, she was perfectly fine with the situation. Everything ended at some point, especially nightmares.

But what if this was a special nightmare? Different worlds had different rules. If you could actually be hurt while in a dream—

Orange light gurgled, bleeding from the fabric of reality. Her head was splitting with colors. A scream crossed her consciousness. She fell through a never-ending hole, trailing wires from her exposed inner workings. She—

"Mimi."

She focused again on the voice. The world flashed before her too rapidly to process. Her sensors registered impossible combinations of numbers. But the voice remained constant.

"Mimi, would you ever doubt the Count?"

"No? Who are you again? Why are you asking me this?"

"You'd stand by his side no matter what?"

Why are you asking me this? But she was being fed through a tube, the sun slurped away at her insides. Her mind was the size of a pinhole. Couldn't focus. "He—he matters to me. He's the first person who really mattered to me. I'll defend him with my life. I'll follow him always."

"Even if he betrayed the mission? If he would destroy everything and never create a better world?"

Her head was splitting. "He was the only person to—yeah, probably? I dunno, why are you asking me this?"

A door opened. A glass box surrounded her. She touched the sides. It wasn't glass. Cuboid dimensional opening.

"Dimentio?"

He appeared in the darkness once again. The orange light crept around her. Visions of radiance suffused her mind. Her world reeled and plunged into vaporous orange clouds, her thoughts vaporized into clouds that encircled a radiant beacon.

He was wearing the same thing he always did. That stupid outfit. That stupid smiling mask.

"Is it really you this time?" The headache subsided barely enough for her think. "Why are you here?"

He produced what might have been a sigh. "I have what I wanted now. We should go."

"Then where...?"

Her head reeled with images, squares asserted themselves onto the landscape previously swirling with dreamcatchers. The landscape glitched, colors melted out and distorted, she saw double. In seconds it was restored. The spaces between the pixels were apparent now. She could see a way out of here.

He dusted off his cloak with a flourish. "And there is our way out. Ladies first."

"That was quick," Mimi said. "What were you doing all this time? I was caught in a—" A wave of vertigo crushed her, she persevered. "Some kind of loop. I heard a voice—"

"We should really be heading out soon. This passage won't last forever."

"Was it your voice?"

"And whatever was targeting you is still lurking here. You can ask your questions once you get to the other side. I hope, considering the circumstances, you would see why that's a good idea..."

"I—" The world oozed around them. She blinked and saw double, triple, infinite copies of her dream, then reality reasserted itself. But the shock remained. "Fine."

She became a bird, a fly, a sheet of paper, a whisper in the wind.

"Let's ditch this joint."

They flipped through the crack between worlds.


Mimi had the worst headache when she woke up. She wasn't even sure how that was possible, considering she was an inorganic lifeform and robots didn't get headaches. Migraines. Anything. But as the events of the past few days had taught her, there was some gosh darned weird stuff going on here. The last thing she remembered was standing in front of an enormous pile of crystals and feeling uncharacteristically enthusiastic about them. After that, nothing. She searched her memory. A lot of corrupt data. Great.

She was lying on the cold hard ground of the mines. She allowed herself to keep lying on the cold hard ground while her headache died and she felt slightly better. The crystals, alluring as ever and mercilessly sharp, towered above. She regarded them with suspicion. Whatever'd happened, she felt like they were responsible.

"Ah, you're finally awake."

She waved half-heartedly at a very ragged Dimentio floating above her. His hat was askew, his cloak scorched, and even the curly bits on his weird clown shoes looked a little burned. A little part of her basked in the glory of sweet revenge as she realized she finally had payback for every time he stayed invisible and let her take all the damage. Another part of her was slightly worried about him.

Slightly.

"What happened to us?" she asked.

He waved a gloved hand. "Well, I'll be honest... I don't entirely remember! It seems these crystals have been more potent than I expected. In particular, they have a strong effect on dreams. Which may explain everything."

She pressed her head to the ground a bit more and appreciated the cool touch of the stone on her internal processors. "Can you be more specific?"

"We may have had some unfortunate experience involving a dream or two. I really can't be more specific than that, when I'm not even sure what got you into that state. But look over there."

She did, and had to suppress a full-body robotic shiver.

Beneath the overhang, a horde of bright-eyed miners gathered. Their poses were identical. Each held a pickaxe in one raised hand and stared directly at her. The eyes watched silently, a promise, an impending threat, in the darkness.

Viewed from above they merged into one amorphous mass. A sea of flickering orange lights, which made her far more uncomfortable than it should. What was it about orange...?

"They were waiting for us," she said. "For me. But why?"

Dimentio, floating in the air, observed the miners from afar. "It was nothing good. We should leave soon."

"Ditching the crystals?"

"They're still in my little pocket space... I believe their powers are channeled through a certain presence centered in this particular dimension, so the further we get, the less deleterious their effect. In short, the sooner we leave, the better! I'm sure someone will be interested in purchasing them." He flipped around, examining the cavern, the spires of pink and dark stone. "Again, we really should leave. Too many people in the audience, and they're not friendly to the show."

"But what happened? I—you were asking me some weird questions. I'm pretty sure about that part."

"And again, I can't be certain! We'll leave now?"

She wouldn't get anything out of him, would she?

"Sure."

The moment she said it, a horrid groan emanated from the crowd. The miners, in perfect synchronicity, lowered their pickaxes. They dispersed and shuffled, stiff-limbed, back into the darkness, leaving no hint they were ever there.

They were left alone. Two people in a vast and lonely cavern, with the endless pink crystals jutting out beneath them in some unholy natural spike field. Death if you weren't paying close attention. The crystals looming high above them, clear and lucid as always, with that maddening light shining in their interior. A hum that resonated with her bones. They wanted her, and she wanted them.

Gee that was creepy.

She looked to Dimentio for a reaction, and he looked back. But said nothing.

She had so many questions, but he wasn't a person who gave clear and lucid answers. More like the opposite. If he didn't want to explain something, he wouldn't. But she'd spent a gosh-awful time in this place already, and some questions didn't need answers. All she really cared about was getting out of here.

"Let's go sooner rather than later," she said.

"For once, I concur."

He snapped his fingers, and the world of Spider Hell vanished for once and all.