As the deep dark before dawn settled over the iron forest like a veil, a single star lighted on the burning city and its residents. Somewhere beyond the gaze of mortal minds, across abysses of wonder and chance, it rose, fell, and turned to dust – scattering itself like rust into the depths of the cosmos. But in its death throes it left its radiance to guide those who traversed the darkness of the earth, bound insatiably towards their own brand of light.

Unaware of the star above, Rain-Born trudged on towards the great tower of the Iron Forest, beating the soles of her feet against each remnant of life beneath her. She still cradled Jespar in her arms.

"Chief..." he said, and his voice was a mere echo of himself now. "I can't..."

"A little further," she groaned as she waded through more cadavers, spilling their rotted entrails into the small flesh between her toes as she kicked her way through them. "A little further."

She repeated that statement like a spell, even though she was no shaman. She had no command over the winds of the Deadlands or the right to give such commands. The thought was selfish, born entirely from her childish fears. These fears were new, and even as they resolved in her mind and she became increasingly aware that it was hopeless, still she trudged on, until she looked up and saw the entrance to the tower had appeared in front of her.

Unlike its exterior perimeter it was pristine and pure – unmarked by blemish or blood-spattered flesh. Its pearl-white entrance welcomed her with a revolving-door mouth which she passed through with only confusion. She let that same emotion wash over her like the washed out, uniform walls of the building's foyer – no paintings adorned the surfaces, no items of Old World design that she had seen within the other layered stories of their existence lined the hallway. There was nothing but the pallid white walls of this place that stretched towards a small desk at the end of this passageway. Above the desk hanged a simple analog clock, and below this item, sitting at the desk jotting down notes with inhuman patience and focus, was a man.

Her steps echoed on the cold floor of the interior, and she left bloody footprints with each new inch forward. Her vision was narrowed to nothing but that desk, and the odd, bespectacled human that sat there engaged in some menial task.

When she reached the desk, she realized he was unnaturally tall for a human being. Even Father-Mother in their prime never rose to this one's height. His long velvet suit was pristine and totally without blemish – and in fact, his aged skin similarly showed no wrinkles. His scent was one of strawberry, or was it lemon? Either way, it was something Rain-Born could not quite place. It was as though he was a being out-of-time and space itself – ripped from the void of nothingness and spewed into a time he did not belong in. He did not "fit" into the Deadlands at all. In that way, she realized, he was the same as Jespar.

His thin, graying hair was matched by an equally out-of-place handlebar mustache that twitched as she approached him, and she opened her mouth to utter words she didn't even recognize were hers.

"Ca – ca –"

He looked up, seemingly unhappy to be disturbed. He shuffled what appeared to be some papers in his hands and paid her no heed.

Her eyes went wild. "Callisto!"

He looked up, once, as though inspecting her with new eyes. He adjusted his monocle and returned to his work.

"Do you have an appointment?" he asked.

She simply looked at him, her breathing growing more and more raspy as she felt Jespar's own breathing still. She banged into the desk unconsciously, looking up at him in desperation.

He sneered. "A small jest, you understand", he said. "I saw your progress from within the viewing chamber above, of course. Quite exemplary. But that is to be expected of you. There have been many such displays recently. It all becomes rather dreary, you know."

She said nothing. She stood, mouth agape, wishing Jespar would speak. She looked down and tried to pry his eyes open. They'd been closed for too long.

"Yes," the tall entity behind the desk continued. "I see you've brought a Child with you. Most ingenious. You will find your path to be much more agreeable from this moment on. You need not look so alarmed - I am sworn to a vow of truth. To the victor go the spoils, and all that. You may leave the Child here – I would rather he not bleed all over the carpets inside."

Her eyes flew to him in horror. "My friend," she breathed. "Help."

At this, the tall one uttered a disapproving tut and threw up his hands. "My dear girl, I do apologize, but I am also sworn to a vow of non-interference. Purely the orders of my master, you understand. I –"

"Save him," she said again, offering Jespar's lacerated body to him.

"My dear, I must –"

"Save him!" She bellowed.

"Chief," Jespar whispered. Her eyes flew to him instinctively, for his had once again opened. His matted fur, coated with scarlet, was starting to feel even colder than it had before.

She reached down to see that his shaking paw was touching her arm. And the gesture caught her like a blow to the skull – for it made her realize that it was she who was shaking the most in this moment.

"Stop...making such a racket," he said. "You'll ruin...your karaoke...voice."

She sank down to the ground with him.

"What the hell is karaoke?" she asked him through tears, and a tiny smile to match his own.

Above them, the tall being sighed.

"Ah, goodness, I see," was all he said. "If it is any consolation, my dear, nothing I could do now could help this one. In fact, I am surprised he has not expired yet. The wound he suffers from surely would have felled a mere mortal almost instantly. But then, the Children of the master do work in mysterious ways."

She jerked her reddened, weary eyes up to him again. "Aren't you Callisto?"

He gave a grunt of surprise. "Of course not. I'm nothing more than a lowly guardian, here to welcome the champion to their prize."

He gestured towards one wall which opened to reveal a brightly lit elevator. A luxurious red carpet sprawled out from its opening as though inviting them to enter its metal mouth.

"I would recommend leaving this one here," the guardian said.

She shook her head, rising with her dog still in her arms.

"He is my friend," she said with ferocity. "I will take him to Callisto."

"Rain-Born," Jespar said, trying feebly to grip her tighter with his paw. "Just – just –"

"I told you," she snapped, sucking in her grief, denying its iron grip that she could feel on her heart. "I will not leave you. You wanted to see Callisto. You will see Callisto."

She ignored his twitching eyes as she nodded to the guardian and he stepped passed them both with a heavy sigh, leading them to the elevator and shutting its metal cage with a prompt flick of his elongated arm.

"If my opinion matters at all," he said. "You should heed the Child's desire. It is far better sometimes not to meet one's creator."

Rain-Born leaned against the wall, keeping Jespar's head propped up, and applying pressure on his dribbling puncture wound.

"He doesn't just want to meet him," Rain-Born said. "He wants to destroy him."

The guardian raised his eyebrows, then simply let out another long sigh as he flicked the switch of the elevator's activation button.

"Him?" He asked as the machine thundered into life. "My dear girl, you really don't know what you've stumbled into, do you?"

She looked at him with only hate, mixed with the burning desire to tear his throat open and crush his condescending voice box. But then she looked back down at Jespar, who had begun kicking in her arms, and her fury instantly abated.

"My, my," the guardian murmured as he observed the pair locked in their shared comatose. "How very interesting indeed."

Rain-Born ignored his quip as the elevator began its ascension, gliding through the building's glistening pearl-white throat.

"Jespar," she said as she stroked his mangy coat. "Not long now."

"For Chrissakes, Chief," he murmured out of the corner of his drooling mouth. "How long...you gonna...keep me...waitin'?"

"Just – just a little," she said, staring into his black eyes as though she could transfix him enough to keep them open. "Callisto can help you."

"No," he groaned feebly. "Chi – Rain-Born, promise me something."

Now she looked away, feeling her heart leaping into her throat.

"Rain-Born..."

"I'm here, Jespar," she croaked. "I'm here."

But his body felt heavy in her arms. His paws began to fall away from her, and she felt his hair come away in her hands as though he were nothing more than a wicker doll threaded with thistle.

"Promise me," he said again.

She gulped down her grief and nodded, barely squeaking out her reply.

"Ok."

She felt him grip her again, with, she knew in her heart, the final ounce of energy he had left in his tiny bones. He knew what he would tell her – and she would do it. She would carry out his final wish. She would take Callisto in her hands, and she would dash it against this evil world it had created. It was her right to do so. It was a right she had won through blood and anguish. She could do it. She could fulfill his –

"Go back," he said, and in her ferocity of his voice she knew there was something in those words that were drawn from deep inside him. Something primal, almost primitive – the simplest of all emotions that somehow made the most sense, in the end.

"Go back...to your tribe...your family. Love them...don't...hate them. You belong with them. Go back...and live."

She felt his head loll to the side, and her ragged breath caught in her throat. She was beginning to feel the weight of her own wounds bare down on her. But she would not leave his side. She knew he would have done the same for her.

"Promise me," he whispered.

She hugged him tightly to her, hiding her anguish in his soft neck.

"I promise" she said. "And I will take you with me."

She heard him snicker at that, in his usual way.

"Must...be good..." he said sleepily. "Must be good...to...belong."

The elevator shuddered up the tower with no alternative, and suddenly the blank back wall of the chamber seemed to disappear entirely – giving Rain-Born, Jespar, and the guardian a view of the Iron Forest from on high.

The towering smoke plumes of the city were reflected through the glass casing that Rain-Born had not even realized the wall was composed of. In the ruins of the city she saw a vision of decimation – of the Old one's creations reduced to rubble and dust by machines of their own making. And yet, presently the sun of a new day was beginning to climb above the horizon in the distance, and the light of the desert swept over the Forest's great trees, sending their shadows across the burned ground beneath them.

Rain-Born could feel the wind on her face. She did not know how – and yet she knew that her friend she still held so tightly in her arms felt it playing across his face too. The wind gradually painted the sky full of ocher plumes and sheets of crystal, strange designs in rushing gold and red. High and warm, it broke against the city and their tower with fountains of dust, thrown by the shadow of the stretching crimson sun.

"Heh," Jespar scoffed suddenly. "When you look at it...like this...it really was a...beautiful world...that we killed..."

She could feel the fading warmth of his body against her. Momentarily, she lowered a curtain of forgetfulness across her vision. She wished this was nothing more than the most lucid dream, but time refused to stand still for her. She closed her eyes and inhaled darkness – starless, tearless. Once she had feared that same darkness that awaited her in her dreams. Now, she looked into the void and felt for his paw, his touch, his small heartbeats coming slower and slower under her hand.

"-y dear?"

She heard a voice faintly calling to her from somewhere distant. Then, rounding on the location with a stare of disbelief, she saw the guardian materialize in front of her blurred vision.

She simply stared at him. She did not know what expression she shot at his face.

"We are here, my dear," he said simply.

Sure enough, the elevator had opened to reveal an opulent red carpet that led towards two double doors at the end of another hallway – its walls lined with empty glass cases and extravagant art work depicting the triumphs of the Old Ones. Rain-Born recognized none of them.

She looked back at the guardian above her.

"You could have helped him," she said. "And you have done nothing."

She saw him sigh again, his massive shoulders sagging in his pristine suit.

"I told you, my dear: non-interference. I could not deliver aid to you or your companion even if I had wanted to."

She grimaced, showing her broken teeth, and spat the blood that had been collecting in her gullet at his feet. He simply glanced down and then back up at her. His expression did not change.

"Do you wish to dispose of me, dear?" he asked. "I would not blame you. So many horrible things have happened to you. Both you, and this one you call friend."

She couldn't look at Jespar. She knew his time left was short. She knew that a lesser creature would have expired long ago. But he was no lesser, mortal hound. She hated that this guardian was even casting his eyes over him. By what right did he dare to look upon Jespar?

"I must say though, the particulars of your journey do spark my curiosity. For instance, how on earth did you manage to convince this creature that you were its friend?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, and her right arm fingered her knife that was still in its sheath.

"There was no convincing," she said, fighting back tears.

This puzzled him even more. "Then how?" he asked. "And why?"

Her twitching hand fell back to her side. At his question – and the utter sincerity of it – a kind of calmness came over her. Now she did look at Jespar's body, and stroked his fur gently, softly. She should have done that so much more. Now, he barely reacted to her touch at all.

She looked up at him, her determination restored.

"Callisto," she said.

"Of course," he replied, bowing, and motioning for her to follow him. "The master awaits."

She gripped Jespar gently and pushed herself forward. Just a few more steps, and it would be over. A few more steps till oblivion. Till the end.

"Jespar?" she said.

When he did not respond, she panicked and called out again, like a child crying out in the darkness of a nightmare.

"Jespar!"

"I – nugh –," he sputtered, coughing up more blood and letting his paws droop down by his sides. He didn't have much time left.

"I urge you to leave him," the guardian said beside her as she approached the doors at the end of the hall, leaving a trail of blackened crimson behind her. "It is not right to-"

"Silence," she said. And though she spoke with nothing more than a whisper, there was a force of command, resolute and proud, in that single word issuing from her blood-drenched throat. The guardian said nothing, and opened the doors.

"Here it is, Jespar," she said, panting, slowly trying to resolve the swirling image of the room before her. "Look."

He did not stir. His heart was barely beating. But she would not let the screaming voice in her mind control her. Now, she was a creature of impulse alone. Impulse to keep moving forward, till the end.

Before her stretched out a darkened hallway that ended in a great glass window, looking out across the great expanse of the Iron Forest and the rising sun of day. Her eyes could pick out nothing – only the vague shadows of something that stood at the center of the precipice – what she assumed to be the treasure of the tower. Then, with a swift motion of the guardian's arm that she barely even registered as it sliced through the air, a switch was flipped, and a single spotlight light blazed into life to illuminate the thing for what it was.

She felt her knees buckle as she saw the words emblazoned across the canister – its psychedelic logo playing havoc with her instincts to focus on only one color at a time. Now her mind seemed to go completely blank. She looked upon this thing as one who had just been told that the Great Spirit itself was nothing but a tiny marsh-rodent stewing in its own swamp-feces. The culmination of all their journeys – Father-Mother's desperate hope, Jespar's quest for peace, her own wish to prove herself worthy of her people's trust and countless others who had made the journey and failed – sat before her with such little fanfare that it was laughable. How could it just exist there, within that little glass cage, proudly proclaiming its own existence with that simple, insignificant label?

She collapsed with Jespar under the weight of the sight. Her breath was short and startled, but her eyes flew back down to him. This is not what he was going to die for. She would not allow it.

The guardian walked forward to steady her, for she looked close to brink of death herself. But as he made to approach, he suddenly stopped in his tracks, arms outstretched towards her, and bolted upright.

"But," he said, looking at the tiny object in its cage. "I thought -?"

Rain-Born stared wide eyed as his expression changed to one of stark surprise. He gave a curt nod of his head, a little sigh, and then turned away from the whole scene altogether.

"Apparently," he said before he left. "If you have strength enough to make it this far, you should have strength enough to stand before the master on your own two feet."

She looked back at the tiny, glass-bound can, and grunted with primeval force. Even now, it mocked her with a final challenge. She rose on shaking feet with Jespar, and, without question, began her walk forwards.

"Good luck," she heard the guardian say as he closed the doors behind him. "I am required elsewhere."

Rain-Born steadied herself as best she could, placing one shaking leg forward with each new ragged breath she drew from her battered lungs. She dragged herself through the mire of her own fading mind towards that light, shining against the backdrop of the city that she had almost died in. She would call it a beacon, if she did not know what Jespar had told her. As she approached, she began to feel a pull – gravitational and magnetic, like a claw reaching out and grabbing her thumping heart. Then she felt a twist in her chest, and a voice rang out in her head.

Welcome, Rain-Born and Jespar.

Within the depths of her skull, Callisto reached out and called to her. Its words were spoken with the slimy coiling of a snake strangling her brain. Callisto spoke with the sliding cold horror of a razor blade slicing her eyeball. It spoke with the bubbling thickness of her lungs filling with phlegm. It spoke with the shriek of babies being ground beneath the boots of the armies of the Old Ones. It touched her in every way she had ever been touched, and devised new ways, then and there inside her head, to make its bone-chilling voice heard.

She stood before it now straight-backed and with defiance, pride, and fear.

We have much to discuss, it said.

...

Below the chamber of his master, the guardian of Callisto #374393 rode the elevator downstairs in silence. He looked out over the Iron Forest's burning alleys and pondered the meaning of it all, as he had so often done back in the earliest days of his career. In truth, he was pleasantly surprised to see the girl had made it, for with his master gone it would relieve him from his duty as its guardian.

No longer would the monotony of recording Callisto's random visions it beamed out to its children be his daily routine from morning to darkest night. Instead, he would experience the freedom he had so often heard was of much benefit to the homo-sapiens he was modeled after. He resolved to at least store his sketches and scribbles in some sort of binder – perhaps they would make for good reading material one day, or a history book maybe? He doubted the literacy rates of The Deadlands were substantial, but still, the message contained in the sketches would carry. That was the power that art held over the word.

He allowed himself the briefest of smiles as the elevator shuddered to a halt below. His final command had been so simple – "Go back downstairs" - almost humorous in its banality. And as the elevator door opened, he looked up to witness the first new step of his free self.

Instead, he was met with the cold barrel of a pistol aimed directly at his skull, and the lambent red-dot sight of the weapon's reticle dancing feverishly over his head. He could just make out the scar on the man's face that held it.

He let his shoulders sag and sighed deeply.

For that is our lot in life. We are but your tools to be used and discarded, aren't we?

And before the pristine glass of the elevator's windowpane was decorated with his brain-matter, he let out a final sad smile.