“Correct.” The Castle was serious now. “The Heterodyne must enter alone.”
Agatha nodded. She pointed to Moloch. “Please don’t kill him while I’m gone.”
Moloch looked appalled. “Hold on—you’re not actually going, are you?”
Agatha took a deep breath. “Of course I am.” And she stepped out upon the pathway. She expected it to give slightly or to sway, but the stones beneath her feet were as solid as if they were resting upon rock. She had listened to enough of the stories that the circus’ aerialists had told around the fires at night to know not to look down, though this was proving difficult to adhere to. She took a step. Then another…and another after that. She was about to release the breath she had been holding, when a clunking sound caused her to freeze. She turned as quickly as she dared and looked back in time to see the stones that were positioned against the doorway begin to wobble and then fall, one by one, to the courtyard below. Slowly the disintegrating edge moved towards her.
Agatha sighed, turned back, and continued onward.
“You’re very trusting,” the Castle remarked.
“And you’re very annoying.”
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll drop you?”
“No.”
Now the Castle sounded peeved. “Why not? I could, you know.”
Agatha continued moving. “You’re like the people in Mechanicsburg, I think. You want a Heterodyne. You keep threatening to kill me, but you’re not sure, so you’re herding me towards the library where I might actually be able to repair you, if I am who I say I am.”
She took a deep breath and continued. “Besides, from how much fun you’re evidently having from these games, I imagine you’d be disappointed if I didn’t survive long enough to take whatever test there is to prove my legitimacy.”
“Games? I don’t know what—”
Agatha gestured downwards. “This path, for one. You could have easily made it three meters wide and as straight as a ruler.”
A note of embarrassment crept into the Castle’s voice. “Yes… well…”
“So, thank you.”
The Castle clearly hadn’t been expecting this. “For what?”
Agatha stepped off of the bridge and into the doorway. As she had surmised, a dark passage twisted off to the right and vanished into the darkness. “For getting me so annoyed that I didn’t have a chance to get scared or disoriented. You did that.”
The Castle was silent.
“Now no more games,” Agatha said.
Behind her the last of the stones pattered to the ground. “Agreed,” the Castle said. Then the floor opened beneath Agatha’s feet and she dropped out of sight.
A fall, a jolt, a disorienting slide in the darkness. With a cry of shocked surprise, Agatha crashed through a wooden lattice and landed upon the floor of a new room. She took a minute to catch her breath and rub at her painful hindquarters. “I thought I said—”
“SILENCE!” With the Castle’s roar, iron shutters slammed back, revealing a magnificent stained glass window. Through this, the afternoon sun washed the room with bright shades of red, yellow, and purple. Agatha stared.
The room was large and high ceilinged. Directly beneath the window was an unadorned altar of black stone. The walls and the ceiling were lined with bones. Human bones, inset and tessellated in patterns that caught the eye and always brought it back to the altar.
Agatha had heard of churches decorated like this, walls and furnishings supplied by victims of plague or war, but reading alone had failed to prepare her for the actual experience. She took a small step and almost fell over. The floor was paved with skulls.
“This is no longer a game,” the Castle said. “This is where you will prove your claim, or where you will die.
“Over the centuries, there have been other times when my masters have gone missing. You are not the first stranger who has come to me claiming the family name. Sometimes they strode in leading armies. Sometimes they skulked in on moonless nights. One flew in on wings made of bone and brass. All claimed to be lost Heterodynes, and all found their way here to this room to be tested.
“Sometimes they were delusional. Sometimes they were…false men. Puppet things of shadow and dead meat. Sometimes they were simply…honestly…wrong. They never left.
“Now it is your turn. Take comfort in knowing that if you fail, there will still be a place for you here, forever.”
Agatha took a deep breath. “Then let’s get started.”
A rumble emanated from beneath her feet. The vibrations swelled until the room shook and Agatha lost her footing, landing atop the pavement of juddering skulls. Before her, the floor bulged upwards. Skulls rolled off, bouncing away as a vast mechanical claw thrust its way up into the light. Another appeared. They bent, and slammed into the ground, levering a vast serpent-like form up from the depths. Corroded brass covered by cracked dials writhed upwards. Agatha could see furnaces glowing within the thing’s structure. A great head shot upwards, paused as it reached the ceiling, and then swung down towards Agatha.
As opposed to the utilitarian gears, springs, and dials of the rest of the mechanism, the face had actually been sculpted. It took the form of an enormous gargoyle—all fangs and spines. Nervous as she was, Agatha had to admire the workmanship that went into its creation—it actually seemed to change its expression as it hovered less than a meter from her.
“Yes,” mocked the Castle’s voice. “Do let us get started.” The gargoyle’s great jaws, easily two meters wide, split open in a great gap-toothed grin. “Place your hand in the mouth.”
Agatha stared into the dark recess. There were…things moving in there.
“…And?”
The mouth drifted open even wider. “And if you are of the family, I will know.”
Agatha squared her shoulders and slipped her left glove off before gingerly inserting her hand between the great teeth. “I am a Heterodyne,” she declared. The mouth gently closed down, trapping her hand. “I…I know I am,” Agatha said gamely. “How will you know?”
The eyes widened innocently. “Blood.”
Agatha had steeled herself for pain, but she screamed nonetheless.
Gilgamesh Wulfenbach gritted his teeth as he felt Krosp climbing up his back. The cat had evidently decided that he liked the height that Gil’s shoulder provided, and Gil (correctly) assumed that the pain and inconvenience this gave him was considered a bonus.
Krosp dipped his head so his whiskers were tickling Gil’s ears. “So,” he said—one eye on the road ahead, “just for laughs, you wanna share what this great plan of yours was?”
Gil brushed a whisker away. “To quietly find my father and explain the situation.” Krosp gave a snort. “And if that didn’t work, drug him into insensibility until I could sort things out.”
Krosp raised an eyebrow. “His doctor would allow this?”
Gil snorted. “If your reports about what my father is doing are correct? Dr. Sun would hand me the syringe.”
Krosp considered this. “That’s…not a bad plan.”
Gil shrugged. “Thank you.”
Krosp looked around at the huge crowd of revelers that seethed around them, yelling, cheering, playing musical instruments, and chanting various slogans as they stumbled towards the Great Hospital. “Got another? Preferably one that instead of stealth, involves half the town?”
Gil nodded seriously. “I’m working on it.”
The appearance of an apparently genuine Heterodyne had brought forth a tremendous wellspring of excitement and jubilation in the populace of Mechanicsburg. This was only slightly dampened by the fact that no one was sure which Heterodyne girl was the genuine article and both of them were still in the Castle, but it was the considered opinion of the populace that the real Heterodyne would shortly appear, preferably with the fake’s head on a pike.
Once Gil had been identified by the denizens of the tavern, he had quickly become the focus of all the pent-up bonhomie and Spark-associated goodwill.