The hole was rounded like a ball, a partially squashed ball, broadest at the bottom and small at the mouth. Certain rare corals on the papio reef had the same blue-black color and the same slick-yet-rough texture. Those were the hardest, most precious corals, prized as jewelry and bullets. Maybe this was their native habitat. Maybe only a few stunted pioneers of these corals managed to push past the demon floor, struggling to grow in the sweet cold rarified air.

The Eight couldn’t forget falling. Explosions and their momentum carried them into the corona world, and then the floor was below them again. The floor claimed them and brought them tumbling down again. Would they fall back into their world, like a toy tied to a rubber string? No, the Eight were suddenly flung sideways, hard as a cannon flings its shell. At least that was the sensation, what each of them sensed. They were above the demons and their magic, surrounded by blistering wet air, and a wind took them, or maybe it was the backwash or hard gasp of a corona, and then their senses failed, and time passed, and they settled here or they were set here, and they would likely remain inside this nameless hole for the next million horrific days.

Mortality was a blessing granted to others, not to them.

The Eight made simple eyes that didn’t boil.

The days and darknesses between were counted.

The flesh that hadn’t been lost or burnt was refashioned, attempting to become useful. But the best that could be managed was a single stubborn vessel with persistent eyes and ears, a rough grasp of taste and smell, and one weak mouth leading into a shared stomach.

Tritian was in charge of the wreckage.

More days were counted, and nights, and the frail strokes of each little heart.

But movement was impossible. Hunting was impossible. And no stupid animal wandered into their grave, offering its flesh as energy. Each day brought more weakness and less possibility. If not for the accidental charity of a passing corona, nothing would have changed until the Eight were as hard as the coral on which they laid.

Only the very young coronas had patience for holes and crevices and caves. And as holes were measured, the Eight had picked the bleakest, least interesting cavity in Creation. But a baby corona traveling to an interesting place was delayed by some social catastrophe common to young creatures everywhere. He/she paused where no corona ever paused. The creature needed a moment to nourish an insult and massage a bruised ego. Eleven heads saw nothing but embarrassment, while the twelfth head noticed a flat bit of colorless trash that wasn’t expected and might have some interesting quality to fill the next half-moment.

That tiny creature approached.

Yet nothing about it seemed small. A magnificent, light-infused beast hovered overhead, and aching with hunger, the Eight imagined killing the creature, or at least ripping away the most curious head. But the visitor had a keen respect for danger, and the first twitch of the trash made it retreat again, and pause. The mysterious object was alive. Hard contemplation led to a quick journey through the roaring winds, and it caught one the gilled beasts rather like what the papio called “fish.”

A simple mouth accepted the food, chewing in a very sloppy desperate and entertaining fashion.

Two hundred and six other fish followed that treasure, each delivered on a different morning, and then that dull hole inside the coral was filled with new flesh.

The corona wasn’t so much a baby anymore. Presumably he/she had opinions about the discovery, and maybe that’s why no one else was told. That might have been a second blessing. Or maybe not. But what mattered was that the fish were eaten in the greediest ways, and the secret creature changed shaped daily, and the corona enjoyed the ritual as well as the slow clumsy transformation of its helpless pet.

Only Tritian’s flesh could endure the heat and pressure, but each of the Eight contributed little talents and sometimes an unsuspected brilliance. A shared metabolism had to be configured. Odd proteins and dense hot fats had to shredded with new chemistries. Those early fish offered little nutrition, but the last dozen seemed delicious, and they were rich with energy, and the latest stomach wasn’t just happy for the work, it begged for more.

Arms and legs had to be contrived.

One quality about this remarkable place was how extraordinarily heavy the Eight had become.

Weight wasn’t a constant, according to the papio Masters. They showed the Eight old compelling evidence that the demon floor pulled harder on the coronas. Maybe the Masters didn’t know much about much, but they had been right about this fact. And once another sweet fish was delivered, the Eight began to climb, new limbs pulling the new body to the sharp edge of the hole. Then Tritian ordered everyone to stop and rest, waiting for the next morning’s meal.

The next fish was carried by the baby’s smallest head. Discovering its pet in an unexpected place, it rose and hovered. Coronas spoke more with light than sound or scent. The orange flashes were admissions of being startled. And then came a bright purple light edging into higher realms, and two heads that had never brought fish reached down, neatly wrenching free every limb on its pet’s body.

The Eight were thrown back into the hole, and the fish was dropped on top of them.

Again, the vengeful Fate was in control.

Another forty-seven days and nights were spent making ready for the forty-eighth morning. Then when the baby arrived—a much bigger entity by then—it found nothing in hole but water and rough coral.

Its pet had fled.

Sorrow swirled inside anger, and not just one head reached inside the hole. Five heads decided to make quick work, examining the pit for clues about where the odd creature might have fled. Except the Eight hadn’t escaped. What the baby hadn’t seen was blue-black like the walls, and it grabbed the heads, the necks severed near the creature’s body. What survived that wicked attack swam away. What might have been shame kept the corona from admitting what he/she had found and what he/she had done since. Meanwhile the lost pet was well-fed and now mobile, and the Eight moved between different holes and deep cool caves, hunting its way back to rough health.

The old world was the destination.

To make that journey, Tritian remade the body that had worked well before. At first glance, they looked like a papio made huge. But this papio didn’t require lungs or big hearts. The hyperdense air gladly pushed its oxygen inside the orange blood and meat. Its mouth was only for eating. There was no one to carry on a conversation with, and no need for a voice. And the eyes only looked like eyes that worked well in the other world, but they could absorb energies far from the visible, pedestrian light.

This new realm was suffused with wonderful, endless colors.

Day was day, complete with the blazing roar of a great fire fixed to the center of everything overhead. Their brother, the little Diamond boy, had made noise about the sun belonging overhead. That tidbit was remembered from one of the many intelligence files brought by friendly hands. Thinking about old allies brought one mood, while thinking about the Diamond boy caused shifting, conflicted moods.

With Tritian in charge, the Eight would return to that other world.

“To make amends,” he said to All.

And Divers remained silent.

By day, the edge of the world was a dome-shaped ceiling that ended only where the sun shoved its way into the Creation. The bottom of this world was vertical and coral-encrusted and difficult to navigate. The Eight considered climbing out on a long spur and falling, letting momentum punch them through the demon floor. But then the floor would pull at them again, and they would fall again and come back through again, and where was the point in that?