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Rojand turned away from the door with the pumpkin. Its smiling face unnerved him, and he didn't want to pass it. The second door, with its almost-obscured symbol, felt wrong. Wrong. He didn't want to touch it. The third, branching downwards, radiating hate - it wasn't false, at least. Wasn't pretending. He could face that.

The doors swung shut as he entered, closing with a hollow thud. Darkness folded in around him. His heart glowed gentle yellow, but its light reached only as far as his own body, illuminating nothing, and he walked slowly and carefully, one hand stretched forward, moving it back and forth, clutching the scissors with two fingers and keeping the others extended like whiskers, like sensors, seeking obstacles in the dark.

The quiet echoes of his footsteps told him that he was in a hallway, the walls nearby, spaces before and behind him. Echolocation, said a memory with no context, navigation by reflected sound, with a faint sense of skepticism falling away as he understood that this was something he did, that everyone did, maybe not with any precision but with instinctive practicality. From time to time he touched the walls, feeling something uneven, the suggestion of movement just barely halted or about to begin.

When he stumbled into something, it was below the level of his seeking hand, and his foot and knee hit it with a thump. He halted, transferred the scissors to his other hand, reached down to feel the outline of what turned out to be a crate, a large crate, blocking the way forward. Something soft, irregular, lit faintly in red, a light that reached nowhere the way his yellow heart lit nothing but his own body. An arm, dangling out of the crate. A sound he'd barely registered hearing stopped as he clasped a still, limp hand.

It was folded into the box, taking up all the space, soft and yielding and fleshy, and as he bent down he could hear it again, a soft and irregular sound. The Heart shone gentle red through the flesh. Red. Not blessed. Failed. It was okay. He could take it.

It took some work to cut through the seal, cut through the outside, patiently snip through what was underneath. The arm than hung out of the crate jerked briefly, and a high thin voice whispered a name, startled, pained. The narrow hand clawed at his arm, bony and too delicate. She wasn't old, but she wasn't young either. She had always been thin, too thin, thin like a hummingbird vibrating with life. The voice cried out in an agonized hiss. The hand fell away from his arm again, and he continued.

He cut through the warm elastic moistness, the rubbery breathing things in the way. A whoosh of soft warm air as the scissors' tips snapped through and they deflated. The cavity was becoming slippery, and things slopped loose as he pulled it wider, plopping wetly into the crate. Out of the way. The Heart waited for him.

He cut it free, carefully, gently, each snip around it severing resistance as it pulsed in the spot it occupied. When he removed it, it stopped pulsing.

"Hi there!" The woman bent towards him, smiling, her eyes bright with delight. He hid behind his mother's legs, clutching at her skirt and burying his face in the sweet-smelling fabric, uncertain of this new tall person who looked so much like Mama but wasn't. Then, when nothing happened, he looked again, peeked around Mama's leg and found her still smiling kindly at him. "Violeta, he's so cute, so shy," she said to Mama.

"He's never this shy," Mama said, laughing. "I guess you're just that scary!" And then they were both laughing, and he didn't understand at all, but if they were laughing something must be funny, so he laughed with them.

The Heart remained a Heart. It did not become one of the odd fragments. That answered that question with certainty. He slipped it into the bag.

He shouldn't struggle. He deserved this. He couldn't hold his breath any longer, and it bubbled out of him in a flurry, and he couldn't help sucking in water to take its place, cold sharp painful wrong -

- he couldn't, he couldn't just die, the Goddess had told him to bring back a Heart, when he was a Goddess he could fix this, make it right, come back and make it all right, he'd started this and he had to finish it, and in a panicked whirl of incoherent thought he stabbed up at the gaping hole where her heart had been with the scissors he still clutched -

- her shriek cut off in an instant as she vanished, the water suddenly gone with her, and he sprawled on the floor coughing painfully. Water spilled out of his mouth, chill and dark. His chest hurt. A door opened, spilled light across him. He squinted into the brightness, picked himself up, slow and sore.

He looked back once before he stepped through the door. She was still there, he thought.

She had the Goddess's scissors now.

Task 2

The red Goddess was harsher than his own Goddess of Paranoia. Rojand held his ground, suspecting that if he stepped back or showed fear, she'd turn away from him. She wasn't his Goddess, but he wouldn't show weakness to her. He wouldn't show weakness because she wasn't his Goddess. Only Paranoia had any right to his pain, if any of them did.

He accepted the dagger, turning it over in his hand and watching the rusty stain of Ruin spread over it. He didn't want it, but he would accept it and grow stronger.

At her command, he turned and went, reluctantly obedient, glancing back once. She watched him with implacable eyes.

His breath echoed in his ears, and his heartbeat pounded underneath it, and behind him he could hear the follower's feet steady and inexorable, thud, thud, thud. The screech and snick of scissors promised something awful if it caught him.

He skidded to a halt in front of the door, not so far away as it had seemed, and yanked on the handle. Locked. Passcode required. A numberpad stared mockingly at him from the door.

He spun and stared at the figure walking slow and steady down the hall towards him, looked around frantically for any other way out, anything that might be a way to escape, escape or fight back. A spot of black in all the white caught his eye, and he grabbed at the paper. A=0, B=1, C=2. A key, but without the code, it was useless. He flattened himself against the door, breathing hard.

Distance: 35/40

A flicker of red made him look to the side again. Another slip of paper. It hadn't been there a moment ago, he was sure of it. Or was it only that his panic had blinded him? He snatched it up and read it in a glance. A C E G. The code. Letters translated to numbers, and he counted rapidly in his head and tapped in the code on the pad.

The door clicked, and he yanked it open and ran out into the grey world outside.

Distance: 30/40

The dirt under his feet turned to a harder substance, and he felt steadier; still, when the house loomed out of the fog, he knew somehow that this was the end of the line, the place where he would have to stop. It was coming. It would never stop following him. The shadows of the house fell over him, and he turned to wait for the follower.

It was there already, right there behind him, and it lifted its scissors. The dagger in his hand burned red, now, NOW -

"We're family," she said. "We'll take care of you." She lifted her chin proudly, looking old and sad and tired, the way Mom had after Dad had died, and Jordan's heart hurt looking at her. He couldn't speak, but he nodded and squeezed Andy's hand. It'd be okay. It wasn't okay, but it had to be, so it would be.

He wanted to go home.

- with a soundless intake of breath, he lunged at her, brought the dagger down into her chest (sharply defined collarbones and two bluebirds half beneath the neckline of her summer dress), and watched the scissors fall from her hand. She crumpled slowly into a heap on the ground and blew away like ash.

The dagger glowed steadily in his hand, and behind him he heard the door swing open. He turned and left, his steps slow, feeling old and sad and tired.