The drop into the retconned chimney pipe was like stepping off the edge of the world into a throat of freezing wind.
Before the descent began, the cellar was a flurry of grim, whispered preparation. Ren-the-Cinder checked the brass buckles of Ren Prime’s leather harness, yanking hard on the chest straps until the leather bit into Ren Prime’s ribs.
“If the harness slips in the drop, you don’t break a bone,” Ren-the-Cinder muttered, his fingers black with soot and chimney grease. “You hit the sump eighty feet down at twenty miles an hour and splatter against the drainage grate like a dropped egg. Keep your elbows in. Don’t flail your arms. If you scrape against the chimney walls while the retcon is flickering, the granite will shave your skin down to the tendon.”
“A comforting thought,” Ren Prime whispered hoarsely, testing the friction brake on his hip.
“I don’t deal in comfort, brother,” Ren-the-Cinder replied, strapping a caged canary to his own chest rig. “I deal in chimney drafts and dead air. Scribe Ren thinks he can out-argue eighty feet of solid mountain rock with a silver pen. I prefer three-ply braided steel and an honest friction winch.”
Scribe Ren sneered from his perch above the hearth opening. “Your rustic ropes would be embedded in thirty tons of solid granite right now if not for my pen, sweep. Stop chattering and go down before the ink oxidizes.”
