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blessed land of Jackals, our green hills and valleys soaked with it. It is the age of the Broken Circle.’
    ‘The comet’s gone, old timer,’ Molly said kindly. ‘It passed us by.’
    Commodore Black muttered a sailor’s curse and waved his cane – a spring-loaded swordstick concealed inside, in the event this lunatic turned violent – motioning their hansom cab to make haste.
    ‘Gone?’ moaned the cultist, as if the news was a revelation to him. ‘It is gone? No. It will come back to us. Make a furnace of destruction of Jackals and all who live in our land. We must meditate now for salvation. Come with me and meditate in my lodgings, lady. Come meditate with me before the world ends.’
    ‘I hardly think so,’ said Coppertracks. ‘Ashby’s Comet is heading towards the sun, I have been following its passage with my own telescope from the top of Tock House.’
    ‘The portents!’ wailed the cultist, trying to infect them with the deep despair he obviously felt. ‘The Broken Circle.’
    ‘I am afraid it is your logic that is broken,’ explained Coppertracks. ‘In my experience, the great pattern of existence carries a substantial weight with it. More than enough to survive a few knocks and jolts of celestial mechanics. Now be a good mammal and run along, I rather fear your proximity to us is putting off the driver of the licensed carriage we have hailed.’
       
    Molly watched the man shamble off, his wooden placard swaying above his shoulders, and she smiled as she noticed the sudden distractions that seemed to engage everyone else walking along the street as the cultist approached them.
    ‘In the desert,’ noted Molly, ‘there are nomads who believe people like him are holy, connected to a deeper truth through their affliction.’
    ‘And in the lanes of Middlesteel there are people like me who believe he has been connecting with a pint too many and an ounce of mumbleweed smoked on the top of it,’ said the commodore. ‘Don’t you go paying any attention to his ramblings, lass.’
    With the placard waver now sermonizing his beliefs further down the street, the hansom cab pulled up before them. Commodore Black opened the door and Molly stepped around a pile of manure that a previous cab’s horse had deposited on the cobbles.
    It was then that the vision struck Molly’s skull, entering it like a spear. The layers of the capital peeled back to be replaced by a white, featureless vista. Of her friends from Tock House there was no sign. Breaking the dimensionless purity, the only landmark in this strange new realm was a brilliantly glowing sphere hovering above the ground. It was the size of a bathysphere, with a single silver eye sitting on its top. Molly picked herself up off her knees, her skin tingling with the familiar presence of the thing. The Hexmachina! Sometime saviour of the Kingdom of Jackals – of the entire world.
    ‘Operator,’ said the Hexmachina, a gentle child’s face forming across its surface. ‘You can hear my words?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Molly, stumbling through the white void, trying to reach the safety of the Hexmachina. Of course she could hear its words. She could wield the machine like a god-slaying sword if she could only get close enough to pilot it.
    ‘This realm is not real,’ warned the Hexmachina, sensing her intentions. ‘You cannot pilot me here. This is a construct, a simulation I am using to communicate with your mind.’
    Molly stopped trying to navigate the featureless realm. ‘Where are you, then? Are you still riding the currents of magma under the earth?’
    ‘No. I am fleeing, operator,’ said the Hexmachina, the child’s face assuming a look of desperation. ‘My lover the Earth is trying to protect me, but her warmth and the life of our world is no longer enough. Her powers are being subverted and with them the powers that I can draw upon in turn. I need you …’
    Already giddy in the dimensionless white space, Molly was left reeling by the