They say that wherever you choose to begin, that is the beginning.

The door opened, and brilliant sunlight flooded into the otherwise dark room, scattering dust motes into the air, making them dance and whirl and spasm about. He ran a dirty hand through them, scattering them more. He coughed into them, making them errupt again into a fury of movement. His scraggly shadow cast itself across the length of the room, partially obscuring the fluttering flag that hung over the missing half of the building.

They had hung it centuries ago. It was in tatters now, but far too heavy for the light wind to kick to life.

His furtive glance drank in the wreckage strewn around the room. No one had climbed this high in decades. After the flag had been hung, there was no longer any need.

It was a miracle the building still stood. Both the North and South faces had been blown off. All that still stood was a bent, battered, rusting steel frame and some floors, just enough to display a thousand-foot-long banner from the top.

The top, which was just a few more hours' climb away. If this had not been his destination, then he could have made it to the top by the end of the day. But at night, at night the sky was full of predators unknown to the light of day.

Dragons. Rocs. Huge beasts that obscured the entire sky, that spat thunder from their beaks, that took people from the city, took them forever.

But they were none of his concern.

His concern for this tower, this weak and decrepit skeleton, this towering behemoth of a husk, it ended here. In this room.

In the coarse and fraying cord he tossed over the steel support that showed through the crumbling ceiling. In the three-legged stool that still had enough workability left in it to give him the lift he needed.

He secured the rope.

He dragged the stool beneath it.

He settled his neck into the coil of rope.

He kicked.

The boy's name was not Santiago, but he was said to be equally charmed. When he came to, hours, perhaps days later, his vision swam.

He felt no great epiphany, no sudden swelling strike in his soul to know that he had finally achieved his goal, finally fulfilled his duty to the tribe. He drew himself to a crouch, caked as he was in dust and dirt and sweat.

The sunlight beat viciously into his eyes, and he rubbed at them, smearing the dirt and dust across his face. He sneezed.

He stared out at the sun, that orb of fire in the sky that did so little to warm these heights.

The flag was gone. The monstrous banner which had symbolized their people for ages, was destroyed, small scraps of tatters fluttering in the gentle breeze, toyed with as though they were dust motes.

Somehow, somehow this was his fault. Somehow, somehow he would be remonstrated for destroying the flag. Unless days certainly had passed and it was the work of a roc, of a dragon.

He swallowed hard. His throat ached, and his hand went to it immediately.

The rope bit into his flesh all around his neck. He cut it with his knife, separating it from the length that was tangled unintelligeably around the girders and the stool. It seemed longer than it had been when he had climbed all this way.

He stood and walked to the edge of the building. There, where the banner had once hung, was empty sky, staring out across the wreckage of the ruined city. No longer did the watchful goblin stare down into the ruins, across the city, keeping its children safe from the predators that prowled the streets: the monument lions and the subway bears.

No longer did Tyler's watchful eyes dare any to take those he did not choose.

But the damage was done. There was nothing else that could be done to save the happy goblin from his fate. He was scattered as dandelion fluff to the wind. There was little else to do, now, except go back down.

Back down, back down. First to open the door back to his ropes, and then to climb and shimmy his way down, the exact reverse of how he reached this height. The same routine he had done at least five other times.

His arms ached in protest at the thought, but it had to be done.

It wasn't as if he could fly, after all.

Envisionment lurked behind his hot embers, which could at any moment be kicked again to life with a violent prod. He stared, listlessly, as the boy scurried into his hovel, removed the old blue, moth-eaten hat that had been repaired by the wing of a bird across the top. He held it delicately, reverently, and knelt next to the glowing embers.

The red rope burn struck out like neon across the darkness of the room, and Envisionment smiled, feeling the familiar tightening of Tyler's hand reaching out across the space of the worlds to ensnare him.

"You failed again," Envisionment told the boy.

The boy hung his head. "I did," he said quietly.

Envisionment could hear the boys' thoughts, loud like the reverberation of the thunder that so long ago struck down this city. One day, one day I will not fail. One day I will succeed. And then my name will come. Envisionment chuckled to himself, smiled ruefully.

"You will not fail next time."

I have been told this many times. "No," the boy agreed obediantly. "I will not fail next time."

"Have you seen the next place it will strike?"

The boy closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath in the still and dusty room. Envisionment could feel his thoughts groping around for Tyler in the darkness. But the boy's thoughts were misdirected. He was seeking the talons of a judicious and jocular god, just as everyone across the city had done, time and again, when they came to Envisionment for guidance.

Envisionment was Tyler's puppet in this world, for decades. His name had come shortly after he felt the clinging grip of the crippled form of the spirit reaching to him from his predecessor, Lighteyelike. The other shamans of the other deities held no sway over him, be they Madison or Engel or Kristus. Just as he held no sway over them.

Envisionment felt the boy's spirit. He groped around his hopes and fears and tried hard to find the words he had come seeking.

Nothing. Nothing came. Not even a clever ruse.

"You are blessed as Santiago had been," Envisionment told the boy. "Patience shall reward you with that which you seek."

When? But the boy remained silent. He bowed his head low, and he ducked from the room, returning the pilot's hat to his head as he left.

Envisionment slowly shook his head. The boy had accepted, practically demanded this for his coming-of-age task. There had been little that Envisionment could do besides tell him that the task came from Tyler himself. It was a lie, but it served its purpose, and Tyler would be pleased.

Envisionment retrieved the hunchbacked little wooden figure from inside his soft leather clothes. The gnomish figure's face was almost completely rubbed off from worry over the centuries, reducing the totem to a faceless slab of wood.

But Envisionment could feel the power in his hands, the echoing manic laughter that surged forth from his totem and into his veins, embuing them again with his power.

He smiled in the darkness, thrust a stick sharply into the embers, and watched them jump to life as he fed them a log.

The boy stared out across the length of the city from his perch atop one of the lower towers. The feathered wing that covered his hat was tossed lightly by the wind, and he stared down across the ruins. To his mind, they were all the world. He did not know the world as it had been, could not feel the wrongness of this picture in his bones.

The wrongness had died centuries ago, when Tyler led them to safety, returned them to the light of day, after the Great Danger, the reason for which had long ago been lost.

He knew, in his head, that once there were many tall towers, towers that reached high into the sky, peeling it away to reveal the stars behind it. In his soul, however, such a world would have been wrong. It would have been empty, hollow, frightening. Devoid of the reason buried in the fall of the stones that shamans like Envisionment could dredge up. Devoid of the safe places to hide from the monument lions and the subway bears. Devoid of the niches in which to hide from the roving claws of dragons and rocs.

He knew why Envionsionment had chosen this duty for him.

He could feel the doubt growing deep in his bones.

He kept it there, in spite of his decided litany, time and again, of 'In Tyler We Trust.'

He had grown, knowing those words, knowing the truth in those words.

And, some time in his childhood, he had lost that blind faith in any of the great deities of their tribe. The totmes were empty-eyed and hollow to him, despite knowing that for years, they had been ripe with treasures. Nothing, now, nothing could return him to the blissful, blind faith he wanted.

So he thought.

But Envisionment thought otherwise.

Every ten days, he was given a time, a place, in a vision. There, there was where he must go. That was when he would be there. And then, time and again, he would feel the pull to blur the line between his world, his space, his life, and the next.

And then, at the time indicated in the dreamstate, in the manner indicated in the dreamstate.

Then.

Then he would cross the line.