Your friend frowns up at it from her papers and her calculations and her workbench. 'It is stubborn. It can't be reasoned with. It must be blinded.'

It is said that Navaratine gemstones are the sparks that fell from the Forge of Souls in those days when it thundered with new life. They adorn the mantles of suns. Earthly kings have gone to war to possess a single stone. No harder material is known in all the sky.

Together, you develop a process to crack them like eggs. When each one splits open, the spark that spills out is as bright and sharp as a needle in the eye.

When you have perfected the process, the Friend(ID2) looks over at the hoard of hued stones that you have concealed beneath a tarpaulin. 'I'd better get to work.' When it is time to act, she will be ready.

The Friend(ID2) has been studying it. 'It has begun to doubt its purpose. It wonders about other futures. In other words, it can be bribed.'

You speculate on the nature of the intelligence that is resident in the gargantuan winged statue. What might such a being want? A being that has stood, unmoving and vigilant, for millennia?

The Friend(ID2)'s theory is that it served the suns. It wants what its masters had.

The suns crave and collect souls, for reasons of their own. Would the Watcher know what to do with them? It doesn't matter. The wanting is enough.

You assemble a collection of souls that would make a sun burn green with envy.

The Friend(ID2) has been constructing a machine that is half science and half speculation. It combines valves and pistons with sigils and secrets.

The souls go into an alembic on one side of the device. The Navarative sparks go into a casket on the other. Between them, a magic lantern projects kaleidoscopic sigils onto the door between the Watchers. Sigils of forced parting, of denial and defiance, of unbidden passage. Where the sigils fall, the door gleams with frost.

The Friend(ID2) looks haggard. She has taken to drinking a concoction of her own invention to help her focus on her present task and scatter her thoughts on other matters; matters that might draw the Fire that Follows.

Now her task is nearly complete. Only luck has kept the Fire away so far. How long will it last?

'There is a problem,' she says, bleakly. 'All the Watchers' attention is set on the door. They have none to spare for us; for this—' She kicks the device. 'Unless they attend to it – just for an instant – we can't bribe them and we can't blind them.'

You need something to attract the Watchers' attention.

Once, the Watchers served the King of Hours. The King is dead, now, but perhaps a gift from another regent would be enough to divert their attention for the moment you need.

Game note: You only need to do one of these options.

The Friend(ID2) burns the dispensation in a copper bowl and pours the ashes into a spherical receptacle deep in the recesses of her contraption. Then she immediately smothers the flame, with an air of constrained panic.

She is sure she has seen blue fires dancing on the sea, recently. Is it exhaustion? Or has the Fire that Follows found a way to reach her?

She tightens a nut. Adjusts a dial. Exhales into a glass jar and examines the patterns that form on the misted glass. Then steps back.

'We're done,' she says, tugging at the long gloves she wears to conceal the secrets burned on her arms. 'Can we go?'

Legend has it that during the beginning of things, the Burrower Below dug tunnels through the sky. She retains the right to demand passage. If she spoke, the Watchers would listen.

The Friend(ID2) musters the last of her strength. Recently, she's sure she's seen blue fires dancing on the sea. Exhaustion? Or has the Fire that Follows found a way to reach her?

You daub yourselves with woad of impossible colours. You sacrifice a fortune in hours – the Burrower's preferred diet – to the waters. You perform scenes from the notorious play The Seventh Letter, in which dragons feast.

You are answered by a sound from below. Not from the Quiet Sea, but deeper still, from the very roots of the sky. A low, booming resonance, as if the vaults of heaven groaned under the weight of the stars.

Your friend scrambles to her equipment and drags out a phonograph. She cranks its handle, and a needle records the sound on its foil-wrapped cylinder. The deep noise lasts only a few more seconds, but it's enough. The Friend(ID2) attaches the phonograph to her device.

'That's it: the song of the Burrower!' She tugs at the long gloves she wears to conceal the secrets burned on her arms. 'We're ready to go.'

The Friend(ID2) has constructed an elaborate mechanism – half science, half superstition – to open the way. 'Shall we knock?' she asks.

Game note: This will complete this captain's story.

The sooner you return to the Neath, the sooner you will be beyond the reach of the Fire that Follows, and the Courtesy, and the suns' secrets. Your friend activates her device.

It emits a tone like the ringing of a huge crystal bell. A shiver runs through the gate. You feel the Watchers' attention shift from the gate to the device, passing over you like the stifling pressure of a storm front.

There is an eruption of light. Seven possible colours and seven impossible ones. The navaratine hues of the hollowed gemstones, the luminous sheens of your offering of souls. The gloom of the Quiet Sea is set ablaze.

'The door!' the Friend(ID2) cries. You look. Its valves are turning, its ice shatters. The doors shudder and part, just a sliver. A crack in the sky. And beyond it..

..a place of cool, comforting gloom. A cavern of improbable vastness. A subterranean sea. Settlements strewn like pearls along its water-lapped shores and lonely islands. A flock of bats, rustling through the windless airs. A starless place. A secret place. The Neath. 'Home,' the Friend(ID2) breathes.

She takes your hand. You step through the door and from the sky, into somewhere deep, and dark, and marvellous.

You promise your friend you will return as soon as you can.