Old Tom's Well was never so quaint as its name suggested. I reflected on this fact as I fell into its depths, which had so far refused to provide the full stop of death.

A spiralling green vortex, the well had long been a terrifying blot of ink in the story of my journey across Sunless Skies. The very sight of it filled the crew of my locomotive with terror, and getting close meant grappling with winds that threatened to dash the ship against icy asteroids—the only land in the vicinity of this great lidless plughole.

If that was the well, what did that make Old Tom? I knew the legends, of course: a desperate prospector had travelled the Reach in the earliest days of London's ascension to space, looking for his fortune. The story goes that he made a wish at the well, and later struck a lu

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