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# [TOME
OF THE
UNDERGATES](toc.xhtml#toc-introduction)

## BOOK ONE OF THE AEONS' GATE TRILOGY

# ACT ONE

# _Few Respectable Trades_

# _Prologue_

# NO ROOM FOR HOPE

_The Aeons' Gate_

_Sea of Buradan, two weeks north and east of Toha_

_Summer, late_

_Contrary to whatever stories and songs there may be about the subject, there are only a handful of respectable things a man can do after he picks up a sword._

_First of all, he can put it down and do something else; this is the option for men who have more appreciable talents. He could use it to defend his homestead, of course, as protecting one's own is nothing but admirable. If he decides he's good at that sort of work, he could enlist with the local army and defend his kin and country against whatever entity is deemed the enemy at that moment. All these are decent and honourable practices for a man who carries a sword._

_Then there are the less respectable trades._

_There's always mercenary life, the fine art of being paid to put steel in things. Mercenaries, usually, aren't quite as respected as soldiers, since they swear no allegiance to any liege beyond the kind that are round, flat and golden. And yet, it remains only a slightly less respectable use for the blade, as, inevitably, being a mercenary does help someone._

_Now, the very bottommost practice for a man who carries a sword, the absolute dregs of the well, the lowliest and meanest trade a man can possibly embrace after he decides not to put away his weapon is that of the adventurer._

_There is one similarity between the adventurer and the mercenary: the love of money. Past that fact, everything is unfavourable contrast. Like a mercenary, an adventurer works for money, be it gold, silver or copper. Unlike a mercenary, an adventurer's trade is not limited to killing, though it does require quite a bit of that. Unlike a mercenary, an adventurer's exploits typically aid no one._

_When one requires a herd of cattle guarded from rustlers, a young maiden protected, a family tomb watched over or an enemy driven away, all for an honest fee, one calls upon a mercenary._

_When one requires a herd of cattle stolen, a young maiden deflowered, a familytomb looted and desecrated or an honest man driven away from his own home, all for a few copper coins and a promise, one calls upon an adventurer._

_I make this distinction for the sole purpose that, if someone finds this journal after I've succumbed to whatever hole I fell into or weapon I've run afoul of, they'll know the reason._

_This marks the first entry of the Aeons' Gate, the grand adventure of Lenk and his five companions._

_If whoever reads this has a high opinion of this writer so far, please cease reading now. The above sentence takes many liberties._

_To consider the term "adventure," one must consider it from the adventurer's point of view. For a boy on his father's knee, a youth listening to an elder or a rapt crowd hearing the songs of poets, adventure is something to lust after, filled with riches, women, heroism and glory. For an adventurer, it's work; dirty, dusty, bloody, spittle-filled, lethal and cheap work._

_The Aeons' Gate is a relic, an ancient device long sought after by holy men and women of all faiths. It breaches the barriers between heaven and earth, allowing communication with the Gods themselves, an opportunity to ask why, how and what._

_Or so I've heard._

_My companions and I have been hired to seek out this Gate._

_To address the term "companions," I say this because it sounds a degree better than a "band of brigands, zealots, savages and madmen." And I use that description because it sounds infinitely more interesting than what we really are: cheap labour._

_Unbound by the codes of unions and guilds, adventurers are able to perform more duties than common mercenaries. Untroubled by sets of morals and guidelines, adventurers are able to go into places the common mercenary would find repulsive. Unprotected by laws dictating the absolute minimum one must be paid, adventurers do all this for much, much less coin than the common mercenary._

_If someone has read this far, he might ask himself what the point of being an adventurer is._

_The answer is freedom. An adventurer is free to come and go as he pleases, parting from whoever has hired him when the fancy strikes him. An adventurer is free to stop at whatever exotic locale he has found, to take whatever he has with him, to stay for as long as he wants. An adventurer is free to claim what he finds, be it knowledge, treasure or glory. An adventurer is free to wander, penniless and perpetually starved, until he finally collapses dead on a road._

_It also bears mentioning that an adventurer typically does leave his employer's charter if the task assigned proves particularly deranged._

_Thus far, my journey has taken my companions and me far from Muraska's harbour, where we took on this commission. We have travelled the western seas for what seems like an eternity, braving the islands, and their various diseasesand inhabitants, in search of this Gate. Thus far, I've fought off hostile natives, lugged heavy crates filled with various supplies, mended sails, swabbed decks and spent hours upon hours with one end of mine or the other leaning over the railing of our ship._

_My funds have so far accumulated to twenty-six pieces of copper, eleven pieces of silver and half a gold coin. That half came from a sailor who was less lucky than the rest of us and had his meagre savings declared impromptu inheritance for the ship's charter._

_That charter is Miron Evenhands, Lord Emissary of the Church of Talanas. Miron's duties are, in addition to regular priestly business, overseeing diplomatic ties with other churches and carrying out religious expeditions, as which this apparently qualifies. He has been allocated funds for the matter, but spends them sparingly, hiring only as many adventurers and mercenaries as he must to form a facade of generosity. The ship he has chartered, a merchantman dubbed the_ Riptide, _we share with various dirty sailors and hairy rats that walk on two legs._

_My companions seem content with these arrangements, perhaps because they themselves are just as dirty and smelly. They sleep below deck even as I write this, having been driven up top by foul scents and groping hands. Granted, the arrangements are all that they are content with._

_Every day, I deal with their greed and distrust. They demand to know where our payment is, how much money we're getting. They tell me that the others are plotting and scheming against them. Asper tells me that Denaos makes lewd comments to her and the other women who have chartered passage aboard the ship. Denaos tells me that Asper mutters all manner of religious curses at him and tells the women that he is a liar, lech, lush, layabout and lummox; all lies, he tells me. Dreadaeleon tells me the ship rocks too much and it's impossible for him to concentrate on his books. Gariath tells me he can't stand the presence of so many humans and he'll kill every one to the last man._

_Kataria... tells me to relax. "Time at sea," she says, smiling all the while, "amidst the beauty of it all should be relaxing."_

_It would seem like sound advice if not for the fact that it came from a girl who stinks worse than the crew half the time._

_To be an adventurer means to have freedom, the freedom to decide for oneself. That said, if someone has found this journal and wonders why it's no longer in my hands, please keep in mind that it's just as likely that I decided to leap from the crow's nest to the hungry waters below as it is that I died in some heroic manner._

# _One_

# HUMAN LITTER

In the span of a breath, colour and sound died on the wind.

The green of the ocean, the flutter of sails, the tang of salt in the air vanished from Lenk's senses. The world faded into darkness, leaving only the tall, leather-skinned man before him and the sword clutched in his hands.

The man loosed a silent howl and leapt forwards. Lenk's sword rose just as his foe's curved blade came crashing down.

They met in a kiss of sparks. Life returned to Lenk's senses in the groan of the grinding blades. He was aware of many things at once: the man's towering size, the sound of curses boiling out of tattooed lips, the odour of sweat and the blood staining the wood under their feet.

The man uttered something through a yellow-toothed smile; Lenk watched every writhing twitch of his mouth, hearing no words behind them. No time to wonder. He saw the man's free hand clutching a smaller, crueller blade, whipping up to seek his ribs.

The steel embrace shattered. Lenk leapt backwards, feeling his boots slide along the red-tinged salt beneath him. His heels struck something fleshy and solid and unmoving; his backpedal halted.

_Don't look_ , he urged himself, _not yet._

He had eyes for nothing but his foe's larger blade as it came hurtling down upon him. Lenk darted away, watched the cutlass bite into the slick timbers and embed itself. He saw the twitch of the man's eye—the realisation of his mistake and the instant in which futile hope existed.

And then died.

Lenk lunged, sword up and down in a flashing arc. His senses returned with painful slowness; he could hear the echo of the man's shriek, feel the sticky life spatter across his face, taste the tang of copper on his lips. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes, the man knelt before his own severed arm, shifting a wide-eyed stare from the leaking appendage to the young man standing over him.

_Not yet._

Lenk's sword flashed again, biting deeply into meat and sliding out again. Only when its tip lowered, steady, to the timbers, only when his opponent collapsed, unmoving, did he allow himself to take in the sight.

The pirate's eyes were quivering pudding: stark white against the leather of his flesh. They looked stolen, wearing an expression that belonged to a smaller, more fearful man. Lenk met his foe's gaze, seeing his own blue stare reflected in the whites until the light behind them sputtered out in the span of a sole, ragged breath.

He drew a lock of silver hair from his eyes, ran his hand down his face, wiping the sweat and substance from his brow. His fingers came back to him trembling and stained.

Lenk drew in a breath.

In that breath, the battle had ended. The roar of the pirates' retreat and the hesitant, hasty battle cries of sailors had faded on the wind. The steel that had flashed under the light of a shameless staring sun now lay on the ground in limp hands. The stench ebbed on the breeze, filled the sails overhead and beckoned the hungry gulls to follow.

The dead remained.

They were everywhere, having ceased to be men. Now they were litter, so many obstacles of drained flesh and broken bones lying motionless on the deck. Pirates lay here and there, amongst the sailors they had taken with them. Some embraced their foes with rigor-stiffening limbs. Most lay on their backs, eyes turned to Gods that had no answers for the questions that had died on their lips.

_Disconcerting._

His thought seemed an understatement, perhaps insultingly so, but he had seen many bodies in his life, many not half as peacefully gone. He had drawn back trembling hands many times before, flicked blood from his sword many times before, as he did now. And he was certain that the stale breath he drew would not be the last to be scented with death.

"Astounding congratulations should be proffered for so ruby a sport, good sir!"

Lenk whirled about at the voice, blade up. The pirate standing upon the railing of the _Riptide_ , however, seemed less than impressed, if the banana-coloured grin on his face was any indication. He extended a long, tattooed limb and made an elaborate bow.

"It is the sole pleasure of the _Linkmaster_ 's crew, myself included, to look forward to offering a suitable retort for," the pirate paused to gesture to the human litter, "our less fortunate complements, of suitable fury and adequately accompanying disembowelment."

"Uh," Lenk said, blinking, "what?"

Had he time and wit enough about him to decipher the tattooed man's expression, he would, he assured himself, have come up with a more suitable retort.

"Do hold that thought, kind sir. I shall return anon to carve it out."

Like some particularly eloquent hairless ape, the pirate fell to all fours and scampered nimbly across a chain swaying over the gap of quickly shifting sea between the two ships. He was but one of many, Lenk noted, as the remaining tattooed survivors fled back over the railings of their own vessel.

"Cragsmen," the young man muttered, spitting on the deck at the sight of the inked masses.

Their leviathan ship shared their love of decoration, it seemed. Its title was painted in bold, violent crimson upon a black hull, sharp as a knife: _Linkmaster_. And in equally threatening display were crude scrawlings of ships of various sizes beneath the title, each one with a triumphant red cross drawn through it.

Save one that bore a peculiar resemblance to the _Riptide_ 's triple masts.

"Eager little bastards," he muttered, narrowing his eyes. "They've already picked out a spot for us."

He blinked. That realisation carried a heavy weight, one that struck him suddenly. He had thought that the pirates were chance raiders and the _Riptide_ nothing more than an unlucky victim. This particular drawing, apparently painted days before, suggested something else.

"Khetashe," Lenk cursed under his breath, "they've been waiting for us."

"Were they?" someone grunted from behind him, a voice that seemed to think it should be feminine but wasn't quite convinced.

He turned about and immediately regretted doing so. A pair of slender hands in fingerless leather gloves reached down to grip an arrow's shaft jutting from a man's chest. He should have been used to the sound of arrowheads being wrenched out of flesh, he knew, but he couldn't help cringing.

Somehow, one never got all the way used to Kataria.

"Because if this is an ambush," the pale creature said as she inspected the bloody arrow, "it's a rather pitiful excuse for one." She caught his uncomfortable stare and offered an equally unpleasant grin as she tapped her chin with the missile's head. "But then, humans have never been very good at this sort of thing, have they?"

Her ears were always the first thing he noticed about Kataria: long, pointed spears of pale flesh peeking out from locks of dirty blonde hair, three deep notches running the length of each as they twitched and trembled like beings unto themselves. Those ears, as long as the feathers laced in her hair, were certainly the most prominent markers of her shictish heritage.

The immense, fur-wrapped bow she carried on her back, as well as the short-cut leathers she wore about what only barely constituted a bosom, leaving her muscular midsection exposed, were also indicative of her savage custom.

"You looked as surprised as any to find them aboard," Lenk replied. With a sudden awareness, he cast a glance about the deck. "So did Denaos, come to think of it. Where did he go?"

"Well..." She tapped the missile's fletching against her chin as she inspected the deck. "I suppose if you just find the trail of urine and follow it, you'll eventually reach him."

"Whereas one need only follow your stench to find you?" he asked, daring a little smirk.

"Correction," she replied, unfazed, "one need only look for the clear winner." She pushed a stray lock of hair behind the leather band about her brow, glanced at the corpse at Lenk's feet. "What's that? Your first one today?"

"Second."

"Well, well, well." Her smile was as unpleasant as the red-painted arrows she held before her, her canines as prominent and sharp as their glistening heads. "I win."

"This isn't a game, you know."

"You only say that because you're losing." She replaced the bloodied missiles in the quiver on her back. "What's it matter to you, anyway? They're dead. We're not. Seems a pretty favourable situation to me."

"That last one snuck up on me." He kicked the body. "Nearly gutted me. I _told_ you to watch my back."

"What? When?"

"First, when we came up here." He counted off on his fingers. "Next, when everyone started screaming, 'Pirates! Pirates!' And then, when I became distinctly aware of the possibility of someone shoving steel into my kidneys. Any of these sound familiar?"

"Vaguely," she said, scratching her backside. "I mean, not the actual words, but I do recall the whining." She offered a broader smile to cut off his retort. "You tell me lots of things: 'Watch my back, watch his back, put an arrow in _his_ back.' Watch backs. Shoot humans. I got the idea."

"I said shoot _Cragsmen_." Upon seeing her unregistering blink, he sighed and kicked the corpse again. "These things! The pirates! Don't shoot _our_ humans!"

"I haven't," she replied with a smirk. "Yet."

"Are you planning to start?" he asked.

"If I run out of the other kind, maybe."

Lenk looked out over the railing and sighed.

_No chance of that happening anytime soon._

The crew of the _Linkmaster_ stood at the railings of their vessel, poised over the clanking chain bridges with barely restrained eagerness. And yet, Lenk noted with a narrowing of his eyes, restrained all the same. Their leering, eager faces outnumbered the _Riptide_ 's panicked expressions, their cutlasses shone brighter than any staff or club their victims had managed to cobble together.

And yet, all the same, they remained on their ship, content to throw at the _Riptide_ nothing more than hungry stares and the occasional declaration of what they planned to do with Kataria, no matter what upper assets she might lack. The phrase "segregate those weeping dandelions 'twixt a furious hammer" was shouted more than once.

Any other day, he would have taken the time to ponder the meaning behind that. At that moment, another question consumed his thoughts.

"What are they waiting for?"

"Right now?" Kataria growled, flattened ears suggesting she heard quite clearly their intentions and divined their meaning. "Possibly for me to put an arrow in their gullets."

"They could easily overrun us," he muttered. "Why wouldn't they attack now, while they still have the advantage?"

"Scared?"

"Concerned."

"About what?"

_Largely_ , he told himself, _that we're going to die and you're going to be the cause._ His thoughts throbbed painfully in the back of his head. _They're waiting for something, I know it, and when they finally decide to attack, all I've got is a lunatic shict to fight them. Where are the others? Where's Dreadaeleon? Where's Denaos? Why do I even keep them around? I could do this. I could survive this if they were gone._

_If she were..._

He felt her stare upon him as surely as if she'd shot him. From the corner of his own eye, he could see hers staring at him. _No_ , he thought, _studying._ Studying with an unnerving steadiness that exceeded even the unpleasantness of her long-vanished smile.

His skin twitched under her gaze, he shifted, turned a shoulder to her.

_Stop staring at me._

She canted her head to one side. "What?"

Any response he might have had degenerated into a sudden cry of surprise, one lost amidst countless others, as the deck shifted violently beneath him, sending him hurtling to one knee. He was rendered deaf by the roar of waves as the _Riptide_ rent the sea beneath it with the force of its turn, but even the ocean could not drown out the furious howl from the _Riptide_ 's helm.

"More men!" the voice screeched. "Get more men to the railing! What are you doing, you thrice-fondled sons of six-legged whores from hell? _Get those chains off!_ "

Not an eye could help turning to the ship's wheel, and the slim, dark figure behind it. A bald beacon, Captain Argaol's hairless head shone with sweat as his muscles strained to guide his bride of wood and sails away from her pursuer. Eyes white and wide in furious snarl, he turned a scowl onto Lenk.

"What in Zamanthras's name are you blasphemers being paid for?" He thrust a finger towards the railings. " _Get. Them. OFF!_ "

Several bodies pushed past Lenk, hatchets in hand as they rushed the chains biting into the _Riptide_ 's hull. At this, a lilting voice cut across the gap of the sea, sharp as a blade to Lenk's ears as he pulled himself to his feet.

"I say, kind Captain, that hardly seems the proper way to address the gentlemen in your employ, does it?" The helmsman of the _Linkmaster_ taunted with little effort as he guided the black vessel to keep pace with its prey. "Truly, sirrah, perhaps you could benefit from a tongue more silver than brass?"

"Stuff your metaphors in your eyes and burn them, Cragscum!" Argaol split his roar in twain, hurling the rest of his fury at his crew below. "Faster! Work faster, you hairless monkeys! Get the chains off!"

"Do we help?" Kataria asked, looking from the chains to Lenk. "I mean, aren't you a monkey?"

"Monkeys lack a sense of business etiquette," Lenk replied. "Argaol isn't the one who pays us." His eyes drifted down, along with his frown, to the dull iron fingers peeking over the edge of the _Riptide_ 's hull. "Besides, no amount of screaming is going to smash that thing loose."

Her eyes followed his, and so did her lips, at the sight of the massive metal claw. A "mother claw," some sailors had shrieked upon seeing it: a massive bridge of links, each the size of a housecat, ending in six massive talons that clung to its victim ship like an overconfident drunkard.

"Were slander but one key upon a ring of victory, good Captain, I dare suggest you'd not be in such delicate circumstance," the _Linkmaster_ 's helmsman called from across the gap. "Alas, a lack of manners more frequently begets sharp devices embedded in kidneys. If I might be so brash as to suggest surrender as a means of keeping your internal organs free of metallic intrusion?"

The mother claw had since lived up to its title, resisting any attempt to dislodge it. What swords could be cobbled together had been broken upon it. The sailors that might have been able to dislodge it when the Cragsmen attacked were also the first to be cut down or grievously wounded. All attempts to tear away from its embrace had proved useless.

_Not that it seems to stop Argaol from trying_ , Lenk noted.

"You might," the captain roared to his rival, "but only if I might suggest shoving said suggestion square up your—"

The vulgarity was lost in the wooden groan of the _Riptide_ as Argaol pulled the wheel sharply, sending his ship cutting through salt like a scythe. The mother chain wailed in metal panic, going taut and pulling the _Linkmaster_ back alongside its prey. A collective roar of surprise went up from the crew as they were sent sprawling. Lenk's own was a muffled grunt, as Kataria's modest weight was hurled against him.

His breath was struck from him and his senses with it. When they returned to him, he was conscious of many things at once: the sticky deck beneath him, the calls of angry gulls above him and the groan of sailors clambering to their feet.

And her.

His breath seeped into his nostrils slowly, carrying with it a new scent that overwhelmed the stench of decay. He tasted her sweat on his tongue, smelled blood that wept from the few scratches on her torso, and felt the warmth of her slick flesh pressed against him, seeping through his stained tunic and into his skin like a contagion.

He opened his eyes and found hers boring into his. He saw his own slack jaw reflected in their green depths, unable to look away.

"Hardly worthy of praise, Captain," the _Linkmaster_ 's helmsman called out, drawing their attentions. "Might one suggest even the faintest caress of Lady Reason would e'er do your plight well?"

"So..." Kataria said, screwing up her face in befuddlement, "do they all talk like that?"

"Cragsmen are lunatics," he muttered in reply. "Their mothers drink ink when they're still in the womb, so every one of them comes out tattooed and out of his skull."

"What? Really?"

"Khetashe, _I don't know_ ," he grunted, shoving her off and clambering to his feet. "The point is that, in a few moments when they finally decide to board again, they're going to run us over, cut us open and shove our intestines up our noses!" He glanced her over. "Well, I mean, they'll kill _me_ , at least. You, they said they'd like to—"

"Yeah," she snarled, "I heard them. But that's only _if_ they board."

"And what makes you think they're not going to?" He flailed in the general direction of the mother chain. "So long as that thing is there, they can just come over and visit whenever the fancy takes them!"

"So we get rid of it!"

" _How?_ Nothing can move it!"

"Gariath could move it."

"Gariath _could_ do a lot of things," Lenk snarled, scowling across the deck to the companionway that led to the ship's hold. "He _could_ come out here and help us instead of waiting for us all to die, but since he hasn't, he _could_ just choke on his own vomit and I'd be perfectly happy."

"Well, I hope you won't take offence if I'm not willing to sit around and wait with you to die."

"Good! No waiting required! Just jump up to the front and get it over quickly!"

"Typical human," she said, sneering and showing a large canine. "You're giving up before the bodies are even hung and feeding the trees."

" _What does that even mean?_ " he roared back at her. Before she could retort, he held up a hand and sighed. "One moment. Let's... let's just pretend that death is slightly less imminent and think for a moment."

"Think about what?" she asked, rolling her shoulders. "The situation seems pretty solved to you, at least. What are we supposed to do?"

Lenk's eyes became blue flurries, darting about the ship. He looked from the chains and their massive mother to the men futilely trying to dislodge them. He looked from the companionway to Argaol shrieking at the helm. He looked from Kataria's hard green stare to the _Riptide_ 's rail...

And to the lifeboat dangling from its riggings.

"What, indeed—"

"Well," a voice soft and sharp as a knife drawn from leather hissed, "you know my advice."

Lenk turned and was immediately greeted by what resembled a bipedal cockroach. The man was crouched over a Cragsman's corpse, studying it through dark eyes that suggested he might actually eat it if left alone. His leathers glistened like a dark carapace, his fingers twitched like feelers as they ran down the body's leg.

Denaos's smile, however, was wholly human, if a little unpleasant.

"And what advice is that?" Kataria asked, sneering at the man. "Run? Hide? Offer up various orifices in a desperate exchange for mercy?"

"Oh, they won't be patient enough to let you offer, I assure you." The rogue's smile only grew broader at the insult. "Curb that savage organ you call a tongue, however, and I might be generous enough to share a notion of escape with you."

"You've been plotting an escape this whole time the rest of us have been fighting?" Lenk didn't bother to frown; Denaos's lack of shame had rendered him immune to even the sharpest twist of lips. "Did you have so little faith in us?"

Denaos gave a cursory glance over the deck and shrugged. "I count exactly five dead Cragsmen, only one more than I had anticipated."

"We don't get paid by the body," Lenk replied.

"Perhaps you should negotiate a new contract," Kataria offered.

"We have a contract?" The rogue's eyes lit up brightly.

"She was being sarcastic," Lenk said.

Immediately, Denaos's face darkened. "Sarcasm implies humour," he growled. "There's not a damn thing funny about not having money." He levelled a finger at the shict. "What _you_ were being was facetious, a quality of speech reserved only for the lowest and most cruel of jokes. Regardless," he turned back to the corpse, "it was clear you didn't need me."

"Not need _you_ in a fight?" Lenk cracked a grin. "I'm quickly getting used to the idea."

"We should just use him as a shield next time," Kataria said, nodding, "see if we can't get at least some benefit from him."

"I hate to agree with her," Lenk said with a sigh, "but... well, I mean you make it so _easy_ , Denaos. Where were you when the fighting began, anyway?"

"Elsewhere," the rogue said with a shrug.

"One of us could have been killed," Lenk replied sharply.

Denaos glanced from Lenk to Kataria, expression unchanging. "Well, that might have been a mild inconvenience or a cause for celebration, depending. As both of you are alive, however, I can only assume that my initial theory was correct. As to where I was—"

"Hiding?" Kataria interrupted. "Crying? Soiling yourself?"

"Correction." Denaos's reply was as smooth and easy as the knife that leapt from his belt to his hand. "I _was_ hiding and soiling myself, if you want to call it that. At the moment..." He slid the dagger into the leg-seam of the Cragsman's trousers. "I'm looting."

"Uh-huh." Lenk got the vague sensation that continuing to watch the rogue work would be a mistake, but was unable to turn his head away as Denaos began to cut. "And... out of curiosity, what would _you_ call what you were doing?"

"I believe the proper term is 'reconnaissance'."

"Scouting is what _I_ do," Kataria replied, making a show of her twitching ears.

"Yes, you're very good at sniffing faeces and hunting beasts. What I do is..." He looked up from his macabre activities, waving his weapon as he searched for the word. "Of a more philosophical nature."

"Go on," Lenk said, ignoring the glare Kataria shot him for indulging the man.

"Given our circumstances, I'd say what I do is more along the lines of planning for the future," Denaos said, finishing the long cut up the trouser leg.

Heavy masks of shock settled over the young man and shict's faces, neither of them able to muster the energy to cringe as Denaos slid a long arm into the slit and reached up the Cragsman's leg. Quietly, Kataria cleared her throat and leaned over to Lenk.

"Are... are you going to ask him?"

"I would," he muttered, "but I really don't think I want to know."

"Now then, as I was saying," Denaos continued with all the nonchalance of a man who did not have his arm up another man's trouser leg, "being reasonable men and insane pointy-eared savages alike, I assume we're thinking the same thing."

"Somehow," Lenk said, watching with morbid fascination, "I sincerely doubt that."

"That is," Denaos continued, heedless, "we're thinking of running, aren't we?"

" _You_ are," Kataria growled. "And no one's surprised. The _rest_ of us already have a plan."

"Which would be?" Denaos wore a look of deep contemplation. "Lenk and I have rather limited options: fight and die or run and live." He looked up and cast a disparaging glance at Kataria's chest. "Yours are improved only by the chance that they might mistake you for a pointy-eared, pubescent boy instead of a woman." He shrugged. "Then again, they might prefer that."

"You stinking, cowardly _round-ear_ ," she snarled, baring her canines at him. "The plan is to neither run nor die, but to _fight_!" She jabbed her elbow into Lenk's side. "The leader says so!"

"You do?" Denaos asked, looking genuinely perplexed.

"Well, I... uh..." Lenk frowned, watching the movement of Denaos's hand through the Cragsman's trousers. "I think you might..." He finally shook his head. "Look, I don't disapprove of looting, really, but I think I might have a problem with whatever it is you're doing here."

"Looting, as I said."

Denaos's hand suddenly stiffened, seizing something as a wicked smile came over his face. Lenk cringed and turned away as the man's long fingers tensed, twisted and pulled violently. When he looked back, the man was dangling a small leather purse between his fingers.

"The third pocket," the rogue explained, wiping the purse off on the man's trousers, "where all reasonable men hide their wealth."

"Including you?" Lenk asked.

"Assuming I had any wealth to spend," Denaos replied, "I would hide it in a spot that would make a looter give long, hard thought as to just how badly he wanted it." He slipped the pouch into his belt. "At any rate, this is likely as good as it's going to get for me."

"For us, you mean," Lenk said.

"Oh, no, no. For _you_ , it's going to get much worse, since you seem rather intent on staying here."

"We are in the employ of—"

"We are _adventurers_ in the employ of Evenhands," Denaos pointed out. "And what has he done for us? We've been at sea for a month and all we've got to show for it is dirty clothes, seasickness and the occasional native-borne disease." He looked at Lenk intently. "Out at sea, there's no chance to make an honest living. We're as like to be killed as get paid, and Evenhands knows that."

He shook a trembling finger, as though a great idea boiled on the tip of it.

"Now," he continued, "if we run, we can sneak back to Toha and catch a ship back to the mainland. On the continent proper, we can go anywhere, do anything: mercenary work for the legions in Karneria, bodyguarding the fashas in Cier'Djaal. We'll earn _real_ coin without all these promises that Evenhands is offering us. Out here, we're just penniless."

"We'll be just as penniless on the mainland," Lenk countered. "We run, the only thing we've earned is a reputation for letting employers, _godly_ employers, die."

"And the dead spend no money," Denaos replied smoothly. "Besides, we won't need to take jobs to make money." He glanced at Kataria, gesturing with his chin. "We can sell the shict to a brothel." He coughed. "Or a zoo of some kind."

"Try it," Kataria levelled her growl at both men, "and what parts of you I _don't_ shoot full of holes, I'll hack off and wear as a hat." She bared her teeth at Denaos. "And just because _you_ plan to die—"

"The plan is _not_ to die, haven't you been listening? And before you ask, yes, I'm certain that we _will_ die when they return, for two reasons."

" _If_ they return," Kataria interjected. "We scared them off before."

" _When_ they return," Denaos countered. "Which coincides with the first reason: this was just the probe."

"The what?"

"Ah, excuse me," the man said as he rose up. "I forgot I was talking to a savage. Allow me to explain the finer points of business."

Lenk spared a moment to think, not for the first time, that it was decidedly unfair that the rogue should stand nearly a head taller than himself. _It's not as though the length of your trousers matters when you piss them routinely_ , he thought resentfully.

"Piracy," the tall man continued, "like all forms of murder, is a matter of business. It's a haggle, a matter of bidding and buying. What they just sent over," he paused to nudge the corpse at his feet, "is their initial bid, an investment. It's the price they paid to see how many more men they'd need to take the ship."

"That's a lot of philosophy to justify running away," Lenk said, arching an eyebrow.

"You had a lot of time to think while hiding?" Kataria asked.

"It's really more a matter of instinct," Denaos replied.

"The instinct of a _rat_ ," Kataria hissed, "is to run, hide and eat their own excrement. There's a reason no one listens to them."

"Forgive me, I misspoke." He held up his hands, offering an offensively smarmy smile. "By 'instinct', I meant to say 'it's blindingly obvious to anyone _but_ a stupid shict'. See, if _I_ were attacking a ship bearing a half-clad, half-mad barbarian that at least _resembled_ a woman wearing breeches tighter than the skin on an overfed hog, I would most certainly want to know how many men I needed to take her with no more holes in her than I could realistically use."

She opened her mouth, ready to launch a hailstorm of retorts. Her indignation turned into a blink, as though she were confused when nothing would come. Coughing, she looked down.

"So it's not _that_ bad an idea," she muttered. Finding a sudden surge of courage, she looked back up. "But, I mean, we killed the first ones. We can kill them again."

"Kill how many?" Denaos replied. "Three? Six? That leaves roughly three dozen left to kill." He pointed a finger over the railing. "And reason number two."

Lenk saw the object of attention right away; it was impossible not to once the amalgamation of metal and flesh strode to the fore.

"Rashodd," Lenk muttered.

He had heard the name gasped in fear when the _Linkmaster_ first arrived. He heard it again now as the captain of the black ship stood before his crew, the echo of his heavy boots audible even across the roaring sea.

Rashodd was a Cragsman, as his colossal arms ringed with twisting tattoos declared proudly. The rest of him was a sheer monolith of metal and leather. His chest, twice as broad as any in his crew, was hidden behind a hammered sheet of iron posing as a breastplate. His face was obscured as he peered through a thin slit in his dull grey helmet, tendrils of an equally grey beard twitching beneath it.

And he, too, waited, Lenk noted. No command to attack arose on a metal-smothered shout. No call for action in a falsely elegant voice drifted over the sea. Not one massive, leathery hand drifted to either of the tremendous, single-bit axes hanging from his waist.

They merely folded along with the Cragsman's titanic arms, crossing over the breastplate and remaining there.

Waiting.

"Their next bid will be coming shortly," Denaos warned. "And _he's_ going to be the one that delivers it." He gestured out to the crew. "They're dead, sure, but they're Argaol's men. We have to think of our own."

"He's just a human," Kataria said derisively, "a monkey." She glanced at the titanic pirate and frowned. "A big monkey, but we've killed big ones before. There's no reason to run."

"Good," Denaos replied sharply, "stay here while all sane creatures embrace reason." He sneered. "Do try to scream loudly, though. Make it something they'll savour long enough so that the rest of us can get away."

"The only one leaving will be you, round-ear," Kataria growled, "and we'll see how long your delusions of wit can sustain you at sea."

"Only a shict would think of reason as delusional."

"Only a human would think of cowardice as rational!"

Words were flung between them like arrows and daggers, each one cutting deeply with neither of the two refusing to admit the blood. Lenk had no eyes for their snarls and rude gestures, no attention for their insults that turned to whispers on his ears.

His stare was seized, bound to the hulking figure of Rashodd. His ears were full, consumed by another voice whispering at the back of his head.

_It's possible_ , that voice said, _that Denaos is wrong. There are almost as many men on our ship as on theirs. We could fight. We wouldn't even have to win a complete victory, just bloody their noses. Teach them that we aren't worth the trouble. It's business, right?_

"What's the big deal over a big monkey, anyway?" Kataria snapped. "The _moment_ he raises that visor, I'll put an arrow in his gullet and we'll be done here! No need to run." Her laughter was sharp and unpleasant. "Or do you find his big muscles intimidating, you poor little lamb?"

"I can think of at least one muscle of his that you'll find unpleasant when he comes over," Denaos replied, a hint of ire creeping into his voice. "And I wouldn't be at all surprised if _it_ was bearded and covered in iron, too. He's seen what you've done to his men. He won't be taking that visor off."

_It's possible_ , Lenk answered his own thought, _but not likely. Numbers are one thing, but steel is another. They have swords. We have sticks. Well, I mean,_ I've _got a sword... fat lot of good it will do against that many, though. Running is just logical here. It's not as if Denaos actually had a good idea here, anyway._

"If you run, you don't get paid," Kataria said. "Though, really, I've always wanted to see if human greed is stronger than human cowardice."

"We get paid slaves' wages," Denaos said. "Silf, we get worse. We get _adventurers"_ wages. Stop trying to turn this into a matter of morality. It's purely about the practicality of the situation and, really, when has a _shict_ ever been a moral authority?"

_When have_ any _of them ever had a good idea?_ Lenk's eyes narrowed irately. _I'm always the one who has to think here_. _He's a coward, but she's insane. Asper's a milksop, Dreadaeleon's worthless. Gariath is as likely to kill me as help. Running is better here. They'll get me killed if we stay._

"Well, don't get the impression that I'm trying to stop you," Kataria snarled. "The only reason I'd like you to stay is because I'm almost certain you'll get a sword in your guts and then I won't even have to deal with the terrible worry that you might somehow survive out at sea. The _rest_ of us can handle things from here."

"And if I _could_ handle it all by myself, I would," Denaos said. "Feeling the humanitarian that I am, though, I would consider it a decent thing to try to get as many _humans_ off as I possibly could."

"Decent? You?" Kataria made a sound as though she had just inhaled one of her own arrows through her nose.

" _I_ didn't kill _anyone_ today."

"Only because you were busy putting your hands down a dead man's trousers. In what language is that decent?"

_They're going to die_ , Lenk's thoughts grew their wings, flew about his head violently, _but I can live. Flee now and live! The rest will..._

"And what would you know of language?" Denaos snarled. "You only learned how to speak ours so you could mock the people you kill, _savage_!"

_... waiting, waiting for what? To attack? Why? What else can you do? There's so many of them, few of us. Save them and they kill each other..._

"And you mock your own people by pretending you give a single fart about them, _rat_."

_... to what end? What else can you do?_

"Barbarian!"

_What else can you do?_

"Coward!"

_WHAT ELSE?_

The thoughts that formed a blizzard in Lenk's mind suddenly froze over, turning to a pure sheet of ice over his brain. He suddenly felt a chill creep down his spine and into his arm, forcing his fingers shut on his sword's hilt. From the ice, a single voice, frigid and uncompromising, spoke.

_Kill._

"What?" he whispered aloud.

_Kill._

"I... don't—"

"Don't what?"

He felt a hand on his shoulder, unbearably warm. He whirled about, hand tight on his sword. The shapes before him looked unfamiliar for a moment: shadows of blue lost in the sky. He blinked and something came into view, apparent in a flash of blazing green.

Kataria's eyes, brimming with disquiet.

With every blink, the sunlight became brighter and more oppressive. He squinted at the two people before him, face twisted in a confused frown.

"What?"

"It's up to you, we agreed," Kataria replied hesitantly. "You're the leader."

"Though 'why' is a good question," Denaos muttered.

"Do we fight or run?"

Lenk looked over his shoulder. His eyelid twitched at the sight of the pirates, visibly tensing, sliding swords from their sheaths. Behind the rows of tattooed flesh, a shadow shifted uneasily. Had it always been there, Lenk wondered, standing so still that he hadn't noticed it?

"Fight?" Kataria repeated. "Or run?"

Lenk nodded. He heard her distinctly now, saw the world free of haze and darkness. Everything became clear.

"I have a plan," he said firmly.

"I'm all ears," Denaos said, casting a snide smile to Kataria. "Sorry, was that offensive?"

"Shut up," Lenk growled before she could. "Grab your weapons. Follow me."

_Don't look_ , Dreadaeleon thought to himself, _but a seagull just evacuated on your shoulder._

He felt his neck twist slightly.

_I SAID, DON'T LOOK!_ He cringed at his own thoughts. _No, if you look, you'll panic. I mean, why wouldn't you? It's sitting there... all squishy and crawling with disease. And... well, this isn't helping. Just... just brush it off nonchalantly... try to be nonchalant about touching bird faeces... just try..._

It occurred to the boy as odd that the warm present on his shoulder wasn't even the reason he resented the birds overhead at that moment.

Rather, he thought, as he stared up at the winged vermin, they didn't make nearly enough noise. Neither did the ocean, nor the wind, nor the murmurings of the sailors gathered before him, muttering ignorant prayers to gods that didn't exist with the blue-clad woman who swore that they did.

Though, at that moment, he doubted that even gods, false or true, could make enough noise to drown out the awkward silence that hung between him and her.

_Wait,_ he responded to his own thoughts, _you didn't say that last part instead of thinking it, did you? Don't tell her that the gods are just made up! Remember what happened last time. Look at her... slowly... nonchalantly... all right, good, she doesn't appear to have heard you, so you probably didn't say it. Wait, no, she's scowling. Wait, do you still have the bird faeces on you? Get it off! Nonchalant! Nonchalant!_

The problem persisted, however. Even after he brushed the white gunk from his leather coat, Asper's hazel eyes remained fixed in a scowl upon him. He cleared his throat, looked down at the deck.

Mercifully, she directed her hostility at him only for as long as it took to tuck her brown hair back beneath her bandana, then looked back down at the singed arm she was carefully dressing with bandage and salve. The man who possessed said arm remained scowling at him, but Dreadaeleon scarcely noticed.

_He probably wants you to apologise_ , the boy thought. _He deserves it, I suppose. I mean, you_ did _set him on fire._ His fingers rubbed together, lingering warmth dancing on their tips. _But what did he expect, getting in the way like that? He's lucky he escaped with only a burned arm. Still, she'd probably like it if you apologised..._

If she even noticed, he thought with a sigh. Behind the burned man were three others with deep cuts, bruised heads or visibly broken joints. Behind _them_ were four more that had already been wrapped, salved, cleaned or stitched.

And they had taken their toll on her, he noticed as her hands went back into the large leather satchel at her side and pulled out another roll of bandages. They trembled, they were calloused, they were clearly used to working.

_And_ , he thought with a sigh, _they are just so strong._ He drew in a resolute breath. _All right, you've got to say something... not that, though! But something. Remember what Denaos says: women are dangerous beasts. But you're a wizard, a member of the Venarium. You fear no beast. Just... use tact._

"Asper," he all but whispered, his voice catching as she looked up at him again, "you're..." He inhaled sharply. "You're being completely stupid."

_Well done._

"Stupid," she said, levelling a glare that informed him of both her disagreement and her future plans to bludgeon him.

"As it pertains to the context, yes," he said, attempting to remain bold under her withering eyes.

"The context of..." she gestured to her patient, "setting a man on fire?"

"It's... it's a highly sensitive context," he protested, his voice closely resembling that of a kitten being chewed on by a lamb. "You aren't taking into account the many variables that account for the incident. See, body temperature can fluctuate fairly quickly, requiring a vast amount of concentration for me to channel it into something combustible enough to do appreciable damage to something animate."

At this, the burned man added his scowl to Asper's. Dreadaeleon cleared his throat.

"As evidenced visibly. With such circumstances as we've just experienced, the risk for a triviality increases."

"You set... a man... on fire..." Asper said, her voice a long, slow knife digging into him. "How is that a triviality?"

"Well... well..." The boy levelled a skinny finger at the man accusingly. "He got in my way!"

"I was tryin' to defend the captain!" the man protested.

"You could have gone around me!" Dreadaeleon snapped back. "My eyes were glowing! My hands were on fire! What affliction of the mind made you think it was a good idea to run in front of me? I was clearly about to do something _very_ impressive."

"Dread," Asper rebuked the boy sharply before tying the bandage off at the man's arm and laying a hand gently on his shoulder. To the sailor: "The wound's not serious. Avoid using it for a while. I'll change the dressing tomorrow." She sighed and looked over the men, both breathing and breathless, beyond her patient. "If you can, you should tend to your fellows."

"Blessings, Priestess," the man replied, rising to his feet and bowing to her.

She returned the gesture and rose as well, smoothing out the wrinkles creasing her blue robes. She excused herself from the remaining patients with a nod and turned away to lean on the railings.

And Dreadaeleon could not help but notice just how hard she leaned. The irate vigour that had lurked behind her eyes vanished entirely, leaving only a very tired woman. Her hands, now suddenly trembling, reached to the gleaming silver hanging from her throat. Fingers caressed the wings of a great bird, the phoenix.

Talanas, Dreadaeleon recalled, the Healer.

"You look tired," he observed.

"I can see how I might give off that impression," Asper replied, "what with having to undo the damage my companions do as well as the pirates' own havoc."

Somehow, the softness of her voice cut even deeper than its former sharpness. Dreadaeleon frowned and looked down at the deck.

"It _was_ an accident—"

"I know." She looked up and offered him an exhausted smile. "I can appreciate what you were trying to do."

_You see, old man? That fire would have been colossal! Corpses burning on thedeck! Smoke rising into the sky! Of course she'd have been impressed. The ladies love fire._

"Well, it would have been difficult to pull off, of course," he offered, attempting to sound humble. "But the benefits would have outweighed the tragedy."

"Tragedy?" She blinked. "I thought you were going to try to scare the rest of them off with a show of force." She peered curiously at him. "What were you thinking?"

" _The exact same thing_ ," he hastily blurted. "I mean, they're pirates, right? And Cragsmen, on top of that. They probably still believe wizards eat souls and fart thunder."

She stared at him.

"We, uh, we don't."

"Hmm." She glanced over his shoulder with a grimace, towards the shadows of the companionway. "And what was the purpose of that?"

He followed her gaze and frowned. He wasn't quite sure why she looked at the sight with disgust. To him, it was a masterpiece.

The icicle's shape was perfect: thick enough to drive it into the wood of the ship, sharp enough to pierce the ribcage in which it currently rested comfortably. Even as the Cragsman clung to it, hands frozen to the red-stained ice in death, Dreadaeleon couldn't help but smile. He had expected something far messier, but the force used to hurl it through the air had been just enough.

_Of course, she probably won't understand that._ He rolled his eyes as he felt hers boring into his. _Women._

"Prevention," he replied coolly. "I saw him heading for the companionway, I thought he might try to harm Miron."

She nodded approvingly. "I suppose it was necessary, then, if only to protect the Lord Emissary."

_Well done, old man, well done._ The exuberance coursing through him threatened to make him explode. He fought it down to a self-confident smirk. _Talking to girls is just like casting a spell. Just maintain concentration and don't—_

"After all," he interrupted his train of thought with a laugh, "if he died, who would pay us?"

_... do anything like that, idiot._

She swung her scowl upon him like a battleaxe, all the fury and life restored to her as she clenched her teeth. She ceased to resemble a priestess at that moment, or any kind of woman, and looked instead like some horrific beast ready to rip his innards out and paint the deck with them.

"This is what it's all about, then?" she snarled. "Pay? Gold? Good Gods, Dread, you _impaled_ a man."

"That hardly seems fair," he replied meekly. "Lenk and the others have killed far more than me. Kataria even made a game out of it."

"And _she's_ a shict!" Asper clenched her pendant violently. "Bad enough that I should have to tolerate _their_ blasphemies without you also taking pleasure in killing."

"I wasn't—"

"Oh, shut up. You were staring at that corpse like you wanted to mount it on a wall. Would you have taken the same pride if you had killed that man instead of just burning him?"

"Well..." His common sense had fled him, his words came on a torrent of shamelessness. "I mean, if the spell had gone off as it was supposed to, I suppose I could have appreciated the artistry of it." He looked up with sudden terror, holding his hands out in front of him. "But no, no! I wouldn't have taken pride in it! I never take pride in making more work for you!"

"It's not _work_ to do Talanas's will, you snivelling heathen!" Her face screwed up in ways that he had thought possible only on gargoyles. "You sound like... like one of _them_ , Dread!"

"Who?"

"Us."

Lenk met the boy's whirling gaze without blinking, even as Dreadaeleon frowned.

"Oh," he said, "you."

"You sound disappointed."

"Well, the comparison was rather unfavourable," the wizard said, shrugging. "Not that I'm not thrilled you're still alive."

He still sounded disappointed, but Lenk made no mention of it. His eyes went over the boy's head of stringy black hair, past Asper's concerned glare, through the mass of wounded sailors to the object of his desire.

The smaller escape vessel dangled seductively from its davits, displaying its oars so brazenly, its benches so invitingly. It called to him with firm, wooden logic, told him he would not survive without it. He believed it, he wanted to go to it.

There was the modest problem of the tall priestess before him, though, arms crossed over her chest to form a wall of moral indignation.

"What happened at the railings?" she asked. "Did you win?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

"In a manner of..." She furrowed her brow. "It's not a hard question, you know. Did you push the pirates back?"

"Obviously, we were triumphant," chimed a darker voice from behind him. Denaos stalked forwards, placing a hand on Lenk's shoulder. "If we hadn't, you'd like have at least a dozen tattooed hands up your skirt by now."

" _Robes_ ," she corrected sharply. "I wear _robes_ , brigand."

"How foolish of me. I should have known. After all, only proper ladies wear skirts." As she searched for a retort, he quickly leaned over and whispered in Lenk's ear. "She's never going to let us by and she certainly won't come with us."

Lenk nodded. Ordinarily, that wouldn't have been a problem. He would just as soon leave her to die if she insisted. However, she could certainly call the sailors' attentions to the fact that they were about to make off with the ship's only escape vessel. Not to mention it would be exceedingly bad judgement to leave the healer behind.

"So just shove her in," he muttered in reply. "On my signal, you rush her. I'll cut the lines. We'll be off."

"What are you two talking about?" Asper's eyebrows were so far up they were almost hidden beneath her bandana. "Are you plotting something?"

"We are _discussing_ stratagems, thank you," Denaos replied smoothly. "We are, after all, the brains of this band."

"I thought I was the brains," Dreadaeleon said.

" _You_ are the odd little boy we pay to shoot fire out of his ass," the rogue said.

"I shoot fire out of my _hands_ , thank you. And it requires an _immense_ amount of brains." He pulled back his leather coat, revealing a massive book secured to his waist by a silver chain. "I memorised this whole thing! Look at it! _It's huge!_ "

"He raises a good point," Denaos whispered to Lenk. "He might try to stop us."

"I can handle it," a third voice added to the conspiracy. Kataria appeared at Lenk's side, ears twitching. "He weighs even less than me. I'll just grab him on the way."

"I thought you didn't like this idea," Lenk said, raising a brow.

"I don't," she replied, sparing him a grudging glare. "It's completely unnecessary. But," she glanced sidelong at Lenk, "if you're going to go..."

The moment stretched uncomfortably long in Lenk's head, her eyes focusing on him as if he were a target. In the span of one blink, she conveyed a hundred different messages to him: requests for him to stay, conveyance of her wish to fight, a solemn assurance that she would follow. At least, he thought she said that. All that echoed in his mind was one voice.

_Stop staring at me._

"Yes, good, lovely," Denaos grunted. "If we're going to do this, let's do it now."

"Do what?" Asper asked, going tense as if sensing the sin before it developed.

"Nothing," Denaos replied, taking a step forwards, "we're just hoping to accomplish it before—"

" _By the Shining Six_ ," the voice cut through the air like a blade, " _who wrought this sin?_ "

"Damn it," Lenk snarled, glancing over his shoulder at the approaching figure.

Despite rumours whispered in the mess, it was a woman, tall as Denaos and at least as muscular. Her body was choked in bronze, her breastplate yielding not a hint of femininity as it was further obscured by a white toga.

Hard eyes stared out from a hard face, set deep in her skull and framed by meticulously short-trimmed black hair. Her right eyelid twitched at the sight of them all huddled together, the row of red-inked letters upon her cheek dancing like some crimson serpent that matched her very visible ire as she swept towards the companions, heedless of the puddles of blood splashing her greaves.

"Quillian Guisarne-Garrelle Yanates," Asper said pleasantly as she stepped forwards unopposed, she being generally considered the person best suited to speak with people bearing more than two names. "We are pleased to see you well."

" _Serrant_ Quillian Guisarne-Garrelle Yanates," the woman corrected. "Your praise is undeserved, I fear." She cast a glimpse at the human litter and sneered. "I should have been here much sooner."

"Yes, scampering in a bit late today, aren't we, Squiggy?" Denaos levelled his snide smirk at her like a spear. "The battle was over before you even strapped that fancy armour on."

"I was guarding the Lord Emissary," the Serrant replied coldly. "You might recall it being your duty, as well, if you could but keep your mind from gold and carnage."

"Carnage?" Kataria laughed unpleasantly. "It was a slaughter."

Quillian's eyes sharpened, focusing a narrow glare of bladed hatred upon the shict.

"You would know, savage." She forced her stare away with no small amount of effort. "I had hoped to arrive to see at least some modicum of rite was being followed. Instead, I find..." she forced the word through her teeth as though it were poison, " _adventurers_." She spared a cursory nod to Asper. "Excluding those of decent faith."

"Oh," the woman blinked, "well, thank you, but—"

" _She's_ with us," Denaos interjected, stepping up beside the priestess with a scummy grin. "How's that stick in your craw, Squiggy? One of your beloved, pious temple friends embroiled in our world of sin and sell-swording, eh?" He swept an arm about Asper, drawing her in close and rubbing his stubble-laden cheek against her face. "Doesn't sit too well, does it? _Does it?_ I can smell your disgust from here!"

Lenk caught the movement, subtle as it was, as the rogue gingerly tried to ease his blanching captive towards the escape vessel. Dreadaeleon, too, looked shocked enough that he'd never see Kataria coming to grab him. He readied his sword, eyeing the ropes.

"That would be me," Asper snarled, driving an ungentle elbow into his ribs and ruining his plans. "Get _off_."

"The hallowed dead litter the deck," the Serrant said, sweeping her scorn across the scene, then focusing it on Lenk. "Innocent men alongside the impure. All sloppily killed."

"What?" Dreadaeleon asked, pointing to his impaled victim. " _That_ is, by far, the cleanest kill in this whole mess!"

"Incredibly enough," Lenk added with a sigh, "killing is a sloppy business."

"These vagrants should have been routed before _one_ of Argaol's men could be driven below," she snapped. " _You_ allowed this to happen."

"Me?" Lenk said.

" _All_ of you."

"What?" Kataria looked offended as she gestured to Denaos. " _He_ didn't even do anything!"

"Yeah," Lenk said, nodding. "How do you figure we're at fault?"

"Because of the horrid blasphemies that continually spew from your bile-holes. You _anger_ the Gods with your disregard for the sacred rites of combat! Your crude tactics, your consorting with heathens," her stare levelled at Kataria again, "as well as inhuman savages."

Her eyes were decidedly warier when she swept the deck again.

"And where _is_ your other monster?"

"Elsewhere," Lenk replied. "Look, we have a plan, but it doesn't need you around. Is this really—"

"Respect for the Gods is _very_ necessary," Quillian said sharply. "Yes. _Really._ Bad enough that you bring your Godless savages here without questioning the divine mandate."

"Savage arrows took three already." Kataria's threat was cold and level. "I've got plenty more, Squiggy."

"Cease and repent, barbarian," the woman replied, just as harshly. Her gauntleted hand drifted dangerously close to the longsword at her hip. "The name of a Serrant is sacred."

"I'd disagree with that, Squiggy." Denaos chuckled.

"Me too, Squiggy," Kataria agreed.

_Stay calm_ , Lenk told himself as he watched the Serrant fume. _This might be better. Neither Asper nor Dread is paying attention. We can still salvage this, we can still—_

_Kill._

The thought leapt, again, unbidden to his mind. He blinked, as though he had just taken a wrong turn.

_Run_ , he corrected himself.

_Kill_ , his mind insisted.

And, like a spark that heralds the disastrous fire to come, the sudden concern on his face sparked Quillian's suspicion. Her glance was a whirlwind, carrying that fire and giving it horrific life as it swept from the companions, standing tensed and ready, to the escape vessel.

By the time it settled on Lenk, wide with shock and fury, he could see his plan consumed in that fire, precious ash on the wind.

"She knows," Lenk whispered harshly to Kataria. "She _knows_."

"Who cares?" the shict growled. "Stick to your plan."

"What? Shove her in, too?"

"No, shove her _over_. She'll sink like a stone in all that armour." She paused, ears flattening against her head. "It was my idea, though, so she counts as my kill."

"Deserters," Quillian hissed, "are the most grievous of sinners."

_Damn it, damn it, damn it_ , Lenk cursed as he watched her sword begin to slide out of its scabbard. _This complicates things. But we can still—_

_Kill._

"I suppose you would know," Denaos said with a thoughtful eye for the brand under her right eye, "wouldn't you?"

Her shock was plain on her face, the kind of naked awe that came from the knowledge of a secret revealed. Her lip quivered, her spare hand going to the red ink.

"You—"

"Yes," he replied smoothly. "Now, if you wouldn't mind scampering off to scrawl another oath on your forehead or something? We've got stratagems to—"

"You..." she hissed again, brimming with rage as she hoisted her sword, "you _dare_!"

There was a flash of steel, a blur of black. In the time it took to blink, the Serrant's sword was out and trembling, its point quivering at Asper's throat. The priestess's eyes were wide and unmoving, barely aware of what had happened as two broad hands clenched her arms tightly.

Denaos peered out from behind her, grinning broadly and whistling sharply at the blade a hair's width from the priestess's throat.

"Dear me." The rogue clicked his tongue chidingly. "You ought to be more careful, oughtn't you? That was nearly another oath right there."

Quillian's eyes were wide, the bronze covering her knuckles rattling as she quivered horribly. Empty horror stared out from behind her gaze, as though her mind had fled at the very thought of what she had nearly done. It was an expression not entirely unfamiliar to Lenk, but it was usually plastered on the faces of the dying.

"I... I didn't mean..." She looked at Asper pleadingly. "I would never..."

_This is it_ , Lenk thought, _she's distracted. Denaos has a grip on Asper. Time to—_

_Kill._

_No, time to run. We have to—_

_KILL!_

_WE HAVE TO RUN!_

"Now," he whispered.

"What?" Kataria asked.

" _NOW, GENTLEMEN, NOW!_ "

The voice of the Cragsman was accompanied by many others, boiling over the railings of the ship like a stew. The panicked cries of the sailors, mingled with Argaol's shrieks for order, were hurled into the broth, creating a thick, savoury aroma that Lenk well recognised.

Battle.

_Damn it._

# _Two_

# BLOOD AND SALT

In the span of a breath, colour and sound exploded.

They came surging over the railings in numbers unfathomable, the twisting wire of their tattoos blending together to create some horrible skeleton of black and blue outside the tide of flesh they arrived on. Their zeal was loud, joyous, the song of impending slaughter joined by the humming of their upraised swords and the clinking harmony of the chains they came clambering across.

"Now, _now_!" Denaos cried, lunging at the rigging and pulling a knife out. "We can still make it!"

" _What?_ " Asper's expression drifted from incredulous to furious. "You _were_ planning on deserting?"

"Oh, come on," the rogue protested sharply, "like you weren't expecting this!"

"I knew it," Quillian snarled. She shoved herself in front of Asper, blade extended. "Stay behind me, Priestess. The danger is not yet great enough that I cannot deal with a deserter first."

" _I say, look lively, gentlemen!_ "

In the sound of whistling metal, the Serrant was proven violently wrong. The hatchet came whirling over the sailors' heads, a bird of iron and wood that struck the woman squarely in her chest. A human gong unhinged, she went collapsing to the deck, Asper quickly diving to catch her.

"Well, there you are," Denaos said. "Providence. Now, let's _go_!"

"No!" Kataria's bow was already in her hand, arrow kissing the string. "Even if we get that thing off, we won't get far."

As if to reinforce her point, a flock of hatchets came flying over the railings. The bold and unlucky sailors who had rushed forth to intercept the boarders went down under the sound of crunching bone and splashing liquid. The first of the boarders came sweeping over the railing, yet more of the thirsty weapons in their hands.

"Dread!" Kataria snarled, seizing the boy by the arm and shoving him forwards. "Do something!"

"Right... right..." He stepped forwards hesitantly. "I can... do something." He cleared his throat, then glanced over his shoulder to see if Asper was watching. "Er... you like fire, don't you?"

" _NOW!_ " Kataria shrieked in unison with the wailing weapons.

The boy's eyes snapped wide open, hand up instinctively as he whirled about to face the onslaught of metal wings. His lips twisted, bellowing a phrase that hurt to hear, crimson light sparking behind his eyes.

The air rippled before him, hatchets slowing in their twisting flight, before finally stopping and falling to the deck.

"Well, hell," Denaos grunted, "we can just have him do that and we'll be fine!"

"We can't leave!" Asper protested. "Quillian is hurt."

"So she can stay behind and be a decoy!" the rogue retorted. "Am I the _only_ one who's thinking here?"

"We don't have time for this," Kataria growled. Her eyes, along with everyone else's, turned towards Lenk, who was watching the ensuing fight impassively. "What do we do?"

He did not hear them. He did not feel her hand on his shoulder. Everything seemed to die; the wind ceased to blow, the sky ceased to move, the sea ceased to churn. He felt his eyes closing of their own volition, as though something reached out with icy fingers and placed them on his eyelids.

And that something reached out, whispered on a breathless voice into his ear.

When he opened his eyes again, there were no more enemies. There were no Cragsmen, no pirates, no sailors rushing forth to meet them. All he could see before him were fields of wheat, swaying delicately in the wind he could not feel. All he could hear was the whisper of their insignificance.

All he could feel was the blade in his hand and his boots moving under his feet.

"Lenk! _LENK!_ " Kataria shrieked after him as he tore away from them, rushing to the railing.

"Well, fine," Denaos said, "see? He volunteered to be the decoy. It's a non-issue."

The others fell silent; she continued to shout. He still didn't hear her. The timbers quaked under him as several pairs of feet added their rhythm to his charge. Emboldened by his actions, possibly, or spurred on by the wordless call to battle Argaol sent from the helm.

He didn't care.

His eyes were for the pirates that just now set their feet upon the timbers. His ears were for the sound of their last hatchets flying past his ears and over his head as he ducked low. His blade was for the man that just now set a hand upon the railing.

The sword lashed out quickly, catching the boarder by surprise as the Cragsman looked to see where his projectile had landed. It bit deeply, plunging below the pirate's breastbone and sinking into his flesh.

His breath lasted an eternity, even as his mouth filled with his own life. The pirate looked down to see his own horror reflected in the steel, then looked up and Lenk saw his own eyes reflected in his foe's unblinking gaze as the light guttered out behind them.

Chaff from wheat.

He pulled hard, his blade wedged so deeply in the man that he came tumbling onto the deck. Lenk smashed his boot against the man's throat and pulled again, jerking his sword free in a spattering arc.

His senses were selective, ignoring the sound of sailors colliding into their foes in favour of the sound of feet coming up behind him. He whirled, lashing out with his blade, not caring who it was that had dared to try to ambush him.

Sparks sputtered in a quick and hasty embrace as his sword caught the pirate's cutlass. It was enough to drive the man back with a surprised grunt, enough to give Lenk room to manoeuvre. He sprang backwards, felt something collide with his heel.

He looked.

A sailor; he recognised the face, if not the name. Such a task was difficult though, given that a hatchet had lodged itself in said visage, leaving little more than half a gasping mouth and one very surprised eye. At that, Lenk's own eyes widened and the world returned to him.

Battle.

He could barely remember what had brought him this far: the fields of wheat, the unmoving sky and the silent screaming. What stood before him now was not something to be scythed down carelessly, but a man, towering and swinging his cutlass wildly.

Surprised, but not shocked, Lenk brought his blade up to defend. He felt the blow more solidly this time, shaking down to his bones. Behind his opponent, other tattooed, leering faces erupted over the railings, rushing to meet the defenders. He heard feet shuffling, bodies hitting the deck behind him. He was surrounded.

_Imbecile_ , he thought. _At what point did this seem like a good idea?_ His foe swung again, he darted to the side. _Charging headlong? Who does that?_ He lunged, sought the pirate's chest and caught his blade instead. _Well, Gariath does, but he's... well, you know._

An errant kick caught him, sent him staggering backwards. His foe, apparently, had long legs. Long arms, too, Lenk noted; this wouldn't be a fight he could win if it continued to be this dance.

_Run away_ , he thought, _escape through the crowd and you can—_

_Kill._

_No, no! Stop that! You just have to get away long enough to—_

_Fight._

_NO! If... if you can't escape, just keep him busy. Keep him distracted long enough for Denaos to stab him in the back or Kataria to shoot him in the neck or—_

_Alone._

"What?" he asked his own thoughts.

He whipped his gaze about the carnage that the deck had become. He could see flesh, faces rising up and down from a sea into which the sailors and Cragsmen had blended seamlessly. But they were only faces filled with fear or covered in tattoos. He could see no sign of a skinny youth, a tall and lanky cockroach, a flashing silver pendant.

Or, he noted ruefully, twitching ears and bright green eyes.

Whatever twinge of despair he might have felt must have made itself apparent on his face, for when he turned his attentions back to his opponent, the Cragsman had discarded his battle-hardened concentration in exchange for an amused grin.

"I say, dear boy," he said, "you look to be possessed of a touch of the doubting dung beetle."

"I'm fine, thanks," Lenk grunted in reply, hoisting his blade up before him.

"More's the pity, I suppose. Had you, indeed, succumbed to the previous hypothesis of being a man of the utmost practicality and, synonymously, cowardice, I would have invited you to congenially excuse yourself from the anticipated social of disaster about to be wreaked."

Lenk blinked. "I'm sorry, did you just offer me an escape route or invite me to tea?" He made a half-hearted thrust at the man, who easily darted away. "Either way, you would seem to be in a poor position to guarantee either. You're not the captain."

"Indeed. Our dearest chum and astute tutor Rashodd has excused himself from this particular bloody fete to better assure you of his honour. All we wish to partake of is the women in your charter, as well as a portion of your cargo, us being pirates and all." He tilted his head slightly. "And a particular priest who has decided to associate himself with your uncouth captain."

Lenk drew back at the mention, suddenly cocking a brow.

"Evenhands?"

"Ah, the delicate ladies of your employ would certainly be unimpressed at the object of your concern, sir."

"What do you want with the Lord Emissary?"

The Cragsman offered a smirk coy as he could manage with lips like a shedding centipede. "A proper gentleman never tells," the pirate said, advancing upon the young man and grinning as his opponent took a step backwards. "Unfortunately, in the time it took to deliver that stirring bout of eloquence, my patience, and thusly the offer, did decline. Alas..." He raised his cutlass high. "Generosity wasted is generosity insulted, as they—"

He was interrupted suddenly by the sound of an out-of-tune lute being plucked, followed by a whistling shriek that ended in a wet, warm punctuation. The pirate jerked suddenly, he and Lenk sharing the same expression of confusion before they both looked down to see the arrow's shaft quivering from between two of the Cragsman's ribs.

"Ah," he slurred, mouth glutted with red, "that would do it, wouldn't it?"

Lenk watched him until he stopped twitching, then turned his stare upwards.

He caught sight of Kataria's smile first, her canines broad and prominent over the heads of the combatants as she stood upon the railing. She held up a hand, wiggling four slender fingers before scampering up the rigging, a trio of Cragsmen at her heels.

It was a well-believed idea of less-practical men that removing oneself from the reach of their opponent was low. _Scampering_ away from them, however, was simply insulting. Kataria doubtlessly knew that. With dexterity better befitting a murderous squirrel, she turned, drew and loosed a pair of arrows at them, giggling wildly as they fell back, one dead, one wounded and the third apparently ready to find easier prey.

The saying was old and well-worn amongst men, but true enough that the pointy-eared savages had adopted it as their own.

_Shicts don't fight fair._

The Cragsmen, too, seemed equally aware of the phrase and voiced their retort in a whirl of thrown hatchets. She twisted, narrowly avoiding the gnawing blades, but found herself caught in the rigging as they glided over her head and bit through the rope. She shrieked, fell, disappeared into the melee.

_Go back_ , was his first thought. _Find her. Save her._ But his legs were frozen, his head pulling towards another direction. _She's a shict. Savage. She doesn't need saving. Keep going, keep going and—_

_Kill._ The thought came again, more urgent this time. It hurt his head to think it, chilled his skull as though it came on icy breath. _Fight._

He couldn't help but agree; there would be time enough to worry about Kataria later, likely when she was dead. For the moment, something else caught his attention.

The sound of wheels turning with such force as to be heard over the din of battle reached his ears. A groaning of wood and metal sounded across the gap of the sea. Lenk could see, over the heads of the pirates who remained aboard the _Linkmaster_ to hold their boarding chains steady, a monstrosity being pushed towards the railing.

"A siege engine?" he muttered to himself, not being able to imagine what else the wheeled thing might be. "If they can afford a damn siege engine, why are they raiding _us_?"

No answer was forthcoming from either the four Cragsmen pushing it, nor from the visor-bound gaze of Rashodd. It was not them that Lenk looked at, but rather the wisp of a man standing by the side of the titanic captain.

Or at least, Lenk _thought_ it was a man. Swaddled in conservative black where the pirates displayed their tattoos brazenly, the creature's clothing was the least curious thing about him. He was heads shorter than the others, looking like a mere shadow next to Rashodd, and his head resembled a bleached bone long scavenged of meat: hairless, pale, perfectly narrow.

Whether he saw Lenk staring at him or not, the young man did not know. But as the insignificant person's lips twisted slightly, the bone showing a sudden marring crack, Lenk couldn't help but feel as though it was intended for him.

_To your left._

The thought came with greater clarity, with greater will, as though it was no longer even a part of his own mind, but another voice altogether. Lenk was highly surprised to hear it.

Not quite as surprised as he was to feel the rounded guard of a cutlass smash against his jaw, however.

He staggered backwards, his heel catching a dead pirate's arm as though his foe reached out in death. His senses reeled as his sword fell from his hand, his vision blurred as he felt blood trickle down his nose. He looked up, blinking and shaking his head; the first thing he made out, shortly before the tattoos, was a long, banana-coloured grin.

"It could hardly be said of me that so noble a man of the Crags does not endeavour to make good on his word," the pirate said. "But I do beg your pardon, kind sir. You do us no honour by sitting quietly and watching." He looked down at the man Lenk had tripped over and frowned. "Nor by the theft of so fine a fellow as this gentleman was to me."

"I'm... sorry?" Lenk's voice was hoarse and weak, his hands trembling as he reached for his fallen sword.

"Ah, of course, your apology is accepted with the utmost gratitude," the pirate replied. "Even if the idea of repairing such egregious breaches of conduct is more than a tad absurd."

His fingers felt numb, unable to sense the warmth of the hilt, the chill of the steel. He tried to regain his footing, the ringing in his skull and the uncertainty beneath his feet conspiring to keep him down. The Cragsman seemed less than concerned with the young man rising, if his very visible pity was any suggestion.

"I don't suppose it would help if I said I wouldn't do it again?" Lenk asked, trying to talk through his dizziness.

"I'm more than a mite remorseful to inform you that such would hardly be the proper retort." The pirate shook his head and levelled his blade at the young man's face. "Regrettably, this is the point in proper protocol where we resolve and absolve alike through the gouging of eyes and spilling of entrails upon the uncaring deck, if you'll excuse the crudeness."

"Ah."

Absently, Lenk regretted not having thought of something better for his last words.

That thought was banished as his hands thrust up weakly, catching the pirate's wrist and holding the blade fast a hair's length away from his face. The gesture was futile, both Lenk and his foe knew; his arms trembled, his fingers could not feel the skin and metal they sought to hold back. His breath gave up before he did, becoming short, rasping gasps in his throat.

He clenched his jaw, shut his eyes, felt his arms begin to yield.

_No._

That thought lasted for but a moment, while the moment existed as a drop of moisture on the pirate's blade, dangling for a silent eternity. Lenk felt his breath run cold in his lungs, felt his blood freeze in his veins and time with it.

_Fight._

His muscles did not strengthen beneath his skin, rather they denied strength entirely in favour of the frigid fingers that crept through him. In one long, cold breath, he felt the numbness sweep up his arms, into his chest.

Into his mind.

_Deny!_

The thought grew stronger, louder with every twitch of his hands, every fingerbreadth he gave to the blade. It echoed through his head, down into his chest, into an arm that involuntarily broke from his opponent's grip and sought his fallen blade.

Through shut eyes, he could see the moment dangling off his opponent's sword.

He felt it drop.

" _KILL!_ "

Blue flashed, pitiless and cold, behind his eyelids. Eyes not his own stared back into him. Teeth that were not his clenched. Fingers that were not his gripped a hilt. The thought did not leap to his mind, did not whisper inside him.

It had a voice.

It spoke.

Lenk felt something move, a snap of cold air that sent his hair whipping about his face. He opened his eyes and stared down the long steel blade of a sword he didn't remember swinging, life dripping down it, upon which the Cragsman's shock was violently etched.

He looked up, just as surprised as his opponent, and met the man's eyes. No fear this time, no moment of futile hope and extinguished life. The pirate stared at him with eyes that could reflect nothing, the blow having come too swiftly to grant him even the privilege of a horrified death.

He mouthed, "No fair."

And fell to the deck.

The numbness did not flee from Lenk's limbs, but rather seeped into his body, as water disappearing into the earth. He felt suddenly weak, legs soft under a body suddenly unbearably heavy, breath offensively warm and jagged in his throat.

Slowly, he staggered to his feet. Slowly, he felt the sun again, heard the din of battle. But the warmth was faint, the sounds distant. He could feel the chill, he was aware of it as he was of his own shadow. It seeped away, dissipated into blood that began to run warm, leaving only a single thought given a voice behind.

" _More._ "

"What?" he gasped, his own voice suddenly alien to himself.

" _More._ "

"I... I don't—"

"MORE, YOU IDIOT! THERE'S MORE COMING!"

Argaol's roar came from the helm with desperation. Lenk glanced up to see four sailors locked in combat with a pair of Cragsmen, desperately trying to keep the blade-wielding pirates away from their captain with their staves. The dark man himself looked directly at Lenk, pointing to the railing.

He shrieked, of course, as he usually did when addressing the young man, but Lenk didn't hear him. He didn't need to as he saw two more tattooed men leap from a boarding chain onto the deck. Instead of rushing towards the battle to aid their fellows, they instead cast wary looks about, hungry eyes and bare feet immediately setting off for the companionway.

_Evenhands._

"Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, _damn_."

A curse for every step as he charged after the boarders. Ironic, he thought absently as he pushed his way through the melee, that moments ago he was ready to leave the Lord Emissary to die. Then again, it was hardly surprising; so long as he had been hit in the face once today, he might as well get paid for it.

Which wasn't likely to happen if his employer was gutted below decks.

"Protect the charter, boys!" Argaol roared to his own crew. "Protect the Lord Emissary! The Gods demand it and smile on us for it!"

Lenk's pace was quick as he leapt over bodies, side-stepped brawls, darted around stray blades. The battle raged with no clear victor; he passed corpses both familiar and tattooed. But the sailors held, the Cragsmen had not overrun them yet, and the two boarders were not as swift as Lenk was. For a moment, he felt a rush of victory as he drew closer.

For a moment, he thought that maybe the Gods _did_ smile upon him.

That belief died with the sudden twist of an ankle and a shriek as he recalled that the Gods loved irony far more than they loved their servants. He hit a patch of red-tinged seawater, his boot slid out from under him and he went sprawling, sword clattering to the deck.

There was barely enough time to spew out a curse before he lunged to his feet, seizing his weapon. Too late; he saw the two boarders vanish into the shadows of the companionway, laughter anticipating the impending looting ringing in their wake. Once inside, they would easily lose any pursuit in the maze of cargo holds and cabins, chopping up passengers at will, cutting and pillaging in a few breaths. And he was too late to stop it.

_Too late, too late, too late, too late, too—_

_Stop it! Stop_ , he scolded himself as he forced his boots into a run. _Fight first, fear later._

Just as the darkness of the companionway loomed up before him like a gaping maw, he was forced to skid to a halt. Something squirmed in the shadows. Someone screamed.

He threw himself to the side just in time to see the body of one of the invaders sail through the air, landing limply on the deck with his neck twisted at an angle at which necks clearly were not meant to twist.

"G-GET AWAY FROM ME!" the remaining pirate squealed from inside. He came shrieking out of the gloom, weapon lost, mouth gibbering. "MONSTER! THEY'VE GOT A GODS-DAMNED DRAG—"

His scream died in his throat, his feet torn from the deck as a great red arm ending in a set of brutal claws reached out from the darkness to wrap about his neck. The hand tightened, the sound of bones creaking between its massive fingers. Lenk cringed, but only for a moment. He knew the smile that then spread across his face was unwholesome, but he could hardly help himself.

The sight of Gariath brought out all sorts of loathsome emotions in people.

The dragonman emerged from the companionway, holding the writhing pirate aloft with an arm rippling with crimson muscle. He surveyed the battle through black eyes, his captive a mere afterthought.

The expression across his long snout was unreadable as he swung his horned head back and forth. The ear-frills at the side of his head twitched in time with the leathery wings folded on his massive back, as if stretching after a long nap.

"I thought you weren't coming up," Lenk said.

Gariath looked down at the young man, who only came up to the lowest edge of his titanic chest. He sneered, far more unpleasantly than either Lenk or Kataria could ever hope to, baring rows of sharp, ivory teeth.

"It was stifling below," he grunted. "I came up for air and find humans dying." He glanced over the melee. "I can't say I'm not pleasantly surprised."

He became aware of the captive pirate thrashing in his hand, pounding at the thick red wrist wrapped in a silver bracer. His scaly eye-ridges furrowed as he turned to the companionway.

His snarl was short and businesslike as he slammed the pirate's face against the wooden doorframe, staining it red. His roar was loud and boastful as he drove it forwards again, bone fragments splintering with the frame. His snort was quick and derisive as he crushed the pirate once more, reducing a formerly grisly visage to featureless red pulp. Already bored with his now-unmoving prey, the dragonman dropped him to the deck, raising a clawed foot to rest upon his head.

"Who needs to die?" he asked.

"Pirates," Lenk replied.

Gariath ran his obsidian glare from one end of the ship to the other in long, patient stares.

"Which ones are the pirates?"

"What do you mean, 'Which ones are the pirates?'"

"You all look the same to me," Gariath grunted, folding his arms over his chest. "Ugly, stupid, smelly."

"So look for the ugliest, stupidest and smelliest ones and give it your best guess," Lenk replied. "Are you going to help or not?"

The dragonman's thick red legs tensed. His weight shifted to the foot resting on the pirate's skull. Lenk winced and turned away at the sound of something cracking, the sight of something grey and sticky oozing out onto the blood-soaked deck. Gariath snorted.

"Maybe."

Contrary to what her elders had said of the teeming race, Kataria didn't find humans entirely awful. The only thing that truly annoyed her about them was their grossly underrated ability to adapt. It was a subject of routine discussion amongst those few shicts who grew old enough to stop killing their round-eared foes and start theorising about better ways to kill them.

" _They're just monkeys, of course_ ," it had often been said. " _They spend theirwhole lives searching for food and, when they don't find it, they just run around in circles, smelling their fingers and eating their own scat._"

In the year since she had followed a silver-haired man out of the woods, she had been keeping track of her own addenda that she might someday offer by the fire. And, as the possibility of her living that long quickly began to dwindle, she thought, not for the first time, that the elders' description neglected to mention that, when faced with food, humans proved particularly motivated.

And the Cragsmen surrounding her proved to be particularly clever monkeys.

_Should've stayed in the rigging_ , she told herself, _should've climbed back up. Easier target for hatchets, sure, but you could've shot more of them._

She had hardly expected them to figure out what arrows were, much less corner her against the railing. But they had adapted; they had found her, pursued her, showing the extreme discourtesy of not giving her enough room to shoot them.

And now a trio of them surrounded her, their eyes locked on the gleaming arrowhead that drifted menacingly from body to body.

One shot. One arrow was all that kept them at bay, each one hesitant to rush, to force her to choose him to plant the angry metal seed in. After that, they would be upon her faster than she could pull another one free of her quiver.

Her ears twitched, recalling the threats and declarations they had inflicted upon her from the safety of their ship. Those same threats, that same hunger lurked behind their eyes now, dormant for fear that she would see them in their gazes and extinguish them with an arrow.

The sea roared behind her; the terror of humans was an invitation for her. It would be better that way, she knew, to kill one and then hurl herself into the froth. She would die, certainly, but it was infinitely better than the alternative, better than submitting to the human disease.

_A bit late for that, isn't it?_ she asked herself, resentful. She forced that from her head, though, determined to think.

Options were unsurprisingly limited, however: shoot and die in the sea, shoot and die in the arms of a human... skip the third party and just shoot herself?

" _Get down, Kat!_ "

She heard Asper's voice first, Dreadaeleon's second. The instant she recognised the alien babble emanating from the boy's mouth, she fell to the deck as her assailants looked to the source.

Then screamed.

Fire roared over her head in a wicked plume, the smell of stray strands of her own hair burning filled her nostrils. The stench of burning flesh, however, quickly overpowered it, just as the angry howl of flame overpowered the shrieks of the Cragsmen. She could feel the deck reverberate as feet thundered past her, carrying walking pyres over the railing to plunge into the water below with a hiss.

She got up, patted her head for any stray flames, then looked at the fast-fading plumes of steam rising from the sea.

_That works, too._

"Are you all right?" Asper's voice was joined by the sound of bronze on wood as she dragged Quillian to the shict's position. "One moment. I can check you over as soon as—"

"Oh, yes, sure, be certain to check her over." Dreadaeleon wore a look of ire as he walked beside her, one hand folded neatly behind him, the other flicking embers from his fingers. "I mean, it's not like I did something incredible like _conjure fire from my own body heat_."

"Like _that's_ hard," Kataria growled. She pointed out to sea. "Those don't count, by the way."

"Don't... what?"

"Only kills you do yourself count. Wizard kills aren't real kills."

" _Real_ kills?" Asper looked up, disgusted. "These are human lives we're taking!"

" _We?_ " Kataria asked with a sneer. "What did you do aside from try to choke me with moral indignation?"

"I..." The priestess stiffened, looking down with a frown. "I can fight."

"Don't waste your breath on a reply, Priestess," came a mutter from the deck, ire unimpeded by her barely conscious stagger. Quillian rose to her feet on trembling legs, turning a scowl upon the shict. "One can hardly expect in-humans to understand things like mercy and compassion."

"What? Your sword is just for show, then?" Kataria asked, smiling.

Quillian did not smile back, did not even offer a reply.

Perhaps it was the clarity that the hatchet blow had robbed her of that caused the Serrant's mask of contempt to crack, or perhaps it was that she simply didn't want to bother keeping it up anymore. But in that moment, the displays of righteous indignation and palls of virtuous disgust fell away from Quillian's face.

Hate remained in abundance.

It was a pure hate that Kataria had seen before, albeit rarely, a hate that flowed like an ancestral disease. Quillian hated Kataria, hated her mother, hated her father, hated everything with pointed ears as she hated nothing else, not even the pirates swarming about the deck.

"Go! _GO!_ He'll kill us all!"

_Or running, anyway_ , she thought as a tattooed blur rushed past her.

The moment of tense readiness collectively and quickly faded into befuddlement as the Cragsmen rushed towards the companions and then, without even looking, right past them. Precious steel was forgotten, wounded men were ignored, terror shone through every inked face. Kataria watched, baffled and wondering whether shooting them in the back counted.

More men rushed past, these ones belonging to the _Riptide_ 's crew. She knew the source of the panic before she even turned about, much less before she heard the screaming.

"MONSTER!" one of the Cragsmen howled. "RUN, GENTS! THE LOUTS BROUGHT A BLOODY DRAGONMAN!"

Blood-soaked, she thought, would be a more accurate descriptor of the towering creature striding casually after them. A small heap of broken bodies, twisted limbs and ripped flesh lay behind him: the brave and foolish few who had decided he might not be quite as tough as he looked.

Gariath looked as unconcerned as someone covered in gashes and blood could be. Almost bored, she thought, as he stepped upon, rather than over, the bodies before him, continuing a slow pursuit after the fleeing pirates.

That expression gave her the courage to shoot him a pair of scowls. Once for his cold, arrogant stride when he clearly had only about one more kill to his name than she did, _if that_. Her deepest scowl, accompanied by a matching frown, was for the fact that he walked alone.

Lenk was nowhere to be seen.

"Stop running, rats," Gariath growled. "The _Rhega_ were made for better fights than you can offer."

A body stirred on the deck. A Cragsman, apparently trying to hide amongst his dead fellows, came sprinting off the deck, only to crash back down as a corpse selfishly tripped him.

He did not remain there for long, however.

"No! _NO!_ " he shrieked, a pair of clawed hands gripping him by the heels. "GET AWAY, BEAST!"

"Oh, Talanas." Asper flashed a sickened look as Gariath pulled the man off the deck. "Gariath, don't."

The dragonman didn't seem to notice her, much less acknowledge her words. Kataria stepped forwards, looking past his terrified victim and into his black eyes.

"Where's Lenk?"

He looked at her as he might an insect, shrugging.

"Dead?" she asked.

"Probably," he grunted. "He's human. Small, stupid... not quite as stupid as the rest of you, but still—"

"Put me down," the Cragsman pleaded, "please. _PLEASE!_ "

"Shut up," Kataria snarled at him. Her eyebrows rose suddenly. "Wait a moment." She knelt before him, looking into eyes that threatened to leap from their sockets. "Did you kill a silver-haired man?"

"Looks kind of like a silver-haired child," Dreadaeleon piped up.

"You're one to talk," Asper replied snidely, "and he's not _that_ short."

"I... I didn't kill anyone! I swear!" the pirate squealed.

"You're only making this more unpleasant." Gariath sighed. "Shut up and see if you can't die without soiling yourself."

"How come you didn't watch him?" Kataria asked the dragonman.

"If he can't watch himself, he deserves whatever happens to him." Gariath snorted. "Hold that thought."

"NO!" the man screamed as his captor pried his legs apart with no great effort. "It's... it's all cultural! I was pressed into service! Please! _PLEASE!_ "

One by one, groans of impending horror escaped the companions. No one dared to look up, much less protest, as Gariath drew his leg back like a hammer and aimed squarely between the pirate's legs. Kataria stared for as long as she could, until the sight of the dragonman's grin finally made her look down.

There weren't hands big enough to block out the crunching sound that followed.

She looked up just in time to see a flash of red and brown as Gariath tossed the man overboard like fleshy offal. That, she knew, was about as much honour as he would offer creatures smaller than himself. That thought, as well as his massive, suddenly wet foot, kept her tense as she addressed him.

"We have to go back," she said, "we have to find Lenk."

He glanced over his shoulder. "No."

"But—"

"If he's alive, he's alive," he snorted. "If he's dead... no great loss."

_He's right, you know_ , she told herself. _It's one human. There are many of them. You shouldn't want to look back, shouldn't care. It's one human, one more disease._

She sighed, offering no further resistance as he pushed his way past her, trying to convince herself of the truth of her thoughts as he moved through the companions. No one bothered to stop him. No one she cared about, at least.

"So!" Quillian placed a bronzed hand on her hip, unmoving as Gariath walked forwards. "The battlefield is further profaned by the presence of abominations? There is hardly any redemption for this—"

"Shut up."

The dragonman's grunt was as thunderous as the sound of the back of his hand cracking against the Serrant's face. Her armour creaked once as she clattered to the deck and again as he stepped on and over her.

"What... I..." Asper gritted her teeth at his winged back. "I _just_ pulled her _off_ the ground!"

"Don't encourage him," Kataria warned. "Come on. We look for Lenk. Gariath handles the rest."

"Oh, is that all?" Dreadaeleon pointed over her shoulder. "There's one part of our problem solved, then." He coughed. "By me." He sniffed. "Again."

She turned, fought hard to hide her smile at the sight of the young man rushing across the deck. That task became easier with every breath he drew closer. For with every breath, she saw the blood on his sword, the uncharacteristic fury in his stride...

The angry cold in his narrowed eyes.

"Does this mean we have to help Gariath?" Dreadaeleon asked, sighing.

She ignored him, cried out to the other short human.

"Lenk!"

"Chain," he grunted as he sped past. " _CHAIN!_ "

It occurred to him, vaguely, that the voice snarling those words from his mouth was not entirely his. It occurred to him that she looked at him with those same, studying eyes and he had ignored her. It occurred to him that he was weary, dizzy, surrounded by death and rushing heedlessly into more.

What did not occur to him was that he should stop.

Something was driving him like a horse, spurring him on. Something compelled his feet to move beneath him, to ignore the footsteps following him. Something forced his hand on his sword, his eyes on the mother chain.

Something spoke.

" _Go._ "

The chain grew larger with every step, as did the sight of the crimson hulk in the corner of his eye. Gariath had stopped before the chain, muscles tensed and quivering. No matter, Lenk thought, he must keep going, he must fight, he must obey the need within him.

In some part of his mind, he knew this to be wrong. He felt the fear that crept upon him, the terror that the voice was some part of the void to which his mind was slowly being lost. Madness; what else could it be? What else could compel him to fight, to rush into impossible odds? What else could override reason and logic with its own frigid thoughts?

" _Stop._ "

He obeyed, not knowing what else he could do.

The reason became apparent quickly enough, reflected in the jagged head of a bloodied axe clenched in meaty, tattooed paws. The Cragsman was massive, apparently of the same stock that had bred the giant Rashodd, with grey hair hanging about a grizzled visage in wild braids.

He stood upon defiant legs, regarding the companions with eyes unwary, challenging them to take the mother chain. Lenk looked past his massive shoulders to the chain itself, swaying precariously as leathery bodies twisted over each link.

" _Reinforcements._ "

"And this one's the vanguard," Lenk grunted in reply to the thought.

"Meant for me..."

Lenk glanced up at the dragonman as he heard the others come to a halt behind him.

"What?"

"This is it," Gariath whispered, taking a step forwards. "This one was made for me."

"That's stupid," Kataria said, "I can put an arrow in him from—"

" _MINE!_ "

She recoiled, with everyone else, as he whirled on her, teeth bared and claws outstretched. "Those other ones were weak, stupid. This one..." He turned back to the massive man, snorting. "I might die."

She blinked. "What?"

"More than a chance of that, dear boy," the vanguard boomed, hefting his weapon over his shoulder. "Defiance of man's law is our trade, but expunging an abomination is the work of the Gods, I am assured."

"Yes." Gariath's eyes lit like black fires, his hands tightened into fists. " _Yes._ " His wings unfurled behind him, tail lashing angrily. His jaws craned open, a roar tore free from his throat. " _YES!_ "

"COME, DEMON!" the Cragsman howled, beating his chest. "COME AND TASTE THE—"

His speech was cut short as his body stiffened with a sudden spasm. He smacked his lips, furrowed his brow, as though he had just forgotten what he was going to say. When he opened his mouth to finish the challenge, a faint trickle of red appeared at his lips.

"Well... that's..." The light behind his eyes extinguished along with the fire in Gariath's as the pirate collapsed to his knees. "That's..." He groped uncertainly at his chest, seeking to scratch an itch beneath the skin. "That's... rather..."

He fell face down. A bright-red flower bloomed from his neck, dripping onto the wood.

Denaos's grin was short-lived as he looked at his companions, wiping clean the long knife in his hands.

"That one was _MINE_!" Gariath exploded in a roar, the deck shaking with the force of his stomp. "He was put here to fight _ME_!"

"He just crawled over the chain, actually," Dreadaeleon said quietly.

"You gutted him like a fish!" Asper said, grimacing at the corpse. "You killed him as if he was nothing!"

"Is that... praise?" Denaos shook his head. "No, no. Of course, you're whining. Isn't that typical? I'm demeaned for not killing anyone and the _moment_ I save us all some trouble by indulging in an act of practical butchery, _I'm_ suddenly at fault?"

" _I_ never asked you to take a life," Asper protested.

" _You_ don't even think that it might be necessary!" Kataria spat back. "If you had your way, we'd all sit around praying to some weak round-ear god for an answer while they sodomised us with steel!"

"Don't talk to her like that!" Dreadaeleon piped up, trying hard not to wither under her scowl. "She's right to have conviction, even if it is in imaginary beings on high." He blinked, eyes going wide. "Did I say that part aloud or think it?"

A hand cracking against his head made a proper answer.

"Who told you to even scurry out of your hole, rat?" Gariath growled. " _You_ were meant to eat filth and drink your own tears. The _Rhega_ ," he thumped his chest, "were made to kill and die."

"Plenty of time for the latter," Denaos replied, holding his arms out wide. "Humanity didn't fight its way to the top of the food chain to be condescended to by lizards."

_Well, that figures_ , Lenk thought to himself. _The one time he musters the spine to confront someone, it's one of our own._

" _Useless..._ " the voice muttered.

_Agreed._ He blinked. _No, wait. Don't talk to it._

" _Fight._ "

_Fight back! Resist! It's madness, you know it's madness! You aren't mad! You can—_

" _NOW._ "

The voice came with a sudden insistence, a frigid howl that drowned out the sounds of argument, the sounds of clinking chains. The voice left no room for fear or for thought as it gnashed its teeth, fangs sinking into his brain, grinding his skull between them, filling his mind with fury.

" _Command._ "

"S-stop..." he whimpered.

" _Lead!_ "

"Hurts—"

" _KILL!_ "

" _STOP!_ "

He didn't know how loud he had screamed, but everyone had snapped to attention. He didn't know what expression he wore on his face that caused them to look at him so.

He didn't care.

"Dread," he snarled, pointing to the chain, "burn them."

"Right..." the boy said, swallowing hard and moving towards the links. "But I need time to—"

" _NOW!_ "

No time even to stutter an agreement, the cold rigidity in Lenk infected Dreadaeleon as well. His fingers knotted together in a gesture that was painful to watch, his lips murmured a language that was painful to hear. Lenk watched him open his eyes, watched the crimson energy flower from behind his eyelids as tiny electric sparks began to dance along his sleeves.

" _Enemies._ "

"Right," Lenk muttered, spying the hatchet-bearing pirates move to the chain on the _Linkmaster_. "Kat."

"Uh-huh," she replied, already drawing the fletching to her cheek. The arrows sang in ugly harmony, wailing from her string to catch them in the throat and chest. She wasted no time in turning a smug grin upon Gariath. " _I_ win."

"What..." Asper asked, her voice as hesitant as her trembling hands, "what should I do?"

"What _can_ you do?" Lenk replied coldly, his mind focused on other things.

No cry had arisen from the _Linkmaster_ , none of the collective panic that had plagued them upon Gariath's appearance, not so much as a harsh word from Rashodd. The pirates simply took a collective step backwards, their expressions unnervingly serene. Even Rashodd appeared not at all displeased as failure loomed in his iron-clad face.

_Why?_

They parted like a wave of flesh, opening up a space at the railing. Lenk's eyes widened.

_The siege engine._

It rolled to the railing, a mass of iron and wood whose immediate purpose he could not decipher. A ballista? Of course, how else would they have got the chain across? Then why weren't they firing it?

"What are they waiting for?"

No answer was heard over the sound of Dreadaeleon's chant as it rose to an echoing crescendo. The sparks that were birthed on his sleeves grew into full electric snakes, crackling eagerly as they raced down his arms and into his knuckles. He extended his fingers, trembling as though they sought to jump free of their fleshy prisons, and knelt down to press two single fingers against the chain.

" _Yes..._ "

It came too quick for anyone to scream, the lightning leaping from his fingers and onto the chain with electric vigour. Men became insects in a hail of sparks, tattoos lost amidst the blackening of skin. They collapsed, fell into the water and were lost to the tide.

" _Good._ "

"Gariath," Lenk muttered.

The crimson hulk stared down at him for a moment, eyes narrowed, challenging him to give an order. Whatever the others had seen in Lenk that made them obey, he didn't see it or didn't care.

Inside his head, Lenk's mind clenched, as if agitated that the dragonman would not obey. Whether he finally resisted out of inner discipline or pure fear, Lenk kept such ire from reaching his lips. He did not break his stare from Gariath's black gaze, did not back down.

And when Gariath finally did move to the chain, he did not care why. He looked, instead, to the deck of the pirate ship and their siege engine. He spied the shadow there again, the man with the bone for a head who looked like some displaced spectre amongst the crowd. Again, the man met Lenk's gaze, again the man smiled.

The dragonman hooked his hands into the mother chain's clawed head, gripping it firmly. Snorting, he gave it a great shake, dislodging a corpse caught by the wrist in its links, throwing off the pirates who still tried to set foot on it. Lenk watched with narrowed eyes and empty thoughts.

Gariath grunted, muscles straining, wood cracking as he began to pull.

The shadow of a man held up a hand, waved it.

" _No._ "

Sailors flocked to the railing of the _Riptide_ , roaring challenges at their calm foes.

Two Cragsmen rushed to the engine, pulled a rope.

" _No!_ "

Gariath's wings unfurled like great sails, the wind filled with a shower of splinters as the chain's head came tearing loose. With a great iron wail for its lost charge, the mother chain collapsed into the sea and its little linked children followed, clinking squeals, while the _Riptide_ drank the wind and tore away from its captor.

Men cheered. Denaos and Kataria shared an unpleasant cackle at the victory. Dreadaeleon managed a smile, looking to Asper, who managed a sigh of weary relief. Gariath snorted disdainfully, folding his arms over his chest.

It was too soon for Lenk to rejoice, not while his ears were fixed to a sound.

The siege engine came to life without boulders or spears or arrows. It shifted upon its wooden wheels, an iron monstrosity of spikes and blades, swinging back and forth. It sang.

A church bell, he suspected, by the look and sound, but forged from a mould more misshapen than was intended for any godly instrument. Its chorus was no echoing monotone droning, but something of many voices that sang out in horrid, discordant harmony.

A shriek banged against a moan, raucous laughter scraped against agonised weeping, a wistful sigh ground against a violent roar. The bell spoke. The bell sang. And it did not fade from Lenk's ears, even as the _Linkmaster_ shrank in his eyes.

"That was it?"

Lenk turned to see scorn in Gariath's eyes, the dragonman looking down at him with scaly lips pulled into a snarl. The young man regarded him coldly, forcing the horrid song from his thoughts long enough to meet him with an equally contemptuous look.

"You got to kill someone, didn't you?"

"I barely bled," Gariath replied.

"That's... a problem, is it?"

Gariath regarded him carefully for a moment before snorting. He turned, forcing Lenk to duck the sweeping tail that lashed out spitefully behind him, and began to stalk along the deck.

"Don't call me again," he grunted, "unless there's real blood to be spilled."

"One wonders," Asper said snidely as he passed, "just how much blood needs to be spilled before it qualifies as 'real'."

Gariath did not reply, did not even seem to notice her or the bodies he crushed under his feet. That only seemed to cause her face to contort further, teeth grinding behind her lips. Her voice still brimming with ire, she turned to Lenk.

"I'm going to help the men remove the bodies, someone has to—" She hesitated, flinching, and seemed to exhale her anger in one long, weary sigh, offering the young man something of a smile. "At least it's over and we're safe."

"Yes, isn't that interesting?" Denaos commented as he walked away. "Violence solves yet another problem."

"That doesn't mean I have to like it."

"You don't, of course," he replied, "but what would you have done differently?"

She looked down, rubbing her arm. "Nothing, I suppose."

"Then let us content ourselves with the present, bloody and body-strewn as it may be."

"Don't act like you're some great warrior," Kataria snarled at his back. "You were more than willing to run away when it was still an option."

"I was," he said without turning around. "And if we had done as I suggested, there'd be much less dead and we'd _all_ be happy." He offered a limp-wristed wave as he headed for the companionway. "Let us consider this the next time we all decide that I'm not worth listening to."

Asper muttered something under her breath, fingering her pendant as she walked towards the sailors who were already pulling up bodies, sighing over their companions and tossing their fallen adversaries over the railing. Dreadaeleon made a move to follow, but staggered, leaning on the railing.

"I can..." He paused to take a deep breath, a thin sheen of sweat on his brow. "I can help. I'm... just a little winded, is all. Strain and all that. Just... just give me a moment."

"Take all the time you need," she said coldly. "There will be a lot of prayers to be said. I wouldn't want you to subject yourself to that kind of ordeal."

He made an awkward attempt to follow her after an even more awkward attempt to retort. Instead, he was left furrow-browed and sneering as he stalked the opposite way, leaning heavily on the railing.

"As though it's my fault I'm surrounded by the ignorant masses." He stopped, glowering at Lenk. " _You_ swing a big piece of metal and make a mess on the deck and _you_ get a smile." He poked himself hard in his sunken chest. " _I_ electrocute _three_ men as humanely as possible and _I'm_ the heathen?"

"Well," Lenk replied, admiring his own blade, "you must admit... it _is_ pretty large."

The boy's face turned as red as his eyes had just been as he staggered past the young man and disappeared into some corner of the ship, muttering under his breath.

Lenk paid it no mind as he walked to the railing and the angry chew-mark where the chain had been dislodged. The _Linkmaster_ continued to dominate the horizon, even as it became a black beetle on the water. Even as its prey continued to outrun it, he could see no hurry aboard, no frenzy of movement as orders were barked for the ship to give chase. It faded into the distance, until he could see nothing of the men aboard it, hear nothing of their voices.

But he continued to hear, continued to see. The bell's song lingered, echoing inside his head just as loudly as if it were next to him. Just as if they were before him, he could see the black-clad man's bone-white lips, twisted into a wide and knowing smile.

And, lingering behind them all like gently falling snow, the sound of a thought given a voice, muttering...

"Are you aware that we won?"

He whirled about with a start to see Kataria smiling, leaning on her bow. Her eyes were soft now, two emeralds gleaming lazily under heavy lids.

"If you want to cheer," she said, "I won't think any less of you than I already do."

"If there's anyone who should be cheering and demeaning themselves, it's you," he replied, glancing at the cleanup taking place along the deck. "Lots of dead humans... must be a good day for you."

"Only a few over a dozen," she said with a shrug. "Barely a dent in their numbers. Nothing worth celebrating."

"You're aware that I'm human, right? Because, really, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to take that remark."

"Well, it's not as if any of the humans I _like_ died." She followed his gaze as a drowsy-looking Quillian appeared to assist Asper. "In fact, several humans I don't like survived." She sniffed the air, scratched herself. "Still, good day."

_Supposedly._

He suspected he should agree; a day that ended with someone else dead instead of himself usually qualified as "good" for an adventurer. He suspected that his next thought should have disturbed him quite a bit more than it did.

_This time, dead bodies just aren't enough._

Had this been a chance raid, some simple act of piracy like he had originally suspected, of course he could take pride in the fact that he could still stab people and thus was still employable. But this hadn't been a chance raid, there were too many factors screaming that this was something worse.

The calm demeanour of a famously bloodthirsty and deranged breed of murderers, a man who had no business being in the company of such towering and fierce creatures, a bell that sang instead of a ballista that shot.

A chill crept up his spine.

" _Staring..._ "

He could feel it immediately, almost heard her eyes turn hard behind him as they bore into him, digging under flesh, searching, studying. He gritted his teeth, tried not to twitch under her gaze. But something inside him lacked willpower. He felt something shift under his skin.

" _Make her stop._ "

"You're worried."

When he turned, her smile was gone. He saw her, then, without the heat of battle to cloud his mind. She was weary: sweat slicked her skin and seeped into the cuts on her muscular physique, her hair clung in dirty clumps and the feathers she wore whipped about her wildly. She was the very vision of savagery, the image conjured up when people spat the name " _shict_."

And she was staring at him with eyes full of concern.

"You're thinking." Her ears twitched, as if hearing his very thoughts.

His breath caught in his throat at that idea. "We won," he gasped, "they lost."

She nodded intently.

"But they didn't curse. They didn't scream. Wouldn't you have?"

"If we had lost and I wasn't dead, probably."

"They were calm." He turned a glower over the sea. "They shouldn't have been."

A hand was laid on his shoulder. He felt her through the leather of her glove and the cloth of his tunic, felt her heartbeat just as he knew she could hear his. Just as he knew he should pull away, just as he knew that she didn't touch humans if she wasn't pulling arrows out of them.

Just as he knew he could not.

Everything went silent inside him. The wailing drone ceased, the smile vanished from his mind. He could feel himself grow warm again, feel the blood pump through him, coursing under her touch.

She turned him to face her, he did not resist. Her eyes were not soft, but not hard. He had no idea what lurked behind her green orbs as she stared into him, just as he had no idea what to do.

"It's over," she said with a certainty he hadn't heard from her before. She smiled. "Stop thinking."

He watched her lay her bow upon her shoulders, looping her arms up and over it. Her hair drifted in the breeze and carried the scent of her sweat into his nostrils as she walked away. It filled his breath, now deep and regular again as he repeated calming words to himself.

"It's over." He rubbed his eyes, laid his sword against the railing and leaned backwards. "It's over."

He heard the voice. It was soft, fading even as it spoke, but he heard it. He heard it speak a single word, ask a single question.

" _Over?_ "

And then, he heard it laugh.

# _Three_

# PRESIDING OVER RUIN

By the time Lenk clambered up the stairs leading to the helm, the cheering had died down. A few fellows enthused at not being killed had dared to clap him on the back once Kataria had left his side, finding boldness in the absence of his maligned companion. Their enthusiasm was slain as surely as their fellows, however, when they cast a glance upon the deck and surveyed the work that had to be done.

There were dead to tend.

Lenk spared a glancing frown for the men below. Some were veterans, having seen the deaths of comrades before, though likely none so gruesome. Most were young men who'd only seen elders pass away in their sleep. He hesitated at the top of the helm, his gaze lingering upon a young man dragging one of the dead from the deck.

A part of him wanted to turn back around, put a hand on the young man's shoulder and move him below where Asper tended to the wounded, mortally or otherwise. The sailor was possibly the same age as Lenk. Hands on shoulders should be wrinkled, he thought, weathered with age and experience, broad from embracing children and wives. Young hands, calloused hands, were not meant to be placed on shoulders.

_Old hands grip people. Young hands grip swords._

His grandfather had told him that once. His grandfather's hands had been young to the day he died. He blinked, drew in a deep breath. Something in his mind stirred: the roar of fire, shadows dancing against sheets of orange, people falling beneath flashes of silver, smiles that twisted into screams. His grandfather...

_No._ He commanded himself to force the images from his mind. _Not today. Not now._

He turned his back on the deck. There were plenty of men with weathered, wrinkled hands on the ship. His still gripped a sword.

At the ship's impressive wheel stood Captain Argaol, looking decidedly less fazed than he should have with dead men on his deck. His dark features were stern, eyes fixed straight ahead, not even looking at the young man. His only movement was to reach down and smooth the sash of commendation medals he had earned from his various charters.

His mate, Sebast, a man who had spent so much time in the sun that he had both the appearance and smell of jerked beef, dutifully moved aside as Lenk stepped onto the quarterdeck. He sniffed, dipped a mop into a wooden bucket and proceeded to wipe away the blood that had been spilled on the ship's timbers as casually as if he were wiping away the lunch that Lenk had spilled some days earlier.

Lenk gave him a cursory nod before stepping up to the captain's side.

"Well, we did it." His voice sounded alien to his own ears.

"Did what?" The captain's voice seemed much deeper than it should have, given his size. The man stood only a little taller than Lenk, his height perhaps diminished due to the lack of hair upon his head.

"Drove off the pirates."

"And?"

"I thought you'd like to know."

"I can see the whole Gods-cursed ship from up here, boy. You think I didn't see that?" He glanced at the young man with a sneer. "What? You wanted some credit for breaking the chain? Smart move there—wish you'd thought of it early enough to spare my men."

"It was a fight," Lenk replied coldly. "People die."

"How fortunate we have you to be so casually nonchalant about it. I've been in this business awhile, boy. I know what happens."

"Then you'll also know to choose your insults carefully. Many more of your men would have died if not for us." The young man gestured to the deck. "Or did you not see how many pirates we killed?"

"Oh, I saw," the captain replied, seething. "I also saw you making eyes at the escape vessel while you were down there." He levelled an accusing finger. "You'd have run like the heathens you are and left the rest of us to die if you could have." He grunted and glowered at his first mate. "What'd I tell you about taking adventurers aboard?"

"Bad idea," Sebast replied without looking up. "Bad philosophically, bad practically. Still, they _did_ undoubtedly save about as many as they killed, Captain. Perhaps a little gratitude wouldn't be inappropriate?"

"I'm grateful enough that the heathen scum didn't decide to slaughter us to try and curry favour with the Cragscum, aye," the captain agreed.

The adventurer reputation for opportune betrayal was not unknown to Lenk, but he still took slight offence at Argaol's accusation. It wasn't as though he had _seriously_ considered turning on the crew.

_Not until now, anyway._

"So, you'll forgive me if I'm not at the pinnacle of appreciativeness" Argaol continued, scowling at the young man. "And you'll forgive me for saying that if you ever so much as think of fleeing and leaving my men without escape again, I'll chop you up and serve you in the mess."

"Hope you've got a bigger sword," Lenk muttered under his breath.

"What was that?"

"I said if you're so concerned for your crew, perhaps you should be down there moving corpses and grieving." Lenk cast a sneer of his own back at the captain. "I promise I won't look if you start crying."

"Ah, we've got a merry jester here, in addition to a filthy adventurer. I bet a man of such diverse talents would like a lovely strawberry tart." He snapped two thin fingers. "Sebast, fetch the fanciful adventurer a tart!"

"As you like, Captain." The mate set aside his mop and began to trundle down the steps.

"Get back here, you nit," Argaol snarled. "I was being sarcastic."

"Facetious," Lenk corrected.

"What?" He sighed, slumping at the wheel slightly. "You got word for me, boy? Or did you come up here to demonstrate your impeccable wit?"

"A little over a dozen of the Cragsmen dead, fewer of our own."

" _My_ own," Argaol snapped back fiercely. "The _Riptide_ sails under Argaol, the men serve under Argaol, not some runty adventurer."

The mate leaned upon his mop, peering thoughtfully at the young man. "Where is it you said you came from, Mister Lenk?"

"Steadbrook," the young man replied, "in Muraska."

"Steadbrook, is it? That can hardly be right. I've travelled up, down, through and around Muraska and I've never heard of any such town."

Lenk opened his mouth. His voice caught in his throat as he blinked. "It's gone," he whispered, choked, "burned."

"Such a shame." Whatever sincerity the first mate might have hoped to convey was lost as he returned to his mop-ping. "It would have been interesting to visit a place that produces such short men with grey hair."

Before Lenk could respond, Argaol interjected with a rough cough. "What of the Lord Emissary?"

"Evenhands is—"

"Kindly refer to our charter by his proper name," the captain interrupted sharply. "This ship is free of all blasphemy, no matter how minor. I won't have a..." He stared hard at Lenk. "What's your faith, boy?"

"None of your business," Lenk responded hotly.

"Khetashite," Sebast muttered. "All adventurers follow the Outcast, I hear."

"The proper title is the Wanderer."

"Khetashe gets a proper title when he's a proper God and not some patron of misfits." Argaol coughed. "At any rate, what of the _Lord Emissary_?"

" _Evenhands_ is safe. No pirate managed to get through us."

"Aye, thanks to that monster of yours, no doubt." Argaol laughed, his humour tinged with an edge of hysteria. "Your boys are good at killing, Mister Lenk, no doubt about that. A shame you couldn't find a more decent skill to devote your life to."

Lenk's only response was an acknowledging hum. There was no real sense in getting angry at slights towards his profession. He had heard them all, up to and including slights against his God, Khetashe. There was, after all, little sense in getting irate about insults to a God who watched over people who killed things for money.

"Speaking of faith, your men are all Zamanthrans, I hear."

"All men of the _Riptide_ pay homage to the Sea Mother, aye."

"Should we not stop to give them their proper burial, then?"

"Not with Rashodd's boys on our backsides, no." Argaol shook his head. "We'll attend to the rites when we're free and clear." He turned to his mate and gestured with his chin. "Mister Sebast, inform the men to trim up the sails. They won't be catching us anytime soon."

As the sunburned man nodded and scampered off, Lenk stalked to the edge of the railing. The _Linkmaster_ wasn't fully out of sight, but far enough away to resemble a glistening black beetle on the horizon.

"Are you sure it's wise to trim the sails?" he asked. "They might catch up."

"Not so long as Zamanthras loves us," Argaol grunted. "And I don't need the wind ripping my sails while it's on our side. We'll be out of their sight before the Sea Mother even realises I'm carrying a shipload of heathens."

"Of course, Captain," Sebast interjected as he clambered back up the stairs, "you _are_ also carrying the Lord Emissary of the Church of Talanas and one of the Healer's holy maidens." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps the two cancel each other out?"

"And _that's_ why you're first mate, Mister Sebast." The captain sighed. He jerked his chin towards the railing. "Have a glimpse, then. Tell me how far they are behind us and see if you can't assuage the adventurer's fears."

The man came up beside Lenk and peered out over the rail. "A good ways, I should say, Captain." Sebast hummed thoughtfully.

"How the hell far away is a 'good ways', Mister Sebast? Can you see their faces?"

"Nay, sir. I wouldn't wager they can see me, neither. They look a mite busy loading up that huge crossbow."

"Crossbow?" Lenk's eyes widened at the calm expressions of the captain and mate. "So they _do_ have a ballista."

"How do you think they launched that chain in the first place, boy?" Argaol snorted, then spat. "Back in the day, a pirate would be as concerned with the condition of a ship he meant to take as her captain would be. Nowadays, they don't even bother. Who cares for the condition of a ship if you're just going to scuttle it, aye?"

"A tragic example of the decline of ethics, Captain," Sebast agreed.

"Should we be worried?" Lenk asked, though their expressions seemed to answer that already.

"As I said, not so long as we've got the wind on our side," Argaol replied. "And the Sea Mother is apparently overlooking your various blasphemies today and giving us Her blessing." He glanced over his shoulder. "Tell me, Mister Sebast, have we lost Rashodd yet?"

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Captain, but assuming we _are_ losing him, he should be getting smaller, shouldn't he?"

"What are you trying to say, Sebast?"

"He's right." Lenk pointed out to sea as the black blot that was the _Linkmaster_ gained shape and definition. Dozens of figures swarmed over its deck. "They're catching up."

"Whoresons must—" Argaol paused, staring at the wheel as though it were suddenly something alien. It remained unmoving, even as his thin, dark fingers gave it a swift jerk. The helm made no response. Nor did it move even as he gritted his teeth, set his feet and pushed with his shoulder.

"Gods-cursed piece of..." The captain's words faded into an angry snarl as he pushed. "Move, you stupid thing!" A growl became a roar. " _MOVE!_ "

The wheel obeyed.

It spun with such ferocity and suddenness as to hurl the captain to the deck, whipping around in opposition to his will. Everyone's eyes went wide, staring at the possessed device with horror as it continued to spin, whirling one way, then the other. The roar of the sea became a low, dejected sigh. The ship rocked, its headway dying to a crawl.

"Something's wrong," Argaol gasped, "something... something's wrong with the rudder."

Lenk peered over the railing, glancing down at the ship's stern. His breath caught in his throat, denying him any curses he might have uttered. Beneath the pristine blue, stark against the white froth of the ship's wake, was blackness, an inky, shapeless void that clung to the _Riptide_ 's rear like a sore.

"What the hell are those?" Sebast muttered.

It took Lenk a moment to realise the first mate wasn't referring to the lightless stain at the rudder. He then saw the flashes of pale skin in the water, gliding towards the _Riptide_ like fleshy darts.

"Are those... men?"

Lenk blinked; they were indeed men. Bereft of hair, bereft of clothing save for what appeared to be black loincloths wrapped about narrow waists, a small company of men swam towards the ship with unnerving speed. In bursts of white froth, they leapt from the sea, arms folded, legs pressed tightly together, in a flash of bone-white and black, before diving below the waves to re-emerge moments later.

"Oh, no, no, no." The captain's growl had degenerated into a sharp whimper as he pointed out to sea. "No, no, not now, _not now_!"

The _Linkmaster_ had closed with such swiftness as to make it seem like a shadow upon the waves cast by the _Riptide_ , a trailing darkness that quickly shifted, gaining on its prey. Lenk could see faces, tattoos, nicked blades clearly. More than that, he could see their chain, its massive links attached to a great spear ending in a claw, once more loaded in the massive ballista.

"This is what they were waiting for—" Lenk muttered.

" _This_ is all _your_ fault!"

He whirled at the accusation, facing a wide-eyed, clenched-teeth Argaol.

" _My_ fault?"

"You and your wretched blasphemies! Your wretched God and your wretched profession! You've brought the damned wrath of the Gods on my ship!"

"Why, you simpering piece of—"

" _BOARDERS! WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!_ " The call rang out from the deck.

" _AGAIN!_ " someone added.

Argaol's mask of scorn was quickly replaced with shock. "Well?" he demanded harshly.

"Well, what?" Lenk responded, equally vicious.

"Get down there!"

"You just called me wretched. Why should I do anything you say?"

"Because you're on the Lord Emissary's coin, the Lord Emissary's on _my_ ship and _my_ ship is about to be simultaneously boarded by Rashodd's boys and..." his face screwed up as he searched for the words, "some manner of _fish-men_."

"They look more like frogs from up here, Captain," Sebast offered.

"That had occurred to me," Lenk replied, stroking his hairless chin and hoping that was as effective as caressing a beard. "And rest assured, I'll get right on it... after you pay."

Shock, anger and incredulity gave way to a moment of sheer, unexpected consternation on the captain's face.

" _Pay?_ "

"Blasphemers live by coin."

"Are you actually trying to extort me while our lives hang in the balance?"

"I can't think of a better time for extortion, can you?"

It was a purely bitter demand, Lenk knew, as much motivated by pettiness as pragmatism. Still, he couldn't deny that it was purely satisfying to watch the captain reach into his pocket and produce a well-worn pouch, hurling it at Lenk as though it was a weapon.

"Of all the vile creatures you consort with, Mister Lenk," he forced through his teeth, "you are by far the most disgusting."

Lenk weighed the pouch in his hand, hearing the jingle of coins within. Nodding, he tucked it into his own belt.

"That's why I'm the leader."

In a perfect world, Lenk would have faced well-trained ranks of soldier-sailors armed with steel and discipline scrawled on their faces as he arrived on the main deck. In a less-than-perfect but still optimistic scenario, he would have found shaken but stalwart men, armed with whatever they had to hand.

Perfection and optimism, however, were two words he had no use for.

He shoved his way through herds of visibly panicked sailors, shrieking and screaming as they tripped over bodies and fought over the swords their foes had left behind. He didn't spare a glance for them as he heard the senior members of the crew barking orders, trying to salvage a defence from the mob.

_Let them deal with their squealing, milksopping idiots_ , he advised himself, _you've got your own psychotic, cowardly idiots to deal with._

The sight of said idiots, for whom hope of perfection or optimism had long ago died a slow and miserable death, was modestly heartening. After all, he reasoned, if they hadn't already looted the bodies and fled he could likely hope for them to put up a fight long enough to abandon him in the middle of it.

Gariath stood at the centre of the deck, Dreadaeleon little more than a dwarf beside his towering form. Kataria and Denaos were at arms, arrow drawn and dagger at the ready. Quillian stood distanced from them, a crossbow strapped on her back to complement her sword; why she lingered, Lenk could only guess. Perhaps she wished to be present to deliver a smug lecture as they lay dying shortly before being impaled herself.

If Khetashe loved him, he thought, he'd be dead first.

"Where's Asper?" he asked, noting the absence of the priestess.

"Tending to the wounded below before tending to the soon-to-be dead above," Denaos replied. "As well as saying whatever prayers she says before engaging in acts of futility."

"You're not showing her the proper respect," Dreadaeleon snapped, lifting his chin.

"Warriors get respect. Humans get their faces caved in," Gariath rumbled as he turned a black scowl upon the rogue. " _You_ will get a pair of soiled pants the moment someone turns their back so you can run."

"If you happen to turn your back on me, monster," Denaos forced through clenched teeth as he flipped his dagger about in his hand, "it won't be running I do."

" _So rarely_ ," Lenk interjected with as much ire as he could force into his voice, "do I find an opportunity where I'm actually pleased you people are around. Would you mind terribly waiting until this uncomfortable feeling has passed to kill each other?" He pointed over the railing to the fast-approaching black ship. "In a few breaths, we'll be swarming with pirates and Gods know what else is swimming up to the ship. If you've any intention of surviving long enough to maim each other, you'll listen to me."

Indignant scowls, resentful stares and frustrated glowers met him. Not quite the attention he was hoping to command, but good enough.

"They'll be upon us shortly," he continued, "they outnumber us, outarm us—"

"'Outarm' isn't a word," Dreadaeleon interrupted.

"Shut up," Lenk spat before proceeding, "and are likely slightly irate at our having killed some of them. It's not an impossible fight, but we'll have to bleed them, make them pay for every step."

At the angry call of a gull from above, his eyes drifted towards the top of the central mast. The _Riptide_ 's flag, with its insignia of a roiling wave encircling a golden coin, flapped with brazen majesty despite the blood spilled beneath it. His eyes settled on the flag for only a moment, however, before he found the tiny crow's nest perched beneath the banner.

"Kataria, Squiggy," he said, glancing at the crossbow resting on the latter's back, "you're both archers."

"Sniper," the Serrant corrected sharply.

"What's the difference?" Kataria quirked a brow.

"It is purpose and duty, not mere coin and savage lust, that drive my arrows." Quillian puffed up proudly. "I've twice the skill, twice the authority," she paused, casting a disparaging glance at the shict's muscular, naked midriff, "and about half a tunic more."

"Whatever," Lenk interjected before Kataria could do more than scowl and open her mouth. "I need you both to climb up there and—"

" _I_ serve a higher calling than you, heathen," the Serrant interrupted with a sneering growl. "Do you suppose I am one of your raving lunatics to command like a hound?"

"I _suppose_ you'd be interested in preserving the life of your employer, as well as that of the priestess below," Lenk retorted sharply. "Listen to me and you can avoid earning yourself another red oath, _Serrant_."

At that, the woman narrowed her eyes and shifted a stray lock of black hair from her rigid face. She didn't make any other move and Lenk supposed that was as close to assent as she would come.

"Right," he grunted. "If we put you up in the crow's nest, you can shoot down whoever comes across."

"A shict can shoot down anything with round ears and two legs," Kataria said, casting a sidelong smirk at Quillian. "Squiggy here throws arrows away like flowers at a wedding. Perhaps she'd better stay down here and see if she can't absorb some steel."

"Why, you barbaric, mule-eared little—" Quillian began to snarl before Lenk's hand went up.

" _Stop._ " He pointed a finger up to the rigging. " _Go._ "

With cold glares exchanged, the two females grudgingly skulked off towards the rigging together. Lenk watched as they nimbly scaled the ropes, if only to make certain they didn't shove each other off, before turning to the others.

"Dread," he glanced at the boy leaning against the mast, massaging his temples, "you've got the most important job."

"Naturally," the wizard muttered. "Somehow, having the talent to hurl fire from one's palms always predisposes one to being given the 'important' jobs."

"Yes, you're incredibly sarcastic," Lenk sighed, "and if we had more time I'd eagerly indulge your staggering intellect. However," he gestured over the side towards the ever-growing _Linkmaster_ , "the whole impending disembowelment aspect is a factor."

"Fine." The boy rose dramatically, coat sweeping about his feet, book banging against his hip. "What do you need?"

"A fire. Nothing much, just make something go ablaze on their ship to keep a few of them busy."

"That's it?"

"Well, Khetashe, don't let me stop you from making their captain eject his intestines out through his ears if you've got that trick up your sleeve."

"I'm not sure..." Dread scratched his chin. "I've done so much already. I can only cast so many spells in a day. If I don't rest, I get headaches."

"A _headache_ is slightly better than a sword in your bowels."

"Point." Dreadaeleon stalked to the railing. He slid his legs apart slightly, knotted his fingers together and drew in a deep breath. "It'll take concentration. Whatever happens, make certain that I'm not disturbed or something could happen."

"Such as?"

"Where massive fires are concerned, is further explanation really necessary?"

"Point."

"Here they come," Gariath said with a bit more eagerness in his voice than seemed acceptable.

The black-timbered ship slid up beside them like a particularly long shadow laden with flesh and steel. The deck swarmed with pirates, their boarding chains and hooks ready in hand, their faces splitting with bloodthirsty grins. The ballista stood drawn and taut, the metal claw of its mother chain glistening menacingly in the sunlight.

No sign of the bell, Lenk noticed, or the black-shrouded man. Or were they simply standing behind the titanic amalgamation of tattoos and iron at the helm? Rashodd was ready to lead this second charge, if the hands that caressed the axes at his hips were any indication.

_Young man's hands_ , Lenk noted.

"Dread," he grunted, elbowing the boy.

"As I said," he hissed in reply, " _no distractions_."

Dreadaeleon's fingers knitted, his mouth muttered as he looked over the _Linkmaster_ , seeking a flammable target.

Lenk turned to check the _Riptide_ 's preparations. Heartened by their seniors' orders, the sailors had formed themselves into a working defensive line. Their wooden weapons were as shoddy as ever, but they had done the job before. The only difference between this and the previous attack was that this time the men were prepared to face the _Linkmaster_ 's crew.

_That_ , Lenk thought, _and the fact that there are about three times as many pirates as there were before... all a degree more psychotic than the last lot._

His own company was as organised as it was going to be. He hefted his sword, raising it as the ranks of grinning, tattooed faces grew larger with the pirates' approach. Any hope of outrunning the fight was dashed; now, Lenk knew, it was down to skin and teeth.

"The captain sends his best to you, lads," came a gruff, guttural voice from behind. Lenk recognised the sailor by his bandaged, burned arm if not by name as he came clambering up. "We'll do our part. The boys are ready to ravage. I hope yours can say the same." Exchanging a grim nod with Lenk, he swept a glance over the other adventurers. He grinned as he spied Dreadaeleon. "Look at this brave lad, here. Can't be more than me own boy's age. Good on 'im, even if he did set me on fire before." He raised a hand over the wizard's shoulder, and Lenk's eyes went wide. "No hard feelings, eh—"

" _STOP!_ "

By the time the word had escaped Lenk's lips, the sailor's hand had come down and clapped the boy on the shoulder. In one slow, painful blink of the eye, Dreadaeleon's stare shot wide open, eyes burning with crimson energy. Lenk barely had time to turn away before his companion instinctively whirled around, bellowed a single, incomprehensible word and extended a palm.

The world erupted into flame, and as the flashing orange faded, screams arose. The sailor's hands went to his head, trying to bat away the mane of lapping fire that had enveloped his hair. The line of sailors parted as he tore through their ranks, his shrieking following him as he hurtled towards the railing.

" _I TOLD YOU!_ " Dreadaeleon barked, suddenly aware of what had happened. " _NO_ distractions! I told you _NOT_ to let anything break my concentration or _THINGS_ could happen!"

"Well, I didn't know that _THINGS_ involved setting people's heads on _FIRE_ , you crazy bastard!" Lenk roared back.

"What in Talanas's name is going on?" Asper appeared on the scene in a flutter of blue robes and a flash of hazel eyes. "What happened?"

"Isn't it obvious, you shrew?" Denaos barked at the priestess. "We're under attack!"

"Get back below!" Lenk ordered.

"I should stay," she contested. "I... I should fight!"

"The next time we're attacked by pirates who are deathly afraid of sermons, I'll call you," he roared. "Until then, _GET BACK BELOW, USELESS!_ "

"No," the rogue countered, "stay up here and see if your God loves us."

Before she could form a retort, her eyes were drawn to the railing. A cluster of sailors had formed, straining to keep their immolated companion from hurling himself overboard while more men poured water on his blazing head. Suddenly, her gaze flitted past Denaos and Lenk, towards the scrawny boy trying to hide behind them.

"Dread! Good Gods, was it not enough to nearly incinerate him the _last_ time?" she snarled and turned towards the men at the railing. "Douse him and bring him below! I'll tend to him!"

Lenk watched her go with a solemn stare. Her medicine, he reasoned, would do little good in the heat of battle. And she was in no mood to linger near Dreadaeleon.

"I knew this was a bad idea." The wizard shook his head. "I knew it, I knew it. My master always said I'd face this someday." He began to skulk off, trembling. "Oh, Venarie help me, I'm so bad at this—"

"Where the hell are you going?" Lenk howled. "What about setting something on fire?"

"I already _DID_ that!" Dreadaeleon shrieked. "Venarie help me... Venarie help me... why did I listen to idiots?"

"No, no, _no_!" He rushed to seize the boy by his collar, pulling him back to the railing. "Take a deep breath, mutter something, inhale the smell of your own fart, do whatever it is you do to get your concentration back." He pointed to the black ship. "Just do one more little poof."

"Wizards don't _poof_."

"Well, you'll _be_ one if you don't burn that ship down! Just fire it up! Any part of it! We can still outrun it and let it burn."

"Right... right..." The wizard inhaled sharply, moving to knit his fingers together again. "I just need to... to set it on fire." He licked his lips. "Then I'll be the hero."

"Yes."

"No," a rumbling voice disagreed.

Before Lenk could cry out, before he even saw the flash of crimson, Gariath's tail had lashed out to smash against the boy's jaw. Dreadaeleon collapsed with a shriek, unmoving. Lenk stared up at the dragonman, eyes wide.

"What was _that_ for?"

"Magic is weak. It didn't work. It's a sign."

"A sign of _what_? That you're a complete lunatic?" He began to glance desperately about the deck, searching for something, anything that might help. "All right, this isn't lost. Someone just go up and tell Kataria to—"

"No."

His breath erupted out of him, driven by a hard crimson fist in his belly. He fell to his knees, gasping. His eyes felt like they wanted to fall out of his skull and roll over the ship's side as he looked up at Gariath, gasping.

"What?" he coughed. " _Why?_ "

"This battle was meant to happen. I was meant to fight it."

"We'll... _die_."

"If we're lucky."

"This is... insane! I had a... a strategy!"

Gariath looked down at him coldly. "I can cave your face in. I make the strategies now."

"Damn... damn..." Lenk cursed at his back as he stalked away He felt the shadow of Denaos behind him and snarled, "What now? _What the hell do we do now?_ "

"Well, you know my advice," Denaos offered.

"No, what do you—"

He looked up and saw the empty space behind him.

"Right."

His ears twitched, hearing the sailors behind him take a collective step backwards as the _Linkmaster_ loomed up before them, drawing level with the _Riptide_. As the first hooks were thrown, the first war cries bellowed, Lenk's focus was on Rashodd. The great iron hulk's helmet angled down upon him, over the bone-white arms that grasped the railing to pull up slender, hairless bodies.

"Gentlemen," the hulking pirate boomed, "good day."

# _Four_

# THE LORD EMISSARY

_U seless?_"

The rip of bandages being yanked from their roll echoed in the confines of the ship's mess, just as Asper's snarl did, sticking in the timbers like knives. The man struggled, but she didn't pay him any mind. She kept pulling the bandages tight about his charred face, growling.

"Sermons, indeed." She tied the bandage off with a jerk. "The stupid little savages could all use one, coupled with a few swift blows to the head." Her hands trembled as she pulled another roll from her bag. "Swift blows to the head with a dull, rusty piece of iron..." She ripped the cloth free, wrapping another layer about the man's face. "With _spikes_. A few to the groin wouldn't hurt, either... well, it wouldn't hurt Kat, anyway."

"No disrespect, Priestess," her patient meekly said, "but the bandages, they're—"

"Soaked in charbalm," she finished, wrapping them around his head. "I apparently have to keep a lot on hand when I'm dealing with heathens who can't even control their oh-so-impressive _fire_. You know he gets the shakes after he casts that fire? Loses bladder control, sometimes, too. He's probably pissing himself right now."

_Don't piss yourself, don't piss yourself, don't piss yourself._

The boy should have been more worried about passing out, he knew. His body felt drained; the heat that coursed through him was all but spent; he'd already reduced two men to slow, smouldering pyres. His hands felt dull and senseless, the electricity that ran through them having been expended on dislodging a chain.

And still they kept coming. The sailors put up an admirable defence, even in the face of the new, pale-skinned invaders. But they couldn't hold out for ever. Neither could he, and he knew it. Nothing was left of him but spit.

He narrowed his eyes as he spotted two of the pale creatures rushing towards the companionway.

He inhaled sharply, chanted a brief, breathless verse and blew. The ice raced from his lips across the deck between the two and formed a patch of frost in the doorway. His foot came down, hard, frigid spikes rising up to cage the passage off. The creatures turned black scowls upon his red-glowing eyes.

"No one," he said through dry lips, "gets in."

"I cured that," Asper said to the charred man, "with a tea I learned after _four years of study_. I can cure the shakes, heal their little cuts and scratches and make sure they don't all die of dysentery. That's what I do. I'm the priestess of the feather-arsed _HEALER_ , for His sake!" She coughed. "Forgive the blasphemy."

"Of course, Priestess, but—"

"But do they appreciate it? Of course not!" She snarled and jerked the bandage tight. "The stupid little barbarians think that killing is the only thing in life. There're other things in life... like _life_. And who tends to that?"

Her patient said something, she wasn't sure what.

" _Exactly!_ I'm the Gods-damned shepherd! _I_ keep them alive! They should be following _me_! The only person on this whole stupid ship with more godly authority is—"

"Pray, does there exist some turmoil amongst the good people in my employ?"

She froze, breathless, and turned.

The Lord Emissary spoke with no fury, no sadness, no genuine curiosity at the sight before him. He raised his voice no higher than he would were he consoling a wailing infant. His conviction was that of a mewling kitten.

Yet his voice carried throughout the mess, quelling hostilities and fear with a single, echoing question. Eyes formerly enraged and terrified went wide with a mixture of awe and admiration as a white shadow entered the mess on footsteps no louder than a whisper.

"Lord Emissary." Asper turned to face him, her voice quavering slightly.

From under a white cowl, a long, gentle face surveyed the scene. A smile creased well-weathered features, eyes glistening brightly in the dim light as Miron Evenhands shook his head, chuckling lightly. One hand was tucked into the cloth sash about his narrow waist while the other stroked a silver pendant carved in the shape of a bird, half-hidden by the white folds of his robe.

"And what evil plagues my humble companions?" he asked gently.

"N-nothing," she said, suddenly remembering to bow.

"Instances of 'nothing' rarely beget so strong a scent of anger in the air."

"It... it was simply a... disagreement of sorts." She cleared her throat. "With... with myself."

"Good for the soul and mind, always." The incline of Miron's head was slow and benevolent. "I find it better to voice concerns before violence comes into play, even if it is with oneself. Many wars and conflicts could be avoided that way." He turned to Asper pointedly. "Could they not?"

Her eyes went wide as a child's caught with a finger in a pie—or perhaps a child caught with a finger in burned flesh.

"Absolutely, Lord Emissary."

Miron's smile flashed for only an instant before there was the sound of something crashing above. He glanced up, showing as much concern as he could muster.

"We are... attacked?"

"My com—" She stopped herself, then sighed. "Those other people are handling it, Lord Emissary. Please, do not fret."

"For them? No," Miron said, shaking his head. "They have their own Gods to watch over them and weapons to defend themselves." He looked with concern at her. "For you, though—"

"Lord Emissary," she said softly, "would you permit me the severe embarrassment of knowing how much you overheard?"

"Oh, for the sake of discussion, let us say all of it."

His voice was carried on a smile, gentle as the hand he laid on her shoulder. She started at first, having not even heard his approach, but relaxed immediately. It was impossible to remain tense in his presence, impossible to feel ill at ease when the lingering scent of incense that perpetually cloaked him filled her nostrils. She found herself returning the smile, her frustrations sliding from her shoulders as his hand did.

"Goodness," the priest remarked, padding towards the bandaged man. "What happened here?"

Her shoulders slumped with renewed burden. "Adventure happened," she grunted, momentarily unaware of the fact that such a tone was inappropriate in the presence of such a man. "That is, Lord Emissary, he was wounded..." she paused, balancing the next word on her tongue, "by Dreadaeleon. Inadvertently. _Supposedly_ inadvertently."

"A hazard with wizards, I'm informed. Still, this may have done more good than ill."

"Forgive me, Lord Emissary, but I find it difficult to see the good in a man being torched."

"There is yet joy in simply staying alive, Priestess." He looked down at the man's bandages and frowned. "Or there would be, had you left him a hole through which to breathe."

She began to stutter an apology, but found no words before Miron gently parted the bandages about the man's charred lips.

"There we are." He placed a hand on the man's shoulder. "After your capable treatment, sir, I must insist that you retire to whatever quarters you're permitted. Kindly don't scratch at your wrappings, either; the charbalm will need time to settle into the skin."

On muttered thanks and hasty feet, the man scurried into the depths of the ship's hold, sparing a grunt of acknowledgement for Asper as he left. Though she knew it to be a sin, she couldn't help but resent such a gesture.

_He would have thanked me proper if I had killed for him_ , she thought irritably, _if only out of fear that I might have killed him. He'd be at my feet and mewling for my mercy if I were a warrior._

"Tea?"

She turned with a start. Miron sat delicately upon one of the mess benches, pouring brown liquid from a clay pot into a cup: tea that had been left cold when the Cragsmen arrived.

Unperturbed by the temperature, the priest sipped at it delicately, smacking his lips as though it were the finest wine. It was only after she noted his eyes upon her, expectant, that she coughed out a hasty response.

"N-no, thank you, Lord Emissary." She was suddenly aware of how meek her voice sounded compared to his and drew herself up. "I mean to say, is this really the proper time for tea? We _are_ under attack."

_So much blood._

The air was thick with it. It clotted his nostrils, travelled down his throat and lingered in his chest like perfume. Much of it was his. He smiled at that. But there was another stench, greater even than the rank aroma of carnage.

_Fear._

It was in the tremble of their hands, the hesitation of their step, the eyes of the man who struggled in his claws. Gariath met his terror with a black-eyed scowl. He drew back his head and brought his horns forwards, felt bone crunch under his skull, heard breath in his ear-frills.

_Still alive._

He drew back his head again, brought forth his teeth. He felt the life burst between them, heard the shrieks of the man and his companion. He clenched, gripped, tore. The man fell from his grasp, collapsing with an angry ruby splotch where his throat had been. He turned towards the remaining pirates, glowering at them.

"Fight harder," he snarled. "Harder... or you'll never kill me."

They did not flee. Good. He smiled, watched their fear as they caught glimpses of tattooed flesh between his teeth.

"Come on, then," he whispered, "show me my ancestors."

"That being the situation, it would seem wiser for us to stay down here, wouldn't it?" Miron offered her that same smile, the slightest twitch of his lips that sent his face blooming with pleasant shadows born from his wrinkles. "And, when confined to a particular spot, would it not seem wise to spend the time properly with prayer, contemplation and a bit of tea?"

"I suppose."

"After all," he spoke between sips, "it's well and good to know one's role in the play the Gods have set down for us, no? Fighting is for warriors."

She frowned at that and it did not go unnoticed. The wrinkles disappeared from his face, ironed out by an intent frown.

"What troubles you?"

_If fighting is all there is, what good are those who can't fight?_ Her first instinct was to spit such a question at him and she scolded herself for it. It was a temporary ire, melting away as she glanced up to take in the full sight of Miron Evenhands. _Of course, it's easy for him to make such statements._

The Lord Emissary seemed out of place in the wake of catastrophe, with his robes the colour of dawning clouds and the silver sigil of Talanas emblazoned upon his breast. She had to fight the urge to polish her own pendant, so drab it seemed in comparison to his symbol's beaming brightness.

The Healer Himself even seemed to favour this servant above all others, as the cloud shifted outside the mess window, bathing the priest in sunlight and adding an intangible golden cloak to his ensemble.

Evenhands cleared his throat and she looked up, eyes wide with embarrassment. One smile from him was all it took to bring a nervous smirk to her face.

"Perhaps you feel guilty being down here," he mused, settling back, "attending to an old man while your companions bleed above?"

"It is no shame to attend the Lord Emissary," she said, pausing for a moment before stuttering out an addendum, "not that you're so infirm as to require attending to... not that you're infirm at all, in fact." She coughed. "And it's not merely my associates—not companions, you know—who bleed and die above. I'm a servant of the Healer, I seek to mend the flesh and aid the ailing of all mankind, just not—"

"Breathe," he suggested.

She nodded, inhaling swiftly and holding the breath for a moment.

"At times, I feel a bit wrong," she began anew, "sitting beyond the actual fighting and awaiting the chance to bind wounds and kiss scratches while everyone else does battle."

"I see." He hummed thoughtfully. "And did I not just hear you rend asunder your companions verbally for taking lives themselves?"

"It's not like they were here to hear it," she muttered, looking down. "The truth is..." She sucked in air through her teeth, sitting down upon the bench opposite his. "I'm not sure what good I'm doing here, Lord Emissary."

He made no response beyond a sudden glint in his eyes and a tightening of his lips.

"I left my temple two years ago," she began.

"On pilgrimage," he said, nodding.

She returned the gesture, mentally scolding herself for not realising he would know such a thing. All servants of the Healer left the comfort of their monasteries on pilgrimage after ten years of worship and contemplation. This, they knew, was their opportunity to fulfil their oaths.

She had been given ample wounds to bind and flesh to mend, many grieving widows to console and plague-stricken children to help bury, and had offered many last rites to the dying. Since joining her companions, the opportunity for such services had doubled, at the very least.

"But there are always more of them," she whispered to herself.

"Hm?"

She looked up. "Forgive me, it's just..." She grimaced. "I have a hard time seeing my purpose, Lord Emissary. My associates, they—"

"Your companions, you mean, surely."

"Forgiveness, Lord Emissary, but they're something akin to co-employees." She sneered. "I share little in common with them."

"And that's precisely what troubles you."

"Something... something like that, yes." She cleared her throat, regaining her composure. "I've aided many and I've no regrets about the God I serve or what he asks of me... I just wish I could do more."

He hummed, taking another sip of his drink.

"We've done much fighting in our time, my comp— _them_ and myself. Sometimes, we've not done the proper work of the Healer, but I've seen many fouler creatures, some humans, too, cut down by them."

_And it had started as such a good day..._

Lenk hadn't planned on much: a breakfast of hard tack and beans, a bit of time above deck, possibly vomiting overboard before dinner. Nothing was supposed to happen.

" _Unfair._ "

The voice rang, steel on ice. His head hurt.

" _Cheaters. Called to it._ "

"To what?" he growled through the pain.

" _Coming._ "

"What is?"

He felt the shadow over him, heard iron-shod boots ringing on the wood. He whirled and stared up into the thin slit of an iron helmet ringed with wild grey hair that was a stark contrast to the two young, tattooed hands folded across an ironbound chest.

"Oh, hell," he whispered, "you sneaky son of a—"

"Manners," Rashodd said.

An enormous young hand came hurtling into his face.

It was a bitter phrase to utter, but it came freely enough. She had learned many years ago that not everyone deserved the Healer's mercy. There was cruelty in the world that walked on two legs and masqueraded behind pretences of humanity. She had seen many deserved deaths, knew of many that were probably occurring above her at that moment.

While she sat below, she thought dejectedly, waiting quietly as others bled and delivered those richly deserved deaths.

"I heal wounds," she said, more to herself than the priest, "tend to the ill and send them off, walking and smiling. Then they return to me, cold and breathless in corpse-carts. I heal them and, if they don't go off to kill someone themselves, they're killed by someone who doesn't give a damn for what I do."

She hesitated, her fists clenching at her sides.

"Lenk, Kataria, Dreadaeleon, Gariath," she said, grimacing, "even Denaos... they kill a wicked man and that's that. One less wicked man to hurt those who Talanas shines upon, one less pirate, bandit, brigand, monstrosity or heathen."

"And yet there is no end to either the wounded or the wicked," Miron noted.

Asper had no reply for that.

"Tell me, have you ever taken a life?" The priest's voice was stern, not so much thoughtful as confrontational.

Asper froze. A scream echoed through her as the ship groaned around her. Her breath caught in her throat. She rubbed her left arm as though it were sore.

"No."

"Were I a lesser man, I might accuse those who were envious of the ability to take life so indiscriminately of being rather stupid." He took a long, slow sip. "Given my station, however, I'll merely imply it."

She blinked. He smiled.

"That was a joke."

"Oh, well... yes, it was rather funny." Her smile trembled for a moment before collapsing into a frown. "But, Lord Emissary, is it not natural to wish I could help?"

His features seemed to melt with the force of his sigh. He set the clay cup aside, folded his hands and stared out through the mess's broad window.

"I have often wondered if I wasn't born too soon for this world," he mused, "that perhaps the will and wisdom of Talanas cannot truly be appreciated where so much blood must be spilled. After all, what good, really, can the followers of the Healer be when we simply mend the arm that swings the sword? What do we accomplish by healing the leg that crushes the innocent underfoot?"

The question hung in the air, smothering all other sound beneath it.

"Perhaps," his voice was so soft as to barely be heard above the rush of the sea outside, "if we knew the answers, we'd stop doing what we do."

He continued to stare out at the roiling seas, the glimmer of sunlight against the ship's white wake. She followed his gaze, though not far enough; his eyes were dark and distant, spying some answer in the endless blue horizon that she could not hope to grasp. She cleared her throat.

"Lord Emissary?"

"Regardless," he said, turning towards her as though he had been speaking to her all the while, "I suggest you spare yourself the worry of who kills who and work the will of the Healer as best you can." He plucked up his teacup once more. "Do your oaths remain burning in your mind?"

"'To serve Talanas through serving man.'" She recited with rehearsed confidence. "'To mend the bones, to bind the flesh, to cure the sick, to ease the dying. To serve Talanas and mankind.'"

"Then take heart in your oaths where your companions take heart in coin. We all serve mankind in different ways, whether we love life or steel."

It was impossible not to share his confidence; it radiated from him like a divine light. He was very much the servant of the Healer, a white spectre, stark and pure against the grime and grimness surrounding him, unsullied, untainted even as taint pervaded.

And yet, for all his purity, she knew he was her employer and her superior, not her companion, no matter how deeply she might have wished him to be. She looked wistfully to the companionway, remembering those she had left on the deck.

"Perhaps it wouldn't harm any to go up and see what strength I could lend them." She turned back to the Lord Emissary. "Will you be—"

Her voice died in her throat, eyes going wide, hands frigid as her right clenched her left in instinctive fear.

"Lord Emissary," she gasped, "behind you."

He spared her a curious tilt of his long face before turning to follow her gaze. Though he did not start, nor freeze as she did at the sight, the arch of a single white brow indicated he had seen it. _How could he not?_

It dangled in front of the window, pale flesh pressed against the glass as it hung from long, malnourished arms. To all appearances, it seemed a man: hairless, naked but for the dagger-laden belt hanging from its slender waist and the loincloth wrapped about its hips. Across its pale chest was a smeared, crimson sigil, indistinguishable through the smoky pane of glass.

Asper had to force herself not to scream as it pressed its face against the window. Its eyes were stark black where they should have been white, tiny silver pinpricks where pupils should have been. One hand reached down, tapped against the glass as a mouth filled with blackness opened and uttered an unmistakable word.

" _Priest._ "

Miron rose from his seat. "That's irritating."

"Lord Emissary," she whispered, perhaps for fear that the thing might hear her. "What is it?"

"An invader," he replied, as though that were enough, "a frogman, specifically."

"Frog... _man_?"

He hummed a confirmation. "If you would kindly inform your companions that their attention is required down here, I would be most grateful."

Before she could even think to do such a thing, she felt the floor shift beneath her feet as the ship rocked violently. A din rose from above, a shrieking howl mingled with what sounded like polite conversation. A discernible roar answered the call, a chest-borne thunder tinged with unpleasant laughter.

Something had happened on the deck, and whatever had happened had also met Gariath. Another noise reached her through the ship's timbers.

From the cabins beyond the mess in the ship's hold, she heard it: the sound of an iron porthole cover clanging to the deck, two water-laden feet squishing upon the wood, a croaking command in a tongue not human, nor shictish, nor any that she had ever heard.

Something had just crept into the ship.

Something crept closer.

Her hand quivered as it reached for her staff. _Lenk's hands wouldn't quiver_ , she thought. Her breath was short, her knees quaking as she trudged towards the cabin's door. _Kataria's knees wouldn't knock._ Her voice was timid, dying on her lips as she tried to speak. _Gariath wouldn't squeak._

Lenk, Kataria and Gariath were somewhere else, though. She was here, standing between the noise and the Lord Emissary. When her hands wrapped about the solid oak staff, she knew that at that moment, the warriors would have to leave the fighting to her.

"Lord Emissary," she whispered, stepping towards the hold, "forgive me for my transgressions."

"Go as you must."

She cringed; it would have been easier to justify staying behind if he had been angry with her. Instead, she took her staff in her hands and crept into the gloom of the _Riptide_ 's timbered bowels.

Miron turned from the portal towards the foggy glass of the window. The frogman was gone, slid off to join its kin on the deck. No matter; a black void spread beneath the water's surface, a mobile ink stain that slid lazily after the ship as it cut through the waters.

"She sent you, did she?" he muttered to the blackness. Absently, a hand went down to his chest, tracing the phoenix sigil upon his breast. "Come if you will, then. You shall not have it."

He turned, striding from the mess towards the shadows of the hold, intent on reaching his cabin. In his mind, a shape burned: a square of perfectly black leather, parchment bound in red leather, tightly sealed and hidden from the outside world.

"They shall not have it," he whispered.

There was a sound from the shadows, a masculine cry of surprise met by a voice dripping with malice. Someone screamed, someone ran, someone fell.

The man tumbled out of the shadows, the broad, unblinking whites of his eyes indiscernible against the swathes of bandages covering his face. He croaked out something through blackened lips, staring up at Miron as Miron stared down at him, impassively.

A webbed foot appeared from the darkness. A pale, lanky body emerged. Two dark, beady eyes set in a round, hairless head regarded him carefully. Through long, needle-like teeth, it hissed.

" _Priest._ " It raised its bloody dagger. " _Tome._ "

The thing peered through the jagged, splintering gash in the ship's hull that used to be a porthole. Only shadows met its black eyes as it searched through the gloom for another pale shape, another thing similar to this one. Quietly, it slid two slender arms through the hole, a hairless head following as it pulled a moist torso through the rent in the timbers.

The hole was no bigger than its head. Absently, the thing recalled that it should not have been able to squeeze through it.

It set its feet upon the timbers, salt pooling around its tender, webbed toes. Slowly, it bent down to observe a similar puddle upon the floor where similar feet had stood just moments ago. And yet now there was no sign of those feet, nor the legs they belonged to, nor any sign of that one at all.

"It is a stupid one," the thing hissed. It recalled, vaguely, a time when its voice did not sound so throaty, a time when a sac did not bulge beneath its chin with every breath. "'These ones stay together,' these ones were told, 'stay together'. That one must not have run off. That one must stay with this one."

This one remembered, for a fleeting moment, that it had once had a name.

That memory belonged to another one. This one knelt down, observing the traces of moisture clinging to the wood. That one had taken two steps forwards, it noted from the twin puddles before it. It tilted its head to the side; that one had stopped there... but not stopped. It had ceased to step and begun to slide. That struck this one as odd, given that these ones had been allowed to walk like men.

That one's two moist prints became a thick, wet trail instead of footprints, a trail leading from the salt to the shadows of the ship's hold. As this one followed its progress intently, watching it shift from clear salty water to smelly, coppery red, it spied something in the darkness: a tangle of pale limbs amidst crates.

That one was dead, it recognised; it remembered death.

It rose and felt something against its back. It remembered the scent of humanity. It thought to whirl around, bring knife against flesh, but then it remembered something else.

It remembered metal.

"Shh," the tall other one behind it whispered, sliding a glove over its mouth while digging the knife deeper into its side. "No point." The other one twisted the knife. "Just sleep."

Then it slumped to the floor.

Denaos grimaced as he bent down, retrieving the dagger wedged in the infiltrator's kidneys. The last one hadn't made half so much noise, he thought grimly as he wiped the bloodied weapons clean on the thing's ebon leather loincloth. Replacing them in the sheaths at his waist, he seized the pale fish-man by the legs and dragged him behind a stack of crates where his companion lay motionless in a pool of sticky red.

With a grunt, the rogue heaved the fresh corpse atop the stale one.

They were skilled infiltrators, he admired silently; he would never have thought even a child could squeeze through the ship's portholes, much less a grown man. Had he not chosen this particular section of cargo to guard, he would never have found them.

His laugh was not joyful. "Ha... guarding the cargo."

_Yes_ , he told himself, _that's what you were doing. While all the men were dying to the pirates and the women were being violated in every orifice imaginable,_ you _were guarding cargo, you miserable coward. If anyone asks why you weren't fighting like any proper man, you can just claim you were concerned for the safety of the spices._

He caught his reflection in the puddle of water at his feet, noting the frown that had unconsciously scarred itself onto his face. In the quiver of the water, he saw the future: chastisement from his companions, curses from the sailors he had abandoned...

_And Asper._ His loathing slowly twisted to ire in his head. _I'll have to endure yet another sermon from that self-righteous, preachy shrew._ He paused, regarding his reflection contemplatively. _Of course, that's not likely to happen, given that they're probably all dead, her included... if you're that lucky._

Something caught his eye. Upon the intruder's offensively white biceps lay a smear of the deepest crimson. Denaos arched a brow; he didn't remember cutting either of the creatures on their arms.

He knelt to study the puny, pale limb. It was a tattoo, that much he recognised instantly: a pair of skeletal jaws belonging to some horrid fish encircled by a twisted halo of tentacles. And, he noted with a cringe, it had been scrawled none too neatly, as though with a blade instead of a needle.

As morbid curiosity compelled him to look closer, he found that their tattoos were the least unpleasant of their features.

They lacked any sort of body hair, not the slightest wisp to prevent their black leathers from clinging to them like secondary skins. Their eyes, locked wide in death, lacked any discernible pupil or iris, orbs of obsidian set in greying whites. A glimpse of bone caught his eye; against an instinct that begged him not to, he removed a dagger and peeled back the creature's lip with the tip.

Rows of needle-like, serrated teeth flashed stark white against black gums.

"Sweet Silf," he muttered, recoiling.

A panicked cry echoed through the halls of the hold, drawing his attention up. He rose to his feet and sprang to the door in one fluid movement. As he reached for the lock, he paused, glancing over his shoulder at the dead frogmen behind. His hand faltered as he pondered the possibility of facing one of these creatures and their sharp teeth from the front.

Slowly, he lowered his hand from the door.

Someone shrieked again and his ears pricked up. A woman.

The door flew open.

Perhaps, he speculated, some sassy young thing slinking down the hall had run afoul of one of the creatures and now cowered in a corner as the intruder menaced her. It was an unspoken rule that distressed damsels were obliged to yield a gratuity that frequently involved tongues.

_Surely_ , he reasoned, _that's worth delivering another quick knife to the kidneys... of course, she's probably dead, you know._ He cursed himself as he rounded a corner. _Stop that thinking. If you go ruining your fantasies with reality, what's the point of—_

A shriek ripped through his thoughts. Not a woman, he realised, or at least no woman he would want to slip his tongue into. The scream was a long, dirty howl: a rusty blade being drawn from a sheath, a filthy, festering, vocal wound.

And, he noted, it was emerging through a nearby door.

His feet acted before his mind could, instinctively sliding into soft, cat-like strides as he pressed himself to the cabin wall. The dagger that leapt to his hand spoke of heroism, trying to drown out the voice of reason in his head.

_You can see the logic in this, can't you?_ he told himself. _It's not like anyone's really expecting you to come dashing up to save them._

The door creaked open slightly, no hand behind it. He continued forwards.

_In fact, I doubt anyone will even have harsh words for you. It's been about a year you've all been together, right? Maybe less... a few months, perhaps; regardless, the point is that no one is really all that surprised when you run away._

He edged closer to the door. The sound of breathing, heavy and laboured, could be heard.

_And this won't solve anything. Nothing changes, even if she isn't dead._ His mind threw doubt at him as a delinquent throws stones. _You won't be any braver for it. You won't be a hero. You'll still be the same cowardly thug, the same disgusting wretch who gutted—_

_Enough._ He drew in a breath, weak against the panting emerging from behind the door.

But it was not the kind of panting he had expected, not the laboured, glutted gasps of a creature freshly satiated or a fiend with blood on his hands. It was not soft, but hardly ragged. The breathing turned to heaving, someone fighting back vomit, choked on saliva. There was a short, staggered gasp, followed by a weak and pitiful sound.

Sobbing.

Without pausing to reflect on the irony of being emboldened by such a thing, Denaos took an incautious step into the shadowy cabin. Amidst the crates and barrels was a dark shape, curled up against the cargo like a motherless cub, desperately trying to hide. It shuddered with each breath, shivering down a slender back. Brown hair hung messily about its shoulders.

_No pale monstrosities here_ , he confirmed to himself, _none that you don't know, anyway._

"Odd that I should find you here," he said as he strode into the room, "cringing in a corner when you should be protecting the Lord Emissary."

_Hypocrite._

"I protected the Lord Emissary..." Asper said, more to herself than to him. Silver glinted in the shadows; he could see her stroking her phoenix pendant with a fervent need. "They came aboard... things... frogs... men, I don't know."

"Where?" His dagger was instantly raised, his back already finding the wall.

She raised her left arm and pointed towards the edge of the room. The sleeve of her robe was destroyed completely, hanging in tatters around her shoulder, baring a pale limb. Following her finger, he spied it: the invader lay dead against the wall, limbs lazily at its sides, as though it were taking a nap.

"Lovely work," he muttered, noting her staff lying near the corpse. "What? Did you bash its head in?" She did not reply, provoking a cocked eyebrow. "Are you crying?"

"No," she said, though the quiver of her voice betrayed her. "It... it was a rough fight. I'm... you know, I'm coming down."

"Coming down?" He slinked towards her. "What are you—"

"I'm _fine_!" She whirled on him angrily, teeth bared like a snarling beast as she pulled herself to her feet. "It was a fight. He's dead now. I didn't need _you_ to come looking for me."

Tears quivered in her eyes as glistening liquid pooled beneath her nose. She stood sternly, back erect, head held high, though her legs trembled slightly. Unusual, he thought, given that the priestess hoarded her tears as though they were gold. Even surrounded by death, she rarely mourned or grieved in the view of others, considering her companions too blasphemous to take in that sight.

And yet, here she stood before him, almost as tall as he, though appearing so much smaller, so much meeker.

"There are..." She turned her head away, as if sensing his scrutinising judgement. "There are more of those things around."

"There _were_ , yes," Denaos replied. "I took care of them."

"Took care of them how?"

"How do you think?" he asked, sheathing his dagger. "I found the other two and did it quietly."

"Two?" She turned to him with concern in her eyes. "There were four others besides this one"

"You're mistaken, I only saw two."

"No." She shook her head. "I caught a glimpse of them from the porthole as they swam by. There were five in all."

"Five, huh," Denaos said, scratching his chin. "I suppose I can take care of the other two."

"Assuming they aren't looking," she grumbled, retrieving her staff. "Let's go."

"Are you certain?" he asked, his tone slightly insulting as he looked her up and down. "It's not like you should feel a need to fight." He glanced at the pale corpse against the wall. "After all, you took care of this one well enough."

He blinked as the thing shifted beneath his eyes. It did not stir, it did not rise. Its movement was so subtle it might have been missed by anyone else. Yet, as he took a step forwards, the body responded to his foot striking the floor. It quivered, sending tiny ripples through the flesh as though it were water.

Flesh, he knew, did not do that.

"Leave the dead where they lie." Whatever authority Asper hoped to carry slipped through the sudden crack in her voice. She drew in a sharp breath, quickly composing herself. "The thing's almost naked; it doesn't have anything you can take."

His attentions were fixed solely on the thing lying at his feet. The rogue leaned forwards intently, studying it. Its own body had begun to pool beneath it. He let out a breath as he leaned closer and the tiny gust of air sent the thing's skin rippling once more.

" _Leave it_ ," Asper said.

Curiosity, however morbid, drove his finger even as common sense begged him to stay his hand. He prodded the thing's hairless, round head and found no resistance. His finger sank into the skin as though it were a thick pudding and when he pulled it back, a perfect oval fingerprint was left in its skull.

_No bones._

"Sweet Silf." His breath came short as he turned to regard Asper. "What did you _do_ to him?"

She opened her mouth to reply, eyes wide, lips quivering. A scream emerged, though not her own, and echoed off the timbers. Immediately, whatever fear had been smeared across her face was replaced with stern resolution as she glowered at him.

"Leave the dead," she hissed one last time before seizing her staff in both hands and tearing out of the room into the corridor.

Ordinarily, he might have pressed further questions, despite her uncharacteristically harsh tone. Ordinarily, he might have left whatever had screamed to her, given that she could clearly handle it. It was simple greedy caution that urged him to his feet and at her back, the instinct inherent in all adventurers to protect their source of pay.

The scream had, after all, come from the direction of Miron's room.

_He doesn't know_ , Asper told herself as they hurried down the corridor, _he doesn't know, he doesn't know. He won't ask questions. He's not smart enough. He won't tell. He doesn't know._

His long legs easily overtook her. She sensed his eyes upon her, angled her head down.

The litany of reassurances she forced upon herself proved futile. Her mind remained clenched with possibility. What if he didn't need to ask questions? He had seen the corpse, seen what it was. He saw her sobbing. He was a coward, a brigand, but not a moron. He could be replaying it in his mind, as she did now, seeing the creature leaping from the dark, seeing her hand rise up instinctively, hearing the frog-thing scream...

He heard the scream.

_Stop it, stop it, STOP IT! He doesn't know... don't... don't think about it now. Think about the Lord Emissary. Think about the other scream. Think about—_

Her thoughts and her fervent rush came to a sudden halt as she collided with Denaos's broad back. Immediately, fear was replaced by anger as she shoved her way past him, ready to unleash a verbal hellstorm upon him. But his eyes were not for her. He stared out into the corridor, mouth open, eyes unblinking.

She followed his gaze, looking down the hall, and found herself sharing his expression, eyes going wide with horror.

"L-Lord Emissary," she gasped breathlessly.

A pale corpse lay at Evenhands' feet, motionless in a pool of rapidly leaking blood. Miron's sunken shoulders rose and fell with staggered breaths, his hands trembled at his sides. The blues and whites of his robes were tainted black with his attacker's blood. The elderly gentleness of his face was gone, replaced by wrinkles twisted with undiluted fury.

"Evenhands," Denaos said, moving forwards tentatively. "Are you all right?"

The priest's head jerked up with such sudden anger as to force the rogue back a step. His eyes were narrowed to black slits, his lips curled in a toothy snarl. Then, with unnatural swiftness, his face untwisted to reveal a bright-eyed gaze punctuated by a broad, gentle smile.

"I am well. Thank you for your concern," he replied in a trembling breath. "Forgive the scene. One of these..." he looked down at the pale man disdainfully, "brutes attacked me as I went to see what was happening on deck."

"We're still under attack, Lord Emissary," Asper said, stepping forwards. "It would be safer if you remained in your quarters."

"Yes, of course," he replied with a shaking nod. "But... be careful out there, my friends. These are no mere pirates."

"What do you mean, Lord Emissary?" Asper asked, tilting her head at the priest.

As Miron opened his mouth to reply, he was cut off by a sudden response from Denaos.

"It's the tattoos," the rogue said, eyeing the priest, "isn't it?"

"Indeed." Miron's reply was grim. "They are adornments of an order who serve a power far crueller than any pirate. Their appearance here is... unexpected."

"A power?" Asper asked, frowning. "They're... priests?"

"Of a sort."

"Then why do they side with the pirates, Lord Emissary?"

"There is no time to explain," Miron replied urgently. "Your friends require your aid above." He raised his hands in a sign of benediction. "Go forth, and Talanas be with you in your—"

A door slammed further down the corridor. Miron whirled about, Denaos and Asper looking over his shoulders to spy the fifth intruder darting away from the direction of the priest's quarters. He paused to regard the trio warily for a moment, clutching a square silk pouch tightly to his chest.

"Drop that, you filth!" Miron roared with a fury not befitting his fragile frame.

The creature's reply was a mouth opened to reveal twin rows of pointed, serrated teeth in a feral hiss. Without another moment's hesitation, he stuffed his prize into a burlap sack and tore down the hallway.

"Stop him!" Miron bellowed, charging after the fleeing infiltrator. " _STOP HIM!_ He must not have that book!"

"What's so important about it?" Denaos called after him.

The priest did not respond, rushing headlong into the shadows of the hold. Denaos opened his mouth to repeat the question, but the breath was knocked from him as Asper shoved her way past, hurrying after the priest. With a sigh, Denaos shook his head and sprinted after them both.

_Pirates, boneless beasts, books worth dying for_ , he thought grimly, _all in one day. Whatever distressed young ladies_ are _rescued from this mess had better be_ disgustingly _grateful._

# _Five_

# COUNTING _KOU'RU_

Screaming from above, an arrow caught a tardy pirate crawling across the chain. It struck deep into his neck, forcing a blood-choked gurgle from the man as he lost his grip on the bridge of links and went tumbling headfirst into the churning waters below.

"Eight," Kataria remarked, nocking another arrow.

Her bowstring sang a melancholy dirge for the next pirate struck, the shict grinning as he fell to join his companion in the liquid tomb.

"Nine," she added, drawing another missile.

"Stop it," Quillian growled in response, levelling her crossbow towards the deck. "You're shattering my concentration."

"You have to concentrate to lose?" Kataria asked coolly as she loosed her arrow. "How sad. Ten."

"I have to concentrate to make sure I don't kill _the wrong people_ ," Quillian snapped back. She squeezed the trigger on her weapon and sent a bolt flying down to meet one of the deck-bound invaders below.

"So you kill a few of your own along with the pirates." Kataria laughed. "It's not like anyone was expecting you to do your job flawlessly." She winked an emerald eye. "You're only human." Her bow hummed and someone screamed from below. "Eleven."

"You stupid savage," Quillian muttered, loading her crossbow.

"You're just upset that you're losing." She launched another arrow. "To look, one would think you've never counted _Kou'ru_ before." Before the Serrant could reply, she smirked. "You see, _Kou'ru_ is—"

"What your breed calls humans, I know," Quillian growled. "I take no pride in killing my own kind, much less making games of it."

"Well, no wonder you're so bad at this."

The Serrant held her tongue, opting instead to focus her aim. It was difficult to ignore the shict; her idle babble was a paling annoyance compared to the grating accuracy of her scorekeeping. That only tightened her resolve, however. She vowed that no simple-minded savage would outshoot a trained Serrant.

"No way in hell," she hissed to herself.

"Would it help if I shot blind?"

Quillian turned, incredulous. "What?"

Kataria's grin was broad as she tugged her headband down over her eyes. Her ears quivered, one rotating to the left, the other to the right, like hounds with the scent of prey.

"I can't be blamed for this, you know. Shicts invented archery. We're even named after the sound of arrows hitting flesh." She let her missile fly and smiled. " _Shict._ "

"Really," Quillian muttered, "and here was I thinking you were named after what comes out of my—"

"Your envy certainly smells like that." Kataria lifted her headband and frowned out. "Twelve... wait, no, that was just a glancing shot." The fall in her voice lasted only a moment before she jumped up and down, giggling madly. "Wait again! Someone got him in the neck with a sword! He's dead! That counts, that counts!"

"Will you _shut up_?"

"Well, you can hardly expect me to help you when you keep shoving that foul attitude at me. Too bad; I could have improved your score to being at least halfway respectable for a human."

"Help?" Quillian laughed blackly. "I've seen your kind's 'help' first-hand, savage. I know what you've done to my people."

"If we're talking about crimes and kinds," Kataria replied nonchalantly, "we may as well discuss this strange little rabble of vermin called humanity." She loosed an arrow. "Thirteen." She reached for another. "At any rate, all the shict tribes put together only add up to a fraction of your teeming race. We're smarter than you, quicker than you, craftier than you, and yet all you need to do to beat us out," she uttered the last words contemptuously, "is breed."

"And how many people, innocent people, will never get the chance because of what your kind has done? Your _tribes_ slaughter without remorse, discrimination or respect for the rites of combat!"

"We can't afford to discriminate between strains of disease." Kataria's voice and weapon were one cold, cruel amalgamation, hissing callously in unison as she loosed her arrow. "Shicts don't fight fair. Fourteen."

"And your companions, are they strains of the same _disease_?"

Kataria fought hard to keep her body from stiffening, to keep her ears from flattening against her head. The Serrant could not hit a target with arrows. The shict resolved that she could not allow her to see her hit a target with words, either. She could not let the Serrant see her offence at the suggestion. Better to keep the ears upright, proud ears.

Shict ears.

A roar turned her attention to the deck and she glowered. Smoke curled into the sky from smouldering bodies. Men swarmed about the red-skinned brute at their centre, trying to hack at him, trying to take courage in their numbers even as Gariath continued to rip, to pull, to claw and to bludgeon.

_Stupid reptile_ , she thought resentfully, _taking all my kills._ She glowered at the rapidly thinning crowd of foes. _I could kill them all if they'd just stop moving around so much, scampering little monkeys._ Her eyes drifted to the _Linkmaster_ , keeping pace with the _Riptide_ so easily, its helmsman shouting encouragement as he guided the ship with expert ease.

_And his big, fat, ripe head..._

"That's it," she whispered.

She loosed an unpleasant guffaw, which only increased as Squiggy cast her a curious cringe.

"This is how I'll help you," she said. "We put a stop to these little pirates moving about and we'll pluck them off one by one." She glanced to the black ship. "Of course, we could also just end this game by putting their ship behind us."

"What?" One of Quillian's eyebrows arched in response to an inner twinge of dread and she whirled about to follow the shict's gaze. "What do you mean?"

"They can't do much if they can't catch us, can they? And they can't catch us if they can't chase us." Kataria drew her arrow, aiming it across the gap of sea and the salt-slick deck of the _Linkmaster_ , towards its helm. "Thusly, all we need to do is keep them from chasing us."

Quillian's eyes went wide as the shict's plan dawned on her. The glistening tip of her arrow was aimed directly at the filthy man at the _Linkmaster_ 's wheel, blissfully unaware of her aim as he hurled abuse at Argaol.

"Like so," Kataria finished.

"Wait, you idiot!"

Quillian's hand snatched an arm already hanging at the shict's side, having loosed the arrow long before the Serrant could even reach for it. With painful slowness, Quillian stared as the arrow hummed with an almost casual speed towards the pirates' helmsman. No heads looked up, far too embroiled in their current battle to foresee the impending disaster.

Quillian's breath caught in her throat as the arrow caught in the helmsman's. He jerked slightly, then stiffened with a curious look on his face, as though unaware of what had just happened.

"There," Kataria said, shrugging the Serrant's hand off. "What's so bad about that?"

The slain helmsman answered.

He slumped across the wheel, his body dragging it into a full spin. The chain connecting the two ships went slack as the _Linkmaster_ veered suddenly, driven by the corpse's weight. The screams of pirates tumbling off their now-unstable bridge were punctuated by splashes of water. Cries of alarm rose up from the deck as fingers pointed towards the black-timbered titan now careening towards the _Riptide_. The pale-skinned creatures clinging to the hull in mid-climb croaked a collective chorus of terror.

Then, all sounds died in a great wooden scream.

The two huge ships collided, bows splintering. The _Linkmaster_ 's momentum sent the _Riptide_ spinning as their hulls ground together. Particularly unlucky pirates and pale frogmen were reduced from hostile invaders to smears in the span of two breaths.

The fighting on the deck ground to a halt as the ships did, the sudden shifting sending all combatants sprawling to kiss the salt. Eventually, the spiralling, the screaming and the splintering stopped, leaving two floating behemoths bobbing with unfitting calmness.

Kataria took the opportunity to stagger to her feet, gripping the edge of the crow's nest. She glanced down at the carnage: dizzy men struggling to rise and find their weapons, uttering prayers to various human Gods, flattened chunks of red and pink tumbling into the waters as the hulls eased apart. In the funerary wake of sound, a stray wind caressed her hair, sending her feathers fluttering.

A smile creased her face, breaking into a peal of laughter that was long, loud and unwholesome.

"How many do you think that was worth, Squiggy?" She cast a glance behind her, spying nothing. "Squiggy?"

When she discovered the bronze-clad fingers clutching at the nest's edge, she had to fight to keep her laughter from overpowering her. She couldn't say at that moment why the sight of Quillian dangling by one stubborn hand was so amusing to her. Perhaps it was her expression, the mixture of fear and outrage at having been hurled from the nest by the force of the collision. Perhaps it was simply the rush of having scored so many _Kou'ru_ with one shot, the woman's humiliation being merely the punctuation of a squeal-filled giddy sentence.

Or perhaps it was the opportunity dangling before her.

"Help me up." Quillian's voice had not even the slightest hint of request.

Kataria's own hand lingered on the rail, her gaze contemplative. There was no real reason to watch the Serrant fall, she realised, but was hard pressed to think of a reason to haul her bronze-clad bulk back up.

And yet, something stayed her hand, a mere finger's length from the Serrant's own reaching gauntlet. Here was a human with genuine hate reinforced with swords, cross-bows and blind zeal. Here was a human who saw notched ears as a target.

She had seen such hate before, but only in the eyes of those not content to revile her people and wallow in deluded myth about the tribes. This hate, the undiluted foulness behind Quillian's eyes, was reserved for those who had seen shicts. _Seen_ , she thought, _and killed._

Her suspicions were confirmed, at least as much as she needed them to be, in the grit of the woman's teeth and narrowing of her eyes. She could not disguise her loathing, even as she dangled above the already blood-soaked deck. Even for the sake of her life, Kataria realised, this human couldn't commit the fraud of repentance.

"If you're going to kill me," the Serrant hissed, "then cease drawing it out."

Kataria made no reply besides a careful, contemplative blink. Here was a human who had killed her people. Here was a human who had committed the one sin all shicts were sworn to avenge. Here was a human who could be one less slayer of her tribeskin, a human the world wouldn't miss.

_They can always make more_ , she thought.

"Do it," the Serrant hissed.

Kataria's hand moved in response, wrapping around the Serrant's wrist.

"Don't be such a whiner," the shict grunted, straining with the effort of hauling up the bronze-clad woman. "Just because," she paused to breathe, "I took my time," she gasped, "Riffid Alive, but you're heavy."

Suddenly she paused, as the woman's chest rose just above the basket's edge.

"Wait a moment, how many did you say that last one was worth?"

"What?" Hate vanished in a moment of puzzlement in Quillian's eyes.

"When the ships collided," Kataria repeated, "how many was that worth? How many did I kill?"

"I don't know," the Serrant snarled, "I was a bit busy _nearly falling to my death_."

"Just take a guess."

"I don't know..." She drew in a breath through her teeth. "You killed... perhaps eight heathens."

" _EIGHT?_ "

Quillian's shriek was short and brief as the shict released her. She came to a sudden, jerking halt, her bronze fingers digging deeper into the wood to suspend herself. A staggering gasp that sounded as though the woman's stomach was on the verge of spilling out of her mouth went unheeded by Kataria.

"That had to be fifteen," Kataria protested sharply, " _at least_ twelve."

"You're delusional," Quillian growled in response. "Eight is being generous. You didn't do more than shoot one man and send a few others into the sea."

"In _a chunky jam_ I sent them! Give me a better number!"

"Lying is a sin in the eyes of all Gods."

"Then you'd better cut it out before I send you to meet them."

Until that moment, it hadn't truly occurred to Kataria that she was prepared to send the woman to her death for refusing to concede a few extra _Kou'ru_ when she hadn't been willing to condemn her for supposedly killing her own tribesmen. It bothered her little; whether by righteous vengeance or petty numbers, still one less human.

_If_ , Kataria told herself, _she continues to act in such a human manner._

"Do you concede?"

"Not a chance," Quillian snapped back.

"Lovely." The shict put on a self-satisfied smirk. "Bid your smelly Gods good day on behalf of Riffid for me."

She turned about, folding her arms over her chest. She could resume shooting in a moment, when this particular distraction was over. Absently, she scratched her flank as she waited for the sound of bronze grinding against wood, gulls crying above the inevitable shriek, a pompous melon exploding in a barrel.

Either that or a plea for mercy. They'd be equally satisfying.

"Shict," Quillian gasped.

_So soon?_ Kataria resolved not to turn just yet; that would be too easy.

"Shict!"

_She can hold on for a few more moments... or not._

"Damn it, you long-eared vagrant! Something's happening below!"

Kataria's ears twitched. The Serrant's concerns were confirmed in a cry of pain from a familiar voice. She whirled about, leaning over the dangling woman to peer at what was occurring below.

What had begun as a melee had degenerated into a matter of swaths: swaths fleeing before Gariath as he tore through the ranks of the pirates, swaths collapsing before Dreadaeleon's fiery hands as his arcane chant went unchallenged.

"That hardly counts as a 'happening'," the shict sneered. "I've already killed as many as they have."

"Not that, you imbecile!" Quillian pointed a bronze finger across the deck.

Kataria's eyes widened immediately, ears pricking up in alarm at the sight. The greatest swath of all lay at the _Riptide_ 's helm, the sailors who had been guarding it now cast to the timbers like scythed wheat. The figure of Rashodd was immense amidst the carnage, wading unhurriedly up the steps towards the sole figure, short and wiry, standing in his way.

"Lenk," she whispered.

Her arrow was up and nestled in the bowstring in an instant, aimed squarely for Rashodd's massive back. The pirate, however, seemed less than interested in standing still and suddenly twisted, drawing up beside Lenk, uncomfortably close. Even as wiry as he was, as skilled as she was, and as massive as the Cragsman was, her fingers quivered.

_No_ , she resolved at that moment. She would not add Lenk to her score. Besides, she reasoned, a shot from such a distance into a man of Rashodd's girth had no guarantee to kill. To waste arrows on a single _Kou'ru_ , no matter how big, simply wasn't acceptable.

Her arrow was back in her quiver, bow in hand, leg over the crow's nest's railing as she prepared to climb down the rigging. Only a sudden shriek gave her pause.

"Hey! _HEY!_ "

"Oh, right." She glanced over the quaking bronze digits and stared down at Quillian. "I almost forgot." She smiled. "Now, we're agreeing that the collision caused at least twelve in my favour, yes?"

"Yes, sure, whatever!" The Serrant nodded fervently. "Just—"

"Mind yourself, I have to count." The shict made a show of wiggling her digits. "Fourteen from arrows alone plus, if we're frugal, another twelve makes..." She smiled morbidly down at Squiggy, tapping her nose with a finger. "An even twenty-seven. Lucky number!"

The total dawned on Quillian the moment Kataria leapt from the nest and deftly seized the rigging. Squeals of fury followed her down, but she ignored them. There were more pressing concerns.

A flash of sparks at the helm drew her attention; Lenk was hard pressed against Rashodd's twin axes, his sword nothing more than a weak stinger in the hands of a tiny wasp. Kataria gritted her teeth, splayed her legs against the ropes of the rigging and slid down, ignoring the burn of the hemp that bit through her gloves. She had no time for pain.

The game was not yet over.

# _Six_

# THE HERALD

Lenk felt a hammer explode against his belly.

The wind left him, the earth left him as he flew up into the air, sailing blissfully across currents carried by fast-fading screams in the distance. _This_ , he thought, _must be what it is to ascend to the heavens._

The Gods proved not so kind.

He struck the timbers with a crash, sliding like a limp, breathless fish. He collided with the base of the ship's wheel with the meagrest of bumps, giving him the opportunity to lament that the blow hadn't killed him.

"Khetashe," he gasped breathlessly, "that didn't work."

"You thought it would?" Argaol was quick to kneel beside the young man, helping him to a sitting position. "Rashodd's twice your size if you stand up straight, boy!"

"I thought," he paused to breathe, "I could... strike quickly. Use size to my advantage... gnats and frogs, right?"

"What?"

"Something my grandfather told me." Lenk rubbed his stomach, grimacing; the indentations of Rashodd's knuckles were all too fresh in his skin. "The frogs are big, slow and lumbering... the gnats are small and quick, they can escape."

"No gnat ever managed to beat down a frog, runt."

"Well, I know that _now_. When he told it to me, it sounded like good advice."

Any further conversation went silent against the sound of distant thunder, the sound of heavy boots. The timbers shook beneath them, the ship trembling with Rashodd's stride. They glanced up as the pirate cleared the last step to the helm.

Rashodd stalked towards them with almost insulting casualness, heedless of the dead beneath his boots, the red flecking his beard, the glistening of his axes. His gaze was unreadable behind his helmet, his voice a metallic ringing.

"It is with no undue fondness that I recall a time when this was a respectable business. It is with nostalgia that I remember when two captains could do business without bloodshed and drinks were always proffered to guests." He sighed. "Where is my drink, Argaol? Where is the courtesy extended to a man of my particular prestige? I would give you all the mercy I could spare had you merely displayed a bit of the propriety I am inarguably due."

Using his sword as a makeshift crutch, Lenk staggered to his feet, steadying himself with the ship's wheel.

Rashodd inclined his head respectfully. "You seem to be the most decent lad amongst this merry band of rabble we've had the pleasure to treat with." He hefted one of his axes over a broad shoulder. "I can't say I don't admire your—if you'll pardon the comparison—cockroach-like tenacity. I've scarce known a man to display such resilience in the face of common sense." He lofted a great, grey brow. "Mercenary?"

"Adventurer."

"That would explain it, wouldn't it? I've no inherent disrespect for the profession, mind you, though it's always seemed to me that an adventurer is naught more than a pirate who couldn't bring himself to admit he's scum."

"We're all entitled to our opinions."

"Regardless, I feel compelled to ask you," he shifted his glance to Argaol, "both of you... why put up such a fight? While I wouldn't list it as a fault in polite company, are you blind, good man? Can you not see the merry company we keep?" He gestured over his shoulder to the pale invaders, sliding up to reinforce their pirate allies. "Be frank with me—how many mere pirates do you know that command such beasts?"

"I've met more than a few beasts in my time," Lenk grunted, standing as straight as he could. "I'm not impressed."

"A pity." Rashodd shook his head sadly and turned to Argaol. "Then I appeal to your reason, good Captain. Is it too late to call for a cessation that we might converse as proper gents? Must it always come to violence?"

"It came to violence ages ago," Argaol snarled, "when you started slaughtering my men."

"The merry boys of the _Linkmaster_ are nothing if not famed for their bravado."

"What you're famed for is rape, murder and slavery."

"You do me no honour with flattery, kind sir. Nor have I the patience to continue such an argument. Simply give us what we wish and we can spare you any more tidying-up."

Argaol regarded the man hesitantly. "And what, pray, is it you wish?"

"I had come intent on taking away some cargo, but I think it a bit rude," the Cragsman cleared his throat, "given that you'll be requiring most of your merchandise to hire on crew to replace the men you've so unfortunately lost."

"Your hacking them to pieces _was_ a bit unfortunate."

"Details. At any rate, we'll simply search your cabins and take two of your gentle lady passengers." He held up a pair of fingers. "One of our choosing, one of yours."

Argaol hummed; the sound was faint and distant in Lenk's ears, slurred by the thunder pounding through his head. Even through blurring vision, however, he could see the captain's gaze drifting upwards to the crow's nest. Kataria and Quillian had both vanished from the mast; perhaps for the better, Lenk thought.

The captain's thoughts were just as audible. He could see Argaol questioning himself, posing any number of logical scenarios in the tilt of his head. _Why not_ , Lenk asked himself, _why not abandon a savage for the sake of the crew? Please the pirates and please the Gods by ridding himself of a heathen adventurer._

Lenk clutched the hilt of his sword, unsure as to who he should turn it on once enough feeling returned to his arm to heft it.

"As well as the priest below."

Argaol's neck went rigid. "Absolutely not! Murder is one thing, Rashodd, but I'll not let you blaspheme this ship."

"Had I any manner of hat not made of iron, I would doff it in reverence of your godliness, kind sir." The Cragsman paused to pantomime this. "But I must attempt to skewer you with logic for a moment: consider the fate of your men. Resist us and the priest comes along with us, cooperate and the priest comes along with us. The only difference that remains is how big a charnel heap you're left with."

"Zamanthras guides this ship," Argaol countered hotly, displaying the Goddess's symbol hanging around his neck. "I will not risk the generosity She's shown me by acquiescing to your logic, no matter how skewering." He reached for the cutlass at his hip. "You offer me a quick death by your own hand or a slow one by the Gods' disfavour. I will accept _neither_."

"We aren't giving up any woman or man, either," Lenk attempted to say without vomiting as the breath returned to him fiercely. "Heathen or faithful, adventurer or otherwise." He hefted his sword and turned an icy glare upon the captain. "No one dies here without taking someone else with him."

Rashodd was impassive as Lenk charged towards him, the tiny gnat levelling his tiny silver stinger against the massive, iron-clad frog. The pirate twirled an axe casually in one hand, testing its weight as he might a butchering knife in the face of a particularly choice piece of meat. As he lowered his visored stare upon Lenk's head, he undoubtedly figured that his weapon would split a melon just as well.

The axe swung, bit only a few stray strands of silver as Lenk ducked low and thrust his blade upwards with a triumphant cackle, aiming for the small gap in his foe's armour. Such mirth was drowned in the clamour of steel, however, as Rashodd's second axe came up with an unfair deftness, grinding against the young man's sword.

Undaunted, Lenk pressed the attack. The pirate might have had leverage and strength, but the young man had two hands firmly on the sword's hilt and its tip poised tantalisingly close to the Cragsman's intestines. _Just a little farther_ , he thought, _a good push and it's all over._ He saw his grin widen in the blade's reflection, brimming with malicious hope.

It was then that he remembered that Rashodd had two hands.

The flat of the second axe came crashing down and slammed against his ribs. His sword clattered to the ground, hands contorting as muscles locked against the blow. Paralysed, he was barely able to let out a pained squawk, let alone squirm away from Rashodd's massive hand.

"Kindly use your reason, gentlemen." The ire boiling in Rashodd's voice was reflected in the fingers tightening around the young man's neck as he hefted Lenk from the deck. "Perhaps it has been your woe to have dealt with considerably less couth men than myself, but I can most benevolently assure you that my terms would be considered most generous by anyone slightly less deranged."

"There can be no negotiation where blasphemy is involved," Argaol snarled in reply.

"Ah, my dear Captain, there can be no victory where Rashodd is involved." He gestured out over the deck. "Amongst his allies are counted men who ply the waters like frogs and fight like devils. Look upon them, Captain, embrace the wisdom of our terms and we can begin the long and arduous process of restraining ourselves from the mutilation of fruits, stones and other synonyms for manhood," he brought his axe up, let the blade graze Lenk's trousers, "starting with this ardent young lad."

Being strangled by a giant hand and with an axe brushing his genitalia, Lenk began to see the wisdom in surrender. He hoped between what meagre breaths he could muster that Argaol, too, had enough sympathy for his situation, if not his profession.

While he couldn't twist his neck to see Argaol's reaction, the captain's derisive laughter assured the young man that godliness was, in his eyes, well above concern for an adventurer's dangling bits.

"And what then, Rashodd? Do we see how many more sacks are slashed before you get your men under control?" He chuckled blackly. "Besides, if you want to negotiate, I suggest you find a more valuable hostage."

"Truly, good Captain, it is rare that I find myself in a position where callousness overwhelms me." The Cragsman shook his head. "I trust the honour isn't lost on you." He looked Lenk over appraisingly like a particularly gristly piece of beef. "This upstanding young gent has spilled much blood for your well-being and you would cast him off so crudely?"

"There are always more adventurers. They're like cockroaches, as you say."

The surprise in Rashodd's voice was genuine. "It is with no great glee that I admit I hadn't expected this of you." He twirled the axe in his hands, raising it a little. "And it is with even less glee that I make this example."

"You ought to listen to the captain," someone hissed from behind.

Rashodd turned laboriously with two heavy feet, not nearly deft enough to avoid the arrow that shrieked from the steps and angrily bit at his wrist as it grazed his flesh. His grunt was more of surprise than of pain as he dropped Lenk to the deck, his scowl more of annoyance than anger as he turned to the woman already nocking another arrow.

"Cockroaches are everywhere." Kataria smiled behind her bow, flashing broad canines. "Back away from him," she gestured to Lenk with her chin, "that one belongs to me."

"Shicts, is it?" Rashodd's thick lips twisted into a grin that was undoubtedly supposed to be coy. "My good Captain, you can hardly retain your claims to godliness while consorting with heathen savages." He raised his hands, taking a step away from Lenk. "By all means, keep the dear lad if you think it will do you any good."

Her arrow followed him as he took another two steps backwards. It wasn't until a moment passed that Argaol glanced from the shict to the fallen young man and coughed.

"Shouldn't you... help him?"

Kataria blinked suddenly, glanced down at her companion and sighed.

"Yeah... I guess."

Rashodd seemed less than worried, even though Kataria kept her bow aimed at him while she came to Lenk's side. The pirate, rather, let out a great sigh, as though a potential arrow through the eyeball was all one tremendous inconvenience. He plucked up his stray axe and twirled it.

"And how do we solve this, then?" He shook his head. "Kill me, my men will fight harder and, while they weren't particularly restrained boys to begin with, they'll have much less restraint if I'm not here to control them."

"Every last heathen aboard this blessed vessel will be cleansed by steel, scum." Quillian's approach was heralded by the hiss of a sword leaping from its scabbard. Though she levelled her blade at the pirate, her scowl was for Kataria. " _Every. Last. One._ "

"She looks mad," Lenk noted through a strained gulp.

"She always looks mad," Kataria replied.

"In the interim," the Serrant said, turning her attention back to Rashodd, "it is only logical that we begin with the biggest."

Lenk held his breath as the woman took a menacing step. Rashodd was right, he knew—the Cragsmen wouldn't even notice that their captain had been killed until well after every last man was dead. Such an occurrence, however, rested on the idea that a sword would be enough to stop him.

An idea, he thought grimly, that seemed more ludicrous with every step the Cragsman took to meet the Serrant.

She growled and Lenk winced, though the sound of steel carving flesh never came. Rather, there was the sound of bronze clattering to the floor as a great, clawed hand reached up, seized Quillian by the head and shoved her aside.

Despite having no breath to chuckle, Lenk felt rather satisfied seeing Rashodd leap backwards at the sight clambering up the stairs. If the Cragsman strode with insulting casualness, Gariath stalked with infuriated ease. The leathery skin of his face was twisted angrily, bared teeth as red as every other part of his body. Cuts and gashes criss-crossed his body like so much decoration, which seemed to be all the credit he gave his wounds.

"It's over."

Gariath seemed to say this with more irritation than satisfaction, though it was difficult for Lenk to distinguish his companion's irritation from his other emotions; all of them involved some manner of rage.

"They barely even fought."

Red pooled at his feet. Red, Lenk noted grimly, not his own.

"This one didn't even raise his sword."

Gariath tossed the limp body at the Cragsman's feet. The man was barely recognisable as one of the _Linkmaster_ 's crew, so badly broken and crushed was he. Limbs were bent in ways they weren't meant to bend, extra joints had been added, and haemorrhages bloomed in ugly purple blossoms beneath the man's skin.

Lenk quietly wished Rashodd hadn't angled himself to prevent the young man from seeing his face.

The colossal captain gasped at his underling. "What in the name of All On High did you do to him?"

"I killed him. Isn't that obvious?" The dragonman took a step forwards and Rashodd backpedalled with uncharacteristic haste, axes raised. "The rest of them will follow." Gariath levelled a claw at the captain. "Unless you kill me."

A glance at the deck confirmed Gariath's declaration. The battle, it seemed, had taken a definite turn with the dragonman's presence. Many of the pirates lay dead, the remaining ones herded by the now superior numbers of the _Riptide_ 's men. Only the pale invaders held strong, pressed into a small mass at one side of the ship, heedless of the Cragsmen's pleas for help.

Those meagre few who hadn't already thrown down their arms collapsed as smouldering husks in the shadow of Dreadaeleon, the boy breathing heavily, hurling gouts of fire from his hands as he strode along the deck like an underfed titan.

"It's an insult," Gariath growled, tearing all eyes back upon himself. "I wanted a fight. I wanted _warriors_ and you send me babies." He kicked the corpse harshly. "Babies." The foot came up and down with a crack of wood and a spatter of thick, grey porridge. " _BABIES._ "

Rashodd cringed at that. Lenk thought it would have been a satisfying sight had he not also been forced to look away.

"So boldly did you utter condemnation of imagined blasphemies, Argaol," the Cragsman's voice betrayed not a hint of fear, "yet now you consort with murderous monsters and do not quiver at your own righteous hypocrisy?"

"Stop talking to them," Gariath growled, clenching his hands into fists. "I had to fight through a lot of ugly, weak, smelly humans to get to you. Now, stand still and _fight_ so one of us can die and we might be able to get something done today."

"I care not what atrocities linger before, throughout or herein, reptile." Rashodd's axes kissed in a challenging clang. "Nor do I yearn to know what allegiances they hold to. If you seek to die, I'll make your funeral impromptu and decidedly lacking in attendance."

Not one of the dragonman's smiles had ever been pleasant, Lenk noted as he watched his companion's lips curl backwards, but this particular grin crossed a threshold the young man had not yet seen. Something flashed in the hulking brute's eye, notable only in that it was no glimpse of bloodlust, nor promise of a memorable dismembering. What glimmered behind Gariath's obsidian orbs was anxiousness, eagerness, anticipation better fitting a young man about to bed his first woman.

After that particular metaphor, Lenk did not dare contemplate what his companion was thinking.

"Show me, then," Gariath's challenge was punctuated by the ringing of his silver bracers clashing together, "what humans can do."

"Requested and granted."

No sooner had the pirate's massive foot hit the deck than a piercing wail cut through the air.

" _Stop him!_ " All eyes below and above turned towards the shadows of the companionway as something emerged, pursued by a voice brimming with righteous indignation. " _Stop him, you fools! Retrieve the book!_ "

With unnerving speed, something came springing out of the shadows. So white as to be blinding in the sun, the slender, pale creature leapt out onto the deck. It hesitated, surveying the carnage surrounding it with animal awareness, baring black gums and needle teeth in a defiant hiss. The combatants, pirates and sailors alike, ceased their fighting at the sudden appearance of the creature and the booming voice that followed it.

" _I said stop him!_ "

At the sound, the creature went bounding through the crowds. Sweeping from the shadows like a white spectre, Miron Evenhands came bursting out, frost flakes on his shoulders. He flung a hand out after the creature in such a dramatic gesture that the figures of Denaos and Asper behind him were hardly noticeable.

" _He has the book! Bring it back to me!_ "

" _SHEPHERD!_ " the creature wailed to no visible presence as he rushed past the crowd. "Summon the Shepherd! This one has the tome!"

"What the hell are you doing?" The roar came from Rashodd. In the angry turn of a heel, the dragonman was forgotten as the captain stormed down the stairs after the fleeing creature. "We don't need any books, you dim-witted hairless otter!"

"Get back here!" Gariath howled in response, charging after the Cragsman.

Lenk and Argaol shared a blink as a new breed of chaos began to unfurl below. The pale creature nimbly darted between those determined to stop him and rushed to the cluster of his own kind at the ship's railing. All the while, Miron bellowed orders as Rashodd pursued the creature and Gariath pursued Rashodd.

"Well?" Argaol asked, turning to the young man suddenly.

"What?"

"Shouldn't you do something?"

The young man sighed heavily and tapped the toe of his boot on the wood.

"Yeah," he muttered, "fine."

Lenk leapt from the stairs, though he knew not why. His breath was still ragged, his grip weak on his sword, his legs trembling. He charged into a throng of flesh, wood and steel with Rashodd's blow still echoing in his body and he knew not why he did. Yet even as he felt himself stagger, he continued to charge after the pale thief, into the battle, into the sprays of red.

He knew not why.

Voices were at his back: commands from Miron, cries of mingled encouragement and warning from Asper and Denaos, all fading behind him. Arrows flew past his ears to put down particularly bold invaders rushing forth to aid their companion. Rashodd was before him, then at his side as he nimbly darted past the hulking pirate. He caught the flash of an axe out of the corner of his eye, moving to hack his legs out from under him.

There was a roar, a flash of red as something horned, clawed and winged caught the Cragsman from behind.

That threat fled from Lenk's mind with the sound of two heavy bodies hitting the deck. As sounds and screams faded around him, as the world slipped into darkness, leaving only the slender-limbed creature and the burlap satchel it clutched, he knew what sent him in pursuit. He knew, and it spoke to him in a harsh, frigid voice.

" _They cannot flee_ ," the voice said, an edge of joy to it, " _they cannot run. Strike. Kill._ "

The command lent him strength, pushed cold blood through his legs, drove him to leap. The pale creature was quick, but Lenk was more so. In the breath between his leap and his descent, the last trace of the world slipped away, bathing everything in darkness. He saw the invader turn, spurred by an unheard shout from his compatriots; Lenk saw the reflection of his steel in the creature's dark eyes.

Then, in a glittering arc, the world returned.

The thief collapsed unceremoniously. Something square and black tumbled out of its satchel, bouncing once upon the deck, then sliding gently to rest in a particularly moist, sticky spot. Even as life leaked out of him, the invader gasped and reached out a trembling, webbed hand for the object.

"Tome..." he gasped, "Shepherd... take—"

Lenk twisted his sword and the creature went rigid, laying its quivering head down in a red pool as though it were a pillow. His blade still glistening, Lenk raised his weapon warily, warning off the small press of pale creatures that took a collective menacing step forwards. They retreated from the weapon, he noted, but with hardly the fear or haste he had hoped. Their eyes were still appraising, their bone daggers still clenched tightly.

"Lenk!" He didn't have to turn around to recognise Miron's booming voice. "The book! Return it to me!"

_A book._

He wasn't exactly sure what he thought the thing should be. It was a broad, black square, only a little bigger than his journal. High quality leather of crimson and ebon bound its pristine white pages; it certainly looked like a book.

And yet, as it slid out of its silk pouch with the rocking of the ship, it somehow didn't seem to be a book.

It was unadorned. No title, no author, no symbol of any faith or people. The pale creatures lurched backwards, regarding it carefully, warily, anxiously. Yet even their reaction went unnoticed beside a fact that hit Lenk as he felt the warmth of the sun on his back.

_It doesn't glisten._

Leather of such high quality should shimmer. It should reflect the sunlight in its onyx face. Yet this leather did not glisten, nor shine, nor even flicker in the sunlight.

"Quickly, you fool!" Miron roared. "Take the book!"

With a swift glance over his shoulder, the young man nodded and moved forwards. Quickly, he reached down to scoop up the item.

" _NO!_ Not with your hands!"

He thought it slightly odd that Miron's voice should seem distant, so distant as to render whatever he had just shouted silent. Truly, all the sounds fell silent as Lenk plucked up the book. No seawater, nor blood, though both flooded the deck in excess, clung to the leather cover. He thought that odd for only a moment before he felt a twinge in his palm.

_Did... did it just move?_

The book quivered at his thoughts and, in the blink of an eye, responded.

The black cover flipped open, baring the pages to his eyes and, spurred by some unseen, unfelt breeze, began to turn. They went slowly at first, blinding him with hymns, invocations, prayers to things he had never heard of, pleas for things he would never have thought to ask for. An eternity seemed to pass as the words scarred themselves onto his eyes.

He was scarcely aware of the fact that he wasn't breathing any more.

The leaves continued to turn, to flip. Words vanished, blending into images, symbols, pictures that were discernible at first: people in torment, things with horns, claws, feathery wings. Then those too vanished and blended into nothing more than black lines scrawled in shapes that reached out and clawed at him, trying to pull his eyes from his skull with inky fingers.

Someone behind him screamed, told him to put the book down, but he could not will his hand to do so. Even as they made less and less sense, flipping viciously through his mind, the lines began to take a shape. He blinked, and with each passing moment, they continued to form a shape. It was horrible, yet he could not turn his head away, could not shut his eyes. He was forced to stare.

The book looked back at him.

The book smiled.

" _NO!_ "

The book snapped shut. His fingers tensed involuntarily around it as the frigid howl reverberated through his head, coating his skull with a vocal rime. He dropped it then, watching it splash in a pink puddle. The liquid did not pool beneath it.

" _Something_ ," the voice uttered, " _is coming._ "

Before Lenk could think, a howl filled the air. His eyes rose at the noise, spying the pale creatures as they clustered together at the railing. Standing above them, perched on the ship's edge and clinging to the railing, the tallest of the invaders pressed a conch shell to its lips. Its chest expanded with breath, then shrank as a wailing exhale cut the air.

Voices rose from behind him, excited warnings to the sky. Lenk saw it: the clouds moved suddenly, twisting and shifting. They grew larger, shimmering with a dozen facets as they descended in great drifts.

The sky, it seemed, was falling.

They descended in ominous unity, a flock of frenzied feathers and bulbous blue orbs, to land upon the masts and rigging and railings of the _Riptide_. Lenk watched them, spellbound by their harmony as they settled. Plump bodies covered with feathers, sagging, fleshy faces dominated by two great blue eyes.

_How many?_ He could not find an answer; they seemed to be endless, lines of ruffling, cooing birds. _Seagulls?_ No, he told himself, seagulls didn't sit and stare with unblinking eyes. Seagulls didn't gather in such numbers.

Seagulls didn't have long, needle-like teeth in place of beaks.

_What_ , he asked himself, _are they?_

"Harbingers." Miron's sneering disgust answered his thoughts. "The book, Lenk! Seize the book! Keep it away from those monstrosities!"

"What are you gentlemen doing?" Rashodd bellowed from the deck, still wrestling with Gariath. "Your master requires aid!"

"These ones no longer require that one," the creature with the conch said, levelling a finger at the Cragsman. "These ones have found the tome they seek."

"What tome?" All semblance of composure vanished from the captain. "I ordered you to take no tome!"

"No, that one did not," the frogman replied, glowering at the captain. "Yet that one is not this one's master."

"What in all hell are you—"

Before Rashodd could find the words for his fury, the timbers quaked with sudden, violent force. Another series of gasps coursed through the crowd, hands tightening around weapons as eyes went wide with bewilderment.

Something had just struck the ship.

Distantly, where wood met froth, the hull groaned ominously. The deck shook once more, shifting to one side, sending sailors and defenders alike struggling to keep their footing. An eternity seemed to pass between sounds of wood splintering, punctuated by further wooden whines as something from below crawled up the hull.

The pale creatures whirled, suddenly heedless of the others behind them, the prize they had lost upon the ground. As a single unit of pasty skin and scrawny legs, they collapsed to their knees, pressing their foreheads to the salt of the deck.

All save one.

"Speak not in the Shepherd's presence," the conch-blower uttered, its eyes on Lenk. "Dare no movement, dare no impure thought. Be content in salvation." Its finger trembled as he pointed. "For that one has seen much purity."

The ship listed further. Men stepped backwards, caught between the struggle to get away from the railing and to stay on their shifting feet.

And then, all were still; no sound, no movement. Only the groan of wood and the death of wind.

Screams were frozen in throats, hands quaking about weapons, unblinking eyes forced to the edge of the ship. From over the side, an immense, webbed appendage dotted with curling claws and wrapped in skin the colour of shadow reached up to cling to the railing. The wood splintered with the force of the grip, threatening to be crushed as the arm, emaciated and clad in painfully stretched flesh, tensed.

"Sweet Khetashe," Lenk whispered breathlessly.

With one great effort, the clawed limb pulled the rest of the creature up from the hull and turned the sailors' anxious terror to panic as a great monstrosity landed upon the deck with enough force to crack wood beneath two massive webbed feet.

It stood more than ten feet tall, dwarfing any creature present with its emaciated, ebon-skinned splendour. Attached to a torso of flesh drawn cruelly tight over a long ribcage were two arms and legs, both longer than spears, jointed in four places and ending in great, webbed claws.

All its thin, underfed horror was nothing compared to the monument atop its long neck. Massive, almost the size of its painfully visible ribcage, resembling the head of a rotted fish, the thing regarded the crew through vast, unblinking eyes: frigid white pools dominated by great blots of darkness. Its wide, toothy maw stretched its entire face to the point of agony, its lower jaw hanging slack. More than one man present retched, cringed or added a distinct yellow tinge to the grisly paint upon the deck as the creature's mouth swung open to speak.

"Where does the salvation lie?" Its voice was lilting, gurgling, the sounds of drowning men. "Where can it be?

"There, Shepherd."

Lenk saw their fingers, pale little digits pointed to the deck right at his feet. He glanced down at the tome for only a moment as it lay in a dry space with nothing but wet about it. His attention was then torn upwards once more as he felt the timbers quake beneath his feet.

The thing walked towards him in a loping, unhurried gait. He could see every webbed claw settle into the wood as it set a foot down, see the water cling to its black soles as it raised a foot up.

Was it aware of the fear it inspired? Lenk wondered. Was it aware that there had been so much blood spilled and so many bodies falling just moments ago? Was anyone else still aware? He could feel their frozen presence behind him, feel the ripple of air as they quivered, feel the breath of whimpered prayers.

Were they aware of him, he wondered, or did they merely see a tiny silver shadow before a looming tower of gloom?

"The tome!" Miron's shout was fading, softened by the terrified silence. "Get the tome!"

By the time Lenk realised there was a world beyond the creature looming before him, the tome was ensconced in webbed claws, examined by empty eyes. It did not blink, did not so much as scowl; whatever it saw in Lenk, Lenk could not see in it.

"Is it tempting? Is it envious?" The abomination's voice was incapable of softness, boiling up in its flabby throat like vocal bile. "Curious... and envious, both. The temptation is great to look within and muse on the salvation that lies beneath man-wrought covers."

"Temptation is strong." The rotund, feathered creatures chanted in horrifying unison. "Flesh is weak. Shelter in salvation. Salvation in the Shepherd."

The black monstrosity leaned down, looking Lenk squarely in the eyes.

"And yet... is it more faithful to keep eyes chaste, minds pure?"

"Chastity leads to the endless blue," the chorus above chanted. "Blessed is the pure mind."

Its arm extended, reached out to touch the deck as the thing remained unbent and Lenk remained unmoving. It reached over him and he heard its joints pop into place with greasy ease. The warning cries that had been at his back were quiet; all was quiet save for the shifting of the creature as it plucked the book's silk covering from the water.

"It is," it continued, drawing its great arm back, "for there is nothing without faith, no hope without chastity." Like a great, bony crane, the thing dipped its hand, replacing the book into the silk pouch. "And such great beauty must be kept only for eyes as beautiful."

Lenk hadn't even noticed the pale creature scurrying up beside the abomination, now accepting the tome with eager hands.

"Is it not so?" The creature did not wait for answer from itself, Lenk or its aide. Without another movement, it gurgled to the pale invader beside it. "Go."

"Fools!" Miron cried, though no one seemed to hear him. No one noticed the frogmen retreating, ambling from their prostrate circle and over the railing of the ship, to land in the salt with muted splashes.

No one could see anything beyond the stake of darkness that had impaled the heart of the deck.

"There is no escape from envy," the creature gurgled, staring down at Lenk, "however base a sensation it may feel. But to tolerate it... feel it and let it live, that is inexcusable in the eyes of Mother."

" _Move._ "

He wished he could; the voice was so distant, drowned in the echo of the abomination's gurgle. Between them, the frost and the shadow, he was smothered, frozen, unaware of the glistening black claw reaching down as though it intended to pluck a flower.

" _MOVE!_ "

"Understand," the thing gurgled, "this is simply how it must be."

"How it must end," the chorus agreed with bobbing heads.

When the blackness of the thing's hand had completely engulfed his sight, he felt it. A roar tore the sky apart, ripping through the air as it ripped through Lenk. The creature's hand wavered for a moment, the field of black broken by a sudden flash of angry red, the smothering echo of its voice shattered by thunder.

Gariath struck the creature with all the force of a battering ram, leathery wings flapping to propel his horned head into its ribcage. The abomination staggered, but did not fall. It gurgled, but did not scream. Gashes formed in its chest as it took a great step backwards... but it did not bleed.

_It doesn't bleed._

He was reminded, however, that he did, as the dragonman's knuckles cracked against his cheek. Whatever else had lingered inside him was banished in a fit of bloody-nosed rage as he turned a scowl upon his companion.

"What was that for?"

"Just checking," the dragonman grunted back.

Lenk blinked as a glob of red-tinged phlegm dripped down his face.

" _For what?_ "

"Huh." Gariath shrugged. "I didn't think I'd have to follow that up with a reason." He held up a scarred hand to prevent protest. "If it makes you feel better, say I was checking if you were too busy soiling yourself to fight."

"I wasn't—"

"Then what were you doing?"

Lenk opened his mouth to reply, but no words came out. He was muted, blinded, deafened all at once as the images flashed through his head again, the words echoing in his ears: the portraits in the book's pages, the smile across the parchment, " _salvation_ ," " _MOVE!_ " He found himself dizzy suddenly, but dared not sway, lest he find Gariath performing another check-up.

"Never mind," Lenk grunted. "Whatever it was, it doesn't warrant you punching your leader in the face."

"Leaders lead, they don't stand around and wait to die." Gariath snorted at that, raising a claw to one black eye. "Cry later. Kill now."

Whatever fear and frustration had been boiling within left him in one great resigned sigh. He glanced over at Gariath; even in the face of such a horror as the black-skinned foe, even against such walking foulness, he was still tensed for the fight, his wounds and cuts threatening to reopen over the bulge of his muscle. His posture, the eager twitch of wings, the flicking of moistened claws, told Lenk that the dragonman had already prepared to throw himself into a gaping, saw-toothed mouth of death. The sole question that lingered between their gazes was who was going to follow him into the afterlife.

Lenk raised his sword unconsciously. He saw his reflection in his companion's teeth; they both knew the answer.

Thunder burst from Gariath's mouth and crashed beneath his feet as he threw himself on all fours, charging towards the towering creature, wings unfurled, tail whipping behind him. Lenk struggled to keep up, following closely in the dragonman's splintered wake.

The creature regarded them with a curious tilt of its head, as though not entirely sure what was charging towards it. Before it could react, Gariath closed the distance in a sudden spring, leaping up to drive his horns against the monstrosity's ribcage. With an impact that shook the ship in the water, the creature staggered backwards as the dragonman sprang away, landing on all fours as he braced his body.

Lenk was quick to follow, charging up and over Gariath's back as though he were a winged ramp. With a grunt, he went flying off his companion's shoulders, his blade flashing in the air. He swung in a wide, murderous arc, intent on bringing his weapon anywhere he could against the thing's emaciated figure.

Rage turned to confusion in an instant as Lenk felt his blade connect with something, though his feet did not return to the ground. He glanced up with mouth agape at the sight of his blade caught neatly between webbed digits. Slowly, he looked to the creature, who regarded him with the same, unblinking expression as it held him aloft with one long black limb.

"Well... uh..." Lenk began.

Before he could even think to let go of the weapon, the loose flesh about the creature's neck quivered as it gurgled unpleasantly. In a blur of silver and black, the thing's arm rose up and snapped downwards, hammering Lenk against the deck.

The air was robbed from him, sight failed him as he was pulled up from the deck by his sword, his hands wrapped about the hilt in a barely conscious death-grip. His senses failing, he barely felt the sudden lightness of his body as the creature's arm snapped forwards once more, sending him sailing through the air.

In an instant, sound and sight returned to him. Screams and frightened gasps filled his ears as he saw the deck rising up to catch him in his plummet. Bones trembled in flesh with the impact of his fall.

"Gods alive," his voice was a breathless whisper, "what made me think that would work?"

"And so it becomes clear."

The voice was a scar on his brain, rubbed with clawed digits, the drowned gurgle painful even to hear. Through blurring vision, Lenk stared up, pulling himself to his feet just in time to see the ebon hand reaching down for him.

"What God can hear such a voice so far below?" the creature asked.

"They are deaf to your fears," the chorus muttered.

Lenk fell limp in the creature's grasp as it raised him up with all the effort it would use to lift a dead fish. He stared into its empty whites, saw the lack of any emotion boiling behind the great black pupils. There was no hatred there, no malice, not even a sinister moment of joy. Nor did the creature's stare reflect any predatory instinct or mindless sense of duty.

Within the thing's eyes, there was simply nothing.

"In the sky where your pitiless Gods dwell, none can hear you."

A roar tore through the air. Out of the corner of his eye, Lenk spied Gariath rushing forwards, pools of blood quivering on the deck with the force of his four-legged charge. What momentary relief he might have felt was dashed with the sudden snap of a long, black arm.

Gariath was plucked from the deck like a tumbling kitten, a claw wrapping about his throat. It raised him for but an instant, holding him aloft as he thrashed, clawing and kicking at the creature, before bringing him down harshly. Wood splintered beneath the impact, forming a shallow grave of timber and seawater for Gariath to vanish into as the abomination's foot came pressing down upon him.

"But down here," it gurgled, "only Mother will hear you."

The creature's mouth went wide, flesh creaking with the effort of its jaws as it bared rows of jagged teeth glistening with saliva.

"Let your end be a blessing to you."

" _Fight back._ "

It struck Lenk as odd that he should feel guilty for disappointing the voice, odd that he should feel so guilty for clubbing an impotent fist against the creature's emaciated limb. After all, there were surely worse things than failing a hallucination.

" _Fight!_ "

Too little strength, too close to the jaws, he realised. He could do nothing but stare, his scream choked in his throat, as the creature's eyes rolled back into its head, the gaping oblivion of its mouth looming before him.

"DROP HIM!"

The scream was distant in Lenk's ears, as were the cries that followed: shrieks of horror, open-mouthed pleas for someone not to be heroic.

Someone, a man whose name Lenk had never known, burst from the press of flesh like a two-legged horse, a long fishing pike clenched in his skinny hands. His roar was more for his own sake than the monstrosity's, trying to convince himself of his own bravery through sheer volume.

"With me, boys," he howled, "we need no heathen adventurers to save us!"

Lenk fell from the monster's grip, suddenly seized by hands about his shoulders as soon as he hit the ground. He glanced up, noting the glint of green eyes and gold hair through his still-swimming vision. A smile tried futilely to worm itself onto his face.

"Kataria," he groaned.

"Shut up," she snarled back as she pulled him into the relative safety of the crowd.

His throat aching, he had little choice but to obey. He looked back towards the creature and saw the sailor standing before it, unflinching, unmoving, as he drove the pike through the wisp of flesh that served as the creature's belly. There was the sound of flesh tearing, sinew splitting as the metal head came bursting through the creature's back.

Gariath seized the momentary distraction, reaching up to grab the creature's ankle. With a snarl, he threw the massive webbed foot up and leapt from his half-finished coffin. Splinters jutted from his flesh, weeping gouts pooling at his feet. If he was in agony, he did not show it.

The creature did not fall, but swayed. It did not shriek, but hummed contemplatively. It did not look at the man with scorn, but with nothingness, a strange sort of curiosity that was something between annoyance and sheer befuddlement.

"A mistake." it uttered. "Your rage at your uncaring Gods drives you to strike at your saviour. Do you repent?"

The man staggered backwards, lips mouthing a wordless prayer.

"Then let salvation be done," the creature said.

What composure it had lost was regained in an instant as it rose tall and erect to glance at the pike's shaft jutting from its belly. With no sound but that of its own flesh being mangled, the creature wrapped a claw about the handle and tore it free, sending meaty black blobs plopping to the deck.

"And thus is my part written. I am here to make wide your error, your false hope."

There was a sucking sound, as of a foot being pulled from mud, and the creature's gaping wound began to quiver. Slowly, the flesh groaned, reaching out with frayed edges to seal itself in a grotesque slurp of sinew.

"What the..." The sailor was breathless, taking another step backwards. "What... what in the name of Zamanthras _are_ you?"

Like a black, rubbery tentacle, the creature's arm shot out to seize the sailor about his head, claws sinking into his cranium as it held the sailor aloft. The man shrieked, kicking about madly, clawing at the creature's webbed hand, writhing in its unquivering grip.

"I am," it gurgled ominously, "mercy."

The sailor's screams died as the beast's claws twitched. With agonising slowness, cloudy, viscous ooze dripped from trembling fingers. The crowd took up their fellow's screams as the slime continued to pour from the creature's hand, coating his head and face to his shoulders. Like a rabbit caught in a trap, the kicking of the sailor's legs slowly died, his thrashing silencing.

In moments, a hunk of breathless meat dangled from the creature's grip, like a condemned prisoner from the gallows, wearing a mask of viscous sludge. The echo of his corpse hitting the deck carried for an eternity.

"A better place, a better dream, free of your uncaring Gods. This is Ulbecetonth's gift to you." Its voice was a whisper, could almost have sounded tender if not for the boiling bile in its throat. "Sleep now... and dream of blue."

Even the murmur of the waves had fallen silent, the sea losing its frothy voice as it bore witness to the horrors occurring upon its surface. All present on the ship shared its sentiment, every man breathless, every woman speechless, not so much as a gull to break the choking quiescence. None present dared even a frightened sob, none heard a single sound.

None save Lenk. His eyes were locked on the man's corpse, this sailor he had never met, whose name he had never known, whose death would never be explained to his widow's satisfaction. His eyes were fixed, his ears were full.

" _Needless. Wasteful. Would still be alive if you had killed._ "

"He's dead," Lenk uttered.

" _Because of you._ "

"Shut up, Lenk," Kataria urged, squeezing his shoulder. "It's going to hear—"

Her voice died as two empty eyes rose up. It had heard.

"Curious," the creature gurgled, as if suddenly aware of the presence of the crew and adventurers, "what strange vermin swim upon the seas."

The answer it was offered was subtle, barely more than a whisper. In the wake of sound, however, it began to carry, it began to swell like the waves that had fallen impotent. For the first time in the horrific eternity that began when the creature had risen, eyes managed to blink as they tore themselves away to spy out the source of the new sound that filled their ears.

They parted before Miron like human waves, allowing the priest to stride between them with noiseless steps. The wind rose in his wake, causing his robes to whip about him, as if to silence his quickly growing voice. He spoke louder in response, his chant a series of prayers wrought from words too pure for any present to understand. He raised his hand to the monstrosity, his faith challenging nature and shadow with the gesture.

"No." The creature's voice was breathless, like a mewling kitten. Its eyes grew wider as it stared at Miron as its victims had stared at it. "Cease your pitiless wails! Silence your mourning, vermin! I have no ears for it!"

Miron was not silent.

The chorus of feathered creatures was the first to scream. They erupted in a cacophony of noise and flapping feathers, leaping, tumbling, tearing from their perches upon railings and rigging. The sky was painted white, men falling to the deck as great white curtains of ripping, frenzied feathers fell over the ship.

Miron was heedless.

Every breath the priest took seemed to cause him to grow. His presence grew brighter, the whites of his robes suddenly blinding, the fall of his feet causing the deck to quake. His chant became thunder, every word a bolt of lightning, every syllable a crackle of purpose. None dared to stop him, to pull him back as he drew closer to the monstrosity. They fell away, as terrified of him as they had been of the creature.

The creature's jaws tore open as it let out a terrible, unearthly howl that carried the sounds of a thousand drowned voices. Miron did not relent, his chant rising in volume to match the monster's scream as he continued to advance towards the abomination. The creature's claws clutched its skull as it backpedalled on trembling legs, shrieking in agony as it shook its head about angrily. The priest continued forth, his chant a bellowing chorus of alien phrases, his face a mask of wrath as he drew closer, his symbol raised like a shield, his voice a weapon.

Driven to the wind, the chorus disappeared from the ship, becoming clouds as they swiftly disappeared into the blue upon shrieks of terror and agony.

The foul beast itself let out one last, agonised howl and turned, breaking into an ungainly sprint as it loped towards the railing. With one immense leap, it sailed over the edge of the ship and fell into the waters below with a colossal splash.

The waves settled and Miron's chant slowly died as he lowered his hand, his twisted face returning to normal. He took a deep breath and let out a great exhalation, his body shrinking considerably as he released all his air in one great gasp. None dared speak in his presence as he stared out over the waves, his eyes locked upon the unseen creature as it fled beneath the waters.

Men dropped their weapons and their jaws, their eyes agog and their murmurs breathless. Dreadaeleon wore a look of amazement, while Gariath's face was carved into an expression of suspicious concern. Kataria pulled her silver-haired companion to his feet, staring out over the railing with wide eyes. Denaos looked towards Asper for an explanation, but she had none to offer, her eyes locked upon Miron in awed disbelief. From the crow's nest, Quillian gazed out at the waters, hardly believing that the beast was truly gone, believing even less easily the way it had departed.

Sole amongst them, Lenk took a step forwards, his footsteps echoing across the waves. Miron remained unmoving, unchallenging of his employee's approach, unspeaking as Lenk cleared his throat behind him.

"It's gone now, is it?" Lenk whispered. "The danger's passed?"

"Danger?" Miron cast a smile out from beneath his cowl.

"I suspect you'll soon learn the reason that word was invented."

# _Seven_

# LAST RITES

On three, right?" Sebast grunted.

Lenk nodded.

"Right, then... one... two..."

They lifted the last of the bodies. The two men had no breath to spare for heaving or grunting as they upended the dead pirate over the railing, sending him tumbling into the eager waters. Lenk grimaced, observing with macabre fascination as the headless man plunged stiffly into the brackish depths.

The sea resembled a floating graveyard, corpses of pirates bobbing at the surface like fleshy lures, their lifeless faces staring up at the darkening skies before they slowly sank in a hiss of froth. Lenk watched the dark, slender shapes of fish gliding between the descending corpses, nibbling, tasting before casually sliding over to the next body. Bigger, blacker fish would join the feast, he had been told, once they caught the scent of blood. By morning, not a scrap of flesh would be left to remember the dead.

A strange thing, the sea, Lenk mused grimly. Hours ago, the men bobbing in the water had been ferocious foes and savage opponents. Now, as they sank in a cloud of swirling dark, they were simply sustenance for creatures that knew or cared nothing for them or their exploits. In the end, for all their bravery, all their savagery, they were nothing but food.

"That's the last of them." The ship's first mate sighed, dusting off his hands and noting unhappily that such a gesture did nothing to remove the bloodstains. "Rashodd has been taken below, along with our own boys."

Lenk nodded. Rashodd had been the only one left alive. What remained of his crew had been swiftly executed and tossed overboard, leaving nothing behind but their captured black ship, a lingering stench and a bloody tarp. Sebast looked to it as his men began to roll it up.

"Once we get some mops up here," he said, "you'll never be able to tell we all nearly died on this ship." His laughter was stale and bereft of any humour. "Ah, I suspect after I say that a few hundred more times, I'll start believing it, aye?" Quietly, the sailor shoved his hands into his pockets and began to stalk towards the companionway. "Decent of you to help dispose of the dead, Mister Lenk. I've got letters to write."

"Letters?"

"To wives... widows, anyway. Orphans, too. Unpleasant business. I wouldn't ask you to help with those."

Lenk remained silent; it would be an odd thing for the man to ask of him, but he wasn't about to offer his aid, in any case. Sebast took the hint and stalked off across the deck. It was only when he was a thin, stoop-shouldered outline against the shadows of the companionway that a question occurred to Lenk.

"What was his name?"

"Whose?" Sebast called over his shoulder.

"The young man who died today." Realising his mistake, he corrected himself. "The one killed by... by that thing."

Sebast hesitated, staring at the wood beneath him.

"Moscoff, I think... some young breed out of Cier'Djaal. Signed on to make some silver when we last set out from that port." He suddenly glanced up, staring out over the evening sky. "I think his name was Moscoff, anyway. It might have been Mossud... or Suddamoff... Huh, you know, I can't even remember any more." He smiled at a joke only he understood. "I can't even remember his face... isn't that funny?"

Lenk did not laugh. Sebast did not, either; even his faint corpse of a smile disappeared as he turned and trudged down the steps into the ship's hold.

It only occurred to Lenk after the first mate had departed that his declaration that their work was done had been incorrect. There were still many corpses upon the _Riptide_ 's deck, save that these still moved and drew some mockery of breath.

The _Riptide_ 's crew traipsed across the deck without purpose, half-heartedly pushing mops over stains that would never disappear, picking up discarded weapons.

Privately, Lenk yearned to see them crack a joke, curse at each other, even brush up against him with a hearty greeting and a full blast of their armpits' perfume in his face. Instead, they muttered amongst themselves, they stared up at the darkened skies above and made unintelligible remarks about the weather. They did not look at each other.

There was no blaming them, he knew. Their hearts were heavy with the deaths of their comrades, their minds trembling with the strain of comprehending what they had seen. He could hardly wrap his own mind about the events as he stared at the splintered dents in the deck.

The creature should not have been. It should have stayed in drunken ramblings and ghost stories, like any other horror of the deep. But he had seen it. He had seen its dead eyes, heard its drowned voice, felt its leathery flesh. Absently, he reached for a sword that was not present as he recalled the battle; he recalled the creature, unharmed by the blows dealt to him by Gariath, himself and Moscoff.

"Or was it Mossud?"

At once, the sailors paused in their menial duties to look towards Lenk. He saw their own lips soundlessly repeat the name before they turned back to their chores.

The moments after the creature had fled returned to him in a flood of visions. Asper had run to tend to the fallen sailor, kneeling beside his still body, looking over his slime-covered visage. He remembered her grim expression as she looked up, shaking her head.

" _He's dead_ ," she had said. " _Drowned._ "

Lenk found his knees suddenly weak, his hand groping for the railing to steady himself. _Drowned on dry land_ , he thought, _that doesn't happen._

Where did such a creature come from? What sort of vengeful God had spawned such a fiend that shrugged off steel and drowned men without water? What sort of gracious God would permit such a creature to exist in the world?

Gods, he had found, were seldom of use besides creative swearing and occasional miracles that never actually occurred. He leaned on the railing and cast his gaze out over the sea like a net, trawling for an answer, some excuse for the horrors he had seen. He knew he would not find one.

Kataria watched from the upper deck, a deep frown on her face as she observed Lenk.

His melancholy unnerved her more than it should, as the battle had unnerved him more than it should have. Bloodshed, she knew, had been a big enough part of both of their lives that pausing and thinking about it afterwards was no longer instinct. That he now stood unmoving, barely breathing, eyes distant, caused her to do the same.

She noted the icy glow in his furrow-browed gaze. His thoughts lingered on the dead, no doubt. He did not mourn; Lenk never mourned. The young sailor's death was not a tragedy in his mind, she knew, but a conundrum, a foul question with no decent answer.

Below deck, she knew others _were_ in mourning, asking themselves the same questions in teary curses. Their presence was the reason she stood away from them, atop the upper deck, far removed from the humans.

Her belly muttered hungrily.

That was reason enough to be away from them.

None of them would even be able to comprehend hunger at such a time, all choked on emotion and tears they dared not share, just as she was unable to comprehend their grief. No matter how often she attempted to place herself in their position, to understand the people they had lost, the same thought returned to her.

Dozens of humans had died, of course, but only dozens of humans. The world had thousands to spare. Even those who survived the day would likely last only a few more years after. What made these few so special? What if they had been shicts?

She shook her head; they hadn't been shicts, of course. If they were, she would likely feel otherwise. The fact that they were human, weak, close-minded, prone to death, prevented her from feeling anything else.

Once again, her gaze drifted to Lenk, also human.

The young sailor and Lenk: both human, their differences too trivial to note. Why was it, then, that one made her think of food, while she could not tear her gaze away from the other?

"Are we so fascinating?"

Kataria turned at the voice, regarding her new company quietly. A tall, black-haired woman stood at the railing beside her, polishing a bright red apple on the chest of her toga. Quillian had discarded her armour, her flesh no more yielding than the bronze she had worn. All the skin exposed was as white as the garment she wore, save for one patch of crimson at her flank.

Oaths, Kataria noted. In bright red script, the Serrant wore her profession, the condemnation that kept her from the very priesthood she protected. Her sins, her crimes were scrawled from her armpit to her waist in angry, mocking tattoos.

Kataria averted her eyes; given the nature of the brand, she thought it would likely be considered rude to stare. Such a thing wouldn't normally concern her, but she simply had nothing left in her to fight with.

If Quillian had noticed her stare, she didn't reveal it. Instead, she took a bite of her fruit and, chewing noisily, produced another, offered it to the shict.

Kataria lofted a brow. "You think enough of me now to offer food?"

"No." The Serrant didn't bother to swallow before answering. "But I thought to spare these brave men the indignity of hearing your belly rumble." She followed the shict's stare to the young man below. "You two are lovers?"

Kataria's ears flattened against her head and her scowl raked the woman. "Are you stupid?"

The Serrant shrugged. "It would have been the first I've heard of such a thing. Given your mutual lack of morality, however, it wouldn't surprise me. I know of no adventurer who looks at her boss that way."

"Lenk isn't my 'boss'."

"I thought briefly about using the term 'commander', but I thought you'd be too unaccustomed to proper terms to recognise it."

"He's my friend."

"So you say."

Quillian's chewing filled the air as she stared out, dispassionate.

"You don't have anyone you worry about?" Kataria asked.

"I forsook the privilege of worry when I earned this." She ran a hand down her tattooed flank. "Those who fight alongside a Serrant can take care of themselves. From the way your 'friend and leader' fought today, I'd say he can more than take care of himself, too. Even if he was an idiot when he charged that... thing."

"He's not an idiot," Kataria snarled. "He was trying to protect everyone, you included."

"The only one I need protecting from," she narrowed her eyes upon the shict, "is the one right before me."

Kataria resisted the urge to retort. There was no need for it now.

"I'm not calling him anything more than a good killer," Quillian continued with a sneer. "He and that dragonman charged a creature that, by all rights, shouldn't exist."

"Lenk is different from other humans. He doesn't think like _you_."

"While I'm thrilled to see a shict stoop so low as to think so highly of a human, I feel compelled to ask... how _does_ he think?"

Kataria shook her head; she didn't know the answer herself. She knew the man well enough to know his patterns, as she knew those of a wolf or a stag. She knew his likes, dislikes, that he wrote in a journal, that he slept little, that he bathed only in the morning, that he made water only when at least two hundred paces from anyone else. What made him think the way he did, however, was a mystery.

All she knew was what he had told her: something had happened in his youth, his parents were no longer alive. She absently wondered what he was like before.

"So much the better," Quillian grunted at the shict's silence. "I'd rather not know how you degenerates think." She swallowed another piece of fruit. "Argaol, I hear, has taken Rashodd alive... to use the bounty to cover his losses."

"And the other pirates?"

"Disposed of, not that you care."

"The world will make more humans."

Quillian stared hard at her for a moment before snorting and turning about.

"One moment," Kataria called to her back. "That phrase can't be enough to make you irate. Tell me," she tilted her head curiously, "why is it you hate me, my people, so much?"

The Serrant paused, her back suddenly stiffening to the degree that Kataria could see every vertebra in her spine fusing together in contained fury. Then, with a great breath, her back relaxed and the woman seemed smaller, diminished. She ran a hand down her muscular flank.

"For the same reason I wear this crimson shame," she replied stiffly. "I was there ten years ago."

"Where?"

"I was at Whitetrees," she muttered, " _K'tsche Kando_ , as you call it."

Kataria froze twice, once for the name and again for the woman's utterance of the shictish tongue. _Red Snow._ She offered no scorn for the woman any more; she could find none within herself. Her hate was no longer misunderstood, no longer unacceptable. Quillian had stood with the humans at _K'tsche Kando_.

She had good reason to hate.

"Given that, and my inability to do it myself, I dearly wish you had died today." She set the remaining apple upon the railing. "Your due, should you get hungry later. Expect nothing else from me."

She was gone before Kataria even looked at the fruit. She glanced at it for a moment before a smirk crossed her face. Plucking up the fruit, she sprang over the railing and glided nimbly across the timbers. As she neared Lenk, she rubbed the apple against her breeches and gave it a quick toss.

Her giggle was matched by his snarl as the fruit caromed off his skull and went flying into the water below. He whirled, a blue scowl locked upon her, as he rubbed his head.

"You're supposed to catch it," she offered, smiling sweetly.

"I'm not in the mood," Lenk muttered angrily.

"To catch fruit? No wonder you got hit in the head."

"I'm not in the mood for your... _shictiness_."

"You never are."

"And yet," he sighed, "here you are."

"Call me concerned," she said, smiling. She cocked her head, regarding him for a moment. "What are you thinking about?"

"The creature," he replied bluntly, scratching his chin.

"What else?" She rolled her eyes. "Worrying about things you can't help makes your hair fall out, you know."

" _Someone_ has to worry about it," Lenk snapped, glaring at her. "Someone has to find out what it was and what can kill it."

"And that's your responsibility, is it?"

"I've got a sword."

"You can put it down."

"I can also get my head chopped off. What's your point?"

"Do you really need to think about this now? The thing is gone."

"For the moment."

His hand slid up unconsciously, reaching for a sword that wasn't there. He had left it below after cleaning it, he recalled. His shoulder reacted to the pressure of his fingers, a sharp pain lancing from his neck to his flank. Asper had plucked the splinters from his flesh, though the wounds still ached beneath their makeshift bandages and salve. Still, such a pain felt minuscule against the sensation that clung to his throat like a collar.

He could still feel the creature's claws, its digits like moist leather wrapped about his neck, tightening as it lifted him from the deck. At the thought, his legs even felt weaker, as though the thing still reached out from wherever it had retreated, seeking to finish what it had begun.

"You're hurt?"

He blinked; Kataria's question sounded odd to him, considering that she had seen him be smashed against the timbers, hoisted up and nearly strangled in a webbed claw. In fact, it sounded rather insulting. His hand clenched involuntarily into a fist. Her jaw loomed before him, suddenly so tempting.

He snorted. "Yeah."

His shoulder suddenly seared with a lance of pain as she laid a hand upon it. With a snarl, he dislodged her, whirling about as though she'd just attacked him. She matched the murder in his eyes with a roll of her own, placing both hands upon his shoulders and easing him down against the railing.

"What are you doing?" He strained to hide the pained quaver in his voice.

"Hold still; I'm going to check you over."

"Asper already did."

"Clearly she didn't do a good enough job, did she?" She slid back the fabric of his tunic, examining the linen bandage wrapped about his shoulder. "Not surprising. Human medicine is roughly where shictish medicine would be if we were just crawling out of the muck." She snickered at that. "Of course, it's _humans_ that crawled out of the muck, not shicts, and that must have been centuries ago, so I'm not even sure what her excuse is."

"It's fine. She gave me some salve and—"

"Bandages. She thinks she can solve everything with bandages and salve." Peeling back the white linen, she scratched her chin thoughtfully. "A bit of fire would close these wounds, I bet."

Had Lenk actually heard her suggestion, he might have objected. As it was, her voice was distant to him, second to the suddenly pervasive presence of her scent.

His nostrils flared soundlessly, drinking in her aroma as she leaned over him. His first thought was that she smelled rather unlike what he suspected a woman should smell like. There was no cleanness to her, no softness. Her perfume was thick and hard, an ever-present scent of wood, mud and leather under an ingrained layer of sweat and dried blood. As he swirled her stink in his nose, he became aware that he should find the aroma quite foul; it certainly smelled particularly disgusting on his other companions.

So why, he wondered, was he so entranced with smelling her?

"That can't be normal—"

"What?"

"What? Nothing." He blinked. "What?"

"Fire."

"What about it?"

"You could seal your wounds with fire," she repeated, "assuming you didn't break down in tears halfway through."

"Uh-huh..."

Her voice had faded again, ears suddenly less important than nose, nose suddenly far, _far_ less important than eyes. The scent of sweat, that key ounce of her muscular perfume, became suddenly more pronounced as he spied a bead of the silver liquid forming just beneath the lobe of a long, notched ear.

She continued to prattle on about fire, shictish superiority and any number of topics related to the two. He could only nod, form half-decipherable grunts as he stared at the small trickle of sweat. It slid down her body like a snake, leaving a path of tiny droplets upon her pale flesh in its wake. It trickled down, trailing along her jawline to caress her neck, slithering over a perfectly pronounced collarbone, roiling over the subtle slope of her modest chest to disappear down her leather half-tunic.

Lenk was no longer even aware of her speaking, no longer aware of the dryness of his unblinking eyes or his slightly open mouth.

After a leather-smothered eternity, the bead reappeared just beneath the hem of her garment, settling at the base of her sternum like a glistening star of hope. It quivered there in whimsical contemplation before sliding down the centre-line of her abdomen. It glided over the shadowed contours of her belly's muscle, across each subtle curve as it journeyed ever downwards, his eyes following, unblinking.

Lenk was forced to swallow hard as it finally reached her navel, dangling off the upper lip like some silvery stalactite, quivering with each shallow breath, each tug of her taut stomach, each breath he unconsciously sent its way, growing heavier. It glistened there, stark against the shadow of the oval-shaped depression before something happened. One of them breathed too hard, flinched too noticeably, and the bead quivered once.

Then fell.

It struck his lap with the quietest of splashes, leaving a dark stain upon the dirt of his trousers. Only when its silver ceased to sparkle did he finally blink, did he finally realise what he had just been staring at for so long.

He stiffened, starting up with an incomprehensible grunt. His head struck something and Kataria echoed his noise, recoiling and rubbing her chin. Eyes bewildered, like a startled beast, she regarded him irately.

"What?" she asked.

"What?" he echoed in a shrill, dry crack.

She blinked. "I... didn't say anything." Tilting her head, her expression changed to one of concern. "Did I hit a nerve or something?"

"Yeah." He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "A nerve or something."

She nodded silently, but offered no response. _At least_ , he thought, _no decent response._ She spoke no more, did not so much as twitch as she reclined onto her haunches and stared. He cleared his throat, making a point of looking down at the deck, hoping she would lose interest in him and find something else to do.

He had been hoping that for the year he had known her.

Kataria, however, had never found anything else to do besides follow him. She had never met anyone else in all their travels worth sparing a second glance for. She had never stopped staring.

He cleared his throat again, more loudly. It was all he could do; if he chased her away, she would stare from afar. If he asked what she found so interesting, she would not answer. If he struck her when his temper got the better of his patience, she would strike back, harder. Then keep staring.

She would always stare. He would always feel her eyes.

"Something's on your mind."

Kataria's voice sounded off. Distant, but painfully close, hissed directly into his ear through a wall of glass. He gritted his teeth, shook his head, before turning to regard her. She was still staring, eyes flashing with an expression he couldn't understand at that moment.

"What is it?" she asked.

_You_ , he wanted to say, _I'm thinking of you. I'm thinking of your stink and how bad you smell and how I can't stop smelling you. I'm thinking of how you keep staring at me and how I never say anything about it and I don't know why. I'm thinking of you staring at me and why someone's screaming at me inside my head and how someone's screaming inside my head and why it seems odd that I'm not worried about that._

He wanted to say that.

"Today," was all he said instead.

She nodded, rising up from her knees. She extended a hand and he took it, hauled himself to his feet with her help.

"It's something to worry about, isn't it?"

_Really? Worried? Why would we be worried? A man drowns on dry land at the hands of something that shouldn't exist and we should be_ worried _? You're a reeking genius._

"Uh-huh," he nodded.

"You almost died."

It occurred to him that he should be more offended by the casual observation of her tone.

"It happens." It occurred to him that this was not a normal answer for anyone else.

She continued to stare at him. This time, he did not look away, absorbed instead by the reflection in her eyes. Behind him, the sun was setting over the bobbing husk of the _Linkmaster_ , painting the sky a muted purple, the colour of a bruise. Above him, the stars were beginning to peer, content to emerge after gulls had been chased away. Before him, the world existed only in her eyes, all the silver, purples and reds drowned in the endless emerald of her stare.

"You're staring," she noted, the faintest of smiles tugging at the corners of her lips.

"I am." He straightened up, painfully aware that he was barely any taller than she was. He cleared his throat, puffing his chest out. "What are you going to do about it?"

"I don't need to do anything about it," she replied smugly. "Stare as much as you want. I know I'm something of a marvel to behold to beady little human eyes."

"My eyes aren't beady." He resisted the urge to narrow said orbs in irritation.

"They _are_ beady. Your hair is stringy, and you're short and wiry."

"Well, _you_ smell."

"Is that so?" She reached out and gave him a playful shove. "And what do I smell like?"

"Like Gar—" He hesitated, a better insult coming to mind. He returned the shove with a smug smirk of his own. "Like Denaos."

Her own stare grew a little beadier at that. Snarling, she shoved him once more.

"Recant."

"No." He shoved her back. " _You_ recant."

"Who's going to make me? Some runt with the hair of an old man?"

"Make _you_? I couldn't make you _bathe_ , much less recant." He leaned forwards, making certain he could see the edge of his sneer in her eyes. "Besides, what do the words of a savage matter to anyone?"

"They apparently mean enough to force a walking disease to put up some pitiful display of false bravado." Her sneer matched his to a precise, hideous crinkling of the lip. "If they don't matter to you, why don't you back away?"

"I don't show my back to savages."

"Shicts don't squirm at stoop-spined swallows struggling to strut."

"I don't..." He blinked. "Wait... what?"

She smiled and shrugged. "So my father taught me."

He smiled at that. Beneath him, his foot twitched, brushing against hers, and he became aware of how close they stood. He felt the heat of her breath, felt her ears twitch at every beat of his heart, as though she heard past all the grime caking him, all the flesh surrounding him, heard him function at his core.

"Back away," he whispered, heedless of the lack of breath in his voice.

Her foot did not move. The wind moaned between them, singing a dirge for the dead that went unappreciated. As if in spite, the tiny breeze cut across them and sent their locks of silver and gold whipping across their faces. Between them, though, the air remained unchanging. He could feel the subtle twist of heat as her chest rose with each breath, the cool shift as another bead of sweat formed upon the pale skin of her neck to begin a snaking path down her belly.

" _You_ back away," she muttered, her voice barely audible over the wind's murmur.

The stars were out, unafraid. The sky was the deepest of bruises now. The clouds had long since slunk into black sails on far distant horizons. Behind Lenk, the sky met the sea and the world moved beneath them.

"Last chance," he whispered.

Before Lenk, the world was eclipsed in two green suns above a pair of thin, parted lips.

"Make me," she smiled.

There was a heartbeat shared between them.

" _Stop._ "

His eyes snapped open wide. His neck became cold just as it had begun to shift forwards.

" _Staring at us._ "

He didn't hear the voice; he felt it, crawling across his brain on icicle fingers.

" _She's staring at us._ "

"What's wrong?"

Kataria's ears went upright, sensing something. Could she hear it, he wondered, as it echoed inside his skull?

"Stop," he repeated.

" _Make her stop._ "

"Stop," his voice became a whine.

"Stop what?"

" _Make her stop!_ "

"Stop!"

"Stop _what_?"

" _MAKE HER STOP!_ "

" _STOP STARING AT US!_ "

The sailors glanced up from their routine, eyes suddenly quite wide as his scream carried across the corpses bobbing on the waves. They stared for only a moment before cringing as he turned around, clutching his head, before returning to their duties and taking a collective step away from his vicinity.

Kataria, however, did not look away.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing's wrong. I'm perfectly fine." The statement sounded less absurd in his head, but his brain was choked by frigid fingers, an echo reverberating off his skull. "Perfectly fine. Would you stop staring at me?"

She did not.

"You're not fine," she stated, her eyes boring past his hair and skin as if to peer at whatever rang in his head. "You just broke down screaming at me for no reason."

"There's always a reason for me to be screaming," he growled. "Especially at you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Her gaze narrowed; no longer a probe but rather a weapon to stab him with.

"What do you mean, 'What's that supposed to mean?' Isn't it obvious? I was nearly killed today!"

_And now I'm hearing voices in my head_ , he wanted to add, but did not.

"You're nearly killed almost every other day! So are all of us! We're adventurers!"

_Insanity isn't common amongst adventurers._

"We're not supposed to nearly be killed by hideous _things_ that can't be harmed by steel and drown men on dry land! Moscoff—"

"Mossud."

"Whatever his name was, he rammed the damn... that... _thing_ through with a spear and it didn't even flinch! Gariath and I threw everything we had at it and it didn't budge! I..." He stalled, then forced the words out through gritted teeth. "I looked into its eyes and I didn't see anything." "And that's why you went mad a moment ago?"

_I went mad because I'm likely losing my mind._

"And you feel that's inappropriate?" he asked with a sneer.

"Slightly." She sighed, her shoulders sinking. "You meet _one_ thing you can't kill and this is how you react? Is it so hard to accept that some things exist that you simply can't change? I would have thought you were used to it, being a—"

"Human." He rolled his eyes. "Of course. How could I not be used to such things, being a weak-willed, beady-eyed human?"

"I wasn't going to say that."

"But you were thinking it."

Her eyes were hard and cruel. "I'm always thinking it." "Well, if you think so little of us, why don't you leave and go frolic in the forest with the other savages?"

"Because I choose not to," she spat back. Folding her arms over her chest, she turned her nose upwards. "Who's going to make me do otherwise?"

"Me," Lenk grunted, hefting a hand clenched into a fist, "and _him_."

She glanced from his eyes to his fist and back to his face. They mirrored each other at that moment, jaws set in stone, eyes narrowed to thin, angry slits, hands that had once been close to holding each other now rigid with anger.

"I dare you," she hissed.

Asper tied the bandage off at Mossud's arm. A frown ate her face in a single gulp as she looked over the tightly wrapped corpse upon the table. Skinny as he was, with his arms folded across his chest, legs clenched tightly together, the pure white bandages swaddling him made him look like some manner of cocooned vermin.

She hated bandaging; it was such an undignified way to be preserved. Though, she admitted to herself, it was slightly better than being stuffed in a cask of rum. At least this way, when they were stuffed in salt, they wouldn't shrivel up. He would be preserved until the _Riptide_ reached Toha and he could be turned over to proper morguepriests.

Still, that fact hadn't made it any easier when she had wrapped the other men up.

She felt sick as she looked over the bandaged corpses laid out upon the tables of the mess hall. The dusty, stifling air of the hold and the mournful creaking of the ship's hull made it feel like a tomb.

She could still recall laughing with sailors and passengers over breakfast that morning...

Tending to the dead was her least favourite duty as a priestess of Talanas. She was bound to do it, as a servant of the Healer, in addition to performing funerary rites and consoling the grieving. When she had trained in the temple, though, she had tended to the latter while less-squeamish clergy had handled the former.

The crew of the _Riptide_ would be dead themselves before they let her console them, however. And Miron, the only other man of faith on board, had vanished shortly after he had driven off the beast.

She sighed to herself and made a sign of benediction over the sailor's corpse; if it had to be done, she thought, it was better that she did it than letting him go unguided into the afterlife.

Quietly, she walked down the hall and noted a red stain appearing at the throat of another bound corpse, tainting the pure white. A frown consumed her; that poor man might have lived if Gariath was able to tell the difference between humans a bit better. She reminded herself to rebind him when she could acquire more bandages from Argaol.

The sound of quill scraping parchment broke the ominous silence. She turned to one of the tables, where Dreadaeleon sat, busily scribbling away. She grimaced at the casualness with which he sat next to the bandaged corpse, as though he were sitting next to an exceptionally quiet scholar in a library.

"Have you finished?" she asked, forcing the thought from her mind.

"Almost," he replied, hurriedly scribbling the last piece of information. "Do you know what his faith was?"

"He was a Zamanthran, I believe," Asper said. "Sailors, seamen, fishermen... they all are, usually."

"All right," he said. He finished with a decisive stab of the quill and held the parchment up to read aloud. "'Roghar "Rogrog" Allensdon, born Muraskan, served aboard the _Riptide_ merchant under Captain S. Argaol, devout follower of Zamanthras.'" He frowned a little. "'Slain in combat defending his ship. Sixteen years of age.'"

With a sigh, he rolled the parchment up and tied it with coarse thread. He reached over the bandaged corpse and tucked the deathscroll firmly in its crossed hands. His sigh was echoed by Asper as they glanced at the pile of scrolls on the bench next to him. With solemn shakes of the head, they plucked them up and walked about the tables, delivering the deathscrolls to their silent owners.

She hesitated as the last one was deposited in stiff, swaddled arms. Dreadaeleon's listless shuffling echoed in the mess.

"Dread." The shuffling stopped. "Thank you for helping me."

"It's not an issue." He took another step before pausing again. "I suppose I was duty-bound, being one of the few literate aboard."

She smiled at that. "I just... hope you don't begrudge me anything after what I said to you earlier."

"I said things just as bad," he replied. "We all do. It's not that big a deal."

She felt him look towards her with familiar eyes: big, dark and glistening like a puppy's. It would have felt reassuring to see him look at her that way, she reasoned, in any other situation. Amongst the library of bandages and scrolls, however, she resisted the urge to return the gesture and waited until she heard the shuffling of his feet once more.

"So, what was it?" he asked suddenly.

"Pardon?"

"The creature," he said, "that thing. Was it some unholy demon sent from hell? Or an agent of a wrathful god? What?"

"What makes you think I know?" She scowled at him. "Is there nothing in any of your books that explains it?"

"I have only one book," he replied, patting the heavy leather-bound object hanging from his waist, "and it's filled with other things." He tucked a scroll into the arms of another corpse. "Nobody knows what that thing was." He looked up at her suddenly. "But the Lord Emissary seems to have a better idea than anyone else."

"What are you insinuating?" she asked, her eyes narrowing as she drew herself up. "Lord Miron would never consort with such abominations."

"Of course not," Dreadaeleon said, shaking his head. "I'm just curious as to what that creature was." He sighed quizzically. "It's certainly not something I've ever seen in any bestiary."

"You're as likely to have an answer as I am," Asper replied with a shrug. "I've never heard of anything that can drown a man on dry land, have you?"

"There are spells that can do such things. But if it had been using magic, I would have known." He paused and thought for a moment. "I wish that ooze hadn't dried off Moscoff—"

"Mossud."

"I wish it hadn't dried off his face so easily. I could have studied it."

The priestess chuckled dryly and he turned to her, raising an eyebrow.

"What's so funny?"

"I shouldn't be laughing, I know. But... you're the only man I know who would face something so horrible and wish he could have been closer to it." She stifled further inappropriate laughter. "Denaos has sent no word yet?"

"No," the wizard replied, shaking his head. "The captain and he have been down there for hours." He shrugged. "Who knows what they're doing to Rashodd?"

"I'm not certain I want to know," Asper replied, frowning. She cast a glance to the companionway leading to the hold below and shuddered.

"And what do you intend to do about _him_?" Dreadaeleon asked, pointing to the far side of the mess hall.

Asper cringed; she had purposely avoided glancing at that particular section. Swallowing her anxiety, she turned and glanced at the cold, limp corpse of the frogman lying on the table under a sheet, eyes wide open and glazed over as they stared up at the ceiling. She hadn't even ventured near enough to close his eyes, she realised, cursing herself for such disrespect. Still, it was difficult for her even to glance at the corpse. Without the rush of combat, the man's appearance unnerved her greatly.

Anxiety was not a word that Dreadaeleon recognised, however, and she gasped as she saw the wizard take a seat next to the corpse and poke it curiously.

"Dread!" she cried out, hurrying over. She skidded to a halt about halfway, cringing, but forced herself to come alongside the boy. "Foe or not, have some respect for the dead!"

"Look at this," the wizard said, ignoring her. He held up the corpse's limp arm and she cringed again. He held the arm a little closer to the light and pointed to the skin. "His skin is still wet and he's been down here for hours and... my, my, what's this?"

He didn't have to point it out to her, for Asper saw it as clearly as he did. The boy gently pulled the man's fingers apart, stretching the flaps of skin between the digits.

"Webbed hands," he said, examining the digits. He dropped the hand and spun in his seat, lifting up the man's leg. "Look here... he has them between his toes as well."

"Fascinating," Asper replied. "Do you really have to do this now?"

"And if he has webbed appendages..." Dreadaeleon trailed off as he inched closer to the frogman's head.

Asper reeled back, cringing as he lifted the corpse's head and pulled back his ear. She nearly retched when she saw the thin red slits hidden behind the earlobe.

"Interesting," Dreadaeleon remarked, sharing none of her disgust. "He has... gills."

"So... he really _is_ a frogman?"

"It'd be more accurate to call him a fishman, I think."

"Uh-huh," Asper replied, intentionally avoiding looking at the mutated man. "It's... good that the captain didn't order him tossed overboard. Otherwise you might never have found this out."

"Why does Argaol want him, anyway?" Dreadaeleon asked, examining the webbed toes again. "Weren't the others tossed overboard after they were executed?"

"I suppose he believes the frogmen have some connection to the creatu—"

Asper stopped short, staring in abject horror as Dreadaeleon dropped the man's leg and began to pull the sheet covering him down. Able to stand no more, she stamped her foot and reached for his hands.

"Even if he _is_ a loathsome creature, I won't let you desecrate him like—"

"Do you have any tattoos under your shirt?" he interrupted.

"What?" Asper asked, pulling back with a shocked expression on her face.

"You know, like on your belly or chest?"

"I most certainly do _not_!"

"Really?" Dreadaeleon asked. With one swift jerk, he pulled the sheet from the corpse. Asper reeled back at the sight as Dreadaeleon leaned forwards to get a closer look. "Our friend here has an interesting one..."

Emblazoned on the man's chest in ink the colour of fresh blood was a symbol of a pair of skeletal shark jaws, gaping wide and lined with hundreds of sharp teeth. The other frogmen had worn the symbol on their biceps, she recalled. Did they all have them on their chests, too?

"What... do you think they mean?" At his curious glance, she cleared her throat and continued. "In your opinion, that is?"

"I'm at a loss. Symbols are really more the dominion of priests, aren't they?"

"Well, maybe I—" She hesitated, suddenly aware of the edge in his voice.

_Or rather_ , she noted, _the lack of an edge. He's doing it again, trying to appear nonchalant and enquiring while secretly smugging it up in his own head._ She felt a familiar ire creep behind her eyes, her hand clench involuntarily. _Not this time, runt._

"What do you mean by that?" she finished tersely.

"I... didn't mean anything by it."

"You leapt straight to linking those symbols to some manner of priesthood. Religious orders are hardly the only organisations to use sigils, you know. What about thieves? Assassins? Merchants? Argaol himself carries his own sigil."

"Not tattooed on his flesh." He held up his hands before she could retort. "Listen, I've neither the time nor inclination for a debate right this moment. I'm simply posing theories regarding a mystery that no one else seems to be thinking about besides you and me."

Her jaw unclenched so slowly and forcefully that it might have made the sound of groaning metal. She inhaled sharply, holding her breath as her thoughts began to melt into a fine, guilty stew in her head. She had overreacted, of course she knew that now; not everything he posited was a challenge to her faith, nor was he intentionally trying to be snide.

The fact that he was unintentionally quite skilled at it, she chose to ignore. For now, she forced her irritation down and her smile up, offering an unspoken truce.

"Though, you have to admit," he scratched his chin, perhaps hoping a beard would magically grow to make the gesture more dramatic, "it is a little odd."

"What is?" She felt her jaw set again.

"That the only one who seems to know anything isn't answering any questions _and_ is also a priest."

It unclenched in a creaking snarl. "Why, you smarmy little—"

Before she could finish expressing her righteous indignation, before he could offer any stammering excuses, a noise filtered through the timbers of the mess. Growing closer with each breath, the sound of cursing, bodies hitting the wood, heavy-handed slaps and more than a little squealing filled the air.

Both pairs of eyes turned towards the companionway as a tangle of flesh, gold and silver came tumbling out of the shadows. They tussled for a moment, all frothing saliva, bared teeth, reddened skin and sheens of sweat, before settling into a mess of limbs. Gloved hands gripped arms, ankles, tufts of hair. Feet were planted in bellies, shins, dangerously close to groins. Their teeth were glistening, their recent use testified by the red marks on each other's skin.

It was a horror to behold, Asper thought, but she had long since spent all her lectures on companionship and scolds for infighting. At this particular tangle, she could only blink once and sigh.

"What's the matter?"

"Ask this savage," Lenk growled. "She bit me."

"This round-ear bit me first!" Kataria snapped back.

"At least _I_ don't have teeth like a dog's!" Lenk spat.

"And that's only his most recent crime," Kataria continued, "before which came insanity, excessive cursing and oversensitivity!"

"Lies!" he all but roared. With a shove, he pulled free from her, clambering to his feet as she did. "It hardly concerns anyone else, anyway. This is between me and her."

"Have you no respect for the dead?" Asper protested, taking a wary step to intervene. "These men, who fought and died alongside you, are resting here and _you_ have to bring another squabble into their midst for no reason?"

"There's plenty of reason," Lenk snarled. "These _men_ are dead because of us."

"Why? Because you weren't able to kill the thing that killed them?" Kataria turned her nose up haughtily. "Accept your weakness and move on. There was nothing you could have done."

"I could have grabbed the book!"

"You could have had your head smashed in and lost the book anyway. Then we'd be short a book _and_ you."

"And what do you care about that? What is it you always say?" He pulled his ears upwards in mockery of hers, his voice becoming a shrill imitation. "'The world can make more humans.' I'd have thought one more of us dying would make you happy."

"In hindsight, it would have, since I wouldn't have to suffer your voice _now_!" Her ears flattened against the side of her head in a menacing gesture. "And don't even think to try to imitate me, even if you've got the height for it."

It occurred to Asper at that moment, regarding them so curiously, that this was no ordinary fight. They had squab-bled before, as had all in their company, but never with such fervour. There was something animalistic between them, a frothing, snarling fury they had not deigned to show each other, or anyone else, before now. For that reason, she thought it wise to keep her distance.

Dreadaeleon, however, had never understood the difference between intellect and wisdom.

"You're disturbing everyone here, you know," he said, reaching out to place a hand on Lenk's shoulder. "If you'd just—"

"Back _AWAY_."

Lenk seized the boy's frail hand roughly, nearly crushing it with his fury-fuelled grip. He shoved Dreadaeleon off effortlessly, propelling his scrawny mass across the floor as though he were a stick wrapped in a dirty coat. And like a dirty coat, he twisted, stumbling across the floor, making a brief cry of surprise that was silenced the moment he came to a sudden halt.

Face-first against Asper's robe-swaddled bosom.

He staggered back as though he had been punched in twelve places at the same time, sweat suddenly forming on his face in streaming sheets, hands held up as though he was facing some murderous wild beast. Given the red-faced, gaping-mouthed, narrow-eyed incredulous expression on the priestess's face, he wagered it would be a reasonable reaction.

"I-I'm truly sorry," he stammered, "but you must acknowledge that this was hardly my fault, you see—"

Her slap cut through the air deftly, stinging him across the cheek and sending a spray of anxious sweat into the air. He recoiled, touching the redder mark upon an already reddened face and regarded her with a shocked expression.

"What'd you do that for? I was just telling you it was an accident!"

"Accident or no, a lady is always entitled to deliver a slap for purposes of preserving her dignity." She flicked beads of moisture off her fingers. "Rules of etiquette."

His finger was up and levelled at her in a single breath, an incomprehensible word shouted in another. A small spark of electricity danced down his arm and leapt from the tip, striking the priestess squarely in the chest. She trembled, letting out a shriek as it spread and ran the length of her body sending her hair on its ends and bathing her in the aroma of undercooked pork.

"What was _that_ for?" she hissed through chattering teeth.

"Spite," he replied, flicking sparks off his fingers.

"How utterly typical," she growled, sweeping a scornful gaze across her companions. "You people _feed_ off each other. When one of you acts like a vagrant, you all do."

"Us _people_?" Lenk sneered. "You remember you're with us, don't you?"

"Yeah," Kataria grunted, "at least we involved you in the fighting. I don't see Miron out here even talking to you, much less getting ready to jab your eyeballs out."

"Why, you pointy-eared little—"

The fight died suddenly as the lanterns swayed at a sudden impact. The companions froze, taking a collective hard swallow as they noted a large shadow looming out from the companionway leading to the ship's hold. All looked up to see Gariath standing in the entry, surveying them through eyes glittering with excitement.

"What's going on here?" he asked as softly as he could, hardly enough to prevent them from taking a collective step backwards.

"Nothing's going on," Lenk said, forcing a weak smile onto his face.

"It doesn't look like nothing to me," the dragonman growled, taking a step forwards. "It looks like you're all trying to kill each other."

He paused, flashing his teeth in a morbid smile.

"Without me."

# _Eight_

# ENTICEMENT

What you don't seem to understand is that this is mere courtesy." Argaol's voice, intended to be a growl, resigned to being a sigh, came out as something of a phlegmless cough. "Your cooperation here is the difference between a nice comfortable cell in Toha and joining your men in the deep."

Rashodd looked up from the chair, weary as he had been when the interrogation had begun, but even less impressed with the dark-skinned captain. With his helmet removed, he was all scars and smirks above his long, grey beard. He raised a hand accompanied by the clink of manacles, covering a long, reeking yawn in a gesture one-part manners and two-parts insult. Making a point of smacking his lips, he looked the captain evenly in the eye, as tall sitting as Argaol was standing.

"I can appreciate your desire for information, dear sir," he spoke curtly, "as much as I can appreciate your lack of tact and patience. Even so, I must insist that you accept the fact that I simply don't know anything." His lips curled in an attempt to be coy. "I should beg your leave to sleep on it, perhaps with a visit from one of your more feminine passengers. It's always been something of a dream of mine to learn what it's like to sleep with a shict."

Denaos had to stifle an admiring chuckle at that. He'd often wondered the same thing, hoping to compare it to his beddings with more civilised ladies. _Never did try to talk Kat into it, though_ , he admitted to himself, _likely because she'd gnaw my gents off._ Content with that thought, he leaned against the far wall of the captain's cabin-turned-interrogation room, taking comfort in the shadows.

It was all very dramatic, he had to admit: the fineries pushed aside or covered up, a single oil lamp hanging directly over the chair that the Cragsman was seated in. However, it was still Argaol's chair, still far too comfortable for any prisoner to confess in. He had considered bringing this to the captain's attention. Still, he reasoned, it would seem presumptuous to accuse the fellow of not knowing a business he clearly did not know.

With that, he simply plucked a dagger from his belt and began to trim the various stains out from under his nails.

"Regardless, good sir," Rashodd said, "don't feign interest in my well-being. I know you full-well plan to recoup your losses with the bounty my head will deliver."

"However meagre it might be," Argaol said with a sneer. "Your ship is damaged, Rashodd. We found scarcely anything of value aboard. Even the companion boat had been taken." He allowed himself a smirk. "It seems your men jumped ship, long before we could board. Small faith in your cause, had they?"

_Not bad_ , Denaos noted. A cheap shot at a man's esteem wasn't always the best way to get someone to talk, but it might work in this case. Rashodd seemed like the kind of man who wouldn't take kindly to being called small.

"Sensible of them," the Cragsman conceded with a nod. "At the very least, they've saved me the hardship of paying for their funerary expenses." He turned a scrutinising eye upon Argaol. "You're still a man in good standing with the guilds, yes? You _do_ plan to extend that particular courtesy to the families of your slain men, don't you, Captain? I'd offer to chip in, but as you said, not much aboard the _Linkmaster_ worth taking, is there?"

The tall man bit back a wince at that. _The captain will be groping his stones tonight, doubtless._

"I will be, in fact," Argaol snarled, leaning in close to the prisoner. "I'll pay for the funerals of those good men who were slain," he thrust a finger at the Cragsman as though it were a weapon, "by _your_ monsters. Have you no shame, Rashodd? Summoning those... those _things_ to fight for you? Denying my men even the dignity of a death by their own race?"

_Weak._ Denaos shook his head. Rashodd's response confirmed his judgement.

"In all fairness, sir, _you_ threw _your_ monster," he caught a glimpse of Denaos in the doorway and coughed, "pardon, _monsters_ at _my_ men first. My... associates simply had associates of their own. I can hardly be held responsible for their actions."

"And you still won't tell me anything about them, even while they leave you here to die!"

Rashodd shrugged. "Friendships are a fickle and mischievous garden, requiring constant tending, with their own share of weeds."

"I..." Argaol flinched, his face screwing up. "What?"

"I'd hardly expect you to understand, kind Captain. After all, most of your precious flowers are dead and trampled into the earth after today, aren't they?"

It was over. Without fanfare or gloating, the verbal spar had ended. Argaol's expression, wide-eyed, slack-jawed, hurt, lasted for only a moment before he turned around to hide the clench of his teeth upon his bottom lip. Rashodd watched him stalk away without contempt or smugness. All he could spare for Argaol was a yawn.

Denaos's own stare lingered upon the pirate for a moment before he felt Argaol's presence next to him. The captain leaned an arm against the wall, regarding the rogue with a tight-lipped, hard-eyed glower.

"Well?" he grunted.

"What?"

"Were you planning on doing anything besides lurking there?"

The tall man rubbed the edge of his blade against his chin contemplatively. "Well, I was planning on paying a visit later to that one spice merchant you've got chartered here. You know the one, right? Slim little dark-haired thing from Cier'Djaal. She called me a swine before, but I wager she'll change her tune once she realises what I—"

"Yeah, you're adorable."

"That's a word you'd use to describe something in pigtails and frills. I'm really more of a man possessed of immense gravitas." He offered the captain a broad smile fit for eating stool. Seeing no reaction, he sighed. "What is it you expect me to do, anyway?"

"Get him to do what I've been trying to make him do all night," Argaol growled. "My boys are up there, terrified that some horror is going to return and do to them what it did to Mossud."

"Moscoff," Denaos corrected.

" _Mossud._ I hired the damn boy." He sighed, rubbing his eyes. "What this Cragsfilth knows may be what I need to keep my boys safe, and he's not talking."

"So throw him in the brig. Give him a few days without food or water and he'll tell you."

"This is a merchantman, you twit. We don't have a brig. In a few days, we could all be stacked in neat little heaps, ready to be eaten by whatever that thing was."

"Well, have you tried asking Gariath to help you? He's not bad at this sort of thing."

"Your monster isn't paying me any mind."

"Ah, ah." Denaos winced. "Keep your voice down. For a fellow with no ears, that reptile hears exceptionally well."

" _Enough._ " Argaol's voice became as hard as his eyes. He took a menacing step forwards. "I myself saw you gut two people like pigs on deck today, and we found more of your work down in the hold."

The rogue shifted, appearing almost uncomfortable if not for the understated smile playing across his lips. It was impossible for Argaol not to notice the aversion of his eyes, however.

"I managed to kill... what, four? Compared to Kataria, Lenk and Gariath, that's hardly—"

"And your fellow adventurers all say you're the man to talk to about things like this." Argaol adjusted his stare to meet the rogue's eyes. "They say you've crawled out of more dark places than they've even heard of. Were they mistaken?"

Denaos's grin faded, his face going blank. With the quietest of sounds, he slid his dagger back into its sheath. Eyes unblinking, he stared at the hilt.

"They said that, did they?" he whispered, voice barely louder than a kitten's.

Argaol's nod was hesitant, but firm. The rogue's voice rang hollow in his ears, bereft of all previous bravado, bereft of any potential scorn. In his voice, as in his eyes and face, there was nothing.

"I suppose they must be right, then."

"Good," the captain replied. "Be sure to get everything you can out of him. Question him more than once if you need to. Pirates lie. We need to know about that thing and every—"

"Leave."

"What?"

"Leave me, please. I don't want an audience." He stared blankly at the shorter man, neck craning stiffly. "And don't check up on me. This won't take long."

"What are you going to do?" Argaol asked. Feeling the quaver echo through his throat, he coughed, straightening up in a show of authority. "It's my ship, my cabin, I have a right to know."

"Go." Denaos slid past the captain, striding towards Rashodd. He did not look back over his shoulder.

Rashodd glanced up with a start at the sound of a chair sliding. He blinked blearily, trying to take into account the shape sitting before him. He regarded the tall man curiously for a moment, studying the absence of any expression upon his face, the dark eyes free of any malice or cruelty. A silence hung between them, the Cragsman angling his face to scrutinise this newcomer.

"And what's this?" he mused aloud. "Perchance, some more stimulating conversation?" He leaned forwards, expressing a smile he undoubtedly hoped would be instigative. "And, pray, what cabin boy union did the good captain drag you out of?"

Denaos said nothing, his face blank, lips thin and tight.

"Somewhere up north, aye? I say _aye_?" Rashodd forced the word through his teeth, thick with a feigned accent. "Around Saine?" He settled back into his seat, a satisfied smirk on his face. "Large men come from Saine, tall men. The Crags are right off the coast. We were once part of the kingdoms. I couldn't truly expect a man of your particular breeding to know such a thing, though."

Denaos's only response was a delicate shift of his hand as he gingerly took the pirate's manacled appendage in his own and held it daintily in his palm, surveying it as though he were reading a screed of hairy pink poetry.

"Ah." Rashodd's eyes went wide with feigned surprise. "Mute, I see. Poor chap." He glanced over the tall man's head towards the dusky Argaol as the captain shifted closer to the door. "And simple, I suppose, by the way he fondles me. Tell me, then, Captain, is this the enticement you've sent me? I'd rather prefer the shict, if she's still about."

Rashodd watched the captain bite back a retort, resigning himself to a purse of lips as the door of his cabin creaked open. Quietly, the man slipped out, the door closing behind him with an agonising groan. Argaol's departure, the lack of fuss and bravado, drew a brief cock of Rashodd's brow, his eyes so intent on the last dusky fingers vanishing behind the door that he scarcely noticed the glimmer of steel at the tall man's hip.

The door squeaked shut and, with a click of its hinges, there was the sound of a raspy murmur, the odour of copper-baked meat and a delicate plop upon the wooden floor.

Rashodd had time to blink three times, noting first the bloodied dagger in the man's hand, second the twitching pink nub upon the floor, and third the red blossom that used to be his thumb. By the time he opened his mouth to scream, a leather hand was clasped over his dry lips, a pair of empty dark eyes staring dully into his own over the top of black fingers.

"Shh," Denaos whispered. "No sound." He set the whetted weapon aside delicately, as though it were a flower, and reached down to scoop up the thumb. He held it before the captain. "This is mine now. It will remind me of our time together tonight."

Slowly, he turned it over in his fingers, eyes glancing at every pore, every ridge, every glistening follicle of hair and every clean, quivering rent.

"We're going to talk," he continued, holding the finger just a hair's width from his lips, "quietly. You're going to tell me what happened today. Argaol asked nicely. He'd like to know."

Rashodd dislodged his leather gag with a jerk of his head. He clenched his teeth together as he clenched his bleeding stump. Though tears began to well inside his eyes, he forced them to go harder, firmer, determined to show nothing.

"And what is it to you, wretch?" he snarled through his beard. "Hm? What makes you think I know anything more than what I said? I don't know anything about that creature."

"Liar."

His voice was as brief and terse as the flick of his weapon. The dagger was in his hand and freshly glistening just as another fleshy digit went tumbling to the floor. It came swiftly, so suddenly that Rashodd hadn't even noticed it until the man was scooping it up. He opened his lips to spew a torrent of agony-tinged curses, but found the hand at his lips again, moisture dripping from his nose onto the leathery fingers.

"I said no noise," Denaos hissed through his teeth, "it upsets me." Quietly, he set the digit beside the other. "You're lying to me, Rashodd. I don't like it." He shook his head. "And I don't like what you did today, either. You threatened my livelihood, my career." He blinked, and, as an afterthought, added, "My associates."

"Zamanthras damn you for the heathen you are." What Rashodd intended to be a fearsome snarl came out as a trembling whimper. "You'll attack an ignorant, unarmed man for money alone. Mercenary scum."

"Adventurer," the tall man corrected.

"Coward is what you are, attacking any man in shackles, preying on those with their backs turned and the helpless. How many people have you gutted before my lads today, hm? How many more unarmed and ignorant did you cut down?"

Denaos did not blink. "Many."

"And now you seek to add Rashodd to your tally?" He lurched forwards, something rising up in his gullet, but he bit it back. Clutching his bleeding stumps, alternating between each, he rose up as much as he could in his chair. "All for naught, heathen."

"Tell me what you know," Denaos whispered calmly, rolling one of the fleshy digits between his fingers, "and I'll give one back."

"I know only that the frogmen sought to make a deal with us," he replied, voice quavering. "They put their services at my disposal, in exchange for attacking a single ship."

"This ship."

"This ship. I don't know why."

"Liar."

"It's the truth!" Rashodd lunged backwards, pulling his mutilated hands away as the rogue's dagger twitched. "They offered no reason beyond the need to attack this ship!" He stamped his feet on the floor. " _This_ ship! They told me nothing else! I was bound to honour our agreement!"

"They were after a tome," Denaos replied evenly. "A book. I heard them say it. You saw them take it." He looked up, staring hard. "You asked for Evenhands, you asked for the priest." His face twitched. "Lies upset me."

" _They_ wanted the priest! _THEY_ , the frogmen! Not my lads!" He felt the first scrapes of metal against the veins on the back of his hands. "I thought they simply wanted to ransom him, in which case it'd be in our best interests to keep him safe, wouldn't it?" If he could have seen himself in the rogue's steel, he would have noted the hysterical smile, the wide eyes, the need to appease that he had often observed in his own victims. " _Wouldn't it?_ "

"What of the creature?"

"I... I was as shocked to see it as anyone! You must believe me!"

"The frogmen summoned it."

"I didn't know! They never told me! They told me nothing but to attack this ship!" He gasped, his voice slurring with coppery saliva filling his mouth. His hands were cold as more of his life wept out from the stumps between them. "That's the truth! I'm naught but a pawn in whatever game they were planning. I consorted with no spawn of hell. Rashodd is no blasphemer."

Denaos's head swayed slightly, regarding the man. He did not blink, his lips did not move and he gave no indication that he was hearing anything the pirate said. Slowly, he leaned forwards and squinted, as though regarding Rashodd from miles away. Then his eyes widened suddenly, a flicker of indiscernible emotion, fear, shame, perhaps.

"You're lying again. Argaol said you would."

"I am no—"

"Hush."

The blow came more slowly this time; no quick, surgical strike, but an angry, heavy hack. The blade bit halfway through Rashodd's remaining thumb, inciting a scream that went unheard behind Denaos's hand. He whimpered, squealed as the digit hung lazily from the joint before the rogue reached down, seized it between his own thumb and forefinger, and twisted.

Rashodd felt his entire insides jerk with the pain, the shock shifting organs about within him. Bile rose behind his teeth, tasting of metallic acid. He muttered something desperately behind his gag and Denaos pressed his hand harder, narrowed his eyes in response.

"Swallow it."

He did so, with a choked protest, and lurched as the vile stuff slid back down his gullet. Denaos took his hand away and regarded the pirate carefully, offering no question, no threat beyond a hollow stare. There was no malice dwelling there, no accusation or anger as he had enjoyed with Argaol.

It was the sheer lack of anything in the man's face that prompted Rashodd to pray.

"Zamanthras help me," the pirate whimpered, "believe me, I had nothing to do with the creature. Why would I defend those traitors this long?"

"Zamanthras does not exist here." Denaos shook his head. "Tonight, the only people in this cabin are you," he pointed with the man's severed thumb, "me," he pressed it against his chest, "and Silf."

"S-Silf?"

"'Salvation in secrets,'" the rogue recited, "'forgiveness in whispers, absolution in quiescence.'" He paused. "Silf."

"The Shadow." Rashodd uttered the name without reverence or fear for the God. Such things were reserved for the man before him. Quietly, he tucked his hands into his armpits, shivering. "A deity... a God for thieves... and..." he paused to swallow, "murderers."

"Murderers," Denaos repeated, hollow. A smile, a wistful tug of the lips, creased his face for but a moment. "Isn't that what we all are?"

"It's one thing to kill in battle, sir, it's another entirely to—"

"It is." The rogue nodded quietly, setting his dagger aside. "Perhaps that's how Silf found His flock. Murderers require absolution, don't they?" His hand went inside his vest and came out with another knife, shorter, thicker, sawtoothed. "Or was He born to serve that need?"

"You can't be serious." Rashodd gasped at the blade. "I've told you everything!"

"You might be lying." Denaos shook his head. "Silf has seven daughters. This is the second. We'll meet more of them if you don't speak."

"They... they wanted the priest for no good deed, I knew." Rashodd spoke with such squeaking swiftness it would have shamed him under other circumstances. "They spoke of mothers, queens and names of a Goddess no good Zamanthran has ever heard!" His lips quivered. "Ulbecetonth... I am loath to repeat her name, even now. Ulbecetonth is who they worship, who they stole the book for! That's all I know, I swear!"

Denaos paused, the dagger rigid in his hand. It appeared almost disappointed at being stayed, its sawtoothed grin pulling into a curving frown. Quietly, the tall man looked down, observing his reflection in the metal.

Rashodd allowed himself a brief moment of breath, free of saliva or bile. He was suddenly so cold, feeling as though all his warmth was dripping out of him, caking the insides of his arms. He needed something, a shirt, a blanket, anything to stem the loss of warmth coming out of him. Slowly, as his tormentor was absorbed in his own weapon, his eyes drifted towards the captain's wardrobe in the far corner. There must be something there, he reasoned, something that would make him warm again, something to wrap about his hands.

"You say this is all you know."

There was a change in the rogue's voice, a subtle inflection indicating thoughtfulness. It was a little thing, Rashodd knew, but enough of an alteration to send his head bobbing violently in a nod.

"But you said, moments ago, that you knew nothing." His eyes lit up suddenly, wide and horrified. "You were lying."

Rashodd was up in an instant, manacles rattling. He saw the dagger, but his eyes were focused on the wardrobe. He had to reach it, he knew, had to find something to stem the blood-loss, had to find something to save what remained of his warmth before this murderer took all of it.

There was a flash of black and Rashodd was upon the floor. The oil lamp swayed violently overhead, jostled. With every swing, it bathed the tall man in shadow, then in light, then in shadow. Every breath, the man was closer without moving. Every blink, the man's dagger was bigger, brighter, smiling.

The lamp swayed backwards. There was shadow. The man was on top of him, straddling him.

"No noise," he whispered.

The lamp swayed forwards. There was light. The man's eyes were broad, wide and brimming with tears. The dagger was in his hand, firelight dancing from tooth to tooth.

"Don't you scream."

After an endlessness of hearing waves rumble in the distance, the door finally opened with a whisper. Denaos's appearance was just as quiet and swift, sliding out of the cabin and easing the door back into place with practised hands.

And there he stood, oblivious to Argaol's stare, oblivious to anything beyond the knob in his grip and the wood before his eyes. The ship lulled, coaxed by the yawn of a passing wave.

"How did it go?" Argaol spoke suddenly, his voice strange and alien to his own ears after so much silence.

"Fine."

"Fine?"

Denaos whirled about with unnerving speed. A smile played across his lips, his eyes were heavy-lidded and sleepy. Argaol cocked a brow; the man appeared more akin to someone who'd been ratting about in a private liquor cabinet than someone doing a job.

"Rather well, in fact," he replied, licking his lips.

"Ah." Argaol nodded, not bothering to hide his suspicion. "What did you find out?"

"Not a blessed lot."

"Were you thorough?"

"Decidedly." Denaos raised his hands in a shrug. "I've a few names, a few theories, but precious little else, I'm afraid. Whatever else you want to know will come from someone other than Rashodd."

"Evenhands," the captain muttered. He'd been hoping the Lord Emissary's name wouldn't come up.

"There doesn't seem to be anyone else aboard who might know about such a thing, does there?" Denaos stalked past him, offering a ginger pat on the shoulder. "If you're intent on finding him, perhaps you can also ferret out a bottle of wine for me. Or rum, if you've got it. Bring out the expensive stuff, in any case, I feel like celebrating."

Argaol lingered by the door as the tall man swaggered down the hall, disappearing around a corner, undoubtedly heading for the mess to join his fellows. Even after he had gone, however, the awkwardness of his presence lingered.

Quietly, Argaol glanced towards the door to his cabin, reaching for the knob.

"Don't."

He looked up with a start. Denaos was at the end of the hall, regarding the captain carefully.

"Not yet, Captain," he warned quietly. "Look in there later, if you wish, but don't do anything now."

"What..." Argaol caught his breath. "What did you do in there?"

Denaos did not blink. "Not much."

Lenk stared at his companion through one eye, the other tucked under a slab of raw meat. Denaos stared back, resisting the urge to look over the young man's shoulder at the disaster in the ship's mess.

The rogue saw smashed buckets in the periphery of his vision, dishes shattered, mops broken and even the occasional bandaged appendage reaching out as if begging to be spared from the raging carnage. Denaos did his best to ignore that.

The sight of Gariath was decidedly more difficult to ignore.

In one great hand he clutched Kataria by the heel, the shict snarling, raking claws at the dragonman's thigh and twitching her ears menacingly. Beneath his foot, Asper grunted and strained to dislodge herself while Dreadaeleon slapped impotently at the long tail wrapped about his neck, cursing breathlessly. Whatever fight had occurred was obviously over and done with, the clear victor simply enjoying his triumph at his foes' humiliation.

"So, Rashodd doesn't know anything?" Lenk brought the rogue's attention back to him.

"No, he doesn't." Denaos frowned at the scene. "Did... something fun happen while I was gone?"

"It's not important," Lenk replied. "Are you sure he wasn't lying?"

"Quite sure." Denaos looked at the glistening meat on his companion's face, then grimaced at the sight of so many nearby corpses. "Where exactly did you get the meat?"

"I found it."

"It's... fresh meat," Denaos said, grimacing. Any flesh from an animal might have been fresh when they set out from Muraska's harbour a month ago, but now... "And... you just put that meat... that fresh meat... that you found on the floor... on your face?"

"I got hit in the eye. It's not like I'm going to eat it." The young man scratched his chin, wincing as his fingers grazed a cut. "That can't be the whole story. We should ask Argaol if he knows anything."

"Don't be stupid." Kataria's voice was quickly followed by Kataria's elbow as she pushed herself in front of Lenk. Gariath seemed unconcerned with her escape. "Argaol doesn't know his head from his foot. You need to talk to—"

"Miron." Dreadaeleon staggered to join the assembly, coughing. "Obviously."

"No!" Asper emerged last, followed by Gariath. "I'll not have you go after the Lord Emissary with accusations and blasphemies."

"He's the only one who would know anything," Kataria snapped back. "Are you such a moron that you'd trust him just because he wears a robe fancier than yours?"

"I'm not a moron," Asper countered hotly, "and _he's_ not the kind of man who needs to be pestered by savages. We need to calm down and—"

"Kill him." Gariath glanced at the incredulous expressions cast his way and shrugged. "As if no one else was thinking it. Let's just hunt him down and get it over with."

"None of that will be necessary."

The crowd around the entryway parted at the sound of the voice, all figures clearing the way, all eyes settling on the tall, white-garbed figure standing therein. Their eyes flashed with a legion of emotions: defensive reverence, suspicious glares, barely restrained murderous intent. And yet, behind each unblinking stare a confused caution pervaded, forcing them to back away and allow him entry into the mess.

The usual gentle mirth Miron had always worn had vanished from his face, replaced by a baleful frown. He seemed to have grown from the quiet, unassuming priest to a towering, white-clad spectre as he stared out over the companions, his gaze settling on them one by one.

"You... have questions."

"Brilliant." Denaos chuckled. "Did you learn all that by overhearing us or did you ask Talanas for guidance on the subject?"

"Shut up," Asper snarled, scowling at the rogue.

"Mirth is a fine coping mechanism," the priest said, offering the faintest trace of a smile that quickly vanished back into his frown. "But the answers I have for you are nothing to jest about."

"The questions we have for you don't amuse us in the slightest, either," Lenk hissed.

"Though I had hoped to reveal more to you when we arrived at Toha, in peace, all questions will be answered." The priest held a hand up for silence. "But before all that, I must... ready myself." He cast a glance towards Lenk. "I advise you to, as well. What I have to tell you is not easily comprehended."

"Lord Evenhands," Asper spoke with reverence, "you need not explain yourself to us. We know that you have no collaboration with that thing."

"Thank you, child," Miron said with a shake of his head, "but you must hear me." He cast a glance about the room. "All of you must hear me."

"Enough." Lenk was the first to take a challenging step forwards. "I'm sure to you, all this cryptic musing is quite dramatic, but I've had enough of it. Before anyone prepares _anything_ , you will tell us: how did you drive the thing away?"

"If it will calm you, then I will tell you," Miron said with a reluctant sigh.

He reached under his robe and produced a symbol. Beside the brilliant silver of his pendant depicting Talanas's phoenix, it seemed dull and ominous, little more than a crudely carved chunk of iron. As the companions peered closer, however, they saw a shape within the metal: a heavy, grey gauntlet clenching thirteen obsidian arrows within its cold digits.

"This is a symbol of my station. That is, of the station that is _not_ that of the Lord Emissary of the Muraskan Church of Talanas."

"What?" Kataria asked, screwing up her face in confusion. "Didn't Lenk just ask you not to speak in riddles?"

"You mean you're _not_ the Lord Emissary?" Asper asked breathlessly, as though she had just been punched in the belly.

"I am," Miron replied calmly, oblivious to the shock coursing through the room. "But I have a station and duties above that of being Lord Emissary. To you, I am Miron Evenhands: Lord Emissary of the Muraskan Church of Talanas."

He held the symbol aloft, letting its cold iron drink in the lantern light as all eyes stared up, some aghast, some shocked and some select few full of more suspicion than ever.

"To Talanas, I am Miron Evenhands: Agent of the House of the Vanquishing Trinity."

# _Nine_

# DEATHSCROLLS

To begin with," Miron said, settling in a chair at the head of the long table, "allow me to thank you for your patience." He poured a cup of steaming brown liquid from an ornately decorated teapot. "I would hope that the brief time I have spent in preparation has given you opportunity to reflect on the events you witnessed."

"Reflection isn't the word for it," Lenk snapped with un-hidden hostility as he pulled up his own chair at the table. "What we _witnessed_ was..." He looked to his companions as, one by one, they took their seats. "Well, what would you call it?"

"Horrifying," Kataria replied.

"Disgusting," Asper agreed.

"Ominous," Dreadaeleon uttered.

"Odd." Denaos coughed. "From what I saw."

"Terrifying," Argaol said as he took his seat at the other end.

A moment of expectant silence descended upon the table. Eyes looked up to Gariath, who spurned a seat in favour of crouching in a nearby corner, cramped as it might have been. He met their stares and snorted.

"Yeah," Lenk said, nodding.

"Undoubtedly, you have questions," Miron replied.

"Understandably, Lord Emissary," Argaol offered, "my crew is terrified. They wonder what the hell it was we saw."

"And what if it comes back?" Lenk added, narrowing a scowl upon the priest. "And how, exactly, did _you_ get rid of it?"

"To begin," Miron said slowly, finishing a sip of his tea, "the Abysmyth will not return. It knows my presence, it has heard the words of Talanas. It will not be back as long as I remain on this ship." His features melted into a frown. "Beyond that, it already has what it wants."

"What did you call it?" Kataria asked, grimacing. " _The_ Abysmyth?"

"Perhaps it would have been more correct to say _an_ Abysmyth," Miron replied with a nod, "for there are undoubtedly more where that one came from." He held up a hand before any questions could be asked. "I do not know their number, nor who leads them, but I know what they crave and who they serve."

"That's not the explanation I was hoping for," Lenk muttered.

"The explanation you seek is a lengthy one," the priest said.

Slowly, he slid a hand within the folds of his robe. The symbol he had produced before, the gauntlet clenching thirteen black arrows, announced its arrival with a sound far heavier than an object its size should have made as he set it upon the table.

"It begins and ends with this," he gestured to the pendant, "the symbol of the House of the Vanquishing Trinity." He rose up in his seat, clearing his throat as he did so. "Eras untold ago—"

"Wait!" Denaos held up a hand suddenly. "If you're going to begin with that particular phrase, would now be a good time to take a piss?"

"Shut up," Asper growled, jabbing the rogue in his ribs.

"It's a valid question," Denaos protested, swatting her arm away. "I know enough about the clergy to be aware that they're prone to long, dramatic speeches and, frankly, I'm not sure my bladder is up to the challenge."

"Then invest in some new pants later," Lenk spat. He turned back to the priest. "Go on."

"As you like," Miron said with a gracious nod to the young man. "It may shock some of you to know that once, this land was purer than its current incarnation. Ages ago, before any peoples thought to scribe their histories, the Gods were closer to us than we would ever realise.

"Though no text grants us the privilege to know whether they actually set heavenly foot upon mortal soil, our prayers were heard and answered with great frequency. Though heaven and earth were divided by sky and storm, the Gods bade their servants descend from on high and turn sympathetic ears to the plights of mortals below.

"Not quite deific themselves, but leagues beyond mortal, these servants were charged with providing the link between God and man. They heard the woes and prayers of the people and returned them to their heavenly masters. In those ages, the earliest days of creation, miseries were minimal and prosperity of that magnitude would never be known again."

The priest paused to sip his tea. Eyes held to his gaze by invisible chains went wider. Lenk cleared his throat impatiently, folding his arms over his chest.

"But—" he said.

"Of course," Miron replied, "there is always a 'but'. Being not quite Gods, their servants were not quite perfect. They were the combination of divine power and mortal feeling, and as such, they were susceptible to envy, desire, hatred," he paused, staring into the steaming cup, "corruption.

"They saw their duties as beneath them, observing praises heaped upon the names of Gods while they served as mere messengers and errand runners. Within their heavenly bodies, their contempt festered, twisted, grew. The day came when they finally cast off the yoke of duty and rebelled against heaven.

"Unable to touch their godly masters, though, they turned their contempt on the mortal creations below. They scarred the land beneath them and wrought misery and suffering upon the mortal races. Slaves, chattel, sustenance: such were mortals to these servants of the divine. They carved vast empires of death and decay, their own bodies twisting to reflect their hatreds. In the wake of their carnage, they left creations, beasts as vicious and decrepit as themselves.

"The Abysmyth you saw today was one such creation, a twisted mockery of the ability privileged only to the Gods. The Abysmyth is but the servant of another servant." He let out a breathless whisper. "And those first servants were the Aeons."

"Aeons," Asper whispered breathlessly, her eyes brimming with a realisation she could not bring herself to voice.

"The very same whose gate we seek," Miron said with a nod.

"You son of a whore," Lenk growled. "You've had us seeking a gate that will let more of _those_ things out?"

"Please, allow me to finish—"

"Why?" Gariath rumbled from the corner. He approached the table, the furniture trembling with each thunderous step. "I smelled that thing. I know that it is nothing good. And _you're_ looking for the gate to let whatever created it _out_." He levelled a clawed finger at Miron. "We'd be better off crushing his head right now." He turned to Lenk and snorted. "Say the word and I'll paint the wood with his face."

"How _dare_ you!" Asper roared, pushing her chair back as she leapt to her feet. "Even to utter such a threat is—"

"And I'll use _your_ scalp to paint it!" Gariath's roar silenced hers as he unfurled his wings. "Stupid humans," he growled. "Only you would defend a man who seeks such a—"

"There is no evidence that he seeks such a creature," Dreadaeleon protested, rising up to stand beside Asper. "He's simply informing us of past events and, were you not so allergic to knowledge, you would know that—"

"That what?" Denaos interjected. "That he's the one who brought it onto the ship in the first place? Don't be stupid. If that _thing_ serves other things called Aeons, then it only stands to reason that—"

"To hear _you_ calling for an end to stupidity is nearly hysterical." Kataria forced a laugh to emphasise the point. "I say 'nearly' because it's far more annoying than funny. Now, why don't you just shut up and let him finish and we'll—"

The sound of wood cracking interrupted her as Gariath brought his fists down hard upon the table.

"I will _not_ sit here and let another creature like that come and do what it did again!"

"So that's it?" Asper snapped. "You're just upset that you couldn't kill that thing?"

"Anything that Gariath can't kill is reason enough to worry," Lenk countered hotly. "Need I add that neither he _nor_ I _nor_ a spear to its gut was enough to kill it? So why don't you just—"

" _STOP!_ "

A voice not his own burst from a mouth that seemed to stretch too widely. The howl was heard throughout the ship and the waters beyond. The fish swarming the floating dead departed, all thoughts of food forgotten at the sound. Men fell to the deck in fear and even the moon seemed to grow a little dimmer.

Below, Miron regained his composure with a deep inhalation, as all eyes widened and all mouths shut.

"I shall hear no accusations," he said calmly. "Not until I have said my piece." He took a sip of tea, looking over the edge of his cup. "Any further objections?"

No one dared offer any.

"Delightful." He smiled. "As I said, by the time the Aeons had wrought the height of their woe upon mortalkind, they could no longer be called servants of the Gods. As such, a new name was crafted for them.

"Demons," he said quietly. Slowly, he swept his gaze about the table, challenging anyone to enquire.

Lenk answered it.

"I find myself wondering whether you're madder than I thought you were, Evenhands," he said coldly. "Demons... do not exist."

"There's no evidence for it," Dreadaeleon agreed.

"Mossud might beg to differ," Argaol muttered.

"There's no reason for it," the wizard countered. "Demons are, theoretically, creatures of distilled evil."

"And?" the captain pressed.

"And evil as we know it," the boy replied with condescending smugness, "or rather, as we like to _think_ we know it, doesn't exist. There is instinct, there is law, there is religion. These define action and the intent behind them cannot be classified by subjective definitions. And, above all, things cannot be _made_ out of evil."

"Moral objections aside," Asper said, casting the boy a sideways glare, "even the high priests deny the existence of demons, Lord Evenhands."

"As well they should," Miron said, nodding. "It has been ages since anyone has even thought the name, much less seen one. They are too horrible to contemplate and too long forgotten to mention. I assure you, though, they do exist and you have seen one."

"I believe it."

Eyes turned towards Kataria with a mixture of horror and suspicion.

"We have legends about them," she continued. "Some of the oldest of my tribe claim that their greater ancestors were still alive when demons roamed the world."

"So you _knew_ about this?" Lenk asked accusingly. "Why the hell didn't you say anything?"

"Oh, come on, imbecile," she snapped back, "what were the odds that it would come up?"

"In the interests of preventing further delays," Miron said, clearing his throat, "may I continue?"

"Sorry," Lenk muttered.

"He certainly is," Kataria added snidely.

"The suffering at the hands of the demons did not go unnoticed by the Gods and did not go unchallenged by mortals," Miron continued. "The heavenly ones spoke to the fiercest and most determined men and women, the ones free of demonic oppression, and granted unto them boons of divine power.

"These Gods were the deities of righteousness: Talanas, the Healer, Galataur, the Sovereign, and Darior, the Judge."

"Who?" Denaos asked.

"Dariorism. An older faith, not much practised any more," Asper answered.

"Indeed," Miron said, nodding. "Some faiths lost much in those times. They vested within these mortals their powers and, with that, the House of the Vanquishing Trinity, an organisation devoted to destroying the demons, was born.

"The fighting began with great bloodshed, but for every demon that fell, more champions rose up, inspired by their rescuers. Many were lost, peoples became extinct in the span of a breath, but ultimately, mortals prevailed. The demons were pushed back and cast into hell, cursed to live in shadow for all eternity.

"The House's life after this was disgracefully short," Miron continued. "With no common oppressor, the suffering was forgotten by all peoples. Grudges were born, rivalries surfaced and wars between races tore the unity apart. The House was disbanded."

"Disbanded?" Kataria said, raising an eyebrow. "Then why do you—"

"Key positions remain," Miron said, "men and women with duties so grave that they must endure the generations. Mine is such a position, mine is such a duty. I remain charged to guard the artefacts born of the suffering, lest they fall into... less worthy hands."

Lenk's eyes were the first to go alight with the realisation. "The book," he uttered, the words heavy on his tongue. "The book the frogmen stole."

"It has a name," the priest replied. "The Tome of the Undergates, penned by the most heinous of demons and their mortal subjects in the last days of the wars. They were not fools; they foresaw their banishment. Knowing this, they wrought within the pages the rituals and rites necessary to bring them back to the mortal world."

Miron shrank with the force of his sigh, all authority and cryptic presence lost as he slumped in his seat.

"In my arrogance, I had hoped to use the tome to enable the Aeons' Gate. I believed that the rituals used to establish contact with hell could be used to commune with heaven."

"How does anything involving the word 'Undergates' lend itself to beneficient purposes?" Denaos muttered.

"I have no idea how the Abysmyth and its vile mistress found the book," Miron continued, "but it cannot remain in their hands."

"Again with this 'mistress'," Lenk murmured. "What are you not telling us?"

"You've a right to know," Miron said. "Her name is known only to a few, but to them, she is Ulbecetonth, the Kraken Queen, Mother Deep. Once a noble servant of Zamanthras, the Mother, she was corrupted into a creature of wickedness and gluttony. It was she who birthed the Abysmyth, spoke to it, sent it out." He stared hard at Lenk. "It is she who seeks to return."

A deathly silence fell over the assembled as minds struggled to comprehend what had been heaped upon them.

_Demons._ The word echoed in the quiescence, a lingering cancer in the minds of the companions. Legends of such creatures permeated each of them, instilled by elders seeking to tame them, reinforced by drunkards muttering nonsensical stories. Until that moment, they had seemed nothing more substantial than that.

And yet...

"All right." Lenk shattered the silence. "You aren't telling us this for historical enlightenment."

"Apologies, but _you_ were the one demanding answers," Miron replied, smiling with a gentle smugness. "However, you are correct. I would not tell you this for no reason."

He took a long sip of his tea and set the cup down. The clink of the porcelain was deafening.

"You will go after the Abysmyth. You will retrieve the tome."

The silence that fell over them brimmed with tension this time, as every jaw went slack and every eye went as wide as they could possibly go without leaping from their sockets. Questions formed on lips, demands for further explanation, pleas for elaboration, accusations.

None were voiced before Denaos spoke.

"You, priest," he said, "are out of your Gods-damned mind."

"Mind your—" Asper began to scold.

"Don't you tell me to mind _anything_ of mine," Denaos snapped back. "Did you not just hear what he said?"

"I heard." Asper nodded. "And I believe he's right to ask this of us."

"So it's the whole clergy that's insane?" Denaos's laughter trembled with hysteria.

"I agree," Kataria piped up.

"Thank you."

"No, I agree with Asper."

"Ah, so it's the clergy and the shicts, is it?" Denaos rubbed his eyes and shook his head, as though trying to emerge from some demented dream. "Am I the only sane one here?"

"Demons are a threat to everything that breathes," Kataria added with a hiss. She drew herself up proudly, her eyes going hard as steel. "And it is the duty of a greater race to see them dead." She glanced sideways at her companions. "Humans can come along, too."

"Well, thank Silf the womenfolk are so eager to run off and die." He glanced at Dreadaeleon, elbowing the boy. "And what about you?"

"Hm?" The wizard glanced up with a start, roused from some deep reverie. "Oh. Yes, we might as well go."

"Oh, _come on_."

"Knowledge is the dominion of the wizards," the boy replied sternly. "There's much we could learn from something that is supposedly distilled 'evil', if we ever get hold of a corpse."

"It's not _their_ corpse you'll be holding." Denaos glanced over his shoulder at Gariath. "What about you?"

The dragonman merely snorted in reply.

"Possibly the sanest thing spoken yet," Denaos said with a frustrated sigh.

He cast his eyes to the end of the table, where Lenk propped himself on his elbows, staring into nothingness. Such an expression did not go unrecognised.

"I'm begging you now," Denaos urged hotly, "as the only other person here who is a man of reason and not a fanatic, pointy-eared, demented or scaly, _don't_ tell me you're considering this."

Lenk spared the briefest of moments for Denaos, taking in his hopeful expression, before turning back to Miron.

"How do we even know where this... Abysmyth is?"

The edge of Miron's small smile sheared off the last layer of ease from the room.

"We are about to find out." The priest looked to the dark-skinned man at the end of the table. "Captain, kindly bring it in."

Argaol's face was the colour of a fading bruise when he looked up, a gloomy blend of pale fear and nauseous green. He looked from the door to the priest, seemingly uncertain which made him more nervous.

"What..." he stammered. "Now?"

"Now," Miron replied, nodding.

"Is it really..." The captain hesitated with a cringe before inhaling sharply. "Fine." He slipped from the chair to the door, leaning out into the corridor. "Sebast! Bring it in!"

The first mate came rushing in like a man pursued, his hands trembling with the weight of the large cylinder in his grasp. A black cloth, scrawled with chalk sigils of Talanas, Zamanthras and other less familiar faiths, was draped about it. He set it down upon the table as though it were a carcass, muttering rapid, indecipherable prayers as he wiped his hands violently on his breeches.

"So..." Denaos hummed as he watched the first mate disappear out of the cabin. "This won't be pleasant, will it?"

"Where these creatures are concerned, there is no such word."

Miron reached out and slipped the cloth off with a whisper, followed by a chorus of retching and vomiting barely restrained as all assembled laid eyes upon the contents of the brass cage before them. And, with wide unblinking orbs, what lay within laid eyes upon them.

Lenk wasn't sure if he recognised the creature as one of the white-feathered chorus from a day earlier, nor was he sure he wanted to. The creature, a strange and curious thing with the body of a portly seagull, was horrific enough from a distance. As it waddled in a slow circle about the cage, sweeping its bulging eyes around the assembly, more than a few gazes were averted.

And yet, it seemed there was no avoiding its stare. The bulbous orbs peered over the hooked nose of an old woman's face, spotted wrinkles peeled back around its gaping mouth. The teeth within its maw, long yellow needles, chattered wordless curses as it swayed ominously within the cage.

"What... is it?" The question came from Asper on a bulge of swallowed bile.

"A parasite," Miron answered, regarding the creature without emotion. "It heralds the approach of the Abysmyth, gluts itself on the suffering and sinew left behind." He leaned closer to the cage, sneering. "Their proper name... is 'Omen'."

"Omen..." Lenk repeated, apparently the only other one amongst them not so stricken with revulsion as to be rendered speechless.

"So named for their precursorship of all things foul. They are the harbingers and the criers of Ulbecetonth, the cherubs that fly about her crown." He settled back, steepling his fingers. "To see them darkening the sky in such brazen numbers is disturbing."

"Yeah," Lenk muttered, glaring at the priest. "That was only _slightly_ obvious, thank you."

The only agreement came from the Omen itself as it chattered its teeth, the yellow needles clicking upon each other as it peered at the companions. Only Dreadaeleon leaned forwards to peer back, observing its lipless mouth with disgust.

"It's... as if it's trying to speak," he whispered. There was a flash of movement behind the creature's teeth, a glimmer of saliva that heralded the boy's blanch. "It's got inner lips."

"It's got what?" Lenk asked, sharing the wizard's expression.

"Its lips are behind its teeth." Dreadaeleon tapped the cage curiously. "Like a gopher... but why?"

In answer, the creature lunged at his finger, gnashing its teeth with such speed that only the startled shriek that sent him falling out of his chair spared his digit. The Omen hissed, ruffling its feathers as if in challenge as it settled onto its pudgy white haunches.

"Part-gopher, part-bird, part-woman..." Lenk tapped his chin thoughtfully and glared up at Miron. "This changes nothing, you realise."

"It proves the existence of demons, at least," Asper offered meekly.

"No, the giant fish- _demon_ proved the existence of demons," Lenk spat back. "What was the point of bringing this out? Shock?"

"Information," Miron replied coolly. "An Omen is not a complex creature, living only to eat and cause misery. Neither takes a great amount of intellect, and thus, an Omen is incapable of lying."

"So ask it a question," Lenk said, "and see what it says."

"It doesn't offer information without incentive," Miron said.

"You mean... torture?" Denaos asked, grimacing.

"Not the kind you would be versed in." Miron affixed a piercing gaze upon the rogue, observing him casually shift his eyes away. "After all, how does one torture that which feeds on suffering?"

"Rip its wings off and roast half of it until the other half talks!" Argaol slammed his fist upon the table, drawing the creature's attention. "So long as it gets me further away from that foulness that infected my ship, who cares?" He leaned forwards, snarling. "Speak, bird, where did you come from?"

The creature replied by tilting its withered head as if studying him. His facade of fearlessness twitched, threatened to break.

"Speak!"

The Omen's mouth craned open slowly, exposing a tiny void beyond the yellow teeth. A low, gurgling noise emitted from within before a voice, masculine and terrified, boiled out of its throat.

" _Captain_ ," it uttered without moving its mouth, " _Captain, where are you? You're... you're supposed to protect us! Where are you? Why aren't you here? CAPTAIN!_ "

Argaol fell back into his chair as if struck. His face was as white as his eyes as he stared, not at the parasite, but at the empty space before him. His jaw hung from his face, his voice oozing out of his mouth like spittle.

"That's... Anjus. He is... he _was_ the master of wares. What's—"

"Z _amanthras preserve me_ ," the Omen continued, its voice now another man's, " _Zamanthras preserve me, Zamanthras preserve me. I'm not going to make it. Mother wash away my sins. I... I don't want to die. I don't want to die! Please, just let me live long enough to see my wife again, please... PLEASE!_ "

"Nor does the Omen truly speak," Miron said, sighing. "It can only mimic what it has heard. But it does so—"

" _IT HURTS!_ " the parasite's imitation voice wailed. " _IT HURTS SO MUCH!_ "

"Accurately."

"Make it stop." Argaol's demand brimmed with tears. "Make it shut up!"

"Your suffering will be brief, Captain," the priest said. "If that is all we require, then let it be so." He turned to Asper and offered a weak smile. "Would you kindly do me the favour of reciting, Priestess?"

"Reciting... what?" the priestess asked, blanching.

" _The Talanic Verses_. Parable four-and-thirty, if you would be so kind."

"'The Healer Addresses the Masses'? But... whatever for?"

"Allow me to ask the questions, please." He gestured towards the creature. "Simply recite."

"Er... ah, very well." Asper cleared her throat, drawing the creature's attention. Averting her gaze, she began to speak. "'And it was upon the sixth noon, the sixth dismemberment of the Healer, that he rose again, whole and unscarred. He looked over the people, who raised torch and sickle against him and demanded he be slain again.'"

The creature emitted a low hum, like a pigeon being strangled. Its feathers ruffled, teeth chattering a little more violently. Yellow feet plopping beneath it, it marched in place, as if preparing to charge.

"Do not stop," Miron commanded, staring at the thing. "Speak, vermin. Where did your master go?"

"'And he said to them, _Do you fear miracles? Have you lost such confidence in the Gods?_ '" Asper continued, breathing heavily. "' _Then look upon me with fear, for in fear you will find the need for answers. And it is answers I give you._ '"

The Omen shrieked suddenly, hurling itself against the cage. The brass rattled upon the wood, causing all to draw back, save Miron. The beast hissed, gnawing on the bars of its cage with yellowed teeth and blackened gums, straining to break free, to silence the prayers.

"' _Your suffering is not unknown to me_ , He said. _And your dead are with me now, in a place of unending sun and peace. Weep not for them. I shall weep for you. For I say to you, life is sacred._ '"

The creature battered itself against the bars, blood leaking from its head, white feathers stained red as it shrieked and made guttural whines. It gyrated, twisted, writhed upon the floor of its cage. Miron held up a hand to Asper, leaned close to the cage and whispered.

"Where?"

" _North_ ," it gasped, through its inner lips, " _north._ "

Miron nodded solemnly, then drew in a sharp breath and finished the prayer. " _Hii lat Udun._ "

" _And so is death_ ," Asper translated, eyes going wide.

"That's... Old Talanic. _Old_ , Old Talanic. It's never been used outside of hymnal verses—"

"And not since humanity developed one sole language out of many," Miron said.

The creature twisted once, then lay still, its life escaping on a gurgling, choked sigh. The assembled could do nothing but stare as Miron slowly took up the cloth and draped it over the cage once more.

"A demon's true weakness is memory," he muttered. "It recalls the chants that led the House into battle, it fears them." He lifted the cage off the table and set it aside. "But more importantly, we have our answer. We know where they are heading."

"You can't be serious," Denaos whispered.

"Can I be anything but?"

"You bring out a flying gopher-demon, do a few tricks and expect us to go chasing after the Abysmyth?" The rogue made a flailing gesture. "All that convinces _me_ of is that we shouldn't be chasing demons! Lenk _and_ Gariath couldn't even scratch that thing! You're sending us against something that can't be hurt!"

"It can't be harmed by mortal creations, no," Miron replied quickly, "but there are weapons that even demons fear. Fire, you see, is their bane. The smallest heat source burns them unmercifully, and they cannot bear the presence of smoke."

"Dreadaeleon is a wizard," Asper said thoughtfully. "He can make fire."

"Well, thank goodness he did that when it was here earlier," Denaos sneered.

"If I had known that _then_ , maybe I'd—" Dreadaeleon began.

"Quiet," Lenk snapped.

"Regardless," the priest continued with a sigh, "you are hired to me as adventurers. You are free to leave my company at any moment and free to make your own decisions." He held his hands up in resignation. "Man's fate is his own to weave."

Glances were exchanged, myriad emotions captured in every eye. Terror, excitement, purpose, anger, anxiety, all reflected in stares that slowly, one by one, turned to the silver-haired young man scratching his chin absently.

Despite everything said between them, despite their harsh words for each other, they looked to him for their answer, their uniting purpose. Whatever had been said in the name of duty and fury, every word and oath could be revoked in the blink of an eye.

All rested on what would emerge from his mouth.

"We'll do it."

Kataria and Asper beamed with simultaneous smiles of pride as Dreadaeleon's brow arched and Denaos's head fell into his hands with a dramatic moan. Gariath's fierce visage remained unchanged, save for a snort and a nod to Lenk. Argaol, meanwhile, stared at the young man with the same curiosity with which he would regard a fire-breathing tortoise.

"For one thousand pieces of gold."

Suddenly, smiles disappeared, brows went flat and the rogue's head snapped up like a cat catching the scent of dead fish.

"How dare you, Lenk?" Asper was quick to hurl her voice brimming with scorn. "To ask any money for such a duty is a sin in itself, but to ask for such an exorbitant sum is—"

"Done."

"Lord Emissary!" Her wrath turned to shock as she whirled upon Miron. "The Church doesn't have that kind of wealth to flaunt on a quest with no guarantee of success."

"As well I know, child." Miron sighed. He looked to Lenk without judgement. "The money will come from my personal funds and will be paid in full upon return of the book."

"I can agree to that," Lenk replied, "assuming you pay for supplies we'll need."

"Done."

"We have a deal, then."

Miron's only reply was an ominous hum as he rose from his chair like an ivory tower.

"I suggest you retire shortly. The Abysmyth has a lead on you and you'll be leaving at dawn if you're to catch it." He glanced at Argaol across the table. "Captain, if you would kindly assist me in consulting the sea charts?"

"Aye... aye," Argaol muttered, rising on shaking legs. He wore an expression of disbelief, unwilling to comprehend what he had just heard, what he had just been a part of.

Quietly, on knocking knees, he followed the priest out of the cabin, pausing only long enough to look at Lenk and shake his head.

No sooner had the door slid shut before all eyes turned to the young man as he reclined in his seat, folding his hands behind his head as though he were at a picnic and not at negotiations regarding beings from hell.

"So, then," Denaos began angrily, "will you give reason as to why you just signed all our deathscrolls?"

"I gave you one thousand," he said smugly.

Asper shot him a vicious glare. "Perhaps then you'll give a reason why you just extorted from my church like a street hawker?"

"No."

"So why should we follow you on this expedition at all?" the rogue demanded.

"You probably shouldn't," Lenk replied with a shrug. "I never asked any of you to follow me wherever I went and I won't ask you now." He glanced to Asper. "If you object to what I just did, I'm sure Argaol will let you stay aboard until you reach Toha."

Slowly, he leaned forwards, sweeping them with his piercing gaze.

"I don't know how far along I've figured this out," he said, "but I want to kill this thing. I don't know how, or why, but I will." He turned to Asper. "And if I'm being sent to kill something that, up until this point, was simply legend, I deserve a bit of compensation." He leaned back again. "So, the way I figure, you can leave this table right now for whatever reason you may have. If I go alone, then I go alone. When I come back with the book, I'll never have to work a day in my life again." He grinned broadly. "Man's fate is his own to weave."

Once more, the glances were exchanged. The silence lasted but a moment.

"I'll go," Kataria said. "Demons and cleansing aside," she smirked slyly, "I happen to need a new set of leathers."

"I will, as well," Dreadaeleon piped up, the faintest hint of excitement in his voice. "There's a lot to be learned here and I intend to be the one to find out what's going on. The Venarium will need to know."

"Freak," Denaos muttered.

"I'll go." Asper spoke with some reluctance. "But only because it's the right thing to do. I forego my share right now."

"And since everyone is intent on killing themselves," Denaos sighed, "I should come along to pick up the bodies." He immediately shot up a single finger. " _If_ I get Asper's share."

"Why, you disgusting—" the priestess snarled.

" _You_ gave it up," the rogue interrupted.

"And what about you, Gariath?" Lenk spoke before Asper could start.

Eyes turned to the dragonman, knowing that, of all the companions, his answer couldn't be predicted. He had stayed with them this long, Lenk reasoned, but it would hardly be surprising if he decided the time to leave was now.

"I go," Gariath grunted. "Nothing, demon or otherwise, fights a _Rhega_ and lives." He snorted. "No stupid, weak human will die if I'm there, either."

"So that's that, then," Lenk said, rising from his chair. "Sleep on it. If you change your mind by morning, stay behind. I'll use your share to buy myself new friends."

"Don't count on me ducking out," Kataria was quick to snap, springing up. "I'll put that gold to good use." She shot her silver-haired companion a glance and winked. "I wouldn't want you to go spending my share on shoes that'll make you look taller."

"Stop being stupid," Lenk grunted. "If we're done here, I'm going to sleep. I don't know when one rises to go demon-killing, but I'll wager it's early."

"Sleep well while you can," Denaos muttered morbidly as he rose. "When the Abysmyth eats our heads, you'll hear the screaming in your dreams."

"By then I'll be able to buy earmuffs."

# ACT TWO

#  _Shores of White and Black_

# _Interlogue_

# FLEETING NIGHT

_The Departure_

_The Sea of Buradan_

_Summer, late_

_I don't remember much about my father, save for the fact that he was a humble man. He made an honest living which, by his definition, was one that involved hacking dirt and killing nothing bigger than a pig as a wedding gift. He lived well, I think, and I try to think of him whenever I have the time, in the moments when I remember the scent of dirt and feel a deep-seated hunger for pork._

_I don't recall what he sounded like._

_In the dawning hours, however, before the sun has risen, I think of my grandfather. In truth, I think of him quite often: whenever I'm about to be killed, whenever I'm about to make a mistake, whenever I'm ready to do something stupid. I hear his voice, even if it is distant. It's his voice I hear as I clutch his sword, my sword._

_Today, I can't hear him. I can't hear anyone. No one's talking._

_There's been precious little sleep aboard the_ Riptide. _The crew remains fearful, preferring to go without sleep as they patrol, ever-vigilant for the return of anything that might crawl out of the water. Miron has been locked up with Argaol, discussing whatever it is men discuss when they're about to send people off to die. I should note that they've been avoiding Argaol's cabin, preferring to do their discussing in the ship's hold. I don't know the reason, but I'm finding it difficult to trust the decision behind anything Miron does._

_More than that, I'm finding it difficult to trust myself._

_The Aeons' Gate, the relic we've been hired to seek out, is named for demons. Not just demons, but arch-demons, demons supreme. Demons with actual_ titles _: "Kraken Queens" and "Mother Deeps." Demon aristocracy, though I'm certain there's a fouler term for their social class. These are the things I've been hired to chase down, these are the things I've been told will be the salvation of mankind, the bridge between heaven and earth._

_Despite all the lies... well, hold it, there's only been one lie, really, but it wasrather prominent. At any rate, despite that, I've still agreed to go off in search of the thing in exchange for one thousand pieces of gold._

_It's a respectable sum, to be certain, but there remains a tart taste around the knowledge that one's soul, dignity and livelihood come at a price. For a while, I actually began to believe Asper when she told me that the human soul was beyond the weight of metal. I suppose I showed her._

_There's time to turn back, to reject Miron's offer, to stay on board the ship and jump off at Toha and find the next priest, pirate or person who requires a sword arm and a lack of questions. For the life of me, however, I simply can't go down there and tell him I quit. I suspect it's because, as I've turned the possibilities over in my head, I continually fail to come up with a reason to turn back._

_Dismemberment, death, decapitation, decay and drowning, on dry land or otherwise, are certainly deterrents. On the other hand... one thousand coins, split evenly amongst five people, still exceed the number most people will ever see in their lifetime. Certainly sufficient to find more respectable work, perhaps opening a smithy or an apothecary, or investing in slaves in the cities where the fleshtrade is permitted. This is presuming that everyone comes back alive, a staggeringly unlikely estimate by even generous accounts; if someone dies, the shares increase._

_I suspect this line of reasoning should strike me as considerably more horrifying than it does._

_And yet, it's not just about money, even though I know it ought to be. I suggest that whoever is reading this should season the next few lines with a bit of salt._

_I want to find the demon. I want to find it and kill it. I want to find it and kill it and I don't know why._

_It's far more likely that the thing will find and kill me first, I know, but all the same, there's something inside me that makes me want to track down the beast and put my sword through it. I never got the chance to strike it directly, as something roiling around in my head reminds me often, and I have to know what will happen when I do. Between blinks, I know this is ridiculous logic: the thing took a spear through its belly and survived, likely my sword won't do anything more than tickle it. And yet... when I close my eyes, it all makes sense._

_When I close my eyes, I hear a voice that is not my grandfather's._

_I suspect if I were to hear an actual voice, one of reason or even one threatening a stiff blow to the side of my head, I might be able to get these ideas out into the open and, upon hearing my own madness, be able to reject them. My companions haven't been forthcoming, however, indicating that they're either fine with the idea of chasing after demons or simply don't want to talk to me._

_It's difficult to tell which._

_Denaos slipped away shortly after our little meeting had concluded, citing the need for last indulgences while slinking off towards the cabin of one of the female passengers. Dreadaeleon, rife with "magic headaches" or some manner of wizardlyaffliction decent people were never meant to know of, found some dark corner to sip tea in and pore over his book._

_Asper, as far as I know, has been in various states of penance, meditation and prayer, tended to by Quillian. The Serrant clings to our priestess like a bloated tick; I suppose this isn't unusual, given the symbiotic or parasitic relationship between their respective callings. All the same, I'm more than a little inclined, at times, to believe the rumours whispered about the Serrant, to give more than just a passing chuckle to the jokes Denaos makes about her._

_Gariath, surprisingly, did deign to talk to me beyond grunted derisions of my race. He proved less than helpful in convincing me of the folly of chasing after demons, apparently sharing the sentiments of what may or may not be a symptom of insanity in my head. "If you're scared, go sleep on a bed of urine," he suggested. "Very warm, I hear."_

_In truth, I had hoped to speak to Kataria. She was... not forthcoming._

_I don't suppose I can blame her, really. Only an hour or two after the Abysmyth was driven off, I managed to not only convince her that I was utterly mad, but savagely attack her and then persuade her to follow me on a chase after the damned thing. If this were any other situation, I'm sure I'd marvel at my ability to turn such a circumstance to advantage._

_More than that, I needed to talk to her. I needed to tell her I wasn't mad, so that she would confirm that. If I tell myself I'm not mad, it's not reliable, since it could be the madness talking. But if she tells me I'm not mad, then it's clear that I'm not because she's just a savage shict, not mad, even if the race itself is more than a bit mad._

_And beyond even that, I needed to tell her something. I don't know what it was, though. Whenever I close my eyes to think of it, I keep hearing the logic, the voice, the need to go after the demon and kill it. All I can think of to say to her is something about how sweaty she is._

_In fact, I did try to tell her. Her response was a shrug, a roll onto her side and a profoundly decisive breaking of wind in my general direction. As one might imagine, negotiations were promptly concluded afterwards._

_The sun is beginning to rise now. It strikes me that I should attempt to get at least an hour's sleep. It strikes me as odd that I'm yearning for conversation. My grandfather used to tell me that the moments before an honest killing were tense, silent, no one able to talk, eat or sleep. Maybe I want to alleviate that tension by talking to someone, anyone. Maybe I want them to tell me I'm doing the right thing by going off to chase demons. Maybe I just want to hear something other than the waves._

_Maybe I want to stop hearing voices when I close my eyes._

_The crew is emerging on deck. Time is short. I'll write later, presuming survival._

_Hope is not advised._

# _Ten_

# PITILESS DAWN

Silver slivers of the dawn crept through the blinds like spectres, casting ghostly hues on the sheets. Denaos glanced upwards at the shuttered window with disinterest, awaiting the late-dawning sun. Nights without sleep were as common to him as a waking day was.

He had no right to place his feet down on the wood, to rub his eyes and stifle a yawn behind clenched teeth. That sort of thing was reserved for people who had done hard work and slept well, the gestures largely the last appreciation between a man and his bed before he readily faced the dawn like a soldier gallantly marching to battle. Still, he admitted to himself, acting as though he had slept well and was heading to brighter days was one of his lesser lies, hardly worth losing sleeplessness over.

Something rustled in the sheets next to him and he glanced sideways at the nude woman. The sheets hugged her slender body as she blissfully dozed, oblivious to the presence of him or the rising dawn.

She looked peaceful in her slumber. She had met him with suspicion when he had pretended to stumble, lost, through her door late last evening, coming close to casting him out with the coaxing of a bottle of inexpensive wine cracked against his skull. Now, all traces of scorn were vanished from her stately, well-nourished features, instead bearing the expression of something akin to a sated lioness.

_Yes_ , he smiled to himself, _that's a rather good metaphor. I like that one._

Negotiating his way into her bed hadn't been difficult; it never was. It hadn't taken much but a few false tears shed for his fallen comrades whose names he couldn't remember out of shock to convince her to pour him a glass of the red. The best lies usually began with tears, he knew, and from there it was only a stiff, resolute inhale to convince her of a wound past his brave, stoic shell that was in need of carnal healing.

He eyed the empty bottle on her bureau, regarding the label: Jaharlan Crimson. A lesser wine from a race who regarded lesser wines with all the reverence they did lesser Gods. _To think_ , he scolded himself, _if I had recited a bit of poetry, she'd probably have given me some of the expensive stuff._

That, at least, might have afforded him the opportunity to pass out, to sleep, perchance to slumber right through the call to leave, and a decent excuse not to follow his companions into death. The expensive stuff, at least, might have given him the opportunity for a dreamless, blissful emptiness behind his eyelids.

Lesser wine was his milk. He took it with bread and stew and it had long since failed to do anything but fill his belly and his bladder. Lesser wine never allowed him to sleep.

He rubbed his eyes again, hoping to lower his hands and find an inviting pillow beneath him. He was still awake, eyes still open. He attempted to convince himself that his insomnia was due to the events that had occurred yesterday.

After all, who could sleep after agreeing to chase a beast that drowned men on dry land? Certainly not Denaos, the average man, the voice of reason amidst the savage, monstrous, insane, zealous and blasphemous. Denaos needed time to digest such horrors, time in bed with pleasurable company and expensive stuff. It could hardly be Denaos's fault that he couldn't sleep.

Denaos told himself this. Denaos did not believe it.

The slivers of light brightened, seeping through the shutters to bathe the woman in muted light. He saw her, then, without the haze of wine or the fleeting euphoria of protrusions in orifices. She was a sculpture, her skin flawless, her hair so dark as to swallow the light as it crept over her.

He blinked. For the briefest of moments the woman was not the merchant who had scorned him previously. For the briefest of moments she was someone else, someone he had once known. He saw her waking as if she were a stranger, rolling over to bat large, dark eyes at him, a smile of contentment upon her face.

" _Good morning, tall man_ ," he imagined her saying.

He blinked. In the span of his eyelid shutting and opening, he saw her once more, now still and lifeless upon crimson-stained sheets, eyes closed so peacefully one might never have noticed the gaping hole in her throat...

_Stop it_ , he told himself, _STOP IT!_

Denaos shut his eyes tightly and breathed deeply. The image lingered in his mind like a tumour, growing ever more vivid with each breath he took. Silently, he held his breath, making not a word or sound until he felt his lungs were ready to burst.

When he opened his eyes, she lay there: whole, unsullied, breathing softly.

He slid out of her bed and crept to the crumpled black heap that was his clothes, and felt a chill come over his naked legs. _It would be so easy_ , he thought, _to stay here, to let them go and die on their own. It would be easy to lie here beside her..._

He looked at her once more, resisting the urge to blink.

Even as his eyes strained to keep open, he could see her hand on the space he had recently lain upon. She had all her fingers. Without blinking, he saw the red stumps on large, hairy hands. Without blinking, he saw the missing digits rolling about on the floor beside a pair of quivering, glistening globs in a pool of brackish bile. Without blinking, he saw a bearded face, lips cracked and gaping, pleas forced through vomit.

He still dared not close his eyes, nor did he dare return to her bed. It was the scent of linen that was his allergy, spurring images to his mind he never wished to see, those images bringing forth other images. He should be lucky to only recall last night's other accomplishment in such fleeting visions. He should be lucky to escape the nightmare of sheets before he was tempted to sleep.

Quietly, cannily, he slid into his trousers. She would be furious when she awoke, he knew, to find him absent. By then, he would be gone, possibly drowned, possibly with his head bitten off by some horrible monstrosity.

The door shut quietly. The woman turned in her bed, grasping at a space on her mattress that bore no depression or muss of sheets, no evidence that anyone had ever been there.

The sun was the dominion of Talanas.

This, Asper knew, was certain. It was the Healer's greatest gift to mankind, the gate through which He had entered and left the waking, mortal world. Talanas frowned upon no human, cursed no follower of another God; He was the Giver, dispensing His purification freely and without judgement. So, too, was the sun an indiscriminate and generous benefactor of humanity.

More than that, however, the sun was His Eye. Mankind could never truly be separated from Talanas for He observed them always through that great, golden sphere. Through it, He saw all in need, heard every prayer. Only under the cloak of night was He ever hard of hearing. Asper frowned at that; if Talanas had heard her last night, He certainly was not revealing any answers today.

She leaned hard on the railing of the helm, staring out over the sea. The curtains of mist over the sea were parting as dawn crept upon the horizon. She had always welcomed the sun, yearned for the warmth it brought, sought the reconnection with the Healer. When she had studied at the temple, it was a ritual in and of itself to see the sun rise and shine through the stained-glass windows.

Here, far away from the comfort of stone walls, out upon the open sea, the dawn was not quite so dramatic. Instead of arriving in a soundless thunderclap, it staggered up with a silent yawn. Instead of blooming with a glorious burst, it opened its golden eye lazily. Instead of acting as a herald for a new day, a cleansing, it seemed slow, sluggish... bored.

Perhaps that was why she had no prayers for Talanas today.

It had been her routine since she had left the temple to thank the Healer for delivering her through the night once the sun rose again. Following that, she begged safety for her family, her clergy, her temple. Prayers for her companions typically ranked last, pleas for Talanas's watchful gaze requested for Lenk, Dreadaeleon, Kataria and Gariath, always in that order. Whether or not she chose to offer a prayer for Denaos largely depended on her mood.

Today, she was in no mood to ask for any such benevolence. Her lips were still, silent. She could not pray this morning, not when the dawn still failed to cleanse her memories of yesterday's violence.

Images flew on shrieking wings through her mind, scenes of the fury that had raged inside the ship's bowels. Even as she tried to burn the sights out of her eyes by staring directly at the sun, she still saw them. The dawn was in no hurry to assist her.

She saw them, the moments replaying themselves over and over in her mind: the frogman lurching towards her, the white flash of its dagger and needle-like teeth. Her staff was out of reach, useless against the wall; she could not remember how it had left her hand. As desperately as she might wish, she could not help but remember her left hand, reaching out, muscles spasming wildly, tears brimming in her eyes as it reached past the knife and took the pale creature by the throat...

_NO!_ She clenched her eyes shut. _Stop it, stop it, stop it. Stop thinking about it! Focus on the dawn! Focus on the sun!_

That proved difficult, as the sun had risen only a hair's width. Dawn had failed to purge her mind. The long, sleepless night had offered her no respite. The new sleeve she had stitched onto her robe failed to offer any comfort.

And so, as she looked down from the dawn to the silver pendant of the phoenix in her hand, she had no prayers. She had but one word.

"Why?"

The holy symbol did not answer. Its eyes, tiny carved gouges, were fixed upwards, staring towards the dawn as though that were enough. She bit her lower lip, not bothering to follow its metal gaze.

"It happened again," she whispered. "Why did it happen again? Why does it keep happening?"

The pendant did not answer. The sun rose another eye-lash, light caught the silver. A glare was cast over its eyes, the usually stern and uncompromising stare of nobility suddenly turning heavy-lidded and disinterested.

"Why don't you ever answer me?"

"Priestess?"

Asper realised she had demanded that last answer more loudly than she had intended. Swallowing hard, she resisted the urge to whirl about at the voice. Instead, she forced her back to stiffen to a more upright posture, resolute against the dawn. It would not serve, she knew, to look startled under the Eye of Talanas.

"Quillian Guisarne-Garrelle Yanates." She turned about, forcing a smile upon her face. "Apologies— _Serrant_ Quillian Guisarne-Garrelle Yanates, good morning."

"To you as well." The woman's eyes had a peculiar way of remaining still and hard while the rest of her head moved in a respectful nod. "Quillian is fine." She cleared her throat suddenly. "Whichever title pleases you, however, is the one that is proper, Priestess."

The Serrant attempted a smile; it was not easy for her. It did not flow smoothly over her face, but had to be carved hastily. The twist of her lips revealed strain, teeth set so tight in her jaw as to creak like aged iron. She looked more prepared for a hanging than a conversation.

"The title that would please me most," Asper replied, her own voice a bit halted by the woman's obvious tension, "is the one where we have only one name to refer to each other by."

"So noted, Priestess, but I must request you reconsider such a statement. It would be improper to call you anything less than your station."

Asper blinked at that; she had never considered her name to be beneath her calling before.

"Oaths dictate a certain protocol."

"Mm." Asper turned back to face the sun; it had risen a finger's width. "What can I do for you, Serrant?"

"I was hoping to fulfil my oaths and make certain of your well-being. I know you will... likely be leaving soon."

It wasn't until Quillian had spoken those words that it dawned on Asper. She would be leaving soon.

All at once, the noise on the decks below began to rise. Sailors were emerging from their sleepless night in the holds below, the sound of ropes sliding on wood, sails unfurling and orders being barked were beginning to mingle with the lazy sizzle of the sun. Asper narrowed her eyes at that; whatever answers she hoped to find, she wouldn't even be able to hear in a few moments.

"Your companions will likely expect you," the Serrant suggested.

"They can wait."

The answer came quickly and without thought. Truly, she hoped it would be enough to express her desire to be alone with the silent, uncaring sun, to have the silence to hear its answers.

Even that hope, however, was extinguished.

"A wise decision, if I may say." Quillian's footsteps were loud and clanking against the wood as she drew closer. "Frankly, if you think my criticism not too bold, I don't know why you continue to indulge those heathens, Priestess."

Asper merely let out a hum. She had often been presented with that query by those who considered themselves worthy of voicing it. She mulled it over herself, frequently. More often than not, she preferred not to think too hard about it; accepting the excuse that she enjoyed the opportunities provided by their company was preferable to the inevitable headaches that ensued further thought.

"Granted, I may not be in a position to question, given that I follow Galataur." The Serrant hesitated momentarily. "But... Talanas only requires you to serve _mankind_ , does He not?"

"Ideally, all Gods—" Asper paused, correcting herself. "All _human_ Gods at least gently encourage the improvement of mankind. I seem to do that rather well."

"Still," she could almost hear the cracking of Quillian's teeth, "I wonder if you are perhaps too indulgent of other faiths. Is it not a sin to acknowledge the Gods of savages?"

"Technically, Kataria and all shicts only have one God. Goddess, actually. Gariath, as far as I know, believes in something else altogether."

"Which is precisely my point: you _are_ aware that some of your companions are—"

"Not human?" She rolled her eyes. "Yes, I had noticed that."

"May I ask why—"

"I suppose their parents hadn't the foresight to have been human."

"Your sarcasm is noted." The lack of ire in the Serrant's voice was oddly unnerving to the priestess. "It was my intent to ask why you cling to them."

_Likely because they're at least occasionally willing to leave me alone._

She bit back that thought.

"In theory," she began with a sigh, "staying in their company grants me many opportunities to do the Healer's work." She cast an appeasing smile over her shoulder. "You might have noticed the abundance of wounds that materialise in my companions' presence."

Her nervous laughter was met with stony silence. Quillian offered no indication that she understood the jest, much less appreciated it. She lingered in the corner of Asper's eyes for another moment before the priestess turned away.

Perhaps, she thought, if she stood perfectly still, Quillian would simply stand there and say nothing; it would be the same as being alone, just with a strange, silent, bronze-clad woman staring at her.

"You don't seem convinced."

Asper opened her mouth to retort before she realised the unpleasant truth of Quillian's words: namely, the fact that she was correct.

She closed her eyes at that moment, trying to summon up images of laughter shared, stories exchanged, a reason why she called them "companions." All that flashed behind her lids, however, were the images: bodies cut down, blood shed. The frogman lying motionless in the corner, quivering like a blob of jelly...

_Stop it!_

Her mind disobeyed the command.

Where, she wondered, was the Healer's work? Where were the mended bones and healed flesh? Where had she consoled the grieving? Where were the funerals? Had there been anything beyond swaddled corpses, deathscrolls and steel?

_If I stay with them, is there anything beyond that at all?_

"Forgive my audacity." Quillian's voice shifted low at the priestess's silence. "I should not have second-guessed your motives."

"I've been with them for a year now."

The Serrant's armour shifted noisily as she straightened up. Without looking, Asper could feel Quillian's eyes upon her: expectant, attentive. She realised she had never commanded such expressions amongst her companions.

"I've done a lot of good in that time, you know," she said softly. "I don't regret it. It seemed a grand idea, then, to embark on my pilgrimage in the company of adventurers. Where else would one find so much healing to be done?"

"In my humble experience," there was an edge of venom to Quillian's words, "there is rarely a good idea that involves shicts and heathens."

"They're good people." The counter came neither as swiftly nor as sternly as she expected. "They're just..." _Violent? Brutish? Half-mad?_ No word summed them up properly. "Misguided."

"Does it then fall to you to guide them?"

Once more, the Serrant's words struck her silent. Her mouth did not so much as open as the question echoed in her mind. What hope did she have of mending their ways? It had been a year now, a bloody, fierce year. They had turned their steel and ferocity towards the good of the Church, that much was true, but they still did so un-charitably, demanding exorbitant amounts of wealth...

What good did she do by remaining with them?

When she turned around, Quillian was close to her, much closer than she had ever seen the woman. Her features became clearer: there was softness between her hard lines, a quiver in her eyes, as though they struggled desperately to remember how women were supposed to look.

The realisation came swiftly upon her. Before that moment, she had never seen the Serrant in such a position: no sword at her hip, no oaths or battle cries on her tongue, no sounds of battle in the background. It was not Knight-Serrant Quillian that stood before her, it was simply Quillian, woman.

"There is good to be done," Asper whispered, "here and now."

Quillian's hand twitched, the bronze knuckles rattling against her gauntlet. It rose up to her torso and froze there, quivering as though it wanted to go higher.

Then something flashed across her face, so swift that Asper might not have caught it had she not been so close. Quillian's eyes widened for a moment, then shut tightly. When they opened again, they were soft, quivering, the beginnings of a tear forming in the corner of one eye. She bit her lower lip so hard that Asper feared blood might gush out at any moment.

"Forgive me, Priestess," she said, her voice suddenly stern and brimming with duty once more, "I must see to the needs of the Lord Emissary."

The Serrant departed with a haste Asper had never seen before: a loud, clunky, stumbling gait down the stairs of the helm. She even apologised after bumping into one of the sailors before vanishing into the companionway. And yet, even though the woman was gone, the tension remained thick and oppressive around the priestess.

The questions still lingered in the air, echoing in her head. Behind her, the sun had risen halfway out of the ocean, still unanswering.

" _Someone_ has a little infatuation, hm?"

Asper blinked and suddenly noticed him: a tall, black stain against the pristine ocean. Tucked in the corner of the helm, Denaos stood, hands at his groin, an arcing flight of golden, foul-smelling angels singing over the railing.

"How long have you been there?" she asked, raising a brow.

"Quite some time," he replied swiftly. "And it appears I'll be here for some time more." The golden shaft suddenly died in the blink of an eye. "You'd be surprised how little attention a man urinating requires in delicate situations."

"Given that said attention would require looking at said man, I'm really not." She formed a glare. "How much did you over—"

"Wait!" His voice was shrill and hurried. "Turn around."

"What?"

"Turn around! Don't look at me!" He offered a bashful smile. "I can't go if you look."

"You can't be—"

" _Do it._ "

The order came with such firmness that she found herself hard pressed to do anything but obey. Shortly after returning her gaze to the familiar sight of the sluggish sun, the sound of water singing acrid yellow tunes filled her ears, accompanied by a sigh so filled with relief it bordered on perverse.

"Oh, sweet Silf, that's better," he moaned. "This is what I get for drinking the cheap stuff."

"I thought men outgrew that."

"Oh, no one ever outgrows their soil habits."

"Their what?"

"Soil habits," he repeated. "Pot practices, golden means, tinkle techniques if you like. Everyone has their own that they discover at birth and they can never get rid of them." The sound of water stopped; there was a grunt before it resumed. "For example, did you know that Dreadaeleon, before checking to make certain no one is looking, removes his breeches entirely, no matter which business he has to do?"

She thought she ought to protest that revelation, if only for propriety's sake. However, she found herself silent; she had seen the wizard do that before. A new, slightly more unnerving image flashed behind her eyes.

"Gariath doesn't even take the time to prepare. He just lifts his leg and goes wherever he pleases." He snorted. "Must be why he wears a kilt, eh?"

"So, you've seen everyone..." she coughed, "make water?"

"Everyone except Kataria," he replied. "It's true what they say about the shicts. They always go in a secret place." The sound of water rose suddenly as he tilted upwards. "Disgusting."

"Huh." She chose not to comment on that. "So, you've even seen—"

"Oh, absolutely." Without waiting for further prodding, he continued with an obscene vigour, "I've seen you plenty of times. Now, you're what I've heard called the 'chamber-pot philosopher', granted said title through the long contemplations while squatting."

Her ears went aflame, face going a deeper shade of crimson than had ever been seen amidst roses. She found her mouth open, without a retort, even though it seemed that she ought to have a particularly scathing one. Still, she whirled about to face him, only to be met with a shriek of protest.

" _Don't look!_ " he screeched. " _Turn around, turn around, turn around!_ "

She did so with only a mild stammer of outrage, more for her own benefit than for his. Undoubtedly, seeing her coloured so would give him _some_ bizarre form of pleasure she preferred not to think about.

A breeze, harsh against her cheek, swept over the ship. Asper stood still, facing the lazy, half-risen sun and listening to the vile symphony of water that showed no signs of fading, slowing or otherwise sparing her the unpleasantness.

"So, do you think you'll do it?" His voice was surprisingly soft, nearly drowned by his functions.

"Do... what?"

"Leave." He grunted slightly, as if forcing himself to concentrate. "It's fairly obvious by this point that you've considered it."

"You overheard."

"'Overhearing' implies a certain degree of innocent accident. I was genuinely and intentionally spying, I assure you."

"Unsurprising."

"Few people are anything but, I find. As for myself, there aren't many surprises left." His sigh was slow and contemplative. "Maybe that's why I linger around you degenerates."

"For surprises," she repeated, sneering to herself. "I find that hard to believe."

"So you should. You know me well enough to know that you don't know me nearly well enough to accept that answer." He cleared his throat. "Still, everyone needs a purpose for what they do, don't they?"

Another breeze swept over the deck. The tinge of salt was heavy, the song of distant gulls growing louder. The sun was rising stronger now, with more fervour, as though it, too, had heard the rogue and taken the man's advice. That gave her a bitter pause as she bit her lower lip.

"I've been wondering about my purpose." She surprised herself with the weakness of her own voice; somehow, she thought she would admit it with more conviction.

"That's funny." He hummed. "I've always envied the clergy for their conviction. I thought the reason you took oaths was to give yourself purpose."

"Oaths are a guide, a reminder of our... of my faith and my duty."

"A reminder." He tasted the words. "That seems acceptable, considering what Quillian's say on her flank." He added quickly, "I know you'd like to turn around and raise an eyebrow at that, but I must encourage you to resist. I'm... sort of in the middle of something."

" _Still?_ " She sighed, but kept her back turned, regardless. "You... can read Quillian's oaths?"

"Bits. Dreadaeleon might know more. Suffice it to say, I can pick out parts that are quite interesting to me when she deigns to doff that armour of hers." Leather creaked as he adjusted himself. "Hers would seem to suggest a reminder of duty."

She paused, her lips pursing thoughtfully, then asked, "Does duty necessarily equate to purpose?"

"That's a decent question," he admitted. "I became an adventurer to avoid most accepted forms of duty. I like to _think_ I manage to serve that purpose."

"Don't lie to me," she snapped. "You became an adventurer because you were a fugitive."

"True, but that's not saying much, is it? Prison sentences are a form of duty."

"For you, perhaps." Her sigh was long, tired and laden with thought. "I need more. I need... to know that I'm doing the right and proper thing."

"You'll never figure that out," he answered decisively. "There's no way to know what the right and proper thing is, you see. Ask a Karnerian, a Sainite, a shict and a dragonman the same question, they'll all tell you something different."

"I suppose," she grunted. "Then again, I suppose I shouldn't be consulting a felon about matters of spirituality and moral rightness."

"Moral _righteousness_ , perhaps not, but I find myself in a unique position to analyse most matters of faith due to my general offensiveness to all Gods, religions and servicemen and -women thereof."

"Fine, then." Her patience was a pot of water, boiling as the sun insultingly decided to rise with a hot and yellow unpleasantness. "What _is_ the right thing, if you're such a genius? What are we doing here? What are we _about_ to do?"

The question was only half-posed to the rogue; she stared and addressed no small part of it to the sun. It was fully risen now, Talanas's great, golden Eye broad and fully awake, ready to accept her struggle. Yet still no answer came and, as the water rippled beneath it and cast its shifting hues upon the sky, even the great fiery disc itself seemed to blink.

"We're about to go on an adventure."

His voice was soft, the words spoken with no particular zeal, yet it echoed in her mind. She turned and found herself jumping with a start as she looked into his dark eyes. He stood before her, perfectly still and unmoving, barely a finger's length of space between them. He did not blink.

"And... what does that mean?" she asked.

"It means that whatever happens is incidental."

"What do you—"

"We kill a demon, we get a book, we get rich." He held up his hands in a shrug. "By that same token, we use that money for whatever good we think it'll do, we prevent that book from being used in anything wicked and whatever demons die as a result will _not_ result in more people dying like Moscoff."

The image of the boy was another wound in her mind: his still corpse, drowned on dry land, the death that should not have been.

"And, as it is an adventure..." His hands slid down past his waist, tightening his belt and adjusting his breeches. "Whether you choose to come or stay, and should you find your purpose—or not—as a result, is also incidental."

With that, he turned towards the stairs of the helm. At the top, he cast a glance over his shoulder. A smile creased his lips, so swiftly and suddenly as to cause her to start.

"Something to think about the next time you squat."

With silent footsteps, he was gone.

She strained to hear his boots upon the wood, strained to hear over the sounds of sailors rising on the deck and gulls upon the wind. She strained to hear, as though hoping he would mutter some last bit of advice, some solid stone of wisdom that would crush her with the weight of decision.

Such a sound never came. She glanced up; the sun was not providing anything else today. It had risen lazily and now stood stolidly, firmly resigned to another day of golden silence.

On the decks below, life returned to the _Riptide_.

# _Eleven_

# BERTH

Kataria leaned over the railing, balancing on the heels of her hands as she stared at the restless sea below. It churned listlessly against the ship's flank, sending up spray that attached to her flesh like swarms of frothy ticks. The small escape vessel looked so insignificant now, in the light of their new intentions. She could hardly recall it being such a salvation when they tried to run the day before.

It had been a temptation then, a betrayal that had beckoned them with promises of redemption from the chaos raging on deck. Today, it threatened her, flashing a smarmy smile of timber as it promised to deliver the companions into the eager, drooling mouth of carnage.

_Or perhaps I'm giving it too much credit_ , she thought. _It's just a boat, after all._

At the far end of the ship, sailors busied themselves with a pulley, lowering crates and various sundries into the boat. She watched with a frown, noting her bow amidst the mess: unstrung, a bit of its perfectly polished wood peeking out from the fur she had delicately wrapped it in. Her left eyelid twitched as a pair of careless hairy hands plucked it rudely from the spot where she had so carefully placed it and tossed it against the vessel's edge as though it were a common branch.

_They did that on purpose_ , she thought scornfully.

Human hands were without conscience or the ability to lie; what a human desired to say with his mouth, but was prevented from doing by his mind, he did with his hands. Their hands were maliciously clumsy. The whole round-eared race held a grudge over the shictish superiority with a bow.

_We can hardly be blamed for that_ , she told herself. _We did, after all, invent archery. They stole it from_ us.

Envy was an instinct for humans, as natural to them as rolling in foulness was to a dog... a human-trained dog.

"You're going to fall if you keep leaning like that."

The voice was thundering, even in so casual a mutter. Gariath regarded her impassively, as he might an insect. He snorted, as though waiting to see if she would actually tumble headlong over the railing.

She offered him half a smile and half a sneer, pulling herself backwards.

"Shicts don't fall," she declared smugly.

"Shicts don't do anything right." He stalked to her side, making certain to shove her aside with a wing as he looked over the rail. He cast a contemptuous frown at the bobbing vessel. "What is that?"

"They call it a companion ship; it's used for foraging on islands. Supposedly, it can be manned by two men." She winked. "Considering we've three men, two women and one dragonman, we should have an advantage."

He merely grunted at that, unaware of her resentful scowl. _Lenk would have at least groaned._

"Five humans are two and a half times as worthless as two humans," he muttered.

" _Four_ humans," she replied, twitching her ears.

"Pointy-eared humans are still humans." He didn't even bother to dignify her threatening bare of teeth with a glance. Instead, he merely kept a disdainful eye upon the craft. "This is a stupid idea."

"I thought you wanted to chase the demon." She knew that speaking so coyly to a creature whose arm was the size of her waist was not, by any race's standards, a good idea. Still, she was hungry for a reaction; Lenk would have insulted her back by now. "Scared?"

He turned to face her, not with any great need to rip her face off, and regarded her through cold, dark eyes. She tensed, ready to leap aside at the first sign of an angry fist. Instead, he merely grunted, ignoring her flicking tongue as she shot it at him. Her sigh was exaggerated and bored, not that he likely heard it.

"Fear is something for lesser races," he rumbled. "It's the only gift their weak Gods gave them, since they sought to deny them intelligence." He thumped a fist against his chest. "The spirits gave no gifts to the _Rhega_. I'll hunt the demon down." He narrowed his eyes. "It was meant for me."

"Meant," she paused, cocking a brow, "for you?"

"I don't expect you to understand."

"You'd expect a human to understand any better?" It was with some form of pride that she noted the crew, standing as far away as possible from both shict and dragonman.

"I wouldn't expect anyone but a _Rhega_ to understand."

"Yeah, well, there aren't any _Rhega_ around."

For the first time, she hadn't intended any offence. Yet, for all her previous prodding and attempts to incite him into a reaction, her innocuous observation caused him to whirl about and turn an angry gaze upon her.

_Obviously._

His step shook the ship as he thundered forwards. The teeth he bared at her, she noted, were far bigger and far sharper than hers. She resisted the urge to back away, even as his hands tightened into fists. Retreat, more often than not, tended to be viewed as even more of an insult by the dragonman.

" _You_ don't have the right to utter that word." He prodded a claw into her chest, drawing blood and sending her staggering backwards. "The _Rhega_ tongue was not meant for _your_ ugly lips."

"Then what am I supposed to call you?" Her attempt to draw herself up seemed rather pitiful when she noted that the top of her head only came up to the middle of his chest, five times as broad as hers. "Dragonman? That _human_ word?"

"There are many human words." He made a dismissive gesture. "All of them are equally worthless. _Rhega_ words are worth more."

"Fine."

He ignored her challenging scowl as she rubbed at the red spot beneath her collarbone. They both looked towards the sea, observing the bobbing craft.

"So," she broke the silence tersely, "what is it you think you're meant to do with this demon?"

"Kill it."

"Well, naturally."

"A _Rhega_ 's kills have more meaning."

"Of course they do. It doesn't bother you that you couldn't harm it before?"

"Hit something hard enough, it falls down. That's how the world works."

"You hit it fairly hard before."

"Then I'll have to hit it harder."

She nodded; it seemed to make sense.

"Riffid willing, we'll do that."

"You should save the names of your weak Gods," he snorted. "The more you utter them, the less likely they'll be inclined to send you their worthless aid. Besides," he folded his arms over his chest, " _we_ won't be doing anything. _I_ will kill the demon and if your Gods aren't useless, they'll kill you quickly and get you out of the way."

"Riffid is the _true_ Goddess," she hissed, "the _only_ Goddess."

"If your Gods intended to cure you of your stupidity, they would not have made you that way in the first place."

She sighed at that, though she knew it was futile. Gariath's response was hardly unexpected. To credit his objectivity, she grudgingly admitted, he had equal disdain for any God, shict, human or otherwise. His interest in theological discussion tended to begin with snorts and end in bloodshed. It would be wiser to leave now, she reasoned, before he decided to end this conversation.

And yet, she lingered.

"So," she muttered, "what's got you in such a sunny mood today?"

His nostrils flared. "There's a scent on the air... one I haven't sensed in a long time."

His face flinched. It was such a small twitch, made smaller in the wake of the rehearsed growl that followed, that he doubtlessly hoped no one would notice. But nothing escaped a shict's attention. In the briefest of moments, concealed behind the subtlest of quivers lurked the mildest ruminations of a frown.

His eyes shifted suddenly. They did not soften, as she might have expected, but rather seemed to twitch in time with his face, as though desperately remembering how to.

"It doesn't stay." His voice was distant, unaware of her presence beside him. "It goes... it returns... then goes again. It never stays. When it does, it is... overwhelmed, drowned out by other stinks."

One eye rolled in its socket, so slowly she could hear the muscles creak behind it as he narrowed it upon her.

"That, too, would be remedied if you weren't here."

Even Kataria was surprised by herself when she leapt forwards. She drew herself up, tightening, tensing and baring teeth in an attempt to look imposing: an effort she clearly took more seriously than he.

"Don't you go threatening _me_ , reptile," she spat. "You seem to forget that _I'm_ not a human. Don't act like I have no idea what you're talking about and _don't_ forget that no one else even has a hope of understanding what you're going through." She jabbed a finger against his chest, narrowly hiding a wince behind her mask of ire. " _I'm_ the closest thing you've got to one of your own."

A silence hung between them, an eternity of inaction. The world seemed to fall silent around them. Gariath regarded her indifferently, his shadow choking her slender frame. He took a step forwards, closing the distance between them to a finger's width.

Like a great mountain sighing, he leaned down, muscles groaning behind leathery skin. His nostrils flared as he brought his face closer to hers, sending the feathers in her hair whipping about her cheeks. There was thunder in her ears, her instincts screaming to be heard over the pounding of her heart and the tension of her muscles, screaming for her to run.

The cacophony was such that she barely even heard him when he whispered, "Is this the part where I'm supposed to cry?"

The thunder stopped with her heart; her face screwed up.

"Wh-what?"

"After this delightful little chat about racial harmony and standing tall against the human menace, are we supposed to be charming little friends? Am I supposed to break down in your puny arms and reveal, through tears, some profound insight about the inherent folly of hatred as you revel in your ability to bridge the gap between peoples? Afterwards, will we go prancing through some meadow so you can show me the simple beauty of a spiderweb or a pile of deer dung or whatever it is your worthless, stupid race thinks is important?"

"I..." His words had struck her squarely in the belly, leaving her breathless. "I don't—"

"Then _don't_." He growled. "Twitch your little ears, if you want. Talk about _your_ Gods as if they're any different from _their_ Gods, if it's important to you, but _never_ make the mistake of thinking you and I are anything alike." His eyes narrowed to angry obsidian slits. "In the end, you _all_ look the same to me. Small, weak..." His tongue flicked out between his teeth, grazing the tip of her nose. " _Vermin._ "

He punctuated his words with a blast of hot air from his nostrils. In an instant, he rose up before her, seemingly even taller, broader and redder against the clear blue sky. She felt herself take a hesitant step backwards as he turned about slowly.

Whatever retort she might have had buzzing inside her mind was swatted aside like so many gnats as his tail came lashing up in a flash of crimson. It slapped her smartly across the cheek, sending her sprawling to the deck. Even the sound of her body hitting the wood was an insignificant whisper against the thunder of his footsteps.

"You've been squealing those same threats for ages now!" she shrieked after him, rubbing the red mark across her cheek. "If we're all so beneath you, why not kill us all now?" Her words were little bee-stings against his leathery back. "Why do you linger around us if you don't like us?"

He paused and she sprang to her haunches, ready to move should he decide to give her more than just a kiss of his tail. Instead, the dragonman merely shuddered with a great breath and spoke without turning around.

"If you're desperate to prove yourself as more than human," he rumbled, "prove it to someone lesser than yourself."

The sea of humanity parted before him as he strode across the deck, sailors practically climbing over each other to get out of his way. The hulking dragonman seemed unperturbed by it, growing taller with each frightened gaze cast his way as he lumbered towards the far side of the ship.

It was with grudging envy that she watched him, for as Kataria stood at the other end of the deck, she was all too aware of the great wall of round-ears that separated her from the only other non-human aboard. Her ears twitched, picking up concerns she couldn't understand, humour she couldn't comprehend, whispers she wasn't privy to.

In Gariath's wake, the humans had re-formed into a great mass of their own race, leaving her sitting beside the railing, alone.

_Stupid, stinking lizard._ Her thoughts immediately turned to scorn. _Acts like he's so much better than everyone else. As if being large enough to strangle anyone who disagrees with you is reason enough to act as though you're beyond reproach._

She bit her lower lip; that actually _did_ make sense.

_Regardless_ , she countered herself, _he has no reason to treat me like that. He has no reason to look down on me like I'm some filthy... human!_

Her anger shifted from the dragonman to the sailors bustling about the deck, each one occasionally glancing over his shoulder to see how close she was to them and make room accordingly.

_Cowards._

Cowardice was the way of their race. Her father had said as much and now she knew it to be true. She recalled the aftermath of yesterday's carnage. The crew of the _Riptide_ , _her_ humans had prevailed over the other, filthier humans with _her_ help. While they screamed, she laughed. While they fumbled, she shot true. While they had soiled themselves, it was _she_ who had pulled Lenk, one of _her_ humans, away from danger.

She had deserved their respect from the very beginning as both a warrior and a shict. Now, her very presence demanded it.

And yet, they continued to prove their cowardice. She heard them even now, making envious, lewd remarks about her musculature. They skulked, casting shifty, wary glances her way. They hurried with the loading, undoubtedly eager to see her leave to chase some demon and die out at sea.

None of them had enough bravery to come forth and insult her to face.

"Hey, moron."

Her lips were curled in a snarl and her teeth bared as she whirled about. The blue eyes that met her fury were impassive and rolling in their sockets.

"Yeah, you're ferocious," Lenk said, half-yawning. "I'll be sure to soil myself later." He extended a tin cup to her, a thick veil of steam rising from its lip. "Here."

"What is it?" She took it and gave it a sniff, examining the thick, brown liquid sloshing about inside it curiously. "It smells awful."

"It's coffee," he replied. "Tohanan brownbean, specifically; expensive stuff."

"Coffee," she murmured. She took a sip and blanched. "It tastes awful, too."

"That's how you know it's expensive."

"I guess that makes sense to a human."

"Not particularly," he said, shrugging. "It never made sense to me, at least." Taking a sip of his own brew, he forced a smile without much effort to convince behind it. "I suppose that makes me inhuman, then?"

Kataria should have smiled back, she knew, but her only responses were pursed lips and a heavy-lidded stare.

_Inhuman._

The word hung in the air between them and she heard it every time she blinked. In the spaces where she should have seen darkness behind her eyes, she saw him instead. She saw him writhing, clutching his head, snarling at her in a voice that was not his own. In the moments between her breath and the beating of her own heart, she heard him as he shrieked at her.

_STOP STARING AT US!_

"Stop," he said.

"What?" She blinked; the images were gone.

"Stop looking at me that way," he muttered, taking a harsh sip, "it bothers me."

"Ah." She turned her gaze down to the brown brew in her hand and blinked. "Why are we drinking the expensive stuff, anyway?"

"Argaol's charity," he replied. "The good captain apparently wants us to depart in good spirits."

"Charity?" She cocked a brow; that seemed an unlikely word to describe the man.

"He said to think of it as a last meal for the soon-to-be-corpses."

"Ah." She took a sip. "Thoughtful."

"Mm."

The stillness of the morning was broken suddenly by the sound of something shrieking across the sea. The two glanced up and regarded the looming black spectacle approaching the _Riptide_.

The _Linkmaster_ was alive in the waters, or at least alive in the same way a carcass crawling with flies was alive. Men scurried across its decks, pink dots against black timbers, variously swabbing, stitching and otherwise mending. From its railings dangled crude rope swings, men ensconced and busy at the hull. At the prow, one such man worked at the bright red lettering of the ship's title, smothering its identity under a shell of black paint.

Kataria noted with some pride the wound where the ship's hull had been shattered by the _Riptide_ 's prow. It had been her precise shooting, shictish shooting, that had given the great wooden beast such a blow. Now, men dangled around the great mess of timbers, prying from its splinters what appeared to be thick, reeking chunks of quickly browning beef.

Kataria's grin was small, restrained and wholly unpleasant.

"Disgusting." Lenk grimaced as what might once have been a thigh was tugged free of the wood and plopped into the waters below, the latest course of a feast tended to by a noisy pack of gulls. "And to think, that's our freedom."

"It is?"

"According to Argaol." Lenk nodded. "He even renamed it _Black Salvation_ for the occasion."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"Well, if that demon we questioned is to be believed, the Abysmyth headed for the islands to the north. The waters there are too shallow for a large ship like the _Riptide_ to navigate, so we're taking the companion craft," he gestured over the ship's starboard side, "out there.

"Now, you might have noticed that thing is far too small to take us _back_ to Toha, where civilisation and our pay await when and if we retrieve the tome and assuming at least one of us is still alive to deliver it."

She nodded; the thought had occurred to her.

"So, Argaol's apparent plan is to let Sebast take the _Black Salvation_ out after us." He took a hard swig, finishing the rest of his coffee. "In a few days, the ship should be ready for sailing. Presumably, it should take another day or two for Sebast to catch up with us."

"I see." Her ears twitched. "So, that gives us how much time to find the tome?"

"About six days before we meet up with Sebast."

"So, going by what we know of the Abysmyth, you figure that gives us, what, one day to find where it went, another day to get the tome, two more days to reach wherever it is we're supposed to reach and one more day to find Sebast." She blinked. "What do we do with the other day?"

Lenk's nostrils quivered as he inhaled deeply. "Presumably?"

"By all means," she answered.

"Bury the dead."

A stale wind swept across the deck. The feathers in Kataria's hair wafted across her face as she stared down into her cup and swirled the liquid thoughtfully.

"Good coffee."

"Mm."

In the brightness of the morning, Kataria couldn't help but notice a sudden change in Lenk. He was not a large man, standing only about as tall as herself, far shorter than most of his kind. Yet, today, as the sun gnawed at his back with hungry golden rays, he seemed smaller than he had been the night before... diminished, somehow.

It was no mere physical change, nothing that sleeplessness alone could account for. He had changed so subtly that no one but she might notice. He stood slightly less straight, his back a little more crooked. His silver hair that had once gleamed bright and flowed in the breeze like liquid metal now hung limp and grey at his shoulders, still even as the wind tried to goad it into movement. For all that, though, his eyes had lost none of their lustre. They were still blue, still hard.

_Still cold._

"Lenk," she whispered.

He turned on her swiftly, a beast sensing danger, and her breath caught in her throat as he levelled his gaze at her. His eyes glimmered with an intellect not his own, flashing with a hard and stony presence for but a moment. When she blinked, his stare was softer, but no less wary.

"Last night..." she continued, unintimidated.

"You couldn't sleep, either," he finished, nodding. "Frankly, if I broke wind as much as you do, I'd have a difficult time breathing, much less dozing off."

"That's not what I was going to say."

He sighed, and diminished further, something leaving him with the force of his breath.`

"I know." His voice was weaker now, closer to a whimper than an answer. "I know what you want. I know it every time you stare at me."

"I don't mean to."

"Yes, you do. That's simply how you ask for things. You stare." When he looked back up at her, his eyes quivered at the corners, stars sparkling against red-veined whites. "But it's far too early for that sort of thing just now, wouldn't you agree?"

"For what sort of thing?" She strained, with no small effort, to conceal the indignation in her voice. " _Talking?_ "

"About what _you_ want to talk about, yes," he replied sharply. "So, kindly indulge me when I ask you to simply keep your peace today."

"Keep my..." Her face twisted into an expression of incredulousness. "For how long?"

"Hopefully," he turned from her and began to trudge away, "until one of us is dead so that it no longer matters."

She watched him go for a moment, venom boiling on the tip of her tongue. Moments before he stepped out of earshot, she struck, like a spitting asp, and hissed at him.

"And will it be you who kills me?"

He stiffened and, in a sharp, shallow breath, he was restored. No longer diminished, he turned on her, standing as tall as he could, wiry muscles tensed and eyes bright with anger. She forced herself not to recoil as he stepped towards her, boots heavy upon the deck.

"What was that?" He had no growl or snarl to his voice, no passion or anger.

"You heard me," she responded swiftly. "By walking away from me, you're putting my life in danger."

"Stop this."

"Are you just going to pretend that last night didn't happen?" She took a challenging step forwards. "Are you going to hope it was a bad dream? That it won't happen again?" She shook her head. "I'm sure you can live with that, but _I_ can't."

" _Stop._ "

"I _remember_ what you did last night." She continued unabated, despite the rigidity of his body, the narrowing of his eyes. "I remember you screaming at yourself, screaming at _me_. Now we've got a chance to find out what's going on inside that thick head of yours and you don't even want to spare a moment to talk about it for _my_ sake, let alone yours."

"Kat—"

"Lenk." She took a step closer, peering intently at him. Her hand trembling, she reached out to lay it upon his shoulder. "What happened to you?"

The answer she received was unspoken. Beneath her hand, beneath the fabric of his tunic, she felt something stir in his bones. Even as the sun hissed, steadily climbing, she felt a sudden chill coursing through her fingers.

"That's enough." His own hand was up in a flash, batting hers off his shoulder. "If I _don't_ want to talk about something, you're in no position to question me. Over the past few days, I've been stabbed, slashed, punched, pummelled and smashed by various people and things _without_ the luxury of pay or anything more than a bowl of beans and the complaining of the people I somehow manage always to find myself surrounded by."

She blinked and he was face to face with her, his breath frigid against her lips. Her own lungs seemed to deflate under his gaze, her eyes refusing to look away from his. She wanted to blink, she craved any reason to close her eyes, praying that when she opened them again, his eyes would be dotted by black pupils.

But she could not blink. As he stared at her, she was forced to stare back into two orbs of pristine, pupilless blue.

"Listen to me when I say," he whispered harshly, "that I have _earned_ the right to walk away from you."

And with a turn that cut the wind, he was off, stalking across the deck. She stared at him; though he was no longer diminished, no longer so small against the day, he did not appear whole, either. He walked with his back straight, but his hair still hung limply upon shoulders that were heavy with some unseen burden.

Though she had spoken to Lenk moments ago, she was unsure who now walked away from her.

A mass of people were congealing at the railing. She spotted her own companions amongst them, huddled about the dark shape of Captain Argaol. Quietly, she began to move towards them, rubbing her arms as she went to nurse circulation back into her skin.

It hadn't been so cold a moment ago.

"Damn," Denaos grunted, looking up accusingly at the sky. "What happened?"

"What do you mean?" Asper asked.

"It was warm," Denaos muttered, stamping his feet. "Now it's colder than a whale fart."

"Do... do whales fart?" She cocked a brow.

"Everything farts; it's what makes us human."

"But whales aren't—"

"That's why _their_ farts are _cold_ ," he snapped. The tall man glanced up as Kataria elbowed her way into the huddle, his eyes darting from her bare arms to her bare midsection. "Not that I've any particular grievance with it, but are you sure you wouldn't like a cloak or something?"

"I don't need anything," she muttered, not looking at him. Her stare was distant, though the corner of her gaze occasionally flickered to the silver-haired man standing beside her. "It's not that cold."

" _Not that cold?_ " Denaos shivered at the very words. "It feels like I've just sat on an icicle and twisted."

"She said she's not cold," Lenk spat, glowering at him. "Shut up."

While a number of scathing retorts leapt easily to mind, ones he was certain would leave the young man fumbling for his stones, Denaos opted to clamp his lips together. Something between his and the shict's stare confirmed the wisdom in that.

"You'll be sweating out of your pants in an hour, anyway," Argaol replied, glancing up at the sun. "The sea changes weather quickly. While those soft and dry porkflanks in the cities won't be up to face their warm morning for another two hours, we men of Zamanthras have to be up before dawn so we can face Her when She's cold and angry."

"And this has never struck you as blatantly stupid?" Dreadaeleon offered the man a smirk.

"I'm in no mood for a smug-off, boy," the dark man snapped. "The Lord Emissary has requested I point you in the direction of your demon and that's just grand by me. The sooner you learn where you're going, the sooner you can be off my ship and out of my life. So, unless there are any objections," his eyes darted between the assembled, "we can proceed."

"This is probably unnecessary," Kataria muttered with a sneer, "since Gariath can apparently just _sniff_ his way to victory."

"Victory smells like a pair of ripped-off ears," the dragonman said in reply, dismembering the argument before it could begin, "just in case anyone was wondering."

"All right, if there aren't any _other_ objections," Argaol sighed, "we can get underway." He swept about, pointing towards the distant horizon. "Now, if you strain your eyes a bit, you can see your destination on the edge of the world there."

Lenk squinted, peering out over the railing and shaking his head.

"I can't see anything." He made a gesture. "Kat, get up here and tell me what you see."

"No need for that," she replied. "I see a speck of white in the distance and, in the fore, a silvery piece of—"

" _Anyway_ ," Argaol interrupted, "she's correct. The island you're looking for has the renown of being the whitest. See, it's the furthest from Toha, the Heart of Buradan, where the Sea Mother plummeted from the heavens to submerge Herself in the deep. As one sails from Toha, where the sands are so blue as to render the shores useless, one finds the sands getting progressively whiter until you reach Ktamgi."

"Ktamgi?"

"Aye, Ktamgi." He nodded. "The uttermost reach of Toha and her Blue Navy."

"What do you mean by that?" Lenk asked.

"He means it's a former Tohanan colony, as far as an island can be from Toha and still be considered theirs," Denaos replied before the captain could. "Though he's a bit mistaken; smugglers have been using the Reaching Isles for decades now."

"Check with whatever vile sources you have, you thug," Argaol snapped back. "The Reaches have been cleared of pirates for the past five years."

"My mistake." Denaos coughed. "I just figured, what with the fact that we were _attacked_ by pirates yesterday, they might still be active. You yourself said that some of the _Linkmaster_ 's crew escaped on their companion boats."

"First of all, it's the _Black Salvation_ now. The _Linkmaster_ was a pirate vessel and I command no such thing." He held up a finger. "Further, however many of Rashodd's boys escaped are likely headed for safer waters than Ktamgi's."

"You're implying that Ktamgi's waters are not safe." Lenk glowered.

"Well, pardon the abruptness, but I figured since you're eager to go chasing after gigantic black demons that rip heads off, safety wasn't that big a concern for you."

"No one's ever actually seen an Abysmyth rip anyone's head off," Dreadaeleon pointed out.

" _Be that as it may_ ," Argaol replied, "the threat of pirates, sharks or whatever man-eating parrots or similar creations may be out there are the _least_ of your worries, I can assure you. As it stands, according to the Lord Emissary and our..." he paused to clear his throat, " _other_ source, Ktamgi is the most likely island the demon has fled to with the Lord Emissary's tome. As stated, you'll have about six days to get your business done before Sebast catches up with you."

"And Sebast will pick us up at Ktamgi?" Asper asked.

"Well, not as such, no." Argaol shook his head. "The waters around Ktamgi are shallower than most. He'll be meeting you on an island another day north, on an outpost called Teji."

"Of course." Lenk rolled his eyes. "Why convenience us when you can make a profit?"

"If you prefer not to meet up with us, you can try making it to Port Destiny in the companion craft."

"All the same," Dreadaeleon tapped his chin thoughtfully, "aren't there a number of islands closer and more suitable to serve as a meeting site?"

"Well, if you check the charts, you'll—" He glanced at the boy, searching the shadows of his coat. "Where are the charts I gave you?"

"Likely down in the hold below. I memorised them last night."

"You memorised sixty sea charts in the span of a few hours."

"Wizard." The boy tapped his temple. "If I can figure out how to turn a man into a puddle of liquid entrails, I can assuredly memorise a few crude drawings of an ocean." He smirked again. "Though I did enjoy the pictures of compasses and sea monsters on the charts. Your handiwork, Captain?"

"Sebast's." Argaol sighed. "Look, the Lord Emissary insists on you having the charts and I'm not one to deny him. I've been all over the sea and—"

"You have," Dreadaeleon interrupted, "and that's why _you're_ overseeing thirty-odd unwashed, hairy men in various states of greasiness and undress and _I'm_ about to—"

"Get your head eaten by a demon," Argaol finished.

Dreadaeleon's grin vanished. "Quite."

"At any rate, Teji is the only island that possesses a desirable combination of attributes," Argaol continued. "In addition to being relatively close to Ktamgi and friendly to merchants, it's also as close as one can possibly get to the more northern islands before entering Akaneed territory." He grimaced. "I'll _not_ send even you into those waters during breeding season."

Lenk almost hesitated to ask; no creature that he knew of was ever particularly desirable company during any kind of breeding season. Kataria, however, asked for him.

"What... is an Akaneed?"

"Well, it's like a giant, angry—" He paused, smacking his lips. "You know, I shouldn't even encourage you. _If_ you stick to the plan and head for Ktamgi, then Teji, you won't even encounter one, so there's no sense in telling you what one looks like." He coughed, lowering his voice. "Not like you could do much against one, anyway."

"What?"

"Nothing," he replied. "Any questions?"

"What did you just say a moment ago?"

"Any _other_ questions?"

"It occurs to me, Captain," Dreadaeleon mused, "that there are a dozen or so Reaching Isles, most of them likely possessing these white sands you speak of. If we get lost, how are we to know we've arrived on the right one?"

"Decent point." Argaol cast a sideways glance at Kataria. "Ktamgi is the furthest Reach, so you'll be looking for sands that are just a shade less white than her." He cleared his throat before she could respond. "Anything else?"

"There yet remains," a voice spoke, slow and methodical, "one point of business."

All other sounds were penitent before the voice of Miron Evenhands: gulls going silent, men pausing to swiftly look up before bowing their heads, and the great waves dying to a quiet, respectful murmur as the priest emerged from the companionway.

The wind, however, did not abate. As he strode towards the companions, his sleeves and cowl billowed behind him, white wings, stark and pure against the dawning gloom. His eyes glimmered like fading stars, his smile as easy and familiar as the sun.

It struck Lenk as only a brief, fleeting moth of a thought, but the Lord Emissary looked as though he hadn't even been present for the carnage the previous day.

"I would hope you aren't planning to send my humble agents out before I can offer the proper benedictions, Captain," Miron said, reaching them. He appeared to be even taller today, threatening to challenge Gariath's own impressive height.

"I'm not one for lying to priests, Lord Emissary," Argaol replied, "so I'll not _tell_ you I was hoping to be rid of them as soon as possible, no."

Miron ignored that, instead surveying the assembled with his unflinching gaze.

"I hope the significance of this excursion has been impressed upon you all," he spoke softly, "not merely for the consequences that are to come from the Abysmyth's holding of the tome, but also for those brave souls who have assembled here to pursue the beast.

"Whether they worship Talanas," he glanced to Asper, "Silf," to Denaos, "the flow of magic itself," to Dreadaeleon, "Gods I've no wish to disrespect by uttering their names improperly," to Kataria, "forces beyond our own comprehension," to a smugly smiling Gariath, "or..."

He hesitated, blinking for the first time at Lenk. The young man blinked back, coughing.

"Khetashe," he said. "The Wanderer."

"Oh." Miron bit his lower lip. "Really?" He waved a hand, dismissing further conversation. "Regardless, a most momentous journey is about to be undertaken. For never before have so many gathered under a common cause since the House was first founded. And I hope—"

The Lord Emissary's voice died for Lenk, fading into such pious rhetoric as could only be spoken by someone _not_ about to be off to be killed. He was jerked aside by a dark hand, pulled away from the circle towards the railing and turned to face Argaol, the captain's face grim.

"Listen," he muttered, "you know I'm no blasphemer."

"Uh... yeah?"

"As well you know I'm none too fond of you."

"Oh... yes."

"But I'd be no man of Zamanthras if I sent you off without encouraging you to a wiser course of action." He pointed down to the bobbing companion craft below. "I'm going to have the boys plant the sea charts in your cargo. There are a few islands safer than Ktamgi that you can land on out there."

"But Ktamgi is where—"

"Don't think I'm an idiot, boy, I know damn well what lies on Ktamgi." He sighed, resting a hand on the young man's shoulder. "That's entirely my point. There's nothing to say you can't just find a decent place to squat and wait out the six days before heading for Teji. Avoid the demon entirely, forget the tome and preserve your life."

"That's a bit sentimental for a man who's wished me dead before." Lenk quirked a brow.

"And if you manage to die of your own idiocy, the world won't miss one or six adventurers," Argaol replied. "But..." He paused, clenching his teeth. "I didn't sleep last night. I kept seeing Mossud in my mind, over and over, I kept seeing what became of him." His eyes were red-rimmed, heavy. "I wouldn't wish that on anyone, much less one who has, I'll admit, helped me in the past. We _might_ have been sunk if not for you and your boys yesterday."

Lenk was at odds with himself; his first instinct was to shove the captain's hand away, to launch some smarmy retort and walk away strengthened by the power of the last word. His second instinct was to nod, thank the captain for his advice and discreetly pursue that course of action later.

He settled for the third and least satisfying instinct.

"I don't have a lot of options here, Captain," he said softly, so as not to be heard by his companions nearby. "I don't _have_ any shipping business, any farm, any shop or anything even resembling a decent life to go to if I don't get paid from this."

"No amount of gold can be worth dying like Mossud did."

"It's not the gold," Lenk spoke with a swiftness that surprised himself, "not just the gold, anyway. It's also... the demon. I have... I have to go and find it. I have to kill it."

"You're skirting dangerous thoughts there, boy." The captain grimaced. "You can just tell me without soiling yourself that you're going to chase after this demon for the _fun of it_?"

Lenk opened his mouth to reply, but nothing even remotely less insane came to mind. Instead, he sighed, rolled his shoulders and offered a half-smile to the captain. Argaol, in response, stared for a brief, horrified moment.

"I'll only say it once more because I suspect you'll change your mind when the truth of your situation sinks in, boy," he hissed. "When you see white, you turn the other way... _quickly_."

Not sparing another moment for a conversation that was clearly already quite deranged, Argaol spun on his heel and stalked off towards his sailors.

"What was that about?"

The young man did not start at the voice; he had felt her eyes on him since Argaol had dragged him off.

"Well-wishing," he replied without turning.

"Don't insult me any further," Kataria growled.

"You're right, I'm sorry." Lenk sighed, his head drooping. "Argaol just had a few last words to spare me." He glanced up; Kataria was already at his side, staring out at the horizon. He followed her gaze. "Can you really see Ktamgi?"

"Slightly." Her pupils dilated swiftly, encompassing her eyes for a moment as she sought out the island. "It's distant, though. It'll take a few days to get there in this wind."

"We've got our own wind."

"Mm."

They stood for a moment. Lenk couldn't help but notice as the breeze kicked up, sending the shict's feathers playing about her face, caressing her skin with the locks of gold that whipped in the breeze. He clenched his teeth, making the same expression he did when he had once pulled an arrow out of his thigh.

"Kat, let me—"

"I'd rather not," she replied.

With that, she was gone, returned to her spot between Asper and Gariath. Lenk stared at her for a moment before forcing himself to turn away. His eyes could spare nothing for her now, he knew, not so much as a blink. He leaned out over the railing, squinting.

Odd, he thought, that Ktamgi, no more than a distant black dot, should be capable of looming.

# _Twelve_

# WAKE

The companion craft tore through the waves like an overeager child. Its canvas sails bubbled and giggled with the air fed into them, it slipped over wave and surf with a grace both enthusiastic and distinguished.

Lenk would remember to savour the imagery later.

For the moment, his world was one of wood. Fingers aching, he clung to the vessel's railing, knees wobbling in nauseous rhythm with his churning stomach. His lunch rose up in protest for the sixteenth time, narrowly fought back by a tightening throat, as they cut over another wave. Near-faint, he was spared a violent uprising of jerked beef and fruit as a fist of froth struck him squarely in the face.

"Fourth time that's happened."

Wet strands of silver obscuring his vision, Lenk scowled towards the prow. Kataria leaned on the edge, perfectly balanced, an obnoxious smile beaming in time with the oppressive sun.

"Choke on it," Lenk snarled in reply.

"You wouldn't get wet so often if you didn't put your face over the side," she chided. "Though, frankly, the concept of water being wet may be too much for me to expect you to grasp."

"If you'd like to clean up my mess after I spill it on the floor, be my guest." He cast a sneer at her, chiefly to hide his nauseous grimace. "Perhaps you could take a moment to roll around in it first."

"I didn't even know you got seasick." The shict gave no indication she had even heard the insult as she tilted her head. "Where was this love of lurching when we were on the _Riptide_?"

"Buried below deck," Lenk replied sharply. "Since I lack that privacy here, I have the distinct pleasure of hearing _you_ while I—"

His sarcasm caught in his throat, overtaken by a stampede of half-digested meat. In one vile swoop, he tilted overboard.

"If you're feeling a bit fragile, I could ask Dreadaeleon to slow down," Kataria offered, none too gently.

"I doubt he'll listen."

Their eyes slid towards the stern, narrowing upon the scrawny, coat-clad figure seated upon the sole bench. Legs folded, hands knitted in a gesture that looked painful to even consider attempting, Dreadaeleon's eyes were shut tightly, lips quivering in a series of incomprehensible murmurs.

Above his head, the air shimmered and waxed, the sails billowing with every rapid twitch of his mouth. Behind him, the combined strength of Denaos and Gariath fought to control the rudder against the fury of the artificial wind. The rogue looked not at all pleased with the task; perhaps due to the proximity of the dragonman, perhaps due to the boy's coat-tails whipping him about the face.

"Fortunate that the companion vessel is small enough for him to move, isn't it?" Kataria spared a smile for the wizard. "I'd wager even the Abysmyth can't swim so fast."

"Yeah... fortunate," Lenk grumbled, narrowly avoiding a rogue wave. "We'll be food for it that much quicker." His cheeks bulged momentarily. "And here I am, courteously marinating in my own juices."

"If it bothers you that much, wake him up."

"You don't know much about wizards, do you?" Lenk cast a baleful glare at the youth. "He's focusing at the moment. If he's disturbed, something could go wrong."

"Such as?"

"I woke him up one time while he was trying to keep a fire lit without wood." A sour frown creased Lenk's face. "He got startled and I walked away with no hair anywhere, save on my head."

Kataria blinked for a moment before her eyes widened.

"You mean even—"

" _Yes._ "

"Sounds painful."

"It was," he replied. "Anyway, if you feel like being blasted by whatever he's messing with, go right ahead. Maybe then I can be sick in peace."

Kataria chose to hold her tongue as his head bowed back beneath the railing. An expression that lingered uncertainly between lamentful and resentful played upon her face as she stared at him. There was a quiet comfort in his lurching, she thought, not without a modicum of distaste for the idea. She could see him now, vulnerable, as she had not seen him for ages. She could stare at him now without agitating him.

_Without him screaming at me._

His head snapped up suddenly, his gaze fixing on her with a cold intensity. She resisted the urge to jump, even as he narrowed his eyes at her, as though he had heard her thoughts. In an instant, whatever malice lurked behind his glare dissipated, replaced by something hovering between meekness and resentment.

"So," he whispered softly, "this will sound rather odd to hear."

She quirked a brow.

"And, rest assured, it's not that easy to say, but..." His eyes flitted to the side, indicating a lock of silver that had been coated in a thick brown substance. "Would you mind terribly?"

The other brow went up, eyes widening as she realised his request.

"Mind?" she asked. "Yes, of course I mind, and more than a little of it is quite terrible."

He blinked at her. "But can you do it anyway?"

"Yeah." She sighed, doffing her gloves. "Just don't get any on me."

With a roll of her eyes, she slid behind him just as his head went back over the railing. Gingerly, she knitted her fingers into his hair and pulled it back gently, holding it out of his face as he sent a wave of brown cascading from his maw.

It occurred to her, with no small amount of grimacing, that she shouldn't be looking so intently, much less smiling so broadly, at the sight of his liquid corkscrews. His sickness was a comfort to her, however; perhaps it was simply morbid amusement at his suffering, perhaps it was simply pleasant to feel needed once more. Either way, she could not turn away nor banish the smile from her face as he let out a gurgling sound, choking on pleas for mercy to his own innards.

She resolved to be disgusted with herself later.

"This is nice, isn't it?"

"Nice," he repeated, gasping. His head tilted upwards slightly. "I'm vomiting up my intended last meal so that I'll be nice and lean before something out there in the wide, blue sea of death decides to devour me." He shuddered. "Yes, this is very nice."

"What I mean is," she continued, "this is like how things used to be."

"That's odd, I don't remember this part."

"Just shut up and listen for a moment." Her ears twitched for emphasis. "What do you hear?"

"I really don't think—"

"Wind and water," she speared his sentence with a smile, "nothing more." From behind her, a shrill voice rose to an alien crescendo. "Well, wind, water and Dread, anyway." She leaned closer, skewering him a little further on her grin. "But that's all there is. There's no screaming, no dying. It's just the sound of the world. Do you even remember when we were last able to hear this?"

He raised his head from the sea, casting a glimpse over his shoulder. Despite the sopping strings of hair clinging to his face and the brown streak creeping from the corner of his mouth, some hint of a smile shone through, like the merest sliver of sunlight through a boarded-up window. With a sigh, the first sigh, she noted, not to brim with resentment, he turned away.

"I'm not sure I'd put it in those words," he said, "but I do remember a time less red... and brown." He made a choking sound as he bit back a meaty uprising. "I suppose if we could have such things all the time, though, they wouldn't mean anything."

"Not necessarily."

"Hm?"

"Well, given the circumstances, you think we might..." She let the thought dangle off her tongue, hanging ominously in the air over his head.

"Run away?"

"Yeah."

"The thought had occurred to me." His second sigh bore not even a hint of contentment. "What of you? You seemed eager enough to go chasing the Abysmyth last night."

"Well, I wasn't about to be shown up by _you_ ," she retorted, less hotly than she thought she ought to. "But I've had time to think on it."

"And now you want to run?"

"Not really," she spoke evenly. "I'm merely putting it forth as a possibility. It doesn't matter much to me."

"Doesn't matter," Lenk repeated. She could hear his brow furrowing. "How does it not matter? Have you _not_ figured out that we're all going to die?"

"Well, if you're so certain about our fate, it would seem a bit pointless to worry about it. But that isn't what I've been thinking about."

"Go on, then."

"It just occurs to me," her voice grew hesitant, as though she were attempting to soothe an irate beast rather than pose a question, "I don't know why you're out here."

Lenk's response was a wet gurgle as he nearly toppled overboard with the fury of his heaving. The sea giggled a mocking, salt-laden tune as it reached up to slap him with a frothy palm. He pulled back a scowl dripping with resentment.

"I ask myself that same question," he muttered, "every Gods-damned day."

"That's not what I mean." She spoke more harshly. "Why are _we_ out here? Why did _you_ decide to go after the demon if death is so certain?"

"I believe we covered this last night," he replied, "with one thousand golden responses."

"Don't you dare pretend to think that I'm an idiot by pretending _you're_ an idiot, Lenk." All traces of sensitivity had given way to ire, anger spurred by his evasion. "All the gold in the world won't do you any good if you're dead. There's another reason you're out here, one you're not telling me."

He drew in a deep breath suddenly and, as though he had inhaled the sun, the air seemed to go cold around her. Before her, he went stiff and rigid, his fingers threatening to dig deep furrows in the railings, so white did they become. His voice was low and soft, though not at all gentle, as he hissed through his teeth.

"Then why would I tell you now?"

Kataria found herself shivering at his response. For an instant, something else spoke from his mouth, another voice that lurked between his words. An echo of an echo resonated in her ears, lingering in the air around his lips and sucking the warmth from the sky with each reverberation.

"Lenk, that's not—"

_No, no, NO!_ Her instincts thundered in her brain, drowning out all other sounds. _Don't you apologise to him, don't you try to make peace. If he wants to be difficult, let him be difficult._

And yet, the voice that seeped out of her mouth was not that of her instinct.

"Lenk," she whispered, "does it have to be this way?"

"What way?"

_Let him be difficult... and let him remember what it means to be difficult._

Whether it was instinct or simple, vengeful pride that forced her to tighten her grip on his hair, she could not say. Whether it was instinct or the last layer before a shell of quiet resentment gave way to a boiling core of anger that caused her arms to tense, she could not say.

"This way."

If it was anything other than a perverse pleasure that caused her to slam his head down against the railing, bringing a smile at the cracking sound that followed, she did not care.

"Khetashe!" he screamed, fingering the red blossom under his nose. "What was that for?"

When his fist lashed out to catch her jaw, he found nothing but air. A quick glance over his shoulder saw her crawling across the vessel's meagre deck. Had he energy for anything besides heaving, he might have scrambled for his sword and pursued. As it stood, he merely vomited again.

Asper glanced up as Kataria sprang forwards over the shifting deck. Her eyes went wide at the chorus of curses from Lenk's lips and she turned a befuddled stare to her companion as she sat down beside her.

"What was that all about?"

"Nothing to worry about yet," Kataria replied swiftly. With unnerving speed, she forced a smile onto her lips. "All's well here?"

"I suppose," the priestess replied. She noticed the bright red spot upon the railing and frowned. "Should I—"

"No, you shouldn't," Kataria snapped. "He's fine. How are you?"

"Decent enough," Asper replied with a weak shrug. She furrowed her brow at the shict. "Why do you care, anyway?"

"I can't care about my companions?" She gave Asper a playful slug on the arm, her grin growing broader as the priestess let out a pained squeak. "What's the matter with you, anyway? You haven't spoken for hours."

"I'm fine." Asper's voice was as distant as her gaze, her eyes staring out over the endless blue. "I'm just... distracted."

"By?"

"Well... nothing." The priestess shook herself angrily, as if incensed by her own lie. "Nothing that I can help, anyway. It's just... I _hear_ something. My ears are ringing, I have a headache," she fingered the phoenix medallion in her palm, "but I don't know why."

"Seasickness, perhaps." Kataria sneered in Lenk's direction as the young man let out a saliva-laden groan. "It could be worse."

"It's not that." Asper shook her head. "It... well, it sounds strange to say, but it feels... like something's calling to me." Seeing her companion's baffled expression, she continued hastily. "It-it's not a sound, not a normal one, anyway. It's not like the ringing of bells or the crying of children. It's... an ache, a dull pain that I hear."

"You hear..." Kataria's face screwed up, "pain?"

"Something like that."

"Well." The shict clicked her tongue thoughtfully. "If there were something out there that you could hear, I think chances are that I would hear it first." Her ears twitched. "And if it were something I couldn't hear, I think Dreadaeleon would sense it." She glanced back at the entranced boy and frowned. "Then again—"

"I know." Asper sighed. "It's just nerves, I suppose." Her hand tightened around the pendant, squeezing it as she might a lover's hand. "I don't think I can be blamed for it, knowing what we're going after."

"The Abysmyth can be hurt." Kataria spoke as much for her own assurance as for Asper's; the quaver in her voice, however, seemed to convince neither of them. "We've seen it, right?"

"We saw the Lord Emissary chase it away with prayers."

"Well, I suppose we're in luck, since you seem to do a lot of that."

"It's not the same and you know it." Asper glowered at her companion. "Further, we _also_ saw it take a harpoon through the belly and..." Her face twisted slightly. "Mossud, bless him—"

"I remember."

Kataria paused to force a frown upon her face. It felt awkward, like pulling a muscle, to strain such false sympathy through her teeth. Yet it was infinitely preferable to trying to explain her thoughts on the matter. Mossud's death had been something appalling, the shict readily admitted to herself, but he was still just one human amongst many.

The fact that the world would make more did not seem as consoling as it once had.

"Even if there is something out there, you don't need to worry." Kataria shifted her face into a smile, hoping the priestess wouldn't notice the pain with which she did it. "Leave matters of death and dying to the warriors."

Asper frowned. As though her brain were wrought out of lead, her head bowed to stare dejectedly into the dull silver of her pendant, fingers caressing its metal wings.

"Yeah... the warriors."

Kataria fought back a sigh; humans never seemed satisfied by anything. They exuded fear, yet despised being reassured against it. They blatantly craved admiration, yet had no desire to earn it. _They're all nothing but a bunch of slack-jawed hypocrites_ , she thought resentfully, _cowards._

Quietly, the urge to sigh twisted within her, becoming an urge to do to Asper what she had done to Lenk.

Before she could so much as tense her fingers, however, she suddenly noticed the waters calming. Curious, she leaned out over the railing, watching the waves slow until they finally came to a bobbing stop. She glanced up; the sails hung impotent against the tiny mast.

"Well," she snorted, "maybe Dread can ease your apprehension, since he seems to be done with whatever he was doing."

"Are we close to land?" Asper cast a glance about the waters. "I don't see anything here." Her eyes shifted towards the rear of the boat. "Dread, are you—"

All eyes, in addition to the priestess's, had turned towards the vessel's bench. Dreadaeleon stood upright upon it, stiff as a board and eyes wide with an expression that could only be described as baffled shock. A few moments of silence passed before Denaos cleared his throat.

"Did you get tired or something?"

The boy did not respond. Rolling his eyes, the rogue rose to his feet and reached out to place a hand on his shoulder.

"Listen, we're on a bit of a schedule, as you might recall. If I'm going to die, I'd like it to be before lu—"

In the blink of an eye, Dreadaeleon's hands flung out, palms wide and aimed at the sail. His voice was an incomprehensible thunder, a furious phrase that erupted from his lips. The air shimmered for a moment before it rippled and quaked, as though threatening to burst apart like an overstuffed pillow.

The vessel responded immediately, rocking at the sudden burst of wizardly force and flying forwards like a javelin. Its prow rose so far out of the water as to threaten to capsize; bodies were forced to cling to wood to avoid being hurled from the deck, their protests inaudible over the boy's chanting.

"Sweet Silf," Denaos howled, "what is he _doing_?"

"Turn the rudder!" Lenk shouted from the prow. "Try to stop it!"

Hands, both human and dragonman, went to the steering rudder, arms quivering with effort as they grunted, growled and spat curses at the stubborn mechanism. It would not budge, except at the beck of whatever force Dreadaeleon imbued in it, jerking it wildly back and forth.

"Stop _him_ , then!" Kataria shrieked above the sorcerous gale.

Gariath responded with a roar that nearly silenced the wind, pulling himself up the deck by his claws, the gleam in his black eyes suggesting that however he intended to stop the wizard, he also intended it to be permanent. As he came closer, his claws reached out to grasp at the boy's fluttering coat-tails.

Dreadaeleon's voice grew louder and, like a wooden slave, the vessel obeyed, lunging out of the water violently. Gariath tumbled backwards, his massive red bulk slamming into Denaos and nearly crushing the tall man against the ship's gunwale.

"Fine," the dragonman snarled, making ready to pull himself up again, "he can't work his magic if his head is ripped off."

"No!"

He narrowed his fury at Lenk. "Why _not_?"

"He's focusing on... something," Lenk hollered. "If you disrupt him now, this whole ship may be blown apart!"

"How is this any better?" Denaos countered.

"He's not acting of his own will," Asper shouted in retort.

"How do you know that?" the rogue howled. "His magic may have driven him insane! It's not unheard of ! We need to put him down!"

"Calm down," Lenk shouted back. "I don't think he's going to bring us to harm."

"How can you be so sure?" Kataria cried loudly as the gale intensified.

"I can't, really."

"Oh... well."

He managed to pull himself up enough to see a rapidly approaching bank of sand in the far distance. As the waves lapped around the island, revealing jagged rocks jutting from the shore, he winced and braced himself as the island grew closer with each blinking eye.

Lenk stared upon the wreckage with dismay.

The companion boat lay on its side upon the beach, several yards up a shore marred by a deep skid-mark. Its red ribs jutted from the jagged hole gaping in its flank, as if it had been harpooned. Its shredded sail hung from a splintering mast like flesh flayed from bone. His frown grew so long it hurt his face as he waited for the carrion flies to begin swarming over it.

"At least no one was hurt too badly," piped up a cheerful voice from beside him.

He glared at the grinning shict and then at the bandage wrapped tightly around his arm. He flexed it a little, wincing as the cut beneath it seared his skin.

"Well." She coughed. " _I_ wasn't hurt too badly."

"Lucky for us," he grumbled.

He cast a glance over Kataria, who bore no physical injuries aside from a few scuffs and sand stains on her pale skin. When the vessel had hit the shore, she had been tossed into a nearby shrubbery. He had had the misfortune of nearly impaling his arm on a jutting timber rib. Disdainfully, he twitched his forearm again and saw a bit of red seep through the white bandages.

He glanced at the long skid in the sand where he had landed after being hurled from the vessel. He winced and made a silent prayer of thanks to whatever deity had prevented him from striking any of the bone-white jagged stones jutting from the sands like teeth. The tips of the same stones, their white hues mottled with coral the colour of vomit, emerged from the surface of the blue, foamy seas beyond.

A sea of trees, rising from a blanket of shrubbery, roots and vines, stood behind them; the only landmark breaking a nearly perfectly endless sheet of white sand and rock. At a glance, it seemed lush, Lenk thought, but he knew well that forests could be just as unforgiving and desolate as deserts. The corpse of the vessel, sprawled out on the sand like a beached whale, wood drying under the sun like bones bleaching, seemed a charming example.

"It could be worse," Kataria offered, snapping him from his gloomy reverie.

_It certainly could_ , Lenk thought.

He glanced over his shoulder to where Gariath squatted. The dragonman had taken the worst of the crash, having been tossed from the prow violently, skidding across the sands until his violent journey ended abruptly at a nearby palm tree. Cuts from the beach rocks and thorny shrubs covered his red skin and splinters from the tree jutted from his back.

Regardless of his injuries, the hardy dragonman had refused all aid.

"Human medicine," he had growled, "is for skinned knees and constipation."

Instead, he had skulked over to the shade of the same tree he had caromed off and sat quietly.

Dragonmen, particularly red ones, Lenk had been told, were resilient creatures and had an innate ability to heal themselves through sheer force of will. If there was a will stronger than Gariath's, Lenk had never seen it, for the dragonman's wounds were no longer bleeding.

He would have thanked his companion for declining aid if it was out of generosity. There weren't a great many supplies to go around for the purposes of treating injuries.

His arm had required a good deal of Asper's bandages and Denaos's scrapes had required a good amount of salve. Most of the priestess's aid, however, had gone to the one who had caused the wreck in the first place. Lenk's eyes narrowed to thin, angry slits as he cast a glare further down the beach.

Dreadaeleon sat propped up against a rock, Asper squatting by his side, working to tighten the bandage around his head that covered the gash at his temple. _A lot of bandages_ , Lenk noted with a wince, _too many to hold in such a small brain._

Even now, the wizard clutched his head as he lay against the rock, pampered like a baby. Lenk's teeth ground together so hard, sparks almost shot from his mouth. He felt his hands clench into fists, heedless of the strain it put on his wounded arm. Kataria noticed his ire rising and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Now, calm down," she said soothingly. "He already told you—"

"He told me nothing," Lenk snarled. "If we're going to be stuck on some Gods-forsaken island and starve to death because of him, I want to know _why_."

Not waiting for a reply from his companion, the young man stormed over to the boy's resting place with such fury in his stride as to burn the sands beneath him. He paused nearby and folded his arms over his chest, focusing his icy scowl upon the wizard. Asper said nothing and continued working on her patient's splint, though her hands trembled more than a little under Lenk's frigid stare.

"Well?" Lenk snarled after several moments' silence.

"Well what?" Dreadaeleon replied, not opening his eyes.

"Well, how's your little scrape, you poor little lamb?" Lenk said, his sarcasm burning. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"Well, I don't know," the wizard replied, equally vitriolic. "I suppose I thought: ' _I bet Lenk would find it hysterical if I decided to crash the boat._ '" He snorted. "I already told you, I don't know what happened."

"How?" the young man spat back. "How do you not know what you were doing?"

"The intricacies of my mind are of such staggering complexity that they might very well cause yours to explode, leak out of your ears and puddle at your feet." He tilted his nose up. "Suffice it to say, I knew exactly what I was doing, I just wasn't sure why."

"Oh, well, thank Khetashe for _that_ distinction!"

"Lenk," Kataria said, creeping up to his side. "You know Dread wouldn't do it on purpose."

"Well, I'd like to know whose purpose he _did_ do it on," the young man growled, casting a sideways glare at the shict.

Despite the protests of his conscience, his rage cared neither for compassion nor logic. It took all his willpower not to flay the boy alive and use his skin to patch the vessel's wound.

"I'm not sure what happened," Dreadaeleon said, finally opening his eyes and looking at Lenk. "I was focusing on moving the ship, as you asked, when I suddenly... heard something."

"Heard something?" Lenk asked, screwing up his face in confusion. "When you focus, you can't hear bloody murder two inches from your ear." His sniffed, glaring at Kataria. "I know from experience."

"Baby," Kataria grunted.

"It wasn't in my ears," Dreadaeleon said softly, "it was... in my head."

"So you were just going mad?"

"No, Lenk," Asper said, looking up. "I... I heard it too."

"Really?" Lenk asked, more in sarcasm than genuine curiosity. "So tell me, why didn't you go insane?"

"She's not sensitive to magic," Dreadaeleon said, "I am."

"If she's not sensitive, then how did she hear it at all?"

"I don't know," Dreadaeleon said, shaking his head. "It's possible that—"

He cut himself off and fell back against the rock, his face screwed up in pain as he clutched his skull.

"What now?" Lenk asked, an inkling of concern seeping through his anger.

"Magic headache," Dreadaeleon replied with a halting, pain-filled voice.

"What?"

"Wizard's headache," Asper said, a hand going to Dreadaeleon's shoulder. "Magic takes a toll on the body."

"If I use magic too much," Dreadaeleon replied, breathing hard, "or cast too many spells at once, I get a headache." He glared up at Lenk through strained eyes. "I've told you this before."

Before Lenk could form a reply, he was suddenly aware of a tall figure standing between him and Kataria. He glanced up, startled as he saw Denaos's concerned face staring down at the wizard.

"And just where have you been this whole time?" the young man asked.

"Asper asked me to get some water for Dread," the rogue replied, holding up a bulging waterskin.

"We have water on the boat," Lenk said, casting a glance over his shoulder. "Most of the cargo was secured, it shouldn't be damaged."

"True," Denaos replied with a nod, "but I thought I might as well take a look around, since we may be here a while."

"It won't take _that_ long to fix the ship," Lenk replied. "With any luck, we'll be back out on the sea in a day or two." His eyes steeled. "Every day we're on land, the Abysmyth's lead increases. Every day we hesitate, another—"

"We're on it."

"What?"

"We're here." He stomped the earth. "This is Ktamgi."

"How do you know?"

The rogue reached down to pluck a single grain of sand from the beach. He eyed it for a moment before holding it next to Kataria's midsection.

"Just a shade whiter, as Argaol said." He pulled back his hand before Kataria could slap it. "Check the sea charts and you'll see I'm right." He blinked at Lenk suddenly, coughing. "Sorry for ruining whatever speech you had, though. I'm sure it was astonishingly inspirational."

"When did _you_ learn to read sea charts?" Asper shot a suspicious glare at the rogue.

"Around the time I learned how to avoid angry debt collectors by signing on as a deckhand and fleeing the city," he replied with a wink, "but that's another story." He tossed the waterskin to Dreadaeleon, the wizard making only half an attempt to catch it as it bounced off his face to land in his lap. "Drink up, little man."

"I see..." Lenk said, furrowing his brow in brief thought. "Well, if it is as you say, we'll take a look around, then."

"Are you sure you wouldn't like to take another moment to berate me for finding the island?" Dreadaeleon asked with a wry smirk. "Or did you perhaps have some praise for me?"

"What I've got for you is a length of steel and few compunctions about where I jam it," Lenk snarled. "Now shut up before I plug the ship's hole with your fat head."

"Still," Asper said, "is it wise to move out now?" She glanced at Dreadaeleon. "Everyone's more than a little roughed up."

"We're not too bad," Lenk said, glancing at his arm. "We're only looking for traces of the Abysmyth and the tome." He glanced around his companions. "If you find it, don't try to fight it on your own." He cast a concerned glare at Gariath. "Come and get the rest of us."

The dragonman merely snorted in reply.

"How are we even going to hurt it?" Denaos asked.

"We'll worry about that later," Lenk said. "For now, we just need to find out whether it's still here and still has the tome." He looked disparagingly at the copse of trees and scratched his chin. "We might as well spread out to find whatever resources we can."

"That makes sense." Asper dusted her hands off, rose to her feet. "The more food and water we find here, the less we have to use from the ship."

"Not to mention that spreading out will make it easier for the Abysmyth to hunt us down and eat our heads," Denaos added with a nod. "As per usual, your genius cannot be praised with mere—"

"Yeah, we're all going to die, I get it," Lenk interrupted, waving the rogue away. "Anyway, foraging shouldn't be a problem. Gariath alone can probably sniff—"

He glanced up at the sound of sand crunching beneath massive feet in time to spy Gariath's wings twitching as the dragonman turned his back to the companions. Without so much as a word, he began to stalk off down the beach, snout occasionally thrust into the air with quivering nostrils.

"There, see?" Lenk smiled smugly. "That's what you call community-minded. He's already got the scent of some food."

"You can all starve," Gariath replied calmly without looking back. "I'm following something else."

"What?"

"Die."

"Ah." Lenk frowned. "He's in a mood." He cast a sidelong glance at Dreadaeleon, gesturing towards the dragonman with his chin. "You'd better go with him."

"What?" The boy looked incredulous. "Why me? I can barely walk."

"'Barely' still translates to 'capable'," Lenk responded sharply. "It'll be better if we've got two hounds on the Abysmyth's trail."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"You can sense magic, can't you?"

"All wizards can."

"And there you have it," Lenk replied. "While I don't know if the demon is actually magical in nature, it probably leaves some kind of reek behind that either you or Gariath can follow."

"That logic doesn't entirely hold up." Dreadaeleon rose to his feet shakily. "Wouldn't one of us have sensed it before it attacked the _Riptide_?"

"Maybe things work differently when it's out of water." Lenk placed a hand on Dreadaeleon's shoulder. "The other reason I'm sending you is to keep an eye on him. If you _do_ find the demon, try your best to keep him away from it until we can all assemble. We don't want anyone to fight this thing alone."

The wizard had no sarcasm in reply. Instead, placing an expression of resolution upon his face, he nodded stiffly to the young man, his tiny chest swelling as Lenk offered him an encouraging smile.

"Beyond that," Lenk clapped him on the shoulder, "he looks like he's going to kill someone, and since you crashed the ship, it might as well be you."

"That does make sense." Denaos nodded.

"What?" Dreadaeleon's eyes flared. "You can't be—"

"I am." With another clap on the shoulder, Lenk sent the boy staggering across the sands in pursuit of the dragonman. "Off you go now." He had barely a moment to make certain Dreadaeleon was still on his feet ten paces later before he spied Kataria moving away in the opposite direction. "Where are you off to?"

"Hunting," she replied, holding up her bow and patting the quiver of arrows upon her back. "Gariath is going that way, I'll go this way."

"Fine." He nodded. "I'll come with you."

"You don't have to," she muttered in such a way as to indicate that it was not at all a simple suggestion.

"But I should," he said, less firmly than he might have, "if only for protection." He raised a brow. "Is that disagreeable to you?"

"Slightly," she hissed. "But if you can keep up, I can't tell you where to walk."

And with that, she was gone, vanished into the palm trees like a shadow. A dramatic sigh brought Lenk's attention to the rogue leaning on the remains of the vessel, staring wistfully into the jungle.

"Tell me," he muttered, "why is it that you always get to go with Kataria while I'm left behind?" A puzzled expression flashed across his face. "And what am I supposed to do here, anyway? Not that I'm complaining, but I seem to have been left out of this plot of yours."

"The boat needs mending." Lenk gestured to the wreckage. "You and Asper can tend to it and see if the Abysmyth comes your way."

"Oh, good," Denaos said, sighing once again. "We get to sit here and do busywork while we wait for the demon to come and eat us."

"More like appetisers than busyworkers, I'd say."

Lenk didn't linger to hear whatever the tall man might have offered in retort. Pausing only for a moment to pluck his sword from the ruined vessel, he slung it over his shoulder and tore off in pursuit of the shict.

With a resigned grunt, Denaos pulled himself up to perch upon the hunk of wood, frowning at the gaping hole between his legs. Definitely some work to be done here, no doubt, and it was work he hardly felt like doing. There'd be wood to find, wood to shape and wood to attach to the ship's wound.

"So, you know how to take care of this, right?" Asper asked, tilting her head at him.

"It's not too hard," he replied. "I did a bit of work under a carpenter back in Redgate." He scratched his chin. "His name was Rudder, more body hair than flesh. Nice fellow, but a bit handsy when he tossed back a few. So long as you can—"

A sudden movement caught his attention and he glanced over to see Asper busily at work, altering her garments. After a little bit of tearing, she tied a flap of her skirt to each of her legs, securing the fabric with leather strips to form a pair of makeshift leggings. His interest was piqued and he leaned forwards as she rolled up the sleeves of her tunic to her shoulders, exposing firm arms. The faintest hint of a grin appeared on his face as she grabbed the hem of her tunic and rolled it up, tying it off below her chest and baring a slender midsection.

Suddenly aware of his gaze, she looked up with a suspicious glance.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said, shaking his head. "But that's quite a bit of skin to show if you're just mending sails."

"You can knit," she said, scowling at him as she moved over to the boat and pulled herself inside. After rummaging around in a few crates, she produced a shiny, well-worn hatchet. Leaping from the vessel, she hiked it over her shoulder and glanced at him. "There's wood to be cut. If _you're_ scared of demons and want to sit here and cry, though..."

He bit his lower lip contemplatively as he watched her go. Truthfully, he had to admit it _was_ a difficult decision: linger here, out in the open where he couldn't be surprised by anything on two or more legs, or follow a hatchet-wielding, half-clad woman into the forest where he might very well accidentally strangle himself with a vine if insects—or demons—didn't eat him alive first.

The decision seemed easy, he thought, until he caught one last glimpse of her before she vanished. It was funny, he thought, but he had never noticed the particular delicacy with which her hips swayed.

# _Thirteen_

# AN EARNEST HUNT

Forests, Lenk decided, were places where man was not meant to tread.

It seemed a logical enough theory; humanity built their cities out on the open, where they could see threats coming. In the canopy-choked gloom, everything seemed to be a threat.

What had begun as a tiny copse of trees had blossomed into a lush jungle, deep and green as the sea. And, like the sea, the forest, too, was alive. Hidden amidst eclipsing boughs and grasping leaves, sounds emerged in disjointed harmony. Birds sang shrilly, determined to drown out the thrum of insect wings with their agonising choruses. For all the noises, he couldn't see a single living thing. Not so much as a flicker of movement in the shadows.

Sunlight filtered through the green, twisting net of the forest's canopy, shadowing every tree that crowded Lenk in an attempt to keep him out of their domain. He glanced about warily; in the darkness, the verdant trunks, slim and black, resembled nothing so much as his quarry.

_The Abysmyth comes from the sea, right?_ He asked and answered himself. _Right. It'll stay near water, then._ He paused. _But what if it needed to go into the forest for some reason? What if it had to eat... demons eat, right?_ He considered that for a moment. _Right. They eat heads, probably. They seem like the kind of thing that would eat a person's head._

If it _had_ retreated into the forest, it could stand right in front of him and not be seen. Even worse, it could easily ambush anything that wandered by it; after all, how could anyone tell the difference between it and a tree in the gloom?

_Simple_ , he thought, _a tree won't eat your head._

That thought brought him no comfort. Instead the same thought occurred to him each time he forced his eyes closed in a blink: he didn't belong here. That thought, in turn, opened his eyes in a scowl at the pale figure shifting effortlessly through the foliage in front of him.

_How does she make it look so easy?_

"You're moving rather quickly," he said, if only to break the ambience.

"I'm sorry," she replied acidly, "would you like to stop and paint a picture of the scenery?"

Lenk let that particular barb sink into his flesh, not bothering to pull it out or launch one of his own. He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth; perhaps, he thought, he should wait before attempting to mend things with the shict. She didn't seem to be in the mood for reconciliation at the moment.

_No, no_ , he scolded himself, _if you don't do it now, she'll just get angrier and do worse than bloody your nose._ His eyes drifted down to the hunting knife strapped to her leg. A grimace creased his face.

"What I mean," he replied, "is you usually take longer to find a trail."

"In most cases," she nodded, "but this particular quarry has a few exceptional qualities."

"Such as?"

"For one, there's still a great deal of noise in the forest. Prey, like birds and bugs, always go silent when a predator is about."

"You said a _few_ qualities."

"Well, there is something more."

"What?"

"It's a ten-foot-tall fish that walks on two legs and reeks of death, you moron," she snapped. "If it's anywhere on this island, it'll be disgustingly hard to miss."

He chose to leave that one in his flesh, as well. It would be easy, he knew, to sling something equally venomous at her. In fact, as he noted a particularly thick branch just next to her head, he realised it would be even easier to repay her for her earlier violence.

_All you have to do is reach out, and..._

He shook his head to dispel that thought. While he knew there to be very few problems smashing someone's head into a tree _couldn't_ solve, this was not one of them. Tact, however little use an adventurer usually found for it, was called for in such a situation.

"That's all there is to it, then?" he asked, hoping she didn't note the civil strain in his voice.

"In this particular case, yes." She ducked under a low-hanging branch. "Let me ask you something."

His entire body tensed; questions from the shict, lately, had served chiefly as preludes to violence.

"Have you thought at all about how you're going to fight this thing if you find it?"

"Would it distress you to hear that I don't know?"

"No more than usual."

"Well, I've been giving it _some_ thought," Lenk replied. "The Abysmyth can't be hurt by mortal weapons, and that's about all we've got. But it _can_ be hurt by fire. Dread can do something about that and, if we've got time, we can get torches."

"It'll be hard to make a fire when it's eating our heads."

"You think it eats heads?"

"Sure." She shrugged. "It seems like the kind of thing that eats heads."

He smiled.

"Dreadaeleon has his headache, however." She grunted as she pressed her lithe body between a heavy stone and a tree trunk. "I've never seen him use magic in such a state, but I wager it won't be pretty."

"You mean the spectacle of him straining himself beyond his limits?" Lenk struggled to follow her through the squeeze but found his waist caught firmly in fingers of stone and wood.

"I was thinking more about the greasy splatter that the Abysmyth will make of him." The shict took his hands in hers and, with a strained grunt, pulled him free. "This is all assuming quite a bit, though."

"Right." He paused to dust himself off. "We have to find the stupid thing first. Khetashe willing, we'll spot it before it spots us."

"And then?"

"Then we run away and hide until we can get fire."

"Not the bravest strategy."

"Bravery and effectiveness are rivers that run in different directions."

He caught her staring at his shirt and followed her gaze. Even after he had brushed himself off, the forest proved less than willing to let him go: all manner of burrs, thorns and leaves clung to his garments. He glanced back up and she met his gaze, smugness leaking out of her every pore.

"Perhaps you'd like to take a moment to rest," she said, leaning against a tree and folding her arms across her chest.

_Reeking, pointy-eared know-it-all._

Despite having led the way through the underbrush, Kataria was completely free of scratches; nothing more than a slight smear of sand marred her flesh. He focused on it unconsciously, observing the sole discoloration to her pale skin, shrinking and growing with each unhurried breath she took.

_Arrogant little..._

A breeze muttered through the canopy, parting the branches to allow a shaft of light through the greenery. As though the Gods had a flair for the dramatic, the beam settled lazily on Kataria, turning her shoulders gold, setting her hair alight, making the sandy smudge glisten.

_Thinks she's so..._

The sunlight clung to her, he realised, upon a skin of perspiration. Even as the dirt painted her body bronze, the sweat caught the sun and bathed her skin in shimmering silver. In the moments between the fluttering of the leaves, she looked like something that had sprung from the forge of the Gods, brightly polished metals, rough edges and brilliant, glimmering emeralds.

"What are you looking at?"

He stiffened up at that, going rigid as though he had just been rudely awakened. The reaction did not go unnoticed as Kataria tilted her head to the side, eyeing him as she might a beast, her body tense and ready to flee... or attack.

Not the ideal response.

_Now's your chance_ , he told himself, _you've got to talk to her and you're alone together. Start with a compliment! Tell her about that forge of the Gods thing, she'll like that!_

"You look like—"

_Wait, WAIT!_ He bit his tongue as her face screwed up in confusion. _She's a shict; she doesn't believe in the Gods, just Riffid. Does Riffid use a forge?_

"I look like what?"

_Damn it, damn it, damn it._ He clenched his teeth. _To the pit with this, just say something._

"Hey."

_Genius._ He sighed inside his head. _Throw away your sword and take up a pen, you Gods-damned poet-general._

"What?" Kataria's long ears quivered, as though she heard his thoughts.

_If she_ can _hear your thoughts_ , he scolded himself, _you might as well just say whatever's on your mind._

"I want to talk."

_All right, not bad. Straightforwardness is key._

"We don't talk during a hunt," she replied, "ancient shictish tradition."

"What?" He blinked at her, puzzled. "You talk to me all the time when you're tracking."

"Huh." She shrugged. "I guess I just want you to shut up this time, then."

_Easy_ , he told himself, drawing in a sharp breath of air, _she wants to fight you. Don't fall for it._

"I want to talk," he repeated, "now."

"Why?"

_Because_ , he rehearsed in his mind, _you're the only person I can trust not to get me killed or murder me in my sleep. It likely sounds stranger to hear than to say, but you're the only person I can sleep easily around and I'd very much like to keep things that way._

He cleared his throat and spoke.

"Why not?"

_Damn it._

"You don't want to do this now," she replied.

"I do."

"Then _I_ don't want to do this now."

"Then how are we going to—"

"We're not, that's the point."

Her stare was different as she slid off the tree, something flashing behind her eyes as she regarded him. He had seen everything in those green depths: her morbid humour, her cold anger, even her undisguised hatred when she met the right person. Up until that moment, though, he had never seen pity.

Up until that moment, he had never had to turn away from her.

"Listen," she said, "it's not that I don't trust you any more, but you're just..." She cringed, perhaps fearing what his reaction might be should she continue. "You're skulking, secretive, snarling. That _was_ charming, in moderation, don't misunderstand me. But now..." Her body shuddered with her sigh. "You're not even Lenk any more."

" _I'm_ not Lenk?" He threw a sneer at her as though it were an axe. "Answer _me_ this, then, how is it _you_ get to decide who Lenk is?"

"I don't," she retorted sharply. "I knew who I _thought_ Lenk was, though. Apparently, now Lenk is some deranged lunatic who talks to himself and refers to himself in the third person."

"Lenk is most certainly _not_ —"

He caught himself, bit his lower lip as she caught his sneer, twisted it into a haughty smirk and smashed him over the head with it.

"Point taken," he muttered. "Being perfectly fair, though, you're not Lenk. _You_ ," he thrust a finger at her, "have no idea what's going on in my head."

"Not for lack of trying, certainly," she spat back. "Is it so shocking that someone _might_ be interested in your weak, insignificant life?"

"Oh, of course, a reminder of my humanity." He rolled his eyes and threw up his arms in one grand gesture. "You held on to that for as long as you could, didn't you?"

"A reminder?" Her laughter was long, loud and unpleasant. "How could you not be reminded of your race? You're reminded every time you wake up and think: ' _Hooray! One more day of being a walking disease!_ '"

"Only _I_ would think of death so sweetly," he snarled, "because the cold hand of Gevrauch is infinitely preferable to sharing my existence with an arrogant, smarmy, pointy-eared shict," he hesitated, as if holding back some vile torrent, before her hiss forced him to loose it, "who _farts in her sleep_! There, I said it!"

" _I eat a lot of meat_ ," she spat back in an unabated hail of fury, "and perhaps if you did, too, you wouldn't be the runt that you are!"

" _This_ particular runt can easily choke the life out of you, _savage_."

"You haven't been successful yet, _round-ear_!"

"Then maybe I just need a little more time to—"

" _No._ "

The voice began as a mutter, a quiet whisper in the back of his mind. It echoed, singing through his skull, reverberating through his head. His temples throbbed, as though the voice left angry dents each time it rebounded against his skull. Kataria shifted before him, going from sharp and angry to hazy and indistinct. The earth under his feet felt softer, yielding as though it feared to stand against him.

The voice, however, remained tangible in its clarity.

" _No more time_ ," it uttered, " _no more talk._ "

"More time to what, you fart-sniffer?" Kataria was hopping from foot to foot, fingers twitching, though before Lenk's eyes she resembled nothing so much as a shifting blob. "Not so brave now?"

"I..." he began to utter, but his throat tightened, choking him.

"You what?"

" _Nothing to say_ ," the voice murmured, " _no more time._ "

"What," he whispered, "is it time for?"

"What the hell does that mean?" If she looked at him oddly, he did not see. Her eyes faded into the indistinct blob that she had become. "Lenk... are you—"

" _Time_ ," the voice uttered, " _to kill._ "

"I'm not—"

" _Kill_ ," it repeated.

"Not what?"

" _Kill._ "

"I can't—" he whimpered.

" _No choice._ "

"Shut up," he tried to snarl, but his voice was weak and small. "Shut up!"

" _Kill._ "

"Lenk..." Kataria's voice began to fade.

" _KILL!_ "

" _SHUT UP!_ "

When he had fallen, he could not remember, nor did he know precisely when he had closed his eyes and clamped his hands over his ears, lying twitching upon the earth like a crushed cockroach. When he opened his eyes once more, the world was restored: the ground was solid beneath him, his head no longer ached and he stared up into a pair of eyes, hard and sharp as emeralds.

"It happened again, didn't it?" she asked, kneeling over him. "What happened on the _Riptide_... happened again."

His neck felt stiff when he nodded.

"Don't you see, Lenk?" Her whisper was delicate, soothing. "This isn't going to stop. I can't help you if you don't tell me what's happening to you."

"I can't." His whisper was more fragile, a vocal glass pane cracking at the edges. "I... don't even know myself."

"You can't even try?" She reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder; he saw her wince at the contact. "For your sake, Lenk? For mine?"

"I... don't..."

His voice trailed off into nothingness, punctuated by the harsh narrowing of her eyes. She rose, not swiftly as she usually did, but with all the creaking exhaustion of an elder, far too tired of life. She stared down at him with pity flashing in her eyes once more; he had nowhere to turn to.

"Then don't," she replied sternly. "Lie here... and don't."

He felt he should urge himself to get up as he heard her boots crunch upon the earth. He felt he should scream at himself to follow her as he heard her slip through the foliage with barely a rustle. He felt he should rise, run screaming after her, tell her everything he needed to until his tongue dried up and fell out of his head.

For all that, he lay on the earth and did not move. For all the commands he knew he should give himself, he could hear but one voice.

" _Weak._ "

His head seared for a moment, then grew cold with a dull ache that gripped his brain in icy fingers. His mind grew colder with every echo, the chill creeping into the back of his eyes, down his throat, into his nose until the sun ceased to have warmth. Breathing became a chore, movement an impossibility, death... an appealing consideration.

He closed his eyes, allowing the world to fade away into echoes as the sound, too, faded into nothingness. There was nothing to the world any more, no life, no pain, no sound.

_No sound._

He opened his eyes as the realisation came upon him: there was no birdsong, no buzzing of insects.

The prey had stopped making noise.

Cold was banished in a sudden sear of panic. He scrambled to his feet, reaching for his sword, sweeping his gaze about the jungle. Any one of the trees could be the demon, watching him with stark white eyes, talons twitching and ready to smother his head in ooze before eating it.

The only things he saw, however, were shadows and leaves. The only thing he heard was the pounding of his own heart.

"Help."

The silence was shattered by a faint, quivering voice. It was little more than a whisper, barely audible over the hush of the wind, but it filled Lenk's ears and refused to leave.

"Help me."

He could hear it more clearly now, recognising it. He had heard more than enough dying men to know what one sounded like. For all the clarity of the voice, he could spy no man to go with it, however. Slowly, he eased his gaze across the trees once more and found nothing in the thick gloom.

"Please," the man whimpered, "don't kill me. Don't kill me."

There was silence for but a moment.

" _DON'T KILL ME!_ "

His eyes followed his ears, sweeping up into the canopy, narrowing upon the white smear in the darkness, improbably pristine. From above, a pair of bleary grey eyes atop a bulbous, beak-like nose stared back, unblinking and brimming with fat, salty tears.

_I should run_ , he thought, _the Abysmyth is likely right behind this thing._

" _No._ " The voice's reply was slow and grating. " _It dies._ "

"It dies," Lenk echoed.

The Omen's teeth chattered quietly, yellow spikes rattling off each other. Lenk's ear twitched at the sound of wet meat being slivered. Narrowing his eyes, he spied the single, severed finger ensconced between the creature's teeth, shredded further into glistening meat with every chatter of its jaws.

"There are others here." Lenk's voice sounded distant and faint in his own ears, as though he spoke through fog to someone shrouded and invisible. "Should we help them?"

" _Irrelevant_ ," the voice replied. " _Men can die. Demons_ must _die._ "

"Right."

The Omen shuffled across the branch, tilting its wrinkled head in an attempt to comprehend. Lenk remained tense, not deceived by the facade of animal innocence. As if sensing this, it tightened its broad mouth into a needle-toothed smile, the severed digit vanishing down its throat with a crunching sound.

It ruffled its feathers once, stretched its head up like a cock preparing to crow and opened its mouth.

"Gods help me!" A man's voice, whetted with terror, echoed through its gaping mouth. "Someone! _Anyone! HELP ME!_ "

The mimicked plea reverberated through his flesh. His arm tensed, sliding his sword out of its sheath. Like a dog eager to play, the Omen ruffled its feathers, turned about and hopped into the dense foliage of the canopy.

"It wants help," Lenk muttered, watching the white blob vanish into the green.

" _Then we shall help it._ "

His legs were numb under his body, moving effortlessly against the earth, sword suddenly so very light in a hand he could no longer feel. He thought he ought to be worried about that, as he suspected he should be worried about following a demonic parasite into the depths of the foliage. He had no ears for those concerns, however.

The ringing cry of the dying man hung from every branch he crept under.

Kataria's ears twitched. The world was quiet on Ktamgi.

Insects buzzed in the distance; she heard their wings slap their chitinous bodies. Birds muttered warbling curses; she heard their tongues undulate in their beaks. The sound of water raking sand and clouds drifting lazily in blue skies was far away.

She smiled. How much clearer, she thought, everything was without humans.

She had become used to their sounds, their noises, their whining and their cursing. She had become infected by the human disease, only realising it the moment a breath of air, free of the stench of sweat and blood, filled her lungs. Her ears were upright against her head, a faint sound filled her mind. Her eyes were wide, her smile was broad.

It was time to hunt in earnest.

She had barely taken ten paces before she saw the tracks. It might have been a coincidence that the trail only revealed itself after she had left Lenk behind, but she chose to take it as a blessing. Crouching low, her eyes widened as she realised that she both recognised the indentations in the moist earth and that she had spoken too soon.

_Humans._

The notion that humans, humans that were not hers, were on Ktamgi did nothing to improve her mood. However, it did not come as a complete surprise to her, either. Argaol, after all, had said that a few of the _Linkmaster_ 's crew had escaped. The island _had_ also been an outpost for pirates.

Why wouldn't they come here?

The tracks asked her questions, her feet answered. The tracks told a story, her eyes listened. This was the true purpose of the shictish hunt: to learn, to listen, to ask and to answer. Intent on the earth, her eyes glided over the tracks, eager for a new story.

It had begun dramatically, she recognised by the chaos of the prints, though with no great care to establish the characters. The tracks were sloppy and slurred, their dialogue messy and hurried. She rolled her eyes; it was as though these particular humans had no appreciation for the fact that someone might want to hunt them like animals.

_Insulting._

Regardless, she followed them further down the trail. They were men, evidenced by the particular depth of the prints, and not graceful men at that. They had been hurried, they had run, but for what purpose?

_Perhaps they were chasing down prey?_ she thought, but quickly dismissed that idea. There was no evidence of another character in this story, no tracks of anything that might be construed as edible. But if not hunger, then what?

There was little else to motivate such speed. Gold, jewels, meat or violence were the typical spurs of flight, but all seemed to be in short supply on Ktamgi. She paused, scratching her flank contemplatively.

_There's always fear_ , she suggested to herself.

She sighed at that; such a predictable twist. Regardless, it forced the story on and compelled her to follow the trail.

The plot only grew more blatantly unimaginative from there, the signs almost disturbingly clear. Here, a boot had become tangled in a root, abandoned by its wearer, who took two more steps before the trail suddenly ended.

_That_ caused her to pause. She glanced up and down the trail but found no more details of this particular character. He had fled only a little further and then, suddenly, disappeared, his feet gone from the earth as though he had sprouted wings. Against her better judgment, she glanced upwards; the canopy remained thick and whole.

Curious, she went further. The cast had been whittled to two, their paths crossing each other recklessly. A pungent aroma filled her nostrils, drawing her eye towards a small depression against the base of a rock.

She grimaced; a vile brew of yellow and brown pooled where one of the characters had fallen onto his buttocks and not taken a step further. _A rather crude ending_ , she thought, _but acceptable._

One set of tracks remained, stretching long and straight through the earth. This one had been spirited, she thought, running for another twenty-three paces before he collapsed beside a tree. Right next to the disturbed dirt where he had fallen, a glisten of ruby, stark against the tree's brown, caught her eye. Her face twisted as she examined the old plant: its bark had been stripped bare in eight deep furrows. Red flecks glittered like tiny jewels, fragments of dirty fingernails like unrefined ore embedded in the wood.

_Spirited, indeed._

Kataria rose, knuckled the small of her back and glanced around. This was hardly the ending she had expected. Three humans run into the forest, leave sloppy trails and then vanish? Where was the tension? Where was the drama?

Her eyes widened with a sudden realisation.

_Where was the villain?_

She stared down the trail, searching every depression, every track, every broken branch. She found nothing. Whatever had run these men down had left no sign of itself, its prints lost amidst the chaos of the chase, if there had been any prints at all. Her brow furrowed concernedly; there was no sign of the characters either. All that remained of the _Linkmaster_ 's crew equated to a few specks of blood and fingernail, an old boot and a puddle of piss and excrement.

_Not a proper ending._

The wind shifted, leaves rustled and she felt a sudden warmth on her back. Whirling about, she couldn't help a twinge of pity at the sight of the sun shining through an opening in the foliage. The last man hadn't been ten paces away from reaching open ground.

_Then again_ , she realised, _whatever finally got them likely wouldn't be put off by sunshine and white sand._

It occurred to her that she ought to return to Lenk and have him listen to the story, as well. He was likely still in the same spot she had left him in, she thought with no small amount of resentment. In fact, if he hadn't moved, whatever unnamed character had ended the three men would likely stumble upon him sooner or later.

_Then again..._ Her ears twitched thoughtfully. _Is there any need to, really? If these deaths were recent, you would have heard them, wouldn't you? A man who pisses himself doesn't go silently. Whatever killed them is likely far and away, right?_

_Right._

She took a step forwards.

_And what if it does come across him? He's a big human... fully grown, or so he says. He can take care of himself. And if he doesn't, what's it matter? He's just one more human, soon to be one less human. For the better, right?_

_Right. Let's go, then._

Her foot hesitated, having not apparently heard the mental debate. She looked down at the ground and sighed.

_Damn it._

Of course she had to go back for him. He had been helpless, curled up on the ground like a mewling infant. _An infant with a giant sword_ , she thought, _but regardless._ Her pride could not be his end; pride was a human flaw. While he might be human, he was one of her humans.

She rolled her shoulders, adjusting her bow, and began to trudge back across the trail. She had taken only half a step before an epilogue revealed itself.

A sudden aroma, growing stronger with the change in the wind, filled her nose. She glanced over her shoulder, peering towards the beach, and saw the smoke. Like ghosts, wisps of grey casually rolled across the breeze, drifting further down the shore.

In another twitch of her nostrils, the smoke became heavy with stench, thick with the aroma of overcooked meat. Choked screams carried on its long, grey tendrils. Her ears quivered, nostrils flared as she reached for her bow.

She forgot Lenk, helpless and mewling, and turned towards the beach. He would wait, she knew, and be there when she returned.

For the moment, Kataria had to see how the story ended.

# _Fourteen_

# THE PREACHER

Where is it going?"

" _The slave returns to its master, the parasite to its host._ "

"Are you sure?"

" _You cannot sense it?_ "

"I can hear."

" _Then follow._ "

There was no choice in the matter. Lenk's feet moved regardless of his approval, legs swinging up and down methodically, heedless of roots and undergrowth. He was aware of the numbness, but did nothing to fight it. He was aware of the fact that he was talking to a voice in his head, but did not cease to speak.

It had spoken with much less ferocity, much less coldness in its words. It no longer felt like a verbal vice, crushing his skull in icy fingers. Now, it felt like instinct, like common sense.

Now, it felt right.

"Help me," another voice called, "please, Zamanthras, _help me_!"

That particular shrieking still grated on him.

He glanced up; the Omen seemed in no great hurry, pulling its plump body from branch to branch on spindly legs. It occasionally stopped to glance down at him, as if making certain he still followed. When he stumbled over a root, it paused and waited for him to catch up.

"It wants us to follow it," Lenk muttered. "It's leading us to a trap."

" _It leads us to an inevitability_ ," the voice replied. " _Its master knows of us now, it wants us to find it._ "

"So it can kill us."

" _So it can find out if it can kill us._ "

"Can it?"

No answer.

The Omen took another hop forwards and vanished into the jungle's gloom, the sound of feathers in its wake. Lenk followed, pressing through a thicket of branches. The leaves clung to him, as though struggling to hold him back. He paid them no mind, brushing them away and emerging from the greenery.

The sun felt strange upon his skin, hostile and unwelcoming. He could spare only a moment's thought for it before glancing down at the wide mouth and bulbous eyes that stared up at him.

"Sea Mother," it echoed from its gaping mouth, "benevolent matron and blessed watcher, forgive me my sins and wash me clean."

A Zamanthran prayer, he recognised, desperate and brimming with fear. The idea of saving whoever the Omen mimicked was nothing more than an afterthought now and Lenk was no longer moved by it. The parasite sensed this, chattering its teeth at him and ruffling its feathers.

"No more," he said, "show me."

The Omen bobbed its miniature head, twisted it about so that it stared at Lenk upside down, then hopped a few steps and took flight. Lenk followed its low, lazy hover across the beach. The forest had not completely abandoned the sand, it seemed, and trees, however sparse, still stretched out their green grasp.

Lush, he thought, but not lush enough to detract from the bodies.

They were Cragsmen, or had been before the Omens had begun their feast. Now the plump demons cloaked them like feathery funeral shrouds, prodding with their long noses, tearing digits off and shredding tattooed flesh in yellow, needle-like teeth. In ravenous flocks, they devoured, slurping skin into their inner-lips and crunching bones in their wide jaws, leaving nothing behind.

_Nothing but the faces._

The two men looked to be in repose. Their eyes were closed, mouths shut with only the faintest of smiles tugging at their lips. Perfectly untouched, their faces were pristine and almost pleasant against the mutilated murals of red and pink their bodies had become.

In fact, were it not for the faint glisten of mucus draped upon their visages, they looked as though they were simply napping in the afternoon sun, ready to awaken at any moment, shrieking at what had ravaged their bodies. Lenk could see the shimmer of the ooze, see where it had plugged up their noses, their ears, sealed their lips. These men would never wake again.

The Omens glanced up as he took a step forwards, regarded him for a moment through their unblinking eyes, then rose as one from the corpses. On silent wings, they glided down to the beach to the sole remaining tree, settling within its boughs to stare at him, a dozen eyes bulging through the leaves like great white fruits.

It was only when Lenk drew closer that he noticed the trunk of the tree. It was not slender and smooth, as the others were, but rough and misshapen on one side, as though it suffered some festering tumour.

As he approached it, he felt the noise die in one thunderous hush. There were no more birds singing, no leaves rustling, and even the sound of waves roiling went quiet. Lenk stared at the tree trunk for what felt like an eternity. It was only when it shifted that he realised.

The tree was staring back at him.

The Abysmyth made no movement, at first, nor gave any indication that it even knew he was there aside from the two great, white, vacant eyes glistening in the shadows. Its head lolled slightly, exposing rows of teeth, as something rumbled up through its chest and out through its gaping jaws.

"Good afternoon," it said.

"Good afternoon," the Omens mimicked in distant chorus, "good afternoon, good afternoon, good afternoon."

"Good afternoon," Lenk replied without knowing why.

Perhaps it was simply wise to show proper manners to something capable of ripping one's head off, he thought. The creature did not appear to register the politeness, however, and continued to roll its head upon its emaciated shoulders.

"Mother Deep gave us, Her children, many gifts," it said, far more gently than its wicked mouth should allow, "and we, Her children, received no greater gift than that of memory."

There was something unnerving within the Abysmyth's voice, Lenk thought, something that reverberated through its emaciated body and glistened in its eyes as it turned its gaze out to sea. Perhaps the shadows obscured any murderous intent, but the young man could see no malice within the creature. It sat, leaned against the tree and stared out over the waves, at peace.

_Like the damn thing's on a holiday_ , he thought.

"These are the voices I remember," the Abysmyth continued. "I remember the wind going silent, the sand losing its hiss and the water closing its million mouths, all respectful, all so that we, her children, may hear the sound of Mother Deep."

Its head jerked towards him and Lenk's sword went up, levelled at the beast. The creature merely stared at him, giving no indication it had even seen the blade, as it tilted its head, fixing great empty eyes upon the young man.

"Listen," it said, "and you, too, shall hear Her."

"Listen." The winged parasites bobbed their heads all at once, their voices ebbing like the tide. "Listen, listen, listen."

Lenk's ears trembled; he heard nothing but the beating of his own heart and the rush of blood through his veins. Even that, however, fell silent before another voice.

" _Do not deign to indulge the abomination_ ," it uttered within his mind. " _To so much as hear the faintest note of Her song is to invite damnation._ "

That, he thought, would have been a much more imposing reply than what he did say.

"I," he paused, "don't hear anything."

The Abysmyth's lolling head rose to regard Lenk curiously. The young man cringed; the thing unnerved him further with every moment. If it had attacked him then and there, he could have mustered the will to fight it. If it had threatened him, he could have threatened back.

Against this display of nonchalance, this utter, depraved serenity, however, Lenk had no defence.

It quietly creaked, resting its head back against the trunk of the tree, and cast an almost meditative stare across the ocean. Then, with the sound of skin stretching over bone, it snapped its great eyes upon him once more.

"Good afternoon," it gurgled.

"You... already said that."

It certainly did not seem wise to offer a colossal man-fish-thing cheekiness of any sort, but the Abysmyth hardly seemed to notice that Lenk had even spoken.

" _Time has no meaning to it_ ," the voice replied, " _for it has no use for time. It exists without reason, without purpose, and time is the reason for all that mortals do._ "

"I know you," it finally said. "It was upon the blight you call ship that I discovered you. I kept you pure, I kept you chaste."

" _It babbles_ ," the voice within muttered, " _it is depraved, driven mad by its wounds._ "

"What wounds?" Lenk asked.

" _You cannot see them?_ "

He squinted, peering into the shadows. Immediately his eyes widened at the gleam of emerald amongst the gloom. Great gashes rent the creature's chest, wounds rimed with a sickly green ichor. Each movement of the demon, each laboured breath and swivel of head, made the sound of leather shredding as the green substance pulsed like a living thing, quietly gnawing on the demon's flesh.

"What happened to you?" It occurred to him that he should be gloating over the creature's wounds, not curious.

"There was a battle," the creature replied, "longfaces... many of them, but weak. They could not hear Mother Deep. We could. We knew. We fought. We won."

"We won," the Omens echoed above, bobbing their heads in unison, "we won, we won, we won."

"We..." Lenk regarded the demon warily. "By that, do you mean you and..." he made a gesture to the winged parasites in the trees, "those things? Or," he could barely force the question from his lips, "are there more of you?"

"More, yes," the creature replied. "Our suffering is profound, but a duty we take gladly. Mother Deep requires us to suffer for your sakes and silence the voices."

Suddenly, its eyes went wide. It rose in a flash of shadows, its shriek causing the Omens to go rustling through the leaves, chattering in alarm. Lenk sprang backwards, his sword up and ready to carve a new set of decorations in the creature's hide. The Abysmyth, however, made no move towards him, not so much as looking at the young man.

It swayed, precarious, before crashing back against the base of the tree, staring up at the sky with eyes full of revelation. Lenk had seen such expressions before, he noted grimly, in Asper's own stare.

"That is it!" It gurgled excitedly. "It is all so clear. The wind may die, the sea may fall silent, but mortals... mortals are never quiet. That is why you cannot hear Her, that is why She cannot reach you."

It turned its eyes towards Lenk and the revelation was gone. Its stare was dead again, empty and hollow as its voice.

"Do not fret, wayward child," it uttered, "I am Her will, Her vigilance." Slowly, its webbed claw slid down to its side; there was a muted moan. "I can silence the voices."

"Silence them," the Omens whispered, "silence them, silence them, silence them."

When the Abysmyth's hand rose again, Lenk saw the Cragsman.

He had looked mighty back upon the _Riptide_ , ferocity brimming in every inch of his tattooed flesh. Now, dangling upside down in the Abysmyth's talons, he was nothing more than a chunk of bait, wriggling, albeit barely, upon a great hook. The claw marks that rent his flesh glistened ruby red in the shadows, the whites of his eyes stark as the yellow of his teeth as he quivered a plea.

"Help me," the pirate squealed, "please!" His gaze darted alternately between the demon and the young man. "I didn't do anything! I don't deserve this!"

"Ah, you can hear that." The Abysmyth's voice drowned the man's screams under a multi-toned tide. "What purpose does it serve to make so much noise? Who can hear with such a tone-deaf chorus? It is a distraction."

The thing's other hand rose up like a great, black branch.

"The cure is nigh."

"Cure it!" the Omens shrieked excitedly. "Cure! Cure! Cure!"

It happened with such quick action that Lenk had no time to turn away. In the span of an unblinking eye's quiver, the demon took the Cragsman's arm in its own great hand and, with barely more than a wet popping noise, wrenched it off.

" _HELP ME!_ " the man wailed. " _ZAMANTHRAS! DAEON! GODS HELP ME!_ " Tears ran in rivulets down his forehead, mingling with fat, red globs that plopped upon the sand. " _PLEASE!_ "

"And for what purpose, my son?" The Abysmyth shook its great head. "Why do you make so much noise, calling to Gods who know not your name nor your suffering? Where is your mercy from heaven? Where is the end to suffering?"

It flicked its taloned hands, sending the appendage flying to land amidst the sands. The Omens let out a collective chatter of approval, bobbing their heads, their bulbous eyes never looking away from Lenk.

"Where is it?" they asked. "Where is the end? Where are the Gods? Where is the mercy?"

"Sea Mother," the man began babbling a prayer, "benevolent matron, bountiful provider, blessed watcher. Wash my sins away on the sand, deliver me to my—"

" _NO!_ "

The Abysmyth's howl echoed across the sea, across the sky. The Omens recoiled, fluttering off their branches to hover ponderously for a moment before settling back down. The demon's black hand trembled as it pointed a claw at the pirate.

"No blasphemies," it uttered, "no distractions." It shook its great head. "There is but one Mother here, one who may provide you with the mercy you seek." Its hand lurched forwards, seizing the pirate's other arm. "Can you not see the truth I seek to give you? Can you not see what woe you wreak upon the world?"

"Can you not?" the Omens muttered. "Can you not see?"

"The way becomes clear," the demon nodded, "with suffering to guide your path."

Lenk grimaced at the sound of ripping, turned away at the sound of meat sliding along the sand, closed his ears to the sound of the man's shrieking. It was too much.

" _Don't bother_ ," the voice replied, effortlessly heard over the pirate's agony, " _he made his path, chose his destiny. He deserves not our aid._ "

"He doesn't deserve this," Lenk all but whimpered.

" _His sins will be washed clean in the demon's blood. Now, patience._ "

"Can you hear it now?" The Abysmyth pulled the man up, bringing him to eye level. "Can you hear Her wondrous song? How it calls to you... how I envy you to hear it for the first time. Let Her hear your joy in the whisper of your tears."

"Let Her." The Omens giggled. "She hears all, She delights in your discovery and Her song shall guide you."

"Do you hear it?" The Abysmyth shook the man slightly. "Do you?"

There was nothing left to drain from him, however, no more agony upon his face, no more pain to leak from his stumps. He merely dangled there, mouth agape, eyes barely open. Only the glimmer behind them told Lenk that he was still alive, only the shine of what once had been hope, snuffed out. The Cragsman's lips quivered, mouthing soundless words to him.

_Kill me_ , he pleaded silently, _please._

"So," Gariath muttered, "what was it?"

Dreadaeleon glanced up at the dragonman, licking his lips as he finished slurping a liquid from a tin cup.

"What was what?"

"What called you?"

"Ah." The boy's eyes lit up. "It was actually quite interesting. I'm surprised you're curious."

"I'm not."

"Then why did you ask?"

"Because," the dragonman replied, "if it calls to you again, I plan to kill you before you can do something stupid. To that end, I'd like to know what to listen for so I can act before you do."

"Pragmatic." The boy inclined his head. "The truth is, I'm not entirely sure. It was something of a song without words, music without notes." He paused, straining to think. "Flatulence without smell? No, no, it was purely auditory." His nostrils quivered. "It occurs to me, though, I'd think you could smell whatever it was long before I heard it."

"Your thinking tends to be brief and often fleeting," Gariath grunted. "I can't smell anything with you drinking that bile." He pointed to the tin cup clenched in the boy's hands as Dreadaeleon squeezed his waterskin over it. "What is it, anyway? It smells like bat dung."

"It is." Dreadaeleon took a brief sip. "Some of it, anyway, mixed with the diluted sap of several trees, primarily willow, a few pinches of a powder you're better off not knowing the name of and a drop of liquor, usually a form of brandy or whiskey, for kick."

"Why drink it?"

"It eases my headaches."

"Uh-huh." Gariath scowled at the boy. "And the bat dung?"

Dreadaeleon smacked his lips thoughtfully. "Flavour."

Gariath's eyes glowered, muscles quivering with restrained fury. For a moment, a thought occurred to him, as it often had throughout his company with the humans, that this might be the sign he was waiting for. This might be the one act that indicated that these meagre, scrawny creatures had finally done something so deranged that they needed to be put down like the crazed animals they were.

"What?" Dreadaeleon asked, unaware of how close he was to having his head smashed in.

_Not today_ , Gariath thought, easing his arm rigidly against his side. _If you get his blood on you, you won't be able to follow the scent. Later, maybe, but not now._ Bearing that thought as a burden, he snorted and turned about, continuing to stalk down the beach.

"Where are we going, anyway?"

"There has never been a 'we'," Gariath growled. "There is 'I', who stands, and 'you', who gets in the way."

"Right." Dreadaeleon nodded. "'We.'"

"'We' would imply that I and you are on the same standing." He turned about, making a spectacle of his toothy grimace. " _We_ are not."

"In that case, where are _you_ going?"

_Just tell him_ , the dragonman told himself. _If he finds out it's a long way to go, maybe he'll collapse from the thought of so much effort. Maybe then the tide will come in and drown him._ He grinned at that. _Then his stink won't be a nuisance and Lenk won't have anything to complain about._

"I'm following a scent," he finally told the boy.

"Food?" Dreadaeleon asked.

"No."

"Water?"

"No."

"Other dragonmen?"

Gariath stopped in his tracks, his back stiffening. Slowly, with a look of violation flashing in his black eyes, he turned to regard Dreadaeleon.

"You're using magic on me," he snarled, "trying to read my thoughts."

"Telepathy," Dreadaeleon corrected. "And I'm not, no. I couldn't with my headache, at least." He beamed a self-satisfied smile that begged all on its own to be cracked open like a nut. "I simply used inference."

"Inference."

"The act of—"

"I know what it means."

"Ah." The boy nodded. "Of course. I simply meant that, given the way you seem to be sniffing at the air, there's only a few things you could possibly be seeking. Common beasts, with their advanced senses of smell, usually only seek food, water or mates."

"Clever," Gariath grunted. "Very clever."

"I thought so."

"Aside from one fact." He held up a single clawed finger. "This particular finger is one of five, which belong to one hand of two, which is the exact same number of feet I have, all of which I've used to split the skulls of, rip the arms off, smash the ribs of and commit other unpleasantries upon," he jabbed the boy, sending him back a step, "humans much smaller than you who called me much kinder things than a common beast."

Dreadaeleon's eyes went wide with a certain kind of fear that Gariath had seen often in him. With predictable frequency the boy, for he was nothing more than a boy, constantly realised he was not the man he pretended to be. Such a reaction was usually caused by his conversations with the tall, brown-haired human woman or with the taller, red-skinned dragonman. Such reactions, too, frequently had visceral effects.

"I... I didn't... I mean, I don't want to—"

_Stammering._

"It wasn't my intention—" Dreadaeleon shifted his gaze from the dragonman.

_Looking at the ground like a whelp._

"You must believe me—" The boy's knees began to knock.

"I do," Gariath interrupted.

Though he hated to admit it to himself, there was a certain gruesome pride that came with making a human soil himself, but such reactions were reserved for times when he wasn't on the hunt. Human urine was filthy, yellow and filled with the stinks of liquor. He couldn't imagine a bat-dung drink smelling any better coming out.

The boy's sigh, so heavy with relief, did not serve to strengthen Gariath's faith in the human bladder. Rolling his eyes along with his shoulders, he turned about and began to stalk further down the beach.

"Well, can I help?"

"There's a lot of things you can help," Gariath growled in reply, "such as your belief that I want to hear you any more."

"I meant can I help you find whatever it is you're looking for?" Dreadaeleon scurried to keep up with the dragonman's great strides. "I'm not bad with scrying."

"With what?"

"Scrying. Divination." He beamed so proudly that Gariath could feel the boy's smile searing his back. "You know, the Art of Seeking. Amongst the wizards of the Venarium, it's not considered worthy of much more beyond a few weeks of study, but it has its uses."

Gariath paused, his ear-frills twitching slightly.

"Magic," he uttered, "can find lost things?"

"Most lost things, yes."

When the dragonman turned to face Dreadaeleon, the boy no longer saw Gariath as he remembered him. In the span of a single turn, the red-skinned brute's face had shifted dramatically. Wrinkles, once seemingly perpetually carved into his face by an equally perpetual rage, had smoothed out. His lips had descended from their high-set snarl to hide his teeth.

Before, Dreadaeleon had never seen anything within his companion's eyes, so narrow and black had they been. Now they were wide, so wide as to glisten with something other than restrained—or unrestrained—fury, and they stared at him from a finger's length away.

"How does it work?" Gariath growled.

"Um, well..." The boy struggled for words in the face of this new, slightly less reptilian face. "It's a relatively simple art, which, as I suggested, is what places it so low upon the Hierarchy of Magic." He began to count off his skinny fingers. "The first of which being the Five Noble Schools: fire, ice, electricity, force and—"

"Tell me how it works."

Gariath did not demand, not with any great anger, at least. His tone was so gentle and soft that Dreadaeleon blinked, taken aback.

"I just need a focus," he replied as confidently as he could, "something that belonged to the _Rhega_."

Gariath's face twitched. "Something that belonged to the _Rhega_."

"Right." Dreadaeleon nodded, daring a smile. "So long as I have something to focus on, something that bears the _Rhega_ 's signature, it should lead us to more _Rhega_."

"As simple as that?"

"Just so."

Dreadaeleon barely had any time to close his eyes before the fist came crashing into his face. His teeth rattled in his skull, chattering against each other like a set of crude ivory chimes. His coat-tails fluttered behind him like dirty brown wings as he sailed through the air before striking the sand, gouging a shallow trench with the force of his skid before finally coming to an undignified halt.

He heard the thunder of Gariath's footsteps before he felt the thick claws wrap around his throat, hoisting him aloft. His head swam, ringing with the twin cacophonies of his magic headache and the force of Gariath's blow. Through eyes rolling in their sockets, he could barely make out the great red and white blob before him.

"There are _no more Rhega_ ," Gariath snarled. " _Your_ breed saw to that." His roar was laced with hot, angry breath that would have choked Dreadaeleon had he been able to breathe. "And now you want to piss on their memory with your weakling, filthy _magic_! _SIMPLE?_ "

The boy's shriek was caught in an explosion of sand as Gariath hurled him to the earth. With the pain echoing through his body in bells of agony, the vicious kick the dragonman planted in his side seemed nothing more than a particularly bloody comma in his furious sentence.

"There are no more _Rhega_ ," Gariath repeated, "just so."

The dragonman might well have been a ghost, so faint were his footsteps, so hazy his outline in the wizard's eyes. Dreadaeleon tried to speak, tried to choke out a query as to what he had done to deserve such a thrashing, an apology of some sort, or perhaps just a plea for help as he felt something growing smaller within him, deflating as air escaped him without returning.

He had no more mind for questions or pleas, however. The dragonman's shape faded in the distance as he stalked away, his footsteps now silent, as was everything else. The world became numb, all sounds fading before the ringing in his ears.

All but one.

It was faint at first, a slow and gentle lilting of the wind, a voice carried on a stiff breeze that he could not feel. Slowly, it grew louder, searing his ears as it began to drown out the ringing in his head.

_So familiar_ , he was barely able to think, caught between the symphony and chaos murmuring through his brain. _I've heard it before, I know._

It grew closer and stronger, something between a hum and a purr, escalating to include a faint whistling and breathless gasp. Soon, it began to tinkle, as though it were a gem of sounds being cut into tiny, euphoric crystals.

_A song without words_ , he thought, _so pretty... so pretty..._

His body was numb now. It no longer hurt to blink; the fact that he could not breathe no longer worried him. He lost himself in the song, agony forgotten as he listened to the delicate voice.

_Ah, I remember now._ He nodded weakly to himself. _From the boat... it's calling to me again._

And he let himself be called, slipping away into darkness. His vision went blank, eyes closing so that nothing else in the world would matter, not even the shadow creeping over him and the cold, pale hand reaching for him as he lay motionless in the sand.

# _Fifteen_

# YOU, TOO, SHALL HEAR

She is speaking so clearly now." Had he any nerve left to be shaken, Lenk certainly would have lost his at the near-orgasmic bliss with which the Abysmyth sighed. His courage, however, was long devoured, vanished under the flocks of Omens who gnawed incessantly at the body parts strewn across the ground. They shredded with their teeth, slurped long strings of greasy meat into their inner lips, all the while chattering their graces over the bounteous meal they had been served.

"We hear Her," they chanted between chews, "and so are we blessed. We hear Her."

The Abysmyth, in response, shook its colossal head.

"But there yet remains no virtue in hearing Her name echoed by the choir." Slowly, it fixed two great empty eyes upon Lenk. "And you? Do you hear Her, my son? Have your ears been freed?"

" _Don't answer_ ," the voice inside his head uttered, " _it wants an answer._ "

"Why?" he barely managed to gasp to his unseen companion.

" _It is an abomination, and like all abominations, it knows it is nothing. It is a preacher, and like all false preachers, it craves validation. It does not belong in this world. It needs a reason to exist._ "

"And we," Lenk muttered, "are that reason?"

" _No_ ," the voice replied, " _we are the reason it dies today._ "

"You keep saying that, but how? How do we kill it?"

" _As we kill everything else._ "

Lenk's eyes drifted to the armless man dangling from the Abysmyth's claws, his eyelids flickering, straining to stay open through the pain long enough to mouth his silent plea to Lenk: _Kill me, kill me, kill me._ His wordless chant was like that of the Omens: repetitive, droning, painful to hear, or to imagine hearing.

"Can we—"

" _He is lost_ ," the voice interrupted callously, " _he is of no use to us, either._ "

"But we can't just—" Lenk attempted to lift a leg to move forwards.

" _We shall._ " He felt it go numb under him.

"I don't—" He tried to tighten his grip on his sword.

" _We do._ " The weapon felt like a lead weight, useless at his side.

"My son," the Abysmyth gurgled with an almost sympathetic inclination, "do not fear what your eyes behold today." It held up a single, webbed digit and shook it back and forth. "For the eyes are what weaken you. Through ears, you shall find your salvation."

"No..."

The word came too softly from Lenk's lips, his own voice paralysed with fear as he watched the demon's arm crane up to its dangling captive. It pinched one of the Cragsman's meaty legs with two massive fingers, rubbing it between the digits thoughtfully.

"And so do I grant two gifts today," it continued, keeping a giant black pupil fixed on Lenk. "To you, the deaf, I grant the gift of hearing." With a thick, squishing sound, the eye rotated back to the pirate. "And to you, the misled, I offer you this gift—"

"No."

Lenk spoke louder this time, but without conviction, his voice little more than a tiny pebble hurled from a limp wrist. Such a projectile merely bounced off the Abysmyth's leathery hide, unheeded, unheard.

"For no God you claim to know has ever bestowed upon you this quality of wisdom." Against the sound of the leg being wrenched free from its socket, the sound of paper ripping, meat splattering, the Cragsman's shriek was but a whimper. "Where are they now, my son? Do they hear you, even as you scream? Even as you beg?"

It shook its head with some grim mockery of despair. It rolled its fingers, twirling the severed limb like a daisy petal before tossing it aside, adding to the Omens' sun-ripened buffet.

"They don't hear you. I hear your suffering, my son, as does Mother Deep." Its eyes brightened. "Ulbecetonth hears. Ulbecetonth grants you this mercy..."

With a gentleness not befitting its great size, the creature's hand took the man's head in its palm. It bobbed up and down, weighing the organ as though it were a piece of overripe fruit, pregnant with juices. Then, in the span of a belaboured groan, the creature's talons tightened over the man's skull as its jaws parted and uttered a final pair of words.

"Through me."

Lenk found not the voice even to squeak at the sight. The creature's arm jerked, stiffened, sank claws into flesh and dripped thick, viscous ooze from its palm. The slime, like a living thing, swept up with an agonising slowness, seizing the man's face with grey-green tendrils, seeping into nose, mouth, ears, eyes until all was nothing more than a glob of moist, glistening mucus.

"Rest, now."

The Abysmyth laid the Cragsman out before it with an almost reverent delicacy, staring down at the body with eyes that yearned to express pity through their emotionless voids. The ooze, as if in reaction to the demon, pulsed once like a thick, slimy heart before sliding off the man's face, uninterested, to pool beneath his head.

It was the expression on the man's face that finally drove Lenk to collapse. He fell to his knees, not with a scream, but a slack jaw and quivering eyes that could not look away from the Cragsman. Dismembered, tortured, drowned, the corpse wore no fear upon his face, no anger nor any mask that the young man had seen upon the face of death.

Upon the undisturbed sand, beneath the shade of a tree swaying with the quiet song of a breeze, the Cragsman stared up at the endless blue sky with closed eyes, a slight smile tugging at his lips.

"This is the sound I remember," the Abysmyth gurgled happily, remorseless, "the sound of mercy." It ran its massive hand over the man's face, a sign of benediction from black talons. "And to you, my son, She grants the gift of tranquil oblivion, through us, Her children."

"Endless is Mother Deep's mercy," the Omens chattered in agreement.

"Mercy?"

Lenk's own voice sounded blasphemous in the stillness, echoing against the empty sky. Slowly, he drew himself up from the sand, body rigid and shivering, cloaked by a cold the sun would not turn its eye to.

Such a sound did not go unnoticed. The Omens paused in the midst of their feast, glancing up with bits of pink and black stuck in their teeth, bulbous eyes quivering. The Abysmyth's great head rose, fixing two white eyes out towards the sand.

Two blue orbs stared back.

"Mercy is a purpose." Lenk could hear the words coming from his mouth, but could not hear them in his head. "You have no purpose," the last word was forced from his lips like a spear, " _abomination_."

He took a step forwards and the Omens scattered, white sheets in the wind as they flew up to the safety of the tree. Behind the net of leaves, their spherical eyes peered out, watching, unblinking, horrified.

The Abysmyth had no such reservations.

"What would a mortal know of purpose?" It rose up, matching Lenk's step with a thunderous crash of its webbed foot. "A fleeting light in a cold, dark place, quivering and then snuffed for ever, your purpose is only to receive Her infinite mercy." It stepped out of the shadow, a blight upon the sky and sand. "Your purpose is to _hear_ Her."

" _Our_ purpose," Lenk felt the urge to pause at that word, but his mouth muttered regardless, "begins with _you_." His sword was up and levelled at the beast. "Where is the tome?"

"Tome? _TOME?_ " The Abysmyth howled, scratching at the side of its head as if pained by the very word. "The book is not for you to see, my son! Its knowledge corrupts, condemns! I won't let you fall to such a fate after all I have suffered for you." It stomped again, petulant. " _I won't!_ "

Only when it stepped into the sunlight, a great stain on the world, did the extent of its suffering become clear. Its wounds pulsated with its rage, the sickly green ichor gnawing at its flesh, carving deeper furrows into its skin and baring masses of bleached white bones and innards that resembled beating patches of dark moss.

"You see," it all but cackled as it saw Lenk's eyes widen, "this is the price we paid, we, Her children, for _you_." It shook its head. "The longfaces, those purple-skinned _deviants_ , would not listen to us, to _HER!_ They would not listen! We tried to make them, and what was wrought?" It gestured to its mangled chest. " _Scorn! Impurities!_ They cast a disease upon us Shepherds and now _you_ say the flock is already brimming with sickness? I will not accept it!"

The creature's roar echoed in Lenk's ears, the same word repeating itself in his head: _We, we, we._ There were more of them, more Abysmyths, more cursed creatures with sharp teeth and glistening ooze.

He felt he should have been terrified by such words. He felt he should run, seek the others and flee the island. Such thoughts were small candlelights in his head, choked out and extinguished by the voice that quieted the demon's howl with its echoing presence.

"You don't belong here," it spoke through him, "you were cast out, sent to hell."

The creature grinned. It did not merely appear to grin, nor did Lenk imagine it grinning. Such an expression seemed painful, the edges of its face cracking, the corners of its lipless mouth splitting with the effort. Still, the demon grinned and spoke.

"We're coming back."

And then the grin vanished. Lenk stared into a vast, black face dominated by expressionless eyes. The creature tilted its head to the right, as though regarding him for the first time.

"Good afternoon," it uttered.

It tilted its head to the left.

"I..." it sounded almost contemplative, "want you to die now."

"Riffid Alive," Kataria whispered breathlessly.

There were very few occasions outside of violent situations where it was acceptable to speak the shictish Goddess's name. Everyday prayers and curses were for weaker deities of weaker races; the shicts were born with all the instinct they would ever need. However, if the Foe of all _Kou'ru_ could have witnessed the carnage on the beach through Kataria's eyes, she highly doubted the Goddess would begrudge her.

What had, undoubtedly, begun as a pristine stretch of white sand, completely indiscernible from any other chunk of beach, was now smothered under twisting sheets of grey and white. She stepped upon what had once been the beach, covering her nose as a heavy sulphurous odour sought to choke the life out of her.

The sound beneath her feet was thick and crunching, not unlike walking on pine cones. The sun's warmth paled against the fierce heat that choked the beach. She glanced down; the earth smouldered, red embers burning stubbornly through the blanket of smoke that roiled over sands scorched black. She glanced up; what thin trees remained standing had been charred into dark, lanky arms reaching up towards a sky no longer visible from the ground. Upon their fingers burned bright fires, beacons in the smoke that drew her further down the coast.

They illuminated the earth, however faintly, and the story continued in the charred sand as Kataria spied the first tracks.

There had been a battle, she recognised, and not a clean one. Footprints were muddled: bare feet with webbed toes crossed over heavy, booted indentations in a brawl that sprawled the length of the shore. Here, someone fell hard upon the earth and left a pool of thick, boiling red behind. There, some strange green ichor pulsated hungrily in the sand like a disease. And all across the sand were the vast, webbed prints of something large that had stalked through the melee in long strides.

_Abysmyth._

Lenk had told her to regroup with the others if she found any sign of the creature, but, she reasoned, he often told her many things she didn't care to hear. For the moment, she forgot him, forcing down concern and instinct, and leaned closer to the ground, following the story further.

The demon had appeared somewhere in the midst of the brawl, after the earth had been scorched. It had wrought terror upon the field; everywhere its foot had landed, the depressions of fallen bodies lay nearby. _Interesting twist_ , she thought, _but unsatisfying._

If the Abysmyth _had_ indeed killed and injured as many as the tracks suggested, where were all the corpses? Where were the drowned victims? Occasionally, shallow trenches had been carved where the bodies had hit the earth, indicating that they had either crawled or been carried away.

Whoever the Abysmyth had struck down had apparently escaped with their dead and wounded. She frowned, uneasy. That only accounted for one side of the battle; where were the frogmen that had rushed into battle beside the demon? For that matter, where was the demon? She paused by the base of a flame-scarred tree, scratching her chin thoughtfully. The wind moaned, peeling back a blanket of smoke.

It was then that she saw the needle-like teeth leering towards her.

She whirled, bow up and arrow drawn, levelling her weapon at the gaping maw that loomed out of the grey. Her hand quivered once, then stayed; the mouth did not move. Instead, the mouth glimmered a shimmering, crystalline blue.

The smoke retreated further, exposing the face that held the teeth, the large black eyes that dominated the face. From behind a skin of ice, the frogman howled soundlessly at her, immobile and unblinking within its azure prison. His spear was held above his head, icicles hanging from the weapon's tip, the frogman's muscles frozen and unquivering under a sheen of frost.

"Well," she grunted, "I'll be damned."

Somehow, the human curse seemed more appropriate for what occurred next.

In a great sigh, the smoke peeled back. A forest of frozen flesh was laid bare before her eyes. They stood in a charge that had no end, mouths open to utter a battle cry that had no sound beyond the cracking of ice in the distance. Dozens of the pale invaders, turned into an expanse of endless blue, rushed towards some unseen foe that they had never reached. Many of them hadn't even set two feet upon the ground before the ice claimed them.

And now they levelled their hatred, their black stares, upon her.

Kataria, however, had no more attention for them. Her concern was reserved for the emaciated beast that had stridden into battle with them. The Abysmyth's tracks were not apparent in the frost-kissed earth nor the smouldering black sand. However, one set of footprints did catch her attention.

He, or she, for the tracks were made by slender feet set lightly upon the ground, had stood before the frogmen. The frost radiated from that position in a great arcing wave, staining the ground with ice. From there, this new character had turned about, unhurried, by the looks of its shallow, well-defined footsteps, and traipsed down the shore.

Where it had stopped, carnage was born. Fire savaged the land, sending bodies to the ground as burned husks, barely discernible from the scorched earth. Trees were split down the middle, as though by a great blade.

It didn't take the shict long to deduce the presence of magic. Even through the acrid stench of brimstone, the stink of wizardry was thick in the air, a foul amalgamation of sulphur and something metallic, with a somewhat lemon-scented after-aroma.

That answered a few questions right away—for what earthly fire could smoulder for so long? What mortal ice could remain frigid even under the sun's unrelenting warmth?

More questions arose than were answered, however; Dreadaeleon was the only creature she knew capable of the practice of magic, and he was far too frail to wreak such devastation. Besides, he had taken off with Gariath, across to the other side of the island... hadn't he?

The Venarium, she knew from listening to the boy, were the sole practitioners and custodians of magic. They were, she had learned, a secretive and largely boring lot, more content to study and make rules than actually use their powers for anything interesting.

This character, this set of prints, however, was anything but tedious. She followed the trail, noting each shattered tree, each heap of burned corpses, each patch of ice. So intent on the tracks was she that she hardly noticed the Abysmyth when it appeared through the gloom.

She did not start at the sight of the creature. Rather, she was struck dumb by it and its sudden appearance.

It was dark, far darker than she remembered it, wisps of smoke pouring from its gaping maw, an enormous wound in its chest and craters that had once been eyes. An icicle the size of the _Riptide_ 's bow skewered it through its ribcage, holding it aloft like some demonic kebab, its webbed feet barely grazing the ground as they swayed in the wind.

Despite the oppressive heat, Kataria felt her blood run cold.

The Abysmyth had been a definition up until this moment. Despite being a creature of hell, it had existed according to rules: it killed and it could not be killed. The ending of the trail's story had changed everything. Something had fought the frogmen and Abysmyth, something that left no bodies, only smears of pulsing green ichor.

And amongst it all, someone, a man or woman who strode between infernos and blizzards as casually as one skips through a meadow, had given her a plot that she no longer wanted to read.

Suddenly, finding Lenk seemed like a rather good idea.

Her ears twitched and, for a fleeting moment, she was almost relieved to hear a sound other than the crackling of ice and fire. Such a moment was short-lived; the sounds of steel singing through the air slipped muffled through scars in the smoke, accompanied by faint mutters of voices she had never heard before.

They were vaguely familiar. There was grunting, snarling, the sound of something heavy being swung through the air. Yet there was something odd about the voices: they all spoke at once, echoing and reverberating off of each other to become incomprehensible. Like wisps of smoke, they trickled through to her, brief scents of sulphur and brimstone without the stink of something truly burning.

And then, all at once, they were silent.

She waited, ears twitching, hoping to hear more; she ought likely to have fled, she knew, but was tempted into stillness by the sounds. She had to find the end of the story that had begun back in the jungle.

Moments passed, a tense eternity of quiescence. In the distance, a seared branch crumbled at its joint and collapsed upon the sand with a faint crash. Her breath was loud, she knew, so loud she might as well have been speaking.

"Ah," she barely whispered, "hello?"

She received her answer half a blink later.

Lenk came hurtling through the air like a wiry javelin, cutting through the smog and leaving a trail of clear air behind him. He hit the earth, shifting from missile to plough as he dug a deep trench in the charred sand, a cloud of ash in his wake. There was an alarmed cry, a faint crash as he struck the tree.

Then, silence once more.

She rushed to him, not bothering to call his name, not bothering to shriek out in alarm at whatever had hurled him such a distance. She made no noise, save for the earth crunching beneath her feet and the words hissed between her teeth.

"Don't be dead, don't be dead," she chanted to herself like a mantra, "Riffid Alive, don't be dead."

He might as well have been, lying in a half-made grave with the seared tree to mark it. Motionless, eyes closed, sword held loosely in hands, he looked almost at peace in his trench. So deep was the rent in the earth that she had to leap in to reach his body.

"Don't be dead, don't be dead."

Two fingers went to his throat; nothing. A long, notched ear went to his chest; soundless.

"Don't be dead, don't be dead."

She leaned closer to his face; his breath was cold and icy. Her eyes remained open, watering as the smoke stung them.

"Don't—"

His eyes opened with such suddenness that she recoiled. He rose from the ground like a living corpse draped in an ashen cloak. His sword was in his hand, naked and silver. His eyes pierced the gloom like candles burning blue. His stare shifted over her, merely acknowledging her presence, before he soundlessly pulled himself out of the hole.

"Lenk," she all but cried after him, "are you—"

"Not sure," he replied. His voice was like the sound of the embers beneath his boots. "Fight now."

"What fight?"

That, too, was answered as soon as she emerged from the grave.

# _Sixteen_

# MOTHER, WHY?

They won't listen! They can't hear You!"

Kataria's ears twitched. A dozen voices, all choked and speaking at once, tone shifting wildly between each word.

"I've tried! How I've tried! How I've _suffered_!"

Footsteps, embers crunching under massive, webbed feet.

"But for what, Mother? They refuse enlightenment, deny You!"

The crack of ice.

"Have I done nothing to show You my devotion? Is all my suffering in vain?"

Silence. The sound of smoke rising from the earth.

" _NO!_ "

The endless grey trembled and scattered, exposing the Abysmyth as a towering tree in the centre of the forest of frozen frogmen. The beast was alight in the gloom, eyes flashing wide and empty, talons wet with ooze, pulsing green ichor pumping in time with each staggered breath it took.

"There's..." Kataria paused to stare at the creature with ever-widening eyes, "more of them?"

"More?" Lenk swept the smoke for a sign. "Where?"

"Behind us," Kataria replied. "Dead. Something happened here." She glanced from the demon's wounds to a glob of the throbbing green substance on the earth. _Not blood_ , she noted, not bothering to wonder what else it might be. "Probably whatever happened to this one as well."

"One or one thousand," the young man muttered, raising his sword. "We will clean the land of their blight."

"You think we can?"

" _You_ cannot," he replied sharply, " _we_ can."

"We?" She glanced at him, terrified. "Who's—"

She never finished the sentence, her breath robbed from her the moment her eyes met his. Perhaps it was the cover of smoke, the angle at which she saw him or stress from the horrors of the battlefield that twisted her vision. She prayed it was, for she saw his stare burning brightly through the smoke.

Pupilless.

She tightened her jaw, turned away, resolved not to look again.

"Then what do we do?"

"Stay," he commanded coldly. "We kill."

"You can't kill that thing."

"He cannot," Lenk replied, " _we_ can."

"Damn it," she muttered breathlessly, "of all the times for you to go _completely_ insane, why did you have to choose the moment when _I_ might die, too?"

If the young man had a reply for that, it was lost in the scurry of boots on burned earth. He was up, a flash of silver and blue, carving a path through the endless smoke towards his towering foe. The creature, for its part, seemed unimpressed.

Then, suddenly, it erupted.

"The Shepherd is ever tireless! Ever vigilant!" It roared and the frozen frogmen quaked against the ice. "It is through his mercy that deliverance is possible! It is through the Shepherd that Her mercy is ever known!"

Lenk lunged, and a great black arm shot out, seizing him about the waist.

Whatever madness or courage had shot him into the beast's grasp vanished once he was drawn close enough to look into the thing's eyes. It gurgled angrily, its blank gaze straining to express the fury its voice could only hint at in disjointed harmony.

That seemed to infuriate it.

"Do not fear, my son," it murmured, "for even as you strike at me, I am ever bound to forgive you."

It craned its arm up, raising him high into the sky, as if to present him to heaven for inspection. Its talons pierced Lenk's flesh, he felt his tunic shredding, five warm pinpricks painted his body red. He felt a scream burst from his lungs, but heard no reply.

"It is your nature to fear the unknown," it continued, a deep, resonant bass leaking through its many voices, "but the Shepherd knows no nature of his own. His life is duty, and his duty is life."

A ray of sunshine split the smoke, shining down on Lenk.

"Through Her, I grant you this," it gurgled, tightening its grip, "my mercy and my duty. I..."

It tilted its head, hesitant. Its eyes flickered once more as a twisted shriek tore itself from the creature's maw.

"I _HATE YOU!_ "

The arm snapped down. Lenk hit the ice, shattered it, and descended below. He ploughed his grave with his body, shards digging into his back and flying up into the air. Even after he had stopped, he felt as though he were still falling, as though something else had torn itself from his body and vanished into the earth.

Through fluttering eyes, he saw the cold powder descending upon him, settling like a blanket, urging him to sleep. Even the sun still shone upon him. It felt warm; somehow, he knew he should have felt colder than he did.

"What," he whispered, "what do we do now?"

No one answered him.

"Can we survive?"

No one spoke to him.

"I... think I'm going to die."

No one reassured him.

The sun vanished behind a blot of ink. His eyes snapped open once, wide enough to see the outline of a webbed foot the size of his head rise above his face. He blinked, and it was still there. Then he felt his eyes shut themselves and it no longer existed.

The world was dark.

"From Mother Deep to child," it all but whispered, "from child to mortal. This is your mercy. Sleep now," its foot tensed, "and dream of blue."

The demon's body convulsed suddenly. A sparrow with a silver beak sang through the air, burying itself in the Abysmyth's ribcage. It hesitated, flinching as one flinches at bee-stings. It heard the sound of feet scampering on ice, the sound of something humming a solemn tune, the sound of air parting before metal.

Another arrow struck it, embedded itself in the creature's neck.

It lowered its foot to the ground, swinging its head about to survey the ice. Nothing but still, solitary bodies and frozen faces met its gaze, mirroring the anger it yearned to express.

"How many times must we go through this?" it gurgled. "How many times must I be scorned before I show you the unreasonableness of your blasphemies?"

Upon hearing no answer beyond the crack of ice, it hurled its head back and screamed.

" _HOW MANY?_ "

Kataria was hard pressed to choke back her scream as the creature's fury raked at her ears. Something tinged its multitude of voices, a gurgling, shrieking squeal that sought to reach inside her head and sink audible talons into her brain. Pain, perhaps, or merely annoyance at having a pair of arrows lodged in its body.

That seemed to aggravate it.

She nocked another arrow and peered around the legs of a frozen frogman who scowled down upon her. The Abysmyth loomed like a tower with a poor foundation, swaying in the impotent breeze that tried to chase the smoke from the beach.

Up to that moment, she hadn't even thought of trying to kill it.

Her plan had simply been to distract it long enough to dig Lenk out of his hole and drag him off to safety. However, as she stared at the creature, temptation manifested in the beast's gaping wounds.

This did not seem like the demon she remembered. This was not the unholy terror that had held a shipful of men in terrified awe, not the creature that had pulled an entire harpoon out of its belly, unfazed. This demon, if it could still be called that, seemed weaker, wounded.

_Mortal._

It whirled suddenly, swinging a colossal arm. Glass shattered and a thousand shards of what had once been a man, or something close to it, flew across the beach. Kataria, again, had to bite back horror as a fragment of what had been a face bounced twice across the ice, then skidded to a halt at her feet to stare at her with one eye frozen in hate.

_Then again..._

"Forgive the fury, child."

Kataria froze instinctively; had the thing spotted her?

She dared a glimpse. The Abysmyth stalked towards her, sweeping its eyes across the blue stillness; the look of a predator with the scent of blood.

With all the casualness of a boy with a stick, it brought its arm down to crush another frogman. It pulled back a webbed fist, dark red splinters embedded in black skin.

"You fear for my well-being, perhaps," it gurgled, "and that is good. But your fear is in vain. No wolf's teeth can harm the Shepherd. Purple longfaces, they tried. They came out of nowhere with their iron," it scratched at a green wound, "their venom. But they could not stop us."

_Longfaces, venom_ , the words flashed through her mind. The tracks became clear, the other characters revealed. Absently, the shict wished that the creatures that had tormented this demon had decided to linger.

"There is nothing to fear." The Abysmyth spoke with a poor facade of reassurance. "There are simply questions, questions that you must answer for yourself."

Its head jerked away at the sound of ice cracking and Kataria seized her chance. Her feet were quiet as she slid out from behind the frogman, her pale flesh indiscernible from the gloom—she hoped—as she slipped behind another.

"Who will remember you when you die, mortal?" It continued to stalk towards her prior position. "Will your Gods take you to their elusive heaven," it levelled its gaze upon a frogman, "when nothing is left to bury?"

Its roar split the smoke as it charged, smashing frogmen underfoot, sending chunks of ice and sinew flying. With one great sweep of its hand, it crushed the frogman that had hidden Kataria. The creature's eyes seemed to go wider, were that even possible, at the sight of empty blue earth, and it collapsed to its knees.

"Why," its voices were long, loud and keening, "are You making this _so hard on me_?"

Whether or not the demon was actually capable of sobbing was a matter Kataria would settle later, for at that moment, she saw her opportunity.

As it hunched over, the gaping wound in the Abysmyth's back split a little further open, the green ichor lining it pulsing slightly. Within the wound, through blackened ribs, she saw it: barely visible in the darkness, but round and swollen like an overripe melon.

_The heart._

She drew back her bowstring, took aim. She could feel her pupils dilating as the creature's heart pounded, growing larger in her vision with each pump of tainted blood until it was as large as a black boulder. The fletching of her arrow tickled at her lips, which twisted into a grin.

"One," the whisper of her voice and her bowstring were united.

The missile shrieked, cutting through the smoke and finding its target with a moist, squishing sound. Kataria bit her tongue to keep from giggling madly at her victory.

Her heart went from pounding to still in the time it took the creature to rise, turn and level two empty eyes upon her. She could see the arrowhead jutting from its ribcage, just as she could see it take an unfettered lurch forwards.

"Blessed is Mother Deep," it gurgled, "the path is revealed."

Why she didn't move when it came charging towards her, she knew not. Why she remained standing, slack-jawed, as it reached a hand out for her, she didn't know. Perhaps, she thought through the fog of awe, she was simply terrified. More likely, she was struck into immobility by the vision of the creature's heart, pounding bloodlessly with an arrow stuck through it.

She took two awkward steps backwards before its arm swept out soundlessly, hand closing about her throat and hoisting her high into the air. It did not tremble as her senses returned to her and she hammered at its hand with leather-bound fists, kicking at its ribcage as it drew her closer.

It merely regarded her, tightened its grip and gurgled, "Sleep."

Commanded, the ooze began to slide from the creature's palm. Kataria felt it choke her immediately, tightening about her throat as it crept like slugs up her jawline. Instinct demanded that she scream, but survival demanded that she clench her teeth tightly together, denying the ooze a door into her.

The image of Mossud was wrought in her eyes as she stared down at the glistening mucus. In its cloudy reflection, she could see herself in his stead: mouth agape, eyes unblinking with a skin of the viscous slime over her face, still and breathless on the earth like a fish torn from water.

If the Abysmyth saw her fear, it showed nothing in its empty eyes.

"I can hear your thoughts," it uttered. "You think the Shepherd mad for slaughtering the flock and calling it mercy." It tightened its grip; Kataria felt something creak inside her throat. "Your ears are deafened by so much inane screeching that you call the voice of your God."

The ooze crept up her jawline, thick, viscous tendrils tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"The truth is not always happy," it continued, "but always necessary, and this truth is insistent upon you." Its fingers twitched, the ooze crawled further upwards. "This is mercy, for you will be spared the tragedies that are to come."

Her nostrils quivered, pumping air desperately as the ooze covered her pursed lips and sought the next nearest orifice. She hammered at the Abysmyth's arm, her fists bouncing off its skeletal limb.

"This world will drown," it spoke, heedless of her strife, "but only your weak Gods believe in tragedy without purpose. Mother Deep's wisdom is as vast and sprawling as the sea. She shall see this blighted earth reborn into the endless blue it was intended to be. The Shepherd's sole lament is that this sheep will not see such a paradise."

Instinct and the desperation to wrench free from the beast's grip slowly quieted within her as the ooze slid up her face. Her body seemed to betray her, mouth beginning to loosen, heart slowing, lungs shrinking and wracking her with pain. And as her organs began to surrender, so, too, could she feel her mind fester with a similar disease.

_It won't be so bad_ , she thought, _quick, not much pain, and then it's over. There are worse ways to die... aren't there?_ With none coming to mind, she felt her heart beginning to sink, turning to lead in her chest. _Whatever happens to me won't be half as bad as..._

Kataria's eyes burst wide open as the ooze crept into the corners of her vision.

_Lenk._

She could not surrender, she knew, could not leave Lenk buried in his grave, waiting for the Abysmyth to visit far worse torments upon him. She could not go peacefully into death knowing that he still lay helpless nearby.

With renewed fervour, she hammered at the creature, but even that fury died a swift, ugly death as soon as she had summoned it. Her lungs drew in less and less breath as the slime crept up into her nose, the screams caught inside her threatened to cause her throat to explode. What could she do against the demon? It could not be harmed by mortal weaponry; she had put an arrow through its heart and it hadn't so much as flinched. No, she realised, there was nothing left to be done.

Nothing left, except to apologise.

_Lenk_ , she thought, craning her neck to survey his hole, _I'm—_

Her gaze lingered upon the empty grave for a moment before a new thought struck her.

_Where?_

The question was answered in an instant as he came, silent as a shadow, silver as the sword he held high, cutting through the smoke. Fast, far too fast for the demon to notice, far too fast for her to flinch, the blade came down in a rainbow of steel.

She felt herself falling, felt fingers loosening around her throat, felt herself collapsed to the ground. She blinked, heedless of the ooze crawling into her eyes, and surveyed the black limb lying limp on the ground beside her, severed neatly at its thin biceps.

If the demon were capable of blinking, it would have, too, as it glanced down at the stump of its arm. It wiggled the remains of the appendage momentarily, shifted its vacant stare about: first to its arm upon the ground, then to the man standing before him, blade bloodless. It tilted its head to the side.

Then, the demon screamed.

The wail was so violent as to pierce even the wall of slime filling her ears, so terrifying as to make her forget the rest of the sludge as she strained to cover her ears. She had heard it laugh, pray, preach and chuckle before. She had heard such things and remained silent.

Only now, when she heard it in pain, did she feel the need to scream.

Lenk, however, was unmoved. His sword lashed out immediately, carving a deep gouge in the creature's wispy torso. Black skin was rent like paper, globs of thick ebon spilling from the wound to plop in quivering jellies upon the earth. The creature shrieked at the wound again, its voice arcing into a high-pitched wail as it grabbed at the cut, straining to keep further parts of itself from slipping out.

"Stop!" it wailed. "Stop! Stop! You're not supposed to do that!"

Lenk did not stop.

He lunged at the creature as it retreated backwards, thrusting his weapon into its leg so that the tip burst out of the other side in a fan of black. The creature collapsed to its knees and its shriek terrified the gloom, chasing the smoke further from the beach. Its hand quivered, darting between wounds, seeking to contain the thick liquids pouring from it at an alarming rate.

"Not fair!" it screamed. "Not fair! Get away from me! _GO AWAY!_ "

Lenk did not go away.

His stride was soundless, his blade held loosely at his side as he advanced casually upon the creature. The victory was already decided, but rather than end it quickly, Lenk chose to take his time, walking so slowly as to suggest he wasn't even aware that Kataria was nearby, covered with slime, still and breathless upon the ground.

"Mother!" the Abysmyth howled. "Mother! Help me! _HELP ME!_ "

Lenk did not hear.

The demon made a lunge at him, feeble and sloppy, hurling its arm out to claw empty air as he stepped backwards. When the thing landed hard on its hand, he was quick to act, sidewinding about it like a serpent. His boots scraped against leathery flesh as he leapt and raced up the creature's back, seizing it by its great black crest. His sword flashed, a steel fang sinking into the creature's collarbone.

It was in that moment that Kataria realised the Abysmyth was making a sound she had never heard it make, never even thought it was capable of making before that moment: the demon was sobbing.

"It hurts! _It hurts!_ " the thing cried out as Lenk wrenched the blade deeper, its mouth gaping wide. " _MOMMY! MOMMY! IT HURTS! MAKE IT STOP!_ " It batted at the weapon, digits suddenly becoming pudgy and helpless. " _MOMMY, I DON'T LIKE IT! MAKE IT STOP!_ "

Lenk listened.

His foot came up and came down in one quick movement, heel upon the sword's crossguard and burying it to the hilt. The silver blade burst out through the creature's ribcage, sunlight through stormclouds, and shone defiantly.

The demon stopped its wailing. Lenk sprang off its back.

Its breathing was heavy now, laboured and ragged, shining rivers pouring out of it with every gasp. Even as it swayed upon its knees, its eyes could not express the despair it clearly felt as it stared blankly at the weapon. The sword looked back up at it through metal eyes, cruel and remorseless, denying the pity the Abysmyth so desperately wanted.

The wind moaned in the distance. Smoke parted above. A beam of light descended warily to the blackened earth and illuminated the silver spike as the demon reached up and fingered its tip.

"So loud," it whispered, "the sky is... so loud." Waterfalls of black bile leaked out from between its serrated teeth, stained the ground. "It hurts..." Quietly, it looked up to the sky. "Mother... how come it hurts?"

Kataria watched it collapse, the sword hilt proud in the sunlight, and a thought struck her.

_That should not have happened..._

It was when she blinked and felt her eyes squish that another thought rose.

_I can't breathe._

As though it had seemed a foreign concept until that moment, she began to rake at her face, pulling mucus off in great sheets. The slime seemed to resent this, trying to seep further inside her each time she clawed. Her lungs were ready to burst, heart ready to explode, mind ready to turn to stone and drag her head to the ground.

And still she raked.

Boots crunched. She felt a shadow descend upon her.

"Lenk," she gurgled, choked, "help."

He stood above her, unmoving, shadowed by the blend of smoke and sunlight.

"Lenk," she said again, voice straining to get out through the ooze.

He twitched, knelt down beside her.

She opened her mouth to plead again, but found herself breathless. Blood froze in her veins, breath forgotten as her jaw went slack. She gasped; the ooze found its door into her body and flooded in. Her next breath was the last she took before she felt herself slip away, but even through the darkness of her eyes, she could still see him.

Lenk, skin as grey as a drowned corpse, eyes blue and burning, bereft of pupils.

# _Seventeen_

# BURY YOUR FRIENDS DEEP

Is it working?"

Asper could feel Lenk's eyes with such intensity they threatened to crack her skull. His stare darted between the priestess, sweating and pumping knotted hands over her patient's chest, and the shict, who lay breathless upon the ground.

Asper kept her actual thoughts to herself; it just seemed in poor taste to tell him his concern over his dying companion was slightly irritating.

"I don't know yet." She pressed a pair of fingers against Kataria's throat. "This sort of thing works on drowning victims, but only if we get to them quickly." No pulse; she kept her head low to conceal her frown. "Really, I just have no idea if it works on drowning by demons."

"Well, try—"

"Oh, is _that_ what I'm supposed to be doing?" she snarled over her shoulder at him. "I'm not putting hands on her chest for your enjoyment, you know. Back away, moron!"

He nodded weakly, backing away. Such readiness to obey distressed her. It was exceedingly unlike the young man to so willingly bow out of such a situation. Then again, she considered, it was exceedingly unlike him to express any interest in death. Yet he seemed to be dying with the shict, moping about her soon-to-be-corpse like a dog around its dying master.

Asper forbore to tell him this.

She was sorely tempted to tell him to stop staring at her, though. His eyes bored into the back of her skull, drilling into two well-worn spots in her head where other, weary stares had rested. Gazes from mothers with fevered children, fathers with raped daughters had left the first scratches upon her scalp. Soldiers with wounded comrades and sons with ailing elders had bored even deeper.

Lenk's stare, however, went well beyond her skin. He peered past hair, flesh, blood and bone into the deepest recesses of her mind. He saw her, she felt, and all the workings of her brain.

He knew she couldn't save this one.

_NO!_ she shrieked at herself inside her own head. _Don't think like that. You can do this. These hands have healed before, countless people. These hands..._

Her gaze was drawn to her left hand, resting limply upon the shict's abdomen. It twitched suddenly, temptingly. _You could end it all, you know_ , her thoughts drifted, _just a bit of pressure, like you did to the frogman. Then, poof! All over! She won't have to suffer any more..._

"No, no, no, _NO_!"

She ignored the concerned stares cast her way, ignored her hand, ignored everything but the placid expression upon Kataria's face and the stillness of her heart.

"I can do this," she muttered, beginning chest compressions anew, "I can do this, I can do this." She found solace in the repetition, so much that she barely noticed the tear forming at the corner of her eye. "Please, Talanas, let me do this..."

Lenk stared at Asper's back, watching the sweat stain grow longer down her robe.

It was a hard battle to resist the urge to rush up beside the priestess, to see if he could help, if he could do something. He was used to fixing things: fixing the fights between his companions, fixing the agreements between him and his employers, fixing to jam hard bits of steel into soft flesh.

_That's how it should be._

He should have been able to fix this.

The sound of metal gently scraping against skin was loud, unbearable. He cast a resentful, sidelong scowl at his companion. Denaos, however, paid no heed to the young man, gingerly working at his fingernails with a tiny blade. Eventually, it seemed Lenk's stare became a tad more unbearable and Denaos glanced back at him.

"Sweet Silf, _fine_ ," he hissed, "I'll do yours, if you're so damn envious."

"Kataria," Lenk replied sharply, "is _dying_."

"To be more precise, Kataria may already be dead."

Lenk blinked at him. Somewhere in the distance, a gull cried.

"What?" Denaos hardly looked at him as he plucked up a waterskin from the ground and took a drink.

"This doesn't bother you?" Lenk all but shrieked at the tall man, snatching the skin away. "You can't even keep yourself from drinking _her_ water?"

"It's _our_ water, you milksop. She'll have her drink if and when she wakes up. Have at least an _ounce_ of faith in Asper, would you?" Denaos glanced over to the priestess. "She's doing her best. She'll do what's right."

"Really?" Lenk permitted a squeal of relief to tinge his voice. "You've seen this sort of thing before?"

"Once, aye." He nodded appraisingly as Asper pressed her lips against Kataria's once more. "But the spectacle cost me a pouch of silver." He became aware of Lenk's angry stare after another moment. "What?"

"What is wrong with you?" The young man forced an angry snarl between clenched teeth. "I almost suspect Gariath would be more sympathetic in this than you are."

"He's further up the beach," Denaos gestured, "far more curious about dead demons than he is about Kataria." He cast a smug smile at Lenk. "Besides, it's not like he'd do anything more than I am save urinate on her corpse." He coughed. "Out of respect, of course."

"Then maybe you should go and linger with him," Lenk snorted. "If we're lucky, I'll only have to come back to see one of you still alive."

"Unsurprising as it might be, I find the near-dead to be rather more pleasant company than that lizard."

"Then do me," Lenk paused, "and _her_ the respect of showing proper manners and worrying a little." He grunted. "Or by seeing how many daggers you can fit in your mouth. Whichever."

"Worry?" Denaos made a scoffing sound. "Would that I could."

The wind between them died. Lenk turned a scowl upon the rogue.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Frankly, I'd rather not say."

"Then you shouldn't have said it in the first place," Lenk snarled. " _What do you mean by that?_ "

The rogue's shoulders sank as his head went low to hide the rolling of his eyes.

"Really, you don't want me to continue. If I do, you'll get all upset and pouty, then violent. You'll do something you'll later regret, then come crawling back like a worm to tell me I was right and, honestly, I'm not sure if I can stand such a sight."

"Whatever I do, I'm guaranteed to regret it less if you don't have the testicular-borne valor to finish your thought."

Denaos half-sighed, half-growled.

"Fine. Allow me to slide a shiv of reality into your kidneys." He shrugged. "If she dies, it'll be a tragedy, to be certain. She was a fine shot with that bow of hers and a finer sight for eyes used to far too much ugly, I'll tell you. But it's not like we're losing anyone..." He paused, tilting his head, wincing as though struck. "I mean... in the end, she's not one of us. She's just a shict. No shortage of them."

Lenk blinked once. When his eyelids rose, it was not through his own stare that he saw his hands reach out and seize the tall man by his collar. It was not his arms that trembled with barely restrained fury. It was not his voice that uttered a frigid threat to the rogue.

"The only regret here," he whispered, "is that my sword is stuck in a corpse that isn't yours."

_This is it._

The thought rang through Asper's head solemnly, like a dirge bell.

_It had to happen eventually._

Her breath was short, sporadic.

_You did your best..._

Kataria's face was almost part of the scenery, so unchanged was it. As much as Asper searched, as much as she prayed for a twitch of lips or flutter of eyelids, she found nothing. The shict seemed more in a deep dream than a breathless coma, more at peace than in pain.

_That might be a sign_ , her thoughts flooded her head like a deluge, _that's Talanas's mercy to you. What do you know about this, anyway? You can tie up scratches and kiss scraped knees, but you can't heal a damn thing without bandages._

She pressed her fingers against Kataria's throat; no pulse... still.

_It's not so bad. You can't save them all. Remember the last one? She was in so much pain, but you managed to take that away._ Her left hand twitched involuntarily. _You can do the same for your friend, can't you?_

"Shut up," she snarled, " _shut up!_ "

She forced her mind dark, silenced the voices in the rhythm of chest compressions and the futile monotony of breathing. There was solace in monotony, she knew, comfort in not seeing ahead. She forced her gaze away from the future, focused on the now, the lifeless shict and the quiet muttering.

"I can do this," she whispered, "I can do this," she told herself as she had for so long, "please, I can do this..."

She drew in her forty-third breath and leaned closer to the shict's lips. She hesitated, hearing a sound so faint as to be a shade more silent than a whisper: a choked, gurgling whisper.

"Please," she whispered again.

The lifeless muscles in Kataria's body twitched. Asper forced herself to continue, biting back hope.

" _Please._ "

The gurgle came again, a little louder. Kataria's body jerked, a little livelier.

"Kat..." She was terrified to raise her voice. "Please..."

A smile wormed its way onto Asper's face. The shict's pale lips parted, only slightly, and drew in the most meagre, pathetic of breaths.

"Yes," her giggle was restrained hysteria, "yes, yes, _yes_!"

Her eyes widened with a sudden dread as she saw something bubble in the shadows of her companion's mouth.

"Oh, no! No, no, _WAIT!_ "

As though possessed, the shict's body shuddered violently, her mouth stretching so wide as to make her jaw creak threateningly. A torrent of translucent bile came flooding out of her, arcing like a geyser as her lungs were brutally evacuated.

Groaning, Kataria rolled onto her side and expelled the last traces of the muck with a hack. Body trembling, she had barely the strength to fall upon her back. The sun seemed bright and harsh above her, her breath foreign and stagnant on her lips.

Through fluttering eyes, she became aware of a shadow falling over her. She tensed, her voice forgotten, a scream bursting from her lips as only a faint, ooze-tinged squeal.

Two wicked blue moons stared down upon her. Her heart raced, head glutted with fragmented imagery: grey flesh, silver hair, two blue eyes burning like cold pyres, pupilless.

She opened her mouth to scream again, but caught herself. Or rather, a pair of strong hands caught her by her arms, pulling her closer. She writhed in the grip, unwilling to stare into the eyes that shifted before her. As dizziness and half-blindness faded, she beheld a gaze that was dominated by two big, hound-like pupils.

"Calm down," Lenk whimpered, "just calm down. You're fine."

"Fine," she repeated as she took in his face, his pink skin and blinking eyes. "I'm fine." She paused to cough, forcing a weak smile on her face. "I mean, as far as nearly dying goes."

"Fine." He nodded. "Just don't strain yourself. Take breaths as they come." He raised her to a sitting position as he eased a waterskin into her hands. "Drink. You're sure you're well?"

"A damn sight better than _some_ of us," someone snarled from behind.

Asper's scowl burned two holes in the mask of viscous sludge covering her face. Her lips quivered from behind the vomit, as though she sought to scream but thought better of it. Fuming so fiercely as to make the bile steam, she resigned herself to grumbling indignantly and mop-ping the substance with her sleeve.

"Oh, you messy little sow." Denaos giggled as he joined his companions. "Gone and eaten your pudding like a fat little baby, have you?"

Artfully dodging the glob of vomit she hurled at him, he approached Lenk and Kataria with all the candour of someone who had _not_ just recently dismissed a looming death as an unfortunate inconvenience.

"And how are we today?" he asked with a broad smile. "I was slightly worried we'd have to cut your body into six pieces so that you wouldn't come back." He added a knowing nod. "That's what happens when shicts die, you know. They'll come crawling right out of the grave to rip your eyes out and eat them."

"One would hope she'd have the sense to rip out your tongue first." Lenk hurled his voice like a spear at the rogue, though Denaos seemed to dodge that just as gracefully as he had the vomit. "Maybe she'd like to hear what you—"

"Well, that's all fine, fine and dandy." Denaos interrupted the young man with a timely spear of his own. "Good to know we all emerged from another near-death experience with only one of us nearly dying. A fine score, if I may say so."

Lenk opened his mouth to retort, but a hacking cough from Kataria shredded that before it reached his lips. Settling for an icy stare at Denaos's nonchalant expression, he raised the waterskin to her lips, pulling his hand back as she swatted at it.

"I'm not an invalid, round-ear," she growled, shaking his arm off from around her. After a few frenzied gulps, she wiped her mouth. "What happened, anyway?"

"We were hoping you might tell us," Asper piped up. "Denaos and I came at the sound of screaming."

"Late," Lenk muttered.

" _Cautiously_ late," Denaos shot back.

" _At any rate_ ," Asper continued, "we found you unconscious and the whole beach scorched halfway to heaven."

"Hell," Denaos corrected.

"What about Lenk?" Kataria asked.

"What _about_ Lenk?"

"He was here. He saw what happened."

"I don't recall." The young man offered a helpless shrug. "We were hit pretty hard."

Kataria's breath caught; she levelled a hard gaze at him.

"We..."

"Yeah," he nodded, "you and me."

"The demon bashed him good," Asper added. "He was just coming out of it when we arrived."

_He wasn't out_ , Kataria thought.

The visions bloomed in her mind: the onyx sheen of the Abysmyth's black blood, the surgical silver of Lenk's sword. They flooded through her with grotesque vividness, matched only by the horrifying sounds that replayed in her mind.

" _MOMMY! MOMMY! IT HURTS!_ " She recalled the demon's wailing voice. " _MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!_ "

Lenk had said nothing.

Someone else had.

" _Stay_ ," it had uttered through his mouth, " _we kill._ "

Whoever had spoken had leaned over her, stood with flesh grey as stone and eyes blue as winter.

Someone not Lenk...

"Whichever of you did whatever," Denaos added with a grimace, " _someone_ seems to have hit the demon back... rather hard."

"The demon." Kataria's head snapped up. "What happened to it?"

The Omen hopped across the sand, sweeping bulbous eyes over the chaos. Despite the smoke seeping into the two gourd-like organs, the thing did not so much as blink. It recalled, vaguely, in what served as its mind, that there had been more of it just a moment ago.

Then there was noise, noise that hurt its ears. It didn't care for that noise, so it stayed away. Now, there were none of it left. It turned about, faced the sea and tilted its head. There was one of it there moments ago, it believed. It chattered its teeth, calling to the other.

All that answered it was the sound of wind and a great, black shadow quickly falling over it.

"Disgusting," Gariath muttered, wiping thick, black fluid off the sole of his foot.

It wasn't so much the texture of the thing's blood, reminiscent of a large beetle's, that irritated him as it was the smell. He cast a dark scowl over the beach: sand still pumping acrid smoke into the air, fighting the stinging salty reek for dominance, as the stinking panoply of electricity, blood and fear congealed into a fine, vile perfume.

With a growl, he gave the Omen's corpse a kick, sending it spiralling through the air like a feathery, blood-dripping ball to plop at the top of a heap of similar misshapen amalgamations. Gathering them in one spot did nothing for the odour.

With a sigh, Gariath thrust his snout into the air once more, testing it. Nothing but the stink of carnage and fire reached his nostrils. He found his fists tightening of their own volition, his skin threatening to burst under his claws. Every whiff of the air only brought him more of the same stinks, denying him any other scents.

_So close_ , he snarled internally, _I was so close. I was right on top of it... then THIS!_

The beach's odour had struck him like a wave, drowning all other aromas. It was only because of its sheer overwhelming stench that he had come to it and found two worthless humans agonising over two other worthless humans.

At that moment, he had excused himself to hunt down the remaining Omens that had been hopping aimlessly around the sands. He needed something to vent his rage upon and crushing the tiny parasites seemed only slightly more appropriate than crushing his companions; besides, one of them was already dead.

The Omens, of course, had provided no sport whatsoever. They merely stood there, idle, waiting to die. They didn't even make a sound when he stepped on them, save for one final chatter of teeth.

"Barely worth killing," he muttered.

"Well, thanks for doing it, anyway," someone spoke up.

He found his mood further soured with the appearance of his companions trudging up the beach, the pointy-eared one barely standing. He snorted contemptuously at her.

"Don't look so weary," he growled, "it's not as though being killed is some vast ordeal." He spat on the ground. "If it was so hard, not everyone would do it."

"Well, thanks for that," she replied, blinking at the large pile of lifeless Omens. "So... been busy?"

"Hardly," he grunted. "Whatever was here before you did all the work."

"Before?" Asper cocked a brow. "I didn't see anyone else."

"Well, you didn't think those two imbeciles could have done all this, did you?" He swept a hand out over the beach, levelling a finger at the frogmen, still frozen even as the sun scattered the last of the smoke. "There were others here. You _could_ smell them, if you were me." He snorted. "But you're not."

"A shame I live with every waking moment," Denaos muttered. "Who else was here, then?"

"Longfaces," Lenk replied curtly. "The Abysmyth said as much before it died."

"It did," Kataria agreed. "I found tracks to support it, too."

"You can tell how long someone's face is by their tracks?"

"I can _tell_ how many people were fighting, idiot," she snarled back. "Not that I needed tracks to tell me there was a fight around here."

"Regardless," Lenk continued, "whoever these people were and however long their faces are, they didn't leave anything behind to let us know what they're up to."

"What they're up to?" Asper sounded incredulous as she gestured to a nearby tree, split apart by whatever magic had rent it. "How could anyone that does _this_ be up to anything we want to be a part of?"

"Leave it to a zealot to leap to conclusions," Denaos countered snidely. "What our dear floor-kisser is missing is the fact that these longfaces not only did this, but they also did _that_."

He didn't even have to gesture to draw everyone's attention to the hanging Abysmyth.

A particularly fierce gust of wind kicked up, causing the creature's lanky legs to rattle against each other, flecks of charred skin peeling off. The icicle spike that kept it impaled in the air showed no signs of thawing in the sun, shining ominously as its scorched captive continued to stare up at the sky through empty eye sockets.

"How is this even a matter for debate?" Denaos held his hands out helplessly. "We want Abysmyths dead. Longfaces kill Abysmyths. We should, obviously, find them and kiss whichever part of their anatomy will make _them_ die instead of _us_."

"Afraid of a little death, are we?" Gariath mused grimly.

"Yes, I am afraid of death," the rogue responded curtly, "that's a brilliant observation." He turned to Lenk. "Listen, you, of all people, must see the wisdom in this. These aren't pirates we're fighting. Whatever help we can get, we need."

"I didn't think you would want to share the reward," the young man replied.

"I'm wagering our yet-unseen friends don't do this for mere gold."

" _Mere_ gold now?" Asper feigned shock. "Have you found a higher calling, Denaos?" She held up a hand to ward off his retort, turning to Lenk instead. "It's not necessarily a _bad_ idea to seek out aid, but whoever did this to the beach clearly didn't have any notion of restraint. Given the circumstances, it'd seem a mite smarter to make sure they won't incinerate us before we throw ourselves upon their mercy."

"The point is moot for the moment," Lenk shot at both of them at once. "The longfaces aren't here. We are." He cast a glance towards Gariath. "You've been poking around up here for a while. Found out anything?"

"About what?" the dragonman asked.

"Well, for starters," the young man pointed behind them, "how about that?"

The corpse of the second Abysmyth, face-down in a pool of its own black humours, was not exactly difficult to miss. If it were even possible, the thing seemed far fouler in death than it had in life, with its emaciated limbs twisted about its hacked and hewn body, arrow shafts jutting from its black skin, one stump of an arm reaching for the shore as though it still sought to crawl to the safety of the sea.

It was not what was leaking out of the demon that caused Kataria's breath to go short, but rather what was jammed into it.

Jutting from the creature's back, the cross of its hilt shining triumphantly in the sunlight, Lenk's sword glittered with a menace it had never showed her. Whereas before it was merely one weapon amongst many, now the blade seemed alive, smiling morbidly in its steel, remembering well what it had done to the beast.

When the others started stalking towards it, she found herself hard pressed to follow.

"So," Lenk began, placing his hands on his hips and staring at the corpse, "what have you found out?"

The dragonman merely rolled his shoulders. "It's dead."

"Well, hell." Denaos sighed dramatically. "Are the rest of us even needed here? It sounds like the lizard's become so good at this necropsy business as to render Asper obsolete." He sneered. "Though, frankly, it's tricky to decide which one's nicer to look at."

"Keep squeaking, rat," Gariath snarled in reply, "and we'll have _two_ corpses to admire."

From seemingly nowhere, he produced something long and black and waved it menacingly at the rogue. It was only after a moment and a sudden wave of nausea that the other companions recognised the Abysmyth's severed arm.

"And one of them will have _this_ ," he paused to pluck a stray Omen corpse up from the ground, "and _this_ crammed into it." He smiled unpleasantly. "Your choice as to what gets stuffed into which end."

"It's far too late in the day for this." Lenk sighed. "You can kill each other once I don't have need of either of you."

"Kill," the dragonman snorted contemptuously, " _each other_?"

"Fine." The young man rolled his eyes. "You can kill Denaos once I don't need him any more."

"I rather take offence at that," the rogue snapped.

"That was likely why I said it." Lenk waved the tall man's concerns away and returned to the corpse. "Now, we know it's dead. We just need to know what killed it."

"Oh, come on," Kataria said hotly, "isn't it obvious?"

Myriad glances cast her way as though she were a mad-woman indicated that it was not. With a snarl, she swept up to the corpse and all but seized Lenk's sword and throttled it, so fervently did she gesture.

"The damn thing has a _sword in its back_! That's quite typically fatal, you know."

"True," Denaos replied, "but if you can point out anything typical about a giant fish-man-demon-thing, I'd love to hear it."

"They can't be harmed by mortal weapons." Asper nodded. "We've seen it. Whatever killed the Abysmyth, it wasn't Lenk."

"But I saw—" Kataria's protest was slain in her mouth at the sight of Lenk's stare, hard and flashing, levelled at her like a weapon itself. Instead, she looked away and muttered, "I saw it die."

"You didn't see Lenk kill it, though." Denaos pushed his way past her and knelt beside the body. As he extended a hand, stopping just short of its leathery hide, he glanced over his shoulder concernedly. "We're sure this thing is dead, right?"

"Sure." Gariath scratched at his chin with the demon's dismembered claws. "If it isn't, though, the worst that can happen is we lose you."

"Acceptable losses," Asper agreed.

"Oh, you two are just a pair of merry little jesters," he hissed. Without sparing another moment for them, he began to trace his fingers down the creature's hide, no small amount of disgust visible on his face. "As I was saying, Lenk didn't kill it. Poison did."

"That can't be right," Lenk muttered, coming up beside the rogue. "I didn't see any poison on it."

"What the hell did you think this stuff was?"

The rogue ran a finger down the edge of one of the creature's wounds, pinching off a few flakes of green ichor, now dried and dusty. He rubbed it between his fingers, brought it to his nose and blanched.

"Granted, it's long past its bottle life, but this is potent stuff." He brushed his hands off. "Someone was carving our dear friend up with an envenomed weapon long before you ever hacked at it." He flicked one of the more prominent tears in the creature's flesh. "Have a glimpse. These wounds are fresh, even though the venom is old. You remember what happened when Mossud harpooned the thing, right?"

"It healed instantly." Lenk nodded as he rubbed his shoulder in memory of the thrashing the creature had given him. "The damn thing didn't even flinch."

"From _your_ attacks, maybe," Gariath snorted.

"So why haven't these lacerations healed?" Denaos winked knowingly. "The wounds were trying to close, but the poison kept them from doing so. Rather potent stuff, actually. I haven't seen anything this vigorous before."

"These wounds, though, are tremendous." In emphasis, Lenk reached out and flicked an arrow shaft that Kataria had sent into the thing's heart through a tear the size of two fists side by side. "I've seen some big swords in my time, but nothing so big as to make such a mess."

"The wounds didn't start that way." Asper elbowed herself into the huddle, pointing to some of the larger rips. "See, the edges of the skin are frayed. The poison ate at the flesh, probably continued to do so up until the thing was dead." She raised her eyebrows in appreciation. "Not unlike a parasite."

"I remember." Lenk nodded. "The green stuff was pulsating." He looked over his shoulder to Kataria. "You saw, didn't you?"

"Yeah." She nodded weakly. "Like it was breathing."

"So," Denaos bit his lower lip, "these longfaces are in possession of a... _living poison_?"

"And you wanted to kiss their rumps," Asper shot at him smugly. "Dip your lips in iron, you smelly little sycophant."

"Well, if you're such a genius," he snapped, "maybe you can tell us what did," he paused to gesture over the scorched beach, " _this_?"

"Isn't it clear?" She paused, held up a hand in apology. "Pardon me. Isn't it clear to everyone who isn't a colossal moron?" She nearly decapitated him with the sharpness of her smirk. "Think. What else do you know that can turn sand black and make ice that doesn't melt in the sun?"

"Magic," the rogue replied, "but—"

"Precisely," she interrupted, "and who do we know who knows something about magic?"

"Dreadaeleon," he answered, "however—"

"See? Even _you_ can solve these tricky little issues with the miracle of thinking." She rose, dusting her hands off with an air of self-satisfaction so thick as to choke even the smoke. She set hands on hips and glanced about the beach. "Now, if Dread would just come up and tell us a little bit about... uh..."

It occurred to her, at that moment, that they had mentioned the subject of magic and had been able to go three breaths without a familiarly shrill voice chiming in with some incessant trivia. She was not alone in her realisation, as Lenk nearly collapsed under the weight of his sigh.

"Right, then," he muttered, "who lost the wizard?"

"He was with the lizard last I saw," Denaos replied. "Maybe he stopped to sniff a tree or something."

"Where is he, then?" Asper immediately turned a scowl upon the dragonman. "What'd you do with him?"

"What makes you think I did something to him?" Gariath replied, raising an eyeridge. "Isn't it possible that he got lost on his own?"

"Well..." Her face screwed up momentarily. "I suppose that's possible. I'm sorry." She sighed and offered him an apologetic smile. "So, where was he when you last saw him?"

"Writhing on the ground and not breathing."

"Oh." She blinked. "Wait, what?"

"I resent you _assuming_ that I beat the stupid out of him until he was lying in a pool of it." He folded his arms over his chest. "But, as it stands, I did."

Asper's jaw dropped. Whether it was from the shock of the dragonman's actions or the sheer casualness with which he reported them, all she could do was turn to Lenk with a look that demanded he do something.

The young man, however, merely blinked; he suspected he ought to do something about it, if he had been at all surprised that such a thing had happened. Instead, he sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose and cast a glance around his companions.

"Well, you know the routine," he said. "Fan out, find him or his body and so forth and so on."

"Searching for someone we're supposed to care about who was possibly _murdered_ by someone else we're supposed to care about is _not_ supposed to be _routine_ ," Asper shrieked, stomping her foot.

"And yet..." Lenk let that thought dangle as he reached out to retrieve his sword. "Anyway, split up." He cast a fleeting glance over his shoulder. "Kat, you're with me."

"What?" She did not mean for her voice to sound as shocked as it did. "Why?"

"What do you mean, 'why'?" Lenk shot her a confused look. "That's how we always do it."

"Selfish," Denaos muttered under his breath.

"Well, yeah, but..." Her eyes darted about the beach like a cornered beast's. "It's just that—"

"If you don't want to go with me, fine," Lenk snapped back, possibly more harshly than he intended. "Go with Gariath or whoever else you feel you'd prefer to claw, stab or insult you in the back." He seized the handle of his sword and gave a sharp jerk. "All I'm doing is trying to keep people from getting killed."

No sooner had the steel left the Abysmyth's corpse than the sky split apart with the force of a scream.

Lenk staggered backwards, falling to his rear and scrambling like a drunken crab as the beast, as though possessed, spasmed back into waking life.

Eyes as vacant as they had been in life were turned to the sky as the fish-like head threw itself backwards, jaws agape and streaming rivers of black bile from the corners of its mouth. Heralded by a spray of glistening ebon, it loosed a howl unlike any sound it had made while alive. The noise stretched for an eternity, forcing the companions to choose between gripping weapons and shielding their ears as the shriek echoed off every charred leaf and ashen grain.

Bile streaming from its mouth turned to black blood streaming from every gaping wound in the creature's flesh. Liquid poured with such intensity as to make the creature's entire body seem like a great half-melted candle. As the thing continued to scream, it became clear that it was not just bile that wept from its body.

There was a grunt of surprise from Gariath and all eyes turned to see the severed arm begin to jerk and spasm with a life of its own. The dragonman growled once, then hurled the appendage at the corpse, as though such an act would stop it.

Instead, both member and dismembered began to react as one. Black flesh turned to wax, wax turned to ooze, ooze turned to blood. The creature's flesh began to peel from it, exposing greying bones and settling in a puddle around the thing's knees. The scream intensified with every inch of skin sloughing off and the flesh only crept more quickly with every moment the Abysmyth shrieked.

Only when the last traces of the creature's face dripped off, leaving a fish-like skull gaping at the sun, did the creature finally fall silent.

Leaving no time to curse or pray to various Gods, the pool of black sludge that had been the Abysmyth began to move. It twitched once, rippled like tainted water, then began to creep across the shore like an ink stain, moving slowly towards the sea. A gust of wind kissed the beach; the grey skeleton fell forwards and clattered into a pile of bones.

The tension lasted for as long as it took for the screaming echoes to silence themselves. It was only when everything was silent, save for the waves taking the molten flesh back into the water, that Lenk spoke.

"Spread out," he whispered, "find Dread. Kat, you're with me."

# _Eighteen_

# TO KILL AGAIN

Gariath searched the air with his nose, greeted by the same scents he had encountered before: salt and trees. The stink of paper and ink that followed the human boy wherever he went were lost on the wind and in the dirt, and while he did detect traces of dried animal excrement, they weren't the odours of the particular excrement the wizard was fond of drinking.

For a time uncountable, Gariath had to pause and wonder why he was even searching.

It was but one more wonder to add to a running, endless list he had been keeping ever since deciding to follow the humans. Chief amongst them, now, was why they insisted on fanning out to search for the little runt. Surely they must have known that he, a _Rhega_ , would find the boy first.

Why even bother attempting to find him without Gariath? Even searching solitarily as he was, there was no chance they would so much as catch a whiff of the boy's farts before he did. They were too slow, too stupid, their noses too small and underdeveloped.

"Stupid little..." His curses degenerated into wordless mumbles.

Of all the creatures that walked on two legs, he offered grudging, unspoken admiration only to Lenk. Despite the shame of having no family and the humiliation of being shorter than most humans, the young man was bold, disciplined and the only one worthy of something just a shade lower than genuine praise amongst the otherwise useless race.

It was unfortunate that Lenk had chosen to go with the long-eared human. Strong and swift, with a healthy contempt for her round-eared fellows, she might have deserved something a shade lower than what he attributed Lenk, had she not the brain of a squirrel.

The two tall humans were naturally inept at all things: fighting fairly, fighting intelligently and, of course, finding anything. The brown-haired woman was too proud in her false Gods to smell the earth. The rat would run away, leaving a yellow trail, at the first whiff of danger.

And, of course, the human boy had found danger. He was born with a dark cloud over his head, a curse of spirit and body, born of a shamed family and supported by a far more shameful life. The scrawny human was estranged from his father and mother, a wicked omen of itself, and far too feeble to overcome such hardship through the proper channel of bloodshed.

After all, how could one kill to honour one's family if one's family was not worth killing over? Most humans suffered from such a fate.

Fortunately for them, their wretched Gods loved them just enough to allow them the privilege of walking in a _Rhega_ 's tracks. The chosen of the spirits, born of red rock shaped by furious rivers, the _Rhega_ were the only creation of the world ever to have turned out right. This, he reminded himself, was why he allowed them to walk behind him. They needed him, as sheep needed rams. How else would they survive?

_They'd find a way_ , he thought with a sigh. Luck and stupidity, both desirable traits to them, were things they had in ample supply.

He sighed again, stuck his nose into the air and inhaled deeply. No stink of human.

And yet, this time, he did not lower his snout.

Instead, he sniffed at the air once again, felt his heart begin to pound, ear-frills fan out attentively. The aroma filled his nostrils with memory and he summoned visions and sounds through the scent: clawed footprints in the earth, wings beating on the air, rain on heavy leather, uncooked meat on grass.

Rivers and rocks.

The boy was forgotten, humans disappeared from his concerns as he fell to all fours and rushed along the ground, following the scent as it wound over roots, under branches, around rocks and through bushes. He followed it as it twisted and turned one hundred times in as many breaths, each time growing fainter.

_No, no, no_ , he whimpered inside his head.

The footprints in the earth became his own as he retraced them.

_Not now!_

The sound of wings beating on the air became the whisper of waves.

_I've almost found you..._

The scent of rain was suddenly tinged with salt.

_Please, don't go yet!_

Rivers and rocks became sand and surf.

He was on the beach suddenly, the forest behind him and the scent gone, a snake stretched too thin around the tree trunks. He rose, turned and thrust his nose into the air. Nothing filled his nostrils. He inhaled until the inside of his snout was raw and quivering and the stink of salt water made him want to vomit.

And salt water was all he received.

The sensation of weakness was foreign to Gariath. He had not felt weak in such a long time, not when blades kissed his flesh and cudgels bounced off his bones; yet he could remember the feeling well. He had felt it once before, so keenly, when he held two bodies not his enemies' in his arms, stared into their eyes as rain draped their faces in shrouds of fresh water.

He had collapsed then, too, as he did now.

He had wept, then, too.

Drops of salt clouded his senses, but not so much that he could not perceive the new stink entering his nostrils. He did not stop to consider what it might be, whether it was something he ought or ought not to kill. His sadness twisted to fury as he drank deeply the aroma and began to anticipate when it would soon turn to the coppery odour of blood.

Fuelled by anger, he tore down the beach on all fours. When he sighted his prey, he stopped only to consider how she might die.

She, for it reeked of womanhood, was pale, beyond even the ghostly sheen of the pointy-eared human. She was so pale as to appear insubstantial, as sunlight shimmering on the sea. Hair the colour of a healthy tree's crown cascaded down her back, its endless verdancy broken only by the large, blue fin cresting her head.

_The Abysmyths have such a fin_ , he thought resentfully.

She was a mess of angles, frail and delicate and wrapped in a wispy sheet of silk that did barely anything to hide the glistening blues and whites of her skin. Through a nose little more than a bony outcropping she exhaled a fine mist. At her neck, what appeared to be feathery gills fluttered.

As vile as she was to behold, the sight of the young boy with stringy black locks in her hands was far more disgusting.

The wizard lay with his head in her lap, a look of contentment creasing his face, as though he were a recently suckled infant. And, as though soothing an infant, the female creature ran webbed fingers through his hair. Through lips a pale blue, she hummed a tune unearthly, one that carried over waves as it carried through the boy, sending both into comatose calmness.

What might temper the sea, however, could not cool the blood of a _Rhega_. She sought to sing him deaf; his ear-frills twitched. She sought to sing his eyes shut; they widened. She sought to carry his bloodlust from his shoulders; he vowed to set it upon hers with two clawed fists.

The fate of the boy was irrelevant; whether she cradled his ensorcelled breathing body or his ensorcelled corpse, she would find herself in a far deeper sleep than she had put him into.

Gariath's wings unfurled like red sails. His hands clenched into fists so tight as to bloody his palms. His terrifying roar seized her weak song and tore it apart in the air. Upon all fours once more, he charged, levelling his horned head at her frail, angular mouth.

It would feel good to kill again.

Lenk staggered as he stumbled over a tree root, kicking up damp soil and leaves. With a sigh, he glanced down at the earth; whatever modest trail had been present was now nothing more than a smattering of dirt and tubers. _If there ever was a trail there at all_ , he thought to himself, discouraged. How Kataria routinely made it look so easy, he would never know.

Which begged another question...

"Why aren't you in front?" he asked over his shoulder.

The shict started at his voice, as she had started at every sneeze, cough and curse to pass his lips for the past half-hour. She quickly composed herself, taking a gratuitous step backwards, placing her even further away from him.

"It's good practice," she replied quickly. "You need to learn this sort of stuff to survive."

"Not so long as I've got you around."

"Well, maybe I won't always be around," she snapped back. "Ever think of that, dimwit?"

"Is there something you want to tell me?" The question came with a sigh, knowing full well that whatever she wished to tell him, he wished not to hear. "You've been skittish ever since we left the corpse."

"Imagine that," she sneered, "near-death experiences leave me a bit jumpy."

"Sure, jumpy." He glanced down to the bow drawn in her hands. "Are near-death experiences something you'd like to share? Because you've had that damn thing drawn and pointed at me for the past half-hour."

"Don't you blame _me_ for being cautious."

"Cautious is one thing," he replied. "You're just being psychotic now. And while I've never begrudged you that before, I have to ask," he tilted his head at her, frowning concernedly, "what's wrong?"

Her reaction did nothing to reassure him.

She shifted nervously for a moment, hopping from foot to foot as she glanced about the forest clearing as though noting all possible escape routes. She did not lower her bow, nor relax her grip on its string. She had all the anxiety of a nervous beast while at the same time regarding him as though he were some manner of bloodthirsty predator.

He knew he ought not begrudge her such a mannerism; she had only barely survived the Abysmyth's touch. Surely, he reasoned, fear and panic were reasonable reactions. But towards him? Towards the man who had saved her? Towards the man who thought of her as not just a shict?

He found his hands tensing of their own volition and quickly fought to relax them. Something within him, however, fought just as hard to keep them in fists. Something within him spoke.

" _Ignore her_ ," it uttered. " _If she wishes to scorn us, then let her rot here while we do our work. There will be more Abysmyths. We know this._ "

He clenched his teeth, straining to ignore the voice. His thoughts were glass, however, and the voice was a vocal rock. He felt them shatter and when the voice spoke again, it was a thousand echoing shards.

" _LEAVE._ "

" _KAT_!" he shrieked.

She looked at him, ears twitching as though she could hear what brewed within him. With a grunt, he forced a new face, a frown of concern and narrowed eyes. _Don't upset her_ , he told himself, _don't let her hear it..._

"Listen," his voice sounded strained to his ears, "you can tell me. I'm not the enemy here."

She cocked her head uncertainly at that. Once more, something shattered within him. His heart contracted under her wary stare and he felt his face twist to match the pain in his chest.

"Kataria," he whispered, "don't you trust me?"

"Usually," she replied.

Her face nearly melted with the force of her sigh as her shoulders slumped, lowering her weapon. Such an expression brought him no relief; she seemed less remorseful and more weary, as though the thought of talking to him was a surrender.

"Do you remember the Abysmyth?" she asked.

"Uh," he blinked, "it's rather a hard thing to forget."

He felt his heart go numb at the sight of her stare, dire and sharp as an arrowhead.

"Fine," he continued, "no, I don't remember it. I can barely remember anything past meeting the damn thing on the beach."

"You... _met_ it?"

"And had a conversation with it." He nodded. "It's rather a polite demon, if you catch it between dismemberings."

"You said you barely remembered anything." She seemed unimpressed with his humour. "What _do_ you remember?"

_Voices. Or rather_ a _voice, in my head. Icy and angry. Told me to pick up my sword and kill the demon. Told me a hundred times. Told me to kill, to slaughter, to rip it apart. And I did. And I know I shouldn't have been able to, but I was. I killed the damn thing and I don't know why. And when I did, it laughed. The voice laughed and I wanted to laugh, too. I wanted to laugh like a madman and dance in the thing's blood._

_That's what I remember._

He told her none of this. Instead, he looked up, and replied in one word.

"You."

It was not exactly the entire truth, but though it was no lie, Kataria's frown seemed to suggest that she did not quite believe it. He fought back a sigh and instead took a step forwards, feeling at least some relief when she did not tense up, retreat or bolt outright. Instead, she regarded him carefully with a hint of that same probing curiosity he hadn't come to miss before she looked at him like he was a lunatic.

"I saw you," he continued, unhindered, "I saw you shoot the Abysmyth. I saw the Abysmyth pick you up and I saw you go still and cold as a fish. Then, I saw you drop."

"And you know why I dropped?" she asked.

He blinked, shook his head.

"Because of _you_ ," she replied, "because _you_ cut the demon's arm off, because _you_ killed it."

"I didn't kill it."

"I'm fairly sure you did."

"We settled this already," he replied, "the poison killed it. The longfaces killed it."

"It didn't stop moving until you put your sword in it."

"The poison took its time, then."

"Why are you denying this?" She seemed as if she wanted to snarl, to spit the words. Instead, she could only shake her head at him. "I saw you, too. I saw _you_ kill the demon. I saw _you_ save _me_." Her frown twisted and Lenk could see that her heart sank as well. "Why are you denying _that_?"

_Because_ , he thought, fingering the hilt of his sword, _the Abysmyth can't be hurt by mortal weapons._

He longed to say such a thing to her, if only so that she might know why he couldn't say it. Instead, he could do little more than roll his shoulders, shake his head and sigh. She returned the expression and, without any fear, walked past him to take the lead.

Her shoulder brushed against his; she felt cold.

"So," he spoke up, desperate to ease the tension, "do you see anything that I might have missed?"

"Nah." She crouched to the earth, glancing over the jungle soil. "Something came through here, but I can't tell who or what. Nothing's clear."

The leaves shook in the trees. Birds fled in a sudden burst as a thunderous roar split the forest apart. Kataria rose to her feet, following Lenk's gaze out and away, towards the distant shore.

"That is, though."

Gariath could tolerate wounds of all kinds: piercings, cuts, gashes, bruises and assorted scrapes were things he could remember, things he could touch, things he could respond to. For those few injuries that drew no blood and beat no flesh, he had no patience.

"Stand still!"

He lashed a claw at the female and, again, she stepped away from him. This routine was becoming quite tiresome. The creature's relentless darting hardly irritated him as much as the serene expression she wore, unflinching, beyond offering him a congenial smile.

"There's no smiling," he snarled, "in _battle_!"

His roar drove his fist as he rammed it forwards, preparing to pulp her placid expression. Her sole defence was an upraised hand, a demure smile and a gentle hum.

Music filled his head, smothering him like a tide. His howling seemed so quiet, so meek, his muscles like jelly. When he opened his mouth to curse, he felt his jaw drop and hang numbly. Summoning what remained of his fury, he lunged forwards, arms flopping out before him like flippers.

And then they were lead weights, pulling him to the ground with a crash.

He roared, or tried to roar, both at himself and at her. He tried to rise, to crush her jaw, rip out her tongue, smash her face in so that she might only sputter out a tune with notes of broken teeth. His body, however, would not answer him. His eyelids became heavy like his arms.

A sweet, soothing darkness enveloped him.

The female tilted her head at him, gills flickering curiously, her gaze lingering only for a moment before she glanced up at the sound of shrieking.

The arrow bit angrily through the air where her head had just been, spitefully taking a few strands of green hair as it sped past her and sank into the sands beyond. The female blinked through eyelids that closed like twin doors and regarded the two pale shapes at the distant end of the beach.

"What the hell was that?" Lenk cried, punching Kataria in the arm. "Shictish archery, my left tes—"

"She moved," the shict spat back, "she _moved_ , damn it!" Shoving him away, she drew another missile and narrowed her eyes at the wispy creature. "I'll get her this time."

Like a silk-swaddled bellows, the female's chest inflated, mouth opening so wide as to threaten to dislocate her jaw. The arrow was lowered in momentary curiosity. Shict and man stared dumbly as the female took one step forwards, turned her mouth upon them and screamed.

The noise was shrill, getting shriller; annoying, Lenk thought through his fingers, but little more than that.

Kataria seemed to disagree.

Collapsing next to her bow, the shict writhed upon the ground, shrieking as she clawed at notched ears that withered like roses. Her legs kicked as she proceeded to bash her head against the sand, straining to pound the noise out of her head.

That left two companions down, Lenk thought, more than enough reason to stick a sword into something.

His weapon was up as he charged towards the female. Her alien features did not cause him to falter; he had killed things much more ferocious than her. He aimed at a spot between her breasts, undoubtedly where her heart was. If it wasn't there, he reasoned, he'd just keep stabbing until he found something.

It was going to be messy. He found himself smiling at that.

It was only when he drew close enough to see her eyes that he hesitated. She cocked an eyebrow, or rather an eyeridge, at him, smiling. He returned the gesture with a confused expression.

_Who_ , he wondered, _smiles at someone charging at them with a sword? It's like the stupid thing doesn't even know I'm about to kill it._

Even as he continued to advance, his sword held high, still she did not seem to recognise his intent. She cocked her head, regarding him curiously. Good; better that she focus on him than look behind her. Better she lock eyes with him than be tempted to follow his gaze over her shoulder.

If she did, she might have seen Denaos looming up behind her, a long knife clenched in one hand.

The rogue's scowl was as cold as his hand was quick. He slipped a gloved hand around and clasped it over her mouth, bringing his dagger up beneath her chin as she tried momentarily to struggle against his long fingers.

"Shh," he whispered as he might to an infant, "no sounds, no singing." The tip of his blade scraped the bottom of her chin. "Don't you scream."

" _STOP!_ "

Had the command come from anyone else, Denaos would have cut out her jugular and autographed it before anyone could object. However, the shrill, excited voice forced his blade to a trembling halt a hair's width from turning the female into a cut of choice meat.

He glowered over the woman's head at the boy standing on trembling legs before him. His face was grave, breath ragged; hardly the sort of visage that should expect to have its commands obeyed, Denaos thought resentfully.

"She needs our help," Dreadaeleon gasped, even speaking an ordeal.

The rogue glanced from Gariath, unconscious, to Kataria, squirming like a worm on the ground, back to Dreadaeleon.

"What, seriously?"

"Let her speak," the wizard said, nodding furiously, "and she'll explain."

"Don't do it, Denaos," Lenk ordered, "she just struck Gariath dead."

"The lizard's still breathing," Denaos noted. "I'd be hard pressed _not_ to release her had she actually killed him." He tugged her closer, bringing his knife a little further up. "As it stands—"

" _STOP!_ " Dreadaeleon shrieked again. "She hasn't hurt them. Kataria and Gariath will both be fine!"

"Here's a funny fact," the rogue spat. "Even if you say something a heap of times, it doesn't actually make it come true." He levelled a murderous scowl upon his captive. "We should kill her before she has a chance to do to us what she did to _them_."

"She won't!" the wizard protested.

"Well, of course she won't if I stick her now."

"I mean she won't at all," the boy added hotly, "not if you let her go. Otherwise, she might—"

" _Not_ if I jam a six-finger piece of steel in her face," the rogue interrupted. "Sweet Silf, man, try to keep up."

Dreadaeleon made a motion to protest further, but instead turned two big, brown, puppy-like eyes to Lenk, pleading.

"Lenk, she means us no harm. You've got to believe me."

"Oh, that's fair," Denaos sneered, "go to Lenk for aid." He turned to the young man. "The boy might have been bewitched by her. Who says his words are his own?"

" _I_ say that you _might_ be an imbecile but it's far more likely that you're a bloodthirsty moron! She was only defending herself!"

"She attacked us first!"

"Gariath attacked _her_ first!" The boy gritted his teeth. "Gariath _always_ attacks first!" He looked to Lenk once more, eyes going so wide they might roll out of his head. "Lenk, _please_..."

The young man remained unmoving, silent for a long moment. He glanced from the unconscious dragonman to the curled-up shict, to the creature with green hair who looked remarkably calm for a woman-fish-thing that had a knife to her throat. He only spoke when the stand-off was joined by a red-faced Asper rushing up to meet them.

"Asper," he gestured with his chin, "have a look at Kat and Gariath. See if they're well."

"What?" she asked, breathless. "Who's well? What's happening?" She glanced over at the strange captive. "Who's she?"

"We're a little busy here, Asper."

The priestess seemed to want to argue, but had no breath for it. With a muttered curse and a wave of her hand, she stalked towards her prone companions.

"Release her, Denaos," Lenk commanded. "Keep your knife ready, though. Gut her if she moves funny."

"She's going to move funny eventually," the rogue grunted. "It'd be easier to gut her now."

"Just do as I say."

With a grudging snarl, Denaos took a cautious step away, releasing the woman. Both he and Lenk kept their weapons at the ready as the young man approached the creature with a grim look in his eyes.

"If you've injured anyone here," he uttered, "I'll take your head before he has a chance to gut you." He flashed a threatening gaze at Dreadaeleon. "And if _you_ try to stop me, Denaos will take _yours_."

He let that threat hang in the air as all parties exchanged wary glances. All save the female, who merely smiled as she opened her mouth and spoke in a lyrical, reverberating tune.

"If all death threats have been finished, I should like to solicit your aid."

# _Nineteen_

# LOUD AND NEEDY

_W hile all men can lie through their mouths, and a select few have a talent for lying through their eyes, no man can disguise intent evident in his buttocks._

Lenk's grandfather had said that, or so the young man thought, and while it seemed almost insulting that he would ever find cause to recall such a morsel of wisdom, there was no denying that it was applicable.

Buttocks were firmly entrenched, steeped in tiny sand pits carved of hatred and suspicion. Only Lenk's glare, perpetually flitting between his companions, kept them seated.

It had taken no small effort to get them there in the first place. After discerning that Kataria and Gariath were well enough, it took the strength of all mortal creatures and the possibility of an impending execution to bring their buttocks to the earth in a circle.

Ensconced between them, like a wiry silver battle line, Lenk kept his sword naked in his lap, eyes darting between his companions and the pale creature across from him.

She was a sight that demanded attention. Her features were human enough, in principle: a face filled with discernible angles, five fingers and toes, though webbed, and a long river of hair, though bright green. Her feathery gills, vaguely blue skin and the crest that occasionally rose upon the crown of her head, however, left the young man's buttocks clenched with caution.

Yet whenever she spoke, they became uncomfortably loose.

"I am once again asking for forgiveness." Her voice was audible liquid, slithering on ripples into his head and reverberating throughout. "Had I known you meant no harm, I would not have used my voice."

Lenk frowned at that; before now, he hadn't thought of a voice as a weapon. Before now, he wouldn't have believed it could be used as one.

"WHAT'D SHE SAY?"

He cringed at the sound of Kataria as she leaned over and yelled at him.

"SHE APOLOGISED," he shouted back.

"YEAH, SHE BETTER!" the shict roared.

"Apologies, again," the female said meekly, "the deafness should subside before too long."

"WHAT'D SHE SAY?"

"It's already been too long," Lenk muttered, waving down his companion. "For the moment, your apology is accepted." At a snort from Gariath, he added, "By everyone who matters, anyway."

"I suspect we might feel a degree more comfortable if we knew your name," Asper offered congenially.

"As well as knowing whatever the hell you _are_ ," Denaos added, cocking his head at the female. "I mean, how are you even _speaking_ right now?"

"She has a mouth," Dreadaeleon muttered, rolling his eyes.

"I mean speaking our language," the rogue retorted. "How does some kind of fish-woman-thing learn to speak the human tongue?"

"Don't be crude," Asper chastised, turning to the woman sympathetically. "You're more woman than fish, aren't you?"

"I..." The female appeared to be straining to express befuddlement. "I am neither fish nor human, though I have spoken extensively with both in my time."

"So you only _talk_ to fish." Denaos sighed. "This is going to be another of those conversations I'd rather not hear, I can tell."

"Then feel free to leave," Dreadaeleon snapped. "We can accomplish much more without you here."

"We could accomplish much more without all of you jabbering like apes." Lenk fixed a glower upon the female. "All right, then... we know how you can speak our language, now tell us what you are."

"She's a siren, obviously," the boy interrupted.

"A what?"

"Impossible," Denaos said with a sneer. "Sirens are a myth."

"Yesterday, so were demons," Dreadaeleon pointed out.

"Demons are a force of pure destruction that want nothing more than to rip us open and eat our innards. It's easy enough to believe such things could exist." The rogue shook his head. "Sirens are a legend to explain away navigational errors. Fish-women that lure men to their doom with deadly songs and promises of raucous, violent coitus? Unlikely."

"Listening to you," Asper sneered, "you'd think everything unexplained desired raucous, violent coitus."

"I have yet to be proven wrong." The rogue's eyebrow raised appreciatively at the siren. "Or have I?"

"The young lorekeeper refers to the name that humans are comfortable with calling my kind," the mysterious female replied fluidly. "I have never thought of myself as anything requiring a name, however. I am a child of the deep, born of the Sea Mother and charged to warden her waters and protect her children."

"Fine job you're doing of that," Gariath growled, "what with the giant demons prowling about." He reared up, rising to his feet; buttocks were tensed immediately, but remained in their seats. "Why are we even having this conversation? If you weren't all so stupid, you'd see what she is." He levelled a claw accusingly at the crest atop her head and snarled, " _She's_ one of _them_."

Lenk supposed the resemblance to the Abysmyth ought to have occurred to him earlier, as did most of his companions. Tensions rose immediately, daggers were drawn, claws were bared, and even Kataria seemed to figure out the dragonman's accusation accurately enough to nock an arrow. Asper glanced to Lenk, wide-eyed and baffled, but even she seemed to stiffen at the declaration.

Before he could make a move to join or restrain his companions, however, Dreadaeleon acted first.

"She... is... _not_!"

With barely more than a flicker of his fingers, he was on his feet, propelled by a burst of unseen energy beneath him. And, apparently envisioning himself as a particularly underdeveloped gallant, stepped to intervene between the woman and the dragonman. Quite unlike the vision his stand conjured up, however, the finger he levelled at Gariath, crackling with blue electricity, delivered a much more decisive message.

"And don't think I won't fry you where you stand if you take one more step forwards."

"The only thing I _don't_ think is that there'll be enough of your treacherous little corpse left to paint the beach with after I'm done with you," Gariath snorted, apparently unimpressed.

"You tried to kill me just _today_ ," the boy warned, his finger glowing an angry azure. "That didn't pan out so well, did it?"

"If I had tried to kill you, you'd be dead."

"Gentlemen." Asper sighed, exasperated. "Can we not do this in front of the siren?" Met with only a snarl and the crackle of lightning brewing, she turned an incredulous gaze to Lenk. "Aren't you going to do something?"

That sounded like a good idea; however much Gariath would like to believe differently, Dreadaeleon's magic was more than capable of reducing things far larger than a dragonman to puddles.

Lenk's attention, however, was less on the boy's finger and more on the rest of him: on the way he stood so confident and poised, on the way his eyes were clear enough to reflect the blue sparks dancing across his hand.

"You're using magic again," he said, more for his own benefit than the wizard's.

"At least _someone_ noticed," Dreadaeleon growled.

"You could barely walk after the crash." Lenk leaned forwards, intent on his companion. "What happened?"

At the question, the boy seemed to forget his impending evisceration. He lowered his finger, magic extinguished, and beamed a smile at the young man. With all the propriety of an actor, he stepped aside and gestured to the siren, who merely blinked and smiled.

"She did it," he said, "with her song."

Lenk felt his heart quicken a beat. "You can heal," he whispered, "with your song?"

"It is within my power to soothe." She nodded.

His mind quickened to match his heart, a flood of thoughts streaming in. The siren could heal... no, not heal, soothe. She could soothe Dreadaeleon's headache, an affliction that no known medicine could cure. She could soothe the mind.

And perhaps, he thought, the voices within it.

"Sit down." He waved a hand at Gariath.

"What?" The dragonman growled. "Why?"

"I want to hear what she has to say," he replied. "Not that I'm promising anything, but if Dreadaeleon believes in her, we should give her a chance."

"The little runt came within an inch of betraying us," Gariath snorted, "and the last thing _she_ said made the shict deaf."

Lenk tensed himself at the mention of Kataria, not for any anticipation that she might yell again, but for the fact that he suddenly felt her gaze upon him. Glancing from the corner of his eye, for he did not meet her stare directly, he imagined she could be looking at him for any number of reasons: explanation, impatience...

Or perhaps his suspicions were right and, deaf as she was, those giant ears could still hear his thoughts.

"If I held attempted murder against everyone in this group," he said calmly, looking away from the shict and towards the dragonman, "then we'd never get anything done. He's entitled to at least _one_ attempt on your life for all the times you've actively attempted on his."

The dragonman's glower shifted about the circle, from the siren to the young man to the boy, then once more around the others assembled. Finally, he settled a scowl upon Lenk.

"You couldn't stop me, you know," he grunted.

"Probably not." Lenk shrugged.

"Good. So long as we all understand that." He snorted, took a step backwards, settled upon his haunches and scowled at the siren. "Talk."

The female blinked. "In regards to..."

"Start with your name?" Asper offered. "I believe that's where we left off before we decided to act like raving psychotics."

"I... I do not have a name, I am afraid," she replied meekly. "I have never had a use for one."

"Everyone needs a name," Dreadaeleon quickly retorted. "What else would we call you?"

"Screechy." Denaos nodded. "Screechy MacEarbleed."

"Don't be stupid," Asper chastised. "She needs something elegant... like from a play."

"Lashenka!" Dreadaeleon piped up, enthused. "You remember the tragedy, don't you? _Lament for a King._ She looks like the young heiress, Lashenka."

"Sounds too close to Lenk." The priestess tapped her chin. "Were there any other players in it? I never saw it on stage. For that matter, was it any good?"

"It was... decent. Nothing too thrilling, but worth the silver spent."

" _Silver?_ When did theatre become worth that kind of money?"

"Well, this particular one had the Merry Murderers, the troupe from Jaharla, and—"

" _Enough._ " Gariath was on his feet again, stomping upon the ground angrily. He snorted, levelling a claw at the siren. "Your name is Greenhair. Get on with it."

"Greenhair?" Asper scratched her head. "It has a certain charm to it, but I'm not sure that—"

"Tell me," Gariath almost whispered, "can you finish that thought with your tongue torn out and shoved in your ear?"

"I don't—"

"Do you want to find out?" With a decisive snort, he glowered at the siren. "Her name is Greenhair. Get on with it."

"It's a fine name." Lenk nodded. "Just so we're all on even footing, though, our names are—"

"There is no need." The siren held up a hand while casting a smile at Dreadaeleon. "I have been informed, Silverhair, of much of who you are and what you do in the Sea Mother's domain." Her smile broadened. "And I expect it is by Her hand that I meet you now."

"Rather high praise," Lenk muttered. "But you said you needed our help."

"And I thank you for it."

"Save your thanks," he replied. "I didn't say we'd give any."

A smile played across her features. Lenk felt his hand unconsciously resting on his sword; something in the creature's gaze was unsettling. Absently, his thoughts drifted back to the Abysmyth. This thing expressed as much emotion in a twist of pale blue lips as that thing could not in a cacophony of shrieks.

"Your... callings are not unknown to me." She did not so much as flinch at his bluntness. "You are... adventurers, yes? And adventurers seek compensation for their trials. Such is the way of the sea. What is given must be earned, what is earned is not easily lost."

"If that's a lot of fancy talk for gold, then I'm interested." Denaos eyed the wispy silk she wore. "I dare suggest I'd be more than tempted to help you if you planned on showing me wherever you hid it, though."

"I have no riches for you, Longleg." She shook her hair. "What I offer, however, is something more precious than gold. Something you have lost."

Lenk leaned forwards again. He could sense the word resting on her tongue as a hedonist sensed a tongue resting on something else.

"I am informed," she said, so slowly as to drive him wild, "that you seek a tome."

Buttocks tightened collectively.

Not a single face remained unchanged at the word. Expressions went alight with various stages of greed, hope and anticipation. Even Kataria's eyes seemed to widen, if only at the simultaneous reaction amongst her companions. Lenk himself could not imagine what his own face must have looked like, but fought to twist it into stony caution nonetheless. The last time someone had mentioned a tome to him, it had led to him and Kataria nearly being slaughtered.

He had since come to treat the word warily.

"What do you know of it?"

"What I have been told by the lorekeeper and what I am able to conclude on my own," the siren replied. "The tome was lost. You, specifically, wish to find it. I am at once filled with joy and sorrow for you."

Lenk felt his face twitch; good news never began with those words.

"You don't know where it is?" he asked.

"I know where it is," she replied. "I have seen much, heard much from the fish before they fled at the presence of the demons." As if reading his thoughts through his eyes, she nodded grimly. "The two you discovered on the blackened sands were but the sneezes and coughs of a sickness with many, many symptoms."

He almost loathed to ask. "How many?"

"Many," she said simply. "They have risen from the depths of the ocean that the Sea Mother has forgotten. They have tainted the waters, as they do all things, and blackened the sea such that no living thing remains between here and their temple."

Her voice changed suddenly. What had begun as liquid song that slipped through his ears soundless became heavy and bloated, a salt-pregnant wave that seemed to steal the air from the sky as she spoke.

"The fish shall be the first to flee, being closest to their taint. The birds shall be chased from the sky. The clever beasts shall hide where they can. The brave will die. As will all things that walk upon land. Mortals drown. Sky drowns. Earth drowns. There shall be an unholy wave born of no benevolent tide. Nothing shall remain... save endless blue."

_Endless blue._

That phrase had passed through fouler lips before. Lenk tightened his grip on his sword, holding it firmly in his hand, but still in his lap. There would be time to dwell on cryptic musings later.

"Swim to the point, then," he growled. "What does any of this have to do with the tome?"

"Consider it a warning," she replied, unhurried, "passed through all children of the Sea Mother of what shall come to pass if that foul thing of red and black remains in the possession of the demons. It is a reminder of all that the Kraken Queen craves, all that her children seek to return her for."

"And the actual location of the tome?"

"It is... not here."

"Well." He slapped his knees with an air of finality. "Thanks for that, I suppose."

"Not here," she continued, undeterred, "but close. You are but an hour away from it, in fact."

"Now that _is_ helpful." Denaos, who had previously been lying on his back and scratching himself, rose to his feet and stretched. "Let's get it and put this whole fish and prophecy business behind us, aye? Screechy here knows where it is."

"I do." The siren nodded. "And I know what guards it."

Denaos paused mid-stretch, sighed and sat back down.

"Of course you do."

Lenk was less rattled. It was rather apparent that the siren would not be telling them this purely for the sake of their aversion to being choked by ooze.

"What do you want from us, then?" he asked.

She stared at him without expression, spoke without hatred or fury.

"I want you to kill, Silverhair."

_That figures._

"Kill... what?"

"I take no great pleasure in asking you, but the plague must be cleansed. The Sea Mother's dominion must be restored."

"So you want us to kill more Abysmyths."

"Curb as many symptoms as you can, yes, silence the coughing and the wheezing where necessary. But for a plague of this nature to be cured, the tumour must be cut out."

Her lips pursed tightly, eyes narrowed as her utterance reverberated through them like a dull ache.

"You must kill the Deepshriek."

A moment of silence passed before Lenk sighed.

"You're going to make me ask, aren't you?"

"They..." The siren paused, looked at the ground. "It... was once like myself. A child of the deep, a servant of the Sea Mother... but no longer. Long ago, when the skies were painted red and She still befouled the mortal seas, the Kraken Queen sang to the Deepshriek and the Deepshriek listened. Now... it is her prophet, the one who shall return its mistress and mother to the waking world." She looked back up at Lenk with a swiftness fuelled by desperation. "Unless you take the tome back to whatever foul hand it came from."

Lenk hesitated at that, leaning back and sighing. Frankly, he thought, he could have done with just being told the location of the tome _without_ hearing the inane claptrap of a deranged sea beast. As it was, the temptation of a thousand gold pieces was slowly beginning to lose its lustre.

He suddenly became aware of Kataria sitting next to him, a blank expression on the shict's face. Leaning over, he yelled.

"SHE SAID THE TOME IS—"

" _I HEARD WHAT SHE SAID!_ " the shict snapped back violently. "The deafness wore off ages ago, you stupid monkey."

"Oh." He smiled meekly. "Well, great."

"Yeah—"

"This... is rather a lot to take in," Asper said breathlessly, as though just recovering from some unpleasant coitus. "Demons upon demons, tomes and diseases... it's hard to decide what to do next."

"If you're an idiot, I suppose," Denaos replied. "Obviously, we run."

"It's obvious to everyone without a spine, I suppose."

"I can guarantee you if we decide to go this route, the only spine you'll be seeing is your own as some Abysmyth... Deepshriek... or whatever rips it out and force-feeds it to you." He cast a glance about the circle. "Listen, I hate to reinforce your beliefs in my cowardice as much as I hate to be forced to be the voice of reason again, but let's consider a few things.

"First of all," he held up a finger, "we can't harm the Abysmyths and it's a decent bet we won't be able to harm something with an even weirder-sounding name. Secondly," he gestured over his shoulder towards the carnage at the other end of the beach, "someone else seems to have tried to 'cleanse' them without much luck."

"You speak of the longfaces," Greenhair replied.

"Seems they get around, too." Denaos rolled his eyes.

"I witnessed them... from afar. I saw the fire and ice they wrought upon the land." She leaned back, as though reminiscing fondly. "They were tall, powerful, skin the colour of a bruise and eyes the colour of milk. There were many, females all but for one male, the one who slew the Abysmyth with a spear of ice."

"I take it these longfaces didn't take the tome."

"No. By that time, the servants of the Deepshriek had taken it into their temple."

Lenk paused, stared hard at her. "What temple?"

She regarded him unflinchingly. "I will show you."

"Well, that's..." Denaos could not find the words to describe the sight looming before him. "That's... uh..."

"Impressive," Lenk muttered.

"Ominous." Dreadaeleon nodded.

"Vile." Asper blanched.

"Yeah," the rogue said, "something like that."

Like the hand of some drowning stone giant, scraping futilely at the sky as he took his final breath, the granite tower rose to claw at the orange clouds above. A plague of algae scarred its great hide, holes riddling its weathered skin like rocky wounds.

Brackish waves licked against the tower's base, rising and falling to expose the sturdy reef it had been wrought upon. Each time the waves recoiled from the stones, a jagged chorus of rusted spears, blades and spikes embedded in the rocks glistened unpleasantly with the fading sun.

Stomachs writhed collectively as the companions stared upon the impressive mass of impaled corpses in varying stages of decay held fast by the red spikes. Amongst the panoply, a few protrusions impaled incautious sea creatures; many more bore arms with fingers, legs with toes, bodies swaddled by clothing.

Lenk still had trouble believing they hadn't seen it before. Even ensconced on the far side of the island from where they had crashed, the thing was imposing enough to command attention from miles around.

"This is their temple," Greenhair explained with a shudder. "They conduct their rites and sermons within." She narrowed her eyes upon the tower. "Mortals once lived here, long ago. In those days, they called it 'Irontide'."

"And they aren't here any more?" Asper pointedly turned her head away as the waves recoiled once more. "Who... or what drove them away? The demons?"

"Other men." Denaos spoke before the siren could. "Irontide has a rather colourful repute amongst certain circles."

"Circles that begin and end in activities I've doubtless no pleasure in hearing about," the priestess muttered. "But do go on."

"Fair enough." The rogue shrugged. "As you probably know, the main export of the Toha Nations is rum, that being the only place in the world the drink's made. As a result, Toha was quick to extort as much tax gold as they could from other nations desiring the drink. Seeing a profit to be made, pirates were quick to sell illicit barrels of the stuff for far cheaper.

"Towers of this design," he gestured for emphasis, "were originally storehouses and protection against the Toha Navy." He pointed to the stone-scarred reaches of the tower's battlements. "You can see there what the Navy's catapults thought of _that_."

"I see." Asper swallowed hard. "And... the spikes?"

"First, they were for protection. Then they were used to make examples."

"Disgusting." She grimaced. "What a vile trick that so many lives should be wasted over a drink that has no purpose but to turn good people into sleazy harlots and swillers."

"That's not entirely fair," he replied brusquely. "The same, after all, could be said of any faith."

"You're actually comparing a house and faith of the Gods to smuggling?"

"They seem fairly alike to me. Crime and religion are the only two things that people are willing to both die for and kill over."

"Regardless of who lived here for whatever reason," Lenk interjected, taking a step forwards, "it appears to have new residents."

It was plain to see what he spoke of.

Plain and gruesome against the setting sun, a flock of feathers and bulbous eyes formed a white and writhing crown atop the giant. They milled about in great numbers, offering glimpses of hooked noses and yellow teeth that chattered endlessly.

"Omens," he muttered.

"Ah yes," Greenhair said coldly, "the choir."

Before Lenk could make any agreement, something caught his eye. At the centre of the huddled mass of parasites, a particularly large white tumour pulsated and writhed. He squinted; though it was larger than anything with feathers had a right to be, he could discern no features. He glanced over his shoulder, beckoned to Kataria.

"Have a look."

She nodded, stalking up beside him, and stared long at the tower. The assembled, in turn, stared long at her, expectant as a grimace crossed her face.

"What is it?" Lenk dared to ask.

"I really have no idea." Her grimace became a frown as she squinted, trying to find the words. "It's... big... like one of the Omens, except... bigger. I don't know... it's got hands and a face, but... it's upside-down, all angular." She scratched her head. "Well... hell."

"As good a descriptor as any," the young man muttered. "How many Omens?"

"At least twenty, though they all move around so much it's hard to tell."

"Scavengers." Greenhair's voice was rife with loathing. "They feed on the dead and grow glutted on suffering. What you have seen, Notch-ear, is their... enlightened form."

"Form?" Asper's eyes went wide. "Omens... change?"

"As they feed, yes. They are heralds, after all, and as they change, so too does the Kraken Queen grow in strength." She frowned. "To see one here, so soon, is... troubling."

"They don't seem to have seen us," Kataria noted.

"Nor will they, should we keep our distance," Greenhair replied. "In their smallest form, they are unthinking, oblivious. The greater one is present to ensure that they attack only what they are meant to attack."

"A watchdog." Lenk nodded. "With a pack of flesh-eating seagulls. Makes sense, given the circumstances."

"Not to mention a bunch of filthy, corpse-laden spikes," Kataria grunted, "and, if Omens _are_ heralds, there're enough of them to suggest quite a few Abysmyths inside."

"And that's where the tome was taken." Lenk bit his lower lip, sighed. "Lovely."

"Lovely, indeed." Denaos clapped his hands together. "Rusted spikes to skewer us, Omens to eat us afterwards, Abysmyths waiting to tear us apart barring more fortunate fates." He giggled, not a little hysterical. "If we're _really_ fortunate, a shark will eat us before we ever set foot on it." His giggle became a cackle. "No, if Silf _truly_ loves us, he'll send a lightning bolt to strike us down before we even try."

At that, he flung out his arms and looked to the sky expectantly. All he received, however, was a stagger forwards as Gariath shoved his way to the front.

"A death from a weak God for a weak rat," he growled, "the best you could hope for."

"Let's not get carried away," Kataria interrupted. "No one, as yet, has said anything about going in."

"Of _course_ we're going in there," Denaos snapped. "It's completely brainless, bereft of any logical reason and totally suicidal. Why _wouldn't_ we go in there?"

"It _does_ look fairly impenetrable." Asper frowned once for the fortress and twice for the fact that she agreed with the rogue. "It's too far to swim without being made into meat for the Omens and I doubt we could get our little boat over there even once we've repaired it." She squinted. "I can't even see a way in."

"There is but one," Greenhair said. "On the other side, amidst the rocks, there is a concealed opening. Seals slumbered by it before the Deepshriek desecrated this place."

"Regardless," Lenk muttered, "there's no way to reach it alive. If we aren't dashed against the spikes by a wave, the Omens will gnaw us to pieces."

"Not necessarily." Dreadaeleon scratched his chin. "I mean, watchdogs aren't the brightest things in the world. Toss a piece of meat out and you can sneak by one, easily." He glanced to Denaos. "I suspect you'd probably know more about that than I would, though."

"You want to distract them?" The rogue scoffed. "You plan to strip naked, smear yourself with faeces and do the jolly Omen mating dance?" He paused, tapped his cheek thoughtfully. "That _might_ work."

"Hm... I'm not sure," the boy replied, oblivious. "I might be able to do something about it, though. They're scavengers, right? Gluttons?" At a nod from Greenhair, he glanced out to sea. "So, if they _are_ anything like watchdogs, they're probably attracted to blood. In that case, all we need to do is turn the water from blue to red."

"Oh, is _that_ all?" Denaos sneered.

"It's not too difficult. In fact, with a glamer, it should be rather easy... in theory."

"Nothing with magic is ever easy, in theory or in practice," Denaos replied. "And what in Silf 's name is a... _glamer_ , anyway?"

"Glamer," Dreadaeleon said, "from the word 'glimmer'. It's just a small spectromancy spell, one of the lesser schools. It works on the theory of bending light to produce an image." He held up a finger. "To wit."

His hand danced in front of his face for a moment, a brief murmur expulsed from his lips. His skin shimmered, blinked, then distorted and when he turned back to the companions, he had full lips, long eyelashes and delicate angles. He batted his eyes and gave a demure giggle.

"Just like that," his voice was a sharp contrast to his new face, "except on a larger, more distant scale."

"That's... actually not a bad idea." Lenk nodded appreciatively. After an unbearably long moment, he coughed. "So, uh, are you going to stay that way or..."

"Oh, right." The boy waved a hand and returned his face to his own with another, equally feminine giggle. "Well, I would just lose my own face if it weren't laced on."

"Right... anyway, never say or do anything you did in the last few breaths ever again."

"We don't need magic," Gariath growled suddenly. "We don't need cowards, either." He thumped a fist against his chest. "We go in. We kill them as they come. We get the stupid book."

"It's all so easy." Asper rolled her eyes. "If we conveniently go insane and forget the fact there are Gods know how many frogmen and Abysmyths in there. Factoring in the Deepshriek, I'd _love_ to believe that we could make it in, I really would, but I doubt it." The waves receded, exposing the decaying buffet of flesh. "I _severely_ doubt it."

"But it is _not_ impossible," Greenhair protested. "I have heard the lorekeeper. He has told me much of what you have faced and fought before! He has told me the bravery of adventurers."

"He lied," Denaos spat. "Practicality dictates adventure, not bravery. Besides," he sniffed, " _you're_ not the one to risk your head getting eaten."

"Don't disrespect her," Dreadaeleon snapped. "She can help us."

"With what? Singing lessons? Unless she can hold you down while I pound sense into your pudgy head, she's useless to us."

"My head isn't pudgy." The boy's eyes flashed. "But my brain... is _HUGE!_ "

"Big enough to come up with a better idea?"

Lenk glanced at the rogue. "Can _you_?"

"As a matter of fact, I can." Denaos puffed up, ready to explode with self-satisfaction. "As much as I'd love to recommend running away, I _do_ like getting paid. Obviously, though, charging into a tower that is both ready to collapse _and_ brimming with demons isn't a good idea in any language." He shrugged. "So, why not just wait?"

"Wait."

"Wait." He nodded. "They'll come out, eventually, to do what demons do. Or we lure them out. Either way, we ambush them, take the book and _then_ run away."

"That's... not completely bad," Asper conceded. "They can't stay in there for ever, can they? If they plan to do something with the tome, they'll likely bring it out eventually."

"I suppose that passes for genius amongst humans," Kataria sneered. " _Leave_ the book in the hands of demons and _wait_ to see what they do with it? You stupid monkey."

"And how do you plan to saunter your mighty shicty self in?" Asper snapped back. "Are you going to swim in and hope they think your huge ears jutting from the waters are just a white fish with two fins?"

"Miron," she poked the priestess hard, " _your_ almighty lord and master, said himself that we can't leave the tome in their hands." Her ears twitched threateningly. "And, frankly, your ear-envy is just sickening."

" _EAR_ -envy?"

"Miron isn't the one risking everything." Denaos stepped up beside the priestess.

"And you would risk _anything_?" Gariath's laugh was a derisive rumble as he loomed over the man. "Your eyes and breeches both go moist at the first sign of trouble. The _Rhega_ spit in the eyes of death and demons."

"Oh, it's not _my_ death I'm afraid of," the rogue hissed, "I'm utterly terrified of the idea that you and I will _both_ die and I'll have to share my heaven with some scaly, smelly reptile."

"There is no heaven for rats," Gariath snarled, shoving the rogue. "They get tossed on the trash heap and rot in a hole."

" _ENOUGH!_ " Kataria's cry temporarily skewered the argument. As an uneasy silence descended, she glanced towards Lenk, staring absently across the sea. "And what do you say? You're the one who usually chooses between bad ideas."

"Oh, is that what I do?"

He had no more words, only eyes, and they were fixated upon the fortress. The sun was dying at the horizon, descending into a blue grave, and the impending darkness seeped into his thoughts.

One Abysmyth, he reasoned, was invincible. It was a vicious brute capable of ripping people apart and drowning them on dry land, sometimes inflicting both on the same person. The fact that there was more than one had seemed a nightmare too horrifying to contemplate earlier that day.

The fact that there were more than _two_ , discounting how many multitudes of frogmen and Omens accompanied them, was too horrifying not to contemplate.

In light of _that_ fact, all plans seemed equally insane, save the unspoken idea of just turning around and leaving.

_And yet_ , he thought, _not even Denaos has suggested leaving..._

Further, he had entered a contract; not just an adventurer's agreement, but a contract, penned and sealed with promises. He had sold his word to Miron Evenhands, for one thousand pieces of gold.

_A man's word, no matter how expensive it might be, is the only thing of any real worth a man can give._

His grandfather had told him that, he was certain.

_Don't forget, though, that honour and common sense are mutually exclusive._

His grandfather had also said that.

"Lenk?"

He felt Kataria prodding him, breaking his reverie.

"I..." he inhaled dramatically and his companions held their breath with him, "am hungry." He sighed and so did they. "And tired."

With that, he turned from the fortress and began to trudge away. They watched him for a few moments before Denaos spoke up.

"What? That's it?"

"Night is falling," he replied. "If I'm going to my death, it can wait until I've had dinner."

# ACT THREE

# _The Mouth, the Prophet, the Voice_

# _Interlogue_

# DON'T ASK

_The Aeons' Gate_

_Ktamgi, a few days north and east (?) of Toha_

_Summer, getting later_

_So, why be an adventurer?_

_Why forsake the security of a mercenary guild, the comfort of a family or the patriotism of a soldier to serve at the whims of unscrupulous characters and perform deeds that fall somewhere in the triangle of madness, villainy and self-loathing?_

_To be honest, I hadn't actually asked myself that for awhile. Don't misunderstand; I asked myself all the time when I first began doing this sort of thing, three years ago. I don't recall ever finding an answer..._

_Eventually, one begins to accept one's lot in life, adventurers included, so I suppose I'd say the chief reason people stay with this, let's be honest, rather abhorrent career decision is out of sheer laziness. But that doesn't really offer an answer to the chief question, does it?_

_Why_ do _it in the first place?_

_Freedom, perhaps, could be one reason: the need to be without the beck and call of sergeants, kings or even customers. An adventurer is as close as you can get to that sort of thing without declaring yourself outright a highwayman or rapist. Hardly any profit in the latter, anyway._

_Greed is certainly another factor, for though adventurers don't get hired often, we do typically end up with whatever gold we acquire along the way from robberies, plundering or looting... which might be why we don't get hired very often._

_That aside, I think the real reason is the first one: laziness._

_Wait, let me rephrase._

_Comfort._

_There's precious little of it to be found in an adventurer's life, it's certain... and maybe that's why we pick up a sword or a bow or a knife and decide to do it. It makes sense, doesn't it? We all want comfort, in one way or another._

_Asper wants the comfort of being able to provide comfort to others in the name of Talanas; being an adventurer gives her plenty of opportunity._

_Dreadaeleon wants the comfort of knowing he did everything he could to make himself and his art stronger; again, plenty of opportunity._

_Gariath wants the comfort of knowing he did everything he could to reduce the population of every non-dragonman species; I suspect there's a greater reason, but I haven't had any inclination to endure the head-stompings that asking would entail._

_Denaos wants gold, I suppose, but why our gold is anyone's guess. He could get gold anywhere else. Maybe he just wants the comfort of knowing he's close to people as scummy as himself._

_Kataria... is a mystery._

_She has everything people who adventure typically don't have: family, identity, security, homeland. Granted, I know only as much about shicts as I'd heard in stories and what I've learned from Kataria, but such things, and she's bragged as much, are abundant in shictish society. If she had stayed with them, she'd undoubtedly lead a happy life hunting deer, raising little shictlets and perhaps killing a human or two._

_As for me... maybe by staying near her I can remember what having those things is like..._

_... The family and identity part. Not the killing humans part. Though I suspect I've done enough of that to warrant at least a nod from the shicts._

_To that end, I briefly considered asking her to stay behind today._

_If I die, there's nothing much that will be sorry for my loss. A dead child is a tragedy. A dead man is a funeral. A dead soldier is a loss. A dead adventurer is a lump in the ground and possibly a round of drinks from his former employer. If Gariath or Denaos die, there'll just be one less murderer running loose. If Asper or Dread die, they'll have done so for a cause and, thusly, not in vain._

_But if Kat dies... people will mourn._

_I would have liked to tell her to stay... but, alas, I am an adventurer and it's true what Denaos said: practicality, not bravery, is what drives us._

_And having her as a part of my plan is very practical._

_The following sentence will undoubtedly prove to be the point of identification in this particular saga where I ceased to be merely foolhardy and became totally mad:_

_I've decided to go into Irontide, after the tome._

_Thus far, I've determined the best means of procuring said book will be through stealth. And, with that in mind, it should come as no surprise that I've decided to divide us up for that purpose. It should come as no further surprise that Gariath won't be coming along._

_Nor will Asper or Dreadaeleon—they are too squeamish and too curious, respectively, to be of any use. Denaos, however, is both a thug and possessed of a particular aversion to what lies inside. He'll be perfect._

_Kataria is a stalker and a hunter. I need keen senses in there, too; if Gariath's nose can't come, I'll gladly settle for Kat's ears. Her bow will be a welcome asset, as well._

_With that in mind, the rest of the plan falls pretty easily into place. Dread's glamer, we're hoping, can apparently draw out the Omens... and the big one, too. If that doesn't work, we'll find a way to lure them away long enough for us three, who I've deemed "Team Imminent Evisceration," to swim across and find our way in._

_The remainder will stay behind to watch out for anything, to fix the boat... and to carry what's left of us back to Miron should we fail. Now, I don't mean our remains, since if we_ do _fail, there's most certainly not going to be enough left of us to sprinkle on gruel, much less bury._

_But Greenhair, for all her shrieking, made clear something that had plagued me for a while._

_These aren't pirates we're fighting. They're demons. Their goals aren't loot and murder, but resurrection. They, themselves something that should not be, are trying to summon something that_ definitely _should not be. And they're succeeding, if a bigger Omen is anything to go by._

_If we do fail, I trust Asper, at least, to make it back to Port Destiny to tell Miron exactly what's going on._

_Dawn is approaching. After a less than satisfying meal of jerky and fruit, my intestines are in working order and my rear is tightly clenched. If I do die today, I most certainly will not be going out soiled._

_I'll write more if I make it out._

_Hope is ill-advised._

# _Twenty_

# THE PLEASANT LIES

The dawn was shy, too polite to come and chase the stars away, contenting itself to slowly creep into the twilit conversation one wisp at a time. The seas caught between night and day in shiftless masses of molten gold and silver. The night had yet to fade, the dawn had yet to break; the world was mired in an indecision of purple and yellow.

Absently, Lenk wished for more than just a meagre piece of charcoal to sketch the scene.

His desire was for naught; there hadn't been any quills in the companion vessel's cargo. He'd likely miss the flaky black stuff when the time came to build a fire, but for now, all it was good for was writing and sketching.

A breeze cut across the sea, heavy with the cold salt of the pre-dawn mist. It slithered across his body like a frigid serpent, and went unheeded. He rarely felt the cold any more. Rain and winter, sun and spring, all felt the same to him: a faint tingle, a passing shiver, and then nothing.

He paused, staring blankly at the journal in his lap.

He couldn't feel cold any more...

"You're up early."

He was torn from further thought by the sound of her voice. Kataria stood behind him, clad in doeskin breeches and shortened green tunic, staring at him with some concern, ears twitching and naked toes wriggling in the sand.

"Yeah," he said, returning to his sketch.

Her footsteps were loud and crunching against the moist sand; that wasn't good. When she didn't bother to hide the sound of her feet, it usually meant she wasn't going to hide any other sounds she might make.

"You didn't eat much last night." She took a seat beside him.

"We need to ration." He didn't look up. "Gariath eats enough for two men, Denaos eats more to spite Gariath." He allowed the corner of his eye to drift over her slender, pale form. "You didn't eat much either, and you're up as early as I am."

"My people don't eat or sleep as much as humans." She didn't even bother to hide her smirk. "We don't need to."

"Mm." Even his grunt was half-hearted, long past hearing or caring about the numerous self-proclaimed advantages of shicts.

"I didn't know you drew." She peered over his shoulder and blanched.

"Mm."

"You're terrible at it."

"Mm."

"You don't seem to understand how this works. I say something to you, you say something back, we fight, maybe someone bleeds. That's how we communicate."

"Too early," he replied. "I'll stab you in the eye a little later and we'll call it a day."

"I won't be in the mood later." She leaned over his lap, making him stiffen. "What do you draw, anyway?"

"Those islands to the north." He simultaneously gestured to three faint specks of greenery as he shoved her away. "I hadn't noticed them until today." He tapped the charcoal to his chin. "It's possible that one of them is Teji. Seems worthwhile to sketch it, don't you think?"

"You don't want to know what I think. What else do you draw?"

Before he could answer, her hands darted out like two pale ferrets. Before he could protest, they snatched the journal out of his lap. Cackling unpleasantly, she tumbled away from him, evading flailing fists. With a deft leap, she rolled to her feet and began to thumb through the pages, strolling away with an insulting casualness.

"Hm, yes." She scratched an imaginary beard, eyes darting over the pages. "Seas... gates... demons... hope." She smacked her lips. "A little morbid, you think? It needs a bit of editing. Skip all this gibberish about humans and stick to the parts about shicts."

"It's for reading, not wiping."

His hands closed murderously about empty air as she sprang away. Backpedalling without the slightest hint of caution, she continued to peruse.

"Just as well, I'm not so much the literary sort."

"More of the illiterate sort, are you?"

"If you could be half as clever in your writing, you might actually have some value. Let's see if your drawings are half as terrible."

"What? Wait a moment!"

"A moment to you is an eternity to me." She nimbly evaded his hands as she noted the various sketches scrawled in charcoal. "Not bad, I suppose. If you ever lose your will to fight, you can hack out a living with a piece of charcoal and a dream, can't you?"

She was prepared to slam the book shut and hurl it at him as he took a menacing step forwards when a frayed edge of parchment caught her eye.

"What's this, then? Something worth reading amongst such drivel?"

No sooner had the page turned than her feet froze in the sand. Her eyes went wide at the sight before her: an image that looked almost wrong in the midst of Lenk's writings. With an elegance she had not seen in his other drawings of demons, landscapes and other combinations of equally boring and horrifying subjects, the page seemed less a sketch and more a memory, revisited frequently in the strokes of charcoal and ink.

It was slender, a wispy figure traced in smooth lines upon the parchment, hair long and unbound, fluttering like wings behind a naked, rigid back. Everything about the figure was hard, fighting against the softness of the lines and winning effortlessly. Even its eyes, brighter than black ink should allow, were fierce and strong.

It wasn't until she noted the pair of long, notched ears that she heard his feet thunder on the shore.

He lunged, wrapped arms about her middle and pulled her to the earth in a spray of sand. She was breathless as he straddled her waist; whether from the drawing, the blow or the physical contact, she did not know. He loomed over her in a burst of blue, two eyes bright and dominated by vast, dark pupils. She found no memories of what that stare had once lacked, only a desire not to look away, a desire to meet his gaze.

And to smile.

Such a feeling lasted for but a moment before she spied the journal held high above him like a weapon of leather and paper. With a snarl, he brought it down and smashed it against the side of her face.

" _OW!_ " She shoved him off and scowled as he skulked away. "How is _that_ , to any race, a reasonable reaction?"

"Based on the fact that a man's journal is his sole refuge from the vile and uncouth elements of the world he chooses to name as his companions," the young man replied snootily. "And, as a violator of that refuge, I invoked my Gods-given right to bash your narrow head with that refuge."

"Disregarding the obvious fact that your logic is completely deranged," she pulled herself to her feet, "why so secretive about it, anyway? It's not like I haven't seen anything you put in there."

His stride slowed at that, suddenly afflicted by some degenerative disease that forced him to walk, then trudge, then stop with a painful finality, rigid as a corpse in an upright coffin.

"These are my thoughts." His whisper cut through the air like a knife.

"Well," she gritted her teeth, feeling his voice rake against her flesh, "I mean, they're fine and all, but—"

"But what? You've seen them before, have you?"

"No, but—"

"Heard them, then?"

"Not exactly."

" _Exactly._ " He whirled on her, hurling his scowl like a spear and skewering her upon the sands. "You don't _see_ my thoughts. You don't _hear_ my thoughts. You don't know _anything_ beyond what your self-important shicty self believes you do." His mouth went tight as he tucked the journal under his arm and stalked away. "Let's not ruin that special relationship we share."

He had barely taken two steps before he felt her reply impale him and hold him fast.

"I know you don't dream."

Lenk forced himself not to turn around; he would not give her the satisfaction of seeing his eyes widen, would not let her hear his heart skip a beat. The sound of the waves was suddenly uncomfortably quiet, the creeping of the mist far too slow for his liking.

"Not like other humans, at least," she continued softly. "Yours are fevered and wild. You snarl and whimper in your sleep."

"And what tells you this?" he replied, just as soft. "Whatever mental illness passes for shictish intuition?"

"You cry out in the night from time to time." Her voice was emotionless, denying him any anger and any opportunity to end this conversation. "Not loudly, not lately, but you do. I've seen it."

His breath caught in his throat. Suddenly, her hand was on his arm, the naked flesh of her fingers pressing against this rapidly tensing bicep. Though desiring not to, though he shrieked at himself not to, he turned and stared into her twin emeralds.

In the year he had known her, he had become accustomed to so much of her: her savagery, her ears, her profoundly morbid laughter. Even her near-total disregard for human life was something he had learned to accept about her. Her stare, however, was something he knew at that moment he would never feel comfortable under.

She never condemned him, never judged him; never did an emotion flicker in the endless green. Her face was blank, mouth small as eyes were wide. He felt vulnerable under her gaze, beyond naked, as though she stared through flesh, bone, sinew, past what some people might call a soul and into something else entirely.

And for all that he strained to deny her, he could not help but stare back.

"What do you dream about?"

"Dawn is rising. The others will be getting up soon." That he seemed unable to pull himself from her was a fleeting thought. "Go and bother one of them."

"Do you dream of your family?" Her grip tightened on his arm. "Do you see them when you close your eyes?" She clenched his hand in hers. "Lenk... is it them you hear?"

"Shut _UP_!"

He ripped himself from her with a shocking ease, meeting her stare with a scowl. Where her eyes were a vast, passionless green, he felt his brim with a scornful blue. He suddenly felt very cold.

"I don't need your interrogations." His voice leaked between his teeth in a frigid cloud. "I don't need your sympathy. I don't need to talk about this and I'm not going to."

At once, her gaze lost its distance and lack of expression. It flitted like that of a beast, darting between fear and resolve, squirming between trembling and firmness. In response, his grew harder, going deep and narrow like a dagger's cut. His jaw clenched, his hands trembled at his sides.

"I _need_ you to stop _staring at me_."

The journal fell to the sand. The sound of it crashing upon the earth echoed through the dawn.

When he turned, all of nature fell silent behind him. The morning took on a thick and oppressive sentience, the mist twisting to angry fingers that sought to impose themselves between the two companions to make room for another presence.

Someone else seemed to step between them, carving a stand with icy feet and turning a hostile, eyeless scowl upon the shict.

And she did not yield.

She had felt it before, seen it walking behind Lenk as an envious shadow, seeking to push others away as it sought to pull itself forwards. She had seen it pull itself into him, overcome him, become him.

She did not fear it, not any more, not for herself.

"Sorry..."

His body shrank with his sigh. She grunted in reply.

"You remember seeing me fall," she said. "Do you remember what happened next... with the Abysmyth?"

"I don't."

"You do. I do." She took a tentative step forwards. "I was alive... awake long enough to see it. You fought well, better than I'd ever seen you."

"Thanks."

"It wasn't you fighting, though." Her voice was hesitant, even as her stare was steady. "It wasn't you who knelt over me. It was someone else." She forced herself to stare out over the sea. "Someone with eyes that had no pupils."

Lenk offered no reply. The beach was reluctant to speak for him, its waves quiet and breezes humble. She rubbed her arms, feeling rather cold at that moment, caught between the silence of the sea and him.

Between them both stood someone else.

She took a step to the side, quietly, as if to get away from the presence. Immediately, she felt a bit warmer, but not because of any removal from an imaginary presence. It wasn't until she felt much warmer that she glanced out of the corner of her eye to see Lenk standing in her footprints, staring out over the ocean, silent.

And they were content to say nothing.

"I can barely remember it."

He shattered the silence with a murmur.

"I don't remember how they died, only that they were dead." His eyes were blank and empty. "I remember shadows, fire... swords. There was no one left afterwards." His eyes turned downwards. "I woke up in a barn, a burned-out thing. I had hidden, I don't remember why I didn't fight. I don't remember whose barn it was, I don't remember what house it was closest to. I don't remember anything about my mother, my father, my grandfather but their faces..."

She heard his eyes shut tight.

"Sometimes... not even that."

He turned away, made a move as if to leave and let the cold presence take his place. Her hand shot out, seizing his and pulling him back.

"I don't want to talk about this," he whispered.

She squeezed his hand, turned him to face her and smiled.

"Then don't."

A breeze sang across the sea, heavy with waking warmth. As if possessed of a sense of humour all its own, it pulled their long hair up into the sky, strands of silver and gold batting playfully at each other.

The stars disappeared completely. The sun found its courage in the murmurs of the forest and the shore's crude symphony. Day rose.

"Time to go soon, huh?" She glanced out at the orange horizon. "I should probably prepare myself."

"I haven't even told you my plan," he replied. "You might not even be involved."

"Of course I'm involved," she said with a smile. "I'm the smart one."

She patted a pouch at her belt before darting off down the beach, long hair trailing behind her. Lenk watched her go and found a smile creeping of its own accord onto his face. She was pleasant company indeed, he thought, and her imminent death would indeed be a tragedy.

In moments, the sounds of her fleeting feet were replaced by a decidedly lazier step. Lenk glanced over his shoulder to spy Denaos approaching, scratching himself in all manner of places that hardly needed bringing attention to. Hair a mess, vest hanging open around his torso, he casually slurped at a tin cup brimming with coffee.

"Good morning." He paused to take a long sip, glancing at Kataria's diminishing form. "My goodness, driven her away at last, have you? Did I miss something fun?"

"Solitude and tranquility," Lenk grumbled.

"Both hard to come by." He nodded. "I'd be rightly irate, were I you."

"What are you doing up, anyway?" The young man tilted his head at the rogue. "You don't usually stir before midday unless you have to piss or you're on fire."

"First of all, that only happened once. And I couldn't sleep. Everyone was keeping me up."

"Everyone, huh?"

"Everyone," he grunted. "Gariath snores like the beast he is and Asper snores like the beast she ought to resemble. Dreadaeleon and his green-haired harlot were the worst, though."

"What, he wanted a lullaby?"

"Apparently so." The rogue shrugged. "He says her songs help him focus his Venarie or clear his mind or empty his bowels or some equally stupid wizardly garbage, I don't know. At any rate, the little trollop of the sea apparently doesn't _need_ to sleep, so she just hums all the Gods-damned time." He quirked a brow. "What were you two doing, anyway?"

"Not sleeping, same as yourself," Lenk replied.

"Unfortunate." He shook his head and sipped. "I'm not sure what the procedure for marching into a demon's nest is, but I'm certain it requires at least eight hours of rest. You can't scream for mercy if you're yawning, after all."

"I'm going to miss these little chats."

"Well, I'll burn a candle for you later, if I happen to remember in between offering thanks to Silf that it wasn't me who got his head eaten."

"Oh?" Someone giggled. "You think your God loves you enough to spare you that?"

Both men glanced up, expecting to see Kataria, though neither seemed to recognise the creature stalking towards them. It was her height, same slender build, same pointed, notched ears, but it wore an entirely different skin.

Jagged bands of glistening black warpaint alternated down her body and arms, giving her a dark, animalistic appearance. Her broad canines were white against the two solid bands of black that covered her eyes and mouth. Her ears, also painstakingly painted, twitched excitedly.

"Impressive, isn't it?"

"Not precisely the word I'd use to describe you." Lenk looked her up and down. "And yet... I feel compelled to ask—why?"

"Why not?" She rolled her black shoulders. "I'm about to go to war, aren't I?"

"We've done that before," Lenk replied, "and I've never seen you like... this... What the hell are you supposed to be, anyway?"

"A shict about to receive the favour of her Goddess," she said proudly. "When the land is smeared with bodies, Riffid will look down and see my colours," she thumped her chest, "and know that it was Kataria of the sixth tribe who killed them."

"I see." Lenk didn't bother to hide his cringe. "So... you expect to make a lot of kills today?"

"You really are stupid, aren't you?" She grinned and tapped a particularly large stripe on her belly. "This is camouflage, you moron. We're going into some place likely rather dark and, if you hadn't noticed, I'm paler than a corpse."

"Convenience, I'd say." Denaos sipped his coffee. "I mean, if you've got the pallor of a dead body, that's one less step before you're actually dead. I suppose the paint will let me know which corpse is yours when you wash up on shore."

"If you live to see her die," Lenk said.

Denaos stared at him blankly, disbelief straining to express itself in his eyes as a particularly venomous curse strained to break free from his lips. Lenk, for his part, merely smiled back.

"As the shict said, your God doesn't love you nearly as well as you'd hope."

The rogue paused, opened his mouth as if to say something, but could find nothing more than a sigh to offer.

"I take it, then," he said, "that you've given some thought to the recovery of our precious tome."

"I have." Lenk nodded.

"Thusly, you've no doubt a plan."

"I do."

Denaos stared at him, purse-lipped, for a moment.

"And?"

The young man smiled gently. "And you're not going to like it."

# _Twenty-One_

# A SERMON FOR THE DAMNED

The frogmen, this one decided, still had needs.

It, for it was now far beyond a "he," would have thought it slightly ironic, had this one still the capability to appreciate such a concept. This one had long ago grown past the desire for what it vaguely remembered as being needs. Comforts of family, of flesh and of company were no longer recalled; families died, flesh was weak, company had shunned him.

And yet, flashes of those necessities still clung frustratingly to this one, the claws of the weak and sorrowful creature this one had long ago sought to kill. While other frogmen had received Mother Deep's blessing and no longer felt the need for food or for air or for water beyond a body to immerse themselves in, this one still felt knots in its belly, could not remain underwater.

Nor, this one thought irately, could this one ignore the growing pain in its loins any longer.

Quietly, this one crept into an alcove, carved by the crumbling tower as walls fell and endless blue seeped in. This one glanced over its shoulder; if any of those ones had seen it, it knew, there would be shame, there would be pain, and Mother Deep's blessing would continually evade this one.

As it would continue to evade this one, it knew, after it dropped its loincloth to spill its water in the shallow pool that had formed in the alcove's corner. To desecrate water blessed by the Shepherds, this one knew, was to displease Mother Deep. This one was not worried, however; Mother Deep was kind, Mother Deep was forgiving, Mother Deep had given this one the blessing of forgetting and a new life beneath the endless blue.

This one was not worried as it let itself leak out into the water with a great sigh.

This one was not worried as it felt the air grow a little colder.

It was only when this one noticed the rope descending from above that it felt the need to scream.

What emerged from its lips, however, was a strangled gargle as the thin, sharp rope bit into its neck and pulled. It felt itself slam against an unyielding surface, felt the rope knot behind its neck tighten. Its own voice fell silent as the yellow stream arced out in a terrified spray, its claws felt so feeble and weak as it raked at the rope.

"Shh," something hissed behind it.

Its vision swam, eyes bulging from their sockets as though trying to escape. It kicked against leather, strained feebly to reach for the knife attached to the loincloth pooled around its ankles. Only as it felt its lungs tighten into pink fists inside it did this one remember the need to breathe.

A need this one never knew again.

Denaos caught the corpse as it slumped to the floor. Quietly, he laid it in the puddle of yellow filth and gave it a quick, distasteful shove. With barely a splash, it rolled over an outcropping and slipped into the black pool. No matter how shallow it might or might not have been, the frogman was well hidden from sight, and Denaos had no urge to see how deep such a pit went.

Instead, he rose and glanced out of the alcove, looking up and down the halls. The faintest traces of sunlight crept in through the faintest scratches in Irontide's hide, but even such a small source of light was not permitted to live long within the tower. It was consumed by the dark water, pulled below to die soundlessly in the brackish depths that drowned the hall.

The poetry, while not lost on Denaos, would have to wait. For the moment, he was thrilled to find no frogmen, no Abysmyths, nothing that stopped him from making a beckoning gesture. Footsteps, wince-inducingly loud, filled the hall as a pair of shadows slipped into the alcove from around a corner.

"Well done," Lenk whispered as he hunkered into the crevasse. "Clean and quiet."

"Quiet, maybe," Denaos mumbled. "Clean, hardly." He wrung out a lock of his hair, gagging at the drops of yellow that dropped to the floor. "I suppose I deserve it. Silf wouldn't smile upon garrotting a man while he's draining the dragon."

"What's..." Kataria grimaced. "What's 'draining the dragon'?"

"It's not important." Lenk waved her down. "Think, now. Where would they have the tome?"

"Somewhere they don't piss, I suppose." Denaos sighed.

"Probably down there." Kataria gestured further along the hall. "Something's going on."

"What's going on?"

The shict glanced at him, her ears twitching as though that would be enough. Blinking, she coughed.

"Oh, right, you're..." She shook her head. "Never mind. It's hard to make out over all the water, but they seem to be... chanting or something, I don't know." She frowned. "It's not a pleasant noise, I can tell you that."

"Chanting is never good," Lenk muttered. "As if we needed any more reason to grab the tome and get out of here quickly."

"Agreed." Kataria nodded. She glanced between the two men. "So, uh... which one of you knows where it is?"

"You might be missing the point of this. If we knew where it was, we wouldn't be stumbling about in the dark waiting for our heads to be eaten." Lenk glanced down the hall. "I'll wager, however, that whatever there is to be found is probably going to be found with the chanting."

"What we'll find is a bunch of bloodthirsty demons," Denaos grumbled. "And, given that we have the rare opportunity of knowing where they are, we should probably go in the other direction."

"Do you have a better idea?" Lenk held up a hand before the rogue could reply. "Do you have a better idea that _doesn't_ involve running away or soiling ourselves?"

"Ah, well... you've got me there."

"Yeah," Lenk grunted. He glanced out of the alcove, then back to Denaos. "We'll continue as we have, with you on point and Kataria covering our... or rather _my_ rear."

"And what will you be doing while I'm sniffing your farts?" the shict sneered. "Put me in the lead."

"Fat lot of good that piece of wood will do you in the lead." Denaos pointed at her bow. "It's too cramped in here to draw the damn thing, let alone hit anything."

"And if _you_ go in the lead, we'll be found out for sure." She twitched her ears. "I could hear that splash for ages after you dumped the body."

"Well, I'm trusting our enemies _don't_ have ears the size of Saine." He snorted. "I seem to be doing a good job of it so far."

"Any dim-witted _Kou'ru_ can sneak around and strangle something," Kataria hissed. " _True_ stalking is a delicate practice, involving equal parts verbal and non-verbal."

"Verbal... you _do_ know the point is to stay silent, don't you?"

Whatever retort she had was cut off by the sound of legs splashing through the water, however. They tensed as one, waiting for the sound to pass. While it did so, they could still hear the heavy breathing of something just around the corner.

"Hello?" it gurgled. "Is that one there?"

Before anyone could stop her, Kataria sprang out from the alcove and levelled her bow at the creature.

"No," she replied.

Air split apart, there was a hollow sound, then the sound of something slumping quietly beneath the black waters. Kataria cast a glance over her shoulder at Denaos and grinned haughtily.

"Case in point." She slung her bow over her shoulder. " _I'll_ take lead."

"For a fortress, there's not much to it, is there?" Lenk murmured as quietly as he could as they crept through the hallway.

Total silence had become unattainable; the water seeping into the fortress had drowned the halls in ever-rising tides. It was all they could do to restrain their fears of something reaching out and seizing them from below as they mucked through the knee-high deeps.

"I haven't seen any rooms," he continued, "no barracks, no kitchens, no mess..."

They hesitated where the hall forked into two black paths. Kataria glanced up and down both, ears twitching, before gesturing for the two men to follow as she stalked further into Irontide. The sunlight, terrified even to peek a scant ray any further, completely disappeared, leaving them sloshing about in the dark.

"If rumours can be trusted," Denaos replied softly, "there used to be sleeping quarters down here." He pointed towards the dripping ceiling. "Business was conducted further up."

"So what happened?" Kataria whispered.

"All I know is stories."

"And what did they say?" the shict pressed.

She could feel his morbid grin twist into her back.

"Supposedly," he muttered, "when the Navy finally seized Irontide, they made their examples down here." He rapped his knuckles against the stone. "The smugglers barricaded themselves in here. The Navy responded by punching a hole through the wall with their catapults."

"And?"

"And then... high tide."

She paused at that, taking a moment to waste a sneer in the darkness.

"Dirty trick," she muttered. "But they're just stories."

No reply from the back.

"Right?"

"They might be," Lenk replied for the rogue. "History's full of worse ways to die and the people who think them up." He spared a stifled laugh. "I suppose we should take a certain amount of pride in that we'll probably be experiencing some of the more awful ways first-hand."

"You're a delight," Denaos growled softly. "Why have we stopped, anyway? At least with the sound of water, I don't have to listen to _you_."

Kataria leaned forwards in the gloom, narrowing her eyes. The two men held their breath behind her, nearly springing backwards when they heard her morbid chuckle.

"There's light ahead," she whispered, "and voices, too. We're getting close."

"What kind of voices?" Lenk asked.

"Frogmen." She looked thoughtful as her ears twitched. "Something else, too."

"Abysmyths?" Lenk tightened his grip on his sword.

"No." She shook her head and frowned. "I thought I had heard something else, but I must have been mistaken."

"You're never mistaken," Lenk said, quickly correcting himself, "when it comes to noise, anyway. What did you hear?"

"A female's voice." Her frown grew so heavy that it threatened to fall off her face and splash into the murk. "It almost... sounded like the siren."

"Aha!" Denaos grimaced at his own cry. "I could have told you. She's led us to our deaths."

"Kat said it _sounded_ like Greenhair," Lenk replied harshly, "we don't know if it's her or not."

"How many things in this blessed world of ours sound like some fish-whore?" the rogue snarled. " _How many?_ "

"I guess we'll find out, won't we?"

Lenk hefted his sword, gave Kataria a gentle push to urge her onwards. The shict responded by nocking an arrow, slinking forwards silently. Creeping into the gloom as they did, their steps heralded by the sounds of water sloshing, neither man nor shict glanced over a shoulder to see if the rogue followed.

Denaos had always thought of himself as a sensible man, a sensible man with very vocal instincts that currently shouted at him to turn around and let the others die on their own. It was suicide to follow; if, by some miracle of faith in fish-women, Greenhair hadn't betrayed them, there might be another siren within the forsaken hold.

He recalled Greenhair's song, her power to send men, even dragonmen, into slumber. The thought of snoring blissfully at some sea-witch's tune while an Abysmyth quietly munched his head down to the neck held no great appeal.

Even if they _did_ survive long enough to lay a finger upon the tome, what then? How would they escape? Even if they survived and were paid in full, how long would it be before he was placed in another situation where head-eating was a very likely outcome?

_The sensible thing_ , he told himself, _would be to turn back now, find a merchantman and hitch a ride back to decent folk._

"Sensible," he reaffirmed to himself, "indeed."

He knew that the tome lay with something that he did not seek to find. But he knew much more certainly that the things he didn't want to find were in the shadows that turned sensible men to cowards.

And, he reminded himself as he sighed and began to wade after them, he was a sensible man.

"I do not remember ever being loved by Gods."

The frogman finished its sentence with a slam of its staff, driving it against the stones, letting the various bones attached to its head rattle against its ivory shaft. Dozens of pale faces looked up at the creature reverently, black eyes reflecting the torches that burnt with a pure emerald fire.

Dozens of faces, the frogman thought, free of scars, free of birthmarks, free of overbites, underbites, deformities, hair colours. Dozens of faces, all the same beaming paleness, all the same mouths twisted shut in reverence, all the same black eyes looking up at it, silently begging for the sermon to continue.

And the frogman indulged them.

"I do not remember a day without suffering," it said, letting its voice echo off the vast chamber walls. "And I do not remember a day when my suffering served any purpose but for the amusement of what I once thought of as beings perfect and pure."

The faces tensed in reply. The frogman snarled, baring teeth.

"And I do not _want_ to remember."

At this, they bobbed their heads in unison, muttering quietly through their own jagged teeth.

"What I remember," it hissed, "is praying daily at the shores for a false mother to deliver food. What I remember is starvation. What I remember is those that I once called my family being swallowed up and the waves mocking me. I remember." It levelled its staff at the congregation. "And so do you."

"Memory is our curse," they replied in unison, bowing their heads. "May Mother Deep forever free us."

"I thought the sea to be harsh and cruel, then," it continued, "but that is when I heard Her song." It tilted its head back, closing its eyes in memory. "I remember Her calling to me, singing to me. I remember Her assuring me that my life was precious, valuable, but my body was weak. I remember Her leading me here, granting me Her gifts, to breathe the water, to dance beneath the waves," its face stiffened, "to forget...

"I do not remember Gods talking to me." It craned to face the congregation once more. "I do remember them asking me for my wealth and to deny others their wealth." Its smile was broad and full of teeth. "And so did Mother Deep bid me to shatter their pretences by asking these ones to come, penniless and alone, fearful and betrayed, full of aching memory. She bade these ones to return and forget the lies they had been told. She gave these ones gifts and asked for but one thing in return."

The faces brightened in response, reflecting the frogman's smile.

"She asks," they chanted, "only that these ones aid the Shepherds as the Shepherds aid these ones."

They spoke, and their voices reverberated through the water that had claimed the stones and the few stones the water had spared drowning. They spoke, and their voices caused the green flames to leap to life at their words as they burned in their sconces. They spoke, and a dozen as yet unheard voices, sealed behind sacs of flesh and skins of mucus, pulsated in response.

It would have thought them disgusting, it reflected, and chastised itself for the blasphemy. Something that it once was would have thought them disgusting, these glorious creations of Mother Deep that clung to the walls and pillars. Now, the frogman, the creature that it had become, knew them to be Her blessings made manifest.

They pulsated, beat like miniature hearts, bulbous and glistening, misshapen and glowing. Inside these great and vile creations of flesh and fluid, something stirred. Trapped within these skins, something sought to glow with the light of life. Beyond the glistening moisture that clung to them, something reflected only blackness.

"Disgusting," Lenk muttered, sneering at the pulsating sacs. "What _are_ they?"

Neither rogue nor shict had a response for him beyond a reflection of his own repulsion. The vast and sprawling chamber, as though it had not yet been desecrated enough by the black water that drowned it and the green and red graffiti that caked its walls, was absolutely infected with the things. They clung to every corner, bobbed in the water, hung from every pillar. The largest of them was suspended directly above the circle of frogmen, twitching with a thunderous pulse, threatening to drop at any moment.

"I'm rather more concerned with what they're doing," Denaos muttered with a grimace as the frogmen began to rhythmically sway. "Any ceremony accompanied by ritualistic chanting tends to end with eviscerations, in my experience."

"I _am_ slightly tempted to enquire, but all the same." Lenk nudged Kataria's shoulder. "Any sign of Abysmyths?"

"Not that I can see." Her eyes were narrowed, sweeping the chamber. "Take that as you will, though. They're large, black things in a large, black room."

"Well, we can hardly wait here for them to come and eat us," the young man murmured. "We'll have to move soon."

"To where, exactly?"

Lenk glanced about the hall. Options, it seemed, were limited. The chamber had undoubtedly once been grand, though its vast ceiling had begun to sink, its marching pillars had crumbled and its floor was completely lost to the water, save for the sprawling stone island that the frogmen congregated upon.

He didn't even bother to note the torches crackling an unnatural green and the hanging sacs; there would be time enough to soil himself over those details later.

Though nearly unnoticeable through the gloom, he spied a crumbling archway at the chamber's furthest corner. Half-drowned, half-cloaked in shadow, what lay beyond it was veiled in forbidding void.

"There," he pointed, "that's the way."

"How do you figure?" Kataria grunted.

"Because we seem to have a habit of going into places that would result in our deaths and I'd hate to ruin our rhythm."

"Sound reasoning as any. However," Denaos gestured to the prostrate frogmen, "how do you intend to get past them?"

"Luck? Prayer?" The young man shrugged.

"Neither of which ever seem to work for _me_ ," the rogue countered. "Hence, before we decide to rush off all at once and possibly die together, let's do a bit of scouting." He gestured to Kataria. "Send the shict out first."

The suggestion struck Lenk like an open-handed slap and he felt himself tense at it, fixing a scowl upon the rogue. In the back of his mind, he knew such an anger shouldn't have been stirred within him; after all, his companions had nothing in common save complete disregard for each other's well-being.

All the same, he couldn't help but tighten his grip on his sword irately.

"Yeah, that works."

If Denaos had slapped him, Kataria's response all but knocked him into the water. He whirled on her suddenly with eyes wide.

"What?" he sputtered. "Wait, why?"

"It makes sense, doesn't it? I'm the best stalker. I should go ahead and see if this even has a chance of working."

She unstrung her bow and pulled a small leather pouch from her belt. Quietly coiling the string, she secured it tightly within the pouch before popping it into her mouth and swallowing it. Her unpleasant smile at the men's revulsion was accompanied by a wink.

"Wet bows don't shoot."

"That's not what I'm worried about. You might get killed."

She blinked at him.

"And?" Not waiting for an answer, she turned, crouching low into the water. "Assuming you can see me when I reach the door, follow."

"But... Fine."

Lenk found the words coming out of his mouth with more exasperation than they should have. He watched her slide into the water, her black-painted flesh melding seamlessly into the gloom. Only the tips of her ears, protruding from the surface like the dorsal fins of two fish, gave any indication of her presence.

It was only after she was almost totally out of sight that he whispered to her fading form.

"Be careful."

"She'll be fine," Denaos muttered.

"Of course, no great loss if she dies." Lenk cast a cold, narrow scowl over his shoulder. "Right?"

"Given the circumstances, I would think the opposite. I'd rather have a working bow than a corpse."

"Don't act coy."

"It's no act, I assure you."

"Well, in case you hadn't noticed," Lenk spat, "I still hold a grudge over what you said on the beach."

"You'll have to be more specific."

"I mean—" The young man paused, scowling at his taller companion. "You really are scum, you know that?"

"It has been suggested before." The rogue shrugged. "And yes, of course I know what you're talking about."

"And?"

"And," Denaos bit his lip contemplatively, "I'm a tad hard pressed to care."

Lenk had no retort for that, merely staring at the tall man with a blend of incredulousness and anger that vaguely resembled an uncomfortable bowel movement. Before he could even begin to think of something to say, however, Denaos held up a hand.

"And before you decide to see just how far up you can shove that sword, let me explain something to you." He sighed a sort of sigh that a father reserves for uncomfortable discussions with a son aspiring to be a seamstress. "Listen, you're still young, rather naive to the ways of the world, but I consider you enough of a friend to tell you that you're wasting your time."

The rogue's words were lost on Lenk, so many unheard echoes in the void of his ears, fading quickly with every breath. And with every breath, another voice spoke more loudly in his head.

" _He is weak._ "

"You're a human," Denaos continued, "she's a shict. Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted you found a pointy-eared shrew to lavish undue affection upon, if only for the sake of loosening you up, but don't think for a breath that the feeling is shared."

" _She is weak, as well._ "

"Whatever you may think of her, of everyone in the little social circle we've created, it's all completely pointless."

" _They will both die here._ "

"In the end, you can't change what you are, and neither can she."

" _We will live on, though._ "

"She's a shict. You're a human. Enemies."

" _Our enemy lies within this forsaken church._ "

"Centuries upon centuries of open warfare won't lapse just for you, my friend."

" _We will make our war upon the creature that leads these abominations._ "

"She'll shoot you in the back as soon as she feels the impulse."

" _We will carve out the pestilence that festers here._ "

"So don't blame me for holding a view that the rest of the world knows to be true."

" _We will cleanse this world._ "

"It's all moot, anyway. You clearly haven't heard a word I've said."

" _And it begins... now._ "

"Now..." Lenk whispered.

"NOW!" another voice echoed.

They whirled about as one, suddenly aware that the rhythmic chanting had reached an abhorrent crescendo. The voices were incoherent, tainted by the sound of croaking and gurgling, punctuated by clawed hands raised, trembling, to the sunken ceiling. All knelt prostrate, all babbled wildly in mockery of a proper hymn.

All but one.

"Now is the time," the frogman with the staff uttered, "now is when these ones" suffering and hardships are rewarded."

It raised its staff to the ceiling and the pulsating sac above responded. It ceased to beat like a heart and began to tremble furiously, shaking angrily against the thick strands of mucus that held it to the stones. Areas of it stretched, extended, indentations of thick fingers pressed against the viscous skin.

The frogmen responded, their voices rising and falling in ecstatic discord with every push from within the tumour-like womb. The staff-bearing creature seemed to rise higher, held aloft by their fervent chanting as it shook its staff at the ceiling.

"Come to these ones, Shepherd," it crowed, "and grant these ones the gifts that were promised."

"Free these ones from the chains of memory and the sins of air," the chorus chanted.

"The feasts that were promised," the high frogman croaked, "the gifts that were whispered, the song that is yearning to be heard..."

"Sing to these ones," the chorus spoke, "and deliver the world—"

"TO ENDLESS BLUE!"

The frogman's invocation echoed through the hall.

It did not go unanswered.

There was the sound of flesh ripping as the sac split apart against the force of a long, black arm. It dangled, glistening like onyx, from the ceiling for but a moment before the ripping became a harsh groan.

Lenk's breath caught in his throat as the womb tore open violently, expelling a blur of blackness that collapsed onto the floor with a heavy, hollow sound. From the quivering strands of leathery flesh that dangled from the ruined womb, droplets of a thick, glimmering substance coagulated, shivered and fell. The frogmen rolled their heads back, expressions twisted into orgasmic mirrors of each other as the substance splattered across their faces.

There was no time for the young man to vomit, no breath left in him to even contemplate doing such a thing. Unable to turn away, he continued to stare as the blob of darkness began to stir in the circle of frogmen.

Without so much as a whisper, it rose to its knees. Even so prostrate, it towered over the row of hairless heads before it. Its body trembled, sending thick globs of the ooze peeling off its flesh. With a violent cough, expelling more of the foul stuff, its head rose: two vacant white eyes stared up, a jaw filled with white teeth lowered.

And, freshly born, the Abysmyth screamed.

"Sons of..."

The meagre breath that Denaos was able to conjure was still more than Lenk could manage. The young man's jaw hung slack, his sword limp at his side. He could not blink, for fear that when he opened his eyes again, the demon would still be there.

The creature took no notice of the men, however. It swayed upon its knees, oblivious to its surroundings as the frogmen crowded around it, scooping globs of the viscous ooze in both hands and devouring it messily, choking on their own moans as they shovelled, lapped and slurped the demonic afterbirth into their craws.

" _This is only the beginning_ ," the voice murmured within Lenk's head, " _and we are the ending_."

"Do we kill it?" Lenk asked quietly.

"Are you mad?" Denaos, incredulous, was unaware of the unseen speaker.

" _No. Too many tumours. We go deeper._ "

"At any rate," the rogue whispered, "we'd better get a move on. Kat's found the way."

The mention of her name caused him to blink. The sight of a few bands of pale flesh at the furthest edge of the chamber caused him to smile. The shict, her eyes so wide as to be visible across the waters, seemed barely able to tear her attention away from the ghastly scene long enough to beckon them over.

"We go, then," Lenk whispered.

He sheathed his sword and slid into the gloom, Denaos close behind him. Quietly, they darted between the bobbing sacs, careful not to look too closely into any of them. Filling their ears were the sounds of things moving within and the choked moans of the frogmen's gluttony.

"Silf preserve me." Denaos's grumble was mingled with the sound of water sloshing as he pulled himself up the steady slope and onto dry land. "But in a fortress crawling with demons, breeches riding up on me should be the _last_ of my problems."

"Could be worse." Kataria wrung her long braid free of the black water as she crawled out of the gloom. "At least there _aren't_ any frogmen here."

"True." Lenk was last to pull himself free. He paused, casting a glance down the twisting corridor they had just swum through; the chanting had begun again and now echoed listlessly. "They're still far too close for my liking, however."

"All the more reason to get moving." Kataria held up a finger, then lurched. Her mouth opened, a vile gagging sound emerging from within. Her whole body shuddered, then the tiny leather pouch was in her hand. Pulling the string out, she began to reassemble her bow. "Right, then. Where to?"

Lenk quietly surveyed their new surroundings, if only to avert his gaze from the shict's nauseating display. The hall was refreshingly large after the oppressively cramped passages of Irontide. The torches, while still burning an unnatural green, did so with as little malice as an unnaturally green fire could manage. All in all, he thought, the broad hall was rather pleasant.

That worried him.

The dilapidation that plagued the rest of the keep was strangely absent. The walls were of a smooth, polished stone that resembled emerald against the crackling torchlight. At the end of the hall, a tall, square doorway had been carved, the green light pouring from beyond like venom from a serpent's maw.

"I only see one way." He sighed, gesturing with his chin. "Denaos, take the lead."

"Of course." The rogue sighed dramatically. "Why not? I've already been doused in some reeking foulness that's gone so far up my nose I can see the filth behind my eyes. Nothing else could be too much worse."

"On second thought," Lenk drew his sword, "I'll take the lead." Shoving the rogue aside, he strode cautiously towards the door. "If there's something waiting up ahead to dismember us, I think I'd like to go first to spare me your whining."

Despite weapons in hand and an irate growl from Denaos, their trek towards the doorway was less than cautious. _Why wouldn't it be?_ Lenk thought. _It's not like anything can hide here._ For all the tension that coursed through them, the young man almost felt disappointed that their journey was so uneventful.

"Wait here," he whispered.

"Be careful."

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to face two hard emerald eyes. He cracked a grin that he hoped was reassuring and hefted his sword as he slipped through the massive stone frame. He could hear their held breaths with each step, their silence speaking the fear their voices could not.

"Think we're close?" Denaos whispered to the shict.

"Might be," she grunted. "I've never known Lenk to guide us wrong." She smiled. "He just takes us on unorthodox routes."

"Unorthodox," the rogue muttered, "a much kinder word than I was going to use."

Lenk paused beyond the doorway as he cast a scrutinising glance about this new chamber. Many moments passed before he turned around and shrugged, then returned to searching.

Kataria was about to take a step to join him when something struck her as amiss: she could hear her footsteps. The sound of silence was deafening in her ears.

"Do you..." she glanced at Denaos, "hear anything?"

The rogue cast her a crooked scowl before the same realisation filled his eyes.

"Nothing," he whispered, "the chanting's stopped."

Before Kataria could reply, she felt a sudden chill. Something cold and wet plopped upon her shoulder and trickled down her bare back. Swallowing hard, she reached behind and took a bit of it between her fingers. It was too thick for water, she realised, and carried a peculiar but familiar odour.

Sparing no words for surprise or disgust, she felt the chill grow colder, a long shadow descending over her.

"Oh," she gasped, looking up, "hell..."

She saw herself reflected in the Abysmyth's white eyes for a moment before a long, black claw seized her by the throat. Her scream was wordless and terrified as she was hoisted into the air.

Lenk whirled about at the cry, his sword up and feet moving before he even knew what had happened. He had barely taken a step, however, before the entire fortress trembled. A massive stone block fell with a thunderous crash, wedging itself firmly in the doorway and banishing Lenk behind a vast screen of grey.

Kataria barely had time to glimpse the sight of another demon grabbing Denaos, the rogue going limp in its claws, before her captor whirled her about. Her bow effortlessly wrenched from her grasp, her quiver torn from her back and tossed to the earth, she was helpless as the demon presented her before dozens of pale faces, each one a perfect copy of the others, looking at her through malicious black eyes.

And at their fore was their staff-bearing leader, the only face to be twisted into a broad, needle-toothed grin as it croaked.

"Mother Deep... has sent us much."

# _Twenty-Two_

# THE COLOUR OF PAIN

Irontide was a thing oblivious to the sun.

As dark and foreboding in the bright afternoon as at dusk, it turned a stony and shadowed face to the shore, frowning with its many catapult-carved gashes, grinning with its corpse-laden spikes when the waters receded. A dispassionate monarch of the waves, Irontide was unmoved by the concerned stare that had bored into it since early morning, choosing to show the fate of those who defied it whenever disapproving eyes lingered too long.

The metaphor, Asper decided, was fitting. Irontide was a tyrant, complete with its own crown of parasites.

The Omens shimmered in the afternoon sun, ruffling feathers, heads twisting on stiff necks as they swept their bulbous eyes about the sea. The priestess was not afraid to stand openly upon the beach as she did; the little creatures showed no signs of moving. Rather, she found herself staring at them expectantly, holding her breath every time they chattered their teeth in a chorus, wondering if they would begin mimicking the sounds of her dying companions as they were torn into pieces by whatever lurked within the fortress.

The demons, to their credit, seemed to possess enough tact to spare her such a thing.

And yet, she thought resentfully, even a horrific echo from their withered maws would give her at least _some_ notion of what was going on inside. The Omens gave no indication that they had any more idea than she, and stood as they had for ages: organised in neat, white rows upon the battlements, wide eyes unblinking even as the light of an angry afternoon sun poured mercilessly into them.

A sun, Asper noted, that hung ominously high.

"Four hours." She sighed.

While she hadn't expected any great outpouring of emotion from her companion, she felt compelled to scowl at Gariath as he stared off towards the jungle, snout upturned and nostrils flickering.

"Four hours since they went in," she reiterated.

Gariath, apparently realising she wasn't going to be content with showing off her ability to tell time, flared his ear-frills aggressively and glared.

"And?"

"Shouldn't they be back by now?" she asked.

"Had I gone with them, they should," he snorted. "Since I'm here, however, their corpses might wash up in a day or two."

"Are you being scornful," Asper glared at him, "or just insensitive?"

"I wasn't aware I had to choose between the two," he replied, and turned his attention back to the jungle.

She would have suggested that they go in after their, supposedly, mutual companions, but wisdom held her tongue. Whyever Lenk had decided to go in with only Kataria and Denaos, perhaps two of the less reliable companions, to watch his back, she was certain he had reason.

It seemed to make sense to her, at any rate, since the remaining two members seemed to be less interested than she was. Dreadaeleon sat some distance down the beach, babbling excitedly with Greenhair, who had yet to show even an ounce of concern, despite seeming the most knowledgeable regarding what might happen within the tower. Her apathy seemed to have infected the boy; he hadn't moved since luring the Omens away with his glamer long enough to allow Lenk and the others to slip in.

As for Gariath, she had to admit she was a tad surprised to see him so calm about being left behind. The dragonman, however, seemed even less concerned than the others. That was only surprising due to his eagerness to kill. Yet even that appeared restrained as he stared towards the jungle, inhaling deeply.

She had been content to allow him whatever eccentricities a two-legged reptile might be entitled to for the first three hours, but after so long without even a bat of his leathery eyelid, she took a step forwards.

"What _are_ you doing, anyway?"

"I _was_ ignoring you," he replied calmly, "but I suppose the spirits don't love me today, do they?"

"And these spirits allow you to remain so calm while our friends are possibly being eviscerated in there?" She gestured fervently to the tower. "I must admit, I'm a bit intrigued."

"First of all, they're not _all_ friends to me," he grunted. "Secondly, the spirits have no use for weak and ugly creatures." He rolled his shoulders. "The spirits protect the strong. Lenk is strong. He will survive."

"And the others?"

"Dead," he replied. "The pointy-eared one might die quicker than the rat, _if_ the spirits are merciful."

"I... see. So, uh..." She found herself eager to begin a new topic, if only to take her mind off which chunks of her friends might or might not be in the process of being torn out at that moment. "Is it... the spirits you're smelling?"

"Don't be stupid," he said, inhaling. "I'm smelling a memory."

"Oh... well, I guess that makes sense." She scratched her head. "What are the spirits, anyway?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"Oh, of course _I_ wouldn't." She rolled her eyes. "Perhaps the only person of worldly faith amongst this whole Godless band of heathens, and _I_ , of course, wouldn't understand the religion of a walking, bloodthirsty lizard."

"No, you wouldn't." The dragonman's tone was decidedly calm for the accusation. Or at least distracted, Asper thought; either way, she resisted the urge to take off running. He simply drew in a deep breath. "It's not a religion."

"Then what is it?"

"Live well, protect the family," Gariath grunted. "And the spirits are honoured enough to give you the strength to do it."

"So... it _is_ a religion." She chanced a step forwards. "I mean, it's not so different amongst us... er, amongst humans."

"So I've noticed," he replied without looking at her. "Humans are rather fond of having so many different weak Gods from whom they claim to draw strength. And with that strength, they try to kill everyone who doesn't kneel before the right weak God." He chuckled blackly. "And somehow, no weak God gives their followers enough strength to _truly_ bless the world and wipe each other out. There are always more humans."

"Well, that's not _quite_ how it works. I mean, Talanas is the Healer, He—"

"Gives you the strength to clean up after the other weak Gods' messes," Gariath interrupted. "I suppose I have you to thank for knowing all this about humans and their useless faiths, since you never shut up about them."

Asper self-consciously rubbed her left arm.

"It's... not always about power."

"Then what's the point?"

Asper found herself disarmed by the question. She had been mentally preparing her arsenal of responses, all sharply honed from years of debate with other scholars of faith. _Other human scholars_ , she corrected herself; amongst her own people, her weaponry had always been enough. Her responses were accepted, her reasoning commonplace, her retorts cutting deeply against the shield of human rhetoric.

And yet, she stood still, too stunned even to be galled at the fact that she had been rendered speechless by a simple question. And yet, all the more galling, she had enough wits left about her to realise why it left her so paralysed.

She was, she realised, a custodian. She was a matron who had, thus far, kissed scratches and massaged bruises, whose limitations had been proven the day before. Kataria, breathless and still upon the sands, was still vivid and fresh in her mind. Now she saw the visions again, visions of things yet to pass: her companions bleeding out on the stones of Irontide, drowning in the clutches of demons, eviscerated on whatever infernal altars they had constructed in the tower's unhallowed depths.

And here she was... left behind.

Now she knew why Lenk had chosen not to take her.

"Do the spirits make you a better fighter?"

Now it was the dragonman's turn to stand speechless. He cast her a glance that suggested he was unsure whether to ignore her or spill her innards upon the sand. She was more than a tad surprised when he rolled his shoulders and answered.

"A spirit is only as strong as the body that honours it." He raised an eyeridge. "Why?"

"Can you teach me to fight?"

She held her breath as he looked her up and down, not with derision or scorn, but genuine appraisal. When he finally spoke, she was slightly less surprised that it was with swiftness and decisiveness.

"No."

"Why not?"

"You're too weak, too stupid, too cowardly, too human," he replied crassly.

"Humans have won many wars, you know." She attempted to mime his tone. "I mean, if you haven't noticed, we _are_ the dominant race."

"Humans only win wars against other humans," he growled. "You breed like cockroaches, fight like rats, die like mosquitoes and expect to receive any respect from a _Rhega_?" He waved a hand dismissively. "Satisfy yourself with staying behind and cleaning up after real warriors."

"You once told me that all dragonmen fight." She furrowed her brow angrily. "Doesn't that include the healers?"

" _Rhega_ don't need healers. Our skin is strong and our bones mend as quick as yours don't." He turned his back to her and flexed for emphasis, every crimson cord pronounced. "I've got things to do now."

"Things to smell, you mean?"

When he did not respond to her, she took a challenging step forwards, unaware of how softly her feet fell in comparison to his tremendous red soles. Perhaps it was the fact that he had turned his back on her that made her so bold, or perhaps she wished to prove to herself that she was made of sterner stuff than he suggested.

"If humans only win human wars," she cried after him, "why aren't there more _Rhega_ around?"

What her motive might have been, even she did not know. As he turned and stalked towards her, with an air of calmness that suggested she wouldn't be able to run far if she tried, she steeled herself. She had issued the challenge, she told herself, and it was her time to stand by it.

"Hit me." He spoke disturbingly softly.

"What?" She half-cringed, looking baffled.

"Here is where you learn to," he replied calmly. "Hit me as hard as you can."

An unfamiliar sense of dread befell Asper, a stubborn battle between fear and pride raging inside her. It was never a good idea, in principle, to hit a creature bristling with horns and claws, even if he requested it. _No_ , she scolded herself, _stand by the challenge._

She simply had not realised when she had issued it how small she stood against his red mass. Nevertheless, with a clench of her teeth, she balled one hand into a fist and launched a swing against the dragonman's chest.

It struck with a hollow sound, which she, at that moment, swore reverberated like metal. She pulled back not a fist, but a throbbing, swollen red mass of skin and scraped knuckles.

It didn't even occur to her to moan in pain, nor even to wince, for the moment she glanced up, she spied a tremendous red claw hurtling towards her. The back of his hand connected fiercely with the side of her face and sent her sprawling to the ground, any sound she might have made gone silent against the crack of flesh against bone.

Pressing red hand to red cheek, she sat up slowly and looked at the dragonman, her shock barely visible behind the massive bruise forming upon it.

"What..." It hurt to speak, so she had to exchange the indignant fury broiling inside her mouth for something more achievable. " _Why?_ "

"You hit me."

"You told me to!"

"And what did you learn today?"

Every sound he made diminished her further. His footsteps echoed in her aching jaw, his tail lashing upon the ground made her hand throb all the worse. It was his back, however, turned callously towards her, that caused tears to well in her eyes, that caused her to rise.

Though her right hand had been the one to sting, it was her left arm that tensed so tightly it sent waves of pain rolling into her. That pain consumed all others, giving her the ability to trudge after the dragonman, her arm hanging low like a cudgel. And like a cudgel, spiked and merciless, she could see herself wielding it against him.

His neck looked so tempting then, blending in with her eyes as her vision reddened further with each breath. She could see herself through the crimson, reaching out to grab him, his neck a pulsing red vein that she need merely pinch shut and...

" _No!_ " She clasped her agonised hand to her left arm, the pain blossoming again like a garden. "No... no. Stop thinking that. It's not right. Stop it." She struck her temple with her red hand. " _Stop it!_ "

"Is that really intelligent?"

She resisted the urge to whirl about before she could wipe the tears from her eyes. Dreadaeleon appeared concerned as he saw her purpling cheek and reddening hand, though not quite as horrified as she thought he should.

"What happened to _you_?"

"Fight," she grumbled, "nothing much. Learned something... I don't know. Gariath hit me."

"Oh."

In civilised countries, there would be a call to arms over a man striking a woman. In the quaint culture of adventurers, bludgeoning tended to be more on the unavoidable side of things.

"It... hurts?" Greenhair was not far behind the boy, tilting her head curiously at the priestess, whose eyelid twitched momentarily.

"Oh, not at all," Asper replied. "Having my hand smashed and my jaw cracked seems to have evened out into a nice state of _being in searing pain. Of course it hurts, you imbecile!_ " Wincing at her own snap, she held up a hand, wiggling red fingers. "It doesn't seem to be broken... I should be fine."

"I could assist, if you so desired, Darkeyes."

Asper had to force herself not to recoil at the suggestion.

She had felt the siren's song before, when the creature had offered her aid in treating the companions' injuries. The priestess thanked Talanas that hers were the least serious. The lyrics were more invasive than a scalpel, going far beyond her ears and sinking into her bones. Though she felt bruises soothed and cuts cease their sting, she was forced to fight the urge to tear herself open in a desperate bid to force the song out.

Bandages and salves were slower and sloppier, but they were natural and Talanas's gifts to His servants. _They're at least a sight more trustworthy than whatever some fish-woman-thing can spew out_ , she thought resentfully. Instead of saying that, however, she merely forced a smile.

"I'll take care of it," she replied with a sigh. "It's not like I've got anything better to do while the _real_ warriors are off... warrioring."

"Warring," Dreadaeleon corrected.

"I knew that, you little..." She trailed off into incoherent mumbling as she began to trudge away. "It just needs a splint, a bit of binding. It'll fix itself in a bit."

"You didn't break it, did you?"

"First of all, I already said it wasn't broken." She whirled on him with a snarl. "And if anyone _did_ break it, it would be Gariath."

"He hit your hand?" The boy raised an eyebrow. "That seems a tad indirect."

"He _broke_ it when I hit him in the mass of metal he calls a chest."

"Well, no wonder he hit you."

"He _told_ me to hit him!" she roared. "And what kind of logic is that, anyway? His fist is the size of my head! How is that at all justified?"

"Oh... um, are you being irrational?" The boy cringed. "Denaos said this might happen while he was gone. And, I mean, you couldn't have been thinking too clearly to have actually thought hitting Gariath was a good idea."

"I could clear your mind, Darkeyes," Greenhair offered with a smile, "if you so wished."

She affixed a scowl to both of their heads, her only wish being that she could replace her eyes with a sturdy quarterstaff. Her rage only intensified as they turned, with infuriating symmetry, to look at Irontide, pausing to exchange an encouraging smile.

There was a time, she thought irately, when Dreadaeleon would have withered under her glare. Now, even the scrawniest creature posing as a man put up a defiant face against her. And at that thought, her heart sank into a foetid pool of doubt.

_Am I truly so weak_ , she asked herself, _that I can't even intimidate_ him _?_

It would seem so. He stood tall upon the shore, taller than ever before. He stood uncrippled by his previous malady; _A malady that only I could cure. Up until now_ , she added, scowling at Greenhair. Beside her, he stood erect, proud and completely oblivious to her best attempts to gnaw on his face with scornful eyes.

"Look at that." He gestured to Irontide with insulting casualness. "She... it? Whatever hasn't stopped moving since dawn."

Asper glanced up and frowned. It was difficult to maintain her anger at the sight of Irontide's crown; another more loathsome sensation crept over her.

The greater Omen skulked up and down the lines of its lesser parasitic kin like a general inspecting its troops. Of course, Asper admitted, there was no way to tell if the creature was even looking at the others; they were much too far away to make out even the barest detail of features besides the creature's size.

And yet, the revulsion it emanated was tangible even from the shore. Everything about it was horrible: its ungainly gait, its bobbing head, its messy, angular body. Asper admitted with momentary unabashedness that she would much prefer it to remain far away.

_Of course_ , she thought with a frown, _Gariath wouldn't even hesitate to get up and tear its wings off... Are those wings or hands?_

"Fascinating, isn't it?"

Her frown became a deep gash across her face; it appeared that someone else wasn't at all bashful about the creature's presence, either.

"All those Omens," Dreadaeleon gestured out to the tower, "standing perfectly still."

"It's not like they've got anything else to do," Asper grunted.

"They are the vermin of hell, Lorekeeper," Greenhair agreed. "They bear not the gifts of thought and heart."

"We know that much, certainly. But look, they aren't moping about." He glanced at Asper. "Recall that, whenever we've found them separated from an Abysmyth... or should I say _their_ Abysmyth, they've always looked addled, distraught."

"We've only seen that happen once," Asper replied.

"Twice—Gariath said they were acting in such a way when he was disposing of them." He paused, licked his lips. "I guess I wouldn't know for certain, though, since apparently no one noticed he had left me for dead at that point."

"Perhaps you should thank him." She forced acid through her grumble. "After all, you found fine company in a sea-trollop."

"Trollop?" Greenhair tilted her head. "That is... what you call a shellfish, yes?"

"It's some manner of fish, all right," Asper seethed.

" _As I was saying_ ," Dreadaeleon interrupted with a snarl far too fierce for his frame, "these particular Omens don't seem at all bothered by the fact that there isn't an Abysmyth in sight."

"I can appreciate that feeling."

"As can we all." Dreadaeleon nodded. "But consider the events of this morning when I lured them away with my glamer."

Asper nodded grimly, remembering the situation all too vividly.

The larger parasite had reacted swiftly, hurling itself off the tower with a piercing wail. Echoed by its lesser kin, the shriek tainted sky and sea as they descended in a stream of white feathers and bulbous eyes upon the illusory blood-stain Dreadaeleon had cast upon the sea.

She winced, recalling the even louder scream when they discovered it was false. Far too late to even notice Lenk and the others slipping in, they had simply returned to the battlements, where they now roosted.

"They followed the big one," Asper muttered, "like ducklings following their mother."

"I was going to compare them to lemmings, but your analogy might be better." Dreadaeleon grinned. "At any rate, the greater Omen seems to act as a substitute for the Abysmyths, if you will, giving orders in place of them." He tapped his cheek thoughtfully. "Though they don't seem that much brighter than the small ones, do they?"

"Not especially, no." She glanced at him. "I suspect you have a reason for thinking about this?"

"While knowledge is its own reward, I do. If the big one gives the orders, then it stands to reason that we can effectively render all those little ones a moot issue." He extended a single finger out towards the tower, aiming it at the greater Omen, and grinned. "Zap."

"That's... actually not bad." Asper felt slightly frustrated at having to compliment the boy, but nodded appreciatively regardless. "Cut off the head and the body falls. If it was that simple, the way for Lenk and the others would be clear."

"Right." Dreadaeleon nodded. "If they come out."

" _When_ they come out," she snapped. Turning back to the tower, she bit her lower lip. "The trick, then, would be to kill the big one before it could reach them." She glanced him over appraisingly. "Could you hit it from here?"

"If I could, I would have done so." He shook his head. "No, I'm assuming that Lenk is a quick enough swimmer that he could draw it close enough for me to plant a lightning bolt in its face."

"Lightning—"

"It's the only thing accurate enough to hit from such a distance."

"Of course... you realise that lightning and water aren't precisely the best of friends."

"Well... I mean, yeah." He straightened up. "Of course I know that. If I can figure out how to throw lightning out of my damn hands, I can figure out _that_." He cleared his throat, attempting to maintain his composure. "Naturally, there might be some collateral damage, but—"

"There is no good way for you to end that thought."

"Listen, the overall objective is to get the tome, isn't it?" He glanced to Greenhair, who offered a weak nod. "Right, so, even if something _does_ go wrong, so long as we can remove the greater Omen as a threat, we can fish the tome out of the water at our leisure." He turned a nervous glance to Asper. "Or rather, you could."

"What?" Her tone was teetering between incredulous and furious.

"It's only fair. I'm the one who has to kill the thing."

"That wasn't..." Her pain and words alike were lost in a sudden flood of anger driven by a storm of righteous indignation. "You're talking about our friends, our companions, _dying_."

"I..." His words failed him as he shook, turning a grimace towards Greenhair, who offered nothing but a concerned glance. "I mean, I thought we always did that."

"We don't talk about murdering _each other_ ," she roared. "These are our friends, _your_ friends, dying by _your_ hands."

"First of all," he mustered a new semblance of confidence in a growl, "I said there _might_ be collateral damage." He offered a weak smile, a crack in his facade. "And, I mean, that would be totally inadvertent, so, it's really more like dying by my finger."

Whatever rage might have boiled inside her was not shown on her face. Rather, as though water had been poured over her, she hardened and grew cold, regarding him through an even, unquivering scowl.

"You make jokes... about murdering them."

"Why are you getting upset at me for being pragmatic?" He shifted, unsure as to whether he should puff up or back down. "You never get this upset at any of the others."

"They can't be helped! You—" She moved forwards, both fists clenched and ready to strike him in spite of the pain in her right hand. Her face clenched harder, finding it very difficult to summon a reason not to. "You..." With a sigh, she reached out and gave him a shove. "Damn it, Dread. You're supposed to be the good one."

He collapsed onto his rear.

Whether it was because he had been rendered stunned by her words or because she had seen him shoved over by toddlers before, she didn't stop to think. And when he stared at her through an unblinking mask of flattery and confusion, she did not smile.

"I... thought it... uh..." He blanched. "What?"

She opened her mouth to say something when she suddenly became aware of Greenhair. Or rather, became aware of Greenhair"s lack of awareness towards them both.

"And you've nothing to say about this?" Asper growled to the siren's back.

Apparently not, for the siren merely stared out over the sea, fin erect, gills fluttering. Asper stalked towards her, perhaps intent on forcing her to participate in the fight, perhaps on forcing her to suggest some way to help.

She did neither, however, for as soon as she came up beside the siren, her gaze, too, was locked on the sea and the black ship that stained it.

Creeping across the waves with ebon oars, like the limbs of some great spider, the ship made only the slightest of ripples in the water, cutting through the surf with a jagged, black bow. With singular speed and purpose, it eased itself inevitably towards the shore.

"What is it?" Asper glanced over her shoulder at Dreadaeleon, who was also staring at the vessel, unblinking. "More pirates?"

"Not like any I've seen." The boy shook his head.

"I have... made a grave sin."

They turned towards Greenhair, who now backed away, eyes wide with fear.

"It was my error to seek help so promiscuously," she uttered, wading into the waves.

"What are you talking about?" Dreadaeleon asked.

"Forgive me, lorekeeper," she replied, frowning. "Forgive me for what I was forced to do and for what may yet happen. Permit me to attempt to atone with a final wisdom." She grimaced, her face going rock hard. "Hide."

Before either of them could form an objection, opinion or question, the siren sprang to her feet and tore into the surf. With a graceful leap, she dived beneath the lapping waves and vanished under a blanket of sand and spray, her form sliding further up the coast.

"Well." Asper coughed. "That's... ominous."

"Greenhair!" Dreadaeleon called, tearing off down the beach. "Wait! Come back!"

"Dread, you fool!" Asper hissed after him, but she could spare no more time for him.

Her attention was seized by the ship; in the moments she had been looking away, it had crept closer. So close, in fact, that she could now make out its crew.

Eyes the colour of milk. The sound of metal clanking against metal. Alien voices uttering foul indecipherables.

Skin the colour of a fresh bruise.

"Preserve me, Talanas," Asper, alone, whispered, "purpleskinned longfaces."

# _Twenty-Three_

# THE PROPER MINDSET

Restraint, Denaos thought, was a vastly unappreciated trait.

All tense situations relied on it, he knew from an experience that had been long and not fatal, which was more than most in his profession could claim. Restraint was the idea of being the centre of calm in a raging storm, so that while all around would be rent asunder by torrid winds and gales, the centre would remain unnoticed, unscathed.

It had served him well in every situation in which he had hoped to never find himself, from negotiations with watchmen clamping irons about his wrists to talking down a particularly passionate young lady with a sharp knife and an overzealous love of fruits.

_Of course_ , he thought as he felt moist talons dig into his neck, _those were all mostly reasonable people._ As he glanced out of the corner of his eye at the Abysmyth regarding him dispassionately, he could think of more ideal situations.

_And_ , he added with a sidelong glance at his fellow captive, _more ideal companions._

Kataria, it seemed, had no talent or appreciation for restraint. Within the demon's grasp, she writhed, snarled, spat and gnashed her teeth. While undoubtedly she thought of herself as some ferocious lioness, in the creature's grasp she more closely resembled a particularly fussy kitten.

The frogman standing before them appeared to share Denaos's thoughts. Leaning heavily on a staff carved of bone, it ignored the rogue to regard the shict with what looked a lot like haughty mirth. Denaos arched an eyebrow at that; this frogman's face was twisted in a grin, distinctive from the legions of identical faces past shoulders bereft of their collective stoop.

"Does it not hurt?" he asked, and Denaos noted a distinct lack of needle-like teeth in his mouth. "Is the futility not agonising? Do you not despair to look upon the rising tide and know that you are so much froth in an endless sea?"

The rogue tightened his lips, regarding the creature suspiciously. He did not recall the frogmen having either a speech pattern unslurred or a penchant for obvious metaphors.

"The tide cannot be stopped." The frogman shook his head. "But yours is not a plight without power." He leaned closer, his grin becoming more abhorrent than the needle-toothed smiles of the creatures behind him. "Surrender to the tide, flow with it as it flows over the world, and become a part of the endless blue."

"Drown in it," Kataria spat back, with as much force as her position allowed. "When you wash up, I'll kick the crabs out of your carcass."

"Sun and sky have blinded you. Wind and dirt have rendered you deaf." He made a sweeping gesture and Denaos noted that all five of his fingers spread themselves into thin, pale digits, free of any webbing. "Open your ears to the song of Mother Deep. When the earth is drowned and the sky kneels before the sea, it will be far too late to repent."

Her ears folded flat against her head as she bared her teeth at him and snarled. The frogman, undeterred, reached out with a trembling hand to cup her by the chin. It was with that gesture, that familiar quiver in the fingers which suggested needs far beyond those that could be satisfied by the company of demons, that the realisation finally dawned upon the rogue.

"You're human," he whispered breathlessly, as though it was some damning discovery.

The unblinking, symmetrical expressions of the Abysmyths and the frogmen beyond him indicated, however, that it was not. The creature himself did not so much as cringe at the accusation, instead turning his leering grin upon the rogue.

"You are cruel to notice," he replied. "But Mother Deep needs many mouths, and I am the one selected to remain cursed with the sins of flesh and earth so that others may be guided to Her waiting heaven." The frogman twisted a bald head to regard the masses behind him. "And am I not rewarded with the adoration of the devoted?"

"The pain is fleeting," the frogmen echoed in unified chorus, "the blue is endless."

"So says the great Ulbecetonth."

"May She reign over a world without the agony demanded by false Gods." The frogmen raised their webbed hands and extended them towards the black water. "May these ones see Her restored to a throne built over heaven."

"It is not too late." The leader turned his attention back to Kataria and a sudden light filled his eyes. A desperation, Denaos saw, that he had seen in every man who hungered for the same thing. "Forsake your false Gods, as they have forsaken you. Abandon the sins of memory and sky. Feed the Mouth of Mother Deep."

His lower lip trembled in time with his hand as it and his eyes, now wide and unblinking, lowered themselves to Kataria's taut, pale form.

"And he shall speak well in your name."

The shict's answer was less eloquent.

Heralded by the sound of ripping flesh and an all-too-mortal squeal, her head shot down like an asp's to seize the frogman's hand in her teeth. After a quick, canine jerk, he pulled back a bloody hand and the pain that lit up his eyes seemed even more foreign in the wake of his inhuman congregation. He stared at her, shocked, as she flashed a smile that was morbid and red, chewing on the pink for a moment.

"Not the mouth you were expecting to be fed," she said before spitting it at him, "was it?"

The frogmen congregation recoiled in collective horror. They turned to their leader with a terror reserved for those who had seen idols desecrated and loosed a chorus of disharmonious agitation at the pain that flashed across his features and the blood that dripped to the floor. For his part, the Mouth seemed far less confused.

"Swear unto Her," he seethed through clenched teeth. He twisted the head from his bone-carved staff to reveal a jagged blade. "Feed Her flock." He lunged forwards, seizing her by the throat as he raised the blade, quivering and whetted with his own blood. "It matters little to Her."

Kataria met the threat with teeth bared and a snarl choked in her throat, defiant even as the jagged edge of the blade grinned green against the unnatural torchlight. Denaos, though he was certain some God somewhere hated him even for the effort, had to fight his own grin back down into his throat.

Silf help him, though, it was hard not to be pleased when opportunity bloomed into so sweet a flower.

Quietly, his eye slid up towards the bulbous ivory sphere that stared out blankly over the impending bloodshed. The Abysmyth's expression hadn't changed since first laying eyes and webbed hands upon his throat. If not for the shallow breaths that shuddered through its emaciated abdomen, it would be hard to declare the creature alive at all.

It was impassive. It was inattentive. It was uncaring. Enough, he reasoned, that it wouldn't notice the dagger until Denaos had jammed it deep into that vast, unblinking stare. Immune to mortal weapons or no, the rogue imagined that two fingers of steel rammed into gooey flesh would at least give the demon an itch.

An itch it would have to scratch.

That, of course, left the frogmen to deal with. The congregation stood, enraptured by their leader's quivering, bleeding hand. They were intent on the human, blank, sheep-like eyes upon their shepherd. So intent, he reasoned, that they had been sent into utter confusion at the little nip Kataria had given him.

A well-placed slice to the jugular, he imagined, would shock them enough that they'd hardly miss him.

_So, one knife in the eye_ , he told himself, feeling the familiar weight of the weapon tucked neatly in his belt, _one in the neck_ , feeling his heart beat against the cold steel strapped to the inside of his vest, _and a spare for whoever else isn't shocked_ , clenching his buttocks tightly.

All that was needed was an opportunity. An opportunity, he noted with some dismay, that was particularly slow in coming.

Of course, the loss of Kataria would be lamentable. She wasn't entirely unpleasant company, as women went, nor entirely unpleasant to look at. However, she was still just a shict. He knew it, and his companions would understand. Dreadaeleon would have a few forced words of grief, Gariath some callous commentary and Asper all manner of harsh words for him not being able to save her.

Lenk, of course, would likely have reacted far worse, if he was still alive. Failing that, however, Denaos thought the young man would have been pleased if he and the shict had both died in the same place, separated only by a mere stone block.

Kataria's death was regrettable, but necessary, he reasoned with a restrained nod.

_Or it will be, if it ever happens..._

The quiver with which the frogman held the dagger was familiar to him; he had seen it in hungry men who had been consumed with desires that the company of other men, or demons, could not satisfy. The broad eyes, angry and hungry at once, suggested that the frogman was caught between the desire to spill blood in retribution and the very grim knowledge that this was likely to be the last female he, all too human, would see in quite some time.

Of course, the rogue might have been more sympathetic to the Mouth's quandary if not for the webbed fingers wrapped about his throat.

As it was, he made a quick note to feel guilty twice when he made his escape. Once for having to bite back his sigh of finality when the frogman at last overcame his indecision and drew the blade back, and twice for forcing himself to resist the urge to shout in exasperation when the creature staggered backwards suddenly.

Such a temptation passed quickly, overcome by a far more pressing urge to cover his ears. A cacophony of whispers filled the room, a high-pitched whine seeping through the stones, a guttural murmur rising between the ripples in the waters. And yet, it wasn't within his ears that the rogue was assaulted. The sound permeated every part of him, vocal talons clawing past every pore to sink into his body and reverberate inside his sinew.

His were not the only sensibilities to be so flagrantly violated. Kataria writhed about in her captor's grasp, snarling with such ferocity as suggested she was straining to block out the noise with one of her own. The Mouth, too, reacted in such a way, drawing concerned looks from his congregation and impassive stares from the Abysmyths.

"Yes, yes," he whispered to no one, "I hear you." With a sudden growl, he clapped hands over his ears. "I SAID, I HEAR YOU!"

The dagger dropped from his fingers, forgotten along with his imminent sacrifice as he trudged past Kataria with a sudden weariness, ignoring her spitting and snarling. Denaos tolerated the noise long enough to note the intensity with which the Mouth gazed upon the stone slab at the end of the hall behind which Lenk had disappeared.

"What is it?" the Mouth muttered, then shrieked. " _WHAT IS IT?_ I can't... it's hard to..." He bit his lower lip, narrowed his eyes upon the stone. "Fine. I just... what? They're coming? How close?"

Denaos felt the creature behind him shift and dared to look up enough to see the Abysmyth's gaze also locked upon the rock. The impassiveness in the demon's eyes had also shifted, as much as an expressionless fish face would allow. It stared without the hysteric intensity of the Mouth, but rather with the attentive silence of an eager pupil.

What lessons it sought to learn in the agonising noise, Denaos did not dare guess.

"They can wait," the Mouth replied, his voice suddenly a whine. "I've business to... what? No, it's not as though—" He paused, hissing angrily at the stone as he gestured wildly at Kataria over his shoulder. "She insulted me! She insulted _you_! Now you wish to—"

The sound intensified. Denaos could no longer resist, forcing his hands to his ears as the murmurs became thunderous bellows, the whining a chorus of angry shrieks. The congregation cowered at the unseen speaker and even the Abysmyths shifted uncomfortably.

It was Kataria who drew Denaos's attention, however. The shict's writhing became a frenzy, kicking, frothing, emitting howls that went silent beneath the onslaught of sound. Her arms firmly locked behind her, her ears twitched and bent wildly, trying to fold over themselves and block out the sound.

The rogue grimaced. Despite his earlier plot, it was difficult not to share his companion's pain. Besides, he reasoned with as little resentment as he could muster, if she decided to simply collapse without blood or fanfare, there'd be no escape for him. That thought fled him the moment she looked up to meet his gaze, however.

Her eyes were wide and terrified, like a beast's. _No_ , he thought, _not an animal... she looks like... just like..._ He blinked. When he opened his eyes again, she was someone else, another woman, another life ending with blood seeping out of her throat. She mouthed something, his ears were deaf to it, but his mind was not.

" _Help me, tall man._ "

He shut his eyes again. When he opened them, the shict hung limp in the Abysmyth's grasp, her breathing shallow, buds of red beginning to blossom inside her ears.

"No! No more! _No more!_ "

His attentions were drawn back to the Mouth, collapsed before the stone as though it were an altar of adoration.

"I do your bidding! I serve the Prophet!" He crushed his head to the floor in submissive fervour. " _I will serve!_ "

The silence that followed seemed deafening in the wake of such a hellish chorus. Even though it had dissipated, Denaos couldn't shake the reverberation, the sensation of ripples sent through his blood. It wasn't with anything but irritation that he recalled where he had first felt such a sound, such a violation of flesh by song.

"Greenhair," he whispered.

"What?" The Mouth rose on shaky feet, not turning about. "What is it?"

"Of course, it was a set-up." His callous laughter, he hoped, disguised fury and fear he dared not show before his captors. "You've been working with the siren the whole time."

"Blasphemy," the Mouth replied. "There are no blind servants to false Gods in this place." He turned, and the hunger that had once filled his eyes was replaced with a madness yet unseen in the empty stares of the Abysmyths and symmetrical glowers of the frogmen. "This... this is a holy place."

"Defilers have arrived," the Abysmyth holding Kataria gurgled. "Offenders to Mother Deep... slayers of the Shepherds."

"So it is noted," the Mouth grunted, stalking back to the dagger.

"The longfaces return," Denaos's own captor added. "The Prophet demands vengeance."

"There is yet time." He leaned down to pluck the weapon up. "I am yet the Mouth of Mother Deep. I demand vengeance of my own."

"The Prophet is the Voice." The Abysmyth regarded Kataria, limp and motionless in its grasp. "This vessel is empty. There is no further need."

"What have you done with her, you sons of fish-whores?" Denaos demanded, scolding himself immediately afterwards. _So much for restraint..._

"I know not from whence this wretch came," the Abysmyth replied, "but it is a blessed one to have heard the voice of the Prophet with such clarity."

"A Prophet," Denaos muttered, eyeing the door. "You worship a block of stone."

_Mock them_ , he told himself, _brilliant._

"I suppose that makes as much sense as anything else related to a bunch of walking chum and their hairless androgynous toadies."

_They're going to kill you, no matter what. Go out with some class._

"You also reek."

_Well done._

"You dare to blaspheme—" the Mouth snarled, stalking towards him.

"The words of the faithless are nothing to the graced ear." The Abysmyth's grasp grew tighter around Denaos' throat. "The Prophet shall cleanse what mortal filth taints these hallowed halls. As we shall march in Mother's name to cleanse the impending blasphemers."

"Is that easier or harder to do with only one eye?"

Before the Abysmyth could so much as grunt, the blade was out and flashing in Denaos's hand. He twisted in the beast's grasp, arcing the dagger up and sinking it into a gaze that remained blank even as the hilt kissed its pupil.

With a triumphant cackle, he kicked at the creature's ribcage, leaping away from it and tearing towards the water. His heart raced with elation as the frogmen reacted just as he had hoped, recoiling and parting with collective horror at the desecration that had occurred before them.

He glanced over his shoulder as he sped towards shadowed freedom, grimacing at Kataria's limp form. Sparing a moment to mutter a prayer that the shrieking had killed her before the demons could have the pleasure, his attention was suddenly seized by the Mouth.

Odd, he thought, that a man so thoroughly defiled would be smiling.

Then he felt webbed fingers seize him. The Abysmyth's long arm jerked him off his feet, staring at him through the wedge of steel lodged in its skull. The hilt shifted with an unnerving squishing noise as the creature's eyeball rolled about in its socket.

"Blessed is he who stands to face his judgement," the creature gurgled. "Blessed is he who perishes in the name of Mother Deep."

Its arm snapped forwards with surprising speed, sending Denaos hurtling towards the wall. He struck it with a crack, bouncing from the stones to land in a puddle of salt water. Through hazy vision, he was barely able to make out Kataria's pale body flying over him as she was likewise discarded.

"So, then, are all blessed in Her eyes and heart."

With that, the creatures turned and stalked through the congregation, followed by a begrudging Mouth. So, too, did the congregation turn to vanish down the hallways, following the Abysmyth's empty voice.

"Defilers approach. All are needed. We go to water, to weapons, to war."

Left alone in the silence of the hall, accompanied only by the crackle of green fire and the lonely drip of water, Denaos could hear the sound of his heart slowing, the sound of red seeping into the puddle that was his grave. It was the groan behind him that caught his attention, however, the voice that rose faintly.

"Lenk," Kataria whispered, her voice wet, "... I'm coming."

No matter; he reminded himself to appreciate the irony when he reached the afterlife.

_She's alive_ , he thought, unable to summon the breath to chuckle.

# _Twenty-Four_

# THE OPPORTUNE MOMENT

It was with great clarity that Asper recalled the very first time she wondered whether Talanas truly loved her.

One year ago, following a short, wiry young man with silver hair, as his barbarous shict followed him, her doubt had been a brief, niggling gnat she could easily swat away. A disciple of the Healer's pilgrimage, after all, required many opportunities to witness and learn from injury as well as to see what good could be wrought from those situations.

While most joined their local militias or armies, Asper was handed the bad luck to be born in an era where no one was particularly eager to slaughter each other on a mass scale. Adventurers, at the very least, provided ample opportunity to observe injury and all manner of wounds and diseases.

Her doubt had grown with each member added to their band: the murderous brigand, the heathen wizard and the savage monster. When they had finally met Miron Evenhands and agreed to aid his mission to commune with the heavens, it had dissipated.

But now, as she squatted in the underbrush of Ktamgi's forest, watching the prow of the black vessel carve through the water, her doubt returned. And like a rash left untreated, it blossomed with a triumphant festering.

The ship, carved long and sleek from a wood so dark as to devour the sun, slid along the shoreline. With every push of the thick oars, every grunt of effort from those who pushed them, the crew became distinct, each one an ugly purple bruise upon the ship's low-set deck.

At first, she wondered if she might be hallucinating, wondered if some native pollen had seeped into her nostrils and twisted her sight into some miasma of ebon and violet. She certainly had never seen such creatures as dotted the benches on the vessel.

Their purple flesh, generously exposed by the hammered sheets of iron they wore over their chests, was pulled hard and taut over muscles that flexed and shimmered in sweat-laden harmony. Their black hair resembled a row of hedges, each one trimmed with similarly violent style and cut close to their powerful jawlines.

It was their eyes that caught Asper's attention, however: rows of narrowed, white diamonds without pupil or iris, each one set deep into the sockets of a long, narrow face.

Asper felt herself cringe inwardly. These, then, were the source of the carnage upon the blackened beach. She found it easy enough to believe; as the ship pulled closer, she could make out the thick iron blades strapped to their belts, two to each man, dark and ominous against their muscular purple thighs.

And yet, for all their menace and jagged edges, they appeared to be nothing more than ordinary blades. Not even well-made ones at that, she thought, each one resembling little more than a long spike. What, then, enabled these men to slaughter the demons as they had done?

That question suddenly became far less relevant to her as another one forcefully entered her mind through her widening eyes.

_Are... are they... slowing down?_

" _NYUNG!_ "

She winced at the sound: a harsh, alien bark that was difficult to distinguish between an actual spoken language and a bodily function. Whichever, the men seemed to understand it well enough. With an equally unintelligible roar in reply, they dug their oars into the sands of the shoals, bringing the ship to a sudden halt, bobbing ominously in the surf.

Though she was shocked to admit it, her first thought was not for herself, but rather for her companions. Gariath and Dreadaeleon were still vanished, chasing whatever it was that made each of them respectively useless at that moment. What would happen, she wondered, fearful, if they should stumble upon the purple creatures disembarked and eager to dismember?

Then again, she reasoned, perhaps their disappearance upset her for the sole reason that magic and claws would be much better for a potential fight than a hefty stick and harsh language.

Whenever her companions planned on returning, however, they'd have to deal with whatever metal bits would be inevitably jammed into their orifices themselves. She had no intention of moving from her cover in the first place, and the sudden sound that arose from the ship's deck did nothing to persuade her.

There was a sharp groan, followed by a heavy slamming sound, as though someone thought it a good idea to drag a bag of particularly old door hinges in a particularly thin sack across the deck. With each passing breath, the sound grew to resemble the distinct pound of footsteps. And with each heavy fall of the heel, the realisation grew in Asper's heart with a chill.

_Talanas help me... they're coming ashore._

From the rear of the ship rose a great white plume, stalking between oarsmen who, at its presence, lowered their heads. It strode to the prow of the ship and Asper could see it was a stiff topknot stretched tightly above a particularly long face. The man, noticeably taller and more muscular than his dark-haired companions, stood at the vessel's bow and swept a white-eyed glare across the shore.

Asper had to clap her hand over her mouth at the sound of shattered surf as he placed a gauntleted hand upon the railing and hoisted himself over. Trudging through the waves with a contemptuous stride, he emerged onto the shore, purple flesh and black armour glistening.

Despite his proximity, close enough for her to see the hard sneer etched into his long, hairless face, Asper couldn't help but lean closer to study the man. There was something off about him, she noted, for as tall and powerful as he was, there were too many decidedly unmasculine qualities to him.

The skirt-like garment that hung from his belt exposed legs that should have been covered in greasy, grimy hair; even Dreadaeleon had that. But his legs were smooth, as was the rest of his purple flesh. His armour, a haphazard collection of blackened chain and plate, was sparse, exposing a muscular abdomen that was also hairless. It was the particular curvature of his breastplate that caught her eye, though: the metal was curved, seemingly needlessly, as though it had been wrought to fit...

The realisation knocked her to her rear.

"Sweet suffering Sun God, it's a woman."

Why wouldn't they be? she asked herself. Females more massive than men would certainly fit with the absolute nothingness she knew of these alien things.

The rest of them, she realised, were also female. Their curves became more apparent, though hard and unyielding. Their chins bore a feminine angle, but only vaguely. Their faces resembled first the same hard iron they wore, but secondly women.

Women, she realised, but only barely so; the one standing upon the beach even less.

Taller than a man, lean and hard as a spear, she surveyed the shore through a long, narrow face. Her eyes were hard and white, not the colour of milk but of angry quartzites, sharp enough to draw blood with a mere gaze. Even her hair was menacing, topknot rising like a white spire from the crown of her head, the rest of it pulled tightly against her skull.

For as much ferocity as she oozed, however, it was nothing compared to the weapon clenched in her hand. Resembling nothing so much as a broad, flattened sheet of iron with a hilt jutting from it, the sword looked to be easily the size of a small man, yet this longface, this woman, clenched it with familiar, five-fingered ease.

_No, wait_ , Asper noted, _four fingers._ The gauntlet covering her hand had only three digits and one thumb, the middle being decidedly larger than the others. She blinked, took a moment to consider.

_Four-fingered, purple-skinned, white-haired, longfaced women who carry giant slabs of metal_ , she paused to swallow, _and kill demons._

Quietly, she looked up to the sun, beaming proudly upon this towering woman and asked.

"Why?"

" _SCREAMER!_ "

Asper staggered back twice; once for the sudden snarl from the woman's mouth and twice for the fact that she was apparently speaking the human tongue. She froze, fearing that the sound of her rump scraping across the dirt might have attracted attention. For the strange woman's part, however, she seemed much more concerned with the state of the beach than anything else.

And the beach seemed to annoy her immensely. With another growl, she hefted her huge weapon and brought it down in an explosion of sand. Sand, Asper noted, that was suddenly green as it landed in sizzling blobs upon the shore.

She squinted and, upon eyeing the sickly emerald shimmer to the weapon's edge, the reason for the Abysmyth's death at the longfaces' hands became apparent.

" _Semnein Xhai!_ "

Another voice, far less hurried and harsh, lilted from the ship as another figure stepped to the prow.

In shocking contrast to the others, this woman was a head and a half shorter than the rest, clad in silken fineries as opposed to heavy black plate. Her face was more rounded, as though better nourished. The billowing velvet of her black and gold robe could not obscure her figure, either. Where the others were lean and hard, this one was frail and slender, where the others bore the modest swell of breasts...

"Oh, you can't be serious..." Asper muttered to no one in particular.

The male looked wildly out of place amongst the metal and muscle. Where the females sat attentively, grips shifting between oars and weapons, he reclined lazily upon the prow, daintily covering a yawn with a slender hand.

He looked almost approachable, Asper thought, at least compared to the others. The images of the frogmen, frozen upon the earth, and the Abysmyth, shrieking out its last breath, were fresh in her mind. That, and the imposing white-haired female between them, kept her still and silent.

For that reason, though, a thought occurred to her. Fierce as they were, these longfaces _had_ slain an Abysmyth, an impossible task done to an impossible foe. Whatever their motives, they had removed one more piece of filth that stood between herself and the tome.

After all, she reasoned, it wasn't as though she travelled with the most gentle-looking people herself. Perhaps these longfaces could be trusted, perhaps these longfaces could be her key to delivering Lenk and the others from Irontide.

Of course, perhaps they'd simply carve her open and wear her intestines as laurels and call it a day.

At the very least, it would have helped to have known what they were saying.

The male at the prow called to the white-haired warrior with a lazy lilt, the language not quite so foul from his lips. In response, she whirled about, howling what were undoubtedly curses in her twisted tongue. The male repeated himself with a smirk, holding up a single digit, one of five, Asper noted, and wiggled it.

The female bristled, hard body trembling with restrained fury.

Though she looked like she would have, and could have, hurled her giant cleaver at the male, she settled for stalking back to the ship. Her angry snarl commanded the sound of two sets of boots rumbling up the deck and, within moments, two more of the females had disembarked and stood before her with hard-faced attention.

She barked orders, accompanied alternately by wild gestures and ironclad slaps across the chin. Barely fazed, the females grunted in response, smashing gauntleted fists together in a gesture that appeared half-salute, half-challenge and uttering a unified roar in response.

" _QAI ZHOTH!_ "

The white-haired female gave them a long, hard stare, as though appraising them. Apparently satisfied, she snarled at them and hefted her weapon over her shoulder. Asper noted grimly the ease with which she hoisted both herself and the weight of metal upon her back into the ship. Tense as she was, though, she couldn't help but spare a relieved breath as the females' grunting rose with their oars, pushing the ship away from the shoreline.

The longfaces were departing, leaving her with two heavily armed, possibly deranged purple women.

The thought momentarily crossed her mind to make her move now: as powerful and fierce-looking as these two were, they still resembled dainty purple milkmaids in the shadow of the white-haired one. Perhaps the opportunity to discover what they were about and whether they might be of use was now.

She quickly retracted that thought as they slid short, stabbing spikes of iron from their belts. Exchanging a momentary scowl with motives unreadable, they turned and began to stalk off towards opposite ends of the beach. Like narrow-faced hounds, they swept the shore with hard stares, searching.

_But for what?_

Horror's icy fingers suddenly seized her by the throat, her breath dying with the sudden realisation: it didn't matter what they were searching for, so much as what they would find. And, if their eyes were for more than just looking menacing, they would undoubtedly find tracks.

Her tracks.

If they didn't think to search the forest after that, she would have been shocked. However, an old adage involuntarily came to her mind: the Gods frequently offered gifts in threes. Given that she had already been handed giant purple men-women in addition to giant black fish-things, it would seem a shame if they _both_ didn't try to kill her.

Her options were so slim as to be an emaciated wretch begging for food.

Running was clearly futile; deserted islands tended to leave very little room for evasion. Fighting them was similarly discarded; neither longface's unyielding muscle seemed to suggest that a staff's blow would have any greater result than a stern talking-to.

Clearly, then, she reasoned, someone else would have to do the fighting.

She glanced up and down the beach and frowned; each one of the longfaces had departed in the same directions her companions had. If she didn't find them first, the females undoubtedly would. Then she might never find out if they were friend or foe before the others decided to eviscerate or burn them alive.

That was, of course, if they didn't simply gut her companions first.

_Then again_ , she thought, rubbing her jaw where Gariath had struck her, _maybe that's not so bad._ She growled, giving herself a light thump to the head. _No, no, no. Stop thinking like that. Don't end up like them._

She would stick to the forest, she imagined, skirt the trees to keep out of their sight until she could find Dreadaeleon or Gariath. Even if the longfaces _were_ allies to be won, negotiations would go much easier accompanied by four hundred pounds of red muscle or one hundred pounds of fire and lightning.

The sole question remaining, then, was why there was so much activity atop Irontide's battlements.

She wouldn't have noticed it had it not been so prominent. The crown of white was now alive, the Omens writhing and hopping about, emitting all manner of chattering jabber that carried over the waves. The sight of them, their countless bulbous eyes shining like ugly, unpolished jewels, made Asper's stomach roil; they had been bad enough when they stood still.

And yet, it wasn't until she noticed a distinct empty space that she truly began to worry as another question crept intrusively into her mind and onto her lips.

"Where'd the big one go?"

Her question was answered in the chattering of teeth that filled the air behind her, carried on a cloud of acrid fish reek. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, kissed by a wisp of salt-laden, hot breath. The fear came over her in a cold blanket, freezing muscles that begged her to run, paralysing a neck that shrieked at her to turn around.

Heat returned to her as she heard something behind her speak in a guttural mimic of her own voice.

"Where'd the big one go?"

She whirled, eyes going as wide as the eyes staring into hers. Two bulbous blue orbs stared at her, unblinking, from an old crone's face. Asper's lips pursed for a moment, unable to find the words to form a prayer holy enough to ward against what she saw.

The creature's eyes stared at her from where the chin ought to have been, the hooked nose curving sharply above them like a long, fleshy horn. Breathlessly, the priestess stammered, trying to form a curse, and her words were echoed back to her from a pair of jaws creaking open upon the creature's forehead.

Trembling hand clenching her pendant, she muttered a word.

"Run," she gasped to herself, "run."

"Run," her own voice replied from the creature's jaws.

Legs refusing to obey, she all but collapsed backwards out of the foliage and onto the beach, arms swiftly dragging her away from the creature. The Omen was not deterred, and leapt from the underbrush in a great flap of white wings to land before her.

In the daylight, the thing was even more horrific. From its upside-down face ran a long neck, leading to a body that resembled an underfed stork. The creature crawled forwards on bony hands blue with swollen veins that jutted from its wing-joints. Its face was blank and expressionless, teeth chattering as its eyes locked on to Asper, who sat frigid and unable to move before it.

The Omen rose up on webbed, yellow feet and spread its wings, exposing a pair of withered breasts that trembled as the creature drew in a deep breath and dropped its massive, inverted jaws.

Whatever sound it might have made, whether a curse or the shrill mockery of Asper's own terror, was lost in a whining shriek and a hollow slamming sound. Something silver whirled violently through the air. Asper blinked and, when she opened her eyes, a leather-bound hilt jutted from the creature's neck. With its face still unchanged, the Omen gurgled slightly, lowered its arms and keeled over.

The Omen lay leaking dark red upon the sand. Asper could not find the breath to scream, nor to do anything but stare open-eyed and open-mouthed at the twitching corpse before turning to gawk at the sound of heavy boots crunching across the sand.

The longface's stride was casual and unhurried as she stalked towards the Omen, her face appearing more perturbed than anything. Completely heedless of the priestess sitting paralysed beside it, she merely leaned down and pulled the long blade, its edge jagged and thick with life, from the creature, her only expression being the hint of a smile that emerged alongside the choked squawk from the parasite as she ripped the weapon free.

When Asper finally spoke, the words came as a shock to her.

"Th-thank you," she gasped.

The longface turned and lifted a black brow, as though she hadn't noticed the woman until just now. Despite the not-entirely-friendly expression, Asper shakily rose to her feet and dusted her robe off, offering the woman a weak smile.

"If you hadn't come along just now..." She cleared her throat. "Can you understand me?"

The longface cocked her head at that and Asper sighed. _Of course_ , she muttered in her head, _that was_ much _better._

"All right," she said resignedly. "You can't understand me. We'll work around that. But you did help me and you _did_ kill what I'm supposed to be killing. So, for now," she extended a hand and a broad smile to her purple rescuer, "we can satisfy ourselves with that, can't we?"

The longface regarded Asper's hand with apparent concern, eyeing it for a moment as if unsure what to do with it. For a moment, the priestess felt her heart stop as the longface shoved her bloodied blade back into her belt without cleaning it. While the sensation she felt as the purple female seized her hand in a red, sticky gauntlet was not what she thought she could call "good" in all conscience, it was with no small relief that she saw the longface smile back, exposing rows of jagged teeth.

The feeling was decidedly ruined when the longface pulled her forwards violently and drove a purple knee into her belly.

She staggered backwards, clutching at her stomach. Her left arm throbbed angrily, pulsing with a life all its own, a foreign, fiery blood coursing through it. Swiftly, she seized it with her weak right hand, clutching it as though it were a feral dog.

_No, no, no! NO! Not now!_ She grimaced at her arm, and it seemed to scowl back at her, as if to ask, _Then when?_

She found no ready answer as the longface stalked forwards, eyes glimmering cruelly in their sockets. Feebly, the priestess held up her right hand, half in futile warding, half in unpitied plea.

"No! _No!_ " she hacked. "That's... not... I didn't want to..." She staggered to her feet, knees threatening to give out beneath her as she backpedalled awkwardly. "Listen. _Listen!_ "

She stumbled backwards, saved from falling only as the red gauntlet reached out to seize her by her collar. With a harsh jerk, she was brought face to longface, a jagged, white smile added to the ivory stare. And the longface spoke with a voice as harsh and grating as the iron spike sliding from her belt.

"I heard you, pinky."

"You," Asper gasped, "speak my language?"

"I do." The longface's smile seemed too wide for her narrow visage as she levelled the spike at Asper's. "That's what your weak breed calls 'irony', isn't it?"

"It's not irony, it's coincidence!"

"Arguing languages while you're about to be skewered?" The longface shook her head. "Your death will be a boon to your race."

Before she knew what was happening, Asper's left arm, burning under her sleeve, snapped up to seize the woman by her throat. The voice shrieking inside her mind, begging for control, fell quiet against a violent crackle inside her. The fire in her veins slid through her fingers, up her shoulder and scorched a bare-toothed snarl upon her face.

"I'm not going to die, _heathen_."

The longface's smile only grew broader, a predator feeling its prey squirm inside its jaws. Without a thought for the unnatural tension in Asper's hand, she raised her spike and aimed the point directly at the priestess's face.

" _VERMIN!_ "

The bellow degenerated into a wordless howl that rent the air. Eyes, white and pupilled alike, turned upwards to regard the massive wall of crimson muscle standing upon the shore.

Gariath's own dark orbs were fixed upon the longface, apparently heedless of the captive she held, as he unfurled his wings, dropped upon all fours and charged, leaving sundered earth in his wake.

"Not yet, anyway," the longface muttered, dropping the priestess and turning her weapon to face the new threat.

She did not have to wait long.

With a roar, Gariath sprang from the sand, wings flapping, claws outstretched and aiming for a tense purple throat. What he received instead was a vicious handful of iron as she raised her spike to strike at him. He seized it and twisted it away. She was driven backwards by the force of his lunge but did not stagger, her heels digging deeply into the sand.

His free hand came up, claws glistening, and was caught in her grasp. His muscles tensed, eyes widened, if only in momentary appreciation for a hand large and strong enough to hold his killing grasp at bay. _A good fight_ , his toothy smile said without words, _a good opponent._ And, as he reared his head back, his horns finished the thought.

_Not good enough._

His skull crashed against her nose, snapping her head backwards. When he drew away a face glistening with a moisture not his own, his eyes spoke of a deeper surprise. The longface's grip held firm, her hands unshaking, as she turned upon the dragonman a scowl burning white through the crimson dripping down her face.

She snarled, a noise as vicious and fierce as Asper had ever heard Gariath utter, and returned the gesture, slamming her face against his snout. He reeled and Asper's breath caught in her throat; Gariath had never reeled before.

He made a long, slow effort of drawing his face back up. And it was with longer, slower and far more unpleasant effort that he drew his tongue across his lips, tasting the red that dripped upon it.

"Oh," he said through his smile, "I _like_ you."

His nostrils flared, snorting a cloud of crimson into her eyes. Her flinch left her unprepared for the head that followed. His skull smashed against hers; she quivered. His horns crushed her forehead; she released him and staggered backwards.

As if infuriated by the sudden lapse in her strength, Gariath drove his head forwards a third time, sending the longface to her knees. His rage-laden howl became the song of a violent choir as he brought his fists down upon her back. She withstood two hammering blows before buckling, collapsing to the earth.

Not nearly satisfied, Gariath fell on her, continuing to rain fists upon her until the sound of meat slapping meat became the sound of thick branches snapping.

It wasn't until the sound of a particularly moist sponge being wrung reached her ears that Asper finally spoke up.

"Enough, Gariath."

"You're right." The dragonman rose, flicking thick droplets from his hands. "This one's almost finished." At an errant twitch from the purple body, he brought his foot up and then down, smiling at the sound of undercooked porridge being spilled. "Tough one, though."

"There are more of them."

His eyes lit up with a glimmer that Asper often found charming in children being handed presents.

"Where?"

"Later. We need to find Dread and—"

" _Where?_ "

He stood before her, the stink from his body, and parts of the longface's body, roiling into her nostrils. She did not turn away, despite the pleas of her senses; his twitching arms suggested that there was only one acceptable gesture to make. And, with a sigh, she pointed out over the sea to the black vessel.

He shoved her aside, scowling across the waters. The ship cut through the froth like a black spear, propelled by its harmony of oars. Purple bruises lined the low deck, and in each pulse of purple muscle, Gariath saw something that made his smile threaten to split his face in two.

"They're not so fast," he grunted, stalking towards the water. "I can still catch them."

"Catch them?" Asper turned an incredulous glare on him. " _Catch them?_ There are over thirty of them on that ship!"

"A ship heading for the tower," Gariath pointed out. "A tower filled with Lenk and two other weaklings."

"Don't insult my intelligence by pretending you care about them."

"Fine, but only because I can insult you in so many other ways. Like this." His hands went limp at the wrists as he began dancing from foot to foot on his toes, whining through his teeth. "Oh! Oh! A bunch of scary purple women! Whatever shall we do?" He gasped, reached out and slapped her face hard. "How about we _kill_ them?"

"Just because that's the only answer you know doesn't mean it's the right one," she snarled, rubbing her face. "They're dangerous. That last one almost killed me."

"Such a phenomenon ceased being interesting the last four hundred and twenty-six times it happened."

"With Dread, we can—"

" _You_ can. With the skinny little runt, _I_ can sit around listening to _two_ spineless imbeciles and waste time that could be better spent killing." He waved her off, stalking into the surf. "See you in the afterlife, if you ever make it."

"You expect to die," she called after him, "and you're still going?"

"It should have ceased to be shocking after the four hundred and twenty-seventh time."

The curse she flung at his tail was lost, as was the tail, behind a screen of froth. She watched him become a red blur, his wings, arms and legs pumping to propel him beneath the waves and towards his target. She snarled, stamped her foot and found herself caught between cursing and envying him.

He, at least, would be doing something to help the others.

Gariath's words were true, she knew; should their companions run into the longfaces, there would likely be nothing left to drift ashore. She admitted to herself with less shame than she expected that the dragonman had voiced concern for their companions before she had.

Now he was off, with at least a shallow facade of compassion behind him, to at least attempt to help Lenk and the others. And she stood on shore, helpless, left arm burning with impotent fury.

"Where's he going?"

She glanced up at Dreadaeleon's approach, immediately noting the smoky tendrils he flicked from his fingers.

"What happened to you?" she asked.

"Found something purple further up the beach," he replied, "fried it."

"It's not important. Look, there's—" She paused, blinked at him. "Wait, what? Fried her? Just like that?"

"Her?"

"It was a woman."

"Oh... wait, really?" He flapped a hand. "It... she had a sword, she was waving it at me. I was busy searching for Greenhair, I didn't have time _not_ to fry her." He stared out over the sea. "But where's Gariath going?" His eyes went wide at the sight of the black ship. "Furthermore, what's _that_?"

"A ship," she replied curtly. "Isn't that obvious? It's also full of more purple women, all armed, all irate, _all_ heading for Lenk and the others."

"As well as the demons," Dreadaeleon pointed out.

"Right. There are demons in there, too." She began to wade into the surf. "Gariath's heading out to help and we have to, as well."

It wasn't until the water was up to her thighs that she realised both that she was not dragonman enough to swim out to Irontide and that Dreadaeleon was still standing on the shore, staring at her in befuddlement. She whirled, turning a scowl upon him.

"What are you waiting for?" She gestured wildly at the water. "Make an ice bridge... or an ice boat, some kind of ice... whale. _Do something._ "

"Like what?" He held his hands out to his sides. "It doesn't seem like anything needs to be done. The longfaces hate the demons. We hate the demons and the longfaces. Let one kill the other and we can clean up afterwards."

"If Lenk and the others get caught between the demons and the longfaces, there won't be enough left of them to clean up with a dirty rag," she snarled. "If you won't help, sit here and wallow in a pool of your own cowardice, but at least call Greenhair to see if she can help me."

" _Call_ her? She's not a dog." He snorted. "Besides, I couldn't find her. She vanished beneath the water."

"All the more reason for you to help me," she replied hotly. "What do you suppose will happen to her when whoever's the victor of this little clash comes out?"

"What do I suppose will happen to a siren capable of hiding anywhere in the limitless blue sea?" He tapped his chin, her scowl deepening with each strike of his finger. "Goodness, maybe she'll come out and ask for a hug?"

Her face grew red with the scathing fury building up behind lips twisting into a grimace fierce enough to spew it. Her left hand trembled at her side, burning angrily, demanding to be wrapped about the boy's throat. If he noticed such a thing, however, he paid it only as much care as was required to wave a hand as though batting away a particularly irate gnat.

"It may seem callous," he continued, turning to walk away, "but my solution is both logical and fair. They'd abandon us in a heartbeat and you know it."

"Being an adventurer isn't about being _fair_ ," she snarled, tearing through the water towards him, "it's about suffering every miserable person the Gods deem fit to throw into your company." She raised a fist angrily, his head a greasy black pimple waiting to be popped. "And dealing with it the best you can at the mo—"

The burning in her arm dissipated with such force as to be painful. Quietly, she lowered it, stared at it with wide eyes. It felt strange in its socket: no longer so heavy, no longer so hot. It felt exactly like her right arm, it felt... normal.

_That_ , she thought, _has never happened before._

But it paled in comparison to the sensation that followed.

A feeling straddling pain and ecstasy swept over her. Her flesh grew gooseskin beneath her robe, a chill crept down her back, wrapping about her spine like a centipede with icy, frigid legs. She felt her voice catch in her throat, unsure how to respond to the feeling. Then, with a suddenness that made her knees buckle, the chill twisted inside her body, becoming violently hot.

The sun seemed incredibly oppressive at that moment, as though it reached down with a golden hand to glide past cloth, flesh, muscle and bone. It seized her essence in a scalding, fiery grip and shook vigorously. She could feel it pushing down upon her, a great pressure forcing her skin in upon itself.

She would never have noticed Dreadaeleon's hand clenching about her arm had she not spied his scrawny fingers. He seized her with a strength belied by his frailty, he stared at her with an intensity she'd never seen in him. Behind the dark orbs of his eyes, crimson light danced like a flock of agitated fireflies.

"What..." Her voice came reluctantly to her lips. "What are you—"

"You feel it." He spoke with a firmness not his own.

"Feel... what?"

" _It._ Cold. Hot."

With surprising strength, he tightened his grip on her left arm. She felt her heart leap into her throat. _He knows_ , she screamed in her own mind, _he knows, he knows, he knows. Of course he knows. He knows everything. He knows what it is._ She tensed her fingers, the burning returning. _It's hot enough to torch him. He knows._

If he intended to act on that knowledge, however, he did not. At least, not the way she expected. Instead, he pressed his palm against hers. It felt freezing, then hot enough to rival even her own heat.

"You can sense it," he whispered, "can't you?"

"Sense what?" she asked, hysteric as she tore her hand away from his. "I don't know what you're—"

"Venarie. Magic."

The fireflies behind his eyes, the ever-present, if faint, mark of wizardry in his stare, went alight. His gaze became a pair of pyres, crimson energy seeping out in great flashes. He turned his scowl out to sea, the pyres becoming thin red gashes.

"There is... a wizard out there."

Her gaze followed his, towards the only thing present upon the sea.

The black ship drew into Irontide's ominous shadow, blending into the darkness. But Asper could still see it, clear as a fire on fresh-fallen snow. Though she knew she stared into darkness, she felt the ship, sensed it as she might an itch between the shoulder blades. She felt it throb, felt it twitch.

And then she felt it stand up and stride to the prow of the ship.

Something stirred atop the tower's battlements. A chorus of chattering teeth and throaty gibbers cut through the sky. The great crown of white shifted as a hundred bulbous blue eyes spotted the ship.

Like a wound bleeding white, the Omens toppled from the tower, pouring over the side with flapping wings and gnashing teeth. In twisting, chattering harmony, they reared, their mimicked voices of the long dead clashing off one another in a hideous howl as they rose, then descended upon the purple invaders.

" _NYUNG!_ " The command went up from the longfaces, audible even over the cacophony.

The vessel came to a sudden halt, bobbing upon the water like a floating coffin. Purple figures rose, drawing back bows made of the same black wood as the ship, arrows aimed at the descending gibber.

The male stood before them, his white hair whipping about his face, his robes billowing about his frail body as he turned a defiant stare towards the winged frenzy.

"Here it comes."

Asper was numb to Dreadaeleon's voice, numb to everything save the freezing sensation coursing through her body and the sudden weight in her left arm.

The Omens swooped upon the ship in a twisting column, shadow and sky painted writhing white as they tucked their wings against their plump bodies and turned their hooked noses and yellow teeth to the longfaces.

With an eerie casualness to his movements, the male raised his hands. His purple, bony fingers knotted together in agonised symmetry as they bent in ways they were not meant to. He shouted a chorus of words not in his own tongue, nor the tongue of humans. They were familiar, if incomprehensible to Asper, and her eyes widened as she realised she had heard them from Dreadaeleon's mouth before.

"Magic," she gasped.

His voice boomed, granted an unnatural echo. An un-present wind swept his hair back, revealing a frigid blue glow engulfing his eyes. He continued to speak the words and the azure energy bathed his fingertips, sweeping up his arms.

The spectacle was not lost on the Omens.

Those in front reared in mid-descent, colliding with the ones still swooping, and the column became a messy cloud. The flying parasites beat each other with their wings, bit each other with their needles, struggling to get free of the mob of feathers and flesh. Their crazed gibberish became a unified howl of terror as the blue glow rose from below.

"This," Dreadaeleon gasped, "will be big."

He was not mistaken. The longface's words of power ended with an echo that stretched into eternity as his mouth opened wide. In the wake of his voice, a howl rose.

The ship shuddered as an angry gale tore itself from the longface's mouth. The air became blue, shimmering blades tinged with razor shards of frost. From the slight, wispy creature, a maw of frigid azure and ivory swept up to crunch rime-laden teeth about the Omens.

The gale grew high, kissing the battlements and devouring the creatures' wailing. The Omens were swept inside it, caroming off one another in bursts of black blood and broken bones. They thrashed, bit, rent each other as they struggled to escape. Many died immediately, limp bodies twisting silently in the wind. More lived, thrashing even as their feathers hardened upon their flesh.

The maw glowed with a horrific blue. The Omens lost their colour in it, frozen bodies becoming so many flakes inside it. Still and silent, the statues clashed against each other, frozen anatomies snapping to become lost in the wind. Hooked noses, lipless mouths, bulging eyes: one by one, they snapped off, crashed against wings, feet and heads before twisting off to crash into torsos, tails and scalps.

Only after there was nothing left to crash did the longface close his mouth.

His trembling fingers undid themselves, his eyes returned to their heavy-lidded whiteness and the wind that had whipped his hair vanished. Folding his hands inside his sleeves, he turned and took a seat at the end of the ship.

As though nothing had happened, the females took up their oars in resignation to duty. The chant resumed, the rowers worked. The ship glided across the sea, towards Irontide, through an artificial snowfall of powdered blood and pulverised flesh.

Asper could but stare. In an instant, the harbingers of hell, the precursors of horror, the Omens had been reduced to nothing. Reduced to nothing, she added to herself, by a display of magic she had not even dreamed possible. And now the ship continued forwards, the male's expression as casual as the hand that brushed red flakes from his shoulder.

Asper could but stare as they continued towards Irontide. Asper could but stare as such a force continued towards her friends.

Dreadaeleon seemed much less indecisive.

"Come," he said, brushing past her with a forcefulness that she might have gone agog at, were she not already dumbstruck. "We have to go."

"What?" she gasped, breath returning to her. "Now?"

"That longface is a heretic."

"You don't even know what religion he is."

" _Not_ a heretic of whatever made-up god you choose to serve," the boy snarled at her. He gestured towards the ship. "Look at him! He's not even breathing hard!"

Asper frowned; she could sense his calm well enough, as she had sensed his power before. Without seeing the longface, she knew Dreadaeleon was right. Dreadaeleon, of course, wasn't waiting for her approval. He waded out from the shore, inhaled deeply and blew a cloud of frost over the ocean. In the few gasping breaths that followed, a small ice floe had formed, bobbing upon the surface.

"It violates all laws of magic, all laws of the Venarium." The boy climbed upon the white sheet, surprisingly sure-footed. "That, at least, is worth getting involved over."

"But not your friends?" Asper asked, raising a brow.

"Friends die. Magic is for ever." He glanced down at her, extended a hand that seemed far too big for him. "Are you coming, or would you rather sit and savour the irony for a bit?"

She glanced out over the sea at a sudden stirring. The male was up and at the prow again, she sensed, his hands outstretched. She felt with her arm the explosive power boiling between his palms. She saw with her eyes the prow aimed at Irontide's great, rock-scarred wall.

Waiting to see what he was about to do seemed decidedly unwise. With a grunt, she waded into the surf and took the boy's hand.

"It's not ironic..."

# _Twenty-Five_

# THE PROPHET

The explosion came to Lenk as a muted thump, shaking the stones in the ceiling and sending gouts of dust to lie upon the black water. He rose to his feet, scrambled to the wall.

"Kat?"

The wall gave no answer.

" _Kataria?_ "

The stone offered no reply.

" _Kat! Denaos!_ "

His fist against the rock slab was half-hearted, all his energy drained from previous pummellings with nothing to show but throbbing fingers and a stone that seemed to smile at the futile effort. He did not expect it to miraculously crumble under his desperation, but the dull rumble spurred him to action.

If his pitiful attempts could be called such, he thought.

He had heard only faint noises since the slab had fallen behind him: the gurgling sounds of the Abysmyths, a shrill whining and the collective croak of the frogmen. Of his companions, he had heard nothing; nothing to suggest they had heard his furtive cries, nothing to suggest they were still alive.

What, he wondered, had made him not listen to Denaos? What had made creeping into a demon-infested, dying fortress seem the logical choice? Greed? Some bizarre, misplaced desire to do the proper thing? _No_ , he told himself, _that doesn't work for adventurers._

A lust for some breed of unpleasant death, then?

_That seems more likely._

Whatever the reason, the stone did not answer. With no more hope to drive him to beat answers out of it, he sought to bring it down with his head. Sighing, he rested a hot brow against cold rock, giving up on it as he had given up trying to find a way out of the forsaken chamber.

He had wondered, when panic had dissipated and calm prevailed, if there was a mechanism of some kind to make the slab rise. After all, he had thought, something must have made it fall. That hope was foetid and rotting now as calm gave way to futility. He swept his gaze about the large, circular room; if such a device existed, he'd never find it.

What floor there was extended ten paces before him into a stubborn outcropping of rock. The rest had long disappeared, swallowed up by a pool of black water that writhed like a living thing. Torches burning emerald lined walls that rose high to form a domed ceiling, glistening with a macabre shimmer of green and ebon.

Whatever had operated the slab before was long-decayed or long-drowned.

The meek thought of searching the waters had been banished long ago. Black enough to eat even the emerald light, there would be no way of finding anything in its depths. The thought of something lurking in there, like the somethings he had seen lurking in brighter waters, was just one more reason to stay on land, however meagre.

Logic and sense abandoned to futility, he turned and, with nothing else productive to do, screamed.

_"KATARIA!_ "

He froze. His echo was joined.

A melodic giggle reverberated through the chamber, bouncing off walls like a chorus of tinkling bells. The harmony was tainted, however, as though those bells were scratched and cracked. He felt it, rather than heard it, slithering across the water, over the stone, through the leather of his boots and into his skin.

He whirled, eyes narrowed, hand on sword. Nothing but stale air and flame shared the room. Or rather, he corrected, shared the part of the room he could see. With the laughter ringing in his bones, he felt his gaze going ever wider, pulled to the water.

"No," he muttered, "not a chance."

The giggle emerged once more, twisting in the air and becoming a stinging cackle. It rang familiar in his ears; his face twisted into a scowl.

"Greenhair."

At the accusation, the laughter became a horrid, shrieking mirth, loud enough to urge his hands to his ears. Resisting, he instead slid his sword from its sheath and snarled at the water.

"And what's so damn funny?"

"If you knew, it wouldn't be quite so."

The voice was alien and convoluted, as though it couldn't decide what it wanted to convey. It was deep and bass, but tinkled like glass, and carried with it a shrill, mirthful malice.

"Tell us," it spoke, "what drives the landborne to try the same thing over and over and expect different results?"

Lenk arched a brow. Wherever the speaker was, it seemed to see this.

"You have been pounding at the stone for some time." It sighed. "Have you not yet realised it moves by will? _Our_ will?" It giggled and spoke at the same time. "All moves at our will, at Her will, earth and water alike."

"You haven't moved me." He spat into the water.

"Haven't we? You drew your horrid metal at the sound of our song."

"Conceded," Lenk muttered, "but it's no great accomplishment that the sound of your voice makes me want to jam something sharp into you." He raised the weapon in emphasis. "Show yourself so we can get this over with."

"Curious. What is it that drives you to fight? To think that we wish to fight you?"

"I've been doing this sort of thing long enough to know that if someone's referring to themselves as 'we', they're typically the kind of lunatic I'll have to kill."

"Astute."

"Time is too short for that sort of thing, you understand."

"One would think all you have is time, unless we decide to move the stone."

Lenk ignored the echoing laughter that followed, searching the waters for any sign of the speaker.

The stirring began faintly, a churn in the water slightly more pronounced than the others. He saw a dim shape in the gloom, the inky outline of something moving beneath the surface. Soon, he saw it rise, circling at the very lip of the rock.

It was when he saw it, so dark as to render the void pale, that it dawned on him.

"Deepshriek..."

"The servants of uncaring Gods and the blind alike have spoken that name," the creature replied, its voice bubbling up from the gloom. "To others, we are Voice and Prophet to Her Will. The landborne forgot all those names long ago, however." Its voice was quizzical. "Tell us, what green-haired maidens have you been consorting with?"

"Hardly the point."

"The point? _The point?_ " It became wrathful, a great churning roar that boiled to the surface. "What heathen consorts with blasphemy with such casualness? Such callousness?"

"Yeah, I hear that a lot."

"Speak to us." The black shape twisted towards his outcropping. "What did she promise you in exchange for vengeance? Treasures of the deep, perhaps, the laden gold of the drowned? Or were you overcome with sympathy for her plight? Perhaps she appealed to your love of false, uncaring deities." Its voice became a slithering tendril, spitefully sliding up from the deep. "Or are you the breed of two-legged thing that lusts to lie with fish-women?"

"I've come for the tome."

The shape froze where it floated. The voice fell silent, its pervasive echo sliding back into the deep.

"You cannot have it." It spoke with restrained fury.

"Landborne... you all covet things you have no desire to learn from, you seek to steal them from their proper authority." Its echo returned with a tangible, cutting edge that seeped into flesh and squeezed between sinew. "Do you even know what holy rites this book contains?"

"I don't care," he snarled through gritted teeth. "I gave my word I'd return it."

"Your word is an iron weight in deep water. What is your true purpose to come with such heresy in your heart?"

"One thousand pieces of gold," he answered without hesitation.

"Meagre riches!" the Deepshriek roared. "Fleeting! Trifling! They give you pleasures you will forget and in exchange forsake your purity and chastity. You would trade power, _the_ power to return the Kraken Queen to her proper seat for shiny metal? There are infinite worlds of golden garbage in the deeps, forever clenched in the drowned hands of those who would die with it. You are no different."

"I haven't been paid yet. If I die, I won't even have gold to drown with." The irony was lost on him in a sudden fury. "I've seen what comes out of the deeps. I've seen it die, too."

"So it was you," the Deepshriek seethed from below. "I heard the cries of the Shepherd as you callously cut it down. And so did Mother Deep hear the wails of Her children."

"I didn't kill it," he replied, "but I put a sword in it. That's one thing I can do to demons."

"Demon?" It loosed an infuriated wail. " _Demon?_ A word birthed by the weak and covetous to rail impotently against the righteous. You display your ignorance with such callousness."

"I don't care."

" _You_ are blinded and deafened by hymn and terror for your false Gods. You would deny your place in the endless blue. You were not there, as we were, in ages past when Great Ulbecetonth reigned with mercy and glory for Her children."

"If you really are so old as that, you're well past due for a sword in your face."

"This book has the power to return Her," the Deepshriek ignored him, "to return Her from worlds of fire and shadow to which She was so cruelly cast." Its voice became shrill, whining, pleading. "Join us, landborne. It is not too late to forsake this quest and aid our glorious mission. You, too, have a place in the endless blue... for the moment."

"I've heard stories that a demon's promise is the bait to hook the mortal soul." Lenk eyed the shape, growing larger and darker beneath the surface as it slid towards his ledge. He held his sword tightly, planted his feet upon the stone. "I'd sooner believe that shicts bottled my farts than believe... whatever in Khetashe's name _you_ are."

The black shape rose wordlessly to the surface. Straining his eyes, Lenk thought he could make out the edges of stubby, jagged fins, like those of a maimed fish, and a long, thrashing tail that spanned an impressive distance from the creature's already impressive mass.

_Shark_ , he recalled, was the name of such a thing.

"We tried, Mother Deep, how we tried." The Deepshriek muttered, whined and snarled all at once. "Let this waste of promise not enrage You."

The surface rippled, parted. Lenk hopped backwards, levelling his sword before him. A pair of glittering, golden eyes peered up at him and he stared back, baffled. A woman's face blossomed from the gloom in a bouquet of golden hair wafting in the water behind her.

Somehow, he had expected the Deepshriek to be more menacing.

Slowly, her visage rose from the gloom entirely and Lenk found himself staring at a pair of enchanting eyes set within a soft, cherubic face the colour of milk. She smiled; he found himself tempted to return the expression.

And she continued to rise. There were no shapely hips or swelling breasts to complement the beautiful face. From her jawline down, she rose from the darkness on a long, grey stalk of throbbing flesh. Her smile was broad, delighting in Lenk's visible repulsion as he recoiled, sword lowered.

But he could not turn away, could not stop staring. He spied another feminine face, another pair of golden eyes framed by hair of the blackest night. Another bobbed up beside it with a mane of burned copper. They shared their golden-locked companion's smile, revealing sharp fangs as they rose on writhing stalks.

In hypnotic unison, they swayed above Lenk, their sharp teeth bared, golden eyes alight against the green fire. They glided gracefully through the water to the outcropping's flank, visibly delighted as Lenk hesitated to follow their movement.

"What," he finally managed to gasp, "in the name of all Gods _are_ you?"

"We," they replied in ghastly symphony, "are your mercy."

The golden-haired head snaked forwards suddenly, its lips a hair's width from Lenk's face.

"And no God will hear you down here."

The demon threw back all its heads and let out a hideous, screeching laughter that echoed through stone and skin alike. Lenk resisted the urge to clutch his ears, finding solace in the grip of his sword. He eyed the stalks the heads were mounted upon; they looked flimsy at a glance, like boiled corn.

_Corn cuts easy._ He took his weapon in both hands, narrowed his eyes and prepared to strike.

The golden-haired head snapped forwards once more, eyes unnaturally wide, mouth agape to an extent that should not have been possible. Lenk stared, horrified, as the very air trembled at the beast.

A great bulge rose up through the fleshy stalk. The demon's mouth stretched even wider. The remaining two heads smiled broadly as, in one great exhale, the Deepshriek screamed.

The air was robbed from him, turned into a fist that struck him squarely in the chest. His ears threatening to burst in tiny blossoms of blood, he was hurled from the outcropping to slam against the chamber's rough-cut wall.

His sword fell from his hand, disappearing beneath the waters. He didn't feel it, didn't feel his heart slowly stopping, didn't feel his body peeling off the wall to slide slowly into the waters, so numb it was.

Fear was forgotten, fury fled. The creature's wail had robbed him of all sense and emotion; he had not the feeling left within him to know to scream before his head slipped beneath the blackness.

Through the gloom of the water, he saw it. The fish hurtled towards him like a grey arrow, skin the colour of rock, save for its bone-white underbelly and spattered maw. Three fleshy stalks crowned its forehead, snaking about in the water. Somewhere far above, he heard three laughing voices.

As he saw the fish's white, gaping jaws and the rows of jagged teeth, he wondered absently if he would feel it when they ate his head.

# _Twenty-Six_

# A BEAUTIFUL DEATH

It wasn't until after Gariath pulled himself up out of the water and into Irontide's gaping wound that he felt his breath stop. Ear-frills spread, eyes wide open, he was terrified to blink for fear that he might miss a single moment of what unfurled before him.

He had begun to think he'd never see it. He had begun to think he was doomed to die a miserable, peaceful death, slipping away in his sleep or being laid low by a particularly noisome cough. He had begun to think that he would never see what all _Rhega_ yearned to see before they left this world for the spirits.

_Beautiful._

It occurred to him that others might think him morbid for describing the carnage blossoming before him in such a way. But then again, he reasoned, that was why they were stupid and dead and he was _Rhega_ , soon to die.

Carnage, a symphony of metal and screaming, permeated the vast hall, pain and glory bled out of the gaping hole in Irontide's hide on saltwater tides.

That he had missed the beginning of it all bothered him little. The fight was still unfolding when he arrived, a humble child well on its way to becoming a furious adult of slaughter. And Gariath could see that it grew amidst the great mass of purple and white in the centre of the vast and sprawling chamber.

That the longfaces held the advantage was obvious enough. They moved in tight, concentrated packs, bristling with their iron spikes and circular shields. Frogmen descended upon them with wailing fervour, undeterred as one after another were impaled and tossed into growing piles of humanoid litter.

But the creatures did not falter, compensating for their lack of skill and weapons with their sheer press of flesh. The passages and archways of the hall were choked with rivers of them, pouring out in ever-greater numbers to fight the violet invaders.

One of the muscular women went down, skewered by a press of five bone-tipped spears. _Magnificent_ , Gariath thought.

A jagged throwing blade was hurled, bouncing off the stone floor to catch a charging frogman in the groin. _Incredible._

A white-haired female at the centre cut down throngs like great hedges, shearing through bone with a massive blade. _Beautiful._

And all through it, the shrieks of battle filled the air, striving to be heard over the din of agony.

" _Ulbecetonth!_ " the frogmen screamed, rattling spears. " _These ones shall be rewarded!_ "

" _Qai zhoth!_ " the females roared in their guttural language, banging iron to iron. " _Akh zekh lakh!_ "

" _Let all defilers know Her mercy!_ " the pale creatures shrieked.

" _Chew them alive, netherlings!_ " the white-haired female howled, the human tongue delightfully harsh on her tongue. " _Akh zekh lakh!_ " Her roar sent the tiny pale creatures scurrying into the water, sent her purple fellows shrieking with collective fury. " _EVISCERATE! DECAPITATE! ANNIHILATE!_ "

At that moment, Gariath decided he liked her best. She would be the last, he told himself, the one to give him his beautiful death.

It was only out of a fleeting sense of fading loyalty that he scanned the melee for any signs of pink flesh. Amongst the fluids and metals exchanged, the humans were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they had fled, or perhaps they were already dead.

_Perhaps_ , he told himself, _is a good enough reason for vengeance._

The thrum of bowstrings was an insult to the glory of personal combat, and its sound annoyed Gariath. Quickly spying its source, a trio of the longfaces loosing jagged-headed arrows into the throng, he narrowed his eyes.

Cowards would serve as decent preludes.

They did not deserve to be made aware of his presence, he knew, but for this death to be true, they would have to. His chest expanded, his roar was a flash of thunder, coursing over the melee and lost in the sound of battle. The rearmost archer turned to regard him curiously, no trace of fear in her white eyes.

He smiled at that; he had forgotten what such a thing looked like.

Honour was satisfied. His presence was announced. Whether the females realised it or not, the time for fighting had come.

He lowered his head and rushed towards them, salt kicking up behind him, eyes alight with fury. His intent was unmistakable; a cry of warning went up, a clumsy arrow flew over his head. He fell to all fours, another pair of arrows shrieked towards him, one sinking into his shoulder.

He did not feel it. He did not hear their threats. There would be time for pain later. There was time for fear never. His horns went low, glittering menacingly. More arrows flew, nicking his flesh, kissing the stones.

By the time they were throwing their bows down to draw swords, he was already laughing.

The archer at the fore was met in a violent burst of crimson. His horns found a hard, purple belly and dug in. His laughter grew to be heard over her howling as his head jerked upwards, his horns grating against her ribcage. He rose to his full height, the female kicking and shrieking like some macabre living hat.

With a great snap backwards, he sent her flying, then skidding, leaving a smear of red upon the stones.

His remaining foes were painted red in his eyes. Their horror was momentary, replaced by expressions that seemed to vaguely resemble jagged smiles. With eager glee, they kicked their bows aside and drew hard iron.

Gariath had to fight the urge to shed joyful tears.

The more eager of the pair rushed him; no shriek determined to intimidate him, no scowl to mask her fear. There was nothing on her face but a hard smile to match her iron. There was no sound from her but the thunder of her boots and two words tearing themselves from her lips.

" _QAI ZHOTH!_ "

He caught her chop in his hand, feeling the metal bite into his palm. His grasp had tasted blades before; he did not flinch. Snarling, he tore it away from her as a stern parent takes a toy from a petulant child. Tossing it aside, he snapped both hands out to wrap around her throat.

It was almost disappointing to feel the weakness with which this one fought back: not quite as firmly as the one on the beach, but equally as fierce. There was no confusion in her milk-white eyes as he had seen in the eyes of humans, no unspoken plea, no desperate murmur to a God suspected to be merciful. Instead, she spat into his eyes as he hoisted her from her feet. Her hatred was unabashed, her fury pure, her fate sealed.

_Refreshing._

With another snap of his arms, he brought her crashing down to the stones. Bones shattered, salt water sprayed, and the longface still twitched. He did not laugh as he seized her by the hair and forced her to kiss the rock once more; he owed her that much. And in return, she did not scream, did not beg, did not put up a pathetic struggle.

When he rose, he did not see a wretched corpse, a dead coward. He had taken that from her, leaving only a good death.

_A beautiful death._

Even if she wasn't quite as strong as the one on the beach, hers would be a death better than most. The same could not be said of her companion. He glared over his surroundings; nothing but the clash of battle and the sound of carnage. Wherever the third one had gone, she apparently had found a better way to die than at his hands.

"Coward," he snorted. Just as well, her death would have given no satisfaction.

His ear-frills pricked up. The sound of whirling metal was faint, but distinctive enough to be recognised between the sound of someone grunting behind him and something sinking into his back.

He jerked forwards, his own growl more angry than painful. Something gnawed at his flesh, worming its way in deeper on jagged metal legs with every twitch of his body. Far too concerned with who had thrown it, he ignored the sensation of warm liquid trailing down to his tail and turned with anger flashing in his eyes.

This one's smile was not eager, but haughty. It was the breed of grin reserved for a weakling who believed themselves to have struck a decisive blow through cowardice. _A human grin._

Gariath could not help but grin back; he had always enjoyed the mess of teeth and gum such grins inevitability became. If the longface saw her fate in his teeth, however, she did not show it. Instead, she slammed her spike against her breastplate in a challenge.

"You pinks should pay more attention," she spat through her teeth. "Bites hard, doesn't it?"

Gariath had no reply that could be voiced with words. He merely stalked forwards, his grin broadening as she took a cautious step backwards. In two quick strides, his claws were outstretched and he opened his jaws wide to offer his answer.

There was little about Gariath that surprised Asper any more. That hardly made him any less pleasant to be around, but while she might never grow used to his style of solving problems, she wasn't prone to go running and screaming from him any more.

Though, she had to admit, when she pulled herself into Irontide to find him standing over a trio of corpses, a leather-bound handle jutting from his back, chewing what vaguely resembled a piece of jerked meat well, _well_ past its intended consumption date, the urge was hard to resist.

In light of that, the concerned pair of words she uttered was a reasonable response, she thought.

"You're hurt."

"Good eyes, stupid." He spat something red and glistening onto the floor, licked his chops. "Better hope they don't get cut out, otherwise your only use will be as food."

Asper looked past him, to the thundering melee. Her first thought was not for the chaos raging in the hall, the bodies falling, the metal flashing, but rather for the pulsating sacs that hung from the pillars, the ceiling, that bobbed in the swiftly draining water. Amidst the bloodshed, they seemed disturbingly placid, like fleshy, throbbing flowers in a red-stained garden.

Occasionally, a longface broke free from the melee to dig a sharp implement into one of them. The frogmen shrieked in response, turning attentions away from other opponents to descend upon the assailant in a hail of spears and daggers.

The longfaces fought with equal vigour, welcoming the attacks with an upraised shield and a cruel smile, warding off their web-footed foes as their fellow females hacked into backs with spikes and jagged blades. The fight seemed scarcely even to Asper, with only five longface corpses on the ground and many more standing, against the quickly piling heaps and shrinking throngs of frogmen.

It was just as she had turned her attention back to Gariath and his new, metallic growth that the stones shook.

Heralded by a great, choked roar, they came pouring out of the fortress's orifices: great, white serpents of salt and spray, churning the waters ivory in their wake and kicking up bubbling clouds as they swept towards the battle.

As titanic dead trees, their bodies glistening onyx, their eyes vacant and expressionless even in fury, the Abysmyths exploded from the water. With gangly, ungainly grace, they swept towards the throng, heedless of the cheering fervour from their smaller, paler companions. Claws lashed as they waded into the purple, rending flesh under talons, snapping bones in great webbed hands, tossing bodies aside with contemptuous disinterest.

The longfaces scurried backwards, closing against each other. In the span of a few screams, the three demons had diverted the tide, crushing and scarring without the slightest thought for the iron sinking into their hides.

Asper fought the urge to look away as an abominable claw seized a longface by her throat. Her struggling, snarling and kicking were nothing to the creature. Her companions, like so many gnats, were swept away by its free claw. In one blink of her white eye, the creature's hand brimmed with glistening mucus.

In another breath, she hung like a limp, lamentable trophy in its grasp.

A silver blur cut the air. With an angry popping sound, the demon's emaciated arm twitched, then fell from its shoulder. It looked to the stump with momentary confusion for the pulsing green ichor that gnawed at its flesh. It could scarcely form a surprised gurgle before metal flashed once more and a great, single-edged blade burst through its ribcage.

The sound of the creature's agony was not a pleasant one. Asper threw hands to ears at the wail that burst from its jaws, winced as it collapsed to knees. In a spray of emerald, the blade was out and painting a silver moon at the thing's neck. When she blinked, the fish-like head sank into the water with a plop.

" _QAI ZHOTH!_ " the longfaces howled.

" _ULBECETONTH!_ " the frogmen shrieked.

The Abysmyths remained silent, looking up from their slaughter as a hard, purple figure rose atop the fallen fiend's corpse.

Asper immediately recognised the stark-white hair of the leader, her heavy iron wedge slick with green and black as she held it aloft and loosed a cry to her underlings. The shout was taken up, the throng was pushed forwards, and the killing began anew.

"Ha," Gariath chuckled blackly. "Now it's a fight."

Asper was hard pressed to disagree as the female leapt from the demon's body and hacked a swathe through frogmen, wading deeper into the battle. With purpose, the priestess realised, noting the shadowy archway at the farthest corner towards which she was cleaving.

Gariath, apparently, noted it too, taking a step forwards before she cleared her throat.

"You're aware there's a knife jutting from your back, aren't you?" She took a step towards him, reaching for the handle. "Here, just hold on for a moment and I'll—"

" _NO!_ "

He whirled on her with eyes flashing and the back of his hand colliding with her jaw. She collapsed to the floor, more shocked than pained. The dragonman loomed over her, blood pooling in the furrows of his scowling face, and levelled a single accusatory claw at her.

" _You will_ not _ruin this for me._ "

"Ruin..." There was not nearly enough room on Asper's face to express her incredulousness. "Are you demented?"

"This is a beautiful fight," he said, sweeping a trembling arm over the melee. "You don't belong here."

That wasn't entirely untrue, she realised as she clambered shakily to her feet. There was no reason to be here, trying to convince a murderous reptile to let her pull a chunk of metal out of his back. There was no reason to be here, in the midst of a battle between two breeds of creatures that should not be. There was no reason to be here, chasing friends who would kill each other in a heartbeat and undoubtedly deserved to die on their own merits.

_Then why am I here?_ she wondered as she rubbed at her left arm. It still burned, seared her from the inside. She grimaced; the pain was coming in sharper now. It wasn't supposed to come so soon, she thought, not after what had happened on the _Riptide_. But it still throbbed, still seared, still was angry.

Perhaps that was why she was here. For as she looked out over the melee, filled with people who wanted to kill her, to kill her companions, she knew of only one way to make it stop hurting.

_No, no, no._ She shook her head. _Bite through it. You know you can. You don't have to—_

" _GNAW! BITE! GNASH!_ "

The war cry shattered her thoughts. She looked up as Gariath whirled about, both spying simultaneously the frenzied longface charging with shield and spike held high. Shrieking, the female lunged into the air, her weapon slick and whetted, her eyes crazed and bulging.

There was little time to appreciate the howl, however, for the echoing word of power that resounded behind her drowned out all other noise. There was the crack of thunder as a jagged bolt of electricity split the air to pierce the longface, reaching through her breastplate, through her breast, and leaping out of her back.

She landed, a smoking hole in her chest, muscles twitching with involuntarily convulsions, teeth forever locked in a sudden rigor. They both turned to regard the scrawny boy lurching forwards, Asper with shock, Gariath with ire. Dreadaeleon seemed rather unconcerned with either them or the woman he had just struck from the sky.

"That one," the dragonman growled, "was _mine_."

"If I had thought you were capable of killing her in a timely manner, I would gladly have let you trade blows until one of you wet yourselves." The boy blew on his smoking fingertip. "I didn't think I had time for that, though."

Asper noted the tremble in the boy, the limp that was swiftly developing in one of his legs. He made no effort to hide it, nor his heavy breathing or the sudden bags that hung like purple fruits under his eyes.

"You should probably sit back for a while," she suggested. "You... don't look so good."

"How about that," Dreadaeleon muttered, "I wasn't actually _lying_ when I said magic drains me. Thus, forming a raft made out of ice using only my _brain_ actually _might_ leave me looking not so good."

"There's no need to get all smarmy about it."

"He gets smarmy over everything. The little runt could pull a gerbil out of his pants and he'd somehow manage to end up in a coma _and_ complain about it." Gariath snorted, prodding the boy in the chest. "I've got a _knife_ in my back, but I don't go crying about it. You don't get hugs for doing things right."

"What do I get for killing that last longface?"

"Punched in your ugly face."

"The fact that you're decidedly unbothered about a knife in your back and the troubling questions it raises does not concern me now." The wizard swept a glare about the carnage. "Where is the heretic?"

"The what?"

"The renegade," Dreadaeleon hissed. "The defiler of law. The male. Where is he?"

Answer came in the form of a sudden pyre that cast the room into a glowing orange hell. A vast circle formed within the battle, charred black figures collapsing around its centre. The male longface, however, seemed to pay these no mind as he turned the plume of flame that leapt from his palm upon the pulsating sacs infesting the hall.

With methodical patience, he reduced them to ash. With contemptuous casualness, he flitted a hand at any frogman that rushed towards him, sending them spiralling against the stones.

"Ah," the dragonman replied, "there he is."

"Incredible."

The male, having torched one cluster of the fleshy sacs, strode across the water upon stepping stones of ice, smirking slightly as he drew back curtains of frogmen to make a path for himself towards the next.

"Simply incredible," the boy repeated, narrowing his eyes.

"How so?" Asper asked. "You can do the same thing, can't you?"

"Not like that," the boy muttered. "I made a boat out of ice and almost lost consciousness." He pointed a trembling finger. " _He's_ channelling three schools of magic at once _after_ doing what he did to the Omens and he's not even sweating."

"So... he's better than you."

"It's simply not possible!" His protest came as a wheeze. "Spells can't just be hurled about without regard! There are laws! There must be pause, there must be rest, there—" He stiffened suddenly, turning the expression of a scolded puppy upon Asper. "Wait, you think he's better than me?"

"Well... I mean, _you_ said he was."

"I said he did something different. That doesn't make him better than me."

"I'm sure you're very talented in other respects, but..." She scowled suddenly. "Does it really matter now?"

"No," Dreadaeleon muttered. He studied the male through a scrutinising squint, his lip crawling further up his face with every spell cast. "If his magic were just stronger, I'd sense it. I'd _know_ it." With cognitive suddenness, he slammed a fist into a palm. "He's _cheating_."

"Cheating." Asper raised a brow.

"Well, he is!" Dreadaeleon stamped a foot. "Even in the most skilled hands, magic is a controlled burn. It strains the body, but not _his_. He's not even breathing hard. He's... I don't know... _using_ something."

"Search him when he's dead," Gariath growled.

With a low snarl, he reached behind him. His body jerked, spasmed, then relaxed at the sound of particularly thick paper being torn. Asper cringed as dark rivers poured down his back, then fought violently against the rising bile as he thoughtfully flicked a glistening fragment of red from one of the blade's sharp prongs.

"For now," the dragonman grunted, "there's plenty to kill. If you're smart, you'll sit back and wait for a real warrior to finish it." He looked over the pair contemptuously. "Being that you're human, though—"

"Naturally." Dreadaeleon's fingers tensed, beads of crimson glowing at their tips. "I don't care who kills him. The laws of the Venarium must be upheld."

With grim nods exchanged, the dragonman and not-yet man turned and stalked grimly towards the melee, ready to rend, to freeze, to bite and to burn. The battle raged with a yet-unseen fury, tides of pink and purple flesh colliding as the Abysmyths waded through to leisurely pluck opponents up and dismember them with disinterest.

_Beautiful_ , Gariath thought.

The dragonman snorted. The wound felt good in his back. He would not be walking away from this fight, he knew. All that remained was to make certain that he got there before nothing was left to kill.

"Wait!"

His eyelid twitched at the shrill protest. He scowled at Asper over his shoulder, meeting her objecting befuddlement with abject annoyance.

"What about the others? Lenk, Kataria, Denaos—"

"Dead, dead, dead quickly," he replied. "Honour them. Give them company in the afterlife."

"But I..." she whimpered, "I can't fight."

"So die."

"I left my staff behind." Her excuse was as meek and sheepish as her smile. "I'm not much use. I... could remain here and tend to you, though. You are bleeding quite badly and I—"

" _Moron!_ " he roared, turning on her. "There will be _nothing_ for you to tend to here. Nothing will survive if I can help it." He stomped towards her, scowling through his mask of gore. "You cried about wanting to fight." He thrust the jagged blade into her hands, staining her robes red. "Now prove if you're worthy of life."

"I... no, it's not that." She tried to return the blade, her grasp trembling. "I don't want to... I mean, I can't. My arm, you see, it—"

"I don't care," he snarled in reply. "No one will ever care what you did while you're still alive." He snorted, spraying a cloud of red into her face. "Your life will be nowhere near as great as your death, if you manage to do it right."

Her eyes were those of an animal: frightened, weak, quivering. But she held on to the blade, he thought, and more importantly, she stopped talking. For the moment, that was enough for him; if she managed to do something worthwhile in the time she still breathed, it would be a pleasant surprise.

She disappeared from his thoughts and his sight as he turned his back to her, stalking towards the throng. He ignored her cries of protest, ignored the boy who had already disappeared into the battle, ignored the thought of the other dead humans. He would mourn for Lenk later, laugh at the rest of them with his last breath.

The wound in his back felt good, the chill that filled him refreshing. The sound of his life spattering onto the ground was a macabre reassurance that he would not be walking away from this fight, that he would be seeing his ancestors before the day was done.

And he would not be going alone, he resolved.

When the first of the longfaces looked up at him, pulling her spike out of a pale corpse and loosing a war cry, it was not death that he smelled, nor sea, nor salt, nor fear. There was only the scent of rivers as she charged him.

Rivers and rocks.

# _Twenty-Seven_

# TO SEE WITH EARS

_K at?_"

That was her name, wasn't it? No shict had ever called her that, of course; shicts had full, proud names that all meant something. Kat meant nothing, Kat was not a name, Kat was not a word.

" _Kat!_ "

Kat was her name, she remembered. Not her true name, not her shict name. Kat was a name that some silver-haired little girl had called her. No, she remembered, he had been a man. A human.

" _Kataria!_ "

She remembered him now. Skinny fellow, not at all impressive to look at; but she looked at him often, didn't she? She followed him out of a forest, a year ago. Where was he now?

His voice was hard to hear. Her ears twitched against her head. They felt disembodied, hanging from her head and heavy with lead. Too deaf to hear her own breath, much less some weak little human girl... man.

But she heard him, still crying out her name, still shrieking, still screaming as if in pain. He had a lot of pain, she remembered.

What was his name again?

"Lenk." Her lips remembered. "Don't be dead." The words came unbidden. They were not shict words. "I'm coming."

"Well, that's just delightful. I'm sure if he wasn't already dead, he'd be thrilled to hear it."

Another voice: grating, simpering, unpleasant. She frowned immediately, her eyelids flittering open. The face she recognised: angular and narrow, like a rat's, except more obnoxious. His wasn't entirely concerned, his frown not particularly sympathetic.

"Denaos," she hissed. Her voice was a croak on dry lips.

"Oh, good. You remember my name. Everything else upstairs working?" He tapped her temple with a finger. "Nothing feel loose? Leaking?" He waved a hand in front of her. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"However many as will fit up your nose if you don't get away from me," she snarled, slapping at his appendage. She rose from the stones beneath her, head pounding with the blood that rushed to it. "What happened?"

"So, you _are_ whole in the mind, right? That question was just your natural stupidity?" He sneered and gestured down a dark, drowned hall. "Just listen, nit."

She didn't have to strain her ears; even weakened as they were, the distant furore sounded violently close. There was the sound of weapons clattering to the floor, harsh and croaking war cries mingling. Mostly, there was the screaming: loud and sporadic, flowing into a continuous river of agony that flooded into her ears and filled her mind like a bubbling pot.

She winced, folded her ears over themselves. They ached terribly; why did they hurt so bad? With a pained expression, she reached up and rubbed them gently. Her horror only grew at the flecks of dried crimson that crumbled out into her palms.

"Ah, yes," she muttered, remembering. "Screaming."

"Plenty of it," Denaos confirmed. "So, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to do this nice and quietly."

"Do... what?"

Denaos rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I'd _like_ to get out of here without having anything stuffed inside me that I didn't put there." He eyed her warily. "Are you sure you're all right? Because I'm starting to think this might be easier if you were dead."

"Get out of here?"

Kataria looked over her shoulder. The great stone slab loomed at the end of the hall, the cracks in its grey face made haughty, shadowy grins against the emerald torchlight. It was mocking her, she realised, as she recalled what had happened. As she recalled who lay beyond it.

"We aren't going anywhere," she muttered, rising to her feet. Her bones groaned in protest. She ignored them, as she did the throbbing of her ears, the agony of her body. "Not without Lenk."

"I'm sure he appreciates the sentiment." Denaos crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. "However, given the fact that he's behind Silf knows how much solid stone and we're out here and... you know, _alive_ , he probably wouldn't hold it against us."

She ignored him, collected her bow and quiver from puddles of salt and slung them over her shoulder. With equal contempt for the limp she walked with, she trudged to the stone and ran her fingers down it.

"It's rather large, if you hadn't noticed," Denaos muttered. "And thick. I checked."

She looked over her shoulder at him with an even stare.

"Admittedly, with not much care." He sighed. "There was the issue of the half-dead shict to attend to." He clapped his hands together. "But you're up. You're moving about. Whatever else is down here is distracted, thus leaving us a fairly good opportunity to do that activity I enjoy so much where I don't get my head chewed off."

"You could have run already," she replied, turning back to the stone.

"I stand a better chance with you watching my back."

"And we'll stand an even better chance with Lenk watching both our backs. Help me look for it."

"For what?"

"A switch... a lever... something that moves this thing, I don't know. You're supposed to be good with these things, aren't you?"

"With hopeless situations?" He shook his head. "Only by virtue of experience. If there was anything that could move that thing, I'd have found it. The only chance you have at this point is to bash it down with your ugly face." He sneered. "Granted, while it seems tempting..."

His voice faded into another babbling tangent, easily ignored as she pressed her ear against the rock. The noises were faint: scuffling, splashing, something loud and violent. Through it, though, there was a familiar, if fleeting, sound.

_He's alive._

At least, he sounded alive to her. It was difficult to tell; what she heard was but a fragment of his voice. It was a weak and dying noise, there and gone in an instant. Perhaps, she wondered, she imagined it?

A trick of her mind or her bloodied ears? Or maybe, in her heart if not her mind, she knew he was already dead and heard the last traces of his breath escaping this world before he followed it. Either way, it was a flimsy, weak excuse to linger in a forsaken fortress filled with demons.

_Still_ , she thought as she cracked her knuckles, _I've gone off less before._

"Hurry it up," she growled as she leaned down to inspect the bottom of the slab. "He's not well."

"Compared to you?" She heard Denaos's long sigh. "Good luck."

She turned at the sounds of boots scraping across the stones. Denaos, with no particular rush or hesitation, stalked down the hall towards the drowned section. She quirked a brow.

"Where are you going?"

"Let's not belabour this, please. We all knew there was going to have to be a parting of ways, eventually." He threw his hands up in resignation. "I did what I could. Let Silf bear witness."

"You did _nothing_!" she spat at his back, as though her words were arrows. "I know your petty round-ear God rewards cowardice, but I don't. Now get back here and help."

He could feel her eyes boring into him, that emerald stare that he had seen even Lenk flinch at. But he was not Lenk. He was not Gariath. He was not Kataria. He was a reasonable man. He was a cautious man. He was a man who knew when to run.

_Keep telling yourself that_ , he thought. _Eventually, you'll believe it._ He stooped, making certain that the shict wouldn't see his bitter frown, hear his sigh. _Don't turn around_ , he reminded himself, _don't turn around. She doesn't deserve a second look from you. None of them do. You told them. You warned them. They didn't listen and this is what happened._

_It's not your fault._

He paused at the edge of the water, blanched at its blackness and noted that it wasn't nearly black enough to hide the frowning face that looked back up at him.

_No... still don't believe it._

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a bowstring drawn. He couldn't say that the sight of her eyes, narrowed to venomous slits over a glistening arrowhead, was particularly unexpected.

"No clansman is left behind," she snarled, "ever."

_Steady now_ , he told himself, holding his hands up for peace. _She's clearly lost what little mind she had._

"Must we do this _now_?" he half-whined.

_Brilliant._

"It should have been done long ago," she hissed, pulling the fletching to her cheek. "I've been lingering amongst your diseased race for too long. I wanted to believe the stories my father told me weren't true." He caught the briefest sliver of a tear murmuring at the corner of her eye. "I _wanted_ to believe that."

_Sweet Silf, she's completely mad._ Mad, he realised, and perceptive. His hands twitched, fingers eyeing the dagger at his belt. She responded, string drawing taut, teeth clenched.

"But every time I try, every legend proves true, every story about your cowardice and sickness..." Her eyes went wide, like a crazed beast's. "All of it was true."

_Grief-ridden, perhaps_ , he suspected. _Gods know Lenk was a decent man, but this seems a bit extreme._ He noted the trail of blood that had dried upon her temple. _Maybe that last blow did it..._ His attentions were drawn back to the arrow. _Either way..._

"If I can't do anything for Lenk..." She growled, her fingers twitched anxiously. "I have to do _something_."

"He's not a shict."

Her fingers twitched, bowstring eased just a scant hair. _Good enough_ , he thought as his hand slid a little closer to his belt.

"W-what?" Her expression seemed to suggest she hadn't contemplated that fact in some time.

"He's human, you know," the rogue continued, pressing a thumb to his chest. "Like me, not you." He raised one hand in appeal, all the better to draw attention from the other. "You call him 'clansman', like that means anything to him... to _us_. But it only bears any weight on long, notched ears."

_There might still be a way out of this_ , he told himself, _you don't have to kill her._ Yet, as his fingers brushed the weapon's hilt, it seemed to add: _But just in case..._

"Lenk's... not like you," she muttered without much conviction.

"Fair enough. What would he suggest you do, then?" The rogue shrugged. "Sit here? Wait for whatever's happening out there to find its way in here?" He shook his head. "No, Lenk might not be like me. He's reasonable. He's cautious." He levelled an even stare at her. "He would run... but he would want you with him."

_I can't really afford to make that kind of choice right now_ , he added mentally. _I'm sorry, Kat._ The dagger slipped into his palm. _This isn't my fault._

He didn't believe it then, either.

Something heavy slammed against the stone, water erupted behind him.

He whirled about, springing backwards at the sight of the great, white-eyed shadow barrelling out of the darkness. The Abysmyth clawed its way into the corridor, dripping water and black ichor from a number of festering emerald wounds that criss-crossed its body.

Denaos held the dagger high, ready to throw as the beast stretched out a claw. Yet, as vacant as the creature's stare was, there was no mistaking its direction. The Abysmyth looked past Denaos, past Kataria, to the great, stone slab. Its mouth dropped open.

"Prophet..." it gurgled, "why... won't you help—"

Its question ended in a violent sputter and a blossom of iron. Faster than Denaos could even gasp, a great wedge of metal burst out from between the thing's jaws. It spasmed as green-tinged froth spilled out of its maw to splatter on the floor, twitched as something pulled on the metal and ripped the weapon free from the back of the demon's skull. It toppled forwards and Denaos immediately forgot how close he had been to killing his companion.

The appearance of the newcomer demanded far more attention.

The woman, or what appeared to be a woman, swung her massive weapon over her shoulder, heedless of the black liquid dribbling down its length. With equally callous casualness, she stepped atop the creature, iron boots crunching upon spine and ribs.

Kataria met her gaze. It occurred to her that the stare, milky white, was not unlike the slain Abysmyth's. Where the demon's was vacant and unfeeling, however, this... woman's stare leaked hunger and scorn as though they were tears.

Her purple flesh was as lean and hard as her black armour. Even her face was long and thin like a spear. The fact that her metal was still slick with the Abysmyth's essence did not encourage the shict to lower her weapon. She had cut down a demon with such cruel callousness and now regarded the rogue and shict with an angry ivory scowl. Any idiot could tell she was no ally.

And, as if on cue, Denaos rushed up to meet her.

"Well done!" He slid about the female, seeming to place her between himself and Kataria. "Quite a fine blow there."

_You can't be serious_ , Kataria thought. Was the woman's malice not apparent to him? Did she strike him as another lusty tramp eager for his seduction? She would have put an arrow through the woman in that breath, but white eyes held her in check, daring her and warning her at the same time.

"Any lady that is a foe to any Abysmyth is a friend of ours," he said, smiling broadly to compensate for the cold scowl she shot him.

"Abys... myth?" Her voice was a knife, raspy and cold. "Is that what they are called? Master Sheraptus refers to them as 'underscum'."

"A fine term." Denaos's laugh was a bit strained. "What does he call us humans?"

"Overscum."

"Clever. And what do we call you?"

The woman regarded him cautiously for a moment, then turned her gaze back to Kataria. Her eyes narrowed, she forced the word into a sharpened blade aimed at the shict's head.

"Xhai." She swept that scornful gaze about the corridor. "Semnein Xhai." She waved a hand. "Unimportant. Where is the leader of this weak gathering? Where is the Deepshriek?"

"We're not entirely certain," Denaos replied. "Our friend slipped into that room there, see, and—"

"Useless."

His jaw became a gong of bone and blood, her gauntlet the hammer that sent it ringing through the hall. His whimper was somewhat less impressive as he crumpled to the floor in a whisper. She spared a derisive glob of saliva for his body before turning to the shict.

There was no time for Kataria to wonder whether her companion still drew breath. Her bow was up and levelled. All that stayed her arrow was the odious malice that oozed from every inch of the female's skin.

"Your males," the purple woman muttered, "have a great love of hearing themselves speak."

"Stay back, longface," Kataria hissed in reply.

"Longface?" The female arched a white brow. "We've been called that before."

"It's slightly less of a mouthful than 'white-haired, narrow-jawed, purple-skinned man-woman'."

"We are netherling, overscum," the woman snarled. " _You_ would do well to shove the proper respect in your mouth when addressing the First of Arkklan Kaharn's Carnassials."

"Whatever you like to be called, you're not needed here."

"We go where we please." The netherling tapped her sword against her shoulder. "I have come for..." Her long face twisted in thought. "A book, is it called?"

"The... tome?"

"Ah. That does sound more impressive."

"That isn't yours to take."

"Ours is the right to take." Xhai levelled a metal finger at the shict. "Your fortune is to stay out of our way when we choose to allow you to. Now... embrace your luck and get out of my way. I have much killing to do."

"So have I." Kataria drew back the arrow to her lips. "And I was here first. Get out."

"Or?"

Her bow sang a melancholy tune and, as Kataria witnessed wide-eyed the woman stagger back only half a step as the arrow sank into her ribcage, she couldn't help but wonder if her weapon sang her own dirge. The Carnassial glanced down at the shaft quivering in her flesh and grinned broadly.

"Weak."

Stone groaned, metal shrieked, the netherling was rushing. Her long blade dragged behind her, spewing emerald-tinted sparks. Kataria fired again, hastily, clumsily, and the arrow lodged itself in the netherling's biceps. Her grin broadened as she hefted the blade in both hands.

_Stop_ , Kataria told herself. _Breathe._ The arrow slid into her fingers eagerly. _Focus._ She drew back the missile. _Steady._ She narrowed her eyes as the netherling raised the weapon above her head and shrieked.

_Shoot._

The arrow howled, found its mark in a splitting squeal and bit deeply into a purple armpit. Iron clattered, the Carnassial shrieked and pressed a hand against the red blossoming under her arm.

Kataria smiled. All humans, purple or pink, never saw that one coming. The victory was as brief as the Xhai's pause, and Kataria's smile died and withered into a terrified gape.

_She's not stopping._

Another arrow flew, ricocheted off an armoured shoulder that collided with her chest. The shict felt something shift inside her violently. Her bow was torn from her grasp as she was torn from the floor, sent skidding across the salt and stone.

She could barely clamber to her knees, barely muster the energy to cough and send a thick liquid spattering onto the floor. _Not good_ , she realised, _not good, not good._ Sounds were distant, sights varying shades of grey.

"That's it, is it?"

The netherling's voice echoed against her skull. She looked up just in time to see a pair of milky orbs, a broad, jagged smile to match the shimmering sword held high above her head.

_Move._

It was more of a lurch than a roll, but the sudden movement served well enough to place Kataria out of the way of the crashing blade. It devoured the stone in a shower of fragments, embedding itself hungrily in the floor. Xhai snarled, tugging violently at the weapon's handle. She didn't even bother to look up at the sound of boots crashing on the stone.

" _Surprise!_ " Kataria roared.

She leapt, took the woman about the waist and sent them both tumbling to the ground. Xhai tossed her off as though she were an overenthused puppy, leaping atop her opponent.

But Kataria's instincts were swift as her legs. Boots were up and planted into the Carnassial's belly with a ferocity the shict was not even aware of. Even less aware of the roar tearing itself from her lips, she drove her feet against her foe's stomach again. The netherling was hoisted up and over her to sprawl upon the floor in a crash of iron.

She should have run then. Some part of Kataria knew that was a good idea. But that part was far away now, bleating impotently against the howling within her.

Kataria could feel the roar, rather than hear it. Something forced undiluted rage from her heart, through her veins and out of her mouth. Something bit her muscles with sharp, angry teeth. She went taut, hard, her blood straining to feed her fury as her ears folded against her head in a feral display.

And through her bared teeth, her flashing canines, she could only say one thing.

"No clansman is left behind," she snarled. " _EVER!_ "

Xhai didn't seem to notice, far more concerned with the foot that crashed down upon her face as she tried to rise. Kataria swept upon her, straddling her waist and seizing her by the jaw.

The sound of bone cracking upon the stone did not cause her to relent, could not drown out the roar. What dwelt within her screamed long and loud, sent its victorious, unpleasant laughter rushing into her ears and past her teeth. She brought her fist up and down, pumping with feral rhythm against the Carnassial's bony cheek.

So loud and proud did it call, so fierce and feral did it roar, that she never even noticed that her foe was growling instead of flinching. She did not see that the netherling barely bled from her wounds. She did not see the metal-clad fist rising.

" _ENOUGH_ ," Xhai shrieked.

The iron was a blur, crashing against Kataria's jaw and sending her reeling to the floor. Her foot was a spear, kicking the shict hard against the ribs and sending her curling, her howl abandoning her in an agonised cacophony.

_Where is it_ , she asked herself, _where is the howling? I can't hear it any more... I can't..._

There were many things that she could not.

She could not feel a heavy weight straddling her back, cold iron wrapping about her wrist and twisting her hand behind her back. She could not even roar in pain any more. When her arm was wrenched up so that her wrist pressed against her shoulder blades, it was a weak, meagre whimper that came out of her lips.

"Stop." A second hand seized her by her braid and pressed her face forwards against the stone. "Do not taint the fight with weakness." She could feel Xhai's smile bore into the back of her head. "I knew somewhere in this stupid horde of weakness, someone could fight. Naturally, I found it in a female."

_How_ , Kataria asked herself, _how am I supposed to kill her? What was I supposed to do?_ The howling within her was silent, offering no answers. _WHAT?_

"Don't misunderstand, of course," Xhai continued, "I'm still going to kill you, but I'll... regret it. That is the word for it, yes? But not yet. I need you to speak." She rubbed the shict's face in the salt water. "Your brains have yet to leak out onto the floor, so use them. Tell me what I want to know or I'll wrench your arm off."

"Then do it." Kataria's voice, weak and foreign to her own ears, did nothing to convince herself, let alone her captor.

The Carnassial's derisive snicker confirmed as much. "Obey and I leave you whole. I understand whatever weak deities you overscum worship frown on followers in pieces." She pulled her prisoner's face up that she might better hear the snickering spike being driven into her ear. "That's all up to you, though." She pressed the shict's face back to the stone. "Where is the book?"

"I... we don't know."

"There are more of you, are there?" The Carnassial snorted. "Odd that so many weaklings would congregate in one place. Were you all drawn here by some stink?" The woman snarled, twisting the shict's arm further. "Or were you sent?"

Kataria could hear her own bones creaking, feel her own fingers grazing the nape of her neck.

"G-Greenhair," she half-growled, half-whined, a wounded beast. "S-siren—"

"The screamer?"

Xhai's recognition should have alarmed Kataria, would have alarmed Kataria if not for the fact that there was no room for panic or fear left in her. Nor was there any room left in the netherling for mercy, for as Kataria pounded the stones for mercy with her free hand, her captor merely let out a contemplative hum.

"She is too loose with her allies," the white-haired woman muttered.

Whether out of mercy or out of boredom, she released Kataria's arm and rose up and off her. Kataria gasped, biting back the scream in her throat. Her arm felt weak and useless, freedom a sudden unbearable agony. Straining to keep from shrieking, straining to keep her breath, she struggled to rise. Even her free arm ached, groped about with blind fingers.

It was by pure chance that she felt a handle amidst the salt water. It was with pure fury that she wrapped trembling fingers about it. It hurt to grin, but she couldn't help it. _Apparently_ , she thought as she looked into the blade of Denaos's fallen dagger, _he's good for something._

"After all, she chose you two weaklings rather poorly." The woman's voice was only slightly harsher than the sound of her blade being jerked free from the stone. "I must admit, I was surprised." Kataria heard the whisper of air as the blade was raised. "Still, for a female, you are weak. Are all your kind?"

"No."

Xhai whirled, the great wedge of metal slicing off the scantest of hairs atop Kataria's head as she drove the knife forwards. It found flesh and drove deep into the netherling's hip. Kataria's cry of joy was as short as her foe's cry of anger.

_Run._

She did, but the effort was hindered by a desperate limp. Still, she reasoned, if her pain was only a little less than that of having a dagger driven through a hip, she should be able to get away.

Unfortunately, she realised as a gauntleted hand clasped upon her shoulder, things rarely went as they should.

Stone struck her back, air was struck from her lungs as Xhai shoved her against the wall. With scarcely any breath left to scream, much less to marvel at the ease with which the netherling hefted the great chunk of metal, Kataria gritted her teeth, folded her ears against her head and hissed as she raked the woman's metal-clad wrist.

She wasn't quite sure what she hoped to accomplish. The unstable twitch that consumed the woman's eyelid suggested she was as far beyond intimidation as she was beyond mercy.

"Clever, clever little runt," the netherling snarled. "Cleverness never prevails against the strong. The netherlings are strong." She slammed Kataria against the wall again. "Semnein Xhai is strong."

There was no room left for fear or pain within Kataria. She had done her part, she told herself, fought as best she could. The knife and arrows jutting from the woman testified to that. The netherling would remember her, long after she killed her. She tried to take comfort in that, but found it difficult. As difficult as she found it to keep a defiant face directed at the Carnassial. Her neck jerked involuntarily, drawing her attention back to the stone slab that loomed with granite smugness at the end of the hall.

"Lenk," she whispered, though she could no longer hear her own voice, "I'm sorry."

She expected the blow to come then: a quick, sudden sever that she would never feel, perhaps swift enough to allow her to stare up at her own neck as the rest of her rolled across the floor. The blow did not come, though. Reluctantly, perhaps afraid that the netherling was simply waiting for her to watch it come, Kataria turned back to face the woman.

What she saw was a black hilt jutting from the Carnassial's collarbone, her face contorted in a sudden agony, iron rattling in her trembling arm. A sudden splitting of flesh drew Kataria's eyes down to the gloved hand wedging a second blade into her flank. The woman staggered backwards as a pink face marred by a black eye and split with an unpleasant grin rose over her shoulder.

"What was that about cleverness?" Denaos hissed, twisting the knife further.

The female shrieked, whirling about to bring her sword up in a frenzied circle. The rogue was already out of reach, retreating nimbly as another dagger leapt to his fingers.

Xhai roared, hefting her sword as she stepped towards her new foe. Like a sparrow, the dagger danced off his fingers, tumbling lazily through the air to impale itself in the netherling's knee. Her foot collapsed under her, she fell to one knee.

She seemed shattered in that moment, swaying precariously as a hand pressed against her as though straining to keep pieces of her from falling apart. Her wounds seemed to bloom all at once, life coagulating in the contours of her muscles. The mask of fury slipped off her face, exposing a slack-jawed, incredulous mockery of a warrior.

"What... I'm..." She touched her knee, eyes widening at the sight of red smearing her fingers. "I... you can't..." She tried to rise, her voice caught in her throat as she winced. "It hurts." As though this were something alien to her, she looked to Denaos. "You _hurt_ me." "It's what I do," he replied casually.

"Impossible. I am... unscarred." She rose to shaky feet. "I could kill you... both of you!" She jerked a dagger free from her side, hurling it to the floor. "I _will_ kill you! _All of you!_ "

Xhai hefted the sword and buckled under its weight, choked by an agonised whimper. The Carnassial, so strong and relentless, became a weak and meagre thing, Kataria thought. The fact that she still held a massive wedge of iron, however, kept the shict from savouring her pain. Instead, she retreated cautiously, eyeing her bow.

"Stay back!" Xhai roared, holding up a hand as she trembled to her feet again. "Stay away from me!" Her eyes darted between them, crazed, before settling upon Denaos. "I will... _kill_ you."

Her voice hanging in the air, her blood pooling beneath iron soles, she spat a curse in a harsh, hissing language. Her sword groaned as she dragged it behind her, Denaos's dagger still lodged in her collarbone. She limped over the fallen Abysmyth into the watery passage and vanished into the gloom.

The air left Kataria in a sudden sigh as she collapsed to her rear. She could hear nothing but the pounding of her own heart and the lonely drip of salt water falling from the ceiling to dilute the sticky red smears on the floor. She felt the sweat of her body cold upon the stone, she felt her breath come in short, ragged bursts.

"Sons of the Shadow," Denaos gasped, crumpling against the wall. "I thought she'd never leave." He glanced down to his belt, ominously empty. "Pity... she took my best knife with her."

"If you'd like, I'm sure she can come back." Kataria resisted the urge to laugh, pressing a hand to her sore ribs. "How do you feel?"

"About the same as any man who's been beaten by demons and purple harlots in the same day. How do I look?"

"About the same."

"Yeah? You should take a look at yourself before you decide to sling stones."

Kataria didn't doubt his claim. She didn't need eyes to know the extent of her injuries. She could feel the purple bruise welling up on her midsection, the blood dripping from her nose, the lungs that threatened to collapse at any moment. She smiled, hoping the gesture was as unpleasant as his grimace would suggest.

"I'll be even less of a prize when we're done."

"We are done," Denaos replied. He rose from the stones, knuckled the small of his back. "There's nothing more we can do here, Kat." He gestured to the great stone slab. "We couldn't lift that even if we _weren't_ both half-dead."

The realisation hurt worse than any of her wounds. He was right, of course. Staying behind was lunacy, a short period of contemplation and repentance before a demon or another netherling stumbled upon her. And, as she heard her next words, she knew there would be much to repent for.

"I'm staying."

He looked at her, frowned.

"He's not a—"

"I know."

Quietly, he nodded. He plucked up her bow and quiver from the floor, giving a quick count before tossing it to her.

"Thirteen arrows left," he said. "Unlucky number for round-ears."

"Shicts, too."

"Mm." He lingered there, watching her readjust her weaponry. "It seems a shame to leave you after you threatened to kill me for leaving earlier."

"You'll get over it." She gestured down the hall. "Go. Don't choose now to pretend we've got camaraderie."

He nodded, turned. "I'll bring back the others."

"No, you won't."

"I might."

She made no reply, merely staring at her arrows. He paused at the edge of the water, looking over his shoulder at her.

"What are you going to do, anyway?" he asked.

"Something."

He slipped into the water without a sound, vanishing. The sound of carnage was quieting now, nothing more than whispers of pain on a stale breeze. A pity, she thought, there might be no one left to come and kill her.

That might be less painful, she reasoned, than living to see the shame of waiting for a human she had dared to call her own.

# _Twenty-Eight_

# TASTING THE SCREAM

_S o..._ that's _why it's called the Deepshriek._

The musing flitted through Lenk's brain, swimming on a ringing cacophony and disjointed panic. He could feel laughter echoing in the water, crawling over his lobes on skittering, shrieking legs. Even through such a wretched fury, however, the voice was clear and cold.

" _Air_ ," it commanded, " _we need air!_ "

Eyes snapped open, aching reverie was banished. The water was thick and oppressive around him, clung to him with a lonely desperation and smothered him with black liquid quilts.

Not nearly black enough, he noted, to obscure the horror barrelling towards him.

The Deepshriek's six golden eyes, alight with wicked glee, were a stark contrast to the shark's glimmering onyxes, just as the fiend's great white teeth were a terrifying comparison to its dead stare.

" _AIR!_ " the voice shrieked.

Fear fuelled his legs, tearing his body from the foggy trance. He struggled, kicked, thrashed as though he were on fire. He pulled himself up to the shimmering green light above him. The water moaned frothily as he shattered the surface, begging him to return, groping with lonely liquid claws.

It shuddered beneath him at the passing of the shark. That was a fleeting terror; for now, he sought to fill his lungs with every stale breath he could. It was only after the danger of drowning had passed that he felt the first pangs of cold fear.

The liquid trembled in sympathy. Six golden eyes peered out of the blackness, three fanged grins pierced the gloom. A great, axe-like fin broke the surface of the water, drifting with a casual menace before vanishing again.

" _Toying with us..._ " The voice, its need for breath satiated, was a fiercer cold than any fear. " _Take us to land._ "

"Right," he muttered in reply.

He spied the decaying stone ledge hanging over the water, reaching with fumbling hands. Breath burned in his lungs as he flailed, struggling against the fierce water. His heart thundered in his chest, sending ripples upon ripples. Undoubtedly, he thought as he felt something pass him, it did not go unnoticed.

The outcropping grew closer.

He yearned for a sword, leather, something solid to wrap his hands around. A man with a sword was a man with a chance, however thin either might be. A man with a sword had a satisfying death to look forward to, a shrug of the shoulders and a knowledge that he had done all he could. A man without a sword was nothing more than...

" _Bait_ ," the voice suggested in response to his thoughts.

He ignored it. The outcropping was within arm's reach.

His hand shot out desperately as a chorus of twisted laughter filled the air. He snapped his head about, regarding the three feminine faces snaking high above the water, staring back at him with broad grins and wide, excited eyes. More distressing than that was the great grey fin jutting between their stalks, looming over Lenk's head.

"Oh, damn," he whispered.

He saw the crimson first, the thick red upon the darkness, before he felt the teeth sink into his thigh. His scream was short and stifled. The shark, unsympathetic, continued to swim, deaf to his agony as it dragged him through the murk. Lenk threw back his head, opened his mouth to scream again.

" _Bad idea_ ," the voice snarled.

The shark dived. Darkness filled Lenk's mouth as the green firelight waxed and grew fainter above him. He was pulled deep, to the bottom of the foetid pool, leaving a crimson cloud behind. He flailed, pounded the shark's head, raked at its rock-hard flesh with painfully human hands. The sheer futility did not occur to him. He was well past the point for logic to be of any use.

The shark's teeth dug further into his flesh in response. He screamed, his voice lost on bubbles and blackness, and through thoughts clouded by pain he wondered why the demon simply hadn't sheared through his leg.

The beast twisted, turned sharply upwards to bring him to the surface. He was spared a choked gasp, a triumvirate of giggles, before the shark angled sharply and pulled him under.

_It's..._ he realised, _it's tasting me._

And it did so with macabre discerning. It chewed on him thoughtfully, fondled his thigh with a thick tongue, saliva cold even in the brackish depths. The three heads shifted, licking their own lips, sharing their grey host's experience with water-choked enthusiasm.

And Lenk continued to strike it, still. The liquid slowed his fists, pulled at him, defending the demon even as impotent as his assault was. And yet, such a futile fury was all that kept him alive. When he ceased struggling, when panic faded, the abomination would become bored.

Hunger, if the thing did indeed eat, would not be far behind.

But his body was running out of fear to fuel his survival. His lungs tightened, vision darkened. A chill seized him, as though the water seeped into his very skin, drowning his panic, consuming fear and replacing it with numb resignation.

_This is how it ends._ The thought was a sigh on a wisp of bubbles, a slowing of his fist. _Eaten by a shark with three heads._ His strike was an infant's against a stone wall. _It'll make a good story, at least._

His thoughts were faint against the creature's laughter. All sounds were fading, drowned by the water rushing into his ears. Even the sound of his heart groaning, ready to burst in a sloppy eruption, was but a distant whisper.

It wouldn't be long. And, as the water reached to caress his mind with liquid tendrils, that didn't seem such a bad thing.

" _Fight._ "

The voice, colder than all the water and pain coursing through him, muttered from a distant corner of his head.

" _Kill_ ," it uttered, faint, like someone screaming from behind a great wall of ice, but growing stronger.

" _Kill!_ "

As water reached from without, something reached from within. A hand with fingers of frigid mist snaked through his body, expelled the invading liquid. His heart went hard, stopped beating. The fear that such a reaction should cause was gone, the need for air less desperate. The pain in his leg was gone, the limb felt numb even under the saw of teeth.

" _Kill!_ "

The numbness spread to his entire body, a coldness that quieted the demands of his flesh, silenced the shrieking laughter. He could not feel his arms moving, but saw his fingers guided by something not himself. They slid down with focused precision to the shark's side, sank into something soft and fleshy. He did not know the beast's weaknesses, but whatever moved his limbs did, and it seized them, merciless.

" _KILL!_ "

Lenk felt his hands dig into the ridges of the gill slits. He felt an impassive, uncaring strength course into his grip. He felt flesh tear.

A gout of red wept in the gloom. The shark's groan was long and echoed through the blackness. The heads above went into a snaking, writhing agony, sputtering through the cloud of blood that drifted into their faces. The jaws relinquished him to the water and he watched the thing twist sharply, retreating into the darkness.

He remembered air, the taste of it in his lungs. He saw the green light shimmering above him. But the strength that coursed through him, the rivers of ice that replaced his blood, would not let him go to it.

Instead, his legs became as lead, pulling him to the bottom. He did not resist, did not feel fear at such a thing, did not hear the cry of his body for breath. All thoughts were gone, retreated from the voice that muttered in his brain, hidden in some forgotten corner of his mind.

His eyes were jerked, forced upon a glimpse of metal in the darkness. He swam to it, heedless of his bleeding, heedless of his need for air. He felt the massive demon swoop over him, heard it scream, but ignored it. Only silver existed.

His fingers groped the rocky bottom of the pool, the glint of silver vanishing as his shadow fell over it. He caught something in the darkness, a strap of some kind. Unthinking, he took it in one hand and reached again. His hand felt a familiar hilt, a leather-bound grip in his own.

Lenk remembered his sword.

" _And now, we are strong._ " The voice spoke to him with what sounded like an attempt at soothing reassurance. It would have caused Lenk to cringe, if not for the smile he felt creep across his face. " _Kill_ ," it commanded.

And, in the death of sound that existed between the blade sliding from the rocky floor and the tightening of his hand around its hilt, Lenk answered.

_Yes._

The presence fled him in an instant. He was once more aware of the blood pumping in his arms, out of his leg. He felt his heart pound in his chest. He remembered the need for air.

Twisting, thrashing, he pulled himself skywards. Out of the corner of an eye wide with returned fear, he spied the Deepshriek spearing towards him. Its jaws gaped, six golden eyes narrowed furiously. He thrashed harder, straining, lusting for the surface.

The water stirred under him, the sound of bone cracking filled the dark as teeth clamped shut over emptiness. It sped beneath him. He felt three pairs of fangs gnash at him, grazing the leather of his boot and growling in frustration.

Lenk sundered the surface with a gasp and tore towards the outcropping. He grunted, grabbed and hoisted himself upon the rocky ledge. The stale air felt as sweet to his lungs as the hard, unyielding granite felt welcome to his body. He lifted his sword above him, smiling at the thick steel as he would an old friend.

And in his reflection, his old friend smiled back.

It wasn't until he rose that he felt the weight in his other hand, the leather strap wrapped around his fingers. A satchel, he realised, water dripping off its black, slick leather. Its mouth hung loosely open, exposing a glimpse of its contents. Yellowed parchment, he recognised with widening eyes, bound between planks of dark leather that reflected no light.

As he stared down at it, the book stared back up at him with papery eyes and smiled.

"It can't be—"

" _VILE LANDBORNE FILTH!_ "

He looked up, simultaneously tossing the satchel behind him as he took up his sword in both hands. Three heads snaked before him, ominous golden scowls narrowed upon him as they spoke in a unified trio of spite.

"What disease of your feeble grey brain afflicts you so to persist in this stupidity?" they snarled. "You know nothing, less than a fraction of what lingers within those pages, and you come, suffer _our_ wrath, even as your fellow mortal pests are butchered beyond this chamber."

"What?"

Lenk knew he shouldn't have said it, shouldn't have let the fear show even for a moment on his face. He should have ignored the demon, drowned its words, but they echoed in his ears.

"This... shocks you?" The three heads bared fangs in unpleasant smiles. "We see all that occurs in this tomb of rock and froth. We see mortals dying, blood being spilled, agony, fear, panic—"

" _It lies_ ," the voice came rushing back into his brain. " _Kill it now._ "

"They are broken, mortal." Their mouths twisted, caught between joyous grins and hateful grimaces. "They have suffered much. They begged for salvation from uncaring Gods."

" _Ignore it._ "

Lenk could not hide the despair flashing on his face, despite the voice's command. Did it truly lie? The demon had powers, powers he could not contemplate. Could it know? Could it speak the truth?

"And when none came," the heads spoke, "they begged for death."

" _Kill it now!_ "

Lenk's sword drooped in his hands and he stared out into nothingness. He didn't notice the golden-haired head rising above its swaying kin on a neck gone rigid.

"Fret not, poor creature," the red- and raven-coloured heads purred. "Your fates are tied. Their mercy was cruel, but swift."

" _LOOK, FOOL!_ "

Lenk spied the bulge rising up the centre stalk. The golden-haired head's mouth stretched impossibly wide.

" _YOURS_ ," the other two heads shrieked, " _WILL BE MUCH MESSIER!_ "

The air shattered, the stones trembled. Lenk's vision rippled as the shrieking thunder split the world before him. He flung himself to the side, narrowly avoiding the vocal onslaught as it bit into the stone slab, digging a crater in a spray of granite shards.

Snarling, he pulled himself away from the edge. His ears rang, but he heard nothing, not the lapping of water or stones sinking into the gloom or the curses of the Deepshriek.

He heard but one cold, angry voice that swiftly became his own as he tightened his grip on the sword.

" _DIE!_ "

Three great bulges rose up the stalks, three mouths gaped wide.

Silent, ignoring the voices of reason and instinct, he charged. Silent, ignoring the quake of his heart and the scream of his leg, he leapt. Silent, heeding only the voice in his head and in his hand, he struck.

He landed, straddling the shark's slippery back. He teetered, narrowly avoiding toppling back to eager jaws by reaching out to grasp the central stalk. The golden-haired head let out choked protest, jerked down as he struggled to keep atop the beast.

The air split with the other heads' shrieks, their fury launched at nothing. His grip tightened as he pulled himself to his feet. The other heads snaked about, snapped at him, nicking multiple cuts on his arms. He ignored them, focusing only on the central head's bulging eyes and the sickly shade of blue it turned as the bulge of air was choked beneath his grasp.

His sword came up and down in a silver blur, sundering the thick flesh of the stalk. His grip slipped as golden locks tumbled into the air and disappeared beneath the water with a satisfying plop.

Time stopped suddenly. The shark came to a halt, the four remaining eyes went wide, and even the blood from his wounds seemed to stop seeping.

Then, chaos.

Their screams filled the chamber, their heads flailed with such fury as to seem ready to rip off from their stalks. The air within the now-headless central stalk came bursting out, heralded by a torrent of black, sticky blood. Lenk released it, seizing the shark's fin as the stalk went wild, spewing black ichor.

The remaining heads shrieked in unison, barely audible through their agony. "What have you done, mortal? What wicked blade do you possess?"

Odd, he thought as he reached for the red-haired head, until that moment, he had never wondered if demons felt fear. Nor did he care as he raised the sword, ready to add another head to his tally.

His arm was jarred as the entire chamber shook. The shark rammed its snout into the rocky wall, causing Lenk's swing to go wide. He snarled, swept his blade up to carve a gaping gash into the beast's hide. It groaned, thrashed suddenly and sent him flying to crash against the wall.

He peeled himself from the stone, winded, but still with his wits about him as he hit the water. His sword was up, its silver bright in the water's gloom as he prepared to finish the demon off.

Through the water, though, Lenk spied the Deepshriek, thrashing madly, its heads screeching. He watched it, squirming about like a wounded animal before it turned to the bottom. He watched it as it passed through the floor, staring in curiosity as its tail vanished into a gaping, black hole, its screaming echoing off the water as it disappeared.

He stared at the hole, waiting for it to return. When moments had passed, he surfaced. His breath was heavy as he hoisted himself onto the outcropping once again. Heavy, but clean.

He stared at the waters for ages, sword clenched tightly as he waited for the demon to return. The surface would yield no signs from its blackness, though, and, with a great sigh, he allowed his sword to fall and himself to collapse onto his back.

His head felt like lead, but through his hair he could feel something resting under his skull. He remembered then: leather, unadorned and black, in the satchel. What he had come all this way for...

"The tome," he whispered, smiling.

And under his head, it smiled back.

# _Twenty-Nine_

# BURN

A blade was a peculiar thing to feel, Asper thought.

She had never held one before, only stared at them with envy as they danced to a tune played by more capable hands. Now that she did feel one, it was heavy in her grip, like an iron burden wrought with jagged teeth.

_Dripping with blood_ , she added mentally, _Gariath's blood._ The thought of holding such a thing had occasionally crossed her mind, in her darkest anger against the dragonman.

But now that she held it...

"I can't do this," she gasped, "I can't do this, can't do this, can't..."

Reassuring denial was lost in an errant roar from the distant hall.

The battle, as Denaos might say in his cruder moments, had long since spent its best affections and now slid into sluggish, sleepy, blood-glutted cuddling.

The precise strikes from the longfaces' iron spikes had become vicious, slovenly chops as their purple kindred lay beside their feet. The endless stream of frogmen had choked to narrow trickles, the pale creatures glancing around with dark eyes to seek out their emaciated Shepherds. The demons themselves had either fled or lay in smoking husks that still sighed white plumes of steam as they sank into the salt.

And even the water seemed disgusted, sliding out of the great wound in Irontide's hide in an effort to escape the battle. Water shunned the place, she thought, and begged her to go with it. Neither of them belonged here.

They were healers. She was a healer. She served the Healer. What place did she have in this slaughter?

She did not desire an answer, but received one, anyway, at the end of her left arm. It twitched now, throbbing angrily. It did not doubt, it snarled. It did not beg, it demanded. And with each moment, it grew harder to ignore.

"Not now," she whispered to her appendage. " _Not now._ I can fight this. I can resist this." Only remotely aware of how much of a squealing whisper her voice was, she felt the tears slide down her cheek to land upon her sleeve. " _Not... now._ "

"Then when?"

Asper's head snapped towards the longface standing over her. For a woman bludgeoned and cut, she looked remarkably calm, regarding the priestess from behind a circular iron shield. The unpleasant grin that split her face, however, left no motive unclear.

"You look lost, pinky," the longface said. She raised her iron spike, slammed it against her shield. "Need some help?"

"S-stay back." Asper retreated a step, raising her left hand, then forcing it down against her side and holding up the blade. "I've got a weapon."

"One of our own gnawblades." The longface tilted her head to note the gore dripping down its handle. "But you don't look like you could have done _that_ with it."

"I... I did."

"I haven't seen you in the fight. Hiding is reserved for males." The longface smiled, took a step forwards. "Females fight."

"Stay away from me!"

"Do your breed proud and stand," the woman hissed. "If I have to stick you in the back, I'm going to be unhappy."

Asper took a step backwards and the longface's grin grew broader. _Unhappy, indeed._ Calling the woman a liar would seem a bit futile, though. Instead, she tensed, ready to turn, ready to flee.

" _QAI ZHOTH!_ " A grating roar split the air. " _DIE, OVERSCUM! AKH ZEKH LA—_ "

The war cry was cut short with the sound of paper splitting. Both longface and Asper looked up, seeing a great red fist thrust into the mouth from which it had poured. Gariath offered no war cry in retort, no insult or unpleasant cackle. His blow was vicious, but his fist hung in the air long after his victim collapsed. When he finally lowered it, he gasped with such exhaustion that the rest of him threatened to follow his hand to the floor.

Still, it was enough to send three other longfaces leaping backwards, shields raised. And in the parting of purple flesh, Asper could see the red pools at his feet, the tears dripping from his flesh, the waning hatred in his eyes. His knuckles were purple, wings flaccid on his back, but his smile was large and unpleasant.

"Lucky, lucky."

Her attention was brought back to the longface before her, who snorted, spat and hefted her shield.

"Looks like the darker you pinkies get, the more trouble you are." She flashed a grin at the priestess. "I don't need you any more. I don't want you any more."

"What?" Asper could not help but look incredulous as the longface stalked away. "That's it?"

"I'll be back later."

"But... you were going to... I mean, I've... I've got a gnawblade!"

"There are always more weapons."

"You can't just—"

_Stop that._ Her thoughts echoed in the sound of iron soles. _This is your chance. Run. You don't belong here._ Her eyes narrowed upon Gariath, swinging wide against an encroaching longface. _He doesn't want you here. He wants to die._ She swept the rest of the battle. _No sign of Dreadaeleon, either. He's dead... you can't bring people back from the dead. No one can._

_There's nothing you can do here._

The longface swung her iron spike, testing its weight. Her left arm twitched.

_You shouldn't even be with these people._

Gariath buckled to one knee under a sudden blow from behind. Her left arm throbbed.

_What_ , she asked herself, _could you even do?_

She clenched her jaw, tightened her grip upon the weapon. And, in the faint flash of crimson that ran down her arm in time with the beating of her heart and the burning of her skin, she knew her answer.

The longface's ears twitched at the sound of whistling iron. She whirled, just in time to see the blade go spinning past the side of her head. The blow was slight, a faint tug on her shoulder that she might have ignored if not for the trail of red that followed the tumbling weapon.

Lips drawn tightly, the woman regarded the empty, trembling pink hand extended at her.

"Fine, then." The longface rolled her shoulder, even as her wound wept. "There's plenty of time left in the day."

"Stay away from my friends," the human female warned.

The longface smirked at the sudden hardness in the human's voice. "Stay away from you, stay away from your friends." She hoisted her weapon and advanced in slow, clanging strides. "Make up your mind."

One quick swing, the longface thought, and it would be over. Pink flesh was soft, weak and tore like paper saturated in fat. If the female turned and ran, it would take only a little longer. Even though the longface's own gnawblade was quivering in a motionless body somewhere, the chase would be a pleasant distraction before returning to the business of slaughtering underscum and whatever the winged red thing was.

The human did not turn and run, however. Her advance came in bold, decisive steps. "Bold," the longface had learned, was the overscum word for "stupid, but admirable," That made sense, the purple woman decided, since this one approached her without fear. Without weapon, without armour, but without fear, the human extended her left arm like a fleshy, flimsy shield.

"Master Sheraptus would like you," she said.

The woman showed no reaction, no wide-eyed honour that such a proclamation should entail. The longface narrowed her eyes. This one's death suddenly became more necessary.

They closed without haste, the longface swung without urgency. One quick swing, she thought in one moment and cursed in the next. The woman side-stepped the blow; clumsy, the purple creature scolded herself, but nothing urgent. The next one would do it.

The woman's left arm shot out, clamped around her throat, and the longface couldn't help but smile at the weak and sweat-laden grip.

"This is it?" she chuckled. "You won't be a great loss to any—"

In a twitch of muscle, the pink arm became something else, something stronger. The fingers tensed, skin tightening around the bony joints as they dug into hard, purple flesh. The longface's voice was strangled as she felt her own blood mingle with the cold sweat. Impressive, she thought, but netherlings were hard, netherlings were strong.

That thought abandoned her, a sudden panic seizing her as the human female's hand began to glow. Her eyes went wide, alternately blinded and captivated by the pulsating light that drifted between bright crimson and darkest black.

" _Nethra_ ," she tried to sputter through the choking grasp.

No more time wasted, she resolved. No more humouring the little pink weakling. One quick swing and it would be over. She kept that thought as she raised her iron spike to the sky.

"No," the human whispered.

There was a sudden red flash. The longface became a trembling symphony, her shriek accompanied by the sudden snapping of bone, the snapping of bone accompanied by her sword falling to the stones. She looked to her arm, the folded, bunching mass that used to be her appendage as it twisted of its own sudden, violent accord, cracking and bending backwards like a wet branch.

She had felt bones broken before, blood spilled, iron in her flesh. This pain that raked through her was nothing like that, no cause, no physical presence. It was simply a blink of the eye, a twitch of muscle, a snap, and then her arm folded over itself violently again, her elbow touching her shoulder.

"What..." she screamed through the sound, "what is this? _WHAT IS THIS?_ "

"I'm sorry," someone sobbed.

She turned to the human female, saw the tears in her eyes, flooding down her cheeks with unrestrained swiftness. She saw the sleeve of the pink creature's robe rip and burst apart into blue ribbons, exposing an expanse of glowing red beneath. The light that engulfed the woman's arm pulsed, and with every heartbeat, blackened bones, joints and knuckles flashed through the crimson.

"I'm so sorry," the woman whispered again.

"Then stop! Stop it! _STOP—_ "

Another snap. The netherling collapsed to her right knee, her left leg a knotted mass of folded bone and sinew, her heel touching her knee, her iron-clad toes brushing against her rear. The woman collapsed with her, her entire body shaking, save for the arm that dug its skeletal claws deeper into the purple throat.

"I can't," the human whimpered, "I can't... I can't stop."

The sensation of tears was alien to the netherling. She had never cried before. Netherlings were hard. Netherlings were strong. Netherlings did not cry. Netherlings did not beg.

"Please," she shrieked, "please! It hurts! It hurts so—"

_Snap._

She felt her teeth touch the back of her tongue, her jaw folding once, twice over itself. Salty tears pooled in her mouth, leaking out over her shattered jaw. She felt her spine bend, groaning like an old and feeble tree before breaking.

_Snap_ ; her other arm.

"It's not my fault," the human whispered.

_Snap_ ; her other leg.

"What could I do?" the human whimpered.

_Snap_ ; her neck.

"Forgive me," the human pleaded.

Asper would have thanked Talanas for her tears, thanked the Healer that she could not see the abomination she had created through the liquid veil. She would have praised Him for the fact that she could not hear the screams emanating from what used to be a mouth over the shrieking inside her mind. But she could not bring herself to utter any thanks, to remember that she had lips with which to praise.

The pain, the searing red and black that engulfed her, would not allow it. The arm could not let her stop.

Her body was limp behind it, so much useless flesh leaking tears that hung from the rigid, glowing appendage. She could not pull her arm from the longface's throat, could not form a prayer for salvation. She could do nothing but close her eyes.

She tried to ignore the loud cracking sound that followed. She tried to ignore the feeling of her palm closing in on itself. She tried to ignore the bright flash of red behind her eyelids.

She tried, failed, and whispered, "Forgive me..."

She had prayed before that she would never see what she did when she opened her eyes again.

There was nothing left of the longface. There was no iron, no black hair or even a trace of purple flesh. Nothing to even suggest that anyone had ever stood there, knelt there, died there.

Nothing, except Asper, upon the floor, and the black, sooty stains that surrounded her. Her arm was a testament, a whole, pink thing that now lay in her lap, satiated. It was whole again, free of burning, free of glowing. It felt normal, good.

_Why_ , she asked her thoughts, _does it feel good?_

Whoever heard her had no answer.

_Three times now_ , she thought next. Once for the frogman in the _Riptide_ 's cargo hold. Twice for the longface. Three times—

_That was an accident_ , she interrupted herself, _no... that was..._

"Interesting..."

She didn't bother to look up at the sound of the masculine voice. It was far away now, the shadow cast by his slight form nothing but a wisp of blackness to join the smears upon the floor.

"What do you call that?" he asked.

"A curse," she whispered in reply, "that the Gods won't take away."

"There are no such things as Gods."

She had no answer.

"Power, however, is absolute. And you, little creature, have such a thing."

Asper craned her neck up, feeling its stiffness, to regard the man. The male longface, clad in robes that looked untainted despite the water, blood and ash that seeped through the great hall, looked almost friendly compared to the woman. His face, narrow as it was, had a smile that was not unpleasant and his eyes flashed with an intrigue, rather than malice.

Or perhaps she was just too numb to see it.

"I... I killed her," was all Asper could choke out through her tears.

"She is... was just a female. There are more."

"I... but... I didn't just kill her. I... made her go away." She stared down at her arm again. "There's nothing left of her."

" _Truly_ impressive." His bony hands applauded. "Imagine my shock. I had no idea females could even use _nethra_ , much less to such... ends."

"It's a curse," she repeated, more to herself than to him.

"Whatever you choose to call it, it's worthy of the attention of Sheraptus." She felt his eyes wander over her, felt his grin grow broader. "Other appreciable qualities considered." He thrust his hand towards her like a weapon. "So, if you would please rise—our business here is concluded and we must be off."

He was right, she thought as she looked up. The hall was largely abandoned now, the battle concluded in the moments when she had held her eyes tight and asked questions no one would answer.

Who had emerged victorious, she could not say.

The defeated lay dead in the dozens, stacked in heaps, strewn across the floor, floating listlessly in the pools of salt water. Flakes of ash drifted lazily on the breeze as the pulsating, fleshy sacs still burned like grotesque pyres. There were grunts called out in harsh tongues, iron scraping on stone as the longfaces hurried back to their vessel, leaving the bodies of their comrades where they lay.

Of her own companions, there was no sign.

Not such a bad thing, she reasoned; they wouldn't have seen what she had just done. They wouldn't have known she had the power... the curse to unmake people, to reduce them to nothing. Dreadaeleon's magic still left ash behind, Gariath left bodies in his wake. Of her foe, there was nothing left: no skin, no bone.

_No soul._

She had not the strength to explain it any more, to justify it to them, to whoever Sheraptus was, or to herself. She could not bear to look upon the arm masquerading behind its pink softness, concealing the crimson and gloom. Three times had it emerged, two times it had left nothing, a thousand times had she looked up to the sky and asked why.

And a thousand times, no one had answered.

The male looked up at the sound of a wailing, warbling horn and frowned. "The time has come to depart, I'm afraid." He scrutinised her through his white eyes. "It has been a long day. Frankly, I am not sure you are worth the trouble it would take to bring you along." He snapped his fingers, sending a blue electric glow crackling at the tips. "Your arm will have to suffice. You can keep the other parts."

Asper looked up as he levelled the finger at her, watching the sphere of lightning grow. It was not with apathy that she stared, but weariness, relief that came with the grim knowledge that there was only one way to ensure there would never be a fourth time.

The male muttered a word of power. The electricity burst forth with a loud cracking sound. Asper stared at it through eyes with no more tears to shed. The male's own stare went alight with energy. One more word, she knew, and it would all be over.

That, too, was not such a bad thing.

"BURN, HERETIC!"

A wall of flame erupted between the two of them. The electric blue faded as the male recoiled, snarling angrily. He turned, more annoyed than anything else, to regard the boy standing at the end of the hissing fire.

Dreadaeleon looked ready to keel over at any moment. His coat hung loosely, tattered in some places, bloodied in others, from a body that appeared shrunken and withered. The veins creeping up from his jawline and the violent quaking that seized his body suggested that whatever damage had been done to him was by his own hand, his magic having eaten at him deeper than any blade.

Asper could muster no excitement at his appearance, nor concern for his frailty. She felt a twinge of scorn, diluted by pity. All this meant was that someone else had to die before her curse could finally be lifted.

"Ah." The male longface smiled at the newcomer with the familiarity of two old friends meeting. "I was wondering who that was." He glanced at the wall of flame and, with a word and a wave, reduced it to a sizzling black line upon the floor. "Decent enough work, really. I was beginning to wonder if any of your breed could use _nethra_ at all."

Dreadaeleon tilted his head to the side. The male grinned and held up a hand.

"Apologies. 'Magic' is your word for it, I believe."

"We have laws for it, too," the boy said sharply. "There are rules to practice by."

"Law... rule..." The longface shrugged. "I have not learned those words yet. They sound like weakness to me, though." He smiled. "I suppose I should not be too surprised, though, since all your language seems to convey varying degrees of that. From my home, we—"

"Clever," Dreadaeleon interrupted, taking a step forwards. "I'm less interested in where you came from and more in how you're still standing."

"Ah, after this, you mean?" He gestured over the burning sacs, the seas of ash. "Duty, I suppose someone of your breed might call it. The underscum are in our way. Sheraptus desires them dead and... well, look. The price one pays for _nethra_ would be a further detriment. Thusly..." He snapped his fingers, smiled. "We removed it."

"Impossible."

"We do not know that word, either."

"How many of you are there?" the boy demanded. "How many heretics remain?"

"Perhaps you refer to males, the only ones capable of _nethra_." The longface shrugged. "Not so many, but if power were not a rare quality, any thick-of-skull female could do it." He glanced sidelong at Asper. "Speaking of which, I have business with this one. If you had claims on her arm, you must live with that disappointment."

"Arm?"

In any other moment, Asper's pulse would have risen, mind gone racing for excuses. Now, what did it matter what Dreadaeleon knew? He would be dead. She would follow. Nothing remained to be spoken, nothing remained to resist as the longface took a step forwards.

"As well as whatever else I can salvage," he said, chuckling. "An arm is not such an important thing to one who carries no weapons, is it?" His eyes ran up and down her body hungrily. "Particularly when the rest of her can be put to a much more proper use."

His purple hand extended with the vaguest hint of an excited tremble coursing down his digits. His tongue flicked out, a tiny line of pink sliding across long, white teeth.

" _GET AWAY FROM HER!_ " Dreadaeleon's roar was followed by a racking cough, a shudder in his stance. The longface, if his quirked brow was any indication, seemed less than impressed.

"This belongs to you? I am sorry in a terrible way, but I must damage your property. I need the arm." He waved dismissively. "You can have the rest when I am finished."

"I said," the boy uttered against the hiss of flames, "stay away from her."

At that, Asper's eyes did go slightly wider. The flames that danced on Dreadaeleon's outstretched palm were barely stronger than that of a candle, but every moment they burned caused his body to shudder, to tremble. _Why_ , she asked him silently, _why don't you do it? Burn your heretic. Save your laws._

She then saw the longface's hand, also outstretched, a single finger pointed directly at her. She glanced back to Dreadaeleon. _No_ , she wanted to cry out to him, but had no voice in her raw throat, _don't do it. Not for me, Dread. I want this to happen... I want—_

Dreadaeleon shuddered suddenly. The longface's grin broadened as the boy shifted slightly, trying to conceal the dark stain that appeared on his lap.

"Pushed yourself too far, it is apparent." The purple man laughed. "Is it really worth the shame, pinkling? I am no bloodthirsty female. Step aside, let me do my business, and you may clean yourself in peace. I have no wish to harm a fellow user."

"I'm not your fellow."

"Whatever laws separate us are as trivial and fleeting as the gods your breed claims to love."

"It's not about laws."

"Oh..." The longface's mouth twisted into a frown. "All this over a _female_ , then? You do not have many where you come from?"

"Stop talking about her," the boy spat. The sphere of flame growing in his palm bloomed into an orchid of fire. "I'm the only one standing in your way. Face _me_."

_The only one..._ Asper let that thought drift into nothingness as the male longface raised his hand, levelled it at Dreadaeleon.

"Point," he said simply, "goodbye."

The longface thrust his hand forwards with a grunt. The air rippled as an invisible force struck Dreadaeleon, his fire extinguished and his frail body sent flying to crash against a pillar. He staggered to his feet, swayed precariously with only a moment to cast a desperate stare in her direction before crashing upon the floor, unmoving, unbreathing.

"Dread." Asper could do no more than whisper, could find no strength. That was going to happen, she knew, he would die before she did, as the only one who had stood in the longface's way. That was logical.

Why, then, did she want to cry out so much louder?

"Annoying," the male muttered, turning back to her. "Perhaps it is worth taking whatever consists of your thoughts to find out what makes you do things like that." He flicked his fingers and spoke a word that called flames to his palms. "Small steps, I suppose. Arm first. Brain later."

"Dread..." she whispered again, watching the boy lying motionless in a puddle of salt water.

He could have stayed behind, she knew, he could have crept up on the longface and struck him from behind. If she had died, his laws would have been upheld, his faithlessness upheld. _Maybe even proven_ , she thought.

Instead, he had stood against the longface, weakened as he was. He had died, his pants soiled, face-down upon unsympathetic stones. _For what?_ That he might preserve her? Though he might not have known it, all he had preserved was a curse. And not knowing that, all he had done was give her the few breaths it took for the longface to approach her.

Where was the reason? Where was the logic?

By the time the longface stood over her, all teeth and fire, she had no answer and Dreadaeleon was still dead.

"Do not think this to be unkind, little pinkling." He extended his hand, the fire engulfing it from tip to wrist. "It is the way of things, you find, as all others shall. We are netherling. We are Arkklan Kaharn." He narrowed his eyes, glowing red. "Ours is the right to take."

There was no cry from her, no protest as he eyed her arm hungrily. She barely had eyes for him and his wicked fire. Her gaze was upon Dreadaeleon, her lips quivering as they sought the words to offer his limp body.

_You shouldn't have bothered_ , she thought. _It's better this way... you didn't have to die, Dread. I did. You shouldn't have become involved._

"Forgive me," was all she whispered.

All that she heard, however, was the throaty, ragged breath from above. Longface and priestess looked up as one, seeing the massive, red chest that rose and fell with each red-flecked burst of air. They looked up further, past the massive, winged shoulders and into the narrowed, black eyes that stared down contemptuously upon them.

"Oh... my..." The longface swallowed hard at the sight of rows of white, glistening teeth bared at him.

Gariath's jaws flashed open, his roar sending the male's white hair whipping across his purple face. The netherling responded swiftly, hands up like torches against the night, mouth straining not to fumble in fear as he uttered the words that caused the flames to leap from his palms and into the gaping maw of this new aggressor.

The dragonman vanished behind the curtain of fire for but a moment before emerging, flesh smeared black, blood boiling in the crevasses of his scowl, eyes painted a ferocious orange by the flame. His hands rose, pressing against the fire, containing it within his claws until he reached down to seize the netherling's own digits with an extinguishing hiss and a sputter of smoke.

The longface's shriek was louder than the sound of his fingers snapping, the tears streaming from his eyes thicker than the blood coating his foe's face. He staggered backwards as Gariath released him, his appendages hanging limply at his sides, oozing liquid that sizzled as it spattered upon the ground.

"You... you _dare_!" the longface tried to roar, but could only whimper as he fought to scowl through his sobs. "It is futile, beast! Your whole fleeting life is nothing but a sigh on the wind before Sheraptus finds you! Both of you! _ALL OF YOU!_ "

Gariath ignored him, stalking towards the netherling with claws flexing.

"We are netherling!" the longface continued to shriek. "We come from nothing! We return to nothing! And _nothing_ you do can change—"

"Stop."

Gariath interrupted the longface, sliding the tips of his claws between delicate teeth. He hooked another two digits under his prey's upper jaw. The skin of the netherling's mouth gave one groan of protest, choked on the man's terrified sob.

" _Talking._ "

Asper was jolted by the sound. The sudden rip, the shudder of the longface's body as it twitched, then hung in Gariath's grasp for a moment. When the body hit the floor, when Gariath stood, breathing heavily, streaked with blood and black, something purple, white and glistening clenched in his hand, she realised.

_I'm still alive._

For all the death that surrounded her, all the ash pervading the air, all the blood on the stones, the only person who should have died was still alive. Her, she realised, and Gariath.

_But Dread..._

"Dread," she said suddenly, clambering to her feet. She looked to Gariath with desperation. "He's—"

"Still alive," the dragonman grunted, tossing the glistening object of purple and white over his shoulder to clatter and bounce across the floor.

"He... is?"

_He is._ She could see it, the faint stir of his body as he pulled himself out of the salt water, only to collapse again.

"He is! He's still alive."

" _I_ am still alive."

Asper looked up, took a step back as Gariath staggered forwards. The murder in his eyes had not dissipated, the red did not coat his hands entirely. His teeth were bared at her, his body shuddering with every haggard step he took towards her.

"Still alive," he repeated, " _because of you_."

"Because of..." She glanced over his body, saw the gaping wounds, the chunks of missing flesh, the countless bruises. "Gariath, you need help."

"You already helped me," he snarled, taking another step forwards. "You fought that one longface, left me with three others." His wings twitched and his lip curled. "Does it look like _three_ could kill me?"

At that moment, it looked like a half-blind, incontinent kitten could kill him, but she chose to say something more sympathetic.

"I can tend to you, Gariath. I can—"

"What can you do?" he roared and his body trembled with the effort. "You cannot kill. You cannot let me be killed. You can't do _anything_!" She recoiled, not at his bared teeth, but at the tears that glistened in his eyes. "I should be dead! I should be with my ancestors! I should be with my _family_!" He levelled a finger at her. "And all I have now... is _you_."

"I... didn't—"

"And you won't." He drew his arm back. "Ever again."

The blow came fiercely, but slowly. Asper instinctively darted away from it, but it did not stop. His great red fist became a falling comet, dragging the rest of him to the floor where he struck with a crash. She remained tense, even as he dragged himself towards her, extended a quivering hand and uttered two words.

"Hate... you..."

And he fell. Still breathing, she noted, but not moving, like Dreadaeleon, like the rest of Irontide. Whatever it had been before, before it was taken by pirates, before it was taken by demons, it was truly forsaken now.

Bodies lay everywhere, the salt choked with blood, the stones littered with flesh, the air tainted by ash. Whatever netherlings had escaped were gone now, their snarling cries absent in the silence as smoke and water poured out of Irontide's jagged hole. Death drew a merry ring about the hall, haphazard bodies scattered artistically in a ritual circle at the centre of which stood Asper, still alive, still breathing.

_Still cursed._

"Why," she asked as she collapsed to her knees, "why am I still alive?"

"Good question."

Denaos did not look entirely out of place, standing nearby, hands on hips as he surveyed the carnage. Clad in black, his flesh purple in places from bruising, he looked the very spectre of Gevrauch, come to reap a bloody harvest from the white and purple fields. The rogue merely scratched his chin, then looked to her and smiled.

"Still alive, I see." His eyes drifted to Gariath and Dreadaeleon. "And them?"

"Yes," she replied.

"Not by much, it looks like," he said, wincing. Quietly, he stepped forwards. "Netherlings gone?"

"Yes."

"Demons dead?"

"Yes."

She felt his shadow, cool against the heat of the flames. She felt his hand on her shoulder, strong against the softness of her aching body. She felt his eyes on hers, hard and real, full of questions and answers.

"Asper," he asked, "are you all right?"

She bit her lower lip, wishing more than anything that she had tears left to weep with. Instead, she collapsed forwards, pressing her face against his shoulder as she whispered.

"Yes."

# _Thirty_

# MORE PERSONABLE COMPANY

Lenk held his hand before his face, turning it over.

"That's odd," he muttered.

" _Hm?_ " someone within replied.

"My skin... I don't remember it being grey."

" _An issue worthy of concern._ "

"And my head... it feels heavy."

" _Moderately distressing._ "

"Only moderately?"

" _In comparison to the fact that we're still alive, I should have added. Apologies._ "

"It's fine." He blinked, lowered his hand to feel the cold rock beneath him. "I am still alive, aren't I?"

" _We are, yes._ "

"Apologies. I forgot you were there."

" _Think nothing of it._ "

"I thank you..." Lenk furrowed his brow. "You know, I don't ever recall you being quite so chatty. Usually, it's all 'kill, kill' with you."

" _You haven't really cared to hear what I have to say_ ," the voice replied. " _When one speaks to closed ears, one places a priority on available words._ "

"Point taken." He let the silence hang inside his head for a moment. "Who are you?"

" _Pardon?_ "

"We've never been properly introduced."

" _Is that really necessary at this point?_ "

"I suppose not... but I feel I should know who you are if you're going to do what you did back in the water."

" _Excuse that intervention. Things were looking quite grim._ "

"I suppose they were. But there are no worries now." He smiled at the familiarity of the satchel beneath his head, the tome safe and supportive within. "We have the book. The Deepshriek is gone. It's over."

_"It is not._ "

The voice was painfully clear and crisp now, as though it was hissing in his ear. He could almost feel its icy breath upon his water-slick skin. And yet, he did not so much as shiver. The chill felt almost natural, as did the presence that settled all around him, within him. It felt familiar, comforting.

And cold.

"I... beg to differ," he replied. "We're alive. We've got a tome and a sword. What else do you need?"

" _Duty. Purpose. Death._ "

"There you go with the 'death' thing again—"

" _You think it wise to leave the Deepshriek alive?_ "

"No, but I—"

" _You chopped off a head. It has three._ "

"That usually suffices with most people."

" _That_ thing _is not_ people."

"Point taken."

" _What of the others? They are weak... purposeless. Let us lie here if you wish them all to die._ "

"The Deepshriek said—"

" _Three mouths to lie with... apologies, two now. We should have killed it when we had the chance._ "

"It ran."

_"We could have pursued."_

"Through water?"

" _Through anything. It fears us. It fears our blade._ "

" _Our_ blade?"

" _The hand that wields it is nothing without the duty to guide it._ "

"I'm... not quite up for philosophy at this point. How do we get to the others?"

" _Others?_ "

"Kataria... the others—"

" _Ah. That remains a problem._ "

Lenk looked upwards. The stone slab loomed, impassable as ever despite the deep gash that had been rent in its face. A tiny fragment of grey broke off, tumbling down the depression to bounce off the ledge and strike Lenk's forehead.

"It's mocking me," he growled.

" _It's stone._ "

"Have you any idea how to get out?"

" _I do._ "

Lenk waited a moment.

"Well?"

The voice made no reply.

Water lapped against water, against stone. Fire that had shifted from unnatural emerald to vibrant, hissing orange sputtered and growled in the wall sconces. The waves made lonely mutters against the stone wall. Something heavy bumped against the outcropping.

_Wait..._

He rolled over and stared into the water, into the golden eyes staring back up at him. He froze momentarily before realising the eyes did not blink, the mouth lay pursed, the golden hair wafted in the waters as the head bobbed up and down with the rhythm of the churning gloom.

Lenk grimaced. He was a moment from turning his gaze away when a hint of movement caught his eye. He leaned over, staring intently at the severed head. The eyes twitched, he felt his heart stop.

_Is..._ he thought to himself, _is that thing... still alive?_

Fingers trembling, he reached down and poked it. It bobbed beneath the waves, then rose again, still staring. Swallowing his fear and his vomit, he seized it by its hair and pulled it out of the water. The eyes twitched, glanced every which way, as if seeking the shark it had been attached to. Its lips quivered, mouthing wordless threats to empty air.

"Disgusting," he said, blanching. He caught an errant glance of himself in the void-like waters, then raised a brow. "That's... unusual. I don't really ever recall having—"

" _Time is limited_ ," the voice interrupted. " _We must focus on this newfound gift the Deepshriek left us._ "

"I beg to differ."

He was prepared to throw it back into the gloom, regardless of the answer, when he heard it. A faint, barely audible sound, as though someone whistled from miles away. Against all wisdom, he drew it closer to his ear.

Wordlessly, an almost-silent breath hissed between its teeth. He turned it over, glancing where its stalk-like neck had been attached. A blackened, bloodied hole stretched from hair to jaw beneath. Air murmured through it, emerging from the creature's fanged mouth.

"Sweet Khetashe," he fought bile to speak, "it _is_ alive."

" _It has a new duty now,_ " the voice replied.

Lenk turned to the stone slab, watching another shard crumble and slide down like a drop of stone sweat. He smiled, rose to his feet, sheathed his sword and slung the tome's satchel about his shoulder.

" _We have but to give it that duty_ ," the voice said, and—how, he had not the faintest idea—Lenk knew what it meant.

He walked before the slab, dangled the decapitated head by its golden tresses and whispered a word.

"Scream."

Even over the explosion, the stone shattering and the hail of rock chips, Kataria could hear the shrieking. In fragments of sound, it had been painful, uncomfortable, but tolerable. Bared to its full vocal fury, it was agonising. And in response, she became a creature of folds: folding her ears over themselves, folding her hands over her ears and folding her body over itself.

Shards of grey bit at her bare back, the earth settled ominously under her feet, dust poured into her nostrils. None of that mattered, none of that pain needed to be felt. All she thought of was the hideous wail that defiled the air, and keeping it from turning her ears into flayed pieces of glistening bacon hanging from her head.

How long it lasted, Kataria did not know, and she did not care. When it finally ceased, it still echoed in the hall, reverberating off stones and ripples and breaths she took. After an eternity of darting eyes and nervous twitching, she took her hands away from her ears, breathed a word of thanks mingled with a curse, and turned around.

And then, the screaming suddenly didn't seem so bad.

Two thin pinpricks of light, cold and blue, stared at her from behind a cloud of dust that, mercifully, showed no signs of dissipating. She swallowed hard, clenched her teeth.

"Lenk," she said, rather than asked. There was no mistaking him or his stare.

The two tiny spheres flickered, a shadow moved behind the dust cloud. It shifted against the curtains of pulverised grey, as though agitated or confused.

"I think..." a voice, faint and freezing, spoke, "she's talking to you."

The voice was familiar to her. She remembered it as well as she remembered Lenk's own. And now they spoke in unison, each one with a crisp clarity that settled upon her skin like rime.

She could feel her heart sink. Whatever dwelt on the other side of the dust cloud was not completely Lenk. _Perhaps_ , she thought, _maybe not even Lenk at all._

"What?" When he spoke next, it was with his own voice, but it was frightened, shrill, like a small child's. "No, I didn't mean... stop. Don't yell at me!"

This was it, she knew, the sign she had been waiting for. He was a disease within a disease now, completely lost to whatever plagued him. These were the moments she should be running instead of staring at his shadow through the veil of dust. These were the moments she should turn, leave this human— _all_ humans—behind her and thank Riffid for giving her the clarity to be free of her shame.

"Stop it..." he whimpered, his voice rising into a roar. "I said _stop_!"

He would never hear her footsteps as she walked away. She kept that in mind as she turned to the water, reassuring herself. He would think it all a dream in his fevered mind, he would think she was dead. He would never suspect that she had left him behind.

And still, she cursed herself. She should be braver, she should be able to stand before the human disease, the great sickness that plagued the world, and spit on him through a shictish curse. Her father would have wanted that. Her people would have wanted that.

For her part, Kataria merely wanted to fight back the urge to turn around.

"Kat..."

_Damn it_ , she muttered in her mind as she halted, _damn it, damn it, damn it._

She turned, only to be greeted by another sign. The curtains of smoke parted, layer by layer, exposing the shadow behind in greater detail. Her blood froze at the sight, the distorted shape of the young man, the jaggedness of his outline and the bright, ominous blue with which his eyes shone.

He extended a hand to her, trembling, far too big to be his own and whispered.

"Please..."

This was the final sign, Riffid's last mercy to her. She should turn, walk away, run away, leave this human and whatever he had become in the shadows behind her. Her ancestry demanded it. Her pride as a shict demanded it. Her own instincts demanded it.

Kataria listened carefully. And, in response, she drew in a sharp breath and walked into the cloud of dust.

"I'm here," she said as she might speak to an injured puppy, her hands groping about blindly. "I'm here, Lenk."

She found him in a sudden shock as her hands clasped around flesh that froze like a fish's. She swallowed hard, ignoring this sign as she had done the last, hearing in the faintest whispers Riffid cursing her for her stupidity.

Another hand reached out to clasp about hers and she froze. Through the leather of his glove, through the leather of hers, she could feel it, a sensation that caused her to go breathless as he squeezed her fingers in his.

Warmth.

"You're alive," he spoke.

_He spoke_ , she told herself, unable to fight back the smile creeping onto her face. _Lenk spoke. No one else._

"Come on," she urged, pulling at him.

They staggered out into the stagnant air and the dying light of the torches. She drew in a sharp breath before looking at him, afraid to find grey flesh or pupilless spheres staring back at her.

Instead, she saw a man barely alive. His shirt was tattered and clung to a body that was stained red in areas. His leg, rent with a jagged cut, barely seemed capable of supporting the rest of his wiry frame. Deep circles lined his eyes and his smile was weary and accompanied by a sharp wince.

_He looks so weak_ , she thought, _like a sick dog or something._ Why she should find that endearing, she did not know. The faint smile that crept to her face quickly vanished by the time her gaze drifted to the black-stained blade and the severed, golden-haired head in his grasp, however.

She cleared her throat. "Busy in there?"

"A bit," he replied as he tucked the head's glimmering locks into his belt.

He paused at the centre of the corridor, noting grimly the Abysmyth corpse striped by sizzling green lacerations. Quietly, he looked her over, frowning at the bruise upon her flank, the cuts criss-crossing her pale skin, the dried trail of blood under her nose.

"How was your day?" he asked.

She sniffed a little. "Pleasant."

"So long as you kept yourself occupied." He took a step forwards, then winced to a halt. Smiling sheepishly, he extended his arm to her. "Help me?"

"Help _you_?" She gestured to her own wreck of a body. "I fought a hulking, purple-skinned white-haired man-woman!"

He patted the severed head at his belt. "I took the skull off a three-headed shark-lady."

"She kicked me," Kataria said, gesturing to the long bruise running down her flank, "might've broken my ribs, too. This was all _after_ I stabbed her."

"Yeah? Well, she..." Lenk looked at the head disparagingly. "She yelled at me."

Kataria stared at him blankly. He coughed.

" _Really_ loudly."

She pursed her lips. He sighed and offered his shoulder to her.

"Fine, get on."

"No." She took his arm instead, draping it over her shoulder. "You'd probably soil yourself with the effort, anyway." She grunted, bolstering him. "You owe me, though."

"I'd offer my blood, if I hadn't left it behind." He chuckled, then winced. "It hurts to laugh."

"Then stop telling terrible jokes." She guided him down the corridor. "Denaos lived."

"Pity," he replied. "And the others?"

"Possibly."

"Possibly what?"

"Either."

He squeezed her hand and she froze. His grip was still warm.

"You're alive," he whispered, the faintest edge of hysteria in his voice.

"I am," she replied in a voice just as soft.

"And you're still here."

She hesitated, looked down at the ground and frowned.

"Yeah... I know."

"I didn't think—"

"Don't ruin it by starting now."

And so they hobbled in silence until they reached the water's edge. There they stopped, there they stared at themselves in the gloom.

The liquid seemed slightly less oppressive now, the air a bit cleaner, if tinged by a distant stench of burning. Kataria glimpsed Lenk's reflection in the water as it twisted and writhed. Odd, she thought, but as distorted as it was, she could still pick out his features, his silver hair and his blue eyes.

What comfort she took in that was lost the moment she spied her own reflection, however. The creature of pale skin and green eyes stared back up at her, twisting, contorting and fading. She frowned, for even as her reflection re-formed, she still didn't recognise the shict looking back at her.

"Kataria," Lenk began, sensing her tense under him, "I—"

"Later," she grunted, adjusting herself and him as they slid into the water.

If there was a later, she would handle it then. Whatever excuses needed to be made, whatever apologies had to be voiced to herself, to her Goddess, to her kin, could be made later. For now, they were both alive.

And Kataria couldn't help but think it would be easier if one of them weren't.

# _Thirty-One_

# THAT WHICH FADES

Denaos had never believed the idea that one of his particular talents should prefer the darkness. The sun was far more pleasant; it illuminated, it warmed, and didn't mind at all if one happened to admire it nude, unlike certain people with primitive notions of modesty and boundaries.

"We could learn a bit from you, my golden friend," he whispered to the great yellow sphere, reaching down to scratch a particularly errant itch.

After the eternity it had taken to leave Irontide, the sun was a particularly welcome sight. It was two long days in a dank, decrepit stone hall stinking of ash and blood before they were rested enough to make the long swim back to Ktamgi. The effort was made all the harder by the grievous injuries sustained during their excursion to the crumbling fortress. Even Asper had tended to them with a degree more listlessness than usual; many of his companions still lingered in uncertain fates.

_But_ , he thought, _they aren't here now._

And so Denaos lay upon a beach blissfully free of demons, netherlings or hulking she-beasts while at least three of his companions were threatened with the imminent possibility of a slow, agonising death.

It was a good day.

_Naturally_ , the thought occurred with a twitch of an eyelid as he heard the sound of footsteps on sand, _someone has to come and ruin it._

"Hey."

Lenk's voice, he thought, was a dull and unenthusiastic brick hurled through a pleasant stained-glass window depicting a rather tasteful scene of curvaceous nude women and apple trees. Knowing that such a thing would be lost on the young man, he chose to say something different.

"Naked here. Go away."

"We've got work to do," Lenk replied with an unsympathetic tone. "The boat needs to be repaired. There's wood to chop and nails to hammer."

"Why in the name of all good and virile Gods did you think that coming to a naked man with messages of chopping wood and hammering nails would persuade him?" Denaos snorted. "Get someone else to do it."

"Everyone else is gone."

"Gone where?"

"I don't know, just... _gone_. I can't find any of them."

"Well, why don't you scurry off and see if they left any scat to track them by?" He snorted and folded his hands behind his head. "Or, for a better idea, why don't you just go and rest yourself? Your leg can't be feeling too well." He coughed. "Not here, of course. Go find your own stretch of beach."

"I feel fine."

Denaos arched his neck, regarding his companion who stood, he thought, far too close. Still, the young man looked to be standing firm, favouring his uninjured leg, to be sure, but largely unaffected. It struck the rogue as odd that someone who had been bitten by a demon shark should be standing only two days later, but that was a concern for another time.

"I'm incredibly comfortable right now, I'll have you know," the rogue muttered. "I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but it takes a considerable amount of effort to achieve the precarious position in which sand does _not_ reach up into my rear end with eager, grainy claws and I'll not have you ruin it."

A period of silence, punctuated by the idle banter of the surf, followed before Lenk spoke again in a voice decidedly meeker than his own.

"Please?"

"Whatever for?"

"I need to talk to someone."

"About what?"

"Things... you know."

"So talk," the rogue replied. "I'm not going anywhere."

"I can't... I mean, not here."

"Why not?"

"Well, back in Steadbrook, whenever we needed to talk about something, we'd do it over work." Lenk rubbed the back of his neck. "And it's not like we can get off the island until someone finishes the vessel, anyway."

"I think I see," Denaos said, humming thoughtfully. "You'd like to talk to me, but instead of doing it like a human being free of mental illnesses, you'd like me to indulge you in this quaint little ritual devoted to furthering your already stunted social skills and rewarding you for not acting like a normal person."

"Basically."

Denaos yawned, then pulled himself to his feet. "Fine."

"I mean, it's nothing all that important," Lenk said to the rogue's back as the taller man began walking towards the pile of nearby tools. "I'm just a little... confused."

Denaos froze for a moment, then sighed. He waved a dejected hand as he turned around and began walking to his discarded clothing.

"Hold that thought. This sounds like the kind of conversation I'll need pants for."

It dangled like an ugly fold of aging flesh, Dreadaeleon thought as he stared at his reflection in the shore's tide-pools. The filthy grey streak of hair that hung over his brow continued to mock him, continued to chide him for his stupidity.

He had suspected this might happen, which was why he made a point of staying far away from his companions. They wouldn't understand; how could they? None of them had the Gift, none of them had the mental capacity to comprehend a fraction of magic's laws and extents, let alone its prices.

The Venarium's records were full of cautionary tales of those who had overextended themselves: flesh melting from bones, bodies exploding into flames after misspeaking a word, young ladies giving birth to two-headed calves after being a bit too close to a wizard when he sneezed during an incantation.

Rapid, concentrated aging was the most common—and the most lenient—of the punishments. He supposed he should be grateful that he would only suffer from one marred lock.

Regardless, he lifted his shirt, checking his torso for any sign of liver spots, wrinkles, prominent veins. Nothing, he noted with relief, as there had been nothing when he checked twenty breaths ago.

The grey lock was warning enough, though, and he absently considered keeping it as a reminder of his failure. His companions wouldn't understand, of course, but why should they? They weren't the same as he was. They were lesser, stupid, still clinging to the belief that gods and spirits would protect them.

_Ridiculous_ , he thought, the notion of beings in the sky that could reshape mountains and raise the dead without a thought. Power had a price, any logical mind knew. Nothing could be created without being taken from somewhere else, whether it was fire from the heat of a palm or ice from the moisture of a single breath. That was the law, the law of magic, the law of the Venarium.

_Or_ , he thought as he reached inside his coat pocket, _that_ used to be _the law._

He pulled the red jewel out, observing it as it dangled on the black chain before him. Perfectly spherical, save for a noticeable chip on its face, the jewel ate the light of the sun, rather than reflected it. That, he told himself, was the sign that this was it, the tool that the longface male had used to cheat the laws of magic.

_I mean_ , he told himself, _what else could it have been?_ He had searched the corpse thoroughly, inside and out after performing a bit of impromptu dissection. Nothing differentiated the longface from himself, save for his purple skin and this... this tiny jewel.

That particular heretic was dead, it was true, but how many more were there? Where did these "netherlings" come from and what did they hope to gain by fighting demons? Who was this "Sheraptus"?

_And what_ , he asked himself with a sudden surge of fury, _made them look at Asper the way that one did?_

The memory of the long face, and its broad grin and hungry eyes, still burned in his mind with an anger far greater than any heresy the black-clad wizard might have committed. The memory of a purple hand extending to touch her, _her_ , _his_ companion, sizzled within his skull. The stink of his own soil filled his nostrils at the thought of it.

Dreadaeleon sighed, pressing his face into his hands. The strain had been too much to bear, he knew, and undoubtedly she would, too. Still, even after that, after drawing upon so much that even his bladder could not hold, he hadn't even been able to save her. Gariath had to do that, leaving him as nothing more than an afterthought with wet pants and a breathing problem.

Somehow, he had imagined the scenario working out far more gallantly.

He should have pushed himself further, he knew, he should have had the strength to fend off that netherling and a hundred more. He should have flung them aside on waves of fire and roars of lightning, creating a ring of destruction to shelter her from the carnage.

He was a wizard! He _was_ the absolute power!

_Power_ , he thought ruefully, _so limited..._

But instead of all that, he had soiled himself and crumpled up in a heap, leaving her to whatever malice the netherling had planned for her. And once again, it had been Gariath, superstitious, brutish, barbaric Gariath, who had done what he could not. And if it hadn't been Gariath, he told himself, it would have been Denaos with a dagger in the back or Lenk with a killing blow of his sword.

Or even Kataria, standing triumphant over an arrow-laden corpse as Asper swooned at the shict's feet.

While not an entirely unpleasant image, the fact of the matter remained that it would not have been him who saved her. It would never be a scrawny boy in a dirty coat. He would never have that kind of power.

_At least_ , he thought as he wrapped his hand about the crimson jewel, _not on my own._

"You are well, Lorekeeper?"

Dreadaeleon found himself incapable of starting at the voice. It was far too melodic, far too soothing to cause anything but a smile. He looked up, wearing that smile, to regard an angular, pale face framed by flowing locks of kelp-coloured hair and a pair of feathery gills.

"I am, thank you," he replied.

"Your hair..." Greenhair noted, frowning at the lock of grey.

"Yeah, well... prices and the like," Dreadaeleon muttered as he climbed to his feet. "You know how it is."

"I do not," she replied flatly.

"Oh." He paused, cleared his throat. "Well... it's, ah... difficult." Forcing a larger, far more awkward smile onto his face, he continued, "Where did you scamper off to, anyway? We missed you."

"Oh," she said, blinking. "Did you throw something at me?"

"No, I mean..." He held up a hand, drew in a deep breath. "Where did you go?"

"I went..." A pained expression crossed her face, though Dreadaeleon found it hard to decipher that from her features. "Away."

"Where?"

"Somewhere else, Lorekeeper. It is not important."

"Why, then?"

"That is even less important." She eyed the boy curiously for a moment, something dancing behind her alien eyes. "You... were victorious in Irontide?"

"Roughly," he replied. "It was difficult. There were demons, some kind of... sacs, I don't know."

"Even fiends have mothers, Lorekeeper, and they are all birthed from the wretched womb of Ulbecetonth."

"Those things," Dreadaeleon said, cringing, "were _eggs_?"

"They were nothing meant for this world. What is important is that they are destroyed." She leaned in to him, regarding him through a wary expression. "You _did_ destroy them?"

"Not personally, no. There was a longface there. He burned them with fire." The boy scratched his chin. "Fire that wouldn't go out..." He scratched a little harder. "He was defying the laws, he cheated." His teeth clenched unconsciously as he scratched harder at his hairless chin. "He... he almost..."

"Lorekeeper..."

He felt his blood on his hands the moment she spoke. Muttering a curse, he wiped his chin off on the lapel of his coat, hiding it from the siren's curious gaze. A futile gesture, for her eyes seemed to focus on something past the dirty fabric, past his skin and bone.

"You are... not well," she observed.

"I'm fine," he replied coldly. "It's just..." He sighed, looking at his hands, so scrawny, so feeble. "I should have been the one."

"To kill the Abysmyths?"

"To kill the Abysmyths, the frogmen, the longfaces, to find the tome, to kill the Deepshriek, to..." _To save Asper_ , he added mentally, _but all I did was piss myself and fall down, like an old man, with barely any blood on my hands._

"So long as they are dead, what does it matter?"

_Because what's the point of having the power if I can't use it? Because why is it fair that I can be beaten by brute force and superstitious myth? Because why can't I be the one to turn the tide, to get the treasure and win the woman?_

"Because," he whispered, "there are laws."

He continued to stare at his hands as the pale, webbed fingers slid around his own, closing tightly over them. Quietly, his stare was drawn up and into her fathomless eyes, her gentle, thin-lipped smile.

"Laws are not important," Greenhair whispered, her voice but a ripple on the water.

He could feel his breath catch in his throat as he stared into her eyes, his hands go so weak and malleable under hers as she pushed them aside. He could feel his legs cross awkwardly over each other in a vain attempt at concealing as she drew herself closer to him, feeling the chill of her body through the garment wrapping her.

_Oh Gods_ , he muttered inside his own mind, _quick, say something clever._

"So... what is important?" he squeaked.

_Moron!_

"What is here. What is now," she replied, low and breathless. "What has occurred is but one wave, come and gone. What is now is you."

She raised a hand to her shoulder and, with digits working slowly, let her silk-like garment fall from her body.

"And me."

His eyes went wide, wide enough to leap out of his skull, yet nowhere near wide enough to take all of her in. He could only steal glimpses: gentle curves like the bend of a river, skin that shimmered between pristine ivory and pale azure as the light glimmered off her body, and rivers of hair that flowed down her body.

"Uh... should I..."

Dreadaeleon was silenced with a sudden chill as she pressed her mouth to his. His eyes threatened to melt as hers closed. Thoughts slid through his mind as easily as her tongue slid past his lips.

_Oh Gods, oh Gods, oh Gods,_ he babbled inwardly, _if there were Gods, that is. This is it! This is it! This is what it feels like! This is what it tastes like._ He blinked, his tongue shyly brushing against hers. _Salt? That makes sense, I guess. She's a siren. Does the rest of her taste like—_

Something stiffened beneath him and he swallowed hard.

_Keep it together, old man_ , he chided himself mentally. _Here and now, like she said, focus on the here and now. One moment... what does that even_ mean _? Am I... am I supposed to lick something? I think I'm supposed to lick something. I should lick something... but what? Oh Gods..._

Her tongue seized his forcibly, wrapping around to caress softly. He felt her breath upon his face, the gentle whisk of sea spray that tingled in his nostrils. He felt her slide a hand up and behind his head, pulling him further into her.

_I think I'm supposed to do that... aren't I? Denaos always says that the male is supposed to be aggressive. But... but what does that mean? Do I... do I pin her down or something? Is that romantic or rape?_ His hands absently brushed against her arms. _Nevermind it, she feels pretty tough. Gods, why do I always have to meet muscular women? Well, I can't just sit here and let her do everything... do something, you fool!_

_But what?_

_I... uh... grab something!_ His hand lashed out and clasped, quivering upon her round buttock. _Not there, you fool! She'll think you a pervert! Wait, no, you fool! She's already naked, how much harm could you possibly do? Okay... okay... everything's okay. It's just—_

"What does it matter," she whispered on a wisp of breath as she pulled slightly away, "that you were not the one to slay the demons?"

_Wait, what? That hardly seems like a nice thing to... steady. Steady! You're losing it!_

"It is what you _will_ do that matters most," she continued.

_Oh Gods, is that a joke? Can she feel it getting soft? Steady! Denaos always says this sort of thing happens... but only with lots of whiskey._

"You have the tome." She drew herself closer, one ivory thigh easily brushing his leg aside and sliding up and down.

_Well, yes, we have it, but Lenk took it... no! No! Think positively! It's not about Lenk! It's about you, you... you throbbing stallion, you rapturous lord of the sheets, you amorous bullfrog. Wait... wait... ignore that last part._

"And you will bring it to me..."

_What?_

"What?" He said as much.

"Is it not wise?" She pulled him closer, smiling as she felt him go rigid against her. "The tome is an item of such knowledge." She leaned in, her whisper carried on the tongue that flicked against his ear. "Such _power_."

"Power..." He could feel himself lost on her whisper, set adrift on the sea that was her voice.

"Your companions would not understand it."

"How could they?" he muttered. "They know nothing but gold."

"They would hate me for it."

"I... I'd protect you."

"You would save me?"

Her gasp caused him to shudder as something within him yearned to be free, yearned to burst out and seize her, to force her upon the sands and savage her in ways he had only heard about second-hand. It pushed at him, demanding he forget the idea of betrayal, demanding he take her in his arms and deliver to her what she demanded herself.

He reached up, seizing her by her naked shoulders and pulling her close, feeling her breasts press against his chest, feeling the breath on his cheek as her lips parted in a faint gasp, feeling her webbed fingers slide down to his belt.

"I would save you..." he whispered.

"On waves of fire," she replied, "and roars of lightning?"

"Yes..."

_Wait..._

With her words sliding like veils over his ears, he felt it. Something twitched in the back of his head, as though a cockroach had skittered upon his brain while she spoke and stood stock still, desperate not to be noticed. But with those last words, he could feel it, the brief twitch of antennae.

Dreadaeleon pushed himself away from her, his eyes narrowing. Greenhair recoiled. Though it was difficult to tell, Dreadaeleon could make out upon her angular features not shock, but the sudden fear of being discovered.

"You're in my head," he whispered, his voice seething.

"It is... it is not what you think, Lorekeeper," she protested.

"How is it _not_ exactly what it seems?" he snarled, advancing menacingly. "You never told me you could read thoughts... then again, if this is what you were planning, I suppose that makes sense."

"The tome is dangerous, Lorekeeper! There are powers at work here that you do not understand! The Sea Mother—"

"Is false! Like all Gods!" Dreadaeleon blinked, his eyes opening with a burst of crimson power. "Like _you_!" He levelled a finger at her. "You wanted to _use_ me! All to get some stupid book!"

"It is no mere book, Lorekeeper," she said, fumbling for her garment. "It has knowledge, it has darkness, it has—"

"Power," he finished for her. "And so do I." He spoke an echoing word and his finger burst with electricity. "Get out of here."

"It is also to save you," she protested, backing away. "The darkness will come after _you_ now that you have the tome! I can protect it! I can protect _you_ , Lorekeeper."

He roared another word that thundered off the sky, punctuated by a sudden crack of lightning leaping from his digit. She shrieked and collapsed. Only when the echo of thunder passed did she look up at him, his finger angled high and smoking.

"My name," he said, "is Dreadaeleon."

The boy could not recall in what order it happened: his threats, her wailed excuses and pleas, his collapsing, her fleeing into the water to vanish into the sea. He could only sit and stare out over the waves as a tear trickled down his cheek and into his mouth, leaving him with the fading taste of salt.

# _Thirty-Two_

# AN UNCARING WING

Denaos poised the hatchet over the wooden block, closed one eye and swung. It split smoothly down the centre, each half flying off to join the two piles of similar semicircular shapes. He smiled at his work momentarily, admiring the even cleave, before sinking the tool into the tree stump that served as a chopping block.

"Your turn," he said.

Lenk looked up through a sweat-stained face, incredulous.

"What?" He looked down at the piles, his piles, with Denaos's addition lying smugly on top like fruits on a dessert. "You only chopped one?"

"I chopped one _exquisitely_ ," the rogue corrected. "If I wanted to beat you in a contest, I could hack circles around you, throwing off so many lacklustre splinters like you did." He plucked up his product and one of Lenk's, holding his up. "Look at this: a nice, delicate blow, revealing every tender secret of the wood. Now look at yours. _Where's the heart?_ "

Lenk mopped his brow, looked down at the piles, then looked back up at his companion.

"It's wood."

"A true artist never makes excuses." The rogue added an insulting sashay to his walk as he turned away from Lenk. "Anyway, you're the one who wanted work ethic and talk. It's only fair that I get laziness and listening." He pulled himself up onto a low-hanging tree branch and lay down. "So, go ahead."

"Fine," the young man said, grunting as he hefted the hatchet and placed a fresh block of wood onto the stump. "I'm having some trouble with—"

"Oh, wait, we're going to talk about _you_?"

"Well... yeah."

"Why can't we ever talk about _me_ for once?" the rogue muttered, settling himself further into his boughy sling. "Everyone comes to _me_ with their problems. Why can't I ever get the same treatment?"

"Because all I know about _you_ is that you're a coward, a lech, a lush, a brigand, a bigot and a piece of offal masquerading as a man," Lenk snarled, bringing the hatchet down in a vicious chop. "Did I miss anything?"

"Yes," the rogue replied, "I also play the lute."

"Fine, then. We'll talk about you." Lenk set a new piece of wood up, glancing at his companion. "You never told me what you did before becoming an adventurer. Are you married?"

Denaos sat up at that, lips pursing, regarding Lenk through narrowed eyes.

"Any children?" Lenk asked.

"You know, I think I am in the mood to talk about you." With noticeable stiffness, the rogue settled back into his tree branch. "So, do go on."

"Um... all right, then." Lenk brought the axe down again. "I'm having some difficulty understanding women."

"Ah, yes." Denaos scratched his chin. "The eternal question on two legs that only gets more annoying with every passing thought." His hand drifted lower, scratched something else. "Fortunately for you, I'm something of an expert on the subject."

"Yeah?"

"No doubt," the rogue replied. "What do you want to know?"

"I suppose..." Lenk's hum hovered in the air as he leaned on the hatchet's handle, staring contemplatively out at the forest's greenery. "Why?"

"The best place to start," Denaos said, nodding. "Well, to understand women, you must first understand their place in the world. And to that end, you must first know how they came to occupy this world alongside us."

"How?"

"The theories vary from faith to faith, but here's how it was explained to me." He cleared his throat, sitting upright as though he were some scholar. "The Gods first created man and gave to him their gifts. From Daeon and Galataur, we received the art of war. From Silf, we received the talent of deception. And from Khetashe, as you know, we received the urge to explore."

"Go on."

"But there was a difficulty. Mankind lacked purpose. There was no reason to go to war, no reason to lie, no reason to wander far and wide."

"And?"

Denaos shrugged and lay back. "And then the Gods created women and suddenly everything made sense."

"Oh..." Lenk scratched his head. "Well, how does that help me?"

"If you haven't reached that conclusion from that particular story, there's really nothing I can do to help you." The rogue waved a hand dismissively. "What do you even care? When we return the tome, you'll have enough money to buy several whores, make one of them your wife and die a slow, lingering death at the bottom of a tankard like any decent man."

"What if I don't want any of that?"

"Then give me your share."

"I mean," Lenk said, setting down another log, "well... let me ask you this. Have you ever wanted something desperately, but you knew it just wasn't meant to be?"

The rogue fell silent, absently scratching his chest. The wind shifted overhead, parting branches that sent shadows dancing over his face, chased by eager fingers of sunlight upon the giggles of a playful breeze. Quietly, he reached up, fingers outstretched as though he sought to grab them.

"Yeah," he replied, "I've wanted that."

"So, what do you do?"

Lenk brought the hatchet down, splitting the log and sending its halves flying off. The echo of the chop lasted an eternity throughout the forest, silencing the laughter of the wind.

"I suppose," Denaos whispered, "you ask 'why'?"

Taire was her name.

Asper remembered that about her, remembered it the first day she had heard it.

" _Like... a paper tear?_ " she had asked the girl, scrunching up her nose. " _What kind of name is that?_ "

" _What kind of name is Asper?_ " she had replied with a smile, sticking her tongue out. " _The name of a slow-witted tree or a snake with a lisp_?"

Her tongue was long and pink, never coated. Her eyes were big and blue, not cold like Lenk's, but vast like the sky. Her hair was long and golden, not dirty like Kataria's, but glistening like the precious metal.

She was always smiling.

Temple life was hard. Asper had been told that before she ever felt called to join. She learned it in the days that followed, during the dissections of the dead to discover what they had died from, ferrying salves and medicines from the apothecary to the common floor where the elder priests tended to the sick and the dying, forced to look upon men, women and children as they coughed out their last breath so that she might know why she served the Healer.

Taire was never shy, never afraid, life never seemed hard for her. She was always the first to peer curiously into the open corpse, the fastest to get the medicine to the common floor while greeting every patient that walked in, the only one who would hold someone's hand as they left the world on Talanas's wings.

Taire had taken Asper's hand and placed it on the dying. Taire had helped her fumble with the medicine. Taire had stayed up reading the tomes on the human body, late into the night, with Asper. Taire was not the reason Asper had entered the temple. Taire was the reason she served the Healer.

Taire had begged.

Her disappearance was officially marked down as "lamentable," never pursued with any particular interest. Children fled from the temple all the time, even the brightest and most enthusiastic students occasionally finding it too stressful to continue with the training. The gravedigger had looked half-heartedly about the temple grounds. The high priest sighed, gave a prayer and made a note in the doomsday book. Taire's belongings were folded into a bundle and put into storage in the bin marked "unclaimed."

There was no corpse, no suicide note, nothing to indicate she had ever existed besides the sooty mark on the floor of the dormitories.

And Asper.

No one had asked the shy little brown-haired girl who was always rubbing her left arm where Taire had gone. No one had paid attention to the shy little brown-haired girl who cried in the night until long after Taire was forgotten by all.

All except the one who knew that she had begged, like the longface, like the frogman.

She hadn't forgotten any of them. She hadn't forgotten the pain she felt, that they shared, as her arm robbed them of all. She could still feel it, would feel it long after whoever kept track of such things forgot that the longface in Irontide had ever existed. She would hear them scream, hear their bones snap, hear their bodies pop, hear them beg.

Her arm was one part of the curse. That Asper would never forget was another.

And she hadn't forgotten that, for as many times as she looked up to the sun and asked, "why?" no one had answered her.

"It happened again," she whispered, choked through tears brimming behind her eyes.

Asper turned. The pendant did not look particularly interested in what she was saying as it lay upon the rock. The forest danced, shifted overhead, casting a shadow over the silver-wrought phoenix. Its carved eyes turned downcast, its gaping beak resembled something of a yawn, as though it wondered how long her weeping confession would last.

"It happened again," she repeated, taking a step closer. "It happened again, it happened again, it happened again." She took another step with every fevered repetition until she collapsed upon her knees before the rock, an impromptu altar, and let her tears slide down to strike upon the pendant. "It happened again.

"Why?"

The pendant did not answer her.

"Why?" she said, louder.

"Why, why, why, why?" Her knuckles bled as she hammered the symbol, straining to beat an answer out of it. "Why does this keep happening to me? Why did you do this to me?"

She raised her hand to strike it again. The phoenix looked out from behind the red staining its silver, uninterested in her threat. Like a parent waiting for a child to burn itself out on its tantrum, it waited, stared. Her hand quivered in the air, impotent in its fury, before she crumpled beside the rock.

"What did I do to deserve this?"

Asper had asked that question before, of the same God, on her first night in the temple. She had knelt before his image, carved in stone instead of silver, far from the loving embrace of her father and mother, far from the place she had once called home. She had knelt, alone, and asked the God she was supposed to worship.

" _Why?_ "

And Talanas had sent Taire.

" _Because_ ," the young girl who was always smiling had spoken from the back of the chapel, " _someone has to._ "

And Taire had knelt beside her, before the God that seemed, in that instant, better than any parent. Talanas was loving, cared for all things, sacrificed Himself so that humans might know what death was, what sickness was, and how to avert them. Talanas cared for His priests as much as He did His followers, and in the instant Taire had smiled at her, Asper knew that Talanas cared for them both, as well.

" _Has to what?_ " she had asked the girl then.

" _Has to do it_ ," Taire had replied.

" _Do what?_ "

" _That's why we're here_ ," the girl had replied, reaching out to tap the brown-haired girl on the nose before they both broke down into laughter.

"I don't deserve this," Asper whispered, broken upon the forest floor. "I didn't do anything to deserve this." She raised her left arm, stared at it as it grinned beneath its pinkness, knowing it would be unleashed again. " _You_ gave this to me."

She rose to her knees, thrust her left hand at the pendant as though it were proof.

" _You_ did. It isn't what I wanted. I... I wanted to help people." She felt her tears sink into her mouth as she clenched her teeth. "I want to _help_ people."

" _To serve mankind_ ," Taire had said as they flipped through the pages of the book. " _To mend the bones, to heal the wound, to cure the illness._ "

" _What for?_ " Asper had asked.

" _You're weird, you know that?_ " Taire had stuck out her tongue. " _Who else is going to do it?_ "

" _Talanas?_ "

" _You don't pay attention during hymn, do you? Humanity was given a choice: free will or bliss. We chose free will and so it's up to us to take care of ourselves. Or rather, it's up to_ us, _His faithful, to take care of everyone else._ "

" _Why would anyone not choose bliss?_ "

" _Huh?_ "

" _I would forsake free will in a heartbeat if it meant I didn't have to feel pain any more, if I didn't have to cry any more._ "

" _Well, stupid, you'd be a slave, then._ "

" _What's wrong with that?_ "

" _What's wrong..._ " Taire had sputtered, looking incredulous. " _What would be the point of life if you never knew pain? How would you even know you were alive?_ "

Asper had felt pain. Asper had felt Taire's pain, that night in the dormitories. Asper had felt it as her friend begged and she could do nothing about it. Asper had felt it for the years after, as she had grown up, told herself it was an accident, told herself that she needed to atone for it by following Talanas.

"Well, I have followed you," she whispered to the pendant. "And you've led me to nothing. I... I always wondered if I was doing good, being amongst these heathens. Never once did I suspect I was doing wrong." Her tears washed away the blood on the silver. " _Never_ , you hear me?

"But what am I supposed to do with this?" She grabbed her arm, its sleeve long since destroyed. "What good can come from this? From leaving nothing to bury? From robbing someone of _everything_? _What good?_ "

The pendant said nothing.

"Answer me," she whispered.

The wind shifted. The pendant shrugged.

"Answer me!"

She turned her arm, levelled its fingers at her throat.

"If you're there, if you're listening, you'll tell me why I shouldn't just turn this on myself and end it all." She shook her arm. "I'll do it. I'll do the one good thing I can with this arm."

A tear of salt leaked past its beak. The pendant yawned. She looked around furtively, found a hefty brown stone. She pulled it up, raised it above her head, fingers trembling as she aimed it over the pendant.

"This," she said, shaking the rock. "This is real. This rock is real. Are you?" she snarled at the pendant. " _Are you?_ If you are, you'll tell me why I shouldn't just destroy you. If you aren't, you end with this pendant. All you are is silver... just a chunk of metal." She growled. "A chunk of metal with three breaths. One."

The pendant did not do anything.

"Two."

The pendant stared at her through hollow eyes.

"Three!"

The rock fell, rolled along the earth to bump against the trunk of a tree that loomed over a brown-haired girl, crumpled before a mossy altar, clenching her left arm with tears streaming down her face as a chunk of metal looked upon her with pity.

# _Thirty-Three_

# MEEK EXPECTATIONS

So," Denaos spoke loudly to be heard over the sound of hammering, "why the sudden interest in the fairer sex?"

Lenk paused and looked up from his duty of nailing wood over their wrecked boat's wound, casting his companion a curious stare.

"Sudden?" he asked.

"Oh, apologies." The rogue laughed, holding up a hand. "I didn't mean to suggest you liked raisins in your curry, if you catch my meaning."

"I... really don't."

"Well, I just meant you happened to be all duty and grimness and agonising about bloodshed up until this point." Denaos took a swig from a waterskin as he leaned on the vessel's railing. "You know, like Gariath."

"Does... Gariath like raisins in his curry?"

"I have no idea if he even eats curry." Denaos scratched his chin thoughtfully. "I suppose he'd probably like it hot, though."

"Yeah, probably." Lenk furrowed his brow. "Wait, what does that mean?"

"Let's forget it. Anyway, I'm thrilled to advise you on the subject, but why choose now, in the prime of your imminent death, to start worrying about women?"

"Not 'women', exactly, but 'woman'."

"A noble endeavour," Denaos replied, taking another swig.

"Kataria."

There was a choked sputter as Denaos dropped the skin and put his hands on his knees, hacking out the droplets of water. Lenk frowned, picking up another half-log and placing it upon the companion vessel's hole.

"Is it that shocking?" the young man asked, plucking up a nail.

"Shocking? It's _immoral_ , man." The rogue gestured wildly off to some direction in which the aforementioned female might be. "She's a _shict_! A bloodthirsty, leather-clad savage! She views humanity," he paused to nudge Lenk, "of which _you_ are a part, I should add, as a disease! You know she threatened to kill me back in Irontide?"

"Yeah, she told me." Lenk began to pound the nail.

"And?"

"And what?" He glanced up and shrugged. "She didn't actually kill you, so what's the harm?"

"Point taken," the rogue said, nodding glumly. "Still, _that's_ the sort of thing you're lusting after here, my friend. Say the Gods get riotously drunk and favour your union, say you're wed. What happens when you leave the jam out overnight or don't wear the pants she's laid out for you? Do you really want to risk her making a necklace out of your sack and stones every time she's in a mood?"

"Kat doesn't seem like the type to lay out pants," Lenk said, looking thoughtful. "I think that might be why I..." He scratched his chin. "Approve of her."

"Well, listen to you and your ballads, you romantic devil." The rogue sighed, resting his head on folded arms. "Still, I might have known this would happen."

"How's that?"

"Well, you've both got so much common," he continued. "You, a grim-faced runt with hair the colour of a man thrice your age. And her..." Denaos shuddered. "Her, a woman with a lack of bosom so severe it should be considered a crime, a woman who thinks it's perfectly fine to smear herself with various fluids and break wind wherever she pleases." His shudder became an unrestrained, horrified cringe. "And that _laugh_ of hers—"

"She has her good points," Lenk replied. "She's independent, she's stubborn when she needs to be, doesn't bother me too much... I'll concede the laugh, though."

"You just described a mule," Denaos pointed out. "Though you grew up on a farm, didn't you? I suppose that explains a lot. Still, perhaps this particular match was meant to be."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean you're both vile, bloodthirsty, completely uncivilised and callous people and you both have the physiques of prepubescent thirteen-year-old boys." The rogue shrugged. "The sole difference between you is that you choose to expel your reeking foulness from your mouth and she from the other end."

"Glad to have your blessing, then," Lenk muttered, hefting up another log. "So, what do you think I should do?"

"Well, a shict is barely a step above a beast, so you might as well just rut her and get it over with before she tries to assert her dominance over you."

"Uh... all right." Lenk looked up, frowning. "How do I do that?"

"How'd you do it the first time you did it?"

"What, with Kat?"

"No, with whatever milkmaid or dung-shovelstress you happened to roll with when you first discovered you were a man, imbecile."

Lenk turned back to the boat, blinking. He stared at the half-patched wound for a moment, though his eyes were vacant and distant.

"I... can't remember."

"Ah, one of _those_ encounters, eh?" Denaos laughed, plucking up the waterskin from the sand. "No worries, then. You might as well be starting fresh, aye?" He brushed the dirt from its lip and took a swig. "Really, there's not much to it. Just choose a manoeuvre and go through with it."

"What, there's manoeuvres?"

"Granted, the technique might be lost on her... and you, but if you've any hope of pleasing a woman, you'll have to learn a few of the famous arts." A lewd grin crossed his face. "Like the Six-Fingered Suldana."

"And..." Lenk's expression seemed to suggest a severe moral dilemma in continuing. "How does that go?"

"It's not too hard." The rogue set down the waterskin, then folded the third finger of each hand under it, knotting the two appendages over themselves. "First, you take your fingers like this. Then, you drop a gold piece on the ground and ask the woman if she wants to see a magic trick, then you—" He paused, regarding Lenk's horrified expression, and smiled. "Oh, almost got me to say it, didn't you? No, no... that one's a secret, and for good reason. If you tried it, you'd probably rupture something."

"Maybe all this is for nothing," the young man said, turning back to the boat. "I mean, it's not usual to... do this sort of thing right after confessing your feelings, is it?"

"Love has nothing to do with _feelings_ , you twit. Or at least, lovemaking doesn't. It's an art, created to establish prowess and technique."

"I'm... I'm really not sure I want to do that, then."

"Fine." The rogue sighed dramatically. "I was trying to spare you some embarrassment, since I severely doubt your capabilities of conveying anything remotely eloquent to her. Then again, she is a barbarian, so perhaps just grunting and snorting will do."

"I was planning on something like that," Lenk said, grinning. "But, out of curiosity, if Khetashe _does_ smile upon me... what manoeuvre _do_ I use?"

"Something simple," Denaos said, shrugging. "Like the Sleeping Toad."

"The Sleeping Toad?"

"A beginner's technique, but no less efficient. You simply request that your lady wait until you're asleep, then have her do her business with such delicate sensual eroticism that you barely even stir."

"Huh... have you ever tried it?"

"Once," the rogue said, nodding.

"Did it work?"

Denaos looked out over the sea thoughtfully, took a long sip from the waterskin. "You know, I really have no Gods-damned idea."

The coconut was a hairy thing, a small sphere of bristly brown hair. Kataria scrutinised it, looked it over with an appraising stare as she took out her hunting knife. With delicate precision, she jabbed two small holes into two of the nut's deeper indentations. Quietly, she scooped a chunk of moist sand out of the forest floor and smeared it atop the coconut.

It looked at least _vaguely_ silver in the shimmer of the sunlight, she thought, but there was still something missing. After a thoughtful hum, she brought her knife up and gouged a pair of scowling lines over the nut's makeshift eyes, finishing the product with a long, jagged frown underneath.

"There," she whispered, smiling as the hairy face scowled at her, "looks just like him."

She traipsed over to a nearby stump sitting solemnly before a larger tree and set the face down upon it. Then, backing away as though she feared it might flee if she turned around, she reached for her quiver and bow. In a breath, the arrow was in her hand and drawn to her cheek, the bowstring quivering tautly.

The coconut continued to frown, not an ounce of fear on its grim, hairy visage. _Just like him_ , she thought, _perfect._

The bow hummed, the arrow shrieked for less than a breath before it was silenced by the sound of wood splitting and viscous liquid leaking onto the sand. The face hung by its right eye, the arrow having penetrated it perfectly and pinned the nut to the tree trunk behind it. Its expression did not change as thick milk dripped out of the back of its head and its muddy hair dribbled onto the earth.

The shict herself wore a broad, unpleasant smile as she stalked back to her impaled victim and leaned forwards, surveying her work. She observed the even split in the nut's eye and nodded to herself, pleased.

"I could still kill him," she assured herself. "I could do it."

He was the tricky part, she knew, the only one she would have trouble killing. The rest were just obstacles: shifty hares in a thicket. He was the wolf, the dangerous prey. But that was hardly a matter. She could kill him now, she knew, and the rest would be dead soon after.

With that, Kataria jerked the arrow out of the face's eye and watched it fall to the earth. Wiping the head off on her breeches, she slid the missile back into her quiver and turned to walk away. She had gone less than three paces when she felt a shiver run up her back.

The nut was still staring at her, she knew, still frowning. It demanded an explanation.

"All right, look." She sighed as she turned around. "It's nothing personal. I mean, I don't _hate_ you or anything."

The coconut frowned, unconvinced.

"You had to know this was going to happen, didn't you?" She scratched the back of her head, casting eyes down to the ground. "How else could it end, Lenk? I mean, we're... I'm a shict. You're a human." She growled, turning a scowl up. "No, you're a strain. You're part of the human disease! It's up to _us_ to kill _you_ before you become unsatisfied with the parts of the world you've already contaminated and infect the whole thing!"

The coconut did not appear to share the same sentiments. As she fell to her rear, Kataria realised she didn't either.

"We had fun, didn't we?" she asked the nut. "I mean, I had fun at least. After a year around you, I'm not infected." She sighed, rubbing her eyes. "That's not true. I am infected. That's why I had to do what I did... sorry, why I _have_ to do what I'm going to do."

She didn't bother explaining the rest to the coconut. How could he understand? she asked herself. Humans didn't understand the Howling, couldn't hear it, couldn't comprehend what it was like to hear it again after a year of silence.

But Kataria did.

She had heard it, in fleeting echoes, during her battle with Xhai. And in those few moments, she had felt it, everything that it meant to be a shict. She could hear all the voices of her people, her ancestors, her tribesmen.

"My father," she whispered.

Quietly, she reached up and ran her finger down the notches in her long earlobes, counting them off. One, two, three, she switched her hand to the other ear, four, five, six. The sixth tribe. _Sil'is Ish._ The Wolves. The Tribe that Hears.

And what good was it to be a part of the sixth tribe if she was deaf to the Howling? What would her people say if they knew such a thing? To know that she only used her ears to be a glorified hunting hound for a pack of inept, reeking, diseased monkeys?

What would her father say?

A brown shape caught her eye and she spied another coconut, this one apparently having landed on a rock when descending from its leafy home. Its face looked sunken, frowning, disapproving.

Much like him.

" _Naturally, I'm disappointed_ ," she imagined the coconut saying, " _you are a shict, after all._ "

"What does that even mean, though?" she asked.

" _If you've forgotten already, then the answer as to what you should do is quite clear._ "

"But I don't want to do it," she replied.

" _If we could all do what we wanted to, what would that make us?_ "

"Human." She sighed, rubbing her eyes.

" _Or?_ "

"Tulwar," she recited with rehearsed precision, "or Vulgore, or Couthi, or any number of monkeys that claim to be a people." She looked to the coconut with a pleading expression. "But it's not like we have to kill them all."

" _Just the ones that make us forget what it is to be a shict._ "

"It's not like that—"

" _Was it not you who just said such a thing?_ "

"It's complicated."

" _It is not._ "

" _He's_ complicated."

" _He's human._ "

"I have no reason to kill him. I don't hate him."

" _It's not a matter of hate._ " She could hear the deep, resonant tone of a voice used to speaking to a people, for a people. " _Any monkey can hate, no matter what race he claims to be. Shicts are as beyond hate as the human disease is beyond redemption. We do not hate the disease, we cure it. We do not kill, we purify. This is simply what must be done and no other race has the conviction to do it. After all... we were here first._ "

"Right..."

Her father had always been hard to deny, for both herself and her tribe. He had shed little blood himself in years past, but had kept their home free of filth and degenerates. It was his leadership that turned back three individual human armies seeking to cross their domain. It was his confidence that led the three tribes to unite under him.

It was his plans, the houses that burned, the wells that were poisoned, the lack of mercy for anything with a round ear, regardless of age or sex, that kept humans far away from their borders.

No one could say what might happen if a human did contaminate a shict. Her father had made certain there would never be an opportunity. Now that Kataria herself felt it, felt the distance, felt the need to ask what it meant to be a shict, his speeches and sermons made much more sense than they ever had when she was small.

And yet, she wasn't quite ready to pick up arrows and start firing.

It could have been something else that infected her, something else that made her forget the Howling. She had been around many humans, after all, and other races as well. Any number of them could have been the cause.

_But then_ , she told herself, _you wouldn't have been exposed to any of them if not for him._

Kataria lay back upon the sand. Her head throbbed, ached with the weight that had been put upon it. Her father was right, she knew; humans had done too much damage to be considered anything but a threat. She was proof enough. But if he was right, why hadn't she done what needed to be done in the first place?

Opinions contradicting her father's were few, but there was one that could be counted on always.

At that, she folded her arms behind her head and stared up at the sky, wondering what her mother would have said.

" _Well, it's not like it's some great loss for a human to die_ ," the crisp, sharp voice came cutting on the wind, " _but when is it really necessary?_ "

"You killed humans at _K'tsche Kando_ ," Kataria retorted, "many."

" _Hundreds._ " There was a morbid laughter on the wind. " _But that was different._ "

"Forgive me for not seeing how."

" _A human encroaching on our land is no different from any other race encroaching on our land. If they stay on their own side, they can do whatever they want. It's when they start pretending they belong somewhere else that they need to be culled._ "

"Not quite the message I'd hoped to receive."

" _Well, you're forgetting a very important aspect._ "

"What's that?"

" _I didn't go to_ K'tsche Kando _for any shict. I went there for you._ "

"I don't understand."

" _If you did, you wouldn't be hallucinating now, would you?_ "

"I thought this was the Howling," Kataria said, frowning. "Am... am I actually going mad?"

" _If you choose to. After all, no matter what your father says, it's all down to choice. He didn't want me to go, but I chose to, because if the humans set one foot upon our sister tribe's land unchallenged, they'd come to our land, too, bolder and more virulent than ever._ "

A brief silence hung over them. Kataria absently sighed up to the sky, hoping that whatever was looking down upon her did so with a frown that matched her own.

"Did you choose to die there?" she asked.

" _Can you choose that? I chose to kill there. What do you choose?_ "

"I'm... not sure."

" _Then what do you want?_ "

Kataria sat up, staring at her hands as they lay in her lap, calloused and well used to the shape of the bow, feeling the breeze kick the feathers in her hair against her notched ears, hearing the distant howl upon the wind.

"I..." she said reluctantly, "I want to feel like a shict again."

" _Then_ ," the sky and coconut answered as one, " _you already know the answer._ "

The hunting knife seemed much heavier when she picked it up. Her body felt like lead as she pulled herself up to her feet. The realisation that they were right was so thick as to choke her when she took in a deep breath.

The coconut with its eye put out now looked cold, stale. In the moments before the last of its milk had sloshed onto the sand, its face had changed. No longer did it demand explanation or look at her with disapproval. It merely seemed to stare blankly, as if to ask what it had done wrong to deserve such treatment.

She had no answer for it, no answer for herself as she tucked the knife into her belt and turned to join her companion for the last time. All she had left was a question that she asked herself with every footstep.

How else could it end?

# _Thirty-Four_

# WHAT IS LEFT

Irontide no longer loomed against the orange setting of the sun. Irontide was no longer capable of looming. Instead, the massive fortress sagged, leaned drunkenly with a long, granite sigh as though it strained to clutch at the gaping hole in its side and lamented its lack of arms. Instead of looking fearsome, instead of looking forsaken, it looked at peace, a great, grey old man ready to go with a stony smile and an undignified stumble into the water.

Salt still wept from its wound, though in small, murmuring trickles. The tide had settled over its spike-encrusted base. Soon, the whole structure would crumble and vanish beneath the waves. The weapons and bodies entombed within would be forgotten. The sea, ever rising, had already forgotten Irontide.

Lenk, however, had not.

He wondered if he could still swim to the fortress, how long it would take him with his injured leg. How long would it take him to revisit the chamber with the black water and the rocky outcropping? How long would it take him to sink to the bottom once more and leave behind what had come out of the chamber with him?

"I hear it more often now," he whispered, perhaps to whatever God might be listening. "It's so loud, so clear." Absently, he rubbed his leg. "So cold."

And with the voice had come the memories, the images that he remembered forgetting before. He saw them in flashes, in the moments when he blinked, and heard them in the moments when he held his breath. He could remember a strange weight upon his head, as though his skull had been coated in lead. He could remember the distinct lack of warmth and not being bothered by such a thing.

He could remember seeing his hands before him, covered in grey skin.

Now they lay before him, pink. But he remembered what they had done, whose head they had taken.

"Demons can't be harmed by mortal weapons," he muttered to himself. "Demons can't die by mortal hands. That doesn't happen."

_But it did, didn't it?_

"Did it?" he asked himself. "Maybe the whole thing was... was imaginary, a hallucination. It could have been a trick of the mind."

_You did take several blows to the head._

"Yes, several blows," he agreed.

_Not as grievous as those the Deepshriek took, of course._

"Exactly, I—"

Lenk paused and looked up, eyes wide as he felt his blood go cold. Somewhere inside him, a chuckle slipped through his brain and slid down his spine on freezing legs.

" _Not so chatty now, are you?_ "

"What?"

"I said, not so talkative any more? No more questions?"

Lenk turned about, regarding the rogue standing behind him. Denaos flashed a grin as he stalked towards the young man, taking a seat beside him on the beach.

"Any other inane enquiries about the female question? Perhaps you'd like to know where babies come from?"

Lenk regarded the taller man through eyes that suddenly felt heavy, as though he had just been deprived of a year's worth of sleep in a breath. He pulled his knees up to his chest and stared out over the ocean.

"No. I don't want to talk any more."

"Oh? Did we run out of work to do?" Denaos glanced down the beach where their vessel lay, its hole patched with conspicuous timber. "Not the best job, I admit, but hardly a reason to stop conversing. I was rather enjoying myself towards the end."

"I don't want to talk—"

"Then maybe you ought to listen." The rogue scratched his chin. "Frankly, I think I might have misjudged your chances with Kataria." At the young man's worried look, he grinned. "There, I thought you might find that interesting."

"I don't understand."

"Shocking." Denaos rolled his eyes. "Anyway, it strikes me that, if plays are any indicator, a great deal of romance tends to end in death. Suicide, frequently, or murder... and if the script's any good, sometimes both." The rogue shrugged. "Given your mutual professions, I think your chances for either are rather good. Violence, it seems, makes a fertile garden for love to blossom."

"Love..." Lenk repeated to himself, staring at his hands.

_And who could love someone who... did what you did? Someone who is what you are?_

" _Who even requires love?_ " the voice asked.

"Shut up," Lenk hissed.

"No, no, hear me out," Denaos insisted. "Given that she's a shict, I think the chances of her killing _you_ are excellent. And that's almost exactly how _The Heresy of Vulton Husk_ ends, if you've ever read it." He made a soft applause. "A great tragedy of our time. Truly inspired."

"You've..." Lenk began, glancing at the rogue, "been in love?"

"I've been married."

"Same thing."

"Oh, Gods no." The rogue shook his head vigorously. "Marriage, you see, is an invention of man. It's a trick in which you deceive someone into cleaning up after you when you're too old to care whether you're wearing pants when you piss. If it's love... true love, one of you dies before the other realises they hate you."

" _And she will die long before us_ ," the voice whispered threateningly, " _they all will die, you know. They're obstacles. They're hindrances._ "

"Stop," Lenk muttered.

"Yes, I suppose it's a little late for such quandaries, isn't it?" The rogue clapped the young man on the back as he clambered to his feet. "But I'm glad we had this talk. If nothing else, you can always buy your answers with your reward when we hand over the book."

Denaos's feet crunched upon the sand, leaving Lenk staring at his hands, straining not to blink, not to breathe. When the taller man's footsteps were barely audible, the young man looked up and spoke to no one.

"Who are you?" he whispered. "What do you want?"

" _It is not a matter of want. It is a matter of what must be done._ "

"I'm not the man to do it. Not if it means that she—"

" _We are the one to do it. All obstacles fade or are torn down, even her._ "

"How do I get rid of you? How?"

" _There is no such thing._ "

"What do you do," he muttered, "when you want to be with someone... but you want to kill yourself?"

"Ah," the rogue called, distantly, "that's most definitely love."

There was nothing left.

The stench of blood and cowardice, the reek of smoke and salt, the foul aromas of humanity and weakness were all vanished. Even the air hung still, carrying no scent of moisture rising from the earth or breath hissing from the trees. The world was as it was intended to be, free from all imperfect stenches.

All that remained was Gariath and the scent of rivers and rocks.

His legs felt weak underneath him as he pushed his way delicately through the jungle, following the memory's trail. His wounds had since begun to heal, the burned flesh peeling off and the cuts scabbing over. It was something else that made him hesitant, made him wary of continuing, a sensation he hadn't been able to smell through the stench of his own anger and the sheets of blood that he covered himself with.

His knees were soft as they had been when he first learned to hunt alongside his father. His bowels quivered with excitement as they had when he tasted the meat of his first prey. His chest trembled and felt as shallow as it had when he first mated. His arms felt weighted and weak as they had when he first held two wailing pups in his grasp, when he first learned he was a father.

That, all of it, was gone now. Only Gariath was left, of his family, of the _Rhega_. When he realised that, when he realised why he had followed a weak, scrawny human away from what had once been his home, where his family had once lived, where his children had cried and his father had bled, he realised what the sensation was.

Fear.

It was a foul emotion, Gariath thought, anger was much better. Within anger there was certainty, there was predictability, and he always knew how everything would end. Within fear, there was nothing. There was nothing to expect and nothing to keep hope from spawning inside him.

Hope died. Anger lived.

But it was with hope that he walked, following the scent as it wound its way through the jungle paths and into the heart of the forest where no one but he was meant to go. The spirits let him pass, drawing back their fronds and branches, leaving their rocks and roots out of his path, chasing the noisy beasts and birds from their crowns that he might hear.

Hear and smell.

The scent became overwhelming as he placed a claw upon the thick, leafy branch. The last branch, he realised, before he faced what lay upon the other side. It would be better to go back now, he knew, to go back to the certainty of anger and the predictability of bloodshed. It would be better to go back, safe in the knowledge that there were no more _Rhega_ , that his father and his mate and his children were all gone.

It would be better to forget that he might have ever hoped.

But, still, he pushed past the branch.

The glade greeted him with the murmur of a stream and the gentle hum of sunlight peering through the branches. The earth was moist, but hard and green under his feet. It pressed against his soles affectionately, as if it were welcoming him back after a journey so long only the earth could remember him.

It knew his feet.

The water greeted him eagerly, lapping up to his waist as he waded through the shallow stream towards the verdant chunk of earth in the centre of it. It giggled, laughed and jumped up to grab at him, trying to invite him to swim as he had once before, before he had known what anger was.

The water knew him.

He reached down, leaving a hand in the stream as if to assure it that he would be back before too long. He ignored the splashing moans of disappointment as he climbed onto the chunk of green. The great stone loomed over it, tall, grey and jagged. An elder, he realised as he brushed a hand over it, who had seen the stream born, the forest born, and so much more.

He knew the stone.

He breathed deeply, inhaling the memories. The elder was free with his tales, let the scents escape his soil and fill Gariath's nostrils. They came quickly, almost overwhelmingly.

_Taoharga was born here_ , he knew, _and she was the swiftest runner in the land. The earth scorned her feet and the beasts feared her approach._

He inhaled again. _Gathar stood here and sheltered his children beneath his wings when the storms came and did not relent for three days._

The sound of breath. _Argha and Hartaga were born here. They stood, they fought, they hunted and they bled together._

They came one after the other, his breaths short and ragged. _Gratha laughed while she mated here. Harathag roared to the sky here as his children died before he did. Iagrah watched her son catch a fish and wrestle with it here._

"There..." Gariath whispered, his voice afraid to confirm what he knew, "there were _Rhega_ here." His eyelids twitched. His hand pressed hard against the stone. "They were... _we_ were here."

_Were._

It was not the name of his people or his family that echoed in his mind. It was that ugly, muttering qualifier that caused his brain to ache and his lips to quiver. _Rhega_ were _here. They are not any more._

That should have been the end of it, he knew, one more reason why hope was stupid, one more reason to go running back in tears to the comfort of hatred and the warmth of anger. He should have gone back, back to fighting, back to bloodshed. But he could not bring himself to walk away, not yet, not before he looked to the elder and asked.

"Where did they all go?"

Gariath's ear-frills twitched as he heard the sound of leaves rustling. He cast a glower out over the surrounding underbrush. Had one of the weakling humans followed him to this place where they weren't meant to go?

_Just as well_ , he thought as he flexed his claws. There was no more reason to continue this imaginary game of pretending they didn't deserve to die. There was no more reason to keep them alive. They were the answer to his question, _they_ were where the _Rhega_ went.

No more questions. No more excuses. This time they all died.

"Come out and die with a bit of dignity," he growled, "or start running so I can chase you."

His unseen spy answered, bursting from the foliage in a flash of red. It moved quickly, tearing so swiftly across the green and through the stream that he did not even lay eyes upon it until it was upon him.

There was a sudden pressure upon his ankle, warm and almost affectionate. Slowly, he glanced down, his claws untensing, wings furling themselves as he stared at the tiny red muzzle trying to wrap itself around his foot.

The pup, apparently, did not sense his smile and the young creature renewed his vigour, clawing at Gariath's leg with short limbs, trying to coil a stubby tail about the taller _Rhega_ 's leg to bring him to the ground.

Gariath reached down and tried to dislodge the pup with a gentle tug. The young _Rhega_ only held on faster, emitting what was undoubtedly intended to be a warning growl. His body trembling with contained mirth, Gariath hooked his hands under the pup's armpits and pulled him up to stare into his face.

From behind a short, blunted muzzle, the pup stared at his elder. His ear-frills were extended, not yet developed enough to be able to fold them. His wings were tiny flaps of skin hanging on his back, the bones not strong enough to lift them yet. His stubby little red tail wagged happily as he stared at Gariath through bright eyes.

_That's right_ , Gariath remembered with a smile, _our eyes are supposed to be bright, not dark._

"I almost got you," the pup growled. He bit at Gariath's nose, the taller _Rhega_ 's nostrils flickering.

"I don't know," Gariath replied with a thoughtful hum. "You're a pup."

"I'm a _Rhega_."

"You're small."

"I'm _big_."

"Big enough to be held like a pup, maybe."

At that, the pup emitted a shrill snarl and bit Gariath's finger. The sensation of tiny teeth grazing his tough hide was familiar. He remembered a pair of jaws nipping at him in such a way, two equally small voices insisting how big they were.

The smile he offered in response, however, did not feel so familiar.

"Fine, you're huge." Gariath laughed, dropping the pup.

The smaller _Rhega_ landed with a growl and a scrabble of short limbs as he scrambled to his feet. Gariath, in response, fell to his own rear, taking a seat opposite the pup. He could not help but stare at the small creature; he had forgotten how small he had started as. The pup was tiny, but not weak, unharmed from the fall, back up and on all fours as he growled playfully at the older _Rhega_.

_Did I ever growl like that?_ Gariath asked himself. _Were my eyes ever so bright?_

"I might not be so big now," the pup said, making a feinted lunge at the older _Rhega_ , "but my mother says I will be someday."

And at the pup's words, Gariath felt his smile drop, fade back into a frown.

_He doesn't know_ , he realised.

And how could the pup know? He couldn't see himself, couldn't look at the way the sunlight occasionally passed through his body. He could not see the distance in his own eyes, suggesting just how long he had been so small. He could not see that the earth did not depress beneath him when he rolled and jumped.

He couldn't possibly know he wasn't alive any more.

"What's wrong?" the pup asked, tilting his head to the side.

"Nothing is wrong," Gariath replied, forcing the smile back onto his face. "It's... just been a long time since I've seen one of you... one of us."

"Me, too," the pup said, plopping onto his rear end. "There used to be lots of us." He looked around the glade and frowned. "I wonder when they're coming back."

_Tell him_ , Gariath told himself, _he deserves to know. Tell him they're not coming back._

"I'm sure they will soon," Gariath replied instead.

_Coward._

"I hope so... they left a long time ago."

"Where did they go?"

The pup opened his mouth to speak, then frowned. He looked down at the earth dejectedly.

"I... I don't know."

"Then why are you still here? Didn't your father take you with him when he left?"

"My mother was supposed to," the pup replied. "My father left... long ago, long before she did."

"He died?"

"I... think so. It's hard to remember."

The pup placed two stubby clawed hands on the tiny bone nubs that would someday be two broad horns. _Would have been_ , Gariath corrected himself.

"My head hurts thinking about it," the pup whined. "You're not going anywhere, are you?"

"Of course not," Gariath said, smiling. "What's your name?"

"Grahta," the pup said. "It means—"

" _Strongest_ ," the older _Rhega_ finished. He flashed a coy smile. "Are you sure it's accurate?" He prodded the pup, sending him tumbling over. "You don't look very strong."

"I will be someday!" Grahta scrabbled to his feet and lunged at Gariath's hand as he pulled it away. "It's a much better name than whatever yours is, anyway."

"My name," the older _Rhega_ said, drawing himself up proudly, "is Gariath."

" _Wisest?_ " Grahta laughed. "That can't be right."

"What makes you say that?" Gariath asked, frowning. "I'm plenty wise."

"You're plenty beat up, is what you are." Grahta poked his stubby finger against the cuts crossing Gariath's flesh, the traces of black where his skin had been burned. "What happened to you?"

Gariath stared down at that finger, prodding so curiously, taking everything in through a tiny digit. _They had fingers so tiny_ , he recalled.

"I..." he whispered with a sigh, "I hurt myself."

_Tried to kill myself_ , he added mentally, _tried to join you, Grahta, and your mother and father and my—_

"That wasn't too smart," Grahta said, frowning. "Aren't you supposed to be the smart one?"

"What do you mean?"

"I've heard you talk to the other creatures you walk with. You yell at them, call them names, try to hurt them." The pup's frown deepened, his eyes turning towards the earth. "My father used to talk like that."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know you were listening."

"You didn't sound very happy."

Gariath followed the pup's gaze. "I'm not."

"Why? Don't you have enough to eat?"

"I have enough to eat," Gariath replied. "I just... I don't have anyone to talk to."

"What about those creatures?"

"The humans?"

"Is that what they're called? They smell bad." The pup tilted his head to one side. "Is that why you're not happy? Because they smell bad? Maybe you could ask them to wash."

"Humans are..." Gariath sighed. "They smell bad no matter how much they wash. And they only smell worse the more of them that are around."

"Are there a lot of them?"

"Many."

"More than the _Rhega_?"

_Many more. Thousands more. There are no more_ Rhega. _Tell him. He deserves to know._

"You don't have to worry about humans," Gariath said, "so let's not talk about it."

"All right," Grahta said. "How come there's only one of you?"

Gariath winced.

"I mean," the pup continued, "don't you have a family?"

"I did... I do," the older _Rhega_ said, nodding. "I have two sons."

"What are their names?"

Gariath paused at that, staring intently at the pup. "Their names are Tangahr and Grahta."

"Like me!" The pup ran in a quick circle, barking excitedly. "Is your son the strongest, too?"

"He was... very strong," Gariath whispered, his voice choked suddenly. "His brother was, too. Much stronger than their father."

"I'm sure you'll be strong too, someday," the pup said, nodding vigorously. "You just need to eat more meat."

"I'm... sure I will be."

"Not as strong as me, though."

"Of course not."

"I'm very strong, you know. Once, I even killed a boar on my own. It was back when—"

The stream whispered quietly around them, no other sound to distract Gariath from hearing the pup. Every word echoed in his mind, every word felt like a claw dug into his chest that he couldn't dislodge. He could hear himself in the pup's voice, he could hear his own shrill bark, his own boasts, his own proclamations that he had made to his father when he was so young.

The proclamations his sons had made to him.

_They were so boastful_ , he thought, smiling at the pup, _they talked so much... they never stopped talking until..._

"Grahta," he interrupted softly, "why aren't you with your family?"

"I... I'm not sure," Grahta replied, scratching his head. "I think... I think Grandfather asked me to wait. He asked me to stay awake."

"For what?"

"For you," Grahta said, looking up at the older _Rhega_ intently.

"I'm here now."

"And you're not going anywhere, right?"

"Right."

"Okay, good." The pup scratched his head. "Grandfather... Grandfather said... uh, he wanted me to tell you something."

"What?"

"He told me to tell you... not to follow me."

Gariath felt his heart stop, his eyes go wide. "Whwhat?"

"He said you can't come where he went, where I'm supposed to go, not yet."

Something welled inside Gariath's throat, lodging itself there. "But... why not?"

"I don't know," Grahta replied, shrugging. "But why would you want to go? I'm right here. We can play!"

_No_ , Gariath told himself, _we can't play. You have to go, Grahta. You can go, now. You can fall asleep. I've heard the message. You can go._

Gariath looked at the pup, eyes wide, teeth so small in his smile. _Tangahr smiled like that. Grahta's eyes were so bright._

_No... NO!_ he roared inside his own head. _Tell him. Tell him he can go! Tell him he can sleep! He's been awake for so long!_

Grahta fell to all fours, tail upright as he barked a challenge at the older _Rhega. Tangahr always barked like that. Grahta didn't like to fight... Tangahr teased him. What... what_ Rhega _doesn't like to fight?_

_Tell him... TELL HIM! YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO HIM!_

"Grahta," Gariath whispered, "how long have you been awake?"

"A... a long time, I guess," the pup replied, sitting back down. He yawned, a shrill, whining sound accompanied by exposed rows of stubby white teeth. "I'm very tired now, since you said it."

_Good_ , Gariath told himself, inhaling sharply, _he can rest. He deserves to rest. He deserves to..._

Gariath watched the pup walk in a circle, then curl up, folding his tail towards his snout. His eyes went wide.

_Tangahr... Grahta... used to sleep like that._

"Grahta," he whispered. Upon hearing no reply, he said loudly. "Grahta!"

"What?" the pup asked, opening one bright eye.

"Don't fall asleep yet!"

"But I'm so..." the pup paused to yawn, "so tired. I've been up for so long."

"I know, but stay up a little longer." There was no reply from the younger _Rhega_. " _Please._ "

"I'll be back, Gariath. I just want to sleep a little."

"No, Grahta, don't fall asleep. Please don't fall asleep." Gariath was up on his knees now, standing over the pup. "Don't leave me alone, Grahta. I... I've been alone for a long time now. Please, Grahta... _please_."

"Maybe you should... should go and see Grandfather," Grahta suggested, yawning. "He said you should go and see him."

"Where? Where did he say he would be, Grahta?"

"Somewhere... north? I don't know what that means."

"Then how am I supposed to find him?"

"You're... you're Wisest, aren't you?"

"I'm not very smart, Grahta. I need you to stay up and give me directions. Please, Grahta, stay up a little longer. Stay awake, Grahta."

"I... I'm sorry," the pup said, almost snoring. "I just... I'm so tired."

"Not yet, Grahta. Talk to me for a little longer. Tell me... tell me about your mother."

"Oh, my mother..." The pup smiled wistfully, even as his red eyelids drooped. "My mother... her name was Toaghari... it means..." He opened his mouth wide in a yawn. "It means... _Greatest_. I... I hope she comes back..." He settled down upon the earth, pressing his face against his tail. "Soon."

The sound of the pup snoring carried over the sound of the brook whispering, but it faded with every passing breath. More sounds returned to the world: air from the trees, breezes blowing over the sand, moisture rising from the earth. Grahta's sound of slumber was a distant part in the world's great chorus.

As was the sound of Gariath's own voice.

"Don't blink," he told himself, gripping the earth in two trembling hands. "Don't blink. He'll go if you blink."

He tried to hold the image of the little red bundle, his side rising and falling with each breath, in eyes that were quickly streaming over with tears.

"Don't blink."

He tried to hold the image of wings too small to flex, a tail too small to do anything but wag, eyes that were bright as his once had been.

"Don't blink."

He tried to hold the image of two similar bundles, rolling over each other at his feet, barking and nipping, wagging and whining, their voices fresh in his frills as they boasted, proclaimed, roared, growled, snarled and snored.

"Don't—"

When he opened his eyes again, Grahta was gone. The earth was not depressed where he had been, the sunlight continued to pour despite his absence. The sound of his sleeping was lost on the wind.

"No," he whimpered, pawing at the ground. "No, no, no, no, _NO_!" His roar killed the sounds in the air as he threw back his head. " _Hit something_ ," he told himself, sweeping his gaze about the glade. "Hit! Kill! Make it bleed! Make it die! Kill something! _KILL!_ "

The only thing that shared the glade, that could possibly satiate the urge, was the impassive elder stone looming over him. Snarling, he levelled an accusatory finger.

" _YOU!_ "

He struck the stone, felt his hand crack, and fell to the earth with a cry. There was nothing to hit. Nothing to kill. No anger, no hatred. He was left alone with hope. Quietly, he laid his head against the rock, his body trembling as tears slid down his snout to trickle across the rim of his nostrils and fall to the unmoved earth.

Grahta was gone. The _Rhega_ were gone. Gariath was alone.

With the scent of nothing but salt and wind as the world continued around him.

# _Thirty-Five_

# NOTHING REMAINS

There was very little in the supply crate to suggest that Argaol ever really expected them to return alive, Denaos thought as he rummaged blindly through the various sundries and goods within. The moon was not much help in illuminating his search.

"Blankets... fishing line... but no hooks," the rogue muttered, rolling his eyes. "Rope... who needs _rope_ on an island? Waterskins, empty... bacon... dried meat... salted meat... _dried salted meat_."

His hands clenched something long and firm. Eyes widening, he pulled something stout and rounded free. Scrutinising it in the darkness, he frowned.

"A... lute." He blinked at the stringed instrument. "What... did he just throw whatever he could spare into this thing?" Quietly, he noted the inscription on the wooden neck. "Not a bad year, though."

"Could you possibly hurry it up?" someone called from behind. "I'm sort of... you know, trying to keep someone's leg from becoming gangrenous and falling off."

"If the Gods had mercy, such a fate should befall my ears," the rogue muttered.

Sighing, he sifted through everything else the captain had deemed worthy for chasing demons. His persistence, however, eventually rewarded him with the knowledge that the old Silfish prayer had yet to be proven false.

"Gods are fickle, men are cruel," he recited as he wrapped his hand around something smooth and cold. He pulled the bottle from the crate and watched his own triumphant smile reflected back to him in its sloshing amber liquor. "Trust only in yourself and what lies in your cup."

That smile persisted as he walked back to the fire, back to his doubtlessly grateful companions. Who else would have had the foresight to smuggle out a bit of liquid love, after all? _Granted_ , he reasoned, _it's stolen love. But what is love if it doesn't leave someone else unhappy?_

He couldn't honestly say the thought of Argaol's furious face, screwed up so tight his jaws would fold inwards and begin to devour his own bowels, caused him any great despair. _After all, the man gave us a_ lute.

Besides, he reasoned, whatever price Argaol demanded could be paid out of his earnings. _One thousand gold_ , he told himself, _divided amongst six... one hundred sixty five pieces, roughly. My share, plus Asper's, equates to three hundred and thirty. This bottle_ , he paused to survey the golden-stained glass, _can't be more than thirty. Expensive, but still enough to buy many more and a new bowel for Argaol._

The good captain's sacrifice would not be in vain. Silf demanded sacrifice for His role in their victory, the recovery of the book. Fortunately, the Patron was, if His own scriptures were to be believed, satisfied with whatever revelry that might occur being done in His name.

And what was not to revel about? The book was in their possession, patiently waiting to be exchanged for hard, shiny coin. The demons were fled for a glorious three nights, the longfaces gone, as well. And, as an added answer to an oft-muttered prayer, both Gariath and Dreadaeleon had been strangely absent for the past day and night, leaving Denaos alone with two lovely women who would no doubt be at least tolerable when the bottle was drained.

_And Lenk, too_ , he thought disdainfully, _but let's not dwell on the negative. Tonight is a night of revelry! Silf demands it! He demands empty bottles, drunken dreams and remorseful lamentations in the morning! He demands satisfied women, wrinkled skirts and trousers that can't be found in the morning! He demands riot, revel and, at the absolute minimum,_ three _violations of scripture by_ two _women with a strong desire to explore their own mystique._

What greeted him when he arrived, however, was not revelry or riot. There was hardly a smile shared around the fire, much less two women committing blasphemies on the sand. Their faces were sombre, their eyes hard and their mouths stretched into frowns so tight they might as well have come off a torturer's rack.

"Frankly," he said aloud, placing hands on hips, "I'm wondering if I might not find a livelier bunch in Irontide."

"Amongst the maggots and corpseflies, perhaps," Asper muttered, looking up from Lenk's leg. She eyed the bottle with scrutiny. "What's that?"

"Huss's Gold Cork," the rogue replied, holding up the bottle triumphantly. "The finest whiskey ever to be wrought past the last Karnerian Crusade. Only one hundred barrels of this made it out of the empire before liquor was outlawed there."

"Where'd you get it?" the priestess asked, lofting a brow.

"Argaol so generously donated it to our cause."

"Uh-huh. And why don't I believe you?"

"Likely because you have two working eyes and at least a tenuous grasp on the concept of behavioural patterns." The rogue batted his eyelashes sweetly. "Or maybe Talanas just loves you."

"Sure, fine." She held out a hand. "Give it here."

"A zealous little one, are you?" He slipped the bottle to her. "By all means, begin your indulgences first. The tightest buttocks require the most lubrication, after all."

Asper ignored his remark, seemed to ignore the bottle as she studied Lenk's leg. The young man's trouser leg had been sheared off above the knee, pulled back to expose the jagged wound in his thigh. It had since been treated, the dead flesh removed, the salve applied, the skin pulled together and stitched tight with black gut thread. All the same, Asper scrutinised it with the same sort of frown she might an oozing, infected, scabrous thing.

She uncorked the bottle and held a white cloth to the mouth. Quietly, she tipped it and stained it amber, wiping it upon the young man's leg.

The scream of agony came not from Lenk.

"What are you doing, heathen?" Denaos shrieked as he shoved her over and wrenched the bottle from her hand, cradling it to his chest as he might an infant. "This is none of your wretched Talanite swill! This... is... _liquor_."

"It's alcohol," she replied, scowling as she righted herself. "It'll fight infection."

"If you were any kind of decent healer, you'd have fought it with another weapon already."

"I wanted to make sure." She shrugged. "What else am I supposed to clean it with?"

Denaos glanced from the bottle, to the priestess, to the young man's leg. He snorted, a wet, rumbling sound coursing through his nose, and spat a glistening glob upon the stitched wound.

"Walk it off," he snarled.

"Yeah, sure," Lenk muttered. "You've been trying to indirectly kill me for as long as I've known you. I suppose you had to escalate at some point."

"You didn't cry out."

Lenk turned a hard stare upon Kataria. It was with a frown that Denaos noted the shict had affixed such a stare to the young man ever since they had settled around the crackling fire. He would have hoped that her gaze would have turned to him by now, or at least to Asper.

_Then again_ , he thought, noting the particular hardness and narrowness of her gaze, _perhaps it's all for the best._

"What?" Lenk asked.

"You didn't cry out," she repeated, gesturing to the bottle. "Didn't that hurt?"

"It might have."

"But you don't know." Her ears twitched with a sort of predatory observation. "Humans are supposed to cry out when they get hurt."

"And what do you think that means." It was not a question that came out of Lenk's mouth, and the cold hostility with which it was delivered indicated no particular concern for whatever Kataria might have to answer.

For her part, the shict said nothing. It was with some concern that Denaos noted the hunting knife securely strapped to her belt. He hadn't ever noticed her wearing it when not hunting, but that was far from his largest concern.

"Oh, let's not do this now, shall we?" Denaos took his place around the roaring orange. "We've a victory to celebrate, after all, and it's two days overdue."

"Victory?" Lenk asked, raising a brow. "We barely escaped alive."

"Barely counts."

"We're wounded and tired," Asper pointed out.

"But alive."

"For now," Kataria muttered.

"And now, we _need_ to celebrate. We _need_ to get drunk, roll around in our own vomit and lick whatever amphibious wildlife we can catch in our stupor." The rogue paused, blinked and cleared his throat. " _Granted_ , in practice, it's a lot more amusing, which is all the more reason to start drinking."

"I don't feel the need to," Lenk replied harshly.

"But the _need_ feels you... to—"

"That doesn't make sense."

"It doesn't have to! We're celebrating!"

"Celebrating what?" The young man rose, his injured leg shaking beneath him. "What did you do that's worthy of celebration?"

"Well, I—"

"Did _you_ fight the Deepshriek?"

"No, but—"

"Did _you_ get wounded?"

"I was fairly well—"

"When you close your eyes, what is it that _you_ see, Denaos?" Lenk snarled.

The rogue glowered, his lips twitching as if ready to deliver some scathing retort to that. After a moment, his face twisted, cracked around the edges, and he quickly looked down at the earth.

"I'd rather not say," he whispered. "But I do know that liquor often helps it."

"Then you keep it," Lenk muttered, turning around. "Thank whatever kind of God Silf is that your problems can be fixed like that."

Denaos did not try to stop him as he stalked away from the fire and vanished into the night air. Silf hated melodrama, after all.

"Well, fine." The rogue snorted and spat upon the earth. "That's just glorious. He can go and sulk and wait for someone to come and rub his back and tell him that everyone loves him and _we_ shall have a good time all our own." He took a brief swig from the bottle. "So, why don't we enjoy ourselves? Kataria, you take off your tunic and I'll show you both a magic trick."

"She's gone," Asper said.

Denaos's frown only grew deeper as he stared at the indentation where she had been sitting. At what point she had decided to go, he could not know, nor did he particularly care. _All the better, all the better_ , he told himself with a bit of hysteria edging his inner voice, _that just leaves me and..._

_Asper_ , he finished with a sigh. Zealous, purist, morally irreproachable Asper. Asper, who had never done anything wrong in her life. Asper, who complained every time he stuck a knife into anything. Asper, who tried to use Huss's Gold Cork as a disinfectant.

_Maybe I should just save myself the trouble and go to sleep now._

He was about to rise when he heard the sand shift, sensed someone come up beside him. He felt soft brown hair laid down upon his shoulder as she pressed her body against his, resting her head upon him as she stared into the fire. So stunned was he that he didn't even try to resist as she took the bottle from his hands and pulled a long swig from its neck.

"Well," he said softly, eyeing the eager pulse of her throat. "Dare I ask what drives you to such extremes?"

"You dare not," she replied coldly.

"Dare I hope where this might lead?"

"You dare not."

"Well, then what's the bloody point?" he muttered, snatching the bottle back from her.

"I need you," she said, simply and without anything behind it.

"I've heard that from a few women in my time," he said bitterly, taking a swig. "In my experience, it never quite works out in a way that's beneficial for me."

"Well, I don't need _you_ , specifically." She wrapped her arm around his, clutching it with a tightness he found uncomfortable. "I need a rock."

"A rock."

"I need something real. I need something that talks back to me."

He smiled at that. It was only with the night time, the starlight that made her skin glow, the scent of smoke that contrasted with her own delicate aroma, that he noticed her. It was only now, as he felt her body rise and fall with each breath, pressing against his, that he noticed how her body curved in a way that could not be hidden by robes.

She reminded him of...

He blinked. The images flashed before his eyes. Blood. A dead stare locked upon the ceiling. Laughter.

_Someone else._

Asper was not someone else, though. It was only at that moment that she was no longer a priestess, he no longer a rogue. She no longer pious, he no longer vile. Between the darkness and the bottle, they were but woman and rock.

That thought brought a smile to his face as he upended the bottle into his mouth.

"Rocks don't drink," she pointed out.

"Rocks also don't finger your asshole while you sleep." He exhaled, then took another swig. "Looks like you're in for several disappointments tonight."

"That's funny," Asper said. "I'm not laughing... but it's funny." She eyed the bottle thoughtfully. "We should make a toast, shouldn't we?"

"We should. The Gods would demand it." He raised the bottle, observed the amber sloshing inside. "To the Gods, then?"

"Not the Gods," she said coldly, snatching the bottle back.

Denaos felt her breath catch in her body, linger uncertainly there for a moment. He could feel her press more firmly against him, her grip tighten on his arm. He could feel her fingers slide up his arm, searching for something.

Smiling, he reached out, letting her hand find his, letting hers grip his tight.

"To rocks, then," he whispered.

"To rocks." She threw back her head and the bottle at once.

Lenk did not remember when the sun had shone so brightly. The golden orb cast a warm, loving caress upon the fields below, setting the golden wheat to a shimmering blaze against the blue sky. Below the ridge, Steadbrook continued its quiet existence as if it had always existed.

He could see the people as distant, vague shapes. They dropped sheaves of wheat, wiped their brows. They rolled up their sleeves and tended to swollen udders. They watched dogs rut, drank stale beer and muttered about taxes in the village's dusty lanes.

It was a quiet life, the most notable occasion being a farm changing hands or an infant from the womb of woman or cow being born. It had never seen plague, famine or weather in enough ferocity to warrant worry over such things. It was a quiet life, far from the grimy despair of cities and away from the greedy hands of priests and lords.

It was a good life.

" _Had been, anyway._ "

He suddenly became aware of the figure sitting cross-legged at the ridge's edge beside him. He stared at the man, observing his silver hair, dull even in the sunlight, his wiry body tensed and flexed despite his casual position. The sword lay naked in his lap, its long blade dull and sheenless, catching the light upon its face and refusing to let it go.

"I can't really be blamed for being nostalgic," Lenk replied, looking back down over Steadbrook. "There are times when I wish it still stood."

" _That would imply there are times when you prefer things as they are._ "

"For certain reasons."

" _Such as?_ "

"None that you would approve of."

" _Doubtless._ "

"If things hadn't happened as they had," Lenk muttered, resting his chin in his hand, "I wouldn't have met any of my companions."

The man beside him drew in a deep breath. No sigh came, nor any indication that the man would ever exhale. Lenk raised a brow at him.

"What?"

" _You believe all the good that came of what happened to this village was that you met a few other people?_ "

"Well... one of them, at least."

" _Ah, yes. Her._ "

Lenk frowned. "You don't like her."

" _We don't need her_ ," the man replied. " _But I digress. You owe much to this village, you know._ "

"Obviously, I was born here, raised here."

" _Apologies, that was not my intended meaning. It would have been more proper to say that we owe much to this village's destruction._ "

"You're treading on dangerous ground," Lenk growled, scowling at the man.

" _Am I?_ "

The man's sword rose with him, so effortless and easy in his grasp. He turned to face Lenk and the young man blanched. The man's face was cold and stony, a mountain-side carved by eternal sleet. His eyes were a bright and glowing blue, glistening with a malevolence unmarred by pupils.

" _Look at me_ ," the man demanded.

"I am."

" _You're not. You look through me. You look around me. You don't hear me when I try to speak to you and you refuse to do what must be done._ "

Lenk rose to his feet. Despite standing the same height as his counterpart, he couldn't help but feel as though he was being looked down upon.

"You don't say anything I don't already know," he retorted.

" _You know nothing._ "

"I know how to kill."

" _And I have taught you._ "

"I taught myself."

" _You're not listening to me._ "

"I am."

" _Are you aware of what we are?_ " the man asked. " _Are you aware of what we do? What we have done? What we were created to do?_ " The man's eyes narrowed to angry sapphires. " _Do you see our opponents tremble? Do you hear them scream and beg? Do you remember what we did to the demon?_ "

"Only vaguely," Lenk replied.

" _Understandable_ ," the man said, " _it was mostly my doing._ "

"I drove the blade into the Abysmyth," Lenk replied. "I killed it. That's not supposed to be possible."

" _Then why will you not say such to your companions? Why will you not answer her?_ "

"I don't want her to worry."

" _You don't want to look at her, either. You don't want to listen to her. If you did, you would know she means to kill us._ "

Lenk did not start at the accusation, not raising so much as an eyebrow at the man. Instead, he drew in a sharp breath and looked back over the ridge. Steadbrook continued under the sun, unmoved and unmotivated by the presence of demons or the whisper of swords. He, too, was once so unmoved.

"Maybe," he whispered, "that's not such a bad thing."

" _What?_ "

"Demons can't be killed by mortal hands."

" _We are more than mortal._ "

"Exactly my point," Lenk replied, looking up sharply. "That's not supposed to happen. _She_ can never know."

" _Why should she not?_ "

"Why _should_ she?"

" _They all should know_ ," the man said coldly. " _They already know we are superior to them._ "

"No, we're not. I'm just a man."

" _You? You are weak._ We _are far more than a man. Why did they follow us? Why do they continue to follow us? Why do we suppress their greed, their hate, their violence and make them do as we say? Even the lowliest of beasts recognise their master._ "

"I don't want to be anyone's master," Lenk snarled suddenly. He stabbed a finger at the man, accusing. "I... I want _you_ to go."

" _Go?_ "

"I want you to get out of my head. I want to stop hearing voices. I want to stop feeling cold all the time. I... I..." He clutched at his head, wincing. "I want to be _me_ , not us."

The man's face did not move at the outpour of emotion, did not flinch in sympathy nor blink in scorn. He merely stared, observed his counterpart through cold, blue eyes, his hair unmoved by wind and heedless of sun, just as Steadbrook was heedless of them upon the ridge.

" _Look._ "

Lenk blinked and felt cold.

The sun sputtered out like a dying torch, consumed behind a black veil of darkness. The golden fields below were bronzed by the fires engulfing Steadbrook, moving in waves of bristling, crackling sheen. The livestock lowed, their cries desperate to be heard over the roar of fire, their owners and tenders motionless in the red-stained dirt. Shadows moved amongst them and where their black hands caressed, people fell.

Lenk felt his heart go cold, despite the fires licking the ridge. He had seen this happen before, had watched them die before, his mother, his father, his grandfather. He could not recall their names, but he could remember their faces as they fell, nearly peaceful, herded to the darkness upon the whispers of shadows.

"This..." he gasped, "this is—"

" _How we were created_ ," the man finished for him. " _What we were created to stop._ "

He caught sight of figures in the distance, out of place against the common folk lying in the streets. These figures fought, resisted the shadows. One by one, they looked up, and he saw the faces of his companions turn pleading gazes to him.

" _Look_ ," the man commanded, and it was so. " _They are lesser than us._ "

Gariath howled, swinging his arms wildly before the shadows fell upon him, consumed in swathes of blackness. Lenk winced, eyes unable to shut themselves against the stinging smoke.

"I don't want to..." he whimpered.

"You _do not have a choice_ ," the man uttered. " _We have our duty._ "

Asper shrieked, fervently babbling indecipherable prayers as the shadows dragged her into the gloom. Lenk felt tears brimming upon his lids.

"Please—"

" _And our duty_ ," the man continued, unheeding, " _is to cleanse. As we cleansed the Deepshriek, as we cleansed the Abysmyth, so we shall continue. We shall do as we must, for no one else can._ "

Dreadaeleon collapsed, the fire in his eyes sputtering out to be replaced by blackness.

"No, it can't—"

" _It will. You cannot recall what suffering was necessary to create us. If more suffering is needed to remind you of our duty..._ "

Denaos twitched, convulsed, tore apart as the shadowy tendrils raked and whispered at his body.

"I want—"

" _Your wants are meaningless. Our duty is all. They are hindrances._ "

Kataria's body was pale against the gloom as they lifted her up to the black sky, as if in offering. The fingers shivered and trembled against her skin, flowing over her stomach, wrapping about her neck, snaking over her legs as she was cocooned in the gloom. Her head rolled, limp, to expose her eyes, bright and green, locked on to his. She stared at him as she vanished into the darkness.

And smiled.

" _NO!_ " Lenk roared, collapsing to his knees. "No, no, no..."

When he opened his eyes again, he was in a vast field of darkness, no flames, no death. All that remained were him, and the two great blue eyes focused upon him, pitiless and cold.

" _The gift shall not be wasted_ ," the voice whispered. " _The duty is all encompassing. Do what must be done._ "

Lenk opened his mouth to scream, his voice silenced as the darkness flooded past his lips and filled him completely.

He awoke not with a start, but with a snap of eyes. Not with fear, but with a cold certainty. Not with thunder in his heart, but a single drop of sweat that slid down his brow and murmured as it dripped past his ear.

_Do what must be done_ , it uttered, voice mingling with the murmur of the surf, _if more suffering is needed..._

And his hand was slow and steady, balling up into a determined fist as he understood what the voice told him.

But he did not rise, suddenly aware of the weight upon his chest. He didn't even see her until she peered down at him through a pair of hard, green eyes, glittering in the darkness. Her knees were on his chest, hands on his shoulders, the knife dark and grey against the moonlight.

"Hey," Kataria muttered.

"Hey," Lenk replied, blinking at her. "What are you doing?"

"What I have to."

_She means to kill us_ , he heard within his own mind, but paid the warning no heed. _Maybe that's not such a bad thing._ He eyed the blade in her hand, its edge a line of silver in the darkness. _No_ , he told himself, _no, you can't ask her to do that._

"Can it wait?" he asked.

The shict's face twisted violently, her eyes softening as her mouth fell open, as if she hadn't expected that one answer of all of them. "Wha-what?"

"I need to do something," he said, placing a hand on her naked midriff. Her body shuddered under his touch, like a nervous beast. "Get off, please."

She complied, falling off him as though she was pushed. On shaking legs, his arms barely strong enough to draw him, he got to his feet. He suddenly felt very weak, his body pleading with him to lie back down, to return to sleep and think upon this in the light of day. He could not afford to listen to it, could not afford to listen to his instincts or his mind.

They, too, were tainted, speaking with a voice not their own.

_No_ , he told himself while he could still hear his own voice inside him, before it was drowned out completely, _this is what it has to be._ He staggered forwards, nearly pitching to the earth. He maintained his footing, his shaking hand rising and reaching for the sword lying upon the sand. _This is how it has to end. There's no other way to get rid of it..._

"Hey," he heard a voice call from behind him.

_Do what must be done._

"Hey!"

_This is how it must be._

" _HEY!_ "

" _WHAT?_ " he roared, turning upon her. She stood before him, ears bristling, teeth bared. "What do you want?"

"I could have killed you there!" she snapped, pointing to the knife. "I... I could have—"

"You didn't," he said simply. "You had every chance in the world, but you didn't."

_So I have to_ , he finished mentally, turning back to the sword.

"No," she whispered, eyeing the weapon. "You can't do that." _I have to_ , she finished mentally, reaching out.

_This is how it has to be_ , he told himself.

_How else could it end?_ she asked herself.

_One blow._ He reached out for the weapon.

_Clean and quick._ She reached out for him.

Her hand fell upon his shoulder.

_This is what has to be done._

They both froze, each one suddenly aware of the other as they connected, hearing each other's breath upon the night wind, feeling each other's heart beat through each other's skin. They felt so weak, all of a sudden, his legs barely able to keep him up as he turned to regard her, her arm barely able to hold up the knife above her head.

Her eyes glittered in the darkness, so soft suddenly, quivering like emeralds melting. His shimmered in the gloom, so warm, ice under sunlight. Her arm shook, the knife trembling in her hand as he stared at her, not with challenge, not with threat, but with a pleading he wasn't even aware of. Her teeth clenched behind her lips, body shaking.

The blade fell to the earth, crunching into the sand, as his body fell into hers. She caught him in her arms, wrapped them about his waist and drew him in closer, tighter. Against each other, they found a strength too weak to keep them up, enough to keep their arms about each other, but not enough to keep them from falling to their knees, the earth's pull suddenly so strong.

"I could have killed you," she whispered, running a hand down his hair.

"Yeah," he said, feeling her heartbeat through his hands. "You could have."

"I didn't," she said.

"Thanks," he whispered.

The surf yawned against their legs, as if disappointed that it ended in such a way. The moon waned with a staggering breath of relief and the stars allowed themselves to blink. They rested there, upon their knees, barely aware of the world moving again beneath them.

# _Thirty-Six_

# TRAGIC

_The Aeons' Gate_

_The Island of Ktamgi_

_Summer, late... date unknown... who cares?_

_No one picks up a sword because they want to._

_It's a matter of need. People are called to wrap their hands about the hilt, even if they can't hear what calls them. The noblest of us do it out of what they call duty, the desire to serve their country, their lord if they have one, or their God. The pragmatic amongst us do it out of a need for work, for coin, for respect._

_And the lowest, meanest of trades picks up a sword because that's all we know how to do. Violence is all we know, all we will ever know, everything else having long been burned away and fled to the shadows. The irony of it is that the mercenary, the soldier, the knight must all carve their own way through life, but there's always enough violence and hatred in the world that it will make room for the adventurer._

_I remember now, if only in fleeting glimpses, when the rest of it was burned away for me._

_Not shadows, but men, who swept into Steadbrook with candles, not torches, and set the dry hay ablaze. They killed while the flames still whispered, vanished when the fire started to roar. That was enough time for them. Mother, Father, Grandfather... all dead... me, still alive. I don't know why._

_Maybe that's how adventurers are made, maybe an act of suffering and violence is necessary as the forge that shapes the metal or the knife that shapes the wood. To that end, I don't suppose anyone can blame us for doing what we do, even if they don't like it. I don't suppose I can blame anyone for thinking what they think of us, even if I don't like it._

_At the moment, I have larger problems than other people's opinions._

_The tome is ours, but so many questions are unanswered. Will we even be able to get to Teji? If we do, will Argaol have kept up his end of the deal? Does Miron have that sort of sway over him? Does Miron even care?_

_And what of the demons? Do so many of them just let their precious book escapewithout a fight? If not their book, will one of them come back for their head? I'm not stupid. I know they haven't just rolled their shoulders, given up and gone back to hell for tea and toast. But will they at least stay in the shadows until we can reach dry land?_

_On a deeper level, should I even give this tome to Miron? Does any one man have the right to carry such a thing?_

_I don't have the answers. Really, I don't care. Someone else can worry about them on their time. My time is worth exactly one thousand pieces of gold. Past that, I don't really mind what the demons, longfaces or beasts of the world do. The world will continue without the actions of adventurers, long after the profession has died out._

_My companions are solemn as we set out for Teji, untalkative, not even mustering the will to fight with each other, for once. At the moment, our humble little vessel resembles something of a flower with half its petals missing. Each of us stares over the edge into the water, watching ourselves, not even aware of the people next to us._

_I should be pleased, I know. After so long spent in prayer, the Gods have answered me and finally taken their tongues. But now... I want them to talk. I want to hear a distraction, another noise, if only to divert me from the other ones._

_The voice... is not gone. I know because it murmurs to me, still, in the time between my breaths. But it is quieted, put down slightly. I don't know why and, again, I don't care, so long as it's quiet again._

_Another few days until we reach Teji. A haven, supposedly, friendly to us, our kind. Is that true? I'm not too sure, really. Argaol doesn't really seem the type to make himself useful to us, in any way possible. But I can deal with that when I come to it._

_Kataria just looked up at me. She seems to be doing that a lot tonight. I try to smile at her... no, I_ want _to smile at her, but she doesn't make it easy. But it's not because of all those questions, oh no. The demons, longfaces, Argaols, Mirons, Deepshrieks, Xhais and tomes of the world can all go burn._

_I've got bigger problems._

# _Epilogue_

# TEARS IN SHADOW

The silhouettes moved viciously against the cavern wall. There was no grace in them, nor gentleness as they twisted against each other. Between the snarls and cries emerging from the back of the cavern, the shadows found individual shapes. A man, tall and lean with long flowing hair. A woman, her curves indistinct as they quivered against the man's movement.

Greenhair could not see the smile on the man's face, nor the tears on the woman's cheeks. But she heard his teeth grinding, her liquid pooling upon the floor in quiet splashes. It was the only noise she allowed herself.

And the siren cringed, the only one to hear them.

"Cahulus is dead," one of them said at the fore of the cavern. "Over _twelve_ of the warriors were lost in the battle. That's nearly half of the force we sent."

"Nearly is not all. Nearly is not even half," a second, snider voice retorted. "We still emerged victorious, with the underscum cleared out." A thin body settled into a large chair. "Besides, Cahulus was an idiot."

There was a terse silence before the other voice spoke. "He was your brother."

Greenhair looked to the pair of longfaces seated before her. Clad in flowing robes of violet and red, respectively, they narrowed white eyes at each other from their black wooden thrones. A great, ebon mass separated them, obscured by shadows cast from torchlight.

This was once a sacred place, Greenhair remembered, a place of devotion to the Sea Mother. The holy writ upon the walls had been seared away by fire. The relics and offerings lay shattered upon the floor. The worshippers...

A scream burst from the cavern's mouth, cut short by the crack of a whip and a snarling command. She was the only one to hear it echo on the stone.

" _Our_ brother," the longface on the right continued, heedless. This one was short and thin, his head swivelling back and forth with a rehearsed sense of ease, like a wispy plant. He smoothed the crimson robes over his purple body as he spoke. "And that does not change the fact that he was weak. The youngest is always the least talented."

"Talent or no, he shouldn't have been able to die at all." The longface on the left, harder and broader than his brother, stroked a white goatee. "Our tools should have ensured that this did not happen. What good are the red stones if they fail?"

"Netherlings can still die, if not stones, Yldus," the other pointed out. "Cahulus was cursed with weakness _and_ stupidity. He was overconfident." He waved a hand and sighed. "But was it not the duty of Semnein Xhai to protect him?"

"True enough, Vashnear." The one called Yldus looked up and over Greenhair's head. "And, I ask again, Semnein Xhai, what is your explanation?"

Greenhair looked over her shoulder and saw that no explanation was forthcoming. The female longface did not so much as adjust her gaze to even acknowledge the two males. She stared instead at the shadows, grinding and jerking upon the wall. Her ears were pricked up, sensing every sound that emerged from the lit space behind the thrones.

And with every sound of ecstasy or agony, her white gaze grew more hateful.

"She will not answer you." Vashnear sighed. "And why should we ask? It is clear by her wounds that she was as unprepared as Cahulus."

The reference to the bandages wrapped about the female's ribcage, hip and neck got her attention. Xhai's stare jerked to the longface, her lip curling upwards in a snarl.

"Cahulus _was_ weak," she growled, "and he died sobbing. If it hadn't happened this time, it would have happened in the next raid. Nothing I could have done would have cured his weakness." She folded her arms over her chest, drummed three fingers upon her biceps. "Be thankful he didn't piss himself before he died."

"And yet, for all that sacrifice, you _still_ don't have the tome," Yldus said, steepling his fingers. "Nor did you even _encounter_ the Deepshriek, much less kill it."

"An issue I will take up with Master Sheraptus," Xhai replied coldly, returning her attention to the shadows.

The red-clad netherling looked over his shoulder at the cavern wall and giggled. "He might be a while."

Xhai's mouth dropped open, her three fingers balling up into a fist. "You wretched little—"

"And what of you, screamer?" Greenhair felt Yldus's hard gaze upon her. "We make no inconsiderable compromise to our worth by admitting you in here. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I..." The siren hesitated, wincing. "What I speak is reserved for the greatest longface."

"His _name_ is Sheraptus," Xhai growled, giving the siren a harsh shove. " _You_ will call him Master."

"A-apologies," she said, feeling the blow ache between her shoulders. "But the information is great, it must be—"

"Reserved for the greatest."

All eyes looked up at the new voice. This one lacked the harshness of the others," bearing no snideness, no hatred, no concern. It was slow and easy, like languid falls over smooth rocks, like...

_Mine_ , Greenhair thought.

And this new longface looked nothing like the others. He was tall, but not menacing, lean, but not hungry-looking. His eyes sparkled instead of scowled and his smile was pleasant, not cruel. His robe hung open around a body developed to the point of attractiveness, not grotesque-ness.

Greenhair pursed her lips. If she hadn't heard his smile, hadn't heard the tears he caused, she might think him a good man on sight alone.

"A sound policy," the new longface said, closing his robes and stepping out from the darkness.

He made a beckoning gesture and there was the sound of bare feet scraping against the stone. The human female who followed him did not bother to close her robe, nor even look up. She shuffled forwards as though her legs strained to die beneath her. Her eyes were wide and vacant, hands limp at her sides, hair hanging over her face like a veil to hide her shame.

_Not nearly long enough to hide the tear streaks_ , Greenhair thought.

"Now then," he said, taking a seat upon the black mass and gesturing for his consort to kneel beside him. "What is it that makes everyone so talkative during my private time?"

"You could always order us out," Yldus muttered, pointedly looking away.

"I like an audience," the longface said, smiling, "a respectful one, though. I can only assume it was pressing business that made you all so chatty." He steepled his long fingers and stared at Greenhair over them. "So... chat."

"Longface—" she whispered, cut short by the blow to the back of her head.

" _Sheraptus_ ," Xhai snarled. " _Master_ Sheraptus." She delivered a booted kick to Greenhair's legs, forcing her to the earth. "And you will kneel before your betters."

"Do calm down, Xhai," Sheraptus said, sighing. He directed a sympathetic smile to the siren. "Apologies. She and her fellow warriors are all so excitable. They learn a new word and they're just _dying_ to use it. I'm sure you've heard them with their chants: 'eviscerate, decapitate' and so forth." He laughed, waving a hand. "Females, hm? You know how it goes... well, of course you know."

"Sh-Sheraptus," Greenhair whimpered from the earth.

" _Master_ Sheraptus," the tall longface replied. "Xhai is enthusiastic, but not mistaken in this case." He laughed again, a gentle, resonant sound. "But we can discuss titles later. Let me hear you."

"Scream the way you do," Xhai warned in a low snarl from behind, "and I carve you open."

"I..." Greenhair tried to speak with the threat lingering in her ears. "I know where the tome is, Master Sheraptus."

"And you waited until _now_ to tell us?" Yldus leaned forwards in his throne, scowling. "We could have had a ship brimming with warriors and ready to take it ages ago."

"I am sure she had a good reason," Vashnear suggested.

"I do!" The siren rose slightly, resting upon her haunches. "I... was conflicted. The demons, too, seek the tome. It would have been folly of me to put my faith in those who could not defeat them."

"You dare to insinuate—" Xhai began to snarl, silenced by Sheraptus's raised hand.

The tall longface merely smiled, raised a finger to the sky, and spoke a word. Fire erupted from the purple tip in a great blaze, illuminating his black seat. Greenhair's voice caught in her throat.

It was still recognisable as an Abysmyth, but barely. Its arms had been twisted, crushed to resemble armrests. Its ribcage had been turned into a headboard and its skull decorated the top of the throne, eyes glassy and vacant in death as its toothy jaw hung slack over Sheraptus's head. Then the longface spoke another word, doused the flame and rested his hand in his lap.

"I trust that will prove sufficient evidence for your faith."

"It... it does!" Greenhair stammered. "But I have seen your power displayed on the blackened sands of Ktamgi, Master Sheraptus. I do not doubt your strength."

"Oh." Sheraptus's eyes went wide, then narrow. "Well, then why do we even _have_ this gaudy thing?" He thumped a hand-turned-armrest. "I despise it."

"She betrayed us once already, Master Sheraptus," Xhai growled. "She was not there when we struck against the demons, as she said she would be. We did not know about the... complications because she was not there."

"Complications?" Sheraptus raised a brow.

"Overscum," Vashnear answered. "Five of them, all told. Two of them lived, three of them died, likely." He cast a smug smile toward Xhai. "One of them gave the First Carnassial her lovely little scratches."

"There are six of them," Greenhair spoke before Xhai could, "and none of them are dead. They have the tome... and weapons."

"Six weapons are nothing against two hundred," Vashnear replied, sighing.

"One of them uses magic," the siren said.

" _Nethra?_ " Yldus blanched. "Are they even capable of that?"

"Not nearly to our mastery, I am sure." Vashnear smiled, tapping the shining red sphere about his neck. "Whatever little users they have will be ash when we find them."

"Which begs the question," Yldus muttered, leaning forwards, "why tell us this? Do you overscum loathe each other so much?"

"I think only of duty. The humans... they are incapable." Greenhair's face felt heavy, pulled to the ground. "They cannot protect the tome and I cannot see it fall to the Deepshriek again." She forced her gaze up to the tall longface, her expression pained. "But you are—"

"I am," Sheraptus said, his nod slow and deliberate. "And you are most perceptive." His eyes lit up with hunger. "As well as..."

Sheraptus tapped a finger to his cheek thoughtfully, his gaze lingering on Greenhair with what appeared to be only a partial concern for what she had to say. His gaze drifted over her, observing her curves, sliding over her body. She swallowed hard and eyed the female kneeling beside him, her eyes wide and dead, her breath shallow.

For a moment, she saw herself there, her eyes so dead, her voice so silent. Quickly, she coughed.

"Six of them," she reiterated, "four men, two women."

Sheraptus's brow raised. Xhai's face twisted into a snarl as Yldus sighed.

"Intriguing," the tall longface said. "And you can find them for us?"

"If you swear to take the tome from them." Greenhair nodded. "If you swear to protect it."

"Let us go for the tome, yes," Yldus said. "But you don't need more women, Sheraptus. You had two and you already lost one of them."

"As well as the boat she escaped in," Vashnear muttered, glowering at Xhai. "Another of the First Carnassial's triumphs."

"That was an internal issue due to our unpreparedness when we first arrived on this world," Sheraptus retorted before Xhai could. "Our security is much improved now."

"Still," Yldus said, "it's hardly necessary—"

"I don't _need_ ," Sheraptus growled, "I _want_. I am _saharkk_ of Arkklan Kaharn, Yldus. _Mine_ is the right to take." He cast a glance down to the female kneeling beside him, stroked her hair thoughtfully. "Besides..."

He muttered a word. Blue electricity danced along her head, coursed through her body. It shuddered once, then went still, collapsing to the side as smoke hissed from her mouth and ears. Her stare did not change, even as she lay dead.

"This one is broken." He smiled, languid and easy, as he leaned forwards in his throne of flesh and rested his chin on his hands. "And you can guarantee that the tome will be ours once the overscum are dead?"

"There's no need to kill them," Greenhair replied quickly. "Display your force, show them your might, and they will flee. It is their nature."

"Indeed..."

Sheraptus regarded the collapsed woman, her eyes reaching out into the darkness as the last light faded from them. His smile was as long as his face.

"The nature... of a human..."

# Acknowledgements

This book was made with no small help from people with more scrutinizing eyes than myself. Danny Baror, my extremely canny agent, was able to get the book to Lou Aronica, an exceedingly savvy editor who helped shape and skin this story to a point where Danny could get it to Simon Spanton, my other editor, for even further and finer hammering. It's because of these fine fellows that the book is what you're reading right now.

Along the way, though, my gurus of quality, psychology and evisceration helped in no small part: Matthew "Danger King" Hayduke, John "Duke of Branle" Henes and Carl Emmanuel "Mighty Thesaurus" Cohen all contributed their diverese and violent qualities to help fine-tune the story.

None of this would be possible without the help of many people, and one in particular. Hopefully, they will all burble with as much pride as I do over the finished story.

# BLACK HALO

## BOOK TWO OF THE AEONS' GATE TRILOGY

# _Prologue_

_The Aeons' Gate_

_The Sea of Buradan... somewhere..._

_Summer, getting later all the time_

_What's truly wrong with the world is that it seems so dauntingly complex at a glance and so despairingly simple upon close examination. Forget what elders, kings and politicians say otherwise, this is the one truth of life. Any endeavour so noble and gracious, any scheme so cruel and remorseless, can be boiled down like cheap stew. Good intentions and ambitions rise to the surface in thick, sloppy chunks and leave behind only the base instincts at the bottom of the pot_.

_Granted, I'm not sure what philosophical aspect represents the broth, but this metaphor only came to me just now. That's beside the point. For the moment, I'm dubbing this "Lenk's Greater Imbecile Theory_."

_I offer up myself as an example. I began by taking orders without question from a priest; a priest of Talanas, the Healer, no less. If that weren't impressive enough, he, one Miron Evenhands, also served as Lord Emissary for the church itself. He signed the services of myself and my companions to help him find a relic, one Aeons' Gate, to communicate with the very heavens_.

_It seemed simple enough, if a bit mad, right up until the demons attacked_.

_From there, the services became a bit more... complicated should be the word for it, but it doesn't quite do justice to describe the kind of fish-headed preachers that came aboard the vessel carrying us and stole a book, one_ Tome of the Undergates. _After our services were required to retrieve this—this collection of scriptures wrought by hellbeasts that were, until a few days ago, stories used to frighten coins into the collection plates—to say that further complications arose seems rather disingenuous_.

_Regardless, at the behest of said priest and on behalf of his god, we set out to retrieve this tome and snatch it back from the clutches of the aforementioned hellbeasts_.

_To those reading who enjoy stories that end with noble goals reached, lofty morals upheld and mankind left a little better for the experience, I would suggestclosing this journal now, should you have stumbled upon it long after it separated from my corpse_.

_It only gets worse from here_.

_I neglected to mention what it was that drove such glorious endeavours to be accomplished. Gold. One thousand pieces. The meat of the stew, bobbing at the top_.

_The book is mine now, in my possession, along with a severed head that screams and a very handy sword. When I hand over the book to Miron, he will hand over the money. That is what is left at the bottom of this pot: no great quest to save humanity, no communication with the Gods, no uniting people hand in hand through trials of adversity and noble blood spilled. Only money. Only me_.

_This is, after all, adventure_.

_Not that the job has been all head-eating demons and babbling seagulls, mind. I've also been collecting epiphanies, such as the one written above. A man tends to find them bobbing on the very waves when he's sitting cramped in a tiny boat_.

_With six other people_.

_Whom he hates_.

_One of whom farts in her sleep_.

_I suppose I also neglected to mention that I haven't been alone in this endeavour. No, much of the credit goes to my companions: a monster, a heathen, a thug, a zealot and a savage. I offer these titles with the utmost respect, of course. Rest assured that, while they are undoubtedly handy to have around in a fight, time spent in close quarters with them tends to wear on one's nerves rather swiftly_.

_All the same... I don't suppose I could have done it without them. "It" being described below, short as I can make it and ending with a shict's ass pointed at me like a weapon as she slumbers_.

_The importance of the book is nothing worth noting unless it is also noted who had the book. In this case, after Miron, the new owners were the Abysmyths: giant, emaciated demons with the heads of fish who drown men on dry land. Fittingly enough, their leader, the Deepshriek, was even more horrendous. I suppose if I were a huge man-thing with a fish-head, I would follow a huge fish-thing with three man-heads_.

_Or woman-heads, in this case, I'm sorry. Apologies again; two woman-heads. The third rests comfortably at my side, blindfolded and gagged. It does have the tendency to scream all on its own_.

_Still, one can't honestly recount the trouble surrounding this book if one neglects to mention the netherlings. I never saw one alive, but unless they change colour when they die, they appear to be very powerful, very purple women. All muscle and iron, I'm told by my less fortunate companions who fought them, that they fight like demented rams and follow short, effeminate men in dresses_.

_As bad as things got, however, it's all behind us now. Despite the fact that the Deepshriek escaped with two of its heads, despite the fact that the netherlings' commander, a rather massive woman with sword to match escaped, despite the fact that we are currently becalmed with one day left until the man sent to pick us upfrom the middle of the sea decides we're dead and leaves and we_ really _die shortly after and our corpses rot in the noonday sun as gulls form polite conversation over whether my eyeballs or my stones are the more tasty part of me..._

_One moment, I'm not quite sure where I intended to go with that statement_.

_I wish I could be at ease, really I do. But it's not quite that easy. The adventurer's constant woe is that the adventure never ends with the corpse and the loot. After the blood is spilled and the deed is done, there's always people coming for revenge, all manner of diseases acquired and the fact that a rich adventurer is only a particularly talented and temporarily wealthy kind of scum_.

_Still... that's not what plagues me. Not to the extent of the voice in my head, at least_.

_I tried to ignore it, at first. I tried to tell myself that it wasn't speaking in my head, that it was only high exhaustion and low morale wearing on my mind. I tried to tell myself that..._

_And it told me otherwise_.

_It's getting worse now. I hear it all the time. It hears me all the time. What I think, it knows. What I know, it casts doubt on. It tells me all sorts of horrible things, tells me to do worse things, commands me to hurt, to kill, to strike back. It gets so loud, so loud lately that I want to... that I just—_

_Pardon_.

_The issue is that I can make the voice stop. I can get a few moments respite from it... but only by opening the tome_.

_Miron told me not to. Common sense told me again. But I did it, anyway. The book is more awful than I could imagine. At first, it didn't even seem to say anything: its pages were just filled with nonsensical symbols and pages of people being eviscerated, decapitated, manipulated and masticated at the hands, minds and jaws of various creatures too awful to re-create in my journal_.

_As I read on, however... it began to make more sense. I could read the words, understand what they were saying, what they were suggesting. And when I flip back to the pages I couldn't read before, I can see them all over again. The images are no less awful, but the voice... the voice stops. It no longer tells me things. It no longer commands me_.

_It doesn't just make sense grammatically, but philosophically as well. It doesn't speak of evisceration, horrific sin or demonic incursion like it's supposed to, despite the illustrations. Rather, it speaks of freedom, of self-reliance, of life without a need to kneel. It's really more of a treatise, but I suppose "Manifesto of the Undergates" just doesn't have the same ring_.

_I open the book only late at night. I can't do it in front of my companions. During the day, I sit on it to make sure that they can't snatch a glimpse at its words. To my great relief, none of them have tried so far, apparently far more bothered by other matters_.

_To be honest, it's a bit of a relief to see them all so agitated and uncomfortable. Gariath, especially, since his preferred method of stress release usually involves roaring, gnashing and stomping with me having to get a mop at the end of it.Lately, however, he just sits at the rear of our little boat, holding the rudder, staring out at sea. He's so far unmoved by anything, ignoring us completely_.

_Not that such a thing stops other people from trying_.

_Denaos is the only one in good spirits, so far. Considering, it seems odd that he should be alone in this. After all, he points out, we have the tome. We're about to be paid one thousand gold pieces. Split six ways, that still makes a man worth exactly six cases of whisky, three expensive whores, sixty cheap whores or one splendid night with all three in varying degrees, if his maths is to be trusted. He insults, he spits, he snarls, seemingly more offended that we're not more jovial_.

_Oddly enough, Asper is the only one who can shut him up. Even more odd, she does it without yelling at him. I fear she may have been affected the worst by our encounters. I don't see her wearing her symbol lately. For any priestess, that is odd. For a priestess who has polished, prayed to and occasionally threatened to shove said symbol into her companions' eye sockets, it's worrying_.

_Between her and Denaos, Dreadaeleon seems to be torn. He alternately wears an expression like a starving puppy for the former, then fixes a burning, hateful stare upon the latter. At any moment, he looks like he's either going to have his way with Asper or incinerate Denaos. As psychotic as it might sound, I actually prefer this to his constant prattling about magic, the Gods and how they're a lie, and whatever else the most annoying combination of a wizard and a boy could think up_.

_Kataria..._

_Kataria is an enigma to me yet. Of all the others, she was the first I met, long ago in a forest. Of all the others, she has been the one I've never worried about, I've never thought ill of for very long. She has been the only one I am able to sleep easy next to, the only one I know will share her food, the only one I know who wouldn't abandon me for gold or violence_.

_Why can't I understand her?_

_All she does is stare. She doesn't speak much to me, to anyone else, really, but she only stares at me. With hatred? With envy? Does she know what I've done with the book? Does she hate me for it?_

_She should be happy, shouldn't she? The voice tells me to hurt her worst, hurt her last. All her staring does is make the voice louder. At least by reading the book I can look at her without feeling my head burn_.

_When she's sleeping, I can stare at her, though. I can see her as she is... and even then, I don't know what to make of her. Stare as I might, I can't..._

_Sweet Khetashe, this has gotten a tad strange, hasn't it?_

_The book is ours now. That's what matters. Soon we'll trade it for money, have our whisky and our whores and see who hires us next. That is assuming, of course, we ever make it to our meeting point: the island of Teji. We've got one night left to make it, with winds that haven't shown themselves since I began writing, and a huge, endless sea beneath us_.

_Hope is ill advised_.

# ACT ONE

#  _The Stew of Mankind_

# _One_

# STEALING THE SUNRISE

Dawn had never been so quiet in the country.

Amid the sparse oases in the desert, noise had thrived where all other sound had died. Dawn came with songbirds, beds creaking as people roused themselves for labour, bread and water sloshed down as meagre breakfast. In the country, the sun came with life.

In the city, life ended with the sun.

Anacha stared from her balcony over Cier'Djaal as the sun rose over its rooftops and peeked through its towers to shine on the sand-covered streets below. The city, in response, seemed to draw tighter in on itself, folding its shadows like a blanket as it rolled over and told the sun to let it sleep for a few more moments.

No songbirds came to Anacha's ears; merchants sold such songs in the market for prices she could not afford. No sounds of beds; all clients slept on cushions on the floor, that their late-night visitors might not wake them when leaving. No bread, no water; breakfast would be served when the clients were gone and the girls might rest up from the previous night.

A frown crossed her face as she observed the scaffolding and lazy bricks of a tower being raised right in front of her balcony. It would be done in one year, she had heard the workers say.

_One year_ , she thought, _and then the city steals the sun from me, too_.

Her ears twitched with the sound of a razor on skin. She thought it odd, as she did every morning, that such a harsh, jagged noise should bring a smile to her lips. Just as she thought it odd that this client of hers should choose to linger long enough to shave every time he visited her.

She turned on her sitting cushion, observing the back of his head: round and bronzed, the same colour as the rest of his naked body. His face was calm in the mirror over her washbasin; wrinkles that would become deep, stress-born crevices in the afternoon now lay smooth. Eyes that would later squint against the sunset were wide and brilliantly blue in the glass as he carefully ran the razor along his froth-laden scalp.

"I wager you have beautiful hair," she said from the balcony. He did not turn, so she cleared her throat and spoke up. "Long, thick locks of red that would run all the way down to your buttocks if you gave them but two days."

He paused at that, the referred cheeks squeezing together self-consciously. She giggled, sprawled out on her cushion so that she looked at him upside-down, imagining the river of fire that would descend from his scalp.

"I could swim in it," she sighed at her own mental image, "for hours and hours. It wouldn't matter if the sun didn't shine. Even if it reflected the light of just one candle, I could be blinded."

She thought she caught a hint of a smile in the reflection. If it truly was such, however, he did not confirm it as he ran the razor over his scalp and flicked the lather into her basin.

"My hair is black," he replied, "like any man's from Cier'Djaal."

She muttered something, rolled up onto her belly and propped her chin on her elbows. "So glad my poetry is not lost on heathen ears."

"'Heathen,' in the common vernacular, is used to refer to a man without faith in gods. Since I do not have such a thing, you are halfway right. Since gods do not exist, you are completely wrong." This time, he did smile at her in the mirror as he brought the razor to his head once more. "And I didn't pay for the poetry."

"My gift to you, then," Anacha replied, making an elaborate bow as she rose to her feet.

"Gifts are typically given with the expectation that they are to be returned." He let the statement hang in the air like an executioner's axe as he scraped another patch of skin smooth.

"Recompensed."

"What?"

"If it was to be returned, you would just give me the same poem back. To recompense the gift means that you would give me one of your own."

The man stopped, tapped the razor against his chin and hummed thoughtfully. Placing a hand against his mouth, he cleared his throat.

"There once was an urchin from Allssaq—"

" _Stop_ ," she interrupted, holding a hand up. "Sometimes, too, gifts can just be from one person to another without reprisal."

"Recompense."

"In this case, I believe my word fits better." She drew her robe about her body, staring at him in the mirror and frowning. "The sun is still sleeping, I am sure. You don't have to go yet."

"That's not your decision," the man said, "nor mine."

"It doesn't strike you as worrisome that your decisions are not your own?"

Anacha immediately regretted the words, knowing that he could just as easily turn the question back upon her. She carefully avoided his stare, turning her gaze toward the door that she would never go beyond, the halls that led to the desert she would never see again.

To his credit, Bralston remained silent.

"You can go in late, can't you?" she pressed, emboldened.

Quietly, she slipped behind him, slinking arms around his waist and pulling him close to her. She breathed deeply of his aroma, smelling the night on him. His scent, she had noticed, lingered a few hours behind him. When he came to her in the evening, he smelled of the markets and sand in the outside world. When he left her in the morning, he smelled of this place, her prison of silk and sunlight.

It was only when the moon rose that she smelled him and herself, their perfumes mingled as their bodies had been the night before. She smelled a concoction on him, a brew of moonlight and whispering sand on a breeze as rare as orchids. This morning, his scent lingered a little longer than usual and she inhaled with breath addicted.

"Or skip it altogether," she continued, drawing him closer. "The Venarium can go a day without you."

"And they frequently do," he replied, his free hand sliding down to hers.

She felt the electricity dance upon his skin, begging for his lips to utter the words that would release it. It was almost with a whimper that her hand was forced from his waist as he returned to shaving.

"Today was going to be one such day. The fact that it is not means that I cannot miss it." He shaved off another line of lather. "Meetings at this hour are not often called in the Venarium." He shaved off another. "Meetings of the Librarians at this hour are never called." He slid the last slick of lather from his scalp and flicked it into the basin. "If the Librarians are not seen—"

"Magic collapses, laws go unenforced, blood in the streets, hounds with two heads, babies spewing fire." She sighed dramatically, collapsing onto her cushion and waving a hand above her head. "And so on."

Bralston spared her a glance as she sprawled out, robe opening to expose the expanse of naked brown beneath. The incline of his eyebrows did not go unnoticed, though not nearly to the extent of his complete disregard as he walked to his clothes draped over a chair. That, too, did not cause her to stir so much as the sigh that emerged from him as he ran a hand over his trousers.

"Are you aware of my duty, Anacha?"

She blinked, not entirely sure how to answer. Few people were truly aware of what the Venarium's "duties" consisted. If their activities were any indication, however, the wizardly order's tasks tended to involve the violent arrest of all palm-readers, fortune-tellers, sleight-of-hand tricksters, and the burning, electrocution, freezing or smashing of said charlatans and their gains.

Of the duties of the Librarians, the Venarium's secret within a secret, no one could even begin to guess, least of all her.

"Let me rephrase," Bralston replied after her silence dragged on for too long. "Are you aware of my gift?"

He turned to her, crimson light suddenly leaking out of his gaze, and she stiffened. She had long ago learned to tremble before that gaze, as the charlatans and false practitioners did. A wizard's stink eye tended to be worse than anyone else's, if only by virtue of the fact that it was shortly followed by an imminent and messy demise.

"That's all it is: a gift," he continued, the light flickering like a flame. "And gifts require recompense. This"—he tapped a thick finger to the corner of his eye—"is only given to us so long as we respect it and follows its laws. Now, I ask you, Anacha, when was the last time Cier'Djaal was a city of law?"

She made no reply for him; she knew none was needed. And as soon as he knew that she knew, the light faded. The man that looked at her now was no longer the one that had come to her the night before. His brown face was elegantly lined by wrinkles, his pursed lips reserved for words and chants, not poems.

Anacha stared at him as he dressed swiftly and meticulously, tucking tunic into trousers and draping long, red coat over tunic. He did not check in a mirror, the rehearsed garbing as ingrained into him as his gift, as he walked to the door to depart without a sound.

There was no protest as he left the coins on her wardrobe. She had long ago told him there was no need to pay anymore. She had long ago tried to return the coins to him when he left. She had shrieked at him, cursed him, begged him to take the coins and _try_ to pretend that they were two lovers who had met under the moonlight and not a client and visitor who knew each other only in the confines of silk and perfume.

He left the coins and slipped out the door.

And she knew she had to be content to watch him go, this time, as all other times. She had to watch the man she knew the night before reduced to his indentation on her bed, his identity nothing more than a faint outline of sweat on sheets and shape on a cushion. The sheets would be washed, the cushion would be smoothed; Bralston the lover would die in a whisper of sheets.

Bralston the Librarian would do his duty, regardless.

"Do you have to do that?" the clerk asked.

Bralston allowed his gaze to linger on the small statuette for a moment. He always spared enough time for the bronze woman: her short-cropped, businesslike hair, her crook in one hand and sword in the other as she stood over a pack of cowering hounds. Just as he always spared the time to touch the corner of his eye in recognition as he passed the statue in the Venarium's halls.

"Do what?" the Librarian replied, knowing full well the answer.

"This is not a place of worship, you know," the clerk muttered, casting a sidelong scowl at his taller companion. "This is the Hall of the Venarium."

"And the Hall of the Venarium is a place of law," Bralston retorted, "and the law of Cier'Djaal states that all businesses must bear an icon of the Houndmistress, the Law-Bringer."

"That doesn't mean you have to worship her as a god."

"A sign of respect is not worship."

"It borders dangerously close to idolatry," the clerk said, attempting to be as threatening as a squat man in ill-fitting robes could be. "And _that_ certainly is."

Technically, Bralston knew, it wasn't so much against the law as it was simply psychotic in the eyes of the Venarium. What would be the point of worshipping an idol, after all? Idols were the hypocrisy of faith embodied, representing things so much more than mankind and contrarily hewn in the image of mankind. What was the point of it all?

Gods did not exist, in man's image or no. Mankind existed. Mankind was the ultimate power in the world and the wizards were the ultimate power within mankind. These idols merely reinforced that fact.

_Still_ , the Librarian lamented silently as he surveyed the long hall, _one might credit idolatry with at least being more aesthetically pleasing_.

The bronze statuette was so small as to be lost amidst the dun-coloured stone walls and floors, unadorned by rugs, tapestries or any window greater than a slit the length of a man's hand. It served as the only thing to make one realise they were in a place of learning and law, as opposed to a cell.

Still, he mused, there was a certain appeal to hearing one's footsteps echo through the halls. Perhaps that was the architectural proof to the wizards' denial of gods. Here, within the Venarium itself, in the halls where no prayers could be heard over the reverberating thunder of feet, mankind was proven the ultimate power.

"The Lector has been expecting you," the clerk muttered as he slid open the door. " _For some time_ ," he hastily spat out, dissatisfied with his previous statement. "Do be quick."

Bralston offered him the customary nod, then slipped into the office as the door closed soundlessly behind him.

Lector Annis, as much a man of law as any member of the Venarium, respected the need for humble surroundings. Despite being the head of the Librarians, his office was a small square with a chair, a large bookshelf, and a desk behind which the man was seated, his narrow shoulders bathed by the sunlight trickling in from the slits lining his walls.

Bralston could spare only enough attention to offer his superior the customary bow before something drew his attention. The addition of three extra chairs in the office was unusual. The admittance of three people, clearly not wizards themselves, was unheard of.

"Librarian Bralston," Annis spoke up, his voice deeper than his slender frame would suggest, "we are thrilled you could attend."

"My duty is upheld, Lector," the man replied, stepping farther into the room and eyeing the new company, two men and one visibly shaken woman, curiously. "Forgive me, but I was told this was to be a meeting of the Librarians."

"Apologies, my good man." One of the men rose from his chair quicker than the Lector could speak. "The deception, purely unintentional, was only wrought by the faulty use of the plural form. For, as you can see, this is indeed a meeting." His lips split open to reveal half a row of yellow teeth. "And you are indeed a Librarian."

_Cragsman_.

The stench confirmed the man's lineage long before the feigned eloquence and vast expanse of ruddy, tattoo-etched flesh did. Bralston's gaze drifted past the walking ink stain before him to the companion still seated. His stern face and brown skin denoted him as Djaalman, though not nearly to the extent that the detestable scowl he cast toward Bralston did. The reason for the hostility became clear the moment the man began to finger the pendant of Zamanthras, the sea goddess, hanging around his neck.

"Observant," the Lector replied, narrowing eyes as sharp as his tone upon the Cragsman. "However, Master Shunnuk, the clerk briefed you on the terms of address. Keep them in mind."

"Ah, but my enthusiasm bubbles over and stains the carpet of my most gracious host." The Cragsman placed his hands together and bowed low to the floor. "I offer a thousand apologies, sirs, as is the custom in your fair desert jewel of a city."

Bralston frowned; the company of Anacha suddenly seemed a thousand times more pleasurable, the absence of her bed's warmth leaving him chill despite the office's stuffy confines.

"As you can imagine, Librarian Bralston," Annis spoke up, reading his subordinate's expression, "it was dire circumstance that drove these... gentlemen and their feminine companion to our door."

The woman's shudder was so pronounced that Bralston could feel her skin quake from where he stood. He cast an interested eye over his shoulder and frowned at the sight of something that had been beautiful long ago.

Her cheeks hung slack around her mouth, each one stained with a purple bruise where there should have been a vibrant glow. Her hair hung in limp, greasy strands over her downturned face. He caught only a glimpse of eyes that once were bright with something other than tears before she looked to her torn dress, tracing a finger down a vicious rent in the cloth.

"Of course, of course," the Cragsman Shunnuk said. "Naturally, we came here with all the haste the meagre bodies our gods cursed us with could manage. This grand and harrowing tale the lass is about to tell you, I would be remiss if I did not forewarn, is not for the faint of heart. Grand wizards you might be, I have not yet known a man who could—"

"If it is at all possible," Bralston interrupted, turning a sharp eye upon the Cragsman's companion, "I would prefer to hear _him_ tell it. Master..."

"Massol," the Djaalman replied swiftly and without pretence. "And, if it is acceptable to you, I would prefer that you did not address me with such respect." His eyes narrowed, hand wrapping about the pendant. "I have no intention of returning the favour to the faithless."

Bralston rolled his eyes. He, naturally, could not begrudge an unenlightened man his superstitions. After all, the only reason people called him faithless was the same reason they were stupid enough to believe in invisible sky-beings watching over them. Not being one to scold a dog for licking its own stones, Bralston merely inclined his head to the Djaalman.

"Go on, then," he said.

"We fished this woman out of the Buradan weeks ago," the sailor called Massol began without reluctance. "Found her bobbing in a ship made of blackwood."

_A shipwreck victim_ , Bralston mused, but quickly discarded that thought. _No sensible man, surely, would seek the Venarium's attention for such a triviality_.

"Blackwood ships do not sail that far south." Massol's eyes narrowed, as though reading the Librarian's thoughts. "She claimed to have drifted out from places farther west, near the islands of Teji and Komga."

"Those islands are uninhabited," Bralston muttered to himself.

"And her tale only gets more deranged from there," Massol replied. "Stories of lizardmen, purple women..." He waved a hand. "Madness."

"Not that the thought of seeking them out didn't cross our minds," Sunnuk interrupted with a lewd grin. "Purple women? The reasonable gentleman, being of curious mind and healthy appetite, would be hard-pressed not to wonder if they are purple all over or—"

"I believe it is time to hear from the actual witness." Lector Annis cut the man off, waving his hand. He shifted his seat, turning a scrutinising gaze upon the woman. "Repeat your story for the benefit of Librarian Bralston."

Her sole reply was to bend her neck even lower, turning her face even more toward the floor. She folded over herself, arms sliding together, knees drawing up to her chest, as though she sought to continue collapsing inward until there was nothing left but an empty chair.

Bralston felt his frown grow into a vast trench across his face. He had seen these women who had sought to become nothing, seen them when they were mere girls. There were always new ones coming and going in Anacha's place of employ, young women whose parents found no other way out of the debt they had incurred, girls snatched from the desert and clad in silk that made their skin itch. Often, he saw them being escorted to their new rooms to waiting clients, the lanterns low as to hide the tears on their faces.

Often, he had wondered if Anacha had cried them when she was so young. Always, he wondered if she still did.

And this woman had no tears left. Wherever she had come from bore the stains of her tears, bled out from her body. Violently, he concluded, if the bruises on her face were any indication. He slid down to one knee before her, as he might a puppy, and strained to look into her face, to convey to her that all would be well, that the places of law were havens safe from violence and from barbarism, that she would have all the time she needed to find her tears again.

Lector Annis did not share the same sentiment.

" _Please_ ," he uttered, his voice carrying with an echo usually reserved for invocations. He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers to suggest that he did not make requests.

"I was..." she squeaked at first through a voice that crawled timidly from her throat. "I was a merchant. A spice merchant from Muraska, coming to Cier'Djaal. We were passing through the Buradan two months ago."

"This is where she begins to get interesting," the Cragsman said, his grin growing.

"Silence, please," Bralston snapped.

"We were... we were attacked," she continued, her breath growing short. "Black boats swept over the sea, rowed by purple women clad in black armour. They boarded, drew swords, killed the men, killed everyone but me." Her stare was distant as her mind drifted back over the sea. "We were... I was taken with the cargo.

"There was an island. I don't remember where. There were scaly green men unloading the boats while the purple women whipped them. Those that fell dead and bloodied, they were... they were fed to..."

Her face began to twitch, the agony and fear straining to escape through a face that had hardened to them. Bralston saw her hands shake, fingers dig into her ripped skirt as though she sought to dig into herself and vanish from the narrowed gazes locked upon her.

_She's terrified_ , the Librarian thought, _clearly. Do something. Postpone this inquisition. You're sworn to uphold the law, not be a callous and cruel piece of—_

"The important part, please," Lector Annis muttered, his breath laced with impatient heat.

"I was taken to the back of a cavern," the woman continued, visibly trying to harden herself to both the memory and the Lector. "There were two other women there. One was... tired. I couldn't stop crying, but she never even looked up. We were both taken to a bed where a man came out, tall and purple, wearing a crown of thorns upon his head with red stones affixed to it. He laid me down... I... He did..."

Her eyes began to quiver, the pain finally too much to conceal. Despite the Lector's deliberately loud and exasperated sigh, she chewed her lower lip until blood began to form behind her teeth. Having failed to fold in on herself, having failed to dig into herself, she began to tremble herself to pieces.

Bralston lowered himself, staring into her eyes as much as he could. He raised a hand, but thought better of it, not daring to touch such a fragile creature for fear she might break. Instead, he spoke softly, his voice barely above a whisper.

As he had spoken to Anacha, when she had trembled under his grasp, when she had shed tears into his lap.

"Tell us only what we need," he said gently. "Leave the pain behind for now. We don't need it. What we need"—he leaned closer to her, his voice going lower—"is to stop this man."

The woman looked up at him and he saw the tears. In other circumstances, he might have offered a smile, an embrace for her. For now, he returned her resolute nod with one of his own.

"When the other woman wouldn't scream anymore," the female continued, "when she wouldn't cry, the man burned her." She winced. "Alive." She paused to wipe away tears. "I'd seen magic before, seen wizards use it. But they always were weak afterward, drained. This man..."

"Was not," the Lector finished for her. "She witnessed several similar instances from this man and three others on the island. None of them so much as broke into a sweat when they used the gift."

_And this couldn't have been sent in a letter? Discussed in private?_ Bralston felt his ire boil in his throat. _We had to drag this poor thing here to relive this?_ He rose and opened his mouth to voice such concerns, but quickly clamped his mouth shut as the Lector turned a sharp, knowing glare upon him.

"Your thoughts, Librarian."

"I've never heard of anything purple with two legs," Bralston contented himself with saying. "If it is a violation of the laws of magic, however, our duty is clear."

"Agreed," Annis replied, nodding stiffly. "Negating the physical cost of magic is a negation of the law, tantamount of the greatest heresy. You are to make your arrangements swiftly and report to our sister school in Port Destiny. You can find there—"

A ragged cough broke the silence. Lector and Librarian craned their gazes toward the grinning Cragsman, their ire etched into their frowns.

"Pardon us for not living up to your expectations of noble and self-sacrificing men of honour, kind sirs," Shunnuk said, making a hasty attempt at a bow. "But a man must live by the laws his fellows put down, and we were told that gents of your particular calling offered no inconsequential sum for reports of all deeds blaspheming to your peculiar faith and—"

"You want money," Bralston interrupted. "A bounty."

"I would not take money from faithless hands," the Djaalman said sternly. "But I will take it from his." He gestured to Shunnuk.

Bralston arched a brow, certain there was a deeper insult there. "A report of this nature carries the weight of ten gold coins, typical for information regarding illegal use of magic."

"A most generous sum," the Cragsman said, barely able to keep from hitting the floor with the eager fury of his bow. "Assuredly, we will spend it well with your honour in mind, the knowledge of our good deed only serving to enhance the lustre of the moment."

"Very well, then." The Lector hastily scribbled something out on a piece of parchment and handed it into a pair of twitching hands. "Present this to the clerk at the front."

"Most assuredly," Shunnuk replied as he spun on his heel to follow his companion to the door. "A pleasure, as always, to deal with the most generous caste of wizards."

Bralston smiled twice: once for the removal of the stench and twice for the relief he expected to see upon the woman's face when she learned of the justice waiting to be dealt. The fact that she trembled again caused him to frown until he noticed the clenched fists and murderous glare on her face. It was then that he noticed the particular hue of the purple discoloration on her face.

"These bruises," he said loudly, "are fresh."

"Yes, well..." The Cragsman's voice became much softer suddenly. "The laws that man has set upon us and such." Seeing Bralston's unconvinced glare, he simply sighed and opened the door. "Well, it's not as though we could just _give_ her a free ride, could we? After what she'd been through, our company must have been a mercy."

"Not that such a thing means anything to heathens," the Djaalman muttered.

Bralston didn't have time to narrow his eyes before the woman cleared her throat loudly.

"Do I get a request, as well?" she asked.

The two sailors' eyes went wide, mouths dropping open.

"You _did_ give us the actual report," the Librarian confirmed.

"You..." Shunnuk gasped as he took a step backward. "You can't be serious."

"What is it you desire?" the Lector requested.

The woman narrowed her eyes, launched her scowl down an accusing finger.

"Kill them."

"No! It's not like that!" The Cragsmen held up the parchment as though it were a shield. "Wait! _Wait!_ "

"Librarian Bralston..." Lector Annis muttered.

"As you wish."

The next words that leapt from the Librarian's mouth echoed off of the very air as he raised a hand and swiftly jerked it back. The door slammed, trapping the two men inside. The Cragsman barely had time to feel the warm moisture on his trousers before Bralston's hand was up again. The tattooed man flew through the air, screaming as he hurtled towards Bralston. The Librarian uttered another word, bringing up his free palm that glowed a bright orange.

Shunnuk's scream was drowned in the crackling roar of fire as a gout of crimson poured out of Bralston's palm, sweeping over the Cragsman's face and arms as the tattooed man helplessly flailed, trying desperately to put out a fire with no end.

After a moment of smoke-drenched carnage, the roar of fire died, and so did Shunnuk.

"Back away!" Massol shrieked, holding up his holy symbol as Bralston stalked toward him. "I am a man of honour! I am a man of faith! I didn't touch the woman! Tell them!" He turned a pair of desperate eyes upon the woman. " _Tell them!_ "

If the woman said anything, Bralston did not hear it over the word of power he uttered. If she had any objection for the electric blue enveloping the finger that was levelled at the Djaalman, she did not voice it. Her face showed no horror as she watched without pleasure, heard Massol's screams without pity, no tears left for the carnage she watched lit by an azure glow.

When it was done, when Bralston flicked the errant sparks from his finger and left the blackened corpse twitching violently against the door, the Librarian barely spared a nod to the woman. Instead, he looked up to the Lector, who regarded the smouldering bodies on his floor with the same distaste he might a wine stain on his carpet.

"Tomorrow, then?" Bralston asked.

"At the dawn. It's a long way to Port Destiny." The Lector raised a brow. "Do bring your hat, Librarian."

With an incline of his bald head and a sweep of his coat, Bralston vanished out the door. The Lector's eyes lazily drifted from the two corpses to the woman, who sat staring at them with an empty stare, her body as stiff as a board. It wasn't until he noticed the pile of ash still clenched in the charred hand of the Cragsman that he finally sighed.

"Waste of good paper..."

# _Two_

# TO MURDER THE OCEAN

There was no difference between the sky and the sea that Lenk could discern.

They both seemed to stretch for eternity, their horizons long having swallowed the last traces of land to transform the world into a vision of indigo. The moon took a quiet departure early, disappearing behind the curtain of clouds that slid lazily over the sky. With no yellow orb to disperse the monotony, the world was a simple, painful blue that drank all directions.

The young man closed his eyes, drawing in a breath through his nose. He smelled the rain on the breeze, the salt on the waves. Holding up his hands as though in acknowledgement for whatever god had sent him the unchanging azure that emanated around him, he let the breath trickle between his teeth.

And then, Lenk screamed.

His sword leapt to his hand in their mutual eagerness to lean over the edge of their tiny vessel. The steel's song a humming contrast to his maddening howl, he hacked at the ocean, bleeding its endless life in frothy wounds.

"Die, die, die, die, _die!_ " he screamed, driving his sword into the salt. "Enough! No more! I'm sick of it, you hear me?" He cupped a hand over his mouth and shrieked. " _Well, DO YOU?_ "

The water quickly settled, foam dissipating, ripples calming, leaving Lenk to glimpse himself in ragged fragments of reflections. His silver hair hung in greasy strands around a haggard face. The purple bags hanging from his eyelids began to rival the icy blue in his gaze. Lenk surveyed the pieces of a lunatic looking back at him from the water and wondered, not for the first time, if the ocean was mocking him.

_No_ , he decided, _it's far too impassive to mock me..._

How could it be anything but? After all, it didn't know what it was requested to stop any more than Lenk did. _Stop being the ocean?_ He had dismissed such thoughts as madness on the first day their tiny sail hung limp and impotent on its insultingly thin mast. But as the evening of the second day slid into night, it didn't seem such an unreasonable demand.

_The sea_ , he thought scornfully, _is the one being unreasonable. I wouldn't have to resort to violence if it would just give me some wind_.

"Hasn't worked yet, has it?"

His eyes went wide and he had to resist hurling himself over the ledge in desperation to communicate with the suddenly talkative water. Such delusional hope lasted only a moment, as it always did, before sloughing off in great chunks to leave only twitching resentment in his scowl.

Teeth grating as he did, he turned to the creature sitting next to him with murder flashing in his scowl. She, however, merely regarded him with half-lidded green eyes and a disaffected frown. Her ears, two long and pointed things with three ragged notches running down each length, drooped beneath the feathers laced in her dirty blond hair.

"Keep trying," Kataria sighed. She turned back to the same task she had been doing for the past three hours, running her fingers along the fletching of the same three arrows. "I'm sure it will talk back eventually."

"Zamanthras is as fickle as the waters she wards," Lenk replied, his voice like rusty door hinges. He looked at his sword thoughtfully before sheathing it on his back. "Maybe she needs a sacrifice to turn her favour toward us."

"Don't let me stop you from hurling yourself in," she replied without looking up.

"At least _I'm_ doing something."

"Attempting to eviscerate the ocean?" She tapped the head of an arrow against her chin thoughtfully. "That's something _insane_ , maybe. You're just going to open your stitches doing that." Her ears twitched, as though they could hear the sinewy threads stretching in his leg. "How is your wound, anyway?"

He attempted to hide the wince of pain that shot up through his thigh at the mention of the wicked, sewn-up gash beneath his trousers. The agony of the injury itself was kept numb through occasional libations of what remained of their whisky, but every time he ran his fingers against the stitches, any time his companions inquired after his health, the visions would come flooding back.

Teeth. Darkness. Six golden eyes flashing in the gloom. Laughter echoing off stone, growing quiet under shrieking carnage and icicles hissing through his head. They would fade eventually, but they were always waiting, ready to come back the moment he closed his eyes.

"It's fine," he muttered.

Her ears twitched again, hearing the lie in his voice. He disregarded it, knowing she had only asked the question to deflect him. He drew in his breath through his teeth, tensing as he might for a battle. She heard this, too, and narrowed her eyes.

"You should rest," she said.

"I don't want—"

"In silence," she interrupted. "Talking doesn't aid the healing process."

"What would a shict know of healing beyond chewing grass and drilling holes in skulls?" he snapped, his ire giving his voice swiftness. "If you're so damn smart—"

Her upper lip curled backwards in a sneer, the sudden exposure of her unnervingly prominent canines cutting him short. He cringed at the sight of her teeth that were as much a testament to her savage heritage as the feathers in her hair and the buckskin leathers she wore.

"What I mean is you could be doing something other than counting your precious little arrows," he offered, attempting to sound remorseful and failing, if the scowl she wore was any indication. "You could use them to catch us a fish or something." Movement out over the sea caught his eye and he gestured toward it. "Or one of those."

They had been following the vessel for the past day: many-legged insects that slid gracefully across the waters. Dredgespiders, he had heard them called—so named for the nets of wispy silk that trailed from their upraised, bulbous abdomens. Such a net would undoubtedly brim with shrimp and whatever hapless fish wound up under the arachnid's surface-bound path, and the promise of such a bounty was more than enough to make mouths water at the sight of the grey-carapaced things.

They always drifted lazily out of reach, multiple eyes occasionally glancing over to the vessel and glistening with mocking smugness unbefitting a bug.

"Not a chance," Kataria muttered, having seen that perverse pride in their eyes and having discounted the idea.

"Well, pray for something else, then," he growled. "Pray to whatever savage little god sends your kind food."

She turned a glower on him, her eyes seeming to glow with a malevolent green. " _Riffid_ is a goddess that helps shicts who help themselves. The day She lifts a finger to help a whiny, weeping little round-ear is the day I renounce Her." She snorted derisively and turned back to her missiles. "And these are my last three arrows. I'm saving them for something special."

"What use could they possibly be?"

"This one"—she fingered her first arrow—"is for if I ever _do_ see a fish that _I_ would like to eat by _myself_. And this..." She brushed the second one. "This one is for me to be buried with if I die."

He glanced at the third arrow, its fletching ragged and its head jagged.

"What about that one?" Lenk asked.

Kataria eyed the missile, then turned a glance to Lenk. There was nothing behind her eyes that he could see: no hatred or irritation, no bemusement for his question. She merely stared at him with a fleeting, thoughtful glance as she let the feathered end slide between her thumb and forefinger.

"Something special," she answered simply, then turned away.

Lenk narrowed his eyes through the silence hanging between them.

"And what," he said softly, "is that supposed to mean?"

There was something more behind her eyes; there always was. And whatever it was usually came hurtling out of her mouth on sarcasm and spittle when he asked such questions of her.

_Usually_.

For the moment, she simply turned away, taking no note of his staring at her. He had rested his eyes upon her more frequently, taking in the scope of her slender body, the silvery hue pale skin left exposed by a short leather tunic took on through the moonlight. Each time he did, he expected her ears to twitch as she heard his eyes shifting in their sockets, and it would be his turn to look away as she stared at him curiously.

In the short year they had known each other, much of their rapport had come through staring and the awkward silences that followed. The silence she offered him now, however, was anything but awkward. It had purpose behind it, a solid wall of silence that she had painstakingly erected and that he was not about to tear down.

Not with his eyeballs alone, anyway.

"Look," he said, sighing. "I don't know what it is about me that's got you so angry these days, but we're not going to get past it if we keep—"

If her disinterested stare didn't suggest that she wasn't listening, the fact that the shict's long ears suddenly and swiftly folded over themselves like blankets certainly did.

Lenk sighed, rubbing his temples. He could feel his skin begin to tighten around his skull and knew full well that a headache was brewing as surely as the rain in the air. Such pains were coming more frequently now; from the moment he woke they tormented him well into his futile attempts to sleep.

Unsurprisingly, his companions did little to help. _No_ , he thought as he looked down the deck to the swaddled bundle underneath the rudder-seat at the boat's rear, _but I know what will help..._

" _Pointless_."

Gooseflesh formed on his bicep.

" _The book only corrupts, but even that is for naught. You can't be corrupted_." A chill crept down Lenk's spine in harmony with the voice whispering in his head. " _We can't be corrupted_."

He drew in a deep breath, cautiously exhaling over the side of the ship that none might see the fact that his breath was visible even in the summer warmth. Or perhaps he was imagining that, too.

The voice was hard to ignore, and with it, it was hard for Lenk to convince himself that it was his imagination speaking. The fact that he continued to feel cold despite the fact that his companions all sweated grievously didn't do much to aid him, either.

" _A question_."

_Don't answer it_ , Lenk urged himself mentally. _Ignore it_.

" _Too late_ ," the voice responded to his thoughts, " _but this is a good one. Speak, what does it matter what the shict thinks of us? What changes?_ "

_Ignore it_. He shut his eyes. _Ignore it, ignore it, ignore it_.

" _That never works, you know. She is fleeting. She lacks purpose. They all do. Our cause is grander than they can even comprehend. We don't need them. We can finish this ourselves, we can... Are you listening?_ "

Lenk was trying not to. He stared at the bundle beneath the bench, yearning to tear the pages free from their woolly tomb and seek the silence within their confines.

" _don't_ ," the voice warned.

Lenk felt the chill envelop his muscles, something straining to keep him seated, keep him listening. But he gritted his teeth, pulled himself from the ship's edge.

Before he knew what was happening, he was crawling over Kataria as though she weren't even there, not heeding the glare she shot him. She didn't matter now. No one else did. Now, he only needed to get the book, to silence the voice. He could worry about everything else later. There would be time enough later.

" _Fine_ ," the voice muttered in response to his thoughts. " _We speak later, then_."

_Ignore it_ , he told himself. _You can ignore it now. You don't need it now. All you need is..._

That thought drifted off into the fog of ecstasy that clouded his mind as he reached under the deck, fingers quivering. It wasn't until he felt his shoulder brush against something hard that he noticed the two massive red legs at either side of his head.

Coughing a bit too fervently to appear nonchalant, he rose up, peering over the leather kilt the appendages grew from. A pair of black eyes stared back at him down a red, leathery snout. Ear-frills fanned out in unambiguous displeasure beneath a pair of menacing curving horns. Gariath's lips peeled backwards to expose twin rows of teeth.

"Oh... there you are," Lenk said sheepishly. "I was... just..."

"Tell me," the dragonman grunted. "Do you suppose there's anything you could say while looking up a _Rhega_ 's kilt that would make him _not_ shove a spike of timber up your nose?"

Lenk blinked.

"I... uh... suppose not."

"Glad we agree."

Gariath's arm, while thick as a timber spike, was not nearly as fatal and only slightly less painful as the back of his clawed hand swung up to catch Lenk at the jaw. The young man collapsed backward, granted reprieve from the voice by the sudden violent ringing in his head. He sprawled out on the deck, looking up through swimming vision into a skinny face that regarded him with momentary concern.

"Do I really want to know what might have driven you to go sticking your head between a dragonman's legs?" Dreadaeleon asked, cocking a black eyebrow.

"Are you the sort of gentleman who is open-minded?" Lenk groaned, rubbing his jaw.

"Not to that degree, no," he replied, burying his boyish face back into a book that looked positively massive against his scrawny, coat-clad form.

From the deck, Lenk's eyes drifted from his companion to the boat's limp sail. He blinked, dispelling the bleariness clinging to his vision.

"It may just be the concussion talking," he said to his companion, "but why is it we're still bobbing in the water like chum?"

"The laws of nature are harsh," Dreadaeleon replied, turning a page. "If you'd like that translated into some metaphor involving fickle, fictional gods, I'm afraid you'd have to consult someone else."

"What I mean to say," Lenk said, pulling himself up, "is that you can just wind us out of here, can't you?"

The boy looked up from his book, blinked.

"'Wind us out of here.'"

"Yeah, you know, use your magic to—"

"I'm aware of your implication, yes. You want me to artificially inflate the sails and send us on our way."

"Right."

"And I want you to leave me alone." He tucked his face back in the pages. "Looks like we're all unhappy today."

"You've done it before," Lenk muttered.

"Magic isn't an inexhaustible resource. All energy needs something to burn, and I'm little more than kindling." The boy tilted his nose up in a vague pretext of scholarly thought.

"Then what the hell did you take that stone for?" Lenk thrust a finger at the chipped red gem hanging from the boy's neck. "You said the netherlings used it to avoid the physical cost of magic back at Irontide, right?"

"I did. And that's why I'm not using it," Dreadaeleon said. "All magic has a cost. If something negates that cost, it's illegal and thus unnatural."

"But I've seen you use—"

"What you saw," the boy snapped, "was me using a brain far more colossal than _yours_ to discern the nature of an object that could very well make your _head explode_. Trust me when I say that if I 'wind us out' now, I won't be able to do anything later."

"The only thing we might possibly need you to do later is serve as an impromptu anchor," Lenk growled. "Is it so hard to just do what I ask?"

"You're not asking, you're telling," Dreadaeleon replied. "If you were asking, you'd have accepted my answer as the decisive end to an argument between a man who is actually versed in the laws of magic enough to know what he's talking about and a bark-necked imbecile who's driven to desperation by his conflicts with a mule-eared savage to attempt to threaten the former man, who also has enough left in him to incinerate the latter man with a few harsh words and a flex of practised fingers, skinny they may be."

The boy paused, drew in a deep breath.

"So shut your ugly face," he finished.

Lenk blinked, recoiling from the verbal assault. Sighing, he rubbed his temples and fought the urge to look between Gariath's legs again.

"You have a point, I'm sure," he said, "but try to think of people besides yourself and myself. If we don't reach Teji by tomorrow morning, we are officially out of time."

"So we don't get paid in time," Dreadaeleon said, shrugging. "Or don't get paid at all. Gold doesn't buy knowledge."

"It buys women _with_ knowledge," another voice chirped from the prow.

Both of them turned to regard Denaos, inconsiderately long-legged and slim body wrapped in black leather. He regarded them back, a crooked grin under sweat-matted reddish hair.

"The kind of knowledge that involves saliva, sweat and sometimes a goat, depending on where you go," he said.

"A lack of attachment to gold is an admirable trait to be nurtured and admired," Asper said from beside him, " _not_ met with advice on whoremongering."

Denaos' scowl met the priestess's impassively judgemental gaze. She brushed his scorn off like snow from her shoulders as she tucked her brown hair behind a blue bandana. Her arms folded over her blue-robed chest as she glanced from Denaos to Dreadaeleon.

"Don't let it bother you, Dread," she said, offering a rather modest smile. "If we don't make it, what does it matter if we go another few weeks without bathing?" She sighed, tugging at the rather confining neck of her robes to expose a bit of sweat-kissed flesh.

The widening of the boy's eyes was impossible to miss, as was the swivel of his gaze to the aghast expression Asper wore. Powerful as the boy might be, he was still a boy, and as large as his brain was, Lenk could hear the lurid fantasies running wild through his skull. Asper's movement had sparked something within the boy that not even years of wizardly training could penetrate.

A smirk that was at once both sly and vile crossed Lenk's face.

"Think of Asper," he all but whispered.

"Huh? What?" Dreadaeleon blinked as though he were emerging from a trance, colour quickly filling his slender face as he swallowed hard. "What... what about her?"

"You can't think she's too comfortable here, can you?"

"None... none of us are comfortable," the boy stammered back, intent on hiding more than one thing as he crossed his legs. "It's just... just an awkward situation."

"True, but Asper's possibly the only decent one out of us. After all, she gave up her share of the reward, thinking that the deed we're doing is enough." Lenk shook his head at her. "I mean, she deserves better, doesn't she?"

"She... does," Dreadaeleon said, loosening the collar of his coat. "But the laws... I mean, they're..."

Lenk looked up, noting the morbid fascination with which Denaos watched the unfurling discomfort in the boy. A smile far more unpleasant than his gaze crept across his face as the two men shared a discreet and wholly wicked nod between them.

"Give me your bandana," Denaos said, turning towards Asper.

"What?" She furrowed her brow. "Why?"

"I smudged the map. I need to clean it." He held out his hand expectantly, batting eyelashes. "Please?"

The priestess pursed her lips, as though unsure, before sighing in resignation and reaching up. Her robe pressed a little tighter against her chest. Dreadaeleon's eyes went wider, threatening to leap from his skull. Her collar, opened slightly more than modesty would allow at the demands of the heat, slipped open a little to expose skin glistening with sweat. The fantasies thundered through Dreadaeleon's head with enough force to cause his head to rattle.

She undid the bandana, letting brown locks fall down in a cascade, a single strand lying on her breasts, an imperfection begging for practised, skinny fingers to rectify it.

Lenk watched the reddening of the boy's face with growing alarm. Dreadaeleon hadn't so much as breathed since Denaos made his request, his body so rigid as to suggest that rigour had set in before he could actually die.

"So... you'll do it, right?" Lenk whispered.

"Yes," the boy whispered, breathless, "just... just give me a few moments."

Lenk glanced at the particular rigidity with which the wizard laid his book on his lap. "Take your time." He discreetly turned away, hiding the overwhelming urge to wash apparent on his face.

When he set his hand down into a moist puddle, the urge swiftly became harsh enough to make the drowning seem a very sensible option. He brought up a glistening hand and stared at it curiously, furrowing his brow. He was not the only one to stare, however.

"Who did it this time?" Denaos growled. "We have rules for this sort of vulgar need and _all_ of them require you to go _over_ the side."

"No," Lenk muttered, sniffing the salt on his fingers. "It's a leak."

"Well, obviously it's a leak," Denaos said, "though I've a far less gracious term for it."

"We're sinking," Kataria muttered, her ears unfolding. She glanced at the boat's side, the water flowing through a tiny gash like blood through a wound. She turned a scowl up at Lenk. "I thought you fixed this."

"Of course, she'll talk to me when she has something to complain about," the young man muttered through his teeth. He turned around to meet her scowl with one of his own. "I _did_ , back on Ktamgi. Carpentry isn't an exact science, you know. Accidents happen."

"Let's be calm here, shall we?" Asper held her hands up for peace. "Shouldn't we be thinking of ways to keep the sea from murdering us first?"

"I can help!" Dreadaeleon appeared to be ready to leap to his feet, but with a mindful cough, thought better of it. "That is, I can stop the leak. Just... just give me a bit."

He flipped through his book diligently, past the rows of arcane, incomprehensible sigils, to a series of blank, bone-white pages. With a wince that suggested it hurt him more than the book to do so, he ripped one of them from the heavy tome. Swiftly shutting it and reattaching it to the chain that hung from his belt, he crawled over to the gash.

All eyes stared with curiosity as the boy knelt over the gash and brought his thumb to his teeth. With a slightly less than heroic yelp, he pressed the bleeding digit against the paper and hastily scrawled out some intricate crimson sign.

"Oh, _now_ you'll do something magical?" Lenk threw his hands up.

Dreadaeleon, his brow furrowed and ears shut to whatever else his companion might have said, placed the square of paper against the ship's wound. Muttering words that hurt to listen to, he ran his unbloodied fingers over the page. In response, its stark white hue took on a dull azure glow before shifting to a dark brown. There was the sound of drying, snapping, creaking, and when it was over, a patch of fresh wood lay where the hole had been.

"How come you never did that before?" Kataria asked, scratching her head.

"Possibly because this isn't ordinary paper and I don't have much of it," the boy replied, running his hands down the page. "Possibly because it's needlessly taxing for such a trivial chore. Or, possibly, because I feared the years it took me to understand the properties of it would be reduced to performing menial carpentry chores for nitwits." He looked up, sneered. "Pick one."

"You did that... with paper?" Asper did not conceal her amazement. "Incredible."

"Well, not paper, no." Dreadaeleon looked up, beaming like a puppy pissing on the grass. "Merroscrit."

"What?" Denaos asked, face screwing up.

"Merroscrit. Wizard paper, essentially."

"Like the paper wizards use?"

"No. Well, yes, we use it. But it's also made _out_ of wizards." His smile got bigger, not noticing Asper's amazement slowly turning to horror. "See, when a wizard dies, his body is collected by the Venarium, who then slice him up and harvest him. His bones are carefully dried, sliced off bit by bit, and sewn together as merroscrit. The latent Venarie in his corpse allows it to conduct magic, mostly mutative magic, like I just did. It requires a catalyst, though, in this case"—he held up his thumb—"blood! See, it's really... um... it's..."

Asper's frown had grown large enough to weigh her face down considerably, its size rivalled only by that of her shock-wide eyes. Dreadaeleon's smile vanished, and he looked down bashfully.

"It's... it's neat," he finished sheepishly. "We usually get them after the Decay."

"The what?"

"The Decay. Magical disease that breaks down the barriers between Venarie and the body. It claims most wizards and leaves their bodies brimming with magic to be made into merroscrit and wraithcloaks and the like. We waste nothing."

"I see." Asper twitched, as though suddenly aware of her own expression. "Well... do all wizards get this... posthumous honour? Don't some of them want the Gods honoured at their funeral?"

"Well, not really," Dreadaeleon replied, scratching the back of his neck. "I mean, there are no gods." He paused, stuttered. "I—I mean, for wizards... We don't... we don't believe in them. I mean, they aren't there, anyway, but we don't believe in them, so... ah..."

Asper's face went blank at the boy's sheepishness. She seemed to no longer stare at him, but through him, through the wood of the ship and the waves of the sea. Her voice was as distant as her gaze when she whispered.

"I see."

And she remained that way, taking no notice of Dreadaeleon's stammering attempts to save face, nor of Denaos' curious raise of his brow. The rogue's own stare contrasted hers with a scrutinizing, uncomfortable closeness.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked.

"What?" She turned on him, indignant. "Nothing!"

"Had I said anything remotely similar to the blasphemies that just dribbled out his craw, you'd have sixty sermons ready to crack my skull open with and forty lectures to offer my leaking brains."

His gaze grew intense as she turned away from him. In the instant their eyes met as his advanced and hers retreated, something flashed behind both their gazes.

"Asper," he whispered, "what happened to you in Irontide?"

She met his eyes, stared at him with the same distance she had stared through the boat.

"Nothing."

"Liar."

"You would know, wouldn't you."

"Well, then." Lenk interrupted rogue, priestess and wizard in one clearing of his throat. "If we're spared the threat of drowning, perhaps we can figure out how to move on from here before we're left adrift and empty-handed tomorrow morning."

"To do that, we'd need to know which direction we were heading." She turned and stared hard at Denaos, a private, unspoken warning carried in her eyes. "And it wasn't my job to do that."

"One might wonder what your job _is_ if you've given up preaching," the rogue muttered. He unfolded the chart and glanced over it with a passing interest. "Huh... it's easier than I was making it seem. We are currently..." He let his finger wander over the chart, then stabbed at a point. "Here, in Westsea.

"So, if we know that Teji is northwest, then we simply go north from Westsea." He scratched his chin with an air of pondering. "Yes... it's simple, see. In another hour, we should see Reefshore on our left; then we'll pass close to Silverrock, and cross over the mouth of Ripmaw." He folded up the map and smiled. "We'll be there by daylight."

"What?" Lenk furrowed his brow. "That can't be right."

"Who's the navigator here?"

"You're not navigating. Those aren't even real places. You're just throwing two words together."

"Am not," Denaos snapped. "Just take my word for it, if you ever want to see Teji."

"I'd rather take the map's word for it," Asper interjected.

Her hand was swifter than her voice, and she snatched the parchment from the rogue's fingers. Angling herself to hold him off with one hand while she unfurled the other, she ignored his protests and held the map up to her face.

When it came down, she was a twisted knot of red ire.

The map fluttered to the ground, exposing to all curious eyes a crude drawing of what appeared to be a woman clad in robes with breasts and mouth both far bigger than her head. The words spewing from its mouth: " _Blargh, blargh, Talanas, blargh, blargh, Denaos stop having fun_ ," left little wonder who it was intended to portray.

Denaos, for his part, merely shrugged.

"This is what you've been doing this whole time?" Asper demanded, giving him a harsh shove. "Doodling _garbage_ while you're supposed to be plotting a course?"

"Who among us actually expected a course to be plotted? Look around you!" The rogue waved his hands. "Nothing but water as far as the eye can see! How the hell am I supposed to know where anything is without a landmark?"

"You _said_ —"

"I _said_ I could read _charts_ , not plot courses."

"I suppose we should have known you would do something like this." She snarled, hands clenching into fists. "When was the last time you offered to help anyone and not either had some ulterior motive or failed completely at it?"

"This isn't the time or the place," Kataria said, sighing. "Figure out your petty little human squabbles on your own time. I want to leave."

"Disagreements are a natural part of anyone's nature." Lenk stepped in, eyes narrowed. "Not just human. You'd know that if you were two steps above an animal instead of one."

"Slurs. Lovely." Kataria growled.

"As though you've never slurred humans before? You do it twice before you piss in the morning!"

"It says something that you're concerned about what I do when I piss," she retorted, "but I don't even want to think about that." She turned away from him, running hands down her face. " _This_ is why we need to get off this stupid boat."

_They're close to a fight_ , Gariath thought from the boat's gunwale.

The dragonman observed his companions in silence as he had since they had left the island of Ktamgi two days ago. Three days before that, he would have been eager for them to fight, eager to see them spill each other's blood. It would have been a good excuse to get up and join them, to show them how to fight.

If he was lucky, he might have even accidentally killed one of them.

"Why? Because we're arguing?" Lenk spat back. "You could always just fold your damn ears up again if you didn't want to listen to me."

Now, he was content to simply sit, holding the boat's tiny rudder. It was far more pleasant company. The rudder was constant, the rudder was quiet. The rudder was going nowhere.

"Why couldn't you just have _said_ you didn't know how to plot courses?" Asper roared at Denaos. "Why can't you just be honest for once in your life?"

"I'll start when you do," Denaos replied.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

The humans had their own problems, he supposed: small, insignificant human problems that teemed in numbers as large as their throbbing, populous race. They would be solved by yelling, like all human problems were. They would yell, forget that problem, remember another one later, then yell more.

The _Rhega_ had one problem.

_One problem_ , he thought, _in numbers as small as the one Rhega left_.

"Because we shouldn't _be_ arguing," Kataria retorted. "I shouldn't _feel_ the need to argue with you. I shouldn't feel the need to talk to you! I should _want_ to keep being silent, but—"

"But what?" Lenk snapped back.

" _But I'm standing here yelling at you, aren't I?_ "

Things had happened on Ktamgi, he knew. He could smell the changes on them. Fear and suspicion between the tall man and the tall woman. Sweat and tension from the pointy-eared human and Lenk. Desire oozed from the skinny one in such quantities as to threaten to choke him on its stink.

"It's supposed to mean exactly what it does mean," Denaos spat back. "What happened on Ktamgi that's got you all silent and keeping your pendant hidden?"

"I've got it right here," Asper said, holding up the symbol of Talanas' Phoenix in a manner that was less proof and more an attempt to drive the rogue away like an unclean thing.

"Today, you do, and you haven't stopped rubbing it since you woke up." Denaos' brow rose as the colour faded from her face. "With," he whispered, "your _left_ hand."

"Shut up, Denaos," she hissed.

"Not just accidentally, either."

" _Shut up!_ "

"But you're right-handed, which leads me to ask again. What happened in Irontide?"

"She said," came Dreadaeleon's soft voice accompanied by a flash of crimson in his scowl, "to shut up."

Their problems would come and go. His would not. They would yell. They would fight. When they were tired of that, they would find new humans to yell at.

There were no more _Rhega_ to yell at. There never would be. Grahta had told him as much on Ktamgi.

_You can't come_.

Grahta's voice still rang in his head, haunting him between breaths. The image of him lurked behind his blinking eyes. He did not forget them, he did not want to forget them, but he could only hold them in his mind for so long before they vanished.

As Grahta had vanished into a place where Gariath could not follow.

"It's not like this is exactly easy for me, either," Lenk snapped back.

"How? How is this not easy for you? What do you even do?" Kataria snarled. "Sit here and occasionally stare at me? Look at me?"

"Oh, it's all well and good for _you_ to—"

" _Let. Me. Finish_." Her teeth were rattling in her skull now, grinding against each other with such ferocity that they might shatter into powder. "If you stare, if you speak to me, you're still human. You're still what you are. If I stare at _you_ , if I speak to _you_ , what am I?"

"Same as you always were."

"No, I'm not. If I feel the need to stare at you, Lenk, if I _want_ to talk to you, I'm not a shict anymore. And the more I want to talk to you, the more I want to feel like a shict again. The more I want to feel like _myself_."

"And you can only do that by ignoring me?"

"No." Her voice was a thunderous roar now, cutting across the sea. "I can only do that by _killing you_."

The wind changed. Gariath could smell the humans change with it. He heard them fall silent at the pointy-eared one's voice, of course, saw their eyes turn to her, wide with horror. Noise and sight were simply two more ways for humans to deceive themselves, though. Scent could never be disguised.

An acrid stench of shock. Sour, befouled fear. And then, a brisk, crisp odour of hatred. From both of them. And then, bursting from all the humans like pus from a boil, that most common scent of confusion.

His interest lasted only as long as it took for him to remember that humans had a way of simplifying such complex emotional perfumes to one monosyllabic grunt of stupidity.

"What?" Lenk asked.

Whatever happened next was beyond Gariath's interest. He quietly turned his attentions to the sea. The scent of salt was a reprieve from the ugly stenches surrounding the humans, but not what he desired to smell again. He closed his eyes, let his nostrils flare, drinking in the air, trying to find the scent that filled his nostrils when he held two wailing pups in his arms, when he had mated for the first time, when he had begged Grahta not to go, begged to follow the pup.

He sought the scent of memory.

And smelled nothing but salt.

He had tried, for days now he had tried. Days had gone by, days would go by forever.

And the _Rhega_ 's problem would not change.

_You cannot go_ , he told himself, and the thought crossed his mind more than once. He could not go, could not follow his people, the pups, into the afterlife. But he could not stay here. He could not remain in a world where there was nothing but the stink of...

His nostrils flickered. Eyes widened slightly. He turned his gaze out to the sea and saw the dredgespider herd scatter suddenly, skimming across the water into deeper, more concealing shadows.

_That_ , he thought, _is not the smell of fear_.

He rose up, his long red tail twitching on the deck, his bat-like wings folding behind his back. On heavy feet, he walked across the deck, through the awkward, hateful silence and stench surrounding the humans, his eyes intent on the side of the tiny vessel. The tall, ugly one in black, made no movement to step aside.

"What's the matter with you, reptile?" he asked with a sneer.

Gariath's answer was the back of his clawed hand against the rogue's jaw and a casual step over his collapsed form. Ignoring the scowl shot at his back, Gariath leaned down over the side of the boat, nostrils twitching, black eyes searching the water.

"What... is it?" Lenk asked, leaning down beside the dragonman.

Lenk was less stupid than the others by only a fraction, Gariath tolerated the silver-haired human with a healthy disrespect that he carried for all humans, nothing personal. The dragonman glowered over the water. Lenk stepped beside him and followed his gaze.

"It's coming," he grunted.

"What is?" Kataria asked, ears twitching.

Not an inch of skin was left without gooseflesh when Gariath looked up and smiled, without showing teeth.

"Fate," he answered.

Before anyone could even think how to interpret his statement, much less respond to it, the boat shuddered. Lenk hurled himself to the other railing, eyes wide and hand shaking.

"Sword," he said. "Sword! Sword! Where's my sword?" His hand apparently caught up with his mind as he reached up and tore the blade from the sheath on his back. "Grab your weapons! Hurry! _Hurry!_ "

"What is it?" Kataria asked, her hands already rifling through the bundle that held her bow.

"I... was looking into the water." Lenk turned to her. "And... it looked back."

It took only a few moments for the bundle to lie open and empty as hands snatched up weapons. Lenk's sword was flashing in his hand, Kataria's arrow drawn back, Denaos' knives in his hand and Dreadaeleon standing over Asper, his eyes pouring the crimson magic that flowed through him.

Only Gariath stood unconcerned, his smile still soft and gentle across his face.

The boat rocked slightly, bobbing with the confusion of their own hasty movements. The sea muttered its displeasure at their sudden franticness, hissing angrily as the waves settled. The boat bobbed for an anxiety-filled eternity, ears twitching, steel flashing, eyes darting.

Several moments passed. An errant bubble found its way to the surface and sizzled. Denaos stared at it, blinked.

"What?" he asked. "That's it?"

And then the sea exploded.

The water split apart with a bestial howl, its frothy life erupting in a great white gout as something tremendous rose to scrape at the night sky. Its wake tossed the boat back, knocking the companions beneath a sea of froth. Only Gariath remained standing, still smiling, closing his eyes as the water washed over him.

Dripping and half-blind with froth, Lenk pulled his wet hair like curtains from his eyes. His vision was blurred, and through the salty haze he swore he could make out something immense and black with glowing yellow eyes.

_The Deepshriek_ , he thought in a panic, _it's come back. Of course it's come back_.

" _No_ ," the voice made itself known inside his head. " _It fears us. This... is..._ "

"Something worse," he finished as he looked up... and up and up.

The great serpent rose over the boat, a column of sinew and sea. Its body, blue and deep, rippled with such vigour as to suggest the sea itself had come alive. Its swaying, trembling pillar came to a crown at a menacing, serpentine head, a long crested fin running from its skull to its back and frill-like whiskers swaying from its jowls.

The sound it emitted could not be described as a growl, but more like a purr that echoed off of nothing and caused the waters to quake. Its yellow eyes, bright and sinister as they might have appeared, did not look particularly malicious. As it loosed another throat-born, reverberating noise, Lenk was half-tempted to regard it as something like a very large kitten.

_Right. A kitten_ , he told himself, _a large kitten... with a head the size of the boat. Oh, Gods, we're all going to die_.

"What is it?" Asper asked, her whisper barely heard above its song-like noise.

"Captain Argaol told us about it before, didn't he?" Denaos muttered, sinking low. "He gave it a name... told us something else about it. Damn, what did he say? What did he call it?"

"An Akaneed," Dreadaeleon replied. "He called it an Akaneed..."

"In mating season," Kataria finished, eyes narrowed. "Don't make any sudden moves. Don't make any loud noises." She turned her emerald scowl upward. "Gariath, get down or it'll kill us all!"

"What makes you so sure it won't kill us now?" Lenk asked.

"Learn something about beasts, you nit," she hissed. "The little ones always want flesh. There's not enough flesh around for this thing to get that big." She dared a bit of movement, pointing at its head. "Look. Do you see a mouth? It might not even have teeth."

Apparently, Lenk thought, the Akaneed _did_ have a sense of irony. For as it opened its rather prominent mouth to expose a rather sharp pair of needlelike teeth, the sound it emitted was nothing at all like any kitten should ever make.

"Learn something about beasts," he muttered, "indeed. Or were you hoping it had teeth so it would kill me and save you the difficulty?"

Her hand flashed out and he cringed, his hand tightening on his sword in expectation of a blow. It was with nearly as much alarm, however, that he looked down to see her gloved hand clenching his own, wrapping her fingers about it. His confusion only deepened as he looked up and saw her staring at him, intently, emerald eyes glistening.

"Not now," she whispered, " _please_ not now."

Baffled to the point of barely noticing the colossal shadow looming over him, Lenk's attention was nevertheless drawn to the yellow eyes that regarded him curiously. It seemed, at that moment, that the creature's stare was reserved specifically for him, its echoing keen directing incomprehensible queries to him alone.

Even as a distant rumble of thunder lit the skies with the echoes of lightning and split the sky open for a light rain to begin falling over the sea, the Akaneed remained unhurried. It continued to sway; its body rippled with the droplets that struck it, and its eyes glowed with increasing intensity through the haze of the shower.

"It's hesitating," Lenk whispered, unsure what to make of the creature's swaying attentions.

"It'll stay that way," Kataria replied. "It's curious, not hungry. If it wanted to kill us, it would have attacked already. Now all we need to do is wait and—"

The sound of wood splitting interrupted her. Eyes turned, horrified and befuddled at once, to see Gariath's thick muscles tensing before the boat's tiny mast. With a grunt and a sturdy kick, he snapped the long pole from its base and turned its splintered edge up. Balancing it on his shoulder, he walked casually to the side of the boat.

"What are you doing?" Lenk asked, barely mindful of his voice. "You can't fight it!"

"I'm not going to fight it," the dragonman replied simply. He affixed his black eyes upon Lenk, his expression grim for but a moment before he smiled. "A human with a name will always find his way back home, Lenk."

" _Told you we should have left them_ ," the voice chimed in.

The dragonman swept one cursory gaze over the others assembled, offering nothing in the rough clench of his jaw and the stern set of his scaly brow. No excuses, no apologies, nothing but acknowledgement.

And then, Gariath threw.

Their hands came too late to hold back his muscular arm. Their protests were too soft to hinder the flight of the splintered mast. It shrieked through the air, its tattered sail wafting like a banner as it sped toward the Akaneed, who merely cocked its head curiously.

Then screamed.

Its massive head snapped backward, the mast jutting from its face. Its pain lasted for an agonised, screeching eternity. When it brought its head down once more, it regarded the companions through a yellow eye stained red, opened its jaws and loosed a rumble that sent torrents of mist from its gaping maw.

"Damn it," Lenk hissed, "damn it, damn it, damn it." He glanced about furtively, his sword suddenly seeming so small, so weak. Dreadaeleon didn't look any better as the boy stared up with quaking eyes, but he would have to do. " _Dread!_ "

The boy looked at him, unblinking, mouth agape.

"Get up here!" Lenk roared, waving madly. "Kill it!"

"What? _How?_ "

" _DO IT_."

Whether it was the tone of the young man or the roar of the great serpent that drove him to his feet, Dreadaeleon had no time to know. He scrambled to the fore of the boat, unhindered, unfazed even as Gariath looked at him with a bemused expression. The boy's hand trembled as he raised it before him like a weapon; his lips quivered as he began to recite the words that summoned the azure electricity to the tip of his finger.

Lenk watched with desperate fear, his gaze darting between the wizard and the beast. Each time he turned back to Dreadaeleon, something new looked out of place on the wizard. The crimson energy pouring from his eyes flickered like a candle in a breeze; he stuttered and the electricity crackled and sputtered erratically on his skin.

It was not just fear that hindered the boy.

" _He is weak_ ," the voice hissed inside Lenk's head. " _Your folly was in staying with them for this long_."

"Shut up," Lenk muttered in return.

" _Do you think we'll die from this? Rest easy. They die. You don't_."

"Shut up!"

" _I won't let you_."

"Shut—"

There was the sound of shrieking, of cracking. Dreadaeleon staggered backward, as if struck, his hand twisted into a claw and his face twisted into a mask of pain and shame. The reason did not become apparent until they looked down at his shaking knees and saw the growing dark spot upon his breeches.

"Dread," Asper gasped.

" _Now?_ " Denaos asked, cringing. "Of all times?"

"T-too much." The electricity on Dreadaeleon's finger fizzled as he clutched his head. "The strain... it's just... the cost is too—"

Like a lash, the rest of the creature hurled itself from the sea. Its long, snaking tail swung high over the heads of the companions, striking Dreadaeleon squarely in the chest. His shriek was a whisper on the wind, his coat fluttering as he sailed through the air and plummeted into the water with a faint splash.

The companions watched the waters ripple and re-form over him, hastily disguising the fact that the boy had ever even existed as the rain carelessly pounded the sea. They blinked, staring at the spot until it finally was still.

"Well." Denaos coughed. "Now what?"

"I don't know," Lenk replied. "Die horribly, I guess."

As though it were a request to be answered, the Akaneed complied. Mist bursting from its mouth, it hurled itself over the boat, its head kicking up a great wave as it crashed into the waters on the other side. The companions, all save Gariath, flung themselves to the deck and stared as the creature's long, sinewy body replaced the sky over them, as vast and eternal. It continued for an age, its body finally disappearing beneath the water as a great black smear under the waves.

"It was going to leave us alone," Kataria gasped, staring at the vanishing shape, then at Gariath. "It was going to go away! Why did you do that?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Denaos snarled, sliding his dagger out. "He wanted this. He _wanted_ to kill us. It's only fair that we return the favour before that thing eats us."

"Gariath... why?" was all Asper could squeak out, a look of pure, baffled horror painting her expression.

The dragonman only smiled and spoke. "It's not like you're the last humans."

Lenk had no words, his attentions still fixed upon the Akaneed's dark, sinewy shape beneath the surface. He watched it intently, sword in hand, as it swept about in a great semicircle and turned, narrowing its glowing yellow eye upon the vessel.

"It's going to ram us!" he shouted over the roar of thunder as the rain intensified overhead.

"The head!" Kataria shrieked. "Use the head!"

He wasted no time in hurling himself to the deck, jamming his hand into their stowed equipment. He searched, wrapped fingers about thick locks of hair and pulled free a burlap sack. Holding it like a beacon before him, he outstretched his hand, pulled the sack free.

The Deepshriek's head dangled in the wind, eyes shut, mouth pursed tightly. It regarded the approaching Akaneed impassively, not caring that it was about to be lost with every other piece of flesh on board. _In fact_ , Lenk had the presence of mind to think, _it's probably enjoying this_.

No time for thought, barely enough time for one word.

"Scream," he whispered.

And was obeyed.

The head's jaws parted, stretching open impossibly wide as its eyelids fluttered open to expose a gaze golden with malevolence. There was the faint sound of air whistling for but a moment before the thunder that followed.

The head screamed, sent the air fleeing before its vocal fury, ripped the waves apart as the sky rippled and threatened to become unseamed. The blast of sound met the Akaneed head-on, and the yellow gaze flickered beneath the water. The dark, sinewy shape grew fainter, its agonised growl an echo carried on bubbles as it retreated below the water.

"I got it," Lenk whispered excitedly. "I got it!" He laughed hysterically, holding the head above his own. " _I win!_ "

The water split open; a writhing tail lashed out and spitefully slapped the hull of the boat. His arms swung wildly as he fought to hold onto his balance, and when he looked up, the Deepshriek's head was gone from his grasp.

"Oh..."

The eyes appeared again, far away at the other side of the boat, bright with eager hatred. The sea churned around it as it growled beneath the surface, coiled into a shadowy spring, then hurled itself through the waves. Lenk cursed, then screamed.

"Down! _Down!_ "

He spared no words for Gariath, who stood with arms hanging limply at his side, snout tilted into the air. The dragonman's eyes closed, his wings folded behind his back, as he raised his hands to the sky. Though he could spare but a moment of observation before panic seized his senses once more, Lenk noted this as the only time he had ever seen the dragonman smile pleasantly, almost as though he were at peace.

He was still smiling when the Akaneed struck.

Its roar split the sea in half as it came crashing out of the waves, its skull smashing against the boat's meagre hull. The world was consumed in a horrific cracking sound as splinters hurled themselves through the gushing froth. The companions themselves seemed so meagre, so insignificant amongst the flying wreckage, their shapes fleeting shadows lost in the night as they flew through the sky.

_Air_ , Lenk told himself as he paddled toward the flashes of lightning above him. _Air. Air_. Instinct banished fear as fear had banished hate. He found himself thrashing, kicking as he scrambled for the surface. With a gasp that seared his lungs, he pulled himself free and hacked the stray streams out of his mouth.

A fervent, panicked glance brought no sign of his companions or the beast. The boat itself remained intact, though barely, bobbing upon the water in the wake of the mayhem with insulting calmness. The rations and tools it had carried floated around it, winking beneath the surface one by one.

" _Get to it, fool_ ," the voice snarled. " _We can't swim forever_."

Unable to tell the difference between the cold presence in his head and his own voice of instinct, Lenk paddled until his heart threatened to burst. He drew closer and closer, searching for any sign of his companions: a gloved hand reaching out of the gloom, brown hair disappearing into the water.

Green eyes closing... one by one.

_Later_ , he told himself as he reached for the bobbing wooden corpse. _Survive now, worry later_. His inner voice became hysterical, a frenzied smile on his lips as he neared. _Just a little more. Just a little more!_

The water erupted around him as a great blue pillar tore itself free from a liquid womb. It looked down at him, its feral disdain matching his horror. It wasn't until several breathless moments had passed that Lenk noticed the fact that the beast now stared at him with two glittering yellow eyes, whole and unskewered.

"Sweet Khetashe," he had not the breath to scream, "there's two of them."

The Akaneed's answer was a roar that matched the heavens' thunder as it reared back and hurled itself upon what remained of the boat. Its skull sent the timbers flying in reckless flocks. Lenk watched in horror, unable to act as a shattered plank struck him against the temple. Instinct, fear, hate... all gave way to darkness as his body went numb. His arms stopped thrashing, legs stopped kicking.

Unblinking as he slipped under the water, he stared up at the corpse of the ship, illuminated by the flicker of lightning, as it sank to its grave with him. Soon, that faded as his eyes forgot how to focus and his lungs forgot their need for air. He reached out, half-hearted, for the sword that descended alongside him.

When he grasped only water, he knew he was going to die.

" _No_ ," the voice spoke, more threatening than comforting. " _No, you won't_."

The seawater flooded into his mouth and he found not the will to push it out. The world changed from blue to black as he drifted into darkness on a haunting echo.

" _I won't let you_."

# _Three_

# ONE THOUSAND PAPER WINGS

Poets, she had often suspected, were supposed to have beautiful dreams: silhouettes of women behind silk, visions of gold that blinded their closed eyes, images of fires so bright they should take the poet's breath away before she could put them to paper.

Anacha dreamt of cattle.

She dreamt of shovelling stalls and milking cows. She dreamt of wheat and of rice in shallow pools, dirty feet firmly planted in mud, ugly cotton breeches hiked up to knobby knees as grubby hands rooted around in filth. She dreamt of a time when she still wore such ugly clothing instead of the silks she wore now, when she covered herself in mud instead of perfume.

Those were the good dreams.

The nightmares had men clad in the rich robes of money-lenders, their brown faces red as they yelled at her father and waved debtor's claims. They had her father helpless to resist as he signed his name on the scrolls and the men, with their soft and uncallused hands, helped her into a crate with silk walls. She would dream of her tears mingling with the bathwater as women, too old to be of any desire for clients, scrubbed the mud from her rough flesh and the calluses from her feet.

She used to have nightmares every night. She used to cry every night.

That was before Bralston.

Now she dreamed of him often, the night she met him, the first poem she ever read. It was painted upon her breasts and belly as she was ordered into her room to meet a new client, her tears threatening to make the dye run.

" _Do_ not _cry_ ," the older women had hissed, " _this is a member of the Venarium. A wizard. Do what you do, do it well. Wizards are as generous with their gold as they are with their fire and lightning_."

She couldn't help but cry the moment the door closed behind her and she faced him: broad-shouldered, slender of waist, with not a curl of hair upon his head. He had smiled at her, even as she cried, had taken her to the cushion they would sit upon for many years and had read the poetry on her skin. He would read for many days before he finally claimed what he paid for.

By then, he needn't take it.

She began to yearn for him in her sleep, rolling over to find his warm brown flesh in her silk sheets. To find an empty space where he should be wasn't something she was unused to; a strict schedule was required to keep his magic flowing correctly, as he often said. To find her fingers wrapping about a scrap of paper, however, was new.

Fearing that he had finally left her the farewell note she lived in perpetual terror of, she opened her eyes and unwrapped her trembling fingers from the parchment. Fear turned to surprise as she saw the slightly wrinkled form of a paper crane sitting in her palm, its crimson painted eyes glaring up at her, offended at her fingers wrinkling its paper wings. Without an apology for it, she looked around her room, and surprise turned to outright befuddlement.

In silent flocks, the cranes had perched everywhere: on her bookshelf, her nightstand, her washbasin, her mirror, all over her floors. They stared down at her with wary, blood-red eyes, their beaks folded up sharply in silent judgement.

So dense they were, she might never have found him amongst the flocks if not for the sound of his fingers diligently folding another. He straightened up from his squat on her balcony, casting a glower over his bare, brown back.

"That wasn't precisely easy to fold, you know," he said.

She started, suddenly realising she still held the wrinkled paper crane in her hand. Doing her best to carefully readjust the tiny creature, she couldn't help but notice the unnatural smoothness to the parchment. Paper was supposed to have wrinkles, she knew, tiny little edges of roughness. That paper had character, eager to receive the poet's brush.

This paper... seemed to resent her touching it.

"None of these could have been easy to fold," Anacha said, placing the crane down carefully and pulling her hand away with a fearful swiftness that she suspected must have looked quite silly. "How long have you been up?"

"Hours," Bralston replied.

She peered over his pate to the black sky beyond, just now beginning to turn blue.

"It's not yet dawn," she said. "You always get fussy if you don't sleep enough."

"Anacha," he sighed, his shoulders sinking. "I am a hunter of heretic wizards. I enforce the law of Venarie through fire and frost, lightning and force. I do not get _fussy_."

He smiled, paying little attention to the fact that she did not return the expression. She was incapable of smiling now, at least not in the way she had the first night she had met him.

" _This is a lovely poem_ ," he had said, as she lay on the bed before him. " _Do you like poetry?_ "

She had answered with a stiff nod, an obedient nod scrubbed and scolded into her. He had smiled.

" _What's your favourite?_ "

When she had no reply, he had laughed. She had felt the urge to smile, if only for the fact that it was as well-known that wizards didn't laugh as it was that they drank pulverised excrement and ate people's brains for the gooey knowledge contained within.

" _Then I will bring you poetry. I am coming back in one week_." Upon seeing her confused stare, he rolled his shoulders. " _My duty demands that I visit Muraska for a time. Do you know where it is?_ " She shook her head; he smiled. " _It's a great, grey city to the north. I'll bring you a book from it. Would you like that?_ "

She nodded. He smiled and rose, draping his coat about him. She watched him go, the sigil upon his back shrinking as he slipped out the door. Only when it was small as her thumb did she speak and ask if she would see him again. He was gone then, however, the door closing behind him.

And the urge to smile grew as faint then as it was now.

"This is... for work, then?" she asked, the hesitation in her voice only indicative that she knew the answer.

"This is for my _duty_ , yes," he corrected as he set aside another paper crane and plucked up another bone-white sheet. "Librarian helpers, I call them. My helpful little flocks."

She plucked up the crane beside her delicately in her hand, stared into its irritated little eyes. The dye was thick, didn't settle on the page as proper ink should. It was only when the scent of copper filled her mouth that she realised that this paper wasn't meant for ink.

"You... This is," she gasped, "your blood?"

"Some of it, yes." He held up a tiny little vial with an impressive label, shook it, then set in a decidedly large pile. "I ran out after the four hundredth one. Fortunately, I've been granted special privileges for this particular duty, up to and including the requisition of a few spare pints."

Anacha had long ago learned that wizards did laugh and that they rarely did anything relatively offensive to brains from those not possessing their particular talents. Their attitude towards other bodily parts and fluids, however, was not something she ever intended to hear about without cringing.

She had little time to reflect on such ghastly practices this morning.

"Why do you need so many?"

At this, he paused, as he had when she had discovered wizards could lie.

" _What is your duty?_ " she had asked, their sixth night together after five nights of reading.

" _I'm a Librarian_." He had turned at her giggle and raised a brow. " _What?_ "

" _I thought you were a wizard_."

" _I am_."

" _A member of the Venarium_."

" _I am_."

" _Librarians stock shelves and adjust spectacles_."

" _Have you learned nothing of the books I've brought you? Words can have multiple meanings_."

" _Books only make me wonder more... like how a Librarian can go to Muraska and afford whores?_ "

" _Well_ , no one _can afford whores in Muraska_."

" _Why did you go to Muraska, then?_ "

" _Duty called_."

" _What kind of duty?_ "

" _Difficult duties. Ones that demand the talents of a man like myself_."

" _Talents?_ "

" _Talents_."

" _Fire and lightning talents? Turning people to frogs and burning down houses talents?_ "

" _We don't turn people into frogs, no. The other talents, though... I use them sometimes. In this particular case, some apprentice out in the city went heretic. He started selling his secrets, his services. He violated the laws_."

" _What did you do to him?_ "

" _My duty_."

" _Did you kill him?_ "

He had paused then, too.

" _No_ ," he had lied then, " _I didn't_."

"No reason," he lied now.

"I'm not an idiot, Bralston," she said.

"I know," he replied. "You read books."

"Don't insult me." She held up a hand, winced. "Please... you never insult me like clients insult the other girls." She sighed, her head sinking low. "You're bleeding yourself dry, creating thousands of these little birds..." She crawled across the bed, staring at his back intently. "Why?"

"Because of my—"

"Duty, yes, I know. But what is it?"

He regarded her coldly. "You know enough about it to know that I don't want you to ever have to think about it."

"And you know enough about me that I would never ask if I didn't have good reason." She rose up, snatching her robe as it lay across her chair and wrapping it about her body, her eyes never leaving him. "You want to be certain of carrying out your duty this time, I can tell... but why? What's special about this one?"

Bralston rose and turned to her, opening his mouth to say something, to give some rehearsed line about all duties being equal, about there being nothing wrong with being cautious. But he paused. Wizards were terrible liars, and Bralston especially so. He wore his reasons on his face, the frown-weary wrinkles, the wide eyes that resembled a child straining to come to terms with a puppy's death.

And she wore her concern on her face, just as visible in the purse of her lips and narrow of her eyes. He sighed, looked down at his cranes.

"A woman is involved."

"A woman?"

"Not like that," he said. "A woman came to the Venarium... told us a story about a heretic."

"You get plenty of stories about heretics."

"Not from women... not from women like _this_." He winced. "This heretic... he... did something to her."

She took a step forward, weaving her way through the cranes.

"What did he do?"

"He..." Bralston ran a hand over his head, tilted his neck back and sighed again. "It's a gift that we have, you know? Wizards, that is. Fire, lightning... that's only part of it. That's energy that comes from our own bodies. A wizard that knows... a wizard that practises, can affect other people's bodies, twist their muscles, manipulate them, make them do things. If we wanted to, we wizards, we could...

"This heretic... this... this..." For all the books he had read, Bralston apparently had no word to describe what the rage playing across his face demanded. "He broke the law. He used his power in a foul way."

"That's why they're sending you out?" she whispered, breathless.

"That's why I'm _choosing_ to go," he replied, his voice rising slightly. She took a step back, regardless, as crimson flashed behind his eyes.

She could only remember once when he had raised his voice.

" _What happened?_ " he had asked as he came through the door.

It had been a month since he had begun paying for her, not yet to the point when he began to pay for exclusive visitations. She had lain on the bed, the poetry smeared across her breasts with greasy handprints, her belly contorted with the lash marks upon it, her face buried in her pillow, hiding the redness in her cheeks.

" _What_ ," he had raised his voice then, " _happened?_ "

" _Some..."_ she had gasped, " _some clients prefer to be rough... I'm told. This one... he brought in a cat_."

" _A whip? That's against the rules_."

" _He paid extra. Someone working for the Jackals with a lot of money. He... he wanted it..._ " She pointed to the hall. " _He's going down the halls... to all the girls. He had a lot of..._ "

Bralston rose at that point, turned to walk out the door again. She had grabbed his coattails in her hand and pulled with all that desperation demanded. No one troubled the Jackals. It wasn't as hard a rule then as it was now, the Jackals being a mere gang instead of a syndicate back then, which was the sole reason Bralston never had to raise his voice again. No one troubled them; not the nobles, not the guards, not even the Venarium.

Bralston pulled away sharply, left the room. His boots clicked the length of the hall. She heard the scream that ensued, smelled the embers on his coat when he returned and sat down beside her.

" _What did you do?_ " she had asked.

He had paused and said. " _Nothing_."

She had barely noticed him pulling on his breeches now. He did not dress so much as gird himself, slinging a heavy belt with several large pouches hanging from it and attaching his massive spellbook with a large chain. He pulled his tunic over the large amulet, a tiny red vial set within a bronze frame, hanging from his neck. It wasn't until he reached for his final garment that she realised he wouldn't be stopped.

"Your hat," she whispered, eyeing the broad-rimmed leather garment, a steel circlet adorning its interior ring. "You never wear it."

"I was requested to." He ran a finger along the leather band about it, the sigils upon it briefly glowing. He traced his thumb across the steel circle inside it. "This is... a special case."

She watched him drape the great coat across his back, cinch it tight against his body. She watched the sigil scrawled upon it shrink as he walked to the balcony. She never thought she would get used to the sight of it.

" _You've... come back_." She had gasped not so many years ago, astonished to find him standing on her balcony, clad in his coat and hat. " _You said it was a special case_."

" _It was. I came back, anyway_." He smiled, shrugged off his coat. " _I've already paid_."

" _Paid? Why?_ " She pulled away from him, tears brimming in her eyes. " _I thought... you were going to take me away when you came back. You said..._ "

" _I know... I know_." The pain on his face had been visible then, not hidden behind years of wrinkles. " _But... the case got me noticed. I'm being made..._ " He had sighed, rubbed his eyes, shook his head. " _I can't. I'm sorry. I won't lie again_."

" _But... you... you said..._ "

" _And I never will again. It was stupid of me to say it in the first place_."

" _It wasn't! You were going to—_ "

" _It was. I can't. I'm a Librarian. I have duties_."

" _But why?_ " she asked then. " _Why do you have to be a Librarian?_ "

"Why?" she asked now, shaking her head. "Why do you have to be the one to avenge her?" She held up a hand. "Don't say duty... don't you dare say it."

"Because I have a gift," he said without hesitation. "And so rarely do I get the chance for that gift to be used in a way that I consider more worthwhile than duty."

"Will I see you again?"

He paused as he opened his coat and held open his pocket.

"Maybe," he answered.

His next word was something she couldn't understand, something no one else but a wizard could understand. She certainly understood what it was, however, for no sooner did he speak it than the sound of paper rustling filled the room.

Silent save for the rattle of their wings, the cranes came to life. Their eyes glowed in a thousand little pinpricks of ruby; their wings shuddered in a thousand little whispers. They fell from bookshelf and basin, rose from tile and chair, hung a moment in the air.

Then flew.

She shrieked, shielding herself from the thousand paper wings as the room was filled with bone-white cranes and the sound of tiny wings flapping. In a great torrent, they flew into Bralston's coat pocket, folding themselves neatly therein.

She kept her eyes closed, opening them only when she heard the larger wings flapping. Opening her eyes and seeing nothing standing at her balcony, she rushed to the edge and watched him sail over the rooftops of Cier'Djaal on the leather wings his coat had once been. And with each breath, he shrank until he wasn't even bigger than her thumb.

And then, Bralston was gone.

# _Four_

# THE PRISTINE MADNESS

Pretty," he whispered.

" _Hmm?_ " the voice replied.

"I was simply noting the beauty of it all," Lenk replied as he stared out over the vast, dreaming blue around him.

The ocean stretched out, engulfing him in a gaping, azure yawn. A yawn seemed fitting, Lenk decided, for the sheer uncaring nature of it all. It did not move, did not ripple, did not change as the sky did. There wasn't a cloud to mar his perfect view of the sprawling underwater world.

The sky had betrayed him too many times. It had hidden his sun behind clouds and sullied his earth with rain. The sky was a spiteful, wicked thing of thunder and wind. The ocean didn't care.

"The ocean... it loves me," he whispered. His face contorted suddenly and his eyes went wide, not feeling the salt that should be stinging them. "What did I just say?"

" _I wasn't listening_ ," the voice said.

"No, I said the 'ocean loves me.' What a deranged thing to say. I said the sky was spiteful, it betrayed me."

" _You only thought that_."

"I thought you weren't listening."

" _Not to your voice, no_."

"Then..." He clutched his head, not feeling his fingers on his skin. "It's finally happened. I've gone insane."

" _You didn't stop to think that when you realised you weren't breathing?_ "

Lenk's hands went to his throat. The panic that surged through him left his heartbeat oddly slow and his pulse standing still. He knew he should be terrified, should be thrashing and watching his screams drift to the surface in soundless bubbles. But, for all that he knew he should, drowning simply didn't bother him.

_But it should_ , he told himself. _I should be afraid. But I'm not... I feel..._

"Peaceful."

The voice, or rather voices, that finished his thoughts were not his own, but they were familiar to his ears. Far more familiar, he knew, than he would have ever liked. He recognised them, remembered them from his dreams and heard them every time his leg ached.

It would have seemed redundant to call the Deepshriek by name, even as it drifted out of the endless blue and into his vision. Three pairs of eyes stared at him. The pair of soulless black eyes affixed to the massive shark that served as the abomination's body was simply unnerving. He didn't truly begin to worry until he looked into the glimmering golden stares of the two feminine faces with hair of red and black, swaying upon delicate, grey stalks from the beast's grey back.

"It could always be this way, you know," the one with the copper hair said. "Drifting. Endless. Peace. Lay down your sword."

"I can't," he replied.

"Why do you want to kill us?" the black-haired one asked, her lips a pout. "We merely wish to deliver the peace you feel now to all who have been lied to by the sky."

"It deceives," the red one hissed. "Tricks. You are told to pray to it, to give your troubles to the sky."

"It gives warmth," Lenk noticed, seeing the beams of sun that even now sought to reach him below. It was warm down here, far too warm for the ocean he had come to know these past weeks.

"Fleeting. When you need it most, where is the light? What does the sky offer then?" the black one sighed. "Rain, thunder, sorrows. How can you trust something that is so fickle? So changing?"

"It lied to you," the red one growled.

"It sent you down here," the black one snarled.

"But we embrace you," they both replied in discordant harmony. "We give you peace. We give you..."

"Endless blue," Lenk finished for them. He narrowed his eyes. "I've heard that before."

"Have you?"

"From every one of your demon servants, yes."

"Demons?"

"What else would you call them?"

"Interesting question," the black one muttered.

"Very interesting," the red one agreed. It looked to its counterpart. "What would you call Mother Deep's children?"

"Hellspawn," Lenk chimed in.

"Dramatic, but a bit too vague," the red one said. "Deeplings?"

"A tad too predictable," the black one replied. "What are they, after all? Creatures returned from whence they were so unjustly banished. Creatures from a place far beyond the understanding of mankind and his sky and earth."

"They had a word for such things," the red one said.

"Ah, yes," the black one said.

"Aeon," they both finished.

Lenk felt he should ask a question at that, but found that none in his head would slide into his throat. He felt the ocean begin to change around him, felt it abandon him as he began to fall, his head like a lead weight that dragged him farther below. Above, the Deepshriek became a halo, swimming in slow circles that shrank with every passing breath.

It was getting warm, he noted, incredibly so. His blood felt like it was boiling, his skull an oven for his mind to simmer thoughtfully in. Every breath came through a tightened throat: laboured, heavy, then impossible.

_Breath_. His eyes widened at the word. _Can't breathe_. His throat tightened, heart pounded, pulse raced. _Can't breathe, can't breathe!_

"What a pity," came another voice, one he did not recognise.

This one was deep, bass and shook the waters, changing them as it spoke. It drowned the sky, doused the sun with its laughter. It sent the waves roiling up to meet him.

He tilted his head, stared down into a pair of glimmering green eyes that he knew well. They stared up at him from above a smile that was entirely too big, between long ears that floated like feathery gills, as a slender, leather-clad hand reached up to beckon him down.

"But where we must all go," she whispered, her voice making the sand beneath her shudder, "we do not sin with breath."

His scream was silent. Her stare was vast. The sun died above. The ocean floor opened up, a great gaping yawn that callously swallowed him whole.

After so many times waking in screams and sweat, Lenk simply didn't have the energy to do it this time, even when his eyes fluttered open and beheld the eight polished eyes that stared back at him through a thin sheet of silk. His scream withered and died in his chest, but the dredgespider loosed a frustrated hiss before leaping off of his chest and scurrying away into the surf.

He stared up at the sky through the gauzy webs the many-legged creature had blanketed him in. _Air_ , he thought as he inhaled great gulps. He remembered air.

He remembered everything, he found, between the twitches of his eyes. He remembered the Deepshriek, what it had said. He remembered Kataria... had that been Kataria? He remembered the ocean, uncaring, and the darkness, consuming. That had all happened. Hadn't it? Was it some temporary, trauma-induced madness? His head hurt; he had been struck in the wreck, he recalled.

The wreck... They had been wrecked, destroyed, cast to the bottom of the ocean.

But he was alive now. He breathed. He saw clouds moving in a deceitful sky. He felt treacherous sunlight on his skin. He was alive. He forced himself to rise.

The pain that racked him with every movement only served to confirm that he was still alive. Unless he had arrived in hell, anyway. He doubted that, though. The tome had told him of hell. It had mentioned nothing of warm, sunny beaches.

Nor, he thought as he spied a slender figure standing knee-deep in the surf, did hell possess women. Not ones that didn't sever and slurp up one's testes, anyway. The sunlight blinded him as he squinted against the shimmering shore. He saw pale skin, long hair wafting in the breeze, a flash of emerald.

"Kat..." he whispered, afraid to ask. "Kataria?"

The gale carried a cloud across the sun that cloaked the beach with the cruel clarity of shadow. The figure turned to regard him and he saw green locks tumbling to pale shoulders, feathery gills wafting delicately about her neck, fins extending from the sides and crown of her head as she canted her head and regarded him.

"Oh," he muttered, "it's you."

Greenhair was not her name, he remembered, but it was what they had given her. She was a siren, a servant of Zamanthras, the Mother. She had aided them in locating the tome. But she had fled afterwards, he recalled, fled from the duty to find the tome and slay the Abysmyths, fled from the duty she claimed was holy.

_Why?_

"Young silverhair is awake." The siren's voice was a melody, a lilting lyric in every syllable. He remembered it being more beautiful before, rather than the dirge it was now. "I feared you dead."

"I suppose it would have been a waste of time, then, to keep the bugs off of me," Lenk muttered, pulling the dredgespider's webbing from his body.

"They feed where they can, silverhair," she replied. "It has been a long time since they found something substantial and alive on this island."

"Except me?"

"Except you," she said, sounding almost disappointed. Seeing his furrowed brow, she forced a weak smile. "But you live. I am glad."

"Don't get me wrong, I'm awfully pleased, myself," he said, trying to rise, "but—"

A shriek ripped through him alongside the fire lancing through his leg. He collapsed back to the sand, looking to his thigh. Or rather, to the scaly green mass that had once been his neatly-stitched and bandaged thigh. The wound had been ripped open, the meat beneath the skin glistening and discoloured at the edges.

"Do not tax yourself," Greenhair said, wading out of the surf. Her webbed fingers twitched as she approached him. "Your wound festers. Your life flows with your protest. The scent is sweet to predators."

He glanced out over the sea. The dredgespiders skimmed across the surface, casting eight-eyed glares at his unsportsmanlike decision to live. The pain coursed through him with such agony that he absently considered lying back and letting them have him.

Still, biting back both the agony and the obscenities accompanying it, he rose to one foot, fighting off the dizziness that struggled to bring him back down.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"The home of the Owauku," she replied. "Dutiful servants of the Sea Mother, devout in their respect for her ways."

"Owa... what?" Lenk twitched. "No, where _am_ I? What is this place?"

"Teji."

"Teji..." The word tasted familiar on his tongue. The realisation lit up behind his eyes, gave him strength to rise. "Teji. _Teji!_ " At her baffled glance, he grinned broadly, hysteria reflected in every tooth. "This is where we're supposed to be! This is where Sebast is going to meet us, who will take us back to Miron, who will pay us and then we're _done_. We did it! We made it! We're... we..."

_We_.

That word tasted bitter, sounded hollow on the sky. He stared across the shore. Empty sand, empty sea met him, vast and utterly indifferent to the despair that grew in his belly and spread onto his face.

"Where are they?" he asked, choked. "Did you find no one else?"

She shook her head. "Teji is not where people go to live, silverhair."

"What? It's a trading post, Argaol said."

She fixed him with a dire gaze. "Silverhair... Teji is a tomb."

She levelled a finger over his head. At once, he felt a darkness over him, a shadow that reached deeper into him than the clouded sky overhead. He turned and stared up into the face of a god.

The statue looked back down at him from where it leaned, high upon a sandy ridge. A right hand wrought of stone was extended, palm flat and commanding all who beheld it. A stone robe wrapped a lean figure set upon iron, treaded wheels. In lieu of a face, the great winged phoenix sigil of Talanas was carved, staring down at Lenk through unfurled wings and crying beak.

The monolith was a vision of decay: wheels rusted and sand-choked, stone rumbling in places, worn where it was intact. Against that, the pile of skulls that had been heaped about its wheels seemed almost insignificant.

"What?" he gasped. "What is this place?"

"It is where the battle between Aeons and mortals began in earnest," Greenhair replied. "The servants of the House of the Vanquishing Trinity opposed the Aeons, the greed-poisoned servants of the Gods. Ulbecetonth, most spiteful and vicious of them, was driven back before their onslaught. Her children and followers faced them down here. They died. The mortals died. And when the last drop was spilled, the land died with them."

"Died..." he whispered. "My companions..."

"Unfortunate" she said, moving closer to him. "The Akaneeds are vigilant, voracious. They leave nothing behind."

"Nothing..."

"Even if your companions survived, there is nothing here to feed them. They would die, too. They would find nothing here."

_Nothing_.

The word was heavier than the whisper it was carried on, loading itself upon Lenk's shoulders and driving him to the earth. He collapsed in the shadow of the monolith, the sigil of Talanas looking down upon him without pity, as he was certain the god Himself did at that moment.

"I am sorry," Greenhair whispered, her voice heavy in its own right as her lips drew close to his ear. "I found nothing of them."

"Nothing."

"No one..."

"No one." Lenk swallowed hard. "The others... all of them..." The next word felt like forcing razors up through his throat. "Kataria."

"You survive, silverhair," she whispered, placing hands upon his shoulders, sitting down. "No fear for you now. There is no danger. Rest now."

"Rest... I must rest." He was suddenly aware of how tired he was, how his bones seemed to melt inside him. She gently eased his head in her lap. "This..." he muttered as he felt the coolness of her ivory skin. "This seems... feels strange."

"Worry will cause you nothing but pain," Greenhair whispered. Her voice seemed to rise now, the whispering crescendo to a melodic choir. "You need only rest, silver-hair. Fear for them later. Close your eyes... You need only worry about one thing."

"What's that?" he asked, barely aware of the yawn in his question, barely aware of the iron weight of his eyelids.

"Where is it?" she whispered, a gentle prod in his ear.

"Where's what?"

"The tome," she prodded again. "Where is it?"

" _This_ ," another voice, harsh and cold against her melody, hummed inside his head, " _is wrong. We must search, not rest_."

"The Akaneeds leave nothing..." Lenk repeated, his own tone listless.

" _How does she know of the serpents? Why does she want us to sleep?_ "

"You must have had it," Greenhair whispered. "You have read it. You know where it is."

" _She does not know that_ ," the voice growled, drowning out her whisper. " _She cannot know that_."

"How," Lenk muttered, "do you know that?"

He felt her tense beneath him, even as he felt his head tighten.

"I... I do not..." she began to stammer, the melody breaking in her voice.

" _She's in our head_ ," the voice roared, echoing off his skull. " _Get out! Get out!_ GET OUT!"

" _OUT!_ "

He shot up like a spear, whirling around just as she scrambled to get away from him. Her pale, slender arm was held up in pitiful defence before a slack-jawed, wide-eyed face full of terror. He was unmoved by the display, as he was unmoved by the hot agony in his leg. That pain quickly seeped away, replaced with a chill that snaked through his body, numbing him to pain, to fear.

To pity.

From beneath the emerald locks, a large, crested fin rose upon the siren's head. The same coldness that numbed his muscles now drove him forward as he leapt upon her and wrapped his hands about her throat, slamming her to the ground.

"No more songs, no more screaming." It was not Lenk's voice that hissed through his teeth, nor his eyes that stared contemptibly down upon her. "You... betrayed us."

She choked out a plea, unheard.

"All you care about is the tome! Pages! Nothing but pages of demonic filth! Kataria... the others..." He felt his teeth threaten to crack under the strain of his clenched jaw. "They mean _nothing_ to you!"

She beat hands against his arms, unfelt.

"Those things, the Akaneeds," he snarled, his breath a fine mist, "they didn't attack immediately. They didn't act like beasts at all! Someone sent them!" He slammed her head upon the ground. "Was it you? _Did you do this to us? Did you kill Kataria?_ "

She drew back a hand. Tiny claws extended from her fingers, unnoticed.

His next words were a startled snarl as she drew her hand up and raked the bony nails across his cheek. He recoiled with a shriek and she slithered out from under him like an eel. Before he even opened his mouth to curse her, she was on her feet and rushing to the sea. In a flash of green and a spray of water, she vanished beneath the waves.

"You can't run," Lenk growled as he staggered to his feet. The agony in his leg made its presence known with a decidedly rude sear of muscle. He collapsed, reaching out for the long-gone figure of the siren. "I'll... kill..."

A glint of viscous liquid upon his fingers, tinged with his own blood, caught his eye. He brought it close, watched it swirl upon his hand even as he felt it swirl inside his cheek. His eyelids fluttered, pulse pounded, body failed.

" _Poison_ ," the voice hissed inside his head. " _You idiot_."

He made a retort, lost in a groan and a mouthful of sand as he collapsed forward and lay unmoving.

The cold, Lenk decided, when he regained consciousness, was sorely missed. When he managed to realise that he had a rather impolite crab scuttling over his face, pinching at tender flesh in search of something to devour, he also realised that his skull was on fire.

Or felt like it, at the very least.

He cast a look up at the sky, saw the shroud of clouds that masked the sun. Yet he still burned. Even the mild light that filtered through in rays that refused to be hindered seared his eyes, his flesh.

_Fever_.

He felt an itch at his leg, reached down to scratch and felt moist and scaly flesh under his nails. However long he had been out, the sun had suckled at his wound and left a mass of green-rimmed skin weeping tears of blood-flecked pus.

_That would explain it_.

He looked around for Greenhair, wondering if perhaps she might be able to make another makeshift bandage to stem the flow. He felt an itch on his cheek quickly followed by a sting of pain.

_Oh, right..._

The urge to chase her down and beat a cure out of her was fleeting; even if she hadn't vanished into the sea like the shark-whoring ocean-bitch she was, he couldn't very well search the whole beach on a limb that begged for a merciful amputation.

He was so very tired.

Perhaps, he reasoned, it would be better to just wait for Gevrauch's cold hand on his shoulder. Perhaps it would be better to be the final period in the Bookkeeper's last sentence on a page marked: " _Six Imbeciles who Fought for Gold and Were Eaten by Seagulls. Big, Ugly Seagulls. With Teeth_."

_Yes_ , he thought, _better to die here, wait for it. Wait to see the others... wait to see my family_. Following that thought came his grandfather's words, with no voice to accompany them.

" _Gevrauch loathes an adventurer_ ," he had said to him once, " _because they never know when to die. We don't return the bodies we were loaned when the Bookkeeper asks for them. Recognise when it's your time to die. Suffer it. Say a prayer to Him and maybe He'll forgive you refusing your space in His ledger all these years_."

_Sound advice_ , he thought.

His boat was likely at the bottom of the sea, along with the fortune he had chased. His companions likely weren't far away, drifting either as half-chewed corpses or long, sinewy Akaneed stool. After both of those images, the fact that he had no food or water didn't seem quite so worrying.

He would not like to upset the Gods and be sent to hell; he had seen what came out of _that_ place. _No, no_ , he told himself, _it's over now_. All the suffering, all the pain he had experienced in his life all led up to this: a few moments of heat-stricken delirium, then off to the sea to be picked clean by crabs and eels.

_Sound plan_.

A wave washed over his leg; he felt something bump against his bare foot. He explored it with his toes, expecting to find splintered driftwood, maybe from his craft. Or, he thought, perhaps the remains of his companions: Asper's severed head, Denaos' chewed leg. He chuckled at the macabre thought, then paused as he ran a toe against the object.

It was not so soft as flesh, not even as wood. He felt firmness, a familiar chill as blood wept from his toe.

He fought to sit up, fought to reach into the surf and was rewarded with hands around wet leather. Almost too scared to believe that he was touching what he thought he was, he jerked hard before fear could make him do otherwise.

His sword, his grandfather's sword, rose with all the firm gentleness of a lover in his hands. Its naked steel glittered in the sunlight, defiant of its would-be watery grave. The sun recoiled at its sight; there would be no angelic glow of deliverance from this sword, he thought. This was a sword for grey skies and grim smiles.

None had smiled grimmer than Lenk's grandfather.

" _Remember, though_ ," he had finished, " _you and I, we're men of Khetashe, men of the Outcast. He has no place in heaven for his followers. He loathes us for the reputation we cast on him. So why should we die when He wants us to?_ "

Lenk felt his own smile grow as he struggled to his feet. It might very well be his time. The sword's arrival might have been coincidence, might have been charity from the Gods: an heirloom to take to his grave. He followed the Outcast, though, and Khetashe had never sent him a divine message he would be expected to listen to.

He turned and looked over his shoulder, toward a distant wall of greenery. A forest, he recognised. Forests were plants. Plants needed water. And so did he.

_Water first_ , he thought as he stalked toward the foliage, sword clenched against his body. _Water first, then food, then find Sebast and keep him around long enough for me to find the others_.

His smile grew particularly grim.

_Or at least something to bury_.

# _Five_

# WHITE TREES

_T ell ell me, Kataria_," she had said once, " _what is a shict?_ "

" _I learned that ages ago_ ," her daughter had grumbled in reply,. " _I could be learning how to skin a buck right now if I wasn't here being stabbed with trivia. A_ buck. _I could be coated in gore right now if—OW!_ "

After the blow, her daughter had muttered, " _Riffid led the shicts out of the Dark Forest and gave us instinct, nothing else. She would not indulge us in weaknesses and we prosper from Her distance and—OW! No fair, I got that one right!_ "

" _You told me what your father says a shict is_."

" _Everyone agrees with him! You asked me what a shict was, not what I thought one was! What do you want me to say?_ "

" _If you could predict what I wanted you to say, you wouldn't have gotten hit. That's what it means to be a shict_."

" _So, violent hypocrisy makes a shict? That sounds pretty simple_."

" _You disagree?_ "

" _I do_."

" _Then tell me_."

" _No_."

" _No?_ "

" _Whatever I tell you, you'll just hit me until I say what you want me to say. If I'm saying what you want me to say, I'm not a shict. I know that much_."

She had smiled once.

Kataria stared up at the sky, folding her arms behind her head as she lay upon the shore. The sun was moving slowly, sliding lazily behind the grey clouds, completely unconcerned for her careful scrutiny of its progress. By the time it peered out behind the rolling sheets of cloud, as if checking to see if she were still watching, she estimated three hours had passed.

She craned her neck up, looking past her bare feet.

The shoreline greeted her: vast, empty, eager. It was all too pleased to show her the rolling froth, the murmuring surf, the endless blue horizon stretching out before her.

And nothing more.

There was no wreckage, no movement, not even a corpse.

She sighed, turning her gaze skyward again, wondering just how long it was acceptable to wait for signs that one's companions might have survived after being cast apart in an explosion of sea induced by a colossal, flesh-eating sea serpent.

_What_ does _one look for, anyway?_ she wondered. _Wood? A severed limb?_ She recalled the Akaneed's gaping maw, its sharp, flesh-rending teeth. _Stool?_

Very little sign of any of that, she noted with a sigh. And why should there be? What _were_ the chances of one of them washing up, anyway? And if they did, why would they wash up as she did, having lost nothing more than her bow and boots?

They were dead now, she told herself, floating in the sea, resting in a gullet, picked apart by gulls or about to wash up as a bloated, pale, waterlogged piece of flesh. They were dead and she was alive. She should count herself lucky.

She was alive.

_And they're dead_.

And she was not.

_And he's dead_.

And she was a very lucky shict.

_Shict_ , she repeated that word in her head. _I am a shict. Shicts are proud. Shicts are strong. Shicts don't fight fair. Shicts were given instinct by Riffid, nothing more. Shicts fight to protect. Shicts fight to cleanse. Shicts kill humans. Humans are the disease. Humans are the scourge that overruns this world. Humans build, humans destroy, humans burn and humans kill. Shicts kill humans. Shicts do not trust humans_.

Nature conspired in silence at that moment. The roar of the ocean lulled, the whisper of the breeze stilled, the sound of trees swaying stopped. All for a moment just long enough for her to hear a single, insignificant thought that crept into the fore of her consciousness.

_But you did_.

The creeping thought became a sudden rush of memory, memories she had tried her best to shove in some dark corner of her mind until she could experience a blow against her skull and lose them.

But they came back, no matter how much she tried to block them out.

She remembered the sight of a silver mane, remembered how she thought it was so unusual to see in a human. She remembered how that had made her lower her bow, lower the arrow that had been poised at his head, a head so blissfully free of suspicions and projectiles alike. She remembered being intrigued, remembered following him out.

_Shicts kill humans_ , she told herself, trying to drown the memory in rhetoric. _Shicts slaughter humans. Shicts cleanse the world of humans. Mother told you what shicts were_.

But she could not drown the sounds. His sounds, the sounds she had studied and learned: the murmurs that meant he was nervous around her, the griping that meant she had said something he would think about if not talk about, the sighs that meant he was thinking about something she had yet to learn about him.

_Humans don't have thoughts_ , she growled inwardly. _Humans only have desires. Humans desire gold, desire land, desire whatever it is they don't have. Father told you what humans were_.

And through it all, she heard the distant beat of a heart. The sound of a heart that had beat fiercely enough to drown out the sound of a roaring sea. The sound of a heart that she was supposed to cut out, the sound of a heart that had fed the pulse in a throat she was supposed to slit. His heart, his pulsating, hideous human heart that she had heard before they departed. His horrific heart. His human heart. The heart she heard now.

_But that's just a memory_. This knowledge came without forcing, the thought resounding in her head only once. _Those are just sounds. He's dead now_.

And the memories were gone, leaving that thought hanging inside her head.

_He's dead. Your problems are solved_.

She rose up, stiffly. She turned from the ocean, not looking back.

He was dead. He was a dead human. Her world was restored. She didn't feel anything for a dead human. Dead humans did not have heartbeats. She was a shict once more.

_This is more than luck_ , she told herself. _This is a blessing from on high_.

That thought gave her no comfort as she walked over the dunes and away from the shore.

She was a shict. For her, all that was on high was Riffid.

And Riffid did not give blessings.

" _What is a human?_ " her daughter had asked.

She had paused before answering.

" _Your father should have told you_."

" _You said Father didn't know what a shict was_."

" _I didn't say that_."

" _You implied it_."

" _And you wonder why people hit you_."

" _If you can't answer it, just say so and I'll figure it out for myself_."

" _A human is... not a shict_."

" _That's it?_ "

" _That's enough_."

" _No, it isn't_."

" _Has anyone ever told you you're amazingly bull-headed?_ "

" _Grandfather says they filed down my antlers after I was born. But that's not important. What is a human?_ "

She had wandered away from their village, into the part of the forest where the earth beneath their feet and the ancestors that came before them were one.

" _Humans are... not like us, but also like us. They fight, they kill, just as we do. And what we claim is ours, they claim is theirs. Our cause is righteous. They say theirs is, too. We do what we must. They do as they do_."

" _Then how do we know they deserve to die?_ "

She had stared at a grave marked with long white mourning feathers.

" _Because they knew we deserved it_."

She journeyed over the dunes, through the valleys of the beach as the sun continued to crawl across the sky. Always, she found her gaze drifting off to the distant forest and shortly thereafter to her own belly as it let out an angry growl.

The knowledge that any food to be had would be found in the dense foliage gnawed at her as surely as the hunger that struggled to wrest control over her from a frail and withering hope inside her. In fact, she knew, it would be wiser to go into the woods now, to begin the search for something to eat as soon as possible, lest she find herself too weary and starving to conduct a more thorough search later.

_Still_ , she reminded herself, _it's not like it's hard to find something to eat in a forest. You've never had trouble sniffing out roots and fruits before. Hell, find a dark spot and you can probably find a nice, juicy grub_.

The image of a writhing, ivory larva filled her mind. She smacked her lips. The fact that she was salivating at the thought of a squishy, tender infant insect brimming with glistening guts, she reasoned, was likely a strong indicator that she should go seek one out, if only to keep herself from dwelling on how bizarre this entire train of thought was.

And yet, no matter how strong the reasoning, she continued to walk along the beach, staring out over the waves. And always, no matter what she hoped to see, nothing but empty shoreline greeted her.

_Stop it_ , she snarled inwardly. _Forget them. They're dead. And you will be, too, if you don't find food soon. This isn't what a shict does. Look, it's easy. Just turn around_.

She did so, facing the forest.

_Now take a step forward_.

She did so.

_Now don't look back_.

That, as ever, was where everything went wrong.

She glanced over her shoulder, ignoring the instant frustration she felt for herself the moment she spied something dark out of the corner of her eye. Tucked behind a dune, bobbing in the water, she could see it: the distinct glisten of water-kissed wood.

Her heart rose in her chest as she spun about and began to hurry toward it, despite her own thoughts striving to temper her stride.

_It's wood_ , she told herself. _It doesn't mean anything beyond the fact that it's wood. Don't get your hopes up. Don't get too excited. Remember the wreck. Remember the Akaneed_.

As she drew closer, the boat's shape became clearer: resting comfortably upon the shore, intact and unsullied. She furrowed her brow, cautioning her stride. This wasn't her boat; hers was now in several pieces and probably jammed in one or two skulls right now.

_So it's someone else's_ , she told herself. _All the more reason to turn back now. No one with any good intentions would be out here. It's not them. It's not him. Turn back_. She did not, creeping around the dune. _Turn_ back. _Remember you're alive. Remember he's dead. Remember they're dead. They're_ dead.

And, it became clear as she peered around the dune, they were not the only ones.

A lone tree, long dead but clinging to the sandy earth with the tenacity only a very old one could manage, stood in the middle of a small, barren valley. She peered closer, spying rope wrapped tightly about its highest branches, hanging taut. The grey, jagged limbs bent, creaking in protest as macabre, pink-skinned fruit swayed in the breeze, hanging by their ankles from the ropes.

She recognised them, the humans hanging from the tree. Even with their throats slashed and their bodies mutilated, their blood splashed against roots that no longer drank, she knew them as crewmen from the _Riptide_ , the ship she and her companions had travelled on before pursuing the tome, the ship whose crew was supposed to come seeking them after they had obtained the book.

Apparently, they had found something else.

About the base of the tree, they swarmed. Kataria was uncertain what they were, exactly. They didn't _look_ dangerous, though neither did they look like anything she had seen before. She peered closer, saw that they resembled roaches the size of small deer, sporting great feathery antennae and rainbow-coloured wing carapaces that twitched in time with each other. They chittered endlessly, making strange clicking sounds as they craned up on their rearmost legs to brush their antennae against the swaying corpses.

And then, in an instant, they stopped. Their antennae twitched soundlessly, all in the same direction. A shrill chittering noise went out over them and they scattered, scurrying over the dunes before whatever had alarmed them could come to them.

But Kataria came out around her cover, unafraid as she approached the whitetree. She was unafraid. She knew its name. She knew the men whose blood-drained bodies hung from it.

And she had seen this before.

"They had swords."

Kataria had heard such a voice before: feminine, but harsh, thick and rasping. Her ears twitched, trembled at the sound, taking it in. It was a voice thick with a bloody history: people killed, ancestors murdered, families avenged. She heard the hatred boiling in the voice, felt it in her head.

And she knew the speaker as shict.

"Humans always have swords," this newcomer said, her shictish thick as shictish should be. "They always move with the intent to kill."

"You killed them instead?"

"And fed the earth with them. And warned their people with them."

Kataria stared down at the red-stained ground. "So much blood..."

"This island is thick with it. That which was shed here is far more righteous."

Kataria clenched her teeth behind her lips, stilled her heart. "Have you found others?"

"I have."

At that, Kataria turned to look at her newfound company.

She was a shict, as Kataria knew, as Kataria was. But in her presence, her shadow that stretched unnaturally long, Kataria could feel her ears wither and droop.

The shict's, however, stood tall and proud, six notches carved into each length, each ear as long as half her forearm. The rest of her followed suit: towering over her at six and a half feet tall, spear-rigid and steel-hard body bereft of any clothing beyond a pair of buckskin breeches. Her black hair was sculpted into a tall, bristly mohawk, her bare head decorated with black sigils on either side of the crude cut. She folded powerful arms over naked breasts that were barely a curve on her lean musculature and regarded Kataria coolly.

And, as Kataria stared, only one thought came to her.

_So... green_.

Her skin was the colour of a crisp apple... or a week-old corpse. Kataria wasn't quite sure which was more appropriate. But her skin colour was just a herald that declared her deeds, her ancestry, her heritage.

And Kataria knew them both. She had heard the stories.

She was a member of the twelfth tribe: the only tribe to stand against humanity and turn them back. She was a member of the _s'na shict s'ha:_ headhunters, hideskinners, silent ghosts known to every creature that feared the night.

A greenshict. A true shict.

And Kataria knew dread.

"I have found tracks, anyway," she said, pointing to the earth with a toe. Kataria glanced down and saw the long toes, complete with opposable "thumb," that constituted the greenshict's feet. "There are other humans here, for some reason." She stared out over the dunes. "Not for much longer."

"Why would they be here?"

"This island is rife with death. Humans are drawn to the scent."

"Death?"

"This land is poisoned. Trees grow, but there is death in the roots. That which lives here feeds on death and we feed upon them."

"I saw the roaches..."

"Unimportant. We come for the frogs. They eat the poison. The poison feeds our blood. We feed on them."

"We?"

"Three of _s'na shict s'ha_ came to this island."

"Where are the others?"

"They seek. Naxiaw seeks humans. Avaij seeks frogs. I seek you."

Kataria felt the greenshict's stare like a knife in her chest.

"I heard your Howling long ago. I have searched for you since." The greenshict fixed her with a stare that went far beyond cursory, her long ears twitching as if hearing something without sound. "You come with strange sounds in your heart, Kataria."

Kataria did not start, barely flinched. But the greenshict's eyes narrowed; she could see past her face, could see Kataria's nerves rattle, heart wither.

"What is your name?" Kataria asked.

"You know it already."

She _should_ know it, at least, Kataria knew. She could feel the connection between them, as though some fleshless part of them reached out towards each other and barely brushed, imparting a common thought, a common knowledge between them. The Howling, Kataria knew: that shared, ancestral instinct that connected all shicts. The same instinct that had told the greenshict her name.

That same instinct that Kataria could now only barely remember, so long had it been since she used it.

But she reached out with it all the same, straining to feel for the greenshict's name, straining the most basic, fundamental knowledge shared by the Howling.

"In..." she whispered. "Inqalle?"

Inqalle nodded, but did not so much as blink. She continued probing, staring into Kataria, sensing out with the Howling that which Kataria could not hide. Kataria did not bother to keep herself from squirming under the gaze, from looking down at her feet. In a few moments, Inqalle had looked into her, had seen her shame and judged.

"Little Sister," she whispered, "I know why you are here."

"It's complicated," she replied.

"It is not."

"No?"

"You are filled with fear. I hear it in your bones." Her eyes narrowed, ears flattened against her skull. "You have been with humans..."

Funny, Kataria thought, that she should only then notice the blood-slick tomahawk hanging at Inqalle's waist. She stared at it for a long time.

Amongst shicts, there were those that loathed humans, there were those that _despised_ humans and then there were the _s'na shict s'ha_ , those few that had seen such success driving the round-eared menace from their lands that they had abandoned those same lands, embarking on pilgrimages to exterminate that which had once threatened them.

And for those that had consorted with the human disease, slaughter was seen as an act of mercy to the incurably infected. As such, Kataria remained tense, ready to turn and bolt the moment the tomahawk left her belt.

The blow never came. Inqalle's gaze was sharp enough to wound without it.

"Kataria," she whispered, taking a step closer. Kataria felt the greenshict's eyes digging deeper into her, sifting through thought, ancestry, everything she could not hide from the Howling. "Daughter of Kalindris. Daughter of Rokuda. I have heard your names spoken by the living."

Her eyes drifted toward the feathers in Kataria's hair, resting uncomfortably on a long, ivory-coloured crest nestled amongst the darker ones.

"And the dead," she whispered. "Who do you mourn, Little Sister?"

Kataria turned her head aside to hide it. Inqalle's hand was a lash, reaching out to seize her by the hair, twisting her head about as Inqalle's long green fingers knotted into her locks.

"You are... infected," she hissed, voice raking Kataria's ears. "Not voiceless."

"Let go," Kataria snarled back.

"You speak words. That is all I hear." She tapped her tattooed brow. "In here, I hear nothing. You cannot speak with the Howling. You are no shict." She wrenched the white feather free, strands of hair coming loose with them. "You mourn no shict."

"Give that back," Kataria growled, lashing out a hand to grab it back. With insulting ease, Inqalle's hand lashed back, striking her against her cheek and laying her to the earth. She looked up, eyes pleading. "You have no right." She winced. "Please."

"Shicts do not beg."

"I am a shict!" Kataria roared back, springing to her feet. Her ears were flattened against her head, her teeth bared and flashing white. "Show me your hand again and I'll prove it."

"You wish to prove it," Inqalle said softly, a statement rather than a challenge or insult. "I wish to see it."

"Then let me show you how to make a _redshict_ , you six-toed piece of—"

"There is another way, Little Sister."

Kataria paused. She felt Inqalle's Howling, the promise within its distant voice, the desire to help. And Inqalle heard the anticipation in her little sister's, the desperation to be helped. Inqalle smiled, thin and sharp. Kataria swallowed hard, voice dry.

"Tell me."

" _You know you talk in your sleep_ ," her daughter had said years later, long after she was gone from the world and her daughter wore a white feather. " _I could have shot you from four hundred paces away_."

" _Lucky for me that you were only six away_ ," the thing with silver hair had said in return. " _Which, coincidentally, is the sixth time you've told me you could kill me_."

" _Today?_ "

" _Since breakfast_."

" _That sounds about right_."

" _So?_ "

" _So what?_ "

" _Do it already. Add another notch to your belt... or, is it feathers with you?_ "

" _I don't have any kill feathers_."

" _What are those for, then?_ "

Her daughter had tucked the white one behind her ear. " _Lots of things_."

" _Okay_."

" _You're not curious?_ "

" _Not really_."

" _You've never wondered why we do what we do?_ "

" _If the legends are true, your people's connections with my people tend to be either arrows, swords or fire. That all seems pretty straightforward to me_."

Her daughter had frowned.

" _You, though..._ " he had said.

" _What about me?_ "

He had stared, then, as he hefted his sword.

" _You stare at me. It's weird_."

He hadn't told her daughter to stop. He hadn't told her daughter to leave. And Kataria never had.

They stretched out into the distance, over the sand, a story in each moist imprint. They spoke of suffering, of pain, of confusion, of fear. She narrowed her eyes as she knelt down low, tracing her fingers over two of the tracks. The voices in the footprints spoke clearly to her, told her where they were heading.

She knew her companions well enough to recognise their tracks.

"There are more," Inqalle said behind her. "They are familiar to you."

"They are," Kataria replied.

"They are your cure."

She turned and saw the feather first. Inqalle held it in her hand, attached to a smooth, carved stick. She held it before Kataria.

"You know what this is."

"I remember," she said. "A Spokesman."

"It speaks. It makes a declaration. This one says that you shall not mourn until you are a shict." She regarded Kataria coolly. "This one will tell you when you are a shict."

"I remember," she said. "My father told me."

"This is a cure for the disease. This is a cure for your fear. This restores you." She handed the Spokesman to Kataria. "Keep it. Use it. Survive until you become a shict again."

"And when I do. You will know?"

Inqalle tapped her head.

"We will all know."

# _Six_

# CHEATING LIFE

_T he heavens move in enigmatic circles_.

In the human tongue, this translated roughly to "it's not my fault." Gariath had heard it enough times to know. Those humans he knew had been happiest when they could blame someone else.

_Formerly humans_ , he corrected himself, _currently chum. Lucky little idiots with no one to blame_.

Not entirely true, he knew. If their heavens did indeed circle enigmatically overhead, and they had indeed gone to them, they were likely hurling curses upon his head from there at that very moment. A tad hypocritical, he thought, to praise their mysterious gods and resent being sent to them.

_Or is that what they call "irony"?_ "

But that was a concern for dead people. Gariath, sadly, was still alive and without a convenient excuse for it.

The _Rhega_ had no gods to blame. The _Rhega_ had no gods to claim them. That was what he wanted to believe, at least.

He had been able to overlook his inability to die, at first, throwing himself at pirates, at longfaces, at demons and at his former humans and coming out with only a few healthy scars. They might have cursed him, if he left them enough blood to choke on, but they were lucky. Death by a _Rhega_ 's hand would be as good a death as they could hope for.

When a colossal serpent failed to kill him, he began to suspect something more than just mere luck. The sea, too, had rejected him and spat him onto the shore, painfully alive. If gods did exist, and if their circles were wide enough to touch him, they took a cruel pride in keeping him alive.

_Now that_ is _irony_.

The former humans, he was certain, would have agreed. And if he had learned anything from them and their excuses, it was that their gods rarely seemed content to allow a victim of their ironies merely to wallow in their misery. They preferred to leave reminders, "omens" to rub their jagged victories into wounds that had routinely failed to prove fatal.

And, as his own personal omen crested out of the waves to turn a golden scowl upon him, he was growing more faithful by the moment.

Like a black worm wriggling under liquid skin, the Akaneed continued to whirl, twist and writhe beneath the sun-coloured waves. It emerged every so often to turn its single, furious eye upon him, narrowing the yellow sphere to a golden slit that burned through the waves.

Just as it had burned all throughout the morning when the sea denied him, he thought. Just as it had continued to burn throughout the afternoon he squatted upon the sand, watching it as it watched him.

He wasn't quite sure why either of them hadn't moved on yet. For himself, he suspected whatever divine entity had turned him away from death thought to inspire some contemplation in watching the sea.

Humans often thought sitting and staring to be a religiously productive use of their time. _And they die like flies_ , he thought. _Maybe I'll get lucky and starve to death_.

That seemed as good a plan as any.

The Akaneed's motives, he could only guess at. Surely, he reasoned, colossal sea snakes couldn't subsist purely on angry glowers and snarls from the deep. Perhaps, then, it was simply a battle of wills: his will to die and the snake's will to eat him.

_Though those two seem more complementary than conflicting..._

By that reasoning, it would be easy to walk fifteen paces into the surf until the sea touched his neck. It would be easy to close his eyes, take three deep breaths as he felt the water shift beneath him. It would be easy to feel the creature's titanic jaws clamp around him, feel the needles merciful on his flesh and watch his blood seep out on blossoming clouds as the beast carried his corpse to an afterlife beneath the waves.

The Akaneed's eye emerged, casting a curious glare in his direction, as though it sensed this train of thought and thoroughly approved.

"No," he assured it. "If I do that, then you'll have an easy meal and I'll have an easy death. Neither of us will have worked for it and neither of us will be happy."

It shot Gariath another look, conveying its agreement in the twitch of its blue eyelid. Then, in the flash of its stare before it disappeared beneath the waves, it seemed to suggest that it could wait.

Gariath lay upon his back and closed his eyes. The gnawing in his belly was growing sharper, but not swiftly enough. Sitting still, never moving, he reasoned he had about three days before he died of thirst and his husk drifted out on the tide. The Akaneed was willing to earn its meal and he was willing to settle for this bitter comfort.

That being the case, he reasoned he might as well be comfortable.

The sounds of the shore would be a fitting elegy: nothing but the murmur of waves and the skittering legs of beach vermin to commemorate the loss of the last of the _Rhega_. Fitting, perhaps, that he should go out in such a way, shoulders heavy with death and finally bowed by the weight of his own mortality, with only the beady, glistening eyes of crabs to watch the noblest of people disappear and leave this world to its weakling pink-skinned diseases.

The Akaneed hummed in the distance, its reverberating keen rumbling up onto the shore and scattering the skittering things. The waves drew in a sharp inhale, retreating back to the open sea and holding its frothy breath as it went calm and placid. Sound died, sea died and Gariath resolved to die with it.

In the silence, the sound was deafening.

He recognised immediately feet crunching upon the sand. The pace was slow, casual, utterly without care or concern for the dragonman trying to die.

An old enemy, perhaps, one of the many faceless bodies he had torn and crushed and failed to kill, come for vengeance at the tip of a sword. Or maybe a new one, some terrified creature with a slow and hesitant pace, ready to impale him with a weapon clenched in trembling hands.

Or, if gods were truly intent on proving their existence, it might be one of his former companions. One of them might have survived, he reasoned, and come searching for vengeance. He listened intently to the sound.

Too heavy to be the pointy-eared human, he reasoned; she wouldn't attack him until his back was turned anyway. And likewise, the feet were too deliberate to be the bumbling, skinny human with the fiery hands. That one would just kill him from a distance.

He dearly hoped it wasn't the tall, brown-haired human woman. She would likely come all masked with tears, demanding explanations in sobbing tones while righteously insisting that the others hadn't deserved to die. If that were the case, he would have much preferred the rat. Yes, the rat would come and give him a quick knife in the throat; surely that would kill even a _Rhega_ suffering from a severe case of irony.

It pained him to think that the feet might belong to Lenk. The death he so richly deserved then would never come from the young man's hands.

The others knew how to kill. Lenk alone knew how to hurt.

The feet stopped just above his head. Gariath held his breath.

No blow, no steel, no vengeance. The shadow that fell over him was warm rather than cold. Even against the setting sun, the heat was distinctly familiar and embracing, heavy arms wrapped gently around him.

He hadn't felt such warmth since...

Almost afraid to, he opened his nostrils, drew in a deep breath. His body jolted at once, his eyes snapping wide open at a scent that instantly overwhelmed his senses and the stink of the sea alike. He opened his mouth, drinking it in and at once finding it impossible that it filled his body.

_Rivers and rocks_.

He looked up and saw black eyes staring down at him beneath a pair of horns, one short and topped with a jagged break. The snout that they stared down from was wrinkled and scarred, but taut, each twisted line a point of pride and wisdom. The frills at either side fanned out unenthused, crimson petals of a wilting flower that had not seen rain in a long time.

It was the eyes, alone untouched by age, that seized Gariath's gaze. They were softer than his own black stare, but that softness only made their depth all the more apparent. Where his were hard and unyielding doors of obsidian, the eyes that stared down at him were windows that stretched into endless night.

The elderly _Rhega_ smiled, exposing teeth well worn.

"You know," he rumbled, the _Rhega_ tongue deep and hard as a rock in his chest, "for someone who has such reverence for my stare, you could at _least_ get up to talk to me."

Gariath's eye ridges raised half a hair. "You read thoughts?"

"I don't get much conversation otherwise." The elder returned the raised ridge. "Not impressed?"

"I have seen many things, Grandfather," Gariath replied.

The elder considered him thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded.

"So you have, Wisest."

The elder scanned the beach, finding a nearby piece of driftwood half buried in the sand. Lifting his limp tail up behind him, he took a seat upon it and stared out over the setting sun. The light met his stare and Gariath saw the elder's shape change as beams of light sifted through a spectral figure.

"You're dead, Grandfather," Gariath grunted.

"I hear that a lot," the elder replied.

Gariath looked up and down the empty beach, bereft of even a hint of any other life.

"I find that hard to believe."

"You would," the elder snorted. "The fact remains that you are the only one who has come by; you're the only one who noticed. My point stands."

"Why aren't you at your elder stone?"

"I got bored."

"Grahta never left his stone."

"Why would he? Grahta was a pup. He would get lost."

"Ah."

Gariath settled himself back on the sand, staring up at the orange-painted sky above. After a moment, he looked back to the elder.

"Grahta," he said softly. "Is he...?"

"Sleeping, Wisest," the elder replied.

"Good."

Another silence descended between them, broken only by the sound of the Akaneed's murmuring keen rising up from below the waves. After an eternity of that, Gariath once again looked up.

"Aren't you going to ask me what I'm doing?"

"Seems a bit unnecessary," the elder said, tapping his brow.

"Then aren't you going to ask me why?"

"You are _Rhega_ ," the elder replied, shrugging. "You have a good reason."

"So, you won't try to stop me."

"I might have a hard time with that." The elder held up his clawed hand to the light, grinning as it vanished. "What with being dead and all."

"Then why are you here?"

"I thought you might like some company while you waited to die."

"I don't."

"Oh?" The elder looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. "Was it not you who was just wishing that his humans would come visit him?"

"Those thoughts were private," Gariath snarled, glowering.

"Then you shouldn't have thought them while I was standing right here."

"It doesn't matter." The younger dragonman turned his stare back up to the sky. "They're dead."

"Possibly."

"Possibly?"

" _You_ didn't die."

"I am _Rhega_. I am strong. They are weak and stupid."

"Bold words coming from a lizard hoping to starve to death so a snake will eat him."

"Can you think of a better way to die, given the circumstances?"

"I can think of a better way to live."

"Live?" Gariath's snout split in an unpleasant grin. "I've tried living, Grandfather. I've tried living without my family, living without other _Rhega_ and living without even humans." He sighed, chest trembling with the breath. "Living was fine for a time, but it was too full of death for my tastes. Maybe dying will be better."

"There is nothing worth living for, Wisest?"

"There was. Now, I have nothing."

"You have me."

"Yes, I do," Gariath grunted. "One thing I never seem to lack is dead _Rhega_." He waved a clawed hand at the elder. "I do not need you, Grandfather."

"What do you need, then?"

"It's not obvious?"

"Not to you."

"I need to die, Grandfather," Gariath sighed. "I need to rid myself of all"—he waved a hand out to the sky and sea—"this. I don't need it anymore."

"You've had plenty of opportunities to die."

"I haven't found the right one yet."

"They all basically end the same way, don't they?"

"Not for a _Rhega_."

"Ah, I see." The elder scratched his chin thoughtfully. "So, the right way is to lie down here and wait to die while contemplating the existence of weak, _human_ gods?"

"It's a way."

"Not the way of the _Rhega_."

"There are no more _Rhega_ ," Gariath growled in response. "I am the last one. I get to decide what the right way to die is."

"And what is the right way to die, Wisest?"

Gariath had an answer for that.

It was an answer that he had often dreamed of, birthed at the fore of his mind when he held two barking pups that seemed so tiny in his arms. That answer had grown along with those pups, nurtured by their experiences. When they had learned to catch jumping fish, to chase down running horses, to spread their wings and glide on the winds, that answer had grown to something that swelled with his own heart.

He would have very much liked to have that heart stop beating when they held pups of their own and watched red silhouettes gliding across the sky. He would have very much liked for them to have their own answers for the question.

Instead, two hearts had stopped beating instead of one. And with them, so did his answer die.

The elder stared at him with intent concentration, seeing it unfurl inside him. He shuddered as he and the younger dragonman shared the final thought.

An angry, agonised wail, offered to a weeping sky as Gariath clutched two lifeless forms in his arms. The same wail offered to so many wide-eyed, terrified faces as Gariath threw himself at them time and again, hoping for and being denied a righteous death.

"That would be a good way to die," the elder said, nodding. "I would have liked to have left my family in such a way."

"How did you die, Grandfather?"

"I didn't," the elder replied with an enigmatic smile.

"You are most certainly dead, Grandfather."

"In body, perhaps."

"Oh, _this_."

"What?" The elder furrowed his ridges.

"I've heard this before. Some vague philosophy about the separation of body and spirit, and it always ends the same way." Gariath made a dismissive wave. "Some attempt to be inspirational by suggesting the two can be resurrected alongside each other, maybe a little aside about raising spirits and being true to oneself. Then we all hug and cry and I vomit." He snorted derisively. "Humans do it all the time."

"Humans have had their points, Wisest. The difference between body and spirit is one they adopted, but it is not one they thought of on their own."

"It's all greasy, imbecilic vomit, no matter who spews it."

"Is it? You've seen me. You've seen Grahta. Can you still deny the difference, knowing what death means to the _Rhega_?"

"I wonder if I do," Gariath muttered. " _You_ know what Grahta told me." He stared up at the sky, frowning at its endless orange and white oblivion. "I can't follow."

"I know," the elder said, nodding solemnly.

"Do _you_ , Grandfather?" Gariath turned his hard stare upon the specter. "You know death, but you know peace. You will know your ancestors, eventually, as Grahta did. You will know rest. Me..." He sat up suddenly, brimming with anger. "I can't follow you. Grahta said as much. I can't see my family, my ancestors..."

They shared a shuddering cringe as they both felt his heart turn to stone inside him and pull his chest low to the ground.

"I can't see my sons, Grandfather... I can _never_ see them again. I can't follow."

"It is the way it must be, Wisest."

" _Why?_ "

He leapt to his feet, the sand erupting beneath him. The earth trembled as he stomped his feet, curled his hands into fists so tight that blood wept from his claws. He bared his teeth, narrowed his eyes and fanned his frills out beside his head.

" _Every_ time this happens," he snarled. " _Every_ time someone dies, _every_ time _I_ don't, that's 'the way it must be'. Everyone sighs and rolls their shoulders and goes back to living. I've _done_ that and I'm _done_ living. If this is how life must be, then I choose death!"

"It is that way for a reason, Wisest. You have duties to your ancestors."

" _More_ excuses! _More_ stupidity! Duty and honour and responsibility!" He howled and stomped his feet. "All just excuses for not getting things done, for trying to excuse away life and all its pain! I have _served_ my duty, Grandfather! I have _tried_ to live the way the _Rhega_ are supposed to. I have _tried_ to be a _Rhega_ when there are no more. I have _tried_ and... and..."

His fist came down with a howl, splintering a hole in the driftwood beside the elder. He jerked it out with a shriek, wooden shards lodged in his fist that wept blood as his eyes wept tears. He collapsed to his knees, pressed his brow against the wood and drew in a staggering, wet breath.

"It's too hard, Grandfather. I don't know what I'm supposed to do anymore. I _can't_ follow." He punched the wood again. "I _can't_ kill myself." Another bloody-handed blow. "I just... can't."

It wasn't often that Gariath flinched at a touch. All the steel and iron that had cursed his flesh in crimson words, all the scars and bruises they had left behind had never made him so much as tremble. But they had struck shoulders that were broad and proud, arms that were thick and fierce.

The hand that rested upon him now was upon shoulders that were broken and bowed, arms that hung limp and bloody at his side.

"Wisest," the elder whispered. "We are _Rhega_. The rivers flow in both our blood and we feel the same agonies, as we have felt since we were born of the red rock. I don't ask you to do this for you or for me..." He tightened his grip on Gariath's shoulder. "I tell you to do it for us. For the _Rhega_."

"What," Gariath asked, weak, "am I supposed to do?"

"Live."

"It can't be that easy."

"You know it isn't." The elder rose up, walking toward the shore. "You've spent so much time bleeding, Wisest, so much time killing. You've forgotten what living is like."

"It's hard."

"I will help you where I can, Wisest," the elder replied with a smile. "But there are better guides to life than the dead."

"Such as?"

After a moment of careful contemplation, the elder scratched his chin. "What of Lenk?"

"Dead."

"You're certain?"

"What does it matter?"

"Consider where you would be without him," the elder replied. "Still where you buried your sons? Or buried yourself, if whoever killed you had enough respect not to skin you alive and wear your face as a hat? How was it you managed to get away from there?"

"By following Lenk."

"And how was it you managed to find Grahta? To end up here so that I might find you?"

"Are you saying I need Lenk?" Gariath growled, slightly repulsed by the idea. "He is decent enough to deserve a good death, but he's still stupid and weak... still _human_. If he is even alive, how do I get him to lead me to where I need to go next? How can I even—?"

"Many questions," the elder said with a sigh, "demand many answers. For now, limit yourself to simplicity. You are caught between lives. Choose one, then make another choice."

"What kind of choices?"

"In time, many." The elder turned and walked toward Gariath, counting out each pace beneath him. "The choice to seek out my elder stone is one, but that is far away in time and distance. The hardest choice"—he paused and drew a line in the earth with his toe—"is to recognise that you will never be as alone as you hope to be."

"I don't understand."

"That's the point of cryptic musing, pup," the elder muttered. "But we don't have time to discuss it. The much more immediate choice must happen within your next fifty breaths."

"What?" Gariath creased his ridges together. "What choice?"

"Whether to move or not. Forty-five breaths."

"What, like... move on? More philosophical gibberish?"

"More immediate. Forty-two breaths."

"Why forty-two?"

"The tide comes in at twenty, it's taking me another fifteen to tell you all of this, and the Akaneed, which has been known to hurl itself upon a beach to get at its prey at distances up to twenty-six paces, has been waiting for the aforementioned tide for about five breaths, leaving you..." The elder glanced over his shoulder. "Two breaths."

It only took one for the water to rise up in a great blue wall, the Akaneed's eye scorching a golden hole through it. Its jaws were parted as it erupted onto the shore, bursting through the liquid barrier with a roar that sent great gouts of salty mist peeling from between rows of needle-like teeth.

It took Gariath another to leap backwards as those great teeth snapped shut in a wall of glistening white. A low keen burbled out of the Akaneed's gullet, cursing the dragonman as it might curse any man who broke a fair deal. Snarling, it writhed upon the sand, trying to shift its massive pillar of a body back into the surf.

"Huh." The elder observed the younger dragonman's wide-eyed shock with a raised eye ridge. "You jumped away. Nerves, perhaps. If you still want to die, I'm sure he won't think it a hassle to come back for a second time."

Gariath regarded the spectre through narrowed eyes. Impassive, the elder stared at him without flinching. He folded his wings behind his back, raised his one-horned head up to meet Gariath's eyes with his own gaze that shone hard as rocks.

"Make your choice, Wisest."

And, with the sound of a snort and claws sinking into wood, Gariath did.

His muscles trembled, then burst to life in his arms, great beasts awakening from hibernation. The driftwood log was long and proud, clinging to the earth. But it tore free, resigning itself to its fate.

His roar matched the Akaneed's, matched the sound of air rent apart as the wood howled. Both were rendered silent by a massive jaw cracking, teeth flying out to lie upon the earth like unsown seeds, and a keening shriek that followed the Akaneed back into the ocean. Blood leaking from its maw, it disappeared beneath the waves, sparing only a moment to level a cyclopean scowl upon the dragonman before vanishing into the endless blue.

The breath that came out of Gariath, rising in his massive chest, was not one he had felt in days. His hands trembled about the shattered piece of wood he still held, as though they had never known the life that coursed through them. When he did finally drop it, that life sent his arms tensing, his tail twitching...

His body thirsting for more.

_This is what it means?_ He stared down at his hands. _To be a_ Rhega _? More death? More violence? This is what it is to be alive?_

"Not the answer you're looking for, Wisest," the elder chimed, his voice distant and fading. "But good enough for now."

When Gariath turned about, nothing but sand and wind greeted him. No footprints remained in the disturbed earth, nothing to even suggest that the elder had ever been there. And yet, with each breath that Gariath took, the scent of rivers and rocks continued to permeate his senses.

Perhaps he should be concerned that he felt alive again only when he was grievously wounding something. Perhaps he should take it as a sign that his road in life was destined to run alongside a river of blood. Or perhaps he should just take pride in having knocked the teeth out of a giant snake that had now failed to kill him twice.

_Philosophy is for idiots, anyway_.

His concerns left him immediately as he plucked the serpent's shattered fangs up from the earth and felt their warm sharpness scrape against his palm. He would keep these, he decided, as a reminder of what it meant, for the moment, to be a _Rhega_.

But he could not dwell on that. His feet moved beneath him as the sun disappeared behind the sea, and already his nostrils were quivering, drawing in the scent of living things.

# _Seven_

# HONEST AFFLICTIONS

No matter how hard she stared, the sun refused to yield any answers to her.

It had been a long time since she had first turned her stare upward, mouth agape and eyes unblinking. If her throat was dry or if the tears had been scorched from her eyes, she didn't care. Her breath had evaporated long ago, dissipating on the heat.

And Asper continued to stare.

The sun was supposed to reveal truth to her. This she knew. Every scripture claimed as much.

" _And when the Healer did give up His body and His skin and His blood until there was nothing left for Him to give to mankind, and only when the entirety of His being was spent for His children, then did He leave the agonies of the cruel earth and ascend to the Heavens on wings heavy with lament_.

" _He left no apologies, He left no excuses and He left no promises for those He had so freely given His body. He left but this: hope. The great, golden disc that reminded His children that He had taken only His bones and breath back to the World Above, leaving His body, His skin, His blood and His great eye_."

She could recite the hymn until her lips bled and her tongue swelled up, and that used to be fine, so long as the words that were uttered were the words she had sought comfort in all her life.

Now words were not enough. And the sun refused to answer her.

Her arm burned with an intensity to rival the golden heat she raised it to. Flickering, twitching crimson light engulfed it, the bones blackened as over-forged sin beneath the red that had been her skin. Each bone of knuckle and digit stretched out, reaching ebon talons to the sun, seeking to wrest truth from it.

Her reach was too short. And lacking that, she could but ask.

"Why?"

The sky sighed, its moan reaching into her body and racking the bones boiling black inside her.

" _I'm sorry_ ," the sun answered. " _It's my fault_."

No room for pride in her body, no room to take pleasure or offer forgiveness. She could feel the crimson slip up over her shoulder, sliding over her throat on red fingers and crushing her breasts in blood-tinted grip. The pain shoved out all other feelings, scarring her skeleton black beneath her.

She saw the ebon joints of her knees rise up to meet her as she collapsed, pressing skeletal hands against the dirt. The sun was hot now, unbearably so. She threw back an ebon skull, cried out through a mouth that leaked red light between black teeth, pleading wordlessly for the great eye to stop.

" _I'm sorry_ ," it replied. " _I couldn't. I'm sorry. I'm sorry_."

Her screams were wasted on the pitiless sky, her pleas nothing beneath its endless, airless droning. It repeated the words, bludgeoning her to the floor and beating her into darkness.

" _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..._ "

Eyelids twitched in time with the breath that rained hot and stale upon her face. They ached as they cracked open, encrusted with dried tears. The light assaulted her, blinding.

She blinked a moment, dispelling the haze that clouded her to bring into view a pair of dark eyes rimmed with dark circles, staring vast and desperate holes into her skull as a smile full of long yellow teeth assaulted her widening stare. She felt leather fingers gingerly brush a lock of brown hair away from her sweat-stained brow with arachnid sensuality.

"Good morning," a voice rasped.

The scream that followed was swiftly silenced.

Long-fingered hands snapped over her mouth, drowning her shriek in a tide of leathery flesh. Another hand was under the first and she felt a heavy thumb press lightly against her throat, seeking her windpipe with practised swiftness.

"Silence is sacred," the voice suggested in a way that implied it was no impotent hymn.

Whatever threat not implicit in the voice was frighteningly apparent in the hands, coursing down the palm and into the fingers that slid across her throat. Her breath came in short, terrified gulps. Her heart pounded in her chest, eyes terrified to meet the dark and heavy stare that bore down on her like a bird of prey.

Breath after desperate breath passed and the light ceased to sting. As a face came to the eyes staring over her, breath came more swiftly and confidently. The smile ceased to be so menacing once she remembered well the crooked bent to it. And, at the look of recognition that crossed her face, the hands slipped off her mouth and neck.

"Not that I'm not thrilled to hear your melodic voice," Denaos whispered, "but it does get a little tiresome after hearing it for a few days."

"A... few days?" Asper felt her voice scratch raw against a throat turned to leather.

"A few days, yes," Denaos replied, his nod a little disjointed. "You took a nasty blow to the head." He rubbed a tender spot against her brow, wincing in time with her. "Not surprising. Lots of wood flying this way and that. Hard to keep track of, no?"

"Wood... flying..." And wet, she remembered, falling like slow-moving hail, herself only one more fleshy stone descending in an airless blue sky. Her eyes widened with the realisation. "We were attacked. Sunk! But..." She felt the sand beneath her, smelled the sea before her. "Where are we?"

"Island. Archipelago, maybe?" Denaos tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Peninsula, coast, beach, shore, littoral... left side of an isthmus. Not sure, lost the map." He stared out at the sea. "Lost everything."

"And... the others?"

"Lost _everything_."

_Everything_.

The word echoed inside her mind and down her body. Her heart pounded against it, feeling surprisingly light, a familiar weight removed from her chest. She glanced down and saw her robes parted, exposing a generous amount of bosom, a patch of particularly pale skin in the shape of a bird where her pendant had once hung dutifully.

She should have been more alarmed at that, she knew. The pendant had been with her since she had first been admitted to the priesthood. It had seen everything, from her initiation as a novice, to her rise to acolyte, to her full initiation.

_It saw Taire_ , she told herself grimly. _It saw the longface. It's seen my arm. It knows. And now it's gone_.

Perhaps it wasn't any wonder she was breathing more freely now.

"I don't wear my robes like this," she muttered. A horrific suspicion leapt from her mind to her eyes and she turned them, wide as moons, upon the tall man. "I was out for a few days."

"Three." He canted his head to the side, looking to some imaginary consultant. "Four? Six? No... three sounds right, thereabouts."

"You didn't..." She grimaced as she readjusted her garments. "You didn't _do_ anything, did you?"

"Seems a little pointless, doesn't it?" He sneered at her blue garment. "I've already seen you naked."

"What? _When?_ " She put that thought from her mind, however difficult it was. "No, don't tell me. Just... did you do anything?"

"I might have. I am well versed in Sleeping Toad."

She opened her mouth to protest further, but something in his grin caught her eye. It was not the smooth, rehearsed split of his mouth that he so often wore like a mask. It was strained at the edges, frayed, as though the porcelain of that mask had begun to crack, exposing a desperate grin and wide, shadow-rimmed eyes.

She forced her next words through a grimace. "You don't look so good."

His parched lips peeled off glistening gums like leather in the sun, seeming to suggest that he was aware of as much. His hair formed a greasy frame about his strained, stubble-caked expression.

"Not so good at sleeping these days," he whispered. "There could be enemies anywhere."

"All this time?"

"Doesn't seem that long now," he replied.

She furrowed her brow; she had seen him function on three days' insomnia without any ill effects before. That he would suddenly seem so rabid didn't make any sense to her until he loosed a long breath, its stale air reeking with old barrels and barley.

"You managed to save the whisky?" she asked, crinkling her nose.

"Wasn't easy," he grunted. "Had to do some diving. Had the time, though. Couldn't sleep, obvious reasons." He patted his breeches and smiled grimly. "No more knives, see? Felt naked, insecure. Whisky helped me alert stay..." He trailed off for a moment before snapping back with a sudden twitch. "Stay alert."

"You could have slept, you know."

"No, I _didn't_ know," he snarled. " _I'm_ not the healer here. I didn't know if you would even wake up."

"So, you..." Her eyes widened slowly this time, the realisation less horrific, but no less shocking. "You watched over me all this time?"

"Not much choice," he said, shaking his head. "You were out. None of the others made it. Dread was absolutely worthless."

"Dreadaeleon? He's alive?"

"Fished both of you out. You were unconscious. He wasn't. Had him make a raft with his ice... breath... magic-thing." He gestured to the beach. "Floated here. He stalked off to the forest shortly after, never came back out."

She followed his finger to the dense patch of foliage over her head, saw the scrawny figure leaning against a tall tree, in such still repose as to appear dead. Perhaps he was, she thought with a twinge of panic.

"Gods," she muttered. "What's the matter with him?"

"What isn't?"

"You didn't _check_?" She turned to him, aghast. "You didn't _ask_?"

"Not the healer." The rogue sneered. "I couldn't watch over _both_ of you, and you were the one with breasts. Process of elimination."

"How delightful," she muttered. "I suppose since I'm awake now..." She made to rise, then paused as she became aware of a sudden pain in her cheek. She winced, pressing her hand to her jaw. "My face hurts."

"Yeah," he grunted, scratching his chin. "I've been hitting you for the past few days."

She could but blink.

"All right... should I ask?"

"I've seen you do it before. Seemed like an easy medical process."

"You hit people who are in _shock_ , idiot."

"I was a bit startled."

She sighed, rubbing her eyes. When she looked up again, an unsympathetic sea met her gaze with the uninterested rumble of waves.

"Lost everything?" she repeated dully.

"Does it somehow make it more believable if I say it three times?" Denaos sighed. "Yes, lost _everything_ , up to and including the derelict reptile that got us here."

"And Lenk, and Kataria..." She sighed, placing her face in her hands and staring glumly out over the sea. "It..." She winced, or rather, forced a wince to her face. "It had to happen, I suppose."

"It did," Denaos grunted, casting her a curious eye. "I'm shocked you're taking it so well, though. One would expect you to be all on knees and hands, cutting your forehead for Talanas and praying for their safe return... or at least safe passage to heaven."

She scratched the spot her pendant had hung. "Maybe it's not so necessary these days."

"Gods are always necessary," he replied. "Especially in cases like these."

She said nothing at that, instead letting the full weight of the words sink upon her. _Lost everything... everything..._

"The tome," she gasped suddenly, turning to the rogue. "The tome! Did you at least look for it?"

"Did," Denaos grunted, then gestured up the hill to Dreadaeleon. "Or _he_ did, rather. Used some kind of weird bird magic that didn't work before running off like a milksop. Useless."

That thought plucked an uncomfortable string on her heart. She should have been more upset about the loss of her companions, she knew. But somehow, the loss of the book carried more weight. It seemed to her that the loss of the tome, merely the topmost piece in a growing pile of disappointments, was just a spiteful afterthought to drive home the pointlessness of it all.

_It was for nothing. It was futile_.

Those thoughts were becoming easier to endure with their frequency.

She looked up at a hand placed on her shoulder, doing her best not to cringe at his unpleasant smile.

"Losing faith?" he asked.

"I didn't know faith concerned you."

"Washed up on an island. No food, little water, friends dead and book lost." He shrugged. "Not much left but faith."

She frowned; faith used to be all she needed. Somehow, Denaos seemed to sense that thought, however. He rose up, offering her a hand and a whisper.

"I'm sorry."

It came back on a flood of sensation, images carried on the stink of his breath, sounds in the warmth of his grasp.

" _I'm sorry_." It was his voice that slipped through her memory, clear and concise, stored in the fog of her mind. And he repeated it, over and over. " _I'm sorry, I'm sorry... but why? Why does this always happen to me?_ "

Was it merely an echo? An errant thought emerging from her subconscious? She had been unconscious, she knew, sleeping. She couldn't have heard him. But, then, why did his voice continue to ring out in her mind?

" _This is the second one_ ," he had said, she was certain. " _I didn't even do anything this time! It's not fair! First_ her, _then... her_." She could remember a hand, lovingly brushing against her cheek. " _Please, Silf, Talanas..._ any _of you! I deserve it, I know, but she doesn't! And_ she _didn't! Please. Please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..._ "

"Who was she?" The question came from her mouth unbidden on the tail of that sporadic voice that rose from her mind.

"What?" He hesitated pulling her up, looking down at her. The mask shattered completely, crumbled in thick, white shards onto the sand. What was left behind was something hard-eyed and purse-lipped. "What did you say?"

"She... the woman you were speaking of." Asper pulled herself the rest of the way up. "You kept apologising."

"No, I didn't." He let his hand fall from hers. "How would you even know? You were out."

"I remember, though. I must have been awake for part of it, and—"

"No, you _weren't_." He cut her off with a razor edge. " _I_ watched over you. _You_ were out and you _didn't_ wake up, at any time." He turned away from her curtly. "I'm going to go sleep myself now. Go check on Dread."

She watched him take all of three steps before the words came again.

"For what it's worth," she said, "I'm sure she forgives you."

He turned upon her with the staggering need of a beggar two weeks starved. Considering her through expressionless eyes for a moment, he walked toward her, arms up in benediction. With more confusion than hesitation, she let herself into his embrace. There was no warmth in his arms, but an unpleasant constrictor tightness.

She gasped as she felt the knife, sliding like a snake up her tunic to kiss her kidneys with steel lips, the menace of the weapon conveyed in a touch that barely grazed her skin.

" _You_ ," he whispered, his voice an unsharpened edge, "don't _ever_ speak of _her_."

"You..." She swallowed hard. "You said you didn't have any knives left. You _lied_."

"No," he gasped, looking at her with mock incredulousness. " _Me?_ "

And in a flash, he was striding away from her. His back was tall and straight, shaking off his threat like a cloak. It fell atop the shards of his mask, and as she stared at his back, mouth agape, she couldn't help but feel that he was already weaving another one to put on.

A warm breeze blew across the beach. The sun was silent. Her left arm began to ache.

After much careful deliberation, a lone seagull drifted down off the warm currents crisscrossing the island to land upon the sands and peck at the earth. In its simple mind, it vaguely recalled not visiting this area before. It was a barren land, bereft of much food. But in its simple eyes, it beheld all manner of debris not seen on these shores before. And thus, curious, it hopped along, picking at the various pieces of wood.

A shadow caught its attention. It looked up. It remembered these two-legged things, such as the one that sat not far away from it. It remembered it should run from them. It spread its wings to fly.

And instantly, it was seized in an invisible grip.

"No, no," Dreadaeleon whispered, pulling his arm back. The force that gripped the seagull drew it closer to him, the bird's movement completely wrenched up in panic. "I need your brain."

His voice was hot with frustration. He hadn't expected it to take nearly this long to seize a stupid bird that, by all accounts, should be infesting the shores like winged rats. But that was a momentary irritation, one quickly overrun by the sudden pain that lanced through his bowels.

His breath went short, his hand trembled and the seagull writhed a little as his attentions went to the agony rising into his chest. This was not normal, he knew; pain was the cost of magic overspent, and the ice raft he had wrought to deliver his companions certainly qualified. But those pains were mostly relegated to the brain and rarely lasted for more than a few hours. This particular agony that coursed through his entire being was new to him.

But not unknown.

_Stop it_ , he scolded himself. _You've got enough trouble without wondering about the Decay. You don't have it. Stop it. Focus on the task at hand. Focus on the seagull_.

The seagull, he thought as he drew the trembling bird into his lap, and its tiny, juicy, electric little brain.

Still, he hesitated as he rested a finger upon the bird's skull. More magic would mean more pain, he realised, and it seemed unwise to expend any energy on anything that wasn't guaranteed to find salvation from the sea. And, as magic went, avian scrying was as unreliable as they came.

Dreadaeleon had never found a bird that wasn't a bumbling, hunger-driven moron. He could sense the electricity in its brain now: straight, if crude, lines of energy suggesting minimal, single-minded activity. It was those lines that made birds easier to manipulate than the jumble of confused sparks that made up the human brain, but it also made them relatively pointless for finding anything beyond carrion and crumbs.

But carrion and crumbs were food. And, as his growling belly reminded him, food was not something they had managed to salvage.

He whispered a word. A faint jolt of electricity burst through his fingers, into the avian's skull. It twitched once, then let out a frightened caw. He could feel the snaps of primitive cognition, bursting in his own mind as their electric thoughts synchronised.

_Scared_ , they told him. _Scared, scared, scared, scared_.

"Fine," he muttered. "Go, then."

He released the bird, sending it flying out over the waters. He leaned back, closing his eyes. In his mind, he could feel the gull's presence, sense its location, know its thoughts as he felt each sputtering pop of thought in its tiny brain. All he needed to do now was wait; he could hold onto its signature for at least an hour.

A lance of pain shot through him. He winced.

_Or less_.

"What do you hope to achieve?" someone asked him.

"Animals search for food first. If there's any around here, I'll know about it," he replied, his thoughts preoccupied with the gull's.

"There are many places the Sea Mother's creatures go that you cannot."

"If I can tap into a seagull's _brain_ , I can certainly figure out how to get where he's going," he snarled. Only when his ire rose higher than his pain did he realise that the voice was not that of one of his companions.

But it was not unknown.

He turned about and saw her standing before him: tall, pale body wrapped in a silken garment, fins cresting about her head, feathery gills blended with emerald-colour hair. He looked up, agape, and the siren smiled back at him.

"I am pleased that you are well, lorekeeper," Greenhair said. The fins on the sides of her head twitched. "Or... are you?"

"Not so much now," he said. He tried to rise, felt a stab of pain and, immediately afterward, felt the urge to wince.

_Don't do it, old man_ , he warned himself. _Remember, she's tricky. She can get into your head. She can manipulate your thoughts. Stay calm. Don't think about the pain. She'll know... unless she already knows and is telling you how to feel now to further her agenda. Stop thinking. I SAID, STOP THINKING!_

"Be calm, lorekeeper," she whispered. "I do not come seeking strife."

"Yes, you're quite talented, aren't you? You find it without even searching for it," Dreadaeleon muttered. "You tricked us into going into Irontide after the tome and abandoned us when we had to fight for it."

"I was concerned for the appearance of—"

"I wasn't finished," he spat. "You _then_ came back after we had it and got into my head." He tapped his temple. " _My_ head, and tried to tell me to steal it for you."

She blinked. "You are finished now?"

" _And_ you smell like fish," he said. "There. Get out of my sight. I'm busy here."

"Seeking salvation for your companions?"

"Shut up," he muttered. He closed his eyes, attempted to seek out the gull's thoughts.

"That they might look upon you with the adoration that befits a hero?"

_Don't answer, old man. She'll twist your words first, your thoughts second and probably your bits last. Focus on the gull. Focus on finding help_.

He found the gull and listened intently to its electric pulse. There was a silence, then a burst, then a gentle sense of relief. A bowel movement.

_Good thing you didn't waste any energy on that. Oh, wait_.

"This is not the way, lorekeeper," she whispered. "You will find no salvation in the sea. This island is dead. It has claimed your other companions."

"Not all of them," he replied.

"You seek their approval? When they do not so much as care for the effort you expend for them? The pain you feel?"

"There is no pain. I'm fine."

"You are not. Something has broken within you, lorekeeper. A well of sickness rises inside your flesh."

"Nausea," he replied. "Sea air and sea trollops both make me sick."

"And you continue to harm yourself," she whispered. "For what? For them?"

Dreadaeleon said nothing. Yet he could feel her staring at him, staring past his skull, eyes raking at his brain.

"Or for her?" Greenhair said.

"Shut up," he muttered. "Go away. Go turn into a tuna or get harpooned or whatever it is you do when you go beneath the waves. I have business to attend to."

"As do they."

"What?"

He turned to her and found her staring down at the beach. He followed her gaze, down to the shore and the two people upon it. The people he had extended his power for, the people that he had put himself in pain for, the people he had magically lassoed and mentally dominated a filth-ridden sea-pigeon for. He saw them.

Embracing.

"But... he's a rat," he whispered. "And she's... she's..."

"She has betrayed you."

"No, they're just doing... they're..."

"And you are not," Greenhair said, slipping up behind him. "As you burn yourself with impure fire, as you expend yourself for them, they roll on each other like hogs."

"They just don't know," he said. "Once they see, they'll know, they'll see—"

"They didn't know when you saved them from the Akaneeds? When you kept them aloft with no concern for your own safety? Your own health? When will they notice?"

"When... when..."

"When you find the tome."

"What?" he asked.

"This island has barely any food. Even the creatures of the Sea Mother avoid it. But there is something else. The gull can find it. It calls to everything. It will call to the gull. The gull will call to you."

Her voice was a melodic serpent, slithering into his ears, coiling around his brain. He was aware of it, of her talents, of her treachery. Yet even fools occasionally had good ideas, didn't they? If he could find the tome, find it and show it to them, to her, she would know, she would know him. They would all know. They would see his power.

He closed his eyes, searched for the gull. He found it, circling somewhere out over the sea. Its eyes were down, its head was crackling as it spotted things bobbing in the water. It saw wood—wreckage, Dreadaeleon concluded, even if the gull couldn't comprehend it. It saw no food, yet remained entranced, circling lower toward the sea.

_Tome_.

He twitched; that shouldn't be possible. Birds had no idea what a tome was. They could not recognise it.

But it did, somehow; Dreadaeleon could feel it. It stared down into the depths, seeing it clearly as a stain of ink upon the pristine blue. It stared into the sea, past the wreckage and past the brine. It stared into the water, it stared into a perfect, dark square plainly visible even so far down as it was.

_Tome_.

The gull stared.

_Tome_.

The tome stared back.

And suddenly, Dreadaeleon heard it, felt it. Voices in his head, whispers that glided on stale air and whispering brine rather than electric jolts. A grasping arm that reached out, found the current that connected gull and wizard, and squeezed.

_Where is it_ , the voices whispered, _where is it? It was here ages ago. It spoke. It read. It knew. Tell us where it is. Tell us where it went. Tell us how it got there. Tell us. Tell us everything. Tell us who you are. Tell us what you're made of. Tell us of your tender meat and your little mind. Tell us of brittle bones and tears that taste salty. Tell us. Tell us everything. Tell us how you work. Tell us. Tell us. We will know. Tell us_.

He trembled, clenched his teeth so fiercely that they creaked behind his lips. His breath came in short, sporadic breaths. His head seared with fire, whispering claws reaching out to flense his brain and taste the electric-stained meat, tasting it for knowledge. He could hear the tome. He could hear it speak to him.

_TELL US_.

And then he heard himself scream.

"Dread?"

He hadn't recalled falling onto his back. He certainly hadn't noticed Greenhair leaving. And he was absolutely positive he would have seen Asper coming. And yet he was on his back, the siren vanished and the priestess was kneeling beside him, propping him up, staring at him with concern. His voice was a nonsensical croak, his head spinning as thoughts, his own and the gull's, sizzled in his skull.

"Are you all right?"

"No," he said, shaking his head to dispel the last sparks. "I mean, yes. Yes, perfectly fine."

"You don't"—she paused to cringe—"look it."

_Steady, old man_ , he reminded himself. _Don't act all helpless now. Don't let her know what's wrong_. He snarled inwardly. _What do you mean what's wrong? Nothing's wrong! Just a headache. Don't worry about it. Don't let her worry about it. And most importantly, don't pay attention to the urge to piss yourself_.

That proved a little harder. His bowels stirred at her touch, rigid with pain, threatening to burst like overfilled waterskins. Still, he bit back pain, water and screams as she helped him to his feet, resisting the urge to burst from any orifice.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Strain," he replied, shaking his head. "Magical strain."

"Bird magic, Denaos said."

" _Bird magic_ ," Dreadaeleon said, all but spitting. "Of course. It's nothing so marvellous as seizing control of another living thing's brain functions. It's _bird_ magic. What would he know?" He found himself glaring without willing it, the words hissing through his teeth. "What would _you_ know?"

"Dread..." She recoiled, as though struck.

"Sorry," he muttered. "Sorry, sorry. It's just... a headache."

_In the bowels_ , he added mentally, _the kind that makes you explode from both ends and probably kills you if it is what you think it is_. He shook his head. _No, no. Calm down. Calm down_.

"Of course," Asper said, sighing. "Denaos said you'd exerted yourself." She offered him a weak smile. "I trust you won't begrudge me if I say I'm glad you did?"

_You're probably going to develop some magical ailment where you begin defecating out your mouth and choke on your own stool and she's_ glad _?_

"I mean, I know it was a lot," she said, "but you did save us."

"Oh... right," he replied. "The ice raft. Yeah, it was... nothing."

_Nothing except the inability to stand up on your own power. Good show_.

"It's just a shame you couldn't save the others," she said. "Or... is that what you were doing with your bird magic?"

" _Avian scrying_ ," he snapped, on the verge of a snarl before he twitched into a childish grin. "And... yes. Yes, I was looking for them."

"Did you find anything?"

"Not yet."

"I suppose you wouldn't, would you?" She sighed, looking forlornly over the sea. "We were lucky to escape, ourselves. Anything left by the wreck would be devoured."

There was something in her that caused him to tense, or rather something _not_ there. Ordinarily, her eyes followed her voice, always a sharp little upscale at the end of each thought to suggest that she was waiting to be proven wrong, waiting for someone to refute a grim thought. If enough time passed, she would, and often did, refute herself, citing hope against the hopeless.

But such an expression was absent today, such an upscale gone from her voice. She spoke with finality; she stared without blinking. And she looked so very, very tired.

"They... they might be out there," he said. "Wouldn't Talanas watch over them?"

"If Talanas listened, we wouldn't be here in the first place."

And then, he saw it, in the seriousness of her eyes, the firm certainty in her jaw. The idealistic hope was removed from her eyes, that whimsical twinge that he was always certain indicated at least a minor form of brain damage was gone from her voice. She was a person less reliant on faith, if she had any at all anymore.

_She's stopped_ , he thought. _She doesn't believe in gods. Not right now, at least_.

There were a number of reactions that went through his mind: congratulate her on her enlightenment, rejoice in the fact that they could finally communicate as equals or maybe just speak quietly and offer to guide her. He rejected them all; each was entirely inappropriate. And nothing, _nothing_ , he knew, was a less appropriate reaction than the tingling he felt in his loins.

_Stave it off, stave it OFF_ , he told himself. _This is the absolutely_ worst _possible time for that_.

"Did you... feel something?" she asked suddenly.

" _Absolutely not_ ," he squealed.

She seemed to take no notice of his outburst, instead staring off into the distance. "Something... like I felt back at Irontide. Hot and cold..."

He quirked a brow; she _had_ sensed magic back then, he recalled, but many were sensitive to it without showing any other gifts. And the source at the time, a fire- and frost-spewing longface, was a bright enough beacon that even the thickest bark-neck would have sensed it.

This concerned him, though. He could feel nothing in the air, none of the fluctuating chill and heat that typically indicated a magical presence. He wondered, absently, if she might be faking it.

Her left arm tensed and she clenched at it, scratching it as though it were consumed by ants. A low whine rose in her throat, becoming an agonised whisper as she scratched fiercer and fiercer until red began to stain the sleeve of her robe.

"Dread," she looked up at him, certainty replaced by horror. " _What's happening?_ "

# _Eight_

# THE NATURALIST

The crawling thing picked its way across the sand, intent on some distant goal. It had six legs, two claws, two bulbous eyes and, apparently, no visible destination. Over the bones, over the tainted earth, over the fallen, rusted weapons it crawled, eyes always ahead, eyes never moving, legs never stopping.

Surely, Sheraptus reasoned, something so small would not know where it was going. Could it even comprehend the vastness of the worlds around it? The worlds beyond its own damp sand? Perhaps it would walk forever, never knowing, never stopping.

Until, Sheraptus thought as he lifted his boot over the thing, it became aware of just how small it was.

Then it happened: a change in the wind, a fluctuation of temperature. He turned and looked into the distance.

"There it is again," he muttered.

"Hmm?" his companion asked.

"You don't sense it?"

"Magic?"

" _Nethra_ , yes."

"I am attuned to higher callings, I am afraid."

"So you say," Sheraptus said.

"You have no reason to distrust me, do you?"

"Not as such, no." His lip curled up in a sneer. "That provides me little comfort."

"What is it that troubles you, if I may ask?"

"You may, thank you. A signature, a fleeting expenditure of strength. It's not what you'd call 'big', but rather... pronounced. It's a moth that flutters before the flame and disappears before I can catch it in my hands."

"A moth?"

"Yes. They do fly before flame, do they not?"

"They do." The Grey One That Grins smiled, baring finger-long teeth. "You seem to be fascinated with all things insect today."

"Ah, but did you not say that this thing—" He flitted a hand to the crawler.

"Crab."

"This crab. It is not an insect?"

"It is not."

"It has a carapace, many legs..."

"It does."

"Why is it not an insect, then?"

"Its identity is its own, I suppose."

Sheraptus glanced down to the sand and the tiny crab. "Why does it exist?"

"Hmm?"

"A tiny thing that moves in the same, meaningless direction as other tiny things, that looks exactly like other tiny things, but is not the same tiny thing as the others?" He quirked a brow. "I have never seen such a thing."

"They have no such things in the Nether?"

"None. Females are females. Males are males. Females kill. Males speak with _nethra_. This is how things are." He sighed, rolling his eyes. "This is what makes them so... dull."

"Hence our agreement."

"Naturally," Sheraptus said. He adjusted the crown on his head, felt the red stones inside it burn at his touch. "And while I am not ungrateful for your donations, I have some reservations."

"Such as?"

"This world... I have difficulty comprehending it. The Nether is dull, of course, but it is logical. It makes sense. This one..."

"What about it?"

"I suppose I'm mainly concerned with everyone's decision to do whatever they want."

"Expound?"

"This is supposedly an island of death, yes?"

"The war between Ulbecetonth's brood and the House of the Vanquishing Trinity left the land scarred. The taint of death is embroiled in its very earth. Nothing pure grows here. Nothing pure lives here."

"I believe you said, originally, that nothing lived here, period."

"Did I?" The Grey One That Grins smiled. "It likely seemed more dramatic at the time, the better to catch your interest. Apologies for the deception."

"Please, think nothing of it. My interest is certainly caught. But as we see, things do live here." He glanced down the beach. "Or did, anyway."

The earth there was a place of deeper death than even the ruinous battlefield of the beach could match. The earth was seared black, still smoking in places. Mingled amongst the burned earth were shapes consisting of two arms and two legs, their bodies twisted into ash that flaked off with each stray gust of wind. They were scarcely distinct from the blackened earth, let alone as Those Green Things they had started life as.

"Truth be told, they are among the source of my worries."

"Go on."

"They came down. They attacked me."

"You were on their land."

"Their land that nothing lives on."

"It was still theirs."

"But why? Why bother over such a land? Would it not make more sense to depart to a place where life persists?"

"If you'll recall, and I mean no disrespect in reminding you, they _did_ have such a land. You repurposed it."

"Your generosity is obliged, but I take no offence in the common term." Sheraptus shrugged. "The netherlings required their land. We took it."

"And why did you take it?"

"Because we are strong. They are weak. Why did they not simply flee from us?"

"Ah, I begin to see your puzzlement. May I pose a theory?"

"By all means."

"The term you seek is 'symbiosis'."

"Sym... bi... osis," he sounded it out. A smile of jagged teeth creased his purple lips. "I _like_ that word. What does it mean?"

"It is the condition in which, through mutual cooperation, one life-form supports another."

"Ah, now I am further confused. You'll have to pardon me."

"Not at all. Consider them..." The Grey One That Grins gestured to the burned corpses.

"Those Green Things," Sheraptus said, nodding. "Well, not so green anymore. What of them?"

"They did not abandon their land until they had no choice, because to abandon their land would mean their death. They cultivate the land, feed their trees, guard their waters. In return, the land provides them with fruit and fish to feed off of."

"Mm," Sheraptus hummed. "One almost feels poorly for what we did to them."

"Almost?"

"As I said, we required their land if we are to return your generous contributions."

"Please, don't make any mistake. The Martyr Stones are our gift to you." His companion gestured to the crown. "You have used them wisely thus far. We trust that you will use them wisely in days to come."

"Trust..." Sheraptus gazed skyward for a moment, his milk-white, pupilless eyes lighting up. "Ah. I believe I understand. Do you mind if I theorise?"

"Oh, please do."

"Symbiosis is what you believe us to be. You give us these stones, you lead us to this new green world and in return..."

"Go on."

"We kill the underscum. This... Kraken Queen of yours."

"You seem to grasp it quite well."

"Yet I remain puzzled."

"Oh?"

"Indeed. I am told there is a bigger, vaster world beyond these chunks of sand floating in this... it's called an ocean?"

"It is and there are."

"A bigger, vaster world filled with more beasts, more birds, more trees and more people and all their vast multitudes of invisible sky-people."

"Gods."

"Another word for 'stupid'."

"Agreed."

"And there are..." He looked to his companion, smirked. "Females there?"

"Many."

"Then why are Sheraptus and Arkklan Kaharn here on this desolate place? Why are we not out and learning more of this world?"

"I did request your presence here."

"Ah. I suppose the question then becomes, why are we listening to you?"

His vision was painted red as the _nethra_ surged through him. Crimson light leaked from his eyes, painting his companion as a dark blob against the ruby haze. The Martyr Stones in his crown blazed, the black iron they were set in growing warm with their response.

It had been the last sight Those Green Things had seen before they were reduced to ash. They had shrieked in their language, tried to crawl over each other to escape. The Grey One That Grins did not try to escape, though. The Grey One That Grins never moved unless he had to.

He thought he didn't have to move.

Sheraptus made people move.

Sheraptus was not pleased.

"Ah, but how would you make this world work for you?"

"I'd find a way."

"You did not find a way to reach this world. It was our searching that discovered the Nether before we found heaven."

"Heaven does not exist."

"Many suspect it does."

"Then they are weak."

"Weakness rules this world, Sheraptus. They believe in things that they themselves do not understand. You cannot hope to understand it, either. Not without us."

"And what do you provide?" Sheraptus asked, narrowing his fiery stare. "You send us on errands against the underscum. They are weak. The females hunger for greater fights."

"You suggested that they were dull for their hunger."

"What I said then and what I say now are different. I, too, tire of this pointless burning. The appeal of the Martyr Stones remains trivial, fleeting. I wish to know more of this land, and all I have discovered are useless relics from useless wars."

"May I dispute?"

"I'd rather you didn't."

"I must insist," the Grey One That Grins said. "Within these ruins lie secrets of the House, the methods they used to banish Ulbecetonth. We must seek them out if we are to destroy her."

"You mean if _I_ am to destroy her," Sheraptus replied. "You only seem to emerge when you require something else of me."

"I would entreat you to have patience with me. My presence is required at many places at once."

"The point remains, I have yet to see a reason to oblige you in this vendetta against your demons."

"You wish to see the world beyond this one? Very well. But know that Gods are strange things. People may not understand it, but they believe that the Gods will protect them in exchange for their devotion."

"Symbiosis."

"Precisely. And their devotions come with spears and swords, Sheraptus, and they are many. Arkklan Kaharn numbers how many? Five hundred?"

"That is as many as we've been able to bring through the Nether."

"Slay Ulbecetonth and you shall have more. We will put our resources behind you. We will open more doors to the Nether. We will point you to the seats of knowledge in this world. We will unleash you... if you simply perform this triviality for us."

Sheraptus stared at him for a time before he blinked. The stones ceased to burn. His eyes returned to their milky white.

"I suppose I can have patience for a while yet, then," he said.

"I am pleased we could reach an agreement. All else goes according to plan?"

"It does. Yldus is scouting the overscum city you wished us to. Vashnear combs this island with the Carnassials."

"And you?"

"I am here to speak to someone about a book," Sheraptus said, smiling.

"I was intending to inquire as to its status."

"I am pleased to have saved you the trouble."

"You would take no offence if I left now, then?"

"Unless you require something else of me."

"At the moment?"

"Or in the near future."

The Grey One That Grins tilted his head to the side, looking thoughtful. Or as thoughtful as Sheraptus suspected his companion was capable of looking.

"I have been made aware of certain presences upon the island," he said after a moment. "Peculiar creatures that should have died long ago."

"Beyond Those Green Things?"

"Far beyond. Humans."

"With all due respect to your awareness and attunements," Sheraptus said, "I suspect That Thing That Screams would have told me if any other elements arrived."

"I do not trust that creature."

"I would suggest, then, that you trust in my hold over her."

"As you say. Of course, should you find trust in my reasoning, I would ask that you do your best not to slaughter these humans. They continue to oppose Ulbecetonth and have dealt blows against her before."

Sheraptus quirked a brow. "These are the ones that were at Irontide?"

"The very same. Does this aggravate you?"

"Not entirely, no. The females lost were... females. They'd have been disappointed if they didn't die."

"And the male?"

"Cahulus was weak, apparently."

"I can trust your discretion, then?"

"Discretion..." Sheraptus hummed the word.

"Judgement."

"You can concede my judgement."

"I will settle for that, then." The Grey One That Grins turned to go, crawling upon his hands and feet. "I trust Vashnear will arrange for the usual transportation?"

"Of course."

"Very well, then. I leave things in your capabilities." The Grey One That Grins continued for another three paces before pausing and glancing over his emaciated shoulder. "Sheraptus?"

"Hm?"

"Symbiosis without certainty is faith."

"Faith being?"

"The ability to move in one direction without necessarily knowing where one is going."

"Weakness."

"The one that drives the world."

The Grey One That Grins said nothing more as he slinked down the rest of the beach, disappearing behind a dune. Sheraptus watched him go for as long as it took for him to feel it again: a light brushing of air against his cheeks, the faint warmth of fire screened through snow.

A moth's wings, flapping.

He recognised it as _nethra_ , albeit only a faint, fleeting trace of it. Weak as it was, though, the intent behind it was clear. With whatever pitiful power they had, someone was reaching out for him.

He smiled softly, narrowed his eyes and reached back.

As one, the fire erupted from his eyes as a wave of force swept out from his body. It sped along the sand, kicking it up in small waves of dirt. In a moment, it dissipated, but the force lingered. He watched it sweep over dunes, over beach, over puddle, following a distant, unseen goal.

He waited patiently.

He heard a scream, faint in the distance.

Female.

He smiled.

Dreadaeleon turned at her howl, seeing her clutching at her arm wildly.

" _What's happening?_ " Asper wailed. " _What is it?_ "

He was about to ask when he was struck by it a moment later. The force shot through him, reaching up into his body with a burning hand, seizing his bowels in intangible icy fingers and giving it a sharp twist.

_Keep it together, old man_ , he tried to tell himself. _Keep it together. She's in trouble now. Keep it together for her_. He took a step toward her, collapsed onto his knees. Breath was coming in rasping, thick gasps, the force slipping up to choke him from the inside. _FOR VENARIE'S SAKE, YOU WEAK LITTLE—_

His insult died with his thoughts as electricity gripped his skull, setting it rattling in its thin case of flesh and hair. For a fleeting moment, he was aware of the sensation, aware of what it meant. Someone was attempting to find his thoughts, to harness the electric impulse in his skull. The human mind was too complex for that, he knew, just as he knew that every experimental attempt to do so had ended in—

He screamed. He couldn't hear it. His ears were ringing. His vision was darkening.

He looked to his side. Asper was not screaming. Why wasn't she screaming? She was always screaming, always terrified. He was supposed to protect her now. Once he remembered how to use his legs, he decided, he would do just that. All he needed to do was remember how to do that, also how to breathe.

Asper was clutching her arm, obviously in pain, but speaking clearly. The certainty was still present in the set of her jaw, the determination in her face. But there was something else there, a glimmer of something in her eye. He recognised it; he wished he could remember what it meant.

With his last thought, he wondered how things could have gone so wrong. He was going to save everyone, save her. But now he was numb, barely aware of the earth moving under him. But as his vision darkened, he could see the gloved hands gripping his shoulders, pulling him along. He stared up into Denaos' face and summoned up the will for one final thought.

_You dumb asshole_.

# _Nine_

# PESTS

Five hundred and forty-nine patches of disease crawling on two legs, he thought as he stared down at the tiny port city beneath the setting sun.

Two hundred and sixty able to hold a weapon, with five hundred and twenty eyes that spoke of their inability to know how.

One hundred and three of them carrying fishing rods and nets instead, taking their aggressions out against an ocean that was far too kind to them.

Ninety and six of them infirm, indisposed or suffering from the delusion that their lack of external genitalia was an excuse to let others do the fighting.

Ninety remained, evenly split between visitors in short boats who believed that the glittering chunks of metal they traded for their fish and grain was what made their civilisation worthy of crushing other peoples beneath its boot, and the children...

_The children..._

Naxiaw scratched his chin, acknowledging the coarse scrawl of tattoos etched from beneath his lip to up over his skull.

Forty and five little, toddling future lamentations. Forty and five impending regrets on skinny, hairless legs. His eyes narrowed, teeth clenched behind thin lips. Forty and five future murderers, butchers, burners and desecrators.

He had counted.

_Diseases all_.

Naxiaw took note of them: where they stood, what weapons they carried and which ones would cower in pools of their own urine when he led the rest of them down into their streets. With a finger smeared with black dye, on a piece of tanned leather, he scrawled the city as he saw it from high on the cliff. His six-toed feet dangled over the ledge, kicking with carefree casualness as he plotted a death with each dab of dye.

Port Yonder, as the humans called it, was a city built on contempt.

It was a demonstration of stone walls and hewn wood that the _kou'ru_ bred with more rapidity than could be contained. It was proof that there would never be enough flesh and fish to satisfy their voracity. It was their assertion of contempt for the land, that they would desecrate and destroy in the name of building walls to cower behind, to raise filthy little children behind.

_Children_ , he knew, _that will grow up to consume more land, to spread the same disease_.

It was a city that proved beyond a doubt the threat of humanity.

He reached behind him, ran his long fingers down the long black braid that descended from his otherwise hairless head. He brushed the four black feathers laced into its tuft. He had earned them the day he proved that threats, no matter how unstoppable they might seem, could be killed.

The time for vengeance would be later; for the moment, he returned their contempt.

He sat brazenly out in the open, long having deemed subterfuge and camouflage unnecessary. The humans hadn't spotted him in the week he'd been there, and wouldn't. To do that, they would have to look up.

All it would take for him to be spotted would be for one of them to look up, to see his pale green skin, to squint until they saw the long, pointed ears with six notches carved into each length, to let eyes go wide and scream " _Shict!_ " They would all be upon him, then; they would kill him, find his map, realise there were more of him coming, assemble their forces, pass the word to their many outliers and empires.

And then, _Intsh Kir Maa_ , Many Red Harvests, and all the long and deliberate years that had gone into its planning would be foiled. The greatest collaboration amongst the twelve tribes would be ruined.

And the human disease, in all its writhing, gluttonous, greedy glory, would fester.

But for that to happen, they would have to look up.

Naxiaw couldn't help but feel slightly insulted at the ease with which the plan was developing. He had dared to venture down towards the city on more than one occasion, to slip a bit of venom into a drink or subtly jab someone from afar with a hair-thin dart. For his efforts, he had counted ten diseases cured. The venom acted quickly—a brief sickness, a swift death. That wasn't the problem.

What angered him was that the humans never seemed to care.

No alarms were raised, no weapons drawn, no oaths sworn as their companions coughed, cried and fell dead. They simply dumped the slain into the ocean and went on without sorrow, without hatred, without asking why.

He had hoped to share that with them: the anger, the fury, the pain. He hoped to return these gifts of anguish, the ones he had taken when the round-eared menace had come to his lands. But the humans would not accept it. They refused sorrow. They refused pain. They refused him.

Many Red Harvests would be a lesson as much as revenge. It would be the wailing of two people, linked forever in death.

But that would take time. That would take patience. For now, he simply sat on a cliff and continued to plot the end of a race as serenely as he might paint the sunset.

The _s'na shict s'ha_ had time. The _s'na shict s'ha_ had patience.

The _s'na shict s'ha_ knew how to paint a scene of vengeance.

His ears suddenly pricked up of their own volition, sensing the danger long before he did. Footsteps, the details becoming clearer with each hairsbreadth by which his ears rose. Four flat, heavy feet clad in metal, heavy weapons and skins of iron making their approach loud and unwieldy.

Humans. Careless foragers or vigilant searchers for a threat. It did not matter.

His eyes drifted to the thick Spokesman Stick resting at his side; he ran his stare along the twisting, macabre design burned into its polished and solid wood.

_Two more go missing_ , he told himself. _No one cares. Then there are only five hundred and forty-seven strains of disease to cure. Still..._ He folded up the tanned hide into a thin, solid square. With a yawn, he tossed it into his mouth and swallowed. _No sense in being careless_.

The footsteps stopped; he narrowed his eyes. They had found his camp.

"Someone else has come here," someone grunted.

He raised a hairless brow at the voice. It was thick, sharp, grating with an indeterminate accent, like two pieces of rusted metal hissing off one another. He was not so concerned with their unfamiliarity; the disease came in all shapes, sizes and voices. What gave him pause was the distinct, if harsh, femininity to their voices.

_Their females fight now?_ He had thought that to be a strictly shictish practice. _They are evolving..._

" _Saharkk_ Sheraptus sent others ahead of us?" the other one asked, grumbling. "He might have said something and spared us the—"

There was the sharp crack of metal on flesh, a growl instead of a shriek.

" _His_ motives are not for you to question," the first one snarled. "And he's called _Master_ now." The footsteps began again. "And we'll find out who wants to stomp here uninvited."

_Yes_ , Naxiaw thought as he rose, the stick heavy and hungry in his hand, _we shall_.

He didn't have to wait long before the footsteps and voices were both thunder in his ears. They were behind him now; he could hear them breathing.

"Ha!" The first one, he recognised, her voice being a bit sharper than the other's. "Look at that. They come in green."

"A green pinky," the other one grunted. "I don't remember them having long ears, neither."

His back was still turned and they hadn't attacked him yet. They were either supremely overconfident or desired a solution that ended without someone's entrails stuffed up their own nose. Either way, he thought as he turned about, they would be surprised.

Of all the things he had expected to meet his narrowed eyes, however, he did not expect to stare at these... things.

They _looked_ human, at least superficially, but were far too tall, their musculature obscene and exposed by the iron half-skins they wore. Their faces, lean and long as spears under hacked crowns of black hair, scowled at him with eyes of pure white, bereft of any colour or pupil.

The fact that they were purple was less of a concern than the swords at their waists. "And it has a stick," the one closest to him said. "A _stick_. What would even be the point of killing it?"

"Fun?" the other one asked.

"Ah, yes."

" _Sh'shaqk ne'warr, kou'ru_ ," Naxiaw hissed between clenched teeth.

Even if they weren't human, they were close enough for the insult to fit. And even if he refused to speak their language, he made sure his tone carried as much threatening edge as his raised stick.

At both, the two merely smiled broad white slashes filled with jagged teeth.

"Look at that," one said, as she shook a round iron shield loose on her gauntleted wrist. "It wants to fight."

"We have duties to attend to," the other one muttered, sliding a short spike of dark iron from her belt. "Make it quick."

" _Sh'shaqk ne'warr_ ," he repeated, hefting his Spokesman. _You don't belong here_.

If they didn't understand his words, they understood his intonation as they slid easily into rehearsed defensive stances. Their muscles trembled with constrained fury as they edged close to him, careful and cautious, every movement planned and poised, every inch of their lean bodies speaking of an iron discipline.

That lasted for all of three breaths.

" _AKH! ZEKH! LAKH!_ " Her shriek was accompanied by the metal roar of her spike clanging against her shield as she charged him. " _EVISCERATE! DECAPITATE! EXTERMINATE!_ "

The other one was close behind her, cursing her companion's recklessness and her own slowness. Naxiaw watched them come, watched the hate pour from their eyes over their shields, their spikes thirsty in their hands. He licked his lips, the stick resting comfortably and silently in his long fingers.

Then, he met their charge.

Tall as they were, they were compact creatures born of rocks, he recognised: too slow, too hard. He was _s'na shict s'ha_ , and he was long. As they rushed, he leapt, his long legs carrying him from the envious earth as their shields went up with their alarmed cries. His long toes curled over the rim of the leading one's shield, his long fingers caught her by what hair she had, his long arms pulled him up and over her head as her sword whined in a vicious chop that caught only the stench of his feet.

He smiled at the rearmost one's baffled expression. They always wore it when he did that.

As broad as his smile was, his stick's was broader, crueller. As he descended to the earth, the stick yearned to show its wooden teeth to her, to offer a brown-and-black kiss.

Naxiaw obliged it.

His stick struck her jaw with a loud crack, sent her staggering backward. He spared enough time to drive the stick's head into her exposed belly, throwing her farther back. He could hear the other one turning around, hear her spike whining for his blood.

When that whine became a roar, he fell to the ground, heard the spike shriek iron frustrations over his head. He pressed his hands flat against the sand, hurled himself from the earth as his feet curled into fists and legs lashed out like coiled vipers.

He felt skin, then muscle, a shocking amount of muscle. More importantly, he heard her stagger backward, counted off her steps. _One, two, three..._

Then came the scream, fading as she took one step too many over the cliff face. One moment for a self-satisfied smile, then he was back on his feet, his Spokesman in hand, ready to make a final argument.

The other longface was up, far sooner than he expected, and her weapon was ready. He glowered; she was strong, resilient, but still a _kou'ru_. All that separated this monkey from the ones below was that she was too stupid to run.

Instead she settled back, waited for him to come to her. He obliged, darting past her thrust, ducking her shield and coming up inside her guard. Half a moment to savour her snarl, another to make sure she could see his large canines.

Then he struck.

The Spokesman had few words for her. It was not a weapon made for long, savoury stabs or vicious, sloppy chops. It spoke in short bursts, rapping against her jaw, then her clavicle, then her arm. Its arguments were sound, though, and reverberated inside her bones, each vibration compounded by the one that soon followed.

Naxiaw had learned well the ways of the Spokesman, heard its arguments voiced to over four hundred _kou'ru_ , watched them all yield to its unwavering wooden logic. This one, he realised, was deaf. She recoiled from each blow, staggered backward, but her muscles did not fail beneath its logic, bones did not shake painfully against her blood. Each sound was solid, firm, where they should be hollow, reverberating.

_Like hitting a rock_ , he thought.

He swung harder, sending her reeling back two steps, then retreated. _Now she falls_ , he told himself. _The shock was keeping her upright. Now, she will die. Now, she will fall_.

She did neither.

Instead, the longface rolled her neck, letting the vertebrae crack within. She flashed him a smile, her jagged teeth stained with only the most meagre trace of red. All her crimson was in the malice of her narrowed eyes.

"Well," she hissed, "aren't you just _adorable_."

She charged. He sprang. This time her hand was in the air, her metal fingers wrapped about his ankle. He had never truly felt the earth until she gave a sharp tug and slammed him down upon it in a spray of sand.

_Strong_ , he thought. His eyes snapped open, body rolled as her spike came down to impale the earth beside him. _Too strong_. He swung the Spokesman up, and shock rolled down his arm as it kissed her shield. _Far too strong_. She swung her spike down and his wrist groaned under the strain as he narrowly caught it.

Another quick jerk and he was back on his feet, her turn to savour his baffled expression, his turn to see her jagged teeth. In a snap of her neck, his entire world became her teeth as she drove her head against his face. He felt bones snap under the thin flesh of his nose, blood spurt out in a great slobbery kiss.

"Ha!" she cackled. " _CRUNCH_."

Even as he reeled back, his own crimson trickling down upon the earth, he could not help but smile. Her own smile was undiminished, even as his blood painted her face in a spattering red mask.

They always looked that way, right before it started to burn.

Her grin turned to angry befuddlement, then to anger proper, and then back to shock as her smile grew wider, skin stretching tight about her face. He savoured each twitch, each expression, each moment before it invariably ended the same way it always did...

"It burns," she grunted. "It... it _burns!_ "

His venom-laced blood went to work with hungry zeal. Her grunt twisted to a shriek as she dropped her sword and began to claw at her face. The skin was drawn tight now, growing redder as the blood sizzled beneath the purple flesh. Her metal fingers raked wildly, drawing out great gouts as she sought to rip the poison out from under her flesh.

The long-faced creature collapsed to her knees and he saw his opportunity.

His knee led his leap, driving her gauntlet deeper into her face and knocking her to the ground. Her neck was a twisting snake, writhing as she ignored the blow and continued to shriek into her hand.

The _s'na shict s'ha_ knew how to kill snakes.

His foot was up and curled into a fist in one breath, then down again in one crunching, choked gurgle. The longface ceased to writhe, ceased to shriek, but her hand did not leave her face. _Just as well_ , Naxiaw thought; he had seen the seething red mass beneath those digits before. It had lost its appeal after he had earned his first feather

There was little time for it, anyway. His ears pricked up again, sensing the sound of metal scraping up sand, cursing from behind.

_Oh, right..._

"Clever, clever..." He turned and saw that the longface's voice matched the anger painted on her face. "But cleverness doesn't spill blood."

He had barely noticed her hand without the large iron spike or heavy metal gauntlet that had been lost in her near-fall. He continued to ignore it right up until it slid behind her back and came out in a flash of jagged metal, the weapon flying from her hand and chased by her shriek.

" _THIS DOES!_ "

The strike was too fast to dodge; he could only angle his shoulder. Even that wasn't enough to stop the pain. The blade carved through with a beaming iron smile, ripping through green flesh and drawing great gouts of red. He shrieked, staggered backward, clutching his shoulder as the Spokesman collapsed to the earth, at a loss for words.

He could barely muster the consciousness through the pain to see her hand, which had plucked up her companion's weapon. The blow came swiftly and fiercely, and he narrowly managed to seize her by the wrist to stop it, biting back the pain lancing through his arm.

And still, the spike drew ever closer. She was spiteful in her attack, but aware enough of his condition to smile. She need only press until the pain became too much to bear. He, too, was aware of her advantage, but more aware of the vein that throbbed under her purple wrist. It pulsed, pumping all the blood she had into her hand, with an inviting wriggle.

Naxiaw was not one to disoblige.

Lips parted, head jerked, canines gnashed and the longface screamed. Her life came spurting out in short, sporadic bursts as the sword fell to the earth. Her other hand came up to strike his head with its heavy gauntlet, but he narrowly caught it before it could crack his skull open.

He had only given her frenzy a desperation that drove her to even more vicious strength. She continued to press her attack, her life leaking out with every twitch of her muscles, intent on driving him into the earth itself. She would succeed, he knew, unless he ended it quickly.

He eyed the spike on the ground.

Legs began to buckle under him, but he pushed up with them, springing off the ground and curling six long toes around her belt buckle. His other leg craned down, toes twitching eagerly, violently. The longface spared enough hatred to glance at them, her eyes going wide as she saw his foot grasp the spike by its hilt and, on a quivering green leg, bring it back up.

"No!" she screamed. Her voice grew louder as her arms pressed harder as the spike drew closer. " _No, no, no, NO! That's not fair!_ "

" _Shict n'dinne uah crah_ ," he replied. _Shicts do not fight fair_.

His leg twisted; he ignored the cracking sound as he brought the spike up between them. He sucked in his belly to allow his foot to pass up, past his chest, the spike angling upward sharply and aiming for a writhing, shrieking part of her.

" _CHEAT!_ " she roared. " _I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL RIP OFF YOUR—_ "

His leg twitched. She stopped moving. He felt blood trickle down from below her jaw and smear his foot.

His leap from her falling body was less nimble than he had hoped; his shoulder stung and his legs buckled as he hit the ground. The fight had gone on too long, his body had taken too much of a toll. If they had been humans, he would have walked away whistling a tune. But they were... These things were...

He ran a hand over his bald scalp. He did not know. But he must tell the others.

He plucked up his stick from the earth. His canoe lay hidden in the reeds nearby. All he need do was reach it, row out until he could concentrate enough to reach the other _s'na shict s'ha_ through the Howling. From there, they could make it to friendly territory, the forests of the sixth tribe, maybe. They could deliver their report; Many Red Harvests would gain a new, purple crop to reap.

_Yes_ , he told himself as the blood seeped out of his shoulder and sizzled on the ground, _this will work. Everything will—_

"Interesting..."

_No... no, no, no!_

As fervently as he tried to deny them, as much as he tried to shut them from his sight, from his mind, every time he blinked and opened his eyes, they were still there.

A dozen long, purple faces, staring back at him.

"A rather unique approach to combat, I must say," the one in the lead said.

If he didn't know what the other ones were, Naxiaw might have thought it to be a female surrounded by burly, hulking males. The scrawny effeminate creature swathed in violet robes looked tiny against the sea of iron skins behind him. Only his goatee gave him away, the colour of bone instead of night like the hair of the females behind him, as he stroked it contemplatively.

"It looks surprised," the female beside him snickered.

This one stood taller and more muscular than any of the ones present, carrying a massive wedge of steel hacked and hammered into a single, haggard edge. The smile she levelled at Naxiaw's very visible shock was no less crude or cruel.

"Oh, come on," she said, her laughter deep and grating. "You thought we only sent two up here? Who would do that?"

"I am not sure it understands you," the goateed male said, leaning forward slightly. "I do not think it is even human." His face twisted up, puzzled. "What is it, anyway?"

"No idea," the large female said, hefting her giant blade over her shoulder. "Better kill it."

"I suppose."

Naxiaw did not wait for the war cry, not the tensing of muscle or the groan of iron skin. He exploded first, charging, his stick held high, his plan a dizzy, swirling collection of images inside a head that swam from blood loss.

_The male leads_ , he told himself. _Kill the male. He looks weak. One blow. That's all it will take. Kill him, break through, run to the water, drown. The others will find you, they'll pull the map out of your stomach. Don't watch the female. Watch him_.

The male did not move at this sudden charge, instead raising a single white eyebrow. Had Naxiaw glanced to the side, shifted his eye half a hair's breadth, he would have seen the females backing away. The fear that should have been on their faces was replaced with morbid bemusement, as though they expected something bloody and glorious to happen.

But Naxiaw did not see that.

_Watch him. Kill him. Kill the male_.

The male's lips started to move, just barely, beginning as only a few twitches. His eyes shut, not with the tightness of panic, but with a gentleness that suggested some kind of boredom. His breath leaked from his mouth in faintly visible lines of mist.

_Kill him_.

The male's eyes opened, milky whites gone and replaced with a burning crimson energy that poured out of his gaze. Naxiaw's stick was up, feet off the ground. It was too late to worry about the crimson, too late to do anything about the inflation of the male's chest as he inhaled deeply, too late to do anything but strike.

_One blow_.

But that would come far too late.

The male's face split in half with the opening of his mouth; the mist poured from his throat on echoing words that bore no meaning to Naxiaw. The chill that enveloped his body, the frost that formed on his skin—those had meaning.

His feet struck the earth, far, far heavier than when they had left it. The blood crystallised in blackish smears, the healthy green of his skin turned quickly to a light blue. The Spokesman felt light in a hand gone numb. His muscles creaked, cracked under his skin. His jaw opened in a cry, of war or of fear he knew not, and he found he could not close it again.

Then he could not move at all.

When the mist cleared, he saw the male, eyes a disinterested white again. The longface glanced to the side, noting the Spokesman, a finger's length from his head, and clenched in a frozen blue grip. Paying little attention to that, he reached out and plucked something from beneath Naxiaw's broken nose.

"Interesting," he muttered, regarding the tiny little crimson icicle. Separated from the shict's body, it quickly became liquid, sizzling between the longface's fingers. He hissed and shook his hand. "Envenomed blood... curious." He leaned forward and studied Naxiaw intently. "That may explain why this one is still alive, despite being frozen." He rapped a knuckle against Naxiaw's forehead, smiling at the tinkling sound. "It is not a pink. They could not survive such _nethra_."

"Well, I could have told you that. I mean, it's _green_." The large female chuckled. "No wonder you're in charge, Yldus."

"Hush, Qaine," the male called Yldus muttered, his voice lacking her snarling ferocity. "Whatever it is, Sheraptus will want to look at it closer." He glanced over his shoulder to a pair of nearby females. "You and you, take it _carefully_ back to the ship. And do be careful not to let any extremities break off."

"The _rest_ of you," the female called Qaine growled, sweeping her white-eyed glower over the remaining females, "retrieve ink and parchment. Remain here and take note of the city's defences: numbers, weapons, positions, _everything_. Master Sheraptus demands thoroughness." Her eyes narrowed. "And while I remain appreciative of a female's need to spill blood, I remind you that your duty is reconno... reconna..."

"Reconnaissance," Yldus sighed.

"Whatever," she snarled. "You are _not_ to be seen. Whoever objects answers to me. Whoever violates this order... answers to Sheraptus." Her grin broadened at the stiffness that surged through them. "Get to work, low-fingers. We return in days."

"With an army behind us," Yldus added, his face a long, grim frown.

There were grunts of salute, the shuffling of metal as the females reorganised themselves. Naxiaw could not turn his neck, could not even think to turn his neck. He could barely muster the worry for such a thing, either. His mind felt distant, as though whatever rime covered his body also seeped into his skull, past the bone and into his brain.

The sensation of movement was lost to him. He could not recognise the sky as two females gripped him by his arms and legs and tilted him onto his back. They proceeded to carry him down the hill, behind Yldus and Qaine, as though he were little more than a fleshy blue piece of furniture.

" _Days_ , she says," one of them muttered, her voice muted to his ears. "How does anyone expect us to wait that long?"

"The Master demands patience," the other replied.

"The Master demands a lot," the first one growled. "He never asks the females to hold their iron." She glowered. "Rarely does he ask _netherling_ females to do anything for him, so absorbed with the pinks..."

"No one questions the Master," the other one snarled. "Leave complaining to low-fingers." She glanced over her shoulder at the remaining females. "Weaklings." She glanced at Naxiaw, stared into his wide, rime-coated eyes. "This thing is hardly heavier than a piece of metal. How did it kill the other two?"

"As you said, they were low-fingers pretending to be real warriors. They should have stuck with their weakling bows instead of thinking they knew how to use swords." She snorted, spat. "They die first when we attack."

"They can't even speak right. What was it she said before she died?"

"'Eviscerate, decapitate, exterminate.'"

"That can't be right. It's 'eviscerate, decapitate, annihilate,' isn't it?"

"Right. Exterminate means to crush something under your heel and leave its corpse twitching in a pile of its own innards. It is what humans do to insects."

"What does 'annihilate' mean?"

"To leave nothing behind. Low-fingers can't even remember the stupid chant." The other one hoisted Naxiaw higher as a sleek, black vessel drifted into view on the beach below. "That's why they're dead."

# _Ten_

# DREAMING IN SHRIEKS

Lenk had never truly been in a position to appreciate nature before. It was always something to be overcome: endless plains and hills, relentless storms and ice, burning seas of trees, sand, salt and marsh. Nature was a foe.

Kataria had always chided him for that.

Kataria was gone now.

And Lenk wasn't any closer to appreciating nature because of it. The moonlight peered through the dense foliage above, undeterred by the trees' attempts to keep it out. The babbling brook that snaked through the forest floor became a serpent of quicksilver, slithering under roots, over tiny waterfalls, to empty out somewhere he simply did not care.

When he had found it and drank, he had thanked whatever god had sent it. When he used it to soothe his filthy wound, promises of conversion and martyrdom had followed.

Now, the stream was one more endless shriek in the forest's thousand screaming symphonies. His joy had lasted less than an hour before he had began to curse the Gods for abandoning him in a soft green hell.

It was murderous, noisy war in the canopy: the birds, decrepit winged felons pitting their wailing night songs against the howling and shaking of trees of their hatred rivals, the monkeys.

His eyes darted amongst the trees, searching for one of the noisy warriors, any of the disgusting little things. His sword rested in his lap, twitching in time with his eyelids as he swept his gaze back and forth, back and forth like a pendulum.

None of them ever emerged. He saw not a hair, not a feather. _They might not even be there_ , he thought. _What if it's all just a dream, a hallucination before Gevrauch claims me?_ A shrill cry punctured his ears. _Or could I ever hope to be that lucky?_

He clenched his scavenged tuber like a weapon, assaulting his mouth with it. It was the only way he could convince himself to eat the foul-tasting fibrous matter. Kataria had taught him basic foraging, in between moments of regaling him how shicts were capable of laying out a feast from what they found in mud.

_She could have found something else here_ , he thought. _She could have found some delicious plant_. " _Eat it," she would have said, "it'll help your bowel movements." Always with everyone's bowel movements..._

_No_ , he stared down at the floor, _always with_ my _bowel movements_.

He wasn't sure why that thought made him despair.

" _But she's dead now. They all are_."

The voice came and went in a fleeting whisper, rising from the gooseflesh on his arm. It had grown fainter through the fevered veil that swaddled his brain, coming as a slinking hush that coiled around his skull before slithering into silence.

He supposed he ought to have been thankful. He had long wished to be free of the voice, of its cruel commands and horrific demands. Now, as he sat alone under the canopy, he silently wished that it might linger for a moment, if only to give him someone to talk to preserve his sanity.

He paused mid-chew, considering the lunacy of that thought.

He grumbled, continuing to chew. _It's not as though you could ever preserve your sanity talking to the others, either. If anything talking to Kat would only drive you madder in short order_.

" _It matters not_ ," the voice whispered. " _She's drowned, claimed by the deep. They all are. They all float in reefs of flesh and bone; they all drift on tides of blood and salt_."

Lenk had never recalled the voice being quite so specific before, but it slithered away before he could inquire. In its wake, fever creased his brows, sent his brain boiling.

_That isn't right_ , he told himself. The voice made him cold, not hot. It was the fever, no doubt, twisting his mind, making his thoughts deranged. _Of course, your thoughts couldn't have been too clear to begin with_.

There was a rustle in the leaves overhead, a creak of a sinewy branch as something rolled itself out of the canopy to level a beady, glossy stare at him. It hung from a long, feathery tail, tiny humanlike hands and feet dangling under its squat body. Its head rolled from side to side, rubbery black lips peeling back in what appeared to be a smile as its skull swayed on its neck in time with its tail.

Back and forth, back and forth...

_It's mocking me_ , Lenk thought, his eyelid twitching. _The monkey is mocking me_. He put a hand to his brow, felt it burn. _Keep it together. Monkeys can't mock. They don't have the sense of social propriety necessary to upsetting it in the first place. That makes sense, doesn't it? Of course it does. Monkeys have no sense of comedic timing. It's not in their nature..._

He stared up, found his tongue creeping unbidden to his cracked lips.

_Their juicy... meaty nature_.

His sword was in his hands unbidden, glimmering with the same hungry intent as his fever-boiled eyes, licking its steel lips with the same ideas as he licked his own rawhide mouth.

The monkey swung tantalisingly back and forth, back and forth, bidding him to rise, stalk closer to the tiny beast, his sword hanging heavily. It wasn't until he was close enough to spit on it that the thing looked at him with wariness.

"Don't look at me like that," he growled. "This is nature. You sit there and swing like a little morsel on a string, I bash your ugly little face open and slurp your delicious monkey brains off the ground."

The beast looked at him and smiled a human smile.

"Now, doesn't that seem a bit hypocritical?" it asked in a clear baritone.

Lenk paused. "How do you figure?"

"Are you not aware of how close the families of beasts and man are?" the monkey asked, holding up its little paws. "Look at our hands. They both suggest something, don't they? The same fleeting, insignificant, inconsequential lifespan through us both..."

"We are _not_ close, you little faeces-flinger. Mankind was created by the Gods."

"That sort of renders your point about 'nature' a bit moot, doesn't it? Gods or nature?" The monkey waggled a finger. "Which is it?"

"That _isn't_ what I meant and you know it!" Lenk snarled, jabbing a finger at the monkey. "Look, don't argue with me. Monkeys should _not_ argue. That's a rule."

"Where?"

" _Somewhere_ , I don't know."

"What is the desire to be shackled by rules, Lenk? Why did mankind create them? Was the burden of freedom too much to bear?"

"And if monkeys shouldn't argue," Lenk snarled, "they _damn_ well shouldn't make philosophical inquiries."

"The truth is," the monkey continued, "that freedom _is_ just too much. Freedom is twisting, nebulous; what one man considers it, another does not. It's impossible to live when no one can agree what living is."

"Shut up."

"Thusly, mankind _created_ rules. Or, if you choose to believe, had them handed down to them by gods. This wasn't for the sake of any divine creation, of course, but only to make the thought of life less unbearable, so that these thoughts of freedom didn't cripple them with fear."

"Shut up!" Lenk roared, clutching his head.

"We both know why you want me to be silent. You've already seen this theory of freedom in action, haven't you? When a man is free, _truly_ free, he can't be trusted to do what's right. The last time you saw someone that was free—"

"I said..." Lenk pulled his sword from the ground. "Shut up."

"He attacked a giant sea serpent and caused it to sink your boat, killing everyone aboard and leaving you alone."

" _Shut up!_ "

Lenk's swing bit nothing but air, its metal song drowned out by the chattering screeches and laughter of the creatures above. He swung his gaze up with his weapon, sweeping it cautiously across the branches, searching for his hidden opponent.

Back and forth, back and forth...

"It's very bad form to give up the argument when someone presents a counterpoint," Lenk snarled. "Are you afraid to engage in further discourse?" He shrieked, attacked a low-hanging branch and sent its leaves spilling to the earth. "You're too good to come down and fight me, is that it?"

" _Now_ ," a voice asked from the trees, " _why is it that you solve everything with violence, Lenk? It never works_."

"It seems to work to shut people up," Lenk replied, backing away defensively.

" _That's not a bad point, is it? After all, Gariath isn't talking anymore, is he? Then again, neither are Denaos, Dreadaeleon, Asper... Kataria..._ "

"Don't you talk about them! _Or_ her!"

He felt his back strike something hard and unyielding, felt a long and shadowy reach slink down toward his neck. He whirled around, his sword between him and the demon as it stared at him with great, empty whites above a jaw hanging loose.

"Abysmyth..." Lenk gasped.

The creature showed no recognition, showed nothing in its stare. Its body—that towering, underfed amalgamation of black skin stretched tightly over black bone—should have been exploding into action, Lenk knew. Those long, webbed claws should be tight across his throat, excreting the fatal ooze that would kill him.

"Good afternoon," Lenk growled.

The Abysmyth, however, did nothing. The Abysmyth merely tilted a great fishlike head to the side and uttered a question.

"Violence didn't work, did it?"

"We haven't tried yet!"

The thing made no attempt to defend himself as Lenk erupted like an overcoiled spring, flinging himself at the beast. _My sword can hurt it_ , he told himself. _I've seen it happen_. Even if nothing else could, Lenk's blade seemed to drink deeply of the creature's blood as he hacked at it. Its flesh came off in great, hewed strips; blood fell in thick, fatty globs.

"Is the futility not crushing?" the creature asked, its voice a rumbling gurgle in its rib cage. "You shriek, squeal, strike—as though you could solve all the woes and agonies that plague yourself and your world with steel and hatred."

"It tends to solve _most_ problems," Lenk grunted through a face spattered with blood. "It solved the problem of your leader, you know." His grin was broad and maniacal. "I killed her... it. I took its head. I killed one of your brothers."

"I suppose I should be impressed."

"You're not?"

"Not entirely, no. The Deepshriek has three heads. You took only one."

"But—"

"You killed one Abysmyth. Are there not more?"

"Then I'll take the other two heads! I'll kill every last one of you!"

"To what end? There will always be more. Kill one, more rise from the depths. Kill the Deepshriek, another prophet will be found."

"I'll kill them, too!" Lenk's snarl was accompanied by a hollow sound as his sword sank into the beast's chest and remained there, despite his violent tugging. " _ALL OF THEM! ALL OF YOU!_ "

"And then what? Wipe us from the earth, fill your ears with blood and blind yourself with steel. You will find someone else to hate. There will never be enough blood and steel, and you will go on wondering..."

"Wondering... what?"

"Wondering why. What is the point of it all?" The creature loosed a gurgle. "Or, more specifically to your problem, you'll never stop wondering why she doesn't feel the way you do... You'll never understand why Kataria said what she did."

Lenk released his grip on his sword, his hands weak and dead as he backed away from the creature, his eyes wide enough to roll out of his head. The Abysmyth, if it was at all capable of it, laughed at him with its white eyes and gaping jaw.

"How?" he gasped. "How do you know that?"

"That is a good question."

The Abysmyth's face split into a broad smile.

_Abysmyths can't smile_.

"A better one, however," it gurgled, "might be why are you attacking a tree?"

"No..."

Words could not deny it, nor could the sword quivering in its mossy flesh. The tree stared back at him with pity, wooden woe exuding through its eyes.

_Trees don't have eyes_. He knew that. _Trees don't offer pity! Trees don't talk!_

"Steady." His breathing was laboured, searing in his throat and charring his lungs black inside him. "Steady... no one's talking. It's just you and the forest now. Trees don't talk... monkeys don't talk... people talk. You're a people... a person." He rubbed his eyes. "Steady. Things are hazy at night. In the morning, everything will be clearer."

"They will be."

_Don't turn around_.

But he knew the voice.

It was her voice. Not a monkey's voice. Not a tree's voice. Not a voice inside his head. Her voice. And it felt cool and gentle upon his skin, felt like a few scant droplets of water flicked upon his brow.

And he had to have more.

When he turned about, the first thing he noticed was her smile.

"We never get to watch the mornings, do we?" Kataria asked, sliding a lock of hair behind her long ear. "It's always something else: a burning afternoon, a cold dawn, or a long night. We never get to sit down at just the right time when normal people get up."

"We're not normal people," he replied, distracted.

It was difficult to concentrate with every step she took closer to him. The moonlight clung to her like silk slipped in water, hugging every line of her body left exposed by her short green tunic. Her body was a battle of shadow and silver. He felt his eyes slide in his sockets, running over every muscle that pressed against her skin, counting every shallow contour of her figure.

His gaze followed the line that ran down her abdomen, sliding to the shallow oval of her navel. His stare lingered there, contemplating the translucent hairs that shimmered upon her skin. The night was sweltering.

And she did not sweat a single drop.

When he returned from his thoughts, she was close, nearly pressed against him.

"We aren't," she replied softly. "But that doesn't mean we must be expected to not enjoy a morning, does it? Don't we deserve to see the sun rise?"

His breath, previously stale with disease, drew in her scent on a cool and gentle inhale. She smelled pleasant, of leaves on rivers and wind over the sea. His eyelids twitched in time with his nostrils, as though something within him spastically flailed out in an attempt to seize control of his face and turn it away from her.

"This doesn't sound like you." His whisper was a thunderous echo off her face. "Not after what you said on the boat."

"I regret those words," she replied.

"You never regret anything."

"Consider my problems," she said. "I am just like you. Small, weak and made of the same degenerate meat. I share your fears, I share your terrors..."

"This isn't you," Lenk whispered, his voice hot and frantic. "This isn't you."

"And you"—she ignored him as her hands went to the hem of her shirt, her face split apart with a broad smile—"share my meat."

His confusion was lost in her cackle, attention seized by her hands as they pulled her tunic up over her head and tossed it aside, exposing the slender body beneath. His eyes blinked wildly of their own volition, and with each flutter of the eyelids, she changed beneath him. Her breasts twitched and writhed under his gaze for three blinks.

By the fourth, they blinked back at him.

Eels, perhaps? Snakes? He could contemplate their nature for one more blink before they launched from her chest, jaws gaping in silent, gasping shrieks forced between tiny, serrated teeth. His own scream, he felt, was nothing more than a fevered sucking of air through the hole that was quickly torn in his throat by their vicelike jaws.

His hands were iron, their bodies were water. He slapped, clawed, raked at them. They chewed, rent, ripped his flesh, brazenly ignoring his desperation. He felt blood weep from his face and mingle with his sweat in thick, greasy tears.

He collapsed under the assault of their teeth and her shrieking laughter, curling up like a terrified, squealing piglet, marinating. He shivered through his tensed body, expecting the teeth to return at any moment and start raking his back and chewing on his spine.

The agony never came. Nor did the death he was certain would come from having one's face torn off and eaten. He reached up and touched his face, feeling greasy and sticky skin beneath. He looked up.

She, or whatever had been posing as her, was gone.

Shaking, he pulled himself to his hands and feet and crawled to the brook, peering in. His face was red, smeared with blood, but from long lines that raced down his cheeks. Long lines, he thought as he noticed his hands, that perfectly matched the strip of fingernails glutted with skin.

Though it seemed slightly redundant to say so after engaging in philosophical debate with a simian and committing bodily assault on a tree, Lenk felt the need to collapse onto his back and mutter in a feverish whisper.

"You're losing it, friend."

" _Understatement_."

Lenk blinked at the voice, coldly familiar after such a long and fiery silence inside his head. He fought the urge to smile, to revel in the return of a more intimate madness. It didn't matter how hard he strained to resist, though; the voice sensed it.

" _Seems pointless to try to resist_."

"Where were you?" Lenk asked.

" _Always with you_."

"Then you saw... all that?"

" _Know what you know_."

"Your thoughts?"

" _Our thoughts_."

"You know what I meant."

" _The point is no less valid. Nothing that has happened tonight was real_."

"It seemed so—"

" _It wasn't_."

"How do you figure?"

" _For one_ , she's _dead. Fact_."

"It's a distinct possibility."

" _A certainty. Listen to reason_."

"Greenhair said she didn't find any other bodies. It's perfectly sane to believe the others might be alive."

" _One would be hard-pressed to take advice on sanity from he who hears voices_."

"Point."

" _Referring to your dependence on them. Why bother insisting that they live?_ "

"I... need them. They watch my back, help me during the hard times."

" _We have each other_."

" _We_ have nothing _but_ hard times."

" _Their deaths are clearly a sign from heaven. We waste time and effort mourning them_."

"No one's mourning anyone yet. They could still be alive."

" _We could be back in Toha right now if not for them, the book safe and away where it belongs and our body aching to wreak vengeance upon the next blight that stains the earth. They are a hindrance_."

"No, they aren't."

" _It is_ them _who needs_ us. _They wouldn't survive without us. They_ didn't _survive without us. They are useless_."

"No, they aren't!"

" _We have our duties. We have our blights to cleanse. The demons fear us, fear what we do to them. We were created to cleanse the earth of impurities. These companions can only be called thus because they were considerate enough to cleanse themselves for us. They're better off dead_."

" _No, they aren't!_ "

The last echoes of the voice vanished, forced out of his mind as he threw himself into a fervent rampage of thought. He sprang to his feet, began to pace back and forth, muttering to himself.

"Think, think... you don't need that thing. Think... it's hard to think. So hot..." He snarled, thumped his temple. " _Think!_ This isn't just fever causing the hallucinations. How do you know?" He ran a finger at one of his scratches. "Well, it makes sense, doesn't it?

"No," he answered himself. " _Nothing_ makes sense." He gritted his teeth, the effort of thought seeming to cause his brain to boil. "You were hallucinating strange things, thoughts that never occurred to you before. Why is that odd?

"Because hallucinations are a product of the mind, are they not?" He nodded vigorously to himself. "You can't hallucinate something you don't know, can you?" He shook his head violently. "No, not at all. You can't hallucinate monkeys with philosophical ideas or trees with latent desires for peace, or...

"Kataria." He blinked, eyes sizzling with the effort. "She wasn't wearing her leathers when you saw her. You've never seen her without them, have you? No, you haven't. Well, maybe once, but you always think of her in them, don't you?" He threw his head back. "What does all this say to us? Hallucination of things that are _not_ the product of your disease or your mind? Either you're dead and this is some rather infinitely subtle and frustrating hell as opposed to the whole 'lakes of fire and sodomised with a pitchfork' thing, or, much more likely..."

" _Someone else is inside your head_."

His breath went short at the realisation. The world seemed very cold at that moment.

He glanced down at the brook. Eyes cloudy with ice stared back. A thin, frozen sheet crowned the water. As he leaned down to inspect it, it grew harder, whiter, louder.

_Ice doesn't talk_.

But this one did, voices ensconced between each crackling hiss as the frost formed thicker, denser. They spoke in hushes, as though they groaned from a place far below the ice, far below the earth. And they spoke in hateful, angry whispers, speaking of treachery, of distrust. He felt their loathing, their fury, but they spoke a language he only barely understood in fragments and whispers.

He stared intently, trying to make them out. There was desperation in them, as though they dearly wanted him to hear and would curse him with their hoary whispers if he didn't expend every last ounce of his will to do so.

As far as events that made him question his sanity went, this one wasn't the worst.

"What?" he whispered to it. "What is it?"

" _Survive_ ," something whispered back.

" _Yo! Sa-klea!_ "

" _What_?" Lenk whispered.

" _Didn't say anything_ ," the voice replied.

"Not you. The ice." He looked up, glancing about. "Or... someone."

" _Dasso?_ "

"Hide," Lenk whispered.

" _Sound advice_ ," the voice agreed.

Too weary to run, Lenk limped behind a nearby rock, snatching up his sword as he did. No sooner had he pressed his belly against the forest floor than he saw the leaves of the underbrush rustle and stir.

Whatever emerged from the foliage did so with casual ease inappropriate for such dense greenery. Its features were indecipherable through the gloom, save for its rather impressive height and lanky, slightly hunched build.

_Denaos?_ He quickly discounted that thought; the rogue wouldn't enter so recklessly. Any further resemblance the creature might have borne to Lenk's companion was banished as it set a long-toed, green foot into the moonlit clearing.

Even as it stepped fully into the light, Lenk was at a loss as to its identity. It stood tall on two long, thick legs, like a man, but that was all the resemblance to humanity it bore. Its scales, like tiny emeralds sewn together, were stretched hard over lean muscle, exposed save for the loincloth it wore at its hips, from which a long, lashing tail protruded.

Its head, large and reptilian, swung back and forth, two hard yellow eyes peering through the darkness; a limp beard of scaly flesh dangled beneath its chin. It held a spear, little more than a sharpened stick, in two clawed hands as it searched the night.

Suddenly, its gaze came to a halt upon Lenk's hiding place. His blood froze; chilled for the stare, frigid for the sudden sight of red splotches upon its chest and hands.

If the creature saw Lenk, it gave no indication. Instead, it swivelled its head back to the underbrush and croaked out something in a gravelly, rasping voice.

" _Sa-klea_ ," it hissed. " _Na-ah man-eh heah_."

The brush rustled again and a second creature, nearly identical to the first, slinked out into the clearing. It swept its gaze about, scratched its scaly beard.

" _Dasso. Noh man-eh_." It shook its head and sighed. " _Kai-ja_." It raised two fingers and pressed them against the side of its head in pantomime of ears as it made a show of baring its teeth. " _Lah shict-wa noh samaila_."

His eyes lit up at the word, spoken with an ire he had felt pass his own lips more than once.

_Shict_ , he thought. _They said "shict." Did they find her?_

He saw the ruby hues of the spatters upon their chests. Lenk felt his heart turn to a cold lump of ice.

That chill lasted for all of the time it took him to seize his sword and tighten his muscles. His temper boiled with his brain, fevered rage clutched his head as he clutched his weapon. He made a move to rise, but the pain in his thigh was too great for his fury to overcome. He fell to one knee, biting back a shriek of agony as he did.

" _What was that supposed to be?_ " the voice hissed.

"They killed her... they _killed_ her," he replied through clenched teeth.

" _She is dead_."

"They killed her..."

" _Is that important? That she is dead? Or is what is important that they must die?_ "

" _Ka-a, ka-a_ ," one of the scaly creatures sighed as it knelt by the brook and brought a handful of water to its lips. " _Utuu ah-ka, ja?_ "

" _Ka-a_ ," the second one apparently agreed, hefting its spear.

"What do you mean?" Lenk muttered.

" _She is dead. We are in agreement. Now vengeance is craved_."

"And you want to stop me?"

" _Only from getting killed. Vengeance is noble_."

"Vengeance is pure," Lenk agreed.

" _Ka-a_ ," the first one muttered again, rising to its feet. " _Utuu ah. Tuwa_ , uut _fu-uh mah Togu_."

" _Maat?_ " The second looked indignant for a moment before sighing. " _Kai-ja. Poyok_."

The first one bobbed its bearded head and turned on a large, flat foot. It slinked into the underbrush as it had emerged, like a serpent through water. Its companion moved to follow, taking a moment to sweep its amber gaze over its shoulder. It narrowed its eyes upon Lenk's rock for a moment before it, too, slid into the underbrush.

" _Vengeance..._ " the voice began.

"Requires patience," Lenk finished.

He huddled up against his rock, snatching up a nearby tuber and chewing on it softly, as much as in memory of Kataria as for sustenance. Tonight, he would rest and recuperate. Tomorrow, he would search.

He would search for Sebast. He would search for his companions. If he found neither, he would search for bodies.

If the lizard-things had left nothing, then he would search for them.

He would find them. He would ask them.

And they would tell him, Lenk resolved, when they all held hands and plummeted into lakes of fire together.

# _Eleven_

# THE INOPPORTUNE CONSCIENCE

Reasonable men had qualities that made them what they were. A reasonable man was a man of faith over doubt, of logic over faith, and honesty over logic. With these three, a reasonable man was a man who was prepared for all challenges, with force over weakness, reason over force, and personality over reason.

Assuming he had all three.

Denaos liked to consider himself a reasonable man.

It was around that last bit that he found himself lacking. And, as a reasonable man without honesty, Denaos turned to running.

He hadn't been intending to, of course. The plan, shortsighted as it was, was to get Dreadaeleon far away from whatever was sending him into fits of unconscious babbling with intermittent bursts of waking, wailing pain. They had done that, dragging him into the forest. From there, the plan became survival: find water for Dreadaeleon, food for themselves.

He had liked that plan. He had offered to go searching. It would give him a lot of time out in the woods, alone with his bottle.

Then Asper had to go and ruin everything.

"Hot, hot, hot," Dreadaeleon had been whispering, as he had been since he collapsed on the beach. "Hot, hot..."

"Why does he keep doing that?" Denaos had asked.

"Shock, mild trauma," Asper had replied. "It's my second problem."

"The first being?"

She had glowered at him, adjusting the wizard over her shoulder. "Mostly that you aren't helping me carry him."

"We agreed we would divide the workload. You carry him. I scout ahead."

"You haven't found _anything_."

Denaos had smacked his lips, glanced about the forest's edge and pointed. "There's a rock."

"Look, just take him for a while." She had grunted, laying the unconscious wizard down and propping him against a tree. "He's not exactly tiny, you know."

"As a matter of fact, I didn't know," Denaos had replied. "From here, he looks decidedly wee." He glanced at the dark stain on the boy's trousers. "In every possible sense of the word."

"Are you planning on taking him at _all_?" she had demanded.

"Once he dries out, sure. In the meantime, his sodden trousers are the heaviest part of him. What's the problem?"

She had glowered at him before turning to the wizard. "You shouldn't make fun of him. He's done more for us than we know." She glanced to the burning torch in the rogue's hand. "He lit that."

"I don't think he meant to," Denaos had replied, rubbing at a sooty spot where he had narrowly avoided the boy's first magical outburst. "And afterward, he pissed himself and fell back into a coma. As contributions go, I'll call it valued, but not invaluable."

"He can't help it," she had growled. "He's got... I don't know, some magic thing's happened to him."

"When did this happen again?"

She slowly lowered her left arm from the boy's forehead. "It's not important." She frowned. "He's still got a fever, though. We can rest for a moment, but we shouldn't dawdle."

"Why not? It's not like he's going anywhere."

"It'd be more accurate to say," she had replied, turning a scowl upon him, "that I'd prefer not to spend any more time in your company than I absolutely have to."

"As though yours is such a sound investment of my time."

"At least _I_ didn't threaten to kill _you_."

"Are you still on that?" He had shrugged. "What's a little death threat between friends?"

"If it had come from Kat or Gariath, it would have meant nothing. But it was _you_."

The last word had been flung from her lips like a sentimental hatchet, sticking in his skull and quivering. He had blinked, looked at her carefully.

"So what?"

And she had looked back at him. Her eyes had been half-closed, as if simultaneously trying to hide the hurt in her stare and ward her from the question he had posed. It had not been the first time he had seen that stare, but it had been the first time he had seen it in her eyes.

And that was when everything went wrong.

Like any man who had the right to call himself scum, Denaos was religious by necessity. He was an ardent follower of Silf, the Severer of Nooses, the Sermon in Shadows, the Patron. Denaos, like all of His followers, lived and died by the flip of His coin. And being a God of fortune, Silf's omens were as much a surprise to Him as to His followers. Any man who had a right to call himself one of the faithful would be canny enough to recognise those omens when they came.

Denaos, being a reasonable and religious man, had.

And he had acted, running the moment her back was turned, never stopping until the forest had given way to a sheer stone wall, too finely carved to be natural. He hadn't cared about that; he followed it as it stretched down a long shore, where it crumbled in places to allow the lonely whistle wind through its cracks.

Perhaps, he wondered, it would lead to some form of civilisation. Perhaps there were people on this island. And if they had the intellect needed to construct needlessly long walls, they would certainly have figured out how to carve boats. He could go to them then, Denaos resolved, tell them that he was shipwrecked and that he was the only survivor. He could barter his way off.

_But with what?_

He glanced down at the bottle of liquor, its fine, clear amber swirling about inside a very well-crafted, very expensive glass coffin. He smacked his lips a little.

_Maybe they accept promises..._

Or, he considered, maybe he would just die out here. That could work, too. He'd be devoured by dredgespiders, drown in a sudden tide, get hit on the head with a falling coconut and quietly bleed out of his skull, or just walk until starvation killed him.

All decent options, he thought, so long as he would never have to see her again.

"Do you remember how we met?" she had asked, staring at him.

He had nodded. He remembered it.

Theirs had been an encounter of mutual necessity: hers one of tradition, his one of practicality. She was beginning her pilgrimage, to spread her knowledge of medicine to those in need. He was looking to avoid parties interested in mutilating him. Their motives seemed complementary enough.

It wasn't unheard-of for people with either problem to hang on to an adventuring party to get the job done. Though, it had to be said there were a fair bit more adventurers suffering his problem than hers.

They had met Lenk and the creatures he called companions: a hulking dragonman, a feral shict. They had looked strong, capable and in no shortage of wounds to inflict or mend, and so the man and the woman had left the city with them that same day. They had gone out the gate, trailing behind a man with blue eyes, a bipedal reptile and a she-wolf.

She had smiled nervously at him.

He had smiled back.

"We met Dread not long after," she said. He had thought he could make out traces of nostalgia in her smile... or violent nausea. Either way, she was fighting it down. "And suddenly I was in the middle of a pack consisting of a wizard, a monster, a savage and Lenk. I wanted to run."

So had he. He hadn't been planning on staying with them longer than it took to escape the noose, let alone a year. But he had found something in the companions and their goals that, occasionally, helped people.

Opportunity, however minuscule, for redemption, however insignificant.

"And I couldn't help but think, through it all," she had sighed, looking up at the moon, "'Thank you, Talanas, for sending me another normal human.'" Her frown was subtle, all the more painful for it. "Back when I had no idea who you were, you seemed to be the only familiar thing I could count on. We were the same, both from the cities, believed in the Gods, knew that, no matter what happened, we had each other to fall back on. So I stayed with them, no matter how much I wanted to run, because I thought you were..."

_A sign_ , he had thought.

"But you are what you are." She had looked up to him, something pitiful in her right eye, something desperate in her left. "Aren't you?"

"No," he had said.

"What?" she had asked.

"Hot, hot, hot..." Dreadaeleon had whispered.

And she had turned to the wizard.

And Denaos had dropped the torch and run.

It was a sloppy escape, he knew. She might come looking for him. He hoped she wouldn't, what with him having threatened to cut her open, but there was always the possibility. He knew that the moment he had looked into her eyes and she had looked past his, into something deeper.

She had seen the face he showed her and realised it wasn't his. And in her eyes, the quaver of her voice, he knew she would want to know. She would want to know... everything.

And he had worked too hard for her to know. Things had become sloppy even before he beat his retreat. She had heard him whisper over her. She had seen his face slip off. She had seen something in him that didn't make her turn away.

He couldn't have that.

Better for it to end this way, he thought as he rested against the wall and took a long, slow sip from the bottle. Better for her to never know anything. If he had stayed, she would keep pushing. If she kept pushing, he would eventually break. He would come to trust her.

And she... she would begin to relax around him, a man that no one should relax around. She would sigh with contentment instead of frustration. She would stop twitching when she heard him approach. She would give him coy smiles, demure giggles and all the things ladies weren't supposed to give men like him.

She would come to trust him.

_And you remember how that turned out last time, don't you?_

He blinked. Red and black flashed behind his eyelids. A woman lay beside him and smiled at him, twice: once with her lips, once through her throat.

He shook his head, pulled the bottle to his lips and drank deeply.

It was all very philosophically sound. It was better for her, he thought, that he leave. That was a lie, he knew, but it was a good lie, a sacred lie blessed by Silf. The Patron would be pleased at such a reasonable, philosophical man.

But philosophy, too, required honesty. And like any philosophical man without honesty, Denaos turned once more to drinking.

He was in a haze, but a pleasant one. The lies were making sense now. The logic was clear and, most importantly, he could close his eyes and see only darkness. The drink did that for him. It made everything quiet.

And everything was quiet. The mutter of the ocean was distant and faint. The sound of stone was earth-silent. The clouds moved across the moon without any fuss from the wind that gently hurried them along. Everything was quiet.

So quiet that he heard the whispers with painful clarity.

They began formlessly, babble rising over the grey stone without words. But as they hung over him, they coalesced, formed a spear that plunged into his head with a shriek. Accusations lanced his mind, condemnations tore at his brain, pleas punched a hole in his skull for so much hateful, violent screaming to pour. It was enough to make him drop his bottle and torch alike and fall to his knees.

His dagger was out and the whispering faded. His head pounded, his eyes sought to seal themselves shut. He strained to keep them open as he looked up and caught a glance at the far end of the wall.

And his blood went cold.

Slender fingers gripped the edge. Half a face peered from behind, locks of long and dark hair framing pale cheeks with a broad and horrifically unpleasant smile. An immense eye, round, white and knowing stared at him.

Into him.

"No..." he whispered.

And the woman said nothing in return.

The whispering came back, grazing his skull and forcing his hands over his ears and his eyes shut tight. They dissipated again and when he was again able to look, she was gone.

He rose, plucking the bottle and dagger up from the sand and sheathing both in his belt as he stared at the space where she had just been.

_Hallucination_ , he told himself, _or delusion or both, wrought by any number of causes, all sinful, of which you have no shortage. Paranoia, drink, sleeplessness. Reasonable, right?_

He nodded to himself.

_Whatever the cause, we can agree that..._ that _wasn't her_.

It seemed reasonable.

_Then why are we following it?_

Because Denaos was a reasonable man, he told himself, a reasonable man with plenty of reasons for not wanting to see a woman who he knew was already dead and none of them convincing enough to turn him back.

He rounded the corner and the land changed in the blink of a bloodshot eye. Forest and shore were conquered by a sprawling courtyard: the stone wall was joined by many, crowding the trees above, smothering the sand below. The walls bore carvings, mosaics twisted in cloaked moonlight, of faces he did not recognise, gods that no one had names for.

Those same gods rose over him, massive statues challenging the moon as they towered over the courtyard. Their robes were stone, their right hands were extended, their faces had long crumbled away and been shattered upon a floor swathed with mist, tendrils of fog rising up to shake spitefully at the moon attempting to ruin its shroud. The stench of salt scraped his throat, seared his lungs. But he could not care for that now.

Not when she was standing there in the centre of the courtyard, staring at him.

It was the same gown she had worn when he saw her last, the simple flowing ivory, now the same colour as her skin, rendering her body and the garment indistinguishable. Her hair was the same, frazzled still, undoubtedly still thick with the scent of streets and people. But he couldn't be sure it was her, not until he took a step closer.

Not until she smiled at him twice.

Once with her mouth.

" _Good morning, tall man_ ," she said suddenly, her voice still thick and accented from a tongue that had no taste for lies.

He stared back at her, a silence thick as the death that seeped into the courtyard hanging between them. When he spoke, his words wilted in his mouth.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She said nothing.

"There was no choice," he said, weakly. "I had no choice. There were... obligations, promises." He swallowed a mouthful of salt. "Threats."

She simply smiled back.

"But... I made a choice, anyway. I made it. What would you have done?" His vision was hazy, but not with the fog. Tears were stinging his eyes, their salty stink worse than the ocean's. " _What was I supposed to do?_ "

No curses, no weeping, no wailing, no whispers. She simply stared. He stepped forward.

"Please, just talk to me—"

His foot struck something soft. The sound echoed through a conspiracy of silence. He looked down. He blanched.

As though it possessed a particularly morbid sense of humour, the white blanket of mist parted to expose a face twisted in death. Black eyes glistening in a pale, bony face bereft of blood stared up at him, a mouth filled with needles open in a silent scream as wide as the wound in its hairless chest.

A frogman, he recognised, a servant of the horrific Abysmyths. It was dead. It was not alone. Other silhouettes, black against the mist, corpses gripping spears in their chest, clutching wounds in their bellies with webbed hands.

Beside them, their faces contorted in unquiet death, he could see the longfaces, the netherlings. Their purple skin was painted with crimson, their iron and armour stained and battered with the battle that had just raged between them and their pale, hairless foes.

Something about the scene of carnage was unsettling, even beyond the death and decay that permeated the mist. The netherlings were dead, but not from wounds that would have been delivered with the bone spears and knives that the frogmen clutched. The injuries were universal across the dead: each one large and jagged, having wept the last of their blood just hours ago. They had all been made by the same weapons.

And the frogmen hadn't killed any of them.

_Then_ , he narrowed his eyes, _what would make the netherlings turn upon each other?_

"It is the way of the faithless to clean itself of its sins," a deep, gurgling voice spoke from nearby, "in blood."

Denaos whirled, his dagger out. The Abysmyth stared back at him, down at him, from its seven-foot height. Its eyes were vast, white voids. Its mouth hung open in its dead fish head, breathing ragged breaths through jagged teeth. Its towering body, a skeleton wrapped in a skin of shadow, stood tall, four-jointed arms hanging down to its knobby knees.

But the arms did not reach. The legs did not advance. It stared, nothing more.

The massive wedge of metal that was jammed through its chest and which pinned it to the wall might have had something to do with that.

He glanced back to the courtyard. She was gone. He was alone.

Almost.

"Before the Sermonic, the longfaces were confronted," the Abysmyth croaked. "Before the Sermonic, they beheld their own sins of faithlessness. She spoke to them in the dark places where they could not hide from her light. She spoke to them, she offered them salvation."

The Abysmyth craned one of its massive arms up. A longface's corpse hung from its webbed, black claw, a sheen of suffocating ooze coating a face smothered in its grasp.

"You fought the netherlings, then," Denaos whispered. He glanced at the weapon jammed through its chest. "Doesn't look like it ended well for you."

"The faithful can never find joy in the slaughter of lambs," the Abysmyth gurgled in reply. "Our solemn task was to follow the longfaces here, to blind their prying eyes, to silence their blasphemous questions."

"They were searching for something?"

"It is the nature of the faithless to search. They crave answers from everything but She who gives them. In Mother Deep, there is salvation, child." It extended its other arm, far too long for Denaos' comfort. "Approach me. My time ends, my service endures. I can save you. I can deliver you from your agonies."

Denaos took a step back at the sight of the glistening, choking ooze dripping from its claws. He had seen men die from that ooze, drowned on dry land, committed to a watery grave while their feet still touched sand.

"I already have a god," he said. "Sorry."

"God? _God_?" It roared. The wound in its chest sizzled with acidic green venom, the same sickly sheen that coated the blade. He had seen this, too, and what it did to the demons. "You have _nothing!_ Your gods care not for you! They are deaf to your cries! They are deaf to your suffering. To _my_ suffering."

The creature looked up above it, to one of the towering, robed monoliths.

"We remember them. We remember how they were driven to us, uncaring in stone as they are in heaven. The mortals, they prayed to _them_ , while _we_ were the ones who protected them, who saved them. And now they mock you, child, impassive even as they drain me."

"The statues... kill you?"

"Merely remind us," the Abysmyth said, "as they will remind you of your own impotence. They take our strength. They take our faithful. It is the way of gods to take."

"I don't know," Denaos said. "I've seen what that poison does to you. You're as good as dead and you can't reach me. Seems the Gods are doing fine, as far as I'm concerned."

"And do they protect you from the whispers, my child?"

He froze, staring at the demon. As far as he knew, the creatures lacked the ability to smile at all, let alone smugly. But in the darkness, it certainly looked like the thing was trying its damnedest.

"Do they care that you live in torment? Do they hide your prying eyes from visions of your shame? Do they guard your thoughts against the sins that lurk beneath them?"

"Shut up," Denaos whispered.

"I speak nothing but the truth. The Sermonic speaks nothing but the truth. Find salvation in her whispers."

"Shut _up_ ," he snarled, taking a step backward.

"Where will you run, child?" it croaked. "Where will you hide? There is no darkness deeper than your soul's. She will find you. She will speak to you. You will hear her. You will rejoice."

He resolved not to listen any further, resolved to remove himself. He was supposed to be running, to be hiding from her. And from _her_. He took another step backward, sparing only a moment to rub a spiteful glare into the dying demon's wound. He turned.

She was there. He stared directly into her smile.

Both of them.

" _Don't you scream_ ," she whispered.

Denaos disobeyed.

His terror echoed through the courtyard, reverberated off every stone, every corpse, ringing clear as a bell. The woman was gone, but the sound persisted. In its wake, a thick silence settled with the mist. The world was quiet.

And he heard the whispers.

_Hearyouhearyouhearyou_ , they emanated in his head, _comingcomingcoming..._

At the distant edge of the courtyard, he spied a gap in the wall, illuminated by a faint blue light. It pulsed, growing brighter, waxing and waning like an icy heart beating as it grew more vivid, as it drew closer. He held his breath, stared at the light as it came around the gap.

And he beheld the monstrosity from which it emanated.

At first, all he saw was the head: a bulbous, quivering globe of grey flesh tilted upward toward the sky. Black eyes shone like the shrouded, starless void to which they stared. From a glistening brow, a long stalk of flesh snaked, bobbing aimlessly before the creature and terminating in a fleshy sac from which the azure light pulsed.

It glowed mercilessly, refusing to spare him the sight of the creature as it slithered into view. Withered breasts hung from a skeletal rib cage as it pulled the rest of its body—a long, eel-like tail where legs should be—upon thin, emaciated arms.

It wasn't until it emerged fully from behind the gap, until Denaos could see its face in full that he felt fear. But the moment he beheld it, he was frozen. Beneath the fist-sized eyes, skeletal jaws brimmed with teeth like bent needles. They gaped open, exposing another mouth between them, a pair of soft and womanly lips, full and glistening, twitching, moving.

Whispering.

"She comes, child," the Abysmyth gurgled, its dying voice fast fading. "She comes to deliver you... You cannot hide..."

Denaos disagreed.

Perhaps Silf truly did love him enough to send the clouds roiling over the moon to bathe the courtyard in darkness. Perhaps it was dumb luck. Denaos didn't intend to question it. He flung himself to the earth, finding the thickest corpse in a particularly well-armoured netherling and hunkering down behind her.

He chanced a look, peering up over his cover of flesh and iron, to see the creature, this Sermonic, dragging itself bodily into the courtyard. Its void-like eyes swept the mist as its outer jaws chattered, the sound of teeth clacking against bone heard with every twitch. All the while, the soft and feminine lips pouted behind those jagged teeth, muttering whispers that shifted from formless babble to sharp, honed daggers.

_KnowyouarethereKnowyouarethere..._

He heard them keenly now, felt them rattle through his being. The urge to scream rose within him; he nearly choked on it. He averted his eyes, but he could not protect his ears, even as he pressed his hands over them.

_WhereareyouWhereareyou... comeoutcomeoutcomeout..._

He bent low to the ground, felt the blue lantern light sweep over his position and continue past. The creature chattered, clicked its teeth in ire. He heard its claws rake the ground and pull a massive weight across the courtyard.

He dared to look up and saw the creature continue across the ground, winding between corpses, sweeping its light over the mist. Behind it, lights trailed, flashing the same blue glow that emanated from its stalk.

_HearyouHearyou... NoisythoughtsNoisyNoisy... KnowyourthoughtsKnowKnow..._

The whispers echoed in his mind, felt like sand on his skull. He could feel his brain twitch under them, as though the creature's claws followed them and plucked at every thought inside his head like harp strings.

_Sorrowsorrowsorrow... Hatehatehate..._

The creature craned its neck about, its lantern lighting up its inner lips in a morbid smile.

_Knivesknives... Darkdarkdark... Screamingscreamingscreaming..._

He blinked and the images flashed behind his eyes once more. He saw each whisper painted on his lids, saw the knife coming down and beheld a red blossom.

_Bloodbloodblood... soMUCHbloodblood..._

He forced his eyes open and saw the creature begin to angle its unwieldy body around with some difficulty. Seeing an opportunity, he crept from one body to another, slinking low through the mist. His dagger remained far from his hand; striking the creature was not on his mind. Escape was.

He spied a rent in the nearby walls. He could make it, he thought; he could slip through it, vanish in the greenery. If the creature didn't see him now, it certainly wouldn't in the forest. From there, he could make his way to shore, he could escape.

All he had to do was reach it and—

_Killedherkilledherkilledher..._

He froze.

_Watchedherdiediedie..._

He fought to keep his eyes open.

_Poorgirlgirl... lovedyoulovedloved..._

It didn't help. He could see the images flashing before him now, even as his eyes stung with salt and went dry.

_Killedherkilledherkilledher..._

A scream began to well up in his throat, carried on a boil of tears.

_Killedkilledkilled..._

His hand fumbled for the bottle, fingers too weak to grasp it. He felt the light sweep toward him, settle on the corpse he lay behind.

_KILLEDKILLEDKILLEDHER..._

He opened his mouth. A choked whimper emerged.

"Denaos?"

Instantly, the whispers retreated. He felt his mind relax, his body go slack. The images left his mind, just as the light left him. He watched it through blurry vision as it swept along the courtyard, heading for another hole in the wall through which the orange light of a torch flickered and a voice emerged.

"Are you in here?" Asper called.

Relief died in his heart. He looked up and saw the creature's twin jaws smile a pair of horrific grins as the light waned. The last thing he saw of the beast was its chattering teeth as the lantern's blue light dimmed.

And then died.

_This is your chance_.

It was a foul thought to think, he knew, but it was true. He could escape now. He could flee.

And she would die.

But what could he do? The creature, whatever it was, was clearly too strong for her, or for him.

_But together..._

No, no. He thumped his head. There was no telling what the thing was, if it could even be killed, by a hundred or two. Where was the sense in offering it up two victims instead of one? Where was the sense in lingering behind? What would be the point of it all?

He sucked in a breath. A thought came to him, clear and concise.

_Redemption, however insignificant_.

He clenched his teeth and reached for his bottle.

She shouldn't be surprised, Asper told herself. She should have expected this; even something as simple as going to get water, even something as noble as easing a companion's fever was beyond the rogue. The ability to perform any act that wasn't completely selfish was beyond Denaos as a matter of nature. She knew this, as she knew she shouldn't be surprised.

Let alone hurt.

Every step, she scolded herself with a fury that burned as hot as the torch in her hand. To think that she had told him she had once relied on him, even in such a roundabout manner as she had. Undoubtedly he relived that moment, those words, revelled in them, laughed at how much power he had held over her.

She loathed him for it, but for every ounce of scorn she spared for him she took two more for herself. She was the one who had told him. And even if she told herself that she had left Dreadaeleon behind to find water herself, she knew that she searched for the rogue with equal intent.

As for what that intent was, she thought as she looked at the torch thoughtfully, she would know when she found him.

So raptly did her loathing capture her attention that she hadn't even seen where she had wandered. The rock wall she had followed had become a decaying ruin, rife with mist and silence. She swept her torch about; the darkness of the night drank her fire and offered only inky blackness in exchange.

She had taken three more steps into the gloom before the thought occurred, not for the first time, that she was wasting her time. To go searching for a man whom she had once seen evade scent hounds while doused in cherry liquor and whorestink was folly enough, but to expend so much effort on a man for whom getting doused in cherry liquor and whorestink was a frequent occurrence was simply stupid.

Let him cling to the power she had so foolishly offered him, she thought, let his laughs be black. She turned about, held her chin high and tried not to care.

The wind picked up, sending the mist roiling about her ankles and her torch's light flickering. It carried with it a stink of salt and the faded coppery stench of dried blood. The moon shifted overhead, exposing a scant trace of light over her.

And with it, a shadow.

She turned and beheld the monolith, towering over her. She did not recognise it, she did not know it. But something inside her did. Her left arm began to sear with pain, to pulse angrily. She let out a shriek, holding it tightly against her body, not daring to drop her torch. Instead, she raised the light to the statue, exposing it to fire.

A great robed figure stared back at her. Its left arm was extended, robe open to expose a thin, skeletal limb. She recognised the arm. Just as the arm recognised itself, throbbing angrily at its stone reflection. Biting back pain, she stared farther up at the statue. Beneath the stone hood, a skull grinned back at her.

And spoke.

_Cursedcursedcursed..._

Her eyes widened at the sound inside her head that echoed into her heart. She whirled about, searching for the source of the whispers.

_Godsabandonedyouabandonedyou... hateyouhateyouhateyou..._

"No," she whispered. She clenched her teeth as thoughts came racing back to her, images of two young girls in a temple, a flash of bright, agonising red, and one young girl walking out. " _No_."

_Cursedcursedcursed... killedherkilledher... TaireTaireTaire..._

It was with the mention of that name that the pain began. Her arm ached, burned with an unbearable agony that pulsed in time with the beat of her heart.

The torch fell from her hand and its light was smothered in the mist. But even as darkness fell upon her in a thick cloak, Asper's world was still bright and blindingly crimson. The arm twitched, pulsed beneath her sleeve, and she could feel its heat through the cloth. She writhed, collapsed to her knees and moaned into the darkness.

"Stop... _please_ stop," she whimpered, unable to hear her own voice.

_TaireTaireTaire... deaddeaddead... gonegonegone... nothingleftnothingnothing..._

"Why?" she wailed. "Why, Talanas? Why? What did I do this time?" She held her arm up to the sky and shrieked. " _WHAT DO YOU WANT?_ "

_Godsgodsgods..._

The whispers came now, slowly and brimming with a bitterness where before there was only sharp malice.

_Don'tcaredon'thearwon'tlistencan'thelparen'ttherewon'thelpcan'thelp_...

And slowly, the pain in her arm began to abate, to subside from agonising throb to dull and steady ache. Her pain began to seep out of her in hot breaths. The whispers, however, continued.

_Weren'ttherenottheredidn'tlistendidn'thelpabandonedleftus-cursedusloathedus..._

She should escape. She should run.

But Denaos...

No. She pushed him out her mind with hate, hatred for herself for thinking of _him_ even as her body was racked and her mind on fire, for thinking of him when her arm was awakened. She fought the whispers, tried not to listen to them as they became moans in her ears.

_LeftusMotherlovesustellsusspeakstousgodswon'tgodsdon'tgods-gonegonegonegonegone..._

She looked to the rent in the wall through which she had come and took two steps before becoming aware of the fact that she could see it. In an instant, she knew that made no sense; the moon was shrouded, the torch was dead.

Where had the blue light come from?

_HatehatehatehatehateHATEHATEHATEHATEHATE..._

A low, chattering sound rose from behind her.

She whirled, and the scream was drowned from her as two mouths of teeth and lips opened as one, emitting a screech that overwhelmed all other senses. Pain, fear, instinct were rendered mute before the wailing. Her voice followed a moment after as she felt a pair of cold hands wrap about her throat.

She had no screams to offer the sight that awaited her, had barely the clarity of mind to take in the full extent of the creature. Its lantern swayed between them on a long and glistening stalk, bathing its bulbous head in waves of light and shadow. She saw a pair of mouths—twisted and sharp, soft and female—torn between gaping, toothy growl and broad, wicked smile.

It did not occur to Asper to fight, to struggle against the creature or even to scream. The abomination transfixed her with horror, rendering her capable only of staring in gaping, mind-numbed abhorrence. She was aware of being lifted from the ground, drawn toward its glistening, jagged outer teeth. She was aware of the creature's vast void-like eyes dilating into tiny pinpricks of blackness against froth-coloured whites. But she was aware of nothing else.

Certainly not the shadow rising up behind the creature.

Both priestess and abomination were made keenly aware of Denaos' presence in a blink of silver, however, as the man's knife flashed out of the gloom and sank deeply into the creature's collarbone. The beast growled, rather than shrieked; more annoyed than furious. It twisted its neck to see its attacker.

Denaos pulled his blade free from the creature, and at the sight of blood pouring from the wound, Asper's senses returned to her with a fury. She began to hit, kick at the creature, pulled at its webbed claws and drove her feet into soft, rubbery flesh. The thing turned its attention to her and snarled, offended by her sudden vigour, as it tightened its grip on her throat.

Her fury was choked from her in an instant, her life quick on its heels. Denaos was quicker; his knife came up again, digging into the creature's armpit, and twisted. The beast roared this time, but there wasn't nearly enough blood to justify agony. It tossed Asper aside, sent her skidding through the mist, and turned upon Denaos, black voids bubbling with rage.

Asper pulled herself from the earth, ignored the stench of death on the ground, and looked toward the battle unfurling.

Denaos did not cringe, did not turn and run. His form was smooth and flowing, an ink stain on the mist, as he brought his weapon back up to face the creature. It, too, flowed, body swaying from side to side, its lantern illuminating only one combatant each moment.

She saw the fight in flashes of blue light. The creature twitched, hurled itself forward, claws outstretched. Denaos flowed backward; his blade leapt. The thing's lantern erupted in a burst of blue coupled by twin shrieks as it drew back, clutching a webbed hand with three fingers of steel jammed through the palm.

The lantern glowed white-hot for a moment as the creature recoiled. Then, the flashes of light became bursts and the battle raged in the darkness between them.

It lunged. Denaos reached for his belt. There was the sound of glass shattering, the odour of liquor. It growled, stretched jaws open, lashed a hand out. There was a shriek, this one male and agonisingly human. There was the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

And then, silence.

The light returned slowly. It waxed to a pinprick; she could see it drift down to a man's face contorted in pain, breath sucked in through teeth clenched. It became the size of a fist and she saw a grey webbed hand, stained dark with blood and dripping with whisky, reach down to grab the tall man by a throat smeared with green-stained claw marks.

When it bloomed, Asper stared at Denaos hanging from the creature's choking grasp.

She rose to help him, but found her body fighting between her commands and the throbbing pain in her arm. She whimpered, clutched it, tried to stagger to her feet.

"Not now, not now, not now," she whined, "please, just let me... just this once. _Please!_ "

"Hot," a voice answered in reply. "Hot... hot..."

She felt Dreadaeleon beside her, the fever of his body seeping out of his glowing red eyes. His hair hung about his face, coat about his body as he swayed precariously on overtaxed feet. He stared at the monstrosity and the rogue without acknowledgement for the latter's imminent demise. Instead, he merely raised a hand, a small circle of orange glowing upon his palm.

"Hot," he whispered, eyes suddenly blossoming into burning red flowers. " _HOT!_ "

The word that followed next, she did not hear. But she did see the circle become a spark, flickering and twisting like a rose petal as it flew from his palm and wafted with an orange glow toward the two combatants. The creature took no notice of it as it sizzled over the mist, nor did it look away from its victim as the little spark drifted up and came to a rest with a hiss upon the thing's whisky-soaked brow.

_HothothothotHOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOT..._

The whispers came in short, staccato shrieks. Denaos was dropped, forgotten as the creature erupted into flames. It writhed in a pillar, blue light sputtering out in the inferno that consumed it. Asper thought she could see something in its figure, now illuminated in the blaze, that seemed vaguely familiar. The shape of its torso, a mockery of womanly figures, perhaps, or the feathery gills that were burnt away like sticks of incense as it hurled itself to the earth.

She wasn't about to try to get a closer look as the horror pulled its body across the ground, leaving a trail of ash behind it. Its wails, its whispers left her mind as the creature left the courtyard, pulling its burning body through a hole in the wall to disappear into the night.

Asper watched it for but a moment before her attentions were brought back to the scrawny boy beside her, legs giving out beneath him.

"Did it...?" Dreadaeleon muttered as he collapsed onto his back. "Saved again..."

She knelt beside him, felt his brow. The fever was no worse that she could tell; it was simply exhaustion stacked upon exhaustion. That simple spark had pushed him to a brink he was nowhere near well enough to tread upon. And like the spark, he flickered. He needed water; he needed rest.

"Stay..." he whispered, reaching for her. "Hot... hurts... but I did it... I saved..."

"I know you did," she replied, smoothing the hair from his brow. "And I'll be here, but I have to help Denaos, too."

"Denaos?" His eyes and mouth twisted into anger. " _Denaos?_ He did _nothing_! It was me! I saved you! _I'm_ the hero!" He tried to rise, but fell back, gasping. "I'm the... the..."

"Please, Dread," she pleaded as she laid him back down to the stones. "Just a moment."

"Assholes," he muttered as his eyes closed, mouth still contorted in a snarl. "Both of you."

No time to heed or take offence, she rose from his side and hurried to Denaos.' Pulling his head up to her lap, she could see the wound in his neck, the seeping green venom. She checked him over quickly, hands flying across his body. His breathing was swift and laboured, but steady. His muscles were tensed, but neither turning to jelly nor hardening with preemptive rigour. His pulse raced, but was there. He was wounded and poisoned, but he wasn't going to die.

Because of her.

"Gone," he whispered.

"Yeah," she said, "it ran away."

"I meant my whisky," he croaked out through a dry mouth.

"Yeah. Sorry."

"Not your fault." He grinned. "Not completely, anyway." He tried to muster a brave laugh, but wound up cringing. "It hurts."

"The wound's not the worst I've seen," she said with a sigh. "I think you might—"

"Last rites."

"What?"

"Last rites."

"No, you're not—"

"I don't want to die without absolution."

The hand he laid on her arm was gentle. Her arm throbbed beneath his touch, rejecting the warmth of another human being. She fought the urge to tear it away.

"I don't want to die," he whispered.

She knew she couldn't offer him last rites; he wasn't going to die. There were no signs of a fatal poisoning; the claws had missed his jugular, and the venom likely wouldn't do much more than hurt terribly. For all the wretched things he had done, he was going to live... again.

To offer last rites would be deception, a sin.

She could have told him that.

"Absolution," she said instead, in a gentle voice, "requires confession."

"I..." His eyelids flickered with his trembling words. "I—I killed her."

"Killed who?"

"She was... it... so beautiful. Just cut her... no pain, no screaming. Sacred silence."

"Who was it, Denaos?" Urgency she did not understand was in the quaver of her voice and the tension of her hands. " _Who?_ "

The next words he spoke were choked on spittle. The agony was plain in his eyes, as was the alarm as he looked past her shoulder, gaping. He raised a finger to the cleft tops of the walls. She followed the tip of it, saw them there, and stared.

And in the darkness, dozens of round, yellow eyes stared back.

# _Twelve_

# INSTINCTUAL SHAME

Semnein Xhai was not obsessed with death. She was a Carnassial, proud of the kills she had made to earn the right to be called such, but only those kills. Deaths wrought by hands not her own were annoying. They left her with questions. Questions required thinking. Thinking was for the weak.

And the weak lay at her feet, two cold bodies of the longfaces before her.

"How?" she snarled through jagged teeth.

"Perhaps they were ambushed," Vashnear suggested beside her.

The male held himself away from the corpses, hands folded cautiously inside his red robe as he surveyed them dispassionately. His long, purple face was a pristine mask of boredom, framed by immaculately groomed white hair. Only the thinnest twitch of a grin suggested he was more than a statue.

"It is not as though females are renowned for awareness," he said softly.

"They're renowned for _not_ dying like a pair of worthless, stupid weaklings," she growled. "What did they die from?" she muttered, letting her voice simmer in her throat. After a moment, she turned to the female beside her. " _Well?_ "

The female, some scarred, black-haired thing with a weakling's bow grunted at Xhai before stalking to the corpses. She surveyed them briefly before tugging off her glove. Xhai observed her fingers, three total with the lower two fused together, with contempt. Her particular birth defect, like all other low-fingers, relegated her to using the bow and thus relegated her to contempt.

Her three fingers ran delicately down the females' corpses, studying the savage cuts, the wicked bruises and particularly well-placed arrows that dominated the purple skin left bare by their iron chestplates and half-skirts. After a moment, she nodded, satisfied, and rose up. She turned to Xhai and snorted.

"Dead," she said.

"Well done," Vashnear muttered, rolling his milk-white eyes.

"How?" Xhai growled.

The low-finger shrugged. "Same way we found the others. Smashed skulls, torn flesh, few arrows here and there. Somethin' came up and got 'em right in the back."

"I told Sheraptus you shouldn't be allowed to roam without one of us accompanying," Vashnear muttered. "If females are incapable of thinking that someone might _ambush_ them in a deep forest, then they're certainly incapable of finding anything of worth to use against the underscum."

"And what would you have done?" Xhai asked.

His grin broadened as his eyes went wide. The crimson light leaking from his stare was reflected in his white, jagged smile.

"Burn down the forest. Remove the issue."

"Master Sheraptus said not to. It will infringe on his plans."

"Sheraptus believes himself infallible," Vashnear said.

"He is."

"And yet he wastes three females for each hour we waste looking for means to slaughter the underscum when we have always had the answer." He pulled a pendant out from under his robe, the red stone attached to it glowing in time with his eyes. "Kill them all."

"That won't work against their queen. The Master says so."

"He cannot _know_ that."

"He has his ways."

"And they are not working."

Slowly, Xhai turned a scowl upon him. "The Master is not to be questioned."

"Males have no masters," Vashnear replied coldly. "Sheraptus is my equal. You are beneath him and beneath _me_."

"I am his First Carnassial," Xhai snarled back. "I lead his warriors. I kill his enemies. His enemies question him."

Vashnear lofted a brow beneath which his stare smouldered, the leaking light glowing angrily for a moment. It faded, and with it so did his grin, leaving only a solemn face.

"Our search continues," he said softly. "I've sent Dech out to find further evidence. We will find her before we lose a Carnassial instead of a pair of warriors." He walked past her, his step slowing slightly as he did. "Carnassials are killers. Nothing more. Sheraptus knows this."

She turned to watch him go. At her belt, her jagged gnawblade called to her, begging her to pluck it free and plant it in his back. On her back, her massive, wedged gnashblade shrieked for her to feed it with his tender neck flesh. Her own fingers, the middle two proudly fused together in the true mark of the Carnassial, humbly suggested that strangulation might be more fitting for him.

But Sheraptus had told her not to harm him.

Sheraptus was not to be questioned.

"What do we do with the dead ones?" the low-finger beside her asked.

"How far behind us is the sikkhun?" Xhai asked.

"Still glutting itself on Those Green Things we found earlier."

"It'll still be hungry. It fights better when it's been fed." She glanced disdainfully at the corpses. "Leave them."

The low-finger followed her scowl to Vashnear and snorted. "He's weak. Even Dech says so. His own Carnassial..." She chuckled morbidly. "If whatever's killing us kills him, no one will weep."

Xhai grunted.

"Who knows?" the female continued. "Maybe if we don't come back with him, we'll get a reward from the Saharkk."

Xhai whirled on her, saw the distant, dreamy gaze in her eyes.

"What did you call him?"

"Saharkk?" The low-finger shrugged, walking past her. "It means the same thing."

She had taken two steps before Xhai's hand lashed out to seize her by the throat. Xhai heard the satisfying wheeze of a windpipe collapsing; she was right to listen to her fingers.

"He wants to be called _Master_ ," Xhai growled. "And _I_ don't share rewards."

The low-finger shrieked, a wordless, breathless rasp, as Xhai pulled harshly on her neck and swung her skull toward the nearest tree.

Kataria felt the bones shatter, the impact coursing through the bark and down her spine. She kept her back against the tree, regardless, not moving, not so much as starting at the sound of the netherling's brutality. She held her voice and her breath in her throat, quietly waiting for it to be over.

But she had met Xhai before, in Irontide. She could feel the old wounds that the Carnassial had given her begin to ache with every moment she heard the longface's grunts of violent exertion. She knew that when it came to Xhai, nothing painful was ever over quickly.

Her victim's grunts lasted only a few moments. The sound that resembled overripe fruit descending from a great height, however, persisted.

The sound of twitching, chittering, clicking caught her attention. She glanced at the tremendous roach standing before her, its feathery antennae wafting in her direction as it studied her through compound eyes. Long having since recognised the oversized pest for what it was, she did nothing more than raise her finger to her lips. Futile, she thought; even if the roach could understand the gesture, she doubted it could make enough noise to be heard over Xhai's brutality.

Apparently, the roach disagreed.

Its rainbow-coloured carapace trembled with the flutter of wings as it turned about and raised a bulbous, hairy abdomen to her. Her eyes widened as the back of its body opened wide.

And sprayed.

Screaming was her first instinct as the reeking spray washed over her. Cursing was her second. Turning around, dropping her breeches and spraying the thing right back quickly fought its way to the fore, but she rejected it as soon as she felt the tree still against her back.

At the other side, a body slumped to the earth with a splash as it landed in a puddle of something Kataria had no wish to identify. The sound of Xhai's growl and her heavy iron boots stomping off quickly followed and faded in short order.

Kataria allowed herself to breathe and quickly regretted it as the roach's stench assaulted her nose. The insect chittered, satisfied, and scurried into the forest's underbrush. Still, she counted herself lucky that the only thing to locate her was a roach.

_A roach that sprays from its anus_ , she reminded herself, wiping the stuff from her face. _And the longfaces_ almost _found you that time_.

She grunted at her own thoughts; the longfaces were crawling over the island, roaming the forest and its edges in great, noisy droves. They were searching, she had learned from the few times they deigned to speak in a language she could understand. For what, she had no idea and she didn't care. She was on a search of her own, one that could not be compromised by the addition of bloodthirsty, purple-skinned warrior women.

The Spokesman stick in her hand reminded her of it, with a warm assurance that it had tasted many human bones before.

She stared down at it contemplatively. The _s'na shict s'ha_ , her father said, often claimed that their famed sticks earned their names for the fact that each one possessed the faintest hints of the Howling. The trees they were carved from drank deeply of shictish blood spilled in their defence. They carried the memories of the dead, perpetual reminders of the duties that every shict carried.

As Kataria stared at the white feather tied to it, she suspected the power of the Spokesman was likely a lot simpler than that.

Inqalle infested her mind, in words and thoughts alike. She had slipped in on the Howling, sank teeth into Kataria's thoughts, and she could still feel them there.

But this was not such an awful thing.

Inqalle's words only persisted because truth was always like venom: once injected, it could not be removed until the proper steps had been taken to cure it. Kataria knew this, just as she knew that what Inqalle had said was true.

For too long had she been comfortable telling herself she was a shict while acting so unlike one. How could any shict call herself such when she stared for hours over the sea, watching...?

_No. Hoping_ , she corrected herself. _You were_ hoping _that one of them would come up on shore and you could go back to the way things were. Those days are over. You always wanted them to be over, right?_

She didn't answer herself.

_Maybe... this_ is _a gift from Riffid_ , she told herself. _Maybe this_ is _how you prove yourself to Inqalle. No, not to Inqalle. To yourself_. She shook her head. _No, not to yourself..._

She looked down at the white feather, frowned.

_Not just to yourself_.

The Spokesman stick was heavy with purpose, eager to be used upon unsuspecting human skulls. It reminded her why this had to be the way. It reminded her of the sensations she had felt in the company of her companions. _Former companions_ , she corrected herself.

They had infected her, deafened her to the Howling. They had taken something from her. This was how she would take it back.

She had found their trail earlier. She could follow it, descend upon them when they weren't paying attention. Two swift cracks at the base of the skull. They would die immediately. They wouldn't be able to ask her why. She could do it, she told herself. If she could avoid the longfaces' patrols, she could sneak up on them. She could kill them.

_If you could_ , the thought entered her mind involuntarily, _you would have done it long ago_.

She shook her head, growled.

Something in the forest growled back.

She froze, hearing the footsteps. Her ears twitched, angling from left to right, absorbing each noise. Heavy feet fell upon the earth with the ungainly disquiet of a predator glutted. Nostrils drew in deep breaths, sniffing about the woods. The growl, a deep chest-born noise, became a shrill cackle. Gooseflesh grew upon her body.

_The sikkhun_ , she thought. _They said something about a sikkhun_. She swallowed hard. _What the hell is a sikkhun?_

And in the sounds that followed, she realised she didn't want to know. She heard a sharp ripping sound; the stench of blood filled her nostrils. Slurping followed, meat rent from bone and scooped into a pair of powerful jaws. Blood dripped softly, hitting the ground with the sound of fat raindrops. A bone snapped, crunched, was sucked down.

And with every breath it could spare, the thing let loose a short, warbling cackle.

She folded her ears against her head, unable to listen anymore. Slinking on her hands and feet, she slid into the underbrush, leaving the sikkhun to its gruesome feast.

_Yes_ , she thought without willing, _so gruesome. Good thing you're about to do something as civil as murdering your companions, you weak little—_

She folded her ears further, shutting them to all sounds, within and without, as she softly crept away.

Tracks told stories.

This was the accepted thought amongst her people. A person spoke to the earth through his feet, unable to lie or hide through his soles. The earth had a long memory, remembered what it was told. Earth remembered. Earth told shict. Shict remembered.

Kataria remembered finding his tracks in the forest, almost a year ago.

Long, slow strides, she recalled, heavy on the heels and the toes alike. He was a man who walked in two different directions: striving to go forward, always held back.

She had tracked him, then, certain that she was going to kill him. She tracked him now, certain that she had to.

_And what's different this time?_ she asked herself. _You went after him, attempting to kill him. You wound up following him for a year_.

Because, she told herself, that was a time when she did not know what it was to be a shict. This time, she knew. She would prove it.

She had found their tracks shortly after. The earth was moist and dry at once, torn between whether it wished to continue living or not. It made the stories hard to hear. Those she recognised in the tracks were simple tales: anguish, pain, misery, confusion, hunger. But those were common enough, especially to those humans she had once called companions.

No matter. They all had to die, eventually. The other humans would be a nice warm-up before she stalked and killed her true quarry. She would have liked to have started with Lenk, though, suspecting that he would be the hardest to kill. He was the most agitated, the most paranoid, the most cautious.

_Oh, and_ that's _why he's going to be hard to kill?_ she asked herself. _Right. He's just_ so _crafty and clever. This entire "stalking" is a farce. If you showed up in front of him and waved, he'd wave back and smile and say how good it was to see you as you clubbed his brains out_.

No, she told herself, he liked her, but probably not _that_ much.

_Right_ , she agreed with herself, _but the point is, you know this is just a stalling tactic. Pretending to stalk him? Pretending to track him? Go run around the forest screaming his name if you think he's alive. Wait for him to come out and then embrace him and then crush his neck. If you_ really _wanted to kill him, you wouldn't even have to try. But..._

She snarled inwardly, opened her ears wide to let the sounds of the forest drown out her own thoughts.

_You also know this forest is dead. Nothing's going to make you stop thinking, dimwit_.

She sighed. No wind sighed back. And from the dead wind, no trees rustled in response. And from the quiet trees, no animals cried out in response. And all around her, the verdant greenery and blue skies and bright morning sunshine yielded no sound, no life.

Barren forests weren't unheard of. Plants, inedible and intolerable to animal palates, often thrived where those on two and four legs could not.

_Except for roaches, apparently_. She flicked away a dried trace of anal sputum.

But there was something different about this forest, this silence. This silence lingered like a pestilence, seeping into her skin, reaching into her ears, her lungs. It found the sound of her breath intolerable, the clamour of her twitching muscles unbearable. It sought to drive the wind from her stomach, to still the noisy blood in her veins.

She shook her head, thumped it with the heel of her hand, scolded herself for being stupid. Silence was uncomfortable, nothing more. It wasn't a disease. _He_ was. _He_ was the one that needed to be cured, not _her_. It was _him_ that was the problem.

_So the problem is him_ , she told herself. _That makes sense. That's what Inqalle said. The greenshicts... no, no. They're the_ s'na shict s'ha, _remember? Greenshicts are what humans call them. The problem is him. Kill him and you're a shict, right? Right_.

Because that was what a shict was, she told herself, pressing forward and following the tracks. A shict killed humans. That was what shicts did. Her father said so. Inqalle said so. Her mother...

Her step faltered. The earth heard her hesitation.

_Mother_ , she told herself, _asked you what a shict was_.

She stared down at the Spokesman stick in her hand, at the white mourning feather tied to it.

_And you said..._

Her ears twitched, still listening even if her mind was not. They rose up on either side of her head, slowly shifting from side to side as they heard a sound.

_Water?_

She followed it, the roar of rushing liquid growing more thunderous with every step. She glanced down at the earth; the tracks continued to it, though the earth still refused to yield the speaker of their stories, even as it became moister.

Soon, the ground turned to mud beneath as forest and river met in battle. The trees refused to yield, leaning in close over the great blue serpent that slithered through the earth. It flowed swiftly, fed by a distant waterfall thundering down a craggy cliff face not far from where she stood at its bank.

Not ten feet away from her, where the water was at its most shallow, an island of earth and stone rose like a rocky pimple. Long and wide, it defied the nature of the river with its stone-paved floors, crumbling pillars and the occasional vine-decorated statue. But the forest challenged even this, those trees and underbrush that had managed to grow over it encroaching upon it, obscuring the finer points of its decay as it strangled the island with leafy hands.

Odd, she thought, but not the oddest part about this place.

She surveyed the river, eyes narrowing. Certainly it sounded like a river ought to. The water was clear and, at a glance, clean enough and suitable for drinking. Her dry lips begged her to drink, her ears told her it was safe. Only her nose rejected it.

The scent of freshness was nowhere present in the air; the aroma of growing things fed by the flow was overwhelmed by a reek that lurked just beneath.

But surely, water was water. Even the water couldn't be tainted if it caused such plants to grow. There was no harm, she told herself, in simply taking a drink. It would enable her to hunt farther, faster, and do what must be done.

She glanced down at the water, smacking her lips. Her nostrils quivered.

_Still_ , she thought, glancing over to the waterfall, _no sense in not taking a drink directly from the source_.

She stared up, wondering exactly where the river came thundering from. And, atop the great crags of the cliff, she found an answer pouring from great, skeletal jaws.

The skull, resembling something of a massive, fleshless fish, stared back down at her through empty eye sockets as it hung precariously over the edge of the cliff, wide as a boulder, water weeping through every empty void in its bleached surface. Liquid poured from its great, toothsome jaws, burst from each empty black eye, weeping and vomiting in equal measure.

Not that such imagery _didn't_ unnerve her, but it paled in comparison to the fact that she had seen this skull before, in a much smaller form. But she had seen it, cleaned of shadowy black skin, sockets where vast, empty white eyes had once been. She remembered the teeth, she remembered the jaws, she remembered the gurgling, drowning voice that went with them.

An Abysmyth. She was staring at a demon's skull, far more massive than any she had ever thought possible.

But it was just a skull, she thought. Whatever demon it had belonged to was dead now and there was no need for her to fear. Nor was there a need to wonder where it had come from. She had tracks to follow, tracks that had to have led through the shallows, over the island and onto the opposite bank.

Rolling her breeches up to her knees, she carefully waded in. The current was swift, but not deep enough to drag her under. Still, it was a slow and steady pace that carried her across, mercilessly leaving her time to be with her thoughts.

_If there_ are _demons here..._ she thought. _I mean, I know that one's dead and all, but if they're here... you're actually doing them a kindness, aren't you? You'd be killing them before they could have their heads chewed off. Of course, you'd be eaten moments later, wouldn't you? But that's fine, so long as they die before that happens. That's just the kind of selfless person you are, right?_

She laughed bitterly.

_Sure. I'm certain they'll see it my way_.

Her foot caught. A root reached up from muddy ground to tangle her. She cursed, reached down to free herself and found no rough and jagged tuber. Rather, what caught at her ankle was smooth and came easily out of the water and in her hand, the mud of the riverbed sloughing off to land in the flow like globs of great brown fat.

She might have thought how fitting that metaphor was, if it weren't for the fact that she was currently staring at a fleshless, skeletal arm in her hand.

Before she could even warn herself against the dangers of doing so, she looked down.

And the small, rounded human skull looked back up, grinning and politely asking for its arm back.

With a sneer, she obliged, dropping the appendage and scurrying out of the water. Suddenly, the vague reek made itself known to her, the familiarity of it cloying her nostrils.

The water was rife with the scent of corpses.

"Still alive."

The sound of a voice beside the one in her head caused her to whirl about, tense and ready to fight or flee. And while she breathed out a scant relieved exhale at the sight of red flesh stretched over muscle before her, she didn't outright discount either option.

Gariath, for his part, didn't seem particularly interested in what she might do. Perched upon a shattered pillar beneath the shade of a tree, he seemed far more interested in the corpse twitching on his feet. She recognised it as one of the rainbow-coloured roaches, its innards exposed and glistening, loosing reeking, unseen clouds as he scooped out its guts.

Strange, she thought, that a dead roach should be more recognisable than the creature she had once called a companion.

It certainly looked like Gariath, of course: all muscles, horns, teeth and claws. His tail hung over the pillar and swayed ponderously, his wings were folded tightly behind his back, as they had been many times before. His hands were no less powerful as they tore a whiskered leg from the roach and guided it into teeth glistening with roach innards. His utter casualness about having a corpse at his feet and in his mouth was also decidedly familiar to her.

And yet, there was something off about him, she thought as she studied him with ears upraised. His skin appeared stretched a bit too tightly. His jaws opened with mechanical precision instead of morbid enthusiasm. The disgust on her face was plain as another wave of roach reek hit her nostrils, but he showed no particular joy at the discomfort he caused her.

This was all strange enough without considering his stare. There was intensity behind it, as ever, but it was not a fire that flickered and burned. His stare was hard and immutable, a stone that pressed against her.

"So are you," she said, observing him coolly as he shovelled another handful of innards into his jaws.

"You sound disappointed," he grunted through a full mouth.

She was, she admitted, if only slightly. Things certainly didn't get _less_ complicated with a hulking reptile still alive. She was certainly surprised to see him, given his rather obvious intent on dying the last time she saw him.

Still, she took some satisfaction in his appearance. It merely confirmed her previous suspicions: If Gariath was alive, Lenk would be, too.

_And if Lenk is alive..._

Gariath's neck suddenly stiffened. He looked up, ear-frills fanning out. She started, unsure whether to run. He made no movement beyond sitting, ear-frills twitching, as though hearing something she could not. This, noting the differences between their ears, she found disconcerting.

"Angry?" He glanced to the air at his side. "Maybe. Probably. I don't care."

"Are... you talking to me?"

"If I was talking to you, I'd be angry." He cast a sidelong glare to the emptiness. "As it is, I'm only mildly irritated."

While there were many oddities one could accuse Gariath of, madness was not one of them. What dribbled from his mouth on insect ichor might have _sounded_ like lunacy, and she wasn't ready to discount that it was, but it was uttered with such clarity that he was not possessed of even in his more lucid moments. He was serene. He was coherent. He was calm.

That unnerved her.

"You look upset," he observed.

She said nothing. "Concerned" and "observant" were two other qualities one never accused Gariath of having.

"Understandable, isn't it?" she asked. "I'm standing in front of a lizard who, up until moments ago, I thought dead and was pleased for it, because, as of a few days ago, said lizard tried to kill me by bringing down a giant snake on my head." She sneered. "Maybe a little upset, yeah."

"What?"

"I just said—"

"Not you, stupid." He held a hand up and looked to the side again, shaking his head. "No, she always sounds like this. Stupid humans cry about things like near-death experiences." He laughed morbidly. "No, no. They call it 'attempted murder'." He snorted. "Babies."

She stared at the nothingness beside him intently, straining to see what he saw. It became evident that trying to do so was as futile as trying to see what crack had split his skull from which this sudden lunacy leaked out.

She took a step back warily.

"Going somewhere?"

She slowed, but did not freeze at his growl. "Back to tracking."

"Tracking what? The other humans?"

" _The_ humans, yes."

"Pointless. I can't smell them. They're probably dead."

"Given that you tried your damnedest to kill them, that's definitely possible."

"They're always snide like this, too," he growled to the air once more. "Hmm? No, you wouldn't think so, but the pointy-eared one gets uppity about the other ones, too. Or at least, the other _one_."

She felt the stab in his words surely as she felt the ire rise in her glare, seeking to leap out and impale him. The ichor on his unpleasant smile and the lunatic calm in his stare, however, convinced her to instead turn around, walk toward the opposite bank and hope he did nothing more than continue to stare.

"Never seen you run before," he grunted after her.

"I've never seen you talk to invisible people before, so I suppose we're even," she called over her shoulder. "And for the thousandth time I remind you, knowing full well you don't care or can't understand, I'm a _shict_."

The question came just as she set foot back onto damp soil, voiced without accusation, without malice, without anything beyond genuine curiosity.

"Are you?"

And she froze, turned around so slowly she heard her vertebrae creak.

"What... what did you say?"

"You're not going about this the right way, you know," he replied with a shrug.

"You can't possibly—"

"I do," he replied, "and I can tell you that more dead bodies, theirs or yours, won't make your ears any pointier."

"And I'm supposed to listen to that?" It was unwise to snarl at him so, to bare her teeth at him challengingly, but she didn't care. It was likewise unwise to allow the tears to form in the corners of her eyes, but she could not help it. "You expect me to believe that _you_ , of all people, think violence isn't a solution?"

"I don't expect you to do much more than die," he replied with coolness not befitting him. "Someone else expects you to do so in a more meaningful way." He blinked, then looked to the air with incredulousness. "Really? How do you figure that?"

"Who—?"

"Right." He nodded once, then turned to her. "But this isn't it, we agree. No matter who dies, you're still what you are."

_Walk away_ , she told herself. _Run, if you have to. He's a long way gone and he was rather far away to begin with. Go. Run_.

Sound advice. She should have cursed her frozen feet, her eyes set against his. She should have done anything, she knew, besides open her mouth to him. But she could not help it, just as she couldn't help the genuine curiosity in her voice.

"What am I?"

"Well, _I_ don't care," he replied sharply. "But whatever you are, whatever you're planning, it won't work."

"You know nothing of what I'm planning, of what I have to do."

"You don't _know_ what you have to do. Isn't that why you're being such a whiny moron?" He leaned closer; the weight of his stare became oppressive, drove her back a step. "What happens when you do it? When you kill Lenk? Your thoughts won't get any more quiet."

"What do I _do_ then?" She was far past concern for how he seemed to know her plans, far past baring her teeth or hiding her tears. "What does your lunacy tell you? Because I've been thinking with sanity and logic, and I can't come to any other conclusion. _This_ has to happen. _He_ has to die."

His expression didn't change. The stone of his stare became one of body. His tail ceased to sway, his claws ceased to twitch. He stared without words, for he had no more for her.

And she had none for him. His might be a serene madness, but it was still madness. And she still knew what she must do.

She turned about swiftly this time, stalked back to the river. She hadn't even lifted sole from stone this time before she heard him growl.

"There, see? I told you she wouldn't listen."

She heard him rise, wings flapping, claws stretching, leathery lips creaking with the force of his snarl.

"Now, we do things _my_ way."

In an instant, the sun was drowned behind her, choked by a shadow that bloomed like a dark flower over her. She had no thought for reasons why, only instinct. She heeded it as she leapt backwards.

He was Gariath. He didn't know why. Reasons were for weaklings.

The ground shook as he fell where she had stood. His claws raked the rock and his wings flapped, sending up a cloud of granite-laced dust. She whirled, narrowing her eyes against the grit as he turned to face her, eyes bright and burning.

She wasn't surprised; sudden and irrational violence was simply what he did. Still, she felt compelled to ask.

"What's it matter to you?" She crouched, a cat ready to spring, ears flattened against her head aggressively. "Sad that you won't get to be the one to kill them?"

"They don't matter." He rose like a red monolith, muscles twitching, claws flexed. "I don't matter." His legs tensed, eyes narrowed. " _You don't matter!_ "

His roar split the dust cloud in half as he hurled himself at her. Her ears rang from his fury; she felt hairs on her neck wilt under the heat of his breath as she darted low beneath him. Her spine trembled as his jaws snapped shut, a hairsbreadth over it.

She heard him crash into the foliage, but did not turn to see. Instead, she scrambled across the stones, mind racing with her limbs as she searched for options and found them desperately scarce.

Fighting was impossible, even if she had her bow and knife. Hiding was futile, for his nose guided him as surely as her ears did her. Negotiation... just seemed stupid at this point. With nothing left, she turned to face him as he tore himself free in an eruption of soil and leaves.

And she hurled the Spokesman at him.

He lowered his head, let it smash against his skull. Such blows from a greenshict were legendary, the sticks splitting open heads as easily as they did melons. But no matter what she was, she was not a greenshict. The stick crashed against his brow, clattered harmlessly to the stones.

He stepped over it, his tail flicking behind him to snatch the stick and send it flying into the river, where it disappeared. She watched it vanish with wide eyes, the white of the feather tied to it visible for a long, horrifying moment. She forced herself to tear her eyes from it, forced the fear from her face and replaced it with snarling, white-toothed rage.

"So what is it, then?" she growled. "Why fight me? You won't get a scratch, let alone die!"

"Dying isn't important... not anymore," he growled back. "Living is."

"You can't possibly expect me to believe you came up with that all on your own."

"I don't expect you to do anything but die." He stalked toward her with more caution than she expected. Or, she wondered, was that hesitation? "And I don't care if I live, either. What's important is that _he_ lives."

"Who? Lenk?"

"I need him."

She paused, blinking. "Uh... for..."

" _I don't know!_ " His roar was mostly fury, but tinged at the edges with pain. "Some lives... are worth more than others."

"What of my life?" She backed away as he continued toward her. "I killed alongside you. I fought. I thought you respected that."

"Liked, yes. Respected, never." He drew back a thin red lip in a sneer. "You're still just a pointy-eared human. Still stupid, still weak, still have to die sometime."

"And when did you reach this conclusion?" she asked. "Was it before yet another failed attempt to kill yourself? Or after another failed attempt to kill this stupid, weak _shict_?"

"Shut up." His ear-frills twitched. His gaze danced from side to side before settling on her. "You should have died at sea. I shouldn't have. I see that now."

"And what of Lenk? What if he died there, too?"

"He lives."

"How do you know?"

"How do you?"

His lunge came swiftly, but it was half-hearted, all fury with no hate to guide it. She darted aside, but did not flee. Perhaps, though, he was giving her the opportunity to do just that? No. He would think that cowardly. The madness that possessed him couldn't have affected him deeply enough that he would be afflicted with the disease of mercy.

Still, something plagued his strikes, hindered his muscle, smothered his growl. Was he in his right mind, she wondered, or merely distracted?

There was an opportunity she could seize.

"What of the others, then?" she shouted, adding her voice to whatever assault kept his ear-frills twitching madly. "If Lenk lives, the others might, as well."

"I said _some_ lives," he snarled, leaning low. "He lives because he was strong. The others died because they were weak."

"The giant raging sea snake might have also had something to do with it."

"It had to be done. The Akaneed was necessary. It was sent for me."

"You seem to say that about a lot of things that try to kill you." She took another step backward and felt unyielding stone at her back. "Since they haven't, you think maybe whatever's sending them to you might be mistaken?"

The rage that brimmed in his eyes at the insult was neither fire nor stone. It was a bodily thunder that boiled up through his chest, rumbled in his throat and became a storm behind his stare, vast, unrelenting and hungry for carnage.

"The _Rhega_ do not make mistakes," he growled, fingers tightening around something on the ground. "The spirits do not make mistakes." He rose, a fragmented stone head from a nearby decapitated statue in his hand. "The beast was sent not to kill, but to teach. And I have learned from it. I thought you and the others weak, stupid. I thought you dead. And now..."

His arm snapped, sending the granite skull hurtling like a meteor toward her face.

" _I'M RIGHT TWICE!_ "

She dove, felt the impact on the pillar behind her as the head burst into fragments and powder that settled over her like a cloak; she took advantage of its cover, crawling on her belly into the foliage and disappearing amongst the greenery.

Futile, of course; he would sniff her out. But between the futility of hiding and the futility of attacking a seven-foot-tall slab of muscle with nothing but her fangs and harsh language, this seemed modestly wiser.

Still, she couldn't help but search for other options. Desperately scarce before, every strategy fled at the dragonman's roar. She heard him clearly, the breaths laden with anger, the feet heavy with hate, his claws twitching impatiently for bones to break and flesh to rend. Above the sounds of his hatred, it was near impossible to hear anything else. But she heard a sound regardless, faint and quiet. Between the flickering of his fury and the rumble of his growls, his nostrils twitched, searched the air.

And found nothing.

_He can't smell me_. The thought raced with the beating of her heart. _Or is he just drawing it out? No, he's not that patient. But it makes no sense. Why can't he—?_

The answer came on an invisible cloud of reek, filling her nostrils with knowledge and the pungent stink of roach innards. She glanced up, peered out of the foliage and saw the roach's corpse loosing its incense onto the sunbeams filtering through the canopy.

And an idea came.

She could barely keep from laughing. The dragonman, the terror of all things that walked on two legs and four, laid low by a stinking _bug_. He had a weakness after all. And, if one of the many curses about shicts was true, it was that they knew weaknesses could be exploited.

_Shicts_ , she thought with obscene pride, _don't fight fair_.

The sole obstacle to capitalising on this pride was the expanse between her and the dead insect, dominated by a mass of red flesh and eager claws.

But that suddenly did not seem so grievous an obstacle anymore. He was _only_ flesh and claws... and teeth, she admitted, but she was a shict. She was cunning, she was stealth, she was hunter. These were things the Howling taught her, reminded her of in faint echoes as she fell to all fours and crept about the bush.

"What's that?"

She froze.

"What?" he growled again. "No, I never said I couldn't learn." Gariath sighed, unaware as she pressed on through the brush around him. "It's just that the humans, round or pointy, have nothing to teach me. They know few things: desecration, degradation and indignation."

He laughed blackly, a sound that made her skin crawl as it never had before.

"No, it means she thinks she's claiming some sort of victory here... no, an _invisible_ victory," he growled. "It's as stupid as it sounds. She pretends she's avoiding me because she doesn't deserve to be splattered on the ground. _That_ is indignation, something humans claim to possess when everything else is taken from them.

"In this case," he continued, "it's stupid of her to think she's going to die with anything more than mud in her teeth and a rock in her skull. That's as invisible as victories get, I suppose. Eh? No, it makes sense to them _morally_."

_He's speaking to you_ , she told herself, _not the air... maybe both_.

"It basically means she's lying to herself. Really, all we're fighting over is killing rights, which is acceptable." He snorted disdainfully. "But she wants to kill the others, the stupid weaklings, to prove she's less stupid and weak. This is a lie... sorry, a _moral victory_."

_He's taunting you, trying to lure you out. Keep going. Don't fall for it_.

"And this is why they look at her with hatred, why Lenk feared to turn his back to her."

She froze.

"She is a liar, a schemer. She tells herself they have to die for reasons she thinks will help, that she'll stink less like a human after rubbing against their soft skin for so long. They know this. They hate her. What?" He grunted. "Yes, _I'd_ kill them, but only because I don't like them. Honesty is an admirable trait."

She was not prepared for this. Claws, fists, bellowing roars she had steeled herself against. But when he spoke with confidence, not rage, when his words were laced with cunning rather than hatred, she was stunned into inaction.

"Ironic? Yes, I know what the word means. That's different, though. I don't _protect_ Lenk. If he needed protection, I would laugh as he died. I give him the respect and honour of a fair fight by killing her first. He's a stupid bug, all wings and stinger, that will leap into the jaws of a snapping flower because he can't tell that the pollen stinks. He knows there's something foul about the stench, but he sniffs it, anyway. _She_ is the pollen. I'm just clearing his nostrils."

_Well?_ she demanded of her body. _What are you upset about? That's what you wanted, isn't it? Lenk's hatred, his fear... if you've got that, it's all so much easier, isn't it?_

It was supposed to be, anyway.

"No, no..." Gariath's voice drifted softly over the leaves like a breeze. "That's not the funny part. The real humour is that she's running away when I'm doing her a favour she doesn't deserve. If she does fear, as you say she does, not being so pointy-eared, then how is what I'm doing a bad thing? Eh? No, I disagree. The kindest thing here..."

She felt the shadow on her back, looked up into hard black eyes.

"Is a swift and fair death."

_Move_.

She did, too late.

His claws raked her, dug into the tender flesh of her back. She felt blood weeping down her skin, shallow muscles screaming, but not the numbing agony that would suggest a crippling blow. She tried to ignore the pain and scrambled away. She leapt to her feet, heard him fall to his feet and his claws as he charged. The bug grew large in her eyes, its stink brilliantly foul in her nose.

He lunged; she jumped.

He caught her ankle in a grasping claw; she seized a handful of pasty yellow innards.

She twisted and saw his teeth looming forward. With a growl to match his, she thrust the glistening, guts-laden fist at him and smeared the insect's ichor into his nostrils.

Though he didn't let go, he did howl. The roach's juices vengefully filled his nostrils, seeped over his snout to sting his eyes. He threw his head back enough that she could pull her ankle from his weakened grip, claws scratching at her heel as she did.

He sprang to his feet, swung his fists out, lashed his tail out, stomped the earth in a blind, anosmic rage.

His roar filled her ears, as did the sound of his nostrils futilely searching the air for her. Such sounds continued as she ran into the forest, leaping over the river's shallows and leaving him far behind. Without direction, without stopping, she ducked branches, leapt over logs. And through his howling and snarling she could hear his words, spoken with such venomous clarity. She could feel them continue to seep into her, as she could feel her eyes brim with tears.

She ran, and lied to herself that she wept because of the pain in her back.

She flew past a roach, the rainbow-coloured insect's antennae twitching curiously as she sped past it without so much as a glance. It chittered quietly, confused. She did not look back at it.

Perhaps if she had, she might have noticed the pair of wide yellow eyes peering out of the foliage. Perhaps, if she had, she might have heard the sound of long, green footsteps that set off after her.

# _Thirteen_

# SCORN

Bralston, like most wizards, resented the term "magic" as it pertained to his gifts.

Magic, in the accepted application of the word, was a dismissive means of explaining the inexplicable. The word "magic" was uttered, whispered and squealed at everything from stars falling across the sky to a flower blooming in snowfall.

Wizards did not practise "magic." Wizards channelled _Venarie_. And as Venarie was the soul of the wizard, so too was reason the soul of Venarie.

"Magic" was no more mystical than a fever in the blood, the moisture in one's breath, the faint shock that occurred when one touched a doorknob or the force that kept a man's feet on the ground. Venarie was simply an added quality that allowed wizards to channel fever to flames, to freeze the moisture in their breath, to twist a shock to a bolt of lightning and to defy the earth itself.

This had been explained before, in countless theses, debates and lectures to the gifted and the unenlightened alike. Met with too many slack-jawed stares and the inability of the unenlightened to even fumble with these concepts, let alone grasp them, the Venarium had turned their efforts to more worthwhile studies.

Without the guidance of wizards, the unenlightened had turned to the only other source of explanation: their priests. And the priests offered only one explanation.

"Magic."

Venarie was the domain of wizards.

"Magic" was the practice of priests.

The explanation wasn't always "magic." Just as frequently it was "fate," or "the will of the Gods," or "apologies that your son died in a war we told him was just; perhaps if you had just given a few more coins in the dish when it was passed your way." Whatever the explanation, priests lived to undo what wizards did.

The reasons for the Venarium's enmity for priesthoods of all faiths had roots that sank into the earth of history, the greatest one taking years to explain in full every slight and grudge the wizards had meticulously recorded.

Bralston did not have years, so he simply settled for scowling across the table at Miron Evenhands.

"I don't like you."

For his part, the priest seemed unfazed by this. He simply smiled, a sort of smile that irked Bralston to admit reminded him fondly of his grandfather, and brought a cup of steaming tea up to a long face beneath a white cowl.

"I'm sorry," the Lord Emissary said.

"Apologies suggest that there is something you can do to alter my opinion," Bralston replied sharply. "I assure you, my reasons remain steeped far enough in history and philosophy that any such suggestions are ultimately a frivolous, and borderline insulting, waste of time and attention on your part and mine."

"That's one interpretation." The priest bobbed his head. "There are others. For example, it can also imply a deep lament that history and philosophy have more to do with an opinion than character and personal experience do. It can also imply a subtle desire that said relations could be repaired, if only through two open minds meeting at the right time with the right attitude."

Bralston snorted, crinkling his nose in a sneer. "That's stupid."

"I'm sorry."

"Look," the wizard said, rubbing his eyes. "I get my fill of arguing philosophical trivia in Cier'Djaal. I was hoping that this mission would heighten my appreciation for simplicity."

"You hoped that a mission to track down people who shoot fire from their fingertips and don't soil themselves with the effort due to glowing red stones would be simple?"

"What did I _just_ say?"

"I'm sorry." Miron smiled and held up a hand for preemptive peace. "Excuse me. In truth, I had hoped that summoning you here would result in a greater enhancement of your desire for simplicity."

Bralston merely grunted at that. Thus far, the two hours of contact that he had shared with the Lord Emissary had been anything but simple.

He had arrived in Port Destiny shortly after dawn broke on the blue horizon of the sea, as scheduled, planning only on lingering for as long as it took to find a meal. He had been surprised to find a bronze-clad, fierce-looking woman with raven hair and a long sword, standing exactly three feet from where he landed, wearing an expression as though she had been waiting there specifically for him.

His surprise had turned to suspicion when she, one Knight-Serrant Quillian Guisarne-Garrelle Yanates, had revealed that she was doing exactly that. That suspicion had convinced him to follow her lead to the luxurious temple in the city, and from there to the table where he now sat, across from a priest of Talanas—an apparently high-ranking priest of Talanas—who somehow seemed to know everything about his mission.

_And_ , he thought with a twitch of his eyelid, _who just won't... stop... smiling_.

"You'll forgive me for being less than willing to nod my head dumbly and accept whatever you say, _Lord Emissary_." Bralston all but spat the title on the table. "But given that the Venarium acts with at least a modicum of secrecy, I must be more than a little suspicious at how you know what my mission concerns."

"Suspicion is a wise policy, even in times of peace." Miron shook his head and sighed. "In times of turmoil... well..."

"That doesn't explain anything."

"No appreciation for dramatic segues, I see." The priest smiled, took another sip. "I can see why, of course. Drama tends to be a word in a forgotten language that roughly translates to 'long-winded, unimportant babble purely for the sake of entertaining idiots.'"

"I would not disagree."

"When 'long-winded and unimportant' tend to be the exact opposite of the concise and sharp-witted pride of the wizard, no? Curtness, forthrightness, everything explained, everything understood. That is what you believe, is it not?"

"Priests believe. Wizards _know_."

"Indeed. However, what you apparently don't know is that everything is not quite so neatly explained as you might think. This supposed rivalry between the churches and the Venarium, for example." The priest's smile seemed to grow larger with every mounting moment of Bralston's ire. "It would cast such _knowledge_ into doubt to learn that there might be one or two wizards out there who find the company of priests tolerable, would it not?" He smiled and winked. "Even to the point of sharing the details on missions conducted with a modicum of secrecy?"

Bralston's eyes went wide, mouth went small.

"You're saying..." he uttered. "We have a leak."

"Now who's being dramatic?" The priest's laughter was dry, like pages turning in a well-read book. "No, no, my friend. I simply meant that, where our concerns coincide, Lector Annis and myself are not above violating enmities steeped in philosophy and history."

"Coincide?" Bralston raised a brow. "The Lector mentioned nothing."

"I suppose he wouldn't, for fear that you might believe what I am about to tell you is an order, rather than a humble request, something you would no doubt resent."

"And that request is?"

Miron's smile faded, and a look of concern, so familiar as to have been etched on the face of every soft-hearted grandmother and hard-working grandfather that Bralston had ever seen, spread over his face.

"I would like you to find my employees."

"Surely," Bralston replied, "agents of the church are more than capable of performing your will, given the funding and support you undoubtedly boast."

" _True_ agents, perhaps." Miron nodded. "However, for want of those, I instead hired adventurers."

Bralston rolled his eyes and placed a finger to his temple, the reasoning suddenly becoming all too clear. "You hired some vagrant lowlifes to do your bidding, they broke their contract and they made off with your money or your daughter or whatever you wear under your robes, if not all three, and you want me to get them back?" He sat rigid in his chair, uncompromising. "I'm not a mercenary."

"No, you're a Librarian," Miron replied, unfazed by the sarcastic assault. "But more than that, you're a good man, Bralston."

"I didn't tell you my name."

"Annis did, amongst other things." The priest leaned forward in his chair, propping his elbows on his table. "He told me many things about you, many foul things you did for the right reasons."

The Librarian had prided himself on being difficult to surprise. But it wasn't the words emanating from the Lord Emissary's mouth that caused him to feel so small in his chair. Rather, it was the intensity, that instinctual concern that played across the priest's face that suggested he had known Bralston all his life.

Only one person had ever looked at him in such a way before...

"You know..." the Librarian whispered.

"I know that you love a woman," Miron replied. "That you spilled blood to protect her, blood that nearly brought the Venarium to war with the Jackals. I know you burned two men alive without question for the agonies they inflicted on a poor woman. I know that your duties go far, far beyond whatever the Venarium claims they do in the name of their laws."

Bralston expected to feel cold, expected that such a revelation should seize him by the heart and twist. Instead, he felt warm, comforted by the reassuring smile that the priest wore. He felt a familiar urge, the same urge that when young would cause him to run crying to his mother when he had skinned his knee, or to hug his father's legs when a dog had growled at him.

An urge that he thought he had hardened himself to.

"That is why, Bralston," Miron whispered, "I want you to find my employees. There are six of them, four men and two women."

"And..." Bralston swallowed hard. "You want me to protect the women."

"If it is in your power, I would ask you to protect them all. As it stands, these adventurers are a capable lot. The men are well-armed, and one of the women, a shict, is possibly even better-equipped to handle herself." Miron's face wrinkled with concern. "The sixth member, however... she is not weak, by any means, but she is... untested."

"I see." Bralston scratched his chin contemplatively. "This woman... I assume she's one of your own."

"Do you?"

"As compassionate as even a Lord Emissary is, I doubt his charity extends so low as to reach adventurers. They live to die, do they not, to be used and disposed of?"

"Perhaps some hold that attitude." For the first time, Miron betrayed a hint of sadness in his face. "Though you are right. She is sacred to Talanas, serving her pilgrimage with the others. A priestess."

The Librarian didn't feel the usual cringe that accompanied such a word. Enmity steeped in years was forgotten, replaced by a sudden surge through his being, the same surge that had called him to burn men alive.

"A priestess..." he whispered.

"I know you do not agree with her calling. But she is not yet hardened enough to know that anything beyond her faith exists." Miron smiled. "She is the one I wish to preserve the most. I fear the horror that was inflicted upon the woman in Cier'Djaal would shatter her completely."

The woman leapt to his mind, and he felt that cringe return. He recalled the bruises on her face, the way she folded into herself to escape the room. He recalled her eyes, so empty and distant as she watched two men burn for what they had done to her. He tried to picture what she might have been before the wizard, the heretic, had shattered her.

He found he couldn't bear to.

"Perhaps, if rhetoric does not sway you, we might see if personal experience truly does trump age-old loathing?" Miron asked as Bralston looked up. "I am told you were one of the few members of the Venarium that assisted with transporting the wounded during the Night of Hounds."

He nodded, slowly, loath to remember the event. A lesser man would have remembered images and sounds: fire, screams, felons running in the street, women begging for their lives, looting, carnage. Bralston, however, was a Librarian and had no choice but to remember the horror with precise chronology.

One hour after dawn: the Houndmistress, bane of the Jackals and champion of the citizenry, before there were statuettes of her in every place of business in Cier'Djaal, had been found in her bed with her throat cut, her adviser missing from his chambers and her child missing from hers.

Two hours: a man named Ran Anniq, small-time Jackal thug, had thrown the stone that struck the herald announcing her death.

Three hours: Bralston was strongly reconsidering his denial that hell, as men knew it, existed.

The Venarium had not been petitioned by the fashas of Cier'Djaal to aid until seven hours after dawn, when the wounded had become too great for the healers of the city to tend to. Bralston had not stepped away from the window of his study for all seven of the hours, save to file a request to visit a brothel, which was promptly denied. He had spared that building, still unblackened by the flames engulfing the city, only a glance as he and several other wizards filed onto a ship to use their magic to propel it toward Muraska and the healers there.

They arrived seventeen hours after dawn, exhausted. The priests of Talanas had offered succour to the wizards, in addition to the wounded they had brought over, and many had grudgingly accepted. Bralston declined with no thought to why he should; he simply could not sleep for fear that the brothel had been razed, its women defiled.

Twenty-two hours in, he had felt a hand on his shoulder. He had looked up into bright eyes, into a smile offering comfort. Hands flecked with dried blood had offered him a cup of tea. A woman in blue robes had placed her right hand around him and asked him what the matter was.

At twenty-three hours, he wept. At twenty-four, he slept. At forty-three, he watched her from his ship, taking her words with him. Two weeks later, he had returned to the brothel, still thanking her quietly.

Seven years later, he now thought of her again, of her god, of what she had done for him.

"I know not much about the specifics of your mission," Miron continued. "Only that you seek a violator of laws, both wizardly and godly, and in this we coincide. I know what direction you head, and I know what direction I sent my employees... what direction I sent her."

"I... will do it," Bralston replied softly without looking up. "If I can find her... I will return her."

"I am sure you can find her... if someone else has not found her first." Miron cringed. "But I am not asking you to go without aid on my part. Your coat flew you here from Cier'Djaal, did it not? A journey that takes weeks by ship done in only a day and a half... its power must be exhausted."

"It will take some time to replenish itself, yes," Bralston replied.

"Time, I fear, she does not have. A ship, however, is what I have." Miron pointed out the window of his room, toward the city's harbour. "Seek a ship called the _Riptide_ ; you will find its captain not far away. Tell him that his charter requests that he deliver you to your destination."

"Our intelligence suggests that the outlaw is based near the Reaches," Bralston said. "But beyond that, we know little."

"There may be someone who knows more," Miron suggested. "A man by the name of Rashodd. He was involved in certain... peculiarities before my employees brought him low. We entrusted him to the care of authorities at Port Yonder."

"I shall seek him out, then. Your assistance is duly noted and will be reflected in my report."

"I trust that you will," Miron replied, nodding sternly. "Godspeed, Librarian."

Bralston rose swiftly and stiffly from his chair and cast a look over the table at the priest. He sniffed, then placed his hat upon his head, running fingers along its brim.

"I don't need gods."

The door shut with a resilient slam, as though the Librarian sought to make his discontent known through the rattle of porcelain as the impact sent Miron's teacup stirring on its saucer. The Lord Emissary let it settle, listening for the sound of the Librarian's determined footsteps over the hiss of the brown liquid.

When all was quiet once more, he gently took his cup in hand and smiled at the door through a veil of steam.

"Idiot."

The harbour of Port Destiny was lax, only a few ships bobbing in blue waters that kissed blue sands, rendering city and sea indistinct from one another. Their cargoes had been unloaded, their crews vanished into the city for wine, dice and women. Most would return destitute and broken, ready to serve at sea for further wages. A few would not return, usually paying for debts they had racked up with either their service or their kidneys.

That was a problem for a captain, Argaol thought as he lay back and shut his eyes against the morning sun. He would be one of those again someday, a captain with problems of unruly men and hostile seas and obligations to greedy men. But today, he was a man whose long, dark legs hung bare over the docks, a fishing line tied to his big toe.

His titanic ship, the _Riptide_ , lounged as lazily as her captain did, bobbing up and down in the water beside him. They would both be called away before too long. But for now, each was content to lose themselves in their shared insignificance between the vast city and the boundless ocean, each content in the knowledge they could ask for no better company.

"It just goes on and on, doesn't it?"

He never _asked_ for worse company. It always just seemed to find him.

"Vast... endless..."

Argaol stifled a groan, attempting to pretend he couldn't hear her. He remembered many an awkward conversation that had begun with this particular clichéd pseudo-insight.

"I can't even begin to fathom how enormous it is..."

Any moment now, this would turn to some horrible confession, probably one involving a pelvic rash or a request for help removing a fishing hook from a particularly tender area. He clenched his teeth, hoped quietly that she would give up before she said—

"On and on and on and on and—"

"Zamanthras" loving bosoms, _all right_ ," he finally spat out. " _What_ in the sweet hell that I so dearly prefer to listening to you is on your wretched little mind?"

Quillian looked down with disdain as he cracked one eye open from his lounging on the dock. Her face was hard, barely any more femininity revealed in it than was revealed in her bronze-swaddled body. She brushed a lock of black hair aside, exposing the red line of an indecipherable oath written beneath her eye.

"What makes you think something's on my mind?"

Argaol stared at her with disbelief that bordered on offended. "I suppose I'm just the sensitive type."

Her befuddlement was short-lived, concern etching its way across her features as she turned her gaze back out past the docks and over the sea.

"I heard what the Lord Emissary plans," she said, "before he met with the heathen."

Argaol chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. "Is it wise to use the word 'heathen' in reference to someone who can spit icicles into your face?"

"Perhaps your faith extends only as far as your fears," she replied coldly. "The Knights-Serrant cannot afford such luxuries of sloth. Our sins do not allow it."

_Your sins apparently don't allow anything less than a gods-damned theatre production whenever you say something, either_ , he thought with a roll of his eyes. To hear her speak would lead anyone else to believe she was more than human. He had seen the flesh underneath her bronze, however. He had seen the red ink that was etched into her side. He knew not the language of sin, but whatever hers had been, they had been many.

That fact made the Serrant's temperament at least somewhat understandable, even if nothing else about her was.

"You're not concerned?" she asked.

He glanced down at his naked foot, the fishing line tied to his big toe as the rest of his slight, dark build sprawled out across the dock. He shrugged, folding his hands behind his bald head as he did.

"I suppose I don't look it, do I?"

"His plan is to head for Port Yonder."

"Yonder's fine enough," Argaol replied. "A little light on entertainment, but a bit of sobriety is good for the soul." He snorted, spat over the edge of the dock. "One would think a Lord Emissary's duties would demand his presence here in Destiny, though."

"They do," Quillian muttered.

That caused Argaol to turn a glare upon her.

"Aye? The Lord Emissary's not coming?"

"Not unless something has changed since he went to speak with that heathen." Quillian shook her head. "He means for us to act as... as _aides_ to the vile creature."

"Ah."

"Surely you can't be well with that." The Serrant turned an incredulous glare upon the captain. "I was assigned by the Master-Serrants to protect the Lord Emissary, _not_ some... some..."

"I wouldn't bother finishing that thought," Argaol interjected curtly. "For someone who likes spewing them as much as you do, your repertoire of insults is surprisingly short and boring. And"—he held up an authoritative finger—"as I recall, you were assigned to _obey_ Evenhands, which protection most certainly falls under. And I was _hired_ to do the same. No one's violating any sacred oaths of red ink here."

Her glare turned violent, face contorting with the audible grinding of teeth as she levelled a bronze finger at him.

"Don't you _dare_ speak of oaths like you know any beyond your own to coin, you chicken-legged, cowardly, purse-fornicating, wheel-raping, hairless _eater of broken meats_!"

"Uh... all right." Argaol rose up, scratched the back of his head. " _That_ one I haven't heard before, I'll grant you." Rather than anger, it was with a furrow-browed curiosity that he cast his gaze at the Serrant. "So... what's _really_ on your mind?"

The Serrant turned her bronze shoulder to him. "It's complicated."

"To you, doorknobs are complicated."

"Why would you be interested?"

"Perverse fascination is not interest."

She stared at him for a moment, expression teetering between appalled and murderous. Like two panes of glass grinding against each other, her face cracked in short order and revealed a look that Argaol had not yet seen on her normally stolid, firm-browed face.

Fear.

"I worry," she said, "about the adventurers."

Argaol blinked. "Do they owe you money?"

Her face screwed up. "Ah, no."

"So..."

"Well, just one of them, really."

"Which one?"

Quillian stared into the waters lapping at the dock. "I shouldn't say."

"Asper, then."

"What?" Her head snapped back up with a look of alarm on her face.

"Don't look so damned shocked," he said, rolling his eyes. "You think you're the first woman to worry after another woman? It was either her or the shict." He furrowed his brow. "It's not the shict, is it?"

" _No_."

"Didn't think so," he replied. "That would have been far, far too interesting to hope for." He lay back down upon the dock, folding his arms behind his head. "Makes sense, though; the priestess is the only decent one amongst them."

"Then you share my concern."

"Not especially, no. Sebast is due to meet with them any day now. From then, he brings them back to us, they collect their pay and you get to be content that a woman who thinks you're a fanatical lunatic is safe."

"But she's..." Quillian paused, looking a little more alarmed. "Wait, did she tell you she thinks I'm a fanatical lunatic?"

"I'm assuming she thinks it. It's sort of your thing."

"My _thing_ is atonement through service to the clergy," the Serrant snapped. "If I am zealous in this pursuit, it's only because I'm truly repentant, truly devoted."

"Well, wait for her to come back and you can show her your thing yourself. The trip from Teji to Destiny takes only a week or so."

"So you say," Quillian said, folding her arms. "But Teji is part of the Reaching Isles."

"Aye."

"They're not called that because they're convenient. They've been lawless and beyond the grasp of Toha's navy for ages."

"What military force can't solve, gold can. Teji's a trading outpost. It's always been a trading outpost. It'll always be a trading outpost. No pirate is going to attack it if they can save themselves the energy by trading."

"Given that we only barely held off Rashodd when you swore you could deal with him and his brigands, I trust you'll see why I'm not confident in your opinion on pirate thought processes." She frowned, staring out to the distant horizon. "Have you heard any news, then? From either Teji or Sebast?"

"None," Argaol said. "But he'll get the job done."

"If he was going to," Quillian muttered, "why would the Lord Emissary send a heathen after him?"

"Ask him," Argaol muttered, closing his eyes as he dangled his leg back over the edge. "Confess your sinful thoughts about the priestess while you're at it. I'm not interested anymore."

The next part was fairly routine: the moment of frustrated silence, the flurry of grunts as she sought to come up with a retort and, finding none, the rattle of metal as she reached for her sword. He didn't bother to open his eyes, even when he heard the steel slide back into its sheath and the heavy, burdened slam of her feet as she skulked down the dock.

He had just begun to get settled, ready to entice a curious fish with the dark flesh of his big toe, when the footsteps began to get louder.

"I told you," Argaol said with a sigh, "I'm not—"

"You are Argaol."

The voice was deep, resonant, full of presumed authority. He cracked one lid open.

The other shot up like a crossbow bolt.

There was no doubting the man for a wizard: the long coat with many pockets and heavy book hanging from his belt left no room for doubt. But the size of the man, his broad shoulders and healthy frame, contradicted any impression he had ever had of the faithless magic-users. Whereas the other wizards he had known were thin and sickly, the tan vigour of this one, a Djaalman, he thought, suggested at least normal vitality.

_Then again_ , he reminded himself, _you've only known the one_.

Apparently unwilling to wait for a reply, the man turned his head, atop which sat a rather impressive-looking hat, to the massive three-masted ship not far away. He squinted a pair of blue eyes at the bold black lettering on its hull.

"That is the _Riptide_ ," he said.

"You can read," Argaol replied, his shock fading and general contempt seeping back in. "I'm thrilled for you, really. Run along home and tell your mother."

"The priest told me to seek you out. We are to leave for Port Yonder at once."

"So I hear," Argaol muttered, easing back. He made a gesture in the general direction of the city. "The crew's out on leave. They'll be back tomorrow morning."

"I will go out and find them," the man said sharply. "Be ready to leave when I return. My duties demand a swift departure."

"I have duties of my own," the captain replied coolly. "Chief among which is catching my lunch today."

He wiggled his toe and added, silently, _As well as making a point that I won't be cowed by any overzealous bookworm_. Too late, Argaol tried to remember if mind-reading was a wizard trick.

"You're not a man that visits Cier'Djaal much, are you?"

"I've been once or twice."

"Not enough to know that the Librarians are the arm of the Venarium." His eyelid twitched. Crimson light poured out in flickering flames. "The duties of the Venarium supersede the necessity of lunch."

"Yes, I've seen that trick before." Argaol waved a hand dismissively. "I know enough of wizards to know they have limits. Tell me, Mighty and Terrifying Librarian, do you know how to pilot a ship?"

"No."

"I see. And do you have enough wicked hoojoo, or whatever it is that makes your eyes do that, in you to move a ship the size of the _Riptide_ by yourself?"

"I do not."

"Then it would seem the duties of the Venarium can wait until I catch something scaly and full of meat, then," Argaol muttered. "Round up the crew, if whatever weird stuff you do allows you to do that, but neither the _Riptide_ nor myself are moving until I get some nice, salted fish in my gut."

"Terms accepted."

The sound of footsteps did not come, as Argaol anticipated. Rather, there was the sound of cloth shuffling. It was unusual enough that it demanded the captain open his eyes again in time to spy the man pulling a piece of paper folded to resemble a crane from his coat pocket.

It rested daintily in the man's dark palm for a moment before he leaned over and muttered something, as if whispering a secret to it. His eyes flashed bright, as did the tiny smear upon the crane's parchment. It fluttered briefly in his palm, imbued with a sudden glowing life, and leapt into the air.

Argaol watched it, at a loss for words, as it glided on a trail of red light, descending into the waters of the harbour. It vanished without a splash, its glow dimming as it slid beneath the green-and-blue depths.

Behind him, he heard Bralston take two steps backward.

The water erupted in a vast pillar of foam, forcing up with it a cacophonous explosion that tore the harbour's tranquility apart. The fish, their mouths gaping in silent screams, eyes wide in unblinking surprise, tumbled through the air like falling stars. They seemed to hang there for a moment before collapsing, flopping in their last throes of life, upon the deck and into the sea.

Argaol blinked, saltwater peeling off his brow, and turned to Bralston. The wizard smiled back at him, then gave a gentle kick to the flopping creature at his insultingly dry feet and sent it skidding to Argaol.

"I'll be back within the hour," he said. "I'll see if I can't find you some salt."

# _Fourteen_

# THE MANY CORPSES

When he discovered it, Lenk christened his vessel the _Nag_.

It seemed fitting enough to name it after a dying beast of burden, anyway. Though he couldn't quite recall any diseased mare he had ever seen in as pathetic a condition as his former ship, spared no indignity by the Akaneeds or whatever god had sent them, was in.

Its two pieces had washed ashore together, lying upon the beach like wooden skeletons of long-deceased sea beasts. Their shattered timbers reached up, as if in plea to an unsympathetic sky, desperate for something to pull them free of the sand they sank farther into with every rising wave. Their reeking, rotting ribs clouded the air with unseen stench, and what remained of a sail flapped in the breeze, trying to escape this crumbling hell and flee upon the wind. Through the dunes, a dying river snaked from the distant forest to serve as a resting place for the wreckage, slipping through its shattered wood as it emptied into the sea.

Lenk could take some macabre solace in the fact that it had found a use as a battlefield for beach vermin. Crabs and legged eels slithered and scuttled in and out of its cracks and holes, desperately trying to avoid the watching eyes of seagulls and screaming in salty, silent breaths when they were caught by probing beaks.

Unable to bear their tiny despairs, Lenk turned his attention to scanning the wreckage, searching for anything of value. He supposed it would have been too much to hope that some supplies might have run aground with the _Nag_ 's corpse. Of course, if anything edible had come ashore, it was likely devoured by one of the many combatants that crawled around the rubble.

_Or, far more likely_ , Lenk thought, _spirited away by some god who isn't content to smite me with disease and despair. Any divine favour I might have enjoyed came exclusively from Asper's presence, and she's..._

He winced, trying not to finish that thought.

" _Dead?_ " the voice finished for him.

"I was trying to avoid that conclusion," Lenk muttered.

" _What purpose is born through denial of the inevitable?_ "

"Hope?"

" _Purpose, not delusion_."

"I find myself hard-pressed to argue." Lenk stalked closer to the ruined vessel, ignoring the resentful glares the seagulls shot him and the sword he carried. "Still, there might be something here... some clue..."

" _What could you possibly find here that would make you realise anything you don't already know?_ "

"I don't know. Maybe they left something for me to find."

" _Such as?_ "

"I said I _don't know_."

" _One would think that clueless futility is also a delusion_."

"One would think."

" _The indulgence can't be healthy, you know_."

"Given that my leg is a festering mass of disease and I'm having a conversation with a symptom of insanity, I'd say I'm well beyond concern for health, mental or otherwise."

" _Did you ever stop to think that perhaps my presence is a blessing?_ "

"In between you causing me to look like a lunatic in front of people and telling me to kill people, no, that thought hadn't occurred to me."

" _Consider this: You're currently searching through rotting timber when you should be seeking medicinal aid. The captain sent his mate to pick you up. You and the tome, do you recall?_ "

"I recall the giant, man-eating sea snakes that complicated matters a bit."

" _Regardless, even if you've lost the tome, there would be medicine, supplies aboard the ship they sent. We could recuperate, recover, and then search—_ "

"For the others..." Lenk muttered, scratching his chin. "You're concerned about them and my well-being. Does the fever affect you, too?"

" _The tome. We must find the tome. As for the others... stop this. They are weak. They are dead. We must concern ourselves with_ our _well-being_."

"You don't know that."

" _I know that this ship was wood and metal and the snakes destroyed it. What chance does flesh and bone have?_ "

"I survived."

" _Because of me, as you continue to do. Because of_ me. _Now take heed and_ listen."

"There's still a chance. There has to be something here. Something that can—"

" _There is something here_."

"Where?"

The voice didn't have to reply. Lenk didn't have to look hard. He spied it, struggling to break free in the flow and flee into the ocean. His eyes went wide, a chill swept over his fevered body. Suddenly, the sun dimmed, his blood ran thin in his body, and his voice could barely rise from his throat.

" _No..._ " he whispered.

Kataria's feather, floating in the water, pulled by the flow as the smooth stick attached to it held it captive.

"No... no, no. _No!_ " Lenk swept up to it, cradling it in trembling hands as though it might break at any moment. "No... she... she'd never leave this behind. She always wears them."

" _Wore them_."

" _Shut up! YOU SHUT UP!_ " Lenk snarled, bashing his fist against his temple. "This can't be it. She wouldn't have left this. She... they..." He swallowed hard, a lump of boiling lead tumbling down his throat. "All..."

" _Dead_."

The word was given a sudden, heavy weight. It drove him to his knees, pulled the sword from his hand, crushed the blood from his face like dirty water from a sponge.

"Dead..."

" _Dead_ ," the voice repeated. " _Another blessing you will come to realise in time_."

"Please..." Lenk gasped, his voice wet and heavy in his throat. "Please don't say that."

" _She would have killed you, you know_."

"Don't say that."

" _She said as much_."

The voices flashed through his mind, as hot and tense as his fevered brow. All he had left to remember them by—her by—was the scorn that had dripped from her lips when they last spoke. The memories, the pleasantries, faded into nothingness and left one voice behind.

" _I want to feel like myself_."

" _And you can only do that by ignoring me?_ "

" _No, I can only do that by killing you!_ "

It continued to ring, cathedral bells of cracked brass. He clenched his skull, trying to stop it from echoing inside his head. He could not let go of the noise. It was all he had left.

"Kill you..." he repeated to himself. "Kill you... kill you..."

" _She would have_ ," the voice replied. " _But that's not important now. Now, we must rise up, we must—_ "

It faded, drowned in a flood of logic and reason that swept into Lenk's brain on a hatefully reasonable tone.

_Of course she would have_ , he thought. _She's a shict. You're a human. They_ live _to kill us_. This voice, familiarly cynical and harsh, he realised was Denaos' own, seeping up from some gash in his mind. _What, you thought she'd give up her whole race for you?_

_Maybe it's a blessing_ , a voice like Asper's said inside him. _The one favour the Gods will show you. You don't have to worry about her anymore, do you? You don't have to worry about anything..._

_Well, it's just logical, isn't it?_ Dreadaeleon asked, more decisive and snide than ever. _Put two opposing forces in the same atmosphere and one destroys the other. You can't change that. It's just how it works_.

_Your life only became more meaningless when you centred it on her_ , Gariath growled. _You deserve to die_.

"I deserve it..."

" _Self-pity is also a..._ " The voice paused suddenly, its tone shifting to cold anger. " _What are you doing?_ "

"I deserve it."

Lenk reached up and took the feather, the last action he took before he rose without compulsion from his body. He turned to stare out over the sea, clutching the white object close to him. Then, his feet beginning to move with numb mechanic, he walked toward the hungry, frothing sea.

" _What are you doing?_ " The voice's demand didn't penetrate the numbness in his body. Whatever eyes it had, it must have seen the shore looming up. " _Stop! This is not our purpose!_ "

"You were right," Lenk said, a smile creeping across his face. "She's dead. They're all dead. We'll be together again, though. Companions forever."

" _Listen to me. LISTEN. Something is wrong_."

"It's over." The young man shook his head. "I can't do this anymore. Not without them. Not without her."

" _Sacrifice isn't noble if it hinders everything else. We have much to do. What of purpose? What of vengeance?_ "

No more words. No more arguing with them, any of them. His willpower seeped out of his leg on weeping pus. Hope could no longer carry him. Futility could no longer fuel him. Surrender, the promise of an end to the blood and the pain, drove him forward, inevitably toward the sea.

" _Resist_ ," the voice commanded. " _Fight. We are stronger_."

No more words. The waves rose up to meet him. He would never stop walking until his lungs burst with salt and his flesh was picked clean by hungry fish.

" _You do not get to die here_ ," the voice uttered, cold and commanding. " _That is not your decision_."

No more words.

He felt a sudden, overwhelming cold, his fever coursing out of him on a frost-laden breath. His legs locked up beneath him; ice water coursed through his veins and sent him to the ground.

" _I won't let you_."

So close to release, Lenk reached out with fingers trembling to grasp the earth and pull him into sweet, blue freedom. Freedom from Miron, from Greenhair, freedom from anyone and everything that had made him think she should have died for leather and paper.

"Why...?" He felt his tears as ice on his face as his body trembled and folded over itself. "I can't do this. Just let me die... I want to..."

" _It does not matter what you want_ ," the voice replied, unsympathetic. " _All that matters is what you must do_."

The pounding in his head faded, freeing his ears to the sound of feet scraping against sand, alien voices rising over the sandy ridge. Alien, but familiar.

" _Hake-yo! Man-eh komah owah!_ "

" _And what you must do... is hide_."

"But I—"

" _You don't get to make that decision_."

He could barely feel the sand beneath his feet or his spine bending as he plucked up the sword. He barely noticed; his entire willpower, what didn't ooze out of him, was concentrated in his fingers as he held desperately onto the feather. He wasn't even aware of moving behind the sandy dune until he was finally there, his numb body forced to the earth as whatever force moved his legs suddenly gave out.

No sooner had his belly pressed against the dirt than the first green scalp came rising over the opposite ridge. A pair of wide, amber eyes shifted across the wreckage. A satisfied snort emerged from a long, green snout. Two long, clawed feet slid down the sand and into the valley, their tracks concealed by the long tail dragging behind it.

That the creature didn't notice his presence spoke more of its inattention than his subtlety. Even amidst the beach scrub, a head of silver hair couldn't have been hard to spot. He lay still; his body bore obedience for only one voice.

The lizardman turned about, cast its glower over the ridge and snarled.

" _Nah-ah. Shii man-eh_."

" _Shaa?_ " came an indignant hiss from beyond the dune.

Three additional green bodies came clambering over the ridge. Lenk took greater note of them now, particularly the clubs studded with jagged teeth and savage machetes hanging from their loincloths. A decidedly vicious improvement from the sharpened sticks they had carried last night, but that only brought a grim smile to Lenk's face.

Their weapons were so sharp, so brutal-looking. They could eviscerate him in the wink of an eye, end the suffering in a horrific chop and smattering of red and fleshy pink chunks on the sand. It would be so quick, so easy.

His felt his leg spasm on the sand.

Despite his mounting excitement, he thought it odd that they hadn't carried those tools last night. Even more curious was the fact that they seemed taller than before, their lanky musculature packed tightly under taut green flesh. Tattoos as ferocious as their weaponry ran up and down their bodies in alternating hoops, jagged bands and cat-like strips of red and black ink. Still, it wasn't until Lenk noticed the space under their long snouts that the realisation dawned upon him.

"Beardless," he whispered. "These aren't the same ones."

" _These are warriors. Look at the way they move_."

Lenk took note immediately. No step was uncalculated, no amber scowl was wasted. They stalked around the wreckage of the _Nag_ with gazes far more predatory than the lizards from the other night.

_Killers' gazes_ , Lenk thought. _They can smell my blood. They hunger for it. They're violent, bloodthirsty creatures_. His grin grew so large that he had to bite his lower lip to stifle it. _Gods, but they're going to kill me so quick_.

He felt his hands tighten around the scrub grass in ecstasy. If the voice could feel the plants, too, it made no indication.

" _That one_ ," it muttered. " _The one with the bow. That's the leader_."

Scarcely a revelation. _That_ one lingered behind the three others with the cool casualness of command against its companions' predatory vigilance. Its polished black bow hung off its shoulder with the easy relationship of a master and his weapon. Any remaining doubt was quickly dispelled by the fact that its tattoos covered more of its flesh than any other lizard present.

" _Cho-a?_ " it called out, apparent disinterest in its voice.

" _Na-ah!_ " One of them, the one that had first arrived, looked up with a snarl. " _Man-eh shii ko ah okah!_ "

" _Shaa_ ," the leader said, waving its scaly hand. It jerked its head back toward the ridge they had come from. " _Igeh ah Shalake. Na-ah man-eh hakaa_."

The other two lizardmen looked up from their own inquiries into the wreckage with nods. They grunted once, then stalked away from the debris, past the leader and up the ridge, vanishing behind it. The leader sighed and folded its arms over its inked chest as it stared at the obstinate one expectantly.

" _Mad-eh kawa yo!_ " it snarled, jerking its head back to the ridge. " _Kawa!_ "

" _Sia-ah!_ " the other one hissed, scanning the wreckage with desperate intensity. " _Shii ko a man-eh!_ "

"They look agitated," Lenk whispered, unconsciously slithering a little closer. He eyed the quiver of brightly coloured arrows hanging off the leader's back and his voice took on a hysterical edge. "Absolutely irate, even. How close do you think we'd have to be?"

" _For what?_ "

"For him to put one of those arrows right between my eyes."

" _It won't happen. They're leaving now, look_."

Lenk bit back a despairing shriek, or it was bitten back for him by whatever numbed his throat. He didn't care about anything save for the fact that the insistent lizard-man's tattooed body shrank with a sudden sigh. Looking dejected, it turned to go and follow the leader back up the ridge.

Until something on the ground caught its eye.

"Yes," Lenk squealed, "yes, yes!"

" _No!_ " the voice countered with a chilling anger.

Lenk followed the creature's yellow gaze past the gutted timbers and scampering crabs, onto the moist sand.

To the perfectly preserved indentation of his footprint.

" _Don't move_ ," the voice warned. " _They haven't seen us yet_."

"Well, we can fix _that_."

" _No! DO NOT—_ "

The voice's command was lost in his laughter. Its control vanished in a fevered surge as Lenk rose to his feet. He spread his arms wide in a deranged welcome, his sword flashing in the sunlight and catching the attention of the creatures below.

From atop their heads, large crests fanned up. Lenk caught a glimpse of the many colours painting the webs of the green protrusions. Murals of blood and steel and teeth stretched from brow to backbone.

The obstinate one pointed a scaly finger up, opened its jaws in a shriek.

" _MAN-EH!_ "

"Yes, yes!" Lenk cried back. "Welcome, gentlemen, to the butchery! If you'll just hoist those fancy-looking weapons, we can finally get down to the gritty process of spilling my guts onto the dirt!"

" _This isn't your decision!_ "

"You keep saying that, but here I am," Lenk replied. His eyes went wide as the leader unslung his bow, nocked and drew back an arrow in short order. "If it makes you feel any better, you can say it was _your_ decision."

" _Down, fool!_ "

It was not a suggestion. Lenk's legs gave out the moment the bowstring hummed; he teetered backwards in time to loose a whining curse as the arrow shrieked just over his face. His hand seized up, clenching his sword as he tumbled down the dune and onto the beach.

"No matter," he sputtered through a tangle of sand and steel, "no matter, no matter. I can still do this. It's just going to be a bit messier."

He felt the vibrations through his feet as he clambered upright, of legs thundering across the sand, long clawed toes kicking up earth as it shot toward him. He smiled, the same sort of grin he might have had for a fond relative, as he looked up at the ridge.

He did not have to wait long.

" _SHENKO-SA!_ "

The war cry came on the eruption of sand and a shiny emerald flash as the lizardman came leaping over the dune. For an instant, Lenk saw the majesty of his impending demise: the teeth glittering in the creature's war club, the enraged circle of its stare, the tensing muscles in its body.

"Oh," Lenk gasped, "this is going to be _good_."

" _No_ ," the voice uttered. " _Fight_."

"I don't want to." The protest of Lenk's voice was a sentiment not shared by his body, however, as his sword came up regardless. " _I want to die_."

" _Fight_ ," the voice commanded.

Refusal was mute against the creature, which slid down the dune in a cloud of sand and screams, swinging its club in wide circles over its head. Lenk watched the tattooed flesh, saw the mural painted on its crest foretelling his own bloody demise.

" _FIGHT!_ "

"I don't—"

Lenk did.

His sword jerked up spastically, was seized in hands not his own. The club sputtered a spray of splinters as it bit the blade, steel grinding against teeth. Lenk felt the shock rattle down his arm, shake his heart in his rib cage. Gouts of fire lanced his leg as he felt himself being pushed backwards.

_Let it drop_ , he told himself. _Let the sword drop and let him smash your head in. You won't even feel it. Then all this will be over_.

Against this, his body had one reply.

" _Fight_."

"I said I won't!" Lenk shrieked back.

" _Man-eh shaa ige?_ " the lizard snarled.

" _I wasn't talking to you!_ " Lenk roared

The lizard's body twitched in response. It slid backwards, breaking the deadlock as it spun about wildly. His dumbfounded stare lasted only as long as it took the creature's tail to rise up and smash against his jaw.

A heavy blow, but not enough that it should make him as dizzy as he felt. He reeled, feet giving out beneath him. The world spun into darkness, banishing his opponent and his body. He did not strike the earth as he fell, but tumbled through, twisting in the dark.

"This is it, then?" He heard his voice echoing in the gloom as a gasp. "This is what it is to die?"

" _No_ ," the voice answered.

The world came rushing back to him in new eyes. The sand was soft. His sword was clenched in his hands, _his_ hands. The club crashing down upon him was slow, weak. He stared up at what had been his enemy. What he saw was a corpse waiting to fall.

" _This_ ," the voice said, " _is what it is to kill_."

" _SHENKO-SA!_ " the lizard screeched.

Lenk's sword replied for him. There was no shock, no strength behind the lizard's club as it met his blade. Or if there had been, Lenk did not feel it. He could barely feel anything, even the foot he rammed into his foe's groin. The creature merely hissed, recoiling with composure unbefitting the injury.

That was unimportant. The earth was unimportant. He rose to his feet, easily. There was weeping from his leg, he knew, but he could not feel it. It was cold in his veins, cold as the steel he raised against his foe. From the corner of his eye, he caught his own reflection in the weapon's face.

Two blue orbs, burning cold and bereft of pupils, stared back.

That was wrong, he knew in some part of him that faded with every frigid breath. His eyes should have pupils. He should feel hot, not cold. He should fear the voice, fear the chill that coursed through him. He should scream, protest, fight it.

He stared at his opponent over the sword.

No more words.

They sprang at each other, arrows of flesh in overdrawn bows. Their weapons embraced in splinters and sparks, crushing against each other time and again. He could only feel the metallic curse of his sword as it searched with the patience of a hound for some gap in the creature's defence. Every steel blow sent the lizardman sliding back, every breath grew more laboured, each block came a little slower.

Only a matter of time, Lenk and his sword both knew. Only a matter of time before a fatal flinch, a minuscule cramp in the muscle, something that...

_There_.

The lizardman raised its club, too high. Lenk's sword was up, too swift. The creature's eyes were wide, too wide.

Then the sword came down.

Skin came first, unravelling like paper from a present. Sinew next. Lenk watched as the cords of muscle drew taut and snapped as lute strings too tight. Bone was sheared through, cracking open to expose glistening pink. There might have been blood; he was sure the creature's arm hit the earth, but didn't stop to look.

The lizardman looked up, mouth agape, eyes wide as it collapsed to its knees. It mouthed something that his ears were numb to. Threats, maybe. Curses.

All silent before the metal hum of Lenk's sword as it came up.

No more words.

The sword slid seamlessly, over the arm that came up too meagre to serve as any defence and into the creature's collarbone. Lenk pushed down, his sword humming happily and drowning out the screaming and muscle popping beneath it. He pushed it down until he felt it jam.

By then, the creature was lifeless, suspended only by Lenk's grip on the sword that impaled it.

" _This_ ," the voice uttered, " _is what we do_."

It should feel wrong, the young man knew. He should feel the rush of battle, the thunder of his heart. He should feel terrified, worried, elated, relieved.

He should, he knew, feel something, _anything_ other than calm, whole.

Even as the voice faded, the cold going with it, the sense of wholeness remained. His purpose, he realised, was gripped in his hands and knelt lifeless at his feet. His breath came easy, even as the fever returned. The desperation and fear had fled, leaving only a young man and his sword.

_His bloody, bloody sword..._

His senses came flooding back to him with the sound of a bowstring being drawn. He looked up, mouth parted in a vaguely surprised circle.

"Oh, right," he whispered, "there's two."

It happened too fast: the string humming, the arrow shrieking, the flesh piercing. He felt it impale itself deep into his thigh, near his wound. He collapsed to his knees, falling with the other lizardman's corpse as he lost his grip on his sword.

"Ah," he squealed through the pain. "Khetashe, but that _hurts_." He looked up at the inked lizard stalking toward him. "I think you missed, though. It didn't hit bone."

The lizard didn't seem to hear or care as it casually nocked another arrow.

"It's funny, though," Lenk said, giggling hysterically. "Moments ago, I was wishing for this, _hoping_ for it. Now, I've killed your ugly little friend here and I want to live so I can kill you, too. But..." He let loose a shrieking peal. "But _you're_ going to kill me. Is that irony or poetry?"

No answer but the drawing of a bowstring.

"I shouldn't be afraid," he whispered, "but... I can't help but feel that I learned something a little too late."

"Too bad for you," the lizard replied in perfect, unbroken human tongue.

"Oh," Lenk said, blinking. "Two things, then."

Voice and bow spoke with one unsympathetic voice. "Shame."

Lenk had no reply; pleading seemed a little hypocritical, what with the creature's companion dead at his knees. Still, stoicism seemed hard to achieve in the face of the arrow. With nothing left, he desperately tried to come up with a final thought to ride into the afterlife.

And all he could come up with was, _Sorry, Kat_.

A shriek hit his ears. Not of a bow, he realised as he watched the creature spasm, but of a long, sharpened stick that ended its swift and violet flight in the lizardman's shoulder. The arrow fell to the earth, and the lizardman shrieked and scampered backward, groping at the makeshift spear in its flesh.

"Lenk," a voice said, distant. "Move."

"What?" he asked in a trembling voice.

" _Down, moron!_ "

The shape came tearing over him, hands on his shoulders and pulling itself over his head. In a flash of brown and white, it struck the creature in a tackle, pulling both to the ground.

Lenk blinked, unable to make sense of the frenzy of movement before him. He caught glimpses of green, brighter than the lizard's flesh, amidst a whirlwind of pale white and gold. The creature shrieked under the other shape, swatting at clawing hands and biting teeth.

The shriek arced to a vicious crescendo. There was a flash of bright ruby.

_Blood_ , Lenk realised, then realised his own leg was warm and wet. _Blood!_ It poured out of his wound in rivulets from the jagged rent the arrow had left, spilling across his leg and onto the sand. _How long have I been bleeding? Why didn't anyone tell me?_

That thought was fleeting, as were the rest as he felt himself grow dizzy.

He heard, faintly, the sound of a tail slapping against skin and an agonised grunt. The pale figure toppled to the earth as the creature scrambled up, clutching a face painted with glistening red. It howled curses, incomprehensible, as it scrambled away, dragging its bow behind it.

"I got its eye," the figure laughed as it rose up. "Reeking little bleeder."

A familiar voice, Lenk thought, though its features were unfamiliar. Even as it rose and stood still, its face was blurry, its figure hazy as it approached him. It leaned closer; he thought he could make out some mass of twisted gold and emerald, a mouth stained with red.

"Lenk?" it asked, its voice feminine. It twitched suddenly. He felt a hand on his leg. She had found his wound. "Oh, _damn it_. Was it too much to ask that you survive on your own for two days?"

Hands wrapping around his torso, arms under his, sand moving under him. The sensation of being dragged was not as visceral as it should be, but he was quickly learning to forget what it should be.

"Poetry," he gasped, breath wet and hot.

"What?"

"If I had just died quickly after I realised I didn't want to, that would be irony."

"You're not going to die," she snarled, tightening her grip. He made out other voices, alien languages behind him. "Help!" she cried to them. "Help me pick him up! _Move!_ "

"I am," he laughed on fading whimsy. "It's beautiful poetry now; I see it. I'm going to die."

"You're not," she snarled as another pair of hands picked up his legs. Green hands. "I won't let you."

He rode those words, off the stained earth and into oblivion.

# _Fifteen_

# PREFERABLE DELUSIONS

_T hat could have gone better_."

"Really? I thought it went rather well. In hindsight, I suppose we should have killed the one with the bow, first."

" _Hindsight_."

"Yes. I could have done with a bit more planning, couldn't I?"

" _Planning_."

"Look, if you're just going to repeat everything I say, I can really have this conversation by myself."

" _There was no PLAN_." His head trembled, brains rattling against bone. " _There was only_ you _indulging_ your _madness and nearly ending_ us."

"I'm... I'm sorry, I just felt—"

" _Feeling is a corruption of the mind and body_. Feeling _is what we eradicate from ourselves before we eradicate whatever did this to us_."

"Whatever did this... to us?"

" _Something was in our head. Something is interfering with our duty, my commands. Something... we must kill it_."

"We must kill something."

" _Not just kill it. Maim it. Burn it. Eviscerate it. Rip it apart and press its meat between sharp rocks_. Cleanse _it_."

"What is it?"

" _Unknown_."

"So... do I just start eviscerating and hope I get lucky?"

A frigid silence consumed him.

" _Do not grow smug_."

"I didn't mean to—"

" _Do not grow confident. Do not grow comfortable. Do not let anything stewing in the tepid mush boiling in your skull convince you that you are in control_."

"What do you—?"

"I _saved you from your suicidal madness_. I _saved you from the demons_. I _continue to preserve your life in the name of_ our _duty_."

"But what is it? What _is_ our duty?"

" _That you do not know is only further proof that you do not deserve the legs you are allowed to walk with. I save you only that we may fulfil our duties. What I preserve, I can destroy_."

"That would seem a little contradictory, wouldn't it? Destroy me and you die, too... don't you?"

" _I did not say_ ," a gentle breeze caressed his mind, " _that I would destroy you_."

"What does that mean?"

The wind died.

" _What does that mean?_ "

Warmth returned.

" _What are you?_ "

"I'm here," said another voice. "I'm right here."

"What? Where?"

"Here, Lenk. I'm right here."

A swift, erratic beat of a drum: certain of nothing.

It reached her as she pressed her ear against his chest, rising up from some deep place inside him. It had come to her before in fleeting whispers, murmurs, the occasional frantic scream. Now his heart hummed softly, sighing inside his body.

And though she knew she should try to resist it, her smile grew with each beat.

"He's alive," she whispered. She let her head rest upon his chest, felt it rise and fall with each breath. Her eyes closed. "Damn."

It would have been easier if he had died, if he had _stayed_ dead. She could have shed a tear, said a few words of memory, and called herself a shict again. She looked to the bandages covering his wounds, smelled the aroma of their salve. She could rip those off right now, she thought, and he would be dead and her problems would be solved. It was another opportunity, another chance to prove herself. And again, she couldn't kill him.

_You couldn't even watch him die_ , she scolded herself. _You couldn't even have just sat back and let him die. Why couldn't you do at least that?_

Kataria sighed in time with his heartbeat; it was never that easy.

Her ears twitched as his muscles spasmed under his skin. Bones moaned, blood began to flow unhindered; he was waking up. She pulled back, heard his eyelids flutter open and held her breath as they peeled back fully. He groaned, turned his head and stared at her.

Two blue eyes, brilliant with the moisture that flooded them, looked up. _Two blue eyes_ , she released her breath in a relieved exhale, _with pupils in them_. It was Lenk looking up at her, and not whoever else dwelt inside him. It was Lenk's eyes blinking, Lenk's lips twitching.

Lenk's trembling hand, reaching up to touch her.

_You could go now, you know_ , she told herself. _You could run away and he would tell himself it was all a dream. You could find another way off the island and never see him again. Then, at least, you could say you didn't sit there and let him touch you. It would be easy_.

She saw the bleariness clear from his eyes, tears drying in the sun seeping through the thatched roof. She felt his fingers on her cheek, felt her shame straining to be heard as she pressed her face into his palm. She could feel his heartbeat through his fingertips, growing faster, and sighed.

It was never that easy.

"You..." he whispered, his voice choked.

"Me," she replied. She saw her canines reflected in his eyes. She saw her own smile. "Damn."

He didn't seem to hear her, barely even seemed to see her. His sole sense was touch, and he explored her with it. She felt the ridges of his fingers, the calluses of his palm on a skin of sweat as his hand traced her face. His fingers creased under her nose, traced the ridges of her lips. She could feel her breath break upon his fingertips, feel its heat.

_He's just mindlessly probing_ , she told herself. _Groping like a monkey. He_ is _a monkey, remember? He probably thinks he's still asleep... or dead. You can still run, or you can push him away_. When she felt herself leaning into his touch again, she all but screamed at herself. _For Riffid's sake, at least_ bite _him or something!_

"You're real," he whispered.

His hand slid farther up, plunging into her hair. She felt the sweat of her scalp under it mingle with his skin, felt his hand gentle upon her.

_It's not gentle_ , she reminded herself. _Remember how many people he's killed. Remember how easily he killed them. He's not gentle. Stop thinking he is_.

A sensation cold and hot at once, like a chill breeze on sweat-kissed skin, lanced through her body, causing it to shudder. She drew in a sharp breath as his fingers found the notches in her right ear, tracing them carefully.

_Oh, you can't be serious_ , she all but shrieked. _Those are your ears!_ Shict _ears, stupid! He can't touch those! They're... they're sacred! They're precious... they're... he..._

"You're alive," he whispered. His smile was easy, bereft of the malice and confusion she had seen in him before. "You're alive... you're..." She felt his hand stop suddenly, something brushing against his hand. "Your feathers." He blinked, as if remembering. "You never leave your feathers behind."

"Not usually, no," she replied. It felt easy to tell him now, the words spilling from her lips. "But this time I—"

She felt his fingers wrap around her locks, pull hard. She felt the sudden stab of pain as the shriek escaped her lips.

It was easy to punch him after that as she brought her fist against his jaw and sent his head snapping to the side.

"You stupid little _kou'ru_ ," she snarled, baring fangs. "What the hell was that for?"

And when he brought his face back, rubbing his jaw with the hand that was still slick with her sweat, it was easy to return the broad, stupid grin he gave to her.

"I had to know," he said, his laughter harsh and parched.

"You couldn't have just _asked_?"

"If you were a hallucination, you'd have said 'yes'." He looked thoughtful, his grin growing broader. "Then again, if you were a hallucination you'd probably be..." His eyes drifted lower, widening. "Um... nude." He rubbed the back of his neck, clearing his throat. "So, ah... not that I don't have more impressive things to say, but I feel I must ask." He levelled a finger at her chest. "Why are you wearing that?"

She followed his finger to the scanty garment of brown fur wrapped about her breasts. From there, she followed his eyes down to her naked midriff and to the loincloth hanging off her sand-covered, pale thighs.

"For the same reason," she said, prodding his bare, wiry chest, "you're wearing _that_."

Up until that point, she never thought that humans were capable of leaping nearly so high or turning such a shade of red. He slapped at his body, naked but for a similar garment tied about his hips, as if wondering if his clothes had perhaps seeped under his skin.

The panic fled after a moment of desperate slapping, leaving him staring thoughtfully at his new garb and the bandage wrapped tightly about his thigh.

"So..." He looked from his loincloth, then up to her. "Did I miss something fun?"

"Well, the fun only started _after_ you passed out from blood loss," she replied.

"As usual," he grunted, looking about. "So, where _are_ my pants? Where's..." His eyes widened, scanning the sandy floor intently. "Where's my sword? I had it! I had it right—"

"It's elsewhere," she replied, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Calm down. Your pants, what remained of them, were filthy and covered in piss."

Lenk blinked, turned a leery eye on her.

" _Whose_ piss?"

"Your piss." She cringed a little at his visible relief. "You may have been unconscious, but your other... parts were still working despite you. The smell became unbearable after the third time."

"I suppose that explains this." He fingered his loincloth. "But why did you dress yourself that way, too? And not that I don't appreciate your enthusiasm for cleanliness, but couldn't you have just cleaned my pants?"

"You think _I_ did this?" She slapped her torso. "Listen, you demented little shaven mole, if I wanted to see so much scrawny flesh I could have just plucked a chicken." She sighed and leaned back on her hands. "I passed out on my way here and woke up like this. They're not too big on modesty here."

Lenk raised an eyebrow.

"They?"

"They." She gestured over his head with her chin. "Specifically, him."

And it was at _that_ point, as he turned his head to his other side, that she realised how high humans could jump. She grinned, studying him even as he studied the creature squatting beside him, reliving the moments she had experienced when she had awakened under their tremendous yellow gazes.

Bulbous eyes, larger than overripe grapefruits and apparently desperate to escape the green, short-snouted skull they were ensconced in, were undoubtedly the first thing he noticed. From there, he would see the creature's squat and scaly body, the apparent horrific crossbreed of a gecko and an ale keg, with four stubby appendages ending in three pudgy digits.

He would then find the most unsettling fact that it wore clothes. The creature absently scratched its furry loincloth and adjusted the round black hat, too small for its large head. One eye remained locked on Lenk while its other independently swivelled up over a pair of smoked-glass spectacles to look at Kataria.

" 'S'the matter with him?" the creature asked in a voice bass enough to make Lenk jump again.

"Fever," Kataria replied. "He's just a little strange right now."

" _I'm_ a little strange?" Lenk replied, voice hoarse with surprise.

"Oh, hey, 's'not polite, cousin," the creature said, shaking its massive head. "King Togu always want politeness in Teji, y'know."

"King... _what?_ " Lenk asked, grimacing at the creature. He held up a hand. "Wait, wait..." He turned back to Kataria. "First of all, what the hell _is_ it?"

" _He_ is not an it," the shict shot back with a glare. " _He_ is an Owauku and _his_ name is Bagagame."

"That's an Owauku?" Lenk looked back at the creature. "And his name... is..."

"Bagagameogouppukudunatagana-oh-sho-shindo," the creature said, a long and yellow grin splitting his face apart as he tipped his hat. "M'the herald o' King Togu, welcomin' you to Teji."

"So... Bagagame."

"Sure, cousin." His head sank considerably, smile disappearing behind dark green lips. "Go ahead and call me that. Not like I got a name that means anything special as my father might have given me to boil down my entire lineage into a single word. No. Bagagame 's'fine."

"Oh, ah..." Lenk rubbed the back of his neck. "Listen, I never really expected a lizard to have ancestry that I _could_ insult, so..."

"Yeah," Bagagame grunted. "M'just so damn pleased you're up and awake and not babbling anymore in your sleep."

"I was babbling?" Lenk's curiosity swiftly became shock, and he turned to Kataria. "You let him _watch_ me sleep?"

"Well, he wasn't really interested until you pissed yourself," she replied, shrugging.

" _Why did you let him do that?_ "

"I couldn't very well say no; it's his house. He volunteered before any of the others could."

He swept his eyes about the reed hut, the thatched roof, and mats of woven fronds on the floor. "There are more? They have _houses_? What do lizards need houses for?"

"Oh, fantastic," she sighed. She rolled her eyes in the direction of Bagagame. "He's doing it again."

"W'sat?" the Owauku asked, tilting his head.

"He does this sometimes, starts repeating everything in the form of a question." She tapped her temple. "He wasn't too right to begin with and the fever hasn't helped. You'd better go get _ah-he man-eh-wa_."

"I kuu you, cousin," Bagagame said, bobbing his head and rising up. "M'had a fellow once, acted like way, kuuin' things that weren't there. W'beat him over the head a bit." He turned a bulging, thoughtful stare to Lenk. "Y'sure that wouldn't just be easier?"

Lenk blinked.

"Yes. Yes, I'm sure."

"Do things the hard way, huh? Yeah, I'll grab _ah-he man-eh-wa_." He hopped to the leather flap serving as a door. "Togu's gonna be wantin' to talk with you after."

Kataria watched the flap open and saw the various green shapes moving about in the bright sunlight beyond, the errant burble of their alien languages drifting into the hut. They were silenced as Bagagame slid out and she turned back to Lenk, eager to see another layer of horrified shock on his face.

What she saw instead was him lying supine on the sand, his arm draped over his eyes. She studied his wiry body, the slight twitch of his muscles as he drew in deep breaths and exhaled them as stale, weary air. His body had become tense, trembling with every sigh he made.

For as much as he seemed to enjoy being grim and silent, Lenk was not the most difficult human to read, she thought. Even if he never spoke his feelings, his body told her enough. He seemed to compress as he lay upon the sand, some great weight pressing him down upon the earth.

She opened her mouth to speak when her thoughts leapt unbidden to the fore of her mind.

_Don't_ , she told herself. _Don't ask him what's wrong. You know what he'll say. He's thinking about what you said on the boat before the Akaneeds attacked. He'll ask you why you said them, why you said you had to kill him to feel like a shict again. Then he'll ask you why you're still here, having said all that, why you didn't kill him. Don't ask him. Don't tell him. He's just now recovering; he can't handle the answer_.

_Yeah_. She sighed inwardly, rubbing her eyes. He's _the one that can't handle it_.

"How long?"

"What?" She looked up with a start. "How long what?"

"Have I been out?"

"Oh," she said. "About two days."

"Two days," he muttered. "I've been out for two days and on the island for two days. Four days total, three days past the time we were supposed to meet Sebast so he could take us back." He cracked a smile. "I'm assuming we lost the tome, too?"

"It hasn't been found, no," Kataria said, shaking her head. "The lizardmen have been fishing things out of the ocean for a while now, but no book."

"Well," he sighed, folding his arms behind his head. "I suppose it doesn't really matter if we don't get picked up, then, does it?"

"Not necessarily," she offered. "The Owauku haven't said anything about a ship arriving in the past few days. Sebast might just be late." She shrugged helplessly. "I suppose that isn't much comfort, though."

It would certainly be _less_ comfort, she reasoned, to tell him that Sebast might not be coming because his search party was currently being digested and excreted by roaches. She held her tongue at that, knowing that the loss of the tome would likely be too much for him to bear.

It didn't appear to be, for his smile didn't diminish. Even when his lips quivered, it only grew a little larger. His eyes didn't grow any colder, their blue suddenly seeming less like frigid sheets of ice and more like the sea, endless and peaceful.

And even as she stared back at him, he didn't turn them away from her.

That, she knew, was unusual. He had stared at her many times before through many different eyes. She had felt his curiosity, his anger, his yearning all hammered upon her back through his stare. And always, he had turned away like a sheep before a wolf when she turned to meet his stare.

Now, it was she who felt the urge to turn away. It was she who felt her smile as sheepish upon her face. To see him so... pleasant, without his sword and without blood spattering his face, was so unusual she couldn't help but feel as though it were somehow wrong, as though he were naked without violence and anger.

_As if you needed any more reason to run_.

"We're trapped here, you know," she said, "for the foreseeable future, at least. We have no weapons, no tome, no _clothes_. We're stuck amidst a bunch of walking reptiles and you just _barely_ survived an arrow through your leg." She sneered, leaning back onto her hands. "So, just in case you'd forgotten, there really isn't anything to smile about."

"I suppose not," he replied, "but things are a lot better than they were two days ago."

"Things will get worse."

"They always do," he agreed, nodding. "But for now..."

_For now_ , she told herself, _you should be dead. It should have been me to kill you. For now, I'm sitting here feeling like a helpless idiot because_ I'm _the one turning away from_ your _stare. For now, I let you..._ touch _me like that. My father thinks a human touch can infect a shict, and you touched me_ that _way. You touched my ears! For now, I should kill you, I should run, I should kill_ myself _so I don't have to think about you and your horrible diseased race and your round ears_.

As the thoughts ran through her head, only two words made it to her lips.

"For now?" she asked.

"For now," he said, smiling. "We're alive."

"Yeah," she sighed, returning her smile. "All of us."

He blinked, his face screwing up in confusion.

"Did you say all of us?"

"She did," came a familiar voice from the leather flap.

A smile crossed both their faces at the sight of a head full of thick brown locks over a hazel stare peering through the doorframe. The smile beneath it was slight, but warm, genuine and comfortably familiar.

"All of us," Kataria repeated, gesturing to the door. "Including _ah-he man-eh-wa_ here."

"I see," Lenk said, smiling.

"You can still call me Asper," the priestess replied. "The Owauku are fond of long names, apparently."

"I noticed." A long moment of silence passed awkwardly before Lenk finally coughed. "So, uh, are you going to come in?"

"Yeah... sure, just..." The priestess fidgeted behind the door. "Just don't rush me."

"Ah, yes," Kataria said, smirking. " _Ah-he man-eh-wa_ apparently means 'shy when near-nude.'"

" _You're_ near-nude, too," Asper spat through the door and tilted up her nose. "And those of us _without_ the physique of an adolescent boy have something to be considered worth concealing."

"Is that right?" Kataria snarled. "Maybe you can pray some clothes up, then? Like you prayed us to have a safe journey?"

"Physique _and_ wits to match," Asper growled at her. "It's those prayers, and the faith that accompanies them, that are keeping me from bashing you in the head."

"With what? Those colossal _haunches_ of yours?" Kataria bared her canines at the priestess. "I'd like to see you try."

"So..." Lenk shifted his stare between the two of them. "Did I miss something _really_ fun, then?"

"It's nothing." Asper's bashfulness apparently disappeared as she stormed into the hut, a bulging waterskin pressed against her torso. She thrust it into Lenk's hands as she knelt beside him. "I need to check your injury. Drink."

He did so, greedily, as Asper ran practised hands over his bandaged thigh, applying pressure to certain locations.

"You tore your stitches open when the Akaneeds attacked," she said, not looking up. "It wasn't easy to close you up again. Not to mention clear out the infected skin _and_ salve and stitch up the arrow wound you so charitably left me to work with."

"I suppose I should be grateful you didn't just put me out of my misery, then," he replied between gulps.

She hesitated suddenly, spine stiffening. Absently, she rubbed an itch on her arm and returned to work.

"Yeah," she muttered, "I guess so." She pressed on part of his leg. "Did you feel that?"

"A little," he replied, "but it didn't hurt."

"Good, good," she said, nodding. "It wasn't _too_ bad an infection, thankfully. The Owauku had the medicine and the Gonwa knew how to use it."

"Gonwa?" Lenk arched a brow.

"The other lizards here," Kataria replied. "Taller, skinnier... and apparently good with medicine."

"Not that their help was all that necessary," Asper interjected. "Most of the work I did on your wound before held over, so you shouldn't have been in too much pain."

At that, Lenk sputtered on his water.

"Wait, what?" he asked, gasping for breath. "It hurt like _hell_."

"Well, yeah, but not too much, right? You could still walk. Your fever was only mild."

" _Mild?_ It felt like my brains were boiling! I was hallucinating! I saw..."

Kataria's own eyes widened as he turned a cringing, moon-eyed stare at her. She met his gaze for a moment, the sudden quiver in his eyes allowing her to scrutinise him carefully. He turned away.

"I saw things," he muttered.

"With this infection? I doubt it," Asper replied. "It was probably just exhaustion."

"But I—"

"You didn't," she said, curtly.

"He says he did," Kataria interjected.

"Well," Asper said, turning a heated glare upon the shict, "how nice of you to be concerned for a lowly human."

At that, Kataria felt her anger quelled only by the shame that blossomed within her like an agonising rose. _She's right_ , she told herself. _I shouldn't be concerned_. She rode that thought to the sandy earth, turning her gaze away.

"Just eat something," Asper said, rising up. "You'll be fine. I'll check on you later." She stalked to the door, heedless of Lenk's befuddlement of Kataria's scowl. And yet, she hesitated at the frame, standing in the door flap. "Lenk... you know I wouldn't ever put you out of your misery, right?"

"Sure, I know."

"Good," she said. She cast a smile over her shoulder, small and timid. "I'm glad you're all right."

And then, she swept out of the hut, leaving Lenk blinking and Kataria flattened-eared and hissing at the space left behind.

"So," he said, "what was that?"

"She's been agitated ever since she started working on you," the shict replied, never taking her glower off the door. "She started screaming one night, telling everyone to get out... went mad for a while, I don't know. Denaos certainly hasn't been a help in calming her down."

"Denaos? He's alive?"

"And here, as well as Dreadaeleon."

"And Gariath?"

She blinked, opened her mouth to reply, then shook her head.

"Not yet," she muttered before quickly adding, "if at all."

"If at all," he echoed, and the weight seemed to return to him.

"Don't think about it," she said, smiling and placing a hand on his shoulder. "It'd be rather anticlimactic if you worried yourself back into a coma. What say we find you something to eat?"

"That'd be nice," he said, rubbing his belly. "I haven't had anything but tubers and roots."

"Ha!" She clapped her hands. "You remembered how to forage just like I taught you! And they said humans couldn't be trained!" Laughing, she rose up from the sandy floor. "I'll go hunt something down for you."

"I appreciate it," he replied.

"You won't once you find out what they eat out here."

She walked to the door, feeling no eyes upon her back and taking great relief in that. She could hear his breath coming in short, steady bursts. His heartbeat no longer plagued her ears. She smiled as she pulled back the leather flap.

_Just a passing fascination_ , she told herself. _He was just thrilled to be alive and awake. All his attentions were focused on you because you happened to be there... watching over him. No!_ She had to resist thumping her temple. _No, no. Don't start. He was... was just like a pup. Yeah. He's momentarily happy. Once he gets some food, he'll forget about everything else, about how you were there... about how he touched your ears..._

She reached up and tugged on her earlobe. The sensation of his finger, the scent of his sweat mingling with hers, still lingered.

_He'll forget all about it_ , she told herself, _and then so can you_.

"Kat?"

_Don't turn around. Don't look. Don't even acknowledge him_.

"Yeah?" she asked.

"I'm happy you're alive."

"Yeah," she said.

She emerged into the daylight, waited for the leather flap to fall so that she could no longer hear him breathing. Then, she let her heavy chin fall to her chest and let her breath escape in a long, tired sigh.

"Damn," she whispered, stalking off across the sands, "damn, damn, damn..."

# _Sixteen_

# THE SIN OF MEMORY

He found he could not remember his name.

Other memories returned to him, vivid as the city that loomed in the distance.

Port Yonder. He remembered its name, at least.

He had lived there once. He'd had a house on the land, back when dry earth did not burn his feet. It had been made of stone that had seemed strong at the time and bore the weight of a family once. He had known the witless, bovine satisfaction of staring up at a temple and praying to a goddess that priests said would protect him. He recalled living through each night, when such knowledge was all he needed.

He had known what it meant to be human once.

But that was long ago. That was a time before he knew the weight of humanity could not be set on flimsy, shifting land. That was a time before he knew that stone, trees and air all gave way before relentless tides. That was a time before his goddess had found his devotion and offerings not enough and had spitefully taken his family to compensate. His name, too, was from that time.

Before he had become the Mouth of Ulbecetonth.

"Do you desire to know your name, then?"

The Prophet's twin voices lilted up from the deep. He looked over the edge of the tiny rock he squatted upon, saw the black shadow of a tremendous fish circling his outcropping. He remembered when he had first seen that shadow and the golden eyes that had peered up at him. There had been six of them, then; now there were only four, two of them put out forever by heretical steel.

"I desire nothing," he answered the water, "save that the Mother is liberated."

The _real_ Mother, he reminded himself, not the Sea Mother.

The Sea Mother was a benevolent and kindly concept, one that took pity upon the land-bound folk and blessed them with the bounty of the deep. The Sea Mother was a concept that rewarded thoughtless prayer, asked for nothing more than humble sacrifice and protected families in return.

The Sea Mother was a lie.

Mother Deep was mercy.

"Liberation is a just cause, indeed," the Prophet replied. "And it is because of that cause that we ask you to return to the prison of earth and wind once more. The Father must be freed for the Mother to rise."

He found a slight smirk creeping upon his face at the naming of the city a prison. Truly, that was what it was, he knew—nothing more than thick walls constructed by fear, doors made of ignorance and the key thrown away by unquestioning faith.

That smile soured the instant he remembered that they were sending him back there, to feel cruel stone beneath his unwebbed feet and languish in the embrace of air. His brow furrowed and he could feel the hairs growing back even as he did, tiny black reminders that the Prophet commanded and the Mouth sacrificed.

_And for what?_

As if summoned by his thoughts, he heard the sound of flapping wings. He looked up and saw the Heralds descending from the unworthy sky, their pure white feathers stretched out as they glided to the reefs jutting from the surface. Upon talons that had once been meagre webs, clutching with hands that had once been pitiful gull wings, the creatures landed silently upon the risen coral.

He remembered what they had been before: squat little creatures, wide-eyed crone heads upon gull bodies, incapable of even the slightest independent thought. The faces that stared at him now, still withered, were set upside down upon their crane-like necks above sagging, vein-mapped teats. Their bulging blue eyes now regarded him with a keen intellect that had not been present before. The teeth set in mouths that should have been their foreheads were long yellow spikes that clicked as they chattered relentlessly.

He had once looked upon them as evidence of Mother Deep's power, the ability to effect change where other gods were deaf and powerless. Now, he saw them only as items of envy, proof that even the least of Her congregation evolved where he stood, painfully and profoundly human.

"Do we sense uncertainty in you?" the Prophet asked, stacking accusation upon scorn.

"Uncertainty?" the Heralds echoed in crude mimic of the Prophet. "Doubt? Inability? Weakness?" They leaned their upside-down heads thoughtfully closer. "Faithlessness?"

"My protests are unworthy," the Mouth replied. "All that matters is that the Father is freed. I have no other desire."

"Lies," the Heralds retorted with decisiveness.

"Irrelevant," the Mouth replied. "Service is all that is required. Motive is unimportant."

"Ignorance," they crowed in shrill chorus.

"What great sin is desire, then? What is the weight that is levied upon my shoulders for my want of vengeance? Mother Deep's enemies are my enemies. Her purpose is my purpose."

"Blasphemy," the voices hissed from below.

The Prophet's twin tones contained a wailing keen, the subtlest discordant harmony that shook his body painfully and caused him to wince. How he longed to abandon his ears with what remained of his memories. How he longed to embrace the Prophet's shrieking sermon with the same lustful joy as the others.

Mother Deep demanded sacrifice, too, however.

"You suffer doubts, then," the Prophet murmured, four golden eyes regarding him curiously.

"Intolerable," the Heralds muttered. "Inexcusable. Unthinkable."

"I had not expected to be asked to return here," he replied, staring out over the walls. "I left this place, and all its callous hatreds, on land where it belonged." He hugged his legs to his chest. "I found reprieve in the Deep."

_But not salvation_ , he added mentally. He had been granted gifts: the embrace of the water, freedom from the greedy liquid hands that sought to steal air and quench it, and the loyalty of Her children. But the true mercies of Mother Deep had been withheld from him, for the moment.

And yet, he lamented, that moment had lasted for years that only made his awareness of the passage of time more profound.

He gazed down into the water, below the swimming shadow of the Prophet, and saw the faithful congregate in pale flashes as they boiled up from below. The fading sunlight shifted on the water hesitantly, wary to expose the creatures bobbing below it. And, as the golden light speared through the waves, a great forest of hairless flesh, swaying on the waves, met his eyes as hundreds of glossy stares incapable of reflecting the light looked up.

They floated so effortlessly, bodies lent buoyancy with the absence of memory. They were oblivious, ignorant to what their lives might have been when their feet lacked webs and could abide the feel of land beneath them. They were blind to the meaning of the rising and setting of the sun. They were deaf to the world, save the wailing chorus of the Prophet's twin mouths, which he could not abide, and the distant call of Mother Deep, which he could not yet hear.

_And_ , he thought resentfully, _they sacrificed nothing_.

They gave themselves fully, ate of the fruit of the Shepherd's births, and were freed from their memories and the embrace of greedy, lying gods. He had abstained, at the Prophet's request. He had become the Mouth and was denied their serenity, their bliss.

_Their freedom..._

And he... _he_ had given everything. He had abstained from the embrace of Mother Deep's children, and for what? That he could be tormented still with his own ignorance? Taunted with the years he had wasted on a goddess that spared not his family? Agonised with the visions of their faces, the memories of their laughter?

And _now_ , now they asked him to return to the land, to bear the stain of solid ground and recall the memories they had promised to take away from him. What he saw when he looked up across the channel at the docks he had walked off of, following three voices in the night, was a return to sinful memory and the company of ignorant airbreathers.

Not the salvation he had been promised.

"And for what?" he muttered. "This brings us no closer to the book."

"An ocean is a vast and tremulous thing," the Prophet replied coolly. "Its sheer magnitude makes it incomprehensible to view with mortal eyes. Where a gale blowing from the west may seem separate from a wave roaring in the east, they meet in the middle as a raging maelstrom." The shadow of the fish's body paused thoughtfully. "And even then, it cannot be fully fathomed unless viewed from below."

He could see flashes of white in the darkness as two broad mouths split open in wide, fanged smiles.

"She sees where we cannot," the Heralds burbled in agreement. "Thinks in ways we cannot comprehend. The maelstrom whirls, swirls chaotically, inexplicably."

"But it is nonetheless felt," the Prophet added quietly. "The Mouth should not concern itself with the book. Mother Deep has seen to its return."

He might have asked how. How could any creature, even one that made such promises and delivered such freedom as Mother Deep, affect anything beyond the bonds of her prison? How could she promise the salvation so freely, knowing that hers was a hand still wrapped in chains?

He might have asked, but recalled too keenly the wisdom of the Shepherds, delivered from their gaping jaws to the unworthy grasped in their oozing claws.

Memory was a burden. Knowledge was a sin.

"A key, after all," the Prophet continued, "is but one part of a door. There must be hinges upon it to swing and hands to turn the knob." Golden gazes drifted toward the distant city. "If those hands should be freed from unjust bondage, so much the better."

"Better," the Heralds echoed. "The sons need a father. The faithful need a leader."

Beneath the waves, something stirred in agreement.

Below, he saw the thousand glossy stares of the faithful turn in unison toward the city, as though something had called to them in a great, echoing call. Darkness stirred beneath them, where the light did not dare to touch, and he saw the great white stares of the Shepherds rise to add their attention.

It angered him that he could not hear what they heard, see what they saw. Before them loomed a prison in their eyes, an unjust and foul dungeon of stone and wind wherein lay the salvation he could not claim. All he could see was the lies and hate that had driven him to the deep in the first place.

What they heard, he could only make out faintly. Even as far away as he was, through the roiling waves and over the murmur of wind, he could hear it. Slowly, steadily, with a patience that had outlasted mountains and earth, it droned like small hands upon a large door.

A single heart, beating.

He supposed, he thought dejectedly, he should be thankful that he was blessed enough to hear even that. His ears burned enviously with thoughts of what the congregation might hear, what bliss it might bring minds wiped clean of memories and lies.

"Impatience does not become the position She chose you for," the Prophet said coldly, as though sensing his thoughts.

"At times, the reason for my choosing becomes obscured," he replied just as brusquely.

"Is devotion no longer reason enough?" the Prophet asked.

"Recall the maelstrom," the Heralds agreed. "It is—"

"I _cannot_ subsist on metaphors," the Mouth snarled suddenly, his patience lost in a sudden surge of grief. "Words do _nothing_ to diminish the memories, to make me forget that _I_ am denied the gifts of Mother Deep that are promised to the less faithful!"

"In time!" the Heralds squawked in protest. "In time, there will be—"

"Will be _what_?" His frustration inspired words that he knew he should not speak, gave force to will that he knew was sinful. "All your promises, all your great plans have availed us nothing! The tome is _lost_ , the longfaces drive back the faithful time and again, even desecrating the Shepherds with their vile poisons! And now, while they sniff out the book like landborne hounds, _you_ sit here and point me toward the very city I turned to you to free myself of?"

He drew in a sharp breath whose saltless taste was yet not foul on his lips. He narrowed eyes that were not glossed over, clenched fists that were not webbed, as weak, sinful emotion came flooding into him.

"Occasionally, Prophet," the man hissed, "gales and walls of water are nothing more than mere winds and waves, each without substance."

Satisfaction was something he knew he should not feel. It was, like all sensations outside of unrelenting devotion, a sin, and he made himself stern with the knowledge that it would be punished. He imagined himself being torn to shreds by the Prophet's shriek, the same wailing doom that had wrought ruin upon the faithless and blasphemers that stood in the way of the faithful.

Perhaps, he thought, that was as close to hearing the harmony in its words as he would ever come.

The Prophet circled his outcropping silently. The Heralds' relentless crowing had fallen silent; they tilted their heads right side up in curiosity. The golden eyes were dark below. The congregation was still, suspended motionless in the water. Even the white stares of the Shepherds had vanished, as though afraid of what wrath awaited their former preacher, Ulbecetonth's Mouth.

But after several painful breaths, all that emerged from below was a pair of melodic whispers.

"Our pity is well given to you," the Prophet said softly. "Perhaps we have become too much like the Gods that ignore your cries. But we are not deaf..." The voices snaked up like vocal tendrils, caressing him with slender, shimmering sound. "Your agonies are heard. Your faith shall be rewarded.

"You wish your sinful memories to be absolved, the tragedy of your life to be eased inside your mind," the Prophet continued. "It shall be done. Yours will be ears closer to the Mother's song than any of the faithful. All that is asked of you is that you grant Her one more favour."

He drew in another deep breath, felt his heart pound with anticipation.

"Free the Father," one Herald whispered, its voice carried on the wind.

"End the injustice of his imprisonment," another hissed.

"Lead the faithful to salvation," more crowed.

"Free him," they burbled. "Free him... free him... free him..."

"Let him crush the earth beneath his feet again." The Prophet's voices silenced the chorus. Gold eyes turned upward again, burning with purpose. "Liberate Daga-Mer."

As the Prophet's voices echoed, fading with each moment, another sound grew stronger. As if in the moment before a great drawing of breath, it echoed from the deep and carried to his ears.

A heartbeat.

The Heralds scattered at the sound, taking wing on shrieks of ecstasy as they twirled and writhed in feathery columns stretching toward the sun-stolen sky.

Another beat, louder.

The faithful stared up, their mouths splitting open in broad, toothy grins. Their eyes quivered in the rising starlight, as though they might add their own joyful salt to the sea.

Another.

The Shepherds dropped their jaws open, exposing sharp teeth as they howled some ancient hymn that went unheard, rising to the surface on bubbles that popped soundlessly.

Another beat, loud and clear as if it were that of the Mouth's.

And he felt himself smile to hear it.

The water called to him and he obeyed, sliding in. It embraced him like a family that would never leave him, never deny him. He swam silently upon its tide towards the distant prison of earth and air. He swam, sliding through the waves as a world of dark flesh, dark eyes and glorious faith moved beneath him.

He swam, dipping his head below the surf.

And through it, he heard the Father calling.

# ACT TWO

#  _Island of Hope and Death_

# _Seventeen_

# BETTER OFF IGNORANT

_The Aeons' Gate_

_Island of Teji_

_Summer, pleasantly so_

_One of the more sobering realisations I have stumbled across since I first picked up a sword is that society, at least as we know it, does not exist_.

_Of course, I'm actually a little disappointed to put it down on paper. After all, I had rather enjoyed the ideas behind civilisation: linking together against common enemies, joining like-minded trades and arms for mutual prosperity, the coalition of many single gods for the benefit of all and, of course, the keen urge to keep one's neighbour close so that, when he finally did knife one in the kidneys and steal one's sheep, at least one couldn't claim they didn't see it coming_.

_Regardless, my most horrific discovery has been that society is nothing more than a series of carefully calculated choices based solely around economics. That's it. No like-minded philosophies, no common gods, not even healthy distrust made it possible_.

_Just gold and greed_.

_Any other thoughts I've had about this were quickly banished once I arrived on Teji and was subjected to the curious company of the Owauku. As far as I've been able to tell from as far as I've been able to understand their language, Teji_ was _a thriving trading post, as Argaol informed me... once, anyway_.

_Humans_ used _to live here. That much is clear by what has happened to the locals. I'd seen some of the more remote societies on the outskirts of Toha when we first began looking for the Aeons' Gate, as Miron originally hired us to do. They tended to have both a keen distrust for me and a keen intent on putting something sharp in my guts_.

_Or an arrow in my shoulder, as the case may be_.

_The tall, tattooed lizardmen... they're called "Shen," the Owauku tell me: raiders, scavengers, generally as uncivilised as one would expect loincloth-clad reptiles to be. Of them, I know not much else, save that the Owauku have driven them off. They're gone_.

_So they tell me_.

_The Owauku... are friendlier than most. Almost too much. They offer us freely their meat and drink, at least what passes for meat and drink, but with the subtle gleam in their eyes that suggests something would be appreciated in return. That gleam, anyway, is what I deduce from the times I can stand looking in those giant melons they call eyes. They do this... thing... where they look at me with one eye, then look at something else with the other, and they keep moving in different directions and..._

_Never mind. It's too disgusting to recount. It does make one yearn for the company of the Gonwa, though. Those taller, bearded things that I saw in the forest apparently share the village with the Owauku. I can't imagine why; the Gonwa are tall and stoic where the Owauku are short and spastic. The Gonwa are reserved and distrustful where the Owauku are almost offensively open. The Gonwa only look at me when they think I'm not looking at them, and sometimes with murder in their eyes, while the Owauku look at me..._

_No. No. Disgusting_.

_The point is that the Owauku have and love and the Gonwa lack and loathe everything one might find in a city: gambling; smoke, in both cigar and hookah form; alcohol, from their own making; and various other sundries and goods remnant from when humans still traded with them. The little ones adore the idea of trade, and constantly ask us if we have anything to put forth in that regard_.

_What they think we have, I really can't even begin to wonder. They've already taken our pants..._

_Anyway, as I was saying, the idea of everything important being driven by economics does not apply solely to society. In the age we live in, it's become a healthy substitute for instinct. If something costs more to get than it's worth, then it's not worth the effort. It's that easy_.

_And, with that in mind, I've decided to follow my instincts..._

_And give up_.

_I'm through. I'm through with everything. I don't want to have anything to do with Miron, with books, with bounties or monsters or netherlings or demons ever again_. Especially _nothing to do with books. I nearly lost all my companions, and did lose at least one, searching for the stupid thing_.

_Once, long ago, that thought wouldn't have seemed so bad. But... that was before. Before I stopped fighting, before I put the sword down and had a chance to breathe. It wasn't by choice that I stumbled across this realisation. On Teji, there's nothing to fight, nothing to kill, nothing to worry about killing me_.

_And... I find that I kind of like it_.

_Without anything's entrails to spill upon it, I find myself doing a lot of walking on the ground instead. I spend most of my days walking down the beaches with Kataria, listening to her tell me about the various plants, shells and driftwood we find. At least half of the stuff she spews, I'm certain she's making up, but every time I feel like accusing her, she smiles and... looks at me_.

_Not_ look _looks at me, but... looks at me, like I'm something she wants to look at. She stares at me, not in the way that suggests she's looking for something beneath my skin, but like my skin is fine as is. She stares at me and I don't mind. There's nothing screaming in my head_.

_I'm... not hearing the voices anymore so much_.

_I'm even starting to remember my old life, before this all happened. I can remember my family. Not their names, but their faces, the colour of my grandfather's beard, the feel of the calluses on my father's hands, the smell of the tea my mother brewed in the morning. I can remember cows I've milked, dogs I've fed, barns I've swept..._

_All while I'm around her_.

_It's not all great, to be perfectly honest. I still dream, and when I do, I dream of flames, of big blue eyes without pupils. And while I'm at ease with the Owauku, their taller, bearded friends, the Gonwa, eye me with distaste. Perhaps they knew, at one point, I planned to kill them? I don't see why they would take offence at that, really. I didn't know them at the time; it was going to be a perfectly honest killing_.

_And... I'm still hearing the voices_.

_That's another thing. I did just write "voices," with an "s." There's another one, I think... a fainter one than the first one, not so loud, not so demanding. The first one was like a fist: jabbing, pounding at the door to let it in. This one... is subtler, like a wiggle of the knob, a hand pulling at the sheet around me, someone moving a cup of tea from where I set it down_.

_And sometimes, it's not so subtle. It tries to break the door down, tears the sheet off, slips and breaks the cup. It gets so loud... so ANGRY..._

_But let's not think about that. There's more important things to worry about_.

_For example, Sebast is now almost a week overdue. The ship that Argaol promised to send to pick us up has never been seen, even when Kat and I wait on the beach for any sign on the horizon. The Owauku assure me that if any did arrive, they would tell me. Frankly, I believe them, since any boat that came would be instantly harried by them as they sought to trade with it_.

_I should be more worried about this than I am. But I've since decided that Argaol wasn't as good as his word. It's really not that big a surprise; he managed to get six bloodthirsty lunatics off his ship. Why would he send anyone to go get them back?_

_Still, I'm not too worried. Even if it's fallen into disuse, this is still a trading post. It's still close to the shipping lanes. There's no reason to expect that a ship_ won't _eventually come by. If all that means is a few weeks stuck in a loincloth walking down the beach alongside Kat, who I must say looks pretty smashing in her own, then I'm fine with that. Naturally, I'm a little disappointed that there are no more humans on the island_.

_Strange, though, I don't recall if Togu ever told me what happened to them_.

_Not that I go out of my way to spend time with Togu, actually. Amongst theOwauku, or even amongst all the horrible things I've seen, he definitely ranks as one of the worst. He is living proof that the Gods exist and that their sense of humour appeals only to themselves. It's as though they made some dwarfish, scaly creature with giant gourds for eyes and a horrifyingly strange accent and decided he just wasn't irritating enough without having the insufferable speech prowess of a six-headed politician crossbred with a forty-handed merchant_.

_I'm content to mostly spend time with my companions, even if the reverse isn't true_.

_Asper has nothing but harsh words and ire for me, though I gather she's short with everyone these days. Why, I cannot say. I know something... occurred when she was tending to my wounds, something that is largely accredited to the stress of the situation and her lack of clothes. Denaos tells me something similar occurred shortly after she woke up and spoke to Dreadaeleon. He didn't have any time to check on her, of course, since shortly after, he made the acquaintance of the Owauku and became wise to their insatiable voracity for human pants_.

_Either way, his attentions are solely on her, in the same way a voyeur's attentions are solely on a lady's unguarded window. Dreadaeleon isn't much better. His conversation is curt and brief and, every time, he always scampers behind a hut or a bush to avoid me. If I wasn't so trusting, and if I didn't care so little, I'd say he was hiding something. And every day I thank Khetashe that pubescent wizards are as loath to share their problems as I am to hear them_.

_We've kept eyes open for signs of Gariath, albeit not very widely. Perhaps it's just the peace that Teji has infected me with, or perhaps it's the fact that he's a deranged, flesh-eating lunatic, but I can't say there's much of a reason to look very hard_.

_In short, I have to say that Teji might be the best thing that happened to me. Despite the disappearance of my sword, the tome and all my clothes, I'm... almost happy_.

_A ship will come, eventually. We'll get new pants. We'll get new boots. We'll clean the sand from our buttocks, wash our faces in fresh water, read books with real words and never have need to pick up a sword again_.

_Hope... doesn't seem such a bad thing_.

# _Eighteen_

# THE BENEFITS OF SWAYING GENITALS

On the very small list of upsides that came with wearing a loincloth, Dreadaeleon counted the ability to urinate without adjusting the garment to be somewhere between gross exposure to insects with a taste for his flesh and the persistent sensation of having a dead rodent lodged up one's rectum.

Though he had been enjoying all in obscene measure since his arrival on Teji, he found the former to be the one most practised.

Of course, he told himself, it wasn't his fault. Venarie was not a precise art. Even the most careful practitioner could find himself strained too much, his spells improperly channelled, and end up with the occasional premature liver spot or loose bladder.

Surprisingly enough, the boy didn't take much comfort in that.

Instead, he pressed his hands against the reed wall of a nearby hut and attempted to convince himself that clenching his teeth and grunting would pass as casual behaviour amidst a plethora of lizardmen. If they had taken notice of this the first dozen times he had done it, they had long since ceased paying attention to the scrawny fellow with the trail of yellow dripping down his leg.

"Come on," he whispered, "finish, finish..."

Even knowing this was far beyond his physical control now, let alone his verbal control, he couldn't help but urge it along. Thus far, he had been able to convince himself that such commendations were all that kept his companions from finding out. Relief had come when Kataria began tending to Lenk, and Denaos had never really taken an interest in him before.

It was Asper's outburst that caused him conflict. On the one hand, the doubtless endless inquiries as to his health that she would have usually hurled at him were better off avoided. Fortunate, he considered, for he hadn't yet figured out a way to make loss of bladder control sound like the kind of thing she would want to concern herself with. But at the same time, she was snappish and curt with him, as well as everyone else, and did her best to avoid them all.

And, he thought with a sigh, he had indeed grown fond of the sight of her in Teji's native garb.

The stream ended with a shudder as he carefully wiped himself down with a handkerchief one of the Owauku had offered him in exchange for a brief display of fire dancing along his fingers. Not quite an even trade by his reckoning, since that display had likely been the reason behind his sudden breakings of the dam.

He found himself hard-pressed to stay mad at the creatures, though, if only because he found himself hard-pressed to even look them in their tremendous, rotating eyes. This became doubly difficult due to the fact that he was especially hard-pressed to find any way to avoid the creatures.

He looked down from the lip of the sprawling, spiralling valley that was their village. Sandy paths topped the concentric rings of stone that formed their streets and held their reed huts. Tiny, swift-moving streams flanked each road. And walking upon these roads, swimming in these streams, dozens of little green blobs scampered about.

Scampering was apparently one of their very few ambitions in life, haggling and yelling at each other being the others. But above both of these, they seemed very fond of lounging. Under the shade of their lean-tos, amongst the pools fed by the waterfalls dripping in from the forest that loomed over their valley, in the half-drowned sandy bottom of their village; it didn't matter where they happened to fall, the Owauku had turned laziness into an art form.

And because of this, Dreadaeleon found himself wondering, once more, where this particular village had come from. The stone circles were far too smooth, far too orderly to be anything born from nature. The waterfalls did not trickle of their own accord, but were fed into their streams and pools from aqueducts and trenches that undoubtedly had required many very patient men a long time to carve from the rock. But the creatures scarcely seemed to have the attention span required to carve a slur into a coconut, much less hew this marvel of sand and stone and stream.

He studied for as long as he dared until he heard the unmistakable cry of greeting. He assumed it was greeting, anyway; the Owauku's language tended to blend salutations, curses and propositions into remarkably similar words. The dozens of green blobs became dozens of pairs of bulbous golden globes as they all looked up at him, yellow smiles splitting their faces and stubby appendages waving at him. His grin and wave were equally meek as he noted with no undue relief that only the Owauku demanded such a reaction.

The Gonwa were mercifully curt.

There was no shortage of the lankier bearded lizards walking amidst the sandy pathways, either. Very rarely did the more stoic creatures even deign to notice their companions' presence, and when they did it was only with a mutter in their own language and a downturn of their eyes.

Side by side with the Owauku, they didn't look _particularly_ strange, and their smaller cohorts didn't seem to mind their presence one bit. Together, they soaked in the dozens of pools that lined the rising sandy ridges in the valley, each one fed by gently trickling waterfalls, flowing swiftly from the forest above to splash in the pools below, sending cascading droplets against the damp earth and...

His eyes widened as he felt a sudden warmth cascade down his inner thigh.

"Oh, come _on_ ," he whispered, turning back to the hut's wall.

The effects of an overuse of Venarie were random and imprecise, ranging anything from pink sweat to instantaneous internal combustion, swiftly followed by external combustion. Horror stories lingered about the occasional bout of extreme overindulgence that resulted in spontaneous hermaphrodite transformation combined with the sudden growth of tails, fins, horns and extra mouths.

Dreadaeleon supposed he ought to be pleased that an uncontrollable bladder was all that he suffered.

And he was, indeed, pleased up until the moment he heard a familiarly unpleasant voice behind him.

"Well, well," the distinctly masculine voice muttered, "watering your garden, are you?"

He whirled about, seeing his horrified visage reflected in Denaos' broad, white grin. The tall man folded his arms over his naked chest and canted his head to the side at the boy, the wrinkled lines in his face suddenly giving him a decidedly sadistic visage.

"I'm not sure what you know of botany," the rogue said, stifling a chuckle, "but you won't be growing any daffodils with the fertiliser you're using."

"How long have you been standing there?" Dreadaeleon demanded, painfully aware of the startled crack in his voice.

"You're never happy to see me anymore."

"Possibly because you watch people while they urinate for purposes I cannot begin to even summon the will to fathom."

"Intimidation, mostly," the rogue replied with a shrug.

"I don't follow."

"Well, see, a fellow who can sneak up on you and put steel in your kidneys while you're not looking is just unpleasant. A fellow who can do all that while you're indulging your glittering wine?" His grin took on an exceedingly unpleasant quality. "Well, there's a man to be scared of."

"I suppose I should have clarified," Dreadaeleon muttered, waving a hand, "I don't _want_ to follow. Go away."

"I don't see why I should," Denaos replied. "You're doing well enough."

"Did you take me for the type that would lock up while being watched?" the boy growled.

"Well, no." The rogue chuckled. "That would be _weird_." He cleared his throat. "Anyway, mind telling me?"

"Telling you what?"

"Why, precisely, you go wherever you please? Being amongst half-naked reptiles is hardly an excuse to cast modesty to the wind."

"It's not your place to know."

"It _is_ my place to ask," Denaos retorted. "Frankly, if you're going to go explode in some magical blaze of fire, I think I have the right to know."

"You think it's magical, then?" the boy asked, sneering.

"Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things wrong with you that _aren't_ magical, but this..." He gestured to the soaked earth. "This seems more in the realm of 'things that could go horrifically awry.'"

"It's just a little loss of control," Dreadaeleon replied as calmly as he could. "Magic needs fuel. I am that fuel. I don't get to decide which muscles it eats away."

"That doesn't seem much like a muscle you should be gambling with," Denaos said. "What was it that caused it? Too much magic stuff?"

"Yes, exactly. All the wondrous thought and power that goes into my gift and you've boiled it down to 'too much magic stuff,'" the boy snarled. "You have a promising future as an archivist for the drunk and simple." He glowered disdainfully at the sleepy look in the rogue's eyes, sniffed at his foul breath. "Mostly the drunk."

"Well, there's hardly any need to be snide about it," the rogue replied. "Really, though, I am a bit curious."

"And I'm a bit uncomfortable with where this is heading."

"Hush, I'm pontificating." The rogue leaned back with an air of scholarly ponder, tapping his chin. "Why in Silf's name, or whatever gods you don't happen to believe in, would you still be suffering magic-related ailments if you haven't had need, cause or want to continue using magic for all the time we've been here?"

_He knows. He knows about the tome, about the scrying, about the stone..._

The thought came almost unbidden, and the stiffening of his spine and sudden dripping halt of his flow came completely unbidden. The rogue's eyebrow rose so slowly, with such arrogant curiosity, that Dreadaeleon could almost hear the muscles behind it creak like a door.

_No_ , he told himself. _He knows nothing. How could he?_

_How could he not?_ the boy countered himself. _It's not like you've been particularly subtle about it. And he has a penchant for sneaking up on people..._

That made sense, the boy had to admit. He should have known he couldn't get far enough away to avoid Denaos.

_Still_ , he told himself, _he can't know much. What could he know? He doesn't understand how scrying works_.

But he could have learned. He could have found out, watched the wizard in his meditations long enough to have discerned that he was sniffing about the island, that he was pulling down more and more seagulls for purposes beyond getting covered in bird stool.

His heart started to beat quicker. How much _did_ the rogue know? Was he aware of the tome's location? Was he aware that the boy knew? Had he surmised the boy's plan, to delay their discovery until he could bring himself up to his full strength and find it himself?

_He must know; he's not an idiot_ , Dreadaeleon told himself. _Maybe I should just tell him. He can be persuaded to keep a secret..._

_No, fool!_ He reprimanded himself with a mental snarl. _Tell him, and he'll tell Lenk_. Lenk _will get it and what will you have done? Tattled like a child? They'll be the great heroes_ again, _adored by_ her, _and you'll be nothing more than a whiny little brat who had to go running to the men again_.

He paused, frowning. _Maybe I'm overreacting. They can't possibly see me like that_.

_But when have they not?_ The irritation came flooding back into him with a scowl. _They treat you like a match, sparking you and throwing you away at their convenience. You set the fires and they enjoy the warmth. It's time you proved that your fires shouldn't be ignored so lightly. You've conquered bigger obstacles with magic before. You can do this_.

_Right_ , he told himself. _I can do this_. He grimaced. _Right?_

"You're hiding something," Denaos said, angling the accusation like a knife.

"What makes you so sure?" the boy replied as smooth as he could manage.

"You just froze while I was talking you, likely disappearing into some bizarre stream of thought that you'd rather I was not privy to." The rogue sniffed. "Also, your piss is on fire."

The smoke filled his nostrils before Dreadaeleon could even think of a reply. He stared down with twofold horror: once to see the stream renewed and twice to see the yellow taint ending in a small blaze that smouldered angrily on the ground. His cry, too, came twice as he leapt backward and sprayed fiery soil across the earth.

"Good Gods, how do you explain _this_?" Denaos leapt from the errant stream.

"It's... it's perfectly natural," Dreadaeleon stammered. "Well, all right, not natural, but not uncommon. Sometimes fluids get crossed when a wizard channels them through his body, resulting in urine that explodes when exposed to air. Nothing to worry about." He nodded sternly, placed his hands on his hips, then looked up at the rogue. "So, uh, what do I do?"

"How should I know what to do about your fluids?" Denaos said, cringing away. "How often does this happen?"

"Not enough that I know what to do," the boy shrieked, gesturing wildly. "How do I stop it? _What do I do?_ "

"Well, don't _point_ it at me!" Denaos angled himself sharply behind the wizard, seizing him by the shoulders and directing him toward a nearby bush. "There! Just... just close your eyes and think of Muraska. It'll wear itself out."

_Damn, damn, damn_ , Dreadaeleon scolded himself mentally. _This!_ This _is what happens when I don't rest! I knew this was going to happen. Well, not this, specifically, but something like this! Oh, I'm so bad at this..._ His hands twitched about his loincloth, fearful to touch and aim the suddenly lethal spewer. _Well... no, it's fine. Denaos can keep a secret, right? He'll make me pay for it later, but for now, all that matters is that no one sees—_

"What's going on?" a familiarly feminine voice lilted to his ears.

He nearly broke his neck as he contorted it to see over his shoulder. Asper stood, hands on bare hips, her expression a blend of concern and irritation that drifted between the wizard and the tall man standing between them. Dreadaeleon felt his blood run cold, even as he felt a sudden, fiery spurt.

_Damn, damn, damn, damn, DAMN!_

"Watch my back," he whispered his plea to Denaos.

"Better than your front, surely," the rogue muttered in reply.

"Is there something going on here that I should be informed about?" Asper demanded again, crinkling her nose as she witnessed Dreadaeleon's activity. "Or is this actually as foul as it appears?"

"Foul?" Denaos mimicked her indignant stance. "What's foul about it?"

"He appears to be urinating on a burning bush," she replied, fixing him with a suspicious stare. "Why?"

"Dry season."

"And Dreadaeleon is..."

"Performing his humanitarian duty by putting it out." The rogue sighed dramatically. "Listen, this is rather a personal aspect of a man's life, so is there something we can help you with?"

"Lenk has something to say to us," she said. "He has a hard time climbing the rings with his injury, so I went out to find you."

"Well, injured or not, he'll have to come to us," Denaos said with a shrug. "Dread's going to be a while." At her confused stare, he nodded sagely. "It was a _very_ dry season." Following that, he thrust his own curious stare at her. "Interesting that you should come this far just to find us, though... Almost out of character, isn't it?"

Even over the crackle of the blazing bush, Dreadaeleon could hear the accusation intoned in Denaos' voice. He lofted a brow, then lofted it higher as he heard Asper's feet slide aggressively across the sand and her hand clap on the rogue's naked back. An instant of remembered pain flashed through his mind, memories of the rogue's arm around the priestess, the sensation of impotent fury that followed.

He hid his scowl, strained to stifle himself and hear the harsh whispers emanating between her clenched teeth.

"You say _nothing_ of what happened," she snarled to him, pulling him closer. " _Nothing_."

"Ashamed?" Denaos muttered in reply.

"Secretive," she growled. "You know the difference."

"I don't know why it matters so much."

"No, you don't."

By the time he heard her break away from him, listened to hear feet tramping down the sandy hill, the blood boiled in his ears with enough fury to render him deaf to all else, save the thunder in his own head.

_You fool! You FOOL! What was she doing while_ you _were scenting out the tome? What was_ he _doing while_ you _were preparing to save them all? Of course, why wouldn't they? Filthy, god-fearing animals acting in decidedly filthy mannerisms..._

"She's gone now," Denaos said, glancing down the hill. "How's the progress over there?"

_Maybe it's not like that... Maybe she's talking about something else. Let's remain calm here. It's the fumes that are making me like this... burning urine can't be good for the sinuses_.

"Really, though," the rogue continued without his reply, "I'm not sure why it needed to be a secret. Chances are she'd be impressed that you could pull off something like this."

_She doesn't need to know anything_ , he muttered inwardly. _She doesn't need to know that you can't even control yourself while he..._ He felt his teeth threaten to crack under the strain of their clenching. _She knows all about_ his _bodily functions, doesn't she? No... no, stop thinking like that, old man. He's a cad... a liar... a rat_.

_He probably seduced her, tricked her... I'm still the better man_.

The stream sputtered and died out, leaving a fire that gave no heat that Dreadaeleon could feel. His head throbbed, but he didn't mind. His fingers ached, but he didn't feel them. All feeling poured into his stare as he felt the crimson light flicker behind his eyes.

_The better man with all the power_.

Too late, Kataria realised that not everything could be learned from the wisdom of the elders. For years, she had been content to accept their categorisation of the human menace as a disease. It had made sense when she had only four notches in her ears.

Humans contaminated, infected, multiplied, spread. It was how they had bred to the point where they threatened land and people, where they began to require a cure. Still, she was forced to admit, certain aspects of the elders' wisdom left out key information.

_Such as onset time_.

Perhaps one year was enough, she thought as she stared down at the strain that sat against the reed hut. Perhaps one year and six days was enough to be infected beyond the point of a cure. That made sense now that she had six notches in her ears.

_After all_ , she thought resentfully, _how long has it been since you felt the urge to kill him?_

"Six days."

"What?" Her eyes went wide, as though fearing he could hear her thoughts with those puny little ears.

"Six days since we landed," Lenk elaborated.

"Shipwrecked," Kataria corrected.

"I was trying to be optimistic."

"It doesn't suit you."

"Fine," he grunted. " _Six days_ since we were shipwrecked on an island forgotten by man and abandoned for dead by the very people we so foolishly trusted to come and rescue us from a slow, lingering death surrounded by an impenetrable wall of salt and wind." He turned a glare upon her. "Happy?"

"Well, now you're just being negative," she replied. "What's your point, anyway?"

"My point is that I've had enough of it," he said. "Enough loincloths, enough lizardmen, and enough forbidden islands."

"Better than berserker purple women, giant fish demons and gaping, diseased wounds, surely."

"I haven't forgotten those." He rubbed the bandages upon his leg thoughtfully. "And I've had enough of that, too."

"Enough adventuring?" Her tone was as sly as her smile. "I thought it was all you wanted."

"No one _wants_ to be an adventurer. They just do it when they can't get any other work."

"Your grandfather was an adventurer," she offered. "He wanted to be one." She frowned at his puzzled expression. "Or so you said."

His face twitched, an expression of doubt flashing across his features like sparks off flint. She held her breath at the sight, waiting for the question that would inevitably follow. He didn't ask it, didn't have to. The doubt upon his face twisted to an all-telling despair in an instant as he undoubtedly realised he couldn't remember his grandfather ever having been such a thing.

His memory was improving. He had said that, but he was human. Humans lied. He had little to offer in regard to his past, save for brief flashes of memory in a deep and smothering darkness: a name of a girl he once knew, an image of a tree struck by lightning, the sound of cocks crowing. Even those days he spoke of slid by swiftly, into memory and out, back into darkness.

To look at him struggling to recall brought her own memories to the surface. When she looked upon him out of the corner of her eyes, his silver hair was a pelt, his eyes were faded and cloud-covered, his breath slow and stagnant. In those brief glimpses, he was no longer Lenk; he was a beast, and he was sick.

When she looked at Lenk, it was difficult to see him as a man anymore. More and more, he resembled something dying, struggling with the symptom of his own memories.

_And you know what happens to sick beasts_.

She closed her eyes, trying to forget the sound of shrill whimpers fading under the crunch of pitiless boots.

"Yeah," Lenk suddenly whispered, "he was, wasn't he?"

She opened her eyes and he was smiling at her, and caring not if it was for her sake or his own, she returned it.

"So," she said, "no more adventure?"

"No more near-death experiences," he grunted.

"No more sharp pieces of metal aimed at your vitals."

"No more fervent pleading to gods."

"No more waiting to be eaten in your sleep."

"Or stabbed or crushed or otherwise maimed," he said, nodding. "No more adventure."

"No more," the words spilled from her mouth unconsciously, "companions."

It was a slow and heavy dawn that rose on their faces, a long and jagged frown that was shared between them. Neither could find any words of the same weight. None were exchanged. They turned away from each other; she fought back both her sigh of relief at the knowledge that passed between them and the urge to turn and look at him.

_No_ , she told herself, _don't look. The solution is easy... Now you don't even have to worry about anything else. No one has to die. You're still a shict. He's still a human. All you need to do is not turn around and stay—_

"So..." she muttered.

_Silent. Damn it_.

"If not adventure, what?"

"Back to my roots, maybe," Lenk replied, rolling his shoulders against the reed wall. "Find some land, build a farm, hack dirt, sell dirt. Honourable work."

"Alone?"

_Damn it_ , she immediately scolded herself, _don't ask him that! Why do you keep doing that? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?_

She turned to look, couldn't help it, and saw him staring at her thoughtfully. Whatever she screamed at herself next, she couldn't hear. Whatever he was about to say next, he didn't say.

"Cousin!"

Another sigh of relief was bitten back before they both looked up to see the massive yellow stare above a massive yellow grin set in a massive green head. A three-fingered hand went up, tipping a round black hat upon Bagagame's scaly crown as he sauntered toward them.

"Y'farin' well, guests of Teji?" He kept one eye upon them, the other circling in its socket to look at the bandage upon Lenk's leg. "Sun feelin" mighty fine on your meat, no? No cure better." He drew in a long breath through his nostrils and twisted his other eye up at the sun. "Too bad it never actually makes things stop hurting."

"Medicine does," Lenk replied, rubbing his leg. He glanced up at the Owauku's rotating eyes and shuddered. "Do... do you always do that?"

" 'S'yeah, cousin," he said, bobbing his great head. "M'always extendin" the warmest of welcomes all the damn time." He tipped his hat again. "King Togu's always pleased to have humans on Teji, always pleased to share his medicine and hospitality." His scaly lips split in a broad, banana-coloured grin. "All for the smiling faces."

"That wasn't what I was talking about, but—"

"Oh." If such a thing were possible, the creature's eyes seemed to grow even larger, threatening to erupt from their sockets with despair. "Oh no... you ain't happy." His hands, trembling, reached up to clutch his face. "Oh, sweet spirits, I knew 's'would happen. Was it me?" He jabbed at his shallow green chest. "W'did I ever do to you _?_ "

"It's... it's nothing, it's just—"

"You're hungry." His head nearly came toppling off with the force of his nod. "That's it. Sunshine and happy thoughts can't heal. M'get you a nice gohmn, cousin. A fine, fat one."

Before anyone could protest, Bagagame had spun on his heel and scampered toward a nearby pool ringed by several rainbow-coloured carapaces. Another Owauku wearing a leather hood and wielding a crooked stick looked up as Bagagame began hooting something in their high-pitched babble. A dozen feathery antennae twitched, a dozen compound eyes looked up from their drinking pools, and even from such a distance, Kataria could see her distaste reflected back at her over a hundred times.

"Gohmns," she muttered disdainfully.

"You don't like them?" Lenk's lip twisted in a crooked grin.

"We have a history." She tried not to remember, but a sudden itch on her face prevented her from doing so. No matter how many times she washed it, she doubted she'd ever get her face clean again. "Stupid insects."

"It doesn't seem a little odd to hold a grudge against an insect?" he asked.

"I'm entitled." She growled. "Anything that sprays anything from its anus I dislike on principle. Anything that sprays anything from its anus on _my face_ I'm obligated to hate."

"Really," he mused, "I would have thought you'd admire them."

"For what?"

"Well, you're always boasting about how shicts ate every part of their kill, right? I thought you'd appreciate them for versatility alone. The Owauku use them for everything: food, milk..."

"Clothes," she added, scratching her loincloth. "It's one thing for a deer or a bear to fulfil those needs. If it comes off a giant rainbow roach..." She moved her hand up, scratching an errant itch on her belly. "They don't even taste good. What I need is venison stewed in its own blood... maybe a nice, hairy flank right off a pig. _Something_ made of meat."

"Insects are made of meat."

"It doesn't seem a little odd to defend an insect so vehemently?"

"A little." His smile was broad, if no less crooked. "Maybe I'm not so averse to the various oddities that surround me anymore."

His lips twitched, something tremulous scratching his mouth, straining to find a place where it could break out. She recalled how many times she had seen his gaze before, bereft of the softness it bore now. His gaze had been something hard and endlessly blue before, something to be avoided.

Quietly, she longed to see those eyes again. They would at least be easier to turn away from. Instead, she was bound by his stare, forced to look at him as he stared back at her with an expression that was terribly human.

"Maybe," he whispered, "I don't want to leave all of them behind."

_Why do you keep doing this?_ Her voice was growing ever more faint in her mind, but still returned to gnaw at her heart with sharp teeth. _Why do you encourage him like this? Even if you wanted this, even if you_ wanted _to be infected, this can't last. It can't even last as long as you think it can_.

Lenk didn't see the fear on her face as he looked up. His smile diminished only slightly as he stared at the three half-naked figures approaching them. His wave was weak, his eyes lost their softness; it only reminded her painfully of how he had just looked at her.

"Other oddities, I'll be glad to be rid of."

"The same could be said of you," Denaos muttered as he slunk forward. "At the very least, don't expect me to leave flowers on your grave."

"And don't expect me not to leave something brown and steaming on yours," Lenk replied sharply. "But I didn't call you out here to just insult you."

" _Just_ insult me? Were you going to kick me, as well?"

"Not today." Lenk patted his leg. "I had something to—"

"You should kick him."

Dreadaeleon's voice was as sullen as his frown was long. His eyes shifted irately toward Denaos, who merely sneered in reply.

"Some gratitude," the rogue muttered. "This is the thanks I get from you?"

"For what?" Asper asked, cocking a brow.

"For..." Whatever it was that flashed across Dreadaeleon's face, only Denaos seemed to catch it. "A secret."

"Secrets," the priestess repeated quietly. "I suppose he knows all about that, doesn't he?"

This time, something flashed across Denaos' face. His visage shifted, as though he tried on and discarded a mask in a single breath many times over. When he finally chose one, the blankness on his face was as cool as his tone of voice.

"Everyone knows something about them."

His eyes flickered and Kataria's breath caught in her throat, as though he had hurled that sentence like a dagger and struck her squarely in the heart. Her ears lowered, flattened against her head as a thick and awkward silence smothered the air between them, even if it could do nothing to hide the scowls darting from face to face.

And, like the baffled eye of a half-naked storm of scorn, Lenk turned a single raised brow to his companions.

"Something wrong?"

"Not at all." Kataria spoke up with a swiftness that made her want to kick herself. "Nothing, really. Nerves are... you know, worn, from having sand up our collective rear ends for a while."

"Six days," Dreadaeleon said, nodding, "since we arrived."

"Since we were shipwrecked," Asper pointed out.

"Yes, we've been over this," Lenk snarled, rubbing his brow. "And now, it's over."

A panoply of furrowed brows and confused looks met him.

"Did I miss something?" Denaos asked. "We don't have the tome, don't have a boat, we certainly aren't _paid_ and, in fact, seem to be poorer by about three pounds of clothing, give or take, since we started."

"Not to mention the fact that Kataria has, in fact, told you that netherlings are on the island," Dreadaeleon pointed out.

"And I think Denaos mentioned something about demons, didn't he?" Kataria asked.

"Yes, but when you found them, they were busy killing each other," Lenk replied. "And none of them saw you, did they?"

A choral attempt at inconspicuousness assaulted Kataria's ears: Dreadaeleon cleared his throat and appeared to study the sky overhead, Denaos sniffed and spared a momentary sneer, Asper shuffled her feet briefly before reaching for a holy symbol that wasn't there and resigning herself to casting her eyes downward. The shict couldn't afford to furrow her brow at them for long before Lenk turned the same scrutinising, expectant stare upon her.

She blinked, then shook her head briefly.

"No one," she replied. "The netherlings were busy with the demons, as you say."

"And likely the same can be said of the other fish-things," Lenk replied, rolling his shoulders. "So what's the problem?"

"Well, basically, _everything_ ," Asper interjected. "Between the presence of the longfaces, the demons, the lizardmen and the noted _absence_ of the presences of the tome, our clothes—"

"The gold," Denaos added, "our dignity, and so forth..."

"Point being," Asper said after shooting the rogue a silencing glare, "things certainly don't _look_ over."

"Because you're not looking at it with the proper perspective," Lenk replied. "What you're seeing is the broth, not the meat."

"The what?"

"I wrote about it earlier."

"How does that help any—"

" _As I was saying_ , you're only seeing what we don't have: the tome, the gold. We didn't have a lot of dignity to begin with, so that's no great loss." He offered a weak smile around the circle. "But we do have each other. We have our lives. We should hold on to them."

Kataria wasn't quite certain what he expected, be it a raucous chorus of cheering approval or a weary sigh of resignation and agreement, but she could guess by the sudden narrowing of his eyes that he wasn't expecting the choked snort Denaos forced through a crooked grin.

"You _girl_ ," the rogue cackled and held up his hands for peace. "No, no, sorry, I meant to say something far less insulting to our female cohorts and far more insulting to you, but... you _girl_."

"Don't feign bravery now, you roach," Lenk snarled at him. "You were the most eager to run when we started this."

"And I still am. I agree with your philosophy, but not your reasons. Let's not go acting like you give a damn over everyone's lives at this point, not after we've nearly died... how many times now?"

"Roughly thirteen since we left the _Riptide_ ," Dreadaeleon interjected. "Those are only the potential deaths by injury, of course. Taking into account factors such as accidents, disease and premeditation sans follow-through, the tally rises considerably."

"All of which you remained conspicuously silent through until now," Denaos said, scratching his chin. "What's changed?"

Lenk made no reply for the rogue to hear, nor did he offer one to anyone. Still, Kataria saw it in the brief flash of blue as he cast her a sidelong glimpse. It was only the barest sliver of azure, but she could see his answer in the sudden softness of his stare, the quiet thaw of his eyes. Something had changed; what it was, he would not say to her or any of the others.

And so, as he stood silent, she ignored the feeling that she should follow and spoke up.

"The longest-lived rat doesn't ask why a crumb comes his way," she snarled at the rogue. "The fact that _this_ one standing in front of me is suddenly so interested in why he's _not_ getting stepped on should be more questionable than anything else."

She had expected anything from the rogue: a sneer, a snide comment, a veiled threat, even the sudden appearance of a dagger he had somehow unnervingly concealed. These she was prepared for; these she had retorts for. Thus, when he angled his eyes away from her stare and said nothing more, she was struck dumb.

"As always," Lenk continued, sighing, "I don't expect anyone to follow me where they don't want to. If any of you wish to stay here, carve out whatever life you care to amongst the lizards and count the days before something—purple, black or otherwise—rips off your head and eats it, feel free to." He sniffed. "Anyone else is free to listen to my plan."

Another chorus of begrudging coughs brought a grin out on his face.

"How swiftly the tide turns, eh? Was it the mention of escape or the promise of having your head digested, then?"

"I'm more curious about how, exactly, you plan to get off this island, given our circumstances," Denaos interjected. The sullenness from his face was banished and reinvigorated with snidery. "Did we or did we not miss our trip back to Port Destiny?"

"We haven't missed it." Kataria looked pointedly at the ground. "Sebast might still show up."

"If he doesn't arrive soon, I still have a plan," Lenk replied.

"Does it include a way to leave the Owauku," Asper began sharply, "who, I feel the need to point out, saved _our lives_ and who, I feel again the need to point out, we are about to abandon as they are caught in the cross between the netherlings and the demons?"

"Yes," Lenk said. He coughed discreetly. "In a way."

"In _what_ way?"

"If we tell them, they're not going to help us escape, so I figured we'd... I don't know, leave a note or something."

"Good," the priestess said, nodding. "Maybe they can use it to stanch the blood when their intestines get spilled out on the ground."

"They took our stuff," Lenk replied with a shrug. "Seems a fair trade."

She blinked. "They made us slightly sunburnt and uncomfortable... so we're being reasonable in condemning them to a slow, agonising death."

"Stop being dramatic," Denaos said. "You know as well as we do that the longfaces kill their prey quickly."

"Oh, so now you're _for_ this?" She whirled, snarling at the rogue. "What was that momentary conscience growing out of your mouth a moment ago?"

"Indigestion, probably," he replied. "Upon further consideration—"

"You mean three breaths long?"

" _Further_ consideration," he replied forcefully, "it's rather clear we aren't going to make any money or avoid an imminent disembowelment any longer by staying here. Prudence dictates we leave, maybe come back later when everyone's dead and sift through the innards until we find something."

Kataria glowered at the distant gohmn herd sipping from a pool. "If there's anything left."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Well, it's all moot, isn't it?" Dreadaeleon suddenly chimed in. "I mean, we can't just _leave_ yet."

"At least someone has a sense of decency," Asper muttered.

"Not a person in this circle is in a position to lecture anyone on decency, young lady," Denaos replied. "He probably just wants to stay as long as he can to catch a glimpse of all the flesh on display."

"Clearly," Dreadaeleon said, sneering. "But I was more referring to the fact that we're, as yet, incomplete." His expression was half-beseeching and half-curious as he swept it about the circle. "I mean, what about Gariath? If the rest of us are alive, he probably is, too."

"He seemed fairly determined not to be when we last saw him," Asper said.

"He's alive," Kataria said softly.

"How do you know?"

The shict felt a sudden unease as the human eyes turned toward her, scrutinising her slowly. She felt the urge to flee, to escape both their stares and the memory of her encounter with Gariath. She had done a good enough job over the past days, she thought, trying to trick herself into thinking that the dragonman was dead and her secret was safe.

In her heart, though, she knew he was alive. There was no way she could be so lucky for anything else to be true.

"She knows because she's not an idiot," Lenk replied before she could. "He's stronger than all of us. He would survive. And I suppose we can delay our plans until we find him."

"A thought occurs," Denaos interjected. A thoughtful look crossed his face and he inhaled sharply, as though about to deliver a stirring conclusion. "Why?"

"What do you mean, why? He's part of our group, isn't he?"

"Well, we're not really a 'group', are we? And he's really more of a hanger-on that chose to insinuate himself into our loose coalition... a parasite, if you will."

"Parasites don't so abruptly try to kill us," Kataria muttered.

"Well, he's been doing it for the past year," Dreadaeleon retorted. "I thought we were past holding that against him."

"Yes, but he came awfully close this time," Asper said. "It's probably wiser to abandon him now after his... what, eighteenth try?"

Denaos chuckled. "Stick up for the lizardmen that you just met, but abandon the one you've known for ages? Is that sort of behaviour condoned in the Talanite faith?"

"I sleep easy," she replied. "Do you?"

"I'm sure there's some lovely backstory that I don't care about between you two," Lenk interjected, "but I'll have to interrupt to put this to a vote." He swept a careful stare around the circle. "Acknowledging full well what it means to say so... how many of you want to leave Gariath behind?"

Denaos' hand shot up with swiftness, Asper's followed with only enough hesitation to display a minor internal struggle. Dreadaeleon glanced at them both with a frown that went slightly beyond disapproval. It wasn't until Lenk looked to his side and saw the pale, slender arm in the air that he quirked a brow.

"Really?" he asked Kataria. "I would have thought you to be his only supporter."

"Wouldn't be the first time you were wrong, would it?" she growled at him.

He frowned. "I... guess not." With a sigh, he rubbed his eyes. "Well, that's that, then, isn't it? If he is alive and we go through with this, I suppose we've got one more thing that can and will kill us."

"All the more reason to leave," Kataria agreed.

"Which you still haven't explained how you intend to do," Denaos pointed out.

Whatever Lenk had to say in response was suddenly drowned out by the sound of a heavy breathing, heavy footsteps and a heavy stick being dragged through the sand. It was hard to ignore the sight of Bagagame approaching the group, and outright impossible to miss the sight of the screeching writhing roach he dragged by its antennae alongside his stick.

"Okay, cousin," he gasped, pulling his twitching prize before Lenk. "Ol" Bagagame got you covered. Took some whacking, but m'found you a nice slab to chew on." With a grunt, he hurled the insect forward. "Eat hearty."

"That's... nice?" Lenk said. "But there's something else you can do for us."

"Ah, right. Rude." The Owauku's tiny muscles strained as he hoisted his stick high above his head and brought it down in a shrieking splatter of foul-smelling ichor. His tongue flicked out from behind his grin to slurp up a glistening gob on his mouth. "Juicy enough for a king, eh?"

"I was thinking the same thing," Lenk said as he turned his smile from the lizardman to his companions. "Bagagame, show us to Togu."

# _Nineteen_

# MEN OF VIRTUE AND THE NOOSES THEY SWAY FROM

He crept quietly through the city's backstreets, hood drawn up, cloak held tightly about him. He navigated them quickly, quietly, the sins of his memories still embedded in the stones when he walked without webs on his feet, when he could bear the sensation of earth on his soles. He once had done so. He once had walked among them and they had called him neighbour.

_And what do they call me now, I wonder_ , he thought. _Monster? Heretic? Betrayer? Demon worshipper_. He paused at the mouth of an alley, glancing about before sliding through the sunlight and back into shadow. _And what slurs I could level at them. Sheep. Cattle. Blind, ignorant masses that feed themselves into the furnaces stoked by the lies of the Gods and their servants. If they want it so bad, they deserve to die. They deserve to—_

_No, no_ , he chastised himself. _Remember what this is all for_.

He glanced down at the vial in his palm, the thick, viscous liquid swirling with a nebulous life all its own. Mother's Milk. The gift of Ulbecetonth. The agent of change.

Change, he reminded himself, was what it was all about. Change needed to lift the blinders from mortalkind, to show them that their gods were deaf and uncaring. It would be violent, he knew. People would die. More would live, guided by a matron that heard them and spoke to them in return. But they would never understand.

They would call him a monster.

He called himself the Mouth.

But before that, he had called himself something else, he recalled. He'd had a name. He'd had a home. He'd had memories; he still did. The Prophet was cruel to keep him from being absolved of them, but perhaps there was a point to their withholding. Perhaps he needed to remember why he forsook name, home, land and sky alike.

And so, when he came to the rotting doorframe of a house long abandoned, when he felt his heart begin to ache as he laid a hand upon the splintering door marked with a large red cross, he fought against the urge to turn away. He pushed it open. He went in.

Shadows greeted him. They still knew him. They had been around for a long time, ingrained into the wood of the house itself. They had seen all. They remembered all. And he read their lightless testimony as he drew his hood back and walked across the rotting floorboards.

He walked past a doorway; the shadows told him of a kitchen that had never been stuffed, but had enough to make stew every night. He walked past a rotting table; the shadows spoke of three bodies seated there, breaking a single loaf of bread to share. He walked to the decrepit stairs at the edge of the house.

And the shadows asked him to turn away. They remembered what happened. They told him he would not want to see again.

But he went up, regardless. The stairs knew him, offering the same creak of complaint they had offered him for years. He paused beside them, staring at a barren spot upon the wall where the shade was a tad lighter than the rest of the decay. A holy symbol had hung there once, the great cresting wave of Zamanthras, the Sea Mother, as a ward against the woes of life and an invitation for the goddess" boon.

He remembered that symbol. He remembered when he had hung it up. He remembered when he had taken it down. He remembered when he had screamed questions at it, demanded answers and received nothing. He remembered when he had hurled it into a dying fire. He had forgotten to stoke it that night. Someone else usually did that.

But there had been no one else left that night.

He glanced back to the door, frowning. A lesson learned, he told himself; he knew that the Gods were impotent and did not care. Surely, nothing more could be gained from venturing farther upward.

_Nothing..._

But he went, anyway. The shadows lamented his return and told him of the long hallway he had once paced back and forth across. They warned him against going to the room at the far end. But he went, anyway.

And he saw the shadows in a small, decrepit room. And he saw the shadows of a small, decrepit cot. It had been a tiny thing, one that he had built hastily when the girl who lay in it grew too big for her crib.

He smiled. The shadows did not have to remind him of when he sat beside that cot and told stories. He remembered them all on his own: the Kraken and the Swan, Old King Gnash, How Zamanthras Stained Toha's Sand Blue. He remembered the promises made beside it: how the girl who lay in it and he would go to Toha one day and she would see the blue sand, how she would one day captain a ship that would dwarf his little fishing skiff, how he would build her a bigger bed in a few months, at the rate she was growing.

But it was only a few days later that the girl who lay in it stopped growing altogether.

The shadows didn't have to tell him that. He remembered it all on his own.

But the shadows were not silent. The shadows spoke of the healer who had knelt beside the little cot. The shadows spoke of heads that shook, eyes that closed, condolences offered and arrangements advised. The shadows spoke of threats, of pleas, of prayers he had offered to the healer, to their Talanas, to his Zamanthras, to anyone who would listen.

No one answered. No one ever answered.

The shadows spoke of the day when that little cot lay empty. The shadows spoke of the day when he sat beside it and cradled his head in hands. The shadows spoke of the day when he pressed his hands against his ears to drown out the sound of the waves. The waves that the girl lay in.

That was where their memory stopped. That was where his stopped. That was where he was no longer neighbour, no longer father, no longer slave to the Gods.

He narrowed his eyes; that was the day when, in the silence, he had heard the voice of Mother Deep. That was the day when he forgot his name. That was the day the Mouth had left the shadows and the wood and the city behind entirely, swearing he would not return until he could change the world.

And now, he had. And now, he could.

He stared down at the vial of Mother's Milk, narrowing his eyes. This was what it had come to. This was how the world would be changed. The Mother would be free. But for Her to reign properly, to guide mankind from their blind darkness, She would need a consort.

The Father must be freed.

And this was the key, this was what would draw Daga-Mer from the prison he had been so cruelly cast into. This was what would call to Mother Deep, to free Her from the Gate, to let Her guide her children and through them mortalkind. And this would all happen... through him.

He knew where Daga-Mer's prison lay; he heard the Father's call, he heard the distant beating of his heart as he slumbered. He closed his eyes, let the memories slip from his mind, let the sound of the heartbeat, the sound of change waiting to happen, fill his thoughts.

And all he heard was a door slamming shut, feet across the floor.

_Fool_ , he scolded himself. _They know. They're coming for you. You wasted too much time. Run!_ In his other hand, the weight of a bone dagger made itself known. _No... no, you can't run. If anyone knows you're here, they must be eliminated. They can't tell anyone you were here. They can't know... not yet_.

With the blade in his hand, he crept to the stairs, narrowed his eyes. He was unrepentant as he searched for the life he would snuff out; change was violent, after all. He saw the intruder now: a mess of wild black hair atop a thin body clad in a poor person's linens. A spy, maybe? A beggar, probably. No matter; he was going to die, regardless. This was no sin. If one had to die so that the others might live, then that was just...

His thoughts were interrupted by the deafening sound of the stairs offering their familiar creak.

The intruder's head snapped up. Wide, brown eyes took him in. A thin, dark-skinned face went slack with fear at the sight of him. And he could feel his own face go slack, his own eyes go wide, his own lips speak words.

"A... girl?"

"I'm not doing anything!" she spoke up. "No one's lived here for years."

"I used to," he replied without thinking.

And her response was to turn swiftly and bolt, the door swinging in her wake.

He was leaping over the railings in a moment, following after her. It was only after a hundred paces that he realised he had dropped the knife back in the house. It was only after a hundred fifty that he realised he didn't mind. He didn't want to kill her. He just wanted to...

_To what_ , he asked himself. _Look at her? Think of duty! Think of change!_

But he could think of nothing else, he realised, but her face. Her thin face, her wide eyes. He had to see her again. He had to look into her face again.

He saw the back of her head as she twisted through the alleys, trying to lose him. His cloak flew wide open as he pursued, trying not to be lost. His body, pale white and fingers webbed, was plainly visible. He did not belong amongst these dark-skinned island people. They would know him. They would call him monster. His mission would be over. Change would never come.

But he had to see her.

"Wait! _Wait!_ " he called after her. "I'm not angry! I just want to talk!"

She said nothing. She twisted down an alley, disappeared. He followed, twisting down the same alley and coming to a sudden halt as he slammed into a broad, leather-bound chest.

He looked up. Fierce, dark eyes looked down. He saw himself reflected: ghostly white, black-eyed, hairless. He panicked, turned about and fled down the alley.

And Bralston stared after him.

"Does Port Yonder have a habit of degenerates running unrestricted through the streets without a care for whom they collide with?" he asked his guide.

"Port Yonder, of late, is no longer a city of habits."

Mesri was his name, priest of Zamanthras and speaker for the tiny abode. He had met Bralston at the docks, he had explained, out of custom. Bralston gave him a quick glance: portly, robes that had once been nice now frayed at the hem, a thick dark moustache and a bright, cresting wave medallion hanging about his neck. All in all, he looked like the type of man that a fishing city would send to meet a man who arrived on a giant, three-masted ship.

"Granted, we _used_ to be," Mesri explained. "But since the fish have stopped coming around, the sight of people running in and out of the back alleys have become more common."

Bralston glanced up, surveying the decaying, crumbling buildings that rose up around them.

"And these?"

"Have always been here," Mesri replied. "Long ago, someone discovered that the fish migrated through these waters. Yonder was founded shortly after and enjoyed a brief time of ostentatiousness, back when we had a lord-admiral of our own." He chuckled, smoothing out his robes. "Said lord-admiral gave these fine robes to me, in fact. But the fish caught wise and the merchants shortly thereafter. These homes were abandoned, but most of us get by... well, I mean, not lately, but we did."

"You no longer have a lord-admiral?" Bralston quirked a brow. "Then the Toha Navy does not govern this city?"

"Not actively, no. A patrol ship still comes around every month, if you're concerned about our capacity to deal with the prisoner you've come to speak with."

"I am."

"What? You don't trust a tiny, impoverished shell of a city commandeered mostly by women, children and men with pointy sticks to take care of a titanic, bearded Cragsman?" Mesri chuckled. "I suppose wizards have their reputations for a reason, don't they?"

Bralston simply stared at the man, stern-faced. Mesri cleared his throat, looking down. A distinct lack of a sense of humour was another reputation wizards had earned, one that Bralston did absolutely everything in his power to nurture. The priest shuffled his feet, waving for the Librarian to follow as he continued down the winding streets of the abandoned section of the city.

"Truth be told, it was our pleasure to take the Cragsman," he said. "If only to keep him away from decent society." Mesri looked thoughtful. "Further truth, he's been remarkably docile, considering his reputation. I like to think we might have encouraged that. We did what we could for his wounds, but—"

"Wounds?"

Mesri paused, giving no indication that he had even heard the Librarian. A shudder, small and clearly not intended to be seen, coursed through his body. After a moment, he resumed his pace, Bralston keeping up.

"What manner of wounds?"

"You're going to see him," Mesri muttered. "See for yourself. Perhaps it's more common in the cities. But cities have Talanites to deal with it. I'm a Zamanthran. I can deliver children and tell where the fish are going. Not handle..." He sighed, rubbing his eyes. "Any of this."

Bralston did not inquire; he did not have to. Even for a city half-abandoned, he had noticed the scanty population of Port Yonder. Most accredited it to poor fish harvests, though few could explain the lapse in the seasonally bustling migrations. Some explained it as most of the population being ill from some manner of disease, a very select few raving about shicts being behind the whole thing.

Those not ill or in exceeding poverty were doing well enough, Bralston had been told, but his concerns were not for this city and its people. He had a duty that went beyond poor fish harvests, illnesses or anything that a priest might claim to be able to cure.

They emerged from the abandoned district, setting foot on sand. Undeveloped beach, marred only by scrub grass and two small buildings stretched as far as the cliffs where the island ended entirely. Apparently, when development of Yonder had stopped, it had stopped swiftly.

"The prisoner is in the warehouse," Mesri said, pointing to the closer of the two buildings. "I guess it's a prison now? We had to move a few spare skiffs and a crate or two... or three. He's an immense man. Ask the two boys we assigned to guard him if you require protection."

"It will not be necessary," Bralston said. He glanced to the more distant of the buildings, a crumbling work of stones and pillars to which a small, beaten path of haphazardly laid stones led. "What's that, then?"

"That?" Mesri followed his gaze and sighed. "That is our temple."

In that instant, as much as he might have loathed to admit it to himself, Bralston knew he liked the man. As far as priests went, it was difficult to find fault with him beyond the obvious. He was a man who clearly cared about his people; that much was obvious by the _many_ delays they had suffered on their trip through the city, Mesri insisting on stopping to hear every problem and plea. He had considered them all carefully and offered each one, from a sick child to a broken net, a clear and logical answer. Never once had the man even uttered, "The will of the Gods."

Bralston had suffered each delay, each problem, in silence, no matter how trivial he had considered it. But it was only now, now that he saw the crumbling, run-down temple, barely any more noticeable than the buildings of the decayed abandoned district, that he deigned to look at the man with admiration.

"Is it not an insult to your gods that it remains in such a shape?" he asked.

"I wager They'd be more insulted if I used the few coins it would have taken to feed one of Their starving followers on a new rug."

Bralston clenched his teeth behind his lips, looking thoughtful. After a moment, as if in defeat, he sighed.

"The Venarium has a policy of paying stipends for research purposes," he said. "If we are forced to repurpose a settlement without its own standing government for our means of research"—he paused, coughing—"such as studying the cause for a change in fish migrations... we are bound to offer a stipend."

"Such as one that might put food in hungry bellies and blankets over cold shoulders," Mesri replied, a smile curling beneath his moustache. "The offer is appreciated, Librarian."

"We do, of course, insist on a policy of extreme secularism," Bralston said, eyeing the decaying temple. "Given the general laxity of upkeep, though, I don't foresee this as being too objectionable an—"

"It is," Mesri answered, swift and stern. "The offer _was_ appreciated, Librarian, but I must decline. I cannot ask the people to part with their matron."

"It's a simple request," Bralston muttered, heat creeping into his voice. "Worship in your own homes, if you must. Simply keep it out of sight of the Venarium and no one needs to know. It's a generous offer."

"It is, sir," Mesri said. "But I must decline, all the same. We are men of Yonder. Men of Yonder are followers of Zamanthras. She is a part of the city and us."

"Faith cannot feed the hungry."

"Money cannot define a man."

"So you say," Bralston sneered. "I will never understand your profession, Mesri—you or the priest who guided me here."

"No one mentioned a priest." Mesri's brows furrowed. "Who was he?"

"Evenhands. Miron Evenhands. Lord Emissary, so-called, of the Church of Talanas."

"Evenhands?" Mesri's face nearly burrowed back into his skull, so fiercely did it screw up. "How is that—"

" _Mesri! Mesri!_ "

The priest's attentions were seized by the young, dark-skinned man that came barrelling out of the poor district. He did not even look at Bralston as he rushed up to the priest.

"Another fell ill," the young man panted. "Swears it was shicts."

"Of course," Mesri sighed. "It's always shicts... or ghosts... or whatever fell spirit has been thought up." He turned to Bralston. "Sir Librarian, please—"

"Time is limited," the Librarian replied curtly, shoving past young man and priest alike. "Those endeavours that cannot be pursued must settle behind those that can."

Mesri was calling something after him, he realised, as he walked toward the warehouse. But he shut his ears to the sound, all the same. It was foolish to have offered; a stipend would require paperwork, endorsements, evaluations. He had a job to do.

One that led him into a dark, dank place.

# _Twenty_

# THE SOUND OF SICKNESS

Shicts were created from Riffid, the Huntress. Shicts had been birthed from Her blood, given Her voice in their ears and nothing more. Shicts were created. Shicts were born. Shicts were meant to be here on this world.

This was fact.

Naxiaw knew this.

Humans were born from no gods, despite the misguided fanaticism they tried to justify their infectious presence with. Humans, instead, began as monkeys that learned how to pick up swords. Humans adapted. Humans evolved. Humans did not belong here on this world.

This was fact.

Naxiaw was convinced of it now.

From their humble origins when the first monkey stabbed his brother and called himself human, the round-ears had shed their body hair, built houses over stone and birthed the corruptions of politics and gold and found more productive uses for their feces. They had evolved.

_Logical_ , Naxiaw told himself. _Sickness is a predator. It mutates, learns to resist medicine and bypass immunities to spread its infection. That the human disease should learn to become more efficient at killing and destroying should be no surprise_.

And truthfully, he admitted, when he had been brought amongst the longfaces and witnessed their brutal devastation, their efficient destruction, their utterly gleeful murder, he had not been surprised.

Shocked, of course.

Horrified, naturally.

_And_ , he thought as he peered through the bars of his cage, _ever more curious..._

From high atop the crumbling stone ruins upon the sandy ridge that overlooked the valley in which they crawled, he watched them. For the past six days, he had studied them as they crushed the earth beneath their iron-shod feet, as they blackened the sky with their forges, as they broke their scaly, green servants with whip and blade.

Horror and repulsion for the purple-skinned brutes had long ago faded. He scolded himself now for wasting time on indulgent loathing. What he was watching was no longer something disgusting, something vicious and cruel to be loathed. What he was watching was something ominous, something miraculous, something wholly terrifying.

He had thought them to be one more aberration on an already-tainted world, one more threat for the shicts to destroy, one more disease to cure. But as he continued to watch them, to study their cruelty and monitor their rapaciousness, he realised they were no new illness. They were merely one strain of the same sickness he had been attempting to purge since he could first carry his Spokesman stick.

They might have been purple instead of pink, thicker of bone and harder of flesh, long of face and white of eye, but he recognised them all too swiftly. And the more he watched them as they spread across the island, purple patches of disease contaminating a pure and pristine land, the less ridiculous it seemed.

_After all_ , he reasoned, _if humans could evolve once, they could surely do it again_.

More aggressive and violent than the human strain had ever been, the longface infection continued to amaze him, even after six days of being held prisoner by them, watching them boil across the sands.

The females were the dominant infection, the true ravagers of flesh and blood. That much was obvious from watching them, tall and muscular, chewing the earth beneath their feet, staining the sand red with the blood of their slaves and themselves, filling the air with the iron challenges and grinding snarls they hurled at each other like spears.

They were the sickness that drove the green lizard-things to do what they did, the fever that boiled their minds and forced them to act in ways unwise. Under the cracks of their knotted whips and the threats from their jagged teeth, the pitiful, scaly creatures worked with broken backs and dragging feet as the females drove them forward. They hewed down the trees from the forests that flanked the beach, dragging the logs to feed the forge pits and build the great black ships that bobbed in the roiling surf.

The land was thick with iron, the sky was thick with smoke. Those females who worked the forge pits, fire-scarred and shorn-haired, relentlessly thrust and pulled glowing iron rods from the embers, tirelessly hammered them into cruel-edged wedges and vicious-tipped spikes, eagerly sharpened their edges to jagged metal teeth.

Not a grain of sand remained undisturbed amidst the activity. The disease swept across the land as the females worked tirelessly. They drilled in tight, square formations under the barking orders of their white-haired superiors. They brawled and attacked each other in impromptu displays of dominance that quickly turned fatal. They hauled the bodies of those scaled slaves too exhausted to work to a pit ringed by iron bars, tossing them in and filling the air with screaming as the denizens of the massive hole let out eerie cackles through full mouths.

And through it all, Naxiaw watched, Naxiaw studied, Naxiaw noted.

This was not the first time he had witnessed such a scene. Voracious greed, heedless industry, the smell of blood and sweat so thick the violence was a collective hunger in the belly of every female present. He had seen these sensations in the round-ears many times before, if never to such an extent.

He knew a war when he saw one.

For what, he did not know. For why, it did not matter. These things, these evolutions of disease, were preparing to spread their infection.

The sole comfort he took was in their numbers. He had counted no more than two hundred since he had first been thrown into his cage. Theirs was nothing like the teeming masses of the smaller, pinker strain.

_And_ , he thought as he lowered his head and raised his ears, _it falls to the shicts to make certain that they never will have such numbers_.

He closed his eyes. His ears went rigid. Through the carnage below, he attempted to hear.

It began quickly, as it always did, with a sudden awareness of sounds without meaning: feet on sand, breeze in sky, air in lungs, snarls in throats. This awareness amplified, sought specificity in noise: trees shuddering under blunted axes, black-bellied ships bobbing in the surf, muscles stretching and contorting under purple flesh.

Close to its goal, the awareness pressed further, reduced the world to nothing but those few sounds that bore significance, the essence of life. Splinters falling in soft, pattering whispers in tiny droplets of sweat-kissed blood. Breezes colliding with clouds of smoke. A crab's carapace scratching against grains of sand as it stirred in a hibernating dream beneath the earth.

And then, silence: the sound with the most meaning, the sensation of his own mind blooming into a vast and formless flower within his head. No more sound, no more thought. The flower stretched out silently, instinctually, reaching out, muttering wordless sounds, whispering unheard speeches. Somewhere beyond his mind, he felt something stir.

The Howling had heard him.

The Howling had found him.

Had he the consciousness to feel his heart stop, he still would not have been afraid of it. The Howling had long ago ceased to be something strange and mystical, long ago ceased to even be the instinctual knowledge that all shicts shared. He had spent many years within it, listening to it, learning it. It was a part of him, as it was a part of all shicts. As he was one with the Howling, so too was he one with all shicts.

And they would hear him as they heard their own thoughts.

Emptiness passed in an instant; then his head filled. Images of sand and blood consumed him, swirled together with sea and ships, purple faces, clenching teeth, red iron, bleeding bodies, fallen trees. War, disease, mutation, danger, anger, hatred. Through these things, coursing as blood through his thoughts, his intent boiled over.

_Find_.

_Rescue_.

_Kill_.

_Harvest_.

The intent flowed across the emptiness, dew across the petals of the flower. It would reach his people, he knew: a whisper in their ears, a sudden chill down their spines as they knew what he knew in an instant. They would hear him, they would feel him, and they would come with their blood and Spokesmen and hatred and—

_Wait_.

His ears went taut of their own volition, sensing something he had not the consciousness to. A sound without meaning? No, he realised, a sound craving meaning. It ranged wildly, whimpering quietly one moment, snarling angrily the next, then letting out a terrified howl and searching for an answer beyond its own echo.

Impossible to listen to. _Too loud, too painful_.

Impossible to ignore. _Too close, too familiar_.

His people? _No_.

No _s'na shict s'ha. Then... what?_

"Oh! Look, look, look! He's doing it again!"

Another voice. Distant, meaningless.

"What is it that he's doing, then?"

Words for those without minds, terrified of emptiness.

"No idea. He always does this, though. Never says a word, just... sits."

Words for those without thought, terrified of silence.

"Well, it's boring. Wake him up."

An explosion of sound.

His eyes snapped open as the flower of emptiness wilted in his mind; he turned to see the iron blade rattled against the bars of his cage. Behind it, white hair, white eyes and jagged teeth set in a long, purple face. He recognised this one, gathered her name long ago, associated it with her ever-present, ever-unpleasant grin.

_Qaine_.

The longfaces behind her, the male with the wispy patch of hair beneath his lower lip, the male with the long nose and red robe, the female with the long, spiky bristles of white serving as hair, he recognised too.

_Yldus, Vashnear, Dech_.

Behind them, standing with arms crossed over her chest, taller and more powerful than any male or female assembled, face drawn so tight it appeared as though it would split apart and bare glistening muscle underneath at any moment... This one, he knew only by the venom with which the others spewed her name.

_Xhai. Carnassial_.

He repeated their names to himself whenever he felt his anger towards them slipping. He collected their names like flowers and wore them about his neck in something fragile that he would pluck, petal by bloody petal and crush under his six toes. Names for now, targets for later. Just as soon as his people heard, just as soon as they knew...

"Must you really do that?" the one called Yldus asked, making a look of disapproval that seemed perpetual.

"It's not fair," Qaine replied, peering into the cage. "I caught him, I should get to kill him."

" _I_ froze him, thank you. I suppose the irony is lost on you that we are gathered here to discuss the ways in which you can kill more than just one overscum and you're barely paying attention for want of killing this one?"

"He killed _two_ females! I didn't even get a chance to fight him!"

"Two?" Dech asked, raising an eyebrow. "I didn't think they were that hard."

"Did you not also say he bled all over them?" The one called Vashnear, long of nose, red of robe, twisted his upper lip in disgust. "Filthy creature. Keep it in its cage."

"It's obvious by now that the overscum won't infect you with anything," Yldus replied, rolling his eyes.

"You cannot know that," Vashnear snapped back.

"Just a moment out of the cage," Qaine whispered. Her hands drifted, one toward the lock on his cage, the other toward the blade on her belt. "It'll be quick. Those others were weaklings. He can't be _that_ strong."

Naxiaw held his belt, already calculating how he would kill her, then leap to the spike-headed one and rip her throat out, seize her sword and move to the males. They were small, delicate—one stroke would finish them both. The big one with the taut face... he would have to flee and come back for her later. Just as well, though; shicts didn't fight fair.

His breath came slow and steady as her fingers drifted closer to the lock. He was prepared for this. He was ready to spill their blood. He was _s'na shict s'ha_. He would kill them all as soon as she just drew a little closer and—

"No."

There wasn't even enough air left to gasp with after the voice spoke. There was no threat in it, Naxiaw discerned; threats implied uncertainty, conditions that must be met. The voice spoke with nothing of the sort. It was a word full of certainty, a sound full of meaning.

This one sat so still at the edge of the ruined terrace, demurely seated upon a hewn brick, idly drumming his long fingertips on a crumbling trellis, staring down at the valley with what Naxiaw was sure was extreme boredom, even if he couldn't see the male's long face.

This one had no name as far as Naxiaw knew. His was whispered so softly, with such quiet reverence, that it escaped even the long reach of his ears. It seemed, rather, that the other longfaces took great care not to mention his name within earshot of the shict. They turned their eyes away from him, and even Naxiaw felt the urge to look away, to avoid the sight of his void-black robes and long and stiff white hair.

But he forced himself to look, to give this one a name, one more flower to the necklace. This one would bleed. This one would die. This one, Black-clad, would suffer most of all.

After a moment, the sound of fingers drumming resumed. Air returned to their lungs, meaninglessness to their voices.

"As I was saying," Yldus continued, "the subject of the invasion is of some concern to me."

"As to us all," Vashnear replied with a sneer. "The fact that _you_ were chosen to lead it is a decision of unending concern."

"I suppose you have a better idea?" Qaine replied, stepping in front of Yldus, returning his sneer.

This, Naxiaw gathered, was their function—to be hounds to the males. To bare their teeth and snarl at those who looked at them without their express approval. These tall, white-haired ones, the Carnassials, were the fiercest and most protective of their charges. And Naxiaw waited with morbid anticipation for the spike-headed Dech to return Qaine's aggression with the grim hope that one of them would die shortly after.

"Granted, given the company," Yldus said before Dech could make a move, "I know that to request an end to your female posturing and snarling is to ask the impossible, but I was hoping we could get at least a little business done before you start tearing each other apart."

"The Master's decision," Xhai uttered, "was made."

A long silence trailed her words, suggesting that any event of tearing apart, as far as she was concerned, would end with her in possession of all her limbs and possibly one or two extra. The remaining females met her gaze briefly before snorting derisively and stepping back to their respective males.

"If _Sheraptus_ has anything to tell us," Vashnear snarled, "then he can speak without the use of females. Until then, nothing is decided." He glanced fleetingly at Black-clad. "I still advocate overwhelming force. The males lead, use the _nethra_ to burn the city to cinders without having to set foot in it and risk contamination."

"The cost would be enormous," Yldus protested.

"You act as though we do _not_ possess the stones." Vashnear tapped the red sphere dangling from his neck, smiled as it glowed brightly at his touch. "The cost is trivial."

"You aren't considering the resources spent."

"Oh no," Vashnear moaned, rolling his white eyes. " _More_ dead slaves? If only we had some inexhaustible source of working flesh and..." He blinked suddenly, holding up a finger. " _Oh wait_." His thin hand made a dismissive gesture. "Ours is the right to take. We can always get more overscum."

"Really?" Yldus strode to the edge of the ridge and stared down at the valley below. "We've already rounded up every green thing on the island and killed half of them already. Attempts to collect and subjugate the painted lizards have gone..."

Naxiaw peered through his bars, following the longface's stare to the valley. Two females below dragged an unmoving compatriot by her ankles. Naxiaw's eyes widened as he spied the female's head, or the red pulp that used to be the head. He had but enough time to make out a miasma of colour, red-stained grey porridge rolling around in bits of exposed, glistening bone held together by a web of tattered purple flesh.

Then the two females tossed their fellow unceremoniously into the spike-lined pit. Shadowy figures moved beneath, stirred with sudden, violent movement. Naxiaw caught flashes of red and brown fur, bright teeth against black lips. An eerie cackle rose from the pit, to be drowned out by the sound of chewing and ripping.

"Not as well as we had planned," Yldus finished.

"If the worst that comes from our attempts is that the sikkhuns eat a little better and we lose a few females, so be it." Vashnear spoke with a very pleased smirk he was certain to swing toward Qaine. "Of course, we have an entire wealth of green-things that will _not_ fight back readily, just waiting for—"

"Not them."

Black-clad's voice lingered for just a moment this time, a spear instead of a cloak that he aimed directly at Vashnear. The red-robed longface nodded briefly, his smile disappearing.

"Of course." He turned his stare back toward his fellow male. "But it is not as though there is a shortage of overscum in this world. We will use what we have to ruin their city and eliminate the need for this useless chatter or for useless females. The three of us. Burn them out. Burn them up. The problem is solved."

Dech snorted. "What would be the point in just burning them, though?"

"That's what I was beginning to illuminate," Yldus replied. "The specifics simply have to be—"

"Specifics?" Dech frowned deeply. "You have a city full of pinkies. Stomp their faces in, cut their heads off, and if you want to get _really_ specific, rip their arms out of their sockets and stab them in their throats with them."

"Stab them," Yldus repeated, "in the throat."

"With their arms, yeah."

A silence settled over the assembly. Yldus stared at the Carnassial for a very long, unblinking moment before pursing his lips together and taking a deep breath through his nose.

"At any rate," he continued, clearly biting back words far more suited to his mood, "burning will not work. The considerable resources that such a plan would utilise aside, our goal is not actually to burn as many overscum as possible, you will recall."

"Right," Qaine chuckled blackly. "Just a bonus."

" _Rather_ ," Yldus continued, shooting her a scowl, "I am hoping to _minimise_ the amount of casualties needed, at least as far as our forces are concerned. Every female we lose in this battle will be a female we will not have for further conflicts. Hence, I will need more to attack the city."

"I don't follow," Dech grunted.

"Really." Yldus rolled his eyes. "The logic is simple. The overscum has a sizable presence. Not enough to hold my current force back, of course, but enough to take a toll that would make future conflicts with the underscum more of a difficulty than they need be."

"You have been given three _venri_ to use," Xhai growled curtly. "More than enough for any true warrior."

"Females are warriors," Yldus countered. "I am not. And if we hope to have any warriors to fight the underscum with—"

"The underscum are yet to be a problem."

"Really?" Vashnear eyed her, noting the mass of thick purple tissue near her collarbone. "How did you get that mark again, unscarred? Or are we still able to call you that?"

" _This_ was given to me," she snarled, thumping the scar, "from no black-skinned, slime-spewing piece of _krazhak_."

"From the overscum you reported, then?" Vashnear asked, smirking. "Perhaps you should have kept that to yourself, no?"

"I have plans for that," she uttered, rubbing the scar with an intensity that went far beyond grudge-filled memory.

"Could we perhaps get back to _my_ plans?" Yldus asked. "You know, the important ones?"

"Proceed."

Yldus shuddered slightly at Black-clad's voice, gritting his teeth before continuing.

"We..." He paused to inhale. "We are in agreement that the overscum city must be sacked, yes? The relic must be procured. Our allies demand it. However, our knowledge on the subject's location is as delicate as our allies' patience is. We lack the time to spend sifting through ashes. Hence, burning is not an option." He glanced toward Xhai. "Neither is failure. To that end, it would be easier to crush them in one overwhelming force, rather than bleeding them, and our forces, over a longer period."

"And what are you asking for, exactly?" Xhai asked. "How many more _venri_?"

"One."

"One?"

"The First."

At this, a collective inhale of breath, a collective call to objection and insult, coursed through the longfaces. Naxiaw saw that even Black-clad's head tilted slightly at the mention.

"Unnecessary," Qaine growled. "I'm going with the invasion. _One_ Carnassial is more than enough to kill a bunch of pinkies."

"Stupid," Dech snarled. "Those stupid high-fingers get all the fighting already. Why give them more?"

"Weak," Vashnear scoffed. "The First are there to break backs and crush heads _only_ when the backs are too stiff and the heads too high. And you think you need them to take a single... whatever it is you are seeking?"

"No," Xhai uttered. "The First cannot be commanded by you. They answer only to the Master, only to—"

"Yes."

Of all the eyes that swept toward Black-clad, Xhai's were the widest, lingered the longest, boiled with the most anger. Though she doubtlessly desired to erupt in a violent torrent of her grating, snarling language, she kept her voice low, language clear and neck so rigid it appeared as though her spine had turned to iron.

" _He_ doesn't have the authority to command the First," she whispered harshly. "It undercuts you, makes you look..." She clenched her teeth together. "I already told him—"

"Leave."

She recoiled, to Naxiaw's surprise, with a look of shock. He hadn't thought any of the longfaces capable of any expression beyond varying degrees of anger. Thus, it was with particular interest that he watched her face melt slightly, whatever force holding her visage so taut snapping and sloughing off to reveal a look of parted lips, quivering eyes.

He certainly hadn't thought that any longface could look so hurt, least of all this one.

"As you wish," Yldus replied. "We will depart swiftly and return all the more quickly for it."

Slowly, one by one, they began to dissipate from the ridge. Yldus strode as tall as he could beside Qaine. Vashnear skulked with Dech following reluctantly. Xhai was the last to leave and took the longest, stopping to turn and look behind with each step.

But she, too, left, as did they all, without so much as looking at Naxiaw, leaving the shict and the black-draped longface alone.

And no sooner did they than Naxiaw made ready to leave, as well. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, prepared to withdraw into his mind, to touch the Howling and send out his panicked warnings, his fevered shouts to his kin.

_Longfaces coming_ , his thoughts ran like terrified deer. _Poison soon. Let them all die together, purple and pink alike. Kill the human evolution before it begins again. Cleanse all diseases_.

A good list, he thought, one he would eagerly relay once he vanished into sounds without meaning, once he reached his people, once they heard—

"Not answering, are they?"

He felt cold, the words echoing through his ribs to clench at his heart. Black-clad's face had not turned, yet there was no doubt who he spoke to.

"You're shocked," the longface said, chuckling softly. "Your kind typically is. Overscum, that is. I like that about you, though." He made a long gesture over the valley. "Everything with netherlings is always a foregone conclusion. When they're born, they know what they're going to do. Males use _nethra_ to lead the females, who use iron to kill each other. Low-fingers use bows, high-fingers use swords, bridge-fingers become Carnassials. Those with black hair die; those with white hair kill. It's so..."

His sigh drained the air from the sky, left Naxiaw breathless, helpless, staring in astonished silence.

"And what's more," Black-clad continued. "They don't just _know_ what it is they do, they _love_ doing it. Males love leading, females love killing, none of them knowing they could do something different. But these... _humans_ , if you'll pardon the mention of their race, these are fascinating creatures. They never know what's going to happen, the females, especially. And when they find out..."

Naxiaw felt the longface's smile, even without seeing it. He could feel the stretch of lips, the baring of teeth, the long, slow drag of a long pink tongue across them.

"Really, I'm surprised you don't think more of the females. You seem to be of similar mindsets: both always thinking about killing, both always thinking about death. Though you don't think of it as death. You think yourself to have medicine, to cure." His fingers drummed. "Lying... we've never had reason to, what with everyone knowing everything about themselves and each other. What a fascinating creation."

Naxiaw opened his mouth, urged his voice into his throat even as it fought to stay down, stay hidden from this creature, to avoid matching itself against his sounds full of meaning. Before the shict could even squeak, though, Black-clad continued.

"No, I can't read your thoughts. Not the ones you keep to yourself, anyway. But whenever you bow your head and start thinking... well, it's so loud, I can hardly hear anything else. Even then, I can't garner much besides some general information, bits and pieces, mostly. I know you hate us, but that's hardly surprising, what with you being our prisoner and all. I know you're looking to kill... apologies, 'cure' the humans, but who isn't? And I know you can understand me, even if you never speak."

Naxiaw felt his eyelids begging him to blink, his breath begging him to suck in more, but he had the wits to do neither.

"No, I don't particularly care, really. You want to kill them, kill Yldus and Vashnear, kill Xhai... kill me, even. I could put an end to that right now, you know. But then, that would be just one more foregone conclusion, wouldn't it? I rather like the idea of something new and interesting happening if I let you live. If you kill a few females, that's fine. I have more than enough to spare. Will you kill me, though?"

He chuckled again.

"I'd really like to see if you could come close, actually. Everything I learn about you... you people and your bright red sun fascinate me. Your lying, your railing against truth, fighting against what you know. I must know more... Perhaps you'll tell me eventually?"

Naxiaw had not the voice to reply.

"Eventually, of course. For the moment, I'm not interested in much else... except that voice. You heard it, too, didn't you? Whining, whimpering, and then... screaming. What was that, anyway? One of your people? But not one you were trying to reach... I can sense that much. But it was trying to reach you, even if it didn't know it. How curious it was, though. So lost, so alone, so blind. I can't know if you can tell or not, but I, for my opinion, think it sounded strange, unique... _female_."

The words rolled off his tongue like a dagger, hanging in the air, its echo the smooth and relentless edge that pierced Naxiaw's heart. Was the voice, that lost and whimpering voice, a female? He could not know. But it was a shict, this was fact, and it was a shict he must warn. But how? If he could not use the Howling without this longface knowing, what would he do?

"It is a confusing dilemma, isn't it?" Black-clad asked. Slowly, he turned to face the shict, his grin broad and white. "I might have an answer, though. This thing you use, your loud thoughts. It can't be too hard for me to figure out. Why don't you just relax..."

Naxiaw swallowed hard as he met the longface's eyes, bright crimson and burning like pyres.

"And let me have a look inside?"

Something reached out, slid past Naxiaw's brow and into his brain. He threw his head back, pricked his ears up. In a word without sound, a noise without speech, he let out a long, meaningless scream.

# _Twenty-One_

# THE KING OF TEJI

_S he did it again_."

The voice came subtly this time, without cold fingers of rime. It came this time as soft as snow falling on his brow, accumulating and growing heavier.

" _She thinks you don't see her_."

Growing impossible to ignore.

" _Thinks_ we _don't see her_."

Still, Lenk tried.

He focused on other distractions in the hut: the oppressive moisture of sweat sliding down his body, the stale breath of the still and humid air filtered through the roof of dried reeds, the sounds of buzzings, chirpings, the rustling of leaves.

And her.

He could feel her, too, just as easily as the sweat. He could feel her body trembling with each shallow breath, feel her eyes occasionally glancing to him, hear her voice bristling behind her teeth, ready to say something. He could feel the brief space of earth between them. When her hand twitched, he felt the dirt shift beneath his palm. When his fingers drummed, he knew she could feel the resonance in hers.

He felt her as he sat, felt her smile as easily as he felt his own creeping across his face.

" _She isn't smiling_."

He furrowed his brow suddenly, resisting the urge to speak to the voice, to even acknowledge it. Try as he did, though, he couldn't stop the thought from boiling up in his head.

_She isn't?_

" _Look_."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her for the first time since they had entered the hut. She was not smiling, not even looking at him. Her stare was tilted up to the roof, along with her ears, rigid and twitching with the same delicate, wary searching that he had seen before, once.

But she had been looking at him, then.

" _She listens_."

_That makes sense_. He was distantly aware of a voice in the room. _Someone else is talking_.

" _Not to them_."

_Why wouldn't she be listening to them?_

" _You aren't_."

_Point_.

" _Watch carefully. She searches for something that you can't hear_."

_But you can..._

" _Only fragments of... wait, she is going to hear it again_."

As if she had heard the voice herself, she suddenly stiffened, her chin jerking. Her neck twisted, face looking out somewhere, through the stone walls and beneath the soil. He followed her stare, but whatever it was that she saw, he obviously could not.

" _She does not see it, either. She hears. It is loud_."

And at that cue, her ears trembled with a sudden violent tremor that coursed down her neck and into her shoulders. He saw her lips peel back in a teeth-clenching wince, as though she sought to hold on with her jaws to whatever it was she had found with her ears. He felt her shudder, through the soil, as she clung to it.

And he saw her release it, head bowing, ears drooping and folding over themselves, seeking to drive it away with as much intensity as she sought to hold on to it.

He listened intently and heard nothing but the frigid voice.

" _Didn't like the noise. Pity_."

_You... did you hear it?_

" _Mmm... are we on speaking terms again?_ "

_Did you or did you not?_

" _Heard, not so much. Sensed, though..._ "

_Sensed what?_

" _Intent_."

_What intent?_

No reply.

_Whose intent?_

Silence.

"Whose?"

It was only after the snow had flaked away, after the numbing silence in his head passed and was replaced with the distant ambience of the village outside, that Lenk realised he had just spoken aloud.

She turned to regard him with a start, eyes more suited to a frightened beast than a shict.

"What?" she asked.

"What?" he repeated, blankly.

"You said something?"

"We didn't."

"We?"

"Well, you didn't, did you?"

"Nothing." She shook her head a tad too vigorously to be considered not alarming.

"Are you...?" He furrowed his brow at her, frowning. "You looked a bit distracted just now."

"Not me, no," she said, her head trembling again with a tad more nervous enthusiasm. Just before it seemed as though her skull would come flying off, she stopped, her face sliding into an easy smile, eyes relaxing in their sockets. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Are you well?"

"I'm..."

" _Calm_."

_What?_

" _When was the last time we felt like this? No concerns, no fears, no duties..._ "

"You're what?" Kataria pressed.

He opened his mouth to reply, but became distracted by the sudden, fierce buzzing that violated his ears. A blue blur whizzed past his head, circling twice before he could even think to swat at it. And as he felt a sapphire-coloured dragonfly the size of a hand land on his face for the twenty-fifth time, he was far too resigned to do anything about it.

"I'm a tad annoyed, actually," he replied as the insect made itself comfortable in his hair.

"You could always swat it off, you know," she said.

"I could and then its little, biting cousins would flense me alive," he growled, scratching at the red dots littering his arms and chest. "The big ones, at least, command enough fear that the little ones will flee at the sight of them."

"Perhaps it's for the best that we're leaving," Kataria said, "if you've been around long enough to figure out insect politics."

"It's not like I've got a lot else to do," he growled. He cast a glance over her insultingly pale flesh, unpocked by even a hint of red. "How is it that they're not biting you, anyway?"

"Ah." Grinning, she held up an arm to a stray beam of sun seeping through the roof and displayed the waxy glisten of her skin. "I smeared myself in gohmn fat. Bugs don't like the taste, I found."

"Is _that_ what that smell is?"

"I'm surprised you didn't notice earlier."

"Well, I noticed the smell, certainly, I just thought it was all the gohmns you were eating."

She grinned broadly. "Every part is used, you know."

"Yeah," he said, scratching an errant itch under his loincloth. "I know."

He could feel her laugh, seeping into his body like some particularly merry disease. And like a disease, it infected him, caused him to flash a grin of his own at her, to take in the depth of her eyes. He could scarcely remember when they had looked so bright, so clear, unsullied by scrutinising concern.

" _It is nice, isn't it?_ "

_It is_.

" _It could always be this way_."

_It could?_

" _Is that not why you wish to leave?_ "

_It is, yes, but... well, you hardly seem the type to encourage that sort of thing_. In the back of his mind, he became aware of an ache, slow and cold. _In fact, you're being awfully polite today. That's... not normal, is it?_

It should have occurred to him, he supposed, that it would take a special kind of logic to try and ask the voice in one's head what constitutes normalcy, but his attentions were quickly snatched away by Kataria's sudden exasperated sigh.

"How long have we been sitting here, anyway?" she asked.

Lenk gave his buttocks a thoughtful squeeze; there was approximately one more knuckle's worth of soil clenched between them, as far as he could sense.

"About half an hour," he replied. "You remember how we're going to go about this?"

"Not hard," she said. "Tell Togu we're leaving, ask on the progress of our stuff, get it back, find a sea chart, ask for a boat, head to shipping lanes, quit adventuring and the possibility of dying horribly by steel in the guts and instead wait to die horribly by scurvy."

"Right, but remember, we aren't leaving without pants."

"Are you still on about that?" She grinned, adjusting the fur garment about her hips. "You don't find the winds of Teji... invigorating?"

"The winds of Teji, muggy and bug-laden as they may be, are tolerable," he grumbled. "It's the subsequent knocking about that I can't abide."

"The what?"

"Yours don't dangle. I don't expect you to understand."

"Oh... _oh!_ " Her understanding dawned on her in an expression of disgust. "They knock?"

"They knock."

"Well, then." She coughed, apparently looking for a change of subject in the damp soil beneath them. "Pants, then?"

"And food."

"What about your sword?"

Not the first time she asked, not the first time he felt the leather in his hands and the weight in his arms at the thought of it. The image of it, aged steel, nicked from where he and his grandfather had both carved their professions through anything that would net them a single coin. His sword. His profession. His legacy.

"Just a weapon," he whispered. "Plenty more to be had."

He could feel her stare upon him, feel it become thick with studying intent for a moment before he felt it turn away, toward the opposite end of the hut. She leaned back on her palms and sighed.

"Chances are it might be here," she said, sweeping an arm about the hut, "given all the other garbage he seems to collect."

He followed her gesture with a frown; it was a bit unfair to call the possessions crowding the hut "garbage," he thought, especially considering that most of it was stuffed away in various chests and drawers. He did wonder, not for the first time, how a monarch who presided over lizards with little more to their collective names beyond dried reeds and dirty hookahs managed to assemble such an eclectic collection of antiques.

The hut's stone walls looked as though they might be buckling with the sheer weight of the various chests, dressers, wardrobes, braziers, model ships, crates, mannequins sporting everything from dresses to priestly robes, busts of long-dead monarchs and the occasional jar of... something.

And over all of them grew a thick net of ivy, flowers blooming upon flowers, leaves twitching as insects crawled over them. They seemed a world away from the dead forests beyond with no life.

" _All that grows on Teji_ ," the lizardman Bagagame had said as he escorted them in, " _grows for Togu_."

Of course, the reptile hadn't bothered to say why, amongst the various pieces of furniture, there wasn't a chair or stool to spare the honoured guests the uniquely displeasing sensation of having soil crawl up one's rear end. Then again, he hadn't bothered to say why the king never moved or spoke before he vanished behind the throne... and presumably stayed there.

"We'll ask him if we can sift through this"—he paused—"collection."

"You were going to say 'garbage'."

"You don't know what I was going to say."

"Whatever," Kataria grunted. "It's all moot since I'm pretty sure he's not going to wake up in this lifetime."

He glanced up towards the throne at the end of the hut, overpolished to a lumpy, greasy sheen. Squatting in its seat, as he had done for the past half hour, the past four conversations and the past two conversations that included discussions of itches in strange places, Togu sat, impassive, unmoving and possibly dead.

He was likely very impressive under the brown cloak, Lenk thought, if bottle-shaped and narrow-necked counted as kingly features in Owauku society. He blinked, considering; that seemed to fit the kind of persona that would be cultivated by a race of heavy-smoking, bug-eyed, bipedal reptiles who ate, raised and wore bugs.

But electing a corpse seemed a bit too eccentric even for them.

He was giving heavy consideration to the idea, though, considering King Togu didn't even appear to be breathing, much less moving, at the moment.

_Probably a concern_.

" _Why worry about it?_ "

_Why worry about the fact that we've been waiting half an hour to talk to a dead lizard?_

" _Well, when you say it like_ that..."

A noise crept through his head. It began softly, then rang with crystalline clarity: cold, clear and mirthful. His eyes went wide.

_Did you just... laugh?_

"Ah, honoured guests!"

The bass voice of Bagagame boomed with the ache that rose in Lenk's neck whenever the Owauku made his presence known. He looked up to see the stout lizardman waddling in from the small hole in the stone wall that formed the hut's back entrance. His yellow grin broad, he bowed deeply, doffing his hat.

"May Bagagame present, on behalf of y'most pleased hosts of Teji..." He stepped aside, pulling back the portal's leather flap. "King Togu!"

Lenk turned a baffled stare from the hole to the figure seated upon the throne. Seeing no movement from the shrouded figure seated upon the throne, he glanced back to the portal and instantly had to choose between greeting, screaming or vomiting at the sight of the creature creeping out of the shadows.

It was difficult to decide, however; there was no clear way to regard the amalgamation of green flesh, fine silk and dirty feathers that came out and regarded the companions with its yellow stare, for, truly, Lenk really had no idea what the hell King Togu was.

Superficially, at least, it resembled an Owauku: stout, green, with a belly as round as his massive, gourdlike eyes. But this one sported a pair of long, fleshy whiskers that hung so far from his blunt snout as to dangle about his stubby feet.

Still, the silk robe he wore open, so that it formed a purple frame to the bright jewel he wore in his belly, suggested something that had been digging in a nobleman's trash. The feathered headdress he wore about his prodigious skull and the nauseating blend of flowers, vines, feathers and leathers he wore as decoration... well, Lenk really had no explanation for that.

Quietly, the creature surveyed them, his eyes swivelling from Lenk to Kataria, then fixating one on Kataria while the other rolled with uncomfortable slowness to stare at Lenk. Eyes split apart, his face soon followed suit as a large, yellow-toothed smile neatly bisected the green visage into two equal segments of scaly flesh.

"Cousins," King Togu spoke in a voice earth-deep and flower-sweet, "be welcome."

"Uh... thanks," Lenk replied. Possibly not the best greeting in the presence of reptilian royalty, he thought, but he found that the creature's presence robbed him of coherent thought for anything more elegant. "I'm..." He searched for a word and settled, reluctantly. " _Glad?_ Glad that you've given us your time today."

"Glad? _Glad?_ " Both yellow eyes swivelled to regard Lenk incredulously. " _Merely_ glad?" He whirled upon Bagagame, face twisted into a frown. " _Merely_ glad. Why not great? Why not fantastic? Why not in need of a drink, so viciously does the excitement inspired by Teji's majesty seep out of their mouths?"

"I don't know!" Bagagame offered, shrugging helplessly. "Maybe they came to complain? The sun don't shine that brightly these days and maybe—"

"The sun _always_ shines on Teji!" Togu drove his point home at the end of a stubby backhand against the shorter Owauku's cheek. " _You_ are the one that diminishes our great reputation! Look!" He smacked his subject again, sending one eye spinning towards Lenk. "A giant _bug_ is sitting on his head! Is this how we will be remembered?"

"Oh, right," Lenk said, suddenly feeling the dragonfly as it, suddenly frightened by the noise, scurried down onto his face. He reached up to brush it away. "It's really no—"

"Sorry! Sorry! M'fix that right up now!" Bagagame came bounding over, eyes fixated on the sapphire-coloured insect.

"It's not necessary!" Lenk's hand moved away from the bug and out in a futile attempt to stop the Owauku as his lips slowly parted. "No! _No, don't—_ "

His words were lost in the subsequent squishing sound and he blinked dumbly, unable to find any others. He didn't feel this was at all inappropriate; it was, after all, quite difficult to form the proper thoughts to express one's feelings at feeling the thick, sticky end of a lizardman's three-foot-long tongue plastered to one's cheek. Even as Bagagame drew it back, winged prize twitching as he yanked it into his grinning mouth, he was at a loss.

He remained in that dumbstruck silence for a moment, blinking through the veil of saliva dribbling down his eyelid as he slowly, calmly licked his lips.

"Right," he said, "so, anyway, we're leaving."

"Leaving." Togu levelled a scowl at Bagagame. " _Leaving_. Why leaving?"

"I don't—"

The king made a sweeping gesture back to the portal he had emerged from. "Go and get the coals."

Bagagame offered a bob of his head, scurrying off to the shadows and leaving the larger Owauku to sigh and stalk toward his throne, keeping one large eye upon the companions. Lenk watched him with some befuddlement; he wasn't quite sure how he expected the king to take the news, but he wasn't anticipating such calmness.

Then again, he wasn't sure he had ever actually anticipated having to explain anything to a feathered lizardman.

"Naturally, I'm a bit curious," Togu said. "Have we not done all we could to establish our hospitality?"

The quality of the king's speech should likely have provided some comfortable familiarity, Lenk thought. Contrasted against the other Owauku, it merely made him seem all the more peculiar.

"Well, yes," Lenk replied, "but surely, you must have known we'd have to leave sometime."

"Of course."

The king deftly leapt onto the armrest of his throne, nearly slipping from the wax before sliding up to perch on the velvet-lined back. His position, combined with his feathers, lent him an avian appearance that was only made more ominous as he reached down with a foot to slide the cloak off the stout figure seated in the throne. A truly massive waterpipe was revealed, seated smugly on the red velvet as Togu reached down to pluck up the hose and bring it to his scaly lips.

"I suppose I was hoping that, against better judgement, you would linger for a while. It has been nice to have humans about in the village again."

"And your hospitality has been..." _Don't say_ " _horrifying_." "—lovely," Lenk said. "But we've got other places to be."

"And there is nothing I can say to convince you otherwise, I'm assuming, or you would not have come to me."

A great yellow eye swivelled to the portal, regarding Bagagame sourly as the smaller Owauku came teetering out with a tiny censer full of smouldering coals. He quickly applied them to the waterpipe, the rich scent of flavoured tobacco filling the air almost instantly as the water burbled inside its vase. Togu drew in a breath that lasted for ages, his chest inflating to a size preposterous for a creature his size. When he did speak again, his words came out on a cloud of smoke that made him resemble some great, fire-breathing beast.

"Which does make old Togu wonder why you _have_ come."

Bagagame cringed at even the brief, dismissive wave Togu offered him and quickly ran, bowing apologies to both of the companions as he scurried between them and out the door. Lenk watched him go only until he was exactly three and a half feet out of earshot then turned back to Togu.

"Well, as you may have noticed, we aren't in much shape to be getting anywhere," he explained. "We _had_ been expecting a..." _Don't say "hired peon_." "—friend to come retrieve us, but we haven't seen any sign of a black ship lately."

"Have you?" Kataria chimed in.

Togu coughed slightly, apparently choking on a stray ash that had crept its way into his hose. He shook his head, thumping his chest gently.

"Not as such, no," he said. He appeared to furrow his scaly ridges in thought, Lenk thought, but that might just be some other emotion too deep for eyes the size of grapefruits to convey. "No... no... the Gonwa would have spoken of such a boat."

"Ah, well, that seems—"

" _Lies_."

A cold ache crept through him, a frosty hand wringing his spine for a moment before releasing it. He shook his head, as he might shake snow from his hair.

"Discouraging," Lenk finished, his voice degenerating into a mutter. "I suppose it might have been helpful if the Gonwa had actually told _us_ first, though."

"They are... a complex people," Togu replied, scratching his chin. "They come from Komga, an island with too many trees, not enough sun and, as such, they lack our 'sunny' disposition." He grinned at his own joke. "They must be more than a little irritated at having moved here, anyway, but Teji will grow on them."

"And why did they move here, exactly?" Kataria asked, drawing a glance from Lenk.

_That does seem important... Should... shouldn't I have asked that?_

" _Why would you?_ "

_That's usually my thing_.

" _Worrying? Let someone else do it_."

Togu's eyes rotated to regard her carefully. "Feel free to ask them."

She accepted the retort with what would appear, to anyone else, as a cool silence. Lenk, however, could see the faint tremble of her upper lip, the minuscule twitch of her eyelid, and a tiny, distinct quiver of her ears.

" _Sees. Hears. Lies_."

"What?" he whispered inwardly.

"Point being," Togu continued, "Teji warms all and all warm to Teji, in time." He settled back, taking another deep puff of his pipe. "I'm sure you could find your place in it, if you wished."

"Point being," Lenk retorted, "that we don't. We appreciate the hospitality inasmuch as we _can_ appreciate having loincloths slapped on us, but—"

"We are mending your clothes. It takes time when we lack thread."

"That, too, is appreciated, which brings me to my next point," he continued. "We were wondering if we could ask a little more of you."

Togu's eyes shifted to him. "Ask away."

"A sea chart to find the nearest shipping lanes to the mainland, a boat to take us there, food to make it there and—"

" _Sword_."

"And..."

" _Sword_."

"Something..."

" _Need_."

"Pants," Kataria interjected. "We want our pants back."

"Pants?" Togu began to mutter, clouds of smoke roiling out of his nostrils. "Pants, pants, pants... It's _always_ pants with humans, isn't it?"

"What _is_ it with lizardthings and calling me human? I'm _not_ human!" She took her ears in her hands, pulling them out for display. " _Look at these things!_ They're _huge!_ "

"Can you get us that sort of thing or not?" Lenk asked with a sigh. "You can keep whatever it is you found from our wreckage in payment or we can work something out."

"What sort of something?" Togu asked.

"We can do... things."

"Such as?"

"Kill stuff," Kataria said, sniffing, "mostly."

"We do other things," Lenk countered with a glare.

"Like what?" she asked, sneering.

" _Things_ , you know..." He leaned back, twirling his hand in what he hoped was at least vaguely thoughtful. "Such as... well, Denaos, I know, can play the lute. You probably have something like that, right?"

"Ah, yes, the tall one," Togu said, inclining his head approvingly. "My people are quite fond of him. Does he have anything to say about your decision to leave?"

"Nothing worthwhile," Kataria replied. "The only thing missing by him, or the rest of them, not being here is a bunch of whining and probably some attempt at innuendo or something stupid like that." She frowned, shrugging. "So can we have the boat or not?"

Before Togu could even open his mouth, Lenk whirled upon her.

"What are you doing?"

"Negotiating."

"No, you're just speaking loudly. You don't understand negotiation." He tapped his chest. "That's what _I_ do."

"So... don't this time," she replied, regarding him curiously. "Is that such a problem?"

" _It isn't, you know_."

" _You_ be quiet," Lenk snarled.

"Who be quiet?" Togu asked.

" _Why even negotiate? Why leave? Everything you need is right here_."

"Everything we need..." Lenk whispered to himself.

The words seeped into him on the silence inside his head, sowing his mind with seeds of comfort. In his brain, they began to bloom, a calm logic spreading over him. Why was this important? he wondered. Why go back to the fighting and death on the mainland? What was the point of it all?

Everything he needed was here: sun, water, food, and though she may have been regarding him with a stare that twitched between confusion and worry, she was here, too. He smiled, not knowing why, not caring why.

" _No_."

It came back, a sudden frost that swept over his mind, killed the blooming calm. His skull throbbed with fear, anger, contempt, all swirling about his mind, all carrying the voice through.

" _Cannot leave now_."

"Cannot leave now," he whispered.

"What?" Kataria asked.

"Then," Togu muttered, hope rising in his voice, "you wish to stay?"

" _Need to stay... need to kill..._ "

"Kill," he uttered quietly.

"What was that?" Togu asked.

"Lenk..." she whispered, leaning close.

" _Lies all around us. Surrounded by worthlessness. Need to kill. Need to stay_."

"Need..."

" _Sword_."

"Sword."

"Sword?" Kataria asked.

" _Need sword_."

"Need it," he whispered.

"Need what?" Togu asked.

" _Sword_."

"Sword."

" _Sword!_ "

"Not again, Lenk..."

" _SWORD!_ "

" _WHERE IS IT?_ "

Togu recoiled, threatening to teeter off his throne as Lenk leapt to his feet and flung an icy stare at him. Lenk could feel his lids narrowing to slits, feel himself freezing despite the sun, but did not care. His head throbbed with need; his hands hungered for leather and steel.

"Where is it?" he demanded, not hearing the rasp of his voice. "Where is my sword? I need it... I..." He took a step forward, leg trembling. " _Need it_."

It was cold at that moment. He could feel his flesh prickle, hairs standing on end, feel the departure of buzzing insects, as though his skin was suddenly unhallowed ground. All of nature seemed to follow their example: the sun averted its warmth, the air was strangled into a crisp chill.

"No."

Even he would not have heard himself whimper if he didn't know he had said the words; his voice was throttled, frozen in his throat. He did not dare to speak louder for fear of what might emerge instead.

He stared into Togu's ever-widening eyes and knew that such a thing was wrong, not merely because such a feat seemed impossible for the creature's already tremendous stare. Rather, he was familiar with such an expression, familiar with the fear embedded in a face rendered speechless by a voice not his own.

Familiarity turned to pain the instant he felt her eyes upon him. Clearness gone, softness gone, now hard, scrutinising, studying, watching, peering, probing.

" _Staring_."

"Stop..." he whispered so softly only he could hear it.

Or so he thought.

"Mad." Togu may have whispered; the king's voice was deep enough that such an effort was futile. His head trembled back and forth, as though refusing to acknowledge what he saw. "You're... _you..._ "

"He's fine."

Her hand was warm on his shoulder; that should not be. But it was, and strong, effortlessly pushing him past. Not past, he recognised, but behind. She stepped in front of him; he could not see the hardness in her eyes, but in her body, it was undeniable. She was tense, her spine rigid under her skin, muscles glistening with sweat, feet planting themselves solidly on the ground, neck rigid and eyes staring forward.

"Just stressed."

"But he—"

" _Stressed_."

Her canines flashed ivory white in the sunlight, her lip curling back to bare them menacingly. The meaning behind their sudden appearance, the inarguable fact that there would be no more discussion on the matter, was received by Togu and displayed in the slow and subtle tilt of his head.

"These times are stressful, yes," the king muttered, nodding. "It is understandable that... people are on edge."

"It is," she said with an air of finality. "Now, then, about our request?"

"A boat is no particular problem," Togu replied. "We had many before and the Gonwa only brought more. But—"

"But what?"

"I still dislike to waste one. What can you do with a boat? Sail out and hope for the best?" He tilted his head to the side thoughtfully. "Not that we are not so very pleased that you managed to find your way, but... _how_ was it you managed to arrive on Teji again?"

Her body rippled slightly with swallowed ire, Lenk noticed, and undoubtedly Togu did as well. She was not a creature of subtlety. She must have known this as well as he did.

_So why did she step in?_ A resolve, fragile as glass, welled up meekly inside him. _I should be the one to do this, the one to..._ And that resolve threatened to crack as he took a step forward.

"Well, we wouldn't be asking if our information was correct in the first place," she growled. "We were _told_ this was a trading post, not a lizard den."

_Snideness_ , Lenk thought. _Lovely. How long until the threats?_

"Trade implies something that is _not_ me giving you a boat that you may or may not destroy with nothing more than goodwill and a kiss on the cheek, cousin," Togu said.

"No one's denying that you will get something in return," she replied, eyes narrowing, "and, in this case, what you are getting is whatever _won't_ be happening with regards to your cheek."

_That took a bit longer than I'd have thought_.

"Beyond the potential hazards of this trade, both before and after you hypothetically launch your boat," Togu said, "there is the matter of expenses."

"Expenses?"

"Supplies? Food? Charts? These things we are in no certain supply of." He shrugged, taking a long puff of his pipe. "A difficult thing to ask."

"Ah, of course," Kataria said, folding her arms. "Forgive me, I should have asked the _other_ king lizard with a house full of garbage."

" _These_ ," the king said, sweeping an arm about his collection, "are investments for when the humans return."

"So... this _was_ a trading post."

"Was, yes," Togu said, nodding. "Not so long ago, in fact, which would account for your information." He eased back as far as he could without tipping over, groaning a smoky sigh. "They came from Toha, seeking trading routes. They had not expected to find partners, and we had not expected that we would enjoy their company. But, like all trade, this was driven by necessity."

"You seem to have everything you need," Kataria said, glancing over the crowding collection, "and more."

"I have many things, but nothing I need, no. The humans came with food, food we desperately needed. We found you in Teji's jungles, yes? You saw."

Lenk furrowed his brow at that. He _had_ seen Teji's jungles, and even through the fever that had swept over him, he could see things growing: greenery, leaves, wildlife. There looked to be no shortage of food. The moment he began to say this, however, Kataria spoke.

"It's a barren forest," she said, "lots of trees, but no fruit."

"No _nothing_ ," Togu replied. "Nothing but roots and tubers. Food for the moment, but not for the people." He shrugged. "Thus, when the humans came with fruits, meats, wines, grain to make the gohmns larger and more hardy... we traded. From there, we continued to trade. Our needs sated, we could take things we wanted: brandy, tobacco..."

_And yet no one thought to trade for pants_ , Lenk thought sourly.

"Don't mistake me for a fool, my people for simpletons," Togu said. "I was not made leader because they didn't know any better. I looked out for them, I learned the human language, the human ways." His face seemed to melt with the heat of his frown. "I learned they move on.

"And, as I said, I am no fool. I knew you would have to leave, eventually, and I suppose my people did, too." He tried to offer a smile, but it was an expression with fragile legs, trembling under the weight that stood upon him. "But we wanted you to stay... if only so we could remember those times again."

Lenk regarded the creature thoughtfully. He tried his hardest not to be suspicious, and indeed, Togu's story gave him no ready cause to be distrusted. And yet...

Something in the creature's eyes, perhaps: a little too intent to be reminiscent. Or maybe the long, slow pause that followed: a moment intended to reflect the severity of the memory, or a moment to gauge their reactions? He distrusted the lizard, but, for the life of him, he couldn't really think why.

" _He's a liar_."

_Oh, right... that's why_.

Lenk wasn't sure if the voice did have moods, but he suspected that none of them were of the kind to humour him. And so, he felt the cold creep over him with greater vigour, greater ferocity.

"Surrounded _by liars. Everywhere. He lies. They lie_. You _lie_."

_Me_ , he tried to think through the freezing throb of his head, _what do you—?_

" _Listen. Listen to nothing else. Only to us. Only to ourselves. Realise_."

_No, no more listening. This is supposed to be over. This is supposed to be—_

" _THROUGH the lies! Do not be tricked! We cannot afford it! We need to stay! Need to fight! Need our sword! See through them! Do not listen! Do not trust!_ "

"Not trust..." he whispered, finding the words less reprehensible on his lips.

"Something the matter, cousin?" Togu asked.

"What happened to them, King?" The question sprang to Lenk's lips easily, instinctually. "Where are they?"

"What?" Togu's smile was crushed under his sudden frown. "Who?"

"Lenk..." Kataria placed a hand on his shoulder, but he could not feel it.

"The humans," he said, "where are they now? Where did they go?"

"They are"—Togu's lips trembled, searching for the words—"not here. They..." He swallowed hard, a sudden fear in his eyes. "They are..."

" _Shi-i ah-ne-tange, Togu!_ "

The voice rang out through the hut like a thrown spear, its speaker following shortly through the front door. While it was impossible to slam a leather flap, the Gonwa that emerged, tall and limber with the ridges on his head flaring, certainly gave it his all.

Lenk could only guess at the thing's gender, of course, and that came only from his booming voice as he shoved his way between the two companions, sparing a glare for both of them. With an arm long and lean like a javelin, he thrust a finger at Togu, using the other hand to pat at a satchel strung about his torso.

" _Ah-ne-ambe, Togu! Sakle-ah man-eh!_ "

Togu spared an indignant glare for the Gonwa, which quickly shifted to Bagagame as the littler lizardman came scurrying behind, gasping for air.

" _Bagagame!_ " the king boomed. " _Ah-dak-eh mah?_ "

Bagagame made a reply, his voice going far too rapidly to be discerned. In response, the Gonwa stepped up the tempo of his own voice, his ire flowing freely through his words. Togu tried to dominate them in speed and pitch both, roaring over them as they blended into a whirlwind of green limbs and bass rumbles.

"Who's the big one?" Lenk asked, glancing sidelong at Kataria.

"How am I supposed to know?" she growled, fixing him with a very direct scowl. "What was that?"

"What was what?"

"That. What you just did."

"I asked him—"

" _You_ didn't ask him anything."

He strained to keep the shock beneath a stony visage hardened by denial. _She couldn't have heard, she can't hear that, her ears aren't_ that _long... are they?_

The argument between the lizardmen seemed to end in a thunderous roar as Togu shouted something and thrust a hand to the rear door. The Gonwa swung a scowl from him to the companions before nodding and stalking off to the back, Bagagame following with a nervous glance to Togu. The king himself hopped off of his throne and grunted at the two non-scaly creatures in the room.

"Forgive the interruption," he said as he disappeared into the gloom. "This won't take long."

"Huh," Lenk said. They were gone, but their voices carried into the hut, only slightly diminished by the walls between them. "What, exactly, do you suppose reptiles argue about?"

He turned to her and saw her lunging toward him, hands outstretched. Before he could even think to protest, question, or squeal and piss himself, she took him roughly by his head, pressing her fingers fiercely against his temples and pulling him close. Their foreheads met with a cracking sound, but they were bound by shock and narrow-eyed anger, neither making a move to resist.

"Stop," she said swiftly.

"What?"

" _Stop_."

"I don't—"

"No, you _do_. You _are_. That's the problem."

"I really don't think—"

"Then _don't_. No more thinking; no more speaking. Don't listen to anyone else. No one else."

He felt his temples burn, warm blood weeping down in faint trickles. He saw a bead of sweat peel from her brow, slide over her snarling lip as she bared her teeth at him.

" _Only. Listen. To. Me_."

The warmth from her brow was feverish, intense, as though his skin might melt onto hers and come sloughing off when she pulled away. His whole body felt warm, hot, unbearable yet entrancing, all-consuming. It swept through him like a fire, sliding down his body on his sweat to send his arms aching, shoulders drooping, heart racing, stirring his body as it drifted lower and lower until it boiled his blood away, leaving him light-headed.

And, as such, he could only nod weakly.

"It's going to be over, soon."

She sighed, the heavy breath sending her scent roiling over him, filling his nostrils, one more unbearable sensation heaped upon the other that threatened to send him crashing to the earth. Her grip relaxed slightly, her hands sliding down to rest upon his shoulders.

"I'm going to take care of everything."

She stepped away from him, turning her attentions back to the portal as the Gonwa came storming out first. Togu and Bagagame emerged from behind, looking alternately weary and shocked. The taller creature paused in front of the companions, whirling about to level his bulbous, yellow-eyed glower upon them.

" _Togu_ ," he uttered softly, " _Shi-ne-eh ade, netha_."

He raised his hands slowly, deliberately dusting his palms together.

" _Lah_."

And with that, he spun again, the companions having to step aside to avoid his whipping tail as he stalked out the front door. They turned to Togu, each baffled. The king merely sighed.

"Hongwe," he said, gesturing at the vanished Gonwa. "Proud boy. His father was, too."

"And that was... what?" Lenk asked.

"A disagreement," Togu replied. He looked up with a weary smile. "So... you truly wish to leave, then?"

They both nodded stiffly.

"Then you and Hongwe agree," he said, nodding sagely. "And so, I must respect the wishes of my guests and my people. Tomorrow, you depart. Tonight, we offer you a _Kampo San-Bah_."

Lenk frowned at the word. It sounded ominous in his ears.

"And that is?"

"A party, of course!" the king said, grinning.

"Ah."

Funny, he thought, that the word should get even more menacing with the definition.

# _Twenty-Two_

# WISE MEN REMEMBER TO STOMP FACES TWICE

Gariath had never particularly understood the reverence for elders that some weaker races seemed to possess. Celebrating the gradual and inevitable weakening of body and mind that ultimately ended in a few years of uncontrolled bodily functions and a mound of dirt just didn't seem all that logical.

Of course, it was different for his people. A weakened _Rhega_ mind was still sharp; a frail _Rhega_ body was still strong. And while weaker races praised senility as wisdom, the _Rhega_ undoubtedly grew craftier with their years. Taking these traits, and only these traits, into account, he could see how an elder might be revered and respected.

However, when he factored in how incredibly annoying elders, particularly dead ones, could be, he figured he was justified in regarding them with a level of contempt just a hair above "intolerable."

"How long has it been since you saw the sun shine like this, Wisest?"

He growled in response, not looking up. "Is that rhetorical?"

"Philosophical."

"There are an awful lot of words to say 'pointless', I've found."

The fact that he didn't even have to see the elder's teeth to know he was grinning, with a profound smugness that only someone who had died and come back could achieve, was just number eleven on an itemised list of irritating traits that was quickly growing.

"Have you not noticed your surroundings, Wisest?" the grandfather asked. "There is beauty in the land."

_Senseless optimism. Number five_.

Gariath stopped in his tracks and looked up, regarding his companion, the grandfather growing slightly translucent as a beam of light struck him. Narrowing his eyes, he looked up and out from the river, its stream reduced to a shallow half-a-toe high. The forest rose in great walls upon the ridges of the ravine he stood in, fingers of brown and green sticking up decisively to present a unity of arboreal rude gestures at him. Sunlight seeped through them, painting the ravine in contrasting portraits of black smears and golden rays.

"Dying rivers," he snorted. "Broken rocks. This land is dead."

"What?" The spirit looked at him ponderously. "No, no. There is life here. We spoke to it, once. We heard the land and the land... the land..."

His voice drifted into nothingness, his form following soon after, disappearing in the sunlight. Gariath continued on, unworried. Grandfather would not stay gone. Gariath was not _that_ lucky. His sigh was one of many, added to the snarls and curses that formed his symphony of annoyance.

The river's bed of sharp rocks was not to blame, of course. His feet had been toughened over six days, searing coastal sand, twisted forest thorns and, more recently, a number of ravines home to sharper rocks than these.

It was the repetition, the endless monotony of it all, that drove him to voice as he did, if only to serve as reprieve from the forest's endless chorus. The island's dynamic environs _might_ have pleased someone else, someone simpler: a leaf-brained, tree-sniffing, fart-breathing pale piece of filth.

_The pointy-eared thing would enjoy this_ , he thought. _She likes dirt and trees and things that smell worse than her. This sort of thing would fill her head with so many happy thoughts_. He paused, inhaled deeply and growled. _As good a reason as any to spill her brains out on a rock_.

"Really? Thinking about brains _again_?"

The voice came ahead of him. He looked up and growled at the grandfather crouching upon a large, round boulder. The elder's penchant for shifting positions wildly did not do anything to impress the dragonman anymore.

"You're getting predictable, Wisest," the elder chided.

"It weighs heavily on my mind," he grunted. "And hers will weigh heavily on the ground." He stalked past, trying to ignore the grandfather's stare. "Once I pick up the scent again."

"It's been days since you last had it."

"It's important."

"Why?"

"Because she will lead me to Lenk."

"Which is important why?"

"Because Lenk is the key to finding meaning again."

"How?"

"Because..." He stopped and whirled about, not surprised to see the rock empty of residence, but growling all the same. "That's what you told me." He turned and scowled at the elder leaning against the ravine's wall. "Were you lying to me?"

"Not entirely, no," the grandfather replied with a roll of effulgent shoulders. "I had simply thought you might lose interest by now, as all pups do."

"Pups aren't big enough to smash heads, Grandfather."

"Size is relative to age."

"No matter how old you are, I'm still big enough to crush your head."

"All right, then, size is irrelevant to someone with no head to crush, which is a benefit of being very old."

"And dead."

The grandfather held up a single clawed finger. "Point being, I had thought you would have found something else to do by now."

"Something else..."

"Something else."

He spared a single, hard scowl for the grandfather before shouldering past. "Something _other_ than finding a reason to live? I suppose I could always die." He snorted. "But _someone_ had a problem with that."

"I meant finding a reason that doesn't involve killing so many things. You've tried _that_ already. Has it brought you any closer to happiness?"

"I'm not _looking_ for happiness. I'm _looking_ for a reason to keep going."

"The sun? The trees? There is much here, Wisest, far away from the sorrows that have made you unhappy. A _Rhega_ could live well here, wanting for nothing, without humans of any kind."

"And do what? Listen to you all day? Have pleasant conversations about the weather?"

"Would that be so bad?" The grandfather's voice drifted to his ear frills softly. "It is rather sunny, today, Wisest... Have you noticed?"

The whisper in the elder's voice quelled the roar rumbling in Gariath's chest, so he merely snorted. "I've noticed."

"When did you last see this much life?"

Gariath glanced around. The forest was silent. The trees did not blow. "There is nothing but death here, Grandfather."

He didn't bother to look up to see. He could feel the elder's frown as sharp as any rock.

"The stench is hard to miss." His nostrils quivered, lips curled back in a cringe at the scent. "The trees are trying to cover it up, but there's the stink of dead bodies everywhere. Bones, mostly, some other smellier things..."

"There is also life, Wisest. Trees, some beasts, water..."

"There's _something_ , yeah. I've been smelling it for hours now." Gariath took in a deep breath, glancing over his shoulder. "Broken rocks, dried-up rivers, dead leaves and dusk."

"There was so much before... so much," the spirit whispered. "I used to hear it everywhere. And now... death?" He sounded confused, distracted. "But why so much?"

"There would be more," Gariath growled. "Good deaths, too. But someone distracted me from killing the pointy-eared one."

"Would that be me or the roach she shoved up your nose?" The grandfather chuckled. "If it means there's one less dead body on this island, I won't object to it."

" _You_ were the one to tell me she was going to kill Lenk!" Gariath snarled in response. "If she hasn't already, she's still planning to."

"And if she has? Then what?"

" _You're_ the elder. You're supposed to know!"

"My point remains," the grandfather said. "What do you suppose happens when you find the humans again? Given it any thought?"

"By following him this far, I've found Grahta and I've found you. That's a start."

"But where is the end? Will you just go chasing ghosts your whole life, Wisest?"

He glanced up, regarding the elder with hard eyes. "What are you trying to tell me, Grandfather?"

He blinked and the elder was gone. He turned about and saw him perched on the lip of the ravine, staring down the river.

"I want you to know, Wisest," he whispered, "that what you find may not be what you're looking for."

Gariath raised an eye ridge as the elder's figure quivered slightly. The sunlight seemed to shine through his body a little more clearly, as though golden teeth seeped into his spectral flesh and devoured his substance, bit by bit.

"So much was lost here, Wisest. Sometimes I wonder if anything can really be found. But the scent, since you mentioned it..."

There was reluctance in Gariath's step as he walked toward the elder. "Grandfather?"

"This place was not dug," he said. "Not by natural hands, anyway."

"What?"

"Suffering was more plentiful back then," the grandfather replied, his voice whispery as his body faded briefly and reappeared in the river. "Swift death was the sole mercy, and a rare one, at that. Many more died in agony... _many_ more."

"Back _when?_ "

"We didn't want any part of it," the grandfather continued, heedless of his company, "but maybe that's just how the _Rhega_ are destined to die... not by our own hands, our own fights. What is it we were even fighting for? I can't remember..."

Gariath stopped and watched as the elder trudged farther down the river, growing hazier with each step. Every twitch of the dragonman's eyelid saw the grandfather fading more and more, leaving a bit of himself in each ray of sunlight he stepped into and out of.

Gariath was tempted to let him go, to keep walking that way until there was nothing left of him, nothing heavy enough that he would have to drop, nothing substantial enough about him that could ache.

He watched the grandfather go, watched him disappear, leaving him in the riverbed...

Alone again.

"Grandfather!" he suddenly cried out.

The outline stopped at the edge of a sunbeam, all that remained of him being the single black eye he turned upon Gariath. The younger dragonman approached him warily, head low, scrutinising, ear frills out, wary.

"Grandfather," Gariath asked, barely louder than a whisper, "how long have you been awake?"

"For... quite some... no! _No!_ You won't send me away like that!"

This time, when Gariath noticed the elder beside him again, he was defined, flesh full and red, eyes hard and black. The elder gestured farther down the river with his chin.

"Up ahead."

"What?"

Gariath glanced up, saw nothing through the beams of light. When he looked back to his side, the water stirred with a ripple and nothing more. The grandfather was up ahead, trudging through the river, vanishing behind each beam of light.

" _What's ahead?_ "

"A reason, Wisest, if you would follow... and see."

Gariath followed, without particularly knowing why, save for the urge to keep the elder in sight, to keep him from fading behind the walls of sun. With each step he took, his nostrils filled with strange scents, not unfamiliar to him. The chalky odour of bone was prevalent, though that didn't tell Gariath much; he doubted that he could go anywhere on the island without that particular stink.

Thus, he was not particularly surprised when he spied the skeleton, its great white foot looming out of sunlight. It was titanic, the river humbly winding its way beneath the dead creature, flowing with such a soft trickle to suggest it was afraid the bleached behemoth might stir and rise at any moment.

Gariath found that not particularly hard to believe as he stalked alongside it, ducking beneath its massive splayed leg, winding between its shattered ribs, approaching the great, fishlike skull.

His eyes were immediately drawn to the massive hole punched through its head, a jagged rent far wider than the smooth round sockets that had been the creature's eyes. Its bones bore similar injuries: cracks in the ribs, gashes in the femur, the left forearm bent backward behind a spine that crested to challenge the height of the ravine as the right one reached forward.

_Towards what, though?_

The great dead thing, when it had been slightly greater and not so dead, had stopped with its arm extended, skeletal fingers withered in such a way to suggest that it had reached for something and failed to seize it.

He stared back down the ravine, noting the cut of the rock: too rough to be wrought by careful tools and delicate chiselling, too smooth to have been made by any natural spirit. Rather, it was haphazardly hewn, as if by accident, as though some great thing had fallen...

_And was dragged_ , he thought, looking back to the cracked skull, _or dragged itself through until..._

"This land is not our land. Not anymore."

Gariath looked up and saw the elder crouched upon the fishlike skull, staring at the rent in the bone intently.

"This island is a cairn."

"Those dark stains upon the rock," Gariath said. "They are—"

"Blood," the elder answered. "Flesh, spilling out, sloughing off, tainting the earth as this thing's screams tainted the air when it dragged itself away from the weapons that had shattered its legs and broken its back."

Gariath looked to the gaping jaws, the rows upon rows of serrated teeth, the shadows cast in the expanse of its fleshless maw.

"What did it scream?"

"Same thing all children scream for... its mother and father."

He did not ask if they had come to save their titanic offspring, did not even want to think what kind of creatures could have sired something akin to this tremendous demon. He knew he should have looked away, then, away from the mouth that was suddenly so pitiably silent, away from the eyes that he could see vast, empty and straining to find the liquid to brim with tears. He tried to look away, forced his stare to the earth.

But it was impossible. Impossible not to hear the cries of two voices moaning for their mother. Impossible not to wonder if they had died screaming for their father. Impossible not to see their eyes, so wide, so vacant, their breath vanished in the rain. Impossible not to—

" _No_."

His fist followed his snarl, striking against the skull and finding an unyielding, merciful pain that ripped through his mind, bathing vision and voice in endless ringing red.

"Why this, Grandfather?" he asked. "Why show me?"

"I have heard it said," the elder replied coldly, "that all life is connected." His laugh was short, unpleasant. "Stupidity. From mouths that repeated it over and over so that no one may speak long enough to point out their stupidity." He crawled across the skull, staring down into the skull. "It's _deaths_ that are connected, Wisest. Never forget that. One life taken is another one fading, one life gone and another one vanishes because of its absence. Each one more horrible, more senseless than the last."

"I don't understand, Grandfather."

"You do, you're just too stupid to realise it, too scared to remember it." He stared down at the dragonman, eyes hard, voice harder. "Your sons, Wisest."

Gariath's eyes went wide, his hands clenched into fists.

"Don't."

"They died, horribly."

"Shut up."

"Senselessly."

" _Grandfather..._ "

"And you would so willingly follow them. A senseless, pointless, _worthless_ death."

No reply came this time but a roar incomprehensible of everything but the anger and pain melded together behind it. Gariath flung himself at the skeleton, scaling up the ribs, pulling himself onto the spine and leaping, vertebra over giant vertebra, toward the skull.

The grandfather regarded him quietly before he tilted just slightly to his left and collapsed into the rent, disappearing into shadow.

"You brought me here to mock me? _Them?_ " Gariath roared, approaching the cavernous hole. "To show me this monument of death?"

"A monument, yes," the grandfather's voice echoed from inside, "of death, yes... but whose, Wisest?"

"Yours..." Gariath snarled, leaning over and into the hole. " _AGAIN!_ "

The elder gave no reply and Gariath did not demand one, did not have the sense to as he was struck suddenly, by the faintest, lingering memory of a scent, but recoiled as though struck by a fist. He reeled back, blinking wildly, before thrusting his face back down below and inhaling deeply, choking back the foul staleness within to filter and find that scent, that odiferous candle that refused to extinguish itself in the dark.

"Rivers..." he whispered.

"Rocks..." the elder replied.

"A _Rhega_ died here," he gasped.

He felt the rent beneath his grip, felt the roughness of it. This was no clean blow, no gentle tap that had caved in the beast's skull. The gash was brutal, messy, cracked unevenly and laden with jagged ridges and deep, furrowed marks.

_Claw marks_ , he recognised. _Bite marks_.

"A _Rhega_ fought here." He stared into the blackness. "Who, Grandfather? Who was it?"

"Connected," the elder murmured back, "all connected."

"Grandfather, tell me!"

"You will know, Wisest... I tried so hard that you wouldn't, but... you will..."

A sigh rose up from the darkness, the elder's voice growing softer upon it.

"And the answer won't make you happy..."

"Grandfather."

"Because at the end of a _Rhega_ 's life... there is nothing."

"What are you talking about?"

"All you are missing, Wisest... is darkness and quiet."

"Grandfather."

Silence.

" _GRANDFATHER!_ "

Darkness.

His own echo returned to him, ringing out through the skull and reverberating into the forest. It seemed to take the scent with it, the smell dissipating in his nostrils as the sound faded, dying with every whispered repetition as it slipped into trees that had suddenly gone quiet, leaving him alone.

_Again_.

That thought became an echo of its own, spiralling inward and growing heavier on his heart with every repetition.

_Alone. Again, again, again_.

No matter how many spirits he found, how many rocks he stomped, how many soft pink things he surrounded himself with. They would leave him, all of them, leaving him with nothing, nothing of weight, nothing of meaning.

Except that word.

"Again, again," he whispered, smashing his fist against the bone impotently with each repetition. "Alone again and always... always and again..."

" _Again..._ "

It was not him who spoke this time, nor was it the grandfather's voice. It certainly was not the scent of either of them that filled his nostrils and drew his head up. His lip quivered at the odour: pungent, iron, sweaty, familiar.

_Longface_.

The creature appeared farther down the ravine, black against the assault of sunlight, but unmistakable. Its frame was thick, tall, laden with the contours of overdeveloped muscle and the jagged ridges of iron armour. A thick wedge of sharpened metal was slung over its shoulder as a long-jawed face scanned the rocks. He recognised the sight immediately, his eyes narrowing, lip curling up in a quiet snarl.

_Female_.

"And again and again and again," she snarled, her voice grating. "Until you tell me what I want to know, you green filth."

" _Shi-neh-ah! Shi-neh!_ " the creature at her blood-covered feet spoke a language he did not understand. " _Maw-wah!_ "

At a glimpse, it resembled something akin to a bipedal lizard... or it had been bipedal before both its legs had been crushed. It now strained to crawl away on long, lanky arms, leaving the sands of the cliff they stood upon stained red. Over the corpses of other creatures, identical to it but for their severed limbs, split chests and lifeless eyes, it crawled towards Gariath.

It caught sight of him, looked up. Its yellow eyes were wide, full of fear, full of pain, trembling with a life that flickered like a candle before a breeze. It reached out a hand to him, opened its mouth to speak. He stared back, anticipating its words to the point of agony.

They never came.

"I don't have _time_ to learn how to speak _your_ language." The longface seized the creature's long tail, hauled it up with one hand. "You have exactly two breaths to learn how to speak overscum!"

" _MAW-WAH! MAW-WAH!_ "

The sounds of its shrieking mingled with the sound of claws raking against the sand stained with its own life, straining to find some handhold as it was hoisted up by its tail. Gariath saw its eyes wide as it looked to him, saw the pleading in its eyes, the familiar fear and pain that he had seen in so many eyes before.

" _RHE—_ "

One breath.

Her thick blade burst out the creature's belly, thick ribbons of glistening meat pouring out. She paused, twisted it once, and dropped the creature. The blade laughed a thick, grisly cackle as it slowly slid from the creature's flesh.

Gariath continued to stare at the creature's eyes, at its mouth. He saw only darkness. Heard only silence.

"Hey."

It was the sheer casualness with which she spoke that made him look up to the longface. Her expression was blank, unamused and only barely interested in him. She slammed the blade down, embedding it in the sand as she dusted blood-flecked hands together.

"They come in red?" she asked. Narrowing white eyes at him, she snorted. "No. You aren't one of them, are you?"

"No," he said.

"That's fine," she said. "You want to fight, yeah?"

He wasn't sure why he nodded.

"That's fine," she said again as she sat upon a rock with a grunt. "Just give me a moment."

He wasn't sure why he waited.

"What are they?" he asked, at last.

"Those Green Things?" she replied with a shrug. "They don't have names, as far as I know. They don't need names."

"Everything has a name."

"You?"

"Wise—" He paused, grunting. "Gariath."

"Dech," she said, slapping her shoulder. "Carnassial of Arkklan Kaharn, chief among my people, the netherlings and—"

"I know what you are," he replied. "I've killed a lot of you."

"No fooling?" She grinned at him. "Yeah, I've heard of you. The Ugly Red One, they called you. You cut open a lot of warriors, you know. I knew a few of them." Her lips curled back, the grin evolving from unpleasant to horrific. "You're good at what you do."

"You're calm about that."

"Why wouldn't I be?" she asked. "Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to kill you, but it's not going to be personal or anything. It's just what I do. It's what you do. Just like dying was just what those warriors did."

"I don't follow."

"Yeah, I don't blame you. A lot of overscum have trouble understanding it, which is why they're always rushing around. They don't know what they're supposed to do." She gestured to the eviscerated lizard-creatures. "Take These Green Things. We got plenty of them back at our base. Slaves. Some of them try to fight against us, some of them pray to some kind of sky-thing, some of them beg for mercy, some of them try to run, some of them talk about how things were..." She looked up at him. "And some of them cry. Big, slimy tears come pouring down their faces when we kill one of them. That's what baffles me."

"They mourn."

"Why?"

"To honour their dead."

"The dead don't care."

"They do."

"You talk to them?"

"Sometimes," he replied.

"Huh... well, they shouldn't. What do they got to ask for once they're dead?"

"Honour. Respect."

"You and I both know that's... what's the word? _Shnitz_?" She shrugged. "If you believed that, you wouldn't have watched this ugly thing"—she kicked the eviscerated corpse—"do what he did."

"He didn't do anything. You killed him."

"Ah, see, this is where the overscum stop learning," she said, smirking. "You all talk about death like it's a sole decision. It takes two to die. The person with the sword does the least amount of work."

He furrowed his eye ridges.

"See," she elaborated, "these dumb things are quick. I only caught them because there was no other place to run." She gestured to the river rushing beneath the cliff. "Now, when I grabbed one, the others could have run away. They all stood and fought, though. They made the decision to die."

She looked up at him disdainfully. "You could run now, too. I've killed plenty today. I can kill you later, if you want."

"You could run, too," he replied.

"No, I couldn't. There's nothing for a female but death. I kill or I die." She spat on the ground. "You?"

He stared at her, unblinking. He closed his eyes. Darkness. He inhaled sharply. Quiet.

"Nothing," he replied.

"Didn't think so," she said. She rose from the rock, pulled her blade from the sand and slung it over her shoulder. "You ready, then?"

He nodded. She furrowed her brow at him.

"No weapon?"

"Unnecessary."

"Don't know what that means."

"It means—"

"Don't care, either."

She howled, iron voice grinding against jagged teeth as she rushed him. Her blade came out in an unruly swing, adding its metal groan to her roar as it clove the air, hungry for Gariath's neck, or torso, or head. A blade that big couldn't be picky.

He ducked, more from reflex than desire, and dropped to all fours, meeting her rush with horns to her belly. It was impossible not to shudder at the blow, not to marvel at the rock-hard muscle he pressed against as he shoved, driving her back only one minuscule, agonising step.

As he extended his last weary breath, his muscles giving out at the futility and his mind fighting hard to remember a time when this had been easy, it was impossible to think of a reason to keep going... and even more so to keep from listening to her long, loud laugh.

"Come _on_ ," she whined. "How are you going to kill me this way?"

It shouldn't have hurt as much as it did. He remembered shrugging off blows like this before. Yet her first came down upon his neck and sent him buckling to his knees effortlessly. She made a clicking sound of disapproval, which he noticed less than the second strike she delivered. It was an intimate blow, all three metal-bound knuckles of her hand digging into his red flesh, finding a tender, affectionate spot between his shoulder blades.

_Not possible_. His thoughts ran wild, leaking out of his mouth as he hacked wildly, _I don't have tender spots_.

His spine disagreed. His vertebrae rattled against each other, sinew bunched up painfully at the force that ran up his back and into his skull, sending brain slamming against bone and sending body crashing to the earth.

_That's never happened before..._

That it _had_ happened should have shocked him. It was difficult to feel shock, fear, pain, anything. Every scrap of consciousness was devoted to keeping his eyes open, to resist the urge to sleep into darkness, though he didn't know why. At least if he fell now, he wouldn't have to see the long, purple face leering down at him.

"You're doing it wrong." Her voice was clear and sharp as a knife.

Funny, but he hadn't expected there to be a right way to die. The fact that he had been doing it wrong _did_ explain a lot. He might have mentioned this to her, had his throat not been swelling up.

"It's fine for us to do this, you know," she said. "But we're netherlings. We come from nothing. We return to nothing. We live. We breed. We kill. We die. This is all there is in life." She reached down and tapped his red brow. "Note that third part, though, **about the killing. That"s important."**

Her throat loomed over him. His hand would just about fit around it, he figured, but it trembled, refused to rise.

_And why should it?_ he asked himself. _Whatever your body knows, you didn't. Now you're both done. There's nothing left_.

"But overscum are supposed to have bigger things on their minds, yeah? They talk to invisible people, spend their whole lives hoarding bits of metal instead of making them into weapons; they do stupid stuff like plant crops and store food and leave it all to wailing whelps who did nothing to deserve it. Point being... you've got reasons to scream, don't you?"

His breath came in shrill whispers, leaking through a closing throat, just enough to breathe, just enough to think.

_Kill her and then what? What's left? Kill more, kill more, live in death. Die, live in nothingness... but with nothing to think about, to speak about, no one left to disappear_.

"But that's what's so _fascinating_ to us. To Carnassials, that is." She glanced over the cliff. "And some males. We've never seen this before, a breed that worries about so many stupid things and lives in complete fear of whatever invisible thing they talk to and is concerned with things other than breeding and killing. It's like... watching ants. That's the correct animal, right? Yeah... ants that run around and cling to every little piece of dirt like it's the greatest piece they've ever seen, even as a thousand more lie around. Take that piece away, and what do they do? Some grab new ones, but most sit there... like you."

_And how much dirt have you been clinging to? Grahta, Grandfather, the humans... they're all gone. How much more can you pick up?_

"You're not going to get up, are you?" She rose up, took her sword in both hands.

_This won't be so bad_.

"No more dirt, huh?"

_No more hurting; no more being alone_.

"Too bad."

She raised the weapon, angled the flat edge of it at his throat. It would be messy.

_No more rivers; no more rocks_.

"Hey, maybe you're right about the whole invisible thing, yeah? If so, I'm sure you'll see your pink friends there with you by tonight."

_No more anything... It'll be so great..._

"Anyway..."

" _SHENKO-SA!_ "

He blinked. Those words weren't said by the longface. That shrill, shrieking sound didn't emanate from her, either.

The loud, angry roar as she staggered away, clutching at the arrow embedded in her side, however, certainly did.

Gariath was almost afraid to look across the river, afraid that he would see the pointy-eared one. If _she_ had placed the timely arrow and saved him, he resolved he would die right then and there, hopefully taking her with him. He was prepared for that possibility, prepared for the idea that it might have come from nowhere and given him an opportunity to take one last breath before lying down and dying.

What he saw, however, he was not prepared for.

Not _Rhega_ , but definitely not human, the creature stood, tall and covered in green scales, at the other side of the river. His long, black bow was in a powerful, clawed hand. His body, ringed by black-and-red tattoos, was tensed and muscular. Behind his long, lashing tail, more like him—more reptilian creatures—stared at Gariath with broad, yellow eyes down long, green snouts.

The one in front raised his hand, regarded Gariath through his single yellow eye, and spoke.

" _Inda-ah, Rhega_."

"What?" he breathed.

"I knew it! _I knew it!_ " He looked to see the longface pulling the arrow free without wincing, as though she were simply scratching an itch with a jagged, biting head. "Xhai said you all got up when someone started mocking you! I didn't believe her!"

He swept his stare across the river again. The creatures were gone; nothing but greenery remained where they had once stood. Perhaps he had imagined them; perhaps they hadn't ever been there...

But that arrow on the sand, covered in blood, was impossible to imagine. And it lay there now. He looked from it to the longface staggering toward him, dragging her weapon.

_Good enough_.

"I didn't think it would work. I owe Xhai a—"

If she saw the fist coming, she didn't move away.

A possibility, Gariath conceded, but one he was willing to accept as he and his arm rose as one, his knuckles connecting with her chin and sending her head snapping back. She was all skull—that much was apparent from his aching fist, if not her conversation.

She, too, was ready to accept. She accepted his punches as he followed with two more in rapid succession, feeling bones shake, but not break, under his fists. She accepted the ground lost as he drove her back. She accepted his horns again, accepted the broken nose as he drove his head against her face.

Only when he stepped back, waiting for her to fall that he might end it with a foot to her skull, did she refuse to accept. She pulled her face back up to stare at him, neck creaking as she did, teeth flashing in a grin that had only grown more wild as blood from her spattered visage dripped over her lips.

" _Yeah..._ "

She came howling again, no concern for strategy, position or anything but the imminent and immediate desire to bring her blade swinging up to lop off his head. A moment of nostalgia swept over him at the sight of such recklessness, followed by a moment of swift panic as he saw the blade just as eager as her, sweeping up towards his head.

He caught it on his wrist, the metal gnawing at the metal bracers there. She drove the blade harder, straining to chew through and cleave his hand from his wrist, his head from his neck. He pushed back just as hard, reaching up to place his free hand on the edge. It was an effort tinged in blood as the weapon bit into his palm, making his grip slick as he shoved back, but an effort that sent the blade swinging wide and leaving her open.

He wasn't sure if he was roaring or laughing, didn't bother to think which it might have been, just as he didn't wonder why his muscles suddenly felt so easy, so strong. There was blood on the ground, blood in his nostrils, anger in his veins and a purple neck beneath his claws.

_Good enough_.

He clenched, clawed, heard her gurgle as her blood seeped out over his palms, blending with his own. He refused to release her as she groped at him with one hand, dropped her massive, suddenly unwieldy weapon to punch at him with the other. Blows rained upon his head, one after the other. He felt the agony, felt his skull want to crack, but refused to succumb to either.

Instead, he swung his body to the side and she followed, like a purple boulder. Releasing, he sent her crashing into the ridge. The earth cracked before she did, but she stood there, bleeding from nose and neck, murder flashing in her eyes, breath coming hot and hateful from between jagged teeth.

"That's it," she snarled, "that's _it_. This is how it's going to happen. This is how it _has_ to happen. From nothing, to nothing."

"And no one will remember you," he uttered. "I won't leave enough of you for it."

"Fine, that's just fine," she gasped. Her hand slipped behind her belt. "Good to know you've got a plan. Thinking ahead, grabbing your pieces of dirt..." Her hand whipped out, sent the green vial spinning toward him. " _STUPID!_ "

He had smelled it before she pulled it out, recognised it. Poison, the same that had felled Abysmyths, ate their flesh like fire ate paper. He wasn't sure if it worked similarly on things not demonic, but he was hardly willing to see for curiosity's sake.

He darted aside; the vial smashed against the rock and he felt a few sputtering instances of pain as droplets spat out and licked his back. His flesh burned; the scent of it sizzling filled his nostrils. It hurt, he admitted as he clenched his teeth, a lot.

" _QAI ZHOTH!_ "

So did the spinning blade that followed Dech's screech. He remembered this weapon, the curved knife with its cruel, jagged edge. And it certainly remembered him, it seemed, as it sank into his shoulder and bit deeply, metal prongs slaking themselves on his blood. Pain racked him, coursing through his body in such excessive quantity that it screamed to be shared.

"Gnaw, bite, gnash," Dech snarled as she took off charging toward him. " _AKH ZEKH LAKH!_ "

He met her, muscle for muscle, fury for fury. They gripped each other about each other's throats, turning, twisting, staggering as they fought for control for their respective tracheas. Gariath slipped his hands up, releasing her throat, seizing her by the temples. Her smile was momentary, lasting only as long as it took him to slip his clawed thumbs into her eyes and push.

He had heard her scream in fury and hatred, but the sound of her pain was enough to make him step away momentarily. It lasted only as long as it took her to lash out blindly, searching for him, snarling for him. He roared in reply, seizing her by the wrist, spinning her about and twisting it behind her back. His limbs worked in furious conjunction, his spare hand grabbing her by her hair, his free foot slamming onto her back, driving her to her knees, then her belly.

There his foot remained, wedged firmly between her shoulder blades as he narrowed his eyes, tightened his grip on her wild white spikes of hair and pulled.

Stubborn as the rest of her, it came slowly, hair clinging to her with such vindictiveness that scarcely any came off in his hand. But he did not stop pulling, as her neck craned. He did not stop pulling, as she screamed in panic and beat at his ankle in bloody blindness. He did not stop pulling, as he heard her flesh begin to rip.

By the time he stared down at a glistening red pate, a mop of crimson and white clenched in his claw, it seemed pointless to keep going.

He tossed it aside, taking only enough time to see that she had stopped moving, before turning away and looking back over the cliff. The other side wasn't too far, he saw, and the scent of the creatures, their dead leaves and dry rivers, was still there, despite the blood seeping into his nostrils. He could keep going downriver, find a fallen tree or a narrow gap, and from there he could—

" _QAI ZHOTH!_ "

She struck him from behind, wrapping arms about his torso. Blind and scalped, nothing remained of her save arms and feet, the latter of which pumped furiously, edging him towards the cliff.

"Nothing else, nothing else," she babbled behind him as he lashed out, seeking to dislodge her with an elbow, "there is nothing else but _this_."

They staggered toward the edge, the riverbed and its sharp rocks waiting just below a surface of deceptively pristine blue. Gariath had no fear for that, no mind to think of anything but his enemy, thick in his nostrils, heavy on his back. He reached behind him as they tumbled over, seizing her blood-slick pate and twisting, tail lashing, wings flapping.

They plummeted, a brief struggle in the air, her shrieking, him roaring, until they finally righted themselves. She, the heavier in her iron skin. He, on top of her like a red anvil, hands wrapped about her face.

They hit the water in an eruption of red and white froth. Gariath, too, was plunged into blindness like his foe. But the battle was his, he knew, as she lay unmoving beneath him.

When the water settled and she lay beneath the water, skull neatly bisected like a rock, it was unnecessary to do more than rise, snort and stagger away.

"Any happier now, Wisest?" The grandfather was there, seated on the rocks jutting from the river. "Find a good reason to keep going?"

"No thanks to you," Gariath snorted. "You didn't tell me about them."

"Who?"

"The creatures, the green things. They called me _Rhega_."

"You have not been called that before?"

"Not by anything that looks like me."

"You said they were green, not red."

"Closer than pink," he growled. "Tell me, then, Grandfather, who are they?"

"They are... lost, Wisest," Grandfather replied. "They will lead you to nothing."

Gariath regarded the spirit for a moment. His eyes narrowed as he saw something in him. _No_ , Gariath thought, it was at this moment that he saw _through_ him. The spirit waxed, his shape trembling, becoming hazy as the sunlight poured through him. In this light, there was nothing to Grandfather, nothing hard, nothing blooded, nothing fleshy.

And Gariath turned his back to the spirit, stalking down the river.

"Where do you go, Wisest?" Grandfather called after him.

"To nothing," he replied.

# _Twenty-Three_

# QUESTIONS OF A VISCERAL NATURE

If he asks for water, don't give him any," the young man posing as a guard said, waving his key ring like a symbol of authority. "And I wouldn't look at him directly, if I were you." He sneered. "It's a mess."

Bralston nodded briefly as the young man cracked open the reinforced door to the converted warehouse room that served as a prison. It opened into shadow, which Bralston stepped into.

The door swung shut behind him, the cramped quarters swallowing the echo. He turned on his heel and walked deeper, taking a moment to scratch the corner of his eye as he removed his hat. The room had likely been storage for the least important objects, possibly the least important members of society, if the smell was any suggestion. The walls were as tall and wide as two men, the only source of light a dim beam seeping in from a grated hole above. Dust swirled within it, flakes clawing over each other in a futile bid to escape.

Against the pervasive despair, the figure huddled pitifully against the wall was scarcely noticeable.

Bralston said nothing, at first, content only to observe. Taking the man in—at least, he had been _told_ it was a man—was difficult, for the sheer commitment with which he pressed himself against the wall.

The Librarian could make out his features: scraggly beard that had once been kempt, a broad frame used to standing tall now railing against its owner's determination to hunch, a single, gleaming eye cast down at the floor, heavy-lidded, unblinking.

"I am here to speak with you," Bralston said, his voice painful in the silence.

The man said nothing in reply.

"Your assistance is required."

Bralston felt his ire rise at the man's continued quiet.

"Cooperation," he said, clenching his hand, "is compulsory."

"How long, sir, have you been seeking my company?"

The man spoke without flinching, without looking up. The voice had once been booming, he could tell. Something had hollowed it out with sharp fingers and left only a smothered whisper.

"Approximately one week."

A chuckle, black and once used to herald merry terrors. "I lament my lack of surprise. But would it surprise you that I was once a man whose presence was fleeting as gentle zephyrs?" He leaned back, resting a hand on a massive knee. "I once was, despite the shrouded sorrow before you." He drummed curiously short, stubby fingers. "I once was."

A closer glance revealed both the fact that the man's fingers were, in fact, fleshy stumps, and that the hairy backs of his hands were twisted with tattoos. Consequently, any sympathy or desire to know what had happened to the man passed quickly.

_Cragsman_.

Whatever cruelties had been visited upon this man by whomever was undoubtedly kindness compared to the blood he had shed, the lives he had defiled. Bralston felt his left eyelid twitch at the fate of the last Cragsman he had known.

"Your... days of zephyr, as it were, are the object of concern," Bralston said curtly.

"No gentleman would accuse another of lying," the Cragsman replied smoothly, "and whilst I am possessed of the most gracious inclination to benefit you the title of man most gentle, I can quite distinctly detect the odiferous reek of a lie dribbling out of your craw. Were I bold enough to declare, I would that you did not come all this way to discuss the seas I've plied and the women I've loved."

That last word sent Bralston's spine rigid, his fist tight.

"I am concerned with the past month of your life," he said, "nothing more."

"Ah, now _that_ bears the sweet, tangy foulness of truth to it," the man replied, chuckling. "I would still hesitate to commit fully my conscience to your claim, sir, for any man interested in the latest chapter of the script of a man named Rashodd would likely be here with the express intent of doing things more visceral than polite conversation and pleasant queries."

His great head swung up, grey hair hanging limply at a thick jaw. His eye fixed itself upon the Librarian. Through the gloom, the yellow of his smile came out in golden crescents.

"So I ask the man who has displayed tact towards my innards by not ripping them out through my most fortunate nose," Rashodd said. "Who sent you?"

Bralston considered carefully answering. Somehow, the words he spoke seemed tainted by the man's presence the moment they left his mouth.

"The Venarium."

"Sought by a circle of heathens, I am reduced to? From being pursued by the greatest navies of the seas? Perhaps such a degradation is fitting, having been laid low by that most meanest and crudest of callings."

_Adventurer_ , Bralston recognised the universal description. _He did have contact with them, then_.

"I digress, though," Rashodd continued. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"I am on an extended search," Bralston replied. "The location of one party will lead to the other, I am certain."

"The ultimate goal being?"

Bralston studied him carefully, wary to divulge the answer. "Purple-skinned longfaces."

"Ah." Rashodd smiled. " _Them_."

"Your tone suggests knowledge."

"You may safely conclude imprisonment has done little to tarnish my talents and predilections towards the coy. My knowledge of the netherlings is from the second hand of a second hand."

"Nether... lings?"

" _Your_ tone suggests our initial comprehension of their title to be mutual. The nomenclature would lend itself to the conclusion that they are descended from nether; that is, from nothing at all. I could not assure you that they do not live up to the name, sir, for I have never seen one, knowing they exist only through their anger towards my former allies."

Bralston nodded. "Continue."

"On which subject? My allies or their violet foes? Of the latter, I know little but what I have heard: rumours of relentlessness, viciousness and faithlessness blended into one." Rashodd raised a brow at the Librarian. "Something akin to yourself, except with less fire and more yelling, I'm told."

"The Venarium has charged them with heresy."

"The practice of a heathenry that differs from yours," Rashodd said, nodding. "Ironic, is it not, that the faithless should steal a term used by the faithful to condemn those of a different faith... or is it just obnoxious? Regardless, I know as much of the netherlings as I knew of my allies, and you would do well to avoid both, lest you, too, find yourself embroiled in their deceits and find us with more in common"—he held up his hand and wiggled his stumps—"than you would like."

"What I find is that my incredible patience is gradually, but wholly, stretched thin with your delusions of eloquence." Bralston allowed ire to sow his voice, fire to spark behind his stare. "My mission, my order, my _duty_ has no concern for your need to waste my time with pretence. My questions are swift and to the point. You will answer them in kind."

"It is a sad day I live every day that the language of poet-kings is considered delusional," Rashodd replied with a sneer. "But I will answer your questions with as much open eagerness and hidden loathing as I can manage."

That was enough, Bralston reasoned, to avoid resorting to anything fiery. "I have been informed, roughly, as to the nature of your 'allies'. I do not hold the opinion that they are entirely factual."

"Factual, sir? One would assume that if you had been granted even the loosest of information regarding my former persons of association, you would recant." He canted his massive head. "Have you, sir?"

"Thirty-six sailors of the _Riptide_ have attested to the encounter."

"And you cannot consider the account of thirty-six good and honourable men trustworthy?"

"There have been mass hallucinations before, often much grander in scale."

Rashodd's laugh gained a horrible enthusiasm. "Of course. The Venarium's unwavering stance of discrediting the Gods and strangling decent men and women with their smugness is not unknown to me. Spare me the rhetoric, sir. I am well informed on the subject, and I humbly disagree with your theory."

"Well informed enough to infer our stance on the idea of demons?" Bralston asked sternly. "Even if we were to ignore the idea that they are stories made up by priests to cow people into coercion, we cannot, and _do not_ , accept the idea of an incarnation of evil, as we do not accept the idea of 'evil' or 'good'. We acknowledge human nature."

"I see... and what do _you_ believe, sir?"

Men would feel anger at the Cragsman's words, men would let their composures crack. Librarians were not men, Bralston reminded himself. Librarians answered to higher authorities. Librarians might _possess_ the power to compel forthrightness through any manner of burning, freezing, crushing or electrocuting, but such would be a flagrant, wasteful demonstration of superiority that _should_ , ostensibly, require no establishing.

_Still, it would be satisfying..._

Far more satisfying than uttering coldly, "There is no belief. Only knowledge."

"And you _know_ your knowledge to be superior over that of thirty-six people? You _know_ that demons do not exist?"

"I _accept_ that there are _unknowns_ typically explained by frivolous imaginations by branding them 'demons'. But, as stated, I didn't come to exchange arguments."

"Of course not, sir," Rashodd replied. "You came seeking purple-skinned longfaces, foes inveterate of demons theoretical. The former pursues the latter for reasons unknown whilst, for reasons incomprehensible, the demons evade them. You hope to find the former by locating the latter. To find the latter, you seek a seeker.

"And to have come this far, being a man of decencies and honorifics as befits his education, you undoubtedly know who you seek. Six members, of a band most foul, which I would conclude to be the second object of your search, would fulfil such a purpose. And, most importantly, the location of their precious cargo would put you in a fine position to locate all parties desirable, regardless of skin colour."

Rashodd's smile was filled with piercing congeniality.

"But of course, you already knew that."

Bralston took a deep breath, the first phase of a common meditative technique, taught to apprentices and used by Librarians. He raised a hand, the second phase, to hone the flow of Venarie and tune the senses.

The spark of crimson, the arcane word, the sound of a heavy body crunching against the wall that followed were part of no meditation. Yet, Bralston couldn't deny that the sight of the man crushed between the force and stone was decidedly therapeutic.

"Where the Venarium is concerned," he said, "there is no definition of the word 'request'. You are not free to refuse what we require. You are not free to wallow in the safety of a cell when you possess what we require." His fingers twitched; he could feel a fleshy throat across the room tighten in his hand. "Not with _both_ lungs, anyway. Gurgle if you will comply."

The sound that boiled out of the man's lips was particularly thick and moist.

"Good enough," the Librarian said, relaxing his magical grip only slightly. "Speak quickly and curtly. What cargo do the adventurers carry?"

"A tome," Rashodd gasped. " _The_ tome. I overheard on the _Riptide_. A book to establish contact between earth and heaven... or hell. The demons want it for the latter... I assume."

"Pointless. Neither place exists."

"I saw the beast. I've seen the demon. It could come from no other place."

"The priest mentioned no tome."

"Sent the adventurers after it. Needs it back."

"And these... demons pursue it?"

"Also need it. It's the key."

"To the door to take them back to hell?"

"No, sir," Rashodd gasped. "To let their brethren in."

Bralston narrowed his eyes. "And the longfaces chase the demons..."

"Demons chase the tome. Adventurers seek the tome. If they found it, you'll find the longfaces and demons with them."

"How long ago did they set out?"

"Two weeks, roughly. Not much supplies for the Reaching Isles. Probably dead now, or mostly." Rashodd found the strength to sneer through the strangulation. "Chase their trail to Ktamgi, north. Find whatever hell you deserve."

Bralston pursed his lips, eased his fingers. The air ceased to ripple. The Cragsman collapsed to the floor, expelling great hacking coughs.

Bralston offered no particular apology for the treatment; the only error he had committed was, perhaps, a small expenditure of power wasted where a little patience would have been prudent. No reason for guilt, though. His course was clear.

The Reaching Isles at the edge of Toha's empire were, as far as the atlases and charts suggested, uninhabited, the Tohana Navy outposts having long since been rendered economically unviable. Locating a rabble of desperate, half-dead vagrants should prove no great challenge; if they were _completely_ dead, the task would be only slightly more difficult.

"Describe the adventurers," he said, replacing his hat.

"Six," Rashodd replied. "Three men, one woman, two... _things_. One, a shict. The other..." He grimaced. "But they aren't important. It's the men, one in particular. There are two runty little things, but the other, a tall and evil—"

"The woman."

"What?" Rashodd shook his head. "No, it's the tall man, the Sainite you're interested in, he—"

" _What of the woman?_ " Bralston pressed. "Was she in good health? Did you harm her?"

"Ah, that's it, is it? I am certain it is no uncertain blasphemy that you should lust after a woman of the Healer, sir, but I must wonder whose faith, or lack thereof, it offends more." At the Librarian's scowl, he chuckled. "Rest assured, she was well, no matter what happened."

Bralston kept the man's single-eyed stare for a moment. A moment was all it took for him to breathe in, raise a hand, mutter an incomprehensible word, and swiftly lower his hand.

Rashodd's face followed its arc, an invisible force sending him to kiss the stone floor with a resounding crack. He lay there, unmoving but for the faint breath that sent his body, broad and unwashed, shivering.

_Not dead, then_ , Bralston thought. _Pity_.

But it was no longer his concern. Restraint, wisdom, prudence were the watchwords of the Venarium; bravado, haste, fury, its anathema. He had spent enough energy on the Cragsman, wasted enough words. He sneered at Rashodd; there wasn't even a splatter of blood to suggest his nose was broken. He would live until he was delivered to whomever would lower the axe on his head. That pleasure was not to be his.

Lesser men had pleasures. Librarians had duties.

He had just turned away from the Cragsman when he heard the chuckle. He turned, hardly astonished to see the man rising. Bralston was prepared for that, prepared to put him back down if need be, and more likely prepared to let him retreat and subsequently rot in the shadows.

Bralston, however, was not prepared for the sight of him in the yellow, pitiless light.

"Is your aim to inflict suffering, sir?" A pair of hands, three fingers between them, splayed their fleshy stumps, hoisting up a great, tattooed bulk. "I lament your lateness, my friend. _Lament_ it." He levelled a single eye at Bralston as the other one, a colourless mass surrounded by tiny lines of scar tissue, stared off into nothingness. "You see, kind sir..."

His smile was all the broader for the flesh that had been neatly sliced from the left side of his lip, baring dry, grey gum beneath a mass of scab. His grey hair was matted all the more from the dried crimson where his left ear had once been. His face all the more akin to a slab of flesh and sinew for the two gaping punctures where he had once bore a nose.

"I've nothing left to feel it with."

Bralston's veneer of indifference cracked; he did not notice, did not care that the shock was plain on his face, the horror clear in his eyes. Rashodd's black humour dropped, as though he were suddenly aware of the great joke and no longer found it funny. He shuffled backwards, back into the gloom, but Bralston's mouth remained agape, his voice remained a whisper.

"You..." he said softly. "Someone... _spited_ you?"

"You've seen this before," Rashodd replied, gesturing to his face. "I somehow thought you might. You are... a Djaalman, yes?"

"That's... yes..." Bralston said, struggling in vain to find his composure again. "During the riots, the Jackals... they spited people, spited everyone they could. There were..." His eyes widened. "When did you meet a Jackal? Are they active outside of Cier'Djaal?"

"Enough questions from your end, sir," Rashodd said, and Bralston did not challenge him. "You are an observant Djaalman, yes? Touched your eye in reverence for the Houndmistress. Lady most admirable, she was... culled the Jackals, restored the common man's faith in the city."

"Until she was murdered," Bralston said. "Her husband and child likely dead, too."

"Likely?"

"They disappeared."

"Disappeared, sir? Or fled?"

"What do you mean?" Bralston's eyes flared to crimson light. "What do you know?" He stepped forward brashly at Rashodd's silence, scowl burning without care. "Her murder started the riots, killed over a _thousand_ people. _What do you know?_ "

"Only what I've read, sir," Rashodd said, "only what I've seen, sir." His vigour left him with every whispered word. "I have heard rumours, descriptions... her husband..."

"A Sainite," Bralston replied. "I met him, when the Houndmistress formalised relations with the Karnerians. Tall man, red hair, dark eyes." He stared intently at the Cragsman. "You... have you seen him?"

"Seen him..." Rashodd repeated. "Yes. I saw him..."

He ran a ruined hand over a ruined face.

"And I didn't scream."

Before the Librarian had even set foot upon the docks, Argaol could sense the man's presence. An invisible tremor swept across the modest harbour of Port Yonder, sending tiny ripples across the water, dock cats fleeing and the various sailors and fishermen cringing as though struck.

They parted before the wizard like a tide of tanned flesh, none eager to get in his way as he moved toward the captain with rigid, deliberate movements and locked a cold, relentless gaze upon him.

"What happened?" Argaol asked, questioning the wisdom of such an action.

"Many things," Bralston replied. "Ktamgi. How far is it?"

"What?"

"I am unfamiliar with the lay of this area. Enlighten me."

"You're looking for the adventurers?" Argaol shook his head. "They went that way, but if they survived, they'd be at Teji by now."

"And how far from Ktamgi is that?"

"A day's travel by ship," Argaol said. "My crew is already in the city, but I can have the _Riptide_ up and ready to go by then if you need—"

"I do," Bralston said. He purposefully shoved the man aside as he strode to the end of the docks. "But I don't have that long."

"What are you doing?"

"Leaving."

"What? Why? What happened?"

"That information is the concern of the Venarium alone."

"And what am I supposed to tell the Lord Emissary?" Argaol demanded hotly. "He instructed me to help you!"

"And you have. Whatever you do next is the concern of anyone _but_ the Venarium." He adjusted his broad-brimmed hat upon his head, pulled his cloak a little tighter about his body. He glanced at Argaol briefly. "Captain."

Before Argaol could even ask, the wizard's coat twitched, the air ripped apart as its leather twisted in the blink of an eye. A pair of great, birdlike wings spread out behind Bralston, sending Argaol tumbling to the dock, and he left with as little fanfare as a man with a winged coat could manage, leaping off the edge and taking flight, soaring high over the harbour before any sailor or fisherman could even think to curse.

Something was happening outside, Rashodd could tell. People were excited, shouting, pointing at the sky. He could not see beyond the thick walls of his cell. He could not hear above the nearby roar of the ocean slamming against the cliffs below. But he knew all the same, because he knew the wizard would act.

"Just as you said he would..." he whispered to the darkness.

" _Those without faith are convinced of their righteousness_ ," a pair of voices whispered back from a place far below. " _Faith is purpose. To admit a lack of purpose is to admit that they possess no place in this world. Understand this and the faithless become beasts to be trained and commanded_."

"It is with a fond lamentation that I make audible that which stirs in my mind," Rashodd sighed, "but speaking as a man with only time and darkness to his name, I cannot help but wonder if you're capable of making a point without a religious speech to accompany."

" _The point lay in the speech_ ," the voices replied. " _You are no beast, Rashodd. Not a beast, but a prisoner, and not much longer_."

"So you say," Rashodd growled. "Of course, and it is with no undue distaste that I point this out, I am only a prisoner because you failed to live up to your end of our prior bargain."

" _Lamentable_ ," the voices said. " _But your presence here serves our purpose further. You shall be free_."

"The door is scarcely more than sticks bound with twine," Rashodd replied. "I can be free as soon as I wish to strangle the boy outside. I remain only on your promises." His voice became a throaty snarl. "In days of darkness, though, I must confess I find them less than illuminating."

" _And yet, your faith compels you to stay_."

"For a time longer."

" _We find our own faith in the Mouth falters. The praises we heap upon him are no longer enough to compel his service. He wavers. He wanes_."

"And you wish my service," Rashodd whispered. "You wish me to free this... Daga-Mer."

" _For Mother Deep to find her way, the Father must also find his_."

"And if I do..."

" _We grant you what you wish_."

Rashodd's thick fingers, what remained of them, ran across his face. No matter how many times he did it, no matter how many times he knew they wouldn't be there, he continued to anticipate pieces of himself still in their proper place: a nose, an eye, part of his lip. And no matter how many times his fingers caressed jagged rents where those parts were missing, his rage continued to grow.

"My face..." he whispered.

" _We can return it_."

"My fingers..."

" _We can bring them back_."

He stared down at his hand. He could still feel the kiss of steel, the dagger's tongue that had taken his digits. He could still see the hand that had held it. He could hear the voice that had told him not to scream. He could remember the tall man, the felon clad in black with the tears in his eyes.

"My revenge..." he whispered hoarsely.

With a melodic laughter, the Deepshriek replied.

" _It will be yours_."

# _Twenty-Four_

# NAMING THE SIN

_T he water is cold today_.

Lenk let that thought linger as he let his hand linger in the rush of the stream. Between the clear surface and the bed of yellow pebbles below, he could see the legged eels, their vast and vacant eyes staring out from either side of their gaping mouths as stubby, pinlike legs clung to rocks and streamweeds to resist the current.

He mimicked their expression, staring blankly into the water as he waited for a reply to bubble up inside his mind. He did not wait long.

" _Mm_."

_The Steadbrook was never this cold_.

" _You remember that?_ "

_It was what the village was named for. It powered the mill that ground the grain. It was the heart of the village. My grandfather told me_.

" _Memories are returning. This is good_."

_Is it?_

" _Should it not be?_ "

_You never seemed concerned with that before_.

" _You never spoke back before_."

_Do you suppose there'll be more?_

" _More what?_ "

_Memories_.

He waited, listening patiently for an answer. All that responded was the stream, burbling aimlessly over the rocks. He furrowed his brow and frowned.

_Are you still there?_

The sun felt warm on his brow, uncomfortably so. Someone, somewhere else, muttered something.

" _Memories_ ," it replied with a sudden chill, " _are a reminder of what was never meant to be_."

He blinked. Behind his eyes, shadows danced amidst flames in a wild, gyrating torture of consumption. Against a pale and pitiless moon, a mill's many limbs turned slowly, raising a burning appendage pleadingly to the sky before lowering it, ignored and dejected. And at its wooden, smouldering base, bodies lay facedown, hands reaching out toward a warm brook.

" _Remember_ ," the voice said with such severity to make Lenk wince, " _why we do not need them_."

"No," he whimpered.

"Well, _fine_ ," someone said beside him. "Refuse if you want, but you don't have to look so agonised at the suggestion."

He opened his eyes, glowered at the stream and the quivering reflection of a stubble-caked face staring down at him.

"If I'm looking pained," he said harshly, "it's because you're talking."

"Feel free to leave. I don't recall inviting you here, anyway."

Denaos was no longer one singular voice, not so easy to ignore as he had once been. Rather, every noise that emanated from him was now a chorus: complaint followed by a loud slurping sound, an uncouth belch as punctuation and the sound of half a hollowed-out gourd landing in a growing pile of hollowed-out gourd halves to serve as pause between complaints.

He looked down at the young man and grinned, licking up the droplets soaked in his stubbled lip.

"They can't figure out the concept of clothing that keeps one's stones from swaying in the breeze, but they can make some fine liquor." He held out the fruit-made-cup to Lenk. "You're _sure_ you don't want any?"

"I'm sure I don't know what it is," Lenk replied, rising up.

"Drinking irresponsibly is a time-honoured tradition amongst my people."

"Humans?"

"Drunks."

"Uh-huh. What's it called?"

Denaos glanced to his left and cleared his throat. Squatting on stubby legs beside the stream, fishing pole in hand, the Owauku took one eye off of the lure bobbing in the water and rotated it slowly to regard the rogue with as much narrowed ire as one could manage with eyes the size of melons.

" _Mangwo_ ," he grunted, slowly sliding his eye back to the bobber.

"And... what's it made of?" Lenk asked.

"Well, now..." Denaos took a swig, swished it about thoughtfully in his mouth. "I'd say it's fermented something, blended with the finest I-don't-want-to-know and aged for exactly who-gives-a-damn-you-stupid-tit." He smacked his lips. "Delicious."

"I suppose I should be pleased you're making such good friends with the reptiles," Lenk said, raising an eyebrow. "Or do they just find your sliminess blends well with their own?"

"Jhombi and I are getting on quite well, yes," the rogue replied as he plucked his own rod and line from the ground and cast it into the stream. "Probably because he barely understands a word of the human tongue and thusly isn't as prone to be a whining silver-haired hamster." He grinned to the Owauku. "Am I not right, Jhombi?"

Jhombi grunted.

"Man of few words," Denaos said. "Speaking of, I trust negotiations with Togu went well?"

Lenk stared blankly for a moment before clearing his throat.

"Yes."

"So he'll—"

" _I said yes_."

"Oh..." The rogue blinked, taken aback. "Well, uh, good." He slurped up the rest of his drink and tossed it aside. "When do we leave, then?"

"Tomorrow."

"Delightful."

"After the party."

There was something unwholesome in Denaos' grin.

Lenk growled. "I hate it when your eyes light up like that. It always means someone is about to get stabbed or molested."

"And yet, you have now inadvertently invited me to an event that is conducive to both." Denaos chuckled, shaking his head. "My gratitude will best be expressed in the generous offer that I will save you for last in either endeavour. How's that sound, Jhombi?"

Jhombi grunted.

"Jhombi agrees."

"How would you know?"

"How would _you_?"

"How is it that he can't speak the tongue? Every creature on this island does." He glowered as a thought occurred to him. "Well, except for Hongwe."

"Who?"

"Tall Gonwa, looked irritated and important."

"Ah." Denaos furrowed his brow. "They all look irritated, though. What made this one look important?"

"Well, he had a satchel."

"A satchel, huh? I suppose that does count as sort of a status symbol amongst a people for whom the concept of pants is an incomprehensible technology." The rogue glanced at Lenk with worry on his face. "You negotiated all our terms, right? We've got pants?"

"We've got pants, yes," Lenk said, nodding. "Kataria said—"

"Kataria was there?" Denaos asked, blanching.

"She was, yeah." He glared at the rogue. "Why wouldn't she be?"

"Well, was there any trash to root around in? Filth to roll in? Perhaps a bone with a tiny piece of meat on it?"

Lenk's neck stiffened. "I thought we settled this."

"Settled what?"

"You talking about her like that."

"We did settle, but on different things. What _you_ settled with was a willingness to ignore the fact that a woman—called such only in theory, mind you—threatened to _kill_ you."

"She saved my life."

"I'm not finished." The rogue pressed a thumb to his own chest. " _I_ settled with the idea that I should cease trying to help a man intent on ignoring that this 'woman' has fangs and that he wants them near tender areas."

"If she was planning on killing me, she would have done it already, wouldn't she?"

"So you're honestly trying to rationalise your attraction to a woman a step above a beast with the excuse that she hasn't killed you _yet_."

"I am."

"And nothing about that seems insane to you?"

"Like you've never threatened to kill someone and not gone through with it."

"There's no time limit on murder oaths."

"Point being, things change, don't they?" Lenk replied. "Oaths are forgotten—"

"Delayed."

"Even so... things change. Things happen." Lenk stared at the stream intently, his mind drifting back to so many nights ago. "Something... something happened."

Denaos cast a suspicious glare at the young man. "What _kind_ of something?"

Lenk sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "It's going to sound insane."

"Coming from _you_?" the rogue gasped. " _No_. Not the man who's been spotted, on more than one occasion, talking to himself, yelling at nothing and possibly eating his own filth."

"I _told_ you, I wasn't _eating_ it, I was—"

" _No!_ " Denaos flung a hand up in warding. "Stop there, sir, for there is no end to that thought that will not make me want to punch you in the eye."

"Just listen—"

" _No, sir_. You've given me the excellent news that we are soon to be off and that we're having a celebration tonight. My life is going exceedingly well right now. I have food, drink, and the comforting company of a surly green man-lizard. Tomorrow, I'm going to start heading back to a world where undergarments are not only invented but _encouraged_. I tried to talk you out of this deranged bestiality plot you've cooked up, and I defy you— _defy_ you, sir—to say anything to lure me back in."

In the wake of the outburst, the stream burbled quietly. Neither Denaos nor Jhombi looked up from their lures. A long moment of silence passed as Lenk stared and then, with a gentle clear of his throat and two words, shattered it.

"Eel tits."

Denaos blinked twice, cringed once, then swiftly snapped his rod over his knee and sighed deeply.

"Gods _damn it_." He plucked up one of the empty half-gourds and stalked to a nearby mossy rock, taking a seat. "All right... tell me."

"Well, it happened days ago, before Kataria found me with the Shen."

"Go on."

"I was in the forest and I was... hallucinating." Lenk stared at the earth, the images returning to his mind. "I felt a river cold as ice, I saw demons in trees, I... I..." He turned a wild, worried stare upon Denaos. "I _argued_ with a _monkey_."

The rogue blinked. "Did you win?"

Lenk felt his brow grow heavy, his jaw clench. Something spoke inside his head.

" _Not important_."

"Not important," he growled. "I saw... _Kataria_ there. She said things, tempted me and she peeled off her shirt and... eels."

"Eels."

" _Eels!_ " Lenk shouted. "She was there, speaking to me, saying such things, telling me to stop—"

"Stop what?"

"It doesn't matter. The fever was eating at me, cooking my brains in my skull."

"Are... you sure?" Denaos' face screwed up in confusion as he stared at the young man curiously. "I was there when Kataria dragged you in, and I should note that I saw nothing writhing beneath her fur. I was there when Asper looked you over. She said your fever was mild."

" _What would she know?_ " the voice asked.

"It was _my_ head, _not hers!_ " Lenk snarled, jabbing his temple fiercely. "What would Asper know about it?"

"Considering the years she's spent to studying the physical condition? Probably quite a bit." Denaos tapped his chin. "She started screaming and ran us out a moment later, but I remember clearly—"

" _He knows nothing_."

"Remember what? How could you know? You and Kat have _both_ now said she went mad and drove you out like... like..."

" _Heathens_."

"Heathens!" he spat. "How could you know what she knew? What happened after she drove you out? Why did she do it in the first place?"

Denaos remained unmoving, glaring quietly at the young man with the same unpronounced tension in his body that Lenk had seen before, usually moments before someone found something sharp embedded in something soft. The fact that there was scarcely anywhere on the rogue where he could keep a knife hidden was small comfort.

"That," he said, "is no business of anyone's but hers. I believe her word over yours."

" _Liar_."

"A good point," Lenk muttered.

"What is?"

"Why so defensive over her?" the young man asked, raising a brow. "You're always the first to suspect, yet you so willingly take her word over mine?"

" _She_ has the benefit of not being visibly demented," Denaos replied.

Lenk wanted to scowl, to snarl, but the pain inside his head was growing unbearable. On wispy shrieks, the voice was agonisingly clear.

" _Traitors. Liars. Faithless. Ignorant. Unnecessary_."

"Just ignorant," Lenk muttered, shaking his head. "Just... just..."

"Look," Denaos said, his tension melting away with his sigh. "I'm not sure what kind of message is entailed by displaying the object of your attention with sea life replacing her anatomy, but it can't be good." He leaned back and looked thoughtful. "The Gods send visions to speak to the faithful, to reward them, to guide them," his eyes narrowed, "to warn them."

"I didn't think you were religious."

"Silf's creed is silence and secrecy. It's probably a mild blasphemy even telling you about this."

"So why do it?"

"Greed, mostly," the rogue replied. "Averting a man from imminent mutilation of heart, head and probably genitalia seems a deed the Gods would smile upon." He glanced at the young man. "Tell me, what were you hoping to do once this whole bloody business was over and we stood on the mainland again?"

"I'd given it some thought," Lenk replied, rolling his shoulders. "Farming is as good a trade as any. I figured I'd get some land and hold onto it as long as I could. Just a cow, a plough..."

"And her?"

Lenk frowned without knowing why. "Maybe."

"Do you remember how she smiles?"

Lenk stared at the ground, a slight grin forming at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah, I remember."

"Remember her laughter?"

His smile wormed its way to the other side of his face. "I do."

"You've probably seen her truly happy a few times, in fact."

He stared up at the sun, remembered a different kind of warmth. He remembered a hand on his shoulder, a puff of hot air between thin lips, heat that sent tiny droplets of sweat coursing down muscles wrapped under pale flesh. He remembered smiling then, as he did now.

"I have."

"Good," Denaos said. "Now, of those times, how many had come just after she shot something?"

His smile vanished, head dropped. The rogue's words rang through his head and heart with an awful truth to them. Surely, he realised, there were some moments between the shict and himself where she had smiled, where she had laughed and there hadn't been a lick of blood involved.

_But had she really smiled, then?_

"So she...?"

"Was around for the violence? It's a possibility, really. Nature of the beast, if you'll excuse the accuracy of the statement." Denaos sighed. "Perhaps it wasn't what you wanted to hear, but it's the truth."

"It's not."

" _It is_ ," the voice hissed.

"It's not!" Lenk insisted.

" _Her motivation is pointless. She is a distraction, useless. He, as well, but less so if he makes our purpose that much clearer to foggy minds_."

"Well, it's not like you'll have to stop seeing her," Denaos offered. "Just keep killing things and she'll continue to follow the scent of blood."

" _He is right_."

"He is _not_!" Lenk muttered.

" _Ours is a higher calling. We are not made for idle farming and contemplating dirt. There is still too much to do_."

"What happened to you?" he whispered. "Why do you speak like this now?"

" _Too much to cleanse. A stain lingers on this island. Duty is clear_."

"Well, you _asked_ for my opinion," Denaos replied, raising an eyebrow. "It's hardly my fault that your thoughts run so contrary that you find sanity offensive, but the fact remains..." He held out his hands helplessly. "Adventuring or the shict. You can embrace both or give up both, but never dismiss either. And you've got divine reinforcement for that fact, not that godly visions are necessary."

"Or real."

The sudden appearance of what appeared to be a pale, talking stick drew both men's attentions up to the stream bank. Dreadaeleon stood there with skinny arms folded over skinny chest, nose up in the air in an attempt at superiority that was made unsurprisingly difficult given his distinct lack of clothing, muscle and dignity.

"How long have you been standing there?" Denaos cut him off with a direct swiftness. "It's weird enough to be wearing a loincloth, talking to another man in a loincloth, without a third _boy_ sitting and staring... _in a loincloth_."

"I had come by to talk to you. Fortunately, I arrived just as the delusional talk of gods came up." Dreadaeleon waved a hand as he sauntered toward them. "It's irrelevant as pertains to the subject of hallucinations."

"It is?" Lenk asked, quirking a brow.

"Wait," Denaos interjected, "don't tell me you're going to listen to _him_."

"Why shouldn't he?" Dreadaeleon replied smugly. "Insight based on reason and knowledge is far superior to conjecture based on ignorant superstition and... well, I suppose you would probably cite something like your 'gut' as credible source, no?"

"That and the fact that, between the two of us, I'm the only one who's managed to talk to a woman without breathing hard," the rogue snapped. "You're aware we're talking about women, right? Nothing even remotely logical."

"Everything is logical in nature, _especially_ hallucinations, which you were also discussing." The boy turned to Lenk. "To credit one hallucination to one delusion is preposterous."

Lenk frowned at the boy. "You... _do_ know I'm a follower of Khetashe, don't you?"

"And yet, gods"—Dreadaeleon paused to look disparagingly at Denaos—" _and_ their followers don't seem to be doing much for you. I once believed in them, too, when I was young and stupid."

"You're _still_ —"

" _The point I'm trying to make_ ," he said with fierce insistence, "is that hallucinations are matters of mind, not divinity. And who is more knowledgeable in the ways of the mind than a wizard? You know it was the Venarium that discovered the brain as the centre of thought."

"Being that this is also a matter of attraction," Denaos muttered, "brains have shockingly little to do with it."

"Then we should introduce a little more to the situation." Dreadaeleon folded his hands with a businesslike air of importance as he regarded Lenk thoughtfully. "Now, the hallucination you experienced, the... ah..."

"Eel tits," the young man replied.

"Yes, the eel... _that_. It was a sign, make no mistake." He tapped his temple. "But it came from up here. Wait no..." He reached out a hand and prodded Lenk's forehead sharply. "In _there_."

The young man growled, slapping Dreadaeleon's hand away. "So... what, you think it's madness?"

"Madness is the result of the rational coming to terms with the irrational, like rel—"

" _Sweet Khetashe_ , I get it!" Lenk said exasperatedly. "You're incredibly enlightened and your brain is big enough to make your neck buckle under it."

"That may just be the fat in his head," Denaos offered.

"Regardless, can we please remember to focus on _my_ problem here?"

"Of course," Dreadaeleon replied. "Your hallucination is just that: your rational mind, what you know to be true and real, is struggling with your irrational mind, what you desire and hope. The hallucination was simply an image manifestation of that. That she was not there was rational; that she was there was irrational; the eels represent—"

"There are precious few ways one can interpret eel tits, my friend," Denaos interjected.

"Can we _please_ stop saying that?" Dreadaeleon growled. "The eels are simply the bridge between, the sole obstacle to what you hope to accomplish, hence their characterisation as something horrifically ugly."

"Couldn't that also suggest an aversion or fear to what lay under her shirt? Or sexuality in general?" Denaos mused.

The boy whirled on him with teeth bared. "Oh, was it a group of smelly thieves and rapists who uncovered the innermost machinations of the organ driving human consciousness? Because here I thought it was the most enlightened body of scholarly inquiry in the world that figured it out. But if Denaos said it, it must be the other way, _because he's so great and he's right about everything!_ "

Lenk had never thought he would actually see a man will himself to explode, much less a boy, but as Dreadaeleon stared fiery holes into the rogue's forehead, chest expanding with each fevered breath like a bladder filling with water, he absently felt the urge to take cover from the impending splatter.

"Right," Dreadaeleon said, body shrinking with one expulsion of hot air as he returned to Lenk. "The correct thing to do, then, would be to embrace the urge and simply... you know... have at it."

Lenk regarded the boy curiously for a moment. There was something different in him, to be sure. The burning crimson that heralded his power seemed to be present, if only in brief, faint flickers behind his dark eyes. And yet, all his being seemed to have sunk into those eyes, the rest of him looking far skinnier than usual, his hair far greasier than it should be, his cheeks hollow and his jaw clenched.

"Well, ah... okay, then." Lenk blinked. "Thanks?"

"My pleasure," Dreadaeleon said, leaning against a tree. "I'm a little curious as to where you managed to find a girl on this island to hallucinate over, though. Or was this someone prior to our departure?"

"What?" Lenk asked. "Didn't you hear?"

"Bits and pieces. I didn't catch the identity." Dreadaeleon's eyes flared wide, the fire behind them bursting to faint embers. "It's not Asper, is it?" Before the young man could answer, he leaned forward violently. " _Is it?_ "

"No, no," Denaos spoke up from behind. "Our boy here has decided that romancing within his own breed is a bit too dull."

"Oh... one of the lizards, then? Tell me, how can you tell the difference between the males and—"

"It's _Kat_ , you spindly little freak!" Lenk snarled suddenly.

"Oh... what, really?" Dreadaeleon blanched. "I mean... ah. No, I don't think that'll work at all."

"See?" Denaos said.

"What?" Lenk frowned. "A moment ago you were telling me to follow my hallucination!"

"Hallucination and delusion are two different things," Denaos replied. "This isn't a matter of heart or mind, but of instinct. I mean, she'll _kill you_."

"That's what _I_ said," Denaos muttered.

"She hasn't yet," Lenk replied, "and I'm sure I won't be the first one she does."

"Who can say when or why an animal attacks? Perhaps she's just waiting to show you her true colours, like a cat stalking. Or maybe she's waiting until she's hungry enough?"

"Now wait just a—"

Denaos interrupted. "See, I hadn't considered that. Here, I thought it was right until she got bored."

"She's not going to—"

"That's a good point, but I think it may be biologically spurred," Dreadaeleon offered. "Like her instincts will only come to light when he spots her demiphallus."

"I'm not going to..." This time, Lenk cut himself off as he stared at the boy with wide eyes. "Wait. Her what?"

"All female shicts have them, it's theorised. Granted, our necropsies haven't catalogued enough to—"

"No, shut up. What's a demiphallus?"

"Pretty much what it sounds like," the boy replied. "Used to show dominance over males, it's... well... it's..." He appeared thoughtful for a moment. "All right, remember when we saw those exotic pets being unloaded in Muraska's harbour?"

"Right."

"Right, and remember the hyenas?"

"Some noble in Cier'Djaal had shipped them up, I remember."

"Remember the _female_ one?"

"Yes, I—" His eyes suddenly wide at the memory. "Oh... _no_."

"Really?" Denaos asked, gaping. "She has one, you think? That would make _perfect_ sense."

"I know!" Dreadaeleon replied, grinning. "Wouldn't it?"

"How would _that_ make perfect sense?" Lenk demanded, eyes narrowing. " _How_?" He glowered at the boy. "And how are you in any position to be commenting on any part of a female south of her neck?"

"I've... read books."

"Books?" Denaos asked, chuckling.

"Books, yes," Dreadaeleon replied. "I'm... familiar with the basic process, anyway. It's not like it's particularly difficult to perform, let along conceptualise."

The two men stared at him, challenging. He cleared his throat.

"See, uh." The boy scratched the back of his neck. "See, a lot of it has to do with the maidenhead. The, er, hymen, if you will, per se."

"Oh, I certainly will," Denaos said.

"This isn't helping me with my—" Lenk muttered and was promptly ignored.

"Right, well, this provides a form of... tightness... a sort of barrier that provides difficulty to the expeditious party. That... that makes sense, doesn't it?"

"Entirely, yes," Denaos confirmed through a grin.

"All right, then... so, the only thing _really_ necessary is some manner of... of..."

"Penetration?"

"No, see, because it's a barrier. It... uh... needs a sort of crushing." He made a fist and thrust it forward demonstratively. "A punching motion."

"Punching?"

"Yes. Punching." He turned to Lenk. "See? It's a matter of nature, physical and mental. There's no way you can possibly—"

"Shut up," the young man said.

"You _did_ ask—" Denaos began.

"I said _shut up!_ " Lenk roared, fists trembling at his side as he impaled the two men with his stare. "I can't believe I asked either of you. _You_ "—he levelled a finger at Denaos—"who would leap at the chance to rut a sow so long as you were drunk enough or _you_ "—he thrust it at Dreadaeleon—"who divides his time between alienating every woman in sight with his pretentious sputter and staring holes in Asper's robe and trying desperately to hide the chicken-bone swelling in his trousers."

"Asper?" Denaos asked, glancing at the boy. "Really?"

"Did I speak too softly or did you hear me when I told you to _shut up_?" Lenk demanded, his scowl growing more intense, his voice harsher. "I don't care what you, you or _any_ voice says. _I'm_ the leader, and even if what I decide to do is at _all_ mad, it's still a damn sight better than any of you cowardly piss-slurpers could think of. Rest assured that no matter who I walk away from this with, their presence will be a small blessing against the fact that I am leaving _both_ of you to rot in filth, get sodomised in an alley and otherwise _die alone_."

He turned away from them, forcing his eyes on the stream, forcing himself to control his breathing. It tasted warm in his mouth, cold on his lips. He could feel their stares upon him, feel their shock. As though there were something wrong with _him_.

"We are going to turn around," he uttered. "Do not be there."

They left. He did not turn around. He didn't have to. He could feel their fear seeping out of their feet and into the earth. They hadn't even waited until they were out of earshot to start running.

Scared little animals. The very kind of animal they accused her of being. The very kind of beast they saw when they had looked at him.

_They_ were the animals. Fearful, weak, squeaking rodents. Useless. Pointless.

He was strong. He saw it in his reflection in the stream. His face was hard. His eyes were hard. No apology, no weakness.

_No pupils_. He blinked. _That can't be right_.

Falling to his knees seemed a bit too easy; his head pulled the rest of him to the earth. He rested on his hands and knees, staring at himself in the river. His breath poured out of him in great, unrestrained puffs that stirred the water, blurred his face in it.

The legged eels below the surface released their grips on the rocks, went drifting down the stream. Lenk ignored them; his image was no more clearer with them gone. He could make out flashes of grey, blue, each one a stark and solid colour that he had rarely seen in his hair or eyes before. Slowly, he leaned down farther, breath pouring out of his mouth to kiss the water.

And freeze it into tiny, drifting chunks of ice that were lost down the stream.

"That... that _definitely_ is not right."

"One would suspect," a deep voice spoke, "that you are a poor judge of that."

He looked up immediately and saw no one to match the bass, alien voice. He was alone in the forest, even the birds and chattering beasts of the trees having fled to leave him bathed in silence. Just him, the stream, and...

"Jhombi?" he asked.

The squat reptile made no immediate answer, did not even look up from his lure bobbing in the water. Then, slowly, his massive head began to twist towards Lenk, staring at him with two immense eyes.

Lenk stared back, mouth gaping open; of all the words he could have used to describe the Owauku's gourdlike eyes, "gleeful" and "malicious" had rarely come to mind. And "terrifying," not at all.

"Hello, Lenk." His... or its voice was like sap: thick and bitter in the air. "I see you're experiencing some difficulty with your current plan? Perhaps I could be of help."

Lenk shook his head, dispelling his befuddlement. "I'm sorry, I didn't think you spoke the tongue." He cast a glare into the forest. "I suppose I shouldn't be shocked. Denaos has lied to me before."

"He has," the lizardman said, "but he didn't this time."

"He said Jhombi didn't speak the human tongue."

"Jhombi does not."

Lenk stared as the lizardman's green smile grew a bit larger and eyes shrank a bit narrower.

"So," the young man said breathlessly, "you would be..."

"I'd say that my name was unimportant, but that would be a lie. You've had far too many of those lately, haven't you?"

"I'd agree with you, but any bond of trust we might have would probably be shattered by the fact that I am speaking to someone wearing Jhombi's skin like a costume."

The creature laughed, not joylessly. Rather, there was plenty of mirth in his deep, booming chuckle, and all of it made Lenk's skin crawl.

"You _are_ clever, sir. A bit macabre, but clever." He held up a hand. "Jhombi is fine, my friend. Not present, but certainly still alive and possessing all his skin. He was lured away long ago by a gourd of his people's wicked brew. Not half as clever as you were, that one, not half as determined." He quirked a scaly eye ridge. "Or perhaps now that you're giving up, you're roughly on par?"

Lenk could but stare, tongue dry in his gaping mouth. "Are... you another one?"

"A hallucination?" The creature shook his bulbous head. "Would a hallucination admit to being such? After all, they only linger as long as you consider them real. I must linger, Lenk; not long, only enough to speak with you, but I must. After that, you can imagine me away."

"All my hallucinations want to speak with me, lately. My mind must have a lot to say... Or is it the Gods that are trying to tell me something?" Lenk dared a smile at the creature. It could hardly hurt, he reasoned. He would hate to gain a reputation for rudeness amongst his growing collection of mental problems.

"Good to see you've kept a sense of humour about it. I can hardly blame you. Lunatics have a reputation for laughing uncontrollably for a reason."

"So you _are_ a hallucination."

"No, but you are going mad." The creature sighed. "Mad and clever, I suppose you could answer me this question: do you suppose it will stop?"

The young man blinked. "Will what stop?"

"All of it. All the madness, the suffering." The creature looked at him intently. "The _voices_." It nodded slowly, all mirth gone from its face. "I know. I can't hear them, but I know. I know how they torment you, running endlessly: hot, cold, soothing, frightening, day in, day out, screaming, shrieking, demanding, whispering, whining, _talking all the time_."

Lenk, having nothing else to respond with, leaned forward, unblinking, unbreathing, unmoving.

"Will they?"

The creature stared back at him and shook his head. "One will."

"One? There are..." _Should have realised that, should have_ known _that_. He stopped cursing himself long enough to breathe. "Which?"

"Scarcely matters. One whispers lies, the other whispers what you don't want to hear. You think either of them will stop?" It sighed deeply. "Or is it that you think the one with the sweet lies will be correct? The one that tells you that everything will be fine, that you'll go back to the mainland and leave all this behind you, grow fat on a field with your slender shict bride and watch the sunset until your lids grow too heavy to keep up and you die feeding the horseflies.

"And yet, everything isn't fine, is it? You are still here. Your companions fear you to the point that they have difficulty following you even back to their precious civilisation. You feel sick without your sword, angry in the company of those who smile at you, experience silence from one voice only when the other speaks..."

The creature shook its head.

"No, not fine, at all, I'd say. One could scarcely be blamed for fleeing, especially when the alternative is to stay here, amidst the intolerable sun and rivers that turn to ice."

"There is nothing here," Lenk replied, "nothing but lizardmen and bugs. What purpose is there in staying here?"

"When was the last time you found a purpose by looking behind you? What awaits you there? Burned ruins of your old home? The graves of your family?"

"What would you know of it?" Lenk snarled, feeling his hands tense, restrained from strangling the creature only by curiosity and dread for the answer.

"I know they will not be there when you return," the creature replied. "Just as I know what little family you've scraped together you only have by coming this far." It grinned broadly. "Go farther and who knows? Blood, yes. Death, most certainly. But in these, you find peace... Perhaps you'll find the kind that lasts? The kind that lets you know who it is that speaks in your head and who it was that sent you on a road that began with the blood of your family? The kind where everything is fine at the end?"

Lenk swallowed hard.

"Will I find it?"

"Are you asking me if things will get better or if things will turn out the way you hoped?"

"I don't know."

"Just as well. Much of the future is uncertain, save for this..." It leaned forward slowly, eyes widening, mouth widening. "None of that matters."

"My happiness does not matter?"

"You were not _bred_ for happiness. You were _bred_ to do your duty."

"I... wasn't bred! I was born!" Lenk nodded stiffly, as if affirming to himself. "My name is Lenk!"

"Lenk what?"

"Lenk... Lenk..." He racked his brain. "I had a grandfather."

"What was his name?"

"He was... he was my mother's father! We were all born in the same place! The same village!"

"Where?"

"A... a village. Somewhere. I can't..." He thumped his head with the heel of his hand. "But, I knew! I _remembered!_ Just a moment ago! Where..." He turned to the creature, eyes wide. "Where did they go?"

"It hardly matters. They won't be coming back... not on the mainland."

A long silence persisted between them, neither of them breaking their stare to so much as blink. When Lenk spoke, his voice quavered.

"But they will here?"

"I did not say that. What I _implied_ was that there is nothing to gain upon returning to the mainland."

"And what is here, then?"

"Here?" The creature grinned. "Death, obviously."

"Whose death?"

"A meaningful one, be certain." It twisted its yellow gaze toward the distant edge of the forest and the village beyond. "Ah... sunset will come soon and your precious farewell feast with it. I would be wary of these green creatures, Lenk. You never know what might be lurking behind their faces."

The creature's saplike voice felt as though it had poured over Lenk's body, pooled at his feet and held him there staring dumbfoundedly at the creature as it strode away like a thing much larger than its size would suggest. Dumbstruck, the young man found the voice to speak only as the creature began to slip into the foliage, green flesh blending with green leaves.

"Wait!" Lenk called after it. "Tell me... something! Anything! Give me a reason to keep going!" As the creature continued on, he took a tentative step toward its fading figure. "Tell me! Will Kataria kill me? Who killed my family? Who is it in my head? You never told me!" He growled, his voice a curse unto itself. "You never told me _anything!_ "

"I know..."

Whatever pursuit Lenk might have mustered further was halted as the creature turned to look over its shoulder with a face not its own. Its jaws were wide, impossibly so, to the point that Lenk could almost hear them straining under the pressure.

Gritted between them, reflecting his own horrified visage that shrank with every horrified step he retreated, a set of teeth, each tooth the length and colour of three bleached knucklebones stacked atop each other, glittered brightly.

"Ominous, isn't it?"

The words echoed in his thoughts, just as the polished, toothy grin embedded itself in eyes that stared blankly, long into the sunset, after the creature had vanished and drums began to pound in the distance.

# _Twenty-Five_

# CONFESSIONAL VIOLENCE

Pagans had certain enviable qualities, Asper decided after an hour of lying in the mossy bed and staring up at the sun, enjoying the sensation of it as it bathed her.

First among those qualities was the confidence to lounge around in skimpy furs beneath the sun for hours on end, she decided. That was certainly a practice she'd have to abandon upon returning to decent society. Not too hard, she thought as she scratched a red spot on her belly, especially if meant fewer bug bites.

But she was possessed of the worrying suspicion that she would have more difficulty leaving behind the second quality she found so enviable: the complete confidence they had in their faiths. She had often wondered what it was about people with limited grasps of homesteading and hygiene that made them so sure of their heathen beliefs.

Only recently, though, was she wondering what it was they had that she lacked.

Perhaps, she reasoned, her faith permitted her a unique position to come to the conclusion. The creed of Talanite was to heal, regardless of ideological difference. The occasional attempt to convert the barbarian races from their shallow, false gods were largely carried out by the more militant faiths of Daeon and Galataur. The most she had ever seen of such attempts was the gruesome aftermath: the hacked bodies of shict, tulwar or couthi who had refused to give up their gods and chose to meet them instead. The most thought she had ever expended for them was a brief prayer and a silent lament for the futility of dying in the name of a faith that made no sense to her.

_Of course_ , she reminded herself, _you worship the sun. That seems pretty silly at a glance, doesn't it?_ She sighed, wondering if those barbaric races had ever asked themselves the same question. _Does Kataria ever wonder that? She doesn't look like she does... then again, she doesn't look like she ever pays enough attention to anything deeper than food... or Lenk_.

She instantly cursed herself for thinking his name. The memories always began with his name. Like a river, they flowed from his name to that night when Kataria had dragged his unconscious body into the hut. The memories never got any easier to digest. Her heart never ceased to beat faster with every recollection.

It was seared into her mind, its heat every bit as intense as the one that ran through her arm that night.

Funny, she had almost forgotten about her arm, at least for a moment. She had almost forgotten the night prior to that, when it burned at the sight of that hooded face and skeletal grin, the confusion of waking up amidst a tribe of sentient reptiles, she could hardly think of anything else.

Of course, _he_ changed that entirely.

Naturally, she had fallen to her knees beside him, running practised hands over his body, checking flesh for wounds, bones for breaking, skin for fever. She had ignored it all at that point: Kataria's shrieking demands, Denaos' cautious stare, the Owauku's incomprehensible babble. All that mattered, at that point, was her charge, her patient, her companion. At that point, she could ignore everything.

Everything except her arm.

She was too well-used to it: the aching, the burning. She could feel it coming, feel it tense, feel it hunger beneath her skin. The scream that had torn itself from her lungs had been cleverly disguised, the pain concealed beneath a command that they all leave. They might have suspected something by the second and third screams, too shrill to be commanding.

But they left, left her alone.

_With him_.

The arm might have been merciful in waiting until the others had gone to erupt. Or it might simply not have been able to contain itself. She didn't care any more now than she did then; thinking on it brought far too much fear now, far too much pain then. There was no slow eating away this time; the arm simply burst into crimson, the bones black beneath the suddenly transparent red flesh, pulsating, throbbing, burning.

Hungering.

It had pulled itself of its own volition, for a reason she could not bring herself to fathom, towards Lenk. And try as she might to tell herself there was likewise no fathoming why she let her body follow its burning grasp, she had to live with the fact that, at that moment, she had simply let go.

There was no thought for what might have happened next, had her hand clenched on his throat, had he become twisted and reduced to nothing, like those who had felt the crimson touch before. There was no thought for what her god, his god or any god might have said of it. There was only pain, only hunger.

And a blessed, unconscious meal before her. A relief from pain, from the agony that racked her.

But where her hand had slid slowly and carefully towards him, his was swift and merciless. It snapped out suddenly from the sand, without a snarl or curse or even any indication that Lenk had known what was about to happen. Her body went from burning to freezing in an instant as his fingers wrapped about her throat. Her arm fell at her side limply as he opened eyes that weren't his and spoke with a voice that belonged to someone else.

" _Do not think_ ," it had said, " _that it will ever stop if you do it_."

It could have been Lenk, she thought, probably was him. He _was_ feverish, if not enough to cause a hallucination, and he _was_ starved and beaten. Trauma was known to cause such changes in personality, she knew from experience, and the fact that he remembered nothing of waking up would support this. But the eerie sensation that it was something more, some madness that gripped him, gripped her, too.

Fear had made her recoil and hold her arm away from him as his slipped from her throat and he fell back into feverish slumber. Or maybe it was compassion, a sudden shock of shame that made her spare her friend. Maybe she had finally claimed some victory over the arm.

Maybe.

The pain was too intense to think, though, the burning from her arm and the cold from his grasp conspiring to plunge her into agony. There she remained, huddled against the hut's wall, choking on her sobs so that no one outside would hear her.

The pain passed, after it had thrust her into agonised sleep and she had awoken to find her arm whole again and Denaos standing over her. She had no idea what he had seen. He stared at her with what looked like concern, but that was a lie.

It had to be.

It was greed, she was sure, the presence of an opportunity to gain an advantage over her for whatever vileness he was planning that kept him around. It was greed that made him lean down and brace her up and offer her water. It was greed that made him ask with such feigned tenderness if she was all right. It was greed that she used to justify cursing at him and driving him out again that she might tend to Lenk and go through the ordeal of forgetting everything.

She had not forgotten, of course. She never would.

She spoke of the event often, posing questions and theorising answers with brazen frequency, but never to anyone with a mouth to reply with. Any time she was alone for a moment, she asked the same questions, as she did now.

"Why?"

And answers now, as they had then, did not come.

"Why him?" Her tone was soft, inquisitive; all her previous indignant, tear-choked anger had long boiled out her mouth and soaked into the earth. "What is it about him that you want?"

That seemed a fair question to her. It had never really sought anyone with the unerring grip that it had sought Lenk. Of course, fair or not, it didn't answer. Perhaps it had heard that one before. Or maybe she wasn't asking the right question. And, in its silence, she furrowed her brow as a new thought occurred to her.

"Who sent you?" She held her hand up to the sun, as though the light would finally deign to give her an answer she had been asking for all these years and shine through the flesh to reveal its purpose. "Why is it you wanted him? What did he do to...?"

And she remembered his eyes, his voice, his cold grasp. And so, she asked.

"Did he...?" she whispered. "Does he deserve it? Should he die?"

A sudden breeze struck. Clouds shifted. Branches parted. The sun shone down with more intensity than it had before, focusing a great golden eye upon her. She gasped, beholden, and stared back at the eye, unblinking.

"Is that it?" she whispered. "Is that the answer? Is what I'm meant to do with this?" She bit her lower lip to control the tremble that racked her as she raised her head and whispered with a shrill, squeaking voice. "Please, I just want to—"

A shadow fell. Light died. She blinked. Giant green orbs and bright white angles assaulted her senses, narrowing and twisting into horrible shapes as greasy yellow strands dangled down and pricked at her skin.

She recognised Kataria too late. Too late to keep herself from starting and far too late to avoid the shict's forehead as it came down upon her own with a resounding crack. She cried out, clutching her throbbing brow and scrambling to get away. She raised herself on her rear, staring at the shict, caught between shock and anger.

Kataria's own expression seemed settled on a grating, irritating grin.

"Hey," she said.

"Why did you do that?" Asper shrieked.

"Do what?"

"You _headbutted_ me."

"Yeah, you looked busy."

Asper stared intently at her. "How... how does that even—?"

"You seem like you're going to dwell on this for a while and leave me no opportunity to give you the present I brought you."

"What?"

The question was apparently enough of an invitation to spur the shict into action. She snapped her arm, sending a brown, multilimbed body into Asper's lap. The priestess looked down at the gohmn, aghast; it was browned from cooking and, if the sticky substance dripping onto her legs was any indication, basted in something of origins she fiercely fought the urge to inquire over.

Instead, she merely scowled up, her distaste compounded as the shict brought a barbed roach leg to her teeth and tore a tough chunk from it.

"Like venison," she said with a grin, her teeth white against the brown smear on her mouth, "except a tad roachier."

"I'm..." " _Leaving_ " _would be a good thing to say_ , Asper thought, _or_ " _furious_ " _or_ " _about to strangle you_." "Not hungry."

"Eat while you can," Kataria said. "You don't know how much you'll miss basted bug meat when there's no room for them on the boat."

"There's a boat?" Asper asked, eyes widening. "Sebast! He's all right? He's come?"

"No, no," Kataria said, shaking her head. "Togu is lending us one to take back to the mainland... well, _giving_ us one, since we can't bring it back, obviously. We'll set out tomorrow, Lenk says, after the party tonight."

"There's a party now?"

"A farewell celebration, I guess? Togu was insistent on it, so we figured it'd be less irritating to simply glut ourselves tonight and spend tomorrow defecating over the railing than arguing about it today."

"How... pleasant," Asper said, blanching. "Why would he be insistent?"

"Neediness, maybe? Loneliness? A fierce desire to see half-clad pink skin instead of half-clad green skin?" Kataria growled, taking another bite from the leg. "How am I supposed to know what goes on inside a lizardman's head?"

"Well, are they at least going to give us back our clothes?" Asper asked, gesturing to the aforementioned pink skin. "If it's a choice between coming back to the mainland dressed like _this_ or staying here..." She paused and frowned. "I suppose drowning would be preferable."

"I feel like you're worrying a lot about trivial things," Kataria said, licking the bug juices from her lips. "It's quite annoying. You're starting to sound like Lenk."

Asper went rigid, fixing a hard stare on Kataria.

"What," she asked, "do you mean by that?"

"Nothing," Kataria replied, canting her head to the side. "I'm merely suggesting that you're being overly stupid about things that don't matter and very rude when I bartered, slaughtered, cooked and slathered a twitching roach for you." She sneered. "You're welcome, by the way."

"There are _just_ enough things offensive about that sentence that I don't feel bad for it." Asper rose up, futilely trying to wipe the juices from her skin. "Or for leaving. Good day."

She fought the urge to recoil as the shict leapt in front of her, but could do nothing to prevent the sudden beating of her heart. Kataria's muscles tensed as she regarded the priestess with an unflinching stare.

_She heard me_ , Asper thought. _She heard me ask if I should kill Lenk. She heard me. And now she's going to..._ Asper's face screwed up in confusion as the shict's softened, her green eyes quivering. _Cry?_

It certainly looked that way, at least. The savage humour, the feral grin, the bloodlust always lurking: all evaporated in an instant. Kataria's mouth quivered wordlessly, fumbling for words to defeat this expression to no avail as she rubbed her foot self-consciously upon the moist earth.

Asper found herself unable to leave for the painful familiarity of it all. She hadn't seen such a display since...

_Since I saw myself in the river today_.

"I need..." Kataria spoke hesitantly, shaking her head and summoning up a growl. "I _want_ to talk."

"Oh." Asper glanced over the shict's shoulder. "Lenk went into the forest, last I saw."

" _Not to Lenk_ ," Kataria snarled suddenly, then clenched her teeth, as though it pained her to spoke. "To you."

"What?" Asper looked incredulous. "What did _I_ do?"

"What is that supposed to mean? I just... I want that thing that priests do."

"The last time I tried to bless you, you _bit_ me."

"I don't want that. I want the other thing; the one where we talk."

Asper looked at her curiously. "Confession?"

"Yeah, that." Kataria nodded. "How's it work?"

"Well, with people of the same faith with something they seek atonement for, we usually sit down, they tell me their sins or their problem, and I listen and help if I can."

"Yes, yes!" Kataria's nod became one of vicious enthusiasm. "We need to do that!"

"I'm not sure it's—"

" _Immediately!_ "

"Look, we're not even of the same faith!" Asper replied hotly. "Besides, your problems always seem to be the kind that are solved by shooting someone in the eye. What makes this one so special?"

" _Fine, then_ ," Kataria spat as she turned away. "I'll figure it out myself, _as usual_."

The shict's impending departure should have been a relief, Asper knew. After all, any problems Kataria was like to share were equally likely to be foul, unpleasant and possibly involving the marking of territory.

And yet, she couldn't help but catch a glimpse of Kataria's face as she turned away. A choked expression, confused, lost.

The shict had a question without an answer.

And the priestess had an oath.

"Wait a moment." Her own words should have been a worry, Asper knew, but she forced a smile. "I can listen, at the very least."

Kataria turned and stared as Asper took a seat upon a patch of moss, gesturing to the earth before her. With a stiff nod, Kataria took a hesitant seat before her. For an age, they simply sat, staring at each other with eyes intent and befuddled respectively. After waiting long past what would be considered polite, Asper cleared her throat.

"So," she said, "what did you want to—?"

"This is supposed to be anonymous," Kataria interrupted, "isn't it?"

"What?"

"I thought there were curtains or something."

"In a proper temple, yes," Asper replied. "But... look, even disregarding the fact that we're in a forest, disregarding the fact that _you_ asked _me_ to do this, I've known you for a _year_ now. Kat, I know you by voice and by smell both."

"What _I_ smell is a loss of principles," Kataria replied, far more haughtily than someone clutching a roach leg should be able to. "And you, my friend, are _reeking_."

"Oh Gods, _fine!_ " Asper loosed a low grumble as she shifted about in the earth, turning her back to Kataria. "There, is that better?"

A sudden jolt was her answer as Kataria pressed her own back against the priestess.'

"Sort of." The shict's hum reverberated into Asper. "Is there any way you could do this in a different voice so—"

" _No_."

"Fine."

The shict's snarl was the last noise she made for a long moment. In the silence that followed, it occurred to Asper with some mild dismay that she had never actually wondered what her companion felt like. She had always suspected that Kataria would be more relaxed, her muscles loose and breath coming in slow and easy gulps of air.

_Someone who cuts wind with as much abandon as she does would_ have _to be relaxed, right?_

But there was nothing but tension in the shict's body. Not the kind of nervous tremble of dismay at having another woman's bare flesh touching her own that now enveloped Asper, Kataria's tension was muscle-deep, her entire body feeling like she had been twisted so tightly that she might explode in a bloody, stressful mess at any moment.

One more regret for ever having agreed to this, Asper thought.

"So, did you want to talk about?"

"What's it like?" Kataria interrupted.

"What's what like?"

"Being a coward."

"What?" Asper began to rise. "Did you get me to sit down just so you could insult me? Because it seems like a lot of work for something you already do standing up."

"Wait." Kataria's hand shot out and wrapped with a desperate firmness about Asper's wrist, yanking the priestess back to the earth. "I mean... I've watched you. When we fight." Her grip tightened. "You're scared."

Asper opened her mouth to retort, but found precious little to say by way of refuting the accusation, and even less to say to pull her hand back.

"I suppose," she said, pressing her back up against the shict's again. "It can be a frightening thing, combat."

"But you don't run," Kataria continued. "You don't back away."

"Neither do you," Asper replied.

"Well, obviously. But it's different with me. I know how to fight. If I _can_ kill it, and I usually can, I do kill it. If I can't kill it, and sometimes I can't, I run away until I _can_ kill it and then I come back, shoot it in the face, tear off its face and then wear its face as a hat... if I can."

"Uh..."

"But _you_ ," Kataria said, her body trembling. " _You_ look so terrified, so uncertain... and really, sometimes, I'm uncertain when the fight breaks out. I don't know if you'll make it out of this one or that one and I expect you to run. I would, were I you."

"But," Asper said softly, "you're not."

"No, I'm not. I don't stick around if it's not certain." The shict leaned back, sighing. "It was all certain when I left the forest to follow Lenk, you know? I knew I couldn't stay there because I didn't know what was going to happen. But everyone knows what a monkey will do. Even one with silver fur just fights, screams, hoards gold and tries to convince himself he's not a monkey."

"Fighting, screaming and hoarding gold is all we've done since we left on the _Riptide_ ," Asper said. "Come to think of it, it's all we've done since I met you."

"So why doesn't it make _sense_ anymore," Kataria all but moaned as she slumped against the priestess' back. "This was all so much _fun_ when we started. But now we're just sitting around in furs, _talking_ instead of killing people."

"And... that's bad?" Asper asked. "I'm sorry, I really can't tell with you."

"That's bad," Kataria confirmed. "I should be running."

"But you're not."

"And _why_ am I not? Why don't _you_ run when you feel like it?" The shict scratched herself contemplatively. "Duty?"

She swallowed the question, and Asper wondered if Kataria could feel her own tension as it plummeted down to rest like an iron weight in her belly. Why _did_ she stay? she wondered. Certainly not to protect her friends. _I need it more than they do_. To survive, then? _Maybe, but why get involved at all with them, then?_ Duty?

That must be it.

_Yeah_ , she told herself, _that's it. Duty to the Healer. That's why you fight... that's why you kill. It's certainly not because you've got an arm that kills people that you can't possibly run away from. No, it's duty. Tell her that. Tell her it's duty and she'll say "oh" and leave and then there will be two people who hate themselves and don't have answers and you won't be alone anymore_.

"Is it your god?" Kataria asked, snapping the priestess from her reverie. "Does he command you to stay and fight?"

"Not exactly," Asper replied hesitantly, the question settling uneasily on her ears. "He asks that we heal the wounded and comfort the despairing. I suppose being on the battlefield lends itself well to that practice, no?"

_Is that it, then? Are you meant to be here to help people? That's why you joined with them, isn't it? But then... why do you have the arm?_

"You have your own god, don't you?" Asper asked, if only to keep out of her own head. "A goddess, anyway."

"Riffid, yeah," Kataria replied. "But Riffid doesn't ask, Riffid doesn't command, Riffid doesn't give. She made the shicts and gave us instinct and that's it. We live or die by those instincts."

_And what of a god who gives you a curse?_ Asper asked herself. _Does he love or hate you, then?_

"So we don't have signs or omens or whatever. And I've never looked for them before," Kataria continued with a sigh. "I've never needed to. Instinct has told me whether I could or I couldn't. I've never had to look for a different answer."

_Is there a different answer? What else could there be, though? How many ways can you interpret a curse such as this? How many ways can you ask a god to explain why he made you able to kill, to_ remove _people completely, to your satisfaction?_

"So... how do you do it?"

It took a moment for Asper to realise she had just been asked a question. "Do what?"

"Know," Kataria replied. "How do you know what's supposed to happen if nothing tells you?"

_How would a woman of faith know if her god doesn't tell her?_

"I suppose," Asper whispered softly, "you just keep asking until someone answers."

"That's what I'm _trying_ to do," Kataria said, pressing against Asper's back as she pressed her question. "But you're not answering. What do I do?"

"About your instincts?"

"About _Lenk_ , stupid!"

"Oh," Asper said, blanching. "Ew."

"Ew?"

"Well... yeah," Asper replied. "What about him? Do you like him or some—"

The question was suddenly bludgeoned from her mouth into a senseless cry of pain as something heavy cracked against her head. She cast a scowl over her shoulder to see Kataria resting the gohmn leg gently in her lap, not offering so much as a shrug in excuse.

"Did... did you just hit me with a roach leg?" the priestess demanded, rubbing her head.

"Yeah, I guess."

" _Why_ did you just hit me with a roach leg?"

"You were about to ask something dangerous," Kataria replied casually. "Shicts share an instinctual rapport with one another. We instantly know what's acceptable and unacceptable to speak about."

"I'm _human!_ "

"Hence the leg."

"So you've graduated from insults to physical assault and you expect me to sit here and listen to whatever lunacy you spew out? What happens next, then? Don't tell me." She started to rise again. "How many times have _you_ been hit in the head today?"

Kataria's grip was weak, her voice soft when she took Asper by the wrist and spoke. Asper could feel the tension in her body slacken, as though something inside her had clenched to the point of snapping. It was this that made the priestess hesitate.

"I'm asking you to listen," the shict whispered, "so that I don't find out what happens next."

Uncertain as to whether that was a threat or not, Asper settled back into her seat and tried to ignore the feeling of the shict's tension.

"The thing is, we're not even supposed to _talk_ to humans," Kataria explained. "We only learn your language so we can know what you're plotting next. Originally, I thought that being amongst your kind would be a good way to find that out." She sighed. "Of course, within a week, it became clear that no one really had anything all that interesting going on in their head."

Asper nodded; an insult to her entire race was slightly more tolerable than an insult to her person, at least.

"I should have run, then," Kataria said. "I should be running now... Why am I not?"

"Is it"—Asper winced, bracing for another blow—"just Lenk that's keeping you here?"

"I protected him today," the shict said, a weak chuckle clawing its way out of her mouth. "He was going into one of his fits, so I stepped forward and did the talking. I _protected_ a human."

"You've done that before, haven't you?"

"I've killed something that might have killed a human before, but I never did... whatever it was I did," Kataria said. "He just needed help and I..."

"Uh-huh," Asper said after the shict's voice had trailed off. "And you did it because of his... fits did you call them?"

"Have you noticed them?"

Asper closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath. She wondered if Kataria could feel her tension growing, if she could feel the chill racking her body.

_Fits_ , she thought to herself. _I have noticed no fits. I have noticed what Denaos whispers, how he accuses Lenk of going mad, slowly. I have noticed the emptiness of Lenk's eyes, the death in his voice, the words he spoke_.

"Tell me," Asper said softly, the words finding their way to her lips of their own accord. "Do you listen to your instincts?"

"Of course."

"Even when they tell you something you don't want to hear?"

"What do you mean?"

"Let's talk about Lenk for a moment."

"All right," Kataria replied hesitantly.

"We don't know where he came from aside from a village no one's heard of, we don't know who his parents are, what his lineage is or even where he got his sword."

"That's not fair," Kataria protested. "Even _he_ doesn't know that."

"And does he know who taught him to fight?"

"What?"

"I learned from the priests, Dreadaeleon was taught by his master, even Denaos likely learned all that he knows from someone," Asper pressed. "Who taught you to fire a bow? To track?"

Kataria's body tensed up again, the kind of nervous tension that Asper had felt many times before. Uncertainty, doubt, fear. It ached more than she thought it might to put Kataria through them. But her duty, too, was clearer than she thought it might be.

"My mother," Kataria said. "But what—?"

"Have you ever known," Asper spoke silently, "anyone who fights, who kills as naturally as Lenk does?" At Kataria's silence, she pressed her back against her. "Have you seen him after he kills?"

Her question was not delivered with the cold, calculating tone she thought would be befitting. It was choked, quavering, but she could hardly help it. The realisations were only coming to her now, with swift and sudden horror. But perhaps that wasn't so bad, she reasoned; perhaps Kataria would be comforted to know someone shared her plight, someone that was trying to help her.

And she _would_ help the shict, she resolved. Helping people, regardless of what kind of people they were. That was why she had taken her oaths.

"I... I have," Kataria replied with such hesitation that Asper knew the same images filled her head.

"I've seen everyone kill," Asper whispered. "I forced myself to, to know how it was done, if... if I ever had to. Denaos boasts, you exult, Dreadaeleon pauses to breathe, even Gariath took the time to snort. But Lenk... does nothing. He says nothing, he doesn't react, but he looks... he looks..." The dread came off her tongue. "Satisfied. Whole."

She could feel Kataria tremble, or perhaps that was herself, for she frightened herself as much as she tried to frighten her companion. But perhaps both of them needed to be frightened, she reasoned, both of them needed to be scared in the face of this new realisation that, in the absence of any demon or longface, Lenk might be the greatest threat.

"Who looks like that?" she asked. "What would make a man act like that?"

Trauma? Madness? Something else? Whatever plagued him, whatever threatened him, threatened them all, Asper knew. And as she felt Kataria tremble, felt her go limp against her back, she knew her friend knew it as well.

"Your instincts were confused," Asper said softly. "You wanted to run, as would anyone, but you want to help and only a few can say they would want that."

But in this knowledge, Asper found peace, as demented as it sounded to her. In Kataria's sinking body, she found the urge to rise up. In her friend's suffering, she found a strength that allowed her to reach down and take Kataria's hand in her own, a strength that would carry her to the peace the priestess felt, a strength that would carry Lenk.

This was her purpose, her duty.

"And we will help him," Asper said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. "It's not gods or instinct that make us do it."

"Then what is it?" Kataria asked, her voice weak.

"You," Asper said gently. "You will do it, because you're in love."

This was the moment she lived for, the moment that had been far too rare in coming lately. The face of a child told they would walk again, the exasperated gasp of a moments-old mother told their infant was healthy, the solemn nod and sad smile of a widow who heard the blessings said over her husband's grave.

And now, she thought, the embrace between races supposed to be enemies, the long road to helping a friend recover.

This was it.

This was her purpose.

This was why.

She released Kataria's hand and turned around. Her companion did not, at first, but she waited patiently. It would come slowly, with great difficulty. It always did, but the reward was always greater in coming. And so she waited, watching as Kataria tensed, as Kataria clutched the gohmn leg in trembling fingers, smiling.

She continued to smile.

Right up until the leg lashed out and caught her in the face with such force as to snap her head to the side.

"Wh-what?" she asked, recovering from the blow with a hand on an astonished expression. "I didn't mean to say—"

"I'm not."

The leg whipped out again, struck her in the side with more force than a leg should be able.

"Okay, you're not, but—"

"I'm not."

Again it lashed out, found her elbow. It snapped, leaving a red mark upon Asper's flesh covered by the stain of its basting juice. She didn't even have time to form a reply before Kataria whirled, hurling what remained of the leg at her.

"I'm not."

She lunged, took Asper by the shoulders and hurled her to the earth. No anger in her face, no sadness, no tears. Nothing but something cold and stony loomed over her, a face as hard as the fist that came down and cracked upon her cheek.

"I'm not, I'm not, I'm _not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not—_ "

No protests from Asper, no denial but for the feeble defence she tried to muster, raising her hands to protect her face, futilely, as the shict blindly lashed out and struck her over and over, once for each word, each kiss of fist to face a confirmation, each bruise that blossomed a reality.

And then, it stopped, without gloating, without a reason, without even a noise. Asper heard the shict flee, heard her running with all the desperation one flees for their life with.

The sound faded into nothingness. The trees whispered as the sun began to set behind them. In the distance, toward the village, a whoop of celebration rose. Their feast was starting.

She should rise, she knew, and go to it. She should rise, even though her body was racked with pain. She should go, even though her legs felt dead and useless beneath her. She should see the others, even though her eyes were filled with tears. She should see them, they who had beaten her, lied to her, disparaged her faith and tried to throttle her.

She should.

But she could not think of a reason why.

# ACT THREE

#  _Feast among the Bones_

# _Twenty-Six_

# WHISPERS IN DARK PLACES

_The Aeons' Gate_

_The Island of Teji_

_Fall, early... maybe?_

_Of my grandfather, I don't remember much. Of my father, even less. He was a farmer, a quiet man, always tithed. Even as I'm able to remember more here on Teji, that's roughly all I recall_.

_Well, that's not entirely true. I do remember what he said to me, once_.

_"There are two kinds of men in this world: those who live with war and those who can't live without it. We can live without it. We can live a long time_."

_I remember he died in fire_.

_I had always wanted to believe I could live without war. Even after I picked up my grandfather's sword, I wanted to know of a time when I could put it down again. I had always wanted to say that this part of my life was something I did to survive and nothing more. I wanted to be able to tell my children that we could live without war_.

_I wanted children_.

_And for the past few days, I was certain I would have them and that I could tell them that_.

_Maybe I was wrong. Maybe father was wrong_.

_I tried. I really did. Khetashe knows how I did, how I tried not to think about my missing sword or the tome or that life I left at the bottom of the ocean. I tried to do this "normal" thing, to be the kind of man who isn't obsessed with death—his or someone else's_.

_It's harder to do than I thought_.

_The bones are everywhere on Teji. I can't take a step outside the village without stubbing my toe on someone's bleached face. The reek of death is always present, and so the Owauku light fires to scare away the spirits. They survive off their roaches. The roaches thrive off the island's tubers. The tubers are the only edible growing things here_.

_And here, amidst the bones and the death, I thought I would become normal.I thought this was where I could sit back and stare at the sunset and not worry over whether or not I was going to live tomorrow_.

_Days ago, I was ready to leave this life behind_.

_Maybe I was wrong_.

_Things are tense. It must be the water... the air... whichever one paranoia breeds in. Crooked stares meet me wherever I go. People go quiet when I pass. I hear them whisper as I leave_.

_The Owauku try to hide it, forcing big grins, friendly chatter before they slip away from my sight. The Gonwa aren't nearly so interested in my comfort. They stare, without shame, until I leave. They speak in their own tongue, in low murmurs, even as I stare at them. And now, they've started following me_.

_Or one has, anyway. Hongwe, they call him, the spokesman for the Gonwa. I don't know if he's been doing it for a while and I just caught on or what. But when I walk through the forest, down the beach, he follows me. He only leaves if I try to talk to him. And even then, he does so without excuse or apology_.

_Granted, if he were going to kill me, he probably wouldn't bother with either. But then, if he were going to kill me, he's been taking his time_.

_Teji is one of the few places I've been able to sleep soundly, without worry for the fact that my organs are almost entirely on display for stabbing. And I happen to know from the many_ , many _times Bagagame has told me Hongwe's watched me sleep that the only thing standing between my kidneys and a knife is a thin strip of leather and a wall of reeds_.

_So far, he's done nothing. And as strange as it sounds, I'm not really that worried about a walking lizard that brazenly stalks me and possibly watches me sleep. One wouldn't think I'd have bigger concerns than that, but it would seem poor form to start questioning it now_.

_My companions..._

_I don't think I've ever truly trusted them. Really, I've just been able to predict them up to this point. Their feelings are easy to see; their emotions are always apparent. And while I'm not a man who considers himself in touch with—or interested in—such things, I can tell that all of them are holding back something_.

_Dreadaeleon skulks around the edges of my periphery, almost as bad as Hongwe. I say "almost" only because he spooks and flees the moment he even gets a whiff of me. I may have been harsh with him in the forest, but he's never... well_ , rarely _been this jittery before_.

_Denaos tells me, in passing, that Dread is going through some changes. That's about all he'll ever tell me. It's interesting: of all the sins I've tallied against Denaos, drunkenness was not one until now. If I don't speak to him before breakfast, I'll never understand him before the slurring, assuming he doesn't go spilling his innards in the bushes. Each time I try to talk to him, he's got an alcohol-fuelled excuse that I cannot argue against. It almost seems like he's planning eachdrunken snore, each incomprehensible rant. Or maybe he just likes his list of sins well rounded_.

_In such cases as this, Asper can usually provide insight, but she's been just as silent. And when I say silent, I mean exactly that. Dreadaeleon flees, Denaos drinks, Asper doesn't even look at me. I might get the occasional nod or rehearsed advice she's said to a hundred different grieving widows, but she won't look me in the eyes. I pressed her once; she screamed_.

_"Ask your stupid little shict if you're so Gods-damned concerned about everything! Pointy-eared little beast knows everything, anyway!_ "

_"Humans, eh?" was the extent of Kataria's explanation when I did consult said beast. Of all of them, Kataria is the one who doesn't flee, who will look me in the eyes. I should be happy with this. But she's the most tense of all, even when she smiles. Especially when she smiles_.

_She seems at ease, but her ears are always high on her head. She's always alert, always listening to me just a bit too closely, waiting for me to say... something_.

_She doesn't stare anymore_.

_I never thought I would be worried by that_.

_I never considered them honest, but I did consider them open. Some more than others. Sometimes I wonder if Gariath, and his constant threats, kept all our tension directed toward him. These bipedal lizards just don't have the same appeal that he has_.

_Sorry. Had_.

_If he's alive, he's not coming back. He's wanted to be rid of us for ages, so he said. Of course, he didn't seem to want to live very badly to begin with, so perhaps he's found a nice cliff to leap from. Either way, I hope he's happy_.

_I want them all to be happy. I do. I want them to be able to live without war. I want us to part ways and be able to forget that our best memories together were born in bloodshed_.

_And maybe it's up to me to help them with that. I am the leader, after all. I should be there for them, help them with this, no matter how drunk, skittish, silent or paranoid_.

_It won't be easy. For any of us, least of all me. I hear the voice. Not always, not often, but I know it's there. I'm likely the one man who shouldn't be looking into someone else's life_.

_But I can do this_.

_I can do this for all of us_.

_Tonight is Togu's celebration, a "kampo," he calls it. It's something of a joint feast to herald the end of summer and remember the day humans came to their island with salvation from starvation. To hear the other Owauku speak of it, it's an excuse to drink fermented bug guts and rut_.

_Sounds like fun_.

_As good a time as any to gather everyone together, to tell them all that I've been thinking, to tell them what we can do, that we can live without war. From there? I suppose I'll find out_.

_Hope is not going to come easy_.

_But I can do this_.

# _Twenty-Seven_

# AN INVITATION WITH FISTS

_K AMPO!_"

The collective roar of jubilation rose from the village's valley into the night sky like an eruption from a volcano too long dormant.

The Owauku had come exploding out of their huts and lean-tos in waist-high green tides, setting bonfires alight to challenge the black sky overhead. Their drums had followed shortly after, pounding relentlessly without concern for rhythm. And, as though it were some honoured guest arriving to mark the official beginning of the festivities, the _mangwo_ had been rolled out in tremendous hollowed-out gourds, dispensed into smaller cups for the patient. Those lizardmen not possessing such restraint simply buried their heads in the drink and came out barely alive but wholly satisfied.

Once Lenk had seen enough to know that he was quite annoyed by the whole affair, his attentions turned to the Gonwa. To a lizardman, they abstained from the merriment, keeping out of the paths of the exuberant Owauku, lingering near fires only long enough to cook gohmn. Against the throngs of their squat, joyous hosts, they stood in groups of three or five, with only three or five groups amongst them.

Only now, as he walked along the edge of the upper lip of the valley, did Lenk truly notice how few and how silent they were.

"They aren't going to join?" he asked the brightly coloured creature to his side, gesturing to a nearby throng of Gonwa.

"The Gonwa come from Komga," Togu explained. "They have always had enough, so they don't think it cause to celebrate when you no longer have nothing." He sniffed. "Also, they're just _weird_."

"Right, but weren't they invited? You said this was for _us_ , didn't you?"

"That might have been a lie."

"Might have been?"

"They get hard to keep track of when you have a position of authority," Togu replied. "You know... well, of course _you_ know. You lead, don't you?"

"Yes, but I don't really lie." Lenk's eyebrows rose appreciatively. "Is that what I've been doing wrong?"

"Probably," Togu said. "At any rate, it's not a _complete_ lie. This time twenty years ago, humans came to our starving island and brought with them all we needed to become what we are today: coin to collect, grains to make the gohmns grow strong..."

" _And all the brandy needed to forget when we didn't be havin"_ 'e _m!_ " a passing Owauku cried out, to the roaring amusement of his companions.

"I've been curious," Lenk said, glancing to the distant forest. "If your forests are barren, how have you survived this long?"

"Barely," Togu replied. "Our numbers reached a point where we could subsist off of the occasional fish caught. But they swam so far from our shores that we could only bring back so many. We survived by starving."

"Until the humans came."

"Yes," Togu continued, "and the _Kampo_ is here to remind us of what the humans have done for us, and to celebrate what we came from. In a way, it is a celebration of you." He flashed a broad grin at the young man. "Of course, there was some hope that you'd be smitten by our native charm and be convinced to stay and convince more humans to come."

Lenk blinked, pondering if the intent fixation of both of the Owauku's eyes was supposed to be expectant, speculative or possibly slightly nauseous. Hedging his bets, he simply shrugged.

"Sorry," he replied. "We're hoping to leave tomorrow." He glanced over the ledge, deeper in the valley, where he spied Denaos adding another half-gourd cup to a growing pile. "Most of us, anyway. In fact, I was hoping to see the boat."

"The boat?"

"The one you're lend... giving us," Lenk replied. "If I can figure out how it works now, it'll save the time of learning it tomorrow."

"Of course... tomorrow..." Togu waddled to the edge and stared down at the jubilant masses. "My people have forgotten the word, it sometimes seems. A few down there likely remember the barren forests we came from, but they have plenty now, so why should they remember?" He sighed deeply, and then looked to Lenk. "Have you ever had this problem in your position? Sparing your friends the harshness so that they might continue to laugh and smile?"

"As far as most of them are concerned, the laughing and smiling tends to come from killing, which in turn seems to come from being honest," Lenk replied, shrugging. "But that's killing. It's done when it needs to be done."

"And you leave Teji? Will you not return to more killing?"

"I don't plan on it. I've seen plenty of it."

"I see..." Togu said, looking back down at his people. "You would say it is fair, then, to avoid spilling blood when need be?"

"I would say," Lenk replied slowly, "that bloodshed is something that gets very tiring, quickly. If it's at all possible to live without it, I don't think it's a ridiculous idea." He offered a weak smile. "So can't some things just come without it?"

He laughed a vacant laugh. Somehow, he didn't feel quite convinced by his own words.

"I am glad you see things that way," Togu said, bobbing his head as he turned about and began heading back up the valley's edge toward his stone hut. "Apologies, cousin. The _Kampo_ is tiring to people in my position. I will see you at the end of it all."

Lenk nodded stiffly. Somehow, Togu didn't sound convinced, either.

It was quickly forgotten, however, as he watched Togu fight against the tide of Owauku pouring into the deeper levels of the valley. The king's words lingered in his ears, the uncertainty in them infecting his thoughts.

He wasn't much of a liar, he admitted to himself. Honesty had been bred into him. But when it came to his companions, it was really more a matter of practicality; lying to them simply wasn't feasible.

Asper had taken enough confessionals to know them before they even began. Dreadaeleon asked too many questions for any to hold up against him. Gariath claimed to be able to smell lies and proved to be able to beat the truth out of people he suspected it of. Denaos would hear them, nod slowly, and then grin knowingly. And Kataria...

_She believes you_ , he told himself. _She follows you, anyway, doesn't she? The others threaten to leave if they don't get their way and you tell them you don't care if they do and that's the truth. But she's never tried to leave..._

He swallowed hard. His mouth felt dry. The bonfires were suddenly unbearably warm.

" _So what are you going to tell her when she does?_ "

"Hey!"

He turned and saw her wading through the green herds towards him. He blinked.

"Hey," he replied.

" _Not as earth-shattering as you'd hoped, is it?_ "

"I thought you'd be with the others," Kataria said, stepping over a staggering, laughing Owauku.

"Probably not a good idea," Lenk said, glancing down to the pink shapes in the valley below. "They..."

" _What are you going to tell her? That they looked at you like_ she _does and you wanted to strangle them?_ "

"Annoyed me."

" _Not quite honest, but that hardly matters_."

"I'm sure you could join them, though," he offered, ignoring the voice.

She shook her head. "Asper and I had a disagreement."

"What kind of disagreement?"

"I beat her with a roach leg."

"Ah."

Through the din of festivities rising from the valley, a silence hung between them that felt unfamiliar. Even amongst the roiling green stew below, even as she stood beside him, he could not help but feel as though he were alone.

" _A thought occurs_."

Almost alone, anyway.

" _Why bother telling her anything? Is that not how all your problems start?_ "

_I can't deal with you right now_.

" _Why not simply enjoy the celebration? Can't some things come without strife?_ "

_I... suppose that makes sense_.

" _You said it yourself, did you not?_ "

_I did. It made sense, then, too_. He smiled. _I should relax, shouldn't I?_

A cold wind swept over the ridge.

" _Idiocy_."

He trembled at the sudden chill. That her hand then fell upon his shoulder should have stopped such a quaking, he knew, yet it didn't. Not until he turned and looked into her eyes.

After that, he felt himself about to shudder, shatter and fall apart.

There was a certainty in her stare that pained him to see. In her eyes was reflected that which he had feared, that thought that had consumed him since morning. She stared at him with a knowledge of who she was, _what_ she was.

She knew how this was going to end.

He knew it now, too.

"Hey," she said again.

"Hey," he replied.

He waited for the confirmation, the declaration as to how it would all happen, how it would all end. He braced himself, wondering if it might be easier just to hurl himself off the ledge right now. She spoke.

"Let's get drunk."

"Oh!" His eyes went a bit too wide for anything other than tumbling screaming over a ridge. "That's what you want to do."

"Yeah." She eyed him cautiously. "What did you think I wanted?"

He glanced down into the throngs below. _Not too steep_ , he noted. _Probably wouldn't have killed you, anyway, not with your luck_.

"Nothing," he said, sighing. "Let's go."

"Huh..."

Asper had done many services for the Healer in her time, tending to the wounds of many different people. Absently, as she felt a pair of fingers prod the bruise under her cheek, she wondered if others felt as uncomfortable as she did when she tended to them.

"Yeah, this isn't anything to be particularly concerned about," Denaos said, giving her cheek a light pat.

"She beat me with a basted leg from a giant bug," Asper growled, slapping away his hand. "How is that _not_ worth concern?"

"She does a lot of things," Dreadaeleon offered with a shrug. "She spits, farts, snorts..."

"And I have a strong suspicion that she once left a steaming pile in my pack," Denaos added.

"I liked that pack," Dreadaeleon said.

"It will be missed." the rogue replied, sighing. He glanced Asper over and took another sip from his half-gourd. "At any rate, she wasn't _trying_ to hurt you. I'd say she was likely pulling her punches, probably just to scare you." He eyed her curiously. "What'd you say to her, anyway?"

"Nothing that's worth repeating to someone who gives his medical opinion while drinking," she replied sharply.

"It's not like there's a lot of other options."

"Well," Dreadaeleon said meekly, taking a step forward and extending trembling hands, "I... I could take a look, I suppose."

"It's fine, thanks," Asper said, waving his concern away.

"Well, no! I mean... are you sure?" the boy asked, swallowing hard. "It's not that much of a problem, really. I'm familiar with..." His eyes quivered. "Anatomy."

"Yes, very familiar," Denaos agreed. "Particularly the relationship between fists and genitalia."

"That's not—" The boy's anxiety boiled to ire as he whirled upon the rogue, glancing at his drink. "That's what? Your fourth tonight?"

"Astute."

"I think you have a problem."

"I agree." Denaos downed the last of the liquid and leaned in close to the boy, his words tumbling out on a tangy reek. "Though I'm hoping that if I drink enough, you'll go away."

"You _are_ drinking quite a bit," Asper said, furrowing her brow. "How is it you're even still standing?"

"This stuff is tasty, indeed," Denaos replied, smacking his lips, "but not that rough to anyone who's ever drunk stronger than wine." He cast a sidelong glare at Dreadaeleon. "Or milk."

"I've drunk before," the boy protested.

"You had _one_ sip of ale and started crying," Denaos replied. "Perhaps you should preserve your dignity now and flee before you find a sip of _this_ stuff and add involuntary urination to the problem."

Dreadaeleon somehow managed to find a healthy medium between fury and astonishment at the insult. Asper felt the passing—swiftly—urge to question the rogue's sudden and frequent interest in the boy's bladder, but something else about the tall man drew her attention.

He had made it clear from the moment she had met him that liquor was second on his list of great loves, wedged neatly between cheap prostitutes and portraits depicting expensive prostitutes. And he had taken great pains to make it clear that there was never any excuse for a rush when enjoying any of those three.

Thus to see him imbibe so, with such reckless desperation, made her pause.

"Why _are_ you drinking so much, anyway?" she asked.

The swiftness with which he turned to regard her was not half as startling as the look upon his face. It lingered for only a breath longer, but she saw it clearly, the same slight slackening in his jaw, the same subtle sinking in his eyes.

And then, even swifter, it was gone, replaced with a grin too fierce to be convincing to either of them.

"It's a party, is it not?" he asked, laughing weakly. "Who doesn't have fun at a party? Besides you, I mean."

"I'm not having fun because of the fact that I was violently assaulted and I'm surrounded by drunks"—she paused and edged away from a flailing, cackling Owauku—"of various sizes and pigments."

"Perhaps you could try, possibly?" he suggested. "I mean, before _too_ long, you'll be back in cold temples, reciting stale vows and flagellating yourself whenever you even think of something mildly amusing. This might be your last chance to do something interesting."

"Wait, what?" Dreadaeleon glanced at Asper, worry plain on his face. "You're leaving?"

"What did you expect was going to happen when we reached the mainland?" Denaos answered before the priestess could.

"I don't know... find more work or something?" Dreadaeleon replied. "That's what adventurers do, isn't it?"

"Adventurers take the opportunities they're given," the rogue spat back. "And given that only one of us has the opportunity and reputation to return to decent society, why wouldn't they take it?"

Asper made no response to the tall man beyond a look of intent scrutiny. There was something to his eyes, she thought, a quaver he sought to bury beneath snideness and sarcasm that continually dug its way out. It was as if the minute cracks to his visage had begun to spread, seeping into his voice, exposing something dire and desperate beneath.

"And what," she asked him softly, "will you do when we part ways, Denaos?"

She had barely expected to be heard through the din of drumming and raucous cheer that echoed off the valley walls. And yet the expression on his face made it quite clear that he had. It didn't so much crack as fall off in one great, pale sheet, leaving behind a wild, sunken stare and a long, sleepless face.

He merely stared at her, hollow, as though he weren't certain whether to search for words or a knife.

"I don't know," he whispered.

His words were lost on the smoke of the fires, vanishing into the night air. And he, too, vanished, turning and staggering through the green jubilation. And she simply watched him go.

Against the chaotic festivities and imbibings in the valley, she was starkly aware of Dreadaeleon's impassiveness. And against his cold expression and folded arms, she was suddenly aware of her own furrowed brow and open mouth.

"You look calm," she said with a hint of envy.

"Should I not be?" he asked, glancing over to her.

"You weren't at all... confused by what just happened?"

"A drunken lout is doing things drunken and loutish," the boy said, shrugging. "He'll wake up tomorrow with a headache and a desperate desire that we all forget what he said tonight. Shortly after that, we'll be back to hearing snideness, cynicism and sarcasm until his neurosis demands him to try and drown himself again." He glanced over the woman's shoulder. "Speaking of..."

She followed his gaze to a nearby puddle fed by a thin trickle of water, in which an Owauku was passed out facedown, a rapidly fading line of bubbles emerging. She made a move to rise up and help the creature, but Dreadaeleon's lips were quicker. At a muttered, alien word, the lizardman was flipped over by an invisible force and unceremoniously dropped on his back. Apparently heedless of the roughness, he looked up through eyes as bleary as those the size of fruits could be and grinned.

"Oh, _cousin_ ," he burbled through liquor-stained teeth, "someone loves me tonight."

She couldn't help but smile at the boy. "That was rather nice of you."

"Oh," he said, looking a little surprised. "Yes, I suppose it was."

"I thought wizards didn't waste power, though."

"Well... he was probably going to die," Dreadaeleon said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I suppose we _could_ have pulled him out ourselves, but by then he might have inhaled a lot of water and you'd feel compelled to give him the kiss of life and..."

"Ah," she said, laughing. "How noble of you to save me from having to mouth a lizard." Her laugh faded, but her smile did not as she regarded him intently. "How did you know?"

"I suspected that it was worth it to spare you having to resuscitate him and—"

"No, how do you _know_?" she interrupted. "How are you always so sure?"

"What?" He cast her a baffled look. "I'm not sure I—"

"Yes, you are," she replied. "You always are. You were certain that you could get us to shore when the ship was destroyed, you know Denaos will be fine, you knew you had to save that lizard... how?"

He studied her intently and she suddenly understood that her face mirrored his own; somewhere, her expression had gone from smiling curiosity to careful scrutiny. His voice, however, bore none of the uncertainty of hers.

"Why," he asked, "do you wish to know?"

"Because I'm not sure," she blurted out, the answer writhing on her tongue. "I haven't been sure for a long time." She glanced down at the earth. "It wasn't always like this. I used to know, because the Gods had to know, and I was content with that."

"I know you don't want to hear it," Dreadaeleon replied, "but I don't think you'll find any answers in gods. I don't think anyone ever has."

She should have grown angry, indignant at that. Instead, she looked at him again and frowned. "When did you first know?"

"What?"

"That you didn't believe in the Gods?"

"Ah," he replied. Now he stared at the earth. "About a year after I was indoctrinated into the Venarium. I was about eleven, then, my parents having said good-bye to me when I was ten." He sighed. "They were Karnerian immigrants to Muraska, strict followers of Daeon."

"The Conqueror," she said.

"Indeed. They raised me to believe that their horned god would descend one day, subjugate the Sainites and lay waste to the bestial races, ushering in a new age of progress for humanity. When I learned of my power by accidentally setting my bed on fire, my father wasn't furious, nor did he sing praises to Daeon. Instead, a week later, the man who would become my tutor took me away and my father had a thick pouch at his belt."

"They _sold_ you?"

"It's not an uncommon practice," he replied. "The Venarium has the right to demand children who show talent—to preserve the Laws, of course—but an incentive is offered for people who turn theirs in before it comes to hunting them down."

"So it was then..."

"No. I was still saying my prayers as I practised my spells, not taking meals I hadn't earned, still cursing Sainites. It wasn't until my indoctrination..." He stared up at the sky. "We all do a task with our mentors to realise our duties to the Venarium. Mine was to hunt down a heretic, someone who practises magic outside our influence.

"We learned he was a priest, a Daeonist, who had thought to put his talents to help his church: repairing roofs, warding off Sainites, that sort of thing. We tracked him down to his home and burst in, demanding that he come with us. He was weak, having no control over his powers had drained him. So his wife stepped before us, my master and I, and threw her arms out to stop us, saying we could not take him, that Daeon needed him.

"We followed protocol, of course. We cited precedent, the agreement between the Venarium and all civilised nations to respect our Laws. After that, a verbal warning, and then finally, a demonstration of power." His face grew hard, bitter. "She refused to abide by all three." His voice was a whisper. "We... I burned her alive."

Asper stared at him intently. The shock in her gullet was choked by sympathy; she edged closer to him.

"So that did it?"

"That only made me wonder," he replied. "If a god did exist, and he did love us to the point that we would die for him... why did my parents give me up so easily?"

When he had finished speaking, she saw him differently and was certain it was his face, and not her eyes, that had changed. By faith or nature, she strove to see him softer, more vulnerable. She scrutinised his eyes for moisture, but found only hardness. His body had become more rigid, as though it ate and found sustenance from his words as he folded his arms and stared past the crowds of lizardmen.

It was neither faith nor nature, she told herself, that made her reach out a hand and place it upon his shoulder.

"Have you ever... told anyone else about this?"

She expected him to tremble, as he occasionally did in her presence. It was with utter calm that he turned to her, however.

"It is not a problem of the Venarium, hence not a problem of my mentor, hence no."

"There are others to talk to, you know," she offered.

"I find no solace in priests, obviously," he replied coldly. "And who amongst the others would listen, even if I wanted to talk to them?"

"Me?" she asked, smiling.

Now, he trembled, as though the thought were only occurring to him now. "I... already said about priests—"

"I'm also a friend," she replied, her smiling fading as she glanced down. "And I've been considering my position as to the Gods." She awaited some considerate word, some phrase of understanding from him, perhaps even a little reassurance. When he merely stared blankly at her, she continued, regardless. "It seems... sometimes that no one's listening. I mean, up there.

"Well, how could they, right? Even if you don't believe that the Gods watch over _everyone_ , they're supposed to watch over their followers, aren't they? So how come I'm frequently surrounded by people obsessed with causing injuries that I'm supposed to cure? And half the time, they're inflicting said injuries on _me_. I've thought it over, wondered if this was just all a test, but what kind of test just doesn't end? And what about gods whose messages conflict with others"? If there are so many, and not all of them can be right, who is?"

She sighed, rubbed her eyes, heard him take in a deep, quivering breath.

"You've probably thought about this before, haven't you? I mean, maybe you've wondered if there was anything beyond just this. So, if anyone has some insight, I'd wager you—"

Empty space greeted her when she looked up, the boy vanished amidst the crowd.

"Do."

No sigh followed; she was out of them, almost out of sources for answers, as well. She muttered angrily, reaching out and snatching a _mangwo-_ filled gourd from a passing Owauku who scarcely noticed. She stared down at it with more thought than liquor likely deserved.

_Almost_ , she told herself as she tipped her head back and drank, _but not yet_.

Feasts, fetes and parties were foggy memories in Lenk's mind. He could recall food, lights, people. He could not recall tastes, warmth, faces. Disturbing, he knew, cause for great alarm, but he could not bring himself to care. The world was without chill memories and cold fears. The bonfires burned brightly; the liquor had long since drowned any concern he had for the sweat peeling off his body and the loincloth precariously tied about his hips.

No sense in worrying about it, anyway, he thought. After the _Kampo_ , he determined that no other parties would ever matter. Even if he could have remembered them, Steadbrook's humble festivities would be a world behind the Owauku's riots.

And, to hear from her, at least six worlds behind a shictish party.

"So, anyway," Kataria said through a voice thick with restrained giggling, "there are pretty much only three things worth celebrating." She counted them off on her fingers. "Birth, death and raids."

"Raids," Lenk mused, his mind seeming to follow his tongue rather than the other way around. "You typically kill humans during them, don't you?"

"Sometimes, and only because they're the most numerous. But Tulwar, too, and Vulgores, Couthi... well, not Couthi, anymore, obviously, but only because they had it coming."

"So, you celebrate birth, death... and more death?"

"If you want to dumb it down like a dumb... dumb, yeah," she grunted, slurring at the edges of her speech. "But it's the whole _atmosphere_ that makes it special. See, we bring back all the loot... er, reclamations back to camp and eat and drink and sing, _and_ if there was one who was particularly bothersome, we drag his body back to camp—never alive, see—and make a _whitetree_. That's when we take them by their legs and... and..."

She looked up, the fierce glow of her green eyes a contrast to the sheepish smile she shot him.

"It's a tradition," she said, chuckling. "Even if it is violent, you aren't in any place to pass judgement."

"I never did," he replied, offering a grin of his own.

"Yeah, but you were thinking it." She made to step closer and wound up nearly toppling over, her face a hairsbreadth from his. "I know. I can smell your brains."

That statement, at the moment, was the least offensive thing about her and, no matter what she smelled, brains certainly weren't what filled Lenk's nose. Her breath reeked of liquor, roiling out from between her teeth in a great cloud. This was challenged only by the smoky odour of her body, her usual musk complemented by the copious amounts of sweat painting her flesh.

He was not intoxicated, not by the sight or scent of her, at least. His fifth empty cup lay in the sand behind him, forgotten and neglected. His head was swimming, his body quivering; it felt as though the _mangwo_ coursed through his veins. Drums were still pounding, song still roaring, but the idea of crashing down onto the sand and waiting for the morning to come seemed quite appealing.

_Or it had, anyway_.

Her presence invited a quick and ruthless sobriety. It was not likely that she could smell his brains anymore, since he could feel them threatening to leak out of his ears as she swayed closer to him. Thought faded, leaving all focus for sight and sound... and smell.

The firelight bathed her sweat-slick skin in gold, battling the pervasive moonlight's determination to paint her silver, both defeated by the smudges of earth and mud that smeared her pale skin from where she had fallen more than a few times. Her breath was an omnisensed affront: a reeking, heavy, warm cloud. Her smile was bright, sharp, lazy like a sated predator. The typical sharp scrutiny of her eyes was smothered beneath heavy lids. Her belly trembled, a belch rising up out of her mouth. He blinked, stared, heard, smelled.

Arousal, he reasoned, was possibly the _least_ sane, and—given his attire—most awkward, response imaginable.

It hurt, if only slightly, to take a step back.

"So," he said, "do you miss it?"

"Miss what?" she asked with a sneer. "My family? My people?" She raised a brow. "Or the killing?"

"Is that all you have to go back to?"

She turned her frown away and asked the ground instead of him. "What else is there?"

"Other things."

"Oh yeah?" she asked. "What is it you're going back to?"

A good question, he thought, as he stared at her. He had no family to go back to, and while, technically, his "people" were in no short supply, he had no particular group of humans he wished to call by that name. She stared at him expectantly, as though waiting for his eyes to offer an answer his lips could not.

"To a place where I don't have to kill anymore."

Her expression was unreadable. It might have been, anyway, if he had been staring at it. Instead he met her eyes, the same eyes that he had squirmed under, that he had shouted at her over, that he had turned away from, feeling the chills that followed the stare, hearing the voice that followed the chills.

_Turn away now_ , he told himself. _Better to not know her answer. Even if she doesn't kill you right now, even if she doesn't say she'll go back to the killing even after all of this, you can't live with this. Not the staring. Not the question if she ever really means what she's going to say. You can't live with this, just as she can't live without the killing. Better to turn away now_.

Drums thundered. Her ears twitched. She didn't blink.

_Better to turn away_.

Fires smouldered. He breathed deeply. He stared back.

_Turn away_.

Her lips twitched. He held his breath.

She smiled at him.

All at once, heat seemed to return to him, his blood turning to _mangwo_ again. He smiled back, strained to smile harder than she was, to show her he felt the same as her. Of course, he thought, if he could read past the pained smile and know exactly _what_ she was feeling, that would have been helpful, too, but he resolved to make do with what he knew.

He knew he wanted this bloodless moment, this voiceless silence, this stare he could not turn away from to last for the years to come.

And as he stared at her—at the sad, pitying smile she gave him—he knew he had only one more night.

"So!" she said swiftly, lids drooping, smile widening. "Why aren't we still drinking?" _If that_.

"It's a party, right?" she asked with a quavering laugh. "We're going to be at sea for who knows how long by tomorrow. Best not think about anything but tonight, right?" She jerked a nod on his behalf. "Of course right."

He said nothing as he followed her farther over the ridge, her eyes furtively searching for any sign of the drink. Any drop visible, however, was fast disappearing down gaping, green gullets. He noticed that her ire seemed to rise with every moment her lips were left dry, a growl rumbling through her body. He could almost see the hackles rise on her naked back.

_Denaos was probably right, you know_ , he told himself. _She thrives on the violence. She can't even go this long without getting angry. How long could you possibly take that in? It's the right decision, then. Say nothing. Try not to even think about her. That's wisest_.

It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he rarely took the wisest course of action. And as he walked behind her, eyes drawn to her slender, sweat-kissed back, he began to develop a theory as to why that was.

Desperate to turn his attention to anything else, he glanced at the rapidly thinning throngs of various green bodies. The lizardmen were vanishing, either collapsing into dark corners or wandering off, leaving only the echoes of their laughter and their aromas behind.

"Where the hell are all of them even going?" he muttered to no one. "Is... is it us? Do we smell or something?"

"Who knows?" she said, chuckling. "Maybe there's some ancient code of conduct for drinking with lizard-things that we're not adhering to."

"Of course. Maybe if we ate insects we'd be fine."

She laughed a long, obnoxious laugh. The very same noise that he had once loathed now put him at ease. Whatever he might be feeling, all the tragic and inconceivable thoughts he might have, she felt none of them. That much was clear by the ease with which she carried herself around him, how swift she was to laugh, how very much unlike him she appeared to be.

_Good_ , he thought, glancing at a nearby fire, _that's good. If she's not feeling anything, then there's nothing to talk about. I mean, if she was going to feel anything, she would have done it with a lot of drink, wouldn't she? The worst is behind you, my friend. Well done. Well done, ind—_

His brief self-congratulatory mood was quashed the moment he collided with her. She had turned about, regarding him with an intent stare. Enraptured, he was only aware of their proximity as he felt their sweat mingle between their skin, the rise of her belly pressing against his as she breathed deeply. His pulse raced, far too swiftly for him to feel hers, as blood quickened through his body.

"Sorry," he muttered and moved to step away.

He hadn't made it another step before she lashed out her hands and seized him. The blood had rushed out of his head, leaving him far too slow-witted to realise what was happening, let alone resist it. Her nails sank into his skin with predatory possessiveness as she drew him against her body and leaned out to press her lips against his.

There was no patience in her embrace, no sense of tact and certainly no hesitation. Her tongue slid past his lips in hasty, urgent fury. His thoughts were left far behind as his senses raced ahead on a thundering heartbeat. He could taste the _mangwo_ on her tongue, feel the need in her breath and hear the growl that welled up inside her, quaking through her body and into his.

Breathless and blind, his mind finally caught up to his senses, barely conscious of what was happening. By the time he realised it, however, his body had already acted. His arm had snaked around her, feeling the tension in her as he pulled her close. His hand had woven into her locks, pressing her lips farther against his, and a feral need that he hadn't even realised was inside him burst out through his mouth. It matched her vigour, matched his pain, fingers clenching her hair where hers sank into his skin, drawing her firmly against him as she pulled at him with animal fury.

And when he finally had the space to think, it was without words: a short, fleeting sense of overwhelming satiation that threatened to bring him to his knees.

And it was made all the shorter when her hands snaked out, parting from his skin in an instant to come up between them. His chest nearly ruptured against the force with which she shoved him, sending him toppling upon his rear to the sand. He stared up, agog and slack-jawed, only to find the same expression staring back at him.

"Hey," she said softly. "Sorry about that."

"No, it wasn't—"

"It was," she interrupted, shaking her head. "It... it really, really was. Sorry. Sorry." Her face contorted in agony as she whirled about, fleeing past the throngs of lizardmen, past the smouldering fires, into the night. "Damn, damn, damn, damn..."

And he, sitting on his rear, staring at the darkness into which she had vanished, finally found the time to think.

_Well done, indeed_.

"Not fair, not fair, not fair."

Dreadaeleon's words churned into his mouth on acrid bile. His breath was clogged with the taste of acid; his mouth felt packed with a tongue twice its actual size. With every step he took as he scurried behind Togu's stone house, his stomach pulled its knot a little tighter.

And he still spoke.

"She was about to... about to..." He collapsed beside the hut's wall, gasping for air as he felt the nausea roil in his throat. "About to do _something_. And now this happens? _NOW?_ "

His indignation was punished with a painful clench within his belly that sent his hands to the earth, his mouth gaping open with a retching noise that stripped his throat. Something was brewing inside him, fighting its way through his knotted stomach with thick, sticky fists. His eyes bulged, blinded by tears. His jaw craned open, stretched painfully wide in anticipation of what clawed its way out of his throat.

The vomit came out on a gargling howl, tearing itself free to douse the nearby shrubbery. Dreadaeleon knew not how long it lasted; his attention was focused on keeping all other orifices shut.

It did end, however, and Dreadaeleon lay gasping on the sand, the bile dripping past his lips to pool on the earth. The pain subsided in diminishing throbs, but not slowly enough to spare him from his own thoughts and his regrets and his anger.

This was something to be worried about. This was something to be terrified about. These reactions were not normal, not to anyone not suffering the Decay. Now was a time for prudent thought, careful concern. At any rate, he certainly shouldn't have felt the rage that he did.

But he had been so _close_.

It had been a graceless exit, naturally; there was no graceful way to run away to spill one's intestines out on the earth. He would have very much liked to have stayed, to discuss philosophy with Asper. She had been so open, enough to make him open, as well. He had told no one of his parents, of his initiation into the Venarium. She had listened so thoughtfully; she had looked at him so eagerly; she had _touched_ him. He could still feel her fingers on his shoulder.

And then he had gone and ruined it all. She loathed him now, he was certain. How could she not? She had reached out to him, he had bared his past to her, and when she sought answers, when she recognised that _he_ had them, he had run away to paint the shrubbery with his supper.

It was better that she _hadn't_ seen that, of course, but not by much.

He would have spared himself more thought for self-loathing if not for the pungent scent of smoke drifting up to his nostrils. He glanced up at what had started as shrubbery, now resembling some sort of half-digested salad. His vomit was hungrily chewing on it with a thousand tiny, semiliquid mouths, belching steam with every moment it reduced the plant to a brown, messy blob.

Suddenly, the days of fiery urine seemed not quite so bad.

His condition was worsening.

Whatever offences he might have committed were forgotten as that phrase echoed in his head. His body was acting, amplifying its functions, functions that should not _be_ amplified, of its own accord. It had likely been that little display in the valley, pulling the Owauku from the puddle, that had done it. It was a stupid thing to do, he reminded himself.

_But she had been so impressed_...

A small compensation. Too small. As he struggled to rise, he found his muscles weak, even weaker than they had been moments before. His magic was going awry, applying itself to all his bodily functions, and he paid for it as he paid for any other exertion of power. Of course, flashes of lightning and fire were far more impressive than flaming urine and acidic vomit.

The stone... he had to retrieve it.

A violation of Laws, perhaps, but there was no other option. It was the stone of the longfaces—that chipped, red sphere—that had kept his body in check, that had kept it from being overwhelmed. He had to retrieve it; he had to return to the sea, search the wreckage, find the damn thing and return to normal.

But how? More scrying would mean more magic. More magic would kill him sooner than later, it was becoming clear.

Voices burbled out of the hut.

Togu.

Of course, he thought as he staggered toward the door. He would beseech the king, convince his companions to delay the voyage. He _needed_ the stone; they didn't need to know why beyond the fact that it gave him the power to move their ship. The lizardmen had trawled the sea for their belongings and found nothing, Togu had said, but that simply meant they weren't looking _hard_ enough. He could convince them. He could _force_ them.

He would have believed it, too, if he hadn't paused outside the king's door to retch again.

"What was that?"

He pulled himself up from his spewing, holding his nausea-soaked breath at the sound of voices burbling out of the king's hut.

"There is someone out there," Togu's deep voice spoke.

"Soon to be many more," another voice replied, a lilting, lyrical phrase that flooded into Dreadaeleon's ears on a song that would be soothing if the recognition didn't shock him into wide-eyed silence.

_Greenhair_ , he thought. _The siren... here?_

"The longfaces have just arrived, Togu," she continued from within the hut, "ahead of their master. He will arrive shortly and he will expect you to be there to greet him with the human offering."

"They haven't arrived yet, Togu," another voice, this one gruff and hissing, spoke. "There is still time to avert this. The forests are dense and the longfaces are not given to caution. You can flee."

"And they will burn the forests down," Greenhair replied sharply. "They _will_ find you, Togu, one way or another. Embracing this way means that your people live. Hongwe _should_ understand this better than even I."

"I do understand this," the speaker identified as Hongwe snarled, "and that is why I know what it is you're sending the humans to. I saw it happen on Komga, to _my_ people. I will not watch you do this to others."

"You intend to stop this?" Greenhair's voice contained an edge of harmonious threat.

Hongwe muttered in return. "They are your people, Togu. I can only ask that you see the stupid villainy in this plan."

Dreadaeleon, heedless of the vomit hissing on the sand or the lancing pain in his stomach, held his breath, listening intently to the long silence that followed. In the valley below, the sound of drums were dimming, the noises of jubilation quieting. In the quiescence, Dreadaeleon could hear the king's body rise and fall with the force of his sigh.

"I do what is best for my people. Do as you must to make the humans ready to give to the longfaces."

Dreadaeleon turned, bit back a shriek as he stepped in the pile of his sizzling bile, dragged his foot on the earth as he made to run down as fast as his cramping body would allow him. The pain shot through him in great spikes that he forced himself to ignore. He had to get below, to warn his companions, or at least one of them.

He collided suddenly with a bare chest and looked up, frowning. This wasn't the one he had hoped for, but still...

"Denaos," he gasped, "we have to get below. Togu, he's—"

"Who cares?" the rogue asked, on a reeking chuckle that sent him swaying. "Who gives a flying turd what's going to happen anymore?"

He wasn't sure how much the tall man had actually drunk to push him over the edge and he hardly cared. The man's only purpose now was to perhaps stall Togu and his conspirators when they emerged. Thus, Dreadaeleon wasted no more words and tried to push his way past, only to find a long arm in his path.

"You don't see what's going to happen, do you?" Denaos said, laughing. "Not as smart as you thought you were, huh? Can't see we're all damned without Asper following us, without the Gods on our side."

"No one's following anyone if you don't get out of the way," Dreadaeleon growled. "The longfaces are—"

"I said _who cares?_ " Denaos emphasised the question with a hook that sent the boy sprawling to the earth. "Don't feel bad, Dread. I'll be punished for that. For a hell of a lot more." He held a hand to his temple, pointing to eyes that had gone from sunken to two fevered, black-lined pits. "I can't... I can't stop _seeing_ her. The whispering just doesn't stop. I thought it was the demon, but... but it's something inside me. Something _I_ did, can't you see?"

"I can't, and I don't care," Dreadaeleon's words were laced with wincing whines as he struggled to regain his feet. "I... I'm having a hard time moving. Denaos. You have to get down there and warn the others that—"

"Not important," Denaos replied. "Asper's leaving. She was going to hear my sins, tell me it was fine, but not yet, not now. She'd never forgive me now. Neither would They." He pointed to the sky. "Whatever happens now is just... just..."

As his voice crumbled on his tongue, the music sliding through them could be heard. He recognised the siren's song in the same instant that Denaos did not. One clapped his hands over his ears; the other collapsed to the earth. Dreadaeleon spared a glance for his fallen companion before looking up as he felt a presence beside him.

Greenhair's alien expression was indifference laid thick to try to choke the pity in her eyes, to no avail. Dreadaeleon shot back a scowl intent on conveying all the curses and venom his mouth could not produce. The siren said something he dared not hear; an apology, perhaps, or a brief explanation, or an insult.

Though whatever she said could have only been half as insulting as the fact that she turned from him as she might a gnat and strode away, towards the mouth of the valley.

He snarled, reached out a hand to wrap about her pale ankle and pull her back, only to find the reason for her disregard. No sooner had his fingers stretched out than they were forced to clench. The pain that ripped through him was extraordinary, bludgeoning breath from his lungs, tearing vigour from his body, sending blood from his head as though it were split open. He collapsed into a quivering, curled position on the ground, unable to form even a sentence through the agony.

Through eyes vanishing into darkness, he stared at Greenhair as she walked down the valley, toward his companions, leaving him coiled in a pile of his own uselessness.

Drums dying with leathery gasps. Unseen liquor vapours wafting out on snores. Gohmns chittering to each other in the night.

"So loud," she whispered, clawing at her ears.

Futility. Trees groaning, shedding leaves. Rivers muttering curses to those who defecated in them. Gonwa jaws clenching together in ire.

"Shut up," she fervently whimpered, "shut up, shut up, shut up."

The sounds were impossible to tune out, impossible to ignore. Every last one rang angrily in her ears, the soft ones intolerably loud, the moderate ones deafening. She couldn't hear her thoughts, couldn't hear her tell herself to breathe, couldn't hear herself chant over and over.

"It'll pass," she was barely aware of telling herself, "it'll pass, it'll pass. It's just a symptom, just a symptom, just a symptom."

It was a symptom, she confirmed to herself, a symptom of the round-eared disease. It had to be, she reassured herself, because it had come from _him_.

She cursed him, spewed a torrent of verbal venom into the sand as she trudged across it. She didn't hear her own curses. She hoped they were good ones.

It had been brewing all afternoon in her head, coming in flashes of clarity: a mutter of resentment from the bottom of the valley, a wistful sigh on the breeze, feet dragging heavily on sand exactly four-hundred and twenty-six paces away from her. The sounds, sounds usually too insignificant to be worth hearing, had reached her ears with crystalline clarity.

She hadn't worried when she had sat beside Asper, heard the twitches in the priestess' back and felt the blood flowing with ire, with fear, through her body. That was good. Humans were supposed to feel fear around shicts. Shicts were supposed to hear.

But then, Asper had taken her hand. Kataria had heard the muscles in her body relax, had felt the fear turn to concern, the ire turn to some maladjusted form of affection. That was not good. Humans were not supposed to feel that. Shicts were not supposed to hear that. She was a shict. She had heard that.

And _that_ was cause for worry, for violence. She hadn't regretted what she had done to the priestess. It was a natural response. It was treating a symptom before it became an infection. It was a cure.

The noises hadn't stopped, though. She had tried to dull them with liquor, tried to ignore them with chatter. That might have worked, she reasoned, if not for him.

He had ruined everything by making it all quiet.

Standing beside him, the sounds slowly went soft, became mute. Staring into his eyes, her ears stopped throbbing. Breathing in his liquor-stained breath, smelling the stink of his sweat-laden flesh, watching him smile with crooked sheepishness, she had just begun to stop hearing altogether.

That was not good. She knew it as much then as she did now, but it was difficult to recall why she had not worried at that moment. The noise was so inoffensive, suddenly; the world's noises ceased to press upon her in intangible walls of racket. No more worries, no more weight, just lightness, just her, and...

And then he had _done_ what he had.

And she had heard him.

She had heard things in him that humans were not supposed to feel, that shicts were not supposed to hear. And she had _felt..._

Well, there was really no other way she _could_ feel.

The howl was what had coursed through her, a sourceless noise that did not obey the laws of noise, starting in her brain, clawing its way out and tearing through her ears. It lasted for but a moment, all the time it took her body to realise what she had pressed her lips against, but it hadn't needed more. It had ripped its way free, rang in her skull.

She had heard him. She had heard the Howling.

And then, she heard _everything_.

Instinct had told her to run, and she did, fleeing far into the forest, into the night. It was the right thing to do, she knew, because it was the voice of her body. What had happened before, what had made her quiver when he snaked his arm about her middle and press her body against his, what had made her slide her own arms around him and draw him tighter, what had made her think she enjoyed it...

No, not her body's voice. Something from somewhere else inside her. Not her body.

Her body had told her to run; her body had howled at her. It was a natural defence, a rejection of the disease, of the infection that had plagued her and made her do those things. The noise—the unbearably, agonisingly loud _noise—_ was just a side effect, the lingering symptoms of which were the last go.

That made sense, she told herself as she trudged to the nearby brook. It was a symptom; it just needed to be cured. She splashed the water gently over her face, ears ringing with the ensuing splash. That would pass, she told herself; it would all pass. She had been tested, passed, survived the disease, for that's what he was.

"He's a disease," she tried to hear herself say, "he's a disease, he's a disease..."

The water settled. She stared down at her reflection. The face staring back at her didn't look convinced.

A realisation dawned on her just as the entire island conspired against her, the forest and creatures all falling silent so that she might voice it and hear it ring through her ears and heart with one painful echo.

"He didn't come after me."

She found herself surprised that the face in the water frowned back at her at that. She found herself surprised that she didn't bother to lie to herself and say it was because she missed the silence. But found herself surprised it hurt.

_What, then_ , she asked herself as the noises began again, _is left? You can'tdo this_, she silently told the reflection. _You've tried—I know you've tried—but you just can't do what you need to do, what shicts do. If you could, you would have killed him when you first saw him, when you knew you had to, when you were given no choice. But you didn't, so what else is left?_ She leaned forward. _No, the water's too shallow to drown yourself. Once more, what else is left?_

_But to live with the disease?_

Footfalls crunching on sand. Soles sinking with shoulders heavy with dried blood. Breath short and irritated, gasped out.

Him.

She sat up on her knees, pulling her spine erect, staring into the water, saw herself biting her lower lip and forced herself to stop. Dignity, she reminded herself; she could afford a little of that when she said what she knew she had to, what a shict never would. The world fell silent again as the footfalls came upon her; she would hear every word she said. One more cruel joke she resolved to be defiant in the face of.

She closed her eyes, whispered as softly as she could.

"You came after me, Lenk."

"What's a 'Lenk'?"

Iron on iron.

Her eyes snapped open, spied a leering face in the water: long, hard, purple. She whirled about just in time to see the boot's toe coming up to kiss her jaw.

# _Twenty-Eight_

# BESIDES THE OBVIOUS INTERNAL BLEEDING

It was cold enough to freeze his lungs, dark enough to weigh his eyelids shut with gloom. Lenk thought he was drawing in deep, steady breaths, but found the air thick and oppressive enough that he couldn't be sure.

_Dead?_

In the gloom, a voice on a warm and fevered wind whispered. That wasn't right, Lenk thought; the sensation here should be cold, not hot.

" _You're safe... not quite dead_."

The voice should not be nearly so comforting.

" _Yet_."

There it was.

_Yet?_

" _We've got time_."

_I can't see_.

" _For the better, one would think_."

_I feel sand_.

" _A warm and pleasant beach_."

_I can't move my hands_.

" _They are bound_."

_What happened?_

Something without words answered.

Echoes of a panicked sorrow sounded in his mind, the question "why" resounding off the walls of his head, accompanied by muttered self-deprecations and a thousand "should haves." Through the thicket of noise, he could see himself: sitting, alone, the crowds of Owauku dispersed, not a slender body in sight, as he stared into a cup of _mangwo_ blankly.

_I remember that part, not the bit that ended with me here, though_.

" _Wait_."

They came flooding into the valley, sweeping through the fog of his mind and into memory: purple-skinned, long-faced, iron-voiced. He saw himself look up, saw them through eyes not his own.

Another emotion: fury without echoes, a long, keening wail of rage as he launched himself at them. The first at the pack, the first that would die, recoiled, stunned at the sudden assault. She looked to her cohorts for assistance, found his hands wrapped around her throat a moment later. She did not fight back as he drove her to the ground and slammed her head against the earth, over and over; she stared at him, aghast, the breath to voice her fear not found.

" _What?_ " one of them grunted. " _Do they all do that?_ "

" _It's getting back up!_ " another shrieked.

He had risen, leaving the creature motionless beneath him. He lunged at another, reaching out hands. She met him with hesitant challenge, eyes wide over her shield as she raised it before her. He spoke words that were not from his tongue, reached out on hands that felt like ice wrapped in skin the colour of stone.

_What happened then?_

He felt cold all of a sudden; the voice shifted to something frigid and sharp.

" _This happened_."

_They looked worried_.

" _They were right to feel fear_."

_They don't fear anything, I'm told_.

" _They fear us_."

_That can't be right. Were those my hands?_

" _Hands of the willing_."

_But were they mine?_

" _Are yours?_ "

_My head is hurting. It probably wouldn't do that if I were dead_.

" _Not dead_."

_Are you sure?_

"This one isn't moving," a voice, distant and harsh spoke. "Give it a kick."

A blow erupted against his ribs. He felt a scream tear through his throat.

" _Yes_."

His eyes snapped open, blackness replaced with a blinding flash of red. His breath returned to him slowly, his sight even more so. When both finally came to him easily, his vision was a field of purple, broken only by the milky white eyes and the deep frown scarred into a long face.

"Yeah," the netherling grunted, flashing a jagged sneer. "It's still alive." She peered intently at him. "And it turned back to pink." She glanced over her shoulder. "You want me to kill it?"

"It strangled a low-finger earlier," another voice snarled in reply. "Not worth killing over that, really." The sound of a black chuckle emerged over iron sliding from a scabbard. "Still..."

The sound of grating metal brought his attention to the shore. Longfaces gathered there in a knot of iron and purple muscle, some watching Lenk, some hauling a boat hewn of black wood onto the shore. One emerged from the crowd with a snarl and a sword, only to be stopped by a sudden iron gauntlet cracking against her jaw. She staggered, then stalked back into line, herded by the scowl of a larger female.

"No one kills anyone," the larger female grunted, "until the Master says so."

A collective sigh of disappointment swept the gathered females, including the one standing over Lenk, who quickly lost interest in him and stepped back to rejoin her companions. His attention swayed on them, his focus lost as he felt his eyes rolling in his head, desperately trying to retreat back into his skull and plunge him into a soothing dark.

He might have heeded their wishes, as his head swivelled from them on a rubbery neck to survey the beach, but shutting his eyes to the sight that greeted him quickly became impossible.

If the skeletons could still make noise, he reasoned, they would be screaming. Their mouths gaped open, bone-white jaws turned skyward, black eye sockets vast and empty. And, he further reasoned, the screams that emerged from their colossal maws would have shook the earth.

They lay on the sand in dozens, titanic hills of arching spines and reaching claws, held fast to the ground by chains that refused to release, heedless of the rust that threatened to break or the fact that their prisoners were long dead. They lay in silent agony, bound, heads stoved in, ballista missile shafts jutting from empty eye sockets and temples, screaming.

They were Abysmyths, he recognised, from their titanic fishlike skulls. They were giant Abysmyths. What could they have to scream about? What could have caused them such pain? What had pulled them to the earth?

" _Something cruel and pitiless_ ," the voice uttered with a warm whisper. " _They died screaming_."

_Ah_.

" _And we made them scream_ ," it laughed coldly.

_What? We killed them?_

" _You didn't have to_."

_But..._

" _We did_."

_You're not making sense_.

" _More important problems_."

He blinked, suddenly aware of his hands tied behind his back, suddenly feeling the agony in his flank, suddenly hearing the sounds of very violent, very muscular women with very sharp swords. So taken by the ancient carnage on the beach was he that he almost forgot he was probably going to die.

Against that, he supposed he should consider himself lucky he noticed Dreadaeleon, similarly bound beside him, at all.

"Awake," the boy noted with a characteristic lack of concern. "Good."

"What's going on?" Lenk asked.

"Difficult to figure out, is it?" Dreadaeleon's sigh was heavy enough to bludgeon Lenk. "The convenience of the longfaces' arrival following the fact that we were plied with copious amounts of unregulated alcohol? The fact that the only things tied up on this beach have pink skin instead of green?"

Even with his head swimming, it was obvious to Lenk that the unpleasant situation had done nothing to temper Dreadaeleon's snideness, but that was all that was obvious. His thoughts were too scattered for comprehension, let alone retort. Punching, he thought, would have been suitable, if not for the obvious.

"We were betrayed, Lenk," Dreadaeleon said, "and if you ask by whom, I swear I'm going to vomit on you."

The temptation to ask anyway was banished as Lenk caught a shiver of movement from the corner of his eye.

At the edge of the shore, great white knucklebones rose from the moist earth, the great skeleton they belonged to far behind, the claws attached to them so very far from the sea the dead beast had tried to crawl into. Atop it, the figure of Togu was insignificant, a gloomy little growth staring distantly over a vast ocean.

"Togu..."

The word crawled out of Lenk's mouth, uncertain. He searched the lizardman with desperate eyes, for explanation as to how this had happened, for elaboration as to why it had happened. Answered with nothing but impassive silence, uncertainty shifted to anger, and the next words charged from his mouth on wrathful legs.

"You slimy piece of diseased stool," he snarled, trying to ignore the impotency of his words and muscles as he pulled at his bonds. "You _sold us_ , you green little sack-sucker! You betrayed us, you... you..."

"He's not going to answer," Dreadaeleon spoke, preventing any further displays of futile fury. "I tried the same thing, with better insults."

The answer was unsatisfactory; anything short of leaping up and strangling the lizard-thing before chewing out his withered throat would be, Lenk knew. Togu didn't so much as flinch, his head hanging from shoulders that looked too small for him. He was burdened, by guilt, regret, something else; Lenk wasn't satisfied by that, either.

Short of strangulation, another round of verbal hate seemed futile, yet came rampaging up to Lenk's lips all the same. And there it died, frozen to death as a cold realisation struck the young man firmly across the face. He swept wide, fevered eyes about the beach, saw nothing but sand, bones, netherlings. Plenty of flesh, none of it pink. Plenty of teeth, all of them jagged and frowning. Plenty of ears...

"Where are they?" Lenk asked in a halting, breathless voice, terrified to ask each word, horrified of the answer, scared pissless of not knowing. "Where is _she_ , Togu? Where's Kataria?"

"He won't tell you," Dreadaeleon said, "about her." He paused, choked. "Or Asper. I... I tried, Lenk."

" _Hardly matters_ ," a voice echoed in his mind. " _Did us no favours, no harm_."

"He... he betrayed us," Lenk whispered back, his voice strained. "He... he..."

" _Will be punished. Betrayers die along with abominations_."

"Too calm," Lenk muttered. "You're too calm."

" _You brought this on yourself. You could have fled_."

"She is... she's..."

" _Most likely. Maybe not. She can be saved_."

He breathed in, feeling overly warm.

" _Does not matter. A task is at hand_."

"What task?" he asked, shivering.

" _They have waited for this moment. They have waited for it to arrive. They have come. They are close_."

"Who?"

There was no explaining how he instantly knew beyond the sudden well of dread that sprung inside him, rising up through him on oily darkness as it tried to choke the breath from him.

Tried, and failed. His breath came to him, regardless, creeping from his lips, sharp, crisp. Cold.

" _They are close_."

Lenk knew exactly of what the voice spoke, knew it did not lie.

" _Tonight, we will kill_."

That, too, was inevitable.

"My father told me, as his father did, that the Owauku were born without life."

Togu was speaking, his bass voice tinged with more weariness than sorrow. Lenk looked up without fury, without hatred, saw only the throat from which the words emanated, the blood pumping underneath. He knew that he would watch it spill upon the earth.

"We were born in death," the lizardman continued, unaware of what the young man saw. "This land was alive when we did not have it, dead when they gave it to us. They fought here, the servants of the Gods and the brood of Mother Deep. For us, they fought here, they said, to keep us free from slavery. They killed one another for days. When only one stood, he gave us this dying land and abandoned us. We were born in death, we lived in death, we survive in death... betrayed."

"I know how you feel," Dreadaeleon replied, "poor dear."

" _We_ were betrayed," Togu said, turning on the boy with bright, angry eyes. "By _everyone_ who claimed to love us. The servants of the Gods gave us a dying land, the Gods themselves refused to heal it, the humans..." He muttered, turning back to the sea. "We do what we can to survive, cousins. You will help us. I do not like it, but I cannot shed tears for you. You would do the same thing."

"She..." Lenk whispered, voice a hiss of air. "Where is she, Togu?"

"A place I do not want to know."

"And the others? Where is—?"

The answer came in the hollow sound of flesh struck, the agonised groan that followed. Lenk struggled to look behind him and spied the a long, lanky body on the earth, hands bound behind him, unmoving as the ability to writhe in pain had apparently been beaten from him.

The answer to that, too, was evident in the towering mass of purple muscle, white hair and grey metal standing over him.

"I expected a struggle," Xhai said, her voice following an iron-shod toe to the man's ribs. "I expected wit. I expected the man that cut me to be one who spoke more."

"I expected that I was going to be sailing home tomorrow," Denaos replied through a voice thick with pain, "wearing pants and _not_ having various fluids being bludgeoned out of me." He cleared his throat, looked up at her and grinned. "That," he said, "was wit."

"This," she replied, "is my foot."

The force of her kick lifted him off the earth, sent him rolling away from her, his groan tinged with red fluid. His attempt at escape, however unintentional, did not go unpunished as she stalked after him and seized him by his scalp, pulling his eyes up to the level of her neck.

"And _this_ ," she gestured to a wound still mending upon her collarbone, "is your doing. Before _you_ , the little weakling I sent to the earth with _one_ blow, I was untouched by metal, unmarked." She pulled his gaze upwards, towards her snarling, jagged teeth. "They called me Unscarred."

"Well, they'll no longer call _me_ un-pissing blood," Denaos replied, "but I suppose you're not willing to call it even at that?"

A resounding answer came upon the back of her hand.

"You don't even realise the insult, the _unnaturalness_ of it all," she growled. "I've killed more overscum, underscum and netherlings than you will ever know, and you, filthy little piece of pink, scar _me_ , after I laid you low?"

"That," he said, "is irony." He paused. "Wait, no, that might just be coincidental. Let me ask Lenk—"

" _NO ONE_ ," her roar silenced him as she hauled him to his feet, "scars a Carnassial and lives."

"And yet... here I am."

"Only because no one," she whispered sharply, "scars Semnein Xhai and dies swiftly."

The face that stared at Denaos, it was evident, was a face used to rigid, expressionless demands for obedience. The trembling of her lips, the clenching of her teeth, was something her face struggled, and failed, to contain. Rage boiled beneath her skin like a purple stew of skin, bone and hate.

Lenk assumed it was rage, anyway, not possessing the unique brand of insanity that accompanied the ability to guess at a longfaces' emotions. How Denaos remained calm in the face of them was likewise a mystery. He was used to seeing Denaos as a trembling, scurrying thing, not the kind of man that would stare down a tower of quivering muscle and iron without so much as flinching.

The sight, Lenk thought, was impressive enough that he would remember the rogue as this, instead of the splattered mess of quivering red chunks he was undoubtedly about to become.

"You _cut_ me," she all but squealed, her voice brimming with something beyond anger.

"It's what I do," he replied, without blinking.

That the man was thrown to the earth, Lenk expected. That the longface's foot rose up was likewise predictable. That Xhai stepped over the rogue and stalked towards her fellow netherlings instead of bringing the foot down in a spray of bone shards and porridge spatters, however, threw him.

" _Get me my scumstompers_ ," she roared to the longfaces. " _The big, spiky ones!_ "

That was more like it.

"Denaos," he grunted.

"Oh, I'm just fantastic, thanks," Denaos groaned back. "What's that? You didn't ask? No. Why would you? I'm just getting my meadow muffins kicked out of me. _You_ have to sit on the cold hard ground. How are _you_ doing, Lenk?"

No time to humour him, Lenk made his question swift. "Where are they?"

"He didn't see, obviously," Dreadaeleon replied. "If he was drunk enough to start showing remorse, he didn't see anything but a pool of his own vomit before he passed out."

"I didn't have enough time to do something nearly so satisfying before that fish-woman put me under," Denaos grunted.

Lenk blinked, the echoes of a fading song bleeding in his mind. _The siren_ , he thought, _Greenhair. She's responsible for this? For knocking me out?_

" _Tried to be_ ," the voice chuckled blackly. " _Was not. Took iron and fists for that_."

"She likely put the others out, as well," Denaos muttered. "Thank goodness we had someone who could shoot lightning out of their asshole on-hand to _not do a gods-damned thing about it_."

"As though it's my fault," Dreadaeleon snarled. "I was as powerless as you!"

"You cannot _piss fire_ and be powerless!"

"You're not even supposed to be talking about this! You said you wouldn't!"

"Oh no! Denaos _lied_? _Really?_ " The rogue gasped, rolling his eyes. "Is this still even a surprise anymore?"

The boy made a reply, shrill and whining. Lenk could hear the tall man growl back. He could see the longfaces looking anxious, tending to blunted weapons with whetstones. He felt Togu's presence, breath leaking from a quivering throat begging to be cut. He knew he had been betrayed, that he was likely to be killed, very soon, very messily.

Somehow, that seemed so... unimportant.

"I'm not afraid," he whispered. One of the two prisoners beside him replied; he ignored them both. "Why is that?"

" _Fear is useless to us. It is for other... things. Not us_."

"I am concerned, though... for her."

" _Also useless_."

"I wish I knew she was safe."

" _Why?_ "

"I left things... unsatisfied."

" _Satisfaction is important_."

"I need her to be safe."

" _She does not feel similarly_."

"You know this?"

" _Yes_."

"You can sense her?"

" _No_."

"Then how do you know?"

" _Inevitable_."

"I... need..."

" _We do not_."

He had no more words for the voice; they, too, were unimportant. He knew no words would convince the voice. He knew he could say nothing to deny the voice. He knew nothing would make the voice wrong. He knew this, without knowing it.

He knew this, because the voice knew it.

And the voice sighed, or seemed to, for it, too, knew something of him.

" _She is not dead_."

"No?"

" _You don't need her_."

"I need her to be—"

" _She will_."

"How do you—"

" _BRING HIM FORWARD_."

A shudder through the sand, feet charging forward; Denaos put up no particular resistance as a pair of netherlings hoisted him up and brought him toward Xhai.

And her scumstompers.

She still possessed feet, but he was only fairly certain. The amalgamations of metal wrapped about her ankles, forged with enough care to only passingly resemble boots, belonged on something that used them to crawl out of hell. They brimmed with spikes, rough and jagged, no space left uncovered.

He saw it, widened his eyes. Dreadaeleon saw them, all but squealed. Denaos undoubtedly saw them, said nothing, did nothing.

The voice answered the question before he asked it, slowly, softly. " _He is at peace. He knows his sins, did what he could for them. His life is complete_."

"It isn't," Lenk whispered. "Is it?"

" _His duty is to accept the inevitability_." It spoke firmly, swiftly. " _Ours, no different_."

"You're not making sense," Lenk said, eyelids twitching. "You say one thing, then another, and they contradict each other and I don't know which to listen to." He swallowed hard, gritted his teeth, almost afraid to ask the question that plagued his mind. "Are... you alone in there?"

" _We are not_."

"Do you mean 'we' as you and I or—"

A groan of agony drew his attention back.

The netherlings dropped Denaos before Xhai. He fell to his knees and no farther, staring up at the female impassively. She stared down at him, cruel, contemptuous, trying to hold back the rage trembling beneath her face.

"Why don't you scream?" she asked.

"No reason," he replied.

"I'm going to kill you."

"I've had worse."

"I'm going to stomp you into the ground, stomp your bones into jelly, stomp the jelly into pulp and stomp the pulp until there's nothing left. I'm going to spill you out on the earth and splash in your entrails."

He stared up at her, grinned.

"I scarred you."

She shrieked, raised her foot, the spikes glistening in the moonlight.

And nothing more came of it.

Something happened: a shift in the night breeze, a calm of the waves, a collective twitch through a dozen purple faces. Suddenly, milky white eyes turned upwards; the fury that fuelled each of them leaked out of their mouths as they opened and turned out towards the ocean. A strange placidity settled over them, a pack of purple hounds scenting meat, stilling their barking maws and wagging tongues in anticipation.

" _Coming_ ," the voice whispered.

"Them?"

" _He_."

"He always comes like this," Togu whispered from his perch. "The world knows when he arrives. The sea knows it first. The sky knows it next because the sea is quiet. We know it last, because the night is too dark and the world is quiet. It doesn't want him to see. Nothing good wants him to see."

He hopped off his perch, glanced at Lenk with eyes too narrow for anything but fear.

"Don't look into his eyes, cousins. You don't want him to see, either."

The netherlings cleared a space at the beach, parting as though bidden by a wind unfelt and hauling Denaos with them. That same wind seemed to continue to blow through, cut across his flesh and chill him.

"I can feel it, Lenk," the boy said on weakening breath, "a power... constant... _wrong_. It doesn't stop. It should stop. It _needs_ to stop." He grimaced, in pain. "Hot, cold, cold, hot. _Why won't it stop?_ "

Lenk, too, felt it; not the wind, but the leaves it picked up, the scent of smoke on it, the humidity it carried. A taint, one he was familiar with.

"A demon?"

" _Their servant_."

"Ulbecetonth?"

" _Her enemy_."

"Our friend?"

He knew the answer as soon as he saw the shadow upon the water.

A ship, he recognised, pulling itself through the water, towards the shore, with no oars, no sails, no source of motion. At the prow, a pillar of gloom. A man, tall and black, crowned by three pinpricks of red light, fire upon shadow upon shadow.

Him.

It came to a perfect halt, barely grazing the sand. The figure waved a hand, dismissed everything, demanded everything. Everything complied.

The netherlings backed away. The earth quivered; the sand drew itself together, smoothed itself out and made itself presentable to him. It rose to meet him in a perfect staircase. His foot hit the step with no sound, and the netherlings took not a breath, dared to utter the word.

"Master," bubbled out amongst them.

"Sheraptus," Togu said, silent as the figure descended the stairs and regarded him.

The three red lights swung back and forth, tiny fires in a halo of black wrapped around a long, purple brow. His sigh crept out of a pair of thin, purple lips. Long, silky white hair rested on thin, drooping shoulders. Seas were silent, skies were still; the world held its breath, for fear that it had angered him.

"And all that greets me," he whispered on a voice long and dark, "is death.

"I have seen death before." He tilted his head up towards the distant forest. "But in my land, Togu, I have never seen green. I have seen no rivers and blue skies, no birds and insects, no rain clouds..." He shook his head. "And you meet me in the dark, on a clear night, on a beach laden with death. Death, I have seen before."

A pair of eyes opened. Bright. Crimson. Fiery.

"I will see more of it."

The voice was languid, liquid, the threat inherent in it ebbing away as soon as it passed his lips, wasted. Or rather, Lenk thought, unnecessary. There was something inherently threatening about the man, something that went beyond the black robes, the glowing red jewels and the black crown about his brow.

"Power..." Dreadaeleon whispered, his voice pained. "He's _leaking_ it."

Magic, perhaps, Lenk thought; that wasn't hard to believe, given that the characteristic crimson pyres that lit up a wizard's eyes were perpetually burning in his stare. But what Lenk sensed was not magic. It was the unseen, unmoving breeze about him, the unscented stench about him.

The taint all too plain to both Lenk and the creature inside his head.

" _Sense it_ ," the voice muttered. " _He's killed many. Demon, mortal... child, mother... he's watched them suffer; he's drunk their pain_." It shifted, becoming hard and rigid. " _He will again if we do not do our duty_."

"Who...?" he asked. "Whose pain?"

Cold sigh. Warm sigh. Two answers.

" _You know_."

"Where is it?"

Another voice, neither warm nor hot, brimming with boredom and hatred. Him again. Sheraptus.

Togu did not bother defiance against his question, did not bother to interpret it as anything other than the demand that it was. He glanced over his shoulder, spoke a word in his native tongue. From around a standing skull, a quartet of Owauku approached, bearing a wooden palanquin upon their shoulders with Bagagame, head heavy and eyes thick, at their head.

They passed Lenk, keeping their gazes low. He paid them no mind, watching instead the objects heaped upon the wooden platform: all of them his or his companions.' He spotted Denaos' knives, Asper's pendant, Kataria's bow. His sword was up there, too; he supposed that should have galled him. The fact that his pants were right next to it should have enraged him.

Neither of those was the reason for the sudden flash of icy heat that seared through his head on a pair of voices.

" _NO!_ "

"What?" he asked, wincing.

" _He cannot be allowed to have it! It does not belong to him! It belongs to... no one... no, to YOU! TO NO ONE!_ " His head pounded, seared with fever, frozen with cold before the voice finally howled in twisting cacophony. " _HE CANNOT HAVE THE TOME_."

Sheraptus glanced over to the boat, raised a white eyebrow. The netherlings followed his gaze, reverence shifting to scorn the moment their gaze left his face. The male seemed to take no notice, though, as he glanced to the bound companions.

"This is them?" he asked.

The shape that rose up from his vessel was instantly recognisable. The skin, white even in darkness, and the crown of emerald-coloured hair were extraneous detail. The palpable aura of treachery denoted the siren's presence long before she showed her gills.

"That is... most of them, yes," she replied, shaking her head. "There was another with them... a beast on two legs with red skin."

"Dead," Denaos muttered. "Thankfully."

"If that is the case, then they are all here and—"

"You three," Sheraptus said, pointing to a trio of netherlings, "search the island for signs of this thing. If this is the same red thing that netherlings could not kill, I doubt he was slain by anything else." He ignored Greenhair's stammered protests as the trio grunted and set off down the coast, instead turning his gaze to the palanquin. "Now, then... where is it?"

"That is it," Greenhair replied, arriving beside Sheraptus and pointing a finger at the palanquin. "It is in there."

He swept his burning gaze back to the objects. His hands rose, the air quivering between them as he gently separated his palms, an invisible force parting the clothes and weapons to expose a pair of books resting gingerly upon the wood. The first one was musty, old, well-worn pages trembling in the breeze, as if taking the cue to quiver before the man's eyes. The other...

Too clean, too black, too shiny, too still and smug and noticeable while the rest of the world darkened for fear of being seen by a pair of bright red eyes. The tome met the man's gaze fearlessly, sparing only enough time to look at Lenk with papery eyes and wink. Or so it seemed to, at any rate.

Surely, Sheraptus must have seen it, too. What could escape that stare? What sense did it make for him to reach down and pluck the musty, frightened book up first?

" _It does not call to him_ ," a voice, he wasn't sure which, answered. " _He cannot hear it. His ears are cloyed with pride, arrogance. He will never hear it. Will never hear us before we take his head_." He glanced to Greenhair, biting her lip, not daring to say anything as he plucked up the wrong book. " _She... betrayed us. Those who betray... die_."

Warmth, then cold. Agreement.

If Sheraptus saw the intent in Lenk's stare, he made no comment. Instead, he thumbed through the pages of the musty tome, heedless of Dreadaeleon's whimper. _Ah, right_ , Lenk realised. _His spellbook_. He hadn't seen it ever unattached to the boy's hip. He guessed that watching another man thumb through something that had been attached so long would be unsettling, at the least.

"Humans use _nethra_ ," he hummed thoughtfully. "I wasn't entirely sure I believed it." Idly, he flipped page by page, his frown deepening. "They scrawl their words on parchment, learn to burn, to scorch." He glanced up. "How many trees were rent asunder by such? How much green turned black?"

His eyes narrowed as he thumbed towards the end of the book. "Possessed of everything, you ruin it all. Spill more blood over imaginary things, like gods and ideologies, never once deigning to fight over the bounties surrounding you." He looked up, thoughtful. "You're so concerned with these false notions of higher powers that you never once realise it's all within your grasp."

"Merroskrit," Dreadaeleon whispered, "merroskrit... that's another wizard he's touching, another person and he's just... he's going to..."

He took a thin, white page and rubbed it gingerly between two fingers. The flinch of his lips, the ripping of the paper was short, bitter. Dreadaeleon's scream was longer, louder. And at that sound, the longface's lips twisted into a wry smirk.

"But that's part of your charm, isn't it?"

"Sheraptus..." Greenhair spoke, then immediately stammered out: "M-Master... that is just a book of lore, nothing important. The true object is—"

"Not moving, for the moment." He reached down and took a severed head from the palanquin, staring at its closed eyes, golden locks and frowning. "And they even carry death around with them... fascinating."

_The head_ , Lenk recognised. _The Deepshriek's head. The lizards kept it_.

" _They know nothing of its importance. It will be ours again soon. Patience_."

"There is a word for this sort of thing..." Sheraptus hummed, tossing the head away. "It is either 'macabre' or 'deranged', but it's unimportant. I came for something else. Where is it?"

"There, Master," Greenhair said, pointing to the palanquin. "The tome is there." Her glance flitted towards Dreadaeleon for a moment. "It will be safer with you."

Sheraptus, however, merely stared at her, as unexpressive as a man with flaming eyes could be, before he looked over her to Xhai.

"Where is it?" he asked the Carnassial.

She shot him back a look, as wounded as a woman with spike-encrusted shoes could. "The Grey One That Grins only wants the tome. The other things are—"

"I would very much like to have it... them," Sheraptus said. "It would make me very happy." He pursed his lips, furrowed his brows; beneath the fire, he looked almost hurt. "Xhai... do you not want me to be happy?"

She recoiled, as if struck. An emotion, close to but not quite the fury that was present earlier, shook her features. After a moment, her face settled into one of cold acknowledgement. She turned her head away and barked a command.

" _TCHIK QAI!_ "

There was a scrabble of boots, a few muffled curses from behind a massive, jutting ribcage half-buried nearby. Lenk's ears immediately pricked up, his attention drawn towards the movement, his heart beating faster at the noise. The reaction did not go unnoticed.

" _Ignore that_ ," a cold voice snarled.

" _The enemy is before you_ ," a hot voice growled.

" _Duty first. Betrayers die_."

" _They will all die. They all betrayed you. Forget everything else_."

" _Kill_."

" _Listen_."

He did not hear them, felt them as nothing but flashes of hot and cold in his body. His eyes were locked upon the twitches of movement between the bones. He spotted glimpses of purple, but did not pay attention them. Before them, glimpses of colour, white and silver under the moonlight, moved swiftly, but erratically.

The movement stopped momentarily. There was another shout of protest, this one louder but not clear enough to be heard well. It was met with a snarling iron retort and a faint cracking sound. Lenk found himself surprised that he was wincing at the unseen blow, found himself surprised that he was leaning forward, craning his neck to see what emerged from behind the bones.

And despite the fear that had been growing in his chest since he had awoken, he found himself surprised to see a pair of emerald eyes, wide, terrified and searching.

He tried to cry out, tried to scream when he found he couldn't. His throat was constricting, voice choked.

" _No_ ," another voice answered his unspoken question, " _speak not. Draw no attention. Not yet. He does not need you, does not want you. Survive first. Kill later_."

_She looks hurt. She needs help. I need to—_

" _Soon. Tome first. Duty first_."

_No! Not duty first, she's more important. She—_

" _Fled. From you_."

_What?_

" _Fear was in her eyes. She was right to show us_."

_No, she—_

" _Does not understand_."

" _Cannot understand_."

" _Your duty... our duty... more important. She cannot see that. Looks away from it_."

_She isn't looking away now_.

No response came; he wouldn't have heard it, anyway. His eyes were locked on Kataria's, and hers on his, as she was marched forward by ironbound hand and guttural snarls from purple lips. She put up minimal resistance to such, not that her bound hands would allow her much, in any case. Still, Lenk found himself surprised by her passiveness as she was ushered towards the knot of netherlings; he had expected her to be snarling, thrashing, biting and cursing.

To see that anticipated furious resistance emerge from the pale form emerging behind Kataria, however, was slightly more surprising.

"And after I've chewed _those_ off, because I'm sure you things only _claim_ to be females," Asper snarled at the netherling shoving her forward, "I'm going to rip your eyes out and eat _those_ , too!" She dug her heels in, shoved back at her captor, tried to break away. All futile efforts, their failures doing nothing to curb her tongue. "Get _back_ , you slavering, sloppy little cu—"

"I know maybe three of those words," the netherling snarled back, raising an iron fist. "And I don't know what to _say_ to make you shut up, but I do know what to hit you with."

" _No_."

Bones shook in skin, sea retreated from shore, all eyes looked up and instantly regretted doing so. Sheraptus' eyes were narrowed to fiery slits as they swept up to the netherling holding the priestess. Like a flower before fire, the females' resolve withered, hands trembled, gaze turned towards the sand.

Asper's did not, however. And from the sudden widening of her eyes, the slackness of her jaw, the very visible collective clench of every muscle in her body, it wasn't clear if she even could. Nothing had seemed to leave her, least of all her fight. Rather, it was apparent that the moment she had met his eyes, something had instead entered her and had no plans of leaving.

And, judging by his broad smile, it was more apparent to no one than Sheraptus.

"This is it," he whispered, stalking closer to her. "This is what I came to see, what I continue to see. This... utter rejection of the world." He lifted a long purple hand to her, grinned as she flinched away from it. " _That_. What is that? Why do you do such a thing? You know you can't flee, know you can't escape, but you still try. Instinct _dictates_ that you sit there and accept it, yet you refuse to. Why?" He glanced up towards the sky. "I had once thought it was your notion of gods, with how often you pray to them, but I see nothing up there."

His voice shifted to something low, something breathy and born out of his heart. Yet as soft as it went, it remained sharp and painful so that none could help but hear him. His eyes drifted from Asper's horrified stare, searching over her half-nude body. Slowly, his hand rose to follow, palm resting upon her belly, fingers drumming thoughtfully on her skin.

Her choked gasp, too, could not be ignored.

"It's not gods, though, is it?" His hand slid across her abdomen, as if beckoning something to rise from the prickling gooseflesh and reveal it to him. "No, no... something more. Or less?" His smile trembled at the edges, trying and failing to contain something. "I just... can't tell with your breed." His gaze returned to hers, a lurid emotion burning brighter than the fire consuming them. "But I dearly look forward to finding out."

He turned away from her, his stare settling on Kataria for a moment, white brows furrowing. "And this one... doesn't even put up a fight?" He gave her a cursory glance, then shrugged. "I like the ears, anyway. Load them up."

"W-what?" Asper gasped. Vigour returned to her as she was forced towards the black vessel, and she struggled against her captor's grip. "No! _NO!_ " At that moment, she seemed to notice the others, bound on the sand. "Don't let him do this to me. He's going to... to..." Tears began forming in her eyes. "Help me... _help me, D—_ "

A rough cloth was wrapped about her mouth, tied tightly as she was hoisted up and over the netherling's purple shoulder and spirited to the boat.

" _Asper!_ " Dreadaeleon cried out. "I can help you... I... I can." He gritted his teeth as crimson sparked behind his eyes, the magic straining to loose itself. "It's just... it's..."

"Intimidating, isn't it?" Sheraptus shot a fire-eyed wink at the boy. "I felt the same way when I first beheld it... well, sans the pitiful weakness, anyway." He ran a finger along the crown upon his brow, circling its three burning jewels. "One can't help but behold it, like a candle that never snuffs out." He considered the boy carefully for a moment. "Which, I suppose, would make you a tiny, insignificant moth."

As soon as he said the word, the boy collapsed, tumbling backwards with his eyes shutting tightly as if to ward against the burning. Immediately, his breathing slowed, his body went still. Lenk couldn't help but widen his eyes in fear. Nothing he had known—human, longface or otherwise—could kill with a word.

"Dread?" he whispered.

" _Ignore it_."

"He's...

" _Unimportant_."

"Should we... do something?"

"I, for one," Denaos interjected, "fully intend on rising up and enacting a daring rescue, as soon as I finish crapping out a kidney."

"Plenty of time for that when I take you to the ship," Xhai snarled as she seized the rogue by his hair and hoisted him up. "This is better, in fact." Her smile was as sharp and cruel as the spikes on her feet. "Now, I can take my time."

"Semnein Xhai."

She looked up with an abashed expression that had no business on a face so hard. Sheraptus' befuddled dismay was just as out of place and somehow even more disturbing as he canted his head to the side.

"Do I not make you happy?" he asked. "You require this... pink thing?"

"But you..." She bit her lower lip, the innocence of the gesture somehow lost in her jagged teeth. "We are taking prisoners, aren't we?"

"It's necessary to understand the condition of humans, yes," he replied. "But it's only ever seen in females, and two is more than enough. We have no need for males. Leave this one behind."

She glanced from Sheraptus to Denaos, gaze shifting from confused to angry in an instant. With a snarl, she hurled the rogue back to the earth and swept her scowl upon the remaining netherlings.

"If _any_ of you kills him," she growled, "you will do it quickly and you will _not_ enjoy it. Or I'll know... and I _will_."

"We have what we came for, in any case," Sheraptus said. He made a gesture, and the tome flew from the palanquin to his hand. He spared a smile for Togu. "As promised, we leave your island in peace."

"Good," Togu replied bluntly.

Lenk was aware of movement, netherlings returning to their vessels, chatter between them. He paid attention to none of it, his eyes locked, as they had been for an eternity, on Kataria's.

Her lips remained still, her ears unquivering. It was only through her eyes that he knew she wished to say something to him. But what? The question ripped his mind apart as he searched her gaze for it. A plea for help? An apology? A farewell?

He was likewise aware of his inability to do anything for her. His bonds would not allow him to rise, to escape. The searing heat and freezing cold racing through him would not allow him to weep, to speak. And so he stared, eyes quivering, lips straining to mouth something, anything: reassurances, promises, apologies, pleas, accusations.

"Take that one to the ship, as well," Sheraptus ordered the netherling holding her.

It was only when Kataria was hoisted up onto a powerful shoulder, only when her eyes began to fade as she was hauled through the surf, only when her gaze finally disappeared as she was tossed over the edge of the black boat that he recognised what had dwelled in her gaze.

Nothing.

No words. No questions. Nothing but the same utter lack of anything beyond a desperate need to say _something_ that he had felt inside of him.

And only then did he realise he could not let her disappear.

"Very well, then," Sheraptus said, pointing to a cluster of netherlings. "You five. You have... pleased me. I think you deserve a reward." He barely hid his contempt at their unpleasantly beaming visages. "The tome is all we require. Everything else can be destroyed."

"What?" Togu spoke up, eyes going wide. "We had a deal! You said—"

"I say many things," Sheraptus replied. "All of them true. It is my right to take what I wish and give as I please. And really, you've been quite rude."

"Sheraptus... Master," Greenhair spoke, "I gave them my word that—"

" _Bored_ ," the male snarled back. "I am leaving. Come or stay, screamer. I care not."

Confusion followed as netherlings hurried back to their boats, Sheraptus idly shaping his earthen staircase and returning to his own vessel. Greenhair reluctantly followed him aboard. Blades were drawn, cruel laughter emerging from jagged mouths. Togu shouted a word and his reptilian entourage fled. White, milky eyes settled on helpless, bound forms.

Lenk cared not, did not hear them, did not look at them. He watched the boat bearing Kataria slide out of view, vanishing into the darkness. He swallowed hard, felt his voice dry and weak in his throat.

"Tell me," he whispered, "can you... can either of you save her?"

No more heat. No more fever. Something cold coursed through his blood, sent his muscles tightening against bonds that suddenly felt weak. Something frigid crept into his mind. Something dark spoke within him.

" _I can_."

# _Twenty-Nine_

# THE SCENT OF MEMORY

The grandfather wasn't speaking to him anymore.

Unfortunately, that didn't mean he wasn't still there.

Gariath could see him at the corner of his eyes, held the scent of him in his nostrils. And it certainly didn't mean he had stopped making noise.

"We had to have known," he muttered from somewhere, Gariath not knowing or caring where. "At some point, we had to have known how it would all end. The _Rhega_ were strong. That's why they came to us. They were weak. That's why we aided them. That was what we did, back then."

Of all the aimless babble, Gariath recognised only the word _Rhega_. How far back, who "they" were, when the _Rhega_ had ever helped anyone weak was a mystery for people less easily annoyed. He wasn't even sure who the grandfather was speaking to anymore, either, but it hadn't been him for several hours, he was sure.

The shift had begun after they had left the shadow of the giant skeleton and its great grave of a ravine behind them. The grandfather suddenly became as the wind: elusive, difficult to see, and constantly flitting about.

_He talks more, too_ , Gariath thought, resentfully. _Much more annoying than the wind_.

He had long given up any hopes for communication. The grandfather vanished if Gariath tried to look at him, met his questions with silence, nonsensical murmurs or bellowing songs.

"We used to sing back then, too," the grandfather muttered. "We had reason to in those days. More births, more pups. We killed only for food. Survival wasn't the worry it is today."

Granted, Gariath admitted to himself, he wasn't _quite_ sure how the effects of senility applied to someone long dead, but he was prepared to declare the grandfather such. The skeleton had obviously been the source, but further details eluded both Gariath's inquiries and, eventually, his interest.

The grandfather had faded from his concerns, if not from his ear-frills, hours ago. Now, the forest opened up into beach and the trees lost ground to encroaching sand. Now, he ignored sight and sound alike, focused only on scent.

Now, he hunted a memory.

It was faint, only a hint of it grazing his nostrils with the deepest of breaths, an afterthought muttered from the withered lips of an ancestor long dead. But it was there, the scent of the _Rhega_ , drifting through the air, rising up from the ground, across the sea. It was a confident scent, unconcerned with earth and air and water. It had been around longer, would continue to be when earth and air and water could not tell the difference between themselves.

And he wanted to scream at it.

He craved to feel hope again, the desperate yearning that had infected him when he had last breathed such a scent. He wanted to roar and chase it down the beach. He resisted the urge. He denied the hope. The scent was a passing thought. He dared not hope until he tracked it and felt the memories in his nostrils.

There would be time enough to hope when he found the _Rhega_ again.

"Wisest," the grandfather whispered.

Gariath paused, if only because this was the first time he had heard his name pass through the spirit's spectral lips in hours.

"Your path is behind you," he whispered. "You will find only death ahead."

Gariath ignored him, resuming his trek down the beach. Even if it wasn't idle babble, Gariath had been told such a thing before. Everyone certain of his inevitable and impending death had, to his endless frustration, been wrong thus far.

And yet, what his ears refused to acknowledge, his snout had difficulty denying.

Broken rocks, dried-up rivers, dead leaves, rotting bark—the scents crept into his nostrils unbidden, tugged at his senses and demanded his attention. The scent he sought was difficult to track, the source he followed difficult to concentrate on.

Each time they passed his nostrils, with every whiff of decay and age, he was reminded of the hours before this moment, of the battle at the ledge.

_Of the lizard..._

His mind leapt to that moment time and again, no matter how much he resisted it, of the tall, green reptile-man coated in tattoos, holding a bow in one hand, raising a palm to him. He saw the creature's single, yellow eye. He heard the creature's voice, understood its language. He drew in the creature's scent and knew its name.

_Shen_.

How could he have known that? How could he _still_ know that? The creature had spoken to him, addressed him, called him _Rhega_. How was that possible? There weren't enough _Rhega_ left on the mainland, let alone on some forsaken floating graveyard, for the thing to recognise him. And he was certain he had never seen _it_ before.

And yet, it had intervened on his behalf, saved him from death. Twice, Gariath admitted to himself; once with an arrow and again with the surge of violent resolve that had swept through him afterwards. That vigour had waned, dissolving into uncomfortable itches and irritating questions.

_Questions_ , he reminded himself, _that you have no time for. Focus. If you can't feel hope, you sure as hell can't feel confusion until you find them_.

"Find what, Wisest?" the grandfather murmured. "The beach is barren. There is nothing for us here."

"There must be a sign, a trace of where they went," Gariath replied, instantly regretting it.

"There are no _Rhega_ here."

"You're here."

"I am dead."

"The scent is strong."

"You have smelled it before."

"And I found Grahta."

"Grahta is dead."

The grandfather's words were heavy. He ignored them. He could not afford to be burdened now. He pressed on, nose in the air and eyes upon the cloud-shrouded moon.

Thought was something he could not carry now. It would bow his head low, force his eyes upon the ground and he would never see where he was going.

"The answer lies behind you, Wisest," the grandfather said. "Continue, and you will find something to fear."

The spirit was but one more thing to ignore, one more thing he couldn't afford to pay attention to. So long as he had a scent to track, answers to seek, he didn't have to think.

He wouldn't have to think about how the beach sprawled endlessly before him, how the clouds shifted to paint moonlight on the shore. Still, he made the mistake of glancing down and seeing the shadows rising up in great, curving shards farther down the beach.

_Bones_ , he recognised. More great skeletons, more silent screaming, more shallow graves. How many, he wasn't sure. He didn't have the wit to count, either, for in another moment, the stench of death struck him like a fist.

It sent him reeling, but only that. What made him stop, what made his eyes go wide and his jaw drop, was the sudden realisation that he had been struck with no singular aroma. Another scent was wrapped up within the reek of decay, trapped inside it, inseparable from it.

Rivers. Rocks.

_Rhega_.

_No_.

That was not right. The scent of the _Rhega_ was the odour of life, strong, powerful. He seized what remained of his strength, throttled it to make himself stagger forward. He would get a better scent, he knew, smell the vigour and memory of the _Rhega_ that undoubtedly lingered behind it. Then everything would be fine. He would have his answers. He could feel hope again and this time, he'd—

He struck his toe, felt a pain too sharp to belong to him. A white bone lay at his feet, too small to belong to a great beast, too big to be a hapless human corpse. Its scent was too... too...

"No..."

He collapsed to his knees; his hands drove themselves into the dirt and began digging. He sobbed, begging them not to in choked incoherencies. Thought weighed him down, fear drove his hands, and with every grain removed, white bone was exposed.

_No_.

An eye socket that should have held a dark stare looked up at him.

_No!_

Sharp teeth worn with use and age grinned at him.

_NO!_

A pair of horns, indentations where ear-frills had been, a gaping hole in the side of its bleached head...

He was out of thought, unable to think enough to rise or look away or even touch the skull. He knelt before it, staring down.

And the dead _Rhega_ stared back.

"That's why the scent is faint."

Gariath recognised the voice, its age and depth like rocks breaking and leaves falling. He didn't look up as a pair of long, green legs came to stand beside him and a single yellow eye stared down at the skull.

"It's in the air, the earth." He squatted beside Gariath, running a reverential hand across the sand. "So is death. No matter how many bones we find and return"—he paused to sigh—"there are always more."

Gariath's stare lingered on the skull, afraid to look up, more afraid to ask the question boiling behind his lips.

"Are they...?" he asked, regardless. "All of them?"

The Shen's head swung towards him, levelled the single eye upon him. "Not all of them."

Words heavy with meaning, Gariath recognised, made lighter with meaninglessness. "If a people becomes a person, there are none left."

"If there is one left, then there is one left. Failure and philosophy are for humans." He glanced farther down the beach. "They have been here."

Gariath had not expected to look up at that word. "Humans?"

"Dragged through here, earlier, by the longfaces," the lizardman muttered, staring intently at the earth. "We had hoped Togu would take care of their presence, but not by feeding them to purple-skinned beasts. He encourages further incursions." He snorted. "He was always weak."

"You have been tracking them? You are a hunter, then?"

"I am Yaike. I am Shen. It matters not what I do, so long as I do it for all Shen."

"You can hunt with one eye?"

"I have another one. I am still Shen. Other races that teem have the numbers to give up when they lose one eye." He hummed, his body rumbling with the sound. "Tonight, we hunt longfaces. Tonight, we kill them. In this, we know we are Shen." He glanced at Gariath. "More bones tonight, _Rhega_. There are always more."

"There is a lot of that on this island."

"This?" Yaike gestured to the skull. "A tragedy. The Shen were born in it, in death. We carry it with us." He ran a clawed finger across his tattooed flesh. "Our lives are painted with it, intertwined with it. In death, we find life."

"In death, I have found nothing."

"I am Shen." Yaike rose to his feet. "I know only Shen. Of _Rhega_ , I know only legends."

"And what do they say?"

"That the _Rhega_ found life in all things. I am Shen. For me, all things are found in death."

Yaike's gaze settled on Gariath for a moment before he turned and stalked off, saying nothing more. Gariath did not call after him. He knew there was nothing more the Shen could offer him, as surely as he knew the name Shen. And because he was not sure at all how he knew the name, he felt no calm. Thought felt no lighter on his shoulders.

_Answers in death_ , he thought to himself. _I've seen much death_.

"And you haven't learned anything, Wisest," the grandfather whispered, unseen.

_Death is a better answer than nothing_.

There was no response to that from the grandfather. No sound at all, but the hush of the waves and the sound of boots on sand.

"Is that it?" a grating voice asked, suddenly. "It's pretty big, isn't it?"

His nostrils quivered: iron, rust, hate.

He turned and regarded them carefully, the trio of purple-skinned longfaces that had emerged from the night. They clutched swords in hands, carried thick, jagged throwing knives at their belts. How easy it would be, he wondered, to stand there and let them carve his flesh. How easy would it be to find an answer in his own blood, dripping out on the sand.

He hadn't learned anything that way so far.

"You have humans," he grunted. "I will take them."

"They yours?" one of them asked. "How about we burn what's left of them and what's left of you in a pile? Fair?"

He stepped forward and felt refreshed by an instant surge of ire welling up inside him. It might not have been the most profound of solutions, but then, this was not the most difficult of problems.

For this question, for _any_ question, violence was an answer he understood.

The netherlings shared this thought, bringing their swords up, meeting his bared teeth with their jagged grins.

Humans were nearby, he knew, and they were likely dead. Netherlings were closer, he knew, and they would soon be dead. He would find answers tonight, answers in death.

Whose, he wasn't quite sure he cared.

Lenk felt the chill shudder through his body, seizing his attention.

" _They have come to a decision_."

The sight of drawn swords and grins of varying width and wickedness confirmed as much. The netherlings' brief argument over who was going to kill whom had lasted only as long as it took for words to give way to fists, with the least battered picking their prey. The one most bloodied settled with a grumble for Dreadaeleon's unconscious form, still beside Lenk.

The one with the broadest grin and the bloodiest gauntlet advanced upon him, pursued by scowls from the ones with the most knuckle indentations embedded in their jaws. There were many of those, he noted. She had wanted him badly.

" _She shall never have us_ ," the voice muttered. " _We will find her first, show her revelation, show them all_."

"Revelation," Lenk whispered, "in blood, steel. We will show them."

"Show us what?" the advancing netherling asked, tilting her head to the side.

"He could show us his insides," one of the longfaces offered.

"Rather, _you_ could," another replied, kneeling beside the prone form of Denaos. "I intend to make this one die slowly. Xhai is going to be _pissed_."

" _Die?_ " the voice asked of Lenk.

Lenk shook his head. "Not us."

" _Not if she is to survive_."

A sudden heat engulfed Lenk, bathed his brow in an instant sweat. " _And what of your survival? Save her, even try to, and you'll die, you'll rot and she'll be—_ "

The sweat turned cold, froze to rime on his skin. " _Meaningless. Duty above survival. Duty above life. Duty above all. They are coming. They will die, as these ones here die_."

"As all die," Lenk murmured.

"Now you've got it," the netherling said, grinning as she levelled her sword at the young man's brow. "This is just how it is, as Master Sheraptus says. The weak give all, the strong take all." Her grin grew broader. "Master Sheraptus is strong. We are strong."

" _Weak enables strong. Strong feed on weak. Not incorrect_."

"Her perception is wrong, though," Lenk muttered.

"What?" The netherling smiled with terrible glee. "Oh, wait, are you going to do one of those dying monologues that pinkies do? I've heard about these! Make it good!"

His stare rose to meet hers. Instantly, her smile faded, the wickedness fleeing her face to be replaced with confusion tinged by fear. His eyes were easy as her sword arm tensed, his voice emerging on breath made visible by cold as he stared at her and whispered.

"We are stronger," he said evenly. "We will kill you first."

She recoiled at that, as if struck worse than a fist could. "I hoped to enjoy this," she growled, drawing her blade back, ready to drive it between his eyes. "But you _ruined_ it, you stupid little—"

A roar split the sky apart, choking her voice in her throat. Her arm steadied as a new kind of confusion, fear replaced with curiosity, crossed her face. She looked over her shoulder, milk-white eyes staring down the beach, seeking the source of the fury.

"That's..." another longface hummed, squinting into the gloom, "that's one of the low-fingers, isn't it? That the Master sent out?"

" _It is_ ," the voice answered in Lenk's head, " _what we have waited for_."

He felt his eyes drawn to the beach. Movement was obvious, even in the darkness: purple flesh shifting beneath moonlight as a netherling charged down the beach. But her gait was awkward, bobbing wildly as she rushed forward. The peculiarities grew the closer she drew: the jellylike flail of her arms and legs, the hulking shadow behind her body.

By the time Lenk saw the longface's head lolling on a distinctly shattered neck, it was clear to him and everyone else what was about to happen.

"Oh, hell, it's that... that red thing!" a netherling snarled. "What are they called?"

"It was supposed to be dead, wasn't it?" another snarled. "The screamer said!"

"It's not," the third laughed, hefting her jagged throwing blade. "This day just gets better and better."

"What about the pink things?"

"Kill 'em if you want. Don't expect any scraps."

A cackle tore through the longfaces. A chorus of whining metal followed as jagged hurling blades flew, shrieking to be heard over the war cry that chased them.

" _QAI ZHOTH!_ "

With each meaty smack, the longface's corpse shuddered as the blades gnawed into lifeless flesh and stuck fast, leaving the creature behind it unscathed. It rushed forward, trembling as a roar emerged from behind the shield of sinew. Lenk saw flashes of red skin, sharp teeth and dark, murderous eyes. He found he could hardly help the smile creeping upon his lips.

And behind the corpse, Gariath's grin was twice as long, thrice as unpleasant.

" _AKH ZEKH LAKH!_ " the longfaces threw chants instead of knives, hefting their swords and shields as they charged forward to meet the dragonman's fury with their own.

" _Distracted. Escape possible. Death inevitable. Duty will be fulfilled_."

"My hands are tied," he whispered.

" _Move or die_."

"Fair enough." He pulled at the ropes; he knew little of knots, but it seemed reasonable that the netherlings would not plan to hold prisoners any longer than it took to gut them. With a little guidance, he was sure he could break free. "Denaos, can you—"

" _He can_ ," the voice replied. " _He did_."

The slipped bonds on the earth where the rogue had lain was evidence enough of that.

" _We did not need him. Do not need any of them. Focus. Time is short_."

A challenging howl confirmed as much. Gariath had dropped his corpse to the earth, seizing it by its ankles and dragging it to meet his foes. Their anticipation was evident in the gleam of their swords, the grin on their faces.

" _QAI ZHOTH!_ " the leading one howled, leaping forward. " _EVISCERATE! DECAPITATE! ANNIHILA—_ "

The chant was shattered along with her teeth as two thick skulls collided. He swung the corpse like a club of muscle and flesh. Limp arms flailed out to smash ironbound hands into chanting jaws. Bones cracked against bones, casting the attackers back as Gariath grunted and adjusted his weight for another swing.

" _Ignore_ ," the voice hissed, its freezing tone bringing Lenk's attention back to his wrists. " _Duty is at hand. We must free ourselves. We must kill_."

"I can't," he snarled, tugging at his wrists. "I can't!"

"Can't what?" Dreadaeleon replied. "Gariath seems to have the matter in hand."

" _If you cannot, then she dies. All die. Because of you_."

"I can't help it... I can't get free!"

" _I can_."

"You... can?"

"Who can?" Dreadaeleon asked, glancing at the young man. "Lenk... really? _Now_?"

" _Say it_."

Somehow, within the icy recesses of a mind not his own, he knew what he must say. And somehow, in the shortness of his own breath, he knew the consequences of saying it.

"Save her," he whispered.

The voice made no vocal reply. Its presence was made manifest through his blood going cold and a chill sweeping over him. His skull was rimed in ice, numbing him to thought, to fear, to doubt. His muscles became hard, bereft of feeling or pain as he pulled them against the rope. They did not ache, did not burn, did not protest. They were ice.

He should worry, some part of him knew.

His hands pulled themselves free. He felt blood, cold on his skin, could not find the thought to hurt. He rose up on numb legs and staggered forward. The palanquin was before him, his sword upon it, its leather hilt thrust toward him invitingly. He clutched it and for a brief moment felt a surge of vigour, a piece he had been missing thrust violently into him and made whole.

" _You have a sword to defend yourself, the means to escape_ ," another voice whispered feverishly. " _Escape! Run now! Save yourself! You don't need to die here!_ "

Words on numb ears; he would not die here. He staggered forward, the blade dragging on the earth behind him. Gariath swung the corpse back and forth wildly; he was unimportant. The netherlings darted about him, seeking an opening in his defence; they were insignificant. One of them hung back, the one that had failed to kill him, the one that would enable him.

She was first.

She heard him approach, felt his breath on her neck, knew his presence; that was all so unimportant. She whirled about, the blade in her hand, the curse on her lips, the shield rising; that was just insignificant.

His own blade rose swiftly. He could see himself in its reflection, see the dead, pupilless eyes staring back at him. Then, he was gone, vanished in a bath of red. He couldn't remember when the blade had found her neck. He couldn't remember what he had said that made her look at him with such pain in her mouth, such fear in her eyes.

But he remembered this sensation, this strength. He had felt it in icy rivers and in dark dreams, in the absence of fever and the chill of wind. He remembered the voice that spoke to him now, as it melted and seeped out of his skull. He remembered its message. He heard it now.

" _Strength wanes, bodies decay, faith fails, steel breaks_."

"Duty," he whispered, "persists."

Life returned to him: warm, burning, feverish life. The body fell to the ground, the netherling gurgling and clutching at the gaping wound in her throat. The others whirled around, staring at her, then turning wide eyes up to Lenk.

" _Shtehz_ ," one of them gasped, "the damn thing just turned grey ag—"

The ensuing cracking sound would have drowned out the remark, even if the netherling's mouth wasn't reduced to a bloody mess as a red claw seized her by the back of her head and smashed her skull against her companion's.

Gariath stepped forward, regarded Lenk curiously for a moment. He snorted.

"Still alive?" he grunted.

"Still alive," Lenk replied.

"I thought _you'd_ be." Gariath reached down and took one of the netherlings by her biceps. "The others are dead?"

"Still alive," Lenk repeated. "For the moment, at least. There was another longface, Sheraptus, he took the women."

"A problem," Gariath replied as he placed a foot between the moaning female's shoulder blades. "What do you want to do about it?"

"They took them by boat, to a ship," Lenk replied, gesturing over the sea. "It can't be far away." He quirked an eyebrow at the dragonman. "Why do you care, though?"

"I killed two of these things earlier. Didn't find any answers. I'll give it a little more time."

"I see... Should I ask?"

Gariath didn't reply. His muscles tensed as he drove his foot downward, pulling the netherlings' arms farther behind her. She screamed, long and loud, but not nearly loud enough to disguise the sound of arms popping out of their sockets, not nearly long enough to drown out the deep cracking sound borne from her chest. She drew in several sharp, ragged breaths that quickly turned to gurgling, choking noises before collapsing into the sand.

"I wouldn't," Gariath grunted.

"Fine... that's _fine_." They both glanced to see the remaining netherling, staggering to her feet, growling as she raised her sword towards the two. "It doesn't matter if I die here. It's _never_ mattered. It doesn't mean you won't still die; it doesn't mean the Master won't—"

In a flash of motion, a dark stripe appeared across her throat framed by two trembling fists. Her sword dropped, her eyes bulging out of their sockets as she reached up to grope helplessly at the garrotte's thick, corded kiss. A grin appeared at her ear, brimming with far more malice than Lenk thought Denaos could ever have mustered.

"It's an ideal situation," the rogue explained to no one in particular. "The more you struggle, the tighter it goes, faster it's over. Perfect for putting down animals. It's all but useless against someone who just sits tight and thinks." He gave her a quick jerk, silencing her choked gurgling. "As I said, for the circumstances, ideal."

She collapsed to her knees, but he refused to relinquish his grip on the garrotte, stalwartly absorbing each elbow she thrust behind her. It was a valiant effort, Lenk thought, awestruck by the rogue's tenacity, though not enough to avoid a sudden thought.

_Wait... where'd he get the rope?_

The question lingered only as long as it took for the hate to leak out of the netherling's eyes, whereupon Denaos loosed his grip and let her drop. Lenk stared down at the rope, recognising it as far too furry to be anything but what the man had been wearing moments ago.

It took a strong perception for Lenk to realise the imperative need to not look back up. It took a decidedly stronger resolve not to scream when he invariably did.

Denaos certainly didn't help matters by placing his hands on his naked hips and setting a triumphant foot on the netherling's back.

"Take it all in, gentlemen," he replied, gesturing downward and tapping his foot. "What do you suppose? The biggest one here?"

Gariath stalked past him, casting a glance and offering a snort.

"I've seen bigger."

"Well, this is all _highly_ disturbing," came a shrill voice. They glanced over to see Dreadaeleon sitting upright, looking at them inquisitively. "I assume, once someone sees fit to untie me, we'll be giving chase?"

"Were you not dead a moment ago?" Denaos asked.

"Coma," Dreadaeleon replied, pausing only to sit still long enough for Gariath to shred his bonds and hoist him to his feet. "A momentary overwhelming of the senses, not unlike deeply inhaling a pot of mustard."

"Mustard doesn't do _that_ ," Denaos pointed out.

"Surprisingly enough, I use these childish metaphors for the benefit of your diminished comprehension," the boy spat back, " _not_ so we can waste time. We have to go after the renegade... the longface."

"They're out at sea," Lenk muttered. "We don't know where."

"We will shortly," Denaos replied.

Before anyone could ask, the rogue slipped behind a nearby bone and returned, shoving what appeared to be a walking, bound, bruised melon before him. Togu did not raise his head, his yellow eyes cast down. Shame, Lenk thought, or perhaps just out of a sense of protection as Denaos drew his loincloth-turned-garrotte tightly between his hands and looked to Lenk for approval.

"No," Lenk said, sighing. "We've got to find out what he knows first. The sea is a vast place, his ship could be anywhere and—"

"Two leagues that way," Dreadaeleon interrupted, pointing out over the shore.

"Huh?"

"He leaks magic," the boy replied. "He's a skunk in linens to me."

"Oh." Lenk glanced over at Denaos and shrugged. "Go nuts, then."

" _STOP!_ "

The Gonwa chased his own voice, emerging from the gloom before Denaos' wrists could even twitch. They regarded him as warily as he did they, though he seemed to be under no delusions that the sharpened stick in his hand was any match for the bloodied sword in Lenk's. Still, his eyes carried a suspicious forthrightness that Lenk instantly recalled.

"Hongwe," he muttered the creature's name. "If you're here to finish the betrayal..."

"He's not," Gariath grunted.

"I'd believe that if _anyone_ else had said it," Denaos replied.

"What makes you so sure?" Dreadaeleon asked, quirking a brow.

"I know," the dragonman said.

"The _Rhega_ speaks the truth, cousins," Hongwe said softly. "I am no friend to the longface." He gestured to Togu. "And neither is Togu."

"He _sold_ us to them," Denaos growled.

"For survival," Hongwe replied sharply. "He had choices... He made the wrong one."

"How is this not reason enough to kill him again?"

"Because I can't watch him die," Hongwe replied, "and don't ask me to look away. Togu saved the lives of me and my people. I trusted him, and if you want my help, I ask you to spare him."

"What help?" Denaos asked, sneering. "We know where the ship is. We've now got our weapons back _as well_ as our monster—no offence, Gariath—so the only thing lacking is a loose end which I've already tied up and am about to strangle with my loincloth."

Hongwe shrugged. "You got no boat."

"He has a point," Dreadaeleon replied, eyeing Denaos. "What do you care, anyway? Death is nearly assured. Not really your ideal situation, is it?"

"Prepubescent men in loincloths," Denaos replied, "are in a universally poor position to choose their help."

" _Post_ pubescent."

"So you say."

"Shut up, shut up, _shut up_ ," Lenk snarled. He whirled a scowl upon Hongwe. "You can get us to the ship?" At the Gonwa's nod, he looked to Gariath. "You coming?"

"People will die," Gariath replied.

"They will."

"Then yes."

"Great, fantastic, good," Lenk muttered, waving an arm about in swift instruction. "Get the boat. Get ready. We sweep in, start killing, hopefully come out of this all right."

"That's a plan?" Denaos asked. "Not to prove the boy's point, but a fire-leaking wizard _is_ something to take a moment about in regards to how we're going to attack this."

"Faith fades, steel shatters, bodies decay," Lenk replied, hurrying to the palanquin. "Duty remains."

"What does that even _mean?_ "

"Khetashe, I _don't know_ , you stupid protuberance! Just shut up and help me get my pants on," he snarled, tearing through the palanquin's array. "If I'm about to go charging onto a ship brimming with purple psychopaths who worship someone who _leaks_ fire, I'm not doing it with my balls hanging out."

"That's a good first step, at least," Dreadaeleon replied. "What next?"

Lenk's fingers brushed against something thick and soft. He plucked the severed head from the assorted tribute, holding it by its golden locks and staring into its almost serene, closed eyes.

"I'll think of something," he said softly.

# _Thirty_

# BURIED IN SKIN

All shicts knew how to deal with predators.

It was a matter of instinct. Those who lived in the wilds shared them with predators; those who knew how to deal with them possessed the talent for doing so. Those who did not lacked the instinct, thus they had not been given the talent by Riffid, thus they were not shict.

Kataria was a shict.

She reminded herself of this. Her breathing was slow and steady, fear kept hidden deep, far away from her eyes. She sat up straight, resting on her knees, back rigid: Those with weak stances were easy prey; those who drew attention to themselves provoked sharp teeth. Her wrists were relaxed in their rawhide bonds: Struggle suggested weakness, weakness invited attention. She forced herself still, daring no movement beyond quick breaths and subtle darts of her eyes.

She glanced at Asper, kneeling beside her, similarly bound. The priestess had only ceased to struggle against her captors when she had been forced into the cabin, placed in the corner with Kataria. Without fury to hide it behind, fear had set in quickly. She cowered in her bonds, bowed her head, breathed quietly, choking back sobs.

"Talanas protect me," she whispered. "I've doubted so much, I've feared for everything, I can't take this anymore, you've denied me my whole life, please don't let him do this, please, please, please..."

"Stay calm," Kataria muttered, "stay still. Don't speak."

"Shut up," Asper whimpered, "shut up, shut up, shut up. You don't know what's going to happen. You can't know."

Kataria narrowed her eyes, her ears folding over themselves. She tried to ignore the priestess' fervent whispering, tried to ignore the truth of her words to no avail. For as much as she reminded herself that she was shict, that she knew how to deal with predators, she could not shut out the doubt, the fear entirely.

Nor could she ignore the sound of long purple fingers drumming on wood. Nor could she recall any predator she had seen whose eyes burned like flame.

Predators were creatures of simple motive: fear, hunger, anger all plain in their gazes. Nothing about Sheraptus was plain on him, least of all his eyes burning fire. Instinct told her to fear him, yet he had not so much as looked at them since ushering them aboard the great, black vessel. His power was obvious, but he had done nothing more than whisper quiet orders to his netherlings to prove it.

Of him, all she could be certain was that his stare, brimming with fire, was not on her. For that, she was thankful.

Sitting lazily in a massive, blackwood chair beside a matching table, he weighed the tome heavily in his hands, staring at it with varying levels of disinterest, drumming his fingers on the armrest contemplatively. Occasionally, he reached up and ran a finger along the crown of black iron upon his brow, relaxing as soon as he touched it, suitably convinced that it was still there.

The crown was his sole distraction, all he seemed to truly notice in the room. It shared his enthusiasm, its three crimson jewels glowing all the brighter at his touch, speaking in a wordless, glimmering language only he could understand. More often than not, Kataria noticed him grinning at the crown's unheard jest, the wrinkles at his lips giving the impression that his mouth stretched far longer than any mouth could or should.

At those moments, Kataria found it difficult to keep the fear buried.

"What is paper made of, anyway?"

It was both the suddenness of and genuinely curious tone behind the question that caused her to start.

"Wood," a voice grated.

She heard Sheraptus shift in his chair, dared glance up to see him a bit surprised by the sudden voice. Xhai, leaning against the wall with arms folded across her chest, met his gaze and shrugged.

"Hacked down, pressed... I don't know."

"Wood... from trees." Sheraptus hummed thoughtfully, staring at the book. "They have thousands of trees." He glanced out the cabin's great bay windows. "Water, salted and pure, they have in abundance. They have fertile earth to grow food to feed themselves _and_ four-legged things they turn _into_ food. There is absolutely nothing to fight over on this world." He lifted the book up to the overhanging oil lamp, as if hoping to divine some secret from it by fire. "But they fight... over this.

"No, no." He suddenly shook his head. "Not even this: what's _inside_ this." He flipped the book open, thumbed through the pages with a sneer painted on his face. "Ink, letters, words I can't even read." He glanced over at Xhai. "The Grey One That Grins... he said that no overscum could read it, either, didn't he?"

"He did," the female replied.

"And yet so many creatures want it," he whispered, astonished. "The overscum wish to keep it out of the underscum's hands. The underscum desire it for reasons I can't even fathom. The Grey One That Grins wants it for reasons he wants us _not_ to fathom. And those green things wanted it to protect them..."

"From us," Xhai finished, grinning.

"No, not those green things. The other ones... the tall, tattooed ones." He shook his head. "So much worth fighting for... and they choose _this_."

"Are you going to read it?" Xhai asked. "If the Grey One That Grins wants what's in it, we should know." She narrowed her eyes. "I don't trust him. Or the screamer. We should have hurt her a little. I don't think she should—"

"Of course you don't," Sheraptus said, sighing. "That's what makes you a netherling. You come from nothing, you return to nothing. Your entire life is set: your actions, your fate, your..." His gaze drifted towards Kataria, causing her head to duck sharply, drawing a grin from him. "Instincts."

She cursed herself instantly; the movement was too sharp, too sudden. It had drawn his attention. She heard his chair slide as he rose from it, his feet scraping softly on the wood floor. She heard Xhai's teeth grind, felt the milk-white scowl levelled at her like a weapon. She tried to swallow, finding it difficult to do so with her heart lodged in her throat.

She heard his hand before it reached her, heard the quiet moan of the air as it parted in fear before his fingers. It did not stop her from cringing when it cupped her beneath the chin.

"But these things... these creatures..." He whispered, a farce of gentility in his voice. "Nothing is certain. They do things that make no sense, worship creatures that don't exist, fight over ink, scream in pain when pain is a certainty..." He tilted her face up, stared into her with burning eyes. "Why?"

Her eyes wanted to burst from their sockets, to let tears boiling behind them come flowing out. Her lips twitched with the scream that sought to pry them open and be heard. She buried them with her fear, or tried to.

But his eyes of fire searched her face, searing away masks of confidence and burning down walls wrought by defiance. He sought her fear, caught it in fleeting glimpses, and bid it to emerge within her stare as his fingers slid down her chin, brushing lightly against her throat, trying to coax out the scream inside.

She trembled, a shudder that rose in the pit of her stomach and coursed through her body, up to his fingers. He sensed it, a smile tugging at lips too long, eyes brightening wickedly. The jewels on his crown shone, wordlessly squealing, whining, suggesting, pleading, demanding that she stare into his eyes, that she loose her terror and fold over and tremble and weep and feel his eyes and teeth upon her, sinking into her flesh, drinking her fear.

_Do not_.

She heard it. Not a voice, but a confirmation not from her own thoughts. It did not rise in her head, but in her heart.

_He is a predator. All predators are the same_.

It did not inform her of this. She found she knew it. It was not a message. It was simply a reinforcement of knowledge, of instinct.

_Do not scream. If you scream, you will never stop_.

And she knew she would not.

"This one, I think," he whispered through his grin.

The moment he rose and stepped back, Xhai swept forward in great, angry strides. She seized Kataria by her arm and hauled her towards the cabin's support pillar. She felt her muscles tense, protest welling up inside them, only to be quashed by the sudden knowledge that rose within her.

_They are all base creatures, uncomplicated. They know weakness and kill it. They know defiance and kill it. Be as the air: light, unconcerned. They do not know the air. They cannot kill the air_.

The fear did not abate, but it suddenly felt less pertinent, if no less certain. Something had intervened itself between her and the longfaces, buried the fear deep behind its shadow. She felt her breath returning slowly, even as Xhai slammed her body against the pillar and swiftly bound her wrists to it. He was a predator; she knew how to deal with predators; she could survive.

She knew this because someone else knew this. Someone else told her this through their mutual instinct, their common, racial voice. Someone told her through the Howling.

Another shict. Close enough to hear. Close enough to smell.

"Not knowing... makes me uncomfortable."

Her eyes were drawn back to Sheraptus as he stood over the table, running long fingers over a smooth, blackwood case. His hand lingered on it with unnerving sensuality.

"It's not right that the pursuit of knowledge should be hindered, that wisdom should be kept from the mind that thirsts for it." The case opened at his touch with a bone-deep creaking noise. "This is the flaw of most creatures, I find: overscum, underscum, netherling alike. They are all satisfied by what they think they know."

His hands went to his brow, fingers digging beneath his crown. It parted with him after some hesitation, the glow burning brightly in protest, and then going dark as he set it next to the open case.

"How is progress made, then, if everyone is sated with gods, with theories, with instinct? No. Progress... true progress..."

From red silk lining, it slid out: a jagged sliver of a blade, as long and thin as two of his purple fingers. Its metal was polished to a high sheen. He turned. The fires in his eyes had been extinguished with the removal of the crown. Behind them, in that milk-white stare, a sadistic glee that had been hidden in crimson was reflected in the blade.

"Is found deeper."

_Bury your fear deep_ , the Howling told her. _Show him nothing_.

It was difficult for her to comply with that as he drew closer, the blade hanging at his side, dangling limply from his fingers. She took it in, along with his stare, his grin, with equal dread as he came upon her.

"And look at how you look at me," he whispered, his voice an edge itself, "with such judgement. I've seen it before, of course, and it strikes me as so hypocritical. That is the word, isn't it? Wherein you deny one truth because it seems inconvenient? Yes, hypocritical. It is hypocritical for you to think that the pursuit of knowledge can ever be second to anything. If you think the pursuit of it cruel, then clearly, you don't know enough, do you?

"The netherlings know. We were born in nothing. We expected nothing. But this world... it's so brimming with... _everything_." His tongue flicked against his teeth with each word, unable to be contained. "And we owe it to ourselves to know, to find out. We cannot be content with instinct, with what we suspected we knew. It would be disingenuous. We would never progress.

"This, I believe, is why I arrived here. Certainly, the Grey One That Grins opened the door in his search, but it had to happen for a reason. Divine happenstance, as you might suspect? No, no... it was natural. It was inevitable. Someone had to come, to understand this world so that netherlings and overscum as a whole might progress."

_Show nothing. Say nothing. Do not look away. Do not give him reason_.

She felt a bead of sweat form at her temple. It felt her fear as it felt his stare upon it. It fled, sliding down her brow, over her jawline, rolling across her chest, through the fur garment to drip down upon her belly. As it chased the centreline of her abdomen and hung above her navel, his finger shot out, pressed against her skin. At her gasp, the shudder of her stomach, his grin grew as broad and sharp as his knife.

"But to know, we must dig, we must seek, we must pry and we must cut." He lifted his finger, studied the bead of sweat upon it. "We must go into the base and find out what makes you work, what makes your heart beat and belly tremble. And you will show me."

He pinched his fingers together, a brief flash of fire behind his eyes as the sweat sizzled into steam. Grinning all the broader, he reached out to seize her by the jaw, running the tip of his blade down her body, gooseflesh rising in the wake of the gentle, razor grazing.

"You will show me _everything_."

The urge to indulge him rose inside her, the urge to wail and scream in the hopes that someone would hear her before that knife angled just a hair and slid into the tender flesh of her abdomen. In his grins, real and reflected, was a suggestion to do just that, to obey if she sought to survive.

_DO NOT_. The Howling rang out inside her head. _He perverts instinct, destroys reason. Do not scream. Do not show fear. Do not even think_.

And as soon as she knew this, her breathing stilled, her eyes dimmed, the fear seeping out of them. His own grin diminished slightly, seeing such a thing. She knew then that he could not succeed, that he could not exploit fear as he had hoped.

"Get away from her!"

Not hers, anyway.

They both looked to the corner: she with a quick, fervent glance, he with a slow, lurid stare. Asper had found her nerve, sitting up straight in her bonds, staring fire through tear-stained eyes, trembling against the ropes that held her. Her lower jaw was clenched tightly as she leaned forward, baring teeth at him.

"Don't you touch her," she hissed.

_Damn it, Asper_ , Kataria growled inwardly.

She looked back to Sheraptus. He apparently sensed her thoughts, offering her a lurid grin. The malicious glimmer in his eyes was as unmistakable as the swell of his breeches. Kataria was more horrified than she suspected she ought to be to know that neither were meant for her.

"Close your eyes, if you want," he whispered. "Shut your ears as best you can. Just know..." He swept his stare to the bound priestess. "You could have stopped this."

Asper's resolve seemed to melt with every step forward he took, her fear becoming more apparent, every quiver on her flesh bare to his pervasive stare, every lump disappearing down her throat heard with painful clarity. Kataria desperately wanted to turn away, to not hear, but found herself bound by his words as surely as the ropes.

She had caused this. Asper would suffer.

_For me_.

"It never lasts long, does it?" Sheraptus almost cooed as he descended upon her. "The defiance, the hope, the anger, the sorrow... You can always come back."

He shrugged. His robe fell from his shoulders. Kataria beheld purple muscle; red lines from which blood had once wept painted a picture of hate and fury upon his flesh.

"They fight back, at first, but that's only one of two constants. After that, it becomes so many things: pleading, persuasion, bargaining until finally..." He sighed. "The second constant. Nothing. No more fear, no more noise. They're... broken."

"S-stay away from me," Asper whimpered, pulling back. Kataria noticed her shifting to one side, tucking her left arm behind her as she did. "Don't touch me."

"Yes, that's usually how it starts." He canted his head to the side. "But... not with you, no. You're wearing a mask, aren't you? You only want me to think you're like the others. There's something within you... something I have felt before."

"I don't know what—"

"You do. I know you do, because I do." Sheraptus raised a brow. "Some qualities go deeper than breed. Some qualities, as loathsome as it is to admit it, are inherent. In you, I sense our instincts... that which drives us to kill, to cause anguish and suffering with no reason other than that's what we do."

"You're wrong," she gasped, her voice a whimper. "You're _wrong_!"

"Never." His eyes flared to crimson life. " _Never_ wrong."

He uttered the alien word, his hand rose and she followed, suspended by an invisible force. She shrieked, the sound ringing in Kataria's ears, drawing Sheraptus' smile wider. His hand extended, he took a step forward and staggered. His spare hand went to his brow as he swayed on his feet.

"Master," Xhai said, stepping forward with hands outstretched. "It's the crown. The Grey One That Grins slipped it to you to weaken you. You don't need it." A needy whine slipped into her voice. "These overscum women, you don't need them, either. They're both making you weaker."

"Weaker?" He turned to her with an expression of hurt on his face, though the fraud behind it was obvious. "Xhai... do you think I'm... weak?"

Obvious to almost everyone.

"N-no, Master!" she said, shaking her head violently. "I am just concerned for—"

"Unnecessary, Carnassial," he hissed with sudden fury, turning back to Asper. "I don't like using magic for this. It dulls everything. What can be learned when all qualities and variables are dashed?"

He growled another word, shoving his hand forward. Asper was flung against the wall of the cabin, her scream choked in pain, her struggling impotent as he strode forward. His eyes were wide, white. His lips trembled, shifting between grin and animal need.

"Knowledge gained through _nethra_ is nothing. It's too swift, too open to doubt. True knowledge is found through observation, through experiment. Slowly."

He waved his hand. Asper's shriek was cut short as she was flipped about by the unseen force, her belly pressed against the cabin wall, her bound arms presented to him. He reached out and placed a hand upon her naked left shoulder.

"And here is where it all starts... This is the source of it, the beginning." His hand slid down her arm, tightening here, pinching there, counting off each knuckle in her fingers. "Such pain in it... I can feel it in you, feel them screaming. But this... this is merely a vessel." His hand slid lower, rested upon her buttock. "Show me, little creature, where the true suffering lies."

Kataria didn't understand his words, didn't even hear him. She could only hear Asper's whimpering, the screams choked inside her, the shuddering dread in her flesh. She could only see Asper's tears pouring from her eyes, over her red cheeks and into her clenched teeth as she tried to shut them against him, against everything.

She could only feel Asper's fear, her rage at how little she could fight against him, how she could do nothing as his fingers slid up past her loincloth.

To his sigh of contentment, she wished she could shut her ears... and then tear out his throat.

"Ah..." he whispered. "There it is." He smiled, pressing his body against hers. "Just takes a bit of trauma, doesn't it? Everything with your breed does. It's the catalyst that makes you shift so constantly. Yours will emerge, I think, only after more, only after..."

He paused, looking up and away from her, staring into nothing. Xhai seemed to pick up on this instantly, stepping forward with a furrowed brow and clenched fists.

"Master?"

"We," he whispered, "have company."

Before she could even form a suspicion, a chorus of screams rang out from the ship's deck and assaulted Kataria's ears. The sound of metal clanging, voices chanting, a thunderous roar, alien words. Through it all, barely audible through the wood, she heard a voice screaming itself hoarse with her name.

_Lenk_.

_A human_ , the Howling answered. _Not important_.

"We're under attack," Xhai snarled. She stalked to the wall, seizing her massive metal wedge of a sword. "Nothing but worthless high-fingers out there. I'll be back."

"No, no," Sheraptus said. "That will take a bit longer than I'd like. I'll handle this personally. Stay here and guard them."

"Guard," she growled in indignation. "I'm a Carnassial. The _First_ Carnassial. _Your_ Carnassial. Let me do this for you; let me—"

"Unnecessary," he replied. "Besides..."

He glanced at his fingers, disdainfully wiping them clean upon his robes.

"I'm in a bit of a mood."

He withdrew his other hand, his power dissipating and letting Asper slide dejectedly to the floor. He swept across the floor, beckoning robe and crown to his hand with a wave. Slowly, he affixed both and turned to the cabin's door, pausing only to spare a smile for Xhai.

"Come now, Xhai, if I trusted anyone else..."

"I would kill them," she grunted.

"Absolutely." He swept his burning eyes back to Asper. "I shall return shortly."

He was gone in an instant. Only then did Kataria look at Asper, lying motionless upon the floor, not enough breath left in her to sob, not enough life in her to stir. Kataria stared at her, the woman who was rendered so still, so lifeless, because she had spoken up for the shict. Kataria stared, mouth hanging open, unable to find words to comfort she who had spoken the words that had condemned her.

The din of battle outside grew louder. Not loud enough to drown out the Howling.

_She is a human. Her actions are a symptom of her disease. You owe her nothing_.

Not loud enough to convince Kataria.

# _Thirty-One_

# SUBTLETY IS FOR THE DEAD

_I was supposed to have given this up..._

There was no doubt in his step as he darted low under a wild swing from a purple arm, shoving his blade up into purple skin, stared up into a purple face. The light leaked out of her white eyes in swift order, the last moments of her life spent spewing a blood-slurred curse from her teeth before she collapsed to the deck of the ship.

_Wasn't I?_

" _Unique circumstances_."

He felt his hands driven of their own accord, twisting the blade inside her to extinguish the last sparks.

_You're not supposed to be so chatty, either_.

" _You're supposed to deny us more powerfully_."

_And yet..._

" _Clarity is a wonderful thing. Behind you_."

" _QAI ZHOTH!_ "

He whirled and saw the pair of longfaces charging. While he might not have heard Dreadaeleon's arcane verse over their war cry, he certainly heard the roaring crackle of fire that followed. A great red plume preceded the boy like a herald as he strode forward, arm outstretched to sweep his fiery harbinger over the pair. They writhed, shrieking as they attempted to press forward, then fall back, before they simply fell, blackened and smoking.

"Nice work," Lenk remarked.

"Well, I do it all for your approval," Dreadaeleon replied, panting. "This wasn't a good idea. I'm strong enough to do that, but not for much longer. Not without..." He glanced at Lenk, then grunted. "We should have opted for another strategy."

"The other strategy was to leave Kat and Asper to die."

"We could have tried something else. Subtlety, perhaps."

"We are a pubescent magic-spewing freak, a man with a disembodied screaming head and four hundred pounds of angry reptile. What about that suggests 'subtlety' to you?"

A thunder of boots rumbled through the ship's black hull; alien war cries rose through the planks of the deck. At the bow of the ship, the purple shapes of the netherlings began to emerge from the shadows of a companionway.

The shriek that met theirs was shrill and terrified.

A green shape came hurtling over Lenk's shoulder like a scaly meteor, colliding with the lead longface with a resounding cracking sound. She collapsed into her companions as Togu, bound and squealing, rebounded from her chest and rolled along the deck.

Lenk _had_ wondered why Gariath had insisted on bringing him along up until now.

Gariath followed, charged on all fours, complementing Togu's strike with one from his own horns. He struck the longface's purple torso, rose to his feet and continued to press her back into her fellows, choking their rush in the companionway's darkened throat.

"Five hundred pounds, maybe. He's looking healthy today," Lenk said, cringing at the flurry of claws and teeth and noting the wisdom in keeping his distance. "Subtlety is where Denaos comes in."

"Pointless," Dreadaeleon muttered. "The moment the heretic even looks at him sideways, he's dead and we'll follow. Did you not see what he can do? What he _did_?"

"I saw," Lenk replied. "If I was duly frightened of everything that makes _you_ faint, however, I'd never get anything done. This is the only chance we have." He shoved the boy forward. "Now, do something useful."

The boy's eyes narrowed and, whether because of Lenk's command or in spite of it, blossomed with crimson light. He swept his hands toward the companionway, the fire in his palms blooming with the murmur from his mouth. He placed them both upon the deck and, with a resounding word, sent serpentine flame racing to meet in the companionway and erect a wall of crackling orange to segregate the dragonman and the netherlings.

Gariath stared at the sudden obstacle with undue contemplation, as though wondering whether to leap through the fire and continue the assault or perhaps just break Dreadaeleon's hands to bring it down first.

Lenk was more prepared for either of those than to see the dragonman reach down, scoop up Togu's bound form, and drag him back with unnerving patience. At Lenk's apparent surprise, he shrugged.

"I've killed a lot so far," he said. "I can wait for a few more."

"The point is not to kill them," Lenk replied, "but to distract them until Denaos can do what he needs to." He glanced over the edge of the ship. "Then we leap off, reunite with Hongwe and paddle off before anyone can kill us." He glanced to Togu, wide-eyed and squealing behind a gag. "What'd you bring him for, anyway?"

"He caused this, as you say. He should see it to the end," the dragonman replied. "The end being that you all die, of course."

"Not you?"

"Not yet."

"You seem in good spirits. How have you been, anyway?"

"Not dead yet."

"Nor us."

"Yet."

"Right, yet. It's a bit strange to see you so enthusiastic."

"I could leave, if you want."

"Not yet."

Gariath said nothing in reply, sweeping his gaze up and down the ship. Aside from Dreadaeleon's murmuring chant holding the flames up and the netherlings back, the deck was quiet from companionway to the looming cabin at the ship's stern.

"And you're waiting for what?"

It happened in an instant. Sound died, wary of being heard. Clouds covered the moon, terrified to be seen. Pressure settled over the deck as the sky sank low and tried to hide beneath the sea.

"That," Lenk whispered.

Dreadaeleon's voice was choked from him, his chant and the flames it conjured extinguished in an instant. The netherlings emerged from the companionway slowly, all their bloodlust and hatred still present in their white stares, but restrained behind shields and nocked arrows.

Keeping baleful stares on the companions as they defensively backed up against the ship's great mast, the netherlings filed out silently, uttering no more than a curse or growl as they took positions, surrounding their prey, but making no move to raise blade or draw bow. The yearning to do so was frighteningly plain on their faces, but they were restrained by some unheard command, a cautious calm settling over them that Lenk found unsettling.

He had seen this before.

"Can I help you?" a voice, deep and rolling, bade Lenk to turn.

Against the purple pillars of muscle and iron that flanked him, the longface didn't look too imposing at a glance. It didn't take long for Lenk to become reacquainted with the eyes ablaze and the halo of black iron wrapped about Sheraptus' brow, however. It took even less time for him to raise his sword cautiously and slip a hand to his belt and the burlap sack hanging from it.

"If he's got only one arm," Gariath whispered, "that will keep him busy, right?"

"Yes, but—"

The dragonman didn't wait. Hurling Togu at the long-face, he howled and fell to all fours, charging after the squealing green projectile. The females made no movement to intervene as Sheraptus lifted a hand and casually waved it.

The air quivered with force. A gale unseen and unheard spawned from nothingness and swept over the deck, striking both Togu and Gariath from sky and deck alike and sending them hurtling over the ship. Lenk stared in astonishment as his companions' roar ended in a brief splash. Sheraptus didn't spare nearly as much shock, glancing disinterestedly over the ship's edge and then back to Lenk.

"Well?" he asked. A moment later, recognition dawned on his face. "Oh, it's you. Still alive?"

Lenk nodded weakly, only just beginning to pull himself from his shock.

"I assume my females are dead, then?"

Another nod. Sheraptus regarded them carefully before canting his head to the side.

"And?"

Lenk recoiled, having expected nearly any other response.

"And... what?" he asked.

"Did you need something else?"

"What? We..." He shook the confusion from his face, replaced it with as steely a resolve as he could manage. "We came for our friends."

"That hardly seems fair," Sheraptus said, looking offended.

"Fair?" Lenk asked, the incredulity of the statement shocking him into inaction.

"I left close to two fists of females on the beach and you killed them all," Sheraptus said before gesturing to the deck. "You killed three more here and who knows how many more in Irontide." He frowned. "I take _two_ of yours and you come onto my ship and make such a ruckus as to draw me out of enjoying them?"

"Of... of course we did."

"Fascinating. Why?"

"Because..." Lenk blinked, his face screwing up. " _What?_ "

"Kindly don't live up to your stereotype. You know exactly what I mean. To have come here, you would have to be led here, thusly you knew what awaited you. It would have been more pragmatic to flee... yet you came here, into a ship brimming with my warriors under my limitless control, into certain death. For what? _Two_ females? You could have found more somewhere else."

_Kataria_ , he thought.

" _Duty_ ," the voice insisted.

"What is it you hoped to accomplish, then?" Sheraptus asked.

"Realistically?" Lenk replied.

"Of course."

The young man shrugged, seeing no particular point in lying. "The idea was to keep you busy until the other fellow who was with us could sneak into your cabin and escape with the females."

Sheraptus nodded, seeing no particular point in reacting. "And ideally?"

"Kill you and render the rest of the situation something akin to making gravy."

"I apologise to say that the metaphor is lost, though I grasp the meaning," Sheraptus sighed. "No matter how lofty the goals, no matter how staunch the ideal, it always ends in base instinct: eat, breed, die. It's so..." He glanced at a nearby female and frowned. "The sole difference between you and them is that you try so hard to deny it."

He waved his hand. Bows creaked, arrows levelled at the companions as his eyes smouldered with burning contempt.

"I'm not sure there's anything to be learned from you, sadly."

" _Now_ ," the voice said inside Lenk's head. " _NOW!_ "

Lenk's hand slipped into the burlap sack, fingers wrapping around thick locks as he pulled the object within free. Strings sang, arrows flew as he held the severed head aloft and spoke a word.

"Scream."

And it obeyed.

The air shuddered in an explosion of sound as the mouth found a macabre life and sprang open, eyes flaring with golden awareness. The arrows found no soft flesh, but a wall of noise that shuddered out of him and tore the air apart, sending the missiles twisting away, scattered like rats before a flood.

With a shriek unheard, Dreadaeleon hurled himself to the deck as Lenk turned, levelling the head and the quavering wail tearing itself free from its mouth towards the surrounding longfaces. In great waves, it swept over them. Hands were clenched to bleeding ears, shields rose in futile defence, the truly unprepared were sent sprawling over the railings, their screams lost in the shrieking onslaught.

Unable to bear it any longer himself, he lowered the head. His ears rang; his heart throbbed as the echoes of the shrieking lingered in the sky on distant, fading thunder. Dreadaeleon rose on shaking legs, breathing heavily. The longfaces rose not at all as they groaned and bled on the deck.

All save one.

"You didn't mention that in your plan, I note," Sheraptus said, twisting his little finger inside his ear.

"Surprise?"

"You are adorable."

Sheraptus flung his hand out, the wave of force rippling from his fingertips to strike Lenk and hurl him towards the mast. He struck it with an angry cracking sound, letting out a breathless cry before he collapsed, unmoving.

As Dreadaeleon stared at his companion's unconscious body, he began to feel it. His breath sought to flee his lungs, his eyes his head, his legs out from under him, regardless of whether or not the rest of him decided to come. It was painfully familiar: the same sensation that had driven him into darkness a week ago, rendered him helpless only an hour before, showed him to be nothing more than an impotent weakling...

_In front of Asper_ , he added mentally, _twice_.

He felt it now—that sensation of power, that great light that never extinguished, that unnatural presence that made nature go still. He felt the burning stare, from eyes and stones alike, and knew that the curiosity behind it was all that kept him conscious at the moment.

"Little moth?" Sheraptus asked, a smile tugging at his lips. "I _thought_ that might be you. Apologies, between the screaming and the distraction, I hardly noticed you."

"Don't talk to me," Dreadaeleon hissed, painfully aware of his breaking voice.

"That would make me a terrible host."

"You're a heretic, a renegade," the boy snarled. "You disregard the laws of magic, the laws of the Venarium. You will be stopped."

Sheraptus stared at him for a moment. "By you?" He held up a hand. "No... no, don't answer that. Don't even think about it, if you can help it. The strain might put you under. _Again_."

"That last time, you... you cheated," Dreadaeleon growled. "Somehow, I don't know. That's why you have to be stopped."

"I have to be stopped because you don't understand how I did it? How will you ever learn?"

"Shut _up_ ," Dreadaeleon snarled.

His voice came with all the conviction of a constipated cow, the pressure around him threatening to shatter his jaw. Breath came harder; standing came with great difficulty. But he still breathed. He still stood. He forced his fingers straight, levelled them at Sheraptus. He forced his eyes open through the sweat dripping down his face. He forced the words to a mind that sought to shut itself down, into lips that sought to seal themselves shut. Electricity, however faint, danced in blue sparks on his fingertips.

"Really?" Sheraptus asked, levelling fingers of his own. "You know how this will end."

"I do," the boy grunted.

"You want to go ahead with it?"

"I do."

"For your... Venarium?"

"Not them."

Sheraptus glanced over his shoulder, towards his cabin, and smiled. "Ah, I see. The tall one?"

"If you touched her..."

"I did," he said, turning his smile upon the boy. "There's more to her than you could know, little moth. There's more I will learn from her. And I will do it slowly."

It was a scream that tore itself from Dreadaeleon's lips: unfocused, angry, wild. The electricity that launched from his fingers was no different, snaking out in a wild, twisting tongue. It was only the sheer inaccuracy of his aim that allowed the sparks to fly past a purple hand meant to ward it off and lash against a shoulder.

The longface hissed and recoiled. It had done no damage that Dreadaeleon could see: barely anything more than a black mark, barely visible against the longface's ebon robe. He supposed it was the indignity of the blow, an electric slap in the face, that caused Sheraptus' visage to screw up in fury, his eyes to become two angry miniature suns.

"Pity," he hissed as he raised a hand and levelled it at the boy, "that she didn't see that."

It occurred to Dreadaeleon that such a blow shouldn't feel quite as satisfying as it did. Even if it _had_ done any discernible damage, his victory was dampened by the groans heralding the rise of the netherlings.

Slowly, shaking blood from their ears, grinding curses between their teeth, those remaining staggered to their feet with murder in their eyes. His companions remained lost to unconsciousness and the sea respectively. Sheraptus' fingers began to crackle with blue sparks just as his eyes went alight with red.

He was going to die, Dreadaeleon realised. And all he had done was sully a robe a little.

Still, he thought with a smile, considering he had been in a coma induced by the man's stare alone just moments ago, this didn't feel like such a bad note to end on.

His only concern was why it was taking so long.

Sheraptus' face twitched, neck jerked, as though a gnat were buzzing in his ear every moment he thought to discharge the lethal electricity and reduce Dreadaeleon to a smouldering husk. That same buzzing lingered in the boy's head, too annoying to allow him to feel fear or a need for flight. It chilled him, burned him, alternating and intensifying with each breath.

Even before he felt the shadow sail over the deck, he recognised the presence of another wizard.

That hardly kept his jaw from going slack as his eyes rose to the sky, followed by a dozen wide whites and two narrowed orange slits. The presence of the newcomer felt an anathema to Sheraptus' power, bidding the seas to churn and the moon to peer out from behind the clouds and shed light on him.

Beneath a broad-brimmed hat, a pair of hard eyes stared down at the deck from high in the sky. A coat fanned out into leathery wings behind a tall and slender body, flapping to keep him gracefully aloft above the carnage on the deck. At his hip hung a dense tome supported by a silver chain, its cover marked with a sigil of authority.

A sigil of the Venarium.

"Oh, hell," Dreadaeleon whispered, "a Librarian."

"It's quite rude to come announcing yourself with that particular presence, sir," Sheraptus snarled to the man. "Come down and let us speak without you buzzing in my head."

Not possible, Dreadaeleon recognised. The power roiling from the Librarian was faint, but constant, worn like the easy mantle of authority that settled about his features. It was a power that came from no crown or stone, but from years of practice and merciless discipline.

"Bralston," the man spoke by way of callous introduction. "Librarian under the authority of Lector Annis of the Cier'Djaal Venarium branch, unlimited jurisdiction, all treaties foregone, lethal force authorised and pre-absolved." His eyes ran over the scene with cool surveillance. "I have come seeking a violator of the laws of Venarie. A heretic."

His gaze shifted from the sweaty boy in a filthy coat before settling on the purple creature with electricity dancing effortlessly on his fingers and the fire burning on his brow and in his eyes. Sheraptus recoiled, offended.

"What makes you so sure it's me?" he asked.

"Violators are offered a singular chance for absolution," Bralston said, descending to the deck. "Surrender your body for research and your crimes will be considered absolved."

" _No one_ ," a nearby netherling snarled, stalking to impose herself between Sheraptus and the Librarian, "speaks to the Master like—"

"Offered and declined. Noted."

With one smooth movement, Bralston doffed his hat and uttered a word before tossing it gently at the longface. The steel ring within instantly sprouted several glistening thorns that gnashed together with harsh, grating noise. It caught the netherling in the face, her screams muffled behind the leather as its brim wrapped about her head and the headgear's teeth began to noisily chew.

"Carnivorous hat," Sheraptus noted as the female staggered off, clawing at the garment. "Impressive."

"Librarian!" Dreadaeleon called out, finding his nerve and voice at once. "Wait!"

"All involved parties will be questioned pending execution," Bralston replied, his eyes burning with crimson as he extended an arm glistening with flame.

"I recognised _two_ of those words," Sheraptus said, matching the Librarian's burning gaze and hand alike. "Oh, my friend, I have so much to learn from you."

# _Thirty-Two_

# MERCY IS FOR THE DENSE

The din outside the cabin was enough to shake the ship. There had been the clash of metal and the roar of battle, a brief moment's pause before the shuddering wail that caused the panes of glass to crack in their portholes and the doors to threaten to buckle under the pressure. Now, the snarling, roaring, grunting, clanging, hissing ruckus of fighting had resumed in earnest.

Each noise clamoured to be heard over the others, and each told Kataria nothing in their haste to tell her everything.

The din inside her head was still more aggravating. The fear, the doubt and the frustration that twisted inside her skull like so many screws were bad enough without the voice of instinct, of the Howling, of the shict she knew to be speaking to her through it, echoing in her brain.

_Survive_ , it told her. _Shicts survive. Shicts preserve. Shicts cure. You are a shict. You have a duty to your people_. She found it hard to ignore the voice. _Ignore the human. Her duty is to live and die. Your survival is worth more_.

Especially when she couldn't find the will to agree with it.

The will of the unseen shict came with nearly every breath, and was as impossible to ignore as it was to stop breathing. Yet for every time it bade her to look within herself, she found her eyes all the more pressed on the pale, bound figure in the corner.

Asper was still alive, though her shallow breathing and still body did not do much to support it. The priestess did not move, did not speak, did not so much as shiver anymore. The soft weeping and violent trembling had left her body and left her nothing more than a pile of limp bones and skin that muttered the same thing on soft, silent breaths.

"You let it happen," she whispered. "I gave everything. I did everything right. You just let it happen."

_What could I do?_ Kataria thought to herself. _How could you not have known what he was? How could you not have known to stay silent?_

_She is human_ , the Howling answered her. _There is no instinct in her. She survives through other methods that she does not have now. You are a shict. You have instinct. You survive so that all shicts may survive. You have a duty to your people_.

The thought was hers and not hers, a dormant, feral logic awakening within her. And it came more and more frequently, with more and more urgency. It was no longer shared knowledge. It was no longer instinct. The Howling was all her people condensed into a single thought.

It was impossible to ignore, yet impossible to grasp. The unseen shict's will brushed her only in fleeting thoughts, prodding the Howling to awaken and tell her of his location. Nothing more was offered, no advice given or instructions handed down. She racked her mind, searching for a possibility for escape, to reach him.

And then, she would look at Asper, and forget everything.

She would hear the priestess' sobbing, see the priestess' agonised tears. She would forget that she stared at a human, one of many. She would forget that Asper should mean nothing to her, forget that she should think of herself, her people, her duty. She would remember Asper was her friend.

That Asper was the reason she was not lying on the floor and sobbing.

And nothing more than that: she recalled no words of comfort, remembered no reassurances of safety. The Howling would speak to her in these moments of lapsed clarity, and it would begin anew.

_Survive_ , it implored as it knew she should. _You must survive_. We _must survive. You must—_

Her bones rattled in her flesh as the wooden pillar trembled with the force of the purple fist slamming against it. A harsh, grating growl filled her ears and drowned all other thought.

"What's taking so long?"

Kataria felt slightly comforted to know she wasn't the only one wondering.

It seemed too mild a comparison to think that Xhai paced the cabin like a nervous hound as she stared at the door. Hounds, as far as she knew, didn't show nearly so many teeth when they growled.

Hounds, too, had instinct. When they sensed danger, they acted, even in spite of their master's orders. Xhai clearly sensed danger, clearly wanted to act, but remained in the cabin. She had been given an order and was determined to obey it. As vague as that order might have been, she rigidly clung to it as though it were the word of a god, or whatever equivalent longfaces worshipped.

_Him_ , she reminded herself. _They..._ she _worships_ him.

"What do you think it is, then?" Xhai grunted at her. "Your pinkies come to take what the Master owns?"

Kataria did not answer, for it was clear Xhai didn't want one.

"We should have killed all of you," she muttered. "Netherlings don't need pink things."

Whatever caused Kataria to speak up, she was certain it was no instinct.

"He seems to disagree," she said.

"The Master _needs_ nothing," Xhai snapped. "He wants. He wants everything." Her gaze became hard and looked straight through Kataria. "He deserves everything."

"If he had everything he needed," Kataria replied, "he would want nothing."

While she had known she should have stopped long before saying that, Xhai's incoming fist only confirmed that. She jerked her head to the side, saw Xhai pull back knuckles red and embedded with splinters.

"If he needed any of you," she snarled, "I wouldn't have watched all the cold, weak bodies of those he wanted fed to the sikkhuns when he was done with them." She sneered. "When I drag your body to the pits, overscum, I'm going to make sure you're still warm."

"I'll go laughing," Kataria replied, meeting her scowl with an even stare. "Because the thought of a longface who desperately wants to lick her Master's feet being relegated to garbage removal is just _hilarious_."

Xhai's hand shot out and caught her by the throat as her fist cocked back. Kataria made certain to smile broadly at the longface, knowing this would be the last time she would do so with all her teeth.

" _I DON'T CARE!_ "

They both glanced to the side as Asper threw herself onto her back, her scream hurled at the ceiling from a face stained by tears.

" _I DON'T CARE ANYMORE!_ " she shrieked. " _YOU LET IT HAPPEN! YOU ABANDONED ME! LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN, THEN! TAKE IT! TAKE ALL OF IT! I DON'T CARE!_ "

"So soon?" Xhai released Kataria and stalked over to the prone woman. "You're not supposed to snap this early. Wait until the Master can do more."

"Get away from her," Kataria growled after the long-face.

_Think of yourself_ , the Howling insisted. _Think of your kin. Think of your duty. You have to—_

"Leave her alone!" Kataria howled, jerking at her bonds.

_She is nothing. You have to survive. You have a duty_.

"Asper!"

"I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care," the priestess sobbed, shaking her head violently. "I want it all to end. I don't care for who."

"It doesn't end now," Xhai muttered, rising up and nudging her with a toe from her spike-covered boots. "The Master doesn't want it to. His is the right to—"

She paused suddenly, then leapt backward, astonishment on her angular features.

"What," she grunted, "the hell is wrong with you?"

Asper's arm looked as though it had suddenly contracted and gone through the worst bouts of an infection, the blood pooling in it and painting it red as sin. It was far too deep a crimson to be anything normal, Kataria thought, all the more disturbing as it throbbed, pulsed and tensed even as the rest of the priestess' body lay unmoving.

"Take it," Asper whispered. "Take it all."

Xhai could muster nothing beyond an alarmed stare, looking to the door with a newfound longing for her master to return. Kataria's eyes were locked on Asper, struggling to find the words to speak, the question to ask through the murmurings in her head. And yet, even as the Howling spoke with urgent fervour, she could still hear the sound.

Hinges without oil creaked. Something slid through a narrow frame. A pair of feet hit the floor.

She saw the porthole's window swinging on its hinges and the shadow sliding beneath it, into the darkness at the edges of the overhanging lamp's light. She only barely saw him, a shadow within a shadow in his black leathers, and only barely recognised him. His face was too long, his eyes too hard. And the smile he gave her as he noticed her staring had never unnerved her before.

Denaos raised a finger to his lips. She nodded, saying nothing, as he slunk about the halo of light. A rope slid into his hands like a snake, his fists drawing it tight. He rose up behind Xhai like a black flower and angled the garrotte over her head, his hands unnaturally steady.

He had only just begun to lower it when an eerily gentle smile split her long face.

"I knew you'd come," she whispered.

His eyes widened just a fraction before he struck. The garrotte snapped down swiftly, finding the tender flesh of her throat and drawing tight. She snarled, thrusting her elbow back and into his ribs. He reeled, but refused to let go, pulling himself closer, hands shaking as he strained to pull the rope against her windpipe.

"I knew it," she said, her voice only slightly raspy, "because I know you, because I know me. I know _I_ wouldn't leave my foe with just scars to remember me."

He suffered another elbow, gritted his teeth. It was frustration and not pain that was evident in his face as he pulled so hard that the garrotte creaked in protest.

"What the hell are you _made_ of?" he snarled.

"And I knew they couldn't kill you," Xhai continued, ignoring his words and his rope alike, "I knew you weren't dead..."

Her hand lashed up and over her shoulder, gripping his throat in a vice of purple fingers.

"Because I hadn't killed you yet."

His cry was a weak and pitiful thing against her roar as she yanked hard. He flew out from behind her and out before her with such swiftness as to suggest that, at some point, his innards had been replaced with soft wool.

That theory, and his all-too-fleshy body, were mercilessly dashed as he came crashing down upon the wood.

_That should have worked, shouldn't it?_ he asked himself, not certain who would answer. _I was certain it would_.

_Everyone makes mistakes_ , he reassured himself.

_Is that her foot above me?_

_It is_.

_I should move, shouldn't I?_

He needed no answer to spur him into a roll. Her spike-encrusted boot came smashing down where he had just lain. He sprang to his feet in time to see her pull her foot out, chunks of wood still clinging petulantly to its twisted spikes.

"That's fine," she said calmly. "We'll take our time with each other, get to know one another." She smiled with something that was obviously intended to be warmth. "When one of us kills the other, I want it to mean something."

She leapt at him, just as the knife leapt to his hand. With surgical precision, he slashed it up and against her brow. Like a shattered dam of purple flesh, the blood came weeping out in great rivulets, pouring into her eyes and rendering her blind. She shrieked, swung a fist, seeking him. He sprang backwards and continued to do so as she flailed too wildly.

His retreat came to a sudden halt as he felt his back meet the pillar his companion was tied to.

"Not a lot of room to move here," he muttered.

"You talk like it's _my_ fault," Kataria snapped. "Kill her quick and it won't be an issue."

"I'm not getting near those hands of hers."

"Then what are you going to do?"

"Run, maybe? Probably die. I'm not sure yet."

"You didn't think of a backup?"

"I didn't."

" _Why not?_ "

"Oh, come on! What were the odds that strangulation wouldn't work?"

Anything she might have replied was lost in a howl of metal and a wail of cloven air. He looked and leapt just in time to avoid the massive wedge of metal that served as her sword from taking off his head. It bit deeply into the pillar instead as he scurried around it and the shict bound to it. He grabbed Kataria about her midsection, glancing around her and avoiding her offended scowl, much more concerned with the white eyes painted red narrowed at him.

"I'm assuming she won't kill you," he said, darting behind the shict as Xhai shot out a fist at his left, "or she would have already."

"You can't know that!" Kataria shouted to be heard over the sword being wrenched free.

"It's an educated gamble," Denaos said, twisting back behind her as Xhai lashed her blade out to catch him on his right. "If she can't kill you, then you make a very good shield."

"I can hear you, you know," the longface said.

She swung again. He leapt again. The blade did not so much strike the pillar as shatter it completely. The ropes were slashed, sending Kataria falling to the ground. Splinters sprayed in all directions, a haze of dust and shards assaulting Xhai's already stinging eyes and sending her into a blind, howling fury.

When he looked down, Kataria was staring at him with vast and empty eyes.

"I could have died," she whispered. "And if I had, there would be no one left to help you." She shook her head. "I can't let you die."

"Then help me find my knife."

"Asper isn't well," Kataria said, rising to her feet and slipping her rent bonds. "You have your people. I have mine."

Before he could protest, she sprang to her feet and darted past the flailing longface, shoving the cabin door open and disappearing. Though he knew he ought to feel it, the urge to curse her as a coward was decidedly faint.

The pang of regret at not having fled first: decidedly not.

A snarl seized his attention. Xhai kicked the last remnants of the shattered pillar out of her way, advancing toward Denaos, her eyes shining through a face painted with blood and adorned with splinters. Her smile was one of contentment, unconcerned with the red dripping over her lips to stain her teeth. His face was one of fervent panic as he backed away and searched for any way past her that didn't end in disembowelment.

"No," she answered his wild gaze. "No more chases, no more interruptions. This is where one of us dies." Even reflected in the blade she levelled at him, her smile was possessed of macabre affection. "I'm glad it ended this way, Denaos."

The rogue did not cry out as he was backed up against the wall, did not think to beg or plead or make deals. There was no room in her face for that. What else he saw in there—the tinges of joy, of desire, of lust—he was determined not to take as the last thing he saw before being gutted.

Thus, when he saw the slender form of Asper stalking towards the woman on shaking feet, her body trembling, her arms still bound behind her, he focused on her immediately.

"I fought for so long," the priestess whispered, though to who was unclear. "I wanted so badly to believe there was a reason I should." There was a sizzling sound; a wisp of smoke rose from behind her. "I wanted to believe that the Gods wanted me for something other than this."

Xhai glanced over her shoulder at the woman and snorted before returning her attentions back to the rogue.

"There are no gods," the longface said.

"There are," Asper whispered.

An arm extended from her shoulder: a black, skeletal limb bound in a red glow that pulsated like a decaying heart.

"They just don't care."

The sword fell from Xhai's grasp the moment Asper laid that red-and-ebon hand that belonged to something that was not her upon the longface's neck. It was a gentle grasp, no more force behind it than that a wife would use to rub her husband's shoulders. Five fingers rested lightly upon the netherling's neck.

And Xhai screamed.

The longface fell to her knees, every muscle visible bunching up and tearing beneath her flesh. Her jaw threatened to snap off with the force of her wail, her eyes threatening to boil out of her skull and dribble in thick yolks into her mouth.

" _NO!_ " she shrieked. " _NO!_ "

"I told myself that, too," Asper replied, shaking her head as tears poured down her cheeks. "I tried. But there's nothing to be done." She choked on a sob. "They abandoned me. I did everything for the Gods and They just let that... let _him_ happen to me. What's the point in resisting now? What does anyone care?"

"I... won't..."

Xhai's arm rose up as if to stop her. There was a loud snapping sound as an invisible force very visibly shattered her hand, causing her fingers to seize up in agonised curls. Asper's arm reacted immediately, fed on her suffering. The flesh of her shoulder seemed to dissipate into sizzling wisps as the crimson spread farther up her arm.

"This hasn't happened before," she said, "but why wouldn't it? Why wouldn't everything be taken from me, flesh and soul?"

"S-stop..." Xhai whimpered.

"I can't... I told them to take it," Asper whispered. The crimson light spread like a stain of paint. The fur wrapped about her chest sizzled and fell off, her left breast bathed in translucent crimson, exposing blackened ribs below. "To take it _all_."

"And... I... said..."

Xhai howled, lashing out her uninjured fist that struck Asper against the jaw like a purple sledge.

" _Stop!_ "

She continued to howl, to hammer, flailing wildly behind her and screaming even as her forearm trembled and shattered like her hand had.

" _STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!_ "

Asper did, her grasp shattered under the hail of blows. She collapsed, weeping, heedless of the looming purple shape as she rose up. Xhai stared at her through trembling eyes, looking from her to her ruined arm. Her face quivered, jaw hung open, as though on the brink of asking why, of demanding how, of weeping along with the priestess.

Instead, when her mouth found her voice, it was only a scream that came out.

" _QAI ZHOTH!_ " she howled.

And nothing more came of it as a force exploded across her back.

She buckled under the attack, tried to look over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of the tall man in black leather holding up her master's chair. Her eyes, and her face, were driven back down as he smashed the chair against her back again and again. It cracked, splintered, shattered in his hands, and still he brought it down upon her until she no longer moved and he was left holding two hewn chair legs.

He set them down six blows later.

Panting, Denaos spared only as much attention for the netherling as it took to confirm that she wouldn't get up. Once that was clear, and after he had given her rock-hard flesh a kick for good measure, he turned his attentions to his companion.

"Asper," he whispered gently.

She was curled in on herself, trying to bury her left arm under the whole of her shuddering body, weeping violently. With some trepidation, he knelt beside her, wary to touch her after what he had seen, wary to even look at her.

Kataria had run. He could, too. Asper was safe now. There was no reason to stay here. He could escape now, too. She wouldn't want him around, either, when she finally looked up. He was a coward, a thief, a brigand. She had called him these before. He had run from her before. He could do so now. It would be easy.

That was what he told himself.

That was not what he did.

He placed a hand gently on her, paused as she recoiled from his touch. Undeterred, he gently rolled her over.

And resisted the urge to scream.

She stared up at him through one tear-stained eye. The other was nothing more than a black socket bathed in crimson light. Her naked breast rose and fell with each breath as the ribs where the other one should be shuddered. Half a pair of lips whispered in shuddering words to him as half a black jaw moved up and down with mechanical certainty.

"I think..." she said. "I think there's something wrong with me."

# _Thirty-Three_

# TO OUR PEOPLE

His head was burning. If he knew nothing else in the darkness that he had been plunged into, he knew this.

And the voice that accompanied it, hot with emotion.

" _Could have been so easy..._ " it sizzled on his skull, " _it all could have been so easy. You could have been away now and we could all have been happy. You could have forgotten her, forgotten_ everything. _It would have hurt, but you would have survived. Now?_ "

The darkness became bright, angry red inside his head.

" _Now I'll watch you die_."

Lenk's eyes snapped open. He knew they were open, even if he wasn't quite sure whether he was awake or even alive. His eyes swam and his head rang. He could see purple shadows moving through great red sheets. He could hear the distant cracking of the sky. His head was still burning, his face still dripping with sweat.

That might have been because of all the fire, though.

The wave of heat that rolled over him returned him to his senses. The wave of crackling orange flame came rolling shortly after. He scrambled to his hands and knees, crawling hurriedly behind the mast before he could feel anything more than the vague sensation of a branding iron tickling his rear end.

Ample reason to figure out what was going on, he thought.

He peered around the mast and was greeted with a sight of carnage. The great red tongues that came lashing out of thin purple palms had long forgotten Lenk. Behind the veil of fire, his face painted orange with the heat, Sheraptus snarled and drove the flames skywards, leaving the deck charred beneath him.

His target, the source of his fury-screwed face, became apparent as the night sky was set alight.

A man, he was at least _vaguely_ sure it was, sailed overhead, the fire licking at his heels as leathery wings carried him over the deck. Those netherling females not lying in various states of cinders, icicles or both surrounded their master protectively, angling drawn bows towards their target.

The man's hand flashed, in and out of his coat, and produced three scraps of paper. Only when he hurled them did Lenk realise that they were folded into the angular shapes of cranes. That realisation was not quite as interesting, Lenk thought, as the fact that their little papery wings were flapping of their own accord.

The man spoke a word. Whatever language, whatever command, the folded cranes heard and obeyed. Instantly, they turned from white to silver, from dull to shining, from angular to wickedly sharp. Spinning through the air, they found three purple throats and dipped steel beaks into tender flesh.

Bows clattered to the deck. The ensuing gasps and breathless screams as the netherlings clutched at severed windpipes went unheard. Sheraptus appeared less than concerned with the females, thrusting his fingers, and the ensuing whip of lightning, at his elusive prey.

"Why is this such an issue for you?" he cried to be heard above the crackling electric blast. "I've never heard of you before. Why are you so obsessed with me?"

"Your eradication is a service to more than one power. You are a violator," the man replied sharply. "In every sense of the word."

"Meaning?"

"I met your victim."

"Which?"

"You took everything from her, including her name."

"It comes down to females _again_?" Sheraptus snarled, thrusting a finger and sending a jagged blue arc over the man's bald, brown head. "Are vaginae truly so scarce on this world as to be worth this much trouble?"

Lenk took it as his good fortune that the longface's attentions were so focused elsewhere. His eyes were drawn past the robed figure to the doors of the cabin, just as his thoughts were drawn to Kataria, undoubtedly inside. It would be a simple matter of crossing, infiltrating and retrieving with Sheraptus so distracted.

_As simple as matters involving wizards can be, at least_.

As if on cue, he felt a familiar hand, far too scrawny and sweaty as to be particularly worrying, on his shoulder. He turned to see Dreadaeleon's sweat-slick visage and purple-circled eyes staring intently at him.

"You've been busy," he noted.

"It's incredible." The intensity of the boy's grin raised some concern in Lenk. "All of a sudden, the weakness... it was gone! I... I can cast again, Lenk. I can channel it. It feels..."

His eyes went unnervingly wide as he rose up. His pelvis, Lenk noted, was far too close to Lenk's face _before_ the boastful thrusting began.

"Look! Not a drop of moisture, not a trace of fire, not a wisp of smoke!" the boy proclaimed loudly. "Look! Look!"

"No! _No!_ " Lenk seized him by his belt, pulling forcibly down. "Now, listen, the longface is distracted and you're feeling..." He paused, shook his head. "We're not talking about that anymore. Denaos very clearly didn't make it or he'd have let us know. We've got to go in and—"

"Save them," Dreadaeleon said, nodding. "I can feel it, just thinking about it. The power... I can feel the surge. Isn't that fascinating? Venarie is internal, to be sure, but it's ruled by thought and logic, not emotion. For it to work this way is—"

"Can you go out and get burned alive or something distracting?" Lenk asked. "That... bird-man-thing can't hold him off forever."

"The Librarians are trained to great feats of endurance and power, Lenk," the boy replied. "He can do more than you or I could." He winced. "And, you know, I'm technically obligated to help him as a member of the Venarium."

" _Treason, treachery, betrayal_ ," the voice, frigid and sharp hissed inside Lenk's head. " _They are useless. We are—_ "

" _Dead_ ," the voice, feverish and burning roared inside Lenk's brain. " _You're dead. You had your chance. You're going to—_ "

" _Ignore that. Focus on duty. Focus on—_ "

" _Her. She's dead, too. You're all dead and—_ "

"Enough, enough, _enough_ ," Lenk growled to all assembled. "I can do this without any of you." He glared at Dreadaeleon. "If you're going to be useless, I can do it without you, too."

"Useless?" The boy mopped sweat off his brow, flicked it at Lenk. "Do you think I got this from jogging in place all this time you've been unconscious, vulnerable and oh-so-stabbable? I've been setting on fire, freezing into ice, frying into blackness and otherwise _harming_ the longfaces. There were ten more on this deck before you woke!"

"Eleven."

The longface came shortly after the word, leading in with a purple fist that drove into Dreadaeleon's jaw and sent him sprawling to the deck. Lenk had scarcely enough time to blink before her hand jerked backward and slammed him against the mast while she took a moment to drive a foot into the writhing boy's ribs.

"He's already—" Lenk began to protest.

"No," the longface interrupted, smashing her fist into his face.

He felt the bone-deep quake, felt his skin ripple across his flesh with the force of the blow. His vision did not so much swim as struggle to keep from drowning, eyesight fading as he saw first the remorseless, uncaring long face, then blackness, then her drawn-back fist, then darkness again.

He felt the knuckles connect with his jaw, even if he didn't see them.

Perhaps he was still dizzy from his previous awakening, he thought. That's why this was so easy for the longface to beat him so savagely. Perhaps this one was just particularly strong, or perhaps they had all been stronger than he suspected. Or had he always been weaker than he thought?

By the fourth blow, and the torrents of glistening red pouring from his nose, his thoughts shifted to something else.

_Sword_ , he told himself. _Need my sword. The head... where is it? Sword, head, sword, head... someone..._

" _We need no one_ ," the voice rang across rime.

" _No one will come for you_ ," the voice hissed across fever.

And they, too, faded, with every blow the longface rained on him. His neck felt like a willow branch, his head like a lead weight. His arms were impotent as he tried to shield himself from her attacks. He felt bruises blossoming under his skin, cuts opening on his brow, his jaw. Eyelids fluttering, he stared at the longface as she stared back, appraisingly.

"Huh," she said. "Don't stop to talk before you kill 'em and they just fold right up, don't they?"

She might have had a point, as the only words he could muster were vain pleas—whether to her or someone else, anyone else, he didn't know—through blistered lips and a tongue swelling with coppery taste. She didn't seem to be listening, in any case, as she knelt down before him and pulled a jagged, short blade from her belt and brought it down in a vicious chop.

He caught her arm as a tree branch catches a boulder. His wrist threatened to snap under the pressure, trembling as she strove to bring the blade down towards his soft throat, which twitched so invitingly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lenk took a quick, despairing stock. Dreadaeleon lay fallen. Gariath was still far over the edge. Denaos was dead, Asper likely with him and Kataria...

Kataria was standing there, not twenty feet away.

She was scrambling across the deck hurriedly, pausing only to snatch up a fallen bow and a pair of arrows. Her eyes were on the companionway at the opposite end of the ship, ignoring Sheraptus hurling curses and fire at the sky, the Librarian spewing frost back at him.

She didn't even see Lenk.

"Kat!"

Not until he screamed, anyway.

She skidded to a halt, looking at him with worrying confusion. She seemed to recognise him in another instant and frowned, either at him or his situation, he wasn't sure.

"Kat! _Help!_ "

His plea for aid twisted in his throat and became a shriek of agony as the longface's blade came crashing down into the tender meat of his shoulder. He fought back against her still, but even as he kept the blade from biting deeper into his flesh, the jagged teeth sawed at him. His ears were filled with the sound of each sinewy strand snapping under it so that he was only scarcely sure he was still screaming.

" _KATARIA!_ "

" _Gone_ ," a voice said sorrowfully.

It was right. He saw, in fleeting glimpses, the shict cringing, then turning and fleeing into the confines of the companionway. She didn't even look behind her. She hadn't even heard him.

" _She did_ ," a voice hissed angrily. " _She betrayed us_."

" _Betrayed you_ ," another said. " _Abandoned you_."

"What now?" he gasped through blood and tears. "What...?"

" _Fight back_."

" _Give up_."

With a blade in his shoulder, his companions gone and the very reason he came to this ship of blood vanishing into shadow, one option seemed much more tempting than the other.

He never got to make the choice, however, as Dreadaeleon staggered to his feet and, from there, staggered into the longface. Kneeling as she had been, she toppled over with a grunt of surprise, releasing the blade and focusing her attentions and fists on the boy.

He, however, was just as focused on her. And only one of them had crimson light in their eyes.

His hands, pitifully scrawny, clutched her throat, indomitably thick. The word, soft in his throat, went unheard through her snarling. The blue electricity that raced down into his fingertips, however, demanded her attention.

Crackling became sizzling became sputtering as her snarling became screaming became frothing convulsion. Her teeth all but welded together as the lightning coursed from his fingers into her body, snaking past purple skin and into thick bone. As though she were some blackening bull, Dreadaeleon fought to hold on as she seized violently on the deck, his fingers digging into flesh growing softer, eyes turning to red spears as they narrowed.

When it was finally over, he slid his fingers from well-cooked meat, wisps of smoke whispering out from ten tiny holes. He clambered off, exhausted, but not spent as he looked to Lenk accusingly.

"You could have fought back," he said angrily.

"No point..." Lenk said. "She's gone, she's gone."

"Who? Asper?"

"Kataria."

"Oh... well, yeah, why wouldn't she? She's a—"

"Yeah," Lenk said, reaching up to clutch his bleeding shoulder. "Yeah."

"So... what now?"

Lenk made no reply, but an answer came to him as a great red hand appeared at the railing. They heard the grunt, saw Gariath haul himself up and over onto the deck. He spotted them just as quickly and rushed over, panting heavily, ignoring the battle raging between the two wizards.

"Up," he snarled. "Get _up_."

"What's the problem?" Dreadaeleon asked.

"Big problem," Gariath muttered. " _Big_ problem."

"Where's Togu?"

"Dead, maybe? I don't know. Now get up. We've got a big problem."

"You've said that already but—"

There was the sound of a distant voice shouting commands in a deep, rolling tongue, audible even over the carnage on the deck. They looked out to see the ocean alight with a swarm of fireflies, dozens of little orange dots reflected upon the waters.

"Are those...?"

At another distant command, the fireflies rose. One more and they flew. By the time Lenk and Dreadaeleon realised the lights were no insects, they heard nothing but the shrieking of shafts and the sizzling of fire.

"Get _down!_ " Gariath snarled, shoving the two of them behind the mast.

The arrows came plummeting, singing mournful dirges accompanied by crackling fire. Sheraptus glanced up just in time to throw his hand out, the air rippling as the missiles struck an unseen wall and went quivering. Those females surrounding him that had not noticed in time to bring shields up became smouldering porcupines in an instant.

The entire ship seemed to shudder with the sound of heads biting deeply into wood and flames snarling angrily as they passed through sails. After an eternity of waiting, Lenk dared to peer around the mast.

Across the sea, he saw them, their green faces and yellow eyes aflame as they lit fresh arrows. Their tattoos of red and black were stark against the firelight, causing them to resemble ghouls fresh from a grave, rotted wrinkles and throbbing veins bright on their dire expressions.

Shen, he recognised. Three long canoes full of Shen. Drawing arrows back.

"That..." he whispered, "that is a problem."

Gariath shook his head. "No, moron. I said we had a _big_ problem."

"That's _not_ big?" Dreadaeleon said, astonished.

He was answered as the sound of a distant horn rose from the canoes.

And in the next moment, the horn, too, was answered.

In the eruption of the sea and the violent vomit of froth, a resonating roar tore through the sea and ripped into the sky. Combatants and companions alike were thrust to the deck as the ship rocked with the force of a violently disturbed wave. Black against the night sky, a creature rose into the air, a great, writhing pillar topped with two menacing yellow eyes.

The Akaneed stared down at the deck as those upon it stared back up at the titanic snake. Its head snapped forward, jaws parting to expose rows of needlelike teeth, a roar tearing out of its throat on sheets of salty miss.

" _That_ ," Gariath roared over it, " _is big_."

_You served your people_.

Kataria heard it over her own footsteps.

_Yours was a duty to all shicts_.

Kataria heard it over her own thoughts.

_You did the right thing_.

Kataria did not believe it.

And yet, she continued down the stairs of the companionway, all the same. She may have doubted the quality of the Howling's message, but was driven forward by the frequency and urgency of its insistence. It spoke inside her a dozen times with each step she took.

_You did the right thing. You did the right thing. You did the right thing_.

By the time she reached the end of the stairs, she knew it was right, because the shict who spoke to her knew it was right. It had ceased to be reassurance, ceased to be a message. It was knowledge now, as primal a knowledge as knowing how to swim and to hunt.

But with the next step, between the two hundred and forty-first time and the two hundred and forty-second time she heard it, she knew she still didn't believe it.

Perhaps it was that doubt that no shict could ever feel for the Howling that brought the tears to her eyes. Perhaps those came from a different instinct altogether. She didn't dare think on it. She brushed them from her face with the back of her hand. If she began weeping now, over a human, over the doubt, that knowledge would become shared.

And she could not bear the thought of descending and finding her kinsman weeping as well.

The sight that greeted her in the vast ship's hold, however, was one of emptiness. Benches and cots lined the hull, presumably for the netherlings to sleep upon when they weren't fighting, crushing, killing, shoving jagged blades into throats from which her name emerged on blood-choked screams...

_Stop it_ , she told herself.

_Stop it_ , the Howling agreed.

And she did. It was powerful here, speaking to her with greater clarity, greater urgency. It needed only to speak once, and she knew it to be true. She felt her eyes drawn to the darkness at the end of the cabin, the great void that ate the light of overhanging oil lamps. She could see the shadows of a cage's cold iron bars, and while she could see nothing beyond that, she could hear something; she could feel something.

A heartbeat. A thought. A knowledge that was hers. A knowledge that was theirs.

A shict.

She had barely taken another step when she noticed the lone netherling in her path, and then only after she noticed the jagged blade hurtling towards her. She fell to the deck, hearing the blade's frustrated wail as its teeth sheared only a few hairs from her head.

"Just how many colours do you things come in?" the longface grunted.

Kataria's answer came with a growl.

The arrow was up and in the bow, drawn back as far as she could force the rigid thing to go, and launched a moment later. A moment was all it took, however, for the longface's shield to go up, sending the missile ringing off.

_Stupid piece of..._ Kataria thought irately, glowering at the weapon. _Who the hell would call this stick a bow?_

The netherling, apparently, agreed, if the broad grin with which she raised her sword was any indication. Still, she refused to advance, holding her shield up defensively as she watched Kataria draw her final arrow back. Such lack of a willingness to have a piece of iron wedged in one's brow, the shict figured, was likely what led this one to be below.

And yet it served her frustratingly well as Kataria aimed and launched, slipping past the longface's shield to find an unyielding iron breastplate below. It was clear, then, that what the black bow lacked in accuracy it made up for in power. The longface was driven back a step, nothing more than an inconvenience before she readied to charge upon the now-defenceless shict.

Still, Kataria smiled. A single step was all she had needed.

The green fingers that came slithering out between the bars would handle the rest.

The longface's cry was brief as the long fingers, attached to longer hands and longer arms still, wrapped around her throat in five tiny pythons. They scarcely trembled as they intertwined and pulled her back towards the bars, possessed of a cold passionlessness that suggested this was just one more neck, like all the other necks that had been strangled. Cold hands. Killer hands.

Shict hands.

Kataria forced herself to watch as the crown of the long-face's head was pulled between the bars, her screams choked as she was fed head-first into an unyielding iron mouth. There was nothing to silence the sound of bone groaning and popping as, hairsbreadth by agonising hairsbreadth, she was pulled between bars that would not accommodate her thick skull.

This, she reminded herself, was what shicts did. Shicts did what they had to. The world, filled with diseases of pink and purple, left them no choice.

The long, purple face was consumed in the void of the cage. Her body twitched soundlessly for but a moment before her legs went slack, bending her back at an awkward angle as she lay still, thick neck wedged between the bars and suspending her in standing, artificial rigour.

Cold, killer fingers slipped out and calmly reached into a pouch at the longface's belt. A few moments of deft search revealed a wrought-iron key that was drawn out neatly between two green digits. A faint clicking noise emerged after those fingers vanished back into shadow. The cage door groaned as it swung open, dragging the corpse frozen in its grip across the deck with it.

He stepped out of the void, a great green plant out of dark earth, stepping lightly on feet bearing thumbs. Countless time in a cramped cage had done nothing to stunt his stature as he rose high enough for his bald pate to scrape the underside of the oil lamp above him. From his groin up, a long line of symbols ran the length of his body, each one a story.

And each one a death. Of wife. Of child. Of their murderers.

Each symbol was no bigger than a thumbprint, but each sorrow and every hatred was condensed into a pattern of lines that only a shict would know.

Kataria knew.

"What is your name?" she asked.

He stared at her with even blue eyes.

"You already know."

Upon his lips, the shictish tongue, _their_ tongue, sounded so eloquent. She wondered absently if he could hear the dust on her own tongue.

She searched herself, listened to the Howling.

"Naxiaw," she said, looking up at him. "I am... pleased you are well."

"Pleased?" His lips peeled back into a broad smile, his canines twice as large as hers. Long arms parted in a gesture almost warm enough for her to forget they had just been used to pull a longface through bars. "Sister. We are not strangers."

She would have been shocked to find herself laughing, possibly a little worried to find the sound so hysterical. That thought was lost in a sea of emotion that carried her on running feet to leap into him. His arms wrapped about her, drew her close to a broad chest. A great weight had fallen from her, evidenced by how easily Naxiaw drew her up off her feet.

In his arms, she found memory. She found a hand on her shoulder, reassuring her after her ears were notched. She found the scent of rabbits cooking and fires. She found the dirge of bows and the song of funeral pyres. She found memories of her father, his sternness, his words, his speeches, his memories. Of her mother, she found only lightness.

She found everything the Howling said she would find.

"Little Sister," Naxiaw said, holding her closely, "you are far from home."

"The world is our home," she replied. "No matter what round-ears say."

"It heartens me to hear such words."

Her father's words.

"The creature above," the greenshict said, "that caused you such sorrow. I felt him. Is he dead?"

_No_ , she thought, _he wouldn't die so soon. He's above, bleeding out under a rusty knife. Right where I left him_.

_Not_ that _creature, stupid_ , she scolded herself.

"You are worried," Naxiaw said.

_Watch what you think, moron_ , she hissed mentally. _And don't look at him! If he can't tell through the Howling, it'll be obvious once he sees your face_.

"I was," she replied, keeping her voice steady. "But I draw strength from my people."

"As all shicts should."

Her grandfather's words.

"It is well now, Sister," Naxiaw said, easing her down and laying her head upon his chest. "I live. You live. We are safe."

Her ear against his chest, she could hear the sound of memory in his heartbeat. Slow and steady, purpose resonating with every pump of blood through it. It was comforting to hear, at least at first.

The more she listened, however, the more she was aware that she had never heard such a thing before. She had heard nothing so slow, so certain, so sure. And it caused her to pull away, her ears attuned to her own body. There was no more thunder in her ears; there had been, she was certain, when the Howling spoke to her, had urged her to hear it.

Now, she heard her own heart. It was swift, erratic, uncertain, conflicted.

Light.

Unpleasant.

Terrifying.

"Sister," Naxiaw said, furrowing his brow. "What is wrong?"

_You_ , she thought. _You're wrong. Your heartbeat is too steady. You're too sure of yourself. You know everything a shict should know and you hear the Howlinglike it was another shict. You're probably hearing this right now because the Howling is... isn't it?_

She said none of that. Instead, she shook her head and spoke words that none of her family had ever said before, that came from her light, erratic heart.

"I don't know."

Naxiaw looked certain, as though he were about to speak with the voice of the Howling and whatever he were to say next would assure her of everything. She watched eagerly as he stared back at her, then said nothing, looking down at the floor of the hold.

"Ah," he said, "they are almost here."

"Who?" Kataria asked, confusion overriding despair.

"You cannot hear them?" Naxiaw asked. He released her, knelt down on long legs to stare at the floor thoughtfully. "They have been following this ship for hours now. They are waiting for something."

His fingers ran over the wood. His ears, six notches to a lobe, perked up. She heard it, too: the groaning of wood, a cry of protest that it knew was useless as something insistent pressed up against it. Naxiaw looked up at her, his eyes keen and his face dire.

"And now," he whispered, "it has come."

The boat rocked suddenly as something struck it from below, sending tremors through the floor, past Kataria's feet and into her heart. The ship's groan became a scream as jagged rents veined the wood and bled saltwater.

Naxiaw leapt up and back, putting himself between her and the rapidly spreading crack in the floor. _He's trying to protect me_ , she realised. _Who... no one's done that for me before_. The thought should have caused her less distress than it did.

She herself took a step backwards as another great blow shook the ship. From beneath the widening crack, she heard them: voices, proclamations, hymns, chants, urges, each one brimming with purpose, each purpose rife with death.

Another blow and the floor erupted into a spray of splinters, the crack became a wound leaking clear, salty blood onto the floor. And at the centre, like a black knife, the arm rose: titanic, emaciated, jointed in four places and ending in a great webbed claw.

"Not them," Kataria whispered with what breath she had left.

"What are they?" Naxiaw asked.

His question was answered as another webbed fist punched through the hull, ripping the wound into a great, gaping hole. Claws sank into the wood, gripped tightly and hauled an immense black shape onto the floor.

A skeleton wrapped in shadow, crowned with a wide head sporting vast, gaping jaws, it pulled itself free from a womb of water and wood. Its flesh glistening under a cowering flame, it rose from its knees, each vertebra visible beneath its black skin as it rose to its full, imposing height. On webbed feet, it slowly turned about and levelled the head of a black fish upon the two shicts.

The Abysmyth stared at Kataria, its eyes wide, white and empty.

"At the midpoint on the pilgrimage," it said, its voice choked with the voices of the drowned, "I looked upon the pristine creation and saw a floating blight. Mother bade me to act on her behalf, unable to bear the agony of the faithless longfaces upon her endless blue. And within the black boil, I found the lost and the lonely." It extended a great webbed hand, glistening with thick, viscous ooze. "Come to me, my children. I will take the agony of this waking nightmare from you."

"Run," Kataria said as much to herself as to Naxiaw, "run."

"What is it?" the greenshict asked.

"Salvation," the Abysmyth answered.

"The Shepherd has come," a chorus of voices burbled on the rapidly rising water. "The faithless tremble. The fainthearted cower. Fear not, fear not..."

"For I am here," the Abysmyth continued, "to ease your agony." It gestured to the wound. "Rejoice."

And, as one, they came boiling through the hull like a brood of tadpoles. Glistening bodies, bereft of hair or pallor, rejected by the great blue body of the sea and vomited out in a mass of writhing flesh, gnashing needle teeth, colourless eyes. The frogmen came in numbers immeasurable, pulling themselves out of the rising water in a gasping, rasping choir.

"We have come," the great black demon said, "to deliver. Messages. Sinners. Everyone."

"Run," Kataria said, grabbing Naxiaw by the arm. " _RUN!_ "

Naxiaw heard and did not question, following her as they sprinted for the stairs leading to the deck. Struck breathless from fear, they spoke in short gasps of air.

"How do we escape?" the greenshict asked.

"The shore isn't far from here," she said. "Shicts can swim."

"Those things... they came from the water. Is it wise to go in?"

"We don't have a whole lot of choice, do we? The ship will go down in a few moments and we'll be drowning, anyway."

"Then we swim. I trust you, Sister."

_Someone else trusted me once_ , she thought with a pain in her chest. _I... I need to. I have to go back for him_.

"Wait!" she cried as they neared the companionway. "I have to..."

He paused, looked at her curiously. What could she say? That she had to stay on this sinking tomb, now rife with demons as well as longfaces, for the sake of a human? The great disease? How could she tell him that? How could she tell herself that, after all the time she had yearned to feel this knowledge, hear this comfort, feel this lightness?

How could she ask herself why her heart beat different than his?

She could not say that, any of that.

"I have to do what I must," she said instead, continuing up to the deck, "for my people."

Someone's words.

Not hers.

# _Thirty-Four_

# MOTHER AND CHILD

Gariath was not dead yet.

Not for lack of opportunity, of course. He darted through a web of iron and curses, batting away clumsy blades, suffering the blows of those too cunning or lucky for him to avoid. Every metal favour bestowed upon him he reciprocated with claws and teeth, forcing his assailants back.

He was vaguely surprised that he could feel the many cuts on his body. He didn't remember the longfaces being quite so strong as they had been when he first encountered them. But Irontide, and the flesh he had rent in suicidal frenzy, had been many eternities ago.

He was less aware of death this time, and so was aware of many more things as he caught an errant blade in his hand and tore it free from the offending longface's grasp.

Pain was among them, but so, too, were the humans.

What had began as a chaos of fire and thunder on the deck had since degenerated into a chaos of fire, thunder, steel, cursing, spitting and screaming.

Arrows fell from the sky in intermittent fiery drizzles, longfaces scrambling to seek cover from them or return fire with hasty shots. Those few who simply couldn't be bothered to hide had either sought another target or clung by their master's side, occasionally intervening between him and a lightning bolt thrown from the dark-skinned human.

Of their sacrifice, the longface with the burning eyes took no notice, consumed wholly with his target. Whatever bemusement had been present on his face had been consumed in the vivid anger with which his eyes flared. He was no longer even making an attempt at appearing as though he was swatting a gnat. Now, he displayed the anger appropriate to a man swatting at a gnat that spewed fire and frost at him.

Those netherlings that had decided to seek easier prey had found them in the leaking weaklings pressed against the deck. Lenk refused to move, clutching his shoulder and staring quietly into nothingness, murmuring something equally stupid. The squeaky little human seemed torn between uselessly trying to get him on his feet and uselessly trying to assist the flying human, apparently by squealing and occasionally hurling something limp-wristedly at the longface.

Impotent, drained, useless and otherwise weak; they deserved to die, he knew.

What he didn't know was why the netherlings seeking to kill them found him imposed between them. Such a thought rose to him again as he caught a rampaging blade in his palm and snarled, shoving the wielder back and meeting her grin with a scowl. After all, it wasn't as though there weren't bigger problems to handle.

Bigger problems with tremendous teeth.

Such a problem made itself known in a shadow that blossomed like a flower over the netherling, blackness banished by the resounding thunder of blue jaws snapping, a scream leaking out between teeth, purple legs flailing wildly as a great serpentine head swept up and shook back and forth to silence its writhing, shrieking prisoner.

No guttural roar that boiled behind its teeth could drown out the noise of flesh rending as an errant leg went flying before the rest of the sinewy mass disappeared behind fangs and down a throat.

The Akaneed, far from sated, levelled its yellow stare at Gariath. The dragonman forgot his other foes in that instant, as the great serpent seemed to forget its other meals. Their gazes went deeper into each other, curiosity turning to respect turning to anger in an instant. In each other, they saw something familiar.

In the great serpent, Gariath saw sharp teeth stained with blood, narrowed yellow slits glowing in the night. He saw in them now what he had seen a week ago, upon a beach he had intended to be his grave: hunger, hatred, an end.

To everything.

In Gariath, the Akaneed saw something distinctly different.

This was made violently clear as its neck snapped, sending gaping jaws hurtling towards him. The dragonman lunged backwards as the serpent's snout speared the deck, shattered the wood and scattered the living and the dead.

The ship shook and groaned as the serpent tried to pull its maw free from the ship's hull, sending combatants rolling about the deck as they struggled to keep their footing. Gariath clung to the deck, his claws embedded in wood as he swept a fervent gaze about the deck.

_A good chance to escape_ , he noted. _Lenk won't move. The runt won't leave. You could make them, though. They're small, stupid. You want to protect them, don't you? Life is precious now, right? Worth saving and all that. The snake is distracted. The longfaces are distracted. The Shen are..._

Watching, he noticed, dozens of yellow eyes staring from canoes.

Waiting, he realised, their bows lowered, bodies tense.

For him, he knew, as he found a single amber eye in the throng of lizardmen and met Yaike's gaze.

They were watching him. Waiting to see what this red thing was. Waiting to see if what they knew of _Rhega_ was true or if they had all died long ago.

He would show them.

He rushed forward, striding over the dead, trampling the living, sliding on claws as the Akaneed pulled itself free, its jaws tinted red and brimming with shards of wood. He leapt, flapped his wings to pull him aloft and towards the creature's snout. He fell upon it with a snarl, sinking claws into blue flesh.

In an eruption of splinters and a thunderous roar, the dragonman became an angry red tick, clinging tenaciously with claws dug firmly into the tender flesh of the creature's nostrils as its serpentine neck twisted and writhed like a whirlwind as it struggled to dislodge this clawed, fanged parasite.

Gariath could not let that happen. His path became all the clearer as he clawed his way, arm's length by arm's length, up the creature's snout, hands digging fresh wounds, feet thrust into old ones. Each time, for a mome
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook