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People sheltered, at first, from the four gargantuan objects that settled to a stop over the City and fell into relaxed orbit there. They glowed, their metal selves orbited by wraithlike, feathery plumes shining white, and refracted the bright summer sun, therefore casting only soft shadows. After a while, the hushed tones turned into open speech, and then curious, sidelong debate, a distraction to guide their minds away from deeper anguish.

There was no music in Xerxes.

Tauga stepped easily through the neatly cobbled streets she knew so well, having learned them in childhood and loved them in adolescence. Sculptors had once been a common sight in the City, but now the glances reserved for such oddballs were scorched into hard stares that turned on her. She knew why that was.

From above, the huge gash blasted into the City was visible for miles. Black and dead, like the charcoal it was. At its centre, tall even in death, the skeleton of the House of Jaan. [color=antiquewhite][i]Where the Purifiers went first, I guess.[/i][/color] It must have burned like a stack of tinder, so cluttered it was with wooden struts and painted canvas. Or then, maybe not. The place had been infested with faeries. But the houses, the district all around it?

[colour=antiquewhite][i]Explains why everyone's on the streets.[/i][/colour]

The City had been built fast, had risen from a town in less than a lifetime. Tauga's memories of growing up were narrated to a background of builders yelling and loads of wood and clay and rubble rolling on tree-trunks and simple ox-carts. Now the construction had ground to an aching crawl, judging by how many buildings had roofs only half-finished, even as hundreds of households were living in the husks of walls burnt out along with all that spare timber that had been lying around. Too poor to pay for what they'd lost.

No shelter, no home, no work, nothing. Untended fields were obvious sights from the sky. Famine had come to the City.

Tauga had to kick the foot of a sleeping goblin in a corner just to find out if she was still alive. Given how many ribs she was showing, she judged it was a matter of time.

As if beckoned by the thought, a stray crocody-doggle, lean and uncollared, tapped its way to the little Rovaick and began to worry at her ears, scaled tail making eager scraping sounds on the road. Tauga kicked it too, pawning her frustration at it to buy the goblin a few more minutes.

It was a wonder, really, that the doggle had come to this particular sleeper. She'd seen bodies dumped just outside the city gates. Might be hours until someone noticed the goblin and sent her to join them; The streets weren't being swept. Another sign that the Énas was dead, if the second ring of scorched earth around the base of the Eye wasn't enough.

Tauga leaned her head back and stretched, rubbing in between her shoulders with a gloved knuckle. [colour=antiquewhite][i]Maybe if I took this off, they'd stop eyeing me like a pissed snake,[/i][/colour] thought she, as a bearded human in rags took a corner to avoid looking at her. But the suit was comfortable, so she walked idly on.

The only place where she didn't find beggars calling out with their tired croaks was the most sprawling complex of buildings in the City, bar the Cipher itself- The barracks. It wasn't the homeless who slept on the streets there. She squatted in front of the sleeping soldier, pulled the limp wineskin out of his hands, drained it, spat for the sourness and backhanded his cheek.

With the reflexes of a trained man still intact, the human's eyelids flung open and he sat up with one hand over his face in a guard stance- [i]"Outta-here, beakie-"[/i] and Tauga grabbed his shoulder and forced him back down, planting a boot on his chest as his head banged on the cobbles. Even with her mask lowered, the man saw what was best for him and lay still, skin crawling for no visible reason, bitterly regretful of the fact that the knife at his hip wasn't made for use against hainbone.

[colour=antiquewhite]"What are you doing?"[/colour] asked Tauga as if it wasn't obvious, in a voice too casual for the violence of what she'd just done.

"Ah, enjoying my off-duty, sir," reported the soldier in a clear tone, either used to a male authority or unable to discern that Tauga wasn't. [colour=antiquewhite][i]It's the suit.[/i][/colour] At least maybe. She'd always been big, by hain standards.

Out loud, she said, [colour=antiquewhite]"What, in uniform?"[/colour]

A slur was visible on the man's face, but he, too, said something other than what he was thinking. "Rules've changed, sir. Precedent set by the new general, sir."

[colour=antiquewhite]"General who?"[/colour]

Well, shit, the weird bonebird had clearly missed [i]everything.[/i] "General Usgalo, sir, of the House of Greed, sir." 

[colour=antiquewhite][i]That's not an elite House.[/i][/colour]

The hain on his chest did that flicking motion that they were always doing, switching from one set of eyes to the other, and he took it as a sign to continue. "General Feeh is dead, sir."

The eyes narrowed and he realised he'd said something wrong. [colour=antiquewhite]"That's all? Just a dead leader?"[/colour] The soldier took a moment too long to respond and Tauga slammed his head against the cobbles again. This time he yelled the curse he'd had in mind- [i]"Fucking bonebirds-!"[/i] and reached for his knife. Tauga smashed his forearm into a bruise with a reinforced glove and pinned his wrist without breaking eye contact.

[colour=antiquewhite]"The Énas set harder punishments for lax discipline,"[/colour] she said, to herself, thinking, then remembered what she was doing. [colour=antiquewhite]"Oh, yeah, you. Whole story this time, right? Don't have all day."[/colour] Tauga didn't really know what she was going to do with her time now that she was here, but it certainly didn't involve kneeling on a feisty soldier who clearly hadn't been drilled in months. The tube of arksynth was already becoming a forgettable responsibility.

He weighed his chances, sighed, and wondered if his head was warm because he was bleeding or because he'd been sleeping in the sun. [i]Fucking[/i] bonebirds.

"Alright. Fine." His composure was already broken, no point in keeping up with the '[i]sirs[/i]'. "Whole story, what, from the whitemasks? Right. Was a few weeks after the Énas announced the birth of his heirs. A regiment of warriors in white- In- In [i]translucent[/i] white uniforms walked into the city from nowhere. Cut through our troops like a knife, nothing we did touched them through whatever armour was stitched into their clothes, so the Énas- balls on him, I swear- Came and started making a bloody mess of them with his bare hands. Some... Shit happened, nobody really knows, but the Énas kind of slowed, like there was magic on him, and that was the last we saw. The whitemask leaders strolled into the Cipher and just vanished.

"The old general, Feeh was his lieutenant, he died in that fight and Feeh took over. Bloody good man, was Feeh. Held everyone together. Kept the City in line long enough for Mourning Night, promised it would happen every year and we'd all stay strong in his memory.

"And then just as we started to sort everything out, getting the right people in the right roles until his heirs came of age, the Purifiers came and everything just went to shit. Everything burned. They started with the House of Y'Vahn and spent hours on it, in the fire. By the time they were done with whatever was keeping them the district was blazing on its own. 

"Then they moved on to the Eye, blasting some murals they found on the way, setting more fires. Nothing they could do really got through the pyramid- It did, uh, something, and its doors closed by themselves- By that time everything outside it was alight. Eventually they just gave up.

"Feeh took charge. The men, we, we did what we were trained to, between scrims and manoeuvres. Saved who we could, made lines of buckets from the river to the most vulnerable places. Still, by dawn the City was broken. Feeh held on, but there was only so much he could control, and those that still had anything were settling scores with the ones that didn't. He expected too much, told one too many trade rings to keep in line and, ugh. He was a good man.

"Usgalo took his place because we knew he was harder to kill, because he's harsh where it matters and slow where it doesn't. We didn't have the time or leaders to train another successor. In the first few days he cut the head off the snake, you know what I mean. Since then he's let the people look after themselves. Freed up men to take over the granaries. It's why we stick to him after the whitemasks smashed everyone with the gut to stand up to them like bugs. We're the only ones with a meal to count on.

"One street at a time he's been taking over since then. Everyone wants food, he gives it to his men and the girls he wants and the families that snitch to him. No newcomers, no bonebirds, no thespians and no damn Chippers. Food matters, keeping the refugees in their place matters. Uniforms don't. Nothing else does. The Énas made sure swords are cheap in the City. Usgalo makes sure the ones who know how to use them are on his side, and no more."

That explained the drinking.

All the talk seemed to have tired out the soldier, and Tauga found him an uncomfortable seat anyway. She could subdue him again if he tried anything. Mostly she let him go simply to cope with the mental overload. It looked like he was about to slip off into the streets and report her to Usgalo for being too curious and knowing too much, but his skin still crawled, and something made him feel that this particular hain was more danger than she was worth- In particular, the ache in his head.

Tauga just breathed, and words of the City's formal dialect fell from her throat. [colour=antiquewhite]"[i]Ejército mundial mantiene paz.[/i] That's what he said, yeah? The army keeps everyone in order."[/colour] She tried to take a few last drops of the wine, but hers wasn't the only stomach that would reject the stuff. [colour=antiquewhite]"What army. Shit, what order."[/colour]

Looking around. The Eye embedded in the pyramid was closed. Another one of her rare, lucid moments was coming on, said her gut, if that wasn't just a bad aftertaste. Where Tauga knew not only what to do but what to say. She held it in as long as she could.

[colour=antiquewhite]"This pyramid stands upside down. The capstone holds everything up. Knock out the eye and the arms're still strong, but the hands have nothing to guide them."[/colour]

The feeling in her chest was still there. It was a belch. A habitual '[colour=antiquewhite]sorry.[/colour]'

"Did you just apologise?" demanded the militiaman in a rising tone. Of [i]all the things[/i] to be sorry for in the last few minutes.

[colour=antiquewhite]"Rather I break the rest of your face?"[/colour]

[i]Now that's an ultimatum.[/i] As the thought left the soldier, a chill crept up his spine, though he was a trained man. Deeper than the writhing on his skin. Something in those words.

[colour=antiquewhite]"Guess not."[/colour] Tauga was watching him again. Now she stood. A movement pricked his trained ears, like dust on the wind, barely visible, and the distant sound of the orbiting Bludgeon grew a little closer. Tilting back her head slightly, she let out an open-mouthed whistle before pulling over her face a mask like the visage of a carrion fly, one-handed, as her other palm rested on nothing. 

A disembodied human heart descended from the heavens, and wrapped its veins around her shoulder, piping cheerily. Around its neck was tied an odd metal tube. The soldier's eyes were wide when she turned to him. [colour=antiquewhite]"Where,"[/colour] asked the hain, her tone innocent, the same she'd first used in greeting, [color=antiquewhite]"Does he live?"[/color]

The chill came again. A shudder of forewarning.