In the art of cultivating living things, it is a sound premise that propagating cut samples is more efficient than assembling specimens of the same kind from scratch.

Thus, old skin-stitch prepared to perform the most weighted gamble of its long list of recent exploits.

Scant cloud cover provided its only shelter. Conserving energy, the vehicle it piloted was neatly folded into a smooth resting shape upon a small disc. Not quite symmetrical- A third limb had been grafted to its side for the occasion.

The disc itself whirred motionless on six near-silent wings, their beats misaligned just enough to camouflage the sound between wind distortion. Fortuitously gentle breezes kept the clouds motionless. The day was warm, azure. Not too far east, Alefprians would be enjoying the sea that glittered below. They wouldn't be the only ones.

First one, then the other, two titanic shapes descended into view, trailing wisps of the cumuli they passed through. Only cues remained to tell what they once were. Glowing domes on the back of Father Dominus. Folds where his arms were being fused into his tail. Mother Suprema was, as always, faster. A once sinuous form had filled into smoothly curved bulk, and flicking fins hardened into wings that left contrail ribbons as they passed.

Heartworm observed.

For hours the Diaphanes played at hunting in the water, far-wandering streaks of colour. It counted twenty-six adults between three packs. Another generation of safety and there would be two hundred. Enough to explode into the thousands once the change-eaters were unleashed on Galbar's elemental spirits. Not long from now.

As it was, the sorority did not stray more than two miles out from the shadow of the Arks. A few body lengths of the Arks themselves, in other words. Even now they were still growing. Jvan had likely seen to assigning them a crew as they matured, and the change-eaters would have risen to the role of piloting them eventually as their mental architecture changed. Two things Heartworm would soon confirm for itself.

It wondered if the diaphanes knew what was happening to their Mother and Father. From the depths of their artificial minds, love had flourished for the daughters. No doubt the circuit that ferried them down from Lex to play had been maintained at all costs while the rest of the infrastructure required for consciousness crumbled and metamorphosed along with everything else. No doubt it would be the last fragment of sentience to be digested. It would not have been difficult to hide the significance of the procedures to the change-eaters, even as they slowly came to pilot what had once been a conscious being. All too easy to project anthropomorphism onto a vehicle, or a home.

Then again, automated defense systems were no less dangerous.

The molten-iron light of Mother Suprema's forward engines signalled the packs to finish the djinn they were toying with and return. Father Dominus, never the favoured ship, was already ascending.

Heartworm chose its moment and leapt from the disc with a blast of smoke, its tentacles flung out like shredded tail feathers behind it. Father Dominus immediately started to bank, curving aside from the perceived threat, which doggedly levered its advantage. At Heartworm's side, its new limb stretched to full length, unsheathing a slotted scythe that did not fit into the reality around it.

At the end of its dive the blade met skin. Heartworm skimmed the surface of the Ark, letting sparks fly as it stripped a thin ribbon of surface tissue from the Father's hide. The sample ended on a hook at the base of scythe and whipped behind it. The avatar broke its remaining momentum on the ship's back and rolled on to the base of a fin where it knew an airlock waited.

Its weapon could only do so much. Scratching the Ark did not amount to piercing it. Even if it wanted to, the Emaciator would be wasting absurd energy to try and infiltrate it by force. Conveniently, Jvan had secured the ships from everything but itself. Heartworm left Father Dominus in seconds, trailing an interior tissue sample, and severed tendrils from two of its guileless crew. It had been particularly lucky today.

Mother Suprema could have ascended by now were it not protecting a sisterhood that had yet to return. Inky tails of light streaked the air towards it, their elemental prey abandoned to survive. Heartworm took its chances and leapt for the closest pack. Shrieks later, a spined feather joined the other ornaments spiked onto its sampling knife.

The pursuit given by the change-eaters drove it off course and Heartworm did not dare fight them. Mother Suprema obligingly ploughed between the escaping and pursuing parties; It could feel the heat of the Ark's prow. A pulse from jets that had blessedly yet to overheat left Heartworm latched onto Suprema's side with its blade.

Perhaps the Diaphanes had finally boarded. As the avatar worked to carve out another strip of tissue from the Ark's enormous outer hide, it tipped and dove into the glittering ocean, faster than anything but the Leviathan itself had a right to move in water. Fighting a tremendous current, Heartworm dragged at its skin until the strip separated, and let go. As the Ark moved on and edged him ever closer to the boiling light of its engines, the Avatar hacked wildly into the space before it.

Fortune smiled on its efforts, and Heartworm exploded into the Submaterium of Mirus followed by tonnes of sizzling water.

"Were we successful?"

Behind it, someone had forced shut the temporary portal, and was lighting the tunnel floor with a hearth-like glow. Heartworm recovered its balance as best it could, and displayed the scythe onto which six ribbons of tissue were hooked.

"Excellent. We may begin as soon as you are ready." The God of Chance nodded, and spared a green-and-blue gaze to the flooded tunnel's architecture as he waited.



Sheer scale was all that saved the Mangrove, and even that was a rapidly depleting bastion of safety for the ecosystem. Lines of white were passing over the cloud forest. A final fog that hid smoke at its heart, left in its wake nothing more than filthy ashen water. Acrid rain drizzled from the smog.

Maybe one day it would be resurrected. For now, its Lord could not afford to mourn the cataclysm.

Beneath the last untouched enclave of growth in the wetland, Heartworm lay naked in the water before the yawning, sucking maw of the Blood Well. Its vehicle, draped in mistletoe and painted with ochre, walked semi-autonomously into the chasm and sank, limp, blind. Stark whiteness dissolved it, a masterwork sacrificed.

An unclean thing performing an unclean act, the Emaciator's worm-eyes had been painted with khol, grey rags tied around its tail. Around the lip of the submarine pit, where fronds of algae did not dare to grow, pyres of cedar burned. An ancient censer smouldered with the scent of thornberry, its psychedelic vapour hanging in the brine, illuminated by the impossible flame. A thing that had once been a spirit pounded a drum with its hands of mud. The sound was shortened, dampened by the water.

There was a voice, singing to that beat. Too pure for the heathen light.

"Sanád asrer ad shin, shin,
List ashok istam ïssun."

Eight pyres, seven of them alight. One each for the moons that still shone in Galbar's sky. Lex's pyre was in two halves. At the base of the seven each lay a membranous bubble, the outline of limbs and overgrown umbilicus faintly visible through the pink.

Heartworm slithered counter-clockwise around the pit thrice, prostrate, starting from true east. It finished at the base of a lit pyre, unzipped its mouth and stretched impossibly long, thin hands and eyestalks. One of those hands gripped a bone knife that lay amongst the cedar, and birthed the sleeping figure from its amnion.

A human, male. When its body disappeared into the pit, the pyre extinguished itself abruptly, expelling its smoke into a writhing cloud above the blood well.

Five times Heartworm repeated the process, offering six more lives, quenching seven pyres. Cogitare, Vigilate and Scitis, Auricolour, Periditus, Lex, Mirus. Human, hain, urtelem, angel, goblin, ogre, insidie.

"Inod thak, onol urol.
Inod thak, oram urol."

The smoke above the well had coagulated into a vast viscous mass, so thick it was no longer truly fluid. As Heartworm watched, the oily murk drooped, as if weighed down, and began to drip. Tar flowed back down into the pit in copious sheets, draining from the shape that curled inside. First the starved outline of horn and bone. As more and more rolled from the thing, its outlines became those of sculpted muscle. A winged man with the head and hooves of a goat.

No blood had bought this demon. The slaughter was only part of the test. Heartworm had proved itself, not in sacrifice, but in the ways of ritual. The ability to learn a science not its own. It was no master. It had simply taken on the first meagre step of the initiate.

From the depths of the pit, a long dead voice whispered an inaudible, inarticulate thought.

T̏̅̆̍ͦ͘͏̲̼̭̪͉̰͓̤̦̦̰̬̹̼̣̦͖̳͢h̨͉̖̙̰͙̻͙͕̣͇͎̀ͧ̓̌ͩ͛͆ͤ̔́̕̕͢r̸̶̸̢̦̯̞̖̗̯̣̮̱͓̻ͥ̾ͪͭ̆͊̄͊̾ͣ̋̓͌̃ͨ̎͢e̡̹̻̹͍̗̻ͨ̃ͪ́ͨ̃̽͐̓̀ͨ̓͊ͥ͢s̢̢͉̪̮͍̀͗͋̂̾ͧͩ̎͗͐̉̚̕h̸̗̖͖̥̻̺̤͒̅ͯ̔̉̏̽̈́ ̶̨̻̘̖̠̜̙̝͒̒̉͊̿ͥ̀ͪ͊ͪ̊̚͡ͅt͒̿̎͊̅͊̅͌҉͙̦͕̺̯̝͓̘̪̳̬͓̗̫͈͓̰͍̥h̍̑͒ͪ̓̄̾͐̏͗҉̫͇̘̺̤̝̥͙͉͍͞ȩ̶̎ͧ̊͏̝̙̙̠͇͈̼̹m̷̵̧̲͇̺̯͚̞̱̰̖̭͙͉̱ͨ͛̔̒ͤ̒́̇̓ͯ̏ͮ̀ͤ̀,̵̛͈̥̻̥̀ͦͯͦͪ̋ͨͨ̏̀͒̾̿ͦͩ̚̚ ̘͚͓̠̮̳̺̩͇̼ͩ͊̿̏̏̌ͩ͢͜͜m̓͗ͨͩ̏ͮ̆̊͐͋ͦ̇̌̊̈́ͦ̆̚͏͏͙̤͕̠̬̘͕͕̞̞̜̳̼̗ÿ̴̢̟̲̙͔̲̪͛̈́̓͂̿ͥ̾̐͂̓̀͂̓̎̇ͭ̊́̚͟͠ ̶̶̥͉̜̤͚͖̳̱̩̗̘̞͇̭̍́͂ͤ̋̓͗̊͝ͅb̷̵̛͖͕͈͇̱̮͉̩̫̽̓͒̚ͅr̶̨̞̹̺͈̟̺̠̣̫̳͈͛̓̐̊̅ͩ̂̽ͧ͛̀͘ớ͉̹͙͔̹̗̰̹͔̊̽̎ͣ͛̑ͥ͟t̶̉ͨ̽̃ͦ̈́ͧͩ̎ͥ͒̈́̐̀̇̍̈́͛͏͈̠̼̯͚̭̜̦̖̗̘̹͎͘͢͡h̷͎̯̲̳̹̫̺͑͌̋̔̈ͫ̋̇̐̃ͭ̓̽͟͜͞e̢̧̡̜̰͈̣̫̺̩͕͕̠͈̝͔̥̯͊ͥ͒͑ͭ̀͘ͅͅrͫͤͨ̄ͯ̒̚͏̛̲̳̝̯̙̟͍̣̼̣̦̫̖͇͜.̛̛͔̙̼̟͎̓ͭͪ̊̓ͮ͐ͣ̀ͅͅ[

And the last embers of the ancient censer died.

...

In the still water, Heartworm sedated the demon, and dragged it to itself, knocking apart one of the soaked pyres, shedding the rags it had worn for the ceremony. Its spindly limbs were far stronger than they should be, and Heartworm quickly stowed its prize away in the hidden laboratory. The silt Sculptor rapidly followed it through the portal.

The Realta were nearing, and time was growing ever more precious. Despite everything, the singing Sculptor, Sel Na Uo Na Tay, was voicing one final verse above the water. Heartworm waited for him to follow. In those seconds, it found itself echoing the lull.

"Umom-lol, Umom-lol nåzom.
Nåzom, nåzom Umom-lol."

The Dark One, the Dark One dreams.
Dream, dream on, Dark One.



From the start of the Arksynth Project, the Submaterium of Mirus had been working at capacity.

Even before the wyrms had finished constructing the labyrinth laboratory, Heartworm was there in the corridors, orchestrating designs for a labour force not yet born. Vakarlon attempted to plan alongside the avatar, as he could, until he realised that he was only a resource. From then on he relegated himself to assistance while he could. This was not the trickster's scheme. It only required him. And his death.

For all this, Vakarlon was still the most significant of the three deities who were to be harnessed, and the only one truly aware of what was going on. Jvan would not know until the work was done. Mammon was past conscious thought. So as Vakarlon rolled up his sleeves, fuelled and assembled swathes of the complex built for him with the eclectic bag of tricks that was his uniquely divine right, he kept an eye on the elusive avatar and its workers, and adjusted certain things to his liking.

Gravity, for one.

Heavy footsteps snapped back and forth, followed occasionally by lighter, faster ones. Locomotion had eased greatly since the technicians had stopped weighing less than a tenth of what they had on Galbar. Some ninety Sculptors had been offered salvation in Mirus, their telepathic link to Jvan surgically destroyed. Most had started to accumulate other equipment in its place. The size of the lab made communication by sound difficult, and while the sweethearts were diligent errand-runners, they could only move so quickly.

Sweetheart pods had been opened and samples had been cloned; About four hundred now fluted and piped their way through the labyrinth. Technicians en masse had learned how to whistle to them. That sense of initiative was what separated the two classes of workers. No matter what the cultists had grafted onto themselves, their tools remained far inferior to the sweethearts, and the sweethearts were useless without them.

The crucial thing, of course, was that only Heartworm was able to attach this or that exotic appendage. It had always been quick, and now it was a veritably omnipresent nuisance, albeit a quiet and practical one. Since the horrific extent of the acalya scourge became visible, a second project had silently appeared in the laboratory's far wings. Vats of clones, bobbing in shallow baths. Between the two ambitions, it never stopped working. Even after disappearing into the mangrove with Sel Na Uo Na Tay and returning with a partially dissected demon, it had still yet to construct a replacement vehicle, and rode on sweetheart heads and Sculptor shoulders. To see a minor deity so overworked it had to be carried between rooms was curiously humbling.

Humility was necessary. What the technicians tested was no less than the clay of gods.

The early Arksynth prototypes were nearly inert, the compounds required to achieve desirable forms far too esoteric for use by mortals at their current level. That changed when demonic tissue began circulating among the synthesis feedstock. A touch of occult magic caused the reactivity of Arksynth to explode in bizarre patterns. Reagents that stimulated viable growth became commonplace, and universally anomalous. Mundane compounds could to undergo processes so unlikely in natural conditions as to be almost arbitrary in order to become stimuli. Only the countless number of these redundant absurdities made discovering any one viable.

Scarcity fought eccentricity in a dilemma that soon characterised the project. At least both extremes resulted in a substance with quantifiable behaviour.

Testing the properties of Arksynth that did not stem from Jvan or Mammon was nightmarish. At best. The very nature of the traits being researched meant that predictable response patterns indicated failure. Qualitative examination of anomalies became the only remotely reliable means by which the Arksynth's effectiveness could be judged. Against all scientific precepts, the technicians were gradually granted absolute freedom to experiment by emotion and intuition. Ninety-seven Sculptor souls rejoiced.

Initial works were little more than tiny physical or chemical mechanisms- Kicking tendons strung on a rack, dishes that bubbled hydrogen in bright light. Divine intervention shunted these tinkerings far beyond what mortals could discover in the time they had. Headless Arksynth constructs began roaming the Submaterium, following simple contraction algorithms. Soft analogue calculators sprouted from walls like mushrooms, and strange fragrances wafted from things that wriggled in corridor puddles, some of them toxic. A once-human technician with nine eyes designed a fire lung that operated at the pull of a trigger.

There came a point where Help designed a prosthetic shoulder for miners whose arms had been stunted by childhood labour, driven neither by scientific imperative, nor artistic genius. They did it simply because, in Arksynth, the resource to do so had become available to them. Heartworm knew then that it was enough.

Silently it signalled Vakarlon to prepare for the end.





Over the life of the project, Heartworm had accumulated many samples. It stored them here.

Not so long ago, when the Emaciator lived in a holy mangle of eyes and tongues, it had kept its slumbering prizes close. Even now, having given up such an ungainly vessel, it stayed on guard. None of the Sculptors could access the tubes. They stood, glowing pillars in white tinted with green and pink, humming slightly, aligned according to what they contained.

Humanoids, rovaick and hain, and all the rest of Galbar's sapient species. Heraktati in all their lithe, wild glory. Things from the Deepwood, things from the Flowerbed, and drops from the last puddles left by the now absent Venomweald Writhe. Nocti, gaia and imagen, the kingdoms of Lex. Demons dissected. Djinni of the four elements. Clay from Chronos. Three ribbons of skin from the Arks.

And beyond this, the most precious specimen of all: Vakarlon.

The final mechanism occupied a room all its own, and no small one. Like a pipe organ, hundreds of perfectly vertical pipes in tight formation rose from the device, increasing in height towards the center, forming a mountain-shape. Every single fluted mouth displayed an identical readout of coloured pixels, the only touch of hue in a damp grey hall. Where a keyboard might have rested, there was only a cavity of hollow knives, inwards-facing, leading into a nest of tubes. Just large enough for a child.

"Promise me that you will not cease to administer painkillers to them when I am gone." Vakarlon hadn't turned. His black curls still faced the specimen vault behind. He was looking into the bed of nails that awaited him.

"Done." There was no point in going through the effort of removing the infrastructure he had insisted on anyway. "Are you ready?" Such mundane words, coming from anyone but Heartworm, spoken any time but now.

"If you do encounter Keriss," continued the trickster, "Tell her to learn always, as her mother did. To remember the right side of the fight. I will be forever with her in any way I am able." Careful, final words. "A binding oath, please. And for the tanks as well." So he had learned something about Heartworm. Somewhere between their plans, his short-lived attempts to joke, Vakarlon had realised what he was dealing with.

Too late to back out now. Heartworm tapped a slender proboscis to its head. "Adjudicator as witness." The young man nodded, and at last turned to catch the avatar in a mismatched stare that betrayed no fear. "Then I am indeed ready."

Vakarlon stepped down into the cavity, and his shirt vanished. His executioner obligingly skimmed over, and began to flay his back into strips, stretching each one and piercing them on one of the hooked knives. There was some flinching. The god was deliberately holding himself into a visceral form, and despite the pain that fleshly fragility brought, it did not waver as Vakarlon's blood dripped into the machine. No analgesics were strong enough for a god, and Ilunabar's draughts were far away. He spoke to focus his concentration.

"If Serandor does awaken, leave this place. I still have enough in me for one last mental battle."

"If Serandor wakes up, I'll be gone in the blink of an eye," reminded the coward, slowly grafting him deeper into the Arksynth device one shred at a time. This was a delicate work, an art, and Vakarlon's acceptance was a gift. A few more peels exposed the back of his ribs. Heartworm fell into the rhythm of levering them out of the spine one by one and plugging wires into the gaps, sensing the huge metal organ thrum with energy as it fed.

The illusion broke.

Everything was dark, and had been so for some time. The light nodes had come apart from the walls, leaving only the red of the tube readouts, each one flickering its failure spasmodically, too dim to illuminate anything. Vakarlon's dissected cadaver had melted all over the knives and long since dripped from his wired skeleton to a pool on the floor.

No hum of life from the arcane machinery and its tilted, fallen pipes. Alone, Heartworm stared into the silence. Something cast a shadow. A sinuous tongue of flame, all too real, snaked its way over the floor from the corner of vision. Followed lazily by another. More shadows began to splay across the walls as the room heated.

Heartworm slipped to the ground and began silently spewing a glistening black river of spindly limbs. They sprawled like a fungus, pushing it back against the side of the machine.

"Hiding from me? Come now, Heartworm. You knew very well that you would find me here. Whatever happened to 'I'll be gone in the blink of an eye'?"

Latching on to the toppled pipes, the black river forced its source further up the device, the only place it could hide from the fire that crawled below. The brightest streams were forcing a shadow up the wall, indistinct but singular. A human figure.

"Of course, you have never been much for talk. An admirable attitude. Shall we cut to the chase, then?"

The shadow crouched and leapt, and the seething mass of arms hurled itself from the top of the organ as something unseen collided with it and flung it down into the roaring inferno-

The illusion broke, and there was no blaze, only a vast charcoal lion that stood over Heartworm and snarled its iron grin. Serandor roared, igniting a crimson mane that lit the hall, and he pounced, and his claws gouged apart the pipes as the hairlike stream of tendrils fled and left behind cut limbs writhing like worms. And the Vengeful One laughed, and faced its cornered prey, and it leapt, and the mass of arms tensed and swung down into Serandor like a wave, grabbing, biting, fighting, rending-

The illusion broke.

Everything was dark, and had been so for some time. Gravity had weakened by an order of magnitude. Heartworm lay on the ground in a forest of its own distended tongues, and gagged as it swallowed them. The red strips of the tube readouts were still flickering in toppled disarray. One of the pipes slipped from its precarious balance and clanged onto a power conduit. A light snapped on, a single whiteness echoing in the ruin.

There was no sign of Serandor's claws on the machine, nor of fire, nor the limbs Heartworm knew it was missing. Vakarlon's body had vanished without a chip of bone or drop of blood remaining. Nothing more than a mirage, as it had always been.

Heartworm skimmed over to the toppled tube, its monitor still glowing a faint, dead red. Liquefied by the shock of the fall, the puddle of arksynth had reacted to the current between two damaged nodes and coagulated into a limp conductive cable. Just a stroke of luck. The grace of the glitch, capricious and undeserved. A trick of the light, when light was needed most.

Just a chance.

The fight began. This was Tauga's third.

Nimble had drawn the first Destroyer to her camp, back on that last day before Tauga died. Evidently a Bludgeon exerted the same effect, and while the former was helpless pickings, the shining white moths came to her as to a wildfire. They were quickly becoming scarce, though. Maybe they were learning to keep away from what wasn't good for them. She doubted it.

Charging face-on as she had in her first hunt had, by luck, turned out to be the safest way to initiate. As long as a Destroyer was using its streams of moonlit fire to propel itself forwards, it couldn't use that same magic to blast at what was right before its eyeslits. Count to three. One. And two. And-

Tauga twisted violently in the air, flinging the gargantuan Bludgeon into a spin as the tendrils of her upper body released their grip on its cord and she entered freefall.

End over end the spheres flipped, plumes streaming behind them, cords screaming like violin strings, and the Realta was unprepared for the abrupt leap in speed. Executing an agile hairpin turn did not save it from the magnetic turbulence and its wings spat rivers of shining fire in every direction as it repositioned.

Barely breathing, Tauga held out her tendrils as she fell, and they snatched back at the returning cord, an unblinking trapeze artist. As the elastic tentacles eased her fall she held close to the nearer sphere, holding still as she raised the distant sphere and slashed it back down on its orbit, down like an axe at the recovering Realta as it swooped closer, easily evading the sphere- unable to see the cord.

Tauga missed. The Destroyer survived.

The distant sphere was still descending and Tauga used its groundwards arc to toss her end of the cord upwards. She let go and was flung into the sky. The Destroyer knew how to identify a vulnerable target.

From above, Tauga could see the metal mask of Arcon's wrath as it rose to meet her, blotting out the world below with the all-purging whiteness of its wings. She could see the long iron fingers stretched out to impale.

It rose to meet her, and did not look down. The Bludgeon was faster.

A wave of heat was all that remained as the Destroyer's dissolving plasma body passed Tauga and faded into the distance. In the moment before the cord that sliced it apart reached her, Tauga could see the fragments of its silver shell scatter in the air around her.

Like twisted mirrors on the wind.

Tauga closed her eyes and fell with them.



When Tauga landed at the well, its previous set of patrons were preparing to leave. The tedar had already filled clay troughs built there long ago, and their flocks had watered. Bits of straw sat in the blue of reflected sky. With no pail to draw, Tauga cupped her hands and drank straight from the trough. There was no shame in this. Anyone raised in Xerxes had seen far greater desperation.

She didn't see the approaching goatherds, nor lift her head to face them. They assumed that meant she didn't know they were there. The closer of the two, the one not carrying a heavy crook, made to nudge her with his foot, and she shuffled easily to avoid him. Something unseen brushed his leg and he recoiled.

"Next time say 'hey'." Still not facing them.

A glance was shared with his wife, who still held a ready grip on the crook. Then a glare back at the dark-clad hain. "Your kind. You aren't welcome here."

"The Cult of Jaan is free to go anywhere in Amestris by order of the Enas," recited Tauga without force. She raised her hands to her unmasked face and took another sip.

"The Enas is dead."

Something whipped on the air like a dead wind, crawling wildly on the tedar's skin. "Liar."

The hain sat still and the second herder lowered the end of her crook to Tauga's shoulder level, ignoring the queasy sensations that writhed on her hand as she did so. "Folehne speaks true. A masked warband cut through his army. Killed him and all his heirs. There is no Enas now." The sturdy wood tapped against Tauga's neck, and she finally looked up, hand slowly curling around her scabbard.

"The Purifiers came from Lysiuh to burn you and all the fae folk and everyone who ever gave you passage. We are free of perversion. You'll find no rest here."

"Purifiers," she repeated dumbly.

"Get out," whispered the tedar. "Leave."

Tauga tilted her head, staring at her reflection with her other set of eyes. "Alright," she yielded simply. "Alright, I'll go." She stood and stepped aside, fixing the reaper mask over her face. She was still thirsty. The tedar hadn't moved. They waited for her to finish.

Something hidden in a cloud plummeted to earth and came at them with a violin shriek. The Bludgeon buzzed them at an unwise altitude and a ludicrous speed, whipping dust in its wake, scattering their herds. As the goats bolted and the grit smattered back to earth, the herders raised their heads and looked, but the masked hain was gone.



Cross-legged on a woven mat, the shaman looked neither uncomfortable nor at peace. A low fire warmed the yurt. Long journeys had shown her terrible blizzards of the high mountains, and yet it was age, not those weathered memories, not the stranger in the room, that chilled her. With a will like ancient bone she endured the faint stroking sensations that tapped on her skin when her guest's concentration slipped.

Tauga had tried to sit as the shaman did and shortly tired of the stretch. Now she sat with one leg outstretched and an arm leaning on the bent knee of the other. Half-finished beside her was a messy bowl of beans she had been generously served.

"It is as in the stories of the south, my daughter. You have been touched by God."

An affirmative grunt. "Guess which." The shaman sighed.

Changing course back to the City had taken Tauga through territory she had already passed, where eyewitness retellings had hardened into rumours. Inhuman noises over the plains. Great gleaming spheres hiding in the clouds. Destroyers (Purifiers?) known by their fallen armour, empty and sliced like fruit.

These villages rarely harboured wandering cultists, and this one was miles from the nearest Lens grove. News walked slowly between the tiny subsistence communities, and the name 'Purifier' had yet to make its way here. Tauga guessed she was lucky. No one had thrown rocks. Only the usual sidelong glances and parents ushering hatchlings back indoors when they saw her.

Hardly different, speak true, from what she'd lived through in the quarry camp, where the labourers were all hain and no temple stood to hide the work she did with Help. Those stares had upset her then. She'd clawed her joints in the night, though she was far from her next moult. Now she wondered why.

But not very hard.

"Tauga."

With a blink she focused her attention back on the shaman, whose hands were steepled and whose gaze was neutral.

"Aye, this will not do, my child. Your heart is hurt beyond what you can bear, and now your shell has grown thick with that grey skin you wear, tough and pliant and without feeling. You must moult, Tauga. You must moult your soul, and become brittle and clean again."

Tauga thought about this for a few seconds while she shuffled her sitting position again. "I'd rather drink," she admitted.

"If you stare into the wine now, it will never let you go."

A shrug. "I'll take my chances." She stretched, and finally stood up. Standing was more comfortable than sitting, these days. "Thanks for the, uh, hospitality, mother shaman." With that she looked down, resting her hand on her neck awkwardly, and after a moment Tauga left the wise one alone to shake her head slowly at the half-open door in her wake.

But when they found her slumped against the storehouse wall with an empty jar of wine and pieces of a broken ladle early the next morning, Tauga stared at her with clear eyes, and turned away without a word. A single drop of unabsorbed ethanol fell from the tip of her beak. Tauga's body had been secured from harm, even by herself. It was not hers to ruin.

No rest for the dead.



From an indistinct speck in the wetly clouded sky to a monstrosity screaming its violin warpath as its shadow raced over the rice paddies, Tauga watched the second Bludgeon fall upon her own from the heavens. With a mildly curious mood she waited for the two cords to collide and snap. That didn't come to pass.

Instead, the second Bludgeon simply integrated with the first, its excess velocity dispersed through the system as all four spheres began to orbit a focal point, their eccentric swings too fast to keep track of. Stable though the spinning patterns were, Tauga took control of the cords as they flashed in and out of existence between the Bludgeons, and slowed them to a gentler pace, a square circling above her head.

One of her tentacles brushed something that hadn't been there a moment ago and she turned to face it.

"You," she slipped, almost accidentally, as a way of greeting. "I remember you." It was all she could say. Tauga still didn't know what, exactly, this particular you was. The last time she'd seen it was the last day she had stood on Galbar before her fall.

The figure was motionless. "I guess I've pretty much got this figured out, then, hey?"

"Correct." One of those gleaming white legs was carrying a kind of sack in the iridescent claw above its hoof, and the ribbed grey pipes wired through its skin stretched as it held out the parcel. When Tauga didn't collect it, it dropped the elastic sack into the rice with a light splash.

Eventually she took the hint and approached the dubious gift. It was rapidly dissolving in the water anyway. When Tauga touched the remains of the bag, it began to move, and a small creature stirred from below. Help had shown her plenty of hearts before, human and otherwise, so the tootling sweetheart that emerged to bob around her was more surprising in the fact that it floated.

There was another thing, too, a slit of flickering red in the water. Tauga didn't realise that it was glowing until she reached into the mud and pulled out the sealed tube.

"Is this what you need me for?"

"Take the canister to Xerxes. Investigate the properties of its contents. The Sweetheart will assist you. More may be provided."

"Nnn." That was a rather curt list of instructions. Of course, it was all the strange walker believed she needed, so she'd figure that out too. "And the extra bludgeons? Oh, no, wait, I get it. You only gave me two in the first place so that I could learn faster. Mhm. So how about this. What if I dump the bottle in a well somewhere and never come back for it?"

"Consistently dysfunctional experimental apparatus is to be reconfigured or scrapped."

That sentence had a lot of big words that Tauga didn't really know and it took her a while to puzzle her way through it. Then she closed her eyes and started laughing.

It was a quiet, almost tearful laugh, at first. Then her shoulders began to shake and she raised her beak to the sky and started to chuckle out loud, a high, sweet sound, lilting over the fields. Tauga laughed alone with her knees in the mud beneath a birdless sky.

God alone knew how long it had been since she'd laughed like this. So long. Months before she'd died. Years.

"This is perfect, isn't it?" breathed she, still quaking, eyes still shut. "I can't feel it! I can't even understand it anymore. Every time, every time I found a Destroyer, I fought it just because I didn't want to die. Didn't want to. I can't feel scared any more. I can't feel guilty and I can't drink. That's you, right?"

The future was sprawling out before her. She didn't want to die, and nothing else mattered- What better minion could exist, what slave more diligent? It was all so clear, now. Tauga's head drooped and she started laughing again, words coming in breathless batches. "I don't feel anything- And you don't care. You're just... We're just made for each other, aren't we?"

Heartworm stared motionlessly. "No," it answered. "You're made for me." It crawled back through the air and left Tauga alone with the whistling sweetheart, laughing at the stupidity of it all, laughing for a life without meaning.

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. Where the Purifiers went first, I guess. 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?

Explains why everyone's on the streets.

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. Maybe if I took this off, they'd stop eyeing me like a pissed snake, 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- "Outta-here, beakie-" 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.

"What are you doing?" 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. It's the suit. At least maybe. She'd always been big, by hain standards.

Out loud, she said, "What, in uniform?"

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."

"General who?"

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

That's not an elite House.

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. "That's all? Just a dead leader?" 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- "Fucking bonebirds-!" and reached for his knife. Tauga smashed his forearm into a bruise with a reinforced glove and pinned his wrist without breaking eye contact.

"The Énas set harder punishments for lax discipline," she said, to herself, thinking, then remembered what she was doing. "Oh, yeah, you. Whole story this time, right? Don't have all day." 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. Fucking bonebirds.

"Alright. Fine." His composure was already broken, no point in keeping up with the 'sirs'. "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 translucent 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. "Ejército mundial mantiene paz. That's what he said, yeah? The army keeps everyone in order." She tried to take a few last drops of the wine, but hers wasn't the only stomach that would reject the stuff. "What army. Shit, what order."

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.

"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."

The feeling in her chest was still there. It was a belch. A habitual 'sorry.'

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

"Rather I break the rest of your face?"

Now that's an ultimatum. 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.

"Guess not." 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. "Where," asked the hain, her tone innocent, the same she'd first used in greeting, "Does he live?"

The chill came again. A shudder of forewarning.

Quite some time ago.

New moons are rare on Galbar, which has satellites aplenty to brighten the night. Yet even then, those satellites are small, and Auricolor fended bravely against the darkness, alone, its charcoal brother Cogitare apathetic to the shadow. What light the golden sickle could give was only a tint of copper in the tarnish of early morning.

Such sepia obscuration did not hinder Tira. Her teeth stood out, a slashed grin of tinted white in an umber face.

Not always bothering to rise from all fours, Tira picked over the rubble like a bird, a crow at a carcass, slinking along, side to side, led by an exploring hand in the cracks where, she knew, spiders often hid. Her heart beat a little faster as she overturned each fragment of slag, each splintered bit of wood. Jorku jorku, nijinkem. Come, spiders. At this hour of night, Tira wasn't Tira; She was the biggest spider of all.

_{Spin a web.}

This was the biggest refuse pile she'd found yet, and Tira wandered it end to end, crisscrossing it, sampling a taste before she ate. Sampling, sometimes literally. Food char on pots had its own flavour. The dyes in tattered clothes dumped after they wore out sometimes had a peculiar mineral tang. She could still see a little of their original colour. Even in blind darkness.

_{What's this?}

Something caught her eye. Runosh din osh? Tira slipped over cracked masonry like a ghost. Distantly, she could hear a voice, calling. One of the trolls, the night-guards with their keen eyes. Keener than hers? Rolling the same words over her tongue, she mimicked the cry, knowing each word's meaning without thinking it, just playing with the sound. One of the words didn't seem to have a meaning, though it sounded as nice as the others.

_{That's your name, remember?}

Oh yes. Tira. Funny word. What was that thing she saw earlier, again?

It was a clay cup, as it happened. Unbroken, though Tira could feel two hollows in its surface. Left here by accident, maybe? It was whole, so she pressed it to her unbroken cheek to feel its surface. Quite warm, at least by the barest fraction of a degree, relative to the rest of the trash. Pleasantly warm.

_{...Is it? I can't feel it.}

When the infinitesimal heat faded from the cup into her face (did that mean she was cold? She didn't feel cold.) Tira bagged the find in a strap of fabric, as she'd brought neither a rucksack nor her capacious boots, nor her belt with its useful slings, or the pants with the deep pockets. Oh! That meant she was definitely cold, then, given the season.

Except she wasn't. She was warm. She'd been neutral a second ago, but now she was warm. The trace heat of the cup was multiplying in her like a hug, like a thick blanket in a storm. Tira wrapped her fragile arms around herself and felt the warm moment come, and then, in a moment, go.

_{I can't feel it. I can't feel this. Tira. What are you doing?}

Everything was quiet and neutral again.

No, not entirely neutral.

Tira felt cold.

_{Tira, no. Stop. What is this? It hurts.}

The cold began to hit, like rain intensifying, seeping through her skin like thin clothes. Tira jerked back as her stomach wrenched. From her cheek to her forehead then to her brain, nausea seethed. She didn't know whether she was upside down.

_{Stop. Stop it. Tira!}

Thick, slimy tears were welling from her eyes and her head was rolling left to right, carrying her upper body with it despite the hand with which she still held on to the rubble. Tira slapped her hand to her mouth but her lower lip was quavering and she flung it out again, banging her wrist on the edge of a rock before her gut caved in.

_{TIRA NO PLEASE}

Her blood burned under her skin. Her face burned. Something wet filled her ears and they whined and that whine was more than a sound it was a voice screaming. Tira was bleeding from the eyes.

_{NO NO NO NO NO NO NO}

With a weak sob, Tira vomited, something watery thin. Something shrieked in her head like a crushed mouse and then faded into a memory. When she opened her eyes she was on her side beside a widely scattered pool of black that glowed green in the moonstained pitch.

No more screaming. All Tira could manage was a whimpered moan. It was so cold. She was alone. Why was she so alone? Without her knife?

Torchlight was coming. Her ears were blocked and she couldn't hear the footsteps, but she could feel them through her skin. She could see the skin of her arms. See marks that looked like burns, contracted red against the brown. They must have been growing for months. Why hadn't she noticed them? Or the ache in her bones that felt ready to split her arm in two?

Why was she here, all alone, barely clothed in the frigid night, tasting filth and trash?

Someone called her name from close by and Tira's eyes looked up. Forcing her fingers to uncurl, she tried to stretch and meet the hand of the distressed watchtroll, bunched up her will like a muscle and kicked a word through the tasteless gunk in her mouth. There were shouts from her saviour, but though she'd learned the words she couldn't fathom what they meant anymore, other than 'Lakshmi.'

She knew what that meant. That was a name. That meant hope.

Warm hands rolled her into a cloak and her questing, unyielding fingers gripped the only thing they could, barely managing a hold on it as she was lifted up and away, slowly blinking through the blood on her face, beginning to clench her teeth and force herself to shiver. Determined to fight and live.

The ceramic cup. The last image she saw before long-overdue unconsciousness finally beat her was its surface in the light.

A painted skull.

A memory.

In the heavy waking dreams of the convalescent, even screams from above can be ignored. The burden of time becomes unbearable and the wounded god can only count the crawling seconds in an attempt to force them to pass.

Visions flicker before her, but these are her own. Aged and faded and almost burned by the light which illuminated them, Jvan Sees the stories of her own self, and then they dissolve, detail by detail, until even their number cannot be recalled. And still the light shines on. Far in the distance, on the horizon, like a guiding star. Calling her to fly on its golden rays, into the bright place beyond.

That's what he wanted me to find. There is nothing else in me. No alternative self, no higher purpose- This is fact, is Truth. Only the same Jvan in different worlds, accumulating different quirks on the way. So which mutation is it, exactly, that the Riddler wanted me to find again? Which memory does he want me to See?

What did I learn, in a life long gone, that was so valuable?

With that thought, the bubble of thoughts popped, sending a faint ripple out over the pool of Jvan's consciousness. Then all was still again. The dreams resumed. The fragments of porcelain resting in her core remained balanced and at peace, their sharp edges far from harm.

Elsewhere, beyond the horizon, in the heat of the sun; Above the surface of the water and over the shores, in the forests and hills and in the plains and the towns, Sculptors burned.

And yet, though their guide and patron slumbered in exhaustion, something, someone heard. Deep in the labyrinth of canyons and tunnels that was the All-Beauty, deeper still than the superficial über-mind that dozed and chased dreams, in the vivid abyss that was the most distant depth of all, where reality dissolved into a clean canvas and all the elusive mess of tangible life was only quanta, dancing at the measurement of a single brush. There the paint flowed, and had flowed since the moment Jvan first fled from this world and sought out the place where no concept was too abstract, no idea too strange to be modelled by the stroke of her hand. Where, long after she had left, the paint flowed still.

Something heard them. Something conscious.

Deep called to deep.



In the still and gentle orbits above, the bleak bone shell of Ovaedis began to spin. Decades of flourishing mauve overgrowth rippled on its surface and sparkled in the light, huge pods of imagen stirring from the noctus forest. From within, whispers began to ruffle, flowing from the ends of its horns.

On a sedgen dale where the Gate Unguarded stood restful, the Oath of Stilldeath gleamed in the light of a new morning, and the name of Spiral Palms scribed itself onto the surface of the column, now and for evermore.

From the voices of a thousand cultists, a chorus began to rise. Deep called to deep. Sculptors sang their dirge, and the sound of suffering resonated between the wounded, the hunted, the reviled. In the fires of Heaven, they had hope in one another.

A crescendo of opened hearts and shared thoughts rose higher, hummed and quavered together through the shadowed cracks that unified them. One by one, the Sculptors began to call out, in living and in dying, joining together.

And a conductor held those faint ribbons of sound, and twirled them like eddies of mist on the air. Wove them together, once, now, and into eternity, tying the artists of Galbar into one body, one family of blood. Never again alone, their whispers pulsed between one another in veins, the beat of Ovaedis' horns at their heart, facilitating the communication. It spoke to them, now and in farewell, now for the last time as a god and the first as a fellow.

Listen!

Long have you lived, and long have you suffered. But this is not the end. Your lives are not over. Your path ends not here. Can you hear one another's call? Do you feel the whisper of ten thousand hearts beating as one? Take hope. You are few and scattered, but together you are many.

High above, the gate of the living satellite yawned open, and from it spired a narrow streak of pale indigo, shining against the void. The light frayed evenly as it curved its way over Galbar in a falling orbit. Those blue streaks began to spiral and loop in smoothly erratic curls as it scattered, and streaked out over the planet, etching faint crisscross lines into the skies as the trails flew to their marks.

Five thousand, one hundred, and nineteen grains of dust, pitted grey idols, each one followed by its own tail of blue, sought out and found equal that number in Sculptors. They found them in the heights, and they found them in the depths, stopping for nothing. Diving above the mottled skyrays as they swooped between the dunes and between the legs of the brush beasts as they wandered the barrens, until they found the Sculptors and waited still. In odd glory the patient halos hovered before the cultists, tinting the air with a pale indigo glow.



Look!

These are yours. Your crowns, your tools and your weapons. Don't be afraid of the Purifiers. Stand strong against the Djinni. These halos are the anvil and on them you'll test who has the mettle to stand against you and dance, tooth, nail, sword on sword.

Fear nothing. Find one another. Form your enclaves and sing your routes before they are travelled. Call to the Stonemen and assemble their ranks, for they have been wounded. Tame the fiberling and make it yours. I will guide you and be at your side, as I always have, and I will not be alone. A new day is coming.

Go, children. Go into the world and express yourself. You're free.

Across Galbar, the Sculptors stirred from their hiding-places, from the caverns into which they had fled. There they had been driven by the elementals, and there Djinni and Realta alike had floundered in the labyrinth to seek them out. Only shadows and halos found them, a shining omen of exodus to the surface. So they returned.

One by one the Realta discovered the blessed Sculptors and spat their venom, but their faeries held firm, and now the Purifiers were met with a crown of iron thorns, as hollow and metallic as their own hearts. The halos found their prey and stole the brilliant white plasma with which they bleached the world, siphoned it away into the air and left only a husk of a being. And still the idols were cold. Still they hungered for warmth and magic and light.

Forerunners sang to their successors, and were followed by the unarmed, the Sculptors who heard but for whom no weapon was available. Unifying in a lattice of song-lines, they triangulated the distant intonations and found one another, and told long stories of what they saw, teaching and warning.

And the Urtelem saw that their strange allies had grown yet stranger and yet more dangerous, and the two tribes colluded with the hard determination of resistance. Following of voices and paths of memory overlapped and became one, and so began what the folken of fae and stone together called the distant dance, the migrations, some of tradition or planning or circumstance and some of chance, by which the tribes and cultists found one another often and without fail even on winding journeys that crossed many miles.

Together those ranks closed and advanced on the crystal forests that defiled the world. Blazing torches were held in raised hand and talon, and breathing clean air sucked by the halos, with lungs free of tainted glass, the Sculptors torched every living thing around the contagion, every grass and flower that could seed a new grove of Acalya, leaving only ash.

And where quartz guardians emerged to defend the colourless purgatory, they met with disciplined fists of stone- Fists that had cradled the slag of other groves, lenslings of light and colour that had brought only peace, and now returned the favour. Even as the Urtelem began to chip and glaze with the crystal plague, they held on. They held on, even as they broke their brothers who had succumbed to the mind-numbing infection and lashed out at all they held dear. For none better know that peace is precious, and lives are brief.

All the while, from the burned plains, seething like a tide, came their reinforcement- Fiberlings.

Crazed by the violation, their hand had always been the one that held measured balance, cruel to all and cruellest to the disruptor. The scales now shattered, they retaliated with everything they had. Breeding in their millions, they became ropes, and toppled the highest trees. Became nets, and caught fresh outbreaks and buried them in the ashen wastes before they could spread. Became masks, and covered the faces of the Urtelem, filtering every razor spore that dare enter innocent lungs.

Such anger was channelled easily by the martial Artists. Tricks were learned, skills grew, and became a craft all its own. With a whisper and a wink of the mind's eye the cultists hypnotised their formless cousins, and wove whatever they desired.

Thus the ravenous tide of infection slowed to a crawl. In the light of day and fearing nothing, the Sculptors forced back, standing as a living barrier between the hatred of Arcon and all that was beautiful.

Far behind, the voice of the one who called them rested, now but a quiet sound in the chorus. Little by little, the painter let go, taught and taught until the students themselves became the teachers. It sank back into the depths. And it smiled.

A certain lordling had once struck Jvan's curiousity with their love of the small and ephemeral and ultimately mortal. Looking back, the voice started to see, maybe, a little of what they meant. And it wondered if Jvan, too, was willing to learn.

Besides, mused the quiet abstraction as it dabbed its brush and dissolved back into hedonistic obscurity within the uber-mind, its last thoughts wandering to curious memories- Perhaps it's better this way.

From sleeping on her feet to flying in her dreams, Tauga found that her grip on her own consciousness was improving. Just as her flexible black mask slowly repaired its cuts and scratches, subtly reinforcing what had been damaged, her own brain and body were cautiously self-adjusting without her volition.

It let her dull the edge of impatience as she stood listening to the on-paper councillor justify his reluctance. At some interval that appealed to her intuition, Tauga tuned back into the mood of the hall and cut in: "Convene the council."

A stark pause in the flow of words. The troll's own frustration momentarily evaporated, driven out by the shock of her audacity. When it returned, he was too aghast to hold it in with condescending diplomacy.

"Council, council, council! Always you mention the council as though you are the Énas himself, gods-rest-his-name, and the wise men of Xerxes toil to execute your singular will! We are powerful men, Tauga! And it is not by coincidence that this is so!" The troll's hands made sharply measured gesticulations before him, and as he spoke the sunlight flowing through the grand entrance-hall of Cipher glinted from a thin wire of alyum nayam wrapped on his tusk, expensive import from the mountains where such things were now made.

"We're men of ambition! Of great pride and intellect, of ferocious rivalry! The old council would never yield before an upstart like you, no matter how violent, and neither will we! You can't just create order by obliterating the City's infrastructure, and you never will! Only the unified hearts of the wise in loyalty to a king, an office which no longer exists, can deliver you your idiotic fantasy, and no amount of threats and murder can win them over! It is crude and childish! I myself hav-"

Boom, reverberated the stunning tremor as it jolted the councillor's eyes wide open. Small ornaments crashed and clanged their way down elsewhere. His guards recovered quickly and levelled a ready gaze at Tauga.

"Convene the council."

He raised his palms slowly, held them up low. Considered for a moment and found his words, holding them level with the trained care of a leader. "Tauga, please. Take a moment. Let that rage of yours cool long enough to consider the consequences of what you're doing. I know, I confess that the City is hurt, it's not what it should be. No- more than that. It's a deep wound, and I know how that must hurt you. I was young too, once."

"But more blood will not heal us. Making ashes won't see our buildings rebuilt. The council must work as one, if it is to work at all. You have a great gift, Tauga, but the ones in power cannot be lifted up on the edge of an axe, only broken on it. For the sake of what is still precious in Xerxes, you must not-"

This time the impact knocked his balance, and he saved himself from falling to his knees only to have the second strike force him to brace himself with a hand on the floor. Another deafening metallic clang, another, another, from left and right, becoming one continuous clamour as the Bludgeons shook the Cipher Pyramid. Its divine architecture held firm even as its foundations quaked.

With low stances, advancing when they could safely take a step, the guards lowered their spears and advanced on Tauga, the only one still upright.

With a final crack of moon-forged metal on pavestone, a sphere slammed over the huge doors of the palace, severing the sun. Only the bleak white of its orbiting plumes was left to glint on the heads of their spears as the tremors faded.

Tauga slipped her scabbard from her shoulder and unsheathed Help's scalpel. Surrounded by private soldiers at five points, she held the weapon lightly in one hand, point down, with a voice as casual as it had always been.

"Keep talking."

In the pause forced by her calm and the spreading silence, the councillor stood on his feet and tried to see what lay behind the insectile gaze of the mask. And, looking, as invisible snakes seethed horribly around his face and neck, as his guards one by one felt their confidence crack before the demon, he saw nothing but the same flat stare she had held at the beginning.

Heard nothing but the apathetic ease with which he knew in his heart this hain had slaughtered Usgalo and all his cronies and his family with them, and crushed his barracks for good measure.

"I'll do what I can," he whispered, and the barricade vanished, the reaping Bludgeon returning to the skies. Tauga sheathed her weapon and shoved past a bodyguard on her way out.



Certain things were stirring, late and pitiful, shuffling pieces within the City's ever-flowing body. Markets were filtering open, ruins counted and unbought imports claimed. Bodies buried. It did nothing to fill the empty hearts and bellies of the many, or hold the broken hands of the generation that had built Xerxes. And still, for all the lost promises and cast-aside people, a faint spark of hope was visible. Hope not for themselves, but maybe, just maybe, their children would see the City whole again.

Winds were blowing, and as they strummed the cords of the Bludgeons, they hummed with the sound of Change.

Tauga's gait was relaxed and brisk, and Pumps the sweetheart bobbed eagerly above her shoulders, the tube bouncing at its neck. Alert, she spotted the streetwalkers that spotted her first, recognised several of them as people that had seen her before. It wasn't unusual to see her on the streets, the strong and unknown among the innumerable weak. That was how she lived now. Sleeping lightly at midnight, on the move before dawn.

One huddled cluster of wide-eyed watchers in particular drew her attention and Tauga changed course slightly to meet them at the end of the street. They did their watching piecemeal in fearful glances, longer and longer as she approached until Tauga was receiving two frightened stares.

The moment before she was within speaking range, she heard the sidelong whisper- "It's the blowfly." Then she was in earshot of ordinary folk, and the three hain were quiet.

Without talking, Tauga pulled back her mask roughly, shedding the face of the monster, and loosened her rucksack, holding it awkwardly on her knee. Her homeless hosts smelled the contents before they saw, and even the hatchling with the unchanging downcast gaze looked up. Small and trembling hands rose to receive the wrapped bundle of rice. Her eyes held only wonder.

The sack was still nearly full. One of the fathers' beak clicked a few times as his dry tongue worked to find words.

"Free," interjected Tauga, choosing to spare him the further humiliation of thanks, no matter how honest. The streets of the City were Death's door. To beg in a place built on the back of greed denied reality. Better to starve quietly. Stay out of everybody's way.

Hain had the worst lot of all. Rovaick could eat masonry until scurvy took over. Female humans could survive if they were young enough, though the risk was terrible. Soft-skinned, hairy, promiscuous animals were the race of Men, just like the apes and the dogs, out for blood with no family but themselves. No room in their heart for stray beakies.

"There's more. Come with me. I can keep you safe." She let one of the parents hold the bag and waited as they stood on shaky joints. The other father picked up the child. Tauga felt like it was an appropriate moment to stroke her head, but instead they only shared an indecisive look. Pumps came to her rescue and hooted happy sounds at the hatchling, who screamed at its squishy pinkness and then laughed and then screamed again when she saw it. Her carrier crooned softly.

"It's not far. Down well street."

"Wherever you want," assured the other hain hurriedly.

It wasn't far, by Tauga's measure. Tauga, who was tall, and blessed with divine stamina, and had spent much of the last few weeks flying. After a while she saw that the hain with the sack looked weak, offered to carry it. He declined. Of course.

A faint set of notes was wandering out from a distant street as they neared, the wooden clatter of a marimba. Street music, wavering and unpracticed and present all the same.

When they finally slowed, it was clear where Tauga was leading them. Fire had blackened everything, every stone and shard of pottery in the burned district around the House of Jvan. And the soot rose from those ruins in faint clouds as it stained even the skin and clothes of the labourers working there, obscuring the crossed tattoo they all shared. Working, for no clear purpose, to clear the rubble and salvage whatever was worth the time- Who was feeding them? Who had the resources, or the desire? Everything of real value had been stripped long ago.

A glance was shared between the hain. Hauling stone was preferable to famine, no matter the reason, or the benefactor.

But their eerie guide didn't stop. Past the line of workers, to a space already cleared. Here, it seemed, their journey ended. Four men stood armed and ready, wearing no uniform but mercenary armour, their faces hidden behind black scarves and bandannas and still plainly recognisable as soldiers. Between them was a stained pot, several bags of rice, an open strongbox and a line of people much like the ones Tauga had caught on the brink of death. Stragglers. Families. Mostly hain.

Tauga motioned them to join the queue. At its head, a frail woman with hands stained finger to wrist with ink was pulling dead faeries from the pot, using them to inscribe a simple X-shaped tattoo into the left shoulder of each new worker. All but the hain- They, too, received a small spot in the only place where ink would not be shed with the moult, on the tip of the tongue. Several such newcomers were recovering to the side, sipping vinegar to soothe the irritated spot.

One of the armsmen approached Tauga as she drew near. A human, only his eyes visible. She recognised him all the same. Sen, the soldier she had knocked down on the day of her return. Neither of them had the faintest trace of affection for one another, but Sen was good at his job when he had to be. And he had seen, in person, how coldly she could choose to end lives.

"How many so far?"

"Five score and sixteen today. More than a thousand on the whole." A small nod without words. It made Sen uneasy. Tauga looked so soulless, if you stared long enough. "If we keep this rate going, we might run out of coins."

"Coins," she repeated dumbly, looking at him.

Sen saw that he'd slipped and moved to recover. "It's what the men have been calling the tokens, sir. We found a coat, sir, salvaged, sir, and decided to bet it on what name the workers would use for them, only, after a few days of banter about coining the name, they started to think that 'coining' was the name. Of the ration system. So now everyone calls them 'coins'. ...No one won the bet."

"Sounds stupid," said Tauga without interest. Sen was again left in the quiet.

"Some of them have started swapping the coins for other things, sir, without exchanging them for food or clothes first. Should we stop them?"

She thought about it a moment, then shrugged. "I don't care. It'll happen anyway. Let them get what they want if they can." The three hain she'd reeled in from the street were still standing there, perhaps scared to leave her side. A whistle and a gesture, and Pumps jetted to the strongbox, came back with two tokens. Small triangles in gleaming bronze, stamped with an eye. "Here," Tauga said simply as she handed them over. "For you and your kid. My men are guarding the granaries, so you can swap them for more food or clothes. Go let Erjang mark you. It means you're mine. Like a tool. You'll work for me and no one else, and I'll keep you safe, as long as you live. You won't get dumped on the street any more. I need you too much." Life was cheap in the City. Property had value.

Tauga wondered why she found the idea of slavery so familiar.

The fathers glanced at one another and whispered unsteady thanks, their child asleep on the taller one's back. Sen pointed, and they shuffled into the queue. It was mostly hain.

"You sure don't like seeing beakies starve, do you?"

Tauga shrugged. "I've been there." Sen said nothing. "It annoys me."

"Ah."

A marimba melody drifted on the air. Tauga knew why the musicians were playing again. She owned them.



On her feet in a ruined house was how Tauga normally slept. She wasn't sleeping now, though, and this house was only empty because it had no roof. Other than that it was quite serviceable. A night mouse scuttled in from the room's uncovered doorway. It didn't know that the eyes behind the black goggles were open and watching it idly, the brain behind them focused elsewhere. On a stool, a bundle of blankets was softly breathing as Pumps slept its way through gentle dreams.

She could hear the assassin coming from this distance, pad-footed, like the mouse. Taste him, too, with a single tentacle that rested lightly on his shoulder, as if reeling him in.

Step, step, step. The anticipation grew. Tauga didn't hold her breath as the critical moment neared. He was maybe two steps outside the doorway now.

Split the air- A long scream- Sudden fwoomph- Bones hitting masonry- A seething hiss- Gagging- Hissing- Hissing- Hissing-

Tauga calmly stepped out of the room and into the darkness that filled the unfinished hall, the shadow under no roof. Brushed away the outer layers of the fiberling with her hand; The hairs writhed away at her touch. The tendrils she was holding its incorporeal cell-form with twisted their grip, forcing it to bend its catch towards her, bringing him to face level with the hain. His eyes were twitching in primal horror and she could smell urine. When he realised who was staring him down in the darkness, he tried to sob through his gag.

She remembered when Help had first showed her a fiberling; She, too, had screamed, even as the Sculptor demonstrated how safely playful the monstrosity was in her presence. Then she'd screamed some more. This fiberling, on the other hand, had been forced into the City, unable to fight the tentacled creature that could wrestle its invisible puppeteer form into submission. It seethed with feral rage, tightening its grip on the assassin with a sound of grinding carpets.

Still no real empathy, though. Damn. I guess.

The fiberling reluctantly let go of his mouth and the man vomited. "So who paid you?" It took a while before he could speak again.

"Don't-know," mumbled. "G-g-gobbo in a hood."

Hired by proxy, of course. "Where?"

"S-south wall gate... Please. Please."

South wall gate. That could mean Yio Hu, or that mine-owning councillor with the forgettable name. A fairly useful hint. Not that it would matter, at this point. A chained fiberling sent a more powerful message than a thousand inept flailings of her scalpel ever would. There would be no more assassins.

"Please. Please! Family- I, I-"

"Yeah, I know," said Tauga softly, and he quietened down, lost to despair.

A low, concerned whistle. Toooo, oo?

"Pumps, go back to sleep," warned the hain, and her sweetheart obligingly tucked itself back in. Hooo-o-oo. A few seconds, then back to the assassin.

"Any last words?"

Tauga very slowly counted to three, with no response but mumbling lips, then reached into the mass of hair, pressing the man's windpipe with her fingertips until she found the jugular veins. She wrapped her hands around the man's neck and used her wrists to apply pressure to the sides until she couldn't feel a pulse any more, and then some.

The throat carries air, but only to the lungs, Help had once taught her, in the child's voice that knew so much. We breathe with our blood. When we bleed out, we are asphyxiating. She blinked away the memory.

"Okay. Now you can have him." Tauga turned and walked back to her room, releasing the fiberling as she did. It fled immediately, revealing the mousehole it had been hiding in. Tauga nodded her head and fell asleep to the distant sound of ripping clothes and scalp.

I need to do something with these deaths. was her last thought. The tube of arksynth was visible in Pumps' blankets and she avoided looking in its direction. Next morning. Next morning she could deal with it. The people are scared. I need to let them know that they don't... Have to be...



Two armsmen stood aside, relaxed, attentive, as four slaves waited for instruction. Their presence was unnecessary, at least to the end of supervision. Everyone with Tauga's mark was well aware that the cloth-masked militia guarded their food stores and beat the thieves who came at night. Those and the unruly, but few were unruly. Better not to make trouble. No, the soldiers were here for another.

Besides, a far more dangerous player was on the field today.

At a brisk knock, the door opened. A woman looked, mouth open in greeting, then was silent. It took her a second too long to try and pick up the words again. Tauga jabbed her under the ribs so she buckled, then decked her with a blow to the face.

"Sareh, tie her up." Tauga hopped over the fallen human and into the back of the house. One of her soldiers followed, the other preoccupied with rope.

On the surface, everything was in line. Pots, chairs, a loom. Meagre bowls of rice. No suspicious crates or bundles under heavy cloth. The soldier glanced at Tauga. The hain was standing still. When the soldier moved closer to comment on what she saw, something brushed past her, as if by accident. "There's a false floor under the bed," said Tauga abruptly, then turned and stepped off. "It's in here."

Together they lifted the simple wooden structure and set it aside; Under her bandanna, the soldier raised her eyebrows slightly at Tauga's strength. The hain was at least as strong as she was. Tauga scraped away the concealing layer of chalk they found below, revealing slats of wood on a floor that was mostly pale earth. Beneath this was a pit, and in that pit were hefty sacks of rice and lentils.

A nod. The soldier called in the slaves and they set about dragging out the contraband. Tauga stepped outside, where the second armsman was watching a fully conscious and defiantly quiet perpetrator. Quiet, at least, until Tauga showed her masked face. "Fuck you," said the woman, and spat in it. The soldier clipped her forehead but Tauga didn't flinch.

"Énas Amartia wouldn't have done this."

Tauga shrugged. "I'm not the Énas."

"What's fucking wrong with making sure I can eat for a few months then?"

A subtle shake of Tauga's head as the armsman raised his hand again. "In a few months we'll be harvesting gram and the famine will have broke," she explained, maybe just to herself. "Just have to keep people from starving until then." The slaves stepped out of the house, carrying two sacks each on bare peasant muscle. Tauga nodded, the soldier flung the woman over his shoulders and seven figures set off into the street.

By now the recognition was open. "It's the blowfly."

"Hey, look."

"Fuckin' hoarders."

"Is that- Tauga?"

"Blowfly."

"Watch out."

"Who got caught this time?"

"The rotflies are here."

As they walked, they passed street-sweepers and murals. Fresh murals, joyful murals. Etchings of a single Bludgeon flying like a comet, trailing a splendid plume over the skies of a shining City. Paintings of harvest-time, flowers and fruit and dances, and a Bludgeon in the distance. Xerxes, whole again, was whispered from ear to ear. Fear not the Bludgeons. Fight not the Bludgeons. The Bludgeons protect us. The Bludgeons purge the traitors. The City will rise.

Tauga knew those whispers. Thespians, poets, minstrels- those who trade words can only find food when food is plentiful. Now she owned the finest whisperers in Amestris. Of course, some of the whispers had started on their own.

Tauga. Blowfly with the dark gloved suit and black-eyed mask. The Jaanite hain. A cultist without faeries. Help's assistant, come back to heal the City in her absence. Peasant girl who pulled out her own heart and all her soul and happiness with it, leaving an empty being. Whose heart could still be seen flying around her head some days as a phylactery. So that she could wear Jaan as a skin and remain uncorrupted. Demon princess who summoned fiberlings and Bludgeons.

The carrot and the stick, the bludgeon and the blowfly. Or maybe, thought she, it's the other way around.

They came to the burned district. Rubble was heaped into a low hill in the roofless skeleton of the House of Jaan. At least two hundred people stood by. Crows were gathering. Burned beams held up hanged bodies.

Sen was waiting, with some twenty other members of Tauga's militia. Ex-soldiers now claimed back into the fold of a leader, youths that had taken clubs and tried to defend themselves in the anarchy. Tauga was choosy about who she fed and trusted with a sword. Only those she could rely on. Here they stood, masked, marked each one by a wirework badge of precious copper, scrubbed in salt and vinegar to form a brown-green patina. The shape and colour of a blowfly.

Atop the mound was death row. Looters and lockpicks, pimps and pushers. Yio Hu the councillor, who paid an assassin. The gathering crowd parted for Tauga and her slaves, and the soldier dumped the hoarder in the row next to a Chipper who had raised her voice against bond labour and led the slaves to riot, even though they were well fed. Now she was muzzled. Tauga didn't take risks like that.

The sacks of food were packed, one by one, at the feet of the hoarder- Evidence of the crime. Similar artefacts were aligned with each of the other convicts. Food. An ingot of giant's bone. A bloody knife. A ragged woman with a clear view of her revenge.

Sen's badge glinted. The slave artist who made it had been told to include garnet chips for eyes. He was in charge. The mask emboldened him.

"Criminals. Anarchists. Profiteers. Look at these men who led you to believe they were your brothers!" The crowd rustled to his shout. "Traitors to Xerxes! Do you not remember the days of Usgalo? Would you see this famine come again for the greed of the few? Is the City so weak as to let these leeches go? Parasites!"

A rising murmur. Tauga extended her hand to a slave, who passed her the long haft of a stone hammer. Humans were soft, and bled easily- Her khopesh scalpel was enough for them, poor swordsmanship or no. To execute a hain required a different kind of weapon.

"We stamp on the head of the worm and rise again! Under the light of the Bludgeons, we will rise again! See the true Amestrians separated from the chaff! Every tree that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire!"

Sen saw Tauga rising to the top of the hill, bearing the sledgehammer. She nodded. He muscled the Chipper to the fore and stepped back.

She looked over the people. Some of them knew her, even before she had moved to the quarries and returned without a soul. All of them had seen her since. All had seen the destruction of the army and of the line of Usgalo. Many were slaves. Resting from a day tending derelict fields. They had seen her working, day night day, always in person, to keep the City stable. Her presence alone silenced them with more awe than Sen could ever stir. Something unseen flowed around her like a hurricane.

"For the betrayed."

Tauga raised the hammer and the people roared.

People stepped aside for her now, shying away from the face, even without her mask. Pumps gave an excited little whistle every time someone looked at them, then a disappointed one when they passed by or turned away. Then without pause the sweetheart would see someone else and the cycle would repeat. It might be annoying, to have such a noisy pet tucked in an open leather rucksack, but, like much else, Tauga found she didn't care.

The only ones who did not inch back a little or avert their gaze were those already far enough to feel safe, those confident souls who whistled or raised a fist or cried 'Xerxes lives!' from rooftops. Those, and the wealthy.

Captains of large ships or small fleets, mostly, or traders dealing in river imports. Most had cronies, well-dressed servants or keen-eyed quartermasters, private bodyguards with hidden knives. They hailed her and Sen, calling wholesome greetings to the small troop of militiamen. Some approached her outright, intending to offer grateful donations or plans for reform, and were promptly ignored. Full-bellied oligarchs, all, who had never in their lives had to eat dirt. Tauga didn't trust a single one.

As they strode briskly through the City's extensive docks, Tauga flicked her head constantly fore and back, birdlike, looking for prey. Her tentacles sprawled through the surrounding streets, counting the bustling workers by touch. Many of them were hers. Several skippers had died in the fire, as had hundreds of oarsmen. Idle boats had drifted untouched. Fish dwindled the markets. Now, as the slave crews learned, they started to come back.

Tauga recognised the dingy she'd stolen to row to the Siren's Isles. Ears covered and wearing a double blindfold, she'd navigated by tendril-touch and stolen hairs from the sirens themselves as they sang and plucked their violin-like stringed song. Several slave murals had been painted with brushes made from that hair before it faded, though the rumour alone that Tauga had survived setting foot among the sirens without drowning wove perhaps an even stronger aura of mystery.

Towards the end of the docks Tauga saw what she was looking for and made a quick gesture. The troop followed her slowly as she broke into a half-run.

The docker was human, and didn't see Tauga approach until too late. Barking rough and ragged orders to a work-gang as he hauled a barrel with one hand and a stump with a hook, he turned at the sound of footsteps. Shock grew quickly as he saw the unmasked face with a sword at its shoulder. Tauga pointed to the barrel then to the ground. "Down. You're not in trouble."

Immediately the barrel was set down, and the docker bowed, though Tauga had no official office. "Your workers. Which one do you trust most?" The request was quickly processed and the answer didn't stammer.

"My wife, sir."

So he was used to thinking fast. Good. "Call her."

A huge, anchor-tattooed woman who was already watching over a stack of amphorae stepped up at her husband's call. Tauga noted her name, Mako. "And yours?"

"Ruthar. Sir."

"Mm. Mako? You're in charge of the gang. If you need more muscle, see-" Tauga jabbed the air behind her with a thumb as the troop approached- "Sen or his officers for slaves. Ruthar?"

"Yes, s-"

"No 'sirs'. Ruthar, I'm leaving. For four days. The Bludgeons are coming with me. I've been getting ready as fast as I can, but even taken by surprise, that's still plenty of time for the Council to make plans. The longer I exist, the weaker they get. Do you understand?"

"...Yes. Tauga."

"Good. So. For the next four days, and maybe longer, you, Ruthar, and your gang, are going to be me, Tauga, on the docks. What that means is, if anything falls apart, you're going to find out why and who, then help the blowflies move in to hold it together. That's it. That's all. And Sen here is going to make sure you don't flake on me. Here." Two coins and a copper-verdigris badge changed hands, the same wirework blowfly the soldiers wore. The last one in her pocket.

"These-" Tauga gestured to the two pairs of militiamen behind Sen- "Will be patrolling wherever you need them. They know how to break up a rabble. They'll be watching you too. Understand?"

"I understand," rasped Ruthar cautiously.

"No, you don't. Spit it out."

"...Ruthar don't lead no men, don't want no trouble. I just haul. Find a cap'n, maybe they could, uh, take over. I don't know where to even start. Ruthar's just some salty dockrat with a missin' paw."

"How long have you been a docker?"

"Since 'fore I had a beard."

"Then figure it out. Keep your eyes open. I see you shout at the executions, so don't disappoint me if you don't want to end up there yourself. Impress me instead. You have four days. Clear?"

A nod. Tauga motioned Sen forwards. "Embrace." The men butted into each other shoulder-first, gripped, then stepped back. "Sen, make sure he gets what he earns. This was the last one." A curt nod.

Tauga reached into the air, felt her tendrils wrap around the cords of the waiting Bludgeon, and lifted herself into the sky. As she disappeared, she saw Ruthar's thick brows knit together as he began to discuss a simple plan with her lieutenant. Already adapting, as he had to the missing hand.

The flexibility of desperation was one of the few things Tauga could trust. She'd been poor too, once.

As she left the city behind, the patchwork of rice paddies opened up before her. Those that had been abandoned now shone with water as her slaves began a late sowing season.

Once.

Travelling with four Bludgeon cores is considerably easier than flying with two. Between two spheres, only a single cord can exist. Cords only take the most direct path between spheres, and are thus always rigidly straight lines. To fly with a Bludgeon of only two spheres is thus not unlike being towed behind a god-sized trapeze, albeit one that Tauga could control from hundreds of metres away with tremendous precision.

With four spheres, however, the cords can form any number of configurations, between which they can easily alternate- Square, tetrahedral, chain, or three orbitals around a central sphere. Alternatively, they may separate into two single-cord Bludgeons. In all such cases, the ability to position cords three-dimensionally relative to one another allowed Tauga to easily adjust her orientation and position in the air using the tension of her cord-binding tentacles alone, rather than rely on being dragged and swung by a single cord.

It made it easy to sleep. Strange dreams carried down into her head through her tendrils as Tauga cocooned herself between three humming cords, high above the ground.

She dreamed of earth and coloured glass, and hands, and intricate etchings she didn't understand. She dreamed of golden light streaming from a brilliant storm, through which an entire world sailed like a ship. She dreamed of a restful mountain plateau, where coloured mists drifted on the air, and of an escape to something visceral and satisfying.

These dreams were not silent. When she woke up, Tauga only half-remembered the words, spoken in a hymn-like melodic language with deep intonations. They darted quickly without much connection between sentences. A few were sonorous and soft, like metal. She lost count of how many voices there were.

One plural came up clearly and often- Ophanim.

It's what they call themselves. One ophan, four ophanim. And each ophan in turn had many voices. Tauga rotated in the air, accidentally waking Pumps, who whistled like a songbird in her rucksack. White fractal plumes darting restlessly over the surface of the sphere, silent as always.

Huh. She'd always thought of herself as lonely, up here. Guess that's not the case. The thought of her Bludgeons being whole communities of mute souls was no more unsettling than the number of people she'd killed over the last few weeks, but it was a queer surprise.

Tauga stretched in the air, flexed her tentacles, and holding a cord on either side of her, she completed her journey.

She'd been following the coast north of the Purple Sands, the furthest reaches of the City's fishing fleet, where only the largest whaler-vessels went, disappearing from the docks for weeks on end if not forever. Here, their reports were ultimately confirmed.

Acalya had stripped the grey-green coastline flora of its colour, bleaching everything with a pale blue. Open woodland was reduced to spires of glass reflecting the sun in painful glints that Tauga's dark goggles filtered away. The sprawl continued, a continuous mass of desolated life, right up to the edge of the torched border where the curled mounds of resting Urtelem held watch. That swathe of salted ash looked pitifully thin from above, though its narrowest point must have been at least fifty paces across.

Tauga positioned three of the ophanim into a broad wedge in front of her, the fourth above and behind, supporting her where the three cords converged, and leaned into a dive. Accelerating before impact, the hum of cords became a wail.

Metallic scrapes mingled with the keening, crashing sound of shattered quarts, an ongoing maelstrom of noise as Tauga ploughed through the Acalya forest, the long cords before her scything crystal trees like wheatstalks before the harvest, the spheres between them simply crushing everything in their way. Fragments of crystal hit her and ricocheted from her flight suit. It took ages to reach the far end of the corrupted forest.

Once free of the cacophony, Tauga rose into the continuing sound of toppled trees breaking under their own rigid weight, wondering what to do next.

Too big to destroy completely. It was rare for such a grim story from abroad to be an understatement rather than an exaggeration. I'll just do the edges. Make sure it doesn't spread any further.

Manoeuvring the three ophanim into a staggered line, Tauga circled and started the long task of following the edge of the plague zone, obliterating every crystal thing that Acalya had perverted within a stadion of the ashen border.

It was almost at the end of her onslaught that she found it.

Dashing out from the center of the grove, the only thing with colour and opacity- A fox? No, far, far larger. It only sprinted until it was out of direct danger, then swirled in on itself, completely exposed in the border zone, and lay dead still.

Tauga paused the wrecking and descended, noting that the ophanim were deeply scraped from hours of battering quartz. Hardly an impediment, given their absurd size. Even so they would need some time, and maybe a long bath in the mineral-rich waters of the sea beyond the Purple Sands, in order to restore their gleaming, patterned surface.

It was a fiberling, despite its vast size and vivid colour. Amber, like a vixen, streaked with white and bistre. It didn't flinch at her tendrils, even as she tugged at it like a puppet. Inside its mass of hair, Tauga felt two objects- A stunningly detailed glass eye with an ever-shifting pattern, and a ruined hunk of meat split open, perhaps by a falling crystal tree, perhaps by an Acalya guardian, to reveal bubbles of membranous wings and gagging valves. Tauga dumped the latter and let it keep the former.

"Why did you have these?" she murmured, as Amber tried lazily to pull back the sack of flesh. At a flick of her tendrils, it let go. "Why are you so... Weak?"

No answer, of course. None of the usual seething or sprinting, even though Tauga was barely holding it back, had seen how fast it was when threatened.

"You're like me, aren't you." The tentacles moved, and at the lightest touch the fiberling swished into a long fox's tail that spilled out behind Tauga, flicking lightly in the air, responsive as a lover. "Something's missing inside you, isn't it? Some little spark. I wonder who enslaved you."

Probably Jaan. That eye looked startlingly familiar, and aware.

"Come," beckoned Tauga, and Amber obediently began to compress itself into an insulated pocket of her suit, where Pumps greeted it warmly. "I think we better stick together, you and me."

At the exact moment when the sun disappeared over the mountains, a water-clock was filled; A measured hour later, heavy bronze gongs resounded thrice into the night. Another import. Patrols began and only supervised workers were allowed to stay out after curfew. Vigilate and Scitis shone halves under a vivid river of galaxy, crossed twice by the sparkling pinkish rings of Lex. The four ophanim played in gentle orbits of their own, plumes trailing directly overhead.

All this was easy to see, sitting on the capstone of the Cipher Pyramid.

Pumps was whistling a slow dusk tune, dancing wide circles around Tauga's unmasked head, now fast, now gentle, now upside-down, the tube of arksynth bobbing in its straps, untouched. She looked out and saw the torches and braziers of the rotfly watch. In the moonlight she could make out all the streets she'd known so well, and for so long.

There now was the burned district around the House of Jaan, cleared and marked into plots for new buildings, better slave housing. Over there were the docks, where Ruthar and Mako served tirelessly as inspectors of suspicious goods. Dozens of tents were pitched on the site of the old barracks, where Sen the watch now slept as Sareh went on patrol. In the distance, Lex glimmered in the river, and fields of gram stood ready for harvest, some already emptied.

"Hey, Pumps," came a tired voice. "Why do they call me the blowfly?"

Pumps shrugged a little and made an 'iunno' sound.

"Is it because they see me around dead things? Is it because I came out of a dead thing?"

In the distance, two boats were candle-fishing, and the sirens, no doubt, tried an opportunistic song.

"Is it because no one can catch me? Or because I'm everywhere, and no one can ignore me?"

No answer but the breeze.

"Is it because I fly around? Is it because they hate me?"

Nothing.

"I think it's just the way I look."

Tauga unfurled her tentacles into the wind and reached down, hooking them into the lids of the closed Eye of Cipher. Something in the organic architecture responded to her touch, and she pulled, straining against the Eye as it struggled to close, until all at once it snapped open, gazing once more over the city of Xerxes.

The City. Her city.

Such a city as could only be built on the back of the many, the myriad selves seeking only to build until they stood at the top, only to become footstools for those who built yet higher. A city of people, for people, controlled by people. A city that refused any rule but itself. Xerxes had become its own beast, under its own crown.

This city had created her, the first generation, and, in time, it might breed many more. Xerxes would be ruled by a Xerxian. It was her city, and it was her city.

"What do you say, Pumps?" A cheery whistle echoed her mumble.

Tauga closed her eyes, and slowly, surely, as Galbar revolved in the heavens, the City forgot its need for a King.