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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- [i]Ophanim.[/i]

[colour=antiquewhite][i]It's what they call themselves.[/i][/colour] 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.

[color=antiquewhite][i]Huh.[/i][/color] She'd always thought of herself as lonely, up here. [colour=antiquewhite][i]Guess that's not the case.[/i][/colour] 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.

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

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.

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

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.

[colour=antiquewhite]"You're like me, aren't you."[/colour] 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. [colour=antiquewhite]"Something's missing inside you, isn't it? Some little spark. I wonder who enslaved you."[/colour] 

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

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