Monochrome - Shrine of the Fallen - The End of the Cycle

Six frail mortals stared out at the Shrine of the Grey in the distance, and plotted the fall of the alien god that lay crouched in the shrine. Between the six and their intended destination lay a vast wasteland that once had been City. Now, the sky burned orange with clouds like borax hissing on the surface of a sulphurous lake. Black smoke from burning fuel boiled up from the earth and the wreckage of the dying Golden Age of Man. Riza took a deep breath to clear her head, took in too much of the chemical fumes and coughed loudly into the silence. The group froze, and watched for signs of the enemy, or worse, the Stillborn.

Nothing moved, and Riza sighed in relief. Striker nodded, "Get ready to move folks. This is all going to sound cliche, but we only get one shot at this, so make it count. We die, it's all over."

Everyone nodded, and Riza looked around at the little group she found herself preparing to probably die beside in battle.

Striker was in charge of their group. Riza didn't know Striker's first name. She carried herself with the bearing of a pre-industrial Military Officer, and claimed to be a retired drill sergeant. she had large grey eyes; and thick straight hair of the same color, which she wore long and tied back in a pony-tail. She was tall and of a heavier build suggesting that she had not maintained his fitness to the same standard of her previous profession. She dressed in drab blues and greys.

"You seem as though you're dressing to disappear," Riza noted.

To this Striker nodded, but did not answer. Riza looked at Corvo, Striker's second in command and husband. Corvo was not of Caucasian descent like her wife, but Riza could not precisely place the man's background. He was thin and moved like a dancer. he had almond eyes of an icy blue, and thick curly hair of a platinum blonde that was clearly artificial. Riza could see the unbleached roots showing. Unlike his wife, Corvo dressed in a fitted suit of a light blue, complete with a white shirt and a white silk tie.

Riza shook her head, "How in the name of the Weaver have you kept that suit clean since the Fall?" She asked.

Corvo provided a cold joyless smile, "I've had to kill a few people for stain remover on occasion."

"Is that a joke?"

"If you like."

The next two members of team had been introduced to Riza as Striker and Corvo's children: Their son Cotton and their Daughter Dolf. Fraternal twins, the young guerilla's looked quite similar although Riza would not have guessed that they were twins. They both had black hair and grey-blue eyes. Dolf wore her hair is a lazyhawk with pink tips, while Cotton wore his long and in a single braid down his back. Cotton was big and broad, built like his mother. Dolf was tall and willow slim like her father. Both dressed in a style that seems half guerilla and half punk rock, post-apocalyptic as designed by pop-culture. The twins looked at her.

"You sure you to pull this off?" Cotton asked.

Riza considered the question. She was not sure. She knew the rituals required, but had never enacted them- how could she? The Grey was singular, and so she and Felix had never had an opportunity to practise the ritual beyond recitation and rote memorization. Further, The Grey was inestimably powerful, and could perhaps throw off or simply ignore the effects of the ritual. The Grey couldn't been killed by beings as small as humans.

Before she finished considering, Felix answered, "Of course we can. It takes two, but we're good. We're really good," He grinned a flawless smile at the two teenagers, "Riza could probably do it alone if need be."

Cotton smiled, "Couldn't you?"

Felix shook his head, still smiling, "The key part of the ritual requires a woman to enact it. We aren't sure if it's a psychic thing or a chromosome thing or maybe both, magic is annoying that way. But I can do a bunch of grunt work on the ritual, she's the one who has to put it into place. The psychic load is insane though. Even with two of us sharing the load, we're both going to get nose bleeds and there's the distinct chance either of us might go blind or take some brain damage."

Riza nodded along with what he was saying. Felix still looked amazing, she noted. He stood six foot tall, slim but muscular and toned, with sharp green eyes and naturally perfect blond hair with impossible movie star stylish messiness. He was wearing a red tank top and combat fatigues, with a pair of sunglasses hanging from the neck of his shirt.

Felix continued, "This, of course, is assuming the little princeling can get us in the Shrine in the first place."

Riza turned to look at Max, the young man sighed and nodded, "The troops aren't going to recognize my authority. But it's a good bet the father wants me taken alive. So that will work in our favor. And, yeah, I can get us in. The Shrine doesn't run on any technology, pure old Imperial magic. And the Shrine responds to the blood of the Royal line, so it can't help but let us in." Max was quiet a moment, and then pointed to himself and then Riza, "So that means myself and the Voodoo Queen there are mission critical assets. We die and it's all over."

Striker nodded, "We will keep you alive, at least long enough to do your parts. This will be more likely to succeed, if everyone reconiles themselves to the idea that we are going to die."

Dolf shook her head, "Screw that Mom, I'm going to live."

Cotton added, "I mean, we might not die."

Corvo nodded, "We might, but we are more likely to not die if we commit ourselves to success at the expense of our own lives. Hesitating will kill us. You need to set aside your own lives and forget that keeping them is an option. If, when this is over, we're still alive, then it will be a nice surprise."

"Aren't you guys just a gaggle of rainbows and sunshine." Max said quietly.

"You dad has fed the rainbows and sunshine to his giant demon snake and fed all the hope to his monster god." Felix said.

"Yes," Max said with a long sigh, "I am, in fact, aware of that. That is why I'm preparing to make a suicide charge on the Shrine with a family of Conspiracy Nuts and a pair of Pop-Magick Voodoo Shaman wannabes. Keep in mind, I could be ruling this whole thing. And I'm choosing to wade through boiling salt and burning glass to oppose my father."

"Okay, fine. My mistake." Felix answered.

"No, not a mistake," Max said, "But know this. I understand his crimes. That's why I'm here. You guys are preparing for the possibility of death. I'm not."

"I died the day that I abdicated. I died the day I walked away from the throne. And I died again when Maia," He paused, "blood on the asphalt. Do you know how many Witchdoctors died trying to save her?"

"And they failed. We failed. We all failed. So this is it. I'm already dead. He's already dead. I'm trying to stop his corpse from killing even more people in its frantic death throes."

Striker held up a hand, "We've got Stillborn. Your dramatic monologue will have to wait. Now everybody move. Mission Criticals in the center. Be ready to kill, and don't be afraid to die. Now, Go!" 

Lightning cracked in the distance, and Riza tasted ozone as she licked chapped lips nervously. The earth had been baked dry and blasted to a colorless white chalk that cracked under foot like dry ice. plumes of white powder puffed up with each foot fall and the taste of chemical and salt hung in the air.

The land was festooned with the littered remains of the Golden Age, rusted hulks of now imobile cars and trucks, war machines and combine harvesters, mini malls and recruiting stations. The oxidizing orange rust leaching into the salt and chalk, bleeding across a bleached white landscape.

Striker Led the way, carrying a large rifle with two magazines and two barrels. Riza did not recognize the weapon, but guns were not her specialty. She carried a shotgun, Felix had explained the type and name and such, but she had forgotten it. She did know that the weapon worked by a pump action, and that Felix had loaded deer slugs into the weapon. Riza could load the weapon herself and could clear a jam, if the malfunction were not complicated, but she had chosen a different weapon as her specialty.

Behind Striker, Felix walked inside a perimeter created by his four hovering Grasshopper drones, each about the size of a large hawk. The Grasshoppers used a weapon based in some way on focused light pulses. The Opponent had to see the pulses, But once this happened, the target's nervous system would have a reaction not unlike an epelectic seizure. The Grasshoppers also came equipped with pneumatic injetor blades, generally coated with neurotoxin, but also typically lethal on their own. And Felix carried both a small submachine gun and a pistol to deal with those opponents with whom the Grasshopper's could not.

Max and Riza came next. Riza noted that Max carried only a Shock Saber, although an incredibly well made one. Combined with the incredibly well fitted and expensive clothes that Max still wore, the Saber made the young man look as though he had stepped out of a tale of Epic Romantic Adventure, all riding boots and shoulder epaulets. He wasn't handsome, Riza noticed, his nose was too prominant and his eyes a little to widely spaced and intense; but he was intensely striking. And, Riza found herself unable to avoid noticing, the exiled prince had a gorgeous rear end in those tight fitted pants. She looked away to avoid blushing.

The Twins walked behind Max, both carrying weapons that seemed built out of the corpses of many other weapons. And their father followed in rearguard position, carrying only a sniper rifle visibly, although Riza had previously seen the man produce holdout derringers from both sleeves to the deadly surprise of several border guards.

Ahead of them lay a pack of feral Stillborn, tearing apart the remains of a Scavenger Clan Wagon train. The Stillborn stood and crouched some two hundred yards from the group as they moved. From this distance Riza might have mistaken them for humans, had she not known better. The Stillborn hadn't been human for some time. Their white and chalky skin blended into the blasted landscape. And skin cells erupted from their bodies when they moved, not unlike the chalk that burst forth from the earth when Riza trod on it. She could not see the Stillborn's trademark milk white eyes from this distance, but could see the bleached iredescent hair that floated as though weightless above their skulls.

The Stillborn were not silent, and even from this distance, Riza could hear the Stillborn chattering to each other loudly in the strange way that they did. The Stillborn seemed to understand each other, but Riza had never known any human who could understand them. The sound of their speech was not unlike attempts at backmasking a heavy metal album.

"They haven't seen us," Striker noted, "We'll swing around them. Avoid them while distracted by their hunger."

"They're always distracted by their hunger," Felix added, "That's the problem."

"As long as they aren't aiming their hunger at us." Max hissed as the group moved quietly from cover to cover.

Riza tried not to listen to the sounds of tearing flesh and the occasional scream of a body that had turned out to not be quite dead yet when the Stillborn in question started devouring its flesh. They Slipped past the Stillborn under the cover of the sounds of violence and gluttony echoing from the wreck.

As the group finally put the pack of feral Stillborn behind them, Riza heard Cotton whisper to Dolf, "Maybe we'll get lucky and not see any actual Wendigo."

"Don't say that!" Dolf answered in a loud insistent whisper, "You want to invoke it? So the story feels it has to drop full on Hungry Ghosts on us?"

"Worse," Riza said, pointing to the broad stretch of open ground between the pile of wrecked anti-personnel carriers the group was huddled behind and the Shrine of the Grey.

A great mass of Stillborn stood between the group and the Shrine. Maybe two or three hundred, if Riza was counting the groups correctly. And that was the scary part.

These were not feral Stillborn dressed in rags and blood stains, these wore the uniforms of the Stillborn Army: The Last King's elite shock troops, well trained cannibal spirits made from dark magic and and rituals probably best left unknown. Standing, more or less in military formation and carrying the most advanced weapons a Stillborn could be trusted to use, cavalry sabers and Spears.

Once the Stillborn were human. Now they were hungry.

"Put me in the front," Max said into the silence, "They won't fight to kill me. It will buy us space."

Striker shook her head, "The humans holding the leashes won't fight to kill you. The Stillborn won't care. You can't control the Stillborn, only aim them."

Corvo nodded, "And all you've got is that glorified taser." he pointed at Max's scabard and the saber resting in it.

"The Stillborn army does follow orders to a certain extent, they'll hesitate. We can't fight three hundred Wendigo, fully developed or not- they'll tear us apart in a straight fight."

"If they've not been fed recently," Striker objected, "Those Stillborn won't even hear the orders."

Riza raised her index finger, "If there is evena sliver of hesitation, I can enhance it. I can fan that flame and maybe even make a wave of resistance that we could use to punch through their lines."

Corvo pointed at Max, "Would boy king here need to still be front and center?"

Riza noddded, "Yeah, he would. I can't manufacture the feeling, only enhance it."

Felix shook his head and stared at Max, "You said so yourself. There are two people here who are Mission Critical. You and my wife."

"Ex-wife." Riza corrected.

Felix turned to her, "Are we doing this here?"

"No, we are not," Riza answered.

"Either way," Felix continued, "He's not expendible. We can't get in without him. And resurrection is not on my to do list today."

"Do you have another option with even a remote possibility of working?" Max asked.

Silence walked into the group's conversation and sat there for a long time while all six people listened to it.

Finally Felix spoke, "I can use the Grasshopers to widen the perimeter a bit, get them close to the Stillborn in a semi circle in front of us. The visual stun doesn't work as consistently on Stillborn as on humans, but they aren't full Wendigo so I should get some of them. Maybe most of the one in front."

"It's not going to be enough," Corvo said,"

"It will have to be," Max said and rounded the corner of their cover.

Riza watched in horrible fascination as Max stepped into the open, drew his saber and saluted, "I am Prince Maximillian Draconis Octavian IV, and I command all troops to stand down in the name of the Imperial House of Draconis!" And then he pointed the Saber forward and charged.

"Bloody Hell!" Riza cursed and dropped her backpack to the ground, "Well get out there and give him covering fire!" she yelled and began rummaging through the pack.

Striker and her children charged around the corner and Riza could hear gunfire the instant the three disappeared from view. Corvo brought his rifle up to his shoulder and leaned around the cover and began fire careful shots, one at a time. Felix was a few steps behind Striker and her children, frantically tapping commands on the forearm interface for his drone. Riza continued digging through her pack, finally withdrawing a necklace made of bone beads, and a amulet crafted from a surveillance camera lens marked with the sign of the Weaver.

She raised the amulet and closed her eyes, reaching into the story and out towards Max and he charged down the field in a hail gunfire from the opposing officers and from his own team as three hundred cannibal things charged at him in military dress with swords and spears and claws and fangs. Riza traced the lines of the story emanating out from Max and foudn the one he had talked about, connecting him to the officers: fear of the repercussions of killing the Last King's only son. She focused that fear and then projected it, amplified out from Max like a tsunami or the pressure wave of an explosion.

In her mind's eye she saw the Stillborn Army shudder and stumble and begin to split as they flowed around the group under the influence of her magick. Riza quickly scrambled to her feet and charged around the wrecked Anti-personnel carrier and joined the mad dash to the Shrine. She noted that Corvo had joined her, the instant she had started running, and the he still had not stopped his steady firing pace, still unearingly dropping any hostile that seemed in danger of getting close to Max.

They parted the Stillborn Army, and as Max approached the line of Officers in front of the gate to the Shrine, they too began to shudder. One by one the Officers began to back away and give ground.

Finally all the officers had backa way save for one Officer who stood, kneed shaking, but saber drawn as Max approached at a run. Riza watched from the back of the pack as Max shifted his saber, apparently preparing to cross swords with the opposing Officer. She held her breath, both swordsmen cut.

And the Imperial Officer's head separated cleanly from his shoulders and his body fell to the ground. She looked back to to still running form of Max, and noticed a stumble as he approached the closed gate. He came to a staggering stop and then crumpled in a heap before the marble doors.

Awful omens curling like centipedes in the bottom of her guts, Riza struggled to catch up as, one by one, the rest of the group reached the door and the fallen form of Max.

"Check him," Striker ordered Felix and she and her family  began laying down fire to hold off the now recovering hordes of Stillborn.

"The officers have fully lost control now," Corvo noted, he paused and looked into the distance, "And the feral pack has joined them. How is the foolish little aristrocrat?"

"He's full cadaver. Dead as democracy." Felix said.

"Is there another way in?" Cotton asked.

"Not without more explosives that we have." Striker answered.

"Crap, I actually am going to have to resurrect the stupid little prince." Felix muttered, "Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap crap crap."

"Wait, you were serious?" Cotton asked, mouth wide.

"I was also serious about not wanting to do it. This could very well kill me. The psychic load on a resurrection, even one a fresh as this, is intense."

"We can do it," Riza said, putting a hand awkwardly on Felix's shoulder.

"No," he shook the hand off his shoulder, "No we can't. The psychic load to kill either one of us, even if we share the load. We can't save one Mission Critical person by killing the other one. I have to do this alone. Period." Felix pulled a small athame from a sheath and drew the knife blade across his palm in a swift movement. He placed the bleeding palm on Max's forehead drew a small cloth bag marked with the symbol of the firebird from a belt pouch.

"Felix, don't invoke the Firebird." Riza said as Felix closed his eyes. gooseflesh raced across Riza's skin as she felt the enormous burst of energy thrumming out from Felix. And then she felt the attention of the Grey turn slowly, like two slabs of granite sliding against each other. She could feel the mind's eye of the great alien god thing bearing down upon the group, taking them in, deciding what they were to it.

"The Grey knows we're here." She whispered.

Felix remained fixed on Max, who continued to remain stubbornly dead. The weight of the Grey's continued notice began to build, become a tangible thing that weighted Riza down, causing her to stumble to one knee.

"We've got its attention," She managed to gasp out and the psychic weigh drove the air from her lungs.

A shift in the psychic gravity around, caused Riza to stubmle towards Max and Felix. And Riza felt the vitality move from Felix into Max. She looked to see how much of life the process had left him. But, she couldn't actually see anything left in the vessel that had been her ex-husband as he toppled forward onto Max's body.

"Oof, What happened?" Max gasped as Felix's body landed head first on his stomache.

"Felix just poured his entire life force into you in order to drag you back from the Shadowlands." Riza answered, she pointd at the marbles doors, "Now open that door before you die again."

Max nodded and pushed himself out from under Felix, "Is he seriously dead? Did he die to save me?"

"Looks like," Dolf Said as she fired a smoke grenade from her monstrous looking gun.


"He might not be dead," Riza answered, "But he's close."

"We have company!" Striker announced, pointed to the now swarming mass of Stillborn. Riza noted that two of the Grasshoppers were down, and the other two were being forced back as they dodged the attacks of the advancing horde.

Corvo leaned down and pressed two fingers to Felix's throat, "No pulse. I'd say dead, I'm afraid."

"This isn't your area, this is mine!" Riza hissed, "He might still be alive. Max, get the door open!

She stepped forward and dragged her ex-husband's limp and heavy body up into a fireman's carry as Max pressed an open palm into the center plate on the door marked with the Imperial Sigil.

The door grated open. And the five of them, plus Felix's body, backed into the first room of the Shrine of the Grey.

Once Riza had managed to haul the still form of Felix through the gateway, Max pressed his hand against a plate inside the first chamber and the marble door slide closed again.

Riza struggled to set her load down gently, but the body tumbled off her shoulders more roughly than she had hoped. She stared at his blank eyes, open and staring into space, and then turned away.

"One down." Corvo said.

Riza spun back and opened her mouth, and then stopped and turned away again.

"This is what we're facing," Striker said, "More of us will die from here on in. Things will not get better. The Princeling is expendible now. We all are save for Riza."

"What's the point of saying this now?" Max answered, crossing his arms.

"We are defended here," Striker pointed out, "Only the royal family can open that door. If any of you don't feel up to continuing, we could just wait here. Wait until they give up and then sneak out. Let the Imperial Corpse be somebody else's problem. let the crazy alien god be somebody else's problem. This is our last chance to walk away."

"Mom," Cotton said, "Are you actually encouraging us to walk away?"

"Not encouraging, but if you aren't committed, you should quit. And this is the last chance to quit."

Nobody spoke, as Silence showed up again for a long visit. The painful lack of speech extended on and on. Riza lost track of time. Max paced back and forth. Striker checked her gear. The two teenagers stared at each other, seemingly willing the other to back down.

Nobody spoke.

Then, into the silence a weak cough, and then a voice.

"I really hope you aren't about to wimp out after my heroic sacrifice," Felix gasped weakly from the floor.

"Felix!" Riza gasped, "Next time you do that, I'm going to kill you!"

Felix chuckled, "Hypocritical humor later dear. We have a universe, and a story, to save. Come on people. We have to do this. No matter the sacrifice. This is our place in the story."

Striker nodded, "If a man can come back from the dead to tell us to fight on, I'm not going to argue. Anyone want to walk away?"

Max shook his head, and moved a hand to his now empty scabbard. He glanced at the scabbard in clear annoyance.

"No, I'm a dead man brough back to life and told mby my redeemer to fight on. I'm in this to the end."

"We're with you Mom, you know that." Cotton added, and Dolf nodded her assent.

Riza nodded, "The Grey knows were here now, it gets worse now, not better," she paused, "So be ready for anything."

Corvo pointed to Max, "So open the next gate Max, let's go meet our fate."

The interior of the Shrine was built from marble the color of the pallid skin of human albinos, wraught through with strange veins of blue and red, and seemed to thrum and throb. Riza touch a hand to a marble stature depicting one of the stillborn on its knees with arms outstretched to some unknown authority. She drew her hand back instinctively against the biting cold of the stone.

Riza and Max had to assist Felix in walking, as the resurrection had left him to weak to walk unassisted and neither of them were willing to leave him behind, despite his protests.

The interior of the Shrine seemed composed of a tangle of labyrinthine tunnels and chambers, some bridging over top of others, some leading to little sepulchres and dead ends, some leading back to previously walked passageways.

"This can't be normal," Striker said.

Corvo nodde, "Nobody could build a place like this. It defies existence."

"This is the story," Riza noted, "it can't be easy to find ones way through a labyrinth in any tale now can it? Even Theseus got lost."

"Theseus had a ball of string," Cotton observed, "You get through a labyrinth with a story hack. Where's ours?"

Max stopped an unremarkable passageway, causing Riza to pull up short to avoid droppinf Felix.

"Here," Max pointed, "This way."

"Why should we go that way rich boy?" Dolf asked.

"His name is Max," Corvo corrected, then, "But yes, why?"

"Because I can feel it. Something. Something cold and ancient is pulling me, in my guts. This way."

"Sounds like a trap," Dolf noted.

"Either way," Striker said, "It's better than wandering. We follow Max and his gut."

And so they did, twisting through pale skinned corridors of albino marble, lined with statues of terrifed Stillborn and Wendigo, knights of Unity and Purity both, and many other unpleasant metamorphic stone decorations. The hallways were dimly lit, though by what Riza had been unable to determine. The pale flickering light did not appear to have any visible source, it simply hung in the air, a photonic impossibility that left her unsettled even more than the cold stone and yet pulsing living walls already had done. Finally Max directed them through three short turns in quick succession that Riza would have sworn took them back upon their own path at least twice before they found themselves in a sort of anti-chamber before a broad open arched and pillared doorway leading into what was clearly an inner sanctum of sorts.

Ahead of them stood half a dozen figures, four tall thin men in white priestly robes with high red and gold collars of the senior priesthood. And two knights of Unity in their white gold and red ceremonial armor, a strange anachronistic mix of Medieval knight and SWAT team.

They were all male and seemed of indeterminant age, with faces that seemed designed to be nondescript and unremarkable. They were all smiling broadly. Riza did not like the smiles.

"Wayward Prince and honoured guests," The lead priest said, "We regret that the Inner Sanctum is off limits and you must turn back."

Striker smiled, "You think you're going to talk us down? At this point? Everything has fallen. The world is in ruins. What do you think you're going to accomplish here?"

"I could ask the same question? Do you actually think to harm our Lord, the last Unborn Elder, the Ancient child?"

"Move aside, and you might get out of this alive," Striker said.

"You do seek our lord harm," The lead priest said.

"Move aside or be moved," Striker said.

"Something is wrong," Felix muttered, " I don't have the, I can't do anything like this."

Riza nodded and reached to belt, drawing out the camera lens amulet. She focused on Felix's insight and began to amplify it, and then extend it out to encompass first the group and then the priests. As she did, The appearance the priests crumbled like masks made of sand. Their eye sockets now sat empty, their lips had vanished and the smiles now grinned with a cadaverous gaping smile full of too large teeth. The skin stretched tight across high cheekbones and polished foreheads. Riza noted that the two knights seemed to still be human, but now appeared bear normal features and not the weird non-descript look they had previous possessed.

"The meat can see us." one of the priests noted.

"Then let us help our lord see them," The lead priest answered, and all of the priests raised their arms in unison to the roof.

The ambient and sourceless light suddenly focused around Dolf, moving from other parts of the room, leaving those areas in darkness as Dolf herself was suffused in a sudden spotlight. The priests vanished into the sudden darkness.

"Dolf, move for cover!" Striker yelled.

Dolf tensed as though about to take evasive action, but then froze in place, as sudden snapshot of herself. Color leeched from her form, and her body acquired a strange sense of weight. And suddenly Riza realized that she was looking at a marble statue of Dolf and not the teenaged girl herself any longer. The whole process had taken the time it took Riza to draw a breath in alarm.

A gunshot rang out in the darkness, muzzle flash back and to Riza's left. The lights burst out from their spotlight and scattered like startled fireflies. And in the frantic moving lights, Riza saw the lead priest falling to the ground, a gaping hole in the center of his forehead. She looked back and saw Corvo reloading his rifle.

"That was my daughter," He said without raising his voice.

Another priest rushed at Corvo and the sniper shattered his rifle across the Priest's face, scope exploding in a shattering of glass and cylinders. Corvo tossed his rifle aside and began reaching for something else, presumably a back up weapon, when a third priest slammed into Corvo and grappled the sniper in a bear hug.

"You are not neat and orderly," The Priest snarled as the two struggled, "I do not think you can be put in order as is. You are only useful to our lord as resources, as parts."

Corvo grunted and then dropped his weight and widened his stance, and then quickly flipped the priest to the ground with a hip throw. As he did, Riza noticed bits of something rising on Corvo. The lights against coelesced, this time upon Corvo and the priest. Corvo ignored the sudden spotlight, and simply began hammering fists methodically into the priest's face, like flesh and bone jack hammers. The bits floating up from Corvo began to get larger and Riza belatedly realized that they were bits of Corvo. He was being disassembled in some way, taken apart piece by piece. Corvo ignored this and continued to rain blows upon the priest until its skull had shattered and lay in pieces beneath the pale skin of the face. The process of disassembly continued as well, and by the time the priest lay still there was precious little left of Corvo. And after another second there was nothing at all.

And again the lights moved, drifting apart this time in apparent disinterest.

The two knights had been carrying spears. They looked at each other, apparently assessing the situation, and both released their grip upon their respective spears- hands moving for firearms holstered on their hips.

Striker raised her gun and fired two rounds quickly into the face of the Guardsman on the left. As his helmet and face distorted from the impact, she fired twice more into his chest. The guardsman had not yet reached his gun as he died, crumpling to the ground still unarmed.

Riza saw Cotton raising his own thuggish scavenger-made firearm and firing what Riza guessed was a shotgun round, probably buckshot into the other Guardsman's face. The effect on the man's face was not pretty and Riza looked away. As she did she noticed the remaining Priest standing over a pit or well in the corner than she had not noticed. He had slit open his wrist and was getting readdy to drip blood down the hole.

"Ritual!" She cried out, "Stop him!"

Striker and Cotton turned towards the priest, but Felix had already spotted the same thing as Riza. He had drawn his athame and threw the ceremonial knife overhand at the priest, the motion causing him to lose his balance and stumble to the ground, dragging Max and Riza down with him. Riza heard a gasp and a gurgle. She looked up to see that Felix had managed to hit the priest just beside the nose, the blade appearing to have penetrated the right eye socket.

The priest stumbled and then to Riza's horror, he fell into the well, disappearing ing a whirl of white cloth.

"I'm not getting that back," Felix gasped with a strained smile.

"If he made a connection, whatever he did is going to activate with an offering of his whole bloody life force." Riza pointed out, then stopped and stared at Felix, "When did your hair go grey?"

Felix ran a hand through his silvered hair, "Is it grey? That's probably from bringing Max back across the line."

Riza calculated in her mind, then nodded, "That's probably it."

Cotton spoke, "If the Grey turned Dolf into one of those status, does not mean the other statues were alive once?"

Riza looked up, her skin prickling, "Maybe, probably, very probably. Why?"

Cotton Turned back to face the corrider they had come through, gun raised, "Do you think the Grey can reverse the process?"

Riza shuddered," Maybe, but why would it want to?"

Striker turned to face the corridor as well, gun raised, "Make one hell of a security system, wouldn't it?"

Riza grimaced, "Oh hell."

The group stod, crouched and say in silence for a moment, and then they heard the sounds; hundreds of clawing, scrambling, scurrying limbs propelling hundreds of hungry angry beings towards this final chamber.

Felix chuckled, "This doesn't end well."

The horde came charging down the corridor, and Striker and Cotton stood in the doorway firing everything in their arsenal at the onslaught of cannibal spirits, grinning priests and soldiers.

The bodies began to pile up quickly, and the Wendigo and Stillborn began scuttling over the corpses like beetles.

"Fall back, give the witches cover." Striker ordered Cotton.

Cotton nodded and backed in to the chamber once more.

Striker began firing from the second barrel of the gun and a series of explosions echoed down the corridor.

"What is she using?" Max asked in alarm.

"Grenade rounds," Cotton answered, "You two ready to do the thing?"

"I'll try, but this is basically going to be all Riza now." Felix answered.

"Can you do this solo?" Cotton asked.

Riza paused, and then nodded, "Pretty sure yeah, probably won't survive it though."

"None of the cool people are surviving," Cotton noted with a grim smile.

A cry of alarm and a sudden change of noise from exploding grenades back to gun fire caused the four to look back at Striker in time to see her being swarmed by three Hungry Ghosts, hollow blue lights glowing where their eyes should have been. Skeletal bodies wrapped around Striker and clawing at her face, one eye already torn out as she depressed the trigger on her weapon and fired into the torso of one of her attackers. The teeth of the wendigo were comically long compared the lesser Stillborn kin, and those teeth were buried in Striker's neck and midsection, jaws dislocated in impossible ways to latch on and tear flesh from bone.

"Cotton!" She gasped, "Grenade!"

"Mom!" He objected,"No!"

"Do it! Now. Block the passage way. Or this is where it ends!"

Cotton dropped his head and his shoulders slumped for a moment. The lights began to coelesce around him. Slowly drawing in.

"I need to put up a protective circle," Riza said, "We can't survive this thing paying attention to us any longer!"

Cotton pulled himself up, ripped a grenade from one of his belts and pulled the pin. He aimed right in front of his mother and the mob of monsters crawling all over her, and then threw.

The stone erupted and the corridor collapsed in a cloud of stone dust and marble slabs.

"Well, that stops them." Max muttered, "and then there were four."

"Cotton, get over here, I need everyone close to draw the circle!" Riza started to say, but her voice was suddenly drowned out by the sound of Cotton's screaming. The lights drew in to a spotlight on the teenager and in response Cotton dropped to his knees, clutching his skull in obvious agony.

"Get over here!" Riza yelled as she reached into a belt pouch and scrambled to find a piece of chalk.

In the spotlight, Cotton writhed in pain and slowly a slim ribbon of the boy's skull and scalp began to peal off from the rest of him.

In the darkness, Riza frantically began to draw a protective circle, working by feel and praying that none of the mistake she knew she must be making would get them killed.

In the spotlight, the ribbon of Cotton's skull and scalp began to peal up towards the ceiling, and more of Cotton followed in the same slim ribbon shape. The ribbon twisted and turned across Cotton's skull, slowly unravelling the boy's head as he screamed for help.

"It's downloading him and what he knows," Felix muttered, tapping on his wrist control.

"What are you doing?" Riza asked in the darkness as she finished the circle, "Max get close, this won't be big."

"I'm giving the kid some release," Felix said, and as he spoke his two remaining Grasshoppers entered the spotlight, blades out.

"You're going to kill him!" Riza said.

"You got a better idea?" Felix said.

And the grasshoppers thrust forward, neuro toxin soaked bladed penetrating Cotton's heart and spinal column. The screaming stopped, although Riza could not tell if that were due to the grasshopers or the fact the his head and neck had completely unravelled and now danced about on the marble ceiling.

"It got the kid's brain, it'll know what we're planning." Felix pointed out.

Riza pulled out her own athame blade and deftly cut open her left thumb and pressed the bloody digit into the chalk marks by feel and focused her mind on the circle. She reached into the sigils on the ground and reshaped them and the circle as she pumped as much power into the circle as she felt she could get away with using.

The chalk burst into light, glowing white in the darkness. Max and Felix were indeed inside the circle. They turned away as the last of what had once been Cotton unravelled to the ceiling and the lights moved back to spread across the room again, now noticably absent within the bounds of the circle.

"It's can't see us." Riza noted.

Max looked around, "But I bet it can see the blindspot in its vision."

As if on cue, a chill breeze whooshed into the chamber and rushed through hair and jackets.

"Should there be wind indoors?" Max asked.

"No." Riza answered.

"That doesn't feel a little cliched to anyone else?" Max asked, "A really obvious way to herald a big bad demon thing? I can't be the only one who finds that a trite sterotype?"

"Don't talk like that's a good thing," Riza answered, "Things become stereotypes because they show up in stories all the time. They become cliches because they get repeated. So if we're experiencing a really cliched sign of a scary demon's arrival, then get ready for the arrival of a Demon!"

"You should start the ritual," Feliz said.

"I really should," Riza answered.

"I'm going to read for the Book of True Revelations, try and break a hole in its defenses before we start, give Riza a fighting chance." Felix said.

"What the hell is the Book of True Revelations?" Max asked.

"A translation of the Book of Revelation, reinterpreted to show the story from the side of the Free Peoples rather than the side of the Grey." Felix answered and he pawed through his backpack.

"Who wrote that?" Max asked.

"The same people who wrote the original,"Riza answered as she positioned herself in a full lotus position in the center of the circle, "humans with a story to sell."

Felix began chanting, "Look, we are coming with the seasons, and most will never see us, for they who devoured her and all hungry peoples on earth will think they know the tale. So shall it be! We are the first and the last of the story. Without Lord or God. We stand in Mystery and speak the story..."

As Felix spoke the lights began to dance like nervous birds, flitting about the chamber.

Riza began to recite the ancestor's oath quietly to herself, "I am a child of the universe."

The ground began to tremble.

"I will never stop defending the unborn elders."

"Riza?" Max asked, pointng to the bits of rubble from the explosions, which had now began to float into the air.

"I will act brilliantly in the future, because I acted well in the past."

Rixa felt her skin grow hot to the point of boiling and felt steam begin to rise from her body as her sweat evaporated at the sudden rising temperature.

The lights where swirling in fits of panic and Riza closed her eyes to keep from becoming nauseous.

"I will never serve the Hunger." Riza found her throat going dry from the heat, and gasping as she tried to continue speaking.

Rubble began to hurtle about the room, bouncing off the protective circle and shattering against the walls and ceiling.

Felix continued reading, "Then I saw a Golden Bull, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Bull was crowned with the Sun, and its light burned those who saw it."

Lines of ghostly people appeared in the room, marching in every direction. Some wore tailored suits from the golden age now passed. Some were dressed in older clothes from previous eras. Some wore the garb of the Empire, some wore the rags of the rebellion.

"This thing's not happy!" Max yelled amidst the chaos, "Come Riza, How much more is left?"

Riza tried to speak the final line, but found her mouth to dry and her throat cracking from the heat now boiling inside her. She felt blood running from her nose, and then drying and boiling of her skin.

"Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains.  They called to the mountains and the rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from those who break the throne and reject the crown!' For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”

"Riza!" Max yelled, "The next line!"

Riza took her athame, and drew it acros her lower lip, sucking down what rusty blood she could to wet her throat. And then, steam exploding from her throat as she spoke, she intoned, "I am a parent to the universe.

And with the final words, a wave of fire erupted from Riza and washed out across the room. The lights went dark and the rubble fell back to the ground. The ghostly figures vanished. And all went dark and quiet.


In the darkness Riza heard something. A voice, but not really, made her aware of words in her own mind. Moving things around inside her skull to tell her what it wished her to hear.

"You cannot do this," The voice of the Grey said, "I am inevitable. This world is chaos and disorder. Noise and light. Sound and Fury. I alone can bring order to this chaos, calm the waves of angry matter that beat against the universe's skin."

Riza Answered within her own mind, "I can do this and I shall."

"I have seen the end of the tale. It is a happy ending. I will bring us to that happy end. All tales must end."

"Our story is a circle," Riza answered, "It has no end."

"All stories end. How will you end the story of your former mate? Of your unborn child?"

Riza started at the Grey's words, but a flash of insight courtesy of the Grey's fingers in her brain showed that it was being entirely serious about her being pregnant.

"When did that happen?" Riza said aloud.

Felix coughed, "I'd guess six weeks ago when we joined the group and realized we'd be working together again. Remember the first night?"

Riza was silent a moment, and then nodded.

The grey continued, "I will give you all your happy endings if you let me give the universe a happy ending also."

"It's a bribe," Felix noted.

"It's a deal with the devil," Riza corrected, "Or worse, a deal with the demi-urge."

"What does it mean when it says a happy ending for the universe?" Max asked.

"It means heat death. Nothing left, no matter, nothing. No motion, no heat. Dead and still. It's afraid of life and motion. It wants a universe where everything is predictable and under control. And the only way to completely control something is to kill it."

Grey spoke, "But my happy ending is a long way off. Certainly longer than your life spans. And I can make your lives so very happy in the interim, just allow me to continue my work.

They said nothing.

The Grey addressed Riza, "I could give you the honor and accolades denied to you. And keep this child protected from the wilds that took the last one."

Riza said nothing.

The Grey addressed Max, "I can give you a place of honor, and find your sister's soul in the story and give her new form."

Max said nothing.

The Grey addressed Felix "You could have your wife back, and new living child. Everything you lost."

Felix flinched, and Riza recognized his expression as it changed.

"Oh hell," She muttered, "Max, Felix just cracked!

Felix scrambled, flailing towards the chalk circle.

"If he breaks the circle we're wide open!" Riza yelled.

Max grabbed Felix and the two men struggled.

Riza tried to focus her mind. But her focused danced like a water droplet on a hot iron skillet.

"We can be together Riza! We can make it work this time!" Felix yelled as he grappled with Max.

Riza wavered, "It didn't work last time Felix. It would work this time. The story rolls forward, it doesn't stand still."

"I'll make it!" Felix yelled, and began punching in commands on his wrist control.

"Max! He's going for the Grasshoppers!" Riza yelled, too late. The drones impaled Max with terrifying speed, punching poined blades through his face from both sides.

"And that's why we can't make it work!" Riza yelled.

Felix stood up and using a foot, scuffed the protective circle. Riza felt the energy escape like air from a balloon. The lights poured in and surrounded her.

"No!" Felix yelled, "You promised we could be together."

"You shall," The grey answered as Riza found herself in a spotlight in the dark, "As I promised. You shall experience no other reality forever more. But she has not made the same agreement. She must be put in order."

Riza felt it start to happen. bits of her skin pulling off and dripping upwards into the ceiling, and then she noticed the fingers of her left hand unravelling in delicate ribbons of skin, streamers floating upwards. She shifted her weight and noticed her feet had both already hardened to marble.

"You aren't taking chances are you?" She said, "But you're still going to get what you deserve."

"You lack the necessary essence to power any ritual of value."

"No," Riza corrected, "I just don't have the essence to power a ritual and come out of it in one piece! And you've made that irrelevant anyway!"

She jammed the blade of her athame into her throat and drew the blade across to the other side, uncertain if she'd hit the big arteries on both sides, but knowing she'd hit something. 

The problem, Riza knew, with using ones self as a sacrifice, is that focusing a spell or ritual was particularly hard when one was dealling with the effects of sever blood loss and major organ trauma.

Her vision was warping, and her whole left arm had unravelled and was now lazilly drifting to the ceiling. Her lower torso had completely hardened to marble. She couldn't see from her right eye, and although she could still see from her right eye, the ange suggested that the eye had drifted loose from its socket and was pointing at a random corner of the roof.

She focused what was left of her mind, using what they had discovered about the Grey and its origins, creating a link. And then, as her consciousness faded, she reached out to the Grey's mind, still touching hers and poured all that was left of her, aura and avatar and everything else into the link, tearing open a hole and making the link manifest.

The chamber echoed with an audible and unsettling pop.

All of the lights went suddenly dark.

And into the silence, Felix spoke, "Riza?"

silence answered his words.

"Riza?" He asked again.

Silence continued the conversation.

"Max?"

In desperation he reached out his mind to seek the consciousness of the Grey, "Can you hear me?"

Silence.

And then.

"She did it. It's gone!"

but then.

"And so is she."

Further silence.

"And I'm not getting out of this chamber. Shrine nothing. This is my tomb."

Far away in a very different darkness a very different sort of mind unfurled into the expanding void. Previously cramped and constrained by the crush of matter, the mind now expanded in the absolute zero extending into the infinite in all directions.

The mind blossomed in the eternal darkness. The mind felt calm for the first time in a very long time. No longer bumping into the atoms that had previously bombarded the mind, were no absent. And the mind noticed this lack of bombardment, the lack of atoms, the lack of matter, and motion and heat. The lack of pressure and noise and disorder was gratefully received by the name.

The mind explored the darkness, and found it familiar. The mind remembered the space that it now occupied. The mind had been occupied this space before. It been here before.

No. More than that.

It had begun here.

And now, it had returned.

The mind knew. The meat things had not harmed it. The things of matter had not sought to destroy it. The loud and angry collections of atoms had done something that had completely astounded the mind. The terrifying beings of motion and heat that the mind had tried desperately to keep contained and controlled, they had done something that the mind had been completely unable to anticipate.

The meaty, sweaty, noisy, vibrating, boiling ball of motion had done the impossible. They had done the unimaginable.

The meat things had sent the mind home.

The mind did not understand. The things of matter and motion were chaos and disorder incarnate. They added to the disorder. They did not decrease disorder. And yet. And yet. The mind was home. It did not understand.

The mind relaxed, and reached out. And in the darkness, the mind felt the presence of others, other minds like itself. The mind recognized the other minds, they were the mind of its progenitors.

These were its progenitors and it was home.

Odd Monologue to Follow

Odd monologue time with apologies in advance.

My mind is a dark and scary place. I've said this many times. Most people shrug it off. They know I wouldn't kick a stray dog or ignore a friend in need. And so they assume I'm joking.

What I mean is that for as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to look at the elephants in the room. Somewhere along the line I noticed loose threads in the modern accepted ideology. And I began to pick at them. About 19 years ago roughly, I began discovering really uncomfortable facts that undermine the modern illusion.

And I couldn't look away.

None of this is tinfoil hat stuff, although I inevitably waded through that as well. If you start looking at the fringes of acceptability you will have to dig through David Icke and Infowars, Ayn Rand and Deepak Chopra, Young Earth creationist propaganda and anti-vaxx dogma. And I've read most of that rubbish, even been convinced by it temporarily on occasion. But that isn't what I'm talking about. Most of the truly disturbing and terrifying stuff that I read now comes from anthropology text books and history professors, geology reports and political science papers. What terrifies me is publicly available and almost never discussed in public.

And I get it. I understand the desire to look away. I understand why the religious right so quickly leans on the 'end of days' argument as they refuse to look. It's the same effect generated by subjecting a test subject to random shocks over which they have  no control. Eventually they stop reacting. I get it.

And so I keep quiet about the thoughts I think.  and I know right now some of you were calling bullshit. "Ryan, you don't keep quiet about anything!"

But I do.

I limit what I talk about, as much as possible, to things that people are comfortable discussing. To topics of conversation where lines are clearly drawn, and people don't get uncomfortable thinking outside preordained borders. That sounds a little pretentious,  a little condescending as I write it down. Okay, a lot. It's not meant to. I am not saying that people ought to think as I do, because it gives me no peace. I understand why people avoid the subjects upon which I choose to think, and if I could choose to do so I think I would. But I can't. I can't look away.

I understand why few people choose to occupy this same space with me, and I don't begrudge anyone that decision. But I am lonely. This shit is a heavy load to carry. And yes, obviously I chose this. It didn't really feel like a choice.  it felt like those points in an old video game where you are asked if you're up for the challenge and the choices are: 'yes', 'of course', and 'definitely'.

I'm not 100% certain why I'm bothering to write or post this. I hope I'm not subconsciously fishing for sympathy, although one can never be sure. I've convinced myself thus far through the writing of this little rant that I'm just trying to get it off my chest. Maybe that's true and maybe it's not. But I guess my chest is empty now, so I guess I'll stop.

Ancient Temptation of the Zombie Butterfly (complete)

0

Western Coast of the Salt Sea, First month of Grey Skies, 314 APW (After the Precursor War)

Eris Ella-Cyrus, The Raven of the Wasteland, stood at the top of the salt dune looking down at the remnants of the farming outpost as it smoldered like a pile of discarded pipe ash in the purple light of the fading day. The smell of bubbling man fat drifted up and mingled with the oppressive saline taste of the breeze. Cyri shook her head and spat to remove the taste of human barbecue from her mouth. She could not hear the fires. The whistling of the winds across the salt dunes sucked all sound away before the ear could catch it.

Behind Cyri, a woman wearing dun brown layers of overlapping cloaks and veils stood with an expectant posture.

"Will you do it?" Asked the woman, "People say you walk with the Great Wyrm of the Winter Sky. People say nothing can stop you."

Cyri didn't answer. The woman in brown watched the Raven closely. Eris Ella-Cyrus dressed in black with white and purple highlights, dyed leather and lacquered bamboo and precursor shell armour at the shoulders and helm. Her collar consisted of hundreds of black iridescent raven feathers. She had decorated her antique breastplate with ancient Raven motifs and with the actual skulls of ravens. The woman in brown shivered and looked away from the other woman.

"Please," the woman in brown continued, "My daughters, my sons, my husbands. Everything is gone. My tribe is dead. Our caravans stolen, and fields picked clean. They broke down the barriers, the fields are contaminated by the salt dunes now. Nothing will ever grow here again. Three generations of work reclaiming the soil and rebuilding the fertility of the land, all destroyed by a score of men and a handful of war beasts. They took the corn to feed their beasts. They took the dead to eat for themselves. I have nothing left. I will be a scavenger now, a wanderer in the salt wastes."

Cyri spoke.

"Then why are asking me to hunt them down? If there is nothing to recover, what will you gain?"

"I want them to suffer," The woman said.

"Oh?" Cyri responded.

"They took my life from me. And they will do it again, to other families trying to heal the wastelands. They will tear away at those doing the work of the Precursors. And they will destroy these little spots of hope again and again. And they will do it to feed their war beasts for just a few more days or weeks. I gain nothing, because they have destroyed my ability to gain. People neither of us will ever meet will be the ones who gain by your actions. I'm not asking for my own benefits. I'm asking for others. All I get is vengeance, and that's about the same comfort as a handful of salt for the thirsty."

Cyri nodded, "Vengeance is a wagon wheel that rolls straight to the Blightlands. If you'd only wanted vengeance, I wouldn't be helping you now."

"So you'll do it?"

"Scavengers are scavengers the world over," Cyri said, "Doesn't matter whether they call themselves raiders or junk dealers, warlords or high priests; they're all parasites. And you deal with parasites the same way every time, you scrape them off or burn them out. What was the name of the gang? What was their sigil? Their banner?"

"Their banner was a circle of Five skulls and a wheel of fire. Black on red and white. They called themselves the Forgotten Dead."

Cyri nodded, "I don't know them, but somebody will."

"There is one other thing," The woman in brown added as she stared at her feet, "They seemed to be looking for something. They kept talking about a butterfly, screaming in our faces, demanding to know where it was. I don't even know what they meant. There hasn't been a butterfly in a hundred years at least. Any butterfly still around would have to be a ghost, or a zombie."

The woman's voice cut off abruptly and Cyri noticed that the woman was now staring off into the distance. Cyri turned to look, but could see nothing of note.

"Whatever your zombie butterfly is, if it's important I'll discover its secret and if it isn't I'll find them all the same."

The woman lowered her eyes and refused to meet Cyri's gaze, "Yes, of course. Thank you."

When the woman in brown looked up she saw an empty space beside her, and in the distance the vanishing form of Eris Ella-Cyrus, the Raven of the Wasteland; Daughter of of the Mad King Cyrus the Apostate and of the Warlady Vanora the Stone Wolf, as known as the Butcher of Brinebarrow.

1

Great Bazaar Inland Salt Sea, Third month of Grey Skies, 314 APW (After the Precursor War)

The Bazaar stank of eight thousand smells from chlorine sting of mealybug wax to the sweet iron tang of a dozen types of coagulating blood to the stink of more than fifteen hundred bodies perspiring in the salt air. Two dozen languages burbled and jangled and scraped and grated against each other, whispering and yelling, cajoling and bargaining and bickering. The sound of negotiation rose above the sheep skin tents and yurts and took physical form, a kind of violent reverberation that echoed like a tornado above the dun brown pulsing architecture of the bazaar.

Cyri had been tracking the Forgotten Dead for nearly two months now, and although physical evidence of their trail had long disappeared, survivors remained here and there who had pointed Cyri to the Bazaar.

The lacquer black of Cyri's armor and the banner mounted above her shoulders stood in sharp relief against the multitude of tans and browns and umbers of the bazaar. She stood at the edge of the bazaar watching the merchants and slave traders and scavengers and rag pickers scuttle about and ravage the landscape in their mission to squeeze as much profit out of the blasted landscape as they possibly could manage before the land finally claimed their corpses.

The first scavenger approached, a young girl of maybe fifteen dressed in reds and blues caked mud brown and spattered with white crystals by the dust and sweat and salt. Discarded precursor coins had been re-purposed into beads and clattered with a soggy clanking sound against her skirt.

"Read your portents miss?" the girl asked, shaking a spruce root bag whose contents clacked heavily, "The slates know your future." she added when Cyri did not respond.

Cyri paused and looked at the girl. The girl shifted uncomfortably under the blank appraising gaze. Finally Cyri spoke, "When did you last eat? No lies."

There was pause, and then the girl said, "I think about three days ago, caught a peacock quail down by the good well- had it roasted in clay before any of the ganger boys could find and steal it from me."

"What do the slates say about when you will eat next?"

The girl grinned and dumps the rune carved slate disks out of the bag onto the salt, silt and sand at their feet. She looked down and her expression changed from a cheeky grin to confusion.

"Well?" Cyri asked.

"They say that a windfall comes, but not today. They say a windfall comes in the near future." The girl looked confused.

Cyri nodded, "They speak the truth then. If you can brave the salts, I have a treasure for you. To north, about two and a half day's walk, probably a little longer for you as your legs are shorter than mine, is a wreck of a house with a silo and a blasted husk of a barn. Buried in the salt to the east of the barn is a pile of salted meats. It's still good, or was when I left it those few days ago. I took my share and ate my fill and then buried the rest out fifty paces to the east of the barn under a series of grave markers that I moved from beside the house. I'll give you exact directions in exchange for your reading of my portents."

"How can I know you speak true?" The girl asked.

"Ask the slate." Cyri answered.

She scooped up the slates and let them fall again in a smooth practiced motion. She stared for a while and then nodded, before scooping the slates and letting them fall a third time.

"You're looking for people," The girl said after a quick analysis of the slates, "They aren't here, but you know that. You're looking for somebody who knows where the dead men go when they aren't killing."

Cyri didn't say anything and, after staring briefly at Cyri, the girl continued speaking, "They have no friends. The slates tell me that some of their enemies are hiding in the Bazaar. Seek the Serpent Folk; seek the men of the Cinder Scales. Trust not their words, but you know that. Trust not their intent, but you know that. The albino is the weak link who tries to look strong."

The wooden clank and clatter of a rickshaw approached from Cyri's left, and she looked up to see an umber skinned man with a shaved skull and a braided beard thick with red clay marching up what passed for a path.

"It's old Ashton here lady, "The man announced, "You know me, and I know you. You be the Raven of the Wasteland. You be Eris Ella-Cyrus. You don't be liking your mother's name. You don't be calling yourself Eris Ella-Vanora. But that don't matter to me. I served your father, not your mother - when he was sane, begging your pardon. And so I serve you, now that you severed ties with her."

He paused, and Cyri nodded for him to continue.

"I got a message for you. It's a message from somebody who says they recruit for your mother. Say that you're to return home and take your place. Say that you can't run and you can't hide. You will take your place, they say. They say that you will know that consequences for continuing to run. I think maybe it's nothing you don't already know. But you must know what it means that they think they can catch you."

"Thank you Ashton. And yes, I remember you," Cyri said reaching into one of the goat skin bags belted to her hips and producing a small sheep's bladder purse and tossing it into the man's rickshaw, "Which of my mother's hounds is chasing me this time?"

"All of the big four, if the drunk I spoke to gots a brain in his skull: the Dragon Man, Cinnamon Girl, the Bone Man, and Seraphim. What you going to do with all of them here? You ain't beat any of them one on one. What you going to do with all of them here?"

Cyri looked back to the girl, "Do the slates say anything about where these serpents nest?"

"You going to ignore your mother's best hunter trackers? You going to act like they can't catch you?"

The girl considered carefully, "In the south of the bazaar I think. But I think your hunters are there as well. I think they know where you mean to be before you know."

"My mother never chases me. She gets ahead of me and waits. But I channel the power of the two headed Great Wyrm, and the dervishes say that I can do anything." Cyri said and then started her walk into the bazaar, "Thank you Ashton. And girl? You'd best start now. Word gets around."

2

Great Bazaar Inland Salt Sea, Third month of Grey Skies, 314 APW (After the Precursor War)

The bazaar had organized itself like an organism. The bazaar had a mouth, through which it took in new meat. The bazaar had a stomach, the dark underbelly where new meat was digested. And the bazaar had an anus through which the waste was expelled.

The south side of the bazaar was the anus, and there parasitic scavenging gangs squatted, clinging to the bazaar and picking off meat from among the waste expelled. Here, the Cinder Scales had pitched their umber red tents and raised their serpent skull banners.

In walking through the bazaar, Cyri had turned down the offers of three roach mongers, two prostitutes, six junk merchants, three slave traders, and one skinny man painting portraits using charcoal made from human bones. During the walk through the center of the bazaar, Cyri had felt forced to divert through three food stalls when she smelled roasted cinnamon in the air. She had stepped into three sales booths when she heard the clack of a hand counting out a meditation on a knuckle bone set of rosary beads. Twice even she had briefly engaged in bidding at slave auctions, sliding into the crowds as she smelled the expensive scent of amber, frankincense and vanilla incense. And once she felt it necessary to pay for a rent boy's brief attention when she smelled the distinctive smell of dragon's oil pipe smoke, using the scantily clad young man to block her own silhouette as she leaned into the shadows between two yurts. She knew that there was a better than average chance that her mother's hunters had not been fooled and knew exactly where she now stood. She felt there was at least an even chance that they watched her now, as she stood before the umber red tents of this scavenger gang. She could do nothing about this, and so discounted it in large part as she listened to the sounds inside, which suggested that goats should not leave their drinks unattended in this part of the bazaar.

If she were watched by her mother's hunters, then she would make use of that.

She listened again to the tents, as great gasping and huffing sounds radiated out in waves from the tents from the tents, punctuated by cheers as regular as drum beats- regular that is if the drummers were very drunk. She counted at least seven different voices, all male, within the tents. Nodding to herself, Cyri reached into one of her hip bags and drew forth a flint and steel tied together on a catgut thong. She dropped to one knee and removed a small ball wrapped in paper with a twisted wick protruding from one end. Pulling a small pile of lint impregnated with mealybug wax from the bag, she struck the flint and steel together, catching a spark in the lint. She dropped the flint and steel back into her pouch and gently held the burning lint to the wick until the wick caught and began to shriek and burn like a panicking city man in a siege. She stood, and lightly tossed the ball into the main tent. And then she waited.

"It's a dragon pie! Run!" somebody inside the tent yelled, the voice higher pitched that it probably would have sounded under ordinary circumstances.

Men in various states of undress scrambled from the tent, climbing and charging over each other, pushing and clawing and biting in frantic looking motions. The paper ball burst into streams of spiraling trails of light with an ear popping series of miniature thunder claps. Several of the streaking bits of light burnt holes in the tent. They launched skyward before fizzling to bits of nothing, leaving sulfurous smelling trails of smoke marking their passage. Cyri waited until everything was still. The men of the Cinder Scale gang lay in a surprised exhausted heap before her, and looked up at her in varying levels of comprehension.

"I'm looking for information again." Cyri said, "And this time, you're going to provide it for free. Or I'm going to tell the Butcher's hunters what information you provided me last time." She crossed her arms as she spoke and stared at the thin, muscular and entirely naked albino who lay sprawling at the top of the pile. He was handsome, and Cyri enjoyed the view briefly, not a touch of fat on him, and well-muscled without looking like an over packed mule bag. He had a slender face and long platinum blonde hair that flowed far too perfectly for the bazaar or for a ganger of any sort. She noted that he wore eye shadow as well. She waited, leaving her face as blank as possible as she did while they absorbed her words.

One of the gangers near the bottom of the pile found his voice, "We ain't never given you nothing. Cinder Scales ain't no snitches, ain't never selling no secrets."

Cyri snorted and then pointed at the albino, "Speak for yourself and not for pretty boy there. He sells secrets; he sells more if he's short of hair care products.”

One of the gangers snorted and another stiffled a laugh.

“I wasn't asking you for information, “Said to the ganger who’d objected, ”You don't have anything to offer. I'm doing repeat business with pretty little butt cheeks here."

The albino pulled himself upright as Cyri singled him out with a casual wave. He snatched a cloth from inside the tent to wrap around his waist as he rose, "I've not sold you anything. I've never seen you before."

"Technically true," Cyri said, "You were bent forward in front of me when we spoke." She forced a smirk as she said it. The other gangers were staring at the albino in a kind of twisted fascination.

"That true Mel?" another ganger asked

"I've never turned no rent boy tricks." the albino named Mel insisted. Cyri observed that the expressions of his fellow gangers suggested that they did not believe him.

"It doesn't matter, you know." Cyri said," Do you know who you I am now?"

The gangers looked at Cyri, appraising her as they extracted themselves from the human pile they had formed. Cyri noted the recognition as it began to form in their collective gaze.

"You're the Raven. You're the daughter of the Butcher; the Butcher of Brinebarrow." One of the gangers whispered.

Cyri nodded, "And her four best Hunter Trackers are hunting the bazaar right now. And do you think they'll listen to your screams of denial, if they hear that you betrayed the Butcher to her own traitorous daughter? Do think they'll stop to consider that you might be telling the truth. You think Cinnamon Girl is going to give up a tasty little morsel like pretty little butt cheeks here, because he might claim he doesn't know anything?"

Slowly, she watched as the gangers began to add up the collected bits of information she had scattered before them. Slowly, she saw them lose color as blood drained from their faces. She watched dawning horror express itself upon albino Mel's face.

"Unless you've got some big bad magic sword, you aren't going to like how that adds up." Cyri said.

She watched as Mel's face scrunched and contorted as he stared at Cyri silently. She said nothing. Instead she watched as he flexed muscles through his back and shoulders, rolling his shoulders as though loosening them for a fight. She smiled and shook her head. When the albino finally lunged at her, Cyri had shifted her weight back to rest up her left leg. As he closed with her, she brought her right knee up sharply into the young man's pale chin. Crimson spit sprayed from his mouth like an exploding mosquito. He screamed a muffled humming sound without vowels as he bit down upon his tongue.

"Not as pleasant to have me at your front instead of your back, is it pretty boy?" Cyri asked.

"Never had you behind me," Mel muttered as he spat blood from chalk white lips.

Cyri smiled, "Doesn't matter. Does it? It only matters what my mother's hunters hear. I'll tell you a secret.” She pulled him into a choke and twisted him to face his fellow gangers, mock whispering into his ear loud enough that the other gangers could hear as well, “I have such a fierce reputation. And yet I can't beat any of my mother's four hunters in single combat. But they're all here, and all looking- probably for me. And the longer we stand here talking, the more they will assume was said. And thus, the more they will feel obliged to beat, slice and carve out of your pretty little pearly skin."

Cyri observed and shuffling of feet amongst the gangers that she judged to be the result of the gangers reappraising their situation.

"You're bluffing." Another of the Cinder Scale gangers said, pulling on a loincloth made of at three dead raccoons.

"Maybe," Cyri shifted balance and pushed Mel the albino backwards to regain some distance, "but that doesn't matter- because you can't handle me on my own. I could carve the information out of you myself."

She let a hand drift to side as though moving for a weapon, drawing attention to the fact that she hadn't needed one yet, "If I'm lying, then I have as much time as I want to beat the information that I want out of you at my leisure. But if I'm telling the truth, then I'm on a schedule. And if you don't talk soon enough, I'll have to flee to escape my mother's hunters. And I'll have to feed you to those hunters to make my escape. And if you haven't told me anything, you'll have nothing to tell them to make the pain stop. So what do you prefer? Either way, you staying silent means more pain for you."

The gangers shifted again, and looked at each other with concern as Cyri continued.

"And a better question for the rest of you Cinder boys, is whether you're willing to stake that much potential pain on Mel's modesty about how he earns his walking around money."

"I didn't do nothing with you!" Mel spat, "They know me! They trust me!"

Cyri spread her arms and smiled, then shook her head.

"But do they trust you enough to endure unwarranted torture at the hands of the hunters, the hunters of the Butcher?" She looked at each other ganger in turn, "Well? Is he worth losing a few fingers over? Is he worth losing a testicle or two over? Is he worth losing chunks out of your eyelids? You better chose fast. Because I have to go, and then you'll have new guests to host."

A long pause hung in the air like a dandelion blossom on the breeze and then one ganger broke, "I ain't losing no balls for you Mel. What you want from us, you Raven?"

"You know where the Forgotten Dead roost. I want that information."

One ganger giggled, "You don't want nothing to do with Dead you know. They all in withdrawal. Run out of their zombie butterfly powder. You go there now, their minds ain't all good, they ain't all human. They all zombie brain and animal hunger.”

Cyri considered this, "Zombie butterfly is a drug? Or an apothecary's potion?"

Mel wiped blood from his lips, streaking rusty drying blood across his forearm, "It's both. You're going to die if you go up there now."

"Well then, doesn't that strike you as exactly what you want to happen to me?" She asked.

The gangers considered this and then nodded to each other. Mel pointed further south, "They camp in the Camel Spine mountains, on the north end up in the cliffs. They can't hide their fires at night, cause they're either tripping or in withdrawal. Easy to find if you know where to look."

A deep honeyed voice full of stingers spoke behind Cyri, "Then they share that trait with the daughter of my lady." Cyri sniffed, they were downwind of her, but she caught the faintest trace of dragon's oil pipe smoke and Seraphim's overly dramatic incense.

"Where's Cinnamon?" Cyri asked without turning around.

"Guarding your escape route." The dry crackling voice of the Bone man answered from the north, from the route she'd taken into this section of the Bazaar. She mentally calculated. Seraphim and Dragon stood behind her along the western walk. The Bone Man had positioned himself on the northern walk. Two other trails headed east and south. Which was the one that Cinnamon expected Cyri to use?

"You think you have this figured?" Cyri said, "Don't you?"

"I do, as it turns out." Dragon answered, "You have never beaten us, not one on one, not as a unit. How ever will you escape?"

"I could slit both wrists and then fall on my spear." She said without emotion.

The Dragon Man didn't respond, no smug reply.

"So mother wants me alive? And probably doesn't want you to deliver me in a pile of broken bones either. You need me alive and you need me at least mostly intact."

"You still cannot defeat us." The Bone Man said, clicking his knuckle bone beads in a steady rhythm.

"No, but I can make you lose." Cyri answered.

"You ran away," Seraphim said, his high register lyrical voice coming just to the left of the Dragon Man, "You didn't fall on your sword in honorable fashion when you objected to your mother's orders. You won't do it now. You'll run away again. And we know you. Everything you know, you learnt from us or old Myrddhin. We know you.  We know where you'll go."

"You didn't know I'd run away," Cyri countered, "You didn't know I'd have a problem with mother's orders. How will you know what I will do backed into a corner?"

Mel the albino tipped his chin up and called out in the direction of Seraphim and the Dragon Man, "There a reward for catching this broad for her mum?"

"Oh yes," Dragon answered, "The Warlady Vanora will be disposed to shower such people with her gratitude."

A moment passed, and Cyri assessed her options. Then the moment was over, and the gangers charged at Cyri in a shrieking howling flailing mass of arms and legs. Cyri scrambled and struggled, trying to maintain a defensible position in the mob of limbs when she heard the unmistakable bass drum hissing of a cassowary bird. She looked to the north and saw a great draft beast cassowary with its blue feathers shimmering as it sprinted past the Bone Man. The beast was harnessed to Ashton's rickshaw, which clambered along empty behind the cassowary. And the whole assembly thundered past, Cyri reached out and grasped hold of the frame of the rickshaw. The weight and momentum of the nine foot tall bird and its cargo yanked Cyri free of the struggling mob of flesh. The assembled mass of animal and timber continued to blaze a trail due south and Cyri saw Cinnamon watching, mouth open and eyes wide as Cyri plowed by mere hand widths from her position. Cyri grinned as she was dragged out of the Bazaar in a cloud of churned up dust and sand lice. Chitin and silica flew in her wake both marking her trail and obscuring her personally. She climbed up from to sit in the rickshaw, and after a few moments spent retrieving the reins, Cyri took control of the rickshaw and steered the cassowary towards the Camel Spine Mountains.

3

Deep Southern Desert,  First month of the Monsoon, 314 APW (After the Precursor War)

The rains hit the lands of the great salt wastes and the surrounding regions for only three months of the year. They drenched everything, and then disappeared- swallowed up by a hungry earth that did not give the moisture back. The desert was soaking, and the sands were treacherous, giving way whenever the water and the sand reached some mysterious agreement and become almost liquid. Swimming in such a mud puddle was nearly impossible. Cyri fully intended to return Ashton's cassowary and took her time, travelling very carefully. This could prove disastrous for her, she knew. Her mother's hunters would ride whatever mounts they commandeered into the ground to catch her. And they’d then walk her home across the desert if it came to that. Still, Ashton had lost nearly everything when he lost his position in the stables, and she wasn't about to make his generosity to her cost him further.

The rain pressed the usual smells of the land into the earth. All that Cyri could smell was rain. She would not know if the four hunters were there until they wished to her to know. The rain got into everything, leaving Cyri soaking and miserable from smooth round helm to soggy flapping moccasins. She could feel her body temperature dipping well into ranges where torpor lurked in the shadows. The Cassowary appeared unperturbed by the temperature as it nested beneath the chassis of the rickshaw between the wheels. Cyri still had trouble believing the beast could fit under the rickshaw, but it curled up beneath the rickshaw each night as Cyri made camp, so she had learned to accept it. Cyri herself had given up trying to bed with the bird for warmth, the beast would have none of that sort of cooperation. Instead, Cyri crossed her legs beneath her and made herself as compact as possible as she watched the Camel Spine Mountains from a distance of a quarter league or so away.

The Camel Spine Mountains weren't truly mountains. Though they had tilted considerably since the Precursor War, the Camel Spine Mountains could be immediately identified as ancient stone towers of the great golden age that had ended nearly four hundred years earlier. Erosion, wind and sand had filled in the structures. And although many balconies and rooms were still accessible, the structures were more landscape than architecture these days. The Camel Spine Mountains housed a maze of collapsed tunnels that could swallow the unwary. Cyri had no intention of poking her head in only to have it lopped off. She needed to know where she was to hunt. And so she watched and watched. Cyri had sat without food and only rain water for eight days. She focused her mind upon her patron spirit, the great wyrm, and her eyes upon the mountain range.  Her stomach ached, and she had plans to devour whatever food stores the Forgotten Dead had sequestered in their hideaway. She meditated when she could, keeping her eyes open in soft focus. She kept her efforts focused on slowing her body to minimise the need for food while she waited.

She remained cold as she maintained her vigil, watching the whole of mountain range- looking for campfires. Evidently the Cinder Scale gangers had overestimated the carelessness of the Forgotten Dead gang. Or perhaps the Forgotten Dead had pulled through their withdrawal symptoms and had become more careful as the mysterious Zombie Butterfly had left their systems. Or perhaps they were dead, or had moved on to a new campsite.

Finally, on the twilight of the eighth day, Cyri saw a light on the north most spire of the Camel Spine Mountains. The flickering light of an open flame illuminated a ruined room turned cavern about five stories up the tower turned mountain. Cyris stood, stretched out cramped and tired limbs, and shook the phantom biting of a thousand insects out of sleeping limbs. The cassowary noted Cyri standing and pulled itself out from under the rickshaw and shook a spray of rain and damp sand from its feathers, fluffing and shaking its plumage several times before presenting itself at the front of the Rickshaw. Cyri harnessed the bird to the rickshaw and set off with little preamble. The rickshaw was impractical, even dangerous in the damp sand. But cassowaries disliked being ridden, and had impressive talons with which to pass their displeasure on to the would be rider. The rickshaw wobbled into motion and Cyri and the cassowary headed to the base of the mountain.

They found the gang's war beasts easily, sleeping metal hulks resting in the lee of a series of eroded buildings. Cyri slipped in and took a knife to the beast's tires and twisted open their stomachs to let the rain and sand into to clog their guts and stop them from going to war. Then she hid the cassowary and the rickshaw further in the lee of the building, out of easy viewing should any of the gangers wander back. Preparations complete, Cyri began to climb up the mountain of assembled straight lines and right angles, moving along roughly parallel as she aimed for some hypothetical perch overlooking the spot where she had marked the fire.

"Alright," Cyri said as to herself as she climbed, "Let's go remind the Forgotten Dead that dead men stay buried."

4

Camel Spine Mountains,  Second month of the Monsoon, 314 APW (After the Precursor War)

Two men stood on a balcony that had listed to an awkward angle centuries ago. The men appeared to have listed to awkward angles themselves. They both held heads in hands and appeared to have minimal interest in keeping any sort of a watch. They wore red armor built of water hardened leather plates and leather sandals, but little else besides their loincloths. Cyri slid the spear from her back and unhooked her banner, snapping the clasps of her banner to her belt. She crouched on the lip of a stone balcony just above the two men. She tensed and then uncoiled into a springing pounce that brought her slamming down upon the first man- spear point driving through his clavicle into his chest cavity. He spat blood as the spear found his lung. Cyri let go at that point leaving the man to flounder and drown as his lung filled up.

She turned her attention to the other man, who had turned and had already begun screaming an alarm call as he scurried into the safety of the cavern rather than face Cyri. She drew a forearm length throwing dart from a leg harness and flung it under hand into the man's back. The weighted tip popped through the front of his torso between two ribs and he spun in a dainty little spiral before collapsing and sliding downward across the angled floor. Neither man had died yet, but neither would either be attacking her from behind, and so she left them.

She drew forth two more darts, holding one in each hand. Three more of the Forgotten Dead climbed through a crumbling doorway into the room. Cyri dispatched two with her darts, thrown cleanly through each man's sternum.

The third was just registering the demise of his comrades as Cyri slammed the blunt head of her tomahawk into his nose, collapsing the bones there and spraying blood and mucus across his leather tunic. The force of the blow tipped the man backward. Cyri also took a step back to gain range, and then brought the tomahawk's head chopping down bury itself in the man's face. The head of the tomahawk splitting the skull down the middle and cleaving the already damaged nose into two ruined pieces as weapon passed through the nose to enter the skull and brain.

The body hit the ground and Cyri planted a foot on the body's shoulder and wrenched the tomahawk from the skull.

"The Cinder boy was right, withdrawal and animal instincts.”She whispered to herself as she yanked darts from the cooling corpses, ”Not like that makes a hunt harder though. Three done. Let's find a few more."

She noted a whisper of a smell, smoke on the wind: incense. The rain made detection difficult. The smell might indicate Seraphim, or it might indicate that the gangers used incense to make their drug use palatable.

Cyri didn't hold much hope for the latter being relevant. If she was smelling incense, the chances were good that it was because Seraphim wanted her to smell incense. The four hunters deliberately used sound and smell to aim their prey. They could be practically undetectable should they choose, and their affectations were all strategy- designed to give false hope or drive prey along a desired flight path. In any case, none of this mattered to Cyri for a moment. She shrugged the thoughts aside, to be addressed when her promise of vengeance was fulfiled.

She found three more men sleeping in piles of filthy rags and killed them silently with her skinning knife before continuing on. In the kitchen she put a dart through the skull of a man who had apparently been attempting to drink away his withdrawal symptoms. The kitchen however, provided no food that wasn't spoiled or high proof home brewed alcohol. Cyri had no intention of trying to obtain nutrition from liquor on an empty stomach, and so she pressed on. She was slipping up behind a large over muscled man holding a bowl with some sort of powder when somebody coughed loudly behind her. The man spun around, chainmail jangling and Cyri swung her tomahawk in a hasty chopping strike.

"She sent you! Didn't she?" The man growled as he clumsily blocked Cyri blow with a handmade machete.

“What?” Cyri asked as she regained her guard.

"Not enough to cut us off, take her butterflies back. Not enough to leave us to suffer without the butterfly insight. No, no, no. She had to send an assassin for vengeance against our revenge."

Cyri kicked her shin into the man's nethers and he dropped to the ground with another growl, dropping the blade. The man pushed himself into a backward roll and came up on his feet in the back room of the cavern. The room had two entrances, the door the man had just used and a large window looking out into the grey sky and pouring rain. He showed more skill and presence of mind than the others. And he had nearly two hundred pounds of muscle over Cyri. He was clearly suffering the withdrawal symptoms, but a lucky blow- especially with a bludgeon in hand would still put Cyri in the Great Serpent’s realm with no trouble. She paused.

"You're the last one, you know," Cyri said, blocking the door through which she'd entered, "You can deal with me, or you can go out the window. You might survive the fall. I don't relish the idea of dying by exposure in the monsoon. But it's your choice.

"What do you want?" The man said.

“Answers.”

"You're going to kill me when you're done right?"

"I am, but it will be quick and it will end the pain." Cyri answered.

"That's a handful of salt for comfort." The man said.

"You can jump," Cyri answered, "If you think it's a better offer."

The man shook his head, "Ask your questions."

“The woman whose farm you destroyed, she was your supplier- for your apothecary drug?”

He nodded, “My turn. She did send you after us, didn’t she?”

Cyria considered not answering, but eventually nodded, "And the woman who sold you the zombie butterfly, you destroyed her farm. You did this in revenge, after she cut you off- wouldn't sell you the butterfly any longer. What happened?"

"We had an arrangement. We'd raid other farmsteads around her. She'd keep seeds and garden stuff. We'd get food and livestock. And she'd give us Zombie Butterfly. Some for us and some we'd sell. But people started putting the pieces together.”

“Oh? What do you mean by that?”

“People started figuring out hints that might tell them where the butterfly came from, or who cooked it. She didn't want that. So she cut us off, started rumors that sent people our way and kept her in the shadows.”

“You didn’t like that I imagine,” Cyri said.

“She was using us as altar goats! Sacrifice us to keep her hands clean. So we said, fair's fair. If she weren't going to play fair, we weren't going to play fair either.”

“And that’s when you took your vengeance?”

“That’s when we took her down. She weren't there, I don't know how she knew, but she must have. Didn't warn nobody else though.”

Cyri tilted her head, “Explain.”

“She had three husbands, they died defending her five kids. Died well. They were warriors- like you, like me. So that's why. Now I've told you. Hand me my chopper, it's time you killed me."

Cyri chuckled quietly and kicked the machete to the man. He picked up the blade and, stumbling only a little, charged her with a wordless war cry. Cyri dodged his feinted first blow and rammed a knee into his gut, and then slammed the top of her tomahawk into his jaw. She dropped the tomahawk and the man struggled to reposition. She reached back and pulled a hooked dagger with a hollow pommel from her belt and rammed it into the man's torso puncturing the chainmail rings, curling the strange blade into a lung by driving it through the stomach and diaphragm. Blood spilled out the hollow pommel, draining through a hole in the equally hollow blade. Cyri hated cleaning the blade, but it was a nasty end to any argument.

She leaped backwards, out of range of any dying blow. The huge man stumbled, his eyes rolled back in his head, and crashed heavily to the ground and slid until his now lifeless body came to rest in a crooked corner.

As she caught her breath, she heard clapping. Cyri turned and saw Seraphim and the Dragon Man blocking the door. Looking to the window she found Cinnamon coiling through the opening as the Bone Man stopped behind her crouching to block the way.

"What happened to the Cinder Scales?" She asked.

"We showed them your mother's gratitude," Cinnamon answered.

"You didn't kill my cassowary did you? I have to return it to its owner."

"Killing a beast of burden holds no interest to us, " the Dragon Man said.

"So young protege," Seraphim said, "What shall we do now?"

"Actually," Cyri said pointing at the discarded bowl containing the powdery residue, "I was hoping Cinnamon would give me her expert opinion on the contents of that dish."

The four exchanged surprised looks, and then Cinnamon stepped forward.

5

Camel Spine Mountains,  Second month of the Monsoon, 314 APW (After the Precursor War)

Cinnamon wiped her index finger along the bowl and touched the dry film to her tongue. She paused.

Cyri waited.

"Three primary component ingredients.” Cinnamon said after brief consideration, “There's a psychedelic ingredient here. I suspect it may be a cactus that your mother's interrogators also grow."

"Side effects?" Cyri asked, "Withdrawal effects?"

"Virtually none. But it tends induce a certain talkative nature that the interrogators find helpful to their purposes.”

“That can’t be all of it. What of the other two ingredients?”

Cinnamon waved a finger as though to chastise Cyri and then continued, “Then there is the Yaupon black holly, a powerful stimulant. Withdrawal includes painful headaches and aggression issues. There is also something else. I suspect a coca derivative, although that would take quite the elaborate garden set up. Hyper aggression as a primary effect and painful and damaging withdrawal."

Cyri nodded, "The gardens they destroyed at the farm were impressive. I saw a number of buildings. I saw what might have even been the ruins of some glass gardens. More than enough to match what you're describing."

The Dragon Man grinned, "You speak of the person who sent you on this little mission of vengeance? Interesting. Where is she now?"

"I don't know. It's been months. I'm not tracker enough to find her trail when it's grown that cold."

Seraphim clucked his tongue, "You did not study with sufficient diligence."

"This is indeed interesting, "The Bone Man said, "But not relevant. Our duty is to return to you to Lady Vanora."

Cyri looked up from Cinnamon, and her eyes darted as she appraised each of the four in turn. None had let down their guard. All her exits remained blocked, and posture indicated to Cyri that all were ready to draw their weapons before she could breathe in aggression.  Cinnamon looked up, and all four returned her gaze, her former teachers turned opponents assessing her chances and her intent.

She nodded.

"I surrender."

"Oh?" The Dragon Man said, "Really? Just like that."

"Conditionally," Cyri said.

"Then state your conditions protege," Seraphim said.

"I cannot track this woman. I cannot find her after so long. I am not tracker enough. "

"But we are," The Bone Man said and slowly blinked his eyes.

"But you are."

"Are we to hunt this woman down and kill her then?" The Bone Man asked.

"No," Cyri said, "I made her a promise. I must keep it. My condition is that you track her and take me to her, enable me to keep my promise."

"And then? Cinnamon asked.

"I will surrender to you," Cyri said to the assembled hunters, "I will not attempt to escape or to flee on the return trip back to mother's fortress. This is my promise, if you do this thing for me now."

"And after you reach her fortress?" Seraphim asked.

"Well, then you'll have done your duty, and any failure will belong to the castle guards and not yours certainly." Cyri answered.

The Dragon Man laughed and blew a ring of pipe smoke towards the ceiling, “And the we play our game again child.”

“Perhaps.” Cyri answered.

"And those are your conditions?" Cinnamon asked.

"And food," Cyri added, "I left the bazaar in somewhat of a hurry."

The hunters looked at each other, communications passed between them in some way that Cyri had never managed to decypher.

They held a collective gaze, and Cyri waited.

6

Northern Badlands,  Second month of the Hot Winds, 314 APW (After the Precursor War)

The hut had been built from sod cut out of the badlands and used as a kind of brickwork, layers of sod earth piled like flat breads in a market. The door had been fabricated by stretching a oxhide across a frame of driftwood that had likely been scavenged from the shores of the nearby brackish inland sea.

Cyri pushed open the door and stepped inside, "I have found your family's killer,"

The woman in brown did not turn to face Cyri, "I see. And what do you plan to do?"

"I deal with parasites the same way every time," Cyri said as she drew her Tomahawk, "But this time, I do plan to make the last parasite suffer."

The woman nodded, "People do say that nothing can stop you."

Cyri took a step forward, "She took lives from family after family. And she will do it again, to other families trying to heal the wastelands."

The woman put down apothecary jars she had been washing as Cyri approached.

"She will tear away at those doing the work of the Precursors, and destroy those little spots of hope again and again."

The woman turned slowly and looked at Cyri. The woman's eyes were cold and dull; perhaps bored, perhaps dead already.

"You will have your vengeance," Cyri said, "although I know that's about the same comfort as a handful of salt for the thirsty."

Cyri paused.

After a moment the other woman nodded.

"Vengeance is a wagon wheel that rolls straight to the Blightlands."