The twins were waiting at the bridge by the time Slade brought Holan down to Shella's Island. Both of them had their blades planted in the ground. The chains with the spike and ball lay at their feet. Vincent looked away from the brothers, but he wasn't sure why.

“You are going to tell me what you are doing here, Reashos,” Akhil rasped, “you were not assigned to this mission.”

“No, I was not,” Slade admitted, “but The La'ark knows of my reputation, as do you. So when I told her I was going, there was no argument to be had. When it comes to competence, I rank equivalent to the shandan, perhaps even better than some since I am not bound by your conventions.”

“Reashos...” Menik repeated, “wait, this...this is 'Silith'?” Hints of humor seeped into his tired voice.

“Aye, she is,” Oris said, stepping forward, “and we do not have time for bickering. We must assume more storms are on their way now that Cordell has been exposed. Madeen has just been in contact with her brethren. We have a few days, but they are borrowed time. So, we camp here for the night, mend our wounds, have interesting dreams about what we just witnessed. Then leave early tomorrow morning, yes?”

After Menik dismounted to be debriefed, Slade pulled Holan onto the plateau toward the camp. Several soldiers were digging a grave for another, the one called Clime, who had passed from his wounds. As for the others that had died, Vincent assumed there were no bodies to bury. Discipline must have been the only thing that kept them going, but he could see the grief in their clenched jaws and their raw eyes. Menik said there were twenty missing. Twenty...out of what, fifty soldiers? Forty percent casualties? He couldn’t think about the missing soldiers. They never existed. This was a nightmare and he had brought it upon their world.

“You may let go of my wings now, Vincent,” Slade said.

He hadn’t been aware he was still holding them, so he released his grip. He had to be helped down off of Holan, as every movement of his right arm felt like it was ripping ligaments in his shoulder. In addition to the wounds on his chest, tongue, and shoulder, he also discovered he must have pulled something in one of his legs. He was fairly miserable. He limped alongside Slade as he made his way toward a campfire, where a healer was tending to the wounded. Pain shot up his leg and he almost fell over.

“You are wounded,” Slade said.

“I know. I'm not using the Triasat,” Vincent hissed as he leaned against Holan's flank, massaging his thigh.

“I mean, let me aid you. There is a healer near the fire. I will help you walk there.”

“You want to help me hobble? Fine.”

Even through the armor, it felt weird to throw an arm over the shoulders of a lacertine biped, whose wiry strength reminded him of the fabled Amazonian women. It was strange how she kept appearing, first to arrest him, then to be his bodyguard and escort. Now, she showed up to save his ass? His mind was shot. His body was hurt and exhausted, so his brain was left grasping at any thread that it could use to weave conspiracies. She set him down by the fire and called over the healer, a soldier with glowing eyes who was finishing up a bandage. The flames made Vincent realize how cold he was, and he started to shake.

“Ay, let's get those pieces off you,” the healer said, using his arms and wings to unfasten the buckles. In seconds they loosened and fell to the ground, freeing Vincent’s form. The healer’ eyes reminded him of the other channeler, the one who had bled to death from his own madness. “It spoke with her voice...”

Flashes of the stormspawn superimposed themselves on the memory and he heard its words again: I miss you, Vinny. He saw its leering face, wide-eyed and manic. It had spoken to him, addressed him by his nickname using the voice of his deceased mother. No...maybe the schizophrenia was returning. How many days had it been since he last treated himself? He couldn’t remember.

“Oy,” the healer said, “I ask you again, where does it hurt? And why have you not used the nectar? I was told you have it.”

Vincent snapped back to the moment and glared at the creature, unsure why he was suddenly angry at it.

“It's too easy...” he said, “you don't get to just 'dose' your problems away like that. You become too...” The thought trailed off before he could finish it. “Just...do whatever it is you do. I pulled something in both my thigh and my shoulder, and I also fucked up my chest.”

The healer removed sections of his armor, had him roll onto his side so that the thigh could be wrapped, then he went to work on his shoulder. Both were wrapped with tight compression. As the healer was treating him, Vincent looked at the armor he had been wearing. The soldier’s blood had soaked into the leather, permanently staining it. His headpiece, striped with a splash of blue and animated by the fire’s flames, stared at him with its empty eyes. It pointed its snout at him like an accusation.

The healer finished wrapping his injuries and he was told to let them rest. There was nothing to be done about the welt on his chest. Somebody set a piece of feln bread next to him and though it was far from palatable, he became ravenous at the sight. Tremors shook his entire body as he shoved pieces into his mouth, suddenly craving a home-cooked meal. His inflamed tongue protested, but he was too hungry to pay any attention to the pain.

As he ate, several zerok arrived and stood as sentries, guarding the plateau’s perimeter. Vincent's head spun as he heard a large cry, thinking perhaps the stormspawn hadn’t truly been wiped out. But it wasn’t a shout of warning, but of ebullience. Menik, who was returning from his debriefing, had spotted Madrian, Jeris, Sperloc and Mkari. The four of them were followed by what Vincent assumed were what remained of the lost group.

The two warriors leapt down from their mounts and though they looked worn, they both ran at Menik. They bumped off each other’s chests before ramming their crests, roaring in what appeared to be a ritualistic sign of camaraderie. Several more of the creatures enacted the same bizarre display with their lost and found peers. Sperloc, having none of it, dismounted his landrider and guided it toward the fire. Menik, seeing him, prepared to charge. However, the tuhli raised his weapon.

“I will sink this into your throat until it comes out your ass, you damn wing flapper!” he rasped, “you keep that shit for the boys. I'm old...too old for this mountain of excrement.”

Several more wounded were carried toward the fire, many of them with minor lacerations and bruises. But the healer ran over to the worst of them, a Falian soldier with a broken arm and mangled wings. Shattered bone poked through the webbing in several locations while pieces of webbing hung in large flaps, stripped from the digits from which they had been detached. Both of the appendages resembled two halves of a broken umbrella.

The soldier, panting, was cradling them around his form and quaking. When he was forced to lie back and spread them for inspection, he let out a blood-curdling shriek. Vincent focused on the flames of the fire, trying to block out the sound. The screams penetrated his skull and invaded his thoughts. I did this...he thought, this is my fault. The creature's comrades had to hold him down while the healer frantically searched his pockets before producing a tub of lyanth resin, which he used to knock the suffering creature out.

“Ah, Cordell!” Jeris bellowed as he clapped Vincent on the back, “you truly wield a wonderful power, yes?”

Jeris' praise stabbed at him like a dagger. Why? Why did they invest that much importance in him? Why were they falling for his lie? Because he stopped the storm? Didn't they understand he had nothing to do with it, that they were all being played? That grin-faced thing had spoken with his mother's voice! It was fucking with them! Only the dour-faced channelers like Mkari, shaken by their extra senses, seemed to reflect his own dismay. Slade sat not too far away, sharpening a knife. Her thoughts were unreadable.

"Where are you going, Cordell?" Jeris asked as Vincent staggered to his feet.

"I'm sorry," Vincent said, “I am going to go take some drugs...get high, and hope I can forget whatever the fuck just happened tonight.”

Sperloc didn’t protest when Vincent limped over to his mount and rummaged through the contents hanging on her flanks. He went through each bag until he found his own belongings. He grabbed the tub of lyanth resin, found a nice soft spot on the grass and dosed himself. The world leaned over and dumped him into slumber, where he dreamt of maggots and carrion. He vaguely recalled awaking in the middle of a night, his sleep interrupted by sharp agony in his shoulder and thigh, but the drug kept the worst of it from his memory, allowing him to fall back asleep.

***

“Oy,” Sperloc rasped early the next morning, “get up. It is time to go.”

Vincent muttered a few curses as the creature helped him up. The pains in his thigh and shoulder were far less than they had been, yet they still ached when he walked. The morning sunlight was just beginning to peak over the horizon, bathing the dew-covered fields. After the ordeal they faced the night before, the rays felt pure and welcome against his skin. They also revealed the devastation. Though there had been fewer trees to uproot, it was still jarring to see ravaged trunks scattered about the hills.

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Sperloc handed him a piece of feln bread and went to prep his landrider. Vincent ate and watched as the soldiers went about their tasks, joking as usual, perhaps even more so than the norm. He might have thought their humor, feeling inappropriate for the moment, was artificial. But it did not feel fake. It had a heartfelt inflection.

“They seem too cheerful for their losses. That is what you are thinking,” Sperloc said.

Vincent did not answer.

“There is a belief that trauma and loss can trigger the Bane,” Speloc continued, “so, the Seikh's Guard are trained to hold camaraderie in high regard, to forge a near unbreakable bond with their peers–”

The bane, Vincent thought, this world is obsessed with it.

“–Comedy is their ward against despair. When a comrade is lost, the grief is tempered by remembering his story, and by exchanging jests, by talking about how many victories or how many wives they've had. That is why they are so damn cheerful.”

Vincent remained silent. He continued to tear apart the bread into bite-sized pieces. Occasionally, he glanced at his armor, which resemble a witch doctor spattered in blue. His helmet was still glaring. Sperloc shrugged and left to speak to the twins. Slade was nearby, but she waited until he was out of hearing distance before she approached.

What now? Vincent thought.

“I need to speak to you,” she said.

“About what?”

“Last night, the stormspawn said something to you,” she said, “it spoke in a language I recognized as your own.”

He clenched his fists and bit his lip before dropping an expletive. He had hoped it hadn't been true.

“And how did you know it was my language?” he asked.

“It is a presumption. You spoke it back in Meldohv when the last storm hit. The creature's words had an impact on you. That you said nothing of this to the shandan is questionable.”

“And have you told anybody?” Vincent did not want to deal with this. What the hell was she doing?

“I have not, and I do not think Menik noticed or heard it speak to you,” she said, “you were tired, and you deserve the chance to tell either of them. But your reaction to its words is of importance and I will tell them of that encounter if you do not.”

“You want to know what it said? Using my dead mother's voice, it said 'I miss you, Vinny!' That's what she used to call me when I was a kid.”

“You are certain it was your mother's voice?”

“Yeah...” He scraped a piece of stuck bread from between his canines and flicked it into the grass. “Yeah, I'm certain. I would recognize it anywhere. I didn't exactly take her...passing very well. Hell, it's been...I don't know how many years, but I'm still not over it, I've just learned to pretend she never existed.” He stared at the vista. “But then that damn thing speaks to me in her voice...just why? What the hell is the point?”

He could see the stormspawn bowing to him with recognition.

“Either way...it used my mother's voice to taunt me.” He picked up his stained headpiece and turned it over in his hands. “If you want to tell the shandan about it, go ahead. I can’t stop you.”

He rode with Sperloc again as they made their way toward Heldair. The zerok messengers sent word to The La'ark about their arrival and he expected a grilling from her when he got there. He held the shryken in his grip as they rode, familiarizing himself with every facet of its script. The motion of the beast was distracting, yet he had to learn to deal with such distractions. If they were caught by those things again, he could not stand to be helpless for a second time. He had no combat experience, his physique was a joke, the only thing he had was his “talent” for hijacking artificial conduits. So that's what he did.

Strange intuitions guided his efforts to penetrate the blade's secrets. The more he studied it, the more this extra “sense” grew. Eventually, he had a breakthrough, though he wasn’t sure what caused it. The hierarchy and settings within the device exploded into greater divisions. The substance within the shryken's blade was normally programmed to cover any organic material that penetrated its “shell”, with exceptions to the owner of the blade. But he modified it several times. And the more he dived into its structure, the more potential he saw. Somehow, the metallic liquid could sense the presence of other life forms. It could see him, Sperloc, as well as the landrider on which they both rode. It seemed almost alive, in a sense.

When they broke for lunch, he sat with his eyes closed, holding the dagger over the grass, testing the limits of this new “sight”. The shryken wasn’t limited to sensing large life-forms, but smaller ones as well. It could see the insects crawling in the grass. He rearranged the biddings, spliced their language to create new definitions. By the time he was finished tweaking the code, the shryken's purpose had changed. The instructions he had left all amounted to this: On Trigger, reach out and encapsulate (insert lifeform here) within (defined vicinity). He chose a small crawling arachnid as the lifeform. As for the trigger, he had to activate it mentally. A dozen strands of liquid argent shot forth from the shryken's blade and pierced the grass. They found their prey and imprisoned them in miniature shells.

“What are you doing?!” Sperloc growled. One of the arachnids that had been climbing his back was now dangling from a thread of metal.

“Growing more powerful by the minute apparently,” Vincent said, retracting the shryken's substance and releasing the terrified critters.

Yes, he could write and rewrite the device's code to greater effect, but he still had no idea how to recreate what happened on the interstice, where the shryken had become an extension of his hand. If he encased himself in its shell, he could weave his commands into its nodes and affect its shape. But he had no idea how to recreate the tactile sense of touch that seemed to permeate the metal when he was on Holan's back. He wondered if adrenaline had something to do with it. He didn’t feel like immediately putting himself in a situation that warranted an adrenaline rush, so instead, he focused on what he could do with the hierarchy.

It was around evening when he saw the first peaks of the Clash-Mounts lining the horizon. Unlike the jagged topography of the interstice mountains, these citadels thrust toward the sky with gracious confidence until they topped off flat. Ancient and majestic, the enormous plateaus dominated the vista in both directions like an impassable wall. The land surrounding them was covered in a dense bramble of gnarled trees with lithe branches. The rolling fields had long given way to foothills and now, Vincent was listening to rocks scraping against each other under the landriders' feet.

They were forced to slow after joining one of the highways leading to Heldair, for the road was crowded with winged travelers. Caravans of merchants stopped to ogle them as they passed by. It was strange, comforting even, to see so many people after witnessing the previous night's horrors. Dispersed along the highway were large roadside rests, enormous cul-de-sacs in which fires burned and travelers gathered.

Some of the merchants set up temporary booths. Entertainers amused the youths by performing magic tricks, juggling, and contorting their painted wings into comical shapes. But scattered among the travelers were haunted creatures who wandered aimlessly, like zombies with eyes glassed over. They were far and few, but they were clearly refugees whose villages had been attacked by stormspawn.

Guards patrolled the road in pairs, each riding a stout, long-legged avian. Their mounts, though nowhere near the size of a landrider, appeared to be more suited for nimble mobility. The guards' leather helmets, which fully obscured their snouts, reminded Vincent of the ancient Egyptian god, Anubis, in their basic shape. Fanned hide straddled the horns like a crown while strips of leather with glass beads tied to their ends, hung free from the helmet’s circumference in the manner of dreadlocks. The rest of their leather-clad armor was embedded with several polished beads of liacyte. The crowd only grew denser as they neared their destination. Pockets of crystal jutted out of the land, a few of them glowing dimly.

Vincent caught his first glimpse of Heldair. The forest of gnarled trees parted as more roads converged into one massive highway. To the left and right, the land dropped off into a cliff, leaving an expanse of crushed chaff and sediment between it and the first of the Clash-Mounts like a large moat. The sheer scale of the mountains up close made him dizzy. Heldair was constructed on an outcropping of land that knelt over the expanse, a huge peninsula that harbored a large spire along its central length. The city had been both built around its rim and carved into the spire's sides. Flanking the peninsula were enormous stone structures whose carved surfaces reminded Vincent of Native American totem poles, except for the fact that their lines never coalesced to form animals or faces.

Wait, did one of those just move? He thought. He gawked at one of the structures, thinking for a moment that his eyes were playing tricks on him. Yes! It’s moving! His stomach did a backflip when the building detached itself from the city and began to walk away.

“Cleft-striders,” Sperloc said to Vincent's obvious amazement, “surge-beasts of the Clash-Mounts, pride of the Walaki. Each port is controlled by a different tribe, but they have all made themselves wealthy. The only practical way to navigate the Clash-Mounts is to take the striders. Otherwise, you could spend weeks trying to get around them. Their passes are steep, dangerous, and dark.”

Sperloc continued to rattle off facts about the Walaki while Vincent gawked at the cleft-striders. Appearance-wise, their basic shape was that of a tortoise on six stilts, only they had no distinguishable head or tail. Ports, decks, and windows had been tastefully carved into the stone of their shells. He watched as one of the colossi, initially standing tall, bent its legs and lowered its mass toward the ground. Now, it no longer resembled a turtle, but an enormous arachnid formed of stone and crystal. It departed from its bay and began to traverse the length of the expanse. Its movements were slow, graceful, and deliberate despite its insectoid features.

For a moment, a feeling of elation came over Vincent and he felt like an impatient child peeking into an amusement park from the parking lot. He nearly forgot last night's events, almost forgot the terror...the guilt. However, one of the zerok must have sent word to The La'ark of their arrival because he could see her trotting up to meet them, flanked by several Walaki guards who parted the crowd. She looked severe, which in turn, soured whatever excitement he felt. She gave Vincent a brief, but calculating glare, waited for the guards to depart and then addressed the twins.

“I have secured passage,” she said.

“Talo's wing, I can only imagine the look on their face when you told them where we intend to go,” Oris mused.

“They think we are suicidal,” she said, “nevertheless, I have reserved a strider that is all but ready to go. We are almost loaded, and we must depart immediately. I have been briefed of events by the messengers, but I will hear your accounts once we are aboard.”

“Aye.”

“And you.” She turned to Vincent. “Veins of liacyte run through the striders' forms. I will not have you contact them and draw attention to yourself. As it is, your charisma is enough of a nuisance even without illuminations marking your body. You will stay on the upper decks, where the veins are easy to avoid. When we are aboard, I will speak to you as well, so prepare your answers.”