We complied at a jogging pace, such to preserve ourselves. “You wanna trade?” Ashli huffed along the way.

I looked back and saw her waggle the ax. Carrying it was throwing off her gait, as much as my tortoise shell was unbalancing mine. “No, I’ll need this shortly,” I raised my voice, jabbing my (by possession, and not anatomy) humerus, briefly into the air.

“I feel like I’m gonna trip with this thing,” I overheard her complain. “Don’t run with knives, Ashli! Yea? How ‘bout don’t run with hand tools,” she grumbled.

Glimmers in a fair multitude made evidence of the interloper, in their droves. As we went, we steered ourselves along the outside of any density of them, trusting ourselves to overcome any single or pair of gòshëm expeditiously.

“I’m kinda messing up the edge on this thing,” Ashli noted, as she made a feint such to draw out one claw.

This left me free on the other side to knock it teetering off the foundation of a second leg. “Well,” I shrugged, “turn it around then. Use the back side.” I shoved down the struggling locust, and ripped the core of it free of its limbs.

“Ugh, don’t touch it,” Ashli grimaced.

The metal weighed a fraction of what I expected, and I turned it over just in case it might be hollow. I could feel the heat of my blood, dimmed up the length of my arm until it was opposed by the Witch’s influence. But even where I was subject to its affect, Saraswathi of the rivers unwrote my discomfort and changed the feeling into a sensation of cleansing refreshment. With curiosity, I discovered that the sensation of cold did not intensify at the surface of the body in my grip: rather it had a uniformity of radiance and a fluctuating intensity. I hypothesized that this phenomena was not a matter of differentials in temperature, but an unnatural property of Flavor.

Desperately, the gòshëm pushed against me, and I could feel pressure this way, and that. It gambled its last hope to make an instrument of me to replace the parts it had lost, but the force could find little purchase in my substance.

“It’s almost like they’re magnetic,” I used the steel buckle on my pack-strap to scratch a line through a length of the tiny runes which made the thing alive. The pearlescence of the markings flickered out, and my book drank what it could before the rest of its Color dispersed. “But that ain’t right. You ever heard of a pewter which was ferromagnetic?”

“Come on, Todd. I don’t care. Put it down before it gives you kidney disease, or something.” Ashli bade me follow and I reluctantly set the object aside.

We pushed on. Groups we’d dodged or rounded began to flow our way. Just as beads on glass will gather in the rain, we were fast becoming something of a center of condensation. My side was stitched, my breath was thinning. The dirt beneath us was torn up: perilous to the ankle. Soon we were just approaching to the edge of the paddock, that small fence where we exercised the horses. There was a figure there: a man standing alone and surrounded. His hair was a wild mess without his hat, and he hollered as he swung his vakero in a great circle around himself with a crash.

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I fell to a knee; dug about in my pocket ‘til I found a finger-bottle of anointing oil. It was meant for gun-metal, and I’d intended it for the ax, but my cudgel had suffered such punishment that I ought not risk it further without a treatment. Auntie Hektor also concocted an animal glue which was better suited to my purpose, but what was not on my person could do me no more good than fiction. So I splashed the little steel container empty over the worst of the damage and greased the thing, slapdash and best as I could.

“We’re not sure he needs our help,” Ashli said.

I wiped some of the leak from my nose with the back of my hand. “Looks to me he has it in hand,” I joshed.

“It’s Simons,” Ashli’s right leg bounced nervously, and she had chewed her lip enough I saw it had taken to bleeding. There wasn’t just a dozen, but a half-gross at least of the stannic1 vandals which had surrounded our man. Every moment we hesitated, we could see another one of them peel off in our direction. “Isn’t he kind of a dick? We could leave him.”

However reticent she sounded, I did not dismiss her out of hand. We knew there were specie greater and worse by far than the [lesser tin locust]; so we were wary now that we’d come upon a new and unfamiliar ‘breed’. The [lesser cassiterite drudge] was like a heavy black beetle made from nine thick pylons of glossy crystal, making four double-segment legs out from its center. Thin cables of aluminum joined each stone, wrapped them like tendons or veins. As each leg stomped, those cords of metal flexed and squealed against each other. It was shorter (by a hair) than the others, but wherever one of them chose to occupy the same space as its tin cousin, the locust would be crumpled underfoot with neither regret nor pause from the drudge.

“There’s no harm done if we’d draw off some few, so far as I see it. The rest can stay his business.”

“Fine. We split the second I say so, though.”

Ashli and I slammed into the outer edge of the crush. Hand Ryder Simons made notice of us, and began to make effort to force his engagement our way.

“Ryder, you piece of crap, you’d better appreciate this!” Ashli screamed. Her shin was bleeding and her fingers too.

So was I, of course. But I was attired in long pants, and sleeves, and could only guess at the state of myself.

“Scrawny and the geek? What the Sam Hill you shits doin’?” The man hollered. There was a heavy burlap bag next to him, leaned against a fence-post, and he himself was still dressed in his nightshirt.

“We’re headed towards the barn,” I called out. There was a drudge on his way to make an acquaintance of me, so I kept an eye on it as I levered apart one of its inferiors. By this point, I’d come to realize it was often simpler to aim directly at the core first and remove it. A locust could curl inward with its piercing legs (if given the chance) but they were slow to choose that course, and confident action would outpace their simple minds. When I would throw a core into the throng, I found amusement that the locusts would bind to each other, and compete ineffectively between them for control of their legs.

“I ain’t catchin’ hell if you bite it, you hear me?” Ryder declared. Reluctantly, he abandoned his bag, and slapped a body out of his way, with a ringing of his spear’s cross-point as it crooked under the impact. His face was red, but his voice was thick with relief.

My teeth were catching a chatter. My nerves were catching up to the count of what were braving ourselves against, and how few we’d undone. Both of us had furled up our amulets, they were strained too much at full strength, unless we could make better advantage of numbers.

The bone I was wielding had gone sick with untamed providence. I nearly dropped it as its name twisted to [blessed hills feral cudgel – bone]. Too much more, and it would become subverted by the ‘vader preeminence. I brought the bone to my face, and shut my eyes.

“You’re nothing but a drumstick off a puma, don’t you forget that,” I whispered. Then I obdurately set myself back to the business of rescue.