The elder arrived like a walking shadow. Itxaro watched as her grandmother’s silhouette was unveiled by the moonbeams.

“Did you give him the potion yet?” the elder asked as she reached the crest of the hill. Itxaro stepped out of the circle to join her.

Itxaro was to give Alva the concoction from when they first met the outsiders. Desdomena would be ejected out while the man’s body was pulled from the circle by the rope around his ankle.

“You have not provided me the potion yet,” Itxaro informed her.

“What do you mean? I already gave it to you,” the elder rebutted.

A spike of ice cold dread stabbed into Itxaro’s chest. “When… did you give it to me?”

“When you came to tell me you were done with the preparations,” the elder continued, oblivious to Itxaro’s realization.

An arm came to rest on the elder’s shoulders. “All it takes is a few shadows and the old crone can not even recognize her own granddaughter,” Itxaro’s voice filled the young woman’s ears. Beside Itxaro was a near perfect copy of herself standing between them and holding onto her grandmother.

Surprise lit the eyes of both elder and granddaughter before terror had time to grow within them. The facsimile of Itxaro had a familiar scarred left eye.

The facsimile’s hands clawed into the elder’s neck and pulled the elder over so that they stood face to face. “Bleh,” Desdomena blurted as she stuck out her tongue while still having Itxaro’s face. Desdomena removed her hand the tips of her fingers were needlethin like the fangs of a serpent.

The elder winced as she slapped a hand onto her neck and applied pressure to the five pinpricks left behind. “Get in… the circle,” the Elder moaned.

Itxaro hesitated, staring at her grandmother. Desdomena laughed as she grabbed the elder by the collar and pulled her down. It was not until a moment later when Desdomena turned her eyes to Itxaro that the young woman backed away.

“So, I was right. You can not notice me if there is something even worse lurking about,” the aberration observed as she changed to her normal appearance. Itxaro remembered Desdomena with the necklace. The distress brought by the Great One deafened her to Desdomena’s presence. “This ceremony. Is it some sort of sacrifice? A sacrifice usually would mean what is lost has value to you. This is simply murder. If I was a god, I would spit out such a petty offering.”

Itxaro stepped back into the circle as the aberration followed after with a hand. As Desdomena reached in, her arm burst into vibrant scarlet flames right in front of Itxaro. The smoke that emanated was multicolored and spread like ink in water, not necessarily floating up but rather spreading apart.

“Ow, that actually hurts!” exclaimed the aberration with an expression more akin to surprise than pain. She drew it back but the limb remained ablaze and spread quickly past the elbow.

The aberration sighed at the sight. Then without pause, she severed her own arm from the shoulder with a chop from her other hand. The burning arm fizzled out of existence as it fell, not even leaving behind cinders. Itxaro watched it all unfold with both horror and awe.

“This will be a bit more troublesome than I expected,” the aberration noted. “When I think of wards, I think of boundaries that keep me out, not punish me for getting in.”

Itxaro was safe for at least that moment and looked beyond Desdomena at her grandmother lying on her back, still breathing. “What did you do to her?”

“I saw it fit to put whatever it was you planned to give him directly into her veins,” explained dismissively. “She should still be awake unless that drug of yours works incredibly fast. I knocked the breath out of her at most.”

A tangle of pure white arms burst from her shoulder. Some returned to her body as five straightened out and twisted together like strands on a rope. The hands of each arm became fingers as they took the shape of the limb she just lost.

The aberration gave attention to nothing as she tested the rotation of her new arm in its socket. She started walking casually around the circle, towards Alvah’s feet. Itxaro followed within the parameter of the ward.

Desdomena began to speak. “You have two choices. Return Alvah to me or-“ The aberration suddenly leapt to grab onto the rope. In a rush, Itxaro drew Alvah’s knife and cut it in one motion. The ends of the rope seemed burnt yet had signs of frost as the aberration pulled out a worthless strand of rope.

Desdomena’s lips stretched to her ears as she revealed sharpened teeth in an inhuman smile. “You have two choices,” she repeated as she stood. “Return him to me or do not return him to me.”

“What will you do if I return him to you?” Itxaro pointed the knife at her.

“No one would need to die,” Desdomena replied. “As for the other option, you will find out the longer you choose not to make the wise choice.”

“Do not… release the mage,” the elder cough as she tried to raise her wizened body. “If you do, it will have no reason to spare any of us.”

“Oh, I do so miss that way of thinking,” Desdomena cheered as she returned to the elder. “It makes negotiating so exciting when neither side trusts the other. It makes every compromise meaningful.” The elder gasped as the aberration sat on her chest.

“Stop that! You’re hurting her!” Itxaro yelled.

“Are you calling me heavy?” the aberration replied indignantly. “I will have you know I am light as a feather.”

“Get off her!”

“Or what?”

Itxaro scanned her surroundings. She had the knife in her hand, Alvah’s satchel, and Alvah himself. If she threatened Alvah’s life, it would only make matters worse.

“Or else I will not trade with you,” Itxaro stated as she crouched down by her hostage. “You want him back. I will never consider giving him if you act like that.”

“Never is a strong word,” Desdomena replied. “How about this? We make a trade. Prove to me you even can barter. You do not have to trade anything for me to leave this comfortable spot, I will move as a sign of good faith as soon we exchange any one thing for another.”

“What do you suggest?” Itxaro accepted.

“Your grandmother probably has a few minutes at most left before the drugs start to take effect, wouldn’t you like me to administer a cure?”

“It is primarily hallucinogens,” the elder struggled to say. She probably meant it as a shout but it came out mildly in defiance. “Even an overdose will rarely lead to death.”

Desdomena patted the woman’s head. “But you’re old. Are you sure your anceint heart can take such excitement?”

That was a legitimate concern. Still, Itxaro knew her grandmother was not that weak.

“Even so there is no cure,” the elder stated.

“It is supposed to be the same drug from his tea when you first came here,” Itxaro confirmed.

“How unfortunate. Is there a cure for what you currently have Alvah under?”

“Yes!” Itxaro swiftly answered.

“Do you have it on you?” Desdomena asked.

“It is on the elder.”

The aberration pilthered through the medicinal belt on the elder and held out a number of potions and remedies. “Which one?” the aberration inquired.

“There should be some herbs pressed together into a pill.”

Desdomena held out an orb the size of a fingernail. “This one?”

“Yes,” Itxaro replied.

“Normally I would have the elder test this for me,” the aberration explained. “But as there is only one and you have been proven to be the worst liar. I will simply rip the elder’s tongue out if you are lying.”

“I am not lying.”

Desdomena threw it to Itxaro. “Then catch.”

“Do not give it to him,” the elder ordered as Itxaro caught it.

Itxaro held out the pill to Desdomena. “I can cure Alvah but there has to be something else you want.” If she cured him, he would walk out of the circle of his own accord. She would essentially be freeing him.

It was past midnight, the Great One should already have arrived but there was no sign of it yet. If she could hold them there until it arrived, the ceremony would be complete.

“No, I do not think I want anything else. Name me your price for you administering it to him.”

Itxaro gently closed her fingers over the pill into a fist. “Spare everyone,” she declared.

“Any bargain struck with it is meaningless,” the elder insisted.

“I can not promise that,” the aberration rejected.

Itxaro clinched her fist. “What?”

“Everyone will only be safe once I leave here with Alvah. I will not promise something as vast as universal safety when you still have me in such a position. Name a smaller price.”

A strange sound came from below Desdomena. “Oh, it looks like you are about to vomit,” the aberration observed. “Can’t have you ruining this site you spent so much time setting up. Let me help you.” The aberration covered the elder’s mouth. There was a wet sickening sound. “Can you swallow it all back? I guess not.”

The elder’s legs thrashed violently as a gurgling sound reached Itxaro’s ears. Her grandmother was choking on her own vomit.

“Stop it!” Itxaro screamed.

“Is that your price?”

“Yes!”

“Then give it to him,” Desdomena instructed softly with a smile.

Itxaro forced the man’s mouth open and jammed the pill down his throat.

The aberration lifted her hand and the elder rechted. Desdomena rose and turned her to her side, then slapped her back to get the sick out of her throat.

“See, was that so difficult?”

The elder’s glazed eyes moved about wildly in the moonlight. Elder Itxaro gagged and coughed as the last remnants of vomit vacated her lungs. The elder curled in the fettle position and looked at Itxaro with unfocused eyes. “You… doomed us all.”

Desdomena kicked her in the back. “Is that how you thank someone?”

“I told you to stop that!” Itxaro yelled.

“I do not remember this being part of the agreement.”

“Get away from her-“ Itxaro rephrased herself. “Get her away from here.”

“I think I already asked but I will ask again for your sake, or what?”

Itxaro brought the knife to Alvah’s throat. “Or I will kill him.” She had about a quarter of an hour before the antidote began to nullify the sleeping drug. After that, he would stir and she would have a new problem to contend with.

The aberration straightened her posture as her scarred eye lit like an ember in the dark her ordinarily blue eye’s pupil contracted into a slit as the iris turned a pallid yellow that reflected the light like a predator. Her scar opened and started to bleed. Desdomena offered no words of doubt as a second Desdomena came into existence, lifted the elder onto her shoulder and dashed towards the western edge of the clearing.

“I will leave her just beyond the treeline so she can no longer bother us with her commentary. That sufficient for you?” the aberration spat.

“How will I know she is safe?”

“You will not. I will harm her no more but maybe I will be lucky and she will be devoured by beasts as she tries to make her way back to your village in a daze.”

“That is the same as killing her,” Itxaro accused.

Desdomena walked to the boundary and hunched at an impossible angle so that their faces were level.

Itxaro pointed the knife at Desdomena’s face. She willed her hands to be still but they still trembled slightly while remained unimpressed by the sight. This would be the first time she attacked someone who could talk to her. “You know this knife can hurt you, right?”

Desdomena ran a hand over her injured eye and wiped away the blood, closing her wound. “Of course, I do but you have to get a little closer to me to do so. It should be quite easy though to plunge that where my heart should be. You are the one killing people, babies or young children from my estimate. Killing babies is something usually reserved for high priests and tyrants. You are quite a wonderful sample of human depravity.”

“You ate people,” Itxaro remembered, holding the knife in front of herself defensively. “You have no right to judge me.”

Desdomena eyed the knife. “True I have eaten people, plenty of people, lots of people. But I do like to let my food ripen. The youngest I ever devoured was a little younger than you. Complicated thoughts really tangle well to bring out the flavor. But I have never saved a child either and according to you not saving someone is the same as killing someone. I ate someone's mother and ate someone's father who knows how many times and left things as they were. So, yes, I have done the same thing you are doing now but according to you I am a monster. What does that make you?”

Itxaro looked at what she was doing. “I-“ She swallowed her words, unable to answer.

“If we are to use my vocabulary, you would be a hypocrite,” Desdomena informed her. “But let me understand the depths of that hypocrisy. Are you really sacrificing children or did me and Alvah miscount?”

Itxaro averted her eyes. “It is the newborn babies.”

“How often?”

“Once every lunar cycle,” Itxaro replied weakly before providing any addendum. “Usually, once every lunar cycle. Sometimes it lets us be and does not visit or it chooses to come twice a month.” It had never come three times a month and the night it most often appeared was a full moon.

Desdomena lowered herself to sit cross legged. “So, we were right.”

“How long did you know?” Itxaro quietly asked.

“We had an idea something was happening since the second day here. We suspected you from the first and probably would have fully realized it then but that concoction threw his mind into turmoil.”

“Why did you stay then?” Itxaro thought back to all the questions Alvah asked like the time he visited the graves. Her cheeks burned with rage against the idea of being caught in some game of theirs. “What were you investigating if you already knew?”

Desdomena crossed her arms and a bit of her old amiability slipped back into her voice and posture as her eyes regained their normal hue. “Curiosity, we knew what was happening, we just did not have all the details as to how and why but really those were not so important. We were left in the dark about was the scale of it and the exact purpose. What we wanted to know was how involved you were in it.”

Itxaro pulled the knife away and sheathed it. “Why?”

“Why. Why. Why. That is not normally what the culprit should be asking the victim,” the aberration replied. “Oh well, might as well tell you. You were the very first human we met since the start of our journey. He wanted to think the best of you and I wanted to have my fun after you poisoned us.”

Desdomena laughed her strange laugh. “Of course, he had to be wrong. He had not interacted with another human in centuries so he forgot his people’s own nature. You must have been aware of everything that was happening from the start. Why would the people here hide the truth from an ignorant babe? When did you first contribute? When you were five? If you were five that means you have the blood of maybe a hundred and eight souls on your hands. There’s only forty-three people in this entire place, I would have to kill everyone twice over to rival such a count.” Desdomena’s laughter grew louder.

“Be quiet!”

Desdomena bared her neck. “Make me. Make me just another one of your victims or maybe I won’t count at all. By the time you're an old woman of nine hundred, I will be just one of thousands, not even worth remembering.”

Itxaro’s fingers brushed the hilt of the knife. She inched it out then she felt herself push it back down with her palm. “You are worth remembering,” Itxaro professed. It was not an entirely pleasant experience to be with those two but it was one she never wanted to forget.

“Am I? Thank you,” the aberration’s smile was grateful for a moment before her eyes seemed to widen. They seemed like distorted mirrors. “Though I do want to know, if I am so precious, what was the value of the others? I have no flesh and bone but at least some of those you offered were of your own blood. Were they worth so little or are you worth so much?”

“You do not understand the point of this ritual.”

“Enlighten me.”

“If no one is offered to Atp’mte then it will pick one from among us.”

“And your point is?” The aberration pressed, either ignorant or uncaring of what that meant.

“We do not know who it might pick. What if it chose to devour the elder? What if it chose a pregnant mother? What if it chose our last two men? That is the damage it can cause us!”

Desdomena tilted her head. “That is not my problem. What matters-“

“Is that we took Alvah, right?” Itxaro finished for her.

“Yes.”

Itxaro hated the words that came from her mouth next. “Can’t you replace him? You can always find someone else.”

The aberration crossed her arms and leaned forward. Her entire body shuddered and the world around her seemed to darken and grow smaller as if drawn into her. When Desdomena raised her head, her smile was that of insanity, her mouth stretching in an arc so that it went above and past her ears, almost touching her eyes. Blood flowed freely from her eye, painting half her face a bright red.

“Yes, I could replace him!” she declared cheerfully. “But you do not understand. You took what is mine! Why even bother speaking with you when you can not understand that?”

Desdomena hugged herself as she stood and took several steps backwards, her every move punctuated with a cackle. “I do not know how long before Alvah wakes and you do not know how long before Atp’mte arrives. So, time is on neither of our sides.”

She spread her arms out and splayed her fingers. “I’m getting impatient. Let me communicate using your logic.” Her fingers wiggled with lives of their own, each except one transforming into a serpent that stretched beyond sight, slithering through the air as if it was water. The only finger to remain recognizably human was her left ring finger.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting everyone else involved. They are also guilty, each and every one of them is your accomplice, correct?”

Itxaro rested a hand over her heart and girded herself. “If you want retribution, extract it from me.”

“Hollow words when you are behind a ward!” Desdomena declared. “Do not tempt me. The idea of ripping all your limbs off would almost be worth dying for but life is too fun. Maybe I could break your spine just below your neck or pluck out your eyes and stick needles in your ears. No, no, no, not a single part of me would be satisfied with laying a finger on you.”

“If you touch anyone other than me.” Itxaro drew the knife and placed it over Alvah’s heart and rested her other hand on the pommel so that all she had to do was push it down. “I will kill him!”

“If that is what you want then go ahead. Do as you please,” the aberration dismissed. “I can not stop you. But if you take what is mine, I will want to take what is yours all the more. Maybe you should just kill me,then all you would have to do is worry about Alvah.”

The aberration crossed her arms wiped a drop of drool from her lips. Her fingers continued to seemingly endlessly extend as tendrils. “Think about it. Me, the one that should be trusted least slain because he trusted you. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Alvah would do everything to avenge me if he thought I was truly dead. It would be too bad I could not enjoy seeing that face of his again. Him killing the first human he met in so long. It would be amazing.”

Itxaro said nothing in return. Desdomena closed her eyes and began to speak, "There’s nine mothers that are currently carrying a child, correct? Maybe there is one I did not notice but I have the nine I most certainly know of. With a thought, I can simply kill them all right now."

The news petrified Itxaro. She forgot to breath as the connotations set in and fear froze her in place. She slowly regained control of herself and wrenched the knife away from Alvah. If she killed him, she killed every hostage.

She looked about. The aberration was not visibly watching.

"Let me think," Desdomena calculated. "It takes nine months from conception to birth, correct? You’re a midwife, correct me if I am wrong."

"You are correct," Itxaro answered before taking several steps forward. She raised the knife up above her head.

"Then you will be short a sacrifice for those coming months," the aberration continued. "Twenty-seven lives lost here and now if you do not let Alvah go."

One life weighed against twenty-seven was obvious. However, her grandmother might have been right. What if Desdomena killed them anyway? What if she let Alvah go, and Desdomena, then unfettered, took vengeance on everyone?

Where was Itxaro supposed to stab to kill such an inhuman thing? If she failed, everyone would die, if she left things as they were, even if she let Alvah go, they would suffer the aberration's wrath. Itxaro stepped into striking range but hesitated.

"A knife is meant to cut," the aberration stated before opening her eyes with a sinister smile "You can use that knife to cut me or him. All you would need to sever from him is his head if you needed one of us dead. You should have stayed with him."

The aberration’s remaining finger turned into a serpent and with a speed surpassing even the creature it mimicked. The serpent tied itself around Itxaro's hand so she could not let go of the knife.

It coiled itself around her neck and rested its head by her shoulder, its forked tongue tickling her ear.

Itxaro instinctively pulled back and to her surprise found no resistance. It was not stopping her from moving, only making her unable to change grip on the knife. She could swing it and sever the snake’s body if she only slashed forward. If Itxaro cut Desdomena, the aberration might become short a finger but would still be alive.

“Why?” Itxaro could only ask. Why had the aberration not crushed her hands, forced her to let go of the knife.

“I want you to make the choice,” the aberration both hissed and growled all at once. “According to your own logic. According to your own will. That knife does not need to kill anyone.”

“How do-“

“How do you know anyone will be safe? You don’t. It is just you and me. If you make the wrong choice, I will kill them. If you make the right choice, I might still kill them. Do you trust me?”

“No,” Itxaro declared as she lowered the weapon. It was certain death compared to a not so certain fate. One life against twenty-seven. “But I think I understand you enough to know what you consider the right choice.”

Desdomena sprouted an extra pair of fingers on each hand. "Oh, since you are so certain, how about I take your mother and grandmother.” The aberration tilted her head to the left so that her bloodied visage dripped all the more. “Then maybe I will take your menfolk so there's no seed left to sow."

"That would kill everyone," Itxaro realized.

Desdomena’s eyes narrowed. "Exactly." Desdomena confirmed. The snake around Itxaro’s neck licked her ear and Desdomena's voice whispered from it. "So, do what we both want you to do."

Itxaro steeled herself as she turned around and faced the ritual site. She knelt and took a breath as she stared at the circle of winter-fire.

In the corner of of her vision, a shadow broke from the wall of trees. "Let go of her!" a voice shouted as the shadow drew back a bow.

An arrow flew over Itxaro's head. The snake coiled around her neck twitched.

Itxaro watched dumbstruck as Zorion rushed towards her. He pulled an arrow from his quiver and severed the snake around Itxaro’s neck with the arrowhead. In the same motion, he nocked it into his bow and launched it at the aberration.

Itxaro turned to see Desdomena get struck in the middle of the forehead with the arrow, another one already planted in her left breast.

Multicolored smoke escaped from her twin wounds.

Desdomena’s eyes settled upwards on the projectile between her eyes in convincing astonishment. As she did that, Zorion closed the distance between them, drawing a club.

“I could kill everyone and you-” Desdomena was interrupted as the club struck her in the side of the head. Her outstretched tendrils shimmered for a moment then faded like smoke as they turned back into normal fingers

The arrow in her head snapped as it got caught in the swing of the club, leaving a fragment jutting from the wound.

Itxaro could not tell if the right side of Desdomena's jaw widened or rotted away as it exposed a skeletal grin while the other side seemed to be nothing more than blood in the shape of a face. If Zorion struck the left side, Itxaro imagined it might simply slip through it like a hand through mud.

“Arrows and a hunter’s club?” Desdomena exclaimed in disbelief. “You think I’m some beast?” Zorion made no reply and simply made another swing. Desdomena did not duck as much as her back bent at a near ninety degree angle from her hips. “Animals rely on fangs and claws. I do not need to lay a finger on you.”

Zorion brought his weapon down but her whole body curved like a wet noodle. She sidestepped and raised herself back as the flesh melted from her right hand into a trumpet of bone. She brought it to his ear and blew into what used to be her thumb.

What came was unbelievably loud, like the thunder for a lightningstrike that landed just in front of her. Yet it was no low rumble but a shrill alarm like an animal's cry. Itxaro covered her ears in pain.

The sound only lasted for a moment but Itxaro's ears still rang as everything else was muted.

Zorion's ears bled in the false silence as Desdomena rested her hands on her hips and opened her mouth wide to laugh. Zorion staggered, his eyes struggling to focus against the vertigo. His weapon remained clinched in his hand with white knuckles, flicks of blood dribbling down its head from holding onto it until the wood bit into his flesh.

True sound slowly began to reach Itxaro's ears as the the ringing faded. The quieter the ringing, the stronger Itxaro's hearing grew. "See, I did not need to lay a finger on him," Desdomena's words reached her with the ringing lingering a background noise.

Desdomena's right arm sprouted a light coat of golden brown fur to cover the bone as her fingertips reformed to extend curved, black claws. The aberration pulled out the arrow from her chest without difficulty with her leonine hand.

The hunter took a step towards the aberration, swayed then planted both feet into the ground to steady himself. He mutely took the club into both hands and slowly lifted it over his head.

Desdomena easily dodged the slow swing.

Desdomena flexed her claws and rubbed them against each other as if to sharpen them. "Quite resilient. Unfortunate that you can not hear all the nice things I have to say. Not that you would have listened." The aberration drew back her right elbow and pointed her claws at his face like a spear.

By reflex and desperation, Itxaro waved her free hand at the remaining arrowshaft sticking from the aberration’s head and saw it as a candle wick. “By my will, burn,” she invoked.

The wood lit but to little effect. Desdomena paused to fixed her eyes on the tiny flame in front of her.

“By my will, burn!” Itxaro repeated. The fire grew a little larger. She repeated the invocation again and again as the fire slowly crept closer to the aberration’s head.

Itxaro closed her eyes and screamed the invocation over and over until her voice went hoarse.

At some point, Desdomena's own screams could be heard between Itxaro's shouting.

When she opened her eyes, the aberration’s head was engulfed in flames down to her shoulders. Or rather the fire was burning from her shoulders as there was no head left.

Desdomena's headless body waved its arms about blindly before patting down the flames. A hole remained where her neck used to be as if everything Itxaro saw had simply been a shell containing a dark rainbow of multicolored vapors. Wisps of either smoke or condensed darkness reached out from the gap and died as they met the open air.

Both of the aberration's arms plunged into the hole between her shoulders. They tensed and pulled her intact head from out of the darkness by the sides. Itxaro had delivered enough babies to see the disturbing contrasts and parrallels.

Desdomena's head slipped back into place and the area between her should and new neck closed any gaps that remained. Desdomena's eyes were closed as if asleep and seemed unaware of what was happening just in front of her.

Zorion lifted and brought his club down just as the aberration opened her eyes. Desdomena failed to dodge and fell as the weapon hit the top of her head with an audible crack.

The aberration hugged herself as she rocked herself on the ground. "It hurts. It hurts so much. I can’t bear it anymore," she shouted before coming to a sudden halt. She smiled. "It is just too hilarious."

She giggled like a child. The sound built into a jovial uproar, the type of laughter that left any normal person gasping for air but she did not struggle to catch her breath.

Desdomena's eyes Zorion. "Did you even raise a finger for any of the others? Yet here you are facing a lovely monster such as me with nothing but fire and sticks."

Desdomena’s jaw unhinged. "Awaken already, Alvah! I have a joke I must tell you! Come hear and see the tale before it is too late!"

Itxaro could not discern if Zorion heard a word. He stared at the aberration, full of rage and adjusted his grip so that the head of the club faced straight down and measured his every move so that he stood directly above the aberration's head. "Just die," he grunted.

The aberration opened her unhinged jaw wide and struck like a serpent. She bit into his forearm with a crunch. Zorion let go of his weapon and moved to push or pull her off. Rather than thrash about with his arm in her vicelike jaws, she let go and sidestepped away.

She spat. "I tried so hard to be careful but some blood still got in my mouth. Disgusting. Give me a moment so-"

Zorion let out a wordless shout as he lunged at the aberration. The excitement or pain perhaps gave him a rennewed clarity as he moved with his former speed.

Desdomena's words were strangled out as the hunter wringed the aberration’s neck. It at least appeared that Desdomena was harmed by it as she grabbed onto his wrists to pry him off.

As she choked, her mouth stretched as a pair of arms emerged from it and strangled him in turn.

Desdomena was facing away from Itxaro. Itxaro looked at the aberration's vulnerable back and felt the knife in her hand. Then Itxaro remembered what she intended to cut.

"The circle!" Itxaro shouted as she stepped out of the way and pointed at the ward repeatedly for Zorion. "Push her into the circle!"

Zorion stared at her for a moment then looked at the ring of winter-fire as his eyes glazed. He opened his mouth to shout one last time as he glared at the aberration. In one swift motion, he lifted the aberration and pushed her into the barrier.

Every part of the aberration down to the fingers around Zorion's neck instantly caught ablaze. Even those extremities were swallowed by the pyre a moment later as the flames spread. The aberration screamed as she writhed, her outline a brief caricature of fire before she was eaten away seconds later. The strangest thing to Itxaro was that the flames did not seem to emanate any heat. She watched it all, yet there was no proof it was happening other than the short lived writhing and screaming.

The hunter fell to his knees, gasping for air.

“Tired already?” a voice inquired from behind him.

Itxaro did everything she could to try to deny what she saw. stepping back into existence was Desdomena appearing as she normally did, completely unscathed from the conflagration.

"How?" Itxaro exclaimed.

Desdomena placed her hands over her cheeks in mock horror. "It was quite chilling to watch myself die. It is a good thing I fed or this would have been exhausting." She stuck out her tongue and licked her fingers. "At least the fire washed the taste of his blood out of my mouth. Maybe if I stuck this tongue in, maybe it might cleanse the rot from my horrendous feast from earlier."

"You watched-" Itxaro began before remembering a detail. "You're the second one." The one that carried her grandmother.

"I am me," Desdomena declared. She lifted a leg as if to dance and swung it, kicking Zorion in the side of the head. The hunter hit the ground violently, unconscious or dead.

Itxaro gestured. "By my will…" she began before she failed to finish the invocation. She panted as her own mind went blank. Why? She could not formulate the image in her mind.

Her head ached. It was not a sharp pain but a dull light headedness like she was reaching in but could not find anything.

"Using an improvised spell repeatedly for something it was never meant to do must be exhausting. I would not know that sensation for myself. Aberrations can do whatever we want as long as we have energy to spend until we vanish.” Desdomena spun as she danced. “And I have plenty of energy to spend at the moment.”

Desdomena cupped her ear to a sound only she could hear. “I guess my little alarm has attracted everyone’s attention. Though I think I have a while before everyone has time to grab their torches and walk here.”

Elder Itxaro taught her granddaughter that the way to destroy an aberration was to whittle away at one. They had a limit before their healing ceased. Desdomena just lost a whole version of herself. Was she really so unaffected or was this the aberration taking advantage of her inability to truly feel tired?

“But here we are again, just you and me for now. I will make it easier for you,” Desdomena reached out her arm and clasped her hand into a fist. “You do not even have a choice anymore. Free him or everyone perishes and I simply have to wait for him to wake up and walk out on his own.”

“It will be too late by then,” Itxaro informed her after a moment of calculation. “If everyone is gone, he will be the only one left and will most certainly be claimed.”

Desdomena cocked an eyebrow. “So, you are willing to accept an outcome where there is no one left?”

Itxaro still had the knife. There had to be more options. There had to be a choice. She brushed her free hand over her pockets and felt something solid. She reached into her pocket and grasped the object. She pulled it out and was greeted by the image of a red sun glowing faintly through the night.

Itxaro closed her fist around the glyphstone and felt her hand warm as she envisioned the inferno that ate the previous Desdomena. She brought her fist to her lips and whispered to the icon while staring at Desdomena, “By my will, burn.”

With a short delay as the aberration seemed to momentarily glow orange similarly to molten metal or glass, the aberration combusted. This fire was not something as ethereal as the one summoned by the ward, it radiated a stifling heat that dried Itxaro’s eyes and burned her lungs as she inhaled the nearby air.

At first, Itxaro thought she heard the aberration scream but that was merely the shrieks and popping of the heat. What she thought was the fire roaring turned out to be laughter. It start normal but it became an all too familiar laugh. A strange "khe-khe” repeating itself.

Within the flames, the image of Desdomena’s silhouette retained its shape, warping and flickering but steadily returning to a consistent state.

The fire suddenly sank into the ground and almost as quickly remerged as a quartet of multicolored geysers of flames. With a flare, they darkened into a dull purple as if the fire was half shadow. Itxaro’s eyes hurt as the darkness and light clashed, carving the blackness of night into impossible shapes.

Wreathed in orange flames as if they were part of an elaborate raiment, Desdomena stretched her arms up high like a foreign dancer. The geysers died but they left four rings of fire around patches of ash. “No magic of Alvah's can harm me anymore,” Desdomena declared with pride. “It would be like the heart rebelling against the body.”

Desdomena bared her teeth. The many shadows she cast defied all positioning of the light. “A short lesson on affinity. A candle may banish darkness but it casts shadows. If it is too weak, it creates more shadows than it erases. If too strong,-“ The aberration’s shadow were cast upon the air itself, around it and everywhere as if they had been caught in some ceaselessly moving spherical net slithered, crawled, and writhed the outline of countless arms and hands, “-you are trapped with whatever was resting in the dark.”

“What are you?” Itxaro asked in shock as she tried to back away only to find a swarm of pure white, seven fingered hands sprouting from the ground like a tiny forest of limbs. They grabbed onto her feet. The ones that had no grip of her wiggled their boneless fingers in ways that mocked any idea of joints like little people celebrating or mouths with peeled back lips laughing.

Itxaro tried to swing the knife in her hand but found she could not move her arm. Growing around her elbow like a fungus were hands. They pressed against her arm’s natural direction like a door being forcefully pushed instead of pulled. Itxaro felt the pressure slowly build, her bones aching as they screamed to her they were ready to break.

The hands spread and covered her like a cocoon, stopping just at her neck. They applied pressure in every possible wrong direction. If they were not at times working against each other, Itxaro was certain her spine would have been twisted out of place.

A pair of hands reached out from her shoulders, placed their palms against her temples so that she could only look ahead. Their fingers dug at her face and pulled back her eyelids so she could not avert her eyes.

The wreath of fire around Desdomena faded as a golden crown formed on her head and she casually reached out to pluck it from its place. “I am no weak ruler.” Her body grew as her skin turned to marble, her features more regel, and hair to gold as she became as a living statue. “Nor am I some weak god.” Her skin cracked and the facade fell away to reveal Desdomena’s normal appearance.

The aberration laid on her side and the hands carried her about as she lounged upon them. They brought the aberration to the incapicated young woman in a wave of motion not dissimilar to a piece of driftwood being brought to shore by the tide.

The limbs lifted Desdomena and she spread the two arms still in their rightful place at her shoulders as they lifted her to stand. They served as a pedestal for her, the aberration balancing on a platform of fingers and palms.

Desdomena leered over Itxaro and scratched at her scar until it bled. Itxaro watched the world move around her as her shell of hands lifted and to turn her before violent wrenching her knifehand forward. She had the same autonomy as a doll. At least a straw doll would have been treated more gently. Itxaro imagined herself as an effigy of dried clay, one wrong move and her arms and legs would be broken off.

She felt a dull pain building in her knees. She gave up all resistance and was brought to kneel, in the same position as just before Zorion appeared but far worse.

There was a knocking sound beside Itxaro like someone at a door. At the corner of her vision, Itxaro could see Desdomena’s hand flicking its wrist in sync with the sound.

“What do you want?” Itxaro spat.

“I knew I left that mouth of yours free,” Desdomena replied. “If you are going to do nothing but a prop you can at least make some sounds. I recommend you scream or pray. Not to me of course. I will not answer but maybe your master will. Pray Atp’mte arrives before I am through.”

“I will not scream for you.”

“Then pray to Atp’mte You were not around when gods troubled this world so let me show you how to pray. You are already kneeling so you just need to bow.” Desdomena’s many limbs placed Itxaro’s other hand parallel to her knifehand so they were both stretched ahead then bowed Itxaro forward. The parts of aberration beyond Itxaro’s wrists burned as they passed the ward. The flames stopped just before her elbow as cluster of hands spread apart from each other to end the chain reaction.

The aberration blathered a mockery of prayer. More an eulogy for one’s soul and a desperate cry for destruction in the guise of salvation. Desdomena concluded it all with a grin. "Now say it,” she instructed.

"He is waking," Itxaro said instead.

For a moment there was no reaction but slowly the weight around Itxaro lifted as Desdomena's attention turned to Alvah.

The man groaned and the aberration blanched. Suddenly, the hands were gone.

Itxaro rolled forward before Desdomena could catch or grab Itxaro through other means.

Now safe within the circle with Alvah, Itxaro slapped him awake and tried to take advantage of his half-awake state.

"Call her off," Itxaro demanded as she pressed the knife to his neck to stop him from moving. She took the weapon away. "Please."

He blinked several times. "Why?" he groaned.

"She is going to kill everyone if you don't," Itxaro practically begged.

"She won't. Not unless you gave her a reason," he spoke slowly before resting his uninjured hand over the handle of the weapon and pushed Itxaro's hand further away. "Why did you take me here?"

"I needed you to stay here," Itxaro answered, gripping the weapon with both hands and pushed back. He was stronger but still dazed and she had leverage. "Someone has to die."

She could plunge it into his skull. But what would be the point? Maybe if there was some guarantee Desdomena would disappear if his heart ceased to beat but it would just be murder. If she took his life herself Atp’mte would take someone else.

She led the knife away from him and stabbed into the circle's perimeter.

"Please, just do not kill anyone," she begged them both as the magic protecting her undoubtedly faded without a sign. She turned the weapon around and slipped the blade between her fingers so she was offering the handle. She focused her eyes on Zorion. "Please, no more of this."

Alvah sat up and brushed the weapon away after his eyes followed her gaze to the fallen hunter. With a grunt, he pressed both hands to the ground to push himself upright so he could stand, wobbling slightly under the remaining influence of the drug and balancing on his cast.

He uneasily walked past his aberrat companion. Desdomena’s mouth openned slightly in surprise for a moment before frowning and glaring at the hunter behind her, sharp teeth exposed at the far corners of her mouth.

Alvah kneeled and pressed a pair of fingers against the hunter's neck. "Good. He is alive and stable."

Desdomena closed the distance between herself and her companion. She wrapped her arms around his neck and their lips touched as she turned his head to face her. For a moment Itxaro thought they exchanged a kiss but a flick of blood decorated her lips and dribbled on his chin. The aberration bit his lip.

"The first thing you do is check on others."

"I knew you were well,” he replied with a suppressed grin, colored the slightest tint red. His expression became blank as he regarded the hunter. “Well enough to leave someone in this state.”

Itxaro said nothing as she watched the two as if paralyzed. She was scared to even move, any activity might draw the aberration’s attention back to her. After nearly sacrificing Alvah, the man also had every reason to despise her. If she just let them be, they might leave but if she reminded them of their predicament, something vile might emerge from either.

Desdomena placed a hand over eyes to shield them from the starlight if anything else."But we both might not be so well soon. Atp’mte is coming." She pointed to the horizon hidden hidden beyond the trees. "I can see it moving over there."

"Now it takes notice?" Alvah exclaimed, half surprised, half intriqued.

"The people from the village are coming. I can smell them getting closer. It must smell them as well."

Itxaro gritted her teeth. She mouthed for them to leave.

"Why are they coming here?" the man asked.

"I summoned them here with a trumpet call," Desdomena stated matter of factly.

"On purpose?" Alvah inquired with suspicion.

Desdomena faced away from him and placed her hands behind her back. "Maybe," the aberration answered dismissively before spinning back around with a wide smile. "Maybe not."

Alvah grunted approvingly. "Good, I would like to speak them."

“You waste your time with people guilty as you suspected. The rituals are as we assumed. They are offering children but it seems anyone might suffice if an outsider can be pulled in.”

Itxaro’s heart sank. Something gripped her chest tightly as the shadow of doom loomed over her thoughts.

“With such dangerous people to consider, it was a good thing Atp’mte was nearby or rather it was a good thing I was here,” Desdomena boasted. “I gorged myself on some of its energies while it was forming but I can only eat so much. You can thank me for it taking a little extra time to arrive. Now I need to wash this terrible taste out of my mouth.”

“About that. Atp’mte is here yet you detected no others. Is it protecting the people as a food source? No…” He took a moment to ponder before voicing his thoughts. “There was a method of execution where an offender would be placed in a sealed room with candles. When the candles went out, the person would be dead as the candles ate all the good air and starved themselves. If it visits with regularity, maybe it is like a candle that is eating all the air so by the time it leaves there is nothing to ignite a new candle until it reappears… That might explain there were attacks earlier but none in the last decade. It was exhausting the supply overtime.”

“A decent analysis but that does not feel exactly right,” Desdomena softly swatted at the air as if to strike the idea down. “We have seen Great Ones manifest near each other.”

“But you proved tonight you can slow down a manifestation.”

“You give me too much credit,” the aberration pretended to be modest yet seemed all more prepared for praise. “I barely slowed it and I ate until I was bloated.”

“What is your hypothesis?”

“It is not feeding off the sacrifices but the people that must worry about preparing a sacrifice. Maybe it is like you and me but less benign. Maybe it was always here and we just did not notice. The earlier attacks slipping through was from it growing accustomed to the land.”

“And we would not have noticed it the way the scale of a mountain can not be appreciated when too close. Technically, the Great Ones are everywhere until they manifest at a singular point.”

“But regarding what you said about slowing it. I do not think I slowed it as much as I confused it. I hid your presence while carrying some of its own scent. It should have manifested earlier.”

“I am curious how they discovered such a possibility as to appease Atp’mte. I understand accepting sacrifices might be its nature hence why it appears less destructive than the others in this instance but why is it accepting babies? They can not comprehend their situation as sufficiently as someone more developed.”

“I can see why. It’s not feeding off the fear of the sacrifices, it is feeding off the fear of everyone else, the dread that something may one day go wrong or it might demand more so they might be next. I could see myself doing that, seasoning my meal until it is just right.”

Desdomena laughed to her own remark. Itxaro’s stomach churned at the revelation. If the sacrifices were not what satiated the Great One meant everything she did for over nine years had been meaningless. For the sake of her sanity she had to deny it.

They were stating theories. That was all. Yet, it all made a far too terrible sense.

“I would still prefer they explained how they made the discovery themselves, though,” Alvah commented. We will have to wait.”

Desdomena took hold of his injured hand and brought it to her lips, smearing the bandages a small streak of light pink. "Perhaps it would be best if I showed you everything that transpired before that."

The aberration slipped into his eye. A moment passed before his right eye glowed blue. He gritted his teeth as his brow furrowed and he exhaled loudly as if to release some building pressure within himself. His features molded into an expression of rage.

Desdomena slipped back out into existence and patted his back. "It has already happened," the aberration soothed.

Alvah looked to Zorion and then to Itxaro, his lips shifting back and forth between a frown and a scowl. He settled for a frown. "I will not apologize for what she did," he declared to Itxaro.

Itxaro lowered her head."I do not expect you to." Those words gave her a small relief. At least she could say that much. She did not want to meet his eyes.

"Thank you for seeing reason," Desdomena seemed to appreciate without mockery.

Itxaro hugged herself. "No…" She bit the inside of her mouth as she focused her eyes on Zorion.

She was about to thank the aberration. If Desdomena had not been there then she would have killed Alvah. However, remnants of resolve won against the guilt for an incomplete crime.

Itxaro claimed she would kill a killer. By her own judgement, the one that needed to die among them was herself.

Still glaring, Alvah kneeled towards the hunter's unconscious form. Alvah silently took the blood dripping from Zorion's ears and drew a pair of conifer glyphs on both sides of the hunter's head.

He held out his unbandaged palm to Desdomena. “Mind lending me some of that power you stole from Atp’mte?”

“Anything to expel that filth from me,” Desdomena replied enthusiastically.

The aberration opened her mouth and vapors gathered in her throat. The vapors condensed into tendrils like a twisted knot of shadowy yarn. Alvah plucked a thread from the air and as he pulled the knot uncoiled and gained speckles of color until it turned solid green.

He brought the vapor to a glyph like a weaver leading a string through the eye of a needle. The thread slithered into the glyph and disappeared like a lengthy worm burrowing to the soil as the blood began to glow dimly the same verdant color. He repeated the process so both sides matched.

“You are healing him?” Itxaro wanted to thank but confusion drowned all gratitude.

“There will be no immediate recovery but we can hope all damage incurred is not permanent,” Alvah answered calmly.

“But why?” Itxaro asked.

“Why would I not heal him immediately?” he misinterpreted her question. “I could perhaps heal him instantly. However, I can not forgive him just yet. Desdomena may be well but he struck with the intent to kill and he also struck first… But, I will not punish a parent for wanting to protect their child.”

Itxaro dared to draw close and kneeled by Zorion’s side. She rested her fingers on his wrists, his steady heartbeat reassuring her. “Thank you.”

“You can take more if you want,” Desdomena offered Alvah. “Go ahead and try to undo all the harm I did if it will make things more pleasant for me. The sooner I have this expelled, the better.”

“I must request that you keep it within you until we are safe.”

“You are not the one filled with mud. It would be like me stuffing you with blood and raw human entrails and asking you not to choke.”

“I am aware. You shared the sensation with me.”

A moment of silence passed between the two so, now that they were close, Itxaro once again held out the knife to Alvah. She practically pushed it into his hands. “You can have this back.”

He regarded the knife still in her hand and frowned. "I wished I could part with this but I can not throw it away." He walked back into the circle he so recently escaped from so he was at the hill’s center. Desdomena floated after him, flashing Itxaro a smile filled with sharp teeth. "Keep it. You need it more than I do. So you never have to cast deadly spells again."

She gazed upon the striped blade in her hands. She felt it growing heavier in her hands and sheathed it. It nestled at her side, its weight a reminder of the blood she prepared to shed and also that she already split.

Alvah stomped his foot on the ground several times. After cracks formed, he placed all his weight upon it. Pieces broke off from around his heel and then he kneeld on his healthy leg and slipped his hands between the cast and calf and pulled it apart.

“We still have some time,” Alvah observed as she stood straight. He held out a hand. “I apologize for neglecting you. Care for the dance I promised?”

Desdomena took the hand as her feet drifted to the ground like a feather falling. She took a sophisticated pose.

Alvah pulled at the black fabric tied around his wrist. “Do you want your ribbon as well?”

“Not yet. I do not want to get any blood on it,” as she led him with a side step.

Itxaro found herself entranced by the sight of the two figures moving about like specters made of moonbeams. Alvah did not still limp as much as he dragged his freshly healed leg during certain steps. The formerly injured limb was not as strong or flexible as the one that was never harmed.

What she witnessed was utterly foreign to her yet she somehow understood with the sensitivity of someone utterly bereft of such a quality. One that spent their entire life in the freezing cold could appreciate the heat of a desert more than one that dwelled beneath the scorching sun one’s whole life.

These two were letting the world wait. They were putting each other first in all things. The whole world could be ablaze and they would spare a moment to talk as if all other urgent matters meant nothing.

Time lost all meaning, at least to them as they ignored their encroaching doom. Their carelessness may have been infectious because Itxaro did not notice her own people’s arrival until her mother was beginning an incantation.

Lady Itxaro stood at the forefront of the mob that gathered at the foot of the hill. The mother’s lips moved as she made a circling gesture with both hands. Itxaro counted at least three verses. Some invisible force raced up the mound towards the still dancing pair.

Suddenly, Alvah bit into his bandages around his wrist and pulled at the wrappings with his teeth. Alvah stepped in front of Desdomena and extended his open hand, pal forward.

Itxaro caught a glimpse of an eye carved into into his palm. She would say it glowed but it was black, solid black, darker than the surrounding shadows like it had been painted with the essence of nothingness. There was a strange shift in the air as the invisible force met the blackness. The spell had been swallowed into the glyph.

“That was rude,” Desdomena chided from behind Alvah, resting both her hands on one of his shoulders as if peeking from a rock.

Lady Itxaro pointed an accusing finger at them. “If it is manners that mean so much to you, it was you who ignored our presence.”

Itxaro examined the crowd gather and was relieved to see her grandmother’s intoxicated form being supported by one of the villagers. The second man of the village stood beside her mother with Eneko in his arms. Everyone was there except the expecting mothers and the children caring for them.

Alvah did not seem to hear the lady as he examined his palm. The glyph on it dimmed or perhaps it brightened as the magic suffused within faded. "You dare to target Desdomena in front of me? Do you think so little of me that you fear no retaliation?" He closed his hand into a fist threateningly.

"I do not think you helpless but I know what you are capable of. Between you and the monster beside you, you are the better known evil."

He reopened his fist, splayed his fingers so she had a clear view of the eye glyph cut into his palm. "Did you know I was capable of this? Do you know what concept I have connected to this symbol?"

"If now is the time for honesty, no I do not. But I doubt that you a single man can convince me you hold more mystery than something that is a conglomeration of all human madness."

"Desdomena has fought in my place. I will battle in her's. You can not threaten her without counting me as your opponent."

A silence settled over the clearing or at least the closest thing to silence that could survive. There was a steady distant boom like the slow beat of a drum. Just as one thought the rhythm was over, it came again. Atp’mte had manifested. It was somewhere behind the outsiders and making its gradual approach.

They just needed to stay a few minutes more. Itxaro turned her head to see what was coming from the east. Parts of Atp’mte's silhouette could be seen where the titan crested the stars.

The outline of its three long heads could be counted. The shadows of their horns overlapped to resemble a single misshapen crown.

Alvah spared Itxaro a glance. “But before that, please take back your daughter so she can not get caught in one of your spells.” He nudged his head from Itxaro to the crowd.

Itxaro did not leave alone. She carried Zorion with her. The villagers came to retrieve him beyond the halfway point. Itxaro’s mother brushed her fingers over Itxaro’s face as she reached her mother’s side.

“They did not harm you, did they?”

“No,” Itxaro answered before adding, “Zorion rescued me before anything happened.” The memory of a snake around her throat and countless hands covering her body made her skin crawl.

“I recommend that you have everyone part from you if you still wish to have a duel between mages,” Alvah advised Lady Itxaro after allowing them a momentary reunion.

No one distanced themselves from the lady. “I know the trick to your every spell but that one,” Lady Itxaro reminded him. “You know none of mine.”

“True but if we were to extend it into a prolonged struggle and Desdomena was not to hide us then this place will become the focus of much attention. I can simply leave but this is your home. Strange that in these days that fighting in one's home soil could be considered a weakness.”

“He should not have any glyphs left,” Itxaro whispered to her mother. She could not be sure if he could use his own body as a canvas. Maybe he could hide one of his back but she had taken all the glyph stones that had been in his satchel.

Lady Itxaro but her lip. That information seemed to do the opposite of reassure her. The lady’s eyes darted to her daughter as if to relay a message too complicated to be communed without gestures.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

For a moment, Itxaro thought she was being told to back away. It seemed the most obvious but then she remembered Alvah did not need prepared glyphs to cast his spells, his prepared glyphs were what made his casting hidden from the aberrations. Itxaro just validated his threat.

“This place already has the attention of Atp’mte. You can not threaten us with the presence of aberrations.” Itxaro’s mother bluffed.

“Indeed, maybe lesser aberrations are avoiding this place. But have you ever casted spells with reckless abandon to be sure they will not come if given bait?”

Lady Itxaro bit the inside of her cheek. Her failure to reply answered everything,

“I do admire your art for having applications outside of spells,” Alvah easily admitted without hesitation or pretense. “Without magic, my glyphs would just be carvings. If we battle, there will be many spells cast, at least by me. It does not have to be that way.”

Lady Itxaro remained still for a long moment as her eyes scanned her surroundings. Her gaze settled on the massive figure that dominated the horizon above the trees. Itxaro the youngest regarded the familiar shape with dread, sweat brimming on her brow.

Slowly the mother lowered her hands and bowed her head. "If you considered the duel already begun, I submit. I will not fight you, not here. But before you claim your rights as the victor, let me say this."

"Ah, so you accept the code that a defeated mage has no right to speak against what comes to pass if defeated? Please say what you will.I honor no such code of conduct"

"To win through threats, you are a cruel man."

"Cruel? No, no…" Desdomena began to deny before she brought a finger to her lip in consideration. "Maybe. Maybe he is. He most certainly was. But is he currently cruel? Hmmm… Are you cruel Alvah?"

The man's mouth opened for a moment and his lips began to move but formed no words. He slowly shut his mouth without voicing an answer and brought his attention back to Lady Itxaro.

Every word they exchanged brought Atp’mte a little closer.

Itxaro, being just an observer, could see what her mother was doing.

The silhouette for Atp’mte became more distinct as more of its shape came against the moonlit sky. Its arms were too low on its body. Not quite where its legs were but close enough that from far away its torso appeared limbless.

Of course, Eneko began to cry in the arms of the man holding him. Itxaro held her arms out to take the child.

“Don’t,” her mother instructed. “We can not have you two in one place, a single target for a spell of his.” Itxaro opened her mouth but found no words of resistance and placed distance between herself and the baby.

Itxaro had yet to discover any harm caused to the forest itself from the Great One’s arrival but the trees did not quietly abide its presence. Maybe it manipulated its spindly limbs with the precision of a spider or simply passed through the plants like a ghost. Itxaro contemplated over every word shared between the outsider and her mother lest her mind have room for the forest’s screams as well as Eneko’s at that point periodic outburst as the one holding the baby did his best to distract the child. It was almost over.

“What do you want that you would stay here?” Lady Itxaro asked.

“I wanted answers,” Alvah stated. “But seeing that you are all here. I understand you are all collaborators. I think understand more than I wish. Still, I want to know how you discovered you could commune with a Great One."

"It appeared to us as all Great Ones did but only took one of us. It appeared to us again a month later. Knowing it was prepared to take at least one of us, one of our number volunteered and the Great One claimed them. We realized then it seemed satisfied with only one of us compared to the terrors that would see our extinction."

"But I imagine you fell short of eager volunteers if you felt inclined to resort to using me,” the man reasoned.

He brought his injured hand to to his forehead as if to hold his head from falling. His eyes were hidden. The sound of what Itxaro at first recognized as sobbing tickled her ears before it grew louder and knew it to be laughter, not his strange laughter but that of what she would recognized to be the weak laugh of a broken man if she had been there to witness olden days.

“I saw no babies and few adolescents when I first arrived,” he took a moment to explain before letting out an unstifled laugh. “I guess that is the problem with us humans living to be a thousand. If we have so much to experience, we might as well discard our young until our final years.

So children are not necessary and if there is a shortage of them, a man can do. You only need one male to keep this system intact. How brilliant.”

He must have solved for himself or learned from his union with Desdomena how Itxaro’s people offered at least one child a month to satiate Atp’mte. He lowered his hand and wore a smile worthy of Desdomena.

“It has been so long, I forgot how devious we humans can be,” he seemed to compliment them, no longer laughing.

“Do not act like you are better than us,” Lady Itxaro retorted. “Not when you consort with an aberration yourself.”

Alvah: I myself am not guiltless. I will not judge you. My crime until this point has been apathy so I am no better. I must admit I am impressed you managed to to form any kind of arrangement with a Great One. My price was a cup of blood each month but to think all that would be required would be a single life to instead to tie my fate to something like Atp’mte.”

“Regretting our agreement?” Desdomena teased.

“The only life I would have had to offer was my own. If I simply let something take my life, how much value would you think I had for it?”

“You know what is we must offer,” Lady Itxaro brought the conversation back to herself. “Then, tell me, if you received the mantle what would you do with those still here?" Lady Itxaro inquired.

"I would run," Alvah stated clearly. "If I could not run from the responsibility, I would try to find an alternative."

"And if there was no alternative?"

"Then I would ask for volunteers, go by who was most ready."

"We already did that," Lady Itxaro informed him.

Alvah frowned. "I see. Those still here are those that want to live. If I perished, I would be abandoning Desdomena. If I was offered the choice I would choose to reject the choice. However, you make it sound as if I absolutely must choose. Then the answer is simple, I would sacrifice myself."

"Are you a liar or have you gone mad? Do you not realize you have been doing the very opposite of what you claim you would do?"

Alvah stood unsteadily, leaning forward as if expecting his walking stick to hold him but there was nothing in his hands. "Long ago, yes I indeed had gone mad gone mad but I am quite lucid now, I believe. One’s greatest responsibility is to protect one’s own life, one can not demand another to sacrifice their life for oneself or any cause. It must be given willingly. I would hope my successor might find a solution where I failed."

"But I thought you wanted to live," Itxaro recalled. "Remember when you told me you wanted to live as long as you could?"

Was he lying then or was he lying now? His solution being letting himself die and trusting a stranger to carry on made no sense.

"I desperately want to live," Alvah replied with a sad smile. "It is because of that that I can not force another to take my place. I can defend myself and while I would like to never do so to another human I can most certainly kill but not for that reason."

"What would you suggest your successor do once you are gone?" Lady Itxaro continued the previous chain of thought.

"It would be their own choice. I would hope they would do as I did. If they can not bring themselves to do that and yet a life must be forcefully taken, then I would hope they would start with the oldest."

"Shi-shi-shi," Desdomena laughed. "For someone so eager to live, Alvah, you are too prepared to list reasons to let yourself die. You are the oldest one here."

"My very first answer was to run, Desdomena. Anything beyond that is simply hypothetical."

"Good. Run as long as it is not from me. That is what you must remember. You belong to me. I alone may decide whether you live or die and I would choose for you to live."

"Indeed, but having lived, those oldest would have experienced the most so would be robbed of the least opportunities."

"The oldest have the most to give!" Lady Itxaro interjected.

"What is there to give?" Alvah began.

"If you are taking away life?" Desdomena finished.

"Everyone would die under your system!" Lady Itxaro shouted.

Itxaro muttered to herself as she counted the number of lives that would be spent if Alvah's choices were made. If they kept having children, there would be more added but it would reach the point that there would only be children and they would be picked off one by one or simply starve. Her vision began to blur as she approached the conclusion.

"Yes, but everyone would have lived," Alvah retorted.

Desdomena scratched her chin with a finger

"How many would actually die though?"

"Fifty-two," Itxaro answered with tears in her eyes. "If no one new was added, only fifty-two. If we continued as we are now, maybe ninety-four at most. Less than a hundred." Itxaro lowered her voice so only she could hear her final comment. "Less than how many I have already taken." After nine years of performing the ritual, her own count would be an estimate of a hundred and eight. She had already killed a hundred people.

What he was saying was insanity. What he was describing was letting everyone die yet it seemed hopeful. He wanted everyone to have lived as long as they each could.

People would survive longer as things were. They could go on indefinitely as long as matters were controlled.

"Ninety-four gone but what do you mean by everyone would have lived?" Itxaro claimed in confusion.

"Simple, they would have felt the sun against their face, the wind through their hair, everything that makes life worth being born to be."

So living meant something different from survival to him. For someone so old, he seemed so foolish. One could not live if they did not survive. What would be the point of pursuing an ideal if everyone died for it?

"But do you see now?" Lady Itxaro asked. "Even your so called answers result in death. We must abide with Atp’mte."

Alvah glared at her. "Atp’mte is not to blame for this. Your people created this system."

On the subject of Atp’mte. The Great One’s shadow was all there was to be seen on the horizon. It was not yet there but was so massive as to dominate the scenery like a moving mountain.

Alvah kept facing forward but Desdomena most certainly noticed. The aberration stood with her back to her companion’s. She bared her teeth at the Great One like a territorial animal.

“A shame,” Alvah continued without concern. “I knew your goddess. She was a younger goddess than the ones my people made. You did not know what it meant to be forced to satisfy a deity or else suffer calamity, so you did not know it would entail to serve something like Atp’mte.”

“I hate to interrupt, Alvah. It is lovely to see this side of you but we have another audience,” Desdomena reminded him. "Oh great Atp’mte,” she called out in a mockingly worshipful tone as she hid her fangs and made a short bow. "We celebrate your coming with a dance and validate you with a testament to the greed that spawned you. Those before you offered something that was not theirs to lose and I say to you, take your pick of any one of them except this one. This one is mine."

"I hope that did not draw its attention to us," Alvah commented as he glanced at the monstrosity. His brow furrowed but he showed no fear.

"All the more reason to dance away into the night if it did."

“How do you intend to escape?” Lady Itxaro inquired confidently. “We stand here before you and you have Atp’mte between you and your destination. If you fight us now, you will be snatched up by Atp’mte.

“That is simple. We will go through Atp’mte. I would trust my fate with it more than I would with you.”

“We can’t let you leave,” Lady Itxaro. She signaled for the mob to surround the hill and the people complied. Itxaro found herself behind the two outsiders between them and the Great One. Eneko was somewhere near her mother, hidden from sight now by the hill.

Her years of encounters with the Great One made Itxaro believe she had been to its particular horror. What its presence truly contributed was a matter of perspective against Alvah’s companion. Still, not seeing the massive aberration’s shape spawned a new terror, she imagined it leaning down to grab her or bite her head off.

Her hands trembled and her knees quaked. Those around her were similarly effected or so scared that they ceased shaking and entirely froze. She was the one that made it furthest before fear got the best of them, leaving her practically isolated.

“Keep looking forward,” Desdomena instructed as she placed her hands over his face. Her fingers parted so they were like holes in a mask.

While Alvah looked straight ahead, Desdomena’s body grew while her hands stayed the same size. Her shoulders slid down to her hips so her hands remained undisturbed in holding Alvah’s head in place while her arms stretched to not be pulled away by the aberration’s widening frame.

Desdomena grew to be over three times the size of any human Itxaro ever saw. She bent forward until her back formed a near circular curve. Some parts of her like her head were further forward than the human but high enough to escape the edge of his vision.

“I hope your momentary respite was worth those not here to enjoy it,” Desdomena declared. “You can stay in this little peace of yours but I am taking what is mine. Every drop of blood. Every strand of hair. Every once of flesh.”

Compared to the even greater monstrosity behind Itxaro, Desdomena no longer seemed so horrifying. There was still an uncanny wrongness to her but Itxaro could imagine her own people braving the lesser aberration to escape the Great One.

Itxaro expected a swarm of arms but Desdomena remained as a serpent with a human face. Blood flowed from her eye, a trickle at first before gushing out like a fountain.

She flicked her tail and it passed under the moon. The night suddenly grew darker. The celestial mirror had been painted a deep shade of scarlet and its light carried that tinge, casting everything within the clearing in a similar shade.

"My companion would like to know for how long you will keep it when we are gone. Tell me when too much blood has been shed. Tell me when the price will be too high."

The blood pooled around the two and raced down the slope. A moistness permeated through Itxaro’s shoes as the liquid reached her ankles. Itxaro saw in her mind the hill as an island in the middle of an emerging, crimson lake.

The blood at the center rippled and those ripples formed a wave. That wave rapidly grew until it blocked sight of the outsiders and threatened to engulf all else.

Itxaro only had a moment to react and plunged the knife she had been given into the ground and clasped both hands over the handle. The tide washed over everyone, pulling them along with the current. While the weapon was unaffected by the crimson flood, Itxaro was not so fortunate.

Itxaro held her breath and fortunately shut her eyes before they could come to know the sting but she became submerged, she realized how disturbingly warm it was. It was not hot, but a subtle warmth, warm enough to make the thick dampness all the less comfortable. Her body threatened to drift away as she clung to the knife.

Her weight returned as the wave rolled past her. She gasped as her face was greeted by empty air. Her tongue touched some of the ichor that lingered on her lips. It had the metallic taste of real blood.

Her drenched clothes and even her own matted hair felt heavy. She groaned and noticed as the outsiders made their way towards her. It failed to surprise her they were dancing, orbiting around each other like twin suns. Desdomena’s appearance all but returned to normal except for her feet that were still conjoined as a serpent’s tail but splitting downwards to reform her legs.

She grabbed onto the hem of Alvah’s clothes without thinking as they passed her. She did not even know why, it was an impulse and a weak one at that. Alvah almost ripped himself out of her grasp without ever noticing. The only reason he stopped was the gentle tug.

He looked down at her and she herself finally realized she reached out to grab him. Before he could ask why, she asked herself that very question.

A glance behind at the sight hidden by the hill gave her no answer. However, almost lost in the chaos was a baby’s cry, her brother’s cry.

She tightened her grip. “If you do not return, someone else will die,” she stated.

“And come next full moon, someone else will also die,” he replied firmly. “And then another and another until this place is bereft of lives to offer.”

“That is the only way we know.”

Alvah winced as he knelt on his weak leg and offered a hand. ”Then, come with us and see if there is another way.”

Itxaro barely saw the hand in her freshly watering eyes. She grabbed onto the grass with her free hand and clasped ever more tightly to his garments to stop herself from reaching out. “I don’t want to agree with you. I don’t want to think everything I’ve done has been wrong.”

“There is nothing wrong with being wrong but do you really want this to continue?” Desdomena interjected abnormally softly. “If you keep Alvah and me here, it will not change anything. We will just be two more to your counting and you will just keep adding more and more.”

Itxaro disregarded the aberration and kept her eyes on her fellow human. “Even if I am wrong, it does not mean you are correct. You are undoubtedly insane. If you sacrificed yourself, you would not be able to save others. How would you be able to know those that succeeded would be any better than you? If there is a problem, you must survive it to solve it.”

“But I really do not intend to die. Even if I offered you my life now, Desdomena would kill you and everyone else out of revenge. Your answer is not slaying us. You can let us go or you can join us.”

Itxaro bit her cheek. “I do not agree with you entirely,” she began before letting go. “But I do not agree with what is happening here either.” She wiped her eyes.

Alvah remained silent as he stood, holding back a grunt as his leg momentarily resisted his will. He held an open palm vertically near his shoulder in a gesture of goodbye. “I wish you well.”

As he began to shuffle away she called out as she rose to her own feet. “Wait, I have one more thing to ask you.”

“Just one more?” Desdomena inquired incredulously,

He turned. “What is it?”

“Do you regret not being able to save your brothers and sisters?”

He smiled crookedly as if one side of him wanted to frown and the other desired the opposite. “If you want the right answer, I think that is a question you should ask yourself.”

He brought his injured hand to his face and exhaled onto his wounded palm. Pure black vapors drifted from his chest and stuck onto the glyph of an eye and the symbol “glowed” ominously black once more.

Alvah gave a sidelong look to Desdomena and presented his awkward half smile. He did not need to say a word to his companion.

For a reason unknown to Itxaro, Desdomena sighed heavily as if in exasperation. The aberration placed her arms under Alvah’s and hugged him tightly. A pair of wing materialized in her back and they were quick to take flight. Itxaro lost sight of them in the night sky, their path only traceable with the disappearances of stars.

The world regained its lost light as the redness faded. Either it had been lifted on purpose or the effect faded with Desdomena’s absence. Her clothes ceased to cling damply to her as the false ichor vanished with the aberration that shed it. Even the stains vanished.

Itxaro rose to her feet and shivered slightly as the strange warmth of an aberration’s spilt blood was replaced with the chill of the night air. As she did so, she plucked the knife from the ground, and sheathed the glass blade. She made her way around the hill, drawn to the lure of a child’s cries.

Everyone that had been washed away, slowly stumbled back into the clearing, many disoriented but none seriously injured. In the back of her mind, she counted each familiar face and worried over every person until they ceased to be missing. Lady Itxaro had already regained her bearings by the time her daughter reached the other side of the clearing.

Eneko continued to wail, now in the mother’s hands. Lady Itxaro held her hands out, cupped together as if carrying an object instead of another life. The lady proceeded forward, step by step, up the slope.

Zorion and the Elder had been dragged back by others. The elder was still unsteady and the hunter remained unconscious. Maybe the elder ingested her fair share of potions in the days such crafts flourished as Itxaro’s grandmother’s daze seemed to be less pronounced than Alvah’s when he ingested such a concoction. Elder Itxaro’s eyes followed events even if they remained unsteady and slightly clouded by unknown visions.

Itxaro watched her mother and caught sight of what the lady was headed towards. The colossal silhouette of Atp’mte shifted. Its heads turned to the side to follow something.

It began to move away. It was turning around? Why would it turn around?

It did not normally leave by any means as mundane as walking away. Once it took the sacrifice, it usually vanished without a trace. Itxaro was not sure whether to be relieved or not. It had to have been pursuing the fleeing Alvah and Desdomena.

Why then was her mother proceeding as if to continue the ritual?

Itxaro rushed to her mother’s side. “Why are you bringing him to the ritual site?” Itxaro tried to speak respectfully but her racing heart hastened her words. “Atp’mte is following the outsiders.”

“We have to be prepared in case the Great One fails to catch them,” her mother answered calmly as she took another step.

“But…” Itxaro began before she stifled herself. But why do it at all? She failed to ask. If the sacrifice itself was meaningless, why continue?

Itxaro took a breath and delivered the news. “But I think the outsiders discovered something. They believe Atp’mte is sustaining itself through us, not the sacrifices.”

“We know,” her mother stated matter-of-factly.

Itxaro froze. She imagined she misheard. “You know?”

“Now is not the time to discuss this. The elder can explain it all come morning.”

“Why would you keep that a secret from me?”

Her mother smiled gently. “I imagine I would not have been satisfied if your grandmother had told me I was not old enough to understand at your age.” The lady turned her head to ensure no others were nearby. The closest ones were the elder and the man who carried her back. He could likely could not hear them but she still lowered her voice. “We kept it hidden because a secret is not a secret if too many know.”

“Why must it be a secret at all?” Itxaro frustratingly matched her mother’s volume.

“Because if it feeds off of us, we do not know how the knowledge would affect the others. Maybe they might grow more fearful and feed it more yet poison our way of life with lingering terror or maybe it might grant them a false sense of security that might stir its hunger. We can not risk change.”

Itxaro found she could not even open her mouth. No words came to mind and she found her body eager to root itself in place even as her mother proceeded forward as if they never spoke.

Itxaro’s feet were heavy. She pulled them up and took each step without a clear purpose. She just knew she needed to stay with her mother.

She stared at the lady’s back and wondered if that was how she herself moved during each ritual, detached. If not, was that how she would be in the years to come?

Beyond the crest of the hill, Atp’mte’s shadow remained cast in the stars, moving further away. The fact it could be diverted at all made her question why she feared it so. For her, it had been a storm that came and went as it pleased.

Yet there it was, chasing something the same way she might try to catch a fly. It all seemed so inconsequential, its massive frame dwarfed by distance while her own mother appeared so large yet even further away.

That thing in the distance was what haunted her for her entire life. Its very existence dictated how she and everyone she ever knew lived. Yet in that brief moment, it appeared harmless to her.

Everything seemed almost comical and the jest had been at her expense. There were no gods left to find amusement in her predicament. She had no audience to entertain. The only one to appreciate it was herself. Some part of her pulled at the corner of her mouth. If she did not laugh to it, no one would. Phantasmal hooks bit into her lips but she resisted them.

She had to laugh. Some value needed to be found or everything, absolutely everything she had done, her entire life would be meaningless. Why should she pretend that this all was not hilarious?

The image of Desdomena’s grotesquely wide smile came to mind. The aberration was one that found joy in misfortune of others.

Itxaro was not a monster like the outsider, or at least she did not want to be. She did not know what she was anymore but if she accepted all that transpired with a grin, it would be over. She could laugh at her previous efforts to appease the Great One if she had been the only one to pay the price.

She was keenly aware now. Seeing the greatest horror she knew being reduced should have brought her some joy but no, the relief came with a nagging ache. Without terror clouding her conscience, she was left with everything she had done. She could feel a hundred needles stabbing into her core.

It was strange how lesser aches were subsumed by greater pains. Someone on a pyre likely paid no attention to how one burnt their finger on a candle the night before.

They reached the top of the hill and her mother knelt to lower the still crying Eneko to the ground. Each wail echo in Itxaro’s ears and seemed to travel down her spine to her limbs.

Her arms trembled as she tried to hold them back. She felt her head turn light and flush even as as a weight rested over the rest of her body. It seemed as though her heart was swapped with a stone and dragged up to her throat to choke her. She knew if she did nothing she would regret it forever.

Before he touched the ground, Itxaro swiped the baby from her mother’s hands. It all happened without thinking. It seemed to her that Eneko found himself in her arms.

Even as her face burned, she felt a clump of ice in her chest. Her resolve sharpened itself against the cold calculation. She counted the single life she was snatching back against those she threw away.

For about nine years she sacrificed on average twelve lives a year. More or less, she had killed a hundred and eight but that number would be dwarfed by the time she grew old.

A moment passed as her mother misread her intent. Perhaps, she thought her daughter had been eager to complete the ritual. Then her features hardened as the realization came to her.

Itxaro placed a finger over her brother’s lips and shushed him. Eneko gazed up at her in recognition and finally went quiet.

“What are you doing with that child, Itxaro?” her mother inquired dangerously before standing to lock eyes with her. Her gaze rejected all defiance. It was the look of pure maternal authority all children feared to rebel against.

Yet Itxaro stood firm. “I am sorry, mother,” she failed to answer at first. She did not want to answer yet what came next rolled off her tongue. “But I can not do this.”

"Do you want us all to die?" her mother demanded to know.

“If we all died,” Itxaro hesitantly counted. “That would be only fifty-two deaths. I already killed a hundred. What are fifty-two more?

After only nine years, she had gathered the blood of a hundred on her hands. If she lived to be a thousand and continued along that course, how many more bodies would she be resting upon? Her estimate was twelve thousand. Perhaps less but for all she knew the Great One might begin to demand more one day.

Itxaro's vision shifted and her cheek stang as a clapping sound resounded through the grove.

Her eyes watered reflexively, blurring her vision. The next sight to greet her was Lady Itxaro’s hand still lingering in the air. “Do you realize how insane you sound?” her mother stately sternly but evenly. It might have been less terrifying if she shouted. “If everyone dies, there will be nothing left. No new lives, just death. Is that what you want?”

Itxaro lifted a hand and rubbed her still stinging cheek in disbelief. Her mother never hit her, not even once. Lady Itxaro never needed to hit her.

Itxaro clinched her fist, her nails clawing into her palm to tell her this was real. “No.” Itxaro returned her hand to Eneko’s side. The one life she could secure. Tears escaped from her eyes from either the lingering pain from being struck or something that had been festering in her chest. “But I do not want this to continue either.”

Nothingness was the one thing they could not recover from. This was no longer about what Itxaro wanted, it never was. She wanted neither outcome. It was about what needed to be done. What mattered was the option that resulted in the least deaths.

Her mother raised her voice. “If this ritual ceases, we will die.” Fear crept into her words but Itxaro somehow felt the concern was directed to herself. “Other horrors are out there, far worse than Atp’mte.” This was a final warning.

Itxaro hugged Eneko closer to herself. If she held him any tighter, she might smother him against her chest. “Then you will have to continue without us.”

Itxaro spared a glance to all those gathered and listened. There was a deathly silence, not even the Great One appeared to be steering. A groan came from Zorion to tell her, to her relief, the hunter was waking.

Itxaro took a long breath and shouted louder than she ever thought she could. “If you truly value your lives as well as your future just run. Please run! We can find a new place free from Atp’mte. If not, then we can just keep running!” She caught her breath and her last words to them drifted out, “But if we stay here, we will just keep dying over and over.”

She gave them no time to answer. Any response, no matter condemning or benign could lead her to falter from her decision.

She turned her gaze to the east and sprinted. She never looked back. Maybe they chased her, maybe they let her go. She would never know. All she saw for what seemed the longest of times was the scenery of enshadowed trees and foliage rush past her to the rhythm of her racing heart.

She ran with the speed only desperation could sustain. Roots and other obstacles threatened to snag her feet but each failed. She knew how to navigate through the woods, she could have closed her eyes and still found herself surefooted.

For some time, the world seemed to be only the shadows of trees, brush, and darkness. With the canopy above her, even the sky was hidden with starlight and moonbeams sometimes filtering through the branches. If there were any animals performing their nightly calls, she could not hear them over her own heartbeat. Even the child in her arms did not seem to make a sound, his weight was her greatest assurance he was still there.

She even forgot about the monstrosity ahead of her. Unfortunately, reality did not forget it existed and that her goals ran opposite to the Great One along her path.

The Great One returned to its proper course back towards the clearing but at a strange angle. It tread towards the north as if still in pursuit, its heads still following something. It was coming back but along a serpentine route, some of its many arms could be seen reaching out across the stars as if forming a net.

She noticed this as it drew near enough for its heads to be what then showed through the canopy, the purple light of its three now clear to her. She tried to run along the opposite side of it while it was continuing its fantastical chase. Itxaro could have sworn she saw something like a snake slithering in the nightsky. The flying creature lowered its trajectory and vanished in the trees far ahead and to the north of her.

Unfortunately, it had not been far enough. Some instinct told her that its gaze was upon her. Some primal terror chilled her blood. Her skin crawled with the sensation of thousands of tiny spiders skittering beneath her skin.

Time seemed to slow. The footsteps of the behemoth seemed to resound eternally as they drew close, the ground quaked as even the light of the moon and stars vanished from overhead.

It was too massive to fully see once it drew so close. Its shadow may as well have been that of a mountain.

But if it had been a mountain, it was a mountain with legs. It was still approaching as she darted straight forward. Everything went black as she got beneath it where its arms should not be able to reach. She tried to banish despair with the hope she might be able to slip under it.

She wandered blindly in the dark. Unseen branches scratched and snagged at her but she kept moving forward. If she stopped, the next sensation she might know was it catching her in its cold grasp. The odor of boiled skin and burnt hair fouled her lungs as she breathed deeply.

Then, in what was a single step for it, all the distance she made was rendered mutt. With a simple shuffle, it stood before her braying insanely in the moonlight.

The gaze of its three eyes focused on her and the air around her brightened into a sickening purple haze. That single moment struck her with the futility of it all. Her flight meant naught to it. They had been offered.

Without the excitement and hot blood pumping through her veins, her body had the opportunity to tell her she was tired. That she had already gone beyond her limits without ever knowing it. Fatigue took root.

Yet her heart still pounded violently in her ears. She was certain it might burst from her chest.

Each of its three goatlike heads possessed a single eye just above the horns. The horns themselves sprouted where eyes should have been as if they exchanged places.

The exact shape of the torso was hidden by the dark along with its legs and arms that placed far too low. From her memories, its arms practically sprouted from the same location its legs did.

The head to Itxaro’s left seemed to be comprised of the boiled bodies the familiar faces of those she saw every day melted together with impossible clarity even in the faint light as if her own eyes illuminated the scene, their scalded flesh bubbled and blistered. Her gaze strained to the left as the one on her right was made from the mutilated and half eaten corpse of every child she ever offered.

The centermost head was blackened and burnt and stretched a long narrow tongue. She could not move as the tendril descended the way that one was paralyzed in one’s worst nightmares, unable to even scream. The appendage reached all the way to ground. It seemed to shrink as it slithered towards her.

When it reached her, it was below shoulder level. Perfect for her to place something upon. On the tongue itself was a multitude of hungry mouths biting at the air.

She shuddered. She could not scream but she could tremble now. She concentrated on her legs but they refused to move.

She found her arms moving, some instinct compelling her to live. If she gave Eneko up, at least one of them would live.

Then she realized something. Eneko was not crying. Even before this doom, he trusted her. His eyes were fixated on her, her own shadow could be seen cast in the moonbeams caught in his gaze.

Her arms stopped moving. She exerted all her will and turned away from the altar of flesh as she tried to flee. “No! You can not have either of us!” she shouted with all her heart as she froze midturn.

Raw fear poured into her. Every nerve flared yet nothing moved. Her shout perhaps tainted with a now proven false bravado, Eneko began to wail. She had turned away from the Great One but now he could see it past her shoulders.

She thought she heard the wet sound of the tongue retract. A deep heaving came from behind her as she imagined it lurching forward with its many arms.

She stared at her hands and begged her fingers to move. If she could at least spare Eneko this fate, perhaps the village would come looking for her and find him. He would have at least a chance to survive rather than be swallowed with her.

Painfully, fingers snapped open one by one like bent twigs breaking. To her relief, Eneko began to slide from her arms.

But just as he was about to fall, a familiar white hand sprouted from the ground and stilled him, its seven fingers cradling his head. “How boring,” Desdomena bemoaned from somewhere. “I catch the scent of fresh terror and all I have to grace my ears are the cries of one clueless of the true danger he is faced with.”

The lesser aberration stepped into and held out an empty hand in greeting, in her other hand was a staff or stick. She bared a sharp toothed smile that gleamed. “Good to see you again, Itxaro, after such a short parting. Though it would be so much more delightful if it was you that was weeping,” the aberration continued tauntingly. “Come now. Cry for me and I might save you this one time.”

Itxaro did not hold out for hope. Even if she could cry, she could not be certain the aberration might not simply abandon her. Desdomena has every reason to still be vengeful and Itxaro resented the idea of asking for help from the one that harmed Zorion.

“I may be a monster, yes but do I really look like a rude guest?” Desdomena conversed as if Itxaro had contributed. “You gave us food, drink, and shelter. As long as Alvah breathes, your transgressions can be overlooked. Even false kindness should be returned in kind or else we will deserve the knife in our back if we ever help a stranger. Not a single one of you will die by my hands tonight.”

Itxaro could not trust anything the unreal thing said.

“Doubting me, that is wise. Still, I have caused no undue harm and would like you to believe I have no intention to bring any more upon you. I simply wanted what was mine back.” She then added dismissively “Though that does not mean you are safe from any doom you brought on yourselves.” The aberration looked up at the titan and grinned evilly at it.

Itxaro could not even unclench her teeth, let alone form words. She tried to force her lips apart to ask for Desdomena to take Eneko from her arms before she was devoured.

“I guess you are too proud to beg to me. It was Alvah you cried to… Oh well, how about this?” The aberration clapped her hands enthusiastically. “How about we leave it to fate? I can part you two and see which one Atp’mte wants more. There is no one to blame but Atp’mte if it makes the choice.” She frowned and scratched her chin. “Though I think it will choose Eneko. It is really savoring you right now. It would probably have quite a feast with just you listening to his little bones crunch.”

Itxaro’s eyes widened as a spike of despair lanced through her skull. Her heart sank as her vision blurred. She imagined the scene she witnessed so many times before repeating itself once again while she did nothing once more.

Desdomena dropped the staff to bring her hands to her cheeks as if to contain the excitement, her expression one of unrepentant ecstasy. “There it is. There is the sensation so many like me crave. The loss of someone other than oneself. To be left with less.” She laughed as she drew close. “So, I was right. If given the choice to offer yourself or another, you would sacrifice yourself. But by your own logic, this is wrong.”

The hand growing from the ground passed the crying child to the aberration before disappearing. The aberration held Eneko to his sister’s face. “In this scenario, who is to care for him? Alvah was a prince and so he has no idea of how to care for another. Raising children was not the responsibility of a prince, you know. I am not real. So, the only people who can possibly nurture him if you were die here is that way.” She pointed towards the village. “I doubt they would be eager to keep the seed that had sown so much trouble. So, both of you will die here if you are the one taken. Maybe not on the same night, but you will both meet your end in this place.”

The aberration held the child up high in offering to the Great One. “But it is not too late, though. One of you can survive. Tell me and I can toss him into Atp’mte’s maw in your place.”

Itxaro chose silence. She imagined her lips parting into a smile if they could. Eneko was out of her hands. There was some hope. It would just be her.

Desdomena regarded her quizzically. The world in front of Itxaro blackened in the approach of the Great One to claim her.

All that remained of the world was Eneko’s crying. Then, Desdomena’s reddened eye flickered to life and glowed, less a candle and more an ember in the dark. Eneko went quiet.

Itxaro’s heart raced as she strained her ears against the deafening beating of her heart.

“Hush now,” Desdomena whispered soothingly. “The choice has already been made, you have nothing left to fear.”

Something grabbed her shoulder. Desdomena’s eye was suddenly so close that it dominated her field of view.

“Apologies, Atp’mte,” Desdomena stated politely. “You can not expect me to ignore a lovely meal like this.”

The injured eye split open to reveal the forming of a mouth. The whites of her eyes broke into long sharp teeth as the red light vanished to be filled in by shadow.

Everything remained dark but a glowing stream of vapors, like a rainbow river, drifted out in front of her for a short journey to meet an abrupt end inches from her face.

Itxaro's conscience grew dim. The monster in front of her drank everything within her until there was nothing left. Yet she remained awake, not that she discern whether her eyes were open or not once the vapors ceased to come forth.

The world remained dark as the ground quaked around her. Things became visible once more as Atp’mte passed them by. Eneko was still in Desdomena’s arms, breathing. However, he stared blankly at the stars.

This should have concerned Itxaro but it did not. She imagined what she should have felt but nothing came. Everything was just basic sensation. She was aware of the world around her, the trees and leaves and grass caught in the cold the wind but it all meant nothing to her.

With it came a crystal clear clarity. Nothing mattered. Absolutely nothing. Her stomach could be empty yet she would not hunger. It was not despair. Despair was something. This was indifference.

A wetness lingered on her cheeks. So, she did cry. Desdomena indeed kept her word.

Desdomena put the slightest weight on Itxaro’s shoulder and Itxaro found her knees bending in response. Itxaro sat in the grass and watched the Great One make its way back to the grove, to the ritual site.

Desdomena placed an equally uncaring Eneko in her lap. The aberration then picked up the staff she once dropped. The young woman recognized it now as Alvah’s walking stick.

The aberration placed the walking stick beside Itxaro. “Please watch this for me. After all this trouble, I must see how this little farce ends. “

Itxaro was left there with an unconcerned Eneko and the wind for company. The forest was in an uproar. She had nothing to distract herself so she was unprotected from the plants’ cries. Though they reached her, they did little to effect her or so she thought. However, she did find herself adjusting her position to impact as few of them as possible as though answering to their will while still complying with Desdomena’s instruction.

An unknowable amount of time passed. Itxaro could see Atp’mte in the distance stop momentarily at the ritual site only to finally vanish. The forest slowly grew quiet as its presence faded.

After that, Desdomena returned. The aberration took the walking stick back and examined it before pacing about dramatically. For a moment, she stepped away to leave the two as they were before quickly coming back with a frown.

“Alvah would have us come back if I left you like this.” The aberration knelt so they met eye to eye. “I guess I should give this all back now,” she decided reluctantly. “Mind if I keep the terror Atp’mte was generous enough to fill you with?”

Desdomena unhinged her mouth and rainbow of vapors seeped from her throat. She exhaled steadily and the vapors seeped back into Itxaro and Eneko.

Emotions started to color her thoughts again, slowly bleeding back into her monochrome mind. To her relief, Eneko babbled.

Of course, what came first was confusion. “Why did you come back?” she asked.

Desdomena held out the staff. “We forgot Alvah's walking stick. It was the first thing we made as one. We were not about to abandon it over something silly as imminent doom. Also, he still needs support after having his leg petrified for a week."

Itxaro glanced around. “Where is Alvah?”

“Not here. I can not move at my fastest while carrying him,” Desdomena explained. “Thank you for distracting Atp’mte from him by the way.”

Too much was happening at once. The outsiders escaped only to return for a mere trinket? There were so much to ask but it seemed like it might lead to more questions when what she needed was to continue forward.

But there was several things that could not go unsaid. She had been prepared to wander about with her sibling but now that the aberration was there, she had a chance for something.

She opened her mouth but her tongue refused to move. The sight of Desdomena letting her grandmother choke and leaving Zorion bloodied sat at the forefront of her mind.

“Care to join us?” Desdomena offered teasingly as if reading her thoughts.

“Would you allow me to join you?” Itxaro asked doubtfully.

“You can at least follow us. If you can not keep pace with a man with a limp, we can just abandon you.”

“Would Alvah still allow me to join you.” It was only the aberration that she was speaking to.

“He was the one that offered back at the grove. If I can tolerate you, Alvah most certainly will. If anything, he would be worried if I left you to the care of the wild.”

Itxaro slipped some venom into her words as she recalled a previous conversation. “Was it not you that recommended I abandon my duties and run into the wilderness only a matter of days ago?”

“Was I?” Desdomena played innocent. “If I did suggest such a thing, I would have recommended that you did so alone. Not with a burden in your arms. But you would not listen to me if I did though, would you?”

Desdomena meant for Itxaro to escape from Eneko, not escape with him.

Itxaro lowered her defenses, all she had left was a mere formality. “What do you have to gain from my company?”

“Entertainment,” the aberration answered bluntly. “And a reminder that Alvah is not the last sane human.”

What was Desdomena’s measure of sanity? Itxaro not sure if she herself could be considered sane anymore. She was ready to make a decision as Desdomena made her fully aware would have led to her meaningless demise.

“If we are done mincing words, let us go. The longer we stay here, the longer Alvah must wait and I am starting to think we are being inconsiderate of that. Come follow me.”

Itxaro did not have much time to regain her bearings as Desdomena ran into the woods. The aberration did not move at the speed of darkness but stayed at a pace where Itxaro struggled to keep up. Seemed Desdomena knew just how fast to move, staying always at the furthest edge of the young woman’s vision. If Itxaro tripped or fell, she thought she might never see her again.

However, that proved to not be true. To no one’s surprise, Itxaro did need to stop to clean Eneko, much to Desdomena’s apparent annoyance and impatience as the aberration circled back for them.

“He is going to be your responsibility,” Desdomena stated, rolling her eyes. “Can you even feed him?”

“I will find a way,” Itxaro insisted.

Itxaro, as midwife, knew a formula. Most of the mothers in the village avoided nursing their children to avoid growing attached to something they intended to throw away so Itxaro did it all.

Desdomena tried to rush her but Itxaro made the aberration wait. By the time the cleaning was done, the aberration was strangely silent and calm. When they resumed their course, it was at a leisurely pace.

The aberration took the lead yet walked wordlessly beside Itxaro. The silence was not ominous but after interacting with Desdomena, the quiet felt unnatural. She focused her thoughts on what made the inhuman’s current demeanor seem so wrong.

Then she remembered how Desdomena claimed she went back to witness what occurred with Atp’mte. It was strange for Desdomena to not speak of what transpired. It seemed more likely she would dangle the details in front of Itxaro, taunting her.

“What happened?” Itxaro finally asked. “Atp’mte left so that means it took someone. Who did it take?”

Desdomena’s lips stretched into a wide knowing grin. “You do not need to know.” One of the forces that compelled her to leave with Eneko was that there were secrets kept from her. The aberration twisted the thorn in her withholding. “A mystery would be better. You can believe whatever you please. You can think the best or worst happened.”

“But I should know,” Itxaro asserted firmly. “It was my decision to leave with Eneko, I should know the consequences.”

“Consequences are often long after the choice is made,” Desdomena replied dismissively. “Who knows how many died not knowing the influence of their legacies.”

“If you will not tell me, I can ask Alvah,” Itxaro informed her. It was not as though Alvah would have a reason to hide such a thing.

Desdomena bristled and glared at her. “You do not need to bother him over such matters.”

Itxaro took a deep breath. “Then please tell me,” she pleaded softly. “Who was it?”

Desdomena’s reddened eye glowed her sharpened smile was as cruel as the venom that dropped from her words. “Your father,” she answered with pleasure.

The world spun around Itxaro. She clutched Eneko too tightly and he began to cry. She needed to sit down.

“I thought after all that happened this night you would have become numb to surprise but I suppose you still have spirit enough to still care,” Desdomena observed.

Itxaro steadied herself on the ground. “Did... did they force him?”

“No, he took responsibility for his daughter’s crime. He traded one life for…” The aberration took a moment to count. “What would it be now… fifty.”

Her people doomed themselves. With only one adult male, all it would take was one hunting accident and they would cease to be. Even all went well, they could not continue the system forever, not anymore. Their blood would thin. It would take generations but it would still occur. She ruined them.

The aberration rested a hand on her shoulder. “It is too late to save him but it is not too late for regrets.” Desdomena knelt brushed a finger against the knife’s sheath at Itxaro’s side. “It is still not too late for revenge.”

Itxaro knocked away Desdomena’s hand. “You are wrong!”

The aberration did nothing to conceal her amusement. “About what?”

Itxaro remembered her choice. “I can not regret a choice I did not make!” Itxaro swallowed everything, sealed it away and locked it as far back in her mind as she could. She buried it all beneath the numbers. “I did not choose one for fifty. I chose fifty-one for twelve thousand.” She knew from the start she was sacrificing him.

*****

Morning broke before they reached Alvah. The sun rose, birds sang, and all the other creatures came out from hiding as if her ordeal never happened. Even the plants paid little mind to Atp’mte’s passage now that it was gone for now, their calls reaching her settled mind without difficulty.

They found Alvah sitting crosslegged on a rock with his eyes closed. Itxaro thought perhaps that he had been hollowed out like she had been but with a tap on the shoulder from Desdomena his eyes cracked open.

He smiled crookedly. “Good to see you.” He placed weight on his healthier leg as he rose to his feet. He stared at Itxaro with pleasant surprise. “Good to see all of you.” He held out his empty right hand in greeting.

The symbol of an eye carved into his palm did not bleed but the cut went deep. The skin lining the symbol was blackened as if bitten by frost. His glyph left an ugly wound.

“I would like my ribbon back, now,” Desdomena informed him.

Alvah held his wrist out and she untied it before tying her own hair with a bow. After that, she pressed her forehead and against his and a part of her seemed to skin beneath the skin. He closed his eyes and they both remained still for a long moment.

“I see,” he stated as they parted. He turned his eyes back to Itxaro. “Do you still wish to join us after all the misfortune we brought you?”

Itxaro tried to smile for the sake of smiling but could not. “I have few choices. I still can not bring myself to believe your approach is entirely right.” But he was not entirely wrong.

“You are welcome all the same,” he assured her. “If you are willing, let us seal it with a meal.”

Maybe his idea would have unleashed a flood of questions but it did at least kindle a spark of curiosity in her. “What do you mean by that?”

“In some places, it is customary to strike pacts over a feast,” he explained.

“Never a more place than where it is normal to hold a knife,” Desdomena added. “You have to trust someone to eat with them.”

“I doubt we can prepare a banquet but perhaps some cooked meat and water will do,” Alvah settled.

Itxaro agreed and soon enough Desdomena brought a bird. Alvah insisted that he cook for Itxaro for all the times she brought him food while she watched Eneko. Itxaro hesitated at first but if he wanted to poison her, she had already poisoned him twice. It was time she showed she trusted him and whatever fate befell her, she earned.

The meal came out a bit strange. He used the local herbs well but prepared it in a fashion unlike her people’s, bringing a different flavor to it all that she would have appreciated more but she barely tasted anything,

“Why are you so quick to let me join you?” she asked after taking several bites.

“Merchants rarely traveled with only fellow merchants and pilgrims did not keep the exclusive company of those on the same pilgrimage. What matters is the common route that is shared.”

“I do not know where I am going,” she informed him.

“Then you can part from us once you decide on a destination.” He put away his food and placed his empty hands in front of himself. “But let us begin the ceremony and we can contemplate such matters as we perform it.”

Dread crept into her heart. “What ceremony?” The last ritual she partook in did not end well.

“Three questions all traveling companions should ask each other. I can ask first then you answer and you can repeat them to me once I am finished. Understood.”

The dread resided with a sigh. “Understood.”

“Where are you going?” he recited.

She frowned as she took a long moment to think. “Anywhere but here.”

“What is your purpose?”

Her frown straightened away but her words remained somber. “To find another way to live.”

“What should I call you by?”

“Itxaro.”

Itxaro placed her hands forward. “Where are you going?”

“To the other side of the world,” he answered confidently.

“What is your purpose?”

“To live a life worth living.”

“Should I call you by?”

He offered his hand. “Alvah.”

Alvah directed Itxaro to repeat the questions to Desdomena. The three placed their hands together in a ring before Itxaro brought Eneko’s tiny arm into the circle.

To that, Alvah held out his arms to Eneko. “I can hold him for a little while. You have done enough.”

Itxaro looked to the child in her hands and then to Alvah. She held her breath as she passed the baby to him.

Her whole body felt light. She finally had a moment to rest. Desdomena urged her to sleep while Alvah stepped westward.

The man gestured to the distance for the child. “That there is your home. Maybe one day when you can walk on your own, you can return.”

Itxaro’s eyelids grew heavy. By the time she woke, it was noon. It was a short sleep but one she needed.

Alvah was sitting with Eneko. He returned the child and explained to her still half asleep self that they were to journey until evening. He also mentioned something about making a carrier for the baby. What was important was they were prepared to leave once she was.

Itxaro gazed westward as if the trees would part to reveal her village. The familiar sounds of the plants told her how the forest paid no heed to her leaving. She had no place there.

“Desdomena was being cruel with her rhetoric,” Alvah said as he returned Eneko to her. “It was common for a general or monarch to have to choose the many but time is cruel. If one must make a similar choice again and again, it is inevitable the dead would outnumber the living. That is why we are fortunate to not have warred with ghosts.”

Itxaro nodded half heartedly but gave no other reply.

“We are not military leaders or rulers nor do we know the future our choices lead us to. You should never have been burdened with such a decision but in such times those choices come to us all the same. It is better to make decisions that you think you will regret less as that is what you chose, not the future.”

Itxaro had done enough rationalizing. She would not absolve herself of what she was responsible for but what he said push something back and begin tugging at something else in her heart.

“Thank you,” she replied graciously.

Alvah began to walk, leaning on his walking stick. Desdomena, however, lingered with Itxaro for a short time.

“Remember that I spared everyone in that grove even after you tried to sacrifice us because you were our host,” Desdomena stated. “But we are no longer host and guest. We are equals now. If you ever, ever betray us like that again," her eye wept blood, "I will kill you."