I had not walked the desolate lands beyond Ossary since I was brought there. To be leaving that place was harrowing. To be leaving with death and ruin behind me was nearly unbearable, knowing there lie a great distance of more ruin before again there would be life. The Dolomites may have been bizarre and unfathomable, but they provided for me, and they were the only family I knew besides Kendra. I was immeasurably relieved to have her by my side and not laying under a collapsed storehouse. When I look back on that sad flight over the grey dunes of Rotaru, I remember keenly how I clung to her with both body and heart, but not only for her, but also for myself, as caring for her kept me from thinking of Anassa's corpse and the hundred arrows piercing her. I remember envying Asher ever more.

I was greatly indebted to the Vandals. Because of them we had ample food, water, heat and light. What we lacked was people. The hurt of loss was intense in their eyes when we would make camp. They had more equipment than was needed for our meager band of survivors, and they would all wince visibly when they caught themselves pitching tents that weren't needed, or preparing more rations that we could eat. I felt especially sorry for Dolores. Her brother had been a great comfort to her when her husband died, and now she had no one who could provide such close love. I went to ask her if Kendra could seep next to her, supposing that she might take at least a small amount of solace in that sweet girl's company, but she shook her head before I could even ask the question.

"She needs you, and no one can replace Oscar or Tyr. But thank you, Victor."

There were only four tarrasquin. They made a small camp a little ways away from ours. I went to them and thanked them for staying true to their contract, and expressed my regrets over them coming to harm. The smallest of them, about the same size as myself, seemed to be their leader. He spoke in words I only partly understood, but to the best of my understanding he apologized for his colleagues abandoning Ossary and the Dolomites to invaders, and swore himself and his three. I think he said brothers in the familial sense, to atoning for his company's failure. When I questioned him for information on our attackers, he merely shrugged, and suggested the Dolomite's may have drawn unfriendly attention with their strange behaviour. When I asked how his fellow mercenaries learned of the oncoming attack, he swore he didn't know.

I wanted to sit with them a little more, but I heard Kendra sobbing, so I went to her. She was in our tent, near the border of the Vandals clustered tents and mobile heating torches. I thought it brave of the tarrasquin to camp so far from the rest of us.

The morning was bright but cold. The Sun glowed pale and yellow, lighting the was across the dark sands for many miles. There was a faint silhouette in the distant haze, but we were too far to see clearly, so I fixed my gaze on a deep ravine that looked like a knife gash in the ground ahead of us.

"We'll have cover on both sides," Dolores said.

"And many caves to hide in," said Nokan, one of the Ossarians. He was a thin man with soft brown skin and slanted eyes, and while slender, he looked deadly. His wife too had a capable look. I saw no children with them, though they were of age to be parents. I decided not to ask any questions of anyone in my company other than those that pertained to our immediate survival. To that end, I had so many questions that I did not know which to ask first. Nokan answered one of them without me having to ask.

"We know our way around the islands," he said. "We were both born in Hokkanto, and have travelled all our lives."

Dolores smiled a little. "Oscar and I have been to the continent. That's where I met Tyr, my husband."

The Ossarians seemed unmoved by Dolores's loss. I was unsure then how to feel. It seemed I should be jaded, as I'd experienced to so much death in my life, but Dolores was kind to Kendra and I, and seemed too good a person to lose so much so quickly.

Amidst my own grief and shock there came to me a sense of awe, hatching from an egg not unlike the one the dead tyfloch mother clutches at now. I set up my writing station in the top chamber of Clarion's highest spire so I could peer into her eyes. They are frozen tight, but not from rot or death; from determination. I gaze too into the hole of her broken egg, sad that I missed her child hatch. I would have loved to have been there to welcome him to the world. I would have first warned him not to fly until the sky had been completely cleared, and told him of all the brave people who feel in the relay to get me to the terminus. I would have shown him his mother, and all mothers, who devote their very lives to their children, and how they have taught me everything I've ever needed to know.

Dolores was speaking with her fellow Vandals and the leaders of the Ossarians. I sat apart from them, happy to hear Kendra humming, though her voice was weak and made me worry. One of the Ossarians mentioned Thirty-third Day, the greatest of the Magnacities. I saw it my mind, looming and immense and silent in the dark. I wanted to go there.

Days later we were nearing the sword slash of a valley. I was given the task of walking ahead of the train with a bright lantern after passing close to a sleeping nimravus without waking it. Also, Kendra had recovered some more of her former mood, even singing softly on occasion, and so she was not in need of my immediate presence. She seemed content as long as she was near either Dolores or Nokan and his wife.

As for me, my head was on a swivel. Besides my general unfamiliarity with the world outside the sanctum, I was deeply worried what creatures might be dogging our trail. The abominations contained in the asylum could have escaped, for all we knew, and they would doubtless be hungry. And here we were, a train of brightly lit refugees traversing the warscape with elders and children in tow.

When we reached the valley, I nearly feinted from its size and beauty. What seemed a thin slash from a distance was in fact a gaping chasm. Two great tears ripped open like teeth, and seemed to grow by miles with each step I took towards them. When we stood near the edge of the sword wound, as I called it, I saw that its descent would be the most difficult task I had ever undertaken, and I was very worried about Kendra. The easiest path down, according to the Vandals, required rappelling a forty foot drop. Two of the more venerable men went first, then the equipment, and eventually there were only myself, Kendra and Dolores, who went last and proved to be an exceptional climber. Once we were all on the long, narrow landing, we took what equipment we could load on our backs and did our best to conceal the rest, then we made our slow, careful way down the path.

I asked frequently of our destination, as it seemed to me there had been a unanimous concord between both parties. I hadn't seen the terrasquin for at least a day, so I began to worry over our safety on that count as well. I asked Nokan about them and he sneered.

"Their brothers betrayed us, so I imagine they left out of shame."

"Maybe our destination doesn't appeal to them," I said, hoping Nokan's reply would include where we were going. Instead he said nothing, so I asked him directly.

"To the end of this canyon. There's a torchlit road on the other side that leads to a coastal hub. Beyond that, I imagine we will all go our separate ways. The Vandal woman seems to care about you and your little songbird, so she'll probably take you with them."

"I want to go to Thirty-Third Day," I blurted.

Nokan gave me a confused, sideways glance, then smiled and gestured for me to look up. When I did I gasped. Our torches were bright, but the canyon was so immense that our light only teased at what lay above and below us. I saw foundations jutting outward with spears of coiled iron poking through in a pattern like thatch. Bent beams and walls of steel, spires of stone and half crumbled effigies, all coming together in a cacophonous mausoleum.

--------------------------

Turk paused his stalking to rest while I wrote this chapter. He was too far for me to clearly see his face, but I sensed something different from him. I thought to sit by the mother and touch her hand, remembering Asher when I last held his. But I'm not ready. I still have more to write. I will hold her hand, though, when I'm done. And when she's collapsed into salt, then I'll go to my friend.

The White Fire Birthed in the Void

A dove of diamonds once lived in the sky, hovering with its grand and deadly wings flapping slowly. From its feathers came winds of such force to level empires, but Acanthis knew her strength, and kept herself back so that by the time her gale overtook us, only enough remained to lift the spores of dandelions. In my dreams I would see that sacred bird sickened, drained of the light shimmering within her diamond bones until a milk white corpse twitched intermittently in her place. A force of purpose emerged within me in the sword wound northwest of the Dolomite sanctum. It wasn't anything conscious, or even remotely human. It was animal mechanical, an algorithmic pulse in my groin that cursed me with the perverse knowledge that I was chosen. Say what you will of me now, in time you will see what I've seen.

And if you doubt my tale then walk in my steps and see the holocaust I so narrowly outran. See it by the light of the Sun now that by my hand the scar tissue over Tarthas is being peeled back. And know that Tarthas screamed when those first stones were knocked loose from its ceiling. Ah, Turk, how you prowl. Come down now and end it. Does he wait for me to finish my account, in case by some chance I missed a step and the pale glow in the sky is merely a stream of bile, and not the mercy of the Fates? If that be the case, study my words closely, and find the piece I overlooked. But I think I succeeded, and Turk hesitates because he doubts the nobility of his purpose. I do not. He has as good a reason to kill me as there could be, and I will only feign resistance to offer sport. Were I to go limp and let him cut the parasite from my spine then he would be invalidated. Better I pose as a resistor, so that he can limp back to Elvedon with pride. He deserves that much. He deserves to forgive himself for his cannibalism.

Forgive me this digression. I slip into solipsism when I'm away from the egg, and I've been writing on my seat atop the high wall.

There. I have risen and returned to the tower chamber where the mother holds her cadaverous vigil. She has gone soft now, spongy and porous. I fear touching her, as I'm not yet ready for her to float away as Asher did. Now that the egg has cracked open I need her. I need some promise of spring to shield me from winter's breath, or I might go and challenge Turk and be done with it. I have, after all, finished the tale for the most part, having begun in Haven, the port city where I would live and study the deeper myths, and learn to wield arms in earnest. But these early days will give much meaning to my story, and so I will do my best to resist the urge to tempt the prowling panther to pounce. I will write in this dark chamber where the faint light of the feathered serpent grows stronger every day, beaming in pale and cold from the hole in the tower's broken ceiling. The dead mother is fine company in these final days of mine. She still clutches her egg, though her child has fled and she is dead. Could there be a more apt witness to the dead things that will soon do battle in this dead city? Let her watch my lifeless fingers pen the birth of Arda's final renewal, while the dead man walking haunts my peripheral vision. Turk is my hourglass, and the tyfloch mother my surrogate heartbeat.

Among Foundations

Longway was a large man with two lazy eyes whose apparent wits seemed well matched to his gift for carrying heavy things. He was kind to all, easily frightened, frequently baffled yet rarely confused. Most of all, he was never lost. He never forgot a path he once tread, and had an uncanny ability to find his way through unfamiliar terrain on the darkest of days. Now and then a child would stray past the torchlight wall and it would be Longway who found them and brought them back. His main purpose was aiding me and the lesser service porters at the fungus vats. There the Dolomites would guide us in the boiling of various compounds that would simulate flavor, so that the Ossarians would be even more than already bound to the adepts. The food would then be poured into vast pans where they would congeal, have a thin crust baked over them, and then be doled out to each family according to its size or behavior. Longway was the strongest man in Ossary (though I suspect his strength came more from leverage than from muscle), and would be my greatest help in carting the barrels of rations to the distribution house.

He was screaming, and as he screamed I dozed, half in dream, half fixated on the prickling feet of a centipede crawling along my skin. It had found its way under my clothes, and so I felt every piece of its body as it crawled serpentine from toe to calf to knee to thigh to testicle to abdomen to nipple to shoulder to neck to face, and then bunched up in my hood and squirmed there against my bald scalp for what felt like a terrifying eternity. The most gruesome feeling came when its face hovered over mine. I felt its feelers dancing over my lips and eyelids as its head swayed from side to side, its sharp jaws grazing my chin with each tremulous pass. All the while Longway cried out in hideous agony and fear, while I lay there entranced by the centipede. Its hooked back legs were dragging lazily along my chest as its forefeet tapped along my face, then it spiraled into a profane ouroboros within the hood of my robe, which I thought would protect me from such things were I to sleep with it over my head.

What I regret most, and surely this will shock you, is that Longway's screams did not motivate me to rise in the slightest. It was not until his screams died down that I became concerned. The centipede may as well have been the hand of a lover, so enraptured with it was I. Eris's trembling kisses never held me so still. But while the man howled he was alive. While the man cried out he had spirit. While the man wailed he was well. Then his voice began to die, and I began to care, so I slipped out of my clothing with a rare agility that I once used to escape Rouge Adept when he went mad in a previous reckoning, and just as then I wormed my way out of my garments and kept out of reach of the pursuing pincers. Then I peered into the dark and gripped the glistening red serpent just under its head and held it aloft. It twisted vigorously as a rope with a climber at its bottom, then coiled around my wrist while its legs struggled to scratch and puncture me. Its back legs dug into my elbow and raked at me until I mustered the courage to face my disgust over crushing it in my hand. Stomach quivering, I re-robed and ran towards the sound of Longway's urgent panting.

Kendra saw my hand and rubbed it clean with that granular mash the Vandals bathed with. We had a perimeter of torches set up, but the burrowing leech had come from a hole beneath Longway's bedroll where none could see. Torreg, a Vandal, had cut Longway's shirt and peeled it back. The leech's tail had almost disappeared into his naval, and some of it could still be seen bulging under the skin of his bulbous belly. Without thinking, I asked for a surgical knife, which Dolores was quick to hand me. I then made my incision and retrieved the leech so deftly that Longway barely even winced while I was pulling it out. Dolores then drizzled a clear gel onto the cut I made and gave the poor man some tea made of strong sleeping herbs.

"It will have befouled his innards," said an old Ossarian woman.

I shook my head, then held up the leech, which I had killed the same way as the centipede. I pointed to what was left of its face, a horrid mess of curved teeth and its two burrowing horns. I showed that its mouth dripped no blood.

"Their bodies are made of filth," the woman insisted. Again I shook my head.

"Only their sting causes infection. The mucous over their skin acts as a disinfectant, preserving their hosts alive while they feed and nest."

Now we see why I felt compelled to come back to write these moments, as I have accomplished my task and have the luxury of reflection. At the time, I assumed the frightened looks from the Ossarians were directed at the burrowing leech. That thought was ridiculous, for such horrors are commonplace in Tarthas. I was a myopic youth, unaware of the dark world around me and though I knew not to speak openly of the work I did for the Dolomites, my discreteness came from pride, and I lacked perspective. From the perspective I have since gained, I can now imagine the same look on my face if I were to see a boy of ten and four expertly slicing into a grown man and extracting a parasite with no signs of squeamishness. I would wonder how the boy learned to do this thing, and what else he had learned in secret service to the beings I had once foolishly thought of as benevolent providers.

Archetypes

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Longway was able to walk, but when he tried to carry anything his stomach bled, so we were forced to move more slowly under the dispersed burden the big man had shouldered. I had always pictured Atlas as a muscular, beautiful man with piercing eyes under a severe brow. But seeing the weight Longway had carried by virtue of it being laden upon the backs of the group had me wondering if Atlas were not in fact a fat man with a gentle, stupid face. I'd never paid him much note before, as he had given me the same slack jawed stare as every other Ossarian. But now I was seeing that that was simply how his face was shaped, and so my heart softened towards him, while further hardening towards the others. When this generation took root above the sanctum, I imagined they looked upon me strangely because they were new, and from a far land where humans looked very different from me. But a voice from the past warned me that the Ossarians had never been my friends. Longway challenged that presentiment. When I spoke to him, his face turned to my voice a little more quickly than it did to others, and his two lazy eyes lifted a little in the corners.

We were on the floor of the canyon and treading very carefully over soft sand. There was a mass of rock with the bones of an old city cantilevered over our heads, conveying to me an immensity to my world that I had before not realized. I craned my neck and gawked at the layers of domiciles and infrastructure dangling overhead as I walked. One house appeared to be suspended by metal ropes, its door swaying with every breeze on distraught hinges. I thought I heard footsteps in the crevices above us, and heard hushed talk of pursuers. It was to be expected, especially with the largest of us wounded. Very eager to know all I could of our situation (mostly for Kendra's sake), I slipped behind a large outcropping, slowly dimmed my torch to nil, then fell in behind Dolores. I did not hear much, as she looked directly at me though I knew somehow she did not see me, but before she could silence her partners the name Jadus was spoken. It struck a chord with me, as if I'd heard the name of a close friend in a large crowd. To my knowledge I had never met anyone by the name, even in passing. It seemed the feeling was merely an echo.

"We need you to shine that light," Dolores said, half scolding, half worried. I turned on that light.

"I wanted to hear," I said. "Is Kendra safe?".

Her face turned sympathetic, then hardened. "Not now. We need to move as quickly as we can."

I then inquired about this Jadus figure, and she said simply that he was a captain of thieves. I then looked for Kendra, and saw her humming softly while walking next to Longway. He was clearly improving, though still not fully so, and the thought occurred to me that he would serve best as a guide in the dark, rather than as a beast of burden. I made the suggestion to Dolores, but she was inclined to trust her own scouts and keep me in the van, so I spoke to Longway personally and he agreed to walk beside me. I wanted Kendra to stay further back, but there was no keeping her from Longway's side.

We made camp under the shelter of the hanging city, keeping as close to as many walls as we could. Only the increasing cold gave any clue to when it turned night. The ruddy light of the Sun was far hidden, as was the sallow glow of the moon; dim lights at their brightest, hidden by earth and sky. The light we had was artificial, pale green torchlight summoned by ingenuity out of need so dire it felt primal. Tarthas it seemed wanted us dead, but we refused.

A guard was set about our exposed flanks. A stout old Vandal named Kobb led the effort. He spoke fondly of Oscar and Tyr, and inferred that he was their mentor in some way. He had taken on a fatherly aspect to Dolores, though she had become their de facto leader.

Three nights in we found no place with less than three fronts exposed. We decided to keep moving through the night, as all in the group seemed well and strong, even poor Longway. As we marched we found pieces of the city had tumbled down onto the valley floor. Heaps of stonework and metal frames sprawled out for hundreds of feet in some places. Kobb suggested a deep nook among a high stretch of rubble for a campsite, but Dolores felt it best to keep moving while our strength held. Kobb was wary of the idea, but conceded, and so we were greatly fatigued and in a far worse location when our stalkers came upon us.

We had three fires, and Kendra and I sat near Longway and his family. It surprised me to learn that he had one. He'd always seemed an orphan to me, but there he was, his five younger siblings and all their children gathered round their big, gentle, slow faced patriarch. The children were asking for a story, and Longway, whom I had previously never heard speak, recited a poem of a forest of 'true trees'. My throat grew tight when he spoke of clean, healthy Sunlight cascading in mottled patterns over moss that rested harmlessly on the trunks of these wooden sentinels. I would eventually go to Elvedon and see such trees. Origin pines and alders and oaks and willows, branched instead of capped, dappled in the Sunlight and softly whispering, the cherry blossoms spreading their spring snows.

As Kendra and I set up our tent, Dolores came by ostensibly to offer help. She asked me what I thought of Longway's tale.

"There has to be a hope," I said after careful thought.

"You've seen the Four Winds at your memorium."

I nodded.

"Do you not know the full tale?". Her face became stern and expectant.

I shook my head. Though I'd poured over every book in the librarium with diligence, I realized in my young heart that for all my knowledge I had little understanding.

"Pazuzu is a demon," Dolores said plainly.

I stood mute. The storm caller had never been more than a picture to me, but her constant gaze made me wonder if she expected me to have an existential aneurysm over what she thought would be a shocking epiphany.

"This is your hope," she said, three fingers touching my chest where I was branded. She then left for her tent, and I laid in mine, pondering over confused feelings while Kendra hummed herself to sleep, curled in a ball by my feet. I fell asleep after an hour of contemplating Dolores's words. When I woke I was numb, but soon a massive blistering of pain alerted me to the knife in my gut. I screamed, and my voice was drowned amongst the screams of the Ossarians. The Vandals were fighting unknown assailants, the Ossarians were being dragged into the dark, and Kendra was crying over my blood soaked robe.

I felt a sickness within the stabbing that spoke of poison, and a clenching sensation unlike any I'd ever known, not in my own body or in another's. I began to sit up so Kendra would feel reassured. I tightened my stomach, held my breath, then curled my fingers into fists as I pressed down with my arms while lifting my bleeding torso. I may as well have been lifting a mountain, but the mountain rose into the air by its own will once I'd moved it a mere inch, and for an instant the pain radiating through my chest was relieved. Then I was on my feet and the pain returned. A forceful hand pulled the knife out and blood poured like water from a spigot. Kendra screamed, and I heard another voice, strangely familiar, that seemed to blend with, emerge from, and engulf from above the worried words of Dolores and Kobb.

The sky is black above a luminous shore. Sand the color of cream is blown in spirals so that the seabird and mayfly are hypnotized. A ripple forms along the horizon and a curl of white splits the sea from the sky, though both are black and infinite. The white curl ripples over itself and grows in size as it nears, bringing the distance close to an unseen eye that floats above the luminous shore. An infant cries to the eye from a hidden cave beneath the sea, but the eye does not respond, nor does it seek the infant, for it is enraptured with the black spaces that converge into oneness each time the division hurdles forward.

In time the infant is silent and the eye looks downward. There it sees the glow from within the sand, and that it comes from each individual grain, but so great and confusing is the schism of the glow that the eye ruptures and is nearly destroyed. As it struggles to continue its existence, it forgets the fragmentary essence of the glow and though the knowledge still exists, it is temporarily ignored so that as long as the eye is looking downward, the glow appears to come from somewhere deep beneath the sand and emanates from a singular, monolithic source, portioned out in like manner to each grain as a unifying gift. But when the eye turns away and looks again into the void that is the undivided sea and sky, it remembers the individual glow of the sands, and it paints the void with that memory, so that in the sky above are stars, and in the sea below are the glittering scales of fish.

When I woke I thought I was alone, and the thought was so terrifying that I wept. But it turned out I was surrounded by people, though they offered little comfort with their cold, suspicious stares.

Whispers

Omen Brought led the few faithful tarrasquin, and knowing that the valley was full of cutthroats and thieves they shrouded themselves as their fellows had when they attacked. Cloaked by a combination of esoteric gadgetry and their own saurian gifts of low movement and changing skin, they prowled along the edges until the highwaymen made their move. Casualties were unavoidable, but they fought bravely, losing one of their own, and our losses were fewer than they would have been. Still, Longway's death was a blow. I gladly would have taken his place. But somehow I was spared, though a knife had pierced my heart. My chest burned, and each breath came with a cost, but I was alive and in a day's time fit for travel. The Ossarians were alarmed and gave me a cautious berth, and Kendra fussed over me constantly. The Vandals seemed more somber and attentive toward me, Dolores in particular. As for me, my prime concern was that my brand may have been marred. It was not. My healing skin had regrown the wraithkin mark in cleaner detail than its own surface, even over scar tissue.

We were huddled in the great hall of an old castle that had fallen from the cliffside and landed somewhat intact. The floor had once been a ceiling, and we'd made bedding and blankets out of old tapestries, of which most had rotted away. Omen Brought made the rounds regularly, asking if there was anything needed that he could send his followers to acquire. I had questions burning holes in my brain. I felt sweat misting my brow from the agitation that had taken me, for now that we were safe and stationary, our doughtiest guards returned to our sides, I was free to wonder, and I had to know what had befallen my home. I eagerly awaited Omen Brought's approach, rehearsing in my thoughts how I would pose my questions. But each time he came near to me he was distracted and turned away. After a while I grew impatient and went directly to him.

"Thank you for your bravery," I said with a bow. I did my best to draw pity from him, wearing my sadness boldly in my blue, monochromatic eyes.

Omen Brought stared down at me thoroughly unmoved.

I was persistent. "You distinguished yourselves by your integrity."

Silence, and a slow retreat.

My shoulders sank, and my head drooped in honest grief. "I want to know what happened to my home."

The tarrasquin warrior grunted a brief reply, his voice rushed and muffled as if feared to leave his mouth and was eager to be safe again behind closed jaws.

"Your sires grew strange. Drew many eyes. Some were greedy. Some were worried. Worried, kept watch, saved who they could."

"What could any thieves have thought to steal from the Dolomites?".

Omen Brought was done with me, and as I turned sullenly away I thought of the great stores.of renewable food the Dolomites produced, and the relics they drew power from for the transmuting of flesh.

Dolores found me in a quiet corner where my dejectedness beckoned shadows to enter through my pores and nest in my internal fibres. I did not want to be seen, but I could not hide from Dolores. In the dark she may as well have been a man; as tall and wiry hard as she was. But her hand on mine was softer than a dying breath, and she looked at me the way a mother did a stillborn child.

"Did the tarrasquin tell you anything?".

"That you and Oscar came to protect us. Thank you.". I looked up at her. "Do you know what our attackers wanted? Did they want our food? Did they wish to enthrall the djinn? Were they afraid of the patients in the storage vaults breaking free?".

I heard Dolores exhale before she replied. "You may have touched on all the reasons your fathers drew unfriendly eyes."

Then came my tears in full, far less than a common boy's but greater than I had done. "Why slay the excrutiants?".

Her arm drew me close. "Because they are cruel, heartless filth. But it may have been a kindness to those poor creatures, regardless of their murderers' intent."

The truth in her words splattered against my wall. "Omen Brought would not say who attacked us."

"They were his former company.".

The plainness in Dolores's voice was oddly comforting. Her unplaited tone gave me the space to process that the traitors were moved by simple greed, an intrinsic component to a desperate world. My anger then was not directed in so base and materialistic as those who inflicted harm, but on the conditions of the world that drove them to such extremes. I made many assumptions then, especially regarding the faithless tarrasquin, and stowed away my rage for a time when it would serve me. For the rest of the night, I sat within earshot, far from the sight of eyes, hearing what I could of the tarrasquin talk. Setting one of the Ossarians to work questioning them helped. Asking her what had become of her husband, I learned he had been one of those culled when their's was an emergent need. I may have commented that the tarrasquin were clearly more alert to the behaviour of the masters than we, and may have kept back knowledge that could have saved many of us. She pressed them for information while I lurked, and throughout the night I learned a few things; namely that while greed was brewing in a few of their hearts, mostly they acted out of fear. The Ossarian woman seemed content to believe they were afraid of only the Dolomites. I remembered the name Jadus, and wondered if there were not more players in this foul game. This is the harshest rub of living under a darkened sky; one can never see more than a few cubits ahead.

We moved with much more speed the next day. Fewer bodies to protect meant the tarrasquin were free to roam in wide arcs, and we felt secure knowing they were prowling on our behalf. Also, those too weak to travel quickly had not survived, a sad boon but one we took for what shadow of hope it gave us. They were dead, we were not, and so there was meaning, and victory. Welcome to Tarthas.

The worst of it was the noise. With eleven Vandals and nine Ossarians, we had fewer torches and so much less light. Longway was sorely missed, as he had carried a great deal of gear, in particular tools and parts for multiple shelters. When we slept, I volunteered to sleep under the black sky so that others could be underneath tents. I took every watch I could manage the strength to take, in part to sate my own curiosity at what lay about us, and in part because I'd become afraid of sleep. I feared the hypnosis of the black distance and the white ripple it threw at me, and I feared the feeling of a knife in my chest and waking alone. Kendra listened to me and slept inside a tent with a Vandal woman who Dolores and Kobb frequently consulted with. She had a motherly look, and was capable yet not a fighter or prone to play the role. She seemed more focused on Kendra than Dolores, and a hardier companion than any of the Ossarians save Noak and his wife, Millet.

As we pressed on we heard sounds that could have been anything. At times we heard feet, at times we heard roars, at times we heard cries or screams, and sometimes, when our hearts were darkest, we heard the squelching sounds of beasts feeding. The noises echoed off building and cliff, and the wind would howl high and shrill when we needed peace the most. Near the end of the canyon we saw a stair lit by pale torches. It zigzagged in short bursts for a third of the canyon's rise, then went long and straight until it rose again in a gradual curve, then ended steep and serpentine. There were two arches on either side of the stairway landing, which was reached by a wide ramp guarded by a row of winged grotesques with torchlight eyes.

The Ossarians and some of the Vandals walked more quickly when they saw the landing, but I held back. Something worried me. Perhaps it was the two arches flanking the landing. They were huge, their openings completely dark, and behind them were walls and ceilings that ran into the walls of the canyon on either side. I wanted very much to be out of that place, as we were running low on food and water, as well as resolve. The noises were getting louder, and we hadn't seen the tarrasquin for the better part of the day.

I was elected Azazel, and shakily approached the landing while the rest waited on guard a dozen yards back. I had never felt such terror before, not even when Oscar died defending me from creatures I could never name. Then I saw the monster. I knew not what it was, but I could see its size and what appendages it would attack me with. These dark arches were so densely devoid of light it seemed the space within them was solid somehow. I held my torch tightly with both hands, but I did not ignite it, for I feared being seen, and hoped for the dark to be an equalizer between me and whatever hid inside the arches.

As I drew close I could make out some detail in their design. The light from the group glinted off the walls, and glittered across the sandy floor. The arches were of that design that could either be very new or old beyond reckoning. The smooth walled stonework of the time before the Fall was an art we had lost. If one deep enough beneath the sediment of history, one found structures made by the means we have today, only they were grand beyond what we today can conceive. These arches were of that ancient build. Each stone was hard as iron but incorruptible, and weathered by ages of pain. Past each arch was an array of buttresses that ran upwards to nearly the top of the canyon, capped at their zenith by turrets. I could not make out the specific designs, but the roofs of the arches were lined with grotesques. One of them had luminous eyes.

When there is malice, there is an omnipresent and fetal sort of courage. What I felt then was a cold emptiness, and the constant, nagging anxiety that brings, compounded with being exposed to all the horrors of Tarthas for the first time in my life. As I crept under the left hand arch, feeling my way through the dark by stretching out my foot with each step, I felt my heart pounding so hard I feared it might wake whatever slumbered in there. I wished more than ever to not be seen, and to be a creature of raw ether, devoid of the vulnerabilities of flesh.

Somehow the chamber inside the arch was softly lit. I could only make out the barest shapes of things, and still frequently tripped or stumbled, but major obstacles were on the edge of sight. There seemed to be a faint green light reflecting off of anything I looked at, but I could not determine its source, and my eyes did not adjust to it as they did a naturally dim room. For a brief time my confusion over this ghost light distracted me from my anxiety, and I found myself completely taken by a large mound of grey stone that seemed to have fallen from a great height. There were no engravings, and as I ran my hand along it it felt surprisingly supple, though still very firm. The surface was cracked and pitted, with sudden, jagged rises that ran like scars in every direction. A piece of rock ran like a pillar tilted downward, then bent as it neared the floor.

I climbed over it and put my hand on the mass behind. A metal chain was coiled between the two pieces, attached to an iron plate somewhere in the tumble of heavy stones. I yanked at the chain, but the links were so large and heavy I could barely move it. I poked my head between the joints of the cross fallen stones, but the chain seemed to be coming from somewhere that was somehow above ground, in spite of the pile of stone having fallen. I sat against the pillar and leaned my head back. I was aware of the group waiting outside, but wanted to discover more of this pile of rock's nature before ushering them in. Did it hide some trap, or otherwise harmful device? Did it mask a crevice one could fall in? It was the only feature in the chamber, other than some large basins near the back corner, and a hole in the other corner that was walled off by a ring of alumidine that rose to a grown man's chest. A putrid smell came from there, so I warned everyone to stay clear of it. I had exhausted my list of contrived reasons to delay waving the group inside, and had come face to face with the fact that I was afraid of leaving the enclosure of that space between the mass of stone and the fallen pillar.

I felt slightly more at ease when we had made a camp of sorts. There was light in the room, though as little as we could get away with. There were broken digits and scraped elbows that needed to be tended to, along with bruised and aching hearts. The Ossarians, especially the three children that had survived, were especially weepy. Kendra sniffed a little, but was mostly herself. The Vandals were busy scouring every space I had ignored, and a few of them ventured out and into the other arch. They said they found nothing but an enormous skeleton. Though they insisted the bones had long since been picked clean, we unanimously decided to remain where we were, despite the rank smell that occasionally wafted from the far corner. When all were settled and I no longer needed to be vigilant, I allowed myself to sleep until I was woken for my watch. I felt deeply indebted to the Vandals, and wanted to be a part of every effort to show my gratitude. And so a man named Yamcha shook me awake, and I positioned myself between a pair of broken keystones in between the two arches. Obscured by the darkness, the stones, and my dark grey robe, I stood guard for the remainder of the night.