Sutha hadn’t much interest in the words Calvin had spoken. He was just another nihilistic human preaching divine ruin and the impending apocalypse. In Sutha’s experience, humans were quite fond of doing this. The ones that were smart were never honest, and the ones that were honest were never right. Mr. Cross was somewhere in the middle, and Sutha appreciated how predictable he was. She was happy to grunt, growl, and play the bloodthirsty monster in his quaint little schemes so long as his human vanity remained predictable. Today, something had changed. For some reason, Mr. Cross had agreed to run Calvin’s job. He hadn’t asked any questions. He hadn’t made any business arrangements. She was sure he had some deception in mind, but had no idea what it might be. For the first time since she had met him, he had done something unpredictable.

The way Mr. Cross described it, the job was simple. Somewhere in the unusually tropical highlands through which the Caravan Madison climbed, there existed a spirit. It had seized control of one of the caravan’s forty three members, and marched him off to a location unknown to fetch a valuable mineral that had fallen from the sky. To complete the job, the civilian had to be found and the spirit had to be arrested. As per usual, most of the work fell on Sutha’s shoulders. She was best suited to track down the poor, feeble minded human. She was best suited to restrain him as he led them to the spirit. She would also be best suited for whatever dirty work was sure to be necessary when the spirit resisted capture. She didn’t mind. Wrestling little humans was good fun.

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Sutha sat lazily upon her hogtied prey, turning his cargo over in her hands. This crystal was larger and prettier than the first. Sutha caressed each of its six glossy faces with her rough fingerpads. The tribeswomen with whom her mother hunted believed that the volume of truth that could be contained within an object depended on that object’s toughness. She wondered if the stone was the truest thing she had ever felt. She picked a pebble from the silty soil. It could not scratch the crystal. She tested the crystal against her ax. Its surface remained unmarred. She prodded her prey with it. The poor boy squirmed under her overwhelming weight. Waiting for her humans was tiresome work.

Sutha was certain Mr. Cross would abandon the mission. He would send gullible Elliot and mindless Rog to return the possessed boy to his family, and make off with the technology Calvin had so incautiously provided. She was wrong. When the rest of the spirit hunting posse caught up with her, Mr. Cross discussed the logistics of the spirit’s capture with the sincerity of a man invested. When she spotted an arcane apparition that could only be the object of their conquest, Mr. Cross approached it with the courage of a man possessed. Had he fallen under the spirit’s control? Had he tired of her companionship? Had he excluded her from today’s scheme because he intended to leave her behind?