Not boulders, Terrtles. They must have been in torpor or waiting in ambush or something, but when the man smacked the Terrtle's shell, it's head shot out in a blur and nipped his leg off above the knee. As the man fell screaming, the next nearest rock sprouted six limbs and a sharply-beaked head before rushing forward with a surprising and terrifying burst of speed. It crunched on his head only a second after he hit the ground.

Like sharks smelling blood, the other Terrtles nearby awoke. The warriors ran, fought, tried to climb trees, but mostly lost limbs in single snapping, crushing, crunching bites.

"Back up slowly," Eth said, as the Terrtles gobbled down limbs whole, then rushed in for more man-chunks, shoving and nipping at each other over the bodies. More than on Terrle lost a limb to violence from its fellows.

"Yeah," Aida said, trembling. "I think you're right."

When they backed free from the Grove, they spotted Ghillie busy plucking needles from a slew of fallen warriors. She motioned them over and they hustled, happy to put distance between them and the Terrtle grove. When they reached Ghillie's side, they gained a new vantage on the training grounds. Jaxe stood amid his Ferals beside the spike branch hazard, pacing back and forth and shooting glances towards the Terrtle grove or the rough area where Eth and Aida now crouched with Ghillie.

Then Ryk drew everyone's attention, sprinting out of the Tangle on the far side of the clearing. Aida's heart skipped several beats: first to see him still alive and second to see him spattered with blood. Broken arrows jutted from his shield and his spear lost the tip somewhere to reduce it to a long staff.

He raced to the collapsed tower, stomped on the head of a pony tailed man trying to pry himself out from the rubble. In a quick motion, he snatched up a quiver of javelins from a pole-pierced corpse, hurling them with fantastic speed at the jungle he'd just left. Aida couldn't even see any of the targets before they cleared the Tangle; as though Ryk hurled them at the trees and the men voluntarily rushed out to catch one in the face, leg, or chest.

Ryk jammed his staff into the broken tower at shin-height, snatched up a discarded spear lying nearby, and leapt to the far side of a grassy ditch as deep as he was tall. He stood their waiting, panting, while a dozen warriors slowly crept from the jungle, clearly not excited to catch pointy bit of death like their faster brethren had done.

So slow was their advance that Jaxe bellowed at them. "Kill him, you cowards, he's limping."

"There's dozens of us bleeding out in there," one of the men shouted back, thumbing over his shoulder towards the Tangle.

"Double his weight in currency then!" Jaxe shouted. He gestured towards a few of his Ferals and pointed towards Ryk since he stood only fifty meters away with his back to them.

The Ferals seemed not to notice the order.

"Fine, you damned rebellious cowards. I'll do it." Jaxe began walking towards Ryk, shouting again at the now twentyish men staring at Ryk from the edge of the Tangle. Ryk knelt to wrap a bit of cloth around his calf, wincing as he pulled it tight. "If I get to him before you do, I'll cut your hands off personally."

That got them moving again.

"He is hurt," Aida said, standing up and grabbing a sword from one of the dead warriors nearby. "I'm not going to hide here while he dies."

To her surprise, Eth picked up a spear and nodded. "I already know I can't stop you."

She glanced at Ghillie. Ghillie shrugged and shot off a bit of sign. You die, I die. So you don't die here.

When the three of them stepped out of the clearing, they saw Ryk hurl his spear at a man circling to his right, catching the man in the gut. Seeing him unarmed, the others shouted and rushed towards the ditch. Ryk turned and ran towards one of the lower, knee-height platforms.

Most of the men cleared the ditch, but the clumsier or more heavily armored missed and slipped on the slick grass. They tumbled down into the ditch, screaming and shouting as they disappeared from sight.

"Moved some unhatched eggs and cocoons from a few varieties of critter from inside the giant Terrtle to the bottom of that ditch," Eth said, tapping on Aida's fingers. As if on queue, one of the very blade-tailed creatures that had cost Aida a few fingers swooped up and dove into the back of one of the men who'd cleared the ditch.

"How? When?" Aida said, bracing herself as a couple of Jaxe Ferals noticed them and got Jaxe' attention.

"Those groups going into the turtle weren't all going for your 'turtle soup'," Eth said, grinning. "Paid well for the contents of very specific nests in there."

Meanwhile, Ryk stood at the center of one of the platforms. A football lineup's worth of men stood about it, looking at it warily or gingerly putting a bit of weight on it with glances at the one burying their ranged support.

Ryk laughed, planting his shield down beside him and holding the other arm wide. "Come then! Let's finish this."

"Another spear planted between some of the poles," Eth whispered to Aida.

"No spoilers," Aida said, but then her attention focused on Jaxe.

"Surprised you're not running again, Mother of Menials," Jaxe said.

"Couldn't leave my people alone," Aida called back. "For all I know you'd butcher them all just to spite me."

"Oh, I still will," Jaxe said nonchalantly. His voice echoed slightly as he spoke and Aida felt a chill run down her spine. "Just as Sava butchered all the slaves and everyone else stupid enough to follow you back in Berujat. When we're done with you and you're people, I'm personally hunting down everyone I find wearing a slave brand and carrying pretensions of freedom. Will rebrand them with my own mark and throw them back in their cages. That and every Wretch. Then every follower of your pathetic faith. They want to be martyr's? We'll make a religion of only martyrs."

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This drew a sharp look from Alerestro, but Jaxe didn't notice, busy as he was pulling his collar aside and armor down to show the strings tight around his throat. "Ah yes, we learned your little secret, my little barbarian. Pity you lost yours."

Shouts and cries of alarm rang out from the platform upon which Ryk fought, but Aida didn't dare glance away as Jaxe's company of Ferals fanned out to envelope them as they neared.

"If you have another plan, I think now may be the time to put it into action," Aida muttered to Eth.

Eth just nodded, reached back, and hurled her sword high into the air. It spun end-over-end, glinting in the sunlight.

"Mothers Militant, ho!" shouted a hundred voices.

Jaxe cursed and spun as a rough line of soldiers rushed from the Tangle. To Aida's surprise, Wreches loped among them, each hurling a fist-sized stone mid-lope just before crashing into the outside edge of Jaxe's Ferals.

"Damn you!" Jaxe shouted, his voice reverberating to killing strength.

"Stop him!" Aida called. She ran forward heedless of a handful of Ferals rushing to intercept her. She was vaguely aware of them stumbling and collapsing around her as Ghillie dealt death and paralysis to all comers, but she couldn't see beyond Jaxe turning the strings on her people. Then, suddenly, Ghille was on Aida, yanking her backwards off her feet by the scruff of her neck.

"Hey, what the-"

Just as Jaxe braced himself and his hum reached a resonance strong enough to rattle Aida's molars, Alerestro lunged forwards and ripped the strings free from Jaxe's throat. Cleft Hand slammed a knife into Alerestro's back a split second later, but too late. Instead of the channeled blast Jaxe had likely been planing to cut a swath of destruction through the Wretches and Militant racing their way, the blast turned into a good approximation of Aida's first scream back in Jadeye.

Ghillie flattened atop Aida to protect her, but the force of the blast still proved sufficient to tumble them ten meters back into the Tangle. The Ferals who had been standing plus the nearest Wretches and Militant didn't fare nearly so well. Those still intact lay groaning and clutching their heads or bleeding ears or rising to their feet groggily.

Aida's ears rang dully, all other sound driven down to a muted sense of sound pulses and waves without differentiation or meaning. When she looked up, Jaxe's Ferals were dragging him away bodily, the Dynast clearly as rattled by the unexpected detonation as Aida had been back on Jadeye.

Ghillie pulled Aida to her feet and patted her down, checking for wounds. She found a splinter of something in Aida's ribs, Aida herself only come aware of it as her Feral wrenched it free with a stab of pain.

"Ryk," she mumbled, shaking her head and turning towards where she'd seen him last.

Her eyes paused on a handful of Wretches pulling a writhing, bleeding-eared Cleft Hand towards the splintered platform. One of the Wretches found Ryk's broken-off spear in the pile and drove the intact end firmly into the heap. While he fought and pulled against him, the Wretches dragged Cleft Hand towards it and, overwhelming his final desperate attempt to break free, dragged him onto it.

Ryk stood leaning against his spear atop the platform, surrounded by bloody bodies. A few survivors discarded weapons and armor to sprint off into the Tangle, the Mother's Militant hot on their heels. Ryk broken shield lay at his feet and blood coated him. By its trickling flow here-and-there, too much of it was his.

"Ryk," Aida cried, rushing towards him. Eth reached him just as Aida did, the two catching him as his strength failed.

"Ryk! Oh my god!" Worse than his wounds was the blank look with which he beheld her. "Ryk, it's me. Aida."

"A hundred," he muttered, turning to Eth with no more recognition. "That number was important. All I remember."

"And Aida?" Aida said, feeling guilty that he lay dying and she selfishly wanted him to say her name.

"A hundred for Aida," Ryk said. His lips began to turn blue. Aida ripped a chunk off of her shirt to staunch his wounds, but Ghillie's hand lighted on hers. The Feral met her eyes, shook her head slightly.

Aida clutched him tight, sobbing.

Tears ran down Eth's cheeks as she took Ryk's head in both hands. "Now at the moment of death, comes birth. Here in this now do you lose all future nows. Here does the arrow of your memory reverse, its point burying in this moment. Now you become Imminent, Paragon. Now does your time here end... and begin."

As she spoke, Ryk turned his eyes to look at Aida, seemingly struggling to recognize her. "I was to do something great. Did I do it?"

"You were to die for love," Aida said. "I promise you and your hundred will never be forgotten."

"For love," he muttered, seeming to take some solace in that.

"For time. For a past full of futures," Eth muttered. As she pressed her hands tight on the sides of his head, a light flared in his blue eyes, burning the color completely out of them. His whole body jerked twice, then fell still.

Eth stood numbly, staggering off sightlessly as tears rained down. Aida clutched him to her chest and rocked back and forth until the warmth fled the body and the light of the One Eight's suns began to fade.

When she rose, she found Ghillie waiting, as usual. The Feral held out her closed fist and Aida held her own hand out numbly.

Strings fell into Aida's hand, the broken necklace chain mended with twine. She stared at them for a moment, then strapped them on.

Found them on what was left of Alerestro.

"Why?"

A brand on his shoulder. A cage.

"An ex-slave?"

Ghillie nodded.

"Guess he didn't trust Jaxe to honor whatever deal they made."

She looked down at Ryk. "If the Militant were here this whole time, why did he have to die?"

Ghillie regarded her with her pale-blue eyes for a moment. Imminent business makes sacrifices of us all.

"And Eth?"

Off to "collect the Dynasties".

"Jaxe?"

Ghillie held up one of her long needles in one hand and a 'nail in the other. In Stacks, Eth said.

"What's in Stacks?" Aida said.

Ghillie tapped Aida's strings, then the corners of her eyes crinkled. Him. Us. His death.

Aida nodded, thrummed the strings to life, and nodded. "Fuckin' A."