"False Prophet Semon," the Inviolate said, trotting closer on her strider as Versal hoplites surrounded Semon. Archers stood watch at a distance, ready to feather anyone who might try to come to his rescue.

The Inviolate's short black hair revealed a single pierced ear. The grip on the long knives on her hips looked worn from use. A long, white scar ran from the edge of one eye straight to her jaw line on the left side of her face. Combat veteran. Unmarried and thus likely entirely devoted to her work. Semon rubbed his own single stud and the long-healed-over piercing in the other. If he had just managed to stay married and settled down in Jadeye, he wouldn't be in this predicament.

The Inviolate lifted her light-absorbing Vial as though her distinctive black uniform wasn't identification enough. When she spoke, only the right side of her mouth moved and her voice came out as though crushed out of gravel.

"False Prophet Semon, I am Inviolate Taesal. You stand charged with inciting revolt, treason, heresy, blasphemy, and other charges too numerous to recount here. Bring the rebelling menials back into the fold, recant, and forswear the Mother publicly and I've been authorized by a Tribunal of Ancients to grant you a quick, painless death." The woman shrugged and glanced at the hideous, distended woman looming over the Versal troops. The malproportioned mancer clicked her teeth against each other loudly. "Refuse and I can promise you nothing."

Semon breathed deeply and shook his head. How would it due for the Mother's First Disciple to die on his knees? He rose slowly , lifting his head high. The steady calm of his voice projected far stronger and carried far more resolve than he'd expected it would. "I never asked the menials to revolt, I simply gave them a hint of something they'd never tasted before: hope. I cannot recant for all I am is the Mother's Voice. Since I do only her will, only if she wishes silence can I cease speaking her words. Thus, I cannot forswear her. Without her light, my world would grow too dim to sustain me any further. No death you can inflict could possibly match the agony of hope extinguished. To live forever in the dark after seeing the sun is more than this old man could survive."

He looked to the Versal troops about him, making eye contact with several before they began looking away. "Know the Mother welcomes and forgives all. No servants, no slaves abide her presence for their are no lords nor masters. No Dyanst nor Verser stands above, no menial or Wretch below her. All stand as equals, all worthy of her. All free to live, love, leave or stay, speak or hold silent, and, most importantly of all, to choose. You here, too, can choose."

Reaching into a pouch, he produced his rope of 'nails. "Follow me out of the fearful, smothering shadows cast by the Black Court and you'll see the path laid to the Mother."

None of the warriors would meet his eye. A few glances flickered towards the Inviolate, but then fell to the dirt.

The Inviolate sighed and shook her head.

"Nice try, heretic," the Manser snarled, stepping over the troops. As she extended one hand, the fingers elongated, the skin peeled away, and the bones fused into sharp, knobby claws. "Rega and Asta wants you alive, but you don't need that other eye or all those fingers to live, do you?"

Semon closed his eyes and lifted his arms wide. "Mother, help me find the way to serve you better through my death as I did in life."

He felt the mancer leaning close. Smelled the stench of her breath and felt her too-long tongue brush across his cheek. "You're not going to die here quickly or cleanly, old man, just wish you had."

"Hey!" a small voice shouted.

Semon's eyes snapped open and his head whipped towards the sound. Mud-mouth stood at the edge of the nearest rice paddy. He waved at Semon. "I found-"

A bowstring twanged and an arrow punched him out of sight. The other archers cheered and congratulated his shooter as they directed their strider over to see if they'd killed him. The Mancer took Semon's hand with her normal limb and held it in her mouth, peering into his eyes with a look full of madness. She seemed desperately hungry for his reaction. He felt only sadness that he couldn't have done more.

"What's that?" "Wait!" "Shoot it, shoot it!" the archers called as a slithering blue light blurred out of the paddy, weaving about too quickly and erratically for the archers to draw a clean bead on whatever it was. It hurtled between their strider's legs, spooking it. The beast half-pranced, half-stumbled sideways. They loosed a few wild arrows, then a roaring eel-like god exploded out of the water. Its crimson and gold scales gleamed. Teeth long as knives bared as it hurtled through the air and crashed into the archer's strider.

Simultaneously, Strygen sprinted out of the elder's house. The heel-length silver wire he called hair coiled into killing points that punched through the unarmored backs and necks of the nearest Versal troops as he darted between them. Unprepared to face a god and a furious dusa at the same time, the remaining Versal troops pulled back to form a phalanx. Cheering villagers charged in from all sides with threshing poles, nets, hunting spears, and simple clubs. Hurled darts, rocks, and the odd fishing spear flew into their ranks. The miniature phalanx dissolved as the villagers crashed into it.

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Fire roared in the Seamery, casting burning silken threads aloft. They drifted through the mist, setting it alight like a thousand dim, floating candle wicks. Larger bits landed on huts and quickly set them ablaze, filling the air with an even thicker smoky, spark-traced haze.

The god had bitten the strider cleanly in half. It swerved to swallow an archer whole then bit the top half of another clean off, weaved, chomped, and swung its bone-crushing, hut-leveling body about erratically. It maimed soldier and villager indiscriminately. A charge of the other strider plunged two spears into its sides, but it simply snapped them off and slithered madly after the strider as it galloped full-tilt off into the bamboo, the lancers on its back holding on for dear life.

The Mancer and Strygen entered a furious duel, the dusa's hair darting, feinting, deflecting, thrusting, and enwrapping limbs while the mancer shifted killing forms with terrifying fluidity and ferocity. Tendon whips, bone blades and talons, a shield of layered ribs, muscles bunched in one arm for scything blows or coiling in her legs to launch her at Strygen with impossible speed and distance. The shape of her violence shifted form as quickly as the dusa's hair did.

Chaos reigned in the village.

Amidst it all, the Inviolate slowly and deliberately dismounted then walked towards him. As she reached him, it struck Simon that the two of them formed a surprising locus of calm amid the maelstrom of death and violence. She stopped close enough to stab him, but instead she smiled ruefully. "This didn't turn out as planned."

"Things rarely do I find."

"You were supposed to be captured, forced to recant, then 'escape'," she said, pausing for a moment before 'escape'.

Semon quirked an eyebrow. "Oh? Escape to where?"

"Anywhere. Or almost. I bring a gift from Rega."

"Rega, the Ancient, offers a gift?"

"Is there another Rega you know of?"

"Doubtful. I was questioning the gift not the name." Semon smiled and glanced towards where the shrine and barracks would be through the blinding fog and smoke. "Is it the third figure you rode with? An old Disciple of mine? One of the imitating Mother's Prophets springing up in my wake?"

"Nothing so mundane," the woman said. As the smoke thickened, they seemed to be alone in a flickering swirl of shouts, cries, crackles, splashes, and clashes. "Give me your word that I go unharmed from this and I'll give you a Valeer."

Now that surprised Semon. "A Valeer? A healthy, functional Valeer?"

"As much as those two words apply to them, yes."

"Why would Rega do that?" Semon laughed, in part at simple relief to still be alive and intact, in part at Rega's audacity. "Ah... I don't suppose the Valeer knows the way to any Ancient Thorns, does he?"

Taesal smiled with what over her lips could perform the expression. "There may have been some oversights in her slavanting."

"But I'm sure she can find Fraction and Isolate verses fine," he said as it dawned on him why they were going to let him live.

"Please. They call themselves Resistance Against the Grevious Ancient Coup now."

Semon sighed and shook his head. "Idiots."

"Agree there. Do we have an agreement otherwise as well?"

He looked out at the raging, confusion of battle. "I can't make any promises you won't get eaten by the god."

"I can't make any promises Jegga doesn't gobble a few bits of you regardless of the orders I give her either. I'd recommend leaving before we find out."

"Sounds like we're about even then," Semon said. He held his right hand out, palm extended. "Deal."

"Deal." Taesal held her palm against his for several seconds. "Come to the shrine tomorrow when this is all calming down and you can 'kidnap' our Valeer."

She turned to leave, but he grabbed her shoulder. Her eyes flicked down to his hand, then rose to a level look at him. He quickly released. "Ah, well, I don't suppose I could ask one favor?"

Something large splashed in the nearest paddy, spraying them with fine mist. Taesal glanced the direction of the sound and put a hand on her knife, then laughed gruffly.

"Ran two lances through it and didn't even slow it down, what're these little stickers going to do?" She turned back to Semon. "No harm in asking, even if I'm likely to refuse."

"Any chance you can let these villagers go? They're only doing what I told them to do. If I hadn't come here, none of them would be dying."

"Wretch Plague would be here soon to kill most of them even if we didn't." She looked at him with something like understanding for a moment, then shook her head slightly. "You know I can't let them live after this."

He sighed. "I figured not."

Pursing her lips, she toed a bloody helm lying nearby. "I'll definitely need a couple days to gather more troops though. They'd certainly be too thinly spread after this to track anyone down if they fled into the heart of the bamboo forests."

He tapped his forehead as he inclined his head towards her. "Thank you."

A grunt and she was gone in the smoke.

It took him several minutes to find Mud Eater. The little boy lay with his legs submerged in the rice paddy, his face pale as he clutched the arrow jutting from his gut. Sadar, the strange, shaven-headed kid who'd latched on to them as they fled Heaven's Tread, squatted at his side. Sadar looked up, talking to himself just outside the range of Simon's hearing as he always did. Semon knelt and took the Mud Eater's hand. The boy gripped it weakly. "Did the Mother come?"

Semon nodded and brushed his fingers across the boy's forehead. "Yes, she's here. Just on her way to see you now."

"Good. I'm still so hungry," he said and died.

After holding his hand for a minute longer, Semon stood wearily. Sadar looked at him and his mumbles grew loud enough to be heard, his version of talking. "...and I ask you in return: how many people just died here? One boy, but how many children, grandchildren, and on? One arrow slays dozens spread across centuries. I've just come across Ocyl meeting with an Inviolate near the ugly woman statue. Ocyl is meeting with a who? An Inviolate, don't you listen?"

There was more, but a waft of oily smoke trail it into a fit of coughing then back to obscure mumbles as the lad continued to talk to himself. Sadar hitched his tunic up to cover his nose and mouth, the boy's eyes as bloodshot as Semon's had to be.

They stumbled away from the rice patty, eyes stinging in the smoke and coughing.

"Mother help us all," he muttered. "It all comes apart around us and you are our only hope that something lies on the other side. Guide me, O Mother, that I may help them find their way to you."