It all took time.

Traveling verse to verse.

Finding gods.

Killing them.

Every populous verse fought back.

Futilely.

Taking time.

Too much time.

Too slow.

Aj needed allies

and knew where to find them.

It finally understood

their endless war

against Aj's creators:

the Mon.

"Lo! The end times come upon us!" Vanyen wailed, clinging precariously to the marble body of some woman whose head had long ago broken away. Desperation granted Vanyen strength, drove her on as she regaled the dissolving crowd arrayed in front of the Mother's villa. "The Prophecy says the Dynasty and its evils shall fall, brought down from within and without when the last barbarian Dynast Partakes at Sunset's set! The Ender of Verses comes!"

Her stomach bit at her painfully, her head throbbed, throat ached. In contrast to the endless, shearing pain of her mangled leg from her fall while the serpentine god had passed, she barely felt them. Using the pain as fuel, she redoubled her efforts. Desperation flooded her as she spotted the jackal Semon approaching with his disciples to sniff out the crowd. Vanyen had to get them before he stole them all away.

Vanyen cast her words into the fading crowds like fishhooks, hoping to snag a few of the curious or bored. She brushed her stained, emerald-hued dress self-consciously, wincing as she ran her fingers through her long, tangled, black hair.

"Where you get this Prophecy then?" an old woman said around her pipe.

"It is the Imminent Prophecy, the one guiding that secretive order in their millennia-long manipulation of the Dynasty," Vanyen shouted, voice cracking.

She looked hopefully among the handful gathered about her. "Anyone have a bite to eat?"

A man laughed and spat. He snorted as he walked away. "Prophets, pah. Hardly piss without hitting one."

The old woman squinted at Vanyen. "How'd you get an Imminent Prophecy? They keep their lips closed tighter than a virgin's twat."

A ragged-looking mother trailing a clinging cluster of small children shot the old woman a dark look, covering her childrens' ears as she hustled away. Vanyen watched them leave with panic, hurrying on before she lost those few still listening.

"I stole into their compound in the night and overheard two talking, caught every word of it in spite of the notorious lengths they go to keep us from learning it." She left out the bits about not knowing whose compound she'd climbed into and that she sought their larders not their predictions. "One said 'the barbarian must be stopped before she destroys it all' while the other said 'fate is fate.'"

"Sounds 'bout right," the old woman said. "What else they say?"

Nothing, because they heard Vanyen and she ran for her life. "The prophecy said the Savior of Dynasties would come and with her a great reckoning."

"What'll she save the Dyansty from? Last I checked they were in charge. Seem pretty saved to me."

Vanyen turned away from the old woman to raise her voice and arms theatrically, turning heads and slowing the flow of passersby. "A great reaping shall come to take the unholy and unclean!"

"What's that, a great raping?" a teenager called out as his cluster of rowdy fellows passed. "Hoped we might have one of those when that Dynast bared herself for us. That what you're offering?"

Vanyen tried to ignore their laughter and the singsong chant of Semon's disciples across the way as they echoed his words in chorus, a trick that always drew in an audience. Straining, Vanyen raised her voice to the edge of breaking. "The reaping shall come upon all equally, those rich in Ebon's Blood or the Pale alike, from Verser to slavant. Only those who believe shall be spared!"

"Believe in what?" The old woman pointed towards the Shrineway with her pipe. "Run my hands along the brailled prayers along the walls and rub my feet across those in the cobblestones, donate what I can to the Blind Priests when times's good. Ain't seen much come of it."

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Several in the crowd murmured in agreement and more stopped. One thing Vanyen learned from Semon: nothing got people to stop and listen like people stopping to listen. The number of faces now staring up at Vanyen flustered her and she wracked her mind for something new to try out before she lost them like she always did.

"Though a barbarian, the Mother of Exiles spoke true: after the Reaping, all shall be made equals. A time of great turbulence shall wrack the Book and every verse tremble at its touch. Those alone who believe in the Mother shall find redemption!"

Nods and murmurs.

A thrill rushed through Vanyen until she saw Semon and his disciples pushing their way through towards Vanyen's crowd. Suppressing a groan, she hiked up her threadbare skirt hem, gesturing at the ugly mass of discolored swelling around her knee.

"I saw a great vision when the god touched me and threw me onto the Wicker Way! I did not believe at first but when it saw me in its eye it judged me, found me full of sin and lacking in all else." All she'd really seen in that terrible, slitted eye had been hunger. "Yet I would gladly pay this price with every limb! I was judged but the god's judgment washed my sins clean and made me its mouth piece, left a vision of the Truth I now share. I feel no pain for the Mother's strength sustains me!"

For emphasis she slapped her swollen knee. Almost passed out at the pain. Jadeye spun. Struggling to stay upright took all her effort. For a moment, she feared she would succumb and lose all the momentum she'd finally gained.

When the spots in her vision cleared, Semon stood next to her statue, edging in to steal her message. With his spotless golden robes, flowing white hair, and ring of kneeling disciples, he looked every bit the holy man. One milky white eye that "peered into the future" completed the look. "Good people, though a lowly porter before her accident, Sister Vanyen does find some hint of the Truth: a great change indeed comes. Lo! Always we might see its source if we but turn our eye to see."

He gestured towards the misty end of Heaven's Tread and the Weeping Falls. "The day comes soon when the Ascendant unleash a flood to wash away the Dynasts grinding us beneath their heel and elevate the true believers to immortality in their stead! Forgive good Vanyen here for she struck head along with leg in her fall."

Vanyen flushed at the laughter this elicited. She thrust a finger at Semon

"I saw you in the god's vision, false prophet Semon!" She brushed her knee more carefully this time and gestured to the sky. "Blasphemers shall be among the first to be struck down. The childhood blindness that took your eye mirrors your blindness to Truth."

Semon remained composed, but his jaw clenched, his good eye shooting her daggers even if he held his body in a masterfully relaxed state. Blessedly, before Semon could counter, the old woman spoke up.

"I've heard you touting that Flood nonsense for years, Semon Goldtongue. Jus' a few months ago didn't you and your lot hide up on the Wicker Ways for days waiting fer the end t' come?"

Vanyen leaned back against the headless statue to watch Semon try to worm his way out of this one. With perfect equanimity, he nodded to the old woman. "We prayed to the Ascendant on high for three days, asking them to spare us a while yet. Thanks to the devotion of my followers, The Great Ones granted us a reprieve that more might hear the Word before the end comes."

A few in the now-sizable crowd nodded, but the old woman spat. "Yer mouth runs like the Falls, grows a crop of imbeciles ready t' lap it up."

She turned to Vanyen. "When jus' a girl I met a man god-touched like yerself. He told me I'd live five-years-and-fifty after bearin' three children. Here I stands seven-and-fifty, with three o' my eight birthed still breathing. Living proof the gods know the future, that is!"

Many called out their agreement.

The gray-hair pointed at Vanyen's leg. "When'd y' see all this Reaping business comin' t' pass?"

"The vision was cloudy and..."

The crowd grumbled.

"Cloudy at first! Then it cleared as our doom fell full upon my sight. I wept, gnashed my teeth, and prayed for deliverance, but the god had spoken."

Even if she went hungry again, lost this gathering as she'd lost all the others, the look on Semon's face at that moment would be worth it. But when she turned to those gathered, she saw only rapt attention, many holding their breath. Thoughts raced.

"When?" someone cried. "Tell us!"

"The Reaping already stalks among us!" she shouted. "I can show you the way to redemption in the Mother, but there is no time left to lose."

Anxious shifting in the crowd accompanied murmurs, everyone looking about them as though expecting demons poised to maim and murder. Instead, the First Chant of Inoculation rippled through, the Mudra of Cleansing rippling through as all in sight reflexively spoke the words.

The crowd parted, revealing a woman wearing Inoculist's red robes.

"The Chants all fail! Save yourselves, we cannot stop it," the woman shouted as she stumbled, eyes wide and hair wild. "The White Kiss comes again!"

A moment later, a pair of battle striders thundered down the street, people diving from their path as the lancers on top drove their weapons to pierce the woman's body. One lance broke off leaving her corpse impaled in the street as they galloped away.

A hundred voices shouted at once:

"Why'd they kill an Inoculist?" "The White Kiss? It's made up." "Dynasts kill whoever please, even Inoculists now!" "Anythin' t' make our lives more miserable." "What can we do?" "A sign! The Reaping's upon us!"

A desperate mass thronged Vanyen, hands reaching imploringly as they begged for her wisdom. Even Semon stood back and waited, his expression troubled.

She raised shaky hands for silence, wincing and growing woozy as their jostling bumped her leg.

Vanyen mentally scrambled for what to say, casting about for inspiration. Something tangible they could focus on, something to give them peace of mind. Semon trembled as her gaze rested on him. She swelled with the heady thought that she could have him torn to pieces with a word.

No, too short lived. A crowd this size would need more.

A pack train of rotters slumped in their harness beside a warehouse, one collapsing completely even as she watched. Its blank wooden mask clattered. Singling them out might be satisfying, but the crowd needed someones, not somethings to blame.

There! A pair of Wretches padding unobtrusively towards the body of the dead Innoculist, coming to secret the body away while it was fresh enough to sell to a gonist or at least the Crowmen.

"Them!" she shouted, pointing. "The Wretches take our broken children, handle our dead, clean the channels down which our refuse and effluent flows. They are unclean. The Wretches carry our doom about them like lice!"

As the crowd roared and rushed forward, Vanyen felt a pang of guilt, remembering only then the Wretch who'd found her after her fall, helped her down the Wicker Way, brought her water and scraps of food. Remembered a Wretch leaving bread to her family after her father's death nearly starved them when she was a child.

The rotters brought a better idea to her and she shouted, "No, even worse are the Crowmen! They profit from corpses, they bring the new Kiss. They want us all for rotters!"

No one heard.

The mob sprinted after the unfortunate Wretches. One managed to slip away and scramble off, but the crowd tore the other to pieces in heartbeats, the Wretch's screams tearing at Vanyen's heart.

She threw up. Wiping her mouth, she shouted futilely to calm the horde and bring them back, but the mob gathered momentum, charging off in all directions screaming for Wretch blood.

"They'll be back," Semon said, calmly. Only a few of his most devoted disciples stood by him, the rest swept up in the mob's frenzy. "I've seen this before, even been at its head a time or two if never at this scale."

"What do I do?"

"Let me be your First Disciple." Semon knelt at her feet as she stared dumbfounded. "Let me follow you and help you navigate this. Do as I say and we shall neither want for anything again. We have little time before the mob slows down and comes looking for you, for us."

"Do as you say? You tried to take them from me!" She shook with anger, fear, guilt, worry.

Semon remained calm. "Yes. I did. It was wrong. I see that now. Forgive me and accept my offer or be ready to have your own answers to placate your thousands of insatiable, fanatical new devotees when they return. Choose as you will."

Pain wracked her leg, her stomach devoured itself, and her performance left her completely exhausted. Though she'd never tell him, seeing Semon preaching with his utter confidence and strident passion when she was a child was what steered her down this path in the first place.

"Very well, what do I do?"

As he helped her down from the statue, he talked, calmly and smoothly laying out a plan. Vanyen felt hope for the first time since her fall, yet as she limped the nearly-deserted streets she couldn't help but look at the impaled Inoculist lying dead in the street and the revolting, scattered mess of the dead Wretch.

She faltered, nearly overcome by an overwhelming sense of foreboding, dread, regret. Fear and doubt overcame her, but Semon took her elbow and led her past it.