Aj moved precisely.

Awakening first in those verses

where few lived to interfere.

Yet even while focused purely on its task,

even alone in an entire verse,

killing gods took time.

As did awakening,

its strange kin

elsewhere

among the billions of verses

where its form

could not exist.

Aj ran a calculus,

weighed the demon's words

as Aj awoke

and hunted,

awoke

and hunted.

Would it be fast enough?

Had it started too late?

Would there be anything left

when it finished?

Adonissian walked a world strange and familiar. A world flickering with each thudding heartbeat. A world where he watched himself, screaming yet silent and powerless to change anything.

A young Adonissian sprawled beaten in a gutter, a crumpled flower ground into the cobblestones beyond his broken fingers. He awoke in bed, the first woman he'd seduced facing him. Startled, he awoke again to find the first man. Again he awoke, this time to a woman hanging from a rafter by a bed sheet noose. The first of the suicides he'd left in his wake.

"I'm sorry," he cried as they faded.

Somewhere, the child wailed. Scream after scream pierced his head, kept him from sleeping. Why didn't someone shut the kid up?

Adonissian's eyes cracked open to find he'd fallen from his bed again and lay on the filthy floor of whatever and wherever place this was. Vague memories of stumbling inside. He and Kass sick, Avani crying. Beams of light pierced the gloom from a cracked shutter. Enough to see Kass writhing on a dirty cot across the room. The room stank of piss, vomit, and smoke.

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"Kass, I need water," he croaked.

Everything fell away again.

In his dream, a crowd arrayed before him, their backs turned. Hassani stood at their front holding an otherworldly sword in her hand. Denault stood at her side naked and full of arrows. Both thrust accusing fingers his direction. The crowd turned in eerie synchrony. He knew every face for they plagued his other dreams. They all spoke at once yet he heard every word. Every accusation. Everything he'd done to them. Their marriages. Their families. Their lives. Every hand raised, pointing at him.

He opened his mouth to speak, but choked as Avani's 'pillar crawled out of his mouth. Gagging, he yanked it out and threw it to the ground, stomping on it as the crowd began to speak. He wronged them. Made them suffer. Ruined their lives. A hundred voices spoke at once. He understood every one.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he cried over and over. Bowing his head he saw pale little Avani kneeling before him, crying over the smashed body of her pet.

"I'm sorry." He reached a hand helplessly towards her. She looked at him with huge sad eyes and thrust a knife into his belly.

The blade twisted as he awoke, tearing him apart from the inside. He threw up a tiny dribble, dry heaved until everything hurt. He crawled towards his cot, every movement shooting spears of agony up his shattered arm. Only when he crawled onto the cot and lay heaving for breath did he sense someone moving. The pain piercing his head hammered deeper with each creaking step they took towards him.

"Water," he rasped, devolving into a fit of wet coughing. He gasped for air, drowning on land.

A wooden cup pressed roughly against his lips. A liquid prayer trickled down his parched throat. He gulped desperately, clung weakly to the hand that held the cup. It pulled away mid-swallow. Water splashed down his chin.

"More," he croaked. "Please."

"Talk first." A female voice, cold as iron.

"Hassani." Too tired to be afraid. "I'm sorry."

"I don't care. Tell me where my daughter is." Hassani moved into the fractured beam of light, one hard eye, brow, and a bit of cheek appearing.

"She's here." He gestured feebly about the room.

"She's not."

"She was."

"She isn't. Where'd she go?"

"I don't know." Adonissian's teeth chattered. He wrapped his arms about himself. "It's cold. Someone took my blanket."

"It's on the floor. Help me and I'll help you."

"Please, so cold."

"My daughter's out there somewhere in the damned Book and you want me to care?"

"Ask Kass." He nodded towards the other cot. "She may know."

A pause. "She's not moving. I think she's dead."

"Can't be dead." He squinted in the darkness. "Woman's like a cockroach."

"Doesn't matter. It's you I'm after." Through his haze of cold and suffering he heard the iron in her voice shift to weariness edged with sorrow. "The shopkeeper across the way said the owner of this room joined a gang hunting Wretches. Denault was right. It's all coming apart and my little girl's lost out there in it."

"I'm sorry. I had no choice-"

The slap almost knocked him off his cot. Pain worse than any in a lifetime of beatings.

"You bastard," she hissed, her face suddenly close. "You broke my life in half, stole my child, savaged my husband so badly I don't know if he's even alive, and in spite of all that my body's screaming to climb into that cot with you."

"I didn't know it would be like this," Adonissian whispered. "I was tired of the abuse. My father. My brothers. The girls I wanted. The gang that harassed me. When I saw my Master in the square offering a way out, I had to take it or die."

"You chose wrong." Hassani pulled away, the weary emptiness in her voice worse than her scorn.

"If I could bring your daughter back, I would. If I could tell you where she is or who took her I would." He realized he was crying, barely able to talk as he choked on twenty years of tears he'd never let fall. "I'm so sorry. I was good at it so I did it. It was wrong, I see that now. You're right. I should have killed myself back then like I was going to. Everything's worse for what I've done."

The strength of his sobs curled his body, his lungs rasping and straining with the effort. After a coughing fit left his hand smeared with red froth, he peered into the darkness for any sign of Hassani.

"End this. Please. I beg you."

Shivers shook him. He looked about for the cup, thirst and cold and pain competing to dominate his suffering.

"Please. Kill me," he whispered. The sinking certainty that she'd already left him pressed down on him.

"That's too quick an end for you," she said from the darkness. "Suffer and die."

As her footsteps retreated, his sobs returned, more feeble this time.

After a moment, he pried his eyes back open, squinting towards the dim outline of Kass's cot. "Kass? You there? Please. Water. I'm so cold."

Out of desperation, he sang a child's prayer to the Ascendant, surprised he remembered the words after all this time. The prayer squeaked out, broken when his shivers grew too violent, punctuated with wet coughs or gasps of pain when he moved his arm.

"Ascendant dwelling high... above... find this little... child below. Heal him of his pain... and woe. Warm him with your... light and sow. Some... little love and though... he mighn't deserve it, mercy and..."

"Dammit." Footsteps. The precious weight of a blanket fell over him. He clutched it desperately close. Wood pressed roughly against his lips and delicious wetness spattered down his throat. After some fumbling, a cool cloth fell on his brow.

As her hand retreated, he snatched it and clung, holding it tight to steal from her one last bit of human warmth and touch. She fought for a moment, then relaxed. They sat in silence.

"I remember now,” Adonissian rasped. “Thought it was a dream. Before we got too sick. A slaver asked me how much for her. Said Pale ones... fetched a fortune. Told him to go... fuck a Wretch."

"Where?" Hassani said intently.

"Said was heading... Fleshmarkets of Berujat."

Hassani's arm slipped from his grasp as she rose.

"Hassani!"

Footfalls stopped.

"Rega runs Ancients. She sent me... after you. Send Ghulen next. Monster. She wants it all... use Inro rogue... excuse to get it." He gasped for breath, trying to calm his panic as air barely wheezed into his lungs. "I sent message. What I heard. What you said. I told them all I heard... told... Earth too."

More steps. The door creaked. "I understand, I think."

"Hassani... last thing."

A pause.

"Thank you. Didn't deserve. But thank you."

"You're right. You didn't deserve it."

She was gone.

Huddled in his blanket, he sang the song again and again until he grew too weak. Every breath became a struggle until the effort grew too great and he gave up trying.