Chapter Fifty Nine

They rode for just over an hour, galloping for as long as they could, slowing to a canter to let the horses rest... crossed a fair distance. Helped when they knew they weren't going to have a camp at the end of their journey - Ayat checked, there were no fresh tracks leading out to the geoglyph, and certainly none which resembled the Scabrous' enormous horses. Nothing but small animals wandering vaguely... until the Scabrous arrive, at which point the tracks diverge, becoming united in their desire to get very far away as soon as possible. Carza wondered if the Scabrous had ways of limiting their contamination, stopping it from infecting the landscape. Maybe their horses consumed it on their way out of a region, maybe they were simply experts at retaining contamination while only rarely giving it out... maybe there was so much foundation stone in this place that contamination never took root. Just little pools, quickly devoured, mutants quickly slaughtering one another, and the remnants being killed off by bored nomads. Like Ayat had said - staying at a distance and firing huge numbers of arrows was generally a good strategy for most problems. Just over an hour of riding... and their horses, their clothes, both were stained a dull, sickly, jaundice yellow from the exploding masses of pollen.

Dustlands, Ayat called this place. The place of blue-grey grass was near the mountains, good damp soil, nice, but very cold. Dustlands were full of dry grasses that thrived in the barren wasteland that existed in the rain shadow of the mountains. The places near the mountains had streams and snowmelt to supply themselves, but out here? Storms broke against the mountains, never touched this place. Too dry. And so the dust built up and up and up, loose soil, dead grass, and pollen. Endless, endless pollen. At this point she was keeping her gas mask on to stop herself from sneezing her lungs out - not that she was very allergic, but with this much pollen? Even 'mildly allergic' would be enough to kill her. Probably. Might be overreacting a bit, but... call her petty (and she was petty), but she didn't want Ayat to see her sneezing until her face was puffy, her eyes were bloodshot, and her lower face was a mask of glistening mucus. You couldn't recover someone's respect after that, it was just impossible. She was speaking from experience there - wild sneezing because someone had decided to grow some awful flowers in a classroom had led to her becoming a bit of an outcast.

Amongst other things.

But the sneezing had contributed.

She was a social scientist, she could say this sort of thing. Social situations were technically her field of study, so...

So there.

Hm.

The geoglyph approached - a line of shining stones embedded in the earth, barely peeping above the dusty grass. These stones seemed immune to the pollen which hung like fog over the Dustlands, shining like silver amidst the yellowed haze. The world seemed sickly, and the geoglyph seemed... well, pure. Ironic, given the creatures that possibly venerated it. Into the horizon the stones stretched, one after the other, perfectly evenly spaced. The stones differed in small details, but overall, were remarkably constant - like they'd been carved into the right shape to attract light, to shine beautifully for the sky above. No idea what shape it formed. It wasn't carved in a place surrounded by hills - indeed, it was placed on the top of a wide, flat pseudo-plateau, there was nowhere higher to view them from. Maybe seeing the geoglyph as the sky did was taboo - maybe it was considered shameful and a nexus of bad luck. Then again, maybe the problem was not seeing it as the sky did. Down here, it was meaningless - there was nothing to determine, nothing to suggest. Could be nothing but random lines, or a bird, or a man, or a horse (most likely) or some huge battle scene. No clue. From a hill, one might glean part of it. An arm. A wing. A sword. A single flash of the mane. But never the full thing.

Maybe they were opposed to seeing it improperly. Total incomprehension was better than partial comprehension accompanied by wrong conclusions. Right now, all her conclusions were equally wrong, she couldn't settle on a single one. But with even a sliver of information... she might come to some utterly wrong assertion. And maybe that would be more insulting than anything. Like an artist who drew something, admired it, then burned it before someone else could see it and misinterpret it. 'Ah, the wind undulating in the painted grass there is symbolic of the struggles which-' and then the fires started before more insults could be lavished.

The worst punishment for an artist was misinterpretation, after all.

Right. So... the flasks needed to be set up. Ayat took some in one direction, she took them in another. In some places there were higher concentrations of stones, lines overlapping at pivotal points... flasks there should blow up quite a healthy amount. The flasks would be linked with a length of cloth torn from an old shirt of hers, along with... well, a few more shirts. The rope was going to be long. Soak it in lamp oil she had left over, then use it as a makeshift fuse. Just like in the mountains, and the fact that she was using the same strategy to save someone else she cared about from a group of profoundly inhuman mutated creatures was not lost on her. Hopefully this wouldn't pan out the same way... no, the explosions back then had worked, technically. No other ancestors had attacked them, which qualified as success in her eyes. So... she wanted this to go half different. Successful explosion, same as in the mountains, but a very different final outcome. Everyone surviving, not just herself. They spread them out evenly as possible, trying to deal the most possible damage. Not a huge number of flasks, really... but it'd have to do. The ideal here was to cause a lot of very visible damage, to send up some plumes of dust, the usual. Deface and disgrace. Best case, the Scabrous came sprinting over hollering in fury. Worst case, nothing happened at all. Possibly, though, they might take a bit to find out... either way. It was one plan. The other plans involved throwing bombs directly into the camp. Maybe if they shot that lamp, they could do something... for all she knew, that red fluid was ludicrously flammable. Absolute worst case, where nothing worked, nothing succeeded, they couldn't kill a single Scabrous outrider...

They just tried to kill Kani, and then themselves. Deny the Scabrous any more prisoners, spite them in their last moments.

She just hoped she'd have the strength to do it. Last time she'd tried, back when the Sleepless had attacked, she'd just... failed. Couldn't follow through whatsoever. Turned out alright in the end, and she was glad she hadn't succeeded, but there was always the risk that the same inclination would emerge and ruin things for her. The idea of dying slowly and painfully of mutation in that miserable little cage, it...

Anyway.

Anyway.

The flasks were set. Ayat and Carza saddled back up, their horses grumbling slightly at this silly game of on-off-on-off they were playing, and cantered back to a safe distance. Then it began. No more matches. Ah. Nuts. Right. Uh... she turned to Ayat.

"Fire?"

He immediately reached into his pockets and withdrew a... huh. That looked almost like... it was a tiny piece of card with a number of wooden strips inside, and... he took one, struck it along his saddle, and a flame burst out. Carza's eyes widened. No. Impossible. How.

"Where did you get that from?"

Ayat shrugged.

"West. They make loads of them, I just started carrying them around..."

...she'd almost thought of the desert as some strange fairytale country, full of oddities and primitive notions. A land that time forgot, perhaps. But... they had matchbooks? She'd heard about them, but thought they'd never catch on. No satisfaction in striking a match, much more fun to shatter a glass bulb and let fire bloom from exotic chemicals. Nothing could compare to that, and... and oh Founder, she wanted to smoke. She wanted so smoke so very, very badly. She'd stopped smoking for a while as her supplies ran dry, but the addiction hadn't faded. Just quietened. Smoked Horns of the Ancestors with Kani from time to time. And dreamed of the days when she'd have as many boxes of cigarillos as she liked. And that quiet flash of flame was enough to awaken all of her old cravings, and they were strong, like they'd never gone away...

The match was dropped. The fuse was lit.

For a second, she watched as the flame raced away, burning slowly - the fuse was long and the oil was limited, so she'd soaked small portions, just to keep the flame going. Bursts of speed, bursts of slowness, a little pulsing rhythm like an arrythmic heartbeat... and then things went a bit wrong. Just a bit.

Oh, the flame didn't go out.

The flame was doing very well.

Too well.

The grass was very dry.

Ayat watched, nodding calmly as the flame rapidly spread into the dust-dry grass, turning the pollen into swirling tornadoes of sparks which vanished a second after ignition. It started small, a blade here a blade there, and before she knew it, it was moving faster than she could walk. Her horse backed away, nervous. And Ayat looked calm as the Founder himself.

"...uh."

"Yes. The fire is spreading well. We should move, no?"

Carza looked at him like he was insane. Because he was. Completely, irreperably insane and she would accept no contradictions on that point.

"...everything's on fire."

"Yes. Your plan was very successful."

She blinked.

"...I didn't plan this, I was just intending to... you know, light the fuse."

He frowned, and once more she felt stupid. Hated this.

"The grass is very dry. Any fire... I thought you were planning this. I thought it was a bit silly, personally. So much fire, and if the wind shifts... but if you have a plan, then you have a plan. I will not contradict my sister's friend."

"I... but... what..."

She pinched the bridge of her nose, then swore under her breath when she remembered the gas mask.

"Let's just move before the wind changes and we all die."

"Wise."

They started at a canter, and broke into a gallop a few seconds later. Because the fire was spreading very quickly now, consuming the fuse completely - from burning cloth to black powder in a matter of moments. No point worrying about the fuse at this point, the fire would take care of the job. Spread and spread and spread... they'd wanted a distraction, and now she could see a thunderous black cloud of smoke marching into the sky like a rampaging horde. They had enough of a distraction for the entire damn steppe, for crying out loud. She was a victim of her own success. She was simply too brilliant. Sometimes she underestimated her instinctual brilliance, and in underestimating herself made herself look a fool... oh, if only she recognised her genius and hot hot hot hot hot. She could see firestorms starting on the steppe, swirling pillars of fire, oh, Founder, she'd started a wildfire, she'd started a natural disaster, the amount of ash she was making would be buried and become a stratigraphic layer of the steppe, an event which archaeologists would puzzle over for generations oh Founder this was going to be her largest legacy.

'Now, the so-called 'Carza Layer' is a layer of ash on the steppe, a desecration of natural beauty, evidence of a calamity which could only be inflicted by a murderous warlord. When asked about this 'Warlord Carza', ancestors contemporary to her life simply burst into peals of mad laughter, driven insensible by fear of her name. Theories that Carza was a very scared rat wearing human skin pretending to be a competent scholar have been dismissed as conspiratorial hearsay'

She didn't want to be a marauding warlord, she wanted to tell future archaeologists.

...not right now, at least.

They ran. Fled the heat. Feared the changing wing which would drive those swirling pillars of fire in their direction, churning and undulating like a sea. The steppe seemed to encourage seas. Seas of grass. Seas of snow. Seas of invisible wind. Seas of blue hanging above their heads in the sky. And a sea of flame.

What an odd country.

* * *

Something awful was happening. The flames were billowing high... and as the red sun dawned before them, it felt like they were rushing out of one hell and into another. From fire to flesh. Orange to red. And the smoke roared overhead, covering the bruised sky and firmly extinguishing the feeble silvery sun which tried in vain to illuminate a world long-since given over to that sickly pulsing red. They rode around the camp, keeping a distance... didn't want to be in the way of any Scabrous who rode out. And as they rode, their patience was rewarded - the thunder of enormous hooves. The trample of titanic horses. The high-pitched squealing croaks which passed for laughter were gone - all that remained were thunderous howls of anger. They did take them seriously, then. Liked their charmingly arranged rocks. In another circumstance Carza might, as an anthropologist and someone enamoured with her home's traditions, feel a little guilty. As it was... she was gleeful. Good. If they didn't want someone to bite back, they oughtn't bite in the first bloody place.

But they were riding, and time was short. Maybe they'd get their horses to vomit all over the flames to put them out, but at this stage Carza didn't think that all the fire fighters in ALD IOM could extinguish this blaze. Best that could be done was confine it... and in the case of the Scabrous, seek bloody revenge against whoever had started it, if indeed they assumed someone was starting it. But then the flasks popped, and... no way of calling that artificial. She hadn't realised how dry this place was, even when pollen coated her from head to foot she hadn't realised. Idiot. Moron. But at least it was effective. At least it worked. She drew her revolver and held it steady as they charged back to the camp. Plans spiralled through her head. Hypotheticals were quickly set aside - either they were all gone or most of them were gone, and either way she was going to attack. Pointless considering that any further. But afterwards... the horses were struggling a little. The day had been a mad train of gallops and canters, they weren't machines, they'd fail after a point. Best case, they'd need to canter along at a slow pace. Worst case, the horses would just... stop. Die, maybe. But most likely, slow to a halt and do nothing else for an extended period.

So... hiding. They'd go back east, obviously, but they'd go north as well. She actually thought about starting another wildfire (she was a public menace at this point, needed to be arrested) just to cover thier trail. But then again, a giant fire was probably the most obvious trail you coud get, so... anyway. East, then north. Or south. Depending on the situation. Race for the mountains, race for that valley. Hide as best they could. Ayat said that there were spots he could see being used for hiding, but he couldn't guarantee any success with the Scabrous around. Worst case... Carza had her eye on that matchbook. And dreams of pyromania were dancing before her eyes. The remnants of one such dream was currently turning the sky soot-black.

The camp approached... and this time they didn't dismount for some time. Got dangerous close to the final slope before choosing to dismount. And that was only because of one thing, one thing alone.

Carza's gun.

She crept slowly up, Ayat by her side, nose filled with sickly decay and overwhelming charcoal, eyes watering from the pollen that had crept through her filters, face hot from how quickly she was breathing and how stifling the atmosphere had become, hands shaking very, very slightly. She was pulsating with adrenaline, she was ready to do or die. She crept up, descending to her hands and knees, forcing herself to keep her fingers away from the trigger. The last time she'd pushed herself to all possible extremes to save a friend, she'd lost two fingers and three toes. Might lose more this time - at least, more of herself. She crested the hill, and stared silently into the camp.

The skin-tents were empty.

The lamp burned on, bright and awful, turning everything a monotonous shade of red, leaching all other colours, devouring them gluttonously.

And...

Two.

Two were here. She could see them pacing angrily, loping like wolves with their flesh-suits twitching into a frenzy. The optics of their masks gleamed in exotic colours, their equivalent of the red face, the flared nostrils, the narrowing eyes of a normal enraged person. Two of them, with their horses waiting placidly outside the camp, antennae swishing like whips as they tasted the growing smoke cloud. And in a cage... Kani. Stirring a little, but hunched over nonetheless. Curiosity overwhelmed by caution - didn't want to attract attention. Soldiers forced to stay in camp while a holy site was desecrated... well, she could imagine they made for unpleasant captors to the sorry individual who caught their vengeful eye. She could hear them speaking to each other. No idea what the words were, though. It was just a low, undulating whisper, which seemed to be polyphonous - emerging from far too many mouths, wheezing out from openings in the flesh-suit, clicking out from rudimentary jaws embedded into the rippling muscle.

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The ancestors communicated through scents. The Scabrous communicated with too many voices, too many clicks, and too many... undulations.

No time for planning or scheming. No time for talking things out with Ayat. Since Kani had been kidnapped, less than a day had passed. Less than a day, one wildfire, one little rest... and that was all. No time for much more than the most rudimentary planning, the most elementary scheming... so many hypotheticals were back in her mind, little problems, little ideas, little errors and niggling doubts, and... and... right, yes, yes, two, that was fine, two was a good number, two was better than they deserved assuming there was no-one else assuming that nothing was going to happen assuming assuming assuming... stop assuming. Just... there were two people. And she had a chance to kill one of them. She had a revolver. She wasn't too far away. If she aimed for that mask... they were humanoid, if she aimed for the mask, she'd hit what approximated for a skull, for a brain, and... that was assuming mutation hadn't twisted them further, and... she raised her revolver. Braced it. Remembered what Anthan had told her about aiming.

Narrowed her eye as she stared down the barrel. Could see the tiniest wobble... and there were a lot more than tiny wobbles, she was shivering. Too many memories. A damp cave where she'd attacked one of those ancestors, failed five times, succeeded once but too late to save Hull. No second chances here, if she failed her first shot then those things would move. And once they moved... she glanced quickly at Ayat. He was all business, no little smiles, no innocent blinks. His daft little cat had been deposited a distance away, nestled with Carza's horse. Loyal animal, wouldn't leave him until it had to. Could feel those golden eyes watching her carefully, even now. He had a flask in his hand, a strip of cloth stuffed inside to act as a fuse, a little lamp oil to give it some fire, and a match ready to strike. Several, actually - he had backups in case any failed, in case the fuse went out... she found a little appreciation for him on that point.

They paused. And Carza knew that Ayat was waiting for her. Never another chance to get a shot off like this, not one. Anything after this would be panicked, complicated by an enemy that was firing back, dodging, doing all in their power to avoid getting hit. Now, they were in the open.

Just hit.

She aimed.

Tried to calm her breathing. Tried to stop her shaking. Piece by piece, silenced all distractions... thought about it like she was readying herself for an exam. Wash her hands with warm water to prevent cramps, to make writing easier and more satisfying. Comfortable clothes. Toilet visit. Broken-in shoes, nothing too tight or too loose... piece by piece building a wall around her mind, a wall of absolute calm. First, breathe - one, two, three, four, time herself. Shaking... harder. Adjust her position. Find a resting spot on the grass. Angle her head just so. Watch them, mark their movements, start anticipating... aim where they eat, not where they defecate, where they're going, not where they are. Slowly, carefully, she got into a rhythm... wished she had a rifle, but then again, she didn't know how to use rifles, and... shh, shh, calm down. Calm.

She eased out a final breath. Back in. And...

Crack.

The revolver jumped in her hands like a wild animal, and Carza...

Saw one of the Scabrous fall. For a second, absolute calm endured. She barely felt the recoil, barely felt the heat or sound or force. Nothing. All she saw was one of the Scabrous falling, a cavernous red hole in the back of its head, just above the neck. The skin-suit was twitching frantically, trying to heal around it - and it was definitely a skin-suit. She could see where it ended and the flesh of the person beneath began. Barely saw anything, but she saw a gradient. Barely clocked it, of course. All she knew was that she'd hit. Her arm tracked upwards in absolute silence...

Crack.

It was a calm unlike any she'd felt before. She felt perfectly lucid, like she was sitting in the eye of the storm. The bullet raced through the air, and...

Her calm snapped.

The lantern pinged. The glass was scored, and whatever dwelled inside squirmed unpleasnatly, but the lantern didn't break. Why had she even tried to do that? If she succeeded, she'd attract attention, she'd have flooded the camp with boiling red fluid that might well kill Kani as soon as it killed anyone else. Or it would do something worse, and... why had she tried? It was silly, it was reckless, it had been unplanned, and her calm was shattered. The bomb was flung down below, and she saw something horrifying as it clattered to a halt in the dusty, grease-soaked grass. The one she'd shot, that she'd felt so confident about killing... it wasn't dead. The skin-suit was thick, healing over, red threads pulling together... the creature was still moving. She hadn't killed it, just wounded it badly. A hit to the back of the head and she hadn't even managed to paralyse it. It squirmed...

And the bomb went off. Ayat had let it cook in his hands. Cunning. And dangerous. And the domain of the professional fighter.

Shrapel. Force. Fire. A burst of light that left shivering imprints in her eyes.

And the squirming body was ripped apart.

Dead for good.

A bullet to the head hadn't done the job, but a bomb had. Good to know. Kani was invisible in a haze of smoke, and Carza jumped up. Two bullets down, and the Scabrous soldier remaining was charging at them from the smoke, gurgling, croaking, squealing, sounding like a whole damn menagerie was crammed into that suit. The whip was uncoiling from its arm, and it snatched up a rifle from the ground. Carza started moving, readying herself to aim... she moved just in time. The rifle popped, the sac underneath twitched ecstatically, and a shivering white grub was projecting through the air. She kept moving. Saw it land in a pile of ichor, saw it start to squirm unerringly in her direction, growing within seconds, form a little grub to a slithering worm that moved as fast as a snake. Even saw little eyes developing. An idea flashed in her mind... but the worm leapt.

Wrapped around her neck. Started to gnaw at the trousers, trying to get to the flesh underneath...

Her gun barked once more. Three bullets. She hissed...

At this range, it was impossible to miss. But it was possible to hit things other than the worm. Scorching pain flashed over her shin before adrenaline killed it dead. A graze? A tear? A wound or just the heat and friction of a bullet passing too close for comfort?

The grub was torn apart, though. White flecks of flesh scattering through the brown grass, coated in pollen and dust a second later, invisible by the time they stopped moving. The creature may as well have ceased to exist spontaneously. For a panicked moment she though it had succeeded, slipping inside her skin, eating her from the inside out - explaining the disappearance and the pain in her shin. A second... and she was certain. Safe.

But the rifle was wheezing again. And she fired blindly into the haze, where the Scabrous outrider lurked. No sound, just a pause in the coughing wheeze of the rifle, a pause in grubs. Ayat was moving fast, his sword dull and faded in the red light, distorted by smoke. No more flasks. And he needed to close in. She saw the outrider lashing out with a red tongue-like whip, snaking through the air, wrapping around his sword... dragging him forwards with savage strength. Even with his size, the creature was stronger, and its optics twinkled with happiness.

She'd fired once into the haze. One bullet for a dead Scabrous solider, one for the lantern, one for the grub, and one for the haze. Two bullets left. Just two.

No time for reloading.

She rolled over, stumbling to her feet, letting the pain flare in her shin but ignoring it. That whip... she ran forwards, and almost fell over. Dammit, she'd definitely torn something... no sight of Kani, invisible in the haze. Might even be dead, pierced by a piece of stray shrapnel. Carza struggled onwards, and raised her gun. No, no, calm down, fire calmly. If she fired rashly she'd miss, and that'd accomplish nothing. A headshot hadn't killed one of these things. But... the creature was reeling Ayat in with languid ease, pulling him like an adult pulling a child's arm. Ayat's other hand went to a dagger, slicing at the whip... but it was damp. Sticky. The knife caught too often, slipped too often, either gained no purchase or simply hung on awkward points, never managing to cut. His face was starting to bloom with panic...

She aimed.

Took a breath.

Fired.

Centre mass. No penetration to a hazardous degree, but the creature reeled back, squeal-croaking. A gash on its chest... already healing over. Those suits were near-bulletproof, to a culture which spent most of its existence devoid of firearms... no wonder the Scabrous had such a reputation. They were monstrously strong, terrifyingly armed, and impervious to almost everything a technologically primitive society could produce. She'd heard of this - cargo cults. Reverence for the technologically advnaced as if it were magical or divine, a severe form of fetishism noted amongst some peoples in isolated communities on the continent. Colonia or colonies which had gone untouched for years, startled by the arrival of advanced firearms or steam engines. Early reports saw it as a sign of contamination, later reports as a sign of backwards primitive thinking, and still later analyses pondering all sides of the issue with languid interest. And here...

An advanced society capable of harnessing contamination, making bulletproof flesh-suits, sculpting lifeforms to serve their interests, advancing along lines no other civilisation she knew of had done. And next to them, nomads. Nomads to whomt these were demonic entities, flung forth by fate, unknowable and with no desire to enligten. Only to punish and hunt.

No wonder they'd developed such a mythology around them.

The creautre flailed backwards, rifle loosely held in one hand, whip detaching slightly... enough time for Ayat to pull his sword free, and to plunge it into the gash in the creature's chest. It didn't make any sound - simply twisted itself with unnatural flexibility. The suit was healing quickly, healing around the sword, and its strength let it rip the whole thing from Ayat's hands. But he had another idea. On his back was a spear, one that he swung out with careless skill, sweeping it low - trying to send the creautre to the ground. She imagined Ayat had never fought anything like this before, but he was improvising with terrific skill. Nothing this strong, fast, quick to heal, or simply unknown. His culture had told him from the day he was born that the Scabrous were an unkillable tide...

And Ayat simply didn't care. His sister had been kidnapped. And that meant he had to give it a go and damn the consequences. Already killed one. Might as well work on the other.

One bullet left, just one... no idea if it would be enough to make a difference. But combat had closed. The spear had swept across the ground, and the creature... stepped backwards with cool ease. Tilted its deformed head to one side... and seemed to consider Ayat. The haze was settling, but Carza only had eyes for this. A second passed. The rifle was dropped, and from the arm of the skin-suit emerged a long, thin sword, made entirely from pale bone, glistening with fat and oil, pulsing with miniature veins on its side. The creature tilted its head to the other side, and whispered through a dozen mouths. The words were impossible to understand, but the meaning was obvious.

Give it a go, then.

Ayat said nothing. His spear darted out, the creature responded swiftly... and Ayat began to adjust. Carza raised her gun instinctually, wondering when she'd get a good hit in. The creature was fighting lazily, casually. Treating this as a game. Learned to dismiss her bullets. It knew that the bullets couldn't hurt it, swords couldn't hurt it, only a bomb could do real damage, and it could plainly see that they were all out. And if they weren't, if they were hiding any under their clothes... well, it had surveyed them, and concluded that they weren't going to die to spite it. They were here for a reason. And they wouldn't die until that reason had been satisfied. Ayat retreated rapidly, his spear shivering with each strike his turned away. The creautre was dancing, tripping forwards, slithering backwards, undulating from side to side... almost graceful, in an organic, predatory way. A lazy blow, and Ayat was sent scrambling for purchase on the slippery group. Another, and Carza could see the wood of the spear's shaft quivering, on the verge of breaking from the strain. The whip trailed at the creature's feet. It saw no need to use it. If it did, it'd win. Carza started circling around them, trying to get to the back, to...

The whip moved.

The creature hadn't even looked at her. But the whip moved on its own, slithering over, jumping from the ground...

And gripping the gun.

A second of strain.

And it was gone.

Her hand ached as it was torn free, flung off into the distance, spinning like an awkward, expensive, life-saving discus. She hissed in pain - the tentacle had grazed her, leaving puckered mouths all along her hand where suckers had bitten deep. Crud. Crumbs. Damn and blast and hang it all. She couldn't just... fire properly, no, had to lose her gun, lose her... an idea blossomed. And Ayat was altering. Learning. He started by fighting cautiously, ducking back, step by step by step, letting the creature advance. Gauging its strength, its speed, its reaction times.

And a second later...

The spear lashed out.

A click and a crack echoed in the air.

The creature paused.

One of its optics was broken. Shattered. Ayat span his spear in his hands lightly, while his face remained absolutely stoic. The creature ran a fleshy hand over its metal face... clearing the glass away. Feeling the damage. Ayat let it do so, not attacking despite the opening... if it was an opening at all, who was she to judge, she'd lost her damn gun after all, her opinions were basically worthless. She scrambled backwards over the slick ground, the brown earth churned into greasy mud which clang to everything it found. The skin-tents were pulsing eagerly, small dark eyes staring hungrily at the fighters. She even saw miniature red tongues slither outwards, like the ribbons in a girl's hair, eager to lap at the dismembered bodies, and...

There.

Hm.

Ayat was fighting more actively now. The creature was powerful and all manner of wonderful things, but it didn't seem skilled. It was lazy, used to having a horse, allies, overwhelming the enemy with sheer strength. And Ayat... what had he said? No honour in dying. Only honour in surviving and winning. Victory meant nothing if you died in the process, right? Right. And he demonstrated that abundantly. He moved quickly, finding his purchase on the greasy ground. The creature seemed more cautious... because the optics meant something. Maybe that would blind it, or at least hurt it. It was wearing impenetrable armour, so go for the damn eyes. Should work. Might work. The creature seemed to take the threat seriously, at least... but it was still having fun. Ayat, though, wasn't going to survive based on how fun he was.

His spear lashed out, the creature paused and let the point sail past it... and it pierced straight into one of the flesh-tents.

The tent moaned, and hot blood flowed out easily... blood, contamination, whatever. The Scabrous outrider flinched back from it, alarmed for a second...

Crack.

Another optic shattered.

The creature was angrier now. The whip lashed, and Ayat smoothly drew the spear back, cradling it under his arm, avoiding the snapping red tongue...

Before flipping the wooden haft around, smacking into the whip, diverting it...

Into the jet of boiling blood cascading from the tent. He'd seen the tents trying to consume the fallen Scabrous. And he'd guessed that they weren't... well, very loyal towards their masters, not when their masters were so achingly delicious. The tentacle locked in place suddenly, the tent squirming around it... a hissed command silenced it, forced it to retreat, but the point had been made.

The delay.

Crack. Crack.

Two more optics. The creature was swinging wildly with its sword, trying to keep Ayat back, to finish this swiftly... the horses were still placid, watching with mild disinterest. No loyalty to their masters either. Carza, though, could see that the situation wasn't tenable. Ayat was fighting brilliantly, but he was still outmatched on every front. He was kicking over pots, flinging flasks of red fluid at the creature, irritating it more and more, blinding it, jabbing perpetually to keep it off-balance... but a single good hit, and the tide would turn.

Carza reached out for the fallen rifle, the finely-carved one with a quivering sac of white grubs. If her detector was on, she could imagine it shrieking. Her gloved hands clutched it...

Where was the trigger?

Where was the bloody trigger?

Nuts, nuts, and... wait. Wait. She'd seen the Scabrous pulling something, maybe... yes, she could see a place where the trigger should be, a slot where... ha! An idea!

The first Scabrous had been blown to pieces. Many pieces. Scattered everywhere. Some of them being consumed by the tents with greedy gulps into half-formed mouths. Even the horses looked interested in giving them a go. And if she looked... there, a mostly-complete hand, and... dammit, the tents were trying to consume it. She lunged for the hand, grabbing it as a pair of red, snake-like tongues wrapped around the wrist... for a second, there was a desperate tug-of-war. No, no, she wasn't giving it up to animate bloody furniture. With a hiss, she drew a small knife she used for cooking and drove it down, over and over, into the squirming red tongues... one retreated, the other held on for a moment, and Carza hissed a single vulgarity at it while tearing away. The hand was hers, and part of one tongue, wrapped tightly around its prize. The tents gurgled, spilling strange fluids over the ground... she retreated quickly as more tongues started to reach. Right, right, right, so... rifle in one hand. Hand in the other. Press the hand into the rifle, angle the finger...

Trigger popped out. And if she manipulated the hand just right, she could actually...

Oh, yes.

Ayat saw what she was doing. The creature didn't. And he adjusted. No more optics, a strategy that annoyed more than it debilitated - there were dozens of them, he'd barely shattered a tenth. Now he wanted the creature wounded, an opening, a distraction, something to pin it. He lunged... and the creature snapped. It grabbed the spear itself, and twisted. The wood strained, the metal shuddered... and Ayat simply let it go. The creature stumbled slightly, its own strength turning on itself... and Ayat, in total silence, kicked it between the legs.

No reaction. It dropped the spear with irritated speed. No more games - and Ayat surprised it again.

By leaping onto it, wrapping his limbs around the creature. Strength meant nothing if it was unbalanced, and unbalanced it was - slipping and falling to the ground, Ayat riding it down to the bottom... before detaching and gaining distance before it could really adjust. The creature was furious now, jumping back to its feet...

Catching a glimpse of Carza, aiming down the sights of a truly bizarre rifle. A rifle with a white sac dangling underneath, churning with infant grubs.

It didn't react well.

Before Carza could manipulate the hand into pulling the trigger, it was leaping across, ignoring Ayat completely. Bad move. As it sprinted towards her, optics shining with fury, Ayat...

Drop-kicked it.

It sprawled, and growled like a wild animal.

Carza pointed down, pulled-

The tentacle lashed around her ankle, dragging her into the mud. Panic flooded her system. The creature lashed backwards, sending Ayat flying, barely avoiding getting swallowed by a flesh-tent. It pounced on Carza, and... and she could feel the flesh crawling, could feel its fetid breath, could see intelligence in those shining optics. Cilia pulsed along the armour. Tiny insect-like legs poked in and out of tiny burrows, and the whip trailed languidly up to her neck. Strong enough to kill her on its own, even ignoring the rest. Panic. Absolute panic. Her heart was pounding. The creature was dripping with boiling-hot liquid, the red lantern shone like an infernal sun, the entire world seemed to have gone mad...

And she could hear Kani whimpering in that sodden little cage.

Could see Ayat struggling to his feet...

Her face lashed forward.

Smashed into the optics.

The creature paused.

Then headbutted her back. Immediately her gas mask became a cloying parcel sealing her face in, the eyeglasses splintered, the nozzle fractured, and she could feel her nose cracking. Blood flowing upwards, her face was at such a strange angle, covering her eyes, trailing into her hair. Claustrophobia increased, she could hear nothing as blood flowed over her ears. Just mumbles, rumblings. The feeling of the creature shifting...

A roar.

Something shifting. Ayat - his spear, plunging into the creature, forcing it to pause.

She still had a grip on the rifle.

No time to think. She was suffocating in her gas mask while her blood blinded her, deafened her, sealed her nose up and turned her hair into a matted mass of clots. She was in a camp made of meat, her friends were about to die, and-

She manipulated the hand.

She pulled the trigger.

No idea if she hit. Maybe she'd hit Ayat. Maybe Kani. But the creature froze.

For a second, nothing.

She jerked her head in a panic, trying to clear her mouth... felt a rush of hot air. She had something, then... and the glasses were a little clearer, blood flowing away, not dried enough to really obscure...

She saw the creature looming over her. Twitching.

A hole in its side.

The creature had been hit. The grub had entered. She could feel the lightness in the pale sac on the gun barrel. A second... and the creature started to twitch more and more violently. The whip went out of control, lashing this way, that way, clutching into anything it found but only for a moment. The armour was shaking, the flesh inside was being shredded - it was struggling to fit a body which was rapidly decaying. Sometimes Carza saw the interior. She saw flesh churning, saw grubs breeding by the thousand, feasting and feasting, growing fat on contamination, growing fat on anything. A perfect weapon, living and dying in seconds, growing to the size of languid snakes which eased through veins like rabbits in burrows, squirming through to the heart, where they gathered in enormous knots, bulging the chest out so far that the ribs snapped like twigs and the armour seemed to become tumorous. Blood spilled - always the same pattern. The skin would rupture. Blood would spill in a great jet, serpent-like, and then it would subside to a slender trickle, and then nothing but a bubbling stew of redness which was overpowered by the breeding whites of the grubs. Thousands and thousands. The creature was locked in place by rigor mortis, his legs clamping tightly around Carza's body. She watched with a single terrified eye, the other glued shut by drying blood...

And she felt the first drops of steaming contamination landing on her. Screamed softly, her throat too constricted for anything else. Ayat was hauling the man away, and he jerked free, spasming on the ground like someone in the grips of lockjaw, back arching back, back, back until she could hear pop pop pop of vertebrae snapping out of place, and now the tents were extending their languid tongues to eat their master and the horses were coming forwards... Carza scrambled back over the damp soil, eye wide, hands ripping at the gas mask covering her face, regardless of the mutation... ripped it free and welcomed the scorching air, welcomed the undulating light of the red sun, welcomed the soot-black sky. Ayat thrust the body away with his spear, retrieved from the earth... retrieved his sword too, rearming himself completely. Carza tried to think, tried to... right, right, drop the rifle, drop it all, find the cage.

Kani was staring at her with wide eyes.

Carza's entire top half was soaked in blood which crawled with the dying remains of white grubs. Bred to not live outside the body, dying with exposure to the air. Her eyes were bulging, staring... and she could feel a hiss in her biology, her cells rebelling against the contamination now entering it. No, no, no... she grabbed pills from her pocket, downed them one at a time, felt her saliva froth up until she seemed rabid. Ignored it, let the spit trickle to the ground as she tried to find a door to the cage... where was it, where was it... Kani was saying something, and Carza couldn't hear, her ears still roaring with the pulses of the underground rivers and the ocean which her nose had yielded up, and... and... Ayat pushed past her.

The cage had no door. But he removed a weight from the top, and Kani heaved at the metal - a box with no bottom, a wooden base to clip it to, a weight to stop an animal from escaping. Like trapping a spider under a glass. The cage fell free with a clatter, and Carza saw the two siblings embracing one another...

Right before darkness started to creep in at the corner of her vision. She chewed down another pill. Felt the hissing abate a little, felt the mutation slow...

And the last thing she saw was Ayat hauling her up onto his shoulder.

And the horses opening their torso-mouths wide, lamprey-like, and bending low like lovers to a maiden on an elegant divan, mouths opening wide enough to swallow the world, teeth hungrily reshaping to find their masters...

And then there was nothing.

But even in the darkness of unconsciousness, she could feel the pulsing redness of the lantern. Of the false sun.

Of the light which squirmed.