Chapter Sixty Six

Carza didn't want to go. Not yet. Not here. Not now. She had too much work to do. And... no, she could feel it again. The gnawing had moved from her neck to her gut, and she could feel a kind of resigned determination boiling up in her. No more urges to lose humanity, all that remained was focus. Memories drifted from her attention, slipping into the grey haze of mutation. The mind slowly dying as the brain was enhanced by the chemical processes of something which didn't understand nor value silly things like sapience. She could feel the collar around her neck shivering, and... no, not a collar. It was part of her, and if she focused, she could feel the corruption spreading outwards. Infecting the brainstem, flowing downwards into her chest, slowly corroding every organ in its wake. Already she found it harder to remember her days as an urchin, her mother's face was slipping... but she wasn't going to live much longer anyhow. Kani and Ayat, though... they could still get out. She hissed at them, voice deeper and stronger than it'd ever been, and she had to fight the urge to stop talking, to allow a mutant instinct to take over - the instinct for silence. These two had no contamination to give her, so she might as well ignore them, and...

"Leave. Now."

Kani blinked.

"You'll-"

"Already going to die, might as well not drag you two down with me. Take my notes and get out, take that letter to ALD IOM. If you still want to go there."

"But-"

"Leave."

Kani nodded uncertainly. Stood. And immediately crouched back down again, grabbing at Carza's hand.

"No. Not happening. Can't. Ayat, you can-"

Ayat was crouching down as well, his face a rictus of stoic focus.

"Already exiled. Kani, you leave. Carza, you and I can hold them off briefly."

Carza could feel incredulity rising up in her. This wasn't a game of 'who could sacrifice themselves the most dramatically', this was just a case of a terminally corrupted mutant trying to do something good with her last few days of lucidity before her brain was completely taken away. And these two were... Carza hesitantly stood, and the others stood beside her. Rifle... dammit, too far away, and the shapes were approaching. Their horses barely fit through the huge doors to the temple, now torn open to let the damp winds inside. The world beyond was a featureless grey haze, and to Carza, it seemed as though everything outside the temple had simply ceased to exist. All that remained was herself, her friends, and the Scabrous. She growled at the other two, and her throat seemed to spasm, corrupting the words. An instinct rising up - don't speak, don't make noise, don't communicate, a mutant ought to be silent and quick. A mutant was a unique species unto itself, what need did it have for communication, especially with creatures that had nothing to offer? Her throat twitched, and her command for them to leave turned into a vague snarl. Kani flinched at the sound of it. And Carza wondered if, in her madness down below, she'd... maybe eaten something.

There had been something unpleasantly dog-like in that snarl.

The Scabrous were advancing leisurely, and after a second, they lazily dismounted from their horses. Three of them. No red lights to announce their existence... but she could see a small pulsing glow from flasks hung about their waists. Travelling without a lantern, but happy to keep their liquor. All of them were alike. Red-pink suits, mottled with nodules of bone and uncountable spiracles, twitching with small insect legs, swirling with antennae. Faces covered with iron masks bristling with glass optics, which shivered and gleamed like the translucent bodies of jellyfish in the light of the moon. Each one of them taller even than Ayat, and she could see the weapons that would easily rip them apart - tongue-red whips coiled around their arms, suits that could extrude bone weapons harder than metal, strength that could overwhelm anything they could dish out, and... she could see other things. Strange weapons and tools dangling easily from their waists, implements of torture most likely. The air filled with the dust-rot smell of contamination, and Carza couldn't help but find it enticing. The collar shivered, and she could feel where the corruption had extended, all of it rumbling and shivering and begging her to go forwards and just taste...

"Run."

Took conscious effort to force her voice out. The three Scabrous were just walking, they were confident. If the two of them ran, they could hide in the shadows, in the basement, find something to survive with. Maybe even... no, they were sealed off. No, no, the dog had gotten in somehow, maybe they could find that, and... squeeze out, or something. Assuming it was an actual door, and not... not the windows set high up in the walls, or some weird hole bored by erosion and rats and stuff which could let a dog in, but not something as large as... say, Kani. Or even Ayat, he wasn't exactly small... the two didn't move. A dry rasp, like a snake moving over a stone floor, echoed - Ayat had drawn his sabre. Kani... Kani had a knife, but she was lowering her head a little, reducing her profile, like she was getting ready to charge them and gore them. Already she was scented with cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves and all the perfumes of the ancestors. Barely smelled like anything to Carza now. Just... data, meaningless data. The contamination, though... she could feel it whispering to her, could feel every promise in the air, could feel it coiling around her brainstem and activating every long-hidden impulse. Making it seem effortlessly natural.

The Scabrous came to a halt. And stared silently, wheezing very slightly as their flesh-suits respired. Three of them, and... she could see some subtle differences. The one in the centre was significantly taller than the others, and had metallic hooks protruding from its back and arms. Hook, she mentally named it. To its left was the shortest of the group, still taller than even Kani, and this one had small, rudimentary eyes clustering all over its suit, gleaming like small dark stones which swivelled, twisted, contracted... reminded her of those toads outside which let their tadpoles nest in their flesh. Eyes, that felt appropriate. And the final Scabrous rider was somewhere between the others in height, and had made modifications to its mask. The lower part was removed, replaced with a chittering mass of metal-flesh pincers and mouth-parts, like something taken from a praying mantis or a cockroach. She could even see liquid-filled syringes, sometimes twitching aimlessly, sometimes stabbing inwards to inject the creature underneath with something. Pincer, then. Hook, Eye, and Pincer.

Moronic names, but she wasn't going to share them.

Her voice struggled to return.

"At least let the cat-"

It was already leaving. Founder, for something so... otherwise nice, it was painfully disloyal. Knew where things were going, and wanted nothing to do with it. Kitten, sure, but it had some well-honed survival instincts already. Carza, Ayat and Kani stared back at the Scabrous, a thin expanse of grey floor dividing the two, the shadow of the vivisection pillar towering above them... Carza had a vague idea of shattering the floor beneath them, it was clearly brittle enough, but... she'd need an explosive to be sure. The Scabrous moved lightly, barely seeming to touch the ground at all, and they were flexible. Could escape easily, drag them down with whips... and in the end, she had no explosives. Idiot. Without her revolver her ammunition was useless, should've just converted it all into explosive flasks... volatile, dangerous, but useful. Plans spiralled quickly... and reached no conclusions. Run? Pointless. Fight? Pointless. Negotiate? Senseless, she'd never even heard them speak a recognisable language. She had no more options left, the best she could do was try to hog attention until her friends were able to get out... and she very much hoped they would at least try to get out of here while they still had time. Still had hope.

She balled her hands into fists, and flinched at how much stronger they felt.

The Scabrous stared.

Hook raised its hands.

Whip? Gun? Sword? Dart? What?

And clapped.

Once. To signal an attack?

Twice. Another sort of signal?

Three times. Four times. Five, six, seven, eight, more... it was clapping, and properly. A proper round of applause, not even slow and sarcastic, quick, earnest, real. Carza stared, her fists unclenching just a little. What was... what was happening? Hook was clapping, and a moment later Eyes and Pincer started to join in, clapping with just as much enthusiasm. Their suits shivered and groaned as they slapped their palms together over and over, and she saw odd, gleaming chemicals seep out from the many pores lining the surface. The optics of their masks glinted, and she had no idea what emotions lay behind them... they were being mocked. Had to be. They were being mocked by the Scabrous. Congratulations, they were saying. All that running, and you wound up in a nice, dry venue for us to kill you. How polite, it would've been such a bore chasing you down and butchering you out there in the mire and the rain. Hook slowly stepped forwards, footsteps barely audible over the sound of the others continuing to clap. Its whip was still coiled around its arm, no swords were visible, the hooks gleamed but weren't... angled correctly, not exactly. Almost flattened, caressing the creature's arms, not outstretched to rip at her.

And she could feel her collar making her want to like this thing. He reeked of contamination, and the collar yearned for more. It was stroking the base of her brain, encouraging it, making it swell with desire and affection. Attacking it from different angles - sometimes she felt a stirring hunger in her stomach, loud and insistent... then her throat seemed dry as dust, and she ached for some contamination to soothe her thirst... then she simply felt cravings, one after the other, each stronger than the last... and even a kind of slavish devotion, an aching love which made her feel sick when she looked at the feeling objectively. It wanted her to consume the contamination on this creature, it longed for sustenance, and it was trying to make her act as it pleased. Trying to change her instincts, shift her perceptions, slowly and surely indoctrinate her into a mutant way of thinking. Drown her out in base instinct until no conscious thought remained. Even now she remembered the dream of running wild in the fields, naked as the day she was born, screaming at the sky and tearing with fingers longer and sharper than a stork's beak...

The Scabrous came to a stop in front of her.

She was utterly frozen.

The others ceased their applause. And now all she could hear was her own heart beating out of control, and Hook's flesh-suit gently wheezing with little inchoate mouths, small and delicate, reminding her far too much of the wound-mouths which anointed the vivisected figure behind her. The mask was utterly still. The optics twitched, narrowing, widening, achieving the right level of focus. And carefully... the creature raised a single hand, and a from a single finger extended a single, razor-thin needle. And before Carza could do anything, the needle plunged directly into her neck. Directly into the collar.

For a second, pain flooded her. The tumour could feel something was wrong. And it was doing everything to survive. Pain blasted into her nerves, an induced warning to get away. Corruption spread faster, undulating through her, infiltrating her veins, sprinting for the places where it could nest peacefully. Tumours in her stomach, a mass of mottled red flesh coated with skin tags, thick and impervious to harm, a rotten bulb spreading roots into the rest of the body. A hard, almost crystalline lump in her intestines, refusing all attempts at being dislodged. Spider-like filaments dancing in the empty space of her lungs, gradually pumping more and more contamination into the flesh surrounding them. Nesting behind her eyes like spider eggs. Weaving into her spine like the thorn-clad trees in the marshes, clambering up and infiltrating until there was no chance of removal. Carza gasped - throat closing, memories of losing consciousness, memories of strange dreams, becoming a squealing, shrieking thing on the ground, turned into a puppet by a force which thrummed to the beat of a vast underground heart from which the rotten underground rivers sprang forth and flowed around bone-white pillars of foundation stone, rivers in which things swam, huge things, unknowable things. The needle in her neck was driving deeper, and... and Kani and Ayat were moving, but the other Scabrous were moving to intercept.

Embarrassing way to go. Killed without even thinking, and-

And the pressure began to ease.

It was... bizarre to explain. But she suddenly remembered something keenly. A memory she'd... not thought about for a very, very long time. Back in her distant childhood, back when she was... Founder, this was a very long time ago. Her mother had just left her home Court, tried to establish herself as someone independent from the whole system. Carza was miniature at the time, small enough to probably be bundled up like that disloyal cat who'd wandered off the moment the Scabrous showed up. Thin as a bone even then, and definitely... somewhat rat-like, she had to admit. Founder, this memory was more vivid than it'd ever been. Her mother was so young, so... well, hopeful. Long before poverty drained almost everything away, long before illness finished off what remained. Still young, hopeful, more cheerful than most. Carza had inherited a lot from her in terms of appearance... but apparently she most resembled her maternal uncle, someone she'd never actually met. Died years ago. But he'd been rake-thin. Her mother had the same faintly rat-like facial features, but on her they just looked clever, intelligent, witty. Hard to look at her without thinking that she had some sort of brain hiding behind those dark, clever eyes. Carza had inherited those features, but none of the relaxation, the charm. Just wound up looking lean and ravenous, prone to hunching... and in this memory, she was hunching up a storm.

And her mother had taken her out into the city. Bought a meat pie from a vendor, some cured sausage, a handful of pastries... wandered out to one of the many parks scattered around ALD IOM. In those days they were still used as common greens, and they'd found a spot under a tree where the myriad grazing animals wouldn't bother them. Ate together quietly, not talking a huge amount. Neither of them were enormously chatty by nature, had to be encouraged to open up. It'd been small. The meal, the day, the excitement. Nothing happened. Nothing at all, beyond a quiet picnic in a quiet park. And yet... yet she was remembering it clear as day. And she remembered how her mother had just seemed... indestructible back then. By the end she'd been fragile as porcelain, but in those early years she'd been an enduring pillar of existence. The only pillar of existence. For those few years, Carza's world extended to the walls of their tiny flat, and wherever her mother was. The wider world was unknown, strange, but... broadly harmless. Easy to ignore. An adventure was going a few streets over, an epic voyage was taking one of the many canal boats to a distant place.

It was a memory of a time which had faded from precise memory, but still had an unmistakeable ring of importance. It was back then, in that perfect scene, that she'd felt the wheels of the world clicking perfectly in time. Childish enough to not see the flaws, but mature enough to see the structure. The way things just... worked. The bones of the world seemed so flawless, so... naturally designed, everything emerging with an elegant inevitability. The same belief which underpinned her anthropology now, the idea that things just... had to form a natural, cohesive whole, they had to function and self-regulate. Because in that moment in her childhood, she saw the world as something functional and complete, a sufficient unit which could regulate itself perfectly... and then everything had spiralled out of control as things disrupted that system. And yet with that disruption had come a realignment. Machinery had emerged, and the Court of Ivory began to use typewriters and printing presses to accomplish the same goals as before. Change came, yes, but homeostasis prevailed. And she'd realised that idea in that moment, in that park, with her mother and her picnic and the sound of grazing animals all around.

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The world had felt aligned. Not perfect, but... aligned. Like a watch operating the way it ought to.

She'd forgotten it a very long time ago. Only the idea had remained.

She didn't weep at the memory, but she felt... a sense of golden nostalgia washing over her. And surprise followed soon after. She could remember. She could remember. How could... the haze was fading, and... and it felt like she was being put back together. Like those corrupted filaments were withdrawing, uncoiling from her brainstem, slithering away from her spine, retracting from her lungs, dissolving from her stomach and digestive system, flowing with her blood to reach the needle, where... where it was drained. Like lancing an abscess, like draining pus from a wound, and... and she could feel clarity in a cold wave, real clarity. The pressure on her throat eased, the pain induction ceased, and...

And she fell to her knees, coughing up chunks of bloody matter.

Bloody matter which tried its best to slither away from her. Knew it had no home. Knew it would need to find somewhere else... slithering to the Scabrous, who politely ignored the fleshy slugs which pawed weakly at the feet of their flesh-suits, too pathetic to climb up, too feeble to do anything more than undulate. Carza barely managed to look up, and... and something had changed. She felt clear, for the first time in... she was realising how much the mutation had affected her. Memories were coming back easily, flickering through her mind with startling clarity. Ideas were processing smoothly, and she felt... ambitions, hopes, desires, wants and needs, all the things which separated humans from animals. The gnawing in her stomach had faded. And she was thinking about notes and ink and... and buying new pencils, and a box of cigarillos, and a new suit, a new robe, getting a proper haircut from the resident barber for the Court of Ivory, sitting down and eating quiet lunches, sharing it all with her friends, and... and it was all the things she'd forgotten as the mutation marched through her. Blinding her to small pleasures in favour of animal satisfaction. Joys were coming back. Petty joy. The sort of thing a mutant would never understand.

She barely managed to look up at the Scabrous.

And she felt something on her neck. Her hands flew to examine... oh. The mutation had been... drained, somewhat. The process had been halted, even reversed. And what remained was cleaner, but... still changed. And when she looked up at the Scabrous she'd named Hook, she saw through more than two eyes. She felt a third eye, growing from the mottled flesh on her neck. A mass of scarring from which a single, dark eyes was staring levelly, capable of seeing light and tracking movement, all the right functions of an eye. And... she felt genuine, existential fear well up. An eye was complex. The collar hadn't been forming an eye, it had no reason to form an eye when it could just hijack her own. The Scabrous had made it grow. The Scabrous could just order a piece of mutated flesh to generate a complex, complex organ, with surrounding muscles, with a proper nervous connection, with all the things it needed. They'd just... done it, with a single damn needle. A needle which smoothly retracted back into the suit with a wet sound, leaving a wound that healed a second later. No sign that it had ever existed.

Maybe the mutation was still clawing at her mind, and had reached the point where she couldn't even fear it. Couldn't feel it. Leaving her with some memories, a few delusions, something to occupy the higher mind while it chewed softly and lovingly away until nothing was left, but... but she could remember everything. Could even remember being on the floor of the basement down below, clawing her way through the salt-dust, eyes bulging, mouth open to snap ineffectually at the writing remains of the dog-thing, impaled on the statues of the people who'd once lived here. Not sure if she'd succeeded, everything became fuzzy, but... but everything else was crystal-clear. The others stopped struggling - one Scabrous each, more than enough to hold them in place while the leader did its work. They'd seen her survive, saw her stand up on shaking legs, blinking with all three eyes... oh Founder, she'd been mutated. They were starting their work, they were going to start mutating her further now, turn her into one of their dogs, and-

And... nothing was happening. They simply stared quietly, and the two others even released their prisoners. No-one said a word. The Scabrous offered nothing, but... but Carza had to know. Her voice was raw, and her third eye's vision shivered very slightly with each word.

"Why?"

The Scabrous looked at one another. Looked back at her. Tilted their heads to one side. And Pincer, the one with the metallic-organic mouth-parts, clicked a few times... before gurgling something out. Not its voice, it sounded like a theatrophone record, like the creature had recorded someone else speaking and now played it back, rasping with static, choked by viscera which clogged up every mechanism in the damn thing.

"I'm not fucking dying, I have too much fucking work to do!"

Her voice.

Oh. Founder. How... embarrassing. She flushed to remember shrieking that at... at the dog, and... had they heard? Had they read it somehow? Did they have spies, some way of listening in? Extracting things from her throat, the last things she'd said... no idea. The Scabrous resisted explanation. They stared at her, levelly. What did they mean by this? Did they... did they... things began to click. There was no red light accompanying these three. They weren't being aggressive. They'd ventured further north than any of their kin... why hadn't the full war party hunted them, why not bring additional hounds, why would they just send three? Unless... unless... it was mad, it was completely mad, and she couldn't say it without evidence, but-

One of them, Eyes, calmly handed her her own rifle... altered. The sac removed, stripped away, and a more conventional breech-loading mechanism added, or unlocked, or... something. Regardless, it was closer to a conventional rifle now.

And the other, Pincer, smoothly presented Ayat with a curved bone-blade, the sort they used. Imitating his own sabre, but... smoother, more refined, larger, lighter, and without a doubt tougher. He took it with a shocked expression, blinking repeatedly, trying to rationalise his way through everything, and...

And the final one, Hook, reached out for Kani, who stepped back... a flicker, and the creature had caught up, and ran a hand down one of her tusks, then the other. Caressing it. And in the wake of that contact, Carza could see the material hardening. Not sculpting, just... previously, it'd been almost spongy, full of perforations. Not meant to grow in yet. And now the tusks were smoother. Cleaner. Pure white, no mottled yellows or reds from half-solidified tissue. Kani was utterly frozen, shivering like a leaf even as Hook stepped back.

A curt nod.

And they were gone. Striding back to their horses. Remounting in smooth motions and cantering out of the temple, hooves snapping against the fallen metal doors.

They'd... they'd been coming to reward them. To apologise, to... no, no, that seemed to altruistic, they were rewarding the three of them. How... why... why? Was it because Carza had shot one of them, Ayat had helped blow up another, and then Kani had killed one of her ancestors with that worm-rifle they used? Was it because they'd proved themselves? No, no, maybe it was pride, and safety. The rifle had been altered, the sac removed, anything to stop it from being used against them. And Kani, well, Kani was a half-finished job, they needed to complete her for their own satisfaction. Or... or was it because the three of them had won, killed a few Scabrous, escaped their clutches, fought their dogs, overcame the culturally-instilled fear of the things, and then... then they had to be honoured. If they weren't honoured, then they were just a trio of useless runaways. And the idea of some useless runaways winning against the Scabrous was so offensive that they needed to be honoured, to make them worthy opponents... or maybe it was just altruism towards a victorious opponent, legitimate respect for their enemies... no, no, no, none of this was... it made sense, no, it made too many varieties of sense, that was the problem. Honour? Aggrandisement to save face? Mercy? Pity? Adherence to a weird belief system? Personal pride?

She had literally no idea.

And they were already gone. And the only thing said to her had been in her own voice, using her own words. She'd never even heard them speak, and... and the only meaning was one she invented for herself. There were no expressions to read or tones to interpret, the things which transcended actual formal language. Nothing non-verbal, they were blank slates and all she saw was herself reflected back.

The three of them lingered for a moment, in the shadow of the vivisection pillar.

And a moment later... Kani wrapped up Carza in a bone-crushing hug, before dragging her brother awkwardly into the tangle. Carza had to duck to avoid her tusks, and Ayat wound up being locked between them like a restrained dog. The three were silent as corpses, but all of their eyes were wide and frightened. In a building too large for them, a world too strange, confronted by creatures too strong and too unintelligible to ever become familiar with. And Carza stared blankly into the middle distance as she processed everything. The change in circumstances, the mutation coming to a stable conclusion... her third eye blinked for the first time, an eyelid formed from her own neck-flesh. Already felt natural having this, and... and it felt somehow less invasive than the original mutation. This felt sterile. It wasn't going for her brain, it wasn't attacking her body, it just... existed. Evidence of a group which casually controlled something that, to her, was one of the most terrifying things in the world. The temple was breached, and age seemed to flow away from it now it'd been unsealed. Mist spilled in, playing around the columns, soaking into the stone, turning the dry salt crystals into nothing but slush. Light spilled in as well, and... and this place was old. It was dusty, and weird, and represented a culture she had no interest in learning about.

This wasn't a good place to die.

Couldn't believe that she'd thought about writing her last will and testament in a place like this.

And with a grumble... she pulled herself out of the terrified huddle, and started to make her way back to her notes. Founder, the plan for this ethnography was awful, it was rank amateurism at its worst. She ought to revise every element of this... every single damn one, and urgh, the letter of introduction was beyond trite. She could write more convincing things than that in her sleep. The mutation hadn't just terrified her beyond belief, it'd actually made her worse at writing, which was the worst damn insult she could think of. She hadn't even included a section in her ethnography, her magnum opus, to discuss the limitations of her study the history of its creation, to place her results into an appropriate context! What, did she think no-one would be able to handle it... Founder, those creatures had been right, she couldn't die here, she had way, way too much work to do.

Everything had changed, but the world continued onwards.

And some things... some things remained exactly the same.

And right about then, the cat came ambling out of the shadows, purring curiously.

"Piss off."

It didn't.

* * *

It was odd, how the world insisted on moving onwards. After the mountains she'd passed out, after the Scabrous' first fight she'd fainted, but this... this had no punctuation, it just happened. The riders came, healed her, and left without a second word. Maybe embarrassed that any of this had been necessary. Well, if they'd wanted to do her this sort of favour, they could at least have yelled. Or made some sort of signal as opposed to just mindlessly chasing them down across the damn swamp. Though... well, if one of the Scabrous found a way to signal 'stop, we just want to talk', she'd have paid, quite literally, zero attention to it. Obviously an evil ploy. And now... now she was just recovering from said 'evil ploy'. She'd wrapped a whole host of bandages around her neck immediately. It was irritating having to close her third eye, a little like having to wink perpetually, but... honestly, she wasn't ready to confront the fact that, by all definitions, she was now a mutant. It did... oh. Wow. It actually made things easier for her in the future. For all she knew, this would attract mutants, make them interested in killing her. Which would mean she'd have a legitimate, justifiable reason to not go on any further adventures. Well, in her own head. Couldn't let anyone know about it... maybe should look into getting it surgically removed from someone who didn't ask questions and didn't tell stories.

Founder, she was going to live.

...she carefully folded away the half-completed letter to Melqua, though. Right before she started destroying her shameful plan of an ethnography. There were some good ideas there. A solid foundation for... any eventualities. The temple seemed to shrink as they left, saddling up their terrified horses, and looking out into the boundless mists of the salt marshes. It was just a building. The only significance had come through its uniqueness, and through its position in her life. It was a four-dimensional object, and when viewed from another angle it diminished into nothingness. And suddenly she could see the holes in the walls, the way the mud was riding high up, devouring the building piece by piece. For all she knew, that 'basement' was meant to be a bottom floor, and the entire structure had simply... sunk. Maybe it did that regularly, sinking deeper and deeper, a new door carved to allow one to enter to whatever floor was at ground level. Maybe soon enough the entire temple would be swallowed up. But... for crying out loud, she could see where bugs were nesting and vines were clambering, could see where the structure was decaying.

Now that it wasn't going to be her tomb, it was just... a grey stone building, rotting away in the marsh. Fortunate enough to survive this long... but luck had to run out sometime.

"Carza?"

It was Kani. Her tusks gleamed silver in the sunlight, even if the overcast sky dimmed and scattered it.

"Hm?"

"Are you... alright? I mean, that was... well, it was a lot, and-"

Carza gave her a stern look, and felt her third eye twitch in sympathy - wanted to amplify the look further, but the bandages were stopping it. Good.

"I'm not mutating anymore. I'm not going to die. Well, I am, but... not immediately."

She sighed.

"Do you know what I want, right now?"

"What's that?"

"I want to go home. I want to go home and have some tea, some cake, and rest. I've reviewed my notes, and... and I've achieved everything I want to. I don't need to stay here, not any longer. I've made contacts, and if you two are coming back, then... well, honestly, you'll be treated like royalty back in the Court of Ivory. If I'm going to be honest... I think we're done. We're finished."

A shrug.

"I don't know where to go from here besides home. Nothing else I can do out here would... improve me, I suppose. I've changed. I've adapted. I've lost people, gained people back. And now... now the only thing left is home. The longer I spend out here, I feel like I'll get sucked in by something, I'll be changed in some way, I'll be... twisted around or altered or something, and eventually I won't even be able to go back home. All I'll have will be... be this."

Another sigh.

"I think I'm afraid that if I spend too long out here, I'll never go back home. I'll change too much. I want to see my aunt, to mourn my friend, to publish my work, and to relax. I have what I need. And I don't know if I can ask for anything else."

And while she didn't say it... she felt redeemed. Hull had died in her arms, and now she'd saved Kani. Her expedition had been destroyed, and now she had a new expedition around her, one she intended to keep by her side for as long as possible. She'd entered the steppe as a terrified girl who could barely shoot to save her life, and now she had an exotic rifle over her back, she rode with confidence, she was improved. And the mutation had thrown this into stark relief. Because once it had left, she'd found herself going through each and every memory she had, interrogating all of them with all the scrutiny of someone who might've lost them all. Each and every one achieved staggering importance, and when she placed all of them together, thought deeply about them... she realised that she'd accomplished all that she desired. Everything. Her notes were complete. She'd moved on from her old disasters and was trying to redeem her failures. And now... now she could go back. Oh, she could imagine staying in the steppe, or maybe going on more adventures, or... anything.

But right now?

Right at this moment, she wanted to be in Melqua's chambers, eating some fruitcake and drinking tea from a samovar while listening to some daft theatrophone play.

"So... do you want to go back with me?"

Kani blinked slowly.

"Carza. Sometimes I think you're a little mad, or at least, very odd. You're not insane, but... you have a few elements missing which would make you an ordinary human being. At this exact moment in time, you sound completely sane, and I find myself respecting your towering intelligence. Yes. I want to go back to ALD IOM with you, because, to be blunt, the idea of going somewhere which isn't a blisteringly cold or hot or damp or dry steppe sounds wonderful. Also, I think my brother might... choke on a chicken bone, or something."

Ayat nodded seriously.

"It's conceivable. Also, I'm exiled and I need somewhere to sleep."

Carza vo Anka. Holiday agent for Kani, and sofa-provider for Ayat.

...as fates went, not so bad.

"Then we're agreed. Heading back. Though... you picked up some gold in there, would…"

She paused.

"Let's try and give that to your parents. Seems fair, as payment for everything they've done."

Unanimous nods. Even the cat looked vaguely appreciative of the concept.

"...so that's it."

Another pause.

"We're leaving. We're going to my home, and... that'll be it. Nothing else if we can help it."

Kani agreed. Loudly. And Ayat certainly didn't raise any objections.

And with a sense of finality, Carza turned her horse to the south, and began to ride. The mud seemed like nothing, the rivers were just tiny slips of water, the temple was just rocks, and the world... the world seemed a little more sane. More rational. And less like a churning rapid in which she was caught, being tossed this way and that with no regard for her health or safety or sanity. An axis had emerged - home. And the fish-hook of homesickness which had been buried in her guts since she left was still pulling her onwards, but now... now it wasn't something to fight against. She let it reel her in. Back to the mountains. Back to ALD IOM. Back to Melqua and the Court, back to her libraries and her comforts, back to her quiet room with a view over the city, back to all the pettiness and smallness that defined true, abiding happiness in a way that mutation couldn't understand or replicate. All it could do was offer contentment, animal contentment in satisfying her instincts and surviving for as long as possible. It offered freedom from hunger and sleep and responsibility to others, and called that contentment.

Carza didn't want to be content.

But she wanted to be happy. To chase what she could get, and... figure out the rest along the way.

They rode single-file. Into the grey mist. Towards the steppe. And with each second, they came closer and closer to the place which would always occupy the corners of her mind, shaping her thoughts, storing them away, forming the contours of memory. A frame which was only noticeable until she stepped outside of it, and realised just how barren and bleak it all seemed by comparison to the infinite charms of the world in that frame.

She rode towards home.

Carza vo Anka was going home.