Chapter Twenty Five

The nightmares were back. And to Carza's surprise, the local girl wasn't involved in them. Not a single crack echoed in the confines of her skull, not a single wheeze of dying air... nothing. All she dreamt of was a deep, deep desert. The heat of the forest was nothing compared to it. She was wandering, so very far, traipsing deeper and deeper, stumbling over dunes... vaster than anything she could imagine. It was a dry ocean. An enormous, bone-dry ocean of a trillion grains, all of them whispering as she walked. They remembered being soil. They remembered being still. Being imprisoned by roots and chained by water, forced to remain bound while others walked freely. And now... now they were free. Nothing moved upon their surface that they did not allow. Nothing lived but what paid tribute to them. Things that changed their entire biology to survive here, life prostrating itself before the endless shifting waves. Waves which could swallow a horse whole in the wrong conditions, could drill into the skin and steal moisture away... and would then consume every corpse. She walked and walked without really knowing why, as the sun remained a perversely tiny disk in the sky... tiny, and hotter than she thought possible. Her skin never roasted - it being a dream and all - but she still felt it. Heat so terrible it shifted to a kind of numbness, a bland resignation that she was slowly drying out, hollowing, becoming a pile of skin and bones as the water fled her body, fled for cool air, fled out.

And she saw a man, half-buried.

Hesitantly, she walked closer, eyes wide, shivering like a leaf... it was a man, definitely. Not a mirage - she'd read about those, and this seemed real. It was a man, from no city she'd seen. Never had she seen someone with his features. And then he'd been left in the sun, slowing drying and burning until nothing remained but skin the shade of coal, cracked like old leather, so thin in places that she could see the dunes through the membrane. A spine pressing upwards like the walls of a castle, each vertebra almost piercing the skin... and his teeth were locked shut. His cheeks had been stretched by the heat, dried to the point of breaking, and she could easily see through, to see... a tongue, bizarrely red and living, curled into a perfect, perfect spiral right at the entrance to his throat. And somehow, somehow, she knew he was alive. His heart was practically stone, his lungs were long-since exhausted, but he lived nonetheless. buried from the waist down, feet latching to something to keep him stable.

And he sang.

He sang in the vibrations of his contorted tongue.

The linguist in her was still present, even in a dream, and she began to observe the man closely. His eyes were shrivelled husks, no water left. No ability to see. But he spoke. He sang. Controlled exhalations through the nose, the rustling of the moist tongue against a dry mouth, coils twitching in rhythmic motions... his cheeks pulsed like a stretched, dry drum-skin, providing a constant rumble that accompanied everything else. A stony heart clattered against half-carbonised ribs, and the careful vibrations sang out clear, crisp notes into the merciless day. She listened, carefully... and she thought she heard a logic to it. A genuine lexicon, a syllabary, a whole damn language. A grammar that was so alien she could barely understand it... and the man continued, improvising new elements, unveiling new complexities and extremes. The sound was so faint it could barely be heard, but she could feel it resounding in the corners of her body. It was not a song one danced to. It was a song one knelt and ruminated on, it... it...

It was a lullaby to the infant name of a star.

The man's eyes flared with light.

* * *

Carza woke with a start. No screams, like... some of her novels suggested. She just opened her eyes, realised her heart was faster than normal, her breath was quicker... and stared. There was nothing in front of her, just the pale blue of the world slowly coming to life... the sight of distant clouds drawing in to coat the sky once more and compress the head downwards. For a few hours, at least, there'd be clear air. Something felt empty in her stomach, something felt... lost, in a way. It was hard to try and move. Easier to remain here, on the hard stone. And after a point, it would be easier to remain here all day - not like there was much to do. Beyond... no, no, she had things to do. Important things. Very important things. The expedition was still unapproved, she needed to make Kralat give them supplies, a guide, a way out, before she went completely mad, or mutated horrifically, or just... killed. For one of a half dozen reasons. Somehow, that urgency didn't quite reach her body, and it remained where it was, prone and insensate. Her brain was sluggishly pulsing through thought after thought, unhurriedly poring over each and every reason why she should get up, without sending anything useful that would actually make her get up. She wondered if she'd slept funny and had paralysed herself below the neck. Somehow, her body was simply refusing to move. She could feel it, but... maybe she could just pretend she was paralysed below the neck and then lie here for a very, very long time. She was already content with remaining still, so why not make up an excuse to keep doing it?

This was probably one of her low points.

Then again, her neck wasn't snapped. She wasn't staring blankly at some terrified scholar who had the good fortune to be born in a place and to a group which some crazed killers didn't loathe instinctually. That entire encounter had been... been bizarre. He'd wanted a debate, so he tortured a random soldier, dragged her out, spouted a few talking points, and then snapped her neck with one hand. That was it. The only thing she'd learned was that Kralat was completely insane, completely convinced that he was correct and any number of sacrifices were necessary to achieve a perfect future that seemed like a pipe dream crossed with a fever dream... and that this whole mess had some relation to some long-running conflict between people who'd seemingly spent a great deal of time hating one another. No idea how this worked. No interest in knowing... mostly because she found it depressing. It felt so trite. To her, anthropology was something she studied to try and get to the core of things - she liked looking at religion, at leadership, at belief systems, how people articulated themselves in relation to the universe. Looking at things like this, at ideologies, at ethnic divisions, at bloody guerrilla wars... she just found it prosaic. Made her entire profession feel ugly.

She still couldn't forget those eyes. Afraid. So very afraid. No words behind them, just... just a feeling. That for all her fire, all her spite, all her curses, she would rather be anywhere else, somewhere safer, somewhere more familiar. In the end, she'd been scared of death. And all the spite in the world couldn't hide it.

Hadn't even learned her name. Never would.

And as she finally, finally sat up... she saw one of the Sleepless sitting on a nearby pillar, staring at her. Scalps around his waist. Weapons draped from him, many stained where they'd been at work and he'd not bothered cleaning them. A hand with long, long nails scratched at his stomach... mutant, then. Contamination could build up like a kidney stone, the body struggling to purge it, to purge infected material, and just creating concentrated lumps which itched and itched and itched... until they were removed, or reabsorbed by a body no thoroughly suffused. Carza's own stomach itched sympathetically, but... no, no, just an illusion. She was fine. Mutation hadn't gone past the skin, and she was clipping that very frequently. Her medication was filthy and made her stumbling visits to the latrines more miserable than they had to be, but... she was fine. He was the one slowly succumbing, she was taking care of herself.

He smiled.

And she remembered his face. One of the guards. One of the guards who'd brought that girl in, had presumably tortured her... had said something, an insult in his own language that she hadn't understood. Couldn't even really remember... he spoke, with a face like he'd smelled some sour milk. The language of Mahar Jovan. He spoke it reluctantly, but well. Presumably been tied up with the colony before joining this bunch.

"You kept moaning in your sleep. Very distracting."

She curled up a little, looking around. Hull was still snoring, sleeping fitfully.

"...sorry. Didn't mean to."

"No problem here. Met scholars like you. Bad stomachs. No ability to see death."

He shrugged.

"You like our work?"

She was silent.

"...that bitch died good, huh? Bit too quick for me. Would've liked to draw it out a bit. Wonder how many of us she's killed... eh, probably a dozen. More. One death in exchange for a dozen... feels pretty unfair, no?"

He barked out a quick laugh. Carza felt discomfort twist in her. Memories. A desire to go and throw up somewhere.

"Still. She got what she deserved, no? Unglara whore... boss knows what to do with them. Wipe them out, you know?"

Carza shivered.

"...he said he'd forgive them if they worked with him."

The man shrugged easily.

"Sure, but they won't work with him. And good, huh? His heart is too big sometimes... we don't need their kind. If they join the Sleepless, they think it belongs to them. If they stay out, they think we're conspiring against them. Unglara have been around for a long, long while, when they ruled this place, ran it into the ground."

Carza stared at him. And his grin widened.

"Unglara? We keep them out, if we know what's good for us. And we do. Kralat... he thinks the best of everyone. Too kind. Too much love. Us? We know that sometimes, hard decision has to be made. A few thousand Unglara, kicked out, stomped down... and everyone ends up happier. You know, Sleepless used to have writers? Propaganda-makers, theorists... and all they did was argue all day, debate, talk about 'advanced methodologies for post-colonial self sufficiency within an internationalist framework while achieving maximum potentiality...' blah blah blah. Unglara are like that. Bring them in, the work would stop overnight, too busy arguing over who gets the best bed... or just talking about their dead relatives. Most morbid fucking people I've ever met."

He grunted.

"Shame we didn't get to kill her slower."

Carza blinked owlishly. She was... she was a little baffled, honestly. And more than that, she was disturbed. Kralat had spoken so... smoothly, talking about erasing divisions, creating the perfect world that would endure for a thousand thousand generations... but it'd always been tinged by the knowledge that anyone who opposed that perfect world was responsible for the attempted murder and oppression of those generations. Dissent was murder, and dissenters would be punished appropriately. And now here this man was, one of the Sleepless, and he seemed to be... just hateful. Just an ordinary, pulsing hatred towards some other group. And she thought that Mahar Jovan was making the right choice by just leaving. She couldn't tell where ideology ended and regular hatred began, and she didn't want to tell. Maybe the distinction was practically invisible for people like this man. He grinned again, and continued to lounge, scratching his stomach lazily, leaving deep red score marks where he'd been at work. He seemed to want her to respond, to validate his opinion, to confirm what he thought - an outsider saying 'yes indeed, this particular group I know nothing about is the root of all evil, and murdering them all is the best option you have, really'.

Couldn't get those eyes out of her head.

Couldn't forget the sound of her neck clicking out of position. A quiet severance and she went limp. The tap-tap-tap of blood from her many wounds hitting the floor. The way her bones had been broken, her flesh had been deformed... her shirt looking like the topographical map of some violent country, unpredictable mountains and valleys and weeping red rivers. She felt something brewing in her chest - an urge to curl back up again, shut the world out, pretend nothing was happening... and only the knowledge that none of it would work stopped her. She was breathing faster, those dead eyes kept burning through her mind, her hands clenched, she could feel a cold sweat breaking out over her body, and...

A voice called.

Sharp.

Female.

Not a language she understood. Local. She turned, and saw one of Kralat's wives/concubines/servants standing a small distance away, an irritated expression on her near-flawless face. The guard drawled back a response... and her rebuke made him sit up straight and cease scratching his stomach. He looked nervous... and a second later, he'd jumped down from the pillar and was striding in the general direction of the temple, adjusting the scalps on his belt to make sure they were all in place, properly combed... Carza watched him as he went, some of her panic fading. To her surprise, though, the woman stayed - and approached. She had a natural sashay to her gait, and Carza felt an irrational pulse of jealousy. She was slim, beautiful, her hair was long, perfectly straight and the colour of old lacquer... more than that, she seemed comfortable here. Capable of actually existing in a place like this without going mad. She looked down at Carza, and sighed. Her city-speak was a little halting, but clearly she'd learned from her... husband? Him and his captives.

"You ought to ignore them. They enjoy getting reactions from people - they're stoic, but they're as bored as anyone else, stuck here watching a few prisoners."

Carza nodded hesitantly.

"Where is..."

"I told him that he was needed for guard duty at the temple, one of the others is... dealing with a problem, and his shift needs to be taken care of."

"...really?"

"Well, my... husband didn't specify which guard should replace the missing one..."

A tiny smile broke out on Carza's face.

"Thank you. Really. I... I'm sorry, I've just been-"

"Don't bloody well apologise, you saw something awful, and you're clearly not used to it. Now, I can get you and your friends a little liquor soon, we have an ample supply for... celebrations."

Carza blinked a few times. Liquor? She was... offering them liquor? Was this a trick? Was Kralat sending two forces, one to intimidate, and one to enchant? She'd heard about routines like this from her novels... but usually those routines didn't involve someone getting their neck snapped in front of her like a bundle of twigs. She involuntarily shuddered again, remembering the sound...

The woman crouched slightly, and smiled. She had a nice smile.

"They can be beastly, but... well, you've not quite seen what they've been through. Still. There are limits, and I think my husband enjoys crossing them. His men don't think twice before crossing them, there are no limits to them at this point."

She sighed a little. Definitely part of a routine. Had to be. No way she was just...

She handed over a cigarillo.

Carza loved her.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

A second later, she was smoking rapidly, puffing smoke in and out and in and out and in and out and wonderful. This woman was the most delightful person Carza had ever met. It'd been days since she'd smoked, and she'd been desperate. Normality seemed to wash over her for a moment, the world disappeared in a fog of grey, and she... she settled, just a little. Felt some kind of tension unwinding. Hoorah. Her chemical dependency had been satisfied for a second, and that seemed to make everything else feel just a little softer around the edges.

She was definitely being manipulated.

Definitely.

Wait...

"I... recognise this cigarillo. Where did you get it from?"

The woman blinked.

"I retrieved it from your luggage."

"My luggage."

"Yes. The men brought all the plunder from your patrol, a fair amount is in the temple's attic."

This changed things. This changed a lot. She could've been wearing fresh clothes by now. She had a whole box of cigarillos in there, she could smoke up a storm if she wanted to... she had so much in there. And more than that, equipment. Mountaineering equipment. Clothes for the cold weather. If she had... oh, this changed things, this definitely changed things. One of the hurdles to convincing Kralat to let them go was the fact that he'd need to outfit them with... everything. The resources Miss vo Larima had described seemed like the ideal way of getting something, but there was no guarantee that she had everything they'd need, or they'd even be able to get it. So having their resources already here, ready to go, ready to ship out, already packed... it made her case stronger, simply because it was easier for Kralat to let her get on with her job. The less he needed to be actively involved, the better.

This cigarillo had brought back a few of her wits, apparently.

Definitely helped her heart settle down.

...she wondered how many of her nightmares were due to tobacco withdrawal.

Didn't matter.

She tried to put the dead eyes out of her mind. Failed. But she tried nonetheless.

"Thank you. Again. Really. But... can I ask, why are you-"

The woman snorted.

"You look like a wet rat, you vomited after seeing my husband break someone's neck, and you've been twitching like a caged animal for the last few days."

She shrugged with disgusting elegance.

"And I like rats. Kept them as pets when I was younger."

Carza smiled weakly. Oh. Hoorah. How nice. She was definitely being manipulated. Kralat was probably trying to milk out some sort of loyalty from her. She'd heard about it in her novels, prisoners starting to love their captors. Well, she was fairly sure that wouldn't happen to her. She had a strong will, and more than that, she was easily horrified by inhumanity, and at this point, Kralat and his men had leapt past every single limit and entered the realms of complete and utter senseless madness. He'd gone so far beyond the pale that she couldn't imagine even respecting him, which was the lowest sort of appreciation. Couldn't respect what he did, why he did it... everything about him was loathsome to her, the only thing she had any appreciation for was his voice, his calm. And the credit that appreciation had bought had long-since expired.

The woman smiled a little back.

"I'll get some liquor for your friends, if I can."

Something occurred to Carza just as the woman was turning to leave.

"Wait! One thing, just... sorry, one thing, the people in the cage, are they... ever getting out?"

"Not until the ransoms come. That woman very much annoyed my husband."

"...could they get some food? Maybe some room? They're... a little... well…"

She struggled to find words which weren't vulgar or childishly simple. The woman nodded understandingly.

"I see. I'll... see what I can do. I promise nothing. The ransom is all that keeps them alive, and... well."

A final nod. And she was gone. Carza puffed away automatically, and instinctually started to brush hair out of her face, to bind it back into a ponytail. Been... days since she did that, she realised. Looking at her arms, she saw how tiny scars were already forming. Scabs like purple-black slugs lining the places where she'd had to do her clipping... and she was certain that there were growths she hadn't dealt with yet, hidden in areas that were difficult to reach. The filthiness of her clothes suddenly came to her with full force...

And she felt human.

Hull started to wake up.

"...oh. Morning, Carza."

He blinked.

"...nice cigarillo?"

"Thanks. Woman gave it to me."

"Huh."

"She'll get you some liquor."

"...we're being manipulated, aren't we?"

"Almost certainly. But I'm willing to act manipulated if it gets me more cigarillos."

"I'll join you there, been craving a drink..."

Well. They couldn't just hug each other and scream about how awful things were. They weren't children. They were adults. Young adults, yes, but that just gave them an excuse to ignore their health. Both had an undeniable hesitation to everything they did, a knowledge that everything could go very wrong very soon... but nonetheless, they kept going. Both of them remembered those dead eyes. That snap. The sheer size of Kralat, the way he handled the girl like she was a rag doll...

But for now... they had to keep going.

And sometime down the line, maybe they could get drunk together and smoke and stare solemnly into the distance while the memories flowed, and be useless for hours and hours.

But being useless now would kill them.

So useful they must be.

* * *

Carza began her work.

Kralat was available. And she had to talk with him. He was where he always was, on his bed, concealed in the dark, peering over his papers, his maps, his newest orders and reports... nothing more. He barely glanced up. Seemed disinterested. Carza explained her case in quiet, firm tones, with Hull assisting with... more than half of it, honestly. He spoke, she'd speak, and Kralat wouldn't look up for a second once they began. The tone was... profoundly non-mercantile. They just wanted, just wanted to honour their religion, to honour their city, to do what they could to preserve independence. They agreed with his arguments, and they wanted to help. And the best way they could help was by going over the mountains, to the steppe, where they could accomplish something. She left the obvious truth unspoken - that they'd be laying the way for a trade route. Miss vo Larima would've said the same thing, the arguments would still be in his memory. He was silent. He was... so talkative the rest of the time that the silence was effortlessly intimidating. She remembered the snap. Thought about how easily he could pick her up and crush her skull into paste if he was so inclined, or simply jolt her neck so far out of position that she'd die in seconds anyway. A jagged chunk of spine sticking out of the malformed bundle where her neck had once been.

Any...anyway. Best to wrap this up. Their luggage had been captured, she was certain of that, she commented that she'd seen some of her equipment being taken away from the massacre. No mention of the wife. Best to play it safe on that point. So... all she'd need would be a guide and some basic food supplies. That would be all. Everything else was already ready for her, she even had a gas mask ready to go, with enough filters for everyone. With Anthan gone, too, they'd have backups for almost everything. Which was, in a morbid way, quite nice. She ignored the small stain on Kralat's table, dried and warped, looking like a living creature as the flickering light cast over it. There was something... odd about that, she thought. He ate from that table, worked at that table, leant on that table... he used his bed for resting and simply sitting. If something could be used in more than one way, he did. He never even seemed to leave his temple, yet he commanded his fighters to spread through the forest, directed in their atrocities by the small pencil he used to scratch delicate orders down on rough-hewn paper.

The points were simple. This was a cultural matter for them. This would allow ALD IOM greater independence. This would cost Kralat almost nothing. And unspoken, his new state would have links to the steppe if they mapped out the route correctly. Though... she wondering why no-one had done that before, honestly. At least, she could (theoretically) give them a network of informants, a base of operations... she intended to give them none of that. But then again, it wasn't up to her. She was just trying to get back on track, and once she was done, she'd go back home and never think about this place ever, ever again, except when she was drunk and sad and staring at the ceiling from her soft, warm bed.

The points were simple. Simple for him to grasp.

And she waited.

And waited.

Kralat didn't even look at them. Simply kept working. She wondered if he was... no, she had no idea what he could be doing. Mocking them? Politely saying that he was too busy to talk? If so, why not just tell the guards to send them out?

The scritch-scratch of his pencil continued to fill the air, and as the seconds dragged on it became deafening.

Still nothing.

Carza saw the orders he was writing. Some of it was in a local language she didn't understand, but a little, a little, was in Mahar Jovan's civisprach. No idea why, maybe an infiltration measure, maybe because he was talking to spies and didn't want to arouse suspicion by communicating in a language tied up with the Sleepless... no idea.

She saw orders to move in on villages. To cut them down to the last man.

Butcher this village.

Execute the elders of this village in a public space, then remove the women and send them to work the fields here, while the men were either going to join up (if able) or were going to go the fields there, somewhere apart from their wives. Divide them up, hold each side hostage to make the other compliant.

Intercept this weapon shipment, slice up the bodies, place them in the emptied crates, and leave one survivor to drive it the rest of the way.

Plant stakes in this pass. Normal chemical treatment - excrement, largely.

Small outbreak of a certain fever in this area. Send survivors to Krodaw to spread terror in the refugee camp.

Dig a mass grave here, near the water supply of a series of colonial settlements.

She felt sickness rising in her throat.

And still the silence endured, only broken by the scratching out of more orders, more names for the lists, more people who needed to go. More people obstructing the path to perfection.

The temple's interior was filled with murals. The same murals as the outside - long-headed men and women with long fingers, walking in stately lines towards huge cauldrons from which an interminable number of arms emerged. A crowd, or a single, heavily mutated person. Ascension to godhood. She looked up, just trying to stop looking at the orders, and at Kralat's enormous shadowy form. The ceiling was lined with carvings. A circle of figures pointing upwards - to the very centre, where an enormous stone sun shone. The figures were... she blinked. No idea. Humanoid, yes, but... undeniably mutated. She saw tusks. She saw too many arms. She saw huge manes of hair interwoven with skulls and crowns. She saw a strange dark figure in armour, turned away while still pointing upwards, long hair tumbling to their ankles. Ascension to godhood through mutation, the way pointed by... hm. She saw the angular skin, the strange quality of it, and wondered if these monstrous figures were meant to represent the glass-skinned gods-of-the-mountain.

This place had once been built by a people that had conquered this place. And they were conquered by others. And they were conquered by others. And they were conquered by others.

A perfect future for the Yasa - they could be gods, and all they needed to do was destroy their bodies and minds, and hope that peace waited on the other side, a divine power that no-one else could hope to match. All perfection required was absolute destruction and corrosion. Sometimes you needed to slaughter a land to save it.

The writing continued.

They'd been silent for minutes now. And nothing had changed.

Minutes went on by. The sky remained grey.

And Kralat said nothing.

Carza's neck was dripping with sweat. She desperately wanted a smoke.

He could kill them whenever he pleased.

She was watching him kill people. So many that the girl from last night would just be a drop in the bucket.

He wrote. And wrote. And wrote.

Minutes...

Maybe an hour?

Silence.

She didn't dare speak. Fearful of insulting him. Fearful of interrupting something. Maybe this was how he said 'no'. She was going to stay here in this temple and this camp and surrounded on all sides by men who never slept. The air was chokingly thick and hot. It buzzed with insects, biting and chewing and gnawing and drinking. Her arms prickled where she'd been clipping. Her throat felt dry. Maybe she'd inhaled something in here, some kind of leaching contamination, and now her innards were changing... she felt sick. Hull was pale. She needed a smoke. If that woman said that if Carza ate some mud, she'd get a smoke, she'd be choking down soil in a second. No hesitation. Come on, just... just say something. Say yes, say no, say anything, do anything! Maybe she'd annoy him and be sent to the cage, maybe she'd insulted him last night by running away instead of remaining, maybe he knew she was squeamish and weak and she was going in the cage. In the branches which crawled with worms, surrounded by bodies, slowly succumbing to madness, and... and...

She was outside again. Panting. Leaning against the temple. Hull was with her, taking in deep, deep breaths. He spoke hurriedly.

"What the hell was that?"

"I... I don't know. Why wasn't he saying anything?"

They glanced at each other. Carza spoke first.

"We... we need someone on the inside. We need that woman to speak for us. That's it. Maybe she can just get him to say no, and we can stop hoping."

"...why not try to escape? You know, the normal way?"

"We'd die."

"We'll die anyway, maybe."

"Maybe."

They slipped into silence.

A distant bird chattered, another joined it, then another, then another... it seemed like the whole forest was cackling at them. Mocking them for their cowardice.

Dammit.

Dammit.

"Dammit."

Hull grunted.

"Dammit indeed."

* * *

The woman was at the cage. The sweating, living cage, filled with tangles of limbs forced to remain inside by the warning axes of the Sleepless. Carza was craving a smoke right about now... no, no, remain focused, beg for a cigarillo later. The prisoners were looking awful right about now. Slumped against the bars, breathing heavily, barely able to stand on their feet but too tightly-packed to sit down. Miss vo Larima's hair was a tangled mass over her face. She hadn't slept in days now, and it didn't look like she was getting enough water. None of them were eating properly, she could tell... and worse, some of them looked sick. One man, with just enough stubble to seem like a grizzled animal, and eyes sunken into dark pits... his arm had been slashed. Tried to get some kind of motion into it, sticking it outside of the cage... until those privileges had been revoked, and sharp, sharp edges had convinced them to stay put. Most of the others had cuts like that, most were scabbed over, sore-looking, but generally clean. This man was the exception. His wound was clearly infected. It stank of sweet rot, and the flesh surrounded it was puckered and purple. Clear fluid ran from the wound itself... and she could see patches of black. Gangrene. The man needed treatment... and more than that, he needed medication for mutation. Conditions like this were asking for contamination to get into the wound, and... and she remembered that mutation while diseased was a bad, bad, bad thing. At the best of times, that is. In a situation like this...

The woman passed Carza by quickly, and patted her on the shoulder.

"Sorry, I... I just wanted to say, we need to-"

"Talk to my husband, yes, I'm sure. I'll see what I can do. What did you need?"

"Expedition. He knows. It's a religious thing."

"...I see. I'll try to encourage him to entertain the prospect. At least, to give you a firm answer. If he was giving you the silent treatment, it's because he was still making his mind up, and he doesn't like sharing his thought processes with other people, not while he's uncertain."

"Thank you. Really, I..."

The woman leaned closer, and her eyes burned a little.

"Listen. I want you out of this camp as much as you do."

She glanced around carefully.

"If I can get you out of here safely... I will."

"...why?"

She pointed subtly at one of the guards. And Carza saw why.

He was frothing. Literally, frothing at the mouth. He was hunched over, sharpening his axe, and muttering to himself as spit continued to fleck his lips. His pupils had divided. His teeth were sharp. He stank of contamination. His hair had a bristly, unnatural quality to it which reminded her of the thorns on a briar bush. His skin was thick and ruddy, layer after layer after layer of it... tough. And he kept twitching in place. The contamination must've been racing through his system... he looked ready to tear someone's throat out, and one of his comrades was keeping a very, very close eye on him. He glanced around sharply, and muttered random sounds to himself. His hands, though... they were steady. His axe was perfectly level. And his eyes had absolute focus on the task in front of him. The woman whispered quietly.

"More each day. My husband is watching prisoners at present, and he gives them work, but... they want the final battle. Before their wits fail them. They wish to burn out, not fade away."

She remembered the soldier with the lamb leg growing out of his stomach. How he'd been led away. Was he meant to die? Head cut off, body burned... all for nothing? Or was he going to be thrown at their enemies, the last of his wits wasted on guard duty, of all things? More and more... hm. Maybe... maybe that was an angle to consider. Not that she could poke it herself. Needed a window, and this woman represented one. Was she being manipulated? Definitely. Someone, somewhere was directing this woman to get into her good graces, it'd all been too calculated. An idiot could see it. The woman shrugged.

"Sooner or later... something has to break. And if there are no prisoners to guard..."

"Why is he guarding us in the first place?"

"For the good of the cause. He believes in it, you know. Willing to stay away from the front lines and quietly run matters... but his men are wilder. And they need combat. He's aware of the situation, but they need a campaign, not just... savage attacks on random villages that haven't capitulated to our demands."

So... so maybe that was it. Maybe she was working for Kralat. Getting into Carza's good graces, presenting herself as an option for negotiation with Kralat himself.. providing practical reasons for them leaving. A terrifying power to enforce, and a gentle voice to explain. A good combination. Or... or she was just being merciful. Maybe she was loyal to the cause, and was trying to work towards it... maybe. Maybe. No idea. This bit of practical insight, it was... honestly destabilising her a bit. Why reveal this?

The woman walked off before Carza could interrupt.

She stared at the living cage.

And Miss vo Larima stared out. She was... she was chewing something. Carza approached hesitantly, and saw... saw that she had a crust of bread, and the moisture around her lips suggested that she'd had water. Who had... maybe the woman? Buying her way into their good graces as well? Come to think of it, some of the other prisoners were looking a little better than she remembered, fed slightly, watered a little... the gangrenous arm remained untreated, though. Intense eyes stared at her.

"Are you... holding up?"

Miss vo Larima was silent for a long, long moment, and seemed to be vivisecting Carza with her eyes. She was shaky, that much was clear. Kept twitching her leg, exciting some blood into it, shifting her weight from one foot to the other... anything to keep her going, to prevent exhaustion and madness. Didn't seem to be working - she looked exhausted, and at least half mad. Her hair was a solid mass at this point, fine dark strands clumping together with grease and sweat. Her skin was awful. Her fingers were filthy, her nails were practically black. The bread was being gnawed at with savage excitement, like she was some sort of rat.

"...hm..."

"Food?"

A single finger to her lips. Shh. Not meant to be known, maybe. Or maybe she feared the guards striking against her. She was being taciturn. No idea why. Carza tried to do a little more, start a small conversation, but... she saw that vo Larima was doing very, very badly indeed, and didn't seem to appreciate conversation with those more fortunate than her. Her hair had been chewed, she could see that much. And... and more than that, she saw something strange. A few of the men had long, red scratches on their faces, like someone had dug their nails in and torn away until the flesh was shredded. Like someone had thrown an angry cat at them. And if she looked... vo Larima was missing a few of her nails. And what remained was stained... dirt, blood? Hard to say. She wanted to say something, but... what could she say? She had no idea if any of this would work, no idea in the slightest. And she couldn't just bust her out of that cage, she had no sway with the guards to negotiate for leniency. She was trying, she'd gotten her some bread and water, right? Right?

"Are you...?"

Her voice was low. Quiet. Careful. Miss vo Larima looked... embarassed. And that embarrassment turned to irritation. Then to a low, simmering fury.

"I am well."

The conversation was over.

She walked away, feeling more uncertain than ever.

And in his chambers, a man plotted out a perfect future in a place where people had once tried to become gods...

And in the forest, something was howling.

It howled in a man's voice. Sometimes it sounded like screaming. Sometimes a wet, throaty gurgle.

And the man sharpening his axe looked up, foam speckling his lips, split eyes bulging with eagerness...

And in a low, low tone, he growled back.

Time was running out.

The number of humans was dropping by the day.