Chapter Twenty Four

The cage was a stinking mess of sweat and limbs. The wood was rotting - too much moisture in the air. Carza could see woodworms breeding in the dead bark, slithering through rigid veins which had once carried sap and water... the stockade was ripening. That was the only word for it. The Sleepless were always watching it, and she imagined they could have charted every single stage, every minute progression towards total rot. Flies clustered hungrily around the wooden beams, feeding on the blood and sweat of the prisoners, and the pale bodies of the worms which crawled incessantly. Carza sometimes forgot that this place was... well, a prison. The fact that she had to be alive for the Sleepless to claim any ransom meant that she wasn't being tortured or treated poorly, but... this was still staffed by people willing to butcher all of them if the situation called for it. For all the leader's pretty talk about oppressors and freedom... they were still brutal. Unfathomably so. The stockade represented that. A little pocket where they had absolute control, and could have a little fun with their prisoners. The people inside were gradually turning into animals. A sea of bodies, their limbs now firmly locked into the cage.

She saw why.

The axes the Sleepless enjoyed carrying were stained with fresh blood, and she saw gashes on the arms and legs of the prisoners. Without that source of relief... they had nothing but the space inside the cage. Bitten by insects. Stared at by silent, mocking guards... and left with one another. At all times. They stared out as one as Carza approached, her steps becoming more hesitant. The guards shrugged, letting her through, but the prisoners seemed more hostile. It was a mix of men and women, and most of them had removed their outer layers, trying to cool down as much as possible. Eyes had sunken into dark pits, sweat-slicked, pulsing with a low, enduring panic. A constant knowledge that they could be hurt by their guards, and there was nothing they could do about it. She didn't even see any doors to the stockade - it'd been built around them. No-one got out until the thing was split open like an egg. Slowly, surely, they were being turned into animals in there, hands bunched into fists, eyes watchful and cautious, not even bothering to clean away the flies which coated patches of flesh.

And the stink...

She coughed... and Miss vo Larima began to shuffle her way forwards. Her hair was in disarray, and a long gash was slowly turning brown on her arm, like a coiled snake or a languid slug. Still wearing her fine grey trousers, but now coated with mud and sweat. Her shirt clung to her, and her breathing was more rapid. And yet... yet her eyes remained clear. Her face remained smooth with the kind of inward tranquillity that most people would kill for. She spoke quietly and quickly, her voice strained by thirst.

"Success?"

"Some. We're trying our best."

Vo Larima looked her up and down quickly, and murmured.

"If you can, speak up for us."

She placed a hell of a lot of emphasis on 'can', and the rest was almost an inaudible mutter. The message was clear. She just didn't want to say it in front of the others. Speak up if she could. But... don't sacrifice this. Maybe vo Larima was deeply committed to helping her home, maybe she was resigned, but... she wanted Carza to push on. At all costs. She'd agreed to help vo Larima accomplish her own mission, and as a result, the two would pool their resources and split the profits. It felt odd, dealing with the Court of Salt, but... she justified it by thinking that the Court of Ivory would be benefited as well, by knowing that help would be required to cross the mountains, by believing that remaining here would be a recipe for disaster, and... and feeling shame at the thought of going back empty-handed, having cost her home the money needed for the expedition, and the money needed for the ransom. She imagined vo Larima was in a similar position. For a second, the two just stared at each other. Nothing to do. If they talked more, the guards might come in, might tear apart the whole operation.

Suddenly, something strange happened.

Miss vo Larima let out a high-pitched peal of laughter, that bubbled out of her throat so unexpectedly that even she seemed surprised, clapping a filthy hand over her mouth. The other prisoners didn't look taken aback, they just stared out of the cage with grim resignation. Unwilling to give their captors the satisfaction of begging.

"...I'm... sorry, I don't know what came over me."

Her voice was a little breathless. Carza stared wide-eyed at her. The woman hesitated for a second... then began to comb her hair back with slightly shaking hands, to brush her clothes of loose dirt...

"Good day, Miss vo Anka."

She said it casually, like she was dismissing her from an office. With a shaky nod, Carza turned on her heel and left, walking just quickly enough to not provoke any offence or suspicion. That... that laugh, it'd been... strange. Not mocking or sardonic, more... more desperate. It was still airy, light, twinkling, it had all the qualities of a good laugh but... but it was still painfully desperate. And distressingly unpredictable. Like... like she'd laughed out of instinct, simulating things that had once made sense to try and cope with a situation where nothing did. Brushing her hair like she was about to go to a meeting, cleaning her clothes like she wasn't in a filthy cage, laughing airily like she was having a normal, delightful conversation with a colleague. The other prisoners were simply silent. Watchful. Cautious. Unwilling to let any vulnerabilities show.

Carza walked away as quickly as she could.

Something about that laugh had unnerved her. A great, great deal.

* * *

Planning. Mutation clipping. The days were defined by ways to kill time - sitting down, preparing a gun, and systematically blowing a hole in the head of each individual second, pop, pop, pop, until she was tired enough to sleep. Not that she did enough to feel tired, so... she would just lie awake in the steaming dark and watch. And think of the cage. She had nightmares these days. Bad nightmares. She dreamt of a long-headed woman in the temple. She would walk amidst the pillars and anoint them with special oils... and all the while her robe would flutter around her ankles, and show bones made thin by indolence. Her eyes would flash would cold command - she was used to ruling, and she had no thought for Carza, a filthy, sweating thing that could barely stand up straight, could barely handle a single laugh from a single woman on the verge of some kind of breakdown. Her head long, her neck was weak... even a breeze made her shift like a willow, bending with it to avoid falling. If she fell... there would be nothing left of her. She looked down, her hair trailing to the small of her back, and reached out with long, long fingers to wrap them around Carza's chin, to tug her closer with unnatural strength, and to whisper:

This is not your place.

She'd wake, sweating, at an hour she didn't want to name. Too early to rise, too late to sleep.

And then her day would begin.

In this unreal place where nothing made any damn sense, not in the slightest. Once, she woke with one of the Sleepless standing over her, crouched, one leg on either side of her body, staring downwards. She almost screamed at the sight of him, of that heat-shrivelled face, of those wide, wide, wide, eyes, riddled with small red veins like the roots of baby plants... but he did nothing. Just stared. Curious. And then she saw his waist... and how the scalps dripped with fresh blood. He'd been out hunting. And he reeked of gore and mud. He poked her in the face with a filthy finger, checking that she was real... and with a dismissive snort, he left. A new arrival, checking out the local exotics. That was it. Only minutes later did she see the red dots on her chest, next to the buttons of her shirt, the remnants of whatever poor soldier had been attacked by him that morning.

Then... then she planned.

And ignored her shirt.

Shan's fate was still unknown. Probably dead. Anthan... no clue. Which meant they'd either need to make their way to the mountains on their own, or they'd need a guide. They prepared like they were working through a research proposal, coming up with the most appealing presentation, the best way of downplaying the costs and tastefully exaggerating the benefits. Maybe a Sleepless guide would make Kralat happy - keep them on a short leash. She wondered if Egg would be willing to kill that guide once the time came. They'd be in the steppe for years, after all, and that might well mean... well, for all she knew, Kralat would be dead or gone by the time they wandered back. And they couldn't have a potential mutant watching them at all times for that long, they'd gone insane. Turn into a ravening monster. No. No no no. Egg might be able to drive them off... kill them, if necessary. Not that they discussed that explicitly. Always half-truths and unspoken implications. Enough.

Lirana was struggling. Egg did fine, but Lirana... she jumped at every sound, flinched at every stare, spoke so quietly she was barely audible. Hands shook too much to even be passed off as a secretary. Something would need to be done there, that much was certain. And one day, as they planned... Carza acted. She hated every second of it, but she acted.

"Are you feeling alright?"

Lirana glanced up from her work sharply. Just some scribbles, nothing usable.

"...no, I am not. But I can operate."

Carza leant in, and spoke quietly.

"The more nervous you act, the more suspicious you are. The more people notice you."

Lirana shook violently, and let out a strangled laugh.

"Yeah. Yeah. That makes me calmer. Very good, miss. Very good strategy."

Well, Carza was bad at this.

"You want to get out of this, right? You want to buy a house in the country, live with a... a stable of manservants."

"...quite a bit. But mostly I want to survive."

"Me too. Me too. Just... just..."

She struggled.

"We can get out of this. I promise we will."

"...you can't promise much, Carza."

"Well, I can promise that. We're getting out. None of us are going into that cage if I can do anything about it."

Lirana tilted her head to one side, and a flash of her old sardonic nature returned for a moment.

"I wasn't even thinking about the cage, and now you've brought it up, that's all I can think of. I can think of nothing else. You're... very bad at this, aren't you?"

Carza scowled.

"Well, what would you do?"

"I'd... slap the other person on the back, tell them in a gruff voice that things were going to be fine and to stop acting like a lily-livered layabout with the guts of a six-year-old girl with fainting sickness, then I'd spit a few times for effect, then I'd hand over some liquor, and I'd growl that I was being given a direct order to survive at all costs."

She was rambling. Nervously. Very nervously indeed.

"I'd say things like 'your pa was a better soldier than you, but I'll be damned if I let you dishonour his legacy by failing in yer duty yer piece of human garbage', and, uh, 'yer pa fought the chimeric horde and came away with nowt but a single arm and some stumpy legs to his name, and yer complainin' about some forest-dwelling freaks that wouldn't know their cousin from their wife on account of them being the same person and your pa was worried about gettin' eaten alive or melted or converted into a soldier for the other side, he'd have called that cage a regular old den of... den of happiness and camaraderie and whatnot, and he'd say 'what are yer complaining about, my girl, ya got nothing to do all day and all the sun in the world, put some life into that flesh of yers''."

She trailed off messily.

Carza blinked.

Slapped her on the back.

"You'll be fine."

She paused.

"I... I lost track of the rest. I... don't think I can... growl like that, and I feel... uncomfortable talking about your father. He sounds nice."

Her eyes hardened.

"I pay your wages, though. We have a contract and I'm not finding someone else to hire, the budget is strapped as it is. I have bags I need hauled and roads I need uncleared. You put your professional reputation on this contract, and I'm not going to let you renege on it."

Lirana sniffed.

"That was terrible."

"I know. But I also pay you, so you better be complimentary."

"...that wasn't completely terrible, boss-lady. I promise to do my duty and earn the tiny amount of money you promised me."

"...I'm giving you the same wage I get from the college."

"Then you're poor."

"Shut up."

Lirana ruffled her hair.

"Oh, be quiet, you daft girl. Stop annoying me and I'll feel fine."

And for a second... all was well. But the temple loomed, strange and godly, a reminder of an age when the dream of some people was to become a god. Not to understand them, worship them, adore them... but to usurp their positions. The kind of madness which could only brew in a place like this. Where any god would seem petty and spiteful, if it made people live somewhere where the heat was endless, the forest stank, and springs of contamination opened every ten minutes to ruin someone's day. And if gods could be petty and spiteful... humans could be ten times as petty and spiteful, they could reach depths of spite no god could ever match. And if they could do that, then why shouldn't a human become a god?

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

...maybe the people here had started elongating their skulls by accident. Pressing cold stones into their heads over and over to relieve the head, eventually sculpting them through sheer repetition.

And looking at the murals, she was painfully jealous of their robes.

* * *

"Please. Come in. Sit."

Kralat wanted her again. Her and Hull. Lirana and Egg had fallen by the wayside. Left to their own devices by Kralat and the rest - they were unimportant. And for once, he'd summoned them. Wanted to keep up their conversation. She kept remembering that high-pitched laugh, the desperation in it, and... and anyway. She had work. Well. Dinner. The food was better - chicken in addition to the customary grains, washed down with water and whiskey. Simple, but just having some meat was deliriously wonderful. One of Kralat's... wives? Concubines? Servants? Anyway, she brought them their food, and they sat around a low table. She wondered if Kralat ever actually stood up - she'd never seen him rise from his bed, nor did she see him lie in it. Always sitting there, face half-in and half-out of the shadows, form disguised and perpetually shifting in one way or another. One second he'd seem human, the next he seemed to fill up the entire space around them. His syrup-sweet voice rolled over her, and she ate quickly, distracting herself. The woman who brought the food was slim and effortlessly beautiful, but there was something in her eyes. Something... well, afraid.

And Carza became very nervous of being in a room with Kralat. More than usual.

He smiled slightly, and ate with delicate care, never stuffing his face... which was irritating. She wanted to stuff her face, and she couldn't do it if he wasn't leading by example. It was just her, Hull, Kralat, and a pair of Sleepless guards who stood by the door, swaying slightly from side to side as they kept their muscles stimulated. Did it with dispassionate passion - she had no idea what went on inside their heads, no idea what they thought of Kralat, or his ideals, or his methods. No idea how much control he had, or how close to snapping this bunch was. Sometimes guards left, sometimes they returned... but the entire temple was enclosed in an unreal sphere of tranquillity. The war was far away, and already mostly won. This place was just... just a dreamworld, a temple to glass-skinned gods where old kings had tried to achieved apotheosis, surrounded by pillars that still bore a little of the perfume once lavished on them, guarded by men incapable of sleep, with a rotting cage in a distant corner where a businesswoman laughed at nothing.

This place didn't feel real. Sometimes Carza wondered if she'd died under that horse, and now she was just... trapped here. If this was her hell. A green world with a temple and tireless guards. And a man who smiled like an innocent lamb while quietly, calmly, dispassionately explaining why his crimes were necessary. The world beyond had ceased the moment she'd been forced to wear that sackcloth.

Maybe she'd drowned in that pool.

The filthiness and heat didn't help, she thought as she quietly ate. Made her feel like a solid mass - no differentiation between her flesh and her clothes, her flesh and her hair, her resting and her waking states, the stages of her day, the activities which divided up her existence. And as mud caked onto her trousers and dirt wormed under her nails, she found she was failing to differentiate between herself and the world.

And if she truly failed there... then that probably meant she'd gone completely mad.

Kralat ate half of his meal, washed it down with a golden mixture of whiskey and water... licked his lips, and made a gesture.

The guards shifted.

And Carza almost screamed.

The local girl.

She was still alive.

And she wished she wasn't.

The was dragged in by her wrists. Her uniform was mostly gone, what remained was her undershirt and her trousers. Bare feet. Bare arms. Her head was almost completely intact, they'd barely touched it. Everything else... Carza stopped eating. She could barely keep her food down as it was. Introducing any more would send her over the edge. Hull actually had to choke back a bite, and shivered repeatedly. She had no nails on her hands or feet. Spiralling cuts made their way up her arms, with only a bare excuse for bandages to stop them bleeding freely all over the floor. Long and thin, never deep enough to damage or kill. Only enough to hurt. The pads of her feet had been flayed, and her palms were a solid mass of blood. No idea how much lingered under it. Bruising was spread all over, her shirt barely covered any of it - it adhered tightly to her skin, showing strange, sickening indentations and rises where she'd been slowly deformed. Some areas caving inwards under the stress, others rising with fluid as the body tried to cushion something.

Tenderised like a piece of meat.

The guards looked at her like she was something they'd scraped from their boots. And one of them muttered:

"Unglara lass-na..."

The girl slowly groaned through lips ragged through thirst. It was perverse how intact her face was - they wanted her to be able to see, to speak. To be aware of what else was happening. She was thrown down roughly in front of the table, and she simply... collapsed, like a rag doll. A second passed where she simply breathed rapidly, trying to get herself under control... and then the two guards hauled her up and forced her onto a small stool, propping her up clumsily. She could barely keep her head upright. Kralat looked at her with an expression of sickening pity.

"I apologise for our guest. You're... receptive to our ideas. And I've long thought that your city could benefit from our ideas. Of course, your context is so limited... well."

He smiled.

"I thought we could talk to our prisoner here, and see why she made the mistakes she did."

The girl wheezed.

"Kras-la... una-kra-ha..."

Kralat hummed for a moment.

"For once - you can speak in the language of the oppressors. I assume you understand it."

He nodded at Carza and Hull, who both shakily nodded. The girl groaned, and spoke again.

"Fuck... you..."

No response, not even a frown. Tolerated in the same a toddler poking someone was tolerated - it was a natural action from an unsophisticated creature, what could you expect? Kralat nodded his large head, and hummed.

"We're rising against our oppressors. But you see? The reason we must be as decisive as we are... it's because of people like this. Our own people, who turn to the other side. Who learn the language of the conquerors, their culture, their faith... and then spread it outwards, like a disease. If we're not decisive, these people will continue onwards, and we'll be too soft to resist the next invaders. Your own city ought to do the same. To resist the oppressors with all their might, to cast them off, and to do so decisively, to prevent them from ever trying again. Anything else... and we condemn future generations to the misery of conquest. What we do now, we do to prevent misery in the future."

The local girl suddenly snarled, a little of her old fire returning to her. Carza looked at her in horror, remembering the grim-humoured girl who'd told her to try and commit suicide rather than be captured, and had gone barefoot in the fort so she could commit suicide with her rifle if necessary. Barely knew her. Didn't even know her name. And she'd been taken apart like a doll.

"Fuck off, Leneras."

...Lene... oh. Yes. One of the ethnic groups. It was... Leneras, Monosa, Unglara, and... Yasa? Kralat shrugged his large shoulders, barely visible in the dark, like mountains in the middle of the night.

"You see? They turn us against each other. Exploit our divisions. Turn our cultures into weapons. This is-"

"Don't you... you fucking talk."

To Carza's surprise, Kralat actually stopped. He gestured calmly.

"Go on. Please. Raise your counterarguments."

"Wanted to... to say this to you... for a while. Hard to... to talk when I'm screaming, ha?"

She paused, gasping, her eyes bright. They widened when they fell on Carza, recognising her... burned with something like pity, something like desperation, and something like envy. Carza was uninjured, she was healthy, she was fed. Filthy, but who wasn't? She hadn't been tortured. For just a second, Carza thought the local girl hated her with all her heart. Loathed her and would gladly tear her apart with her bare hands, if she had functional hands left in the first place. Carza stared. She was paralysed. Her hand slowly reached for Hull's, but... but neither did more than make contact, too frightened. This place had been unreal, and now... now it was crushingly visceral. She could hear the pitter-patter of blood as it fell to the stone floor, hear the eager breaths of the guards as they longed to deliver more punishment, smell the scent of a body slowly dying, inch by inch. Pulped.

"I am... I am Unglara. You talk about oppressors. You talk about conquerors. Where were you... where were you when the Monosa ruled us? Where were you when the Leneras spat at us in the street and called us savages?"

Silence.

"We were here first. And we killed the people who came before. You came, and conquered us. The Yasa came, and conquered you. The Monosa came, and conquered them. And now Mahar Jovan is here. No less... no less noble a cause than the rest. You... no different. You conquered us, and treated us like trash. No less noble than Mahar Jovan. Just like them. But at least they don't pretend to be saviours."

She spat out a loose tooth. Carza kept staring. And Kralat hummed idly.

"Ignorant. Very, very ignorant. You see? Before Mahar Jovan came, our people were divided. My Sleepless promise a better future, just as you can promise a better future to your own home. The divisions are pointless, all that matters is us, the locals, and them, the foreigners, and oppressors. Locals that would divide us into pointless groups are-"

More fire.

"You butcher our villages because we will not work for you."

Silence for a long, long second.

Kralat spoke mildly.

"Don't interrupt. Some people try and divide us. If they do, they're working for the oppressors by enabling them."

"Can... can you... can you say that you will protect us? That you will stop your people spitting at us in the streets, throwing us to the outskirts of your towns? We sided with them because they weren't killing us. Because they treated us with respect."

"Because they wanted to elevate you above us, to divide us further."

"You already hated us! You divided us! Mahar Jovan didn't invent that."

"If you're willing to let the stains of the past obfuscate your ability to seek a better future, then-"

"Would you forgive us, then?"

Kralat blinked.

"Hm?"

"Forgive us? Those who stay when you win? Will you forgive the 'stains of the past'? Will your men?"

"I will, if loyalty is proven, if you show that you're willing to abandon the divisions of the past. You're a lost cause, obviously. Too embedded in their way of thinking, too bitter against us. A sad casualty of a war that didn't need to happen."

"Will your men?"

"I will order them to."

A hollow, embittered laugh echoed in the room. The girl slumped, and seemed to have exhausted herself a little. Needed a moment before she did anything. Kralat hummed, and turned back to Carza, still eating his meal with the same deliberate slowness as before. She saw his teeth grinding up the chicken into pale white strings, swallowing them in ragged clumps, like the writhing woodworms that infested the stockade outside.

"You see? Divisions. Petty, pointless divisions, hard to erase... but necessary to erase. Your city has eight Courts, and if they continue to spit at one another, then they'll achieve nothing. Erase those distinctions. Unite. Only then can you be spared the present that we've been fighting against for... so very, very long. This bloody war creates more divisions... but you, you're in a position to nip the problem in the bud, before it becomes entrenched with warfare."

Working with the Court of Salt to survive being here, despite the rivalry between them and Ivory. The feeling of smallness in the outside world, the almost pitying look shot her way by the governor, like he thought of their war as a petty little thing that was beneath the attention of grown-ups. Children squabbling over a toy while adults fought wars for the sake of vast stretches of land, against people who disobeyed every command of morality.

He smiled.

"Remember, a perfect system is one that can last for eternity. So, in effect, we're fighting for... the rest of time. Until the land itself collapses into the underground rivers. We're fighting for the rest of existence. For infinite generations of children born free, without thinking about the fact that they're ruled by people who loathe them and would rather if they were never born at all. Generations of families who can live in land that's their own, and can be called safe. So hostile to invasion that they can live out their days contented and secure. We're fighting for the rest of time."

A light shrug.

"Some people are under the shameful illusion that they can err from that. All they do is interrupt the march towards a perfect state, where we can live in self-sufficient peace."

The girl mumbled.

"Peace on the back of bodies."

"A few hundred here, a few hundred there... saddening, yes. But we're fighting for the rest of time. Millions of lives lived in peace and happiness. Morally... there's no contest, I'm afraid. And I will choose the most effective means available to me."

He said this in the same mild tone as always, still eating his food without a care in the world. Carza stared. Hull was silent. That mild face, that innocent smile... and in those eyes, something terrifying. A certainty that he was right, which denied any kind of debate. Any kind of meaningful debate, at least. Anything was justified if it was in the name of the unborn millions. If it got the oppressors out of the country and let him hold sway. She wondered what this place would be like if he owned it completely. If she could start dictating things. How long until more people were dividing it and compromising them against the aggressors in the outside world? How long until more and more and more needed to be butchered to stop them from dividing them further? The Sleepless would never go away, she realised. And she understood why Krodaw was so full. Why so many were trying to get out of here, why the governor had looked so exhausted. They were being fought by someone who would never, ever give up - because he was simply correct. Anyone who disagreed with him was a stone trying to stop a river. She wondered how he had attracted any followers in the first place, there was something indescribably...

She just didn't understand this. Him. Any of it. Any of the pointlessness.

It just didn't click.

But in the glimmering of his eyes, she thought she could see the shadow of the world he wanted to build. Undivided. Perfect. Free of any form of oppressor... except for the necessary, steely, guiding hand of him and people like him. The solemn few who would have the duty of preserving the world for the rest of the people, who took it upon themselves to strip away the dissenters and the traitors. Anyone who stood in the way of the march of progress was responsible, in a way, for murdering, enslaving, imprisoning, torturing, and assaulting each and every one of the millions who would've otherwise lived free and happy lives, and now who wouldn't because of their actions. Each one was responsible for crimes against humanity, so vast that no-one would ever match them.

And if that was the case...

What wasn't justified?

The girl groaned, and another laugh escaped her. Dry. And exhausted. Carza felt a surge of pity, wanted to reach out and tell her that it was going to be alright, that she'd... but why? There was nothing she could do. And reaching out would just... just annoy Kralat. Enrage him, maybe. The girl stared blearily at the table, struggling to focus... and a second later, heaved herself forwards, sprawling on the table and sending cutlery flying, her bloodshot eyes fixed on Kralat, bloodstained teeth bared in a furious snarl. Her voice emerged from a battered chest, and it gurgled on the way out. The last of her.

"May you be remembered."

She said it with overflowing bile. And Carza caught her meaning, even as the girl fell silent once more. May you be remembered what what you've done. For the people you've killed. For the horror you unleashed. For the ruin you invoked. And let it stain everyone who ever thinks to act like you, think like you, believe like you. May your memory mark out the borders of every division from now until forever. May you strangle your perfect future before it can achieve even a single thousandth of a percentage of itself. Kralat watched the girl, curious if she had anything more to say. When nothing emerged but a low wheeze... he shrugged again, with affected delicacy.

"The curse is the last refuge of someone with no arguments left to state."

A sigh.

"Always a shame when they can't see. But lost causes are lost causes."

And with a grunt... he rose.

Carza's eyes widened further.

He was enormous. The shades of him, the glimpses, they suddenly resolved into something concrete, something real. And it was titanic. He stood so very, very much taller than her, she couldn't say quite how much, and as he stepped through the candlelight, his muscles gleamed. Only simple clothes, stretching to contain his size. There was something monstrously idolised about him, like he hadn't been born, just... plucked out of the earth, full-formed and hard-carved, ready for the duties assigned to him. Never to crawl, only to march. Never to speak, only to command, to convince, to rally. Never to exist, only to rule. He looked like something that would march out of the forest and immediately take command, the kind of person who she doubted had ever been in a position of true weakness. And always, that large, innocent, guileless face, with its syrup-sweet voice and lamb's smile, carelessly charming and effortlessly terrifying. He barely moved, simply reached down for the girl, and pinched the back of her neck like she was a lost kitten...

And then he kept pinching. Harder. Denting the flesh, pressing it against the bone so tightly that it shone like silver, like a deep-sea creature surfacing through a pale pink ocean...

The girl struggled weakly, hands batting so feebly against the bowls on the table that she couldn't even knock them over. Carza stared... and the girl's eyes met hers. They were wide. Frightened. And in Carza, they seemed to find a kindred spirit. Nothing passed. No final secret, no last wishes, nothing. Just a look. Even Carza couldn't say what it meant. She doubted the girl could either.

One sound.

A click. A scrape.

And the neck shifted a few crucial inches. Disjointed. Ripped out of position.

The body didn't even spasm. The light in the eyes simply brightened with fear... then dimmed. The body had been dead since it walked in here. Now it just... remembered that. And the brain finally got the message.

Not a single twitch.

And with a gentle rustle, Kralat returned to his bed, to his shadows, to the uncertainty - his body unfolding in the dark until all that remained was his innocent face, and his dead-star eyes. Carza stared at him. What... what was she meant to do? Keep going? Keep talking? Praise him ecstatically for his heroic slaying of the traitor who stood in the way of a perfect, eternal future, who dared to oppose the inevitable march of history... her hand clutched at Hull's. The two of them were paralysed. She glanced... his face was pale, his eyes were wide, and he kept shivering. They were scholars they weren't... weren't... the dead eyes kept staring at her, cold, clouding over... didn't even know her name, never would, dead because Kralat had wanted to make a point, wanted to make a point, and... and...

Carza lunged from the table, and stumbled from the room, her brain roaring with panic. Made it a few steps outside the temple before she threw up. Barely anything. Hadn't eaten much. She couldn't tell when she started crying. Such a weakling, such a... she was a scholar, she'd wanted a quiet office, a typewriter, a secretary, and peace. She didn't... even on the streets, she hadn't seen things like this, never. Never this kind of coldly idealistic brutality, informed by an overwhelming, burning love which consumed everything it touched. Things had been normal back home, people had operated by human rationale, obeyed some form of morality, even the Court of Salt wasn't like this. And in this green hell, nothing was normal. What was normal was insane everywhere else.

She knelt in the dirt for some time, spitting, trying to clear her mind enough to move, failing.

Hull patted her back, and she almost screamed. Barely managed to speak in Tralkic.

"What... what do we..."

She groaned, almost vomiting again. Hull didn't look much better. He sighed.

"I don't know. I really don't. Do we... keep going with the plan?"

"...have to. Can't stay here."

She thought she heard high-pitched laughter. No, no, just her imagination, she was certain of it... but it made a point. Couldn't stay. Couldn't have her neck broken because she was standing in the way of progress. What would happen if Kralat decided that he needed to be more active with his altruism? Talks, terrifying meals... nonsense, nonsense. They needed to help with the resistance effort, help fight, help make weapons, help strive. So they could better save ALD IOM once they returned. Turned into nice little Sleepless psychopaths, ready to create a perfect future back home. Or... or maybe he'd think that they were potential threats, and would just lock them up in the stockade. Already too many people in there. No long until she was there too, crammed in, starving, thirsty, until laughter bubbled out of her own throat without her knowledge or consent. They couldn't stay here. They couldn't let the unreality of this place infect them too. Even the mountains would be better than this. The place where the Yasa had thought glass-skinned gods dwelled.

She whimpered a little.

Hull spoke.

"I'm... I'm sorry for dragging you... you out here, it was-"

She lunged up, grabbing him by his collar. She knew how insane she must look.

"Do not apologise to me. Alright?"

Because if he did, and if he did it enough, she might believe it was his fault. And then her spite and irritation and anger and fear would have an outlet. And she couldn't let that outlet be her one and only friend in this green hell. He stared at her... and nodded his head silently.

"No, we... we... we think, we just... recover from this, go back tomorrow, apologise, then try and get out."

Dead eyes staring from the table. A neck pushed forward a few painful inches, skin almost splitting where the bone came too close, became a blunted guillotine...

"We... we get out. That's it. We get out of here. Any means... means necessary."

Her stomach heaved. Nothing left to throw up. The sky was a solid wall of grey, but it burned. It funnelled the heat down into the temple, and made her want to crawl out of her skin. There was no sight of the sun, she had no idea where it was, all she knew was flat, monotonous, glow. Burning, burning glow... like the lights in that morgue, the kind which never flickered or varied or shifted. Just projected light unnaturally and constantly. Made her feel dirty. Made her feel like a body being prepared for autopsy. Made her want an autopsy, just so she could feel cool air on her innards...

Hull hugged her.

She almost fought back on instinct.

And a moment later, she hugged him back, clutching like he was the one thing keeping her from falling into the abyss.

Silence between the two.

Silence amidst the green hell and the grey sky.

Silence amidst the temple for people ascending to godhood.