Chapter Twenty Seven

The summons were brief. Their time in this camp was over, she could feel it. The temple loomed with eerie finality - either they left this place alive, or they didn't leave at all. And based on the orders she'd seen on Kralat's desk... they'd be lucky if they wound up dumped in a mass grave, used to poison nearby water supplies with their festering bodies in order to drive people into joining with the Sleepless to fuel their ever-increasing demand for bodies. She wondered how many other Sleepless leaders there were - a dozen, a hundred? Less, more? Maybe Kralat was powerful among them, maybe he was a dangerous radical, maybe he was a moderate, maybe he was just some tinpot lunatic with a tiny group of murderers that needed to be driven half-insane to agree with anything he said... for everything she'd learned, there was so much that simply evaded her. Honestly, that was why she liked historical anthropology. The real stuff... it was messy, it was uncategorised, it was infinite. A culture existed - if one person did something strange, then it was for psychologists. And if... say, about a dozen did that strange thing, then she'd have to dedicate time to it. In the history books, though, the strange antics of a dozen-odd people was forgotten immediately. It was irrelevant. Cultures were boiled down to the most integral details, and... that was it. That was what she studied. Information was limited once a culture died or changed beyond recognition.

...maybe that said something about her.

She was feeling reflective, knowing this all might go wrong. Made her all introspective.

Some would say navel-gazing.

That was... probably more accurate.

Either way. Out here, surrounded by a context she barely understood, she felt like she was drowning. Too much history, too many struggles, too many groups with strange names, speaking in languages she barely understood or didn't understand at all. History was nice, quiet, dead. Easy. But also... well, sterile. Not much to get out of the same piles of data everyone else had access to.

She was pondering things when the summons came.

Kralat wanted to see them. One of the Sleepless delivered the message - his mutations were progressing in strange directions. She could see his torso had... lengthened, almost. Too many ribs, all of them a little too thick, too long. Holding in more organs than they were meant to. His stomach was covered in a ragged patchwork of brown scars... but he wasn't scratching them, not anymore. Old wounds. The scratching had ceased - the buildup of contamination had been reabsorbed into the body. Given up on rejecting it. Addicted to the stuff unmaking it on a cellular level. She wondered what he had in there - additional, backup organs? Or something more bizarre? Maybe he was developing additional stomachs, like some sort of ruminant animal. Maybe he was developing some strange gland of some variety, venom sacs, acid pouches, or maybe, just maybe, he was starting an evolution into something stranger. She'd heard rumours - mutants were sterile, but some learned to produce offspring within themselves. Parthenogenesis. Always hilariously unstable and short-lived, but... maybe there was a hive in him. Simple, fleshy insects generating out of his muscles, out of the repurposed slurry of muscles, infertile and cursed with half-lives, but still potent...

She thought she heard a slight buzz in his voice as he spoke.

The four were required. Herself, Egg, Hull, and Lirana. Well, as far as these people were concerned, Liraza, a good-old-girl from ALD IOM who spoke flawless city-speak and served as her nervous, stammering secretary, which conveniently hid anything resembling a foreign accent that they might recognise. To a local, it was obvious she was from somewhere else, but to, say, Kralat? Should be indistinguishable from Carza. Especially if Lirana never talked and just looked nervous.

...but then again...

The temple rose in front of them, a stone tree in a forest of pillars. She thought, thought she could detect scents as she walked... must just be her imagination, but she thought that there was something here. A trace of odd spices, odd hints. Sometimes it was completely foreign, and sometimes... it reminded her of home. One of Melqua's fruitcakes, the kind which used some of the more interesting spices from around the city. Warmth and strangeness and ideas that Carza had never quite thought about before, but... now that she did, she wondered how she'd ever lived without them. Liquorice, for instance. The smell was bizarre, it was downright indescribable, but... Carza still loved star anise, even if she could never satisfactorily pin down what it smelled like. Hm. Each pillar smelled differently, the carvings were always a little different... grave markers, maybe? Or maybe... maybe... she remembered her odd dream about the man buried in the sand, singing without once saying a single word or making any recognisable sounds. Maybe there was some kind of language here, maybe in the scents, maybe in the positioning of the pillars - they weren't regularly spaced. Maybe the carvings, which had long-since been lost. She'd heard stories about this sort of thing - buildings designed to mimic the constellations, or to serve some strange purpose when looked at from a certain angle. But...

Well. Like Kralat and the girl had said. Conquerors came and went. The Yasa had come, and now they were (mostly) gone. And with them, their language. Any kind of meaning from this place had been lost to the years, long before Kralat had set up shop here.

...hold on...

"Hull?"

"Hm?"

"Did... your research ever say anything about scents? Or people that lived in the mountains? I mean, the Court of Horn crossed the mountains, so..."

"You think the Yasa are connected?"

"A little. Maybe. Both came from the west, both have ties to the mountains, might've crossed them..."

Hull laughed quietly, thoughtfully.

"Well, Yasa does have a similar sound to a few Tralkic words. But the pronunciation is all off. Probably changed to fit into the languages around here... but the closest equivalent is a word which means 'bone', or sometimes 'clan' depending on which source you look at. Maybe there's a connection."

"...half of the Court of Horn left ALD IOM after they conquered most of it. Went back home, I thought."

"Or maybe they went south and conquered this place."

"And then were wiped out by the next round of conquerors."

"...if that's how their story ends, that'd be... fitting, I suppose."

He reached out to touch one of the pillars, running his hands over the faded grooves.

"...but they changed, clearly. Or our Court changed a great deal. Either way... I suppose the original people is long-gone, and all we can do is piece together what they left behind. Even when it's obscured, muddied, translated poorly, and then the records get destroyed every few generations because someone couldn't keep them safe..."

"You ever think that on the other side of the mountains, there's nothing at all? I mean, that we'll get there, and the people will just be... different. Unrecognisable. So unrecognisable it'll be hard to connect them to this, to the Court of Horn, to anything we understand...?"

Hull hummed.

"Maybe. Still worth doing. More so, in that case. Just imagine how screwy you'd end up after that amount of time in a place like the steppe, a place which was, apparently, so strange that people would voluntarily make the intensely risky crossing over the mountains just to get away."

"And then go back."

"Exactly. The sane ones stayed. The mad ones went back. Now imagine that happening here as well - sane ones stay, mad ones return, and over time the steppe is just full of the absolute lunatics that wanted to go back every time, even when they had multiple chances to succumb to sanity."

Carza actually laughed at that. She had a sudden image of ravening barbarians beyond the mountains, the purest breed of lunatic, the absolutely terminal individuals who had chosen to live in a place so strange that most of them crossed the mountains to get away from it. Maybe they'd get over there and promptly take enough narcotics to transcend their physical forms, before becoming lunatic warriors themselves. Carza vo Anka, the exceedingly muscled nomadic warrior armed to the teeth with a gun mounted on a spear, riding a mutated horse with eight legs, screaming hymns to unknown gods... Melqua would probably just be happy she was eating enough. Even if she was eating the screaming offspring of her enemies - because what else was she going to do with them? They were so conveniently bite-sized, might as well eat them, not like she was going to take care of them, they were probably already indoctrinated with the foul ways of the enemy - with ideas like 'civilisation' and 'hygiene' and 'not eating babies'.

Bosh. Flimshaw.

Oh, good heavens, she was going mad again.

And the temple awaited. She smiled shyly at Hull, still unused to being... openly affectionate with someone who wasn't a family member (adopted or otherwise). He grinned back nervously, but unreservedly. The weight of the knives was pressing down on both of them. She could feel the sharp edge scraping very, very slightly against her bare skin... and she wondered if she should get rid of it. Just to be sure. But... no. No. Keep it, and keep it hidden. Fear of Kralat would make him stronger, the best she could do was be prepared for anything. She had all her allies. She had everything she needed. The field of stone pillars was left behind, and now all that lingered in the air was the faint stench fo the rotting stockade with its silent prisoners, beaten into submission by days of captivity, of unrelenting heat. She still felt guilty about them. About not being able to free them yet. No shade from the sun, no privacy, no shelter from any element, no ability to move more than a few inches... it was efficient torture, she'd give the Sleepless that much. They barely had to do a damn thing, and they were still able to inflict pain.

Only a few guards.

Shivering. Eyes dividing. Ready for war.

The four looked at one another, and nodded.

...and entered.

* * *

Kralat was where he always was, and like always, he filled up the darkness of the room with his uncertain size - large enough to loom over all of them, despite only being partially visible. Like always, his expression was mild and lamb-like. Like always, Carza was completely terrified of him, and as he slowly turned a few papers, she remembered how those pinched fingertips could snap her neck with dismissive ease. The knife in her belt felt... heavy. Certain. A point of defence, but one she barely knew how to use. She wasn't a fighter, the best she could do was delay him for a real fighter to... also go and lose, because with uncertainty came a kind of invulnerability. He was all around, he was right by her ear, he was whispering to her and touching her neck, he was squeezing... and he was sitting in front of her, only his face and hand visible. The candles were burning low, leaking fat yellow tears to the ground, frozen waterfalls which gleamed like cave formations. Something holy about him - something of a holy hermit, or a mystic, someone who lurked in a cave and came up with terrible wisdoms. This place had once been used to ascend people to the ranks of the gods, and now he sat here, meditating. Gestating. She'd never even seen him in the sunlight... maybe he was trying to become a god himself, in some way. A god of a new world, a perfect world which could endure until the end of time.

To him, she imagined this place was the womb where the end of the world was created.

His eyes flicked up.

Carza gulped.

His finger tapped on the table.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

And the guards brought someone in, carrying her slightly. Carza gritted her teeth. Knew she'd be here.

Miss vo Larima looked awful, but... to her surprise, she hadn't been tortured. If anything, she looked a little healthier, some core element filled out where it'd once been hollow. Her fingers were twitching quickly, adjusting her clothes, brushing her hair out of her eyes... Carza remembered what she'd been like in the cage, slowly losing control of herself, becoming filthier and less talkative, not even bothering to attend to her hair. And now she'd reversed course, becoming human again. Maybe it was the shade, or food, or water, or simple freedom of movement. Still bore the marks of captivity, of course. Still unhealthily thin, and had a hollow look in her eyes where memories still danced. But she pulled herself free of her guards, who stood by without any objection, and she sat delicately down on one of the stools. Refused to meet Carza's eyes.

Kralat leant forwards, some of his enormous back entering the light, becoming real. Miss vo Larima retreated very slightly, shrinking into herself... it was uncanny, seeing her like that. Even in the cage, she'd had some kind of dignity to her, a kind of... bearing which set her apart from the other prisoners, who'd quickly seemed to lose their humanity and become living piles of meat, prodded and poked by guards while slowly dying in the sun. She, at least, spoke. She had ideas, schemes... and now here she was, backing off, looking at Kralat with unabashed fear. The two guards were dismissed with a gesture. No idea where Kralat's wives were. They were alone, all six of them.

"Now."

His voice rolled over Carza smoothly, and she felt the knife's point more keenly than ever.

"The merchant has made a point to me. An interesting one. Go on. Tell us your suspicions."

Miss vo Larima's eyes glimmered.

"I'm... s-sorry, Miss vo Anka, I... I couldn't stay in there, I couldn't, you have to understand, I didn't... you couldn't get me out, they out, I'm sorry, I really am, I..."

A single glance shut her up. And a moment later, she began again, barely keeping her voice under control. Carza felt fear pulsing in her, a cold chunk of ice slowly peeling its way through her guts.

"...Liraza isn't a real name. It sounds like it's from ALD IOM. It isn't."

...oh crud. Kralat smiled.

"Liraza. Your secretary, yes?"

Carza was utterly still. It took a monumental effort to nod, to break through the paralysis. Too frightened to reach for her knife. Just... just frozen. Useless.

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"Speak."

He wasn't talking to her. Carza was trying to move. Lirana was trying to stop moving. She was shaking like a leaf, and her hands were clenched into fists, like she was trying to hold onto some kind of anchor, something to keep her in place... but there was nothing but herself, no solid point to operate around. Carza looked around, trying to shoot her a look of reassurance. Didn't work. She was too damn terrified, both of them were. Lirana started to stutter in city-speak, her stutter masking her accent. Miss vo Larima listened carefully, and... to her credit, she was trying to be silent, clearly trying to phrase herself tactfully. Carza could hear traces of uncertainty in Lirana's speech, areas of unfamiliar grammar and syntax, holdovers from a language which obeyed very different rules indeed. Maybe that was just because she was a linguist, though, she knew how to pick out that sort of thing, it was her job... Lirana was making mistakes. Tiny pauses that clearly marked her out as a foreigner - Mahar Jovan's civisprach included a questioning prefix, ALD IOM city-speak didn't, and she kept hesitating as she bit down on her instinct to include it when she said things. And she was babbling, just trying to make noise, and... and it was obvious she was drawing from sources she shouldn't.

Miss vo Larima tried, at least.

"...well, I... I... I suppose... there's-"

Kralat slowly reached over... one finger on each side of her neck. She locked up. Maybe she'd seen this before. Maybe the proximity alone was enough to frighten her. A little pressure, and click.

"You will be clear. Or you can go back in the cage."

He leaned close, murmuring barely loud enough to be heard.

"The time of a final reckoning is approaching for us, Krodaw is almost ready to be attacked directly. And if I find you've wasted my time, exploited the mercy I showed you by offering you up for ransom... then perhaps my men would rather extract some final enjoyment from the cage before we burn it to the ground."

His murmur turned to a whisper.

"Would you like to go back to them?"

Carza abruptly remembered seeing some of the people in the cage with scratch marks on their face, and Miss vo Larima with blood under her nails... had she attacked them? Had they attacked her, and she'd defended herself? Maybe they blamed her for this, or maybe they were just maddened and strange and provoked by their captors into losing any traces of humanity. She remembered the food she'd been given... it was a terrifyingly potent method, she realised. Imprison them, wait until they started to turn on one another, then foster loyalty in the chaos by feeding a select few, driving wedges in deep, cultivating a caste of prisoners who were willing to work with their captors, anything to get away from the vicious divides that the captors themselves had created. Carza had helped, simply by being outside the cage. By being fed regularly, by being permitted to walk around in the temple. More divides, more separation. Enough for the Sleepless to exploit as they pleased. Going back in the cage after this, with nothing to show for it... they'd rip her apart. The guards would probably let them. They'd think of her as a traitor, or a collaborator, or worse, as someone who had tried and failed to free them... or had simply ridden on her status to escape for a brief moment. She'd come back, fed and rested, and they'd still be sweating and rotting... they'd tear her to pieces in seconds.

"...n-no. I don't."

He squeezed her neck very, very softly.

"Then speak clearly."

"She's not one of us. Her accent's wrong. Her syntax is poor. She's a foreigner."

Kralat smiled gently, and released her.

"Why would you hide this from us?"

Carza gulped... and realised she could sell Lirana out here. Say she wasn't aware of it, act incredulous. It might have a slim chance of survival packaged up with it. But...

No.

No.

Not descending to their level. Her hand twisted behind her back for Hull to notice - 'follow my lead'.

"...I'm sorry. I... didn't want to complicate matters."

Lirana stiffened.

"She's not from ALD IOM, she's from Fidelizh."

Egg nodded heavily.

"Yes, that's how the two of us met. Both from the same city, and people from Fidelizh tend to cluster around one another wherever we go, eh?"

Lirana nodded quickly.

"Yes. Fidelizh."

Hull shrugged.

"We just... didn't want to make things complex, sir. Didn't mean to offend you, but Liraza here, she's... sensitive about being a foreigner, is all. Likes to learn the local language, blend in as well as she could, she intended to live in ALD IOM, and didn't want to stand out."

Kralat blinked slowly, and a moment later, he spoke.

"I see. And yet, Egg, you referred to yourself as from Fidelizh. Do not feel shame?"

"Not particularly. But I respect the desire of others to avoid their past."

Crud, crud, crud... it sounded unbelievable to her, it was riddled with too many problems. Why not just be truthful? No, no, just... feign being a panicked idiot who'd made a mistake early on and had now doubled down for fear of being discovered. Not too far from the truth, honestly. She smiled uncomfortably, trying to present the image of... yeah, who she really was. A desperate little wet rat that had burrowed itself into a hole it didn't want to be in, mostly by accident. Kralat stared silently at her, considering her statements, her arguments, her lies. She felt her back ache from standing up straight for too long, felt her shoulders long to hunch forwards once more... and her eyes were watering. Kralat hummed... and said something awful.

"I speak Fidelizhi. Please."

And he spoke a few quiet words in a language Egg knew, and no-one else did. A question, maybe? She knew nothing about this language, he might well have said anything. Lirana locked up. Please, please, please, know something, she'd travelled a bunch, surely she'd picked up a few words, one or two, just enough to get by for a second... and she did, she spoke a few halting words, but... but it was obvious she was a foreigner. Carza's heart stopped. And Kralat spoke quietly again, in a language understood by everyone present.

"I see. Lying. And if you were going to hide this from me... why? Where could you be from, that you would feel the need to hide it from me?"

A second of silence, and he stood. Rising to his full height. Taller even than Egg. Radiating power in every direction, muscles like steel wires threaded under his skin, flesh gleaming in the flickering candlelight. Less a person, more an idea pressed into service as a physical object. He was naked down to the waist, and she didn't see a fleck of distortion, mutation, scarring... nothing but the spiralling wounds around his arms, inflicted years and years ago, apparently. He was flawless, a marble statue, a primitive idol which demanded some kind of worship. His existence felt like this temple - feeble hands shaking as they rose up something higher and higher and higher, ambition outstripping the capacity to fulfil it, but ambition propelling onwards nonetheless. Higher and higher, out of a desperate need to rise. His hand began to move... and he spoke, in his awful, syrup-sweet voice, innocent as ever.

"Mahar Jovan."

Her breath froze.

"One of the oppressors. I've seen what your city has done... and I don't have any personal grudge against you. But your city cares for you. There are people in it who care for you."

Lirana spoke quickly.

"N-no, I don't... I left home, I left it, I'm not going back there, I abandoned Mahar Jovan, please, I-"

"And they wreaked havoc indiscriminately on us. So we do the same in return."

He stepped closer, eyes still bland and calm.

"This isn't personal. But examples need to be made. If you want someone to blame... blame your leaders. Blame your soldiers. Blame those who came here to exploit us and divide us for their own benefit. Die cursing them. There would be more dignity in it."

Lirana whimpered.

Carza and the others could stand back.

Miss vo Larima was staring in horror, shivering with guilt. None of her old professionalism left, most of it broken by the cage, and the rest shattered by a betrayal that Carza couldn't even really hate her for. She'd have done the same thing in her position, if given the choice between letting a random stranger die or suffering and eventually dying herself, hopeless and miserable. But... Carza might survive this, right? She could let Lirana die, and then submit to being captured, wait for the ransom to come through... maybe... maybe this could work out, maybe she could survive, and all she needed to do was choose the most cowardly option available to her. She remembered the local girl dying, afraid, alone, staring into Carza's eyes...

No.

She didn't even think.

The knife was in her belt. Kralat was reaching. The guards were gone. Her muscles bunched, and she felt tension begin to well up, to burst, a river surpassing the dam. She'd been tense for so damn long, ever since she set off from ALD IOM. Every single day had made it mount up. Cam dying. The constant artillery strikes. Marana almost getting her hooked on some new variety of poison. Seeing the massacre in the forest, the warnings left by the Sleepless, being dragged as a prisoner, being locked up here for... days... all of it. And seeing Kralat killing someone in front of her. Feeling the heat rise, never feeling clean, and never able to express the tension boiling inside her... her muscles were so tight, she realised. Almost cracking her bones, they were wound up so tightly.

And now she could watch someone else die. Because some madman in the forest wanted to send a message.

And yeah.

She'd gone mad.

So... might as well act mad.

She jumped, shrieking at the top of her lungs. Kralat, for once, looked surprised. He was huge, she realised, but... damn it, she'd committed. Her knife plunged into his chest, opening up a ragged line of red across his flawless flesh. It lodged deep, scraping against his ribs, and as he stepped aside, his sheer size and power ripped the knife out of her grip, leaving it embedded completely. Only the handle remained visible, the rest had sunk deep, deep into him. A blood comet, with a ruddy trail and a gouged hole at its apex, weeping downwards over his chest.

And a second later, she realised what she'd done.

Oh.

Crumbs.

...had she shrieked something at him?

She had.

Why couldn't she remember what she shrieked?

Oh. Yes. Shock. Terror. Tension. Madness. The knife was still lodged in his chest. And Kralat... stumbled backwards, his breathing a little faster. The blood seemed to highlight him, forced him into reality, turned the shadows in nothing but... well, shadows. Nothing dramatic, nothing mythical. Some of the terror had vanished by stabbing him in the chest.

Maybe she should do it more often. Might help with the anxiety.

With a huge hand... he began to pull the knife out, and...

And that felt like a bad move.

Hull was at her side.

And the two of them jumped at Kralat, trying to clamber on his enormous body, stabbing in Hull's case, biting and clawing in Carza's. She felt like a wet rat no longer - she was a queenly rodent. And she was nibbling. No, gnawing. Survival now rested on killing or incapacitating him, and she was too stressed and terrified and stressed and horrified and stressed and mad and stressed to really think about the consequences of doing something this catastrophically stupid. Kralat said nothing. His face was still calm as ever, with only a faint hint of surprise colouring it - something had done something without his say-so. Someone had resisted intimidation. She heard others charging, Lirana had drawn her knife, Egg had his out, and both were slicing when they could, trying to get through the flailing bodies of the two profoundly weak scholars trying to deal damage to someone much, much, much larger and stronger than them oh good heavens this was a terrible idea.

This was hammered home when Kralat finally moved.

The bloodstained knife dropped to the ground with a clatter.

Carza's fingers ached as she tried to claw at him, and failed. Her teeth felt on the verge of splitting. Already she wanted to sleep.

And Kralat grunted.

Carza suddenly found herself being flung across the room, and Hull was flung in the other direction, both of them sprawling. In the moments before impact, Carza had clarity. And she saw Egg charging, teeth gritted and face frozen with tension, knife a perfect silvery flash in the air, another comet coming to strike the unfathomable planet that was Kralat. Lirana was more hesitant, but she had a frothing, frenzied look to her. She understood the gnawing, then. The urge to survive at all costs, no matter how much blood accumulated under one's nails. She... oh. Wall.

She crashed into it, and her breath surged out with a desperate wheeze. She felt everything ache to slide out of place, and... and...

Clarity. Come on, hold onto clarity, no matter how much it hurt, don't just faint like some idiot.

Wall.

Not a wall.

Door?

Door!

What did people do with doors?

They... ran through them! They entered and stabbed her and locked her in a cage and starved her and hurt her and hurt her and hurt her companions and hurt Hull and-

She staggered drunkenly to her feet, everything hurting, bruises blooming across her entire body...

Uh. Yeah. Door? Door.

The table was upended, papers flying everywhere. And with a grunt, it was thrust under the door handle, pinning it in place. No-one could get in - and good timing, because she heard a thump as someone tried to enter. One of the guards. Many of the guards. All of the guards. They were sealed in now, and trapped, and... and she was just coming up with wonderful plans, wasn't she? Real tactician. How to stop Lirana getting hurt because she couldn't stand to see someone else die, and not because of her? Right, yes, pick a fight with the giant man with a group of insane mutants at his beck and call. Oh dear, the group of insane mutants is coming in, who could've guessed at this predicament! What on earth should Carza do? Oh, yes, lock herself inside with the giant not-dead man. Who could break people's necks with his fingers. She was going to die here.

Miss vo Larima was huddled in a corner, staring in horror at the unfolding events, unwilling to involve on either side.

Good move. Carza wished she could do the same. She looked around... knife, knife, knife, bloody knife on the ground, but Kralat accidentally kicked it away, useless... knife! Another one! His dining knife, used for tough meat, she grabbed it and lunged without thinking. Hull was staggering up, and she saw his face was a bloody purple, his nose clearly broken. A few seconds of contact and they both looked like living garbage, wonderful. Egg groaned as a huge fist crashed into his stomach, Lirana squeaked and ducked back a few paces, anything to get away from those brick-like fists...

Hull lunged...

And hugged Kralat.

Tightly. Around the waist. Then he picked his legs up and wrapped them around the huge man too. Clinging like a monkey. Like a father staggering around with children attached to his legs - her novels said that was something that sometimes happened, she'd never really seen it. Now she had. And it was disturbing, because everyone involved was injured and trying to kill each other.

But it kept him still.

Egg crashed into Kralat's legs, making him stumble for a moment...

Carza saw a chance. A daring move.

She ran.

She jumped.

She sprang from Egg's back, knife in hand, she'd stab and stab and stab and-

She fell.

She wasn't an acrobat.

Very bad jumper, Carza vo Anka. On account of not being a damn acrobat.

The knife came within an inch of her own eye as it sprang her from hands, the hard ground driving yet more air out of her lungs, how did she still have any air in there she was getting it beaten out of her enough. An inch closer, and she'd have killed herself by jumping, falling, dropping her knife, and then almost crashing her face into the blade. Which was... alright, never, ever, ever talking about this to anyone at anytime in any place. Little personal promise, and she intended to keep it, which meant she had to live and move and not do something so stupid again. Alright, that was a bad move. Very bad move. But... wait, still had the knife, she was low down, she saw a foot! And what was a foot? A thing to be stabbed, because it was fleshy and felt pain and was full of blood and beans and hurt! With a roar, which if she was being brutally honest was probably more of a helpless squeak, she plunged the knife into the foot, and relished in how it pierced deep, how the tip of the knife snapped off on the floor, how blood pumped out in dull, dark rivulets, and... and... oh, oh, she felt a little sick. No, push it down, keep moving. Kralat still hadn't screamed or roared or done anything. A solid kick hit Carza in the side - the same foot that she'd just stabbed did he not feel pain. If she had any air left, it was gone now. She sprawled against the wall, stars exploding in front of her eyes, teeth feeling like they were about to spill out from the force with which she clenched... and another knife plinked in front of her.

...oh?

Miss vo Larima had pushed her original knife over, and was now huddling deeper into the corner, refusing to make eye contact, to associate herself with anyone here. Good move.

The knife was appreciated, though.

Kralat was struggling. Stabbed in the chest, slashed in a half dozen other places, and several dozen nicks... and now stabbed solidly in the foot. Still being wrestled. Egg collapsed to the ground as a huge fist cracked into the back of his head. He didn't move. Didn't get up. Hull was nothing, he was a scholar, they weren't good at this sort of thing. A fist pounded into his groin... and it was over. His knees curled up towards his face, he whined like a dying goat, and collapsed to the ground in a shivering heap, tears involuntarily pricking at his eyes.

Oh dear.

Oh crud.

But... a weakness!

Yes, remember those embarrassing anatomy lessons!

She lunged, just as Kralat was trying to get his bearings, assaulted from all directions... Lirana threw a stool at his head, which proved the pivotal factor. Stopped him from moving.

And Carza drove her knife into his crotch.

She heard something slice open.

And for once, Kralat roared, loud enough to shake the walls of the temple... his hands shook as they moved for the knife currently embedded in things Carza wasn't going to think about. She had piered the femoral artery and nothing else, he was completely fine besides the fact that he was bleeding to death, and- she had no knife. No knife. Crud, crud, crud. She scrambled backwards... and Lirana rushed in, knife in hand, blood running from a wound just over her left eye. She plunged it into his chest, and this time, she aimed for more than just flesh. Better than Carza. She howled like some kind of mythical thing, and the knife sank deep, deep, deep into Kralat's heart.

Carza stared.

...blood raced over Lirana's hands.

Tears were streaming down her face, and her teeth were like those of a rabid animal.

Kralat stared at the knife currently killing him.

Pain seemed to drain from his face. No more life in his body to feel any pain. Numbness. Total and comforting and final.

"Ah."

He leant forwards for a moment, his face tightened as he focused... and he reached for the knife. Reached to pull it free. He wouldn't. He couldn't. He was dead. There was... oh, Founder, no, he couldn't live, he couldn't be some unnatural mutant who had a dozen hearts which were all perpetually regenerating and... his hands wrapped around the knife's handle, and he began to pull with an expression of mild annoyance. Blood rushed outwards, a whole waterfall of the stuff, and Lirana staggered back, spitting wildly. No sight of her face, just black-red liquid pouring down, like she was a waxwork left out in the sun for too, too long...

Kralat pulled...

And stopped.

Everyone held their breaths. Too battered to go on. He had room, he had time, if he recovered, they were all very, very, very dead.

His face was focused.

His hands were tight.

His legs were functional.

...and not a single breath escaped his mouth. His eyes were unblinking. And the flow of blood began to slow, bit by bit, drop by drop... until it stopped completely.

Dead. Upright.

He died standing, pulling a knife out of his heart. Maybe he thought he could survive. Maybe he'd been idiotic and crazed by pain. Maybe he'd been so divinely confident in his own power and righteousness that... that he just had to go on, he just had to live. His purpose was too grand, his destiny too vast. He had an infinity of generations to birth, a perfect world to create. Atrocities to commit.

And now he stood there, perfect, marble, and soaked in blood. Knives sticking from him like a porcupine's quills.

Carza was pale.

Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.

Carza vo Anka was, in a way, now a murderer. A complete and utter murderer. Hull slowly, slowly unwound himself from the fetal position, groaning as he went... looking like he was about to throw up. Lirana slowly, slowly wiped the blood from her face with hands that shook even more than Carza's. And Egg sat up, slowly, slowly, taking in the scene with a vague air of bewilderment. And in the corner was Miss vo Larima, the one who'd started this, and who Carza still couldn't quite bring herself to hate.

She was the first one to speak, as it turned out. Her voice was mild. Burned out. Used on instinct.

"...oh. Oh my."

Hull groaned, and his bloodshot eyes flicked to Carza. His voice was muddled by blood, passing through thick, bruise-bloated lips.

"...Carza, did you shriek... uh..."

Her eyes couldn't leave the corpse. Even now she thought it was going to keep moving. To pull the knife out and move to find her and catch her and break her snap snap snap.

"I don't... don't know. Don't k-know what I said."

"...you said... said you were going to..."

Egg took over as a renewed wave of pain made Hull curl into a ball again, suppressing his vomit.

"...said you were going to feed his cock to the 'burny man in my dreams'."

Carza blinked.

"...I would never be so..."

She paused. Insane? Bloodthirsty? Downright homicidal and sadistic and murderous and monstrous and terrible? Her voice had a slightly broken tinge to it.

"...vulgar..."